第105章 CHAPTER IV(10)
10. These resulting canons of blameless anility will react on the character of the academic personnel in a two-fold way: negatively and by indirection they work out in an (uncertain but effectual)selective elimination of such persons as are worth while in point of scholarship and initiative; while positively and by direct incitement it results that the tribe of Lo Basswood has been elected to fill the staff with vacancy.
At the same time the case is not unknown, nor is it altogether a chance occurrence, where such an executive with plenary powers, driven to uncommonly fatuous lengths by this calculus of expedient notoriety, and intent on putting a needed patch on the seat of his honour, has endeavoured to save some remnant of good-will among his academic acquaintance by protesting, in strict and confidential privacy, that his course of action taken in conformity with these canons was taken for the sake of popular effect, and not because he did not know better. apparently having by familiar use come to the persuasion that a knave is more to be esteemed than a fool, and overlooking the great ease with which he has been able to combine the two characters.
11. In all fairness it should be noted, as a caution against hasty conclusions, that in both of these cases this initial scholarly intention has been questioned -- or denied -- by men well informed as to the later state of things in either of the two universities in question. And it may as well be admitted without much reservation that the later state of things has carried no broad hint of an initial phase in the life-history of these schools, in which ideals of scholarship were given first consideration. Yet it is to be taken as unequivocal fact that such was the case, in both instances; this is known as an assured matter of memory by men competent to speak from familiar acquaintance with the relevant facts at the time. In both cases, it is only in the outcome, only after the pressure of circumstances has had time to act, that a rounded meretricious policy has taken effect. What has misled hasty and late-come observers in this matter is the relatively very brief --inconspicuously brief -- time interval during which it was found practicable to let the academic policy be guided primarily by scholarly ideals.
12. As a commentary on the force of circumstances and the academic value of the executive office, it is worth noting that, in the case cited, an administration guided by a forceful, ingenious and intrepid personality, initially imbued with scholarly ideals of a sort, has run a course of scarcely interrupted academic decay; while the succeeding reign of astute vacuity and quietism as touches all matters of scholarship and science has, on the whole, and to date, left the university in an increasingly hopeful posture as a seminary of the higher learning. All of which would appear to suggest a parallel with the classic instance of King Stork and King Log, Indeed, at the period of the succession alluded to, the case of these fabled majesties was specifically called to mind by one and another of the academic staff. It would appear that the academic staff will take care of its ostensible work with better effect the less effectually its members are interfered with and suborned by an enterprising captain of erudition.