III
So much for a consensus of some of our notable instructors of the public on things political and social. That these opinions produce a powerful influence on the mass, no one will deny. The wide respect in which our teachers—particularly our commissioned teachers—are held; the general recognition of their learning, their profundity, their unquestioned liberty to speak what they will, their insulated freedom from the influences arising out of seigniorial endowments, compel a popular deference to their judgments. It is, therefore, with pained surprise that an American reads an uncharitable comment on their ability and learning. Such a comment is that which appeared last February in the conservative and ably edited Paris Temps. “It is true,” writes its editor, “that American universities pay great attention to social and political sciences. It is no less true that they have at their disposal considerable financial resources for the publication of reviews. But the question is to know what the reviews and teachings are worth.... I believe myself sufficiently conversant with the matter. By professional duty I read, not everything which is printed on the other side of the Atlantic concerning these subjects, but a notable part of the work which is considered the most weighty. With a few honorable exceptions—honorable, but rare—I must venture to say that these publications are, for the most part, without originality and without any real value.
“I imagine American professors will be the first to feel surprise at the great honor [the establishment of a French school in America] which it is proposed to do them. They have a very keen feeling of what they owe to European culture. They keep in close touch with all that is published in their respective specialties in France, Germany, England, and Italy. They profit by such publications, of which their own are sometimes—let us say things as they are—only adaptations or reflections. Many of them have had their intellectual training in old Europe, and had, at their start, no other ambition than to model themselves on their masters and repeat them. The development of social and political studies is immense—on the surface—in the United States. In depth it is not quite the same.”
The Temps, it may be remarked, is not, on the one hand, radical, nor on the other, anti-democratic or anti-American; and so the reasons for its illiberal and discourteous judgment must be left undiscerned. Its startling declaration, that the sociological pronouncements of our distinguished teachers “are, for the most part, without originality and without any real value,” rises to the dignity of a national affront, and rightly calls for emphatic action from our strenuous State Department.