Byron In Exile
Frederick Fucking Chopin
- Joined
- May 3, 2002
- Posts
- 66,591
From the Trenton, N.J. Sunday Times, April 3, 1927
by H.L. Mencken
Early in 1927 several suicides were reported from college campuses, and the newspapers played them up in a melodramatic manner and tried to show that there was an epidemic. In this they were supported by various alarmed pedagogues, one of whom, Dr. John Martin Thomas, president of Rutgers, told the Times that the cause was "too much Mencken." The Times asked me to comment on this, and I sent in the following. Thomas, a Presbyterian pastor turned pedagogue, was president of Rutgers from 1925 to 1930. He resigned to enter the insurance business.
I see nothing mysterious about these suicides. The impulse to self-destruction is a natural accompaniment of the educational process. Every intelligent student, at some time or other during his college career, decides gloomily that it would be more sensible to die than to go on living. I was myself spared the intellectual humiliations of a college education, but during my late teens, with the enlightening gradually dawning within me, I more than once concluded that death was preferable to life. At that age the sense of humor is in a low state. Later on, by the mysterious working of God's providence, it usually recovers.
What keeps a reflective and skeptical man alive? In large part, I suspect, it is the sense of humor. But in addition there is curiousity. Human existence is always irrational and often painful, but in the last analysis it remains interesting. One wants to know what is going to happen tomorrow. Will the lady in the mauve frock be more amiable than she is today? Such questions keep human beings alive. If the future were known, every intelligent man would kill himself at once, and the Republic would be peopled wholly by morons. Perhaps we are really mowing toward that consummation now.
I hope no one will be upset and alarmed by the fact that various bishops, college presidents, Rotary lecturers and other such professional damned fools are breaking into print with high-falutin discussions of the alleged wave of student suicides. Such men, it must be manifest, seldom deal with realities. Their whole lives are devoted to inventing bugaboos, and then laying them. Like the news editors, they will tire of this bogus wave after a while, and go yelling after some other phantasm. Meanwhile, the world will go staggering on. Their notions are never to be taken seriously. Their one visible function on earth is to stand as living proofs that education is by no means synonymous with intelligence.
What I'd like to see, if it could be arranged, would be a wave of suicides among college presidents. I'd be delighted to supply the pistols, knives, ropes, poisons, and other necessary tools. Going further, I'd be delighted to load the pistols, hone the knives, and tie the hangman's knots. A college student, leaping uninvited into the arms of God, pleases only himself. But a college president, doing the same thing, would give keen and permanent joy to multitudes of persons. I drop the idea, and pass on.
by H.L. Mencken
Early in 1927 several suicides were reported from college campuses, and the newspapers played them up in a melodramatic manner and tried to show that there was an epidemic. In this they were supported by various alarmed pedagogues, one of whom, Dr. John Martin Thomas, president of Rutgers, told the Times that the cause was "too much Mencken." The Times asked me to comment on this, and I sent in the following. Thomas, a Presbyterian pastor turned pedagogue, was president of Rutgers from 1925 to 1930. He resigned to enter the insurance business.
I see nothing mysterious about these suicides. The impulse to self-destruction is a natural accompaniment of the educational process. Every intelligent student, at some time or other during his college career, decides gloomily that it would be more sensible to die than to go on living. I was myself spared the intellectual humiliations of a college education, but during my late teens, with the enlightening gradually dawning within me, I more than once concluded that death was preferable to life. At that age the sense of humor is in a low state. Later on, by the mysterious working of God's providence, it usually recovers.
What keeps a reflective and skeptical man alive? In large part, I suspect, it is the sense of humor. But in addition there is curiousity. Human existence is always irrational and often painful, but in the last analysis it remains interesting. One wants to know what is going to happen tomorrow. Will the lady in the mauve frock be more amiable than she is today? Such questions keep human beings alive. If the future were known, every intelligent man would kill himself at once, and the Republic would be peopled wholly by morons. Perhaps we are really mowing toward that consummation now.
I hope no one will be upset and alarmed by the fact that various bishops, college presidents, Rotary lecturers and other such professional damned fools are breaking into print with high-falutin discussions of the alleged wave of student suicides. Such men, it must be manifest, seldom deal with realities. Their whole lives are devoted to inventing bugaboos, and then laying them. Like the news editors, they will tire of this bogus wave after a while, and go yelling after some other phantasm. Meanwhile, the world will go staggering on. Their notions are never to be taken seriously. Their one visible function on earth is to stand as living proofs that education is by no means synonymous with intelligence.
What I'd like to see, if it could be arranged, would be a wave of suicides among college presidents. I'd be delighted to supply the pistols, knives, ropes, poisons, and other necessary tools. Going further, I'd be delighted to load the pistols, hone the knives, and tie the hangman's knots. A college student, leaping uninvited into the arms of God, pleases only himself. But a college president, doing the same thing, would give keen and permanent joy to multitudes of persons. I drop the idea, and pass on.
