The Scholar Is an Institution Jacques Barzun the Journal Of
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The Scholar Is an Institution Jacques Barzun The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 18, No. 8. (Nov., 1947), pp. 393-400+445. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-1546%28194711%2918%3A8%3C393%3ATSIAI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5 The Journal of Higher Education is currently published by Ohio State University Press. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/ohio.press.html. 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For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. 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 history 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- science, 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.