The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches

by David Starr Jordan

In a recent number of The Dial, Mr. W. P. Reeves tells us the tale, half-humorous, half-allegorical, of the decadence of a scholar. According to this story, one Thomson was a college graduate, full of high notions of the significance of life and the duties and privileges of the scholar. With these ideals he went to Germany, that he might strengthen them and use them for the benefit of his fellow-men. He spent some years in Germany, filling his mind with all that German philosophy could give. Then he came home, to turn his philosophy into action. To do this, he sought a college professorship.

This he found it was not easy to secure. Nobody cared for him or his message. The authority of "wise and sober Germany" was not recognized in the institutions of America, and he found that college professorships were no longer "plums to be picked" by whomsoever should ask for them. The reverence the German professor commands is unknown in America. In Germany, the authority of wise men is supreme. Their words, when they speak, are heard with reverence and attention. In America, wisdom is not wisdom till the common man has examined it and pronounced it to be such. The conclusions of the scholar are revised by the daily newspaper. The readers of these papers care little for messages from Utopia.

No college opened its doors to Thomson, and he saw with dismay that the life before him was one of discomfort and insignificance, his ideals having no exchangeable value in luxuries or comforts. Meanwhile, Thomson's early associates seemed to get on somehow. The world wanted their cheap achievements, though it did not care for him.

Among these associates was one Wilcox, who became a politician, and, though small in abilities and poor in virtues, his influence among men seemed to be unbounded. The young woman who had felt an interest in Thomson's development, and to whom he had read his rejected verses and his uncalled-for philosophy, had joined herself to the Philistines, and yielded to their influence. She had become Wilcox's wife. His friends regarded Thomson's failure as a joke. He must not take himself too seriously, they said. A man should be in touch with his times. "Even Philistia," one said, "has its aesthetic ritual and pageantry." A wise man will not despise this ritual, because Philistinism, after all, is the life of the world.

But Thomson held out. "I pledged my word in Germany," he said, "to teach nothing that I did not believe to be true. I must live up to this pledge." And so he sought for positions, and he failed to find them. Finally, he had a message from a friend that a professorship in a certain institution was vacant. This message said, "Cultivate Wilcox." So, in despair, Thomson began to cultivate Wilcox. He began to feel that Wilcox was a type of the world, a bad world, for which he was not responsible. The world's servant he must be, if he received its wages. When he secured the coveted appointment, through the political pull of Wilcox and the mild kindness of Mrs. Wilcox, he was ready to teach whatever was wanted of him, whether it was truth in Germany or not. He found that he could change his notions of truth. The Wilcox idea was that everything in America is all right just as it is. To this he found it easy to respond. His salary helped him to do so. And at last, the record says, he became "laudator temporis acti," one who praises the times that are past. As such, he took but little part in the times that are to be.

So runs the allegory. How shall it be with you? There are many Thomsons among our scholars. There may be some such among you. When you pass from the world of thought you will find yourself in the world of action. The conditions are not changed, but they seem to be changed. How shall you respond to the seeming difference? Shall you give up the truth of high thinking for the appearance of speedy success? If you do this, it will not be because you are worldly-wise, but because you do not know the world. In your ignorance of men you may sell yourself cheaply.

One must know life before he can know truth. He who will be a leader of men must first have the power to lead himself. The world is selfish and unsympathetic. But it is also sagacious. It rejects as worthless him who suffers decadence when he comes in contact with its vulgar cleverness. The natural man can look the world in the face. The true man will teach truth wherever he is,—not because he has pledged himself in Germany not to teach anything else, but because in teaching truth he is teaching himself. His life thus becomes genuine, and, sooner or later, the world will respond to genuineness in action. The world knows the value of genuineness, and it yields to that force wherever it is felt. "The world is all gates," says Emerson, "all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck."

Thus, in the decadence of Thomson, it was not the times or the world or America that was at fault; it was Thomson himself. He had in him no life of his own. His character, like his microscope, "was made in Germany," and bore not his mark, but the stamp of the German factory. Truth was not made in Germany; and to know or to teach truth there must be a life behind it. The decadence of Thomson was the appearance of the real Thomson from under the axioms and formulae his teachers had given him.

Men do not fail because they are human. They are not human enough. Failure comes from lack of life. Only the man who has formed opinions of his own can have the courage of his convictions. Learning alone does not make a man strong. Strength in life will show itself in helpfulness, will show itself in sympathy, in sacrifice. "Great men," says Emerson, "feel that they are so by renouncing their selfishness and falling back on what is humane. They beat with the pulse and breathe with the lungs of nations."

It is not enough to know truth; one must know men. It is not enough to know men; one must be a man. Only he who can live truth can know it. Only he who can live truth can teach it. "He could talk men over," says Carlyle of Mirabeau, "he could talk men over because he could act men over. At bottom that was it."