Appreciating eccentrics at a school full of them
Matthew Taylor
Issue date: 2/26/09 Section: Opinion
Opinions breed like rabbits amongst undergraduates. A freshman whom I met this year believes that Catholicism would be better off without the Pope; another student that Newtonian physics governs the universe; and several that absolute monarchy far excels all other forms of government.
There are those with obscure tastes: the shaggy-haired fellow who sneaks a flask of whiskey to get himself through choir practice, the young man who refuses to listen to any recorded music.
What will happen to them when they grow up? They all have some skill with the mind, so none will be pedestrian. Some, I suppose, will conceal their oddity under a guise of convention, some will acquire a reputable judgment. And some will become eccentrics.
John Stuart Mill, a precocious child and probably an eccentric himself, maintained, in his work On Liberty, that "eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time." So greatness of intellect sits side by side with eccentricity: the two spring from the same source, and they often appear in the same person.
Eccentrics have populated the British Isles for centuries. There was Samuel Pepys, who, in between managing the admiralty, chairing the Royal Society, and languishing over young women, acquired an enormous library, which he donated to Magdalene College, Cambridge, on the condition that no book ever leave the provided building, that no book be added to the collection, and that if any of this ever happened, that the collection become the property of Trinity College, their worst enemy.
There was Jonathan Swift, the Irish priest and satirist, who, being caught out in a thunderstorm one afternoon, took shelter under a tree, where he found an anxious woman, very pregnant, with a shabbily-dressed man. The couple wanted to reach the nearest town as soon as possible, to be married before the baby was born, and so avoid disgrace. Swift kindly took it upon himself to perform the ceremony, then wrote out their license:
There are those with obscure tastes: the shaggy-haired fellow who sneaks a flask of whiskey to get himself through choir practice, the young man who refuses to listen to any recorded music.
What will happen to them when they grow up? They all have some skill with the mind, so none will be pedestrian. Some, I suppose, will conceal their oddity under a guise of convention, some will acquire a reputable judgment. And some will become eccentrics.
John Stuart Mill, a precocious child and probably an eccentric himself, maintained, in his work On Liberty, that "eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time." So greatness of intellect sits side by side with eccentricity: the two spring from the same source, and they often appear in the same person.
Eccentrics have populated the British Isles for centuries. There was Samuel Pepys, who, in between managing the admiralty, chairing the Royal Society, and languishing over young women, acquired an enormous library, which he donated to Magdalene College, Cambridge, on the condition that no book ever leave the provided building, that no book be added to the collection, and that if any of this ever happened, that the collection become the property of Trinity College, their worst enemy.
There was Jonathan Swift, the Irish priest and satirist, who, being caught out in a thunderstorm one afternoon, took shelter under a tree, where he found an anxious woman, very pregnant, with a shabbily-dressed man. The couple wanted to reach the nearest town as soon as possible, to be married before the baby was born, and so avoid disgrace. Swift kindly took it upon himself to perform the ceremony, then wrote out their license:
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