The Higher Learning as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture
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 décolleté
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.