Gradus ad Quod?
THE CUSTOM HAS ESTABLISHED itself of calling this department of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE "Gradus ad Parnassum." Is this always to be appropriate? Some, no doubt, will insist that it isn't appropriate even now; but it would be manifestly less so if collegiate education in the future came to have less kinship with Apollo and Pallas Athena than with Poseidon and Hephaistos. In short, Parnassus is by way of harboring some strange gods and goddesses, as what the British call the "Modern Side" rivals the Classical in the intellectual domain.
When Eleazar Wheelock set out to kindle a burning and a shining light in the bleak northern wilderness, he is reputed to have equipped himself "with a Gradus ad Parnassum, a Bible, and a drum." The drum was the one "practical" accessory, designed to summon such as might desire to feed their souls with the food then esteemed to be convenient for them. It was on the Bible and on the treads-and-risers composing the ascent to Parnassus that Eleazar founded his educational faith. In those days the devout theologian entertained a lively suspicion of the sciences—a suspicion which has died extremely hard. None the less it has weakened; and in its stead has arisen a reciprocal suspicion on the part of scientists that classicism, once sole occupant of the Parnassian throne, is no better than it should be and might well be ousted a mensa et a thoro.
One by-product of the war seems to have been a resurgence of the belief that the classical side of education hath still its honor and its toil; that an idealistic background may still have its place in a practical-minded world; that the colleges should pander to something above and beyond man's belly-need; and that the soul of mankind still finds its chief nurture in the Bible and in the classics of both Greece and Rome. Maybe Parnassus will not be entirely submerged, but will serve as an Ararat for the laboring ark of modern education! The gold and silver trophies offered as prizes in the contests of life may not entirely obliterate man's reverence for the crown of wild olive.
