<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />
1 of 2
2 of 2
Previous
Next
Update Required
To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.