第44章 CHAPTER II(13)

Its bearing on the higher learning is, of course, sufficiently plain; and its intimate connection with business principles at large should be equally plain. The scheme of reputability in the pecuniary culture comprises not only the imperative duty of acquiring something more than an equitable share of the community's wealth, but also the dutiful privilege of spending this acquired wealth, and the leisure that goes with it, in a reputably conspicuous way, according to the ritual of decorum in force for the time being. So that proficiency in the decorously conspicuous waste of time and means is no less essential in the end than proficiency in the gainful conduct of business. The ways and means of reputably consuming time and substance, therefore, is by prescriptive necessity to be included in the training offered at any well-appointed undergraduate establishment that aims in any comprehensive sense to do its whole duty by the well-to-do young men under its tutelage.(9*) It is, further and by compulsion of the same ideals, incumbent on such an establishment to afford these young men a precinct dedicate to cultured leisure, and conventionally sheltered from the importunities of the municipal police, where an adequate but guarded indulgence may be had for those extravagances of adolescence that count for so much in shaping the canons of genteel intercourse.

There is, of course, no intention here to find fault with this gentlemanly ideal of undergraduate indoctrination, or with the solicitude shown in this behalf by the captains of erudition, in endeavouring to afford time, place and circumstance for its due inculcation among college men. It is by no means here assumed that learning is substantially more to be desired than proficiency in genteel dissipation. It is only that the higher learning and the life of fashion and affairs are two widely distinct and divergent lines, both lying within the current scheme of civilization; and that it is the university's particular office in this scheme to conserve and extend the domain of knowledge. There need be no question that it is a work of great social merit and consequence to train adepts in the ritual of decorum, and it is doubtless a creditable work for any school adapted to that purpose to equip men for a decorative place in polite society, and imbue them with a discriminating taste in the reputable waste of time and means. And all that may perhaps fall, not only legitimately, but meritoriously, within the province of the undergraduate school; at least it is not here intended to argue the contrary. At the same time a secure reputation for efficiency and adequate facilities along this line of aspirations on the part of any such school will serve a good business purpose in duly attracting students -- or residents --from the better classes of society, and from those classes that aspire to be "better."But this is essentially not university work. In the nature of the case it devolves on the college, the undergraduate school;and it can not be carried through with due singleness of purpose in an establishment bound by tradition to make much of that higher learning that is substantially alien to the spirit of this thing. If, then, as indications run, the large undergraduate schools are in due course to develop somewhat unreservedly into gentlemen's colleges, that is an additional reason why, in the interest of both parties, the divorce of the university from the collegiate division should be made absolute. Neither does the worldly spirit that pervades the gentlemen's college further the university's interest in scholarship, nor do the university's scholarly interests further the college work in gentility.

Well to the front among these undergraduate appurtenances of gentlemanship are the factional clubs known as Greek-letter fraternities. These touch the province of learning in the universities only incidentally and superficially, as they do not in practice enter the graduate division except by way of a thin aftermath of factional animus, which may occasionally infect such of the staff as are gifted with a particularly puerile temperament. They are, in effect, competitive organizations for the elaboration of the puerile irregularities of adolescence, and as such they find little scope among the graduate students or among the adult personnel at large. But as part of the apparatus of the undergraduate division they require a strict surveillance to keep them within the (somewhat wide) limits of tolerance; and so their presence affects the necessary discipline of the school at large, entailing a more elaborate and rigorous surveillance and more meddling with personal habits than would otherwise be required, and entailing also some slight corporate expense.