The Man behind the Legend: Memoirs, Autobiographical Novels & Essays of Jack London. Jack London
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“All thinkers on general subjects, the greatest minds in the world, in fact, rely on the specialists. Herbert Spencer did that. He generalized upon the findings of thousands of investigators. He would have had to live a thousand lives in order to do it all himself. And so with Darwin. He took advantage of all that had been learned by the florists and cattle-breeders.”
“You’re right, Martin,” Olney said. “You know what you’re after, and Ruth doesn’t. She doesn’t know what she is after for herself even.”
“—Oh, yes,” Olney rushed on, heading off her objection, “I know you call it general culture. But it doesn’t matter what you study if you want general culture. You can study French, or you can study German, or cut them both out and study Esperanto, you’ll get the culture tone just the same. You can study Greek or Latin, too, for the same purpose, though it will never be any use to you. It will be culture, though. Why, Ruth studied Saxon, became clever in it,—that was two years ago,—and all that she remembers of it now is ‘Whan that sweet Aprile with his schowers soote’—isn’t that the way it goes?”
“But it’s given you the culture tone just the same,” he laughed, again heading her off. “I know. We were in the same classes.”
“But you speak of culture as if it should be a means to something,” Ruth cried out. Her eyes were flashing, and in her cheeks were two spots of color. “Culture is the end in itself.”
“But that is not what Martin wants.”
“How do you know?”
“What do you want, Martin?” Olney demanded, turning squarely upon him.
Martin felt very uncomfortable, and looked entreaty at Ruth.
“Yes, what do you want?” Ruth asked. “That will settle it.”
“Yes, of course, I want culture,” Martin faltered. “I love beauty, and culture will give me a finer and keener appreciation of beauty.”
She nodded her head and looked triumph.
“Rot, and you know it,” was Olney’s comment. “Martin’s after career, not culture. It just happens that culture, in his case, is incidental to career. If he wanted to be a chemist, culture would be unnecessary. Martin wants to write, but he’s afraid to say so because it will put you in the wrong.”
“And why does Martin want to write?” he went on. “Because he isn’t rolling in wealth. Why do you fill your head with Saxon and general culture? Because you don’t have to make your way in the world. Your father sees to that. He buys your clothes for you, and all the rest. What rotten good is our education, yours and mine and Arthur’s and Norman’s? We’re soaked in general culture, and if our daddies went broke to-day, we’d be falling down to-morrow on teachers’ examinations. The best job you could get, Ruth, would be a country school or music teacher in a girls’ boarding-school.”
“And pray what would you do?” she asked.
“Not a blessed thing. I could earn a dollar and a half a day, common labor, and I might get in as instructor in Hanley’s cramming joint—I say might, mind you, and I might be chucked out at the end of the week for sheer inability.”
Martin followed the discussion closely, and while he was convinced that Olney was right, he resented the rather cavalier treatment he accorded Ruth. A new conception of love formed in his mind as he listened. Reason had nothing to do with love. It mattered not whether the woman he loved reasoned correctly or incorrectly. Love was above reason. If it just happened that she did not fully appreciate his necessity for a career, that did not make her a bit less lovable. She was all lovable, and what she thought had nothing to do with her lovableness.
“What’s that?” he replied to a question from Olney that broke in upon his train of thought.
“I was saying that I hoped you wouldn’t be fool enough to tackle Latin.”
“But Latin is more than culture,” Ruth broke in. “It is equipment.”
“Well, are you going to tackle it?” Olney persisted.
Martin was sore beset. He could see that Ruth was hanging eagerly upon his answer.
“I am afraid I won’t have time,” he said finally. “I’d like to, but I won’t have time.”
“You see, Martin’s not seeking culture,” Olney exulted. “He’s trying to get somewhere, to do something.”
“Oh, but it’s mental training. It’s mind discipline. It’s what makes disciplined minds.” Ruth looked expectantly at Martin, as if waiting for him to change his judgment. “You know, the foot-ball players have to train before the big game. And that is what Latin does for the thinker. It trains.”
“Rot and bosh! That’s what they told us when we were kids. But there is one thing they didn’t tell us then. They let us find it out for ourselves afterwards.” Olney paused for effect, then added, “And what they didn’t tell us was that every gentleman should have studied Latin, but that no gentleman should know Latin.”
“Now that’s unfair,” Ruth cried. “I knew you were turning the conversation just in order to get off something.”
“It’s clever all right,” was the retort, “but it’s fair, too. The only men who know their Latin are the apothecaries, the lawyers, and the Latin professors. And if Martin wants to be one of them, I miss my guess. But what’s all that got to do with Herbert Spencer anyway? Martin’s just discovered Spencer, and he’s wild over him. Why? Because Spencer is taking him somewhere. Spencer couldn’t take me anywhere, nor you. We haven’t got anywhere to go. You’ll get married some day, and I’ll have nothing to do but keep track of the lawyers and business agents who will take care of the money my father’s going to leave me.”
Onley got up to go, but turned at the door and delivered a parting shot.
“You leave Martin alone, Ruth. He knows what’s best for himself. Look at what he’s done already. He makes me sick sometimes, sick and ashamed of myself. He knows more now about the world, and life, and man’s place, and all the rest, than Arthur, or Norman, or I, or you, too, for that matter, and in spite of all our Latin, and French, and Saxon, and culture.”
“But Ruth is my teacher,” Martin answered chivalrously. “She is responsible for what little I have learned.”
“Rats!” Olney looked at Ruth, and his expression was malicious. “I suppose you’ll be telling me next that you read Spencer on her recommendation—only you didn’t. And she doesn’t know anything more about Darwin and evolution than I do about King Solomon’s mines. What’s that jawbreaker definition about something or other, of Spencer’s, that you sprang on us the other day—that indefinite, incoherent homogeneity thing? Spring it on her, and see if she understands a word of it. That isn’t culture, you see. Well, tra la, and if you tackle Latin, Martin, I won’t have any respect for you.”
And all the while, interested in the discussion, Martin had been aware of an irk in it as well. It was about studies and lessons, dealing with the rudiments of knowledge, and the schoolboyish tone of it conflicted with the big things that were stirring in him—with the grip upon life that was even then crooking his fingers like eagle’s talons, with the cosmic thrills that made him ache, and with the inchoate consciousness of mastery of it all. He likened himself to a poet, wrecked on the shores of a strange land, filled with power of beauty, stumbling and stammering and vainly trying to sing in the rough, barbaric tongue of his brethren in the new land. And so with him. He was alive, painfully alive, to the great universal things, and yet he was compelled to potter and grope among schoolboy topics and debate whether or not he should study Latin.
“What in hell has Latin to do with it?” he demanded before his mirror that night. “I wish dead people would stay dead. Why should I and the beauty in me be ruled by the dead? Beauty is alive and everlasting. Languages come and go. They are the dust of the dead.”
And his