them, or any other ideal be substituted for them, the educational plan fails; for a man who is merely a repository of knowledge is worth neither more nor less than his equivalent shelf-full of books in the market-place. He is not strong. He is not an educated man. He is an absorbent. He is a sponge. He is a repository of other men's ideas, with no ideas of his own to give in exchange. He may have been instructed, but he has not been educated. "The magnet attracts iron, to be sure," he says, "to the student who has learned the fact from a book; but the fact is real to the student who has himself felt it pull. It is more than this- it is enchanting to the student who has discovered the fact for himself. To read a statement of the fact gives knowledge, more or less complete, as the book is accurate or the memory retentive. To verify the fact gives training; to discover it gives inspiration. Training and inspiration, not the facts themselves, are the justification of science-teaching. Facts enough we can gather later in life, when we are too old to be trained or inspired. He whose knowledge comes from authority, or is derived from books alone, has no notion of the force of an idea brought first-hand from human experience."

Any consideration of Dr. Jordan's educational position must necessarily include a reference to the "elective system," for no educator has more unequivocally espoused this system than he. Men are born different, he says; therefore they require individual training, rather than the training afforded by a curriculum based upon averages. "No two students require exactly the same line of work in order that their time in college may be spent to the best advantage. The college student is the best judge of his own needs, or, at any rate, he can arrange his work for himself better than it can be done beforehand by any committee or by any consensus of educational philosophers. The student may make mistakes in this, as he may elsewhere in much more important things in life; but here, as elsewhere, he must bear the responsibility of these mistakes. The development of this sense of responsibility is one of the most effective agencies the college has to promote the moral culture of the student. It is better for the student himself that he should sometimes make mistakes than that he should throughout his work be arbitrarily directed by others."

Physically as well as mentally Dr. Jordan is "a massive man, as imperturbable as a mountain." He lives upon simple fare, keeps regular hours, and turns off his work promptly. His nerves never fail him; he never worries. He is never in a hurry for fear something will not be done. Consequently he can do four men's work without knowing it. The only thing that ever bothers him is society small talk. He is never happy at a reception or a swell dinner, with its chatter, or its smoking, drinking, and speech-making. He plays first base on the faculty baseball team by way of recreation, or goes off tramping through "fresh woods and pastures new" in quest of unnamed birds and fishes. He does not own the silk hat of the traditional college president. His dignity does not depend upon the clothes he wears. He is a part of the Palo Alto ranch, where professors and students and horses and meadow larks and humming birds grow up together, each respecting the rights of the other, and all of them unafraid; the ranch of the finest fellow-feeling in the world, where the quail and the robins are tamest, because there is no one there who has the desire to throw stones at them. His favorite quotation is the saying of Ulrich von Hutten, "Die Luft der Freiheit weht (Freedom is in the air)." Freedom is in the air at Stanford University.

Dr. Jordan's contributions to the literature of science have been numerous and important. In 1877 he published "A Partial Synopsis of the Fishes of Upper Georgia; with Supplementary Papers on the Fishes of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana," consisting of papers reprinted from the Annals of the New York Lyceum of Natural History, Volume XI. In 1880 he was appointed special agent of the United States Census Bureau for the purpose of inquiring into the marine industries of the Pacific Coast. While upon this duty, with the help of Professor Charles H. Gilbert, he made the first comprehensive survey ever attempted of the fresh-water and marine fishes of the west coast. The immediate results of this labor are embodied in the scattered bulletins of the United States Fish Commission, while the economic aspects are discussed in the "Fisheries" section of the Tenth Census Report. In 1882 appeared the "Synopsis of the Fishes of North America," in two volumes, comprising nearly twelve hundred pages, the authorship of which is shared with Dr.

Gilbert. An earlier work, "The Manual of the Vertebrate Animals of the Northern United States, inclusive of Marine Species," has gone through a number of printings, and has grown from the small pocket edition of 1876 to a stout octavo volume of nearly four hundred pages. It attempts to give such guidance with respect to the classification of vertebrate animals as a botanical key gives with respect to our flora. "Science Sketches," published in 1888, consists of a number of unconnected sketches and addresses, written more or less distinctly with a view to the popular presentation of scientific thought. It was of these papers that Professor Anderson said that they "are marked by a union of sound knowledge, with a whimsical humor and delicate fancy which is sufficiently rare among men, whether scientific or literary, and which goes far to convince readers that Jordan might have attained a place in literature perhaps as distinguished as his place in science." Another popular presentation of scientific studies is outlined in his "Factors in Organic Evolution," which is a syllabus to a course of introductory lectures. It was printed in 1894. "The Fishes of Sinaloa" was printed in 1895. In 1896 and 1898 appeared the "Fishes of North and Middle America," in three volumes, 3136 pages, done in collaboration with Dr. Barton W. Evermann, ichthyologist of the United States Fish Commission. This manual is the most complete and authoritative of its kind that has yet been written.

In 1896 Dr. Jordan was sent out by the President as commissioner in charge of the fur seal investigation authorized by Congress. Owing to the fact that the regulations formulated by the Paris tribunal of arbitration had failed to accomplish their object, there still remained the question between the United States and Great Britain with regard to pelagic sealing. Dr. Jordan spent a season in Alaska in the careful investigation of seal life on the islands, and the results of the expedition are recorded in three large volumes, "Fur Seals and Fur Seal Islands of the North Pacific Ocean," 1619 pages in all, with a supplementary volume of plates. The work was printed by the Government in 1898.

"Footnotes to Evolution" was published in 1898. The book comprises twelve popular addresses on the evolution of life. "Animal Life," a modern text-book of zoology, is by Dr. Jordan and Dr. Vernon L. Kellogg, New York, 1900. In

the introduction it is called "an elementary account of ecology; that is, of the relations of animals to their surroundings and of the responsive adapting or fitting of the life of animals to these surroundings."

Besides his writings on scientific subjects, Dr. Jordan has written some notable papers in education and ethics. Of these, the collection called "Care and Culture of Men" was published in 1896. It is a volume made up of some eighteen addresses relating to higher education. "The Story of the Innumerable Company" (1896) is a series of nine papers upon ethical, religious, and historical subjects. "The Strength of Being Clean" (1900) is a Red Cross address upon the quest for unearned happiness. "Imperial Democracy" (1899) is an eloquent repudiation of the commercial and materialistic spirit, so far as American politics is concerned.

A book of poems, "To Barbara, with Other Verses," was privately printed in 1897. "The Book of Knight and Barbara" (1899) is a collection of tales for children.

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other.

SINGLENESS OF PURPOSE.

RCHBISHOP LEIGHTON said, "To him that knoweth not the port to which he is bound, no wind can be favorable." One wind is about as good for him as an

He may be well equipped, a good craft, sails set, ballast right, cargo well packed; but he wants somewhere to go, a port to enter.

All his activity and preparation are useless without a purpose. A ship without rudder, chart, or compass, on a trackless sea, tossed about like a cockle-shell by wind and wave, is an apt symbol of thousands of youths who undertake to cross the ocean of life without a definite aim. They are more likely to make shipwreck than a safe harbor.

By singleness of purpose we mean an early decision to follow a certain occupation or profession as a life work, keeping that object constantly in view, true as the needle to the North Pole, and pushing for it through sunshine and storm to the goal. That is what the great apostle meant when he said, "This one thing I do." That single purpose took possession of his soul, and all the powers of his nature combined and bent to its accomplishment. In his triumphant declaration,