The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903, 1902-01-18
TIL f COU r / f r


before. BY excluding fads from the
public schools and by employing teach
ers with a wider margin of knowledge
and inspiration the time of American
youth could be saved and they could
be turned into the professional schools
at eighteen and complete the course
in their twenty-fir year. In order to
accomplish this electives must be dis
couraged.
Boys do not know what they want
to make their life work until they have
accumulated data for wide compar-
ison. In the first years of Professor
Munsterberg's life botany was all his
desire. Every minute which | could
spare belonged to the plants which
collected and pressed. 1t became
years. Then came my passion for
physical instruments: an uncle gave
me a dainty little electrical machine
and soon the whole house was over
spun with electrical wires. A friend
with theological inclinations inter
religion, Islamism in particular. Thus
at fifteen years of age we learned
Arabic from the Koran. Now finally.
my true vocation was found: my friend
wrote prOphetically in my album that
we should both go out as missionaries
to the Arabs-and yet / missed con-
nection and went to Boston instead of
to Mecca, and forgot on the way all
my Arabic. Friends of mine soon
found an old slavic grave while dig
ging on their farm. | became fasci-
mated with chronological discoveries, and
as important excavations We're going
on in the neighborhood, | spent every
free afternoon and whole vacations
in the chronological camps. studied the
literature of the subject, dug up urns
for our town museum. and wrote at
the age of seventeen a never published
book on the prehistoric anthrOpolOgy
of West Prussia. Then the happy
school days came to an end and yet
/ had not found myself. / have never
digged any more. l did not become an
bridge insists on my showing him the
Harvard sights, and We come to the
chronological museum, the urns bore me
so utterly that it is hard for me to
believe that in earlier days they made
all my happiness. l went then to the
university with something like lib
eral education; and when in the mid
die of my philosophical studies / came
TO psychology. the lightning struck.
l thus found my life work: and in all
these years l have never had an hOIr
in which l doubted that il was my life
spite of all those various fanciful in
terests, before 1 reached the intellect
ual level of the graduate school. The
school never took the smallest account
of those inclinatiOns and never allowed
me to take the smallest step aside from
the prescribed school work. My school
work was not adjusted to botany at
nine years because / played with an
herbarium, and at twelve to physics
because l INDUCED in noises with
homemade electric bells and at fiji
teen to Arabic. The more my friends
and 1 wandered afield with our little
superficial interests and talents and
passions the more was the straight
forward earneStneSs of the school our
blessing; and all that beautified and
enriched our youth and gave to it
freshness and liveliness would have
turned out to be our ruin if our elders
had taken it seriously and had formed
life's program out of petty caprices
and boyish inclinations."
The foregoing long quotation from