Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 June 1901 — AMERICAN SCHOLARSHIP. [ARTICLE]

AMERICAN SCHOLARSHIP.

Has a Bright Future, Says a Learned Professor. It has been said that just as England has no great composer, America will never have a great scholar. Ido not believe that, says Prof. Hugo Munsterberg in the Atlantic. At the middle of the seventeenth century all the nations of Europe had great philosop h ers—E ngla nd, Fra n ce, H olland, Italy; and only Germany had the reputation of having no talent for philosophy. It was just before Leibnitz appeared on the horizon, and Kant and Fichte and Hegel followed, and Germany became the center of philosophy. As soon as the rightconditions are given, here, too, new energies will rush.to the foreground. In carefully watching year after year the students here, I am fully convinced that their talent for productive scholarship is certainly not less than, that of the best German students. Compared with them, American students have an inferior training in hard systematic work, as their secondary school education is usually inferior. With a more strenuous preparatory training behind them, and a better opportunity for productive work before them, these students would be the noblest material from which to develop American scholarship.