The Scholar Is an Institution

Jacques Barzun

The Journal of , Vol. 18, No. 8. (Nov., 1947), pp. 393-400+445.

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http://www.jstor.org Wed Nov 14 16:52:57 2007 The Scholar Is an Institution By JACQUES BARZUN

An Address Given at the Opening Exercises of the One Hundred Ninety-fourth Academic Year of Columbia Uaiversity

T IS an unfortunate fact that an After the war, to be sure, the atmosphere of democratic equality scholar is still found of some use I tends to make people endlessly when by granting degrees he enables justify their existence. Hence in youth to qualify for jobs, or when addressing a community of scholars, from time to time he is drawn into I may be permitted to regret that the business or civic affairs as an expert. latest occasion on which scholars But all these services are in reality proved their usefulness should have by-products of his main performance, been the exceptional situation of war. which remains hidden, mysterious, It is only in time of war, apparently, and consequently unregarded. Not that the population at large, and many being met daily in the downtown of scholars themselves, awaken to the any city, he is thought of-if at all- fact that knowledge derived from as one of the hibernating animals, or research is public property, that he is credited with what are actually scholarship plays a national r81e, that his secondary powers. For it is not the scholar is a public man. When true that the scholar is of national he can inform the General Staff what importance only in war, nor that he coastline has the flattest and sandiest is a public man only when trans- beaches, or when he can interpret planted to Washington or when testi- with the aid of cultural the fying in a lawsuit. The scholar is a political moves of the enemy, then the public institution at all times, whether scholar seems to emerge from his his work is visible or invisible, by the private, hobby-like pursuit, and his very nature of his occupation. What worth is recorded in citations of which is his occupation? What is scholar- the language is that of mingled ship? Scholarship is simply the un- gratitude and astonishment. ceasing effort to bring order into the 393 JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION confusion of Tradition. By searching Our faith in the scholar is implicit out, by comparing and weighing, by in our complaint that the behavior of organizing facts, the scholar tries to mankind has not kept pace with its hold in check the perpetual tendency inventions. For this is to recognize of mankind to get things wrong, to that mechanical appliances, though mix up names and facts and ideas, to potent, are ultimately less influential blur the outlines of its own active than the intangible results of thought, beliefs. The history of the human which take the form of common mind is the history of deviation from beliefs and common practices. Lord accurate meaning and memory. The Keynes once pointed out that the history of scholarship is one long economic ideas of any generation of fulfillment of the formula: "Look! business men were the cast-off notions It is not as you think." of the great theorists of fifty years The scholar teaches us our language before. The process illustrates a gen- and our literature, interprets our erality: the handing down of ideas is history, compels us to recognize that what we mean by a tradition, what other peoples inhabit the earth, lays we mean by a culture, and it has the open to our view their ways and force of any natural presence. Just wills, corrects at every turn the first as we assume that the existence of a false impressions that we form of the bridge implies solid engineering, so heavens, the fields, and the workings the public assumes that the presence of our human frame; he tells us how of a common opinion implies solid we should walk, sleep, eat, dance, and scholarship. "Everybody knows, 9 y think, and he tries against heavy odds they will say, "that all German to light up the dark chamber of our philosophers have been Fascists"; or brains with the artistic and religious "It stands to reason that an alliance visions of the great spirits of humanity. with a European state is bad for Amer- This then is the scholar: he is a ica"; or "Of course, Shakespeare is the transmitter, a publisher of what is greatest poet and Beethoven the great- good for us to know. As such he has est musician the world has ever seen." always existed, whether as priest, Where do these dogmas come from? poet, or garrulous elder of the tribe. From the newspaper, the schoolbook, He is an institution as old as society the broadcast, the popular ency- itself. In high civilizations his task clopedia-all of which ultimately lead is so huge that it is split up into back to the scholar, who is supposed specialties, which we now call by to know what he is talking about, and classical names ending in -culture or who is supposed to talk in a respon- -ology. If some of these nowadays sible manner about what he knows. receive a kind of public worship as Think of the number of firm convic- , and are invidiously compared tions which go to make up a national with scholarship, the distinction is culture, think of the number of those here meaningless. For I am speaking who act from day to day on the of the scholar or scientist as the strength of these convictions, and you regulator of the people's mind; I am begin to gauge the immense amount not speaking of the applied scientist of potential energy that the scholar or applied scholar who temporarily circuitously directs. You begin to serves as ambassador or makes bombs. see him as manning the controls of a THE SCHOLAR IS AN INSTITUTION huge hydraulic press, slow in action, The great popular weeklies have but irresistible in its multiplication of gone one step further and borrowed the pressure of a single hand. the whole stock-in-trade of scholar- ship. They employ researchers, build it is clear that in a high up libraries, and use footnotes when- civilization the scholar is not ever they want to make a special Y"alone in charge, and it may be demonstration of candor. What is thought that so many other hands more, they have accustomed the take part in conveying or counter- public to send in corrections, and acting his truth that his influence is these, too, are often couched in the neutralized altogether. These con- scholar's tone of irritable impatience. ditions are far from clear, and it is I need not detail how the major radio their effects that constitute precisely programs involving news, history, the problem of scholarship today. literature, or biography undergo the This problem is a double one: what same factual scrutiny, nor how eager the institution of scholarship in the the movies are to represent the past, twentieth century shall furnish as an the present, and the future wie original product, and what part it eigentkch gewesen. shall play in the dissemination of that It would seem as if the public product. should be basking in perpetual beams Some may think that the second of truth propelled from every source: question can be answered out of hand. we know it is not so, though this is The publication of findings in a learned not for lack of the desire to be right. journal is dissemination enough. With Certain rigid institutional habits in the mailing of the reprints, scholarship journalism stand in the way of ends and the buzzing confusion of the achieving a greater yield of truth per world begins, which is beyond repair. inch of type. But it is not in my That view, once universal and indeed province to discuss those shortcomings appropriate, is no longer tenable, for here. Rather it is to inquire how far the world has moved in on the sacred rigid institutional habits in scholar- precincts and begun to play with the ship have kept it from aiding the press philosophical instruments it has found in its task of mass education. For if there. Observe current practice in the scholar's duty is to keep public editorial rooms, publishers' offices, knowledge clear and orderly, he can- and broadcasting studios :everywhere not at one and the same time disdain the methods and the ideals of research the means of conveying his truth and are in force, however amateurish in complain that his interpreters distort use. Everywhere one finds a pains- it. This does not mean that the taking concern to put the fact straight. scholar must abandon his judicial The touching and pathetic aim is to detachment, that he must set himself amuse the public and still tell the up as a popular counselor, and take a truth. And if one compares the daily Berlitz course in journalese. No one press of today with that of a hundred can say what he must do, except that years ago, one is bound to report if he really wishes truth to prevail he a virtual revolution-a scholarly can no longer rely on salutary neglect revolution-in the journalistic atti- and the passage of time. He needs a tude toward accuracy. revised conception of scholarship, one JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION which has roots in present practice which types of scholarly work are now but looks outward. desirable, and to provide the workers. But first, perhaps, we should reas- In scholarship as it functions today, sure ourselves that a change in the we are still moved by the great habits of scholarship will not destroy impulse to expand knowledge which its essential character. The scholar, marked the late eighteenth and early in some form or other, is as eternal nineteenth centuries. This impulse as the baker-possibly more so-and has gone through two phases. The history shows that as an institution first was one of extraordinary con- he has been as malleable and prag- quests and rough mastery over new matic as the statesman. At Alex- domains. It closed about andria, the scholar was chiefly a eighty years ago, and was succeeded grammarian and scholiast; in the by a period of refining, correcting, ram- Middle Ages, a chronicler and com- ifying the knowledge previously won. piler; in the Renaissance, be became At the height of this second period, an editor of texts and even a printer- Americans began to come under the as we are reminded by the beguiling influence of the great scholars- figures of Aldus Manutius and his mainly German-who exemplified this assistant Erasmus. At times he has discipline, and it is upon these models been a cleric, at others a layman or a that the present institution of scholar- slave; he has been attached to indi- ship in the United States is still vidual patrons, to universities, mon- patterned. But meantime the social asteries, printing presses, museums, order has changed and we have libraries, and governments. He has imperceptibly entered upon a third done his work in groves, .porches, phase. We still need great workers cells, street corners, porcelain stoves not merely of the second, but of the (I am thinking of Descartes), lab- first breed. We need adventurous, oratories, Arabian deserts, mountain even reckless spirits who will create tops and-most lately-bomb shelters. new subjects of study-an act of mind It is clear that the scholar is not only which makes us think at once of Presi- eternal but ubiquitous, and I stress dent Conant, whose recent redefining the fact so that we shall not be of the history of science may prove a hypnotized by the lithographs on our landmark in our cultural evolution. walls and visualize him in a single We need equally the more deliberate place or form. It would be as reason- assessors and critics-which does not able to require that the scholar wear mean those who at the first sight of a beard because some of the great novelty would discourage the pioneers scholarly works in the century just by saying "Impossible." And we past came from bearded men. need a third type of scholar in Now diversity in the modes of several subvarieties-the synthesizer scholarship exists today, but only in and transmitter who is not a middle- haphazard fashion, and the need for man, but a creator in a different it is admitted only reluctantly, with- dimension. out clear idea of its purposes and The original scholar, the investi- justification. Here, I feel, is the first gator of supreme skill and divinatory step to take in reform: to ascertain instinct-like Bentley in the seven - THE SCHOLAR IS AN INSTITUTION teenth century or Mommsen in the editions with indispensable scholarly nineteenth-will always evoke the notes. Soon, I believe, we shall be highest admiration and be sought after giving thanks to Chancellor Hutchins when he appears. He ought even to be and the University of Chicago for treated like a privileged being, as publishing many hitherto inaccessible Bentley was. But he is a genius and classics, thus carrying out an idea cannot be had on demand. Instead implicit in John Erskine's restoration of requiring that every would-be of the thirty years ago scholar should follow him in his goals on Columbia campus. But the Chicago and ways, we can require and we can set of books will still not fill the need train for high competence in other I have in mind, and the obvious scholarly duties, which are all the remedy is that we should set our more urgent because they find us graduate students to editing works unprepared. that are out of print and urge our Even leaving aside the masses who university presses to publish them. read, the ever enlarging school popula- I need hardly add that this suggestion tion in college has made the accurate should not be administered as a com- transmitting of information a feat pulsion but as a scholarly choice to be whose difficulty the layman can encouraged only while the need lasts. scarcely realize. It is not only that In the same spirit and for a we need more teachers and more kindred reason, we should encourage books; we need superior teachers and co-ordinated effort among mature superior books, to counteract the scholars. We are all familiar with blurring effect of large numbers. The the series of volumes by different nub of the problem lies in the very hands, and with symposiums uniting word "diffusion." To prevent higher various points of view. An extension education from becoming diffuse by of the idea would help fill the lament- being diffused, we must have graduate able gaps in our store of general and undergraduate teachers who are scholarly books, which every worker scholars in the essential sense-cor- is aware of in his field. A single rectors of confusion, transmitters of university or a regional group could what they know, and not parrots of offer its guidance on a given subject to dead verbalisms. The first type of writers everywhere, and through its scholar in demand, then, is the presses could begin to supply the scholarly teacher and scholarly writer educated world with a meaningful of textbooks. collection of authoritative works, in place of the usual helter-skelter annual UT behind this obvious need list of books, which differ in depth there is the prerequisite of putting and breadth and which sometimes scholarlyB matter in motion. As I duplicate others accidentally obscured. consider one field with which I am A plan of this sort has been adopted at familiar, I am struck by the deficient Princeton, to whose press we owe our circulation of truth within the body knowledge of Kierkegaard as well academic. To take the simplest case as the chief works on Naval history of want, we need many of the great and strategy. books of the western world in good At this point I can foresee an JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION objection that may seem well founded: Columbia faculty. Too much of our "You ask for synthesis, simplification, good scholarship shows a sound core and livelier trade in ideas, and yet of truth,ringed about by old prejudices you propose the editing and writing in the form of casual comment or of more books that add nothing new." comparison which is drawn from The answer is that in a healthy state so-called educated opinion. In a sense, of scholarship, books should not only the individual scholar is not at fault, procreate but also kill off one another. since he cannot make a lifelong study The well-edited text gets rid of of every minor topic in his book. clumsy secondhand accounts; the What he needs is a guide to the good general treatment displaces fifty surest views, superseding what he verbose dissertations. This is so desir- himself learnt at college years before. able that, short of stifling minority To put it another way, the scholar opinions, the pruning must go on by owes a duty not solely to his subject, conscious effort. It is not enough to nor yet to his fellow specialists, but to let a fine work make its way: at that all scholars in all fields, who are rate the cultural lag is about thirty collectively the guardians and purifiers years. Scholarship must act as its own of every tradition. clearinghouse-or else consent to be known as a rummage shop. An 0 FAR I have suggested simple excellent clearing device used in devices, mere mechanical aids, to French scholarship before the war Sbe used or adapted as judgment consisted of small brochures of a dictates. But another reform is called hundred pages or less, entitled "Pres- for, more difficult both to describe ent State of Scholarship Concern- and to carry out. It might be stated ~ng----- > 2 whatever the subject as the obligation to translate fact into might be. Supplemented by articles truth. The great scholars of the of the same sort, such regular publica- seventies and eighties from whom we tions would serve as portable registry are descended made factual accuracy offices for new knowledge. They and the sifting of testimony the would lessen both delay and confusion. scholarly virtues par excellence, and As things stand, the eight or ten they were not wrong. But as we specialists on a given topic easily have seen, this assumed the existence, keep abreast of their subjects, but the ready-made, of all necessary fields of several thousand in contiguous fields study. It assumed, besides, some- ignore for a decade the results acknowl- thing which is the object of my edged by the handful. I need only present concern, namely, the pos- cite the references to Rousseau or session by students and readers of Nietzsche which are found in scholarly considerable knowledge, derived from works that do not deal primarily with a certain upbringing, a certain way of these two men. These references are life, a certain class consciousness, almost invariably false, though penned which have altogether disappeared. by scholars, and though the needful Today the absence of that knowledge, corrective exists-about Rousseau, for coupled with the insistence on the example, in the work done twenty scholarly virtues, produces results years ago by E.H. Wright of which I do not hesitate to call THE SCHOLAR IS AN INSTITUTION terrifying. I have already alluded reorienting of the aims of graduate to one such manifestation in speak- instruction, to make it more concrete, ing of press and radio, where so less distant-in some ways less ambi- often factual accuracy exists side by tious, and in all ways more thorough. side with profound and unconscious Graduate students should perhaps misrepresentation. follow more courses in common, and But this dramatic contrast is so perform simpler exercises under guid- little a monopoly of journalism that ance, before attempting what is now examples of it could be found in every expected as research. By adapting grade of printed matter up to the a means recently used at a Kenyon most rarefied scholarship. There is, College summer institute, practicing in short, an accelerating tendency to scholars might be asked, as it were, to use facts, figures, words, and names demonstrate their art, instead of in the stultifying way which was once merely receiving and criticizing the imputed to the medieval schoolmen. hopeful piece of patchwork. When In proportion as its facilities are formal methods break down from a multiplied and its techniques opened lack of continuity in the culture or to all, scholarship is in danger of the tradition, a return to the atelier becoming scholasticism; and the vice system is indicated. of scholasticism is not simply empti- Parallel with this direct training of ness, but the parasitical choking out future scholars must go direct action of living truth. In our day too many by as many scholars as possible upon doctoral and other books present us the culture at large. We have come with a text in which every numerical full circle to our starting point-the statement is correct, and every verbal dissemination, that is, within our statement anchored by a footnote to mass culture, of the scholarly facts, a sound authority, but of which the the scholarly truth, the scholarly total effect is absolute error. It is as outlook, the scholarly feel of the if the author were on a traveling world. This task, like all others, fellowship from the planet Mars, and must remain elective; it must be had not yet learned how earth dwellers chosen by the individual in the light feel and behave. Words are used as of his talents and opportunities. But mere counters, reproduced with a it would be culpable neglect on the Chinese reverence for their original part of scholars as a group if mis- form and punctuation, but with no placed notions of dignity kept the suspicion of what they stand for institution of scholarship from sending or imply. its missionaries even among the Nor can this lack be ascribed to low infidels. Dignity consists in the qual- intelligence or poor technical training. ity of the performance, not in the It is a deficiency in the culture, which category to which the act belongs. technical training has not rectified There is both a dignified way of because, precisely, technique is a polishing boots and an undignified disembodied thing, an abstraction way of receiving an honorary degree. from the practice of art, and not the In practice, American scholars have art itself. Two remedies suggest been quite ready to speak or write for themselves as imperative: one is a a popular audience, but in theory the JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION deed has been considered reprehen- must radically mend our ways. The sible, and certainly not "scholarly earlier analogy with the Church should work." Without question, a large correct our heedlessness. The gospel portion of these popular lectures, is one, but requires many servants. articles, and books have been mere pot- Priest, monk, clerk, missionary are of boiling, but the hack work no more one family with the few to whom it is contaminates the sound populariza- given to be mystic, saint, or theologian. tion than the brilliant textbook con- And the work of all is indispensable taminates the learned article. What to the work of each. we should consider, instead of rating By analogy, we can see that the scholarly purity, is the ways and institution of scholarship must not means of satisfying the vast demand reserve its honors and rewards only for popular enlightenment. This for those who lay claim to the rarest scholarly art must have its technique, merits. The genuine scholar is equally too, though we leave success in it to a scholar whether he is evolving a come by chance. If the amateur hypothesis, tracking down a book, bungles, that is only the more reason unearthing facts, or sharing his results for turning over the task to the high in the dozen ways in which truth can authority. But nothing in his train- be communicated. There is the way ing or environment has prepared him to be a great editor of texts, a great for the enterprise, and he may bungle teacher, a great librarian, or a great it in a different way. A success like popularizer-witness Michael Fara- that achieved by Professor Selig day and . One can Hecht in his last book is not given hardly understand the state of mind to every aspirant. In mourning his which would make one of these death both as scholar and companion, pursuits supremely honorific and we cannot measure our loss solely by remunerative, or rather, one can the shock to our expectations and our understand it most easily as common affections; we must try to measure it snobbery. by imagining the impact of so com- It has sometimes been objected plete a scholar's mind upon his that if a man did not produced printed students-graduate and undergrad- matter of a certain sort he could not uate-upon his colleagues, upon the be known as a true scholar, and would abstract entity known as biophysics, not deserve recognition in a corpora- and upon the unknown many who will tion of scholars, which is what a pick up his book on the atom and university is. The objection would have, even if for a short while, their be sound if all those who so wrote native darkness replaced by his light. gave evidence of scholarly skill, and It is this last sort of scholarly all those otherwise engaged gave influence that we all tend to imagine evidence of scholarly faults. Experi- too feebly. We suppose that because ence denies both generalities even if a mere reader of a mere popularization the term "all" is reduced to "most." is not at once transformed into We shall have to continue judging a physicist, nothing of intellectual scholarly merit individually and not moment has taken place. That is by magical signs. For I do not look where we are wrong; that is where we [Continued on page 4451 REVIEWS The Scholar Is an Institution thirty years ago; we shall be in a fair way to fulfill the destiny which every JACQUES BARZUN scholar takes as his privilege and his [Continuedfrom page 4001 justification. [Vol. XVIII, No. 81 with any greater favor upon the growth within scholarship of an opposition party which would make The Responsibility of the popular teaching or lecturing the State University preferred stock for a quick rise. LEWIS WEBSTER JONES Any denial of the natural diversity of talents is an absurdity, especially in [Continuedfrom page 4061 a milieu where intelligence and not believe that each state should expect blind custom is supposed to rule. strong and decisive leadership from And unless we believe in common that its university administration. Just as the function of scholarship is one and a democratic community expects ex- indivisible, though its modes may be pert leadership from the medical as varied as convenience demands, we officers to whom it has entrusted the shall incur waste through factionalism public health, it has a right to expect at every turn. Only by that agree- far-sighted and courageous leadership ment can we release all the talents in matters concerning education from we need. its university officers. Both func- If scholars with a knack for organ- tions, public health and education, izing materials will freely turn to are delegated to the people most writing textbooks; if those having the qualified to perform them. Both gift of accurate rhetoric will deliver imply a relationship of service, but the classroom lectures and radio not of servility. They must not only broadcasts; if the minute philosophers provide for the needs of the state, but will edit documents and write mono- they must see further than the graphs; if the generalizing minds will average citizen and constantly raise produce the broader syntheses; if the the sights to a higher level of ready pens will enlighten the public aspiration. with vivid restatements of important May I conclude by repeating Pres- truth; if bibliophiles and antiquaries ident Futrall's inspiring definition of will staff libraries and museums and a university: facilitate, as they already do, every A place where men and women of all branch of study and research; and if ranks and conditions of society may come the versatile will combine two or to partake of knowledge, in the discovery more of these activities at choice; and conservation of which the univer- then we shall not only be sure that sities have for centuries had a primary the institution of American scholar- part; a place for the gathering of individ- uals aflame with the desire to extend the ship is a flourishing concern: we shall boundaries of natural science, or to search also be sure that the culture which deep into the , as a means of it serves lives mentally upon some- furthering the happiness and well-being thing better than superstitions, catch- of the race; a place where the technique words, and the fashionable ideas of of the professions may be learned and