THE COLLEGE PROFESSOR 277 



to be a thinking study of things. The fact is that it hardly occurs to 

 the college professor to ask what he can do with the means at his dis- 

 posal. The same man who, in his household budget, is careful to ask 

 what he can afford, urges the demands of his department upon grounds 

 of absolute necessity. A two-thousand dollar professor will insist un- 

 blushingly upon a two-hundred-thousand-dollar laboratory. And by 

 dint of urging and begging he may get it. Of course he thinks that 

 his salary will rise to correspond. He is then much chagrined to dis- 

 cover that what might have been added to his salary is needed for the 

 maintenance of his laboratory ; and the responsibility is laid upon " the 

 administration." 



All of this goes to show that, in spite of the theory of " missionary 

 work," the activity of the college professor is not a purely altruistic 

 response to a crying need. To this it may be replied that it is precisely 

 in accordance with the missionary idea to endeavor to create the need. 

 All very true, perhaps, but just this may be claimed for every line of 

 business, for jewelry and millinery as well as for preaching. In fact, 

 "missionary work" is one of the stock-features of the slang of ad- 

 vertising. The real question has to do with the nature and significance 

 of the need you are endeavoring to create, whether it be a need for col- 

 lege life and academic degrees or for culture and serious thinking. 

 Whichever it be, it would be profitable for the college professor to 

 recognize that, like men in other trades and professions, what he is 

 endeavoring to create is at any rate a need for himself. In other words, 

 he, like other men, is aiming to develop a field for his own activity. 

 Now he is none the less to be respected for this. Eather do I think, 

 the more. Nor does this lessen the social value of his work. If his 

 work have a genuine intellectual content, it is bound to be worth while, 

 for others as well as for self. The point of criticism is not that the 

 college professor works for himself, but that his self-seeking is so per- 

 sistently unintelligent ; not that his " missionary work " conceals ulter- 

 ior personal motives, but that these motives are allowed to remain 

 ulterior and to express themselves in ways so ineffectual and so little 

 in accord with the dignity of his profession. 



What the college professor needs, then (paradoxical though it seem), 

 is a self-consciousness of his position. He should make it clear to him- 

 self that, whatever be the social significance of his aims, he is working 

 at the same time, like other men, for the satisfaction of personal ends, 

 among which is included a satisfactory provision for his living. He 

 should then take upon himself the responsibility of doing openly, de- 

 liberately and intelligently what he is now doing covertly and blindly, 

 without cooperation or organization. To this he commits himself by 

 his present attitude. Upon him, then, should rest the responsibility, 

 both of formulating his case and of using the means at his disposal 



