To achieve it Harvard had to stand with bitter determination against
the current sweeping toward the practical, the immediate, the
successful. At the same time it bought its cherished democracy of
thought at the price of social anarchy. The college as a body made
very little effort to protect or to comfort its individuals. It was
assumed that he who came could make his own way; if the way were hard,
so much the better! The triumph would be sweeter. The great
fraternities grew in strength, possibly because there was no
countervailing force issuing from the college itself. But there was
never a determined organized attempt to make the individual life of
the undergraduate happy or comfortable. In its place there was a huge,
inchoate, and tremendously successful attempt to make the intellectual
life of the individual interesting and productive. Each man found his
own; fought to win his place, struggled against loneliness and
despair, and emerged sturdier in spirit, younger and braver and
better. Some fell. They were the waste products of a civilization
which was harsh, selfish in its interests, generous in its
appreciations, a microcosm of life. A pity that some should have to
fall! But it would be a greater pity if for them the battle should
cease. Because the fighting was always fair. The strength which
developed in many a man in his efforts to make a paper, or a club, or
even in qualifying to join some little group of men, was often the
basis of a successful life. With it came an intensification of
personality; the absence of a set type made the suppression of the
individual at Harvard almost impossible. I am certain that no one with
a personality worth preserving ever lost it there.
I wonder whether those who speak and write about democracy at our
colleges ever realize the importance of this intellectual freedom. Mr.
Owen Johnson is not unconscious of it, yet his whole attack upon the
colleges, practically unchallenged, was on account of their lack of
social democracy. It is considered a dreadful thing among us that rich
A should not want to talk to poor B; but it would never occur to us to
be shocked if they had nothing to say to each other except small talk
about baseball or shop talk about courses. And if the choice is
between social promiscuity and intellectual freedom, we must say, “Let
their ways be apart eternally, so long as they are free.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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