Second Mencken Chrestomathy
“MAKING A LIVING The Professions From the Smart Set, Jan., 1922, pp. 46–47 THE DIGNITY of the learned professions, always assumed in discussions of them, succumbs quickly to analysis. What, realistically described, is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? In brief, he gets a living by convincing idiots that he can save them from a mythical Hell. It is a business, at bottom, almost indistinguishable from that of selling Texas oil stocks. As for a lawyer, he is simply, under our cas...h-register civilization, one who teaches scoundrels how to commit their swindles without risk. As for a physician, he is one who spends his whole existence trying to prolong the lives of persons whose deaths, in nine cases out of ten, would be a public benefit. The case of the pedagogue is even worse. Consider him in his highest incarnation: the university professor. What is his function? Simply to pass on to fresh generations of numskulls a body of so-called knowledge that is fragmentary, unimportant and, for the most part, untrue.MoreLess
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