President Eliot's Address.

The warm appreciation of the University for President Eliot was shown by the enthusiastic applause with which he was received last evening. Sever 11 was crowded.

The object of President Eliot's recent trip to the West was to investigate the universities and the secondary schools. The trip had been very instructive, as it revealed points which could not be learned by reading.

First among Harvard's many gifts to the West is the elective system. Although this system was thought of by many long before it was introduced at Harvard, yet as it has received its most liberal development in this college, it can justly be called a Harvard institution. Western universities have been struck by Harvard's success and progress under the elective system and have been eager to adopt it as far as their resources would allow. The election of studies in the University of Minnesota is even more liberal than at Yale.

The elective system has also entered into the schools. The high schools of all the great western cities have adopted a system of election of courses, although not of particular studies. The grammar schools of the West have a wider range of study than those of the East. This elective system which has been so rapidly developed is one of Harvard's gifts to the West.

The second gift is the system of education for the purpose of acquiring not mere knowledge, but the power to use our faculties to the utmost. It is in just this point that a college education is apt to be wanting, and it is for just this point that Harvard has made a stand. At Harvard first of all colleges was abandoned the time-honored custom of requiring certain passages from the classics for admission. Now the stress is laid mostly on the ability to translate at sight. This was a substitution of a test of power for a test of memory. This change was adopted in other requirements. Although this idea of acquiring power rather than knowledge has only been put in practice about fifteen years it has got a firm hold on the institutions of the West.

Harvard's third gift to the West is the system of individual instruction. This was first introduced by Louis Agassiz in the form of natural science laboratory. The laboratory system spread through Harvard and even to the schools. In the University this individualization has taken the form of conferences and seminaries. In nearly all of the western schools the laboratory system has been to a great extent adopted. Individualization is bound to produce good results; for what both the individual and the community need is the development to the utmost of each man's capacity.

Harvard sets an example which the promoters of education in the West hold up to their people and legislatures to follow. The steady growth of the college, the gratuitous services of her governing boards, the generous financial support of the state are all held up as a standard which western universities should try to reach. The countless historic and literary associations centred about Harvard and Cambridge have a great fascination for the westerner brought up in places no older than a lifetime.

In return the West has sent to Harvard a large delegation which has helped to make instruction take a broader course. The department of the University which receives the greater part of this delegation is not the college but the graduate and professional schools. harvard cannot pretend to compete long with the growing western universities in the matter of rudimentary college education. But in the higher departments Harvard has a great start on the new western universities, and as eastern brains and enterprise are as great as western, there is no reason why Harvard should not keep her lead and continue to attract advanced students from the West. This means, however, that increased attention must be paid to the graduate and professional schools.