The pleasure quickly evaporates, though, when one recalls the stark contrast between that state of affairs and our own day, when it has become verboten even to invoke the generic term man. Seldom if ever have the humanities been in such slack and confused shape as they are now. Everyone knows about the humanities, and most everyone has a vague sense that they are probably a good thing one of those intrinsically good things, like soup kitchens and animal shelters, that decent, civilized folk should feel obliged to support. But in our day such an attitude is little more than a sentimental reflex.
Truth be told, almost nobody has any idea of what the humanities are.
Least of all the practitioners themselves. They tend to regard the term itself with some embarrassment, and if asked to define it, are likely to take the question itself as a hostile or impertinent act, unworthy of a serious response. But this routine may not work much longer. Even intelligent and sympathetic observers are getting dubious about the emperor s wardrobe. The late Robert Nisbet used to tell a story about the academic scientist who was angrily accosted by his humanist colleague for speaking against the humanities at the previous day s faculty meeting.