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Owen Wister >> Philosophy 4
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PHILOSOPHY 4
A STORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY
BY OWEN WISTER
I
Two frowning boys sat in their tennis flannels beneath the glare of lamp
and gas. Their leather belts were loosened, their soft pink shirts
unbuttoned at the collar. They were listening with gloomy voracity to
the instruction of a third. They sat at a table bared of its customary
sporting ornaments, and from time to time they questioned, sucked their
pencils, and scrawled vigorous, laconic notes. Their necks and faces
shone with the bloom of out-of-doors. Studious concentration was
evidently a painful novelty to their features. Drops of perspiration
came one by one from their matted hair, and their hands dampened the
paper upon which they wrote. The windows stood open wide to the May
darkness, but nothing came in save heat and insects; for spring, being
behind time, was making up with a sultry burst at the end, as a delayed
train makes the last few miles high above schedule speed. Thus it has
been since eight o'clock. Eleven was daintily striking now. Its
diminutive sonority might have belonged to some church-bell far distant
across the Cambridge silence; but it was on a shelf in the room,--a
timepiece of Gallic design, representing Mephistopheles, who caressed
the world in his lap. And as the little strokes boomed, eight--nine--
ten--eleven, the voice of the instructor steadily continued thus:--
"By starting from the Absolute Intelligence, the chief cravings of the
reason, after unity and spirituality, receive due satisfaction.
Something transcending the Objective becomes possible. In the Cogito
the relation of subject and object is implied as the primary condition
of all knowledge. Now, Plato never--"
"Skip Plato," interrupted one of the boys. "You gave us his points
yesterday."
"Yep," assented the other, rattling through the back pages of his notes.
"Got Plato down cold somewhere,--oh, here. He never caught on to the
subjective, any more than the other Greek bucks. Go on to the next
chappie."
"If you gentlemen have mastered the--the Grreek bucks," observed the
instructor, with sleek intonation, "we--"
"Yep," said the second tennis boy, running a rapid judicial eye over his
back notes, "you've put us on to their curves enough. Go on."
The instructor turned a few pages forward in the thick book of his own
neat type-written notes and then resumed,--
"The self-knowledge of matter in motion."
"Skip it," put in the first tennis boy.
"We went to those lectures ourselves," explained the second, whirling
through another dishevelled notebook. "Oh, yes. Hobbes and his gang.
There is only one substance, matter, but it doesn't strictly exist.
Bodies exist. We've got Hobbes. Go on."
The instructor went forward a few pages more in his exhaustive volume.
He had attended all the lectures but three throughout the year, taking
them down in short-hand. Laryngitis had kept him from those three, to
which however, he had sent a stenographic friend so that the chain was
unbroken. He now took up the next philosopher on the list; but his
smooth discourse was, after a short while, rudely shaken. It was the
second tennis boy questioning severely the doctrines imparted.
"So he says color is all your eye, and shape isn't? and substance
isn't?"
"Do you mean he claims," said the first boy, equally resentful, "that if
we were all extinguished the world would still be here, only there'd be
no difference between blue and pink, for instance?"
"The reason is clear," responded the tutor, blandly. He adjusted his
eyeglasses, placed their elastic cord behind his ear, and referred to
his notes. "It is human sight that distinguishes between colors. If
human sight be eliminated from the universe, nothing remains to make the
distinction, and consequently there will be none. Thus also is it with
sounds. If the universe contains no ear to hear the sound, the sound
has no existence."
"Why?" said both the tennis boys at once.
The tutor smiled. "Is it not clear," said he, "that there can be no
sound if it is not heard!"
"No," they both returned, "not in the least clear."
"It's clear enough what he's driving at of course, "pursued the first
boy. "Until the waves of sound or light or what not hit us through our
senses, our brains don't experience the sensations of sound or light or
what not, and so, of course, we can't know about them--not until they
reach us."
"Precisely," said the tutor. He had a suave and slightly alien accent.
"Well, just tell me how that proves a thunder-storm in a desert island
makes no noise."
"If a thing is inaudible--" began the tutor,
"That's mere juggling!" vociferated the boy," That's merely the same
kind of toy-shop brain-trick you gave us out of Greek philosophy
yesterday, They said there was no such thing as motion because at every
instant of time the moving body had to be somewhere, so how could it get
anywhere else? Good Lord! I can make up foolishness like that myself.
For instance: A moving body can never stop. Why? Why, because at every
instant of time it must be going at a certain rate, so how can it ever
get slower? Pooh!" He stopped. He had been gesticulating with one
hand, which he now jammed wrathfully into his pocket.
The tutor must have derived great pleasure from his own smile, for he
prolonged and deepened and variously modified it while his shiny little
calculating eyes travelled from one to the other of his ruddy scholars.
He coughed, consulted his notes, and went through all the paces of
superiority. "I can find nothing about a body's being unable to stop,"
said he, gently. "If logic makes no appeal to you, gentlemen--"
"Oh, bunch!" exclaimed the second tennis boy, in the slang of his
period, which was the early eighties. "Look here. Color has no
existence outside of our brain - that's the idea?"
The tutor bowed.
"And sound hasn't? and smell hasn't? and taste hasn't?"
The tutor had repeated his little bow after each.
"And that's because they depend on our senses? Very well. But he
claims solidity and shape and distance do exist independently of us. If
we all died, they'd he here just the same, though the others wouldn't. A
flower would go on growing, but it would stop smelling. Very well. Now
you tell me how we ascertain solidity. By the touch, don't we? Then, if
there was nobody to touch an object, what then? Seems to me touch is
just as much of a sense as your nose is." (He meant no personality, but
the first boy choked a giggle as the speaker hotly followed up his
thought.)" Seems to me by his reasoning that in a desert island there'd
be nothing it all--smells or shapes--not even an island. Seems to me
that's what you call logic."
The tutor directed his smile at the open window. "Berkeley--" said he.
"By Jove!" said the other boy, not heeding him, "and here's another
point: if color is entirely in my brain, why don't that ink-bottle and
this shirt look alike to me? They ought to. And why don't a Martini
cocktail and a cup of coffee taste the same to my tongue?" "Berkeley,"
attempted the tutor, "demonstrates--"
"Do you mean to say," the boy rushed on, "that there is no eternal
quality in all these things which when it meets my perceptions compels
me to see differences?"
The tutor surveyed his notes. "I can discover no such suggestions here
as you are pleased to make" said he. "But your orriginal researches,"
he continued most obsequiously, "recall our next subject,--Berkeley and
the Idealists." And he smoothed out his notes.
"Let's see," said the second boy, pondering; "I went to two or three
lectures about that time. Berkeley--Berkeley. Didn't he--oh, yes! he
did. He went the whole hog. Nothing's anywhere except in your ideas.
You think the table's there, but it isn't. There isn't any table."
The first boy slapped his leg and lighted a cigarette. "I remember,"
said he. "Amounts to this: If I were to stop thinking about you, you'd
evaporate."
"Which is balls," observed the second boy, judicially, again in the
slang of his period, "and can be proved so. For you're not always
thinking about me, and I've never evaporated once."
The first boy, after a slight wink at the second, addressed the tutor.
"Supposing you were to happen to forget yourself," said he to that sleek
gentleman, "would you evaporate?"
The tutor turned his little eyes doubtfully upon the tennis boys, but
answered, reciting the language of his notes: "The idealistic theory
does not apply to the thinking ego, but to the world of external
phenomena. The world exists in our conception of it.
"Then," said the second boy, "when a thing is inconceivable?"
"It has no existence," replied the tutor, complacently.
"But a billion dollars is inconceivable," retorted the boy. "No mind
can take in a sum of that size; but it exists."
"Put that down! put that down!" shrieked the other boy. "You've struck
something. If we get Berkeley on the paper, I'll run that in." He
wrote rapidly, and then took a turn around the room, frowning as he
walked. "The actuality of a thing," said he, summing his clever
thoughts up, "is not disproved by its being inconceivable. Ideas alone
depend upon thought for their existence. There! Anybody can get off
stuff like that by the yard." He picked up a cork and a foot-rule,
tossed the cork, and sent it flying out of the window with the
foot-rule.
"Skip Berkeley," said the other boy.
"How much more is there?"
"Necessary and accidental truths," answered the tutor, reading the
subjects from his notes. "Hume and the causal law. The duality, or
multiplicity, of the ego."
"The hard-boiled ego," commented the boy the ruler; and he batted a
swooping June-bug into space.
"Sit down, idiot," said his sprightly mate."
Conversation ceased. Instruction went forward. Their pencils worked.
The causal law, etc., went into their condensed notes like Liebig's
extract of beef, and drops of perspiration continued to trickle from
their matted hair.
II
Bertie and Billy were sophomores. They had been alive for twenty years,
and were young. Their tutor was also a sophomore. He too had been
alive for twenty years, but never yet had become young. Bertie and
Billy had colonial names (Rogers, I think, and Schuyler), but the
tutor's name was Oscar Maironi, and he was charging his pupils five
dollars an hour each for his instruction. Do not think this excessive.
Oscar could have tutored a whole class of irresponsibles, and by that
arrangement have earned probably more; but Bertie and Billy had
preempted him on account of his fame or high standing and accuracy, and
they could well afford it. All three sophomores alike had happened to
choose Philosophy 4 as one of their elective courses, and all alike were
now face to face with the Day of Judgment. The final examinations had
begun. Oscar could lay his hand upon his studious heart and await the
Day of Judgment like--I had nearly said a Christian! His notes were
full: Three hundred pages about Zeno and Parmenides and the rest, almost
every word as it had come from the professor's lips. And his memory was
full, too, flowing like a player's lines. With the right cue he could
recite instantly: "An important application of this principle, with
obvious reference to Heracleitos, occurs in Aristotle, who says--" He
could do this with the notes anywhere. I am sure you appreciate Oscar
and his great power of acquiring facts. So he was ready, like the wise
virgins of parable. Bertie and Billy did not put one in mind of virgins:
although they had burned considerable midnight oil, it had not been to
throw light upon Philosophy 4. In them the mere word Heracleitos had
raised a chill no later than yesterday,--the chill of the unknown. They
had not attended the lectures on the "Greek bucks." Indeed, profiting
by their privilege of voluntary recitations, they had dropped in but
seldom on Philosophy 4. These blithe grasshoppers had danced and sung
away the precious storing season, and now that the bleak hour of
examinations was upon them, their waked-up hearts had felt aghast at the
sudden vision of their ignorance. It was on a Monday noon that this
feeling came fully upon them, as they read over the names of the
philosophers. Thursday was the day of the examination. "Who's
Anaxagoras?" Billy had inquired of Bertie. "I'll tell you," said
Bertie, "if you'll tell me who Epicharmos of Kos was." And upon this
they embraced with helpless laughter. Then they reckoned up the hours
left for them to learn Epicharmos of Kos in,--between Monday noon and
Thursday morning at nine,--and their quailing chill increased. A tutor
must be called in at once. So the grasshoppers, having money, sought
out and quickly purchased the ant.
Closeted with Oscar and his notes, they had, as Bertie put it, salted
down the early Greek bucks by seven on Monday evening. By the same
midnight they had, as Billy expressed it, called the turn on Plato.
Tuesday was a second day of concentrated swallowing. Oscar had taken
them through the thought of many centuries. There had been
intermissions for lunch and dinner only; and the weather was exceedingly
hot. The pale-skinned Oscar stood this strain better than the
unaccustomed Bertie and Billy. Their jovial eyes had grown hollow
to-night, although their minds were going gallantly, as you have
probably noticed. Their criticisms, slangy and abrupt, struck the
scholastic Oscar as flippancies which he must indulge, since the pay was
handsome. That these idlers should jump in with doubts and questions
not contained in his sacred notes raised in him feelings betrayed just
once in that remark about "orriginal rresearch."
"Nine--ten--eleven--twelve," went the little timepiece; and Oscar rose.
"Gentlemen," he said, closing the sacred notes, "we have finished the
causal law."
"That's the whole business except the ego racket, isn't it?" said Billy.
"The duality, or multiplicity of the ego remains," Oscar replied.
"Oh, I know its name. It ought to be a soft snap after what we've had."
"Unless it's full of dates and names you've got to know," said Bertie.
"Don't believe it is," Billy answered. "I heard him at it once." (This
meant that Billy had gone to a lecture lately.) "It's all about Who am
I? and How do I do it?" Billy added.
"Hm!" said Bertie. "Hm! Subjective and objective again, I suppose,
only applied to oneself. You see, that table is objective. I can stand
off and judge it. It's outside of me; has nothing to do with me. That's
easy. But my opinion of--well, my--well, anything in my nature--"
"Anger when it's time to get up," suggested Billy.
"An excellent illustration," said Bertie. "That is subjective in me.
Similar to your dislike of water as a beverage. That is subjective in
you. But here comes the twist. I can think of my own anger and judge
it, just as if it were an outside thing, like a table. I can compare it
with itself on different mornings or with other people's anger. And I
trust that you can do the same with your thirst."
"Yes," said Billy; "I recognize that it is greater at times and less at
others."
"Very well, There you are. Duality of the ego."
"Subject and object," said Billy. "Perfectly true, and very queer when
you try to think of it. Wonder how far it goes? Of course, one can
explain the body's being an object to the brain inside it. That's mind
and matter over again. But when my own mind and thought, can become
objects to themselves--I wonder how far that does go?" he broke off
musingly. "What useless stuff!" he ended.
"Gentlemen," said Oscar, who had been listening to them with patient,
Oriental diversion, "I--"
"Oh," said Bertie, remembering him. "Look here. We mustn't keep you
up. We're awfully obliged for the way you are putting us on to this.
You're saving our lives. Ten to-morrow for a grand review of the whole
course."
"And the multiplicity of the ego?" inquired Oscar.
"Oh, I forgot. Well, it's too late tonight. Is it much? Are there
many dates and names and things?"
"It is more of a general inquiry and analysis," replied Oscar. "But it
is forty pages of my notes." And he smiled.
"Well, look here. It would be nice to have to-morrow clear for
review. We're not tired. You leave us your notes and go to bed."
Oscar's hand almost moved to cover and hold his precious property, for
this instinct was the deepest in him. But it did not so move, because
his intelligence controlled his instinct nearly, though not quite,
always. His shiny little eyes, however, became furtive and
antagonistic--something the boys did not at first make out.
Oscar gave himself a moment of silence. "I could not brreak my rule,"
said he then. "I do not ever leave my notes with anybody. Mr.
Woodridge asked for my History 3 notes, and Mr. Bailey wanted my notes
for Fine Arts 1, and I could not let them have them. If Mr. Woodridge
was to hear--"
"But what in the dickens are you afraid of?"
"Well, gentlemen, I would rather not. You would take good care, I know,
but there are sometimes things which happen that we cannot help. One
time a fire--"
At this racial suggestion both boys made the room joyous with mirth.
Oscar stood uneasily contemplating them. He would never be able to
understand them, not as long as he lived, nor they him. When their
mirth Was over he did somewhat better, but it was tardy. You see, he
was not a specimen of the first rank, or he would have said at once what
he said now: "I wish to study my notes a little myself, gentlemen."
"Go along, Oscar, with your inflammable notes, go along!" said Bertie,
in supreme good-humor. "And we'll meet to-morrow at ten--if there
hasn't been a fire--Better keep your notes in the bath, Oscar."
In as much haste as could be made with a good appearance, Oscar buckled
his volume in its leather cover, gathered his hat and pencil, and,
bidding his pupils a very good night, sped smoothly out of the room.
III
Oscar Maironi was very poor. His thin gray suit in summer resembled his
thick gray suit in winter. It does not seem that he had more than two;
but he had a black coat and waistcoat, and a narrow-brimmed, shiny hat
to go with these, and one pair of patent-leather shoes that laced, and
whose long soles curved upward at the toe like the rockers of a
summer-hotel chair. These holiday garments served him in all seasons;
and when you saw him dressed in them, and seated in a car bound for Park
Square, you knew he was going into Boston, where he would read
manuscript essays on Botticelli or Pico della Mirandola, or manuscript
translations of Armenian folksongs; read these to ecstatic, dim-eyed
ladies in Newbury Street, who would pour him cups of tea when it was
over, and speak of his earnestness after he was gone. It did not do the
ladies any harm; but I am not sure that it was the best thing for Oscar.
It helped him feel every day, as he stepped along to recitations with
his elbow clamping his books against his ribs and his heavy black curls
bulging down from his gray slouch hat to his collar, how meritorious he
was compared with Bertie and Billy--with all Berties and Billies. He
may have been. Who shall say? But I will say at once that chewing the
cud of one's own virtue gives a sour stomach.
Bertie's and Billy's parents owned town and country houses in New York.
The parents of Oscar had come over in the steerage. Money filled the
pockets of Bertie and Billy; therefore were their heads empty of money
and full of less cramping thoughts. Oscar had fallen upon the reverse
of this fate. Calculation was his second nature. He had given his
education to himself; he had for its sake toiled, traded, outwitted, and
saved. He had sent himself to college, where most of the hours not
given to education and more education, went to toiling and more toiling,
that he might pay his meagre way through the college world. He had a
cheaper room and ate cheaper meals than was necessary. He tutored, and
he wrote college specials for several newspapers. His chief relaxation
was the praise of the ladies in Newbury Street. These told him of the
future which awaited him, and when they gazed upon his features were put
in mind of the dying Keats. Not that Oscar was going to die in the
least. Life burned strong in him. There were sly times when he took
what he had saved by his cheap meals and room and went to Boston with
it, and for a few hours thoroughly ceased being ascetic. Yet Oscar felt
meritorious when he considered Bertie and Billy; for, like the
socialists, merit with him meant not being able to live as well as your
neighbor. You will think that I have given to Oscar what is familiarly
termed a black eye. But I was once inclined to applaud his struggle for
knowledge, until I studied him close and perceived that his love was not
for the education he was getting. Bertie and Billy loved play for
play's own sake, and in play forgot themselves, like the wholesome young
creatures that they were. Oscar had one love only: through all his days
whatever he might forget, he would remember himself; through all his
days he would make knowledge show that self off. Thank heaven, all the
poor students in Harvard College were not Oscars! I loved some of them
as much as I loved Bertie and Billy. So there is no black eye about it.
Pity Oscar, if you like; but don't be so mushy as to admire him as he
stepped along in the night, holding his notes, full of his knowledge,
thinking of Bertie and Billy, conscious of virtue, and smiling his
smile. They were not conscious of any virtue, were Bertie and Billy,
nor were they smiling. They were solemnly eating up together a box of
handsome strawberries and sucking the juice from their reddened thumbs.
"Rather mean not to make him wait and have some of these after his hard
work on us," said Bertie. "I'd forgotten about them--"
"He ran out before you could remember, anyway," said Billy.
"Wasn't he absurd about his old notes? "Bertie went on, a new
strawberry in his mouth. "We don't need them, though. With to-morrow
we'll get this course down cold."
"Yes, to-morrow," sighed Billy. "It's awful to think of another day of
this kind."
"Horrible," assented Bertie.
"He knows a lot. He's extraordinary," said Billy.
"Yes, he is. He can talk the actual words of the notes. Probably he
could teach the course himself. I don't suppose he buys any
strawberries, even when they get ripe and cheap here. What's the matter
with you?"
Billy had broken suddenly into merriment. "I don't believe Oscar owns a
bath," he explained.
"By Jove! so his notes will burn in spite of everything!" And both of
the tennis boys shrieked foolishly.
Then Billy began taking his clothes off, strewing them in the
window-seat, or anywhere that they happened to drop; and Bertie, after
hitting another cork or two out of the window with the tennis racket,
departed to his own room on another floor and left Billy to immediate
and deep slumber. This was broken for a few moments when Billy's
room-mate returned happy from an excursion which had begun in the
morning.
The room-mate sat on Billy's feet until that gentleman showed
consciousness.
"I've done it, said the room-mate, then.
"The hell you have!"
"You couldn't do it."
"The hell I couldn't!"
"Great dinner."
"The hell it was!"
"Soft-shell crabs, broiled live lobster, salmon, grass-plover,
dough-birds, rum omelette. Bet you five dollars you can't find it."
"Take you. Got to bed." And Billy fell again into deep, immediate
slumber.
The room-mate went out into the sitting room, and noting the signs there
of the hard work which had gone on during his absence, was glad that he
did not take Philosophy 4. He was soon asleep also.
IV
Billy got up early. As he plunged into his cold bath he envied his
room-mate, who could remain at rest indefinitely, while his own hard lot
was hurrying him to prayers and breakfast and Oscar's inexorable notes.
He sighed once more as he looked at the beauty of the new morning and
felt its air upon his cheeks. He and Bertie belonged to the same
club-table, and they met there mournfully over the oatmeal. This very
hour to-morrow would see them eating their last before the examination
in Philosophy 4. And nothing pleasant was going to happen
between,--nothing that they could dwell upon with the slightest
satisfaction. Nor had their sleep entirely refreshed them. Their eyes
were not quite right, and their hair, though it was brushed, showed
fatigue of the nerves in a certain inclination to limpness and disorder.
"Epicharmos of Kos
Was covered with moss,"
remarked Billy.
"Thales and Zeno
Were duffers at keno,"
added Bertie.
In the hours of trial they would often express their education thus.
"Philosophers I have met," murmured Billy, with scorn And they ate
silently for some time.
"There's one thing that's valuable," said Bertie next. "When they
spring those tricks on you about the flying arrow not moving, and all
the rest, and prove it all right by logic, you learn what pure logic
amounts to when it cuts loose from common sense. And Oscar thinks it's
immense. We shocked him."