"Brocky, you are terrific," said Swazey in admiration. There was too much truth in the attack, violent as it was, not to have called forth serious attention.
"I feel a good deal the way you do," said Bob Story, and Stover nodded, "only it seems to me, Brocky, a good deal of what you're arguing for must come from outside--in just such informal talks as this."
"That's true," said Brockhurst. "If the stimulus in the college life itself were toward education all our meetings would be educational. It's true abroad, it isn't here. You know my views. You think I'm extreme. I'm getting an education because I didn't accept any such flap-doodle as, 'What am I going to do for Yale?' but instead asked, 'What has Yale got to offer me?' I'm getting it, too."
Stover suddenly remembered the conversation they had together the year before, and looking now at Brockhurst, revealed in a new strength, he began to understand what had then so repelled him.
"The great fault," continued Brockhurst, "lies, however, with the colleges. The whole theory is wrong, archaic and ridiculous--the theory of education by schedule. All education can do is to instil the love of knowledge. You get that, you catch the fire of it--you educate yourself. All education does to-day is to develop the memory at the expense of the imagination. It says: 'Here are so many pounds of Greek, Latin, mathematics, history, literature. In four years our problem is to pass them through the heads of these hundreds of young barbarians so that they will come out with a lip knowledge.'"
"But come, we do learn something," said Hungerford.
"No, you don't, Joe," said Brockhurst. "You've translated the Iliad--you've never known it. You've recited in Horace--you have no love for him. You've excavated the plays of Shakespeare, a couple of acts at a time; you don't know what Hamlet means or Lear, the beauty of it all has escaped you. You've _recited_ in Logic and Philosophy, but you don't understand what you're repeating. You're only _repeating_ all the time. Your memory is trained to hold a little knowledge a little time--that's all. You don't enjoy it, you're rather apologetic--or others are."
"Well, what other system is there?" said Regan.