Essays and Literary Studies

MP3 Audio CD. I.?The Apology of a Professor



An Essay on Modern Learning



I



KNOW no more interesting subject of speculation, nor any more calculated to allow of a fair-minded difference of opinion, than the enquiry whether a professor has any right to exist. Prima facie, of course, the case is heavily against him. His angular overcoat, his missing buttons, and his faded hat, will not bear comparison with the double-breasted splendour of the stock broker, or the Directoire fur gown of the cigar maker.

Nor does a native agility of body compensate for the missing allurement of dress. He cannot skate. He does not shoot. He must not swear. He is not brave. His mind, too, to the outsider at any rate, appears defective and seriously damaged by education. He cannot appreciate a twenty-five-cent novel, or a melodrama, or a moving-picture show, or any of that broad current of intellectual movement which soothes the brain of the business man in its moments of inactivity. His conversation, even to the tolerant, is impossible. Apparently he has neither ideas nor enthusiasms, nothing but an elaborate catalogue of dead men's opinions which he cites with a petulant and peevish au- thority that will not brook contradiction, and that must be soothed by a tolerating acqui- escence, or flattered by a plenary acknowledgment of ignorance.

Yet the very heaviness of this initial indict- ment against the professor might well suggest to an impartial critic that there must at least be mitigating circumstances in the case. Even if we are to admit that the indictment is well founded, the reason is all the greater for examining the basis on which it rests. At any rate some explanation of the facts involved may perhaps serve to palliate, if not to remove', demerits which are rather to be deplored than censured.