MY MIND
I come of a family that prides itself on its culture and
intellectuality. We have always been professional people, for my
grandfather was, as I have said, a clergyman; and among my uncles are a
lawyer, a physician and a professor. My sisters, also, have intermarried
with professional men. I received a fairly good primary and secondary
education, and graduated from my university with honors--whatever that
may have meant. I was distinctly of a literary turn of mind; and during
my four years of study I imbibed some slight information concerning the
English classics, music, modern history and metaphysics. I could talk
quite wisely about Chaucer, Beaumont and Fletcher, Thomas Love Peacock
and Ann Radcliffe, or Kant, Fichte and Schopenhauer.
I can see now that my smattering of culture was neither deep nor broad.
I acquired no definite knowledge of underlying principles, of general
history, of economics, of languages, of mathematics, of physics or of
chemistry. To biology and its allies I paid scarcely any attention at
all, except to take a few snap courses. I really secured only a surface
acquaintance with polite English literature, mostly very modern. The
main part of my time I spent reading Stevenson and Kipling. I did well
in English composition and I pronounced my words neatly and in a refined
manner. At the end of my course, when twenty-two years old, I was handed
an imitation-parchment degree and proclaimed by the president of the
college as belonging to the Brotherhood of Educated Men.
I did not. I was an imitation educated man; but, though spurious, I was
a sufficiently good counterfeit to pass current for what I had been
declared to be. Apart from a little Latin, a considerable training in
writing the English language, and a great deal of miscellaneous reading
of an extremely light variety, I really had no culture at all. I could
not speak an idiomatic sentence in French or German; I had the vaguest
ideas about applied mechanics and science; and no thorough knowledge
about anything; but I was supposed to be an educated man, and on this
stock in trade I have done business ever since--with, to be sure, the
added capital of a degree of bachelor of laws.
Now since my graduation, twenty-eight years ago, I have given no time to
the systematic study of any subject except law. I have read no serious
works dealing with either history, sociology, economics, art or
philosophy. I am supposed to know enough about these subjects already. I
have rarely read over again any of the masterpieces of English
literature with which I had at least a bowing acquaintance when at
college. Even this last sentence I must qualify to the extent of
admitting that I now see that this acquaintance was largely vicarious,
and that I frequently read more criticism than literature.
It is characteristic of modern education that it is satisfied with the
semblance and not the substance of learning. I was taught _about_
Shakspere, but not Shakspere. I was instructed in the history of
literature, but not in literature itself. I knew the names of the works
of numerous English authors and I knew what Taine and others thought
about them, but I knew comparatively little of what was between the
covers of the books themselves. I was, I find, a student of letters by
proxy. As time went on I gradually forgot that I had not, in fact,
actually perused these volumes; and to-day I am accustomed to refer
familiarly to works I never have read at all--not a difficult task in
these days of handbook knowledge and literary varnish.
It is this patent superficiality that so bores me with the affected
culture of modern social intercourse. We all constantly attempt to
discuss abstruse subjects in philosophy and art, and pretend to a
familiarity with minor historical characters and events. Now why try to
talk about Bergson's theories if you have not the most elementary
knowledge of philosophy or metaphysics? Or why attempt to analyze the
success or failure of a modern post-impressionist painter when you are
totally ignorant of the principles of perspective or of the complex
problems of light and shade? You might as properly presume to discuss a
mastoid operation with a surgeon or the doctrine of _cypres_ with a
lawyer. You are equally qualified.
I frankly confess that my own ignorance is abysmal. In the last
twenty-eight years what information I have acquired has been picked up
principally from newspapers and magazines; yet my library table is
littered with books on modern art and philosophy, and with essays on
literary and historical subjects. I do not read them. They are my
intellectual window dressings. I talk about them with others who, I
suspect, have not read them either; and we confine ourselves to
generalities, with a careful qualification of all expressed opinions, no
matter how vague and elusive. For example--a safe conversational
opening:
"Of course there is a great deal to be said in favor of Bergson's
general point of view, but to me his reasoning is inconclusive. Don't
you feel the same way--somehow?"
You can try this on almost anybody. It will work in ninety-nine cases
out of a hundred; for, of course, there is a great deal to be said in
favor of the views of anybody who is not an absolute fool, and most
reasoning is open to attack at least for being inconclusive. It is also
inevitable that your cultured friend--or acquaintance--should feel the
same way--somehow. Most people do--in a way.
The real truth of the matter is, all I know about Bergson is that he is
a Frenchman--is he actually by birth a Frenchman or a Belgian?--who as a
philosopher has a great reputation on the Continent, and who recently
visited America to deliver some lectures. I have not the faintest idea
what his theories are, and I should not if I heard him explain them.
Moreover, I cannot discuss philosophy or metaphysics intelligently,
because I have not to-day the rudimentary knowledge necessary to
understand what it is all about.
It is the same with art. On the one or two isolated varnishing days when
we go to a gallery we criticize the pictures quite fiercely. "We know
what we like." Yes, perhaps we do. I am not sure even of that. But in
eighty-five cases out of a hundred none of us have any knowledge of the
history of painting or any intelligent idea of why Velasquez is regarded
as a master; yet we acquire a glib familiarity with the names of half a
dozen cubists or futurists, and bandy them about much as my office boy
does the names of his favorite pugilists or baseball players.
It is even worse with history and biography. We cannot afford or have
not the decency to admit that we are uninformed. We speak casually of,
say, Henry of Navarre, or Beatrice D'Este, or Charles the Fifth. I
select my names intentionally from among the most celebrated in
history; yet how many of us know within two hundred years of when any
one of them lived--or much about them? How much definite historical
information have we, even about matters of genuine importance?
* * * * *
Let us take a shot at a few dates. I will make it childishly easy. Give
me, if you can, _even approximately_, the year of Caesar's Conquest of
Gaul; the Invasion of Europe by the Huns; the Sack of Rome; the Battle
of Châlons-sur-Marne; the Battle of Tours; the Crowning of Charlemagne;
the Great Crusade; the Fall of Constantinople; Magna Charta; the Battle
of Crécy; the Field of the Cloth of Gold; the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew; the Spanish Armada; the Execution of King Charles I; the
Fall of the Bastile; the Inauguration of George Washington; the Battle
of Waterloo; the Louisiana Purchase; the Indian Mutiny; the Siege of
Paris.
I will look out of the window while you go through the mental agony of
trying to remember. It looks easy, does it not? Almost an affront to ask
the date of Waterloo! Well, I wanted to be fair and even things up; but,
honestly, can you answer correctly five out of these twenty elementary
questions? I doubt it. Yet you have, no doubt, lying on your table at
the present time, intimate studies of past happenings and persons that
presuppose and demand a rough general knowledge of American, French or
English history.
The dean of Radcliffe College, who happened to be sitting behind two of
her recent graduates while attending a performance of Parker's
deservedly popular play "Disraeli" last winter, overheard one of them
say to the other: "You know, I couldn't remember whether Disraeli was in
the Old or the New Testament; and I looked in both and couldn't find him
in either!"
I still pass socially as an exceptionally cultured man--one who is well
up on these things; yet I confess to knowing to-day absolutely nothing
of history, either ancient, medieval or modern. It is not a matter of
mere dates, by any means, though I believe dates to be of some general
importance. My ignorance is deeper than that. I do not remember the
events themselves or their significance. I do not now recall any of the
facts connected with the great epoch-making events of classic times; I
cannot tell as I write, for example, who fought in the battle of the
Allia; why Caesar crossed the Rubicon, or why Cicero delivered an
oration against Catiline.
As to what subsequently happened on the Italian peninsula my mind is a
blank until the appearance of Garibaldi during the last century. I
really never knew just who Garibaldi was until I read Trevelyan's three
books on the Resorgimento last winter, and those I perused because I had
taken a motor trip through Italy the summer before. I know practically
nothing of Spanish history, and my mind is a blank as to Russia, Poland,
Turkey, Sweden, Germany, Austria, and Holland.
Of course I know that the Dutch Republic rose--assisted by one Motley,
of Boston--and that William of Orange was a Hollander--or at least I
suppose he was born there. But how Holland came to rise I know not--or
whether William was named after an orange or oranges were named after
him.
As for central Europe, it is a shocking fact that I never knew there was
not some interdependency between Austria and Germany until last summer.
I only found out the contrary when I started to motor through the
Austrian Tyrol and was held up by the custom officers on the frontier. I
knew that an old emperor named William somehow founded the German Empire
out of little states, with the aid of Bismarck and Von Moltke; but that
is all I know about it. I do not know when the war between Prussia and
Austria took place or what battles were fought in it.
The only battle in the Franco-Prussian War I am sure of is Sedan, which
I remember because I was once told that Phil Sheridan was present as a
spectator. I know Gustavus Adolphus was a king of Sweden, but I do not
know when; and apart from their names I know nothing of Theodoric,
Charles Martel, Peter the Hermit, Lodovico Moro, the Emperor Maximilian,
Catherine of Aragon, Catherine de' Medici, Richelieu, Frederick
Barbarossa, Cardinal Wolsey, Prince Rupert--I do not refer to Anthony
Hope's hero, Rupert of Hentzau--Saint Louis, Admiral Coligny, or the
thousands of other illustrious personages that crowd the pages of
history.
I do not know when or why the Seven Years' War, the Thirty Years' War,
the Hundred Years' War or the Massacre of St. Bartholomew took place,
why the Edict of Nantes was revoked or what it was, or who fought at
Malplaquet, Tours, Soissons, Marengo, Plassey, Oudenarde, Fontenoy or
Borodino--or when they occurred. I probably did know most if not all of
these things, but I have entirely forgotten them. Unfortunately I manage
to act as if I had not. The result is that, having no foundation to
build on, any information I do acquire is immediately swept away. People
are constantly giving me books on special topics, such as Horace Walpole
and his Friends, France in the Thirteenth Century, The Holland House
Circle, or Memoires of Madame du Barry; but of what use can they be to
me when I do not know, or at least have forgotten, even the salient
facts of French and English history?
We are undoubtedly the most superficial people in the world about
matters of this sort. Any bluff goes. I recall being at a dinner not
long ago when somebody mentioned Conrad II. One of the guests hazarded
the opinion that he had died in the year 1330. This would undoubtedly
have passed muster but for a learned-looking person farther down the
table who deprecatingly remarked: "I do not like to correct you, but I
think Conrad the Second died in 1337!" The impression created on the
assembled company cannot be overstated. Later on in the smoking room I
ventured to compliment the gentleman on his fund of information, saying:
"Why, I never even _heard_ of Conrad the Second!"
"Nor I either," he answered shamelessly.
It is the same with everything--music, poetry, politics. I go night
after night to hear the best music in the world given at fabulous cost
in the Metropolitan Opera House and am content to murmur vague ecstasies
over Caruso, without being aware of who wrote the opera or what it is
all about. Most of us know nothing of orchestration or even the names of
the different instruments. We may not even be sure of what is meant by
counterpoint or the difference between a fugue and an arpeggio.
A handbook would give us these minor details in an hour's reading; but
we prefer to sit vacuously making feeble jokes about the singers or the
occupants of the neighboring boxes, without a single intelligent thought
as to why the composer attempted to write precisely this sort of an
opera, when he did it, or how far he succeeded. We are content to take
our opinions and criticisms ready made, no matter from whose mouth they
fall; and one hears everywhere phrases that, once let loose from the
Pandora's Box of some foolish brain, never cease from troubling.
In science I am in even a more parlous state. I know nothing of applied
electricity in its simplest forms. I could not explain the theory of the
gas engine, and plumbing is to me one of the great mysteries.
Last, but even more lamentable, I really know nothing about politics,
though I am rather a strong party man and my name always appears on
important citizens' committees about election time. I do not know
anything about the city departments or its fiscal administration. I
should not have the remotest idea where to direct a poor person who
applied to me for relief. Neither have I ever taken the trouble to
familiarize myself with even the more important city buildings.
Of course I know the City Hall by sight, but I have never been inside
it; I have never visited the Tombs or any one of our criminal courts; I
have never been in a police station, a fire house, or inspected a single
one of our prisons or reformatory institutions. I do not know whether
police magistrates are elected or appointed and I could not tell you in
what congressional district I reside. I do not know the name of my
alderman, assemblyman, state senator or representative in Congress.
I do not know who is at the head of the Fire Department, the Street
Cleaning Department, the Health Department, the Park Department or the
Water Department; and I could not tell, except for the Police
Department, what other departments there are. Even so, I do not know
what police precinct I am living in, the name of the captain in command,
or where the nearest fixed post is at which an officer is supposed to be
on duty.
As I write I can name only five members of the United States Supreme
Court, three members of the Cabinet, and only one of the congressmen
from the state of New York. This in cold type seems almost preposterous,
but it is, nevertheless, a fact--and I am an active practicing lawyer
besides. I am shocked to realize these things. Yet I am supposed to be
an exceptionally intelligent member of the community and my opinion is
frequently sought on questions of municipal politics.
Needless to say, the same indifference has prevented my studying--except
in the most superficial manner--the single tax, free trade and
protection, the minimum wage, the recall, referendum, or any other of
the present much-mooted questions. How is this possible? The only answer
I can give is that I have confined my mental activities entirely to
making my legal practice as lucrative as possible. I have taken things
as I found them and put up with abuses rather than go to the trouble to
do away with them. I have no leisure to try to reform the universe. I
leave that task to others whose time is less valuable than mine and who
have something to gain by getting into the public eye.
The mere fact, however, that I am not interested in local politics would
not ordinarily, in a normal state of civilization, explain my ignorance
of these things. In most societies they would be the usual subjects of
conversation. People naturally discuss what interests them most.
Uneducated people talk about the weather, their work, their ailments and
their domestic affairs. With more enlightened folk the conversation
turns on broader topics--the state of the country, politics, trade, or
art.
It is only among the so-called society people that the subjects selected
for discussion do not interest anybody. Usually the talk that goes on at
dinners or other entertainments relates only to what plays the
conversationalists in question have seen or which of the best sellers
they have read. For the rest the conversation is dexterously devoted to
the avoidance of the disclosure of ignorance. Even among those who would
like to discuss the questions of the day intelligently and to ascertain
other people's views pertaining to them, there is such a fundamental
lack of elementary information that it is a hopeless undertaking. They
are reduced to the commonplaces of vulgar and superficial comment.
"'Tis plain," cry they, "our mayor's a noddy; and as for the
corporation--shocking!"
The mayor may be and probably is a noddy, but his critics do not know
why. The average woman who dines out hardly knows what she is saying or
what is being said to her. She will usually agree with any proposition
that is put to her--if she has heard it. Generally she does not listen.
I know a minister's wife who never pays the slightest attention to
anything that is being said to her, being engrossed in a torrent of
explanation regarding her children's education and minor diseases. Once
a bored companion in a momentary pause fixed her sternly with his eye
and said distinctly: "But I don't give a --- about your children!" At
which the lady smiled brightly and replied: "Yes. Quite so. Exactly! As
I was saying, Johnny got a--"
But, apart from such hectic people, who run quite amuck whenever they
open their mouths, there are large numbers of men and women of some
intelligence who never make the effort to express conscientiously any
ideas or opinions. They find it irksome to think. They are completely
indifferent as to whether a play is really good or bad or who is elected
mayor of the city. In any event they will have their coffee, rolls and
honey served in bed the next morning; and they know that, come what
will--flood, tempest, fire or famine--there will be forty-six quarts of
extra xxx milk left at their area door. They are secure. The stock
market may rise and fall, presidents come and go, but they will remain
safe in the security of fifty thousand a year. And, since they really do
not care about anything, they are as likely to praise as to blame, and
to agree with everybody about everything. Their world is all cakes and
ale--why should they bother as to whether the pothouse beer is bad?
I confess, with something of a shock, that essentially I am like the
rest of these people. The reason I am not interested in my country and
my city is because, by reason of my financial and social independence,
they have ceased to be my city and country. I should be just as
comfortable if our Government were a monarchy. It really is nothing to
me whether my tax rate is six one-hundredths of one per cent higher or
lower, or what mayor rules in City Hall.
So long as Fifth Avenue is decently paved, so that my motor runs
smoothly when I go to the opera, I do not care whether we have a Reform,
Tammany or Republican administration in the city. So far as I am
concerned, my valet will still come into my bedroom at exactly nine
o'clock every morning, turn on the heat and pull back the curtains. His
low, modulated "Your bath is ready, sir," will steal through my dreams,
and he will assist me to rise and put on my embroidered dressing gown of
wadded silk in preparation for another day's hard labor in the service
of my fellowmen. Times have changed since my father's frugal college
days. Have they changed for better or for worse?
Of one thing I am certain--my father was a better-educated man than I
am. I admit that, under the circumstances, this does not imply very
much; but my parent had, at least, some solid ground beneath his
intellectual feet on which he could stand. His mind was thoroughly
disciplined by rigid application to certain serious studies that were
not selected by himself. From the day he entered college he was in
active competition with his classmates in all his studies, and if he had
been a shirker they would all have known it.
In my own case, after I had once matriculated, the elective system left
me free to choose my own subjects and to pursue them faithfully or not,
so long as I could manage to squeak through my examinations. My friends
were not necessarily among those who elected the same courses, and
whether I did well or ill was nobody's business but my own and the
dean's. It was all very pleasant and exceedingly lackadaisical, and by
the time I graduated I had lost whatever power of concentration I had
acquired in my preparatory schooling. At the law school I was at an
obvious disadvantage with the men from the smaller colleges which still
followed the old-fashioned curriculum and insisted on the mental
discipline entailed by advanced Greek, Latin, the higher mathematics,
science and biology.
In point of fact I loafed delightfully for four years and let my mind
run absolutely to seed, while I smoked pipe after pipe under the
elms, watching the squirrels and dreaming dreams. I selected
elementary--almost childlike--courses in a large variety of subjects;
and as soon as I had progressed sufficiently to find them difficult I
cast about for other snaps to take their places. My bookcase exhibited a
collection of primers on botany, zoölogy and geology, the fine arts,
music, elementary French and German, philosophy, ethics, methaphysics,
architecture, English composition, Shakspere, the English poets and
novelists, oral debating and modern history.
I took nothing that was not easy and about which I did not already know
a little something. I attended the minimum number of lectures required,
did the smallest amount of reading possible and, by cramming vigorously
for three weeks at the end of the year, managed to pass all examinations
creditably. I averaged, I suppose, outside of the lecture room, about a
single hour's desultory work a day. I really need not have done that.
When, for example, it came time to take the examination in French
composition I discovered that I had read but two out of the fifteen
plays and novels required, the plots of any one of which I might be
asked to give on my paper. Rather than read these various volumes, I
prepared a skeleton digest in French, sufficiently vague, which could by
slight transpositions be made to do service in every case. I committed
it to memory. It ran somewhat as follows:
"The play"--or novel--"entitled ---- is generally conceded to be one of
the most carefully constructed and artistically developed of
all ----'s"--here insert name of author--"many masterly productions. The
genius of the author has enabled him skilfully to portray the atmosphere
and characters of the period. The scene is laid in ---- and the time
roughly is that of the --th century. The hero is ----; the heroine, ----;
and after numerous obstacles and ingenious complications they eventually
marry. The character of the old ----"--here insert father, mother, uncle
or grandparent, gardener or family servant--"is delightfully whimsical
and humorous, and full of subtle touches. The tragic element is furnished
by ----, the ----. The author touches with keen satire on the follies and
vices of the time, while the interest in the principal love affair is
sustained until the final dénouement. Altogether it would be difficult
to imagine a more brilliant example of dramatic--or literary--art."
I give this rather shocking example of sophomoric shiftlessness for the
purpose of illustrating my attitude toward my educational opportunities
and what was possible in the way of dexterously avoiding them. All I had
to do was to learn the names of the chief characters in the various
plays and novels prescribed. If I could acquire a brief scenario of each
so much the better. Invariably they had heroes and heroines, good old
servants or grandparents, and merry jesters. At the examination I
successfully simulated familiarity with a book I had never read and
received a commendatory mark.
This happy-go-lucky frame of mind was by no means peculiar to myself.
Indeed I believe it to have been shared by the great majority of my
classmates. The result was that we were sent forth into the world
without having mastered any subject whatsoever, or even followed it for
a sufficient length of time to become sincerely interested in it. The
only study I pursued more than one year was English composition, which
came easily to me, and which in one form or another I followed
throughout my course. Had I adopted the same tactics with any other of
the various branches open to me, such as history, chemistry or
languages, I should not be what I am to-day--a hopelessly superficial
man.
Mind you, I do not mean to assert that I got nothing out of it at all.
Undoubtedly I absorbed a smattering of a variety of subjects that might
on a pinch pass for education. I observed how men with greater social
advantages than myself brushed their hair, wore their clothes and took
off their hats to their women friends. Frankly that was about everything
I took away with me. I was a victim of that liberality of opportunity
which may be a heavenly gift to a post-graduate in a university, but
which is intellectual damnation to an undergraduate collegian.
The chief fault that I have to find with my own education, however, is
that at no time was I encouraged to think for myself. No older man ever
invited me to his study, there quietly and frankly to discuss the
problems of human existence. I was left entirely vague as to what it was
all about, and the relative values of things were never indicated. The
same emphasis was placed on everything--whether it happened to be the
Darwinian Theory, the Fall of Jerusalem or the character of Ophelia.
I had no philosophy, no theory of morals, and no one ever even attempted
to explain to me what religion or the religious instinct was supposed to
be. I was like a child trying to build a house and gathering materials
of any substance, shape or color without regard to the character of the
intended edifice. I was like a man trying to get somewhere and taking
whatever paths suited his fancy--first one and then another,
irrespective of where they led. The Why and the Wherefore were unknown
questions to me, and I left the university without any idea as to how I
came to be in the world or what my duties toward my fellowmen might be.
In a word the two chief factors in education passed me by entirely--(a)
my mind received no discipline; (b) and the fundamental propositions of
natural philosophy were neither brought to my attention nor explained to
me. These deficiencies have never been made up. Indeed, as to the
first, my mind, instead of being developed by my going to college, was
seriously injured. My memory has never been good since and my methods of
reading and thinking are hurried and slipshod, but this is a small thing
compared with the lack of any philosophy of life. I acquired none as a
youth and I have never had any since. For fifty years I have existed
without any guiding purpose except blindly to get ahead--without any
religion, either natural or dogmatic. I am one of a type--a pretty good,
perfectly aimless man, without any principles at all.
They tell me that things have changed at the universities since my day
and that the elective system is no longer in favor. Judging by my own
case, the sooner it is abolished entirely, the better for the
undergraduate. I should, however, suggest one important
qualification--namely, that a boy be given the choice in his Freshman
year of three or four general subjects, such as philosophy, art,
history, music, science, languages or literature, and that he should be
compelled to follow the subjects he elects throughout his course.
In addition I believe the relation of every study to the whole realm of
knowledge should be carefully explained. Art cannot be taught apart from
history; history cannot be grasped independently of literature.
Religion, ethics, science and philosophy are inextricably involved one
with another.
But mere learning or culture, a knowledge of facts or of arts, is
unimportant as compared with a realization of the significance of life.
The one is superficial--the other is fundamental; the one is
temporal--the other is spiritual. There is no more wretched human being
than a highly trained but utterly purposeless man--which, after all, is
only saying that there is no use in having an education without a
religion; that unless someone is going to live in the house there is not
much use in elaborately furnishing it.
I am not attempting to write a treatise on pedagogy; but, when all is
said, I am inclined to the belief that my unfortunate present condition,
whatever my material success may have been, is due to lack of
education--in philosophy in its broadest sense; in mental discipline;
and in actual acquirement.
It is in this last field that my deficiencies and those of my class are
superficially most apparent. A wide fund of information may be less
important than a knowledge of general principles, but it is none the
less valuable; and all of us ought to be equipped with the kind of
education that will enable us to understand the world of men as well as
the world of nature.
It is, of course, essential for us to realize that the physical
characteristics of a continent may have more influence on the history of
nations than mere wars or battles, however far-reaching the foreign
policies of their rulers; but, in addition to an appreciation of this
and similar underlying propositions governing the development of
civilization, the educated man who desires to study the problems of his
own time and country, to follow the progress of science and philosophy,
and to enjoy music, literature and art, must have a certain elementary
equipment of mere facts.
The Oriental attitude of mind that enabled the Shah of Persia calmly to
decline the invitation of the Prince of Wales to attend the Derby, on
the ground that "he knew one horse could run faster than another," is
foreign to that of Western civilization. The Battle of Waterloo is a
flyspeck in importance contrasted with the problem of future existence;
but the man who never heard of Napoleon would make a dull companion in
this world or the next.
We live in direct proportion to the keenness of our interest in life;
and the wider and broader this interest is, the richer and happier we
are. A man is as big as his sympathies, as small as his selfishness. The
yokel thinks only of his dinner and his snooze under the hedge, but the
man of education rejoices in every new production of the human brain.
Advantageous intercourse between civilized human beings requires a
working knowledge of the elementary facts of history, of the
achievements in art, music and letters, as well as of the principles of
science and philosophy. When people go to quarreling over the importance
of a particular phase of knowledge or education they are apt to forget
that, after all, it is a purely relative matter, and that no one can
reasonably belittle the value of any sort of information. But furious
arguments arise over the question as to how history should be taught,
and "whether a boy's head should be crammed full of dates." Nobody in
his senses would want a boy's head crammed full of dates any more than
he would wish his stomach stuffed with bananas; but both the head and
the stomach need some nourishment--better dates than nothing.
If a knowledge of a certain historical event is of any value whatsoever,
the greater and more detailed our knowledge the better--including
perhaps, but not necessarily, its date. The question is not essentially
whether the dates are of value, but how much emphasis should be placed
on them to the exclusion of other facts of history.
"There is no use trying to remember dates," is a familiar cry. There is
about as much sense in such a statement as the announcement: "There is
no use trying to remember who wrote Henry Esmond, composed the Fifth
Symphony, or painted the Last Supper." There is a lot of use in trying
to remember anything. The people who argue to the contrary are too lazy
to try.
* * * * *
I suppose it may be conceded, for the sake of argument, that every
American, educated or not, should know the date of the Declaration of
Independence, and have some sort of acquaintance with the character and
deeds of Washington. If we add to this the date of the discovery of
America and the first English settlement; the inauguration of the first
president; the Louisiana Purchase; the Naval War with England; the War
with Mexico; the Missouri Compromise, and the firing on Fort Sumter, we
cannot be accused of pedantry. It certainly could not do any one of us
harm to know these dates or a little about the events themselves.
This is equally true, only in a lesser degree, in regard to the history
of foreign nations. Any accurate knowledge is worth while. It is harder,
in the long run, to remember a date slightly wrong than with accuracy.
The dateless man, who is as vague as I am about the League of Cambray or
Philip II, will loudly assert that the trouble incident to remembering a
date in history is a pure waste of time. He will allege that "a general
idea"--a very favorite phrase--is all that is necessary. In the case of
such a person you can safely gamble that his so-called "general idea" is
no idea at all. Pin him down and he will not be able to tell you within
_five hundred years_ the dates of some of the cardinal events of
European history--the invasion of Europe by the Huns, for instance. Was
it before or after Christ? He might just as well try to tell you that it
was quite enough to know that our Civil War occurred somewhere in the
nineteenth century.
I have personally no hesitation in advancing the claim that there are a
few elementary principles and fundamental facts in all departments of
human knowledge which every person who expects to derive any advantage
from intelligent society should not only once learn but should forever
remember. Not to know them is practically the same thing as being
without ordinary means of communication. One may not find it necessary
to remember the binomial theorem or the algebraic formula for the
contents of a circle, but he should at least have a formal acquaintance
with Julius Caesar, Hannibal, Charlemagne, Martin Luther, Francis I,
Queen Elizabeth, Louis XIV, Napoleon I--and a dozen or so others. An
educated man must speak the language of educated men.
I do not think it too much to demand that in history he should have in
mind, at least approximately, one important date in each century in the
chronicles of France, England, Italy and Germany. That is not much, but
it is a good start. And shall we say ten dates in American history? He
should, in addition, have a rough working knowledge of the chief
personages who lived in these centuries and were famous in war,
diplomacy, art, religion and literature. His one little date will at
least give him some notion of the relation the events in one country
bore to those in another.
I boldly assert that in a half hour you can learn by heart all the
essential dates in American history. I assume that you once knew, and
perhaps still know, something about the events themselves with which
they are connected. Ten minutes a day for the rest of the week and you
will have them at your fingers' ends. It is no trick at all. It is as
easy as learning the names of the more important parts of the mechanism
of your motor. There is nothing impossible or difficult, or even
tedious, about it; but it seems Herculean because you have never taken
the trouble to try to remember anything. It is the same attitude that
renders it almost physically painful for one of us to read over the
scenario of an opera or a column biography of its composer before
hearing a performance at the Metropolitan. Yet fifteen minutes or half
an hour invested in this way pays about five hundred per cent.
And the main thing, after you have learned anything, is not to forget
it. Knowledge forgotten is no knowledge at all. That is the trouble with
the elective system as usually administered in our universities. At the
end of the college year the student tosses aside his Elements of Geology
and forgets everything between its covers. What he has learned should be
made the basis for other and more detailed knowledge. The instructor
should go on building a superstructure on the foundation he has laid,
and at the end of his course the aspirant for a diploma should be
required to pass an examination on his entire college work. Had I been
compelled to do that, I should probably be able to tell now--what I do
not know--whether Melancthon was a painter, a warrior, a diplomat, a
theologian or a dramatic poet.
I have instanced the study of dates because they are apt to be the storm
center of discussions concerning education. It is fashionable to scoff
at them in a superior manner. We all of us loathe them; yet they are as
indispensable--a certain number of them--as the bones of a body. They
make up the skeleton of history. They are the orderly pegs on which we
can hang later acquired information. If the pegs are not there the
information will fall to the ground.
For example, our entire conception of the Reformation, or of any
intellectual or religious movement, might easily turn on whether it
preceded or followed the discovery of printing; and our mental picture
of any great battle, as well as our opinion of the strategy of the
opposing armies, would depend on whether or not gunpowder had been
invented at the time. Hence the importance of a knowledge of the dates
of the invention of printing and of gunpowder in Europe.
It is ridiculous to allege that there is no minimum of education, to say
nothing of culture, which should be required of every intelligent human
being if he is to be but a journeyman in society. In an unconvincing
defense of our own ignorance we loudly insist that detailed knowledge of
any subject is mere pedagogy, a hindrance to clear thinking, a
superfluity. We do not say so, to be sure, with respect to knowledge in
general; but that is our attitude in regard to any particular subject
that may be brought up. Yet to deny the value of special information is
tantamount to an assertion of the desirability of general ignorance. It
is only the politician who can afford to say: "Wide knowledge is a fatal
handicap to forcible expression."
This is not true of the older countries. In Germany, for instance, a
knowledge of natural philosophy, languages and history is insisted on.
To the German schoolboy, George Washington is almost as familiar a
character as Columbus; but how many American children know anything of
Bismarck? The ordinary educated foreigner speaks at least two languages
and usually three, is fairly well grounded in science, and is perfectly
familiar with ancient and modern history. The American college graduate
seems like a child beside him so far as these things are concerned.
We are content to live a hand-to-mouth mental existence on a haphazard
diet of newspapers and the lightest novels. We are too lazy to take the
trouble either to discipline our minds or to acquire, as adults, the
elementary knowledge necessary to enable us to read intelligently even
rather superficial books on important questions vitally affecting our
own social, physical intellectual or moral existences.
If somebody refers to Huss or Wyclif ten to one we do not know of whom
he is talking; the same thing is apt to be true about the draft of the
hot-water furnace or the ball and cock of the tank in the bathroom.
Inertia and ignorance are the handmaidens of futility. Heaven forbid
that we should let anybody discover this aridity of our minds!
My wife admits privately that she has forgotten all the French she ever
knew--could not even order a meal from a _carte de jour_; yet she is a
never-failing source of revenue to the counts and marquises who yearly
rush over to New York to replenish their bank accounts by giving parlor
lectures in their native tongue on _Le XIIIme Siècle_ or Madame Lebrun.
No one would ever guess that she understands no more than one word out
of twenty and that she has no idea whether Talleyrand lived in the
fifteenth or the eighteenth century, or whether Calvin was a Frenchman
or a Scotchman.
Our clever people are content merely with being clever. They will talk
Tolstoi or Turgenieff with you, but they are quite vague about Catherine
II or Peter the Great. They are up on D'Annunczio, but not on Garibaldi
or Cavour. Our ladies wear a false front of culture, but they are quite
bald underneath.
* * * * *
Being educated, however, does not consist, by any means, in knowing who
fought and won certain battles or who wrote the Novum Organum. It lies
rather in a knowledge of life based on the experience of mankind. Hence
our study of history. But a study of history in the abstract is
valueless. It must be concrete, real and living to have any significance
for us. The schoolboy who learns by rote imagines the Greeks as outline
figures of one dimension, clad in helmets and tunics, and brandishing
little swords. That is like thinking of Jeanne d'Arc as a suit of armor
or of Theodore Roosevelt as a pair of spectacles.
If the boy is to gain anything by his acquaintance with the Greeks he
must know what they ate and drank, how they amused themselves, what they
talked about, and what they believed as to the nature and origin of the
universe and the probability of a future life. I hold that it is as
important to know how the Romans told time as that Nero fiddled while
his capital was burning. William the Silent was once just as much alive
as P.T. Barnum, and a great deal more worth while. It is fatal to regard
historical personages as lay figures and not as human beings.
We are equally vague with respect to the ordinary processes of our daily
lives. I have not the remotest idea of how to make a cup of coffee or
disconnect the gas or water mains in my own house. If my sliding door
sticks I send for the carpenter, and if water trickles in the tank I
telephone for the plumber. I am a helpless infant in the stable and my
motor is the creation of a Frankenstein that has me at its mercy. My
wife may recall something of cookery--which she would not admit, of
course, before the butler--but my daughters have never been inside a
kitchen. None of my family knows anything about housekeeping or the
prices of foodstuffs or house-furnishings. My coal and wood are
delivered and paid for without my inquiring as to the correctness of the
bills, and I offer the same temptations to dishonest tradesmen that a
drunken man does to pickpockets. Yet I complain of the high cost of
living!
My family has never had the slightest training in practical affairs. If
we were cast away on a fertile tropical island we should be forced to
subsist on bananas and clams, and clothe ourselves with
leaves,--provided the foliage was ready made and came in regulation
sizes.
These things are vastly more important from an educational point of view
than a knowledge of the relationship of Mary Stuart to the Duke of
Guise, however interesting that may be to a reader of French history of
the sixteenth century. A knowledge of the composition of gunpowder is
more valuable than of Guy Fawkes' Gunpowder Plot. If we know nothing
about household economies we can hardly be expected to take an interest
in the problems of the proletariat. If we are ignorant of the
fundamental data of sociology and politics we can have no real opinions
on questions affecting the welfare of the people.
The classic phrase "The public be damned!" expresses our true feeling
about the matter. We cannot become excited about the wrongs and
hardships of the working class when we do not know and do not care how
they live. One of my daughters--aged seven--once essayed a short story,
of which the heroine was an orphan child in direst want. It began:
"Corrine was starving. 'Alas! What shall we do for food?' she asked her
French nurse as they entered the carriage for their afternoon drive in
the park." I have no doubt that even to-day this same young lady
supposes that there are porcelain baths in every tenement house.
I myself have no explanation as to why I pay eighty dollars for a
business suit any my bookkeepers seems to be equally well turned out for
eighteen dollars and fifty cents. That is essentially why the people
have an honest and well-founded distrust of those enthusiastic society
ladies who rush into charity and frantically engage in the elevation of
the masses. The poor working girl is apt to know a good deal more about
her own affairs than the Fifth Avenue matron with an annual income of
three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
If I were doing it all over again--and how I wish I could!--I should
insist on my girls being taught not only music and languages but
cooking, sewing, household economy and stenography. They should at least
be able to clothe and feed themselves and their children if somebody
supplied them with the materials, and to earn a living if the time came
when they had to do it. They have now no conception of the relative
values of even material things, what the things are made of or how they
are put together. For them hats, shoes, French novels and roast chicken
can be picked off the trees.
* * * * *
This utter ignorance of actual life not only keeps us at a distance from
the people of our own time but renders our ideas of history equally
vague, abstract and unprofitable. I believe it would be an excellent
thing if, beginning with the age of about ten years, no child were
allowed to eat anything until he was able to tell where it was produced,
what it cost and how it was prepared. If this were carried out in every
department of the child's existence he would have small need of the
superficial education furnished by most of our institutions of learning.
Our children are taught about the famines of history when they cannot
recognize a blade of wheat or tell the price of a loaf of bread, or how
it is made.
I would begin the education of my boy--him of the tango and balkline
billiards--with a study of himself, in the broad use of the term, before
I allowed him to study about other people or the history of nations. I
would seat him in a chair by the fire and begin with his feet. I would
inquire what he knew about his shoes--what they were made of, where the
substance came from, the cost of its production, the duty on leather,
the process of manufacture, the method of transportation of goods,
freight rates, retailing, wages, repairs, how shoes were polished--this
would begin, if desired, a new line of inquiry as to the composition of
said polish, cost, and so on--comparative durability of hand and machine
work, introduction of machines into England and its effect on industrial
conditions. I say I would do all this; but, of course, I could not. I
would have to be an educated man in the first place. Why, beginning with
that dusty little pair of shoes, my boy and I might soon be deep in
Interstate Commerce and the Theory of Malthus--on familiar terms with
Thomas A. Edison and Henry George!
And the next time my son read about a Tammany politician giving away a
pair of shoes to each of his adherents it would mean something to
him--as much as any other master stroke of diplomacy.
I would instruct every boy in a practical knowledge of the house in
which he lives, give him a familiarity with simple tools and a knowledge
of how to make small repairs and to tinker with the water pipes. I would
teach him all those things I now do not know myself--where the homeless
man can find a night's lodging; how to get a disorderly person arrested;
why bottled milk costs fifteen cents a quart; how one gets his name on
the ballot if he wants to run for alderman; where the Health Department
is located, and how to get vaccinated for nothing.
By the time we had finished we would be in a position to understand the
various editorials in the morning papers which now we do not read. Far
more than that, my son would be brought to a realization that everything
in the world is full of interest for the man who has the knowledge to
appreciate its significance. "A primrose by a river's brim" should be no
more suggestive, even to a lake-poet, than a Persian rug or a rubber
shoe. Instead of the rug he will have a vision of the patient Afghan in
his mountain village working for years with unrequited industry; instead
of the shoe he will see King Leopold and hear the lamentations of the
Congo.
My ignorance of everything beyond my own private bank account and
stomach is due to the fact that I have selfishly and foolishly regarded
these two departments as the most important features of my existence. I
now find that my financial and gastronomical satisfaction has been
purchased at the cost of an infinite delight in other things. I am
mentally out of condition.
Apart from this brake on the wheel of my intelligence, however, I suffer
an even greater impediment by reason of the fact that, never having
acquired a thorough groundwork of elementary knowledge, I find I cannot
read with either pleasure or profit. Most adult essays or histories
presuppose some such foundation.
Recently I have begun to buy primers--such as are used in the
elementary schools--in order to acquire the information that should have
been mine at twenty years of age. And I have resolved that in my daily
reading of the newspapers I will endeavor to look up on the map and
remember the various places concerning which I read any news item of
importance, and to assimilate the facts themselves. It is my intention
also to study, at least half an hour each day, some simple treatise on
science, politics, art, letters or history. In this way I hope to regain
some of my interest in the activities of mankind. If I cannot do this I
realize now that it will go hard with me in the years that are drawing
nigh. I shall, indeed, then lament that "I have no pleasure in them."
* * * * *
It is the common practice of business men to say that when they reach a
certain age they are going to quit work and enjoy themselves. How this
enjoyment is proposed to be attained varies in the individual case. One
man intends to travel or live abroad--usually, he believes, in Paris.
Another is going into ranching or farming. Still another expects to give
himself up to art, music and books. We all have visions of the time when
we shall no longer have to go downtown every day and can indulge in
those pleasures that are now beyond our reach.
Unfortunately the experience of humanity demonstrates the inevitability
of the law of Nature which prescribes that after a certain age it is
practically impossible to change our habits, either of work or of play,
without physical and mental misery.
Most of us take some form of exercise throughout our lives--riding,
tennis, golf or walking. This we can continue to enjoy in moderation
after our more strenuous days are over; but the manufacturer, stock
broker or lawyer who thinks that after his sixtieth birthday he is going
to be able to find permanent happiness on a farm, loafing round Paris or
reading in his library will be sadly disappointed. His habit of work
will drive him back, after a year or so of wretchedness, to the factory,
the ticker or the law office; and his habit of play will send him as
usual to the races, the club or the variety show.
One cannot acquire an interest by mere volition. It is a matter of
training and of years. The pleasures of to-day will eventually prove to
be the pleasures of our old age--provided they continue to be pleasures
at all, which is more than doubtful.
As we lose the capacity for hard work we shall find that we need
something to take its place--something more substantial and less
unsatisfactory than sitting in the club window or taking in the Broadway
shows. But, at least, the seeds of these interests must be sown now if
we expect to gather a harvest this side of the grave.
What is more natural than to believe that in our declining years we
shall avail ourselves of the world's choicest literature and pass at
least a substantial portion of our days in the delightful companionship
of the wisest and wittiest of mankind? That would seem to be one of the
happiest uses to which good books could be put; but the hope is vain.
The fellow who does not read at fifty will take no pleasure in books at
seventy.
My club is full of dozens of melancholy examples of men who have
forgotten how to read. They have spent their entire lives perfecting the
purely mechanical aspects of their existences. The mind has practically
ceased to exist, so far as they are concerned. They have built marvelous
mansions, where every comfort is instantly furnished by contrivances as
complicated and accurate as the machinery of a modern warship. The doors
and windows open and close, the lights are turned on and off, and the
elevator stops--all automatically. If the temperature of a room rises
above a certain degree the heating apparatus shuts itself off; if it
drops too low something else happens to put it right again. The servants
are swift, silent and decorous. The food is perfection. Their motors
glide noiselessly to and fro. Their establishments run like fine
watches.
They have had to make money to achieve this mechanical perfection; they
have had no time for anything else during their active years. And, now
that those years are over, they have nothing to do. Their minds are
almost as undeveloped as those of professional pugilists. Dinners and
drinks, backgammon and billiards, the lightest opera, the trashiest
novels, the most sensational melodrama are the most elevating of their
leisure's activities. Read? Hunt? Farm? Not much! They sit behind the
plate-glass windows and bet on whether more limousines will go north
than south in the next ten minutes.
If you should ask one of them whether he had read some book that was
exciting discussion among educated people at the moment, he would
probably look at you blankly and, after remarking that he had never
cared for economics or history--as the case might be--inquire whether
you preferred a "Blossom" or a "Tornado." Poor vacuous old cocks! They
might be having a green and hearty old age, surrounded by a group of the
choicest spirits of all time.
Upstairs in the library there are easy-chairs within arm's reach of the
best fellows who ever lived--adventurers, story-tellers, novelists,
explorers, historians, rhymers, fighters, essayists, vagabonds and
general liars--Immortals, all of them.
You can take your pick and if he bores you send him packing without a
word of apology. They are good friends to grow old with--friends who in
hours of weariness, of depression or of gladness may be summoned at will
by those of us who belong to the Brotherhood of Educated Men--of which,
alas! I and my associates are no longer members.