This is the impression left on the mind of any observing student by too many of his fellows.They seem all frigid old men;and one pauses to think how such an unnatural state of matters is produced.We feel inclined to blame for it the unfortunate absence of UNIVERSITY FEELING which is so marked a characteristic of our Edinburgh students.Academical interests are so few and far between -students,as students,have so little in common,except a peevish rivalry -there is such an entire want of broad college sympathies and ordinary college friendships,that we fancy that no University in the kingdom is in so poor a plight.Our system is full of anomalies.A,who cut B whilst he was a shabby student,curries sedulously up to him and cudgels his memory for anecdotes about him when he becomes the great so-and-so.Let there be an end of this shy,proud reserve on the one hand,and this shuddering fine ladyism on the other;and we think we shall find both ourselves and the College bettered.Let it be a sufficient reason for intercourse that two men sit together on the same benches.Let the great A be held excused for nodding to the shabby B in Princes Street,if he can say,'That fellow is a student.'Once this could be brought about,we think you would find the whole heart of the University beat faster.We think you would find a fusion among the students,a growth of common feelings,an increasing sympathy between class and class,whose influence (in such a heterogeneous company as ours)might be of incalculable value in all branches of politics and social progress.It would do more than this.If we could find some method of making the University a real mother to her sons -something beyond a building of class-rooms,a Senatus and a lottery of somewhat shabby prizes -we should strike a death-blow at the constrained and unnatural attitude of our Society.At present we are not a united body,but a loose gathering of individuals,whose inherent attraction is allowed to condense them into little knots and coteries.Our last snowball riot read us a plain lesson on our condition.
There was no party spirit -no unity of interests.A few,who were mischievously inclined,marched off to the College of Surgeons in a pretentious file;but even before they reached their destination the feeble inspiration had died out in many,and their numbers were sadly thinned.Some followed strange gods in the direction of Drummond Street,and others slunk back to meek good-boyism at the feet of the Professors.
The same is visible in better things.As you send a man to an English University that he may have his prejudices rubbed off,you might send him to Edinburgh that he may have them ingrained -rendered indelible -fostered by sympathy into living principles of his spirit.And the reason of it is quite plain.From this absence of University feeling it comes that a man's friendships are always the direct and immediate results of these very prejudices.A common weakness is the best master of ceremonies in our quadrangle:a mutual vice is the readiest introduction.The studious associate with the studious alone -the dandies with the dandies.There is nothing to force them to rub shoulders with the others;and so they grow day by day more wedded to their own original opinions and affections.They see through the same spectacles continually.All broad sentiments,all real catholic humanity expires;and the mind gets gradually stiffened into one position -becomes so habituated to a contracted atmosphere,that it shudders and withers under the least draught of the free air that circulates in the general field of mankind.
Specialism in Society then is,we think,one cause of our present state.Specialism in study is another.We doubt whether this has ever been a good thing since the world began;but we are sure it is much worse now than it was.
Formerly,when a man became a specialist,it was out of affection for his subject.With a somewhat grand devotion he left all the world of Science to follow his true love;and he contrived to find that strange pedantic interest which inspired the man who 'Settled HOTI'S business -let it be -Properly based OUN -
Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic DE,Dead from the waist down.'
Nowadays it is quite different.Our pedantry wants even the saving clause of Enthusiasm.The election is now matter of necessity and not of choice.Knowledge is now too broad a field for your Jack-of-all-Trades;and,from beautifully utilitarian reasons,he makes his choice,draws his pen through a dozen branches of study,and behold -John the Specialist.That this is the way to be wealthy we shall not deny;but we hold that it is NOT the way to be healthy or wise.The whole mind becomes narrowed and circumscribed to one 'punctual spot'of knowledge.A rank unhealthy soil breeds a harvest of prejudices.Feeling himself above others in his one little branch -in the classification of toadstools,or Carthaginian history -he waxes great in his own eyes and looks down on others.Having all his sympathies educated in one way,they die out in every other;and he is apt to remain a peevish,narrow,and intolerant bigot.
Dilettante is now a term of reproach;but there is a certain form of dilettantism to which no one can object.It is this that we want among our students.We wish them to abandon no subject until they have seen and felt its merit -to act under a general interest in all branches of knowledge,not a commercial eagerness to excel in one.
In both these directions our sympathies are constipated.We are apostles of our own caste and our own subject of study,instead of being,as we should,true men and LOVING students.
Of course both of these could be corrected by the students themselves;but this is nothing to the purpose:it is more important to ask whether the Senatus or the body of alumni could do nothing towards the growth of better feeling and wider sentiments.Perhaps in another paper we may say something upon this head.
