The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-06-05
GRADUATE COURSES IN HISTORY.
An Increase in Instruction of Fifty
 Per Cent in Fifteen Years.

An Increase In Instruction of Fifty
 Per Cent. in Fifteen Years.
 During the last fifteen years the num-
 Der of courses in history at Yale open
 to graduate students has risen from
 twelve to about thirty and the number
 of hours of instruction per week from
 twenty to fifty. Such growth in less
 than four college generations is very
 striking, but, as it we'll known, it is
 typical of the expansion of the whole
 university, and notonly of Yale, but of
 all our leading institutions. In this
 general abundance of opportunity the
 advantages offered by one institution as
 compared with its rivals will be found
 to consist not so much in the number of
 the courses as in the distinctive meth
 ods employed, and in the opportunities for studying special branches of history
 in which the institution in question
 may possess exceptional facilities. It is
 in regard to these two particulars that | the historical courses offered in the l graduate school will be reviewed | The distinctive feature of the gradu-
 ate work in history at Yale, that which 1 differentiates 1t from the advanced
 work elsewhere and that by which its
 success must in the main be measured,
 is the especial emphasis laid upon training, upon the acquisition of a sound critical method and spirit, rather | than upon mere range of knowledge. l The students are taught pre- -eminently by doing rather than by listening. This above all distinguishes the purely graduate courses from the advanced | undergraduate electives. The higher elective courses are conducted in gene l ral upon the familiar lines of university lectures but accompanied by stated amounts if assigned reading and fre- queritly by essay work. The graduate
 courses for the most part are not lec- ture courses, but practice courses, and
 1t is believed that there are more dis
 tinctlvely practice courses at Yale than anywhere else in the country
 In these courses the students do most of the work, which is of kind to en- large their knowledge of the sources and the literature, to test their critical judgment, and to train them in sound methods of research Preliminary to | these courses, although necessarily pur- sued by some at the same tme, is the | introductory course in historical meth cd and criticism. This is not q course | of lectures on bibliography or the high | CT criticism, but consists mainly from | the start in grappling with practical | examples of critical problems, selected | for their fitness to illustrate the princi- ples of criticism. Sometimes they are questions around which voluminous literature has gathered, and sometimes they are questions which demand gen uine original critical work if anything at all is accomplished. Especial em- phasis in this course Is laid upon train ing in the interpretation of historical texts, to enable the students to extract from them not only all the historical in formation mbedded in them, but exact ly what they contain and no more. Af- ter this course they take hold of work in the original cources with more intel ligenec and success.
 An extension and specialized applied tion of this critical training is provided in Professor Perrin's courses in Greek history and the same aim dominates the courses in European and American historiography, which the students make critical studies of narrative histo- ries which are primary sources, and of secondary histories or products of 
 Training in criticism of course cannot of itself make great historians or great 1 teachers; but on the other hand 1t is that students get a sounder and truer insight into the foundations of historical Knowledge, and become | more thoroughly infused with the his- .orical spirit by training of this sort than is possible in any other way. The more elaborate papers produced by the are brought before the larger audiences of the Historical club, which | meets bi-weekly for the discussion of | papers presented either by some in- structor or student.
 Among the special fields of historical investigation in which there are excep- ional facilities at Yale, may be mem toned ancient Oriental and Biblical his- ! ory, Greek history, medieval institu- ional and church history, and the mod-- ,rn history of the relations of the Uni ed States to the far east The oppor- l unities also for investigation in Span sh-AmeriCan history are unusual and l york in that field is heartily encour- ged, although no courses devoted par lcularly to that subject are now given. 'he work in Greek history, as has been above, is distnctvely train- ng in the higher lines of critical inves- igation and in particular, in source 
 The cooperation of the faculty of the ,ivinity school with the graduate faeui- y, coupled with the extensive resources l f the library, enables Yale to offer op- ortunitieS in Oriental history, Biblical l istory and criticism which are proba- ly unsurpassed elsewhere in the coun- " and certainly not equalled at more - nan two other places.
 The same cooperation re-enforces the ork in mediaeval institutions. Pro- ] ,ssor Walker joining with Professor dams in conducting the advanced re- sarch course. In modern Oriental history there are l purses devoted to the modern history India China 11d Ta nan tn tba h. I