Laudator Temporis Acti

John Burnet (1863-1928), "Form and Matter in Classical Teaching," Essays and Addresses (London: Chatto & Windus, 1929), pp. 29-45 (at 35-38):

The great scholars of the past never talked about research at all, though they did an amount of it that casts our efforts wholly into the shade. All their work was subordinated to one end, the enjoyment of the things themselves. Nothing is more striking in the lives of these great men than the way in which they read and re-read the whole of ancient literature for the sheer joy of it. They did not dally with the handmaids like Penelope's suitors; it was the image of Antiquity in its strength and beauty they really cared for, and the rest of their work was but the brightening of the glass through which we behold it, and the removal of excrescences from the surface of the image itself.

But nowadays learning has become a trade, and the trail of βαναυσία is over it all. There are posts to be won and reputations to be made with the least possible expenditure of time and trouble, and the easiest thing to do is to imitate a little piece of the great men's scaffolding. You need not trouble about the plan of the building, indeed, there need not be a building at all, if only the scaffolding is sufficiently elaborate. Scholarship in the old-fashioned sense is a thing of slow growth; it implies ripe knowledge and a trained judgment. 'Research,' on the other hand, is certainly laborious, but, in its lower forms, it requires little knowledge and makes few calls upon the higher powers of the mind. That is why we hear most talk of it in the newer American and colonial universities, where there is not yet any great tradition of scholarship. It is the desire to get results without the processes which alone can give them value, that is at the bottom of the whole movement. I propose now to show you how the thing is done.

By common consent, the constitution of an author's text is the highest aim that a scholar can set before himself. It is also one of the most difficult things in the world. Most people, however, are quite ignorant of the difference between a real recension and the production of a readable text that will pass muster. So much has been done already, that the production of a respectable text is not really very difficult. Up to a certain point, a sort of rough common sense, a sort of ἄγροικος σοφία, will acquit itself tolerably well in a task of this kind. Of course you do not trouble to collate MSS or to study the tradition of your author's text. You take for granted that a certain MS is 'the best,' and you follow that as closely as you dare, on the plea that you believe in 'objective criticism.' You need not go beyond the critical apparatus of the latest German edition. Indeed, you need not go so far. To most people, textual criticism is a mystery altogether, and they will respect you if you reprint the Teubner text with a selection of readings from Bekker or Dindorf at the bottom of the page. The risk of detection is very slight indeed. Even good scholars seldom know much about the text of more than one or two authors, and a few judicious compliments in the preface will probably silence the two or three men who could expose you if they thought it worth while. Even if one of them does say any thing, that can always be put down to professional jealousy and brazened out somehow.

This kind of thing is being done every day, and it is directly encouraged by loose talk about 'research.' But there are lower depths still. A man who knows little more than the Greek alphabet can count prepositions by the fireside. Of course it is dry work, but there are universities which will give you a doctor's degree for it, you will be accounted a truly scientific philologist, and you will be entitled to look down upon the man who can only write Latin prose or Greek iambics, though he may have a thousand times more knowledge and skill than you have. This is a pretty pass for classical scholarship to come to, but every one who has ever felt it his duty to read through what is facetiously called the literature of a subject knows that the picture I have drawn is not exaggerated.

It is to be observed also that the people who talk most about 'research' are not those who have done any. It is a word which is most often on the lips of people who say they would do it if they were 'encouraged,' that is to say, practically, if they were paid for it in advance. It is this which has vulgarized the word and made it offensive to many people. We hear of the 'endowment of research,' 'research scholarships,' and the like, as if it was all a question of money. But true research can never be fostered in that way. I don't suppose that any of the greatest discoveries have ever been paid for at all, and I am sure that they have all been made by men who had no thought of being paid for them. Let a man get his living by performing some definite social service like teaching, and keep his research work free from contamination by the thought of promotion or gain.

The word has been debased much further in our day, when people look things up on Google and call it research.