The Four Loves

Lewis, C. S.

Fontana, 1963

pp. 50 - 51

“I am old enough to remember the sad case of  Dr. Quartz.  No university boasted a more effective or devoted teacher.  He spent the whole of himself on his pupils.  He made an indelible impression on nearly all of them.  He was the object of much well-merited hero worship.  Naturally, and delightfully, they continued to visit him after the tutorial relation had ended—went round to his house of an evening and had famous discussions.  But the curious thing is that this never lasted.  Sooner or later came the fatal evening when they knocked on his door and were told that the Doctor was engaged.  After that he would always be engaged.  They were banished from him forever.  This was because, at their last meeting, they had rebelled.  They had asserted their independence—differed from the master and supported their own view, perhaps not without success.  Faced with that very independence which he had labored to produce and which it was his duty to produce if he could, Dr. Quartz could not bear it.”  He saw student independence of him not as a triumph but as a rebuke.