1
20
387
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/87b35e3d407c47ade3299c81cfc53b01.mp3
bb9a2fd63fb225d5e3928df7584f14a4
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
audio cassette
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:55:01
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
"I think, therefore I am"
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on October 22, 1971 by Samuel S. Kutler as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kutler, Samuel S.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1971-10-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a typescript of my lecture available online."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Kutler_Samuel_1971-10-22
Subject
The topic of the resource
Descartes, René, 1596-1650
Philosophy, Modern
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/3de7b4180c4d6f2efa49aa5381e59e33.pdf
995d746ab663358b47f5b3254100efa8
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Microsoft Word
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
15 pages
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
"In Want of a Wife..." or a Husband, in <em>Pride and Prejudice</em>
Description
An account of the resource
Typescript of a lecture delivered on April 17, 2015, by Suzy Paalman as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Paalman, Susan R.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-04-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating, "Make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make typescript copies of my lecture available online."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Paalman_Susan_2015-04-17
Subject
The topic of the resource
Austen, Jane, 1775-1817. Pride and prejudice
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/9c400c66a03563ce5e0085e6b1c4c7bd.mp3
30ac09e89a36f6a8836e94a956b0c461
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
wav
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:56:58
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
"Making New Gods?": Reflections on Plato's <em>Symposium</em>
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on March 21, 2008, by Mitchell Miller as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Miller, Mitchell H.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2008-03-21
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: make a recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John’s College Greenfield Library; make a recording of my lecture available online."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Plato. Symposium
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LEC_Miller_Mitchell_2008-03-21_ac
Friday night lecture
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/bf4e5164d43e8cad5ccd0e9a54a8638a.mp4
a8307b6f6d08799c46b145f38eac8288
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
mp4
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:53:22
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
"Poet, That’s Just Like You!": Language and the Figure of Echo (Steiner Lecture)
Description
An account of the resource
Video recording of a lecture delivered on February 11, 2022, by Ange Mlinko as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Mlinko is the poetry editor of the Nation, an associate professor at the University of Florida, and a Guggenheim fellow.
Mlinko describes her lecture: "Poetry is an enormous subject, but it can be distilled into a single figure. This figure is Echo, who manifests in three ways: as a prosodic device at the level of the line and stanza; as a poetic form; and as a nymph from Greek mythology, who may stand in for literature itself. We will look at the many ways in which Echo informs poetry and teaches us to read it.”]
This lecture is also part of the Steiner Lecture Series, which is made possible by a gift from the Steiner family in memory of Andrew Steiner, an alumnus of the college from 1963. The lecture series was established to bring notable speakers to campus from a variety of disciplines and endeavors, in recognition of Steiner’s intellectual versatility, and for the sake of continued learning.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mlinko, Ange
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-02-11
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
moving image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp4
Subject
The topic of the resource
Poetry
Echo (Greek mythology)
Echo verse
Frost, Robert, 1874-1963
Valéry, Paul, 1871-1945
Tyni︠a︡nov, I︠U︡. N. (I︠U︡riĭ Nikolaevich), 1894-1943
Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 1844-1889
Barnes, Barnabe, 1569?-1609
Ovid, 43 B.C.-17 A.D. or 18 A.D. Metamorphoses
Poussin, Nicolas, 1594?-1665
Webster, John, 1580?-1625? Duchess of Malfi
Bishop, Elizabeth, 1911-1979
Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich, 1799-1837
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Macfarland, Joseph C.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Mlinko_Ange_2022-02-11acccess
Alumni
Friday night lecture
Steiner lecture
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/150b684e183eb974b8cbbe614d71cf1f.mp4
5eb1a2c213cd8165190a71ba31423016
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Zoom video conference
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:05:32
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
"The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself": Reflecting with Montaigne on Liberation of the Intellect and on Education in Times of Crisis
Description
An account of the resource
Video recording of a lecture delivered by Walter Sterling, Santa Fe tutor on February 5, 2021 as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Mr. Sterling describes his lecture: "The lecture will blend reflections on education in times of crisis, including a discussion of the founding of the St. John’s Program, with an examination of Montaigne’s understanding of education and its ends. Montaigne, who lived through plague and civil war, is one of the few authors who can stake a claim to give birth to the modern individual. His response to the crises of his times was to cultivate a new literary form, the 'essay,' devoted to a new topic, 'myself,' and to send out a renewed or radicalized call for freedom of thought, independent judgment, and self-possession."
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sterling, J. Walter
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-02-05
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a typescript of my lecture available online."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
moving image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp4
Subject
The topic of the resource
Montaigne, Michel de, 1533-1592
Education--United States--Philosophy
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Macfarland, Joseph C.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7486" title="Audio">Audio</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Sterling_Walter_2021-02-05
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/44af01d084367af610bcc50f07358648.mp3
ac44e4aa3acdde3df35a9fd89a063050
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Zoom video conference
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:05:32
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
"The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself": Reflecting with Montaigne on Liberation of the Intellect and on Education in Times of Crisis
Description
An account of the resource
Audio track from the video recording of a lecture delivered by Walter Sterling, Santa Fe tutor on February 5, 2021 as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Mr. Sterling describes his lecture: "The lecture will blend reflections on education in times of crisis, including a discussion of the founding of the St. John’s Program, with an examination of Montaigne’s understanding of education and its ends. Montaigne, who lived through plague and civil war, is one of the few authors who can stake a claim to give birth to the modern individual. His response to the crises of his times was to cultivate a new literary form, the 'essay,' devoted to a new topic, 'myself,' and to send out a renewed or radicalized call for freedom of thought, independent judgment, and self-possession."
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sterling, J. Walter
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-02-05
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a typescript of my lecture available online."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Montaigne, Michel de, 1533-1592
Education--United States--Philosophy
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Macfarland, Joseph C.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7485" title="Video">Video</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Sterling_Walter_2021-02-05audio
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/e8c29e112f8c44903fbd4e653a29d8e6.pdf
0c5bafc00236043c786481b54884d7fe
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
lec Petrich 2018-11-03.pdf
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
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paper
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24 pages
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"The Student," by Anton Chekhov: A Story Told and Glanced At
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Typescript of a lecture delivered on November 3, 2017, by Louis Petrich as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
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Petrich, Louis
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2017-11-03
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A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make typescript copies of my lecture available online."
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Reprinted from the St. John's Review, 59.1-2 (2017-2018).
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English
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lec Petrich 2018-11-03
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/ff57fa84fe678410fe660cc19fa0bedd.mp4
259b96598b6c421095a234b581a26987
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
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00:50:36
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"We the Heroes" or "We the People?" Leadership in the Homeric Epic
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Video recording of a lecture delivered on September 24, 2021, by Johannes Haubold as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Dr. Haubold is a Professor of Classics at Princeton University.
Dr. Haubold describes his lecture: "This lecture investigates some fundamental problems of leadership as they emerge from the Homeric epics. It asks what happens when heroic leaders (Achilles, Agamemnon, Hector, Odysseus) ignore the needs of their people and end up failing them, despite their duty of care (a scenario expressed by recurring formulas in which leaders, as ‘shepherds of the people’, repeatedly and catastrophically ‘destroy the people’). The paper moreover asks whether ancient audiences in specific settings, most importantly the ancient Athenian festival of the Panathenaea, identified with epic leaders or their people.”
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Haubold, Johannes
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2021-09-24
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A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a typescript of my lecture available online."
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text
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mp4
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Leadership in literature
Homer--Characters--Odysseus.
Epic poetry, Greek -- History and criticism.
Panathenaia
Homer--Characters--Achilles
Homer--Characters--Agamemnon
Homer--Characters--Hector
Homer--Iliad
Homer--Odyssey
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English
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Haubold_Johannes_2021-09-24acccess
Friday night lecture
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/2cae7a3b0a498dec8f748f28b5e0c575.mp3
acc9c50eff25c21372270f26f2ffc8e4
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Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
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01:10:17
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<div style="text-align:left;">Johann Sebastian Bach and <em>The Six Suites for Cello Solo - A Fanciful and Extravagant Allegory</em></div>
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 21, 2017 by Steven Hancoff as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
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Hancoff, Steven
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2017-04-21
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A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library."
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sound
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mp3
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English
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Hancoff_Steven_2017-04-21
Alumni
Friday night lecture
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a9b539a566e0b95815f9b30a80814537.pdf
84276775799eb9abd7c750189822464c
PDF Text
Text
HOMO . LOQUENS FROM A BIOLOGICJl.L STANDPOINT
by
Curtis Wilson
St. John's College
Annapolis, 1"..aryland
Septeil'ber, 1975
�The words homo loquens, in the title I announced for this lecture, mean
speaking man, man the speaking one. As a designation for the human species,
homo loquens perhaps has an advantage over the official zoological designation,
homo s~piens, man the sapient, wise, discerning one, the one who savours the
essences of things. The human capacity for loquaciousness is somewhat more
obviously verifiable. But what has that capacity to do with things biological?
This is a complicated and problematic topic. Forgive me if I first approach
it by slow stages, then attempt a gingerly step when the going becomes treacherous~
I wish to begin with a small technical matter, an aspect of the physiology of
speech-production.
Respiratory patterns in different species of air-breathing vertebrates
differ in many details. Different species have special regulatory systems,
adapted to special behavior patterns. There is the panting of dogs, specially
adapted for cooling; birds, during flight have the unique ability to increase
their intake of oxygen a hundredfold; the sperm whale can go without breathing
or dive for 90 minutes, the beaver for 15, man for about 2 1/2; and so on. All
these differences are species-specific.
In a human being, the respiratory patterns during quiet breathing and during
speech are remarkably different (see Table I). The volume of air inhaled, as
shown in the first item of the table, increases by a factor of 3 or 4 during
speech. The time of inspiration, as compared with the time for a complete cycle
of inspiration plus expiration, decreases by a factor of 3. The number of breaths
per minute tends to decrease drastically. Expiration, which is smooth during
speechless breathing, is periodically interrupted during speech, with a build-up
of pressure under the glottis; it is during expiration that all normal human
vocalization occurs. The patterns of electrical activity in expiratory and
inspiratory muscles differ radically during quiet breathing and during speech.
Both chest and abdominal musculature are utilized in breathing, but during speech
the abdominal musculature is less involved, and its contractions are no longer
fully synchronized with those of the chest musculature. In quiet breathing,
one breathes primarily through the nose; during speech, primarily through the
mouth.
More than you wanted to know, I'm sure. My point was to show that breathing
undergoes marked changes during speech. And remarkably, humans can tolerate
these modifications for almost unlimited periods of time without experiencing
respiratory distress; witness fillibusters in the U. s. Senate. Think now of
other voluntary departures from normal breathing patterns. If we deliberately
decide to breathe at some arbitrary rate, say, faster than ordinary -- please
do not try it here -- we quickly experience the symptoms of hyperventilation:
light-headedness, giddiness, and so on. Similar phenomena may occur when one
is learning to play a wind instrument or during singing instruction; training
in proper breathing is requisite for these undertakings. By contrast, talking a
blue streak for hours on end comes naturally to many a three-year-old. The
conclusion must be that there are sensitive controlling mechanisms that regulate
ventilation in an autonomous way during speech. More generally, it is evident
that we are endowed with special anatomical and physiological adaptations that
�-2-
enable us to sustain speech for hours, on exhaled air.
Do we speak the way we do because we happen to possess these special adaptations,
or did these adaptations develop during evolution in response to the pressures of
natural selection or the charms of sexual selection? I think there is no way of
answering these questions; it is difficult enough when one can refer to skeletons,
which fossilize; behavioral traits do not. But whatever the answer, there is
still this further question, whether the genetic programming for speech extends
beyond the mere provision of vocal apparatus? Might it not, in addition,
determine the make-up and structure of language in a more detailed and intimate
fashion?
Such a question runs counter to views that are widely held. Is not language,
after you have the voice to __
pronounce it with, fundamentally a psychological and
cultural fact, to which biological explanations would be largely irrelevant? Do
not languages consist of arbitrary conventions, made up in the way we make up the
rules of games? Wittgenstein speaks of language as a word-game, thereby likening
it to tennis or poker. Is it not apparent that the conventions of any particular
language, like the rules of :tennis o::-: poker, are transmitted from generation to
generation by means of imitation, training, teaching and learning? Are not
these the important facts about language, the facts that reveal to us its nature?
Until recently, students of linguistics and psychology have tended uniformly
to answer these questions in the affirmative. To many, the extraordinary
diversity of human tongues has seemed argument enough against any assumption of
linguistic universals, that is, characteristics of language imagined to be
rooted in human nature. The reductio ad absurdurn often mentioned is the attempt
of the Egyptian king Psammetichos to determine the original human language. As
reported by Herodotus, Psammetichos caused two children to be raised in such a
way that they would neither hear nor overhear human speech, the attendants
being instructed meanwhile to listen out for their first word. The report was,
that is was Persian. The experiment is said to have been repeated in the 13th
century by Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, and again around 1500 by James IV
of Scotland, who was hoping that the children would speak Hebrew, and thereby
establish a biblical linec:_ge for Scotland. No result was reported.
Stress on the arbitrariness of language has been enhanced by a coalition
between linguistics and behaviorist psychology. Behaviorist psychology is led,
by its premisses, to the view that language is merely an arbitrary use to which
the human constitution, anatomical and physiological, can be put, just as a tool
can be put to many arbitrary uses by its manipulator. A recent account that
views language in this way is the book Verbal Behavior by B. F. Skinner. Along
with other behaviorist scientists, Skinner holds that all learning can be explained
by a few principles which operate in all vertebrates and many invertebrates.
The process is called operant conditioning. Learning the meaning of a word,
Skinner holds, is like a rat's learning to press a bar which will cause a buzzer
to sound, announcing "food pellets soon to come". Learning grammar, likewise,
is supposed to be like learning that event A is followed by event B, which is
in turn followed by event c. Many an animal can be trained to acquire associations
�-3-
of this kind. Skinner would hold that there is nothing involved in the acquisition
of language _that is not involved in learning of this kind.
Unquestionably, we would be mistaken to deny the importance or the power of
the conditioned reflex, either in language acquisition or in other learning.
The experimental psychologists have recently announced that even the visceral
organs can be taught to do various things, on given signals, with rewards provided
immediately afterward to reinforce the action. We are told that rats, with the
reward held out of another shot of electrical juice in a certain center of the
brain, have been taught to alter their blood pressures or brain waves, or dilate
the blood vessels in one ear more than those in the other. Similar achievements
in operant conditioning are held out as a bright future hope for humans. What
rich experiences in self-operation are not in store for us?
On the other hand, the successes of this technology do not necessarily
tell us much about the character of what it is that is being conditioned. The
behaviorist treats the organism as a black box; he controls the inputs and
records the outputs; what goes on in the box is not, as he claims, an appropriate
concern of his. He cites the similar situation in quantum physics. In the case
of quantum phenomena, the physicist cannot successfully describe what is there
when he is not looking, not using probes that interact with whatever it is. But, _
between the situation in quantum physics and the situation in the study of animal
behavior, there is this difference. Animal behavior goes on, observably so,
· even when the animals are not being experimented on. May it not be important
to try to observe this behavior, before we .set out to change it, as we can, so
frighteningly, do?
Those who study the behavior of animals in their natural habitats nowadays
have a special name for their study, Ethology. Long hours of patient observation,
much of it during the last 50 years, have demonstrated how intricate, how unexpectedly adaptive, how downright peculiar, are the patterns of behavior specific
to particular species of animals. Many of the patterns function as communication:
the elaborate courtship rituals of birds, the less elaborate ones of butterflies
and certain _ ish; the way in which two dabbling ducks, on meeting, lower their
f
bills into the water and pretend to drink, as an indication of nonagressiveness;
and so on. Among these behaviors, there is one tha.t has been called truly
symbolic. That is . the dance of the honeybee, the symbolism of which was first
recognized and deciphered by Karl von Frisch in the 1940's. Let me describe
it briefly (see Figure I) •
The dance that a forager bee performs in the dark hive gives, by a special
symbolism, the distance and direction of the food source she has found. If, for
the Austrian variety of bee, the food source. is less than 80 meters away, she
performs a round dance, running rapidly arouna in a circle, first to the left,
then to the right. This in effect says to the hive bees: "Fly out .from the
hive; close by in the neighborhood is food to be fetched."
�-4If, on the other hand, the food source is more than 80 meters away, the
forager will use the tail-wagging dance. The rhythm of the dance tells the
distance: the closer the source, the more figure-of-eight cycles of the dance
, per minute. The tail-wagging part of the dance, shown by the middle wavy line
in the diagram, tells the direction, in accordance with a curious rule. On
the vertical honeycomb_ in the hive, the direction up means towards the sun,
and the direction down means away from the sun. If the tail-wagging run points
60° left of straight up, the food source is 60° to the left of the sun, and so
on. Directions with respect to the sun have been transposed into directions
with respect to gravity, the directions are reported with errors of less than
30.
This same dance is used in the springtime when half the bees move out of
the hive and form a swarm, seeking a new nesting place. Scout bees fly out in
all directions, then return and dance to announce the location they have hit on.
It is important, of course, that the selected spot be protected from winter,
winds, and rough weather, and that there be abundant feeding nearby. The
surprizing thing is that not just one nesting place is announced, but several at
the same time. The dancing and the coming and going can continue for days. By
their dances the bees engage in mutual persuasion, inciting one another to inspect
this site or that site. The better the site, the longer and more vigorously the
the returning bee dances. The process continues until all the scout bees are
dancing in the same direction and at the same rate. Then the swarm arises and
departs for the homesite it has thus decided upon. Mistaken decisions are few.
The dance
human language
the language a
depends solely
of the honeybee is symbolic in a genetically determined way. That
is not genetically determined in the same way is easy to show:
child learns, whether Swahili, Cantonese, Urdu, or any other,
on the language of those by whom he is brought up.
·
The vocabulary of a human language is not genetically fixed. However, I
do not believe that the discussion of the biological foundations of language
can properly end at this point.
My reasons for saying this are two. In the first place, there are certain
features of human speech which are not found in the natural corrnnunication
systems of animals, but which are found universally in all known human languages,
present or past. The existence of these features is, at the very least,
consonant with the possibility that there is a genetic foundation underlying
human speech. The facts appear to be most easily accounted for by assuming
that there is such a foundation, , forcing human speech to be of a certain basic
type.
Secondly, this same assumption receives support from the study of primary
language acquisition in children. It is not that Psammetichos was right,
or that children if left to themselves would commence to speak proto-IndoEuropean
or any language resembling
adult human language. All genetically determined
traits depend for their appearance to a greater or lesser degree, on features
of the environment. The genes or genetic factors do not of themselves determine
an
�-sbody parts or physiological or behavioral traits. Rather, they determine
developmental processes, which nonnally succeed one another in a determinate
way, but can be profoundly affected by environmental influence. These facts
point to the possibility that genetically determined traits might appear only
in the course of maturation, and then only in response to specific influences
from outside the organism. Ethologists inform us of many instances of speciesspecific, genetically based behavior that emerge only in this way. An example
is imprinting. Thomas More described it in his .Utopia. Chicks or ducklings
or goslings, a few hours or days after hatching, enter a critical period. Whatever object they first encounter during this period, within certain limits of
size, and moving within appropriate limits of speed, they begin to follow,
and continue to follow through childhood. The object followed can be, and
usually is, the mother; but it can also be an ethologist like Konrad Korenz
on his hands and knees, or something stuffed at the end of a stick. Failure to.
develop imprinted responses during infancy may cause behavioral abnormalities
in the adult bird -- abnormalities that cannot be corrected by later training.·
Imprinting is only one of many known species-specific characteristics or
behaviors that appear in the course of development, in response to what are
sometimes called "releasers", environmental stimuli of specified kinds. It
will be my contention that important features of human linguistic capacity are
of this kind.
After discussing these two points, I shall conclude with certain reflections
on what they might mean.
I begin, then, with three features of human speech that do not appear to
be found in the natural communication systems of animals (see Table II) :
1.
Phonematization
2.
Concatenation
3. · Granunar
What is meant by phonematization? The vocalizations heard in the human
languages of the world are always within fairly narrow limits of the total
range of sounds that humans can produce. We are able to imitate, for instance,
the vocalizations of mammals and birds with considerable accuracy, given a little
training, but such direct imitations never seem to be incorporated in the vocabularies of human languages. In all human languages, the meaningful units, words,
or more strictly speaking, morphemes, are divisible into successive, shorter,
meaningless sounds called phonemes. Morphemes are the smallest meaningful
units into which an utterance can be .divided. A morpheme can be a single word
such as "water"; it can be more than one word as in "spick and span"; and it
can be less than a single word, as in the "er" in "whiter", which turns the
adjective "white" into a comparative. Phonemes are the meaningless sounds into
which morphemes can be di.v ided. A phoneme is not, strictly speaking, a single
sound, but rather a small class of sounds; it can be defined as the smallest
�-6distinctive unit functioning within the sound system of a language to make a
difference.
Refinements aside, the central fact I wish to convey is this:
in all languages, morphemes are constituted by sequences of phonemes. This
is a fact that the inventors of the alphabet were probably about the first to
come to understand.
The fact could have been different. One can imagine a language in which
the symbol for a cat was a sound resembling a miaow; in which size was represented
by loudness, color by vowel quality, and hunger by a strident roar. Morphemes
in such a language would not be analyzable into phonemes.
All human languages are phonematized, but each language uses a somewhat
different set of phonemes, in each case a small set.
Parrots and mynah birds excel other animals in the imitation of human
speech, but i t is doubtful that they speak in phonemes. The matter could be
put to a test.
A parrot that had heard only Portuguese, and had acquired a
good repertory of Portuguese words and phrases, could be transferred into an
environment where he would hear only English, and have the opportunity of
repeating English exclamatory remarks. If these remarks emerged with a
Portuguese accent, the n it would be clear that the parrot had learned Portuguese
phonemes, which he proceeded to use in the vocalization of English words.
In
the opposite case, we would conclude that the parrot had the capacity to imitate
sounds accurately, but had not acquired the habit of using phonemes for the
production of speech.
In the human child, speech by the same test would turn out to be phonematized.
The second general characteristic of human speech I have listed is concatenation. Human utterances seldom consist of single morphemes in isolation;
in no human speech-community are utterances restricted to single morphemes;
in all languages, morphemes are ordinarily strung together into sequences.
To
be sure, the peoples of many, perhaps most cultures, are less garrulous than we;
they use language only in certain circumstances and only somewhat sparingly,
while we talk a good deal of the time. It is nevertheless true that humans
in all speech-communities concatenate morphemes.
The third property presupposes concatenation; it is the property of grammatical or syntactical structure. By "structure" I am going to mean a set of
relations that can . be diagrammed. In no language are morphemes strung together
in purely random order. Native speakers of a language normally agree in
rejecting certain utterances as ungrammatical, and in recognizing certain
other utterances as grammatical. According to Noam Chomsky, for instance, the
sentence "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is grammatical, though meaningless or nearly so; the concatenation ... furiously sleep ideas green colorless",
the same words in revers e order, is ungrammatical.
The one concatenation admits
of a syntactical diagram, the other does not.
�-7It is generally assumed in linguistics that the grammar of a language is
completely describable by means of a finite and in fact small set of formal
rules. For no natural language has such a description been achieved as yet,
otherwise one could program a computer to utter the grammatical sentences in
the language. Apparently the mechanism involved in the grammar of a natural
language is complex. I shall return to this topic again; the point now is
just the W1iversality of grammar -- a relatively complex kind of system -- as
a feature of human languages.
All three properties I have described are, so far as the available evidence
indicates, without cultural histories. Phonematization, concatenation, grammatical
structure, are features of all known human language, past or present. And although
languages are always in process of change, it is not the case that these changes
follow a general pattern from a stage that can be called primitive to one that
can be called advanced. No known classification or analysis of human languages
provides any basis for a theory of the development of language from aphonemic,
non-grammatical, or simple imitative beginnings.
These facts are consonant with the hypothesis that there is a genetic foundation underlying human speech, forcing it to be of a certain basic type, and in
particular, to have the features I have just described. In support of this
hypothesis, I take up now the development of language in the child.
The first sound a child makes is to cry.
Immanuel Kant says the birth cry
has not the tone of lamentation, but of indignation and of aroused
wrath; presumably because [the child] wants to move, and feels his
inability to do so as a fetter that deprives him ·o f his freedom.
More recently a psychoanalyst has written of the birthcry:
It is an expression of the infant's overwhelming sense of ir.feriority
on thus suddenly being confronted by reality, without ever having had
to deal with its problems.
In view of the anatomical immaturity of the human brain at birth, these adult
interpretations are rather surprizing. No doubt the infant in being born undergoes
a rude shock. But crying is a mechanism with a number of importan~ functions;
one of the earliest is clearing fluid out of the middle ear, so that .the child
can begin to hear. The mechanism is ready to operate at birth, and the infant
puts it to work. The sound made in crying changes slightly during childhood,
but otherwise does not mature or change during one's life. Crying is not a first
step in the development that leads to articulate speech; it involves no articulation;
the infant simply blows his horn without operating the keys.
A quite distinct sort of vocalization begins at about the 6th or 8th week
after birth: little cooing sounds that appear to be elicited by a specific
stimulus, a nodding object resembling a face in the baby's visual field. A
�-8clown's face painted on cardboard, laughing or crying, will do for a while.
The response is first smiling, then cooing. After about 13 weeks it is
necessary that the face be a familiar one to elicit the smiling and cooing.
During cooing, some articulatory organs are moving, in particular the tongue.
The cooing sounds, although tending to be vowel-like, are not identical with
any actual speech sounds. Gradually they become differentiated. At 6 months
they include vocalic and consonantal components, like /p/ and /b/. Cooing
develops int.o babbling resembling one-syllable utterances, for instance /ma/,
/mu/, /da/, /di/. However, the babbling sounds are still not those of adult
speech.
The first strictly linguistic feature to emerge in a child's vocalizations
is contour of intonation. Before the sound sequences have determinable meaning
or definite phonemic structure, they come out with the recognizable intonation
of .questions, exclamations, or affirmations. Linguistic development begins not
with the putting together of individual components, but rather with a whole
tonal pattern. Later, this whole becomes differentiated into component parts.
Differentiation of phonemes is only approximate at first and has to be progressively refined. The child is gradually gaining control of the dozen or so
adjustments in the vocal organs that are required for adult speech. By 12 months
he is replicating syllables, as in "mamma" and "dada". By 18 months he will
normally have a repertory of three to 50 recognizable words.
I have described this development as though mothers were not trying to
teach, but of course they normally are.
It is nevertheless a striking fact
that these stages emerge in different cultures in the same sequence and at
very nearly the same ages, and in fairly strict correlation with other motor
achievements.
Detailed studies have been made of speech acquisition among the
Zuni of New Mexico, the Dani of Dutch New Guinea, the Bororo in central Brazil,
and children in urban U.S.A.; in all cases, intonation patterns become distinct
at about the time that graspin9 between thumb and fingers develops; the first
words .appear at about.the time that walking is accomplished; and by the time
the child is able to jump, tiptoe, and walk backward, he is talking a blue
stre:i.k. Among children born deaf, the development from cooing through spontaneous
babbling to well-articulated speech-sounds occurs as with normal children,
but of course the development cannot continue onward into the stage at which
adult words are learned through hearing. Among the mentally retarded, these
developments are chronologically delayed, but take place with the same correlation
between various motor achievements. Given the variety of envirorunental conditions
in these several cases, it seems plausible to attribute the emergence of
linguistic habits largely to maturational changes within the growing child,
rather than to particular training procedures.
The specific neurophysiological correlates of speech are l .i ttle known,
but that there are such correlates and that they mature as speech develops is
supported by much evidence. The human brain at birth has only 24% of its adult
weight; by contrast, the chimpanzee starts life with a brain that already
weighs 60% of its adult value. The human brain takes longer to mature, and
�-9-
more happens as it matures, including principally a large increase in the number
of neuronal connections. A large part of the discernible anatomical maturation
takes place in the first two years; the process appears to be complete by about
14 years of age. By this time the neurophysical basis of linguistic capacity
has become localized in one of the two cerebral hemispheres, usually the left.
If by this time a first language has not been learned, no language will ever
be learned. Speech defects due to injuries to the brain that occur before the
final lateralization of the speech-function are usually overcome; but if the
injury comes after lateralization, the speech defect will be permanent.
Capacity for speech does not correlate uniformly with size of brain.
There is a condition known as nanocephalic dwarfism, in which humans appear
reduced to fairy-tale size; adult individuals attain a maximum height of between
two and threefeet (see Table III). Nanocephalic dwarfs differ from other dwarfs
in preserving the skeletal and other bodily proportions of normal adults. Brain
weight in these dwarfs barely exceeds that of a normal newborn infant. The
brain weight of the nanocephalic dwarf, given in the middle row, is only a
little over a third of that of a 2 1/2 year old boy, but the ratio of body
weight to brain weight is equal to that of a 13 1/2 year old boy. These
dwarfs show some retardation in intellectual growth, and often do not surpass
a mental age-level of ~ or 6 years. But all of them acquire the rudiments of
language, including speaking and understanding; they speaJc grarm:natically, and
can manufacture sentences which are not mere repetitions of sentences they have
heard. The appropriate conclusion appears to be that the ability to acquire
language depends, not on any purely quantitative factor, but on specific modes
of organization of human neurophysiology.
One further point concerning the neurophysiological basis of language. The
main evidence here is provided by aphasias (aphasia= a +~ava1, not+ to speak).
These are failu~es in production or comprehension of language, resulting from
injuries to the brain. And this evidence argues, for one thing, against regarding
language ability as being encoded simply in a spatial layout of some kind, say
a network of associations in the cerebral cortex. Subcortical areas are involved,
as well as cortex. The aphasias most frequently involve, not disruption of
associations, but rather disruption of temporal order, affecting either phonemes
in the production of words, as in spoonerisms, or words and phrases in the production
of sentences. The patient is unable to control properly the tempcral ordering
of these units, and as a consequence they tumble into the production line
uninhibited by higher syntactic principles. In general, the sympton is lack
of availability of the right thing at the right time.
Language is through-and-through an affair of temporal patterns and sequences.
The neurophysiological organization required for this cannot be simply that of
associations. In the making of speech-sounds, for instance, certain muscles
have to contract, the efferent nerve fibers innervating these muscles are of
different lengths and diameters, and as a consequence the times required for a
�-10-
nerve inpulse to go from brain to muscle differ for different muscles. Hence
the nerve im.pulses for the production of a single phoneme must be fired off
from the brain at different times, and the sequences of impulses for successive
phonemes must overlap in complex ways. In the simplest sequential order of
· events, it thus appears that events are selected, not in response to immediately
prior events, but in accordance with a hierarchic plan that integrates the
requirments for periods of time of several seconds' duration. All this patterning
in time is thought to depend on a physiological rhythm of about 6 cyles per
second, in relation to which other events are timed. Arrangements of this
complexity do not come about by learning. The evidence here, as well as the
observations I have already described as to the way voice-sounds develop in
children, points to the existence of an innate mechanism for the production of
phonemes, one which is activated by a specific input, the appearance of the
human face, and which matures in stages.
Could anything similar be argued for competence in syntax, the ability
to understand and produce grarn.~atical sentences? Here you will undoubtedly
be more doubtful, for surely the grammars of different languages are different.
Please recall that the sets of phonemes used in different languages are also
somewhat different. The universality of phonematization is compatible with
different languages employing different. subsets of the humanly possible phonemes.
The claim for universa~ity of grammar must be of similar kind. The grammars
of human languages are not of just any imaginable kind of ordered concatenation
of morphemes. Rather, they derive from a certain subclass of the imaginable
orders, a subclass involving phrase structure and what has been called "deep
structure". The production of grarrnnatical sentences turns out to pose requirements similar to those necessary for the temporal ordering of phonemes; a
serial order in which one element determines the next is insufficient; there has
to be hierarchical organization, in which elements connected with one a,.,other are
separated temporally in the production line.
Let me return now to the description of stages in the primary acquisition
of language by a child.
At about the end of the first year of life, the child normally utters his
first unmistakeable word. For a number of months, while the child is building
up a repertory of about 50 words, he utters only single-word utterances. He
frequently hears sentences like "Here is your milk", "Shall daddy take you by-by?",
and so on, but he will neither join together any two words he knows nor can he
be induced to do so on request. Does he lack the memory or the vocalizing
power to produce a two-word utterance? The evidence is against these suppositions.
Then, roughly between 18 and 24 months, he suddenly and spontaneously begins to
join words into two-element phrases: . "up baby", "baby highchair", "push car",
and so on. What explains the shift?
An important observation at the one-word stage is that these single words
are given the intonations or pitch-contours of declarative, interrogative, or
�-11-
hortatory sentences. The single-word utterances seem to function in meaning
in the same way as sentences will function later cm: "Doggie" might mean,
for instance, "There is a dog". When the two-word construction "push car"
appears, it is not just two single-word utterances spoken in a certain order.
As single-word utterances, both "push" and "car" would have primary stresses
and terminal intonation contours. But when they are two words programmed as
a single utterance, the primary stress and higher pitch come on "car"; and
the unity of the whole is indicated by the absence of a terminal pitch contour
between the words and the presence of such a contour at the end of the sequence.
What appears to be happening is that the child is by stages increasing
his span, his ability to plan or program longer utterances. Grammar is already
present in embryo. Further development will be a process of successive increases
in span or integration, on the one hand, and progressive differentiation of the
parts of utterances on the other.
Imitation plays a role in this process, but it is seldom mere parroting.
In Table IV I have listed some imitations actually produced by two children,
whom I shall call Adam and Eve; both were about two years old.
First note that the imitations preserve the word orderof the model, even
when not preserving all·the words. This is not a logical necessity; it is
conceivable that the child might reverse or scramble the order; that he does not
suggests that he is processing the utterance as a whole. A second fact to
notice is that, when the models increase in length, the child's imitation is
a reduction, and that the selection of words is not random. The words retained
are generally nouns, verbs, and less often adjectives: words sometimes called
"contentives", because they have semantic content; their main grammatical
function lies in their capacity to refer to things. The forms omitted are what
linguists call "functors", their grammatical functions being more obvious than
their semantic content. The omission of the functors leads to a kind of telegraphic
language, such as one uses in wiring home: "Car broken down; wallet stolen; send
money American Express Baghdad". In the child's telegraphic utterances, how
will the appropriate functors come to be introduced?
While the child engages in imitating, with reductions, the utterances
of the mother, the mother frequently imitates, with expansion, the utterances
of the child (see Table V). The mother's expansions, you will note, preserve
the word order of the child's sentences, she acts as if the child meant everything he said, and more, and it is the "more" that her additions articulate.
She adds functors. The functors have meaning, but it is meaning that accrues
to them in context rather than in isolation. The functors tell the time of
the action, whether it is ongoing or completed; they inform us of possession,
and of relations such as are indicated by prepositions like in; on, ~' down;
they distinguish between a particular instance of a class as in "the highchair",
and an arbitrary instance of a class, as in "a sandwich"; and so on.
�-12How or to what extent these adult expansions of the child's utterances help
the child to learn grammatical usage is uncertain. It has been found that
inunediate imitations by the child of just uttered adult sentences are less
frequently well-formed than spontaneously produced utterances. The view that
progress toward adult norms arises merely from practice in overt imitation of
adult sentences is clearly wrong. The child rather appears to be elaborating
his own grammar, making use of adult models, but constantly analogizing to produce
new and often mistaken words or forms.
Take pluralization (see Table VI) . In English there are a few irregular
plurals, as of mouse, foot, man. The child normally regularizes these plurals:
mouses, foots, mans.
Instead of foot vs. foots, some children give feet for the
singular, feets for the plural. One does not get an initial fluctuation between
foot and feet, such as one would expect if only imitation of adult forms were
a _ work.
t
Most English plurals are regular and follow certain formal rules. Thus we
have mat vs. mats, but ~atch vs. matches. Words ending in sibilants, such as
match, hors e , b o x, add a vowe l before the..§_ of the plural. Children have difficulty
with pluralizing these words, and tend at first to use th e singular form for
both singular and plural. Sometime s a child will analogize in such a way as to
remove the sibilant, substituting for instance, for box vs. boxes, the singularplural pair bok vs. boks. Then at some point the ch~ld produces the regular
plural of a sibilant word, say, boxes. Frequently when this happens he may
abandon temporarily the regular plural for non-sibilant words, so that one gets
foot vs. footses. What is happening? Overlaid on the child's systematic analogic
forms, there is a gradual accumulation of successful imitations which do not fit
the child's system. Eventually these result in a change in the system, often
with errors due to over-generalizing.
Consider also the past tense inflection, which in English bears considerable
similarity to the plural inflection (see Table VI again). There are regular
forms like walk-walked, and irregular ones like go-went. Among the regular verbs,
the form of the past d e pends on the final phoneme of the simple verb:
so we have
pack-packed and pat-patted. In the case of past-tense inflection in contrast
with pluralization, however, the most fre q uently used forms are irregular, and the
curious fact is that the child often starts regularizing these forms before having
been heard to produce any other past-tense forms.
Thus goed, doed, corned appear
among the first past-tense forms produced.
The analogizing tendency is evidently
very strong.
· The occurrence of certain kinds of errors on the level of word construction
thus reveals the child's effort t.o induce regularities from the speech he is
exposed to. When a child says, "I buyed a fire car for a grillion dollars,"
he is not imitating in any strict sense of the term; he is constructing in
accordance with rules, rules which in adult English, are in part mistaken. At
every stage, the child's linguistic competence extends beyond the sum total of
the sentences he has heard. He is able to unders tand and construct sentences
�-13-
which he cannot have heard before, but which are well-formed in terms of general
rules that ar·e implicit in the sentences he has heard. Somehow, genius that
he is, he induces from the speech to which he is exposed a latent structure of
rules. For the rest of his life, he will be spinning out the implications of
this latent structure.
By way of illustration of this inductive process, and .of a fur~her stage in
the achievement of grarrunatical competence, let me indicate some aspects of the
development of the noun phrase in children's speech (see Table VII). A noun
phrase con~.ists of a noun plus modifiers of some kind, which together can be
used in all the syntactic positions in which a single noun can be used: alone
to name or request something, or in a sentence as subject, object, or predicate
nominative. The table at the top gives a number of noun phrases uttered by Adam
or Eve at about two years of age. Each noun phrase consists of one word from a
small class of modifiers, M, followed by one word from the large class of nouns,
N. The rule for generating
these noun phrases is given below in symbols: NP ·
is generated by M plus N.
The class M does not correspond to any single syntactic class in adult
English; it includes indefinite and definite articles, a possessive pronoun, a
demonstrative adjective, a quantifier, a cardinal number, and some descriptive
adjectives. In adult English these words are of different syntactic classes
because they have very different privileges of occurrence in sentences. For the
children, the words appear to belong to a single class because of their common
privilege of occurrence before nouns; the lack of distinction leads to ungranunatical
combinations, which are marked in the table by an asterisk. Thus the indefinite
article should be used only with a · comrnon count noun in the singular, as in
"a coat"; we do not say "a celery", "a Becky", "a hands". The numeral two we use
only with count nouns in the plural; hence we do not say "two sock". The word
"more" we use before mass nouns in the singular, as in "more coffee", and before
count nouns in the plural, as in "more nuts"; we would not say "more nut". To·
avoid the errors, it is necessary not only that the privileges of occurrence of
words of the class M be differentiated, but also that nouns be subdivided into
singular and plural, common and proper, count nouns and mass nouns.
Sixteen weeks after Time I, at Time II, Adam and Eve were beginning to make
some of these differentiations; articles and demonstrative pronouns were now
distinguished from other mewbers of the class M. Articles now always appeared
before descriptive or possessive adjectives, and demonstrative pronouns before
articles or other modifiers.
Twenty-six weeks after Time I, the privileges of occurrence had become
much more finely differentiated. Adam was distinguishing descriptive adjectives
and possessive pronouns, as well as articles and demonstrative · pronouns, from
the ' residual class M; Eve's classification was even more complicated, though she
was a bit younger. Also, nouns were being differentiated by both children:
proper nouns were clearly distinct from common nouns; for Eve, count nouns were
distinct from mass nouns.
�-14Simultaneously with these differentiations, further integrations were
occurring: the noun phrases were beginning to occur as constituents in longer
sentences; the permissible combinations of modifiers and nouns were assuming
the combination privileges enjoyed by nouns in isolation. Thus the noun phrase,
for Adam and Eve, was coming to have a psychological unity such as it has for
adults. This was indicated by instances in which a noun phrase was fitted between
parts of a separable verb, as in "put the red hat on". It was also indicated
by substitution of pronouns for noun phrases in sentences, often at first with
the pronoun being followed by the noun phrase for which it was to substitute,
as in "mommy get it my ladder", or "I miss it cowboy boot".
Whether any theory of learning at present known can account for this sequence
of differentiations and integrations is doubtful.
The process is more reminiscent
of the development of an embryo than it is of the simple acquisition of conditioned
reflexes or associations. What is achieved is an open-ended competence to comprehend sentences never before heard, in terms of a hierarchical structure, that
embeds structures within structures.
To illustrate, let me use, not a child's sentence, but an example that Chomsky
excerpts from the Port Royal Grammar of 1660 (see Figure II). The sentence is:
"Invisible God created the visible world".
The sentence may be diagrammed as
shown in the figure; Chomsky calls these diagrams phrase markers. There is a
phrase marker for what he calls surface structure; this has the function of
determining the phonetic shape and intonational contour of the sentence. And
there is a phrase marker for what he calls deep structure; this shows how prior
predications are embedded in the sentence, and determine its meaning.
Are formal structures like the one indicated by this diagram really operative
when linguistic competence is being exercised? There are a number of indications
that this is so. One indication is the extent to which the understanding of language
involves resolution of ambiguities, or disambiguation as it is sometimes
massively put. Consider the sentence "They are boring ' student~" (see Figure III) .
This has two different interpretations, which are represented by the diagrams
on the screen.
In interpretation A, the word "boring" is linked with the word
"students"; the students are thus characterized as boring.
In interpretation B,
the word "boring" is linked with the word "are", which thus becomes the auxiliary
verb in the present progressive tense of the verb "to bore", it is the students
who are being bored, by certain other persons designated by "'.:he pronoun "they",
but otherwise mercifully unidentified.
In an actual conversation, the context
of meaning would have led us to apply, as quick as a thought or perhaps more
quickly, the correct phrase marker to the interpretation of the sequence of uttered
sounds.
Other examples show how deep structures are essential to understanding
(see Table VIII). Consider the two sentences:
John is eager to please
John is easy to please.
�-15-
These sentences have the same surface structure. But a moment's thought shows
that the word "John" has two very diffe·r ent roles to play in the two sentences.
John in the first sentence is the person who is doing the pleasing; in the second
sentence he is the person who is being pleased. John is the underlying subject
in the first case, and the underlying object in the second case. Deep structure
or grammar is involved in understanding the difference in meaning of the two
sentences.
An opposite sort of case occurs when the surface granunars of two sentences
are different, although the meaning is essentially the same. Consider this
sentence in the active mode: "Recently seventeen elephants trampled on my
summer home".
Now consider the following sentence in the passive mode: "My
summer wa.s trampled -on recently by seventeen elephants." A native speaker of
English feels that these sentences are related,that they have the same or very
similar meanings. Yet their surface structures are very different. Recognition
that both sentences are describing the same event presupposes that speaker anJ.
hearer refer them both to a single deep structure embodyin~ the single meaning.
Something similar happens in recognition of similarity between visual patterns,
where there is no point-to-point correspondence between them.
Now all of this is unlikely to . seem astonishing, for it is' very familiar,
You and I, like the bourgeois gentilhomme, have been speaking and listening to
more or less grammatical prose for a long time now. People living at the seashore
are said to grow so accustomed to the murmur of the waves that they never hear
it. Aspects of things that could be important to us may be hidden by their
familiarity. The point I have been seeking to make is one that is due to Noam
Chomsky, a linguist I have been depending on more than once this evening. The
grammaticality of human languages involves properties that are in no sense
necessary properties of a . system that would fulfill the functions of human
communication. A grammar, for instance, in which statements would be generated
· word-by-word, from left to right, so to speak, so that any given morpheme would
determine the possible classes of morphemes that might follow it, is a kind of
grammar that might have been used, but was not. Instead, human speech involves
dependencies between non-adjacent elements, as in .the sentence "A.Tlyone who says
that is lying", where there is a dependency between the subject noun "anyone"
and the predicate phrase "is lying". All operations in human languages,
transforming, for instance, an active into a passive sentence, or a declarative
into an interrogative sentence, operate on and take account of phrase structure.
Example: we form the1nterrogative of the English.sentence, "Little Mary lived
in Princeton",. by introducing an auxiliary to the verb ("Little Mary did live
in Princeton"), then inverting the order of the auxiliary and the noun-phrase
which is the subject, to get "Did Li.ttle Mary live in Princeton?" It would be
entirely possible to form interrogatives in a different way independently of
phrase structure. There is no apriori reason why human languages should make
use exclusively of structure-dependent operations. It is Chomsky's conclusion
that such reliance on structure-dependent operations must be predetermined for
the language learner by a restrictive initial schematism of some sort, given
genetically, and directing the child's attempts to acquire linguistic competence.
�-16Put differently, one does not so much teach a first language, as provide a
thread along which linguistic competence develops of its own accord, by processes
more like maturation than learning.
The Chomskian analysis requires that we take one more step. The fact that
deep structures figure in the understanding and use of language shows that grammar
and meaning necessarily interpenetrate. The child's grammatical competence
matures only along with semantic competence, the organization of what can be
talked about in nameable categories and hierarchies of categories. This process,
like the development of grammatical competence, involves successive differentiations.
Sensory data are first grouped into as yet global classes of gross patterns,
and then subsequently differentiated into more specific patterns. The infant who
is given' a word su.ch as "daddy", and has the task of finding the category labelled
by this word, does not start out with the working hypothesis that a specific,
concrete object, say his father, uniquely bears this name. Rather, the word
initially appe ars to be u s ed as the labe l of a general and open category, corresponding
to the adult category of people or men.
Infra-hwnan animals are taught with
difficulty, if at all, to make the generalizations involved in naming, whereas
children fall in with the ways of names automatically.
Name s, other than proper
names, refer to ope n and flexibl e c l a s ses, which are subj e ct to e xte nsion and
differentiation in the ~ourse of languag e usage.
Catego rization and naming
involve relations between categories; nothing ever resides in a single term;
~ means nothing without £ and probably ~ and ~; £ means nothing without .5:..
and c and d. Children go about assimilating the relations that are embodied
in language, not me rely imitatively, but in an active, inventive, and critical
way.
They are full of impossible questions:
"How did the sky happen? How did the sun happen?
like a lamp? Who makes bugs?"
Why is the moon so much
At first, they are ultra-literal in their reactions to idioms and metaphors.
When grandmother said that winter was coming soon, the grandchildren laughed
and wanted to know: "Do you mean that winter has legs?" And when a lady said "I'm
dying to hear that concert", the child's sarcastic response was, 11'Then why don't
you die?" Sometimes reconciliation of adult requirements requires genius.
Chukovsky reports that a four-year-old Muscovite, influe nced both by an atheist
father and by a grandmother of orthodox faith, was overheard to tell her playmate:
"There is a god, but, of course, I do not believe in him." The active analogizing
and generalizing of 4- and 5-year olds is discernible in the odd questions they
can put:
"What is a knife -- the fork's husband?"
"Isn't it wonderful? I drink milk, water, tea, and cocoa, but out of
me pours only tea."
"What does blue look like from behind?"
�-17For a certain period, there is a special, heightened sensitivity to the strangeness
of words and their meanings; by age 5 or 6 this talent begins to fade, and by
7 or 8 all traces of it have disappeared. The need has passed; the basic principles
of the child's native language have been mastered.
What is it that has in fact been gained? We say, knowledge of a language.
But what is a language, my language? Thoughtfully considered, this is a wellnigh impossible question, because a language is .not a simple object, existing
by itself and capable of being grasped in its totality. It exists in the
linguistic competence of its users; it is what Aristotle would call an actuality
of the second kind, like the soul, or like knowing how to swim when you are
not swirruning. Through it I constitute myself a first-person singular subject,
by using this short word "I", which everyone uses, and which in each seems to
refer to something different, yet the same. And through it I am brought into
relation with others -- the ubiquitous "you" -- and with the public thing that
is there for both you and me, a treasury of knowledge and value transmitted
through and embedded in language.
We hear language spoken of as "living language", and there is evidence
enough to make it more than a metaphor. Language reproduces itself from generation
to generation, remaining relatively constant, yet with small mutations, enough
in fact to account for-its growing and evolving, leaving vestiges and fossils
behind, and undergoing speciation as a result· of migrations,, like Darwin's
finches on the Galapagos Islands. A change here provokes an adjustment there,
for the whole is a complex of relations, mediating between a world and human
organisms that are a part of it. The way a word is used this year is, in
biological lingo, its phenotype; the deep and more abiding sense in it is its
genotype.
It is we, of course, who are accomplishing all this; but we do not know
how we accomplish it. It is mostly a collective, autonomic kind of doing, like
the building activities of ants and termites, or the decision-making of bees.
It takes generation after generation, but we are part of it whenever and however
we utter words or follow them in the sentences th.at we hear or read, whether
lazily or intently, whether with habitual acceptance or active inquiry. Always
the words are found for us, and fitted with meanings for us, by agents in the
brain over which we exercise no direct control. We can either float with the
stream, sometimes a muddy tide of slang and jargon and cliche, or struggle cross
stream or upstream. Sometimes we can, sensing the possible presence of a meaning,
attempt a raid on the inarticulate; we can launch ourselves into speech, discovering what it is that we mean as we proceed. We "articulate"; the word once
meant division into small joints, then, by an effortless transition, the speaking
of sentences. There are unexpected qutcomes. We may find that our utterance is
ungrarrunatical or illogical; or we may discover that the connection of ideas
leads in directions we had not previously considered. In any case, phonetic,
syntactical, and semantic structures are being actualized in time, without our
quite knowing how. Yet we can strive after that lucidity and precision which,
when achieved, make language seem transparent to what there is.
�-18I have already been carried beyond the two propositions I set out to defend,
and in doing so, I have moved into a region of ambiguity. The question as to
what is determined by nature, independently ofus, and what is man-made, is an
ancient and disturbing question, embedded in old etymologies and myths.
(See Table IX). In more than one language, the word "man" is derived
from "earth". So it is in Hebrew: Adam, "man", comes from the word for "ground".
As shown in the upper diagram, the IndoEuropean root for "earth" gives us "man"
and "human" as well as "humus". The notion here is that of the autochthonous
origin of humans, their origination from the earth itself; it is a notion found
in early cultures all over the world. An implication would seem to be that man
is like a plant in his naturalness. On the other hand, as shown in the lower
diagram, the IndoEuropean root "wiros", "man" or "the strong one", leads not
only to virile but, staggeringly, to world, suggesting that man makes himself
and his world.
The dicho~omy, the tension, emerges in the Theban cycle of myths (see Table X).
Following a suggestion of Levi-Strauss, I am listing elements of it in chronological
order from left to right and from the top downward, but in columns, to show the
repetition of similar elements. Cadmus is sent off to seek his sister; he
kills a dragon, a chthonic monster, that will not permit men to live, and sews
the teeth of the dragon in the earth; from the teeth sprout up armed men who
kill one another, all except five who become the ancestors of the Thebans. In
column I are listed events of the myth in which blood relations seem to be given
too much importance. In colu..~n II are listed murders of brothers by brother,
of a father by a son: here blood relations are brutally disregarded. Column I is
thus opposed to column II. In column III, chthonic monsters that were killing
off humans are themselves killed by men; we can interpret this as a denial
of the autochthonous origin of man, an assertion that man has now become selfsufficient, himself responsible for his continued existence. In column IV .a re
listed the meanings of the names of the Labdacidae, including Oedipus; the
etymologies all indicate difficulty in walking or in standing upright. In myths
throughout the world, this difficulty in walking or standing is characteristic
of the creature that has just emerged out of the earth; the names given in column
IV thus constitute an assertion of the autochthonous oYigin of man. Column IV
contradicts column III, just as column I contradicts column II. The myth
de?ls with a difficulty of one sort, not by resolving it, but by juxtaposing
it to another, parallel type of opposition. Neither man's rootedness in nature
nor his transcendence of nature is unproblematic:
The study of language and its acquisition by children indicates that our
language has genet~c foundations or roots. These, however, have their fruition
only under appropriate conditions, only through culture. Man is by nature
a cultural animal. He does not fabricate his linguistic culture out of whole
cloth.
On the one hand, it becomes conceivable that a universal grammar and semantics
might be formulated, describing the species-specific features and presuppositions
that characterize human linguistic behavior universally. On the other hand,
nature's gift of language brings with it an apparent freedom from deterministic
necessity not previously present. Most of our sentences are quite new; it is
�-lguncommon for one sentence to come out the same as another, though the thoughts
be 1;.he same. Our utterances are free of the control of detectible stimuli.
The number of patterns underlying the normal use of language, according to
Chomsky, is orders of magnitude greater than the seconds in a lifetime, and
so cannot have been acquired simply by conditioning. While the laws of generation
of sentences remain fixed and invariant, the specific manner in which they are
applied remains unspecified, open to choice. The application can be appropriate.
Articulate, structurally organized signals can be raised to an expression
of thought.
Achievement here is subject to change and old laws, and it depends on a
sensitivity to old meanings as well as new possibilities. It requires both
strength and submission.
�TABLE I
Respiratory Adaptation in Speech
Breathing
Quietly
During Speech
3
3
Tidal volume
·soo-600cm
Time of inspiration
Time of
inspiration + expiration
about 0.4
about 0.13
Breaths per minute
18-20
4-20
Expiration
Continuous &
unimpede d
Periodically interrupted, with increase
in subglottal pressure
Electrical activity in
expiratory muscles
Nil or very low
Nil or very low at
start of phonation;
then increases rapidly
and continues active
to end of expiration
Electrical activity in
inspiratory muscles
Active in inspiration & nil during
expiration
Active in inspiration
& in expiration till
expiratory muscles
become active
Musculatures involved
Chest & abdominal,
closely synchronized
Mainly chest; slight
de synchronization
between chest and
abdominal muscles
Airways
Primarily nasal
Primarily oral
1500-2400cm
�FIGURE I
ROUND DANCE
..,.,,,.
/
,....
- ---
/
'
I
l~
1 "'-;
/"'-
-
t
/
-/~:
--./...:
.-
.--..:_
'\
'\\
""
'./,,
~
\
I
I
I
I
1
\
I
I
\
I
I
~
'
/ ' /
/
/
~.,.......::....-
.....:..
......... ........ .
.
TAIL-WAGGING DANCE
-· - -.....
. .
..,&'"
, .
lrn/
...._
.-.,.
• /?' ,,--.
\
/
..-.
~
/
r
'l~
-k::;~/
'
'
\.
...~~}~\.
I
~
'
)
'
\
(....
(
\
'
I
/
~
\
t
t
'
\
\
· J,-
'~
) .
l
I
1 \
\.. '-
--....-- _.,,. /
I
l
d
'
I
'
I
I
/
-......
__.
_.,,.,,.. /
�TABLE II
Species-specific Features of Human Speech
1.
Phonematization
"Morphemes":
the smallest meaningful units into which an
utterance can be divided.
Examples:
water
spick and span
"er" in "whiter", "taller", etc.
"Phoneme":
the smallest distinctive unit of sound functioning
within the sound system of a language to make a
difference.
Examples:
/p/ vs. /b/
/t/ vs. /d/
Phonematization: all morphemes in all natural human languages
are divisible into phonemes.
single morphemes are strung together into sequences,
rather than being used in isolation.
2.
Concatenation:
3.
Grammar or Syntactical Structure:
in no human language are
morphemes strung together in purely random order.
Examples (Chomsky) :
Grammatical:
furiously"
Ungrammatical:
colorless"
"colorless green ideas sleep
"furiously sleep ideas green
�TABLE III
Comparative Weights of Brain and Body in Humans,
Including Nanocephalic Dwarf, Chimpanzees, and Monkeys
Body Wt.
(kg)
Brain Wt.
(kg)
Human (male)
2-1/2
13-1/2
1.100
12.3
yes
Human (male)
13-1/2
45
1.350
34
yes
Human (male)
18
64
1.350
47
yes
INanocephalic
dwarf
12
13-1/2
0. 400
34
ye_s_u_
Chimp (male)
3
12-1/2
·o.4oo
34
no
47
0.450
104
no
0.090
40
no
I
Chimp (female)
adult
Rhesus monkey
adult
3-1/2
Ratio
(Bcdy : Brain)
Speech
Acquisition
Age
I
�TABLE IV
Imitations by Adam and Eve, Two years of Age
Model Utterance (parent)
Child's Imitation
Tank car
Tank car
Wait a minute
Wait
Daddy's brief case
Daddy brief case
Fraser will be unhappy
Fraser unhappy
He '.s going out
He go out
That's an old-time train
Old-time train
It's not the same dog as Pepper
Dog Pepper
No, you can't write on Mr. Cramer's
shoe
Write Cromer shoe
a minute
Contentives
Nouns:
Daddy, Fraser, Pepper, Cromer;
tank car, minute, brief case, train, dog,shoe
V~rbs:
wait, go, write
Adjectives:
unhappy, old-time
Functors:
the possessive inflection 's
the modal auxiliary will
the progressive inflection -ing
the contraction of the auxiliary verb is
the preposition on
the articles the and an
the modal auxiliary can
�TABLE V
Adult Expansions of Child Pronouncements
Utterances of Child
Mother's Expansions
(Additions circled)
Baby highchair
BabyE in the ) highchair
Mommy eggnog
Mommy(£ad herleggnog
Eve lunch
Eve~ having1lunch
Monuny sandwich
Mommy
Sat wall
~sandwich
~sa~wall
Throw Daddy
Throw\it t~ Daddy
Pick glove
Pick(!he'j glove
&J
�TABLE VI
Plural Inflection
Regularization of irregular fonns:
Singular
vs.
Plural
mouse
mouses
foot
foots
feet
feets
man
mans
or:
Words ending in sibilants
First Stage:
(as well as horse, match, judge, etc.)
treated as both singular and plural
~ox
bok vs. boks, in analogy with normal
Possible Second Stage:
"s" pluralization, replaces box vs. boxes
Third Stage:
after box vs. boxes is produced, then we also
get foot vs. footses, hand vs. handses
Past Tense Inflection
goed
corned
/
come
went
~came
buyed
doed
do
---------
~did
/
buy"-....
~bought
�TABLE VII
TIME I:
Noun Phrases with Generative Rule
A coat
That Adam
Big boot
*A celery
That knee
Poor man
*A Becky
More coffee
Little top
*A hands
*More nut
The top
· *Two sock
Dirty knee
My Monuny
· Two shoes
My stool
*Two tinker toy
NP ~ M +
N
M
a, big, dirty, little, more, my, poor, that, the, two
N
Adam, Becky, boot, coat, coffee, knee, man, Monuny, nut, sock,
stool, tinker toy, top, etc.
TIME II:
A.
Subdivision of Modifier class with Generative Rules
Privileges peculiar to articles
Obtained
Not Obtained
A blue flower
*Blue a flower
A nice nap
*Nice a nap
*A your car
*Your a car
*A my pencil
*My a pencil
Rule:
B.
NP -7.
Art + M + N
(Not:
NP --7 M + art + N)
Privileges peculiar to demonstrative pronouns
Not Obtained
Obtained
*That a horse
*A that horse
*That a blue flower
*A that blue flower
* Blue a that flower
Rule:
NP --7 Dem + Art + M + N
*Ungrammatical in adult English
�FIGURE II
Chomskian Phrase Markers
"Surface Structure"
Sentence (S)
~
Subject
(Noun Phrase)
Predicate
/~
/~
Noun
.
. Adjective
t
.Invisible
t
God
Verb
Object
\
the visible world
created
"Deep Structure"
Sentence (S)
·~
1~
Predicate
Subject
/\
God
/~
Object
Verb
S
/l~
Subject
J,
God
Copula
J
is
Pred . Adj.
-}
invisible
J
Created
l~ S
//~
Subject Copula Pred.
the world
J..
the world
"' .
is
\.
Adj.
visible
�FIGURE III
"They are boring Students ... :
Two Interpretations
Interpretation A
Sentence
Predicate ,
Subject
~ Nominative
Predicate
j
I
Verb
I
I
Adjective
Copula
Pronoun
students
boring
are
They
\
J
I
j
~Noun
Interpretation B
Sentence
/~
Predicate
subject
I~
verb
Pronoun
j
They
Object
I~
Progressive
Aux
j
are
\
boring
\
Noun
\
students
�TABLE VIII
Evidence For "Deep" Structure
Surface structures the same,
deep structure different:
John is eager to please.
{ John is easy to please.
Surface structures different,
Recently seventeen elephants
trampled on my summer house.
deep structures the same:
My summer home was recently
trampled on by seventeen elephants.
Visual patterns recognized as similar,
although no point-to-point correspondence exists between them.
--
-7
~-
�TABLE IX
Some Etymologies
_/7
gum an
(Germanic)
dhghem
------------~----------.-:.-gumen
'
(IndoEuropean)
(Old English)
= "earth"
= "man"
homo, humanitas ·
(Latin)
humus
(Latin)
="mould", "ground"
chthon
(Greek)
= "earth"
human
(English)
humus
(English)
chthonic ----,...autochthonous
(English)
= "fromthe earth
itself"
= . "of the earth"
vir---(Latin)
= "man"
--->- virile
{English)
wiros
(IndoEuropean)
= "man"
we.r
(Germanic,
Old English)
="man", "the~
strong one"
~
weorold ~ world
(AngloSaxon)
(English)
= "age of man",
"world"
alt, old
(AngloSaxon)
= "age"
�TABLE X
I
Blood relations
overemphasized
II
IV
III
Blood relations
underemphasized
Chthonic monsters
that would not
permit men to live
are slain by men
Difficulties in
walking straight
and standing
upright
Cadmus seeks
his sister
Europa,
ravished by Zeus
Cadmus kills
the dragon
The Spa rti (the
sown dragon's
teeth) kill one
another
Labdacus (Laius's
father) = "lame"
Laius (Oedipus' s
father) =
"left-sided"
Oedipus kills
his father,
Laius
Oedipus kills
the Sphinx
Oedipus "swollen-foot"
Oedipus marries
his mother,
Jocasta
Eteocles and
Polyneices, brothers,
kill one another
Antigone buries
her brother,
Polyneices,
despite
prohibition
Column I
Column II .. Column IV
Column III
�Bibliography
(In the preparation of this lecture I made use of the following books: the book
by E. H. Lenneberg, as well as the book edited by him, was particularly useful.)
Benveniste, Emile, Problems in General Linguisitcs (Coral Gables, Fla.: University
of Miami Press, 1971)
.,
Chomsky, Noam, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1965)
-------------, Cartesian Linguistics (New York:
-------------
Language and Mind (New York:
Harper & Row, 1966)
Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1968)
CrYstal, David, Linguistics (Penguin, 1971)
Frisch, Karl von, The Dance Langua ge and Orientation of Bees (Cambridge, Mass.
Belknap Press of Harvard, 1967)
Goldstein, Kurt, Language and Language Disturbances (New York, 1948)
Lenneberg, E. H., The Biological Foundations for Language (New York:
& Sons, 1967)
John Wiley
Lenneberg, E. H. (ed.), New Directions in the Study of Language (Cambridge, Mass.:
M. I. T. Press, 1966)
Lindauer, Martin, Communication Among Social Bees (New York:
Lyons, John, Noam Chomsky (New York:
Atheneum, 1967)
Viking Press, 1970)
Saussure, Ferdinand de, Course in General Linguistics (ed. Bally & Sechehaye; tr.
Baskin; New York: 1959)
Skinner, B. F., Verbal Behavior (New York:
Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1957)
�
Dublin Core
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Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
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34 pages
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<em>Homo loquens</em> from a biological standpoint
Description
An account of the resource
Typescript of a lecture given on September 19, 1975 by Curtis Wilson as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
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Wilson, Curtis
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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1975-09-19
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text
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pdf
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English
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lec Wilson 1975-09-12
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<a title="Sound recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3670">Sound recording</a>
Deans
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a715ac5c895949d67ad8e9052c322938.mp3
d0ee594456840281f563f2772ece653d
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
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<em>Homo loquens</em><span> from a biological standpoint</span>
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Audio recording of a lecture given on September 19, 1975 by Curtis Wilson as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
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Wilson, Curtis
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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1975-09-19
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sound
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mp3
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English
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lec Wilson 1975-09-19
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<a title="Typescript" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3652">Typescript</a>
Deans
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a704208e72c40428abc052f69004b701.mp3
edce5fa96846e8e65c88525d493057a2
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
wav
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:03:15
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<em>The Student</em>, by Anton Chekhov: A Story About Us Told and Glanced At
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on November 3, 2017, by Louis Petrich as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Petrich, Louis
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-03
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Petrich_Louis_2017-11-03
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/395fe6f2b8804b1b070963ce09d7f3e1.mp4
39e11fea1fcb27c9fbbe9e4f0100a4da
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
live YouTube webcast
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:52:03
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<span>Ulysses: Does Your Life Matter? The Conspiracy Against Knowing Who You Are and How to Fight This Conspiracy with Amor-Matris</span>
Description
An account of the resource
Video recording of a lecture delivered by Annapolis tutor David Townsend on March 26, 2021 as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Mr Townsend describes his lecture: "Ulysses names Amor Matris—mother-love—as the passion most strongly opposing the tyrannical conspiracy against knowing who you are. Mothers are certain that their children deserve love and freedom. People infused with Amor Matris cannot be dominated without their consent. Tyrants cannot control people who love this deeply. Via the stories of the three main characters, Ulysses gives you a purpose-driven way to free yourself, your native land, your dearest associations, your working life, your family and friends, and your soul."
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Townsend, David L., 1947-
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-03-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a typescript of my lecture available online."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
moving image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp4
Subject
The topic of the resource
Love, maternal
Joyce, James, 1882-1941. Ulysses
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Townsend_David_2021-03-26
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/499d77fed3c616f2dab52c7806ee2e61.mp4
add3744da74637264f675b79046187ac
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
mp4
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:01:15
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<span>W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, and the Democratic Catastrophe of the Color Line</span>
Description
An account of the resource
Video recording of a lecture delivered by Jared Loggins on April 16, 2021 as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Mr. Loggins is an Assistant Professor of Black Studies and Political Science at Amherst University. His research and teaching interests are in black political thought, religious studies, and modern and contemporary democratic theory. He is about to publish his first book, which he co-authored, that “explores a critical theory of racial capitalism in the work of Martin Luther King Jr.”
Mr. Loggins describes his lecture: "When W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, at the dawn of the twentieth century, the now famous formulation in The Souls of Black Folk that 'the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,' he was issuing something of a prophecy. Du Bois foresaw catastrophe in a failure to regard the flourishing of African-Americans in the United States as of central concern in the American polity. Souls imagined racial domination as a shared 'democratic' catastrophe, and one that can be understood as taking on world significance in his later work. In seeing the catastrophe of racial domination as shared, Souls established Du Bois as a towering political theorist on the question of what freedom demands on both sides of the color line."
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Loggins, Jared A., 1992-
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-04-16
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a typescript of my lecture available online."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
moving image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp4
Subject
The topic of the resource
Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963. Souls of black folk
African Americans--Social conditions
United States--Race relations
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Macfarland, Joseph C.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Loggins_Jared_2021-04-16
Friday night lecture
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/fd3b37ccf37cda39acc2c51d4037265b.mp3
827475f3faf89363e548a9d65516a45c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
wav
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:55:11
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
1001 Nights of Marcel Proust
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on February 11, 2011, by Patricia Locke as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Locke, Patricia M.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2011-02-11
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received giving blanket permission to make recordings of lectures and to make them available in the library and online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Proust, Marcel, 1871-1922. À la recherche du temps perdu
Arabian nights. Selections
Storytelling
Sleep. Stages
Sleep. Psychological aspects
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LEC_Locke_Patricia_2011-02-11_ac
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/77abfdeb9758ed9a7d57128e897740b4.mp3
b393f396b3805c85894b602b54edfc86
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
wav
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:10:49
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
A Grecian Urn
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 6, 1984, by Howard J. Fisher as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Fisher, Howard J., 1942-
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1984-04-06
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received giving St. John's College blanket permission to make audiovisual recordings of Howard J. Fisher's lectures, speeches, and addresses available online, and to make copes of typescripts of Howard J. Fisher's lectures speeches, and addresses available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Symmetry
Art
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LEC_Fisher_Howard_1984-04-06_ac
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/3f48c7af77f1cf87a95e7061109f8d6d.pdf
09ca56fa6e358f59c57195ae02c2c3f4
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
pdf
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
13 pages
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
A History of Galileo's Inclined Plane Experiment and Its Philosophical Implications
Description
An account of the resource
Powerpoint slides of a lecture given on September 9, 2011 by Paolo Palmieri.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Palmieri, Paolo
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2011-09-09
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College was given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
lec Palmieri 2011-09-09
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/c6683e75b0320650ae65aa6e7049027c.mp3
30f37208098f8e5af41bb5e7f22d0a6c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
wav
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:52:46
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
A Many Headed Beast
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered by Jason Tipton on November 16, 2018, as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Tipton, Jason A.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-11-16
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make copies of my typescript available online"
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Tipton_Jason_2018-11-16
Subject
The topic of the resource
Plato. Republic
Soul
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/21695765030a399c5d9c38253cc31fad.pdf
4fad9d8e3a98172ea169d93407ced55a
PDF Text
Text
A READlNG OF THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS
Eva Brann
Expanded Version ·
Friday ~ight Lecture
1968
�Final text of the addre••
delivered at th• dedication of the c..etery at Gettysburg
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on.
thla continent, an• natlon, o-•tv•d'ln. Liberty, and dedicated
to the proposition that all •en ar• created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great eivll var, testing whether that
nation, or any nation ao oencelved and so dedicated, can lo'ftl endure.
We are 118t on a great battle-field of that war~ We hav• coae t•
dedicate a portion ef that field, as a ft.na~ reatlng ptaee fer
those who here gave their live• that that natien •lght .live. It ls
altesether fitting and preper "
that ve ehould do thl1.
.
lut, in a larger aenae, we ean net d•d1oat• ... we oan not
consecrate • we ean Mt ball•w • thl1 greund• TM brave •en, llving
and dead, who 1trugsled here, have conaeerat•d it, far a"v• e>ur·
· poor power te add or detraet. the world will little n.te, nar long
re11•ber tlhat we say h•r•, .but it oan never for get 111h.at they did .
here, It is for ue the living, rather, to be dedicated her• te the
unflnlahed · werk which they whe fought her• nave t:hu1 far •• nobly
advanced. It la rather for us te be her• dedlt!ated ~ tlut great task
reaaln.ing before ua - that fr•• t1-•• honored dead ve take lncr••••d
devotion t• that cauae for vhleh they gave the last fwll ••••ur• of
devotion • that we here highly reeelve that th••• dead 1hall n.t
have died ln valn • that this ~tlon, under God, ahall have a new
birth of (rHdoa • and that geverna•nt of the people, by the p.. ple,
fer the peeple, shall net perl1h fro• the earth.
Abrah.,. Llnceln
Nov•b•r 19, 1863
1.
the Speech •• a Whal•
It la probably beat to .begin by ebaerving what la aoet ebvlous
about thle "Address Delivered at the Dedioatloo of the Cemetery at
Gettysburg" (p. 734)* - its brevity. It . oen•i•t• of t•n eentenoes
which can be spoken ln a little over two airutea. It la ao short that
on the eccaslon of lte delivery in the open air, before a orovd of
more than 15,000 people, though the speaker delivered hla wurds •tn
a cl•ar, full veloe.• he
d to have finished before his voice
had really begun t• car~y.
•re..
Perhaps this very (ugltive character of the live speech has
something to do wtth its enduranae as a piece of pro••· We know
that Lincoln meant the speech t• 1urvlv• as a written tut, since
h• ht.aaelf prepared ••.v eral copies fer publl•ation, the laat ene
over three months after its dellvery.2 · And although Lincoln
punctuated thi• 1peech, aa he did allhi.1 epeeohea, in the . .nner
of an orator, as it was to be heard (cf. P• 47), using especially
~
.
At'th•• Ltnqf~na
{brary,
62.
*All page references to Lincoln's speeches co• fro•
Speechee !ml ·· Writ:iD&•• ed. R. P. Bailer, Uni.versa
H.ll
�the ce...s of grammar to . .rk th• ~o. .as o~ 1peaker'1 pau1e• of
the rhetorle, yet there ta ••••thlng peoµl l.&rly .•1et_ dew• and
permanent about lt.
· •· ·
·
· · · · · ' , . ' ··
furtheraore we know fro• Llneoln hl•••lf that h• ohee• hie
format quite deliberately. Fer he answered _Everett- vh9 had
,
generously· written t• bi• that "I ahould t>e'"sl•d if . I could flatter
•yself that I ca- as near te the central ldeae! the oeea1ion
in two hours •• you did in twe •11tut•a" that _ ,
M•n
In our respective p&rtl Y••t•rday. ' ye~ oeul.d net ha-..
exouaed te uke • ahort addre1a, no·r I a leng on• (pa 737) •
• •~
•
J
Edward Everett, whe had been·· both a ~·t•a:ler ~t Gr•'• k •t
Harvard and a d:l•t inguiahed atate1un 1 bad been oheaen to be the
t1aln apeaker at the dedication as a national ce-tery of th• piece
of ground beught by the eight~-.n ~orth~r~ ~tat~e ;wtio had l••t aen
at the battles ef Getty1burg. · · Linceln, aa chief. of aiate, bad been
invited only two weeka be!ore the · oereuny and £verett had court. .usly
sent hi• his own two-hour 's peech, 3. ctoapoaed _ the olaaat.alzing
lp
,
style. for which he vaa famous, ao that Llneoln alsl\t 'aenelder lt
in writt.rg hie own (p. 738). We •1ght then ...-otL1neoln'• speech
to be oo. 1POa•d aa a eounterpol••- t• Everett•• 1 ln !apt, ln eplte of
1
Li.neoln'a expressed adalrat1on (p~ 737) • . it ." •ett•s to be, a tacit·
and tactful repudiation : ef auoh learned rnetoric. : . .'
Everett be~ina vitha re!erence ·to th• funeral cere•niee for
tJ1e so).dlers of ancient· ·Athene, reporte~ by thuc.ydidee in the
~-e~ond ·book of t-h• PtltRtoDI• ttn ~ (para a. · 35 ff.) , ..-:td end a by
quoting Pericles• speech, ·aa Thucydides givee it. Evk"•tt'•
speech wae thus intended to be, and wa1 readily reeognlzed •• bet.ng1
••elass1cal • ln t&ne. In a aal iolous but not totally inept editorial,
the Richmond ~9111)1r had said of Everett'• perfor•anc~a •so f&J!
the play was strictly classtc•1 and then o! Lincoln's 1peeoh .. To
suit the gert•ral public, ·however, a little ad•ixtt.Fe .e f the •re
irregular ro•antlc drau was allowed"• the latt;.,•r tena •ight
conceivably be applied te a apeeon which, in its reveal.,ns brev i ty,
was 11.ke the aerteua obverse of a Llncoln!ai\ anecdotfh
.
.Here are certain other points in whloh the twe apeeche1 differed.
Everett'• waa heavtlydaotylica a stress verelon ' of the Greek epie
_ foo~ of. one , long and two short ayllablea appeared eften, , beginrill18
with the first words 1
·
··
- I
I
..
.
'
Standing beneath this serene
eky,
through phrases Ilk••
" the
.. -
I
. .
·
.
,
'
.
I
~raves , o!
our brethren beneath our feet;,
,.,
I
•
· I
. .
I
.
.
the -eloquent ·Silence of God and Nature, ·
.,
c~
.,.. I
I ..
I
I
It was appeil'\ted by law in Athens;· ·
to the final wordsa
�·l~
I
I
I
that whtoh r•latel to the Battles of Gettyaburg.
Lincoln's speech, on the other hand, has the prevallina diayllabic
pattern, . . stly lamba, ·natural .to sober Engli1h apeeah. So after
the two long beats of a grave and 11e>urnful apondee the pattern
sets ina
I
I
I
I
I
Four score and seven year• age,
and in the last paragraph partioularl~ sequences of laablo
penta•eter are dlaoernible.
In respect t• diction, Everett'• prose vaa «=la11loal and
Latinate, while, lt ha1 been reckoned, Llnoalil on thi1 eccaaion uaed
only 32 words of Latin orlgin9 in contrast to . his praotlae vhtll'l
addressing a aelfM!t body, for instance, Congreaa; aa ln th• pererat. lon of his Annual Heaaage of 18611
With a relianee on Providence, all th• 110re fir• and earneat,"1et
i•:: t · us proceed ln the great task which events have devolved upon
·
It ".'.,
(pa 635) e
.
.
us
Aa for eettl~, Everett conaeived hie effo~t ae part ef a
11onumental tradlt1.on of aeldler~ funeral oratory. He: ende by
••belliahill8 upon P•rlolea• . .snlloquent saying that •tbe whole
earth ls the sepulchre of llluatrloua men.• Lincoln,,ln aontra1t,
asslgn1 to the dead neither the earth wlth which he end1 hi• apeeeh,
nor th& continent with which he begin•, nor even the battle field on
which he dwells in the slddle, but soberly, a aere . .deat •postlon
of that field.• So also Everett, beginnlng •• Periclea had, with
a reference to the law in Athena, aakes aucb of the am;t.que 1anctlon
for such cere•nle1 1 whla!h included an ebllsatory funeral eratlen
delivered by an orator chosen for th• purpe1e. Llnoelft• en th•
other hand, in hia first draft aaya brusquely, -•thle we aay in all
propriety do" (p. 736) 1 intiaating that such dedication• are an
indulgence of the livl~, and aoderates this in delivery to a brief
statement of co11aon propriety•
It ls altosether fitting and proper that we ahould do thl••
(p.
734,
cf~
P• 728),
.
only to go on to call the whole cere11e>ny in questlan1
But 1 in a larger aenae, we can not dedicate - we oan not
consecrate - we can not hallaw • this ground. The brave aen,
living and dead, who 1truggled here, have consecrated it, far
above our poor power ' to add er detract.
Lincoln ls lmplioitly ..klng the aignlficant point that it is !!IS
the l~w tn Aaeriaa to have such oaaequles and such speaker1, that
honor, particularly for the dead, 11 not an ••tabll1hed publics
concern 1n A••rlca.
�In content, · what la ••t atriking t.1 that Everett touahe1 on
a nwiber of •attere .on whioh_L1neoln has . not one exp11clt word.
Everett re!era te the Confederate "lnva1lon11 of Maryland and ·
Pennsylvania and ceaparea 1t te the Peralan invaai•ft~f G~•eae.
Lincoln, en th• ether band, ~d. ln a letter to General Ralleek,
specl.fically objeeted t• a phr••• ltke ·11 drlv• ti. invad•i' tr••
our 1011•. uaed by General Meade ln hla order thanklng the aray for
the victory at Gettyabur· . Fer, Lincoln. · aaid, "th• male country
g
is our soil,• alndful ef the faot that th• opponent vae not a
fore~ner • .. Hence h• aaye nethin.g of the _
atratestc a1.roW11tamea
of" th~ battle credited with ending th• danger of a Colilfederat•
occupation ef the North which aake up:.:, the bulk of Everett' a tut,
nor . doea he, aa Everett, assign reaponaib111ty fer· .the var, _ tak• up
epeciflc conatltutienal queetiona or aention explieitly the fundaaenta}
issues of alavery and Unt.on. It 11 worth ••ntlont.ng th.ea• oal1alone,
because, as will be shown, in a way they ahape the apeeea.
·
Thus Linooln preeenta an alt•rnatlve te the olaa9loizlng atyle,
an unde110cratle style daalgned, at bttttoa, fqr the secret and eeparate
satle!actlon of the speaker and
conn.laaeura. Thi• appears
aost cleaaly at a _polnt in Which Lincoln
in~e · algni!loant
contrast with the claaaloal •delatheaaelvea, vi.th Thuaydt.d•• and
his Pericles, net by way ot .E:verett'a learned fllter, but 1. .edlatelyt
nor aa a etudent of the P9lo~ont1110 !!II: (there ls n. evldence that
,_he was), but as an Aaerican vth an Athenian 1tate1un. Everett••
·- cholce of aedel had, after all, been an aead••ic, a polltleally
bl ind cholcje, fer in the Aurlaan tradition P•rloles 11, of neceaaity,
a dubious figure, the leader whO, aa Al•xander Haallton aaya tn
~he sixth F1de;9ll•~· was fer peraonal aottvea
·
••Ille
co•••
aucber •f tha• fa-.ua aM -ta1*al , war._ wbl~h
••
•• tenlnated in the · ruin of the Athenian co..,,nw•alth.
~h• prl•lalv•
~
It is only necessary t• cal 1 that var a o1v11 var to sn" that . Perie lea
la Lincoln'• - roper antique antagenl8t. The queet~n here la1 hov
p
do they contrast with respect to political rhetqric1
·
The single sentence or th• 1peech wbieh had the greateet eff'9Ct
at the tiae and was aoat singled out for anecd(>te and quetatlon
(for instance, by the P~iJ1d1lpbi1 Pr•10 Ind Htrptr'• Wtfi\y) vas
the follovln~ generou• alsehooda
.
The world vl,11 little n0t:e, ner long re11e•ber what we aay
here; but lt can never forget what they did here.
The word
In
5UJl was the only word underecered (F1tet Draft, P• 736).
this emphasis on the soldlers• deed, LtncQln, of oeurn,
_expresses hie senae of urgency in that late fall of 1863, vb.en after
the SWiiier battles of Gettysburg, auch to his dlsappointaent~ ·
expressed in urgent letters to his generals (cf. PP• 711-12, 726-27),
there had been only indecisive 11aneuvering ln the eaat. Lincoln
_
�felt oppressed by unf1nlshed buslnass and had said that hia speech
would be "ehort. short. ahert." the "unflnt.ahed wark." "the gr••t
task reraalning before ua• curtail the foraat of the a~ech, and
in the precipitous elllpsea of the last sentence, .affeet lta gr-.r.
for the sentence lacks all the conneativea here eonjeeturally
supplied a
· It t.a rather for us to be here d•dt.cated .to the great taak
reaalrit.~ before ua •[vhlch aeana] that fro• th••• homred
dead we take increased devott.en to that cause fer whioh they
.8ave the last full •aaure of devotion - [and] that we here
hl~ly resolve that these dead ahall not have ·dlecf t.n valn •
[aoJ that this nation, under God, ahallheue • new birth of
lreedo• • and that govern111tnt of the people. by the people,
for the people, shall not perish fro• the earth•
But the 110re significant aspect of Linaoln'a depreciation of
"what we say here• can be beat seen by contrast with a correepondlng
sentence fro• Perlolea' open1"8• He says!
·
Moat of •Y predecessors t.n this place· have ee-ended hia
who •de this speech part of the law,. telling ua that it ia
well that it should be delivered at the burlal o( thoae ·who
fall in battle. For •Y••lf, I should have thought that the
worth which had displayed itself in deeds, would be auff\,ciently
rewarded by honours also ahriwn by deede1 such aa yeu now see in
·this funeral prepared at the people's coat. And I oeuld have
·Wished that the reputations .of many brave •en were net to be
i•perllled ln the 11outh ef a alngle individual, to stand or fall
aooordlng as he spoke well or 111 (II, 35).
the deprecating phrases barely hide Periclea• persuasion that the
dead must rely on hi• fer their life in the elty•s aeaory, !•r ho,,ar,n~·
that his speech ia worth a battle; as Thucydides thought hls history
worth a war. With that, contrast Lincoln'• assertion that the dead
are beat honored by their own deeds, that they do theiaaelvee honor,
that the task at hand overshadows all ceremony, and hie avoidance
of the pronoun "I".
·
Hore of the rhetorical character of Peri.el.••' apeech le writ
large in Plato• s d lalo~ue . Htgrcenu1, in. whieh Spcrate1 . recitee to
Menexenus an excruciatingly ~own-up caricature of Pertelea• funeral
oratory, which he elai•a to have learned fro• Pericles' hlgh•elaaa
whore Aepaeia. It ls essentially a pervers ton of the •noble lte•
of the Republt.c (414f .) • For tn it the Athenians are•·teld that
they are all autoebt:henoue, deseended fro• those whe sprang fro11
the earth, their aether, and so share equally in a h1gh and heroic
lineage (M!poxenue, 237 ff.). By th• prolonged repetttlen,·of i thla
and other false facts, erateri, .a11 Socrates deacribea . lt,
bewitch our soul•·•••o that even I, Henexenus, when so
lauded by the• feel thoroughly noble, and eaeh tlM I stand
and listen enthralled and think that I have becoae suddenly
�bigger and nobler and Mre handso•e• •• And this exaltation
re-ins wlth ae for •ore than three days (235).
Nov co•pare a speech in which Lincoln deals with the aatter of
traditional colebratl•n•, his Chicago speech of 1858 (p. 401). He
calls attention to the natl.en'• rutn•aboriginal nature, ta its
beginning 82 years ~gor he calla th• faundera,"aen we clala ae eur
fathers and ~randfathers," not hereee, but •tron aen"t he apprevea
of the annual celebratien of the ancestral founder• ef eur present
prosperity and saya drily that "we go fro• these 11eetinga tn better
humour with ourselves.• But · then he stops and r--bera that half
the preaent citizens of the country a,re not blood descendants of
the founding fathers, and he finds that the true co. .on •rather• of
all Amerloana is in fact a declaration of "soral principle,• and
through lt all AMerieana are "blood of the 'blood, and !leah of the
flesh, of the Nen who wrote that Declaratien" (p. 402).
·
In Lincoln's rhetoric, then, general prosperity take• the place
si~nificant founding act replaces continuity of .
habitatlont •nd a peraanent 11eed of sober self-approbatlcm subatitutee
for the 'exaltati•n of the days a tradition e! principle euperoedes a
llnea~e of blood,
And fer all these reasons together, the Aaerioa.n
speaker ls net a •aster aani.pulator, but a ftlitlcal t11g~.al'• the
only course open to a man Who believed, ind etinct eppea tion to
the thesis that •so.e ••n are too isnor•nt, and too ylgloul to share
in ~overnment" (p. 279), .
·
of proud deedst a
that n:. aan .ls ~ood enou~h to
ether' 1 c1 naent ( p. 304) •
~overn
another -n, · wttl]!ut
.
~
The Gettysbur~ Address will, accordingly, turn out to be a
distlllatlen of Lincoln'• political phiteaophy, which he, . en thle
occasion as on many others, atteapted tG infuse tnt,o t;he natien at·
lar~e. a nation distingulahed by the !aet th&t its proaperity ."hae a
philesophical cause" (p. 513). It is !or this reas. n that the vrltt•n
o
versions of the apeeeh have no foraal ealutat ten. - it la addressed to
all citizens. And the brevity that aade its ten sentenc•e at the
.
ti•• so fugitive in the hearing, aake them a "peraanent peea•••lon• ,
ln later readings. For because ef it the speech is readily learned
by heart, and la, ln fact, learned by ·heart by aany aehool children.
But that ••ans that it aay aucoeed in lodging in the ~t in the
fora of seund sentl11ent, e! "virtue and v1~1lance" (p~fh, theee
very propoeltlons, essential to the national life, which are too
difficult - and perhaps too dubleus - to be continually kept in !!.lm!•
Lincoln reco~nized that
.
.
In this age, in this country, public sentlaent ls everything,
since in A•erica si~nlfloant political action depends entirely on
such sentl•ent. Consequently, as a republioan stateeaan, he aade
lt his continual rhetorical task t• guide it,- that i1, te ••nvert
the founding doauaents' sound principles. into the ot.ti&•n•' sober
passion, in unoensclous accO'rdance wlth Monteaquieu•a advice in the
§piri!= ~.ll the L!n•
For he says in the chapter "Of Educatien in a
�-7Republlcan Governaent" that the ~ullar republican virtue, •teve
of the laws and of our country,• requtr•• a kt.nd ef aelf•renunolation.,
a "constant preference of public to private lnterest," and that "to
inspire it ought to be the principal business of educatien" (II,S).
But such love of things public la precisely the product of propeaition
transforaed int• sent1aental Llnoeln'• rhetarlc la ba••d en the
conversion of politlc•l principle into "aoral sentlaent" (p. 401).
••Y••
·
Thus Lincoln, who deprecates what ht
aust •ke every word
i>nl8n&nt with a werld of -•nlng, a~ hia eonte.porarlea reoo~nized
that he did just that. Th• Spr\ng!lfld Rfpubllean ce~nteda
Hts little speech ts a perfect g. . a deep ln feeling, coapact ln
thought and expreaalen, and tasteful and .elegant in every word
and eo...... Turn ba~k and read it over, it wlll repay atudy
as a 1t0del apeeeh. Strong feelings and a large brain were ·
its parents - a little palnataklr« lta tccoucl\§y[•
•ad•
The be~innlng of suctiatudy ls beat
with a acanning of the
whole, which will brlng out the g~and fraaevork of this little speech•
· In time it spans the past ("Feur score and seven years ago"), the
present ("Now we are engaged in a great civil war") and the future
("this natlen ••• ahall have a new birth of freedoa"), ¥hil• in apace
it coraprtaes the battle ground, on which it ls delivered (aiddle
sentences), the continent on which the nation was ~rn (first sentencE
and the earth which it ls to aave (last sentence). ·
11.
The First Paragraph
Linaeln- begln••
Four scere and seven
yea~s
ago •••
"Four score," vi.th its long •h's, repeated in several assonancea,
and the first of 11any alliteratlena, sounds a abre mourttful and
solemn ·, note than the wards "eighty-seven years," but th• choice
of the phrase is not only a J1Atter of sound1 it also carries a ·
speclal iuant.ng. It ta· the language of the Btble, as in Psal11 90, 101
The days 'o f our years are threeacGre · yeara and tena and
if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is th•ir
strength labour and sorrow.a for it is soon out off, and we fly
away •
. With the psala in mind ·the phrase ••ane- jus~ beyond the .ae•ry of
1
anyone new alive, too long ago for living lleaGry. Now ve know that
from youth on Lincoln was concerned with a peculiarly Aaerlcan dangers
the death of sound political passion. In hie speech on "The
Perpetuati•n of our Political lnetltutlons" of 1838,s Llnceln drew
a clear parallel with the early cofllltlnlty e! Christians, whose danger
lay ln the fact that the first generation of disciples and eye•
witnesses was followed by a second which had only heard by word of
�-8-
mouth, by a third which had begun only to have read of Christ, and
a fourth which had begun t• fer~et. So in the Aaerican co11munityi
the ecenes of the revolution
J2.! so universally known, nor so vividly felt, as they
_,,the generation juat gone to r••t (p. 84).
CtQDlt
..r.
The ••n who had seen the Revolution, who were its "l tving history••
are now genes
They were the pillars. o! the temple of llberty1 and now,
that they have cruabled away, that teaple 11ust fall, unless ve,
thelr deseendanta, .supply their places with other pillars,
hewn fro• the aolld quarry of s&ber r~ason (p. 84).
The danger that the enthuslaa11s of the Revelutlon aight beco11e mere
myths .has advaneed to a fact in 1863, the ti•• of the fourth generation
fro• that eventa the national edifice has to be rebuilt "fro11 the
solid quarry of sober reason." This la the age for a deliberate
11ining of the ft.rat aceounte, for rereadl~ ·the founding docuraents·.
Se, then "Feur 1oore and seven years ago" points to that quarry,
that alne, ef reasen. Subtract .87 fr•• 1863 and the result 18 1776.
Lincoln cen1idera that th~l natt.gn was both conceived l~ and born with
.
the Declaration .2! ln1'pt_enc§• ·· on July 7, 1863, in response to a
serenade en the eccas ctn o the . victory of Gettysburg. under the
influence cf the providential coincidence that both the victories of
that battler . and Vicksburg had been announced on the Fourth or July,
and that Jefferson and John Ada11s had both dled on that day, he
had said1
How long ago ls it • eighty odd years • since -on the Fourth .
of July for the first tl•• in the history of the world a natien
by its representatives, assembled and declared as a self·
evident truth that "all 11en are created equal•• That was the
birthday of the United States of America (P• 709) •
...
And in earlier speeches he had often counted back the et'ghty or
eighty•two years to 1776 (pp. 39!, 393)• In repeatedly fixing on
the signing of the Declaration as a crucial date, Lincoln ls making
a deliberate pelltieal judgment concerning the 'hierarehy of founding
events, different for instance fro11 the of Toombs of Georgia who ·
had begun a speech ln 1850 in this waya
Sixty years ago our Cathers joined together to form a more
perfect Union. and to establish justice ••• (of. P• 216),
refe.-ring the foun<1log Sl[ ~republic to 1790 (the date when the las~
ori8lna1 , state ratified the Constitution), and quoting frora its
Preaable. Lincoln's veraien ~ives rather the birth .2.{ Sh!! nation.
�- q ..
He goes
on~
••• our fathers brought 'fbrth on this continent, a new natlon,
conceived ln Liberty, and dedicated to the propoeltlon that all
men are created equal.
The "fathers" - he calls them fathers, although they are only
forefathers, to bring the Revolutlon close - are a very deflnlte
group of men. In another context he had said•
I suppose the "t:hirty-nine" who st.gned the original instrrn..nt
(here the Constltutiona.ay bf!' fairly called our fathers who
t'r••d that part of th• fresent Governaent (p. 517).
In this speech, then, "our fathers" must be those men, tn .part
identical vlth the signers of the Constitution (p. 305), who devlsed
and signed the Declaration, ~specially Jefferson.
·
·
. .. These men "brought forth"• thts is again Biblical dlctiona ' the
phrase ls used, for tnstance, . ln ~ 1, 31 in the annunciation of
the Messiah's birth. They •brought forth on this continent" (all
. versions but the last two had "upon•) L ther.e are undertones here
of "begot upon the body of this land,• "fathered on thla .fallQv
contlnent a1 aother•a the child nation ts safe tn the ' lap of a
whole continent, capable ef protecting it from foreign: interference
and o! providing those unlimited riches whlch are ita material
condltlon.
The new nation was •conceived ln Liberty• ("liberty" being the
only noun capital lzed beald,,.~, "God") 1 not conceived in love aa are
blessed children, but conc,lVed in the love of liberty as are
bleased nations \Cf• P• 315)~ Thus the ~gettirut of this nation
was a begetting of reason (so. also "bringing f'orth" can mean
·
"uttering reasons," cf. 11111!} 41.21), primarily a male acta as in
Aeschylus• &U!!ent.deo the begetting of the wisdom of Athens, the
conception of Athena, is exclusively male (1. 736)1 America ls a
fatherland, not a Henexenean aotherland, and this lend' Lincoln's
•patriotis111• a special cast. Upon this conception, thtJ nationchild vaa dedicated to a proposition as in a baptism. The proposition,
"that all men are created e.ual," was tn quot,tion marks ln the first
draft (p. 735) since it com.ra. from the second paragr4ph of the ·
Declaration of Independence.
·
I! these are the tmplications of the first, and shortest, of
the three paragraphs of increasing length, what ts its sign1flcance7
Consider ftret the continent, the first Qf a nation's three
parts, which are "its territory, its people, •nd its lava" (p. 676).
The second Federal1et says
Thia country and this people seem to have been made
for each other •••
�-10-
De Tocqueville makes the s&11e point of the United States1
••• God hlaself gave the11 the 11eans of remaining equal and free,
placing the11 upon a boundless continent, ••• (De10s;racy
!n A11eric1, I, xvii).
·
by
Lincoln too, especi-ally in hia ·Annual Messages to Congress, spoke .
almost with awe of the continent, "the ever-enduring part" of the
nation, whose riches give llb~rty an object, whGae 1.11pregnability
fosters an unlnvidious patrl~tls11-, and whose integrity makes
secession a chlmaerae
Physically speaking, we cannot separate (1861, P• 586) ••• the
land we inhabit ••• would, ere lo~, force reunion, however auoh
blood and t;reasure the s•paratio!l might have cost (1A62, P• 679).
Such a contl~nt makes the fittest ground for a aeed of principle,
for a continental spac• is needed te safeguard the first e11bodt11ent
of the deaGeratlc ldea.
Next• What of the blrthdate of 17767 Censonant . with the second
Fedgallst, Lincoln held that the Declaratlcan of Independ•nce ·was
.
~~te- by the Union, for~ally established by the Arti~les of
Assoc atian 1774, and was ft~~ceeded by the establishment of the
Constitution in 1787 (p. 5~. This sequence was of the greatest
stgniflcance, for 1.t ·aeant - that the nation's birth was a birth of
principle, whose issue was •ads peaslble by the ali~htly . antecedent
union of the people, and whose nature was kept safe by allowing the
practical . lnstruaent of its life to wait on its conception. · Thus,
usln~ phrases borrowed fro• Proverbs 25,11, Lincoln, wrote of the
principle .. Liberty to all" as expressed in t:he Declaration•
·
The assertion of that principle, at .tl!!£ ,.t.111§., was the
word .. fltly eppktn .. which has proved an "apple--orgold .. t;o us.
The Union and the Constituti•n are the pictut:s! of §ilver,
subsequently fraaed around tt ,(p. 513).
Herf! "subsequently .. 11t1st, ln the case of the Union, mean not later
in tiMe, but in pelltlcal priority.
Lincoln. then, held the Declaration ta be far more than a
declaration ef independence (cf. PP• 574, 577), and lndeed, it
would in that case have been a peculiar docuaent to cite in a war
to. fight secessi•n• But 1.t 1§. llUCh mores for its wri.ter, Jefferson,
had the coolness, t:orecast and capacity to lntroduce 1.nto a
Merely revolutionary document an abstract truth, ••• (p. 489)1
and lt is precisely 'by the o•lssion of this truth that the various '
"merely revolutlenary .. Declarations of Independence adopted by the
Union's adversaries are characterized (p. 607). And so Llnceln eaysa
�J have never had a feeltng polltlcal.ly that did not sprlng frofti
the eentlraente embodied in the Declarat.lon of Independence.,.
It wan not the 11ere 11atter of the separat \.on of th" Co lonles
fro11 the •otherland1 but that sentiment ln th• D•clar.atlon of
Independence whlch ~ave 1 t.berty, not alone to the peopla of thl ; ;
country, but~I hop~, to the world, for all future time (Adores~
10 ~Jl~1J11en!"t1nc,; ll!ll, 186 l, P• 577, cf. PP- 362, 513).
Now what l8 of pt·lme lmportance ln the speech ls Wu! these
pr lnc lplft~, which mark the tru.t beg hmlng of the nation, are hel d .
tincqln denomlnatf!~ t h ers "concrp'lgn§'" nnd "Q!oposi~12n~." In the
Of!claratt.on the fftthers hact he rl that they were "ltelf-~vid11a.nt Truths .;
So11ftthln~ hae happened between the foundln~ and the present: which
forc~u Llncoln to c4ll the axi.011s o! the Declaration mere proposltlo n
Th la le 'fhllt had happened 1 tpe Declarat: ton had been cal led ln
publ lo. 11 a aelf·evlchmt l le, .. a phrase Lincoln often clted with
rfl!pu~nanoe (pp • .
'314, 331, 489, cf, P• 275), for i.t qreates a f a tal
sltu11tlon1
One would ~tart wlth great conf 1.dence that he coulo convlnc
any sane chlld that the et11pler proposi.tlons of Euclid are trueJ
but neverthole~se he would fall, utterly, wlth one who should
deny tho de!tnltiona anc1 axioms. The pri.nciples cf Jefferson
Are the de!inltione •nd axi.01110 of free soctety (p!. 489).
That Llncutn hac'I 11ade a epecial effort to study t~xte concerned with .
itnrt to ponder the natUJ;e of, axt.or1att.c sel!·evtdence and logical
conaequeno• is k.nown. In hls short autoblo~raphy he particularly
nientiQne that he had "studt.ed &nd nearlv 11astered the six books of
F.:uclld tttnce he wae a me1'1lber of' Co~res; .. (p. 549). He understood
that melf~evldence le a peculiarly delicate affair. since once
impugned, one~ only dented in publtci · a,self•evtdent truth turns
lnto a debatable proposition. Yet as the axtom, precisely by reason
<>f lts eel!•evldence. was unprovable, so the . proposition has no
·
rational proof from hi,gher prtnclples, but can be verified only
fro~ its consequences or • draadful prospect - from the fatal
consequences of ite oontrary. !hie, then, ts the peculiar danger
or a natlon which lives on a tradition of expl{clt prl~ctple rather
than of ingrained myth, • prlnclple afflr~ed at its very beginning
in one event: whose impact no later ones, wlth l:he unhappy exception
of 1Jo11n catastrophe, ce.n match· that it grows blind to the selfevldence of lts conceptiona untll a catastrophe opens lts eyes.
And now, what.,more precisely, are these principles whose s tandi r
has changed? In the words of the Declaratlon they are1
that all M~n are preated equal, that thoy are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rlghts, that among these are
Llfe, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Bere equality of creation, equality before God, precedes, and ls the
condltlon of, the other rl~hts, of whlch only some are named. One
etrlkln~ o~teslon ls of positive importance, slnce wlthout lt
Ltncoln could scarcely have cited thls document ln that year which
had be~un, ln the Emanclpatlon Proclamation of January · t, lR63, with
what was ~dmitteoly a destruction of the property of many Americans
·1. ·.·
�-12-
(p. 6At). In Leok•'• teeurrent f•raula .. ll!e, liberty and preperty
(or eG.. •qulvalent fer
l••t• ni.
Itt•t~lf .It C1Y.1l
~'!.!,nuot• ••8• par••· 123, 11,, lli),• •r•en•~ 1ubitltiited
?Or prepert:y .,the Purault ef ff•J>plne11, • l••vlns the , erl9lnal p"ra•e
to be pt.oked up in the Con1tltutten (p. 524). Exoept fer thi•
sub•tltutlen th• Deelaratlen -.euld b.ardly have been ••
t•
the heart ef Lt.nceln, wtMI r ...•bered wt.th apprnval
th•
11
S•J•?f
cl•••
that ttw Je!feraon party were foraed upon it• ~UP'8••<t 1upet:'ler
devetlen t• the peraenal rtfht• ef aen, holding th• rl1hi• •f
property te be eecendary en y, and a•••tly t.nferl•~•·•• (p. •&&).
But a ••••nt
v•r dead
epeelfleally
• r • reuin,
th•
ef natlenal erisle and
t~•
ee•••lGn •f ••••... rating
lt 1earoely an eppertune tl•• te ·dwell en the
per1onal rlgftts te life and th• pursult ef happlne•••
eut et: th• Deelaratlon, tir•t equality •nd then libert1•
Nov Llneeln ••••• in thl1 epeech ta reverae tht1 erder in
setting l 1berty as th• orla1M1 ··oe'n.eeptlen, •• he had befere tented
"Liberty to all," ~ principle of the Deelaratien (p. 513). Jut
el eevhere he 1aya a ·
·
1
I believe that the deolaratienthat "all "'fin are created
equal" l• the gr••~ ('und1••nt:al prlnaipl• upon vhlch eur
f9M t i.Qtih.~~l- . i"••~ "f ~ 1
·479) I
.
l.t le tha feundt.ng prinelple to be kept: tn vlev, !er ln1t•na•, when
the terrlteriea pa1a eut ef a state ef nature and the !•undatiena
of aeeiety are latd. What do•• Llneeln censider t:• be the real
relatton •f these twe prlnclple•?
De Tequev1ll• lri th• ohapter inquiri"' .. Whr10. . .oratie Natlana
Shew a More Ardent and Enduring Leve o! lqual tty than •! Liberty•.
(n. .1yr11y in AMtlll• II, ii, t) een1lder1 lt.berty and equality
two d v•r•• aM in •P•ndent thtng1 1 ef vhloh equality pertain•
pri-rlly ta th• •••lat, liberty t:e the pelltlcal sphere. Yet
he ad•lta that ultl..tely, radlaally, ceneldered the t"t are what
weuld be called tn legtoal ter•a •co•..naurately unlveri,t,• that
11, they i•ply eaoh other•
·
It la pe•alble t• l••8ine
freedom and equallty veuld
•••t
an
I
extre•e polnt at which
and blend.
Lincoln take• exactly tht.a '*extr•••" .ul•• · '.ff8, bbit11-'111"r'i1•t•
eut hl1 underatandlng of the prlna1ple ef equal1ty with respect t•
the alavery que1tlen, whlch would appear to be prt.aarlly a queatlen
of 11berty • On the ether hand, ...h•. lnt~rprete equal lty ef ereat; ion
t:• -•n •r•ol••lY the .PO•••••l•n'ef 11 unallena-le rlght•"• chief
wh1eh le peilltt.eal liberty. The Deolarat:1en. alttwugh by ne aeana
declaring •en equal J.n Ill [!lltct1,
••Iii
�- 11-
At the Srime time> true t:o the openness_ deman<ted by the prtnc.i.ples
he usually abstains from the rhetorlcal compulsion of specific pleas,
these sentences of his .last public address, deallng with~
burning problem of the moment, are typlcal1
In the Annual Message of Dec. 1863 and accompanylng Proclamatlon,
I pre~enterl ~ plan of re-constructlon (as the phrase goes) which,
I proml!ied, if adopted by any State,- should be acceptable to,
and sustalned by, : the Executive gov.e rnment of the nation. I
distinctly stated that this was not the only plan which mi5ht:
possibly be Rcceptablea ••• (p. 797).
·
Instead of att~mptinp, to compel the people t:il ·a co1:itse deduced
. dogmatically, in the manner of an ideoloe,tst:, h~ presented in the
words of the London Spectator,
A poli.tlcal transparency, ln which the nation could see an
lndivldual character of great power working out the problems
set before them all •••
He manages to make these problems supremely absorbing, and he does
it by making almost every speech an interpretation of the founding
documents, in whlch he reveals at once their inexhaustible
radical t.ty and their enduring applicability - by g.lvlng ,Americans a
secular complement to the Scriptures (p. 84).
With respect to the promissory character of democratic
principles, Lincoln 1mder:scores lt by projecting the . growth of the
past into the futures
There are already among us those, who, if the Union be preserved,
wl 11 l lve to see lt contain two hun<1re<1 ann fifty mll 1 ions.
The struggle of today, ls not altoP-eth~r for t.oday .. it ls for
a vast future also (p. 635, cf, PP• 681, 75f1).
The present is thus understood as being the sponsor of the
futures yet the future · ts, 1.n turn, nothing but t[le magntftcation
of the past (cf. p• 656). But polttlcally the American past ls of
a. pecullar sorta it ts not an extensive, unbroken tradition but t:he
memory of a s1.ngle, lntense event - just as a fabric of reason
beg.1.ns with a principle from whlch lt is derived, so the history
of democracy beglns with the Revolutlon. Lincoln intends to assure
that that beelnntng ls present to the futur", that that event
remains the tradltion which governs the future. For the prlnciples
of the fathers are, by their \lery nature, the r.oot of the future
insofar as it ls good.
An<l finally, wlth respect to the passive and incurious mode
in which the democratic principles of equality and liberty tend to
be accepted, it is significant that Lincoln himself never attempts
to raise the question of their truth, nor even .to supply a defl.nl.tion,
exc.ept in extremely slmple, and negative terms. So he says,
�-14-
state of nature exists, Cengreae. with the aid ef that "standard
•axia for free society" (p. l61), the principle of equall.ty, 11 laya
tbe foundations ef society" (p. 479) • pelltlca precedes eeciety,
not the reverse (p • . 279). Thua, since 1001.ety ls 1ria~qallf
based on pell.ti.cal pri.neiplea, which .theaaelves nave a -r• and,
finally, a rtl\g11u1 basia, Aaerican lite depends ulttaately en a
higher source. And ••• by his reference to the principlet ef equallty,
Lino•ln realnda the natl•n which laeka the earth-born equality of
coa•n · blrth, teuted for Athena t.n the Her•QUI• ef a coamn high
.
paternal origins it la a natien equal •un er God."
III.
the Second Paragraph
Now we are enga$ed in a great ctvll war, testing whether
that nation, or •ny natten so conceived and .so dedicated, can
long endure.
In hie •iddle paragraph Llnooln passes fre• "four acere and aev&n
years age• and •our fathers" to "nev" and "we•, fro• the Aeneratl•n
of the Rev•lution to the generation ef the ' Rebellion, ef the "great
civil war", which, ln its enor11lty, he had in the·daya •f the
victory ef Gettysburg teraed, in Hiltonlc language, a "stgantlc
Rebell ton .. (p. 709, ala• P• 702). Indeed there was to hi• aeaetht.~
ef the .Fall ln the wanten
destructien ef our national fabric, with all its benefits, tta
11e11ories and its hopes, •••• Will you hazard ao desperate•
step, ••• while the eert·a1n ills you fly t•, are greater than
all the real enes yeu fly fre11? (First Inaugural Addreaa, P• 584)
Yet in that very a,..eoh Lineoln aaintained the right of
revolution (p. 587), whleh he had already aaaerted in the House as
a "sacred right" during the war with Mexico, in a speeeh attacki~
the President fer waging, without. consulting Congress, a leng,
aggressive and 1..,ral var (p. 209). · But, he aalntat.nec:t,11 the actl•n
of the seuthern st•t•• was not revolution, er aecessien, but
"rebellion" (p. 602),
·
·
Why was it net seceaslon7 The word, he declared to Congress,
i11plles the legality of states leaving the Unien as statea. But,
he had said,
I. hold, that ln conte•plation of universal law• and ef
theCanetltuti.on, . tpe Union of these States 1s perpetual (p.
582)~
This ls · because the Union represents the fundamental social caapact1
aa Locke says in Ihe S~con!! treatise 2f Ctvtl Goverm1ent1
That which ..akes the coaaunity and brings aan out ef the loose
state of nature lrito one politic aociety ts the agreeaent which
�everybody has with the rest to incorporate and act as one body,
and s.o to be one dlsti.nct commonwealth. The usual an.d almc~t
only way whereby t:hl9 union ts dissolved is the inroad of
for\.'ign force making a conquest upon them ••• (para. 21 t, of, 243).
Secession of any sort therefore does violence to pollt:lcal society
itself and ts simply insupportable. But formally lt was a theory of
statehood .which allowed Lincoln to maintai.n the absolute p..,rpet:ulty
of the Union, a theory which again turned about the date and wordi~
of the Declaration of Independence.. He observed that that document
first declared the "united Colonies" "free and independent st:at:es"
(p. 603), so that the Union, whlch had preceded independence. hlid
certainly preceded statehood. Accordingly he denied that the new
Confederacy was right ln claiming that the Art i.cles of Coo.federat: ion
adopted by Congress in the year af'ter the Declaration, .according to
which MEach state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independencett
(Art. II), repreeented a kind of prototype pertod, a state of nature ~
so to speak, for the States, in which thelr original sovereignty
· dlsplayed itself. For the Union, having prec~ded the Declaration, .
!! fortiori preceded any organic law, as shown by the Preamble of tht:
Constitution. which speaks merely of ·establishing " a ~ perfect
Unton"' (p. 582). The states had never existed 11 out of" the Uni.on, .
but had entered it, insofar as they were entitles at all, only as
colonies, or, if territories, from the state of nature' (p. 479)1
Our States have neither 11ore nor less. power than that reserved
them in the Union by the Constitution - no one of them ever ·
having been a state out of the Uniona The orlglnal ones passed
into the Union even ~fore they cast off thelr lirltlsh colonlal
dependence, ••• ,. The new ones only took the designs.ti.on of
States on comtng into the Union, while that name '-ra.s f tr st
adopted for the old ones in and by the Declaration of Independe <
:
•••• Having never been States, either in substanc~ 'or in name,
outside of t:he Union, whence this magical omnipotence of
"State rights", asserting a claim of power to !awfully destroy
the Union ltself7 (pp. 603·604. cf. P• 572) •
....
"
Hence the assumption of the states• power of lawful witttdi:awal ~as
a "sophlsm" (p. 603).. Lincoln's term "civil war", i.11pl'les precls~ly
the denial of the Confederate view, that it is a "war between the
States.•
·
'
This 1s only apparently an appeal to•er~ dates. · Here history,
ln the providential course lt . seeras to run on this continent, dlsplay
the nature of the case, for the Unlon comes naturally before the
states, b~ing the ground and guarantor of that popular goverl'l.lll,ent
which is the incarnation of the founding principles. Thi~ le
.
expres$ed in its instrument, the Constitution, in two places. Fire ·~.:
ln its Preample1 the very phrase, .. We, the people", le meant to
ind lcate t,hat only a unlted people, ·speaking in it:e own voice, can
sanction republican fundamental law - as Lincoln had pointed out, it:
had been precisely this phrase which was altered in the new ,southern
�-16document to •we, the deputl•• of the sovereign and independent
States•, in aeoerdance with the fact that the new Deelarat1ona had.
omitted the words -all ..n are ereated eqwa1.• •Why thla dellberata
preaalng eut •f vtew th• rlghta of •en and the authertty ef the
pectple7• he ••k• (p. 607). seoendly ln lte bodya the Cenatitutlon
provides that "The Unlted St:atea ahall guarantee to every atate ln
the Union a republican fora of gever1t11ent• (Art. IV, Sec. 4), ••
that
if a atato ••Y lawfully
g~
out of the Union, having done so,
lt uy alee dlseard the relf)Ubllcan for• of Gevern11ont1•••
(p. 608, ef, P• 740) • ·
the Union is reapenalblle not eniy for th• eatabliahaent but al10 for
pervasiven••• of republican institution•• But «le T•equev111e
••Y••
Th• •overetgnty ef the Union la an abatract beln.l•••t the
sovereignty of the atatea if perceetibla by tho
eaally
understood, and constantly active {DtlJllC[ICY !D Aurtc1, l, xvltl } ,
••n••••
Lincoln's effort ia, without detriment to tho dl1tlnctlveneaa of the
states (p. 446), to turn this abstraction into a palpat.le feeling,
as 11Uch •• anywhere ln thla speech, ln which out of tactful respect
for the fact that .it is a natlerual but not a federal cemetery which
is being dedicated, the w.rd "Union• never appears.
Now the right ef aeceeaion being rejected, what happens to the
right of revelutlen? Lincoln thinks on thi• crucial matter as a
radical conservative. That le, when charged with revolutionary vieva
he protest• his eeneervatlaa'i
What la conservatiaa? ls it net adherence to the old and trl•d•
against the new and untried? We stick to, eentend !or, the ·
identical old policy on the point in controversy which w~s
adopted by •our fathers who fra11ed the govermaent ·under which
we llve" (p. 528),
.
·
but alnce the controversy referred to is the extension of alavery,
which Llnceln opJ>Gsed with all hls ai.ght, his v"ry opposition to
change t.1 made in the spirit of the Revolution. ' In other wrda,
in this country, whose original government vae cenatituted by
revolution, the aoat pregreaaiv• side tries most faithfully to return
to the beginnings, so that even innovations are aade in a context
of rational arguMent with the fathers (p. 525). It haa once and !or
all preeapted the Revolution, embodied in the process of change by
majority decision, so t~t henceforth all rebellion is counter- ·
revolution • . In a well-f11unded pol tty, justice ls almost o•lncident
with organic law, and a sense of justice with the intention to
preserve it.
In practice this means, on the one hand, that bad laws
�.. I 7 ..
should be repealed as soon as possible, still while they
- contlnue 1.n force·, for the sake of exa11ple, they should be
religiously observed (p. 81),
·
even 1.f 1.t is expected that they will be .held unconstitutional (p. 58 ~
and on the other, that no law or decision need become 9• a rule of
polit:ical action" (p. 418, cf. p .. 396) until it is judged to harmoniz(
with t.he intent ion of the Founders. · The right to revolution does
remains however it ls clearly c1rcumscr.ibed, n.nd :tn such tP-rms as to
reveal the chief function of the Conatltut'-on in a working democracy c
If, by mere force of numbers, a majority should deprive a
· ~lnorlty c.•f any clearly written constitutional right, le might,
tn a moral pob1t of view, justify revolution .. certainly would,
if such a !°-ight were a vital one (p. 5'84).
The issue mu~t, then, be one of constitutional rlghts dented, or
extra-legal action upon i.t constitut~s an upris1ng against the
people• So Lincoln says of th~ aecessiqnisttu
.These politicians are subt i.l-e and profound on the rlght:B of.
mlnoritieB. They are not partial to that power which me.de
the
Con~t:ltution,
and speaka from the preamble. calling 'itself
"We, the People_" (p. 606).
Thus any sectional or factional uprisif\S, upon a mere feeling of
dissent or discuntnet, or ev"n ort a plea of "social just tee", no
matter how worthy of sympathy, b~ing dir~cted against that government which ls itself the first living and prospering incarnati.on
of the r~volutionary principle,
conoucing ~ore essentially to the ends of civil and religtous
liberty (p. 76)
than any previol!sly known, wi.thout ' vlable alternative, and moreover
as Lincoln emphasized, containing the means of lts own a~endmenc
wt.thin itself {p. 587)~ ls a catastrophe of a p~culiarly _ allful sort.
Llncoln d~cl ined to participate in it even where hla sen•e of jt•stice
was completely outraged (p. 3]6). For the man who
proposes to abandon such a Government, . would d<.' welt to consider .
in deference . to what princ-lple it ls that: he does it' what bette·
he i.s likely to get in U:e !l!teach .whether the substltute will
6lve, or be intend~d to give, so much of good to the people?
(p. 607).
. .
The question is thus always, in Lincoln's a<laptat1.on of Hamlet's
weighing. of suicide (III, i, 82)•
Will you hazard so desperate a step, .... whi.le .the certain llls
you fly to, are greater than all the real ones you fly from7
(p. 584).
�·18-
Thle , v.ar, Lincoln goes on to say., ls a .tJ!.1..k• The oriaia has the
nature of a teat, because, aa he had aatd 1.n -iits ..aaage to the
Congress vhlch he had called into special session to aeet on that
fateful . date e! July .4, at the beginning of the war ln 1861, thla
goverruaent ls an experl•enta
·
· Our pepular govern•ent has often been cal led an experlaent •
Two points ln it eur people have already eettled - the auoceaaful
t•t•rl19hi~, and th~ eueceaaful 1~11ni•f•{1Dft ef it. one atlll
0
re11a ne • ~. auooeasful 11tifilY'nc1 aga net a foraldable internal
.
attempt to overthrow 1t (p.
. •
·
.
.
As a final phase of 4n experiaent the war represents one teat for
all cases, a aodel caae of a natl.en established' on expltcit prinoiplea,
ln which two rutceasary foundi~ conditions, na•ely the vtade• ef
the fathers and the reeeptivity of the contin~nt had been optiaal •
lf. this ?14tlon fails then it la de11onatrated that "any natlen• muat
fall. Thia ls how the American enterprise had. been underatoed fro•
the founding1 lt 1ee11e te have been reserved", says the ft.rat
Federal tot
11
to the people of thie country, by their conduct and exaaple,
to decide the i11portant question, whether oocletlea of aen are
really capable or not, of eetabl iahi"R good govet·!Wetlt fro•
reflectlen and choioe ••• ,
and this very thlng h•d •oved de Tocqueville to write his book
(I, xvli9 end). When the Thucydt.dean Pericles calla the whole city
"an edueatlen to Greece .. (II, 41)he •eans that Athene 11 the· unique
and t.ni•ltable cynosure of the Greeke1 when Lincoln calls the
government an experiaent and the present war a teat.1for all natl•n•
he offers Amert.ca as a practical poli.tt.cal pattern to the werld.
The funda11ental iseue, whlch t.n the course of the war had beoo•e
"distinct, staple and inflexible• i1 an lssue which can only be tried
by war and decided in victory (p. 787). But how can a war be a teat
of anythi.ng? The var vlll, .Llnceln says at lt11 beginntnai, teach th~t
when ballots have fat.rly and constitut't.onally decided, there
can 6e no succeaa!ul appeal baak te bullet•••• (1861, P• 608).
Is Lincoln rutt aelf •contradt.ctory here? How could the suooeasful u1e
of bullets tn thi• var preve that there can be ne succeeeful appe•l
te bullets in republlca7 Or, lf the argu..ent ia that strength at
war ls the converted strength of the ballet box, will it not be
necessary to say that every outco•e proves the principle of popular
eoverelgnty? Certainly, Lincoln f&und his old "faith that right 11akea
might" (e.g., P• · 536) corroborated by the popul.• r aupport the Unlen '
co!Ulanded {pp. 606-7, 764, 786)1 to hi• the solid conservatism of the
11ajortty was a sign of political soundnesa • . But as the war went on
�he looked ure often to a higher judge, to .. the God of battles .. of
the Revolution (p• 264) ,· who• the theoreticians o! popular governnem:
had not been able to aveld invoking.
In the Seoon~ Ireatloe g.! Civil Goyer~en;. Locke says, not
perhaps with much inner conv1ctlon, but rater driven by the argu. .nt,
that
where there 1• no judicature on earth te decide eantroveraiea
amongst men, God in heaven 11 Judge (par••· 241-242, of. 168).
And the Second Inaugural Address (1865) ls a fervent reference to
Psalm 19,91
qth• judg••nta of tha Lord, are ttu• and righteoua altegether•
(p. 793, of. Letttr ~ A{ G, Qqd111 1. Aprll 4, 1864, Which
anticipates · the Inaugura ).
. .
And in a private ••dtaation on the divine will "net written to be
seen of men• in 1862, he ascribes the dlreotlen and the outcn•e of
the war entirely te the will of God who uaes the contestants ae his
•huraan instruaentalitles" (p. 655, cf. P• 610). While there ls
still peaoe, Ged'a juds•ente are ~lven by hie •8Nat tribunal, the
A•erlcan people• (Firat Inaugural, P• 587), but ~nee at war, the
Almi~hty adjudicates. Frcn• the day Lincoln left for wa·• hington, as
Prealdent~e1ect, he did what the A•ertcan people have always expected
their fallible fellow citizens who rule the• to do - he co•mitted
himself te God, (p. 568), aa the only power htih enough to oversee
the tendency •f the whole, and in this spirit he CGnttnued1
I olalm not to have controlled events, but confess
that eventa have controlled me. New at the enp of
struggle the nation's cenditien la not what either
any 11an deviaed, er expected. God alone can clat.11
!2. A, q, H9dge1. April 4, 1864).
plainly
three y11tars
party, or
it (LetterI
Exactly what the test · was to prove Lincoln had· stated already in
his •Perpetuation• speech o! 1838. It was to b~·
a practical de•onatratian of the truth of a propositi•n• which
had hitherto been cnna1dered, at best no better, than proble11atloal
namely, the ~rAtltv 2! A pegple IA gove~n themoelyes
(p. 82, cf. P• 1
•
"The experiment is successful", he had then added, but as the self•
evldence of the axlom · e! equality had begun to fade, se it• practical
oonsequence, the gevernaent, was thrown t.n doubt. The more precise
forra of. the questlon n.w lsa
.
·whether di.scentented indlvlduale, too few in nmnbers to contr•l
ad11lnistration. according to organic law, in any case, can always,
upon the .pretenses 11ade ln thle case, or on any other pretenses,
or arb.ttrarlly, without any pretense. break up their Government,
and thus practically put an end to . free goverlll'llent upon the earth ••
�-20•ts th•~•· in •11 republtoa, thls inherent and fatal weak"-••T•
•Huat a Geverftll8nt, of neoe11lty, be too
tor the 11bei:tl••
of lt• own peeple, or
Kl!k te •alntaifi?ta evn ex1~teneet•
n1ou
t••
(p. 598).
·
That • natien, heir te the •tuM••ental bl•••lna•~ •! th• •falr•et
portion of the earth•, lnvulnera~l• t• lnva1l•n• •• ~•11 ••tea
fref· gover1111ent, eeuld enly "die by auieide• (pp. 76-77) had lene
see1ied plain te Lt.nceln, though at ·the t i - (lRl8) 1'• had tboual\t
that thi• internal trlal would take th• fer• of that p•rv•,•l•n of
de11c .cracy, whioh he called •ubeeracy•, in vhleh.
JtMPl• l.Wt.•
vldt1ally forget te ~evern thnaelv••• Nev lt tum1 eut that ln hit
century the teat of endurance baa taken th• for11 't elvll war, i n
whl<·h a whole a•g•nt of the Mtian refuaea td aubaltl 'i• lte !'.'I
t•
StY!·~~rtl•
t::
.
··~. :-::~
..
Lincoln goee ona
We are .•et en a Areat battle•fleld o! that war.
But he avoids any particularization of the circu••tancea ef the
battle of the great . war 1 iV§tC~.~. tit4 treated that at length.
p,re~ . test
Lo::·-··.-"·"" -' ··- ·" ,::;: . :... - .~---=a:~..--:r..:::::::.-q:;::.r:;ctr.J•P"'
We have colle to dedicate a pertlon of that field, as a ·
final resting place fer thoae who here gave their lives that
that nation might live. It ls altogether fitting and proper
that we should do this.
A pi.rt of the fi.eld, which had, incidentally, been called Ce•etery
Hl11 even before the battle, ls being eet aside as the earthly
dom .ln of these newly dead soldier• vhe, ae the father• gave the
nat1 .on birth insured lt11 continuing life.
IV.
The Third Paragraph
But in a larger sense
we can not dedicate we can net consecrate •
we can not hallow •
this ground.
The third paragraph has features of an incantation, repetition and
rhy11e, but it ls a negative incantation. It begins by warding off
an 4!rror1 fit and proper though it may be in a narrow sense to
comtuct dedication ceremonies, there la danger that the present
gem,ration, txhat •we", •ay substitute the redundant rituals of
ded~ .catlon, censecrat1on and devotion for dedication in the sense of
the fathers, 'that dedication of a piece of ground may take the place
of 1:he larger ded'lcation to a proposition called for. by the great
war. So one can hear tlhe steady lambs of Lincoln's three-line
rhyritng ref'raln perturbed by a warntnge11.phasls on "we 11 •
�•21-
The brave aen, living and dead, who struggled here, have
consecrated it, far above our poor power to add ~r detract.
With this sentence Lincoln honors at ol'\ee the Union dead, the
Union aurvlvora, and genereualy but tactfully, the enell)', fer the
phrase "the brave men, living and dead, who atruggled here", with
its intranaitlva. uae ef the verb, applies also . to the other alde of
whom about an equal number, 23,000 aen, had died (p. 712). Lincoln,
unlike Pericles in speaking to the Greek Athenians, always keepe
before hl11 the· terrible fact of the civll war, that Alierlcana are
fighting Aaerican1. He aaya not one derogatory werd of the transient
enemy a -three weeks after the Addreaa, Lincoln issued a Proclaut;.ien
ef Aanesty and Reoonstruction giving tull pardon to all ordinary
ct.tizena whe would resuae allegiance to the Unt:on (p. 738 f.). As .
always, he ·av•lda 11.aklng dlviaiena, fore
Our strife pertains to eurselvea • to the passing generatlens
of mens and it can, wlthout convulal•n, be hushed forever with
the passing of one generation (p. 679, of. P• 588),
1
and
What I deal wt.th ta ~9.9 AIJ'.&! .f9!': malicious deal 11)8 (p. 650) •
He goes ona
The world will little note, nor long remeaber what we say here,
but lt can never forget what they dld here.
·
as
It la. known that Lincoln considered the speech a failure
a speken
speech, for he h.ad told a friend right after its delivery1 •Lamen,
that speech won't ocour. It is a flat fallure and the people are
disappointed.• The ea11e thing had happened with respect to hls
second moat renowned speech, the Second Inaugural, ·about which he
had written to a friend•
·
I expect the latter ta wear as well as • perhaps befter than •
anything I have producedf but I believe it is not ilQlediately
popular (p. 794)•
In view of Lincoln's correct appraisals of hi& ~peeches, the sentence
cannot be regarded as a conunent on the Address1 rather, besides
carrying the meaning siven above, it serves as the counterpart of
one in his previous Annual Messaget
We ~ we are for the
we say this (p. 688).
Union~
The world will not forget that
The state11ent of ai11 has been once and for all made, and now all is
concentrated on its mil ltary !9.9.~.!e~..!•~Jlli•
t:=,";;:, .. ~ ... __ ...... _ ~· • ••.:.::::.:..• ,; ; .;..:.-:.~~.~:.. ··..:·...~....:;;.. ;;;..,1. ~ ;. ;::-,.-:-..:;~..;.:-:;; =-~:::;,..
:
...
And then come the last two sentences, . half the speech in length,
wh1.ch develop its expl lcit theme - the second dedtcat\qn. of the
�-22·
natt.nn, ln this consecrated pl•~· ll!Dt (Lincoln reaoved a fourth
.. here" fr•• th• ft.ul veraten), "'
"
·
Tt l• f•r ua the llvtns. rat:her, to be dedlcated here
to the un!tnlahed WGrk
whloh they vha fou,!ht here hav• thua far so nobly advanced.
lt t1 r•ther fer ua to be here dedtcated
to the great task r•••lnlng before ua •
Practt.cal ly, th• "un!lnlehed work"; .. the great t.a11tk r••alntng before
11
,
ta the winning o! thtt W'-1" (ef. Jh 791) • bttt in 1lgnlftcance it
.
ta ao••tht.~ Ar•ater, tl\e 1ueeeelt!ul .PMl'l•t.en ef the expert.11ent
nf ~npular !•v•rn••nt.
·
tJa
-
·;·:,.~.":""'~~~~:~· · :-:.';: .~:. ~~"-~~:-~:!.. · ~~t.: : ." ' ;" :'" .~~·;:.·~ ..;~ .-~-J?-~ .•
~
Th• next two clau1e1 1 ·~•lft in that 1pell•l t.ke .diction which
gtvea eucee11\ve cola ldentlcal er n••r-tdentlcal endlnge, give the
nat.ure qf thl1 new d8dleatlon1 it •••ns
·
I
that frGa these honered dearl we take lnere&$ed devetlon
t• that caua• !ftr whleh the~, ~ave the l•st: ful 1 l'leasure of
devothm •
th.at we her• hi8hly reaolve
that these dead
shall nftt have dled
tn va1.n ..
In invok1"8 the dead, Lt.neoln t.a touohing what ln hla Flrat Inaugural
he ttalled
the 11)'11tlc ohotc1e er •e•ory;'. atret:chlng fro• every battle•.fi.eld
and patriot ~rave, to every 1 lving heart and hearth-etol"tt• ••
(p, 5ftA).
..
.
I
'fe '10 thle hf.It al~lftB the la~U&f';t!t of (!hurch and . legielatlve assemhlye
'fhe dedloat:lon, · the eena•cratt.en, .t h• hat lowing, the .devotion Lt.ncoln
i1r••• 1.a ofen
a
h1.s Rf'ttltch
pol ltlcal . sort. He had uried lt .already 1n 1R3R, in
"The Perpetuation nf our Polltlcltl Inatltl;ltlons .. ,
Let rfJv«trence for the lawa.~.becol'le thsJ91\t;1 0 alte11~1on of
the natl.ant and let the old"!'and the you ·. 1 the rt.oh an ·the
po«n'• th8 ~rave a~ the 8•Y• nf all sexes and tca~ues, and
oolai-• and eendltlena. aaorlflce unceattln81Y upon lts altars
(p.
Rt).
·
nu•an
Llncnln ls dftllberateiy ooneecrati.1\A poll.tlc1, and the ~reat
agency of reverenee la , •••ery, wtl~fQ .,1 l th\naa .. Se•• hallowed" (p. 191.
The laat: two olauaee !lV• the efteot. of
that thi.1
f reedoll -
nattnn.
undf.tr
n,.d,
~he
new dedicatlona
ahalt have a new birth ef
�-23The wonds 11 under God" were not in the flrst draft1 they were .reported
in the newspaper verslons of the ap•ech as delivered and incorporated
by Lineeln later (cf. 1s. 752). Why did he add the117
··
I¥•
Under th_, heading "Of Clvll Reli~ion", the last in
Sogial
C1ntr15t, Rousseau describes the clvll rell~i•n of repub cs wh{ch
it le the business of the acverelgn to set out, not as retl~loua
de1t•a1 but as 11 8entlaenta •f 1octablllty". They ought t• be
staple, few ln nuaber, preclaely fixed, and without explanation
or co••nt. The existence of a powerful, wlae, and benevolent
Divlnlty, vhe fer••••• and prevldee .t he life to 0011e, the
happlness ef the . juat 1 the puniahaent of the wicked, the ..
sanctity of the aeeial contract and the laws ••• (IV, viii).
This la precisely the nature of Lincd~'s faith as continually set out
tn hla public pronauncMtente (pp. 65~, 727, 757, 793). The natlen 1.a
under a "beneficent Father who dvelleth in the Heavens" (p. 728).
.
It has a double parent•~• • the !ore-fathers and the F•ther above.
Wlth the1e words, Lincoln, then~ tnvokes at once faith, the pe1:sonal
trust in a auperlitr betng, and religion, the public obligation to
reverence.
·
·
Thia natlonwill have .. a ·new birth of freedo•"· Thoee werds
were not, at the time, felt to be at all innocuous• Nor are they,
if "of freedo•" la read not as an objective genitive, so that the
natl.on is said to ~ive blrth to a new freedom, but as a parallel
to •conceived ln Liberty•, ae that the nation itself ts said to be
rebnrn. The Chteago ~. tnreperttng on the speech, aald that
in thia phrase "Mr. LIJ\COin did
foully traduce the 11otlves of
the tHm who were elaln at Gettysburg", for· they fousht only to
preserve the eld govern11ent. Now, as has been shown, Lincoln in
fact &8reed with thla conservative vlew of the struggles he bad
sai.d so explicitly1
·
I
••t
I am exceedingly anxious that thla Union, the Constitution, and
the libertle1 of . the peGple shall be perpe~uated in accordance
with the ori~lnal idea for which that strt.lggle was aade, and I
ehal l be raost happy indeed if I shall be . an humble lnstl'Uaent. ·
in the hand . of the A1111.ghty, and this, . hls almost chosen
a
people 1 for perpetuating the object of that great struggle
' {p. 57:>).
And yet theChidago Times was right to
1.ntentlon, a ra teal oppost.tlon to the
conserv.atta• expressed ln their slogan
the Union as t.t was". ln 1R54 Lincoln
suspect an underlying radical
De110crat!.c party' a klnd of
"The Constltutlon as i.t is and
had satd at Peorla1
Let u~ re-adopt the Declaratton of .Independence, and With lt,
.the practices and policy, whlch har110nize wt.th lt. Let north
and .south • let all A•ericana - let all lovers of liberty
everywhere .. join in the great and good work. If we do this,
we shall not only have saved the Unions but we shall have so
saved lt, as to make, and keep 1.t, forever worthy of saving.
We shall . have so saved it, that the succeeding mtlllons of free
�-24-
kappy people, thft worlrt ovt!r, shal 1 rl8e 1.ip, and cal 1 us
blessed, to the latest generatlons (p. 315)"
The last phrases are a para.phrase of the Hagnlfleat, the words of the
ntother-to•be of the Messlah1 "For, behold, front hence forth all
~e""ratlons shall call nte blesse"" (Luke t, 48).
It i8 Lincoln's
aweso11e lctea that the generatlon of the clvll war, undtitr his leadership, ls 81: once the savior and the par.ent of the . savior nation,·
that America is to pol itlca "all'fto.8 t" as Israel was to the spirit•
That means that for th& Union side the war ls a kind of second
comlnA, a second brlnglng-forth, after four score and seven years.
Llncoln has converted Jefferson's extravagant opinion that "a
llt:tle rebellion, now and then, is a gt>olt thing" (Letter 12. Hadlsin,
January 30, 17R7)- into a serious view concerntng the perlodlc
rP-hir.th of the Revolution - to occur, evldently, in fullest force
· ln·the fourth g"neratlon, once ln a century.
.
In this idea Llnooln recognizes that a country founded ln a
revolut\on ls bounc1 to have a Aeneratlonal problell• . For the document.
con~tltutl~ lts p;overmaent is ordalnerl and · eRtabllshed. as- the
prlnclple of popular government demands, ln the ftrst p~rson plural;
lt beglns1 "We the penple." Yet thls can mean literally only the ·
r.atifylng generation, thereafter the fundamental act . of self·
govern~nt ls lnherltec1 - but self-determinatlon by tradition ls a
ktnd nf paradox. This dlfficulty lay hehlnd Jefferson's advocacy of
· re~ular
revolutlona
Can one generation bind ariother,·ancl all others, ln succession
forev8r? l .~hlnk not. The Cr~ator has made the earth for the
living, not the dead..... A generatton may bi.mi itself as ·
long .a s lts majority continues ln l lfea when that, has dlsap•
peared, another majority ls tn place, holds all the rights and
powers their predecessors once held, and may change thelr
lawe and lnstltutlons to suit themselves. Nothlrig then ls
unch11n~P-able but the inherent anrl unalienable rights of 11an
(Letter~ J• Cartwright, June 5, 1R24).
·
Jefferson's radical solution to the problem of changlnS. generations
was opposed hy Lincoln on the ground that majority rule itself as ·
well as mlnor\.ty rlghts were guaranteed by nothing but a commitment
to the fun<Jamental law and the governmP-ntal institutions.
The very raaterial success of "the popular principle applied to
government" . acerbates the problem • . Lincoln, on several occasions,
for instance to Congress ln 1R61 and 1862, had given exultant accounte
of the fanta8tlc .increas., of population, elsht-fold ·. since the founding
11nd contlnui.ng, incredibly, even throu~h .. the )lar (pp. 72R, 761),
with the expectation at the sAme rate of growth of 250 nitlllon by
1910 ann a proportionately even greater lncrease of prosperity
(pp. f.'34-615. 6R1). But when making up Auch an account a quart?er
of a century earl ler, ln the speech "On the Perpetuation of our
PolttlcAl Jnstltutlons" he had a<t<leda
�-25-
We, when 11ountins the stage of existence, found ourselves the
legal inheritors of these fundamental blessinss. We toiled not:
ln the acquirement or establiahllent of them - they are a
legacy bequeathed u1, by a ~ hardy, brave, and patriotic,
but ~ laaented and departed race of ancestors (p. 77). ·
The generational. dileraaa raised by success ls that the epigoni, the
successor generation•• bred in that most desirable ignorance, the
ignorance of anarchy and despotls11, and 11tatak{ng the drained habits
of their parents for the tradition, will in the low ef political
passion areuae themselves by giving current problems a cataclysmic
cast, that they aay, developing an appetite for unknown terror, be
· willing to cure dlasatisfaction by catastrophe. A deliberate return
to the founding revalut~on alone can forestall · e~ch an event, or if,
as in the case ef the Clvil War, it beco. . a a fact, can turn it into
an act of salvation. Lincoln bei\tinually mak&a the effort to
.
convert the war in this way, even coflparing its financial funding
to that of the Revolution (p. 602).
,
There ls, of course, an assuMption in this which goes beyond
Jefferson's reliance on the mere principles of 1776. It is that
constitutlonal severn11ent is, in fact, the best 11eans of realizing
the11, and ts, therefore, to be equally cherished. .. Lineoln held ·
this asau•ption ln full awareness of the 11lxed and ma1111ath character
which the nation was to atta1n in the next century, and this is why .
he saw the incidents of the Civil War as "phllosophy to learn wisdom
fro11" "for any future great natienal trial" (p. 764).
f
a .Z:::st.ftW
l llH A -
-
..f.
What then, 1Mre precisely, does Lincoln aean by •a new birth .of
freedo11"7 As ·the nation was cenceived in liberty and dedicated to
equality, so it ls to be reborn ln freedort• That 11eanethat . ln this
speech 11 freedom 11 covers both equality of creation and the Latinate
"liberty•, that ls, civil freedom, which Lincoln elsewh~re calls the
jewel of liberty within the fartily of freedom1 it stands at once for
••n's riature as a creature under God and for hls means .of fulfill!~
that nature in civil seciety, as part of a natiop (cf. P• 403). ,
This means ls self•gavernaient, which Lincoln res~ects equ.lly with
its end, calling it •rtgN&~absolutely and eternally right" (p. 303).
In fact, he defines it coextensively with liberty, which means for
"each 11an to do as he pleases with himself" (p. · 748) 1
I trust I und.e rstand and truly estimate the rtght of self•
government. My faith in the propost.tion that each man should
do precisely as he pleases with all which ls exclusively his
oWn, lies at the foundation of the sense of justice there is in
•e (p. 303, cf• PP• , 394) •
.
I11pli.ed in this is first, that poltti.cally, where there must be
submission to a govern11ent, this must be by the consent of the
governed, understood as
.
A 11ajority, held in constraint by constt.Uuttonal checks and
limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes
of popular opinions and sentilllents ••• (p. 585),
�-26discovered in elect1ens 1 for
We can not have .free government without electlonst•••
The strife of the electien ia but huaan-nature practically
applied to the facts of the case (pp. 763-764).
And. secondly·, ·~•no•ically, that a 11an ~•t be abl• to acquire and
hold so11ethlng of hia own, -.iat have, not the assurance, but the
possibility of acquiaitlena Lincoln 11ade this a1Jit")t
aelf•
govern11ent a subject of hla firet Annual Heeaage t• Ceqre11 ln
1861 (pp. 633, ef. P• 501).
.
. ·.
of
••t
Now when Lincoln in the decade before and durlng the war
out his vlews on freedoa, h~ did it almet lnvarla)>ly in refarerac•
to lts antithesis - slavery (cf. P• 303 and P• 347). By •a new birth
of freedom• Lincoln 11eana the readoptlen of the Deelaratlen in a .
very specific sen••• a aenae which the ordinary •conae~atlvea•
strongly disapproved.
During the war Lincoln expressed his views on the slavery ·
question succinctly in a private letter. They are charaoterletic
of the double nature of his politi.cal opinions, rever•M• for the
laws combined with radioa11ty •f principle. He ~alda
I am naturally anti•elavery. If slavery la not wrong, nothing
la wreng" . .I can not r•••ber wben I did .not so thlrik, and f'eel.
·: .And . ·iy•t 1 I, hA•·· never understood that the Pres idericy conferred
upon me an unrestricted rlght to act offlclally upen tlhiai
judg11ent and feeling (April 4, 1864, cf. PP• 395, 652).
For, as he said in his Firat Inaugural, not only did he have under
the Constitution no lawful right to do so, but he even held hl•••lf
bound by his oath of office to en!orcethe constitutional provtatpn
for the reclai11ing of fugitive slaves (pp. 492, 580-581) - it wae
more i.11porta.nt . o preserve the very bas 1 e of 11.berty than to secure
t
iml'lledlate justice. At the sa11e time he found hi•s6lf. able to base
his uncompromising public opposition to slavery~on the ~plnlona e!
the . founding father3 (e.g. pp• 272-273) and on the found\ng doouaenta io
Whether or not he knew of Jeffereon•a "pblllppic against Negro slavery
which Congress had deleted fro• the final draf~. he had no
question that the Declaration meant . to include negroes, a view he
set · out ln his debate with Douglass
I should like to k°"w if taki~ this old Declaration of
Independence, which declares th11.t all men are equal upon
principle, and raaking exo•ption to it, when will it atop7
If one aan says it· does not mean a. negro • why IlC)t another
say it does not 1ftean some other man?" (pp.: 402-403, cf. PP•
360 ff, P• 479).
And he had equally no question about the intention of the Constitution
He often repeated, the argument from .. necessity .. , that to get the
Constitution at all the framers had had to compromise, but that they
�-27·
had found a way to save in the long run the principle which they
could not assert at the J'llO•ent (pp. 304, 313, 358 ff., 403, 423,
479), for
When ~he . fathers of the goverruaent cut off the source of slavery
by the· abolition of the slave trade, and adopted a systent of
restricting lt from the new territories wh&re lt had net
existed, I maintain that they placed it wh~re they understood,
and .a ll sensible men understood, it waa in the OIJHme ef
ultimate extinction (October 13, 1858, et. PP• 394, 416).
Accordingly Lincoln whe, as a responsible parti.clpant tn political
l lfe, could not support the extre11e of abel ltion, became the laplaeabL~;
foe of the 7xttn1ion of slavery • thia single ·issue doatnatea his
speeches ·be ore the war (e.g.,
170, 339) • a net in !act . brought
.
him, as lt had Jefferson (p. 272 , back lnto politics, t.n which be
had been losing interest (p. 512 • It was an lsaue important to
him ln some part because it was so peculiarly connected with the
question o .f the axiomatic character of the founding prlnclples,
namely wlth the question of their uniyersall~y, (cf. PP• 308, 477).
Such proposltlona, ·precisely because they are prlnci.plea of hwu.n
nature, pronounced concerning •all 11en", must eventually either
altogether fall or altogether preva1.1, both in respect to lnetitutlonet
p!.
I believe thl& government cannot endure, permanently
half slave and half free (1858, P• 372),
and to (ndlvlduals1
This ls a world of compensations• and he who would lll! no
slave, must consent to .b.E!.! no slave. Those who deny freedom
to others, deserve it not fer themeelves1 and, under a just
God, can not long retain lt (p. 489, cf. PP• 136, 473).
Lincoln. did not regard it aa l11poss1.ble that the nation alght fail,
that ls, that the false principle might become generally accepted
so that the natien would degenerate into despot·tsm (p. 335) t:o prevent this wa.s precisely hla pol it teal task. So, ance the war
had turned out tn be the final means of resolving .the question, for
. the very reason that his .. para11ount object.. .wa,s to
save the Union, and •••I!S!.t. either to save or destroy slavery
(1862, P• 652),
he recogni.zed, in hts Second Inaugural Address, that the "ei.ghth of
the whole population" who were slaves, were "somehow, the cause of
the war" (p. 792), and ·that
tn giving freedom to the tlave·, we assure freedom to the
~ ••• (p.
688),
for slavery was "that only thing wh:tch ever could brlng thls nation
to civil war" (p. 759). And he gave this not only a political but,
�-2R·
as was in the nature of the case, an economic interpretation, on the
principle that bad labor drives out good. So he told a labor dele ...
gation that
'
••• the exlsting rebellion 11eans more, and tends to 1110re,
than the perpetuation of African slavery • that l.t ta, in
. fact, a war upon th~ rights of all working people (March 11,
1864, cf. P• 343).
.
.·
Ihis ls why, just after the victory at Gettysburg, he had been able
to call the war
a gigantic Rebellion, at the bottom of which ls an effort to
. overthrow the principle that all 11en are · created equal•·•.
(p. 709).
.
.
.
Lincoln had s. veral time.s made a point of the fact that the
e
word Jtal•v•t!Y"' :de's 'riot appear"·tn; the CofteC:ltutien1 ·
Thus, the thing ls hid away, lri the constitution, just as an
afflicted lll8.n hldea av•y a wen
a cancer, which he dares not
cut out at once, lest he bleed to death1 with the promise,
nevertheless, that the cut·t tng may begin at; the end of a given
tl.11e (p. 313). •
.
·.
.
or
So also this speech does not contain the word, . but for a different
reason1 as the founders had to violate their feelings about it out
of political necessity, ao the ti11e had come at the beginning of that
year, 1R63, when Lincoln couldlndulge hi.a out of Military necesalty.
He used what he considered to be the Prealdent•s war powers to put
the Emanci.patl.on Precla11&tlon ln force
the states in rebellion
(p. 691), a mve he defended with the argUJMnt that the black
regl11ents were indispensable to ml.litary success (Letters of Apr~l 4
and August 17, 1864)• Since the Union slave states, l'lke Maryland
(p. 749), were proceeding wlth voluntary emancipation, it was plain ·
that the thing was on the way out. The Union was to be rec•nstru~ted
without slavery, . nd so the irgclamat1on. 2.( 6•efta A!!!\ Reconstruotio j.
a
Lincoln issued three weeks a tftr the Gtt~yabµrg _d_rees provided .
(pp. 73R ff., cf, PP• 796 ff). The "new birth of freedom" 11eant for
Lincoln the re-adoption of the Declaration ·(p, 315) and the amend11ent
o( the Constitution (pp. 679, 785) to make explicit their true
intention1 it meant "returning . slavery to the posltiori our fathers
gave it" (p. 315), and restoring the republican example to •tta
just influence lil the world .. , by · averting fro11 it the charge of
hypocrisy (p. 291) • . Llncaln made of the war a purlflcatlon1 ·
the nation was to be p~ged of inconsistency •
for
. t..
And now the last clausee
and that government of the people, by the.people, for the
people, shall not pert:l.h from the earth •.
�-29How, to begin with, should we i11agine that Lincoln read this phrase
concerning govermaent, a memerable expansion ' on •popular governm~nt''7
Did he streaa the preposltlona •ef•, "by"• "for•• or the noun "people''
which they govern? The diaayllabic rhythm of the speech is best
pres~rved by reading trochees•
I
I
I
I
I
I
of the people, by the people, for the people,
a rhythm which gives equal weight to the people and its relation to
the governaent.
As was the beginning, se tbe. end of the epeechis directly
adapted from the American oratofical tradition, namely fro11 an
abol ltioni1t seraon siven_. appropriately, en July 4 of lRSR by
the Rev. Theodore Parker1 who had 1•td1
. .
De110cracy le direct aelf-government, over all the people, for
all the people, by all the people.
Besides changin8 the rhythm, Lincoln had, significantly, softened
"over" to •or•, avoiding even a hint of deapo.t ism. Thus the people
govern 1. by repre1entatives, 2. chosen fro• aMorig theaselves,
3. who rule in the popular interest - a deacription President Lincoln
himself exemplifies (cf. P• 756).
·
.
Lincoln does not .say 11 thle government as he had . said "this"
nation, for it ia the preservation of popular, that la, elected,
govertlllent anyybere which is at stake, though the i..ediate cause
for resortil18 te force was certainly the preservation of this
.
government. But that came to the same _
thl.ngr thus near the beginning
of the war Llnceln had teld Congress, called by hlm into special
session, again on July 4 of 1861, that he regretfully found
•
•
,
J
I
the duty of e•ploytng the war power in defense of' the Government
forced upon hi11 ••• no popular Govermnent can long survive a
·
marked precedent that those who carry an election can only
save ·the Government from iNmediate destru~ion by giving up
·
the main point upon which the people gave the election (p. 609).
Lincoln had begun with the Revolution an~ its statement of
principle, the Declaration1 he ends with government and its
instituting docUJ11ent, the Constitution. This represents the dl.fferenr
in the commitments of the first and the fourth . generations '(
As the patriots of seventy-six did to support the Declaration of
Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, le·1
every American pledge his life, hts property, and his sacred
honora ... (p. 81, cf. Declaration, end).
· ·
It also represent~ the relation of the Declaration to the
Constltuttont the latter ls merely the i.nstrument of the former, as
shown tn a sentence Lincoln quotes from the second paragraph of
the Declaration 1
�.30:.. .
That to secure these rlghts, govern11ent~ are instituted among
men, DERIVING THEIR JUST POWERS -!o""ROM THE CONSENT OF THE
GOVERNED (p. 304).
The gover11111ent ts a metns, and thus a compromise of evils • Madiabwr1
says in the fifty-first Feder1li1t1
But what is gover1111ent itself but the greatest of all reflections
ori human nature? If aen were angels, no govern•ent ·vould be
necessary.
and he warns1
Don't interfere wt.th anything tn the Constitution. • That 11ust
be . . tntained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties
(p. 345).
And so the preservation of . popular goverruaent is linlced · to .the
defense of the American Constitution~
I'
_ _ ...:u; ..--~ ..-
... ~;;.-:.'.!".=:::::.•.- .............,..,....
--
···
This goverill'lent "shall not perish from the earth",· that is ~he
"work", the "task.. , the "cause". Lincoln has ended, as he began,
with language heavy with the Bible•
The good man is perished out of the ekrtha ••d there is
none upright amng 11en1 they all lie in wait for bl•ed1 they ·
hunt every man his brother with a ne• ~M~cah 7, 2),
If . this rebellion prevails, this allusion warns, so that "these
institutions shall pert.ah" (p. 609), aen will return to that universal
state of war, the war of each against all, which prece4es the
institution of government1 the Rebellion would undo the Foundlnga
for when men, b4f! entering .into society apd civil govertllllent,
have excluded force and 1ntaoduced' laws (or the preservation
of property, peace, and unity amongst the~selves, those who
set up force again ln opposition to the laws do rebellare that ls, bring back again the state of war - and are
properly rebels' ••• (Locke, Second Treatise 2.[. Civil Government ,
para. 226).
�-31-
Tn
Lincoln's words 1
Plainly, the central idea of secess.i.on, is the eesence cf
anarchy. A majority, held in restraint by constitutional
checks and l~mitation~, and always changing easily with
deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentl11ents is the
only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects tt,
does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or despotism (1861, P• 585).
And finally, there is the allusiDn to ·Jere11lah.tO,tl1
The gods that have not made the heavens am the earth, evt!n
they shall perish from the earth •••
False gods shall perish, but the ; government of the people shall
perish.
~
V•
the Speaker
After having, at length, considered the speech, it is leglti11ate
to consider the speaker.
Lincoln ts, at his height, a publtc mane
If ever I feel the soul wt.thin me elevate and expand to those
dlmen•••ns not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect. it
is when I contemplate the cause of my country ••• (1839, P• 112).
But the American speake~r who, like Lincoln, means to put his whole
heart and ambition (p. "Ill) in the service of the body politic.
has a peculiar problem, rooted in the quality of American life,
which de Tocquevil l& describes in the chapter "Of Some Sources of
Poetry Among Democratic Nations".·
-1
Nothing concelvab.le is so .petty, so lnslpbt, so crQwded with
pal try interests . - in one word so anti-poetic - as the lt.fe of a
man in the United States (pemocracy 1n America, II, t, 17).
'
This ls because democracy has given up ln dlst&ste the source of
aristocratic poetry. the past, while its very principle. that of
equality, deprives it, by maklng ' all contemporaries equally mediocre,
of -the present. There remain, de Tocqueville says. only three
sources to democratic poets• the nation, the future, and God - and
thls precisely anticipates the theaee of Lincoln's public poetry.
But, as he observes in · the chapter on "Why Ameri.can Writers and
Orators Often Use an Inflated Style'•,, lt is difflcul t to oresent
these themes at the middle distancea ·
ln democratic communities, each citizen is habitually engaged
in the contemplation of a very puny object t namely, hinlself.
If he ever raises his looks higher, he p~rcelves only the
hnmens., form of society at large or the stl 11 more imposing
aspect of mankind. His ideas are all either extremely minute
and clear or extremely general am1 vaguea what lies between
�-32-
ls a veld
(.i!?JJ1., lR).
For thls American proble11 of the middle void the very nature of U1e
pr\nciples of equality and liberty is responsible, Flr1t 1 11no~
they are axioms of ~penness, that is, pro.positiona et reaaon wh \ch
are yet not ~ntended ' as the .theoretical bases of a tetal 1yste••
they provide ne specific authoritative "public ph1.1i.iitiphy 0 , 10 that
each issue. ,.aust be dect.ded ·anew on the basis of prlnolplea whose
nature lt' ls precisely to give no univocal guldanciet ~e b•
politically aware is to be uncertain. Second, sin~• they ar•
. intended precisely to insure "the pursu_ t of happ1.n•••'', that t.~ ,. 1
i
a prosperous privacy, they becoae less palpable the . .re euqoe.~tully
they are at work, for, ln echolaatic terms, they are prtnclpl•• of
pure potentiality.- the possibility of goods but not theileelvea
goods, and certainly not public good.as sigrilflcantly 1 Fr•nch
"fraternity" has never co11pleaented 1 iberty ~nd equalcl.~y t.n A•erica.
And third, · insofar as they are self-evident proposltlnna •f reason
they, unlike objects of faith, · become less .and not ao~e objects of
hunlan concern as they are more e!ficact.ously at work, •o that they
tend to.drop simply out of sight in the dally conslderatlone of
national llfe1 private business induces public apathy.
·
In his speeches, Lincoln wrestles with just. t:hee~ dlfflcultiea,
which might be characterized with the aid of a clasalo•l ter•• by
the very nature of their . pol itt.cal foundation Amed.cane tend to act
not as a p9l\s, a pol t.tlcal colll1lt1nity held togethfttr by .rrt.endahlp
(Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VIII, i, 4), but •• a aoQlety, a
col _ection of private persons who jostle each othetr into 11toae eC'rt
l
of balances his effort in his speeches is precisely to prove this
tendency inessential, to persuade the nation that it la held
toge~her by •bends of affectlan" (p. SRR) •
. To Lincoln, then, the problem of filling the agitated natto~l ·
void with sober sentiment •hewn fro11 the solid quarry of sober reaaon"
represented by the . founding principle8 is ~ probl•• of the natleth
Once the spentlanef)us conimit11ent of the Revolution l11 gontt, he aaya ln
his speech· on "The Perpetuation of Our Politi.cal Tnstlt ... tiona"• a n.ev
situation arises a
·
Passi.on has helped uss but . can do so no more. It wtlt 1.n the
future be our ~nemy. Reason, cold, calculatt.ni, . unt.11pa1u1toned
reason. rwust furnish all the materials fer our future support
and defense ... Let those materials be 11oulder1 lnto 11ner1}
. intelligence, souQd morality, and, in particular, ! [IY!Itnct
for the constitution All2. l.!l!l•••<PP• A4-85).
Lincoln's solutien of the "historical• problent, thft recedtng t'lf the
moment of greatness for ·succeeding generations., h1 bald 1 he .,fffl!rs a
new, sober passion, a passion of reason - reverence, a lawyer-llke
love. for the tnstrumentwhlch has accomplished the 11lracle of a
stable democracy - his rhetoric incorporates, and so ftllclta tt.
�At the same tlmeJtrue to the openness demanded by the principles
he usually abstains Crom the rhetorical compulsion of specific plea.st
these sentences of his last public address, dealing with the
burning problem of the mo11ent, are typical•
In the Annual Message of Dec. 1863 and acco111panylng Proclamation,
pre8ent~d A plan of re-construction (as the phra•- goes) which,
I promiaed, if adopted by any State, should be acceptable to,
and sustained by, the Executive government of the nation. I
distinctly stated . that this was not the only plan which might
possibly be 11cceptabhtr ... (p. 797).
·
I
Instead of attempting to compel the people to a course deduced
dogt1ultically, in the manner of an ideologist,· he presented i.n the
words of the London Spectator,
A political transparency, in which the nation could see an
individual character of great power working out phe problems
set before them alt •••
He manages to make these problems supre11ely. absorbing, and he does
it by maki.ng al11ost every speech an interpretation of the founding
docu11ents, in which he reveals at once their in~xhaustlble
radlcali.ty and their enduring applicability - by giving A11eri.cans a
secular complement to the Scriptures (p• 84).
With respect t<> the pro11iatmry character of democrat le
principles, Lincoln underscores lt by projecti.ng the growth of the
past into the future1
There are already among us those, who, lf the Union be preserved ¥.
will llve to see lt contain two hundred and fifty mllliona.
The struggle 2! today-, is not altogether for today - it is for
a vast future also (p. 635, cf. PP• 681, 756).
'
·
The present .is thus understood as being the sponsor of the
,future1 yet the future la, · 1n turn, nothing but the maanlfi.cation
of the past (cf. P• 656) • . But politically the American past ls of .
a peculiar sorts it ls not an extensive, unbrokentraditlon but the
me11ory of a single, intense event - just as· a,fabrtc of reason
begins with a principle from which it ls .derived, so the history
of del'locracy begins with the Revolution. Lincoln intends to assure
that that beginning is present to the future, that that event
remalns the tradition wtiich governa the future. .For the principles
of. the fathers are, by their very nature, the root of the future
insofar as lt is good.
And finally, with respect to the passive and incurious mode
in which the democratic principles of equality and liberty tend to
be accepted, lt ls significant that. Lincoln himself never attempts
to rai.se the question of their tcuth, nor even to supply a definition ~
except in extremely simple, and negative terruJ. So he says,
�-34-
The world hae never had a good definitlon of the word
l lberty, and t .h e .A11ertcan people, just now, are 11Uch ln want
of one.
And he provides lt ln the simple tertae of the possibll ity for
eelf-real.lzatien - liberty means
for each •an ta do as · he pleases wlth himself, and the product
·
of hl1 labor ••• ( P• 748) ·1
wht.le he expreasea .hie "idea ef del'locracy" in the for11 of the
fa11illar rellsloua precept "Do not do unto others as you would not
have them do unto you"•
As I would not be a §lt'llh so I would not . be a maoier.
Thia expresses 11y idea of de110cracy. Whatever d lffera ~ro11 .
thts, to the extent of the difference, it not ~eraocracy (p. 427)
I
Thus he treata the principles af A•eriean politics as s1.11ple precepts
for the . happineaa of hu•anity, which are at the aa11e time standards
of llOral perfeotlon, and about whleh he offers no theoretical
re f'l ftCt ton• I
The Saviour, I eupp«t••• did not expect that· any h1,111an creature
could be perfect ae the Fat.her tn Heaven1 but He 1ald1 11 Ae
yeur Father in Heaven le perfect, be ye also per!ect."·~·so I
say in relation to the principle that all men are created
equal, let it be•• nearly reached as we can (p. 403).
Indeed, such public inquiries would not be to the point of ht•
rhetoric. Fer the strictly rational basis of democracy ls to be
found in the theery of wnatural rights" aet out by Hobbes . and
Locke, a theory which regards precisely what ls "natural", that ~~.
conrmon, in Mn: and not what ie high, so that it is scarcely conducive
to a public feellng of plety. What Lincoln does lnstead .ls, by
speaking ln dellberate analogy to Christ (p. 403), to ralee these
princlple111 fro11 1elf-evld1tnt propoaltlone to arttclea Q{ faith,
thu• returning, as de Tocqueville ahow~d (QR• .cit.•• I, ~). to a
.
foundation · 1n fact deeper than t.hti! rational begrrlnlngs provided by
the found lng fathers. _
. .
.·
·
,
.
·
To explain why "the oolr\t g.i rells1on and the ru"?lrtt !lf l tbert\(
are anclently lncorporated wlth each other ln A11ert.ca, de Tocquevil l ~:
had appealed to the classical tradltlon concerning the nef'td for
public pl8ty to support the body politlc1
·
Llberty regatcts religion as its companl.on in all lts
battles and ite trlul'llphll, a& the cradle of t.t8 infancp and
the divine source of tts . clal•s (21?, • .£!..t•• I, 11).
·
And he had found this theory corrobor~t.ed in A111erlca1
�-35Religion in Arnerica takes no direct part ln the government
of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their
political lnstltutt.ons (SlQ• ill•, I, xvii).
The older Lincoln came to a view which is. the insenuous converse
of this posl.tion of expediency1 not religion serves polities, but
the reverse - republican government is itself a great religious
lnstitution1 in his own words "the only greater institution• ta
the church (p. AS). The rock of reason of Washington's foundation
has the sa11e basis as Peter'e church. That reverence for the laws
which Lincoln calls "the political religion" of the nation (p. 81)
derives froN a trans-political faith. It Nuet be urged that this is
not an opinion l .. lncoln holds routinely or perfunctorily .. for .hi.a,
the Republic, which puts the sood of the whole finally into the
hands of a numerical majority (p. 785), ls plausible to the ••ul
only as a community of the faithful, protect~d by a kindly provision
that few shall be totally without gracP., that
of all those who conte into the world, only a email percentage
are natural tyrants (p. 301).
Were . it otherwise, democracy would be a continual garAble wtth the
body politic at stake.
Accordlngly the Gettysburg Addrfi2SR begins and ends not:. only
wt.th phrases hftrrowed fro11 American oratory but with the diction of
the Bible. To Lincoln.the people of the Revolution ls also the
second people of the Boo¥;, the "al11ost chosen people" (p. -575) • All
1\mericans, he said in his Second Inaugural,
read the same Bible and pray to the same God ••• (p. 793).
Lincoln himself was not only, as 110st backwoodsmen, hr. ught up on
o
the Bible, but he wrote to hls friend Speed in the year .before
his deatha
I am profitably engaged t.n reading the
J:S1Dle,
and in the same year he said to a committee which .had presented
a Bible 1
It is the best gift God has given to men. All the good
Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book.
But for it we could not know right from Wrong. All things aost
desirable for 11.an•s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found
portrayed in it (September 9, 1864).
Lincoln's commitment to tihe Bible ls not .that of an orthodox
Chrietian, for, as he sald,
I have neverunited myself to any church, . because I have
found difficulty tn.glvlng my assent, without mental reservation~
�-36-
to the long• complicated statement 11 of Christ tan doctrine
whlch characterize their Articles of Belle! and Confessions
of Faith (Remark to H. c. Demig, c. 1R62, cf. P• 186).
For h111 the Bible is rather a palit ~cal ••vr•• book, and that in
two contrasting respect•• On the one hand it lends hi• a lan~uage
at once high and popular, beyond both the de11agogue and the
intellectual, a language of salvation with which to ••gnify the
A11eri.can enterprise 1 wlth i.ta dlcti.on he speaks as ••Father Abraham"•
As the first patriarch of a new generation of founding fathers.
And on the other, it supports him in a view of the n•ture of things
which, when publicly acknewledged,da11pa the hysterical activity
filling the American void, and reduces it to ~hat 11elaneholle
deliberateness on which the public buain••• thrivea. F•r Linceln
had been fro11 h.18 youth a believer in an inner counterpoise tt>
political liberty, which he understood to be called the "Doctrt.ne
of Necessity",
that is, that the hu•an mind ls impelled to action, or held
ln rest by some power, over whtch the raind itself has noi:
control ••• (p. 187-188J.
.
· ·
.
That power ls God who, though •not a person••, can yet directly
exercise his will in human affairs•
By his mere great power on the 111nds of the now contestants,
he could have either eav•d' ( or destroyed the Union without a
human contest (Hedltat1.ou 2Ji the . Divine~. 1862, P• 655).
This ~od, in who11 Lincoln, by the peculiar power of hla falth,
recognizes ·at once •Nature's God" and the God of the Bible, le
Lincoln's and the people's political 11B.ster1 he constitute• a
direct limitation on the power of hu11an contrivance. 1he humanity
. which ls the consequence of Lincoln's view ls embOdled ln Lincoln's
last speech to the natlon before his assassination, the Second
Inaugural Address, which is evidently the clae~ical American poem
drawing particularly on de Tocqueville's third source of democratic
poetry, God.
·
t::.::.;.::.;:;:=.~::;...-..:-:.·- -,........~
.:~::=-~,.::a:=a=::E. '.Z.;l1
The sarne speaker who is so eminently democratic ln theme is,
however, the very reverse 1n form. Again de Tocqueville provldes
the criteria in h!s chapter on •Ltterary Characteristics of
Democratic Times" 1
·
.
.
· Taken as a. whole, literature in democratic ages can never
present, as lt does in periods of arlsto~racy, an aspect of
order, regularity, science and art1 its form, on the contrary,
will ordinarily be slighted, sometimet11 despl8ed. Style will
frequently be fantastic, incorrect, overburdened, and lotn!le,
almo8t alwa.ys vehement and bold. · Au~hors will aim at rapidity
of execution more than at perfection of detail. Small
productions wlll be more common than bulky books •••
(Democracy!!! America, II, i, 11).
�Now, thl:s oth;:~rwise sn accurat~e .1k~scrtpUon ti:; ci>rH~picnmrnly
~ nc.tppl tcablG to Linc..~oln° s; h'rit i:ngi
The ~;~!·.ttY§..hU£t~ t\d~!tS:!il! is
small, to he sure., hut: lt W35 not r·aptrny exf ~cuted - Lincoln had
brought a worl\~d .. over tlraft from ~va:~hingtonr he rf~-w1n ·k,z·:rd this in
Getty sbtff('.; on t::h1:i ~V(~ of dt:~l t Vt?r~·, and h(~ {!mended e<~ch n f · thf;• thr-e .-~
kn.own co'pi1~s he m~de ovn-r the nf:'xt three m{H1l:bs.. A 1 thoor;hf as
he sa ld, not: a master: of langt..H:tge nnr tn po:s1H,:ost.o n n f ;1 flne
e<lucat ion ( fh 39:3), be !!~~ careful 1 ·
·
Gentlem(mt' Jud iv:~~ noue;Ias informed you tha.t th t. s Spt~f!'Ch () r In tH <'~
was p1:-ohahly ca1:--efully pre{A11.rede T •:hirnit. i.t wan (p .. 392).
By thio ca1:·e he SlK'C<-:eded tn glving hi<> thuu-r~hts their almost
unalt.Grahle f,n·nh For..· thts purpose he had 1• ~ft·er t:he agB of twenty~
t:hreef Bet lli.mself t i } study~ E.ngltsh 8~:'.f;\lliffi.:U~~ "lmpl"!-:rff!Ctly~ uf COUt:'Ge~
but so as to speak and l~'i'C:t~ as wGll a~~ he does nuw" (l8hll, p~ 5.'.}9).
enabli.ng him to write to a man whn had submit.tH1! t:o h1m an ecHt(~ii
ve~·&ion of one of hi.n. speedv:.•81
So f;:ff as ·1.t la tnt:ended me.r~.:, Jy to i mprov'1:" 1n gicarn.rnar, .aml
elegancE:-~ .zy.f comp•oslt. l&n,. I. am qul t .e agceed 6 hut I do not. w tf~h
the st•nsc~ change.•d, or rii.odifi.ed,. to· a hatr~s .breac\t:h. i\nd you,
not havtng
ntudi.t.~d
parttcular points
<:>r~
cl:o1.rnly as 1 haV<:"i·· ,can
not be qutte sure that you do not at\8.n!';H the , sens~ whl'.:ln :yo_l clo
L
,..lif
t:''t:
~
.
not. ~t.nten'J ~t ( p., .J4J; ct., p .. c:3 8,) ·• .
:>
:.
.· . .
Hts style.I> . ton-t ts the very oppu.sltu of that of t: ~1~ typical cternocrat i c
wrltert descrthe-d by dt~ Iucqmwi.lle in hiv chaprer on "How AmerlcHn
nemoct.~acy ha6 Morn.n .P.·d the gnslioh :Langua.ge" (J.h.!:S:1~1' IIP L; 16) Wh<~t
out of lack of . egre ~ lmH~ of chang~ und <lesire fo:r blgn~ss, us~G
old words in indeterminate seasen~ i.ntxodue~s vast rn.m1bf~t-s of rn"w
wonlslt usually borrowed · fl.'£.'\'.tn technical vt-.cabul.artes, and 1o<ids hl'8
speech wtth abstract ar.ttt gew:,r.a1. expreastor'\s. ne TocqttevU lo had
called lawveis t.he ar:tstocr~'its (}f Am~d. ca (i.bld ... J xvi}" and ln
part Li.ncoinf s caN'fu1ness tn that: of a lawyei.=-·1nrt~.r:pr~~i-. ln.~ law.
But t .he lapidar·y precisi.tH'l of form which earrh;;s the p:n.:ri.a.rcb3l
gran~eur of Ltn.coln~ ~ rhe-toric . ... h. e W<'HJ. Lm~1h~e m•rrniy to 1 P.C1:_ur13
.
(p .. 54t) - !.~ sometctnng 1~:H"fd~~ it. is a Blf>;n ot a HO\H~l ki..nd of
aristocracy ~ republi.ca.n arlstocracy. L\.nenln had t ..~cttly r<~jected
Everett• s cold L~lasslc1..sm a.s inapproi:,wiat:e t.n a, democ.r-r.tt'ic speaker,
\.-Knse object must not be to dt:aJ17onstrate or 8xert h r.s (lWn. superior ity.
Hts amblth1Tt '\>;t,'lSv r«~ttu~r.·, as he told hlo f1-ien1I H'~ tndont "to bi;~
d}. stinct:1y under.·stood by th~! '('ornmon pt:>op1H'' (p~ ti5)~ dnd to U:'>i".: blfl
power as had hts mo~fol, Clay, in t:he tHffvtce of d~mot:rat t c d~c; a
r'\ll hiE< i:J;ffortn were mad~ for practtcal effect~ Ho new~r
spoke merely to l>e l1eard •. H.e never 't~el i v<~red a .Y11iurth or J111\r
cn:ation" o.r an eulogy on an occaGlon 1 Lke tbta U'\!19.Bl'. ~,~.Q lfC'nrv
f,lay, July 6, 1'852f cf. P• 269} ~
--
Yet hts rhetori.c Hhow~ pn~ctse1y th~ fundamental chH:CiH:'!terist' i.cs of
ancient artstocratic wrltt~rs. of whi.ch de Tncquev) l le, i.n thi~ ch;;ptf"'r
�') •·
••ll • ,, 1-
"Th~ 'Stucty o:r Greek and Lat t n L i.te.
.r.atur c ts Peculiarly
Useful in Of:mocrat:ic (}o'Tlmuniti.es" wrtt:ese.
·
ent ltlect
Nothing tn thE::ir wol."ks seems done haoti.ly or .at :candomw · eve:r::y
1 inH is writt:e1'1 ft"H: · the eye of the conno lsseur and i.s shapod
after .some \.~cmcept ton of lt'.iea1 . b~m1ty • No l it:e.r ature places
tht.rne flne . qu~•t itles ln . \4hteh the wr: i.terc, uf democr:-ach~s . <:i:r.e
naturally dHf'].cl.ent in bolch~r relief than trH~-=.l. \'.,f 'i:he .anct.ent:t:11'
no l iteraturet thm 'efort• ~ ou:.~ht to be rno.r.e -stud s_,.:>d h1 democrat 1.c
t: tmt~s
11, t, 15).
<w..si . ,
Llncoln h\rna.elf ls~ 1: h<.:Hl 10 in de Tncqw?.>vtlle' s s.•~m'!'e an aristoeratic
writer\\ cwen tu t:he point ·of flndlng hit~ sourceo tn tru:- par.t. The
msn who had had f·r·om y'1'uth the .. pecul lil:r amblti(mn ·
of betng truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rern.1erl.ng myself
. worthy o.f the!.r esteem (p~ 57 v ef ~ Jh 48)),
and who Ga id he tnped h1~ UW:it?rStO~tri "th~{.t Which CQlll3t itub.HJ the tns ide
c•f a gentleman'' (p .. 414-).c · eould have no quC!rn· .'l wtth thp- essence of ,
"
m-i.stQcracy.
In faet11 in the weak~1 ju5t before the d•:>ltvery of the
· .Qc-tt~yfil.>~ [likh:e~ he had .had vlsi.tot~s whn urged him a.t ~he (rn,r;-1 t~nt
occ~tii.on t<:.i prest:mt the Uni.on. to the 'public ~·a_s . ftght'htf.~ the batt1 e
of democracy for .all the wor.tdn and th<... war Hs being one ~~ of 't:JH5 people
s.ta tnst the arlstocratsv; l .he had accepted the former ~'lnd rejected the
l.att:er st.1.gge~th.;1h F'or hl~ w~H hbnself s eorroboration of
Jef.fer~on w o contentton, set out tn hlH .cor.re.operndence with Adams
(Octob!!.•r. .2H t 1 Al :J) ~ that md.stocracy an6 dsrnocn~cyi' the t~ule (!~ f the
best etnd the rule . of the ,peopl~'" have been marle t:o111patlble in the
United St~teG, t:hat the: citize'n~ tn fre~· -eleott6n can and will nln
~enaral •• choose from among · thernselvt~s the "rtatural ~ls,t.Q\ , the
best by nature" The ~~q;b_ur.,g iHJQ.rgJ}£. ts thu u'Ctr..~r.ance o.f such an
§.X.i§tsu~. t <) man at 'the s-ame thnH ex.celle•nt in the arit i.que sense and
good in the common um1eratarLding ..
0
�1
· For a desert pt ion of tht~ events of the Gett.y s hurg ded l.cat ion and
a collect ion of crnnmentari.~s on the ~meeches see :Car:l Sandburg r
Abraham Ltnool.r!t JJt~ l l i ~.• New York ( l 939), Vol. !I~
PP• ~452-4~
2 For an annotated col lectlon of the vartous versions seL~ Ihe
Colle~t;!Zd ~ ~J.~~~l!l Linc9...ln~ ed. Roy · p, Ih"lsl-01-·" Ne;;-Drunewlck
'CT95"3), Vol VII \.l8b3·lJJb4)t ppe 17~·23 . .
3
Edward Evere,ttf ill.:..E!.'tlOfl..§. ill1f1 .S~fil'Jl.~11 liostun (1892) 11, Vol~ IV,
}lp.
622~659.
see Harold l:ysklnd, ~'I\ Rhet.ori.~a.l linalyE.d;s of the Geti~'sbur.g
Addre·s6 1' , J.21!£.lli!l u.[ Q.ene..r~l J~Qn~ Vol~ IV (1950)., PP• 202-212.
4
5
.For an analys ls whtch .doe-s just ioe to the awesome i.mpl icat ions of
the,. speech see. H~!l~Y V ~ Jaffa~ ~JJi
( 1 9 :> 9) t pp c l 8 J"' ~ 3 L ~
tl
S.~ l:!Q~~ .Jl};y1d~
,
,
61
'
n t h' i ng out these paragraphs J. rec~ 'i ved much .
i.nk
help from Geor,ge
i\naat:aplo. ~§ Q.'l th.«r; f.l!:fil~ t\11\endmett..t .t.g .tl!!t. ~2!1~~1.t:ut .!Q!! J2i. the
Un .. cd St;at:es· ~ Ductural. Hisser.tat ton,, Univer~i.ty of Chi~go
U 64 v ~l\ppentlix I, 6, p .. 600 'ff~
7
8
Prom a spee<
ch lnd irectly repo1i:t.ed in
(1890). Vol~ !I, P• lilS.
S~e Carl L. Becker.,
P• 142 ..
J!le:
~:.!]litfu.1~§. !JJ.l~Ql nf
Chicago
~la!£!~tiqn ~2( !D&~.Q.fill.£!£11 E~t New "York (1958),
...
�
Dublin Core
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Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
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40 pages
Original Format
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paper
Dublin Core
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Title
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A reading of the Gettysburg Address (expanded version)
Date
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1968
Description
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Typescript of a lecture delivered in 1968 by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Identifier
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lec Brann 1968
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
Publisher
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St. John's College
Language
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English
Type
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text
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St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online.
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pdf
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Brann, Eva T. H.
Deans
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/6238210cf32cde7989b9e5688670f42e.mp3
556795032142193da83784a30ef80b55
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
Sound
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wav
Duration
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01:06:53
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A Revolution in Higher Education: Tales from Unlikely Allies
Description
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on February 17, 2017, by Richard DeMillo as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
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DeMillo, Richard
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2017-02-17
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A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online."
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sound
Format
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mp3
Language
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English
Friday night lecture
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