The Pseudoscientific Spirit in the Treatment of Literature

Abstract

T HE study of the humanities today is playing a minor r8le in the scheme of higher education; the natural sciences are dominating our colleges and universities. A glance at those liberal-arts departments where no general requirements are packing classrooms, as in modernlanguage departments, for example, will convince anyone that actually few people consider it worth while to enroll in the humanities. Those who are still showing interest in such courses as art, literature, and music are often stamped as queer by their fellow-students. Every serious liberal-arts student at some time or other will try to find an answer to this situation from within the field of his major interest. Even the dullest cannot help but notice that with few exceptions the approach to and presentation of the various college subjects follow similar lines. In other words, too many teachers seem to apply the scientific methods of complete objectivity even in purely cultural fields where one would expect an interpretativequalitative approach. Consequently, liberal arts as they are treated today are often nothing but dry, dull histories of the past. The history of ideas is taught, but the ideas themselves are seldom laid bare and evaluated. This pseudoscientific spirit seems to have permeated all the humanities, literature included. In literature, as in the other humanities, it has led many to consider everything equally worthy of attention. From a scientific point of view all issues have, of course, a potential usefulness but, humanistically conceived, not all things in literature are of equal importance. Science has probably taught literary men the importance of accuracy, and perhaps the necessity for understanding the environment of a work of art. But the world of art is predominantly an artificial creation with a purpose, while the world of science simply exists with its purposes more or less concealed. Thus, when a literary work has been treated scientifically (often the only accomplishment), the work of the genuine humanist has barely begun. Any work of art is a reaction to and an evaluation of life, and failure to recognize this fact is failure to understand the true purpose of the study of the humanities in general and of literature in particular. The teacher's responsibilities surely are not discharged fully when mere theoretical relationships have been presented. Any humanism which expects the support of society should somehow be made to reveal a contemporary significance, something which seems