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'sReview
St. John's College
1784-1984
Summer, 1984
�Editor:
J. Walter Sterling
Managing Editor:
Thomas Parran, ·Jr.
Editorial Assistant:
Jason Walsh
Editorial Board:
Eva Brann
S. Richard Freis,
Alumni representative
Joe Sachs
Cary Stickney
Curtis A. Wilson
'
Unsolicited articles, stori~s, and poems
are welcome, but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed
envelope in each instance. Reasoned
comments are also welcome.
The St. John's Review (formerly The College) is published by the Office of the
Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis,
Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre,
President, Samuel S. Kuder, Dean.
Published thrice yearly, in the winter,
spring, and summer. For those not on
the distribution list, subscriptions:
$12.00 yearly, $24.00 for two years, or
$36.00 for three years, payable in advance. Address all correspondence to
The St. John's Review, St. John's College,
Annapolis, Maryland 21404.
Volume XXXV, Number 3
Summer, 1984
©
1984 St. John's College; All rights
reserved. Reproduction in whole or in
part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Compos£t£on: Fishergate Publishing Co., Inc.
Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co.
Cover courtesy State of Maryland
Maryland State Archives. Laws 1784
Chapter 37 Page 1.
�THE
StJohn's Review
Contents
2
A Search for the Liberal College (book review)
Joseph Killorin
6
The Analysis of Fictions
Scott Buchanan
15 . . . . . .
The Breathing Side of Ocean (poem)
William Thompson
16 . . . . . .
The Problem and the Art of Writing
jacob Klein
23 . . . . . .
Passage (poem)
Elliot Zuckerman
24 . . . . . .
The Myth and the Logic of Democracy
John S. Kiiffer
31 . . . . . .
Bandusia, Flower of Fountains (poem)
Richard Freis
32 . . . . . .
On Mimesis
Victor Zuckerkandl
40 . . . . . .
The Archimedean Point and the Liberal Arts
Curtis Wilson
48 . . . . . .
The P~ogram of St. John's College
·Eva T H. Brann
OccASIONAL DrscouRsEs
56 . . . . . .
Sermon Preached at St. Anne's Church, Annapolis
J Winfree Smith
59 . . . . . .
The Golden Ages of St. John's College
Eva Brann
62 . . . . . .
William Smith: Godfather and First President of St. John's College
Arthur Pierce Middleton
BooK REviEw
66 . . . . . .
The Early History of St. John's College in Annapolis
Charlotte Fletcher
68 . . . . . .
The Old Gods (poem)
Gretchen Berg
�BooK REviEw
Summer 1984
A Search for the Liberal College
]. Winfree Smith, St. John's Press, Annapolis, 1983, vii+135 pp., $11.00
Joseph Kill orin
T
his is the story of how a man conceived
and founded, as an act of war against the
familiar educational enterprises of our age,
a college to cultivate the intellectual virtues
by means of what he called the liberal arts;
how, after a decade, its restle~s and weary maker, overreaching to a grander goal, attempted to confound his
original creation; and how, abandoned by him, it fell at
first into confusion until a second man, after a good
night's sleep, restored it safe and sound on its foundations, not without dire warnings thereafter against safe
foundations and sleep.
Who could possibly have thought, as Winfree Smith
says some did think, "that it would be preferable to have
someone from outside the college tell the story on the
ground that I might be partial to the curriculum and the
men who had most to do with starting and establishing
it"? The same Athenians, perhaps, who thought some
Scythian might tell their story more impartially than
Thucydides? Winfree Smith "went through the program"
under the conscript fathers and has acted for over forty
years a part in the life of the college that itself demands
a chapter. Yet his allegiance to St. John's appears only
in the restraint and decorum with which he presents its
history, and in the clarity with which he handles its principal intellectual concerns. The restraint is that of one
who knows first-hand far more of the facts and has had
cause for far sharper judgements than archives and other
secondary sources record, and which facts and judgements, one assumes, must sometimes therefore be forbidden to this history. On a very few occasions he gives
Joseph Killorin graduated from St. Joh.n's College, Annapolis, in 1947. He
is Callaway Professor of Literature and Philosophy at the Savannah unit of
the University of Georgia.
2
us only the deed with insufficient clue to motive; we
need the help at least of
"Some said ... , while others
said ... :'
Nowhere is Mr. Smith
more discreet or his interpretation more needed than
in the exit of Buchanan at
the conclusion of this history's enthralling central
episode, perhaps misleadingly titled "The Fight with the
Navy in Wartime and the Departure of Barr and
Buchanan:' The chapter begins, "This is a strange and
perhaps incomprehensible story:' Mr. Smith links up the
moves between the Navy and St. John's Board, both of
whom seemed to find this local war they discovered themselves in strange and incomprehensible. No wonder. As
Mr. Smith makes us see, it was a war in one man's soul,
in which war Mr. Barr was merely a messenger, the Navy
was merely an historical occasion, and the St. John's
Board a chorus of friends found to be betrayers. For the
war at the end of Buchanan's career with St.John's was
a psychomachia. The Demiurge, comparing his copy of
St. John's to the pattern laid up in Possibility, raged in
despair. Or, can one say, his "mistaken historical judgement'' at last revealed him to himself as a N essus, not
a Heracles, and in self-horror he demanded that his poisonous "program should be laid on the shelf and forgotten:' As Mr. Smith now presents this story, it is a good
deal more comprehensible than it seemed on the spot
(or even than Mr. Smith made it seem to me on the spot).
But for so byzantine a story, res ipsa non loquitur, or at least
the tears of this res do not speak out.
Buchanan in April 1945 virtually offered to sell the
campus to the Navy. Why within a year did he reverse
himself and decide to fight the government in the name
SUMMER 1984
�of"the great liberal arts college family;' "the sacred city,"
although he still did not wish to continue the college in
Annapolis? And why, after the battle to keep the campus was won, did he denounce the St. John's Board as
"stupid and blind . . . and therefore highly irresponsible to the vision . . . and disloyal" because they wished
to hold on to what they had? Of course Buchanan's life
had always been responsible "to the vision;' but why had
he been overcome with a holy horror at housing this vision in the scaffolding of his own New Program? He
called the New Program merely "a revolutionary blueprint to subvert and rebuild education, ... a bulldozer
inside a Trojan horse." And when after ten years it had
not yet subverted education, he cursed his program not
only as "a mistaken historical judgement;' but as "a poison
corrupting a household at St. John's and ... because of
its being at St. John's it would become a poison wherever
it was tried." It was also, in one of his favorite figures,
"a wind-egg;' an empty birth. (Thirty years later he asked
St. John's students how the search for a liberal college
was going, "and if it's still on, why do you have the same
curriculum now that we had thirty years ago?" [Embers
of the World, p. 180].) Was this turning in 194 7 against
the New Program connected in Buchanan's mind with
his turning from a non-voter to a political activist (on
the national platform committee of the Progressive Party
[Embers, pp. 99-195])? Mr. Smith's summing up of
Buchanan's tormented saga keeps our eye on the
subject -St. John's: if there was a tragedy in all this, he
says, it was that Buchanan's behavior jeopardized the only
college he and they had by losing for it Mellon's $4.5
million.
Not much is illumined in this history of Buchanan's
charm or of his power of mind and character. (Nor do
these things often appear in Wofford's conversations with
him. Perhaps Saul Bellow is needed.) But that mind and
that presence struck all with respect and many with love.
That is why it is so important to comprehend this story
as far as possible.
The community, dispirited if not paralyzed entirely
by the founder's curse, whispered in groups and
floundered for two years. Who now could speak for them?
Anyone would be measured against Buchanan. Yet
neither another Buchanan nor, worse, a new prophet with
a new program could save what they felt was worth the
saving. What was needed was a N uma or, rather, an
Augustus. And of course they knew he had actually been
among them all along. Neither imitator nor innovator,
he was a restorer.
In Scott Buchanan and in Jacob Klein, other faculty
members and students all saw plainly in act before their
eyes what Heidegger called the "faculty of wondering at
the simple, and of taking up and accepting this wondering as one's abode~' And Buchanan's fear that established
routine (even in the best possible curriculum) might inhibit spontaneous learning was also a persistent fear of
Klein's. They both saw college as an abode for practicing the habit of staying awake among the almost over-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
whelming inducements everywhere to sleep in unexamined opinion.
One might gather from Mr. Smith's portraits,
however, that Buchanan and Klein, both as philosophers
and deans, not only differed about why men do not stay
awake, but-far more to the St. John's point-about why
men do stay awake (when they do). Buchanan saw inducements to sleep embedded in the deficiencies of the
educational tools: in second-rate books and curricula, and
in arts unhoned for activating and liberating men's thinking power. Under the spell of the best books and the true
liberal arts the soul of any faculty member and any student learns to fly. Klein saw inducements to sleep welling from within, from "inactivity of vegetative or at best
appetitive souls~' It is a part of our nature, he told our
class, to fall "subservient to the appalling practical
automatism of our way of life;' for intellect to sleep, to
forget, before "the dull onslaught of routine and matterof-fact attitude:' Perhaps the life of almost all men (including in one year all but ten members of St. John's
faculty) is mostly a sleep and a forgetting. But, yet, intellect does not die.
Why do (some?) men desire to stay awake, to know
in the fullest sense? Mr. Smith presents, with an admirable explication, what is obviously a treasured parable
about the two Fathers- treasured, I would guess, because
it shows how one of them (almost?) forgets his own deepest faith, the faith of St. John's. The self-exiled founder
had wandered for six years when he returned to the sacred
city he once said he had poisoned- for a conference.
At St. John's "in the early days," Buchanan
remembered, "we were concerned about the whole range
of virtues, and the theological virtues were seriously inquired into. There was a concern about Faith, Hope, and
Charity ...." Because "the intellect does not live without
faith, without (hedging here; Mr. Smith may have caught
his eye] something ofthe sort ... :• Mr. Smith reminds
us that even Thomas does not see faith "as an imperative
for bringing intellect to life:' But did Buchanan say intellect is dead? Yes. Intellect unwatered by "ideology, faith,
or something or other" has died, he seemed to say, leaving everywhere in the house of dead intellect "a dismal
grim dullness:' The founder's suggestion that without faith
men do not desire to know thrusts to the heart of St.
John's. So Mr. Smith persists, "But did Mr. Buchanan
really mean that without faith (intellect] was dead?" And
the historian charitably answers that this is unlikely, on
the ground that Mr. Buchanan never before had faith
in Faith, but only employed it for "lively intellectual gym_nastic:;s~'
Now, like Mercury bearing the words of Jupiter to
that other wandering founder ("heu! regni rerumque oblite
tuarum!- Alas! forgetful of your own world, your own
kingdom!"), or like Parsifal opening the forgotten shrine
to heal the self-wounded Leader, Klein speaks.
Buchanan: We have to have something that will bring
intellect back to life. I have not any solution for this.
Klein: The intellect lives.
3
�Some men desire to know most fully, and intellect, the
highest activity, is under no necessity to proceed from or
to flower in faith, much less in ideology "or something
or other!' It is this other faith, in intellect itself, that both
of them demonstrated in their lives: the faith that
tormented Buchanan to abandon St. John's and sustained
Klein in restoring it. It was the spectacle of that act of
faith in intellect- most eminently in the lives of those
two and of Leo Strauss, but of others too- that many
of us carried away to ponder in our hearts in all the years
after.
Not, as our historian notes, that this confusion of
faith-in-intellect with faith was not itself a regular theme
for questioning. And indeed Mr. Smith himself usually
led the questioning. Note the extra-dryness of tone when
Mr. Smith recalls Buchanan on the sacraments or the
Incarnation, or rather the idea of them. And there is no
word in the vintner's vocabulary for the dryness with
which we are told that a President of St.John's once said
"the college as such was committed to belief in a God
who listens to and answers petitionary prayer?' Intellect
at St. John's came up against Faith in what seemed to
us at first novel ways: some had Faith (I mean Jews and
Christians now), and hated Theology, while some had
no Faith and loved Theology. And, again, Mr. Smith was
a citizen, we gathered, of Jerusalem, who nevertheless
elected alien residence in Athens. (He once ended a
review of a lecture on Kierkegaard: "Is it necessarily true
that faith in Jesus Christ requires the opposition of
reason? Is reason, after all, that important?" Just as he
couldn't believe Buchanan thought intellect was dead, we
couldn't believe Winfree thought that in any respect reason
was unimportant.) Mr. Buchanan claimed equal citizenship in both Athens and Jerusalem, or rather he thought
that each was also the other. Mr. Klein was a citizen of
Athens, for whom the desirability of citizenship in
Jerusalem was not even discussable. Mr. Kaplan (our
semi-official guide to Jerusalem) and Mr. Scofield (our
strongest guide to tragedy) were life-long renters in the
House of Intellect; we loved them, among many other
reasons, for their smiles of suspicion as they heard out
the landlord in his more aggrandizing moods.
Another persistent theme in the College and appearing in Mr. Smith's account of Mr. Klein was its ambivalent view of history. There was a public ban on
history, as sometimes there is a public ban on alcohol;
one drink can lead to the gutter, a little history can lead
to "historicism," which is the curse of the intellectual class
throughout and since the nineteenth century. Yet we
learned (in the coffee shop) from Mr. Klein that he and
Leo Strauss had studied under the greatest and most subtle "historicist" of all, Heidegger, whose "radical
historicism" seemed to us, after all, a little like the attempt of Mr. Klein himself to make clear the history of
"thinking:' (This conversation followed Mr. Klein's annual week of extra-curricular [!]lectures on the radical
difference between Greek and Cartesian mathematics.)
Yes, it turned out, there was a legitimate form of
4
history- only one: the history of thought (in Mr.
Klein's-and Husserl's-written words) as "the interlacement of original production and 'sedimentation' of
significance." At St. John's we were attempting to reactivate "sedimented" thought, recovering thinking, the
original "wondering at the simple" (the original production would be reflected in the greatest books), out from
history. All along in our often trackless seminar wandering (do they still try to cross Thomas on law with Burnt
Njal?) we had been holding on, Mr. Klein made us see,
to this Ariadne's thread from the thinking of great
thinkers. The way in which Mr. Klein suggested we examine how words present things to us was different from
the ways ofWittgenstein or Austin. We were, it seemed,
superimposing, from our great authors, word on word,
context on .context, examining-as on a palimpsesthow the oldest, the original, handling of this thing showed
through the new and colored it, or, on the other hand,
was blanked out. How startling to see through Descartes,
Hobbes, Leibniz, Swift, Rousseau, the paths back to
Aristotle and Plato that had led from a thinking to a
rethinking! Mr. Klein in seminar, throwing up his hands
from time to time, would explode with twenty minutes
or so of this legitimate history. Mr. Strauss, besides his
lectures, would offer at times in Klein's seminar a full
evening of it. The discussions that followed later were
never so keyed up and so "informed" Heidegger and late
Husserl were mentioned, but we could not know then
also how unique were Klein's and Strauss's "history" lectures, which, except for Strauss's Hobbes, we never read
unless as mimeographed lectures. (Speaking of lecture
subjects, am I alone in not remembering now what was
said in a single lecture about the liberal arts-except
about Music, where-aside from Augustine-you simply
had to invent, the wilder the better. I see Music, the
traviata of the Seven Sleepers, has been downgraded to
Harmonics.)
If chiefly Buchanan and Klein informed this search
for a liberal college in its first twenty-one years, Mr.
Smith's subject is not the separate actors but the College
as a community concerned with the learning effort and
particularly the curriculum, its surprisingly adaptive soul,
as it moved from its first frantic plenitude through its
successive, more practicable, shapes.
And in the curriculum, one should mention (I am
not the one to say more) a last persistent theme or obsession. I remember that in our first week the Demiurge
himself warned us they had all been struggling with the
"matter" of the laboratory to try to make it more rational
and that the struggle would, with us, continue. The
laboratory has provided a theme more native to St.John's
than even faithless theology or anti-historicist history. Mr.
Smith calls attention to the now ancient yearning of these
knights of intellect to unify all the sciences, sheer force
of analogy having regularly failed. With Humphreys,*
*Humphreys Hall, where the laboratories were located in the 1940s
and 1950s.
SUMMER 1984
�it seemed then, the eros of intellect could not get beyond
an interesting fumble. Consideration of this matter of
the laboratory makes one see, on the one hand, how
romantic was St. ] ohn's reach as opposed to its grasp,
and, on the other hand, why an insider had to write this
history. For how could any outsider write the next
sentence with so little sarcasm and with so much smiling rue?
give unity to all knowledge (p. 57), was nevertheless in
an essential way like other modern seekers for unity
through method, and thereby unlike Klein.
Actually [Engelder, Dunkelberger, and Schiller] was not
a bad text for learning chemistry, but it did not do much
in the way of relating chemistry to the question of being qua being.
This kind of overriding concern to unify the diversity
of experience Buchanan shared with, say, both Dewey
and Whitehead, but not with Klein, who held "it is very
hard even to postulate unity" in the sciences as well as
in all the other fields of learning (p. 119).
Mr. Smith shows us, then, that the "radical inquiry"
which "St.John's College means to be engaged in" meant,
in its beginnings, at least two, and very different, kinds
of questions and answers. We cannot know how a longer
interchange between two such different men and different
concerns might have altered the content and style oflearning at St. John's. From what interchange we actually
observed there arose a spontaneity, a liveliness, a felt
presence of intellect, and along with this a model of intellectual manners which it is impossible to forget.
About Buchanan versus Klein, there was also, in their
last years together at St. John's, a distinct but light-hearted
sense of danger to students' minds, not that either man
willingly (horrible dictui) provoked it in the slightest way.
For the Collegian (August 20, 1943) five seniors wrote a
spoof in which J ascha, having sat at Euclid's feet, and
having rejected Descartes ("Jascha: All the world's in rack
and ruin/Grecian dough has ceased its brewin'./Genus,
species have passed by,/All that's left is x and y!'), at last,
arriving at Coney Island, is enticed by a carnival barker
named Buchanan:
So Mr. Smith's whole view of St. John's beginnings
arouses on every page comparisons with one's own partial memory of admirations, exhilarations, frustrations.
We felt at once the thrill of participants in Odysseus
Buchanan's plot to halt the Decline of the West by driving our unaccredited Trojan Horse into the Sacred City
of Higher Education, assured by Mr. Barr on our first
Sunday night that it was ripe for bulldozing, dying in
fact of the bourgeois-vocational-elective-system disease.
There were, to be sure, other, but "progressive;' Trojan Horses at work before us (Sarah Lawrence, Bard,
Antioch, Bennington, Black Mountain, and Minnesota),
and "we" found ourselves often at war with their sympathizers, instead of the common enemy we were all out
to do in. What followed was mere pretension at debate
about education's proper end and means in which, as it
has long since become clear, there was not much will,
on any side, to ')oin" the issues, except, perhaps, in
Meiklejohn's reply to John Dewey (Fortune, January
1945). But the difference between us and all of them was
obvious: we depended on the (mostly long past) great
books.
Now Mr. Smith's whole view invites us to see what
could be meant at St. John's by its goal of "radical inquiry" at that historical moment (1) when the American
scene was breeding such opposing Trojan Horses, all
radically inquiring, and (2) when a man with Klein's view
of the past joined a man with Buchanan's view of the past.
Buchanan and Klein shared an anti-historicist interest
in thinkers of the past, where even Meiklejohn understood
history, like education, as a progress towards wisdom.
Buchanan had, like that other American transcendentalist, Emerson, a trans-historical openness to past
thinkers in his desire to connect all insights to the eternal. But with this he combined a modern addiction to
logical systems and methods, such as Ockham's, Ramus's,
and Hegel's. (That Buchanan could not see the antisystematist Nietzsche as a serious philosopher may be
a sign of the differences between his education and
Klein's; it was from the attack launched by Nietzsche, from
phenomenology and deconstruction with their radical
questioning of the metaphysical tradition, that Klein returned to the tradition with a concern for recovering
thinking out of it.)
Mr. Smith implies that Buchanan, for all his faith that
metaphysics and theology were the sciences that would
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
[Buchanan] was a man of the post-Cartesian world in
that he was seeking methods and formulas and symbolic
structures for learning or philosophizing, methods that
would, he hoped, bring together the most diverse worlds
of thought and imagination.
All tickets win, and none do lose,
It doesn't matter which you choose.
Systems great and systems small,
Numbered you must try them all.
Won't you come and play my game,
Metaphysics is its name.
Uascha hesitates, then buys a chance. While
Buchanan turns the wheel, Jascha murmurs.]
J ascha: Oh fate, oh misery, oh dark forebodings . . . !
Buchanan (smiling): You've won a free ride on the
Platinic system.
f]ascha approaches the wheel, hesitates, tears the
ticket up and turns to go. The entire carnival, however,
converges on him in a whirling vortex. Thunder, lightning. Curtain.]
We heard that the piece caused somewhat hurt feelings
all-round. In any case, it turned out to be bad prophecy
about who tore the ticket up and turned to go, and no
doubt too light-hearted an assessment of what the game
rightly was and is.
0 beloved Pan and all you other gods of that place,
grant the fair-and-good man who wrote this book as
many blessings as he has the thanks-for unnumbered
reasons- of those he wrote it for!
5
�The Analysis of Fictions
Scott Buchanan
atter-day discussions of the fine arts have
led to an interesting metaphor which has
suggested the title of this little book. In the
attempt to clarify the criterion of 'purity' in
poetry, music, painting, and sculpture, and
to disentagle it from the older criteria of truth, sincerity, and depth, critics have spoken of 'distance: There is
no doubt that the metaphor has sharpened the sense of
a certain quality recognizable in our appreciation, one
which is closely related to formal clarity. On the other
hand there is little sharpness or formal clarity in the exposition of the metaphor itself. In fact it seems improbable that distance should become an exact technical
term in art criticism as long as the divorce between works
of art and symbols is maintained. The metaphor is empty
until we recall that a symbol, or a work of art, was
originally only a part of something from which it had
been separated, but to which it functionally belonged.
The immediate suggestion from this etymology is that
distance would neatly refer to the degree of separation
of sign from thing signified.
I shall not plead with art critics and aestheticians for
a nostalgic rapprochement between works of art and symbols, but I shall plead with linguists and logicians for the
inclusion of their studies within the broad traditional field
of the arts. The intellectual arts, at any rate, are concerned with symbols, and, it may be added, they are at
present painfully and crucially concerned with symbols
as their essential subject-matter. The pain involved in this
concern arises chiefly from the modern difficulty of
achieving distance or detachment in the terms of our arts
L
The late Scott Buchanan founded the New Program at St. John's College.
Ana(ysis qf Fictions appeared as the first chapter of Symbolic Distance, published
by Faber and Faber in 1932.
6
and sciences. It may be that our art critics are teaching
a deeper and broader lesson than they themselves realize,
a lesson that should be studied by scientists and moralists
as well as the man in the street.
The ancient arts of the trivium, grammar, rhetoric,
and dialectic, which we have relegated to the finishing
school for young ladies, were concerned equally painfully with the symbols of a previous age; they were studied
and applied for a thousand years before their task was
accomplished and they were allowed to give place to the
symbolic discipline of modern science with its operational
skills and its speculative generalizations. It seems worth
while to attempt a brief statement of their methods and
aims, and to enquire into the possibility of reconstituting
the technique to suit modern symbols.
In the first place it was considered dangerous to allow
students to enter upon the higher studies, law, medicine,
and theology, without a thorough training in the trivial
arts. The dangers were literal interpretation of symbolic
formulae and violent application of doctrine to special
cases. No vitally important study was safe in the hands
of untutored persons who could not deal easily and fluently with figurative, abstract, and general terms. No
small portion of our fear and confusion of medieval ideas
is due to the untutored experience we have had with the
isolated fragments of these subtleties that have persisted
into modern times. Laboratory training and mathematical discipline are necessary for the successful handling
of modern subtleties, and in some cases it seems that they
are not enough: vide recent attempts of mathematical
physicists to bring theology down to earth.
The distinctions and consequent specialized treatments of subject-matters in the trivial arts are still important. In the first place the trivial artist distinguishes
between what he calls impositions. There is the use of
words or symbols in the first imposition, as when 'apple'
SUMMER 1984
�refers to this or that concrete spherical red object. 'Apple' in the second imposition is the word itself, a part of
speech or writing. The confusion of imposition leads to
syllogisms like this:
This is an apple.
Apple is a word.
Therefore, this is a word.
In the second place, the trivial artist distinguishes between intentions. A term may be taken in the first intention as when Freedom is intended to refer to free beings; or it may be taken in second intention when it refers
to an abstract principle which may or may not govern
the behaviour of free beings. Confusions of intentions
lead to more serious, because more cryptic, selfdeceptions which we shall discuss under the head of
fictions.
It is in terms of these two distinctions that the trivial
arts operate. Grammar as a science studies words or symbols in the second imposition and the laws for combining them as parts of speech. In modern mathematical
language, grammar studies notations and their useful
manipulations. Rhetoric as a science studies these notations as natural objects having causal connections between themselves and with other natural objects, including man. In this respect rhetoric embraces important parts of psychology and anthropology. In addition
to studying words and symbols in the second imposition,
rhetoric also studies them as terms with second intention. When an orator manipulates notations in order to
'move' an audience, he almost necessarily also instructs
or misinstructs it by elucidating an abstract idea or principle. The lawyer may develop a valid argument by means
of enthymemes in order to convince a jury, or a teacher
may analyse a geometrical figure and prove a theorem
in order to instruct his pupils. The rhetorician must then
give an account of the verbal magic of second impositions and also show how a discourse clarifies or obscures
an ideal subject-matter. Finally the dialectician abstracts
second intentions from terms for the sake of discovering
and isolating the forms which many apparently diverse
notations may have in common. Eventually the dialectician will be concerned with the limits and boundaries
of meanings in which all symbols, even in the first imposition, are implicated. If he is easily tired with formal
distinctions or powerfully moved by rhetoric, he may
become a metaphysician, and hold theories about facts
and universals.
It should be noted how complicated, in the radical
sense of the word, these sciences are. Each one can cover
the whole field of symbols in the one single aspect that
it selects as its proper subject-matter. Another may cover
the same symbolic territory taken in another aspect, and
any given linguistic or logical unit may have three interpretations, or possibly more if rhetoric be more finely
divided. Adequate treatment demands at least three separate accounts which are normally complementary, but
may conflict badly if they are not carefully distinguished.
Finally there is a more general distinction between
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the tnv1um as a group of sciences whose application
results in a criticism and theory of the symbols and the
trivium as a group of arts whose practice accomplishes
this or that ulterior purpose. It is impossible to speak,
write, read, think, or observe without at the same time
being as an artist, a grammarian, rhetorician, and dialectician. It is impossible to be in any adequate way more
than one of these at one time as a scientist and still is
quite as impossible to make an assertion in one science
without inferences being forced in the others. The controversies between the nominalists, conceptualists, and
realists of the late middle ages are incidents in the
development and differentiation of the corresponding
arts, and it would seem that the ability to understand
and appreciate the arguments has again become important to us although our subject-matters seem very foreign
to the ways of logic-chopping.
Modern scientific training has fairly completely
transferred the grammatical art from the authoritative
texts of the scholastic to human experience as given
material. It has also, though somewhat half-heartedly and
cautiously, followed the ways of rhetoric and dialectic,
but it has not yet achieved the linguistic balance and facility which it should provide. My contention is that its deficiency in rhetoric and dialectic has prevented us from
discovering and maintaining proper symbolic distances
in our highly specialized sects and cults of thought.
The point may be presented in an illustration taken
from our most familiar technical language for symbolic
problems. Perhaps it is its familiarity that has encouraged
us to omit scrutinizing the figurative modes from which
the language has been drawn. A symbol is said to 'represent' what it symbolizes. The metaphor is taken from
optical theory, where mirrors are said to reflect objects.
Imagine a series of mirrors set up between an object and
a human eye in such a way that the first mirror catches
an image from the object and throws it on to the second
mirror which in turn throws it to a third mirror, and so
on to fourth, fifth, and nth in which the eye finally sees
the image. There will then be a series of (possible) images corresponding to the series of mirrors. We may ca11
the image in the first mirror primary, and the other images secondary since they are derived from the first.
Whether we refer to a geometry of perspective merely
or add to that a theory of light transmission, there will
be certain distortions to be taken into account, and hence
qualifications or degrees of representative accuracy. If
we add to such distortions, due to perfectly plane and
efficient mirrors, the possibility of imperfect planes or
degrees of concavity and convexity, and if we allow for
imperfectly reflecting materials, we shall have a problem in the resolution of images such as an astronomer
must solve before he can trust the data which he gains
by the use of a reflecting telescope, spectroscope, and
interferometer.
The representation theory of symbols presupposes
some such analogy as this. Notations whether they are
verbal, imaginative, or operational, correspond to im-
7
�ages in mirrors. Usually primary images are all that the
theory envisages and the problems of multiple distortion
and resolution which arise in connection with secondary
images are ignored. The theory of symbolic distance is
an attempt to introduce into the critique of symbols some
of the devices for circumspection and calculation that will
correspond to optical theory in the art of astronomical
clause can take its place. In this account of grammar it
would seem that discourse is the successive selection and
exhibition of sections from a matrix whose constituents
are adjectives and whose order is fixed by the subsumption of adjectives. As a matter of fact such hierarchies
have been the main content of European thought
throughout long periods of history, as is evidenced in
observation. I hope it is not necessary to warn the reader
variations of the neo-Platonic hierarchy of forms, the
that the analogy is only an analogy and should not be
taken literally before it is fully expounded.
Symbolic distance is a constituent of any set of symbols. It should first be recognized, and then its measurement should be attempted. The suggestion for the latter
is that the number of reflections as given by the nota-
theory of ecclesiastical and political official ranks, and
the rise of the classificatory sciences.
However, this analysis will not do. Forcing it leads
to serious paradoxes, and in fact many symbolic forms
are suppressed even in what we have already described.
tions intermediate to the extremes that correspond to the
For instance, the copula tends to be restricted to only
one of its many meanings, namely, "is identical with;'
concrete object and the observant eye would give a rough
scale of measurement. We shall see that the problem of
pretation when "is a case of' is allowed. Paradoxes are
distortion and resolution in symbols will require considerable revision and reformulation of this suggestion,
were well aware. The connective force of prepositions is
and is only partially relieved of this paradoxical interborn of both these meanings as the Greek Megarians
but it may serve as a working diagram or archetypal image from which the exposition can proceed. It will become
lost when they are buried in prepositional phrases which
clear as we proceed that unresolved distortions of sym-
logical force have to be eliminated with the result that
bols are favourable conditions for the production and per-
whole sentences undergo reconstruction. Nouns become
sistence of fictions, and that the measurement of sym-
hypostatical and immanent entities and threaten the
whole hierarchical structure, as F. H. Bradley so eloquently showed in his defense of adjectives against the
absolute.
bolic distance itself effects some degree of resolution.
So much at present for the field of symbols within
which we are to find and determine fictions. There will
be more to say of it explicitly later, but at this point grammar calls for the choice of' the elementary units from
which the field may be said to be built up. The grammar usually taught to school children deals with the parts
of speech, by which it means the parts of sentences:
are then used as adjectives. Conjunctions that have any
On examination these paradoxes and suppressions
show more or less thinly disguised the elements that have
been ignored, the relations. The copula always is asserted
in respect of some relation, or in logical terminology, in
some category. The preposition is obviously relational
nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, and
and directive. Conjunctions with logical force express very
so forth. Older grammar began with smaller units, such
as the parts of words: syllables, sounds, and marks, and
it might even include non-verbal elements. Certainly
fundamental relations, and nouns are either substantives
or, like functions in the mathematical sense, systematic
there is no reason apparent in the representation theory
relations. In fact with the same kind of ingenuity that
educes the adjectival hierarchy from the sentence struc-
why these should not play the part of elementary units,
but it may be well for us to start with the parts of
ture, we can educe a network, or matrix, of relations from
sentences, and allow generalization to follow the suggestions we find there.
The form of the simple sentence seems to dictate its
division into three parts, the noun, the verb, and the ad-
analyzed into relations, and after the manner of the contemporary mathematical physicist we can rearrange our
preconceptions in such a way as to turn the world into
a relative and expanding universe. Relations are mar-
jective, or the substantive, copula, and the adjective. The
vellously elegant hypostatical entities, and they appeal
strongly to the metaphysical imagination. We shall have
to say more of the fictions arising from this mode of
need for an account of more complex sentences and the
possibility of substituting phrases and clauses for one or
another of these parts of speech has led to the separation of the form of the sentence and the making of rules
of substitution. These allow not only a prepositional
phrase to be substituted for an adjective, or a copula and
an adjective or an adverb for the verb, but also for the
replacing of a substantive by an adjective. In fact, by the
which all discourse can be drawn. Adjectives can be
generation also, but here it will be sufficient to point out
that we have paradoxes and suppressions like those that
accompany the adjectival grammar. The chief sufferers
here are the adjectives and nouns that serve as terms for
perform the function of a substantive, as when it is the
the relations. They are needed to anchor the relations,
but their service is soon dispensed with and they give
their places to relations between still other terms whose
life and activity is also limited. Here again also the whole
network is finally taken in one piece and attached as an
adjective to some substantive of hypostatical origin and
subject of a sentence, and that an adjective may be very
complex as when a preposit\onal phrase or an adjectival
that we are pushing good analysis too far in each of these
proper selection of rules of substitution it is possible to
show that any sentence expresses some section of a merely
adjectival hierarchy. This means that an adjective can
8
we have Bradley's problems on our hands again. It seems
SUMMER 1984
�cases, and that there ought to be a more temperate
medium which will throw the precedin$ methods into
complementary service.
This last suggestion is reinforced by certain points
in Bentharns' Theory of Fictions (Kegan Paul, 1932). It
seems that J ererny Bentham spent the greater part of his
life in exposing ghosts. There were ghosts in his family
horne when he was a child, and later he found john Doe
and Richard Roe in the law courts, as well as the economic and the natural man in Rouges of Parliament. In
fact every institution harboured ghosts, and some of them
were even worshipped. After a busy life spent in exorcizing ghosts of all descriptions and reputations, Bentham decided to retire to some quiet place and draw up
the rules for the permanent cure of ghost-seeing in
general. He had learned that the genesis of ghosts is
linguistic, and he therefore knew that the required rules
would be orthological, and in particular would deal with
the clarification of fictions. The exposure of ghosts is
brought about by the clear exposition of meanings in
language. For this purpose he lays down the fundamentals of a suitable grammar and rhetoric.
He begins with a classification of words as substantives, adjectives, relatives, and operatives according to
the usual conventions of school grammar except for the
substitution of operatives for verbs. We shall see the importance of this exception later. He then points out the
various practical devices for fixing the meaning that a
word shall have in a given piece of discourse. These are
chiefly comparison of words by means of dictionaries and
etymologies, and definition by means of classification according to genera, species, and differentiae. So much he
expounds only to point out the subject-matter and the
conventional and therefore recognizable ways of handling
it. Nothing has happened to fictions and ghosts up to
this point. And so it is with the types of grammar that
we have pointed out so far; they are not sensitive enough
to discriminate between fhe vicious and the efficient uses
of language.
The clarification of fictions requires exposition by
paraphrasis. This in turn depends on a certain telescopic
character in words as Bentham recognized, particularly
in words that have a fictional force. A single word may
stand for and at the same time obscure very complex
linguistic forms. A sentence containing such a word may
convey quite false and misleading intents to a hearer who
cannot make the proper reference. Thus in the grammar of adjectives a single adjectival word may be
substituted for a whole clause or phrase, and then this
single world may occur as the subject of a sentence. The
result for a naive hearer or reader may be the addition
of an apparently substantial entity to the sum of things
that the ordinary person would call his real world. Thus
as Bentham shows, many people have fought wars and
died in order to achieve Liberty or Justice, simply because
they have heard someone use these words as subjects of
sentences. Phlogiston, caloric fluids, and the ether have
influenced centuries of laboratory practice for the same
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
linguistic reason. Bentham recognized the telescopic
character of these and other words, and recornrnend~d
paraphrasis for the resolution of their distorted images.
Paraphrasis is the process by which a real subject may
be substituted for a fictional subject in such sentences.
It has two parts, archetypation and phraseoplerosis, as
Bentham very pictorially calls them. These names really
refer to parts of the process by which the fictional subject was generated, and therefore call for the reconstruction of the structure that lies behind or inside the
telescopic word. Archetypation is the process by which
a term is made to represent a thing. In terms of the representation theory of symbols it is the setting up of the first
mirror so that it will reflect some one aspect of the concrete individual. It is on such archetypes that the rest
of our symbolic world depends. Phraseoplerosis is the
filling in of the secondary, tertiary, and n-ary symbols
that mirror for us the primary or archetypal symbols.
When some of these intermediate symbols are lacking,
we mistake the remaining ones either for archetypes or
for individual objects, and we suffer from fictional
deception.
Bentham has this to say about archetypation: Simple propositions are either physical or psychological.
Psychological propositions have physical propositions for
archetypes; physical propositions are asserted about
things either at rest or in motion. Ultimately every proposition predicates the existence, past, present, or future,
of some state of things which is either motional or quiescent. These remarks have a heavier metaphysical load
than we need to carry for our purposes, but it is easy
to see that the distinction between physical and
psychological propositions accords with the distinction
between primary and other symbols. The specifically
psychological side of symbols will more suitably come
into the next chapter when we are discussing the production and gcowth of fictions. The formal and operational side will concern us here.
Phraseoplerosis may be a very complex process, and
Bentham has listed many suggestions that we shall have
to systematize. The general term of the separate processes
is synonymization, and these processes correspond very
closely with the various sorts of transformations that take
place in secondary symbols under the conditions of
distortion, on1ission, and amplification of representation
or mirroring. The Benthamite list follows:
Antithesis
Illustration
Exemplification
Description
Enumeration
Parallelism
Ampliation
Restriction
Distinction
Disambiguation
(Determination by opposites)
(Adducing analogies)
(Showing instances)
(Application of unique traits)
(Of instances)
(Comparison by complex analogies)
(Characterization by relations to other terms)
These terms are fairly pictorial and, with the explanatory
phrases that I have added, help to· convey what may be
better gained by reading the archetypation and
9
�phraseoplerosis of the word 'church' as Bentham gives
it (Theory of Fictions). It can also be seen that the list has
overlapping terms, and that it is probably not exhaustive
of the processes that would be necessary in given cases.
These are Bentham's brief suggestive descriptions of processes that we find him employing throughout his other
writings. If we can translate his terms to a new basis,
I think it will be possible to show the systematic foundation on which he was working. This new basis will be
taken from the science of rhetoric, or that part of it which
deals with figures of speech, but, as an account of notational structure, rightly belongs to grammar.
There seem to be two important ways that sentences
involve figures of speech. In one of these ways a sentence
is to be understood metaphorically; in the other a sentence is to be understood literally. It is by ignoring this
distinction that the grammar of adjectives and the grammar of relations gain the specious generality that leads
to the paradoxes that we have noted in them. The grammar of adjectives tends to conceal metaphors, as when
an adjective in one hierarchy is predicated of an adjective in another hierarchy without confessing the jump.
The grammar of relations on the other hand pretends
to give all sentences a literal interpretation. Each grammar has its proper virtues, but the virtues are heuristic
and speculative rather than analytical. A first rough division of sentences into literal and metaphorical serves a
practical and common-sense end, and the possibility of
referring them both to more complicated units, the
figures of speech, takes care of their complementary
properties.
In the language of one contemporary school oflogic
sentences may be divided into two different kinds of incomplete symbols. Some sentences, those to be understood literally, need other literal sentences as co-ordinate
context to make their meanings clear. Other sentences,
metaphors, need to be expanded into sets of literal
sentences. In this manner of speaking, metaphors are
condensed summaries of systems of literal sentences, and,
as we shall see, they become fictions when their exposition is ignored.
·
The distinction between metaphors and literal
sentences is important and obvious in the literary use
of language. 'Napoleon was a wolf and 'Napoleon was
a soldier', though in the grammar of our schools of the
same verbal form, are easily distinguishable in a literary
context. In 'Napoleon was a wolf' we have a good case
of Bentham's archetypation, the picture of a wolfleading
a pack to the destruction of flocks of sheep, and this picture obviously represents, or can be represented by, a
system of literal sentences, one of which would be
'Napoleon was a soldier: The finding and articulating of
this set of literal sentences would be what Bentham calls
phraseoplerosis. There is no doubt that such archetypation and phraseoplerosis would have been comforting to
the ordinary folk in the Napoleonic period of history. We
usually have similar but closer and less recognizable fictions in our minds, and they need similar treatment.
10
As in the case of the previous grammars, there are
matrices of terms from which metaphors are drawn. As
a matter of fact such matrices are constructed by the proper combination of adjectival hierarchies and relational
networks, but they have much greater generality and
usefulness than either of their constituents, and the process of combination would not be illuminating at this
point. These figurative matrices are like those from which
determinants are made in algebra, terms set in rows and
columns to make rectangular patterns, some oblong and
some square. Diagrammatically they look like this:
a
b
c
d
a
b
h
c
i
b
e
h
c
!
b
e
h
k
!
g
a
d
g
a
d
(1)
e
k
d
J
j
I
(2)
(3)
'
c
(4)
'
!{
I
J
Thus 'Napoleon is a wolf could be interpreted as a
metaphor drawn from a matrix of the first type, with four
terms thus:
Napoleon
peasants
wolf
sheep
(1)
Or from the second type:
Napoleon
army
peasants
kings
wolf
shepherds
(2)
pack
Or from type (3):
ambition
plans
hunger
hunting
end
means
sheep
success
satisfaction
consequences
(Napoleon)
(wolf)
(man)
It will be noted that the terms in this matrix do not include any of the terms in the metaphor except as these
are expanded in the matrix. This example might easily
be extended for the purposes of a psychological-ethical
analysis of the history of Napoleon. Another type might
state the comparative anatomy of Napoleon and a wolf.
The extent and shape of a given matrix depends on the
explicitness of the subject-matter, the available notations,
and the purpose of the diagram.
According to the mathematician a matrix should be
read merely as it stands, but this is doubtfully possible
in algebraic matrices, and quite impossible when the
terms are verbal. The mathematician's point is that matrices are merely arrangements, and the moment any
selection or rearrangement is attempted, a matrix
SUMMER 1984
�becomes a determinant with a value at least potentially
determined. The mathematician's insistence is somewhat
like the metaphysician's insistence that a prime matter
completely unformed can be separated from things and
dealt with in isolation, and in the metaphysical analogue
we may see what the mathematician intends to point out.
For the metaphysician wishes to say that matter can enter
into any of a certain class of things, and is not restricted
to this as against that form, except disjunctively, either
this or that. Likewise the mathematician intends to say
that different determinants can be drawn from the same
matrix, and this means that a matrix has a greater range
of possible forms than any one interpretation can put
upon it, though this range has definite limits, as could
be shown by the application of a calculus of permutations and combinations to the aggregate of terms.
It is the presence of the indeterminacy under a
definite form that makes it so difficult to read a matrix
without imputing to it one or another of the possible interpretations. On the other hand the attempt to make
a matrix fully explicit meets with great difficulties. A
matrix as it stands has many meanings but we do not
know which one is intended. A verbal matrix is like an
algebraic formula in which we do not know what is being talked about nor whether what it says is true. The
fact that it has words as terms makes it doubly puzzling
to the ordinary reader because we recognize the words
of which we usually think we know the meaning and yet
the clues these give us lead to labyrinthine confusions.
Just so to some people an algebraic equation calls for
solution and the filling in of unknown quantities, search
for which by the untrained algebraist leads across the
swamp of trial and error. The trained algebraist notes
the form of the equation and follows the rules appropriate
elements, the table top and the number five, but the
analogy makes clear that the similarity is not directly relevant. It rather holds between two relations, one between
a part and the whole of the table-top, and the other between one and five; it is between these relations only that
the similarity holds. Furthermore the similarity does not
hold between any two terms either of the metaphor or
of the analogy, but rather between two relations about
which nothing more than a similarity is stated. The
distinction here between what is stated and what is not
stated in the analogy shows what is definite in the matrix,
and what is left indefinite, and the distinction is important to keep in mind when dealing with metaphors,
analogies, and matrices in general.
The example chosen above is of course of the simplest
sort, and there are more complicated sorts, correspon-
ding to the types of matrices diagrammed previously. In
each case a similarity is stated between the respective relations that connect the terms in the several rows or columns. The primary relations connecting the successive
terms in any row or column may be of any sort as long
as the other rows and columns involve similar relations
similarly placed. Also terms may be repeated from one
row or column to another, resulting in the type of matrix
from which the Greeks drew their favourite analogical
formulae, the mean proportional. A completely
degenerate case of this would be a matrix in which all
the terms were identical and all the relations relations
of identity. The other extreme of this type would be a
matrix in which all the terms were distinct and different
and the relations in any one row or column different from
those in any other row or column. In this case we should
have what might be called a thin analogy, the similarity
holding only between orders resulting from quite different
to it. In some cases he will know that there are no determinate solutions, in others that there are several solu-
relations. All cases of physical measurement are cases of
tions, and in still others there may luckily be one and
only one. But there is still another kind of mathematician who will realise that the solutions are trivial illustrations only and that there is more to be learned by a study
of the form itself, and that such study may proceed
in either terms or relations, provided the relations give
rise to similar orders. Stated otherwise, a matrix consists of rows and columns of terms, such that the relational order in one row is repeated throughout the others,
and the relational order in one column is repeated
through transformations, generalization, and the many
tricks in mathematics that correspond to what Bentham
calls archetypation and phraseoplerosis. The ways of
such thin analogies. Any degree of diversity is allowed
throughout the others. Obviously the most abstract
matrical notation as it is written on paper fulfills the above
requirement in the bare spatial relations of its terms, but
generalization and manipulation of forms seem vague
that does not prevent it from exhibiting the form of an
and confusing to those who have like ourselves lost grasp
of their language, and these remarks about mathematics
may be comforting by way of citing precedent for the
following remarks about matrices of words.
The form that we have exhibited in matrices is the
form of the analogy; this is true both for mathematics
and for grammar. The relation between metaphors and
indefinite number of other matrices. One further point
their matrices is best shown in the expressions we have
for measurement. Thus to say that the table is five feet
long is a quasi-metaphorical short statement for the
analogy: a certain section of the table-top is to the whole
table-top as one is five. The original metaphorical statement says that there is a certain similarity between two
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
of formal description: Any retangular part of a given
matrix is also a matrix; and any given matrix may be
included as a part in some larger matrix. Any shifting
of the order of terms, and the rules for such shifting would
come under the treatment by rhetorical operations.
Bentham illustrates archetypation by an analysis of
the fiction of moral obligation. Chasing etymologization
as the clue, he says that the archetype involved in any
reference to obligations incumbent on persons is the pic-
ture of a man pinned to the earth by a heavy weight which
must be removed if he is to get free. This picture is the
archetype of the fiction in that it sets the pattern for the
11
�phraseoplerosis that is required to make clear just what
the elements and relations are that go ioto the social situation where we fmd obligations. In another place he cites
the picture of a man bound by ligatures to a load which
he is carrying as the archetype of obligation, and then
goes on to detail the elements in this situation. The flat
literal-mindedness of these interpretations is a striking
quality in all of Bentham's work; he was vividly aware
of the great distances in fictional discourse and was not
afraid to take them at one stride. The rest of the analysis
is concerned with the details of his well-known hedonistic
ethical theory.
If we assume that the analysis consisted in the construction of a matrix, the picture of the man pinned to
the ground by a heavy load serves to fill in the top row:
man
load
This row then serves as an archetype or model upon
which the other rows are to be built, and we may imagioe the last row as follows:
person
duties
There will be as many intermediate rows as are necessary
to make the fiction clear. In Bentham's case the middle
rows would present the main terms in the hedonistic
theory, and the original archetype would be expanded
to more terms for the sake of a finer analysis.
As the matrix grows by the addition of rows, the columns also take form and when it is complete we have
another archetype in the first column, which repeats its
form in the succeeding columns, and as a matter of fact
this second archetype is often used in the construction
itself. It would be used as an aid for the purpose of suggesting terms where the words for things and ideas are
in a confused state and difficult to choose. We may call
these second archetypes cognate to the first; they become
useful in measuring distances as we shall see. They may
displace the original archetypes in cases of emergency.
It should be noted that often the relations that constitute
the archetypal order in the columns are very thin relations of correspondence; whether they give place to
thicker relations or not depends on the skill of manipulation applied to the matrix in deriving formulae from it.
There are two important processes in scientific method
that are exceptions, the so-called one-oneing of series and
the observation and measurement of data. In these cases
there is a stage where mere correspondence is taken as
original and the process of induction passes from this to
detennination of relational order (for instance, in the case
of series, to the analysis of serial orders, and in the case
of measurement, to the articulation of relational hypotheses). The shift of attention from an archetype to its
cognate and back again sets the twin problems of
mathematical and empirical induction in a most instructive light. It informs imagination and memory, and may
at any time save the analytic process from complete
collapse.
12
Archetypation lays down the basic structure of the
matrix in the rows and columns. Phraseoplerosis completes the matrix by filling in secondary rows and columns. The remaining part of grammar is concerned with
the determinants and the rules by which they are drawn
from the matrix. In the first place two kinds of determinants are to be distinguished, the analogical determinant and the literal determinant. The analogical determinant is little more than a reformulation of the matrix,
though there is some variation in the ways that this can
be done. Thus the matrix
a
d
g
c
b
e
h
/
l
can be written as a determinant thus
a:b:c:d:e:J:g:h:i
which may be read
a is to b is to c as dis to e is to f as g is to h is to i.
The same matrix can also be written
·j ·
a .· d .· g .· .· b .· e .· h .· .· c . . ,·
In the Euclidean account of proportions, from which
this notation is taken, the second determinant would be
said to result from the first by alternation, and other
forms with which the reader will be acquainted result
from the first by inversion. The application to matrices
and analogies is obvious and needs no further comment.
These might be called the complete analogical determinants derivable from a matrix. Partial determinants
can also be derived by taking any rectangle or square
of terms as they stand, or by taking the corresponding
parts of selected rows or columns. For instance,
a
g
b
h
gives rise to the determinants
a:b::g:h
and
a:g::b:h
The derivation of literal determinants is a more fundamental process. Suppose we try to take a single row
or column by itself. We can do as Bentham did and
translate it into a picture, for instance, the man bound
to a load, but pictures are too ambiguous. If we are to
keep the necessary degree of rigour and explicitness, we
shall have to substitute some more determinate relation
for the implicit or variable relation that is indicated in
the matrix. Instead of simply
a
b
c
or
a: b : c
we shall have to say
SUMMER 1984
�where R 1 and R 2 are more or less explicitly defined relations. Thus
man
load
will have to be amplified or explicated to
man bound to load.
The derivation of literal determinants demands some
determination of the unknown or unstated relations of
the matrix. It is a more difficult process than any other
so far mentioned. It leads to the notion of a fully determined matrix in which all the relations would be made
explicit thus:
a
R'''
R'
R"
c
R'''
R'
b
R'''
e
d
R'"'
g
R"
f
R'
h
R"
R""
R''''
in which the primes show the diversity and yet the
similarity of the relations. Fortunately such fully determined matrices, if we may still call them such, are not
always needed. If the archetype is sufficiently familiar
as ,il picture, the determinate relations may quite
harmlessly remain submerged, as far as the analysis of
fictions is concerned. On the other hand, some degree
of explicitness must be brought into the analysis at some
point. Otherwise matrices, determinants, and analogies
in general become the vehicles of mysteries and the multiplication of mysteries. Familiarity with pictures is a scaffolding built in imagination for the sake of the establishment of explicit relational structures.
The derivation ofliteral determinants from matrices
actually calls for the specification of the relations in the
rows or columns concerned. These relations, as long as
they are in matrices, need only be specific enough to fulfil
the demands of analogical similarity; that is to say, they
are apparent variables as they enter into analogies. The
analogy says that there is at least one relation between
a and b which is like at least one relation between c and
d. It may be that there is more than one such relation
on each side for which the analogy holds. Literal determinants, on the other hand, substitute constant relations
for the variables, and since there may be more than one
constant that satisfies the conditions of the analogy in
the matrix, there may be several literal determinants for
any one row or column. If there is only one such constant, we say the original row was thin; if more than one,
the original row was thick Thin and thick relations make
weak and strong analogies respectively, and the usual objections to arguments by analogy are directed against
abuses that arise from confusing such relations. The cure
for such abuses is the careful explication of literal
determinants.
Certain violations of the rules for drawing literal
determinants from their matrices may give rise to what
might be called metaphorical determinants. In the matrix
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
a
c
b
d
it may be noted that a in the first row corresponds to
c in the second row. If we now substitute 'is' for 'corresponds td, we have the simplest and most familiar type
of metaphor. 'Napoleon is a wolf is an instance, and it
was drawn from the matrix
Napoleon
wolf
peasants
sheep
Another class of violations give rise to more subtle and
lively metaphors. 'Napoleon barked at the sheep' or 'The
Wolf stampeded the peasants' would seem to argue the
supposition of diagonal relations in the matrix, or the
product of the cognate relations. Strictly speaking this
is not the case. It is easy to see that 'barked at' and
'stampeded' belong in the literal determinants for the second and first row respectively, and that the metaphorical
sentences merely appear to shift them to the diagonal.
A literary purpose has been fulfilled by ellipsis, which
in these cases has either crushed or staggered an analogy.
Metonymy and synecdoche play similar happy havoc with
matrices, and likewise allegories, myths, and scientific
theories with more complex analogies.
It should now be clear that the results of phraseoplerosis consist in explicit relational statements extracted
as literal determinants from analogical matrices. Some
propositions as we meet them in discourse are metaphors
which are to be analysed and made explicit by archetypation and exposition in matrices. Metaphors are thus elliptical expressions for a group of propositions that we derive
as literal determinants from their matrices. The simplest
literal determinant will be a proposition that states a
dyadic relation holding between two terms of the matrix.
Larger literal determinants can be analysed into these
units. These are the atoms whose confluence in discourse
results in symbolic structures, and their conjunction in
analogies is the basis for the representation theory of
symbols.
One of the difficulties in the representation theory
is that propositions do not always show in their verbal
structures the kind of precise correspondence to one
another and to their objects that the theory demands.
I think I have shown one reason for this, namely that
some propositions are metaphorically elliptical, or contain telescopic words and incomplete symbols. A!llllysis
of these propositions removes the difficulty by showing
their elementary units and how they do correspond in
analogies. Another difficulty is due to the fact that not
all the symbolic units, the relational couples, are expressed in verbal propositions. In fact relations are in
a real sense themselves fictions, as Bentham says. They
can be translated into other symbolic elements, and in
ordinary discourse some relations are so translated and
some are not.
The best term to describe the symbolic elements into
which some relations are translated is operation, or
13
�operative. The discovery of operations in mathematics
and their careful formulation was a turning point in
analytic theory. So it might have been in the other
linguistic sciences. In mathematics it is possible to formulate the assumptions of geometry in terms of points,
translations, and rotations. The last two are operations
to be performed, first, on points and then on any elements
that result from such operations. Thus a line results from
the translation of a point in a given direction, and a circle from the rotation of this line about a point. When
such a formulation has been made, it becomes apparent
that the operations have taken the place of the fundamental relations in the older geometry. Likewise in
algebra the relations in an algebraic equation can be
formulated as operations on elementary symbols. Similarly the relational constituents of any language can be
translated into operations, a fact which has recently been
noted and developed by anthropologists and pragmatists
in philosophy, and recognized by them as parallel with
the operational interpretation of physics as we have it
stated in Bridgman's Th£ Logic of Modern Physics. As a matter of fact any material that is used symbolically can be
interpreted operationally, and this is done by substituting
operations for relations in all cases.
Some conservatives are alarmed at the apparent
degradation of science and thought in general brought
about by this translation. They think that relations have
been annihilated and that therefore rigour must have
been lost. They should be reminded that all the rigour
that is essential has been carried over in the translation,
and it should further be pointed out that there were very
puzzling paradoxes in the calculus of relations that were
disguised and hidden in the rules of operation. In other
words operations have always been present, and sometimes their neglect has had confusing consequences. The
operational interpretation of symbols recognizes these
puzzles, and at the same time applies its grammar to a
wider range of symbolic materials such as, for instance,
the use of scientific instruments and the patterns of
human behavior that enter into intellectual arts. Thus
the rules of grammar become mure general and adequate
as the grammarian admits that the whole field of symbols is his subject matter.
However these controversial matters may stand, the
point for us here is that a full analysis of fictions should
include operations as well as that part of the symbolic
14
complex which happens to be symbolized in sentences.
Thus the metaphor of measurement noted above, "The
table is five feet long;' must be analyzed into an analogy,
one side of which collslsts in the operation of successively
applying the unit of length to an interval which corresponds to the multiplication of one by five in arithmetic.
Most discourse for reasons of brevity and convenience
is half relational and half operational in its significance,
and the difficulty of deriving literal determinants from
matrices is often avoided by the introduction of operations where relations are not named. Similarly, the
representation theory will often not apJrly unless operations are introduced to supplement the propositional form
which is deficient.
Bentham realized this point a hundred years ago and
for that reason substituted operatives for verbs, thus gaining at the outset directness and concreteness in the results
of his analysis. The pictures which he used for archetypes,
when given operational interpretation, lead directly to
the detail of phraseoplerosis and the full exposition of
fictions. The final interpretation of matrices would also
treat the spaces between the terms in the rows and columns as blanks to be filled in with operations appropriate
to the analogical form. Thus we can say that the operation that will transform a to b is similar to the operation
that will transform c to d, and discover that Love makes
the World go round because the turning of one's head
and the apparent whirling of the visual field involve the
same relation or operation, namely, rotation.
With the extensions which the operational interpretation make possible for verbal symbols, sentences can enter
grammar in two ways: metaphorical or literal. If they
are metaphorical, they should be interpreted and analysed
by archetypation and phraseoplerosis with the help of
analogical matrices and the derivation of literal determinants. Literal determinants can then be asserted as
propositions or entertained as propositional functions
whose forms are relational. If sentences are literal, they
can be placed in matrices with their proper analogical
contexts. All of this may be done under the operational
interpretation.
Such is the grammatical account of the structure of
symbols and the description of the field within which fictions arise. It remains for rhetoric to show how these
structures arise in use, and what changes they undergo
and pass on to other things.
SUMMER 1984
�The Breathing Side of Ocean
The storm has lifted and the summer sea
lies still, a shimmering immensity,
as the spent waves slide over the sand.
The mind can almost grasp a sea this still,
is tempted to forget itself until
the vacationers return, crowding the strand.
They are well-equipped: umbrellas erected,
towels placed, radio-stations selected,
bodies well-oiled and tanning, they compose
a tedious leisure. Let the sun bless
them with lethargy. It will suffice.
I watch their children bobbing in the shallows,
and remember wading here, a child-king
for whom the sea dreamed freely, waves arching
toward the shore with the glory of Chinese
warriors, their horses crowned with foam,
their swords flashing victoriously in a prism
of mist beneath the chalky, mountainous clouds.
At evening I meander down the beach
to where the pelicans feed on dead fish.
The clouds are high and thin, luminous ghosts
attending the seas heavings, the waves crashing
dim silver. I lie down, thinking of nothing,
and watch the sea for hours, how it persists.
William Thompson
William Thompson is a graduate student in English at the University
of Virginia.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
15
�The Problem and the Art of Writing
Jacob Klein
T
he subject of this lecture is The Problem and
the Art uf Writing. And that is what I am going
to talk about. My real theme, however, the
theme that prompts me to deliver this
lecture, is- Reading. For what we do here,
are supposed to do here, most of the time, is- reading.
I submit- and I hope you will not mind my saying thisthat, on the whole, we do not read too well. There are
obviously many reasons for this failure, varying from individual to individual, from circumstance to circumstance. It would be quite a task to try to account
for all of them. But there is one reason- one among so
many-which is conspicuously noticeable. Reading
means, first of all, to face a written text. And it seems
to me that we do not sufficiently reflect on what this fact
entails, on what writing itself implies or presupposes, and
on what it, of necessity, precludes. To talk about Reading
leads thus unavoidably to the subject of Writing. Hence
this lecture.
In reflecting about writing it is impossible to disregard
the spoken word. How could we, indeed? For human
speech, this marvel, this greatest marvel perhaps under
the sun, is right there, behind or beneath or above the
written word. It is difficult (although not impossible) to
conceive that there could have been writing without
human speech existing in this world. I mean, writing
seems to follow speaking. Writing and speaking exhibit,
at any rate, common aspects as well as aspects in which
they differ. Let me discuss those similarities and differences at some length.
The differences are not as clear as one might sup-
The late Jacob Klein taught at St. John's College, Annapolis, for over thirty
years. For a decade, from 1948-1958, he served as Dean of the College.
16
pose at first. Speaking, we might say, appears, of necessity,
as an audible sequence of sounds, a sequence in time;
actual human speech is never available as a whole, while
anything written is visibly there at once, in a book or
on a piece of paper or a chunk of stone. While reading,
even silent reading, takes time, as does the act of writing,
a written text, which takes up some space, is present all
at once in all its parts. But what about a tape-recorded
speech or conversation? Is not the whole right there, on
the marked tape? Are not written records of the proceedings, say, in a law court complete in such a way as
to project the temporal sequence of all the speaking that
goes on into a more or less limited space in which the
entire sequence is duplicated, and thus preserved, at
once? Such projections, duplications, and preservations
of live speech by means of manual skills or mechanicoelectrical or electronic devices amount to canning processes. The result is indeed canned speech that can be
released again into its proper medium by vocal or
mechanical or electrical means. The written word, however, is not at all canned speech. The primary cause for
the existence of the written word is not the desire to
duplicate and to preserve the sound of the spoken word,
but the desire to preserve its meaning so that it could
be conveyed to others over and over again. Writing tends,
therefore, to a shortening of the spoken word, a shortening that manifests itself in a variety of ways. Let us consider this phenomenon in some detail.
First of all, any writing is shorthand writing. Any
writing will do violence to the sound of the spoken word
for, although it cannot help reproducing words, its
primary purpose is to convey the meaning of those words.
The various methods of writing show that clearly. Chinese
characters, as you all know, although they can be read,
are drawn not to be read but to be understood without
recourse to the medium of sounds. They are appropri-
SUMMER 1984
�ately called ideograms. Egyptian hieroglyphics, at least
the oldest ones, convey their meaning directly, even
though out of them evolved a syllabic and alphabetic
script, something that happened to Chinese characters,
too. But even alphabetic writing, i.e., writing reproducing the sounds of words with the help of some thirty letters and combinations of letters, can often be read only
if the meaning is grasped first. This is particularly true
in the case of English writing. We would not know how
to pronounce, for instance, the assemblage of the three
letters BOW or ROW without the context that gives this
assemblage one of its several meanings. The reason for
this ambiguity is that the number ofletters is not sufficient to indicate the various sounds we are producing
while speaking. Although in many cases, as in the examples given, it might be easy to remedy the situation
by changing the spelling, it does not seem possible to
reproduce in writing the sound of all spoken words with
complete faithfulness. And that would probably still be
true if we adopted a phonetic system of signs, as the
linguists do, unless we multiplied the number of those
signs immeasurably. It is rather remarkable that the inadequacy of our sign systems does not really bother us.
It is true that something very similar can be said of
spoken words (in any language) inasmuch as the same
sound may convey differnt meanings depending on the
context, as for example the sounds "spell;' ''lie" (lye), "die"
(dye), or the sound of inflections in nouns and verbs. In
cases like those, writing might help to distinguish the
meanings, but it does not always do that. The relation
of written signs to the sounds of words seems, on the
whole, more ambiguous than the relation of those sounds
to their meanings.
Now, what seems to me significant is that the shortcomings of our character or letter systems appear to
reflect the tendency inherent in all writing to shorten the
flow of spoken words for the purpose of clarifying and,
above all, of preserving their meaning. This shortening
is done by reducing the number of the spoken words,
by condensing them, as it were, and this in turn is done
by selecting and arranging them in a proper way. That
is where the problem of writing begins to emerge.
Such shortening and condensing cannot be attempted, let alone achieved, unless the whole of what is to be
written is in some way present to the writer- I mean the
whole as a whole, not necessarily in all its details. In
shortening and condensing the spoken word, writing extends the devices by which words and sentences are con-
joined in live speech. The device of shading the meaning of words by inflections or prepositional and adverbial linkages, and above all, the device of combining not
only words but whole sentences by means of conjunctions and variations of verbal forms- the sum total of
all such devices constitutes what we call the arts and
disciplines of Grammar and Syntax. These terms refer
to disciplines which are the result of some reflection on
the manner of our speaking. It is not without interest
to observe that such reflection bore fruit, in other words,
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
that those disciplines took shape, in confrontation with
the written word, as the very word "grammar" indicates.
But writing itself transforms those grammatical and syntactical devices by applying them on a much larger scale
to the whole of a written work. The term "syntax"
( cruv"ta~t<;), in particular, acquires a much more comprehensive meaning. The word means "co-ordering," "putting things together in a certain order;' "com-posing." Anticipating the whole of what is to be written down, the
writer has to fit the parts of that whole into a proper order.
We have a direct pointing to this procedure in the title
of Ptolemy's book that we study here: it is called
Matherrwtical Composition (cruvra~t<; !!<XStl!i<X"tlKl'j)-"mathematical" in contrast to a possible non-mathematical composition relating to celestial phenomena. But the same
term cruvra~t<; could be applied to all written works. The
anticipated whole imposes upon the writer the task of
com-posing its parts with the graduated emphasis due
to each of them. And just as the devices of such a composition are extensions of syntactical devices (in the
restricted sense of the term "syntax"), the devices involved
in varying emphases, the devices of articulation, appear
to be extensions of grammatieal shadings observable even
in simple sentences of live speech.
The shortening and condensing of spoken words in
writing demand, then, modifications and extensions of
grammatical and syntactical devices. In writing, the
devices of Articulation and Composition add a new
dimension above and beyond the one governed by grammatieal and syntactical rules. It is in these new devices
that the problem of writing resides. That problem can
be formulated as follows: how can the anticipated whole
be made to unfold itself so as to become an actual whole,
that is, in Aristotle's immortal phrase, to become
something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end?
Right at this point, we see that the term "writing"
may be somewhat misleading if it is understood to suggest that the act of writing must be done with some kind
of instrument on some visible material. A speech in a
political assembly, in an election campaign, or on some
other public occasion (a lecture, for example) may well
be delivered without any written text, even any written
notes; the speaker could, of course, have prepared his
speech beforehand in writing, but he need not have done
so; he must, however, have prepared it somehow by thinking about what he is going to say and about how he is
going to say it; he must thus have anticipated the whole
of his speech and have committed this whole to his
memory, again not necessarily in all its details, but in
such a way that its composition and its main articulations are present to his mind. A speaker of this kind is
a writer, too. His rhetorical problem is not different from
the problem the writer faces. The speaker's memory is
covered, as it were, with the "imprints" of the whole. On
the other hand, a letter, a hastily scribbled note, can, on
occasion, be something like canned speech, if that letter
or note reproduces faithfully what would have been said
without writing.
17
�The distinction, then, between the spoken word and
the written word reduces itself to the distinction between
saying something spontaneously and saying something
in the light of an anticipated whole. Yet, this does not
seem sufficient. It could become more meaningful if we
looked at the effect speaking or writing may have or may
not have on the listener or reader.
We all remember a phrase that Homer uses so often
when describing human speech, the phrase "winged
words" (E1tEU n·mp6EV'tU). Whence this image? In most
cases, the phrase occur& when a personage, a god or a
man, addresses another single personage, a god or a man.
Occasionally it is also used when someone speaks to a
group or a crowd of people. Minstrels in Homer are never
said to utter or to sing "winged words." Now, words are
not called "winged" to indicate their soaring or lofty quality. The image seems rather to imply that words, after
escaping the "fence (or barrier) of the teeth'' (EpKo<;
OOOV'tOJV), as Homer puts it, are guided swifty, and
therefore surely, to their destination, the ears and the soul
and the understanding of the addressee. Words, especially
spontaneous words, can indeed be spoken in such a way
as to "sink in;' as we say. But this possibility grows more
uncertain with the growing indefiniteness of the addressee. It is more difficult to reach a crowd of men than
a single man. Exertions of a special kind are then required. In writing, the indefiniteness of the addressee
becomes almost complete. Live speech is spontaneous,
not confined within the boundaries of an anticipated
whole, and more often than not endowed with wings.
Written speech, visibly put down or invisibly committed
to memory, is prepared, composed and articulated as a
whole, and may yet lack wings. The problem of writing,
then, is: how to give wings to written words so that they
may reach their destination, the soul and the understanding of men.
To solve this problem, that is, to know how to compose and to articulate words so as to give them wings,
is to possess the art of writing. However artful the composition, some of us, of course, will not be touched by
the wings. There are no safeguards against that.
In the main, there are two ways in which this problem Baa be solved.
One is: to say explicitly all that is necessary for the meaning of the written text to be grasped, that is, not to omit
any link in the chain which binds our understanding,
and not to say anything which could disrupt that chain.
This kind of composition is conspicuously present in
mathematical works, in Euclid, Apollonius, good calculus
textbooks, and so forth; it is prevalent in any writing
meant to convey to us an understanding of the ways of
nature, of nature's structure, of the interlocking of natural
phenomena; its traces may be found elsewhere, too, especially in legal writing. The articulation of such works
tends to follow the sequence oflogical inferences. In fact,
it is the reflection on what is implied in this kind of composition that leads to the conception and establishment
of a very special art and discipline. This discipline has
18
as its subject that element in human speech, that element of the A.6yo<;, which gives it the character of
reasoned discourse. It concerns itself with the pure structures of the A.Oyo<; and bears therefore the name of Logic.
Subsequent reflection may make us doubt whether words
derived from actual speaking can serve as vehicles of
logical inferences. This doubt, in turn, leads to more
refined versions of the discipline of logic, leads to what
is call today Symbolic Logic. Any writing termed
mathematical or scientific is under the spell of the idea
of a strictly logical demonstrative discipline that proceeds
from accepted premises through a chain of inescapable
inferences to irrefutable conclusions. Seldom,. if ever, does
a composition embody this idea in its purity. The degrees
to which this idea is being approximated form a wide
range. What interests us here is the character of the wings
proper to compositions of this kind. This character is the
necessity inherent in our thinking.
The other way in which the problem of writing can
be solved is quite different. Here what is most important and decisive is not said explicitly at all. Compositions of this kind tend to articulate the whole in such
a way as to raise questions about the link that holds them
together. It is our answer that will either illuminate the
whole or plunge us into further darkness out of which
we shall be groping anew for light. Writings of this kind
taunt us. The character of the wings proper to them is
the taunting presence of a hidden answer, yet of an answer
within our reach. In what follows I shall try to give examples of this second way of writing. I shall take them
from Homer and Plato. But before embarking upon this
dangerous enterprise, I have to add a not unimportant
remark to what I have just said.
I said that in the main there are two ways of solving
the problem of writing and I have tried to indicate what
they were. I said "in the main" because there are- as
always- border cases and fringe phenomena in writing
that may loom large before our eyes and glow in a
peculiar light. Among the oldest cases of writing are, for
example, written laws. There are also monuments, themselves something like imprints on the collective memory
of mankind, but imprints made visible, and there are
inscriptions on them glorifying the deeds of some great
man or of some great ruler or of an infamous one. There
are epitaphs. There are short poems expressing a mood
or a whim, aphorisms, sayings, and proverbs. I omit mentioning other examples. (There are too many of them.)
We tend to cherish such border cases and fringe phenomena and to devote special attention to them. But I should
venture to say that they find their place on the map of
writing in terms of coordinates derived from the two main
stems of writing I was talking about.
And now, let me turn to the first example of the
second of these main stems.
Consider the Iliad. Among the great many events that
follow each other in the story and the description of which
constitutes the whole of the poem, there are certain ones
of decisive importance, which are quite familiar to us:
SUMMER 1984
�(I) the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles which
leads to Achilles' withdrawing from the fight; (II) the victorious advance of the Trojans; (III) the intervention and
death of Patroclus; (IV) the reappearance of Achilles on
the field of battle; (V) the death of Hector; (VI) the
funeral ofPatroclus; (VII) the surrender of Hector's body
to Priam. All these decisive events could be put in a
diagram as follows:
I
JI][·
·--------------- -x --..z
,6 " '
Disregarding the more or less superficial division into
books or songs and even allowing for all kinds of tampering with, and dislocations of, the original text, there is
no denying that the decisive events are crowded into the
last third of the whole. Between (I) and (II) events of great
significance certainly do occur, as, for example, the death
lost through Agamemnon's action. It is then said (I,
511-12): "But Zeus, the cloud-gatherer, said nothing at
all to her and sat in silence for a long while (&ljv):' An
awful silence! Thetis repeats her plea. At last, Zeus consents and nods, a sign of an irrevocable decision. Olym-
pus shakes. Thetis departs, apparently satisfied that she
has accomplished her mission. Has she?
The second event occurs after Patr~::>elus' death
(XVIII. 165-229), while the battle for Patroclus' body
rages before the ships between Hector and the Aiantes
and while Thetis is on her way to get new arms for her
son from Hephaestus. Hera sends Iris to Achilles, without
Zeus and the other gods knowing anything about the mission, to urge Achilles to intervene in the struggle for
Patroclus' body. Since Achilles has no arms at this juncture, he is asked by Iris to do nothing but to show himself
to the Trojans, to frighten them by his mere appearance.
Achilles, "dear to Zeus" (203), obeys and does more than
what Hera through Iris asked him to do. Pallas Athene,
who is nearby, does her share: she casts the tasseled aegis
around his shoulders and she sets a crown in the guise
of a golden cloud about his head and from it issues a
blazing flame. Thus he appears- alone, separated from
the other Achaeans- in the sight of the foe, a flaming
torch. But not only does he appear, he shouts, three times,
and the wounding of many and important warriors, the
Diomedean terror, the wounding of two gods, the encounter of Diomedes and Glaucus, the peaceful scenes
a terrible shout, clearly heard-and "from afar Pallas
Athene uttered her voice" (217-18). Unspeakable confu-
in Troy, the unsuccessful embassy to Achilles, inconclusive
duels among men and delightfully treacherous actions
on the part of the gods-all of which contribute in varying degrees to the unfolding plot. In the main, however,
the battle is swaying back and forth all the time until
finally the Trojans reach the ships of the Achaeans. During all that time Achilles sits in his tent, sulking, and only
occasionally watching the fight. The pivotal event, the
death of Patroclus, which changes, which reverses
saved.
What kind of shout is this? Is it one of triumph? Of
everything, occurs very late in the poem, in the sixteenth
book. It is as if the poem took an exceedingly long breath
to reach that point and afterwards rushed with breathtaking speed to its end. This is the more remarkable since
the entire period of time the poem encompasses is one
of 49 days and Patroclus' death occurs on the 26th day,
that is, very nearly in the middle of that period.
Why is the composition articulated in such an unbalanced way, we wonder. Let us see.
There are two events-among many others-which
I have not mentioned at all. Yet it is these two events that
seem to be the two foci from which all light dispersed
throughout the poem stems.
The first takes place when Thetis, Achilles' mother,
is visiting Zeus to ask for his help on behalf of her son,
reminding Zeus of the help he once received from her.
She wants Zeus to turn the scales of the war, to let the
the Trojans have the upper hand until finally, in the hour
of the Achaeans' greatest peril, 'Achilles, and only Achilles,
might be able to save them from certain defeat, lead them
to victory, and thus regain his honor, which he allegedly
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
sion and terror seizes the Trojans. Patroclus' body is
threat? Is it an ordinary war cry, raised to a very high
pitch? It is certainly not like the bellowing of the wounded
Ares (V, '859, 863). Two verbs are used to describe that
shout, one of a rather neutral taint, and, at the decisive
moment, another,
iuxro
(22S), which has a range of
meanings. One of these meanings is "crying out in grief;'
Shortly before (29) the same verb was used in precisely
this meaning to describe the lament of the maidens at
the news of Patroclus' death. It will be repeated shortly
afterwards (XIX, 41) to describe Achilles' shouting when
he rouses the Achaeans to battle. Why does Achilles shout
now, though not urged to do so by Iris? Certainly, to
frighten the Trojans, to make them desist from Patroclus'
body. But can this shouting fail to express the unspeakable
pain that fills his heart, the pain which had just brought
his mother to him from the depth of the sea? Here indeed is a terrible sight to behold: a man raised to his
highest glory by Pallas Athene, wearing the aegis,
crowned by flames, radiant, truly god-like-and this same
man crushed by grief, miserable in his awareness of hav-
ing himself brought the immensity of this grief upon
himself. The apotheosis of Achilles is the seal of his doom.
And it is his voice, his brazen voice (XVIII 222), his terrible shouting, which brings terror to the foe, that expresses
his misery and his doom. Pallas Athene's voice seems but
a weak echo of that of Achilles or is even completely
drowned out by the latter's intensity.
But are not these two events related?
19
�Does not Achilles' shout sonorously echo Zeus' silence?
Can we not guess now why Zeus remained silent for a
long while? Surely, he had to take account of the susceptibilities of his wife, as any husband would- and in his
marital relations Zeus is no exception- but is it only
Hera whom he was silently thinking about? Must he not
have been concerned about the whimsical nature of
Achilles' plight and Thetis' plea? And, on the other hand,
how could he have refused to satisfy Thetis in whose debt
he was? Is it not right then and there that Zeus decided,
in wisdom and sadness, irrevocably too, to accede to
Thetis' demand, to give honor and glory to Achilles, but
to do that in a manner which neither Thetis nor Achilles
suspected? The long stretch of the poem which corresponds to Achilles' inactivity fills Zeus' silence. While
the tide of the battle is being reversed, Patroclus' approaching death is announced twice (VIII, 476; XV,
64-7), the steps which lead to it are carefully pointed out
(XI, 604, 790-804, especially 792-3). Achilles will get
what he wants, but at the price of the greatest loss he
could suffer- the loss of his beloved friend, his other self
(XVIII, 79-82). In the hour of his triumph he will be
the most miserable of men. The ways of Zeus are as wise
as they are crooked. Zeus does not know about Iris' mission. But do the strong-headed and light-minded goddesses, Hera and Pallas Athene, know what is going on?
They do not, nor does Achilles' mother (XVIII, 74-5).
While Pallas Athene transfigures Achilles into a god,
Achilles is mortified. He has grasped Zeus' intent. He
says himself (XVIII, 328): "Not all the thoughts of men
does Zeus fulfill"; as Homer has said before (XVI,
250-2), commenting on Achilles' prayer before the slaying of Patroclus: "One thing the father granted him, the
other he denied:' Zeus denied him the safe return of
Patroclus. He denied it for Achilles' true glory's sake. For,
as Zeus confides to Poseidon, mortal men are his concern even in their perishing (XX, 21). That is what
neither Hera nor Pallas Athene understand. Hera does
not understand the biting irony of Zeus' remark to her
(XVIII, 357-9): 'Well, then, you have accomplished this,
you have aroused Achilles free of foot. Verily, the flowinghaired Achaeans must be your children:'
Achilles' suffering at the moment of his triumph is
Achilles' own. It cannot be matched by anything on
Olympus. It is as much the prerogative of a mortal as
it is the attribute of a hero. Homer is the teacher no less
of Aeschylus than he is of Plato.
This, then, is one example of the way in which a piece
of writing taunts us to understand what is being said not
20
in so many words, but through the articulation and composition of the whole. The answer I have given may not
be the right one or may not suffice. It is up to you to
find a better one.
Let us turn to the second example, Platds Phaedrus.
This example has the virtue of being not only an example of writing, but also a piece of writing the main theme
of which is writing itself. The two people who do the talking in this dialogue are Socrates and Phaedrus. Phaedrus
is a young man who loves passionately everything connected with words. He is a qnA.6A.oyo~ and so is Socrates.
The conversation is between two lovers of words and takes
place, on a summer day, outside the walls of Athens, near
a cool brook, under the shade of a tree in which cicadas
make a continuous and, I suppose, sometimes deafen.
.
1ng nmse.
The dialogue is divided as follows: there is an introductory part which I shall omit, although it is highly
significant. Then there are two clearly distinguishable
parts as follows:
"' Q00
~
=·
" lis.
I
The whole dialogue is framed, as it were, by two
figures. One is. Lysias, a famous speech-writer, who, at
the very beginning of the dialogue, appears on the scene
in the most suitable mask, to wit, as the scroll in
Phaedrus' left hand. (The scroll contains a speech written by Lysias.) Lysias remains present in that guise
(although presumably not always in Phaedrus' left hand)
throughout the entire dialogue. The other figure is
!socrates, another famous speech-writer, who is conjured
up by Phaedrus and given stature and dignity by Socrates
at the very end of the dialogue. One emerges as a past
master of bad writing and the other as full of promise
of becoming a writer of superior standing. Between these
two extremes Phaedrus is confronted with the problem
of Speaking and Writing-and so are we.
In the first part, three speeches are heard, the one
written by Lysias and read by Phaedrus, the other two
spoken by Socrates who keeps attributing their authorship variously to somebody he cannot remember, or to
the local deities, the Nymphs and Pan, or to the poet
Stesichorus, or to the cicadas, or to Phaedrus. The two
speeches spoken by Socrates are, at any rate, painstakingly elaborate, and, if they are not to be taken strictly
as written speeches, can hardly be conceived as impro-
SUMMER 1984
�vised unless, indeed, they are "inspired;' that is, dictated
by divine or superior powers.
Lysias' speech is the plea of a man to a young boy,
in which it is contended that it is better to favor a nonlover than a lover. Phaedrus considers it a wonderful
speech, "charming," as he would say today. Socrates finds
plenty of faults in it and proceeds to deliver a better
speech on the same theme, except that this speech blames
the lover and stops short at the point where it is supposed
to begin praising the non-lover. Phaedrus does not succeed in making Socrates finish that speech. It remains
truncated. Instead, Socrates, by way of recantationbecause he has offended Love- delivers another speech
in praise of Love. This speech, the most eloquent, occupies the middle part of the dialogue and is spoken by
Socrates while the sun goes through its highest course.
There is a definite change in the tenor of the dialogue
after the speeches are done with, and this changed tenor
persists throughout the second part. The conspicuous difference in the tenor of the two parts poses the problem
of the dialogue's composition.
Socrates and Phaedrus begin to speak, quietly and
soberly, about the spoken and written word and continue
doing so until the very end of the dialogue. Phaedrus
agrees with Socrates that the real problem concerning
writing is to distinguish good writing from bad writing
and is ready to embark on a discussion on this subject.
It is here (258E-259D) that Socrates calls Phaedrus' attention to the cicadas over their heads. He tells a story
about their origin: they were once human beings, even
before there were Muses; now, in their present form, so
says Socrates, they are supposed to report to the Muses
and to tell them who among men honors whom among
the Muses; they are watching, says Socrates, him and
Phaedrus now, at noontime, and if they see both talking
to each other and not asleep -like sheep and most
men- they might be pleased and report accordingly. The
question arises: why does Socrates tell this marvelous and
fantastic story of the cicadas' origin and nature at this
moment? It seems to be done to underscore that, from
now on, Phaedrus and Socrates, instead of exchanging
elaborate speeches, that is, written or dictated words, will,
in leisurely and sober fashion, converse about speechmaking and speech-writing and thus restore to the spoken
word its proper and unchallengeable function. The trouble is that Socrates' tale interrupts this sober conversation. And let us not forget that this sober conversation
is embodied in a written text.
In what follows, we witness the previous speeches being criticized and analyzed. The beginning of Lysias'
speech is subjected to a special scrutiny. And in the course
of it this beginning of Lysias' speech is made to repeat
itself, twice (262E; 263E-264A), word for word. We hear
Socrates interpreting freely the speeches he himself made,
assuming the role of their "father," so freely indeed that
they appear somewhat changed: the doubtful is omitted,
the wording is modified, additions are made (264E ff. ).
It is Socrates' way of supporting and defending the truth
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
they might contain. We observe Socrates and Phaedrus
bearing down on various books which claim to teach the
art of speaking. Phaedrus, the "lover of the Muses," is
not altogether satisfied with this kind of conversation
which he describes as "somewhat bare" (262C).
At the crucial point, when the discussion seems to
revert to the problem of good and bad writing (274B),
it is again interrupted by Socrates. He suddenly asks:
"Do you know in what way you would best please divinity
in the matter of words, either in making speeches or talking about them?" Phaedrus replies: "I certainly do not.
Do you?" Socrates: ''A tale, no more, I can tell from hearsay; a tale that has come down from our fore-fathers;
as to the knowledge of the truth, it is theirs alone:' And
Socrates casually adds: "But should we ourselves find this
truth, would any human fancy or opinion (S6l;uaJ.LU)
about it still be of any concern to us?" To which Phaedrus
replies: ''A ridiculous question!" Urged by Phaedrus to
report what he heard, Socrates proceeds to tell the tale
of Theuth and Thamous, legendary Egyptian personages,
a tale in which Theuth is reported to have invented letters, and thereby writing, and to have presented this invention to the god-king Thamous. I shall read now what
Thamous, according to Socrates, says (274E-275B):
"Most artful Theuth, one man has the ability to beget
artful things, another the ability to judge of their
usefulness or hamfulness to their users; and now you,
who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that
which they possess. For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because
they will neglect their memory, inasmuch as their tftist
in writing will make them recollect by means of external marks which are no part of themselves and will not
make them recollect from within through their own effort. You have thus discovered an aid not to memory but
to reminding. And you give to those who learn not truth
but merely the appearance of wisdom: they will become
acquainted with many things without proper teaching
and will seem to know, while remaining for the most part
ignorant and hard to get along with since, instead of getting wise, they will merely have acquired the reputation
of being wise:'
We should not forget that this is a tale and that we
have been warned by Socrates: hearsay is no substitution for our own discovery of the truth. Again, we should
not forget that this tale presents itself to us as a written
text which, according to the very content of the tale, cannot be relied upon without proper teaching. Neither
should we forget that the discussion of the problem of
good and bad writing has, once more, been successfully
interrupted.
What follows in the written text is a description of
writing that makes it appear a playful thing, undertaken
for "amusement's sake" (276B-D). One cannot expect
written words to be serious. For, as Socrates says (275D),
"you would think that they (the written words) speak as
if they had understanding, but should you, from a desire
21
�to learn, ask them anything about what they say, they
do nothing but repeat always one and the same thing!'
They cannot, therefore, defend themselves against misunderstanding and abuse. Furthermore, they cannot and
do not discriminate between those to whom they speak.
Any author who holds that there could be much solidity
and clarity in his written work, whatever its subject,
deserves to be blamed for that, regardless of whether there
is anyone to voice the blame or not (277D-E; 275C).
What, then, about the distinction between good and
bad writing that Socrates and Phaedrus set out to discuss?
Nothing is said about it. The answer to that question has
been- of necessity, it seems- playfully withheld. Still,
whatever has been said about the problem of writing has
been enacted in the dialogue. The repetitiousness of the
written word, its inability to defend itself, the superiority of the spoken word in spontaneous conversation which
interprets with understanding what was written downall that has been enacted by Socrates and Phaedrus in the
dialogue. Must we not continue the conversation to solve
the problem of good writing, to find the answer which
was not stated in the dialogue? And does not precisely
the Phaedrus, as it is written, offer an example of how good
writing can be done?
I have few concluding remarks.
Is Plato right in attributing superiority to the spoken
word, to any conversation in which winged words can
be exchanged spontaneously? There is a point at which
this superiority seems to disappear altogether.
22
A most remarkable similarity obtains between words,
spoken words of live speech, and money, money that is
available in coins and bills. Both are precious, both circulate freely, coins and bills from hand to hand, words
from mouth to mouth. The imprints on coins and bills
are gradually erased, effaced, rubbed off, just as the
meanings of words seem to become fuzzy, blurred and
empty with the passage of time. There is even
counterfeiting in language as there is in money. Human
speech, that greatest marvel perhaps under the sun, can
and does indeed deteriorate to an extent which renders
it obnoxious and totally wingless.
It is at this point that the written word may come
to its rescue. As we so aptly say, words can be "coined."
This happens both ways: words can be coined in support of cliches, fostering and increasing the ever-present
tendency to diminish the vigor and meaning of speech;
but words can also be coined afresh.
In a letter to a friend, Virgil, a writer, says that he
gives birth to verses in the manner of bears and according to their custom (parere se versus modo atque ritu ursina),
that is to say, that he handles his verses the way the mother
bear handles her newly born cub: assiduously and persistently she licks it into its proper shape. Such assiduous
work, performed on the written word and undertaken
to assure the right articulation of a composed whole, can
and does restore and preserve the integrity of human
speech. It is thus that the written word repays its eternal
debt to the spoken word.
SUMMER 1984
�Passage
Ich habe unter meinen Papieren ein Blatt
gifunden . . . wo ich die Baukunst eine
erstarrte M usik nenne.
Goethe
Cold as it is, this Duomo isn't frozen
Music. Measures I have in mind grow stiff
To no fa<;:ade, no calculable space,
No shrines for worship. God
And Goethe can't discern the difference,
Not having heard my music. This is not
To say that music has anything much to do
With sound- the unessential ear-caress
Of cello or contralto. Only the tones
Have number. Music moves
By turnings, unprefigured, unannouncedFallings that promise risings, like the wink
Of Eros at the crossing of the bar.
Elliot Zuckerman
Elliot Zuckerman is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis.
THE ST JOHN'S REVIEW
23
�The Myth and Logic of Democracy
John S. Kieffer
D
emocracy is a myth. From one point of view
there is not and never has been a government or a society that is truly democratic.
But on the other hand, when the name is
given with sinGerity to a government, there
are demands imposed on that government and its people that compel them to act so that the name is not completely falsified. This is the nature of a myth. It is a story
that is both false in detail or in literal fact, true in spirit
and in general.
The myth of democracy is, however, in our tradition
more definite than these general considerations. The
myth of democracy is the history of ancient Athens. It
has its quintessential formulation in the funeral oration
of Pericles, though it is told by all the great Athenian
writers; poets, historians, orators, or philosophers. It is
a lively, living myth. When modern historians write about
Athens, they reveal as much about modern political feeling as they do about ancient Athens. All the battles of
politics in the nineteenth and twentieth century have been
fought in the Agora of Athens.
The myth of Athenian Democracy has been one of
the great formative myths for our times. The goddess
Athena stands in the center of it. Athenas place in the
myth is exemplified in the Eumenides. She was the founder
of the court of the Areopagus, which symbolized the
wisdom and justice that were to replace the tribal custom
of blood-feud. The Athenians saw themselves in this central myth as escaping from the reign of the daughters
of Night, the furies. Now Athena is the goddess of the
In the course of a lifetime of teaching at St. John's College, Annapolis, John
Kieffer served as professor, tutor, President and Dean of the College.
24
household arts, of weaving, of managing. She also gives
the art of persuasion and practical reason.
In the Statesman Plato draws an analogy between the
art of weaving and the art of government or kingship.
It is not fanciful to suppose that he had Athena the weaver
in mind when he did so. He must have been thinking
of the way Athena had woven the fabric of her polis from
the warp of the bold natures who dominated the assembly
and the woof of prudence in the Areopagus. At any rate
the history of Athens shows this interweaving of boldness
and prudence, grandly in Themistocles and Aristides,
meanly in Nicias and Alcibiades.
The myth of democracy is largely legend, that is, a
story explaining some great phenomenon of history.
What does it explain? To take an example of another
myth, in the case of the Trojan cycle it seems probable
that the myths explain the breakdown of the Mycenaean
world. Periods of chaos are productive of legend. But this
is not the full story. The my.th of Troy as we have it is
the work of a man of genius who seems to have lived long
after the disappearance of the Mycenaean world. The
expansion of Greece through colonies seems to have been
the exciting cause of the Homeric poems. This was again
a period of swift change such as to be fertile in making
myths. So, for the Trojan war,. it seems that two periods
of history contribute to the story. (I am not saying that
the Homeric poems are caused by historical circumstances. The absolute cause must be the myth-making
faculties of Homer and his unknown predecessors. I am
saying that historical periods supply the material for the
poet's imagination to work on. And further, that periods
of change supply the most usable kind of material. Still
further, it may be that the finished poem, the Iliad or
Odyssey, is produced in a stable period following a period
of change.)
With the analogy of the Iliad and Odyssey in mind,
SUMMER 1984
�we may try to see what historical circumstances furnished
material for the myth of democracy. I am not going to
say "the fifth century," because that was the myth. To us
looking back it has historical being and becomes circumstantial to the myth; to the people living then it did
not, of course, exist historically, and so could not be the
phenomenon they felt called on to explain. I think the
historical phenomenon I am looking for is that same
period of colonization, or rather its concluding phase,
that had been, in its earlier phase, the material for
Homer. The second set of historical conditions for the
myt~ of democracy would be the rise of the Persian
empire.
So it is my contention that the myth of democracy
that we know from a community of bards and classic
writers, and that they knew from the rhapsodes of the
assembly, somehow told itself by applying its imagination to the colonizing period that ended in the sixth century B.C. and to the Persian wars. What was there about
that period that aroused the imagination to see a way
of government by words? And secondly, why does this
produce a myth of democracy?
I answer my first question first. Words must have
achieved a new importance for the sea-faring colonizers.
Ulysses shows by his example how his survival depended
on his skill with words: his quick repartee with the
Cyclops, his courteous speech and inspired tale-spinning
among the Phaeacians, his self-concealing lies when he
had returned to Ithaca. We can well imagine how often
a group of colonizers had use for quick wit and ready
tongue, to ease their way among strange tribes on the
coast ofltaly or the Crimea, to gain advantage over rival
groups seeking. a "home far off' on the same site, to settle disputes among the colonists themselves, now they
were living far from their accustomed ways and ancestral
habits.
This last was perhaps most important of all, for,
though hearth fire.and home gods accompanied the colonists, and ancestral customs were carried in their very
souls, the change of setting must have weakened the sentiment with which the colonists regarded them. Moreover,
many of their gods and customary rites must have been
inappropriate to their new surroundings. Add to this that
the colonizers went in small groups to widely scattered
places, from the Crimea to Spain, and came from many
different home cities, and so there was no central direction of their movement. They were forced to rely on their
own resources. No wonder then that the colonies were
often pioneers in new constitutions and in the development of written law. In all this words assume an importance not only greater than before, but also of a different
kind. As confirmation from the converse let me remind
you that the Spartans, who did not colonize and did not
carry on commerce overseas, were a byeword to the rest
of the Greeks for brevity of speech and have given us
our word Laconic. No one should be surprised to notice
that Homer was an Ionian and that both poetry and
philosophy sprang into being in colonial areas: Sappho,
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Alcaeus, and Archilochus in the islands; Thales, in Ionia,
Pythagoras born in Samos and settled in Southern Italy.
The rise of Persia contributed to the myth in a different way. In the first place Persia created Greece. It
was the threat of conquest by her world empire that made
the Greeks know themselves as Greeks. This was the
origin of the myth of Hellas. The Hellenes were forced
into a cooperative effort for self-defence. Once more the
power of words was made apparent. You cannot read
Herodotus without observing how rational discussion
among the allies was essential to the measures taken to
meet the Persian danger and how much persuasion was
needed to bring the leaders to agree on plans in common.
So we have the myth of Hellas and have seen how
the Greeks have discovered the power of words to hold
together a self-uprooted, changing society. Why does the
myth of democracy eventuate from this finding? To
answer this question we may first look at the political
myth that prevailed in Greece before the colonizing
period and that guided the plans and actions of the colonizers. That myth, I suggest, was the patriarchal myth,
the myth of fatherhood, of the wisdom of the elders. It
was the myth that was to be named aristocracy when later
ages became self-conscious and invented labels for its
customs. Its foundation in economics was in the ownership of land and its legal expression was through ancestral
custom, the laws (thesmoz) of Zeus-born kings and the pronouncement of oracles. The myth or elements of it survived all through the later age of democracy, oligarchy,
and tyranny. You can feel its presence on every page of
Plato. By contrast one of the formative myths of modern
democracy is the Social Contract. Now the Social Contract implies the natural equality of all men; it
foreshadows brotherhood rather than fatherhood and is
forward-looking not backward-looking. Men in a SocialContract society ask what new agreement shall we make
to deal with a new situation; in a patriarchal society they
ask, what does the custom of our ancestors, or the will
of our father, God, direct us to do. Probably the inner
logic of political behavior will always interweave the
strands of fatherhood and brotherhood. Our society is
founded on the Social Contract and yet our own Social
Contract, the Constitution of the United States, has
become, and had to become, an institutionalized father
image, the incarnation of ancestral wisdom.
In the foundation of the Greek colonies this order
is reversed. The colonies, as we have seen, were founded
according to the ancestral model of the mother city, but
by the logic of the situation, geographical dispersion, and
political autonomy, the colonies were forced to look ahead,
not back, and to act in practice as if on the theory of
the Social Contract. Accordingly, as we have seen, they
became leaders in the writing of constitutions and the
making of legal codes. Moreover, as we have also seen,
the Social Contract implies equality. Therefore, the
tendency toward democracy acquired the backing of
political practice. When the cumulative force of the many
separate experiences with government showed what had
25
�happened, historic patterns came into view. Tyrannies
arose, oppositions in the name of ancestral custom converted the traditional, unself-conscious aristocracies into politically conscious oligarchies, and the people, the
Demos, thereby became conscious of itself as a political
force.
I see the grounding of the myth of democracy, then,
in the colonial movement, which weakened the unquestioned acceptance of the old patriarchal way oflife of the
land-owning aristocracy pictured and idealized in Homer
and Hesiod, and in the Odes of Pindar. I have argued
that colonizing put a new emphasis on the use of words
as means of politics and that this meant a tendency away
from ancestral custom toward something like a Social
Contract. Another way of putting it is that tradition
disappeared to be replaced by reason. Historical realities
never exactly conform to categories of thought. The more
rational new forms of the colonies retained traditional
forms and relations and developed their own tradition.
Conversely, the traditional forms began to use the mode
of reason in their struggle for self-preservation.
The democratic myth includes something more than
a set of historical conditions and a new way of using
words. It includes also an implicit change in the view
of men in relation to one another and a new foundation
of political power. These two changes are related to each
other. If we can believe the accepted view of most
historians, the colonizing movement was one expedient
adopted because of population pressure. Rather than risk
revolution, the citizens of the metropolis decide to encourage a portion of the populace to emigrate and colonize. So, you see, a group that may have been an unconsidered mob of base-born paupers acquires a new
status. Partly this is because of its physical strength as
it grows more numerous, and perhaps because of the appearance of bold and intelligent leaders in its ranks. More
significant, however, is that, by the proposal to send out
a colony, the old aristocracy confers on the group of colonies the dignity of a rational equal. No longer are they
just a number of poor people who can be absorbed as
tenants or clients and cared for in a fatherly way by the
well-born land owners. It is now in embryo a corporate
body with whom the aristocracy can treat in a reasonable
way. This is the birth of Demos.
It is noteworthy that colonization was only one of the
possible expedients for dealing with the problem, but the
most rational and successful one. Another was the Spartan solution of the opposite extreme. The Spartans converted themselves into a permanent police force, holding
down lower orders by terror in a state of permanent subjection. Another solution, which went along with colonization, was conversion of the metropolis from agriculture to commerce and industry. This was the course
taken by Athens and Corinth, the former not an active
colonizer, the latter one of the greatest mothers of colonies. It was to these commercial cities that the progressive back-flow of new ideas and institutions first extended its influence and was most permanently effective.
26
In both Athens and Corinth the accommodation to the
new age was made by means of tyranny. Athens, however,
passed through the stage of tyranny under Peisistratus in
the sixth century and went on to Periclean democracy.
Corinth lapsed from Periander's tyranny into oligarchy.
As you remember, Athens and Corinth were the first antagonists in the Peloponnesian War.
In all this ferment which gave birth to Demos, and
Anti-Demos, we may add, there operates a world force
that assisted and hastened the coming of Democracy and
perhaps helped move events in that direction. This was
the introduction of coined money. Coinage both made
possible the commerce that sustained the colonial
development and was an important factor in the rise of
rationality. The latter because first coinage simplified
numbering and measuring goods for exchange, and then
because it struck a blow against the aristocracies' system
of personal values. As Marx puts it, exchange value
became dominant over use value. Whatever evils follow
from this exchange, it does represent a greater rationalization of human life. Protagoras' "Man is the measure" is
the philosophical end product.
One result was the substitution of property qualifications (represented in monetary terms) for qualifications
of birth, in settling the constitutional organization of the
polis. This was Solon's fundamental reform in sixth century Athens. Although he graded political power according to wealth, the successors to Pericles gradually
transformed the institutions until the property qualification became meaningless. But while these reforms ended
forever the old aristocratic power, they introduced the
schism that was to prove fateful, that divided Greece between democracies and oligarchies. For as to the birth
of Demos there always remained an uncertainty. Was
Demos the poor alone, or was he the whole state?
Periclean Athens came close to ending the schism, but
at the cost of a new division. The Demos of Athens was
corrupted by the imperial power the city gained as a result
of the Persian War, and ultimately the rational basis of
democracy and its appeal to the aspirations of men was
lost in the struggle for power. So the myth of Athenian
democracy ends in tragedy.
I believe we can trace a progress in the form of one
central question. Aeschylus and Pericles seem to ask the
question, 'What will make democracy work?" while Plato
asks rather, "Why won't democracy work?" Socrates is
the pivot on which the question turns. The transformation of the question is due, I think, to the tragic flaw in
the democratic myth that I have pointed out. For
Aeschylus, the answer to his question is that democracy,
which is represented as the victor over the Furies, will
work if it reverses the compact between Athena and the
Furies, now become the Eumenides, and preserves
Athenas court of Areopagus. In other words he accepts
the democratic exchange, but warns that the wisdom of
the elders, which we have seen to be characteristic of the
old aristocracies, must be allowed to make its voice heard.
Democracy is to be the government of all, not the govern-
SUMMER 1984
�ment of the many. Pericles, to judge from the funeral
oration, finds the source of the wisdom needed to guide
deliberation in the character and institutions of the Athenians. Athens is the School of Hell as, and must be, consequently, her own first scholar. For Pericles, too,
colonial experiments in rational construction of government had time to sink into the consciousness of the
Hellenic world, the authority of ancient wisdom, enshrined in sententious sayings, was first perverted then
democracy is the government of all; Demos is not just
challenged: perverted by being applied in contexts apart
from the old ways of behaving, then challenged by a ra-
the poor. The city will have wise leaders and a public
opinion that is a judge of good leadership, even if it is
not capable of originating policy. For Aeschylus and
tionalizing ascription to reason. For example, the most
famous gnomic utterance, "Know thyself," attributed to
various ones of the Seven Sages, meant, first of all, no
Pericles wisdom is something a little mysterious. They
each, in fact, are somewhat complacent in accepting the
doubt, know thyself to be an insignificant ephemeral
creature, the kind of being Zeus in Prometheus Bound intended for destruction. The perversion of the saying is
confident view that the success of Athens is due to her
wisdom and that one need not doubt that the wisdom
is there.
Socrates' whole life was a life of questions. In him
the power of rationality puts ancient wisdom to the question to declare its meaning to a new generation. The
democratic heirs of the old patriarchate had inherited
the noble terms, Ko./...6<;, tlya96c;, 8tKat6c;, "noble," "good"
and '~ust:' But just as Cleisthenes had rearranged the
patriarchal tribes of old Athens into geographic wards,
in order to obliterate the political power of the ancient
birth, so the sophists were rearranging meanings of the
ancient words and thereby obliterating the ancient moral
wisdom of the polis. As they became gradually aware of
what they were doing, the Sophists summed up the
discussion with the words qn)av; and v6!J.ot;, nature and
convention. 'What is just by nature differs from what
is just by convention" is a thesis that points up the contradiction in the democratic position of Pericles and his
contemporaries. To Conservatives the ancestral custom
of justice is natural and opposed to the injustice of tyranny, which is conventional. The sophists transvalue
values. Ancestral custom is conventional, brute power
is natural. "The natural is just" is the major premise here.
The mysterious paternal wisdom that Aeschylus saw interpreted by the goddess Athena and Pericles found in
the curriculum of the School of Hellas has become a subject of inquiry to the rational spirits of the sophists.
Socrates therefore appears in the pivotal role of
democratic dialectic. To the simple man, who was satisfied
instanced in the chorus of the Antigone, "Many the wondrous things, but none more wonderful than man." The
challenge, or substitution of new authority, is portrayed
in Prometheus who gives man the liberal arts and the
industrial arts, and frees him from his abject dependence
on the powers of nature. Finally, the naked opposition
to the original meaning of the saying is subsumed in Protagoras' "Man is the measure of all things." This saying
is effective because it not only expresses the end point
of an intellectual tendency to reverse man's relation from
one of dependence on nature to one of control of nature;
it also, additionally, reflects the economic and political
shift from an aristocracy of land-owners, with their
dependent tillers of the soil, and their own dependence
on the whims of weather and season, to the commercial,
sea-faring society of the colonies and Athens. In this society all things are measured by coined money, man himself
becomes a coin that measures all things with which he
comes in contact.
Socrates is a statesman, then, because he made possible the rational criticism of politics. He is a democratic
statesman, because it was only in democracy that his
method could work. I do not mean that people in an
oligarchy or an aristocracy could not play the game of
dialectic. But for Socrates his method was not a game;
it was a political program, aimed at the improvement
of the process of government. The reason why it could
work only in a democracy is that it is only in a democracy
that the means of governing is speech. Oligarchy and
with the wisdom of his fathers, he was a sophist. To the
aristocracy alike rest on a non-rational foundation, the
sophists, themselves, he was the supreme antagonist and
reactionary.
Socrates claimed to be the only true statesman in
one of wealth, the other of personal prestige or nobility.
Political control is reached either by purchase or by inspiring awe and in the end, sustained by force. Whatever
reasoning may go on among the elite themselves, the final
Athens because he alone went about asking people to
examine themselves and to find out what as men they
really wanted. The so-called statesmen simply out-bid
each other in giving the people what they thought they
authority is external to reason. In a democracy, on the
growth of democracy, was tending to destroy the foun-
other hand, reason is the final authority. I do not imply
that a democracy always reasons well or that the authority of reason never breaks down. I mean simply that you
can't have democracy without this principle. In Athens
the people discovered the principle, used it implicitly
without full understanding, were insufficiently self-critical
dation in ancestral wisdom not alone of democracy, but
of their own wisdom, and so put Socrates to death.
of any orderly government. The early aristocracies could
The death of Socrates was followed, within less than
a century, by the death of Athenian democracy at the
hands of the Peripatetic philosopher, Demetrius, of
Phalerum. In their dying both became myths for us.
wanted. This position of Socrates' is a rational criticism
of democracy. He saw that the movement to rationality,
which, as we have seen, played so large a part in the
subsist in their moral life on the gnomic pronouncements
of the sages, buttressed by the ambiguous declarations
of the oracles. As soon, however, as the success of the
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
27
�There is a curious difference, however, in our reception
of the myths. No one, I suppose, would hold that Socrates'
death is a warning for us not to seek knowledge. Yet there
have been many who have held the death of Athenian
democracy a warning not to practice democracy. To a
certain extent this difference may be due to the dialogues
of Plato. In them Socrates is hero and democracy villain,
at least as many read the dialogues. But Plato is not
melodramatic. The death of Socrates is as much the
tragedy of Athenian democracy as it is of Socrates. Plato,
I think, makes it clear that this is his feeling. One has
only to read his loving and hating satire on democracy
in the eighth book of the Republic and compare it with
the coldly disinterested treatment of oligarchy, the unmitigated contempt of tyranny, to see that Plato was no
oligarchical reactionary. In spite of Platds anti-democratic
profession we gain from him a sense of the power of the
democratic myth to make itself the standard by which
all other forms of government are judged.
One point the myth puts immediately before us for
decision. Are we going to understand democracy as a
government of the many or of all? This, as we have seen,
was the tragic uncertainty in Greek democracy. Thucydides has shown the irreconcilable division that drove the
democrats more and more in the direction of many rather
than all. It is not primarily an intellectual confusion, but
a real difficulty. Walter Lippmarm has stated the difficulty
for our time in his recent book, The Public Philosophy. In
it he shows what confusion surrounds the term "the people" in our political thought. It is not a semantic or intellectual confusion, though he uses a semantic device
to make it clear. It is the kind of confusion that cannot
be cleared away, because the people means both things
at once that Mr. Lippmann tries to separate. His two
senses are, the electorate at any given election, "the peepul" of political satirists, and the whole host of the nation, the ancestors, ourselves who now are living, and
the unborn generations to come. Government belongs
to all the people in this latter sense, while the electorate
of the moment is but a temporary trustee for the whole
people. Yet in so far as a generation is the product of
its ancestors and holds its beliefs from them (in large part)
while also having in its heart hopes for its progeny, it
is impossible to separate the people from the People. And
on the other hand the larger People is itself a temporary
part of humanity. Its habits and beliefs may be, in a larger
context, as momentary as the people in any given election year. It seems to me that, just as ancient democracy
both lived and died through the tension of few and many,
so our democracy lives in this same tension, extended
through time. Whether it will eventually die from the
tension is not for us to say. Mr. Lippmann has done us
a service by reminding us that it exists. Aware of it, we
know better where we are and, possibly, how we should
act.
Mr. Lippmann's analysis brings to light another problem in democracy that has its analogue in the Athenian myth. He is concerned with the encroachment of
28
the legislative on the executive. From this point of view
the history of Athens is eloquent. By the time of Pericles,
and in large part owing to his policies, the Athenian
assembly had acquired untrammeled supreme power. By
force of his personal persuasive powers Pericles guided
the policy decisions of Athens. While he lived Athens was,
according to Thucydides, ('in name a democracy, in fact
a government by the first citizen." The story of the corruption of affairs by demagogues after the death of
Pericles is too familiar to need retelling. We have seen
it repeated here under the name of McCarthyism. Demagoguery thrives because of the tendency of the people
to forget that it is not the People and the second problem is the outgrowth of the first.
Whether the cure for these conditions is possible
within the democratic framework is not settled by
reference to the myth. A slogan used by ardent democrats
that "the remedy for the ills of democracy is more
democracy" is an expression of faith and hope, but hardly
a prescription. One asks how will "more democracy" work
its curative effect. Moreover, the demonstration that cures
attempted by non-democratic :means, the ancient oligarchies, the modern fascisms, are invariably remedies worse
than the disease merely displays another slogan. It does
not help point to a solution.
Perhaps Plato offers a solution in his conviction that
politics is a science, an episteme. For Plato this discovery,
which he generalized from Socrates' claims to statesmanship, led to the conclusion that monarchy or aristocracy
(of the wise) was the best government. Since only a few
can be wise, therefore, only a few can govern. In this way
democracy is put out of court. In the Politicus, however,
Plato in despair puts all human government out of court,
by showing, against the Republic, that a wise king must
be a god, no man having sufficient wisdom for the task
of kingship. Platds desperation is our opportunity. Having once and for all disposed of government by an elite,
Plato forces us to the only possible course of action, which
is to discover how to make do with what we have.
If Plato is driven to despair because the science he
held politics to be was beyond human capacity, the fault
may lie in Platds conception of science rather than in
human nature. Plato sets up a rigid alternative: either
an all-wise king or an unchangeable code of laws, embodying the unchanging principles of political conduct.
The dialectic of wisdom and reason, out of which we saw
the myth of democracy grow, is replaced by complete
separation of them into mutually exclusive realms. In the
myth of the dialogue, the Statesman, they are placed in
different eons of the world, kept apart by a cosmic
catastrophe.
In trying to escape Platds dilemma, let us first agree
that politics is a science, that is, that a government will
be successful in achieving justice only when it is conducted by men of intelligence, possessing wisdom and
knowledge. I shall further premise that a dictatorship or
an oligarchy, however intelligent, wise, and knowing its
leaders, necessarily rests in the end on extra-rational foun-
SUMMER 1984
�dations and will ultimately rely on force to keep its power,
in other words, to exist. This means that opposition to
the government, however rational, will be a crime. All
such governments are therefore unjust. Hence, only
democratic government can, in principle, achieve justice.
Can democratic government achieve justice in practice? I do not know, but before fleeing with the despairing Plato to Utopia, I would consider what means may
exist to make democracy worth a try.
I would first see whether the rigid alternatives of Plato
are really so separate. Considering his first alternative,
the all-wise king, we can see that, if his wisdom is to succeed in making just decisions in particular disputes, it
is not sufficient for the decisions to be abstractly just.
They must be accepted as just by the parties to the
dispute; otherwise, the king will have to use force and
to that extent his government will be unjust. His subjects therefore must have at least the intellectual capacity
to recognize justice. But so they will be intellectually
above the standard supposed by Plato to measure the
capacities of all but a few men.
In the case of the other alternative, rigid laws governing by general principles admitting no exceptions, there
is no chance at all for justice, since no particular case
exactly fits a general principle. Therefore, the standard
for men is even higher. The men in this society must have
the wisdom to recognize that everyone must accept a little
injustice for the sake of others.
I have pointed out these consequences of Platds position in the Statesman because I believe they reveal two
demands that just government makes on its citizens, one
that they know what justice is and the other that they
accept something less than justice for themselves in any
given situation. These seem to me to be the presuppositions of the Social Contract, but they do not depend for
their existence on the theory of the Social Contract. It
is rather the other way around. The Social Contract is
a myth to account for these two inescapable demands of
society. It now remains to show that they can be met by
a democratic society, and to suggest some of the means
available to a democracy for meeting them. That they
cannot be met by a society other than democratic has
already been stated as a premise.
The first demand requires the assumption of human
rationality, while the second requires the assumption of
human wisdom. You will notice that Platds hypothesis
of an all-wise ruler entails rational subjects, while his
hypothesis of pure rationality of government entails wise
subjects. Insofar as democracy is government in which
all rule and are ruled in turn, both presuppositions are
entailed. You will notice too that the government of
wisdom is personal government, while the government
of rationality is institutional or government of law. I think
you will now see how I will argue that democracy meets
these demands. A government of laws is no respecter of
persons, but any government other than democratic is
a respecter of persons, insofar as it distinguishes a ruler
or ruling class from the other members of society. The
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
condition that makes the injustices inherent in human
government bearable, however, is that they be justly
distributed without respect of person. So the second demand is met by democracy.
You may well say here that I have fled to a Utopia,
only I am in the company of John Stuart Mill instead
of Plato. I admit at least to idealizing, since I would be
hard put to show that our own or any democracy is now
practicing or ever has practiced these principles. I do
believe that our practice under the constitution comes
within nodding distance of them and I will say what
means seem to me to have developed in the course of
history since the days of Athens to make them less
unrealistic.
The two principles are that men are capable of acting rationally and of acting wisely, that is, capable of
knowing principles and having the skill to apply them.
The means to establishing democracy are the ways of converting these capabilities into actualities, of bringing it
about that men do as they are capable of doing. From
Aristotle on, teachers have recognized that men learn by
doing. This fact makes sense to me of the slogan that
the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. If
democracy operated by rational discussion, the way to
learn the art of rational discussion is through discussing
rationally the problems encountered in society.
The foundation, then, for bringing democracy into
being and maintaining it is the liberal arts. There are
two practical problems here. One is to have liberal arts
in one's tradition, the other is to make them available
to all citizens. On the first count we are in one respect
more fortunate than the Athenians. They were inventing the liberal arts while they were inventing democracy.
The positive work of the sophists was their invention of
the liberal arts. Sophocles, Herodotus, Euripides,
Aristophanes, the whole list of classic Greek authors
testify to the lively effect of this invention. Thucydides
and Plato confirm it, while they portray its somber side
of failure. We are more fortunate in this, that having the
tradition that they invented, we are less dazzled by the
brilliance of the invention and can use it more soberly.
On the other hand, we can lose the liberal arts by reducing them to routine, as the Greeks reduced the wisdom
of their early sages to conventional opinion. Nevertheless,
because we have the Greek authors, we can go back to
them, and have done so from time to time to light again
the fires of the liberal arts.
Secondly, to make the liberal arts available to all has
been the work of the universities and of educational institutions. Although education has all too often seemed
to divide society into the educated and the uneducated
and so to become an instrument of aristocracy, this has
not really been the case. Even when education has subserved aristocracy as in Europe, where university training became the road to wordly prestige in church or government, the very possibility of acquiring this prestige
drew men of ability from all ranks into the upper classes
and so promoted a movement towards democracy. For,
29
�however perverted the use of the liberal arts, the simple
lesson they propounded remained the indifference of
reason to false distinctions of pride. When education at
times became completely perverted, offering itself as a
mark of culture, it generated its own antithesis in the
class of self-made men, self-graduates of the "school of
hard-knocks;' and the resulting discussion brought education back to its true purpose. The very existence of educational institutions tends to universal education, which is
the first prerequisite of democracy.
In addition to educational institutions as a ground
of possibility for democracy today is a difference in the
material of education. This is the shift from the spoken
word to the written word, and the accumulation of a great
number of books. At first sight these changes might seem
irrelevant to democracy. The first great library was built
by the Macedonian kings of Egypt. The decline of speech
in favor of writing reflected the withdrawal of intellectuals from political activity in times of monarchy and
empire. May this not, however, be an instance of
Toynbee's "withdrawal and return." The oratory of Athenian democracy was partly the cause of its instability.
Books gave a haven to the liberal arts and preserved them
for a better day. They gave a stable form to the tradition
of rationality. Whatever harm there was in the medieval
deference to the authority of an Aristotle or a Galen, their
books conveyed still more the authority of reason. Even
before the barriers to learning had been broken by the
printing press, and increasingly thereafter, there was a
rational authority to rally around that could and did oppose the blind authority of despotic governments. The
Bible, of course, was the spiritual center of the bookish
tradition. Quite fortunately, the Bible never despotically
blotted out the books of the secular tradition, as the
Koran had done in the Muslim world, but Revelation
took reason as its handmaiden.
One consequence of this for the preparation of the
new experiment in democracy was the demarcation of
the political sphere from the spiritual. The Athenian experiment foundered in part because the polis demanded
the whole of men's energies. As Ernest Barker has said,
the polis was both state and church. Thus political conflict among the Greeks led to irreconcilable opposition
and the formation of Platds two cities. The church
drained away some of this passion and, by pointing to
an otherworldly standard, made it possible (after much
confusion, it is true) for men to differ rationally and not
always feel compelled to attempt to murder one another.
The church became the guarantor of wisdom in human
affairs and enabled it to avoid entanglement in conflict
with reason, which, as we have seen, was the confounding of Greek political life. The result of the Christian
belief in the temporary nature of this life led to a
30
tempered effort to ameliorate evil conditions and prevented the doctrinaire insistence on immediate, wholesale solution of problems, the kind of attitude that so often
has wrecked the order of society.
Democracy, of course, was not an immediate consequence. What I mean to suggest is that our democracy
is the heir to a tradition that contained it in seed, because
it preserved and nourished the two conditions of wisdom
and reason, so delimited that they could work together.
This is manifest especially in the law. The law came to
depend on written records of a peculiar sort. Where the
Athenian courts pretended to the wisdom to discover absolute justice in every case they had to decide and had
no concern with rational precedent, our modern law
learned from the written record of justinian's Roman law
the lesson of the rational adjustment of principle and particular case. Plato had proposed as a desperate remedy
for the masquerade of Athenian courts as omniscent kings
a rigid law which could never be changed. Roman
jurisprudence had set itself the task of discovering law
as a science and had transmitted this ideal to the modern
world. In the concept of law that can be interpreted to
fit different cases, jurisprudence gave an answer to Platds
contention that democracy cannot work because government is a science and the many are not wise. By granting an appeal from the unwisdom of the momentary majority to the institutionalized wisdom of the lasting majority, the law made an answer to Plato. This is. Lippmann's "tradition of civility."
I have all too briefly sketched some of the materials
that democracy has to work with in the human attempt
to achieve justice. In conclusion, let me say what I think
I have been saying. Democracy is the best form of government because the people insist on governing themselves,
and any attempt of men to govern other men against their
will begets injustice, which is the negation of the end of
government. People can govern themselves, because they
can be wise and reasonable. Athens once made a brave
attempt at democracy and left us a myth from which we
can learn about democracy. Moreover, she left us the
beginnings of the liberal arts, which, once given to the
world, took to themselves the discoveries of Romans, of
Jews, of Christians and have transmitted to us the
paradigms of the science of government, especially in
education, law and religion. I hold neither to the law of
progress, which would affirm that democracy is the inevitable final stage of history, nor to a biological analogy
which places democracy as one stage in some cyclically
unfolding course of events. I think that men can and
sometimes do succeed in governing themselves; that by
rational self-criticism they may prolong their success; that
a genuine education will sustain their self-criticism.
SUMMER 1984
�Bandusia, Flower of Fountains
for Martha
(Horace, Odes, Book III, 13)
Bandusia, flower of fountains,
clear uprushing of waters,
due thick, sweet wine with roses,
tomorrow's rite; due this kid
whose tipped brow and goatish play
hint the loves and the battles to comenever! His hot, thick blood
will curdle with dark your bright fall.
No rage of midsummer can quicken
your quiet; dispensing cool ease
you soothe the meandering cattle,
heal the yoke-weary ox.
Fame will mirror your beauty
when I speak the ilex branched over
the riven rock, whence loquacious
clear rivulets chatter and leap.
Richard Freis
An alumnus of St. John's College, Annapolis, Richard Freis is currently
collaborating with the composer, Alva Henderson, on a new opera, Achilles.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
31
�On Mimesis*
Victor Zuckerkandl
T
he motif of this lecture-"motif' in the sense of
what set it in motion- is Aristotle's definition
of tragedy as imitation- mimesis- of human
action, and in gen'eral of the arts of painting,
sculpture, poetry-narrative, dramatic, lyric
poetry-music, and dance as mimetic arts, imitative arts.
This is the group of arts which we today call by the unfortunate term of fine arts. (I am not going to use this
term; I shall call them, with Aristotle, the mimetic arts,
or briefly, the arts; for the context of this lecture, then,
the arts means the so-called fine arts. One of them is missing from Aristotle's list: architecture; so I will not refer
to architecture either.)
All these arts, Aristotle says, are mimesis, imitation.
They represent, so to speak, different species of the genus
imitation. The imitative element is not something secondary, accidental in them; it is their essential quality. A work
of art is what it is, namely, a work of art, because it imitates; the artist is essentially an imitator. Take away from
a work of art the element of imitation, there will no longer
be a work of art; deprive the artist of the imitator's skill,
he will no longer be an artist.
This theory seems to rest on solid ground, to be in
sound agreement with the facts. Nobody can deny, for
instance, that every painting, every sculpture, shows
something, represents something, and in this sense imitates that which it shows. (This is true for non-objective
painting, too; the only difference there is that the things
shown are not objects of external visual experience, but
1
The late Victor Zuckerkandl came to St. John's College, Annapolis, in 1948.
He taught at St. John's for over a decade. On Mimesis was delivered as a formal lecture at St. John's College, Annapolis, in 1955.
32
objects of the imagination.) Every tragedy or comedy represents an action, and in this sense imitates the action
and the people involved in it; every narrative poem tells
a story, every lyric poem expresses some idea; they imitate the story, the idea. It is not as obvious with music
and dance, but Aristotle states, as Plato did before himand he has a large following through the ages- that music
and _dance express, and in this sense imitate, emotions,
passwns.
We can grant all this and immediately move on to
the directly opposite position: there is no imitation in
the arts. When Aristotle looked at the paintings which
decorated the walls of Greek houses, what did he see?
Colors and shapes covering a two-dimensional surface.
The things represented are three-dimensional. How can
two dimensions imitate three? By the art of perspective,
we say, which creates an illusion of depth on a surface,
and which the Greeks of course knew. There are no more
Greek wallpaintings to be seen; they are gone. But we
know the art of painting of the Greeks from the vases
that have been preserved. There is no attempt at perspective here; everything is strictly two-dimensional. Would
Aristotle maintain that a mediocre wallpainting which
makes skillful use of perspective is a better work of artbecause it is a better imitation- than one of those perfect
vase paintings? When he walked up the great steps leading
to the Acropolis and looked at the Parthenon, what did
he see? Among other things, the long series of marble
reliefs-the remnants of which we still see todayrepresenting the long procession of men and horses at
the festival of the goddess Athene. Men and horses in
motion-do the sculptures imitate them? The marble
does not move. How can sculpture, frozen in time, imitate motion, change in time? When Aristotle went to
the theatre to see a tragedy, what did he see? Figures on
the stage wearing huge masks. If they were intent on im-
SUMMER 1984
�itating human beings, why should they hide the only visible testimony of their being human, their faces? When
the chorus sang and danced, did they intend to imitate
emotions, say, of mourning, or fear? People who experience these emotions do not dance or sing. Aristotle
must have been either very naive or very unresponsive
to the experience of works of art if he could hold that
theory. How responsive or naive Aristotle was, I do not
know. But he certainly was not that naive. We can safely
assume that he was aware of these circumstances. Naive
in this case is not Aristode's understanding of the arts
but our understanding of Aristotle, more specifically, our
understanding of the meaning of mimesis.
When Aristotle says "the arts are mimesis," he did
not mean that they produce mechanical duplicates,
replicas, copies that might be substituted for the real
thing. When he called the artist an imitator, he did not
class him with the man who knows how to bark like a
real dog. He understood mimesis in a wider sense which
might be translated, "making of images, imaginative imitation." Image in this sense is never a mechanical
duplicate; it involves a transfer into another medium, a
sort of translation or transformation. The painter
transforms three-dimensional things into twodimensional colored shapes; the sculptor transforms moving things into unmoving stone, bronze, wood; the poet's
medium, into which he transforms actions, events,
characters, are words; the musician's, tones; the dancer's
gestures. In the process of transformation the maker of
the image may be led very far away indeed from his
model; elimination, condensation, on one hand, extension, elaboration, on the other, may produce an image
which is anything but a mechanical substitute of its model
(e.g., Steinberg). But always will the image be recognized as image, that is, as representing something. Its very
significance rests on the fact that it is an image, that is,
related to that which ·it represents. The adequate
understanding of an image is not plainly to see it, but
at the same time to see through it to its model, to see
the relation of image to model.
A closer scrutiny of the evidence, however, will show
many discrepancies between even this refined mimetic
theory of the arts and the observed facts. (I am not going to review the whole evidence; I merely mention a
few points.) First of all, the artist himself is very inadequately described as an imitator, in any sense of the word.
The young man or woman who decides to become an
artist -we assume that the decision is justified- does not
do so out of any desire to imitate anything-or rather,
the one thing he desires, passionately desires, to imitate
is another artist. The decisive events in a future painter's
life are visits to art galleries, not hikes in the country;
the future dramatist's fate is determined by evenings in
the theatre, not by reading the newspapers or witnessing a murder. Andre Malraux, whose PsycholOgy of Art
is the most comprehensive presentation of the visual arts
from a non-mimetic viewpoint- it has nothing to do with
psychology as we understand the term; it is a
THE
S1~
JOHN'S REVIEW
philosophy- puts it very pointedly: "The composer loves
compositions, not nightingales; the painter loves paintings, not sunsets." It is always art that makes the artist,
not nature, or life. The arts therefore have no
beginning- no more than language- or, in other words,
the beginnings of the arts are mythical.
Before we go on I want to clarify further these
concepts- image, and maker of images. The prototype
in a way is the demiurge in Platds Timaeus, who fashions
the universe as the image of the ideal model. All the essentials are here. Where there is an image, there must be
a model. The maker has his sight set on the model; he
takes his bearings from the model. The image is derived
from the model. The model is prior to the image, not
only in time (which is obvious- the image can hardly
precede the model) but also in rank: the model is more
than the image- if in no other respect, then because it
is the real thing; the other is 'only an image.' As Plato
puts it at another place, the image is farther removed
from truth than that of which it is the image. One might
object that many works of art glorify, idealize, their
model (for instance, in the case of an idealized portrait).
But in this and all similar cases the actual model is not
the real object in front of the artist, but an idea developed
from the contemplation of that object-in the case of a
person, the idea of his unrealized potentialities, or the
idea of what this man should look like in order to look
like a great man.
With this understanding of image it seems hard to
admit that a work of art is essentially an image. In the
strictest sense there is no model. The role of the model
in the making of a work of art is of the most trivial sort.
This becomes evident when we watch artists at work. A
famous example is Beethoven's shaping of the melody
of the last movement of the Ninth Symphony, the Hymn to
Joy. We have the testimony of this working process in a
few sheets of sketches. If a melody is an image of an emotion, then the model here would be the emotion of joy.
It is perfectly clear that the composer is not concerned
with joy or any other emotion, but with the relations between tones; if there is a model, he certainly is now working with his back to it. Nor is he now engaged in matters of secondary importance, like the search for the right
means to express an emotion. He is now struggling with
the essential problem; success or failure of this as a work
of art will not be determined by the finding of the right
relation between tones and an emotional model, but by
finding the right relation between tones and tones. This
corresponds to the fact that when the melody is heard
for the first time in the symphony it makes perfect
sense- I still have yet to find the person who would find
any relation between the melody there and the emotion
of joy. The model, if there is one, is as unimportant to
the understanding of the melody as to its making.
Recently I read a paper which analyzed the seven different versions of a famous German poem- successive
stages of development from a crude beginning to a finished work of art. The poet: Conrad Ferdinand Meyer;
33
�the title of the poem: Dead Love. The model is clearly
recognizable from the very beginning: two people returning from a walk one evening, and realizing that their love
had died, and that they themselves had killed it. The
whole development has nothing to do with the relation
to the model-like trying to tell the story clearer, throwing more light on the relationship between the two, and
so on. It has to do exclusively with rhythm, verse, rhyme,
syntax, choice of individual words- choice of words not
for the sake of a better relation between words and story
but between words and words. And again, the development is not concerned with means, secondary matters;
the changes mark the difference between a very poor and
a very good poem, that is, with the essence of poetry.
As these changes have nothing to do with the realation
of the words to the model, the poem cannot essentially
be an image. Even more disturbing is this: the story at
the end, after all the changes, is no longer exactly the
same as it was at the beginning; but it is quite clear that
the changes in the poem were not adjustments to a
changed story; it seems rather the other way, the changes
in the words, rhythms, etc., changed the story. So if we
want to call the poem an image, it would be the rather
extraordinary case of the image changing the model, or
even of the image making the model.
Or take a tragedy, Hamlet. Where is the model of
which this is an image? Is it the story Shakespeare read?
The chronicle which reported the events of bygone days?
The vague, uncertain figure, the real Hamlet? Was
Shakespeare's sight set on any one of these as the model
of which he wanted to make an image? It is clear that
if there is a model of which Shakespeare's Hamlet is the
image, it could only be Shakespeare's Hamlet againthe idea of such a man, such a character which
Shakespeare formed in his mind and then made the central figure of his play. If this is the case, the essential
achievement is not the making of the image but the forming of the idea; Shakespeare would be the artist he is,
not because of his capacity to make images but because
of his power to produce models. But is this a reasonable
account of the process? That he first figured out the man
and then wrote the play about him? I would rather say
that the writing of the play was his way, the only possible way, to figure out the man. By making the image he
produced the model- if you want to put it in this
paradoxical way. When Phidias made the statue of Zeus,
what was his model? His idea of the ruler of the gods?
Where did he get this idea? It was certainly not a current idea -witness the statues of the preceding generation. It was an idea generated in his own mind. And
again, it does not make sense to me to imagine that he
first figured out his idea and then made the image. Most
likely he did not begin with the idea but with a block
of material; he then uncovered the idea in the material
on which he worked. If we call it an image, then the model
comes into being together with the image. Those who
saw it did not understand it because they knew the model;
they understood the model because they saw the image.
34
That is, the statue gave them a new understanding of
Zeus. The image makes the model. Not even with
painters like the impressionists and their followers who
turn again and again to nature in order, as it seems, to
be as close as possible to their models, is the case as simple as it looks. When they leave their studios and go out
into the open, it is primarily to effect a break with an
outworn tradition; what they expect from nature is
delivery from the dead weight of convention. Nature tells
them what not to do, but as to nature being the modelwe have only to look over their shoulders and see what
they do, what they mean when they say 'true to nature.'
True to their own nature, maybe. Otherwise it is much
less a transformation of the model into an image thanand I use once more Malraux's words- the secret destruction of the model for the benefit of the construction of the canvas.
I think this is enough to give an idea of the evidence
contradicting the image theory of the arts. The evidence
in turn supports the diametrically opposed theory: the
work of art is not an image. Still it is important, meaningful, significant. The significance of an image lies in
its relation to something outside itself; the work of art,
not being an image, has no such relation. Its significance
therefore must lie wholly within itself. It is a completely
autonomous construct, closed within itself, without any
essential relation to anything beyond itself, carrying its
full meaning strictly within itself. I quote (this is Clive
Bell, the protagonist of this theory; he refers mostly to
the visual arts, but the implications are that the theory
extends to all the arts): "He who contemplates a work
of art inhabits a world with an intense and peculiar
significance all it own; that significance is unrelated to
the significance of life . ... The representative element
may or may not be harmful; always it is irrelevant. For
to appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing
from life, no knowledge of its ideas and affairs, no
familiarity with its emotions ... for a moment we are
shut off from human interests ... to appreciate a work
of art we need bring with us nothing but a sense of form
and color and a knowledge of three-dimensional space
... I appreciate music, a pure art with a tremendous
significance of its own and no relation whatever to the
significance of life.... The contemplation of pure form
leads to a state of extraordinary exaltation and complete
detachment from the concerns of life."
To me this seems a theory of despair. I fail to see how
anything completely detached from the concerns oflifeand one of them is the search for truth- can be in any
way important, significant. This theory builds a wall
around the arts, isolates them completely from the totality
of human experience, makes of them a world of their own.
It leaves the fundamental question wide open. No matter how self-contained a construction the work of art is,
tones related to nothing but tones, colors to colors, words
to words, there must be at least one relation to something
which is not tones, words, colors, namely, me. Granted
that music is tones related to tones, but their being so
SUMMER 1984
�related must be related to me, the listener; otherwise,
why should I bother? The same for the other arts. The
statement about the work of art being meaningful in itself
is no answer; it merely pushes the problem further back,
and makes it in a sense insoluable.
I understand the force of the argument which pushed
the theory in this direction. The work of art can only
be either an image, related to something outside itself
and meaningful because of this relation, or not an image, not related to anything outside itself and meaningful
only within itself. If the evidence against the image theory
gets too strong-as it did -what remains but the other
alternative? At this point we have to recognize that this
whole alternative- image or no image- is phony. There
is no either/or situation here. We have not yet fully exhausted the meaning of mimesis.
It is Aristotle himself who sets us on this track. In
a paragraph of his Metaphysics he uses mimesis in a very
much different meaning. In Chapter 14 of the Vth book,
when he talks about the concept of quality in reference
to number, he mentions composite numbers. For the
benefit of those who have not yet read the VIIth book
of Euclid or have forgotten it, I have to explain what composite numbers are. The Greeks distinguished between
linear, plane, and solid numbers. The linear or onedimensional number is simple number as we think of
it when we imagine the units, so many of them as there
are in the number, all lined up in one straight line; the
plane or two-dimensional number is the number we get
when one number is multiplied by another number: so
many times so many-like a rectangle contained by two
sides; the solid or three-dimensional number adds one
more factor: so many times so many times so manylike a solid figure contained by three sides. For instance
24, if considered as so many units, is a linear number;
considered as 3 times .8, it is a plane number; considered
as 3 times 2 times 4, a solid number. A number like 25,
5 times 5, or 81, 9 times 9, is called a square number,
for obvious reasons; 27, 3 times 3 times 3, a cube number.
All the numbers which are not linear are together called
composite numbers. Now Aristotle says: "composite
numbers which are not in one dimension only, but of
which the plane figure and the solid figure are the
mimema':_ the word mimema means the result of
mimesis; the Greeks have two words for our one, "imitation;' which means both the process of imitating and
the result of that process, the thing which imitates.
It is clear that none of the meanings of mimesis we
have so far considered apply here. A square, for instance,
is not an image of a number like 25, 36, and so on. The
number is not the model of the square. The square is
not derived from number, is not meaningful because of
its relation to number. We do not understand a square
by recognizing its relation to number. And the maker
of the square, so to speak, is no image-maker, did not
have his sight set on any number, did not make the square
as an image of a number. The square is, W-as made as,
and is understood as an element in the autonomous con-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
text of geometry. It is even impossible to understand a
square otherwise than in the context of geometry; the
study of the square-and of the plane figure, or the solid
figure- involves only references to geometric figures, no
reference to anything outside of geometry. Whatever
meaning a geometric figure has, this meaning is completely contained within the figure as an element of
geometry.
On the other hand, there is, over and above this
meaning of the geometric figure which we now call its
immanent meaning, another, a transcendent meaningand I am using the word transcendent literally, without
metaphysical connotations, that is, going beyond one's
limits. The meanings of all words are transcendent: the
meaning of apple pie, for instance, is transcendent, as
the word is something audible, while the things belonging to it lie beyond the limits of the audible in the edible. So square or plane figure or solid figure have, in addition to their immanent, a transcendent meaning, a relation to something which is not figure but number, and
this is the meaning Aristotle refers to. This meaning is
not arbitrarily assigned to the geometric figures as we
arbitrarily assign meanings to words or symbols; the relation seems to arise from the nature of both geometric figure
and number, and therefore, when it is called up, it throws
a new light on number, and reciprocally also adds to the
significance of geometric figures.
I would like to clarify this new meaning of mimesis
further, by using a quotation of a more modern thinker.
Pascal writes: The numbers imitate space. Here space
does not mean geometric figures but extension, the great
receptacle, that in which all the extended things of the
universe have their place. In what sense can number be
said to imitate space? Numbers are not images. 17 cannot be the image of 17 things as we have no 17 things
without first having 17. Number is pure construct, a construct which knows only its own inherent laws, takes no
regard of anything outside; numbers are primarily related
to numbers, not to something which is not number. Their
system is a perfect example of an immanently meaningful
order. Still we all know, are all aware, that mathematics
is not a beautiful game of numbers, that it has over and
above its immanent a transcendent meaning. I do not
refer here to the usefulness of mathematics but to its
truthfulness. What this transcendent meaning is, is of
no concern to the mathematician or to the student of
mathematics; in the making as well as in the understanding of mathematics we are exclusively concerned with
numbers in relation to numbers, not with numbers in
relation to other things. This does not mean that the
transcendent meaning is less important; without it,
mathematics would not be what it is, namely, true. But
the question of that meaning is no longer a mathematical
question. When the transcendent meaning crystallizes
in a philosophical mind- that of a person or a
generation -as it did for instance in that thought of
Pascal, then it becomes clear that the pattern of this meaning is not that of an image. If it were, we would have
35
�to say that number is the image of the order of universal
space. How could it be this, as the very idea of a universally ordered space, is the outgrowth of our having
numbers. The mimema here is not derived from its
counterpart but reveals, or almost produces, its counterpart. This is a very disturbing observation, that a pure
construct of the mind discovers itself as in profound
agreement with a universal order. It is as if we were
writing a test and then discovered that we had written
a translation.
We can now try to formulate the difference between
image and mimema in this new sense. The image has
its origin in the model and its significance in the relation to the model; the mimema has no model. Its origin
is in its own context- number from number- and its
significance is twofold. Primarily it is pure construct. It
is nothing but construct, determined solely by the inherent logic of the construction, not by any outside factor. Its transcendent meaning is of an entirely different
type from that of image. The relation image-model is
a one-to-one relation- image of this, not of that -like
that between a word and its meaning, a sign or symbol
and the thing signified or symbolized (and this takes into account the possibility of one word having different
meanings, etc.). The relation of the mimema to its
counterpart must be different, as we see from what we
have said: the mimema made and understood without
any regard to its counterpart~ the mimema revealing or
even producing its counterpart, and so on (this is-like
saying to a foreigner: you listen only well to the sound
of 'apple pie' and you will understand what it means).
What precisely this relation is, is the problem which I
will raise and maybe clarify a little, but not answer. The
main thing, it seems to me, is to show that such a problem exists. We are so caught in the meaning pattern
of words and symbols that we take this to be the pattern
of meaning. Statements like: "I know this is meaningful
though I do not know what it says," sound foolish to us.
They would not to less positivistic minds. Socrates did
not doubt that the sentences spoken by his inner voice
were meaningful, although he had sometimes a hard time
finding out exact1y what they meant. The ancient world
was full of oracles which were supposed to speak the truth
even though it was very difficult to understand what they
said. And even today, the Christian does not doubt that
the sentences of the Bible speak the truth, irrespective
of whether or not he understands what they say.
Let us come back to the mimetic arts. I would now
say this: Aristotle is right in defining painting, sculpture,
poetry, music, dance as kinds of mimesis- provided
mimesis is understood as we do it now. I would not flatly
say that Aristotle did understand it in this way when he
applied it to the arts. But it might have been a marginal
possibility in his mind. After all, we gathered this meaning of mimesis first from his own use of the term.
We recapitulate. What have we got? Two theories.
One asserting that the work of art is essentially image,
significant because of its relation to the model, a transcen-
36
dent relation. The other asserts that there is no such
essential relation of a work of art to anything outside
itself, and that therefore its significance lies all within
itself, is immanent. We have now a third possibility: the
work of art is mimema as we now understand the term.
The work of art has both transcendent and immanent
meaning. Primarily it is pure construct, nothing but construct, made and understood without any reference to
anything outside. This construct has by nature a counterpart outside, and the relation to the counterpart makes
it what it is, a mimema. Accordingly the question: What
does it mean? (namely, over and above the immanent
context), is a legitimate one. Only we must not forget
(as we usually do) that the relation between the work of
art and its counterpart, which is in question here, is not
the same and not even similar to that between the image and its model.
The art to which this interpretation most easily and
most naturally applies is of course music. The element
of construction is very much in the foreground in music,
perhaps more so than in any other human activity with
the exception of mathematics. It comes as close as possible
to the idea of a pure construct- its material, the tones,
have relation only to each other, not to anything else (the
opinion that the tones of music are kinds of idealized
sounds of nature, need not be taken seriously); we express this also by saying that music is pure form, form
without content, or-as this seems to imply empty
form- that in music form and content are the same.
Music is essentially tones-in-relation; whatever meaning
there is in a tone points to another tone, not to something
which is not tone. A perfect example of immanent meaning. Yet we are also aware that this statement, "Music
is tones-in-relation;' -is not an adequate or satisfactory
answer to the question which the phenomenon of music,
its presence among us, puts to us. We are aware that in
this answer something has not been accounted for; in
other words, we are aware of the fact that music is
mimesis, of the fact of its mimetic significance. Not all
the threads of meaning that attach themselves to music
coil inwards; some of them lead outwards, and they hold
the whole construct in its proper place, as it were, the
place of mimema. But although without an awareness,
however dim, that there are such threads of transcendent meaning there is strictly speaking no musical experience, the knowledge what they are, where they lead
to, is in no sense a prerequisite either for the making
or the understanding of music. The question: What does
it mean? referring to the transcendent, not the immanent meaning, is no longer a musical question. The composer does not ask it, at least never when he writes music,
only when he philosophizes, which he rarely does. And
the study of music, if it is to lead to an understanding
of the works of the tonal art, is the study of tones-inrelation, of immanent meanings. Of course the question
of the transcendent meaning is a valid question -a question for philosophy. But before even admitting it as valid,
we must make sure that it is not asked in a thoughtless
SUMMER 1984
�way: What does it mean?-with 'what' I usually ask for
a 'this' or 'that', and so I tacitly introduce the assumption that the relation between music and its mimetic
counterpart is of the same kind, of the same type, as that
between a symbol and a thing, an image and a model,
a word and its meaning. This way, the very asking of
the question would prejudge the answer. The problem
is precisely to find out what kind of relation prevails between music and its mimetic counterpart. You see, from
the outset we get deep into philosophy; and so we understand why good answers to this question do not usually
come from musicians but from philosophers. One of these
answers, a famous one, I will now quote, not because
I want to suggest that this is it, but because it helps us
to understand the nature of the questions.
In his Harmonies of the World Kepler writes:
The movement of the heavens is nothing but a certain everlasting polyphony (intelligible, not audible) effected by dissonant tensions comparable to
those syncopations and cadences wherewith men
imitate those natural dissonances, tending towards
certain and prescribed clauses, each involving six
terms (like the six parts of polyphonic music),
demonstrating and defining with these notes the immensity of time. It is therefore not too astonishing
that man, the ape of his creator, should finally have
found the knowledge of polyphonic song which was
unknown to the ancients, so that in some short part
of an hour, by means of an artful harmony of many
voices, he might play the everlastingness of created
time, and thus to some extent taste the satisfaction
of God the Workman with his own works in the
sweetest feeling of delight which comes from the experience of music, that imitation of God.
The word imitation appears here twice. Certain
elements of music, syncopations (which then meant a type
of dissonance, not a rhyth,mic irregularity) and cadences,
are called imitations of the motion of the stars; and music
as a whole is called an imitation of God- Dei imitatri
Musica. Clearly imitation stands here for mimesis, in the
sense we try to understand it. It has nothing to do with
image. Otherwise the study of composition would have
to begin with Ptolemy or Copernicus. And no listener,
however familiar with astronomy, has yet-as far as I
know-discovered in a polyphonic piece any reference
to the motions of the planets. Neither is music an image
of God; atheists can be excellent composers, and religious
faith is not a prerequisite to the enjoyment and
understanding of music. Also many of those polyphonic
songs Kepler referred to were written to decidedly nonreligious words (to say the least) and in this sense were
certainly no images of God. Still, by being music, mov-
composer produces a piece of music according to the laws
of the tonal construct. By doing this, he produces an imitation, a mimema, of the heavens, of God. He did not
know it, he did not intend it, he could not help it happen. It happens behind his back, as it were. The listener
hears tones-in-relation. In hearing this he becomes aware
that this is an imitation of something which is -not tones,
a mimema. What it imitates he does not know and need
not know; yet he may have a sense of direction in which
to look for that counterpart. In some mind this awareness
may crystallize into an act of mimetic recognition in
which the counterpart of the mimema is apprehended.
Kepler saw it in the stars, in God. The result is a new
recognition of the universe, of God. I would even say,
more strictly, it is the recognition of a new universe, a
new God. The Universe, the God, whose imitation we
recognize music to be are not the same as they were
before. Not only did the man who made the music imitate something he did not know, which nobody knows,
but also the imitation produced the thing imitated. This
is like saying: a man writes a text and later finds out he
has done a translation; or: a man is charged with writing
a translation, but he gets no text; when he asks for the
text, he is told that the text does not exist, but that it
will come into existence by way of his translation.
These are fantastic propositions. I will try a metaphor
to make them more manageable. Imagine a man working on some material, some block of metal. His intention is to produce a perfect surface -whatever he may
consider a perfect surface. This he accomplishes. When
he has done it he discovers that his surface shows a reflection-. He-discovers that he has produced a mirror. It was
not his intention to produce a mirror, he did not even
know that there are mirrors. (I do not think here of mirror
in the conventional sense, as a surface reflecting visual
images, but of mirror in the most general sense, in the
sense in which a magnetic needle might be called a mirror: its existence "reflects" and thus makes apparent the
existence of a magnetic field. In the case of our man's
metal surface, the reflection may for instance assume the
form of vibration.) The reflection may be vague, not well
defmed. The chief thing about it is that it is not the reflection of a thing that was there and seen before; it is the
reflection of something so far unseen: the mirror receives
the reflection from a direction where there was emptiness
before. The reflection leads to the discovery that there
is something there to be reflected. Considering the very
special shape of the surface which seems to be the condition for its functioning as a mirror, one might even
ing according to those dissonant tensions, cadences, and
suspect that the thing reflected had an interest in becoming manifest in the reflection, and secretly guided the
hand of the worker so that the outcome would be as
desired. This sounds a little mystical. I refer to the everrecurrent comment of artists that while at work they feel
the other rules of tonal motions, it imitates God. There
is also the profound remark that the musician in truth
enacts a play the subject of which is everlasting time; but
this I won't take up now. So what are the inferences? The
themselves as instruments, as tools of some power whose
source is located outside themselves-a sort of Socratic
diamonion for workmen. However this may be, returning to music, the tones are the surface; if they are in the
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
37
�right relation, they will become a mirror; there will be
a reflection from somewhere, testifying that there is
something out there to be reflected. To Kepler's eye the
thing reflected, revealed in the reflection, was divine
order. The order of tones appeared as 'imitation', as the
mimema of a divine order.
What about the other arts? What happens if we apply our interpretation of mimesis to them? The application there is not as obvious as in the case of music. The
painter or the sculptor certainly do imitate in the conventional sense of the word, do produce images; yet if
the work of art is essentially miinesis in the other sense,
then the imitation in the conventional sense cannot be
essential. The painting, the sculpture, are essentially, like
a piece of music, free constructs, that is, determined by
the laws of the construction, not by anything coming from
outside. That the painting is a likeness of something is
a secondary, an accidental factor; it is not that which
makes the painting a work of art, a mimema. In other
words: insofar as the painter makes an image he is not
an artist, and insofar as he is an artist he makes no image. On the other hand, as mimema, the painting has
also transcendent meaning, a counterpart; but this
counterpart cannot be that which the painting represents,
of which it is an image. A good painting of a chair is
not essentially an image of a chair; it is essentially a construct of shapes, lights, colors, which happen to look like
a chair-the reference to the real chair is non-essential.
The likeness is merely an element in the construction;
it belongs to the immanent meaning. The transcendent
meaning has nothing to do with 'chair', real or ideal. In
the terms of our metaphor: the chair of the painting is
mirror, not thing mirrored; it is not a reflection, but a
reflector; and what it reflects is certainly not 'chair'.
I look at a Greek statue, say, of the god Apollo. I
know, I have been informed, that this represents that particular god. I understand what the statue is an image
of. Whether the model of this statue was a real person
or an idea does not matter. I can deduce from this statue
all kinds of thought regarding Greek art, religion, culture.
With all this, I have only seen the image, not the
mimema. I try to see better, that is, to do nothing but
see, forget all information, speculation, rationalization,
give the eye a chance to find its way undisturbed. After
a while, the statue so to speak takes me over, takes over
my body. My body assumes the attitude of the statuenot actually of course, and not in imagination- this has
nothing to do with imagination- but in what I would
call body-thought; my body consciousness becomes the
inner. counterpart of the external attitude of the statue;
I have the experience of body which the statue would
have if it had consciousness. In this case the experience
is of body at rest- not of body, the thing, in a state of
rest, but of body and rest as absolutely one. This is contrary to our normal experience where rest is felt, when
there is no consciousness of body, in complete
relaxation- body being the source of perpetual unrest.
Here, however, there is full presence of body, full·
38
awareness, awakeness of body-the statue stands-and
perfect rest. In other words, it is rest not as absence of
tension but as equilibrium of tensions. This is a revelation of a previously unknown mode of body existenceand this, not the God Apollo, or the Greek idea of a god,
or Greek culture, is what this statue is the mimema of.
Let us lastly consider tragedy. Aristotle defines it as
imitation, memesis, of human action -a certain kind of
action- done in the medium of language- a certain kind
of language. As long as the word imitation is not taken
too literally nobody will quarrel with this. Every tragedy
has a plot, action involving people, and in this sense imitates, represents human action; and the making of a
tragedy is concretely a writing- tragedies are writtenwritten language is the medium in which it comes to light.
The only question is: is this, as Aristotle seems to say,
that which makes a tragedy what it is? Is written work
a tragedy because it is this particular kind of imitation,
representation?
I would deny it. If tragedy is mimesis in the sense
in which we now understand it, it is primarily an
autonomous construct, a language construct, not a
representation. The representation in it is not its essential quality. On the other hand, as mimema it does have
transcendent meaning, is significantly related to a
counterpart. But this counterpart is not the story, the plot,
the people, is not that which it represents-and this includes ideas, the moral, anything that can be deduced
from it.
This requires some clarification. The term "language
construct" seems to imply that we consider a piece of
poetry, such as a tragedy, primarily from the viewpoint
of syntactical construction, rhythm, meter, verse, rhyme,
sound- from a purely formal standpoint. We would then
deal with them as organized sounds in time- organized
according to certain formal patterns, not according to
meanings. We would then detach the constructive element from the meanings, consider words apart from
meanings. This would be a misunderstanding of the term
language construct. Words arc not sounds plus meanings; they are meaningful sounds. Words divorced from
meanings are no longer words, no longer language. If
language is the material of my construct, then meanings
are a part of the material. In handling this material I
cannot but always handle meanings too. A language construct is a construct of sounds and meanings. To call
tragedy a language construct does not therefore mean
that it is considered, as we say, from the formal stand. point only, apart from the content. The content- plot,
people, action- is itself an element of the constructionthe most important element-along with the language.
The writing of a tragedy is not the making of an image
of people in action, or the search for the most convincing (persuasive) way to present people in action; it is
primarily a construction of people in action, whose chief
means of communication is language. These people and
their actions and passions have no existence apart from
the words; in tragedy, as in music, form and content are
SUMMER 1984
�one. The words are the tones, the people are the melodies;
it is as impossible to think of these people apart from
the language as it is to think of melodies apart form tones.
So if tragedy is mimesis, the so-called content belongs
entirely to the context of immanent meaning of the
mimema; the plot, the people cannot be that of which
the tragedy is the mimema. Again in the terms of our
likeness: the people and their action are not that which
is mirrored, they are the mirror; not the reflection but
the reflector; or as Aristotle would say, they are not that
which is imitated but that which imitates.
With this in mind we can face the question how to
understand, how to explain to ourselves, the peculiar
quality of the experience of a tragedy, the difference between being a spectator in the theatre, having the thing
represented really happen to oneself, watching it happen to others, reading a report about it. These other
possibilities- misfortune befalling oneself, observing
misfortune befall others, reading or listening to a story
about such misfortune -are certainly most depressing
experiences. The experience of tragedy leaves us in a state
of elation. We desire it. How can we understand this?
Take Oedipus Rex. Why should we expose ourselves
to it? The story we know well enough. Of course, knowing the story, and being made actually to live through
it-which is what happens in the theatre-are different
things. But for what purpose should we be made to live
through it? What else could this be but a torture? It is
true that this is theatre, that it is not a real story, real
happenings which we observe on the stage-and there
are certain styles of representation which emphasize this
quality of non-reality. But no matter how realistic or
unrealistic the representation, if that story does not come
fully alive on the stage and make it come alive in the spectators, we might just as well stay home and not go to
the theatre at all. So what does it profit us to live through
it? Aristotle's answer is: only by living through it can we
learn from it; we learn through imitation. I confess I am
not convinced. What can I possibly learn from Oedipus
Rex-and I take the word learn to mean what we usually
understand as learning? I do not want to make any cheap
remarks. Seriously, the idea is that by living through
Oedipus' experience and at the same time reflecting on
it-as we can because we are not really living through
it-we might detect the point on his way where he
possibly erred and where the choice of another course
might have saved him from his tragic fate. But is this
really the moral of Oedipus? Does the tragedy not do
the very opposite to us, namely, drive home with the
greatest possible force that no matter what you do, how
hard you try, fate cannot be avoided, that there is no
escape from fate, and if this fate is fall, then fall one must.
The whole impact of this tragedy seems to me the experience of the inevitability of fall. And what could such
an experience be but of most depressing kind: still, this
like any other tragedy leaves us elated.
In its pattern the experience of tragedy is similar to
the experience of a work of the visual arts as I have tried
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
to describe it. It is not an illusion- believing something
to be real which is not real- nor can I ascribe it to
imagination -lending the color of reality to something
which I know to be not real- it is an experience of participation. As I experience a tragedy I remain what I am
and where I am; at the same time my consciousness
spreads out and goes over into the people involved in the
dramatic action- into all of them; in reference to the
words, I am at the same time hearer and speaker. The
words, the people, the action are all together, as we said,
the construct of tragedy. By participating in them I
become one with the construct, I become mirror, and
I receive the reflection of something-whatever it may
be- that of which tragedy is the mimema. I become
aware that the immanent order of the construct is order
also in relation to something else, that there is
something- not a thing, rather a state, a mode, a dimension of human existence whose order is revealed in :;
tragedy, in reference to which tragedy is in order. In this
sense we can say: we experience tragedy as true. This is
the source of the elation. Take away tragedy- there is
the suffering, dejection, despair, the great visitations, the
inscrutable catastrophies- the whole chaos of human
misery. This chaos tragedy transforms into order. Tragedy
does not explain suffering, or justify it, or give it to us
as a fact to which we have to resign ourselves; but it
bridges the gap between suffering and reason. Oedipus
Rex is not an explanation or a justification of fall; it is
I would say the logos of fall. This is then one way to
redeem fall, and tragedy on the whole, one way to redeem
the suffering of man. We understand that tragedy
originated in the cult of the god Dionysus, the redeeming god of the ancients. We understand also why in a
truly Christian world there is no room for tragedy. The
Christian finds redemption in other ways.
I want to come to a conclusion. In the last analysis
the problem will boil down to the question about the relation between a work of art and reality. We have mentioned one theory which denied there was any relation
between them. If we admit a relation, there are two possible interpretations of mimesis: as image, where reality
is the source from which the work of art is derived; and
mimesis as reflection, where the work of art is the source,
the detector, of new realities. I will close with two legends
which 'imitate', better than I would be able to, the two
different views. One is the well-known story of the most,
famous painter of Greece, Appelles; it is said that wheEL
he painted grapes, birds would come and pick at them.
The other is the story of one of the great painters of old
China. When he became old he began to work on a painting which he showed to no one; he worked on it for years,
and finally he called in his friends and pupils, and there
it was: showing a .landscape with mountains and a road
leading from the foreground back towards the hills. They
looked at the painting and at the old man, and suddenly
they saw the man enter the painting, begin to walk on
the road, getting smaller and smaller until he finally
disappeared in the mountains.
39
�The Archimedean Point and the Liberal Arts
Curtis Wilson
T
he subject of the lecture is, in accordance
with tradition, the liber.al arts, liberal artistry.
And I wish to point out, to begin with, that
these words "art" and "liberty" are difficult
words; they do not designate anything you
can point at with the index finger; they belong, not to
the order of motion and perception, but to the order of
action and idea. They are, as I shall try to explain later
on, dialectical words. And the question arises, how are
such words to be defined? Where should one begin? What
standpoint should be taken in setting out to define these
words? These are not merely theoretical questions; wars
are fought between those who understand words like
"liberty;' ')ustice;' "right," "obligation;' in different ways.
Archimedes, the mathematician, is said to have said:
Give me a fixed point on which to stand, and I shall move
the world. He was referring, of course, to the power of
the lever; to the law according to which the ratio of the
two forces is the same as the inverse ratio of the lever
arms. All that Archimedes requires, then, is a fixed pivot
or fulcrum, a lever of extraordinary length, and a place
to stand, and he will be able to move the earth.
This claim would not be stated in quite the same
terms by modern scientists, beginning with Newton; I
shall not go into the modifications required, but only state
that they are required precisely because, in a sense that
is both real and figurative, man has now discovered the
Archimedean point, the point outside the earth, the
knowledge of which permits us to unhinge the earth. And
Curtis Wilson is a tutor at St.John's College, Annapolis. The Archimedean Point
and the Liberal Arts was delivered as the Dean's opening lecture in the fall of
1958 at St. John's College, Annapolis.
40
this point, being a place to stand, is also a standpoint
from which man attempts to view himself. Kafka
somewhere says that, while man has discovered the Archimedean point, he uses it against himself; that it seems
that he was permitted to find it only under this condition.
Modern science, beginning with the Copernican or
heliocentric theory, is a return to Archimedes, and was
so regarded by its founders, particularly Galileo. Copernicus discovers in the sun the fixed point from the standpoint of which the earth moves. He looks upon the earth
as though he were actually an inhabitant of the sun. He
lifts himself, by an act of the mathematical imagination,
by means of ratios and geometrical diagrams, to a point
from which the earth and its earthbound inhabitants can
be viewed from the outside.
The Archimedean point'is shifted yet once again, or
rather made infinitely mobile, when Giordano Bruno announces the infinity of the universe. What is characteristic
of the thought of Bruno is the fact that the term "infinity"
changes its meaning. In classical thought the word "infinity" is understood negatively. The infinite is the indeterminate, the boundless; it has no limit or form, and
is inaccessible to human reason which lives in the realm
of form. But according to Bruno the word "infinity" no
longer means a mere negation of form. It means rather
the immeasurable and inexhaustible abundance of the
extended universe, and the unrestricted power of the
human intellect. Man no longer lives in the world as a
prisoner enclosed within the narrow walls of finite ordered
cosmos. He can traverse the air and break through the
imaginary boundaries of the celestial spheres. The human
intellect becomes aware of its own infinity through
measuring its powers by the infinite universe.
Einstein has insisted that we may assume with equal
validity that the earth turns round the sun or that the
sun turns round the earth; that both assumptions are in
SUMMER 1984
�agreement with observed phenomena, and that the difference is only a difference of the chosen point of
reference. Thus the Archimedean point is moved a step
farther away from the earth to an imaginary point in the
universe where neither earth nor sun is a center. We are
no longer to be bound even to the sun, but move freely
in the universe, choosing our point of reference wherever
it may be convenient for a specific purpose.
This shift of standpoint, from the earth to a point
outside the earth, received a certain kind of corroboration in Galileo's telescopic discoveries, the discovery of
the moons of jupiter and of the phases of Venus. These
discoveries did not prove the truth of the Copernican
theory; theories are never proved, only confirmed. And
in fact, if we accept the theory of Einstein, we can no
longer ask about the truth of the Copernican theory, for
the Archimedean point becomes infinitely shiftable. But
for those of Galileo's contemporaries who already accepted the Copernican theory, his telescopic discoveries
were a confirmation of the power of the human intellect,
which, by means of man-made instruments and mathematical theories, can free itself from the earth, and break
down the age-old barrier between the sublunar and the
celestial spheres.
One cannot fail to note, in the works of Kepler and
Galileo, a certain exhilaration, a sense of the power of
the human mind. According to Galileo, ". . . the
understanding is to be taken in two ways, that is, intensively, or extensivefy; and extensivefy, that is, as to the
multitude of intelligibles, which are infinite, the
understanding of man is as nothing, though he should
understand a thousand propositions; for a thousand in
respect of infinity is but as a cypher: but taking the
understanding intensively, I say that human wisdom
understandeth some propositions so perfectly, and is as
absolutely certain thereof, as Nature herself; and such
are the pure Mathematical sciences, namely, Geometry
and Arithmetick: in which Divine Wisdom knows infinite
more propositions, because it knows them all; but I
believe that the knowledge of those few comprehended
by human understanding equalleth the divine, as to the
objective certainty, for that it arriveth to comprehend the
necessity thereof, than which there can be no greater certainty."
By mathematics Galileo understood implicitly the
science of physics, since the book of nature, as he says,
"is written in mathematical characters." For both Kepler
and Galileo, man becomes a god, travelling through
space, able to calculate for his own displacement, and
so to arrive at knowledge which, intensively considered,
is perfect.
I shall not attempt to retrace the vicissitudes of this
scientific faith through the last three centuries. It would
be a complex story, I would even say a dialectical story,
a romantic biography, as it were, of a recently deceased
friend. The aim was to express qualities through figure,
to substitute a geometrical configuration for each primordial quality, to explain all things by figure and move-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ment considered as situated in an infinite matrix of time
and space. The doctrine of atomism was part and parcel
of this scientific faith, the notion of an inert matter or
stuff cut up into tiny shapes. But it was soon found
necessary to attribute occult qualities to the matter of
the atoms, mysterious dynamic qualities like gravitation,
and the atoms were gradually transformed beyond recognition. The geometrized space of Galileo has become with
Einstein a symbolic space-time matrix. The development
of theoretical structures has been constantly in a direction away from the simple geometrical object, which the
mind's eye can see with the certainty that it is there. Einstein has to deny that at a definite, present instant all
matter is simultaneously real. Whatever theoretical
physics is talking about today, it is not something which
is imaginable with the eye of geometrical imagination.
I am told that you can learn the fundamentals of quantum mechanics in about six months; then it takes another
six months to understand that you understand it, though
you cannot imagine what the theory is supposed to be
about. The tension between the empirically given and
the imaginable on the one hand, and the content of theoretical physics on the other, has increased to the breaking point. The mirror of nature that scientific faith
endeavored to build has been shattered, and the scientist finds himselflooking straight out into the unknown.
Already in the seventeenth century the new conception of the world- the world as viewed from the Archimedean point- had given rise to a reaction of doubt and
fear. "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens
me;' says Pascal. Pascal's distinction between the esprit
de geometrie and the esprit de finesse is directed against the
geometrical and astronomical view of the world. The
geometrical spirit excels in all those subjects that are
capable of a perfect analysis into simple elements. It starts
with axioms and from them derives propositions by universallogical rules. Its excellence lies in the clarity of its
principles and the logical necessity of its deductions. But,
Pascal would say, there are things which because of their
subtlety and variety defy the geometrical spirit, which
can be comprehended, if at all, only by the esprit de finesse,
the acute and subtle spirit. And if there is anything which
thus defies the geometrical spirit, it is the nature and
mind of man. Pascal holds that contradiction is the very
essence of human existence. Man has no "nature;' no
homogeneous being; he is a mixture of being and nonbeing. His precarious place is midway between these
poles.
The discovery of the Archimedean point produced
a crisis in man's knowledge of himself. Self-knowledge
has almost always been recognized as the highest aim
of philosophic inquiry. It is impossible to penetrate into
the secret of nature unless one also penetrates into the
secret of man. The discovery of the Archimedean point
demanded that man view himself from a totally alien
standpoint, that he understand himself ultimately in
terms of geometrical figure and the impact of atoms. The
seventeenth-century philosophers were fully aware of this
41
�cns1s, and attempted to meet it in different ways. But
the most obvious and crucial step, the step which was
already implicit in the Copernican shift of standpoint,
was taken by Descartes: the removal of the Archimedean
point into the mind of man, so that he could carry it with
him wherever he went, and thus free himself entirely from
the human condition of being an inhabitant of the earth.
Descartes says: I think, therefore I exist; or: I doubt,
therefore I exist. Beginning with the idea of universal
doubt, he concludes that there must be something which
doubts, which thinks; and this something is what he is.
He identifies himself as a mind, a thinking thing. And
this thinking thing is the fixed and immovable point from
which all else must be derived, the existence of God and
of other minds, and of things which have extension or
occupy space. Descartes himself recognizes the connection of his thought with the Copernican revolution, for
he states that if the earth does not move, then all of his
doctrines are false.
Unfortunately the Cartesian removal of the Archimedean point into the mind of man fails to assuage the
Cartesian doubt. Descartes' argument, cogito ergo sum) I
think, therefore I exist, is faulty. For as Nietzsche pointed
out, it ought to read: cogito ergo cogitationes sunt) I think
therefore there are thoughts. It does not establish the existence of a something which thinks; it can only end with
what it begins, namely thinking. And the questioning
and doubting remain; universal doubt, not in the sense
of really doubting everything all at once, which is impossible, but in the sense of the indefinite possibility of
doubting things one by one as they occur in thought.
And so one becomes a question to himself, asking who
he is- which is one sort of question- and what he is,
which is another sort of question.
Both the successes and failures of the scientific revolution have resulted in an anarchy of thought with regard
to the nature of man. The Archimedean standpoint leads
to theories of man in terms of impulses, forces which are
analogous to mechanical forces, the sexual instinct for
,_ Freud, the economic instinct for Marx. But the different
theories contradict one another. No age previous to ours
was ever so favorably placed with regard to the empirical
sources of knowledge of human nature, and yet never
was there so little conceptual agreement. And it becomes
the task of modern man, if he is to avoid the piecemeal
response of dissipation, and the one-track response of
fanaticism, to inquire once again into the being that he
is, and that he can become.
I make a new start, not from the Archimedean point,
but right in the middle of things.
And let me begin this time with the obvious, with
the observation that man is a linguistic animal. He
speaks; also, he uses writing as a substitute for speech.
The word "linguistic" is derived by a metaphorical extension from the word for a bodily organ, the tongue.
The tongue is used in articulating the voice. The Homeric
epithet for men was oi lltpo:n:e~ iivepw:n:ot; !ltpo:n:e~ is
from llepi~w, the verb meaning to divide; and the phrase
42
means those who divide or articulate their voice.
This does not, of course, tell us what a language is,
or in particular what human language is. A chimpanzee
can articulate most of the sounds used in human speech;
his tongue and lips can be used to articulate sound in
the same way as the human tongue and lips; but he is
not a linguistic animal in the same sense as man is. The
chimpanzee uses gesture and voice to express rage, terror, despair, grief, pleading, desire, playfulness, pleasure;
he expresses emotions. Man also utters cries expressive
of distress, pleasure, and so on, but these interJections) as
they are called, are quite frequently vocal sigus of a higher
order, the use of which as interjections comes about by
a degradation from their proper use; in fact, they are
quite frequently vocal signs borrowed from the language
of theology.
Man articulates his voice with the conscious intention of signifying, or sign-ifying, something to somebody.
The notion of a sign is, ordinarily, wider than that of
language. With respect to the relation between sign and
thing signified, we can distinguish three kinds of signs.
First, indexical signs, or indices. Here the sign is causally
connected with that which it signifies; thus smoke is a
sign of fire, because it is. produced by fire; the direction
of a weather vane is a sign of the direction of the wind,
because the direction of the weather vane is determined
by the direction of the wind; and the position of a
speedometer needle indicates the speed of the automobile,
because it is causally connected with the rotation of the
wheels. Secondly, there are iconic signs, or icons, which
are significant of something to somebody because they
are similar to that thing in some respects. Examples of
such signs are photographs, replicas, geometrical
diagrams, images of every kind. Finally, there are conventional signs, often called symbols; and under this
heading fall most of the words of human language. Symbols are all those signs which are signs only because they
are interpreted as such by some organism or mind; there
is no other connection between sign and thing signified,
as there is in the case of indices and icons.
Sometimes the word "language" is taken in a broad
sense, as any set or system of objects or events which are
significant for some being, or which are such that certain combinations of them are meaningful or significant
for some being. In this case, we should have to include
as special cases the language of looks and glances, the
language of the bees, and the language of the stars.
The incredible navigation feats of migratory birds,
such as the white-throated warblers which migrate between northern Europe and Africa, have been shown
recently to depend on celestial navigation, a reading of
the stars as indexical signs oflatitude and longitude. The
experiments were performed in a planetarium, and it was
shown that during the migratory period the birds decide,
on the basis of the look of the sky and an inner time sense,
exactly in what direction to point in order to be aiming
toward their destination. If they are so far put off course
as to have, say at midnight, the midnight appearance of
SUMMER 1984
�the Siberian sky over their heads, they know in what
direction to point in order to regain their course.
The language of the bees, on the other hand, consists in significant actions which are mostly iconic. As
the researches of von Frisch have shown, a honey bee
that has returned after successful foraging for food goes
through a strange and complicated dance, and this dance
is so designed, by the direction of the step and tempo,
as to show to the other members of the hive both the
direction and distance of the find.
None of these systems of signs is strictly comparable
to human language, which differs in essential respects.
But all of them consist of signs, and a sign is a very special
sort of thing, which would not come into focus if we stood
at the Archimedean point.
Wherever there is a sign, there is a relation which
is at least triadic in complexity, that is, a relation which
relates at least three things. The sign stands to somebody
for something. The something may be called the object
of the sign; but it should not be supposed that the object
is always, or even ordinarily, what we call a physical object or thing, something that is spatially bounded, capable
of existing for a stretch of time, and movable. The object of the sign is just whatever the sign signifies, which
might be redness or horizontality or justice. The
somebody, human or not, for whom the sign is a sign,
interprets the sign as signifying the object; or we may say
that the sign produces in this somebody an interpretant
or thought. Thus the three things related in the signrelation are (1) the sign, which will be a physical object
or event in any particular case; (2) the object, or thing
signified; and (3) the interpretant.
A triadic relation, such as we have in the sign-relation,
cannot be reduced to any sum of dyadic relations, that
is, relations relating two things. Dyadic relations can be
diagrammed by means of a letter with two tails, thus:
-R- . It is understood that something has to be written
in at the ends of the tails, to indicate the two things
related. Hitting is a case of such a dyadic relation, as
when we say "a hits b." Triadic relations, on the other
hand, have to be diagrammed by means of a letter with
three tails, thus: -1}-. An example of such a relation
is the giving involved when john gives the book to Mary;
the giving is a relation between three things, John, the
book, and Mary. Similarly a sign signifies something to
somebody.
Now it is easy to show that the combination of dyadic
relations only leads to further dyadic relations; for instance, by combining the relation "uncle of'' (- U-) with
the relation "cousin of'' (-C-), we only obtain the relation "uncle of cousin of' (-U -C-) or "cousin of uncle of'
(-C-U-); and the diagram shows that the combined relation has only two tails. Therefore triadic relations cannot be built up out of dyadic relations. Hence the sign
relation is not reducible to anything involving only dyadic
relations. As a consequence, no theory about the world
which seeks to account for everything in terms of dyadic
relations, such as we have in the impact of atoms or
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
gravitational attraction, is adequate to account for sign
relations. Lucretius, for instance, is wrong.
Now given the irreducibility of signs to things which
are not signs, we have yet to advance another step before
we reach the level of human language. We have, in the
first place, to understand the distinction between a sign
which is a signal or operator, and a sign which is a designator
or name; between a sign which serves as stim.ulus to a
motor response, and a sign which serves as an instrument of reflective thought. Man is a naming animal.
Human language is characterized by a freedom of
naming. Man can devise a vocal name for anything that
he can identify or distinguish as. being, in some way, one.
This freedom of naming depends, for one thing, on the
manifoldness of the sounds which the human voice can
produce and which the human ear can distinguish; and
it depends for another on leisure and reflectiveness.
Among peoples whose mode of life grants them little
leisure, the naming of things may be very restricted; thus
Malinowski found that among the Trobrianders of the
South Seas there are no special names for the various
trees or bushes which provide no edible fruit, but all of
these are alike called by a name we may translate "bush:'
When leisure intervenes, however, the reflective botanist
or zoologist, or in general the reflective namer, makes his
appearance, and nothing is safe from being named, not
even the Nameless, which after all has that name.'
The identification that goes with naming is like the
drawing of a circle, which separates all that is outside
the circle from all that is inside. Among the words which
name, I include adjectives and verbs as well as nouns,
for all such words have the general function of identification, of signifying something that is, in some way, one.
Corresponding to every adjective or verb there exists, or
can be invented, a corresponding noun; in English, for
instance, we frequently turn adjectives into nouns by adding N-E-S-S, and verbs into nouns by adding T-I-0-N.
All such words are called, traditionally, categorematic terms.
And the key to the categorematic terms, the key noun
or noun of nouns, is "monad" or "unit;' which Euclid
defines as that in accordance with which each of the
things that are is said to be one; and which was also defined by the ancients as the form of forms, dlirov ellio~.
The categorematic terms are of different sorts, depending on the kinds of thing they designate. Some of the
things they designate can be simply located in space and
time, and others cannot.
There are, for instance, terms for simple qualities like
"red;' "bitter;' "shrill." The awareness of such a quality,
considered by itself, is unanalyzable and incommunicable; it is just what it is and nothing else. I can
never know that my neighbor's awareness of the redness
of the curtain is the same as mine; if he uses the words
"red" and "blue" on the same occasions as I do, this only
means his classification of colors corresponds to mine. The
identification of qualities by name presupposes acts of
comparison and classification.
There are names for physical oqjects, "horse;' "chariot;'
43
�"Hektor!' A physical object has unity insofar as it is
bounded in space, persistent for a stretch of time, and
capable of moving or being moved. It is identified as an
invariant within a spatial and temporal framework. The
character of the spatial framework is determined by the
character of possible motions. Motions are reversible, so
that one can return to his starting-point; and motions
are associative, so that one can change direction, add motion to motion. In other words, motions form what
mathematicians call a group of operations. The character
of possible motions implies that space is homogeneous,
that it constitutes a uniform background against which
physical objects can manifest their unity and invariance,
that is, their boundedness, persistence in time, and
mobility.
There are names for materials, such as gold and
water, and names for such strange beings as rivers and
streams; whatever a stream or river is, it is something
you can step into twice, though the water is never the
same.
There are names for happenings, events, motions;
running, grasping, twisting, leaping, coronation,
assassination.
All the kinds of name I have mentioned so far
designate things that can be pointed at. But the meaning of such words cannot he defined simply by pointing;
pointing by itself is totally ambiguous; if the pointing
is to be understood, something else must be understood
at the same time. For instance, we have to understand
that it is a physical object that is meant, or a color, or
a shape, or a material, or a motion. The tree is not only
a tree, but is green-leaved, tall, branched, and so on. In
whatever direction one points, there is manyness, plurality of aspect.
All such naming, then, presupposes and implies an
act of comparison and classification, the isolation of
something from a matrix or background of possible
meanings. Man is an animal who compares, finds ratios;
he is a rational animal.
There are names for things which cannot be localized
in time and space, names like "law;' "liberty,"
"art;' "nature," ')ustice," "knowledge," "wisdom." Such words
belong, not to the order of perception and motion, but
to the order of action and idea. We ascend here to a new
level which, once again, is not discernible from the Archimedean point. These words cannot be defined through
classification, through specification of genus and differentia. They are polar or dialectical words, which take up
their meanings in relation to the meanings of other words
of the same kind. The word "freedom" presents different
facets to the word "tyranny" and to the word ''slavery";
and any one of these words requires the services of the
others.
Most if not all of the dialectical words are borrowed
from the realm of the corporeal, visible, and tangible;
the original reference is forgotten, and only the metaphorical extension survives. Both the Greek 0iK11, justice,
and the Chinese word i, morality, originally meant a way
44
of life, that is to say, a particular way of life. But there
are many ways oflife, and the adjudication between rival
opinions requires a universal meaning. The universal is
then grasped in the particular. The definition of the
dialectical words depends on representative images or
anecdotes, like the Hobbesian state of nature, or the state
constructed in Platds dialogue, Republic.
In all cases, naming involves the location of a kind
of commonness, law, regularity, invariance- something
on the basis of which one might classifY or predict. And
in all cases the commonness, law, regularity, invariance,
makes its appearance in a matrix of relations. Whenever
anyone has managed to grasp such an invariance or
regularity or commonness, he has thereby in some
measure released himself from the tyranny of diversity.
As Aristotle says, the soul is so constituted as to be capable
of this process. And he adds that it is like a rout in battle, stopped by first one man making a stand and then
another, until the original formation has been restored.
The human freedom of linguistic formation is not
limited to naming. Human language is combinational;
it permits the combination of sign with sign to form a
complex sign called the sentence, the proposition, the affirmation or denial, or-to use the Greek word-the logos.
In order really to say something, one must say something
about something. The fundamental type of expression
with complete or independent meaning is the sentence;
a meaning is completely specified only if it is imbedded
in an affirmation or denial, something that could be an
answer to a question.
Words that, in a broad sense, name or identify, can
be answers to questions. They have a certain possible completeness of meaning, which becomes actual when they
are uttered in a context of other words or in a non-verbal
situation which serves to specify the way in which they
are being used. The single word "fire;' for instance, may
have different meanings depending on the situation in
which it is uttered; whether, say, by a neighbor whose
house has caught on fire, or by an artillary officer, or
by Pascal in his study, in an attempt to express a theological truth.
Or to take a case where the context is verbal: the
meaning of the word "man" in the sentence "Some man
is a liar" is not entirely the same as its meaning in the
sentence "Man is mortal;' and is different again from its
meaning in the sentence "Man is a species!' In "Man is
mortal" the word stands for all things which it is capable
of signifying, all men who ever were, or are, or will be,
this man and that man and so on. In "Man is a species"
the word stands for a certain nature which it signifies; and
it is not possible to descend to individuals, to assert that
this man or that man is a species. In "Some man is a
liar;' the word "man" stands not for all things it is capable
of signifying, but only for an indeterminate individual,
this man or that man. We may say in general that while
any categorematic term is capable of signifying, the
precise way in which it signifies is determined by its use
in an assertion, a sentence.
SUMMER 1984
�Every sentence contains, besides categorematic terms,
other signs which are called syncategorematic signs,
words like "if;' "with;' "by;' "the;' "is;' "every;' "because;'
"not;' and signs which consist of inflectional endings or
word order. These signs are not names; they determine
the range of meaning of other terms, or the mode of connection of terms in sentences; they express instrumentality, the modalities of the possible or probable, tense,
negation, conditionality, and so on. In translating from
one language to another, these signs present the greatest
difficulty, for they are most likely not to translate into
a completely analogous form in the second language. The
conditional "if;' for instance, can be expressed in German by a mere inversion of the order of subject and verb;
Greek and Latin can express the instrumental "by" or
"with" by means of case endings of nouns; .and Latin
somehow- though not very happily- manages to get
along without a definite article. Nevertheless, we can expect that any adequate language will supply the connective and determining functions in some way.
The crucial syncategorematic sign is the sign of assertion itself. In the Indo-European languages this is supplied by the finite verb form; the verb has, in addition
to its function of naming or identifying, the function of
indicating that sometlllng is to be affirmed of something.
In Chinese there is no verb "to be;' and instead there is
a little particle "yeh;' which may be translated "indeed?'
Thus one says ''Tail long indeed;' meaning The tail is long,
and ''Boat wooden-thing indeed;' meaning Boats are made
of wood. The particle "yeh" may be taken as an epitome
of the business of the sentence, to assert or declare.
There is, then, a freedom of linguistic formation in
human language, freedom in the formation of names and
sentences. And this freedom extends to the subject-matter
of language itself; we can talk about language, use
language to describe language. This peculiar atop-theatopness is characteristic pf human capacity. Thus we
can make machines which make tools, which are used
in turn to make macliines. And according to Kant, man
is the only animal who can read a sign as sign. This implies that man is the only animal who can make signs
of signs; the only animal that has a hierarchical or selfreflexive language. And it implies also that he can become
aware, as by a sidelong glance, of his own linguistic activity, and raise it to the level of conscious artfulness,
liberal artistry.
Because of the triadic relation between the sign, the
object, and the thought or interpretant, we can distinguish three branches of linguistic artfulness. Grammar will
deal with linguistic formation, with the conditions which
any sequence of signs, and in particular any sentence,
must satisfy if it is to be meaningful. Logic will deal with
the conditions which any sequence of signs must satisfy
if it is to be true of any object, and in particular with
linguistic transformations which preserve truth, with the
derivation of one sentence from another in such a way
that if the first sentence is true of any object or objects,
then so is the second. Rhetoric will deal with linguistic
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
transformations that are persuasive, with the conditions
under which one thought or interpretant leads to another
in the mind of the interpreter. The focal topic of grammar is the sentence; of logic, the argument; of rhetoric,
the trope or figure of speech.
Grammar has to do with the conditions of meaningfulness, or conversely, with the avoidance of nonsense.
Meaninglessness or nonsense is to be distinguished from
absurdity. A word heap like king but or similar and is meaningless, and so is Gertrude Stein's A rose is a rose is a rose,
unless a comma be inserted after the second occurrence
of "rose"; an expression like round square or All squares have
5 comers, is absurd or countersensical, though meaningful.
The avoidance of nonsense is the business of grammar;
the avoidance of absurdity is the business of logic.
Grammar has to do with the recognition and distinction of forms and modifications of meaning which any
adequate language must be capable of expressing, the
existential sentence, the hypothetical antecedent, the
generic sense of a common noun, negation, the plural,
the modalities of the possible and probable, past, present, and future, and so on. If a language is to mirror
truly, in its verbal materials, the various kinds of possible meanings, then it must have control over grammatical
forms which permit the giving of a sensuously distinguishable "expression" to all distinguishable forms of
meanings. Different languages may differ with respect
to their adequacy. It is the task of the grammatical art
to see through the grammatical forms of particular
languages to essential distinctions of meaning, and to the
ways in which meanings may be combined so as to result
in the completed meaning of the sentence.
Logic is concerned with relations between sentences,
with transformations of sentences yielding new sentences,
in such a way that if the original sentences be true of
any objects of thought, then so are the derived sentences.
Wherever logic is being employed, the logical function
will be expressible in terms of a sequence of sentences,
of which one or more will be regarded as antecedent,
and one or more' as consequent.
Among sentences, some are denials or contradictions
of others; in fact every sentence has a denial, and the
denial of a denial is the same as the original sentence
denied. Everyone who cares to speak or assert anything,
has to take it as a rule that a given sentence cannot be
both truly affirmed and truly denied; on pain of contradiction, we say, he cannot both affirm and deny
something of something at the same time and in the same
respect. This principle, called the law of noncontradiction, cannot be proved. Anyone who dares or
cares to deny it cannot be talked with without absurdity, for his very denial would imply a denial of his denial.
He is, as Aristotle says, no better than a vegetable.
There are sentences which are consistent or compatible with one another, so that one can be denied or affirmed without our having, on pain of contradiction, to
affirm or deny the other.
And there are sentences which are related as antece-
45
�dent and consequent, where the affirmation of the one
requires us, on pain of contradiction, to affirm the other.
In this case, the antecedent is said to imply the consequent.
Implication always depends on syncategorematic
words, words which do not name, but which connect or
modify the meanings of names, words like "and;' "or;' "ifthen;' "all;' "every;' "some;' and so on. For instance, if p
and q are two sentences, and if I assert the sentence "If
p then q," and also assert the sentence "p;' then I am forbidden on pain of contradiction to deny the sentence ((q."
Or if A, B, and C are objects of thought, and if! assert
that all A is B, and that no B is C, then I am forbidden
on pain of contradiction to deny that no A is C.
In all applications of logic there are signs- either
categorematic terms or sentences- which occur vacuously; all that is required of them is that their meaning
should remain self~identical. The implication depends
solely on the connective and determining words, the syncategorematic signs.
The logical art enables us to pass from sentence to
sentence, to draw out the consequences of what has
previously been asserted, to construct the tremendous
deductive sciences of mathematics and theoretical physics.
An omniscient being would have no need for such an
art, but man is a discursive animal, who can only pass
from truth to truth in some consecutive order, in time.
Rhetoric has to do with the ways in which one thought
leads to another. As rhetorician, one is concerned with
linguistic transformations which occur in daydreams and
reveries, in jokes and poems and myths, in the formation of opinion, in the coming about of discoveries and
insights. While the task oflogic is to look through signs,
so to speak, toward the self-identical character of objects
of thought, the task of rhetoric is to look through signs
toward the polar character of thoughts.
Every identification of meaning involves the drawing of a circle which includes and excludes. Every
sentence involves affirmation or negation. The fundamental polarity in thought is that between same and
other.
There is an ancient Pythagorean table of opposites,
contrarieties, polarities: odd-even, unity-plurality, rightleft, male-female, rest-motion, light-dark, good-bad, and
so on. These polarities rest not only on the law of contradiction, but on the polarized character of man's life,
the erotic character of his linear voyage through time and
space. The other polarities become invested with Eros,
the desire for pleasure, for honor and power, for community, and for knowledge.
Wherever there are poles, there are tropics. The word
"pole" comes from the Greek word n6Ao<;, meaning pivot.
Wherever there are pivots, one expects to find something
that turns; and the Greek word -rp6n:o<;, from which we
derive the word "tropic;' means a turning. Thus the
tropics of the earth turn round the poles. Wherever there
are polar oppositions of terms, one may expect to find
what are called tropes, that is, turns or figures of speech,
similes, metaphors, metonymies, ironies.
46
In the 15th book of the Iliad, there is a point at which
Hector is seeking to break the ranks of the Achaians, but
is unable, we are told, for they endured like a tower, 'just
as a rock in the sea endures despite wind and waves:' The
rock in the sea is a simile, of course, for the endurance
and courage of the Achaians. The polarity here is between man and rock. I read into the rock the human endurance, and then I turn round and read into the human
endurance the steadfastness of the rock. I look at each
from the standpoint of the other; I use each to obtain
a perspective of the other. The movement is from man
to rock and back to man. I obtain an echo of man from
the rock.
As I pointed out earlier, the words for moral notions
and for the activities of the mind are derived by metaphor
from words for visible or tangible things and motions.
Poetry involves a regaining of the original relation in
reverse, a metaphorical extension back from the intangible into a tangible equivalent. It involves the discovery
of what T. S. Eliot calls an objective correlative of the interior life; that is, the finding of a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events, which will be the formula of a
particular feeling or thought, so that when the external
facts are given, the feeling or thought is immediately
evoked.
Modern science can also be viewed, on the theoretical
side, as a gigantic trope or series of tropes, a series of
models or images whose meanings are drawn out by
logical inferences. Thus one may conceive electric current after the analogy of a river, or electric oscillations
after the analogy of mechanical oscillations, and other
aspects of electricity suggest other metaphors which in
turn acquire corresponding mathematical formulation.
Modern mathematics and mathematical physics overlies
a mass of disjunct imagery which it does not appear possible to unify; instead, imagery is used dialectically to transcend imagery, in successive stages of formalization.
Finally, let me not fail to mention the trope of irony,
the dialectical trope par excellence. Irony is an elusive trope;
its essence lies in simulation or dissimulation, in the use
ofthc tension between what appears and what is. It can
be savagely or gently mocking, but it also contains the
seeds of humility. When Newton* sees a criminal being
led to the gallows and says "There but for the grace of
God go I;' he is not congratulating himself on not being
a criminal; he reads himself in the other and the other
in himself, and the irony lies in this peculiar combination of"yes" and "no;' as these two are connected by means
of the God-term. When Socrates says "I know that I do
not know;' he combines affirmation and denial in such
a way as to produce a peculiar transcendence. Irony is
here the net of the educator.
The possibility of irony rests on the tension between
what appears and what is. Man exists at the horizon be-
*The hymn-writer.
SUMMER 1984
�tween appearance and idea; his being is an intermediate,
a metaxy, as Plato would say (co l!oca~u). And the task
of education, starting in the middle of things, is to use
the appearances, the images, the names and the
sentences, to produce a development toward hierarchy
and wholeness which uses all the terms.
I have but a few more words to say. Man is a being
who is constantly in search of himself; this is the human
condition. Socratically speaking, he is a questioning
animal, a being who, when asked a rational question,
can give a rational answer. So questioning and responding, both to himself and others, man becomes a responsi-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ble being, a moral being. In the image of the Republic,
the movement of dialectical or dialogical thought, as
guided by Socratic irony, is upward, from darkness into
light, from partiality to wholeness, from appearance to
intellectual vision. The Socratic irony produces a transformation of terms, a hierarchy, a perspective of perspectives, in which the contradictions of pOlitical life, and of
the soul which is an inner political life, are resolved by
becoming hierarchially related to the idea of knowledge.
The Socratic irony punctures pretense, and points
beyond, to the unity of knowledge and to the great dialectical interchange which has yet to be carried out.
47
�The Program of St. John's College*
in Annapolis, Maryland,
and Santa Fe, New Mexico
Eva T. H. Brann
I. Principles and Parts of the Program
I. The Principles and Parts of
the Program
Authors
Arts
The Community of Learning
II. Problems and Questions
Concerning the Program
The Place of the Program
in American Education
The Omission of Certain
Studies
Study Modes of the Program
Institutional Difficulties
"Real Life"
Eva Brann is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. The Program of St. John's
College, was written for the Rockefeller Foundation Conference KToward the
Restoration of the Liberal Arts Curriculum;' September 28, 1978.
48
E
very plan of education, whether borne up by a
passing trend or bound into a long tradition,
is fraught with implicit philosophical principle.
Since the program of St. John's College is
devoted to that peculiar kind of learning which
of necessity includes a reflection on its own conditions,
most members of the college accept the obligation- or
yield to the fascination- of engaging in ever-recurrent
discussion and review of the philosophical bases that
underlie their activity. A part of the life of the college
(some say too much, some too little) is devoted to such
reflection. To mention this activity is a matter of minutes,
while to reproduce even a sample of it would require not
hours but, probably, years. Furthermore, precisely
because it is a living inquiry, it is impossible for one
member to state the results in behalf of the whole college. That would be tantamount to announcing that we
had communally determined the answer to such questions as "What is learning?", ''What are the objects of
learning?", "What is human nature?", and "What is truth?"
Such an announcement is, judging from good precedent, not in itself unthinkable, but it would be absurd
in view of the central aim of the college, which is the
pursuit of what I can only call radical inquiry. The college certainly has other and, it sometimes seems, conflicting aims. If the usual purposes of institutions of higher
learning can be said to be: 1. training for scholarship or
research; 2. pre-professional preparation, 3. broadening
of views and sharpening of intellectual faculties and
development of the sensibility, 4. initiation into the
cultural tradition- then the college eschews the first
almost completely, does the second fairly adequately, succeeds in the third but erratically (that is to say, about
SUMMER 1984
�as well as other good schools), and accomplishes the last
superbly, albeit according to its own lights. But, however
well the college may do any of these things, it does them
only incidentally to the central aim, which is to us the
very purpose of liberal education.
By radical inquiry I mean the attempt to delve as
deeply as possible into the roots of the world, to bring
to light not only the nature of things but also the nature
of thinking. When I say that it is the central aim of the
college, I do not- God forbid- mean that every waking
moment is devoted to first philosophy, but rather that
philosophical questions are always in the background, are
always welcomed, are always on the brink of being entertained, even when the subject at hand is highly technical
or acutely esthetic.
Now precisely because such an inqu~ry is a search
for truth and substance, it needs to be free, free in the
sense of being conducted in a setting that imposes the
fewest bars and the least presuppositions possible. The
program of the college embodies an attempt to provide
such a setting. If the actual life of the college is difficult
to describe succinctly, its formal aspect, this very plan
oflearning, should be quite capable of coherent and concise presentation.
Now the program of the college consists of an almost
totally prescribed course of studies. It sets not only the
books to be read but the exact order in which they are
itself. I shall try below to set out our approach to the intellectual world, an approach that still accords it enough
integrity so as to engender in a faculty the confidence
to derive a plan of studies from it.
The enabling freedum which is essential to our sort
of inquiry depends on a program explicitly embodying
strong but minimal notions- strong enough to help and
sparing enough not to hinder inquiry.
We have agreed on two approaches as meeting these
demands. They stem from an old tradition. But it is not
because they are old that we adopt them; on the contrary, they are, presumably, long-lived because they contain much pedagogical wisdom. These approaches have
the medieval designation of Authors and Arts.
AUTHORS
The wisdom of the West is handed down in a collection of books by individual authors, books of words, symbols, notes and images, books of philosophy, science and
poetry, books of intellect, reason and imagination. I
believe that the existence of such a written tradition is
an accepted fact among all educated people. The issuing of definitive lists of these books has been a favorite
activity of pedagogues since the Renaissance, and the
zestful debates concerning the inclusion or exclusion of
items have usually confirmed a perennial core. We tinker
with our list-which we find in the main satisfactory-
to be studied and even the times, to the hour, when and
for various reasons. The main cause is that far more
the people with whom they are to be discussed. It requires its students to forego all notions of being born a
books by right belong on it than can be read in four years.
(We now have an informal rule obligating anyone who
wishes to add a book to the list to point out- at his
peril- the one to be dropped to make room for it.) Again,
humanistic or a scientific type, makes the silent speak
and the speech-makers be quiet, imposes dozens of
earnest formalities, requires teache.rs to teach what they
certain texts turn out to be unsuccessful in discussion.
do not know well to students who did not particularly
choose to be taught by them, and requires relentless activity in the name of true leisure. And all these constraints
Also, the splintering of the tradition in recent times makes
the modern choices much less settled. So, while we invariably begin with the Homeric epics, our final readings
vary. When I last taught seniors about to go forth into
the so-called world, we ended most appropriately with
that perfect conflation of thought and action embodied
in Supreme Court decisions.
These books form a coherent tradition because their
are imposed, I must now try to show, in the interests of
intellectual freedom.
It is not, of course, academic freedom in the usual
understanding, that is, the students' right to study what
they please and the professors' right to say what they
think. In the St. John's community, the latter is not so
much a right as a duty, though a duty mitigated by a
pedagogic tact. The former freedom is, except for small
choices, confined to the initial decision to come to the
college, though that decision is never permitted to be
made sight unseen. Electives, which the program ex-
common mode is response, repudiation, revival. Each
book is explicitly or implicitly a commentary on, or a
critique of, preceding books. Much as we regret having
affixed to ourselves the fatuous formula of a "great books"
college (and exactly 100 of them, forsooth!), the irrefutable experience seems to be that these books are
great, that they are inexhaustible in their depth and
cludes, are the most characteristic feature of modern
university organization, introduced into this country
definiteness, in their responsiveness and self-sufficiency.
significantly by Thomas Jefferson. They were devised,
on the one hand, to take account of the individual talents
(and what often weighs more, the supposed inabilities)
of the students, and on the other, to make up for the loss
It is, after all, by these criteria that the educated consensus has chosen them and guarded their survival.
What makes the study of these books relevant to practical inquiry is that they are all occupied with versions
of consensus concerning a universally enforceable educa-
of the same root questions. Arguments have been made
in this century claiming that these questions are radical
misdirections of human effort, and that the tradition is
tional plan. The St. John's program, on the contrary, is
based on the assumption that certain fundamental studies
are still universally accesssible, reliably exciting and formulable as a plan to which a whole faculty can commit
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
in need of a respectful but merciless dismantling, but such
critiques are, and mean to be, themselves within the tradi-
49
�tion. In short, these books are helpful only on the simple working assumption that human questions are so continuously transformed as to remain fundamentally the
same now, then, and tor all time. If that is false, the study
of these books-and indeed any book not written here
and now-is a mere antiquarian amusement. I should
add an observation essential to the enterprise: The
acknowledgement that there are perennial questions is
the very antithesis of the claim that such questions have
no answer-a presumptious supposition which implies
that one has seen deeply enough into the well of things
to know that it has no bottom.
One chief characteristic of these works is that they
are original in both senses of the term: very much the
author's own product and very much at the beginning
and origin of an intellectual development. Such texts differ from text books by communicating the order and
the difficulties of discovery rather than delivering prepared packets of knowledge. Hence, precisely by reason
of their originality, they imply a certain arrangement of
studies, or better, they obviate the principal organizational features of modern university studies, which is the
department corresponding to a field of study.
The department is the expression of a thoroughgoing
intellectual prejudgement, namely the Baconian division
of the intellectual world into parcels of ground, fields,
areas, within which can occur that concentrated cultivation, that intensive specialization, and that well-defined
research, which make possible the advancement oflearning and the accumulation of intellectual products.
Without attempting here to sketch out the intellectual
revolution which made such a division of labor possible
and profitable, let me simply say that this college, as an
undergraduate teaching institution, is willing to forego
all its advances for the sake of radical reflection. For us,
students "make an original contribution" when they go,
for themselves, to the origin of things. We want them
not so much to think something new, as to think anew,
not so much to discover truths for the world as for
themselves.
These books, then, in their o~iginality, precede the
fixing of the divisions of studies. In the language of hindsight, in them philosophy is not yet one of many equal
specialties, poetry is still a source of wisdom, physics and
theology are still continuous. Hence the reading of
authors involves fewer assumptions than the study of
fields and permits the more natural pursuit of those questions otherwise so frustratingly formulated as
"interdisciplinary?'
The order in which the books are read is by and large
chronological. This observation of the given order again
embodies a minimum of prejudgement. In addition it
makes obvious sense for the student to have read what
the author has read. As Hegel knew his Aristotle or
Milton his Homer or Stravinsky his Bach, so, perhaps,
ought the student. In certain, though by no means all,
cases it is even indispensable to be so prepared.
Contrary to appearance, this temporal order is not
intended to have anything to do with the "history of ideas".
50
We have no interest at all in having students learn how
different notions have succeeded each other. Indeed, in
distinction from every school I know of, we have no interest in the past whatsoever (though a good many of
us are privately avid readers of history). The fact that
some of these books are written by authors who happen
to be physically dead is perfectly peripheral. For insofar
as the books really do form a tradition, their matter has
entered into the present. It has done so in at least two
ways, which correspond to the two old senses of the word
tradition: It signifies a process of handing down but also
of traducing- of preservation, but also of subversion.
Hence the matterrofthe older books is always there, either
as an absorbed and digested element of the development
or as the forgotten cause and motive of an antithetical
formulation.
The attitude toward the books which the college tries
to foster is one of respectful~ attention combined with
vigorous independence. We demand such respect even
for the small number of lesser or even shoddy books
which we include not on their own account but for the
influence they have had. This respectful listening and
critical responsiveness are meant to be carried over into
the communal exercise which seems to us most appropriate to the study of tradition.
We call this institutional device the seminar and
regard it as the central class of the college. It is a discussion group of no more than twenty students, which-meets
twice a week throughout the four years of the program
on a set text. It is emphatically not intended as a rap
session or an encounter group, or as some exercise in
group dynamics. In fact, there is no manipulation and
no method which properly belong to the seminar; on the
contrary, the rule is the great Heraclitan saying, "Listen
not to me but to my speech." There is, however, a certain structure. There are two seminar leaders who alternate in asking an opening question. The object of having two is to prevent the unopposed profession of
authoritative opinion and to encourage students to address each other rather than the teacher. Every member
of the seminar is expected to contribute to the discussion and to do so responsibly, responsively, and civilly-all
members use a formal mode of address. The seminar
may work at explicating the text or attempt to determine the truth. These two and a half hours can be vapid
and they can be vigorous, silly or sublime, rambling, sequential, hilarious, serious. In accordance with the ancient discovery that speculative loquacity flourishes after
dark, the seminars are held at night.
Juniors and seniors are given a ten-week break in the
middle of the year to join the only elective class of the
college, the preceptorial. It is a small study group on
a book or a theme, offered by a tutor and chosen by the
student.
ARTS
Our second approach to reflective inquiry is through
the liberal arts. The liberal arts are traditionally, and,
I think, rationally, divided into the arts concerning speech
SUMMER 1984
�and the arts concerning learnable objects, that is, the
medieval trivium (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and the
quadrivium (four grades of mathematics and natural
science).
The arts of language and of mathematics are root
skills. By adapting the way of these arts, the college hopes
to overcome the vexed question concerning what fields
of study the institution should offer and which of these
a student should be allowed to avoid. As I understand
this question, it has, from the pedagogical point of view,
two aspects. First, a modern university offers numerous
wonderfully ingenious and equipotent studies among
which young students have scarcely any way of choosing but by mere and unmatured preference. It also harbors certain dubious offerings, advertised in the language
ofpiffie-land, which the same student has hardly any way
of exposing but by bitter and expensive experience. Hence
the choice of goods and the avoidance of trash pose an
equally baffling problem to young learners, one whose
acuteness increases with their obliviousness of its existence. Second, the serious studies usually require of
those committed to them steeply increasing sophistication and specialization, and it is not clear that such learning is, in the language of educational psychology,
transferable; indeed it often seems that a high degree
of early specialization depresses rather than raises both
the students' willingness and ability to bring learning to
bear widely.
The arts, on the other hand, are eminently transferable, for although they are always wedded to a defmite
matter- the grammar is, say, French grammar and the
mathematics is, say, projective geometry-the skill and
the matter together can be continuously elaborated and
adapted to any use. What is more, they are eminently
defensible as required subjects for their own sake, for
they are by nature elementary, and that means that,
aside from the boom of their general accessibility, they
display an inviting combination of simplicity and depth.
At least our students seem to be won by some such quality
when they get absorbed, for instance, in the mysteries
of the copula "is" and why a certain type of Greek sentence does without it, or again, when they recover the
mental leap which leads from the naive to the formal
meaning of the mathematical limit notion.
Once more the use of the arts in the program serves
to avoid prejudgements. For these arts are antecedent,
both in time and in thought, to the debilitating split between the humanities and the sciences which dominates
modern schools. The skills of the trivium and the
quadrivium involve continuous and complementary
human abilities: It is not only that the art of mathematics
can be most humane and the art of language ought to
be very precise, but that the elements of both are rooted
in one and the same human power, the power of thought.
Furthermore, the arts help us avoid the necessity for those
"methods of analysis" courses with which schools attempt
to reintroduce some sort on generality into their studies.
We want to circumvent them because each such method
embodies an enormous amount of intellectual prepara-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
tion which students are scarcely sophisticated enough to
to discern. For example, the tremendous intellectual
predeterminations involved in the application of quantitative methods to the social sciences can hardly become
perspicuous to students unless they have thoroughly
reflected on the nature of quantity and the process of
quantification itself- one of the very intentions of our
mathematical program which can, however, hardly be
achieved without some detailed but reflective study of
pure mathematics.
In accordance with the twofold way of the arts, the
program provides for two kinds of day classes called
tutorials: a language tutorial and a mathematics
tutorial. These are recitation classes, most of which meet
four times a week, and they are devoted to various exercises, above all to translation and demonstration.
The language tutorial uses translation as the chief
learning device. The languages studied and used are
Greek and French. An ancient language is useful to us
precisely because it is "dead;' that is to day, completely
fixed and literary. Greek in particular is chosen first,
because it is, in illuminating contrast to English, a highly
inflected language; next, because of its intimate relation
to our seminar readings; again, because of its literary
riches; and finally, because most of the faculty has quite
shamelessly fallen in love with it. The choice of French
is more arbitrary. German or Russian might do as well,
although it is argued that French poetry, in its artfulness,
best lends itself to rhetorical analysis. The work of the
language tutorial almost always begins with some sort
of translation exercise.
The object of the tutorial is above all to reflect on
the relation of language to thought, of the languages to
each other, of correctness to persuasiveness, of logic to
grammar, of form to meaning. It is secondly to support
the seminar by a slower and more detailed reading of
some of the central passages of seminar books, and last
(though, by our own intention, least) it is to learn the
language in question, for without some concrete medium
the discussion would be mere hot air. Hence the tutorial
always, and sometimes rather inefficiently, shifts back and
forth between the necessary rote learning and the desired
reflection, the more so since language, unlike mathematics, cannot be learned by advancing in a linear sequence from agreed beginning to desired conclusions;
it has no clear given "elements:'
The mathematics tutorial is apparently the pedagogically most successful part of the program, and, many
of us think, the most gratifying to teach.
First of all, it ought to be said that in the tutorials
the injunction against the use of textbooks is of necessity somewhat relaxed. As it happens, the most appropriate beginning mathematics textbook is also a work
of originality and subtlety: Euclid's Elements. All
freshmen begin their mathematical studies with a consideration of its first definition: "A point is that which
has no part;' and they end up, four years later, with the
four-dimensional geometry of Einstein's special theory
of relativity.
51
�On the way, they study mostly original texts. It may
seem surprising that in so unquestionably progressive
a study as mathematics and mathematical physics (the
tutorial includes both, especially astronomy) the original
sources are good teaching tools. But suppose one thinks
of it in this way: Einstein, in the famous 1905 paper which
sets out special relativity, explicitly presupposes a
knowledge of Maxwell's work. Maxwell cannot be understood without Newton, who, in his own phrase, "stands
on the shoulders" of Kepler and Galileo. Galileo advocates
Copernicus' system.
Copernicus revolutionizes the
Ptolemaic cosmos. Ptolemy's theories cite Appolonius'
Conics and Apollonius is inaccessible without the
Elements of Euclid. These are, in reverse order, some
of the very texts used in the tutorial. Seen in this light
the so-called "genetic" approach makes immediate sense.
And yet, regarded as textbooks, these works are often
cumbersome and complicated. They are frequently not
conducive to efficient learning and technical proficiency.
But then, it is not our object to train productive or
problem-solving mathematicians, though we acknowledge and want all the benefits usually attributed to
mathematical studies: precision of thought, logically valid
reasoning, the power of demonstration, and an appreciation of intellectual elegance. Once again, however, the
chief aim is reflection on the nature of mathematics and
the possibility of its application to nature. And for that
the original texts are almost indespensible, providing only
they are not approached in the spirit of the history of
science, that is, as repositories of past and surpassed forms
of thought. Instead, we look to them as setting out both
enduring intellectual acquisitions and accounts of the
revolution of intention and understanding which accompany their continual displacement and absorptionrarely refutation- by subsequent discoveries. In particular, we follow with fascinated care the development
of mathematical structures from those humanly immediate objects of the natural intellect which engage the
ancients to the sophisticated high-level abstractions of the
constructive reason which preoccupy the moderns. This
implied view-that the ancients and the moderns are at
once separated and connected by a deep intellectual rupture whose thorough apprehension is crucial to the
understanding of modernity-is perhaps the one substantial interpretative dogma built into the program.
For three years a full fourth of the students' time goes
into the laboratory. It is a most problematic, and yet
an absolutely essential, part of the program. While the
tutorial and the seminar take off from written texts, the
laboratory is concerned with what its early modern proponents, eager to assimilate the direct study of nature
to respectable learning, called the book of nature. But
at the same time they also spoke of putting nature to the
test of torture to extract her secrets. Contained in this
figure of speech is the necessity for a laboratory, literally a workshop, in which strange tools are usedinstruments not of production but of contemplation, instruments of observation and measurement. Close and
52
careful study of the appearances was certainly practiced
among the ancients, but the elaborately prepared and
controlled kind of experience which marks the central
device of the laboratory, namely the experiment, is
peculiar to the moderns. That is why this class is a
separate and problematic exercise in a program devoted
to interpretive reading.
Pedagogically, too, the laboratory has its special difficulties. The first function of the experiments is the determination of new truths of nature. In asking students to
repeat experiments, albeit crucial ones, we run the danger
of mounting a deliberately rickety reenactment with
unrevealing results, or of getting slick reconfirmation of
predetermined laws. Add to this the necessity, in more
sophisticated experiments, of using the notorious '~lack
box;' the instrument whose insides are a dark mystery
to the user, and it will be obvious how hard it can be
to engender and maintain thoughtful excitement in this
class.
Our aims are clear enough. We want to reflect on
that enormously powerful activity called science which
has arrogated to itself the name of knowledge simply;
to think about the changes in meaning that the word
"phenomenon" has undergone, from the ancient injunction to astronomy to "save the appearances" to Heisen-
berg's uncertainty principle; to consider the term "hypothesis'~ for example, to understand what Newton means
when he announces: "I make no hypotheses"; to understand how nature must be transformed to undergo
mathematization; to think about time as the beat of the
soul and the reading of a clock; to study force considered
as acting at a distance and as a field; to understand energy
in its continuities and discontinuities; to ask what life
is; and so on and on. I might add that the problem of
"scientific method;' much beloved of philosophers of
science, seems, somehow to fade away before the
brilliance of original natural inquiry.
The actual laboratory sequence remains somewhat
fluid even after thirty years of practice, mostly on account
of the embarrassment of riches from which to choose.
At present it begins in the freshman year with the observation and classification ofliving things and the atomic
constitution of matter, that is, roughly, biology and
chemistry. These subjects are taken up again in the senior
year and pursued beyond the threshold of ordinary observation as molecular biology and quantum mechanics. In
between there is a year of classical physics. Wherever
possible the preparatory readings are original papers,
from Aristotle to Monad, from Galileo to Schroedinger.
In the sophomore year a music tutorial replaces the
laboratory. Music is traditionally the coping stone of the
liberal arts, the juncture of the theoretic with the fine
arts and even with theology. Here mathematics becomes
qualitative in the ratios which govern consonances; here
grammar becomes passionate in the tone relations which
constitute a musical rhetoric.
The music tutorial is generally regarded as the most
difficult class to teach, because, our fond dogma to the
SUMMER 1984
�contrary, previous preparation and ta1ent are necessary
to the tutor and make disturbing distinctions among the
students. We do require all freshmen to sing together in
the chorus and to learn some musical notation, but that
is not quite adequate.
The music class begins with the elements of music.
The theory of proportions, which has been studied in
the mathematics tutorial, is applied to the construction
of the Western, diatonic scale, and rhythm, melody and
harmony are taken up. Then musical texts are subjected
to detailed analytic listening, partly in preparation for
the seminar, which includes a number of musical works.
One example is Bach's Matthew Passion. The seminar
might respond to the fact that Bach was a learned
theologian by asking how the arias of the musical passion comment on the Gospel text -an inquiry for which
the music tutorial has provided the preparation.
Finally, all members of the college are expected to
attend one formal weekly lecture on any subject, which
is given by a visitor or a tutor, and is followed by a
(sometimes interminable) question period in which the
mood ranges from puppy-dog aggression to deep cooperative probing. This exercise in listening and responding
to connected discourse is quite important, especially for
students who are so much called on to engage in
conversation.
It goes without saying that we have various special
devices for examining students beyond their daily performance and for reporting to them our opinion of their
work. The most important formal test is the senior essay,
which is intended to be a work of reflection rather than
research; these essays vary in quality from dispiriting to
exhilarating.
One last observation on the program as a whole:
Because of the many factors that have to be juggled, the
integration of the parts is in stretches so loose as to be
hardly discernible. HapP.ily there are other occasions
when it is satisfyingly ~patent, when the tutorials,
laboratory and seminar immediately and essentially bear
on each other. The details of the schedule of studies and
their relations are set out in the catalogue of the college,
a frequently revised document to whose authority we attach great importance.
THE COMMUNITY OF LEARNING
It remains to say something of the community of
learning in which this program is realized, that is, the
students, the faculty and, briefly, the administration.
First, our students. We have always maintained that
the program is intended for students of widely varying
intellectual capacities, and that there is no distinctive St.
John's student. Since our progress is stepwise and patient and almost all the work is elementary, there should
be few parts that are technically beyond anyone's range.
Indeed, a slow and naive student may contribute more
searching questions than a quick and sophisticated one.
·We find that, except for occasional sad cases, self-selection
is the best guarantee of aptitude; the desire to learn
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
outweighs the question of talent. Our students, consequently should and do come from everywhere-as they
end up doing practically anything. As it turns out, they
do, in fact, perform so very well on the standard national
tests (in which we, nonetheless, place little faith) as to
make the college appear far more selective than we intend it to be. There is, moreover, good corroboration that
the program is indeed universally accessible. It comes
from our Graduate Institute in Liberal Education, a summer- version of the program intended in the main for
school teachers. Our graduate students, who teach in
large part in inner-city schools, whose academic training is usually neither very recent nor, often, very good,
and who are preoccupied with urgent practical problems,
take to the program with great gusto and gratifying
success.
The faculty, on the other hand, has undeniably over
the course of time grown into a certain distinctiveness,
which is largely the consequence of the one circumstance
we have most difficulty in explaining to the academic
world. Just as we expect the students to study the whole
program, so we expect ourselves to teach it. Naturally,
not everyone has done every part of the program, but
it is an aim to be attained, though over decades. It means
constant new learning, sitting in on each other's classes,
phoning for help. It sometimes means being only hours
ahead of the students. But I think, on the whole, it makes
us better teachers, closer to the students' difficulties and
more apt to find the most revealing way out. What
characterizes the faculty is, therefore, a certain proud
shamelessness about admitting ignorance and engaging
in public learning. One way to describe this group might
be to say that it is recalcitrantly unacademic: No departmental politics-we form, if you like, one large department. No imperial references to "my field" or "my century" or "my material'!.._ we have a common subject, the
program. No pride of competence or rank- our single
rank and title is tutor, that is to say, "guardian" of learning. In spite of royal battles over matters of principles
and gently simmering personal animosities, the faculty
engages in continuous common study and conversation.
When I say "faculty" I include our administrators. Our
deans are, according to the college policy, chosen from
among the tutors, and the other administrators, including
the president, have always (as much as they could) joined
in the learning and the teaching-a circumstance of incalculable value to the college. I think that most of us
would say that this happy collegiality is simply a reflection of the integrity of the program.
This then is a sketch of the plan and the people that
constitute St. John's College. Now might be the moment
to ask why a community should feel entitled to devote
itself to the kind of inquiry I have described. I think our
communal answer- briefly formulable but not briefly
defensible- might be that such activity is both the
mark and the source of human excellence. And if we
are told that that is all very well, but that there are more
urgent and iinmediate tasks for a college, solid, realistic,
53
�practical aims, and if we are asked how we can, in good
conscience, set them aside, we might answer with some
counter-questions: Have any of those myriad accom-
modations to the times into which schools have been
driven made education one whit more immediate to life?
Have the educators' urgencies in any way made the stu-
dent a better judge of the right action? Is realism in
education practical? Does it work? Ever?
II. Problems and Questions Concerning
the Program
Of course, rhetorical questions do not adequately
dispose of the many difficulties raised about the college
by friendly and not-so-friendly observers, and most intensively, by the faculty and the students themselves. Let
me briefly list what seem to me the chief topics of debate,
and indicate some first answers.
THE PLACE OF THE PROGRAM
IN AMERICAN EDUCATION
We are often asked, and have to ask ourselves, why
St. John's College has not been more widely imitated,
and of what use, beyond its own minuscule enterprise,
it can be to American education if it is indeed inimitable.
There have, in fact, been a number of programs modelled
on ours, but by and large, the departmental organization of American schools is simply too rigid to accommodate the radical modifications demanded by this program, while the propitious conjunction of factors
fession, especially law and medicine. By their own report,
after an initial disorientation, apparently comparable to
that of Adam and Eve after their ejection from paradise,
they find their years at the college both professionally
and personally helpful to life in the world- though
"helpful" is too bland a word for the effects of the program. It would be more candid to report that some
students say they feel crippled by the habit of reflection
they have acquired, while others- far more- claim that
the world belongs to them as, they think, it does not quite
belong to their peers.
THE OMISSION OF CERTAIN STUDIES
One of the apparently inevitable questions at the
orientation session which the Instruction Committee, the
faculty group charged with the supervision of the program, has with the incoming freshmen is: Why do we
study no Eastern books? The answer is threefold. First,
four years barely suffice even to begin with our own
Western tradition. Nothing worth doing could possibly
happen in the time we might squeeze out. Second, it is
by no means clear that the Eastern books can be fitted
into a Western, academic, institutional framework
without making a travesty of them-that they do not demand to be approached within their own living discipline.
Third, we have reason to distrust available translations,
because by an undiscriminating use of metaphysical terminology they seem so often to turn Eastern wisdom into
a pale and unoriginal reflection of Western philosophy.
In the case of Western texts we are alert to the fact that
translations will tend toward the higher gibberish and
necessary to a new founding is very rare. I think we
we have the communal competence to counteract this
should not yield to the implication that institutions that
are good in themselves are not doing their social duty
unless they are also exerting wide influence around them.
Nonetheless, the college does have a wider role to play
difficulty- not so with Eastern works. We have similar
hesitations about Islamic texts. It is not from disrepect
but from the exact opposite motive that we omit these
traditions.
in American education, namely, as one distinctive point
of reference: a self-confident but receptive center of
the very notion of "encountering other cultures;' especially
debate, an established repository of experience and a will-
as an undergraduate enterprise. Our deeper difficulty
The fact is that we have the greatest misgivings about
ing source of well-tested working devices for the restora-
is with the concept of culture itself, which can, notor-
tion of the liberal arts.
iously, include anything from menus to metaphysics. The
The imputation of elitism is sometimes made in this
context, but we must simply reject it. The program is
intended for all literate human beings and most particularly for citizens of a republic-our style of learning is eminently participatory, and questions of political
philosophy play a large role in the program. If smallness
and intimacy is a sin, one might as well accuse the family
of elitism. As for the expense of such an education, if
the true costs of public, large-scale, higher education were
ever honestly reckoned, this college, which has, as it were,
only one single large department and no need for fancy
hardware, might look good.
Finally there is the problem of vocationalism, of
preparation for careers. Is this kind of education nothing
but a respectable luxury on the educational scene? In
fact, way over half our students go on to graduate and
professional schools and they enter every conceivable pro-
54
more immediate pedagogical problem, however, concerns
the idea of "encounter" or "exposure." Surely it is not safe
to encounter strange ways when one is not yet solidly
grounded in one's own, nor is it sound to approach alien
traditions when one cannot afford to pursue them in
depth and detail.
The other major omission of the program which is
often questioned is that of history. Even observers who
accept the fact that we do not study any of a number
of other worthwhile fields wonder how we can read the
texts without a "historical background." Our answer, far
too abruptly stated, would be, first, that such capsule
history conveys very little except a prejudgement, and
second, more importantly, that the works are intended
by their authors to be directly accessible and selfsufficient, and that this claim must be, at least to begin
with, respected.
SUMMER 1984
�STUDY MODES OF THE PROGRAM
Our students seem to have little difficulty in accepting an all-required program which they have, after all,
chosen, which has a fairly explicit rationale, and which
has the adherence of their teachers. Indeed, they turn
out to be the most orthodox defenders of the program
against the inroads of elective elements. What they do
complain about is the lack of choice in tutors, since they
are assigned to classes and discouraged from asking for
transfers. It is a necessary hypothesis of the college community that all tutors are about equal in their ability to
guide classes which do not, supposedly, depend so much
on the teacher as on the text and the students. Of course,
the hypothesis is not quite true; our classes depend a great
deal on teachers, and also all the tutors are not equally
competent and exciting; a few are not even very good
teachers. This is one of the perennial problems of a college whose faculty thinks of itself as primarily a teaching
faculty. The best that can be said is that we do agonize
over the situation.
On our part, we worry about the amount of spoon
feeding and handholding our students absorb and wonder
whether it strengthens them or unfits them for making
choices and working independently. We are never quite
sure what we ought to do in this respect.
Our students, again, tend to suspect us- sometimes
with irritation and sometimes with a kind of intellectual
frisson- of propagating some esoteric dogma through the
classes. Nothing can resolve these suspicions except constant readiness on the part of the faculty to make explicit
and to discuss the assumptions behind our studies.
An academic critic might question the complete
absence of scholarship and reasearch. Truth to tell, the
students do not miss them, and they do get the benefit
of their teacher's fuller attention. Perhaps there is some
loss in the absence of ongoing intellectual productivity
(though many of us do write quite a bit), but we comfort ourselves with the thought that there is something
very timely indeed ab6ut our ambition to recollect and
revivify our intellectual inheritance and our reluctance
to join in the further accumulation oflargely unabsorbed
rational artifacts.
Finally, the scantiness of our contemporary readings
is often criticized. I think that, like everybody else, we
are simply embarrassed by the fragmented enormity of
the material. We would excuse ourselves from fully resolving this difficulty by pointing out that the appreciation
and critique of modernity, which is indeed one of our
central preoccupations, is best initiated with the aid of
earlier, more fundamental texts.
INSTITUTIONAL DIFFICULTIES
Pressure is the chief difficulty in realizing the pro-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
gram institutionally: the pressure of doing difficult daily
preparation, the frustration of racing through extensive
seminar assignments, the weariness of continuous involvement in that contradiction of terms, the scheduled conversation. We used to call the week between semesters
"Dead Week!' Tutors and students alike felt like zombies.
By way of relief we have been slowly cutting down
the program, shortening the readings and giving
ourselves some long weekends. But oddly enough, the
final fact of the matter seems to be that, endless complaints notwithstanding, people like it this way.
The one aspect of this problem that observers most
often notice is the relentless, strenuous intellectuality of
the college. Again there is some relief in the art studio,
the drama groups and in amateur music. Also students
have the choice of being at the Western campus, which
is said to be somewhat more relaxed. But the condition
itself is not curable, since it is the consequence of a pro-
gram that has no intention of educating "the whole person" (an enterprise which is part impertinence, part im-
possiblity), but addresses itself mainly to what is selfaware, rational and communicable, in sum, to what is
traditionally called free in human beings. The faculty's
contribution must be a great effort to ensure that it is
not a dry and brittle but a passionate and absorbing intellectuality that dominates the community.
"REAL LIFE"
Our students persistently bring to us a perplexity
which we share, though more occasionally and less
acutely. Who is there who spends his life with objects
of thought and does not sometimes feel a panic of fright
that reality is not being reached, that life is going on,
but elsewhere? Young students are especially vulnerable
to such suspicions, because they are the most afflicted
with idealism, a propensity for pitching ideas too high
for action and too shallow for truth. But the sporadic
fear that thought and life are forever disjoined -which
has nothing to do with such mundane worries as being
prepared to make a living- is an endemic anxiety of any
serious community of learning and particularly of St.
John's College.
Now the ultimate relation of thought to things and
theory to action is precisely one of those perennial questions of the inquiring tradition with which we are incessantly preoccupied. Hence all we the faculty can immediately do is to urge melancholic students to engage
in lots of sports (we have a lively and inclusive intramural
program) and to refrain as much as possible from being
mere intellectuals- I mean, people who stake out arrid
claims in a ghostly, self-sufficient environment of abstractions. Probably the best we can do is ourselves to show
fairly unfailing trust, not to say faith, that thinking can
reach the world and that learning is indeed possible.
55
�OccASIONAL DiscouRsEs
Summer 1984
Sermon Preached at St. Anne's Church,
Annapolis
]. Winfree Smith
W
hen the latest edition of Tieline reached
me in Santa Paula, California, the first
thing that met my eyes was an
announcement that the St. John~ Program
had been adopted by St. Anne's Church
School. That, I thought, is taking too far the intimate
relationship between St. John's College and St. Anne's
Church which we are this day celebrating. Then, of
course, a careful reading of Tieline showed that the St.
John's Program mentioned therein was a program
developed for pre-school children at St. John's Cathedral
in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and, being for pre-school
children, differed in some particulars from the St.John's
College program.
There certainly has been an intimate relationship between St.John's College and St. Anne's Church, so much
so that Tench Tilghman in his recently published Early
History of St. John~ College in Annapolis could say that from
its earliest infancy St. John's College was haunted by
Episcopal clergymen. During the first century of its existence under charter as St. John's at least five rectors
of St. Anne's were also principals or vice-principals of
the college. Those were the titles given by the charter
to those who nowadays would be called presidents or vicepresidents. The Reverend Ralph Higginbotham, who had
taught in the King William School, was the first principal or president of the college to be also rector of St.
Anne's, having been elected rector in 1785, the year after
the college was chartered. That the intimate relationship
was not always a happy one is shown by the fact that Higginbotham's reputation suffered because it was thought
by some in the St. Anne's congregation that he gave too
For over four decades, the Reverend
St. John's College, Annapolis.
56
J.
Winfree Smith has been a tutor at
much attention to the college and not enough to the
church.
There were also presidents of St. John's who were
Episcopal priests but not rectors of St. Anne's. The most
noteworthy of these was the Reverend Hector Humphrey
who was president of St. John's for 26 years just prior
to the Civil War. He is the only one of all these clergymen,
whether rectors or not, to whom there is a memorial in
this building, the second window along the south aisle
starting from the chancel end.
In 1941, when I came to Annapolis, the St. John's
baccalaureate service was held in St. Anne's Church, as
it had been over the years and decades.
It has, however, been more than a hundred years since
a rector of St. Anne's has been president of St. John's
and more than forty years since the baccalaureate service was held in this building. And so one begins to
wonder whether the intimate relationship still exists, as
far as any institutional offices or formalities are
concerned.
But on this occasion it might be well for us to think
rather about a deeper relationship that might exist between what St.John's stands for and what the Episcopal
Church stands for. There is, as you may know, a motto
of the Virginia seminary: "Seek the truth, come whence
it may, cost what it will." This is a good motto for St.
John's, but it is a bad motto for the seminary or for the
church, and I know at least one seminary Professor who
agrees. It is a good motto for St. John's because what
Sf' John's stands for is the search for the truth, and there
is no presupposition as to the source of the truth or as
to what the truth might be if it were to be discovered.
St. John's as such is not hostile to Christianity or even
indifferent to it. But, unlike the Roman Catholic college
where I now am, it has no religious commitment. The
church, on the other hand, is not in the position of merely
SUMMER 1984
�seeking the truth nor is there for the church any question as to the source of those truths which are most im-
portant for human beings to know. The church rests on
the assumption that God has revealed the most important truths for human beings to know and that the source
from which we receive them is the Holy Scriptures of
the Old and New Testaments.
In spite of this assumption that there is divinely
revealed truth and that it is to be found in the Holy Scrip-
lead them to deny the truth of the articles that give them
difficulty. We have recently read reports of a poll taken
among bishops of the Church of England that disclosed
that a majority of them do not believe that Jesus is God
or that he was raised from the dead or that he was born
of a virgin. Now the reports did not give any account
of the reasons why these bishops have made these denials,
i.e., what they have found so difficult as to be impossible in the articles having to do with the incarnation, the
tures, there is considerable confusion at the present time
resurrection, and the virgin birth. These three articles
as to what the Episcopal Church stands for. My claim
during the whole of my long ministry has been that the
Book of Common Prayer is the guide to what the
Episcopal church stands for and that the Nicene creed
do not all stand or fall together. One might well believe
that Jesus was truly God and completely human and
believe that even now He is truly God with only a human
soul without believing that His human body was raised
from the dead and without believing that He was born
of a human mother without a human father. I happen,
as Archbishop William Temple did, to believe in all three
articles, but I recognize that some Episcopalians might
in one of these see a difficulty that they would not see
in the others. I would claim, however, that what is
definitive of a Christian is the acknowledgement that
Jesus Christ, while being completely human, is God,
recited as part of our act of Eucharistic worship contains
those revealed truths in which Episcopalians, indeed in
common with other Christians, put their trust.
This claim has been challenged by several Episcopal
priests on the basis of a little change in the English text
of the Nicene creed as it apprears in the Prayer Book.
The little change is the change from "I" to "We;' from
"I believe" to 'We believe" at the beginning of the creed.
The commission that made this change did so for no
other reason than that they wanted the English version
to be an exact translation of the original fourth century
Greek version of the creed. But these priests understand
whatever one may believe about the resurrection or the
up what they consider the burden of the faith. Accord-
virgin birth.
Does the New Testament say that Jesus is God? Yes,
the first verses of the Gospel ofJohn say that Jesus, who
is there called the Word, not only was with God but was
God in the beginning and that through him creatures
ing to them, when we say "we believe;' we don't mean
came into being. Do those verses say that Jesus is of one
that I believe everything that we believe. When we say
"we believe" we mean rather that the Episcopal Church
believes all those things that are in the creed while I may
believe only in God as creatorwithout believing anything
about Jesus or the Holy Spirit and some other Episcopalian may believe something about Jesus without believing that Jesus is God, of one being with the Father, or
perhaps even without believing that God exists. If this
is the right way to understand the change from "I" to "we;'
should we not, when the Prayer Book is next revised,
substitute for "we" the words "The Episcopal Church'' so
being with the Father? No. Does the New Testament say
that anywhere explicitly? Nowhere explicitly. Yet if the
Gospel of John has Jesus telling the truth when he says
in that Gospel, "All that the Father has is mine;' do we
not have to conclude that, ifJesus has all that the Father
has, that all must include the very being of the Father?
I do not know what the nay-saying English bishops
would reply. Perhaps they would raise questions about
the authority of the Gospel of John. A while ago I said
that the church rests on the assumption that Holy Scripture is the source of divinely revealed truth. That does
that each of us could say out loud "The Episcopal Church
not necessarily mean that every single sentence in Scrip-
believes" but where necessary and sotto voce "I don't" or
"God knows what I believe"? Is it not absurd to make
maybe is not so absurd. The articles of the creed are not
ture is true. It may be that the pure gold of the word
of God in Scripture is mingled with the dross of the
human authors of Scripture. But how do we separate the
gold from the dross? Sometimes it seems that all the skill,
a commendable human skill, of the Biblical critics is
needed to make that separation, a skill which one can-
easy to accept. Different articles present different dif-
not expect to average Christian to have. Also sometimes
that the shift from "I" to ''We" means that we can divvy
such a separation between the faith of the Episcopal
Church and the faith of Episcopalians?
But behind this absurdity there is something that
ficulties. Even Thomas Aquinas, who, one might sup-
it seems that the presuppositions of the Biblical critics
pose, would find it rather easy to accept the articles of
are themselves questionable.
the creed, on the contrary maintains that the articles are
There is a rather widespread modern dogma that is
the source of one difficulty that people in the modern
age have with the resurrection and the virgin birth. That
to be distinguished precisely according to the distinct difficulties they present.
Whatever difficulties Thomas Aquinas may have
seen, there are certain difficulties which modern
Episcopalians, including bishops and priests, as well as
laymen, encounter. The difficulties do not lead them to
say "Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief." Rather they
THE ST JOHN'S REVIEW
is the dogma that modern science has made it impossible for modern man to believe in miracles, that modern
science has shown that miracles are not possible. This
dogma lies behind all the talk about demythologizing
Scripture. Modern science, of course, has not shown what
57
�it is alleged to have shown. To show that miracles are
impossible one would have to prove the non-existence
of an omnipotent God. No one, as far as I know, has
ever done that. For if God is omnipotent, everything that
happens is within His power, and though things may for
the most part happen in the way science or ordinary experience says, they may by the will of the omnipotent
God happen differently.
If the difficulty is that we cannot believe anything
unless it is evident to our senses or evident of itself to
our intellect or made evident to our intellect through
reasoning, then, to be sure, we cannot believe the articles
of the creed, though we may not be in a position to deny
them either. But here we touch upon something fundamental. For the very reason that we say that it is faith
that grasps the truth of what is divinely revealed is that
such truth is not evident to the senses or the intellect.
It is not evident that there is a God. It is not evident
that God is the omnipotent creator of heaven and earth.
If we think we can believe only what is evident or can
be evident to our senses or intellect or that faith is not
a way of grasping the truth, then we should give up Christianity altogether.
I maintain that the articles of the Nicene creed as
a whole, with all the difficulties they present, lay a claim
upon every Episcopalian. Surely they need the whole context of Christian thought and life if they are to have
fullness of meaning. But these articles represent a fundamental part of what the Episcopal Church stands for.
Does the truth revealed by God exclude searching for
the truth? No. It provides a rich field for such a search.
The human intellect has much to do in exploring the
meaning of what is revealed, in tracing its presuppositions and consequences for Christian thinking and doing, and so in discovering truths that are involved in the
explicitly revealed truths. It also has much to do in seeking truths not revealed in Scripture and the ways they
may be related to those that are. St. John's College may
be instructive for Christians as regards the discipline of
thought necessary for any search and hence for this search
that presupposes revelation. There is also another way
in which St. John's might be an example both for
58
theologians and for inquiring Christians generally.
Among present day theologians there is often the prejudice thatthe theological thought of the past is of merely
historical interest, that the theology of the Fourth century fathers or of the Medieval theologians or of the
reformers or of the Anglican divines like Richard Hooker
or Lancelot Andrewes is old-time stuff. It is a mere prejudice that in the age-old mainstream of Christian
theology there are no or few permanent insights into
Biblical revelation, that in the words of a ridiculous hymn
"we must keep abreast of truth;' that in theology the new
supersedes the old (as it seems to have done in modern
physics, not in theology), that in the present day the
theologian must devise a theology compatible with what
is alleged to be the thought of the present day. Liberation theology, to take one example, is based on the
premise that it is only on the foundation of the teaching
of Karl Marx that justice for the poor and the oppressed
can be achieved, and so that theology, which rightly seeks
justice for the poor or the oppressed, identifies God with
the historical process as understood by Karl Marx and
his twentieth-century followers, an identification that
would be rejected by Marx and is to say the least doubtfully Christian.
"Seek the truth, come whence it may?' A good motto for
St. John's College. St. John's is open to the possibility
of new truth hitherto unknown and wherever it may come
from. But, as everyone knows, St. John's people read old
books. They read them not because they are old, not in
order to find out what this or that person or people
thought in this or that past age, but because those who
thought well in the past raised questions that are relevant in all times and gave answers worthy of consideration at all times. It may be well for theologians and inquiring Christians of the present day to forget about hopping on contemporary intellectual or philosophical bandwagons and seek to recover the thought of the great
theologians of the past because of its perennial relevance.
This thought, as all Christian thought must, centers in
the question "what think ye of Christ?" and in the answer
that He is both the truth and the way to the truth that
He is.
SUMMER 1984
�The Golden Ages of St. John's*
Eva Brann
F
riends of the college, Fellow Students and
Fellow Tutors:
The theme tonight is "Liberty and Liberal
Education:' but the occasion is the two-hundredth anniversary of the founding of our college. Late in 1784 a bill, no. 37, was introduced into the
Maryland Senate, entitled "An act for founding a college on the Western Shore of this State and constituting
the same, together with Washington College on the
Eastern Shore, into a university by the name of the
University of Maryland:' The "college on the Western
Shore" was to become St. John's. (The fascinating tale
of its naming has been convincingly reconstructed by our
former librarian, Charlotte Fletcher.) So St. John's was
first conceived as one of the two colleges of a state university. We have the honor of having Professor Fallaw here
tonight to represent our intended sister school.
I will spare you the protracted, fitful and even
tumultuous history of St. John's metamorphosis into a
private college. The legacy of its public origin is the
Charter of 1784 which remains in essence our charter:
It proclaims that "institutions for the liberal education
of youth in the principles of virtue, knowledge and useful
literature are of the highest benefit to society, in order
to train up and perpetuate a succession of able and honest
men for discharging the various offices and duties oflife
both civil and religious with usefulness and reputation ... ?' The charter expresses the prevailing view in
the early republic, propagated in numerous essays, that
liberal education is the necessary support of a republic,
*Eva Brann delivered this talk as part of a symposium on "Liberty and Liberal
Education" held at St. John's College, Annapolis (September 20, 1984), for
the Two-Hundredth Anniversary Colloquium.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
that tyranny and ignorance, liberty and knowledge are
to be equated. In this spirit, a frenzy of college founding followed the Revolution; nineteen colleges were
established between 1780 and 1799, among whom St.
John's was one of the earliest, being chartered in the very
first year "of the present favorable occasion of peace and
prosperity;' in the words of the charter.
The legislature's expectation for public usefulness
were amply fulfilled. Between the first graduation in 1793
and 1806 (when its troubles with the state became acute),
there came out of St. John's four future governors, seven
United States senators, five representatives, judges galore
and one governor of Liberia. That time was later termed
the "Golden Age:' So also is an early Golden Age attributed to the "New Program;' our present program, on
the principle that the time is always goldener on the other
side of this generation. Actually, it seems to me, the whole
near half-century of the New Program, constituting
almost a quarter of the college's history, is a second
Golden Age, though it has a distinction different from
that of the first founding. Let me therefore propose a
question to you which has a certain charm for me: Is
this present college of ours an old school or a new school?
To begin with I want to entertain you- I hope you
may be entertained- with several circumstances which
induce this question, some more wonderful than significant, but some significant as well as wonderful. For example, the first grammar master was called Peter
McGrath; who knows but that our Hugh McGrath is
his reincarnation? Similarly there was a friendly but unofficial relation between St.John's and St. Anne's Church
in the person ofthe Reverend Ralph Higginbotham, the
last master of the King William School and rector of St.
Anne's, who was one of the stalwarts of the first founding. Now we have our Winfree Smith. What is
remarkable about this relation is that it is scrupulously
59
�unofficial (though there have been lapses between the first
and second founding). The college charter stood early
in a developing tradition of religious liberty which prohibited religious tests for students and forbade that they
be urged to attend any particular religious service. St.
John's went even further: It was the first school, I believe,
to have a principal who was not a clergyman, ] ohn
McDowell, St. ] ohn's first president (though three
clergymen, a Roman Catholic, an Episcopalian, and a
Presbyterian had taken a major part in its organization).
Could this same spirit of religious liberty, a spirit whose
merit it is that it manages not to be anti-clerical, not to
be attributed to the present college?
To descend from the spirit to sticks and stones, there
is McDowell Hall, a half-finished ruin in 1784, which
became the college's first building, containing class rooms,
the library in the octagonal room under the cupola, and
the dormitory. Each student was furnished with a
chamber pot under his bed, a service which has been
dicontinued. McDowell burned down in 1909 but was
faithfully restored. Do we inhabit an old or a new
building?
have been played out all the perenially absorbing institutional issues of American liberty: the rivalries of local
with centralized foundations, ofwell-offwith poor man's
schools, of public with private establishments, of religious
with secular education. It matters even if we, tutors and
students, have more urgent things to do than to absorb
the history of this little local phenomenon. I would have
to be an Edmund Burke to say well and clearly why the
antiquity of the college matters to the cause of liberty,
but I will try to say it briefly: First, in its phoenix-like
propensity for reprise and revival the college is an offshoot and an index of American liberty, which seems to
me quintessentially characterized by that second chance,
that new departure, which does not kick its springboard
under but rather preserves and absorbes its ground. And
second, through its continuity, through the simple fact
that it was there with its liberal tradition, the college could
offer a home to a program which made a conscious and
deep connection between liberty and liberal education.
It is the making of that connection in the New Program which is the new wine, tart and heady, in the old
bottle of the classical college. Let me conclude by say-
But, of course, the question becomes really fascinating
ing, quite superficially, what I conceive that connection
with respect to studies. In those early days the college
proper (there was a preparatory department attached)
was called "the philosophy school:' The curriculum was
prescribed and unified. The students read original texts
and studied mathematics as well as '~natural philosophy;'
that is, science. The languages were Greek and optional
to be.
The idea that political liberty and education go hand
in hand was an article of faith with the educational writers
of the early republic, a matter of preachment rather than
inquiry. There was, however, much debate about the kind
of education the republic required: Should it be primarily
utilitarian training or liberal education, at least for youths
destined for leadership? (Since Aristotle's book on educa-
French. For example, the novitiates, or freshmen, read
Plato and studied Euclid and the juniors read Aristotle
and studied fluxions, that is, calculus. While we marvel
at these detailed similarities to the present program, we
must, however, remember that at that time these studies
were but a version of the normal classical American college curriculum, with account taken of the science of a
hundred post-Newtonian years. In histories of education
our New Program is sometimes described as reviving the
classical college curriculum. But granting- even revel-
tion, "liberal" in this context has properly meant "nonvocational.") But even in this discussion it was repeated
to weariness that, to quote our character, "institutions
ling in- the apparent parallelism, is it really such a
understood that liberal education somehow made for in-
revival?
Let me try an answer: the present St. ] ohn's is, to
coin a phrase, new wine in old bottles, and that has some
dividual enlightenment. For example, the Marylander
Samuel Knox wrote in an essay (which won a prize offered by the American Philosophical Society in 1799) that
"the one great object of education should be to inculcate
independence of mind and consequently an aversion to the
embracing of any species of knowledge, moral, physical,
bearing on the theme of liberty and liberal education.
First, the antiquity of the bottle matters. It matters
that the physical place remains recognizably the same,
that an alumnus of the first graduating class of 1796 could
nostalgically poetize the liberty tree:
And many a frolic feat beneath thy shade
Far distant days and other suns have seen.
(Dr. Shaw)
It matters that this tiny, tough college has sprung back
from two closings and several nadirs of mediocrity and
that it has throughout the centuries attracted the oddly
intense sentiment-accompanied, to be sure, until re-
cently by rather more subdued financial solicitude-of
its alumni. It matters that it is a microcosm in which
60
of liberal education are of the highest benefit to society?'
My point is: In the large enthusiasm of the founding such
fine-grain question as just how the liberality of education was to underwrite the liberty of the republic fell
through the cracks of the argument. To be sure, it was
or religious, without examinat~on and consequent conviction." (This same Samuel Knox, incidentally, nearly
did us in. Belonging to what might be called the] effersonian faction in education, he prefaced his essay with
an address to the Maryland legislature urging them to
support local academies, that is, secondary education in
the counties, rather than a college for the wealthy in the
state capital. This advice was what it had long been looking for: It withdrew financial support and the college fell
into its first decline.) But how one might implant liberty
in a mind was as dark then as "teaching students to think
for themselves" is now. It was a time not for theory but
SUMMER 1984
�for turning out competent citizen-rulers, and that is just
what the college did in its first Golden Age.
In its second Golden Age it was right and timely for
the college to ask the perennial question "what is the relation of liberty to learning?" and to make the ground of
the inquiry the hypothesis that the connection may be
found in the soul of the learner. Its doing so was timely
because thus the college acknowledged that the easy and
immediate relation of those early days between liberal
learning and republican statesmanship had long been
ruptured. And it was wise because thus the college
brought forward the oldest and the newest, the most persistent and the most urgent, of all political questions:
What is the relation of thought to action?
So the hypothesis which discerning critics who charge
the college under the New Program with being an "ivory
tower" would have to refute are these: That we do live
in a country in which there is liberty and that liberty
is both exercised and preserved by true action, namely,
free action. That such action is by its very nature preceded by thought, from which it follows that human beings, the young especially, ought to have a period of reflective learning as a prelude to both private and public
action. That this pedagogical prelude should take the
form of liberal, that is to say, non-vocational, education,
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
not only because such learning is a deep need and a perennial possibility of the human soul, but even more
because the theory that is meant to precede action cannot be pursued otherwise than freely, that is to say,
spontaneously.
The St. John's Program, then, is nothing but a
coherent set of occasions for encouraging liberal learning. The question of real interest, just how it is specifically
designed to induce liberty of soul, I leave, as is fitting,
to one of the most characteristic of these occasions, the
question period.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Charlotte Fletcher, "1784: the Year St. John's College Was Named",
Maryland Histon'cal Magazine, Vol. 74, No. 2, June 1979.
Richard Hofstadter, Academic Freedom in the Age of the College, (New
York 1955).
David Ridgely, Annals of Annapolis, 1649-1812 (Baltimore 1841), pp.
237-244.
Essays on Education in the Early Republic, ed. Frederick Rudolph (Cambridge 1965).
Bernard C. Steiner, History of Education in Maryland (Washington 1894).
J. Winfree Smith, A Search for the Liberal Arts College, (St.John's College Press 1983).
Tench Francis Tilghman, The Early History of St. John's College in Annapolis, (St. John's College Press 1984).
61
�William Smith: Godfather and
First President of St. John's College*
Arthur Pierce Middleton
0
n Wednesday, November 11, 1789, an event
occurred in Annapolis which the college's
historian, Tench Tilghman, has described
as the day that St. John's College officially
began its academic career. Members of the
General Assembly, the Chancellor, judges of the General
Court, gentlemen of the bar, and the worshipful corporation of the city, followed by the students and a "numerous
and respectable concourse of people;' went in procession
from the State House, through North Street, to what is
now called College Avenue, and then to Bladen's Folly,
which had been converted into a suitable building to
house St. John's College. There-presumably in the
Great Hall- Dr. William Smith, who had been named
the day before president pro tern of the College, preached
what the Maryland Gazette described as "an elegant sermon;' and the Rector of St. Anne's Parish and former
Master of King William's School, Ralph Higginbotham,
gave an oration on the advantages of a classical education.
Why William Smith was an excellent choice- indeed
the obvious one- for both president pro tern of the infant college and for preacher on this auspicious occasion
is what I am here to explain. And I may add that it is
strange that such an eminent figure in the intellectual
circles of eighteenth-century America needs any introduction at all. But the sad fact is that he is not as well known
today as he deserves to be- or as he was to his
contemporaries.
A Colonial historian, Canon Middleton is a former Director of Research for
Colonial Williamsburg, and former Research Associate and lecturer at the
Institute of Early American History at the College of William and Mary. This
discourse was delivered in the "'lCa and History" Series, King William Room,
The Library, November 6, 1984.
*An address given in the "Tea and History" Series, King William
Room, the Library, November 6, 1984.
62
Born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in 172 7, William
Smith was the son of a small landholder and the grandson of a physician and astronomer. His sister married
an officer of the Royal Navy who later acquired fame
as an admiral who defeated a Dutch fleet in 1797 and
was elevated to the peerage as Viscount Duncan of
Camperdown. One of his brothers settled in Philadelphia,
practiced law, and eventually became a judge of the
highest court in Pennsylvania.
William Smith was educated at King's College, Aberdeen, just at the beginning of the great Scottish
renaissance of the eighteenth century. After serving as
a schoolmaster for a time, he came to New York in 1751
as a private tutor to the sons of a wealthy gentleman on
Long Island. While there he published poetry in the New
York and Pennsylvania newspapers, a letter in defense
of freedom of the press, and a pamphlet on education
urging the creation of a college in New York City.
In 1753 he published his magnum opus, a pamphlet,
(of 86 pages) entitled A General Idea of the College of Mirania,
with a Sketch of the Method of Teaching Science and Religion.
Intended for the proposed college in New York, it set forth
Smith's concept of the curriculum and methods of
teaching appropriate to a liberal arts college. And it was
a real breakthrough for the twenty-six year old scholar,
for, as we shall see, it fell into the hands of Benjamin
Franklin and led to Smith's appointment as head of the
Academy of Philadelphia, which was about to be made
into a college.
Smith was a strong believer in a classical education,
but, in the characteristic vein of the Age of Reason, he
proposed rejecting some things commonly taught at colleges and adding others. Inspired by a quotation from
Archbishop John Tillotson (1630-94 ), he held that "the
knowledge of what tends neither directly nor indirectly
to make better men and better citizens, is but a knowledge
SUMMER 1984
�of Trifles: it is not learning, but a specious and ingenious
sort ofidlenessc' Consequently, Smith rejected the "Rubbish" of the vast tomes of ancient Rabbis, Schoolmen,
and modern Metaphysicians, and also "the polemic
writers about Grace, Predestination, moral Agency, the
Trinity, Ec Ec;' and added that "The years of Methusalem
would be far too short to attain any Proficiency in all
the Disputes and Researches of this kind, which have so
long puzzled the learned world, and are still as much
undecided as at first. Almighty God seems to have set
the knowledge of many Things beyond our present Ken,
on purpose to confound our Pride."
Instead, Smith recommended "rejecting Things
superfluous and hypothetical" and urged that we "mount
directly up to fundamental Principles, and endeavour to
ascertain the Relations we stand in to God and universal Intelligence, that we may sustain, with dignity, the
Rank assign'd us among intellectual Natures, and move
in Concert, with the rest of Creation, in accomplishing
the great End of all thingsc'
Such a distinction was a little daring for a college
erected in a colony in 1753, where the natural tendency
was to avoid anything novel and to cleave, instead, to the
accepted ways of the Mother Country. Smith made
another distinction that was, perhaps, even more daring, by dividing the whole body of prospective students
into two categories: those who had an aptitude for the
learned professions, and all the rest- including those
whose aptitude inclined to the mechanic arts. Different
training, he thought, should be provided for the two
groups. The classic languages, for example, would be of
use to the former, but a waste of time for the latter.
The book had no immediate results. King's College,
which opened in New York six months after the book
appeared, was, as Smith ruefully observed, "on a plan
somewhat different:' But the copy of the College of Mirania
that he sent to Franklin did produce results, and Smith
was invited to be the head of the Philadelphia Academy.
Before taking up his post, however, he returned to
England where he was ordained a priest of the Church,
and where he conducted a highly successful fund drive
for the Academy of Philadelphia. Upon his return in
1754, he set about to transform the school into a college,
and began his long and distinguished career as its provost.
During the next quarter of a century, William Smith
became a fixture in the intellectual life of the City of
Brotherly Love, and one of the chief promoters of the
new liberal cultural movement in the fields of belleslettres, art, music, and drama that developed there in
the second half of the eighteenth century. His students
at the college formed a nucleus of a group that included
Francis Hopkinson (musician, composer, poet, and later
a Signer of the Declaration of Independence and designer
of the American flag); Thomas Godfrey, Jr. (poet,
playwright, and author of the "Prince of Parthia" c.
1758-59), and Benjamin West (whose aptitude Smith
discovered, and who studied art in Italy in 1760, and
became the court portrait painter to George III and
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ultimately president of the Royal Academy). In the realm
of law and politics, one of Smith's students who later made
good was William Paca, lawyer, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, governor of Maryland, and a
Federal judge. One of the ways in which Smith sought
out and encouraged literary ability was by founding a
magazine in 1757 which, though short-lived, proved to
be a vehicle for many rising young men of talent.
Culturally, it was the most influential periodical in colonial America-and was entitled The American
Magazine, or Monthy Chronicle for the British Colonies.
As Smith's biographer, Alfred Gegenheimer, has said,
the almost simultaneous production by three proteges
of Smith of one of the earliest American musical compositions, the first American drama to be professionally
performed, and the first American painting of permanent worth is a phenomenon-and William Smith was
the catalyst of this outburst of musical, dramatic, and
artistic talent.
Smith's fame spread far and wide, eventually reaching
his fellow countrymen in Great Britain. While he was
there, raising money for the college in 1759, he received
the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Aberdeen, Oxford, and Dublin universities-an uncommon distinction
for a colonial.
Liberal though he was in cultural and intellectual
matters, William Smith was somewhat conservative in
matters political. Almost as soon as he arrived in
Philadelphia, he began to participate in public affairs,
writing pamphlets, publishing letters, and preaching sermons. Though sharing many cultural and educational
ideas with Franklin, Smith soon quarreled with him on
political grounds. Franklin belonged to the antiproprietary or country party, whereas Smith identified
himself with the proprietary party and frequently
castigated the Quakers, who dominated the legislature,
for refusing to appropriate funds to defend the frontier
settlements against Indian attacks. On one occasionin 1758-he was arrested by the Assembly, convicted of
libel, denied the right of habeas corpus, and sent to prison.
Supported by the trustees of the college and by the proprietary governor, Smith taught his classes in moral
philosophy through the prison bars. Released by the
courts, he went to England and appealed his case. It took
a long time and a great deal of money, but eventually
the King-in-Council sustained his appeal and directed
the governor to declare His Majesty's "High Displeasure"
at the Assembly's unwarranted disregard of habeas corpus. Smith was completely vindicated and British justice
triumphed.
As the controversies that led to the Revolution unfolded, Smith readily sympathized with the grievances
that the colonists expressed after the Stamp Act debacle,
but he was very slow, indeed, to accept the idea of independence, holding to the increasingly forlorn hope that
sooner or later the British Government would make
amends and grant sufficient autonomy to satisfy the
Americans and to reconcile them to a continuance within
63
�the British Empire. But such was not to be, and his reluctance to embrace the concept of seceding from the Empire until after July 4, 1776, got him into trouble with
the patriot party. On January 6, 1776, he was called
before the Philadelphia Council of Safety charged with
speaking disrespectfully of the Continential Congress.
There being no evidence, the charge was dropped.
Curiously enough, the next month Congress invited him
to give an oration commemorating General Montgomery
and the men who had fallen with him in his unsuccessful
attack on Quebec. Smith also defended the colonists' action at Lexington and Concord as justifiable selfpreservation. And on December 8, 1778, Smith preached
in Christ Church, Philadelphia, to a Masonic gathering
in the presence of George Washington. Hence, he could
scarcely have been considered a loyalist at that time. The
moderation of his views, which caused some to suspect
him of being a loyalist, led others to look upon him as
a rebel. On December 20, 1776, the loyalist, Samuel
Seabury (later to become Bishop of Connecticut), wrote
to the English ecclesiastical authorities that Smith, like
other Philadelphia priests, "rushed headlong into the
Rebellion:' This perception of him by others as being
something other than what he felt himself to be did
nothing for his volatile disposition and probably provoked
him to register his resentment in rather strong language.
During the Revolution, soldiers were quartered on
the college grounds, and most students returned to their
homes. When the British troops approached Philadelphia,
the college was shut down for nearly two years. It reopened in January, 1779, shortly after the British
evacuated the city. But Smith's adversaries in the
Assembly persuaded that body to dissolve the trustees
and faculty of the college, and to substitute a new board
that was more under the control of the legislature.
It must have been heartbreaking for Smith to be cast
out after nearly thirty years of devoted and distinguished
service to the college. In 1780 he left Philadelphia and accepted a call to Chestertown, Maryland, where he became
Rector of St. Paul's and Chester parishes. Since his stipend of 600 bushels of wheat per annum was inadequate,
it was understood that he was free to accept a few private
students, and shortly thereafter he was put in charge of
the Kent County Free School, of which Charles Willson
Peale's father had been the master forty years before.
Within two years Smith had conceived of the idea of a
University of Maryland composed of two colleges, one
on each shore of the Chesapeake Bay, and he raised funds
and persuaded the Maryland Assembly to charter
Washington College in Chestertown. By May 14, 1783,
when the first commencement took place, Smith had
raised more than £10,000 Maryland currency, and the
list of subscribers was headed by the national idol,
General Washington, who gave £50 and permitted his
name to be used for the college. At its third commencement- in 1785- nine men were awarded Doctor of
Divinity degrees, including the Jesuit, John Carroll, who
had helped Smith draw up the charter of St.John's Col-
64
lege the year before, and who later became the first
Roman Catholic bishop in the United States and the first
Archbishop of Baltimore.
Meanwhile, Smith published a pamphlet in 1788 appealing to the Pennsylvania Assembly to reinstate the
violated charter of the College of Philadelphia. Now that
the rancors of the Revolutionary War were beginning to
subside, many prominent men exerted influence in
Smith's behalf. In 1789 the Assembly reinstated the old
trustees, faculty, and provost. Smith was vindicated once
more, but it meant that he must forsake his fledgling college in Chestertown and return to Philadelphia. Oddly
enough, in the year 1789 when he served as president
of St. John's College, temporarily and for ceremonial
reasons, he was also president of Washington College,
Chestertown, and of the College of Philadelphia as well.
I wonder how often in our history one man was president of three institutions of higher learning at the same
time!
When Smith created Washington College in 1782, the
preamble of the charter described it as a part of a projected university which was to include a sister college on
the Western Shore, the two to be united under one
jurisdiction. Since this concept of a state university
bestride the Chesapeake (like the Colossus of Rhodes)
was the product of his fertile brain, it is only natural that
Smith, the most eminent academician in the United
States, should have been in the forefront of the move to
create a college on the Western Shore to balance the one
in Chestertown. A group of gentlemen met in Annapolis
on December 3, 1784, to hasten the project. They appointed six men- three clerics and three laics- to a committee to "complete the . . . bill for founding a college
on the Western Shore, and to publish the same immediately:' Imagine how long it would take today! But
in those halcyon days, the job was done in less than two
weeks. ''A Draught of a Proposed Act ... for Founding
a College on the Western Shore of this State, and for constituting the same, together with Washington College on
the Eastern Shore, into one University, by the Name of
the University of Maryland" was published, and later
enacted by the House of Delegates on December 30,
1784.
In passing, it is worth noticing that pursuant to the
Maryland Declaration of Rights of 1776, which swept
away all the civil and financial prerogatives of the
Anglican (or Episcopal) Church, the three ecclesiastics
on the committee respresented the three principal subdivisions of Maryland's Christian community: Dr. Smith
the Episcopalians, John Carroll the Roman Catholics,
and Patrick Allison, a Presbyterian divine, the Protestants
generally, and especially the dissenters from the former
Established Church. The Draught borrowed large portions of the Washington College charter which had been
written by Smith. After the charter of the new college
in Annapolis was enacted, Smith declared that he and
his Roman Catholic and Presbyterian colleagues had
draughted it "happily and with great unanimity:'
SUMMER 1984
�This ecumenical concord, together with the toleration engendered by the Age of Reason, Jet them to write
into the charter that all qualified students were to be admitted "without requiring or enforcing any religious or
civil test" and "without urging their attendance upon any
particular worship or service, other than what they have
been educated in, or have the consent and approbation
of their parents or guardians to attend:' But there was
no idea of trying to eliminate religion from education.
The college was to nurture students in their own church
affiliations and provide them with opportunity to frequent
their particular foJ.ms of worship in the churches in
Annapolis.
While all this was going on in the 1780s, Dr. Smith
was active and influential in the Church in Maryland
and on a national level. Four months after arriving in
Chestertown in 1780, he presided over a convention consisting of three priests and twenty-four laymen, which
made the first move towards organizing the Diocese of
Maryland. This was the first convention of the Episcopal
Church in any of the thirteen American States that was
composed oflay representatives as well as clergy and that
undertook to cope with the changes brought about by
the Revolution in the polity and liturgy of the Anglican
Church in America. Annual conventions were held in
Maryland thereafter, and Smith was chosen to preside
over every one of them until he left the State and returned
to Philadelphia in 1789. These conventions erected the
diocese of Maryland, created a constitution and canons,
and, in 1783, chose Dr. Smith as biship-elect of Maryland.
On the national stage, too, Smith emerged as one of the
leaders, along with William White (first Bishop of Pennsylvania) and Samuel Seabury (first Bishop of Connecticut). Smith's organizing talent, impressive intellectual
stature, and speaking ability resulted in his election as
president of all the early general conventions of the
Church, and his selectiol'l as chairman of the committees that formulated the constitution of the Episcopal
Church and produced the first American Book of Common Prayer in 1789-the very year in which he served
as President pro tern of St. John's College, participated
in its opening ceremonies, and preached his "elegant Sermon." These are indications of his eminence in the eyes
of his colleagues and contemporaries.
William Smith's life and career were crowned with
success and recognition, and he became one of the
foremost celebrities of his day. But he suffered several
adversities, and they, rather than his triumphs, give us
insight into his character. One was when he was imprisoned unjustly by the Pennsylvania Assembly. Another
was when he was ejected from his provostship of the College of Philadelphia by the political machinations of his
enemies. In both cases he resolutely resisted and ultimately obtained vindication, which indicates his con-
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
fidence in justice and his strength of character. After all,
the classical authors whom he taught had said that as
fire tests gold, so adversity tests brave men!
But his other great adversity, the chagrin and humiliation of being denied consecration to the Episcopate,
reveals him to be a man whose faith was even greater
than his pride and his ambition. All the reasons for this
disappointment are not known to us, but it appears that,
like many eighteenth-century gentlemen, Smith was accustomed all his life to imbibe hard liquor in liberal
amounts. He was certainly not an alcoholic-his active
life and prodigious achievements make that quite clear.
Although he did not habitually overindulge-at least in
public- he was reported to have done so once, while attending the General Convention in New York. Smith
denied the allegation and called for proof, which as far
as we know was never forthcoming. The Maryland Convention dismissed the allegation as unproven-and even
unlikely- but the charge hung over him like a cloud, and
he never again applied to the General Convention for
confirmation of his election or for recommendation to
the Archbishop of Canterbury for consecration.
This darkest hour, I think, proved paradoxically to
be his finest hour. He was, in effect, considered guilty
until proved innocent, which is a cr~el reversal of the
juridical axiom. And his undeniable contributions to the
Church, and especially his organizing and liturgical
abilities, seem to justify his consecration as the first
Bishop of Maryland. Much as he yearned for the lawn
sleeves of a bishop, Smith did not allow what in his view
was unwarranted rejection to curtail his devoted service
to the Church. He continued to serve in any way the
Church could use him. And he remained one of the most
prominent priests of the Church, being chosen to preside
over every convention in Maryland until he left in 1789,
and over every House of Deputies of General Convention until 1801 when ill health prevented him. In addition, he had the high honor of being selected to preach
the sermon at the burial of his old political enemy, Benjamin Franklin, and he was chosen to preach at the consecreation of the first three bishops of the Episcopal
Church that were consecrated in America: Thomas John
Claggett of Maryland, Robert Smith of South Carolina,
and Edward Bass of Massachusetts. Moreover, he remained on friendly terms with Bishop White, who opposed his consecration, and with Dr. Andrews, who made
the allegation against him in the first place. It would seem
that love of Christ and his holy Church took precedence
over egotism, righteous indignation, and- ambition. There
is perhaps no better illustration of his Christian character
than this. And this eminent and impressive academic and
churchman was the first president pro tern of St. John's
College.
65
�BooK REviEw
The Early History of
St. John's College in Annapolis
Tench Francis Tilghman
Annapolis, St. John's College Press, 1934.
XIII+199 pp. Illustrations. $13.00
hen Tench Francis Tilghman
wrote The Early His tory of St.
John's College some forty years
ago, he wanted to use it as a "kind of glass
to view the changes in American educa-
W
tion as they affected the smaller college."
What emerges in the telling is a conservative St. John's, more faithful to a liberal
arts curriculum adopted in 1789 than
responsive to the winds of educational
change blowing through other early
American colleges. Referring often to
passing educational fads in American colleges contemporary with St. Johds, Dr.
Tilghman details the insubstantial
changes made in St. John's original curriculum until, following the lead of other
American colleges, its board in 1923
adopted an elective program.
Dr. Tilghman writes wittily, irreverently, and ironically about the college's trial and perils throughout one hundred and fifty years. He describes the
state of student morals, faculty woes and
board resilience amid the snares of
sociable Annapolis, the "ancient city;'
which grew more provincial while
Baltimore developed into the metropolis
of Maryland. The book offers an entertaining slice of Maryland history, a
chronicle of youth at the Western Shore
college attended by many Eastern
Sharemen, where students studied,
drilled, frolicked and sported. Their life
styles were influenced by a series of
presidents, but most profoundly by three
outstanding ones: John McDowell, a
graduate of the College of Philadelphia,
a gentle disciplinarian who led by example; the Reverend Hector Humphrey, a
66
graduate of Yale, a stern disciplinarian
with puritanical leanings; and genial
Thomas Fell, educated at King's College,
London University, Heidleberg, and
Munich, who presided when sports and
dances became an integral part of college
life at St. John's and other American
colleges.
Private citizens and the Legislature
made generous pledges to launch St.
John's in 1784: the Legislature by charter
promised it a perpetual grant of 1750
pounds per annum. When St. John's and
King William's School merged in 1786
(Dr. Tilghman questions that it was a
merger), the King William's board
pledged two thousand pounds and agreed
to close their school, called the Annapolis
School, when the college opened. Because
of this agreement, St.John's felt a special
obligation to educate Annapolis youths,
and in 1789 it opened a grammar school
which operated as part of the college until 1923.
Between 1789 and 1805, years later
called the "golden age;' the college prospered. Then in 1806 a republican Qeffersonian democratic) majority in the
Legislature rescinded the charter provisions which promised St. John's and
Washington colleges adequate taxgenerated incomes "forever." The
Republicans favored the founding of
county academies over supporting the two
colleges founded by the Federalists. PresidentJohn McDowell resigned in protest.
Those who could have provided the
needed financial support, though outraged by the perfidy of the Legislature,
followed its example: they gave nothing
from their personal wealth to run the college. Thereafter the board was forced to
beg at each biennial session of the
Legislature for what little money it
received.
Twenty-five years later in 1830 the
board (helped by an alumni aSsociation
composed of men educated in the
McDowell years) persuaded the Reverend
Hector Humphrey to become president.
Under his administration the buildings
on St. John's campus known as Humphrey and Pinkney were built. He imposed strict rules of conduct on grammar
school and college students alike. He continued a voluntary military program
begun in 1826, partly for discipline, partly
for exercise (there was no athletic program), and partly for career training.
Like the grammar school, the military
program, compulsory at times, continued
until 1923. Dr. Tilghman believes that the
grammar school and the military program hindered the development of St.
John's as a college.
During the nineteenth century, student fees and state grants plus fees received from the pasturage of cows at fifty
cents a head per month, a fee later raised
to two dollars, made up the college income. The board converted each grant into scholarships. For instance, in 1850,
when the state granted $15,000, the board
offered one hundred and fifty scholarships
worth one hundred dollars each. What a
student was charged over and above the
amount he received as a scholarship was
reserved for faculty salaries, and a teacher
was assigned the job of collecting it. Once
in desperation an unpaid teacher sug-
SUMMER 1984
�gested that scholarships be sold to produce revenue. Dr. Tilghman remarks,
"How anyone could sell a scholarship, and
yet have it remain a scholarship, is more
than a little puzzling."
Out-of-state students would have
brought money to the college but none
enrolled. In 1853 Professor EJ. Stearns
resigned in disgust saying that St. John's
remained a small provincial college
because the faculty was horribly overworked and underpaid; antiquated textbooks were studied instead of original
works; and "young men will not come to
be treated under school-boy discipline."
Yet the presidents and faculty were
not provincial in either background or
outlook. They came from respected colleges and universities, and when they left
Annapolis many joined prestigious
faculties elsewhere. St. John's offered "a
complete and general education, that
which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices,
both private and public, of peace and
war," like Milton's ideal college, a model
cited in a letter written by President
Henry Barnard. In truth many St.John's
alumni filled important offices in the
state, church, and military services.
The early college almost expired
several times for lack of money. During
the Civil War the college campus was
commandeered as a Union parole camp
and hospital. Until the college reopened
in 1866 Professor William Thompson
held classes in town, thus fulfilling a college obligation by charter amendment
always to teach at least five foundation,
or charity, boys.
In 1809 the U.S. Supreme Court had
ruled for Dartmouth College against the
state of Massachusetts for breach of contract. The St.John's board, believing that
the state of Maryland had acted unconstitutionally, like Massachusetts, when
it refused in 1806 to continue an annual
grant promised St. John's by charter, sued
the state in 1859. Subsequently, the
Maryland Court of Appeals ruled that the
state had indeed breached a contract, but
because the college had continued to accept a lesser state money under an "Act
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
of Compromise" agreed to in 1830, it no Dean Scott Buchanan, and the colonizlonger had claim to the original grant. ing expansion to Santa :Fe, New Mexico,
Years later, in 1880, the St. John's board under President Richard D. Weigle, in
declared that state pride alone prevented the early 1960s.
it from taking its case to the U.S. Supreme
Dr. Tilghman's history and Reverend
Court. This veiled threat worked: "The J. Winfree Smith's The Search for a Liberal
Legislature rose nobly to the occasion," CoLLege, which covers the early years under
restored the arrearage accumulated since the New Program, both published by the
1861 and approved an annual appropria- St. .John's Press to celebrate the college's
tion plus a five-year grant.
two-hundredth anniversary in 1984,
When Thomas Fell became president should be read tog·ethcr. Interesting
in 1886, the college consisted of sixty-eight parallels are immediately obvious. Viewstudents and a campus full of dilapidated ing St. John's of the New Program era
buildings. The student body grew and through the glass Tilghman provides, we
three buildings- Woodward (the sec the Dartmouth College case cited
Library), Randall (a dining-room and again in the 1940s, by President Barr
dormitory), and Iglehart (the gym- when he defended the St. John's campus
nasium) -were built during his ad- against encroachment by the U.S. Naval
ministration. When he resigned in 1923 Academy. Earlier board efforts to unite
"he took with him the affection of hun- two colleges within a university under the
dreds of old students."
1784 charter preceeded the founding of
Dr. Tilghman divides the one hun- a second St. John's College in New Mexdred and fifty years of St. John's history ico in 1960 under that charter. In 1890 a
into eight epochs and describes in detail proposal that women be educated at St.
the curriculums adopted in each. The John's was introduced by trustee-alumnus
first, designed by President John ] udge Daniel R. Magruder: women were
McDowell and the Reverend Ralph Hig- admitted to St. John's in 1950. In 1891
ginbotham, was the most rigorous of all. President T'homas tell unsuccessfully
It required proficiency in the ancient solicited private donors for an endowlanguages, mathematics, natural philoso- ment: President Weigle made many sucphy, and logic. To graduate, a student had cessful solicitations in his administration
to undergo a public examination. In the (1950-1980). A good curriculum underlate 1860s President James Clarke Well- girded the early college just as the curing introduced English literature with the riculum known as the New Program
reading of Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, undergirds today's college.
Hooker, and 'T3.ylor; and he added Plato's
I disagree with Dr. Tilghman's view
dialogues and the Greek dramatists to the on the relationship between King
list of Greek classics read.
William's School and St. John's College.
Dr. Tilghman treats the eighth epoch I believe that a new corporation was
(1923-193 7) very briefly. I hope some day created by a merger between the two ensomeone will cover this period more fully. tities in 1786 and that St. John's College
For in 1923 the board discontinued the is a continuation of King William's
grammar school and military program, School. This view has been more fully
making St. John's solely a four-year liberal developed in a paper that has been acarts college. Four teachers appointed in cepted for future publication.
this period- George Bingley, Ford K.
Charlotte Fletcher
Brown, John S. Kieffer, who served as
both president and dean under the New
Program, and Richard Scofield -were to
help steady the college at two critical junctures in its twentieth-ce/ntury life: the Charlotte Fletcher was librarian of St. John's College, Annapolis, from 1944 until 1980. Her article
transition to the New Program in 193 7 1784: The Year St. John's College waJ- named was pubunder President Stringfellow Barr and lished in the Maryland Historical Magazine in 1978.
67
�The Old Gods
What titanic captive, god in chains
smokes the earth with his dire
breath that scorches? All are bound
in blood, lapping rock with flame
which flares towards the sources, then
reverses to fall back into the cave
where puppets dance in mockery
of truth.
Dolphins hammer the sea
to dints of foam, pressing a shield
for the adamant depth; who knows
what immortal agony exhorts them
to friend the singer as a brother.
How seeps that song of harmony
filtering through fault's abyss?
Stricken priestess chants her office,
mad eyes trail a clue of destiny.
Whose altar is the overwhelming will?
The answer blinds us, leaves us asking still.
Gretchen Berg
Gretchen Berg is a graduate of St. John's College, Annapolis. She lives in
Vermont where she pursues her interest in writing and painting.
68
SUMMER 1984
��The St. John's Review
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
Non-profit Org.
U.S. Postage
PAID
Permit No. 66
Lutherville, Md.
�
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<em>The St. John's Review</em>
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<em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. As it represents the St. John's Program, The St. John's Review espouses no philosophical, religious, or political doctrine beyond a dedication to liberal learning, and its readers may expect to find diversity of thought represented in its pages.<br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> was first published in 1974. It merged with <em>The College </em>beginning with the July 1980 issue. From that date forward, the numbering of <em>The St. John's Review</em> continues that of <em>The College</em>. <br /><br />Click on <a title="The St. John's Review" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=13"><strong>Items in the The St. John's Review Collection</strong></a> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Office of the Dean
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St. John's College
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ISSN 0277-4720
thestjohnsreview
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The St. John's Review (formerly The College), Summer 1984
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1984-07
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Sterling, J. Walter
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Walsh, Jason
Freis, S. Richard
Sachs, Joe
Stickney, Cary
Wilson, Curtis A.
Sachs, Joe
Brann, Eva T. H.
Killorin, Joseph
Buchanan, Scott
Thompson, William
Klein, Jacob
Zuckerman, Elliot
Kieffer, John S.
Zuckerkandl, Victor
Smith, J. Winfree
Middleton, Arthur Pierce
Fletcher, Charlotte
Berg, Gretchen
Description
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Volume XXXV, number 3 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Summer 1984.
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ISSN 0277-4720
The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_35_No_3_1984
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Annapolis, MD
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St. John's College
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English
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text
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St. John's Review
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