On the Apparent Gullibility of the Intellectual Class

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

PERHAPS I may claim to be a member of the intellectual class, as I am a college professor of the old-fashioned sort — old-fashioned, that is, in having received a liberal education; but I do not wear a gray beard and gold spectacles, nor have I any reason to suppose that I look unworldly and meek. Yesterday I was led to wonder how I do look, through the friendly treatment I received when I went to buy a pair of shoes.

‘A straight last,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said the salesman, ‘that is the only shape for a trim narrow foot like yours.’

Now my foot has always been recognized as having certain solid and substantial qualities, but trimness and narrowness are not among them; hence I lifted my eyebrows. Yet why should I dispute the opinion of an expert? So I let it pass. The first pair of shoes that were brought to me pinched rather alarmingly.

‘Is this the size I have been wearing?’ I inquired.

‘Not exactly the same,’ said the salesman. ‘Those are B’s and these are A’s. But if you should ask my opinion I would say that A is your width.’

‘I have no theoretical prejudices on the subject,’ said I. ‘But it does not feel like my width.’

‘In fact, you know,’ said he, ‘these shoes are only one sixteenth of an inch narrower than what you have been wearing.’

‘But this is not a matter of relativity,’ said I (whereat he seemed pained); ‘ it is one of absolute comfort or discomfort.’

‘Of course you must remember,’ said he, ‘ that this vici leather stretches very quickly. By to-morrow these shoes will be all right.’

It hurt me to be insistent, but the shoes hurt me still more, so I requested him to take them off. He brought a second pair. When I had occupied these, there was considerable room which I might have offered for rent.

‘These are B’s?’ I asked.

‘Well, no,’ said the salesman. ‘I seem to be just out of B’s in this style; but as I looked at your foot in that pair of A’s, I thought it was really a C that you wanted.’

‘But when you look at it now,’ said I, ‘do you think it ought to be left to move about at large, as it were, so unrestrictedly?’

‘Well,’ said he, ‘your foot needs to settle down into the shoe a little more, but it will do that soon enough. And it’s quite worth while to be comfortable — at least that is what I always say.’

He implied that this was a high disinterested doctrine of his, to which less thoughtful spirits always came around in time.

I shall now leave the shoe-shop and its salesman, because it is a matter of no moment whether I took the C pair or not, and my real subject is not my shoes but my inner self. The point is that I left the shop with a painful sense of having been weighed in the balance and found wanting in common intelligence. For to what person of ordinary intelligence could the arguments of the salesman conceivably be addressed?

Salesmen often give me this chastening experience. There was the one who called last Saturday, for example, with goods to be made up into suits. They were his last remaining samples, and were to be sacrificed only because he had lost his family on the Lusitania, and was hurrying back to England. He spoke with much solemnity, and there was a distinct implication that unless I was wholly destitute of the quality of mercy I would not hesitate to give my trifling aid toward the return of the bereaved man to his home. If only he had not emphasized so strongly the fact that the price he now set on the suitings was below their value in the wholesale market, and had not, in consequence, set me to wondering why he did not dispose of them by means less circuitous than seeking me out in my study, so far from the marts of trade, I should have felt that here was one of those calls which no man, however little he might need a new suit or be able to pay for having one made up, could bring himself to deny. As it was, however, my pity for the bereaved agent turned to the self-pity which I have already described, and I could have wept that he thought I was one to believe his story.

But it is not the approaches of salesmen that chiefly interest me, nor should I be led to consider them of themselves, for after all it is possible that their opinion of me is no different from that on which they act with all other kinds of men. In other words, perhaps they are not aiming at the gullibility of my particular class, but have simply failed to distinguish between the intelligent and the unintelligent. Unfortunately for this conjecture, I find that I meet with similar treatment from members of my own group, and from others who make a specialty of dealing with it. Sometimes, I must add, even from my own colleagues. For it was only the other day that my neighbor Professor Sprouts came to me and said, ‘You know you agreed to join our new Club for the Discussion of all Public Woes. The first meeting is to be held next month, and we have decided that in order to give it a really good send-off we want you to read the paper. There’s everything in beginning right, you know.’

Shall I deny that this brought a certain warmth to my bosom, as Sprouts intended it should? Yet this was in spite of the absolute certainty that Sprouts would prefer almost any other man in the faculty for any purpose which he had deeply at heart, and of the further fact that I know definitely of three colleagues, and conjecturally of two more, who were asked to read the paper for the Public Woes Club before any one turned to me.

The mail brings similar experiences. Indeed, they are becoming so numerous that I seem to discern signs of a general movement toward the forming of societies which may be said to represent a kind of higher salesmanship. Last year I was invited to become an honorary member of an organization formed to support the researches of a distinguished man of science. No obligations of any kind; no dues; only the support of my name was desired. It is doubtless a very rare and violet-like type of man who will turn down any good cause which has use for his name. Nor did I; but I protest I knew that something more would presently be revealed. It was: the man of science had written his memoirs and expounded his views, in many sumptuous volumes, and honorary members could purchase these, by special favor, at an extraordinary reduction.

The National Exploration Society sought me out, a few months later, stating that they had the honor to inform me that I had been nominated as — not a member (perish the thought that one of my position should stoop to such a pass), but a Fellow, and they trusted there was no doubt that I would accept this opportunity to aid in furthering our knowledge of distant lands. A Fellow has the privilege of paying $200 as a single fee, or $10 annually if he expects to live very long. I had barely recovered from the realization that I had attracted the attention of the scientific world, when I was communicated with on the part of the National Sociological League, with the request that I serve on their Advisory Council. ‘We appreciate the fact that you are doubtless too busy to do more than assist in directing the general policy of the organization,’ wrote the secretary. And who would not cheerfully pay the annual dues (mentioned casually in the last line of his letter) in order to assist in directing a number of eminent citizens who crave merely the crumbs of one’s counsel?

Let no one suppose that I have exhausted the list of my honors. I am known to the National Council of Public Health, to the League for the Increase of the Army and Navy (or Decrease, I am not sure which, — perhaps both), to the Federation of Christian Citizens; I have been chosen to an Institute whose exalted name I blush to mention here, but membership in which entitles me to wear a silk button, white on a purple ground. And all this in spite of the fact that I am a professor of mathematics, and have never written or uttered a public word on the subject of natural science, or geographic exploration, or sociology, or public health, or the army and navy. There is only one day in the year — indeed only in alternate years — when I regret that two considerations, pecuniary exiguity and a slight but troublesome sense of humor, have kept me from accepting all these honors. That is the day on which comes the biennial request to revise my biography for ‘ Who’s What,’ and when, therefore, I must take account of stock with respect to my value to the human race. It would then be comforting to write down, in addition to the simple annals of my academic life, the titles of my two or three books, and the items ‘Member of the American Mathematical Society,’ ‘Democrat,’ and ‘Congregationalist,’ a pageant like this: Fellow of the Exploration Society, Advisor of the Sociological League, Sustaining Member of the National Council of Public Health, Honorary Member of the Army and Navy League, Associate Member of the Federation of Christian Citizens, Member of the Institute of Blank and Blank. The town paper would reproduce all these, perhaps not during my lifetime, but possibly at the time of my retirement on a Carnegie pension, and certainly when announcing my death.

But the sad fact that underlies these experiences, the heart of my theme, must not be forgotten. It is that I see through all these things, and the promoters thereof apparently think that I do not. Is it not time, I sometimes query, that the intellectual class should protect its reputation by disavowing its gullibility? I did not say to my friend in the shoe-shop, ‘Pardon me, but would it not be worth your while to lie as if addressing a person of intelligence?’ Perhaps I ought to have done so. I did not reply to Professor Sprouts, ‘Yes, I will read the paper, but please understand that I know your alleged reason for asking me is tommyrot.’ I have a polite form-letter to use when honored by various national organizations, in which I say, ‘The pressure upon my time and interests is such that I have resolved to confine myself to strictly professional engagements.’ Would it not be in the interests of morality and self-respect to say instead, ‘Your favor of the 10th instant appears to have been intended for some one who would really suppose you meant what you said in professing that he is one whom the country delighteth to honor. But I am no Malvolio; a poor professor of mathematics, but not to be writ down an ass. I remain, my dear sir, your obedient servant’?

Advice concerning this question of conduct would be received with due appreciation.