THE PETERITE VOL. LVIII
MAY, 1966
No. 372
EDITORIAL The tone of voice in which you heard the word "intellectuals" spoken nowadays would indicate the speaker's attitude to the best products of our educational processes: it might show a fear, whether disguised or not, of a more complex capability than his own ("too clever by half"); dislike and distrust of a man who has apparently thought out so rationally principles and convictions so different from his own ("these left-wing intellectuals"); or perhaps a feeling of the impropriety of the arrogance, real or apparent, of certain intelligent people whose main pleasure seems to lie in pulling to pieces and debunking. This academic occupation is in fact nothing new. In 1345 Richard Aungerville wrote: But scholars as a class are commonly not well brought up, and unless they are held in check by the rules of their elders, are puffed up with all sorts of nonsense. They act on impulse, swell with impudence, and lay down the law on one point after another, when, as a matter of fact, they are inexperienced in everything. 150 years ago, Coleridge had this to say about the bright young demolition experts of his own day : Instead of awakening by the noblest models the fond and unmixed love and admiration, which is the natural and graceful temper of early youth, these nurslings of the improved pedagogy are taught to dispute and decide . . . to hold nothing sacred from their contempt but their own contemptible arrogance—boy-graduates in all the technicals, and in all the dirty passions and impudence of anonymous criticism. We know what they mean. It is not that we object to anyone criticising the existing state of things, but we in turn judge the worth of their comments by their manner and motives as well as their apparent knowledge; and if these are self-congratulatory and cynical, we react accordingly. It seems worth pleading that young people should respond more readily with admiration for what are generally reckoned to be the "noblest models", instead of automatic scepticism or outright rejection—with admiration, "the natural and graceful temper of early youth". It is easy enough to smile condescendingly and dismiss with a wave of the hand the Victorians, or those Greeks, or that classical music stuff, or all those statues with holes in the middle, and paintings that don't look look like anything. The result is probably a relieving feeling of simplification, at reducing the number of claims on our attention, and a not-unpleasurable sensation 1
