The Plastic Age Percy Marks (read full novel txt) 📖

cannot fail to see how far mankind falls below those standards. The result is cynicism, and if he is truly intelligent, the cynicism is kindly. Having learned that man is frail, he expects little of him; therefore, if he judges at all, his judgment is tempered either with humor or with mercy.”

The dozen boys were sprawled lazily in their chairs, their feet resting on the rungs of the chairs before them, but their eyes were fastened keenly on Henley. All that he was saying was of the greatest importance to them. They found comfort in his words, but the comfort raised new doubts, new problems.

“How does that affect college?” Winsor asked.

“It affects it very decidedly,” Henley replied. “You haven’t become true cynics yet; you expect too much of college. You forget that the men who run the college and the men who attend it are at best human beings, and that means that very much cannot be expected of them. You do worship false gods. I find hope in the fact that you recognize the stuff of which your gods are made. I have great hopes for the American colleges, not because I have any reason to believe that the faculties will become wiser or that the administrations will lead the students to true gods; not at all, but I do think that the students themselves will find a way. They have already abandoned Mammon; at least, the most intelligent have, and I begin to see signs of less adoration for athletics. Athletics, of course, have their place, and some of the students are beginning to find that place. Certainly the alumni haven’t, and I don’t believe that the administrative officers have, either. Just so long as athletes advertise the college, the administrations will coddle them. The undergraduates, however, show signs of frowning on professionalism, and the stupid athlete is rapidly losing his prestige. An athlete has to show something more than brawn to be a hero among his fellows nowadays.”

He paused, and Pudge spoke up. “Perhaps you are right,” he said, “but I doubt it. Athletics are certainly far more important to us than anything else, and the captain of the football team is always the biggest man in college. But I don’t care particularly about that. What I want to know is how the colleges justify their existence. I don’t see that you have proved that they do.”

“No, I haven’t,” Henley admitted, “and I don’t know that I can prove it. Of course, the colleges aren’t perfect, not by a long way, but as human institutions go, I think they justify their existence. The four years spent at college by an intelligent boy⁠—please notice that I say intelligent⁠—are well spent indeed. They are gloriously worth while. You said that you have had a wonderful time. Not so wonderful as you think. It is a strange feeling that we have about our college years. We all believe that they are years of unalloyed happiness, and the further we leave them behind the more perfect they seem. As a matter of fact, few undergraduates are truly happy. They are going through a period of storm and stress; they are torn by weltschmerz. Show me a nineteen-year-old boy who is perfectly happy and you show me an idiot. I rarely get a cheerful theme except from freshmen. Nine tenths of them are expressions of deep concern and distress. A boy’s college years are the years when he finds out that life isn’t what he thought it, and the finding out is a painful experience. He discovers that he and his fellows are made of very brittle clay: usually he loathes himself; often he loathes his fellows.

“College isn’t the Elysium that it is painted in stories and novels, but I feel sorry for any intelligent man who didn’t have the opportunity to go to college. There is something beautiful about one’s college days, something that one treasures all his life. As we grow older, we forget the hours of storm and stress, the classroom humiliations, the terror of examinations, the awful periods of doubt of God and man⁠—we forget everything but athletic victories, long discussions with friends, campus sings, fraternity life, moonlight on the campus, and everything that is romantic. The sting dies, and the beauty remains.

“Why do men give large sums of money to their colleges when asked? Because they want to help society? Not at all. The average man doesn’t even take that into consideration. He gives the money because he loves his alma mater, because he has beautiful and tender memories of her. No, colleges are far from perfect, tragically far from it, but any institution that commands loyalty and love as colleges do cannot be wholly imperfect. There is a virtue in a college that uninspired administrative officers, stupid professors, and alumni with false ideals cannot kill. At times I tremble for Sanford College; there are times when I swear at it, but I never cease to love it.”

“If you feel that way about college, why did you say those things to us two years ago?” Hugh asked. “Because they were true, all true. I was talking about the undergraduates then, and I could have said much more cutting things and still been on the safe side of the truth. There is, however, another side, and that is what I am trying to give you now⁠—rather incoherently, I know.”

Hugh thought of Cynthia. “I suppose all that you say is true,” he admitted dubiously, “but I can’t feel that college does what it should for us. We are told that we are taught to think, but the minute we bump up against a problem in living we are stumped just as badly as we were when we are freshmen.”

“Oh, no, not at all. You solve problems every day that would have stumped you hopelessly as a freshman. You think better than you did four years ago, but no college, however perfect, can teach you all the solutions of life.