WISE MEN FROM THE EAST

It is not often that the announcement of a new appointment to the faculty of the University arouses much enthusiasm in the undergraduate mind. Instructors come, lecture for their allotted space, and then, so far as most of their students are concerned, completely disappear into the limbo of lost things and forgotten personalities, leaving little behind them but battalions of dead blue books and seeds of thought cast on barren ground.

Always, however, occurs the exception. It seems probable that Professor Alfred North Whitehead, for twenty-six years lecturer on mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge is one of the lucky few whose coming will attract more than the usual amount of undergraduate attention. Besides being one of the foremost adherents of the school of English Realists, which numbers among its leaders Bertrand Russell, Professor Whitehead is a follow of the Royal Society of England, and was awarded the James Scott prize in 1922 by the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

From a mixture of two good strains, according to anthropologists, comes good stock. With Professor Whitehead bringing into the Department of Philosophy the best of English thought, it seems likely that there will shortly be a revival of the old days made famous in anecdote by the amiable differences of Professor Royce and Professor James.