finds occasion to parade his
accomplishments in this respect, but the evidence of such knowledge
serves at the same time to recommend any savant to his audience, both
lay and learned. It is currently expected that a certain number of
years shall have been spent in acquiring this substantially useless
information, and its absence creates a presumption of hasty and
precarious learning, as well as of a vulgar practicality that is
equally obnoxious to the conventional standards of sound scholarship and
intellectual force.

The case is analogous to what happens in the purchase of any article of
consumption by a purchaser who is not an expert judge of materials or
of workmanship. He makes his estimate of value of the article chiefly
on the ground of the apparent expensiveness of the finish of those
decorative parts and features which have no immediate relation to the
intrinsic usefulness of the article; the presumption being that some
sort of ill-defined proportion subsists between the substantial value of
an article and the expense of adornment added in order to sell it. The
presumption that there can ordinarily be no sound scholarship where
a knowledge of the classics and humanities is wanting leads to a
conspicuous waste of time and labor on the part of the general body of
students in acquiring such knowledge. The conventional insistence on a
modicum of conspicuous waste as an incident of all reputable scholarship
has affected our canons of taste and of serviceability in matters of
scholarship in much the same way as the same principle has influenced
our judgment of the serviceability of manufactured goods.

It is true, since conspicuous consumption has gained more and more on
conspicuous leisure as a means of repute, the acquisition of the dead
languages is no longer so imperative a requirement as it once was,
and its talismanic virtue as a voucher of scholarship has suffered a
concomitant impairment. But while this is true, it is also true that the
classics have scarcely lost in absolute value as a voucher of scholastic
respectability, since for this purpose it is only necessary that
the scholar should be able to put in evidence some learning which is
conventionally recognized as evidence of wasted time; and the classics
lend themselves with great facility to this use. Indeed, there can be
little doubt that it is their utility as evidence of wasted time and
effort, and hence of the pecuniary strength necessary in order