College Professors and the Public

IN a recent number of the Harvard Graduates’ Magazine there is a sketch entitled A Harvard Ascetic. It describes that singular gentleman and scholar, Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles, with whose academic career anecdote and myth have long been busy. For some thirty-six years after his appointment as Greek tutor, in 1842, Professor Sophocles “ lived by himself, ” we are told, “ in the west entry of Holworthy, and there evoked and spread his frugal meals, amid his lexicons and papers and exercise books.” Whether he bred his famous chickens in his sleeping room is still a matter for high debate among Cambridge humorists of an antiquarian turn. At any rate, he seems to have lived his own life in serene indifference to contemporary opinion. He preserved, throughout the most stirring period of the last century, the spiritual isolation of the exile. He remained from first to last a Greek monk, set to the somewhat incongruous task of teaching American boys.

I am so unfortunate as never to have known Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles. But I have often been inclined to moralize upon his monastic existence, in comparing it with the fuller if more interrupted lives of some of his contemporaries and pupils. For there have been many Grammarians, quite as anxious as Professor Sophocles to “settle Hoti’s business ” and impart “the doctrine of the enclitic de, ” who have cheerfully surrendered their scanty hours for research at the call of public service; arguing in town meetings for better schoolhouses and better roads, visiting and burying the town poor, securing better terms from the all-invading trolley companies, addressing legislative committees in behalf of local improvements, — sparing, in short, no time or labor where the expenditure of time and labor might insure better conditions of living for the communities where the scholar’s lot was cast. That this devotion to the claims of the town or city or general public is likely to interfere with Hoti’s business is undeniable. The doctrine of the enclitic de is less clearly defined to-day than it might have been if all college teachers had lived, like Professor Sophocles, in the west entry of a dormitory, engrossed with lexicons and exercise books, and with a few chickens, possibly, to add speculative interest to the scene. There is, one must confess, a more or less constant antinomy between the instincts of pure scholarship and the impulses of citizenship. It is a warfare which accounts, at least in part, for the peculiar status of the college professor under the conditions of contemporary American life; and certain phases of the rather complex situation growing out of these contradictory duties one may venture to discuss.

Few educated men will deny the imaginative charm that invests the existence of the solitary scholar. In his person we discover one man, in this confusing world, who knows what he likes. Chaucer’s Clerk of Oxenford, who had

is something more than a type of mediæval devotion to the Aristotelian logic. Some breath of his ascetic spirit still abides in every scholar worthy of the name; the twenty books continue to yield to such a man a deeper delight than the robes or the fiddle. There is no college faculty without its Clerk of Oxenford, — some unworldly soul who grows old without tangible rewards, possibly without very tangible achievements, but who has nevertheless kept the pure flame of learning alive in his heart. Innocent eccentricities attach themselves to him. Young doctors from the great foreign and American universities find him a trifle old-fashioned in his views and unaware of the latest dissertations. Yet the blameless Clerk loves his twenty books to the end.

One such man I remember in particular. In his younger days he had been a Latinist, until the loss, by fire, of his manuscript Latin grammar disheartened him, and he accepted a casual offer of a chair of elementary mathematics, which he kept till his death. He fulfilled his duties as instructor with perfect gravity and fidelity, but cared wholly for other things: for his collections of Phædrus and black-letter Chaucers; for Scott’s novels, which he used to read through once each year; for the elder dramatists ; for Montaigne and Lamb. Weather permitting, he drove from twenty to forty miles a day in his rusty, mud-covered buggy; he knew every wild flower, every lovely or hold view, within reach of Williamstown. To be his companion upon one of these drives was to touch the very essence of fine, whimsical, irresponsible scholarship. But Professor Dodd made no speeches in town meeting, was scantily interested in no-license agitation, was rather likely to forget election day altogether, and on pleasant Sundays used to patronise obscure churches that lay at an extraordinary driving distance from home. His sense of freedom from these compulsions that are laid upon the strenuous citizen of New England was very charming. The land of his habitation was “far from this our war.”

The type of moral detachment which my old friend thus exemplified is not only charming; it is positively necessary, if the work demanded by productive scholarship — though he was quite frankly an unproductive scholar! •—• is adequately to be done. It is an encumbrance to the scholar, as it is to the soldier, to entangle himself overmuch with the affairs of this life. Certain members of every academic community seem drafted by nature and by achievement to special service. They are summoned out of the usual social order, away from the conventional, wholesome round of ordinary discipline, to lead some forlorn hope of science or letters, to explore the farthest boundaries of human knowledge, to chart unknown waters that will by and by be crowded with the funnels of the carrying trade of the world. There is a profound sense in which every such man must, like Newton, be

He cannot keep in touch with the normal life of other men. If he brings back something to us at the end of his voyages, that is enough; he must not be held to rigid attendance upon ward meetings and Sunday school. The chances are that not twenty men in the world will recognize, at first, what these explorations mean to human progress ; their significance is realized very gradually. Meantime the man’s neighbors will know merely that he is gone, — that he is absent-minded, forgetful of jury duty and registration and a hundred admirable “causes.”

Since this type of intellectual pioneer is so essential to the true progress of the race, there is no likelihood that it will not persist. Indeed, there are more opportunities open to it and greater honors are paid to it to-day, in this country, than we have ever offered before. The Clerk of Oxenford, who was “ not right fat, ” as it may be remembered, in the fourteenth century, is better clothed and fed and housed in the twentieth. Yet the college teachers who really make original contributions to human knowledge are few in proportion to the total numbers engaged in the profession. The passion for scholarship, like that for poetry, does not always imply a corresponding power of production; and because we are glad to release some picked man from the common social obligations and services, and bid him Godspeed upon his adventure, it does not follow that a similar freedom may be claimed for those who stay at home. The solitary scholar will always be the exception, not the rule. The college professor, under normal conditions, can escape neither his duties to the public nor the daily irresistible impact from the public. His endeavor to escape them may be an evidence of instinctive capacity for creative work of the highest value; but it has not infrequently been the badge of a mere Bohemianism, a mark of the reckless, selfish existence of an alien, — of a man with no stake in the community.

“I do not often speak to public questions,” said Emerson, who, without formal academic relations, was nevertheless in so many ways our finest type of academic behavior: “ they are odious and hurtful, and it seems like meddling or leaving your work. I have my own spirits in prison, — spirits in deeper prisons, whom no man visits if I do not. And then I see what havoc it makes with any good mind, a dissipated philanthropy. The one thing not to be forgiven to intellectual persons is, not to know their own task.”

Yet these serene sentences were uttered at the opening of his address on the Fugitive Slave Law, and he goes on to say that he never felt the crack of the slaveowner’s whip until that measure, backed as it was by Daniel Webster, put a check on his free speech and action. Then, with words fairly incandescent with noble scorn, Emerson denounces a law which he believes to be an outrage alike upon the rights of private citizenship and upon the public honor. That speech upon the Fugitive Slave Law deserves to be read with the more famous Phi Beta Kappa oration of 1837 on The American Scholar. The earlier address describes the scholar’s duty toward his work; the speech of 1854 states and exemplifies the scholar’s duty as a citizen.

Scarcely half a century has elapsed since these later words of Emerson were spoken. Yet what far-reaching changes have been wrought in the relations of the academic scholar to the public! Many of the most characteristic phases of our modern industrial and social development are less than half a century old. Within that period the curriculum of the American college has been transformed. The professor of to-day, instead of occupying himself solely with the dead languages and a little mathematics and philosophy, pursues studies and gives instruction that bring him into touch, at a thousand points of contact, with the material interests, the practical concerns, of the American public. Some Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles still trims his solitary lamp in every college; and in every college there are still, as always, men whose instincts of citizenship are wholly independent of the work of their particular department. But a newer type of college professor is also everywhere in evidence : the expert who knows all about railroads and bridges and subways; about gas commissions and electrical supplies; about currency and banking, Philippine tariffs, Venezuelan boundary lines, the industries of Porto Rico, the classification of the civil service, the control of trusts. I take my illustrations almost at random, and yet in connection with each topic upon that variegated list it would be possible to point to college professors who have lately been rendering a signal public service. These men combine technical training with practical capacity. They can no longer be brushed aside contemptuously as “mere theorists.” They are helping to carry forward the detailed work of governmental departments; and as you and I are paying for their traveling expenses and their stenographers, they ought to meet every American definition of “ the practical man ” !

And we must take into account other facts besides these new professorial activities springing out of the new scientific and commercial energy of the nation. This energy has been felt by the universities, and it has produced university men who, judged by any previous academic standards, belong to a new species. But the college professor who represents the “humanities,” rather than the distinctly scientific side of modern education, is likewise brought closer to the public than ever before. The newspapers report — and inisreport — him. Editors offer him space to reply. Publishers weary him with appeals to write textbooks. He goes to conventions. He has become sophisticated. The great festivals of his university — like the rural college Commencements of sixty years ago — assume the character of a popular show. The President of the United States attends them. The professor’s photograph, in full academic costume, assaults your eye in the market place. The college press club and the university’s bureau of publicity give his lecture dates in advance. The prospectus of your favorite magazine bids you inspect his literary qualifications as well as his thoughtful countenance. Who ’s Who in America informs you of the name of his second wife.

In all this familiarity of intercourse with the world, some of the fine old reserve of manner and reticence of speech has been lost. The secularized professor — like one of those gray Italian convents now secularized into orphan schools—is sometimes rather a noisy, middle - class affair. Yet if something of the traditional fastidiousness and exclusiveness has disappeared, other qualities, more robust and probably more useful, have been gained. It has been an advantage to the public to see the professor at closer range, and it has been a still more obvious benefit to the professor himself that he has found manifold modes of contact with his fellow citizens. For the lessons which the professor learns from the public are at least as important as those which he imparts. If, as the cant phrase has it, he does something occasionally to “purify politics, ” politics pretty constantly clarifies him.

This growth in mutual knowledge between a single class in the community and the community as a whole has already proved its value, but the limits of its usefulness have by no means been reached. Popular suspicion of the political theorist — a suspicion curiously active at the present moment — is still apt to find in the “ college professor ” a convenient symbol of ineptitude. The Philistinism which glorifies the socalled “man of action ” minimizes by contrast the man of thought. Nor is it to be expected that the general public can ever develop a full sympathy with the academic scholar whose mind is bent solely upon discovering the truth. It may respect him if he keeps out of the way. But let him once lift his voice against some popular movement, and the hisses will be prompt enough. Most of us can remember the time when college professors of economics who advocated tariff for revenue were stigmatized as “British emissaries ” with their pockets stuffed with “British gold.” There is less said just now about British emissaries, and yet the college economist who does not, in football parlance, “buy the winning colors after the game ” must still pay the penalty of his hardihood. Within a twelvemonth college teachers have been openly denounced as “traitors ” for advocating self-government for the Filipinos. In many a pulpit and newspaper office, last September, it was declared that the utterances of college professors were largely responsible for the assassination of President McKinley. Singularly enough, the most bitter denunciations of the college professor in politics come from college-trained politicians and journalists; there is no such master of the sneer as the partisan who in his youth

In short, courage is still necessary if the college teacher desires to speak frankly upon disputable topics. In 1902 it is easy to be a champion of the gold standard, because the gold standard has fortunately prevailed; in 1896 the comfort of such a championship depended upon the longitude of the college. We are gradually learning to analyze the complex elements that enter into the question of “academic freedom, ” and to discover that human nature must not be left out of the reckoning; but meantime it must be confessed that academic freedom, like the Supreme Court in Mr. Dooley’s epigram, “follows the election returns.”

Yet there is something to be said for that instinct of self-preservation which forces the majority, in a democracy like ours, to silence demonstrative opposition and proceed with the public affairs. One must admit that a good many college professors have taken the Irish members of Parliament as their exemplars, and are boyishly pleased if they can merely obstruct the business of the House. Miss Evelina Burney once wrote of Sir Philip Jennings Clerk, “He is a professed minority man.” This type of man is familiar in academic circles. There is something very admirable in his bravery, in his consistency, and in the Cato-like — the Oxford-like — pride with which he clings to lost causes. But, like all of us, he needs to discriminate. John Milton, who was “a professed minority man ” of the most militant order, declared that “when God commands to take the trumpet, and blow a dolorous or a jarring blast, it lies not in man’s will what he shall say or what he shall conceal.” Noble, heartening words are these, and as much needed now as ever. Yet there should be a reasonable certainty that the note is really blown at God’s command; and one may concede that the professed minority man of the academic species sometimes mistakes for the Divine clarion what is merely a tin trumpet hanging on the wall of his private study, and that he blows it mainly for the exercise of his lungs.

It is easy to comprehend, and it should be easy to pardon, these professorial extravagances. They are the excitable utterances of men not habitually sobered by practical contact with affairs. Yet an excited participation in public debate is better, after all, than indifference; and as the solidarity of interests between all classes in the republic becomes more generally realized, there is likely to be less and less criticism of academic critics. While making fullest admission of the occasional peevishness and exaggeration of these men, it should never be forgotten that no class of American citizens bring to the discussion of current questions so wide a knowledge of the teachings of history, a deeper attachment to American ideals, and a more disinterested patriotism.

The field of political activity has been selected to illustrate some of the relations of the professor with the public, not only because the illustration lies conveniently near at hand, but also because it is typical of other activities as well. The benefits that have attended the more general participation of college teachers in current politics are undeniable. They justify the belief that many of the obstructions which still embarrass the commerce of the professor with the public will disappear upon better mutual acquaintance. There are many spheres of public activity in which college teachers need encounter none of the suspicion that is bred by partisan politics. In the fight for better tenements, for public parks, bath-houses, libraries, and training schools ; in all the varied work of philanthropic, ethical, and religious organizations; in the immense task of securing and developing throughout this country a respect for law, a man is not handicapped because he earns his living in a college. He will discover, if he makes the effort, that he can come to closer quarters with his fellow Americans, not only without abandoning any old ideals worth keeping, but with the certainty of obtaining an invigorating supply of new ideals. His working hours may be devoted to investigation or to classroom instruction; he may hope to influence his generation through his pupils or through his books; but he will have at least certain moments of leisure. These may be spent, if he will, in widening his knowledge of the American people of to-day.

I have already referred to one delightful Williamstown personage, the late Professor Dodd, as an instance of academic detachment. I shall choose a phrase descriptive of a more normal scheme of life from a remark made about another resident of the Berkshire college town, named “ Russ ” Pratt. He was the one-armed and more stupid brother of the half-witted and locally famous “Bill” Pratt. As Russ was reputed to be the laziest man in Williamstown, — a village that had many claimants to that distinction. — I once asked his adopted daughter how her father spent his time. Her answer was epigrammatic in its swiftness and scope : “He saws wood, sets in the house, and goes down street! ” Is not that an admirable formula ? Labor, reflection, social contact! Could there be a wiser counsel of perfection for the college professor ? Poor fellow, he must “saw wood ” or freeze; yet he has some opportunity to reflect, in a world which is just now little enough given to reflection ; and surely he might “go down street ” more often and to better advantage than he does. The street no less than the library has its whims, partialities, extravagances, panics. But the man of the library has much to learn from the man of the street, and a riper friendship between them will betoken a better service toward their common country.

A friend of James Russell Lowell has said that in Lowell’s later life he sometimes spoke discontentedly of the years he had spent as a college professor. He complained humorously that he had been wont, in those earlier days, to lecture for an hour or two, go back to Elmwood, fill his pipe, and thank God that he had done a day’s work. Now it is not easy to say what shall constitute a day’s work, either for one’s self or for another; the question is not so simple as the arithmetic of the labor unions would seem to imply. Yet that is a scant day’s work, whether long or short, that does not bring the worker into some relation to human progress; that does not make men and women freer, wiser, better. Lowell’s years of service in the Smith Professorship may have been as fruitful as any years of his life, although it was the nobler side of him, no doubt, that made him question it.

But who knows the pattern into which his days and years are being woven? I remember complaining, long ago, to a venerable professor, as we were walking together to morning chapel, that a required chapel service involved a costly expenditure of time; and that the German scholars were steadily drawing ahead of their American rivals because, for one reason, they saved that half hour a day. His reply was very fine: “If you are turning a grindstone, every moment is precious; but if you are doing a man’s work, the inspired moments are precious. ” Every fully endowed man believes that saying in his heart, whatever he may think about the specific question of compulsory chapel for the college-bred; and as our modern world gradually reveals to us both its complexity and its spiritual unity, the “inspired moments” are increasingly likely to be those, not of lonely intuition, but of organized social service. No Americans, above all no body of educated Americans, should imagine that they have a charter to live unto themselves. The whole contemporary movement is against it, — the secularization of knowledge, the democratization of society, the fundamental oneness of interest among all peoples of this swiftly narrowing earth. For the members of any profession to insulate themselves from these currents of world-sympathy is to cut off that profession’s power. The astonishing development of academic studies in our day, the evolution of these new types of professorial activity, the immense endowments and other evidences of public interest in the American college, are fortunate auguries for the republic. But they are also welcome because they invite the professor himself to make generous contribution to what the President of Harvard, in speaking at the bicentennial of Yale, characterized as “the pervasive, aggressive, all-modifying spirit of Christian democracy.”

B. P.