calvin mccarter

The educated man, as some still think, is one whose existence is not isolated in the present, whose intellectual and emotional life is consciously joined to the deep currents of evolution, moving from the far past to the invisible future. History is a large part of such an education, and the modern languages may claim their share. But the source and fountain of it all is that classical world in which lie the beginnings of our civilisation. He who can trace his intellectual pedigree back to those origins is among scholars what the aristocrat of ancient family is in society. His taste does not fluctuate with the passing whims of the hour, for his imagination is schooled to contemplate things in long duration. He loses his facile admirations and acquires judgment; his delight in beauty is still and deep. “Sir,” said Dr. Johnson once to Boswell, “as a man advances in life he gets what is better than admiration—judgment—to estimate things at their true value.” To be trained in the classics is to graft the faculty of age on the elasticity of youth. The flimsy arguments of fanatics and charlatans break on such a man without effect, for he knows the realities of human nature, knows what is permanent and what is ephemeral.

— Paul Elmer More

“The Value of Academic Degrees,” The Bookman, Vol. XXIII, 1906.