212
PARTISAN REVIEW
and you will see how the pursuit of relevance is in fact bound to lead in
time to the extinction of knowledge - a failure to pass on what has been
too hastily acquired.
I believe that we should be as impatient with "multi culturalism" as
with the advocates of relevance. For once again, there is a mistaken con–
ception of education being forced on us. The humanities, as these
emerged in the new university of the nineteenth century, were not de–
signed to instill a cu lture. On the contrary, they assumed that the work of
"acculturation" was already complete. Their purpose was to reflect on
culture and the human spirit as expressed in art, history, literature, and
institutions. Naturally, those who passed through the great European and
American universities tended to belong to some branch of Judeo–
Christian civi li zation (though that civilization itself contained myriad
cultures). But their education did not consist in a single-minded scrutiny
of their own moral, religious, or artistic identity. On the contrary, it was
assumed that the closer a matter is to the life of the student, the less im–
partially and instructively could he study it, and the less therefore should it
be a matter of academic concern. Goethe was no part of the curriculum
in Goethe's day, yet what German student refrained from reading him?
Contemporary history was rarely taught, and the principal intellectual
discipline consisted in the study of dead and difficult languages, languages
deemed to be worthy of study precisely because of their supreme useless–
ness.
Reflecting on this, it is obvious how wide of the mark is the charge
that has been leveled against the traditional humanities curriculum .
Our
ancestors studied - and I mean really studied - cultures that were entirely
strange to them. They learned the languages and literatures of Greece and
Rome, came to understand, love, and even worship the pagan gods. They
studied and translated from Hebrew, Sanskrit, and Arabic, and roamed the
world with insatiable curiosity, believing, on the best of grounds, that
nothing human would be alien to them.
It
was second nature
to
the
nineteenth-century graduate to learn the language of a country to which
he traveled, to study its literature, religion, and customs - often to the
extent of "going native," as did so many of the British in India.
In
comparison with those graduates, I can say only that the product of to–
day's supposedly "multicultural" curriculum is depressingly monocultural,
brought up on a mishmash of pop, soap opera, and political sloganizing
whose effect is everywhere the same and everywhere forgettable. Nor
should we overlook the real explanation for the true "multiculturalism"
of the nineteenth-century university, shaped as it was by the cosmopolitan
ideals of the Enlightenment. For Vico and Kant, education should address
itself to the
scnsus communis
of mankind; that which we have in common
