There is reason to believe that the culmination is
now already past. Except for the new impetus given by a new war
experience, and except for the support which the growth of a
wealthy class affords to all ritual, and especially to whatever
ceremonial is wasteful and pointedly suggests gradations of
status, it is probable that the late improvements and
augmentation of scholastic insignia and ceremonial would
gradually decline. But while it may be true that the cap and
gown, and the more strenuous observance of scholastic proprieties
which came with them, were floated in on this post-bellum tidal
wave of reversion to barbarism, it is also no doubt true that
such a ritualistic reversion could not have been effected in the
college scheme of life until the accumulation of wealth in the
hands of a propertied class had gone far enough to afford the
requisite pecuniary ground for a movement which should bring the
colleges of the country up to the leisure-class requirements in
the higher learning. The adoption of the cap and gown is one of
the striking atavistic features of modern college life, and at
the same time it marks the fact that these colleges have
definitely become leisure-class establishments, either in actual
achievement or in aspiration.
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