From Literature and the American College: Essays in Defense of the Humanities (1908)

Abstract

It is related of Darwin that after a morning of hard work in his study he was wont to come out into the drawing-room and rest on the sofa while listening to a novel read aloud. This anecdote may serve as a symbol not only of the scientific attitude toward literature, but of the place that literature is coming to occupy in life. The modern man reserves his serious energy for science or sociology or finance. What he looks for when he turns to pure literature is a soothing and mildly narcotic effect. Many people, of course, do not seek in books even the solace of their idle moments, but leave art and literature to women. “Poetry,” as Lofty says, speaking for men of business, “is a pretty thing enough for our wives and daughters, but not for us.” In the educational institutions, especially the large universities of the Middle West, the men flock into the courses on science, the women affect the courses in literature. The literary courses, indeed, are known in some of these institutions as “sissy” courses. The man who took literature too seriously would be suspected of effeminacy. The really virile thing is to be an electrical engineer. One already sees the time when the typical teacher of literature will be some young dilettante who will interpret Keats and Shelley to a class of girls. As it is, the more vigorous and pushing teachers of language feel that they must assert their manhood by philological research. At bottom they agree with the scientist—and the dilettante—in seeing in literature the source not of a law of life, but of more or less agreeable personal impressions.

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