The Valley of Vision Part 16

"And you agree that this difference exists both in mental and in physical affairs? For example, you would call the foreman of a machine-shop who directed his work in accordance with the natural laws of his material and of his steam or electric power a man of good habits, would you not?"

"Undoubtedly."

"And you would not deny him this name, but would rather emphasize it, if in addition he had the habit of paying regard to the moral and social laws which condition the welfare and efficiency of his workmen; for example, self-control, cheerfulness, honesty, fair play, honor, human kindness, and so on. If he taught these things, not only by word but by deed, you would call him an excellent foreman, would you not?"

"Without a question. That machine-shop would be a great success, a model."

"But suppose your foreman had none of these good mental and moral habits. Suppose he was proud, overbearing, dishonest, unfair, and cruel. Do you not believe he would have a bad influence upon his men? Would not the shop, no matter what kind of work it turned out, become a nest of evil and a menace to its neighbors?"

"It surely would."

"What, then, would you do with the foreman?"

"I would try to teach him better. If that failed, I would discharge him."

"In what method and by what means would you endeavor to teach him?"

"By all the means that I could command. By precept and by example, by warning him of his faults and by showing him better ways, by wholesome books and good company."

"And if he refused to learn; if he remained obstinate; if he mocked you and called you a hypocrite; if he claimed that his way was the best, in fact the only way, divinely inspired, and therefore beyond all criticism, then you would throw him out?"

"Certainly, and quickly! I should regard him as morally insane, and try my best to put him where he could do no more harm. But tell me why this protracted imitation of Socrates? Where are you trying to lead me? Do you want me to say that the German Kaiser is a very bad foreman of his shop; that he has got it into a horrible mess and made it despised and hated by all the other shops; that he ought to be put out? If that is your point, I am with you in advance."

"Right you are!" cried d.i.c.k joyously. "Can the Kaiser! We all agree to that. And here the bout ends, with honors for both sides, and a special prize for the Governor."

The professor smiled, recognizing in the name more affection than disrespect. He leaned forward in his chair, lighting a fresh cigar with gusto.

"Not yet," he said, "O too enthusiastic youth! Our friend here has not yet come to the point at which I was aiming. The application of my remarks to the Kaiser--whom I regard as a gifted paranoiac--is altogether too personal and limited. I was thinking of something larger and more important. Do you give me leave to develop the idea?"

"Fire away, sir," said d.i.c.k.

Hardman nodded his a.s.sent. "I should like very much to hear in what possible way you connect the misconduct of Germany, which I admit, with your idea of the present value of cla.s.sical study, which I question."

"In this way," said the professor earnestly. "Germany has been living for fifty years with a closed mind. Oh, I grant you it was an active mind, scientific, laborious, immensely patient. But it was an ingrowing mind. Sure of its own superiority, it took no counsel with antiquity and scorned the advice of its neighbors. It was intent on producing something entirely new and all its own--a purely German _Kultur_, independent of the past, and irresponsible to any laws except those of Germany's interests and needs. Hence it fell into bad habits of thought and feeling, got into trouble, and brought infinite trouble upon the world."

"And do you claim," interrupted Hardman, "that this would have been prevented by reading the cla.s.sics? Would that have been the only and efficient cure for Germany's disease? Rather a large claim, that!"

"Much too large," replied the professor. "I did not make it. In the first place, it may be that Germany's trouble had gone beyond any cure but the knife. In the second place, I regard the intelligent reading of the Bible and the vital apprehension of the real spirit of Christianity as the best of all cures for mental and moral ills.

All that I claim for the cla.s.sics--the works of the greatest of the Greek and Roman writers--is that they have in them a certain remedial and sanitary quality. They contain n.o.ble thoughts in n.o.ble forms. They show the strength of self-restraint. They breathe the air of clearness and candor. They set forth ideals of character and conduct which are elevating. They also disclose the weakness and the ugliness of things mean and base. They have the broad and generous spirit of the true _literae humaniores._ They reveal the springs of civilization and lead us--

'To the glory that was Greece, To the grandeur that was Rome.'

Now these are precisely the remedies 'indicated,' as the physicians say, for the cure, or at least the mitigation, of the specific bad habits which finally caused the madness of Germany."

"Please tell us, sir," asked d.i.c.k gravely, "how you mean us to take that. Do you really think it would have done any good to those brutes who ravaged Belgium and outraged France to read Tacitus or Virgil or the Greek tragedies? They couldn't have done it, anyhow."

"Probably not," answered the professor, while Hardman sat staring intently into the fire, "probably not. But suppose the leaders and guides of Germany (her masters, in effect, who moulded and _kultured_ the people to serve their nefarious purpose of dominating the world by violence), suppose these masters had really known the meaning and felt the truth of the Greek tragedies, which unveil reckless arrogance--_Hybris_--as the fatal sin, hateful to the G.o.ds and doomed to an inevitable Nemesis. Might not this truth, filtering through the masters to the people, have led them to the abatement of the ruinous pride which sent Germany out to subjugate the other nations in 1914? The egregious General von der Goltz voiced the insane arrogance which made this war when he said, 'The nineteenth century saw a German Empire, the twentieth shall see a German world.'

"Or suppose the Teutonic teachers and pastors had read with understanding and taken to heart the pa.s.sages of Csesar in which he curtly describes the violent and thievish qualities of the ancient Germans--how they spread desolation around them to protect their borders, and encouraged their young men in brigandage in order to keep them in practice. Might not these plain lessons have been used as a warning to the people of modern Germany to discourage their predatory propensities and their habits of devastation and to hold them back from their relapse into the _Schrecklichkeit_ of savage warfare? George Meredith says a good thing in 'Diana of the Crossways': 'Before you can civilize a man, you must first de-barbarize him.' That is the trouble with the Germans, especially their leaders and masters. They have never gotten rid of their fundamental barbarism, the idolatry of might above right.

They have only put on a varnish of civilization.

It cracks and peels off in the heat.

"Take one more ill.u.s.tration. Suppose these German thought-masters and war-lords had really understood and a.s.similated the true greatness of the conception of the old Roman Empire as it is shown, let us say, by Virgil. You remember that splendid pa.s.sage in the Sixth Book of the AEneid where the Romans are called to remember that it is their mission 'to crown Peace with Law, to spare the humbled, and to subdue and tame the proud.' Might not sucn a n.o.ble doctrine have detached the Germans a little from their blind devotion to the Hohenzollern-Hollweg conception of the modern pinchbeck German Empire--a predatory state, greedy to gain new territory but incapable of ruling it when gained, scornful of the rights of smaller peoples, oppressing them when subjugated, as she has oppressed Poland and Schleswig-Holstein and Alsace-Lorraine, a clumsy and exterminating tyrant in her own colonies, as she has shown herself in East and West Africa? I tell you that a vital perception of what the Roman Empire really meant in its palmy days might have been good medicine for Germany. It might have taught her to make herself fit for power before seeking to grasp it."

"Granted, granted," broke in Hardman, impatiently poking the fire.

"You can't say anything about Germany too severe to suit me. Whatever she needed to keep her from committing the criminal blunder of this war, it is certain that she did not get it. The blunder was made and the price must be paid. But what I say now, as I said at the beginning, is that Latin and Greek are dead languages. For us, for the future, for the compet.i.tions of the modern industrial and social era, the cla.s.sics are no good. For a few ornamental persons a knowledge of them may be a pleasing accomplishment. But they are luxuries, not necessaries. They belong to a bygone age. They have nothing to tell us about the things we most need to know--chemistry and physics, engineering and intensive agriculture, the discovery of new forms and applications of power, the organization of labor and the distribution of wealth, the development of mechanical skill and the increase of production--these are the things that we must study. I say they are the only things that will count for success in the new democracy."

"That is what _you_ say," replied Professor De Vries dryly.

"But the wisest men of the world have said something very different.

No democracy ever has survived, or ever will survive, without an aristocracy at the heart of it. Not an aristocracy of birth and privilege, but one of worth and intelligence; not a band of hereditary lords, but a company of well-chosen leaders. Their value will depend not so much upon their technical knowledge and skill as upon the breadth of their mind, the clearness of their thought, the loftiness of their motives, the balance of their judgment, and the strength of their devotion to duty. For the cultivation of these things I say--pardon the apparent contradiction of what _you_ said--I say the study of the cla.s.sics has been and still is of the greatest value."

"What did George Was.h.i.+ngton know about the cla.s.sics?" Hardman interrupted sharply. "He was one of your aristocrats of democracy, I suppose?"

"He was," answered the professor blandly, "and he knew more about the cla.s.sics than, I fear, you do, my dear Hardman. At all events, he understood what was meant when he was called 'the Cincinnatus of the West'--and he lived up to the ideal, otherwise we should have had no American Republic.

"But let us not drop to personalities. What I maintain is that Latin and Greek are not dead languages, because they still convey living thoughts. The real success of a democracy--the production of a finer manhood--depends less upon mechanics than upon morale.

For that the teachings of the cla.s.sics are excellent. They have a bracing and a steadying quality. They instil a sense of order and they inspire a sense of admiration, both of which are needed by the people--especially the plain people--of a sane democracy. The cla.s.sics are fresher, younger, more vital and encouraging than most modern books. They have lessons for us to-day--believe me--great words for the present crisis and the pressing duty of the hour."

"Give us an example," said d.i.c.k; "something cla.s.sic to fit this war."

"I have one at hand," responded the professor promptly. He went to the book-shelves and pulled out a small brown volume with a slip of paper in it. He opened the book at the marked place. "It is from the Eighth Satire of Juvenal, beginning at line 79. I will read the Latin first, and afterward a little version which I made the other day."

The old man rolled the lines out in his sonorous voice, almost chanting:

"'Es...o...b..nus miles, tutor bonus, arbiter idem Integer; ambiguae si quando citabere testis Incertaeque rei, Phalaris licet imperet ut sis Falsus et admoto dictet periuria tauro, _Summum crede nefas, animam praeferre pudori Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.'"_

"Please to translate, sir," said d.i.c.k, copying exactly the professor's cla.s.sroom phrase and manner.

"To gratify my nephew," said the professor, nodding and winking at Hardman. "But, understand, this is not a real translation. It is only a paraphrase. Here it is:

"Be a good soldier, and a guardian just; Likewise an upright judge. Let no one thrust You in a dubious cause to testify, Through fear of tyrant's vengeance, to a lie.

Count it a baseness if your soul prefer Safety above what Honor asks of her: And hold it manly life itself to give, Rather than lose the things for which we live.

It is not half as good as the Latin. But it gives the meaning. How do you like it, Richard?"

"Fine!" answered the young man quickly; "especially the last lines.

They are great." He hesitated slightly, and then went on. "Perhaps I ought to tell you now, sir, that I have signed up and got my papers for the training-school at Madison Barracks. I hope you will not be angry with me."

The old man put both hands on the lad's shoulders and looked at him with a suspicious moisture in his eyes. He swallowed hard a couple of times. You could see the big Adam's apple moving up and down in his wrinkled throat.

"Angry!" he cried. "Why, boy, I love you for it."