Of genius they make no account, for they say that every one is a genius,
more or less. No one is so physically sound that no part of him will be even
a little unsound, and no one is so diseased but that some part of him will
be healthy—so no man is so mentally and morally sound, but that he will
be in part both mad and wicked; and no man is so mad and wicked but he will
be sensible and honourable in part. In like manner there is no genius who
is not also a fool, and no fool who is not also a genius.
When I talked about originality and genius to some gentlemen whom I met at
a supper party given by Mr. Thims in my honour, and said that original thought
ought to be encouraged, I had to eat my words at once. Their view evidently
was that genius was like offences—needs must that it come, but woe unto
that man through whom it comes. A man's business, they hold, is to think
as his neighbours do, for Heaven help him if he thinks good what they count
bad. And really it is hard to see how the Erewhonian theory differs from
our own, for the word "idiot," only means a person who forms his opinions
for himself.
The venerable Professor of Worldly Wisdom, a man verging on eighty but still
hale, spoke to me very seriously on this subject in consequence of the few
words that I had imprudently let fall in defence of genius. He was one of
those who carried most weight in the university, and had the reputation of
having done more perhaps than any other living man to suppress any kind of
originality.
"It is not our business," he said, "to help students to think for themselves.
Surely this is the very last thing which one who wishes them well should
encourage them to do. Our duty is to ensure that they shall think as we do,
or at any rate, as we hold it expedient to say we do." In some respects,
however, he was thought to hold somewhat radical opinions, for he was President
of the Society for the Suppression of Useless Knowledge, and for the Complete
Obliteration of the Past.
As regards the tests that a youth must pass before he can get a degree, I
found that they have no class lists, and discourage anything like competition
among the students; this, indeed, they regard as self-seeking and unneighbourly.
The examinations are conducted by way of papers written by the candidate
on set subjects, some of which are known to him beforehand, while others
are devised with a view of testing his general capacity and savior
faire.
My friend the Professor of Worldly Wisdom
was the terror of the greater number
of students; and, so far as I could judge, he very well might be, for he
had taken his Professorship more seriously than any of the other Professors
had done. I heard of his having plucked one poor fellow for want of sufficient
vagueness in his saving clauses paper. Another was sent down for having written
an article on a scientific subject without having made free enough use of
the words "carefully," "patiently," and "earnestly." One man was refused
a degree for being too often and too seriously in the right, while a few
days before I came a whole batch had been plucked for insufficient distrust
of printed matter.
About this there was just then rather a ferment, for it seems that the Professor
had written an article in the leading university magazine, which was well
known to be by him, and which abounded in all sorts of plausible blunders.
He then set a paper which afforded the examinees an opportunity of repeating
these blunders—which, believing the article to be by their own examiner,
they of course did. The Professor plucked every single one of them, but his
action was considered to have been not quite handsome.
I told them of Homer's noble line to the effect that a man should strive
ever to be foremost and in all things to outvie his peers; but they said
that no wonder the countries in which such a detestable maxim was held in
admiration were always flying at one another's throats.
"Why," asked one Professor, "should a man want to be better than his neighbours?
Let him be thankful if he is no worse."
I ventured feebly to say that I did not see how progress could be made in
any art of science, or indeed in anything at all, without more or less self-seeking, and hence unamiability.
"Of course it cannot," said the Professor, "and therefore we object to progress."
After which there was no more to be said. Later on, however, a young Professor
took me aside and said he did not think I quite understood their views about
progress.
"We like progress," he said, "but it must commend itself to the common sense
of the people. If a man gets to know more than his neighbours he should keep
his knowledge to himself till he has sounded them, and seen whether they
agree, or are likely to agree with him." He said it was as immoral to be
too far in front of one's own age as to lag too far behind it. "If a man
can carry his neighbours with him, he may say what he likes; but if not,
what insult can be more gratuitous than the telling them what they do not
want to know? A man should remember that intellectual over-indulgence is
one of the most insidious and disgraceful forms that excess can take. Granted
that every one should exceed more or less, inasmuch as absolutely perfect
sanity would drive any man mad the moment he reached it, but..."
He was now warming to his subject and I was beginning to wonder how I should
get rid of him, when the party broke up, and though I promised to call on
him before I left, I was unfortunately prevented from doing so.
I have now said enough to give English readers some idea of the strange views
which the Erewhonians hold concerning unreason, hypothetics, and education
generally. In many respects they were sensible enough, but I could not get
over the hypothetics, especially the turning their own good poetry into the
hypothetical language. In the course of my stay I met one youth who told
me that for fourteen years the hypothetical language had been almost the
only thing that he had been taught, although he had never (to his credit,
as it seemed to me) shown the slightest proclivity towards it, while he had
been endowed with not inconsiderable ability for several other branches of
human learning. He assured me that he would never open another hypothetical
book after he had taken his degree, but would follow out the bent of his
own inclinations. This was well enough, but who could give him his fourteen
years back again?
I sometimes wondered how it was that the mischief done was not more clearly
perceptible, and that the young men and women grew up as sensible and goodly
as they did, in spite of the attempts almost deliberately made to warp and
stunt their growth. Some doubtless received damage, from
which they suffered
to their life's end; but many seemed little or none the worse, and some,
almost the better. The reason would seem to be that the natural instinct
of the lads in most cases so absolutely rebelled against their training,
that do what the teachers might they could never get them to pay serious
heed to it. The consequence was that the boys only lost their time, and not
so much of this as might have been expected, for in their hours of leisure
they were actively engaged in exercises and sports which developed their
physical nature, and made them at any rate strong and healthy.
Moreover those who had any special tastes could not be restrained from developing
them: they would learn what they wanted to learn and liked, in spite of obstacles
which seemed rather to urge them on than to discourage them, while for those
who had no special capacity, the loss of time was of comparatively little
moment; but in spite of these alleviations of the mischief, I am sure that
much harm was done to the children of the subwealthy classes, by the system
which passes current among the Erewhonians as education. The poorest children
suffered least—if destruction and death have heard the sound of wisdom,
to a certain extent poverty has done so also.
And yet perhaps, after all, it is better for a country that its seats of
learning should do more to suppress mental growth than to encourage it. Were
it not for a certain priggishness which these
places infuse into so great
a number of their
alumni, genuine work would become dangerously common.
It is essential that by far the greater part of what is said or done in the
world should be so ephemeral as to take itself away quickly; it should keep
good for twenty-four hours, or even twice as long, but it should not be good
enough a week hence to prevent people from going on to something else. No
doubt the marvellous development of journalism in England, as also the fact
that our seats of learning aim rather at fostering mediocrity than anything
higher, is due to our subconscious recognition of the fact that it is even
more necessary to check exuberance of mental development than to encourage
it. There can be no doubt that this is what our academic bodies do, and they
do it the more effectually because they do it only subconsciously. They think
they are advancing healthy mental assimilation and digestion, whereas in
reality they are little better than cancer in the stomach.
Let me return, however, to the Erewhonians.
Nothing surprised me more than to see the occasional flashes of common sense
with which one branch of study or another was lit up, while not a single
ray fell upon so many others. I was particularly struck with this on strolling
into the Art School of the University. Here I found that the course of study
was divided into two branches—the practical and the commercial—no student
being permitted to continue his studies in the actual practise
of the art
he had taken up, unless he made equal progress in its commercial history.
Thus those who were studying painting were examined at frequent intervals
in the prices which all the leading pictures of the last fifty or a hundred
years had realised, and in the fluctuations in their values when (as often
happened) they had been sold and resold three or four times. The artist,
they contend, is a dealer in pictures, and it is as important for him to
learn how to adapt his wares to the market, and to know approximately what
kind of a picture will fetch how much, as it is for him to be able to paint
the picture. This, I suppose, is what the French mean by laying so much stress
upon "values."
As regards the city itself, the more I saw the more enchanted I became. I
dare not trust myself with any description of the exquisite beauty of the
different colleges, and their walks and gardens. Truly in these things alone
there must be a hallowing and refining influence which is in itself half
an education, and which no amount of error can wholly spoil. I was introduced
to many of the Professors, who showed me every hospitality and kindness;
nevertheless I could hardly avoid a sort of suspicion that some of those
whom I was taken to see had been so long engrossed in their own study of
hypothetics that they had become the exact antitheses of the Athenians in
the days of St. Paul; for whereas the Athenians spent their lives in nothing
save to see and to hear some new thing, there
were some here who seemed to
devote themselves to the avoidance of every opinion with which they were
not perfectly familiar, and regarded their own brains as a sort of sanctuary,
to which if an opinion had once resorted, none other was to attack it.
I should warn the reader, however, that I was rarely sure what the men whom
I met while staying with Mr. Thims really meant; for there was no getting
anything out of them if they scented even a suspicion that they might be
what they call "Giving themselves away." As there is hardly any subject on
which this suspicion cannot arise, I found it difficult to get definite opinions
from any of them, except on such subjects as the weather, eating and drinking,
holiday excursions, or games of skill.
If they cannot wriggle out of expressing an opinion of some sort, they will
commonly retail those of some one who has already written upon the subject,
and conclude by saying that though they quite admit that there is an element
of truth in what the writer has said, there are many points on which they
are unable to agree with him. Which these points were, I invariably found
myself unable to determine; indeed, it seemed to be counted the perfection
of scholarship and good breeding among them to have—much less to express—an
opinion on any subject on which it might prove later that they had been mistaken.
The art of sitting gracefully on a fence has never,
I should think, been
brought to greater perfection than at the Erewhonian Colleges of Unreason.
Even when, wriggle as they may, they find themselves pinned down to some
expression of definite opinion, as often as not they will argue in support
of what they perfectly well know to be untrue. I repeatedly met with reviews
and articles even in their best journals, between the lines of which I had
little difficulty in detecting a sense exactly contrary to the one ostensibly
put forward. So well is this understood that a man must be a mere tyro in
the arts of Erewhonian polite society, unless he instinctively suspects a
hidden "yea" in every "nay" that meets him. Granted that it comes to much
the same in the end, for it does not matter whether "yea" is called "yea"
or "nay," so long as it is understood which it is to be; but our own more
direct way of calling a spade a spade, rather than a rake, with the intention
that every one should understand it as a spade, seems more satisfactory.
On the other hand, the Erewhonian system lends itself better to the suppression
of that downrightness which it seems the express aim of Erewhonian philosophy
of discountenance.
However this may be, the fear-of-giving-them-selves-away disease was fatal
to the intelligence of those infected by it, and almost every one at the
College of Unreason had caught it to a greater or less degree. After a few
years atrophy of the opinions invariably supervened, and the
sufferer became
stone dead to everything except the more superficial aspects of those material
objects with which he came most in contact. The expression on the faces of
these people was repellent; they did not, however, seem particularly unhappy,
for they none of them had the faintest idea that they were in reality more
dead then alive. No cure for this disgusting fear-of-giving-themselves-away
disease has yet been discovered.