SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE.

As the year of work winds up, it is very natural to look back on what has been neglected, forgotten, or actually learnt. Many will regret that the last has been with them the least of the three, and feel that a mistake has been made in the eight months past, - that too much has been aimed at, and consequently too little accomplished. These will perhaps feel the force of a few words on what is becoming so common at Harvard, a fashion of trying to get a general idea of all the elective studies, rather than an accurate knowledge of a few. This desire for a little of everything seems to result in part from a very imperfect conception of what is called Culture, - that movement of which Matthew Arnold was the leader, and of which he himself says that its aim is the perfection of our human nature on all its sides, in all its capacities; that it presses ever onwards to an ampler growth, to a gradual harmonious expansion of those gifts of thought and feeling which make the peculiar dignity, wealth, and happiness of human nature. Surely a high purpose, but one not incapable of being but partly understood or not understood at all; and thus culture comes to seem to many people the ability to talk on any subject readily and fluently enough for five minutes or perhaps a quarter of an hour, to know a little music, a little science, a little Greek, a little mathematics, and a little of fifty other things; that is, not to know them at all.

One sees this misapprehension in reading-men who rush through book after book - novels, sermons, poems, biographies, travels, plays, histories - only that they may feel, when they have finished, that they have read them and are therefore "well-read" men. How different from people in the last century, who perused their Clarissa Harlowe, Rape of the Lock, Pilgrim's Progress, and Shakespeare till they almost knew them by heart, and thoroughly understood and appreciated much that was in them! Would it not be better if we, in our day, could only bring ourselves to give up the one thousand and one others, and try to get some idea of the real spirit of Carlyle, Thackeray, Tennyson, or some great writer, till we felt ourselves equal to the study of the greatest, - Shakespeare?

Some, perhaps, will deny the value of this thorough mastery of a few branches of knowledge instead of an acquaintance with all; in answer, two considerations might be brought up, - one the effect on character of becoming perfectly certain in some department of learning, feeling that in one thing at least success has been attained and not merely half-way work; the other an argument from the desire for culture - true culture - itself the training of the whole mind, not by vague ideas gained in careless study or reading, but by definite, clear-cut knowledge of that for which we feel ourselves most fitted.

It is not often that the advocates of any particular opinion are among the first to acknowledge its defects and its liability to abuse; when they do so, a large measure of liberality and fairness should be granted them: this applies very forcibly to the Faculty of the University, whose advice about a plan of study for next year confesses the weakness in the Elective System, while it strives to remedy it. Their suggestions should certainly be received with some consideration by us, as the opinion of men whose desire it is that we should leave college with minds not narrowed by prejudice or conceit, and yet ready to do some especial work, and do it well and worthily of Harvard.

H. S. F.