More Humane Letters

Extract

I warn you that I am going to make a plea for something quite old fashioned, the tradition of humane letters. We have lost sight of it so completely that we almost never use the phrase any more and it seems to survive only in the title of an honorary degree which we sometimes bestow upon elderly dodos when we call them doctors of litterae humaniores, doctors of more humane letters. I believe we should be rendering a considerable service to higher education if we could turn out annually in regular course at least a handful of bachelors of humane letters. I say this because today even when the undergraduate throws himself upon our mercy and majors in English, or French, or Spanish, or German, or in American civilization, we turn him out not as a bachelor of humane letters (to say nothing of more humane letters) but usually as a bachelor of nationalistic history.