Chapter 14: The Higher Learning as an Expression of the
Pecuniary Culture
<
BACK
To the end that suitable habits of thought on
certain heads may be conserved in the incoming generation, a
scholastic discipline is sanctioned by the common sense of the
community and incorporated into the accredited scheme of life. The
habits of thought which are so formed under the guidance of teachers
and scholastic traditions have an economic value -- a value as
affecting the serviceability of the individual -- no less real than
the similar economic value of the habits of thought formed without
such guidance under the discipline of everyday life. Whatever
characteristics of the accredited scholastic scheme and discipline
are traceable to the predilections of the leisure class or to the
guidance of the canons of pecuniary merit are to be set down to the
account of that institution, and whatever economic value these
features of the educational scheme possess are the expression in
detail of the value of that institution. It will be in place,
therefore, to point out any peculiar features of the educational
system which are traceable to the leisure-class scheme of life,
whether as regards the aim and method of the discipline, or as
regards the compass and character of the body of knowledge
inculcated. It is in learning proper, and more particularly in the
higher learning, that the influence of leisure-class ideals is most
patent; and since the purpose here is not to make an exhaustive
collation of data showing the effect of the pecuniary culture upon
education, but rather to illustrate the method and trend of the
leisure-class influence in education, a survey of certain salient
features of the higher learning, such as may serve this purpose, is
all that will be attempted.
In point of derivation and early development, learning is somewhat
closely related to the devotional function of the community,
particularly to the body of observances in which the service
rendered the supernatural leisure class expresses itself. The
service by which it is sought to conciliate supernatural agencies in
the primitive cults is not an industrially profitable employment of
the community's time and effort. It is, therefore, in great part, to
be classed as a vicarious leisure performed for the supernatural
powers with whom negotiations are carried on and whose good-will the
service and the professions of subservience are conceived to
procure. In great part, the early learning consisted in an
acquisition of knowledge and facility in the service of a
supernatural agent. It was therefore closely analogous in character
to the training required for the domestic service of a temporal
master. To a great extent, the knowledge acquired under the priestly
teachers of the primitive community was knowledge of ritual and
ceremonial; that is to say, a knowledge of the most proper, most
effective, or most acceptable manner of approaching and of serving
the preternatural agents. What was learned was how to make oneself
indispensable to these powers, and so to put oneself in a position
to ask, or even to require, their intercession in the course of
events or their abstention from interference in any given
enterprise. Propitiation was the end, and this end was sought, in
great part, by acquiring facility in subservience. It appears to
have been only gradually that other elements than those of efficient
service of the master found their way into the stock of priestly or
shamanistic instruction.
The priestly servitor of the inscrutable powers that move in the
external world came to stand in the position of a mediator between
these powers and the common run of unrestricted humanity; for he was
possessed of a knowledge of the supernatural etiquette which would
admit him into the presence. And as commonly happens with mediators
between the vulgar and their masters, whether the masters be natural
or preternatural, he found it expedient to have the means at hand
tangibly to impress upon the vulgar the fact that these inscrutable
powers would do what he might ask of them. Hence, presently, a
knowledge of certain natural processes which could be turned to
account for spectacular effect, together with some sleight of hand,
came to be an integral part of priestly lore. Knowledge of this kind
passes for knowledge of the "unknowable", and it owes its
serviceability for the sacerdotal purpose to its recondite
character. It appears to have been from this source that learning,
as an institution, arose, and its differentiation from this its
parent stock of magic ritual and shamanistic fraud has been slow and
tedious, and is scarcely yet complete even in the most advanced of
the higher seminaries of learning.
The recondite element in learning is still, as it has been in all
ages, a very attractive and effective element for the purpose of
impressing, or even imposing upon, the unlearned; and the standing
of the savant in the mind of the altogether unlettered is in great
measure rated in terms of intimacy with the occult forces. So, for
instance, as a typical case, even so late as the middle of this
century, the Norwegian peasants have instinctively formulated their
sense of the superior erudition of such doctors of divinity as
Luther, Malanchthon, Peder Dass, and even so late a scholar in
divinity as Grundtvig, in terms of the Black Art. These, together
with a very comprehensive list of minor celebrities, both living and
dead, have been reputed masters in all magical arts; and a high
position in the ecclesiastical personnel has carried with it, in the
apprehension of these good people, an implication of profound
familiarity with magical practice and the occult sciences. There is
a parallel fact nearer home, similarly going to show the close
relationship, in popular apprehension, between erudition and the
unknowable; and it will at the same time serve to illustrate, in
somewhat coarse outline, the bent which leisure-class life gives to
the cognitive interest. While the belief is by no means confined to
the leisure class, that class today comprises a disproportionately
large number of believers in occult sciences of all kinds and
shades. By those whose habits of thought are not shaped by contact
with modern industry, the knowledge of the unknowable is still felt
to the ultimate if not the only true knowledge.
Learning, then, set out by being in some sense a by-product of the
priestly vicarious leisure class; and, at least until a recent date,
the higher learning has since remained in some sense a by-product or
by-occupation of the priestly classes. As the body of systematized
knowledge increased, there presently arose a distinction, traceable
very far back in the history of education, between esoteric and
exoteric knowledge, the former -- so far as there is a substantial
difference between the two -- comprising such knowledge as is
primarily of no economic or industrial effect, and the latter
comprising chiefly knowledge of industrial processes and of natural
phenomena which were habitually turned to account for the material
purposes of life. This line of demarcation has in time become, at
least in popular apprehension, the normal line between the higher
learning and the lower.
It is significant, not only as an evidence of their close
affiliation with the priestly craft, but also as indicating that
their activity to a good extent falls under that category of
conspicuous leisure known as manners and breeding, that the learned
class in all primitive communities are great sticklers for form,
precedent, gradations of rank, ritual, ceremonial vestments, and
learned paraphernalia generally. This is of course to be expected,
and it goes to say that the higher learning, in its incipient phase,
is a leisure-class occupation -- more specifically an occupation of
the vicarious leisure class employed in the service of the
supernatural leisure class. But this predilection for the
paraphernalia of learning goes also to indicate a further point of
contact or of continuity between the priestly office and the office
of the savant. In point of derivation, learning, as well as the
priestly office, is largely an outgrowth of sympathetic magic; and
this magical apparatus of form and ritual therefore finds its place
with the learned class of the primitive community as a matter of
course. The ritual and paraphernalia have an occult efficacy for the
magical purpose; so that their presence as an integral factor in the
earlier phases of the development of magic and science is a matter
of expediency, quite as much as of affectionate regard for symbolism
simply.
This sense of the efficacy of symbolic ritual, and of sympathetic
effect to be wrought through dexterous rehearsal of the traditional
accessories of the act or end to be compassed, is of course present
more obviously and in larger measure in magical practice than in the
discipline of the sciences, even of the occult sciences. But there
are, I apprehend, few persons with a cultivated sense of scholastic
merit to whom the ritualistic accessories of science are altogether
an idle matter. The very great tenacity with which these ritualistic
paraphernalia persist through the later course of the development is
evident to any one who will reflect on what has been the history of
learning in our civilization. Even today there are such things in
the usage of the learned community as the cap and gown,
matriculation, initiation, and graduation ceremonies, and the
conferring of scholastic degrees, dignities, and prerogatives in a
way which suggests some sort of a scholarly apostolic succession.
The usage of the priestly orders is no doubt the proximate source of
all these features of learned ritual, vestments, sacramental
initiation, the transmission of peculiar dignities and virtues by
the imposition of hands, and the like; but their derivation is
traceable back of this point, to the source from which the
specialized priestly class proper came to be distinguished from the
sorcerer on the one hand and from the menial servant of a temporal
master on the other hand. So far as regards both their derivation
and their psychological content, these usages and the conceptions on
which they rest belong to a stage in cultural development no later
than that of the angekok and the rain-maker. Their place in the
later phases of devout observance, as well as in the higher
educational system, is that of a survival from a very early
animistic phase of the development of human nature.
These ritualistic features of the educational system of the present
and of the recent past, it is quite safe to say, have their place
primarily in the higher, liberal, and classic institutions and
grades of learning, rather than in the lower, technological, or
practical grades, and branches of the system. So far as they possess
them, the lower and less reputable branches of the educational
scheme have evidently borrowed these things from the higher grades;
and their continued persistence among the practical schools, without
the sanction of the continued example of the higher and classic
grades, would be highly improbable, to say the least. With the lower
and practical schools and scholars, the adoption and cultivation of
these usages is a case of mimicry -- due to a desire to conform as
far as may be to the standards of scholastic reputability maintained
by the upper grades and classes, who have come by these accessory
features legitimately, by the right of lineal devolution.
The analysis may even be safely carried a step farther. Ritualistic
survivals and reversions come out in fullest vigor and with the
freest air of spontaneity among those seminaries of learning which
have to do primarily with the education of the priestly and leisure
classes. Accordingly it should appear, and it does pretty plainly
appear, on a survey of recent developments in college and university
life, that wherever schools founded for the instruction of the lower
classes in the immediately useful branches of knowledge grow into
institutions of the higher learning, the growth of ritualistic
ceremonial and paraphernalia and of elaborate scholastic "functions"
goes hand in hand with the transition of the schools in question
from the field of homely practicality into the higher, classical
sphere. The initial purpose of these schools, and the work with
which they have chiefly had to do at the earlier of these two stages
of their evolution, has been that of fitting the young of the
industrious classes for work. On the higher, classical plane of
learning to which they commonly tend, their dominant aim becomes the
preparation of the youth of the priestly and the leisure classes --
or of an incipient leisure class -- for the consumption of goods,
material and immaterial, according to a conventionally accepted,
reputable scope and method. This happy issue has commonly been the
fate of schools founded by "friends of the people" for the aid of
struggling young men, and where this transition is made in good form
there is commonly, if not invariably, a coincident change to a more
ritualistic life in the schools.
In the school life of today, learned ritual is in a general way best
at home in schools whose chief end is the cultivation of the
"humanities". This correlation is shown, perhaps more neatly than
anywhere else, in the life-history of the American colleges and
universities of recent growth. There may be many exceptions from the
rule, especially among those schools which have been founded by the
typically reputable and ritualistic churches, and which, therefore,
started on the conservative and classical plane or reached the
classical position by a short-cut; but the general rule as regards
the colleges founded in the newer American communities during the
present century has been that so long as the constituency from which
the colleges have drawn their pupils has been dominated by habits of
industry and thrift, so long the reminiscences of the medicine-man
have found but a scant and precarious acceptance in the scheme of
college life. But so soon as wealth begins appreciably to accumulate
in the community, and so soon as a given school begins to lean on a
leisure-class constituency, there comes also a perceptibly increased
insistence on scholastic ritual and on conformity to the ancient
forms as regards vestments and social and scholastic solemnities.
So, for instance, there has been an approximate coincidence between
the growth of wealth among the constituency which supports any given
college of the Middle West and the date of acceptance -- first into
tolerance and then into imperative vogue -- of evening dress for men
and of the d閏ollet?for women, as the scholarly vestments proper to
occasions of learned solemnity or to the seasons of social amenity
within the college circle. Apart from the mechanical difficulty of
so large a task, it would scarcely be a difficult matter to trace
this correlation. The like is true of the vogue of the cap and gown.
Cap and gown have been adopted as learned insignia by many colleges
of this section within the last few years; and it is safe to say
that this could scarcely have occurred at a much earlier date, or
until there had grown up a leisure-class sentiment of sufficient
volume in the community to support a strong movement of reversion
towards an archaic view as to the legitimate end of education. This
particular item of learned ritual, it may be noted, would not only
commend itself to the leisure-class sense of the fitness of things,
as appealing to the archaic propensity for spectacular effect and
the predilection for antique symbolism; but it at the same time fits
into the leisure-class scheme of life as involving a notable element
of conspicuous waste. The precise date at which the reversion to cap
and gown took place, as well as the fact that it affected so large a
number of schools at about the same time, seems to have been due in
some measure to a wave of atavistic sense of conformity and
reputability that passed over the community at that period.
It may not be entirely beside the point to note that in point of
time this curious reversion seems to coincide with the culmination
of a certain vogue of atavistic sentiment and tradition in other
directions also. The wave of reversion seems to have received its
initial impulse in the psychologically disintegrating effects of the
Civil War. Habituation to war entails a body of predatory habits of
thought, whereby clannishness in some measure replaces the sense of
solidarity, and a sense of invidious distinction supplants the
impulse to equitable, everyday serviceability. As an outcome of the
cumulative action of these factors, the generation which follows a
season of war is apt to witness a rehabilitation of the element of
status, both in its social life and in its scheme of devout
observances and other symbolic or ceremonial forms. Throughout the
eighties, and less plainly traceable through the seventies also,
there was perceptible a gradually advancing wave of sentiment
favoring quasi-predatory business habits, insistence on status,
anthropomorphism, and conservatism generally. The more direct and
unmediated of these expressions of the barbarian temperament, such
as the recrudescence of outlawry and the spectacular quasi-predatory
careers of fraud run by certain "captains of industry", came to a
head earlier and were appreciably on the decline by the close of the
seventies. The recrudescence of anthropomorphic sentiment also seems
to have passed its most acute stage before the close of the
eighties. But the learned ritual and paraphernalia here spoken of
are a still remoter and more recondite expression of the barbarian
animistic sense; and these, therefore, gained vogue and elaboration
more slowly and reached their most effective development at a still
later date. There is reason to believe that the culmination is now
already past. Except for the new impetus given by a new war
experience, and except for the support which the growth of a wealthy
class affords to all ritual, and especially to whatever ceremonial
is wasteful and pointedly suggests gradations of status, it is
probable that the late improvements and augmentation of scholastic
insignia and ceremonial would gradually decline. But while it may be
true that the cap and gown, and the more strenuous observance of
scholastic proprieties which came with them, were floated in on this
post-bellum tidal wave of reversion to barbarism, it is also no
doubt true that such a ritualistic reversion could not have been
effected in the college scheme of life until the accumulation of
wealth in the hands of a propertied class had gone far enough to
afford the requisite pecuniary ground for a movement which should
bring the colleges of the country up to the leisure-class
requirements in the higher learning. The adoption of the cap and
gown is one of the striking atavistic features of modern college
life, and at the same time it marks the fact that these colleges
have definitely become leisure-class establishments, either in
actual achievement or in aspiration.
As further evidence of the close relation between the educational
system and the cultural standards of the community, it may be
remarked that there is some tendency latterly to substitute the
captain of industry in place of the priest, as the head of
seminaries of the higher learning. The substitution is by no means
complete or unequivocal. Those heads of institutions are best
accepted who combine the sacerdotal office with a high degree of
pecuniary efficiency. There is a similar but less pronounced
tendency to intrust the work of instruction in the higher learning
to men of some pecuniary qualification. Administrative ability and
skill in advertising the enterprise count for rather more than they
once did, as qualifications for the work of teaching. This applies
especially in those sciences that have most to do with the everyday
facts of life, and it is particularly true of schools in the
economically single-minded communities. This partial substitution of
pecuniary for sacerdotal efficiency is a concomitant of the modern
transition from conspicuous leisure to conspicuous consumption, as
the chief means of reputability. The correlation of the two facts is
probably clear without further elaboration.
The attitude of the schools and of the learned class towards the
education of women serves to show in what manner and to what extent
learning has departed from its ancient station of priestly and
leisure-class prerogatives, and it indicates also what approach has
been made by the truly learned to the modern, economic or
industrial, matter-of-fact standpoint. The higher schools and the
learned professions were until recently tabu to the women. These
establishments were from the outset, and have in great measure
continued to be, devoted to the education of the priestly and
leisure classes.
The women, as has been shown elsewhere, were the original
subservient class, and to some extent, especially so far as regards
their nominal or ceremonial position, they have remained in that
relation down to the present. There has prevailed a strong sense
that the admission of women to the privileges of the higher learning
(as to the Eleusianin mysteries) would be derogatory to the dignity
of the learned craft. It is therefore only very recently, and almost
solely in the industrially most advanced communities, that the
higher grades of schools have been freely opened to women. And even
under the urgent circumstances prevailing in the modern industrial
communities, the highest and most reputable universities show an
extreme reluctance in making the move. The sense of class
worthiness, that is to say of status, of a honorific differentiation
of the sexes according to a distinction between superior and
inferior intellectual dignity, survives in a vigorous form in these
corporations of the aristocracy of learning. It is felt that the
woman should, in all propriety, acquire only such knowledge as may
be classed under one or the other of two heads: (1) such knowledge
as conduces immediately to a better performance of domestic service
-- the domestic sphere; (2) such accomplishments and dexterity,
quasi-scholarly and quasi-artistic, as plainly come in under the
head of a performance of vicarious leisure. Knowledge is felt to be
unfeminine if it is knowledge which expresses the unfolding of the
learner's own life, the acquisition of which proceeds on the
learner's own cognitive interest, without prompting from the canons
of propriety, and without reference back to a master whose comfort
or good repute is to be enhanced by the employment or the exhibition
of it. So, also, all knowledge which is useful as evidence of
leisure, other than vicarious leisure, is scarcely feminine.
For an appreciation of the relation which these higher seminaries of
learning bear to the economic life of the community, the phenomena
which have been reviewed are of importance rather as indications of
a general attitude than as being in themselves facts of first-rate
economic consequence. They go to show what is the instinctive
attitude and animus of the learned class towards the life process of
an industrial community. They serve as an exponent of the stage of
development, for the industrial purpose, attained by the higher
learning and by the learned class, and so they afford an indication
as to what may fairly be looked for from this class at points where
the learning and the life of the class bear more immediately upon
the economic life and efficiency of the community, and upon the
adjustment of its scheme of life to the requirements of the time.
What these ritualistic survivals go to indicate is a prevalence of
conservatism, if not of reactionary sentiment, especially among the
higher schools where the conventional learning is cultivated.
To these indications of a conservative attitude is to be added
another characteristic which goes in the same direction, but which
is a symptom of graver consequence that this playful inclination to
trivialities of form and ritual. By far the greater number of
American colleges and universities, for instance, are affiliated to
some religious denomination and are somewhat given to devout
observances. Their putative familiarity with scientific methods and
the scientific point of view should presumably exempt the faculties
of these schools from animistic habits of thought; but there is
still a considerable proportion of them who profess an attachment to
the anthropomorphic beliefs and observances of an earlier culture.
These professions of devotional zeal are, no doubt, to a good extent
expedient and perfunctory, both on the part of the schools in their
corporate capacity, and on the part of the individual members of the
corps of instructors; but it can not be doubted that there is after
all a very appreciable element of anthropomorphic sentiment present
in the higher schools. So far as this is the case it must be set
down as the expression of an archaic, animistic habit of mind. This
habit of mind must necessarily assert itself to some extent in the
instruction offered, and to this extent its influence in shaping the
habits of thought of the student makes for conservatism and
reversion; it acts to hinder his development in the direction of
matter-of-fact knowledge, such as best serves the ends of industry.
The college sports, which have so great a vogue in the reputable
seminaries of learning today, tend in a similar direction; and,
indeed, sports have much in common with the devout attitude of the
colleges, both as regards their psychological basis and as regards
their disciplinary effect. But this expression of the barbarian
temperament is to be credited primarily to the body of students,
rather than to the temper of the schools as such; except in so far
as the colleges or the college officials -- as sometimes happens --
actively countenance and foster the growth of sports. The like is
true of college fraternities as of college sports, but with a
difference. The latter are chiefly an expression of the predatory
impulse simply; the former are more specifically an expression of
that heritage of clannishness which is so large a feature in the
temperament of the predatory barbarian. It is also noticeable that a
close relation subsists between the fraternities and the sporting
activity of the schools. After what has already been said in an
earlier chapter on the sporting and gambling habit, it is scarcely
necessary further to discuss the economic value of this training in
sports and in factional organization and activity.
But all these features of the scheme of life of the learned class,
and of the establishments dedicated to the conservation of the
higher learning, are in a great measure incidental only. They are
scarcely to be accounted organic elements of the professed work of
research and instruction for the ostensible pursuit of which the
schools exists. But these symptomatic indications go to establish a
presumption as to the character of the work performed -- as seen
from the economic point of view -- and as to the bent which the
serious work carried on under their auspices gives to the youth who
resort to the schools. The presumption raised by the considerations
already offered is that in their work also, as well as in their
ceremonial, the higher schools may be expected to take a
conservative position; but this presumption must be checked by a
comparison of the economic character of the work actually performed,
and by something of a survey of the learning whose conservation is
intrusted to the higher schools. On this head, it is well known that
the accredited seminaries of learning have, until a recent date,
held a conservative position. They have taken an attitude of
depreciation towards all innovations. As a general rule a new point
of view or a new formulation of knowledge have been countenanced and
taken up within the schools only after these new things have made
their way outside of the schools. As exceptions from this rule are
chiefly to be mentioned innovations of an inconspicuous kind and
departures which do not bear in any tangible way upon the
conventional point of view or upon the conventional scheme of life;
as, for instance, details of fact in the mathematico-physical
sciences, and new readings and interpretations of the classics,
especially such as have a philological or literary bearing only.
Except within the domain of the "humanities", in the narrow sense,
and except so far as the traditional point of view of the humanities
has been left intact by the innovators, it has generally held true
that the accredited learned class and the seminaries of the higher
learning have looked askance at all innovation. New views, new
departures in scientific theory, especially in new departures which
touch the theory of human relations at any point, have found a place
in the scheme of the university tardily and by a reluctant
tolerance, rather than by a cordial welcome; and the men who have
occupied themselves with such efforts to widen the scope of human
knowledge have not commonly been well received by their learned
contemporaries. The higher schools have not commonly given their
countenance to a serious advance in the methods or the content of
knowledge until the innovations have outlived their youth and much
of their usefulness -- after they have become commonplaces of the
intellectual furniture of a new generation which has grown up under,
and has had its habits of thought shaped by, the new,
extra-scholastic body of knowledge and the new standpoint. This is
true of the recent past. How far it may be true of the immediate
present it would be hazardous to say, for it is impossible to see
present-day facts in such perspective as to get a fair conception of
their relative proportions.
So far, nothing has been said of the Maecenas function of the
well-to-do, which is habitually dwelt on at some length by writers
and speakers who treat of the development of culture and of social
structure. This leisure-class function is not without an important
bearing on the higher and on the spread of knowledge and culture.
The manner and the degree in which the class furthers learning
through patronage of this kind is sufficiently familiar. It has been
frequently presented in affectionate and effective terms by
spokesmen whose familiarity with the topic fits them to bring home
to their hearers the profound significance of this cultural factor.
These spokesmen, however, have presented the matter from the point
of view of the cultural interest, or of the interest of
reputability, rather than from that of the economic interest. As
apprehended from the economic point of view, and valued for the
purpose of industrial serviceability, this function of the
well-to-do, as well as the intellectual attitude of members of the
well-to-do class, merits some attention and will bear illustration.
By way of characterization of the Maecenas relation, it is to be
noted that, considered externally, as an economic or industrial
relation simply, it is a relation of status. The scholar under the
patronage performs the duties of a learned life vicariously for his
patron, to whom a certain repute inures after the manner of the good
repute imputed to a master for whom any form of vicarious leisure is
performed. It is also to be noted that, in point of historical fact,
the furtherance of learning or the maintenance of scholarly activity
through the Maecenas relation has most commonly been a furtherance
of proficiency in classical lore or in the humanities. The knowledge
tends to lower rather than to heighten the industrial efficiency of
the community.
Further, as regards the direct participation of the members of the
leisure class in the furtherance of knowledge, the canons of
reputable living act to throw such intellectual interest as seeks
expression among the class on the side of classical and formal
erudition, rather than on the side of the sciences that bear some
relation to the community's industrial life. The most frequent
excursions into other than classical fields of knowledge on the part
of members of the leisure class are made into the discipline of law
and the political, and more especially the administrative, sciences.
These so-called sciences are substantially bodies of maxims of
expediency for guidance in the leisure-class office of government,
as conducted on a proprietary basis. The interest with which this
discipline is approached is therefore not commonly the intellectual
or cognitive interest simply. It is largely the practical interest
of the exigencies of that relation of mastery in which the members
of the class are placed. In point of derivation, the office of
government is a predatory function, pertaining integrally to the
archaic leisure-class scheme of life. It is an exercise of control
and coercion over the population from which the class draws its
sustenance. This discipline, as well as the incidents of practice
which give it its content, therefore has some attraction for the
class apart from all questions of cognition. All this holds true
wherever and so long as the governmental office continues, in form
or in substance, to be a proprietary office; and it holds true
beyond that limit, in so far as the tradition of the more archaic
phase of governmental evolution has lasted on into the later life of
those modern communities for whom proprietary government by a
leisure class is now beginning to pass away.
For that field of learning within which the cognitive or
intellectual interest is dominant -- the sciences properly so called
-- the case is somewhat different, not only as regards the attitude
of the leisure class, but as regards the whole drift of the
pecuniary culture. Knowledge for its own sake, the exercise of the
faculty of comprehensive without ulterior purpose, should, it might
be expected, be sought by men whom no urgent material interest
diverts from such a quest. The sheltered industrial position of the
leisure class should give free play to the cognitive interest in
members of this class, and we should consequently have, as many
writers confidently find that we do have, a very large proportion of
scholars, scientists, savants derived from this class and deriving
their incentive to scientific investigation and speculation from the
discipline of a life of leisure. Some such result is to be looked
for, but there are features of the leisure-class scheme of life,
already sufficiently dwelt upon, which go to divert the intellectual
interest of this class to other subjects than that causal sequence
in phenomena which makes the content of the sciences. The habits of
thought which characterize the life of the class run on the personal
relation of dominance, and on the derivative, invidious concepts of
honor, worth, merit, character, and the like. The casual sequence
which makes up the subject matter of science is not visible from
this point of view. Neither does good repute attach to knowledge of
facts that are vulgarly useful. Hence it should appear probable that
the interest of the invidious comparison with respect to pecuniary
or other honorific merit should occupy the attention of the leisure
class, to the neglect of the cognitive interest. Where this latter
interest asserts itself it should commonly be diverted to fields of
speculation or investigation which are reputable and futile, rather
than to the quest of scientific knowledge. Such indeed has been the
history of priestly and leisure-class learning so long as no
considerable body of systematized knowledge had been intruded into
the scholastic discipline from an extra-scholastic source. But since
the relation of mastery and subservience is ceasing to be the
dominant and formative factor in the community's life process, other
features of the life process and other points of view are forcing
themselves upon the scholars.
The true-bred gentleman of leisure should, and does, see the world
from the point of view of the personal relation; and the cognitive
interest, so far as it asserts itself in him, should seek to
systematize phenomena on this basis. Such indeed is the case with
the gentleman of the old school, in whom the leisure-class ideals
have suffered no disintegration; and such is the attitude of his
latter-day descendant, in so far as he has fallen heir to the full
complement of upper-class virtues. But the ways of heredity are
devious, and not every gentleman's son is to the manor born.
Especially is the transmission of the habits of thought which
characterize the predatory master somewhat precarious in the case of
a line of descent in which but one or two of the latest steps have
lain within the leisure-class discipline. The chances of occurrence
of a strong congenital or acquired bent towards the exercise of the
cognitive aptitudes are apparently best in those members of the
leisure class who are of lower class or middle class antecedents --
that is to say, those who have inherited the complement of aptitudes
proper to the industrious classes, and who owe their place in the
leisure class to the possession of qualities which count for more
today than they did in the times when the leisure-class scheme of
life took shape. But even outside the range of these later
accessions to the leisure class there are an appreciable number of
individuals in whom the invidious interest is not sufficiently
dominant to shape their theoretical views, and in whom the
proclivity to theory is sufficiently strong to lead them into the
scientific quest.
The higher learning owes the intrusion of the sciences in part to
these aberrant scions of the leisure class, who have come under the
dominant influence of the latter-day tradition of impersonal
relation and who have inherited a complement of human aptitudes
differing in certain salient features from the temperament which is
characteristic of the regime of status. But it owes the presence of
this alien body of scientific knowledge also in part, and in a
higher degree, to members of the industrious classes who have been
in sufficiently easy circumstances to turn their attention to other
interests than that of finding daily sustenance, and whose inherited
aptitudes and anthropomorphic point of view does not dominate their
intellectual processes. As between these two groups, which
approximately comprise the effective force of scientific progress,
it is the latter that has contributed the most. And with respect to
both it seems to be true that they are not so much the source as the
vehicle, or at the most they are the instrument of commutation, by
which the habits of thought enforced upon the community, through
contact with its environment under the exigencies of modern
associated life and the mechanical industries, are turned to account
for theoretical knowledge.
Science, in the sense of an articulate recognition of causal
sequence in phenomena, whether physical or social, has been a
feature of the Western culture only since the industrial process in
the Western communities has come to be substantially a process of
mechanical contrivances in which man's office is that of
discrimination and valuation of material forces. Science has
flourished somewhat in the same degree as the industrial life of the
community has conformed to this pattern, and somewhat in the same
degree as the industrial interest has dominated the community's
life. And science, and scientific theory especially, has made
headway in the several departments of human life and knowledge in
proportion as each of these several departments has successively
come into closer contact with the industrial process and the
economic interest; or perhaps it is truer to say, in proportion as
each of them has successively escaped from the dominance of the
conceptions of personal relation or status, and of the derivative
canons of anthropomorphic fitness and honorific worth.
It is only as the exigencies of modern industrial life have enforced
the recognition of causal sequence in the practical contact of
mankind with their environment, that men have come to systematize
the phenomena of this environment and the facts of their own contact
with it,in terms of causal sequence. So that while the higher
learning in its best development, as the perfect flower of
scholasticism and classicism, was a by-product of the priestly
office and the life of leisure, so modern science may be said to be
a by-product of the industrial process. Through these groups of men,
then -- investigators, savants, scientists, inventors, speculators
-- most of whom have done their most telling work outside the
shelter of the schools, the habits of thought enforced by the modern
industrial life have found coherent expression and elaboration as a
body of theoretical science having to do with the causal sequence of
phenomena. And from this extra-scholastic field of scientific
speculation, changes of method and purpose have from time to time
been intruded into the scholastic discipline.
In this connection it is to be remarked that there s a very
perceptible difference of substance and purpose between the
instruction offered in the primary and secondary schools, on the one
hand, and in the higher seminaries of learning, on the other hand.
The difference in point of immediate practicality of the information
imparted and of the proficiency acquired may be of some consequence
and may merit the attention which it has from time to time received;
but there is more substantial difference in the mental and spiritual
bent which is favored by the one and the other discipline. This
divergent trend in discipline between the higher and the lower
learning is especially noticeable as regards the primary education
in its latest development in the advanced industrial communities.
Here the instruction is directed chiefly to proficiency or
dexterity, intellectual and manual, in the apprehension and
employment of impersonal facts, in their casual rather than in their
honorific incidence. It is true, under the traditions of the earlier
days, when the primary education was also predominantly a
leisure-class commodity, a free use is still mad of emulation as a
spur to diligence in the common run of primary schools; but even
this use of emulation as an expedient is visibly declining in the
primary grades of instruction in communities where the lower
education is not under the guidance of the ecclesiastical or
military tradition. All this holds true in a peculiar degree, and
more especially on the spiritual side, of such portions of the
educational system as have been immediately affected by kindergarten
methods and ideals.
The peculiarly non-invidious trend of the kindergarten discipline,
and the similar character of the kindergarten influence in primary
education beyond the limits of the kindergarten proper, should be
taken in connection with what has already been said of the peculiar
spiritual attitude of leisure-class womankind under the
circumstances of the modern economic situation. The kindergarten
discipline is at its best -- or at its farthest remove from ancient
patriarchal and pedagogical ideals -- in the advanced industrial
communities, where there is a considerable body of intelligent and
idle women, and where the system of status has somewhat abated in
rigor under the disintegrating influence of industrial life and in
the absence of a consistent body of military and ecclesiastical
traditions. It is from these women in easy circumstances that it
gets its moral support. The aims and methods of the kindergarten
commend themselves with especial effect to this class of women who
are ill at ease under the pecuniary code of reputable life. The
kindergarten, and whatever the kindergarten spirit counts for in
modern education, therefore, is to be set down, along with the
"new-woman movement," to the account of that revulsion against
futility and invidious comparison which the leisure-class life under
modern circumstances induces in the women most immediately exposed
to its discipline. In this way it appears that, by indirection, the
institution of a leisure class here again favors the growth of a
non-invidious attitude, which may, in the long run, prove a menace
to the stability of the institution itself, and even to the
institution of individual ownership on which it rests.
During the recent past some tangible changes have taken place in the
scope of college and university teaching. These changes have in the
main consisted in a partial displacement of the humanities -- those
branches of learning which are conceived to make for the traditional
"culture", character, tastes, and ideals -- by those more
matter-of-fact branches which make for civic and industrial
efficiency. To put the same thing in other words, those branches of
knowledge which make for efficiency (ultimately productive
efficiency) have gradually been gaining ground against those
branches which make for a heightened consumption or a lowered
industrial efficiency and for a type of character suited to the
regime of status. In this adaptation of the scheme of instruction
the higher schools have commonly been found on the conservative
side; each step which they have taken in advance has been to some
extent of the nature of a concession. The sciences have been
intruded into the scholar's discipline from without, not to say from
below. It is noticeable that the humanities which have so
reluctantly yielded ground to the sciences are pretty uniformly
adapted to shape the character of the student in accordance with a
traditional self-centred scheme of consumption; a scheme of
contemplation and enjoyment of the true, the beautiful, and the
good, according to a conventional standard of propriety and
excellence, the salient feature of which is leisure -- otium cum
dignitate. In language veiled by their own habituation to the
archaic, decorous point of view, the spokesmen of the humanities
have insisted upon the ideal embodied in the maxim, fruges consumere
nati. This attitude should occasion no surprise in the case of
schools which are shaped by and rest upon a leisure-class culture.
The professed grounds on which it has been sought, as far as might
be, to maintain the received standards and methods of culture intact
are likewise characteristic of the archaic temperament and of the
leisure-class theory of life. The enjoyment and the bent derived
from habitual contemplation of the life, ideals, speculations, and
methods of consuming time and goods, in vogue among the leisure
class of classical time and goods, in vogue among the leisure class
of classical antiquity, for instance, is felt to be "higher",
"nobler", "worthier", than what results in these respects from a
like familiarity with the everyday life and the knowledge and
aspirations of commonplace humanity in a modern community. that
learning the content of which is an unmitigated knowledge of
latter-day men and things is by comparison "lower", "base",
"ignoble" -- one even hears the epithet "sub-human" applied to this
matter-of-fact knowledge of mankind and of everyday life.
This contention of the leisure-class spokesmen of the humanities
seems to be substantially sound. In point of substantial fact, the
gratification and the culture, or the spiritual attitude or habit of
mind, resulting from an habitual contemplation of the
anthropomorphism, clannishness, and leisurely self-complacency of
the gentleman of an early day, or from a familiarity with the
animistic superstitions and the exuberant truculence of the Homeric
heroes, for instance, is, aesthetically considered, more legitimate
than the corresponding results derived from a matter-of-fact
knowledge of things and a contemplation of latter-day civic or
workmanlike efficiency. There can be but little question that the
first-named habits have the advantage in respect of aesthetic or
honorific value, and therefore in respect of the "worth" which is
made the basis of award in the comparison. The content of the canons
of taste, and more particularly of the canons of honor, is in the
nature of things a resultant of the past life and circumstances of
the race, transmitted to the later generation by inheritance or by
tradition; and the fact that the protracted dominance of a
predatory, leisure-class scheme of life has profoundly shaped the
habit of mind and the point of view of the race in the past, is a
sufficient basis for an aesthetically legitimate dominance of such a
scheme of life in very much of what concerns matters of taste in the
present. For the purpose in hand, canons of taste are race habits,
acquired through a more or less protracted habituation to the
approval or disapproval of the kind of things upon which a favorable
or unfavorable judgment of taste is passed. Other things being
equal, the longer and more unbroken the habituation, the more
legitimate is the canon of taste in question. All this seems to be
even truer of judgments regarding worth or honor than of judgments
of taste generally.
But whatever may be the aesthetic legitimacy of the derogatory
judgment passed on the newer learning by the spokesmen of the
humanities, and however substantial may be the merits of the
contention that the classic lore is worthier and results in a more
truly human culture and character, it does not concern the question
in hand. The question in hand is as to how far these branches of
learning, and the point of view for which they stand in the
educational system, help or hinder an efficient collective life
under modern industrial circumstances -- how far they further a more
facile adaptation to the economic situation of today. The question
is an economic, not an aesthetic one; and the leisure-class
standards of learning which find expression in the deprecatory
attitude of the higher schools towards matter-of-fact knowledge are,
for the present purpose, to be valued from this point of view only.
For this purpose the use of such epithets as "noble", "base",
"higher", "lower", etc., is significant only as showing the animus
and the point of view of the disputants; whether they contend for
the worthiness of the new or of the old. All these epithets are
honorific or humilific terms; that is to say, they are terms of
invidious comparison, which in the last analysis fall under the
category of the reputable or the disreputable; that is, they belong
within the range of ideas that characterizes the scheme of life of
the regime of status; that is, they are in substance an expression
of sportsmanship -- of the predatory and animistic habit of mind;
that is, they indicate an archaic point of view and theory of life,
which may fit the predatory stage of culture and of economic
organization from which they have sprung, but which are, from the
point of view of economic efficiency in the broader sense,
disserviceable anachronisms.
The classics, and their position of prerogative in the scheme of
education to which the higher seminaries of learning cling with such
a fond predilection, serve to shape the intellectual attitude and
lower the economic efficiency of the new learned generation. They do
this not only by holding up an archaic ideal of manhood, but also by
the discrimination which they inculcate with respect to the
reputable and the disreputable in knowledge. This result is
accomplished in two ways: (1) by inspiring an habitual aversion to
what is merely useful, as contrasted with what is merely honorific
in learning, and so shaping the tastes of the novice that he comes
in good faith to find gratification of his tastes solely, or almost
solely, in such exercise of the intellect as normally results in no
industrial or social gain; and (2) by consuming the learner's time
and effort in acquiring knowledge which is of no use,except in so
far as this learning has by convention become incorporated into the
sum of learning required of the scholar, and has thereby affected
the terminology and diction employed in the useful branches of
knowledge. Except for this terminological difficulty -- which is
itself a consequence of the vogue of the classics of the past -- a
knowledge of the ancient languages, for instance, would have no
practical bearing for any scientist or any scholar not engaged on
work primarily of a linguistic character. Of course, all this has
nothing to say as to the cultural value of the classics, nor is
there any intention to disparage the discipline of the classics or
the bent which their study gives to the student. That bent seems to
be of an economically disserviceable kind, but this fact -- somewhat
notorious indeed -- need disturb no one who has the good fortune to
find comfort and strength in the classical lore. The fact that
classical learning acts to derange the learner's workmanlike
attitudes should fall lightly upon the apprehension of those who
hold workmanship of small account in comparison with the cultivation
of decorous ideals: Iam fides et pax et honos pudorque Priscus et
neglecta redire virtus Audet.
Owing to the circumstance that this knowledge has become part of the
elementary requirements in our system of education, the ability to
use and to understand certain of the dead languages of southern
Europe is not only gratifying to the person who finds occasion to
parade his accomplishments in this respect, but the evidence of such
knowledge serves at the same time to recommend any savant to his
audience, both lay and learned. It is currently expected that a
certain number of years shall have been spent in acquiring this
substantially useless information, and its absense creates a
presumption of hasty and precarious learning, as well as of a vulgar
practicality that is equally obnoxious to the conventional standards
of sound scholarship and intellectual force.
The case is analogous to what happens in the purchase of any article
of consumption by a purchaser who is not an expert judge of
materials or of workmanship. He makes his estimate of value of the
article chiefly on the ground of the apparent expensiveness of the
finish of those decorative parts and features which have no
immediate relation to the intrinsic usefulness of the article; the
presumption being that some sort of ill-defined proportion subsists
between the substantial value of an article and the expense of
adornment added in order to sell it. The presumption that there can
ordinarily be no sound scholarship where a knowledge of the classics
and humanities is wanting leads to a conspicuous waste of time and
labor on the part of the general body of students in acquiring such
knowledge. The conventional insistence on a modicum of conspicuous
waste as an incident of all reputable scholarship has affected our
canons of taste and of serviceability in matters of scholarship in
much the same way as the same principle has influenced our judgment
of the serviceability of manufactured goods.
It is true, since conspicuous consumption has gained more and more
on conspicuous leisure as a means of repute, the acquisition of the
dead languages is no longer so imperative a requirement as it once
was, and its talismanic virtue as a voucher of scholarship has
suffered a concomitant impairment. But while this is true, it is
also true that the classics have scarcely lost in absolute value as
a voucher of scholastic respectability, since for this purpose it is
only necessary that the scholar should be able to put in evidence
some learning which is conventionally recognized as evidence of
wasted time; and the classics lend themselves with great facility to
this use. Indeed, there can be little doubt that it is their utility
as evidence of wasted time and effort, and hence of the pecuniary
strength necessary in order to afford this waste, that has secured
to the classics their position of prerogative in the scheme of
higher learning, and has led to their being esteemed the most
honorific of all learning. They serve the decorative ends of
leisure-class learning better than any other body of knowledge, and
hence they are an effective means of reputability.
In this respect the classics have until lately had scarcely a rival.
They still have no dangerous rival on the continent of Europe, but
lately, since college athletics have won their way into a recognized
standing as an accredited field of scholarly accomplishment, this
latter branch of learning -- if athletics may be freely classed as
learning -- has become a rival of the classics for the primacy in
leisure-class education in American and English schools. Athletics
have an obvious advantage over the classics for the purpose of
leisure-class learning, since success as an athlete presumes, not
only waste of time, but also waste of money, as well as the
possession of certain highly unindustrial archaic traits of
character and temperament. In the German universities the place of
athletics and Greek-letter fraternities, as a leisure-class
scholarly occupation, has in some measure been supplied by a skilled
and graded inebriety and a perfunctory duelling.
The leisure class and its standard of virtue -- archaism and waste--
can scarcely have been concerned in the introduction of the classics
into the scheme of the higher learning; but the tenacious retention
of the classics by the higher schools, and the high degree of
reputability which still attaches to them, are no doubt due to their
conforming so closely to the requirements of archaism and waste.
"Classic" always carries this connotation of wasteful and archaic,
whether it is used to denote the dead languages or the obsolete or
obsolescent forms of thought and diction in the living language, or
to denote other items of scholarly activity or apparatus to which it
is applied with less aptness. So the archaic idiom of the English
language is spoken of as "classic" English. Its use is imperative in
all speaking and writing upon serious topics, and a facile use of it
lends dignity to even the most commonplace and trivial string of
talk. The newest form of English diction is of course never written;
the sense of that leisure-class propriety which requires archaism in
speech is present even in the most illiterate or sensational writers
in sufficient force to prevent such a lapse. On the other hand, the
highest and most conventionalized style of archaic diction is --
quite characteristically -- properly employed only in communications
between an anthropomorphic divinity and his subjects. Midway between
these extremes lies the everyday speech of leisure-class
conversation and literature.
Elegant diction, whether in writing or speaking, is an effective
means of reputability. It is of moment to know with some precision
what is the degree of archaism conventionally required in speaking
on any given topic. Usage differs appreciably from the pulpit to the
market-place; the latter, as might be expected, admits the use of
relatively new and effective words and turns of expression, even by
fastidious persons. A discriminative avoidance of neologisms is
honorific, not only because it argues that time has been wasted in
acquiring the obsolescent habit of speech, but also as showing that
the speaker has from infancy habitually associated with persons who
have been familiar with the obsolescent idiom. It thereby goes to
show his leisure-class antecedents. Great purity of speech is
presumptive evidence of several lives spent in other than vulgarly
useful occupations; although its evidence is by no means entirely
conclusive to this point.
As felicitous an instance of futile classicism as can well be found,
outside of the Far East, is the conventional spelling of the English
language. A breach of the proprieties in spelling is extremely
annoying and will discredit any writer in the eyes of all persons
who are possessed of a developed sense of the true and beautiful.
English orthography satisfies all the requirements of the canons of
reputability under the law of conspicuous waste. It is archaic,
cumbrous, and ineffective; its acquisition consumes much time and
effort; failure to acquire it is easy of detection. Therefore it is
the first and readiest test of reputability in learning, and
conformity to its ritual is indispensable to a blameless scholastic
life.
On this head of purity of speech, as at other points where a
conventional usage rests on the canons of archaism and waste, the
spokesmen for the usage instinctively take an apologetic attitude.
It is contended, in substance, that a punctilious use of ancient and
accredited locutions will serve to convey thought more adequately
and more precisely than would be the straightforward use of the
latest form of spoken English; whereas it is notorious that the
ideas of today are effectively expressed in the slang of today.
Classic speech has the honorific virtue of dignity; it commands
attention and respect as being the accredited method of
communication under the leisure-class scheme of life, because it
carries a pointed suggestion of the industrial exemption of the
speaker. The advantage of the accredited locutions lies in their
reputability; they are reputable because they are cumbrous and out
of date, and therefore argue waste of time and exemption from the
use and the need of direct and forcible speech.
<
BACK
|