The presumption raised by
the considerations already offered is that in their work also, as
well as in their ceremonial, the higher schools may be expected
to take a conservative position; but this presumption must be
checked by a comparison of the economic character of the work
actually performed, and by something of a survey of the learning
whose conservation is intrusted to the higher schools. On this
head, it is well known that the accredited seminaries of learning
have, until a recent date, held a conservative position. They
have taken an attitude of depreciation towards all innovations.
As a general rule a new point of view or a new formulation of
knowledge have been countenanced and taken up within the schools
only after these new things have made their way outside of the
schools. As exceptions from this rule are chiefly to be mentioned
innovations of an inconspicuous kind and departures which do not
bear in any tangible way upon the conventional point of view or
upon the conventional scheme of life; as, for instance, details
of fact in the mathematico-physical sciences, and new readings
and interpretations of the classics, especially such as have a
philological or literary bearing only.
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