THE desirableness of an elective in the New Philosophy which has been discussed through the columns both of the Magenta and the Advocate - yet discussed at much less length than the interest felt by upper-classmen demands - will not be overlooked, we hope, in arranging the philosophical courses open to us next year. It is not for us to discuss here the soundness of any system of Philosophy; but we wish to point out one or two arguments in favor of an elective in the New Philosophy which appear to us convincing. Assuming that it is not philosophy, but the power to philosophize, that students are here taught, - and the distinguished head of our Philosophical Department has often assured us of this, - it becomes of less than vital importance what textbooks are used. But it is of vital importance that the men who study Philosophy should have minds open and receptive to all truth; that every capability of real, worthy enthusiasm should have full development; and that no text-books should be employed which unnecessarily lessen that enthusiasm, whether by the overshadowing vastness of the dry psychological facts there accumulated, or by their adherence to a phraseology that to our modern ears seems stilted and pedantic.

It is this conservation of enthusiasm here at Harvard which we would insist on, and which the older members of our Faculty do not yet appreciate the urgency of. Even the younger members of that body are just beginning to recognize the fact that the enthusiasm of their undergraduate days has departed from our halls; and a bit of real, honest enthusiasm in any department of study is becoming more and more prized from its rarity. The present apathy that has supplanted the enthusiasm we may suppose once to have existed among the students of Philosophy is such that it has become a subject of common remark among undergraduates; and disregard for the philosophical opinions held by those who take electives in the present courses In Philosophy; is fast becoming disrespect for the courses themselves.

That a course in New Philosophy would take advantage of what enthusiasm there is here, and so utilize it that it should increase rather than, as now, decrease, cannot be a matter of serious doubt to any one.

And the reasons for such a desirable result are not far to seek. The New Philosophy has received its great development within a few years; the enthusiasm of its founders may be that of our teachers; the great questions about which it is concerned are not new ones, to be sure, but they are in their nineteenth-century dress, and stand in a purer, clearer air than in the scienceless centuries of Thomas Aquinas and the schoolmen. It is just this difference of dress and environment which makes the difference between enthusiasm and apathy which their discussion produces; and no greater mistake can be made by our Faculty, as we see it from the undergraduates' point of view, than to suppose that such a surplus of available enthusiasm exists here, that it can much longer be drawn on by those who persist in taking it out of circulation, without endangering the soundness of our whole philosophical treasury.