Part 5

Now there is this about a pragmatic truth: like any other invention of the devil, it smooths the road for the lazy. If it did not smooth the road, it would not be, by pragmatic definition, truth. And the great bulk of us have found the “free and equal” statement such a help that, though we cannot pretend for a moment that it is true, we stick to it. The schoolboy sticks to it because it greases his oratory; the politician sticks to it because his constituents like the sound of it; the detrimental sticks to it because it is his only apology. And, just as you cannot suppress a word without eventually suppressing the thing it stands for, so you cannot utter a statement forever without imbibing some of its poison. Even as our reasonable national pride turned into the spread-eagleism that Dickens and Mrs. Trollope caricatured, so the “free and equal” shibboleth turned into the “I am as good as you are” formula. Why trouble about anything, if you were already lord of the world? At first, it was Europe we defied. What were the ancient oligarchies, to impose on us their standards, intellectual, social, or moral? We set up our own standards, because we were as good as any one else--and also because it was a little easier.

Let me say before going further, that I am not blaming the lower classes alone for the extirpation of culture among us. The upper classes are equally responsible--if, indeed, not even more to blame. We have become materialistic: our very virtues are more materialistic than they were. It is forgivable in the poor man to be materialistic; for unless he has bread to keep his body alive, he will presently have no soul to cherish. Materialism is less pardonable in the man who always knows where his next meal is coming from. He, if you like, does have time to worry about his soul. None the less, he worries about it very little. There used to be a good deal of fun poked at settlement-workers who tried to read Dante and Shakespeare to slum-dwellers. I am not sure that those misguided youths and maidens who first carried Dante and Shakespeare into the slums were not right as to substance, however wrong they were as to sequence. The only morally decent excuse for wanting to have a little more money than you actually need to feed and clothe your family, is your ambition to have a little mental energy to spend on things not of the body. The ultimate tragedy of the slums is that, in slum conditions, one can scarcely think, from birth to death, of anything but the body. The upper-class people who think of pleasing their palates instead of relieving hunger, of being in the fashion instead of covering their nakedness, are no more civilized than the slum-dwellers. They are apt, it is true, to become more so; for it is a strange fact that a family can seldom be rich through several generations without discovering some æsthetic truths. And æsthetic truths lead to moral perceptions. You cannot with impunity fill your ears with good music, your eyes with good painting and sculpture and architecture. Something happens to you, after a time, no matter how vulgar you may be. But wealth is very fluctuating in our country; and several generations of it are not often seen. The people who are now rich are generally people whose grandfathers and great-grandfathers were fighting for sheer existence. So we have the spectacle of the dominant plutocrats (no one will deny that plutocracy is the order of the day, both here and in Europe) either mindful themselves of the struggle for existence, or in a state of having only just forgotten it. They are not going to push their children into a race for intangible goods. And the more we recruit from immigrants who bring no personal traditions with them, the more America is going to ignore the things of the spirit. No one whose consuming desire is either for food or for motor-cars is going to care about culture, or even know what it is. And it is another misfortune of our over-quickened social evolution that the middle classes do not stay middle class. They climb to wealth, or sink to indigence. Neither that quick rise nor that quick fall is a period in which to cherish their own or their children’s intellects.

Both from above and below, then, our colleges and schools have felt the hostile pressure. Colleges are, on the one hand, jeered at for doing their business badly, and, on the other, accused of being too difficult. We are always hearing that college is of no earthly use to a man except as he learns there to rub up against other men. We are always hearing, also, that the college curriculum is a cruel strain on the average boy or girl. On one score or another, the colleges are always being attacked; and the attack usually includes the hint that the real test of a “college education” is not the intrinsic value, but its success or failure in preparing the youth for something that has nothing to do with learning. Will it be of social or financial use to him? If not, why make sacrifices to get it? Far be it from me to assert that the intellectual flame never burns in the breast of collegiate youth! But I do believe it provable that there is far less tendency to regard learning as a good in itself, and far more tendency to cheat scholarship, if possible, in the interest of some other thing held good, than there was two generations ago. Ignorance of what real learning is, and a consequent suspicion of it; materialism, and a consequent intellectual laxity--both of these have done destructive work in the colleges.

The education of younger children is in like case. We put them into kindergartens where their reasoning powers are ruined; or, if we can afford it, we buy Montessori outfits that were invented for semi-imbeciles in Italian slums; or we send them to outdoor schools and give them prizes for sleeping. Every one knows what a fight the old universities have had to put up to keep their entrance standards at all. With the great new army of state universities admitting students from the public schools without examination, because they themselves are part of the big public-school system, how can it be otherwise?

Now the patriotic American may see--and rightly enough--in the public-school system which includes a college training, a relic of the desperate desire of our forefathers that education, as a major good, should be within the reach of all and sundry. But even the patriotic American must see another impulse at work: the impulse to put the college intellectually, as well as financially, within the reach of all. The Colleges must not set up standards for themselves that the average boy or girl, from the ordinary school, cannot reach without difficulty, because that is undemocratic.

Now I know as well as other people that it is positively harder to get into our old universities to-day than it was in our fathers’ day. But granted the enormously increased facilities for preparation all over the land, it is not relatively anything like so hard. Certainly, once in, it is possible to get through the college course with less work than ever before. In the first place, there is a much wider choice of subjects on which a boy can get his degree: his tastes are consulted as they never used to be. If he does not want to endure the discipline of Greek, he can get an A.B. at every college in the country--except Princeton--without knowing a word of Greek. Even at Princeton, he can take a Litt.B. and let Greek forever alone.[A] He can study sociology, or Spanish, or physical culture, or nearly anything he likes. I have even heard that in one of our state universities there is a department of hat-trimming, which contributes its quota to the courses for a (presumably feminine) academic degree.

It may be objected at this point that the fluctuations of colleges have nothing to do with our standards of culture. I think they have, a great deal. No one will deny that culture can be got elsewhere, or that colleges do not suffice in themselves to give it. But if colleges do not consider themselves custodians of culture, warders and cherishers of the flame, they have no reason for existence. It is a platitude that business men consider college a worthless preparation for business life--save as a young man may have laid up there treasure for himself in the shape of valuable “connections.” Even the conception of college as a four years’ paradise intervening before the hell of an active struggle for existence, does not touch upon the original reason for universities’ being at all. Universities were invented for the sake of bringing their fortunate students into contact with the precious lore of the world, there garnered and kept pure. There was no idea on the part of their founders that every one would or could partake of academic benefits. The social scheme would not originally have allowed that; still less would the conception of the public intellect have admitted the notion. Every one was not supposed to be congenitally qualified for intimacy with the best that has been thought and said in the world. They had no notion, until very recently, of so changing the terms of that intimacy that every one might think he could have it. Learning, culture, were not to be adulterated so that any mental digestive process whatsoever could take them in.

But now, in America, there is a tendency that way. If a boy does not feel a pre-established harmony between his soul and the humanities, then give him an academic degree on something with which his soul will be in pre-established harmony. And if there is no pre-established harmony between his soul and any form of learning, then create institutions that will give him a degree with no learning to speak of at all. I do not mean to deny that many of our virtually valueless colleges were founded in the pathetic inherited conviction that learning and culture were too great goods not to be accessible to all who cared passionately for them. But I do believe that the reverence for learning and culture has been largely replaced by a conviction that anything which has so great a reputation as a college degree must be put within the reach of all, even at the risk of making its reputation a farce. The privileged have been unwilling that their children should be made to work; the unprivileged have been unwilling that their children should see anything of good repute, anything with a prestige value, denied to them. We have all demanded a royal road to a thing to which there is no royal road. The expensive schools lead their pupils from kindergarten to nature-study and eurhythmics, with basket-work and gymnastics thrown in; the public schools follow them as closely as they can. Of real training of the mind there is very little in any school. The rich do not want their children overworked; the poor want a practical result for their children’s fantastically long school hours. So domestic science comes in for girls, and carpentering for boys. Anything to make it easy, on the one hand; anything to make a universal standard possible, on the other.

Take one example only: the attitude towards Greek. There are two arguments against teaching our children Greek: one, that it is too hard; the other, that it is useless. The mere fact that public opinion has drummed Greek out of court as an inevitable part of a college curriculum shows that these arguments have been potent. No person who could be influenced by either has the remotest conception of the meaning or the value of culture. Culture has never renounced a thing because it was difficult, or because it did not help people to make money. And the mere fact that Greek is no longer supposed by the vast majority of parents to be of any “use”--even as a matter of reputation--to their sons, shows that the old standards of culture have changed. The larger number of our public schools no longer teach Greek at all; a great many private schools have to make special arrangements for pupils who wish to study it. And the attitude towards Greek is only a sign of our democratic, materialistic times.

Now I have done with the colleges. I have dealt with them at all only by way of hinting that they have been so democratized that culture means, even to its avowed exponents, something different from what it has ever meant before. May I speak for one moment explicitly of the public schools? For we must trace all this back to the source--must begin with the ostensible homes of “culture” and follow up the stream to the latent public consciousness. Each class that comes into college has read fewer and fewer of what are called the classics of English literature. An astonishing number of boys and girls have read nothing worth reading except the books that are in the entrance requirements. An increasing proportion of the sons and daughters of the prosperous are positively illiterate at college age. They cannot spell; they cannot express themselves grammatically; and they are inclined to think that it does not matter. General laxity, and the adoption of educational fads which play havoc with real education, are largely responsible. In the less fortunate classes, the fact seems to be that the public schools are so swamped by foreigners that all the teachers can manage to do is to teach the pupils a little workable English. Needless to say, the profession of the public-school teacher has become less and less tempting to people who are really fit for it.

It is not only in the great cities that the immigrant population swamps the schoolroom. An educated woman told me, not long since, that there was no school in the place where she lived--one of our oldest New England towns--to which she could send her boy. The town could not support a private school for young children; and the public school was out of the question. I had been brought up to believe that public schools in old New England towns were very decent places; and I asked her why. The answer made it clear. Three fourths of the school-children were Lithuanians, and a decently bred American child could simply learn nothing in their classes. They had to be taught English, first of all; they approached even the most elementary subjects very slowly; and--natural corollary--the teachers themselves were virtually illiterate. Therefore she was teaching her boy at home until he could go to a preparatory school. Fortunately, she was capable of doing it; but there are many mothers who cannot ground their children in the languages and sciences. A woman who could not would have had to watch her child acquiring a Lithuanian accent and the locutions of the slum.

An isolated case is never worth much. But one has only to consider conditions at large to see that this has everything to make it typical. One has only to look at any official record of immigration, any chart of distribution of population by races, to see how the old American stock is being numerically submerged. If you do not wish to look at anything so dull as statistics, look at the comic papers. A fact does not become a stock joke until it is pretty well visible to the average man. Our forefathers cared immensely for education; they felt themselves humble before learning; and their schools followed, soon and sacredly, upon their churches. They stood in awe of the real thing; and they had no illusions as to the ease of the scholar’s path. They legislated for their schools solemnly, and if not with complete wisdom, always at least with accurate ideals. Educational (like all other) legislation nowadays is largely in the hands of illiterate people, and the illiterate will take good care that their illiteracy is not made a reproach to them. If any one chooses to say that culture must always be in the hands of an oligarchy, and that the oligarchy has not been touched, I will only ask him to consider the pupils and the teaching in most private schools. In the end, prestige values are going to tell; and the vast bulk of our population will see to it that the prestige values are not absolutely unattainable to them. The great fortunes have made their way to the top--yes, really to the top. In many cases there has been time for a quick veneer of grammar to be laid over their original English. In many cases there has not; and no one cares. The custodians of culture cannot afford to care; for their custody must either be endowed or be forsaken.

Oh, yes, there are a few Brahmins left; but one has only to look at the marriages of any given season to see what is becoming of the purity of the Brahmin caste. The Brahmins themselves are beginning to see that they are lost unless they compound with the materialists, and make or marry money--or increase, by aid of the materialists, what they have inherited. In what New England village, now, is the minister or the scholar looked up to as a fount of municipal wisdom because he is a learned man? Is he a “good mixer”? That is what they ask: I have heard them. Once it was possible in America for a poor man to hope to gain for his children, if they deserved it, the life of the intellect and of the spirit. Now it no longer is; for the poor themselves have defiled the fount. They are a different kind of poor, that is all; and they have become an active and discontented majority, with hands that pick and steal. When they no longer need to pick and steal, they carry their infection higher and give it as a free gift. And they have been aided by the Brahmins themselves; who, having dabbled in sociology _pour se désoeuvrer_, and then for charity’s sake, are now finding that sociology is a grim matter of life and death, and endow chairs of it--as if one should endow chairs of self-preservation. But self-preservation is not culture and never will be; and no study of the manners and customs of savages or slums can call itself “contact with the best that has been thought and said in the world.”

We owe, too, I think, a great deal of our cultural deterioration (which I admit is a villainous phrase) to science. Science has come in with a rush, and is at present--why deny it?--on top. “Scientific” is a word to charm with, even though it has already had time to be degraded. If Mrs. Eddy had called her bargain-counter Orientalism anything but “science,” would she have drawn so many followers? Science has done great things for us; it has also pushed us hopelessly back. For, not content with filling its own place, it has tried to supersede everything else. It has challenged the super-eminence of religion; it has turned all philosophy out of doors except that which clings to its skirts; it has thrown contempt on all learning that does not depend on it; and it has bribed the skeptics by giving us immense material comforts. To the plea, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God,” it has retorted that no word proceeds authentically out of the mouth of God save what it has issued in its own translations. It is more rigorous and more exclusive than the Index of the Roman Church. The Inquisition never did anything so oppressive as to put all men, innocent or guilty, into a laboratory. Science cares supremely for physical things. If it restricted itself to the physical world, it would be tolerable: we could shut ourselves away with our souls in peace. But it must control the soul as well as the body: it insists on reducing all emotions, however miraculous and dear, to a question of nerve-centres. There has never been tyranny like this.

Now I do not mean to say that all scientists despise culture. That would be silly and untrue. But the “scientific” obsession has changed all rankings in the intellectual world. The insidiousness of science lies in its claim to be not a subject, but a method. You could ignore a subject: no subject is all-inclusive. But a method can plausibly be applied to anything within the field of consciousness. Small wonder that the study of literature turns into philology, the study of history into archæology, and the study of morals and æsthetics into physical psychology. With the finer appeals of philosophy and poetry and painting and natural beauty, science need not meddle; because about their direct effect on the thought and wills of men if can say nothing valuable. You cannot determine the value of a Velasquez by putting your finger on the pulse of the man who is looking at it; or the value of Amiens Cathedral by registering the vibration of his internal muscles; or of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado by declaring that all perception of beauty is a function of sex. Nor does it matter very much, at the moment, to the enraptured reader or observer that such and such a work of art was the logical result of a given set of conditions. The point is that it is there; and that it works potently upon us in ways which we can scarce phrase. Culture puts us disinterestedly in communication with the distilled and sifted lore of the world. Science is in comparison a prejudiced affair--prejudiced because it seeks always to bring things back to literal and physical explanations. Far be it from me to deny that geology, biology, physics, have given us unapprehended vistas down which to stray--only, strictly speaking, it forbids the straying. The moment the layman’s imagination begins to profit, begins to get real exhilaration from scientific discoveries, it contributes something unwelcome to science. Science has its own stern value; in the end we are all profoundly affected by its gains in the field of fact. One’s quarrel is not with science as such, but with science as demanding an intellectual and spiritual hegemony. With nothing less than hegemony, however, will science be content.

Now if it is not yet clear what effect all this must have on culture, a few words may make it clearer. The great danger of the scientific obsession is not the destruction of all things that are not science, but the slow infection of those things. If the laboratory is your real test, then most philosophies and all art are no good. The scientists are not good philosophers, and they are not good artists; and if science is to rule everywhere, we must shelve philosophy and art, or else take them into the laboratory. I need not point out what has become of literature under a scientific régime. We all know the hopeless fiction that is created by the scientific method; fiction that banks on its anecdotal accuracy and has in it no spiritual truth. Literature is simply a different game: you do not get the greatest literary truth by the laboratory method. Art is not reducible to science, because science takes no account of the special truth which is beauty, of the special truth which is moral imagination.

It is not only by the laboratory method that our fiction has been ruined: a great many of our writers of fiction are not up to the laboratory method. But all our fiction has been harmed by the prevalent idea that no fiction is any good which is not done according to the laboratory method, and that even fiction which attempts that method is of little value in comparison with a card-catalogue. There were some snobs who were not affected by the democratic fallacy; but even the snobs have been affected by scientific scorn.