The relative prestige of other occupations is determined to a considerable extent by their association with the sporting-life or with the original activities which sport reproduces.Not only the idle landowner, but the yeoman, and in a less degree the tenant farmer, enjoy a social consideration beyond the measure of their pecuniary standing, by virtue of the opportunities for hunting and other sport which they enjoy.Part of the reputation of the military and the naval services is explained by the survival of the barbarian feeling that a life of hazard and rapine contains finer opportunities for physical prowess than a life of productive activity.Though a good deal of this prestige belongs to the glory of 'command' and extends even to a great employer of labour, the glamour of the soldier's, hunter's, sportsman's life hangs in a less degree about all whose occupations, however servile, keep them in close contact with these barbarian activities.Apublican, a professional cricketer, a stud-groom, a gamekeeper, enjoy among their companions a dignity derived from their association with the sporting-life.
§4.If physical recreations thus carry prestige, so in a less degree and in certain grades of society do intellectual recreations.Once a sportsman alone had a claim to be regarded as a gentleman.Only in comparatively modern times did the association of 'a scholar and a gentleman' seem plausible.
Even now prowess of the mind can seldom compete in glory with prowess of the body.The valuation of achievements current in our public-schools persists, though with some abatement, among all sorts and conditions of men.But as mental skill becomes more and more the means of attaining that financial power which is the modern instrument of personal glory, it rises in social esteem.As manners, address, mental ability and knowledge more and more determine personal success, intellectual studies become increasingly reputable.
It might appear at the first sight that the highest reputation would attach to those abilities and studies which had the highest mediate utility for money-making.But here the barbarian standard retains a deflecting influence.To possess money which you have not made still continues to be far more honorific than to make money.For money-making, unless it be by loot or gambling, involves addiction to a business life instead of the life of a leisured gentleman.So it comes to pass that studies are valued more highly as decorative accomplishments than as utilities.A man who can have afforded to expend long years in acquiring skill or knowledge which has no practical use, thereby announces most dramatically his possession, or his father's possession, of an income enabling him to lead the life of an independent gentleman.The scale of culture-values is largely directed by this consideration.Thus not only the choice of subjects but the mode of treatment in the education of the children of the well-to-do is, generally speaking, in inverse ratio to their presumed utility.The place of honour accorded to dead languages is, of course, the most patent example.Great as the merits of Greek and Latin may be for purposes of intellectual and emotional training, their predominance is not mainly determined by their merits, but by the traditional repute which has made them the chosen instruments for a parade of 'useless' culture.Though some attempt is made in recent times to extract from the teaching of the 'classics' the finer qualities of the 'humanities' which they contain, this has involved a revolt against the pure 'scholarship' which sought to exclude even such refined utilities and to confine the study of the classics to a graceful, skilful handling of linguistic forms and a purely superficial treatment of the thought and knowledge contained in the chosen literature.It is significant that even to-day 'culture' primarily continues to imply knowledge of languages and literature as accomplishments, and that, though mathematics and natural sciences enter more largely into the academic curriculum, they continue to rank lower as studies in the education of our wealthy classes.
Most convincing in its testimony to the formation of intellectual values is the treatment of history and modern English literature.Although for all purposes of culture and utility, it might have been supposed that the study of the thought, art, and events of our own nation and our own times, would be of prime importance, virtually no place is given to these subjects.
History and literature, so far as they figure at all, are treated not in relation to the life of to day, but as dead matter.Other subjects of strictly vital utility, such as physiology and hygiene, psychology and sociology, find no place whatever in the general education of our schools and universities, occupying a timid position as 'special' subjects in certain professional courses.
Pedagogues sometimes pretend that this exclusion of 'utility' tests for the subjects and the treatment in our system of education rests upon sound educational principles, in that, ignoring the short-range utilities which a commercial or other 'practical' training desiderates, they contribute to a deeper and a purer training of the intellectual faculties.But having regard to the part played by tradition and ecclesiastical authority in the establishment of present-day educational systems, it cannot be admitted that they have made a serious case for the appraisement of studies according to their human values.Probably our higher education, properly tested, would be found to contain a far larger waste of intellectual 'efficiency'
