has had a horizon of what “ought to be,” and he could not help putting
in a word and an idea in the wrong place; and so he was thrown out
of education in America exactly as he was thrown out of politics in
America. I am here speaking about the great general trend of influences
since 1870, influences which have been checked in recent years, checked
in politics, checked in education, but which it is necessary to
understand if we would understand present conditions in education. The
men who, during this era, have been chosen to become college presidents
have, as a rule, begun life with the ambition of scholars; but their
talents for affairs have been developed at the expense of their taste
for learning, and they have become hard men. As toward their faculties
they have been autocrats, because the age has demanded autocracy here;
as toward the millionaire they have been sycophants, because the age
has demanded sycophancy here. Meanwhile these same college presidents
represent learning to the imagination of the millionaire and to the
imagination of the great public. The ignorant millionaire must trust
somebody; and whom he trusts he rules. Now if we go one step further
in the reasoning, and discover that the millionaire himself has a
somewhat exaggerated reverence for the opinions of the great public,
we shall see that this whole matter is a coil of influence emanating
from the great public, and winding up--and generally winding up very
tight--about the necks of our college faculties and professional
scholars. The millionaire and the college president are simply middle
men, who transmit the pressure from the average citizen to the learned
classes. What the average citizen desires to have done in education
gets itself accomplished, though the process should involve the
extinction of the race of educated gentlemen. The problem before us in
America is the unwinding of this “knot intrinsicate” into which our
education has become tied, the unwinding of this boa-constrictor of
ignorant public opinion which has been strangling and, to some extent,
is still strangling our scholars.
I have no categorical solution of the problem, nor do I, to tell the
truth, put an absolute faith in any analysis of social forces, even
of my own. If I point out one of the strands in the knot as the best
strand to begin work on, it is with the consciousness that there are
other effectual ways of working, other ways of feeling about the matter
that are more profound.
The natural custodians of education in any age are the learned men
of the land, including the professors and schoolmasters. Now these
men have, at the present time, in America no conception of their
responsibility. They are docile under the rule of the promoting college
president, and they have a theory of their own function which debars
them from militant activity. The average professor in an American
college will look on at an act of injustice done to a brother professor
by their college president, with the same unconcern as the rabbit who
is not attacked watches the ferret pursue his brother up and down
through the warren, to predestinate and horrible death. We know,
of course, that it would cost the non-attacked rabbit his place to
express sympathy for the martyr; and the non-attacked is poor, and has
offspring, and hopes of advancement. The non-attacked rabbit would,
of course, become a suspect, and a marked man the moment he lifted up
his voice in defense of rabbit-rights. Such personal sacrifice seems
to be the price paid in this world for doing good of any kind. I am
not, however, here raising the question of general ethics; I refer to
the philosophical belief, to the special theory of _professorial_
ethics, which forbids a professor to protect his colleague. I invite
controversy on this subject; for I should like to know what the
professors of the country have to say on it. It seems to me that
there exists a special prohibitory code, which prevents the college
professor from using his reason and his pen as actively as he ought in
protecting himself, in pushing his interests, and in enlightening the
community about our educational abuses. The professor in America seems
to think that self-respect requires silence and discretion on his part.
He is too great to descend into the arena. He thinks that by nursing
this gigantic reverence for the idea of professordom, such reverence
will, somehow, be extended all over society, till the professor becomes
a creature of power, of public notoriety, of independent reputation
as he is in Germany. In the meantime, the professor is trampled upon,
his interests are ignored, he is overworked and underpaid, he is of
small social consequence, he is kept at menial employments, and the
leisure to do good work is denied him. A change is certainly needed in
all of these aspects of the American professor’s life. My own opinion
is that this change can only come about through the enlightenment of
the great public. The public must be appealed to by the professor
himself in all ways and upon all occasions. The professor must teach
the nation to respect learning and to understand the function and the
rights of the learned classes. He must do this through a willingness to
speak and to fight for himself. In Germany there is a great public of
highly educated, nay of deeply and variously learned people, whose very
existence secures pay, protection, and reverence for the scholar. The
same is true in France, England, and Italy.
It is the public that protects the professor in Europe. The public
alone can protect the professor in America. The proof of this is that
any individual learned man in America who becomes known to the public
through his books or his discoveries, or his activity in any field of
learning or research, is comparatively safe from the guillotine. His
position has at least some security, his word some authority. This man
has educated the public that trusts him, and he can now protect his
more defenseless brethren, if he will. I have often wondered, when
listening to the sickening tale of some brutality done by a practical
college president to a young instructor, how it had been possible for
the eminent men upon the faculty to sit through the operation without a
protest. A word from any one of them would have stopped the sacrifice,
and protected learning from the oppressor. But no, these eminent men
harbored ethical conceptions which kept them from interfering with
the practical running of the college. Merciful heavens! who is to run
a college if not learned men? Our colleges have been handled by men
whose ideals were as remote from scholarship as the ideals of the New
York theatrical managers are remote from poetry. In the meanwhile, the
scholars have been dumb and reticent.
At the back of all these phenomena we have, as I have said, the general
atmospheric ignorance of the great public in America. We are so used to
this public, so immersed in it, so much a part of it ourselves, that
we are hardly able to gain any conception of what that atmospheric
ignorance is like. I will give an illustration which would perhaps
never have occurred to my mind except through the accident of actual
experience. If you desire a clue to the American in the matter of the
higher education, you may find one in becoming a school trustee in
any country district where the children taught are the children of
farmers. The contract with any country school-teacher provides that he
shall teach for so many weeks, upon such and such conditions. Now let
us suppose a teacher of genius to obtain the post. He not only teaches
admirably, but he institutes school gardens for the children; he takes
long walks with the boys, and gives them the rudiments of geology. He
is in himself an uplifting moral influence, and introduces the children
into a whole new world of idea and of feeling. The parents are pleased.
I will not say that they are grateful; but they are not ungrateful. It
is true that they secretly believe all this botany and moral influence
to be rubbish; but they tolerate it. Now, let us suppose that before
the year is out the teacher falls sick, and loses two weeks of school
time through absence. You will find that the trustees insist upon his
making up this lost time; the contract calls for it. This seems like a
mean and petty exaction for these parents to impose upon a saint who
has blessed their children, unto the third and fourth generation, by
his presence among them. But let us not judge hastily. This strange
exaction does not result so much from the meanness of the parents, as
from their intellectual limitations. To these parents the hours passed
in school are schooling; the rest does not count. The rest may be
pleasant and valuable, but it is not education.
In the same way, the professional and business classes in America do
not see any point in paying salaries to professors who are to make
researches, or write books, or think beautiful thoughts. The influence
which an eminent man sheds about him by his very existence, the change
in tone that comes over a rude person through his once seeing the face
of a scholar, the illumination of a young character through contact
with its own ideals--such things are beyond the ken of the average
American citizen to-day. To him, they are fables, to him they are
foolishness. The parent of our college lad is a farmer compared to the
parent of the European lad.
The American parent regards himself as an enlightened being--yet he
has not, in these matters, an inkling of what enlightenment is. Now,
the intelligence of that parent must be reached; and the learned
classes must do the work of reaching it. The Fathers of the Christian
church made war with book and speech on Paganism. The leaders of the
Reformation went out among the people and made converts. The patriots
of the American Revolution--nay, the fathers of modern science, Tyndal,
Huxley, Louis Agaziz, Helmholtz--wrote popular books and sought to
interest and educate the public by direct contact. Then let the
later-coming followers in learning imitate this popular activity of the
old leaders: we need a host of battlers for the cause.
For whom do these universities exist, after all? Is it not for the
people at large? Are not the people the ultimate beneficiaries? Then
why should the people not be immediately instructed in such manner as
will lead to their supporting true universities? It is hard to say why
our professors are so timid. Perhaps too great a specialization in
their own education has left them helpless, as all-around fighters. But
the deeper reason seems to be a moral one; they think such activity is
beneath them. It is not beneath them. Whatever be a man’s calling, it
is not beneath him to make a fight for the truth. As for a professor’s
belonging to a mystic guild, no man’s spiritual force is either
increased or diminished by the name he calls his profession. Learning
is their cause, and every honest means to promote learning should be
within their duty. Nor does duty alone make this call for publicity.
Ambition joins in it; the legitimate personal ambition of making one’s
mind and character felt in the world. This blow once struck means
honor, and security of tenure in office, it means public power.
In fine, the scholars should take the public into their confidence
and dominate the business men on our college boards. This will be
found more easy than at first appears, because the money element, the
millionaire element, is very sensitive to public feeling, and once the
millionaire succumbs, the college president will succumb also. The step
beyond this would consist in the scholars’ taking charge of the college
themselves, merely making use of certain business men on their boards
for purposes of financial administration.
THE DRAMA.
When a subject is too complex and too subtle to admit of any adequate
analysis, people dogmatize about it. They believe that they are thus
recurring to first principles. But what are the principles? That
is just what no one can state. The drama is one of those difficult
subjects which lure the writer on and draw him out. It is a subject
upon which ideas flow easily, theories form of themselves, and
convictions deepen in the very act of improvisation. The writer who
will trust his own inspiration can hardly fail to end by saying
something very true about the drama. That is the trouble with the
drama: so many things are true of it. It is scarcely less confusing
than human life itself. The difficult thing is to strike some balance
between all these interlocking and oscillating truths.
Consider, for example, how many and illusive are the influences that
go to make up a good dramatic performance. The elements are interwoven
in our consciousness, mingled and flowing together like motes in the
sunbeam, rising, falling, fading, changing, glowing, and ever suffering
transformation and re-birth, like the dream-things that they are. No
matter what you say about a performance you can hardly be sure that
you have hit upon the right explanation. Let us suppose that there
has been an evening of inspiring success. Some golden lead of the
imagination has sprung up and overshot one performance--paused, passed
and vanished--leaving audience and actors, and even critics, to account
for it as they may. You think you have a clue to the situation; but
you have barely time to rejoice over your discovery, when, on the next
evening, disaster follows from the same apparent causes as led to the
first success. The fact is that some unseen power has been at work upon
one evening and not upon the next. The weather, or the composition of
the audience, or the mood of the actors has changed. The fact is that
no two occasions are really alike; but they differ in so many ways that
one can scarcely catalogue their divergencies.
There is no ill-considered thing that an author may write, or an actor
do on the stage, no mistake or violation of common sense and good
art, that may not be counterbalanced by some happiness which carries
the play in spite of it. And conversely, there is no well-reasoned,
profound, and true theory of play-writing or stage management which,
if logically carried out, may not prove the very vehicle of damnation.
The reason is that your theories are mere nets waved in the air some
miles below the stars which they seem to imprison. Your true theories
are true only to theory; the conditions always upset them. It is,
therefore, not without some trepidation that I tread the paths of this
subject. I almost fear the sound of my own voice and the conclusions
of my own reason. This fear shall be my compass, this the silken
thread, unwinding as I walk, which shall lead me back again out of the
labyrinth and into the daylight.
The aim of any dramatic performance is to have something happen on a
stage that shall hold people’s attention for two hours and a half or
three hours. Anything that does this is a good drama; and there are as
many kinds of good drama as there are flowers in the meadow. All of
these species are closely related to each other. They are modifications
that spring up from the roots of old tradition, like shoots in an
asparagus bed.
The different great divisions and species of drama depend on the size
and shape of the theatre used, more than on any other one thing.
For the great theatre you must have slow speech, or, at any rate,
a concentration of theme. For a small modern theatre you must have
quicker motion and more variety. Not only the actor but the playwright
must have some special size of theatre in his mind as he plans a play,
and must adapt his whole art to that size, as he fashions his work.
You might call this the first canon of the drama.
Now, we have, at present, no controlling conventions, no overmastering
habits of thought about stage matters, and this leads us to forget
the original force, not to say tyranny, of convention in other ages.
England has had no controlling convention in stage matters since
Charles II’s time; and the English stage has thus become a free, wild
sort of place where anything is permitted. It is like the exhibition of
the “Independents” in Paris, where anyone may hire space and hang what
pictures he please, leaving the public to reward or punish him for his
temerity.
The disadvantage of this condition of things is that the public
does not know what to expect, and therefore fine things may be
misunderstood. The playwright is not sufficiently supported by the
crutch of tradition. He has lost his task-master; but he has lost
also the key to expression. A well-developed, formal tradition is
as necessary to any powerful spiritual deliverance as a system of
punctuation is to writing. It was not until Haydn and Mozart had
developed the form of the symphony and sonata that Beethoven’s work
became possible. The same holds true of all the arts; the great artist
who finds no harness ready-made for his ideas must set to work like
Giotto to painfully create a makeshift of his own.
If we have to-day no great tyrant of contemporary convention in any
of the arts, we have a hundred fashions. The age is eclectic; the
conventional side of art is at a discount. Now in the drama, the
conventional side of art is of peculiar importance. The more you
surprise an audience, the less you will please it. The thing that
entertains and relaxes people is to have something unmistakable and
easy unrolled before them; something in which the problems are plainly
stated and solved beyond the possibility of a doubt. The good man and
bad man must be labeled; and so must the different sorts of plays
receive labels--as, Comedy, Tragedy, Farce, Problem-play, Tank-drama,
etc.; otherwise a great part of the attention of the audience will be
exhausted in finding the right humor. The modern playwright has thus a
problem that is new to the stage, the problem of giving the grand cue
to the audience as to which kind of play is coming.
After all, the condition of the contemporary stage is very much
like the condition of contemporary painting. Any good historical
gallery contains samples from the whole history of art. There are as
well-defined classes of pictures as there are of dramas: _e. g._, the
religious picture, the genre picture, the portrait, the landscape,
etc.; and within each of these classes there exists a world of
half-defined traditions in which educated persons are learned, and by
which all artists are somewhat controlled. Now each of these classes
was originally the product of an age devoted to it. But to-day the
artist is eclectic. He is eclectic in spite of himself because he is
not forced by universal expectation to do a particular thing: he must
choose. Whether he be painter or dramatist, the artist in Western
Europe to-day is born into an epoch of miscellaneous experiment. Let
him choose. The spread of international education has brought about
this state of things: art is becoming an international commodity.
Let us return to the drama, and seize upon some convenient model of
a conventional play--for instance, the old-fashioned melodrama. What
a relief it is to find in the opening act of a play that we are upon
familiar ground, that we know very well what is coming and can enjoy
the elaboration of it. We must have a taste for the whole species or
we can never either like or understand the particular example. And
so also in judging of any drama of another age we must positively
bring the whole of the epoch to bear upon it or we are lost. The
Elizabethans before Shakespeare’s time had developed a drama of
horrors, or running-mad play, in which the audience knew from the
outset that someone was to be dogged and tortured and dragged through
a living Inferno before being thrown on the dung-hill. The audience
expected to be moved to awe and to a certain sort of solemn horror by
the tragedy. The play was to be in blank verse, a narrative play full
of incident--with a host of characters and many changes of imaginary
scene. The story was to be new to the audience and as exciting as
possible. Very often it had, to our modern thinking, no plot; but was
a helter-skelter of delirious cruelty, accompanied by torrents of
passionately excited words which sometimes broke into great poetry
and more often soared in a cloudland of divine bombast. The people
loved this language. They reveled in the rhetoric of the dialogue, and
wallowed in the boldness of the action. The first line, or even the
very name of a horror-play in Elizabeth’s time, was enough to throw the
audience into the proper mood. How mistaken is it for one of us to-day
to read any old play without conjuring up something of its epoch.
Now let us remember the Greeks, since we cannot escape them. The
cultivated, conventional, logical, and over-civilized Greek wished
his tragedy to be elegant and in a just measure solemn, not to say
awe-inspiring. He expected this, much as we expect coffee after dinner
when we dine out. It was to be done through the means of one of the
old Greek myths, a thing half history, half fable in its complexion.
In the days of Æschylus the Athenian audience was made up of
God-fearing, conservative people who could be moved to awe by the
contemplation of religious ideas, and by pictures of lofty moral
sufferings. But as time went on, the people became bored by the old
Greek religion, and it required more highly colored pictures to satisfy
them. In the days of Sophocles there is a certain amount of religious
feeling left in the people, though one feels that Sophocles is making
use of it for artistic purposes. In Euripides’ day, however, everything
has been used up in the way of big moral ideas, and the emphasis is
laid on the suffering. Mental agony is manipulated by a skilled hand.
The taste is refined, the logic is perfect, the art is wonderful; but
the dramas of Euripides were felt in his own day and thereafter to
be a little corrupt. People blame Euripides instead of blaming the
insensibility of the Athenian theatre-goer who required this sort of
enginery to make him weep delicious tears. The thing to be noted in
both of these instances--from the English and the Greek stage--is the
part played by the audience. It is only through a tacit consent on all
hands that a certain game shall be played, that very highly-finished,
complex and perfect works of art are produced. There is so much
to be conveyed by a drama that unless the audience will agree to
take nine-tenths of it for granted, the project is hopeless. The
conventions! These are the precious symbols which have been developed
by centuries of toil. They possess such telling value that by their aid
even mediocrity can do good things, and genius, miracles. How shall we
preserve them?