The Bismarck tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, N.D.) 1916-current, 1924-12-26
SOLELY CULTURAL
New York Times)

tNeW IOfk llfneS)
RefutinP an early prediction, the
West has encountered difficulty in
making culture hum. From the Uni
Versity of Michigan, Professor X. c.
ANGEL lamentS that college no
longer is solely a place for those who
wish to become cultured" But his
woe is only "a plaintive idyll compared
TO the tragic gloom which emanates
from the University of Minnesota.
Through the pages Of The American
Mercury, Richard Burton asks Why
Go to College and finds no answer.
Professor Burton is for a process
Of wholesale exclusion. His heart is
hardened against the gentleman
loafer," the picturesque, butterfly
type Of student" That was to be ex-
pected. More significant is his dia-
tribe against the dig, the grind, the
shark, the poler, the swatter-- "the
word varies, the genus is the same"
This faithful plodder, this monster
Of "machlne-like assiduity," he de-
scribes as "a monument of misap-
piled energy" as Il "yOung man or
woman of mediocre or worse calibre
who lacks initiative, personality and
that creative energy which translates
curiosity in learning into genuine
performance" And he hurls him
headlong from the haunts of the
Muses. together with the painted,
fluttering butterfly.
One wonders just who will be left
The answer brings the tragic curtain
of the fifth act. On the one hand
Professor Burton excludes the young
men of family and breeding who
take college as matter Of course
because their predecessors did," ad
on the other he is even more down
upon "those who go to college, not
because their parents did, but be-
cause they did not" Thus nobody
remains but the Faculty. For such
an institution, solely cultural, there
exists happy precedent. All Souls
College at Oxford is inhabited only
by dons, except that they have four
or five "sch GLARS "-undergraduates
who do the chapel business for them.
1t may seem to be a self-limited par
adise, doomed to extinction. But
there are nineteen other colleges,
swarming with sharks and swatters,
with gentlemen butterflies and with
youths whose fOrebears went to col
lege or did not, from whose non
cultural activities dons of All Souls
are derived as Il by-product.
From Professor Angeles outgiving
one surmises that college was once
place where young men were not at
all interested in things EXTERNAL"
but deeply interested in everything
vital The ''principal purposes" Of
college life were eagerly embraced,
while the "forms of achieve eflt"
now coveted" were piously scorned,
! namely, places on athletic teams,
editorships of student publications
and presidencies of student organi-
cations" That being the case, there
was no possibility Of the "hero wor-
ship" of athletes, editors and Presi-
| dents which Professor Angel SO
sternly deprecates. One wonders
what Carlyle would say-or Matt
liz" Ehihoiu, VINO uCSCilUCu oAlOIu
SO lovingly as the haunt of young
barbarians all at play. Would they
| have excluded the activities most
, warmly human, native and dynamic
| in young men? Surely there is some
thing to say for the conception Of
culture, of which Professor Burton
| is SO scOrnful, as "a sort Of conta-
gion; you get it by being exposed
| to it,"
Is there, in fine, such a thing as
being SOLELY cultural" sort Of
Typhoid Mary of the Muses.? Or is
culture an OvertOne, u fine essence of
other things-Of personality and in
itiative and creative energy in any
of the great fields of human endea-
vor? Few men have ever been highly
praised for their culture, even col
lege professors, unless they were
first praised for something else.