Representative essays in modern thought; a basis for composition

Preface

In presenting this volume to teachers of English composition, the editors realize that it can hardly fail to suffer from the suspicion of novelty which confronts new publications in a conservative educational field. It is hoped, however, that initial distrust of the book because of its novelty will not outlive a fair trial of the methods and materials which it offers. This hope is based upon successful experiment with much of the substance of the volume among students as varied and as cosmopolitan as the undergraduates in Columbia College, and upon the generous and often enthusiastic support that the underlying idea has received from prominent educators throughout the country who have had occasion to pass judgment upon its value.

In the preparation of the collection for classroom use we have prefixed to each essay a brief introductory note intended to give relevant biographical facts and to assist the student to an understanding of the design of the work. In addition, where suggestions as to other material of direct bearing upon the subject under discussion seemed to us to be of value for collateral reading, we have included references to such writings. Some of the authors' footnotes to the essays have been omitted as foreign to the purpose of the book, and others have been supplied wherever the text seemed to require elucidation or interpretation. Our principle has been, however, to restrict the formal teaching apparatus of the volume to the general introduction, and to encumber the selections themselves with the minimum of annotation. In the printing of the essays we have followed accurately the original forms, retaining sub-titles and numbered divisions where these were essential to the logical arrangement of the essay.

This volume includes substantially the essays which, when we first discussed the plan of publication, we chose tentatively iv PREFACE

as the most available for our purpose. That what seemed to us the ideal plan should be brought to completion with scarcely a modification is for us a matter for special gratitude, since any effort to reproduce on an extensive scale writings still in copyright must be conditioned largely upon the generosity of publishers. Our thanks for publishing privileges, therefore, are emphatically more than formal. We have been enabled to use copyright material through the kindness of Mr. Henry James, Jr., Dr. Dole, Mr. Mallock, Professor Hobhouse, Professor Clark, President Hadley, and Mr. Harrison; and by the permission of Messrs. D. Appleton and Company, Henry Holt and Company, Longmans, Green, and Company, John Murray, The Macmillan Company, the American Association for International Conciliation, the Fortnightly Review, the Harvard Theological Review, and the Atlantic Monthly. We desire also to express our acknowledgments to Viscount Morley and Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, and to Macmillan and Company (London), the Popular Science Monthly, the Contemporary Review, and the Edinburgh Co-operative Printing Company Limited.

The task of selecting the essays and preparing the collection for publication has been materially lightened by the friendly cooperation of a number of our colleagues who have interested themselves in the undertaking. We are under special obligation to Professor John Erskine, to whom in large measure the credit for the educational program must be given, and who has aided our work with many helpful suggestions. Others to whom we have been indebted for advice and active interest are Professor Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, Professor Herbert G. Lord, Professor Ashley H. Thorndike, Professor Robert A. Harper, Professor Monroe Smith, Mr. Frederick P. Keppel, Dean of Columbia College, Professor Joseph V. Denney, of Ohio State University, Dr. Carl Van Doren, Mr. John J. Coss, and Dr.

Ernest Stagg Whitin.

H. R. S.

F. H. R.

Columbia University, June, 191 2.

Contents

PAGE

Introduction vii

I. Matthew Arnold : Sweetness and Light . . . i

Introduction

This book has been compiled under the conviction that composition can be taught more effectively with ideas rather than with literary models or set exercises as the point of departure. That this conviction is opposed to some time-honored ideas of composition, the editors are fully aware. They are also aware that most teachers are agreed that the old methods of teaching composition are unsatisfactory ; and it is the prevalence of this opinion which lends support to the belief that a book presenting a new method of handling the subject of composition ought not to be unwelcome, especially if the method has been tried successfully for some time at a representative university.

To many it must seem that one obvious reason for the failure of the older methods to accomplish the best results lies in the inadequacy of the material commonly employed in composition courses. This material usually consists of literary selections, which, for students of the age and training of the average freshman, generally fail to sustain interest ; or it descends to trivialities, in overworking, frequently by the "daily theme" method, the small concerns of school or outside life.

In the behef that a new and more stimulating subject matter was desirable, we endeavored a few years ago at Columbia University to provide material which when used as a basis for composition would serve the purpose of not merely developing a formal accuracy in writing, but of expanding the student's ideas and increasing the number viii INTRODUCTION

of his points of contact with vital questions. In selecting more or less classic approaches to such provinces as biology, philosophy, modern politics, sociology, and practical religion, we relied upon the student's desire to know what fields of knowledge He before him in his academic work, and we relied upon his natural curiosity in questions which, once presented, challenge him, as they challenge everybody, for answers. The only real problems were : first, to find material sufficiently simple and concrete in presentation to insure its fitness for this special period of intellectual development ; and second, to make this material available in a single volume, as naturally the Hbrary facilities were overtaxed to provide a large number of students simultaneously with the required reading.

The result of our experiments with this subject matter at Columbia during the past two years has been an immediate and emphatic response to the stimulating interest of the questions taken up, once the students had adjusted themselves to the idea. There was scarcely an essay in the course which had not an appearance of forbidding profundity, or which did not seem to presuppose a more special knowledge of a particular field than the average freshman has mastered. But if the writing possessed sufficient irritancy to start speculation over the question presented, the initial objection to profundity disappeared and left the student convinced that his own common sense and reasoning powers were sufficient equipment for an approach to any of the subjects offered.

The selection of this series of essays as subject matter for a course in English composition does not necessarily restrict the essays to that use, as the cultural relations of the material are sufficiently broad to adapt it to many educational ends. The important fact is that in our mod-

INTRODUCTION ix

ern college curriculums adequate provision is seldom made for allowing the student's stock of ideas on vital questions an opportunity for better organization and greater expansion, or for orienting him in the field of collegiate studies. Possibly much of the diffuseness and ineffectiveness of the elective system may be traced to this very condition. It may not be the particular province of the English department to remedy these deficiencies, but it seems clear that since teachers of Enghsh are so frequently obhged to go hunting for subject matter, such an opportunity may profitably be accepted, particularly if it serve the purpose of accomplishing two important educational ends at once. With the general and commendable tendency to establish a definite coordination between the various subjects of undergraduate study, however, there can be little question that whether the "course in ideas" is given as philosophy, history, English, or as the growingly popular general culture course, in any event it has a place of profound value in the college curriculum, and is probably most beneficial when presented as one of the first steps in the student's work. A device which experience has shown to be very successful has been followed all but uniformly throughout the present volume. Whenever a problem has been introduced about which " much may be said on both sides," two typical essays, representing the two points of view, have been offered. For this reason Arnold's Sweetness and Light, which upholds the traditional classical culture, is opposed to Huxley's Science and Culture, which defends the viewpoint of modern science. W. K. Clifford's Ethics of Belief, emphasizing scientific skepticism as a moral obligation, is followed by Professor James's Will to Believe, which justifies the acceptance without proof of religious behefs. Huxley's Darwinian essay and Tyndall's Belfast Address, both of which at least suggest a

X INTRODUCTION

materialistic philosophy, are contrasted with Dr. Dole's Truth and Immortality, a reasoned argument for belief in a future life. The two essays on socialism and the two on the present position of women afford similar contrasts in treatment. Such a grouping of mutually opposed constructive ideas is of course emphatically more stimulating both to the imagination and the reason than the presentation of one side of questions which have been historically matters of dispute. In the case of such works, however, as Mr. Mallock's Scientific Bases of Optimism, a criticism of a typically modern philosophical position, and Sir Henry Sumner Maine's Prospects of Popular Government, a British analysis of the institution of democracy, the issues defined are academic rather than popular, and are presented with so much originality and force that they are probably sufficient in themselves to establish the high interest of the questions with which they deal, without the risk of cultivating prejudices. Since this volume may represent a new and unfamiliar educational program to many, a word as to our method of handling these essays as materials for composition may not be out of order. In the first place, it has been our custom to use this reading for the second half of the freshman year, and to prepare the way for this term's work by composition drill during the first term, by impromptu themes written in class and based upon assigned selections that give opportunity for an understanding of the methods of scientific inquiry. An effective method of approach in this first term lies in the use of historical memoirs, autobiography, books of the Bible, and literary works of historical flavor, for the purpose of establishing inductively some primary conceptions of social, political, and moral evolution. A variety of material of this sort will immediately suggest itself : for example, Homer, Sophocles, or iEschylus ; Plutarch's Lives ; the

INTRODUCTION xi

less intricate dialogues of Plato, such as the Protagoras ; Norse sagas — or decently faithful reproductions of their spirit, as Morris's Lovers of Gudrun; parts of CeUini's autobiography ; Chesterfield's Letters, — anything which depicts vividly the influence of custom upon ideas and actions. We have been accustomed to alternate this reading with literary work less familiar to the average student, and generally less in literary pretentiousness than that which his forced preparatory school instruction has brought him to respect — and sometimes to detest — without clear reason. Works of this class might include the more unfamiliar plays of Shakespeare ; simple narrative poems like Wordsworth's Michael and Tennyson's Enoch Arden; the Ingoldshy Legends ; novels which invite discussion, like Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, David Balfour, Sentimental Tommy ; even the less philosophical of the novels of Meredith or Hardy — • The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, or The Mayor of Casterhridge. The effect of this infusion of lighter literature is to eUminate the student's sense of strangeness in a new field by enlarging at the same time his knowledge of a field in which he already feels some degree of acquaintance.

With this foundation, then, established during the first term, we find the student relieved more or less of the tendency to argue and think upon presumptive grounds, and generally receptive to the discussion of questions which touch his inner life and his relations to men and institutions.

In the second term's work we have been accustomed to assign one piece of reading each week, not limiting ourselves to the series of essays printed here — for, once more, this volume merely makes available a number of important essays which are generally inaccessible to a large body of students — but supplementing our special inquiry with maxii INTRODUCTION

terial from the more purely literary field, as it may seem expedient. Large possibilities in this direction may be seen in both the highways and byways of literature of the late nineteenth century, in poems such as Tennyson's In Memoriam, ia modern editorials or magazine articles, in short stories interpretative of life, such as Hardy's Fellow-Townsmen, Stevenson's Ebb Tide, Kipling's Mowgh stories, or in plays of the most modern of moderns, if the student is kept properly aware of the glamour of the cleverly expressed half truth.

On each of our weekly assignments we require impromptu themes of about five hundred words, written in the classroom, upon assigned topics which suggest the saHent points of the work under consideration.^ Every effort is made to encourage the student to think for himself and to state his own position on the questions involved. The usual result is that the student discovers, perhaps for the first time, that he has ideas on questions of rehgion, morals, politics, social conduct, and the like, and develops an interest and fluency in expressing them that have been noticeably absent in his previous compositions. With his interest once aroused and his mind free, the frank dislike of composition work too often inspired by distasteful or trivial subject matter may quickly disappear, as well as the self-consciousness in writing that a

1 The editors have not equipped the essays with suggested topics for themes, beheving that this part of the program should be left to the judgment of the teacher in each case. The kind of topics thought most effective, however, for, say, Clifford's Ethics of Belief, may be indicated by the following: Why I agree (or disagree) with Clifford. Something from my own experience or observation illustrating the fallacy {or the truth) of one of Clifford's contentions.

The idea is that the topics should be of such a nature as to allow the student no opportunity of merely reproducing the argument or substance of the essay, but rather to encourage him to form his own opinions on the questions presented and to give him all possible latitude in expressing them.

INTRODUCTION xiii

too labored application of rhetorical formulas is apt to develop.

The following meeting of the class is taken up with a general discussion of the ideas evolved in the writing ; and in this discussion it is not ordinarily necessary to resort to artificial methods of sustaining interest. Such discussions, which are by their nature free, informal, and even intimate, may frequently be pursued into other hours of meeting; but in many cases the necessities of composition work require attention to matters of form — exclusive of mechanical errors, which we beheve should be treated only in individual conferences — and this must inevitably reduce the time devoted to the "ideas" part of the course. Our program of reading and discussion is obviously best adapted to students whose preparatory training in the principles of composition has been adequate. On the other hand, students whose preparation has been deficient should be segregated in a special section and given instruction adapted to their needs, lest their presence in the regular class hinder the profitable employment of the "course in ideas." In the case of students whose composition is not radically faulty but whose intellectual maturity may be below that of the average freshman, discussion of the fundamental problems in the assignment might very well precede the writing of the themes. In fact, wherever the substance of the assignment is really profound, or its treatment unusually obscure, an attempt at interpretation or at least clarification of the work is to be recommended as introductory to the writing itself. But whether discussion of the essay precedes or follows the writing, the key to effective understanding is discussion founded upon common sense, and free from even an intimation of dogmatic or pedantic assurance.

This suggested program covers a great deal more material xiv INTRODUCTION

than could possibly be utilized to full advantage in a single term's work. We have intimated the extent of the field of choice, however, in the belief that further suggestion mayfacilitate the process of selection for the teacher for whom this program is still only experimental.

It is probably unnecessary to point out that none of the essays in this volume are intended by the editors to represent their judgments upon the issues involved. Whether right or wrong, both conservative and radical points of view have been given. In many cases, however, where a difference of opinion is clearly inevitable, but where the presentation of one side of the question defines the objections that might be urged by the opposition, no effort has been made to adhere to a systematic impartiality. The purpose of the volume is, after all, to encourage the student to form his own opinions upon proper evidence ; and to this end it is not necessary in every instance to offer him a choice of opinions already formulated.

Finally, these essays are in many cases not the last word of technical accuracy or theoretical subtlety. What we have sought, and what we believe we have succeeded in securing in every work offered here, is a stimulating presentation, sufficiently general and dignified in its handling of the apparent truth to lay just claim to permanent esteem, even though, in some cases, later intellectual progress may demonstrate the work to be partially deficient in method or in scientific detail.

REPRESENTATIVE ESSAYS IN MODERN THOUGHT: A BASIS FOR COMPOSITION

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT Matthew Arnold

[Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), son of the famous educator, Dr. Thomas Arnold, is well known as a poet, but more particularly as a critic of literature, religion, politics, and society, and as the foremost apostle of culture and champion of classical education in a scientific and materiahstic age.

The following essay is admirably illustrative of this latter phase of his activity, and is the recognized classic exposition of the humanist point of view. In it Arnold sets forth his ideal of culture as the panacea for the social evils of the time and as the means of attaining a harmonious and equal development of all those powers in man that are essential for perfect human nature. This view of culture underlies Arnold's protest, set forth later in Literature and Science, against the growing movement of the age to exalt the sciences over the humanities in education. Arnold, while not bhnd to the importance of modern scientific truth, maintains that the pursuit of science tends toward a one-sided development and leaves man with the greater part of his nature unawakened and as unprepared as ever for the practical duty of living a harmonious, well balanced, and perfected human life, which the study of the classics and the old humanities alone can bring about. This contention is answered in the next selection by Huxley, who upholds the cultural and educational value of the physical sciences.

Sweetness and Light was delivered as Arnold's last lecture in the chair of poetry at Oxford, and first appeared in the Cornhill Magazine for July, 1867, under the title Culture and Its Etiemies. In 1869 it was pubhshed in book form as the opening chapter of the volume Culture and Anarchy.]

The disparagers of culture make its motive curiosity; sometimes, indeed, they make its motive mere exclusiveness and vanity. The culture which is supposed to plume itself on a smattering of Greek and Latin is a culture which is begotten by nothing so intellectual as curiosity ; it is valued either out of sheer vanity and ignorance or else as an engine of social and class distinction, separating its holder, like a badge or title, from other people who have not got it. No serious man would call this culture, or attach any value to it, as culture, at all. To find the real ground for the very differing estimate which serious people will set upon culture, we must find some motive for culture in the terms of which may lie a real ambiguity ; and such a motive the word curiosity gives us.

I have before now pointed out that we English do not, like the foreigners, use this word in a good sense as well as in a bad sense. With us the word is always used in a somewhat disapproving sense. A liberal and intelligent eagerness about the things of the mind may be meant by a foreigner when he speaks of curiosity, but with us the word always conveys a certain notion of frivolous and unedifying activity. In the Quarterly Review, some little time ago, was an estimate of the celebrated French critic, M. Sainte-Beuve, and a very inadequate estimate it in my judgment was. And its inadequacy consisted chiefly in this : that in our EngUsh way it left out of sight the double sense really involved in the word curiosity, thinking enough was said to stamp M. Sainte-Beuve with blame if it was said that he was impelled in his operations as a critic by curiosity, and omitting either to perceive that M. Sainte-Beuve himself, and many other people with him, would consider that this was praiseworthy and not blameworthy, or to point out why it ought really to be accounted worthy of blame and not of praise. For as there is a curiosity about intellectual matters which is futile, and merely a disease, so there is certainly a curiosity, — a desire after the things of the mind simply for their own sakes and for the pleasure of seeing them as they are, — which is, in an intelligent being, natural and laudable. Nay, and the very desire to see things as they are implies a balance and regulation of mind which is not often attained without fruitful effort, and which is the very opposite of the blind and diseased impulse of mind which is what we mean to blame when we blame curiosity. Montesquieu says : "The first motive which ought to impel us to study is the desire to augment the excellence of our nature, and to render an intelligent being yet more intelligent." This is the true ground to assign for the genuine scientific passion, however manifested, and for culture, viewed simply as a fruit of this passion ; and it is a worthy ground, even though we let the term curiosity stand to describe it.

But there is of culture another view, in which not solely the scientific passion, the sheer desire to see things as they are, natural and proper in an intelligent being, appears as the ground of it. There is a view in which all the love of our neighbor, the impulses towards action, help, and beneficence, the desire for removing human error, clearing human confusion, and diminishing human misery, the noble aspiration to leave the world better and happier than we found it, — motives eminently such as are called social, — come in as part of the grounds of culture, and the main and preeminent part. Culture is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection ; it is a study of perfection. It moves by the force, not merely or primarily of the scientific passion for pure knowledge, but also of the moral and social passion for doing good. As, in the first view of it, we took for its worthy motto Montesquieu's words : "To render an intelligent being yet more intelligent ! " so, in the second view of it, there is no better motto which it can have than these words of Bishop Wilson : " To make reason and the will of God prevail !"

Only, whereas the passion for doing good is apt to be overhasty in determining what reason and the will of God say, because its turn is for acting rather than thinking and it wants to be beginning to act ; and whereas it is apt to take its own conceptions, which proceed from its own state of development and share in all the imperfections and immaturities of this, for a basis of action ; what distinguishes culture is, that it is possessed by the scientific passion as well as by the passion of doing good ; that it demands worthy notions of reason and the will of God, and does not readily suffer its own crude conceptions to substitute themselves for them. And knowing that no action or institution can be salutary and stable which is not based on reason and the will of God, it is not so bent on acting and instituting, even with the great aim of diminishing human error and misery ever before its thoughts, but that it can remember that acting and instituting are of little use, unless we know how and what we ought to act and to institute.

This culture is more interesting and more far-reaching than that other, which is founded solely on the scientific passion for knowing. But it needs times of faith and ardor, times when the intellectual horizon is opening and widening all round us, to flourish in. And is not the close and bounded intellectual horizon within which we have long lived and moved now lifting up, and are not new lights finding free passage to shine in upon us? For a long time there was no passage for them to make their way in upon us, and then it was of no use to think of adapting the world's action to them. Where was the hope of making reason and the will of God prevail among people who had a routine which they had christened reason and the will of God, in which they were inextricably bound, and beyond which they had no power of looking ? But now the iron force of adhesion to the old routine, — social, political, religious, — has wonderfully yielded ; the iron force of exclusion of all which is new has wonderfully yielded. The danger now is, not that people should obstinately refuse to allow anything but their old routine to pass for reason and the will of God, but either that they should allow some novelty or other to pass for these too easily, or else that they should underrate the importance of them altogether, and think it enough to follow action for its own sake, without troubling themselves to make reason and the will of God prevail therein. Now, then, is the moment for culture to be of service, culture which believes in making reason and the will of God prevail, believes in perfection, is the study and pursuit of perfection, and is no longer debarred, by a rigid, invincible exclusion of whatever is new, from getting acceptance for its ideas, simply because they are new.

The moment this view of culture is seized, the moment it is regarded not solely as the endeavor to see things as they are, to draw towards a knowledge of the universal order which seems to be intended and aimed at in the world, and which it is a man's happiness to go along with or his misery to go counter to, — to learn, in short, the will of God, — the moment, I say, culture is considered not merely as the endeavor to see and learn this, but as the endeavor, also, to make it prevail, the moral, social, and beneficent character of culture becomes manifest. The mere endeavor to see and learn the truth for our own personal satisfaction is indeed a commencement for making it prevail, a preparing the way for this, which always serves this, and is wrongly, therefore, stamped with blame absolutely in itself and not only in its caricature and degeneration. But perhaps it has got stamped with blame, and disparaged with the dubious title of curiosity, because in comparison with this wider endeavor of such great and plain utility it looks selfish, petty, and unprofitable.

And religion, the greatest and most important of the efforts by which the human race has manifested its impulse to perfect itself, — religion, that voice of the deepest human experience, — does not only enjoin and sanction the aim which is the great aim of culture, the aim of setting ourselves to ascertain what perfection is and to make it prevail ; but also, in determining generally in what human perfection consists, religion comes to a conclusion identical with that which culture, — seeking the determination of this question through all the voices of human experience which have been heard upon it, of art, science, poetry, philosophy, history, as well as of religion, in order to give a greater fullness and certainty to its solution, — likewise reaches. Religion says : The kingdom of God is within you; and culture, in like manner, places human perfection in an internal condition, in the growth and predominance of our humanity proper, as distinguished from our animality. It places it in the ever increasing efficacy and in the general harmonious expansion of those gifts of thought and feeling which make the peculiar dignity, wealth, and happiness of human nature. As I have said on a former occasion: "It is in making endless additions to itself, in the endless expansion of its powers, in endless growth in wisdom and beauty, that the spirit of the human race finds its ideal. To reach this ideal, culture is an indispensable aid, and that is the true value of culture." Not a having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming, is the character of perfection as culture conceives it ; and here, too, it coincides with religion.