The Academic Fakir

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

The satire with which Thackeray in the Book of Snobs portrayed the university snob is probably no longer applicable to the Oxford and Cambridge of to-day, and, indeed, was never applicable to our American colleges. Not that our colleges have never exhibited traces of snobbishness, but the brand of snobbishness there developed, while confessedly a poor creature, was emphatically our own.

Thackeray’s picture of the college don of his day, however, is no more sadly out of date than the stock caricature of the American college professor. The bland and dignified gentleman of somewhat visionary turn of mind, of strong ecclesiastical affiliations, and of inelastic pedagogical methods, who has so long passed for the representative incumbent of our academic chairs, is becoming—at least in our older colleges — about as rare as the ichthyosaurus. And, despite his many peculiarities, there was generally about the old figure the dignified simplicity of a cultured scholarly life, which was not without its own peculiar charm. There were intellectual giants in those days, too, and their energies, instead of being wholly absorbed in the work of organization and administration, were very often employed most effectively in imparting a thorough education to their individual pupils.

The prevalent type of the American college professor of to-day it is hard to describe in a word. For the most part they have gone on crusades to the holy land of learning, and have returned bristling with degrees “made in Germany.” Their information, though often narrowly delimited in scope, is more exact and generally nearer first hand than the traditional learning of the Ancients. The practical wisdom which comes of ripened reflection and of the experienced appraisal of human nature as exemplified in the individual college student they very often lack, or acquire only as their predecessors acquired it, — by hard knocks. It is the more to be regretted that while the other type of professor, with all his limitations, was so often able to make his modest learning attractive, the fretful Quellenforscher, by reason of his bearish personality, should so frequently render his thorough scholarship repellent. Time will doubtless soften his asperities, for, notwithstanding the foibles of the younger professorial breed, they are in the main conscientious cultivators, each of his own scientific garden-plot, intent by honest work, both in teaching and investigation, upon conforming to the exacting standard which as a class they have set for themselves.

In marked contrast to this normal type of university teacher there has of late emerged in certain of our colleges a figure, fortunately rare as yet, who may fairly be dubbed the academic fakir. Not content with slowly pushing forward the limits of knowledge, or with the honest handing down from year to year of the deposit of accepted truth in his own department, the academic fakir in every marketplace assiduously hawks about his own tinsel wares. His usual method is to employ his reputation for erudition as a bait for popular applause, and then to use such notoriety as he may acquire as a ladder by which to climb to academic preferment. His supposed scientific eminence serves him at the start as a passport to public consideration; and ever afterwards on the basis of his admittance to the public hearth he founds his claim to preëminence in the college cloister, — all of which, by the way, is a curious reversal of Crabbe’s verdict, that —

To explain the appearance of the academic fakir several facts must be remembered. In the first place, it is certain that well-meaning but undiscriminating boards of college trustees, and enthusiastic but ill-advised benefactors of their alma mater, are often wont to base their judgments as to the desirability of a man for an academic post entirely upon the popular estimate in which the man is held. An appointment to a vacancy in the department of English, let us say, is to be made, and some one starts a boom for “ Gigadibs, the literary man,” whose recent writings have attracted such favorable popular attention. Or again, the scientific department grows to such an extent as to require a dean of its own. Who so likely to commend himself for the position as young Professor Push, the wide-awake popularizer of sciolism ?

In the second place it must be remembered that the teaching profession offers very few pecuniary prizes, and pays but little in the “cheap coin of honor,” and that both of these rewards are apt to be found conjoined in such administrative posts as the headships of professional schools, or of the special departments, into which our larger colleges are being subdivided. A careful cultivation of the suffrages of the general public is a strong bid for such a place, “since men call flare success” in the world of learning as well as elsewhere. Moreover, why should the educational promoter alone be denied the right to capitalize his scrappy scientific or literary assets, which possibly percolate through a dozen repetitious volumes, at a figure in excess of their cost value ? Why on the basis of his fame as a magazinist, or on the strength of his newly exploited pedagogical vagary, may he not issue watered academic securities, when he must himself take his pay in the common stock of the newly formed educational trust ? Like his brother of the financial world, he is only bent on giving the Philistines what they think they want.

Successfully to float such educational shares — it sounds ironical to call them securities — the academic promoter must of course show himself a “persuasive optimist.” In his invoice of personal qualities he will of course have to count a certain fausse bonhomie. This indispensable gift will serve to lubricate the wheels of personal intercourse with disdainful colleagues, and will pass as current coin among powerful outsiders on whose favor the successful flotation of his stock depends. Surely, if our educational system is to be imbued with commercial ethics, we must expect that business methods will increasingly prevail in our universities. If, following the lead of a western college, we are to have the university drummer at the bottom, we must not be surprised to see the university promoter at the top. If the general run of our academic shops give us good wares at fair prices, we must make up our minds to see the parasites of trade peddling their tin collar-buttons and moth-eaten shoestrings along the thoroughfares of Academe.