scientific historical method applied in this field is steadily
devitalising literary study. Criticism and enjoyment of the great
masters have to give place to the study of tendencies and influences,
of historical minutiae and bibliographical irrelevancies. The academic
mind apparently fails to see any incongruity in the eagerness and
seriousness with which learned societies recently discussed the
precise circumstances of the death of Marlowe; nor is it shocked
at the regularity with which university lecturers and others write
letters to the “Times Literary Supplement,” taking leave to record
some “new fact” about a relative of a tenth-rate poet whose name lives
only in the bigger histories of literature. Immature graduates in the
American schools of English are steadily working through all our
writers who are sufficiently unimportant to have escaped attention
hitherto and producing monographs on them “in part preparation for
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of ――――.” And as
money is plentiful in the American universities the theses are duly
printed. Similar so-called literary research is being carried on with
unremitting energy in this country also; happily the results of most
of it remain decently buried in the university archives. Dr Butler
foresees a probable decline in the educational importance of scientific
study through concentration on the unessentials and neglect of the
essentials: for the same reason it is to be feared that the university
departments of modern literature are already well on the road to
decadence.
The outlook for university education is therefore not hopeful. It seems
probable that the worship of the false gods of the academic world will
take an unconscionable time in dying. Universities are conservative
places: they hold themselves superior, and often rightly superior, to
the rough and tumble of the world outside, and thus they are tardy in
responding to the changing spirit of the age. Moreover, by their very
system they are cramping the free intelligence and narrowing the vision
of those who are to direct the universities of the future. Success in
university life necessarily involves obedience to the tradition.
Thus it may be assumed that present tendencies will take a generation
or two to reach their limit. With the improvement in the secondary
schools through the better selection of pupils the standard of work
there will be forced up to such a pitch that every student proceeding
to the university will immediately specialise in a narrow field. Pass
degrees will be abolished. The prestige of research-degrees will
be such that most, if not all, graduates will proceed to them. In
every university there will be a busy colony of researchers. In the
departments of science in its various branches men and women will be
labouring to discover new phenomena and to formulate fresh theories.
Much of this work will fulfil the laudable purpose of improving man’s
material lot. Much of it, on the other hand, will have the practical
result of supplying an industrialised community with a surfeit of
mechanical luxuries which the ordinary person will have neither the
desire nor the time to use. The spirit of man may find some consolation
in increased knowledge of such matters as the habits of atoms exposed
to various sorts of experimental bombardments. In the departments
of the modern languages and literatures the soil will have been so
far exhausted that students will be reduced to collating and editing
(with linguistic commentary) the dullest and most obscure mediaeval
manuscripts. Or the American example will be followed of writing
dissertations on recent or contemporary writers. We may expect doctoral
theses with such titles as――“A Bibliographical Account of the Works
of Arnold Bennett, together with a Hand-list of his Contributions to
the Periodical Press”; or “The Sussex Farm-Labourer in English Fiction
from 1900 to 1930.” In the realm of history, the evidence of the past
will, in most directions, have been sifted and re-sifted; accounts of
first-rate, second-rate, and even third-rate men and movements will
have been multiplied _ad nauseam_ on the excuse that an additional
insignificant fact or two has been added to information that was
already accessible. Students will be driven to editing the dreariest
records (if any still remain unpublished) elucidating matters of the
least possible concern to the twentieth century. They will, no doubt,
be sustained in their thankless tasks by the thought that they are
doing the Spade-work: they are doing their share, however humble,
towards providing a greater than themselves with the materials for
a new survey of a period. We can only hope that their single-minded
devotion may not be disturbed by the horrible thought that the mass of
accumulated research on any given topic will eventually be so vast that
no single human life will give sufficient time in which to read it, and
that no single human mind will be equal to the task of synthesising it.
When the cult of research has thus reduced itself to absurdity the
time will come when we shall perhaps turn to the conception of a
university as a place where, by the study and discussion of problems of
fundamental importance, the most intelligent young men and women are
brought into contact with the best and most stimulating minds, where
the balance is held true between intellect and emotion, between thought
and action.
But that time is not yet.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
――Punctuation, and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.
――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.