Saturday, June 9, 2007

fifty years ago

"But there is, of course, that other worry: whether liberality itself has not bred so wide a license that the humanists have nobody else but themselves to blame for the incoherence of the picture they offer to the pragmatic world....the moral is that the free and easy posture of the self-sufficient scholar, within these areas, becomes for this reason all the more difficult to maintain. He is never quite sure—although he dresses atrociously—that he doesn’t really belong with the bankrupt dandy, and that he, like his fellow wastrel, isn’t concerned with nothing more than keeping up appearances."

--Perry Miller, “The Plight of the Lone Wolf.” 1957.

No comments: