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I'ARTISAN R£VIEW
For the freedom we have enjoyed - the freedom to know thc human
world as it really is and not mercly as the arena of our temporary passions
- was predicated on a religious conviction that has since crumbled away.
That old and unassuming religion is what Arnold, Eliot, and Lcavis really
had in mind when they wrote of "culture": the gentleness toward the
human world that comes from a sense that we arc safe in it. In place of
this culture a new religious passion roams the world of scholarship, staking
its non-negotiable claims in every area where science has not forbidden its
ingress. The academy has become
J
recruiting ground for new forms of
membership and, however short-lived and ridicu lous the campus group–
puscules may be, it will be hard to save the curriculum from thcir sacred
purpose. For what they require is not knowledge but opinion , and opin–
ion must be shut off from free inquiry in order to become the password of
a group.
Science progresses, and scientific knowledge always grows. But
knowledge of the human heart is more easily lost than won.
It
is the duty
of thc tcacher to pass on what he knows, even whcn only one or two are
ready to receive it. To accept the radical curriculum , I belicve, is to re–
nounce that duty and to connive at the loss of knowledge. This would
matter less, were it not for the fact that the knowledge in question is the
most valuable that we have.
