A very interesting and significant feature of university life in the early days was the great part played by students in the scholastic community. They were not only included in the group described by the word "faculty," but they were charged with administrative and executive functions. The movement toward self-government, which has already borne fruit in many of our colleges, is in no sense a modern influence; it is a return to a condition widely prevalent in the early history of university organization. Not only did the students share, through various deliberative bodies, in the determination of the gravest questions of academic policy, but, in many cases, the executive head of the university was not only chosen by them but was often one of their number. The rector of the Italian universities was in most instances a student, often under twenty-five years of age. The rector of the University of Paris, who was charged with the gravest administrative functions, took precedence of the archbishop, and sat at times in the royal councils with princes and nobles, was originally elected by the student communities, and was often a very young man; and yet Paris was essentially a university of professors. Bologna, which was a university of students, was governed directly by the general assembly of undergraduates. Whether governed by students or by masters,—alumni as we should say,—these historic institutions were essentially democratic, and the student seems on the whole to have been the most important figure; not only because at the beginning he formed the constituency for the popular teacher, but because later when these throngs of students formally organized he had the largest share of privileges and for a long time the controlling voice in the management of affairs.

"Universities," said Professor Croisat at the centenary of the University of Montpellier in 1889, "do not come into the world with a clatter. What we know least about in all our history is the precise moment when it (Montpellier) began." It is impossible, in many instances, to fix the date of organization of many of the foremost of the older institutions; they were not made, they grew. There was a deep necessity for their existence in the intellectual and spiritual condition of the times, and they sprang into being here and there, in Italy, France, Spain, and England, in response to that need. They were notable, at the beginning, not for academic calm, but for turbulence and vitality; for they were not universities of science, they were universities of persons. The differences of scholastic rank were not very sharply defined. In early days, whenever the university body was formally addressed by Pope or Emperor, the students were named in the same sentence as the masters.

It is unnecessary to recall here the changes in condition which have separated the student class sharply from the teaching body and divorced it almost entirely from governmental functions. What is significant for the purpose of this article is an apparent disposition in many quarters to recede from the extreme position of entire exclusion of the student body and a tendency to move in the other direction. That tendency may become very marked and lead to a very radical change of policy in the government of colleges, a change so radical as to be revolutionary in its effect. It is certain that the government of colleges, like that of states, must from time to time undergo marked modifications if it is to remain vitally representative of, and harmonious with, the growing and changing life of the college. In healthy institutional life there is free play and interaction of all the forces that go to make up the organic life, and a certain flexibility is involved in all growth. The student community, is, after all, in most institutions the prime object of interest. A few foundations exist for the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, instruction being incidental; in most institutions, however, instruction is the foremost and absorbing function, and the student's welfare is, therefore, the controlling factor. In western colleges, where the edge of hunger for knowledge has not yet been dulled by opportunity, it is not an unknown thing for a committee of students to wait on a president or chancellor and announce the failure of some professor to prepare himself for recitations by fresh study of his subject. It would be well if students in eastern colleges would sometimes put on a similar boldness; they would help heads of colleges out of very trying difficulties with well-meaning but incompetent or indolent professors. Undergraduate popularity is often illusive and unstable, but undergraduate perception of incompetency is often very keen and discriminating.

But whether admitted to, or excluded from the government of the college, the student community plays a part not always recognized in its educational influence and work, and many men receive more influential impressions from the atmosphere in which they live and the men with whom they associate during their college career than from their instructors. Nothing is so pervasive as an atmospheric influence, and, in its way, nothing is so important. It is significant that foreign students rarely speak of Oxford without commenting on its atmosphere; something in the air of the old town which, although intangible in its operation, is a positive factor in the educational result. Specific courses of instruction are less numerous than in many other places, and such instruction as is offered is often defective in methods and spirit; but the life of the place is adjusted to intellectual work; the library facilities are great, the traditions which seem to be part of the very structure of the colleges are liberalizing and make for generous culture. In such an air it is easy to study by one's own impetus and to develop in ourselves the passion for perfection. Culture is so different from training or favoring the acquirement of knowledge that it is so often totally lacking in men who have carried both processes to great length; it is indeed rarely conveyed, though it may be greatly aided, by definite instruction. It cannot be said of the great mass of college graduates that they are men of culture. Culture comes, in a sense, by indirection, a man absorbs it and furnishes the conditions for its growth, but he cannot receive it directly from his teachers. There are, in every college, teachers, who stimulate culture in students not so much by reason of their scholarship as by reason of their attitude toward what they know. For culture is always a personal quality; a ripeness which comes from the generous enrichment of a man's nature by contact with the best things. In certain atmospheres men ripen, as in certain others they remain hard and unaffected.

The atmospheric quality of a college is determined largely by the character and traditions of undergraduate life. If that life has generous ideals, sound impulses, and traditions which appeal to the imagination, the atmosphere will do as much for many men as the formal instruction they receive. It will inspire self-respect, firm ambitions, and general dignity and nobleness of nature. Men will be drawn together by the sympathy of aspiration, rather than by mere congeniality of habit, and their daily association will have an educational influence of the most lasting kind. It is this association which often leaves its mark on men who have failed to make right use of the opportunities for specific instruction which surround them. A college education is complete, so far as any provisional education is complete, only when the student receives the strong impress of both teachers and associates; when instruction is competent and vital, and undergraduate life is wholesome, generous, and aspiring.

It is a significant fact that when a group of men develop creative gifts in later life it will generally be found that their undergraduate life together discovered strong sympathetic aspirations which bound them together and gave their intercourse a very stimulating quality. The action and reaction upon each other of a group of young men of generous aims are peculiarly delicate and influential, affecting the very sources of individual strength and impulse.

Such influences are intermittent and irregular; it would be a great gain if they could become continuous and, in a flexible sense, organic. Student life has been, at times, highly organized and penetrated by intellectual impulses. Colleges differ greatly in this respect, but in American institutions the student life of to-day does not anywhere near realize its rich possibilities. Its interest in athletics is so great that in this single field it may be said to be fairly well organized and fairly effective in securing the end for which it works; but in no other field is a similar activity discoverable, unless it be in that of journalism. One of the most interesting features of the intellectual and moral revival now going on in France is the notable change that has come over student life, a change shown in a revival of song, of old student customs, of solidarity of feeling, and of a generous enthusiasm for the common traditions and views. May not American students learn something from this contemporary illustration of the possibilities of organized student life?

Literary Monthly, 1893.