Thorstein Veblen

“ Saint and sinner alike knew no higher rule than expediency, for this world and the next. And, for that matter, so it still stands with the saint and the sinner, -- who make up much of the commonplace human material in the modern community; although both the saint and the sinner in the modern community carry, largely by shamefaced subreption, an ever increasing side-line of other and more genial interests that have no merit in point of expediency whether for this world or the next. ”

“ But the human propensity for inquiry into things, irrespective of use or expediency, insinuated itself among the expositors of worldly wisdom from the outset; and from the first this quest of idle learning has sought shelter in the university as the only establishment in which it could find a domicile, even on sufferance, and so could achieve that footing of consecutive intellectual enterprise running through successive generations of scholars which is above all else indispensable to the advancement of knowledge. ”

“ With the later advance of culture, as the intellectual interest has gradually displaced the older ideals in men's esteem, and barring a reactionary episode here and there, the university has progressively come to take its place as a seat of the higher learning, a corporation for the pursuit of knowledge ”

“ Professional training and technological work at large have of course not lost ground, either in the volume and the rigour of their requirements or in the application bestowed in their pursuit; but as within the circle of academic interests, these utilitarian disciplines have lost their preferential place and have been pushed to one side; so that the professional and technical schools are now in fact rated as adjuncts rather than as integral constituents of the university corporation. ”

“ As time has passed and as successive cultural mutations have passed over the community, shifting the centre of interest and bringing new ideals of scholarship, and bringing the whole cultural fabric nearer to its modern complexion, those purposes of crass expediency that were of such great moment and were so much a matter of course in earlier academic policy, have insensibly fallen to the rank of incidentals. ”

“ The genesis of the university at large, taken as an institution of civilized life, is an incident of the transition from the barbarian culture of the middle ages to modern times, and its later growth and acquirement of character is an incident of the further growth of modern civilization; and the character of this later growth of the university reflects the bent of modern civilization, as contrasted with the barbarian spirit of things in the mediaeval spiritual world. ”

“ And what had once been incidental, or even an object of surreptitious tolerance in the university, remains today as the only unequivocal duty of the corporation of learning, and stands out as the one characteristic trait without which no establishment can claim rank as a university. ”

“ It is quite feasible to have a university without professional schools and without an undergraduate department; but it is not possible to have one without due provision for that non-utilitarian higher learning about which as a nucleus these utilitarian disciplines cluster. And this in spite of the solicitous endeavours of the professional schools to make good their footing as the substantial core of the corporation. ”

“ It is true that, by historical accident, the university at large has grown out of professional training-schools, primarily schools for training in theology, secondarily in law and medicine. It is also true, in like wise and in like degree, that modern science and scholarship have grown out of the technology of handicraft and the theological philosophy of the schoolmen. ”

“ The university of medieval and early modern times, that is to say the barbarian university, was necessarily given over to the pragmatic, utilitarian disciplines, since that is the nature of barbarism; and the barbarian university is but another, somewhat sublimated, expression of the same barbarian frame of mind. The barbarian culture is pragmatic, utilitarian, worldly wise, and its learning partakes of the same complexion. The barbarian, late or early, is typically an unmitigated pragmatist ”

“ Under the rule of such a cultural ideal the corporation of learning could not well take any avowed stand except as an establishment for utilitarian instruction, the practical expediency of whose work was the sole overt test of its competency. And such it still should continue to be according to the avowed aspirations of the staler commonplace elements in the community today. ”

“ Under this overshadowing barbarian tradition the universities of early modern times started out as an avowed contrivance for indoctrination in the ways and means of salvation, spiritual and temporal, individual and collective, -- in some sort a school of engineering, primarily in divinity, secondarily in law and politics, and presently in medicine and also in the other professions that serve a recognized utilitarian interest. ”

“ And yet so persistent has the spirit of idle curiosity proved to be, and so consonant with the long-term demands even of the laity, that the dissimulation and smuggling-in of disinterested learning has gone on ever more openly and at an ever increasing rate of gain ”

“ Such is the character of institutional growth and change; and in its adaptation to the altered requirements of an altered scheme of culture the university has in this matter been subject to the conditions of institutional growth at large. An institution is, after all, a prevalent habit of thought, and as such it is subject to the conditions and limitations that surround any change in the habitual frame of mind prevalent in the community. ”

“ The historical argument amounts to saying that the universities were founded before modern civilization took on its modern character, before the disinterested pursuit of knowledge had come to take the first place among the ideals of civilized mankind, and that they were established to take care of those interests which were then accounted of first importance, and that this intellectual enterprise in pursuit of disinterested knowledge consequently was not at that time confided to the care of any special establishment or freely avowed as a legitimate interest in its own right. ”

“ By subreption, and by a sophisticated subsumption under some ostensibly practical line of interest and inquiry, it is true, the university men of the earlier time spent much of their best endeavour on matters of disinterested scholarship that had no bearing on any human want more to the point than an idle curiosity ”

“ It is in the more backward communities and schools that the barbarian animus of utilitarianism still maintains itself most nearly intact, whether it touches matters of temporal or of spiritual interest. ”

“ The best of men in that world were not ashamed to avow that a boundless solicitude for their own salvation was their worthiest motive of conduct, and it is plain in all their speculations that they were unable to accept any other motive or sanction as final in any bearing. ”

“ But their philosophy has fallen into the alembic of the idle curiosity and has given rise to a body of modern science, godless and unpractical, that has no intended or even ostensible bearing on the religious fortunes of mankind ”

“ Professionalism and practical serviceability have been gradually crowded into the background of academic interests and overlaid with quasi-utilitarian research -- such as the history of jurisprudence, comparative physiology, and the like. ”

“ They have reached a mature phase of organization, developed a type of personnel and control peculiar to themselves and their special needs, and have in effect come out from under the tutelage of the comprehensive academic organization of which they once in their early days were the substantial core. These schools have more in common among themselves as a class than their class have with the academic aims and methods that characterize the university proper. ”

“ Under the régime of unmitigated pragmatic aims that ruled the earlier days of the European universities, this pursuit of knowledge for its own sake was carried on as a work of scholarly supererogation by men whose ostensibly sole occupation was the promulgation of some accredited line of salutary information. ”

“ They are in fact ready and competent to go on their own recognizances, -- indeed they commonly resent any effective interference or surveillance from the side of the academic corporation of which they nominally continue to be members, and insist on going their own way and arranging their own affairs as they know best. Their connection with the university is superficial and formal at the best, so far as regards any substantial control of their affairs and policy by the university authorities at large ”

“ At the same time these vocational schools have, one with another, progressively taken on more of a distinctive, independent and close-knit structure; an individual corporate existence, autonomous and academically self-sufficient, even in those cases where they most tenaciously hold to their formal connection with the university corporation. ”

“ The all-dominating spiritual trait of those times is that men then made the means of life its end. It is perhaps needless to call to mind that much of this animus still survives in later civilized life, especially in so far as the scheme of civilized life is embodied in the competitive system. ”