in my hand. I had never heard of Socrates, but I would have challenged him to a debate without the slightest fear.
“Since then I have grown more humble, so humble that there are times when I am ashamed to come into the class-room. What right have I to teach anybody anything? I mean that quite sin¬ cerely. Then I remember that, ignorant as I am, the undergraduates are more ignorant. I take heart and mount the rostrum ready to speak with the authority of a pundit.”
He realized that he was sliding off on a tangent and paused to find a new attack. Pudge Jamieson helped him.
“I suppose that’s all true/’ he said, “but it does n’t explain why college is really worth while. The fact remains that most of us don’t learn any¬ thing, that we are coarsened by college, and that we —well, we worship false gods.”
Henley nodded in agreement. “It would be hard to deny your assertions,” he acknowledged, “and I don’t think that I am going to try to deny them. Of course, men grow coarser while they are in college, but that doesn’t mean that they would n’t grow coarser if they were n’t in college. It isn’t college that coarsens a man and destroys his illusions; it is life. Don’t think that you can grow to manhood and retain your pretty dreams.
