第121章 Chapter 13 Survivals of the Non-Invidious Interest(2 / 3)

The sciences have been intruded into the scholar's discipline from without, not to say from below. It is noticeable that the humanities which have so reluctantly yielded ground to the sciences are pretty uniformly adapted to shape the character of the student in accordance with a traditional self-centred scheme of consumption; a scheme of contemplation and enjoyment of the true, the beautiful, and the good, according to a conventional standard of propriety and excellence, the salient feature of which is leisure -- otium cum dignitate. In language veiled by their own habituation to the archaic, decorous point of view, the spokesmen of the humanities have insisted upon the ideal embodied in the maxim, fruges consumere nati. This attitude should occasion no surprise in the case of schools which are shaped by and rest upon a leisure-class culture.