The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-11-28
BY ANpREw LANG.

.-. 7.
 Scholarship has no real standing in the American community" This Is the opinion of Prof Munsterberg, stated in the Atlantic Monthly. He adds: srhe foreigner feels at once that great difference between the Ameri- cans and the Europeans" The Bri- ush foreigner, t 1t is any consola- feel no difference. This scholar is, if do not err, an experimental psy- chologist, a scholar in that branch of learning. Now, to many of, us know even by name the experimental psychologists of Britafn7 Prof Nun sterberE remarks that the death of Simon Newcomb "did not bring the slightest ripple of excitement" more interest was taken in the decease of team. MT. Newcomb was "the great est American astronomer" never heard of him before and who is our greatest living astronomer in Eng iand7 <
 The Germans are different; they -grieved the loss of men like Helm- holtx. and Mommsen and virchow" To be just. the deaths of Darwin, of Macaulay. of Froude. and others were not ignored. But they, with the great Germans named. were scholars in
 
 history of Mommsen was "as interest ing as novel" whereas astronomy, except in the hands of the Martian MT. Lowell. is a cold and remote af- fair So Is experimental psyschoiogy, except when 1t comes to crystal gag ing. and. with William James. to mediums and Mrs. Riper At least that iss the general opinion. I myself like Malvolio. think highly of the soul" and of experiments in the scIehce of souls. An3ertca does not. When Mir, James left Harvard there were festivities. which seems odd {. fasting was more to the purpose
 s-In the United States and Germany the scholars are almost exclusively university professoPs, in striking con trast to France and. England, where many of the greatest scholars have always been outside of; the universal ties" Prof. Munsterberg may not be aware that at our universities there are few professors. and that they are rather decorative than utilitarian. Again. one can think of but few English scholars outside of the univer- sities: Grote is the most prominent exception, unless we call Darwin a "scholar," the term Is not commonly applied to him. But 1t is true that the scholar and the man of science are. except historians. best Known by their by-products" lectures fwith magic lanterns), magazine articles. and so on. How can 1t be otherwise How can you expect the public to pora over mathematics and the obscure metaphysics of Homeric grammar, and the Cypro- -Arcadian dialect? The Greeks were an intellectual people. but they. did not ripple with excite ment at the names of Zenodotus and Aristarchus: they put an end to Soc rates, and Theocritus hinself tells us that his own poetry was a drug on the market.
 The Americans cannot give "baron- etcies for the leading scholars,"' as we do. according to Prof. Munsterberg. am not able to remember any scholar who was given a baronetcy for his learning. Scholars, like the little modest girl at the schoof feast, may cry. T asked for nothing and I got nothing" Baronetcies come by asking not by scholarship.
 The scholar, like the poet, "is born to be so,'. he is naturally interested in the disinterested exercises of the mind. It was so in Greece. Nobody in Ionia thought much of Prof. Thales. he was only t'crank," with peculiar opinions about water; was a scholar in the sense Of Prof. Munsterberg. But when he made & corner Tn oil mills, when he struck ile. and pre- vented other people from striking it, Ionia knew no bounds to her admira-