The Duty of the Humanists

W X rE HUMANISTS, shaking our heads sadly over the fact that the humanities are not granted the respect they once had in the educational world, are inclined at times to blame everyone but ourselves. We fortify ourselves within our own snobbery, hold on defiantly to the little corner of education into which we have been crowded, and almost dare anyone to develop the sensitivity required to appreciate our work. We are inclined to divide the world into Humanists and Othermen, and to consider that the elect inevitably will appreciate the humanities and that to talk to Othermen is useless. We have almost entirely given up the idea that the humanities should be for everyone, and remind ourselves that some great humanistic writings do assert that most men are somehow not of such fine clay as humanists and their like, and incapable, therefore, of responding to life's best experiences. When every educated man was educated in the humanities, not everyone was educated. Now that all are being educated, they are not all educated in the humanities. Many humanists, in fact, explain the fall of the humanities from their once high place as the inevitable result of broadening the base of those to be educated. Since not everyone is human, in the finer sense of the word, it is ridiculous to expect that all will respond to the humanities simply because they are held captive in a school for several years. Othermen inevitably demand coarser fare. This attitude is causing a forfeiture of much service that the humanities ought to be giving the world. Surely, in at least some of the finer senses of the word, Othermen are human. Certainly, they will not respond to all of the most profound, the most penetrating, the most moving of what great men have left to us of their experiences. Neither does

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