English 53 had only a dozen men in it; so Henley conducted the course in
a very informal fashion. The men felt free to bring up for discussion
any topic that interested them.
Nobody was surprised, therefore, when George Winsor asked Henley to
express his opinion of the value of a college education. He reminded
Henley of what he had said two years before, and rapidly gave a resume
of the discussion that resulted in the question he was asking. "We'd
like to know, too," he concluded, grinning wickedly, "just whom you
consider the cream of the earth. You remember you said that if we were
you felt sorry for the skimmed milk."
Henley leaned back in his chair and laughed. "Yes," he said, "I remember
saying that. I didn't think, though, that you would remember it for two
years. You seem to remember most of what I said. I am truly astonished."
He grinned back at Winsor. "The swine seem to have eaten the pearls."
The class laughed, but Winsor was not one to refuse the gambit. "They
were very indigestible," he said quickly.
"Good!" Henley exclaimed. "I wanted them to give you a belly-ache, and I
am delighted that you still suffer."
"We do," Pudge Jamieson admitted, "but we'd like to have a little mercy
shown to us now. We've spent four years here, and while we've enjoyed
them, we've just about made up our minds that they have been all in all
wasted years."
"No." Henley was decisive. His playful manner entirely disappeared. "No,
not wasted. You have enjoyed them, you say. Splendid justification. You
will continue to enjoy them as the years grow between you and your
college days. All men are sentimental about college, and in that
sentimentality there is continuous pleasure."
"Your doubt delights me. Your feeling that you haven't learned anything
delights me, too. It proves that you have learned a great deal. It is
only the ignoramus who thinks he is wise; the wise man knows that he is
an ignoramus. That's a platitude, but it is none the less true. I have
cold comfort for you: the more you learn, the less confident you will be
of your own learning, the more utterly ignorant you will feel. I have
never known so much as, the day I graduated from high school. I held my
diploma and the knowledge of the ages in my hand. I had never heard of
Socrates, but I would have challenged him to a debate without the
slightest fear."
"Since then I have grown more humble, so humble that there are times
when I am ashamed to come into the class-room. What right have I to
teach anybody anything? I mean that quite sincerely. Then I remember
that, ignorant as I am, the undergraduates are more ignorant. I take
heart and mount the rostrum ready to speak with the authority of a
pundit."
He realized that he was sliding off on a tangent and paused to find a
new attack. Pudge Jamieson helped him.
"I suppose that's all true," he said, "but it doesn't explain why
college is really worth while. The fact remains that most of us don't
learn anything, that we are coarsened by college, and that we--well, we
worship false gods."
Henley nodded in agreement. "It would be hard to deny your assertions,"
he acknowledged, "and I don't think that I am going to try to deny them.
Of course, men grow coarser while they are in college, but that doesn't
mean that they wouldn't grow coarser if they weren't in college. It
isn't college that coarsens a man and destroys his illusions; it is
life. Don't think that you can grow to manhood and retain your pretty
dreams. You have become disillusioned about college. In the next few
years you will suffer further disillusionment. That is the price of
living."
"Every intelligent man with ideals eventually becomes a cynic. It is
inevitable. He has standards, and, granted that he is intelligent, he
cannot fail to see how far mankind falls below those standards. The
result is cynicism, and if he is truly intelligent, the cynicism is
kindly. Having learned that man is frail, he expects little of him;
therefore, if he judges at all, his judgment is tempered either with
humor or with mercy."
The dozen boys were sprawled lazily in their chairs, their feet resting
on the rungs of the chairs before them, but their eyes were fastened
keenly on Henley. All that he was saying was of the greatest importance
to them. They found comfort in his words, but the comfort raised new
doubts, new problems.
"How does that affect college?" Winsor asked.
"It affects it very decidedly," Henley replied. "You haven't become true
cynics yet; you expect too much of college. You forget that the men who
run the college and the men who attend it are at best human beings, and
that means that very much cannot be expected of them. You do worship
false gods. I find hope in the fact that you recognize the stuff of
which your gods are made. I have great hopes for the American colleges,
not because I have any reason to believe that the faculties will become
wiser or that the administrations will lead the students to true gods;
not at all, but I do think that the students themselves will find a way.
They have already abandoned Mammon; at least, the most intelligent have,
and I begin to see signs of less adoration for athletics. Athletics, of
course, have their place, and some of the students are beginning to find
that place. Certainly the alumni haven't, and I don't believe that the
administrative officers have, either. Just so long as athletes advertise
the college, the administrations will coddle them. The undergraduates,
however, show signs of frowning on professionalism, and the stupid
athlete is rapidly losing his prestige. An athlete has to show something
more than brawn to be a hero among his fellows nowadays."
He paused, and Pudge spoke up. "Perhaps you are right," he said, "but I
doubt it. Athletics are certainly far more important to us than anything
else, and the captain of the football team is always the biggest man in
college. But I don't care particularly about that. What I want to know
is how the colleges justify their existence. I don't see that you have
proved that they do."
"No, I haven't," Henley admitted, "and I don't know that I can prove it.
Of course, the colleges aren't perfect, not by a long way, but as human
institutions go, I think they justify their existence. The four years
spent at college by an intelligent boy--please notice that I say
intelligent--are well spent indeed. They are gloriously worth while. You
said that you have had a wonderful time. Not so wonderful as you think.
It is a strange feeling that we have about our college years. We all
believe that they are years of unalloyed happiness, and the further we
leave them behind the more perfect they seem. As a matter of fact, few
undergraduates are truly happy. They are going through a period of storm
and stress; they are torn by _Weltschmerz_. Show me a nineteen-year-old
boy who is perfectly happy and you show me an idiot. I rarely get a
cheerful theme except from freshmen. Nine tenths of them are expressions
of deep concern and distress. A boy's college years are the years when
he finds out that life isn't what he thought it, and the finding out is
a painful experience. He discovers that he and his fellows are made of
very brittle clay: usually he loathes himself; often he loathes his
fellows.
"College isn't the Elysium that it is painted in stories and novels, but
I feel sorry for any intelligent man who didn't have the opportunity to
go to college. There is something beautiful about one's college days,
something that one treasures all his life. As we grow older, we forget
the hours of storm and stress, the class-room humiliations, the terror
of examinations, the awful periods of doubt of God and man--we forget
everything but athletic victories, long discussions with friends, campus
sings, fraternity life, moonlight on the campus, and everything that is
romantic. The sting dies, and the beauty remains.
"Why do men give large sums of money to their colleges when asked?
Because they want to help society? Not at all. The average man doesn't
even take that into consideration. He gives the money because he loves
his alma mater, because he has beautiful and tender memories of her. No,
colleges are far from perfect, tragically far from it, but any
institution that commands loyalty and love as colleges do cannot be
wholly imperfect. There is a virtue in a college that uninspired
administrative officers, stupid professors, and alumni with false ideals
cannot kill. At times I tremble for Sanford College; there are times
when I swear at it, but I never cease to love it."
"If you feel that way about college, why did you say those things to us
two years ago?" Hugh asked. "Because they were true, all true. I was
talking about the undergraduates then, and I could have said much more
cutting things and still been on the safe side of the truth. There is,
however, another side, and that is what I am trying to give you
now--rather incoherently, I know."
Hugh thought of Cynthia. "I suppose all that you say is true," he
admitted dubiously, "but I can't feel that college does what it should
for us. We are told that we are taught to think, but the minute we bump
up against a problem in living we are stumped just as badly as we were
when we are freshmen."
"Oh, no, not at all. You solve problems every day that would have
stumped you hopelessly as a freshman. You think better than you did four
years ago, but no college, however perfect, can teach you all the
solutions of life. There are no nostrums or cure-alls that the colleges
can give for all the ills and sicknesses of life. You, I am afraid, will
have to doctor those yourself."
"I see." Hugh didn't altogether see. Both college and life seemed more
complicated than he had thought them. "I am curious to know," he added,
"just whom you consider the cream of the earth. That expression has
stuck in my mind. I don't know why--but it has."
Henley smiled. "Probably because it is such a very badly mixed metaphor.
Well, I consider the college man the cream of the earth."
"What?" four of the men exclaimed, and all of them sat suddenly upright.
"Yes--but let me explain. If I remember rightly, I said that if you were
the cream of the earth, I hoped that God would pity the skimmed milk.
Well, everything taken into consideration, I do think that you are the
cream of the earth; and I have no hope for the skimmed milk. Perhaps it
isn't wise for me to give public expression to my pessimism, but you
ought to be old enough to stand it."
"The average college graduate is a pretty poor specimen, but all in all
he is just about the best we have. Please remember that I am talking in
averages. I know perfectly well that a great many brilliant men do not
come to college and that a great many stupid men do come, but the
colleges get a very fair percentage of the intelligent ones and a
comparatively small percentage of the stupid ones. In other words, to
play with my mixed metaphor a bit, the cream is very thin in places and
the skimmed milk has some very thick clots of cream, but in the end the
cream remains the cream and the milk the milk. Everything taken into
consideration, we get in the colleges the young men with the highest
ideals, the loftiest purpose."
"You want to tell me that those ideals are low and the purpose
materialistic and selfish. I know it, but the average college graduate,
I repeat, has loftier ideals and is less materialistic than the average
man who has not gone to college. I wish that I could believe that the
college gives him those ideals. I can't, however. The colleges draw the
best that society has to offer; therefore, they graduate the best."
"Oh, I don't know," a student interrupted. "How about Edison and Ford
and--"
"And Shakspere and Sophocles," Henley concluded for him. "Edison is an
inventive genius, and Ford is a business genius. Genius hasn't anything
to do with schools. The colleges, however, could have made both Ford and
Edison bigger men, though they couldn't have made them lesser geniuses."
"No, we must not take the exceptional man as a standard; we've got to
talk about the average. The hand of the Potter shook badly when he made
man. It was at best a careless job. But He made some better than others,
some a little less weak, a little more intelligent. All in all, those
are the men that come to college. The colleges ought to do a thousand
times more for those men than they do do; but, after all, they do
something for them, and I am optimistic enough to believe that the time
will come when they will do more."
"Some day, perhaps," he concluded very seriously, "our administrative
officers will be true educators; some day perhaps our faculties will be
wise men really fitted to teach; some day perhaps our students will be
really students, eager to learn, honest searchers after beauty and
truth. That day will be the millennium. I look for the undergraduates to
lead us to it."