ABSTRACT
The essential authority of the academic community arose directly from the faculty itself— from a faculty uniformly engaged in the single function of teaching-research. The function of the community, of the cult, is precisely the superintending of belief in the sacred and the differentiating between the sacred and the profane. The academic community prided itself, as we know, on its rigorous exclusion of all other criteria in the fixing of a man's rank. So too among students was the academic dogma final in the fixing of position, in the advancement through successive classes to completion. The stringency of the academic code of honor, and also its aristocratic roots, was to be seen in the disdain that the traditional academic community tended to feel for the faculty member whose writing was largely confined to textbooks. Few structures have been more stratified, more sharply layered in distinct ranks, than the academic community.
