Besides the incentive so given to polite expenditure by the presence of a highly solvent minority among the academic personnel, it has also been found expedient that the directorate take thought and institute something in the way of an authentic curriculum of academic festivities and exhibitions of social proficiency. A degree of expensive gentility is in this way propagated by authority, to be paid for in part out of the salaries of the faculty.
Something in this way of ceremonial functions and public pageants has long been included in the ordinary routine of the academic year among the higher American schools. It dates back to the time when they were boys' schools under the tutelage of the clergy, and it appears to have had a ritualistic origin, such as would comport with what is found expedient in the service of the church. By remoter derivation it should probably be found to rest on a very ancient and archaic faith in the sacramental or magical efficacy of ceremonial observances. But the present state of the case can by no means be set down to the account of aimless survival alone. Instead of being allowed in any degree to fall into abeyance by neglect, the range and magnitude of such observances have progressively grown appreciably greater since the principles of competitive business have come to rule the counsels of the universities. The growth, in the number of such observances, in their pecuniary magnitude, in their ritualistic circumstance, and in the importance attached to them, is greater in the immediate present than at any period in the past; and it is, significantly, greater in those larger new establishments that have started out with few restraints of tradition. But the move so made by these younger, freer, more enterprising seats of learning falls closely in with that spirit of competitive enterprise that animates all alike though unequally. 1That it does so, that this efflorescence of ritual and pageantry intimately belongs in the current trend of things academic, is shown by the visible proclivity of the older institutions to follow the lead given in this matter by the younger ones, so far as the younger ones have taken the lead. In the mere number of authorized events, as contrasted with the average of some twenty-five or thirty years back, the present average appears, on a somewhat deliberate review of the available data, to compare as three or four to one. For certain of the younger and more exuberant seats of learning today, as compared with what may be most nearly comparable in the academic situation of the eighties, the proportion is perhaps twice as large as the larger figure named above. Broadly speaking, no requirement of the academic routine should be allowed to stand in the way of an available occasion for a scholastic pageant.
These genteel solemnities, of course, have a cultural significance, probably of a high order, both as occasions of rehearsal in all matters of polite conformity and as a stimulus to greater refinement and proficiency in expenditure on seemly dress and equipage. They may also be believed to have some remote, but presumably salutary, bearing on the higher learning.
This latter is an obscure point, on which it would be impossible at present to offer anything better than abstruse speculative considerations; since the relation of these genteel exhibitions to scientific inquiry or instruction is of a peculiarly intangible nature. But it is none of these cultural bearings of any such round of polite solemnities and stately pageants that comes in question here. It is their expediency in point of businesslike enterprise, or perhaps rather their businesslike motive, on the one hand, and their effect Upon the animus and efficiency of the academic personnel, on the other hand.
In so far as their motive should not (by unseemly imputation)be set down to mere boyish exuberance of make-believe, it must be sought among considerations germane to that business enterprise that rules academic policy. However attractive such a derivation might seem, this whole traffic in pageantry and ceremonial amenities can not be traced back to ecclesiastical ground, except in point of remote pedigree; it has grown greater since the businessmen took over academic policy out of the hands of the clergy. Nor can it be placed to the account of courtly, diplomatic, or military antecedents or guidance; these fields of activity, while they are good breeding ground for pomp and circumstance, do not overlap, or even seriously touch, the frontiers of the republic of learning. On the other hand, in seeking grounds or motives for it all, it is also not easy to find any close analogy in the field of business enterprise of the larger sort, that has to do with the conduct of industry. There is little of this manner of expensive public ceremonial and solemn festivities to be seen, e.g., among business concerns occupied with railroading or banking, in cottonspinning, or sugar-refining, or in farming, shipping, coal, steel, or oil. In this field phenomena of this general class are of rare occurrence, sporadic at the best; and when they occur they will commonly come in connection with competitive sales of products, services or securities, particularly the latter. Nearer business analogues will be found in retail merchandising, and in enterprises of popular amusement, such as concert halls, beer gardens, or itinerant shows. The street parades of the latter, e.g., show a seductive, though, it is believed, misleading analogy to the ceremonial pageants that round off the academic year.
