President Eliot's recent address at Johns Hopkins on the subject of the proper requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts is likely to create considerable discussion. The subject involved in it is so momentous a one, that one must hesitate to form decided opinions upon it until it has met with a more thorough discussion. We cannot, however, forbear inclining to adopt the opinion in regard to it expressed by the New York Times. It is easy to brand opposition to so radical a reform as the extension of the system of specialization and differentiation in studies into the years of boyhood and earliest youth, as mere unthinking conservatism. President Eliot speaks, of course, with the highest authority; and yet the logical outcome of his views cannot but excite alarm. It is not easy to admit that the favorite modern principle of the division of labor can wisely be carried to this extent in the intellectual world as it is now being carried in the physical world. The fundamental principle on which the great republic of letters is founded, the very idea of the "humanities," as the Times says, and of a broad and liberal culture, revolts against this proposition.

The terms "smattering" and "superficiality" in knowledge, are frequently used with a great deal of effect nowadays; and yet we think that there is much to be said in favor of smattering in knowledge. Reproach can properly attach to the smatterer only when in the arrogance of half-knowledge, he attempts judgments only open to the specialist. Every man to a certain extent must be a smatterer. It may be necessary to lessen the preponderance of time given to the classics in a liberal education. This many are ready to admit. But that the common ground of studies prior to the college course should be altogether broken up, that all educated men are to be marked out as specialists even from their cradles, is a thing hard to receive.