The Importance of Being a Professor

I

‘ So they ’re going to pass up increases in your salaries again this year, are they? ’ said Charles. ‘Damned shame! ’ he added with conviction.

You will infer at once (and rightly) that I am a teacher. I belong to one of those institutions of learning where the traditional method of meeting increased expenses is to penalize the teaching staff. This will not enable you to identify the institution. I never intended that it should. On the contrary. For I would have you think of me as a class and not as an individual.

Charles is my brother-in-law. He is in business. What kind of business I do not exactly know. It has something to do with mergers — whatever a merger may be. Anyhow, he makes money out of it; and, judging by the way he spends it, he is always superbly confident of making more. He is the sort of man who knows what a sinking fund is, and the difference between common and preferred stock. He uses terms like ‘collateral ’ and ‘ overhead expenses ’ with a fluency which puts to shame my ignorance. It is useful to know a man like that. If ever I can afford to take out any life insurance, I shall certainly get Charles to arrange it all.

He is a great comfort to me. I see him about three or four times a year, when he ‘ stops off ’ on one of his business trips — those undertakings which, to an outsider like myself, seem all Pullman and taxi and hotel. I will get a telephone call from some place about a hundred miles away, telling me that Charles proposes to ‘run over’ and see me for a few hours that evening. When he arrives, he will stand me a dinner at our best hotel. At this dinner I must act like a starved creature, for I fancy that he derives the same kind of pleasure from watching me eat it as you or I would get from watching the maxillary processes of a hungry tramp. Afterwards we will fall into easy chairs, and Charles, large, genial, self-made, elderbrotherly Charles, will tell me about conditions in the world of business, and how the government is making a mess of everything it touches. Then he will want to know how goes the academic life.

I, you see, had just been telling him. Hence his remark.

‘It’s a damned shame!’ he repeated. ‘Especially when you consider the value of you men to the community.’

Naturally, I agreed with him. Between us we discovered that, after eleven years spent in school and college and eight years of teaching, I was drawing a salary a little more than that of a janitor and a little less than that of one of Ford’s office-boys. And what use were janitors and office-boys, anyway? Of what value were they to the community? Office-boys, of course, I was not sure of; but I knew all about janitors.

I became fired with righteous indignation. I saw myself as a member of the exploited classes. I thought of Karl Marx and the Social Revolution; of sabotage and the red flag. Charles added fuel to the flames.

‘If I had a man with your brains and education, with a training as long as yours, I could put him where in twelve months he’d be making five thousand a year.’

My heart sank for a moment as I wondered whether Charles knew that I had n’t the faintest idea what collateral means. Somehow I have a feeling that you can’t get very far in business unless you have a firm grasp on the meaning of collateral. But Charles was going on.

‘What you men ought to do is to strike. I have n’t much use for strikes in my business, but yours would be a strike with some point to it. Go to your president, or whatever you call your boss, and tell him that you are n’t anxious to be nasty or to make trouble, but that you ’re simply going to down tools until they give you a living wage. That would soon produce results.’

I should have seen the comedy in the idea, in that picture of the senior member of the faculty leading a deputation of full professors to the president’s office, tapping on the sacrosanct door, and then trying to look and speak like a strike leader presenting an ultimatum. I should have laughed, but I did n’t. I saw only the word JUSTICE written in letters of fire across the sky of my imagination.

In this exalted mood I went home. Charles always makes me feel like that. That is why he is such a comfort to me. Most of the time I feel like a sheep; but now I was a viking. I was conscious of my power. What a success I might have made in business! I saw myself grappling with strong men, and outwitting them. I saw myself accumulating wealth. Wealth! And then—? Theatres, automobiles, real servants, and never another baked bean. Not on your life!

How unappreciated I was! Think of what we teachers meant to the community and look at the community’s black ingratitude!

Next morning such emotions and sentiments had no chance in the atmosphere which surrounds the effort to get to an eight-o’ clock class in elementary logic. And I have never regained those peaks of insight and enthusiasm. I don’t think I ever shall. For I have been soberly reflecting on my value to the community, and I am a little chilled by the result.

You will be, too, before you have finished with my cogitations.

II

The first thing to disturb the selfassurance which Charles had aroused in me was the meeting of the faculty which I attended a few days later. I arrived late and took a seat near the door.

The members of the faculty sat facing a table where chairman and secretary had their places. The company was made up of men of different ages, of different characters, of different interests and attainments; but in one thing they were all alike — in the look of unmitigated boredom which rested upon their features.

This was not surprising. The chairman of the Committee on Degrees was reading his report, and this is what he was saying: ‘The first is the case of Mr. Collins of the class of 1905. He left college in the spring of 1905 with two credits lacking. He now writes that he spent three years, from 1905 to 1908, in Paris, where he acquired a knowledge of French both written and spoken. For the last two years he has been in Brazil engaged in the study of Brazilian butterflies. He now asks that this work in French and Zoölogy be reckoned as the equivalent of his deficiencies, and that he be enrolled with his class. The committee feels that this request is so unusual that they would like to have the opinion of the faculty.’

A few barely audible titters were cut short by the stern voice of the chairman : ‘ Will you discuss the case of Mr. Collins? ’

There was a pause. Then a cheerful voice asked nonchalantly: ‘Mr. Chairman, what Collins is this? The son of Judge Collins of Cleveland?’

‘I don’t know;’ from the chairman. ‘Perhaps the committee can tell us.’

The committee had no information about the parentage of Mr. Collins.

Another silence. A man with a mouth like a steel trap and a for-God’s-sakelet-us-get-on manner snapped out, ‘I move that Mr. Collins’s request be denied.’

An old gentleman rose. His air of diffidence was at once pathetic and lovable. He spoke in the tone of one who does not expect anyone to pay any attention to what he says, but who is none the less determined, for duty’s sake, to say it.

‘Mr. Chairman, I think it is hardly fair that Mr. Collins should be penalized in this way. I knew him well. He was in my class in mathematics and did good work there. He was a man of unusual charm. His father, as it happens, is Judge Collins of Cleveland, a graduate of ours in the class of ’78. I think we should look into his case very carefully before committing ourselves to action which we might later regret. Of course, I do not want to do or say anything which will not commend itself to the faculty or to the Committee on Degrees, but still, as I say, I feel, and I feel that others will feel — ’

He ended in the middle of a sentence and sat down.

‘Motion! ’ snapped the steel trap.

‘The motion before the faculty is that Mr. Collins’s request be not granted. Is there any seconder? ’

It then appeared that there had been a seconder, but his contribution had not been heard. Garbed in formal decency, the motion was again set up for contemplation. A serious-looking man forestalled the imminent vote.

‘Mr. Chairman, before we act on this matter, should we not have some principle to guide us? Are we prepared to go on record as approving of the reading of French newspapers as counting toward the degree?’

The committee, on being pressed to fulminate a principle, confessed that they had none, but preferred to deal with each case on its merits. They felt, however, that the case of Mr. Collins presented so many unusual features that they would prefer, as they had said, to be guided by the judgment of the faculty.

The collective wisdom of the faculty was still to seek, and the member who had pressed for a principle crossed his legs and settled back hopelessly into his chair. There was an awkward silence. The older men relapsed into the resignedness of those who for years have been expected to waste their time and their intelligence on such matters. The younger, including myself, were shy of speech, and looked round expectantly for something to happen.

‘ Are you ready for the question ? ’ asked the chairman.

The thought of actually having to come to a decision struck a chill of horror to the heart of a conservative in the back of the room. ‘Mr. Chairman,’he said slowly, ‘ I should like to know, before we settle this question, what the feeling of the committee themselves is. What do they themselves recommend? ’

‘The committee have already said that they have been unable to agree on any recommendation.’ replied the chairman, with a touch of pardonable asperity.

‘Oh, I’m sorry; I did n’t know,’murmured the victim; and began to whisper to his neighbor what he really thought of the rough-and-ready methods of the chairman. He seemed to be under the impression that he had opened up a new and promising line.

The case of Mr. Collins was at last disposed of, together with a few less grave and complicated matters concerned with degrees.

Then, with an air of putting away things at once tedious and frivolous and coming to the real business of the afternoon, the chairman announced that we would continue from the preceding meeting the discussion of the proposed new courses in the science of business.

Heavy lethargy brooded over the company. No one seemed capable of initiating a discussion of anything. A gloom was settling down upon the minds of all of us, as outside it was gathering about the trees on the campus. One man looked at his watch and tiptoed to the door with the look of a hunted criminal; but his heart within him was as a dancing star. The less courageous followed him with eyes of envy. I suddenly had a vision of excavations being carried on here thousands of years hence, when the searchers in our antique civilization would come upon the room and the members sitting just as they were, mummified, and still waiting for something to happen. The secretary would be frozen in an altitude of resigned despair; Professor X——, wise old veteran, would still be dozing with the peace of the ineffable upon his face; the chairman would still be gazing out upon us with that frown of perplexity; all of us paralyzed by the baneful influence of a system which nullified intelligence and good-will and set a premium on human weakness. The whole situation became dream-like.

I was awakened by a speaker whose quiet competent tones were evidence that he was immune from the spell.

‘I thought we had settled that last time, Mr. Chairman. As I understand it, we voted to include the science of business among the subjects leading to the degree, and to-day we were to hear from the Committee on the Curriculum about the nature of the course and the amount of credit to be assigned to it.’

The chairman looked puzzled. While he was still trying to formulate a reply, he was interrupted by a voice saying, in mingled surprise, pain, and indignation, ‘Mr. Chairman, that was certainly not my understanding of our action. I was under the impression that we were simply stating our desire that the committee should draw up a scheme of instruction for us; but I should never have voted for it if I had thought that we were committing ourselves irrevocably to business science as part of the curriculum.’

These remarks created a mild consternation. Here was the faculty congratulating itself upon actually having done something last time, only to be faced with the awful problem of discovering what the devil it had done.

An elderly supercilious-looking man, with an air of caustic weariness, as if for one who was in possession of all truth these signs of human finitude were too much, made a show of coming to the rescue: ‘Perhaps the secretary can enlighten us.’

The secretary read from the minutes: ‘Voted to refer to the Committee on the Curriculum the question of the amount of credit to be given to courses in the science of business.'

‘Does n’t seem to help us much,’ muttered the chairman.

There was a moment of silence during which we cogitated upon the pregnant possibilities of that vote. Then the gentleman who knew Mr. Collins’s father seized the opportunity to make a speech which perhaps he had long meditated.

‘I do not know, Mr. Chairman, whether it is proper for me to say what I am going to say or not; but I cannot help feeling, and I feel that the faculty will feel as I feel, but, as I say, I am rather under the impression that we ought to go very carefully in this matter. Are n’t we really rather in danger of rushing things and taking precipitate action which we may subsequently regret? Of course, I realize that the matter is urgent, and I do not wish for a moment to obstruct the faculty if they have really decided to go ahead with this matter; but nevertheless we should exercise caution and study the proposal in all its bearings before rushing blindly into a course of action which, as I say, although I would not be thought to be resisting an innovation, if that should really turn out to be for the best, after mature consideration of the matter from all sides and in every angle and light.’

He paused to clear his throat. In imagination one could see him taking the orator’s sip of water.

My neighbor groaned.

‘Sh!’ said the man next to him. ‘I think it’s immense. I would n’t miss a word. He’s going on.'

He was. He went. He spoke for ten minutes. For five of these he was in favor of instruction in the science of business, and for five against. But he did not leave his audience in doubt about his final verdict. He closed his magnificent career of irrelevance by bringing forth a treasure of conservative wisdom. ‘But finally, Mr. Chairman, I cannot conceal from myself the fact that this is, after all, a change.'

While we were still turning this jewel of thought so that the light might catch it on all its facets, a cool businesslike voice broke in: ‘Mr. Chairman, may we have the vote read again? I have forgotten the exact wording of it.’

This was the moment when a malign, or rather a beneficent, voice within me whispered, ‘What price the value of all this to the community?’

A pause. Then, ‘And you need n’t be superior. What have you contributed to the discussion? Nothing but sneers and profitless criticism. A little humility, my son, a little humility.’

That punctured me. But the owner of the voice must have taken pity on my crestfallen condition, for, after a few moments, it spoke again, very seductively, — this was in the Good Old Days, — ‘Don’t you think you need a drink?’

Gentle reader, if you are still gentle, what would you have done? Remember, I was sitting near the door. — I am glad to see that we agree. I did not even stay to consult my watch. I beat it.

III

I had been conducting an examination in one of my courses, and about noon I dropped into the University Club to look at the newspapers. Before I had settled myself to my reading Dick Remington strolled up. Dick is about thirty-eight, a physically robust specimen, frank, breezy, and always amusing. He is one of those enviable people who can use the most frightful language without offending anyone. At college he had the reputation of being a good sport, and he has maintained it since. He is in the insurance business, has plenty of money, and spends it freely. He was now waiting for a guest and had no intention of reading himself, or, apparently, of letting me read. He caught sight of the bundle of examination books under my arm.

‘Got to correct all those? Gosh! I don’t see how you do it. Let’s see: philosophy is what you teach, is n’t it? ’

I nodded.

‘I only took one course in philosophy when I was in college; with old Professor Gilbert. Say, do you remember him? No, you would n’t. He must have been before your time. Well, believe me, he was a queer duck. Gee! I ’ll never forget that course I took with him. You could n’t do anything to please him. No matter what you said or wrote, it was always wrong. I’d bone up that stuff, you know, and put down everything just as it was in the book, and then get a flat zero. There were about ten of us in the class, and it was the same with all of us. I guess we none of us understood much about the subject anyway; and as for understanding his lectures — My Lord! He’d come in to class, you know, and begin to talk about some problem, and in five minutes we’d all be up in the air. He might just as well have been spouting Hebrew at us.

‘Well, by and by, I began to get a bit sore at getting zeros all the time, and I suppose I must have showed it, because after one test on which he gave me two — two, mind you! — out of a hundred he called me up to the desk and sailed right into me. Told me that I was loafing, and that I must make up my mind whether I wanted to work in his class or play football. You bet I was n’t half mad. I told him I’d play football. And with that I faded away. I had just about decided that all was over between us.

‘And then what do you suppose happened? A few days later we heard that he ’d had a son. He had been married about fifteen years and had had no kids, and I guess never expected to have any; and now, bing! along comes a son. Can you beat it?

‘That morning I and a couple of the fellows in the class who were collecting zeros thought up a scheme. We went down to Burgess the jeweler’s and asked to see some silver cups. Finally we picked out a walloping great thing — it cost us about twenty-five dollars — and had it engraved: “To Professor A. M. Gilbert, with the cordial congratulations of” the class in philosophy, whatever it was. Then came the names of all the members of the class, and the date of the kid’s birth. Believe me, it was some cup when we got through. We had it sent out to his house.

‘ Well, sir, you should have seen the old boy’s face when he came into class the morning after — fairly beaming all over. He made us a little speech of thanks; told us the kid’s weight and everything. Then he wound up by saying that he had decided that he had been rather severe with the class so far, so he was going to change his methods and adopt a new plan for the examination at the end of the term. He was going to give us fifteen questions beforehand, from which he would pick out eight for the examination. And sure as you live, he did! Well, of course, that was pie for me. I boned up the answers to those questions until I could have written them out on my head. And I got a final stand of eighty. Eighty, mind you, after all those zeros! he must have given me about a hundred and fifty per cent on the examination. And it only cost me about five dollars in the end. — Albert Murchison Gilbert! Well, he certainly was a great old boy. You know, there was another story they used to tell about him —'

But at this point I interrupted. ‘No, Dick,’ I said, ‘I’m not going to let you tell me any more. As it is, I am a broken man. I ’m going home to have a good cry.’

IV

I went home; but not to the luxury of a good cry. The afternoon and evening found me reading those examination books.

The answers were of two kinds — those that represented two hours’ reflection by an immature mind on a series of problems which had perplexed the ablest thinkers throughout the generations, and those that represented absolutely nothing at all. If I might have had my way, I should have marked two per cent of the papers, ‘ Intelligence: a trace’; the remaining ninetyeight per cent, ‘ Would be better advised to take up plumbing,’ But, for various reasons, that would never do. So I knew that I would pass ninety-eight per cent of the papers, with marks ranging from 100 to 50. To the absolutely worthless two per cent I would give marks between 50 and 40. Thus I would perpetuate the arrangement whereby in the heaven of academic attainment there is standing-room only, while the echoing corridors of hell are crying out for more.

It is hard to locate the responsibility. Let us take the easy way out and put the blame on the System.

On this particular evening the System filled me with a despair more profound than usual. Dick Remington’s story kept nagging my mind. His cheerful assumption that education was a farce, and that both parties to the enterprise knew it to be so, was a more damning indictment of education than any petulant or indignant attack on the System could have been. Here was I, reading examination papers, partly in contempt, partly in despair of the writers; at any rate, suffering fools sadly. Now I suddenly saw myself through their eyes. Were they just enduring me, reading their assignments and taking notes, ‘with humble underbearing of their fortune,’ because they knew that I, too, was a victim of the System and that a man has to earn his living somehow?

I thought of that little book in which from time to time I had noted down the more breath-taking howlers that my pupils committed. In my early days of teaching I had looked upon these blunders as good fun, as so many diverting comments upon the level of undergraduate intelligence. As my collection grew, I had thought of working it up into an entertaining and quite innocuous little article. I had hit upon a good title too: a remark attributed to a fifth-century Greek philosopher concerning one of his alleged disciples: ‘What lies the young man tells about me!’ That would have had the faint aroma of culture needed to set off the article. In imagination I had already heard the thin bland mirth of the complacent reader.

But now, as I took out the little book and ran my eye over its pages, I knew that my article would never be written. One could not be facetious before so scorching a revelation of the teacher’s guilt for his part, willing or unwilling, in the Great Conspiracy. Look over my shoulder, reader, as I turn the pages, and see if you will not agree with me.

Philosophy did not begin until an idle set of men began to think.

The Pythagorean way of life was very practical and in many instances it had customs which were based on implicit knowledge. E.g. They said: Never eat beans.

Xenophanes said this in the first flush of the doctrine of relativity.

Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean is that everything is in a mean state between an excess and a dirth.

With Aristotle Christianity began to break forth.

The chief Stoics were Anaxagoras, Socrates and Aristotle’s Encheridion.

Protagoras believed that everything is what it appears to the individual. In the case of a pig, a pig would be the measure of all things. Here we have the beginnings of transcendentalism.

Spinoza was an optimist about the bright side of life and a pessimist about the dark side.

The United States, through over-emphasis of freedom, have allowed elements within the body politic such free play that they may have injected a gangrene that will suck out her life.

A beautiful object just naturally exudes goodness.

In departing from the mores or customs of the state the person is liable to get himself into trouble, as for instance a free thinker or a believer in so-called ‘absolute motherhood’ or some fanatical scheme of the sort.

You laugh? Yes, of course you do. But listen a moment, and you will surely detect some quality of bitterness in the echoes. ‘A beautiful object just naturally exudes goodness.’ Consider what lies behind that statement. A vast institution, with millions of dollars’ worth of pretentious buildings sprawling over a large tract of land, and those buildings pullulating with busy men. Trustees sitting solemnly about a table to decide matters of high finance or of educational policy; committees forming and reforming; instructors lecturing and preparing to lecture. Clerks and sub-clerks swarming like ants about miles of card-index drawers. The cacophony of batteries of typewriters going up to heaven, to mingle with the noise of innumerable telephones.

In the Dean’s Office they are busy adding marks, computing averages, recording cuts. The Dean himself is hard at work upon three new disciplinary measures. A thousand books are on their way to the Library. In the Gymnasium a small army of freshmen are being weighed, measured, and questioned upon the color of their parents’ eyes. A wrecking company is tearing down our last original building, to make room for the new school of journalism. Hundreds of students are preparing hundreds of assignments for the next day’s classes. Carloads of beef and eggs and vegetables are rolling into town, to feed the bodies of the members of this great society, and officials are busy dictating invitations to distinguished preachers and lecturers for the nourishing of their minds.

Think of this huge and complex machine turning over night and day, of the labor that has gone to the making of it, of the toil of hand and brain that keeps it in operation, and then see the result. ‘A beautiful object just naturally exudes goodness.’ That is what it all comes to. That is the finished product. — Does your laughter sound quite so spontaneous now?

‘Xenophanes said this in the first flush of the doctrine of relativity.’ How came human pen to set down that?

As I see it, there are three possible explanations. First, the writer is a defective, a moron, or whatever is the latest jargon for the old-fashioned and more expressive ‘dolt.’ If so, how did he manage to enter college? And now that he has succeeded in getting in, how has he survived two years of it, so that in the third he can come to plague me and drag a dead weight upon his companions?

Second, the writer’s brain and will may be sound enough, but were never designed by the Lord to occupy themselves with philosophy. Why, then, is he allowed to take philosophy? In all probability he is a demon chauffeur, with a taste for mechanics; but I will surely flunk him, and his low mark in philosophy will reduce his mark in some course where his natural abilities may have enabled him to shine. And in after years, when he has amassed a fortune in carburetors or something of the kind, he will think and talk of philosophy as rubbish and education as a farce. And who will blame him for it?

The third explanation is that I have no business to be teaching philosophy. After all, every human being must have some interest in that subject, whether he is aware of it or not: he must find the universe exciting or delightful or mysterious or terrible. What have I done to him to make him talk of ‘the first flush of the doctrine of relativity’? I must be responsible, for no human being, left to himself, could ever come to think and write like that. I have turned his world into a jig-saw puzzle, the disjecta membra of which are the fragments of a hideous terminology. But the teacher in whose hands philosophy becomes either a slayer of enthusiasm or a silly game of abstract ideas has missed his vocation.

No matter which of the explanations proves to be correct, I cannot escape some of the responsibility. Either I am tainted with the guilt of the institution which admits dullness and stupidity, or I am a cause of dullness and stupidity in others. In neither case am I of conspicuous value to the community.

And so, the next time that the good Charles comes to feed me and to sympathize with my lot, I am going to surprise him. I am going to sing the praises of the janitor and the office-boy. I am going to point out to him that the community could get along very well without its professors, but that it can by no means afford to dispense with the janitor. I shall turn the cutting edge of socialistic doctrine in an unexpected direction: I shall try to convince him that a more just distribution of wealth will surely mean that some of my salary shall be deducted and added to that of the man who takes care of the furnace. I shall do it reluctantly, even sadly; not only because I cannot afford to have my salary reduced, but because I fear it means that brother Charles can no longer be a comfort to me.