The Unpopular Review, Number 19: July-December 1918Various
History
The Unpopular Review, Number 19: July-December 1918
Various
American periodicals
In seven out of ten of the text-books of the classics edited for college
use, the notes are written, not for freshmen and sophomores, but for
those who have already attained or are going to attain the degree of
doctor of philosophy, a degree that was first made in Germany. This
blight of the doctor's degree has invaded not only our courses in the
classics, but every course in the university curriculum that can in any
sense be called a humanistic course. It is high time that we form a
solemn procession and make an offering on the altar of Robigo, god or
goddess of the rust.
In the natural and physical sciences we do not resent or criticize
futile experimentation. We are willing that that six hundred and five
futile experiments may be made that the six hundred and sixth may be
successful. We expect this work of experimentation to be more or less
dehumanizing, in its drudgery, that in the end the fruit of the
successful experiment may confer some blessing upon the human family. We
do not protest against a doctor's dissertation in science in which the
results are wholly negative. But we do protest against a doctor's
dissertation in literature or history, which has compelled the _doctor
designatus_ to spend months of his time on some inconsequential subject,
giving him a false perspective and a false sense of proportion that it
will take him years to get rid of in his teaching.
Let it be understood that this protest against the doctor's degree is
not a protest against the length of time that is given to graduate
studies in preparation for teaching. This should be increased rather
than diminished. It is a protest against some of the objects to which
years of graduate study have been devoted under the shadow of the
doctor's degree. It is "a place in the sun" that we are demanding. In
using this phrase "a place in the sun," I am not plagiarizing that one
whom Henry Van Dyke has christened "the damned vulture of Potsdam," but
a far better man, Diogenes of Sinope, who once requested Alexander the
Great to get out of his daylight and give him his place in the sun.
In conclusion let me cite an incident from the life of Zeno, the founder
of Stoicism. It is related that Zeno once asked the oracle what he ought
to do to live in the most excellent way. The reply came back that he
ought to become of the same complexion as the dead. Whereupon he
immediately inferred that he ought to apply himself to reading the books
of the ancients. This is the Zeno who promulgated the doctrines of the
fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, who fashioned the molds in
which the Roman Law and Roman Christianity were cast, who conceived of a
world democracy in which friendship should be the guiding principle, and
in which Greek and barbarian alike should have equal privileges and
equal opportunities for growth.
THE MODERN MEDICINE MAN
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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