History of a literary radical, and other essays

by Randolph Silliman Bourne

Impeccable as is his critical taste where the classics are concerned, he is reluctant about giving his opinion to those students who come for a clue through the current literary maze. Stevenson was early canonized, and the Professor speaks with charm and fulness upon him, but G. B. S. and Galsworthy must wait. “Time, perhaps,” says the Professor, “will put the seal of approval upon them. Meanwhile our judgment can be only tentative.” His fine objectivity is shown in those lists of the hundred best books of the year which he is sometimes asked to compile for the Sunday newspapers. Rarely does a new author, never does a young author, appear among them. Scholarly criticism, the Professor feels, can scarcely be too cautious.

The Professor’s inspiring influence upon his students, however, is not confined to his courses. He has formed a little literary society in the college, which meets weekly to discuss with him the larger cultural issues of the time. Lately he has become interested in philosophy. “In my day,” he once told me, “we young literary men did not study philosophy.” But now, professor that he is, he goes to sit at the feet of the great metaphysicians of his college. He has been immensely stirred by the social and moral awakening of recent years. He willingly allows discussions of socialism in his little society, but is inclined to deprecate the fanaticism of college men who lose their sense of proportion on social questions. But in his open-mindedness to radical thought he is an inspiration to all who meet him. To be radical, he tells his boys, is a necessary part of experience. In professorial circles he is looked upon as a veritable revolutionist, for he encourages the discussion of vital questions even in the classroom. Questions such as evolution, capital punishment, free thought, protection and education of women, furnish the themes for composition. And from the essays of the masters—Macaulay, Huxley, John Stuart Mill and Matthew Arnold—come the great arguments as freshly and as vitally as of yore. Literature, says the Professor, is not merely language; it is ideas. We must above all, he says, teach our undergraduates to think.

Although the Professor is thus responsive to the best radicalisms of the day, he does not let their shock break the sacred chalice of the past. He is deeply interested in the religious life of his college. A devout Episcopalian, he deplores the callousness of the present generation towards the immemorial beauty of ritual and dogma. The empty seats of the college chapel fill him with dismay. One of his most beautiful poems pictures his poignant sensations as he comes from a quiet hour within its dim, organ-haunted shadows out into the sunlight, where the careless athletes are running bare-leggedly past him, unmindful of the eternal things.

I think I like the Professor best in his study at home, when he talks on art and life with one or two respectful students. On the wall is a framed autograph of Wordsworth, picked up in some London bookshop; and a framed letter of appreciation from Richard Watson Gilder. On the table stands a richly-bound volume of “Ganymede” with some of the very manuscripts, as he has shown us, bound in among the leaves. His deep and measured voice flows pleasantly on in anecdotes of the Authors’ Club, or reminiscences of the golden past. As one listens, the glamor steals upon one. This is the literary life, grave, respected, serene. All else is hectic rush, modern ideas a futile babel. It is men like the Professor who keep the luster of scholarship bright, who hold true the life of the scholar and the gentleman as it was lived of old. In a world of change he keeps the faith pure.

ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS

When Dr. Alexander Mackintosh Butcher was elected to the presidency of Pluribus University ten years ago, there was general agreement that in selecting a man who was not only a distinguished educator but an executive of marked business ability the trustees had done honor to themselves and their university as well as to the new president. For Dr. Butcher had that peculiar genius which would have made him as successful in Wall Street or in a governor’s chair as in the classroom. Every alumnus of Pluribus knows the story told of the young Alexander Mackintosh Butcher, standing at the age of twenty-two at the threshold of a career. Eager, energetic, with a brilliant scholastic record behind him, it was difficult to decide into what profession he should throw his powerful talents. To his beloved and aged president the young man went for counsel. “My boy,” said the good old man, “remember that no profession offers nobler opportunities for service to humanity than that of education.” And what should he teach? “Philosophy is the noblest study of man.” And a professor of philosophy the young Butcher speedily became.

Those who were so fortunate as to study philosophy under him at Pluribus will never forget how uncompromisingly he preached absolute idealism, the Good, the True and the Beautiful, or how witheringly he excoriated the mushroom philosophies which were springing up to challenge the eternal verities. I have heard his old students remark the secret anguish which must have been his when later, as president of the university, he was compelled to entertain the famous Swiss philosopher, Monsfilius, whose alluring empiricism was taking the philosophic world by storm.

Dr. Butcher’s philosophic acuteness is only equaled by his political rectitude. Indeed, it is as philosopher-politician that he holds the unique place he does in our American life, injecting into the petty issues of the political arena the immutable principles of Truth. Early conscious of his duty as a man and a citizen, he joined the historic party which had earned the eternal allegiance of the nation by rescuing it from slavery. By faithful service to the chiefs of his state organization, first under the powerful Flatt, and later under the well-known Harnes, himself college-bred and a political philosopher of no mean merit, the young Dr. Butcher worked his way up through ward captain to the position of district leader. The practical example of Dr. Butcher, the scholar and educator, leaving the peace of his academic shades to carry the banner in the service of his party ideals of Prosperity and Protection has been an inspiration to thousands of educated men in these days of civic cowardice. When, three years ago, his long and faithful services were rewarded by the honor of second place on the Presidential ticket which swept the great states of Mormonia and Green Mountain, there were none of his friends and admirers who felt that the distinction was undeserved.

President Butcher is frequently called into the councils of the party whenever there are resolutions to be drawn up or statements of philosophic principle to be issued. He is in great demand also as chairman of state conventions, which his rare academic distinction lifts far above the usual level of such affairs. It was at one of these conventions that he made the memorable speech in which he drew the analogy between the immutability of Anglo-Saxon political institutions and the multiplication table. To the applause of the keen and hard-headed business men and lawyers who sat as delegates under him, he scored with matchless satire the idea of progress in politics, and demonstrated to their complete satisfaction that it was as absurd to tinker with the fundamentals of our political system as it would be to construct a new arithmetic. In such characteristic wisdom we have the intellectual caliber of the man.

This brilliant and profound address came only as the fruit of a lifetime of thought on political philosophy. President Butcher’s treatise on “Why We Should Never Change Any Form of Government” has been worth more to thoughtful men than thousands of sermons on civic righteousness. No one who has ever heard President Butcher’s rotund voice discuss in a public address “those ideas and practices which have been tried and tested by a thousand years of experience” will ever allow his mind to dwell again on the progressive and disintegrating tendencies of the day, nor will he have the heart again to challenge on any subject the “decent respect for the common opinions of mankind.”