Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/429

Rh ," whose limbs were stiffened by toil, and whose lives were so destitute of light, we thought the editor of "The Varsity" was about to come forward with some chivalrous scheme for diminishing their burdens and helping the light to penetrate into the dark places. But, no; his cry is, "Keep them down! They can never learn to spell English according to the present rules; so let us see to it that we, the nurslings of culture, the children of light, resist all attempts to introduce any simpler, even though more scientific and more philological, system of spelling. Otherwise what will there be to distinguish us intellectually from those poor, toil-stiffened creatures?" One is tempted to say in reply that, if superiority in the matter of spelling is needed to distinguish men of culture from men destitute of culture, then culture itself must be a very poor and unsubstantial thing. Imagine, for a moment, two men, one of whom has had a university education, while the other has lived such a life of bodily toil that no light has shone into his mind; and then imagine, further, the gentleman of the first part asking that spelling may be kept a difficult and mysterious art, in order that there may be something to distinguish him from his illiterate brother, whose condition, however, he hastens to say, excites his profound sympathy! The thing is most ridiculous; but, in so far as it may be held to indicate the spirit in which university journals are conducted, it has its serious and lamentable aide. A university sustained by public moneys should have as its one great object the rendering of service to the community as a whole. If it can only train a limited class, that class should look upon themselves as trustees for the whole people of the superior advantages their education confers upon them. "Why should public money be spent in making A. B. a particularly intelligent and accomplished man, if he is going to put on fine intellectual airs, and even ask for special protection against the unlettered multitude? In this matter we have not yet got down to "hard pan," but we must get down to it. We are no advocates of a "misty socialism"; but we do not only advocate but demand the strict and scrupulous appropriation of public moneys to public purposes in the very widest sense of the term. To establish a system of intellectual caste is not a public purpose nor a social purpose, but an anti-social one. Let men who want to strut in intellectual broadcloth find their finery for themselves; but when a great educational institution has been established by the aid of public funds, let those who avail themselves of its advantages recognize that they are called to a ministry of public usefulness, and that it is theirs to see that, in some way, the toiling classes get a share of the benefits provided. Never shall we have a society worthy of the name, until those who have—whether in a material or an intellectual sense-are actuated by a sense of duty toward those who have not. When that day comes, we shall not hear it urged, as an argument for the retention of a difficult system of spelling, that it serves as a convenient mode of distinguishing the cultured from the uncultured classes. In that day, too, culture will probably mean something more than the ability to spell. It will be a thing of ideas and of real knowledge, a thing expansive by nature, and in the best sense of the word democratic. We should strongly advise the universities of today to prepare for the new culture of the future, and meantime to do their best to purge themselves thoroughly of that spirit of exclusiveness so plainly manifested in the passage quoted from "The Varsity," and of which it probably would not be difficult to gleam examples in other similar quarters.