第98章 CHAPTER IV(3)

It is not that either of these two great schools is to be rated as useless for whatever each is good for, but only that that pursuit of learning on which both set out in the beginning has fallen into abeyance, by force of circumstances as they impinge on the sensibilities of a discretionary executive. As vocational schools and as establishments for the diffusion of salutary advice on the state of mankind at large, both are doubtless all that might be desired; particularly in respect of their statistical showing. It is only that the affairs of the higher learning have come definitively to take a subsidiary, or putative, place. In these establishments; and to all appearance irretrievably so, because both are now committed to so large and exacting a volume of obligations and liabilities, legal and customary, extraneous and alien to their legitimate interest, that there is no longer a reasonable chance of their coming to anything of serious import in the way of the higher learning, even, conceivably, under the most enlightened management in the calculable future. In their bootless chase after a blameless publicity, both have sunk their endowment in conspicuous real estate, vocational, technical and accessory schools, and the like academic side-issues, to such an extent as to leave them without means to pursue their legitimate end in any adequate manner, even if they should harbour an effectual inclination to pursue it.(13*)These remarks on the typical traits of the academic executive have unavoidably taken the colour of personalities. That such is the case should by no means be taken as intentionally reflecting anything like dispraise on those persons who have this (unavoidable) work of stultification in hand. Rather, it is dispassionately to be gathered from the run of the facts as set out above that those persons on whom these exigencies impinge will, by force of habituation, necessarily come to take the bent which these current conditions enforce, and without which this work could not well be done; all on the supposition -- and it is by no means an extravagant assumption -- that these persons so exposed to these agencies of spiritual disintegration are by native gift endowed with the commonplace traits of human nature, no more and no less. It is the duties of the office, not a run of infirmities peculiar to the incumbents of office, that make the outcome. Very much like that of the medicine-man, the office is one which will not abide a tolerant and ingenuous incumbent.(14*)VIn all the above argument and exposition, touching the executive office and its administrative duties, the point of the discussion is, of course, not the personal characteristics of the typical executive, nor even the spiritual fortunes of the persons exposed to the wear and tear of executive office; although these matters might well engage the attention of any one given to moralizing. The point is, of course, that precarious situation in which the university, considered as a corporation of the higher learning, is placed under these current conditions, and the manner in which these current conditions give rise to this situation. Seen from the point of view of the higher learning, and disregarding considerations extraneous to that interest, it is evident that this run of events, and the conditions which determine them, are wholly untoward, not to say disastrous.

Now, this inquiry is nowise concerned to reform, deflect or remedy this current drift of things academic away from the ancient holding ground of the higher learning; partly because such an enterprise in reform and rehabilitation lies beyond its competence; and partly, again, because in all this current move to displace the higher learning there may conceivably be other ends involved, which may be worth while in some other bearing that is alien to the higher learning but of graver consequence for the fortunes of the race, -- urgent needs which can only be served by so diverting effort and attention from this pursuit.

Yet, partly out of a reasonable deference to the current prejudice that any mere negative criticism and citation of grievances is nothing better than an unworthy experiment in irritation; and more particularly as a means to a more adequate appreciation of the rigorous difficulties inherent in this current state and drift of things; it may not be out of place to offer some consideration of remedial measures that have been attempted or projected, or that may be conceived to promise a way out.

As is well known, divers and various remedial measures have been advocated by critics of current university affairs, from time to time; and it is equally evident on reflection that these proposed remedial measures are with fair uniformity directed to the treatment of symptoms, -- to relieve agitation and induce insensibility. However, there is at least one line of aggressively remedial action that is being tried, though not avowedly as a measure to bring the universities into line with their legitimate duties, but rather with a view to relieving them of this work which they are no longer fit to take care of. It is a move designed to shift the seat of the higher learning out of the precincts of the schools. And the desperate case of the universities, considered as seminaries of science and scholarship, is perhaps more forcibly brought in evidence by what is in this way taking place in the affairs of learning outside the schools than by their visible failure to take care of their own work. This evidence goes to say that the difficulties of the academic situation are insurmountable; any rehabilitation of the universities is not contemplated in this latterday movement. And it is so coming to be recognized, in effect though tacitly, that for all their professions of a single-minded addiction to the pursuit of learning, the academic establishments, old and new, are no longer competent to take the direction of affairs in this domain.