Read Ebook: The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration Vol. 01 No. 08 August 1895 Fragments of Greek Detail by Various

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The extent to which the Harvard students make use of these opportunities is to be inferred from the figures which the last Annual Report of the President offers. These refer to the year 1899-1900; the current year will show somewhat the same proportions, perhaps even an increase of graduate work. The figures are necessarily too low, inasmuch as they refer merely to those students who take examinations in the courses and omit those who merely attend the lectures. The attendance in the philosophical courses was last year over one thousand students. They belonged to all parts of the University, 188 Graduates, 210 Seniors, 218 Juniors, 175 Sophomores, 59 Specials, 57 Scientifics, 55 Divinity students, and the rest from the Freshman class, the Law School, and the Medical School. The introductory courses were attended by almost four hundred students, that is, by a number corresponding to the size of the Junior class. As, in spite of natural fluctuations, this figure is pretty constant,--in 1897 reaching its maximum with 427,--it can be said that in Harvard under the system of absolutely free election practically every student who passes through Harvard required of himself at least a year of solid philosophical study.

An even higher interest, however, belongs to the figures which refer to the most advanced courses offered, especially to the courses of research. It has always been the most characteristic feature of the Harvard Philosophical Department to consider the advancement of knowledge as its noblest function. The productive scholarship of the Department is shown by the fact that the last two years alone brought before the public eight compendious scholarly works from members of our Department, besides a large number of smaller contributions to science. To train also in the students this highest scholarly attitude, that of the critical investigator as contrasted with that of the merely receptive hearer of lectures, is thus the natural aim of our most advanced work; it is this spirit which has given to the Department its position in the University and in the whole country. This prevalence of the spirit of research is the reason why, as the Report of the Dean of the Graduate School points out, the Philosophical Department has a larger number of graduate students who have carried on graduate studies elsewhere than any other Department of the University. The table of the Dean which records these migrating graduate students who come to us for advanced work after graduate studies at other universities, is as follows: Mathematics 6, Natural History 7, Political Science 7, Modern Languages 11, Classics 14, History 15, English Literature 16, Philosophy 20. If we consider the whole advanced work of the University, that is the totality of those courses which are announced as "primarily for Graduates," we find that the following number of graduate students, including the graduate members of the professional schools, have taken part: Classics 103, Philosophy 96, English 75, German 61, History and Government 52, Romance Languages 45, Mathematics 39, Economics 23, Chemistry 21, in the other departments less than twenty. But this situation turns still more strongly in favor of philosophy as soon as we consider the technical research courses, those which in the language of the catalogue are known as the 20-courses, and omit those graduate courses which are essentially lecture courses. In these research courses the number of Graduate Students is: Philosophy 71, History and Government 34, Chemistry 13, Zo?logy 12, Geology 10, and in the other departments less than ten.

These few figures may be sufficient to indicate not only the extent of the Department and its influence, but above all the harmonious character of this development. The most elementary courses, the solid routine courses, and the most advanced courses, show equal signs of growth and progress, and the whole work with its many side branches remains a well-connected unity with a clear systematic plan. All this must be understood before one can appreciate the striking contrast between the work and the workshop. It is of course easy to say at once that the truth of a metaphysical thought does not depend upon the room in which it is taught, and that the philosopher is not, like a physicist or chemist, dependent upon outer equipments. Yet, this is but half true, and the half of the statement which is false is of great importance.

The dependence upon outer conditions is perhaps clearest in the case of psychology, which has been for the last twenty-five years an objective science with all the paraphernalia of an experimental study: the psychologist of to-day needs a well-equipped laboratory no less than the physicist. Harvard has given the fullest acknowledgment to this modern demand and has spent large sums to provide the University with the instruments of an excellent psychological laboratory; the one thing which we miss is room, simply elbow-room. Our apparatus is crowded in the upper story of Dane Hall, and even that small story must give its largest room for the lectures of other departments and another room to a philosophical reading-room. The space which remains for the psychological work is so absolutely out of proportion to the amount of work going on that the problem how to bring all the men into those few rooms has become the most difficult of all our laboratory problems. During the current year, besides the training-courses, twenty-three men are engaged there in original research, each one with a special investigation and each one anxious to devote as much time as possible to his research; only the most complicated adjustment makes it possible at all, and yet the mutual disturbance, the necessity of passing through rooms in which other men are working, and of stopping the work when other men need the place interfere every day with the success of the instruction. A mechanical workshop is an urgent need of our laboratory, and yet we cannot afford the room; and while the only desirable arrangement would be to have the psychological lectures in the same building where the apparatus is stored,--as the instruments are necessary for the experimental demonstrations,--there is no room for the lectures under the roof of Dane Hall, which houses the Bursar's Office and Co?perative Stores. The result is that the instruments must be carried through the yard in rain or shine, an effective way to damage our valuable equipment. But the evils connected with the present locality of the psychological laboratory are not only such as result from its narrowness. Its position on Harvard Square, with the continuous noise and the vibration of the ground, is perfectly prohibitory for large groups of psychological studies and disturbing for every kind of work for which concentration of attention is a fundamental condition. Finally a psychological laboratory, perhaps still more than a physical one, needs in its whole construction a perfect adaptation to its special purpose; the walls, the shape, and the connection of the rooms, everything must be built, as has been done in other universities, for the special end. We have merely the rooms of the old Law School with thin partitions dividing them. In short everything is in a state which was tolerable during the last few years only because it was felt as provisional, but the time when the psychological laboratory must have really adequate quarters cannot be postponed much longer.

The needs of the psychological work can thus be easily demonstrated to every beholder; but while perhaps less offensive on the surface, the outer conditions of the other branches of the Philosophical Department are not therefore less unsatisfactory. The advanced student of logic or ethics does not need a laboratory, but he needs seminary-rooms with a working library where his work may have a local centre, where he can meet his instructors and his fellow students engaged in related researches, where he may leave his books and papers. To-day all this theoretical work has no home at all; the seminaries seek refuge in an empty room of the laboratory at a late evening hour, in a chance lecture-room, or in private homes; there is nowhere continuity, no place to collect or to deposit, no opportunity to meet beyond official hours, no feeling of coherence suggested by surroundings. The most advanced research work of the country is thus done under external conditions which suggest the spirit of a schoolroom, conditions which deprive students and instructors equally of the chance to make our seminaries the fitting forms for their rich content. But if all this is most deeply felt by the advanced students, it is not less true and not less deplorable for the undergraduate courses. There is nowhere fixity of association between the work and the room. The philosophy courses are scattered over the whole yard, wandering each year from one quarter to the other, creeping in wherever a vacant room can be found, not even the instructors knowing where their nearest colleagues are meeting students. The dignity and the unity of the work are equally threatened by such a state of affairs. There remains not even a possibility for the instructor to meet his students before or after the lecture; his room is filled up to the time when he begins and a new class rushes in before he has answered questions. A business-like restlessness intrudes into the instruction, and yet philosophy above all needs a certain repose and dignity.

Thus what we need is clear. We need a worthy monumental building at a quiet central spot of the Harvard yard, a building which shall contain large and small lecture-rooms, seminary-rooms, a reading-room, and one whose upper story shall be built for a psychological laboratory, so that under one roof all the philosophical work, metaphysical and ethical, psychological and logi8 or 1.E.9.

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