Michael Rosenthal
 

extent to which Butier was encrusted with honors,
H. G. Wells called him the "pearly king of acade¬
mics." Ezra Pound, who considered him "one of
the more loathsome figures of a time that has not
been creditable even to humanity," nevertheless
acknowledged him as the "titular head of the
country's intellectual life." Good or bad, he was
someone to be reckoned with.

Buder's own view of himself and his impor¬
tance is perhaps best caught on a small typewritten
chart located in a file labeled "Personal Odds and
Ends." Most likely the product of a self-indulgent
reverie which he had spawned in an idle moment
some time in 1940, its frighteningly revealing cal¬
culation had no doubt been typed into permanent
form by a dutiful secretary:
 

dimensions of his narcissism and his patrician

indifference to process, it is also critical that these
be seen in the context of his own vast aspirations
for himself and the university he was building. In
our current age of diminished expectation, in
which we have accommodated ourselves to the
flawed nature of all our institutions, educational
as well as governmental, it is astonishing to
encounter Buder's monumental vision of what he
hoped to achieve. At a dinner honoring him on
his seventy-fifth birthday, Butier emphasized the
dreams he always had for Morningside Heights:

What was in my mind, and is in my mind still, is
that Morningside Heights shall become the great¬
est capital of the mind that the world has ever
seen—either ancient or modern—and that from
 


 

Mussolini
 

Stalin
 

Hitler
 

Roosevelt
 

NMB
 

Born
 

1883
 

1879
 

1889
 

1882
 

1862
 

Come to Power
 

1922
 

1924
 

1933
 

1933
 

1902
 

Years in Power
 

18
 

16
 

7
 

7
 

38
 

Age
 

57
 

61
 

61
 

68
 

78
 

Total
 

3880
 

3880
 

3880
 

3880
 

3880
 

Divided by 2
 

1940
 

1940
 

1940
 

1940
 

1940
 

The company Buder chooses for himself here
emphasizes the enormous distance he traveled
from his warnings, bestowed upon his Columbia
classmates in his 1882 Class Day Address, against
the evils of overweening ambition: "Let us then
keep steadily before us," he concluded, "the motto
of the ancient sage—'not too far...'—and rest con¬
tent with the satisfactory attainment of a reason¬
able ambition as our ideal of human happiness."

While it is perfectiy reasonable—and even
appropriate—that Butier's critics point out the
 

it there shall go out to every part of this land and
to every foreign land a steady and heartening
stream of influence and inspiration in every field
of thought and endeavor.

However implausible such a notion, it was
Buder's abihty to articulate it that accounts in part
for Columbia's greatness as a modern university. It
also speaks to a time in which an implacable ambi¬
tion such as his could be entertained. Buder's
quest for power, control, and influence make him
one vrith his friends Andrew Carnegie and J. P.
 

10 ^