REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION 39to my maternal Hungarian grandparents (the only ones I knew
well), both brilliant people with no access to much formal education.
My grandmother could speak four languages fluently, but could
only write her adopted English phonetically. My father became a
leftist, along with so many other idealists, during upheavals of the
depression, the Spanish Civil War, and the growth of nazism and
fascism. He remained politically active until poor health precluded
further stress, and politically committed thereafter. I shall always
be gratified to the point of tears that, although he never saw The
Mismeasure of Man in final form, he lived just long enough to read
the galley proofs and know (shades, I recognize, of Aljolson singing
Kol Nidre as his dying father listened) that his scholar son had not
forgotten his roots.
Some readers may regard this confessional as a sure sign of too
much feeling to write a proper work in nonfiction. But I am willing
to bet that passion must be the central ingredient needed to lift
such books above the ordinary, and that most works of nonfiction
regarded by our culture as classical or enduring are centered in
their author's deep beliefs. I therefore suspect that most of my col-
leagues in this enterprise could tell similar stories of autobiographic
passion. I would also add that, for all my convictions about social
justice, I feel even more passionate about a closer belief central to
my personal life and activities: my membership in the "ancient and
universal company of scholars" (to cite the wonderfully archaic line
used by Harvard's president in conferring Ph.D.'s at our annual
commencement). This tradition represents, along with human
kindness, the greatest, most noble, and most enduring feature on
the bright side of a mixed panoply defining what we call "human
nature." Since I am better at scholarship than at kindness, I need to
cast my fealty with humanity's goodness in this sphere. May I end
up next to Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius in the devil's mouth
at the center of hell if I ever fail to present my most honest assess-
ment and best judgment of evidence for empirical truth.
My professional reason for writing The Mismeasure of Man was
also, in large part, personal. The saddest parochialism in academic
life—the depressing contrary to the ideals I mentioned in the last
paragraph—lies in the petty sniping that small-minded members of
one profession unleash when someone credentialed in another
world dares to say anything about activities in the sniper's parish.