Art principles in literatureDonnelly, Francis P. (Francis Patrick)
Philosophy
Art principles in literature
Donnelly, Francis P. (Francis Patrick)
Aesthetics; Literature
It would not seem to require much argumentation to show the fallacy of
such a theory. Do we not all know that nothing in this world is wholly
automatic? Motion is a function of personality. Perpetual motion in
systems and organizations, that would dispense with personality, is just
as absurd as the same proposal in the physical order. Nothing in this
world will run of itself without personal coöperation. Somewhere there
must be a living, breathing, responsible individual. We may have to
travel a long way to find him, but we shall find him, the man behind the
motion. It is so with machines; it is much more so with organizations and
systems and laws; it is most of all so in education. Latin or German or
physics or anything else without a teacher (cf. catalog of correspondence
schools) are phrases that belong to the language of advertisement which
has omitted from its ethics the chapter on lying. All success, all
interest, all enthusiasm are harvests whose sowing is in a human head or
human heart. Even the universe calls for the constantly applied force
of omnipotence to keep it from disintegrating into nothingness and the
watchfulness of Providence to prevent it from wrecking itself. While
writers on education have been tracing the causes of the decrease of
interest in the classics have they not been overlooking the necessary
factor of personality?
The other depressing effect upon education exercised by the scientific
atmosphere was the insistence upon concrete results, leading likewise
to the elimination of human interest. Science said to every branch
of knowledge, “Collect your data, classify your instances, make your
deductions, enunciate your laws.” The literary classics were bade to
stand and deliver. They had to have data and deductions and laws. Homer
and Virgil, Demosthenes and Cicero became the chosen camping-ground
of the specialists. The pupils that finished the _Iliad_ with a taste
developed, an imagination warmed, a soul uplifted, might be refused
a degree. The pupil who had Homer undergo the surgical operations of
specialism, who had him pigeon-holed, who had him weighed and counted,
was the honor man of the class. He could write an essay on Homeric
Æolisms or Homeric ship-building or Homeric word-building. He knew more
about Homeric pottery than Homeric poetry. What if his heart never beat
faster as he read; what if he was too busy measuring the length of
Homeric swords or analyzing the metal of Homeric armor, to drink in the
imaginative delight of battle, with Homeric peers, “far on the ringing
plains of windy Troy,” he was scientific, he had some concrete results to
show for his schooling, and he was the pet child of the century. Assets
of the mind could not be weighed or measured; his doctor’s dissertation
in his grip could. It contained just twenty-five thousand words, and
weighed one pound and a half, and had a superficial area of about a
hundred square yards.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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