Word: resultant
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...characteristic of Harvard undergraduates which we choose to call "indifference," - a term which is often used for laziness in very much the same way as, in the circles of outer darkness, "financial irregularity" is used for fraud. This indifference - to keep the more general term - is usually supposed to result from a precocious and unerring insight into the realities of things, and a moral and intellectual nature of too high a "tone" to take any interest in the vulgar and short-sighted struggles of the external world. The Harvard student is popularly supposed to be a handsome, well-dressed...
...Thus the result of the entire system is that those men who bid fair to be our more prominent writers and thinkers are induced to exercise themselves more in writing and thinking than less promising students, who will seldom need to do more than write business letters. Of course, there are many men who do not use any of these means of education, for even a theme may be bought for a few dollars; still it is through no fault of our system that men remain awkward in expressing themselves. That many of our best writers are willing to make...
...infectious disease the effect would not catch it. If the writer would allow that the phrase "lack of gush" covered the whole ground, I would freely maintain that the Nation, as well as all other vigorous writing of a practical nature, had tended to produce that desirable result. But he will insist on attaching a definite significance to that time-honored phrase of "Harvard indifference." Some one has said, "Give ear to no doctrine that has not a beard on its face." If I might be allowed to force the simile, it is in this case the whitened beard...
There is assuredly among students, as among all other distinct classes and bodies of men, a cant, - a slang, - a language of words and acts that characterizes and separates them from the mass. It is the result of uniformity of occupation and desires, and is developed by internal laws, proceeding not from the composition of the editorial staff of the Nation, but from the exigencies of college life. I need not stop to point out the various causes that tend to produce the flippant tone among students which has struck our author. It is but the cant of our profession...
...ideal among the stars, we must be content to find most things falling under the ban. It is precisely this species of writing, of all others, that awakens readers from mental sloth, and it is inconceivable that such a thing as indifference should be quoted as its legitimate result...