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�The College
Cover: Marble statuette of Socrates (d.
399 B.C.). Copy of a Greek original of
the fourth century B.C. In the British
Museum.
The College is a publication for
friends of St. John's College and for
those.who might become friends of the
College, if they came to know it. Our
aim is to indicate, within the limitations of the magazine form, why, in our
opinion, St. John's comes closer than
any other college in the nation to being
what a college should be.
If ever well placed beacon lights
were needed bY American education it
is. now. By pubiishing articles about the
work of the College, articles reflecting
the distinctive life of the mind that is
the College, we hope to add a watt or
two to the beacon light that is St.
John's. (Ed.)
Editor: Laurence Berns
Managing Editor: lV!ary P. Felter
Alumni Editor: Thomas Farran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant: Maurice Trimmer
Editorial Consultant: James M. Tolbert
Art Editor: Daniel Sullivan
The College, part of The Bulletin
series, is published by the Development
Offices of St. John's College in Annapolis, Md. (Julius Rosenberg, Director)
and Santa Fe, N. l\·!. (Frank McGuire,
Director); Member, American Alumni
Council. President, St. John's College,
Dr. Richard D. Vv'cigle.
Published four times a year in April,
July, September, and December. Entered as Second-class matter, February
18, 1949, at the Post Office at Annapolis, l\laryland. Additional entrv, Baltimore, l\iaryland.
·
Volume XI
April 1969
Number l
In the April Issue:
A World I Never
Made~
by John S. Kieffer
A Reading of the Gettysburg Address,
by Eva Brann
·
"How Is The Seminar?" by Michael Ossorgin.
• The College and the Underprivileged,
by Laurence Berns
I
6
14
17
News On The Campuses ..
19
Alumni Activities .
23
�A World I Never Made*
By JOHN S. KIEFFER
In one of A. E. Housman's poems there is this couplet:
I alone and sore afraid
In a world I never made.
James T. Farrell chose the second of these lines as the
title for his Studs Lanigan trilogy. The note of self-p1ty
and alienation is all too evident and seems to express
what manv young people today are feeling. Yet the same
disclaimer. about world making is found in Augustine's
Confessions, and there it serves as a starting point for
the saint's joyous search for the true maker of the world.
Between these two extremes, of alienation and reconciliation , the dialectic of the liberal arts tradition tends to
oscillate.
That you were born into a world you never made goes
without saving: all of us are. The lesson I draw from
Farrell's trilogy is that though you did not make the
world, you can, \Vithout half trying, n1ake a mess of 1~.
The whine of self-pity separates the one who feels tlus
way from the world, makes of him a passive object, and
while he is being ground up by the world he never made
he is in turn making it a messy place.
How this sort of thing may happen becomes clear when
you examine what. we mean by the world and what our
relation to it is. We come into a world we never made,
but we come into it as a part of it and not as an object
set over against it. In the first and broadest sense, the
word ~<world" means the physical universe. Far, then,
from making a world, you are made by it. Whatever possibilities lie before you are conditioned by your phys1cal
being as a human animal. Your bodies take nourishment
from the physical el1\'ironinent and are subject to natural
laws-gravitation, growth and decay, change of many kmds.
As participants in natural processes men are not merely
takers from a fixed surrounding; they give as well as take
and so in some way contribute to the continual making
of the world. \Ve are, all of us, as Plato saw with poetic
vision, part of a greater animal, the cosmos.
* Lecture
gi\·cn by Dean Kieffer on the Annapolis campus, Septem-
ber 20, 1968.
The world that we come into and that we never made
is a human world, presupposing the physical, of course,
but transcending it. A way of seeing symbolically the meaning of the human world is to think of two of the most
important events in the early life of newcomers to the
world. These are the infant's first word and his first step.
With these he is initiated into the world of man. They
are the true beginnings of the liberal arts. 'A'ith speech
the animal perceptions that have constituted his world
are aiven meaning through names. \Vith steps and walking the child begins to interact with the spatial world, to
count and to measure and to achieve balance and rhythm.
Of itself, locomotion is characteristic of most animals. It
becomes human and liberal in combination with speech.
To be human, then, is to be able to give names to
patches of experience, which we call things in the most
general sense. Once the nascent human being finds that
things have names, the world of his experience becomes
intelligible. But already, in showing him that things have
names, the world has played a trick on him. He is bound
to think for a while that names are somehow innate in
things and to confuse the thing and its name. Nevertheless, the great power of names is that it frees one from
bondage to the immediate and the particular. The name
unites diverse particulars under one heading and enables
the child to see something as persisting through change.
Thus he can have a sense of the identity of himself and
the world. He. is also able to communicate with others
and so enter into the world of men. With names, for the
first time, a sense of the unknown arises, and its fascination draws him into ventures that extend his horizons,
making the world a bigger place for him. One must supJohn S. K.iefler, classicist, tntor, retiring, Dean ( 19?2-1969) and
former hesident ( 1947-1949) of St. Johns College, IS one of that
srna11 band of tutors which preceded and remained with the new,
i.e., traditional, program of liberal ~nts instituted at the Col1ege in
1937. Dean Kieffer received his B.A. and M.A. from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from 111e Johns Hopkins University .. He ha~ be~
with the College since 1929. In 1964 the Johns B.opbns UmYemty
'Press published his Galen's Institutio Logica-English Translation,
Introduction, and Commentary.
1
�The College
pose that for animals there is no unknown as such. The
world they live in is known in the mode of familiarity
and to them nothing is unknown, but their world is a very
restricted one. The fact that the unknown exists for men is
expressed by Plato and Aristotle when they say that
·
philosophy begins in wonder.
Capacity for language is the natural endowment by
which the world makes the individual. As linguistic skill
develops, the growing human being acquires his native
bnguage, so called, and at first accepts the world that
language reveals to him, partly trapped, as we have seen,
·by the easy confusion of word and thing. In the stricter
sense, the liberal arts are the reflections on language, the
conscious study and practice, in the light of great models,
that come with schooling. It is this systematic study that
frees a man from the tyranny of words, as Stuart Chase
once called it, and allows him to pass from the stage of a
slave to linguistic habit and become a master of his tongue.
Although we are born into a world of language we never
made, language as an art is one of the fundamental means
of achieving freedom and participating in the ongoing
making of the ever-changing world.
The other branch of the liberal arts is mathematics. I
have suggested that it is by walking that we enter into
the mathematical world. Walking habituates us to counting and measuring. We find we have a different power
over our world from the power that names give us.
'Nhereas by pointing and through names we can join
with our fellows in understanding our world, through
walking around in it we can come into close physical contact with its parts and gradually learn its shape and extent.
Yet mathematics depends on language. Our counting and
measuring, which we do by- moving around, must still be
made intelligible through a set of names: the numbers
with which we count, and the units with which we
measure. The use of language gains something in return
from mathematics. Counting and measurement are precise operations. Ordinary language is imprecise. The name,
by virtue of ·its potential generality, does not correspond
exactly with the thing it names. This is the starting point
for metaphor and analogy, but it is also the source of
fallacy and misjudgment. The names that assist the process
of counting and measuring, however, force us into pre~
cision. The numbers by which we count are exactly what
they are and stand in an order to each other. The units
of measurement, too, must be fixed and exact. Thus in
the mathematical sciences there is a corrective for the
imprecision of language and a paradigm for precision in
other subjects than mathematics.
The faculties of the intellect and brain that give men
the capacity to acquire the arts of grammar, rhetoric, and
dialectic on the one hand and the arts of arithmetic and
geometry on the other do not become actual without
teaching and learning. In this respect they are different
from the perhaps more fundamental faculty of sight. Man's
2
first awareness of the world is through his eyes and ears
and the other senses, but it is only as the arts develop
that he stops being an uncomprehending spectator, a
detached observer, and becomes a participant with evergrowing awareness. The learning of the liberal arts, insofar
as we as a college are concerned, is a reflective process and
a combination of theory and practice, or, if you will, of
science and art. We study the structure of language and
of particular languages; we learn arithmetic and geometry
in a systematic way. In acquiring the sciences of the liberal
arts we are dealing with the reasons governing what we
have been doing naturally since we learned to talk and
listen, to walk around and feel the extent of our world.
Along with the reflective understanding that our tutorials
help us to develop we simultaneously practice the arts
of the liberal understanding. We read and ponder and
discuss; we observe, experiment, work problems. Liberal
education, therefore, requires both reflection and participation, contemplation of the liberal structure of our
world and participation in it, vicariously, perhaps, through
reading but directly through the discipline of thinking
and writing and talking.
With the liberal arts men have shaped the world into
which we are born and have recorded the work of those
who have been the great shapers. It follows first, therefore,
that every new human being in a world he never made is
forced to conform to that world, on pain of losing his very
humanity. A few years ago it was fashionable to ·decry
"conformity" and to make a fetish of eccentricity. Nevertheless, conformity, in the sense I have described, is essential. As I have already pointed out, the liberal arts are
dangerous and can mislead. Through men's lack of understanding of the nature of words in relation to things,
it has come to pass that the world into which we come,
the world made by previous generations, can and d<ies
contain many illiberal elements, born of misconception
and perpetuated by habit and indolence. On this basis
objections to conformity are valid. Dissent has today taken
the place of non-conformity as the slogan and rallying
cry of the young. In any case, the consequences of defective exercises of the liberal arts in the past cry out for
correction. It is, moreover, innate in the liberal arts that
they do provide the means for correction of their former
errors.
As I was saying, you and everyone coming into the
world must conform to the patterns of discourse and action
created by previous generations if you are to become truly
human. Only then, after you have learned those patterns
and the opportunities they offer you for independent
action and what is called now creativity, only then dare
you question the conventional wisdom of your ancestors.
But then you may; and any one of you who aspires to be
a man and not a robot must exercise to the full your
powers of creation and of persuasion for the achievement
of your goals.
�April 1969
But what ought these goals to be? Here I come to a
new point of departure. The liberal arts I have been presenting are the instruments of acting as a man. They are
the habits and rules by which you live in the human
world both of intellect and of community. Being instruments, however, they are neutral to the ends for which
they can be used. Not entirely, perhaps. It is hard to see
how a man who can read well, and has read widely and
thought deeply, could apply the liberal arts to nefarious
ends. You need, however, look no further than Plato's
dialogues to find in his portraits of the sophists examples
of men who, in the common opinion at least, misused
their liberal skills for selfish and unenlightened purposes.
And they, the sophists, were in fact the first men to give
· systematic study to the phenomena of language in all its
aspects as a symbolic representation of reality.
The question remains, to what goals do the liberal arts
lead? This is to ask, in effect, what are the ends proper
to human beings? A whole new question has arisen. Tradition gives us a choice of answers. To Plato and Aristotle
the end is happiness, which itself is a concomitant of
virtue and, more generally, the good. To the Jews, it is
obedience to the law of God as given to Moses; to the
Christian, to glorify God and to do his will. Apparently
the existentialist would deny that there is an end proper
to men, but would affirm that men may make for themselves, by affirmative action, an achieved end. Such an end,
if achieved, is individual and not to be generalized to
apply to all men. The variety of answers that men have
held out to themselves leaves a dialectical choice to
every young person as he pursues his education. Let us
see if we can contribute anything to the dialectic.
Philosophically the question of the proper end of man
belongs to an area of thought that the eighteenth-century
German teacher of philosophy, Christian Wolff, called
teleology. The word comes from the Greek telos, which
Aristotle uses so often as the term for his final cause. The
study of ends, as Aristotle conceived it, is concerned with
more than the end of man. Since man is a natural being
and a part of and participator in the world, the existence
of a final cause in the world and for the world would of
course imply something about the end for man as well.
Teleology, however, considers ends in general. The consideration of the end for man belongs rather to ethics
and politics.
Aristotle's discussion of causation and particularly final
causation owes much to what he learned from Plato. His
debt to his master is as evident in his disagreements with
him as in his direct borrowings. Although it is always
dangerously misleading to assert something too dogmatically about Plato's beliefs and philosophical opinions, it is
probably true that for Plato the belief in a final cause,
a telos, is an affirmation and not a fully reasoned conviction. The idea of the good, Socrates seems to assure us,
cannot be proved by demonstrative reason but is grasped
after a long preparation and excursion from mathematics
to dialectic. Nevertheless the dialogues not only inspired
in later thinkers a teleological approach to the world, but
also supplied them in great part with the language and
imagery of this way of viewing the world.
There is a great resemblance between the teleology of
Plato and Aristotle, and a profound difference. In both
philosophers the world is dependent on a rational principle, and the things that change move toward an end and
are good for something, as well as good simply to a
greater or less degree. In both, art fits the same pattern
as nature; in both, man has a special position of importance
and through reason shares somehow in the divine nature.
For Plato, however, it is almost safe to say, art is more
-natural than it is for Aristotle. The "constructor of the
all" works like a demiourgos, an artisan, and the cosmos
3
�The College
is an artis!Jc product. In the lively dialectical dialogues
culminating in the Republic, the arts-medicine, shipbuilding, farming, architecture and many others-are
looked to for information about the way of the world. In
Aristotle, on the other hand, art is distinct from nature
and imitates her. For Plato the changing world has two
principles of mO\·ement: the self-moving activity of
rational soul and the disorderly motions of the primitive
receptacle which nous brings into order by its persuasion
of necessity. In Aristotle the divine noesis is an unmoved
mover, who transmits motion to the world beneath him
through the intermediary of the heavenly spheres with
their moving intelligences. Nature, then, becomes the
principle of movement of the things in the sub-lunar world.
The disorderly motions of chaos, which Plato represented
as somehow the energizing cause of motion in the world
of becoming, disappear from Aristotle's picture. They
are replaced by the potentialities of material, which are
actualized by nature as efficient cause and tend toward
the being of what they are potentially. The active working of intelligence in artisan fashion is replaced by the
unconscious purposes of natural motion-except in the
case of man. Man's intelligence allows him through art
to be a principle of movement in material and so to imitate nature, as in contemplation he imitates God.
I have dwelt at some length on the Platonic and Aristotelian discussions of ends because their philosophical
analysis has had such mastery over our thinking. \Ne
cannqt escape their influence. Let us, nevertheless, remem-
ber that Aristotle certainly, and Plato in all probability,
'looked on the world as fundamentally unchanging, with
fixed species maintaining themselves everlastingly through
reproduction, true to type except for certain monstrous
accidents. In their world, man's end was an assimilation
of his life to the cosmic order of the universe. Virtue was
at the same time the means to this end and the end, so
far as men could attain it. While it is not true that the
idea of progress was foreign to Plato and Aristotle or
unacceptable to them, it is the case that the spatially finite,
but temporally infinite, universe of their thought made
fundamental progress philosophically impossible. In their
view, while man was the roof and crown of nature, and
was a microcosm that reflected the macrocosm of the
universe, he could only contemplate the beauty of the
cosmos, and that only if he was specially gifted, persevering, and lucky. He could not share in it creatively. It is
significant that for Plato the sense of sight, the contemplative sense, is the paradigm of intellect. Much as we
owe to Plato and Aristotle it is impossible for us to follow
them in their definition of the ends proper to man. This
is not a philosophical question only but a real question for
each of us as we try to order our lives.
As seen by the Jews and the Christians, man is a
historical being and the world order is moving toward
a culminating point, not endlessly repeating itself as the
4
ancient Greek conceived it. This \'ii.'\\' ::in'S much more
importance to individuality. If mnt is hist?rical, individual men are distinguished by thcit l'lxc m th~ lime
sequence. Their uniqueness is not liH'tch to be a:tnbuted
to the simple material individuation ,,f ,·J.t;;~cal ph1losophr.
They are no longer mere contempl.tl''" ,,f the ceaseless
rounds of the heavens but doers a11 d "'"kcrs, partiCipants
in the progress of m~n and the "'''tid tn its final end.
Making and doing are inevitably aCC•'"'i'·"""d by m1stak~,
by error. The contemplative man "' ,n·ll as the ~rac!J
tioner of political virtue, as Aristot k C\''.'cei~es lum, IS
essentially static. The great-souled "'"" ,,t Anstotle, and
all his politically virtuous men, arc 1h''""clves objects of
contemplation; their value lies in whJI thcv are and_ the
example they set to other men, rathcr 1h:lltlll the a~hievc
ment of any social or political goa h. 11 tIus VIew, VIrtue
is its own reward."
Historical man on the other hand. 11·hile he has his
own virtues, gait;s his being from his particiJ.?a~ion ~n
the ongoing of the world. The dnl'ltilll' of ?ngmal sm
is an expression of rrian' s partiality in IIH, !ustonc~l. proce~s.
It is an account of the fallibility ,,f :1111· p~rhcipant m
a process that extends beyond him<~·lf. Ihat mvolves hnn
in goals whose achievement he canllnl_ expect to see .. It
is also an account of the greatne~~ of man as a bemg
capable of helping to forward such gn:tls. I am not here
expressing an optimistic view that cn'J_rl hmg_ tends toward
good. Far from it. It is only too plaill th;tl nnstakes,errors,
crime's, stupidity, misfortUne play :1 .I:J.rgc part m any
historical process. It is only that I wn11ld have you keep
in mind that this is not the whole ;H·cmmt, that there IS
achievement as well as misfortune, :nHl that man's life is
meaningful because it is measured by its failures as well
as by its successes.
The measure is what is in quesliotL In the Platgnic
tradition the archetypal universe, the tdeas, were the
measure. In Aristotle's formulation ill!' Hk:ts become God,
moving the world as the beloved moves Ihe love~. In evert
thing there is a movement from wh;tl is poss1ble !or It
to what it actually becomes, and this lltove':'ent IS set
going by the first mover, who is pore ;tc\oahty_ or Go~!.
If we try to find a measure by which I" tlctermme mans
success or failure in achieving his end. we cannot wholly
abandon the Platonic and Aristotelian vtcw. As we have
seen, man is born into the world wil h C'l'rt"ain limit~ti<:>ns
and with certain potentialities concli\i1111!'d by those limitations. To live is to actualize the huJII'"' potenhahhes one
is born with and the ideas or the At i::totelian God are
pure actualit;,, Yet the measure of ;whicvcment is not a
simple imitation of God.
In treating of the physical world, At i::totle talks about
time and concludes that time is tlw JHIIIlher or measure
of change. Change, for Aristotle, is tlw l1111damental C~~']
dihon of the physical worlcl. If wt· '"""cler the soct.I
world of man, "action" 'replaces "r lr:ntr;e" as the key
J
�April 1969
term. "Action" in Greek is· praxis and is used only of
human action. In physics there is no action, only motion·
and change. Now, I propose to say that history is the
measure of action. As I have already remarked, the Jews
and the Christians make history a central factor in understanding human life. I take the term "history" broadly to
mean the available record of human events. And I include
myth and poetry in the record. Myths and epics and
dreams are historical events in themselves and are reflections, images, imitations if you will, of human action.
If historv is the measure of human action, which occurs
in the phy;ical world into which man is born, then history
is the record and the measure of man's exploitation of
nature, his own included. Man's potentialities, supplied by
his nature, include the power to take advantage of the
potentialities that exist in nature and that are realized,
apart from man, in the procession of time. The potentialities of nature, when viewed in connection with the ends
proper to man, become instrumental values, which man
can use and order to his ends. To speak of potentiality and
value in nature leads us to the scholastic "metaphysical
goodness of all things." Since the world is finite, possibilities always outnumber actualities, and so nature as actualized is radically imperfect. Not every good that might
be is, in fact, actualized; on the other hand, from a
narrower point of view, not everything actualized is good
in all respects. But because of contingency in nature it
canna! be said that nature is simply wasteful; that which
in one event shows as a wasted potentiality or seems to
be good for nothing, may contingently, or through human
art, find elsewhere a use or perform a function productive
of something good. Thus being and goodness are intermingled aspects in events.
It may be objected that in "following this line of argument we have to go from Heraclitus to Protagoras, even
as Theaetetus and Theodorus are made to do, and that
it has now been said that "man is the measure of all
things." Now, there is a sense in which this proposition
is true for Plato. Taking good as the measure of that
·which contributes to human happiness is to assign to
man a position of dignity with respect to the standard
by which things are measured. It is clear, however, that
this is to apply to man a standard that is more widely
rooted in nature (or as Plato would say, being) than the
life and opinions of any particular man. Thus man is the
measure of all things insofar as he converts the instrumental goods of nature into the ingredients of his happiness. This is what I have called history. But nature is the
measure of man insofar as his happiness depends on the
natural endowment which he, as a part of nature, possesses.
In this respect, as a finite being, man, as well as nature,
fails to realize many potentialities, but since he is rational
and is free to choose, his failure is the occasion of tragedy,
while nature's failures are only faults or, if on a large
scale, catastrophes, but are never tragic.
The actuality of human life teems with possibilities,
some to be realized, some deferred, some excluded. Among
the possibilities is heightened awareness of surroundings.
If possibility and its passage to actuality are a primary
fact, the mind's awareness of process becon1es an awareness of possibility, of use. From this comes the mind's
power, through intellect and imagination, that is, through
the liberal arts, to find its way to the unactualized and
the unactual, to myths that enlighten the human spirit,
to philosophy.
Philosophy may supply the connection between the
ideal criterion of which I spoke and the historical and
mythical paradigms against which we measure ourselves
and our condition. It is an activity by which we get a
better grasp of existence and so understand the conditions
under which we live and are active. Activity rather than
spectatorship is natural to us. \Vhat I. spoke of a while ago
as teleology is the part of philosophy that leads from
metaphysics to ethics and politics, because it shows us
that we have a proper end rooted in the being of the
cosmos but individually significant. Though we did not
make the world into which we came, teleology tells us
that we are makers, the only ones perhaps within nature;
that by our living we make the world partly new; that if
we attain wisdom, we may even make our part of the
world a little better. This is a small and finite hope, but
it is at least genuine.
5
�A Reading of the Gettysburg Address*
By EVA BRANN
Liberal education ought to be less a matter of becoming
well read than a matter of learning to read well, of acquiring the arts of awareness, the interpretative or "trivial"
arts. Some works, written by men who are productive
masters of these arts, are exemplary for their interpretative
application. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is such a text,
and the following reading did indeed begin as an exercise
in a language tutorial in Annapolis. But although an
exercise, it was nevertheless done on the hypothesis essential to liberal study: that what the author wrote then
might be true even now.
I. The Speech As A Whole
It is probably best to begin by observing what is most
ob1·ious about this "Address Delivered at the Dedication
of the Cemetery at Gettysburg" (p. 734 )-its brevity. It
consists of ten sentences which can be spoken in a little
over two minutes. We know from Lincoln himself that
he chose his format quite deliberately. When Everett
generously wrote to him,' "I should be glad if I could
flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of
the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes,"
Lincoln answered, "In our respective parts yesterday, you
could not have been excused to make a short address, nor
I a long one" (p. 737).
Edward Everett had been chosen to be the main speaker
at the dedication of the national cemetery at Gettysburg,
on ground bought by the eighteen Northern states which
had lost men in the battle there. Lincoln, as chief of state,
had been invited only two weeks before the ceremony.
Everett courteously sent Lincoln his own two-hour speech,
composed in the classicizing style for which he, a professor
of Greek, was famous, so that Lincoln could consider it
in writing his own. \Ve might then expect Lincoln's
speech to be composed as a counterpoise to Everett's;
in fact, it seems to be a tacit and tactful repudiation of
the classical rhetorical tradition, not only in style, which
is (in contrast to Everett's Latinate dactyls) English and
iambic, but in a deeper way. For Everett's speech was
explicitly modelled on Pericles's Funeral Oration as given
by Thucydides, but Lincoln can be contrasted with Thucydides's Pericles precisely as an American with an Athenian
statesman, as a republican leader with an oligarch, that
is, as a political teacher with a master manipulator.
The Gettysburg Address will, accordingly, turn out to
be a distillation of Lincoln's political philosophy, which
he, on this occasion as on many others, attempted to
infuse into the nation at large, a nation distinguished by
the fact that its prosperity "has a philosophical cause"
(p. 513). It is for this reason that the written versions of
the speech have no formal salutation, just as its body does
not contain the pronoun "I." The very brevity that made
its ten sentences at the time so fugitive in the hearing
makes them a "permanent possession" in later readings.
For because of it the speech is readily learned by heart
and is, in fact, learned by heart by many school children.
That means that it may succeed in lodging in the heart,
in the form of sound sentiment, those very propositions,
essential to the national life, which are too difficult-and
perhaps too dubious-to be continually kept in mind.
Lincoln recognized that "In this age, in this country,
public sentiment is everything." Lincoln's rhetoric aims
at the conversion of political principle into "moral sentiment" (p. 401).
Consequently, as a scanning of the grand framework
of this little speech shows, Lincoln makes his brief words
E,·a Brann, tutor of St. John's College since 1957, Ph.D. (Stanford),
FeHow of American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Sibley
Fellow of Phi Beta Kappa at the Agora Excavations in Athens, mem-
ber of the Institute of Ad,·anccd Study, Princeton (1958-1959), has
recently published an extensive study of Plato's Republic, "The Music
* This
article, given as a lecture on both campuses in the fall of
1963, is a much shortened version of a study published in a supplement to The Palaestra, a student magazine. Page references are to
Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and \Vritings, ed. R. P. Basler,
Universal Libmry, 1962.
6
of the Republic," in Arn~. Journal of Classical Studies, University
of California, Berkdc)·, April, 1967. She is also the translator from
the Gennan of Jacob Klein's Greek Mathematical Thought and the
Origins of Algebra, M.I.T. Press, 1968, and author of numerous
articles in the St. John's Collegian on mathematics, astronomy, and
other subjects in the liberal ai:ts.
I
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poignant with a world of meaning. In time it spans the
past ("Four score and seven years ago"), the present
C'l\Tow we are engaged in a great civil \var"), and the
future ("this nation ... shall have a new birth of freedom"), and in space it comprises the battleground on
which it is delivered (in the middle sentences), the continent on which the nation was born (in the first sentence), and the earth which it is to save (in the last
sentence).
II. The First Paragraph
Lincoln begins: "Four score and seven years ago.".
"Four score/' with its long oh's, SOUI).dS a more mournful,
solemn note than could the words "eighty-seven years,"
but the choice of the phrase is not only a matter of sound;
it also carries a special meaning. It is the language of the
Bible, as in Psalm 90:10:
The days of our years are threescore years and ten;
and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,
yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon
cut off, and we fly away.
\Vith the psalm in mind the phrase implies: just beyond
the memory of anyone now alive, too long ago for living
memory. Now, we know that from youth on Lincoln was
concerned with a peculiarly American danger: the death
of sound political passion. In his speech on "The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions," of 1838, Lincoln
drew a. clear parallel with the early community of Christians, whose danger lay in the fact that the generation of
disciples and eye-witnesses had been followed by a second
generation which had only heard by word of mouth, by a
third which had only read of Christ, and by a fourth which
had begun to forget. So in the American community; the
scenes of the revolution, he said, "cannot be so universally
known, nor so vividly felt, as they were by the generation
just gone to rest" (p. 84). The men who had seen the
Revolution, who were its "living history/' ar~ now gone.
They were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and
now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must
fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places
with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of
sober reason. (p. 84)
The danger that the enthusiasms of the Revolution might
fade away has advanced to a fact in 1863, the time of the
fourth generation from that event; the national edifice has
to be rebuilt "from the solid quarry of sober reason." This
is the age for a deliberate mining of the first accounts, for
reading the founding documents.
So, then, "Four score and seven years agd' points to
that quarry, that mine, of reason. Subtract 87 from 1863
and the result is 1776. Lincoln considers that this nation
was both conceived in and born with the Declaration of
Independence. On July 7, 1863, in response to a serenade
on the occasion of the victory of Gettysburg, under tl1e
influence of the providential coincidence that the victories
of Gettysburg and of Vicksburg had both been announced
Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery
at Gettysburg
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought
forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in
Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men
are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing
whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and
so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
battle-field of that war. "'e have come to dedicate a
portion of that field, as a final resting place for those
who here gave their lives that that nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do
this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate-we can
not consecrate-we can not hallow-this ground. The
brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have
consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or
detract. The world will little note, nor long remember
what we say here, but it can never forget what they
did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated
here to the unfinished work which they who fought
here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for
us .to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the
last full measure of devotion-that we here highly
resolve that these dead shall not have died in vainthat this nation, under God, shall have a new birth
of freedom-and that government of the people, by the
people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
November 19, 1863.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
on the Fourth of July, he had said:
How long ago is it-eighty odd years-since on the
Fourth of July for the first time in the history of the
world a nation by its representatives, assembled and
declared as a self-evident truth that "all men 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
80 or 82 years to 1776 (pp. 392, 393). In repeatedly fixing
on the signing of the Declaration as a crucial date, Lincoln
is making a deliberate political judgment concerning the
hierarchy of founding events, different for instance from
that of Toombs of Georgia, who had begun a speech in
1850 in this way: "Sixty years ago our fathers joined together to form a more perfect Union and to establish
justice," referring the founding of the republic to 1790
(the date when the last original state ratified the Constitution), and quoting from its Preamble. Lincoln's version
gives rather the birtl1 of the nation.
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Lincoln goes on: "our fathers brought forth on this
continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
The "fathers," then, are the men who devised and signed
the Declaration, especially Jefferson.
These men "brought forth": this is again Biblical
diction; the phrase is used, for instance, in Luke 1:31,
in the annunciation of the Messiah's birth. They "brought
forth on this continent": there are undertones here of
"begot upon the body of this land," "fathered on this
fallow continent as mother"; the child nation is safe in
the lap of a whole continent, capable of protecting it from
foreign interference and of providing those unlimited
riches which are its material condition.
The new nation was "conceived in Liberty" (Liberty
being the only noun capitalized besides "God") : not
conceived in love as are blessed children, but conceived in
the spirit of liberty as are blessed nations (cf. p. 315).
Thus the begetting of this nation was a begetting of
reason (so also "bringing forth" can mean "uttering
reasons," as in Isaiah 41:21). Upon this all but holy conception, the nation-child was devoted to a proposition as
in a baptism. The proposition "that all men are created
equal" was in quotation marks in the first draft (p. 735),
since it comes from the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.
What is the significance of the birthdate of 1776?
Consonant with the second Federalist, Lincoln held that
the Declaration of Independence was preceded by the
Union which had been formally established by the Articles
of Association of 1774 and was succeeded by the establishment of the Constitution in 1787 (p. 582). This
sequence was of the greatest significance, for it meant
that the nation's birth was a birth of principle, a birth
whose conditions had been made safe by the slightly
antecedent union of the people and whose nature was
kept safe by allowing the practical instrument of its life
to wait on its conception. Thus, using phrases borrowed
from Proverbs 25:11, Lincoln wrote of the principle
"Liberty to all" as expressed in the Declaration:
The assertion of that principle, at that time, was
the word, "fitly spoken" which has proved an "apple
of gold" to us. The Union and the Constitution are
the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it
(p. 513).
Here "subsequently" must, in the case of the Union, mean
not later in time, but in political priority.
Lincoln, then, held the Declaration to be far more than
a declaration of independence, and indeed, it would in
that case have been a peculiar document to cite in a war
to fight secession. But it is n1uch more; for its author,
Jefferson, had, Lincoln said, "had the coolness, forecast
and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary
document an abstract truth" (p. 489). It is precisely in
the omission of this truth that the various declarations
8
of ,ndependence adopted by the Union's adversaries are
characterized (p. 607). And so Lincoln says:
I have never had a feeling politically that did not
spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. . . . It was not the mere
matter of the separation of the Colonies from the
motherland; but that sentiment in the Declaration of
Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the
people of this country, but, I hope, to the world,
for all future time (Address in Independence Hall,
1861, p. 577, cf. pp. 362, 513).
Now, what is of prime importance in the speech is bow
these principles, which mark the true beginning of the
nation, are held. Lincoln denominates them "conceptions" and "propositions." In the Declaration the fathers
had held these "truths to be self-evident." Something has happened between the founding and the
present which forces Lincoln to call the axioms of the
Declaration mere propositions. What happened was that
the Declaration had been called in public "a self-evident
lie," a phrase Lincoln often cited with repugnance (pp.
314, 331, 489), for it creates a dangerous situation:
One would start with great confidence that he could
.· convince any sane child that the simpler propositions
. of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail,
utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and
axioms. The principles of Jefferson are the definitions
and axioms of free society (p. 489).
We know that Lincoln had made a special effort to study
texts concerned with, and to ponder the nature of, axiomatic self-evidence and logical consequence. In his short
autobiography he particularly mentions that he had
"studied and nearly mastered the six books of Euclid
since he was a member of Congress" (p. 549). He understood that self-evidence is a peculiarly delicate affair, since
once impugned, once only denied in public, a self-evident
truth turns into a debatable proposition. Yet as the axiom,
precisely by reason of its self-evidence, is unprovable, so
the proposition has no proof from higher principles, but
can be verified only from its consequences or-dreadful
prospect-from the fatal consequences of its contrary-the
very situation of the Civil War.
What, more precisely, are these principles whose standing has changed? In the words of the Declaration they
are "that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that
among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Here equality of creation, equality before God, precedes and is the condition of the other rights, of which
only some are named.
Now Lincoln seems in the Gettysburg Address to reverse this order in setting liberty as the first conception,
as he had before termed "Liberty to all" the principle of
the Declaration (p. 513). But elsewhere he says, "I believe
that the declaration that all men are created equal is the
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great fundamental principle upon which our free institutions rest" (p. 479). \Vhat does Lincoln consider to be
the real relation of these two principles?
De Tocqueville, in the chapter inquiring "VV"hy Democratic Nations Show a More Ardent and Endur{ng Love
of Equality than of Liberty" (Democracy in America,
II, ii, l), considers liberty and equality two diverse and
independent things; equality, he says, pertains primarily
to the social, liberty to the political sphere. Yet he admits
that ultimately and radically considered, the two are what
would be called in logical terms "commensurately
uni~
versa]," that is, they imply each other: "It is possible to
imagine an extreme point at which freedom and equality
would meet and blend."
Lincoln takes exactly this "extreme" view. He habitually
sets out his understanding of the principle of equality
wrth respect to the slavery question, which would appear
to be primarily a question of liberty. On the other hand,
he interprets equality of creation to mean precisely the
possession of inalienable rights 1 chief among which is
political liberty. The order of the two terms in the speech,
then, srgmfies only that a community conceived in the
spirit of liberty is congenitally devoted to the enunciated
condition of its conception, the axiom of equality.
Lincoln is able to join the two conceptions in this way
precrsely because he does not make De Tocqueville's divisiOn between the social nature of equality and the political
nature of liberty. Equality, the ruling article of Lincoln's
political thought, is not fundamentally a social or even a
political matter, for it is prior to human affairs. Lincoln
asserts the serious converse of De Tocqueville's statement
that
Men who are similar and etjual in the world readily
conceive the idea of the one God, governing every
man by the same laws and granting to every man
future happmess on the same conditions. The idea
of the unity of mankind constantly leads them back
to the idea of the unity of the Creator (II, i, 5).
The effect of this converse is a deep doctrine regarding
man's original nature in the strict sense and his conse~
quent standing in what Lincoln calls "the economy of
the Universe/' namely his common submission to ''the
justice of the Creator to his creatures ... to the whole
great family of man"; it is a deep-felt revival of Jefferson's
discarded version of the Declaration, which had asserted
"that all men arc created equal and independent; that
from tl1at equal creation they derive rights inherent and
inalienable." This crcaturely equality implies no social
homogeneity at all-the authors of the Declaration,
Lincoln asserts, "did not mean to say all were equal in
color,
SIZe,
mte1lect,
moral
developments,
or social
capacity" (p. 360). But it does mean that men have each
a will of their own and a sufficient amount of good common sense for the earthly realization of their equality,
in civil liberty, which, in effect, is self-government; it is
on this view of human nature as having its source in a
creator that Lincoln's trust in the wisdom of the people
concerning the basic matters of ordinary life depends. The
American social situation is, then, the consequence of
America's political principles; or to put it another way,
in America society is originally based on political principles, and politics, which is ultimately a matter of faith,
precedes society, not the reverse (cf. p. 279).
III. The Second Paragraph
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing
whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and
so dedicated, can long endure.
In his middle paragraph Lincoln passes from "four
score and s·even years ago" and "our fathers" to "now"
and "we," from the generation of the Revolution to the
generation of the Rebellion, of the "great civil war,"
which, in its enormity, he had in the days of the victory
of Gettysburg termed, in Miltonic language, a "gigantic
Rebellion" (p. 709, also p. 702). Indeed, there was to
him something of the Fall in what he termed the wanton
"destruction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its
memories, and its hopes" (First Inaugural Address, p.
584).
Yet in that very speech Lincoln had maintained the
right of revolution (p. 587), a right he had already asserted
in the House as a "sacred right" during the war with
Mexico. But, he maintained, the action of the Southern
states was not revolution nor secession-it was "rebellion"
(p. 602). The states could not leave the Union, for they
had never existed, as states, "out of" ·the Union, but had
entered it, insofar as they were entities at all, only as
colonies, or, if as territories, from the state of nature (p.
479). There could be no "war between the states" but only
a "civil war." He justified this legalism by the argument
that the Union alone is the guarantor of republican government through the Constitution. For this reason the
Union-although, as De Tocqueville observed, an abstract
being-is absolutely unbreakable. Lincoln's effort is to
turn the assent to this abstraction into a palpable feeling,
even in this •Speech in which, out of tactful respect for
the fact that a national but not a federal cemetery is
being dedicated, the word "Union" never appears.
But, secession being rejected, what remains of the right
of revolution? Lincoln's thinking on this crucial matter
is that of a radical conservative. When charged with
revolutionary views himself, he protests his conservatism:
\\That is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the
old and tried, agaiqst the new and untried? \Ve stick
to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point
in controversy which was adopted by "our fathers
who framed the government under which we live"
(p. 528);
but since the controversy referred to is the extension of
slavery, which Lincoln opposed with all his might, his
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very opposition to change is conceived in the spirit of the
Revolution. In other words, in this country, whose orig'
inal go\'ernment was constituted by revolution, the most
progressive side tries most faithfully to return to the
beginnings; that side has once and for all preempted the
Revolution, the essence of which is the process of change
by majority decision, so that all rebellion is counterrevolution. But this means that in a well-founded polity
justice is almost identical with organic law, and a sense
of justice with the intention to make it "long endure."
Hence the right of revolution is strictly circumscribed.
If, by mere force of numbers, a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional
right, it might, in a moral point of vie\v, justify revo-
lution-certainly would, if such a right were a vital
one (p. 584).
The issue must be one of constitutional rights denied,
and any sectional or factional uprising, upon a mere feeling of dissent, constitutes an uprising against the people.
So Lincoln savs of the secessionists:
These politicians are subtile and profound on the
rights of minorities. They are not partial to that
power which made the Constitution, and speaks from
the Preamble, calling itself "We the People" (p.
606).
This war, Lincoln goes on to say, is a test. The crisis
has t]le .;ature of a test, because this government is an
e>;periment, as Lincoln said in his message to Congress,
which he had called into special session to meet on that
fateful day of July 4, at the beginning of the war in 1861:
Our popular government has often been called an
experiment. Two points in it our people have already
settled-the successful establishing, and the successful administering of it. One still remains-its successful maintenance against a formidable internal
attempt to overthrow it (p. 608).
As the final phase of an experiment the war represents
one test for all cases, a model case of a nation well established, in which two necessary founding conditions were
optimal, namely the wisdom of the fathers and the
receptivity of the continent; if this nation fails, then it
is demonstrated that "any nation" must fail. This is how
the American enterprise had been understood from the
founding; "it seems to hove been reserved," says the first
Federalist,
to the people of this country, by their conduct and
example, to decide the important question, whether
societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice.
IV.
The Third. Paragraph
In the last two sentences, half the speech in length,
Lincoln develops the single explicit theme of the speechthe second dedication of the nation, in this consecrated
place, here among the dead (Lincoln removed a fourth
10
"here" from the final version), in that spell-like diction
which gives successive colons identical or near-identical
endings. To describe the nature of this new dedication
he mingles the language of church and legislative assembly. The dedication, the consecration, the hallowing, the
devotion Lincoln urges is of a political sort. He had urged
it already in 1838, in his speech on "The Perpetuation of
our Political Institutions":
Let reverence for the laws ... become the political
religion of the nation; and let the old and the young,
the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all
sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars (p. 81).
Lincoln is deliberately consecrating politics.
The last two clauses give the effect of the new dedication: "that this nation, under God, shall have a new
birth of freedom." The words "under God" were not
in the first draft;- they were reported in the newspaper
versions of the speech as delivered and later incorporated
by Lincoln (cf. p. 752). Why, did he add them?
Under the heading "Of Civil Religion," the last heading in The Social Contract, Rousseau describes the civil
religion of republics which it is the business of the sovereign to set out, not as religious dogmas but as "sentiments of socialibility." They ought to be
simple, few in number, precisely fixed, and without
explanation or comment. The existence of a powerful, wise, and benevolent Divinity, who foresees and
provides the life to come, the happiness of the just,
the punishment of the wicked, the sanctity of the
social contract and the laws (IV; viii).
This is precisely the nature of Lincoln's faith as continually set out in his public pronouncements. The
nation is under a beneficent Father who "dwelleth in
the Heavens" (p. 728). It has a double parentage-the
founding fathers and the Father above.
This nation will have "a new birth of freedom." Those
words were not, at the time, felt to be at all innocuous.
Nor are they, if "of freedom" is read not as an objective
genitive, so that the nation is said to give birth to a new
freedom, but as a parallel to "conceived in Liberty," so
that the nation itself is said to be reborn. The Chicago
Times, in reporting the speech, said that in this phrase
"Mr. Lincoln did most foully traduce the motives of the
men who were slain at Gettysburg," for they fought only
to preserve the old government. Now, as has been shown,
Lincoln in !net agreed with this conservative view of
the struggle, but in a not so innocuous way. He had said:
Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence,
and with it, the practices and policy, which harmonize with it. Let north and south-let all Americans-let all lovers of liberty everywhere-join in
the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not
only have saved the Union; but we shall have so
�April 1969
saved it, as to make, and keep it, forever worthy of
saving. \Ve shall have so saved it, that the succeeding
millions of free happy people, the world over, shall
rise up, and call us blessed, to the latest generations
(p.315).
. The last phrases are a paraphrase of the Magnificat, the
words of the mother-to-be of the Messiah: "For, behold,
from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed"
(Luke 1:48). It is Lincoln's awesome idea that the
generation of the Civil War, under his leadership, is at
once the savior and the parent of the savior nation, that
America is to politics "almost" as Israel was to the spirit.
That means that for the Union side the war is a kind of
second coming, a second bringing-forth, after four score
and seven years. Lincoln has converted Jefferson's extravagant opinion that "a little rebellion, now and then, is a
good thing" (Letter to Madison, January 30, 1787) into
a serious view concerning the . periodic rebirth of the
Revolution-to occur, evidently, in fullest force in the
fourth generation, once in a century.
In this idea Lincoln recognizes that a country founded
in a revolution is bound to have a generational problem,
brought about by the very success of the system, for he
says:
We, when mounting the stage of existence, found
ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental
blessings. We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them-they are a legacy bequeathed us,
by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors (p. 77).
The generational dilemma raised by successful survival of
the revolutionary institutions is that the successor generations, bred in that most desirable ignorance, the ignorance of anarchy and despotism, and mistaking the drained
habits of their parents for the tradition, will in the low
of political passion arouse themselves by giving current
problems a cataclysmic cast, and may, developing an
appetite for unknown terror, be willing to cure dissatisfaction by catastrophe. A return to the founding Revolution
alone can forestall such an event, or if, as in the case of
the Civil War, the event becomes a fact, can turn it into
an act of salvation. Lincoln continually makes the effort
to convert the war in this way, even comparing its financial funding to that of the Revolution (p. 602).
But the phrase "a new birth of freedom" also has a
more precise meaning. Lincoln contended that the Declaration of Independence included Negroes and that the
authors of the Constitution intended that slavery would
in time be abolished. Accordingly he was the implacable
foe of the extension of slavery-this single issue dominates his speeches before the war. It was an issue important
to him partly because peculiarly connected with it was
the question of the axiomatic character of the founding
principles, namely the question of their universality. Such
propositions, pronounced concerning "all men/' must
either altogether fail or altogether prevail, in respect both
to institutions: "I believe this government cannot endure,
permanently half slave and half free" (1858, p. 372), and
to individuals: ,
This is a world of compensations; and he who
would be no slave, must consent to have no slave.
Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not
for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long
retain it (p.489).
Lincoln repeatedly pointed out that the fathers had not
allowed the word "slavery" to disfigure the text of the
Constitution. No more does it occur in the Gettysburg
Address, and yet it is there, in the background, for on
the first of that very year he had issued the Emancipation
Proclamation, and that fact gave a specific meaning to
the "new birth of freedom."
Lincoln begins with the Revolution and its statement
of principle, the Declaration; he ends with a phrase
defining popular government and alluding to its instituting document, the Constitution. This represents the
natural difference in the commitments of the first and the
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fourth generations:
As the patriots of seventy-six did to support the
Declaration of Independence, so to the support of
the Constitution and Laws, let every American
pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor
(p. 81; cf. Declaration, end).
This government "shall not perish from the earth"that is the 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 earth: and
there is none upright among men: they all lie in
wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with
a net (Micah 7:2).
If this rebellion prevails, this allusion warns, so that
this government does perish, men will return to that
universal state of war, the war of each against all, which
precedes the institution of government; the Rebellion will
undo the Founding.
In Lincoln's words:
Plainly, the central idea of secession, is the essence
of anarchy. A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing
easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and
sentiments is the only true sovereign of a free people.
\Vhoever rejects it, does, of necessity, fly to anarchy
or despotism ( 1861, p. 585).
And finally, there is the allusion to Jeremiah 10:11: "The
gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even
they shall perish from the earth." False gods shall perish,
but the government of the people shall not perish.
11
11
V. The Speaker
After having, at length, considered the speech, it rs
legitimate to consider the speaker.
Lincoln is, at his height, a public man:
If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand
to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its
Almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the
cause of my country (1839, p. 112).
But an American speaker who, like Lincoln, means
to put his whole soul at the service of the body politic,
has a peculiar problem, rooted in the quality of
American life, which De Tocqueville describes in the
chapter called "Of Some Sources of Poetry Among Democratic Nations": "Nothing conceivable is so petty, so
insipid, so crowded with paltry interests-in one word so
anti-poetic-as the life of a man in the United States"
(II, i, 17). This is because democracy has given up in
distaste the source of aristocratic poetry, the past, while
its 1·ery principle, that of equality, deprives it, by making
all contemporaries equally mediocre, of sources in the
present. There remain to democratic poets, De Tocqueville
says, only three sources of theme.s: the nation, the future,
and God-and these precisely anticipat.e the themes of
12
Lincoln's public poetry. But, as he observes in the chapter
on "\Vhy American Writers and Orators Often Use an
Inflated Style," it is difficult to present these themes at
the middle distance:
In democratic communities, each citizen is habitually engaged in the contemplation of a very puny
object: namely, himself. If he ever raises his looks
higher, he perceives only the immense form of society
at large or the still more imposing aspect of mankind. His ideas are all either minute and clear or
extremely general and vague; what lies between is
a void (II, i, 18).
The very nature of the principles of equality and liberty is responsible for this American problem of the
middle void. For they are axioms of openness, that is,
propositions of reason which are yet not intended as
prescriptive bases for the whole of life, principles of
potentiality which, not being themselves goods, only
offer the possibility of goods, the foundations of a prosperous privacy, which become the less interesting the
more efficacious they are.
The Gettysburg Address begins and ends not only
with phrases borrowed from American oratory but with
the diction of the Bible. In his effort to fill this American
void, Lincoln finds a source book which is at once traditional but not antique, which offers an appropriate alternative to classicizing rhetoric. The Bible, on the one
hand, lends him a language at once high and popular, a
language of salvation with which to magnify the American enterprise; with its diction. he speaks as "Father
Abraham," as the first patriarch of a new generation of
founding fathers. On the other hand, it supports him in
a view of the nature of political affairs as finally beyond
merely human management, a nature whose public
acknowledgement damps the hysterical activity filling the
American void, and reduces it to that melancholic deliberateness on which the public business thrives.
So the same speaker who is so eminently democratic
in theme is the very reverse in form. Again De Tocqueville
provides the criteria in his chapter on "Literary Characteristics of Democratic Times":
Taken as a whole, literature in democratic ages can
never present, as it does in periods of aristocracy, an
aspect of order, regularity, science and art; its form,
on the contrary, will ordinarily be slighted, sometimes
despised. Style will frequently be fantastic, incorrect,
overburdened, and loose, almost always vehement and
bold. Authors will aim at rapidity of execution more
than at perfection of detail. Small productions will
be more common than bulky books (II, i, 13).
Now, this otherwise so accurate description is conspicu·
ously inapplicable to Lincoln's writing. The Gettysburg
Address is small, to be sure, but it was not rapidly executed: Lincoln had brought a worked-over draft from
�April 1969
\Vashington; he re-worked this in Gettysburg on the
eve of deliverv, and he amended each of the three known
copies he made over the next three months. Although,
as he said, not a master of language nor in possession of
a fine education, he was careful; he wrote to a man who
had submitted to him an edited version of one of his
speeches:
So far as it is intended merely to improve in grammar, and elegance of composition, I am quite
agreed; but I do not wish the sense changed, or
modified. to a hair's breadth. And you, not having
studied particular points so closely as I have, can
not be quite sure that you do not change the sense
when you do not intend it (p. 545).
His style is the very opposite of that of the typical
democratic writer described by De Tocqueville in his
chapter on "How American Democracy has Modified the
English Language" (II, i, 16), who out of lack of care,
love of change and desire for bigness, uses old words in
indeterminate senses, introduces vast numbers of new
words usuallv borrowed from technical vocabularies, and
loads his sp.eech with abstract and general expressions.
The lapidary precision of form, deliberately acquired in a
solitary study of grammar, which carries the patriarchal
grandeur of Lincoln's rhetoric is a sign of a novel kind of
aristocracy-republican aristocracy. Lincoln tacitly rejected Everett's cold classicism as inappropriate to a democratic speaker whose object must not be to demonstrate
or exert his own superiority. His own rhetoric shows
precisely those special characteristics of certain ancient
aristocratic writers, of whom De Tocqueville writes in the
chapter entitled "The Study of Greek and Latin Literature is Peculiarly Useful in Democratic Communities":
Nothing in their works seems done hastily or at
random; every line is written for the eye of the connoisseur and is shaped after some conception of
ideal beauty. No literature places those fine qualities
in which the writers of democracies are naturally deficient in bolder relief than that of the ancients; no
literature, therefore, ought to be more studied in
democratic times (II, i, 15).
Lincoln himself is, then, in De Tocqueville's sense an
aristocratic \vriter, even to the point of finding his sources
in the past. The man who had had from youth the
"peculiar ambition" of being "truly esteemed of my fellow
men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem" (p. 57),
could have no quarrel with the fundamental idea of
aristocracy. For he was himself an exemplification of
Jefferson's conten'tion, set out in his correspondence with
Adams (October 28, 1813), that aristocracy and democracy, the rule by the best and the rule by the people,
have been made compatible in the United States, that
the citizens in free election can and will-as he said, "in
geneial/' and as we must say, on occasion-choose from
amorig themselves the "natural iiristoi," the best by
nature. The Gettysburg Address is the utterance of such
an iiristos, a man at the same time excellent in the antique
sense and good in the common understanding.
l3
�"How Is The Seminar?"*
An Exercise in One Particular Hearing and Viewing of the Question
I
By MICHAEL OSSORGIN
The question in the title is inextricably bound up with
the particularities of the voices, situations and times that
gi,·e rise to it at St. John's. It has, first of all, an immediately practical dimension: "great" texts, many strange
ones, ranging widely, have to be read and thought about
\Vithin a short span of time; conversation has to go on;
and learning ought to be taking place with all members
of the seminar. Secondly, the question has also a moral
dimension as long as the practices in question are open to
praise and blame, passion and reason, misery and happiness, while they begin, proceed and end with particular
men and women, students and tutors,t and authors of
books, forming one learning community called "seminar."
Thirdly and finally, the question acquires a dramatic
dimension when, and only when, a course taken by such
practices is being viewed in and through the occurring and
recurring situations of the seminar: as a whole, in breadth,
\vithin a perspective, in depth.
This kind of viewing is raised to the level of comprehensive and lasting vision in some works on the seminars'
reading list. For instance, it occurs in the staging, the
mise en scene of Socrates's conversations by Plato in the
Dialogues and by Aristophanes in The Clouds. "The truth
* For those unfamiliar with the title of this essay: this question is
probably the most frequently heard opening for conversation on the
St. John's campuses, among students and Faculty alike. The seminar,
it is frequently said, "is the heart of the Program." (Ed.)
t Tutor is the title held by all members of St. John's faculty. 1l1cre are
no other academic ranks, although there is a tenure system. Through
this arrangement the College reduces the diversion of faculty energy
from teaching and learning by concern for advancement in rank to a
minimum; irrele\'ant obstacles to reason's being the chief authority in
discussion, in this \Vay, are also minimized. (Ed.)
:j: At St. John's grades are registered in the Dean's Office but not
reported to students unless special request is made and special condi·
tions warrant such reporting. Instead, at the end of each semester
the student meets all his tutors in the "don rag," a consultation
between a student and his tutors on all phases of the student's work
at the College. The tutors report t0 one of the seminar lCJ.ders on
the student's work. Then the student is asked to comment oo the
reports and to judge his own work. Rather than reporting marks, the
don rag attempts to discorcr and articulate the rcasoJJS for the student's
lack of progress, or, more happily, for. his success in understanding.
(Ed.)
14
of things staged" is meant to be eyed with the immediacy
of involvement, before scholarly detachment, if desirable,
could be thoughtfully and meaningfully sustained. Here
the poet's eye, as it were, takes precedence over the
scholar's eye. Staging both reveals and conceals the artist
at work. It reveals a vision, its breadth and its depth,
while it conceals the "seer"; it may even conceal something
of the vision from an indiscriminate view. The revealings
and the concealings seem to be rooted in the artist's
practical and moral attitude toward his fellow men, and
more deeply, in his attitudes towards what he views as
lifegiving and as mortifying, in fact and in conscience.
Ultimately and suddenly, if at all, his perspective opens,
or opens partially, to the all-pervasive and guiding graces
of the sublime and of the humorous. But here one nears
something which is at the same time still distant and
remote, as throughout Dante's Comedy, and, as with the
Comedy, one is always tempted to try to cut it down to
SIZe.
To come back to our title, the following is an exercise
in one particular hearing and viewing of the question.
The question is raised perennially at St. John's. Soon
after convocation it is usually voiced in relation to the
unfamiliarity and to the puzzlements with the folk, ]ores,
and books that are beginning to mingle in seminars. Its
first or immediately practical phase subsides with the
spread of familiarity and habituation. It enters its second,
or moral, phase in times of don rags,:): when it is raised
more specifically: "How is one's performance in the
seminar?" Don rags tend to have a purging effect on a
seminar, strengthening its moral fiber. Finally, at the end
of the year, the question may enter its third, or dramatic,
phase with the producers and the performers of the annually staged skits. The skits tend to distribute punishments
Michael Ossorgin, tutor at Santa Fe, has been with St. John's since
1956. A Russian, he was educated at the Lycee Russe, Conservatoire
Russe, and Institut de clllCologie Orthodoxe, where he received a L.Th.,
all in Paris. He was an instructor in theology at St. Tikhon's Seminary,
PennsylYania, and later an instructor in music under the auspices of
the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Alaska when the College discovered
him. He has been deeply involved in studies of the novels of
·
Dostoevsky.
I
,
�April 1969
and awards, to keep some feelings of failure on edge, and
to carrY the \'iewers and the listeners to the brink and the
verge 0£ many laughs, and an occasional tear.
Throughout the year the question also persists
in quiet sorts of \Y3\'S, It keeps imposing itself in difficult seminar situations involving intricate demands
of texts, minds, and com'Cfsation. It
taunts one to pause and reflect
on what is and what is
not happening in the seminar, what its possibilities
ar.e and ~vhat one's possibilities in it are. At
times, such reflections
must take a perilous
course amidst harsh
impediments·
to
learning that insist
on being there. At
other times, they
mav take an occasio~al flight towards the highest
learning possibilities. \Vhatever
their course, they
tend to proceed
from
different
points of ,·iew with
different learners.
The angle of one's
\'iewing "from a
point" may widen or
it may narrow. Occa-
sionally it may widen
enough to gauge the
span of one's learning
times as it presents itself at various distances
to one's fotesigh t and
hindsight. It may even
widen to gauge a lifetime
of genuine learnings. as em-
bodied in many a text at St.
John's. However, onh· four years
arc required bv the College for
certification in liberal artistry, and
only one \'ear is allotted to a particular seminar; accordingly, one may
choose one's angles and one's distances.
In some such ways as these, or in others,
one may happen to Yie\\' the question in the
title and discover that the hidden part of learning m
semin~ns
thri,·es on that \·cry question. Here I hasten to
make a parenthetic remark that, as far as I can see, the
program at St. John's does not seem to rest on formulae,
or on hunches, not even on utterances from a position. of
knowledge, but continues to rest on the acts of its own
rediscovery. In these respects the program strangely
resembles "the truth of things staged."
The other day the question rang in my ears in very
peculiar circumstances. I had just finished reading a certain romance
of knight errantry, and was
plunging into daydreams
and hallucinations under its magic spell.
The book happened
to be the only romance of knight errantry I have ever
read: Cervantes's
Don Quixote. Of
course! Or is it
Don Quixote's Cervantes? I am not
sure, for I cannot
make up my mind
once and for all
whether "man is the
father . . ." or Hthe
child of his works,"
even without the implications of the additional "step:" But to
get back to the story,
I found myself thrown
onto a vast stage in the
middle of a play. I did
not know where I was
in the play, with whom,
or what was going on.
Yet, I knew somehow
that the play had something to do with the life
of inquiry.
Not being able to stand
my predicament, I tried to
orient myself on the stage. I
recognized its two outstanding
landmarks: "the High Cliff of
Madness" and "the Abyss of SimpleMindedness." Stretched in between
were the broad expanses of the "Tierra
Firma."
Among the figures moving around,
one pair stood out as central to the play, for,
between the two of them, they covered the whole magnitude of the stage. I "figured them out" as Don Quixote
and Sancho Panza: the knight came down from the High
15
�The College
Cliff to transform men and their ways to what they
ought to be; his squire came up from the Abyss to rule
over them as they happen to be, i.e., "as God made them,
and often much worse." 'Two more figures were conspic-
uous, for, unlike the rest, they did not move, but stood
still, one at each end of the stage, at its exits. They· had
been "figured out" by another enchanted reader of Don
Quixote in The Diary of his:
To some observers all phenomena of life develop
with a most touching simplicity and are so intelligible
that they are not worth thinking about or even being
looked at. However, these same phenomena might
embarrass another observer to such an extent that,
in the long run, he feels una blc to simplify them, to
draw them out into a straight line and thus appease
his mind. He then resorts to a different kind of "simplification" and very "simply" plants a bullet in his
brain so as to extinguish at once his jaded mind,
together with all its queries. Such are the two extremes
between which the sum total of human intelligence
is enclosed.-Dostoevski
The rest of the figures were moving anywhere between
the pair at the extremes and around the pair "at the
center."
I found I was not lost after all, for I began to have
some vague notions about the breadth of the stage, and
about the range of the characters on it. Still, I sorely
lacked some guiding notions about the plot. I knew that
it had something to do with the life of inquiry, but I could
not ·figure out its beginning, its middle, and its end. There
was nothing else for me to do but to get into the act by
inquiring around.
.
To my surprise, the first character I ran across happened
to be in the same predicament I was in. The two of us
inquired of the third ... ; the story was the same....
By the time the compan)c reached a sizable number, the
story was still the same. It was useless to go on like that,
yet each hesitated to part from the company of the others,
for we had something crucial in common: the predicament and the question. There was a possibility of putting
our minds together to see if we could come up with an
answer as to what the action of the play might be. Everyone spoke in turn. At the end there was an embarrassment
in addition to the predicament: we had ended up with as
16
many answers as there were minds available. We had to
pause, reflect, and deliberate .... There was a possibility
for each to try to support his opinions with reasons, while
making efforts to understand what the others were saying,
as they, each in turn, understood it themselves. We began
to converse. In a way we made some progress: the embarrassment, which had been added, subsided and a new bond
began to emerge. It was a bond of awareness that the
various affirmations and denials in and of our opinions
craved justification in terms of evidence, and that evidence
as such is something that could be seen in common. At
times we battled, at other times we conversed in a friendly
way. Still, on the whole we were moving back and forth
with no end in sight. Again we had to pause, reflect and
deliberate.... There was a possibility of moving towards
an end: in case of battles, to try to see clearly into the
issues involved, "to raise the conflict to the level of rational
articulation"; and in case of friendly conversations, to try
to raise them to the level of illumination, of insight. Both
tasks proved to be extremely difficult to sustain in conversation. Yet, to the extent to which each was trying, "the
patterns of his respective affirmations and denials began
to change, as his insight into possibility was deepening."
And so, to make a long story short, it finally dawned
upon us that our conversation was occasionally reflecting
the action of the life of inquiry: its beginning, its middle,
and even an end. Some began to feel like trying out their
roles on the stage at large. . . . But the magic spell of
.
Don Quixote wore off. . . .
I found myself on the campus grounds in "The Land
of Enchantment." The buildings stretched between a
foothill and an arroyo, with the dormitories at either end,
with the classroom buildings and the student activities
center in the middle. It was getting dark, the lights went
on, and soon various figures began to appear from various ·
directions, following their converging and diverging paths
towards their respective seminars. It was time for me to
go, too .... End of the exercise.
How is the seminar?
The quotations in the exercise are taken from Cervantes, Don
Quixote; Dostoevski, The Diary of a \\lriter; and The Dean's Statement of Educational Policy and Program, St. John's College, 1959.
(Author)
(
I
�The College and the Underprivileged
By LAURENCE BERNS
Longstanding injustices and neglect have deprived too
many Americans of the resources ·and opportunities for
ad,·anccment shared by most of their countrymen. The
greatest sufferers, clearly, have been American Negroes.
At St. John's, as throughout the nation in recent times,
mam lm·e been moYed to translate their feelings about
thesC matters into action.
The situation at Santa Fe, where there is almost no
1\:egro population, is different from the one at Annapolis.
But there, too, a number of community projects have been
undertaken. Under the Community Service and Continuing Ed.ucaiion Program of the Higher Education Act of
1965 a project is in operation with tutor Stuart Boyd as
director. Students have been leading seminars at the state
mental hospital and at the state prison at Cerillos. A
tutoring sen·ice for high school dropouts and near-dropouts was organized by students of the College. Students
have been helping in local high schools as teaching assistants. \Ve shall concern ourselves here, however, with
activities directed mainly towards the Negro population
and, therefore, at Annapolis.
At Annapolis, too, students have, on a somewhat occasional basis, tutored pupils at local high schools.
During June of 1968 a three-day pilot project under the
auspices of the Jack and Jill Foundation of ·washington,
D. C., was tried with Negro boys who were scholastic
"underachievers.'' Simple readings and a movie, Raisin In
The Sun, were discussed in seminar, and some elementary
mathematics tutorials were conducted. Baseball and
basketball games took place in the afternoons. Tutors Peter
Laurence Berns, tutor at St. John's since 1960, receiYed his Ph.D.
from the Social Sciences Di\·ision of the University of Chicago. He
\Yas a lecturer in the liberal arts nt the UniYersity of Chicago from 19 56
to 19)9. lie has ,nitten the chapter on-Thomas Hobbes, History of
Political Philosoph;:, R:md \Ic:;-.;ally, 1963, and a chapter on "Aristotle's
Poetics" in Ancients and .\Iodems, Basic Books, 1964. He spent 19661967 on lca,·e of absence as Associate Professor of Philosophy at
Rosary College, Ri,·cr Forest, Illinois. lie is currently engaged in a
translation of Aristotle's Politics for Bantam Books.
Brown and George Doskow were in charge of the project.
As a result of this project the Foundation is looking forward to a seven-week program during the summer of 1969
for 100 boys between fifteen and seventeen years old.
They will all be seriously behind in their academic work,
serious "underachievers"; 50 will be Negroes, 35 SpanishAmericans, and fifteen American Indians. A very simple
St. John's curriculum is planned: seminars, mathematics
and writing tutorials, and a choice of a class of instruction
in reading or a laboratory. The program is to be directed
by Leroy Giles, who has been in charge of the Upward
Bound program at Howard University. There is some
reason to doubt whether the program will materialize:
only $20,000 has been raised out of a needed $140,000
(including the cost of student room and board).
In the spring of 1968 the Annapolis Faculty resoh·ed
to initiate an Annapolis Community Scholarship Fund
at St. John's: its primary aim is to provide fees at St.
John's for intellectually qualified but economically underprivileged Negroes from Annapolis. Efforts to raise funds
for such students have not been as successful as anticipated, although the Honeywell Corporation has promised
$400 for each of four years. There has only been one
student recipient of such money. This student had applied
successfully to the College, but was unable to attend
because of lack of funds. She then left town for New
Yark and was working in a bakery there when she was
informed that funds would be available. (Contributions
may be sent to the Fund in care of Julius Rosenberg,
Director of Development, at the College.)
The Educational Enrichment Program for Annapolis
was conceived and developed by teachers at St. John's
and the Naval Academy in cooperation with officials at
local high schools. The program was initiated in response
to the Office of Economic Opportunity's failure to award
an Up\\'ard Bound Program to St. John's for the year
1968-69. Its goals were genera]],. those of the national
program: in raciaiiy integrated programs, to stimulate the
culturally and economically underprivileged towards
greater educational achievement. The program at St.
17
�The College
John's was directed by tutor Benjamin lv!ilner and carried
on by nine tutors on a voluntary basis. The students were
mostly in their ninth, tenth, and eleventh years of high
school. Twenty-two enrolled and eighteen completed the
program. All of those who completed it were Negroes.
There were seminars, classes in mathematics, and English
composition, and work in the art studio. Mr. Milner
informs us, "There were some accomplishments-chiefly
of a remedial nature-in English composition and in
mathematics. To our disappointment, the seminar (a
discussion of short stories, poems, novels, biography, and
a movie) never developed as a significant learning experience for more than a few students. Some were too young,
and some, while they could read the assigned texts, could
not understand them, because of their very limited
vocabularies and their not having the habit of using a
dictionarY. \Ve learned a lot-about the students, about
their ne~ds, and the best way to meet them. For the
students, I venture to believe, it was a significant educational experience, although neither they nor we could
point to dramatic accomplishments."
One question raised by some of these experiences is
whether St. John's, because it is framed for liberal education on the highest level, is the appropriate place for
helping those who need the most elementary kind of
instruction. It is very difficult for those without experience in· the program to realize just how elementary the
needed instruction is. The programs are, in effect, stopgap
measures to make up for intolerably inadequate elementary school education. Most great books may presuppose
too much: yet there may be some exceptions, e.g., Euclid
and the Bible, and one tutor reports that his most successful class was a discussion based on Xenophon's Education
of Cyrus, book one, chapter three, sections sixteen and
seventeen. \Vhat does seem clearly to be transferable is
the St. John's tradition of dedicated teaching, and especially the seminar training in dialectic and discussion that
has been so successful in getting students to expose and
reflect upon what is really going on in their minds, in
involving them directly in teaching each other and themselves.
The closing exercises of the program on August 9
consisted of refreshments, an exhibition of the students'
art work, and the following address by tutor Laurence
Berns:
You have volunteered to devote six vacation weeks to
the improvement of your minds and, we hope, your
hearts. We congratulate you for having the good sense to
choose to do so, and for having the good heart to stick
it out to the end.
All animals need food, all ·animals need shelter and
almost all animals need families. In this respect man is
no different from the other animals. But man is the talking animal and the thinking anin.1al, and when you brir1~
those together, the learning animal. !\Jan is the animal
18
which through learning has the power to modify his feelings, to control his feelings, to improve his feelings, to
impros·e his likes and dislikes.
This sounds very rosy. It is not so rosy. This great
opportunity which Nature, or Nature's God, has opened
up for man is a two-edged sword-it can cut one way
and it can cut the other way. For man's thinking and talking, his power to learn, makes its way to man's feelings
through the force of habit, through the formation of
habit, and habits can be good or bad. The sword of
learning is a two-edged sword, a dangerous instrument,
because it can lead to bad habits as well as good habits.
Man is the learning animal, and because of this even
when he does the things all animals do-eat, seek shelter
and have families-he does it with ·a difference: man
can't just do things the other animals do, he's got to do
them with style. \Ve always watch each other's styleto see whether it's good style or bad. A man or a woman's
style points to what he or she has learned. What I'm
pointing to is that no man can help learning. It's what
. he learns that counts: he can Jearn to spoil his feelings, to
corrupt his feelings, to make his likes and dislikes worse
as well as to make them better. In fact, it's probably
easier to do that than to make them better. If you don't
put your mind to work at forming good habits, it's likely
that, whether you know it or not, it will be working to
form bad ones. Forming good habits, I believe, is what
the business of education is chiefly about.
\Ve must continually search for those teachers and
those books which can guide our learning power towards
improving ourselves, which can teach us how to be strong
and sensitive, courageous, tender and thoughtful all at the
same time. The best teachers (and this refers to books,
too) are the ones that teach us and move us to become
our own· teachers, to become thoughtful critics of ourselves, that arouse in us the habit of constructive thoughtfulness. The best teachers and the best books make us
aware of how much we Jose when we waste our time.
There are some who think that the most important
thing about a man is the size of his bankroll, or the
sharpness of his clothes, or the size of his muscles, or the
color of his skin. No matter how many of them there are,
and there are a lot oi them, they are very superficial
people. What counts is the quality of a man's mind and
heart, what he does and has done with his power to learn.
I should like to end this talk with some words from
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from his book Strength to
Love:
May I offer a special word to our young people ....
Many of y.ou are in college and many more in high
school. I cannot overemphasize the importance of
these years of study. You must realize that doors of
opportunity are opening now that were not opened to
your mothers and fathers. The great challenge you
face is to be ready to enter these doors.
�NEWS .ON THE CAMPUSES
does not wish his name disclosed.
likes to be known as "T. K.," transThe Western Consolidation Cam- ferred to Annapolis from Santa Fe and
Richard Ferrier, a junior from Oak- paign constitutes the second of three found herself involved in the junior
land, California, appeared with four phases in Santa Fe's "Decade of Devel- seminar program almost immediately.
students from Bennington College in opment," 1964-1974. About $5,445,000 \Vorking with her are Bonnie \Velch
Vermont on Philadelphia's vVFIL-TV was received in the initial period of and Dolores Strickland, Class of 1971,
on January 21st. The program, entitled 1964-1968. The College will seek Marvin Cooper, Class of 1970, and
J<On Camera," specializes in controver- $7,200,000 during 1968-1971, a total Tom Geyer, Class of 1969.
sial subjects. Every day one of five news for the decade of $16,541,000, which
T. K. states the program does take
columnists in the Philadelphia metro· is committed to the firm establishment a great deal of time. "We have planpolitan area has a day "on camera" of the St. John's idea in the west.
ning sessions where we decide upon the
interviewing guests and discussing all
Urging support for the current cam- readings to be covered. Before the semkinds of topics.
paign, an editorial in the Santa Fe inar we decide upon a question broad
The columnist and questioner for New Mexican said that growth and enough to encompass the whole work
the Tuesday program was Otto Dekom, recognition for a new college often read, and after the class we meet to
critic-at-large for the \Vilmington, Del- come slowly. "We are pleased to note, evaluate the day's work." She adds,
aware, News-Journal. The students therefore, that as St. John's in Santa with a smile, that having found herself
were asked .about the contrasting cur- Fe moves into its fifth year of life, it in that position, she can understand the
riculum• and differing aims of each shows the potential for achieving the role of a tutor better now.
college, both of which grant Bachelor kind of local and national significance
The seminar students come from
of Arts degrees.
its many godparents had hoped for at varied races and economic backgrounds.
the christening in 1964." The editorial "Each student has something valuable
cited the growth in enrollment, support to offer," T. K. reports, "no matter
Goals Set for Western
by Board members and others in the what his background, and each should
Consolidation Campaign
.
West, participation of students in com- present his ideas as they relate to him.
The \Vestern Consolidation Cam·
paign Committee has announced Santa munity service projects, initiation of the The students get to hear other inter·
Fe's financial goals for the three-year summer Graduate Institute of Liberal pretations of life besides their own."
Recently St. John's student polity
period ending June 30, 1971. The cam-. Education, and the construction of
attractive and useful buildings.
donated $50 towards the purchase of
paign will seek to raise a total of
books for the program. The children
$3,896,000 for endowment ($2,000,read and discuss classics such as Aesop's
000), a physical education building Annapolis Students Conduct
Fables, Milne's \Vinnie-The-Pooh, and
($1,000,000), annual operating budgets Seminars at Elementary Scho.ol
($693,000), and debt retirement ($203,·
Five Annapolis students have been Carroll's Alice in \Vonderland.
000). The Committee is headed by conducting weekly junior "Great
Tom L. Popejoy of Albuquerque, re- Books" seminars at Adams Park, a local Two Santa Fe Grads Write "Memos
cently retired president of the Univer- elementary school within walking dis- for the New President"
sity of New Mexico.
tance of the campus. The school counTwo members of the Class of 1968
selor, Mrs. Sarra Shockley, requested at Santa Fe are involved in research
At the same time that this campaign
was announced, President Richard D. the participation of St. John's students projects at the Center for the Study of
Weigle disclosed St. John's College in for the project which is similar to one Democratic Institutions at Santa BarSanta Fe had received almost $2.5 mil- carried on once before by students who bara, California. The appointments of
lion from members of the Board of have since graduated. Over thirty stu- Kenneth L. Kronberg and Philip P.
Visitors and Governors in less than dents from the fifth and sixth grades Chandler II as Junior Fellows were an·
three and a half years. These donations were chosen bv their teachers for inclu- nounced by Center President Robert
were prompted by a challenge gift of sion in the exPeriment.
i\l. Hutchins. Center Fellows include
$400,000 from a Board member who
r~oni Karen Thomas, a junior who
Stringfellow Barr, former president of
Annapolis Junior Appears on
WFIL· TV in Philadelphia
19
�The College
St. John's College.
Hutchins said Chandler is assisting in
studies on a world constitution and
on restoring modern mathematics to
the status of a liberal art. Kronberg is
working on "Creating the Future"-a
project involving "revolutionary devel-
opment in technologically advanced
nations."
Douglas Allanbrook Composes
and Performs
Douglas Allanbrook's 4 OrclJeslrai
Landscapes-Symphony No. 3 was
given its premier performance by the
Oakland Symphony Orchestra in
Berkeley, California, in the spring of
1968. Mr. Allanbrook, St. John's tutor
and composer, whose works have been
widely performed both in this country
and in Europe, gave a harpsichord concert in St. Anne's Episcopal Church
in Annapolis, on January 19th. He performed works by Couperin, J. S. Bach,
and Rameau on the College's new
harpsichord. The harpsichord was built
by William Dowd of Boston, and
modeled on an instrument made by
Tasguin in France during the eighteenth century. The Presser Foundation
of Philadelphia contributed towards
the acquisition of the instrument.
Famed harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick, Professor of Music at Yale
University, gave the dedication concert
on the instrument on November 1st in
Francis Scott Key Auditorium.
The January, 1969, issue of the
Center Magazine featured a section
called "i\lemos for the New President,"
written by members of the Center, including Chandler, Kronberg, and Barr.
The two graduates called for a national review of the role of higher
education.
"The problem centers around education, of which the university offers
both too much and too little," Kronberg \\Tites, "-too much to allow students to remain totally ignorant of the
world, not enough to satisfy the opened
Pandora's box of intellectual curiosity
coupled with personal commitment."
Chandler writes, "The generation
gap. is not a natural phenomenon;
rather, the rites of passage have been
Library Activities Make Friends
lost. Traditionally, the initial exposure
for St. John's
to the liberal arts constitutes the transAn active and creative Friends of
formation of children into free men.
the Library Committee has set up seve
"Reformation of the University
era! programs to bring Santa Fe resiawaits the renaissance of 'the liberal
dents and authors together and to
college; the solution to the generation
arouse friendly interest in St. John's
gap requires a renewed faith in the
College.
potentials of human life," he concludes.
Three book-author luncheons are
Stringfellow Barr in his "me,;,o" scheduled to be held at Santa Fe's
asked the new President to set a higher famous hotel, La Fonda, from March
cultural tone for this nation.
to May. At each luncheon three writers
"Mav·be the best way to raise the will discuss contemporary literature
cultural tone of the naiion is to inte- and its production. Dates set by the
grate politics and art. You might, for Committee are March 14th, Aprilllth,
example, submit the speeches your and May 9th. Participating Santa Fe
ghost-writers will be putting together authors are to include John Creasey,
to a decent poet in order to make them Jack Shaefer, Richard Stern, Dorothy
refer, as Lincoln's Gettysburg Address Hughes, Richard Bradford, Charles
referred, not only to the matter at Bell, and Donald Hamilton, with
hand but also those few matters always others to be named later.
at hand."
The Committee sponsored another
Finallv, Barr urged that Americans popular cvcnt-"A Sampling of the
be challenged by the "hard objectives Poets' Roundup"-last October as a
mentioned in the preamble of the old- benefit for the Library. This was a nosest written constitution in the world- talgic revival of the Poets' Roundup
ours."
held regularly in Santa Fe during the
20
thirties when local writers gathered to
read their works to each other and
friends. Mrs. Edgar L. Rossin, chairman of the committee planning the
event, is the daughter of the founder
of the original Roundup, the late Alice
Corbin.
The Library received a number of
generous gifts of books and money
from friends of the College this year,
including nearly 400 books last fall
from John Dodds of New York. Dodds,
a former resident of Santa Fe, is a
member of the College's Board of Visitors and Governors. He and his wife,
actress Vivian Vance, helped plan
commencement week activities for the
first graduation last year.
Graduate Institute Plans Third
Summer Program
The summer Graduate Institute in
Liberal Education will hold its third
session at St. John's in Santa Fe, June
23rd to August 15th. Conducted by
members of the Faculty from both
campuses, the Institute offers to members of the teaching profession, and
others who are qualified, the opportunity to pursue a carefully planned program in the liberal arts, based primarily
on the study and discussion of important works of Western thought.
The Institute was started in the summer of 1967 with a program on Politics
and Society. Two other subject-areas
were offered in 1968-Literature, and
Philosophy and Theology. Mathematics
and Natural Science will be added
this summer to complete the four-part
program. Students earn nine hours of
graduate credit in eight weeks, approved for teacher certification by the
New Mexico State Board of Education.
Those who complete all four summer
programs successfully, or three summers
at St. John's plus nine hours of graduate credit from another institution,
will earn a Master of Arts in Liberal
Education from the Institute. The first
degree will be awarded this year.
The academic program consists of
seminars, tutorials, preceptorials, and,
with the introduction of the 1\'lathematics and Natural Science program,
laboratories.
�April 1969
GATHER!~G-Si;.;
members of the Board of Visitors and Governors gather during a reception jn
the lobby of Key Auditorium on Friday, March ith. They arc, left to right, Myron L. Wolbarsht,
Cla~s of 1950, professor of ophthalmology, Duke University, Durham, N. C.; John D. Oosterhout,
Class of 1951. :mistant branch chief of the Tracking DiYision, NASA Goddard Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; Fr~nk Appleton, Elgin He-reford Ranch, Elgin, Ariz.; Emmanuel Schifani (Lt. Gen. Ret.),
Springer Corp., Albuquerque, N. M.; Louis T. Rader, \'ice president and general manager, Industrial
Process Control Di\·ision, General Electric Co., Charlottcs\·ille, Va.; and Martin H. Dubilicr, president
and chief executive officer, Kearney-Na.tional, Inc., New York, N. Y. Wolbarsht and Oosterhout are
Alumni Representatives on the Board. (Courtesy of Lee Troutner/The EveJJing Cap_ital)
The Institute's first director was
Robert A. Goldwin, an Annapolis
alumnus. The current director is Elliott
Zuckerman, an Annapolis tutor.
Applicants for admission must have
a Baclielor's degree from an accredited
institution or the equivalent in study
and experience. Although the curriculum is designed primarily for teachers,
applications are invited from others.
Decisions on admittance are made by
the Admissions Committee of the Faculty. Students who plan to receive their
]\Jaster's degree from another institution are advised to consult that institution before enrolling at St. John's.
Fees have been kept low thanks to
underwriting from the Carnegie Corporation. Twelve teachers from inner~
citv schools in Baltimore have attended
with fellowships granted under the
auspices of the Hoffberger Foundation.
Ten teachers from \Vashington, D. C.,
inncr-citv schools have also attended
under scholarships, six of which were
granted bv the Cafritz Foundation.
There were 91 students enrolled in
the progr~m bst summer, with eight
tutors from Annapolis and five from
Santa Fe teaching the eight-week cur-
riculum. All those who have been connected with the Institute have been
gratified beyond expectation by the enthusiasm, seriousness, and dedication
with which these older students have
em braced the Program. Representative
comments during first summer don rags
were, "\Vhy didn't we hear about these
books before!" and "Everyone talks
about it, but you people really are concerned with what students are thinking
about." More about the Graduate Institute will appear in a future issue of
The College.
All inquiries regarding applications
and fees should be sent to the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education,
St. John's College, Santa Fe, New
Mexico 87501.
Faculty and Staff Make OffCampus Visits
Several members of the Annapolis
Faculty and staff visited off-campus
this past year. Dean john S. Kieffer,
Assistant Dean Robert Spaeth, and
tutor Hugh P. McGrath travelled to
i\lacalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, at the end of. October. Joining
them were John Steadman and Elliot
Skinner from the Santa Fe campus.
The dean and four tutors were returning a visit the Faculty of Macalester
paid to St. John's in the college term
year 1966-1967. Discussions were held
comparing the ways in which the two
schools conceive of and try to fulfill the aims of liberal education.
Among the topics discussed was the
impact and potential impact of liberal
education on today's world.
Edward M. Godschalk, Assistant
Director of Admission on the Annapolis campus, travelled to MinneapolisSt. Paul in early November, Milwaukee in late November, Chicago in early
December, and Pittsburgh in early
February visiting public and private
high schools. He also arranged showings
and question periods about our 16 mm.
film, entitled "St. John's College,"
filmed without a script and without rehearsal, which describes St. john's and
its aims.
Tutor emeritus Ford K. Brown was
in New York City for a social hour and
organizational meeting of the New
York alumni chapter on February 5th.
Thomas Farran, Jr., Director. of Alumni Activities, and Darrell L. Henry,
President of the Alumni Association,
accompanied him. They also attended
the February 21st alumni reception and
dinner in Philadelphia.
Students Endorse Program
at St. John's
Students on the Annapolis campus
responded with a whole-hearted endorsement of the College in a survey
taken in October of last year.
According to Director of Admissions James M. Tolbert, a random sample of students was asked about the success of the college program and life at
the school. The survey, entitled "Questionnaire on Students and College
Characteristics," was prepared by the
Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New jersey.
One set of answers indicated that
87 percent of the students were more
concerned with academic life than with
social activities. Ninety-four percent
thought the 'faculty-student relation-
21
�The College
ships were close and informal, and
98 percent declared a majority of the
faculty seem genuinely interested in
teaching. In addition, the students
said, the College has excellent library
resources, and it sponsors a rich cultural program, attracting nationally
known scholars to address students
and faculty.
One section of the questionnaire
co.ncerned classroom activity and fac-
ulty-student relationships. Ninety-four
percent of the students stated that the
tutors challenged them; 95 percent
belie,·ccl that the studentS arc encouraged to think for themsel\'Cs. Kinety
percent of the students thought there
was a great amount of contact with
the facult\' outside the classroom, with
the tutors. treating the students as indiYiduals.
The questionnaire also showed that
the students were rather fully involved
in intramural athletics, recreation-outing activities, dramatic productions,
dating and social life (79 percent).
Eighty-nine percent expected to
continue their education into graduate or professional schools. Eighty-six
percent were satisfied with the College's assistance in moving them towards their ultimate educational goals.
The greatest endorsement' of the
College was found in the response of
97 percent that they would recommend
the College to like-minded high school
seniors.
The students were given the opportunity to write comments on the reYerse side of the answer sheet. i\lany
students wrote further descriptions of
the College, its program, and life on
campus. One student commented that
St. John's "is committed to the active
use of reason by its members." It encourages ((education, not instruction,"
wrote another. Students warned that
those who are much interested in social life should look elsewhere for a
college education because St. John's
is highly academic and intellectually
inclined, with a difficult curriculum.
TheY further encouraged those who do
not know the College to obtain a catalogue and to visit the campus. "St.
22
ings and Santa Fe."
"I like the life of the seminar-conversation which seeks to be meaningful."
"Although this is a good learning
situation, with good tutors and small
classes, I feel that the books themselves
are what makes the school what it is."
"The seminar transforms what might
College Entrance Examination Board
otherwise be dry, distant classics into
for students in secondary schools.
living masterpieces of human experience. You have to work hard to have a
Freshmen Tell Why They Like
dull seminar."
the St. John's Program
"The serious student will find it
Several Santa Fe freshmen were
close to impossible to run out of interasked recently to comment on the St.
John's academic program after their esting things to think about in the
first few months on the Santa Fe cam- St. John's program."
"The thing that is most enjoyable
pus. Their remarks included:
about St. John's for me is the people.
"I think ... that the part I like best
For the first time in my life I have
here is the atmosphere, where a person
found people who like to really talk
who thinks seriously is not regarded as
about things. Tutors and students alike
a freak, as is often the case elsewhere."
are willing to sit down and thrash out
"Vv'hether putting a Euclidean proof a question with me, no matter how
on the board, breaking down the gram- long it may take, or what subject it may
mar of a Greek sentence, or discussing be. That's what happiness is."
a play bY Sophocles, the instructor
doesn't ask one to accept but to ques- Chess Tournament Held on
tion."
·
Annapolis Campus
"St. John's is not perfect, but it is
The first annual Great Books Open
one of the best schools there is. I do Chess Tournament was held in the
nw work to learn, not for a grade, and
Baldwin Room of Campbell Hall Jangrades can be an awful pressure. My uary 24th through January 26th on the
main interests have always been in Annapolis campus. The tournament
English and languages, but lab has was sponsored by the United States'
opened up something totally new for Chess Federation and the District of
John's is like no other," one enthusias-
tic student concluded.
rdr. Tolbert said results of the questionnaire were compiled by the Educational Testing Service and will constitute part of the description of St.
John's in The College Handbook, an
informational manual prepared by the
me."
"The personal validity of the work
here tastes very good. 11
u . . . the intense discussion and learning in such a casual atmosphere bring
student and tutor together, not so
much as the teacher and the taught,
but as equal partners in the task of
learning."
"To be honest, I could not say St.
John's is for cyeryone, only for those
individuals willing to discuss ideas, not
merely memorize them."
"I have discovered through discussion not only a latent ability to speak,
lost in hum-drum, lecture-type classes,
but also an ability to write."
"The setting of the school is an
obvious advantage: natural surround-
Columbia Chess League. The successful meet was organized by St. John's
students.
First place prize money of $125 was
shared by three out-of-state winners,
Carl Sloan of Alexandria, Va.; William
Gary, Jr., Charlottesville, Va.; and
Pedro Saavedra of the Math Department of the University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, Va.
Three St. John's students as well as
three United States Naval Academy
midshipmen participated in the tournament. Of the eighteen entrants, Marvin Cooper ('70) and Alan Plutzik
('71) placed fifth and sixth respectively, only one-half point behind the
winners. BQb Dunleavy, a freshman at
St. John's, also participated.
�ALUMNI ACTIVITIES
Dinner Honors Medical Men
The annual iiiid-\\'intcr Dinner of
the .-\lumni Association. held this \Tar
on :\larch 15th, paid tribute to tlwse
alumni in the medical profession. Dr.
Thomas Boumc Turner of the Class of
1921 was asked to represent the other
doctor-alumni in rcceiYing special recognition from the Association.
Thi~ ,-Car's mid-\~·intcr fete was de-
signed c.llong lines somewhat different
from tho~c followed in earlier \'ears.
The Dinner Committee, heacle~l by
Echard \\'ebb,- '63, was aware of past
critici~m
that there should be more
to the Dinner
th~m
just a meaL Conse-
quently a fu11-sct.~h: dinner-dance was
arranged at the Barn in Glen Burnie.
'rllC'rc ·,yas an open bar both before
and after the meal, a roast beef dinner,
and dancing to li\'c music until 1 a.m.
As this goes to the printer, some \Veeks
before the C\"Cnt, prospects pointed
towards a good turn-out of alumni
and guests.
-
Dr. Turner, now dean emeritus and
professor of microbiology at the Johns
Hopkins UniYersitY School of Medicine, first came to St. John's as a sub- fre~hman in the Preparatory SchooL
lie graduated from the College in 1921
and entered the Unisnsih· of i\ Ian·hncl \ledical SchooL ln 1925 the ne;,.
doctor started an internship at the Hospital for the IV omen of i\ lardand, and
the following rear was a resident at
\lerC\ Ilospital. From 1927 to 1929 he
held <1 fello\\·ship in medicine at the
Hopkins School of :\ledicine, and was
later an instructor and tl1cn an associate
in medicine.
Dr. 'I 'urncr clCJXlrtccl temporarily
from the academic world in 1932, \Yhcn
he bcc;nnc <l staff member of the Intcrmtion<Jl Ile<1lth Di,·ision of the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1939 he was ~p-
pointed professor of bacteriology and
director of the Department of Bactcriolog\·, Johns Hopkins Uni,·ersity
School of HYgiene and Public Health.
Except for a .four-year tour in the Office
of the Surgeon General, U. S. Army,
during \Vorld \Var II, Dr. Turner remained at the Hopkins until his retirement in 1968. He became dean of the
medical faculty in 19 57,
Dr. '1'urner sen'es on the advisory
committee on medical research of the
\Vorld Health Organization, as well as
on the national advisory council of the
National Institutes of Health. He is a
past president of the Association of
American Medical Colleges, and a fellow of the American Public Health
Association.
Although busy professionally, Dr.
Turner has found time to sen·e as both
secretarv and chairman of the Board
of Visitors and Governors of the
College.
Gone But Not
The Alumni newsletter about St.
John's, just two years old in illarch,
has gone the way of the Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, and other publications which used to be. This section
of The College will no\\· sef\·e as the
principal conveyor of ne\VS for and
about alumni.
It might be well to remind our
readers of our unappeased appetite for
news; with material for only slightly
over a page of Class Notes, for example, we arc on a very meager diet!
Things arc happening to each of you,
or you arc causing things to happen.
Yonr classmates and friends rea11\'
would like to hear about them. So,
\Vhen you do something noteworthy,
or something noteworthy happens to
yo.u, ]d ns in on the good news.
Regional Chapters
Regional alumni committees or
chapters, key elements in most alumni
organizations, have never held that
position in the Alumni Association of
St. John's College. The chapter concept is not a new one, hO\vever, and at
times in the past there have been active
groups of alumni in a number of cities.
For whatever reasons, these chapters
have become quiescent over the years;
today, only about two meet even once
a year.
Interest in regional chapters has been
renewed since last October, when
Darrell L, Henry took over the reins
of the Association. Mr. Henn' belieYes
that one way to a strong arid lasting
relationship behveen alumnus and College is the extension of the College
community beyond the campus limits.
To take the College into the home
areas of the alumni requires a local organization with which the Association
and the College can work. This is
where the regional alumni chapter fits
in to the picture.
Initially, four centers of alumni
population were selected for special
attention: New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
The last three of these have had chapters in the past, so New York was the
only truly new area. AppropriatelY
enough, the first general meeting took
place in that city.
On Februarv 5th about 65 alumni
and guests mtt in a Second Avenue
restaurant. Francis :t\'lason '43, Ste,·e
Benedict '-17, and Ralph Herrod '50
headed an ad hoc committee for the
affair. Ford K. Brown, inYitcd specifically for the occasion, delighted e\·en·one "·ith his commentarv on the College as viewed by a tuto~ emeritus.
The next regional meeting took place
23
�The College
all the \\'3\' across country irl San Francisco on ·February I 6tl;. Under the
guidance of i\Iorrow and Carol Otis
'64-, a dinner for some seventeen
alumni, spouses, and parents was arranged. '"J 'om Parran reported briefly
on affairs at the College, and on the
general plans for renewing actiYity in
alumni chapters. As in :t\'c\\' York, the
high pcrcc.:ntagc of younger alumni
promised well for the future.
FebruarY was apparently a popular
month for alumni meetings. In Philadelphia the old Delaware \'alley chap-
ter assembled 60 strong on February
21st. Baker J\liddclton '38 and Victor
Schwartz '61, with assistance from Eel
Dws-cr '30 and others, put together
_this fine affair. President \ V cigle,
Ford K. Brown, and Darrell Henry
represented the College and the Asso-
ciation.
:\fter the preliminary organiza tiona]
phase, it is hoped that regional groups
sYill des·ote their attention to specific
programs. or projects. Seminars, panel
discussions, talks bv tutors or staff offi-
cers, and social cv~nts have been sug-
gested. \ Vhile the Association and the
College will lend all possible support,
regional groups must decide for them, sels·cs what they want to do.
King William Associates
This year a special category of
alumni donors has been established.
An,· alumnus who contributes $100-or
mo-re for current unrestricted purposes
is enrolled in the King \Villiam Associates.
Established primarily to recognize
those alumni who support St. John's
in a special way, the new designation
aho emphasizes the importance of the
unrestricted gift as the principal form
of alumni gi\'ing.
BY FebruarY 21st eighteen alumni
froni a.s man\· cbsses ha,·c been en~
rolled <lS charter members of the Assoc-i~1tes. Before the end of the Cap1paign
many more ,,-jJl ha\T joined. \\'hy not
<lclcl Your name to the rolls?
The first eighteen King \\'i~liam
1\"ociatcs arc: Rickml H. Jloclgson
'06, Benjamin Michaelson '12, Care,·
Jarman '17, Robert A. Bier '19, Milto;,
G. Baker '21, W. Royce Hodges '26,
G. Newton Scatchard '30, Vbdimir F.
Ctibor '32, Stanley J. Bartis '33, Dalton
C..!. \Velty '35, Samuel H. Desch '36,
Paul R. Comegys '41, Haven E. Simmons '-14, John J. Lobell '46, Thomas
G. Fromme ')0, Jac Holzman '52, and
Arthur Kunglc, Jr. '67.
Help Wanted
Completed Alumni History Questionnaires arc rather important for the
Alumni Office. Manv of those mailed
to alumni last summer ha\'e not found
their wav back. Ii sou has·e not filled
in yours,_, please do -so and return it to
us.
How's Your Memory?
Can anyone identify the alumni in
the hack-cm-er picture? There are a
number of old photographs like this
in the Alumni Office. Every now and
then we will reproduce one, and ask
for sour help. \Ve would like to hear
from you old-timers.
essential to a successful reunion program. Some of the earlier classes may
have had a more complete organization,
but almost all classes have had at least
a secretary. In some classes we will
have to find replacements, and may
even have to draft a volunteer or twO.
For this coming October, then, we
should like to invite classes of '09, '19,
'29, '39, '44, '49, '59, and '64 to make
a particular effort to be with us. Final
arrangements for Homecoming must
still be made, but it is quite likely that
the dedication of the "new" Library
building will be held at that time.
" 'e shall be in touch with the classes
mentioned above in the months ahead.
Plan now to come to Annapolis on
October 18th.
CLASS NOTES
1872
Dr. James D:n,ison lglelmrt in February was
inducted posthumously into the Lacrosse Hall
of Fame. Dr. Iglehart, the father of lacrosse
in 1\hryland, is credited with bringing the
sport to the Baltimore area. The first game in
Baltimore was played on Nm·ember 23, 18i8.
1910
!vir. & Mrs. Newton B. CoJiinson celebrated
their 50th \vedding anniversmy in November.
Class Reunions
Comments recently recei\'ed by your
Alumni Director indicate considerable
interest in class reunions. This is a
welcome turn of events, and will be
supported ii1 every way possible. Two
things can be done immcdia te1y: we
can set up a specific schedule for foimal
reunions, and we can activate or reacti,·ate class secretaries.
:For the schedule, we propose that
each class hold a formal reunion on the
5th, lOth, 20th, 25th, 30th, 40th, etc.,
anniversaries of the graduation of that
class. Vv c suggest that a logical time for
these gatherings would be at Homecoming each fall, and that the reunions
be held on campus, or at least in
Annapolis. (Santa Fe alumni in 1973
maY, of course, want to haYC their 5th
reu-nion in Santa Fe.)
Class secretaries provide a point of
contact with the classes, and arc thus
1913
John \\filson was inducted posthumously into
the l\laryland Athletic Hall of Fnme in December. An outstanding football player and coach
at St. John's, J\1r. \Vilson also coached at the
NaYa] Academy for many years.
1918
Clvdc E. Bourke and 1'-Ars. Charles H.
Aml;rson were married on December 23, 1968,
in ]n·ington, N. Y. The Bourkes make their
home in Annapolis.
1921
Luther S. TaJJ joined radio station \\').L\RFl\1 {Baltimore) as an account executi\·e last
fall. Mr. Tall hncl earlier retired from positions
,,·ith \\'. IT. Lomeyer, ]nc., and Payne and
l\1crrill, Inc. lie is a former president of the
:\]umni As~ociation.
1922
Richncl T. Porter, noted basch:1ll pbyer at
St. John's. and bter with the R1ltimore Orioles
and the Cle,-c1and Indians, was inducted into
the ?\lnn-hmd Athletic llall of Fame in December. -1\Ir. Porter now makes his lwme in
Drexel -llill, Pa.
I
I
I
1
_,_.t'
�April 1969
1932
:\nothcr St. Johnnie now in the Lacrosse Hall
of Fame is Philip L. Lotz, now practicing law
in Staunton, Va. !\Ir. Lotz joins his brother
Ed11·in, who was admitted to the Hall in 196i.
As undergraduates they formed the backbone
of the defense when St. John's played Canada
in the 1931 Lally Cup series. Phil Lotz was
named captain of the :\11Timc All-American
Lacrosse Team in 1932.
1936
Samuel H. Desch, former executive ,·icc president ·and a director of the Pepsi-Cob Co.,
recently. \\'35 appointed president of the Dairy
and Scn·iccs Di,·ision of Borden, Inc. :i\Ir.
Desch was elected to the Board of Visitors and
Gm-crnors of the College at I Iomecoming last
October.
1938
Thonws E. Smith was recently promoted to
lieutenant-colonel in the ::--.Iarybnd State Police.
Col. Smith is now chief of operations, second
highest position on the force.
1939
James R . .1\IcQueen, Jr., president of the
Trojan Bmt Co., and president of the Na·
tioml Association of Engine and Boat :..1anubcturcrs, opened the 59th National Boat Show
in ::\ew York on January 25th.
Dr. Francis J. Tmmsend, Jr., is one of a
group of interested citizens seeking to build
and staff a ycaHound emergency treatment
center in Ocean City, l\Id.
1942
Albert A. Poppiti, until January 7th the
Commissioner of Public Safety of \:Vilmington,
Del., recently addressed the Maryland ·Coyernor's Conference on Fire Pre\·ention. l\-h.
Poppiti's topic was "Firefighting Problems during CiYil Disturbances:"
1943
Francis S. Mason, Jr., last fall assumed duties
as assist;mt to the president of Steuben Glass
in New York City.
1944
Jr., was recently pro·
mated to assistant professor of science ·at the
U.S. Na\'al Academy.
Joseph F. Hollywood,
1947
I. \Vendall Marine, a represcntati\·e of the
U.S. Geological Sur\'ey ~tationccl at the Atomic
Energy Commission's Sa\·annah Ri\'er (Ga.)
plant, was recently m\·;mlcd a Certificate of
Apprccintion by the Commission. Dr. J\brine's
~rca of primary concern has heen the longttml storage of mdimcti\·c wnstc mnterials.
1951
John F. Horne, Jr., recently joined the faculty of ;\nne Arundel (:\1d.) Community Colkgc. 1-Ic ,,·ill teach n new comse in Afro.-\mcrican culture. Earlier. l'vir. Horne was social
studies ad\'isor to Harvard University's Nigerian Project for two years.
1956
E,·erett H. \XIiJson is an assistant professor
at the UniYcrsity of Maryland School of Social
\\'ark.
1958
Christina (Sopher) Neuman graduated from
Pomona College last June, cum laude and Phi
Beta Kappa. She is now working toward an
J\L-\. degree in German nt the University of
Californi~ in Riverside.
1960
Cnptain George B. Jones, III, a member of
the U. S. Army for seven years, is a helicopter
pilot stationed in Savannah, Ga.
1962
Barry L. Fisher, currently on a surgical residency at Cedars-Sinai J'vfedical Center in Los
Angeles, plans a further residency in pediatric
surgery on the Enst Coast starting in 1971.
Dr. Fisher receiYed his medical degree from
Albert Einstein College of l\ledicine ( 1966),
and interned at Einstein College Hospital. He
and his wife, the former Irene Katz, were mar·
ried in 1966, and have a son, Scott Robert,
born last I\ lay,
\Villiam R. Salisbury and Diana Curns were
married in December in Kronberg, Germany.
:\Ir. Salisbury is a Foreign Service Officer at
the .-\mericnn Consulate, Frankfort·am-Ma.in.
1963
Alan Dorfman is now an instructor in mathematics at Catonsville (Md.) Community College. He holds a master's degree from Johns
Hopkins Uni\'ersity.
Robert K. Thomas and Rosemary Jierjian
were married in December in Beirut, Lebanon.
Mr. Thomns is with the USIA in Lebanon,
1964
A welcome letter from Jere my Leven brings
us up to date on his many activities. In addition to founding, writing, producing, and
directing The Proposition (see November
newsletter), he spent four months in Europe
last summer. In Florence he met Linda Forte,
\\·hom he married in December. He is no\V
starting a professional theater in Cmnbridge
{!\lass.), and in his spare time has been travelling and lecturing in connection \Yith his research at Han·ard. There he leads a team
deYeloping nn cducntional system for the year
2000.
It's now Cnptain Ke\'in J. \\Iitty, U. S.
Army. Cnpt. \Vitty, an instructor in the Engineer School at Ft. Beh·oir, Va., was promoted
last fall.
1966
The engagement of Alexis clu Pont Valk and
Cynthia Zm·ckas of Joplin, Mo.. was nn:
nounced on December 1St. :\Iiss Zuvekas is a
graduate of Ball Stnte UniYersity, while Mr .
Valk is now studying at the New England
Conservatory of Music in Boston.
Michael D. Weaver has received an assistantship and tuition scholarship in philosophy
at the Uni\'ersity of Cincinnati.
1967
Ga}' Diane Singer and Joseph P. Barrata '69
were married last June. The couple is living
in Annapolis while Mr. Barrata completes his
senior year.
1968
Santa Fe graduates Philip P. Chandler III
and Kenneth L. Kronberg, now junior fellows
at the Center for the Study of Democratic
Institutions, recently were in the news (see
news from Santa Fe elsewhere in this issue).
Eren P. Jacobson is college representative
in the eastern Great Lakes area for Dodd, Mead
& Co.
\Villiam R. Owens (SF) and Nancy Anne
\\food SF 'il were married in Albuquerque on
January 3rd.
Gilbert Rcnaut is now teaching mathematics
at Edmondson High School in Baltimore.
Ruth Ann (Nelson) Hiltebeitel writes that
she received her A.B. degree from Brown last
June, with n major in e:\:perimental psychology.
She lives with her husband and baby daughter
in Winnepeg, Canada.
In Memoriam
1904-R. TuNIS STRANGE, ·Annapolis,
Md., December 10, 1968.
1906-GEORGE DoN RILEY, Baltimore,
Md .• November 14,1968.
JoHN B. WELLS, Annapolis, Md.,
January 4, 1969.
-l-9BB==-LEWIN VlETHERED BARROLL,
Baltimore, Md .• February 2, 1969.
1910-CHARLES A. MuLLIKIN,
more, Md., Febrmry 8, 1969.
Balti-
1923-H. B. R. RoBERTS, Salisbury, Md.,
March 4. 1969.
1925-CHARLES \:V. WHAYLAND, Annapolis, Md .• February 24. 1969.
-193 3-DR. LINCOLN J. MAGEE, Winchendon, Mass., December 8, 1968.
1934-DR. EuGENE J.
River, Mass., 1968.
DIONNE, Fall
1935-LAwRENCE J. O'CoNNOR, Linthicum Heights, Md., January 29, 1969.
_
1940-JonN E. DuFFY, Annapolis, Md.,
No\'ember 19, 1968.
1944-HARRISON SAsscER, Che\'y Chase,
Md., January 19. 1969. ·
1966-C. PHILIP AcKERMAN, New York
City, Dccemb~r 8, 1968.
��
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<em>The College </em>(1969-1981)
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An account of the resource
St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>. <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981. <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Santa Fe, NM
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Berns, Laurence
Felter, Mary P.
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Trimmer, Maurice
Tolbert, James M.
Sullivan, Daniel
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THE COLLEGE
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
Santa Fe, New Mexico
September 1969
\._ l
' ~~
.,._-
SPECIAL ISSUE: PRESIDENT'S REPORT
�The College
Cover: Line conversion of Richard D.
\Vcigle (Photo by Bill Johnson, Den''er Post).
Inside front cover:
i\ k Dowell Hall.
The annual Report of the President
comprises a major part of this issue of
The College. The new format seems
particularly appropriate for this, the
twentieth anniversary report of President \ V cigk, an cl permits a general
review of the past two decades as
well as a more detailed report of the
year just ended. T'he editors are pleased
that the President chose the new magazine as the ,-chicle for this landmark
report.
The staff of the magazine acknowledges receipt of several manuscripts
for possible publication, and hopes to
begin the "Question Period" feature in
the December issue. Your criticisms
arc welcomed. (Eds.)
J\ fanaging Editor: I\Iary P. Felter
Alumni Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant : Maurice Trimmer
Art Editor: Daniel Sullivan, '71
The College is published by the De,·elopment Offices of St. John's College, College Avenue, Annapolis,
Maryland 21404 (Julius Rosenberg,
Director), and Santa Fe, New Mexico
(Frank McGuire, Director); Member,
American Alumni Council. President,
St. John 's College, Richard D. Weigle.
Published four times a year in April,
July, September, and December. Second-class postage paid at Annapolis,
Maryland, and at additional mailing
offices.
Vol. XXI
September 1969
No. 3
In the September Issue:
The Liberal Arts College: Anachronism or Paradigm,
by Richard D. \Veigle ....... .
1
The Report of the President
4
News on the Campuses .
. 12A
Alumni Activities
. 12F
Twenty Years in Retrospect .
13
Scenes At The College
24
�The Liberal Arts College:
Anachronism or Paradigm
Commencement Address, The Colorado College, June 2, 1969
By RICHARD D. WEIGLE
'y
These are parlous times for the independent liberal
arts college. Harbingers of gloom and other Cassandras
freely prediot the probable demise of this allegedly
anachronistic institution upon the American educational
scene. The Darwinian thesis of the survival of the fittest
is the ground for such pessimism.
How indeed can these relatively small and impecunious
colleges withstand the competitive pressures of the giant
public and private multiversities and the myriad state
normal schools, now respectably redesignated and r.estructured? And what about the epidemic of junior and
community colleges now breaking out in every state?
\Vith ready access to the public purse, tax-supported institutions bid for students with minimal tuitions and for
teachers with enticing emoluments. What hope is there
for the traditional liberal arts college, which dominated
American higher education until only a few decades ago?
As we explore the question of whether the free-standing liberal arts college has outlived its usefulness and los t
its relevance, let us go back to the Latin word conlegium
or collegium. The root word here is legere, meaning "to
choose, to pick, to collect, or to gather together." There
is a close connection here to the word collega, "one
chosen at the same time," that is, a colleague. A collegium
is therefore a group of persons united in colleagueship, a
guild, a corporation, or a college.
History shows that the word collegium was first applied
to hostels for poor students. Apparently the cathedral
chapter of Paris established the first college around the
vear 1180. It was called The College of the Eighteen.
The Sorbonne in Paris; Balliol, Merton, and University
Colleges of Oxford; and Peterhouse College at Cambridge
followed in the mid-thirteenth centurv. On the Continent
the university tended to absorb th~se colleges, but in
England the colleges dominated the universities instead.
They often provided complete curricula and became
teaching institutions rather than simple hostels.
It was the British College which provided the model
for the young American colleges of the 17th and 18th
centuries. Harvard, the first, was started in 1636 under
Congregational Church auspices. Its founders were large1
ly Cambridge men from Emmanuel College. Most early
American colleges began under church sponsorship. The
Episcopalians were involved in founding William and
Mary in 1693, the Congregationalists in opening "The
Collegiate School" in 1701, later to become Yale. The
Presbyterians brought Princeton into being in 1746, and
the College of Rhode Island, the forerunner of Brown
University, was founded by the Baptists in 1765. Of the
182 colleges which had been born prior to the War
between the States, only one in nine was a public
institution.
The modern university with its correlative emphases
upon teaching and research has been a more recent <level:
opment. Here the pattern tended to be that of the German
university, dating back to the creation of the University
of Berlin in 1810. This type of institution came into
being in the United States (in the latter part of the
19th century) in places like the Johns Hopkins University
and the University of Chicago. Harvard, Yale, and other
institutions which had begun as colleges became universities as they added graduate work, oftentimes in areas
which had long been considered too technical and too
utilitarian for the intellectual life of the scholar. A landmark in American educational history was of course the
introduction of the electiv.e system into the undergraduate
curriculum by President Eliot of Harvard at the turn of
the century. The old liberal arts curriculum built around
the trivium of grammar, rhetoric and logic and the quadrivium of arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy thus
yielded to a wide range of subjects, many of them avowedly illiberal and often highly specialized.
It may be well at this point to ask ourselves what we
understand by the liberal arts, which should be the hallmark of the liberal arts college. The Greek word for such
an art is nxv'l, from which the English word "technique"
and "technical" are derived. Liberal arts are therefore
liberal or liberating skills, skills of the mind. The primary
function of these liberal arts or skills has been to mediate
man's understanding and to give conscious form to
knowledge. In contemporary terms man uses words, or
verbal symbols, as he practices such liberal arts as analyz-
I
�The College
ing, thinking, writing, speaking, and deciding. By the same
token he uses a set of mathematical symbols as he practices such liberal arts as counting, measuring, deducing,
experimenting, and demonstrating.
If I may be pardoned one quotation, a paragraph from
the Catalogue of your young sister institution in New
Mexico seems to state the case rather we11:
Knowledge advances and the fundamental outlook
of man may change over the centuries, but these
arts of understanding remain in one form or another
indispensable. They enable men to win knowledge
of the world around them and knowledge of themselves in this world and to use that knowledge with
wisdom. Under their guidance men can free themselves from the wantonness of prejudice and the
narrowness of beaten paths. Under their discipline
men can acquire the habit of listening to reason. A
genuinely conceived liberal arts curriculum cannot
avoid aiming at these most farreaching of a11 human
goals.
And now let us return to the word "co11ege." The
Oxford English Dictionary offers several definitions. A
co11ege is termed "an organized society of per~is performing certain common functions and possessing certain
rights and privileges, a body of co11eagues, a guild, a
fc11owship." I pass over one definition which suggests
that a co11ege "often combines, in its original character,
the functions of a local charity for the aged, eleemosynary
education for the young." It is unlikely that either hard
working professors, on the one hand, or high tuitionpaying students, on the other, would appreciate such a
definition. It is safer to understand the co11ege as "a
society of s~holars formed for the purpose of study and
instruction."
It is my contention and my faith that the fundamental
concept of the liberal arts college is sti11 valid and relevant, and that such a college can indeed provide a paradigm for American education. But there are necessary
conditions. The liberal arts co11ege must be true to itself.
It must commit itself to its own distinctive program, and
it must practice this with integrity. It must not attempt
to be a11 things to all men, nor may it seek with impunity
to be an inadequate replica of the universality. Its competitive position depends, not upon its similarity to other
institutions, but rather upon its uniqueness. All of this
means that the liberal arts co11ege must constantly resist
pressures, even well-meaning ones, to alter its program.
Alumni, the general public, the government, and even the
faculty and the students, may exert such pressures. I
am not suggesting that the liberal arts co11ege remain
static and stagnant. Far from it! My only concern is that
such change foster, rather than impede, the liberal learning which should animate the entire institution.
In the United States we are fortunate to have a wide
range of colleges and universities. The diversity of our
institutions of higher education has indeed been a source
2
of strength and vigor m this country. This situation
should continue. Without trying to establish any single
pattern for our liberal arts co11eges, I would like to set
down certain desiderata which might we11 make this particular type of coll.ege more of a paradigm for the education of young men and women over the four years fo11owing their seventeenth or eighteenth birthday.
First, the liberal arts co11ege should be a one-purpose
institution. Its objective should be the best possible liberal education of undergraduates. Any compromise with
vocational and pre-professional training is hazardous, for
experience seems to indicate that the camel has a way of
moving into the tent. It goes without saying that the
liberal arts co11ege should rarely offer graduate work,
for it will divert faculty talent and it will prove an
expensive appendage.
Second, the curriculum ought to be limited in scope
and imaginatively conceived. Granted that few faculties
or administrators would agree with the St. John's purist
position of no electives and no majors, I would propose
the next best alternative, a relatively sma11 number of
majors with minimum quantitative requirements in each.
At the same time I would encourage the offering of such
courses as would devdop the ski11s of the student in both
the great system of symbols which man has developed
and refined-words, on the one hand, and numbers, signs,
figures and formulas, on the other. No man or woman is
libera11y educated without benig conversant with both.
Where possible, I would urge faculties to stress relationships and connections between areas, fields, and courses.
T'he primary criterion for the inclusion of any course in
the curriculum should be its contribution to developing
the thinking skills of the student, not the information to
be imparted. Facts are always accessible in any good
library.
Third, the liberal arts co11ege should concentrate on
good teaching. Its faculty members should not be under
any compunction to do research or to publish. These are
President Weigle receives honorary doctor of laws degree at commencement exercises of The Colorado College, June, 1969 (Photo by Knut-
son-Bowers.)
�September 1969
functions of th~ university._ Nor should consultantships
assignments distract faculty members from
thcu pnmary opportunity of classroom teaching. I submit
th~t any_ teacher can remain intellectually alive by broadenmg himself through exploring new fields and thus
r~discovering. unsuspe~ted implications for his own specialty. He will find his colleagues and his students constant sources of stimulus. Ideallv, he will eschew the lectun:; in class for discussion and clialectic. Only as students
and t~acher bot~ participate in questioning, searching,
proposmg, analyzmg, and defending will the best liberal
teaching a~d learning take place. Parenthetically, I might
add that JUSt. a_s the .teacher is not to be diverted by
extraneous activity, neither should the student be. Extracurricular engagement, athletic, social or governmental,
must never usurp the interest and attention of any studcn t, else the teaching at the liberal arts college has
surely failed.
A fourth consideration is size. The liberal arts college
should be content to remain small and should resist the
temptation to grow. ~here is a story that most college
presidents, when quest10ned as to the ideal size for their
institt~tion, will pr~pose an enrollment 100 larger than
then m effect. Addmg a hundred tuition fees is no solution ~o ~ny college's financial dilemma. For a good college 1t simply creates ,t he need for one or two million
doll.ars mor~ in endowment. Careful study will determine
optmmm size for any liberal arts college from a financial
point of view. But even more important is preservation
of the sense of community, which is one of the liberal
art~ co~leg~'s great.est assets. We are already reaping the
\vlurlwmd m certam of our larger institutions where computers and gigantic lecture courses have robbed the
studen~ of any feeling that he matters as a person. In the
small liberal arts college communicating is possible among
students, faculty members, and those much maligned but
very necessary characters unhappily known as administrators.
A final and most important consideration is independence of action. The liberal arts college can be free of
political pressures. Its board of trustees can guarantee
responsible academic freedom. Its facultv can be encouraged to ex~eriment wi~h new teaching techniques or new
sequences m the cumculum. Its students ,exercise their
freedom to study and to learn, with full assurance that the
~aculty and the administration care and that they are
mdeed the only reason for the college's existence. Undergraduate education at the liberal arts college under these
~onditions should strongly appeal to faculty and students
m other colleges and universities.
Should the liberal arts college succeed in what I have
proposed _for it-undeviating adherence to its single purpose o~ liberal education, limiting the curriculum, concentratmg on effective teaching, preserving smallness and
a real sense of community, and maintaining independence
of thought and action-it will indeed become the paraan~ ov~rseas
digm to be emulated by other institutions. Witness
already the movement in large universities to create
small undergraduate colleges within them-the Santa
Cruz campus of the University of California and Justin
Morrill College of Michigan State University.
But the real and lasting effects flowing from a rededication of the liberal arts college to its original commitment
will be the influences upon the individual student. You,
the members of the Class of 1969 of The Colorado
College, stand before us today having completed four
yea~s in a liberal arts college. The faculty, the administrative staff, the board, the alumni, and the friends of
the liberal arts college have sought to provide you with a
place and the conditions where real learning can take
p!ace. As we all know, such learning is a highly individual matter. Whether each of you has succeeded in
these four years _is not attested to by the diploma you
are about to receive, but rather by your own quiet assessment of how well you meet certain criteria which measure
a liberal education.
Is your mind keener, more imaginative and more versatile as a result of your college experience? Is it simply
a storehouse of rapidly disappearing facts, or is it a tool
which you can employ with joy and confidence in the
years that lie ahead?
Are you aware of the tradition in which vou stand and
can you therefore live with some perspective of history?
Too many people today are ignorant of the minutes of
~he previous meetings. They live in the here and now, an
isolated and lonely ,existence, as compared to the richness
of man's accumulated heritage.
Have yo~ confronted and honestly sought answers to
the pers1stmg and baffiing questions of man's existence
and his relation to his fellows, to the world around him
~nd to .the divine Force which must have brought him
mto bemg, ~ave you the:efore discovered or developed
a personal philosophy of hfe that will make living meaningful and satisfying?
Finally, do you respect reason and do you have confidence that dialectic-reasonable conversation and communication between rational men and women-can arrive
at solutions to problems and can approach the attainment
of truth? Eristic-the art of disputation or fighting with
words-seems currently fashionable, whether in a tirade
fr~m Peking or a confrontation on a college campus.
History demonstrates that it is a totally inadequate substitute for dialectic and for reason.
·
Members of the Class of 1969, I salute you and wish
you well as you continue the lifelong process of education.
I hope that your four years in college enable you to share
my ~onviction tha~ the liberal arts college is hardly
archaic and my faith that it can and will provide a
paradigm for the future.
Richard . D. \Veigle has been President of St. John's College m
Annapolis, Maryland, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, since 1949.
3
�The College
The Report of the President
1968-1969
Twenty years ago today this Board elected me to the
presidency of St. John's College. The prospect was both
sobering and challenging to this young college teacher
temporarily turned State Department official. St. John's
was beset with long-standing debt, aging buildings, and
administrative turmoil. Enrollment was declining; regional accreditation had just been denied. But the educational ideas which had produced the St. John's Program
were eminently sound. Given the assets of the Program,
it seemed that the College must succeed.
Now in 1969 St. John 's College stands on firm ground.
It has achieved a high degree of administrative and financial stability. The curriculum has evolved into an ever
more effective vehicle for the liberal education of both
tutors and students. Many promising young teachers have
been added to the Faculty. Antiquated buildings have
been renovated and new structures added, without detracting from the traditional atmosphere of a colonial college.
A sizable endowment has been established.
But the most significant development has been the
creation of a second St. John's College in Santa Fe. Here
an entire new campus has been constructed, with the
Annapolis college as a model for curriculum, for teaching
techniques, for administrative organization, and for physical facilities. St. John's is, therefore, now two colleges.
This fall over 600 students will be enrolled, three times
as many as in 1949. Yet the essential character . of the
learning experience at St. John's will not have changed.
This Board can be justly proud of what it has accomplished in the brief span of two decades. The quality of a
St. John's education and the unique plan for expansion
through duplication have justly earned national recognition for this college of ours.
As you are well aware, the college or university presidency has become a hazardous and precarious post in
recent years. The problems facing most presidents still
include the traditional ones of faculty recruitment and
retention, student nurture and governance, alumni and
community relations, state and federal grants, and omnipresent deficits. But a new and profoundly disturbing
dimension has been added. A militant and impatient
4
minority of students and junior faculty members have
forsaken the means of reason and dialectic and adopted
instead the tactics of confrontation, demands, occupation,
and force. Presidential casualties have been heavy under
harassment, with concomitant faculty vacillation. One of
my colleagues suffered a fatal heart attack; numbers have
resigned, several from prestigious universities. It is no
secret that college and university boards of trustees are
now seeking candidates to fill over two hundred presidential vacancies.
In contrast to the unrest and disturbances at many
other institutions, St. John's College has exhibited over
these two decades a remarkable fidelity to its single purpose, an enviable sense of community, and a high degree
of accomplishment. During this period -St. John's has in
effect been a pilot college demonstrating the effectiveness
of educational concepts and ideas which might prove
salutary in meeting problems on other campuses. Certain
of these principles are here delineated.
First, St. John's College has steadfastly adhered to the
concept of smallness. It believes that one of its missions
is to provide a truly intimate learning community for
those young' men and women most likely to profit from
it. The College recognizes , that there is no magic in any
particular number, but it has held that the nature of the
institution would change if enrollments were to grow
by even relatively small annual increments. Consequently,
St. John's met the problem of expansion in 1964 by the
unique method of mitosis. The small college in the
mountains of New Mexico may well be a forerunner of
other small St. John'ses as yet unborn in various parts of
the United States. The faculty and the administrators of
St. John's College take vigorous exception to the view
that a college must be judged in quantitative terms ap d
that the size of a college should be determined only by
factors of efficiency of operation. Instead, they believe
that learning is an intensely personal experience and that
it occurs in each individual as he reacts to his environment and to his opportunities for personal interplay with
those around him, both his teachers and his fellow students. The wisdom of the St. John's position is now borne
�September 1969
out by the efforts of large universities to break themselves
down into small residential colleges of the approximate
size of St. John's.
A second important tenet of the St. John's philosophy
of education is that students should participate fully in
their own education. The seminar and the tutorial have
proved to be unusually efficacious in achieving one of the
College's main goals, that of developing the student's
ability to think. Dialectic, courteous and reasonable conversation, both inside and outside the classroom, seeks to
approach the truth. Students learn the fine art of listening, an art widely lacking and much needed in this world
of conflicting special interests, of lobbying, and of confrontations. In contrast to the passive attitudes of students
in large lecture courses, the St. Joh n's student is encouraged to state his own opinions about subjects under discussion in the classroom. He is required to affirm his
premises, to meet the reasonable objections of his colleagues, and to reach a reasoned position as a basis for
action. It seems clear to me that the failure of the large
institutions to involve the student in an active classroom
situation is one of the roots of the current discontent
which has manifested itself so unhappily on many
campuses.
A third principle of St. John's College is the conviction
that firsthand acquaintanceship with their Western heritage is a prerequisite for young men and women in this
or any other. period of time. To be ignorant of what
the best minds have thought and written on the wide
range of questions and problems which have confronted
men over the centuries, is to impoverish one's existence.
In all ages men have pondered their relationship with
each other, their place in the natural order of the universe,
and their relationship to a divine being. They have confronted the problems of the rich and the poor, the
strong and the weak, the ruler and the ruled, the just and
the unjust. The basic themes persist, regardless of changing circumstances. A dialogue of Plato, a Shakespearean
play, or a political treatise by Alexis de Tocqueville often
provides unsuspected perspective on matters of immediate concern to present generations. The relevance of such
books to the world today is soon apparent to the student.
In seeking to understand them he discovers more abiding
principles than he would find in a series of elective courses
on current problems.
Still another fundamental concept to which the College
has adhered over the years is that all students should
be literate in the mathematics and th~ sciences, as well as
in the humanities. Publication of C. P. Snow's book ,Thc
Two Worlds and the uncomfortable advent of Sputnik
simply confirmed St. John's College in the course which
it had chosen to follow in 1937. Unfortunately, our colleges and universities have thus far failed miserably to
make the scientist more humane or the humanist more
conversant with the sciences. In the closing third of the
twentieth century, every intelligent citizen should have
enough exposure to the world of science to comprehend
both governmental and private developments in this
ever-expanding sphere of activity.
Finally, St. John's College has adhered steadfastly and
single-mindedly to its basic commitment to liberal education. Here it has more than justified David Boroff's
designation of it as "the very archetype of liberal education, the pure thing." In the absence of departments and
major areas of concentration students do not undertake
their studies as a means to a vocational end. Instead,
learning becomes a pleasure in itself. Reading, studying,
discussing, writing, .e xperimenting, and demonstrating
are undertaken because they themselves are found to be
both satisfying and stimulating. If St. John's succeeds iJ?.
imparting the joy of learning to a young man or woman
it will have importantly shaped the rest of his life.
Two small St. John's Colleges can never exert the
impact which they deserve to upon American higher
education. Yet the very presence of these small communities of learning has been a proverbial mustard s.eed, and
the Board should not discount the influence which it has
exerted. In more than one instance actions taken by St.
John's College have subsequently been followed by
larger sister institutions. The decision to admit women in
1951 seemed almost sacrilegious at a college which had
been exclusively male since 1696. Now nearly two decades
5
�The College
later, the trend. toward coeducation among even Ivy
League colleg~s ~s pronoll:nced. During my Chairmanship
of the Commiss10n on Liberal Education of the Association of American Colleges, intellectual life conferences
fam~liarized college presidents and deans with St. John's
semmars and caused them to introduce such seminars on
~heir ~o~e campuses. In 1965 the Peace Corps revamped
its trammg program for volunteers using as a model the
St. John's seminar.
Finally, mention should be made of the College's impact upon public education through the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education on the Santa Fe campus. Here
teachers, many of them from inner-core city schools or
from schools in rural areas, <discover for the first time the
Western tradition in which they stand and the effectiveness of the teaching techniques in seminars and tutorials.
Elsewhere I have sought to summarize the major developments at St. John's from 1949 to the present. There I
have delineated the major changes in the academic progra~1,. the building of a faculty and a student body, the
additions. to the College's resources, and its major involvements with the marketplace, the world outside its walls .
I am convinced that the education which St. John's College provides has never been more relevant or more necessary than it is today. If the conflicting demands of the
various segment3 of this nation's population are to be
reconciled and if consideration and reason rather than
confrontation and force are to prevail, students must be
offered a liberal education, one which meets their deepest
needs rather than stirring their angry frustrations.
1949-President ·Weigle and Dean Klein walk to Convocation.
The St. John's Deanships
The academic year under review was the last for John
Spangler Kieffer as Dean of the College. No man has
served St. John's in more capacities than he-President,
Dean, Board Member, Tutor, and Director of Adult Education-since he and his wife joined the College forty
years ago . Mr. Kieffer will continue to serve as Tutor
following a sabbatical leave trip to Greece. He retires
from the Deanship with the affection and gratitude of
the entire college community.
On July 1st Robert A. Goldwin assumed the Deanship
of the Co.llege and of the Annapolis campus. A St. John's
graduate m the Class of 1950, Mr. Goldwin earned both
the. M.A.. and .P.h.D . ~egrees from the University of
Chicago m Political Science. He was Director of the
~ublic Affairs Conference Center at Chicago before joinmg the Kenyon College faculty in 1966. In 1967 he served
as the first Director of the St. John's Graduate Institute
in Liberal Education on the Santa Fe campus.
I ar:i P.leased to report that \Villiam A. Darkey more
than Justified all our high expectations in his first year
of the Santa Fe Deanship. He assumed his new duties
with imagination, diligence, and perceptiveness. This was
the final year for both Assistant Deans, who had served
since the opening of the Santa Fe campus. Mr. Robert
E. Skeele resigned to accept a deanship at Marlboro
College, and Mrs. Ingeborg Lorenz Lang leaves to teach
at the Verde Valley School in Arizona. The College owes
a par~icular debt of gratitude to these two persons who
contributed so much during the institution's formative
yea:s. For the coming year John T. Rule will be Acting
Assistant Dean for Students and Mrs. Marie Winterhaler
the Registrar, Acting Assistant Dean for Administration~
Accreditation of Santa Fe Campus
The major development of the year on the Western
campus was achievement of full accreditation by the
North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary
Schools. Previously the Santa Fe campus had been accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and
S~condary Schools .through the parent campus in Annapolis. The new reg10nal accreditation includes both the
bachelor's and master's degrees. The Association asks to
receive annual reports for at least three years on enrollments, finances, and the organization and administration
of the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education.
The Library in Annapolis
Meanwhile in the East renovation and enlargement of
.Hall, the College Library, was completed durmg the sprmg. A holiday was declared in mid-May and
students and staff together accomplished the move of the
book collection from temporary quarters in Mellon Hall
back into the library building. The relocation of the books
~ oodward
6
�September 1969
~,
was a smooth and efficient operation, thanks to the student volunteers. Miss Charlotte Fletcher, the Librarian,
called it "a kind of day of triumph for all of us ."
Woodward Hall is now a completely new and func- ·
tional library within its traditional facade of turn-of-thecentury collegiate architecture. The creati~i~ ~f two ~t~ck
floors in the lowered basement and the adiommg addition
along King George Street almost doubles the floor space
in the library. A formal ceremony of rededication is
planned for the afternoon of Homecoming on October
18, 1969. The next task confronting the Librarian is the
recruitment of additional trained staff members. This
necessity results in part from the resignation of Mrs.
Simon Kaplan, who has served loyally and well as Cataloguer since 1948. All the members of the college community are deeply appreciative of Mrs . Kaplan's service
over the years.
Graduate Institute in Liberal Education
On August 14, 1969, the first ,eleven master's degrees
were awarded to students who had completed three summers in the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education
and who had transferred sufficient credits from other institutions. An appropriate commencement ceremony was
held in the Great Hall of the Student Center. Robert
Goldwin gave the address. This session marked th~ co1:11pletion of Elliott Zuckerman' s two-year term as Du.ect~r
of the Institute. He is to be highly commended for his
administration of this new program, \vhich again this year
19 51-The smokestack from the old heating plant topples to the
ground on the back campus in Annapolis .
attracted nearly a hundred teachers. A new director will
be nominated ·at the fall meeting of the Board.
Instruction
Both Deans report that the teaching throughout the
College during the academic year was successfu~ and the
morale high. The annual meeting of the Instruct10n Co~
mittee took place in Santa Fe in mid-March. r~~e pnncipal matter discussed was .a propo:al for revismg ~he
Junior and Senior mathematics tutonals and laboratones.
This had been worked out by a study group of tutors
under the chairmanship of J. \Vinfree Smi th. The pro~
posal was approved and will go into effect next .Y~ar.
The Committee also considered the program of admittmg
a February freshman class and recommended its cont~n
uance for another year. Finally, the subject of a thud
campus at Oak Ridge, Tennessee was discussed. There
was general agreement that the need to assimilate new
tutors to the St. Jo.hn's Program would preclude any possible further expansion for at least five years.
1
The Tutors
Jacob Klein ended his active. teaching car~er . at St.
John's College in June. Appropriately he was mvited to
make the address to the graduating class and was presented with a scroll recognizing his immense contributions to the College over the years . Mr. Klein arrived at
St. John's as an emigre scholar in 1938. He was Dean
for nine years, from 1949 to 1958, and then held an
Addison E. Mullikin Tutorship. I shall always be grateful
to him for his guidance and counsel during my neophyte
years in the presidency.
During the year forty faculty members taught on the
Annapolis campus. In addition th~e~ retired tuto.rs, Ford
K. Brown, Simon Kaplan, and Wilham Kyle Smith, conducted preceptorials. Eva Brann, Alvin Main, and Malcolm Wyatt were on sabbatical leave; Rob~rt Sac.ks w.as
given leave to teach at St. Mary's College m Cahforma;
and George Berry was granted leave for personal reasons.
Gerald E. Bunker and Rosemary Z. Lauer completed
their appointments and leave the College for other positions.
Eight new appointments have been made on the .
Annapolis campus for the fall. Bert Thoms, who taught
at St. John's from 1949 to 1954 and has since.been head
of the Department of Philosophy at \:Vashmgton and
Jefferson College, returns to the Faculty on a tenure
appointment. Other appointees are Robert J. ~nd~rso~ ,
who holds the master's degree from Yale Umversity m
Philosophy and has taught a~ Temple. University;
Vassilios Christides, a Ph.D . candidate at Prmceton, who
has been a Junior Fellow at Dumbarton .Oaks Center
for Byzantine Studies; Wye Townsend J~mis.on, . who h.as
just completed her Ph.D. at Stanford Umversity m ~usic;
Aaron Kirschbaum, a candidate for the Ph.D. m the
7
�The College
1951-A new heating plant is opened in Annapolis. (Photo by M.
E. \V arre11 . )
19 52-A fire damages the Great Hall of McDowell in Annapolis.
History of Science at the University of Wisconsin; Robert
Mueller, a St. John's graduate in the Class of 1947, who
holds a master's degree from Johns Hopkins University
in History and who has taught at Armstrong State College in Georgia and Savannah State College; George
Vahanian, who was granted the Ph.D. degree from Boston
University this summer in Greek Philosophy and Logic;
and Ray A. Williamson who received his Ph.D. from the
University of Maryland in Astronomy.
An exciting innovation on the Annapolis campus is the
appointment of the first Scott Buchanan Distinguished
Scholar-in-Residence. This chair will be filled by Leo
Strauss, eminent political scientist and first incumbent
of the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service
Professorship at the University of Chicago. Mr. Strauss will work at the graduate level with both teaching interns
and regular tutors of the College. It is hoped that such
work will constitute for these tutors an important renewal
of their intellectual capital.
In Santa Fe the College's principal effort with respect
to the Faculty continues to be the building of a cadre
of tutors who are both experienced and versatile in the
whole curriculum. This effort implies the discovery of
good teachers who understand and are sympathetic to the
goals of the St. John's program and are willing to commit
themselves to it long enough to become skilled in its
content and methods. Financial considerations have thus
far precluded giving reduced teaching programs to new
tutors. It is planned in the years ahead to try to assign
newly appointed faculty members two-thirds teaching
schedules in the hope that they will be able to audit other
classes and to undertake a more carefully devised program
of orientation.
At the end of the academic year six tutors left the Santa
Fe Faculty: Robert J. Kovacs, Mrs. Ingeborg Lorenz Lang,
Bill K. Mathews, Jr., George B. Miller, Robert E. Skeele
and Dr. Julius 'Vilson. Dr. Wilson, who during his
service as College physician also taught one laboratory
section, will go into full retirement.
Thomas J. Slakey was on sabbatical leave and Clarence
J. Kramer on leave of absence. For the coming academic
year three new members of the Faculty have received
appointments: Glenn A. Freitas, who holds a number of
degrees from Laval University and from the Pontifical
Biblical Commission in Rome and who has been a professor at St. Mary's College in California; Ralph J. Quintana, who has an M.A. from the University of Colorado
and has been a professor of history at Highlands University; and Robert D. Sacks, of the Annapolis campus.
8
The Students
Enrollment on the two campuses this year exceeded
560. In marked contrast to last year, the Santa Fe campus
experienced a high rate of attrition, while the Annapolis
campus ended the year with more students than were
enrolled initially. The Annapolis record is attributable
to a very high retention rate and to the enrollment of
a February freshman class of 22 students.
As Dean Darkey notes in his report, attrition tends to
be regarded as an index to the health of the college community and to the adequacy of its functioning. The Dean
wisely points out that such judgments must be made
with caution. A "successful" student is not always one
who takes the A.B. degree, though naturally the College
holds that the program is a four-year entity. The Admissions staff is therefore right in exploring those characteristics in prospective students which are the most reliable
predictors of active and fruitful involvement in the
College.
To the individual faculty member a low rate of retention may mean his own failure or that of his colleagues,
or perhaps the failure of methods and materials of the
curriculum. Such inferences may be correct in a particular
�September 1969
case, but in most cases they are probably not. The danger
is that such assumptions might produce a climate for
endless trivial tinkering with the curriculum. In colleges
as small and intimate as the two St. John's colleges the
answer probably lies in better teaching, better counseling,
and a more supportive social structure in the college community. Dean Darkey suggests that the climate of the
learning community might be improved through more
consistently serious academic demands of the students.
In analyzing this whole situation it is important not
to overlook the general climate of unrest that deeply
affects all young persons today. St. John's College, by
its very nature, attracts intelligent and articulate students
who are sensitive to the dilemmas and pressures of our
times-the ill-starred war in Vietnam, the blight of urban
poverty, the continuing racial conflict, and so on. Some
students certainly leave because of these pressures. It
is significant, however, that many who do so proclaim
their desire to return, and indeed often do return. It seems
to me a great tribute to the College and its educational
program that in a ,period of general student unrest and
unhappy confrontation the two St. John's campuses have
demonstrated the value and effectiveness of genuine communication between student and tutor, of mutual respect
among all members of the community, and of serious
involvement in the ongoing educational program of the
college.
The distribution of the students among the several
classes on each campus was as follows:
Annapolis
Freshmen
February Freshmen
Sophomores
Juniors
Seniors
Totals
Total
46
39
19
Women
69
9
25
23
21
176
147
323
74
29
21
21
45
29
10
11
119
58
31
32
145
95
240
321
242
563
Men
59
13
128
22
71
suspended on both campuses for engaging m further
unilateral liberalization.
For a second year at Santa Fe, Stuart Boyd, of the
Faculty, administered and supervised a Title I Project in
Youth Opportunities and Social Problems. The project
sought to establish relations with various community
agencies and institutions and to train students to work
with them in varying conditions and stresses. Some two
dozen students were successfully involved as week-end
workers at the New Mexico State Hospital, as summer
group workers and tutors with Young Citizens for Action,
as case-work aides in the Division of Child Welfare of
the Department of Health, and as part-time teacher-aides
at Acequia Madre and Manderfield Public Schools. One
student founded a tutoring organization which enlisted
volunteers from the two colleges and high schools in
town to work with slow and deprived boys and girls.
One tragic event saddened the Annapolis college community and shocked the people of the city. Anne Bradley,
a junior from Brookline, Massachusetts, left her dormitory
after curfew to get a snack. She was subsequently found
murdered on the State House lawn. Her assailant has
never been discovered. The Administration redoubled its
warning to students on both campuses to exert the utmost
caution in walking both on and off campus after dark.
A relatively small number of A.B. degrees were awarded
on the Annapolis campus. Thirty-five seniors received
degrees, one of them magna cum faude and six of them
cum faude. The second commencement on the Santa Fe
campus witnessed the awarding of two degrees magna
cum laude, four degrees cum faude and 22 degrees rite.
1953-The important senior oral is filmed for a movie on St. John's
College. (Photo by M . E. Warren.)
62
40
Santa Fe
Freshm~n
Sophomores
Juniors
Seniors
Totals
Grand Total
Student morale on both campuses was good. Particular note should be made of the excellent service of
Christopher Nelson, a junior, who served for the second
year as Executor of the Student Polity at Annapolis. His
leadership made the Polity a significant factor in the
College's life. Rules of Residence continue to be a problem in spite of the liberalized visiting permitted between
the hours of noon and midnight. Some students were
9
�The College
Class of 1973
r
I
I
Both Directors of Admission report capacity entering
classes this fall. Over 500 final applications for admissions
were received, 246 for Annapolis and 263 for Santa Fe.
Those accepted appear to be an able and interesting
group. For Annapolis 613 were in the top fifth of their
graduating class, for Santa Fe 693 were in this category.
Median Scholastic Aptitude Test scores for Annapolis entrants were verbal-696 and mathematical-661, for Santa
Fe, verbal-643 and mathematical-593. The geographical distribution of the 250 incoming freshmen shows that
38 states, the District of Columbia, and five foreign countries are represented (In each case the first figure is for
Annapolis, the second for Santa Fe):
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
District of
Columbia
Georgia
Illinois
Indiana
Kansas
Kentuckv
Louisian;
3
7
I
I
I
5
I
I
I
I
2
6
I
30
12
Maryland 8
Massachusetts 6
Michigan
3
Minnesota 2
Mississippi 2
Missouri
2
Nebraska
I
Nevada
New Jersey 5
New Mexico
New York 18
3 N. Carolina 4
I N. Dakota I
I Ohio
6
Oklahoma
2 Oregon
2
4
I
I
2
25
6
I
5
I
Penn2
sylvania 13
Rhode
Island
I
S. Dakota I
Texas
2 12
Vermont
I
Virginia
8
Washington
I
\i\T.est
Virginia
Great
Britain
I
Greece
I
HongKong I
Spain
I
Venezuela I
Again this past year prospective students were encouraged to visit the two campuses, live in the dormitories
and attend classes. A record number of 250 took advantage of this opportunity in Annapolis, half of whom
subsequently applied. Santa Fe had 191 student visitors,
125 of whom applied and 70 of whom are enrolled in
the Class of 1973.
The future recruitment program of the College undoubtedly will benefit from the fact that the fiftieth
annual meeting of the Country Day School Headmasters
AssociMion was held on the Santa Fe campus in late
June. Fifty-nine current headmasters from coast to coast
attended, many of them with wives and children. All
participants expressed in extravagant terms their appreciation of St. Joh n's College, the beauty of its campus,
and the hospitality of its staff.
Administrative Personnel
. In addition to appointments already mentioned for the
Annapolis campus, Julius Rosenberg, of the Class of 1938,
was appointed Director of Development; Mrs. Mary Jean
Felter, Director of Publicity; and Mrs. Violet Keily, secre-
10
19 55-The historic Carroll-Barrister House is moved through Annapolis streets to St. John's campus. (Photo by M. E. Warren.)
tary in the Development Office. M rs. Vicki Cone, of the
Class of 1968, was appointed Library Assistant, succeeding Miss Anne Wright. Mrs. Vaughnita Benda became
mimeographer, replacing Mrs. Barbara Littler, and M .rs.
Theresia McGuire secretary to the Assistant Deans after
Mrs. Roberta Henke resigned. Mrs. Pauline Fowler resigned in June to be married. She had serve~ faithfully and
competently as College Nurse for seven years.
At Santa Fe James P. Shannon, who resigned from his
ecclesiastical duties as Auxiliary Bishop of Minneapolis
and St. Paul, was appointed by the Board to be Tutor
and Vice-President for the coming academic year. Mr.
Shannon was Visiting Lecturer during the second semester. He will now teach a Greek tutorial, counsel with
students, and assist the Dean and me in administrative
and development matters. Mr. Shannon holds the Ph.D.
degree from Yale University in American studies. For ten
years he was President of the College of St. Thomas
in St. Paul and in 1966 was Chairman of the Association
of American Colleges.
Major personnel changes were made in the Library on
the Santa Fe campus during the course of the year. George
Miller, the Librarian, left in January for health reasons.
Alice Whelan, Assistant Librarian, was appointed Acting
Librarian. Her former position was filled in June by the
appointment of Mrs. Sara Douglas. Finally, Mrs. Marilyn
Copelan became Circulation Librarian, succeeding Mrs.
Carolyn Mathews .
Dr. Julius Wilson, who had served conscientiously and
sympathetically as College Physician since the opening of
the new campus, decided to retire. For the coming year
Dr. Robert Scott has been appointed. Dr. Scott is moving
�Sep tern ber 1969
his place. The Alumni Award of Merit this year was presented to Major General George M. Gelston, of the Class
of 1935, Adjutant General of Maryland.
The Alumni Annual Giving Campaign was launched
in December after careful planning and organization. It
concluded with a telethon in the Maryland-Virginia-D. C.
area in June, when over 300 alumni were telephoned by
volunteers. Participation was the best on record. Six hundred twenty-nine a.Jumni contributed $20, 700 for the
general purposes of the College. Many became King
William Associates by contributing $100 or more. In
addition, alumni gifts for scholarship endowment totaled
$36,570, for memorial endowments $74,441, and for the
physical plant $15,146. The aggregate of all alumni gifts,
including bequests, was $146,847.
Finances
19 59-President Dwight David Eisenhower gives dedicatory address
in the auditorium of Francis Scott Key Memorial Hall. (Photo
by M. E. \Varren .)
his practice to Santa Fe from Indianapolis. In the Business Office Henry Salazar was succeeded by Jam es Carr,
who had previously worked for an accounting firm in
Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. Other appointments on the
western campus are Charles Webb, Bookstore Manager,
Mrs. Stephanie Roberts-Hohl, secretary to the Dean,
and Miss Vivian Heye, Senior Resident in the Women's
Dormitory complex.
The Alumni
Homecoming in October marked the culmination of a
useful two-year study of Alumni-College Relations. Direct
results of this study were activation of chapters of the
Alumni Association in New York, Philadelphia and San
Francisco, delivery of a Friday night Alumni Lecture by
Richard Massell, of the Class of 1965, alumni involvement in the counselling of seniors, and participation in
the program to recruit new students. The new publication, The College, was well received. It is expected to
bring alumni and other friends of St. John's excerpts of
lectures, papers, and news from both campus.es.
Daniel L. Henry, of the Class of 1961, was elected Pr.esident of the Alumni Association, succeeding Julius Rosenberg when Mr. Rosenberg became the College's Director
of Development. John D. Oosterhout, of the Class of
19 51, was elected to a three-year term on the Board of
Visitors and Governors, succeeding Edward A. Kimpel,
Jr., of the Class of 1931. Cyril R . Murphy, Jr., of the
Class of 1936, was re-elected but resigned for personal
reasons. The Board of Directors of the Alumni Association named Samuel H. Desch, of the Class of 1936, in
It is gratifying to report that both cam puses completed
the fiscal year with a modest excess of income over expenditure. In Annapolis income from all sources amounted
to $1,522,988, as compared with total expenditures of
$1,507,492. This left a surplus of $15,496, in contrast to
the deficit of $25,433 a year ago. The Santa Fe figures
showed aggregate expenses of $1,429,068 against income
totaling $1,435,769. The surplus of $6,701 was applied
against the cumulative deficit of $198,809 incurred during
the first four years of the new college's operation.
A major change in investment policy was adopted by
the Board during the year. Under the new procedure
known as the total-yield concept, a certain portion of
growth in the portfolio is considered to be part of the
income available for current use. For the next fiscal year
a figure of 63 was s.et as a realistic and reasonable return
on the portfolio from both dividends and appreciation.
During the winter the Board appointed Goldman, Sachs
and Company, of New York City, and T. Rowe Price
and Associates, of Baltimore, as investment advisers.
Responsibility for the investment of the portfolio was
divided equally between them.
The Decade of Development
During the year the Decade of Development was rescheduled to correspond to the first ten years of the new
college's life, from July 1, 1964 through June 30, 1974.
The Western Consolidation Campaign, as the second
phase of this progral)1 began July 1, 1968, with a revised
goal of $3.5 millions. During this first year of the campaign a total of $556,469 was obtained in new gifts and
pledges, just one-sixth of the amount to be raised within
a three-year period.
The smaller and more realistic goal resulted from the
necessity of substituting a $600,000 administration building for the $1,000,000 physical education building. The
expanding enrollment has placed great stress on available teaching facilities. The administration building
11
�The College
would release to instructional use at least three classrooms,
ten faculty offices, and nine dormitory rooms presently
occupied by administrative personnel. Revised preliminary
plans are now being drawn. An initial grant of $100,000
toward the cost of the building has been voted by the
Trustees of the Max Fleischmann Foundation of Reno,
Nevada.
Frank ~kGuire, Director of Development, has made
notable progress in involving the Santa Fe community
through a sustained information and public relations
program. In this he has been helped immensely by the
appointment of Maurice E. Trimmer as Director of
Public Information . A steady flow of news releases and
publications has emanated from Mr. Trimmer's office.
The Boards of Associates in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Los
Alamos and Denver have met with tutors, students, and
members of the staff. The Friends of the Library Committee sponsored a highly successful series of Book and
Author Luncheons which drew hundreds of people and
redounded to the credit of St. John's. In fact, such a
favorable climate of opinion had been created that the
College successfully survived a grossly unfair allegation
of drug activity in a Santa Fe County Grand Jury report.
Legal recourse in the court resulted in the expunging of
the Grand Jury's unsupported charge from the record,
to the gratification of the College's friends.
Meanwhile, in Annapolis, Julius Rosenberg, Director of
Development, sought to reactivate the Friends of St.
John's College. Richard F. Blaul, of the Class of 1932,
an Annapolis businessman, served as Chairman pro tern.
A preview tour and reception at the new Woodward Hall
drew well over 125 friends in June. A monthly series of
events at the College is contemplated for the coming
year. Initial steps have been taken to develop Friends
of St. John's College in Baltimore and in Washington.
Mrs. Felter has done a fine job in making news of St.
l 965-A Peace Corps hut adorns the back campus by the boathouse.
1963-President Weigle watches the construction of the Student
Center in Santa Fe.
John's available to the various media and in editing and
in producing the publications of the College. Mrs. Felter
is Managing Editor of The College; Laurence Berns and
James M. Tolbert, of the Faculty, are respectively Editor
and Editorial Consultant. Considerable good will was
generated in the Annapolis area when tl:ie College made
available its facilities for the annual Annapolis Fine Arts
Festival in June.
Mr. Rosenberg spent considerable time during the
winter months in an effort to obtain a matching grant of
$600,000 from the Maryland General Assembly toward
the cost of constructing a new physical education building between the heating plant and College Creek. The
project failed, largely because of the mood of economy in
the legislature. It is planned to make another effort by
introducing a new bill next January. Meanwhile preliminary architectural planning for the structure is being clone
by the firm of Cochran, Stephenson & Donkervoet of
Baltimore.
Gifts, Grants, and Bequests
It is interesting to note that over $20,000,000 has been
received by St. John's College over the past twenty years,
for an average of a million a year. The greatest continuing
measure of support has come from the Trustees of Old
Dominion Foundation, whose grants over the period
exceed $8 millions for current purposes, for endowment,
for new construction, and for debt liquidation. The
strength and vitality of the St. John's enterprise today is
attributable in no small measure to the magnificent support which Paul Mellon and Old Dominion Foundation
have given the College over the years.
During the year under review a total of $1,652,813 was
received in gifts, grants and bequests to the two St. John's
campuses. In addition, gifts in kind, including land, to
12
�NEWS ON THE CAMPUSES
GRADUATE INSTITUTE AWARDS
FIRST DEGREES
St. John's College in Santa Fe
reached another important milestone
in its five-year history on Thursday,
August 14th, with the awarding of the
first advance degrees by its Graduate
Institute in Liberal Education.
Eight students from New Mexico
and three from Maryland received the
Master of Arts degree from St. John's
president Richard D. \rVeigle at ceremonies in the Great Hall: New Mexico
-Albuquerque, Miss Rachel Ann
Colvard and L. Luis Lopez; Encino,
Ernest Archibeque; Los Alamos, Mrs.
Eliza beth Ann Aiello and Miss Helen
]. Starling; Santa Fe, Mrs. Lee Langspecht Bowen, Mrs. Kathleen Hamilton, and Frank McGuire. (Mr. McGuire is Assistant to the President and
Director of Development in Santa
Fe.) Maryland- ] oseph G. Gardiner
and William Yannuzi of Baltimore,
and Francis A. Tewey of Reisterstown.
Robert A. Goldwin, Dean of St.
John's College, spoke to the graduates
and the audience on the theme of
"smallness and greatness." He said the
motto of St. John's and the Graduate
Institute should be "Contemplate
greatness: Think small."
"There seems to be an observable
affinity of smallness and greatness and
therein lies a practical problem. Our
times are not at all congenial to smallness. . . . there is now a real danger
that the study of human greatness
will be lost, as all the activity of the
world becomes mechanized, computerized and enlarged."
T'he Graduate lnstitue was opened
on the St. John's campus in the summer of 1967 with the assistance of the
Carnegie Corporation, primarily to
give school teachers the opportunity
for a liberal education and to extend
the ideas of the liberal arts into the
public education system. A five-year
grant of $161,000 has helped the Institute to provide financial aid for teachers from ghetto and rural area schools
who wish to enroll in the program.
First graduates of The Graduate Institute in Liberal Education and faculty and friends listen to
commencement address by Robert A. Goldwin, Dean of St. John's College.
Mr. Goldwin was the first Director,
and he was succeeded by Elliott Zuckerman, also of the Annapolis faculty,
in 1968 and 1969. The four study sections are Literature, Politics and Society, Philosophy and Theology, and
Mathematics and Natural Science. The
successful completion of all of the
sections over four summers may earn
a Master's degree. Or, as in the case
of these first graduates, one can receive
a degree after completion of three of
the eight-week s.essions, plus nine
hours from another graduate school.
Mr. Goldwin urged the graduates,
most of whom are teachers, to be
"doers" in the greatest sense of the
word. He noted that Socrates never
built a building, wrote a book, or made
a profit, but "what he made, what he
did, what he shaped and brought to
life has endured longer and had more
influence for the good than any work
of any other mortal man. He made not
just a building or a city or even just
an .e ra-but an entire civilization, a
world."
There were about 95 students in the
Graduate Institute this year. They responded enthusiasticaly to the liberal
arts-great books program with such
comments as:
"I like the vigorous expectation
that the texts will be understood and
the freedom given to meet that expectation."
"I have learned more about how to
teach from watching the tutors . . .
than I learned in the numerous
'methods' courses that I have been
exposed to over the years."
"What I like best is that it is tremendously flattering to have people
care about what I think."
" ... makes learning a joyful experience because it emphasizes thinking
as opposed to fact finding."
12A
�~
I
I
I
The College
Six TuToRs AND ONE
TEACHING INTERN JOIN
II
ANNAPOLIS FACULTY
1~·
.1
Six new tutors and a teaching intern will join the Annapolis faculty
this fall. They are Robert J. Anderson,
Vassilios Christides, Wye T. Jamison,
Aaron Kirschbaum, Robert Mueller,
George Vahanian, and Ray A. Williamson.
Mr. Anderson received his A.B. in
philosophy from Temple University in
1961 and his M.A. in philosophy from
Yale University in 196~. He presently
is completing his doctoral dissertation,
a commentary on Plato's Theaetetus,
and working for the New York City
Department of Welfare.
Mr. Christides received a diploma
in classics from the University of Athens in 1955 and a M.A. in oriental
studies from the University of California in Los Angeles in 1961, and is a
Ph.D. candidate in the department of
oriental studies at Princeton University. He taught classics in Greece and
at the University of California at Los
Angeles. In 1965 he received the honor
of a junior fellowship at the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine
Studies in Washington, D.C.
Miss Jamison graduated magna cum
laude from Vassar College with her
B.A. in classics in 1964 and received
her M.A. in musicology from Stanford University in 1965. At Stanford
she is completing her doctoral dissertation, "Dance as a Topic in the
Operas of Mozart." At Vassar she was
awarded the Francis Walker prize for
proficiency in piano. In 1964 she received a '"oodrow Wilson Fellowship,
and Stanford Fellowships in 19661967. She was a teaching assistant in
music appreciation, history, and theory
from 1967 to 1969.
Mr. Kirschbaum received a B.A. in
political science in 1964 from the City
College of New York and a M.A. in
the history of science in 1969 from the
University of Wisconsin. His dissertation is entitled "Gaston Bachelaireand the Psychoanalytical Critique of
Science." He was a teaching assistant
12B
in the history of science and European
cultural history at the University of
Wisconsin from 1965 to 1968, and a
correspondence instructor at a University of Wisconsin extension from
1964 to 1968. Recently he became
chairman of the University of Wisconsin Teaching Assistants Association. Honors received include two years
as a University Fellow under the auspices of William Freeman Viles and
the Ford Foundation. Author and coauthor with Dr. R. Wagner of two
books on geometry, Mr. Kirschbaum
has also been active in local politics,
working with the Wisconsin Alliance
Party, devoted to the causes of peace
and freedom.
Mr. Mueller, a 1947 St. John's College graduate, studied at the New
School for Social Research before obtaining his M.A. from the Johns
Hopkins University in 1951. From
1961 to 1962 and from 1964 to 1965
he was an assistant professor of history
at Armstrong College in Savannah,
Georgia, and from 1968 to 1969 he was
an assistant professor of social science
at Savannah State College. From 1962
to 1964 and 1966 to 1967 he studied at
the University of Chicago under the
Committee on the History of Culture.
Mr. Vahanian, the teaching intern,
received a B.A. in 1963 from Washington and Jefferson College and a M.A.
in 1967 from Boston University. He expects to receive his Ph.D. this year
from Boston University. His disserfation is entitled "The Relation between
Zeno of Elea and Euclid's Elements."
He taught philosophy and logic at
Tufts University, Calvin College, and
Boston University.
Mr. Williamson received a B.A. in
physics from the Johns Hopkins University in 1961 and a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Maryland
in 1968. He was a teaching assistant in
physics and a research assistant in
physics at the University of Maryland
before obtaining a three-year NASA
traineeship in 1963. Recently he was an
assistant astronomer at the University
of Hawaii. His wife, Abby, taught at
the Key School from 1963 to 1966.
Paul Mellon, 1944
LIBRARY REDEDICATION AND
BOARD MEE TING SET FOR
HOMECOMING WEEKEND
The Board of Visitors and Governors will meet with Mrs. Margaret
Driscoll as chairman on Friday, October 17th, and Saturday, October 18th,
during homecoming weekend in Annapolis.
On Saturday the library, Woodward
Hall, will be rededicated with Paul
Mellon, Class of 1944, giving one of
the addresses.
Woodward Hall was originally constructed in 1900 and was recently completely renovated.
Further details concerning homecoming activities may be found in the
alumni news.
NEW PERSONNEL HIRED
IN SANTA FE
New faculty members in Santa Fe
include Glenn Alan Freitas, Ralph G.
Quintana, and Robert D. Sacks. Istvan
F ehervary has been made director of
student activities, and John T. Rule
and Mrs. Marie Winterhaler are
assistant deans.
Mr. Freitas received his B.A. from
St. Mary's CoUege of California in
19 57. From 1960 to 1964 he studied
at the Universite Laval in Quebec, re-
�Sep tern ber 1969
,-·
ceiving a licentiate in theology. From
1964 to 1966 he studied at Ecole
Biblique ,et archeologique Francaise de
Jerusalem. In 1965 he obtained the
baccalaureate and in 1966 a licentiate
in Sacred Scripture and Pontifical
Biblical Commission in Rome. From
1957 to 1960 Mr. Freitas was an instructor in classical languages at Garces
Memorial High School in Bakersfield,
California, and an assistant professor
of theology at St. Mary's College from
1967 to 1969. He was also a member
of the Instruction Committee and
Faculty Library Committee at the
college.
Mr. Quintana, a cum laude graduate
of Williams College in 1947, was a
Tying Scholar, and Phi Beta Kappa.
In 1966 he received his M.A. in history from the University of Colorado
and is a doctoral candidate at the university. From 1946 to 1949 he was an
instructor at Williams and from 1953
to 1958 he was a master at the
Fountain Valley School in Colorado
Springs. He also was a master of the
Hebron Academy in Maine (19591961) and the Denver Country Day
School (1963-1966). He comes to St.
John's after teaching history as an
assistant professor at New Mexico
Highlands University.
Mr. Sacks, a 1994 graduate of St.
John's College, received his Ph.D.
from The Johns Hopkins University
in 1963. From 1954 to 1956 he studied
at Hebrew University in Jerusalem,
from 1956 to 1957 at Ecole des
Langues Orientales Vivantes, and from
1957 to 1959 at the University of Chicago. Mr. Sacks is familiar to Annapois as he tutored at St. John's from
1961 to 1968. In 1968 he taught at
St. Mary's College in California.
Mr. Fehervary is a graduate of the
Hungarian Air Force Academy. He
studied engineering at the University
of Budapest and was a member of the
Hungarian Olympic team in fencing
and ·modern pentathlon in 1946-1947.
He was editor of an English and
French newspaper in Vienna from
19 57 to 1964. In 1962 he founded the
Europa Club for Sport and Cultural
Activities in Vienna. From 1966 to
1969 he served as chairman of the
physical education program for the
American School of Tangier.
Mr. Rule, who has been a parttime tutor in Santa Fe, retired in 1966
from Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he had been dean of
stud en ts and professor. He received his
training at M.I.T. and Harvard.
Mrs. Winterhaler, who has been
serving as registrar and executive secretary, is a graduate of Oberlin College
and also attended the University of
Puerto Rico. She spent her early school
years in Germany and Switzerland.
BOARD MEMBER JOINS FACULTY
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
St. John's College Board member
Louis T. Rader became chairman of
the electrical engineering department
of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville on September 1st. Dr. Rader
is also the Alice M. and Guy A. Wilson
professor of electrical engineering and
professor of business administration.
He was a vice president of General
Electric Company and general manager of its communications and control division, Charlottesville.
Dr. Radar received his B.A. in electrical engineering from the University
of British Columbia and his M.A.
and Ph.D. from California Institute
of Technology.
His former positions include director of the electrical engineering department of Illinois Institute of Technology, president of the Univac Division of Sperry Rand Corporation, and
group vice president and director of
the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation.
He serves on the Blue Ridge Community College advisory board, the
Robert A. Taft Institute of Government board of trustees, the advisory
engineering committee at Lafayette
College, and the industry advisory
committee of the University of Virginia's Graduate School of Business
Administration.
Dr. Rader has been a member of
the St. Joh n's Board of Visitors and
Governors since 1961.
Louis T. Rader
(Photo by Fabian Bachrach)
SANTA FE GRANTED NORTH
CENTRAL ACCREDITATION
President Weigle announced in
August that the Santa Fe campus was
granted accreditation by tpe Commission on Colleges and Universities of
the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.
The Santa Fe campus had been accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools
ever since the southwestern campus
opened in 1964.
Chairman of the visting committee
of the North Central Association was
John J. Pruis, president of Ball State
University. Committee members were
William Bentsen, vice president of the
Associated Colleges of the Midwest;
Edward B. Espenshade, chairman of
the department of geography of Northwestern University; and Clarence L.
Golightly, special assistant to the vice
chancellor of the Milwaukee campus
of the University of Wisconsin.
President Weigle expressed the
gratification of both the Board of
Visitors and Governors and the Faculty that the Santa Fe campus had
won its independent accreditation
within the brief span of five years.
12C
�The College
j,
ST. JOHN'S BRINGS ANNAPOLIS
AND SANT A FE CIVIC
OFFICIALS TOGETHER
I
East and West met on Friday, August 8th, in Santa Fe-with a strong
assist from St. John's President. Mayor
Roger Moyer of Annapolis and Mayor
George Gonzales of Santa Fe sat down
together with members of their respective city councils to discuss mutual
problems. Despite the differences in
cultural backgrounds and geographic
locations of their cities, these civic
leaders found they share many similar
interests and concerns.
The joint meeting was the idea of
President Weigle, who is chairman of
the Maryland Commission on the
Capital City, which sponsored the trip
for the Annapolis delegation. Both
cities are distinctly rich in history,
Weigle noted, Annapolis going back
to the English colonial period and
Santa Fe, the oldest capital city in the
United States, still bearing the marks
of its Spanish founding. Each has developed historic zoning ordinances, is
trying to adapt urban renewal aims
with its unique traditions, and is
located near a large metropolitan
area.
The Annapolis visitors were given a
tour of Santa Fe by John Gaw Meem,
member of the College's Board of
Visitors and Governors and donor of
the site of the Santa Fe campus. They
had lunch at St. John's with Santa Fe
officials, conferred at the city hall in
the afternoon and were guests of the
Weigles for dinner at Chimayo, a
nearby village. Several of them afterwards enjoyed a performance of the
San ta Fe Opera.
Annapolis
participants,
besides
Mayor Moyer, included City Attorney
Eugene Lerner, council members
Noah A. Hilman, Robert L. Spaeth
(of the St. John's faculty), John T.
Chambers, and Roscoe J. Parker, along
with commission members Senator
John W. Steffey and C. Hayes Duvall.
:Mesdames Chambers, Lerner, Steffey,
and Duvall accompanied their husbands.
Santa Fe Mayor Gonzales was joined
bv council members Alfonso Larragoite, Lee Rubenstein, and Reynaldo
Torres, and City Manager Marion
Sebastian.
ANNAPOLIS FRIENDS HOLD
RECEPTION FOR CLASS OF 1973
A reception in honor of the members of the Class of 1973 was hosted
by the Annapolis Friends of St. John's
Annapolis and Santa Fe city councils gather outside St. John's College in Santa Fe.
I
on Sunday, September 28th, in Francis Scott Key Memorial Hall. Chairman of the Steering Committee of the
Annapolis Friends is Richard F. Blaul,
Class of 1932.
The reception also formally introduced to the Annapolis community
the new academic dean, Robert A.
Goldwin, a 1950 cum faude graduate
of the College.
SANTA FE RECEIVES $100,000
GIFT FOR CONSTRUCTION OF
ADMINISTRATION BUILDING
The Fleischmann Foundation of
Reno, Nevada, has voted a grant of
$100,000 toward the planned Administration Building for the Santa Fe
campus. The new building, which is
expected to cost $500,000, will enable
the College to release space now occupied by administrative offices in the
Evans Science Laboratory and the
women's dormitory. It is hoped that
federal funds will cover half the total
construction cost and that private
gifts will make up the difference.
FEBRUARY FRESHMEN VIEW
ORIOLE VICTORY
The s.econd "February freshmen"
class, which was enrolled on the Annapolis campus during the summer
months, had the pleasure of attending an Oriole game on Thursday, July
24th.
Seventeen of the twenty freshmen
accompanied by President Weigle,
Assistant Dean and director of the
summer program Robert L. Spaeth,
and Tutor John Sarkissian, were hosted by Jerold C. Hoffberger, Chairman
of the Board of Baltimore Baseball
Club, Inc. Before the game the freshmen ate dinner in the Hit'N Run
Club at Memorial Stadium.
NATIONAL HEADMASTERS
GROUP MEETS AT SANTA FE
11
Officials and members of the Country Day School Headmasters Association of the United States gathered in
Santa Fe from Thursday, June 19th,
through Saturday, June 21st, for the
I
12D
�Sep tern ber 1969
organization's fiftieth national conference. It was the first meeting in the
southwest for the association, which
usually convenes on eastern campuses.
The fifty-nine headmasters and their
families seemed immensely pleased
with St. John's and their experience
there. Thev lived in the student residences and were able to take advantage of such campus facilities as the
riding horses and tennis courts between
sessions. The College also helped to
provide them with tours of the Los
Alamos Scientific Laboratory and the
Bandelier Indian Cliff Dwellings.
ANNAPOLIS CAMPUS HOSTS
CONFERENCES AND ANNAPOLIS
FINE ARTS FESTIVAL
A Maryland Workshop on Crime
and Corrections was held on the Annapolis campus from Friday, June
13th, through Sunday, June 22nd. The
conference, first of its kind in the
East, was under the direction and
sponsorship of the National College
of State Trial Judges and the (Maryland) Governor's Commission on Law
Enforcement and the Administration
of Justice. The U. S. Department of
Health, Education and \Velfare supported it with a grant of $67,000. The
workshop was directed by a group of
California social scientists known as
The Berkelev Associates.
In attenc:fance at the conference
were judges, policemen, legislators,
lawyers, correctional officers, and a few
private citizens. Twenty-one convicts
also participated on an equal basis
with the lawmen.
Each morning the convicts presented a psychodrama on aspects of prison
life such as homosexuality, extortion,
and drugs. During the afternoons
groups analyzed the issues raised during the morning dramas and discussed
how to solve them.
Dr. Richard Korn, professor in the
Criminology School of the Universitv
of California at Berkeley, guided the
convicts through the psychodramas. A
public defender, Douglas Rigg, and
Dr. David Fogel, former director of
juvenile institutions in Marin County,
California, helped Dr. Korn organize
the conference. Dr. Fogel said its purpose was to acquaint officials with
what really goes on in prisons, and to
inform convicts on what basis officials
make decisions.
The seventh annual Annapolis Fine
Arts Festival was held on Saturday:,
June 21st, and Sunday, June 22nd.
A fine arts exhibit including twentyfive photographic prints from the collection of Ansel Adams was displayed
in Iglehart Hall. Art and sculpture
from more than five states was shown.
A youth choral workshop concert
was directed by Warner Lawson, dean
of the college of fine arts and the
school of music of Howard University, on the back campus on Sunday.
A youth symphony workshop concert concluded the festival Sunday
evening. Directed by Harry John
Brown, music professor at New York
State University, the concert featured
Gary Karr, a double bassist.
Each year the Annapolis Fine Arts
Festival is sponsored by the Annapolis
Festival Foundation, Inc.
The Sciences and Systems Division
of the Rockville, Maryland, laboratory
of TRACOR, Inc., held a meeting on
Monday, June 23rd, and Tuesday,
June 24th, in Annapolis.
Conferees discussed the basic purpose and approach of a report concerned with defining the most advanced techniques in controlling pollution through computer modeling.
The report will be the end result of a
$34,000 contract recently awarded by
the Federal Water Pollution Control
Administration to TRACOR's Ocean
Sciences and Water Resources Section. Dr. William H. Espey, manager
of the firm's Hydrospace Program, is
supervisor of the contract, and Richard J. Callaway is project director.
An all-day conference for Maryland
law enforcement officers on the problem of narcotics called by Maryland
Governor Marvin Mandel took place
on Thursday, August 7th.
About 150 officials including chiefs
of police from towns around the
State, State police barracks commanders, and security officials from Maryland's major industrial and business
concerns were in attendance.
The purpose of the seminar was to
permit an exchange of information
between Federal narcotics officials and
Maryland law enforcement personnel
on the latest advances and newest
developments in the nation-wide war
on drug abuse.
Panel participants were Donald D.
Pomerleau, commissioner of the Baltimore City Police Department;
Colonel Robert J. Lally, superintendent of the Maryland State Police;
Joseph G. Cannon, commissioner of
the Maryland Department of Corrections; and from the Federal Bureau of
Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, John
Ingersoll, director; Dr. Edward Lewis,
Jr., chief medical officer; and Donald
E. Miller, chief counsel.
OPERA CHAMBER ENSEMBLE
PERFORMS AT SANT A FE
Leading musicians of the Santa Fe
Opera Orchestra presented a public
concert of works of Bach, Ravel, and
Brahms in the College's Great Hall
on Sunday, July 27th. Students in the
Graduate Institute in Liberal Education were admitted free of charge.
Members of the chamber ensemble
included members of symphony and
philharmonic orchestras in New York,
New Orleans, Atlanta, and the University of Delaware. The Santa Fe
Opera is a repertoire company which
presents a s.eries of traditional and
modern works each summer, which
this year included the American premieres of Krzysztof Penderecki's "The
Devils of Loudun" and Gian Carlo
~en~,tti's "Help! Help! The Globolmks.
GRANT RECEIVED FROM
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
The National Science Foundation
has awarded a $600 grant to the Santa
Fe campus for the purchase of instructional scientific equipment. The grant,
effective from July 1, 1969, to June 31,
1971, will be spent under the direction
of Tutor Roger S. Peterson.
12E
�I
ALUMNI ACTIVITIES
PROFILES:
MEET OuR ALUMNI
Although many St. John's graduates
of the past three decades have entered
academic careers, that certainly is not
true of all. There is a strong sprinkling of business and professional men
and women, as well as those who have
entered technical and scientific fields.
Our subject for this issue is in the
latter category, and is one of several
alumni in our country's space program.
As you will see, St. John's also had a
hand in putting a man on the moon.
From Cumberland in western Maryland, just out of Allegany High School,
John M. Twigg, Jr., came to St. John's
in September, 1948. Unlike the subjects of our first two Profiles, he was
able to complete his college work without interruption, and graduated in
1952.
Twigg spent the next two years at
The Johns Hopkins University, trying
to squeeze three years of electrical engineering into two. He was successful
in this, and received his B.E.S. degree
in 1954. After a year as a sales engineer with Westinghouse, he was
claimed by the Army for a two-year
period.
Military service means different
things to different people. For John
Twigg it introduced him to his present career. Stationed at the Redstone
Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala., he worked
with some of the nation's leaders in
the growing field of rocketry. When
he left the Army in 1957, it was to
move to what was then Cape Canaveral, and the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration. He has
been there ever since.
His experience with the space program spans a wide range of events:
test conductor for the Jupiter space
12F
John M. Twigg,
Jr.,
1952
shot which carried aloft space monkeys
Able and Baker; test conductor of the
Mercury-Redstone launch carrying
Captain Virgil Grissom in July 1961;
then test supervisor on the Saturn 1
project, followed by a position as
branch chief, Launch Vehicle Operations. Twigg's present position is that
of assistant to the Director of Launch
Vehicle Operations for the Apollo
Applications Program.
Twigg and his wife, the former
Marie Jean Chelson of Cincinnati,
have a son nine and a daughter four
years of age. They make their home
in Cocoa Beach, Fla.
HOMECOMING
Plans for Homecoming are gradually
taking shape. Since people are the key
to an event like this, we are pleased
that several class reunions are being
planned.
Dr. Bob Bier is coordinating the
50th anniversary celebration of the
Class of 1919; Allan Hoffman and Jack
Brooks are luring the Class of 1949
back to the campus; and Harvey Gold-
stein and Bill Tilles are helping 1959
plan its tenth "birthday." We hope
that the other "9-ers," plus 1944 and
1964, will also be with us.
The principal event on Homecoming Day, of course, will be the rededication of Woodward Hall, the College
library building. Mr. Paul Mellon,
alumnus of the College in the Class of
1944 and a long-'time friend, will be
one of the speakers at the ceremony.
In other activities, students will
again have a chance to discuss with
alumni the attractions and pit-falls of
graduate schools. Dr. vV. Douglas
'Veir '57 and a panel of alumni will
discuss and answer questions about
graduate school experience.
The Homecoming Dinner will be
held this year in the gymnasium in
order that faculty and seniors might
be able to join alumni for that event.
Special tables will be reserved for reunion classes and their guests.
While the entire program was not
complete when this went to press, the
following events are fairly certain:
Saturday, October 18, 1969
9 a.m.-2 p.m.-Registration.
10 a.m.
-Graduate School Discussion.
12 noon
-Buffet Luncheon.
2 p.m.
-Annual Business
Meeting.
4 p.m.
-Library Rededication.
5:30 p.m.
-Pre-Dinner Festivities.
7 p.m.
-Homecoming Dinner.
9 p.m.
-Alumni Parties.
ALUMNI MEMBERS
OF COLLEGE BOARD
The directors of the Alumni Association have announced the nomination of J. S. Baker Middelton '38 and
Myron L. Wolbarsht '50 as alumni
representatives on the Board of Visi-
�September 1969
,.
tors and Governors of the College.
Both alumni are serving currently on
the Board. If re-elected, they would
serve until 1972.
l\fr. Middelton, Director of Industrial Relations for the Keufel & Esser
Co., is a member of the Orga.nization
and Annapolis Campus Development
Committees of the Board. He has
served as chairman of the latter committee.
Mr. \Volbarsht is Professor of Ophthalmology and Director of Research,
Duke Universitv Medical Center.
He is serving as ·chairman of the Annapolis Admissions Committee of the
Board, and holds membership on the
Annapolis Planning and Development
and Alumni Relations Committees.
CHARTER FLIGHT
Does Rome in the spring sound
better than th e Alps? We hope so, because unforeseen circumstances have
forced us to modify our originallyannounced plans.
The charter trip is being sponsored
lw the College rather than the Alumni
Association, and this means that tutors,
students, alumni, and administrative
personnel are all eligible. And to permit the maximum number to take
advantage of the trip, it will take place
during the Annapolis spring vacation.
CLASS NOTES
Plan now to join our flight to sunny
Italy and the glory that was-and isRome.
ALUMNI GIVING:
IT Is MoRE BLESSED
The final report of alumni giving for
the year 1968-69 has been prepared in
detail, and wi11 be distributed to all
alumni. It seems appropriate to report
a few highlights here, to keep nonalumni readers informed about this
important form of alumni activity.
First, the Alumni Annual Giving
Campaign (the Alumni Fund) was
re-defined last year to mean giving for
William B. Athey, 1932
current unrestricted purposes only.
(Photo
by Leonard L. Greif, Jr.)
Led by chairman William B. Athey
'32, a team of four co-chairmen and
forty-four class captains and their vol- 1906, Roscoe E. Grov.e of the Class
unteer agents wrote, telephoned, and of 1910, and John H. E. Legg of the
visited their classmates and friends. Class of 1921.
Some 629 alumni responded to these
The key to success this past year
appeals with $20, 700, thus exceeding was participation, in many cases firstthe Campaign dollar goal with the time involvement on behalf of the
greatest number of unrestricted gifts College. A good example was the
ever received in one year.
round-up telethon held in Baltimore
Second, more than $125,000 for en- on June 10th-12th. Of the seventeen
dowment and plant purposes was re- volunteers who devoted three hours
ceived through alumni gifts and be- each, eight were first-time workers.
quests. The largest amounts came Together, they raised more than $1,500
from the estates of Alfred Houston and for the Campaign; perhaps more imHenry F. Sturdy, both of the Class of portantly, they enjoyed doing it.
correctly the track team in the April issue. Mr.
Robinson was a member of that team.
1923
Paul L. Banfield, headmaster of the Landon
School. Bethesda, Md., attended the 50th
annual conventiop of the Country Day School
Headmasters Association of the United States
last June. The meeting was held on St. John 's
Santa Fe campus, exactly ten years after the
same association met on the Annapolis campus.
S. Paul Schilling, professor of systematic
theology and chairman of the division of theological studies at Boston University School of
T heology, is the author of God in An Age of
Atheism, to be published in September by
the Abingdon Press, Nashville, Tenn .
1924
Lt. Gen. Ridgely Gaither, USA (ret.), was
reappointed Police Commissioner of Annapolis
in July. Gen . Gaither's four-year appointment
was appro\·ed unanimously by the city aldermen .
Adel the name of the Rev. Charles M.
Robinson to the list of those who identified
1928
Louis L. Snyder, professor of history at
TI1e City College of the City University of
New York, has been elected to the American
Committee of the History of the Second
\ Vorld \Var. He has also been appointed to
the AdYisorv Committee of the Committee of
Federal Legislation of the New York State Bar.
1937
L. Lee Moore ,
Jr.,
in June was appointed
principal of the Druid Hills Elementary
School in Martinsville, Va. He has been in
that city since 1948, and was most recently
Director of Federal Programs for its school
s~ ·stem .
1938
Samuel D. Foster, Jr., and his wife Betty
were honored in May for their contributions
to Girl Scouting activities in Anne Arundel
County, Md. Mr. Foster has been honored in
the past for his work with the Boy Scouts.
1939
Lewin W . Wickes was appointed general
attorney for the Penn Central in July. Mr.
Wickes joined the former Pennsylvania Railroad in 1947, and was made assistant general
counsel in 19 5 5.
1942
Joumet G . Kahn left St. Xavier College
last June to become director of the Honors
Program at Marquette University .
1948
A recent visitor to Santa Fe and the western
St. John's was C. Robert Morris.
1949
John (Father Hilary) Hayden reports that
he .is still a monk of St. Anselm's Abbey in
Washington, D. C. He teaches Greek, Latin,
and the Great Books in the Abbey School, and
is novitiate-master for the monastery. He is
currently president of the Classical Association
of the Atlantic States, and vice-chainnan of
the Northeast Conference on Teaching Foreign
12G
�Ill
The College
Victoria (Meeks) Blair-Smith and husband
Hugh are the proud parents of Robert McPhail
Blair-Smith II, born June 19th in Cambridge,
Mass.
Elise Mary Filipi and Robert F. Abbato
were married in West Grove, Pa., on June
28th. Mrs. Abbato completed her undergraduate work at the University of Delaware, and
has been a kindergarten teacher. Her husband,
employed by General Electric, has degrees from
Cooper Union School of Engineering and the
University of Pennsylvania.
Judith (Morganstern) Licht and husband
Robert '62 announced the arrival on June
24th of second son Jacob. Mr. Licht will be a
lecturer in the Philosophy Department at Bucknell University during the coming year.
1962
Philip P. Chandler II, 1968 (SF)
(Photo by Jimmy Chen)
Languages. He would like to know how many
'49ers plan to come to the Homecoming October 17th-18th.
1953
On July 1st John D. Alexander, Jr., became
a partner in the Baltimore law firm of Allen,
Thieblot & Alexander.
James \\!. Linsner writes that he has accepted a position at St. Mary's College in
California, and will be teaching music and
Ptolemy this coming academic year.
1959
George W. \Vorthington, after fourteen
years experience as a public relations executive, has formed his own public relations agency
with offices ih New York City.
1960
J1
I
Captain John J. G. Lane and his wife Grace
(Prevost) '59 have moved to Oklahoma City,
\\·here he is stationed at Tinker Air Force
Base. Captain ·Lane received his master's degree in management from Texas A&M in
May, together with the University's Alumni
Award for Outstanding Graduate Stllilent of
1969, as well as the Facultv Achievement
Award in Management.
·
Frank B. Murray writes that he and his
wife Fiona (Paul) are moving to Newark,
Del., mid-August. He will be an associate
professor in educational psychology at the Uni\-ersity of Delaware.
1961
Eric A. Arnold, Jr., writes that he defended
his doctoral dissertation (Administrative Leadership in a Dictatorship: the Position of Joseph
Fouche in the Napoleonic Police, 1800-1810)
before the Department of History at Columbia
University last February. During the 1969-70
academic year he will hold a position in the
Department of History at the University of
Denver.
12H
J.
Jerome Brennig, Jr., having completed a
tour with the Peace Corps in India, has returned to the United States. He and his wife,
the former Nilimina Sapra, now live in Madison, Wisconsin.
Pherne Perkins received a master's degree
from Harvard University on June 12th.
Nancy (Hillis) Schroeder informs us that
husband Irwin, who graduated with honors
from the University of San Diego Law School,
was one of sixty outstanding law graduates
nationally who were offered positions with the
Department of Justice. In September he will
start work with the Land and Natural Resources Division of the Department. Mrs.
Schroeder, who has taught first grade this past
year, writes that she is ready to mo\'e to the
East Coast.
1967
The engagement of Clark E. Lobenstine and
Miss Joy Ann Chatlain was announced in
the early summer, with a July 19th wedding
scheduled in Kansas City. Miss Chatlain, a_
native of Shawnee Mission, Kan ., and a graduate of the state University, is a research assistant at The Johns Hopkins University. Mr.
Lobenstine is a social worker at Spring Grove
State Hospital.
1963
1968
Robert K. Thomas, whose marriage to Rosemary Jierjian of Lebanon was announced in
the April issue, sends more information about
his work for USIA. He is in Jidda, Saudi
Arabia, as assistant to the Public Affairs Officer, and will soon take over as director of the
American Center there. Although Jidda is
"beastly hot," the Red Sea and its water sports
are just minutes away. Mr. Thomas says his
wife speaks English with a native American
accent, and is as excited about St. John's as
he is.
Philip P. Chandler II (SF) will help Stringfellow Barr during the coming year in preparing an historical account of the curriculum
revolution at St. John's College in 1937.
Todd H. Everett (SF) clarifies our cryptic
entry about him in the July issue. He is now
an account executive in the advertising department of Liberty /UA Inc., and says that his
free-lancing, in the same general field , is now
secondary.
The engagement of Jinua P. MacLaurin to
Thomas Rie '70 was announced in May. An
August wedding was planned.
George Partlow wrote in June that he was
entering Peace Corps training for a project in
Jamaica, W. I.
1964
Eleanor L. Noon received her MD. degree
on June 3 from the Woman's Medical College
of Pennsylvania. So far as we are aware, she
is the first women graduate of St. John's to
enter medicine. Dr. Noon will intern at South
Baltimore General Hospital.
Lowell I. Shindler and wife Barbara are the
proud parents of Whitney Alison, born on
July 3rd.
1969
On July 19, Anne Barbara Lyons and
Thomas H. Farrell '67 were married in Santa
Fe. The marriage was performed by the Rev.
J. Winfree Smith of the Annapolis faculty.
1966
Frances E. Borst writes that she has been
(as of June) a Peace Corps teacher in Thailand for more than a year, and is now making
plans for graduate school.
Richard F. Fielding and Miss Sara Elizabeth
Melzer \Vere married in Scarsdale, N. Y., on
July 3rd. Brother Robert '68 was best man.
The bride is a graduate of the University of
\Visconsin, and is working toward a doctorate
in romance languages at the University of
Chicago. Mr. Fielding is studying for a doctorate in political science, also at Chicago.
Melvin and Deena (Brodkin) Kline '67 report they both completed their M.S.Ed. degrees at the Ferkauf School of Yeshiva University in New York in July. They plan to settle
permanently in Israel where they expect to
teach.
In Memoriam
1906-GuY BoNNEY, Kinsale, Va ., June,
1969.
1918-DR. LLEWELLYN HALL,
Hartford, Conn., June 21, 1969.
West
1919-DR. THOMAS R. O'RouRK, SR.,
Baltimore, Md ., July 24, 1969.
1933-WILLIAM A.
Md., August 10, 1969.
PERCY,
Vienna,
1962-WILLIAM A. HELLIWELL, New
York City, May, 1969.
�September 1969
of the Class of 1916, $10,000. The residence willed to
the College by Henry F. Sturdy, of the Class of 1906,
was sold, and the sum of $28,633 placed in a permanent
fund as a memorial to Professor Sturdy.
To the many alumni, Board members and other friends
of St. John's College who have contributed so generously
of their time and of their substance over this past year,
I should like to convey the College's deepest gratitude.
I know that the members of the Faculty and the staff on
both campuses would endorse these sentiments. I am
confident that even a substantial number of St. John's
students realize and appreciate what friends and supporters of this College are doing on its behalf. We all
move into this third decade with confidence and hope.
RICHARD D.
President
,;v
1968-The interior of
oodwarcl Hall is completely stripped before
renoYation. (Photo b~, Stewart Bros. Inc.)
the Santa Fe campus totaled $42,996, making a grand
total of $1,695,809. Once again members of this Board
amply demonstrated their confidence in the new Western college by giving $426,930. Foundations contributed
$91,520, business corporations $43,980, parents of students
$4,385, and friends and young alumni $45,698. It is significant that there were 520 donors this year as compared
with 324 last year and 242 in 1966-67. Particular mention
should be made of a life income gift of $67,671 from Mr.
and Mrs. Eugene Hayward of Cimarron, New Mexico,
and a gift from Mr. and Mrs. Charles Scarlett, of Baltimore, Maryland, for a portrait of the President by Charles
W. Thwaites, Santa Fe artist.
In Annapolis there were 840 gifts for current purposes
aggregating $66,111: $20,610 from alumni, $1,890 from
Board members, $25,854 from business corporations, including St. John's share of the annual campaign conducted
by the Association of Colleges in Maryland, $8,950 from
foundations, $3,826 from parents and $4,891 from friends.
The Annapolis endowment was increased by gifts of
$620,296. Approximately half of this amount came in
the form of matching grants from Old Dominion Foundation. The most notable single gift was that of $187,500
from Thomas l\!I. Evans of New York City, a former member of this Board. A total of $232,851 was received toward
the reconstruction of \Voodward Hall. This included a
grant from the State of Maryland of $75,000, federal funds
of $132,204, and a helpful further grant from the Trustees
of the Hodson Trust of $25,000.
I am pleased to report four alumni bequests, all of which
have been added to the College's endowment through
the creation of memorial funds in the names of the individuals: Roscoe E. Grove, of the Class of 1910, $15,978;
Alfred Houston, of the Class of 1906, $29,287; John H. E.
Legg, of the Class of 1921, $22,289; George Davidson, Jr.,
WEIGLE
Annapolis, Maryland
September 17, 1969
TWENTY YEARS IN RETROSPECT
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
1949-1969
The table on the following two pages contains the
highlights of the twenty years of the presidency of Richard
D. Weigle. Categories listed are: major developments,
the academic program, tutors and students, developing
resources, and the public and the college.
The concluding pages of the September issue are
devoted to the financial reports for the fiscal year 19681969. (Eds. )
13
�The College
1949-1950
196
EnrollmentFaculty
Budget
27
$461,956
EnrollmentFaculty
Budget
173
25
$455,612
EnrollmentFacul ty
Budget
151
17
$413,804
EnrollmentFaculty
Budget
133
19
$478,789
EnrollmentFaculty
Budget
125
25
$555,170
EnrollmentFacultv
Budget
139
26
$504,080
EnrollmentFaculty
Budget
166
24
$531,628
EnrollmentFaculty
Budget
179
28
$622,430
EnrollmentFaculty
Budget
212
29
$679,679
EnrollmentFaculty
Budget
225
32
$785,421
Major Developments
The Academic Program
Richard Weigle elected President.
First College Polity adopted by Board
of Visitors and Governors.
Jacob Klein appointed Dean. Written
enabling exams moved back to June
from fall of senior year.
Board votes to admit women students
in September, 1951.
lV[usic tutorial inaugurated for freshmen under Victor Zuckerkandl' s
direction.
1950-1951
1951-1952
Individual lab projects initiated m
senior year.
1952-1953
St. John's accredited by Iviiddle States
Association of Colleges and Secondary
Schools. Fire damages McDowell Hall
(November).
Self-study undertaken on grant from
the Fund for the Advancement of Education. Sophomore language tutorial
to emphasize English and Greek.
1953-1954
Teaching internship program begun
with six appointees. Enabling exams
moved to end of sophomore year.
1954-1955
First six women graduate. Initial
quinquennial review of College Polity completed.
Self-study published (April).
1955-1956
Faculty study group instituted. First
theme "Classical Logic and Modern
Logic."
1956-1957
Board creates Visiting Committee to
establish closer relationship with
Faculty.
Internship program ends. Calendar reverts to semester plan. Algebra
dropped; test for freshmen substituted.
President Eisenhower speaks at dedication of Francis Scott Key Memorial
(Class of 1796) and Mellon Hall
(May); Paul Mellon and Mark Van
Doren made Honorary Fellows.
Curtis Wilson becomes Dean. Special
events: Founders' Weekend; Kirkpatrick concerts; Monteverdi's Orfeo;
and lectures on "The Scientist as
Philosopher" and "Man and His
World."
1957-1958
1958-1959
I
14
I
�September 1969
,.
Tutors and Students
Developing Resources
The Public and the College
TI.A.A. faculty retirement and collective life insurance programs adopted.
Gift announced of $ 300,000 from Old
Dominion foundation for a new
heating plant.
Publication of about St. John's begun.
Barbara Leonard appointed Assistant
Dean for Women. Faculty opposes
Ober Bill, requiring loyalty oaths.
Old Dominion offers to match up to
$250,000 for plant and $1,000,000 for
endowment.
Weigle appointed to Board of Education of Anne Arundel County.
First tenure appointments made under
College Polity. Twenty-four women
enroll in Class of 1955.
Heating plant dedicated at fall Homecoming. Randall Hall remodeled to
house women.
Historic Annapolis, Inc. founded m
meeting in the Great Hall.
$300,000 Old Dominion grant liquidates all indebtedness. Brice House
sold. Association of Independent Cplleges in Maryland formed for cooperative fund-raising .
First St. John's
conducted.
St. Jolm' s Story, color-sound movie
filmed during fall. Nadir in enrollment-125.
Seminar-in-Europe
College contracts with U. S. Foreign
Operations Administration to orient
foreign nationals from labor and other
fields.
Faculty advisers instituted for freshmen. New faculty salary scale adopted.
New women's dormitory completed;
named for Levin Hicks Campbell,
Class of 1793. Campus master plan
adopted. Endowment reaches $1,000,000.
Weigle made chairman of Commission on Liberal Education of Association of American Colleges.
James Tolbert becomes Director of
Admissions. College JOms College
Scholarship Service. Valk Tutorship
established.
Carroll-Barrister House ( c. 1721)
moved on campus from Main Street.
212 Norwood Road purchased for
President's Residence.
\iVeigle travels to India for U. S. State
Department lecture tour.
Work begun on auditorium and laboratory building; financed by $750,000
from State and $1,250,000 from Old
Dominion. 9 St. John's Street purchased for dormitory.
Weigle elected President of Board of
Education of Anne Arundel County.
Freshman Class of 107 largest smce
1934. Faculty scale adopted with
$12,000 maximum.
Third
Century
Fund
campaign
planned for $6,600,000 m two-year
period, 1958-1960.
Portrait at a Faculty and The Student
Body published.
·
System of 12-year tenure appointments begun. College joins College
Entrance Examination Board.
Bequest of $1,787,120 from Addison
Mullikin, Class of 1895. Humphreys
Hall restored as dorm. State deeds
former railroad land to College.
Country Day School Headmasters Association meets on campus.
15
�The College
1959-1960
Major Developments
The Academic Program
EnrollmentFaculty
Budget
257
33
$914,331
Board invited by citizens of Monterey
Peninsula to consider second St. John's
campus in that area of California.
New laboratory revision begun. Faculty visit Reed College on Hazen
Foundation grant.
EnrollmentFaculty
Budget
280
36
$1,030,830
Board votes Feb. 22 to try to start
second St. John's College in Santa Fe,
after considering 40 sites. Legal
authority for granting degrees in New
Mexico obtained.
Second year of French substituted for
German. Analytical geometry introduced in sophomore year and calculus moved to junior year. Reed professors visit St. John's.
EnrollmentFacultv
Budget
293
40
$1,051,243
Master plan for Santa Fe campus
adopted by Board. $1,467,362 raised
in first year. Land given in Carmel
Highlands for possible third campus.
EnrollmentFaculty
Budget
313
43
$1,139,874
Ground broken for Santa Fe buildings on April 22.
John Kieffer appointed Dean of the
College. Preceptorials introduced for
juniors and seniors.
EnrollmentFaculty
Budget
319
50
$1,248,387
Accreditation reaffirmed by Middle
States Association will carry to Santa
Fe campus for two years.
Clarence Kramer named Santa Fe
Dean. Music tutorial shifted to sophomore year; biology concentrated m
sophomore year; measurement and
chemistry for freshmen.
EnrollmentsFaculty
Budgets ASF-
321 - 84
46-11
$1,227,613
491,101
Santa Fe campus opens with 84 freshmen; Robert 0. Anderson speaks at
October dedication; Maryland and
New Mexico Governors attend.
Third quinquennial Polity Review
creates single Instruction Committee
meeting annually on alternate campuses.
EnrollmentsFaculty
Budgets ASF-
341 - 148
45 - 18
$1,377,856
834,959
EnrollmentsFaculty
Budgets ASF-
333 - 168
46-27
$1,338,727
1,172,113
Joint Middle States and North Central
Association Evaluating Team calls
Santa Fe "complete second college"
"A magnificent achievement."
Written enabling exams for sophomores abandoned. Eight-week Graduate Institute begins with 33 students
(June).
EmollmentsFaculty
Budgets ASF-
316-170
46- 28
$1,482,816
1,199,269
First Santa Fe class of 34 seniors
graduated.
February class of 19 freshmen admitted at Annapolis; summer semester
followed in Santa Fe. Three-year, one
summer transfer program to be tried
provisionally.
EnrollmentsFaculty
Budgets ASF-
323 - 240
40 - 32
$1,507,491
1,422,937
North Central Association of Colleges
and Secondary Schools accredits Santa
Fe campus for B.A. and M.A. degrees.
~,frs. Walter Driscoll first \,\roman and
first westerner to chair Board.
William Darkey appointed Dean at
Santa Fe. John Kieffer retires as Dean
m Annapolis; Robert Goldwin appointed to succeed him.
1960-1961
1961-1962
1962-1963
1963-1964
1964-1965
1965-1966
Planning undertaken for summer
Graduate Institute in Liberal Education at Santa Fe; Robert Goldwin
named Director.
1966-1967
1967-1968
1968-1969
16
�Sep tern ber 1969
Tutors and Students
Developing Resources
Addison Mullikin Tutorships established; first appointments made.
Third Century Fund campaign ends
with H,698,000 raised. Book Store
opens in Humphreys Hall. McDowell
Hall renovated.
Five extra tutors appointed to gain
experience in anticipation of need for
faculty at Santa Fe.
The Public and the College
Endowment reaches $6,000,000. Santa
Fe citizens donate 260 acres as site for
new campus.
St. John's International Labor Center
closes after orienting 6,200 foreign
visitors from 72 nations.
Master plan for Annapolis campus
commissioned. Boat house rebuilt after
fire (Octa ber) .
25th Anniversary of St. John's Program
marked by publication of P'ortrait of
Graduates.
David Boroff's article appears m Saturday Review (March).
Admissions applications jump to 420,
an increase of 60 3 over previous years.
Chase-Stone House rebuilt at cost of
$250,000. Architects retained to plan
Woodward Hall renovation and addition.
New contract with U. S. Labor Department to run Center for one year.
T\velve-vear
tenure
appointments
aband01;ed; full tenure appointments
restored.
Planning begun for Decade of Development, fund-raising program for both
campuses totaling $16,500,000.
Summer Peace Corps training program
for India conducted at Annapolis.
Faculty colloquium held at St. Mary's
College of California.
Carnegie Corporation of New York
grants $161,000 for Graduate Institute.
Tennis courts built at Santa Fe. Western Consolidation Campaign begun.
Peace Corps training program held for
Philippines (Annapolis) and Latin
America (Santa Fe).
Santa Fe Dormitory complex for 126
women and Health Center completed
at $920,000 cost. Overlook and terrace
behind McDowell Hall constructed.
Weigle elected chairman of Association of American Colleges, Vice Chairman of Independent College Funds of
America.
New faculty salary scale instituted with
$17,000 maximum. Santa Fe admissions doubled; Southwest Scholars
Program instituted.
The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations
make grant of $200,000 to Santa Fe
campus. Laboratory building named
for Thomas M. Evans.
Governor appoints Weigle Chairman,
Maryland Commission on the Capital
City.
First 11 l\!I.A.'s m Graduate Institute
awarded.
Renovation
and enlargement
of
Woodward Hall completed at cost of
$600,000. Endowment reaches $9,000,000. Board members pledge $2,400,000
in Western Consolidation Campaign.
Country Day School Headmasters
Association meets on Santa Fe campus. Publication of The College
begun.
17
�The College
ST. JOHN'S
Annapolis,
BALANCE SHEET,
ASSETS
CURRENT FUNDS
Unrestricted
Cash
Accounts Receivable
Due from Other Funds
Sundry Receivables . .
Inventory-Bookstore
Prepaid Expenses
Total
. . . . . . .. .. $
142,564
4,173
12,745
4,383
23,454
3,519
...... . . . . . $
190,838
.$
77,489
lll,855
14,119
.$
.$
203,463
394,301
.$
47,217
1,799,086
38,175
7,341,620
7,041
Restricted
Cash.
Loans Receivable .
Investments .
Total.
Total Current Funds
ENDOWMENT FUNDS
Cash.
Accounts and Notes Receivable .. . . . .... .
Matching Funds and Pledges Receivable.
Investments at Cost.
Accrued Income .
Total Endowment Funds
. . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .. . $ 9,233,139
PLANT FUNDS
Total Plant Funds.
63,246
367,182
5,047,146
394,221
29,221
5,000
. . $ 5,906,016
Total Funds ....
. $15,533,456
Cash.
Land and Campus Development .
Building and Improvements .. . ..... .. .. . . .. . .
Equipment ...
U.S. Government Grant Receivable.
Due from Other Funds ..
18
. ..... . . $
�Sep tern ber 1969
COLLEGE
rviaryland
June 30, 1969
LIABILITIES AND CAPITAL
CURRENT FUNDS
Unrestricted
Notes Payable , ..
Accounts Payable .
Due to Other Funds .
Student Advance Deposits .
$
165,53 8
25,300
Reserve for Current Operation .
Total .
100,000
12,99 5
5,000
47, 543
$
190,838
$
99,574
Restricted
Advanced from U. S. Government
99,574
103,889
Fund Balance
Total
Total Current Funds
$
$
203,463
394,301
ENDOWMENT FUNDS
Principal-Income Expendable
Unrestricted Endowments
Restricted Endowments . .
Reservation of Profits-Sale of Securities
Unexpended Income
Due to Other Funds
Total Endowment Funds
$ 6,859,915
926,763
1,431,143
3,073
12,245
$ 9,2 33,319
PLANT FUNDS
Accounts Payable
Funds Available for Plant Expansion
Investment in Plant
$
24,517
72,950
5,808,549
Total Plant Funds
$ 5,906,016
Total Funds
$15,533,456
19
�The College
ST. JOHN'S
Santa Fe,
BALANCE SHEET,
ASSETS
CURRENT FUNDS
General Current
Cash.
Investments
........
. . .. .. .. .
Notes and Accounts Receivable, Less Reserve of $952 . . . . . .. . .. . .
Deferred Expenditures
Due from Other Funds .
Other Assets
I ~· ·
Total .. . . .
$
49,498
7,450
19,688
29,056
21,525
13,080
$ 140,387
Restricted Current
Cash-Restricted
Cash-Loan Funds
Investments-Restricted
Notes Receivable-Loan Funds (Students)
United Student Aid Fund Deposit ..
$
69,430
1,844
4,300
127, 149
1,000
Total
$ 203,723
Total Current Funds
$ 344,110
ENDOWMENT FUNDS
Cash
Investments
Total Endowment Funds
$
43,737
6,083
$
49,820
PLANT FUNDS
Cash
Retirement of Indebtedness Funds
Land and Land Improvements .
Buildings
Library Books . .
....... ......... ............
Other-Land and Buildings
Equipment and Furnishings
20
$
6,293
63,041
284,665
4,766,130
76,938
90,623
387,397
Total Plant Funds
$5,675,08 7
Total
Less: Inter-Fund Cancellations
$6,069,017
21 ,525
Total Funds
$6,047,492
�Sep tern ber 1969
COLLEGE
New Mexico
June 30, 1969
LIABILITIES AND CAP ITAL
CURRENT FUNDS
General Current
~··
Notes Payable
Accounts Payable and Accrued Expenditures
Deferred Income
Actuarial Annuity Obligation
Total
$ 200,000
44,013
66,665
21,817
$ 332,495
(192,108)
Cumulative Fund Deficit 1963-69 .
Total .
$ 140,387
Restricted Current
Fund Balances
Due to Other Funds
$ 189,652
14,071
Total
$ 203,723
Total Current Funds .
$ 344,110
ENDOWMENT FUNDS
Total Endowment Funds
$
43,737
$
6,293
PLANT FUNDS
Unexpended
Retirement of Indebtedness Funds
Fund Balances
Due to Other Funds
Invested in Plant
Dormitory Bonds of 1964
Dormitory Bonds of 1966 .
Actuarial Annuity Obligations
Due to Other Funds
From Contributions and Current Funds .
Notes Payable
. .. . . .. . . .
62,588
453
864,000
885,000
191,064
7,000
2,197,689
1,461,000
Total Plant Funds .
$5,675,087
Total
Less: Inter-Fund Cancellations
$6,069,017
21,525
Total Funds
$6,047,492
21
�The College
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
Annapolis, Maryland
CONDENSED STATEMENT OF REVENUE AND EXPENDITURES
Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1969
REVENUE
Education and General
$ 592,061
598
415,299
9,574
Tuition Fees
Adult Education
Endowment
Miscellaneous
$1 ,017,532
Total
Auxiliary Enterprises
Dining Hall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $ 142,343
Dormitories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. .. .. . .. .
131,211
Bookstore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. .. . . . . . . . .. .. .. . .. . ... .. .. .. . .. . .. .. .
33,764
Coffee Shop
............. .......... ........... .........
812
Total
$ 308,130
Other Non-Educational Revenue ..
$ 134,982
Gifts and Grants
$
Total Revenue
62,343
$1,522,987
E XPENDITURES
Education and General
Administration
$ 151,371
General
133,3 78
Instruction . .
560,71 7
Student Activities
12,526
Adult Education
560
Plant Operation and Maintenance . .. . . . .. . . . .. . . . .. ... . .. . .. .. .. . .. . . . . .
257,615
Total ...... . . .... .... ... . . . . . . .. .. . .. .. . . .... . . .. . .. .. . .. . . . . .. .. . $1 ,116,167
Auxiliary Enterprises
Bookstore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . $ 39,456
Dining Hall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
134,412
Total
. .... .. . . . . . . . . ... .. .. . . .. ... . . ... . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . $ 173,868
Other Non-Educational Expenditures
Scholarships and Grants in Aid .
Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . . . . .
Total .
Total Expenditures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Revenue in Excess of Expenditures .
22
$ 201,110
16,346
$ 21 7,456
. ... ... . . . $1,507,491
. . . ... . . $
15,496
Transfer of Funds for Library Renovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $
5,000
Funds Available for Future Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $
10,496
�September 1969
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
Santa Fe, New Mexico
CONDENSED STATEMENT OF INCOME AND EXPENDITURES
Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1969
INCOME
Educational and General
Tuition
Endowment Income
Miscellaneous
$ 465,527
365
4,134
Total .. . . .
$ 470,026
Auxiliary Enterprises
Dining Hall
Dormitories . .. . .. . ... . .. ... . . . . . .. . . . .
Bookstore . . .. . .... .. . . ... . ....... . . .
$ 119,835
111,469
20,253
Total
$ 251,557
Other Non-Educational Income
Gifts and Grants
Organized Activity Relating to Instructional Departments.
$ 12,994
$ 687,334
$ 13,858
Total Current Income
$1,435,769
EXPENDITURES
Educational and General
Administrative and General
Instruction
Student Activities
Operation and Maintenance ...... . .. . . . . . .. . .
$ 270,988
504,462
12,951
127,818
Total
$ 916,219
Auxiliary Enterprises
Dining Hall
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... ... . .... . . . . . . ... . .
Dormitories, including $ 58,8 55 debt service .
Bookstore
Total
$
90,078
109,108
19,23 5
$ 218,421
Other Non-Educational
Student Aid .. ...
Interest
Annuity Payments . . .... ..... .... . .. . . . ..... .
Organized Related Activities .. .. . . .. . .... . ...... . ... . .. . .. . . . ... .
Miscellaneous
$ 157,472
70,671
9,184
18,631
924
Total
$ 256,882
Total Expenditures
$1,391 ,522
Appropriations
For National Defense Student Loans . ... . . .. ... . . . .. . . .
For Capital Outlay . . .... . . . . .... .
. . . . ....... . $
1,560
35,986
Total Appropriations . . . . . . . . .
$
37,546
Total Expenditures and Appropriations . .. ... .
$1 ,429,068
Excess of Income over Expenditures and Appropriations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $
6,701
23
�The College
~· ·
SCENES
AT
THE COLLEGE
Photos by M. E. Warren
24
�GIFTS AND BEQUESTS
St. John's College is a non-sectarian, independent liberal arts
college deriving its income from student fees, from a limited appropriation by the Maryland General Assembly, and the gifts of its
friends and alumni and from permanent endowment funds. The
College's permanent endowment now exceeds $7,000,000, but increasing educational costs will require future additions to these funds.
The CoUege invites gifts and bequests to its current budget, to
its building program, and to its permanent endowment funds. Inquiries may be addressed to the President or the Treasurer. Bequests
may be made in a form similar to the following:
"I hereby give and bequeath to St. John's College
in Annapolis, Maryland
or
m Santa Fe, New Mexico
the sum of
. . . .. . ... . .... dollars."
The Co11ege would prefer gifts and bequests to be applied in the
discretion of the College, but gifts and bequests may be made for
specia11y stated purposes.
�Santa Fe: A dream is now a five-y_ear-old reality.
The College
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
Second-class postage paid at
Annapolis, Maryland, and at
additional mailing offices.
�
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Title
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<em>The College </em>(1969-1981)
Description
An account of the resource
St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>. <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981. <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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thecollegemagazine
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16 pages
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paper
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Development Offices of St. John's College
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The College, September 1969
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1969-09
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Felter, Mary P.
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Trimmer, Maurice
Sullivan, Daniel
Description
An account of the resource
Volume XXI, Number 3 of The College. Published in September 1969.
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The_College_Vol_21_No_3_1969
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
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English
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text
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pdf
President's Report
Presidents
The College
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/68d34f3e8731847aea4d83d709f6fd17.pdf
c07c5acc330797ce39a88cc66000959c
PDF Text
Text
�The College
Cover: Portrait of Newton by Kneller.
\Ve should like to invite tutors,
alumni, and students to submit articles
for publication by The College. Articles on any subject which would be of
interest to the College community and
which would be representative of the
life of the mind of the College will be
considered.
Mindful of St. John's tradition and
Socrates's suggestion in The Phaedrus
that what every good speech or writing
most deserves is a question period, we
should like to begin a new feature, entitled "Question Period," which would
contain questions or criticisms of what-
ever we have published and answers
from their authors. (Ed.)
Editor: Laurence Berns
Managing Editor: Mary P. Felter
Alumni Editor: Thomas Farran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant: Maurice Trimmer
Art Editor: Daniel Sullivan
The College is published by the Development Offices of St. John's College
in Annapolis, Md. (Julius Rosenberg,
Director) and Santa Fe, N. M. (Frank
McGuire, Director); Member, American Alumni Council. President, St.
John's College, Dr. Richard D. Weigle.
Published four times a year in April,
July, September, and December. Second-class postage paid at Annapolis,
Maryland, and at additional mailing
offices.
In the July Issue:
The First Annual Provocation Address,
by Robert A. Goldwin
•
I
Mathematics As A Liberal Art,
by Samuel S. Kutler
3
Number Z
IZ
Alumni Activities
July 1969
10
News On The Campuses
Volume XXI
The Teaching of Theology to Undergraduates,
by the Reverend J. Winfree Smith.
18
�The First Annual Provocation Address
The 1967 Graduate Institute in Liberal Education
By ROBERT A. GOLDWIN
Everybody knows how an academic session ought to
begin; that is, it properly begins with a Convocation
ceremony and a Convocation Address. And everybody
knows how an academic session ought to end; and that
is, with a Commencement ceremony and a Commence-
ment Address.
But if there is no Commencement, as in our situat.ion,
what kind of farewell ceremony and talk is called for? And
what is such a talk called?
One of my colleagues suggested recently that if one
begins with a Convocation, one ought to end with a Provo-
cation. I thought that was an excellent suggestion, and
so I have prepared this Provocation Address. I hope that
the excellence of the suggestion will be appreciated, that
a Provocation Address will- become a tradition of the
Graduate Institute, and that this address tonight will come
to be known in later years as "The First Annual Provocation Address."
·
Provocation strikes me as quite consistent with the
underlying idea of Commencement. It seems strange to
some people, especially at first glance, that the ceremony
marking the end of formal education is called Commencement. But the intention is, I think, very clear-that the
best way to understand the end of formal education is as
a true beginning. Commencement suggests that we look
ahead; in the same sense, a Provocation Address should
provoke us to look ahead. An educational provocation
should seek to provide some beneficial irritant to keep us
usefully active and thoughtful until next June. An academic provocation must seek to follow the example of the
ancient gadfly.
We have spent the summer studying politics and society,
and during that time we have read about and thought
about and written about different kinds of communities
and their underlying principles. What about this community, this Graduate Institute? What kind of society or
community is it?
We can say of it that it is only temporary, because
after eight weeks we are about to disband and disperse.
We can say that it is not architectonic, because it is a com-
munity within many large communities. We can say that
it- is· not even a political community, because whatever
powers it exercises fall far short of political power. The
question then is, in what sense is it a community? What
has made us a community?
Now, certainly, the answer is not the residence we have
shared, not the meals we have shared, not our outings, not
Our parties, not even our common interests and woFk.
Nothing has made us a community if it is not the desire
we all share to understand.
But one might object that the principle I have just
stated is what characterizes every good school, and that
there is nothing peculiar to this Institute in the shared
d-::sire to understand, however strong it may be. I think
·if is true, that objection, and worth thinking about, too,
for the question "What is a school?" is a noble question.
We are forced to go one step farther. What makes this
school the community we have all felt it to be-unique
in our experience, unique in our schooling experience?
This community has been characterized by one unusual
fact that sets it off from other schools. We have lived for
eight weeks in the presence of greatness. I do not mean
the greatness of any one of us; I mean the greatness of
the authors of the books we have str1died. They, the
great authors, have set the standards under which we have
worked and lived this summer.
Now I must point out to you that the greatness of those
authors has made us the victims and the beneficiaries of a
ridiculous paradox. The paradox can be simply stated:
they, the authors we study, are great; in fact, they are the
greatest teachers available to us. Compared to them, to
those giants of our civilization, we are pygmies. But because we chose to learn from the truly great teachersand this is the ridiculous paradox-we have spent eight
weeks unavoidably trying to tell each other, and ourselves,
about the .errors those giants made. It lfas been a common
thing for one of us to say, "Now where Hobbes (or
Aristotle, or Rousseau, or Marx, or Freud, or any of our
authors)-now where Hobbes made his fundamental
error," and so on. Is that not presmnptuous? Of course
1
�The College
the greatness of the great authors. But, it is not too much
to hope that many of us have been affected in another way,
that we have developed a preference, a strong preference,
a growing preference, and perhaps a permanent preference,
for excellence rather than the mediocre.
All of us know the Biblical story of Jacob, who one
evening met a Inessenger of the Lord, and, for some reason,
wrestled with him all night long. As morning approached,
the messenger of the Lord asked Jacob to let him up.
Jacob replied that he would only if the messenger blessed
him. Part of the blessing was that a new name was
bestowed on Jacob, "Israel," the one who wrestles with
God.
We, too, have been wrestling with beneficent adversaries capable of blessing us. The authors we have wrestled
with this summer may or may not be messengers of the
Lord, but they are surely men from whom we may obtain
a blessing through wrestling well. At this moment, when
the wrestling is about to cease, what blessing shall we
ask of them?
I make this suggestion-and let this be the provocation
-that we ask them to bless us by making us as ambitious
for excellence as they were for greatness. And, if, as a
result, a strong inclination toward excellence works itself
into the very constitution of our beings, then this com·
munity will persist, even though dispersed, but no other
way.
I know the other members of the Faculty join me in
thanking you for your diligence, your patience, your ex·
cellent good humor, your intelligence, and your devotion
to teaching and learning. In short, we thank you for being
the kind of people you are.
it is; worse than that, it is arrogant. What excuse can we
possibly make? Our only excuse is that they made us do
it. That is, the only way we can learn from those great
teachers is for us to attempt to argue with them, which
sometimes necessarily means to disagree with them. In
order to be their humble students, we had to make ourselves their critics, which is arrogant.
That is the inescapable, ridiculous paradox involved in
study of the sort we have been engaged in this summer.
To learn from the greatest teachers, one must learn how
to be humbly arrogant. Timidly, apologetically, hesitantly,
docilc1y, but with arguments, we must say, "Excuse me,
0 Great One, but I think you are wrong."
Now what is the consequence of our having dared to
live in the presence of greatness? If we had been
thoroughly successful, I mean completely successful, no
one of us could ever again be satisfied with, or tolerant of,
the second-rate. We could not even settle for the first·
rate, because greatness stands far above even the firstrate, the skillful, the excellent. But, unfortunately-or per·
haps fortunately for the ease of our lives-we have not
been that successful. We must surely understand and
acknowledge that we have not learned how to share in
2
Robert A. Goldwin began his term as Dean of St. John's College
in Annapolis on July l, 1969. He was Associate Professor of Political
Science and Director of the Public Affairs Conference Center at
Kenyon College. He is Editor of the Rand McNally Public Affairs
Series-volumes of essays which have grown out of Conference Center
meetings among practicing political men, journalists, and academics.
The volumes present responsible and authoritative statements of
differing views on major public problems on a variety of subjects.
Some of the volume titles are America Armed: United States Military Policy; A Nation of States: Tile Amcricau Federal System; Political
Parties, U.S.A.; 100 Years of Emancipation; Left, Right, and Center:
Liberalism and Conservatism in t11e United States; Higller Education
and Modern Democracy: The Crisis of tile Few and tlw Manv;
and A Nation of Cities: America's Urban Problems.
·
Mr. Goldwin has also edited three readers in international relations.
He is the author of "John Locke," in History of Political Philosophy,
published in 1963 by Rand McNally, and he is presently writing a
book on Locke. In 1966 he was named a Guggenheim Foundation
Fellow.
He is a 1950 graduate of St. John's College and received his Ph.D.
from the University of Chicago. IIe was one of the planners and the
first director of the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education in Santa
Fe. Since enrolling as a freshman he has always been connected with
College activities. All those who have had the opportunity to observe
and to admire his leading a seminar or conducting a question period
know that his return to the College is indeed a coming home.
�Mathematics As A Liberal Art
By SAMUELS. KUTLER
Seminar Discussion on the Place and Extent of the
Teaching of Mathematics in the
Liberal Arts Curriculum''
SEMINAR PARTICIPANTS
The Instruction Committee of St. John's College
Dr. Richard D. Weigle, President
Dr. JohnS. Kieffer, Dean
Mr. Robert S. Bart, Tutor
Dr. Eva T. H. Brann, Tutor
Dr. Jacob Klein, Tutor
Mr. SamuelS. Kutler, Tutor
Mr. Hugh P. McGrath, Tutor
Mr. Dean R. Haggard, Tutor
Brother, U. Alfred, F.S.C., Professor of Mathematics, St.
Mary s College
Dr. Henry Alder, Associate Professor of Mathematics, University of California, Davis Campus
Brother T. Brendan, F.S.C., Associate Professor of Mathematics, St. Mary's College
Dr. Max Kramer, Professor of Mathematics, San Jose State
College
Dr. Gordon Latta, Professor of Mathematics, Stanford
University
Dr. Kenneth 0. May, Professor of Mathematics, Carlton
College, Visiting Professor of Mathematics University
of California, Berkeley Campus
'
Mr. John Thomas, Assistant Professor of Mathematics,
University of San Francisco
Dr. Richard P. Wiebe, Assistant Professor of Mathematics
St. Mary's College
'
Dr. Lloyd Williams, Professor of Mathematics, Reed Col·
lege
* Taken from the "Proceedings of the Colloquium on The Liberal
Arts Curriculum: Structure and Content, St. Marv's College, March
25th-March 27th, 1965," pp. 27-41.
·
Mathematics is a liberal art at St. John's College.
Although four hours a week are set aside for a mathematics
tutorial! the mathematics curriculum should not be set up
or considered mdependently of the curriculum as a whole.
Mathematical illustrations illuminate discussions in semi·
nars and language tutorials, which in turn illuminate discussions of the methods, axioms, postulates, and definitions
m the mathematics tutorials. Certain passages in Plato's
Republic must remain dark unless illuminated by careful
study of geometry. One cannot read far in the writings
of Whitehead without wanting to know what experiments
and what hne of reasoning leads to the incredible postu·
lates and conclusions of relativity theory. Every leader
m a mathematics tutorial is engaged in teaching and learning ii: other parts of the program. This permits radical
questwmng beyond what is ordinarily considered to be
within the boundaries of mathematics. It allows students
and tutors to pursue lines of inquiry leading to relation·
ships between the work of the mathematics tutorials and
the .semina~, language program, laboratory sciences, and
musiC tutonal. By studying Euclid and Ptolemy in mathematics tutorial while they are reading Plato and Aristotle
in seminar, by studying Newton's Principia ... while they
are reading Locke, Hume, and Kant, the students discoyer~without requiring sermons on the subject-relationships m and between what are conventionally regarded as
separate fields of knowledge.
The chief specific aim of the mathematics tutorial, as
stated in the catalogue, "is to give the student insight
mto the nature and practice of thinking, of reasoning that
proceeds systematically from definitions and principles to
necessary conclusions." And, one might add, to become
familiar with those objects, such as number and figure,
which are preeminently accessible to tl1is kind of think·
ing. T11e student should learn what a demonstration is.
H~ sh<:uld learn this br understanding demonstrations, by
cnli~IZmg demonstratwns, and by performing demon·
stratwns. Mathematics is a discipline in which the subject
matter allows of great precision. If it is the case that
politics, for example, does not allow of the same precision
of argument, the student of the liberal arts should have
3
�The College
something to hold up as a model of that precision which
he must always fall short of in a political discussion.
To what extent should mathematics be studied in a
liberal arts curriculum? In an age dominated by modern
science and technology the student should have enough
theory and practice in symbolic mathematics so that he
will not have to despair of being able to understand the
ing propositions himself, defending his proofs from ob-
discoveries and even of being able to criticize claims to
authority made in the name of mathematical physics and
Dedekind's analysis of the real number system. The study
of Euclid concludes with the construction of the five
mathematical biology.
regular solids, which soon reappear in a seminar reading
of Plato's Timacus and again in his sophomore year when
he reads Kepler's Epitome of Copernican Astronomy. In
Since no one can be considered to have received a good
education if he accepts uncritically the opinions of the
educators of his own times, the student should encounter
alternatives to these opinions. At the present time many
educators appear to be of the opinion that no child is
too young to begin to learn mathematics from the point
of view of the theory of sets. It seems that we may be approaching a time where no other way of mathematical
thinking would be conceivable. At such a-so far hypothetical-time a liberal arts mathematics curriculum should
draw material from any period of history that presents
an alternative approach. At the present time it would
seem to be worthwhile to study the first book of Euclid's
Elements with an attempt to understand it not from a
"higher" point of view, but as much as possible as Euclid
himself understood it. Then proofs of the same theorems
from Hilbert's axioms would provide a modem approach.
Each study should enrich the other, and the student
should then be in a position to begin serious and fruitful
reflection on the nature of geometry.
The following review of the mathematics program at St.
John's is not meant to suggest that St. John's has found
the only correct road to a mathematics curriculum for
liberal arts students. Many improvements have been made
over the years and we try to remain open to suggestions
for further improvement. We do believe, however, that the
present mathematics program at St. John's is successful to
a large extent, to a greater extent than any other program
we know of, in meeting the aims of such a mathematics
jections, and explaining it to those who arc having diffi-
culty understanding the proof. Among the high points
in the study of Euclid's geometry is the theory of ratios,
in which the difficulties caused by the existence of incommensurable magnitudes are met by the Eudoxian definitions of same and greater ratio that contain the seeds of
the last third of the year the attention of the tutorial is
fixed on Ptolemy's Almagest. Here the student finds the
theorems of Euclid extended to set up a mathematical
science of the 1notion of heavenly bodies. His first experience with mathematical methods of approximation is
in Ptolemy's construction of a table of arcs and chords
that is equivalent to our trigonometric tables. The freshman mathematics program concludes with Ptolemy's
theory of the sun's movement.
In the sophomore year the study of the Ptolemaic system
of the world continues with the consideration of a theory
of planetary motion. Before long the difficulties and complexities become apparent in Ptolemy's attempt to "save
the appearances" by means of regular circular motion
about the earth as center. The student is prepared for the
transition to Copernicus's heliocentric theory, which is
effected by proofs that show the mathematical equivalence
of the two theories in accounting for certain basic measur-
able phenomena.
Apollonius's purely geometric treatment of conic sec-
tions is the next course of study. The student builds upon
his understanding of Euclid's Elements to reach the culmination of Greek mathematics. In the last third of the
sophomore year, analytical geometry is studied. Because of
the previous work on Apollonius, an especially important
proof is that every conic section represents an equation of
the second degree and conversely. Here, and at other points
curriculum. To see more fully how the College under-
in the study of conic sections, ancient and modern arts
stands these aims it is necessary to turn to the particulars
are brought to bear on the "same" objects, which be-
of the program. We hope to emerge from the consideration
of these particulars with opinions applicable to a mathe-
cause of radically different treatments are somehow not
matics program in any liberal arts curriculum.
In his freshman year at St. John's, every student begins
with the Elements of Euclid. The freshman who thought
that mathematics was only for those with a special aptitude finds himself actively engaged in discussion about
mathematical principles: the definitions, the postulates,
the common notions. Together with students who were
sure that they had mastered plane geometry in secondary
school, he begins to reflect on the nature of the mathematical objects and on the nature and kinds of mathematical demonstration that Euclid displays. Besides
challenging and discussing the proofs given by his fellow
students, he is acquiring the art of effectively demonstrat-
4
quite the same. The contrast between the treatments
leads to the raising of far-reaching questions about these
treatments and their objects. Assumptions and presuppositions arc thus explored which otherwise might never
have been brought to light.
In the third year the historical order of subjects is
abandoned; that is, the calculus in its modern form is
studied as preparation for the consideration of the roots
of mathematical physics in the works of Galileo, Kepler,
and Newton. (It should be said that the order of subjects
in this program is not based on any theory of history, but
on the opinion that in many, if not most, cases the order
of insight, or natural order of conception and argument
can best be understood by studies that follow the historic
�July 1969
development.) In the Principia . . . the student sees
astronomy no longer treated only as a heavenly science
but "heavenly and earthly motions brought under one
law." There is an exciting moment when Newton seems
to have grasped the notion of limit in its modern rigorous
form, "For those ultimate ratios with which quantities
vanish are not truly the ratios of ultimate quantities, but
limits towards which the ratios of quantities decreasing
without limit do always converge; and to which they approach nearer than by any given difference, but never
go beyond, nor in effect attain to," and then he reverts
to ('till the quantities arc diminished in infinitum."
In the fourth year there is a return to elementary
geometry. Lobachcvsky, in the uncertainty as to whether
there is more than one line through a point that does not
meet a given line, produces a consistent, perhaps unimaginable, geometry. Moreover, Lobachcvsky insists that
the choice between consistent geometries must he decided
by astronomical observation. The student, returning to
the demonstrations of elementary geometry, finds he is
handicapped by being unable to usc his images in quite
the way he could with Euclid's geometry proofs. The
student is compe11ed to re-examine his opinions about the
nature of geometry; for example, a re-reading of a section
on the transcendental aesthetic in Kant's Critique of Pure
Reason is then in order. With these alternatives to
Euclidean geometry having been examined, the groundwork has been laid for a consideration of more general
geometry with the examination of the claim of Arthur
Caley that projective geometry is all of geometry.. The
substance of that claim becomes clear when the nonEuclidean geometries, as well as Euclidean geometry,
turn out to be special cases when considered as subsets of
the projective plane. The mathematics program concludes
by extending the study of astronomy that began with
Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton to
the geometrization of physics proposed by Einstein in the
theory of relativity.
·
CoMMENTARY BY BROTHER
U.
ALFRED
In discussing the mathematics program of the St. John's
plan and its relevance for liberal education in general,
there are some major problems. What is the standard of
judgment? Liberal education from what one is able to
read about it is an undefined quantity in the sense that
we are blessed with innumerable divergent conceptions of
its nature. Such a flexible yardstick does not lend itself
to accurate measuring.
Accordingly, a mathematician might proceed in the first
instance to note that the St. John's program has the
characteristic of consistency. Starting with the concept
of learning from the great teachers of all times and accepting the twofold nature of the liberal arts as manifested
in the trivium and quadrivium, it is only appropriate to
seck for works that incorporate classical development of
mathematics either in its own right or in relation to other
fields ....
One can go on to specific difficulties of a practical
nature. The program evidently docs not agree with the
usual pattern of college education as exemplified in our
country wherein students as a rule engage in some measure
of specialization so as to be prepared for their specific
subject area in graduate work or their life work after
college. Possibly, the superior type of student can take the
St. John's program and then go on to higher studies and
without too much difficulty compensate for the lack of
ad hoc work in his area of specialization. But I doubt if
the generality of students would be able to do this. T11e
problem then is thrown back to one of economics: so
many years of schooling costing so much per year before
one is able to arrive at the time of gainful employment ....
Next, while the emphasis on the great themes in mathematics and concern with mathematical classics has admirable features, it would seem to me to be carried to an
extreme. Too much time and effort is spent on puzzling
through obscure and involved approaches which have long
been superseded. There is an answer, of course: this is the
way to train the human mind; what the students do not
get in n1athematical content, they acquire in greater
ability to analyze difficult language and piece together
obscure thought processes. Such an answer carried to its
logical consequences can arrive at the absurd conclusion
that the more obscure and difficult a teacher is, the better
he is This view could be very satisfying to some of the
people who spend their years confusing the young mind
in the classroom, but it hardly appears satisfactory from
the standpoint of the young mind ....
Simply as a springboard for discussion, I would like
to advocate the following as a minimum: In the freshman
year, there should be a course along the lines indicated
by Dr. Henry L. Alder in a recent article in the American
Mathematics Monthly entitled "Mathematics for the
Liberal Arts Students." This emphasizes the free operation
of the human mind in its approach to quantity and form.
Starting with a fully fabricated theorem such as is found
in Euclid is quite artificial. IVIathematics is never discovered in this state. Such formulations are the very last
5
�The College
stage in a process of development beginning with vagne
fumblings, proceeding by surprising intuitions, maneuvering by shrewd guesses, checking by numerous .examples,
arriving at a projected theorem, attempting to prove this
theorem ... and only after a long period of development
when many such processes have been carried out, the fullfledged logical system a Ja Euclid is achieved. To start
students at this end of the process is fine for exemplifying
the logical structure of a mathematical system, but very
poor as a means of giving them a mathematical experience.
In the upper division course, this would be the time
to show students one or more mathematical systems including Euclid's, though it would not be advisable to go
through the entire work. Here would be the place to consider those many fine topics treated in the St. John's program: rational and irrational number, limits, the nature of
with the kind of mathematics which presupposes a totally
different conceptual approach. That's one of the reasons
why we prefer it. There are other reasons-let me not
go into them now. On the very general question why
mathematics should be studied at all, I should like to
point out the fundamental fact that the way to learn is
originally the mathematical way; there is something about
learning mathematical relationships which presents the
model of all learning, because of its precision and the
necessary avoidance of all the sophistry which usually
surrounds our way of talking. Furthennore1 mathematics
is, indeed, a way of speaking, a very strange way of speaking, because it is related to our use of signs, and although
words are signs, the mathematical signs arc different because they are not necessarily pronounced. They are written
or diagrammed1 put down somewhere on sand 1 or on
paper, or on the blackboard.
I have, pemonally, a certain opinion-it may be totally
wrong-that the development of mathematics consists in
changing the nature of those signs with which mathematics originally started.* That is, originally mathematical
signs were not symbols, but .they became symbols later
on. And this symbolic language is, of course, an incredible,
powerful tool for our understanding, for understmfding a)
our world, and b) ourselves. So it seems to me that liberal
education, if it is to exist, cannot possibly avoid studying
mathematics.
calculus, the postulational approach to mathematics, what
constitutes mathematics, the relations of mathematics and
science, non-Euclidean geometry, the Dedekind cut, and
so on. The historical significance of these ideas brought
out especially by relating them to passages from the great
works on mathematics should be considered essential.
Finally, without becoming too technical, students should
be brought to the very last word in modern mathematicswhat it is doing, where it is going, its significance for
the future of our culture.
DISCUSSION
Mr. Klein: ... it is perfectly conceivable to us that our
mathematics program is not built in the right way. I think
that what you said about Euclid representing a sort of last
stage in the whole process of mathematical experimentation, as it were, is· quite right. It is a sort of an accomplished affair, and to start with that is questionable.
On the other hand, one could start the freshman year
with the buildup of the number system. The reason-one
of the reasons, not the only one-why we prefer our way
is this, that it helps the rest of the program. While in the
freshman year they are reading books written originally
in Greek, the relation to Euclidean mathematics and
Apollonian mathematics is much closer than if you start
6
Miss Brann: ... Another topic that comes up and becomes very vital is: What are the objects with which
mathematics deals? And since we begin in classical mathe-
matics with systems which do have specific objects to be
seen and imagined and analyzed, and then go on to the
type of mathematics (first represented by analytical
geometry) which does not apparently have such objects,
this question is very quickly transformed into the following: Is mathematics primarily concerned with objects or
with methods? And so we raise a second great topic the
question: what is a method? Is there an objectless method?
Does the object determine the method? Or the method
the object? So when I began by saying that it probably
would be accurate to say in some way that we don't study
mathematics, this is what I meant. We're really interested
in ways of understanding primarily, and if the particular
theorems 1 the particular discoveries of mathematics are in
some way curtailed, that may be deplorable from a different
point of view, but it fits in with what we are trying to do.
Dr. May: I'd like to ask a couple of questions whose
answers will give me a better picture of what actually
* Sec Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought ami the Origin of
Algebra, translated by Eva Brann, with an Appendix containing Victa's
Introduction to the Analytical Art translated by the Reverend J.
Winfree Smith, Jr., M.I.T. Press, 1968. (Ed.)
�July 1969
happens in class. I imagine you studying Euclid in the
first year and, as we say, discussing the proofs. Now it's
well known that Euclid is incomplete-his axiom system
is incomplete-someone who's trained in modern mathematics would be able to demolish a good many of these
proofs. Does it ever happen in your critical discussions
that students realize on their own that things are missingthat the argument isn't complete? And does the instructor
call this to the attention of the student?
Mr. Kutler: It certainly happens that students discover
this, either by themselves or with the help of Thomas
Little Heath, who has edited it, and filled it with scholarly
comments of all kinds, historical and mathematical. Now,
I'm not sure that Euclid, if he were alive-and maybe
you could convince him-would agree with you that all
the gaps are gaps. I'm not sure that the enterprise he's
interested in is the same as the enterprise of modern
mathematics. That is, I think Euclid's talking about triangles, not the ones you draw on the board but the ones
in your -imagination. But I think he expects you to look
at those figures, or look at them with your mind's eye.
So when you say in the first proposition in Euclid, "Well,
look, he doesn't have an axiom which says that two circles
are going to intersect," maybe he'd say "I don't need an
axiom for that because it's about figures and we can see
that there's a point inside and a point outside and we
know what circles are, and of course they meet."
Dr. May: Do you stay within the Euclidean program and
judge Euclid on the basis of what he was trying to do
or do you also consider the possibility of other programs
at the same time?
Miss Brann: This is another one of those large topics
which arises very nicely within this framework. Most of
our students have some sort of vague notion of, to use a
there arc two aspects of mathematics-modern aspectsthat one, I think, is neglecting. The first one is the enormous amount of mathematical information which makes
people feel that one can't start with the present. On the
other hand, one of the characteristics of mathematics in
the last hundred years is a tremendous achievement in
understanding the simple ideas of mathematics. And I
think that this makes it possible by utilizing what we
know about mathematics now to start with the very most
modern ideas, to start with mathematics as it now exists,
and present that to the beginning student. I think that
by so doing, and only using the classical material as contributive, one would be able to achieve all the goals of the
Program. Certainly one would teach logical reasoning and
so on. I think you will do this far quicker by starting with
what we now know about logical reasoning.
Mr. Kutler: The quicker there's no doubt about.
Dr. May: I think quicker and more deeply. The individual
would even understand better the chssical work in this
area if you begin utilizing everything we know. So that
I would say, instead of starting with the old and going
toward the new, start with everything we know now.
Mr. Kutler: We do that with the calculus. I tried to say
that. We do it with the calculus and then we read
Newton's lemmas, and we get the tension in the other
direction, the way you want to see it; that is, we see a
struggle for something-somethimes Newton seems to
have it as much as Cauchy had it. I do think it's bad if
everything is presented too simply as a finished product.
You see Brother Alfred's criticism about Euclid would
apply pretty strongly to what you say now, that is, you
don't see any struggle or groping to come up with this,
but everything is presented as something all smooth with
all the edges taken off.
technical term, an "axiomatic system," when they come to
us. When we begin to study Euclid, one of the interesting
topics to discuss is whether this is what they had heard
rumors of in high school, whether Euclid's "system" is
intended to be an arbitrary axiomatic system in the sense
they imagined. Well, three years intervene, and we finally
come to the senior year when we begin to study modern
axiomatics, and it turns out that in fact there exists a
world of difference between an Euclidean axiom and an
axiom of Hilbert. And though it is in fact the case that
we don't do justice to the ramifications of modern axiomatics, I think that we do do justice to the difference between the approaches. And this does make many students
feel that thev want to go on with the modern side.
Dr. May: ... it seems to me that it would be better not
to make it the concern to get to modern times from
ancient times, getting modern ideas from old ideas, but
to start with what we know now, and to usc the old ideas
to illuminate modern understanding. It seems to me that
. .. but you see one thing we do, and nobody has
emphasized this, one reason why we like to do a lot of
theorems in Euclid is it's the first, it's the beginning of
having the students learn to demonstrate. And when they
learn it, it's not by our lectures. We consider that a
major thing-I don't know whether you agree with me or
not.
7
�The College
Dr. Kramer: I agree up to a point. Too much time is spent,
I think, on doing everything in Euclid. There are many
methods of proof. Euclid practically restricts himself to
one. Oh, he gives a token to the indirect method, but
there is very little induction, nothing of mathematical
induction, and he doesn't get involved in the laws of logic
(for example, the law of the contrapositive) and things
of this sort. So my feeling is this: I would like to see you
cut back the number of theorems from Euclid-give the
rest of the time to a consideration of a variety of methods
of proof, and see what has evolved, for example, through
the use of algebraic methods. I'm not saying you must
disregard Euclid's work. With the statement that one
must start with it, I agree a hundred per cent. My feeling
is that you must cut back to make room for these other
things.
Mr. Kutler: To make the points you want to make, it
seems to me, that Euclid doesn't have this or doesn't have
that, which we notice, time and again, would go in and
out the ear of the student who hasn't worked with it
long enough. They don't have any solid thing to base
against the modern approach.
Miss Brann: Do not forget that many of these students
are people who, in an ordinary college, would regard
themselves as having a block against mathematics.
Mr. Bart: I'd like to say just one word about the example
that came up with continuity-two words. First of all,
of course, continuity doesn't wait in our treatment until
the senior year. That's manifest. It emerges the moment
we try to look at a locus problem. We're immediately
confronting the converse of the situation we've been
getting with the conic section taken as a cut, in which it
seems the figure is given in its continuity in the manner
in which, say, Euclid gives it. When we try to look at the
conic section as some kind of locus problem, immediately
the question of continuity has to come up, and then we
try to go back and ask ourselves to what extent and in
what way Euclid presupposes it. But it 'doesn't seem to
me certain that our notion about continuity, that is the
notion we formulate in a mathematical system today, is
the real starting point of the problem of continuity. Those
definitions and those achievements really seem to me to
have something in back of them, and what they have
in back of them is really what Euclid starts with. Now
at what moment one is to become articulate about the
problem of continuity is not completely clear to me ....
There are various approaches to these problems, but I'm
also inclined to believe that there is merit in doing what
we do, the obvious merit being that students who expect
to have problems with math don't. The strange fact abont
our program is that nowhere is it more successful than
in our math program, simply in the sense that within a
week the students find that they don't have blocks, they
8
don't have problems, we don't have to do handsprings,
we just forget that, and it's extraordinarily rare that a
student fails to come out with a profitable experience. I'm
inclined to think that the Euclidean starting point is a
perfectly good starting point. There was, it seems to me,
in a number of remarks that have been made, the impli-
cation that we have improved on the Euclidean starting
point, especially improved pedagogically. It's taken for
granted that we've improved on it mathematically, and
perhaps that's correct. Set theory doesn't seem to mehowever central and, to many people, fun-it doesn't seem
to me clear that it is as successful a starting point pedagogically.
Dr. Williams: Would simple group theory be a better
starting point? It's much simpler. Geometry's tough. It's
complicated.
Mr. Bart: That depends on what you're trying to do. That
depends on whether you feel with Euclid that the objects
of geometry have a givenness ... or not. And it seems that
really until the eighteenth centmy people were inclined
to think so. I don't know. They might have been wrong,
but they did have this notion.
Dr. Williams: Well, when you said "in back of it" you
meant in time, that is, what people were doing when they
stumbled onto the notion.
Mr. Bart: What they were doing was something like trying
to describe a figure as a set of points. But of course if you
haven't understood a figure as a set of points, the problem
of continuity doesn't have the same prominence.
Dr. Williams: Well, maybe continuity should be postponed. I don't hold any brief for that particular topic,
unless one is studying the history of mathematics. Then,
of course, it is very central.
Mr. Bart: We're not pretending to be studying the history
of mathematics for its own sake. It is very true that more
than in anything else we do we follow an historical pattern
in mathematics, but I think we would try to argue that
we do so for two reasons, one pedagogical, and probably
more importantly, the very great impact on the student
of the transition from ancient mathematics to modern
mathematics through the Cartesian revolution. The axiomatic method as we're understanding it, say especially
under the aegis of Hilbert, is not the only starting point
for the science of mathematics. In fact, not only in
theory, it's not the only starting point. I agree with Mr.
Kutler, I doubt very much that Euclid would agree that
all of the gaps we find arc gaps. I very very much doubt it.
Miss Brann: Let me try to say what Mr. Bart's saying in
a somewhat different way. People do usually agree when
they talk about modern mathematics of the types that
have been mentioned, that the word "abstract" is a good
word for it. Some of its beauty and simplicity comes from
its "abstractness." Well, it seems to me that it's very
hard to keep an interest in something abstract if one
hasn't first become thoroughly familiar with the concrete
underpinning from which it has been abstracted. It seems
�July 1969
to me that the mathematics that we do in the first three
just a matter of efficiency of communication, circulation,
years, which is so closely associated with physics, or at
and so on. It has made possible things that couldn't be
done otherwise, but that's not the essence of the change.
Miss Brann: You would agree that what you are now propounding is a doctrine of great importance and that it is,
whether true or false, an opinion which one would need
least with objects of the imagination, is precisely the
ground of concreteness frmn which the abstractions 1nust
be understood to have been made in order to seem formally
beautiful. That is, they are the proper ways, or at least
the most convenient ways, of viewing the things which
are left behind. For what good are these new ways to the
understanding if what has been superseded, if not presupposed, by them is not at some point recalled?
some years to investigate. That is, you wouldn't want us or
anyone else to accept this opinion as simply true? But
how else would one investigate whether it was true or not
except by making the comparison?
Dr. May: Mathematic language is an extension. It includes
the ordinary every day language and some additional
symbols just as every other scientific language does. This
little business of the nature of mathematical symbols is
really a side issue.
Mr. Bart: For us, it simply isn't a side issue. The issue
that we're facing really is to carry the students as far as
we can back over the Cartesian revolution about the
nature, not merely of mathematics, but a great many other
things, to the point where the word "image" would no
longer be a synonym for the word "symbol," as it's tended
to be in literary discourse and elsewhere, and obviously
as in your reaction to my remark; and to the point in
which we would really sec that the role which Mr. Kutler
ascribed to the imagination is now meant in a rather
literal sense, the very sense which, I guess, is so crucial
Dr. May: If one approaches mathematics by studying
Euclid because he was a great n1athematician, in the same
way that one approaches philosophy by studying Plato and
Aristotle because they were great philosophers, there's a
difference in the outcome: some part of Euclid are timeless and they're incorporated in modern mathematics, and
some are obsolete and confusing. Euclid suffered in many
aspects of his work by simply not understanding things
which now we do understand. And therefore by taking
off from the modern ideas, we really hit the problems
that are meaningful today with the understandings that
we have today. So that I think that this prejudice in favor
of the classics has led to the curriculum that is here.
Mr. Bart: You don't accept in the least Mr. Klein's suggestion, which we take extremely seriously, that there
was a Cartesian revolution, and in making mathematics
symbolic, mathematics was profoundly transformed?
Dr. May: I don't think there's any difference between
using words and using any other symbols. Words are
symbols just like the others. Nor do I think there's anything special about mathematical symbols on the alleged
ground that you don't pronounce them. You do. There
isn't a single mathematical symbol which you have which
can't be read, and stated in words. We do it all the time.
There's no essential difference there. This is not the
revolutionary thing, although it is true that mathematicians have developed a more efficient lar)guage. This is
to Kant-the role of the imarination and the role of the
objects of mathematics as images. Now of course a great
many of the gaps which we think we find in Euclid disappear. There aren't gaps from that point of view. There are
gaps insofar as we are grappling with symbols, every meaning of which must be given through definition and axiom.
But maybe it's not the case that all objects of mathematics
are only given to us by definition and axiom. It's perfectly
clear that a very long tradition of mathematicians who
were not exactly fumblers did not entertain this point of
view.
Samuel S. Kutler, tutor at St. John's College, is a 1954 graduate
of the College. Before returning to Annapolis as a tutor, Mr. Kutler
had risen from Assistant and Associate Mathematician to Mathematician at the Applied Physics Laboratory of TI1c Johns Hopkins University. He has lectured on Cantor's mathematics of the infinite and
on Euclid's Elements.
9
�The Teaching of Theology
to Undergraduates
By the Reverend J. WINFREE SMITH
\Vhy should theology be taught to undergraduates and
how should it be taught? Before dealing with these
questions we should have some rough definition of theology. As the origin of the word suggests, theology can
mean any reasoning about God or what relates to God
without specification as to what is meant by God or the
possible source and means of one's knowledge of God.
So it could mean what Aristotle calls theology, which
is identical with first philosophy or metaphysics. But
we shall mean by theology an investigation or a teaching
that is concerned with the God of the Bible and the
tradition that springs from the Bible.
We may assume that the education of undergraduates
has as its aim not to train them in some skill which will
pay we11 after graduation, unless the words "pay" and
"well" be taken in a highly metaphorical sense. It has as
its aim the training and informing of their souls. T11is
means that they have to he led to know their own souls.
T'he fact is that there is no man living in the modern
world whose soul is not already touched by theology.
He cannot know his own roots without knowing theology.
This does not mean that modern thought is a simple
derivative of theology and ultimately of the Bible. It does
mean that in order to understand modern thought, i.e.,
in order to understand ourselves, we have to go back to the
beginning of modern thought.
Modern thought originated in a breaking away from
ancient thought, both from classical philosophy and from
the Bible. The education of modern man, therefore, re~
quires that he go back and seek to understand this breach,
to sec whether it was a total breach or a partial breach. At
the very roots of modern thought there is an argument
which is basically a theological argument and which cannot be dealt with fairly without knowledge of the ancient
tradition of theology. This is one reason why theology is
essential to liberal education.
There is a second reason, which is perhaps more important and which is quite independent of any consideration of the history of thought. During the years that an
undergraduate is in college he should be examining in a
leisurely and ordered way the basic questions of the mean-
10
ingfulncss of his own life, of human life in general, and
of the world as a whole. All such questions become ultimately theological questions. One can understand what
Laplace meant when he said he had no need of the
hypothesis of God. Modern physics can proceed with its
theories, its experiments, and its measurements, to its discoveries without reference to God. But if one stands just a
little way outside of modern physics, one can ask what its
meaningfulness as a whole is and this necessarily involves
one in the question of heaven and earth in general and
whether in the beginning they were created by God. There
is no area in which human inquiry, if pressed far enough,
docs not lead to theological questions.
Men are generally interested in such questions as: Is
there a God, or not? If so, is he a God who cares for men
or one who does not? If he is a God who cares, is he
limited or not limited in what he can do for me? Can he,
for example, raise them from the dead? What does his
care imply with respect to what man should do and what
he may hope for? Theological education feeds the soul of
the undergraduate by acquainting him in a more or less
thorough way with the serious and well-reasoned answers
that might be given to the questions, answers that are rich
and far-reaching in their implications. It gives him much
to wonder about and to explore with his mind and heart.
The conclusion to be drawn is that theological education
is essential to liberal education, whether the educational
institution be a secular one or a religious one. In the
secular institution the study of theology cannot be thought
of as taking faith either as its premise or as its conclusion.
The secular institution cannot assume the trnth of the
Bible or the dogmas of faith. But it must assume that the
Bible and the dogmas of faith make a serious claim to
being the simple trnth, a claim that is well worth examining and exploring. No doubt both teachers and students
will bring to such a study special prejudices and feelings, of
which they must constantly be aware. It is none the less
possible for believers and non-believers to apply to the
Bible the art of communal discussion with a view to finding out what it is saying in its own ten11s and on what its
claim to trnth rests.
�fuly 1969
In a college with a religious commitment the teaching
of theology would mean something more. For a man of
faith, piety is the necessary motive for any study, and one
would not engage in theology if one did not regard the
study of theology as a pious work. Piety for a Christian
means the acceptance of the Bible and the dogmas of
faith as truth given by God. It is none the less the case
that these given truths have to be appropriated. The believer has to make them his own. One way he does this is
through the activity of his intellect, by which he seeks
to deepen his own understanding of the revealed Word
of God. A liberal arts college with a religious commitment
has a duty to assist the undergraduate believer in this enterprise. The enterprise should not be understood too narrowly. Theology must be seen as bearing upon questions
that can take their origin in anything with which the
undergraduate may be concerning himself. If theology so
interpreted is not the queen of the sciences, it is still the
center toward which all thought moves, by whatever
circuitous paths.
Liberal education in a liberal arts college, while its aim
is to train and inform the soul, cannot save the soul. Only
God can do that, and the institution that God uses for
that purpose seems to be, not the college, but the Church.
The Reverend Josepli Winfree Smith, Jr., tutor at St. John's College, received his B.D. from the Virginia Theological Seminary and
his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. He was Rector of St. Paul's
Church, Ivy Depot, Virginia, from 1939 to 1941. In 1959 he was
awarded the Addison E. Mullikin Tutorship. He has lectured on
Aristotle's Metaphysics, Aristotle's Ethics, John Calvin, Ptolemy, and
Kepler's astronomy. Students and tutors have profited from his notes
on the number and ratio books of Euclid, his paper on Ptolemy's
"Theory of the Moon," and his introduction to and transbtion of
Viete's Introduction to the Analytical Art. For some twenty-five years
students have benefited from his Tuesday evening extra-curricular
classes on the New Testament.
]]
�NEWS ON THE CAMPUSES
GRADUATION IN
ANNAPOLIS
The I 77th commencement exercises
of St. John's College in Annapolis were
held on Sunday, June 8th, under the
Liberty Tree on the front campus.
The Invocation was delivered by the
Reverend Joseph Hemighaus, Assistant
Pastor, St. Mary's Church, Annapolis.
Jacob Klein, tutor at the College since
1938 and former dean, gave the graduation address.
Graduating Magna Cum Laude was
Robert Jerome Benton, Raleigh, N.C.
Cum Laude graduates were Mariam
Alice Cunningham, Edmond, Okla.;
Linda Ellen Davenport, New Hope,
Pa.; Bernard Mark Davidoff, Philadelphia, Pa.; Anne Barbara Lyons, Westport, Conn.; David Eugene Riggs,
Evansville, Ill.; and Catherine Allen
V'lagner, Shoreham, Long Island, N.Y.
Those receiving degrees Rite were:
George Michael Anthony, Brandon,
Ore.; Meredith Artis Anthony, Washington, Pa.; Joseph Preston Baratta,
Sylmar, Calif.; Mark Israel Bernstein,
Brooklyn, N.Y.; Gabrielle Harris Bershen, New York, N.Y.; Dorothy Louis
Brodie, Brooklyn, N.Y.; David Wade
Caruthers, Cheshire, Conn.; Robert
Browne Davis, San Francisco, Calif.;
Margaret Ann Escher, New Yark,
N.Y.; Regina Clare Forsyth, Houston,
Tex.; Benjamin Spencer Franklin,
Jr.,
Bala-Cynwyd, Pa.; Thomas Powick
Geyer, Pottstown, Pa.; Janet Anne
Gleason, Roanoke, Va.; Philip Gordon
Holt, Bethesda, Md.; Martin Kalmar,
Flint, Mich.; Blake Landor, Highland
Park, Ill.; Deborah Adelaide Moll, Oxford, Md.; Joan Jacqueline Mooring,
Braddock Heights, Md.; Gregg Dennis
Rains, Weymouth, Mass.; David Leonard Simon, New York, N.Y.; Katen
Stagg Simon, Valley Stream, N.Y.;
12
Cheryl Elizabeth Sirofchuck, Sutersville, Pa.; Anthony Jay Snively, III,
Washington, D.C.; Merrill Richard
Stevens, University Park, Md.; Mary
Fowler Teed, Annapolis, Md.; Linda
Margaret Torcaso, vVheaton, Md.;
Prcsiilcnt of T. Mellon and Sons of
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Karen Lee Jurgensen, Albuquerque,
N.M., and David Alexander Sackton,
Cambridge, Mass., graduated Magna
Jeannine Pennington 'Vatson, Bel Air,
Cum Laude.
Md.; and H John Witman, III, Yardley, Pa.
Included in the graduation cere-
Cum Laude graduates were Margaret
Louis Blum, Washington, D.C.; Vicki
Sue Brown, New York, N.Y.; William
James Cromartie, Jr., Chapel Hill,
N.C.; and Michael John Hodgett,
\"link, Tex.
Receiving degrees Rite were Frank
Hudson Adams, Chestnut Hills,-Mass.;
monies was Richard Tower Congdon,
DeKalb, Ill., 1952.
Mr. Klein was recognized by the
Board of Visitors and Governors and
the College for his thirty-one years of
service to the College. A scroll signed
by Mr. Walter F. Evers, retiring chairman of the Board, and by President
\'Veigle was presented to him.
Retiring Dean Kieffer was also hon-
Governors and Governor and Vice-
Paul Fleitmann Bunker, Santa Fe,
N.M.; Lynn Ellen McCiivc Butler,
Buffalo, N.Y.; \Villiam Roderick Butler, Lancaster, Tex.; Daniel Cleavinger,
Albuquerque, N.M.; Raymond Jay
ored by the Board and was presented
Drolet, Farmington, N.M.; Craig Fan-
a scroll recognizing his forty years of
service to the College in many capaci-
sler, Sun City, Ariz.; Shirley Jean Cushing Flint, San Jose, Calif.; James Morrow Hall, Albuquerque, N.M.; Melissa
Ann Nettleship, Fayettesvillc, Ark.;
Claudia Nordstrom, South Nyack,
N.Y.; Joe Pratt Reynolds, Arlington,
Tex.; Robert Lessing Rosenwald, Jr.,
Santa Fe, N.M.; James Austine Scanlon, Upland, Calif.; Marilyn Joyce
Avery Soon, Tulsa, Okla.; .Thomas
Evans Stern, Palo Alto, Calif.; John
ties, including president.
A Faculty Resolution was then presented to Mr. Weigle honoring him for
his twenty years of service and guidance as president of St. John's College.
The Benediction by the Reverend
Hemighans concluded the ceremonies.
SECOND SANTA FE
COMMENCEMENT
'll1c second commencement day at
St. John's College in Santa Fe began
at 11:00 a.m. with a baccalaureate
service with visiting lecturer Bishop
James P. Shannon as speaker.
The invocation and benediction at
the exercises was given by the Rever-
end Lowell Russell Ditzen, director of
the National Presbyterian Center in
\'Vashington, D.C.
Principal speaker at the graduation
was Mr. Adolph W. Schmidt, former
chairman of the Board of Visitors and
Harvey Strange, San Antonio, Tex.;
Lee Tepper, Washington, D.C.; Joseph
Hicks Tooley, New Yark, N.Y.; Carol
Ann Lightner Tucker, Albuquerque,
N.M.; Steven Lee Tucker, Albuquerque, N.M.; and Michael Anthony
vViener, Sausalito, Calif.
The Class of 1969 graduated 63
seniors on both campuses.
AWARDS AND PRIZES
PRESENTED AT
BOTH COMMENCEMENTS
Awards and prizes at the two com-
�fuly 1969
mencements were presented to the
following students:
To the Senior who has the highest standing,
a silver medal, offered by the Board of Visitors
and Governors: (A) Robert Jerome Benton,
{SF) William James Cromartie, Jr., and David
Alexander Sackton.
To the member of the Senior Class who
writes the best Senior ~essay: (A) Dorothy
Louise Brodie; Honorable mention, Joseph
Preston Baratta and Anthony Jay Snively, III,
(SF) Vickie Sue Brown; Honorable mention,
Margaret Louise Blum.
To the member of the Junior Class who
writes the best annual essay: (A) Marielle
Mikah Hammett; Honorable mention, Diana
Owen Runyon, (SF) James Frederick Scott;
Honorable mention, Michael Joseph Landry.
To the member of the Sophomore Class
who writes the best annual essay: (A) Katherine Elisabeth Jackson; Honorable mention,
Jeffrey Coleman Kitchen, Jr., (SF) James
Christopher Brown and Jenny Frances Calm.
To a member of the Freshman Class who
writes the best annual essay: (A) Deborah
Jessica Letven, (SF) John Stephen Denney.
To the student whr submits the best English
translation of a Cree'..: poem: (A} Mark Leland
Haynes, (SF) Edward Gerald McGrath.
To the student who submits the best English
translation of a French poem; (A) Meredith
Artis Anthony, (SF) James Dale Danneskiold
and Donald Hugh \Vhitfidd.
To the student who submits the best English poem: (A) Anthony Jay Snively, III,
(SF) First prize, James Frederick Scott; Second prize, Jonathan Lippitt Brewer and Kerry
Martin Prechte1.
To the member of the Freshman or Sophomore Class who submits the most elegant solution of a mathematical problem: (A) Jeffrey
Coleman Kitchen, Jr.; Honorable mention,
Jeffrey Sonheim, (SF) No prize.
To the member Of the Junior or Senior
Class who submits the most elegant solution
of a mathematical problem, or submits the best
short essay on a "mathematical topic: (A)
Anthony Jay Snively, III; Honorable mention,
Dikran Kizilyan, (SF) Michael Joseph. Landry.
To the student who submits the best brief
comment on a piece of music: (A) No prize;
Honorable mention, Jeffrey Coleman Kitchen,
Jr.
To the student who submits the best musical
composition or the best commentary on the
song, "An die Musik," by Schubert: (SF) Joe
Pratt Reynolds.
To a Junior for ac-ddemic achievement, con~
structive ·membership in the College community, and commitment to post-graduate study,
the Duane L. Peterson Scholarship: {A) Edward Michael Macierowski, {SF) Michael
Joseph Landry.
To the member of the Junior Class considering teaching as a career, a book award given
by Teachers College, Columbia University:
(A) Richard Dclahide Ferrier.
Assistant Dean Robert L. Spaeth meets with Annapolis Mayor Roger VI. Moyer to discuss campaign plans before the May 13th election. Mr. Spaeth's initiation into politics \vas successful with
his election as alderman from the third ward, \vhile Mr. Moyer was voted a second term in office.
ASSISTANT DEAN ELECTED
ANNAPOLIS ALDERMAN
Robert L. Spaeth, assistant dean and
tutor, was elected alderman from the
third ward in Annapolis, on Tuesday,
May 20th, by a vote of 426 to 327. He
defeated the Republican candidate,
Mrs. Anthony M. Leigh.
On Thursday, May 15th, on the
editorial page of the Annapolis Evening Capital Mr. Spaeth was endorsed
in the following terms: he "is not the
kind of college professor-politician who
would permit pendantry to block common sense. He is the kind who will roll
up his sleeves and work toward fair,
reasonable and productive eonclu·
sions."
The editorial also spoke of his ex·
eellent grasp of what the city's prob·
!ems were and his keen sense for the
kinds of solutions they required. He
was endorsed also by the Annapolis
Committee for Good Government and
by the United Democrats of Anne
Arundel County.
In his campaign Mr. Spaeth stressed
1) the need for a street parallel to West
Street, 2) holding the line on taxation
of property owners, because the prop·
erty tax as now constituted is too regressive, 3) continuing the improvement of the Annapolis police force, 4)
the need for a better Historic Ordinance (controlling building in the
downtown area for the purpose of pre·
serving the historic character of the
city), and 5) the need to improve
housing conditions for many of our
citizens, which involves expanding urban renewal and involving Negroes in
every facet of the city's progress.
Mr. Spaeth had won the Democratic
primary on Tuesday, April 15th, by a
vote of 300 to 245.
To the best of our knowledge, this
is the first time in St. John's history
that a tutor has been elected to the
office of alderman in Annapolis.
l3
�The College
NAVAJO STUDENT 110VES
IN Two WoRLDS
AT ST. JOHN'S
When Benjamin Barney was a little
boy in a government school on the
Navajo reservation, he had two great
desires. One was to go to college; the
other was to remain true to the Navajo
way. His teachers told him to forget
both ideas. He did not.
Mr. Barney is now going into his
senior year at Santa Fe, and he tries
to weave together the best from both
his worlds. In his three years at St.
John's, he has found that the study of
various philosophies has led to the reexamination of his own beliefs. As a
result, he reports "my Navajo religion
has become more important to me."
At St. John's he has especially enjoyed studying Greek and French, discussing the philosophy of Plato, and
analyzing Euclidean propositions.
When home with his family near Lukachukai, Arizona, he enjoys talking to
his "traditional" Navajo parents about
the meaning of life, participating in
their religious rites, and practicing the
ancient arts and crafts of his people.
After he graduates he would like to
go into education, preferably of Indian
youth. He has already had some instructional experience in local schools
Benjamin Barney
and at the Demonstration School of
Rough Rock, Arizona.
PUBLIC READINGS
HELD AT THE CoLLEGE
A series of literary readings at the
College attracted favorable attention
this past school year in Santa Fe.
Participants included poets Bert Meyers, Michael Jenkins, Peter Nabokov,
Robert Greeley, W. S. Merwin, Richard Brautigan, and Barrett Price, as
WoODWARD HALL RENOVATED
well as W. Warren Wagar, who is best
known as an historian and author of
The City of Man. Tutor Charles Bell
read excerpts from his new novel, The
Halt Gods, in addition to some of his
own poems. Another tutor, Stuart
Boyd, read from the works of Robert
Woodward Hall has been completely
renovated and library books again fill
Burns "in an authentic accent."
Several students also read their own
poems, including seniors Frank Adams
and Vicki Brown, junior James Scott,
sophomores Jonathan Brewer and
Vicky Manchester, and freshman
Kerry Prechtel. A reading in honor of
the ]60th anniversary of Abraham
Lincoln's birth was given by sophomores Ralph Esdale and Steven Moser
and freshmen Seth Cropsey and
Stephen DeLuca. Dramatic readings of
Faustus and Heartbreak House also
were presented by students and faculty
during the year.
RECORD ENROLLMENT
EXPECTED IN SANTA FE
St. John's will enter its sixth academic year in Santa Fe this fall with
an expected enrollment of about 275
students. This will be the largest since
the College opened in 1964 and will
place it well on its way to the 300-plus
projected for the fall of 1970. This
incoming freshman class of 125 should
be among the most able in the history
of the Santa Fe campus. More than
half of the applications approved
through May ranked in the top ten
per cent of their high school classes.
Admissions Director Douglas Price and
his assistant, Gerald Zollars, a 1965
aluinnus, have visited numerous dties
in the West this year to talk with
prospective students and their parents.
l4
Thirty scholarships worth $6,000
each have been awarded by St. John's
to outstanding high school seniors in
Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, planning to attend
college this fall. The Southwest Scholars Program was started last year by
friends of St. John's to help students
from this region on the basis of academic merit and ability.
its interior.
Annapolis Treasurer Charles T. Elzey accepted the building on behalf of
the College from W. H. \1\Tard Construction Co., Inc., on Wednesday,
May 7th. Rogers, Taliaferro, Kostritsky & Lamb (now RTKL, Inc.) _redesigned the building, with furmshings by The H. Chambers Company,
interior designers of Baltimore.
On Timrsday, May 15th, and on
Saturday, May 17th, students, faculty,
and staff undertook the enormous task
of transporting over 42,000 volumes
from their two-year temporary dwelling, Mellon Hall, across campus to
\1\1oodward Hall. Books were carried in
coded bags to predetermined locations
in the library.
There were some exciting moments
on Thursday morning when "Eyewitness News," Channel 13, WJZ-TV, m
Baltimore, arrived to film the move.
A featurette on the move appeared that
evening on the station, under the title,
"A Different Kind of Student Demonstration at St. John's."
On Tuesday, June lOth, a preview
showing of the library for the Friends
of St. John's Committee as well as
members of the press was held. President Weigle and Committee Chairman Richard F. Blaul, a 1932 alumnus,
made welcoming remarks, after which
Librarian Charlotte Fletcher and staff
gave a tour of the building. Faculty
wives were hostesses at the reception.
Formal dedication of Woodward
Hall will be on Saturday, October 18th,
during homecoming activities at the
College. (See back cover.)
�July 1969
BOARD OF VISITORS AND
GOVERNORS ELECTS
WoMAN As CHAIRMAN
Mrs. Margaret (Peggy) Driscoll of
Santa Fe is the new chairman of the
College Board of Visitors and Governors elected during the meeting on
May 31st in Santa Fe. Mrs. Driscoll, a
wrdow, replaces Walter F. Evers of
Cleveland, Ohio. She has been on the
Board since 1965.
Also elected to the Board were Jack
M. Campbell, former governor of New
Mexico; John Matthews, Abilene,
Texas; Mrs. George Raudenbush, St.
Louis, Missouri; and 'Mrs. Howard
Sirak, Columbus, Ohio.
College officials believe Mrs. Driscoll may be the first woman ever selected as Board chairman.
MR. WEIGLE HoNORED
IN SANTA FE
One of the highlights during graduation week in Santa Fe was a May 31st
party given by Mrs. Ruth Hurley for
the Board of Visitors and Governors.
During the evening Mr. Weigle, who
is celebrating his twentieth year as
president of St. John's College, received
three gifts.
One was a book conveying expressions of appreciation to him from all
present and past Board members.
Another was a large sterling tray bearing Mr. Weigle's name and the anniversary date, plus the engraved signatures of all the Board members who
have served during those twenty years.
He also received an oil portrait by
Charles Thwaites.
BISHOP SHANNON NAMED
SANTA FE VICE PRESIDENT
The Most Reverend James P. Shannon, former Auxiliary Bishop of St.
Paul-Minneapolis, has been appointed
tutor and vice president of St. John's
College in Santa Fe, President Weigle
recently announced.
Bishop Shannon, who attended a
summer course at St. John's in Annapolis in 1941, has a master's degree in
literature from the University of Minnesota and a doctorate in history from
Yale University. He served as president
of the College of St. Thomas for ten
vears. He also has studied at Oxford
University.
AsSISTANT DEAN VISITS
COLLEGE ABROAD
In March Barbara H. Leonard, tutor
and assistant dean, participated in a
Comparative Education Seminar that
visited schools, colleges, and universities in England, Russia, Austria, and
Germany. Seminar members were college and university presidents, deans,
professors, and secondary school administrators.
·
Secondary and higher education was
discussed with students, faculty, and
staff at the University of Leeds and
Trinity and All Saints College in England, the University of Moscow in
Russia, the University of Novosibirsk
in East Siberia, the University of
Vienna in Austria, and the Free Uni~
vcrsity of West Berlin in Germany.
rl 'he Seminar spent one day in East
Berlin as guests of East German educators.
Talks were held with the Ministries
of Education in all four countries and
with representatives of the Trade
Union of Education and Scientifi:c
Workers of the U.S.S.R. Topics discussed included administration and or~
ganization, professional appointments,
ranks, salaries, and policies, student organizations, student life, stipends, and
problems.
Miss Leonard found conversations
with students from the Free University in West Berlin about causes of student unrest particularly interesting. It
was reported to her that many who
study political science, sociology and .
economics there cannot find jobs
based on their specialties and some
Severna Park, Maryland, Jones Elementary School student Mary Louise Jones raises a point during
a junior great books seminar led by St. John's College students Blanche Nusbaum and Susan
Mackey. The seminar is similar to one directed by Mrs. Nelson (formerly T. K. T1wmas) last
semester at an Annapolis e1emcntary school. (Photo by Tomatsu Nakata.)
COLLEGE HoNORS KIEFFERS
A reception· in honor of Mr. and
Mrs. John Spangler Kieffer was held
on Monday, June 9th, in the lobby of
the Francis Scott Key Memorial Hall.
Tutors Barbara H. Leonard and
Robert S. Bart were reception cochairmen.
Tutor Ford K. Brown expressed the
College's gratitude to the Kieffers and
presented them with a silver tray engraved with Mr. Kieffer's name and
the dates of his deanship in Annapolis.
15
�The College
enroll in theology with a view to using
the pulpit as a platform to espouse
their social and political convictions.
With no time limit on preparation for
academic degrees opportunities are
opened for some to become what
amounts to professional student revolutionaries. She heard of one woman,
a revolutionary leader, who had been
a member of the Student Council
since 1958.
ANNAPOLIS FACULTY ACTIVITIES
Douglas Allanbrook recently signed
a contract with the international music
publishing firm of Boosey and Hawkes.
The company will publish his "Four
Orchestral Landscapes - Symphony
No. 3" and "Forty Changes" this year.
Mr. Allanbrook will be on sabbatical
leave during 1969-1970.
Gisela Berns became an American
citizen on May 29, 1969. Mrs. Berns
prepared for her citizenship examination by studying junior and senior
~eminar readings in The Constitution,
The Federalist, Speeches of Lincoln,
and the excellent textbook on American government by sometimes St.
John's lecturer, Martin Diamond, The
Democratic Republic (Rand McNally,
1966). Her witnesses were Tutor
Emeritus Simon Kaplan and Tutor
Robert Williamson. Mrs. Berns received her doctorate in classics and
_philosophy from the University of
Heidelberg, Germany.
Laurence Berns gave two lectures"Rational Animal-Political Animal,"
an analysis of the relation of nature
and convention in speech and in politics, and "Piety in King Lear," under
the auspices of the Graduate Program
in Politics and Literature at the University of Dallas in March. He reports a lively question period followed
- each lecture.
Howard J. Fisher visited three public
high schools, Evanston Township,
Lake Forest, and Deerfield, and one
preparatory school, Lake Forest Acad- ·emy, in the Chicago metropolitan area
in the middle of May as part of the
Faculty's effort to engage secondary
school students' interest in the liberal
arts.
16
Harvey Flaumenhaft was married to
Mera Joan Oxenhorn on Sunday,
May 18th, at Westbury Manor, Westbury, Long Island, New York. The
ceremony was performed by Rabbi
Oxenhorn, the bride's uncle. Mrs.
Flaumenhaft is in the process of completing work for a doctorate in English literature from the University of
Pennsylvania.
Harry L. Golding presented an hour
lecture on Friday, March 28th, at the
College of Steubenville, Ohio, entitled
Relativity Theory: An Introduction and
Some Philosophical Aspects. TI1e lecture was sponsored by the philosophy
department of the college.
John S. Kieffer, retired dean of .the
College in Annapolis, will be on sabbatical leave for 1969-1970.
Samuel S. Kutler visited two public
high schools, Edina and St. Louis Park,
and three preparatory schools, Northfield Collegiate, Blake, and St. Paul
Academy in the Minneapolis, Minnesota, area in early May as part of the
school visiting program. (See news
item abont Howard J. Fisher.)
Mr. Kutler taught thirteen classes
and talked with faculty and guidance
counselors. At a joint meeting of Blake
and Northfield Collegiate he met
about a hundred faculty members and
their wives and spoke briefly on The
Distinction Between Education and
Training. A lively discussion period followed the lecture.
He reports his most successful sessions were based on exploring sections
of Plato's Meno with students. After
getting the students to share Meno's
perplexity about how to define excellence, reading and articulating his
famous paradox about learning and
analyzing the slave boy scene, it became evident to the students that
mathematical arts, the ability to interpret myths and philosophical discipline were needed, all together, in
order to begin to understand both the
problem and the reading.
Rosemary Lauer appeared at a forum
entitled The Invisible Tyranny?-Academic Freedom and Theology in the
Catholic University, on Tuesday,
April 22nd, at Boston College.
Barbara H. Leonard will spend five
weeks in Ceylon and South India this
summer. She will also visit Lady Doak
College and American College in Madurai, South India, where she taught
as a Fulbright Lecturer and Honorary
Professor of Zoology in 1962-1963. Miss
Ida Doraiswamy, tutor at St. John's in
Annapolis in 1964-1966, is chairman of
the mathematics department at Lady
Doak College.
Miss Leonard intends to visit some
of the Greek islands on her return.
J. Winfree Smitl1 will be on sabbatical leave during 1969-70.
W. Kyle Smith, tutor emeritus, led
two classes at the United States Naval
Academy on the Brazilian novel Gabriela, Cloves and Cinnamon. He is preparing a study of Calvin's views on the
ethics of war for a seminar in the philosophy of war, also at the Academy.
Mr. Smiili is a member of the Board
of Directors of the Westminster Foundation of Annapolis, an organization
that is concerned with religious work
among students in the Presbyterian
churches in the United States.
Mr. Smith has also been participating in ((Dialogue," a group composed
of Negro and white Annapolitan citizens who are interested in improving
race relations in their city.
Robert L. Spaeth led a seminar for
Oak Ridge, Tennessee, secondary
school students on Thursday, March
27th, to exhibit the St. John's College
seminar technique. Open to the public,
the seminar centered on Volume One
of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy
in America. Mr. Spaeth's visit was part
of an exchange program between Oak
Ridge scientists and Annapolis and
Santa Fe tutors.
Two FRESHMEN LEAD
GIRL SCOUT TROUP
. Two freshmen girls at Santa Fe have
helped a troop of Girl Scouts in the
fifth grade of a local public school develop a special project in sign language
for the deaf.
Ann Miller of Lubbock, Texas, and
Molly Porter of Shaker Heights, Ohio,
�rnly
1969
encc. He also has been in charge of
student programs working with underprivileged children in Santa Fe, patients at the State Mental Hospital,
and inmates of the State Penitentiary.
He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, a member of the
Rocky Mountain Psychological Association, and a Certified Clinical Psvchologist.
STRINGFELLOW BARR LECTURES
ON BOTH CAMPUSES
Santa Fe graduates march into the Student Center auditorium for Commencement Exercises on
Sunday, June 1st. (Photo by Karl Kernberger.)
worked with the girls in learning to
communicate with the signs and in a
production of The Wizard of Oz carried out in sign language.
Performances were given in town
and at the State School for the Deaf,
which is located in Santa Fe. Both Ann
and Molly are "early-enrollment" students who came to St. John's after their
junior year in high school. Ann, who
had training in Scout leadership, conceived of the project after viewing a
performance of the National Theatre
of the Deaf.
ACTIVITIES OF PRESIDENT
WEIGLE ARE VARIED
President Richard D. Weigle was invi ted to serve as a consultant to the
Curriculum Revision Committee of
the University of Notre Dame on Monday, May 19th. Teaching and administrative personnel at the university
wished .to confer with Mr. 'Veigle regarding Notre Dame's optional liberal
arts program, called the General Program of Liberal Studies. He was asked
to discuss the educational ideals embodied in the St. John's curriculum.
Mr. Weigle delivered a commencement address, "The Liberal Arts Col-
lege: Anachronism or Paradigm," at
T11e Colorado College on Monday,
June 2nd. The college then granted
Mr. Weigle an honorary doctor of laws
degree.
Our president also appeared on
'VBAL-FM radio on Saturday, May
lOth, on a program entitled "Molly
Martin Presents A Day In Annapolis."
Miss Martin featured the city during a
·
thirteen-week series.
Mr. Weigle discussed the uniqueness of the College curriculum as well
as his background with the State Department and his service with the U.S.
Army Air Force as a captain in China.
Earlier during April a talk by Mr.
'Veigle was tape-recorded by the
United States Information Agency for
a "Voice of America" broadcast.
TUTOR ELECTED HEAD OF THE
STATE PsYCHOLOGICAL AssN.
The New Mexico Psychological Association has elected tutor Stuart Boyd
of St. John's as president for the coming year. Mr. Boyd has degrees in
philosophy and psychology from Aberdeen University in Scotland. He has
been a tutor at St. John's since 1966,
teaching mathematics, French, and sci-
Stringfellow Barr, eo-founder of the
St. John's academic program and former president of the College, visited the
Santa Fe campus on April 25th. His
lecture on "The First World Revolution" attracted the largest crowd of the
year and it was necessary to hold the
discussion period in the dining hall to
accommodate all the students and
townspeople who came.
_
Mr. Barr visited the Annapolis campus on ~/lay 2nd to lecture on "Socrates
and the Multiversity." His lecture was
the first given as part of the Scott
Buchanan 1tlemoria1 Lectureship established in March, 1968, by friends, students and tutors in honor of the late
former dean. The Conversation Room
was filled to capacity by inquisitive
students eager to converse with one of
the founders of the program.
JAMES
I.
GILBERT
James I. Gilbert, artist-in-residence at the College in Annapolis,
died Saturday, March 29th, at his
home in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.
Mr. Gilbert was professor of lmmanities at the University of Chicago before joining the Faculty in
1962. His spirited presence on campus is sorely missed especially by
the many students and townspeople
who profited from his instruction
and example in the Art Studio.
A collection. of his paintings was
presented at the galley in Santa Fe
at the end of the school year. A
similar collection is planned for
showing in Annapolis in the fall.
17
�ALUMNI ACTIVITIES
PROFILES:
MEET OuR ALUMNI
The Alumni Association of the College last fall completed a two-year study
_of Alumni-College relations. Among
the resulting recommendations was a
suggestion that the College publicize
more widely what its graduates are
doing.
Although the primary purpose of
that suggestion was to bring together
several different elements of our alumni
body by introducing one to the other,
.. such publicity might also help answer
the oft-asked: "But what do your
alumni do?"
From time to time, then, the Profiles feature will appear in this section
of The College. Ou; purpose will be to
acquamt alumm With each other, and
to. show those outside the "family"
what so':'e ?f our graduates are doing
with their hves.
Our first two subiects are a college
French te~cher and a research neur~Jogist who IS also a teacher. We thmk
that you Will enJOY meetmg them.
Morris A. Parslow, I945
18
Morris A. Parslow was born in Wil·
liamston, Michigan, graduated from
Muskegon High School, and attended
Muskegon Junior College and Albion
College before coming to St. John's.
Like many who entered college in
the late thirties and early forties, Mr.
Parslow found his education interrupted by the war. As a result, he spenf
almost two years on campus, served in
the Army for three years, and returned
to tile College in 1946. He received his
bachelor's degree two years later.
Following graduation, Parslow stud~jed in France for two years, first at the
University of Grenoble, then at the
University of Strasbourg. In 1950 he
entered graduate study at Princeton
University as a junior fellow in romance languages. The following year
he became a Herbert Montgomery
Bergen Fellow in modern languages
and received his M.A. degree in French
in 1952. Continuing with the study of
French at Princeton, he earned the
Ph.D. degree in 1954.
Parslow started his teaching career
while still at St. John's as a student
_tutq.r during his senior year. While at
Princeton he was a teaching assistant,
and from 1953 to 1959 he was first an
instructor and then an assistant pro~
fessor at the University of Chicago. In
1959 he became an associate professor
at the State University of New York,
Long Island Center. He has been at
Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa, since
1962, and is curren.tly a professor of
French.
MF. Parslow is married to the former
Michele Milliat of Grenoble, France.
With their three sons imd a daughter
they make their home in Grinnell. Mr.
Parslow's brother Robert, an assistant
professor of linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh, is a 1951 graduate
of the College.
Our second Profiles subject, Henry
B. Higman, was born in Millington on
Maryland's Eastern Shore. After graduation from Millington High School he
came to St. John's in the fall of 1944.
Like Mr. Parslow, he found his college
interrupted by the war; his graduation
cum laude occurred in 1950, as of the
Class of 1948.
I·Iigman continued his schooling first
at the University of Delaware for a summer, and then as a pre-medical student
at the University of Maryland during
1950-1951. He entered Maryland's
Medical School in 1951, and received
his M.D. degree four years later.
The new doctor interned for one
year at the Delaware Hospital in Wilmington, and then spent three years'
residency in neurology at the Charity
Hospital of Louisiana. During the
period 1959-1962, Dr. Higman held a
special training fellowship in neurochemistry at the National Institutes of
Health, and was a research fellow in
biochemistry at Columbia University.
Higman spent the next two years- as
an instructor in neurology at the Lo.uisiana State University Medical School,
Henry B. Higman, 1948
�July 1969
then four years as an associate professor
of neurology at the University of Illinois Medical School. While at Illinois
he was also attending neurologist at
Presbyterian-St. Luke's Hospital in
Chicago.
In 1968 Dr. Higman moved to the
University of Pittsburgh School of
Medicine as professor and first chairman of the then-new Department of
Neurology, the p'osition he holds today.
A frequent contributor to professional journals, Higman's articles reflect his
special rese-arch interest in the chemical basis of neural transmission.
He is a member of the U. S. Public
Health Service Advisory Committee
on Neurological Training, as well as a
member of several medical organizations.
Dr. Higman lives with his wife and
four children-two boys and two girls
-in Upper St. Clair Township, Pennsylvania. Mrs. Higman is the former
Betty Jean Rusteberg of Annapolis, sister of A. Irwin Rustebcrg of the Class
of 1930.
AWARD OF MERIT
The Alumni Award of Merit, first
awarded in 1950, may be awarded annually at the discretion of the Board
of Directors of the Alumni Association.
The Award is made to an alumnus for
~~distinguished and meritorious service
to the United States or to his native
State or to St. John's College, or for
outstanding achievement within his
chosen field."
Association President Darrell L.
Henry asks that confidential letters of
nomination be submitted to him no
later than August 29th. Letters may be
sent to Mr. Henry at the Alumni Office
at the College. Each letter should contain sufficient information about the
nominee to permit thorough evaluation by the Board of Directors.
Previous recipients of the Award
have been:
1950 Amos Francis Hutchins, M.D.
1951 John Vincent Jamison
1952 Lynde Dupuy McCormick
1953 Robert Otis Jones
'06
'05
'13
'16
1954 John Triplett Harrison
'07
1955 William Lentz
'12
1956 Thomas Farran, M.D.
'll
1957 Thomas Bourne Turner, M.D. '21
1958 Walter Scott Baird
'30
1959 William Childs Purnell
'23
1960 J. Ogle Warfield, Jr., M.D. '19
1961 Robert Franklin Duer, Jr.
'21
1962 Richard Herman Hodgson '06
1963 No award made
1964 C. Carey Jarman
'17
1965 William Cranmer Baxter
'23
1966 John Charles Donohue
'35
1967 John Wesley Noble
'17
1968 George M. Gclston
'35
HOMECOMING
Make your plans now to attend
Homecoming on October 17th and
18th. There is no Navy football game
in town that weekend, so plan to stay
overnight. Classes with numerals ending in 9, plus '44, are encouraged to
hold their reunions that weekend.
The feature event will be the dedication on Saturday afternoon of the new
library building, Woodward Hall. In
addition, the Board of Visitors and
Governors is meeting in Annapolis on
Saturday, so here is a chance to meet
and talk with the governing body of
the College.
VVe hope to have the Homecoming
Dinner in the gymnasium, so that the
faculty and the senior class can be included. To our knowledge, this will be
the first time that alumni, faculty and
seniors have all attended the dinner. It
should be a great step toward making
Homecoming a com1nunity affair.
Tentative Schedule:
Friday, October 17th:
Afternoon: Alumni Seminars
Night:
Lecture or Concert
Afternoon: Alumni Annual Business
Meeting.
(Board of Visitors and
Governors meeting.)
Dedication of Woodward
Hall; tour of building.
Evening:
Reception, Alumni, Faculty, Seniors, Board members, and special guests.
Night:
Dinner for Alumni, Faculty, Seniors, and Board.
Dance, entire community.
PICTURE
We received quite a response from
the "old timers" to the back cover picture in our April issue. Even a current
student was among those who helped
identify the thin-clad stalwarts: he
knew Louis Clark from St. Paul's
School.
Our sincere thanks to H. Monroe
Helm '25, A. M. Cunningham '26,
Louis D. Clark '27, Frank H. Kaplan
'29, Ralph S. Guth and R. Ellis Mitchell '30, James W. Crabbe and Robert
G. Woodman '32, and Edward E. Gray
'34. Congratulations to Mitchell and
Kaplan who identified all seven men
correctly.
The picture is of the varsity track
team of 1927, and appeared in the 1928
Rat-Tat. From left to right: William
J. Humphreys '27, team captain;
Thomas Van Clagett, Jr. '30 (deceased); Lawrence M. Taylor, Jr. '29
(deceased); Frank H. Kaplan '29;
Louis D. Clark '27; Rev. Charles M.
Robinson '29; and E. Rochester Bryant '27, team manager (deceased).
The mile relay team of Humphreys,
Clark, Clagett, and Robinson won the
Small College Championship of Maryland in 1927, and finished third in a
field of seventeen colleges in the Penn
Relays in Philadelphia.
Saturday, October 18th:
Morning:
Alumni-Student discussion on Graduate Schools.
(Board of Visitors and
Governors meeting.)
Noon:
Buffet luncheon.
CHARTER FLIGHT
Interested in a trip to Switzerland?
Or to anywhere in Europe or the Mediterranean? We may have just the trip
you have been waiting for.
The Alumni Office is investigating
19
�The College
the feasibility of sponsoring a charter
flight late next winter (to take advantage of lowest rates). For a group
of 75 alumni (wives and children are
also eligible), the individual roundtrip fare via DC-8 jet will be about
$156. How can you afford to stay at
home?
The group will fly from Baltimore
to Zurich and Geneva, and will return from those cities two weeks later.
From Geneva those who wish to go
further south can obtain excellent connections. The fare covers the specified
flights to and from Europe only.
A complete announcement, with a
reservation form, will be sent during
the summer. Think of the fun you can
have touring, skiing, or just sitting in
the sun. Make your plans now to join
the St. John's College Alumni Charter.
ALUMNI DELEGATES
Again this year, St. John's College was invited to inaugurals, dedications, and convocations at other institutions. Mr. Weigle attended two inaugurals himself: that of Edward M. Levi as president of the University
of Chicago, and that of John J. Pruis as president of Ball State University.
Alumni were invited to represent the College at other ceremonies. We are grateful for
the willingness with which they responded.
- These alumni represented the College at the
following ceremonies: S. Paul Schi11ing '23,
the inauguration of Morris B. Abram as president of Brandeis University, October 6; John
")<inlocb '47, the inauguration of James R.
Lawson as president of The Fisk University,
October 6; J. Jeremy Bodine '63, the inauguration of TI1codore D. Lockwood as president of
Trinity College, October 12; The Honorable
f Dudley Digges '33, the dedication of the
I'lew campus of the Charles County Community College, October 12; Stephen W. Ber--gen '45, the inauguration of George I-I. Wil1iams as president of The American University,
October 16; Alfred Geier '54, dedication of the
i1ew campus of the Rochester Institute of Technology, October 19; T. Lansdale Hill '41, the
inauguration of the Very Reverend Thomas D.
Terry, S.J ., as president of the University of
Santa Clara, October 24; Walter Schatzberg
'52, the 125th anniversary convocation of the
College of the Holy Cross, October 26; John D.
Alexander, Jr. '53, dedication of new buildings
at Towson State College, November 2; Willimn A. Darkey '4 2, the inauguration of Ferrel
Heady as president of the University of New
Mexico, November 9; Jerome D. Goodman '34,
dedication of the new campus of Bentley College, November 11; Pasquale L. Polillo '56, the
inauguration of the Vezy Reverend Terrance
Toland, S.J., as president of St. Joseph's College, November 14; Edwin F. Heinen '39, the
inauguration of Allyn P. Robinson as president of Dowling College, February 2; Herbert
K. Mohn, Jr. '68, the inauguration of Robert
S. Eckley as president of Illinois Wesleyan University, March 22; John \V. Boud1er '29, inauguration of Kermit A. Johnson as president
of Alabama College, March 25; Neal R. Gross
'65, dedication of Herbert I-I. Lehman College
of the City University of New York, and the
inauguration of Leonard Lei£ as first president,
March 28; George 0. Kunkle, Jr. '62, the Centennial convocation and inauguration of Vivian
W. Henderson as president of Clark College,
April 19; Mrs. William Aston '55, the inauguration of James A. Butcher as president of
Shepherd College, April 19; John D. Mack '45,
the dedication of the Elizabeth Seaton Library
of the College of Mount Saint Vincent,
April 19; Joseph C. Hofmann, Jr. '42, the inauguration of Ronald G. Weber as president
Of Mount Union College, April 25; Charles J.
Kibler '36, the inauguration of John A. Fincher
as president of Carson-Newman College,
April 29; William J. King '38, the inauguration of William H. Wagoner as president of
Wilmington College, May 1; Midmel C. Keane
'45, inauguration of Herbert Schueler as president of Richmond College of the City University Of New York, May 9.
CLASS NOTES
Lloyd F. Taylor, 1939
High School's first lacrosse team, Gen. Gelston
played at St. John's and later helped coach at
Boy's Latin School
1936
George T. \Vingate in March was named to
the newly-created position of coordinator of
government activities for the Goodyear Tire &
Rubber Company's Chemical Division. Mr.
Wingate wi11 remain in "\Vashington, D.C.,
where he has been since joining the company
nine years ago.
1938
1912
Philip L. Algei was honored by the First
Unitarian Society of Schenectady, N.Y., recently when he received the Charles Proteus
Steinmetz award for outsto·mding community
service. The award cited Mr. Alger's \Vork with
the Freedom Forum, United World Federalists,
and the Citizens League, as well as with local
civic organizations. We can also report the
publication of a new book co-edited by 1vir.
Alger, The Life and Times of Gabriel Kron,
and the publication of the sccorid edition of
his Mathematics for Science and Engineeri11g.
1927
Elmer M. Jackson, Jr., has been awarded the
Maryland Librazy Association's Trustee' Citation for 1968, in recognition of his "distinguished leadership" in the Annapolis and Anne
Arundel County Library Association,
1932
Richard F. Blaul has been elected president
of the Anne Arundel County YMCA for 1969.
Mr. Blaul recently also assumed chairmanship
of the Annapolis committee of the "Friends of
St. John's."
1935
Major General George M. Gelston, Adjutant
General of Mazyland, was co-chairman {with
Senator Joseph D. Tydings of Maryland) of
the first Lacrosse Heroes Banquet on June 6
in Baltimore. In addition to playing on Towson
A note froq1 R. Cresap Davis, too late for
the last issue, .reveals that he has left his fu11
time law practice in Annapolis, and is now on
the faculty of Frederick Community College.
In addition to teaching a variety of legal and
business courses, 1\!Ir. Davis maintains a 1a·.v
practice in Hagerstown.
James L. McCully was recently appointed
to a two year term as chairman of the Board of
License Commissioners of the Baltimore City
Liquor Board.
Jobn C. \Vagner \vtitcs that he is a metallurgist with the U.S. Army Systems Command
in St. Louis, Mo. He works with materials
selection and failure analysis in connection with
Anny aircraft.
1939
Frederick R. Buck has become president of
the Title Guarantee Company of Baltimore.
Richard \XI. Snibhe, an architect in New
Yark City for 28 years, has been elected to the
College of Fellows of the American Institute
of Architects. Such election is a lifetime honor
bestowed on members \vho have contributed
notably to the advancement of the profession
of architecture.
L1oyd F. Taylor in TVIarch was elected president of Standard Kollman Industries, Inc.,
after six years as president of one of the corp·oration's principal subsidiaries, Casco Products
Corporation. Standard Kollman is a diversified
manufacturer of aircraft instruments, optical
equipment, automotive accessories, and elec;;L( ')
)\
20
�July 1969
tronic components. Mr. Taylor and his wife
live in Bridgeport, Conn.
1947
The Rev. Samuel B. Bird, Jr. became rector
of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in
Pelham, N.Y. in March. Prior to moving to
Pelham, Father Bird was for seven years rector
of the Church of the Resurrection in Ilopewe11 Junction, N.Y.
1950
In February, \V. Bernard Ficisclunann, head
of the comparative literature program at the
University of Massachusetts, gave a series of
six lectures (one delivered in German) at the
University of Tulsa. Mr. Fleischmann is an
·alumni representative on the Board of Visitors
and Governors of the College.
1953
Glenn Yarbrough continues to make news
across the country with his popular college
concerts and his recordings. He recently recorded a number of songs by poet and composer Rod McKuen, his partner in a recording
firm. In addition to his wide-ranging interests
in boating, mus~c, and the col1ege generation,
Mr. Yarbrough ts deeply involved in founding
an experimental school for orphans near Lake
Hcmett, California.
1960
Carol Haynie writes that she is in her tenth
year of teaching, currently in the Lodi California Unified School District. She teaches a
combined first and second grade, and believes
that St. John's "did a wonderful job" of preparing her for teaching.
John R. Jacobson, for the past year an officer in the division of Continuing Education
of_ the State University of New York, Albany,
wlll become the executive director of the Associated Colleges of the Mid-Hudson Area this
summer. The Association is composed of eight
colleges, and is concerned with cooperative programs between the colleges.
1961
Stephen Morrow is bureau manager for
United Press International in Baltimore.
. Ha~rison Sheppard writes that on April 24
hts wtfe Joy presented him with a baby boy,
their first child, Justin Andrew Sheppard. Mr.
Sheppard, formerly with the Justice Department, is now Attorney Advisor to Federal Trade
Commissioner Philip Elman.
1962
Judith Mary Levine and magazine cartoonist
Mort Gerberg were married on February 1 in
New York City. Mrs. Gerberg completed her
undergraduate work at Columbia University,
and holds an M.A. degree in art from New
York University. The couple reside in Greenwich Village.
1964
Sara (Hobart) Homeyer writes that husband Charles will enter the military service at
(,
:;;
Three members of the Class of 193 5 meet at the sixth Annual Scholar-Athlete Award Dinner in
Baltimore. Left to right a~e: Major Gcner_al George M. Gelston, Adjutant General of Maryland;
John C. Donohue, co-chauman of the Dmner; and Colonel James L. Hays, III, director of Selective Service for Maryland. The Dinner is co-sponsored by the Greater Baltimore Chapter of the
National Football .Foundation and Hall of Fame, and the Quarterback Club of Baltimore.
(Plwto by Chuck Hickey.)
an early date. She and son Peter will visit with
grandparents until Charles is settled.
1966
The engagement of Richard F. Fielding and
Miss Sara E. Melzer was announced in April,
with a July wedding planned. Mr. Fielding is
a doctoral candidate in political philosophy at
the University of Chicago.
Carole (Picarda) Kelley writes that she and
Loren '67 are "alive and well and in Italy,"
where he works for an American company on
a contract with the Olivetti Corporation. Mrs.
Kelley says that it is an interesting experience
to set up housekeeping in a t0\\'11 where noone speaks English. The Kelleys live in an
old stone house in Ivrea, in the Italian Alps,
and may be reached c/o Olivetti D.S.I., 10015
Ivrea, Italy.
Peter Morosoff, lst Lieutenant, :Marine
Corps, was wounded in Vietnam February 25.,
by grenades when North Vietnamese soldiers
overran a hill being held by Marines three
miles below the Demilitarized Zone. Hospitalized- for two weeks in Vietnam and .two
weeks in Yokosuka, Japan, he was taken to St.
Alban's Naval Hospital in New York City.
He visited the College May 21 enroute to
Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where he will
be an artillery officer with the Second Marine
Division.
1967
Arthur Kungle, Jr., is employed by the Air
Quality Control Sec-tion, Division of Environmental Services, Anne Arundel County Health
Department.
1968
Donald A. Booth, a visitor to the campus in
April, has completed Navy officer training and
as of that time, was training in submarines in
,q
New London, Conn.
Todd Everett (SF) is now free-lancing in
Los Angeles.
Antigone G. Phalares (SF) taught second
and third grades in Tanana, Alaska, this past
year. Tanana, about 100 miles northwest of
Fairbanks along the Yukon River, has a large
Indian population. Miss Phalares, in proper
Alaskan spirit, entered and placed second in the
1969 Tanana Winter Carnival Chcechako Dog
Race. (For those not raised on Jack London, a
cheechako is a tenderfoot in Alaska.)
Jonathan Sinnreich and Masha Zager '70
married on December 29, 1968, in New York
City.
Susan Turnbull (SF) and Eleftherios Zagoras were married last November in Los
Angeles. TI1e couple are now living in Athens,
Greece, where Mr. Zagoras is with Olympic
Airlines.
Frederick R. Wicks (SF), who came to St.
John's from Alaska, is another alumnus now
teaching there. He teaches third and fourth
grades in Nondalton, an Indian town about
175 miles southwest of Anchorage. Mr. Wicks
plans to enter the Starr King School for the
Ministry (Unitarian-Universalist) in Berkeley,
California, this coming fall.
t-"i
~----------------~
In Memoriam
"'1(}W~NEwTON
B. CoLLINSON, Edgewater, Md., April 14, 1969.
,.,.-191-5-HERBERT E. Ju:rvrP, Easton, Md.,
April !6, !969.
·19"3"7-REV. CHRISTIAN NEUJviANN, Ellicott City, Md., May !6, !969.
�Woodward Hall, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland
(Photo by Tomatsu Nakata)
e College
John's College
lapolis, Maryland 21404
Second-class postage paid at
Annapolis, Maryland, and at
additional mailing offices.
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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<em>The College </em>(1969-1981)
Description
An account of the resource
St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>. <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981. <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Creator
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St. John's College
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
Contributor
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Identifier
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thecollegemagazine
Text
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20 pages
Original Format
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paper
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Development Offices of St. John's College
Title
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The College, July 1969
Date
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1969-07
Contributor
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Berns, Laurence
Felter, Mary P.
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Trimmer, Maurice
Sullivan, Daniel
Description
An account of the resource
Volume XXI, Number 2 of The College. Published in July 1969.
Identifier
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The_College_Vol_21_No_2_1969
Publisher
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
Language
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English
Type
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text
Rights
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
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pdf
The College
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https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/e49127065869f74ee717b64f4822df9c.pdf
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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 College </em>(1969-1981)
Description
An account of the resource
St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>. <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981. <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
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
Santa Fe, NM
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
thecollegemagazine
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.
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
24 pages
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
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The College, December 1969
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1969-12
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Berns, Laurence
Felter, Mary P.
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Trimmer, Maurice
Sullivan, Daniel
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Volume XXI, Number 4 of The College. Published in December 1969.
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The_College_Vol_21_No_4_1969
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
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text
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The College
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�The College
Cover: Plato and Aristotle, from "The
School of Athens," by Raphael. Inside
front cover: McDowell Hall, Annapolis
campus.
The College is a publication for
friends of St. John's College and for
those who might become friends of the
College, if they came to know it. Our
aim is to indicate, within the limitations of the magazine form, why, in
our opinion, St. John's comes closer
than any other college in the nation
to being what a college should be.
If ever well-placed beacon lights
were needed by American education
it is now. By publishing articles about
the work of the College, articles reflecting the distinctive life of the mind
that is the College, we hope to add a
watt or two to the beacon light that is
St. John's.
Editor: Laurence Berns
Managing Editor: Mary P. Felter
Alumni Editor: Thomas Farran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant: Maurice Trimmer
Art Editor: Daniel Sullivan, '71
The College is published by the
Development Offices of St. John's
College, College Avenue, Annapolis,
Maryland 21404 (Julius Rosenberg,
Director), and Santa Fe, New Mexico
(Frank McGuire, Director); Member,
American Alumni Council. President,
St. John's College, Richard D. Weigle.
In the April Issue:
I
Biological Explanation, by Robert A. Neidorf.
Published four times a year in April,
July, September, and December. Second-class postage paid at Annapolis,
Maryland, and at additional mailing
offices.
A Giving of Accounts: Jacob Klein and Leo Strauss
6
April 1970
No. I
15
News on the Campuses.
18
Alumni Activities
Vol. XXII
"When Is St. John's Going to Resume Athletics?"
by Bryce Jacobsen
23
�A Giving of Accounts:
Jacob Klein and Leo Strauss
The following gtvmg of accounts took place at St.
John's College, Annapolis, on January 30, 1970. Mr. Klein
and Mr. Strauss were introduced by Dean Robert A.
Goldwin:
Mr. Klein and Mr. Strauss are going to present us
tonight with two {(accounts."
The origin of this event is, I think, quite simple. Many
of us have known them both, as our teachers, for many,
many years. In a sense we can say that we know much
about their teachings.
But, in fact, most of us know very little of the genesis
of their thought. And it occurred to us that it would be,
very simply, enlightening, to hear from them their own
accounts of the origin and development of their thoughts
in those matters of greatest interest to us, their students ....
It is arranged that Mr. Klein will speak and then Mr.
Strauss will speak. Then we will have questions, in our
accustomed style.
Mr. Klein
This meeting has two reasons, one is accidental, the
other is important. The first is the fact (and any fact is
some kind of accident) that Mr. Strauss and I happen to
have known each other closely, and have been friends for
50 years, and happen both to be now in Annapolis at St.
John's College. The other reason, the important one, is
that Mr. Strauss is not too well known in this community
and that we as a real community of learners should begin
to understand better why he is now a member of this
community. We thought it might be not too bad an idea,
although a somewhat embarrassing one, to tell you what
we have learned in our lives, what preoccupied us and
what still preoccupies us. Dead Week might perhaps
indeed provide the right opportunity, the kairos, to do
that. I shall begin.
Up to my twenty-fifth year I had one great difficulty.
I was a student, and so was Mr. Strauss-we studied at
the same university-, and I studied all kinds of things,
something called philosophy, and mathematics, and
physics, and I did that quite superficially. But what preoccupied me mostly during those years was this: whatever
thought I might have, and whatever interest I might have
in anything, seemed to me to be located completely
within me, so that I always felt that I could not really
understand anything outside me, could not understand
anything uttered or written by another person. I felt that
I was in a kind of vicious circle, out of which I could find
no escape. I wrote a dissertation, which is not worth the
paper on which it was written, obtained my Ph.D. degree,
and then after a short while, returned to studies.
Now, while Mr. Strauss and I were studying we had
many, I should say, endless conversations about many
things. His primary interests were two questions: one, the
question of God; and two, the question of politics. These
questions were not mine. I studied, as I said, quite superficially, Hegel, mathematics, and physics. When I resumed
my studying, a certain man happened to be at the University in the little town in which I was living. This man
was Martin Heidegger. Many of you have heard his name,
and some of you might have read some of his works in
impossible English translations. I will not talk too much
about Martin Heidegger, except that I would like to say
that he is the very great thinker of our time, although
his moral qualities do not match his intellectual ones.
When I heard him lecture, I was struck by one thing: that
he was the first man who made me understand something
written by another man; namely Aristotle. It broke my
vicious circle. I felt that I could understand. Then I
began studying seriously, for myself, seriously, not superficially.
It became clear to me that one had to distinguish the
classical mode of thinking from the modern mode of
thinking. Our world and our understanding, as it is today,
is based on a certain change that occurred about 500
years ago, and this change pervades not only our thinking
but the whole world around us. It made possible one of
the greatest achievements of man, mathematical physics,
and all the auxiliary disciplines connected with it. It
made possible, what we call with a strange Latin word,
science. This science is derived from the classical mode of
thinking, but this derivation is also a dilution which blinds
our sight. My studies led me to conclude: we have to relearn what the ancients knew; we should still be able to
persist in scientific investigations, where real progress is
1
�The College
possible, although the science with which we are familiar
is also capable of regress and of bringing about a fundamental forgetfulness of most important things. As a consequence of these studies and of this understanding, a
question arose: How should people be educated?
At that time a certain political upheaval made it necessary for me to come to these United States, and to land
on the St. John's campus. This great question, how to
educate people, became suddenly a "practical" question.
I found here a man, an extraordinary man, whose name
you all know, Scott Buchanan. He was also struggling
with this question, as he had been struggling all his life.
Since then, as the Dean told you, I have stayed here on
this campus.
Mr. Strauss, meanwhile, worked on his own, tenaciously,
indefatigably, and in an exemplary way. His erudition, his
zeal, his tenacity brought fruit-resplendent fruit. As so
many others, I learned from him. There are indeed, I
think, differences between us, although it is not quite
clear to me in what they consist. And I do think that at
this point it is not too important to find out what they
are. Mr. Strauss might allude to them.
Mr. Strauss
I must begin with an introduction to my introduction.
Some faculty members, I was told, had misgivings about
this meeting. The only ones which are justified concern
this question: Is it proper for people to talk about themselves in public? The general answer is: no. But there are
exceptions. First, what is true of men in general is not
equally true of old men. Second, and above all, people
may talk about their thoughts concerning matters of
public concern, and virtue is a matter of public concern.
Those thoughts, it is true, are connected with our lives
and I for one will have to say something about my life.
But this is of interest even to me only as a starting point
of considerations, of studies, which I hope are intelligible
to those who do not know my starting point. Why then
speak of one's life at all? Because the considerations at
which I arrived are not necessarily true or correct; my life
may explain my pitfalls.
The subject is the relations between Klein and me, i.e.,
our agreements and our differences. In my opinion we are
closer to one another than to anyone else in our generation. Yet there are differences. I wish to learn from Klein
how he sees these differences. It is possible that our disagreements have something to do with the differences of
our temperaments or humors. It is more helpful and
worthy, however, if I tell the tellable story of my life
with special regard to how Klein affected it. I must warn
you: I may commit errors of memory. Apart from this I
shall not always keep to the chronological order.
I was brought up in a conservative, even orthodox
Jewish home somewhere in a rural district of Germany.
The "ceremonial'' laws were rather strictly observed but
2
there was very little Jewish knowledge. In the Gymnasium I became exposed to the message of German
humanism. Furtively I read Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.
When I was 16 and we read the Laches in school, I
formed the plan, or the wish, to spend my life reading
Plato and breeding rabbits while earning my livelihood
as a rural postmaster. Without being aware of it, I had
moved rather far away from my Jewish home, without any
rebellion. When I was 17, I was converted to Zionismto simple, straightforward political Zionism.
When I went to the University I tended towards the
study of philosophy. For reasons of local proximity I went
to the University of Marburg which had been the seat
and center of the neo-Kantian school of Marburg, founded
by Hermann Cohen. Cohen attracted me because he was
a passionate philosopher and a Jew passionately devoted
to Judaism. Cohen was at that time no longer alive and
his school was in a state of disintegration. The disintegration was chiefly due to the emergence and ever increasing
power of phenomenology-an approach opened up by
Husser!. Husser! told me a few years later, the Marburg
school begins with the roof while he begins with the
foundation. But also: Cohen belonged definitely to the
pre-war world. This is true also of Husser!. Mosc characteristic of the post-war world was the resurgence of
theology: Karl Barth. (The Preface to the first edition of
his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans is of great
importance also to non-theologians: it sets forth the
principles of an interpretation that is concerned exclusively with the subject matter as distinguished from historical interpretation.) Wholly independently of Barth
Jewish theology was resurrected from a deep slumber by
Franz Rosenzweig, a highly gifted man whom I greatly
admired to the extent to which I understood him.
It was in Marburg in 1920 that I met Klein for the
first time. He stood out among the philosophy students
not only by his intelligence but also by his whole appearance: he was wholly non-provincial in a wholly provincial
environment. I was deeply impressed by him and attracted
to him. I do not know whether I acted merely in obedience to my duty or whether this was only a pretense: I
approached him in order to win him over to Zionism. I
failed utterly. Nevertheless, from that time on we remained in contact up to the present day.
Academic freedom meant in Germany that one could
change one's university every semester and that there were
no attendance requirements nor examinations in lecture
courses. After having received my Ph.D. degree (a disgraceful performance) in Hamburg I went to the University of Freiburg in 1922 in order to see and hear
Husser!. I did not derive great benefit from Husser!; I was
probably not mature enough. My predominant interest
was in theology: when I once asked Husser! about the
subject, he replied, "If there is a datum 'God' we shall
describe it." In his seminar on Lotze's Logic I read a paper
in the first sentence of which the expression "sense per-
�April 1970
ception" occurred. Husser! stopped me immediately, developed his analysis of sense perception and this took np
the rest of the meeting: at the end Husser! graciously
apologized. I attended regularly the lecture courses on the
Social Doctrines of the Reformation and the Enlightenment by Ebbinghaus: I still remember gratefully Ebbinghaus's lively presentation of Hobbes's doctrine; Ebbinghaus shared with Hobbes a certain boyish quality. One of
the unknown young men in Husserl's entourage was
Heidegger. I attended his lecture course from time to
time without understanding a word, but sensed that he
dealt with something of the utmost importance to man
as man. I understood something on one occasion: when
he interpreted the beginning of the Metapbysics. I had
never heard nor seen such a thing-such a thorougb and
intensive interpretation of a philosophic text. On my way
home I visited Rosenzweig and said to him that compared to Heidegger, Max Weber, till then regarded by
me as the incarnation of the spirit of science and scholarship, was an orphan child.
I disregard again the chronological order and explain in
the most simple terms why in my opinion Heidegger
won out over Husser!; he radicalized Husserl's critique of
the school of Marburg and turned it against Husser!: what
is primary is not the object of sense perception but the
things which we handle and with which we are concerned,
pragmata. What I could not stomach was his moral
teaching, for despite his disclaimer, he had such a teaching. The key term is resoluteness without any indication
as to what are the proper objects of resoluteness. There
is a straight line which leads from Heidegger's resoluteness to his siding with the so-called Nazis in 1933. After
that I ceased to take any interest in him for about two
decades.
To return to 1922, the resurgence of theology, of what
sometimes was even called orthodoxy, was in fact a profound innovation. This innovation had become necessary
because the attack of the Enlightenment on the old
orthodoxy had not been in every respect a failure. I
wished to understand to what extent it was a failure and
to what extent it was not. The classical statement on this
subject in Hegel's Phenomenology of the Mind had become questionable because Hegel's whole position had
been called into question by the new theology. One had to
descend to a level which is, in the good and the bad sense,
less sophisticated than Hegel's. The classic document of
the attack on orthodoxy within Judaism, but not only
within Judaism, is Spinoza's Tbeological Political Treatise.
Spinoza's Treatise had been subjected to a fierce criticism
by Cohen-a criticism which was impressive because
Cohen was entirely free from the idolatry of Spinoza as
the God-intoxicated thinker but it was nevertheless inadequate. In order to form an independent judgment I
began, therefore, a fresh study of the Tbeological Political
Treatise. In this study I was greatly assisted by Lessing,
especially his theological writings, some of them with
forbidding titles. Incidentally, Lessing is also the author of
the only improvised live dialogue on a philosophic subject
known to me. Lessing was always at my elbow. T11is meant
that I learned more from him than I knew at that time.
As I came to see later Lessing had said everything I had
found out about the distinction between exoteric and
esoteric speech and its grounds.
In 1925 Heidegger came to Marburg. Klein attended his
classes regularly, and he was, naturally, deeply impressed
by him. But he did not become a Heideggerian. Heidegger's work required and included what he called
Destruktion of the tradition. ( Destruktion is not quite so
bad as destruction. It means taking down, the opposite
of construction.) He intended to uproot Greek philosophy,
especially Aristotle, but this presupposed the laying bare
of its roots, the laying bare of it as it was in itself and
not as it had come to appear in the light of the tradition
and of modern philosophy. Klein was more attracted by
the Aristotle brought to light and life by Heidegger than
by Heidegger's own philosophy. Later Klein turned to the
study of Plato in which. he got hardly any help from
Heidegger. Klein convinced me of two things. First, the
one thing needed philosophically is in the first place a
return to, a recovery of, classical philosophy; second, the
way in which Plato is read, especially by professors of
philosophy and by men who do philosophy, is wholly
inadequate because it does not take into account the
dramatic character of the dialogues, also and especially of
those of their parts which look almost like philosophic
treatises. The classical scholar Friedlander had seen this
to some extent, but Friedlander had no inkling of what
Plato meant by philosophy. Klein and I differ somewhat
in our ways of reading Plato but I have never been able
to find out precisely what that difference is. Perhaps the
following remarks are helpful.
T11e first offshoot of Klein's Platonic studies is his
work on Greek logistics and the genesis of modern algebra
-a work which I regard as unrivalled in the whole field
of intellectual history, at least in our generation.
While Klein was engaged in this work, I continued my
study of Spinoza's Treatise from which I had been led to
Hobbes, on the one hand, and to Maimonides on the
other. Maimonides was, to begin with, wholly unintelligible to me. I got the first glimmer of light when I
concentrated on his prophetology and, therefore, the
prophetology of the Islamic philosophers who preceeded
him. One day when reading in a Latin translation
Avicenna's treatise, On the Division of the Sciences, I
came across this sentence (I quote from memory): the
standard work on prophecy and revelation is Plato's Laws.
Then I began to begin to understand Maimonides's
prophetology and ,eventually, as I believe, the whole Guide
of tbe Perplexed. Maimonides never calls himself a philosopher; he presents himself as an opponent of the
philosophers. He used a kind of writing which is in the
precise sense of the term, exoteric. When Klein had read
3
�The College
the manuscript of my essay on the literary character of the
Guide of the Perplexed, he said, "We have rediscovered
exotericism." To this extent we completely agreed. But
there was from the beginning this difference between us:
that I attached much greater importance than Klein did
and does to the tension between philosophy and the city,
even the best city.
I arrived at a conclusion that I can state in the form
of a syllogism: Philosophy is the attempt to replace
opinion by knowledge; but opinion is the element of the
city, hence philosophy is subversive, hence the philosopher
must write in such a way that he will improve rather
than subvert the city. In other words the virtue of the
philosopher's thought is a certain kind of mania while the
virtue of the philosopher's public speech is sophrosyne.
Philosophy is as such trans-political, trans-religious, and
trans-moral but the city is and ought to be moral and
religious. In the words of Thomas Aquinas only reason
informed by faith knows that God must be worshipped,
and the intellectual virtues with the exception of prudence do not presuppose moral virtue. To illustrate this
point, moral man, merely moral man, the kaloskagathos in
the common meaning of the term, is not simply closer
to the philosopher than a man of the dubious morality of
Alcibiades.
This view of philosophy was derived from my study of
pre-modern philosophy. It implies that modern philosophy
has a radically different character. In modern times the
gulf between philosophy and the city was bridged, or
believed to have been bridged by two innovations: 1)
the ends of the philosopher and the non-philosopher are
identical, because philosophy is in the service of the
relief of man's estate or "science for the sake of power";
2) philosophy can fulfill its salutary function only if its
results are diffused among the non-philosophers, if popular
enlightenment is possible. The high point was reached
in Kant's teaching on the primacy of practical, i.e., moral
reason; a teaching prepared to some extent by Rousseau:
the one thing needful is a good will and of a good will
all men are equally capable. If we call moralism the view
that morality or moral virtue is the highest, I am doubtful
if it occurs in antiquity at all.
I was confirmed in my concentration on the tension
between philosophy and the polis, i.e., on the highest
theme of political philosophy by this consideration. What
distinguishes present day philosophy in its highest form,
in its Heideggerian form, from classical philosophy is its
historical character; it presupposes the so-called historical
consciousness. It is therefore necessary to understand the
partly hidden roots of that consciousness. Up to the
present day when we call a man a historian without
qualification (like economic historian, cultural historian,
etc.) we mean a political historian. Politics and political
philosophy is the matrix of the historical consciousness.
4
•
SELECTION FROM THE QUESTION PERIOD
Question: Concerning the difference between Mr. Klein
and Mr. Strauss.
Mr. Klein: I do suppose that his emphasis on the
political aspect of our lives, which can never be disregarded, of course, is something I do not quite agree with.
On the other hand, we do agree that if there is philosophizing, it is a completely immoderate undertaking, that
cannot find, ultimately, its goal, although one has to
persist in it. Now where the difference here is, is really
not quite clear.
Mr. Strauss: ... I believe that there is another way of
stating the difference. Mr. Klein and I differ regarding
the status of morality.
Mr. Klein: (Laughter) I am not entirely certain of that.
That's all I can say. \Veil, I will add something to that.
And that is again a question of a difference of emphasis.
I think I wouldn't emphasize it so much, the morality of
man, but I do think that man ought to be moral.
Mr. Strauss: Yes-sure. I did not mean that when I
spoke of our difference. I think that in your scheme of
things morality has a higher place than in my scheme.
Mr. Klein: I really don't think so. Why do you say that?
Mr. Strauss: Because we have frequently had quite a
few conversations . . . now and then, and one general
formula which suggested itself to me was that you attach
a higher importance to morality, as morality, than I do.
Now, let me explain this. That the philosophic life,
especially as Plato and Aristotle understood it, is not
possible without self-control and a few other virtues almost
goes without saying. If a man is habitually drunk, and so
on, how can he think? But the question is, if these virtues are understood only as subservient to philosophy and
for its sake, then that is no longer a moral understanding
of the virtues.
Mr. Klein: That may be. (Tape break)
Mr. Strauss: ... a statement by a modern extremist, but
who had a marvelous sense for Greek thought, Nietzsche
-in his Genealogy of Morals, third treatise, "\Vhat is
the Significance of Ascetic Ideals," he explains, why is a
philosopher ascetic? And he makes this clear, that he is
ascetic. And, he says, that is not different from the
asceticism of a jockey, who in order to win a race must
live very restrainedly, but that is wholly unimportant to
the jockey, what is important is to win the race. If one
may compare low to high things, one may say similarly
of the philosopher, what counts is thinking and investigating and not morality. Of course the word morality is
a "bad word" because it has so many connotations which
are wholly alien to the ancients, but, I think for provisional purposes, we can· accept it.
Mr. Klein: If there's something that I learned from
Plato, or that I think that I learned from Plato, is to
�April 1970
understand that nothing can be-nothing can be-that
isn't in some way-and that's very difficult-good. That's
why I do understand why Mr. Strauss says that the
philosopher is in a certain way superior to the concern
about morality, but I can not agree that the ultimate
consideration of things, as far as one is capable of doing
that, ever, ever, frees men of the compulsion to act rightly.
Mr. Strauss: Yes, I think that you believe that. Yes, that
is what I meant.
Questioner: Of what use is the city to the philosopher?
Mr. Strauss: Without cities, no philosophers. They are
the conditions.
Mr. Klein: You wouldn't deny that, would you?
Questioner: But it seems to me that the city provides
for the needs of the body.
Mr. Strauss: Yes, sure.
Questioner: But does it provide for the needs of the
soul?
Mr. Strauss: To some extent, sure.
Questioner: Is it necessary for its existence?
Mr. Strauss: To some extent, obviously. In one way or
another, even if there is no compulsory education, the
city educates its citizens.
Questioner: Wouldn't the philosopher get his education
from nature?
Mr. Strauss: His first education, surely not. His first
education he would usually get from his father and
mother, and other relatives, that is to say, from the city.
Questioner: How does it follow from the saying that
every thing that is, is somehow or other good, that a
man should act rightly?
Mr. Klein: I would answer that very simply: He must
try to be what he is. And, by the way, to be a man, a
human being, is not a simple matter. The trouble with
us human beings is that we are not quite complete,
neither when we are born nor when we die.
Jacob Klein has been a Tutor at St. John's College since 1938, and
was Dean of the College from 1949 to 1958. Born in Russia, he
studied in Germany. He is the author of Greek Mathematical Thought
and the Origin of Algebra {translation, M.I.T. Press, 1968), and Commentary on Plato's Meno {University of North Carolina Press, 1965).
Leo Strauss is the first Scott Buchanan Distinguished Scholar in
Residence of St. John's College. He is also Professor Emeritus of
Political Philosophy of the University of Chicago. His works include
Natural Right and History (University of Chicago Press, 1953); What
Is Political Philosophy? (Free Press, 1959); Thoughts on Machiavelli
(Free Press, 1958); "How to Study the Guide of the Perplexed," in
the translation of the same of the University of Chicago Press, 1963;
Persecution and the Art of Writing (Free Press, 1952) containing
"The Literary Character of the Guide of the Perplexed"; and Socrates
and Aristophanes (Basic Books, 1966).
5
�Biological Explanation*
BY ROBERT NEIDORF
This paper discusses an old but continuing controversy
in the philosophy of biology. It is the controversy between those who claim that purpose and action for an end
is present in the behavior of animals and in the development of their internal structures, and those who claim that
it is inaccuracy of thought or plain superstition to speak
that way. This second group I will call mechanists. The
first group used to be called vitalists, but for reasons that
will emerge I do not wish to use that term, since it
carries certain unfortunate associations. The paper falls
into two parts. The first is analytical and destructive; the
second suggestive, vague, constructive, much weaker as
argument, and to me much mor:e interesting.
I. Living things, especially animals, have incredibly
complex internal structures; their organs, tissues, and cells
seem to be arranged in patterns which subserve the
growth, maintenance or reproduction of the organisms in
which they occur. So thoroughgoing is the apparent functional relation between the structures and their containing organisms, that the whole presents the appearance
of a miracle. We see nothing like it in the rocks, the
weather or the stars. It is then natural to suppose that
plants and animals cannot be understood in the same
way as earth, cloud and heavens.
How then can the organic world be understood? One
might think of material organisms as governed by one or
more Intelligences that are non-material, spiritm1.l, in some
way separate from the material organisms they govern.
This hypothesis is usually called vitalism, and it is not
susceptible to investigation by familiar methods; for this
reason I lay it aside, but without prejudice. The obvious
alternative is to think of governing Intelligences that
are natural parts or aspects of animal material. Again
there may be one or many, and the notion of a plurality
of such Intelligences is not inconsistent with their subsumption in some fashion under a single world-embracing
* A lecture
6
delivered at St. John's College in Santa Fe, April, 1968.
Intelligence. For simplicity, I concentrate in what follows
on the hypothesis that there are many, each associated
with a definite material organism. In this view the term
Intelligence has to be understood metaphorically, since
we do not find in plants or animals any evidence of
deliberation or ability to grasp a universal. The hypothesis
therefore takes this form: in the plant and animal worlds,
vital processes are governed or at least influenced by some
inarticulate and usually unconscious striving toward the
achievement of a goal specific to the organism-that goal
being the development and maintenance of just those
structures and activities that are typical of the species, and
the production of further instances of their own kind.
This purposive striving is simply a characteristic or quality
of the kind of matter that we encounter in the organic
world, namely organic matter. This, as I understand it,
is the core of the view held by Galen, and before him
by Aristotle, a view now widely rejected as metaphysical,
anthropomorphic, superstitious, sentimental, dogmatical,
and-worst of >~11-prescientific. I call it organicism.
Part of the contemporary attitude of disdain toward
organicism is based on evolution, for it seems that evolution makes it possible to understand the organic world
in precisely the same way as the inorganic; that is, as a
series of events governed by a blind mechanical causality.
But here we come upon a surprise. At the very beginning
of The Origin of Species, Darwin quotes Aristotle approvingly. He suggests that the principle of natural selection is
"shadowed forth" in Aristotle, and he cites a passage from
Physics, II, 8, which I give in the Oxford translation:
Why should not nature work, not for the sake of something, nor because it is better so, but just as the sky rains,
not in order to make the corn grow, but of necessity?
What is drawn up must cool, and what has been cooled
must become water and descend, the result of this being
that the corn grows. Similarly if a man's crop is spoiled
on the threshing-floor, the rain did not fall for tl1e sake
of this-in order that the crop might be spoiled-but
that result just followed. Why then should it not be the
�April 1970
same with the parts in nature, e.g., that our teeth should
come up of necessity-the front teeth sharp, fitted for
tearing, the molars broad and useful for grinding down
the food-since they did not arise for this end, but it
was merely a coincident result; and so with all other parts
in which we suppose that there is purpose? Wherever
then all the parts came about just what they would have
been if they had come to be for an end, such things survived, being organized spontaneously in a fitting way;
whereas those which grow otherwise perished and continued to perish.
Evidently Aristotle is here expounding a view, attributed
to Empedocles, which has something in common with
Darwin's. But Aristotle does not believe it, as we see in
the passage immediately following:
It is impossible that this should be the true view. For
teeth and all other natural things either invariably or
normally come about in a given way; but of not one of the
results of chance or spontaneity is this true. We do not
abscribe to chance or mere coincidence the frequency of
rain in winter, but frequent rain in summer we do; nor
heat in the dogdays, but only it we have it in winter. It
then it is agreed that things are either the result of
coincidence or for an end, and these [i.e., the teeth] cannot be the result of coincidence or spontaneity, it follows
that they must be for an end.... Therefore action for an
end is present in things which come to be and are by
nature.
The argument may be restated thus: if a structure serves
a purpose, the series of events causally antecedent to the
structure are either relevant to the purpose or not. If
not, they do not often realize the purpose, as we see
empirically. But the teeth almost always do. Hence the
process of eruption of the teeth is relevant to the purpose,
is "for an end."
We must ask how a modem biologist of the mechanistic stripe would reply to this. No doubt he will point
out that Aristotle has quite missed the point of the
evolution theory. Evolution, he might say, does not
invoke coincidence to explain the eruption of these particular teeth in this particular animal, but to explain
the general fact that animals of such and such a kind
have teeth of such and such a kind. The first teeth
arose coincidentally, as the outcome of mechanical causes
unrelated to nutrition; but since they did serve the nutritive function, the animal possessing them enjoyed a competitive advantage, and so on with a familiar story. Ultimately, teeth-not just these teeth but teeth in general
-appear on the scene coincidentally; particular teeth,
other than the first, arise by the operation of mechanical
necessity flowing from a mechanism of inheritance. When
we take this view, further shifts of emphasis occur, for
then Aristotle's insistence that "action for an end is
present in things that come to be . . . by nature" now
appears superfluous; the mechanical causes explain everything.
So Aristotle's view is refuted or outflanked by shifting
the subject to a wider context. But we have not heard
the end of him, for his argument can also be shifted to
that wider context and repeated. Thus: throughout the
animal and plant worlds we see structures serving the
accomplishment of what look like natural purposes. The
occurrence of structure functionally adapted to ends is the
general rule, not the exception. Hence that general fact
cannot be the result of coincidence; therefore action for
an end exists in things that come to be by nature. It does
not matter at this point whether we hold, with Aristotle,
that species are fixed and have always existed much as
they are now, or whether we think with the evolutionist
that species begin in time and evolve one from another.
The general fact is the existence of functionally adapted
structure, and that general fact has to be explained by
acknowledging the existence of action for an end. To
put the same point differently, the mechanist cannot
prevail by referring the development of adapted teeth to
an ingenious genetic mechanism, for we still have to ex~
plain the functional appropriateness of that mechanism.
Thus Aristotle's argument has some residual forces despite
evolution, and we see that the argument between biological mechanists and their opponents is really independent
of the fact of evolution, which could have been inferred
from the fact that the controversy antedates Darwin by
two millennia.
Thus generalized, the Aristotelian argument on behalf
of action for an end in nature is I think conclusive, pro-
vided we admit that there are such things as ends. So
our question is now disentangled from the confusing
context of evolution, and takes a simple form: is there
such a thing as end or purpose in animals?
For Aristotle it was past doubt that the normal series of
events in the life of a normal living creature represented
an approach to a "completion," then a recession from that
completion in senility and death. The completion itself
is defined by the disposition to perform, and the ability
to execute, a variety of complicated and highly integrated
processes, including self-maintenance and reproduction.
Except when he is in a theological mood-which is for
him a strained one-it is no use asking him what the
completed mature animal is for. It is for itself, for its
specific normal processes. As the Zen Buddhists have it,
the purpose of a flower is simply to open, a truthif it is one-that cuts clean across the flower's reproductive function. For the mechanist, the attribution of the
term "completion" to the adult animal is a conventional
or subjective mode of speech; for him there is just a
physico-chemical system passing through varying stages of
activity and stability, and it makes no objective sense to
single out any one stage as a privileged one, worthy to be
called the completion or the desired end.
How can the controversy between mechanism and
organicism be decided? I will review five different attempts
to decide the issue. The first three are attempts to come
7
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to a decision on empirical grounds, the fourth on pragmatic grounds, and the last on analytical grounds.
First empirical attempt: someone asks me whether
animals have completions or ends and I try to find out
by cutting up the animal, looking for the end or the
directive agent for all the world as if I were looking for
the vermiform appendix. This is clearly wrong. It is as if
someone tried to find the form in matter with the help of
a microscope.
Second empirical attempt: are there phenomena inconsistent with one theory or the other? And first, are
there things that animals do that chemical systems cannot? If there are, it would overthrow the mechanist view.
No one has yet built a tiger in a laboratory, but there
seems to be no limit to the extent to which machines can
imitate macroscopic biological behavior, and no limit to
the ingenuity of biochemists in synthesizing almost-biological microsystems. It wonld be bad tactics to hang
the organistic philosophy on the prediction that machines
cannot do X, Y or Z; name it, and someone builds a
machine that can do it. And it would be bad logic to
hang it on the prediction that no one will ever bnild a
machine that can do everything animals can, for this might
be true as an accidental matter, even though animals
were just machines.
Next, are there hard facts, real or imaginary, that conld
overthrow organicism? I can only think of one that has
been proposed, and that is the imaginary fact of the
laboratory production of a genuine animal, fertile and
true-breeding. But I think it is wrong to imagine that
this would refute the organic view. It would only show
that animals can be produced in a peculiar manner.
Roughly half of the higher animals-the female halfpossess the capacity to synthesize animals from relatively
simple chemicals; only the process is so usual that we
fail to dwell on its truly remarkable and very puzzling
characteristics, and in the human case we often take
pains to prevent it.
Third empirical attempt: is one of the two views more
adequate than the other? I.e., are there phenomena that
can be accounted for under the one theory that the other
theory must ignore as unexplainable? Again, probably not.
The organicist says that stems grow up in order to put
the leaves into the light and air. The mechanist discovers
growth-controlling fluids generated in the tip which flow
differentially down the stalk depending on its orientation,
thus insuring that the stem grows upward. The mechanist
now claims to have explained the directionality of stem
growth, which his opponent could not do. His opponent
replies that any purpose has to be effected by a mechanism, and he thanks the mechanist for having found the
relevant one in this case.
Next, are there phenomena that can be explained
teleologically but not mechanically? Again I think not.
I think anything can be explained mechanically, but to
explain why requires a digression, for here I must explain
8
what I understand by mechanical explanation. What
follows is a simplified version of an account found in
Ernest Nagel's book, The Structure of Science.
I propose that mechanical explanation of a system
involves four conditions. ( 1) The system or phenomenon
enjoys momentary states or conditions defined by a finite
collection of simultaneous momentary qualities; for example, in Newtonian mechanics the state of a material
particle is defined by its location and its instantaneous
momentum. (2) There is a formulated procedure for
observing and measuring these qualities. ( 3) There are
mathematical functions which connect the states of the
system at one time with its states at other times in such
a way that, given the state at some chosen initial time, one
may in principle predict the state at any future time.
(4) The system behaves in accordance with these predictions. Some philosophers hold that this is the general
pattern of all explanation, with some variation in the
definition of state to allow for statistical and probability
considerations that are prominent in some kinds of systems. As might be expected, such philosophers tend to be
hostile to teleological explanation. Mechanical explanation understood in this way is historically linked to an
atomistic and chemical understanding of nature, which
·thus leans heavily on the ideal of prediction.
The 19th century biologist Hans Driesch believed that
certain biological phenomena associated with embryological development and regeneration of lost members
could not in principle be understood mechanically. But
the history of biology passed him by and later workers,
mostly enthusiastic mechanists, discovered mechanisms
of heredity and growth control of a subtlety and complexity apparently undreamed of by Driesch. I believe
this is typical of a general pattern; phenomena at one
time inexplicable and unpredictable except from the
teleological point of view later yield to mechanical explanation. One might even suggest that the mechanistic
program is doomed to succeed; for given any regular
phenomenon, it may just be a matter of ingenuity to
invent a mechanical system with suitable state-definitions
and time-dependent mathematical functions that "explains" the phenomenon.
Having failed to decide the controversy by empirical
means, I now turn to a pragmatic attempt. That is, we
might give the palm to whichever view seems most useful
in generating interesting research problems and useful
medical devices. At first glance the mechanist has the
advantage here; certainly those university biologists who
espouse some form of mechanism are also those who have
the biggest buildings, the most expensive equipment, and
the greatest number of Ph.D. students. They also have
a rhetorical point to make, for they tend to claim that if
you are satisfied with teleological explanations you will
be uninterested in finding mechanisms, thus choking off
inquiry. But neither Aristotle nor Galen deny the presence
of the importance of mechanisms, they only deny the
�April 1970
adequacy of mechanistic explanations in isolation. Yes,
says the mechanist, but we have made great strides in
biology precisely by ignoring the teleological approach; we
never use the concept of purpose or end. Then, asks the
organicist, why is your literature choked with the words
purpose, function, in order to, and so on? Oh well, comes
the casual reply, that is just a short-hand for a more
elaborate series of statements; we all understand that.
But do we? The attempt to decide the issue pragmatically ends in confusion, as is perhaps appropriate for
all pragmatic attempts. We now find the mechanist using
teleological notions, but claiming that in a fundamental
sense he is not really using them. We must therefore
examine the attempt to rewrite all teleological propositions in the form of non-teleological propositions; for it
is .essential to the mechanist position that such rewriting
must always in principle be possible.
Space forbids a detailed presentation of any of the
many recent attempts to carry out this program. Perhaps
the most characteristic effort was published in 1950 by
A. Sommerhof in a book entitled Analytical Biology. Sommerhof takes it as axiomatic that living systems are
characterized by behavior and structure-growth which is
adaptive; that is, conducive to some goal defined as a
frequent, typical, or otherwise important state of the
system. His problem is to define the apparently teleological term adapted in non-teleological terms. The analysis
is complex, and colored by a full sense of the difficulties
of the problem. He decides that a given response in a
living system is adapted if and only if the following conditions hold. ( 1) The response will, in conjunction with
a given environmental context, lead to the goal. (2)
The response and its corresponding environmental context
are each members of ensembles of real or imaginary responses and contexts, correlated with each other one-toone, and such that any correlated pair will lead to the
same goal. ( 3) The response enjoys a measure of causal
independence from its corresponding context; rather, the
response and its corresponding context are both outcomes
of one set of prior causal conditions. (4) It is possible to
say that, had the prior conditions been such as to produce
a different environmental context, they would also necessarily have produced a different (but corresponding) response.
This schema provides a definite meaning for the assertion that a response is adapted, yet there is no reference
to use, purpose, or striving. When we say a response is
adapted we are referring in a short-hand way to its complex relations with other states real and ideal. What
explains the response is the ordinary causal mechanism
that produces it; and this latter is of course understood
mechanically, in terms of disconnected momentary states
related only by time-dependent mathematical functions.
But here I must express a misgiving. Let us assumealthough it is arguable-that Sommerhof's analysis permits
us to pass from any statement about goals to a complex of
other statements expressed in strict mechanical terminology. Is this a translation? If it is, the process should work
in reverse, and any biological situation that falls under
the Sommerhof schema should be equally describable in
terms of goals and purposes. I think that animal death
is a case that falls under the schema, for in any environment that we know the higher animals all exhibit longterm processes leading to death. But no one will say that
death is a goal, and that aging processes are responses
adapted thereto. Sommerhof concedes this, and rejects
death as a suitable goal-state on further grounds. It is
then a matter for further discussion as to whether the
rejection-criteria are-or can be-stated in purely mechanistic terms. My misgiving rests on the suspicion (perhaps
unwarranted) that biologists characteristically select goalstates for causal analysis through a sense of their subjectmatter that lies quite outside Sommerhof's schema, and
quite outside any possible cluster of purely mechanical
meanings. If so, Sommerhof's schema, however supplemented, is a way of deducing many useful mechanical
statements from a few teleological statements, but it is
not a translation.
This leads to what I think is the fundamental discomfort that will be felt by many persons, myself included,
9
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in the face of an approach like Sommerhof's. Even conceding that it is possible to replace all of our customary
uses of teleological terms with strictly equivalent mechanical terms, we might still feel that the result could
only provide the bare bones of an adequate description.
Mechanical terms do not describe the states of an organism at various times as truly related to each other, but as
discrete moments tied together by empirical mathematical
functions. Differently put, a mechanical description like
Sommerhof's is not dynamic, but kinematic; it has no
room for the forces, tensions, and pressures that we think
operate in the organic world; it only tells us about
static states that appear and disappear under a purely
adventitious order. Like the cinema, it suggests that
what appears to be dynamic and flowing is actually a
series of static tableaux. Of course certain kinds of changes
in these successive tableaux could be labeled as forces, but
this would not satisfy the objector, because he is convinced that something goes on in the animal world
analogous to what he feels when he senses internal muscular stress, the restlessness of a frustrated bodily drive,
or the quiescence of satisfaction. No doubt this objection
is anthropomorphic; it remains to be seen if it is on that
account vicious.
What I am finally questioning is the whole tradition
of describing nature and animal life in terms of disconnected momentary states, a tradition which derives on
its epistemological side from Hume and on its ontological
side from 17th century science. It is a tradition which
insists that the fundamental entities of the world, or of
our perceptive experience, are distinct items not related
to each other except in space and time, and internally
homogeneous. Thus, for Hume, any experience of feeling
which differs from moment to moment is not one experience, but two. He says, "Whatever is distinguishable is
separable." And for a devotee of Newtonian particle
physics (which Newton was not), any change in the condition of an object has to be understood as a translocation
of constituent particles, where each particle remains unaffected by its motion and is really just a series of instantaneous acts of occupation of points in space. The atoms
do not and cannot acknowledge each other by any internal
alteration 1 nor can one moment in an atom's life acknowl~
edge the existence of past or future moments.
II. Having failed to decide the original controversy by
any of the approaches made so far, the suspicion arises
that we are dealing with a pseudo-problem generated by
inattention to the meaning of the term purpose. Some
would say that we should read the meaning of purpose
from the animal world, where we see structures serving
ends. Since it is just the suitability of this posture which is
under examination, we cannot ]Ocate the meaning there
without begging the question. Another source for the
meaning of purpose rests in deliberative human experience;
but it seems clear that animals do not enjoy such experi-
10
ences. It is often maintained these these are the only two
meanings for purpose; in which case the term is either
applied to the animal world by convention and vacuously,
or we have to impute thought to animals. But I think
there is a third source.
Let me go back to David Hume, who is the outstanding
exponent of the view that our experience is made up
of disconnected bits and pieces carrying no intrinsic order.
If under suitable circumstances I were to shout Brutus,
most listeners could be relied upon to shout back Caesar.
This is a kind of order among our perceptions that Hume
must account for. He would point out that when we first
meet Brutus we have no inclination to think of Caesar;
that comes only after we have read Plutarch and Shakespeare. For Hume this shows that the psychological relation between imagined-Brutus and imagined-Caesar is not
part of the perception we call imagined-Brutus; for if it
were, it would have been there from the beginning. He
accounts for the association by invoking a force of the
mind which is trained, like Pavlov's dogs, to repeat in
imagination those conjunctions of perceptions which
have been forced upon it by past experience. This associative force of the mind is inexplicable in Hume's system; it reveals itself as a felt tension under certain circumstances and must be accepted as brute fact.
I would draw from these psychic phenomena a different lesson. Instead of saying that imagined-Brutus is associated with imagined-Caesar by a mind-force, we may
say that the content of the present perception "imaginedBrutus" is truly connected to, stressed by, influenced by
our past reading, so that it is now essentially and intrinsically related to the present perception "imaginedCaesar." After reading Plutarch, the experience "imaginedBrutus-imagined-Caesar" is not two experiences, but one,
with distinguishable but inseparable aspects. It is only
a dogma to assume that the presence within the experience of disting,uishable aspects must be explained by
breaking the experience into a conjunction of separate
experiences, as Hume would have it. We are now spared
the embarrassment of a mysterious mind exerting curious
forces on its own perceptions, a mind which Hume in
other contexts insists is nothing more than the collection
of its perceptions.
The same point may be urged with the aid of a sketch
that has appeared frequently in the works of Gestalt
psychologists and recent philosophers. If you focus to the
right of the central circle and say "antelope," you see one
thing. If you focus to the left of the central circle and
say "bird," you see something else. We have to distinguish carefully between the perceptions and what is supposedly really there on the sheet that bears the diagram.
What is on the sheet is a pictorially neutral and unchanging pattern of ink-grains. But the existence of that unchanging thing is inferred from our perceptions, and it is
a mistake to think a priori that our perceptions must have
the self-contained neutrality that is in the inferred physical
�April 1970
0
reality. It is therefore a mistake to suppose that there
must be one unchanging perception upon which the mind
puts different interpretations at different times; there are
many perceptions (loosely said to be perceptions of the
same thing), spread out in time although bearing a family
resemblance, and substantially influenced by other perceptions lodged in the same biography.
If it will be allowed that we have perceptions of sensation and imagination that cannot be analyzed atomistically, let me assume that the same holds for some of our
emotions. I will then use the word feeling to refer alike
to the contents of sensation, imagination or emotion. The
next step is the claim that we have feelings which are
organized organically, in the sense that there are indissoluble wholes within which one may sometimes discriminate tension and resolution, within which one may
sometimes truly say that this strives for that and finds
its completion therein. In a recent book, Mind: An Essay
on Human Feeling, Susan Langer argues that this is so,
and that the clearest articulation of such relations of feelings is to be found in the arts. She claims, for example,
that the relations of tension and resolution found in music
are really there as the music is felt, that they are not mere
conventional terms of harmonic theory. In her view, all
art is in part an articulation of this sort of genuine organic
relatedness found at the level of feeling. I think it evident
that such organically related feelings are found in our
responses to felt bodily drives, to love, to novels and
plays, and even to books on mathematics. Langer even
maintains that our sense of deductive logical form is derivati;<e from and dependent upon a universally shared
feeling of rightness in connection with certain verbal
relations. It is not essential to my argument to follow
her that far, but only to concede that such a thing as
irreducible qualitative "completion" exists in the life of
feeling.
If this be allowed, we advance to another thesis:-that
animals have such feelings. This should be laughable
because so obviously true, but it is wrong to underestimate
the power of scientific dogmas. One would think that anyone who has heard a dog scream would know that animals
have feelings, yet there have been biologists who argued
that vivisection without anesthesia is justified because
animals are just machines, whose screaming is strictly
analogous to squeaking gears. In any case, if animals have
feelings I assume that some of their feelings are organic
in the sense just stipulated; that is, that they sometimes
constitute wholes within which there is tension and resolution, striving and c~mpletion. Surely animals do not
attain to the levels of organic synthesis of feelings of
which humans are capable, for we have the help of paint
and canvas, drum and fife, and fairy stories; but attain it
they do.
The next step is critical. If the psychological life of an
animal is susceptible of regions of organic organization,
why not admit that the same thing holds for the animal
when viewed physically? The animal viewed physically is
just a collection of material substances, and we are here
face to face with the dogma that matter cannot feel. But
that view is linked historically to the science and philosophy of a certain time, and it seems to me silly to cling to
it if the argument leads elsewhere. The chief obstacle to
the organic view of matter comes from the fact that we
think we know what matter is, pretty much. Matter is what
comes in billiard balls, steel beams, piles of mud, pools
of water, wind on the face. Whatever it is, it neither feels
nor possesses desires; to think otherwise is to throw us
back into the world of river-gods and wind-spirits that we
have figured our way out of-thank God. But I think it
has to be observed that those who cling to a radically
inorganic view of matter have a difficulty :-they have to
account for the rise of organic feelings in animals, and
of feeling and thought in humans, and it is peculiarly
hard for them to do so. If we endorse the premise that
matter consists only of atoms going bump-bump in the
dark, it is hard to see how billions of atoms can do anything else than go bumpity-bumpity-bump in the dark,
and there is still no place for feeling, much less thought.
This difficulty is independent of the particular type of
atomic theory one holds; it arises so long as one assumes
that the fundamental constituents of matter are unalterable and internally homogeneous entities, either classical atoms or momentary system-states. Materialists of
this mechanistic persuasion usually account for feeling
and thought by assigning them to a miracle, or to a
II
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non-material substance, or by denying that science is
competent to cope with such airy things, or by denying
altogether that they have any causally significant existence.
I regard these one and all as counsels of despair.
The view I am advancing claims that matter should
not be understood as something composed of self-contained particles or momentary states; matter should be
understood as organic through and through, made up of
events or acts each enjoying temporal thickness, capable
of internal differentiation into aspects that from another
point of view may also be events or acts, related to each
other essentially rather than accidentally in space and
time; matter is more like a changing forcefield, perhaps,
than like a particle. It is further maintained on this view
that matter is sometimes capable of sustaining relations
which deser'.'e to be called tension-resolution, or strivingcompletion, and that these relations cannot be decomposed into ensembles of isolated states as in Sommerhof's
schema, but are what they are in virtue of a unique qualitative attribute that we recognize because it enters our
own experience frequently. In this view it is possible for
matter to achieve conscious feeling and thought. Compare this passage from Susan Langer's book, where she is
discussing the complexity of physical and chemical systems:
The complexity of such processes is beyond the imagination of anyone who does not know some samples of them
rather intimately; they grow up into self-sustaining
rhythms and dialectical exchanges of energy, forms and
qualities evolving and resolving, submicroscopic elements-already highly structured-merging and great
dynamisms emerging. The common-sense tenet that such
products of nature cannot attain feeling, awareness and
thougllt loses its cogency when one is confronted by the
actual intricacies of chemica] and electrochemical organization. The bridge to organism arises of itself, and the conviction that "extended substance" [i.e., matter] cannot
think and "thinking substance" cannot have materia]
properties appears as a medieval doctrine handed down to
modern philosophy in Descartes' famous dictum, and with
no firmer foundation than his word.
The traditional view has now been turned up side down.
Instead of regarding organisms as very complicated mechanisms, we regard mechanisms as tragically simple
organisms. We see that for the mechanist action for an
end was never possible in nature because in his view
action in the dynamic sense is never possible at all. The
controversy between mechanism and organicism may be
decided in favor of the latter by imposing a metaphysical
vision in which striving is present in animals because it is
potentially present everywhere. It thus turns out that we
are not discussing two contesting interpretations of experimental evidence; we are in fact discussing two con·
trary metaphysical visions about the basic character of
the material world. It is obvious which view I incline to,
12
and I would like to conclude by confronting the view
with three brief criticisms.
First criticism: The view is silly because it imputes
feeling to matter; the only kind of feeling we know is
conscious feeling, and while animals may share this, surely
plants and inanimate matter do not. This objection is
based on the principle that there is no such thing as
unconscious feeling. My only reply is to raise a further
question. Suppose that during a heated conversation a man
sits down beside me, so close that he crowds me on the
bench. Without interrupting the flow of words, and without becoming aware of discomfort, I move over.* I
would like to say that my motion was a response to an
unconscious feeling. I suppose a mechanist would say that
if I was not aware of any discomfort there was no such
feeling, and my motion was a kind of reflex action. That
is a possible way of describing the situation, but it seems
to me an awkward way, and in any case I do not see why
it is obvious that the situation must be described that way.
Another example: Anyone who reads a lecture at St.
John's and who survives the discussion afterwards finds
out that he holds some important beliefs of which he was
previously unaware. In general, we have no qualms about
using the notion of an unconscious belief. But the ability
to believe something is a most sophisticated human capacity; the ability to experience feelings seems far more
primordial. If the former can occur unconsciously, why
not the latter? It is an open question.
Second criticism: The view is anthropomorphic because it seeks to understand nature in terms drawn from
human experience. Reply: If you insist upon trying to
understand nature in terms entirely alien from human
experience, you will never be able to explain human experience in those alien terms, and you will then be driven
to invoke supplementary or supernatural principles. We
see this in Descartes' theory that mind and matter exist
side-by;side but independently. And we see it in Locke's
theory that feeling and thought arise as a result of the
action of matter on our brains, but how that happens is
in his view forever incomprehensible to us.
Third and final criticism: Let us grant that organicism
provides a unified scheme of explanation, even though
that scheme may be more evident in the promise than in
the execution; and let us grant that organicism is the
only or the most accessible unified scheme. Still, why
should we insist on a unified scheme at all? Perhaps the
world does consist of a brute combination of mind and
matter, which we descnbe and correlate but never render
intelligible. Perhaps the material world does consist of a
heap of disconnected atoms whose spatial relations to
each other can be summarized and predicted but never
reduced to some underlying intelligibility. Reply: In the
opening passages of Process and Reality, Whitehead gives
* TI1is example was suggested by Mr. Dean Haggard.
�April 1970
an interesting definition of an incoherent metaphysics.
He says that a metaphysical scheme is incoherent if it contains principles that can be understood in isolation from
each other, such as mind and matter, or atoms and
paths of motion. In this way he expresses his preference
for a scheme of understanding in which nothing is left
as ultimate mystery, describable but unaccountable; for an
incoherent system as he defines it is one in which the
connection or togetherness of first principles is unaccounted for. Hence, organicism, which does not seek a
simple deductive understanding of the world with everything flowing out of a single principle, but an understanding in which every principle, every experience, and
every entity is incomplete in itself and must find its com-
pletion by reference to others. There is no mundane
logic by which one can prove the superiority of such a
scheme or vision.
Robert A. Neidorf received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the
Universi,ty of Chicago and his Ph.D. degree from Yale University. From
1962 to 1964 he was a Tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis. He
was Associate Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New
York at Binghamton, 196H967. He is the author of DEDUCTIVE
FORMS: An Elementary Logic (Harper and Row, 1967), a book in·
tended to serve either as an introduction to general logic or for a first
course in .symbolic logic. Some of Mr. Neidorf's special interests have
been the history and philosophy of science, Aristotle's Ethics, et al. He
joined the faculty in Santa Fe in 1967.
With Respect to Descartes
To avoid the lie he showed great tact;
And swore sincerely by the beard he lacked.
Not false cried Many, and it was true.
Nor true saw some, but only a Few.
Centaurs prance, they lead the dance.
The god hears the vaunt from below.
Uproused he turns him to advance.
Will he come with lyre, or with bow?
-Argonides
13
�"When is St. John's Going to
Resume Athletics?"
BY BRYCE JACOBSEN
A Midshipman from the Naval Academy recently
asked me this question. Many alumni and other friends of
the College have done the same during the years that I
have been the Director of Athletics at St. John's. The
question, with its implications that I am Director of what
does not exist, or even Director of Nothing, has both
amused me, and not surprisingly, even slightly irritated
me.
That so many should still identify a college athletic
program with an intercollegiate athletic program, is rather
strange. Thirty years ago, however, not many questioned
this, among other sacred cows of American education.
President Barr had to .explain to a waiting world the
College's "revolutionary" abandonment of intercollegiate
athletics in a radio address in November, 1938. Everything he said then still rings true now. Let me quote at
some length from that memocable broadcast:
I propose to discuss an important step which St. John's
College has taken within the past ten days. Many of those
who are listening to me, including alumni members of the
College, will by now almost certainly have been told by
somebody that the College administration has abolished
athletics. Those who believed this statement should, it
seems to me, be gravely disturbed. I think I ought promptly to disabuse them. To keep the record straight, I shall
therefore first state the facts. Athletics have not been
abolished, but the College has decided that after the
close of the present academic session athletic facilities
will be increased* and at the same time will be· placed on
a strictly intramural basis .
. . . The system of intercollegiate athletics which has
developed during the past 20 years will no longer support
the prime purpose of a liberal college. I suppose I ought
to have foreseen this. But I didn't. Certainly, there have
been enough Carnegie reports, enough magazine articles
by candid writers like John Tunis to convince men of my
generation that we are sheer sentimentalists and ignoramuses if we suppose that intercollegiate athletics are the
* Emphasis supplied.
l4
(Ed.)
same thing we remember from 20 years back. They do
things better now, with Rose Bowls, Cotton Bowls, and
Sugar Bowls; with costly equipment, transcontinental
journeys, and big money; with costly coaches and costly
quarterbacks. I knew all this. The first thing I !earned
about athletics on arrival at St. John's was that we were
booked to play our unnatural rivals, Army and N.Y.U.in an effort to keep down the high cost of modern athletics by earning a good "gate." But still I thought it
might be possible to adapt intercollegiate athletics to educational ends, to pare down schedul-es, to decline with
Photo by M. E. Warren
�April 1970
thanks such games as Army and N.Y.U., and to protect
the coaches from criticism if they lost games by refusing
to hire athletes. I was mistaken.
The thing that taught me I was mistaken was what
happened when intercollegiate athletics collided with a
curriculum that really required work. . . . There is no
reason on this round earth wl1y securing a liberal education in an undergraduate college should be a less serious
business than acquiring a medica] education in a medical
school. But if it is a serious business, then it had better
steer clear of another very serious business, indeed a highly
organized "big" business, intercollegiate athletics. For
this big business has its own exigencies: those who won't
meet them had better keep out.
That big business substitutes spectator psychosis for
actual participation, cheering sections for playing teams,
an orgy of sports goods equipment for costumes fit to have
fun in, large business staffs with long-term schedules for
the old-time impromptu challenge of natural antagonists,
monotonous physical drill for ]earning to play by playing,
pressure from fellow-students for zest to play, the exhibitionism of star performers for the satisfaction of playing well because it is more fun to play a game well than
badly. The sum total of these things is hysteria, lost
motion, the death of the amateur spirit, and an athletic
system that competes with study instead of supplementing
and strengthening it.
We have all known these things for years, unless we
have been ostriches or Rip Van Winkles. But I repeat,
they don't prove fatal so long as undergraduate education
is run in low gear. In fact, I should insist again that,
so long as education is run in low gear, these things are
better than idleness. But there is something better still,
and that something is amateur athletics, amateur athletics
of a quality no college can achieve so long as it is meshed
in with the new kind of at11letics, the big-business kind.
The educational program now going on at St. John's must
have the support of amateur athletics. It must have it,
because amateur athletics is rich in terms of health,
recreation, skill, and co-ordination. To get that support,
it will expand its intramural athletics. More varieties of
sport will be offered, and more facilities. Our colleges are
often abusively called country clubs. I want to see St.
John's offer the sort of athletic facilities a good country
club offers .
. . . Sooner or later, I hope sooner, the present system
of semi-professionalized intercollegiate athletics will hang
itself. When it does, the problems that caused us to take
our present stand will disappear. When it does, we shall
doubtless play games with other colleges as naturally as
15
�The College
Phot{} by M. E. Warren
earned them. It was always, for some of us, one of the
highlights of the year. Somewhere in the intervening years,
sad to say, this tradition was lost.
Now that the history of the athletic program has been
presented, let us examine the program itself in some
detail. There are several areas to be considered. First, we
maintain for the use of the College various fields, courts,
and a gymnasium. There is widespread use of these facilities on an unorganized basis-persons simply coming to
the gym to individually exercise, or to pick up any
competition they can find in individual or team sports.
The activity at this level is quite high.
Second, we run tournaments in certain individual sports.
In November, we began with table tennis, in which some
47 students and Tutors were involved. In January, we have
the badminton tournament. This y.ear 56 persons participated. Last year 89 men were involved at least once in
our individual tournaments. This is about 55 per cent
such games were once played. Meanwhile, athletics at St.
John's will be for the student, not the student for athletics.
Over 30 years later, we recognize how right Mr. Barr
was in his penetrating analysis of the state of intercollegiate athletics. The unhappy features of the system,
which he so vividly described, have become worse since
then. It may come as a surprise to some that the founding
fathers of the New Program, Messrs. Barr and Buchanan,
should have been concerned at all about athletics. But
they were very much concerned about having a good
athletic program, not the sham kind of thing described
above. In those early years of the College, they worked
hard and long with Mr. Ned Lathrop to set up and
promote the new athletic program. Mr. Lathrop became
the first Tutor and Athletic Director under the new
system. To signify the College's involvement and commitment to the new athletic program, an Annual Athletic
Banquet was held each year. Mr. Barr personally ·presented the various Blazer Awards to the students who had
of all male students. We try to offer as much individual
instruction as we can in these sports.
Third, we maintain an organized schedule of team
competition in touch football, soccer, basketball, volleyball, and softball. We play 20 games in each sport, 100
in all. Once every spring we hold our annual track meet.
The student body is divided into five teams, called
"Spartans/' "Hustlers," "Guardians/'
41
Greenwaves," and
"Druids." These teams are self-perpetuating and continuous. Freshmen are assigned to them in a simple alphabetical scheme. However, as sophomores, they are
"drafted" permanently to some team. Many alumni who
live in the Annapolis area continue to play for their team.
Tutors are re-drafted each year on teams. This fall, 120
male students, many alumni, and many Tutors played in
our football and soccer leagues. This is about 60 per cent
16
�April 1970
under severe stress. Its limited facilities seriously restrict
the scope of our program. The College is planning to
build a new physical education building, as soon as the
money can be raised.
Our students are well aware that we have an unusual
athletic program, designed solely for their benefit! (It
is a sad commentary on most American colleges that the
irony in the preceding sentence should make so much
sense.) They appreciate this situation, and respond to it.
The average student, with no special athletic abilities,
becomes an important part of this enterprise. We count
on his growing interest and involvement.
It is significant, I believe, that in recent years, almost
no student has seriously questioned the fundamentals
of this program, or proposed that we should resume intercollegiate athletics. The only people who have proposed
such a return are those who are unacquainted with the
present program. This is not to suggest that we have
solved all our problems-far from it. But we keep working
at them within the spirit and context of Mr. Barr's call
for amateur athletics at St. John's.
I hope that the question posed in the title has been
adequately answered. Our goal here, in the current idiom,
is participatory athletics-or even the "athletics of involvement."
of the male students. Last year about 75 per cent of
the male students participated in our team sports program.
We encourage participation as much as we can. It is,
of course, all voluntary, and no one has to fear losing
varsity status, or his scholarship, or his job, if he happens
to miss a game, or if his team happens to lose now and
then. All these activities have put the present gymnasium
Bryce Jacobsen graduated from St. John's College in 1942. He was
a farmer and carpenter until 1957 when he returned to St. John's as
Tutor and Director of Athletics. Mr. Jacobsen has concentrated on the
teaching of mathematics and has published articles on subjects like
Apollonius' Conic Sections and Ptolemaic astronomy in the St. John's
College Collegian. His even-tempered fairness, helpful instruction, and
undefeatable excellence in every sport he tries his hand at have won
him the admiration of all who participate in the athletic program.
We regret the following ERRATA in the December, 1969, issue
in The Habit of Literature, by Richard Scofield.
Page one, column A, line 20 for the read a; 1. 13 from the
bottom, for and class read and in class; 1. 6 f.b., for philosophy read
philosopher; I. 2 f.b., for of read in; col. B, I. 10 for be of meat
read be full of meat: p. 2, col. A, 1. 26, for than having read than
never having; col B, 11. 5 and 6, for of St. John's students ... to
their own read of a St. John's student . . . to his own; 1. 12 f.b.,
for actions read action; 1. 11 f.b., for of a pagan read of pagan:
p. 3, col. A, I. 7, for is a pleasure read is the life of pleasure; 1. 17,
for people who read people, who; I. 6 f.b., omit a; col. B, 1. 3,
omit the; 1. 23 for will not be read wi11 never be; 1. 27, for it to
read to it; 11. 12 and 13 f.b., insert commas after vocation and after
as such: p. 4, col. A, I. 8, for and supernatural read and to super·
natural; 1. 9, for out of life read out of life and is for the benefit
and use of life; col. B, 1. 1, for claims read claim; 1. 2, omit will.
(Eds.)
17
�NEWS ON THE CAMPUSES
of Mediaeval Studies m Toronto,
Canada.
BoTH CAMPUSES CLAIM
WOODROW WILSON DESIGNATES
Edward Michael Macierowski, a
senior in Annapolis, and James D.
Danneskiold, a senior in Santa Fe,
have been chosen Woodrow Wilson
Designates by the Woodrow Wilson
National Fellowship Foundation in
Princeton, New Jersey.
The students were two of the 1,153
finalists that topped a field of 12,000
outstanding graduating seniors nominated for the honor by more than
800 colleges.
The Foundation's selection committee picked Designates as "the most
intellectually promising" 1970 graduates planning careers as college
teachers.
Mr. Danneskiold is the first winner
from the Santa Fe campus in the annual competition. He plans to do his
graduate work in philosophy or in the
history of science. The senior from
Whittier, California, says he has
learned a great deal about good teaching from his experiences in St. John's
tutorials and seminars.
Mr. Macierowski has received the
WalterS. Barr scholarship at St. John's
for four years. During his junior year
he won the Duane L. Peterson scholarship award for $1,000 for "high academic achievement, constructive mem~
bership in the College community, and
commitment to later post-graduate
work."
He is the student member of the
Lectureship Committee that selects
guest lecturers at the College. He was
instrumental also in arranging "the
Greek floor" in one of the dormitories
for students interested in intensive
extra-curricular study of Greek.
Mr. Macierowski plans to continue
his studies at The Pontifical Institute
18
GRADUATE INSTITUTE TO
OPEN FOURTH SESSION
THIS SUMMER
James D. Danneskiold
(Photo by J. R. Thompson)
Edward Michael Macierowski
(Photo by Edward J. Edah1)
The bulletin for the 1970 session
of the Graduate Institute in Liberal
Education is available at St. John's
College in Santa Fe. The eight-week
summer Institute will hold its fourth
annual session at the College from
June 22nd to August 14th.
The program is designed primarily
for school teachers and other college
graduates interested in exploring the
basic works of Western civilization.
The Director is James P. Shannon,
who is Vice Pcesident of the College
in Santa Fe. Seminars, tutorials, and
preceptorials are conducted by members of the Annapolis and Santa Fe faculties along with some teachers from
other colleges.
Students may earn a Master of Arts
degree upon the successful completion
of four summer sequences of study or
three sequences plus nine hours of
graduate credit from another institution. The four subject areas are again
Politics and Society, Philosophy and
Theology, Literature, and Mathematics
and Natural Science.
CONTRIBUTORS RECEIVE
COPIES OF GREAT BOOKS
In its last mail solicitation for donations, the Santa Fe Development
Office offered copies of several of the
Great Books to those who sent contributions to the College. Of the
twelve books offered, most requests
came for Montaigne's Essays and Tocqueville's Democracy in America. In
�April 1970
third place was Darwin's The Origin
of Species, followed by Melville's Billy
Budd, Einstein's The Principle of Relativity, Homer's The Iliad, Apollonius'
On Conic Sections, Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, Freud's A Genera! Introduction to Psychoanalysis, The Constitution of the United States, and Plato's
Crito. The only book listed and not requested was Elements of Chemistry
by Lavoisier. Van Doren's Libera! Education also was offered and it ranked
next to Darwin in popularity although
not on the Great Books list.
The mailing was considered successful with about 40 per cent of the
donors giving to the College for the
first time.
FoRUM FEATURES WASHINGTON
SEMINAR MEMBERS AS
GUEST SPEAKERS
Since January a prominent group of
federal officials, national legislators, attorneys, Washington columnists and
political writers have been making individual guest appearances at the St.
John's College student Forum in Annapolis.
The guest appearances constitute a
kind of "tuition" for the St. John's
seminar the group held one night a
week for five weeks during November
and December in Washington at the
National Press Club.
The subject of the seminar was "Plato's Republic." Dean Robert A. Goldwin called the seminar the "highest
level, postgraduate course in political
philosophy in the country."
Members of the seminar include
Joseph Califano, attorney and former
special assistant to the President;
James Farmer, assistant secretary of
administration, Department of Health,
Education and Welfare; David Ginsburg, attorney and former executive
director of the Commission on Civil
Disorders; Miss Meg Greenfield, editorial writer for The Washington Post;
Thomas Houser, deputy director of the
Peace Corps; Senator Charles MeG.
Mathias; Representative Abner J.
Mikva; Robert Novak, syndicated columnist; Allen Otten, Washington cor-
Board member David Ginsburg pauses before
answering a question during an Annapolis stu-
dent Forum meeting (Photo by Bob White/
Anne Arundel Times).
respondent, The Wall Street Journal;
Senator Charles H. Percy; and John
Robson, attorney and former Undersecretary of Transportation.
In addition to the Dean, Jacob
Klein, Tutor Emeritus, and Miss Eva
Brann, Tutor, represented the College.
Senator Charles McC. Mathias speaks during a
student Forum meeting in Annapolis (Photo by
James Villere).
ST. JOHN'S AND NAVAL ACADEMY
HoLD JOINT SEMINARS
IN ANNAPOLIS
St. John's College in Annapolis has
been participating with the United
States Naval Academy in several joint
St. John's students and Naval Academy Midshipmen participate in a joint seminar (Photo by
Robert Fenton Gary).
19
�The College
seminars on liberal arts topics.
The first seminar, held at the College during the first week of last December, brought together nine St.
John's students and nine Midshipmen
to discuss Paper Ten of The Federalist.
John A. Fitzgerald, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Academy, and Robert A. Goldwin, Dean of
St. John's, led the discussion.
According to Dean Goldwin the
initial seminar was "a splendid success." He also observed that this
seemed to be the first joint activity
between the two campuses that anyone could remember.
At the conclusion of the first meeting, both the Dean and Rear Admiral
James Calvert, Superintendent of the
Naval Academy, decided that there
should be more of such seminars.
Additional meetings have taken place
and are being planned for topics in the
natural sciences, mathematics, and politics.
CARITAS SociETY FoRMED
To Am ST. JoHN's
TI1e Caritas Society, the women's
group of the Friends of St. John's College in Annapolis, was formed recently
to promote a variety of cultural activities at the College.
The society took its name from the
Latin word meaning "love and dear
regard for." Its goals are "to create a
new image of St. John's for the Annapolis community, to make the College the cultural center of Anne Arundel County, and to raise funds for student aid purposes."
The society's first activity was to
sponsor Archibald MacLeish's drama,
J.B., produced by the students' Modern Theater Guild. Chairman of the
December event was Mrs. Joan L.
Baldwin.
During January, under the direction
of Mrs. Alan G. Harquail, chairman,
the society sponsored a harpsichord
concert by Tutor Douglas Allanbrook.
Proceeds benefited the Faculty Scholarship Fund for student aid. The concert was taped for future broadcast by
an educational radio station, WETA,
Washington, D.C.
20
During March the society was host
at a luncheon reception on the first
day of its Cinema Review I. Mrs. Theodore G. Osius was chairman of the
event.
Additional functions are planned
for the year including a general membership tea during the spring.
SANTA FE CITIZEN DoNATES
LAND TO COLLEGE
Ten acres of land adjacent to the
Santa Fe campus have been donated
to St. John's by the local owner, Mr.
LeRoy Manuel. The land will provide
additional frontage along Camino de
Cruz Blanca as well as protecting that
a"ea from possible unsightly private development. The gift was in addition
to the eight acres donated by Mr.
Manuel in the early 1960's. The St.
John's campus now totals 270 acres
at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo
Mountains. Most of the land was
given to the College originally by
John Gaw Meem, Santa Fe architect
and member of the Board of Visitors
and Governors.
STUDENTS HEAR
VIETNAMESE OFFICIAL
A representative of the Vietnamese
Embassy in Washington, D.C., came
to Santa Fe in January to speak at St.
John's at the request of a student organization there called "Goodtimes
Tran Kho Hoc of the Vietnamese Embassy: in
Washington, D.C., came to Santa Fe at 'the
invitation of St. John's students to present his
government's views on the war.
Santa Fe student Elizabeth Randolph, 1973,
learns silver craft under the guidance of a local
artist. This is one of numerous extraciiiricular
activities available to St. John's students (Photo
by J. R. Thompson).
Overground." Tran Kho Hoc, Third
Secretary with the embassy's political
section, spoke on "Prospects for Peace
in Viet Nam." After his speech, he
answered questions for about 1:Vz hours
and visited a student barbecue.
Mr. Hoc said he believed American
demonstrations for the immediate
withdrawal of troops were "well-intended" but "more subjective than ra-
tional." He said North Viet Nam
should admit it is an aggressor and
should agree to supervised elections in
all of VietNam. Members of the audience questioned him about such matters as the imprisonment of political
opponents to the government, the
closing of newspapers, and desertions
of Sonth Vietnamese soldiers.
Mr. Hoc is one of several speakers
and entertainers brought to the campus
this year by Goodtimes Overground,
which also sponsors studies on topics
of interest.
FASCHING BALL HELD
AT SANTA FE
The Santa Fe students celebrated
the end of the winter session with a
�April 1970
which he describes as intellectually
and physically demanding as a combination of chess, ballet, and track
running. He is quite impressed with
the progress of the students, who practice several times a week. They are
searching for another team in the area
with which to hold a competition.
thusiasm for continuing the discussions
at future meetings.
Students also attended the Board
meeting in Annapolis during October
and entered into lively discussion of
campus life with Board members.
BoARD MEMBERS AND STUDENTS
BRIDGE THE GENERATION GAP
Students at Santa Fe have become
involved in the growing national concern over the pollution of the na-
When members of the St. John's
College Board of Visitors and Governors come to town for a meeting,
The breaking of the pifiata is an old Southwestern custom which St. John's students
adapted in the Holiday party they gave for
the children of the Santa Fe faculty and staff
(Photo by J. R. Thompson).
Fasching Ball to which they invited
the pnblic. The "Fasching" title was
suggested by the Director of Student
Activities, Istvan Fehervary. It is the
name of the festive season before Ash
Wednesday in Europe.
Two bands played a variety of music
from waltz to rock for the semi-formal
ball in the Student Center. Donations
were accepted to help to pay the expenses. It is hoped it will become an
annual event for the students and the
College's friends in Santa Fe.
they make a point of talking to students as well as to staff members. At
the January meeting in Santa Fe, the
Board members exchanged ideas with
students at the opening business session of Friday, at special seminars on
Saturday afternoon, and informally in
the coffee shop and elsewhere on the
campus.
The seminar reading was the commencement address given last year in
Annapolis by Jacob Klein. It produced lively discussions on the meaning of liberal education and the relative roles of reason and sentiment in
pursuing a worthwhile life. Participating Board members expressed en-
ECOLOGY CRISIS ATTRACTS
STUDENT INTEREST
tural environment and resources. Nine-
teen students received permission to
attend the "Can Man Survive?" symposium held at Colorado College in
mid-January, After their return they
helped to conduct special seminars at
St. John's on January 30th with Paul
Ehrlich's article "Eco-Catastrophe" as
the reading. Conservation films from
the Sierra Club were shown that afternoon and a table of material on ecology
was offered in the Student Center.
Students also have participated in local
meetings on programs to control pollution in Santa Fe and New Mexico.
Plans were being discussed for action
on April 22nd, when national attention was to be focused on these concerns.
Touche! Santa Fe seniors Michael Landry and Carol Paterson practice on the campus patio
(Photo by Kathy Lear).
FENCING TEAM SEEKS
CoMPETITION
A former champion from Hungary is
training what apparently is the only
fencing team in New Mexico at St.
John's College. Istvan Fehervary, the
Director of Student Activities at St.
John's, won the first national competition in foil fencing for youth in
Hungary at the age of 17, and he was
a member of the Hungarian Olympic
team in fencing and modern pentathlon. He believes that St. John's is an
appropriate setting for an ancient sport
21
�The College
Leo Strauss the highest tribute one
scholar can pay another by remarking
that he has brought to academic
studies 'the scholarship and philosophic insight necessary to a proper confrontation of ancients and moderns.' "
ADULT CoMMUNITY SEMINAR
HELD IN ANNAPOLIS
Leo Strauss, Scott Buchanan Distinguished
Scholar-in-Residence (right), receives a copy of
the citation accompanying his honorary doctor
of laws degree from the Very Rev. Joseph T.
Cahill, C.M., president of St. John's University
in New York.
ST. JOHN'S UNIVERSITY
GRANTS HoNORARY DEGREE
To LEo STRAUSS
During convocation exercises in
November, St. John's University in
New York presented an honorary doctor of laws degree to Leo Strauss, Scott
Buchanan Distinguished Scholar-inResidence at St. John's College in Annapolis.
The convocation climaxed an all-day
symposium of commemorating the
SOOth anniversary of the birth of
Machiavelli.
The Machiavelli Symposium presented distinguished scholars who delivered papers relating to the life and
work of the Florentine author. Mr.
Strauss spoke on "Machiavelli and
Classical Literature."
His paper will be printed in Review
of N ationa! Literature, a new periodical to be published by the St. John's
University Press in the spring.
The Reverend Joseph I. Dirvin,
C.M., Assistant to the President of
the university, read the degree citation
which began, "A colleague has paid
22
The St. John's College Adult Community Seminar is meeting again this
semester. The seminar is a series of
discussions of great books, led by St.
John's tutors. The seminar is open to
the public. The only requirement is
that the assigned hook must be read in
preparation for the discussion. Each
seminar is two hours long; it begins
with a question by one of the two
tutors and it continues with discussion
by the members of the seminar.
Readings for Spring 1970 include
Democracy in America by Tocqueville;
several addresses, speeches, and letters
by Lincoln; articles by Mencken; Go
Tell It On The Mountain by Baldwin;
and The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald.
Tutors Geoffrey Comber, Nicholas
Maistrellis, and Robert L. Spaeth have
been leading the discussions.
BoARD APPOINTS NEW MEMBER
Attorney Charles David Ginsburg of
Washington, D.C., has been elected to
the Board of Visitors and Governors.
A graduate of West Virginia University and Harvard Law School, Mr.
Ginsburg has had experience in variG>us
governmental positions in Washington, the latest as Director of the National Advisory Commission on Civil
Disorders (The Kerner Commission).
He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He
has participated in the recent Washington Seminars conducted by Dean
Goldwin.
The Board at its January meeting
in Santa Fe also approved the appointment of two new tutors at Santa Fe
effective July 1st-Frank K. Flinn of
Philadelphia, and John S. Chamberlin of Toronto, Canada. Mr. Flinn is
assistant professor at LaSalle College
Graduate School of Religion, and Mr.
Chamberlin is Archivist, Center for
Medieval Studies, University of Toronto.
CONCERTS HoNOR
BEETHOVEN BICENTENARY
Santa Fe Tutor Timothy Miller is
presenting a series of four public concerts this year at the College in honor
of Beethoven's bicentenary. Miller has
performed two piano programs and
will give the remainder of the series
later in the year. He holds degrees in
English literature and in music from
Harvard, Yale, and Indiana Universities, and also has studied at the Music
Academy in Hamburg and at the University of London.
ANNAPOLIS GAINS FEBRUARY
FRESHMEN CLASS
Twenty-one students, mostly transferees from other colleges and universities, began their college education
again as freshmen at St. Joliri's Annapolis campus this February.
The class includes students from
twelve states and the District of Columbia, with six students from Maryland, and one from Hawaii.
The students signed the College
register as part of the regular formal
ceremony. The Faculty attended in full
academic regalia.
The freshmen will complete their
year during the summer in Annapolis.
Robert L. Spaeth, Tutor and Assistant
Dean, is director of the summer program.
Some of the places from which the
students have transferred are Boston
University, McGill University, Purdue
University, the University of California
at Levine and Santa Cruz, and the
University of Maryland.
CHARTER FLIGHT
The much-advertised charter flight
to Italy has been cancelled. Although
the flight was opened to all members
of the College community, as well as
to the Friends of St. John's, there was
insufficient response to the invitation.
(Based on actual deposits received, the
flight would have cost about $2,500 a
person and that certainly was no bargain!)
�ALUMNI ACTIVITIES
COUNSELING AND PLACEMENT
During the past few months both
the Alumni Association's Career Counseling Program (or Alumni Advisory
Program) and the placement and
counseling services of the College have
been subjected to critical review.
The Counseling Program started
four years ago under the leadership
of then-president Jack L. Carr '50.
Since that time individual alumni have
counseled students on an occasional
basis and once-a-year discussions about
graduate schools have been held with
students at three of the last four
Homecomings. Any other alumni
counseling has been a personal, voluntary, and informal activity.
Counseling and placement at the
College have been the responsibility of
one of the assistant deans whose duties
also include supervision of the financial aid program as well as teaching.
Graduate school counseling has often
been done by tutors on the basis of a
personal friendship with a given stu·
dent, with no coordination through
the placement office.
Dean Goldwin has stated that the
College must improve its counseling
service, especially in guiding students
toward graduate fellowships. At the
same time, the Alumni Directors see
room for improvement of alumni participation in counseling. The concern
of Mr. Goldwin and the attitude of
the Alumni Board are underscored by
comments from younger alumni who
are still in graduate school, and seeking positions: they know the College
is not doing all it should to help them.
It is recognized that the College's
financial resources for placement and
counseling are limited. This is an
added reason for a joint College-Alumni endeavor. With this in mind, the
Alumni Directors appointed Mrs.
1
Nancy Solibakke '58 as a committee of
one to study the placement and counseling function at St. John's, with particular emphasis on alumni involvement.
After consulting with Dean Goldwin, Mrs. Solibakke and Charles E.
Finch, Assistant Dean for placement
and financial aid, visited a number of
college placement offices. Based on
their findings, Mrs. Solibakke on February lOth submitted a report to the
Alumni Board for study, approval, and
transmission to Dean Goldwin.
The report sent to the Dean contained four specific recommendations:
I. That the placement office institute
standard placement techniques including student dossiers, preparation of
students for interviews, and standard
liaison activities between the College
and possible placement situations;
2. That the placement office formulate lines of communication to the students making as much information
available to them as possible and in
general serving as a liaison between the
student and placement information;
3. That the Dean in consultation with
the faculty explore forming a faculty
placement committee that serves on a
rotating basis to advise students in
their junior and senior years and whose
duties it will be to keep abreast of
information coming from the placement office and pass it along to students who, in their judgment, would
benefit;
4. That the Alumni Association set up
and maintain in the placement office a
file of alumni and others who are
familiar with the St. John's curriculum
and who will serve as advisors to students in various professional and academic fields both about the general
"state of the field" and about specific
requirements and possibilities of which
they are aware.
Mr. Goldwin found the report most
helpful, and is exploring ways of
putting the first three recommendations into effect.
The Alumni Association has begun
to implement recommendation num-
ber four. During late February a special questionnaire was sent to certain
more recent graduates. When completed and returned the questionnaire
will form the nucleus of the Alumni
Placement Counselor File.
Ultimately, the placement officer at
the College should serve as the coordinator for all career, employment,
and graduate school counseling. It- is
hoped that alumni and others, as potential employers, will make their
needs known to the placement officer.
The combined efforts of the faculty,
the placement officer, and the alumni
counseling volunteers should then provide graduating seniors and younger
alumni with a much-needed service.
ALUMNI ARE GIVING
TI1is year's Alumni Annual Giving
Campaign is off to a very healthy start,
Chairman Myron L. Wolbarsht '50,
reports.
During the first 30 days of the drive,
129 alumni responded with some
$3,800 in gifts. Leading the response
were !6 King William Associates (contributors of at least $100).
The class captains and their volunteer agents started to work during
January and February, and the effect
of their appeals was felt almost immediately. By the 28th of February
more than $8,300 in unrestricted gifts
had been received from 311 alumni. An
additional $800 was received from corporate matching programs of companies employing alumni. Of the responding alumni; 32 were King William Associates.
23
�The College
These statistics point to the important fact that the alumni of the College, in response to appeals from classmates and friends, are setting new
records this year. The February 28th
gift totals were almost a full month
ahead of last year. That is a record of
which all alumni can be proud, especially, of course, those who have contributed.
If you have not sent a gift this year,
please consider what a gift can mean
to St. John's. Like all of us, the College
is affected by the inflation of the national economy. Careful management
of our resources can achieve a great
deal, but it cannot work miracles. In
order to buy needed services, to attract
and keep able tutors and staff, the College must spend more and more
money. Income must keep pace with
spending; gifts are an important part of
our income.
Students also bear their share of increased costs: fees for next year will be
at an all-time high of $3,400. (Ten
years ago they were $2,100; on a comparative basis, it takes $40 now to
match the value of a $25 gift in 1960.)
If you have never made a contribution to the College, consider doing so
now. If you simply have not responded
this year, consider increasing your gift.
Your support, so eagerly sought, is
just as deeply appreciated.
CLASS NOTES
many newspapers and periodicals, and -he is a
regular contributor to the New York Times.
Horace W. Witman recently sent Miss
Strange some family information which she
thought his classmates might enjoy. Mr. Witman wrote that daughter Hope Ann was mar·
ried last April, and having finished a business
coJiege course, is employed as a medical secretary in Wilmington, Delaware. Daughter Elaine
received her A.B. degree cum laude in English
from Lincoln University in June, and has
joined the University's library staff. Son John is
in the 11th grade, and is now choosing between
the Naval Academy and a medical career.
New York City, a critical look at events leading
to passage of the Omnibus Crime Control and
Safe Streets Act of 1968. Mr. Harris, whose
writings appear in The New Yorker, is also the
author of "The Real Voice," about Estes
Kefauver's attempts to regulate the pharmaceuticals industry, and "A Sacred Trust," about
Medicare.
Joseph I. Kiliorin, Jr., dean of Armstrong
State College, Savannah, Ga., participated as a
panel member in the International College
and University Conference held in Atlantic City
in March. Dean Killorin's discussion -area was
"Inter-Institutional Cooperation; Who Benefits?" His daughter Diana, by the -way, is a
freshman on the Annapolis campus this year.
1909
In the December issue it was stated that the
Class of 1909 was not represented during the
reunions at Homecoming. A11en H. St. Clair
writes to point out the error of that statement,
and we apologize to him and to his two guests
who were indeed present.
1921
Dr, Thomas B. Turner, Dean Emeritus of
the Johns Hopkins University medical faculty,
has received the William Freeman Snow award
for distinguished service to humanity. The
award is the highest presented by the American
Social Health Association.
1923
Paul L. Banfield, who founded Landon
School 40 years ago, announced in December
that he is retiring as headmaster of the Bethesda, Md., boys' preparatory school. His retire·
ment will be effective this coming fall.
1933
J.
Dudley Digges, former chief judge of the
Seventh Judicial Circuit of Maryland, was appointed associate judge of the Court of Appeals
of Maryland in November. In his new capacity,
Judge Digges represents the Fourth Appellate
Judicial Court, which includes Maryland's four
southernmost counties. Judge Digges is the immediate past president of the Maryland State
Bar Association.
1934
The January 11th edition of the Santa Fe
New Mexican carried an interesting feature
about W. Thetford LeViness. Mr. LeViness, a
resident of Santa Fe for 30 years, was our
only resident alumnus when St. John's first
went into that city. He is the librarian for the
State Department of Health and Social Services, and pursues an active second life as a freelance writer. His particular area of interest is
New Mexico and its native cultures, and although confined to a wheel-chair ( a cerebral
palsy victim since birth) he visits Indian
pueblos and archaeological digs throughout the
state. Mr. LeViness's articles have appeared in
24
1938
R. Cresap Davis is teaching full time at
Frederick (Md.) Community College as associate professor of business administration. He
is serving this year as chairman of the Faculty
Council.
1941
If you have ever conducted a meeting of
any organization, chances are you relied heavily
on the orderly mind of the grandfather of
Henry M. Robert, III. His "Pocket Manual of
Rules of Order for Deliberative Bodies" has
sold more than 2.6 million copies in several
editions. With his mother, Mr. Robert, III
has just edited a complete revision of the
authoritative volume. Published by Scott, Fares·
man & Co., the new edition appeared Oil> February 19th, 94 years to the day after the first
edition -was published. On February 16th Mr.
Robert appeared on NBC's "Today" show to
publicize the book.
1942
A. Chesley Wilson, after several years with
the American Hospital Association in Chicago,
moved to the Annapolis area about two years
ago. He works at the National Institutes of
Health in Bethesda.
1946
Charles L. Van Doren delivered the weekly
lecture in Santa Fe on January 16th. Mr. Van
Doren, associate director of the Institute for
Philosophical Research in Chicago, spoke on
"Rhetoric."
1947
Richard S. Harris has written "The Fear of
Crime," published by Prager Publications in
1950
Two members of the class of 1950 now
have a greater-than-normal interest in the
College these days: James H. Frame's son Matthew and Theodore W. Hendrick's son Bill
are members of the Annapolis freshman class.
1951
James A. Grinder and Mrs. Nancy Moran
Noel were married in New Canaan, Conn., on
February 27th. Mr. Grinder is a vice president
of A. A. Schechter Associates, Inc., a New
Yark City public relations firm.
1952
Walter Schatzberg has been appointed to the
rank of associate professor of German at Clark
College.
1954
Merle Shore and his wife Priscilla '55 op·
crate the Village Frame in Santa Barbara, Cal.,
a shop specializing in frames, prints, and original graphics of international stature.
Alfred R. Sugg, Jr., a member of the Theater
Department at Western College, Oxford, Ohio,
delivered the Friday lechue on January 23rd
in Annapolis. His subject was the dramatic
structure of "Prometheus Bound."
1957
Mrs. Arnold Daane of Cambridge, Md., received a Christmas message in December alleged to be from her son, Navy Lt. Cdr. Hugh
Allen Stafford. Cdr. Stafford, identified by the
�Department of the Navy as a prisoner of the
North Vietnamese, sent his message over Radio
Hanoi, and a tape was given Mrs. Daane by
the Navy. Cdr. Stafford was shot down over
Haiphong August 31, 1967, while on his 31st
combat mission. Although Mrs. Daane could
not positively identify the taped voice as that
of her son, several letters and a postcard
written in apparently fresh ink indicate that he
is indeed alive and well.
1966
Jonathan Alfred Kaplan and Abigail Winston
Ewert of New York City were married in
Dedham, Mass., on November 1, 1969. The
bride was graduated from Winsor School and
the Boston Conservatory, in dance.
Kenneth H. Thompson sends a most interesting brief of his activities. An assistant professor of political science at the University of
California, Dr. 11wmpson is devoting full
time this academic year to his research on comparative politics. He is one of twenty political
scientists in the nation to be awarded a Ford
Foundation Faculty Research Fellowship for
the year 1969-70. Mrs. Thompson is an assistant professor of sociology at Scripps College,
where she is a colleague of Harry Neumann
'52. The Thompsons have just built a mountain home at Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains near Los Angeles. Dr. Thompson also writes that they have visited former
dean Curtis Wilson and his family in La Jolla,
Cal.
1961
Darrell L. Henry, president of the Alumni
Association and Zoning Hearing Officer for
Anne Arundel County (Md.), resigned the
second of those positions to enter practice with
an Annapolis law firm on February 12th. Mr.
Henry received his law degree from the U niversity of Baltimore in 196 5.
Did you know that Artlmr I. Simon was
the discoverer and is now the manager of
Goldie Hawn, the zany blonde featured in television's weekly show, "Laugh In"?
1963
Dr. Oliver M. Korshin visited the Santa Fe
campus last November, He works for the U. S.
Public Health Service out of San Francisco,
and makes his home across the Bay in Tiburon.
1964
Stephen C. Fineberg writes from Athens,
where, although a "confirmed philologist," he
has been studying at the American School for
Classical Studies this year. He plans to be back
at the University of Texas next year, pursuing
his doctoral work. Mr. Fineberg's experience in
Athens has "opened whole new perspectives on
antiquity" for him. "It was something of a
rude awakening to discover that the Greece of
the 19th century romantics ... was in fact {and
is) excessively muddy, sweaty, and above all
very noisy."
1965
David R. L1chterman lectured in Annapolis
on Friday, February 27th. His subject was
"Selfhood and Reason," concerning Kant's distinction between theoretical and practical
reason. Mr. Lachterman is a lecturer in the
Department of Philosophy at Syracuse University, and a Fellow, Institute in Greek Philosophy and Science, Colorado Coilege.
1966
Ian M. Harris writes that he received his
M.A. degree last spring from Temple University, and that he is now enrolled in a doctoral
program at Temple.
Michael Weaver in November was awarded
a tuition schobrship and a graduate assistantship in the University of Cincinnati's Depart"
ment of Philosophy.
1967
Gay (Singer) Baratta writes a most appealing
letter about the life which she and husband
Joseph '69 are leading in Israel He has just
finished an intensive Hebrew language course,
and has started a program for potential teachers.
Mrs. Baratta is a computer systems programmer
at the Israel Institute of Technology. Their
apartment in Haifa has a view of the entire
city, the Mediterranean Sea, and the coast.
The Barattas both, to quote Mrs. Baratta,
" ... find the goals of the St. John's language
tutorial vividly realized in living here; learning
and living with a new language really makes
one think about what bnguage is supposed
to accomplish--and how it does it."
Richardson B. Gill, San Antonio, Tex.,
business executive, has announced his candidacy for the U. S. House of Representatives.
He will try to unseat incumbent 0. C. Fisher,
a 28-year veteran of the Congress. Mr. Gill is
president and chairman of the Board of Richard
Gill Properties and of Gillsons Co., both of
San Antonio, and a vice president of the El
Rancho Grande Hotel Co. of Brownsville and
San Antonio.
1968
William R. and Rebecca (McClure) Albury
celebrated the arrival of their second child,
Alicia Frances, on February 13th. Alicia's father
is now a graduate student in the history of sci-
ence at the Hopkins, while her mother is
completing work for her bachelor's degree in
the Evening College of the same university.
Christopher Ballmer (SF), replying to the
mailing about the Italian charter flight, regretted that, since he was on " ... a 52-week
deluxe Vietnam holiday ... ," he could not possibly consider the one to Italy.
Jane-Ellen (Milord) Long writes that she is
Book Editor and a member of the cat1Iog
department at Schwann, the Boston publisher
of a well-known record catalog.
According to a recent letter from his father,
David I. Moss (SF) is currently enrolled in the
rabbinical program at the Jewish Theological
Seminary in New York. During his first year
after graduation, the younger Mr. Moss was a
student at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
'While in Israel he learned the exacting art of
Torah calligraphy, and has gained some recognition designing marriage contracts for his
friends. His father reports his son finds New
York very noisy after Santa Fe and Jerusalem.
Donald J. and Marilynne (Wiiis) Schell announce with joy the arrival of Patience Alexandra (Sasha), born in New York City on the
19th of February. Mr. Schell is a second-year
student at General Theological Seminary. Mrs.
ScheU has completed one semester toward her
master's degree in Early Childhood and Elementary Education at New York UniverSity.
1969
Miriam A. Cunningham and Michael J.
Cohen were married on November 23, 1969,
and are making their home in Brooklyn, N. Y.
Linda Torcaso and Mark Bernstein were
married on December 28th in Washington,
.D.C. They are now living in Philadelphia
where she is a first-year student at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and he is
a research associate at the Franklin Institute
Museum.
Wendy Watson (SF) and Kirk Cheyiitz
SF'68 were married several months ago in
Washington, D.C., and are making their home
in that city.
In Memoriam
1909-Col. Everett LeC. Cook, Washington, D.C., January 8, 1970.
1912-Col. Charles R. Jones, San Antonio,
Tex., January 20, 1970.
1915-Howard Claude, Galena, Md., February 25, 1970.
1916-Col. Gabriel T. Mackenzie, Kendall, Fla., January 12, 1970.
1920-Dr. Joseph J. Klebach, Scranton, Pa.
1922-William D. K Aldridge, Chestertown, Md., Summer, 1969.
Philip H. Cooper, Phoenix, Md.,
July 26, 1969.
Edgar F. Voelcker, Baltimore, Md.,
November I, 1969.
1923-BGen. William C. Baxter, Phoenix,
Md., January 29, 1970.
1926--George A. Woodward, Crofton,
Md., January !2, 1970.
1931-Henry S. Emrich, Pacific Palisades,
Cal., March 7, 1970.
1933-Cad S. Thomas, Easton, Md., November 24, 1969.
193 5-MGen. George M. Ge1ston, Lutherville, Md., February 17, 1970.
1937-Herbert K. Clayton, Baltimore, Md.,
December 1, 1969.
�The College
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
Second-class postage paid at
Annapolis, Maryland, and at
additional mailing offices.
�
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<em>The College </em>(1969-1981)
Description
An account of the resource
St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>. <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981. <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
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The College, April 1970
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Berns, Laurence
Felter, Mary P.
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Trimmer, Maurice
Sullivan, Daniel
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The College
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THE COLLEGE
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
Santa Fe, New Mexico
July 1970
�The College
Cover: Michael Faraday. Inside Front
Cover: McDowell Hall, Annapolis.
The College is a publication for
friends of St. John's College and for
those who might become friends of the
College, if they came to know it. Our
aim is to indicate, within the limitations of the magazine form, why, in
our opinion, St. John's comes closer
than any other college in the nation
to being what a college should be.
If ever well-placed beacon lights
were needed by American education
it is now. By publishing articles about
the work of the College, articles reflecting the distinctive life of the mind
that is the College, we hope to add a
watt or two to the beacon light that is
St. John's.
Editor: Laurence Berns
Managing Editor: Mary P. Felter
Alumni Editor: Thomas Farran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant: Maurice Trimmer
Art Editor: Daniel Sullivan, '71
The College is published by the
Development Offices of St. John's
College, College Avenue, Annapolis,
Maryland 21404 (Julius Rosenberg,
Director), and Santa Fe, New Mexico
(Frank McGuire, Director); Member,
American Alumni Council. President,
St. John's College, Richard D. Weigle.
In the July Issue:
I
The Number of My Loves, by Charles G. Bell.
Published four times a year in April,
July, September, and December. Second-class postage paid at Annapolis,
Maryland, and at additional mailing
offices.
Commencement Address, Annapolis, 1970,
by Reverend J. Winfree Smith. .
3
Faraday's Thought on Electromagnetism,
by Thomas K. Simpson.
6
July 1970
No.2
17
News on the Campuses
18
Alumni Activities
Vol. XXII
Prayers, by Michael S. Littleton.
27
�Commencement Address
Annapolis, 1970
By THE REVEREND J. WINFREE SMITH
In a church near London there is a plaque with the following inscription:
In the year 1653, when all things sacred in the
kingdom
Were either profaned or demolished,
This Church was built by Sir Richard Shirley,
Baronet,
Whose singular praise it was
To do the best things in the worst times
And hope them in the most calamitous.
These times in which we live are not the worst times or
the most calamitous. But they are bad times and they
threaten worse and more calamitous times. In the United
States of America we have special troubles which arise
partly from our power and our wealth, but also and maybe
consequently from a disrespect for law. We can understand how for many black people and others among us
"law" means only an instrument of injustice and oppres-
sion. It has, however, been the greatness of the United
States as a political society to have combined law and
freedom, to have made freedom possible by means of law
which is the only way it is possible. We must think both
of the common law and of constitutional law. Murder
committed by Black Panthers endangers society; committed by police, it endangers society even more. Arson,
whether committed by the frustrated poor in ghettos or
by frustrated students on campuses, is as criminal as arson
anywhere and is not to be justified as a form of rhetoric.
There can be no freedom where men fear the destruction
of their lives and the external means of living them. A
concern for life and property is not necessarily a bourgeois
concern.
We the people of the United States in adopting the
Constitution declared in the words of that document that
it was to be the supreme law of the land. Sometimes those
whose very powers depend upon the Constitution speak
and act in such a way as to contravene it. The Congress
in passing the Omnibus Crime Bill of 1968 may have been
acting in response to the mood of the people and with
respect for one kind of law. But in doing so they were also
attacking the independent authority of the Supreme
Court. The President, when recently the Senate was about
to vote on a certain nomination to that Court, referred to
himself as "the one person entrusted by the Constitution
with the power of appointment" of Supreme Court justices. He was forgetting or deliberately ignoring the constitutional, and by no means nominal, requirement, that
such appointments be made only with the advice and consent of the Senate. Furthermore, it is hard to avoid the
conclusion that those who talk most about law and order
are not deeply concerned to preserve the law contained in
the Bill of Rights, the law that directly protects specific
freedoms.
Americans who would not have their country destroyed
will respect both the common law and constitutional law
and will respect legal processes for the removal of unjust
law. They will refuse to be "polarized" no matter who may
be playing on which of their passions to attract them to
this pole or repel them from that. In independence of
soul they will not allow the present confusion of good and
evil to overwhelm their power to discriminate them.
Many teachers in our colleges and universities, as well
as many students, are determined that those institutions
shall as such become active in political affairs. There may
be occasions when such institutions have to act politically.
For instance, it would surely be their duty to resist by all
lawful political means a measure such as that not long ago
proposed in Congress, though not passed, to require every
college "to adopt an approved code of conduct for its
students and teachers before it or they could be eligible for
federal aid." The reason it would be their duty is that
such a measure would destroy the independence of the
educational institution. A college is of service politically
exactly by keeping itself out of political action. It is of
service because its independence does not mean indifference, but rather the occasion and the freedom to discuss
and debate political issues with rational detachment,
which is the only way to obtain light upon them. It is a
truly amazing thing that some teachers and students do
not believe in such debate or the possibility of any rational
detachment. They have become champions of blind action. Although I have never seen it defined, I suppose that
the name "activists" refers to such champions. The action
they desire they often call "revolution," which is also not
defined, but it seems to mean destroying all human institutions. There is an echo of Marxism in this though
I
�The College
without the painstaking Marxist argument designed to
show that in capitalist society all law and government,
all religious and educational institutions are derivative
from that society and in the dialectic of history destined to
be destroyed along with it.
In these bad times we who belong to this small college,
but all the greater for being small, often feel ourselves to
be like the philosopher in the 6th book of Plato's Republic
who amid the circumstances of actual political life is like
one "in the storm of dust and sleet which the driving
wind hurries along." If we retire to the shelter of a wall it
is partly to get a place where we may begin to see and
understand what is going on in that storm and what
should and could be done about it. And if we sometimes
manage to ignore the storm, we do not consider that we
are self-indulgent for there is a seraph that constantly
whispers to us that we have a true self that is above the
storm, and that knowledge belongs to another world and
is itself good. Others hurrying past may call to us to leave
our shelter and join them. They think it is no time for
business as usual. They do not know that when it is a
question of the business in which we arc engaged it is
always time for business as usual.
Last year's com1nencement speaker referred to our
pro~
gram and the character of our studies as presupposing the
authority of intellect. Let me stress the word "authority."
The authority of intellect is not the authority of doctrine.
St. John's College has no authoritative doctrine. But it is
devoted to asking questions about all things around us.
This asking of questions is meaningful not because we
can always find answers, but because learning occurs. That
genuine learning does occur means that the intellect is
not a servant or an instrument, but that it has authority.
Graduates of the Class of I 970, I bid you do the best
things in these bad times and in the worst times if such
should overtake you. Cultivate temperance in political
judgment and action. Cultivate the courage to stand firm
for reason and sense against unreason and nonsense. Sup~
port what justice there is in our laws, our institutions, and
our ways without losing sight of a higher justice by which
they must be measured. Be intemperate and erotic in the
quest for wisdom and understanding. Value charity and
humility since he who hates or contemns his brother
2
abides in death, as someone has said.
What hope can I offer you for the future of this earth?
I do not know. Things do not look good. The future is
perhaps not as much within man's hands as he has persuaded himself in our modern era. It is, of course, my own
belief that it is in the hands of a beneficent God, and
that is ground for hope. If you do not share that belief,
is there some ground? Ignorance of the future is not reason for despair, but neither is it reason for hope. Yet I
would pray that it be your singular praise, no matter
how bad the times, not only to do, but to find it possible
to hope, the best things.
The Reverend Joseph Winfree Smith, Jr., Tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, received his B.D. degree from the Virginia Theological
Seminary and his Ph.D. degree from the University of Virginia. He
was Rector of St. Paul's Church, Ivy Depot, Virginia, from 1939 to
1941. In 1959 he was awarded the Addison E. Mullikin Tutorship.
He has lectured on Aristotle's Metaphysics, Aristotle's Ethics, John
Calvin, Ptolemy, and Kepler's astronomy. Students and Tutors have
profited from his notes on the number and ratio books of Euclid, his
paper on Ptolemy's "TI1eory of the Moon," and his introduction to
and translation of Vi6tc's Introduction to the Analytical Art. For
some 25 years students have benefited from his Tuesday evening extracurricular classes on the New Testament.
�The Number of My Loves
Selections
By CHARLES G. BELL
In flaming
And is still .
From the Preface
. . . But what is the whole field of love? It is not comprised
of sex, romance, and marriage. Despite all attempts of
materialists and reductionists in all ages to fumigate nature
of everything more anthropomorphic than particles in
motion, embodied attraction retains and will retain some-
thing of the mystery and ambiguity of love. No less with
us than with Dante "the love that moves the sun and
other stars" stretches from gravity through electrical and
chemical affinities to hunger, lust, the quest for knowledge,
the longing for God. "Our soul is restless until it rest in
Thee ...."
The Act
Dante, who witnessed heaven and hell,
Found both fashioned out of flame.
In the passion of this calm,
Feel love's keel wake worlds of pain.
From Part II
Dogwood and Flowering Judas
From Part I
Moss-green
Far in the spruce wood, through the stained
Twilight over the needled ground,
A space opens, as under water, brimmed
With sky and green, where a spruce tree has died.
To stretch out on the cinquefoil of that ground:
Wood sorrel, bunch berry, goldthread,
A walnut gnawed, a robin's egg,
Coil of a snail, gray feather of a dove.
Child of death, come with me
Over the brown-stained ground,
To the round heart of birth,
Love-luminous, moss-green.
Te,Dea
The well
That floats the leaf
And flower,
Drowning them;
The flame
That wraps itself
Cornel, a Florentine profile,
Snow-maiden,
Quatrefoil dawn-flower;
Redbud, Venetian puta:na,
Spilling the
Wine of noon's orgies;
In the garden of the heartGod saidLet them bloom together.
From Part III
Rainsong of Fish and Birds
A long drought. In the heat of this afternoon
Unaccountably the birds
Begin to sing.
I go with mask and snorkel to the pool. Dive.
Fish come round me: black bass, goggle-eye, brim,
Flowing and retreating, expectant among
The water-weed. When I come up for air,
The liquid interface is dimpled with white spume,
3
�The College
Rustling on the water; thunder shakes the trees;
And the birds are singing in a gust of rain.
Love of Number
How cause and wish
Foreknowledge, chance and deed
Rustle around us dark and luminous as rain.
ONE
1
Giant Spruce
To climb that liquidly resilient up the air,
To take fixed and swaying all year the wind and rain,
To point branch over branch the skyward bone of the spire,
And trail for the nuture of light sun-terraces of green,
Through centuries to unfold the templet shape we areHere conqueror, earth-waster, lift fire-eyes of pain
and say: "I might have been life-rooted, like that tree."
The point alone.
Dilate it (birdcall, waves in a pond,
Circle and sphere, in the gravity of onesness, raindrops,
stars)
Cleaves an in from out, other from same
Self-reflecting
TWO
Since every actual round
Stretches on some axis, oblate dividing star,
Breeds the antinomy of poles. Fix on the void betweenIn turbulence the axis mounts a thrust
Bisecting: pyramid of
THREE
From Part IV
Dunghill Harbinger
Only the poor keep roosters.
In the dark before the dawn
From every moonvine porch
And shanty ridgepole breaks
The raw confirmatory cry.
The suburbs of the rich are silent.
A Fly Thrown into the Fire
The black body shrinks and hisses
Fringed with lightWhat stretched the neck, what preened
Head and wings,
Changed to incandescenceAll flesh grass
In the hands of the living God.
4
Timaeus' flame.
From there to four asks toil, vertex
Split apart; asks skill, to draw them equally, balance the
post
And lintel temple of the year, Roma Quadrata,
Circumscribed
FOUR
Too perfect.
Reason's limit. Beyond is miracle.
Call imagination back to the sphere, the wave four had
stilled:
Golden section, curling vine, petals, starfish,
Undulant and dancing sea-barn fluent
FIVE
Love would rest there.
But in rest knows the cold descent of rule
More than quadrate order where all the waters close
Lost to love and play, tyranny of bees
The radial crystal
�July 1970
SIX
The Berlin Titian
From that ice cage
We reach out any way. Numbers
Where Venus in the lap of flesh,
Subdued by music, cleaves her thighs,
The lover plays; only his eyes
Pursue those generous valleys, flank and breast.
Infinite: seven music's prime, closed in the octilgon,
The gods' ennead nine, three threes,
And one, Gothic
TEN
Endecasyllable
Hourly market dozen and the haunted
Gulf thirteen ... But all of them born of Pythagorean five
By the breeding on female two of male
And numberless
But in a landscape broad as dream,
Brown fields and mountains in dim light,
The curtained carriage of his thought
Drives to a stable, drawn by a plunging team.
Being on its downward course
Delays in music, delegates the act;
Love's home unentered is the root
Whose flower is beauty, whose seed is force.
ONE
From Part V
Midsummer Night in Aspen Meadows
Winding down three valleys from fir mountains
Converging pastures, flickering fires in dark nowThe world I say is like that: multi-dimensional
Comet-slug, shaping time-space landings as it goes.
And by each eye of fire, in the eave of God's nativity,
Krishna dancers, bongo hippes, single acid brooder,
Spin the cocoon of vision, inwardness as always
Reaching out-to be the whole earth-river,
Charles G. Bell was born in Greenville, Mississippi. He received a
B.S. degree from the University of Virginia ( 1936), a Rhodes
Scholarship, a B.A. degree (1938), a B. Lilt. degree (1939), and an
M.A. degree ( 1966), all at Oxford University. He has been both a
Research Assistant in Physics and an Assistant Professor of English
at Princeton University, an Assistant ProfeSsor of Humanities at the
University of Chicago, a Guest Professor at the University of Frankfurt,
a Guest Professor in the Honours Program at the University of Puerto
Rico, and a Fulbright Professor in the Technische Hochscule in
Munich. In addition he has been awarded with Rockefeller and Ford
Foundation grants. He was a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis,
from 1956 to 1967 when he joined the College at Santa Fe.
Mr. Bell is the author of two volumes of verse, Songs for a New
America (1953), revised edition, Dunwoody, Georgia: Norman S.
Berg, 1966; and Delta Return (1956), revised edition, same publisher,
1969. He is also the author of the first two parts of a novel triology
The Married Land, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962, and The Halt
Gods, same publisher, 1968. Both his life and writings testify to his
aim to bring art and science into organic union.
Glacier of marging soul-fires down black mountains,
The comet filled with eyes, it cannot be ... and is .
•
•
•
5
�Faraday's Thought on Electromagnetism
By THOMAS K. SIMPSON
This is part of the first chapter of a study of a neglected
great book, James Clerk Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity
and Magnetism. The Treatise appeared on the original
reading list of the new program, but apparently was taken
off just in time for my senior year in 1950; I never read it
as a student. Apparently it was a hard book to incorporate
in the program. The problem of my study is, really, how
to read a book of analytic mathematical physics. Interestingly, it develops that the book and the problem are well
matched, since Maxwell, writing one af the last great
works of natural philosophy, is wrestling with the question,
how to write a book of analytic mathematical physics in
such a way that it can be read with understanding. Maxwell wages a relentless struggle with the symbols throughout the book, trying all the while to develop a rhetoric
of mathematical physics which will make the equations
intelligible. 'I11e present chapter is not about the Treatise,
however, but about another great book (also a dropout
from the reading list), Faraday's Experimental Researches
in Electricity. The reason why the study starts with the
wrong book is given in the first pages. (Author)
development. But Maxwell not only draws upon Faraday
as his source; in a curious way he makes this source the
object of his work as well. We are directed back to Faraday, to read with renewed apreciation and understanding:
If by anything I have here written I may assist any
student in understanding Faraday's modes of thought
and expression, I shall regard it as the accomplishment of one of my principal aims-to communicate
to others the same delight which I have found my_
self in reading Faraday's Researches 2
It is therefore essential that the present study of Maxwell's Treatise should begin with some consideration of
Faraday's Experimental Researches.
No summary can convey either the content or the character of Faraday's writings. As perhaps the ultimate example of their genre, the literature of scientific inquiry organized episodically in linked series, they are a texture of
speculation and intelligent experiment so interwoven that
it is virtually impossible to isolate significant sections from
their context or detail. The point of the work is in effect
this very mass of theme and variation. What I hope to do
in this chapter, rather, is first to discuss the nature of
science as Faraday conceives and practices it, and then to
In an extraordinary way, Maxwell's Treatise vn Electricity and Magnetism presupposes that the reader is already familiar with another book, Faraday's Experimental
Researches in Electricity. One can indeed master the
Treatise without having read Faraday, bnt such an approach cannot lead to the understanding which Maxwell
deeply desires to share with the reader. Many wbrks refer
repeatedly to a single principal source, but there must be
few which command their readers as Maxwell does in a
footnote to Chapter III of Part IV: "Read Faraday's Experimental Researches, Series i and ii." 1 As I have asserted
earlier, Maxwell has designed his Treatise as a faithful
translation of Faraday's Researches, and throughout, Faraday is the mainspring of the work and the guide to its
Copyrighted by T. K. Simpson
1 James Clerk MaxweB, A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism
(3rd ed., 2 vols.; Oxford: 1892), 2, p. 178. (This is the edition cur~
rently available in a Dover reprint.)
6
identify certain principal insights which Faraday tended
to bring to bear on electromagnetism in his later work.
These last constitute the primary material with which
Maxwell works in Part IV of the Treatise. Since it appears
to me that these insights, however powerful, by no means
constitute a theory, I have titled the present chapter
simply "Faraday's Thought on Electromagnetism," and
not "Faraday's Theory." As we shall see, one way of looking at the "translation" of Faraday's ideas which Maxwell
accomplishes is exactly as the transformation from the
mode of empirical inquiry in which the Researches are
cast, to that of theory, demonstrated in a systematic
treatise.
Faraday developed two concepts which became increasingly significant in his thought about magnetic and
electromagnetic effects. One was of course his concept of
"lines of force." He was impressed by this notion early
when he spoke of the lines merely as representations, and
2
Maxwell, Treatise, 1, p. xi.
�July 1970
called them, as others did, the "magnetic cnrves." Toward
the end of his work, they bore nearly the whole bnrden
of his thought on these topics, and he speculated increasingly about their possible "physical existence." The other
fundamental concept was that of the electrotonic state.
This is now less familiar to students of science, but for
Faraday it was both significant and deeply troubling, and
he returned to it, as Maxwell points out, again and again
from its first introduction in connection with the induction experiments of Series I in 1831, to the end. Faraday
was convinced that the surge of current which he ob-
science. However brilliantly he succeeded in self-education
in other areas, he apparently never felt it necessary to
acquire the mathematics he had missed. The result is that
he does not have before him with any vividness that universal paradigm of a reasoned deductive system, toward
which virtually all competent physics over the ages has
tried to shape itself. In particular, Faraday apparently
never studied Euclid; he has no working notion of a system of axioms and postulates, or of reasoning leading with
logical rigor to universal theorems.
There is at least the possibility that this innocence--of
served in the secondary circuit in electromagnetic induc-
mathematics represents not merely accidental ignorance,
tion could not occur unless the secondary conductor had
been initially in a state of electric tension. which was relaxed when the primary circuit was broken. The term
but a deliberate rejection. We are blessed with the record
of a remarkable exchange of correspondence between Faraday and Andre-Marie Ampere, the French philosopher and
mathematical physicist, whose work on electrodynamics
Duhem once called "a theory which dispenses with the
Frenchman's need to envy the Englishman's pride in the
glory of Newton." Here Faraday confronts his opposite, a
brilliant mathematical theorist, and in the course of the
correspondence Faraday finds occasion to describe his view
of his own role. We shall return to this in greater detail
below, but note this reaction of Faraday's when confronted
with a mathematical argument of Ampere's:
I regret that my deficiency in mathematical knowledge
makes me dull in comprehending these subjects. I
am naturally skeptical in the matter of theories and
therefore you must not be angry with me for not admitting the one you have advanced immediately.. 3
This skepticism of theory, I believe, turns him away from
mathematics almost on principle. He tends to regard
''electrotonic" was manufactured to express this electric
tension. As we shall see, Maxwell's translation of Faraday's
thought on electromagnetism turns about these two notions, the "lines of force" and the "electrotonic state."
For Maxwell, then, these will become fundamental concepts in a connected theory. But what sort of use does
Faraday himself make of them? I think it becomes clear on
a reading of the Experimental Researcl1es that Faraday
does not use them as elements of a scientific theory in any
formal sense. Even if we were not to ask for a connected
or complete theory, doubt arises whether concepts in Faraday's hands even tend toward inclusion in a provisional
theoretical structure. The question, indeed, becomes more
fundamental: does science, for Faraday, grow toward a
theoretical shape, or does it develop toward something
else altogether, not theory, but an account of a different
kind?
We might attempt to answer the question by putting
Faraday's account to certain tests, asking it to do the kinds
of things theories are expected to do: to solve "problems,"
to "predict" phenomena on the basis of certain given con-
dictions, or to yield general "theorems" through logical
argument from assumed premises. But these functions,
though they are surely among the proper tasks of an effective scientific theory, are precisely those which Faraday
does not undertake.
Faraday was almost totally uneducated in mathematics.
It is difficult to grasp the significance of this fact for
mathematicians as operating on a height, while his own
work, as experimentalist, is close to nature, and to fact;
it would be a mistake, I believe, to overlook the element
of pride which mixeS with humility in his descriptions of
his more modest work. In a moment of triumph following
upon the discovery of electromagnetic induction and the
explanation it afforded of the Arago disk phenomenon,
he wrote to his friend Richard Phillips:
3 Faraday to AmpCre, Sept. 3, 1822. "L. de Launay," Correspondance
du Grand Ampb-e ( 3 vo1s.; Paris: Gauthier-Villiars, 1936-1943), 3,
p. 911.
7
�The College
It is quite comfortable to me to find that experiment
need not quail before mathematics, but is quite competent to rival it in discovery; and I am amazed to find
that what the high mathematicians have announced
as the essential condition to the rotation ... has so
little foundation ... .<
There is a suggestion of a mora] note in Faraday's rejection of theory, as will become clearer when we look at his
characterizations of the true form which science should
take. In relation to mathematics, this passage from the
work which Faraday early adopted as his pocket guide,
Isaac Watts's Improvement of the Mind, may be significant:
But a penetration into the abstruse difficulties and
depths of modern algebra and fluxions, the various
methods of quadratures ... and twenty other things
that some modern mathematicians deal in, are not
worth the labour of those who design either of the
three learned professions . . . This is the sentence
of a considerable man . . . who was a very good
proficient writer on these subject; he affirms, that they
are but barren and airy studies for a man entirely to
live. upon ... He adds further, concerning the launching into the depth of these studies, that they are apt
to beget a secret and refined pride, an over-bearing
vanity, the most opposite temper to the true spirit of
the go~el. 'I11is tempts them to presume on a kind
of omniscience in respect to their fellow-creatures,
who have not risen to their elevation . .. 5
Faraday remained, in a phrase he used without, I think,
any hint of apology, an "unmathematical philosopher."
Maxwell grew up solving problems; as a child, he carried
them with him for spare moments, calling them his
"props"; as a man, he filled his Treatise with them. By
contrast, for all we know, no teacher may ever have set
Faraday a problem, ever assigned him certain "givens"
and required him to find the corresponding "unknowns."
4 Bence Jones, The Life and Letters of Faraday {2 vo1s.; Philade1phia:
1870), 2, p. 10.
5 Isaac Watts, The Improvement of the Mind (Washington, D. C.:
1813)' p. 213.
8
Naturally enough, then, he does not think of his .electromagnetic notions as serving this purpose, and a reader can-·
not make much of the Experimental Researches if he
comes to them with this criterion in mind. It is not only
that Faraday cannot perform the operations of algebra
or geometry, that he can make only a first approximation
to a quantitative argument of any complexity. It is not
only that he uses spatial images and models where others
would work with number and symbol. It is not that he uses
brief arguments where others would construct theorems.
To a degree, these may all be true of Faraday, but -as I express them they suggest defects; in Faraday's case, they
must be construed as aspects of his special strength. His
steps are not weak and faltering, his works are not those
of a man who hesitantly approaches a language he has not
properly learned. Faraday (for all the humility which has
been attributed to him) steps forth proudly, and while
he is generally cautious and of course always modest in his
public claims, he speaks with a voice as confident and
firm as that of any scientist who knows the strengths of
his own method. He is speaking a different language from
that of the theoretical scientist. He is not stepping hesitantly toward a mathematical physics; he is marching confidently along a different road. He has indeed no notion
of theory as a goal of science.
In retrospect, this is a fantastic situation. In the land of
Newton, at a time when mathematical physics was again
flourishing, some of the most creative scientific work of
the century in a new and more difficult area of physics
was done over a long period of years by a man who had
no notion of the Principia and did not share either Newton's methods or his goals. For Faraday, Newton's classic
triumph was quite meaningless, the triumph which had
polarized the intellectual life of Europe for a century.
How can the historian of science understand the success of such a deep and total disruption of any reasonable
continuity in the scientific enterprise? Perhaps the ultimate
challenge for the present study is to lay the groundwork
for finding the significance of the Faraday-Maxwell episode in the development of mathematical physics. Physics
seems indeed to have profited immensely from this instance of amnesia in its work, but it is well to keep in
mind that the fact that this one course was followed does
�July 1970
not m.ean that it was in principle a necessary "stage'' of
development, or that it was ultimately for the "best."
There is a sense in which the serious historian must always
weigh alternative histories. On the Continent there were
of course a number of highly competent scientists at work
on the topics which concerned Faraday, both mathematicians and experimentalists, and I think one may reasonably suppose that most of Faraday's discoveries would before long have been made by others whose thought was
in the tradition stemming from Newton. The great Newtonian counterpart of Faraday was Ampere, but there were
many others, Weber, the Neumanns (father and son),
Kirchoff, Lorenz, Helmholtz, Boltzmann, Hertz. There
were at once capable mathematicians and skillful searchers;
had electromagnetic theory developed in the hands of
such workers without the peculiar turn of thought given it
by Faraday and Maxwell, it is quite conceivable that
physics might have passed into the modern era, more or
less on schedule, as a more purely mathematical discipline,
and without the digression marked by the "field" concept.
Accordingly to a number of critics, the field concept was
never systematically necessary, and has been the source of
much confusion, beginning with the Treatise itself' Faraday's unmathematical physics, therefore, developed and interpreted as it was by Maxwell, may have diverted science
from a more rational course of development which would
have made little or no use of the concept of the "field,"
but would have left nope of the phenomena unaccounted
for.
What then is Faraday's concept of science? It is evi-
6 The classic criticism of Maxwell's theory is Pierre Duhem, Les
Theories Electriques de f. Clerk Maxwell (Paris: Hermann, 1902).
Outstanding among the more recent critics is O'Rahilly, who recommends a direct particle/particle interaction equation in the tradition of
Wilhelm Weber. Alfred O'Rahilly, Electromagnetics: a Discussion of
Fundamentals ( 19 35), reprinted as Electromagnetic Fundamentals ( 2
vols.; New York: Dover Publications, 1965), especially pp. 645 ff. See
also J. A. Wheeler and R. P. Feynman, "Classical Electrodynamics in
Terms of Direct Interparticle Action," Reviews of Modern Physics,
21 (1949), pp. 425 ff., and articles by Parry Moon and D. E. Spencer,
among them "A New Electrodynamics," Journal of the Franklin Institute, 257 (1954), pp. 369 ff., and "Electromagnetism without Magnetism," Amer. J. ot Physics, 22 ( 1954), pp. 120 fl.
dent that he is not merely an experimentalist, cleverly providing data for theoreticians to work up into theories. On
the contrary, Faraday had one of the most fertile and
insistent of speculative minds; in a certain sense, he was
constantly producing new hypotheses and his mind was
constantly reasoning from them. The result of this, reported in the thousands of paragraphs of the Experimental
Researches .rnd the still more numerous paragraphs of the
Diary, is not theory; but a vast weaving and unweaving
of powers, a process of discovery and identification, a great,
highly unified formulary for the production and classification of effects. Faraday, as Tyndall proclaimed and all the
world agreed, is the great "discoverer"; the paradigm for
Faraday is Odysseus rather than Euclid: he travels from
land to land, reporting wonders, guided by legend and
myth, rumor or divine love. For Odysseus, the dominant
desire is to see men's cities and to know their minds,
and to gather all this together in the return to Ithaca. For
Faraday, it is to investigate all the powers of nature, and
to unveil them as essentially one, in the lecture hall on
Albemarle Street. If Faraday did not learn this from
Homer, he was moved to it by Dr. Watts:
Let the hope of new discoveries, as well as the satisfaction and pleasure of known truths, animate your
daily industry. Do not think learning in general is arrived at its perfection, or that the knowledge of any
particular subject in any science cannot be improved,
merely because it has lain five hundred or a thousand
years without improvement. The present age, by the
blessing of God on the ingenuity and diligence of
men, has brought to light such truths in natural philosophy, and such discoveries in the heavens and the
earth as seemed to be beyond the reach of man ...
Do not hover always on the surface of things, nor
take up suddenly with mere appearances; but penetrate into the depth of matters ... 7
Here is Faraday's own characterization of his hope for
his chosen science of electricity, in a passage which opens
the famous Series XI on induction:
The science of electricity is in that state in which
7
Watts, Improvement of the Mind, p. 24.
9
�The College
every part of it requires experimental investigation;
is just now of far more importance, the development
given to Odysseus to talk with Athena, face to face?
This is not theoretical physics; as has been suggested, it
is essentially chemistry, not in the modern sense of
of the means by which the old effects are produced,
Lavoisier, but as a science of powers, in the tradition of
and the consequent more accurate determination of
von Belmont and Stahl.10 We might best understand
Faraday as the disciple of Davy, and the Researches as the
evolution of a coherent chemistry of electromagnetism.
The translation of Faraday which Maxwell is to accomplish in the Treatise must be, among other things, the
transformation of this chemistry into the form of a mathematical theory worthy of admission to the halls of Trinity.
In this, it must he like the historic transformation of Greek
thought from the mode of Homer to that of Euclid.
The Experimental Researches are dense with questionsFaraday's method is that of unremitting inquiry. The
not merely for the discovery of new effects, but what
the first principles of action of the most extraordinary
and universal power in nature:-and to those philosophers who pursue the inquiry zealously yet cautiously, combining experiment with analogy, sus~
picious of their preconceived notions, paying more
respect to a fact than a theory, not too hasty to generalize, and above all things, willing at every step to
cross-·examine their own opinions, both by reasoning
and experiment, no branch of knowledge can afford
so fine and ready a field for discovery as this. Such
is more abundantly shown to be the case by the progress which electricity has made in the last thirty
years: Chemistry and Magnetism have successively
acknowledged its overruling influence; and it is probable that every effect depending upon the powers of
inorganic matter, and perhaps most of those related
to vegetable and animal life, will ultimately be found
subordinate to it. (XR if360) 8
In one paragraph Faraday has given both his vision of
nature, and the method of science proportioned to it. He
describes an impasse in the science of electricity-one in
which phenomena are known in plenty, but first principles
are lacking. To another man, this would look like a situation which called for a theory; but for Faraday, this is precisely the situation which calls for "experimental investigation"; it is a "fine and ready ... field for discovery." What
is to be sought? Not axioms or laws, but the principles
of action of a power-the most universal in nature, which
moves all of the inorganic world and perhaps for the most
part the plants and animals as well. This is not something
to he resolved with paper and pencil, hut by facts: we
very notion of a "series" of researches is, in a sense, that of
a chain of linked questions and answers. Before we bring
our own questions to bear on Faraday's work, let us listen
briefly to the questions Faraday asks of himself.
The underlying question for Faraday is always the same:
what really exists in nature? The practical form which this
takes is that of the test: what will happen if I do this?
Can I produce the phenomenon, the visible or tangible
evidence, which will be the sure symptom of the existence
of this or that suspected power or state? Think, for example, of the discovery of the diamagnetic force. (XR,
Series 19 & 20). Faraday had first sought to reveal the state
of strain in a dielectric, to which the curved lines of electric action were already a clue; using polarized light, he
hoped to make manifest the existence of the hypothesized
lines of action of contiguous particles. This failing, he
asked the analogous question for the curved lines of action
of the magnetic force: do lines of strain really exist in a
diamagnetic medium? When this succeeded, and the
plane of polarized light was rotated on passage through
his "heavy glass" in a strong magnetic field, he announced
see that for Faraday, the causes, the "first principles," are
not laws but themselves facts, to be unveiled to observation in the laboratory. We should remember that it was
8 The notation (XR i/360) refers to Faraday's Experimental Researches in Electricity, volume i, p. 360, of the original edition, which
is reproduced with the same pagination in the current Dover reprint.
10
9 It is impossible not to point out the striking appropriateness of
the epithet which Homer regularly assigns to Odysseus: in his laboratory, Faraday is indeed the man "of many devices."
1H "In a very real sense, all his discoveries were chemical if chemistry be defined (as it was by Faraday) as the science of the powers of
matter." L. P. Williams, in Lancclot "Wbyte, ed., Roger Joseph
Boscovich (London: Allen & Unwin, 1961), p. 163.
�July 1970
that he had:
... at last succeeded in magnetizing and electrifying
a ray of light, and in illuminating a magnetic line of
force. (XR iii/2)
By this, he says in a note, he
. . . intended to express that the line of magnetic
force was illuminated as the earth is illuminated by
the sun, or the spider's web illuminated by the astronomer's lamp. Employing a ray of light, we can
tell by the eye, the direction of the magnetic lines
through a body ... (XR iii/2)
This I believe is a paradigm of Faraday's concept of science: to make manifest to the eye what is suspected to
exist in nature. In one of his last writings about the
magnetic lines of force, he carefully drew a distinction
between the limited powers of mathematical physics as a
mode of representing the forces of nature, and his own
search for "the one true physical signification" of the
phenomena:
Indeed, what we really want is not a variety of different methods of representing the forces, but the
one true physical signification of that which is rendered apparent to us by the phaenomena, and the laws
governing them ... supposing that ... mathematical
considerations cannot at present decide which of the
views of magnetism is either above or inferior to its
eo-rivals; it surely becomes necessary that physical
reasoning should be brought to bear upon the subject
as largely as possible. For if there be such physical
lines of magnetic force as correspond (in having a
real existence) to the rays of light, it does not seem
so very impossible for experiment to touch them;
and it must be very important to obtain an answer
to the inquiry respecting their existence, especially as
the answer is likely enough to be in the affirmative.
(XR iiij531)
An hypothesis or a theory is nothing more than an unresolved suspicion; a part, as Tyndall suggested, of the
scaffolding, not of the edifice of science itself, which moves
on to deal with existences.
He then demands of himself, what it is which has been
revealed by the new phenomena. It is a condition of
tension, and therefore of force, because it relaxes as soon
as the magnetic induction is removed, but is it the same
as the magnetic force, or different? He tests, by determining whether the diamagoetic body responds to a magnet; not observing any motion, he concludes that:
... [T]he molecular condition of these bodies, when
in the state described, must be specifically distinct
from that of magnetized iron, or other such matter,
and must be a new magnetic condition; ... the force
which the matter in this state possesses and its mode
of action, must be to us a new magnetic force or mode
of action of matter. (XR iii/21)
In other words, having made a force manifest, Faraday
proceeds to identify it, by asking whether it is the same
as, or specifically different from, previously known forces.
The same line of inquiry, of course, in time revealed
that indeed the diamagnetic material does move under
the action of a magnet, but moves in a way specifically
distinct from the motion of a magnetic material. The existence of the diamagnetic force, first revealed only optically, is now revealed by a second token, a specific type
of motion. This motion is summarized in a law:
All the phaenomena resolve themselves into this, that
a portion of such matter, when under magnetic action,
tends to move from stronger to weaker places or
points afforce. (XR iii/69)
There follows a brilliant experimental inquiry as to the
universality of the new effect, concluding with the generalization:
All matter appears to be subject to the magnetic force
as universally as it is to the gravitating, the electric
and the chemical or cohesive forces; for that which is
not affected in the manner of ordinary magnetic action, is affected in the manner I have now described ...
(X.k. iii/70)
To reveal, to identify, and to generalize-the greatest part
of the stream of Faraday's working questions serves these
three ends. He frequently reasons by analogy, but for
Faraday an analogy functions most often as a tentative
identity, drawing him on (as in the case of the diamagnetic and magneto-optic forces) to decide whether the
two analogous powers are finally the same or different.
Admittedly, Faraday is never content to rest with an
unexplained phenomenon, and he moves on from a law
11
�The College
such as that of diamagnetic action above, to ask why the
action occurs. Again, this might seem to be the step into
theory, which I have denied Faraday takes. Indeed, he
begins a paragraph shortly after with the words, "Theoretically, an explanation of the diamagnetic bodies . . .
might be offered . . .," and proposes an account of diamagnetism in terms of induced polarity, a theory which
was as we shall see beautifully successful in the hands of
Weber, though Faraday himself soon disowned it. But
a theory for Faraday is merely a makeshift explanation, a
temporary and unsatisfactory stage of science, which is
dispelled as the science progresses. The explanation of diamagnetism which proved more fruitful in Faraday's hands,
and which accounted as well for magnetism and magne-
crystallic action (the pointing of crystals in the magnetic
field), is a good case in point. This is the theory of the
conduction of lines of force:
I cannot resist throwing forth another view of these
phaenomena which may possibly be the true one.
The lines of magnetic force may perhaps be assumed
as in some degree resembling the rays of light, heat,
& c.; and may find difficulty in passing through bodies,
and so be affected by them, as light is affected ...
the position which the crystal takes ... may be the
position of no, or of least resistance; and therefore the
position of rest and stable equilibrium. (XR iii/12223)
I submit that the decisive words in this paragraph, for
Faraday, are these: "Which may possibly be the true one."
Even if this explanation accounted for all the known
phenomena, I do not believe Faraday would have rested
for a moment until he had found out the lines of force,
which here take on a new importance, and given tangible
and visible evidence of their presumed passage through
bodies. Only thus would the "truth" of the view be exhibited to his satisfaction.
His renewed efforts to reveal the "physical lines" of
force are well known. 111ey culminate in papers of 1852
and 1855 (XR iii/437, 528). Here the concern is openly
for the real ("physical") existence of the lines, and these
papers are therefore "speculative" in a way in which the
disciplined researches were not; but I think it is apparent
that the whole thrust of the Experimental Researches
12
has been toward this end: to discover the powers of nature, to find out their true characters, and, finally, to produce the guarantees of their ''physical" existence. In an
apology for speculation, which prefaces the 1852 paper
but which really speaks for the role speculation has played
throughout the Researches, Faraday says:
It is not to be supposed for a moment that speculations of this kind are useless, or necessarily hurtful, in
natural philosophy. They should ever be held as
doubtful, and liable to error and to change; but they
are wonderful aids in the hands of the experimentalist
and mathematician. For not only are they useful in
rendering the vague idea more clear for the time,
giving it something like a definite shape, that it may
be submitted to experiment and calculation; but
they lead on, by deduction and correction, to the discovery of new phenomena, and so cause an increase
and advance of rea] physical truth, which, unlike the
hypothesis that led to it, becomes fundamental knowledge not subject to change. (XR iii/408; italics mine)
Speculation is a thread which "leads on" toward the goal
of science; the path is through "discovery of new phenomena," and the terminus is not a completed theory,
but "real physical truth." What then is "fundamental
knowledge not subject to change"? As immune to change,
it must be manifest in the phenomena; as fundamental, it
must consist in those select phenomena which directly reveal the primary, universal powers. Such would be phenomena which made manifest the "physical lines" of magnetic force. In his late, unpublished researches on "Time
in Magnetism" Faraday was hard at the effort to capture
such primary evidence. 11
In a recent biography of Faraday, L. Pearce Williams
makes a striking observation about the law known as "Faraday's," relating the current induced in a circuit to the
change of flux through it. Faraday certainly states the law:
They also prove, generally, that the quantity of electricity thrown into a current is directly as the amount
of curves intersected. (XR iii/346)
11 Faiaday's Diary, cd. Thomas Martin (7 vols.; London: G. Bell &
Sons, 1932-1936), 6, pp. 434-444; 7, pp. 255-333. See T. K. Simpson,
Isis, 57 (1966), pp. 423-425.
�July 1970
Williams points out, however, that in its context in a
search for sure evidence of the lines of force, this law
"was not directed at electricity at all":
Faraday was trying to prove that there was a certain
specific amount of 'power' associated with every magnet; the induced currents merely detected this power.12
Williams adds that Faraday was interested in the induced
electricity in Series I, though in the passages cited there
Faraday was not stating the quantitative "law." I think
this distinction is valid, and significant for an understanding of Faraday's purposes. Whereas the world has taken
from Faraday a quantitative law relating motion in a magnetic field to induced current, Faraday himself had his
eye on the problem of detecting the "sphondyloid of
power" about a magnet; he was seeking out an entity in
nature, and using the moving wire with its law of action
merely as a highly prized instrument in the search.
This is the physics of the explorer, the discoverer.
Throughout the Researches Faraday sought what he called
"contiguity" in nature; understandably, he seeks the same
contiguity in the account of nature. A work of science
should record a completed exploration, a detailed mapping, without gaps, of contiguous substances and powers.
Maxwell, I believe, sees this about Faraday, so that it is
not merely Faraday's clarity of view and inventiveness
which attract Maxwell, but an image of the form physics
might take, a physics of contiguity. In the transformation
which Maxwell made of Faraday's thought, I believe his
obj·ective was not only to find a mathematical expression
appropriate to Faraday's electromagnetic concepts, but to
bring into analytic form Faraday's insight about the nature
of physics itself as a connected system. This calls for a
new kind of mathematical physics, field physics.
I mentioned earlier that two concepts are particularly
important in Faraday's thinking about electromagnetism,
namely the "lines of force" and the "electrotonic state."
Thus far, the discussion of Faraday's inquiry into diamagnetism has emphasized only the former, but curiously it
was the "electrotonic state" which seemed to Faraday himself the more fundamental idea, and it is this latter which
12
L. Pearce Williams, Michael Faraday (New York: Basic Books,
1965), p. 463, n. 51.
Maxwell takes as the key in his translation of Faraday.
For anyone who holds as I do that Faraday did not work
with theories, the electrotonic state presents a special problem, since it is a concept which he never abandoned, and
yet was never able to support empirically. He held it with
tenacity, as we shall see, even though it remained a pure
speculation.
Without attempting to trace the history of this elusive
notion through the Experimental Researches, I should like
to try to indicate its role in Faraday's thought. In Series I,
it appears in effect as the vehicle for Faraday's perplexity
at the unexpected finding that an electric current is induced only by variation of the current in a primary circuit, or by motion of a permanent magnet. Like Fresnel,
Faraday had expected a magnet to produce a current in
a conductor at rest, and even after he had discovered the
pulse of current on make or break of the primary circuit,
he continued to look for the anticipated effect during
steady flow of the primary current. Taking the inductive
pulse as evidence of a change of this supposed state, he
names it "after advising with· several learned friends" the
electro-tonic state signifying that it is a tension in the
direction of current flow in the conductor, and Series I is
conceived more as the announcement of the discovery of
a new state of matter, than as the discovery of the phenomenon of induced currents:
Whilst the wire is subject to either volta-electric or
magneto-electric induction, it appears to be in a peculiar state.... This electrical condition of matter
has not hitherto been recognized, but it probably
exerts a very important influence in many if not most
of the phenomena produced by currents of electricity.
(XR ij16)
He has to confess, however, that he had found no evidence for the existence of the newly named and announced state whatever:
This peculiar condition shows no known electrical
effects whilst it continues; nor have I yet been able to
discover any peculiar powers exerted, or properties
possessed, by matter whilst retained in this state.
(XR i/16-17)
The Experimental Researches thus open with a somewhat
embarrassing blunder-for he never was able to find any
13
�The College
evidence of the State" whatever, and in Series 2 he for~
11
mally withdrew the claim that it exists, though at the same
time he reasserted his own conviction that it must:
Thus the reasons ... have disappeared; and though it
still seems to me unlikely that a wire at rest in the
neighborhood of another carrying a powerful electric
current is entirely indifferent to it, yet I am not aware
of any distinct facts which authorize the conclusion
that it is in a particular state. (XR ij69)
Before making this reluctant retraction, he had made great
efforts to exhibit the existence of some such static state
in conductors in a magnetic field: that is, the efforts to
produce an effect in a conductor due to the mere presence
of a strong magnetic field did not stop with the discovery
of electromagnetic induction, but were if anything accelerated by it. The electrotonic state was the surrogate
for the effect which had for years been expected, and
which he still felt must exist. The experiments which he
performed then, on copper bars and leaves in a magnetic
field, were the equivalent of a search for diamagnetism or
diamagnetic polarity, and the actual discovery of diamagnetism seven years later, which we have discussed above,
was the outcome of essentially the same search for a state
of tension due to a steady magnetic field. In effect, the
persistent search for the electrotonic state yielded the
diamagnetic state.
Faraday himself speaks eloquently of his unremitting
dedication to the search for this missing "state"; three
years after the retraction, he writes:
Notwithstanding that the effects appear only at the
making and breaking of contact, (the current remaining unaffected, seemingly, in the interval) I cannot
resist the impression that there is some connected
and correspondent effect produced by this lateral
action of the elements of the electric stream [that is,
the magnetic action of the current] during the time
of its continuance ... there appears to be a link in
the chain of effects, a wheel in the physical mechanism
of the action, as yet unrecognized. If we endeavor to
consider electricity and magnetism as the results of
two forces of a physical agent, or a peculiar condition
of matter, exerted in determinate directions perpen-
dicular to each other ... (XR ij342)
14
He is seeking in the electrotonic state a "physical agent"
of which electricity and magnetism are merely two manifestations. In 1852, some thirty years after Series I, he reasserts his faith, now linking the search with that for the
physical lines of magnetic force:
Again and again the idea of an electro-tonic state ...
has been forced on my mind; such a state would coincide and become identified with that which would
then constitute the physical lines of magnetic force.
Another consideration tends in the same direction. I
formerly remarked that the magnetic equivalent to
static electricity was not known ... (XR iii/420-421)
He then sketches what amounts to a completed scheme
of nature, in which he takes the magnetic line as dynamic
by analogy to electric currents, and then inserts the electrotonic state as a static state of magnetism, a magnetic
tension analogous to the electrostatic tension which he
has asserted precedes all conduction.
The conviction expressed in Series I is reiterated in the
last pages of the Experimental Researches; speaking of the
wire which experiences a current when it is moved in a
magnetic field, he demands:
Now, how is it possible to conceive that the copper
or mercury could have this power in the moving state,
if it had no relation at all to the magnetic force in the
fixed state? ... The mere addition of motion could
do nothing, unless there were a prior static dependence
of the magnet and the metal upon each other ... (XR
iiij55l)
Even the complex, never-completed experiment on 11Time
in Magnetism" with which the Diary closes is a search,
strictly speaking, for the electrotonic state; he writes to
Maxwell in 1857:
I hope this summer to make some experiments on
the time of the magnetic action, or rather on the time
required for the assumption of the electrotonic
state . ...13
It would hardly be going too far to say that the Experimental Researches begin, and the Diary ends, with abortive efforts to find the one thing Faraday most wanted to
13 Lewis Campbell and William Garnett, Tl1e Life of James Clerk
Maxwell (2nd ed.; London' 1894), p. 200.
�July 1970
discover, yet for which he was never able to adduce a
single definite fact. The momentum of this search carries
over, however7 into Maxwell's reformulation of Faraday's
views, where, as we shall see, the electrotonic state holds
the central place.
We see here, as others have emphasized, that the "experimental" researches are shaped and motivated by great
speculative forces. Does this mean that science is, for
Faraday, ultimately in fact a theoretical enterprise? I think
it is only so to the extent that there is a gap which has
not yet been filled, as it should be, by something other
than such speculative concepts. His own terms in a quotation above are revealing: there is "a link in the chain
of effects, a wheel in the physical mechanism of the action, as yet unrecognized." As the gap is filled, the need
for theory will disappear. As science takes its completed
form, hypothesis and speculation, which is the only sense
of "theory" for Faraday, drop out, and a completed
"physical mechanism" with no gears missing takes their
place. True science, for Faraday, is the machine revealed.
It is useful, finally, to note what Faraday does not ask
himself. He does not ask questions about functional relationships: he does not ask, for example, the amount of
the repelling force on a diamagnetic body, or the dependence of this on the strength of the field in which it is
placed. He does not work with ratios and proportions. Not
only does he almost never write an equation: he never
asks the kind of question which has an equation as the
natural form of its answer.
Faraday's discomfort with the notion of a functional
relation in mathematics is revealed poignantly by a remark he made very late in his career, at a time when he
had finally been brought into confrontation with the
dreaded inverse-square law of gravity. He rebels at the
formulation "with a strength VARYING INVERSELY
..." The capital letters are his, expressing his outrage at
what he considers a blatant violation of the principle of
conservation of the force: how can it then "vary"? 14 He
14 Faraday, "On the Conservation of Force," Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics (London: 1859), pp. 443 ff., where
the remark quoted is found on p. 463. The essay is of special interest to the present study, as Maxwell discusses it at length in a letter
to Faraday (Campbell, Life of Maxwell, pp. 202 fl).
understands, indeed, the algebraic relation as describing
the effect, but the equation which for Newton and many
generations of scientists after him had fully characterized
the force, seems to Faraday utterly unjust to it. "Why,
then, talk about the inverse square of the distance?" he
says, commenting on the dismissal of his theory by the
astronomer-royal, Sir George Airy; "I had to warn my
audience against the sound of this law and its supposed
opposition on my Friday evening..."?15
Reference was made above to Faraday's correspondence
with Ampere. The following passage from a letter to Ampere, written early in Faraday's career, reveals the extent
to which he was aware of the divergence of his concept
of science from that of the mathematicians:
I am unfortunate in a want of mathematical knowledge and the power of entering with facility into abstract reasoning; I am obliged to feel my way by facts
closely placed together ... On reading your papers
and letters, I have no difficulty in following the
reasoning, but still at last I seem to want something
more on which to steady the conclusions. I fancy the
habit I got into of attending too closely to experiment has somewhat fettered my power of reasoning
and chains me down and I cannot help now and then,
comparing myself to a timid navigator who, though
he might boldly and safely steer across a bay or an
ocean by the aid of a compass which in its action
and principles is infallible, is afraid to leave sight of
the shore because he understands not the power of
the instrument that is to guide him. 16
Could there be a more revealing contrast between Faraday's steady effort to satisfy his mind with a dense series
of "facts closely placed together," and the elegant demonstrations of the mathematical physicist, embodied in the
electrodynamics of Ampere? The latter had announced
'his program at the beginning of his Theorie Mathematique:
Observer d'abord les faits, en varier les circonstances
autant qu'il est possible, accompagner ce premier
15
16
Jones, Life of Faraday, 2, p. 354.
de Launay, Correspondance, 3, p. 929.
15
�The College
travail de mesures pnecises pour en deduire des lois
generales, uniquement fondfes sur 1' experience, et
deduire de ces lois, independamment de toute
hypothese sur Ia nature des forces qui produisent les
phenomenes, Ja valeur mathematique de ces forces,
c' est-a-dire Ja formu}e qui Jes represente, teiJe est Ia
marche qu'a suivie Newton ... c'est elle qui m'a serve
de guide dans toutes mes recherches ....17
One should not, I think, be put off by the modesty which
Faraday assumes, however sincerely, in this letter. It is
clear that he reaiJy makes no apology for his physics. It
is a science, not of mathematics, but of facts. It does
not Jack mathematics, for it does not need mathematics.
As the letter reveals, Faraday sees mathematics as useful
(for others) as a short-cut, in leaping over gaps. His own
idea, however, is of a science without such gaps, a science
essentiaiJy non-quantitative, not needing either mathematical equations or chains of argument, but only inteiJigent experiment and clarity of view.
Faraday certainly reasons incessantly. But for him the
motions of the mind are constantly checked by reference
to fact, so that the result is a dense structure, a closelyspaced series, directed throughout by experiment:
Let the imagination go, guiding it by judgment and
principle, but holding it in and directing it by experiment.ls
Throughout the Experimental Researches, it is true, speculation and imagination run ahead of experiment, but seldom by more than a paragraph; this is not theory-building
in the mathematician's sense, but envisioning new, pos~
sible things, and they are no sooner envisioned, than they
are sought.
This is of course a naive view, profoundly naive. Faraday
built the world of Experimental Researches according to
this naivete, and if we are to view it by any other criteria,
or use his work for other purposes, we must first to a certain extent destroy it, and then rebuild. It is, perhaps,
the literary triumph of MaxweiJ's Treatise that it effects
this translation of Faraday's thought into mathematical
physics with such gentleness and understanding, preserving so much of Faraday's concept of nature and of science.
16
17Andrt!-Marie Ampere, ThCorie mathCmatique des phenomenes
electro-dynamiques, uniquement dCduite de l'expCrience {1827) (reprinted Parie: Librairie Scientifique Albert Blanchard, 1958), p. 2
(italics mine) .
18
Faraday, Diary, 7, p, 337. The remark in its context in the Diary
pages is not a reflection, but a Dionysian outcry in the midst of the
chase. It is surrounded by a cascade of ideas, as much speculative as
experimental, about a wished relation of gravity and electricity.
Thomas K. Simpson attended Rennselaer and Virginia Polytechnic
Institutes where he studied physics and electrical engineering. After
military service he resumed his education at St. John's College, graduating in 1950. He received an M.A. in Teaching degree from
Wesleyan University in 1955, and a Ph.D. degree in the History of
Science from The Johns Hopkins University in 1968. He has been
a Danforth and a National Science Foundation Fellow. He was one
of the founders and is currently President of the Key School, an
experimental school in Annapolis. He has been teaching at the College
in Annapolis since 19 55 and has had an important part in the development of the College's laboratory science program. Both by his
teaching and by his example Simpson has shown how science can and
should be understood as a liberal art, as one among the humanistic
disciplines.
�Prayers
Given at St. Johns College, Annapolis
By MICHAEL S. LITTLETON
Convocation, September 1968
Baccalaureate Service, June 1970
Eternal God, the source and fountain of truth,
To whom men turn when weary with illusion,
In humble recognition of the precious gifts of knowledge
And insight which thou dost bestow upon all who diligently seek them:
0 Lord, our Lord, how excellent thy name is in all the
earth;
Great and marvelous are thy works,
Just and true are thy ways, thou King of kings,
TI1e Gentiles come to thy light,
And thou dost lighten thy people Israel.
We ask thy blessing upon this institution of learning, its
faculty, students and administration.
That we may be delivered from fanatical devotion to halftruths,
From that half-hearted drudgery which takes no delight in
the given, and from sloth in all its forms.
Keep alive in us that freshness which lies deep down in
things, yet ever close at hand,
And with it the patience to forge for ourselves tools of
understanding, sturdy and precise,
Which shall enable us to continue on the path of knowledge in pursuit of the common good.
We pray in the name of the Lord
To whom belongs the earth and the fullness thereof. Amen.
Convocation, September 1969
Eternal God, whose glory is above the heavens
But is mirrored in the tiniest fragment of thy creation,
We thank thee that in the fullness of time
Lighten our dark world, 0 God,
and lead us in the paths of peace.
Direct our nation that she may walk upright
in the hour of responsibility.
Bless this college, now and in the years to come,
TI1at it may perform its task with integrity and gladness.
Bless these students about to graduate
That they may be encouraged by the memory of these
years spent together.
Create in us all clean hearts 0 God,
that we may see thee aright.
Renew a right spirit within us,
that amidst a babel of warring tongues
We may discern thy true word.
Restore unto us the joy of thy salvation,
And uphold us with thy free spirit,
Lest having begun a good work, we grow weary in well
doing
And miss thy kingdom's goal. Amen.
Thou dost create man in thine own image and IikeneSS 7
And dost call him from childish pursuits on to the full
stature of manhood:
Michael S. Littleton has been a Tutor at St. John's College since
1960. The recipient of the B.D. and S.D.M. degrees, he is a Minister
of Music at the United Church of Christ in Annapolis.
To be watchful, wakefull, compassionate and free;
Not conformed to the present schema of things,
But renewed in mind and spirit,
Able to give an account of the hope that is in him.
Do thou bless this college
And all who teach and learn,
That we may find courage to live with our own complexities,
And grace to upbuild one another in truth. Amen.
17
�NEWS ON THE CAMPUSES
St. John's College in Santa Fe conducted its third commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 31st, on the
campus patio, holding the program
outdoors for the first time.
The Reverend Robert Boshen of the
First Presbyterian Church in Santa Fe,
gave the Invocation and Benediction.
The graduates, faculty, and audience
sat around the lovely pool and waterfall which were given to the College
by actress Greer Garson in memory of
bier, 0.; Steven Alan Jackson, Santa
Fe, N.M.; Christine Lincoln, Cambridge, Mass.; Kyle Van McCard,
Corning, Ia.; Jane Moore, Liberal Kan.;
John Edward Munoz, Santa Fe, N.M.;
Toni Karen Thomas Nelson, Los Alarnos, N.M.; Sigrid Catherine Nielsen,
San Bruno, Calif.; Warren Frederick
Schmalenberger, Albuquerque, N.M.;
David Michael Sills, Chicago, Ill.;
Kathleen Marie Skelton, Geneseo, Ill.;
and Kathryn Joan Teipel, Tulsa, Okla.
Mr. Robert A. Neidorf, who has
taught at St. John's in Annapolis and
Santa Fe for a total of five years, was
selected by the senior class to present
her mother. A warm southwestern sun
the commencement address. He said in
"The literature of the new generation contains just criticisms of the
shone on the gathering while a spring
breeze tugged playfully at the academic
gowns and tassels of students and tutors.
President Richard D. Weigle announced the awarding of 27 degrees.
Graduating Cum Laude were James D.
Danneskiold, Whittier, Calif.; Michael
J. Landry, Franklin, La.; Christopher
B. Nelson, White Plains, N.Y.; Yehudith N. Schneider, Mamaroneck, N.Y.;
and James R. Walker, Fort Stockton,
Tex.
In addition 22 seniors were graduated Rite: Andrea Lynn Asti, Severna
Park, Md.; Benjamin Barney, Lukachukai, Ariz.; Henry Hunsden Carey, New
York, N.Y.; Ted Eugene Crook, Rifle,
Colo.; Michael Neil Dayton, Santa Fe,
N.M.; William Henry Doleman, Honolulu, Hi.; Toni Katz Drew, Santa Fe,
N.M.; Hugo Bengt Donaldsson Hamilton, Santa Fe, N.M.; Sarah Jane Curtis
Henderson, New York, N.Y.; Samuel
Merritt Hitt, III, Mountain Lakes,
N.J.; Susheila Louise Horwitz, Gam-
his speech that America is in danger because many of its leaders and young
usually extended with sweeping con-
SANTA FE HoLDS ITS
COMMENCEMENT OUTSIDE
FOR FIRST TIME
18
people lack a "sense of history." Mr.
Ncidorf said history "is a human process in which three vital things are created: the language of a people, an actualization of freedom for those people, and an idea of themselves, an idea
of what they are and ought to be, an
idea that may be expressed in their literature, their rituals, or their political in~
stitutions." A failure to understand
American history in these terms-- is evident in recent actions by President
Nixon and Vice-President Agnew and
in the practices of some of the younger
generation.
older generation, but the criticisms are
Santa Fe's third commencement, held outside this year, was situated around the Garson memorial
pool.
�July 1970
tempt to anyone who does not share
the rituals and slogans of the
young ...." He said the President had
violated the tradition of separation of
powers among the branches of government in ordering troops into Cambodia, and the Vice-President had disregarded the American concept of "due
process of law" in his "campaign of
intemperate and inflammatory vilification against the collegiate youth."
The Class of 1970 graduated 72
seniors on both campuses.
ANNAPOLIS
GRADUATION EXERCISES
The Class of 1970 in Annapolis graduated 46 seniors on Sunday, June 7th,
on the front campus under the 700year-old Liberty Tree.
The Reverend G. Holmes Mendelman, St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Annapolis, delivered the Invocation. The
Reverend J. Winfree Smith, tutor at
the College since 1941, gave the graduation address (see elsewhere in the
magazine).
Graduating Magna Cum Laude were
Marielle Mikah Hammett, Pottstown,
Pa.; Deborah Warren Kalmar. Annapolis, Md.; Edward Michael Macierowski, Springfield, Mass.; Joanne
Linda Murray, Arlington, Va.; and
Diana Browning Runyon, Annapolis,
Md.
Cum Laude graduates included Ronald Herbert Fielding, Cohasset, Mass.;
Stephen Joel Forman, Houston, Tex.;
Steven T. Harvey, Harrison, N.Y.;
Maureen Linda Hollander, Hamden,
Conn.; Joan Leslie Kramer, South
Orange, N.J.; John Patrick MacDonald,
Detroit, Mich.; Madelyn Jane Siegel,
Baltimore, Md.; Masha Zager Sinnreich, Annapolis, Md.; and Susan
Smith Wigutoff, Orlando, Fla.
Those receiving degrees Rite were
Philip Joseph Avila, Jr., Yeadon, Pa.;
Samuel Stephen Burnett, North East,
Md.; Catherine Ann Caffrey, Gmnd
Island, Neb.; Patricia Ann Carey, La
Vale, Md.; Thomas Anthony Chambliss, Chattanooga, Tenn.; David
Domenic Cicia, Northampton, Mass.;
Henry Clay Constantine, III, Baltimore, Md.; John Richard Dean, Boston, Mass.; Stephanie Ann Forrest,
Madison, N.J.; Jeffrey David Friedman,
Cleveland, 0.; Steve Alex Hancoff,
Annapolis, Md.; Maya Hasegawa, Richmond, Va.; Roy Alan Hepner, Huntington, W. Va.; David Harding Humphreys, New York, N.Y.; Juan Blaise
Ianni, Arcola, Va.; Dikran Kizilyan,
Istanbul, Turkey; Arthur Harold Luse,
III, Mahopac, N.Y.; Mary Elizabeth
Perry, Glastonbury, Conn.; Thomas
Anthony Pink, Chicago, Ill.; Thomas
Rie, West Chester, Pa.; Susan Gail Rumore, Glendale, N.Y.; Cara Gendel
Ryan, New York, N.Y.; Anne Robin
Schmidt, Baltimore, Md.; Worku
Sharew, Lock Haven, Pa.; Mark Leonard Silverman, South Dartmouth,
Mass.; John David Smith, Humacao,
Puerto Rico; Richard Edward Sohmer,
Annapolis, Md.; Melanie Hannah Sollog, Franklin Square, N.Y.; Jean Lenore Stephens, Chassell, Mich.; Anthony Vitto, Jr., Rockville, Md.;
Charles Robert Williams, Silver
Spring, Md.; and Nancy Lillian Williams, South Windsor, Conn.
Included in the !78th commencement exercises was Paul A. Lowdenslager, Annapolis, Md., as of the Class
of 1955.
The Benediction by Reverend Mendelman concluded the ceremonies.
President and Mrs. Weigle were
hosts at a buff·et supper for the graduates, faculty, and guests, at their
home in Wardour.
POLITICS AND THE COLLEGE
At St. John's this May, as at most
campuses throughout the country, the
United States-South Vietnamese operations in Cambodia produced significant
reactions. With turbulence and disruption overcoming most of what are
called the major centers of higher learning in the nation, the St. John's community conducted itself with dignity
mid sobriety in action, and with honesty and intelligence in inquiry.
On May 8th and 9th a group of students and Tutors participated in a 24hour silent vigil processing about
Church Circle in Annapolis in a demonstration of concern for what liad
taken place at Kent State University.
Some Tutors and students also engaged in activities to inform Annapolitans about the Church-Cooper and
Hatfield-McGovern amendments.
On May 12th a letter drafted by
President Weigle and signed by some
350 members of the College com'
munity from both campuses was pre-
Tutor Benjamin C. Milner, Jr., led the Annapolis graduation procession. (Photo by John S.
O'Brien/Aune Arundel Times)
I
"'
19
�The College
sented by President Weigle and three
students to Herbert Klein, President
Nixon's Director of Communications,
in Washington. The text of the letter
foiiows:
Dear Mr. President:
We as individual students, faculty
members, and administrative officers
at St. John's College wish to convey to
you our deep concern over the most re-
cent expansion of the undeclared war
in Southeast Asia and over the resulting dissension and division in our coun-
try, especially within our colleges and
universities.
We are deeply troubled by the sacrifice of our young men and by the drain
upon our country's resources. There is
a basic question wlllch disturbs us as
well. We doubt the constitutionality
of this undeclared war which was embarked upon by a previous administration. We agree with Senator Charles
Matlllas that the Senate seems to have
been denied its historic constitutional
role of declaring or not declaring war.
We would lwpe for a speedy return to
the proper delineation of tl1e functions
and responsibilities of the three
branches of the Government, the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial. In grave moments of history
like these, nothing can be more important than a strict upholding of the
Constitution.
Many of us recognize that we do not
have the necessary background or ·facts
to assess the wisdom or necessity for
the original American involvement in
Indo-China or for the subsequent escalation of the fighting. We are not experts on power politics, Communist
subversion, political vacuums, or military strategy. However, we share a repugnance for the conflict which has
devastated this area of the world for
nearly two decades. We earnestly want
to believe you when you publicly commit yourself and our government to
withdrawal of our armed forces as
rapidly as is consistent with safety and
prudence.
St. John's College is devoted to the
life of the mind, to reason, and to dialogue. We cannot subscribe to irrational and violent methods of dissent
20
Director of Communications Herbert Klein receives letter to President Nixon, and President
Weigle and students Denise Fort, Mary Coughlin, and Lee Elkins. (Official Photograph, The
Wl1ite House)
since they imply an abandonment of
tl1e fundamental principles for which a
college or university should stand. We
doubt whether confrontations can advance the cause of reason. Nor will the
welfare of the country be advanced by
a national strike of students or the
closing of our colleges and universities.
We shall continue with our regular
academic program. We believe that
our primary responsibility as students
and teachers is to continue to study
and learn. Only then will we be properly equipped to exercise our life-long
responsibilities as participating members of tl1e political communities
which depend upon enliglltened and rational leadership-our towns and cities,
our states, and our nation.
This decision should not be interpreted as implying any lack of concern
on our part. Though the College considers it inappropriate to take an institutional stand on such a matter of national policy, we as individuals may
choose to show our own personal positions in appropriate and dignified ways.
We hope that our actions may com-
mend themselves to students and faculties in other colleges and universities
and may prove to have a sobering effect in a period of campus turmoil and
national division.
Therefore, as individual citizens and
members of the St. John's community,
we hereby record our dissent and in so
doing insist that such dissent be registered in the proper way.
The questions and arguments of
President Weigle and three students,
Mary Lee Coughlin, Lee Elkins, and
Denise Fort, it was reported, were received attentively and argued with intelligently by Mr. Klein.
A press release covering the letter
suffered the usual abuse that carefuiiy
qualified statements receive from a
large part of the national press: in some
places this letter of protest and dissent,
which also spoke against "irrational
and violent methods of dissent," was
reported as a letter of support for Presidential policy. In a number of places,
however, the reporting was accurate.
A Coiiege meeting was held on the
evening of May 12th. President Weigle
�July 1970
reported on a second press release issued by the Publicity Office stressing
the vigorous dissent of the signers of
the letter to the President.
Dean Goldwin spoke briefly about
the grave dangers stemming from the
growing politicization of the colleges
and universities in the country. Taking
stands on controversial political issues
as institutions already has destroyed
the conditions for open-minded, unprejudiced .examination of controversial
issues on a significant number of important campuses in the United States.
"What is at stake," he said, "is freedom of inquiry."
The Dean proposed that the regular
Friday evening lecture for May 22nd
be abandoned in favor of a dual lecture
presenting opposing positions on the
Cambodian operations, and that Saturday, May 23rd, be set aside as an extra
day of study comprised of two seminars
on the subjects of Southeast Asia and
Viet Nam policy, and the role of the
dissenting citizen. Discussion took
place to solicit suggestions from the
students and to determine the general
reaction to the proposal. Shows of
hands were taken to determine what
kind of participation might be expected. There was some debate as to
whether attendance should be required
or voluntary. It was argued that required attendance would be one step
towards that politicization spoken of
earlier, that students and faculty who
did not want to participate, who did
not want to take part in any activity
that could be construed as joining in
political dissent, should not be required to do so. On the other hand, it
was argued that required attendance
would endow the meetings with the
the Washington Center of Foreign
Policy Research, School of Advanced
International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, and a member of the
Senior Staff of the National Security
Council, presented the case for the administration.
a Question: The Uses and Abuses of
Civil Disobedience," by Harris L. Wofford, Jr.; and "The Case Against Civil
Disobedience," by Herbert J. Storing.
On the Annapolis campus about 80
per cent of the faculty and some 60 per
cent of the students participated in the
seminars. This extra day of study carried out at the most burdensome time
of the regular work year was generally
reported to have been highly successful.
In Santa Fe, over 200 letters were
written by students to their Congress-
Professor Morton Halperin, author
of China and the Bomb and Contemporary Military Strategy, Senior
Fellow of the Brookings Institution,
former Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense, who resigned as a consultant
to the National Securitv Council when
United States forces' entered Cambodia, presented a case against administration policy.
The Question Period was packed,
long, lively, intelligent, and informative, and marred by no disruptions.
The readings for the seminar at
10:00 A.M. on Viet Nam and Southeast Asia were President Nixon's
speech on Cambodia, an article by
Henry Kissinger, an article by Senator
Fulbright, and a ten-point proposal by
the Vietcong. Readings for the seminar
at 2:00 P.M. on the role of the dissenting citizen were taken from the recently published volume, On Civil Disobedience-American Essays Old and
New (Rand McNally), edited by Robert A. Goldwin. The essays were "Letter from the Birmingham Jail," by
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; "Law as
President Weigle has announced the
appointments of Gerald F. Zollars as
Director of Admissions and John- S.
Steadman as Assistant Dean at Santa
Fe.
Mr. Zollars graduated from Annapolis in 1965 and received his graduate degree at the University of Hawaii's EastWest Center. He succeeds Douglas R.
Price, who has accepted the position of
Special Assistant to the President of
the Univer:iity of Hawaii.
Mr. Steadman, who has been a Tutor at St. John's in Annapolis and
Gerald Zollars
Plwto by J. R. Thompson
John S. Steadman
Photo by Robert Nugent
_...,
men, expressing opinions on the escala-
tion of the Southeast Asian conflict.
ADMISSIONS DIRECTOR AND
ASSISTANT DEAN
APPOINTED AT SANTA FE
seriousness of our regular work. Some
argued that they would approve and
participate in the activities if voluntary,
but not if required. A show of hands
revealed that a large majority were in
favor of the activities being voluntary.
On Friday, May 22nd, Professor
Robert E. Osgood, author of Ideals and
Self-Interest in America's Foreign Relations and Limited War, Professor of
International Relations and Director of
21
�The College
Santa Fe since 1962, succeeds John T.
Rule. Mr. Rule, who retired as Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1966, has taught at St. John's
for two years and served as acting Assistant Dean the past year.
Mr. Zollars served as assistant admissions director during Mr. Price's
three years as director.
PRESIDENT WEIGLE LEADS
STUDENTS IN "EARTH DAY"
CLEANUP IN SANTA FE
Students and faculty observed Earth
Day on April 22nd at Santa Fe with
talks by officials of private and public
agencies concerned with pollution control, films on the environmental crisis,
outdoor dinner of organic foods, and a
seminar.
The action phase of the College's
participation in the national program
began the previous Saturday when
President Richard D. Weigle led a
group of students in an all-day cleanup
along several streets near the campus.
A dump truck loaned by the City of
Santa Fe was filled several times with
bottles, cans, auto parts, discarded
furniture, and other trash found scattered along these streets. The College
received commendation from residents
in the area and a special citation from
the Santa Fe City Council.
GRADUATE STUDENTS COMPLETE
FouRTH YEAR IN
SUMMER INSTITUTE
The first students to complete all
four sections of the summer Graduate
Institute in Liberal Education will receive their M.A. degrees at Santa Fe
August 14th. The Graduate Institute
was started in 1967 with a course in
Politics and Society. Two other subject
areas-Literature, and Philosophy and
Theology-were added in 1968. Mathematics and Natural Science were offered for the first time last summer,
completing the four-part program.
Twelve students received degrees last
year as a result of having completed
three summers at St. John's, plus nine
hours of graduate credit transferred
from another institution.
22
The institute's curriculum was de-
signed primarily for the benefit of
school teachers wishing to enrich their
liberal arts training, but applications are
invited from others interested in this
type of advanced education. James P.
Shannon, vice president of St. John's
at Santa Fe, is the director of the institute this year. His predecessors in
that position have included Elliott
Zuckerman, tutor at Annapolis, and
Robert Goldwin, now Dean of St.
John's College. The Graduate Institute
has received aid from the Carnegie
Corporation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. As a result of
such financial assistance, several stu-
deQts have been able to enroll who are
teachers in core ateas of Washington,
D.C., and Baltimore and in small rural
schools in New Mexico.
ANNAPOLIS FACULTY NOTES
Laurence and Gisela Berns became
the parents of a daughter, Anna Elena,
on Friday, May 29th, the first anniversity of Mrs. Berns's becoming a
citizen of the United States.
Eva Brann, Jacob Klein, and Thomas
K. Simpson are three St. John's College
tutors who were recently appointed to
a new Curriculum Committee at the
Key School in Annapolis to expedite
work on an extensive statement of the
school's curriculum.
Robert A. Goldwin edited On Civil
Disobediei]ce, published by Rand McNally in December. The book was used
for the special seminars at Annapolis.
He was also the leader for the Public
Affairs Conference on "Censorship and
Freedom of Expression" at Kenyon
College, May 7-lOth. The Dean was
interviewed on WBAL-FM Radio,
Saturday, May 16th, for a program entitled "Molly Martin Presents A Day
In Annapolis," a thirteen-week series
on Maryland's capital and its citizens.
Mr. Goldwin will serve as moderator
at the Aspen (Colorado) Institute of
Humanistic Studies on August l6-29th.
During the 1968-1970 academic years
Jacob Klein gave the following lectures: "On The Soul in Plato's Republic," and "Introduction to Aris-
tole," at the University of Chicago;
"On The Nature of Nature," at The
New School for Social Research and
Claremont Men's College; "On Precision," at St. Mary's College of California, the University of Massachusetts, and Catholic University of
America; and "On Liberal Education,"
at Cornell University. In addition he
led a seminar, 11 0n Plato's Statesman,"
at Yale University, and a seminar, "On
Liberal Education," at Cornell University in which two St. John's alumni,
Linda Davenport and Bernard Davidoff, participated.
Samuel S. Kutler will be on sabbatical leave in 1970-71, traveling and
studying in England.
Barbara H. Leonard will travel to
Africa and India during her 1970-71
sabbatical leave.
Benjamin C. Milner, Jr., served as
chairman of the Anne Arundel County
liberal
New Democratic Coalition,
wing of the Democratic Party, which
stresses citizen participation in politics.
His book, Calvin's Doctrine of the
Church, was published by E. J. Brill
this year.
Richard Scofield was appointed Tutor Emeritus by the Board of Visitors
and Governors during the June meeting in Annapolis. Mr. Scofield joined
the St. John's faculty in 1927, teaching
continuously at the College except for
1948-49 when he was Visiting Associate
Professor of History and Humanities
at the University of Chicago. He held
an Addison E. Mullikin Tutorship
commencing in 1959.
In December Thomas K. Simpson
was principal speaker at the History
of Science Society annual meeting,
Washington, D.C. The speech was on
the "Metaphysical Foundations of
Maxwell's Treatise On Electricity And
Magnetism."
·
Robert L. Spaeth was appointed
chairman of the newly-formed housing
committee for the City of Annapolis.
He called housing "the most serious
social problem in Annapolis" and expressed confidence that the committee
would improve relations between the
city council and the city's housing authority.
a-
�July 1970
David H. Stephenson is the new conductor of the Annapolis Symphony
Orchestra. Since joining the St. John's
faculty in 1963, he has arranged several
concerts, conducted the small and
great choruses at the College, and directed a full performance of Bach's
Cantata No. 101 at St. Anne's Episcopal Church. He has recently completed
a book on the works of Beethoven
which will be published shortly by
Thomas Y. Crowell Company.
The Danforth Foundation recently
awarded a leave grant to President
Richard D. Weigle. The grant provides
an opportunity for the college administrator to enlarge his perspectives of current and future educational issues and
to renew his inner resources for con~
tinucd leadership in higher education.
The Weigles plan to begin their leave
in May, 1971.
After giving the commencement
address at Bard College on Saturday,
June 20th, Mr. Weigle received an
honorary degree of Doctor of Humane
Letters.
Elliott Zuckerman is an Associate
of Clare Hall, Cambridge University,
for 1970-71, during his sabbatical leave
from Annapolis.
SANTA FE AWARDS
SOUTHWEST SCHOLARS
Ten outstanding high school students in the Southwest have been
awarded scholarships worth $250 to
$1,500 by St. John's for 1970-71.
The winners by state include: Arizona, Jody Mary Bol, Scottsdale. Colorado, Carl A. Huffman, Wheat Ridge.
New Mexico, Mike Lee Beall, Santa
Fe; Kathleen Marie Buchen, Los
Alamos; George S. Davidson, Carlsbad,
and David B. Wallace, Las Cruces.
Oklahoma, Jennifer Gail Jordan, Turpin. Texas, Sheila Cathryn Jackson,
Beaumont; David B. Maclaine, Houston, and Phillip B. Weathers, Denton.
The Southwest Scholars Program was
started by friends of the College to
encourage attendance at St. John's by
young people from the five southwestern states. The grants are renewable
annually upon successful completion of
the previous term's work.
§!tee/1 §a11son
Comes !fJ
v/nnafiolis
Governor and Mrs. Mandel were
hosts at a reception at the Government
House Friday evening, in honor of
Miss Garson and the Caritas Society,
giving recognition to the Society and
its community activities this past year.
On Saturday, May 23rd, the Fogelsons enjoyed a cruise of the harbor and
the Chesapeake Bay on the Governor's
Yacht and a tour of the Annapolis
campus.
That evening Miss Garson received
The Caritas Society of the Friends a standing ovation following the showof St. John's College in Annapolis ing of "Mrs. Miniver," and was sursponsored an evening with Miss Greer prised with a bouquet from the Caritas
Garson on Saturday, May 23rd, with a Society. She was available for queschampagne buffet supper and a show- tions from the audience, and mingled
ing of two of her films, "Mrs. Miniver" freely with delighted guests during the
and "Madam·e Curie."
"champagne reception.
Miss Garson and her husband, Mr.
Mrs. L. Corrin Strong, a member of
E. E. Fogelson, a former member of the Board of Visitors and Governors,
the Board of Visitors and Governors, gave a luncheon on Sundav in honor
were met at Friendship Airport by of the Fogelsons.
'
Mrs. Marvin Mandel, the First Lady
Members of the Caritas Society who
of the State of Maryland. Mrs. Richard were committee chairmen for the eveD. Weigle and Mrs. William Jabine, ning with Miss Garson were: Mrs. WilII, chairman of the Caritas function, liam Jabine, II, Mrs. Robert 0. Felter,
also greeted the couple.
Mrs. Theodore G. Osius, Mrs. Richard
In addition to being interviewed at F. Blaul, Mrs. Bert Thoms, Mrs. Joan
the airport by WMAR-TV, Baltimore, L. Baldwin, Mrs. William G. Gideon,
Miss Garson participated in a taping Mrs. Remsen Johnson, Mrs. L. Corrin
at W ANN-WXTC Radio in Annapo- Strong, Mrs. Karlton F. Morris, Mrs.
lis and a press conference that after- Colby G. Rucker, and Mrs. William B.
noon.
Clatanoff. Student Daniel Sullivan assisted with the artwork on the proMiss Garson signs autographs during the champagne reception.
gram.
NEW MEXICO AUTHORS
ADDRESS LUNCHEONS
FOR BENEFIT OF
ST. JoHN'S LIBRARY
This year's spring series of the St.
John's Book-and-Author Luncheons
continued the success of the 1969 programs. A total of about 600 people attended the luncheons on April lOth
and May 14th at Santa Fe's downtown
hotel, LaFonda. The series is sponsored
by the St. John's College Library Associates Committee, headed by Richard
l\/Iartin Stern, who is a prize-winning
author himself. Local book stores help
sell tickets and the programs are well
covered by press and television.
Speakers so far this year have in23
�The College
eluded Walter Kerr, former general
manager of the New York Times International Edition; John Masters, Calcutta-born, author of 16 books including Blrowani Junction; Tom Mayer,
whose first collection of short stories,
Bubble Gum and Kipling, was published before he was 21 and whose next
book will be about Vietnam, where he
spent eight months as a free lance correspondent; Peggy Pond Church,
whose The House at Otowi Bridge is in
its third printing; Tony HiUerrnan,
whose The Blessing Way has received
favorable reviews and a film contract,
and Alice Bullock, prolific writer of
articles, author of Legends of the Santa
Fe Country and member of the St.
John's Library Associates.
STUDENTS EXHIBIT
ARTS AND CRAFTS
An exhibition of art work and crafts
made by students this past year was
held in the St. John's Gallery at Santa
Fe, May 22nd-30th. Awards were presented by the Student Activities Office
for the best work in fine arts, pottery
and photography. Prize-winners included:
Fine Arts-Gretchen Vadnais '72,
Portland, Ore., and John Kvapil '72,
Phoenix, Ariz. Pottery Making-Christopher W. Hill '72, Tucson, Ariz.;
Karen A. Nelson '73, Danville, Calif.;
James M. Nelson, Tucson, Ariz.
Photography-A. Mackenzie Waggaman '73, Reno, Nev.; J. R. Thompson
'73, Rocky Ford, Colo.; Rachel L. Trneblood '72, Blue Bell, Pa. Thompson
also was cited for his editing of the
student publication "Seven," printed
this year in newspaper tabloid form,
and for his direction of the musical
HFantasticks."
STUDENTS PRESENT
"THE FANTASTICKS"
A student version of the longest-running off-Broadway play, "The Fantasticks," was presented in Santa Fe
May 19th-20th. The first night's performance was for students and faculty
and the second for the public. Directed
by J. R. Thompson '73, Rocky Ford,
24
Colo., the boy-meets-girl musical included Kaley Moffatt '73 of Fort
Worth, Texas, as the girl and Greg
Ford '72, East Palo Alto, Calif., as the
boy.
Others in the cast were Jack Holman,
Lemoore, Calif.; Jon Stroud, Shreveport, La.; Tom Robinson, Newport,
R.I.; Dana Netherton, Florissant, Mo.;
Eric Springsted, St. Paul, Minn.; MelJanie Morgan, San Antonio, Texas. All
were freshmen except sophomore
Netherton. Pianists were Jacob Stoller
'73, Mill Valley, Calif., and Ray Davis,
tutor.
ANNAPOLIS STUDENTS
DANCE IN CONCERT
The Annapolis Association for Contemporary Dance presented a studio
concert of its dance theatre and choreographer's workshop on Sunday, May
17th, at the College in Annapolis.
'I11e Association featured two works
by Miss Georgia Cushman, "On Conic
Sections," created in 1961, and "Pallavi," a premiere. Douglas Bennett, '71,
composed the music which was performed by Kimi Hasegawa, '73, Leslie
Starr, '72, and William Martin, '71.
The senior dance theatre included
faculty wife Mrs. Marilyn Williamson,
and students Michelle Budny, '70,
Marcia Greenbaum, '73, Priscilla Lindsay, '73, and Christel Stevens, '72. Miss
Elizabeth Kurs, daughter of Tutor and
Mrs. Louis B. Kurs, was a member of
the junior dance theatre.
Santa Fe fencers Michael Landry, Carol Paterson, and Edith Callender placed at the Texas
Collegiate Fencing Championships.
COLLEGE RECEIVES
GIFT OF PAINTING
Award-winning artist Shirley U.
Miller of New York has given her
painting "Purple Lake" to St. John's
College in Santa Fe. Miss Miller has
had one-man exhibitions at Aspects
Gallery and Contemporary Arts Gallery in New York. Her awards include
the New Masters Fine Arts Award,
1966, at the New England Exhibition;
M. Grumbacher Award, 1967, Painters
and Sculptors Society; Audubon Artists
Medal for Creative Oil, 1968; and the
D. Wu Jeet-Key Memorial Award,
1969, National Association of Women
Artists. She is a graduate of the Cooper
Union School of Arts, and she attended Black Mountain College, N.C., and
the Art Students League, New York
(Merit Scholarship).
STUDENTS EN JOY WIDE
VARIETY OF ACTIVITIES
Santa Fe students have enjoyed outdoor activities ranging from skiing to
river rafting this past year under the
guidance of the new Director of Student Activities, Istvan Fehervary.
Members of the College's fencing
team, the only one in New Mexico,
competed in April in the Texas Collegiate Fencing Championships and
returned with three torphies. Senior
Carol Paterson of San Bruno, Calif.,
won second place in the women's division; senior Michael Landry of
Franklin, La., was fifth in the men's
division, and freshman Edith Callender
of Littleton, Colo., came in sixth
among the women. Students interested
in river rafting made several week-end
trips down sections of the Rio Grande
on rubber rafts. The Santa Fe Ski
Basin, only an hour's drive from the
campus, offered lessons and equipment
at reduced prices to students during the
winter. Other activities included horseback riding, soccer, karate, basketball,
modern dance, swimming, and softball.
Work has begun on a temporary track.
The Student Activity Office Award for
best all-around athlete went to Robert
J. Schlegel '72, Palo Alto, Calif. Rebecca Brinkley '72, Lovington, N.M.,
received the prize for best girl athlete.
�ALUMNI ACTIVITIES
PROFILE
Michael H. Elias, born in Monticello, N.Y., graduated from St. John's
in June, 1962. During the spring of his
senior year he was co-editor, with
Theodore Stinchecum '62, of the special College Bulletin entitled Mathematics.
Mr. Elias taught a variety of subjects in the New York City public
schools in his first year after college,
and in the spring of 1963 he joined the
Living Theater in the cast of "The
Brig."
He performed with "The Brig'' company in New Yark, and toured with it
in Europe, for almost two years. Back
in New York, he did a number of plays
at the Judson Memorial Church,
among them Stinchecum's production
of "Antigone." He then worked in
television, several films, and summer
stock, before teaming up with Frank
Shaw in a comedy act.
The act was evidently quite successful, playing in night clubs, college con-
Michael H. Elias '62
certs, and on the Ed Sullivan Show, in
addition to a number of appearances
on NBC's "Tonight Show."
In 1968, Elias and Shaw, as the act
was known, received an offer to go to
Hollywood to write for television. They
went, and in the past two years have
BucHANAN BooK
ALUMNI AND THE
DISTRIBUTED
COLLEGE POLITY
The recent mailing of Embers of
the World to certain alumni was made
possible by the generosity of the publisher, The Center for the Study of
Democratic Institutions, Santa Barbara. In view of the understandable
limit the Center had to place on the
mailing, the book was sent only to
those classes of alumni who were at
St. John's with Scott Buchanan and
Stringfellow Barr, the classes of 1938
through 1950.
The book, a series of interviews with
Mr. Buchanan, edited by Harris
Wofford, may be ordered through the
College Bookstore by others who
might be interested.
pol-i-ty n 4a: the form or constitution
of a politically organized unit. (Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary)
For the first time since a formal
Polity was adopted by the College in
1950, the Alumni are recognized officially as members of the College.
A completely revised set of "by-laws"
for the governance of St. John's was
adopted by the Board of Visitors and
Governors on June 6th. Article I thereof states in part that "The College
shall be understood to consist of the
following: (a) the Board of Visitors
and Governors; (b) the Faculty; (c)
the Students; (d) the Alumni; and (e)
written for "What's It All About,
World," "The Leslie Uggams Show,"
"The Pat Paulsen Show," "The Good
Guys/' ''Love, American Style/' and
"The Bill Cosby Show." The last of
these received very favorable notice in
the New York Times.
Mr. Elias also has teamed up with
another St. Johnnie, Robert W. Garland '62, to produce films, to race cars,
and to work with a seminar group in
the film colony. A project to produce
"Fear and Tremblin' ," their own adaptation of the Kierkegaard classic, unfortunately collapsed. The Elias'Garland team fared better in last year's
"Baja 500" auto race in a car of their
own design, finishing 23rd in one of
the most gruelling of all road races.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Elias, the former
Caroline Bielefelt '65, is putting the St.
John's program to work at Disneyland.
She is a consultant for a park with the
proposed theme of Classicland. The
Eliases make their home in Los
Angeles.
the Staff."
The new Polity also defines Alumni:
"All who have formally matriculated
on either campus, who are not at pres-
ent enrolled, and whose class has graduated, whether graduates or non-graduates, whether in graduate or postgraduate programs, shall be called
Alumni of St. John's College."
In addition to the quoted sections
which concern alumni as individuals,
the Polity recognizes the Alumni Association: ''The Alumni Association
shall be the formal means by which
alumni participate in the life of the
College. Through the election of
Alumni members to the Board of Visitors and Governors, alumni share in
the direction of that life. In these and
25
�The College
other ways, alumni shall be given the
opportunity to serve the College."
In other actions, the Polity now
provides that the President of the Associati?n attend meetings of the Board
of Visitors and Governors as a
par~
ticipating, non-voting guest, and that
election of alumni members to that
Board take place in the spring. The result of this latter provision is that all
members now begin and end their
terms at the Annual Meeting, normally
in May.
WATCH THIS SPACE
IN THE
SEPTEMBER ISSUE
WITH THE AREA GROUPS
Regional alumni groups have been
considerably more active these past six
months than in the preceding six.
On February 22nd, the Los Angeles
area alumni met at the home of Dr.
and Mrs. David Dobreer '44 to honor
President and Mrs. Weigle.
Further to the North, the San Francisco alumni, augmented by some parents, met at the Miyako Hotel at a reception for Mr. Weigle. Thomas M.
Carnes '52 was the prime mover for
the February 28th event.
In Annapolis, informal monthly
lunch meetings have resulted in the revival of an official chapter. Frank B.
Marshall, Jr. '45 has been elected chairman. Luncheon meetings will continue
next fall (the second Friday of each
month), and the group will help the
Fnends of St. John's in Annapolis with
the second annual reception for incoming freshmen.
May 26th saw the New York area
alumni gather in the apartment-gallery
of Eugene V. Thaw '47 to hear Tutor
J. Winfree Smith report on the state
of the College. Mr. Smith spoke briefly
about the Polity revisions being pre-
26
sented to the Board of Visitors and
Governors for approval. He then discussed the reaction at the College to
the Cambodian offensive and the Kent
State shootings (see related article in
NEWS ON THE CAMPUSES).
Finally, he mentioned several possible
curriculum modifications which have
been discussed by the Instruction Committee. Francis S. Mason, Jr. '43, acting
chairman of the New York group for
the past two years, was coordinator for
the event.
Two days after the New York gettogether, the Washington (D.C.)
alumni met in Silver Spring, Md., for
a dinner and talk by Tutor Ford K.
Brown; 69 alumni and guests were present. Mrs. Cynthia (Siehler) White '66,
Dr. Robert A. Bier '19, and William R.
Tilles '59 coordinated this most successful regional alumni gathering. The
group is now talking about a midsummer picnic on the Annapolis cam-
pus.
These accounts support the theory
of Association President Darrell Henry
that alumni are interested in some sort
of local activity in their home regions.
The prevailing sentiment has been to
keep
'~organization"
to the minimum
necessary for proper functioning, to
avoid fixed activity schedules, and to
keep all functions informal.
The Alumni Association cnCQttrages
regional groups to organize, no matter
how loosely, and stands ready to assist
in whatever way it can, particularly
with mailings. Any group wishing to
be recognized formally as a chapter of
the Association should get in touch
with the Director of Alumni Activities
at the College in Annapolis.
Starting at far left:
At New York alumni meeting (from left) Hope
Zoss '67 meets Steven Shore and Donald and
Marilynnc (Wills) Schell, 1968 graduates from
Santa Fe.
Mary (Bittner) O'Connor '59 and escort talk
with the Rev. J. Winfree Smith of the Annapolis faculty.
Francis Mason '43, New York area chairman,
gets acquainted with John Clapp '68 and
Ronald Silver '63.
�July 1970
A
In Baltimore, (left to right) Theodore W.
Hendricks '50, and Dorothea (Wend) and
Jerome Gilden '54, chairman of the Baltimore
telephone roundup, in action.
First nighters hard at work in the Baltimore
office of the C&P Telephone Co.
will contribute.
Many colleges now use the telephone
exclusively for annual giving campaigns. There is little doubt that a
telephone appeal yields a higher return
than a letter, even a letter from a
classmate. Whether or not St. John's
is ready for an all-'phone campaign is
now being discussed. Over-all cost
would not be out of proportion to the
increased revenue which could be expected. The real question is whether
enough volunteers can be enlisted in
the cities from which calls would be
made, and that depends on local leadership.
Telephone campaigns will be explored thoroughly over the next few
months, so don't be surprised if you
get a •'phone call next year instead of
a series of letters.
Edward C. Webby '63 and Richard F. Blaul
'32 launch the telephone roundup in Annapolis.
Alumni Office of the College, they are
deposited in a special account maintained by the Treasurer of the Association. Disbursements of these funds are
controlled by the directors of the Association. TI1e College finances the
Alumni Office, some of the activities
of which may be for the benefit of the
Association, but the College contributes no funds to the operation of the
conducted by the College through the
Development Office, which includes
the Alumni Office. (TI1e Director of
Alumni Activities is employed by the
College, although his office serves as
the administrative office for the Association.) Although members of the
Association each year volunteer to work
in the Annual Giving Campaign, the
Association and its activities.
involved.
To sum up: if you have paid your
membership dues, you have not by that
act contributed to the College. You
must make a separate donation, payable to St. John's College, in order to
be listed among the annual givers.
Joshua T. Gillelan II '68's.
TELEPHONE DOLLARS
TI1e Alumni Annual Giving Campaign this year ended in a jingling of
telephone bells. Since the Baltimore
telephone "round up" was so successful last year, another and larger round
up was held in that city this year. The
result was three nights of calling all
over Maryland, the District of Columbia, and the Virginia suburbs of the
District. In addition, a team of alumni
in Annapolis spent three nights making
local calls in that area.
Results are hard to evaluate at this
time. As we go to press, gifts are still
coming in. In Annapolis, about 140
calls were completed; 50% of those
promised to send a gift, and received a
follow-up card. Based on last year's experience, almost all of those alumni
DUES AND GIFTS:
A
DISTINCTION
Each year a misunderstanding seems
to arise about Association dues and an-
nual gifts to the College. These are not
the same.
The Alumni Association, a legal entity incorporated in the State of Maryland, derives its income principally
through collection of dues (for which
printed notices are sent out shortly
after January lst each year, with a follow-up mailing in July). The dues help
finance Homecoming activities and assist regional chapters, for example, by
subsidizing their mailings.
Although dues are mailed to the
Annual gifts, usually sent in response
to specific letter or telephone appeals,
go directly to the College and help
finance College activities like paying
faculty salaries, for example. The
Alumni Annual Giving Campaign is
Association as an organization is not
27
�The College
Clockwise: Seniors Thomas Chambliss (left
foreground), Masha (Zager) Sinnreich, John
Dean, Worku Sharew, Dikran Kizilyan, Jeffrey
Friedman, Susan Rumore, Stephen Forman,
Arthur Luse.
Alumni Association President Darren Henry '61
and his wife Linda were among the alumni
present.
CLASS NOTES
1909
Cdonel Robert A. Jones and Mrs. Jones were
on the Annapolis campus for the events of
Commencement week-end. T11e Joneses make
their home in Palo Alto, Cal.
1922
Dr. Rafael Rodriguez-Molina, writing as R
de Villafuerte, is the author of The Americanization of Manuel de Rosas. Published by Vantage Press, Inc., the book is a fictionalized autobiography, tracing the life of a Puerto Rican
medical scimtist from the Sp'anish-American
War to the present. Dr. Rodriguez-Molina himself spent a year at St. John's, finished his college and professional education at the University of Puerto Rico, and has followed a life
28
ANNAPOLIS
Dean Robert Goldwin '50 concentrates on
steamed crab while listening to Stephen Burnett '70.
SENIOR-ALUMNI
CRAB FEAST
MAY 29, 1970
of teaching and research. Although retired from
active practice, he is still listed in the catalogue
of the University of Puerto Rico School of
Medicine with the rank of clinical professor of
medicine.
1931
In January Richard C. Mottu returned to
his job as manager-purchasing for Koppers
Company, Pittsburgh, after six months of service with the National Alliance of Businessmen.
After 19 years with Revere Brass and Copper,
John S. Price retired on June 1st. At the time
of his retirement, Mr. Price was plant engineer at Revere's Rome (N.Y.) division. Mr.
and Mrs. Price will make their home at 2235
Alice Lane, Clearwater, Fla. 33516.
Crab Feast co-chairman Henry Braun discusses
dissection techniques with seniors- Stephanie
Forrest and Anne Schmidt.
Judge, Maryland Court of Appeals, was awarded
the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from
St. Mary's College of Maryland.
Daniel J. Ward was recently elected Northern Region Vice President of the Fuel Merchants Association of New Jersey. Mr. Ward is
part-owner of Strand Engineering, Inc., of
Paterson.
1937
Willard 0. Ash, chairman of the department
of mathematics and statistics at the University
of West Florida, in September will become
dean of the college of arts, sciences and technology at the University of North Florida in
Jacksonville.
1938
On May 3rd,
J.
1933
Dudley Digges, Associate
The new president of the Propellor Club of
Baltimore is John L. Lambros, assistant to the
�July 1970
general manager of Bethlehem Steel Corporation's Baltimore Repair Yards. The Club is
comprised of persons in the shipping industry
in the Baltimore area.
J- S. Baker Middleton, who joined Keuffel
& Esser Company, Morristown, N.J., last year
as Director of Industrial Relations, has been
Promoted to the position of Vice PresidentIndustrial Relations. From 1966 to 1969 Mr.
Middleton was Director of Manpower for Scott
Paper Company.
1939
Frederick R. Buck, president of the Title
Guarantee Company of Baltimore, has been reelected to a second term as president of the
Maryland State Title Insurance Association.
1943
On Saturday, March 7th, John L. Hedeman
and Joanne Anderson were married in ceremonies at the Annapolis Yacht Club. Dr. Hedeman is in private medical practice in Annapolis,
while Mrs. Hedeman teaches in the Anne
Arundel County school system.
1944
In May, Paul Mellon was named recipient of
the 1970 Thomas Jefferson Award of the National Society of Interior Designers. The award
is given for an outstanding contribution to the
preservation of American cultural heritage. Mr.
Mellon was cited for his contributions to the
National Gallery of Art, of which he is president and trustee.
1945
The July issue of Modern Photography mentions Gene Thornton as a possible candidate to
take over the photography column of the Sunday New York Times. Mr. Thornton has written about the fine arts for many years.
1946
Clarence J. Kramer, former tutor and first
dean of St. John's College, Santa Fe, and a cofounder of the Key School in Annapolis, has
been reJected to the Board of Trustees of that
School.
1950
W. Bernard Fleischmann, for the past three
years chairman of comparative literature at the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has
been named the first dean of Montclair (N.J.)
State College's new School of Humanities. Mr.
F1eischmann has been an Alumni member of
the Board of Visitors and Governors of St.
John's since 1967.
Thomas K. Simpson, tutor on the Annapolis
campus, in March was elected president of the
Board of Trustees of the Key School. Mr. Simpson was one of the founders of the Annapolis
school.
1951
Robert S. Hill has been promoted to the
rank of professor, and has been named acting
head of the new Department of Political Science, at Marietta (Ohio) Col1ege. Mr. Hill
joined the Marietta faculty in 1969.
1952
Alvin A. Aronson, author of the off-Broadway plays "The Pocket Watch" and "Night
Hawks," will return to the College in Annapolis
next year as a member of the Junior Class and
as playwright-in-residence.
1953
Philip H. Lyman, who started working for
the Gotham Book Mart during his college
summers, since 1959 has been in charge of the
cinema section of the famous New York book
store.
1956
Pasquale L. Polillo has been appointed News
Director of television station KGO-TV in San
Francisco, and now makes his home in San
Rafael.
1958
John A. Bremer (M.A.) has been director of
the unique Parkway Program of the School District of Philadelphia since the Program started
in 1968. Drawing students from the eight
Philadelphia school districts on a volunteer
basis, the Program is designed to help the
present-day urban student "live learningly with~
in his present life-space, and . . . to expand
this life space."
Jacques F. Cartier, founder, producer, and
artistic director of the Hartford (Conn.) Stage
Company, is co-writing an original comedy for
Warner Bros. Entitled Spy Mother, the motion
picture involves an international espionage
agent, his do-good mother, and the Federal
government.
1959
Charlotte F. King will assume the duties of
Resident Head of Campbell Hall for the coming academic year, while Assistant Dean Barbara Leonard is on sabbatical leave.
1961
Stephen Morrow, formerly with the UPI
bureau in Baltimore, is now at the Cleveland
office of the same news service.
John R. Pekkanen, Midwest Bureau Chief
for Life Magazine, is one of 13 journalists
selected for the 33rd class of Nieman Fellows,
to study at Harvard University in 1970-71. Mr.
Pekkanen plans to study the history of American social and political movements.
1964
Arlene (Andrew) Banks writes that she and
husband William P. will be in New Haven this
summer, where Mr. Banks will be doing research at Yale. Mrs. Banks called our attention
to the appearance of Dr. Paul Rosenberg '61 on
a Los Angeles television program about drugs.
The University of Rhode Island named
David R. Jordan an instructor in Latin for the
spring semester. Mr. Jordan is a Ph.D. candidate at Brown University, and holds an A.M.
degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
Mr. and Mrs. Jeremy C. Leven in March became the proud parents of Zoe Roberts Leven.
Mrs. Leven is the former Linda Forte.
Sharon (Kaplan) Wallis writes that she and
Charles S. Wallis '65 were married on March
14th at her parents' home in Philadelphia. Mr.
Wallis holds the degree of Master of Fine
Arts from Tyler Institute of Art, and is working full-time as a sculptor. Mrs. Wallis, a Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania Law School graduate of
1967, is a staff attorney for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. She is
working on a program to train law students to
represent tenants in eviction cases.
John Wise, a painter currently working in
painted plexiglass, held his first Washington,
D.C., showing this past March. The Washington Post at the time gave Mr. Wise a very
favorable review.
1965
Gerald F. Zollars has been appointed Director of Admissions at St. John's College in
Santa Fe. Mr. Zollars has been Assistant Director of Admissions of the western campus since
1967.
1966
Robert E. Fields, Jr., we learn from his
brother-in-law, Army Captain Frederick J.
Blachly, has been awarded a doctor's degree in
Bio-Chemistry by King's College, Cambridge.
Mr. Fields will remain in England, at least for
the time being, doing research and some teaching at Cambridge.
A. Stevens Rubin, Jr. received his M.D. degree in June from the University of North
Carolina School of Medicine. Dr. Rubin will
be an intern this coming year at Philadelphia
General Hospital.
1968
Nancy Jean Goldwin and Steven T. Harvey
'70 were married Sunday night, June 14th, in
an outdoor ceremony held in the quadrangle
behind McDowell Hall. The couple wiJI live
in the Boston area, where Mr. Harvey will do
graduate work at Harvard.
1969
The College has received welcome news that
Daniel L. Cleavinger (SF) and his wife, the
former Anne Bancroft SF '68, escaped injury in
the May earthquake in Chimbote, Peru. The
two Peace Corps volunteers lost their small
apartment, and were evacuated up the coast to
the town of Trujillo.
Melissa Nettleship in April assumed duties
as Director of Consumer Protection in the New
Mexico Attorney General's Office.
In Memoriam
1917-Dn. HENRY SHEPPARD, Jn., Baltimore, Md., May 25, 1970.
1925-HAROLD H. CECIL, Stevensville,
Md., May 9, 1970.
1933-WILSON J. C. BRAuN, Phoenix,
Md., April, 1970.
1934-RrcHARD A. WATSON, Upperco,
Md., May, 1970.
1946-VrNcENT W. McKAY, Erie, Pa.,
May 17, 1970.
29
�ALUMNI
MAKE YOUR PLANS
NOW
ANNAPOLIS HOMECOMING
OCTOBER 16-17, 1970
The College
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
Second-class postage paid at
Annapolis, Maryland, and at
additional mailing offices.
�
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<em>The College </em>(1969-1981)
Description
An account of the resource
St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>. <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981. <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
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The College, July 1970
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Berns, Laurence
Felter, Mary P.
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Trimmer, Maurice
Sullivan, Daniel
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FlL~
THE COLLEGE
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
Santa Fe, New Mexico
September 1970
�The College
Cover: James Madison, by Charles
Wilson Peale. Courtesy of Albert E.
Leeds, Philadelphia. Inside Front
Cover: McDowell Hall, Annapolis.
The College is a publication for
friends of St. John's College and for
those who might become friends of the
College, if they came to know it. Our
aim is to indicate within the limitations of the magazine form, why, in
our opinion, St. John's comes closer
than any other college in the nation
to being what a college should be.
If ever well-placed beacon lights
were needed by American education
it is now. By publishing articles about
the work of the College, articles reflecting the distinctive life of the mind
that is the College, we hope to add a
watt or two to the beacon light that is
St. John's.
1
Editor: Laurence Berns
Managing Editor: Mary P. Felter
Alumni Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant: Maurice Trimmer
Art Editor: Daniel Sullivan, '71
The College is published by the
Development Offices of St. John's
College, College Avenue, Annapolis,
Maryland 21404 (Julins Rosenberg,
Director), and Santa Fe, New Mexico
(J. Burchenal Ault, Vice President);
Member, American Alumni Council.
President, St. John's College, Richard
D. Weigle.
In the September Issue:
I
Personal Freedom, by Thomas Slakey
Published four times a year in April,
July, September, and December. Second-class postage paid at Annapolis,
Maryland, and at additional mailing
offices.
Reasonable Politics and Technology,
by Laurence Berns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4
The Report of the President, 1969-1970.
. ....... lOA
September 1970
No. 3
l4
News on the Campuses .
16
Alumni Activities
Vol. XXII
Richard Scofield, 1898-1970
20
�Reasonable Politics and Technology
By LAURENCE BERNS
Admiration for the intelligence, the courage, the discipline, and the prodigy of orgacnization that made the moon
exploration possible has led many to form expectations
for similar spectacular successes in dealing with more
pressing social, political, and economic problems. It may
be salutary, surely not novel, to refer to the dangers
that can arise from such unreasonable expectations.
First7 moderate, workable, partial, or gradual, solutions
get condemned as unsavory compromises or as myopic.
Extreme alternatives come to pre-empt the field of action.
Second, to turn to the human consequences, compromise
or failure breeds frustration; frustration, for some, leads
to paralyzing despair; for others, more dangerously, to
hatred of their political opposition as the imagined causes
of the failure, and finally, to political fanaticism. The
workability of parliamentary, republican government is
directly proportional to the strength of that philosophical
temperament that can accept and appreciate the idea of a
"loyal opposition," of honest and honorable disagreement.
So far the major premise of this argument, that the expectations are unreasonable, has only been assumed. On
what grounds?
I
As a goal, landing a man on the moon would seem to
be uncontroversial. Whether resources should be allocated
to it or not may be controversial, but the goal itself is
hardly contrm>ersial. There are few, if any, political goals
about which this can be said. Dispersion of authority
makes for inefficiencies, but allows more scope for individual initiative and for the exercise of individual judgment; concentration of authority may be more efficient,
but induces regimentation and, by eliminating checks and
balances, makes the abuse of authority more possible. In
different circumstances the weight of these different considerations will be different; and probably in all circumstances different men can conscientiously and reasonably
differ about their relative importance.
Socrates, the political scientist par excellence, elucidated
this state of affairs by referring to the distinction between
opinion and knowledge, and by arguing that in the cognitive element of political life opinion rather than knowledge will always predominate. Socrates may have hinted,
but did not insist, that· full knowledge of the political
good was unattainable; but he certainly did argue that
such knowledge was extremely rare, hard to come by, and
well-nigh impossible to put into political practice. As far
as I can tell, the variability of the subject matter, the
power of the human passions, and the relative strengths
of rational and irrational powers in most men, the central
facts these arguments rest upon, have not been changed
in any decisive way by the technological development.
To refer to the distinction between opinion and knowledge, of course, is not to deny that some opinions -are
better than others.
II
Because opmwns are essentially disputable, and because political disputes, by the passions they arouse, can
often be more harmful to society than the original difficulties prompting them, it is frequently more important
for political practice to maintain reasonable procedures
for settling and dispensing with problems than it is to be
certain that the solutions to the problems be correct
solutions. 1 Imperfect solutions are not necessarily unreason~
able solutions in a free society: what is most to be
avoided is action that could destroy those procedures and
institutions for compromise and debate which, by the
discussion attendant upon them, open up the way for
reason to make the limited but saving contribution that
it might make to free political life.
For a government to be free, constitutionally authorized
governmental and party officials should be free from the
kind of coercion, intimidation and pressure that prevents
them from making maximum use of their own capacities
for rational discourse and debate. This freedom, more
1
Cf. Aeschylus, Oresteia, especially Eumenides.
1
�The College
As a goal,
landing a man on the moon
would seem to be uncontroversial.
particularly, the privileges and immunities with regard to
their political speech which had been won for members
of legislative bodies in tbeir respective legislatures, became the paradigm, it has been suggested, for the rights
of free speech and peaceful assembly laid down by the
First Amendment to the Constitution of the United
States: that is, privileges and immunities with regard to
political speech, which till then had been granted only
to members of legislative bodies in their legislatures, were
guaranteed to all citizens; the entire citizen body as far
as its political speech is concerned is conceived by analogy
to a free deliberative assembly.2 If this most generous
conception is correct, it might provide us with a solution,
in principle at least, to the pressing problem of conflict between the right and duty of duly constituted
government to govern and the rights of free speech and
peaceful assembly guaranteed by the First Amendment:
it would not seem to make sense to allow what was meant
to serve as an instrument of something analogous to unintimidated rational deliberation to be used to destroy the
conditions for rational deliberation in those places where
not something analogous to it but unintimidated rational
deliberation itself is required.
Some seek to mitigate the increasingly technocratic
character of modern life by means of what is being called
participatory democracy. To the extent that this means
transferring authority to local political institutions
wherever possible, it is in harmony with -to the extent
that it seeks to by-pass or dispense with the direction of
leadership by direct democracy, it is in tension with what
2
governed. Our governors, our representatives, should repre-
sent not the Hpassions" nor the "inclinations" but the
"interests," the well-being, of the represented.3 They are
to be provided with the best possible conditions and resources for reasonable, well-informed deliberation; for determining what, under tbe Constitution, the best interests
of their constituents and the country as a whole are, and
how those interests can best be served. Because they are to
be put in the best position for deciding, they are the representativ-es, not the delegates, of the people. The people, on
the other hand, are understood as qualified periodically to
judge by means of elections their leaders and the general
effects of the policies formed by tbeir leaders. In tbis way,
among others, they check and influence their leaders.
They do not, however, make policy; they are not regarded
as some mystical repository of political wisdom or virtue.
The formation and execution of policy is to be carried out
by those best situated and best qualified to carry it out,
by a democratic leadership.
A liberally educated leadership, in the classical view,
fosters enlightened government and justly secures its own
position I) by controlling the overambitious, the demagogic and the autocratic, within its own ranks, 2) by dispensing justice, and 3) by providing moral examples,
moral leadership, for the great bulk of the population.
Cf. George Anastaplo, The Constitutionalist: Notes on the First
Amendment, to be published in 1970 by Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, p. 5, and chap. 5, sec. 9, esp. pp, 115-120.
2
we regard as the more adequate philosophical psychology
of the Declaration of Independence, The Federalist, and
the Constitution of the United States. According to the
Declaration of Independence governments derive their
just powers not from the will but from the consent of the
-3 Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, The Federalist,
Nos. 49 and 71.
�September 1970
cerning educational capacities might perhaps best be left
open, but, as the first part of this paper indicates, unreasonable expectations can be at least as dangerous as undue
pessimism.
IV
Whether resources should be allocated
to it or not may be controversial ...
The winning, the survival, and the extension of freedom
are seen to depend not only on sound laws and institutions,
but also upon the abilities of the recipients of freedom
to use freedom well. More importantly, not only the survival but also the value of any freedom is dependent upon
the same abilities, that is, upon the virtues of the citizens,
and, primarily, upon the virtues of those who are fit by
nature, by training, and by education to guide the rest.
III
The temptation to seek technical, or mathematical,
solutions to political problems was noted at least as early
as Aristotle's somewhat humorous description of the
preciousness of the first non-professional political projector,
Hippodamus. 4 The description seems to su~~est that
mathematical studies unaccompanied by humamzmg philosophic and literary studies, not only do little to dispel the
mental effects of love of honor, or excessive political ambition, but when coupled with the latter seem to produce a
distinctive perversity of their own. The general lesson
Aristotle draws from reflection on Hippodamus is that
it is unreasonable to expect political life, which cannot
abstract from habit and custom, from human pa~swn,
prejudice and stupidity, to be able to proceed 1n as
reasonable a way as the arts and the sciences.
.
One might argue that the situation Aristotle descnbed
c<1n be remedied by universal education. Are all, or most,
or even many men educable in that way? The question con-
4
Aristotle, Politics, bk. ii.
Technological progress has brought along with itself
certain unprecedented problems: overpopulation, pollution
of the physical environment, pollution of the spmtual
environment by the mass media and advertising, to
mention only a few. The technocratic controls reqmred to
remedy these ills may make, or have already made, a certam
loss of individual liberty unavoidable; every effort should
be made to reduce such losses to a minimum.
Technology makes it easier for more and more people
to gratify all kinds of desires, some grand and presumably
harmless, like going to the moon, some abominable, like
those of the recent tyrants of Russia and Germany, and
very many very petty desires. No responsible scientist
(microbiologists included) or engineer has claimed that
technology can provide men with the wisdom to desire
what is good for them. The most responsible use of technology, of the science of means, would be to free men-for
the fuller development of their spiritual, or mental, capacities. Yet from within the scientistic perspective these
higher purposes are hardly visible, and the spiritual energies
of more and more men are being absorbed and monopolized by technique and technical tasks. Knowing how
crowds out learning why.
The disproportion between human power and human
wisdom grows apace. What originated as instrumental
carries us along in the wake of fortuitous and unpredictable
developments. To be in a position where human error IS
intolerable, where the very conditions of existence of the
race as a whole are at hazard, can be fatal for more than
political liberty. The problematic character of the great
project for the conquest of nature is becoming increasingly
obvious. What would seem to be required is a thoroughgoing reconsideration of the principles of that project, of
the science which gives it life, and of the alternatives to
that science. That reconsideration might well begin by
turning to the serious study of those who have devoted
themselves most humanely, most industriously, and most
intelligently to the exploration of the human psyche, to
seeking the science of ends-that is, to Homer, to Aristotle,
to Plato, to Shakespeare, and to the authors of the Bible.
Laurence Berns, Tutor at St. John's Col1ege since 1960, received
his Ph.D. degree from the Social Sciences Division of TI1e University
of Chicago. He was a Lecturer in the liberal arts at the University
from 1956 to 1959. He has written a chapter on Thomas Hobbes,
History of Political Philosophy, Rand McNally, 1963,_ and a chapter
on "Aristotle's Poetics" in Ancients and Modems, Bas1c Books, 1964.
He has lectured on "Liberal and Illiberal Politics," "Piety in King
Lear" and "Rational Animal-Political Animal: Nature and Convention in Politics and Human Speech." He is currently engaged in
a translation of Aristotle's Politics for Basic Books.
3
�Personal Freedom*
By THOJVi.AS SLAKEY
I
n the political jargon of the day, no word comes so
easily to the lips as the word "freedom." We call ourselves free men, citizens of a free country, the leaders
of the free world. The civil rights marchers used to sing
of a time when ''We shall all be free," and now, more
stridently, they call for it, "freedom now." We are fond
of quoting, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall
make you free." And yet some of what passes for truth
among us helps to destroy onr freedom. That is, it
destroys our understanding of freedom, and therefore,
I believe, helps to destroy onr freedom itself. I can perhaps best illustrate what I mean by referring to a debate
between the psychologists B. F. Skinner and Carl R.
Rogers which took place in 1956 acnd was reported in the
magazine Science at that time. 1 Skinner is best known as
the author of a Utopian novel, Walden Two, which
describes a community designed and controlled by expert
psychologists. Rogers and Skinner agree that the sciences
of human behavior, psychology, sociology, anthropology,
and so on, are rapidly growing in their ability to predict
and to control. They are beginning to establish laws about
human beings which have the form of laws about physical
particles, such that Hthe existence of certain describable
at exposures so brief that the viewers arc completely
unaware of having seen the word. They tend, however, to
see the face as becoming angry. Then the experimenter
begins to flash the word "happy" on the screen in similar
fashion. Now the viewers see the face as becoming more
happy.2
What arc the consequences of such growing po"'er to
predict and to control for the ancient belief in the freedom
of the will? For Skinner the consequences arc obvious: the
conception of human freedom is simply an illusion. In
fact he welcomes a future in which expert psychologists
will exercise a greater and greater control over their
fellow human beings, somewhat in the fashion of his
novel Walden Two. 3 Rogers, on the other hand, does see
a difficulty. He asserts that alongside the growing evidence
that human behavior is subject to laws, there is also the
direct and immediate experience of "responsible personal
choice, the most essential clement in being a person . ...
To deny the experience of responsible choice, is to me as
restricted a view as to deny the possibility of a behavioral
science" (Readings, p. 136). And yet Rogers, in this debate, could see no way to reconcile freedom and behavioral
science. He thought that the assertion of both must re-
conditions in the human being and/or in his environment
main a paradox, "The great paradox of behavioral science,"
is followed by certain describable consequences in his
actions" (Readings, p. 128). To give an example of predictability: a certain test on the perception of a dim spot
of light in a dark room can be used as a predictor of race
prejudice. To give an example of control: the use of
comparable to the paradox in physics of the wave and
particle theories of light: we assert both that light behaves
as if it were composed of waves and as if it were composed
of particles without in any way being able to reconcile the
two assertions. Similarly, Rogers says, we assert both that
man's behavior is predictable and that it is free without in
any way being able to reconcile the two assertions (Readings, p. 136). Later, in his book On Becoming a Person,
Rogers sketched a partial solution of the paradox and I will
speak of it later.
But it is not only among professional psychologists that
there is difficulty with the concept of freedom. Consider
subliminal or unconscious perceptions. A face is shown on
a screen. The viewers are asked to note how the expression
changes. Then the experimenter, without changing the
image of the face, flashes the word "angry" on the screen
*A lecture delivered at St. John's College, Santa Fe, February, 1968.
My quotations are from the reprint in Readings in Abnormal
Psychology, Human Values and Abnormal Bel1avior, \V. D. Nunokawa,
ed., Chicago, 1965, pp. 122-139 (hereafter cited as Readings). Rogers
later returned to this subject in his book On Becoming a Person,
Boston, 1961.
1
4
the emphasis in modern literature on abnormal and erratic
2
3
Examples from On Becoming a Person, pp. 369, 373.
See Readings, pp. 122-139 passim, and esp. pp. 136, 138.
�September 1970
behavior. In part this emphasis expresses what poets have
always expressed, an interest in unconventional characters
and a rebellion against stale and meaningless traditions.
But I think there is something more involved: a rebellion
not only against stale reasoning from the past, but against
reason as such. In her lecture earlier this year on Jean
Paul Sartre, Miss Hazel Barnes spoke of a man standing
on the edge of a cliff. Most probably he will not jump
off. But he could jump off, she insisted, he really could
jump off. Why should she insist on this possibility? Because she feels that to guide one's actions by reasoning
about alternatives, to explain the actions of others by
giving reasons for what they did, and perhaps most of all
to predict the actions of others by figuring out what reasons
might lead them in one direction or another, all of these
are hostile to our freedom because they show that our
actions are determined in some way. \Ve do not freely
perform an act; we are led to it, driven to it, restricted
to it by reasons.
E
ven in a book like Tolstoy's War and Peace, which
is written within the conventions of the 19th
century novel, whose characters are fairly con-
ventional in ideas and behavior, one finds an attack on
the use of reason. Tolstoy shows us Pierre Besuhov,
fumbling, foolish, always constructing elaborately reasoned
plans for the best use of his great wealth. Yet after the
war and his experiences of suffering, after his mysterious
friendship with the simple peasant Pia ton Karataev (note
the name Platon), Pierre finds himself a changed man.
Tolstoy says of him,
Now to his own surprise he found that he had no
more doubt or hesitation on all such qttestions. Now
there was a judge within him settling what he must
do and what he must not, by some laws of which he
was himself unaware (Modern Library ed., no date,
p. 1033).
Similarly, Nikolay Rostov, befote the war always worrying
about what to do and usually behaving badly, after the
war becomes a very successful farmer, skilled at handling
his serfs. Tolstoy says of him,
He could not have said what his standard was of
what he ought and ought not to do; but there was
a standard firm and rigid in his soul (p. 1068).
The novel as a whole fills out and lends plausibility to this
view. We see battles, complex, vast, involving thousands
of individual men. Who can plan them in any detail?
Who can predict their outcome? On the other hand, we
see men and women falling in love. Who can say why
Andre loves Natasha? Various reasons can be given but
they do not add up to a full explanation. The whole
is larger than the sum of the parts. Somehow we feel that
if Andre could catalogue all of his reasons for loving
Natasha, his love would be sterile, perhaps even destroyed.
Thus while there is surely some truth in the view
that we cannot guide our lives by fully articulated reasons,
yet the anti-rationalism of the novel is very heavy, heavy
despite Tolstoy's own rich and subtle understanding of the
people he portrays. Why? The long philosophical Epilogue
at the end of the novel shows us why. Tolstoy sees a conflict between free will and determinism, between acting
freely and guiding one's life by detern1ining reasons. He
says, speaking in his own person in the Epilogue, 11 0nce
admit that human life can be guided by reason, and all
possibility of life is annihilated" (p. 1054, and see pp.
1101-36 passim).
Finally, if we move from the world of behavioral science
and the world of literature to our own familiar experience,
I think we find all about us the pursuit of the irrational.
I will only mention two of the most obvious manifestations: experimentation with the so-called "mind expanding" drugs, and fascination with the non-rational aspects of
religion, especially with the non-rational aspects of Eastern
religions.
Thus I assert again that there are difficulties with the
concept of freedom, and most fundamentally with two
questions: what does ((freedom" mean? and, what does
the guidance of one's life by "reasons" mean?
5
�The College
I would like to begin my attempt to discuss these two
questions by examining something which Skinner takes
as an obvious fact: that predictability is incompatible with
freedom. Is this the case?
Consider an example. Socrates is ordered by the government of the Thirty to take part in the arrest of another
citizen. This was a technique used by the Thirty to force
prominent people into a public acceptance of their rule
and a public affirmation of their authority. Socrates studies
the case and decides that the man is innocent. What will
he do? We know Socrates' character well enough to predict that he will refuse to take part in the arrest. We
know the reasons that guide his life and we know how
strong he is. Does the fact that we can predict what he
will do make his action less free? Consider the alternative
possibility. At the decisive moment Socrates is afraid of
death and yields to the Thirty. Thus he does not conform
to our prediction. Docs this make his action more free?
hy then does Skinner see a conflict between predictability and freedom? I think that his view of
the matter, and I suspect that he does not realize
it, is essentially that articulated by Kant in the Critique
of Pure Reason. What Skinner takes as an obvious fact,
W
needing no discussion, has seemed obvious, I believe, only
since the time of Kant. Let us examine what Kant says.
Kant defines "freedom" as "absolute spontaneity,"
as "a power of absolutely beginning a state." 4 He means
by this an action which has no cause whatsoever in the
events and circumstances prior to it in time. He considers
the example of rising from one's chair (B. 479) an example
which could have had its origin in a lecture hall like this
one. Anyone of you could at this moment rise from his
chair and leave the room. This might be due to the oppressive heat of the room, a sud,den pain, a recollection
of something you had to do, etc. But if your action is
due to any such event or circumstance, Kant sees it as
caused and for him this means not free. Only if your action
is such that it begins a completely new sequence of events
in space-time which has no relation whatsoever to any
previous events can your action be called free.
Kant sees, of course, with his characteristic courage and
strength to follow out his ideas to their ultimate logical
consequences, that such a conception of hee human acts
takes them completely outside of any possible scientific
consideration. "Science" here means not only the science
of Skinner and Rogers, who try to set up laws of human
behavior which are modeled on the laws of physics, but
also "sciencen in the broader sense of knowledge about
human behavior of the kind one finds in Aristotle's
Ethics, or Plutarch's Lives, or even the kind of knowledge
one finds in countless novels and plays.
Kant discusses, for example, "a malicious lie by which a
4 Critique of Pure Reason, Norman Kemp Smith, tr., London, 1953,
p. 474, B. 473.
6
certain confusion has been caused in society" (B. 582).
He sees that we can study the history of the man who lied,
considering his upbringing, his friends, his natural disposition of shamelessness, perhaps, or of levity and
thoughtlessness. But none of this is in any way relevant
to our judgment of his lie as a free act. For this consideration, "we presuppose that we can leave out of consider-
ation what this way of life may have been, that we can
regard the past series of conditions as not having occurred
and the act as being completely unconditioned by any
preceding state, just as if the agent in and by himself
began in this action an entirely n.ew series of consequences"
(B. 583). Furthermore, all judgments of morality are concerned only with actions as free. Kant again draws the
logical consequence, "'T'he real morality of actions, their
merit or guilt, even that of our own conduct, thus remains
entirely hidden from us" (B. 580).
Given such a view of freedom as absolute spontaneity,
how is it possible for Kant to assert its existence? It is
obvious that at least the vast majority of human actions
have some relation to prior events and circumstances.
Kant's reply is that any human action can be considered
under two quite different aspects. It can be considered
as taking place in the world of space~time, the world where
causes operate, the world of the natural sciences, the world
of most of our ordinary experience. But it is a mistake
to think that this world is the only existing reality. Behind
this world of experience, of appearances, of phenomena,
which is essentially a human construction, lies another
world of what he calls "Things in themselves." It is in this
world, as real as or even more real than the world of
phenomena, that the free human act exists, that the immortal soul exists, that God exists. It is the concern of
the entire Critique to establish the plausibility of the
world of Things-in-themselves, and I cannot review Kant's
arguments here. I will only point out that those who
accept Kant's conception of freedom as absolute spontaneity but who do not accept his argument for a world of
. Things-in-themselves separate from the empirical world
end by either denying the existence of freedom, like
Skinner, or by seeing the existence of freedom as an
absolute and incomprehensible paradox, like Rogers. I
believe that if one accepts the terms in which Kant discusses the problem, if one accepts the concept of freedom
as absolute spontaneity, then there are no other alternatives.
L
et us consider, then, why Kant conceives of freedom
in these terms. We began with writers of our own
century. We sought the roots of their thinking in
Kant. We now must take a further step backwards and
seek the roots of Kant's thinking in Hobbes. Hobbes takes
as his model for the understanding of human behavior the new mechanical philosophy of the 17th
Century, which explains events in terms of matter in
motion. Thus in a chapter on method from his De
�September 1970
The vast majority of human actions have some relation
to prior events and circumstances ...
Corpore, he asserts that "motion cannot he understood
to have any other cause besides motion" (VI, 5). He
first discusses the motions considered by physics, and
then asserts 1
(VI, p. 31). The beginning of a voluntary motion
is called an "appetite" or "desire," if it is toward something, and an "aversion," if it is away from something.
"Good" and "evil" are defined in terms of appetite toward
and away from. The only difference Hobbes sees between
After physics we must come to moral philosophy; in
which we are to consider the motions of the mind,
namely, appetite, aversion, love, benevolence, hope,
fear, anger, emulation, envy, etc.; what cause they
have, and of what they be cause. And the reason why
these are to be considered after physics is, that they
can directly perceive, whereas "pleasures of the mind"
arise from the expectation of pleasures of sense from some
object which is absent (VI, p. 34). Thus no distinction
is made among kinds of pleasures or kinds of voluntary
have their causes in sense and imagination, which are
motions.
the subject of physical contemplation. (VI, 6)
Note what Hobbes casts together here in a single group.
Let me repeat the list: ~'appetite, aversion, love, benevolence, hope, fear, anger, emulation, envy, etc." All of these
are motions produced by causes, specifically by prior
motions in sense and imagination. No distinction is made
among kinds of motions produced by kinds of causes.
Motions of love and benevolence are of essentially the
same type as motions of appetite and anger. If my child
is hurt and I comfort him in an effort to help him stop
crying, this is to be understood in essentially the same
terms as when, annoyed by his crying, I shout at him and
strike him. Or, to return to our earlier example, when
Socrates stands against the judgment of the Thirty and
refuses to cooperate in the arrest of an innocent man, this
is to be understood in essentially the same terms as if,
through fear, he yielded.
The interpretation I have made of the quotation from
De Corpore can be supported from the chapter on "Volun·
tary motions" in Leviathan-' Hobbes distinguishes in
animals two sorts of motions, vital motions, such as the
motion of the blood through the body, breathing,
nutrition, and so on, and voluntary motions, such as walking, moving our arms, speaking, and so on. Voluntary
n1otions are defined as motions "first fancied in our minds"
5
Page references are to the Blackwell edition, Oxford, 19 57.
"pleasures of sense" and "pleasures of the mind" is that
"pleasures of sense" arise from present objects which _we
G
iven such an account of pleasu. re, how does Hobbes
think that we deliberate among pleasures, how do
we choose? Hobbes considers deliberation simply
as a succession of appetites and aversions. First we incline
toward some object, then we incline away from it, due
to a fear of some evil consequence. "The whole sum of
desires, aversions, hopes and fears continued till the thing
be either done, or thought impossible, is that we call deliberation" (VI, p. 37). Choice, or "will," is simply "the
last appetite in deliberating" (VI, p. 38), the appetite which is immediately followed by motion toward the
object. Again, no distinction is made among kinds of
objects which move the will.
Such a conception of choice is evident in a popular
tendency to place an action like giving money to the poor
or risking one's life to save a drowning man on essentially
the same level as eating a piece of candy or taking a ride
on a roller coaster, classing all these actions as the same
because they produce a kind of "pleasure" or usatisfaction,"
with no distinction made among kinds of pleasure or satisfaction. Such supposed psychological sophistication is to
be contrasted with the naive judgment that some human
actions are genuinely
41
altn1istic," that is, fundamentally
directed toward others, alteri.
I turn now to Hobbes' account of freedom.
For Hobbes the question of "freedom" or "liberty"
offers no difficulty whatsoever. "Liberty" is defined simply
7
�The College
as ''the absence of opposition"; and "opposition" means
"external impediments of motion" such as walls and chains
(XXI, pp. 136, 137). Thus, unless a man is actually
tied down or confined within a certain space, he is
said to be free. In this sense of "freedom," as Hobbes
sees clearly, animals are free in the same way that man is,
and even water, when it is not constrained to flow within
certain banks, can be said to be free (XXI, pp. 136, 137).
Thus, to say that a man has "free-will" means simply
that "he finds no stop, in doing what he has the will, desire,
or inclination to do" (XXI, p. 137). But what of the
freedom of the will itself, when a man chooses to do one
thing rather than another? Hobbes denies that a creature
having the power of thought and judgment might be
free in a sense in which animals and inanimate objects
are not. Finally, when he goes on to discuss political
liberty, he is able to say that it makes sense only for a
state as a whole, which succeeds in operating without
constraint from other states. Within a state, there is
as much or as little liberty in a monarchy as there is in
a democracy, since both states constrain men to abide by
the laws. Hobbes says that the idea of political liberty is
essentially an illusion inherited from the Greeks and the
Romans! (XXI, pp. 140, 141)
Now, what is the line of development from Hobbes'
discussion of deliberation, choice and liberty to the
Kantian difficulties about freedom? Despite the vast differences in the conclusions they draw, I think the line of
development is very simple and direct. Kant does want
to affirm the presence in man of a kind of freedom which
is not simply the absence of external restraints. It is a
freedom to do what one knows to be right despite one's
upbringing, despite one's desires, despite the conditions
in which one is acting. It is a freedom which is the basis
of moral choice. Nevertheless, Kant accepts the terms in
which Hobbes has discussed the problem. Kant makes no
distinction among the kinds of causes which act on the
will. Everything which acts on the will is a kind of mover,
or "motive," which produces a certain motion as its
effect, analogous to a physical particle producing a physical
motion. Whether a man does something for good reasons,
or does it in a fit of rage it is all one, an action which is
caused and could have been predicted. The only kind of
freedom Kant can see is a complete absence of causation
of any kind, an "absolute spontaneity" which has no
reference whatever to anything prior to it in time. Kant
affirms that such freedom exists, but it is an affirmation
which depends on a world of "things-in-themselves" lying
outside experience.
U
p to this point, my argument has been largely negative. I have tried to describe a conceptual problem
and to show what its origins are. At several points
I have suggested that the fundamental error which gives
8
rise to the problem is the failure to distinguish among
kinds of human actions, among the kinds of things which
lead men to act, that is, the tendency to class everything
indifferently as a "motive," as a mover of the human will
analogous to a billiard ball producing motion in another
billiard ball.
I wish now to make a fresh start by considering a
thinker who stands completely outside the tradition which
begins with Hobbes and whose discussion of human behavior consists primarily in distinguishing among kinds
of men and kinds of human actions. I refer to Aristotle and
particularly to his Ethics.
The first thing to notice is that Aristotle brings to his
discussion of human behavior not a single model of
causality, as does Hobbes, but a distinction of four kinds
of cause, that is, four ways of answering the question
"why?" Only one of these is described in terms of motion,
namely, the efficient cause, or that from which motion
begins. Answers to the question "why?" can also be given
in terms of the components of a thing, the material cause,
or in terms of the nature or definition of a thing, the
formal cause, or, most important in the present context,
in terms of the end or goal, the telos, at which something
aims, called the "final" cause. It is interesting to note
that this distinction is obscured in a crucial way by the
English translators of the Ethics, who are themselves fully
in the grip of the Hobbesian tradition. Thus Aristotle
speaks of "the principles" of human action. His word is
arche, which means simply "beginning." W. D. Ross, in
the translation familiar to most of us, the one published in
the one volume Basic Works of Aristotle, writes "moving
principle" (lllOa 2). The Loeb translator goes still
farther. At a point where Aristotle speaks of the telos or
goal of an action, he writes "the end or motive" (l!IOa
14). In some sense these translations are not incorrect, and
yet I think they illustrate the difficulty that both of these
translators had in reading an ancient text without bringing
their own habits of mind to it, and the still greater difficulty for one whose only reading of an ancient text is
filtered through translations.
L
et us proceed. We move from the general classification of causes, which deals with all kinds of events
in the inanimate as well as the animate world, to
the particular discussion of human behavior. Aristotle's
first concern is to define "voluntary" action, but the
order in which he proceeds is extremely interesting. He
begins by considering "involuntary" action, perhaps because he finds it easier to identify and to describe. Involuntary action is, first of all, action which is compelled or
forced, and what this means is made clear by examples.
A man riding in a boat which is carried off course by the
wind, or a man physically dragged along by stronger
men is said to act under compulsion. Aristotle defines this
as action in which the arche, the principle or beginning
of the action, is outside the person (Ethics, III, I, ll!Oa
�September 1970
We presuppose that individuals
do have control over their own actions ...
l-4). Involuntary action is, secondly, action done through
ignorance, and again what this means is clarified by examples. A trainer thinks that a spear he is using in practice
has a blunted point. In fact the spear does not have a
blunted point and the trainer kills his pupil. His ac.t was
done through ignorance; that is, in a literal sense, he did
not know what he was doing. If had known the spear was
pointed he would not have done what he did ( lllOb 17lllla 20).
Aristotle is now in a position to define voluntary action.
I quote:
Since that which is done under compulsion or by
reason of ignorance is involuntary, the voluntary
would seem to be that of which the arche, the
principle, is in the agent himself, he being aware of
the particular circumstances of the action ( lllla 21).
Thus two conditions are required for an action to be
voluntary. First, the principle of the action must be in
the agent himself. T11is means simply that the agent is not
compelled. Second, the agent must know what he is
doing. This means simply that the agent is not ignorant of
the circumstances of his action. In other words, voluntary
action is defined negatively. An act is voluntary unless
it is done through compulsion or ignorance, unless, that
is, it is involuntary. Voluntary action means action which
is not involuntary.
I
n the course of his discussion, Aristotle moves from
the clear cases of involuntary action to the ambiguous
cases. What about someone who, to avoid sinking in
a storm, throws his goods overboard? Is not his action in
some sense compelled? (lllOa 8) Or what about someone
threatened with terrible punishment if he does not do
what he is told? ( lllOa 5, 20-33) Or could one not even
say that all pleasant and noble objects have a kind of
compelling power which forces us from without? (Ill Ob 9)
Or again, what of a man who is drunk or a man in a
violent fit of rage? Is he not in some sense ignorant of what
he is doing? (lllOb 25) And could one not say that any
man, who does not know that what he is doing is wrong,
is in a sense ignorant of what he is doing? ( lllOb 29-34)
Aristotle's response to these ambiguous cases and the
questions which arise from them is in a way dissatisfying
and yet interesting. He acknowledges that a man who
throws his goods overboard in a storm or who pursues
pleasure is, in some sense of the word, "compelled." But
he refuses to assimilate this to the case of a man who is
compelled in the sense that he is physically dragged along.
Aristotle sees that a man in the sway of passion is in a
sense ignorant of what he is doing, and yet he refuses to
assimilate this to the case of the trainer who thinks
that the spear he is using is blunt (III, 1, passim). Aristotle
does not aim at theoretical simplicity. Again and again
he returns to particular examples, and I have mentioned
only a small number of those he actually describes. In
any case, let us postpone for the moment the difficulties
arising from the ambiguous cases, and follow Aristotle's
analysis to its next stage, which is a discussion of choice.
F
or Aristotle not all voluntary actions are chosen; for
example, actions done in anger. He ascribes volun-
tary action to children and animals, but not choice.
What then distinguishes choice? Again Aristotle has a
simple criterion. He describes the activity of bou1euest1:wi,
which means taking counsel, planning, advising. (The
word commonly used to translate bouleuesthai, "deliberation," is of Latin origin and has the specific sense of deciding among alternative courses of action, that is, of
weighing alternatives on a balance, libra.) Aristotle points
out, for example, that we do not take counsel or make
plans concerning eternal things, such as mathematical
propositions. We investigate them and think about them,
but we do not consider what to do about them. Similarly
concerning natural events which always happen in the
same way, such as the rising of the sun. Similarly still
about chance events, like stumbling on a buried treasure.
And finally concerning things impossible for us, like becoming emperor of Persia, we do not make plans, we do
not deliberate. For none of these things come about
"through us," di'hemon, through our efforts. What then
do we deliberate about? We deliberate about things which
"are in our power and can be done," as Ross translates it,
ton eph' hemin kai prakton, which are ours and which
are do-able" (1112a 19-30). With this description of deliberation as a basis, choice is then simply defined in terms
of deliberation. When is an action chosen? When it follows deliberation (1112a 15).
11
N
ote that this definition presupposes that actions
11
which are chosen are actions which belong to us"
as Aristotle puts it, eph' hemin, or as Ross translates
11
it, "are in our power." What are actions in our power"?
Again the meaning of the expression comes negatively
from examples of things not in our power: mathematical
propositions, the rising of the sun, stumbling on a buried
treasure, and so on. Yet Aristotle does go on to explicitly
9
�The College
consider the question whether good and bad actions, acts
of virtue and vice, are really "in our power" in a deeper
sense.
He first points out that both in our private lives and in
our laws we presuppose that individuals do have control
over their own actions, for we punish those who do evil
acts and honor and praise those who do good acts, as
though we meant to deter the one and to encourage the
other ( 1113b 22-5). He also points out that we excuse
those who acted under compulsion or in ignorance, when
both arc taken in the strict sense defined earlier. For
ignorance in a looser sense, for example when ignorance
is due to drunkenness, one is not excused and in fact the
penalties might even be increased. This is because we
feel that the person was responsible for his own ignorance
(1113b 30).
But now comes the difficult question. One can agree with
all that Aristotle has said and accept the accuracy of his
definitions and the claim that they reflect the practice of
our lives. But one can still ask whether the apparent
power that we have over our choices might not be an
illusion. For one can still ask whether the way in which
possible alternatives appear to a person is really in his
power. Does not paying his debts appeal to one man because of the way he has been brought up, whereas cheating
appeals to another man? Aristotle does raise this question,
but his answer might seem too obvious and too close to
our ordinary experience to be very impressive. He reverts
to his general discussion of virtues and vices, which are
simply states of character or habits acting in certain ways.
Before one has acquired a habit, Aristotle asserts, one
does have the power to act differently. After one has acquired a certain habit, for example the habit of drinking
heavily, one does not have the power to change, at least
not to the same degree (1114a 3-22). How does one
acquire good habits? How does one become temperate
and courageous? The answer is simple but the task is
difficult: one becomes temperate or courageous simply
bv repeatedly performing acts of temperance and courage
(Ethics, II, I, 4; III, 5).
T
his point is filled out by the discussion of akrasia
in Book VII of the Ethics. Akrasia means simply
"lack of strength" but is usually translated as "weakness of will" or "incontinence." With regard to sensual
pleasures, pleasures of food, drink and sex, Aristotle makes
a three-fold distinction. On the one hand there is the
virtuous man who enjoys such things to an appropriate
degree and at appropriate times. On the other hand, there
is the intemperate or vicious man who enjoys them to
excess and at inappropriate times. In between there is the
man of akrasia. He has good principles, he knows what he
ought to do, and yet he is unable to follow his principles.
In the particular situation, he is carried away by his desires and indulges more than he intends to. He is a man
for whom there is still hope of virtue because he can, by
10
repeatedly restraining his evil desires and performing the
individual acts of virtue, finally acquire the habit of doing
good, that is, the virtue itself. For the vicious man, on
the other hand, there is no hope, because he not only
acts badly in the particular situation and under the influence of overwhelming desire, but his very principles
have been corrupted. He believes that self-indulgence is
a good thing and goes ahead to act on that belief. He is,
in one respect, like the man of virtue, in that he acts on
his principles. His trouble is that he has acquired bad
principles. (See Book VII, Ch. l-10, passim.) Thus,
Aristotle says that "the incontinent man is like a city
which passes all the right decrees and has good laws,
but makes no use of them," whereas
<~the
wicked man is
like a city that uses its laws, but has wicked laws to usc"
( 1152a 20-24).
Thus Aristotle's discussion of voluntary action and
choice simply follows our ordinary experience of human
behavior. As far as I have observed, nowhere in this discussion is a word used which could be translated "free,"
and he does not speak to the problem of freedom and
determinism posed by Kant because this problem does not
arise for him. For him there is no abstract theoretical
standpoint from which men could be said to be free-or not
free. Nevertheless I have mentioned those passages where
Aristotle speaks of actions as eph' hemin, as "ours" or
"in our power," and I think we can construct from these
passages the direction of Aristotle's reply to Kant. Asked
if man is free, Aristotle would not try to answer the
question in general, but would discuss whether particular
men in particular situations are free and to what degree.
To what extent did they understand the circumstances
of their action? Did they think about what they were
doing before they acted? Or did they act on impulse?
Were they angry or agitated at the time the decision
was made? Were they drunk? From the replies to these
questions we can say to what extent they clwse to do
what they did. And to say that they chose is, in Aristotle's
terms, to say that the action was "theirs," ''in their
power," and, I would add, it is to say that the action
was "free."
Suppose we then ask, "But what about the choice
itself? Was that free?" Again Aristotle wants to know
the particular sort of person we are considering and the
particular history he has had. Are we offering a drink to
a man who enjoys drinking but does not get drunk, to a
man who does not often get drunk but who on this particular occasion has been drinking heavily, or to a con-
firmed alcoholic who is at this moment licking his lips
in impatience? It is obvious that in some ordinary sense
of the word "free," there are degrees of freedom of choice
among these three men. To say that none of them is
free is simply to obscure the distinction we would want
to make among them. If we refuse to use the word "free"
to make this distinction because we are reserving it for
some high theoretical meaning, then we have to find
�REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT
1969
Through the past year of campus dissension and unrest
across America, the students and Tutors of St. John's
College distinguished themselves by their sane and rational
behavior. Almost all of them were gravely concerned
over the war in Southeast Asia and the crisis at Kent State
University. To express their dissent from national policy
they chose what they considered to be proper and appropriate means-a letter to the President signed by individuals and delivered by hand to the White House, a
twenty-four hour peace vigil, letters and visits to congressmen, and an extra day of classes on Vietnam and on the
general problem of dissent.
St. John's College believes that there is grave danger
to higher education in this country if colleges and universities as entities take political stands. Such politicization
could well result in the subversion of these institutions
into action agencies and in the ultimate loss of real academic freedom. St. John's students and Tutors correctly
insisted that their opinions be understood as those of
individual citizens and that the College not be officially
or implicitly involved.
In the words of the letter to the President, "St. John's
College is devoted to the life of the mind, to reason, and
to dialogue. We cannot subscribe to irrational and violent
methods of dissent, since they imply an abandonment of
the fundamental principles for which a college or university should stand .... We shall continue with our regular
academic program. We believe that our primary responsibility as students and teachers is to continue to study and
learn."
A college or university must be a place where any idea
or opinion may be expressed, entertained, examined, or
criticized. Complete freedom of inquiry must prevail.
1970
The goal must be the search for truth. The rules musf be
the rules of reason. The tools are the liberal arts, the
thinking skills. To prescribe a position, a dogma, a doctrine, or a political stand is to vitiate freedom to question,
to discuss, to study, and to learn. The contemporary trend
of making colleges and universities action institutions to
deal with society's problems and woes is fraught with real
danger. A college like St. John's must continue to adhere
steadfastly to principle in these matters. Nor does this
mean any lack of concern for the outside world. St. John's
will have failed in its full mission if its graduates are not
inspired or impelled to meet their full responsibilities as
citizens of the Republic.
It is interesting that St. John's students declined during
the critical days to judge their fellows in other institutions.
Some thought that they might have acted differently had
they not been at St. John's. As one student put it, striking
against St. John's College would be senseless, for students
here already have most of what students elsewhere are
seeking-small classes, genuine dialogue with Tutors, a
sense of the dignity and worth of the individual, full
opportunity to participate in class, and serious and
thoughtful discussion of the great questions of human
existence. Indeed, the vague smoldering disenchantment
with the conventional academic experience appears to
me to be at the root of the problem for students in many
colleges and universities. This disconrent is capitalized
upon by the relatively small and vocal minority of dissident radicals, who associate it with political issues to
which it is at best remotely relevant.
In my opinion no palliative or remedy of the ills of
higher education can be found in the coBtemporary movement to involv-e students in the governance of our col-
lOA
�The College
leges and universities through board membership, or to
make them partners in planning the curriculum. A college
cannot and should not be a democracy. In fact, a college
is not a political organization of any sort. One of the
vital tasks of colleges should be to preserve the distinction
between an educational community and a political community. Each segment-board, faculty, and students of the
college community-has its assigned role. Responsibility
rests by charter with the board and is delegated by it to
the president. He in turn delegates it to deans, administrators, faculty, and students. Students must indeed be
listened to on all matters, and their ideas, proposals, and
suggestions should be seriously and tj10ughtfully considered. But a college faculty cannot evade or surrender its
basic responsibility for prescribing that course of study
which in its opinion is most likely to result in a liberally
educated man or woman. Nor can a board, a president, or
a dean yield to expediency or pressure and fail to maintain
those conditions which are considered m 0st conducive to
real learning.
A college, to be true to its purpose, should be a community of learners. It is significant that the word "community" is derived from the Latin communis-con mean~
ing "together" and the root mu meaning "to bind." From
the same origin comes the word communico, meaning "to
divide a thing with one, to impart, or to communicate."
As a community, then, a college is a society or body of
disparate individuals bound together by the common goal
of learning. In such a body communication, the full sharing of thoughts :md ideas is paramount. There must also
be a proper ordering of the body if its laudable ends are
to be achieved. Hence the need for clearly defined functions and working relationships.
Quinquennial Polity Revision
The year just ended at St. John's College witnessed a
further development and refinement of the College's basic
constitution, the Polity. It has been a major accomplishment that every five years a mandatory reveiw. of this
document has been completed to the general satisfaction
of the various segments of the college community. This
year notable progress was made by broadening the concept
of the Faculty to include not only Tutors, the teaching
members, but Associates as well, that is, administrative
staff members. Sections defining the role of the students
were amplified, and, for the first time, the alumni were
included as part of the College. Both campuses were
accorded equal status. A major change in administrative
structure was instituted by the creation of the position of
Provost on the Annapolis campus. This new post will have
presidential powers, though the incumbent will report to
the President of the College rather than to the Board. The
objective is to relieve the President of many administrative details and to assure greater attention to the developing needs of the Annapolis campus. A search for a suitable candidate for the provostship is now in progress.
lOB
The Annapolis Campus
Robert Goldwin brought to the deanship a high degree
of vigor, imagination, and judiciousness. With remarkable success he gave high priority to four matters: the
attrition of student enrollment, the recording of the instructional program, the rules of residence for students on
campus, and the College's relations with the world outside the campus. It is gratifying to report a net loss of
only three students throughout the year. The February
freshman class and returning students almost replaced the
number who left during the year. The significant point
is that many fine students, who might have been lost to
the College, were apparently satisfied with the progress
of their education and stayed on.
At the initiative of the Dean, Tutors kept records of
what happened in every seminar, and uarchon" or "gau-
leiter" Tutors did the same for tutorials and laboratories.
As a result a complete account of what is done in every
class in every year is now available for the use of new
Tutors. These reports are in no sense rigid guides but
rather starting points for the further improvement and
refinement of the curriculum. In similar fashion, a care-
ful record has been kept by Elliott Zuckerman, Secretary
of the Instruction Committee, of all its deliberations and
decisions. Copies of his report for the year were circulated
to all Tutors.
Much time and energy were expended in deliberations
over possible revision of the rules of residence. A liberalization of the rules resulted. Curfew was eliminated for
women students, except for freshman women during the
first semester. Visiting hours were extended somewhat,
but the College would not accede to the request of some
students that dormitories remain open for intervisitation
twenty-four hours a day. The general problem will undoubtedly continue to trouble the College. It may be
relieved somewhat as a larger proportion of students are
permitted to live off campus.
As part of his effort to improve relations with the outside world, the Dean instituted two series of seminars.
One series was conducted combining St. John's students
and midshipmen of the United States Naval Academy.
Co-leaders were drawn from the two institutions. A second
series was conducted for public figures in Washington and
led by the Dean. Tuition for this series was the requirement that participants visit the Annapolis campus and
speak on national affairs before the Student Forum. These
seminars contributed helpfully to a new understanding of
the College by people outside it.
Finally, mention should be made of a most significant
innovation in the area of instruction. Under the direction
of Hugh McGrath, one of the College's most senior
Tutors, a six-week New Tutors School was conducted on
campus this summer. Five of the seven newly appointed
Tutors participated to prepare themselves for the shock
of meeting their first classes. The Dean and I are both
�September 1970
confident that the quality of teaching by these new Tutors
will be greatly improved as a result.
The Santa Fe Campus
Dean William Darkey reports that notable progress
has been made on the western campus in broadening general faculty competence in all areas of the program. Classes were scheduled during the year so as to permit maximum opportunity for auditing. Many Tutors availed themselves of the chance to observe their fellows teaching. As
a corollary it is gratifying that almost all requests for
teaching assignments for the coming year included at least
one subject new to the Tutor. The criterion of extending
one's competence in the St. John's Program is already
being taken very responsibly.
A special study group of music Tutors was set up and
met regularly throughout the year. As a result, a syllabus
of carefully selected materials was prepared for use in the
Music tutorial. Furthermore, three "non-musicians" can
now be assigned to the Music tutorial for the coming
year. The Dean also reports that six Tutors without previous experience in teaching biology have now successfully
taught in that part of the laboratory program, and that
a half-dozen faculty members studied elementary Greek
for eight weeks this summer. Thomas Slakey instructed
the group under the auspices of the Graduate Institute in
Liberal Education. Some Tutors learned the language for
the first time, others reviewed their previous acquaintance
with it.
The Dean notes that for the coming year the teaching
slate will be somewhat tight, though a ratio of eight students to one Tutor will be maintained. The Dean urges
a policy of earlier interviews with prospective faculty
members and earlier appointments another year. In general, he concludes that the morale of the faculty has been
good on the Santa Fe campus and that the quality of the
teaching has been high.
Ricl1ard Scofield
The entire St. John's community has been saddened
by the death of Richard Scofield, one of St. John's greatest and most beloved Tutors. He had retired at the end
of June following 43 years of service on the St. John's
Faculty. Educated at the University of California and at
Oxford University, where he held a Rhodes scholarship, he
was first appointed to the St. John's Faculty in 1927 as a
member of the English Department. When the New
Program was introduced he undertook diligently and
enthusiastically the varied duties of a Tutor. Since 1959
he had held an Addison E. Mullikin Tutorship. The scroll
honoring Richard Scofield npon his retirement read in
part as follows:
In these years nothing has been more trusted by
students and colleagues alike than his patience,
his modesty, his calm perseverance, his subtle
understanding, and his unswerving rectitude,
nothing more admired than his urbanity and
elegance and, above all, his capacity for warm
friendship. In his company other persons have
felt themselves somehow at their best.
The Tutors
The selection and training of the best possible faculty
members continues to be a matter of prime importance
both in the east and in the west. This year each campus
received approximately 300 applications for teaching positions. Seven new Tutors have been selected for appointment at Annapolis and three at Santa Fe. Two teaching
interns have also been appointed at Santa Fe, both of
whom will work toward Master's degrees.
Appointed to the Faculty on the Annapolis campus for
the coming academic year are Steven Crockett, who holds
a Ph.D. degree in the History of Culture from the U niversity of Chicago; William DeHart, who has a doctorate
in biology from the University of Rochester Medical
School, and who has been an assistant professor at the
Medical College of .Virginia; Robert Licht, a young St.
John's graduate, who has been teaching philosophy as an
instructor at Bucknell University; Brian Patrick McGuire,
who has just completed his D.Phil. at Oxford University
in History; Alfred Mallin, whose doctorate is in Philosophy from the Penn State University; William O'Grady,
who has a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in Political Science; and Jonathan Skinner, whose doctorate at
the Universitv of Massachusetts was in the field of mathematics.
Additions to the Santa Fe faculty are John S. Chamberlin, who has completed work for a Ph.D. at the University of Toronto in Medieval Studies; Frank Flinn, who has
a B.A. from Quincy College and a B.D. from Harvard
Divinity School; and Edward H. Porcella, a St. Mary's
College graduate, who holds the M.A. degree in Philosophy from the University of California at San Diego. The
two teaching interns on the Santa Fe campus are Mrs.
Toni Katz Drew, who graduated from St. John's College
in June. and Paul D. Mannick, who completed his undergraduate studies at California State College at Long Beach
this year.
During the year just ended Douglas Allanbrook, John
Kieffer, and J. Winfree Smith were all on sabbatical leave
while Gisela Berns, George Berry, Clarence J. Kramer,
and Henry Larom were on leave of absence for all or
part of the year. Mr. Berry resigned during the year because of the pressure of family business. Peter Brown,
Vassilios Christides, Alan Cotler, Carl Linden, Robert
Mueller, and George Vahanian, all completed the terms
of their appointments and leave the College for other
positions.
The Students
The following excerpt from Dean Darkey' s report well
IOC
�The College
summarizes the student situation on both St. John's
campuses:
"The quality of campus life at St. John's is as difficult
to assess with confidence as it is on any campus. On the
one hand, we have escaped the more obvious manifestations of student unrest that have troubled campuses
throughout the country. It is certainly safe to say that
our advantage is due in part to the essential nature of St.
John's itself, that is to its deliberately small size, to the
intellectual soundness of its curriculum, and to the high
quality of its teaching. Much of the current campus unrest is certainly aggravated by the impersonality of the
enormous universities and by the curricular chaos into
which students are thrust with the assurance that they
will receive an education. By contrast our curriculuill
provides a common intellectual experience in a commu-
nity small enough to permit an easy dialectical consideration and assimilation of that experience. These conditions and the fact that the curriculum has deep roots in
the larger tradition of our society produce community to
an unusual degree within the College and this is a source
of great strength.
"But we must recognize that our students come to us
from the same world that other college students come
from. Ours are a highly selected group of sensitive and
intelligent young men and women who are responsive to
the tensions that properly enough trouble all young people
today, and although we have escaped the more openly
destructive manifestations of those tensions, St. John's is,
nevertheless, profoundly affected by them. For example,
it is beyond any reasonable doubt that our so-called problem of attrition is a symptom of the general unrest. The
student who withdraws, declaring as many do that he has
no really serious criticism of St. John' s-in deed he usually
avows his intention to return in time-is, in most instances,
deeply troubled by the same causes that produce demonstrations on other campuses.''
St. John's on both its campuses had its largest enrollment to date. Attrition at Santa Fe was somewhat higher
than at Annapolis. Figures for the vear follow:
Annapolis
Freshmen
February Freshmen
Sophomores
Juniors
Seniors
Total
Santa Fe
Freshmen
Sophomores
Juniors
Seniors
Total
Grand Total
lOD
Men
71
14
56
40
35
216
Men
71
40
13
21
145
361
Women
54
7
41
26
24
!52
Women
54
36
15
12
117
269
Total
125
21
97
66
59
368
Total
125
76
28
33
262
630
A major factor contributing to good morale on the
Annapolis campus this year was a rejuvenated Collegian.
Under the able editorship of Daniel J. Sullivan, of the
Junior Class, some thirty weekly issues appeared. The
publication was partly newspaper and partly magazine.
At Santa Fe the greatest positive contribution to the
life of the students was the establishment of the SAO,
the Student Activities Office, under the direction of
Istvan Fehervary. All sports and other activities fell under
the purview of this office, whether soccer, skiing, rafting,
and fencing, or photography, the theater, jewelry-making,
or the publication Seven.
Students were confronted with an increasingly serious
problem in the area of financial aid. For Maryland students the State's new scholarship program worked to the
disadvantage of those selecting an independent college
like St. John's. This is graphically demonstrated by the
sharp decline of awards to students attending St. John's
over the past five years:
Year
Number of Students Total Sclwlarsl1ip Funds
1965-66
59
$!19,125
'1966-67
50
99,000
1967-68
45
90,850
1968-69
30
53,800
1969-70
24
32,350
Every effort must be made to alter the system so that a
more equitable share of these scholarship funds are made
available to Maryland residents desiring to attend independent institutions.
In spite of the reduction of state scholarships, the College sought to provide as much financial aid as possible
out of its current budgets on both campuses, as the following table shows:
Total
Annapolis Santa Fe
Student Assistantships $ 43,740 $ 48,933 $ 92,673
Grants-in-Aid
67,191
49,464 116,655
Maryland Scholarships
32,350
32,350
Southwest Scholarships
58,500
58,500
Staff Children's
Scholarships
3,900
1,950
5,850
Other Scholarships
1,000
42,340
41,340
Educational Opportunity
Grants
13,165
6,682
19,847
VI ork-Studv Program
5,992
5,992
$201,686 $172,521
$374,207
These figures include no financial aid through loans,
either by local banks or within the National Defense
Student Loan program.
In June the College awarded 75 Bachelor of Arts
degrees, 27 of them on the Santa Fe campus and 48 of
them on the Annapolis campus. Five Annapolis seniors
received recognition in the form of degrees magna cum
laude, that is Hwith great praise.'' Fourteen seniors earned
cum laude degrees, that is "with praise," nine in Annap~
�September 1970
olis and five in Santa Fe. These two most recent classes
bring to 935 the total number of St. John's graduates of
the New Program.
Admissions
This has been a disappointing year from the standpoint
of admissions. In contrast to the 508 applications of last
year, only 450 prospective students completed final applications for this fall. Instead of two capacity classes of 125
students each, Annapolis expects to enroll 120 students
and Santa Fe 108. Apparently experience at St. John's
parallels that of other independent liberal arts colleges.
Undoubtedly higher college fees, the depressed state of
the economy, and the relative scarcity of loan funds have
all contributed to the decreased numbers.
In May Douglas Price resigned from his position as
Director of Admissions in Santa Fe to become Assistant
to the President at the University of Hawaii. Earlier in
the year Edward Godschalk had relinquished his responsibilities as Assistant Director of Admissions in Annapolis
in order to pursue graduate study. Both men made substantial contributions to the success of the admissions
program over the past several years. Gerald Zollars has
been appointed Director of Admissions at Santa Fe replacing Mr. Price.
Tile Graduate Institute in Liberal Education
Under the able directorship of James Shannon, Vice
President of the College, the Graduate Institute in Liberal
Education completed a successful fourth session this
summer and graduated 28 teachers and other adults with
the degree of Master of Arts. Full-time enrollment rose
from 84 to 120, an increase of nearly half. Graduate Institute students came from 20 States, with the largest
number registered from New Mexico and Maryland. It is
clear that the Institute is performing a useful service and
that every effort must be made to publicize it more
widely, particularly in certain of the larger cities in the
Midwest.
Eighteen Tutors constituted the faculty for the summer, each of them teaching two assignments. Most of the
Tutors were drawn from the two St. John's campuses but
two Tutors were appointed from other institutions, A.
Lowell Edmunds of Harvard University and Mrs.
Chaninah Maschler of New York City. Once again generous compliments were paid by the students to the faculty and to the calibre of instruction. This was the final
year of the helpful funding grant from the Carnegie
Corporation of New York. The Graduate Institute received as well a supporting -grant from the National
Endowment for the Humanities. This was made possible
by generous matching grants from the Cafritz Foundation
of Washington, D. C.; the Hoffberger Foundation of Baltimore, Maryland; and of the Richardson Fund of New
York City.
Tile Libraries
Hugh P. McGrath, a Tutor at the College since 1948,
gave the address at the re-dedication of Woodward Hall
at Homecoming, October 18, 1969. The new building has
found immediate favor with students and Tutors alike
on the Annapolis campus, though staff members continue
to be haf!led by gremlins in the mechanical equipment.
During the summer months especially the availability of
quiet air-conditioned space for reading, study, and seminar discussion has been a godsend for the February fresh·
men and others.
A truly significant accession to the Library holdings
during the year was a gift from Mr. and Mrs. Peter H.
W. Jackson, of Cedar Hills Plantation, Rutherford, North
Carolina, of some 500 volumes published in the 16th, 17th
and 18th centuries. Mr. Jackson was a member of the
Class of 1943.
In Santa Fe the year has been one of re-organizing procedures, systems and routines within the Library. A comprehensive staff procedur~ manual was produced and will
be amended as necessary. Notable gifts of music were received from Miss Amelia Elizabeth White of Santa Fe,
Professor S. Ellsworth Grumman of New Haven, Connecticut, and Mr. and Mrs. Donald McCormick, of Tulsa,
Oklahoma. The Library Committee of Santa Fe citizens,
nnder the dynamic chairmanship of Richard Stern, continued its successful Book and Author luncheons, drawing sell-ant crowds for the benefit of the Library.
The Associates and the Stafl
After only a year as Vice President on the Santa Fe
campus, James P. Shannon has resigned to undertake
study of the law. He won many new friends during the
year for his work in the Greek tutorial, for his counseling,
and for directing the Graduate Institute. His role in development is also greatlv appreciated. Appointed to
replace Mr. Shannon in the vice-presidency is J. Burchenal
Ault, of Oyster Bay, Long Island, the unanimous recommendation of the Faculty's search committee and of the
College's administrative officers.
Other departures from the Santa Fe staff include Marie
Winterhaler, Registrar and Acting Assistant Dean, and
Frank McGuire, Director of Development. Mrs. Winterhaler was the first staff appointee at the new college in
1962. She remains at St. John's as the wife of a Tutor,
Roger Peterson. Mr. McGuire undertakes work with the
Indians. He did yeoman service for the College in bringing it closer to the Santa Fe community. The College
records its gratitude to both, and also to John T. Rule,
who served an interim one-year appointment as Assistant
Dean.
In addition, the following personnel changes should be
recorded: Mrs. Emily Van Horn was appointed secretary to the Director of the Graduate Institute. Mrs.
JOE
�The College
Esther Lopez and Mrs. Marilyn Copelan were added to
the staff of the Development Office, replacing Mrs. Van
Horn and Mrs. Louise Tamotzu. In the Library, Mrs.
Holly Tani was succeeded by Mrs. Beth Floyd. Her position on the switchboard was filled by Mrs. Ruth Archer.
Another library appointee was Miss Linda McCormick.
Charles Webb managed the College Book Store.
At Annapolis Charles Finch, who had been Assistant
Dean, was appointed Director of Financial Aid and Placement. Dr. Robert Biern and Dr. Charles Kinzer were
named College Physicians and Dr. Sigmund Amitin
College Psychiatrist, succeeding Dr. Gerard Church and
Dr. Robert Ward. Mrs. Jnlianna Rugg was appointed
College Nurse. Mrs. Kathryn P. Kinzer was appointed
Assistant Librarian, and Mrs. Josephine B. Thoms served
for the year as Director of the Fine Arts Studio. Mrs.
Leanore Rinder was named a secretary in the Dean's
Office, while in the Development Office Mrs. Violet R.
Keily was replaced by Mrs. Renee Jabine, who was in
turn succeeded by Mrs. Emalea E. Noyes. Everett Whitehead resigned as Library Assistant at the end of the year.
During the coming academic year Miss Barbara Leonard, Assistant Dean, will be on sabbatical leave. Geoffrey
Comber will serve as Acting Assistant Dean in her stead,
while her place in Campbell Hall will be filled by Miss
Charlotte King, of the Class of 1959, who will be Resident Head and Student Counsellor for the year.
The Alumni
By all available measures the year just ended was a
good one for alumni activities. The stage was set with a
successful Homecoming. This was followed by re-vitalized and informal chapter activities in Annapolis, Baltimore, Washington, and New York. The program of counselling of undergraduates has involved a considerable
number of alumni, to the profit of the graduating seniors.
Finally, it is noteworthy that 838 alumni gave a total of
$26,140 in the annual giving campaign, by far the greatest
number of donors and the largest amount contributed to
date.
Again the affairs of the Alumni Association were in
the capable hands of Darrell Henry, of the Class of !96!,
as President. J. S. Baker Middelton, of the Class of 1938,
and Myron L. Wolbarsht, of the Class of !950, were
each re-elected by the Alumni for second consecutive
terms on the Board of Visitors and Governors of the
College. The Alumni Award of Merit was presented this
year to Dr. Louis L. Snyder, of the Class of !928, Professor of History at City College of the City University of
New York.
Finances
From a financial point of view the past year was a major
disaster for the Santa Fe campus, which failed by $251,828
to balance its current expenditures and appropriations of
lOF
$1,527,961. Income from fees was lower by $50,000 than
the budget estimate, but the main problem resulted from
a failure to develop new unrestricted gifts. The depressed
state of the stock market was undoubtedly a major cause
of the College's difficulty. Every effort must now be exerted to develop substantial new sources of support, for the
new college's borrowing power has been exhausted.
The Annapolis campus fared somewhat better but still
ended the year with an excess of expenditures over revenue in the amount of $13,687. On this campus fees from
students and gifts considerably exceeded budget estimates,
but greater expenditures for faculty salaries, for student
financial aid, and for plant operation and maintenance
more than offset the gains. The Annapolis campus now
also faces a difficult current cash situation, as its reserve
for future operations has been nearly depleted.
The book value of the College's endowment fund
dropped to $8,776,!98 while the market value reached
a low point of $7,141,642 at the end of the fiscal year.
The investment portfolio realized losses on the sale of
securities in the amount of $345,405. The sum of $190,2!!
was drawn from earlier reservation of profits to make up
the necessary draw of 6% for current budget purposes. It
is good to report that the Brice House mortgages of
$25,000 and $15,000 respectively were paid in full during
the year. A purchaser was found for the Glendale property.
If the sale is consummated as anticipated, a loss will be
taken but the net annual income to the College will be
greatly increased.
Development
Julius Rosenberg, Director of Development, calls the
year just ended as the year of the breakthrough for St.
John's College in Annapolis. Town and gown relations
were the best in many years, thanks largely to the work
of the Friends of St. John's College and to the founding
of the Caritas Society, its women's auxiliary. Various
social functions were held involving College people and
townspeople, the largest of which was an "Evening with
Greer Garson" in May. Nearly 500 guests were attracted
to the campus for the showing of two of Miss Garson's
films and for the reception for her and her husband, Mr.
E. E. Fogelson, former member of the Board. The gratitude of the College is extended to the many individuals in
the Friends and in the Caritas Society who worked to
make the various affairs so successful.
As a matter of policy the College has now consolidated
its publications program in a single quarterly, The College.
Under the editorship of Laurence Berns, Tutor, and the
managing editorship of Mary Jean Felter, Director of
Public Information, The College combines articles and
lectures with news from both campuses and with alumni
notes. It is proving itself an effective vehicle to reach
alumni, parents, and friends as well as more immediate
members of the St. John's community. Meanwhile, an
active program of news releases continues. St. John's re-
�September
ceived most favorable publicity from coast to coast this
spring as a result of the mature and rational actions of
its students.
Gifts, grants and bequests to the Annapolis campus
totaled $284,268 during the year, representing contributions from 1,231 donors. The largest amount was for current purposes: $25,000 from The Hodson Trust in Morristown, New Jersey; $8,700 from other foundations,
$6,885 from business corporations, $4,045 from Board
members, $2,465 from parents, $3,271 from friends,
$26,140 from alumni, and $17,878 from Maryland business firms and corporations through the joint appeal of
the Association of Independent Colleges in Maryland.
Gifts for endowment purposes totaled $93,934, $47,046
of which represented matching funds from the Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation. Restricted current gifts in the
amount of $49,643 were received as well as gifts toward
the Library totaling $29,576 and toward Harrison House
totaling $16,732.
On the Santa Fe campus the Boards of Associates in
Santa Fe, Los Alamos, Albuquerque, and Denver continued to function helpfully in building good will and
understanding of St. John's College in the Southwest.
Local groups were encouraged to hold luncheon meetings
and other gatherings on campus so that their members
might become familiar with the College. An active program of news releases about the College events was pursued. It is apparent that word is reaching an increasing
number of people, for the flow of visitors on campus
steadily increases.
As already noted, gifts and grants to the Santa Fe
campus were sharply reduced from the total of the preceding year. The sum of $402,551 was received for general purposes and $71,173 for scholarships and other
student financial aid, making a total of $473,724. Apart
from cash contributions the College received many gifts
in kind. Noteworthy among these was a gift of ten acres
of land contiguous to College property and lying just
north of Camino de Cruz Blanca. This generous contribution from Mr. and Mrs. LeRoy Manuel assures the
College of adequate protection for its campus for many
years to come. To these and to all donors to both campuses
the College expresses its heartfelt gratitude.
1970
the raising of $5,000,000 for the Annapolis campus and
$10,000,000 for the Santa Fe campus. Mrs. Duane L.
Peterson, of Baltimore, Maryland, a devoted member of
the Board of Visitors and Governors, has pledged one
and a quarter million dollars over a period of years. This
will cover the cost of constructing and furnishing the
student center at Santa Fe, for which funds were borrowed
from the Annapolis endowment fund seven years ago. Mrs.
Peterson's commitment will therefore assure the repayment to Annapolis of most of the outstanding loan upon
which the Santa Fe campus has been paying interest
over the years. I am also pleased that the Board has taken
action to name the building "The Peterson Student
Center" in honor of both Mrs. Peterson and her late
husband, Duane L. Peterson. This is a good omen for
the future.
*
*
*
I was pleased to be selected by the Danforth Foundation as one of the recipients of its Short-Term Leave
Grants for College and University Administrators. Mrs.
Weigle and I appreciate tbe willingness of the Board to
allow us a four-month leave of absence for this welcome
period of study and refreshment. We hope to be away
during the early months of 1971.
As I conclude this, my twenty-second report, let me
again express gratitude to all of those associated with the
College-Board members, Tutors, Associates, Staff members, students, alumni, parents and friends. Your work
for the College and your commitment to it account for
whatever we have been able to achieve on the two
campuses. Because of you the presidency of St. John's
never ceases to be a deeply satisfying and challenging
experience.
RICHARD
D. WEIGLE
President
September 8, 1970
275th Anniversary
Next July will mark the 275th anniversary of the granting of a Royal Charter to King William's School in 1696.
Faculty committees on both campuses are preparing for
appropriate activities to celebrate this significant anniversary. It is planned as well to inaugurate a major fund-raising drive to be known as the 275th Anniversary Fund.
The campaign will open in 1971 and continue for three
years, the final years of the Decade of Development.
It gives me a great deal of pleasure to announce the
first major commitment in this program which envisions
lOG
�The College
ST. JOHN'S
Annapolis, Maryland
BALANCE SHEETS,
ASSETS
Annapolis
Santa Fe
CURRENT FUNDS
Unrestricted
Cash
Accounts Receivable
Due from Other Funds .
Due from SJC-Santa Fe.
Prepaid Expenses
Miscellaneous
Bookstore Inventory ..
Total Unrestricted ·Funds
$
54,648
4,947
$
37,722
125
5,917
46,003
20,284
32,929
22,418
23,013
$
120,455
$
50,907
58,129
840
$
64,381
3,226
Total Restricted Funds
$
109,876
$
83,767
Total Current Funds
$
230,331
$ 211,318
$
2,394
124,987
2,871
$
$
130,252
$ 162,052
$
231,210
7,283
129,460
1,461,000
49,792
870
Restricted
Cash
Investments
Loans Receivable
$ 127,551
16,160
Due from Other Funds .
LoAN FuNDS
........
Cash
National Defense Student Loans .
Other Student Loans .
Total Loan Funds
13,856
147,196
1,000
ENDOWMENT FUNDS .
Cash ....
Accounts and Notes Receivable .
Faculty Home Loans
Loan to SJC-Santa Fe .
Due from Other Funds.
Miscellaneous .
Investments .
Securities-at cost
6,616,080
49,755
234,000
Mortgages on Real Property.
Real Property .
. .............
Total Endowment Funds
155
2,985
$
59,507
$ 8,779,450
$
62,647
12,069
44,000
$
15,623
PLANT FUNDS
Cash
Investments
Notes Receivable
Due from Other Funds
Retirement of Indebtedness .
Land and Campus Development
Buildings and Improvements .
Equipment and Furnishings
Land and Buildings-Other .
Library Books ..
Total Plant Funds .
$
11,000
67,000
103,332
313,615
4,766,839
421,787
77,343
95,613
2,395
375,677
5,168,920
394,221
$ 5,997,282
FUNDS
Due from Current Fund .
Due from Plant Fund
$5,872,152
ANNUITY
$
Total Annuity Funds
Total Funds
lOH
21,241
193,064
$ 214,305
$15,137,315
$6,522,474
�September 1970
COLLEGE
Santa Fe, New Mexico
June 30, 1970
LIABILITIES AND CAPITAL
Annapolis
Santa Fe
3,664
51,984
52,187
$ 310,000
36,881
83,101
103,836
37,669
CURRENT FUNDS
Unrestricted
Notes Payable
Accounts Payable
Deferred Income .
$
Due to Other Funds .
Due to SJC Annapolis .
Reserve for Future Operations
Cumulative Fund Deficit
12,620
(443,936)
$
120,455
$ 127,551
----
$
109,876
$
8),767
Total Restricted Funds
$ 109,876
$
83,767
Total Current Funds
$ 230,331
$ 211,318
$
130,252
$ 162,052
$
130,252
$ 162,052
Total Unrestricted Funds
Restricted
Fund Balances
LoAN FUNDS
Fund Balances
Total Loan Funds
ENDOWMENT FUNDS
$ 7,880,672
895,527
3,251
$
62,647
$ 8,779,450
$
62,647
$ 5,938,817
(21,535)
$2,099,067
1,722,000
200,065
1,461,000
103,332
93,624
$ 5,997,282
$5,679,088
Annuity Funds .
Due from Other Funds ..
$
$ 214,305
193,064
Total Annuity Funds
$
$ 407,369
Total Funds
$15,137,315
$6,522,474
Principal-lnveshnents
Reservation of Profits-Sale of Securities
Unexpended Income
Total Endowment Funds
PLANT FUNDS
Invested in Plant
Federal Dormitory Bonds
Due to Other Funds
Notes Payable .
80,000
Retirement of Indebtedness
Unexpended ...
Totdl Plant Funds .
ANNUITY FuNDS
10!
�The College
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
Annapolis, Maryla-nd
Santa Fe, New Mexico
CONDENSED STATEMENT OF REVENUE AND EXPENDITURES
Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1970
Annapolis
Santa Fe
686,393
444,747
91,667
115,850
10,443
$ 496,272
$ 1,349,100
$ 979,450
REVENUE
Educational and General
Tuition
Endowment Income
Gifts and Grants
Scholarships
Miscellaneous
Total
$
3,099
473,724
6,355
AUXILIARY ENTERPRISES
Bookstore
Dining Hall
Dormitories
Total
$
45,760
164,072
143,429
$
$
353,261
$ 270,281
$
OTHER NoN-EDucATIONAL INCOME
Organized Student Activity .
Total Revenue
27,061
131,774
111,446
13,974
12,428
$ 1,702,361
$1,276,133
312,194
691,213
16,974
279,131
$ 292,585
$ 1,299,512
$ 971,553
ExPENDITURES
Educational and General
Administrative and General .
Instruction
Student Activities
Operation and Maintenance
Total
Auxiliary Enterprises
Bookstore
Dining Hall
Dormitories
Total
$
$
49,578
150,520
515,742
24,634
138,592
$
28,085
98,947
121,474
---200,099
$ 248,506
$
Student Financial Aid
$
192,294
$ 172,522
Other Expenditures
$
24,143
$ 114,933
Appropriations
National Defense Student Loan
Capital Outlay
$
$
Total
Total Expenditures ..
Excess Revenue (Expenditures)
lOJ
$ 1,716,048
$
(13,687)
1,302
19,145
20,447
$1,527,961
$ (251,828)
�September 1970
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
Annapolis, Maryland
PERMANENT ENDOWMENT FUNDS
June 30, 1970
Gift
of Donor
Old Dominion
Foundation
Matching Gift
Total
Fund
$1,989,953
150,215
$ 500,000
150,000
$2,489,953
300,215
$2,140,168
$ 650,000
$2,790,168
TUTORSHIP ENDOWMENTS
Addison E. Mullikin, 1895
Arthur deTalma Valk, 1906
SCHOLARSHIP ENDOWMENTS
Annapolis Self-Help
George M. Austin Memorial, 1908
Chicago Regional
Class of 1897
Class of 1898
Dr. Charles C. Cook
Corporal George E. Cunif!, III, 1930
Faculty
John T. Harr~on, 1907
Hillhouse High School, 1927
Richard H. Hodgson, 1906
Alfred Houston, 1906-Student Aid
Houston Regional
Jesse H. Jones and Mary Gibbs Jones
Robert Edward and Margaret Larsh Jones
Arthur E. Landers and Hilda Combs Landers
Massachusetts Regional
Philip A. Meyer II, 1938
Oklahoma Regional
Thomas Farran, 1911
Pittsburgh Regional
Reader's Digest Foundation
Clifton H. Roehle
Murray Joel Rosenberg Memorial
Hazel Norris and J. Graham Shannahan
Clarence J. Stryker
Friedrich J. von Schwerdtner
$
15,000
25,000
3,070
8,672
87,933
13,705
$
15,000
25,000
3,070
$
30,000
50,000
6,140
8,672
87,933
13,705
270
25,483
45,050
16,034
300,500
45,287
1,000
72,000
28,333
2,000
45,370
28,362
52,000
6,165
1,120
12,500
7,055
2,726
3,070
7,056
1,552
135
2,359
20,025
7,367
150,250
2,500
500
36,000
$ 575,519
STUDENT LOAN FUND ENDOWMENTS
George Friedland
John David Pyle, 1962-Memoria1
135
23,124
25,025
8,667
150,250
42,787
500
36,000
28,333
2,000
22,685
19,362
26,000
6,165
560
12,500
7,055
2,726
3,070
3,643
1,552
$ 323,864
$ 899,383
22,685
9,000
26,000
560
3,413
25,035
4,569
$
20,000
1,470
$
45,035
6,039
$
ALUMNI MEMORIAL ENDOWMENTS
Granville Q. Adams, 1929
Charles Edwards Athey, 1931
William C. Baxter, 1923
Drew H. Beatty, 1903
Dr. William Brewer, 1823
Frederick W, Brune, 1874
Benjamin Duvall Chambers, 1905
Henry M. Cooper, Jr., 1934
Walter I. Dawkins, 1880
Robert F. Duer, Jr., 1921
In Honor of: Dr. Philip Edwards, 1898
Joseph W. Fastner, Jr., 1960
Allen Lester Fowler, 1915
Edna Gable and Roscoe E. Grove, 1910
Charles W. Hass, 1927
Dr. Amos F. Hutchins, 1906
Clarence T. Johnson, 1909
$
29,604
$
21,470
$
51,074
$
1,100
5,825
25
300
125
854
2,638
1,000
58,683
3,265
1,135
2,000
500
16,545
40
658
100
$
$
1,100
5,825
25
500
250
1,361
2,638
2,000
58,683
3,600
2,!20
2,000
1,000
16,545
40
1,291
100
200
125
507
1,000
335
985
500
633
lOK
�The College
100
18,357
200
200
5,140
23,166
!,020
5,000
325
432
550
12,219
100
5,000
10,000
4,933
!,000
!,108
850
402
100
3,270
500
28,633
3,000
2,500
125
625
2,000
Clifford L. Johnson, 1911
Helen Barnes Jones and Robert 0. Jones, 1916
Jonathan D. Korshin, 1966 (Library)
Oliver M. Korshin, 1963 (Library)
Dr. W. Oscar LaMotte, 1902
J. H. E. Legg, 1921
William Lentz, 1912
Leola Burnette and Thomas Watkins Ligon, 1916
CoL Harrison McAlpine, 1909
James McClintock, 1965
Robert F. Maddox, 1876
William L. Mayo, 1899
Ridgley P. Melvin, 1899
WilliamS. Morsell, 1922 (Athletic Fund)
John Mullan, 1847
Walter C. Mylander, Jr., 1932
H. Keith Neville, 1905
Dr. John 0. Neustadt, 1939
Blanchard Randall, 1874
Susan Irene Roberts, 1966
Leroy T. Rohrer, 1903
Harrison Sasscer, 1944
C. H. Schoff, 1889
Henry F. Sturdy, 1906
Rev. Enoch H. Thompson, 1895
John T. Tucker, 1914
Dr. RobertS. G. Welch, 1913
Dr. Willis H. White, 1922
Amos W. W. Woodcock Fund, 1903
125
625
1,000
100
25,920
200
200
5,140
23,166
2,040
5,000
650
432
550
12,219
200
10,000
20,000
4,933
2,000
1,108
1,180
402
200
3,270
1,000
28,633
6,000
2,500
250
1,250
3,000
7,563
1,020
325
!00
5,000
10,000
1,000
330
!00
500
3,000
$ 225,648
OTHER ENDOWMENTS
Hertha S. and Jesse L. Adams Concert Fund
Alumni Memorial Book Fund
Philo Sherman Bennett Prize Fund
Benwood Foundation Library Fund
George A. Bingley Memorial Fund
Scott Buchanan Memorial Fund
Helen Cropsey Davidson and George Davidson, Jr.
Fund for Tomorrow Lectureship
Floyd Hayden Prize Fund
Mary Safford Hoogewerff Memorial Library Fund
Library Fund
Monterey Mackey Memorial Fund
Emily Boyce Mackubin
Ellen C. Murphy Memorial Library Fund
Henry H. and Cora Dodson Sasscer Newspaper Fund
Adolph W. Schmidt Fund
Mrs. Blair T. Scott Memorial Prize Fund
Kathryn Mylroie Stevens Memorial Prize Fund
Elma R. and Charles D. Todd Memorial Library Fund
Clara B. Weigle Memorial Fund
Daniel E. and Jessie N. Weigle Memorial
Jack Wilen Foundation Library Fund in memory of Murray Joel
Rosenberg
Victor Zuckerkandl Memorial .Fund
Alumni Endowment
General Endowment
$
34,973
$ 260,621
60,000
355
308
25,000
14,897
5,770
20,025
3,000
77
31,683
560
200
75,192
!,500
!,500
10,569
518
!,250
19,500
!,196
2,500
$
60,000
$ 120,000
355
308
50,000
14,897
5,770
20,025
6,000
102
3!,683
960
200
75,192
3,000
1,500
10,569
518
1,250
39,000
1,196
2,500
$
1,000
19,321
205,480
522,429
$1,023,830
Total Endowment Principal
IOL
3,000
25
400
1,500
19,500
186,309
1,000
19,321
391,789
522,429
$ 295,734
$1,319,564
$2,559,858
PERMANENT ENDOWMENT FUNDS
Old Dominion Foundation Grants Not Applied to Named Funds
Reservation of Profits, Sale of Securities
25,000
$2,559,858
$ 895,527
$4,890,296
$ 895,527
$2,885,899
$8,776,195
�September 1970
crying; in short, for behavior which is not chosen. A case
of special interest is that of slips of the tongue, for which
Freud provides his ingenious causal explanations in terms
of an hypothesized unconscious mind.6
Now, to put my argument about human freedom into
There is a distinction between a "reason" for
an d a " cause " of an ac t'wn ...
some other expression to distinguish the relative freedoms
of the three drinkers. Our word "free" has lost Its use
in ordinary language, that is, it has lost the meaning
it had. If a philosopher like Kant elmms to have a
meaningful use of the word "free" in his theoretical
system, then the burden of proof is on him. And one
should always be suspicious of the ?'eanmg of words
used in special or technical ways. It lS not easy to giVe
words a clear meaning.
In these last few remarks, I have shifted from the
style of Aristotle to the style of the s_o-called _"ordinary
language" philosophy initiated by Wrttgenstem. Yet I
think the two are congenial, despite the recent charge
from this platform that the ordinary language philosophers
are misologists or haters of reason. I myself would say
that they are haters only of abstract theories which generate what they regard as pseudo-problems. They are agamst
the kind of system building in philosophy which prevailed
from Descartes through Hegel, but they are for looking
closely at the way people talk and the way people behave.
I have argued that this is the style of Anstotle," and ':' fact
many of the ordinary language philosophers see Anstotle
as a man from whom they can learn.
I
will pursue this digression a bit further. 'I11ere is a
well known distinction in contemporary philosophy
which I think makes essentially the point I have found
in Aristotle1 namely a distinction between a "reason" for
a certain action and a "cause71 of an action. For example~
we can ask why Socrates is heading for the market place,
why he left the party early, and so on. We expect to be
told the answer in terms of reasons why he drd what he
did. The search for causal explanations of human behavior
arises only, and this is the important point, arises only
where the explanation in terms of reasons breaks down.
For .example, if we know that Socrates loves parhes and
never chooses to leave a party early, we might conjecture that he was caused to leave by a sudden illness, by
an irrepressible hatred for someone who just entered the
room, or by some other such cause over which he had no
control. Explanation in terms of causes is also apl'ropnate
for such things as facial twitches, pains, laughmg and
terms of the distinction between "reasons" and "causes":
To think of all human actions as not free is to think of
them all as if they were caused. It is to think of an action
done for carefully considered and good reasons as being on
the same level with a facial twitch or an outburst of
crying. Why should all human actions be assimilated to
such a single model? Why should one seek such theoretical
simplicity at the cost of ignoring the variety and complexity of human behavior?
L
et us return now to Carl Rogers. I began this dis-
cussion of freedom and deterrriinism with an account
of a symposium between Carl Rogers and B. F.
Skinner. Both men felt that predictions and explanations
of human behavior were hostile to human freedom. I
argued that both accepted an essentiall~ K~ntian ~oncep
tion of freedom as absolute spontaneity m which the
free human act has no antecedents in preceding space-time.
Skinner looked forward to increasing predictability and
control of human behavior. As for human freedom, he
regarded it as an illusion. Rogers, on the other hand,
wanted to assert the existence of free human choice as
the most important aspect of being a person, but he could
see no way to do this except as an absolute paradox. He
wanted to assert that men are free and yet he saw that
their behavior could be predicted and explained, and he
saw no way to reconcile predictability and freedom.
In his later book, On Becoming a Person, Rogers
describes what he sees as a partial solution to the problem
of free will and determinism (p. 193). This partial solution
comes from Rogers' conception of a "fully functioning
person,': one who is living his life well. When a fully
functioning person chooses to act in a certain way, he
takes account of everything in his present situation and
in his past experience which is relevant to his action. He
is to be contrasted with what Rogers calls the "defensively
organized" person 1 who shuts out elements of his own
past and of the situation around him. He cannot face
certain aspects of himself or of his world. Thus he denies
or distorts some of the data relevant to his actions. Now
the significant point of this contrast for the problem of
free will and determinism is as follows: one could say
that the person who chooses by taking account of all
relevant data is in a sense ''determined" by those data 1
and yet Rogers claims, on the basis of his clinical work,
that such a person "experiences the most complete and
o For an excellent discussion of the distinction between causes and
reasons, see R. S. Peters, Tile Concept of Motivation, London, 1958,
Chapter l. Peters is both a psychologist and a philosopher influenced
by the Wittgenstein school. See also his reference to Hobbes, p. 1,
and to Aristotle, p. 157.
11
�The College
absolute freedom." The defensively organized person, on
the other hand, who shuts out some of the relevant data
and is therefore not determined by them, is "not free to
make an effective choice." Thus Rogers concludes that
where there is more determinism, there is, surprisingly,
more freedom, and where there is less determinism, there is
less freedom. Rogers himself does not follow out the
implications of this discovery. In this very passage he
still speaks of freedom as "spontaneity" (p. 193), and
at the end of On Becoming a Person, where he returns
again to discuss his earlier symposium with Skinner, he
repeats in practically the same language as before that
the problem of free will and determinism presents an
absolute paradox (p. 400). Despite the force of his own
experience and despite his efforts to break out, Rogers
is still in the Kantian box. But what he is moving towards,
I think, is a distinction among kinds of determinism.
Asked whether free will is incompatible with determinism,
one must first ask, "What kind of determinism?" Is it
determinism by careful thought which takes account of all
the factors in a situation? With Rogers, I want to say that
such determinism also constitutes the freest human action
of all. And yet, unlike Rogers, I do not feel a paradox
here because I do not think of freedom as spontaneity,
as implying complete lack of relation to previous events
in space-time. Instead I think of free action simply as
action which is intelligently chosen, and where the choice
is not hampered by vicious habits.
I
could stop here. I have given a solution to the problem of free will and dterminism which satisfies me and
which I think would have satisfied Aristotle had he
posed the problem for himself. That is, I have argued
that the problem of free will and determinism is essentially
a pseudo-problem, resting on an inadequate conception of
freedom and a failure to distinguish among kinds of determinism. And yet what I have said is perhaps not
adequate to satisfy Rogers or to satisfy most of you. I
want therefore to extend Aristotle's analysis one step
further. In the discussion of choice, Aristotle remarks in
passing that children and animals are not capable of
choice ( 1111 b 8). In the discussion of weakness of will
he remarks that animals are not capable of weakness of
will. The reason he gives is that animals cannot grasp universals, but only particulars (1147b 5). The greatest of the
Aristotelian commentators, Thomas Aquinas, develops
these remarks into an argument for the freedom of the
human will.
What does it mean to "grasp a universal"? It means
to grasp some particular thing not merely in terms of its
particular sensory qualities but as falling in some larger
class where the essential attribute of the class must be
understood by an act of mind. It cannot be perceived by
the senses. I can perhaps make the point clear by example. 7
The cxamp1c is actually drawn from William James, Principles of
Psychology, New York, 1904, Vol. II, pp. 349-350.
7
12
Consider a man who regularly takes his dog fishing with
him. He arrives at his boat to find that he has forgotten
the sponge which he always uses to bail out the boat. Since
he does not wish to return to the house for the sponge,
he makes motions of bailing out the boat while saying to
the dog, "Sponge. Sponge. Go fetch the sponge." The
dog goes back to the house and returns with the sponge.
Is this a case of grasping a universal? No. The dog merely
associates some particular thing, a sponge, with a par-
ticular act, bailing out the boat. But, if the dog had not
been able to find the sponge, and had returned instead
with a bucket, then he would have grasped a universal.
The point is that he would have had to abstract from the
particular, the sponge, to the universal class under which
it belonged, namely, things useful for getting water out
of a boat. Most men could easily make this abstraction.
Few, if any, animals could.
N
ow, what are the implications for human freedom
of the capacity to grasp universals? When a man
is considering a· possible action, he considers it not
merely as a particular, as something he could do which
is pleasant or painful. He sees it as a means to some end,
as one porticubr way of achieving that end. Animals too
are capable of selecting means to ends, but not in the
same way. Since an animal, at least for the most part,
grasps only particulars, he cannot compare the particulars
with each other to decide which best serves the universal
end. He cannot compare a sponge and a bucket and
decide which is the best instrument for bailing out a
boat. He can only associate in his memory the particular,
sponge, or the particular, bucket, with the particular act
of bailing out the boat. To compare them he would
have to grasp the non-sensory universal under which
both fall, something useful for bailing out the boat. Since
he cannot do this, he cannot in any meaningful sense
choose between bucket and sponge.
The end of bailing out the boat is itself a means to a
further end, going fishing. This can in turn be a means to
a still further end, obtaining food, or it can be an end
in itself, something done for its own sake. Ultimately,
aeording to St. Thomas, the end for which we do things
is the most universal category of all, namely, the good.
In this life, he argues, man is never presented with any-
thing which is completely and perfectly good in every
way. The activity of fishing, for example, attractive as it is
in some respects, takes time, costs money, involves the
risk of getting wet, and so on. Presented with the possibility of fishing, we can always consider it under those
aspects under which it is not good, under which it does
not attract us. Therefore we are always capable of rejecting it. Our minds are capable of choosing something
else which better approximates the universal good. 8
8 It is difficult to give a good single reference for St. 111omas'
doctrine of free action. Cf. Summa Tbeologica I, Qq's 82-3; Ia !Iae,
Qq's 6-17; De Veritate, Q. 24.
�September 1970
This concludes my argument for the freedom of the
will. Let me review what I have said by considering the
various senses which have been given to the word "free."
T
he first sense of "freedom" is total and complete
spontaneity, a complete lack of relation to anything
prior in space-time. I showed the paradox to whrch
this concept of freedom gives rise and traced its origin to
Kant.
The second sense of "freedom" is lack of external constraint. This is the sense in which Hobbes defined
"freedom," and it 1nakes no distinction between the way
in which men are free and animals are free, or even water
flowing down a hill is free.
The third sense of "freedom" is that actions are "ours"
or "in our power" in the sense that we can deliberate
among alternatives a-nd choose what we will d~, ~nd
in the sense that our choices themselves are not lrmrted
by inadequate understanding or by vicior<s habits.
"Freedom" in !:his sense is compatible with the fact that
our actions and even our choices are completely predictable. This is the sense of freedom I found in Aristotle.
A fourth sense of freedom, suggested by St. Thomas'
analysis, accepts the account of freedom as dependent
on choice, a choice guided by reason and unobstructed
by vice. But it shies away from accepting complete predictability as compatible with freedom. It holds out for
the idea that given any possible course of actron, a human
being could always have chosen differently. Thus I
characterize this fourth sense of "freedom" as reqmnng
that a person "could have done otherwise." This. is part
of what is involved in the concept of spontaneity, and
in fact it may even be the essential point that Kant and
others want to 1naintain, that a man's behavior is not
completely determined by his situation and his past
life, that he could always have done other':'rse than he
does. If so, this fourth sense of freedom satisfies the demand for freedom as spontaneity, but does not go to the
extreme of saying that a free human act has no relation
to anything prior to it in space-time. Whel:her or not I
ought to argue for an element of spontaneity in human
behavior, I do not know. As I have said before, I am
inclined to think that complete predictability is compatible with complete freedo~ and that the;e . real!y IS
no conflict between them, provided that one drstmgmshcs
among ki-nds of predictability. Predicting that Socrates
will refuse to cooperate in the arrest of an innocent man
is a totally different thing from predicting which way a
rat will run in a maze.
I wish to close with a few remarks. about the practical
consequences of this discussion of free~om. In a w~y the
practical consequences are unimpressive. There IS no
theory which can tell us exactly what we ought to do
in the extremely varied and complex circumstances of our
lives. The ultimate particular action must be grasped
by an act of perception; it cannot be deduced from any
rules. And yet there are certain general prmcrples whrch
follow from a conception of freedom like the one I have
sketched.
For one thing I have tried to remove a pa~adox _which
in my opinion gets i-n the way when one rs trymg to
decide what to do. I mean the belref that predrctabrlrty
and freedom are incompatible with one another. This
belief is, I think, at least partly responsible for the various
phenomena of irrationality which I mentioned at the beginning of this lecture, for Tolstoy's. statement that a
life of reason is hostile to a truly meamngful hfe, for Mrss
Barnes' feeling that being able to jump off a cliff is an
important and valuable aspect of human life, and so. on.
To remove the paradox IS not to tell a person precrsely
how to act, but it does free him to use his reason in deciding what to do. It frees him from the feeling that the
use of his reason restricts and limits his freedom, that his
action must be absolutely spontaneous if it is to be free
at all.
A
s a second practical consequence, consider the
following. Suppose we a"e trying to influence someone else's actions. Do we use the techmques of
modern advertising, which is content to move people with
flashy pictures, with glamour, with subliminal devices of
which they are not even aware? Or do we proceed wrth
arguments, with persuasion, with reasons wluch respect
the capacity of the person to understand the facts of a
situation and to himself make an intelligent choice? The
expert psychologist Skinner is content to blur this distinction. He is content with any kind of what he calls
"reinforcers" of human action, as long as they get a
person to behave in a certain way (Seep. 124 of the debate
cited in the first paragraph of this article). In fact even
some of our political leaders seem to be content to motivate the citizens of a supposedly free country by techniques which have more and more of the sti~k of modern
advertising and less and less of l:he clean arr of ratronal
discourse. But one who understands and values human
freedom will not allow himself to use such techniques.
How will he proceed? I have tried to say. in general, but
I cannot say in detail, and certamly not m a few words.
I can say, however, that reflecting on Aristotle's Ethics
or Shakespeare's plays or Tolstoy's novels will help. For
the answer is at once as obvious and as difficult as bringing
up one's children, as obvious and as difficult as education,
as obvious and as difficult as achieving personal freedom
for oneself.
Thomas J. Slakey is a graduate of St. Mary's Colleg.e, ~alifornia.
He received an M.A. degree in philosophy from the Umye~site. Laval,
Quebec, and a Ph.D. degree in philosophy from <;o~ne11 UmYemty. He
became a Tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis m 1959 and mored
to Santa Fe when the College opened there in 1964. He has lectured
on the concept of "form" in Plato and Aristotle, ~nd o~ St. P~ul's
Epistle to the Romaus, and has published in The PhllosophJCal Re\'ICW.
13
�The College
Marion E. Warren
RICHARD ScoFIELD
1898-1970
Richard Scofield, one of St. John's' greatest teachers,
died Thursday, July 16th, at The Johns Hopkins
Hospital in Baltimore. For seven years he had been
afllicted with cancer but had gallantly and cheerfully
surmounted both pain and discomfort to continue his
tutorial duties at the College.
His luminous intelligence, his learning, his gentle·
ness, his humor, his love of excellence, and his sure
knowledge of when to speak and when to be encouragingly silent-these have made him as nearly ideal a
Tutor as the College is likely ever to have.
In all these years nothing has been more trusted
by students and colleagues alike than his patience, his
modesty, his calm perseverance, his precise and subtle
understanding, and his unswerving rectitude; nothing
has been more admired than his urbanity and elegance,
and, above all, his capacity for warm friendship. In his
company, other persons have felt themselves somehow
at their best.
14
�September 1970
FRoM
The Habit
of
Literature
The College, December 1969
" ... I have come increasingly to see that intellectual
we think or feel, though without thought and feel-
virtue in general, which is the goal of a liberal arts
ing, what we do had better for the most part be left
college, requires, as a condition for its existence, that
undone ....
sentimental and moral education without which we
are barbarians, not fully human . . . poverty and
"Literature is not a substitute for action. It is an
vulgarity of feeling, more than stupidity, put humane
invitation, in the midst of action, to withdraw from
letters beyond the mind's reach . ...
it for a moment and to look at it, but as essence and
as possibility rather than as existence. In these mo-
"Love without knowledge is blind; there is no
ments, as if out of time, there are no decisions that
better way to avoid the excesses of ignorant and
have to be made. 'The falcon hood of morality' need
fanatical love than patient study of the causes and
not be worn though the discourse itself were moral.
consequences of choices. But without love, power
Literature makes for serenity and for confidence, not
and knowledge are worthless and dangerous ...
for the passionlessness of philosophy, not for the
peace of religion. It may point beyond itself to super-
"It is not necessary to choose the life of action as
human and to supernatural goods; it does not attain
against the life of thought, society as against con-
to them. Its consolation arises out of life and is for
templation. These are arbitrary and artificial alterna-
the benefit and use of life. It returns you to action,
tives. The life of good will embraces them all. _And
ready, restored. The habit of literature is the college's
the measure of good will is what we do, not what
special and best gift to you . ..."
�NE~lS
ON THE CAMPUSES
GRADUATE INSTITUTE AWARDS
28 M.A. DEGREES
The Graduate Institute in Liberal
Education completed its fourth successful summer at St. John's in Santa Fe,
August 14th, with the awarding of
M.A. degrees to 28 candidates.
The commencement address was
given by Dr. Benjamin Henley, acting
superintendent of schools in Washington, D. C. Several of the graduates
are teachers in his district.
Receiving degrees were students
from the following areas:
Maryland - Baltimore, Grace P.
Bennett, Walter Dudley, William
Eldridge, Joseph Hines, and Daniel
Mowrer. Washington, D. C.-Isaac
Block, Marjorie Harper, Otto Jordan,
Joyce Ann Matthews, Helen Scott,
Governor Stokes, and Malcolm Tillett.
New Mexico - Santa Fe, Rosalie
Bindel, Sarah Connelly, Wendy Gray,
LaVera Loyd, Correen Najjar, Sandra
Purrington, and Edwin Reel; Albuquerque, Velma McConnell; Alameda,
Simmie Gibson; Cuba, Jacob Martinez.
Others-James H. Childers, Colby,
Kansas; William Douglas, Williamsburg, Virginia; Muriel McCown,
Pueblo, Colorado; Sara Macina, Midland, Texas; Fred Schwendimann,
Richardson, Texas, and Andrew Treacy,
Patchogue, New York.
The Graduate Institute was opened
in 1967 to provide advanced training
in the liberal arts for school teachers
and other interested college graduates.
There were twelve graduates last year
at the first awarding of degrees.
There were a total of 123 students
enrolled this past summer from eighteen states and the District of
Columbia. Most of the Tutors come
from the St. John's faculties in Annapolis and Santa Fe. James P.
Shannon of Santa Fe was the director.
16
The four sections of the curriculum
are "Literature," "Philosophy and Theology," "Politics and Society," and
"Mathematics and Natural Science."
One may receive a degree on completion of all four sections of the program, or on completion of three s~c
tions if one has nine graduate credits
to transfer from another college or
univerisity.
Each eight-week section includes a
tutorial, a seminar and a preceptorial
which includes the writing of a paper.
Readings are generally from the St.
John's seminar lists of great books. The
school teachers who participate say they
learn a great deal about teaching
methods simply by participating in the
discussions and by observing how the
Tutors usc the art of questioning and
listening to develop a student's thinking and learning abilities. They testify
the St. John's methods can be applied
at all levels from first grade through
high school. Discussing what they
enjoy about the Graduate Institute,
they say: "The program is valuable
to adults in a period of transition
in their vocational lives." "Most universities and colleges have numbers.
Here you remain a person." "It is a
fantastic experience to have the
freedom to express your ideas, to participate." <IYou can relate to other
people as you've never done before; it
is almost impossible to withdraw from
others in the community." ~~The program emphasizes the dignity of man,
that he's more than a biological being"
(From a medical student).
Tutors this year included Robert
Bunker, Tiwmas Harris, DaViG-Jones,
Harvey Mead, Michael Meehan,
Michael Ossorgin, John Steadman, and
Ralph Swentzell of Santa Fe; Joseph
Cohen, Geoffrey Comber, George Doskow, Nicholas Maistrellis, Benjamin
Milner, Thomas Simpson, and J. Winfree Smith of Annapolis; Lowell
Edmunds, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Mrs. Chaninah Maschler of
Forest Hills, New York.
James P. Shannon, Benjamin J. Henley, and Richard D. We~gle (left to right) are.show~ in .front
of an Indian weaving in the Santa Fe student center followmg the Graduate Inshtute m Liberal
Education commencement, which was addressed by Mr. Henley.
�September 1970
PLAYWRIGHT IN RESIDENCE AND
SEVEN NEW TUTORS JOIN
ANNAPOLIS FACULTY
This fall !\Ivin Aronson became the
playwright ;,-, ::esidence at St. John's
College in Annapolis, and Steven B.
Crockett, William D. DeHart, Robert
Arthur Licht, Brian Patrick McGuire,
Alfred Mallin, William W. O'Grady,
Jr., and Jonathan B. Skinner became
members of the faculty.
Mr. Aronson attended St. John's
College from 1948 to 1950 and
Columbia University from 1950 to
1951. He is the author of two off·
Broadway plays, Nighthawks and The
Pocket Watch (725 performances). He
was an assistant to Alan Jay Lerner for
three years, and actor and sound technician at Circle-in-the-Square for three
productions.
Mr. Crockett received the A.B. degree in 1965 from Earlham College
where he was also elected to Phi Beta
Kappa. In 1967 he was awarded the
A.M. degree from The University of
Chicago where he was a Woodrow
Wilson Fellow and a Ford Foundation
Fellow. He is currently a doctoral
candidate at the University. Dming
1969 he was an instructor in the lmmanities at the Central YMCA Community College in Chicago and an advisor to undergraduate students on the
Committee on General Studies in the
Humanities at the University.
Mr. DeHart graduated from Allegheny College with a B.S. degree
in 1955 and was certified to teach by
Clarion State College in 1959. The
University of Rochester granted him
a Ph.D. degree in 1965. After a year
as a teaching fellow in the Department
of Physiology at the University of
Michigan Medical School, he joined
the Department of Physiology at the
University of Rochester Medical
School as a graduate physiological
trainee. From 1965 to 1966 he was
Senior Neurophysiologist at Smith,
Kline, & French in Philadelphia, and
from 1966 to 1970 he was Assistant
Professor in the Department of Physiology of the Medical College of Virginia. He is a member of the New
York
and
Virginia
Academies
of
NEW CATALOGUE POLICY
Science1 the American Association for
When the 1970-72 College catalogue
the Advancement of Science, the International Union of Physiological is published this month, there will not
be a general mailing to alumni.
Sciences 1 and Sigma Xi.
There has always been some question
Mr. Licht received a B.A. degree
about alumni needing or even wanting
from St. John's College in 1965 and an
M.A. degree in 1967 from the Penn- each issue as it appears. Each copy
sylvania State University where he is costs $.60. Then, too, the copies rea doctoral candidate in philosophy. At quired for one alumni mailing would
the University he was a graduate as- supply the needs of the Annapolis Adsistant and a National Defense Edu- missions Office for an entire year.
cation Act Fellow. He was a lecturer Hence, the expense of a general mailin the Department of Philosophy at ing to alumni does not seem to be
Bucknell Univ.ersity from 1969 to 1970. warranted.
Alumni who are serving as AdMr. McGuire received his B.A. demissions Volunteers will each receive
gree from the University of California
at Berkeley in 1968 and is a doctoral a copy of the catalogue. Other alumni
candidate in history at Oxford Uni- can receive them by sending a request
versity. From 1968 to 1970 he was a to the Publicity Office, St. John's
Fulbright Scholar in Balliol College at College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404.
The new catalogue will again contain
Oxford University. He is married to
the former Ann Kirstin Pedersen of the site plans for the two campuses
as well as new material on finaneial
Copenhagen.
Mr. Mallin is a 1965 graduate of aid and admissions.
Western Illinois University. From
1966 to 1969 he was a National De- PRESIDENT WEIGLE REPLIES TO
fense Education Act Fellow at the Uni- PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION
versity of Pennsylvania where he reON CAMPUS UNREST
ceived an M.A. degree in 1967. He was
President Richard D. Weigle of St.
a Richard M. Weaver Fellow from
1969 to 1970 at the University of Penn- John's College has cited general student
sylvania where he is a doctoral candi- dissatisfaction with their education as
date in philosophy.
a basic cause of campus unrest in
Mr. O'Grady graduated summa cum America.
laude from the University of Notre
The computerized approach to eduDame in 1966. He received the M.A. cation has led to discontent and disdegree in 1966 and the Ph.D. degree illusionment among students, President
in 1970 from the University of Chicago Weigle said in reply to a questionnaire
where he was a Woodrow Wilson from William W. Scranton, chairman
Fellow, a Danforth Fellow, and a Uni- of the President's Commission on
versity of Chicago Humanities Fellow. Campus Unrest.
Students, Mr. Weigle said, were beFollowing graduation from Carleton
College in 1963 with a B.A. degree, ing short-changed in their education beMr. Skinner received an M.A. degree cause of fragmentation of learning,
from the University of Michigan in neglect of undergraduate teaching, lack
1964. After two years as an instructor of ''real dialogue," and failure of instiin mathematics at Hope College he tutions to instill in their students "a
was a teaching assistant, an instructor sense of history." He credited the lack
in mathematics, and a lecturer at the of violence at St. John's to its traUniversity of Massachusetts where he ditional liberal arts curriculum, emphawas a doctoral candidate. W11ile at the sis on learning through discussion, and
University of Michigan he was a the personal involvement of each
Woodrow Wilson Fellow. In addition student in his education.
he is a member of Pi Mu Epsilon and
"The sheer force of numbers, parPhi Kappa Phi.
ticularly in the state-supported insti-
17
�The College
tutions, results in a computerized
oper~
ation, which the individual student resents and finds dehumanizing," the
President noted.
"Compartmentalization of knowledge through, and even within, departments has fragmented faculties and
student bodies, so that true community
of learning is difficult if not impossible
to achieve," he added.
SANTA FE RECEIVES
FoRD FOUNDATION GRANT
The Ford Foundation has approved a
grant of $150,000 for St. John's College
in Santa Fe to be used at the President's discretion. Tire grant of $50,000
annually for three years will be used
in a variety of ways to strengthen the
overall academic program.
President Weigle said that several
projects were being considered. One
possibility would be to create a toplevel committee of St. John's Tutors
to work with academic specialists in
studying certain subject matter fields to
discover whether they might be included in the St. John's curriculum.
The President cited the library and
lecture programs as other areas in
which portions of the grant might be
used to improve the overall development of the College at Santa Fe. Funds
also are needed to provide more frequent interchange of faculty members
between the two campuses.
FEBRUARY FRESHMEN ATTEND
SUMMER CLASSES
IN ANNAPOLIS
Twenty students who matriculated
on the Annapolis campus in February
concluded their freshman year during
the summer.
They attended seminars led by
Tutors Douglas Allanbrook, Bryce
Jacobsen, William Pitt, John Sarkissian, Robert L. Spaeth, Robert
'Villiamson, and Elliott Zuckerman.
The summer classes began on Mon~
day, June 15th, and continued through
Friday, August 21st.
The twenty freshmen began their
sophomore year with the regular class
in Septemher.
18
J, Burchenal Ault
VICE PRESIDENT APPOINTED IN
SANTA FE
J. Burchenal Ault of Oyster Bay,
New York, has been appointed Vice
President of St. John's College in
Santa Fe.
President Richard D. Weigle said
the College's Board of Visitors and
Governors approved the appointment
which was effective September 1st.
Mr. Ault is responsible for administrative supervision of the Santa
Fe campus except for academic
matters and student welfare, which remain the province of the Dean.
He will represent St. John's in Santa
Fe in the absence of the President and
he will be responsible for the development, public relations, and fnnd-raising programs of the College.
Mr. Ault, who has a B.A. degree in
English literature from Yale University,
has had extensive business executive
experience in New Yark. He was President of Burlington Industrial Fabrics
Company for six years. From 1964 to
1969 he was Vice President, Treasurer,
President, Director and Chairman of
the Executive Committee of Radiation
Research Corporation in Westbury,
New York. He presently is a director
of two businesses.
Mr. Ault has been active in educational and civic affairs in the East. He
is a member of the Alumni Board at
Yale University and Chairman of the
Alumni Fund at Phillips Academy,
Andover, Massachusetts. He is a
Trustee of Hofstra University, St.
Paul's College, Chatham Hall, and the
Foundation for Education of the
Episcopal Diocese of Long Island. He
is President of the Pro Arte Symphony
Orchestra Association of Hempstead,
New York, and a Trustee of the
Goldovsky Opera Institute.
He is a former Mayor, Trustee and
Chairman of the Planning Board of
the Village of Upper Brookville, Long
Island. He serv.ed in the U. S. Marine
Corps in Korea and held the rank of
Cf\ptain when released from active
duty.
The 44 year-old executive is married
and has five children. His father,
Bromwell Ault, is a former chairman of
the St. John's Board of Visit<JrS and
Governors.
NEW TuTORS AT SANTA FE
Three Tutors and two interns joined
the Santa Fe faculty this fall. A former
Tutor, Henry N. Larom, rejoined the
faculty after a two-year leave of
absence.
The new Tutors are John S.
Chamberlin, Frank K. Flinn, and
Edward H. Porcella. The interns are
Mrs. Toni Drew and Paul D. Mannick.
Tutors Dean R. Haggard and Charles
G. Bell are on leaves of absence.
Mr. Chamberlin received his B.A.
degree in English from Haverford
College in 1964, his M.A. degree in
Medieval Studies from the University
of Toronto in 1966, and his Ph.D. degree in Medieval Studies from Toronto
in 1970. He has lectured on Old
English, Chaucer, and Forms of
English Literature, and has served as
archivist at the Centre for Medieval
Studies of the University of Toronto.
He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and
received two Woodrow Wilson Fellowships.
Mr. Flinn received his A.B. degree
from Quincy College, Illinois, in 1962,
was graduated magna cum laude from
Harvard Divinity School (B.D.) in
1966, studied at the University of
�September
Heidelberg as a Fulbright Fellow in
1966-67, and did graduate study in Near
Eastern Languages and Literatures at
Harvard ( 1967-68) and the University
of Pennsylvania ( 1968-69). He served
as Assistant Professor at La Salle
College Graduate School of Religion
Philadelphia, 1969-70; Instructor at
Boston College, 1967-68; and Lecturer
at Newton College of the Sacred Heart
1965-66.
'
Mr. Porcella has a B.A. degree from
St. Mary's College and an M.A. degree
from the University of California at
San Diego, where he was a doctoral
candidate. He has been an Instructor
in philosophy at the University of San
Diego College for Men from 1969 to
1970, Teaching Assistant in humanities
at the University of California, 1965-70,
and Lecturer in literature and theology
at St. Mary's, 1967-68.
Mr. Larom was an education director
for the Peace Corps in Ethiopia and
Elementary Language Arts Director for
the State of New Mexico during his
leave of absence. He taught at St.
John's in 1967-68. He received his B.A.
degree from the University of Montana and his master's degree from
Idaho State University. He taught in
the Nokuru Secondary School in
Kenya, East Africa, in 1963-65 under
sponsorship of Teachers College,
Columbia University.
Mrs. Drew received her B.A. degree
from St. John's in Santa Fe this year.
Mr. Mannick compl€ted his freshman
and sophomore years at St. John's in
Santa Fe. He received his B.A. degree
in Comparative Literature and Philosophy from California State College
at Long Beach this spring.
NEIDORF APPOINTED DIRECTOR
OF GRADUATE INSTITUTE IN
LIBERAL EDUCATION
The Board of Visitors and Governors
has approved the appointment of
Robert A. Neidorf to succeed James P.
Shannon as Director of the summer
Graduate Institute in Liberal Education. Mr. Shannon has resigned as
Vice President of St. John's College
in Santa Fe and Director of the Insti-
1970
year by one of the six recognized
regional U. S. accrediting associations.
St. John's in Santa Fe was accredited
independently last year by the North
Central Association of Colleges and
Secondary Schools.
CAMPUS NoTES
Robert A. Neidorf
tute to enroll in the School of Law
of the University of New Mexico.
Mr. Neidorf has been a Tutor in
both Annapolis and Santa Fe and in
the Graduate Institute as well. He
is a member of the Instruction Committee, and will continue to serve as
a Tutor in the College.
Mr. Neidorf received his B.A. and
M.A. degrees from the University of
Chicago and his Ph.D. degree from
Yale University. He served as Associate
Professor of Philosophy at the State
University of New York at Binghamton and was an Instructor and Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Bucknell
University.
SANTA FE RECEIVES
FRoM FouNDATION
$5,000
St. John's College in Santa Fe has
received a $5,000 grant from C.I.T.
Foundation of New York.
To qualify for the grant, St. John's
had to raise an equivalent sum through
donations from local business organizations and funds. The check was presented to Santa Fe's treasurer, Kirk C.
Tuttle, by Donald George, regional
representative for C.I.T.'s Tuition
Plan, Inc.
'1 'he Foundation's annual awards go
to privately supported, four-year nonspecialized liberal arts colleges and universities that were accredited or had accreditation restored in the previous
Charles T. Elzey, Annapolis treasurer, was elected president of the Annapolis Fine Arts Festival Board for
1970-1971. He recently served as treasurer of the 1970 Fine Arts Festival. The
College was one of the focal points of
the June festivities with opening ceremonies in the Francis Scott Key
Memorial Hall, poetry readings in
McDowell Hall, art and sculpture exhibits in Iglehart, and an outdoor cafe.
James E. Grant, business manager
in Annapolis, and three colleaguesRobert Welzenbach, Donald Stratton, and Fred King-recently won first
prize in the international barbershop
quartet competitions in Atlantic City,
New Jersey. The Oriole Four quartet
won the highest award on June 27th
after twelve and a half years of dedicated work. The Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America
(S.P.E.B.S.Q.S.A.) contest is sponsored annually by the International
Society as a tribute to Owen C. Cash
who founded the society in 1938.
John S. Kieffer is at home recovering
from major surgery.
The Annapolis 1970 graduation address by The Reverend J. Winfree
Smith has been published in the Congressional Record on June 30th and
Jnly 8th.
Edward G. Sparrow represented the
College at the inauguration of Dr.
ClaLence C. Walton as the first lay
president of The Catholic University
of America in Washington, D. C., in
November.
Marie Winterhaler, one of the first
staff members of St. John's College in
Santa Fe, resigned August 7th as acting
assistant dean; she and Roger S. Peterson, a Tutor at the College, were
married on August 23rd in Los Angeles,
California.
19
�ALUMNI ACTIVITIES
ALUMNI DELEGATES
During the academic year 1969-70, a
number of alumni across the country
were called upon to represent the
College on ceremonial occasions at
other institutions; w.e are grateful to
the following for their help:
John S. Price '31, at the sesq~icen
tennial celebration and maugurahon of
Thomas A. Bartlett as president of
Colgate University, September 25th,
1969; Kendon L. Stubbs '60, at the
!50th anniversary convocation at the
University of Virginia, October 21st;
Alice G. Chalmers '67, at the inauguration of Arthur G. Hansen as president
of the Georgia Institute of Technology,
November 29th; Thomas Farran, Jr.
'42 at the lOOth anniversary convocatio~ and inauguration of Jacqueline
Grennan Wexler as president of
Hunter College, February
lith;
Ch;nles L. Van Doren '46, at the lOOth
anniversary convocation at Loyola Uni~
versity of Chicago, March 9th; Robert
A. Licht '62, at the inauguration of
Robert J. Nassen as president of
Bloomsburg (Pa.) State College, April
18th; Jonathan E. Brooks '49, at the
centennial convocation at the Umversity of Akron, May 8th; Paul R.
Comegys '41, at the inauguration of
Frank N. Elliott as president of Rider
College, May 16th; and Fred Bielaski
'16, at the dedication of the new
campus of the University of the
Americas, Puebla, Mexico, July 16th.
ALUMNI SET NEW
GIVING RECORDS
Although the final report on Alumni
Annual Giving will be published in
detailed form soon, our readers might
enjoy a few highlights of the 1969-70
Campaign which ended on June 30th.
20
New records were set as 828 alumni
responded to the appeals of Chairman
Myron L. Wolbarsht '50 and his team
of volunteer workers. Unrestncted
gifts amounted to $26,139, or 4.5 per
cent in excess of the announced goal.
Tbere were 87 King William Associates during the year, up from 83
the previous year; 56 of these were enrolled for the second time. (Membership in the Associates is limited to
alumni who make an unrestncted g~ft
of at least $100.)
The total response was 29.2 per cent,
comfortably passing the goal of 25 per
cent, and up from 22.5 per cent last
year. Thirty-six of the achve classes exceeded the 29.2 per cent figure, while
50 classes went over the 25 per cent
goal. And for the first time in many
years, every class was represented by
at least one donor.
DANFORTH FELLOWSHIPS
FOR WOMEN
This year for the seventh time the
Danforth Foundation has announced
competition for its Graduate Fellow.
ships for Women.
The objective of the program 1s to
find and develop college and secondary
school teachers among American
women whose preparation for teaching
has been postponed or interrupted. Recipients of the Graduate Fellowships
are expected to undertake full:time
teaching upon completwn of their de·
grees.
.
Thirty-five new appomtments are
available annually, with the maximum
award for 1971-72 set at $3,000 plus
tuition and fees, or for heads of
families, $4,000 plus tuition and fees.
Appointments are for one year beginning September, 1971, and are renewable annually.
A brochure Danforth Graduate Fellowships for 'women, provides fuller
information about this program.
Write:
Graduate Fellowships for Women
Danforth Foundation
222 South Central Avenue
St. Louis, Missouri 63105
HoMECOMING
OcToBER 16-17
Building on the success of last year's
record-breaking attraction, this year's
Homecoming Committee is pJ;mning
another two-day event. Chairman Jack
A Nadol '57 has announced the gener~l schedule of activities, and this appears on the back cover of this issue.
The highlight for many alumm Will
again be Alumni Seminars on Saturday
morning. (The specific readmgs w1ll
be announced in a special mailing
about mid-September.) Those who attended last year will note that there 1s
no conflict with this year's seminars.
For those who are inclined toward
golf tennis or sailing, Friday's schedule 'offers ~pportunities to enjoy the
outdoors. For those whose interests
are less athletic, the week-end offers a
variety of other activities.
.
Again this year, certam classes :"'ll
be holding reunions at Homecommg.
Special emphasis is being placed on the
"decade" classes, and on the 5th and
25th year classes. Plan now to join
these and other classes in October.
CLASS NOTES
1924
Coleman M. Anderson, known to generations
of students at Ba1timore's Forest Park High
School as "Andy", has retired after 46 years
of service to scholastic athletics in Maryland.
During his years at Forest Park, Mr. ~nderson
coached five sports, and among Ius young
charges were many future St. Johnnies.
�September 1970
1931
On June 30, 1970, Lt. Gen. Lewis J. Fields
retired after 39 years' service in the United
States Marines. Gen. Fields received his professional education in various Marine Corps
schools and at the Army's Field Artillery School
at Ft. Sill, Okla. At the time of his retirement,
Gen. Fields was Commanding General, Marine
Corps Development and Education Command,
Quantico, Va. Gen. and Mrs. Fields now
make their home in Fairfax, Va.
1940
Robert H. Reynolds on August 7th received
his master's degree in Social Studies from
Shippenburg (Pa.) State College.
1963
Paul C. Coclmm, recently graduated from
the General Theological Seminary in New
York, is now vicar at the Church of the Holy
Cross, San Antonio, Tex. He was ordained
deacon on June 14th. Mr. Cochran and his
wife, whom he met and married when he was
in Greece, are parents of a year-old daughter,
Anastasia.
S. David Krimins graduated in June from the
Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia.
Dr. and Mrs. Krimins and their year-old son,
Ethan Marc, are now living in Richmond, Va.,
where Dr. Krimins is an intern at the Medical
College of Virginia HospitaL
1964
1947
A good note from John Brunn advises that
he has just completed a year's soibbatical leave,
studying mathematics at California State College
at Hayward. He will again be teaching mathematics and physics at Chabot College in San
Francisco. Mr. Brunn adds that in the spring
he will work with an interdisciplinary program
using great hooks; he will have the physics,
mathematics, and astronomy portions of the
program, and will lead one of the five discussion
sections.
TI1c August 3rd issue of Time contained
a brief write-up about Eugene V. Thaw, as part
of a story on private art dealers in New York
City.
1950
The Rev. David C. Streett II in July became
Administrative Director of the Augusta (Ga.)
Planned Parenthood Association. He will also
continue as vicar of All Saints' Church in
Beach Island, S. C.
1955
Donald A. PI1illips joined the National
Council on Alcoholism, Inc., in June as Assistant Director of the Labor-Management
Services Department. For seven years preceding this latest appointment, Mr. Phillips
was Sales and Service Manager for Ma1co
Plastics, Inc., in Baltimore. He and his family
make their home in Fanwood, N. J.
1958
Christina (Sopher) Neumann in June received
her M.A. degree in German from the University of California at Riverside, and has
started work on her doctorate in the same field.
1961
Darrell L. Hemy, President of the Alumni
Association, former Zoning Hearings Officer for
Anne Arundel County (Md.), and now in law
practice in Annapolis, was a Democratic candidate for the Maryland Senate in the September,
1970, primary election.
1962
Susan (Cliver) Eames and Lt.Comdr. Lucian
B. Purinton II were married last October 18th,
and at present are stationed in Portugal.
Sara (Hobart) Homeyer, who so thoughtfully sent the information about Paul Cochran
(see 1963), writes that her husband has been
assigned to Altus Air Force Base, Okla., from
San Antonio.
John F. White, a graduate assistant at the
New School for Social Research in New York,
delivered the Friday lecture for the February
freshman class on August 14th. Mr. White's
subject was "On Mimesis (Poetry and Politics)."
1965
Susan (Liebersobn) Ginsburg writes that husband Jay is now a partner in A. A. Ehrlich and
Associates, a Washington, D. C., firm engaging
in individual and business financial planning.
The Ginsburgs are the parents of a year-old
son David, and e.xpect another addition at the
end of the year.
1966
\Villiam N. McKeatchie last Trinity Sunday
became a deacon in the Church of God in a
ceremony in Toronto, Canada, Mr. McKeatchie
will serve in the Cathedral Parish of St. James
in Toronto until October, and will then become
Assistant to the Chaplain and a D .Phil. candidate at St. John's College, Oxford.
Douglas C. Proctor and Miss Roberta Ruth
West of Rockville, Md., were married July
18th in Silver Spring, Md.
working at Spring Grove State Hospital as an
alternative to military service, hopes to become
a Presbyterian clergyman.
Hope Rosemary Zoss left the single ranks
when she and Jon Wayne Schladen were
married on May 31st at her parents' home in
Minneapolis. Both Mr. and Mrs. Schladen
have been reading specialists for Independent
Education Services of Princeton, N. J. In
addition, Mrs. Schladen has conducted a master
course in reading development at the Chaplain's
School, Newport, R. I.
1968
Bruce R. Baldwin {SF) received his M.A.
degree in Urban Planning from the University
of Michigan on May 2nd. So far as we are
aware, Mr. Baldwin is the first Santa Fe gradu.
ate to receive an advanced degree. Information
from the Santa Fe campus indicates that Mr.
Baldwin was to have entered Peace Corps
service on July 6th.
1968
Ann Blaine Garson is now a graduate student
in pathology at the University of Pittsburgh.
The engagement of Stephanie Prigge and
George F. Kramer SF '66 was announced in
July. An August wedding was planned. M"r.
Kramer is a law student at the University
of New Mexico.
1969
Jonatlmn D. Sackson and Penelope R. Rowe
'71 were married August 8th in Cincinnati,
with Andrew A. F. Garrison '70 serving as best
man. The Sacksons will live in Annapolis this
year.
Hugo B. D. Hamilton (SF) and Miss
Georgia Marodes Weyer were married on June
27th in Santa Fe. Mrs. Hamilton is a native
of Santa Fe, and is Registrar of the Museum
of New Mexico. The Hamiltons wiH make
their home in Santa Fe.
In Memoriam
1967
William F. Cone bas been appointed Assist·
1910-P. Y. K. HowAT, \Vashington,
D. G., July 19, 1970.
ant Headmaster of the middle grades at the
Key School He has taught mathematics at
the Annapolis school since graduation from
St. John's.
Roger B. Glad and Miss Rowena E.
McDonald of Port Hueneme, Cal., were
married on June 20th. Mrs. Glad is a student
at the University of California at Los Angeles,
while Mr. Glad is employed in the Los
Angeles area.
Clark E. Lobenstine, his wife Joy, and two
Episcopal clergymen have begun a Christian
commune in Baltimore. Their desire is to
show that peace in this world must start at the
neighborhood level, where people, with their
basic differences, show that they can live together in harmony. Mr. Lobenstine, who is
1921-BEVERLY S. RoBERTS, Fredericksburg, Va., March 25, 1970.
1922-JoHN H. ScHWATKA, Chestertown,
Md., June 29, 1970.
1923-ALBERT
SYDNEY
DERINGER,
Chestertown, Md. July 17, 1970.
THOMAS S. PHOEBUS, Richmond,
June 24, 1970.
1929-THE REV. CHARLES M. ROBINJarrettsville, Md., July 14, 1970.
SON,
1943-PETER H. W. JACKSoN, Rutherford, N. C., July 8, 1970.
21
�HOMECOMING ACTIVITIES
"Friday, October 16th:
Morning:
Golf Tournament
Afternoon: Golf Tournament
Alumni Seminars
Noon:
Luncheon with students
Afternoon: Annual Meeting
Tennis Matches
Sailing
Night:
Graduate School Counseling
Alumni- Student Soccer
Game
Lecture
Movie
Informal "Welcome Aboard"
Cocktail Party
Saturday, October 17th:
lVIorning:
Registration
The College
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 2!404
Night:
Annual Dinner
Alumni Parties
Second-elass postage paid at
Annapolis, Maryland, and at
additional mailing offices.
�
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<em>The College </em>(1969-1981)
Description
An account of the resource
St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>. <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981. <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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thecollegemagazine
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21 pages
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Development Offices of St. John's College
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The College, September 1970
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1970-09
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Berns, Laurence
Felter, Mary P.
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Trimmer, Maurice
Sullivan, Daniel
Description
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Volume XXII, Number 3 of The College. Published in September 1970.
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The_College_Vol_22_No_3_1970
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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text
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pdf
President's Report
Presidents
The College
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PDF Text
Text
THE COLLEGE
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
Santa Fe, New Mexico
December 1970
�The College
Cover: Statue of Virgil, by Benedetto
Antelami (?),Mantua, Palazzo Ducale,
ca. 1215. Inside Front Cover: McDowell Hall, Annapolis.
The College is a publication for
friends of St. John's College and for
those who might become friends of the
College, if they came to know it. Our
aim is to indicate, within the limitations of the magazine form, why, in
our opinion, St. John's comes closer
than any other college in the nation
to being what a college should be.
If ever well-placed beacon lights
were needed by American education
it is now. By publishing articles about
the work of the College, articles reflecting the distinctive life of the mind
that is the College, we hope to add a
watt or two to the beacon light that is
St. John's.
Editor: Laurence Berns
Managing Editor: Mary P. Felter
Alumni Editor: Thomas Farran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant: Maurice Trimmer
Art Editor: Daniel Sullivan, '71
The College is published by the
Development Offices of St. John's
College, College Avenue, Annapolis,
Maryland 21404 (Julius Rosenberg,
Director), and Santa Fe, New Mexico
(J. Burchenal Ault, Vice President);
Member, American Alumni Council.
President, St. John's College, Richard
D. Weigle.
Published four times a year in April,
July, October, and December. Second-class postage paid at Annapolis,
Maryland, and at additional mailing
offices.
Vol. XXII
December 1970
No. 4
In the December Issue:
Reflections on the Idea of Science, by Curtis Wilson.
1
The Myth of Virgil's Aeneid, by Jacob Klein
... 12
News on the Campuses
.. 19
Alumni Activities
... 23
�Reflections on the Idea of Science*
By CURTIS WILSON
We and our world stand within the unity of an encompassing history, a vast culture or set of traditions, inherited
techniques and patterns of behavior, interlocking and
diverging patterns of transmitted thought. And perhaps
the mightiest of these traditions today is that which we
call "science." Its eff·ects are omnipresent. It has trans~
formed, and continues to transform, at an ·ever accelerat-
Rigorous standards of procedure are upheld; results are
arrived at which are reproducible with a known order of
precision. Should a mistaken assumption be made, it will
surely be found to be such, for there is a constant reference
to observation and experiment, to reality. We gain the
image here of a machine which functions smoothly, dispassionately, according to rules of operahon which are
clearly set forth once and for all. As its product we obtain
universally established, objective truths.
ing rate, the visible world around us as well as the routine
of our lives. It has made possible the extinction of man and
his culture in a universal holocaust; and it has presented,
for the first time in the history of the human species, the
possibility of banishing material want from the face of the
earth.
All this is journalistic commonplace, and the actual or
possible material effects of science are not my concern here.
These effects t?stify, of course, to a certain kind of success of the on-going tradition of modern science, and this
success brings with it a certain claim. When I set out to
think in the attitude of one who seeks to arrive a-t truth
and to avoid falsehood, this claim appears upon the horizon
of my thought, whether invited or not. It is the claim of
the objectivity of science. Whether I choose to welcome
this spectre as a friend, or to duel with him as an enemy,
which is involved here is relatively recent. In the .thirteenth
century the use of these terms in philosophic discourse
was almost opposite to the present-day use; "subject,"
from subjicio, to place or throw under, could mean a thing
as a sustainer of properties and attributes, something so
to speak "thrown under" the qualities of the thing; "object," from objicio, to place or throw before or opposite
one, normally meant the concept intended by the mind.
The present-day use appears to derive from a particular
setting of problems in modern philosophic thought, be-
or even to dismiss him as irrelevant to my concerns, his
ginning with Descartes's assumption that what exists must
appearance, I believe, will not have been without lasting
effect upon my thought. For as participant in a particular
either be a thinking thing, res cogitans, or an extended
thing, res extensa. Particularly since Kant, the words "subject" and "object" hav-e been the key terms of a compli-
culture at a particular time-and every human being is
that-! do not find it possible to determine my thought
just as I please; problems, and the terms in which they
are couched, are presented. And we cannot set out to think
in our time without being confronted with the claim upon
our thought of scientific objectivity. It seems best, therefore, to attempt to question this spectre, to try to elicit the
meaning of his pr.esence.
Why do I say "spectre"? Surely there is nothing ghostly
or frightening about scientific objectivity. Here is a realm
of light. We are out of the dust of metaphysical disputation. Superstition and prejudice have been left behind.
*A lecture given at St. John's College, Annapolis, in September, 1961.
"Objectivity," however, is a polar term; it evokes its
contrary or opposite, "subjectivity"; it has its meaning in
relation to the meaning of this second term. I should mention that the use of the terms Hsubject" and Hobject"
cated and sometimes acrimonious dialectic. Kierkegaard
says: "Subjectivity is the truth." The theologian Berdyaev
says: "The self-alienation of spirit in objectivity is a fall."
The psychoanalyst Theodore Reik speaks of the bitchgoddess objectivity. l-Ie suggests that there is an historical
connection between the most elevated passion or thirst for
knowledge and the desire to devour something; this hypothesis, he adds, will explain why people open their
mouths when surprised.
What is at issue here? Clearly the terms "subjectivity"
and "objectivity" are being used as firearms; they are, as
we say, "loaded terms." Is not this opposition basically the
one of which C.P. Snow complains?-the splitting of the
intellectual life of western society into two polar groups,
between which there is a gulf of mutual incomprehension
and even hostility-those typified as literary intellectuals
1
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on the one hand, those called scientists on the other. "The
non-scientists," Snow says,
have a rooted impression that the scientists are
shallowly optimistic, unaware of man's condition.
The scientists believe that the literary intellectnals are totally lacking foresight, pecnliarly unconcerned with their brother man, in a deep sense
anti-intellectual, anxious
to restrict art and
thought to the existeThtial moment.
It is not hard, Snow adds, to produce plenty of this kind
of subterranean backchat.
It is my purpose here, not to rehearse the debate, but
to try to specify more exactly the notion of scientific
objectivity, which I have called a ghost, and then to compare this notion with what I believe to be the actualities
of scientific practice.
When we think or speak of scientific objectivity, I believe we ar.e evoking a kind of mosaic of meanings, different
components of which will be in the foreground of our
attention in different contexts of discussion. I believe I
can distinguish the following components. First, we are
thinking of science as empirical, as based on observation
of what we call facts. We are thinking of science as a set of
statements which is "objective" in the sense that its substance, its essential content, is entirely determined by observation, even though its presentation may be shaped by
and end in the discard.
Yes, of course, you say, a selection has to be made; the
observations have to be sorted. In order that knowledge
should arise from sense experience, you must abstract or
separate certain aspects from the different perceptions, associ3!te similar aspects in order to form general ideas, and
correlate those aspects which are constantly conjoined.
I counter with a question: What do you mean here by
"observation" or "sense~perception"? Am I supposed to
be thinking of myself as a blind computer harnessed to a
brainless photoplate? Consider the following passage from
Duhem's La theorie physique (p. 218):
Enter a laboratory; approach the table crowded
with an assor•tment of apparatus, an electric cell,
silk-covered copper wire, small cups of mercury,
spools of wire, a mirror mounted on an iron bar;
the experimenter is ins·evting into small openings
the metal ends of ebony-headed pins; the iron
oscillates, and the mirror attached to it throws a
luminous band upon a celluloid scale; the forward-backward motion of this spot enables the
physicist to observe H1e minute oscillations of
the iron bar. But ask him what he is doing. Will
he answer "I am studying the oscillations of the
iron bar which carries a mirror"? No, he will say
that he is measuring the electric resistance of the
spools. If you ar·e astonished, if you ask him what
his words mean, what rela-tion they have with the
phenomena he has been observing and which you
have noted at the same time as he, he will answer
that your question requires a long explanation
and that you should take a course in electricity.
convention. Second, we are thinking of science as a set of
techniques, exact methods for establishing control over
experience. We are thinking that there is something called
scientific method, a set of precise rules for proceeding
which can be formally set out and empirically tested. The
scientist has only to follow the rules faithfully in order
to arrive at reliable results. Third, we are thinking of
science as proposing a certain type of explanation as the
only proper and final kind of explanation; roughly speaking, a physico-chemical explanation of all things, including
living and thinking beings.
I shall take up the three components one by one. It will
be clear enough that I regard these assertions embedded
in the notions of scientific objectivity as false and misleading; but there is a central and important clement in the
notion which I shall seek to disengage in the end. I begin
with the notion of science as empirical, as determined in
its essential content by observation.
Kirchhoff, the nineteentl1-century physicist, said that
science is ultimately concerned with nothing else than a
precise and conscientious description of what has been
perceived through the senses. Suppose now that a man devotes his entire adult life to writing down in notebooks a
precise and conscientious description of what he perceives
through the senses; when his life approaches its close, he
forwards these notebooks to the National Academy of
Sciences. It will not be merely because of bureaucratic
inefficiency that these notebooks are never read by anyone,
2
Is it altogether clear that the visitor sees the same thing
as the physicist? Consider the following cases. A musician
listening to a quintet hears that the oboe is out of tune;
the
non~musician
does not. Or a Westerner and a
Far~
Easterner listen, both for the first time, to a Mozart concerto. For the one there is a perception of form, for the
other there is confusing, unadulterated pure sound. For
the experienced listener, the interpretation is there in
the music; it is not something taking up a time of its own,
subsequent to the hearing.
'I11e same goes for seeing. I see a bird in the air; my
seeing takes him in as a being that has just been flying
and that will continue in the arc of his flight. Or compare
the way in which the freshmen see the College campus
with the way it appears to his ancient Tutor.
Seeing, hearing, perceiving are through and through interpretative; only in a limiting case, maybe in the case of
a newborn babe, or a person fainting, does observation
become an encounter with unfamiliar and unconnected
flashes, spots of color, sounds, bumps. A physicist confronted with observations which he could describe only in
terms of color patches, shapes, oscillations, pointer read-
�December 1970
In the development of modern physics one has to distinguish the great theoretical achievements, or times of
theoretical break-through, from the mopping-up exercises
whrch follow. Textbooks of physical science tend to give
the following picture. First a theory is proposed. Then
there is a certain amount of logical and mathematical
equipment, a kind of machine, used in manipulating the
theory; the theoretical assumptions are fed into this machine along with certain initial condi-tions specifying the
srtuatwn to whrch the theory is to be applied, the crank
is turned; logical and mathematical operations are
ings, would feel himself to be in a conceptually confused
situation; he would try to get his observations to cohere
against a background of established knowledge. It is in
terms of a perceiving in which the elements already cohere
in a pattern and interpretation that new inquiry proceeds,
and not m terms of an encounter with pure flashes, sounds
and bumps. Physicists observe new data as physicists, and
not as cameras.
What I have been saying argues against the view that
observation is simply opening one's eyes and seeing, or
that facts are plain and unvarnished, and not laden with
theory. But I want to go further. Observation, measurement, experimental result-all these have had their roles
in the development of what we call modern science. These
roles have not been the same as the role of experience in,
say, .theological speculation-where, by the way, experience does have a role; for I do not think that we can make
any statement at all which docs not have roots of some
kind in our experience of the visible, sounding world. But
the question is how we are to describe the relation of
theory and fact in the modern scientific development; and
I maintain that we do not describe that relation correctly
if we say that theories are merely convenient summaries
of experience, or economic adaptations of thought to faots,
or logical constructions whose sole purpose is to predict
what will he observed. I do not even believe that it is corr~ct to _say that validity or rightness of a theory can be
Slffiply JUdged by the degree to which it is confirmed by
experiment, or that a theory is automatically discarded
when experiment fails to confirm it. The rightness or
wrongness of these statements that I make can only he
determined through a close examination of the ways in
which scientific speculation and experimentation have proceeded in actual, particular cases; I cmi only give a few
indications here. I take physical science as paradigmatic,
and avoid the social sciences where the maxim often seems
to be: If you cannot measure, measure anyhow.
intern~
ally performed, and numerical predictions emerge from
the chute at the front of the machine. These predictions
are arranged in the left-hand column of a table· in the
right-hand column appear the results of actual r'neasure·
ments. If the numbers in the two columns are in reasonable agreement, the theory is said to be confirmed; otherwise, it is disconfirmed.
We must first ask: what is meant by "reasonable agreement"? Is an average deviation of three per cent acceptable,
is ten per cent good enough, or should we insist on 0.001
per cent? These questions cannot be decided a priori, independently of the total theoretical background within
which the physicist works in each case. In effect, the tables
in the textbooks define what is meant by reasonable agreement in the case which is being described.
In the second place, we must examine what physicists do
in the period following the proposal of a new and encompassing theory. Are they engaged in attempting to confirm the theory by experiment? If so, then a failure to
obtain agreement between theoretical prediction and actual measurement should lead to discarding the theory.
Nothing of the sort happens. In general, a theory is not
discarded unless there is another theory to replace it. In
general, the theory has already been accepted; it has been
accepted because it brings potential order to a large number of natural phenomena. Finer and finer investigations
of the quantitative match between theory and observation
are not attempts to confirm the theory, but attempts to
make explicit what was previously implicit agreement between theory and the world. Again and again, nature's
hand has to be forced. If the physicist succeeds in achieving reasonable agreement between theory and observation,
he achieves a result already anticipated by the general
community of physicists. If he fails, his failure counts not
against the theory, but against himself; his talents have
not proved equal to the task.
In 1638 Galileo published his description of the famous
inclined plane experiment. He claimed that comparisons
of the times required by a sphere to roll different measured distances down the plane confirmed his prior thesis
that the motion was uniformly accelerated; he did not
report his measurements. Subsequently a group of wellknown scientists in France announced their total failure
to get comparable results, and publicly doubted that
3
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Galileo ever tried the experiment. Presumably Galileo did
perform the experiment; presumably he got results which
appeared to him to be reasonable agreement with his hypothesis. Anyone who has performed this experiment with
a present-day electric timer or stop-watch may doubt that
Galileo's results were in anything like unequivocal agreement with the hypothesis. But for the development of
physics this did not particularly matter. What mattered
was that there should appear a detective like Newton, who,
taking as clues such apparently unnoticed unrelated items
as Galileo's thesis, Kepler's laws for the planets, observations of the lunar tides, and precession of the equinoxes,
and so on, could produce a coherent pattern of intelligibility, a rational structure of potential explanatory power.
The coherence and rationality of such a pattern is recognized precisely when one understands the theory, and not
otherwise; there is a quality of wholeness there, an interlocking of parts in the theoretical structure, which commands the assent of the mind. And there is also an indeterminate range of yet unknown implications which
later investigators will be years in ferreting out and trying
to realize in experimental situations.
In the years between 1902 and 1926, D. C. Miller repeated the Michelson-Morley experiment many thousands
of times, in an effort to disconfirm the theory of relativity.
The Michelson-Morley experiment, you know, is generally
described as having shown that the velocity of the earth
with respect to the ether is indetectible. (The ether is, or
was, the medium hypothesized as carrying electromagnetic
vibration-radio waves, light waves, and so on.) Actually
the experiment detected a positive effect, corresponding to
a velocity of about eight or nine kilometers per second.
4
This is considerably less than a pre-Einsteinian physicist,
believing in absolute space, would have predicted; but it
is not zero. In 1925, Miller announced that the whole
series of his experiments confirmed overwhelmingly the
existence of a positive effect of about eight or nine kilometers per second. Miller was known to be a careful experimentalist. One would have supposed that the theory
of relativity would be insbmtly abandoned, or at least that
physicists would have withheld judgment until Miller's results could be accounted for without impairing the theory
of relativity. Nothing of the kind. Only in Russia were
Miller's results taken as casting doubt on the theory, and
there the theory of relativity had not been accepted as yet
anyway, since it was believed to be in conflict with the
dialectical materialism of Engels and Lenin, and no material benefits seemed to flow from it. For physicists elsewhere, however, the theory of relativity continued to command belief for the reasons which had led to its original
acceptance: it provided a coherent vision of laws, theories,
facts, which had previously appeared disparate, rationally
unconnected. TI1ere is still no generally agreed-upon interpretation of Miller's result; but the indetectibility of
the earth's motion relative to the ether has been shown
experimentally in ways quite independent of the Michelson-Morley apparatus.
According to Einstein himself, and contrary to most
textbook accounts, contrary even to certain implications in
the St. John's manual on this subject, the MichelsonMorley experiment played no role in the formulation of
relativity theory. Einstein was concerned fundamentally
with certain anomalies in the theory of electrodynamics.
For instance, he felt that when a magnet is moved relative
�December
to an electrical conductor, or a conductor relative to a
magnet, the situation was fundamentally the same, and
should be determined by the relative velocity alone; whereas Maxwell's electrodynamics gave different accounts of
the two cases.
It is sometimes alleged that Einstein's motive was to
eliminate untestable conceptions from theory, for instance, the notion of absolute space. Such conceptions, it
is urged, are meaningless. This assertion is an attempt to
assimilate Einstein's work to the notion of science as
economic description. Actually, the Newtonian conception
of space was not untestable; Einstein showed not that it
was meaningless but that it was false.
What I am urging here is that the great and revolutionary theories of physics-and the number of these has
not been large-have all possessed qualities of wholeness
and coherence, intellectual beauties and harmonies and
profundities, and that it is by these qualities that the
theories have laid claim to truth. Observations and experimental results function as clues; but the theories transcend
such experience by embracing a vision of the world. This
vision speaks for itself and as such becomes accredited
with prophetic powers. This view of the nature of physics
will be confirmed, I believe, by a study of the major
theoretical achievements from Copernicus to Einstein. Nor
does the newer quantum mechanics deny it, so far as I can
tell from a slight acquaintance. Unlike previous theories,
it is peculiarly concerned with the processes involved in
observation itself; but I do not find that it is a convenient
or economical summary of experimental results. It requires of the physicist startlingly new ways of thinking
about the world. Every one of the major theories has done
just that-changed the framework of interpretation. And
it is just for this reason that such major discoveries cannot
be arrived at by continued application of a previously accepted framework of interpretation.
This brings me to the second component of the notion
of scientific objectivity which I have distinguished: the
conception of science as method. Let me begin by considering the subject of methods generally. We are all able
to do many things. We walk, talk, and eat with fork and
spoon. All these actions involve sets of skills, or arts.
What is an art or skill?
Consider a simple case like this: the usc of a hammer
to drive a nail. The carpenter is aware of both the nail and
the hammer, but it is the nail which occupies the focus of
his attention. He watches the effect of his strokes, and
wields the hammer in such a way as to hit the nail effectively. He is aware in a subsidiary way of the feeling in his
fingers and hand: even more dimly, he may be aware of
the contractions in the muscles of his arm and shoulder,
and of his whole bodily posture. But these feelings are not
the object of his atter1tion; they are not watched in themselves. The subsidiary awareness is merged into a focal
awareness of driving the nail. The adjustments in hand
1970
and arm and body are instrumental in achieving an end;
the hammer is used as a tool, an extension of the body.
By the effort of concentration on the operation to be performed, the successful nail-driver absorbs, one might say,
the elements of the situation of which he might otherwise
be aware in themselves; he is aware of them only in terms
of the operational results achieved through their use. He is
no doubt following here a complex set of rules; but he is
not aware of these rules as such.
The same thing, I believe, is true of every skilled performance. The process of bicycling can be analyzed in accordance with the theory of mechanics. It is found that
when the cyclist starts falling to the right, he turns the
handlebars to the right, so that the bicycle moves along a
curve to the right. This action results in a centrifugal force
which pushes the cyclist to the left and offsets the gravitational force which is dragging him down to the right.
This maneuver soon has the effect of throwing the cyclist
out of balance to the left, a lack of balance which he
counteracts by turning the handlebars to the left; and so
he keeps in balance by winding along a series of appropriate curves. An analysis in terms of Proposition IV of
Book I of Newton's Principia shows that for a given angle
of unbalance the radius of the curve must be inversely
proportional to the square of the cyclist's speed. The
cyclist, of course, knows nothing of all this; nor would such
information be useful in learning to ride. In any skilled
performance there are countless rules which are observed
but of which the performer is unaware.
An art or skill is a set of potentialities which is brought
into play in the accomplishment of an end. The elements
of the successful performance are merged in a focal awareness of the end. Bringing one of these elements into awareness may be occasionally helpful in improving performance; but focal awareness of the elements, if maintained,
is destructive of the skill, and leads to a paralysis like stagefright.
It may indeed be possible to analyze every aspect of a
skilled performance; and it will then be possible to replace the performer by a machine. The studies of the
industrial arts made in preparation for mechanization have
repeatedly shown that such analysis is enormously difficult.
The resources of microscopy, chemistry, mathematics, and
electronics have as yet failed pathetically to produce a
single violin of the quality which Stradivarius achieved
as a matter of routine 200 years ago. Even in modern industries based on the discoveries of pure science there is a
considerable amount of undefined knowledge or knowhow which forms an essential part of the technology.
Hence the importance of imitation in learning a skill; the
apprentice has to submit himself to the authority and example of the master; he thus learns to obey rules of which
he is not focally aware and which may not even be explicitly known to the master himself. An unbroken tradition, from generation to generation, is essential here.
5
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I want to apply these conclusions now to the cognitive
or intellectual arts, the arts not of doing but of knowing.
Let me begin with the arts of language; it is the possession
of these arts which distinguishes man from the other animals; and it is their exercise which has made possible the
constant extension of human knowledge on the basis of
previously achieved results.
A language is no doubt a construction, the product of
the activity of generations of human beings belonging to
a given society. The ready use of nouns, verbs, adjectives,
which have been invented and endowed with meaning by
unknown men of the past, expresses a theory of the nature
of things. Every child who learns to speak accepts unwittingly this theory or framework as the basis for all further
efforts of understanding.
There is a prevalent view that language is a set of convenient symbols used according to conventional rules of
a "language game." Likewise, the nominalistic doctrine
which was put forward in medieval times and is still with
us, maintains that general terms are merely names desig-
nating certain collections of objects. The implication is
that a language is essentially arbitrary and unrelated to
the way things are. This view is adopted in abhorrence of
its metaphysical alternatives.
On the contrary, I think that we can appraise skill and
lack of skill in the use of words. I am sometimes aware
of groping for words and phrases, and I recognize that
something is awry when I get the wrong one. A skilled
artist in speech is thoroughly conscious of the figurative
and metaphorical elements in speech. He continues to
correct and supplement one metaphor by another, even
allowing contradictions to enter at times, but always attending focally to the unity of his thought. In skillful
speech, there is only a subsidiary awareness of words; one
sees through the words to things; attention is focused on
the object of the thought. This characteristic has been
called the transparency of language.
Every situation to which speech is applied is to some
extent unprecedented. In the adaptation of speech to new
situations, there is a focal awareness of the situation of
which we wish to make sense, and a subsidiary awareness
of the words we are using as instruments. In this process
the meanings of words become modified, but we are not
focally aware of this change. Our framework of interpretation thus changes, and the words for which we grope
become invested with a fund of unspecifiable connotations.
What I have just said applies not only to the education
of a single person, but to the development of the language
of a whole society. The efforts of men to adapt language
to situations and things have the result, after years and
centuries and millennia, of modifying the instrument of
interpretation itself. Some of the changes are degenerative;
but words which have great human significance tend to
accumulate a wealth of connotations adapted to the situations in which they have been meaningfully applied. It is
6
because of this fact that when we speak we say more than
we know; that language seems to have a wisdom of its own.
And it is also because of this fact that inquiries of the
Socratic type are worthwhile. We have the power to take
cognizance of a subsidiary element in the comprehension
of a term, say ~~justice" or "courage"; we can try to define
the term. Such an enterpris-e presupposes an understanding
of the subject-matter to which the term refers. Only if
we are confident that we can identify what is just or
courageous in particular cases, can we reasonably undertake
to define the term. If we want to analyze the meaning of
the term, we must be using it as thoughtfully as we can,
and at the same time watch ourselves doing this. We must
look, with all the discrimination we ·can bring to bear,
through the term "justice" at justice itself; for this is the
use we are trying to define.
I am urging, then, that the skills of using a language
are like other skills; that the employment of linguistic
skill involves the merging of a subsidiary awareness of
words and grammer in a focal awarenes of an end, say persuading someone of something, or expressing a truth. The
process depends on a fund of unspecified connections and
connotations which constitute a framework or instrument
of potential explanation. Any attempt to step altogether
outside this framework and to criticize the structure of
language as wholly arbitrary and conventional, is lacking
in frankness; for the attempt employs and appeals to the
very instrument whose validity it denies. Language commits us, far beyond our comprehension, to a vision of the
world. It is a shirt of flame in which we arc garmented; the
responsibility of wearing it we cannot avoid.
The view I am advocating would deny that there is a
single scientific method, or method of achieving truth,
the rules of which can be set down once and for all. I do
not deny that there are methods (plural) which have
been developed in the particular sciences, and which continue to be applied effectively in a variety of situations.
But formulations of these techniques, even by a competent
scientist, tend to be inadequate because the scientist automatically supplements the explicit formulation by a tacit
knowledge of how the techniques are applied in particular
cases.
As an illustration -of the way in which tacit appraisals
are involved in the use of a giv:en technique, let me men-
tion the application of probability theory. This theory is
applicable to systems of objects and events which have a
characteristic called randomness, and also to significantly
ordered systems which interact with random systems.
~~Randomness" means the absence of significant order or
pattern; ''significant order," of course, means absence of
randomness. The randomness of a system cannot be speci-
fied in terms of the particular elements of the system; such
specification, if it were possible, would in fact destroy
the randomness. The appraisal of a system as random or as
orderly depends on tenuous criteria peculiar to the system
�December 1970
under consideration, and cannot be reduced to universal
rules. This becomes evident when probability theory is applied to a live scientific issue; in such cases there may be
intense controversy Ol'er the proper experimental design
and statistical technique.
If we turn to the deductive or mathematical aspects of
the science, I believe we shall find again the same supremacy of art over mechanical procedure. The teaching of all
the mathematical sciences such as mechanics or electromagnetic theory relies to a large extent on practice in
solving problems. The skill striven for in all these cases is
that of converting a language which one has assimilated
only receptively into an active tool for answering new questions. The rules for problem-solving that can be specified
are but vague maxims: Polya, in his book, How To Solve
It, says "Look at the end. Remember your aim. Do not lose
sight of what is required ... Look at the unknown." In
attempting to solve a problem we use the known particulars as clues, and try to feel our way toward an understanding of the manner in which these known particulars relate
with each other and with the unknown which is sought.
To recognize the problem in the first place means to
anticipate a hidden potentiality. As we proceed in tracing
out relations and in trying various transpositions of symbols, we may at a certain moment feel that we are getting
close; we sense-not without excitement-the accessibility
of a hidden inference. Finding the solution is having a
"happy thought"; it is crossing a logical gap. The solution
of further problems of the same kind may increase our
facility. In some cases we may discover a routine technique
for dealing with all problems of a given class; such problems are no longer problems. The recognition of a genuine
problem, and the solving of it, are acts which are not reducible to mechanical or systematic technique.
That genuine discovery is not in principle capable of
being dispensed with in the deductive disciplines has been
shown as a result of research in metamathematics, the
study of the formal properties of mathematical systems.
In some such systen1s, a decision procedure is available, a
finite sequence of predetermined operations which suffices
to resolve every question or problem that can be set in the
terms of the system. Reckoning of sums, differences,
products, and quotients of numbers is of this character.
There are other systems in which a decision procedure is
available for deciding whether a given sequence of statements constitutes a proof of a given statement, but in
which there is no decision procedure which would enable
one to decide, in a finite number of steps, whether a given
statement couched in the terms of the system is provable
or not-is a theorem or not. In these cases a machine can
be built which, by operating on the axioms according to
specified rules of inference, will churn out theorems, one
after another; but there mn be no guarantee that it will
turn out in a given finite time the answer to any particular
question. The determination as to whether a given statement in the language of science is deducible or not is
contingent on time, luck, ingenuity, and intelligence
directed toward a goal. Euclid's geometry is of this char-
7
�The College
acter. We may speak of a primordial darkness of reason
here; we are unable to .envisage the total outcome of a
series of acts whose generating principle we can envisage
with complete clarity.
There is still a further kind of situation in the deductive
s~ienc':', discovered by Goede! in 1931. Within any deductive sc1ence of suffic1ent scope to include arithmetic, it is
p~ss,.bJe to formulate sentences which cannot be proved
w1thm the sc1ence, that is, starting from the stated axioms
of the science and employing the stipulated rules of inference, but which can nevertheless be shown to be true
by reflections on the science as a whole. In 1949 Turing
showed that a machine could be devised which would construct and assert as new axioms an indefinite sequence of
these Goedelian sentences, as they are called. It nevertheless remains true that any given set of mathematical inference machines can only cut a swathe out of the total
field of mathematical truths. Mathematics cannot be
formalized, once and for all, in a single linear deductive
development; the methods of procedure and inference in
mathematics are, in principle, inexhaustible.
What I am saying here, in sum, is that no fixed impersonal, and fully specified technique can be laid down
for attaining all and only the truth. The knowledge we
have or gain is shaped within a framework of tacit acceptance and incompl~tely specificable arts which are logically
pnor to any particular assertion we may make. Such a
framework can be altered, or as I would say, improved, in
th~ very process of examining a topic in its light. Either
th1s 1s so, or hberal education is nomensical. My acceptance of one of these alternatives rather than the other is
no doubt a passionate aot, a comn1itment.
I turn now to the third claim associated with the notion
of scientific objectivity, roughly speaking, the claim that
only explanatwns based on physics and chemistry can be
accred1ted as finalm the scwnces. Huyghens, in his Treatise
on L1ght ~f 1678, speaks of "the true Philosophy, in which
one conce1ves the causes of all natural effects in terms of
mechanical motions." Laplace, in his Treatise on Prob~
ability of 1814, writes than an intelligence which knew at
one moment of time
all the forces by which nature is animated and
the respective positions of the entities which
compose it . . . would embrace in the same
formula the movements of the largest bodies in
the universe and those of the lightest atom:
nothing would be uncertain for i·t, and the future, like the past, would be present to its eyes.
S~ch a mind, Laplace claims, would possess a complete
sc1entific knowledge of the universe. K. S. Lashley, speakmg >n 1948 at a symposium on cerebral mechanisms in
behavior, states:
Our common meeting ground is the faith to
8
which we all subscribe, I believe, that the phenomena of behavior and of mind are ultimately
describable in the concepts of the mathematical
and physical sciences.
With these views I believe it is necessary to do battle.
For they present us with a picture of the universe in which
we ourselves are absent, in which there are no scientists
and hence no science. This is a simple-minded objection.
I would support it and amplify it by the following considerations, which will have to be brief.
Suppose, first, that the universal knowledge of which
Laplace dreamed were possible. Then from the positions
and velocities of the n atoms or particles of the world at
a given time t,, it would be possible to compute the positions and veloc!lles of all these particles at any later or
earher time t2. As 1t turns out, if n is greater than two,
no exact and general solution of the computational problem is possible. But even if it were, it would remain true
that this knowledge would not constitute knowledge of
all past and future events, unless "event" be defined in so
narrow a fashion as to exclude the events of which I have
experience. The Laplacean picture supplies no clue as to
how the data of experience are to be accounted fo·r; how
I am to pass from information about atoms to data of
experience. It 1nerely claims, wrongly as it turns out,
that an answer is possible to a question raised by the
theory of mechanics itself. The change from Newtonian
to quantum mechanics makes no difference in this argument. The wave equation of the world in quantum mechanic~ represents our ultimate knowledge of all the parbcles m the world, leaving open within this framework
only variations which are strictly random. There is no accounting here for living beings or for intelligent behavior.
Computing machines and feedback mechanisms, as is
well known today, can simulate or improve upon the behavior of living and thinking beings. But here again I must
point to a very obvious fact, which is nevertheless often
forgotten: No knowledge of physics or chemistry would
ever suffice to enable us to recognize or account for a
machine. A machine for instance a clock a steam engine
or a digital computer, is an instrument or implement which
is operated in accordance with certain more or less specifiable rules for the sake of a certain advantage. Of instruments, operational rules, and advantages, physics and
chemistry can tell us nothing. Suppose you are confronted
with a problematic object and try to explore its nature
by a physical and chemical analysis of its parts. A complete
phys1eal and chem1cal account of the object, and of all
1ls future possible transformations, would still not enable
you to discover that it is a machine, if it is one and if so
how it operates. Such a discovery could only b~ made by
testing the object as a possible instance of known or conceivable machines. For you must know that the problematic object embodies a rule of rightness, or operational
rule; that 1t can succeed or fail, depending on whether it
1
1
1
�December 1970
operates in accordance with this rule or not. In the subject
matter of physics and chemistry proper, the notions of
success and failure do not occur. Given the rule of rightness, the physicist and chemist may be able to find the
causes of a failure of the machine, or the material conditions under which it will operate successfully; but the
reasons for the consecutive stage of operations of the
machine, and for the ways in which its parts are coordinated, are not specifiable in physico-chemical terms. The
relation between reasons and physico-chemical causes or
conditions is like the relation between logical rules and
psychological explanations as applied to processes of
thought. A given sequence of thought may be started by
appetite or intellectual passion; it may depend on memory,
visual imagination, and verbal or other symbolism. But a
psychological analysis of these conditions will never reveal whether the sequence of thought embodies a correct
inference or not.
The thesis that all living beings are physico-chemical
automata, the opemtions of which are in principle totally
specifiable in terms of spatio-temporal determinations, is
not strictly inconceivable. It forms a closed interpretative
system which is passionately pursued by a whole school
of geneticists and neurologists today. The fact that most
non-psychopathic persons become morally indignant when
treated as automata might be said to be due to primitive
patterns of mentality that a perfect scientific knowledge
would eliminate.
There are, of course, many biological phenomena which
have thus far resisted reduction to physico-chemical or
spatio-chemical terms. These include the powers of improvisation discovered by Driesch in embryonic fragments,
and the powers of adaptive reorganization exhibited by
many animals in the achievement of a predetermined end
under profoundly modified conditions. Tims a rat which
has learned to run a maze will continue to find his way
through it after the neural paths used in learning have
been cut, although he has to employ quite different patterns of locomotion. All along the evolutionary scale of
life, there is evidence for the presence of active centers
which act inventively in ways which are not fully specifiable in physico-chemical terms. It can always be claimed,
of course, that further knowledge will enable us to explain such evidence away.
These particular and no doubt intricate issues within
the biological sciences I cannot follow up here. My central
9
�The College
point is that if man is himself regarded only m his factuality, only as a complex object which is in principle
specifiable in physico-chemical terms, then the very idea
of science becomes unintelligible. I can no longer accredit
myself with the responsibility for drawing an ever indeterminate knowledge from unspecifiable clues with an aim
to universal validity; nor can I acknowledge other persons
as responsible centers of equally unspecifiable operations,
aiming likewise at universal validity. In the resulting
image of the world and of man there is no longer room
for the norms and ideas of reason. Thus we&tern man, who
since the sixth century B.C., has defined himself by the
idea of reason, as anima] rationale, loses sight of himself.
Reason, through a partial realization of its goal in modern
science, appears to betray itself.
This is the primary root, I believe, of the intellectual
crisis of our time.
Let me recur here to the fact with which I began. What
we call science is at any moment, and for anyone, a part
10
of an inherited culture, a set of techniques and patterns
of thought which have been cultivated and transmitted,
and which as such must have arisen, must have had origins,
in human activity. Thus science has a history.
This fact would be of little import if the past of science
or of any cultural configuration were merely behind and
extraneous to its present. But surely this supposition is
false. For do we not know tha!t the historical present
comes out of the historical past, and contains this derivation implicitly in itself? Is it not so in the case of
languages, customs, laws, and indeed of every cultural
achievement? And does not this fact point to a possibility-the possibility that tradition may allow itself to be
questioned; that it is not necessary merely to live within a
tradition, accepting it as a matter of course, or to set
oneself up blindly as nihilist, rejecting traditions which
have formed us?
To follow up this line of inquiry in the case of the
scienc.es is to refer scientific knowledge to the generating
�December 1970
and producing activities of the mind; it is to attempt to
discern how objective science came to be, how it must
have stepped into history as a human production. The
history which is in question here is not primarily factual
hi&tory; and indeed the factual origins of the idea of objective science are irrecoverably lost. The concern is rather
with general and necessary truths about the way in which
this idea came to be there for human beings; and these
truths are implicit in the mode of being of science in the
living present.
Do we nat know, for instance, this simple truth that
science is transmitted from generation to generation, from
teacher to learner, and that at the same time it is continually broadened, with the achievement of new results? And
in this process is it not manifest that there is a continual
synthesis, an incorporation of new results with prior re-
sults to form a totality; and that at any time the entire
achievement becomes the total premise for further results? Do we not know, further, that this history must
have had a beginning; that there must have been a moment in time when a man of the past for the first time
grasped, in full awareness, a truth as being there in its own
right, as being evident, as constituting knowledge which
was self-justifying and capable of indefinite expansion?
Each science is thus related to an open chain of generations of investigators, working with one another and for
one another. For the later investigators, the earlier acquisitions or results are not, in general, grasped in the same
way as they were by the original discoverer in the original
act of discovering. They have become embodied in speech
and writing; and indeed in no other way could they be
objectively and self-identically there, as ideal objects, for
Everyman, for every real or possible investigator of every
place and of every future time. Also, it is their embodiment in speech and writing which allows them to be used
as stepping-stones to further results, stepping-stones in a
deductive development. But these advantages bring with
them a seduction. The sounds of speech and the signs of
writing, these indefin;tely repeatable sensible forms of
the embodiment of the ideal objects of knowledge, are, for
the most part, taken in passively, in an unreal way, because
they are given in the sphere of trust which is language.
This seduction is a kind of forgetting, a lapsing of the
originally active grasp of evidence, which nevertheless permits the deductive process to proceed. Thus GaliJ.eo and
Kepler, and we also, can acCept the geometry of Euclid as
a self-contained science, with no roots or foundations outside itself; we have lost sight of its beginnings, of the
idealizing activities whiCh, starting from the vaguely typical objects of experience, and the rules of thumb in the
practical arts, produced a universe of ideal entities among
which exact and necessary relations hold.
Can the original evidence be regained, reactivated? Can
we, for instance, rediscover the original meaning of objec-
tive knowledge, science, as present to the mind of the man
who first envisaged its possibility?
I would claim that this unidentifiable man is not totally
unknown to us. He lived, no doubt, in an already developed cultural world. Like his contemporaries and like
all men, he had first lived naively within that world, which
he had then taken for granted and accepted unquestionably as reality. It was a magico-religious world, thoroughly
imbued with meaning, with a traditional meaning bestowed on it by the members of the community whose
world it was. All activities there were traditional, and were
undertaken for the sake of living and making one's way
about in this limitedly meaningful world. Even cognitive
activities would there be motivated by, and essentially related to practical human interests. The notions of knowledge, truth, and error, would be understood only in relation to the specific world belonging to the community.
Speculative activities would occur only within a finite
horizon.
Some moment; for some man, was a moment of emer~
gence from this limited world. It was, if we are to believe
Plato and Aristotle, a moment characterized by wonder.
And indeed, to wonder is to suspend praotical activity, it
is to adopt the attitude of the detached, onlooking observer. And in the attitude of wonder there arises the conception of Being, Being-as-it-really-is-in-itself, a conception standing in contrast to the limited world belonging to a specific human community. Also, and correlative
to this conception, there arises the idea of objective
science, or knowledge of being, episteme, standing in contrast to the opinion, doxa, by which men relate themselves to their traditional and everyday world. This moment is a disclosure of unlimited horizons. For the idea
of episteme is an ideal norm, an ideal limit with respect to
every cognitive endeavor. The grasping of any single truth
will henceforth be regarded as a transitional phase within
an infinite process oriented towards this ideal limitepisteme as finally accomplished.
The rise of this idea in Greek Antiquity marks the appearance in history of a new type of man who in all his
finitude assumes an infinite task. To belong to this tradition is less a glory than a responsibi1ity. To seek to uncover its original meaning is an essential step toward the
discovery of what we are.
Curtis A. Wilson became a Tutor at St. John's College in 1948.
He was Dean of the College from 1958 to 1962. From 1964 to 1966
he was a member of the Faculty of the College at Santa Fe. In 1966 he
became a Professor in the History of Science with the Depar,tment of
History of the University of California, San Diego, at La Jolla. The
laboratory science and preceptorial programs at the College owe much
to his efforts. He is the author of William Heytesbury, Medieval Logic
and the Rise of Mathematical Physics, University of Wisconsin Press,
1956; "Kepler's Derivation of the Elliptical Path," Isis, No. 59, 1968;
and "From Kepler's Laws, So-ca11ed, to Universal Gravitation: Empirical Factors," in the Archive for History of Exact Sciences, SpringerVerlag, VoL 6, No.2, 1970, pp. 89-170. He is currently engaged in a
study of astronomy and physics from Kepler to Newton.
11
�The Myth of Virgil's Aeneid*
By JACOB KLEIN
It is impossible to read the Aeneid without being constetntly reminded of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Nor can
one read the Aeneid without becoming aware that the
poem intends to glorify Rome and Rome's imperial and
pacifying power under Caesar Octavian Augustus. All of
you, I think, and also all Virgil commentators agree on
these points. Let me quote two ancient ones.
Servius, 4th century A.D., has this to say: "This is Virgil's purpose: to imitate Homer and to praise Augustus
in the light of his ancestors" (Intentio Vergilii l1aec est,
Homerum imitari et Augustum laudare a parentibus).
Macrobius, 5th century, explains: Virgil
held his eyes intently upon Homer in order to
emulate not only Homer's greatness but also
the simplicity and power of his diction and its
quiet majesty. Hence the multifarious magnificence of the various personages among his heroes;
hence the intervention of the gods; hence the
weight of mythical details; hence the natural way
of expressing passions; hence the tracing back
of the origin of monuments; hence the elevation
of his metaphors; hence the ringing sound of
his rolling diction; hence the climactic splendor
of single incidents.
This "sweet imitation," says Macrobius, leads Virgil to
the point of even imitating Homer's vices.
We have to note that these ancient commentators attribute to Virgil a double purpose: not only is it his intention to praise Augustus, his imitation of Homer is, according to them, also an end in itself.
Let me give you a series of examples of what these commentators call Virgil's imitation of Homer. I shall quote,
in an English version, lines from the Iliad and the Odyssey
and corresponding lines, again in an English version from
the Aeneid.
Odyss. XII, 403: "But when we left that island and no
other land appeared, but only sky and sea, then verily the
son of Kronos set a black cloud above the hollow ship,
and the sea grew dark beneath it." Aen. III, 192: "After
*A
lecture given at St. John's College in Annapolis on February 25,
1966.
12
our ships gained the deep, and now no longer any land
is seen, but sky on all sides and on all sides sea, then a
murky rain-cloud loomed overhead, bringing night and
tempest, while the wave shuddered darkling." This is
repeated in Aen. V, 8. (Note that Virgil does not mention
Zeus, the son of Kronos.)
Iliad VIII, 16: "Tartaros ... as far beneath Hades as
heaven is high above the earth." Aen. VI, 578: "While
Tartarus' self gapes with abrupt descent and stretches
twice as far, down through the shades, as the heavenward
gazing eye looks up to Olympus and the firmament."
(Note the change from a one to one ratio to a two to one
ratio.)
Iliad VI, 305: Theano, wife of Antenor, priestess of
Athene in Troy, prays "Lady Athene, that dost guard our
city, fairest among goddesses, break now the spear of
Diomedes, and grant furthermore that himself may fall
headlong before the Scaean gates." Aen. XI, 483: The
Latin matrons implore Juno: "0 mighty in arms, mistress
in war, Tritonian maid, break with thine hand the spear
of the Phrygian pirate [that is, of Aeneas], hurl him prone
to earth and stretch him prostrate beneath our lofty gates."
Iliad I, 234: Achilles swears, in enmity towards Agamemnon: "verily by this staff, that shall no more put forth
leaves or shoots since at the first it left its stump
among the mountains, neither shall it again grow
green ...." Aen. XII, 206: Latinus swears, in friendship
towards Aeneas: "even as this scepter shall never again be
dressed in light foliage and put forth branch and shade,
since once in the forest it was hewn from the nether
stem . ..."
Iliad XVI, 249: "So spake he [Achilles] in prayer, and
Zeus, the counsellor, heard him, and a part the Father
granted him, and a part denied." Aen. XI, 794: "Phoebus
heard [the prayer of Arruns about Camilla], and in
thought vouchsafed that part of his vow should prosper;
the other part he scattered to the flying breezes."
Iliad IV, 122: "And he [Pandarus] drew the bow,
clutching at once the notched arrow and the string of
ox's sinew: the string he brought to his breast and to the
bow the iron arrow-head. But when he had drawn the
great bow into a round, the bow twanged and the string
sang aloud, and the keen arrow leapt" (namely towards
Menelaus who is not killed). Aen. XI, 858: The goddess
�December 1970
Opis, sent by Diana, "drew the fleet arrow from the golden
quiver, stretched the bow with grim intent, and drew it
afar, till the curving ends met each with other, and at
length, with levelled hands, she touched the pointed steel
with her left, her breast with her right and with the bowstring." (She aims at Arruns who is killed.)
Odyss. XI, 206: "Thrice I [Odysseus] sprang towards
her [his mother J, and my heart bade me clasp her, and
thrice she flitted from my arms like a shadow or a dream,
and pain grew ever sharper at my heart." Aen. VI, 699:
"Thrice, where he [Aeneas] stood, he assayed to throw
his arms round his neck [his father's neck]: thrice the
phantom fled through the hands that clutched in vain,
light as the winds and fleet as the pinions of sleep." But
we can also read in the second book of the Aeneid, verse
792: "Thrice, then I [Aeneas] strove to throw my arms
round her neck [the neck of Aeneas's wife's shadow]:
thrice the form, that I clasped in vain, fled through my
hands, light as the winds and fleet as the pinions of sleep."
Odyss. XIX, 562: "For two are the gates of shadowy
dreams, and one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory.
Those dreams that pass through the gate of sawn ivory
deceive men, bringing words that find no fulfilment. But
those that come forth through the gate of polished horn
bring true issues to pass, when any mortal sees them."
(Penelope is saying these words.) Aen. VI, 892: "There
are two gates of Sleep :-of horn, fame tells, the one
through which the spirits of truth find an easy passage;
the other, wrought smooth-gleaming with sheen of ivory,
but false the shades that the nether powers speed therefrom to the heaven above." (Virgil, the author, is saying
this.)
These examples can be multipled many, many times.
There would be no point for me to continue quoting. But
let us take notice of the fact that there is almost always
some weighty difference embedded in the otherwise completely analogous phrasing and imagery.
However the similarity between the Iliad and the Odyssey on the one hand and the Aeneid on the other goes
far beyond phrasing and imagery. Let me give you another
series of examples of what is called Virgil's imitation of
Homer.
When Odysseus arrives in Ithaca, Pallas Athene fills the
countryside with mist so that Odysseus cannot recognize
it. When Aeneas arrives in Carthage, Venus conveys him
in a cloud so that nobody can see him. Before meeting
with Penelope Odysseus is beautified by Pallas Athene.
Before meeting Dido Aeneas is beautified by Venus. A
young man, Elpenor, falls from the roof of Circe's house;
Odysseus sees his shade in Hades and buries the corpse
when he returns to the light of the day. The pilot of
Aeneas' fleet, Palinurus, falls from his ship and is subsequently killed by· a barbarous tribe; his shade is seen by
Aeneas in the nether world and his corpse buried later on.
Diomedes and Odysseus, two seasoned warriors, engage
in a spying mission at night, kill a quantity of Trojans
and bring their enterprise to a successful and glorious end.
Nisus and Euryalus, two young men, try to break through
the enemy lines at night, kill a quantity of Latins and
die gloriously but unsuccessfully at the end. The shade of
Ajax keeps a contemptuous silence when facing Odysseus
in Hades. So does the shade of Dido when confronted
by Aeneas in the nether world. In point of fact, innumerable episodes in the Aeneid have their analogues in the
Iliad or the Odyssey. There are exceptions, as, for instance,
the diverse prophecies addressed to Aeneas, the transformation of the Trojan ships into mermaids in Book IX and
the role of the warrior maid Camilla. Camilla has her
analogue, however, in Penthesilea who, although not to
be found in Homer, appears in many classical Greek texts
and is mentioned by Virgil himself (I, 491). There is
parallelism between Menelaus, Paris, and Helen on the one
hand, and Turnus, Aeneas and Lavinia on the other, whatever the difference between these personages and their
relationships. There is parallelism between Achilles and
Patroklos on the one hand, and Aeneas and Pallas on the
other, again whatever the difference betwen these pairs.
To the catalogue of ships in the second book of the Iliad
corresponds the catalogue of the Latin armies in the
seventh book of the Aeneid. To the funeral games in
honor of Patroklos correspond the games in honor of
Anchises. Three times does Achilles circle the city of
Priam in hot pursuit of Hector, while Aeneas covers five
circles on the plain around the city of Latinus in hot
pursuit of Turnus. To the shield of Achilles fashioned by
Hephaistos upon the insistence of Achilles's mother corresponds the shield of Aeneas fashioned by Vulcan upon the
insistence of Aeneas's mother. But the difference here is
13
�The College
great: on Achilles's shield are moulded Heaven and Earth,
Peace and War, Marriage and Litigation, Work and
Leisure, and all the bounties of the earth; on Aeneas's
shield are shown the glorious deeds of the Romans culmi·nating in Octavian's victory at Actium.
What is the significance of this persistent and detailed,
yet unfaithful "imitation"? In other poems, written before
the Aeneid, especially in the Bucolics, Virgil also imitated
his Greek predecessors, especially Theocritus, But this
imitation involved only the general pattern, the general
mood and style of the poems and hardly any of their details. The tradition tells us that Virgil, in his younger
years, conceived the plan to write an epic poem devoted
to the glory of Rome but that he gave up that plan hecause he found the task too difficult. In his later years he
took it up again, prodded by Augustus, perhaps, and
worked on the Aeneid for eleven years-until his death.
It is in this period that what is called his imitation of
Homer flourished supremely. The question we face is just
this: why was it necessary for Virgil to imitate Homer to
the extent he did? The ancient commentators I quoted
in the beginning were late commentators. Their opinion
that one of the purposes of the poem was the imitation
of Homer and their implied opinion that such an undertaking was in itself praiseworthy were not shared by Virgil's contemporaries, we are told. His contemporaries re~
proached him for borrowing too much from Homer. Virgil is reported to have answered them, proudly and enigmatically, that it was easier to steal from Neptune his
trident and from Hercules his club than to steal a verse
from Homer. What did he mean by that?
Let us go back to the unquestionable purpose of the
Aeneid. It is the praise of Augustus and the projection of
an exalted vision of the Roman world. What is the background of this praise and this projection? The answer is:
a century of civil disorders and wars, beginning in 133
B.C., after the end of the Punic and Spanish wars, and
a passionate and widespread desire for peace. Peace is
finally restored by Octavian in the year 31. Let me quote
from a modern critic, Edward Kennard Rand: "To Virgil's contemporaries, hardly any religious or political event
could have had a more spectacular importance than the
closing of Janus' temple [which act signified peace] twice
in the reign of Augustus, once after the victory of Actium
[over Antony] and once in the year 25 ... Only once be-
14
fore in all Roman history had this happy event occurred,
namely, at the completion of the First Punic War." This
peace is based on Roman rule under Caesar Augustus.
And the origin of this Roman rule is the great subject of
Virgil's epic endeavor.
But how to attack so vast a subject? Let us understand
Virgil's predicament. We, today, have an easy way of dealing with such a subject. To praise deeds or events, we call
them "historical." We say: an historical meeting or an
historical battle took place on such or such a day. In saying this we mean to pay tribute to the importance of that
meeting or that battle. The adjective "historical" is used
as a superlative which confers to an event a transcendent
rank and the laurel of undying glory. But to Virgil-and
not to him alone-the medium of praise is not History
but Myth. For only the glowing light of a myth is able
to illuminate the intrinsic unintelligibility of human deeds
and sufferings. To write an epic poem on the grandeur of
Rome means, therefore, to construct a myth. To use a
Greek word familiar to Virgil, it means to p.vOo1rou:.Zv.
Most myths are anonymous. They are there, filling,
mirror-like, the horizon of human lives with splendid or
dark or sometimes terrifying figures that bring to pass
wondrous and awesome events. But there are also
myths attached to names, to names of "mythmakers/' as,
for example, to Homer, to Hesiod, to Plato. Can one compete with these mythmakers? Can one invent "new"
myths? In fact, did those mythmakers I have just mentioned invent theirs? Did they not merely imitate or
modify or transpose myths in existence long before them,
just as the Greek tragedians did? How, then, shall Virgil
go about it? Virgil has before him a plethora of legends
related to various sites and monuments in Rome and Italy.
The legend of Aeneas himself, of Aeneas the Trojan, the
source of Roman stock, is well known in Roman lands.
Can these legends lend themselves to form the nucleus
of the myth Virgil is after? Must not other myths be taken
into consideration? Virgil himself seems to have cherished
the myth of the succession of the ages of mankind. Let
us consider this myth briefly.
Hesiod tells it in his Works and Days. Five generations
of men have so far succeeded each other: first the golden
one, in Kronos's time, when men lived as if they were gods,
abundantly, without hard work or pain, without suffering
from old age; then the gods created the second generation,
�December 1970
of silver, far worse than the first, shortlived, troublesome,
lacking piety; then came the age of bronze, when men were
terrible and strong, destroying each other; then Zeus created the fourth generation of hero-men, who are also
called half-gods; they besieged seven-gated Thebes and
fought before Troy for the sake of lovely-haired Helen;
those who did not perish in carnage and war were settled
by Zeus in the islands of the blessed, at the extreme end
of the world, with Kronos, freed from bondage, as their
k;ng; finally carne the age of iron, in which we live now,
in which the sense of right and wrong has been almost
entirely lost, in which force reigns and vengeance and
weariness; but Zeus will destroy this generation of mortals
also. This story of the ages of men can also be found ill
the Book of Daniel, supposedly written some hundred
years before Virgil and in all probability unknown to him,
but still symptomatic for the myth's universality and influence. In the second chapter of this book Daniel interprets a dream King Nebuchadnezzar had had. According to this interpretation the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar
is the kingdom of gold, of power and strength and glory;
it will be succeeded by another, presumably of silver,
which in turn will be followed by a kingdom of brass;
then will come a fourth kingdom, that of iron and clay,
in which kingdom men "shall not cleave one to another,
even as iron is not mixed with clay"; at last the God of
heaven will set up a kingdom which will stand forever.
So much, then, for the myth of the ages of mankind.
But Virgil also knew the oriental and Greek doctrines
of the Great Year. The Great Year is the time it takes for
all stars and all planets to return to the same position,
with respect to us, that they once occupied. This time
constitutes an age, an alWv. Once this age reaches its completion, a palingenesis occurs and a new aiWv begins,
identical with the pr-eceding one. This doctrine was also
preserved in the collection of oracles of the Cumaean
Sibyl, which oracles constitute the books of Sibylline songs
widely diffused among the people. The cycle of cosmic
life, the al~v, was divided into ten great months. The end
of each of these months and the transition into a new one
was supposed to be announced by a celestial sign. The
sun grew pale after the murder of Julius Caesar, and it is
reported that the apparition of a comet during the funeral
honors rendered to the victim was interpreted by a soothsayer to ;ndicate the end of the ninth cosmic month and
the beginning of the tenth. Some amalgamation between
the doctrine of cosmic cycles and the myth of the four or
five ages of mankind must have occurred in the course of
time. Each cycle repeats the succession of ages, from the
golden to the iron one. We witness this in Virgil's fourth
Eclogue in the Bucolics, which, I hope, most of you have
read. Let me quote a few lines from it: "Now is come the
last age of the song of Cumae; the great line of the centuries begins anew. Now the Virgin too returns, the reign
of Saturn returns; now a new generation descends from
heaven on high." The Virgin is Astraea or Justice, last
of the immortals to leave the earth. The eclogue is addressed and dedicated to Asinius Pollio, a patron of Virgil,
who was elected consul in the year 41 and phyed a decisive role in the reconciliation between the two mighty
leaders, Marc Antony and Octavian, at Brundisium in
the year 40. But the emphasis in the eclogue is on a child
"in whom the iron brood shall first cease and a golden
race spring up throughout the world." The new age
shall begin in the consulship of Pollio and the mighty
months will then commence their march. The babe shall
have the gift of divine life and rule over a world pacified
through his father's virtues. His cradle shall pour forth
flowers for his delight. Goats will come to the milking
unbidden and the ox lie down with the lion. "On wild
brambles shall hang the purple grape, and the stubborn
oak shall distil dewy honey." The serpent will be no more,
and the false poison-plant perish. Any lingering traces of
human crime shall gradually disappear. In the beginning
these traces will still be visible-in sailings across the seas,
in the building of walls around towns, in the cleaving of
the earth with furrows. Another Argo shall be manned to
seek the golden fleece, "and again shall a great Achilles
be sent to Troy." But when the child will have become
a man,
the trader shall quit the sea, ... every land shall
bear all fruits .... The earth shall not feel the
harrow, nor the vine the pruning hook; the sturdy
ploughman, too, shall now loose his oxen from
the yoke. Wools shall no more Jearn to counterfeit varied hues, but of himself the ram in the
meadows shall change his fleece, now to sweetly
blushing purple, now to saffron yellow; of its own
will shall scarlet clothe the grazing lambs.
15
�The College
of the myth of rebirth which tells of the return of the
days of Saturn, of the golden age, after completion of a
cosmic cycle and the beginning of a new alwv. Aeneas will
land on Saturnian soil, in Latium. King Latinus, who rules
"over lands and towns in the calm of a long peace" and
himself descends from Saturn, will tell Aeneas, an offspring
of Jupiter: "be not unaware that the Latins are Saturn's
race, righteous not by bond or laws, but self-controlled of
their own free will and by the custom of their ancient
god." Evander, the "good man," king of the Arcadians,
who is going to ally himself with Aeneas at precisely the
spot where Rome shall stand, will recount to Aeneas the
origins of Saturnian rule:
This prophetic poem is written in a dark and oracular
vein, imitating, perhaps, the Sibylline songs. The identity
of the child has remained a controversial subject among
scholars. The preponderant opinion tends to recognize in
the child a son of Asinius Pollio. Christian interpreters
considered the fourth Eclogue as a prophecy of the
Messiah, saw in the child Jesus, the Christ, and in Virgil
a pagan Isaiah. Not by chance does Virgil play the role
of Dante's guide and mentor in Hell and Purgatory. It is
conceivable that the Sibylline oracles, re·assembled after
the genuine ones had burned with the Capitol in the year
83, might have contained some Jewish oracles reflecting
the spirit and the substance of Isaiah's prophecy and that
Virgil might have experienced their spell. What seems
indubitable is that the fourth Eclogue expresses the overwhelming longing for a New Beginning, a new age of
Peace. The mythical idea of the completion of a cosmic
cycle and of a return to the happy days of Kronos, the
days of Saturn, seems ever-present to Virgil's mind.
We thus perceive the factors which determine the
composition of the Aeneid devoted to the glories of Rome
and to the bounties of Peace under the aegis of Caesar
Augustus. The legend of the Trojan hero Aeneas, the
ancestor of Roman power, would become part and parcel
16
In these woodlands the native Fauns and
Nymphs once dwelt, and a race of men sprung
from trunks of trees and hardy oak, who had
no rule nor art of life, and knew not how to
yoke the ox or to lay up stores, or to husband
their gains; but tree branches nurtmed them and
the huntsman's savage fare. First from heavenly
Olympus came Saturn, fleeing from the weapons
of J and exiled from his lost realm. He gathave
ered together the unruly race, scattered over
mountain heights, and gave them laws, and chose
that the land be called Latium, since in these
borders he had found a safe hiding-place [from
the Latin verb latere ]. Under his reign were the
golden ages men tell of: in such perfect peace
he ruled the nations; till little by little then crept
in a race of worse sort and duller hue, the frenzy
of war, and the passion for gain.
And before the final triumph of Aeneas, Juno, Aeneas's
implacable enemy, will yield to destiny, but will request
this from Jove: "command not the native Latins to
change their ancient name, nor to become Trojans and be
called . Teucrians, nor to change their tongue and alter
their attire: let Latium be, let Alban kings .endure through
ages, let be a Roman stock, strong in Italian valour: fallen
is Troy, and fallen let her be, together with her name."
Jove will grant Juno's wish, and Rome's future will be secure. Under Caesar Augustus the reign of peace will begin
anew.
But is all this sufficient to account for the composition
of the great Roman epic poem? Is this tl1e myth of the
Aeneid? Have we not overlooked a crucial point in the
very conception of the poem, to wit, that the epic poem
itself, while embodying a myth, cannot help reflecting the
age it belongs to? But are not the great cosmic cycles, the
alwv", identical? Do not in each of them the Argo, and
Troy, and Caesar reappear? It is with respect to this point
that a Platonic myth becomes of utmost importance to
Virgil. It can be found in Plato's dialogue The Statesman.
The interlocutors in this dialogue are the Stranger from
Elea and a young man, a namesake of Socrates. The
�December 1970
Stranger tells the myth:
During a certain epoch god himself goes with the
universe as guide in its revolving course, but at
another epoch, when the cycles have at length
reached the measure of the allotted time, he lets
it go, and of its own accord it turns backwards
in the opposite direction, since it is a living being
and is endowed with intelligence by him who
fashioned it in the beginning.
Thus, we read further, "the universe is guided at one
time by an extrinsic divine cause, acquiring the power of
living again and receiving renewed immortality from the
divine artisan, and at another time it is left to itself and
then moves by its own motion ...." Young Socrates asks:
"But was the life in the reign of Kronos ... in that previous period of revolution or in ours?" The Stranger answers:
No, the life about which you ask, when all the
fruits of the earth sprang up of their own accord
for men, did not belong at all to the present
period of revolution, but this also belonged to the
previous one. For them, in the beginning, god
ruled and supervised the whole revolution, and
so again, in the same way, all the parts of the
universe were divided by regions among gods who
ruled them, and, moreover, the animals were
distributed by species and flocks among inferior
deities as divine shepherds, each of whom was
in all respect the independent guardian of the
The Stranger summarizes his tale in the following way:
Now as long as the world was nurturing the
animals within itself under the guidance of the
Pilot, it produced little evil and great good; but
in becoming separated from him it always got on
most excellently during the time immediately
after it was let go, but as time went on and it
grew forgetful, the ancient condition of disorder
prevailed more and more and towards the end of
the time reached its height, and the universe,
mingling but little good with much of the opposite sort, was in danger of destruction for itself
and those within it. Therefore at that moment
the god, who made the order of the universe, perceived that it was in dire trouble, and fearing
that it might founder in the tempest of confusion
and sink in the boundless sea of diversity, he took
again his place as its helmsman, reversed whatever had become unsound and unsettled in the
previous period when the world was left to
itself, set the world in order, restored it and made
it immortal and ageless.
This is the myth of the Stranger in Plato's Statesman,
of which I have read to you only a small part. It changes
the old myth of the cosmic cycles, which repeat themselves and remain identical, in a significant way. Dia-
grammatically this can be shown as follows:
Old pattern:
creatures under his own care, so that no creature
was wild, nor did they eat one another, and there
was no war among them, nor any strife whatso-
ever.
The Stranger goes on to describe how god himself was
the shepherd of man in that age.
And under his care there were no states, nor did
men possess wives or children; for they all came
to life again out of the earth, with no recollection of their former lives. So there were no states
or families, but they had fruits in plenty from
the tr·ees and other plants, which the earth furnished them of its own accord, without help
from agriculture. And they lived for the most part
in the open air, without clothing or bedding;
for the climate was tempered for their comfort,
and the abundant grass that grew up out of the
earth furnished them soft couches. That, Socrates, was the life of men in the reign of Kronos;
but the life of the present age, which is said to be
the age of Zeus, you know by your own experi·ence.
Pia tonic pattern:
C7
CJ
The identity of the cycles in the Platonic pattern is, as it
were, intermittent. And the reversal of the direction can
be best seen at the beginnings of two consecutive cycles.
What is important for us to see is this: to be able to
accomplish his work, Virgil has to adopt this Platonic
myth and to disregard its highly comical and self-refuting
context. This adoption determines the composition of the
Aeneid and, by implication, Virgil's true relation to Homer.
The age of Homer is the age of Zeus, an age characterized
by calamitous expeditions, disastrous wars, anarchical diversity. Its beginning is reflected in the Iliad and the Odyssey,
its climax reached in the Punic wars. The content of
the Homeric poems has to be understood as a derived
one. What underlies this content is the reversal of
the preceding age of Kronos. Virgil's epic of Rome will
have to reverse this reversal. It cannot avoid reproducing
the main features and the single episodes of the Greek
work, but it will reverse their order, shift the emphasis in
them, exchange the nature and the role of the leading per-
17
�The College
sonages; for the age of Jove is but a mirror-image of the
age of Saturn. Does that mean that Virgil is bound to
imitate Homer? No, on the contrary, it is Homer who
cacnnot help imitating Virgil or, if you please, cannot help
imitating the epic poet of the preceding Saturnian age,
who is identical with Virgil. That is why there has to be
so much unfaithful resemblance between the Aeneid and
Homer's work. Virgil's own relation to the epic poem of
the preceding age constitutes, it seems to me, Virgil's
myth of the Aeneid. This is what he must have meant
when he declared that it was easier to steal the club of
Hercules and the trident of Neptune than to steal a verse
from Homer. A poet of the god-led Saturnian age is incapable of stealing verses from a Javian poet, however
excellent this Jovian poet may be.
It might be objected that the Platonic myth, as a Greek
myth, adopted by Virgil, is itself a product of the Jovian
age. I venture to think that Virgil considered words of
sages, words of philosophers as not subjugated to the dominion of the age in which these words were uttered,
just as Tartarus and Elysium are outside the sway of the
ages. It may be worth while to report to you what an
unknown hand has inscribed into a manuscript of Donatus's Lite of Virgil (Donatus himself wrote in the fourth
century A.D.): "... although he [Virgil] seems to have
put the opinions of diverse philosophers into his writings
with most serious intent, he himself was a devotee of the
Academy; for he preferred Plato's views to all the others."
Let me sketch briefly the way the reversal of the J
avian
order is accomplished in Virgil's poem. First of all, the
Odyssey precedes the Iliad here, as every commentator
since Servius has remarked. But, as we shall see in a
moment, the first six books, which correspond to the
Odyssey, still belong to the old Homeric age. When
Aeneas and his men arrive in Carthage, they face a basrelief on the temple of Juno which depicts the Trojan
war and all the events described in the Iliad. Their past
is before them. But this past also casts a shadow on
Aeneas's sojourn in Carthage. Aeneas falls in love wi-th
Dido, who corresponds to both Calypso and Circe and
resembles both Medea and Cleopatra. Aeneas's passion for
this woman shows his lingering affinity to the Javian age,
to which Carthage itself, Rome's eternal foe, belongs. A
violent separation from Dido becomes necessary, a separation consummated only in Elysium, when the golden
bough, the gift to Proserpine, is planted by Aeneas on the
threshold of the land of joy, the abode of the blest in the
nether world. There, in Elysium, Aeneas sees the shade of
his father, while Odysseus, in Hades, meets the shade of
his mother. There Aeneas is shown by Anehises the future
of Rome, while Odysseus, in Hades, is told of the past and
the present, except for the prophecy of the seer Teiresias.
When Aeneas is leaving Elysium, a decisive event occurs,
challenging our imagination. I quoted earlier the passage
in the 19th book of the Odyssey and the corresponding
18
passage at the end of the 6th book of the Aeneid about
the two gates of sleep, one of horn through which true
dreams pass and one of ivory through which false visions
and shades issue forth. Anchises dismisses the Sibyl and
Aeneas by the ivory gate (porta que emittit eburna). How
shall we understand these words? Is Aeneas, the pious
Aeneas, led on by divine power, a false dream? Is the
grandeur of Rome, Aeneas's treasure and burden, a melancholy illusion? Or do not these words, uttered at the very
center of the poem, rather symbolize a cosmic reversal in
the structure of the universe, marking the transition from
the age of Jove to the reign of Saturn? In Greek, the
words for "horn" and for "ivory'' are attuned to the
mean~
ing of "fulfilment" and of "deception." Not so in Latin.
Aeneas emerges from the nether world a changed man. A
re-birth has taken place. His passing through the gate of
ivory transmutes its function. From now on the poem
changes its character, too. As the poet himself says:
"Greater is the order of things that opens before me;
greater is the task I essay."
The task is greater indeed. The poem has to describe
the beginning of the golden age. This beginning is marred
by the inherited features of the preceding one, the iron
one. Violence and fury will display themselves. -Under
Turnus's leadership, Amata's predilections and Juno's help,
the Latins and their allies will oppose the Trojans, aided
by the Arcadians and Etruscans. A new Trojan war will
rage in a reversed order. This time it will end with the
victory of Aeneas, the new Hector, over Turnus, the new
Achilles. After this victory there will be reconciliation between the Trojans and the Latins according to the terms
agreed on by Jove and Juno. There will be reconciliation
between Jove and Saturn, too. From then on Rome will
begin its tumultuous ascent, until she reaches the height
of Augustean peace.
The tradition has it that Virgil, when he had finished
(or almost finished) writing the Aeneid, wanted to burn
all he had written. Augustus himself is said to have prevented this from happening. We may surmise that Virgil
knew this much about his myth: its truth depended on
the actual destiny of Rome. And, prophet that he was, he
foresaw the future pax romana, the future Roman peace,
more often than not immersed in a sea of corruption, of
monstrous crimes and dismal anarchy. We should be
grateful to Augustus, though. For even if the gate of
ivory may have preserved its Homeric character, the nobility of Virgil's attempt and the boldness of his mythical
VISIOn make us bow our heads and raise our minds.
Jacob Klein has been a Tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, since
1938. He was Dean of the College from 1949 to 1958. He received
his Ph.D. degree from the University of Marburg, Germany. He is
the author of Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra
(translated from the German), Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1968; and A Commentary on Plato's Meno, University
of North Carolina Press, 1965. His "Introduction to Aristotle" may
be found in Ancients and Moderns, Basic Books, 1964.
�NEWS ON THE CAMPUSES
SANTA FE STUDENT CENTER
NAMED IN HoNOR OF PETERSONS
TI1e student center of St. John's in
Santa Fe has been named the Peterson
Student Center in honor of Mrs. Clemenhne Peterson of Baltimore and her
late husband, Duane L. Peterson.
President Weigle and members of
the Board of Visitors and Governors
participated in the unveiling of a
plaque on the building on October 2nd
honoring the Petersons for their services to the College. Mrs. Peterson came
from Baltimore to attend the program
on the Santa Fe campus.
Before his death in 1963, Mr. Peterson was Chairman of the Board of
Peterson, Howell & Heather, Inc., director and member of the Baltimore
National Bank, and director of the Industrial Corporation of Baltimore.
He was president of the Baltimore
Association of Commerce in 1952-54,
and he was a member of the Executive
Committee of the Greater Baltimore
Committee, Inc., in 1959-61.
In the area of education 1 he was Vice
President of the Association of Independent Colleges in Maryland, a trustee of Boys' Latin School, a trustee of
Ripon College, and a member of the
Board of St. John's College.
Mrs. Peterson is making a gift of
$1.25 million to St. John's College over
a period of years to cover most of the
cost of the student center, which
houses the main library, dining hall,
auditorium, coffee shop, art gallery,
music room, and student and faculty
lounges. The building was part of the
first construction at Santa Fe in 1964.
However, donations at that time fell
short of the amount needed, so it was
necessary for the college to borrow
money to pay for the construction.
About $539,000 of the $2 million construction cost has been repaid. Mrs.
President Weigle shakes hands with Mrs. Clementine Peterson of Baltimore after ceremonies
naming the student center in Santa Fe the "Peterson Student Center" in honor of Mrs. Peterson
and her late husband Duane L. Peterson, both former Board members.
Peterson's gift will enable the college
to pay most of the remaining debt,
President Weigle said.
"No member of the Board of Visitors and Governors has been more
faithful in attendance and in activity
on the College's behalf," Mr. Weigle
said of Mrs. Peterson at the plaque unveiling. ~~H.er keen interest in young
people and in education has made her
an ideal member and chairman of the
College's Visiting Committee. Now,
her exceedingly generous gift of this
building attests to her interest in education, her commitment to St. John's
College and its educational philosophy,
and her confidence in this and future
generations of young people. She
wished to make the gift in honor of
her husband, Duane, but we have finally prevailed upon her to allow the
Board to name the building in honor of
both Duane and Clementine Peterson.
This is most appropriate since in our
mind and hearts they are inseparable
in their dedication and their service to
this College."
With Mrs. Peterson at the ceremony
were her niece, Mrs. Lowell S. Peterson of Arcadia, California, and her children Duane L. II and Mary Gay.
In 1968 Mrs. Peterson established
the Duane L. Peterson Scholarships for
outstanding juniors at St. John's.
19
�The College
CAMPUS NOTES
Ford K. Brown and John S. Kieffer
were elected honorary alumni during
Homecoming activities in Annapolis.
Mr. and Mrs. Wiley Crawford are
now living at 964 Old Santa Fe Trail in
Sant" Fe, New Mexico 87501.
Mrs. Mary P. Felter, Annapolis director of public information, was
chosen to appear in the 1970 edition
of Outstanding Young Women in
America. One of 6,000 young women
who contribute to the betterment of
their communities, professions, and
country, she is a graduate of the University of Maryland whose Alumni
Association nominated her for the
award.
Charles E. Finch is the Annapolis
director of financial aids and placement.
Robert A. Goldwin, Annapolis dean,
is editing a book ·entitled How Democratic is America: Responses to the
New Left Challenges to be published
by Rand McNally in the spring of
1971. (See also alumni news.)
Edwin Hopkins was co-chairman of
the United Fund campaign on the Annapolis campus.
David C. Jones and Mary Modrall
Burckmyer were married in Santa Fe
on Saturday, September 5th.
Aaron Kirschbaum and Danielle
Doyon-Dugal were married in Annapolis on Thursday, September 17th.
Thomas McDonald is on leave of
absence for 1970-71.
Robert A. N eidorf, director of the
Graduate Institute in Liberal Education in Santa Fe, discussed his Santa Fe
commencement address with members
of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara,
California, on October 9th. In his talk,
entitled "The Future and the Past," he
remarked that this country is endangered because many of its leaders
and young people lack "a sense of history."
Mr. and Mrs. John Sarkissian became the parents of a daughter, Julia
Araxie Shahan, on Saturday, September 19th.
Mrs. Virginia Schenck is a resident
20
head of Humphreys Hall, replacing
Mrs. Virginia West who accepted a
position with Kirkland Hall College on
Maryland" s E a s t e r n Shore. Mrs.
Schenck is the mother of alumnus
Peter B. Schenck.
Robert L. Spaeth, assistant dean in
Annapolis and city councilman, was
elected to the Maryhmd State Central
Committee of the Democratic Party on
Tuesday, September 15th.
Cornell University recently published Xenophon's Socratic Discourse:
An Interpretation of The Oeconomicus, by Leo Strauss, Scott Buchanan
Scholar in Residence in Annapolis. The
book is available through the College
bookstores.
SANTA FE STARTS
CONSTRUCTION ON NEW
OFFICE BUILDING
Construction has started at Santa Fe
on the ''Tower Building/' which
should help the College meet its needs
for classroom and residential space.
The new three-story structure will
provide room for offices, supplies, and
a section of the library, which are now
taking up space in Evans Science Hall
and a women's residence building.
Gifts and pledges have been received
from private foundations and individuals to cover the building costs and related expenses. Sewell and Stanton
President Weigle (right) shows a model of the
proposed new administration bui1ding at Santa
Fe to Mrs. Walter B. Driscoll, Board chairman,
and Vice-President J. Burchenal Ault. 111ey are
standing at the construction site at the foot of
Monte Sol. Photo by Lynne Waugh.
General Contractors of Santa Fe submitted the low bid of $499,975 for
construction. William R. Buckley of
Santa Fe is the architect. The building,
in modified territorial-style, will include
a portal and a bell tower. There will
be 18,700 square feet of floor space.
The contractor expects to complete
construction befor.e the opening of the
1971 fall term.
Gifts and pledges received for the
new building include $125,000 from
the Fleischmann Foundation, Reno,
Nevada; $100,000 from the Kresge
Foundation, Detroit, Michigan; real
estate from John Murchison of Dallas
valued at $200,000; $125,000 from a
member of the Board; $25,000 in a bequest from the late Miss Flora Conrad
of Santa Fe, and $15,000 from the U.S.
Steel Foundation.
The structure will house offices for
the president, vice~president, dean, as~
sistant deans, treasurer, business· man~
ager, admissions director, and public in~
formation director, as well as the music
and science sections of the College's
library, space for printing and mailing
activities, a conference room and sup~
ply area.
The additional library space will accommodate up to 25,000 volumes, including three important music collections, which will become available for
general use for the first time.
POLITY REVISED
As noted in the President's Report
in the September issue of The College,
the Polity recently underwent its quinquennial revision.
"It has been a major accomplishment that every five years a mandatory
review of this document has been completed to the general satisfaction of the
various segments of the college community," wrote Pr.esident Weigle.
Major changes include the broadening of the concept of the Faculty and
the creation of the position of Provost
on the Annapolis campus. In addition
the alumni were officially recognized
as members of the College.
The Polity presently is being printed
and copies may be obtained by writing
�December 1970
the Public Information Office, St.
John's College, Annapolis, Md. 21404.
CLASS OF
1974:
ANNAPOLIS
One hundred seventeen freshmen
registered at St. John's in Annapolis in
September. They came from 26 states,
the District of Columbia, and Puerto
Rico. The largest percentages of stu·
dents came from Maryland, New York,
Virginia, and Pennsylvania. The youngest freshman was 15 years old at regis·
tration; the oldest was 28. Nine stu·
dents entered from the lith grade, and
26 had attended college before, five of
them at St. John's. There were five
veterans of the military service. Seventy
per cent came from public high school.
Most of the freshmen ranked in the
top fifth of their secondary school class.
Five were National Merit Scholars, 16
were National Merit semi-finalists, and
eight received Letters of Commendation.
Three freshmen are children of
alumni, nine are siblings of earlier St.
Johnnies, and one is the wife of a
Tutor.
NEW MEXICO AUTHORS SPEAK
AT LIBRARY LUNCHEONS
The Santa Fe Book and Author
Luncheons were described in an article
earlier this year in The Christian Science Monitor as "the most popular
project in town." Several of the noon
programs have filled the largest dining
room available at Santa Fe's famous
La Fonda. Twenty-seven New Mexican
authors ha"e spoken at the nine lun·
cheons held the past two years. The
1970 fall series held on October 9th
and November 13th included novelist
Stanley Noyes, wildlife-writer Burdetta
Beebe, western-author S. Omar Barker,
photographer Todd Webb, bridge ex·
pert Betty Lind, and archaeologist
Douglas Schwartz.
The St. John's College Library Associates Committee plans the programs
and obtains the speakers, who participate without charge. There are an estimated 160 writers living in the Santa
Fe vicinity.
Annapolis Dean Robert A. Goldwin (left) and Yale University law professor Alexander Bickel
converse with alumnus Arthur Kungle following Bickel's Friday evening lecture. Photo by James
Viiiere.
SHIP AHOY!
SAILING RETURNS TO ST. JOHN'S
Through the assistance, financial and
otherwise, of several friends and alumni
of the College, students in Annapolis
have four International 420's to sail in
College Creek and the Severn River.
The boats were purchased from Arnold C. Gay, a local business- and
yachtsman. Donors were Mrs. L. Corrin Strong, a member of the College's
Board of Visitors and Governors; Mr.
Coleman duPont, Mr. Richard H.
Hutchings IV, 1944, and Mr. William
W. Simmons, 1948, of Fawcett's Boat
Supplies, Inc.; Mr. and Mrs. Frederick
Fraley, Jr.; and the St. John's College
Alumni Association, Mr. Jerome La
Pi des (through the La Fides Foundation), and Drs. Theodore G. Osius
and Charles E. Iliff, Jr.
Additional donors to the boating
program in services and materials were
Mr. Charles Dell, 1924; Mr. Arnold C.
Gay; Mr. Frank R. Atwell, 1953; Mr.
David M. Saunders; Mr. Thomas Parran, Jr., 1942, Director of Alumni Activities; Mr. Charles T. Elzey, Treasurer, Annapolis campus; and Mr. Julius
Rosenberg, 1938, Annapolis Director
of Development.
Faculty advisors to the program are
Mr. John Sarkissian and Mr. Geoffrey
Comber. Mr. Jay Newlin, 1971, is
Commodore.
(See boat photo in alumni news.)
PRESIDENT WEIGLE's
AcTIVITIES ARE VARIED
President Richard D. Weigle represented St. John's College at the inauguration of Albert R. Jansen, S.J., at
the University of San Francisco on
February 27th. In August he spoke at
the Foxhowe Association of Buck Hill
Falls, Pennsylvania, about the College.
In September he attended the organizational meeting of the Maryland Independent Colleges and Universities Association, a group which will lobby for
state funds for private higher education. He also spoke at the dedication
of the new Preparatory School in Santa
Fe.
On October 24th Mr. Weigle attended a function in honor of Thomas
Mann at Princeton University. On October 30th he gave the inaugural
address at the University of Albuquerque whose new president is Francis
A. Kleinhenz.
21
�The College
Mr. Weigle attended a family observance in New Haven, Connecticut,
on September 11th when his father,
the Reverend Luther A. Weigle, celebrated his 90th birthday. Reverend
Weigle is Dean-Emeritus of the Yale
Divinity School, and was chairman of
the committee of biblical scholars who
issued the Revised Standard Version of
the Bible in 1952.
ANNAPOLIS HAS NEW
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
St. John's College in Annapolis has
a new artist in residence, Robert A.
Cole, a graduate of the University of
Maryland with a B.A. degree in 1966
and an M.A. degree in 1968.
Mr. Cole was a graduate assistant instructor in Design I and an instructor
in Applied Design I at the University.
He was also an instructor in the basic
drawing and design workshop at Dartmouth-Cape Cod during the summer
of 1969. From 1968 to 1970 he taught
ninth grade art at Annapolis Junior
High School.
His exhibitions include "Maryland
Artists," Baltimore Museum of Art,
1966; ((Gross Memorial Exhibition/'
College Park, Maryland, 1969; "Maryland Annual," Baltimore Museum of
Art, 1970; and a traveling exhibition
with Maryland Arts Council, 1970-71.
STUDENT NEWSPAPER
PUBLISHED IN ANNAPOLIS
A weekly newspaper, The Collegian,
is being published on the Annapolis
campus with senior Daniel Sullivan as
editor.
The newspaper has kept the students, Tutors, and officers of the College informed about campus and community happenings. Also published last
year, it prints any material that is submitted if signed by the author, subject
to editorial comment.
Editor Sullivan states that anyone interested in receiving the newspaper
should write him in care of the College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Subscriptions are $7.00.
22
Margaret Frame '74 and Tutor Hugh P. McGrath as the Hostess and Falstaff respectively in
the King William Players' production of "Henry IV, Part One." Photo by James Vi11ere.
STUDENTS PRESENT
SHAKESPEAREAN HISTORY
The King William Players of St.
John's College in Annapolis presented
"Henry IV, Part I" by William Shakespeare, Friday, November 20th, and
Saturday, the 21st, evening performances, and a matinee on Sunday, the
22nd. The performance, of more than
amateur excellence, was highlighted by
Tutor Hugh McGrath's surpassingly
flawless Falstaff, Tutor Robert Williamson's flaming, and, at the same
time, always clear and articulate Hotspur, and senior Harold Koenig's convincing transition from madcap to true
prince, Prince Hal.
Tutor Charles Finch played a stately
King Henry; junior Matthew Mallory
was an impressively menacing Worcester. Tutors J. Winfree Smith and
Malcolm Wyatt played Sir Walter
Blunt and Sir Richard Vernon respectively. Student players were Russ
Lipton as Pains; Margaret Frame, a
delightfully witless Hostess; Thomas
Casey, Douglas and Peto; Craig Mooring, an impressive Glendower; Richard
Ferrier, Mortimer; Lee Elkins, a jaunty
Gadshill; Lester Silver, Bardolph; Jane
Young, Lady Percy; J. Elliott Tourtelott, Northumberland; and David
Carey, First Carrier.
This smoothly cooperative effort of
the whole college community was ably
and strenuously coached, cajoled, and
directed by senior Michael Victoroff.
Tutor Robert Bart served in an advisory capacity. Playwright-Producer in
Residence Alvin Aronson served as Executive Producer; sets were by Richard
Gasparotti; and costumes were under
the direction of Sarah Harrison.
Following the Sunday performance
the cast joined with those of the audience desirous of it for a discussion of
the play. The discussion focused on the
differences between Hotspur's, Falstaff's, and Hal's understanding of
honor-honor as exclusive, all embracing, and unpolitic; as counterfeit; and
as sharable, civic, and political.
'I11e achievement of this performance was the culmination of efforts
beginning with more or less bimonthly
Shakespeare readings shared by faculty
and students the previous year, long
and careful planning, and finally, long
and painstaking, if not exhausting,
work in rehearsals.
Saturday night's performance was
sponsored by the women's group, The
Caritas Society of the Friends of St.
John's College in Annapolis. The Society also loaned the King William
Players $300 towards the purchase of
permanent stage fixtures. (L.B.)
�ALUMNI ACTIVITIES
HOMECOMING
Homecoming 1970 attracted more
than 230 alumni and their guests this
year, for activities which covered Friday and Saturday, October 16th and
17th. Co-chairmen Jack A. Nadal '57
and Temple G. Porter '62 arranged an
attractive schedule for the two-day period. Again this year, Dr. David Dobreer '44, of Alhambra, Calif., came
the greatest distance, accompanied by
Ills wrfe and two of their daughters.
Friday was a rather slow day, despite
events designed to attract the out-door
types. Dick Blaul '32 and Sam Shenker
'38 had arranged a golf tournament,
but only three players showed up: the
Cozzolinos, Gene '29 and Bob '63, plus
Ed Webby '63, made up the threesome. At the Boat House Frank Atwell
'53 and the members of the Boat Club
had the International 420's and Tempests rigged and ready, and several
alumni fought the gusty breezes in College Creek. So far as tennis was concerned, no activity was evident.
The lecture Friday night by Douglas
Allanbrook, Tutor, proved more popular than the athletic events, and the
"Welcome Aboard" party after the lecture was even more attractive. Carol
and Bill Tilles '59 were hosts for that
successful event.
On the basis of figures from the Saturday morning registration, attendance
was down from last year by about 20
per cent. What had been planned as
three seminars was condensed into
two, with Tutors Laurence Berns
Joseph P. Cohen '56, J. Winfree Smith:
Robert L. Spaeth, and Edward G. Sparrow, Jr., dividing the leadership tasks.
As was true last year, those who participated were generally enthusiastic
about keeping the seminar in the
Homecoming schedule.
soned students in a game of soccer.
A memorial service for Richard Scofield was conducted in Great Hall at
noon on Saturday, and was attended
by all members of the College community. The Dining Hall luncheon
proved popular, although seating was
at a premium at times. And as was
hoped, alumni and students were able
to talk with each other in a few cases.
The Annual Meeting of the Alumni
Association attracted the usual 60-70
members; the principal items of business were the election of new directors
and officers (see separate story); certain amendments to the By-Laws; the
voting of $500 to a memorial fund in
memory of Richard Scofield; and the
election of Ford K. Brown and JohnS.
Kieffer to honorary membership in the
Association.
After the Annual Meeting, a team of
alert, aspiring, but aging alumni met a
team of stalwart, strenuous, and sea-
Before the final whistle, however,
"harsh reality asserted itself," to quote
Athletic Director Bryce Jacobsen '42,
writing in the October 25th issue of
The Collegian. "Muscle, nerve, and
bone were deaf to the trumpet's call.
As usual, they marched to a cadence
all their own." The score: Oldsters-0,
Youngsters-4.
Some 80-90 alumni, faculty, and students then gathered in tl1e Library's
King William Room for a session on
graduate schools. Rogers G. Albritton
'45, of Harvard University's philosophy
department, was chairman of a panel
of alumni, all present or former graduate students. Each discussed his or
her own experiences, and then an~
swered questions from students.
Graduate students on the panel were
Sharon Bishop '65, Bryn Mawr Graduate Department of Social Work; John
F. Miller '62, Art and Architectural
History, University of Maryland; J.
William Rumpp '63, Department of
Physics, University of North Carolina;
Peter B. Schenck '59, Clinical Psychology, Catholic University, and
John I-I. White '64, Department of
Philosophy, New School (New Yark).
Former graduate students were Bruce
Collier '65, Lecturer, History of Science, Harvard; W. Bernard Fleischmann '50, D.ean, School of Humanities,
Montclair State College; Robert L.
Parslow '51, Graduate Advisor-Associate Professor, Department of General
Linguistics, University of Pittsburgh;
Vernon E. Derr '44, Physicist, Environmental Science Services, Department
of Commerce, Boulder, Colo.; Sydney
vV. Porter, Jr., '54, Vice President,
Radiation Management Corporation,
Philadelphia, and A. Stevens Rubin,
M.D. '66, an intern at Philadelphia
General Hospital.
23
�The College
Thanks go to Nancy Solibakke '57
for bringing this group of interesting
alumni together for the benefit of the
students.
For most alumni, the cocktail party
was an occasion to meet old friends
and to make new ones as they enter·
tained the faculty and members of the
senior class. As he has for several years,
Henry D. Braun '59 made the neces·
sary arrangements for food and beverages. Dinner in the gymnasium fol·
lowed the libations, and was the setting
for the presentation of the Awards of
Merit and a talk by President Weigle
(see separate story) .
The day's events were complete with
the party in the Coffee Shop after the
dinner. Nancy Solibakke and Stephen
Mainella '54, with last-minute help
from William D. DeHart of the faculty, arranged the attractive setting.
(Md.) executive and a director for
three years.
REUNION CLASSES
William R. Tilles '59 (left), newly-elected As·
sociation president, is congratulated by Darrell
L. Henry '61, former president.
tion in Annapolis and a new member
of the Board;
Directors:
NEW BOARD OF
DIRECTORS
The first Board of Directors to be
elected in accordance with the 1969
By-Laws was installed during the Annual Meeting on October 17th. The
By-Laws now provide for the election
of eight directors in even-numbered
years and four in odd-numbered years.
This year, in order to start the cycle
properly, eight directors were elected
for two years, four for one year.
Two-year officers and directors are
as follows:
President: William R. Tilles '59, program administrator with IBM Corporation in Washington, D.C., and treasurer of the Association for two terms;
Executive Vice President: Bernard F.
Gessner '27, recently retired from the
Coca-Cola Company, and a director
of the Association for two years;
Secretary: Mrs. Nancy C. Solibakke
'58, Executive Secretary of the State
Coordinating Office of the League of
Women Voters of Maryland and secretary of the Association for two years;
Treasurer: Temple G. Porter '62,
Manager, Learning Material Production, Westinghouse Learning Corpora-
24
William B. Athey '32, of the insurance firm of Athey, Oberg & Associates
of Baltimore, former member of the
Board of Visitors and Governors and
a long-time director of the Association;
Bernard Casassa '34, contractor and
property manager in the Washington,
D.C., area and long active in alumni
affairs, including service on the Board
of Directors;
Stephen Main ella '54, Chief of the
Housing Hygiene Section of the Anne
Arundel County (Md.) Department of
Health and a director for a number of
terms;
Jack A. Nadal '57, an executive with
the Navy Department in Washington,
D.C., and a director for several terms.
One-year directors are as follows:
Jerome Gilden '54, owner and operator of the Jerry Gilden Gallery in Baltimore and vice-chairman of the Baltimore chapter of the Association;
Mrs. L. Faye Polillo '56, a teacher at
the Key School in Annapolis and active
in the Annapolis chapter;
William W. Simmons '48, an officer
of Fawcett's Boat Supplies Company
of Annapolis and active in the Annapolis chapter; and
Edward C. Webby '63, a member of
the staff of the Anne Arundel County
Again this year the decade classes,
plus the 5th and 25th anniversary years,
were encouraged to have reunions at
Homecoming. In those classes in
which a member was willing to act as
coordinator, there was the best response. In all classes attendance was
smaller than in last year's reunion
groups.
The following alumni were present
for reunions: I920-John D. Alexander,
Sr., Mr. and Mrs. John H. Birely;
1930-Mr. and Mrs. J. Sprightly Kelly,
Mr. and Mrs. Arthur E. Landers, Jr.,
Claxton J. O'Connor; 1940-Wilbur
Matz (chairman); 1945-Rogers G. Albritton, Frank B. Marshall, Jr., 0. M.
Meredith, Gene P. Thornton; -1950Mr. and Mrs. Jack Ladd Carr, W. Bernard Fleischmann, Mr. and Mrs. James
H. Frame (chairman), Mr. and Mrs.
Robert A. Goldwin, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore W. Hendricks, George Hofrichter, Mr. and Mrs. Irwin T. Hunt,
John J. Logue, George Usdansky, Myron L. Wolbarsht; 1960-Lee and Hilda (Wozny) Freeman, Mary Gallagher, George P. Kell, Thomas J. and
Belle (Patterson) Maher, Ronald C.
and Katherine (Sauer) McGuirk, Elliot H. and Suzanna (Willis) Mini,
Ronald A. and Sarah (Robinson)
Munson, Frank B. Murray (chairman);
1965-Sharon Bishop, Bruce Collier,
Jethro M. Eisenstein and guest, Britt
R. Gilbert, Thomas D. and Pamela
(Mark) Harvey, Diana Katz, Aliena
(Dungan) Leonard, Bruce M. Preston
(chairman) .
SPRING TRIP TO
VIRGIN ISLANDS
As the old song says, "Three strikes
and you're out," so we're coming up to
bat for the last time. The game? To
try to interest alumni in group travel
somewhere. Our previous efforts were
�December 1970
Philip L. Alger '12 inspects Award of Merit
plaque with William R. Til1es '59.
Representing General Noble, Carey Jarman '17
accepts plaque from President Tilles.
Luther S. Tall '21 (left) receives plaque from
former Award winner Thomas B. Turner '21.
obviously ill-timed or unappealing; we
hope that this latest effort will prove
more attractive.
If you didn't see one of the flyers at
Homecoming, you will soon receive
one through the mail. Basically, the
trip involves eight days and seven
nights in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands.
The travel is on jet aircraft from Baltimore's Friendship Airport, the cost
covers almost everything during the
trip.
The dates for the trip are April 1724, 1971, just at a time when we can
all use some warm surf and sun after a
long, cold winter. Watch for the special announcement giving all details.
Meanwhile, make plans now to join in
the fun.
or to St. John's College, or for outstanding achievement in his chosen
field."
Philip L. Alger of the class of 1912
has been a professional engineer all his
life. He earned degrees of bachelor of
science from Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and master of science
from Union College, both in electrical
engineering. St. John's awarded him an
in-course master's degree in 1916, and
in 1968 he was honored by the U niversity of Colorado with the degree of
doctor of science. Forty years of his
long career were spent with the General Electric Company, during which
time he became a leading authority on
electric motors. He holds numerous
patents in that field, and has written
extensively about all aspects of mathematics, electricity, and professional
ethics, among other subjects. He received the Lamme Award from the
American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1958, and eight years later was
selected as Engineer of the Year by the
New York State Society of Professional
Engineers.
Alfred Houston Noble served in the
United States Marine Corps from
1917, when he graduated from St.
John's, until 1956, rising from Second
Lieutenant to Lieutenant General
while on active duty. Upon his retirement he was advanced to the rank of
General, the first St. John's alumnus
to hold that rank. He served in France
with the Sixth Marine Regiment dur-
ing t]le First World War, and in the
Treasury Islands, and at Choiseul Island, Bougainville, and Guam during
World War II. His many decorations
include the Distinguished Service
Cross, the Navy Cross, the Silver Star
Medal with Oakleaf Cluster, the Legion of Merit with Combat "V," and
the Croix de Guerre with Silver Star
and Diploma.
In 1827 Francis Scott Key helped
form a Society of the Alumni; in 1934
Luther S. Tall incorporated the Alumni
Association in its present form, served
as its president for an unprecedented
three consecutive terms, and was a
member of the Board of Visitors and
Governors during the critical years
1936-1938. Currently an account executive with radio station WMAR-FM in
Baltimore, he was formerly vice president of Wm. H. Lohmeyer, Inc., a
men's wear firm in Baltimore. For
years Mr. Tall has been a leader in
alumni activity in the Baltimore area,
even after stepping down from active
participation in Association affairs.
General Noble was the only honoree
unable to attend Homecoming, sending a telegram of regret from his home
in La Jolla, Calif. Carey Jarman '17,
winner of the Award in 1964, accepted
the presentation plaque for him. Dr.
TI10mas B. Turner, a classmate of Mr.
Tall, a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors, and the recipient
of the 1957 Award, made the presentation of Mr. Tall's plaque.
AWARD OF MERIT
An electrical engineer, a Marine general, and an advertising account execu-
tive were honored with the 1970
Alumni Award of Merit at Homecoming this year. This was a departure from
the practice of the past 20 years, and
reflects a decision by the Association
directors to increase the number of annual awards from one to not more than
three.
The Award of Merit, established in
1950, is given each year by the Alumni
Association to an alumnus "for distinguished and meritorious service to
the United States or to his native state
25
�The College
President Richard D. Weigle greets Frank B. Marshall, Jr. '45, William
W. Simmons '48, and the latter's mother, Mrs. Haven Y. Simmons.
Front, left, A. Willard Joyce '13, Mrs. Dunlevy C. Downs, Mr. Downs
'16; Rear, Guy D. Thompson '16, Walter W. Warner '14, Ernst Von
Schwerdtner '17, and Carey Jarman '17.
Graduate School forum in King William Room.
Bernard F. Gessner '27, new executive vicepresident of Association, waits for dinner.
ANNAJPOUS HOMECOMING
From left: Roland N. King '25, George F. Wohlgemuth '19, Mrs.
Robert A. Bier and Dr. Bier '19.
26
Mrs. Robert A. Goldwin (almost hidden, left) chats with Mr. and
Mrs. Irwin T. Hunt '50 during cocktail party.
�December 1970
Gene Thornton '45 (left), and Frank B.
Marshall, Jr. '45, join Alex Koukly '44 at Friday
night "welcome aboard" party.
From left: Bill Hendricks '73, his dad Theodore
W. '50, Mr. and Mrs. Irwin T. Hunt '50, and
Annapolis Dean Robert A. Goldwin '50.
California alumnus David Dobreer '44 (left)
renews old friendship with Henry T. Wensel,
Jr. '46.
From left, Julius Rosenberg '38, Cyril R. Murphy, Jr. '36, John D. Alexander, Sr. '20, Darrell L.
Henry '61, Earl R. Keller '21, and A. Willard Joyce '13.
Henry S. Shryock, Jr. '32 and Charles Dell '24
follow soccer game closely.
Mrs. Juliana Rugg, College nurse, Joan E. Cole '57, Gay (Patterson)
Ahlf '59, and Charlotte King '59, from left.
Sharon Bishop '65 and Tutor Edward G. Sparrow,
Jr.
27
�The College
ANNUAL GIVING
Since 1937 St. John's has insisted that
it is essentially different from other
colleges. That this has been and is true
was never more clearly shown than in
the past five years. While violence has
torn other campuses apart, St. John's
has remained an island of relative tranquility, a college whose sole purpose is
education, not political action.
Unavoidably, there is one area in
which St. John's is exactly like all other
colleges: in its financial need. And that
area is more critical for all colleges this
year than perhaps ever before. Unlike
some, St. John's has neither closed nor
"gone public"; like many, we have
raised fees this year and may have to
do so annually. Unlike some, we have
not frozen faculty and staff salaries; we
have tightened our belt and pared an
already streamlined budget.
And like almost all others are doing,
St. John's this year is asking parents,
friends, corporations, and alumni to
raise their level of giving. This year's
alumni campaign has a goal of $30,000,
for instance, up $5,000 from last year.
Appeals for alumni gifts will start
shortly after January 1st. We hope to
be able to terminate the campaign in
May. During that period you will be
approached in person, by 'phone, or by
letter; please respond as generously as
you can. Don't hesitate to give, however, because your gift can't be a large
one: the number of gifts is as important
to us as the total amount received.
If you want to take maximum advantage of tax benefits from your gift, you
might consider giving before December
31st. No matter what you give, or when,
the College will be most grateful.
CLASS NOTES
ers of the 175th Infantry Regiment during
Wor1d War II and later commander of the
29th Division of the National Guard, is the
second recipient of the Medal.
old block, was a star lacrosse player at Brown
University last season.
1914
Ernest L. Yost, M.D., as a member of the
50th anniversary class at Georgetown University, in June was honored with a Golden
Jubilee Citation by the University. Dr. Yost
received his medical degree from Georgetown
in 1920.
1916
Lt. Gen. Thomas E. Bomke, USMC (ret.),
and Mrs. Bourke were September visitors with
his brother, Clyde E. Bourke '18, at the latter's
Annapolis home, Gen. and Mrs. Bourke make
their home in San Diego, Calif.
1917
The Rev. Dr. J. Turnbull Spicknall was honored on Sunday, April 5th, 1970, by the congregation of the Woodside United Methodist
Church of Silver Spring, Md. In commemoration of his 50 years of clerical service, a portrait of Dr. Spicknall was unveiled at the
church.
1919
Robert A. Bier, M.D., has "retired" from
the post of chief medical officer of the Selective
Service System, and has joined the Medical
Division of the Civil Service Commission. Dr.
Bier has been very active in re-forming the
\Vashington chapter of the Alumni Association.
1921
Luther S. Ta11, an account executive with
radio station WMAR-FM in Baltimore, and
one of this year's AWard of Merit winners, was
featured recently in the station's newsletter in
a unique way. One page was devoted to a reproduction of Mr. Tall's senior class entry in
the !921 St. John's Rat-Tat.
1923
lviaj. Gen. WiHiam C. Purnell in October
received the Maryland Distinguished Service
Medal and a special commendation from the
Governor. Gen. Purnell, one of the command-
28
1924
Lt. Gen. Ridgely Gaither, USA (ret), Police
Commissioner of Annapolis, and Miss Anne
Stua1'i Harcourt were married during the summer in Silver Spring, Md. Dr. Robert S. McCeney, Gen. Gaither's roommate at St. John's,
served as best man.
1934
The August 2nd edition of The Denver Post
contained an interesting article by and about
W. Thetford LeViness of Santa Fe. A cerebral
palsy victim since birth, and confined to a
wheel-chair, Mr. LeViness, nevertheless, pursues a fu11-time career as a librarian at the
State Capitol in Santa Fe, a side-line as a freelance journalist, and with a companion travels
the Southwest in a Toyota Land-Cruiser to
gather material for his articles.
Gust Skordas, assistant archivist for the State
of Maryland, addressed the September luncheon
meeting of the Annapolis Alumni chapter, describing the work done in the Hall of Records.
1935
Morton S. Fine is one of the co·producers
of the new ABC-TV series, "TI1e Most Deadly
Game." A radio and television writer who
turned producer, Mr. Fine has among his
credits the movie "The Pawnbroker" and the
"I Spy" television series.
1938
William T. Ross in July was appointed manager of production planning for Celanese Fibers
Company in Cumberland, Md. An employee
of the company since 1940, Mr. Ross ho1ds a
bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering from The Johns Hopkins University.
1939
Frederick R. Buck's son Rick, a chip off the
1941
Paul R. Comegys, a general life insurance
agent in Trenton, N.J., has become a parttime instructor at Rider College.
1944
John Davis Hill received the degree of master
of arts in librarianship from the University
of Denver last June. He is currently employed
as Geology/Geophysics Librarian at the University of California at Los Angeles.
1945
Frank B. Marshall, Jr. has been elected president of the Annapolis Chapter of the Alumni
Association. Mr. Marshall is the manager of
an investment securities office in Severna Park,
Md.
Gene Thornton now writes the photography
column of The New York Times Sunday edition.
1950
Robert A. Goldwin, dean of St. John's in
Annapolis, was selected to appear in the 1970
edition of Outstanding Educators of America.
This national honor has been extended to Mr.
Goldwin on the basis of exceptional service,
achievements, and leadership in education.
Approximately 5,000 educators in all levels of
education are thus honored each year.
1952
Warren Winiarski and his wife, Barbara
(Dvorak) '55, Jive in the Napa Valley of California, where he is a winery consultant and is
developing a 40-acre Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard. I-Ie hopes his enterprise will produce
wines of excellence comparable to those of
BordeatL-x. The Winiarskis live on a mountain
top, and are initiating their three children in
winery and vineyard practices, according to a
recent letter.
1954
Folksinger and recording artist Glenn Yarbrough recently gave a concert at the Anne
�December 1970
Arundel Community College near Annapolis.
Many of Mr. Yarbrough's recent recordings
have been works by his long-time friend, Rod
McKuen.
1957
W. Douglas Weir, M.D., on July 1st started
full-time work on the faculty of the University
of Maryland School of Medicine as an assistant
professor of psychiatry. His decision to devote
more time to teaching was influenced largely
by what Dr. Weir terms "stimulating, exciting
changes in medical education."
1958
An interesting letter from Joseph M. Green,
M.D., brings us up to date on his career. After
St. John's he worked for a publisher for several
years, attending school at night, and then he
entered the State University of New York
Downstate Medical College. He now has his
medical education, a year's internship, and three
years' residency in Internal Medicine behind
him. This year Dr. Green is in the first of two
years of a fellowship in cardiology, and is acting director of the Systems Computer Laboratory, at Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn. He and his wife, the former Rachel Elfie,
have a son, Noah, age one.
1959
Christ Sagos has accepted a position with the
IBM Corporation working in Phoenix, Ariz.,
managing a small group on a highway contract
with the Arizona highway department. His wife,
Mary (Horton) '61, has completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin,
graduating this past August. T11e Sagoses have
daughters seven and nine years of age.
1960
Along with the invitation to celebrate their
I Oth reunion at Homecoming, the members of
the class received a questionnaire card from
chairman Frank Murray. The idea was to send
back a card if they couldn't attend in person;
six replies were received, and are summarized
below. (In each instance the last statement, set
in quotation marks, is in reply to the question,
"How have you changed?")
Betty (Beck) Bennett, husband David, and
their two girls live in Berkeley, Calif., and
Nirs. Bennett replies, "How not? I view cynicism and skepticism as necessities, find it
harder to hope. But I do."
Rosalie (Levine) Boosin, hllSband Joel, and
their daughter live in Brooklyn. Mrs. Boosin
is a teacher on child care leave, and writes,
"I feel older. I hope I'm wiser."
David Chang, wife Ann (Wisotzki) '63, and
their two children live in Acton, Mass., where
he labors in the military-industrial complex, and
from whence he replies, "for the better, thank
you."
John E. Gorecki, an instructor in English at
Macon (Ga.) Junior College, replies, "I am
married, and I am looking forward to beginning
a Ph.D. program in English shortly at some
Southern university."
John R. Jacobson is married, has two children, is Executive Director of Associated Colleges of the Mid-Hudson Area, lives in New
Paltz, N.Y., and answers, "more cynical."
John J. G. Lane, his wife Grace (Prevost)
'59, and their three children live in Del City,
Okla., where Capt. Lane is Chief of Research
and Analysis, Communications Computer Programming Center, Tinker Air Force Base. His
answer to the question about changing, "Aged
10 years."
Kendon and Patricia (Townsend) Stubbs
live in Charlottesville, Va., with their two sons.
Mr. Stubbs is reference librarian and a member
of the faculty of the University, while Mrs.
Stubbs is "former teacher and a future teacher
and full-time housewife." The Stubbses answer,
"perhaps most significantly by activity in community affairs and problems."
1962
Maria ,(FJaschberger) Hanneman writes that
her husband has received a one-year overseas
research grant, and that they will be living in
Ritterweg, Germany.
1963
Daniel T. Devereaux married Miss Helena
"'iskman last April, and is currently assistant
professor of philosophy at the University of
1 Virginia.
Roberta Lee (Invin) Wagner writes that she,
her husband, and their six children have moved
to Kansas City, Kans., where she has accepted
a one-year internship in clinical psychology at
the University of Kansas Medical Center. She
hopes to obtain her Ph.D. degree in clinical
psychology from George Peabody College, Nashville, Tenn., next summer.
1964
Jolin P. Hetland and six other IBM'ers left
that corporation in October 1969 to form Corstar Business Computing Company in White
Plains, N.Y. Mr. Hetland says, "we are not
getting rich, but we're having fun and learning
a lot."
1965
Daniel V. Madfredi is currently attending
graduate school at the University of Toronto.
Lt. Kerry Nemovicller writes that he is alive
and well "somewhere on the border" in Israel.
His card promises a longer letter when circumstances permit.
Antigone Pllalares (SF) and Ervin Lee
Moore were married on June 20th in Tanana,
Alaska. Mr. Moore is a sanitarian for the U.S.
Public Health Service. The Moores were scheduled to be transferred to Albuquerque in Sep·
tember, and she plans to return to school, perhaps to pursue a master's degree in education.
Mrs. Moore writes that Anne (Harlan) Plummer (SF) is also in Albuquerque, taking education courses at the University of New Mexico.
Jinna (MacLaurin) Rie is presently enrolled
at Goucher College in Towson, Md., as one
of 38 participants in Goucher's 5th Year Program in Elementary Education leading to the
degree of Master of Education.
1969
Meredith (Ardis) and G. Michael Anthony
now live in Eugene, Oreg. Mrs. Anthony this
past spring received her master's degree in
writing from The Johns Hopkins University.
Janet Gleason and Robert J. Benton were
married on June 13th, and now live in New
York City.
David H. Humphreys has joined the staff of
the Anne Arundel County (Md.) Department
of Social Services.
1970
John R. Dean, having traveled in Europe
and Greece this summer, has settled into his
studies in comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts.
Joanne Murray is a teaching assistant in the
Deparbnent of Physics and Astronomy at the
University of Maryland.
Adrian E. Pols is currently employed by the
Anne Arundel County (Md.) Department of
Social Services.
In Memoriam
Dennis G. Glew in August was appointed an
instructor in history and classics at Moravian
College, Allentown, Pa. A Ph.D, candidate at
Princeton University, Mr. Clew holds an M.A.
degree in classics from that institution, and
studied at the Albertus-Magnus University in
Cologne, Germany, last year.
Bruce Collier, a June recipient of a Ph.D.
degree from Harvard University, now lectures
in the history of science there.
Vivian T. Ronay and Theodore L. Barry III
were married during the summer, and make
their home in New Yark City.
1925-J. GoRDON BASSETT, Baltimore,
Md.
CARTER D. MESSICK, Annapolis,
Md., October 5, 1970.
1968
1965-TRAcY S. YoUMANs, Portland,
Oreg.
1909-BusnROD B. HowARD, Charlestown. S.C., August, 1970.
1934-ROBERT
CRANE
{LEATHERBEE)'
New York City, July 2, 1970.
Daniel L. CJeavinger (SF) and his wife,
Anne (Bancroft) SF '69, have returned safely
from Peace Corps service in Peru. Mr. Cleavinger is now slated for active duty in the U.S.
anned forces.
1969-ANTHONY J. SNIVELY III, Cambridge, Mass., October 12, 1970.
29
�St. John's College in Annapolis
announces
Summelt' Confelt'ence Site AvaHable
Auditorium, dining hall, dormitories, classrooms
(301) 263-2371, ext. 14
The College
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
Second-class postage paid at
Annapolis, Maryland, and at
additional mailing offices.
�
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THE COLLEGE
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
Santa Fe, New Mexico
April 1971
�The College
Cover: John Locke, by Sir Godfrey
Kneller. Inside Front Cover: McDowell
Hall, Annapolis. Inside Back Cover:
Statue of Virgil, by Benedetto Antelami (?), Mantua, Palazzo Ducale,
ca. 1215.
The College is a publication for
friends of St. John's College and for
those who might become friends of the
College, if they came to know it. Our
aim is to indicate, within the limitations of the magazine form, why, in
our opinion, St. John's comes closer
than any other college in the nation
to being· what a college should be.
If ever well-placed beacon lights
were needed by American education
it is now. By publishing articles about
the work of the College, articles reflecting the distinctive life of the mind
that is the College, we hope to add a
watt or two to the beacon light that is
St.John's.
Editor: Laurence Berns
Managing Editor: Mary P. Felter
Alumni Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant: Maurice Trimmer
Art Editor: Daniel Sullivan, '71
The College is published by the
Development Offices of St. John's
College, College Avenue, Annapolis,
Maryland 21404 (Julius Rosenberg,
Director), and Santa Fe, New Mexico
(J. Burchenal Ault, Vice President);
Member, American Alumni Council.
President, St. John's College, Richard
D. 'Weigle.
Published four times a year in April,
July, October, and December. Second-class postage paid at Annapolis,
Maryland, and at additional mailing
offices.
VoL XXIII
April 1971.
No.1
In the April Issue:
e
St. John's College Asks John Locke Some Questions,
by Robert A. Goldwin
.........
1
Logic and Reason, by Edward Sparrow
11
News on the Campuses
22
Alumni Activities
30
�St. John's College Asks John Locke
Some Questions*
By ROBERT A. GOLDWIN
John Locke has been dead now for 265 years, but his
truth goes marching on. And, unfortunately, so does his
untruth. This is a matter of deep concern to us, for
to the extent that this nation is a Lockean society, our
strengths ·and our weaknesses are related to the truth
and the untruth ·of the teachings of John Locke-which
still go marching on.
As many of you know, I attended St. John's College
as a student for four years, and that means that I sat
through more Friday night lectures without understanding
what the lecturer was talking about than most of you
have yet had the opportunity to do. When the time
came for me to start lecturing here, I resolved that if I
accomplished nothing else at least I would do my utmost
to be clear. It is not for me to say whether this lecture
will be profound or elegant, but I do not hesitate to claim
clarity. I tell you this in advance so that you will know
this will not be one of those incomprehensible presentations that cannot be grasped no matter what effort the
listener makes. Whoever listens will understand.
My subject, indirectly, is St. John's College and the
liberal arts. My subject, very directly, is the political
teaching of John Locke, especially his teaching concerning
the state of nature. The connection of the two will be
made clear, I promise, before the end. The lecture will
culminate in two questions directed to John Locke.
But if this lecture is to have the advertised clarity, there
is something you must do. You must ask the right
question as I tell you about Locke's state of nature.
To ask the right question is a key to learning, as this
College knows full well. Asking the right question is
the foundation of this curriculum. You know, for example,
that the simple, one-word question, "Vv'hy?" is often
incomparably useful. Asked with good timing, asked about
*This was Mr. Gold\vin's first Formal Lecture to St. John's College
as Dean; given in Annapolis, October 16, 1969. Copyright © 1970
by Robert A. Goldwin. All rights reserved.
an assertion that ought to be challenged but rarely is,
the perceptive "Vfhy?" can transform your thinking and
lead you into entirely new paths.
But "\Vhy?" is not the question I advise you to ask
about Locke's state of nature. The question I have in
mind is longer-in fact, twice as long. It is the question
of relevance. It is a question that should be asked,
eventually, about almost everything we study; but it
must not be asked too frequently, and it must not be asked
too soon; but it should be asked eventually. I have in
mind the simple, two-word, earthy, challenging, imperti.
nent question, l'So what?"
Locke tells us about the state of nature in a book on
politics. My advice to you is to be sure to ask him-but
he can't answer, so ask his book and ask me and ask
yourself-"So what?"
Let me show you what I mean. Some interpreters of
Locke say that for Locke the state of nature is a state
of war, as with Hobbes. Others say that Locke obviously
wrote to oppose and refute Hobbes and that according
to Locke the state of nature is a state of peace. I say
that Locke meant neither-the state of nature is neither
a state of peace nor a state of war but a state of a very
different kind, not necessarily characterized by peace or
war. And what should you say? You should say, "So what?"
To say, "So what?" is not the same as to say, "\Vho
cares?" "Vlho cares?" is a nonquestion because it ex-
presses a .lack of wonder, a lack of concern, a lack of
curiosity, a disclination to inquiry. "\Vho cares?" is the
false-face of an unquestioning mind.
On the other hand, to ask, "So what?" means to ask,
"tell me why I should care." That is a request for evidence that the subject is worth your time and thought,
not because you are lazy but because you want to spend
your thought on those things of the greatest importance
to the building of your life and the flourishing of your
mind.
I am certain that Locke wanted you to ask him probing
1
�The College
and impertinent questions. I am certain that he hoped
to attract just such questioning readers. In fact, since heas many of the great authors-had a towering ambition to
transform the world and thus save it from folly, he thought
the future safety and prosperity of mankind depended
on his attracting the most able readers, who would be
persuaded only by the strongest arguments and the most
useful teachings. He wanted readers who would say as
they read, "You say the state of nature, Mr. Locke, and
I say, So what?" And Locke wrote to instruct such readers
and rouse them to action-to lead them to a new understanding of politics and to stir them to build a new and
better kind of political society.
And I ask you, in the same spirit, to be sure to ask
of my teaching, the same disrespectful "So what?", because
I, in the spirit of Locke, also hope to guide you and
others away from a folly that endangers us all. The folly
I hope to warn you of has its origin partly in tbe teachings
of John Locke, one of mankind's most influential teachers
and greatest subverters. We must try to save ourselves
from him-but to do it we must first understand his
teaching, and what it has done to us.
Locke published the Two Treatises of Government, in
1689, soon after William of Orange and his Mary ascended
the throne as the culmination of what is known as the
Glorious Revolution of 1688. This is the same King
\Villiam in whose name King William's School was
founded in Annapolis in 1696. It has long been said that
Locke wrote the Treatises to justify the Revolution, which
involved deposing a legitimate monarch, a somewhat
ticklish matter to justify; as a matter of fact, Locke tells
us in his Preface that he is presenting this book "to make
good" the title of King \Villiam to the throne and "to
justify to the world the people of England" though they
did depose their former king. The evidence is clear, however, that Locke wrote most of the book about ten years
earlier, and did little more than add a few topical paragraphs and the preface just before publication in 1689.
2
The book was written as one work divided into Book
One and. Book Two, but very few readers study the
First Treatise now, and in fact the First Treatise is a
lengthy, somewhat tiresome analysis of an earlier book,
Patriarcha, by a man named Sir Robert Filmer. Filmer is
a deservedly little-known author who would be absolutely
and completely unknown, I believe, if Locke had not
chosen him as an explicit opponent. Filmer's book was,
however, in 1680, in England, a bestseller, and he was the
darling of the Establishment because he argued the divine
right of kings. Locke might have been thinking of publishing his refutation at the time he wrote it, about 1681, but
Algernon Sidney beat him to it; he published an attack
on Filmer and was hanged for his trouble. Locke, a
prudent man, put his manuscript away for another day.
In 1683 an Establishment was really an Establishment,
and since Locke was thought to be the sort of man who
would write something disagreeing with the divine right
of kings, and was friendly with men who were known
to be enemies of the throne, the king's police were after
him. Locke escaped to Holland just before they came
to arrest him, and remained there until his enemies
were dethroned and his friends put in their places. Even
so, he was so cautious that when he did publish in 1689,
with his friends occupying the highest seats of power, the
book was issued anonymously. All three editions printed
while Locke was alive bear no author's name on the title
page. Not until his death, in the codicil to his will, did
Locke acknowledge that he was, indeed, the author
of Two Treatises of Government. Was it, as it seems, a
dangerous book? Did it threaten anyone? If so, whom?
The Second Treatise begins with a one-page summary
of the First Treatise. I will not go into the substance
except to say that an argument that had little plausibility
as it issued from the pen of Filmer, that all kings rule
by right descended from Adam, is mercilessly refuted by
Locke. But Locke acknowledges a certain obligation to
mankind. If he has destroyed the thesis that all present
�April 1971
Thus, in the beginning of the Second Treatise,
we are presented with Locke's grand question:
What is political power?
rulers rely on-divine right-to justify their right to rule,
does he not have an obligation to explain how they do
have a right to rule others? Filmer had expressed or
attempted to express, with reasoned argument, what
everyone had agreed was the title of kings to political
power. Locke had shown that, when examined, Filmer's
arguments do not stand up. But how does anyone come to have political power? Some men rule
other men. By. what right? Is "all Government in
the World ... the product only of Force and Violence"?
Do "Men live together by no other Rules but that of
Beasts, where the strongest carries it"? The man who
answers yes to these question lays "a Foundation for
perpetual Disorder and Mischief, Tumult, Sedition and
Rebellion," and Locke would not want to be guilty of
those crimes. He acknowledges, therefore, that he "must
of necessity find out" another explanation of how government rises, what the origin of political power is, and
how we can know "the Persons that have it" (section l ).**
Thus, in the beginning of the Second Treatise, we are presented with Locke's grand question: What is political
power?
That question does not mean, "What is power?" The
emphasis is on the word political. Locke wants to distinguish political power from the other kinds of power
that men are observed to exercise over others. In the
course of the book he discusses the power of husbands
over wives, parents over children, and despots over slaves,
and he shows that although there are similarities and
that sometimes they are mistaken for and spoken of as
political power, they differ from political power. He
does this by showing what the origin is of political power,
\vho has it, for what duration, for \Vhose sake, for what
purpose, and on what terms.
He begins by defining political power as "a Right" to
make laws and enforce them "for the Publick Good" (sec-
** All
section references are to the Second Treatise.
lion 3). A man may make rules for others and enforce
them, but if he doesn't have the right to do so, his power
isn't political. Locke begins with his definition of political
power. The rest of the book is an explanation of what
that definition means.
His explanation begins this way. "To understand Political Power right," he says, "we must consider what State
all Men are naturally in" -"a State of perfect Freedom"
and "also of Equality" (section 4)-a state of nature. The
liberty and equality are but two faces of the same thing.
Men are born equal: nobody is set over you, authorized by
nature to tell you what to do. That is, your equality means
you are naturally free from subjection by others. In short,
the essential fact of the state of nature-the "State all Men
are naturally in"-the essential fact is that there is no
natural boss. What Locke means more than anything
when he says state of nature is, the absence of some "decisive powe; to appeal to" on earth. "Men Jiving together
... without a common Superior on Earth, with Authority
to judge between them, is properly the State of Nature"
(section 19).
In other words, the state of nature is a nonpolitical
condition. Why does Locke think we must first consider
men in a nonpolitical state in order to understand what
political power is? To this perplexity we must add that
the argument not only begins with consideration of man
outside of political society, it also ends that way. The
final chapter, the longest in the Second Treatise, is on
"The Dissolution of Government," and there once again
Locke discusses the state of nature. lli'hy does a book on
government begin and end with man without government?
Let us go back to Locke's earlier phrase: the "State all
Men are naturally in." Did you notice the tense' He
doesn't say "were"; he says, "are." Throughout the book7
the predominant use of the present tense in discussing the
state of nature is quite consistent. Somehow or other we
must figure out.how we are in the state of nature if we are
3
�The College
•
to understand what Locke wants to tell us about political
society.
Primitive, prepolitical men may have lived in the
state of nature, but the state of nature may exist now, too.
It does not have to be a primitive condition of mankind.
The first example Locke gives of men in the state of nature
is of heads of independent states-rulers, princes, presidents (section l4). In relation to one another, they are in
the state of nature because there is no "common Superior
on Earth with Authority to judge between them." President Nixon and President Pompidou are, according to
Locke, in the state of nature in relation to one another,
although they both are-you must admit-highly political
men. The state of nature need not be primitive or prepolitical.
Let me give another example gf the state of nature,
this time within political society.i};uppose that you are
walking alone down an isolated street in any large American city, at night, and off in the distance you see a figure
of a man approaching. It is ominously quiet; you see no
one else around; you realize that there are no homes on
the street; you recall that a police patrol passed five
minutes ago and so you have no hope that they will be
back for quite a while-not soon enough for you in
case you should need help. Now, then, as the two of you
approach, there is no common superior to intervene in
case of controversy \vho can intervene in time. For all
practical purposes, the two of you are in the state of
nature although, in another sense, you are also in civil
society.
In this state-of-nature situation you obviously have a
right to defend yourself if necessary, and even to injure
or kill the other if he attacks you. But what if he is
bigger? \Vhat if he is male and you are female? \Vhat if
he has a knif~i']The man approaching may be as frightened
of you as you are beginning to be of him, and he may
tum and go in the opposite direction; or you may do
the same before he does. But suppose the two of you
4
buck up your courage, and stride on toward each other,
and then pass with no incident whatever-was that the
state of nature? According to Locke's description of it,
emphatically yes. The state of nature is not defined by
the presence or absence of violence. It is defined only
by the presence or absence of someone with authority to
settle controversies that might arise.
The way Locke defines the state of nature, it cannot
be the opposite of the state of war, although it is very
different from the state of war. The state of war, Locke
says, occurs when force is used without right, without
authority (section 19). For instance, if the stranger on the
dark street pulled a knife and threatened you with it to
steal your wallet, that would be the state of war, for he
would be using force without right. The state in which
force is not used without right is a state of peace. The
definition of the state of nature has nothing to do with
whether force is used. The opposite of the state of nature
is not the state of war; it is civil society-a state where men
live together with a common superior to judge between
them. \A/lwever tells you that according to Locke the state
of nature and the state of war are opposites has the
matter in a hopeless jumble.
Locke's teaching is simply this: if there is no judge,
that's the state of nature. If there is a judge, that's the
state of civil society. If force is used without right, that's
the state of war. If force is not used without right,
that's a state of peace.
Of course, if you want to know whether the state of
nature would b.e peaceful or whether there would be
war, just think about that dark street. Is force more
likely to be used without right under such circumstanceswhether out of malice or fear or misunderstanding makes
little difference-when there are just the two of you
and no police around? Common sense and Locke agree
that war is more likely to occur in such a situation and
likely to end only with the escape, defeat, surrender, or
death of one of the parties. Thus, though the state of
�April 1971
\Vhat Locke means
more than anything when he says
state of nature is,
the absence of some "decisive power to appeal to"
on earth.
nature and the state of war are very different, one can
safely say that the state of war is very likely to occur m
the state of nature.
And so Locke tells us that the state of nature is "not to
be endured" (section 13). It is "full of fears and continual
dangers" (section 123). It is one long, dark, dangerous, unpatrolled city street, and who would not be willing
to make some sacrifices to change it for the sake of
safety?
Men seek to escape the state of nature and put themselves in civil society, to establish a common authority
to judge between them. In the state of nature, every
man must rely on himself to take care of himself; as
Locke puts it, in the state of nature every man must
have the executive power of the law of nature in himself.
In a state of nature, each of us has certain powers,
chiefly two: first, "to do whatsoever he thinks fit for
the preservation of himself and others within the permission of the Law of 1'-lature)); second, "to punish the
Crimes committed against that Law" (section 128). Every
man has a natural power to do what he must to save
himself, and a natural power to punish criminals. These
two natural powers of every man in the state of nature
become the source of political power-Locke says they are
"the original of the legislative and executive power of
civil society."
Now, there is an important difference to be noted
about these two fundamental natural powers, \Vhich are
crucial in Locke's description of the transformation from
the state of nature to ci,·il societv. The second natural
power, the power to pt:nish, we SL;rrender entirely to the
common superior when we enter civil society. \:Vhen the
civil ;:JUthoritY is funcboning. \\'e cannot take the law into
our own hJr;ds. But tl!e other natural power, "of doing
n·h:-tfS(JC\'Cr he thought- fit for the Preservation of himselr
(section 129), cannot be wholly surrendered. Locke says
not that "he wholly gives up" that power, but rather
thJt he gives it up "so far forth as the presen'ation of
himself, and the rest of that Society shall require" (section
129). Thus this remnant of the state of nature survives
in civil society. The effort of men to get out of the state
of nature and into civil society cannot be completely
successful. The fact that we do not give up the right
to judge what is good for our own safety stems not from
some opinion of Locke's or judgment of what he thinks
ought to be; he says that is the way human beings are.
The natural power of every man to judge what is necessary
for his own preservation is not wholly given up because
it cannot be wholly given up.
The natural powers of men in the state of nature are
transformed into the political powers of civil society.
Men contribute their natural powers to make political
power, and they do it for a reason-protection. The fundamental purpose is self-preservation. Since the purpose
was to remedy the uncertainty and the danger of the state
of nature by providing settled laws for the protection of
all the members, the exercise of unlimited power is not
and cannot be considered political power:
Absolute Arbitrary Power, or Governing without
settled standing Laws, can neither of them consist with the ends of Society and Government,
which lvlen would not quit the freedom of the
state of Nature for, and tie themselves up under,
were it not to preserve their Lives, Liberties, and
Fortunes; and by sbted Rules of Right and Property to secure their Peace and Quiet. It cannot be
supposed that they should intend, had they a
power so to do, to give to any one, or more. an
absolute Arbitrary Power over their Persons and
Estates .... This were to put themselves into a
worse condition than the state of Nature~ wl1erein
they had a Liberty to defend their Right against
the Injuries of others, and were upon equal terms
of force to ·maintain it. .. (section 137).
5
�The College
Locke, starting from the principle of self-preservation
as the rock-bottom foundation of civil society, shows again
and again that absolute power is no remedy at all for
the evils of the state of nature. To be subject to the
arbitrary power of an uncontrolled ruler without the
right or strength to defend oneself against him is a condition far worse than the state of nature: it cannot be
supposed to be that to which men consented freely, for
"no rational Creature can be supposed to change his condition with an intention to be worse" (section 131).
Therefore, Locke says, absolute monarchy is "no Form
of Civil Government at all" (section 90). In short, dictatorial power is not political power.
Political society is a human invention and contrivance,
but this artificial thing once made has a nature of its
own and hence has an applicable natural law. Society
is "acting according to its own Nature" when it is "acting
for the preservation of the Community" (section 149).
"The first and fundamental natural Law ... is the preservation of the Society" (section 134). The first obvious
consequence of this natural law of society is that all of
the political rights of its members must be consistent
with the preservation of the society. No society can concede to any of its members any political right that
would lead to its destruction. To do so would threaten
the preservation of its members, whose safety depends
so much on the protection the society affords them.
Now we come to a very great difficulty, and we must
be very attentive to make sure that Locke does not put
something over on us. Locke says the people are the
supreme power even after the government is formed. He
also says that the legislative power, .once established, is
and remains the supreme power so long as the government
continues to exist and function. Now how can there be
two supreme powers? If the government is supreme,
then we have not retained some natural power or right;
we have lost all of the freedom and natural power of the
state of nature, and then what is to keep government
6
within limits? On the other hand, if the people are
supreme, what authority will the government have in
time of crisis? And if the government cannot function
with authority, how will it fulfill the purposes for which
men established it in the first place? Here is Locke's
answer. It is true that the supreme power remains always
in the hands of the people, but not, Locke says, "as considered under any Form of Government" (section 149).
In short, both the government and the people are said
to be supreme, but not at the same time.
Under government, the supreme power of the people,
which cannot be transferred away, is completely latent
and never to be exercised until by some calamity or
folly the government might cease to exist. "This Power
of the People," Locke tells us, "can never take place till
the Government be dissolved" (section 149). As long as
government exists, the legislative is the actively supreme
power. But the power of the people. does not cease to
exist, it only remains latent, and if the government should
come to be dissolved, the supreme power will be wielded
directly and actively by the people.
Men transfer their natural powers to form political
society, to live under laws that are humanly enforceable
by an authority on earth set up by themselves. Political
power originates from the people, from their natural
powers, and it has for its purpose, their good: their saf~!j·
and well-being. Now, what is the situation, accordmg
to Locke, when the government misuses its powers, when
the ruler or rulers use their power tyrannically, for then
own benefit and not the good of the people? Locke answers
by comparing the good prince and the !)•rant.
·First he tells us that at some times the prince must
act without the direction of the law:
... the good of the Society requires, that se,-eral
things should be left to the cliscretion of him,
that has the Executive Power. For the Legislators
not being able to foresee, and provide, by Laws,
�April 1971
Whoever tells you
that according to Locke
the state of nature and the state of war are opposites
has the matter in a hopeless jumble.
•
for all, that may be useful to the Cemmunity,
the Executor of the Laws, having the power in
his hands, has by the common Law of Nature a
right to make use of it, for the good of the
Society . . . (section 159).
The executive may act not only without the sanction of
the law, he may also make the laws "give way" to his
power where blind adherence to them would be harmful,
and he may go so far as to act contrary to the law for
public good. "This Power to act according to discretion,
for the publick good, without the prescription of the Law
and sometimes even against it, is that which is called
Prerogative" (section 160).
The necessity for the executive's prerogative is obvious,
but the danger is no less obvious. The prerogative has
always grown most extensively in the reigns of the best
princes. The people trust a good and wise prince even
while he acts beyond the limits of the law, not fearing
for their safety because they see that his purpose is
to further their good.
But even the best princes are mortal and have successors, and there is no assurance that one of them, claiming the precedent, will not make use of the enlarged
prerogative to further his own private interests at the
peril of the people's safety. "Upon this is founded that
saying, That the Reigns of good Princes have been always
most dangerous to the Liberties of their People" (section
166).
According to this argument, what characterizes the
wisest and best princes is not their obedience to and
enforcement of settled law, but their service to the people.
The scope of executive discretion is limited only by the
proviso that it be used for the public good; a prince
"who is mindful of the trust put into his hands, and careful of the good of his People, cannot have too much
Prerogative" (section 164). But at this point, it seems to
me, we encounter a severe difficulty. Since tyrants have
always used "the public good" as their pretext for exceeding constitutional powers, "the good of the people"
seems a dangerously vague test of whether the executive
prerogative is being properly used.
The good prince and the tyrant are alike in that they
both act outside the law and even contrary to it; but one
acts for the good of the people and the other for his
own good. Is there some practical test to tell them apart?
And who can be entrusted to make that test? Locke
answers that the determination is made "easily" (section
161) and that the judgment lies with the people-"The
People shall be Judge" (section 240).
A tyrant is not simply one who uses political power
outside the law; the best princes do that. A tyrant is one
who pursues his own advantage at the expense of the
people's safety and well-being, by means of the power
they have entrusted to him. He uses their power to further
his advantage at their expense. He makes his good separate
from theirs; he takes himself out of their community. He
puts himself outside their society, into a state of nature
with regard to them. If he then uses force against them,
it is without authority or right; he thus places himself
in a state of war with them.
The tyrant, by this argument, wars on the people and
thus destroys their government and threatens their society.
The power he uses was entrusted to him by the people, but
only for other ends; and thus the power he wields is
not political power, and he is no longer a political ruler.
The people, naturally, defend themselves and their society,
and their resistance to him is perfectly consistent with
the preservation of society. The one who brings war again,
who literally rebels, is the tyrant, and the people who resist
him are acting as any men must who are in the state of
nature and subjected to the use of force without right.
Locke's teaching is addressed primarily to those who
hold political power, for they are the ones most likely
to fall into rebellion, and, he says, "the properest way
to prevent the evil is to shew them the danger and
7
�The College
injustice of it, who are under the greatest temptation
to run into it" (section 226). But the teaching is also
available to the ordinary run of men and Locke also,
clearly, has a teaching for them. For those who are ruled
rather than rulers, under any form of civil government,
Locke has a teaching of alert suspicion. A people who
know that they are the source of political power, that theirs
is the supreme power (even though latent), and that
they shall be judge of when the government has been dissolved by the prince, is more likely than other peoples
to insist on limiting political power. As James Madison
put it, "It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment
on our liberties."
What is Locke's teaching to the people? In the state
of nature, all men have the natural power to be the judge
of what is necessary to their preserVation. The right to
judge when your life is in danger cannot be wholly given
up to society. In a certain sense it is inalienable;· what
power can legislate out of a man the sense of danger
and the inclination to save himself? Locke says this right
to judge is reserved by all men "by a Law antecedent and
paramount to all positive Laws of men." But does this
provide an excuse for perpetual disorder? No, Locke says,
because "this operates not, till the Inconvenience is so
great, that the Majority feel it, and are weary of it, and
find a necessity to have it amended" (section 168).
Is the government threatening the saf.ety of the people?
That is the question of which the people shall be judge.
\Ve may consider it an extremely difficult question for
even the most highly trained, highly intelligent, and completely impartial judge to answer, but the people, Locke
says, answer it "easily." How? Not by reasoning, but
by feeling. \Vords and ideas do not influence such matters.
Arguments or doctrines have no effect, he says. "Talk
... hinders not men from feeling" (section 94). Natural
forces are unaffected by doctrines (sections 224 and 225).
\Vhether there will be resistance to the rulers depends
on what the people see and feel. \Vhen the great majority
8
of the people feel that their lives are in danger, "how they
will be hindered from resisting illegal force, used against
them, I cannot tell," Locke says. All governments feel
this "Inconvenience" and Locke calls it "the most dangerous state which they can possibly put themselves in"
(section 209), but then he adds that it is a state which
is very easy to avoid. The prince who understands this
matter avoids, as his greatest danger, allowing the people
to see and feel a threat from him to their lives, liberties,
and estates. He must make his good intention toward
them manifest, so manifest that the people see and feel
it. If he fails in this, and the people come to suspect him,
he may be able for a time to maintain his place by force,
but his political power is gone. Locke asks,
\Vhen a King has Dethron'd himself, and put
himself in a state of War with his People, what
shall hinder them from prosecutiRg him who is
no King, as they would any other Man, who has
put himself into a state of \Var with them
(section 239)?
The king is no king. The government is dissolved. The
prince is a tyrant, a rebel against society, and the people
use their power to resist the tyrant, to preserve their
society. Thus Locke's argument comes full circle, from the
state of nature and back.
\~That have we learned? \Ve all are presently in a state
of nature except to the extent that civil authority exists and
functions for our protection. It works and has force because we have contributed our natural powers to it. \Ve
give up the exercise of our own efforts at self-protection on
the understanding that civil society will do the job for us.
But human nature is such that we cannot give up all
of our powers to society. \:Ve are never entirely in civil
societv; we are never entirely out of the state of nature.
\Vhe~ situations arise such ·as the one· described earlier,
the dark cit)' street, we find that the natural powers are
�April 1971
"The Reigns of good Princes have been always most dangerous
to the Liberties of their People."
still there, and we will use them. And if the danger seems
to come not from a single stranger there in the dark but
from the political authorities, then we will react in the
same way. If we feel ourselves vitally threatened, we will
act, naturally, to preserve ourselves. A man who does not
is a kind of living corpse, a zombie, or-as Locke describes
a slave-so completely without the right to own anything
that he does not even have the first claim to his own life.
Locke sees this something held back, this vital and
ineradicable remnant of the state of nature, as the principal
clue to understanding what political society is. The inclination of self-preservation is thus, for Locke, the basis of
civil society.
The double strength ofthe teaching is obvious, and we
in this country have long been its beneficiaries: rulers
. who are very concerned not to make the people feel
threatened;. citizens who are alertly suspicious of every
action of their government, watching always to assure
themselves that their powers are used for their good.
In short, in nations taught by John Locke, limited government is likely to prevail, supported for opposing and
complementary reasons by those who govern and those
who are governed.
What, then, is the weakness of which I spoke? What
is the untruth? How can I call Locke one of the great
subverters of mankind? Let me respond first by reminding
you of another teaching you all know, or, in the case of
the Freshmen, soon will know. When Crito tried to
persuade Socrates to escape from prison, Socrates persuaded Crito that he must not escape-not even to save
his life when the rulers were about to take it-because,
he said, he was a child of the Laws, a slave of the Laws,
and therefore he must not injure them to save himself.
Socrates persuaded Crito-or at least silenced him-by
the argument that everything he was he owed to the Laws
of Athens.
But surely we cannot be persuaded of that, for if ever
there
W8S
a man whose essential being was not
O\\'ed
to
civil society, that man was Socrates. In fact, the death
sentence was pronounced because he would not give up
everything to Athens. Socrates held back something that
his nature would not allow him to surrender to the polis.
But compare what Locke says we hold back-lifeand what Socrates holds back-not mere life but the
examined life-and we begin to see the character of
Locke's subversion. It is a subversion by subtraction, by
diminution. For example, it is well known that Locke
defined property as "life, liberty, and estate." Many have
commented on how this definition expands and elevates
the concept of property. But consider, also, how Locke
debases and diminishes life and liberty by reducing them
to property. Locke impoverished everything he touched;
he was a kind of back-wards Midas. \Vhat does he tell us
of virtues: of temperance, courage, wisdom, justice? The
words hardly occur in his political book. What does he
write of morality, ethics, friendship, generosity? He doesn't
speak of them in his political book. It is as if to say by
his silence that these are not essential to an understanding
of the political, that they are not relevant to political
power.
Let us consider, as especially relevant for us of St. John's
College, a liberal arts college under liberal, limited government, what Locke says and fails to say about education
in his political book.
It would not be accurate to say that he does not mention
education, but it is true to say that he doesn't say very
much about it. He does speak of it in a chapter entitled
"Of Paternal Power," and there his purpose, chiefly, is. to
make clear the distinction of paternal power and political
power. To accomplish this distinction, he explains just why
it is and how it is that parents have a rightful claim to
authority over their children. The reason, it turns out,
is that children need guidance until they can "shift for
themselves." Once they can be presumed to have reached
the age of reason, that is, old enough to "shift for themselves," Locke argues that parents cease to have the right
9
�The College
to rule their children and even cease to have the power
to rule their children, except for those parents who have
property, and can control their sons by the prospect of
an inheritance.
Thus, when· Locke says that parents are "under an
obligation to preserve, nourish, and educate the Children,"
he means that they are under an obligation to teach
them to take care of themselves, to preserve themselves.
Here again we see Locke's amazing capacity to impoverish
everything. He reduces education to its lowest and most
basic aspect and connects it with self-preservation.
Finally, we must observe that Locke speaks of education, even in this modest form, only in the portions of
the book that have to do with the state of nature and the
law of natur-e. In the portion of the book that considers
political society and government, education is not discussed. In short, education is thought to be of no political
consequence; in a book that claims to set forth the origin,
extent, and end of civil government, education is not
worthy of consideration.
Now-need I urge you to ask, So what?
In a Lockean society, there is no essential place for
liberal education, for education understood as something
well beyond learning to "shift for yourself," for education
understood as necessary for the examined life rather
than mere life.
But perhaps I draw too much, too quickly, from Locke's
silence. Perhaps it will be more useful and more instructive
for us to leave it at a question, from all of us to John
Locke: In your society, what place would there be for
St. John's College?
I said at the outset that "this is a matter of deep concern
to us, for to the extent that this nation is a Lockean society,
our strengths and our weaknesses are related to the truth
and the untruth of the teachings of Locke-which still go
marching on."
The extent to which this nation is a Lockean society
10
is uncertain and debatable. I know we are not entirely
Lockean, for a purely Lockean civil society would not be
viable, could not survive its first hostile challenge. But I
return to Locke's strange Midas touch. Our greatest danger
and our greatest weakness seems now to be a widespread
malaise, an uneasiness that great things are lacking in our
political scheme of life, that in the midst of our unprecedented affluence we are the victims of a grave impoverishment. My conclusion is that Locke is in great
part responsible for both the affluence and the impoverishment.
But once again let me retreat from the assertion to
another question. To my first question Jet me now add
this one, which may be the key to everything: Is it true
that a man is in his natural condition when he is without
government?
Robert A. Goldwin has been Dean of St. John's College in An·
napolis since July 1, 1969. Previously he \VaS Associate Professor of
Political Science at Kenyon College and the Director of the Public
Affairs Conference Center at The University of Chicago and later
at Kenyon College, He is Editor of the Rand McNally Public Affairs
Series, the latest volume of which is entitled How Democratic Is
America? Responses to the New Left Challenge. The editor of
three readers in international relations, he is also the author of
"John Locke" in History of Political Philosopl1y (Rand McNaUy,
1963). In 1966 he \\'aS named a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow. He
was one of the planners and the first Director of the Graduate
Institute in Liberal Education of St. John's College in Santa Fe.
Mr. Goldwin graduated from St. John's College in 1950, and received
his Ph.D. degree from The University of Chicago.
�Logic
and
Reason*
By
EDWARD SPARROW
Significant of one of the attitudes prevalent in the
modern age is the frequent use by intelligent people
of the words "logic," "logical," and '1ogically" in a deprecatory sense. Vv e hear often of something being "all
very logical" bu ~ for all tha~ opposed to common sense.
\Ve hear people say that something or other follows "all
very logically" from something else, but is, nonetheless,
totally wrong. One sometimes hears the phrases "according
to that system of logic," "according to your logic," or
"according to the rules of logic which you adopt." And
one even hears remarks to the effect that "you can prove
anything with logic."
Simultaneously with the growth of the use of such
modes of expression arises a sort of obsession with the
emotional, the paradoxical, the irrational, and interestingly
enough, as if the depreciation of the logical were somehow connected with the depreciation of the public, the
intimate. Not only is logic thus put into the coffin of the
dry, the implacable, and the relentless. It is also, like a
public enemy, unceremoniously buried, and on its tombstone is inscribed "the misleading," "the false," the
"inhuman." Many do not even bother to look at the
tomb, for it has for them become "the irrelevant," that
is to say, "the meaningless.))
One thing, however, it is curious to note: the words
''reason," "reasonable," and '~reasonably" have not yet
become as thoroughly subject to the same depreciation,
although there are signs that such a development is not
to be unexpected. Now because the Latin ratio from
which we get "reason" translates in part the Greek logos,
which is of course the root of "logic," one would expect
that the neglect or odium attaching to the one
would necessarily attach itself to the other as well. And
so the differe~ce.in the esteem in which the two groups of
*A lecture given at SL John's College in Annapolis in 1961.
words are held makes an interesting subject of speculation. One is led to suspect that what should be a very
warm embrace between the science, logic, and its object,
reason, may be turning instead into the kiss of death;
or that logic, which, in at least one tradition has some
relation to life, has in the course of time become estranged
from reason, so that it resembles nowadays nothing
so much, in the manipulation of its symbols, as the rattling
of the dry bones in the valley of destruction.
·
Now it is not my concern to anatomize logic or to
discourse to you about Goedel's theorem and symbolic
logic, for my ignorance of these things is only matched
by my admiration for those who have mastered them.
Nor is it my concern to show that the properly mysterious
may be as much above the logical as love may be above
justice. But since the neglect or odium which attaches
itself to the "logical" in the minds of many has not
yet totally polluted their estimation of the "reasonable," I
should like to discover whether there may not be more
life in the logical than many would grant; to put it
another way: I should like to learn whether it may not
be a ghost of logic that so many have buried as false,
inhuman, and meaningless.
To this end, I should like us to begin by examining together and possibly criticizing a certain formulation of
the relationship between two quite distinct things, validity
and truth. For the understanding of the relation of validity
to truth which we shall examine lies very close to the root
of those estimates of logic as dry, false, and irrelevant. I
should then like to examine what people seem to be doing
when they argue and see what the implications of this
enterprise mav be. And if it turns out that we can say
something significant on these two themes, I should like to
combine them into at least a beginning of the understanding of hypothesis. Finally, I hope we can say something about the true and the false and that some relationship may appear between thought and, if I may
use the word, reality.
11
�The College
I. "Valid" is a term which in logic is predicated of arguments, inferences, and some of the "moods" of the
syllogism. And "true" is something which is said of
individual premises and conclusions. So there is no opposition between them. But a question does arise about their
relationship to one another. Vvhat is the relation between the truth of the premises of an argument and the
validity of the argument of which they are premises?
Or, more exactly, can there be validity without truth? To .
introduce the discussion I am going to read a few selections
hom some contemporary writers on logic in order that
you may see how the relation of validity to truth is
presently understood and in order that the position
which we shall examine this evening may be put in
front of us in the words of those who maintain it.
Augustus de Morgan in his book, Formal Logic, writes
as follows:
Logic has so far nothing to do with the truth
of. the facts, opinions, or presumptions, from
which an -inference is derived; but simply takes
care that the inference shall certainly be true, if
the premises be tme. Thus, when we say that all
men will die, and that all men are rational
beings, and thence infer that some rational beings
will die, the logical truth of this sentence is the
same whether it be true or false that men are
mortal and rational. This logical truth depends
upon the structure of the sentence and not upon
the particular matters spoken of. (p. 1)
Alonzo Church, in Introduction to Mathematical Logic,
says:
Traditionally (formal) logic is concerned with
the analysis of sentences or of propositions and
proof with attention to the form in abstraction
from the matter. This disti-nction between form
and matter is not easy to make precise immediately, but it may be illustrated by examples.
"Brothers have the same surname; Richard and
Stanley are brothers; Stanley has surname Thompson; therefore Richard has surname Thompson."
The argument, it may be held, is valid from
the form alone, independently of the matter, and
independently in particular of tlre question
whether the premises and the conclusion are in
themseh·es right or wrong. The reasoning may be
right though the facts be wrong, and it is just
in maintaining this distinction that we separate
the form from the matter. (p. 1)
Our own sophomore logic manual puts it this way:
12
Minor logic is therefore concerned only with
the formal validity of reasoning and not at all
with its factual (material) truth.
All these writers seem to consider logic, or, at best,
"formal logic," to be concerned with logical form; and
it would appear that a companion, if not a child, of
this logical form is something called validity, correctness,
logical truth, or, as in the case of Church, right reasoning.
And it would further appear that this element, while not
exactly opposed to truth, belongs, as it were, to another
and possibly higher realm than truth. This would be so
because of its close affinity to form, since form is traditionally a much nobler thing than matter; and truth
is merely a predicate of logical form combined with
logical matter. If, after all, one can show that the
"A-A-A" form in the first figure or the "p implies q; p
therefore q" form is valid regardless of truth of the
major and minor premises, then it becomes possible to
have a science of valid and invalid forms. And this knowledge, since it will bear on something necessarily prior to
any determination of content, will be of greater import
and significance than any knowledge of any particular
argument.
But before we go on to a more detailed consideration
of the relation between truth and validity, I would like
to try to justify very informally the remark that the
understanding of the relation between the valid and
the true which our authors have articulated lies close
to the root of those estimates of logic as false and
meaningless. If false premises can underlie a valid argument, logic will clearly be concerned with valid forms and
lose its concern for truth. It will come to consider the very
Jogoi through which we are human as unworthy of its
abtention compared to the symbols for wordless x's, p's
and q's which it will push around on paper. Formal deductive svstems will flourish, the authors of which, disavowing ~ny concern for truth, will ground their enterprise on valid inferential forms. Great enterprises of the
past, whose authors considered the validity of· their
reasoning as adding rather than subtracting from the
merits of their work, will be reinterpreted as "forrnalh·
deduotive systems" as arbitrary _in their starting points
as thos-e more recently constructed, essentially tautologous,
and unworthy of serious attention except as logical exercises. Lastly, in the eyes of many, a writer will tend to
become the more respected the less "logical" he is, for
being logical will have become synonvmous with bem;
consisknt with a certain set of arbitrarily assumed stdrtm~
points, i.e., with being valid, .and the self-e,·idence o;
premises will have become a question for psychology.
not logic. \Vhen the form will thus have swallowed the
matter, the valid annihilated the true, it will not be sucprising that the searcher for truth will look elsedlet
�April 1971
than in argument and reasoning, will canvass the emotional
in music and art, will seek it in nove1s, esoteric poetry, ·
and direct experience, and will ransack the private, the
intimate, and the irrational, for that essential kinship
to himself which he has given up the hope of finding
in the reason.
Now let us ask whether the relation between the validity
of an argument and the truth of its premises admits of the
simple solution offered by the writers mentioned, namely,
that validity and truth have nothing to do with one
another; that a valid argument may have false premises,
and that false premises can yield true conclusions.
Let us begin by looking at a very simple argument. Suppose you were to overhear the following conversation:
A:
B.
A:
B:
A:
Of course Socrates deserved to die.
Why?
He corrupted the youth of Athens.
He did not. He was trying to educate them.
So what?
You might be tempted to join in the argument. But
you might also be interested in analyzing it. In that case,
you would note the following reasoning:
A's argument: (Anyone who corrupted the youth of
Athens deserved to die.)
Socrates corrupted the youth of Athens.
Therefore Socrates deserved to die.
B's argument: (No one who tried to educate the youth
of Athens corrupted them.)
Socrates tried to educate the youth of
Athens.
(Therefore Socrates did not corrupt
them.)
A's reply:
(Someone who tries to educate another
may corrupt him.)
It is evident in the first place that A gives the minor
premise of his argument, that Socrates corrupted the
youth of Athens, as an answer to B's question, 'V\Thy did
Socrates deserve to die?" It is also clear that in doing
so he intends to give the reason for his conclusion that
Socrates deserved death. He thereby indicates his awareness that his bare assertion that Socrates deserved to die
cannot, since he is not God, compel the assent of B or
of anvone else without a reason. And he also shows his
aware~1ess that to refuse or to be unable to give a reason
to B, since they are on the same level, would be a sign
either of intole;able pride or of pure prejudice.
In the second place, it is evident that B recognizes
that A's argument must carry the day and determine the
question, even though to B's mind, the conclusion is
surprising and doubtful, unless it can be shown, and he,
B, will undertake to show it, that one of A's premises is
false. Else he would not argue with A. Since he accepts
A's implied major premise, that anyone who corrupted
the Athenian youth deserved death, he must concentrate
on proving the minor false. And this he does by trying
to prove that the contradictory of it is true. In other
words B also recognizes that A's argument will collapse
if one of his premises is proved false. And so B sets up
his own argument, the implied conclusion of which,
resting on his own implied major premise, is that Socrates
· did not corrupt the youth. Now B thinks that by having
contradicted A's premise, with a reason of his own, he
has established the falsity of it and hence has invalidated
A's argument.
A next, by his remark, "so what" implies that there
might have been a "so ... something," that B might
have produced an argument which would have invalidated
his own. But he also indicates that B has not in fact
done so. But why does B's argument fail in A's eyes?
Clearly it is not because A disagrees with B's minor
premise, that Socrates tried to educate the youth of
Athens, for he admits it. What A denies is that together
with the implied major, that no one who tries to educate
another can corrupt him, produces the implied conclusion,
that Socrates did not corrupt the youth. Now why should
A think that the argument fails to produce the conclusion? The form of B's argument is perfectly valid; it
is E-A-E in the first figure. It can only be that A thinks
that the major premise of B's argument is false. By saying
"so what?" he is in effect contradicting A's major by
impliedly asserting the truth of its contradictory, to wit,
that someone who tries to educate another may corrupt
him. And obviously if someone who tries to educate
another may corrupt him, the fact that Socrates tried to
educate the youth of Athens can in no way determine
the question whether or not Socrates corrupted the
youth. A thus recognizes that B's argument must also
collapse if the major premise of B's argument is false.
Now the interesting thing about this argument for
our present purpose is to note that in the minds of the
disputants there is a real relationship between a valid
argument and true premises. B recognizes, as does A,
that A's argument is no longer valid if one of his premises
can be proved false. And A recognizes, as B does, that
B's argument also collapses if one of his premises can be
proved false. In the minds of both, as, I daresay, in the
minds of all of us, when we are not thinking about
thinking, there is no possibility of such a thing as a
valid argument one of whose premises is false. \Vhat
makes A 1 S argument valid for him is his conviction that
his premises are true 1 and what makes the same argument
invalid for B is his conviction that one of them is false.
Validity, in the minds of these disputants, seems to be so
intimately related to truth as to be almost the offspring
of it.
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But, someone might say, whatever intimate relationship A and B might assert between the validity of an argument and the truth of its premises is of no consequence
as far as the formal logic of the argument is concerned.
The logical form of A's argument, A-A-A in the first figure,
is valid per se regardless of the truth of the constituent
premises. But we must then ask this person what he
means by "valid." He would reply, I believe, that a
valid argument is one the conclusion of which follows
necessarily from the form and relation to one another
of the premises regardless of their truth. Such necessity
would be called logical necessity and the argument would
be called logically true. Very well then, let us agree to call
an argument with true premises a good or sound argument
and one with the proper form but true or false premises
a valid argument. And let us concentrare on distinguishing
a valid argument from a sound argument.
If the valid is distinguished from the sound by the fact
that the premises of a valid argument may be either true
or false while those of a sound argument must be true,
· the validity of a valid argument obviously accrues to it by
virtue of the form in which it is cast. Let us then examine
a bare form of a valid argument, say A-A-A in the first
figure, one from which anything that could introduce the
true and the false has been removed. Now since the
matter has been left behind, and truth and falsity accrues
to a premise by virtue of form and matter, it would
seem to follow that both premises, MaP and SaM, are
beyond the true and the false. So let us inquire whether
the major premise, MaP is in fact beyond the true and
false.
A moment's thought will reveal to you that it is not
beyond the true and false. For only what admits the true
and the false can be contradicted. So that if the form
we have under study does not admit the true and the
false, it cannot be contradicted, any more than a pencil,
an eclipse, or an auditorium can be contradicted. And if it
cannot be contradicted, it can have no contradictory. And
this is very strange indeed. For if it can have no contradictory, neither can any given universal affirmative major
premise have a contradictory. Just as if area is denied to
circle as such, it must be denied of any given circle. For if
a given premise could have a contradictory, while the form
of every one of them all could not have one, the property
of having a contradictory would have to accrue to a given
one from the particular matter of which it was made
up. But the property of having a contradictory accrues
to a given one from its combination of quantity and
quality and not from the matter which makes it up.
And any given universal affirmative does have a contradictory. One is therefore forced to conclude that the
MaP form is not beyond the true and the false.
\Vell then, if it is not beyond the true and false, how
does it have the true and the false in it? It must be either
14
true or false but indeterminately neither. If so, it admits
of a contradictory, MoP. Now of two contradictories
it is well known that they cannot stand together. If one
is true, the other must be false and vice-versa. Suppose
MaP now to be false. To make that supposition is to
recognize that MaP has turned into MoP, its contradictory,
under our very eyes. For there is no motion of the mind
involved in going from the assertion of the falsity of one
contradictory to the assertion of the truth of the other,
To say that MaP is false is to deny MaP, and that very
denial is the assertion to MoP. To say that a statement
is false is to assert the contradictory of it. To think not
MaP is to think MoP.
Consequently it may be said that to consider MaP false
is to make MoP the major premise. But from MoP and
SaM in the first figure (both true), nothing follows.
Consequently if MaP is false, the argument is not valid.
And the satne thing can be shown for all the other
Can there be validity without truth?
moods of the first and other figures. Each one requires
for its validity that the premises be true. Consequently
the distinction which was set up between a sound argument which had true premises and a valid argument
which had premises which could be either true or false
and hence which derived its validity from the mere form
alone turns out to be specious: every argument with true
premises will be valid and every valid argument has true
premises and will be sound.
To illustrate this point with reference, this time, to
a specific example, let someone offer an argument in
A-A-A in the first figure with a false premise which he
asserts to be a valid argument regardless of the falsity it
contains. Thus someone may say in order to make this
point:
"Every duck is a man, and every man is a fowl. Therefore every duck is a fowl." One instinctively and rightly
wants to say, "No, that's not true. You're talking gibberish.
No duck is a man and no man is a fowl. Therefore the
�April 1971
conclusion doesn't follow (two negatives yield nothing)."
Let us have the courage to voice our protests to our
logician. Then indeed the argument does not prove the
conclusion and the example does not exemplify what
it was designed to exemplify. But our friend has not
given up, for he will say to us, perhaps a bit patronizingly,
"Sure, sure, I agree with you about the matter of these
premises, but what we're concerned with is the fact that
if every duck is a man and every m.an a fowl, then it
follows necessarily, logically necessarily, I might add, that
everv duck is a fowl. And it doesn't matter whether a
duck is in fact a man or a man in fact a fowl in order
for the conclusion to be formally necessary. Nor does
it matter whether we think of ducks, men, or anything
else. The form 'if all x is a y and all y is a z, then all
x is a z is eternally valid.' Now then, be a good fellow
and suppose that every duck is a man and every man
is a fowl. Don't you see that you must affirm that every
duck is a fowl?"
But we may then reply to this fellow, "Indeed, if it
were conceivable that every duck be a man and every
man a fowl, every duck would be a fowl. But what are
you doing when you say 'If every duck is a man,' and what
are you asking me to do when you ask me to 'suppose
that every duck is a man?' Have we not agreed that
those beings which are rational, featherless, terrestrial,
bipeds, of a certain average size, are called 'men', and
that those beings which are of another size, irrational,
winged, feathered, and aquatic, are called 'ducks'? And
are you not therefore supposing by your 'it' and asking
me also to suppose, that is, think, that all those things
which are rational, featherless, and terrestrial are also
irrational, feathered, aquatic, and smaller than themselves?
Are you not in short asking me to think the unthinkable?
You are, and I cannot do it. Nor can you, in my opinion,
in this case. or in any other case where you take premises
which you know to be false. The false, qua false is unthinkable and self-contradictory. As for your bare form, I have
already showed you that your premises have to be true,
and that your x's have to be in fact y's, and the y's in
fact z's before the form can be .valid. And that means
that your symbolism is impossible and misleading, for
the only thing that can distinguish x from y and y from
z is that none is either of the other two. But that is illegitimate; for by your 'if' you are asking me to suppose
that that to which any name, symbolized by x, has been
given, can also be that to which any other name, which
you symbolize by y, could be given. And that can't be
done. Let x be the scale of C sharp minor, and y the
Empire Stare Building. I cannot conceive, nor can you, of
that which is called the scale of C sharp minor being
that to which the name Empire State Building is given.
I can make the noises, if you wish me to, but nothing else.
And you would be the first to say that logic is not the
study of noises. You must devise a more accurate set of
symbols."
It is justified, therefore, to say that a valid argument
is impossible unless the premises be true and that validity
rests on truth. It can further be said that in any pure
logical form exhibited symbolically on paper, such as
A-A-A, there is a very restricted range of interpretation for
various symbols. For any S only a certain amount of M's
or P's are possible, namely those that can be conceived
as belonging with that S. For those M's and P's which
cannot be conceived as belonging with that S result in
a false premise, and, as we saw, if the premise is false,
the argument collapses. And conversely, for any M or P,
only a certain limited range of S's are possible, namely
those which can be conceived as being able to admit those
P's and M's.
It may also be said that since validity rests on truth and
Every argument with true premises will be
valid and every valid argument has true
premises and will be sound.
truth on form and matter, that validity rests on matter,
i.e., on the conceivability, compatibility and incompatibility of what is thought about much more than it does
on form. In fact, what the bare form SaM, MaP, SaP
really means is that if you think about anything P as
being predicated of something M, and that other thing,
M, as being predicated of a third thing, S, then you
cannot help thinking of that first thing P being also
predicable of S. The validity, in short, of Barbara rests
on the thinkability of predications, P of M and M of S,
and only where such predications are thinkable will
the form be valid. The dictum de omni as a principle
of the syllogism should therefore be properly formulated
as the cogitum de omni. And consequence, therefore, or
the property of reasoning with which logic is primarily
concerned, rests on what is thought about.
It is hence incorrect to think of every valid argument as
homogeneous with every other, such that Barbara, for example, could be the common form of all universal affirmative arguments in the first figure. The truth of one argu-
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ment is only like the truth of another, so that Barbara
only reflects the analogical identity of every valid argument in that form with e\'ef)' other. It thus only reflects
the identity of the activities that each mind goes through
as it in any given argument moves through the predications which lead to the conclusions. Similarly, the truth
of one statement is only like the truth of another, so that
SaP only reflects the analogical identity of every true universal affirmative to every other. Truth is not univocaL
In the last place we may go a bit further than do most
logicians who maintain not only that true premises produce true conclusions but also that false premises can
)~eld true conclusions. Since the false cannot yield the
true, true conclusions only follow from, if they follow
from anything at all, true premises. Furthermore, if as
we ha1·e said, the false, qua false, is unthinkable and selfcontradictory, a false premise will also disintegrate as
An hypothesis is thus a premise the doubt
about whose truth is to be removed by the
process called, appropriately, verification.
will a false conclusion. And so nothing will follow from
a false premise . and a false conclusion will not be a
consequence of anything.
*
*
*
*
*
II. Now Jet us return to the example of Socrates and
of his disputed deserving of death in order to explore
the implications of A's thinking of himself as giving
B a reason for his statement. You will recall that when
B asked A why Socrates deserved to die, A replied that
Socrates had corrupted the youth. In saying that, A
thought he was giving a reason for his statement. And
in A's argument, you will notice that after the premises
the word "therefore" occurs. "Therefore" is the same sort
of word as '-'thereat" or "thereafter." It is a compressed
prepositional phrase with a demonstrative pronominal
object "there" and a postpositive preposition "for." It
means, in short, "for this." For what? Clearly "for this
reason" is implied. A could just as well have said, "Sacra-
16
tes deserved to die, for he corrupted the youth of Athens."
Now a little reflection will Jeveal that Socrates did many
other things for which he did not deserve death, and that
if anyone other than Socrates were to have corrupted
the youth, he too should have met the same fate. Consequently 'Ne may say that although it is the whole predication or minor premise, Socrates corrupted the youth
that is the reason why Socrates is worthy of death, it i;
"corruption of the youth" that reveals why anyone, including Socrates, is worthy of death. But "corruption
of the youth" is the middle tem1 in A's argument. So that
the argument, in answering the question whyl gives in
the middle term, the reason. It gives, in other words, that
through which the predicate of the conclusion, being
worthy of death, attaches to the subject of it, Socrates.
1l1e major premise of A's argument sets out the reason
with its consequences; corruption of the youth has as its
consequences meriting death. The minor shows that the
subject is subsumed under the reason; Socrates corrupted
the youth. And the conclusion sets out the obvious, that
the consequences necessarily attach themselves to the
subject; Socrates deserved to die.
But there is another interesting thing about argument:
A could equally well have said that Socrates deserved
to die because he corrupted the youth of Athens. And
if one were to ask A what is the cause of Socrates deserving death, A would reply "Socrates's corruption of the
youth of Athens." Corruption of the youth thus mav he
said to have among its effeCts or results the being worthy
of death of the one who corrupts, and Socrates's corruption of the youth is the cause of the effect, Socrates's
being worthy of death. Thus it seems that the middle
term, which we identified previously with the reason, also
in some sense intends the cause, so that reason and cause
seem to be identical. And the major term, which we
previously identified with the consequences of the reason,
also intends the effects, so that consequences and effects
also seem to be identical.
Now if we examine what we think when we think
"cause" one of its salient notes is that it is that through
which or by which something is or happens. Of caused
things, we say that they don't happen "by themselves,"
and that must mean that they happen, if they happen bY
anything, by something other than themselves. Hence if
it be correct to say that the middle term intends the
cause, it will not be surprising to find that the middle
term is also that by or through which the effects intended
by the major term, being worthy of death, inhere in
the minor term, Socrates. For the middle term is also
a mean or through \Vhich between the minor term and
the major term.
Thus in A's argument, the major premise gi1·es the
cause, corruption of the youth, and the effect. being
worthy of death, without any specification of the one
�April 1971
in whom these are manifested. The minor premise gives
that in which the cause is, Socrates, and the fact that
the cause is in it, corrupted the youth, a finite verb
agreeing with its subject. And the conclusion through
the middle term gives that in which the effect is, Socrates,
and the fact that the effect is in it, is worthy of death,
again a finite verb agreeing with the subject. In the same
physical subject then, one might say, is the person,
Socrates, the cause, his corruption of the youth, and
the effect, his being worthy of death. And in the same
logical subject, is the minor term, Socrates, the middle
term corruption of the youth, and major term, being
worthy of death.
If such is the structure of cause and if it be truly
revealed in the structure of argument, one \Vi111ook in vain
for causes as s·isible events occuring temporally prior to
their effects. One will find them only revealed through
the contemporaneous presence of logical middle terms.
They will also necessarily be im~sible and accessible only
by thinking. And Hume will be quite wrong; the notion
of cause will not arise from habit, but from reflection on
the structure of reasoning, that is, giving reasons.
But, someone might say, you have not got the cause
through the middle term at all, because if anything
is true of cause, it is that a cause must be sufficient to
produce its effects. It is not enough for something to be
a cause of something that wherever it is present its imputed effects are present. It is also required that the
effects cannot occur without the cause. Logically speaking,
the consequences, major term, must be consequences of
the middle term and they will not be consequences of
the middle term if they can exist without it. But in your
example, being worthy of death cannot be an effect or
consequence of corrupting the youth, since others are also
worthy of death who have not corrupted the youth. So
having corrupted the youth is not the cause of deserving
death. And this is revealed in your not being able to
convert your major premise completely, into ''everyone
who is worthy of death has corrupted the youth." Therefore the middle terrn does not intend the cause. The
point is well taken.
But to meet it, we need only search for such a middle
term as, in combination with the predicate, being worthy
of death, will result in an universal affirmative fully convertible major premise. For full convertibility of such
a premise will be the logical equivalent of the full commensurability of cause and effect. To say what such a
middle term is is difficult, and if none can be found,
those who advocate the abolishing of the death penalty
"·ill ha\"e made their point. But let the following be suggested: the commission of such an act by a normally
intelligent person as by its nature leads to the destruction
of those things ·which men should seek to preserve by
their living together among their fellows. Such a term
might be fully convertible with being worthy of death,
and if it were, any one who had committed such an
act would be worthy of death and anyone who was worthy
of death would have committed such an act.
If the above analysis is right, it should be possible to
convert the universal affirmative fully convertible major
premise so as to make the consequent-effect now its
subject and the reason-cause its predicate. Thus, everyone
who deserves death has committed such an act, etc. And
then, given a subject exhibiting the new middle terrn,
Socrates deserves death, deduce the presence of the cause
in the subject: Socrates has committed such an act, etc.
In such a case one would be inferring a cause from an
effect. And the middle term would intend not, as before,
the reason-cause, but instead, the effect. It would intend
not that through which the effect was present, but that
The false in itself strictly is not: it is only
in the true, as negation.
through wi1ich the cause came to be known. In other
words, it would intend a sign; for a sign is that through
which something other than itself is known. Socrates's
deserving death would be a sign of his having committed
such and such an act. But in order to know that deserving
death was a sign of having committed such an act, one
would have antecedently to know the major premise;
that is, one would have to know that everyone who deserved death had committed such and such an act.
Now it is possible for us to know that things may be
signs of other things, or that they may be effects of
causes, and such knowledge comes to us from the observation of concomitant variations and the reflection that
it is highly unlikely that things which vary concurrently
are self-caused or things that happen by themselves. But
the knowledge that such and such a thing is an effect of
that cause or signifies that thing is not come by so
easily. For we stand in the middle of things and we do
not see the causes, i.e., the fully convertible major
premises." But the measure of our knowledge is the extent
17
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to which we come to view more and more things about
us as effects of particular causes, that is, as conclusions
from premises. We express facts through sentences, and
as we think these, we realize that they are either selfevident, to be made evident through middle terms, or
else not to be made evident at all. For this is the same
as saying that the things we apprehend are either selfcaused, caused through or by something other than themselves, or simply uncaused, that is, by chance.
•
•
•
•
•
III. It is at this point the search for the unseen causesthat is, for the fully convertible major premises-, that
what we have said about the true being only consequent on the true comes together with what we have
said about the reason-middle term of an argument intending the cause. They come together in the hypothesis
and in that form of reasoning called the hypothetical
syllogism.
For what, after all, is an hypothesis? In its most simple
form, it is a premise in which what manifests something
is temporarily conceived or thought under some sort
of middle term, a middle term whose conceptually
necessary consequences are the very effects which are
sought to be explained. If light be wave motion, interference patterns are possible. If the heavens move
spherically, the stars may be seen to rise and set. If the
elements be composed of more or less indivisible bits
of matter, two substances can react in definite proportions
by weight. It is a premise, further, about whose truth
one is in doubt, but the truth of which can be known,
if, from assuming it as true, the facts can be deduced.
For the facts take the form of conclusions. And a conclusion, as we have seen, if it can be shown to be a consequence at all, can only be a consequence of the true,
since it cannot be a consequence of the false. It is thus
a premise the doubt about whose truth is to be removed
by the process called, appropriately, verification.
But it is not sufficient for the hypothesis to be true
that the effects can be deduced from assuming it as true.
Since a cause is commensurate with its effects, the middle
term to be sought must be such that those effects are
the necessary consequences of it and of nothing else.
Since the appearance of the rising and setting stars can
also be explained by a rotating earth, neither is the proper
middle term between the stars and their rising and setting.
The true middle term and true cause of that particular
thing would have to be something common to both middle
terms: not only would a necessary consequence of it be
the rising and setting stars: it would also be true that no
other motion could have the same consequence for an
observer stationed on the earth.
Logicians are right, therefore, since truth can only
18
follow upon truth, when they say that it is valid to
affirm the conclusion when the hypothesis has been
affirmed. But since they do not often stress that what
makes the conclusion follow at all is the fact that the
predicate-effect is .folded into or implied by the middle
term, they are led to deny the validity of affirming the
hypothesis after the conclusion has been affirmed. But
this is not invalid at all, provided that the middle term
is a true cause; provided, that is, that the middle term
and effect are fully convertible: that the effect is truly
a consequence of the middle term. Thus, in the case of
Socrates and his being worthy of death, if we were to pick
as middle term the commission of such an act ... and if
his being worthy of death is given as true, the hypothesis
can be validly and truthfully placed beyond the realm
of doubt. For only the true breeds the true.
Furthermore, we can now see why it is right, if the
conclusion is denied, to deny the hypothesis. For to deny
the conclusion is to say that what seemed to be a conclusion is false. But as we have seen, all that means is
that some other conclusion, its contradictory, the observed
facts as formulated in a sentence, is true. And since the
true can only come from the true, and the true can
only yield the true, the false can only be rooted in the
false. Hence anything which made the false conclusion
a consequent and to the extent that it did so, must also
not be. Such is the rationale of a reduction ad absurdum
proof. Take the following hypothetical sentence and assume the implied major, that anyone who corrupted the
youth deserves to die. "If Socrates corrupted the youth,
he deserved to die. But Socrates did not deserve to die.
Therefore he did not corrupt the youth." From the falsity
of the conclusion, Socrates deserved to die, it is right to
deny the hypothesis, that Socrates corrupted the youth;
for if not, we would have to maintain that Socrates
both did and did not deserve to die.
But it is equally true that it is proper to deny the conclusion if the hypothesis is denied. But only to the extent
that the hypothesis makes the conclusion follow from it
as a consequence. Suppose now that Socrates did not
corrupt the youth but did introduce new divinities and
that such an introduction made him worthy of death:
"If Socrates corrupted the youth, he deserved to die.
But Socrates did not corrupt the youth." It is valid
to deny that Socrates deserved to die to the extent
that his deserving of death is a consequent of his corrupting the youth. And if deserving death were truh
a consequenc-e of corrupting the youth, that is, if cor·
rupting the youth were convertible with being worth,· of
death, it would be valid to deny Socrates's deserving death.
But deserving death is not truly a consequence of corrupting the youth: it is a consequence of commiting such an
act as by its nature tends to the destruction, etc. Since.
therefore, deserving death is not a true consequence of
�April 1971
corrupting the youth, Socrates's deserving death can
stand despite the falsity of the hypothesis. But one has
only to think of something which would be convertible
with corrupting the youth of Athens in order to see the
validity of denying the conclusion after the hypothesis
has been denied. Thus, "if Socrates corrupted the youth
of Athens, he injured their souls. But Socrates did not
corrupt the youth of Athens." It is perfectly valid to
conclude that he did not injure their souls. And this because corruption of a youth and the injury to his soul
are convertible terms.
We may say as a result of this investigation that consequence seems to reside in fully convertible major premises,
and that only because it does reside there is it possible for
reasoning to move from one statement to another. But if
that is so, any symbolism of hypothesis such as if p
The thing thought must be purely
significant of the thing that is.
then q; p therefore q is radically deficient. The reason
is not only that p, and at least r, and possibly s and t as
well, must be true before q can in fact be implied by
p, but also that p and q cannot be any premise and any
. conclusion different from one another only to the extent
that each is not the other. Both must be restricted to
such premises as conceptually lead to such conclusions
and to such conclusions as are in fact consequent on such
premises. And that means that there must be a fully convertible r in there somewhere.
*
*
*
*
*
IV. It would seem appropriate at this point, since we
have spoken so much about the true and the false, and
since logic takes the true and the false asabsolutely fundamentaL to trv brieBv to make a few remarks about each
of them and· tl1en to try to think about the relation between truth and-reality.
The false, you will . recall, was unthinkable in itself.
It was self-contradictory. \Ve saw that it immediately resulted in a negation of the false assertion, which negation
itself was a true negation. Its characteristic manifestation
is therefore "not. ... " Now "not ..." is an adverb, that
is, it is always used to modify something. If we want to
think of it as stripped of its adverbial trappings, we have
to think no, pure and simple, and that is not to think
at all. To try to think pure "no" is just like trying to
see pure darkness. And just as darkness is only apprehended
through illuminated things, so no is only thought through
true affirmations of negation. The false in itself strictly
is not: it is only in the true, as negation. It is even
too much to say that the false is not, for we are saying
that it is not. One should rather say "false not" or, even
better, nothing at all, for even that much is mere noise.
We can, therefore, drop the word "false" from the voca bulary since we do not mean anything by it other than
tme negation. But that we may keep.
And what of the true? \Vhat do we think when we
think that a thing is true? Let us attack the problem
this way. \V'hat is the difference between saying "I am
lecturing" and "It is true that I am lecturing." It would
seem to be the same as the difference between requesting
someone to assume that the earth moves around the sun
and that it is true that the earth moves around the sun;
or as the difference between asking "Are you lecturing?''
and "Is it true that you are lectnring?" And there does
not seem to be any difference at all. Any affirmation
or assumption or even queslion is at the same time an
affirmation or assumption or question of its truth. The
phrase "It is true that ..." does not add anything to an
affirmation. \Ve may therefore also drop the word "true"
from the vocabulary, although we may retain "affirmation,"
understanding thereby necessarily affirming something.
Now what is the relation between an affirmation and a
negation? Is there any priority of the one. over the other?
A moment's reflection \Vil1 reveal that affirmation is prior,
for even a negation is an affirmation of negation. And
if someone were to say that that is a specious argument,
because it is just as possible to say that an affirmation
is a negation of a negation? He would be wrong, for even
a negation of a negation is an affirmation of that negated
negation.
*
*
•
•
•
V. Let us now turn to the great question, what might
be the relation of affirmation to "reality," "what is," or
"being"?
The first thing we should look at is the hypothesis again,
but this time from a fresh point of view. If, as we have
been maintaining, an hypothesis is a premise \vhich we
do not know whether to affirm or deny, but which, if
affim1ed, gives the middle t·erm throngh which the conclusion follows, it follows that we can speak about
premises being in themselves and prior to our coming
to know whether to affirm or deny them, either affirmable
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or deniable. The enterprise of hypothesis and verification
is inconceivable without this supposition. And indeed,
not only is hypothesis impossible, but any question at
all is impossible if such is not the case. But we have seen
just now that pure negativity is unthinkable and selfcontradictory and that we can only apprehend it in the
form of an affirmation of negation. Therefore if it is
possible to speak about premises that are in themselves,
it can only be affirmable premises that are in themselves.
But what in the world can it mean to have a premise
that is affirmable in itself? A premise can only be in the
one who thinks it, if it is in anything. But what is it
then that is in itself and that one doubts whether it
should be affirmed or denied? When we want to find
out whether something is true, what is the something
about which we want to make the determination? If it is
not the premise, and that it cannot be, it can only be
that which the premise asserts. But the premise asserts
what something is. Consequently, what is in itself and
prior to· our coming to know it, must be what something
is, i.e., being. And the affirmation, the premise, must be
the being in us of what is also in itself.
But how is this double mode of being possible? We
have been suggesting it during the whole course of this
evening, identifying facts with conclusions, middle terms
with causes, and predicates with effects. And every time
we spoke of intentions-of middle terms intending causes,
of major terms intending effects, and of minor terms intending physical subject. We seemed to have been
moving swiftly from thought to being and back again
and "intending" has been our vehicle of passage. But
what is it to intend? And how does it solve the problem?
Let us return to the example "every man is a duck."
I take it as fixed and given that none of us, no matter
what we may be or what our habits may be, invariably
says "quack-quack" or paddles about on the surface of
the water. Now you will recall that when we had that
example before us we asked our logician friend the following question: have we not agreed that those beings which
are rational, featherless, terrestrial, bipeds, of a certain
average size, are called
11
IDen," and that those beings
which are of another size, irrational, winged, feathered,
and aquatic, are called "ducks"?
We pick this example because of the relation which
it reveals between the name and the named. Clearly
Now to intend is exactly the same thing as to mean: we
use them synonymously, e.g., I didn't mean to do that;
I didn't intend to do that. Both are verbs referring to
activity. The status of the word then is clear: it is in the
gap between me and what I mean, what I intend, or
that to which I want to point. It itself is used as a mean
between these two extremes, and it is highly doubtful
whether I can mean, intend, or point without it. Its
use is to help others and myself to come to mean what
I mean. The end of its use is that both come to mean
the same thing.
If the above analysis is correct, it follows that if what
is meant is self-cm;tradictory or unthinkable, the name
through which it is intended will be a mere voice-sound,
a mere word; for since what is self-contradictory cannot
be entertained, there will be nothing to intend. Thus if
To ask a question is to seek for being.
the voice-sound, ''the square root of two" is used to mean
"that number which, multiplied by itself, is equal to
two," _and it can be shown that there is no such number,
number, again, being used to intend "a plurality of units"
(and it is not altogether clear what else the word is used
to mean), "the square root of two" will be mere noise,
acoustically different from "the square root of three," but
every whit as meaningless, i.e., lacking in a meant.
So far, then, we have three things, the speaker, the
word or name, and what the speaker means. But now our
question arises again: what is the relation between what
duck" are each
he means and what is?
Now as a synonym for what a speaker means, Jet us
use "what a speaker thinks." For we use these phrases
synonymously: Vvhat do you mean? \1\That do you think?
names; but their being called names can only mean that
Say \vhat you mean; say what you think. To the meant,
insofdr as they are names, they name something \vhich
then, and to the intended and the pointed to will correspond the thought, which is the analogous passive
participle of the active verb to think. It is not a noun
intending, I don't know what, a rather opaque blur,
such as in the phrase "Greek thought." It is a passive
participle, and this indicates that what it modifies is being
acted on by the one thinking it. So now the question
enough the voice-sounds "man" and
41
is not itself a' name. They point to something or tend
to something. Or rather, since the activity of tending or
pointing is more properly in the speaker or thinker than
in the name itself, one who uses them uses them to point
to or tend. A Dame, in other words, is such on1y in its
use. The speaker intends -something through the name.
20
�April 1971
has become, what is the relation between the thing .
thought and what is?
Let us put the question in another form. \Vhat is
includes this auditorium, you, the patient and long-suffering audience, John Glenn's space capsule, and many other
things as well. For of each of them I can say "it is." Now
these are all things that we think of or about; so that as
a s~·non~'m for "what is," "being," or "reality,'' I feel free
to speak of the things of or about which we think. So
the question narrows down to this: what is the relation
between what we think and what we think about. Or
rather it is this: what is the relation between the thing
thought and the thing thought about' Only one answer
seems possible. They must be the same, and yet the thing
thought must be about or of the thing thought about.
But '' Ldt Lind of relation is that?
To try to answer this question, we must ask what sorts
of things are of or about other things. Now newspaper
articles are about things, books and lectures are about
things, and photographs and images generally are of or
about that of which they are photographs and images.
And what all these have in common is that they are
means through which one can move in order to get to
something else. In other words, they are signs, for a sign,
you will recall, is that through which something other
than itself is known. Their significance precisely lies in
their power not to be themselves. The more they are
themselves, the less they are significant. And so what
I think must be a sign of. what I think about.
But these other signs also. share something else, namely,
that they must all be known in themselves before what
they signify can be known through them. One must
learn what people use words to intend, and the sound
and appearance of those words before one can use them
either to mean things by them or to learn what others intend by them. One must find the article before learning
w~at ·someone says is going on in Algeria. There is a
kind of obstruction or opacity in the thing itself which
must be overcome before the thing becomes transparently
significant. Since this is so, one may call these imperfect
s1gns.
But I do not have to know you, this audience, as a
thing thought before I can know this audience as a thing
thought about. Indeed, the existence of a thing thought is
onlv arrived at after one begins to reflect on the possibililv' of thinking about anything. I am never aware of
things as things thought. \\That I think when I think this
audience takes me directly and transparently through
to t1li<; ;mclience. If it did not I could never get-to make
lhc distinction' between thing thought and thing thought
about at all; for I could never have the occasion to think
that what I thought might be different from what I think
about. The sign therefore must be such as not to hinder
the proceeding in any way. It must therefore be a perfect
sign; and the relation between what I think and what I
think about or of therefore must be one of pure significance. The thing thought must be purely significant
of the thing that is. It might be possible to carry this
analysis out for affirmations and arguments as well as
names, and in each case it would probably turn out that
the relation would have to one of pure significance. But
I think it is now time to stop and, bearing in mind our
. initial resolve to seek for life in logic, emphasize a few
of the conclusions which this study of the implications of
reasoning seems to lead us to affirm.
The first is that logic is permeated throughout with
logos and ratio. \Ve meet them not only in the triple
sense of argument, word and reason. \Ve also meet
them in the sense of re1a tion, where the \Vord is a mean
between myself and what I mean through it. \Ve meet
them in the middle term which unites the minor term
with the major term, in the cause, which unites the subject with the effect, in the sign, which unites the signified
with the one for whom it is significant, and again in the
middle term as a mean between a thinker and the why
of things. Last of all, we meet them in the thought itself,
a mean between being and the thinker.
But in the second place, we must also notice that
every affirmation is true. But we must add that it is
possible to utter many sequences of words which are not
affirmations. It is possible that the ignorant, the bigoted,
and the deceiving, can trespass on the good will, credulity,
and compassion of others by making them think that the
noises they make are significant. The road to the revelation
that not everything that is sayable is thinkable is a long
and hard one. But it is there. For dialectic is with us, and
she can reveal to us the ultimate absurdity of our false
opinions and the meaninglessness of the sentences by
which we try to signify them.
But finally, and perhaps most significant of all, is the
understanding which we get of a question. For a question
is in truth a questing, that is, an activity, the activity of
searching and seeking. But we can see now that it is
also a seeking for affirmation, and that this is inconceivable
without the existence of the affirmable. To ask a question,
in other words, is to seek for being. Doubt is rooted in
possibility.
Edward C. Sparrow, Jr. received his B.A. degree from Harvard
College and his LL.B. degree from the Harvard Law SchooL He then
sen·ed for a time with the Nev;• York Legal Aid Society. He received his
M.A. degree from Teachers College at Columbia U~i\·ersitv. A Tutor
at St. John's College in Ann::~polis since 1957, he sen·ecl as Acting
Director of the Integrated Liberal Arts Curriculum at St. Mary's
College, California from 1964 to 1966.
·
21
�NEWS ON THE CAMPUSES
PAUL MELLON GIVES
ST. JoHN's $1,000,000
St. John's College received a major
gift of one million dollars from Paul
lvlellon, Class of 1944, in December,
1970.
In transmitting his gift, Mr. Mellon,
an Honorary Fellow of the College,
strongly ·endorsed the Annapolis and
Santa Fe colleges.
"St.
John's has demonstrated
through the lives and careers of its
alumni the validity of its distinctive
program in the liberal arts, begun some
three decades ago," he said.
"St. John's stresses the essential
unity of knowledge," Mr. Mellon
stated. "To my mind, the College's
program constitutes a cohesive and
challenging learning experience for
young men and women.
Mr. Mellon also noted with approval
the decision of the St. John's Board
that the College. remain small so that
a close personal relationship could be
possible between students and Tutors.
He cited the fact ·that certain large
ously graduated from Yale University
and had received an M.A. degree with
honors in history from Cambridge Uni·
versity in England. Over the years his
interest in the College has been evidenced by personal gifts and by grants
to its endowment fund, building program, and current budgets from Old
Dominion Foundation, of which he
was the founder. Most of these grants
have been on a matching basis.
In 1958 the College's Board of
Visitors and Governors named the new
science laboratory building Mellon Hall
in his honor. At that time he was also
named an Honorary Fellow of the
College.
Presently he is serving with Mr.
Mark Van Doren and Mr. Richard
11
universities were now seeking to estab-
lish colleges of the size and character
of St. John's within their own
campuses.
"I consider it extremely important
that St. John's College attain as firm
a financial base as possible over the
next several years, since its mission
on the American educational scene was
never more important than today.)'
l'vlr. Mellon's interest in St. John's
dates to 1940 when he enrolled as a
freshman in order to experience for
nearly a year the College's unique
liberal arts curriculum. He had previ-
22
Paul Mellon
F. Cleveland as Honorary Co-Chairmen of the National Committee for
St. John's College. This Committee
was created in anticipation of the 275th
anniversary celebration planned for
the fall of 1971. Mr. Mellon expressed
hope that his gift would serve as a
catalyst and a challenge for others.
In accepting the gift, President
Richard D. Vleigle expressed the deep
gratitude of the College for ll!r.
Mellon's support and confidence. At
a time when private colleges are confronting grave financial difficulties, Dr.
Weigle said that the Mellon gift would
greatly strengthen the academic program on both campuses.
President Weigle indicated that the
Santa Fe share of the Mellon gift,
which totalled $651,000, would be used.
first, to eliminate debt there, and to
ensure against a deficit in the current
fiscal year. The remaining amount will
be placed in a special fund to be drawn
on to match gifts raised during the
Anniversary campaign.
Announcement in Santa Fe of l\lr.
Mellon's gift was received with appreci·
ation by the local community as weil
as the College.
An editorial in the Santa Fe new-;paper, The New Mexican, guoted :\lr.
Mellon's statement on the d1sbnct"~
program being demonstrated throu;'t
the lives and careers of the alumm.
The editorial commented, "This i'
high praise indeed, and well me~:~::'
in our opinion." The '\Titer addtc.. •'
is also noteworthv that the St. J. :.:
concept of liberal education_ h.>
spired other colleges and umn.·r:.:::~-c
throughout the country to offer,. ;·o:o
ations of the St. John's program.
�April 1971
SANTA FE PRESENTS
RADIO SERIES
A series of conversations between St.
John's Tutors and students at Santa
Fe are no\v being broadcast every other
Saturday morning by a local station,
KTRC. "A College in Action" is the
title of the half-hour programs, as suggested by Dean William A. Darkey,
who was a participant in the first discussion and introduced the series.
The conversations are representative
of the various types of classes which
constitute the College's unique liberal
arts curriculum. Their purpose is to
demonstrate the dialectic approach to
learning used at St. John's and to encourage the listener to read or reread
the subject works.
The first. three programs were based
on a comparison ·of the Declaration
of Independence and the U. S. Constitution, Robert Frost's poem "The
Draft Horse," and Euclid's definition
of a straight line.
Tutors leading these discussions included l\1r. Darkey, Robert M. Bunker,
Frank K. Flinn, David C. Jones and
Ralph J. Quintana. Participating students \:vere seniors Jonathan L. Brewer,
Maya Contractor, R. David Esdale and
James F. Scott; junior Mark D. Jordan,
and freshmen Claire Kurs, Michael
Beall, Dan Blake, Dobbie Kerman,
l\Jary Ridout, and Celia Yerger.
GRADUATE INSTITUTE
AWARDS FELLOWSHIPS
Eleven New Mexico school teachers
will receive fellowships this summer
to the Graduate Institute in Liberal
Education held each vear on the Santa
Fe campus. Each fell~wship will cover
all fees for the four summers required
to complete the advanced course.
Graduate Institute Director Robert
A. Neidorf said thev are looking for
promising te;-~chers 'i'i~·ho are interested
in the Institute's unique liberal arts
curriculum and who appear to be committed to a career of classroom teaching in the are:1 where they now reside.
Discussing the first "Civilisation" film during a reception are James P. Underwood, President
of the Annapolis Fine Arts Foundation (left), Mrs. James L. Motley, and Robert A. Goldwin,
Dean of the College in Annapolis. T11e two institutions are co-sponsoring the film series.
Photo: Anthony Drummond.
"Although the program differs
markedly from the conventional
teacher-training curriculum, we believe it has been an unqualified success as a source of enrichment and
inspiration for its students, and ultimately for their students," Mr. Neidorf said.
Inaugurated in 1967, the Institute
offers an eight-week program of studies
based on the curriculum and seminar
methods of St. John's College. The
four subject areas are Literature,
Philosophy and Theology, Politics and
Society, and Mathematics and Natural
Science. They may be taken in any
order, one per summer.
"CIVILISATION" COMES TO
ST. JoHN's
Santa Fe was one of the first communities in the nation to show the
"Civilisation" film series, under the
auspices of St. John's College and the
Museum of New Mexico. The national
program of free distribution of the
films to small colleges is sponsored
by the National Gallery of Art, the
National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Xerox Corporation. Mr.
Howard Adams, Deputy Administrator
of the National Gallery, came to Santa
Fe for the January lOth opening.
The renowned color film series on
the cultural life of Western man,
written and narrated by art historian
Kenneth Clark, is also being shown at
the College in Annapolis until May
23rd. The series is being sponsored by
the College and the Annapolis Fine
Arts Foundation.
At the opening of the Annapolis
"Civilisation" series, Mr. P. James
Underwood, President of the Annapolis Fine Arts Foundation, and
Dean Robert A. Goldwin, were hosts
to over SOO persons at a reception following the film. On both campuses
two showings of the series have been
arranged because of the overflow
audiences each Sunday afternoon.
23
�The College
CAMPUS NoTES
Laurence Berns, Tutor, published a
review of Yves Simon's Freedom of
Choice in the Review of Politics, January, 1971. The book was translated and
edited by Peter C. Wolff, Class of
1944, former St. John's College
Tutor. Mr. Berns spoke of the book
as "very lucid, with a most interesting
discussion of freedom and causality."
The old Santa Fe Association has
commended Tutor John Chamberlin
for his work in investigating and charting the route of the Acequia Madre, a
360-year-old irrigation ditch which runs
through the city. As a result of his
work the Acequia Madre has been included as a historic landmark in the
State Registry of Historic Properties.
The local newspaper, The New
Mexican, cited 'his activities in a fullpage article with photographs.
Geoffrey J. Comber, Tutor and Assistant Director of the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education, attended a
meeting. of. the Maryland State
Teachers Association in Baltimore in
October to recruit students for the
summer program in Santa Fe. In addition he organized two seminars for
previous. Graduate Institute students
in Baltimore and Washington, D. C.
Tutors Geoffrey J. Comber, Alvin
Main, Nicholas Maistrellis, John Sarkissian, and Robert L. Spaeth are conducting the Spring 1971 Adult Community Seminar using Chaucer's
"Canterbury Tales," Freud's "A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis,"
Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a
Young I\1an," Mann's <~Tonia Kruger,"
Nietzsche's "Genealogy of Morals,"
Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure,"
and Shaw's "Man and Superman."
George Doskow, Tutor, has been
serving as the Administrative \lice~
President for the Anne Arundel Cou,..ty
Chapter of the American Civil
Liberties Union.
Annapolis Treasurer Charles T.
Elzey attended a meeting of the
Eastern Association of College and
University Business Officers in To-
24
Annapolitans participate in life figure drawing classes sponsored by St. John's. The classes, which
are open to students and the general public, are conducted by the College's Artist in Residen::-c
Robert A. Cole. Photo: Ed Boyce.
ronto, Canada, in November. During
December he attended a National Association of College and University
Business Officers Investment Vvorkshop in Chicago. Topics under discusswn included college insurance
problems, the impact of tax reform
legislation, the total return concept
in the investment field, and the new
trend toward unionism in the aca·demic sector of higher education.
Tutor Harry Golding and St. John's
students participated in the 1970
Science and Technology Exhibition
sponsored by the Annapolis Chamber
of Commerce in November.
Board member LeRoy E. Hoffberger
has been elected Chairman of the
Board of Union Federal Savings and
Loan Association in Baltimore. An
active civic leader, he is also chairman
of the Baltimore City Hospitals Commission, president of the Hoffberger
Foundation, a director of the \Valters
Art Gallery, and a board member of
the Associated Jewish Charities.
An article entitled "The Missing
Sense of the Past" by Robert A. ?\' eidorf, Tutor and Director of the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education in
Santa Fe, was published in the January 1971 issue of The Center Magazine.
On February 28th he delivered a lecture "Love of Form" at St. ~lary's
College in California.
Thomas Farran, Jr., Director of
Alumni Activities, has begun his second
year as chairman of the Partner-Membership Campaign for the Yl\!C:\ m
Severna Park, Maryland, handling that
organization's fund-raising for its opetating expenses. He also serves on t;re
Committee of Management, and 15 t•K
representative to the YMCA (:\nne
Arundel) County Board of Dir<~·tc•,':•
Tutor Robert D. Sacks of SJnto ! '
will begin his sabbatical this summc:
by going to Israel to start \\TirW; "
commentarv on the book of Gmc~>
\:V. Kyle' Smith, Tutor Emcr::::o. '.
a member of the Board of Dm~·tu:o ·the )Vestminster Foundation of_ .'::•
o+ •r.napolis, Inc., an d a m~mber ·• ·~-~
Local Advisory Comn11ttee of dc:t
�foundation. He also has completed
going through Cah·in's works for his
views on \Var and has written a brief
introduction to these vi·ews which ·wi11
be one of a series on \Var sponsored
by . the Local Commi !tee of the
foundation.
Hobert L. Spaeth, Tutor and Asssistant Deon in Annapolis, attended a
conference on campus disruptions at
the University of J'dichigan Center for
Continuing Legal Education in August
1970. At St. John's he is the director
of the February Freshman Program.
The ;\b,-or of Annapolis recently appointed Lim to the City'5 Board of
Housing Appeals. ;\ lr. Spaeth is also
a member of a CitY-County Joint
Committee on the Property Tax
Differential.
John S. Steadman, Tutor and Assistant Dean at Santa Fe, participated
in a panel on "Education for the
Future" at a January 13th meeting of
the Los Alamos, New lllexico, chapter
of the American Association of Universitv \\lomen. 1\lr. Steadman read a
paper. entitled "\Vhy Schools?".
Leo Strauss, Scott Buchanan Distinguished Scholar in Residence in
Annapolis, has completed a book entitled Xenoplwn's Socrates, and an introduction to Simon Kaplan's translation of Hermann Cohen's Religion
of P.eason Out of the Sources of
Judaism. He has published an article
on Plato's Euth1·demus in Interpretation, Summer 1970 issue. During
i'vlarch 1971 he gave a lecture at the
Baltimore Hebrew College on Hermann Cohen. Next bll and spring he
intends to gi\·e a course on Nietzsche
at the College.
President P.ichard D. \Veigle was
selected "Boss of the Year" bv the Annapolis Chapter of the Natio~al Secretaries Association in January. Nominated b,- .\Irs. IsabclJc Simpson, his
'<:~:re::ry fur fiftc:cn y·~·:ns. \lr. \Veigle
·::~~ Lonurl'cl <1t J di1L·:cr ~ittcnded b\·
i1lcm bcrs of the Coilc~e and the A1;.
napulis communih·. His name wil1 be
:.ubmittcd to the· i11tc:rn~ttionuJ "Boss
uf the Year" progr~nn.
An article entitled "H~ Photography
of the Orion Nebula with a HalfAngstrom Filter" by Ray Williamson
(with R. R. Fisher) appeared in
Astronomical Journal, Volume 75,
Number 5, 1970. Mr. \Villiamson received a National Science Foundation
Summer Research Participation Fellowship for College. Teachers which
he took during the summer of 1970
at the University of Maryland. He also
has received a National Science
Foundation Academic Year Extension
Grant for Astronomy Research from
Decem her 1970 until September 1972.
SANTA FE ASSOCIATE ELECTED
PRESIDENT OF MYSTERY
WRITERS OF AMERICA
Richard Martin Stern, who is chairman of the St. John's College Library
Associates in Santa Fe, has been chosen
president of the Mystery \Vriters of
America for the coming year. He will
be installed during the annual convention dinner in New York City on
.
April 30th.
He has directed the successful Book
and Author Luncheons conducted by
the Associates in Santa Fe for the
benefit of the College Librarv and St.
John's in generaL Thev are' now in
their third year, with tl;e 1971 spring
series scheduled for April 16th and
May 14th.
lvlr. Stern won an M\VA "Edgar"
for his first mvsterv novel some vears
ago. His latest book, Murder in~ the
\Valls, is due for publication by
Scribner's in April.
TWENTY-THREE IN FEBRUARY
FRESHMAN CLASS IN ANNAPOLIS
Twenty-three students, mostly transferees from other colleges and universities~ began their co11cgc educations
;1gain as freshmen at the College in
Annapolis February 1st.
The Fcbruarv freshman class included students from nine states, the
District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and
British Columbia.
Some of tile nine
-z--_:_;_,
teen men trc.::sfem:::
from
Antioch
Cc~~:'.
.\'lellon UniwrsiiT. -:..-...
rcrsill·, Hood Colle~=- ·,·
lege~ ·Reed College~ ~~
of 1\Jusic of the ,_.:_ ,_
Rochester. the Uni,-e:-:-:: ,
the Univtrsin· of Io';'.~ ;,-:_-rersi !I of :i !2:-danc :. .·;.-vision.
Approximateh· 1\Ye:::::..:::. ""
of the new class r~c.-o i.,. _
Six students were ~\.:.-'.r.
Scholarship Fil•dists. :~:
letters of cc:-:::~1Cl~:...::_':_.
students attend;:-d pu"::~:...:
attended DJro2hiJl c:- :--~
and one • rec·ein:d ~
equil·alencT diploma. ·:·
are carh· entrants to 5:. ·.___ _
to the College before ;::;,c, ,_ .
high school. T1m zc
alumni. tv;o ha\·e a ::::~·-:.:.
-· ----enrolled at the CoL=-¢
married to a St. J
ok·:
former students 2lso ~-::-:::
teen students were i::: ::::,,_
their graduating class :.= ·-<
A student 11·ho traiO.•"~:
begins as a freshman 2:1..
credit for couc;es hlc-. ,,
student who enters ~'- -F·ebruan· ;;"ilJ contir.::.::
coursts in a su:nmer :?=--~---""
STUDEKTS FoR:Ir
RESCUE U:-;-n
Su.r.-/ _.
Santa Fe students :o~
Search and R=ue L.:.. '.·
locating and .:iding ~-- _.
nearb,- rnount2n are:;::__
~J~nts ar~'~'ece:~?ng ?':-'~
aJd SUTil•c.l ..:. .. d 0~~niqutS. T:-.t:,- ~:-;: on c::=.
law and er;-:;:::~enc-:_;- --~
1
needed.
The S2c cd Fe car::::•c
the fc8:!-::::~ :: :he ~
ivfou:-.~J.i:-.: t: :-::-iih:--:-:::.
which i~:.~::.C-;: :he :F~-
~nca and ::::2:1·,- (:_:tdo~·:: :~
inc1uC:n=: .-f::: ~-'-'PC~..
and c"Jm:;:: ~'" ~:-:ds.
�The College
FIRST ANNAPOLIS
PROVOST NAMED
Mr. Paul D. Newland, first Provost
of the College in Annapolis, assumed
his duties at St. John's on February 1,
1~71.
Fallowing a regular meeting of the
Board of Visitors and Governors in
early December, Mrs. Walter B. Driscoll, Chairman of the Board, announced his appointments as Provost
and Tutor.
Mr. Newland's appointments were
recommended by President Richard D.
Weigle following four months of
search 7 interviews, and consultations
with a joint Faculty Search Committee. Tutors from both campuses served
on the Committee.
The Provost, a newly created position, has executive authority for the
instruction, discipline, and government of the College in Annapolis and
is responsible to the President.
Prior to coming to St. John's, Mr.
Newland was Executive Vice President
at Franklin and Marshall College,
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he also
served as Assistant Secretary of the
Board of Trustees. In addition he is
President of the Middle-Atlantic Educational Research Center (MERC), a
computer consortium of small colleges.
For twelve years prior to his appointments at Franklin and Marshall, Mr.
Newland held executive positions with
the Hamilton ·watch Company. He
was successively Director of Public Relations and Director of Merchandising.
From 1961 to 1967 Mr. Newland
was President and Treasurer of Standard Time Corporation in the Virgin
Islands where he negotiated the acquisition of that firm for the Hamilton
\Vatch Company.
He was an assistant instructor in
fine arts at Ohio State University and
associate professor in fine arts at Mount
Union College, as well as the Director
of Academic Schools of the United
States Marine Corps.
From 1950 to 1952 he was an informational specialist with the Federal
Civil Defense Administration, serving
Plwto: Edward 1. Edahl.
Paul D. Newland
Provost, St. John's College in Annapolis
as writer, producer and director of
radio and television shows, and
speeches on civil defense matters for
Congressional and celebrity personalities.
In 1952 he won first prize award
for the best network education program for children presented by the.
National Association of Education by
Radio and Television.
·
Mr. Newland received a B.A. degree from Heidelberg College in Ohio
and an M.A. degree from Ohio State
University where he also studied for
a doctoral degree. In addition he attended Denison and Catholic Universities.
He and his wife Beth are parents of
three children, Paul, Jr., 23; Alice, 17;
and Claire, 13. The family expects to
move to Annapolis at the end of the
1970-71 academic year.
COLLEGE HosTS "INDIAN TABLE"
A group of Santa Fe citizens, faculty,
and students interested in discussing
Indian history and culture meets at
the College once a month on Vlednesday evenings for dinner and a talk by
an authority in the field. New Mexican
Indians occupy nineteen pueblos and
three reservations in the state. Toun
to nearby pueblos along the Rio
Grande also are offered to student>
at the College from time to time.
Speakers at the suppers so far h:n-e
included Bertha Dutton, Director of
the lV!useum of Navajo Ceremonial
Art, and Douglas Schwartz, DirectOl"
of the School of American Research.
In a related vein, exhibits are sched.
ulted in the St. John's Gallery during
March and April by Seymour Tubi.;,
artist and instructor at the Institute
of American Indian Art in Santi Fe;
and by students of that Institute.
STUDENTS PERFORM
ANOUILH'S "ANTIGONE"
A student group at Santa Fe prtsen ted Jean Anouilh' s ;',ersion of ,tl."'
ancient Greek tragedy Anllgone ~:;
December. The play was perfc:-rl><'-'
one night for the College commu:"''
and another for the public.
.
The title roles of Antigone '""
Creon were played by sophc::J'-"~
Mellanie P. Morgan and freshmJr. Jc~'
Harris. Production was under the "'
rection of sophomore J. R. Thom?"'''
26
- ·-·-· ... - - --- -----~---~~---mlllll!!l!!i!lllll\lll
�April 1971
Others in the cast were: Chorus,
Mark Belanger; Ismene, Rebecca A.
Brinkley; Haemon, Hal Hensley;
Eurydice,
Paula
Brumley;
nurse,
Jennifer Jordan; messenger, Kevin E.
Snapp; page, Jim Vv'illis; guards Steve
Thomas, Philip \Veathers and Thomas
Alex Lawson. Laura J. Kelly was technical director and Gregory J. Ford,
technical assistant. Set decoration was
by Robert M. Hampton, and Miss
Brumley was wardrobe mistress.
FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPHER SHOWS
AFRICAN SLIDES
Famed photographer Eliot Porter
showed slides taken on his recent trip
to Africa at the College in Santa Fe on
January 22nd.
Mr. Porter, who is well known for
his outdoor photography for the Sierra
Club on behalf of wilderness conservation, is preparing a book on the wildlife of East Africa. He is the father of
Santa Fe student Patrick Porter, a
junior.
STUDENTS SPEAK AT
SANTA FE CHURCH
Four St. John's students will deliver
lay sermons this spring at the Episcopal
Church of the Holy Faith in Santa Fe.
Paul F. Bustion,' Gail Hartshorne,
Mark D. Jordan, and James F. Scott
were invited by the minister, the Rev.
Dennis Walker, · to participate in
services during March and April.
STATE BoARD HoLDs
MEETING AT COLLEGE
St. John's in Santa Fe was host to
the March meeting of the New Mexico
Board of Educational Finance, which
supervises the financial operations of
State institutions of higher education.
Vice President J. Burchenal Ault spoke
briefly to the board about the College's
finances and the finances of New
Mexico's three accredited private
colleges.
The New Mexico legislature is prohibited by the State constitution from
appropriating money to educational
institutions not controlled by the State.
A recent law does allow students in
private colleges to apply for loans from
the State Student Loan Fund.
SANTA FE CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
COMBINES STUDENTS AND
TowN'S PEOPLE
The St. John's CoJJ.ege Chamber
Orchestra is a new movement on the
Santa Fe musical scene. "A group of
Santa Fe adults and students from
nine states have learned to make music
together," the Albuquerque Journal
recently commented in an article on
the orchestra and its musical director,
Richard B. Stark, a Tutor at St. John's.
"It is a labor of love for both the
Santa Fe musicians and the students,
who receive no pay or academic credit
for participation and [who J practice
and perform on their own time," the
newspaper noted.
The orchestra's concerts are built
around soloists from both the College
and the community. A program last
October featured a Vivaldi guitar concerto with Philip T. Ansteth, a junior
from Tulsa, as soloist. Anne Hemmendinger, sophomore from Santa Fe, was
soloist in a Marcello concerto for oboe
and strings. That program also included
a suite composed by junior student
Steve M. Whitehill of Chestertown,
Maryland.
One of the high points in the group's
drive for improvement was a week-long
workshop in January with international
conductor Eleazar de Carvalho, climaxed by a concert featuring the
orchestra and De Carvalho's wife,
pianist J ocy de Oliveira. De Carvalho
is conductor of the Brazilian National
Symphony and the Pro Arte Symphony
of Long Island, New Y ark.
Eleazar de Carvalho discusses his workshop with the St. John's College Chamber Orchestra
with \Villiam A. Darkey, Dean of the College in Santa Fe. A harpischord constructed by :\1r.
Darkey had its debut at the a:mcert conducted in Santa Fe by Dr. De Carvalho. Photo:
Robert Nugent.
SANTA FE RECEIVES $10,000
FROM THE NATIONAL
SCIENCE FOUNDATION
The National Science Foundation
has awarded a $10,000 grant to St.
John's College in Santa Fe. The "Institutional Grant for Science" was given
to the College in connection with a research grant received earlier by one
of its Tutors, Roger S. Peterson.
Institutional Grant funds may be
used for any aspect of a college's academic program in the natural and
social sciences, including research and
education.
27
�The College
This concert also saw the debut of
a harpsichord constructed by \Villiam
A. Darkev, Dean in Santa Fe.
The gr~up has been helped by gifts
of material and equipment from two
former local orchestras, the Rio Grande
Sy'mphony and the Santa Fe Sinfonietta. Rehearsals and performances
of the Chamber Orchestra are open
to the public without charge.
Students in the orchestra include:
Violin-Ellen
Usncr,
sophomore;
Margaret E. Jacobs, senior; Jennifer A.
\Vicke, sophomore and Marcia E.
Greenbaum, sophomore. Cello-David
H. Shennan, freshman; Eric 0. Springsled, sophomore; and David \Vallace,
freshman. Double Bass-Robert C.
Norberg. junior. Flute-Janet E. Buchbinder, sophomore; and Christina
Pierce, freshman. Oboe-Anne Hemmendinger, sophomore, and Thor Sigstedt, freshman. Clarinet-Gary D.
Greene (also manager), sophomore,
and Donald Merriell, freshman. Harpischord-Fred Sturm, freshman, and
Anthony B. Jeffries, junior.
MoDERN THEATER GROUP IN
ANNAPOLIS PRESENTS CoMEDY
The Modern Theater Group of St.
John's College in Annapolis is planning to present "The Lady's Not For
Burning," a comedy by Christopher
Fry, on Saturday, April 17th, and Sunday, April 18th.
The play is directed by sopl1omore
Rand Lee, son of the late mystery
writer Ellery Queen and radio serial
star Kaye Brinker. St. John's College
Playwright- Producer in Residence
Alvin Aronson '52 is executive producer.
The Caritas Societv of the Friends
of St. John's College has lent the
Charles Brian Scott; and freshmen
Edmund Raspa, Deborah Ross, and
Eric Scigliano.
Sophomore Lee Elkins is in charge
of lighting; senior Sarah Harrison and
freshman Linda Sharp, costumes; and
sophomores Bryant Cruse and Nicholas
Patrone, sets. Sophomore Susan Conlin
is the assistant to the director.
SANTA FE STUDENTS
PUBLISH TABLOID
The student publication at Santa
Fe is called Seven. Published monthly,
it is printed on newsprint and includes
reYicws of lectures, drama, films, and
concerts as wc11 as a calendar, campus
nC\'i'S, essays, photographs, advertisements, cartoons, and poetry. Chief
editor is J. R. Thompson, a sophomore. Co-editors are senior James Scott
and sophomore Della !\'Janning.
The subscription rate is $2.50 per
academic year.
ST. JOHN'S STUDENTS WIN
DANFORTH AND WATSON
FELLOWSHIPS
Richard Delahide Ferrier, a senior
in Annapolis, and James Frederick
Scott, a senior in Santa Fe, have been
Richard Dclahide Ferrier, Danforth Graduate Fellowship winner, and Holly Carroll, honorable
mention. Photo: Tlwmas Farran, Jr.
-
thc2tcr group funds for the performance and will sponsor the play on Sundav evening. Proceeds wi11 benefit the
College's schobrship fund.
J\ppc;ning. in the comcc1~- will be
juniors Dana "'ctherton and Christel
Stevens; sophomores Pet-er Aronson,
Peter Ellison, Je;:mne H;:;rrison, Craig
?\Jooring.. Thomas Robinson, and
awarded
the Danforth Graduate
Fellowships for College Teaching
Careers, and Hollv Carroll, a senior in
Annapolis, has be.en named honorable
mention.
Mr. Scott and another Santa Fe
senior, Steven M. l\1oser, also won the
Thomas J. \\Tatson Fellowships for
Foreign TraveL
Thus St. John's two senior classes
with a total of only 80 members received two of the 107 Danforth Fellowships granted this year and two of the
70 \Vatson Fellowships.
The \Vatson Fellowships proYide
$6,000 for an initial postgraduate year
of independent studv and travel
abroad.
The Danforth Fellowships program
was established in 1951 with the aim
of giving persona} encouragement and
financial support to selected college
seniors and recent graduates who seek
to become college teachers. The
Fellowship provides tuition and living
expenses for up to four years of study
toward the doctoral degree in preparation for a career in college teaching.
Mr. Moser, whose parents live in
Haiku, Hawaii, plans to traYel to
Poland, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Israd, a11d Germany in con-
,
\PI
�April 1971
neetion with his study of "the status of
the Jew in the modern world." He
eventually hopes to attend medical
school.
At St. John's he received the best
junior essa~·' ;:Jwt~rd and the Duane L.
Peterson Scholarship, presented annually to a junior for academic achieve-
monasterv in Snowmass, Colorado, and
a brief time at a junior college in
Pueblo. After purchasing a set of the
great books for his personal reading, "I
learned there was a place where they
were used as texts." Because of an
illness it was necessary for him to
complete his junior work in t\:vo years.
The Danforth Fellowships are open
ment, constructive membership in the
College community, and commitment to men and women who have a serious
interest in college teaching careers,
to postgraduate study.
Mr. Scott, son of Mr. and Mrs. and who plan to study for the doctoral
Floyd B. Scott of Pueblo, will use his degree. Special attention is given in
\Vatson Fellowship to travel to three areas in considering candidates:
England, Gennany, France, India, l) evidence of intellectual power which
Afghanistan, and Tibet. His study topic is flexible and of wide range, and eviis "a personal and poetic odyssey." dence of academic achicyemcnt which
His Danforth grant will further his is a thorough foundation for graduate
study; 2) evidence of personal characstudies in psychology.
\Vhile at St. John's he won the teristics which are likely to contribute
awards for. the best sophomore and to effective teaching and to conjunior essays. He. also received first structive relationships with students;
prize for the best English poem one and 3) evidence of concerns which
year, tied for first place another year,· range beyond self~interest and narrow
and also received second place another perspective and which take ethical
time in the same category. A publisher or religious questions seriously.
Based on a college's enrollment, the
is interested in a number of his poems.
Both students have worked at the number of candidates nominated may
State Mental Hospital. ]'vir. Scott also be two to five. St. John's College is
has helped conduct studies at the State limited to two nominations from each
Penitentiary. He entered St. John's in campus.
From Eugene, Oregon, Mr. Ferrier
1966 after two years in a Trappist
SteYen M. Moser, winner of TilOmas
Fellowship for· Foreign Travel
J.
\Vatson
James Frederick Scott, v.~nner of Danforth
Graduate and Thomas J. Vl/atson Fellowships
is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert H.
Hunt, Jr. He is presently team-teaching physics and seminar at Tire Key
School in Annapolis with Tutor
Thomas K. Simpson as well as attending classes at the College.
At St. John's he was a member of
the Delegate Conneil, and in the
spring of 1970 he was treasurer of the
Polity. He has appeared in several dramatic productions including "Henry
IV, Part I," "Love's Labour's Lost,"
and "Twelfth Night." In 1969 he received the book award from Teachers
College of Columbia University.
After fulfilling alternate service, Mr.
Ferrier plans to study the histon· of
science at either the University of California at San Diego or Princeton University.
iV!iss Carroll is the daughter of 1\Ir.
and Mrs. Alexander Spicer Carroll, Jr.
of Indianapolis, Indiana. A member of
the Instrumental Ensemble, a chamber
music orchestra, she was also a member of the Small Chorus. In 1970 she
received the book award from Teachers
College of Columbia University.
Miss Carroll plans to take off a
year to vi'Ork for an environmental
agency. She then may study environmental engineering perhaps at The
Johns Hopkins University.
More than 1,800 college seniors from
colleges and universities throughout
the United States were in the Danforth Fellowship competition. Approximately 400 students were chosen to be
inten,iewed, with only 107 awards
made. The selection of the Danforth
Fellows is made annually by a national
panel of educators.
PLEASE NOTE!
1lre December 1970 cover of the
magazine has been reprinted as the
inside back cover of this issue for those
of YOU who are interested in collecting
the con:rs. \Ve sincerely regret the poor
reproduction on the December cover
and regret any inconvenience it might
have caused. (Ed.)
29
�ALUMNI ACTIVITIES
Dear St. John's College:
5 February 1971
Your announcement of Mr. Mellon's latest donation to the college
moves me to [a] rather different communication from that which I had
at first intended.
Your inclusion of me as an alumna with the attendant circumstances of
pleas for money (of which I have very little anyway) had up to now
annoyed me slightly, since of course I was at St. John's for Jess than a
year. It was a shock to find that Mr. Mellon's stay was equally short.
Even though his other academic achievements make further comparisons
futile, his example of concern with the affairs of St. John's has given me
[cause] to think.
My anger toward St. J ohn's-a feeling perhaps familiar to others who
have '!eft the. college in a confusion of academic and personal conflictshas largely evaporated, leaving me now able like Mr. Mellon to consider
myself in some way connected with the college despite my non-graduation,
and to wish to continue that connection simply because I agree with
'the St. John's idea.' I only wish I could express these feelings as lavishly
as Mr. Mellon.
But please accept this rather smaller token, and if my example will
encourage other 'alumni' like me, please feel free to use it.
Sincerely,
Linda Rodman Dewing '68x
PS My current activities, should any old cronies be interested, include
a happy marriage and study leading to a degree in nursing at Simmons
College here in Boston. Love to all. LD
ALUMNI BOARD OF DIRECTORS
The Board of Directors of the
Alumni Association has been increased
bv four members since the elections at
Homecoming. As provided in the ByLaws of the Association, President
William R. Tilles has appointed the
following:
Miss Allison G. Karslake S'68, a
teacher at the Key School in Annapolis,
and the first Santa Fe graduate ever to
join the Board;
l\·frs. Barbara (Brunner) Oosterhout
'55, whose husband, John '51, is a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors;
30
Thomas G. Casey II ('65) '71,
student representative, back for his
senior year after an Army hitch and
several trips to Vietnam; and
Joseph P. Cohen '56, alumnus Tutor
at the College since 1962.
In other action, the Board voted
recently to vary the format of its
monthly meetings. Rather than business meetings every month as in the
past, on alternate months the Board
will hold discussion periods.
The first of these took place on
February 16th, when the Treasurer of
the College, Charles T. Elzey, discussed the non-academic operations of
the College. Provost Paul D. Newland
also attended the meeting.
In future meetings the Board will
hear from chapter chairmen, past presidents of the Association, and other
officers of the College. All of these
meetings are designed to improve communications between the Association
and the College, as well as between
various elements of the Alumni bodv
itself.
•
CHAPTER NEWS
"An Interview with Scott Buchanan
and Stringfellow Barr" was the feature
presentation at the February 2nd meeting of the New Yark City Alumni
Group. The 40-minute film, produced
under the guidance of Harris \Vofford,
was made at the Center for the Study
of Democratic Institutions in California, and was completed only a few
days before Mr. Buchanan died in
1968. Mr. Wofford, now president of
Bryn Mawr College, attended the
showing and introduced the film.
The Annapolis Alumni Chapter continues to hold monthly luncheon
meetings at the College on the second
Friday. Recent speakers have been
Hersey D. Taylor, executive director
of the Anne Arundel County YMCA,
Judge Matthew S. Evans '31; Temple
G. Porter '62; College Treasurer
Charles T. Elzey; and Provost Paul
D. Newland.
CLASS NOTES
1907
Robert Anderson bas advised us that the
percent response of the class to last year's
Giving Campaign should have been 6i%.
Miguel Ferrer, we have found, died in 1966,
so he could not be counted among the possible
donors.
1916
In November the College was presented a
transcript of an interview with Lt. Gen. Thomas
�April 1971
E. Bow-ke, USMC (Ret.). Originally taken
on tape under the auspices of the Historical
Division of Marine Corps Headquarters, the
intcn·iew was one of a series with all general
officers of the Corps, active and retired. TI1e
collection supplements official reports already
on file, and provides many personal views and
insights not reflected in official documents.
1921
Lt. Ger,, l\filton G. Baker and CoL Josephine
Louise Redenius were married December
1970. Gen. Baker is founder and superintendent
of Valley Forge 1V1ilitary Academy and Junior
College. :tvlrs. Baker had been director of
publications and development at the Academy.
The Bakers make their horne in Wayne, Pa.
s:
1922
C. Ed\\'in Cockey this year has two sons at
the A.nnapolis campus: James, a senior and
Richard, who entered with the February freshman class.
Benjamin C. \Villis, former superintendent
of schools in Chicago and more recently head
of an educational consulting firm, is now
superintendent of schools of Broward County,
Florida.
1923
11uough Luther S. Tall '21 we have re-
ceived a reqD:est from Carlos V. Urrutia, Jr.: he
would Jike copies of the 1920 and 1921 RatTat. His copies were lost in a fire in his house,
and he would like to replace them. Mr.
Urrutia's address is Calle 2, Sur Oeste,
Caparra Terrace, San Juan, P. R. 00921.
1928
A. Olin Grimes retired January 31st after
more than 41 years with Armco Steel Company. He started in the Melting Department
of the Baltimore plant in 1929, and became
manager of Baltimore operations in February,
1968, the position he held at retirement.
Professor Louis L. Snvder must indeed be
the most published of St. John's alumni; his
. Frederick the Great was published in January by Prentiss-Hall. It is one of a series entitled
Great Lives Observed.
1930
Edward f. Dwyer, president of ESB, Inc.', in
December was installed as 1971 board chairman of the National Association of 1\1anufacturers. Active in Philadelphia United Fund
work since 1965, Mr. Dwyer is chairman of
the Finance Committee of the Board of Visitors
and Go\'ernors. He first joined the Board of the
College in 1959.
1931
Stanley S. Hall in January was promoted to
general manager of The Fritz & Hawley Co.,
New Haven, Conn. .1\-ir. Hall joined the
optical and photographic equipment store in
1928, and became manager of its Photographic Equipment Department in 1933. He is
also assistant treasurer of the firm. ·
1935
David E. Napper has been promoted to
general manager, \Vashington office, for the
advertising firm of Ketchum, MacLeod &
Grove, Inc.
1937
\Villard 0. Ash, formerly chairman of the
11athematics and Statistics Department, University of \Vest F1orida, Pensacola, has accepted the position of Dean of Arts, Sciences,
and Technologies, University of North Florida,
Jacksonville.
On Saturday, January 16th, 11rs. John Stuart
Smart, Jr., of \Vestfield, N. J., was married
to Ferris Thomsen of Holderness, N. H. Mrs.
Thomsen was attended by her daughter and
was given in marriage by her two sons. 1v1r_
Thomsen's two sons served as best men. Head
lacrosse coach at Princeton University through
last season, Mr. Thomsen is director of Camp
Deerwood for Boys in Holderness.
1939
CoL M. Worthington Bordley v,:as awarded
the Legion of Merit upon his retirement from
the Army last fall.
1943
A most interesting letter from A Scott
Abbott reports that after two years teaching
at Colorado Alpine College, he spent last year
teaching in a Steamboat Springs (Colo.)
preparatory school. Now that their youngest
is "on her way," he and his wife Kate are
thinking seriously about teaching among the
Indians. This year he is trying to outline an
historical geography of Colorado, perhaps a
first step toward such a study for the whole
country. All this recent activity Mr. Abbott
describes as "being foolish at fifty."
1944
Registration day for the February freshman
class brought a welcome visit from John C.
Smedley, as he brought his son \Vebb down
to join the College family. Mr. Smedley, after
many years in social work, most recently at the
Children's Village at Dobbs Ferry, N. Y., has
now embarked on what he hopes will be a
career as a writer. A novel for Doubleday is
in the works, as well as several others in various
stages of development.
Pete\-'C. Wolfl's son Theodore is a member
of the freshman class which entered in September.
)
1945
I
.--.
The Danville {N, J / Citizen of l\1orris
County in November C}fn'ed an interesting profile about Robert f· Campbell, Jr. :Mr.
Campbell went to /work for Life magazine
immediately after St. John's, starting as a
reporter-researcher, and leaving to free-lance in
1957. He has compiled a long list of credits
in Life and Sports Illustrated, and has written
a number of award·winning films. He, his wife,
and two sons live on a farm in Rockaway,
Stewart A. \Vashbum '51
N. J ., where he indulges his hobbies of composing music and restoring a classic Bugatti automobile.
1950
Margaret Frame '74, daughter of James H.
Frame, joined her brother 11atthew '73 on the
Annapolis campus last September.
Dean Robert A. Goldwin's daughter Elizabeth is a sophomore and her sister Jane is a
senior on the eastern campus.
John L. Lincoln's son John is also a member
of the freshman class in Annapolis.
Tutor Thomas K. Simpson this year is on
2/3 leave of absence, teaching only senior
mathematics at the College, in order to serve
as teacher and Curriculum Counsellor at Key
School in Annapolis. At the school he teaches
physics (team-teaching with Richard Ferrier
'69), geometry, analytic geometry, seminar,
electronics, and has indi,iidual students in
calculus and modern algebra. Mr. Simpson's son
Patrick is a freshman in Santa Fe,
1951
Stewart A. \\!ashburn, vice president and a
director of Porter Hemy & Co., Inc., a New
York management consulting firm, was elected
to full membership in the Institute of Management Consultants in December. In an unusual
move, he was accorded Founding Member
status. In addition to his corporate duties
with Porter Henry, Mr. \Vashbum is the
firm's eA-pert on the evaluation and operation
of field sales forces and in the use of computers to manage such forces. In addition he
is a producer of prize-winning films for the
firm's clients.
1952
'n1e October, 1970, issue of Liberal Education (the Bulletin of the Association of American Colleges) contained an article by Harry M.
Neumann entitled "Plato's Defense of Socrates:
an Interpretation of Ancient and lviodern
Sophistry." Mr. Neumann, who holds dc&'Tees
31
�The College
from the University of Chicago and The Johns
Hopkins University, is professor of philosophy
and go\'crnment at Scripps College and Claremont Graduate School.
1955
Alexandra Culbertson is now teaching at a
school in Germany, the Zinzendorf Schule in
Postfach.
Mr. \Veigle has passed on to us a long,
informative letter from Hugh D. McKay, Jr.
Mr. McKay and his wife Joan (Gilbert) taught
at the Colorado Rod..)' Mountain School from
1956 to 1959. In the latter year they were
separated and subsequently divorced. Mean·
while, Mr. McKay started writing TV scripts
and planning for his own film. Attendance
at film school at UCLA taught him a great
deal, he says, and now his three part film
is in production. The title of the production
is "The I of the Beho1der," and the first
feature-length section should be completed by
1972. Mr. McKay also hopes to open a theater
for showing the film, revolutionizing standard
motion picture distribution procedure by eliminating notmal distribution costs. He is now
married to a forrrter actress turned teacher
turned text-book writer, and while not working
on his film, teaches at the Art Center College
of Design and at Barnsdall Art Center in Los
Angeles.
1961
We are informed that John C. Kohl, Jr., is
now an assistant professor of biology at Trenton
(N. ).) State College. The cut-back in federal
science spending forced termination of his
federally-funded research contract at Harvard
last June.
Stephen .Morrow, transferred and promoted
by United Press International, is now Overnight Editor in UPI's division headquarters in
Pittsburgh. He is responsible for the "overnight report" (stories written the day before
for afternoon newspapers) for seven states, including Maryland.
Eyvind C. Ronquist is back in Chicago,
working in Library Resources, Encyclopaedia
Brittanica.
Joseph W. Alto~. Jr.; this seems a good
position for one who does not deny that he has
political aspirations.
1964
James P. Nach is now Second Secretary of
the U. S. Embassy in Saigon, assigned to the
political section. His first post v.~th the Foreign
Service was as vice-consul in Calcutta. Before
going to Saigon Mr. Nach spent a year of
Vietnamese study in Washington. \Vhile in
Calcutta he frequently saw his former roommate, Roger \Vicklander (see below).
James l\1.. Toney, Jr., according to a note
from his mother, was recently made chief
deputy district attorney for Yolo County,
Calif.
Roger V. Wicklander, last reported in the
pages of the newsletter "about St. John's'' as
teaching at the American International School
in Calcutta, is now at the American International School in New Delhi.
1963
A note from the mother of Elliott A. Rosenberg states -that her son is a social work supervisor in Bellflower, Calif. Mr. Rosenberg
entered social work in the \Vatts area shortly
after the riots there, and plans to return to
school in September for graduate study.
Edward C. \Vebby, for the past two years
senior management assistant with the Anne
Arundel County (Md.) Bureau of Communitv and Industrial Affairs, took on a new
job J~nuary 11th. Mr. Vlebby was named
administrative asSistant to County Executi\'e
32
1969
A long holiday period at the University of
Texas at Austin a1lowed us the pleasure of a
visit from Philip G. Holt. A graduate student
in the Department of Classics at Texas, Mr.
Holt talked more about B. Jeffries Cothran, Jr.
than about himself. Mr. Cothran manages the
Logos Bookstore in _Houston, under the
auspices of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, pnd is a member of an interdenominational community devoted to Christian life
and service.
1967
1970
A business card from David C. Dickey an-
nounces that he has entered the practice of
law in Stanardsville, Va. Our congratulations.
Clark Lobenstine, whose membership in a
Christian commune in Baltimore was reported
in September, writes that he has finished his
alternative service at Spring Grove State
HospitaL He plans to enter a seminary in the
fall, and to pursue a joint program with a
school of social work. This would lead- to
B.D. and M.S.\V. degrees in a total of four
years.
1968
William Randall Albury has been awarded a
\Voodrow \Vilson Dissertation Fellowship, one
of approximately 200 to be awarded this year.
Mr. Albury is a doctoral candidate in the
history of science at The Johns Hopkins University.
The holiday period also brought us an informative Christmas card from Steven and
Theda (Braddock) dos Remedios (and daughter
Jennifer). Both parents have now completed
undergraduate college, he with a major in
government from the University of San
Fran cisco last July, she as a history major
at Mills College in December. Both are now
applying to law school.
Jeflrey D. Friedman sends a short note from
Jerusalem, giving his address as Yeshivat Chafetz Cha"im. He wrote that he had met David
Sackton (SF '68) at the yeshiva on Mt. Zion
in Jerusalem.
Arthur H. Luse III V~rrites that he has been
in the Army since enlisting last November.
Having completed his basic training at Ft.
Dix (N. J.), he is now stationed at Ft.
Gordon (Ga.), receiving advanced training
in Signal SchooL
In Memoriam
1962
Ann (Davidson) Fastner and James Q.
Blimmel were married this past fa1l, and are
making their home in Hyattsville, Md.
Steven Shore {SF) writes that he is the
second member of Santa Fe's class of 1963 to
receive an advanced degree, his an M.B.A.
from Columbia University Business School. He
is now a financial assistant to the Division
Controller (Pipe Division) of JoP.ns-Mansville
in New York. Mr. Shore says that he would
welcome the chance to give (and to receive)
advice to (and from) St. John's students and
alumni about careers in business.
v1900-George B. Girault, Washington,
D. C., April 5, 1970.
r/1.905-H. Rodgers Gore, Upper Marlboro,
Md., Novembec 24, 1970.
,- 1909-Commodore Charlton E. Battle,
USN (Ret.), Miami, Fla.
, 1909-Allen H. St. Clair, Rocks, Md.,
January 9, 1971.
lf916--Bcig. Gen. James T. Duke, ·USA
(Ret.), Morganza, Md., December
19, 1970.
917-John M. Storm, Baltimore, Md.,
October 26, 1970.
"J917-Co1. N. Dodge Woodward, USA
/i
(Ret.), Cambridge, Md., January
3, 1971.
/1922-Dallas B. Lumpkin, St. Michael's,
Md., December 5, 1970.
1924-Jay S. Price, Owings Mills, Md.,
~
November 13, 1970.
vl931-Alfced H. Cockshott, Bciarcliff
/
Manor, N.Y., November 4, 1970.
(1935-Gordon K. Boucher, Sudbury, l\1ass,
December 30, 19i0.
.. -t936-Paul J. Kesmodel, Severna Park,
Md., December 17, 1970.
/
.
\ ,l-937-John T. Hopkms, Charleston, S. C.,
,.
February 1, 1971.
�THE COLLEGE
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
Santa Fe, New Mexico
December 1970
�St. John's College in Annapolis
announces
Summell" Confell"ence Site Available
Auditorium, dining hall, dormitories, classrooms
(301) 263-2371, ext. 14
The College
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
Second-class postage paid at
Annapolis, Maryland, and at
additional mailing offices.
�
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St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>. <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981. <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Berns, Laurence
Felter, Mary P.
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Trimmer, Maurice
Sullivan, Daniel
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The College
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�The College
Cover: Dante Alighieri, by Vincenzo
Vela. Inside Front Cover: McDowell
Hall, Annapolis.
The College is a publication fat
friends of St. John's College and for
those who might become friends of the
College, if they came to know it. Our
aim is to indicate, within the limitations of the magazine form, why, in
our opinion, St. John's comes closer
than any other college in the nation
to being what a college should be.
If ever well-placed beacon lights
were needed by American education
it is now. By publishing articles about
the work of the College, articles reflecting the distinctive life of the mind
that is the College, we hope to add a
watt or two to the beacon light that is
St. John's.
Editors: Laurence Berns and
Malcolm Wyatt
Managing Editor: Mary P. Felter
Alumni Editor: Thomas Farran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant: Maurice Trimmer
The College is published by the
Development Offices of St. John's
College, College Avenue, Annapolis,
Maryland 21404 (Julius Rosenberg,
Director), and Santa Fe, New Mexico
·(J. Burchenal Ault, Vice President);
Member, American Alumni Council.
President, St. John's College, Richard
D. Weigle.
Published four times a year in April,
July, October, and December. Second-class postage paid at Annapolis,.
1\laryland, and at additional mailing
offices.
Vol. XXIII
July 1971
No.2
In the July Issue:
Noun and Verb, by Edward G. Sparrow .
l
Hell: Paola and Francesca, by Robert S. Bart.
7
News on the Campuses
22
Alumni Activities
29
�Noun and Verb*
By EDWARD G. SPARROW
I. Introduction
This lecture is the fruit of reflecting on form in language.
Some of the questions I have asked myself and tried to
answer in this lecture are these: I) \\That status do the
entities and distinctions traditionally used by grammarians
to explain form in language really have? I am referring here
to such entities as nouns and verbs, subjects, predicates,
and objects, and to such distinctions as those between
transitive and intransitive verbs and direct and indirect
objects. 2) If these entities and distinctions do not exist
in and of themselves, can any account be given of form
in language at all? 3) If so, how should such an account
be framed?
This lecture. has three parts: a neutral part, a constructive part, and a conclusion. The neutral part is an
investigation of verbal communication and a spelling out
of some consequences, destructive as weiJ as instructive,
that are the results of that investigation. The constructive
part is an attempt to build on the results of that investigation. The conclusion considers the meaning of the word
11
Ungrammatical" and briefly examines one relation between the semantic and the grammatical.
Let me apologize in advance for my use later on of
familiar 'vor.ds with unfamiliar meanings. They w.ere the
best I could find. Please believe my fervent hope that
the context and the definitions I give of them will clothe
them with intelligibility.
II. Neutral Part
A. An Investigation of Verbal Communication
The words we speak do not carry their meanings with
them. This is an obvious remark, but a very important one.
\Vords may be winged. but they are not carrier pigeons.
This is to say that ll'hen one hears a word, he does not
hear a mean(ng along with the sounds he hears. Nothing
is transmitted from speaker to bearer in speech except
sound \Vaves. This remark is so important and funda~
*A lecture given at St. John's Co!lege in Annapolis, November 13,
1970.
mental that I must repeat it. Nothing is transmitted from
one person to another when they talk to one another
except sound waves. This means that there is not, nor
can there be, any transmission of "information/' that no
"cornmunicabon,-' passes from one person to another, and
that no "messages" can ever, as \ve say, get across in any
spatia-temporal sense.
If this were not the case there would be no such
thing for us as a new word. The meaning of the new
word would be borne into us along with its sound.
This would, in turn, eliminate the gap between meaning
and sound. But this gap cannot be eliminated, for it is to
it that we refer when we say, "'VI/hat does such and such
mean?" when we hear a ne\:v word. Si-nce all of us have had
the experience of hearing new words, therefore, words do
not carry their meanings with them. ·
Let me add that it is a good thing that this is the
case. Teaching would be admittedly easier if a teacher
could form the minds of his students just by speaking
meanings. But in the first place, the price would be high:
a student completely at the mercy of his teacher. And
thus, in the second place, anything would have to be
as true as anything else.
But people do communicate with one another by means
of words. And so, if words do not carry meanings, there
must be another account of verbal communication. There
is such an account, and it is psychological.
Communication consists of shared meanings. But since
the meanings which the hearer comes to share with the
speaker cannot proceed from the speaker into the hearer,
as we have seen, we must say that these meanings must
be already in some way in the bearer and brought to his
consciousness through association with the sounds he
hears. The effect of speaking and hearing words must
sornehO\v be to stir up these meanings within the hearer
so as to have them come to his consciousness. Speaking
words is the production of sounds for the hearer to associate with meanings. It is the making of occasions for the
coming to the consciousness of the hearer of the same
meanings as those which \Vere, and still remain, in the
mind of the speaker. Thus words, as words, and not as
sounds merely, are born twice: once in the souls of speakers
when the\· enunciate sounds which thev have associated
with their"' mea Dings, and once again in the souls of hearers
1
�The College
when they have associated those same sounds with the
meanings they already possessed.
And so we say that human beings signify and that
sounds do not. Men, in other words, and not discourse,
are significant. The human activity of signification, wordbirth, is the association of the meanings which we already
have within ourselves with the sounds that habit and
convention have put at our disposal. And thus although
words in themselves are indeed notlting but sounds, they
do become words in us when we associate them with the
meanings in our possession.
But what are these meanings in our possession? Are
they all of the same kind and comparable with one another?
\Vhen we think of what a meaning is, we may tend to
think more or less clear and distinct ideas such as are
named by the sounds "dog" or l<anthropos," each of them
with what one might call a determinate notional content,
a "whatness." However, when we reflect on some of the
prefixes and suffixes of English, or on the multiform
endings, reduplications, augments, or internal changes
in the words of synthetic languages, it becomes evident
that elements such as "-ness" in English, or the "-s"
characteristic of the third person singular of the verb, or
such sounds as ' -mp.t" or "-ovTa," are also associated with
some kind of meaning. That is, he who hears these
sounds associates them with something. But the meanings
\vhich come to mind with such suffixes, etc., are sorne\vhat
different from those which come to mind with such sounds
as "dog" or "anthropos." They seem to lack the determinate notional content, the "whatness," that is to be found
in meanings such as "dog."
I should like to mention a few of these special meanings, all of them very familiar to you, in order that our
understanding of verbal communication may become
somewhat enlarged. I shall merely list them here according
to the different kinds of sound elements (or lack of sound
elements); with which they are usually associated.
Some of them, paradoxically, have no special sound
element associated with them at all, but instead hover,
as it were, under and around the edges of the ordinary
meanings. For example, if we think the "meaning dog, we
will find that under or around it there are at least two
other meanings present. First, that a dog is a being; and
second, that a dog can somehow be thought of as by itself.
I shall call meanings that can be thought of as by themselves by the word "subjects" from now on this evening.
Hence when you hear me use the sound "subject" in
this lecture, you are not to think of "subject" in the
sense in which we sometimes speak of the subject of a
sentence or the subject of a predicate, on both of ll"hich
occasions we say thJt a given word is a subject. I am
speaking of meanings, not words, \\'hen I speak of subjects.
This is of absolutely central importance for understanding
this lecture.
Similarly, if we consider. the meaning named by "runs"
we will find that under or around it also there are other
1
2
meanings present. It, too, is a being; unlike "dog," though,
it cannot be thought of as by itself; rather, the action of
"runs" can only be thought of as in a runner, a subject;
and it is an action-meaning, that is, the sound "runs"
names an action. From now on I shall call meanings that
can be thought of only as in subjects "adjects." Adjects are
not to be confused with "adjectives." "Adjective" is
something that is usually said of a word; for example,
"Blue is an adjective" we would say in parsing. But I am
speaking here, as above, when I spoke of subjects, not of
words but of meanings, specifically meanings which can
only be thought of as in subjects.
The same holds true if we consider the meanings named
by "blue," by "five," and by "between." Each of these
meanings is a being, each one is an adject, and the first
is a quality-adject, the second a quantity-adject, and the
third a locality-adject.
But commonly special meanings are not hidden under
ordinary meanings but are rather associated with special
sounds which occur before or after the ordinary meaning
sounds, i.e., prefixes and suffixes. The Greek augment is
a sound associated with a distinct meaning in the meaning
of the sound to which it is attached. What is meant by
"love" in "They love," differs from what is meant by
"loving" in 11 Loving is suffering." In the example of ''1ov~
ing" the special meaning of subject has replaced the
special meaning of adject which was in the meaning of
"love." This change was accomplished by the addition
of the sound "-ing." It so happens that that sound, in this
context, is associated with the special meaning of subject
in the sound to which it is added.
A change within the sound itself, as in the so-called
"subjunctive forms" of certain Greek words, the
lengthened w or ~· can be associated with the different
desires a speaker might have in speaking to his hearers.
The order of sounds, also, as in the case of interrogation,
can be associated with a distinct special meaning. "You
do love me" means something different from "Do you
love me?" and word order has turned the trick. Similarly,
") ohn loves Mary" means something different from "Mary
loves John," and it is the difference in the word order that
is associated with the difference in the meaning.
Even separate sound elements, \vith which no ordinary
meaning of their own is associated, are often associated
with having another ordinary meaning appear under a
special aspect. Thus one who hears the English sound
"than" comes to view the subject named after it in the
light of its being the standard to which the subject named
before it is compared.
Still other separate sounds arc associated with these
special meanings only, ;:md thus not only me themselves
not associated \vith ordinary meanings, but are a1so not
even associated with having the ordinary meanings of the
words around them appear under a special aspect. Thus in
English, and in other languages to a lesser extent, the
sounds called "relative pronouns" are only associated with
�July 1971
the special meanings of subject, or object, and number.
The hearer's memory and the context must provide further
intelligibility.
Tone of voice may be associated with interrogation. It
may also be associated with negation of the totality of a
rpeamng, as m scarcasm.
So _much for a very partial first glimpse at these special
meanmgs and at the means by which they are signified.
As we shall see, there are many groups and kinds of them
and, like "ordinary" meanings, they exist in the minds of
all of us, waiting to be brought to consciousness by hearing
the sounds or other elements with which they are by
custom associated. There is no way to put them into our
minds if they are not there already, for they seem to be
pnor to expenence and are surely prior to language. As
w~ grow m matunty, we gradua11y learn to associate them
\\'lth all the v·ocal devices mentioned above plus a good
many more, such as accent, melody, gesture, clothing,
etc. Thus we may say that a given language bears the
same . relation to the network of ordinary and special
meamn~s wh1ch communicants have at their disposal,
that a given amount of grains of sand bears to the network
of vessels and tubing in which it happens to be located.
All that is formal in language pre-exists language and is
foreign to It. But more of this later.
I should like to call these special meanings "dimensions"
of meanings or just "dimensions." I pick this word "dimensions" b:cause it usually suggests something which,
Without Impmgmg on the integrity of something already
existi-ng, yet can change or expand it in some way. I am
aware of a danger that a dimension of a meaning may, in
the case of subjects and adjects, be a part of the meaning
of those .subjects and adjects and not, as I have been
suggesting, somethi-ng separable from them. However, it
on balance that the subjectness or adjectness
seems to
of a meamng rs sufficiently external to it, or distant from
rt, to allow the. use of the term. I am moved to this
decision by the fact that these special meanings can, in
English and other languages, be independently signified by
the additiOn of such sounds as "-ness" "-al" "-ize" or
"-ly" to the sounds which are associated with 'the ordinary
meamngs.
The use of the word "dimension" may be more difficult
to justify where it is used to identify such things as
sentences, predicates, and objects. Ho\:vever, as \:Ve shall
see bter, this usage is not altogether far-fetched. VVhen
we. call a group of s?tmds a sentence, a predicate, or an
object, we are refern~g to something, to some meaning
which comes to consciOusness when we hear those sounds.
This meoning is altogether different from the ordinary
:nc~mings of sounds such as "dog" or "~mthropos." Yet i't
1s wl~~t allows us to recognize those sentences, predicates,
or objects as sentences, predicates, or objects.
I am taking as a necessary, though not sufficient, test
of the presence o~, a dimension the futility of asking a
questiOn such as \Vhat is such and such-ness?" about
n:e
a given significant linguistic element. Such and such can
be any significant linguistic element, from the suffix "-ing"
to me:e \\;?rd ord~r,, ~s in "J ~~? lo~:es.'' T~us the futility
of askmg \Vhat rs -mg-ness? or \Vhat rs the position
of 'John' before 'loves' -ness?" is a sign for me that the
linguistic elements "-ing" and the position of "John"
before "loves" are associated \Vith dimensions of meanings
rather than with ordinary meanings.
B. Some Important Consequences
There are some important consequences of the two
positions affirmed so far for the study of form in language.
The two positiOns are I) that communications take place
by the assocwtwn of sounds with meanings, and 2) that
meamngs mc1ude the \vhole range of dimensions of meanings as well as ordi-nary meanings.
First, it becomes apparent that nothing stable or permanent can be said about words except insofar as they are
sounds. \Ve may, that is, speak about the length of words
their mellifluence, the number of their syllables, and thei;
srmibnty to one another, all of them spatia-temporal
predicates. But smce they only become words in us and
never are such in themselves, \V€ cannot say anything
about them that would be based on their being things in
themselves apart from sounds. Hence we cannot ascribe
to them natures as so-called "part of speech." \Ve cannot
say that . they have "histories." 1l1ey are incapable of
entermg mto relatiOnships. They cannot act in any way,
I.e., they cannot umean," "designate," "modify" <(describe," or "point to." And thev cannot be classified except into spatia-temporally defined classes. Thus thev cannot be classed as "nouns," "adjectives," or ''verbs," "finite,"
or ":wn-~nite/' "transitive," or "intransitive." Nor can they
be Identified as "subj·ects," "predicates," or "objects>) or
spoken of as grammatical or ungrammatical, acceptable or
unacceptable. The activity of parsing, therefore, as it is
usually understood, is necessarily an exercise in futility
and frustration.
Thirdly, ,it is ~vident that any explanatory power or
understandmg which conventiOnal grammatical categories
had, and that any future attempt at making sense of form
in language \\1i1l want to have, must be rooted not in
word classes but in classes of meanings and of dimensions
of meanings. For words in themselves are nothing but
sounds: thm own proper being is to be articulated sound.
Therefore there is not, nor can there be, such a thing
as the science of grammar, if such a science be understood
as so~ething differ?nt from a science of me~mings and din1enswns of meamngs. But the name of tklt science is
logic.
III. Constructive Part
In this part of the lecture I should like to begin to clean
up the debris by discussing what a studv of this branch
3
�The College
of logic might begin with. I shall be concerned with the
dimensions of meanings only, as a study of the meanings
themselves would necessary involve a study of the deepest
things, and, as we shall see, it is in association with the
dimensions of the meanings more than with the meanings
themselves, that form in language is grounded. I shall
proceed a priori since what we are studying is not given
in experience. I shall make a very rough ordering of the
different dimensions and discuss a few.
Dimensions are dimensions of meanings, and are as-
sociated by convention with human vocal sounds. But
human vocal sounds associated with meanings are speech,
and speech is communicating something. Hence there are
two main kinds of dimensions, those related to communicating, and those related to something. The ones related
to something are related to meanings as such whereas those
related to communicating are related to meanings as communicated, i.e., to meanings as brought by a speaker successively and deliberately to the consciousness of a hearer.
The dimensions related to meanings as such I divide
into those like subject and adject, where a mere inspection
of the meaning· reveals the dimensions, and those related
to meanings taken with reference to other meanings. A
discussion of those in the first group would investigate
subjects and the dimensions appropriate to them as sub;ects. For example, it would treat of that in subjects by
which they. do or do not admit of plurality. Some subjects cannot be pluralized, for example, triangularity
and co_urage. Vilhy? It would also investigate the different
dimensions appropriate to the different classes of adjects.
It would treat of that in quality-adjects that allows them
to have degrees and of that in action- and passion-adjects
that allows them to be differentiated with respect to time.
It would provide the ontological basis for the possibility
that in some languages what are called "adjectives" and
~'nouns" "agree" \Vith one another. This whole discussion
would savor strongly of Aristotle's Categories, but I will
not embark upon it now.
The dimensions related to meanings taken with reference
to other meanings concern, among others, the objective
dimension and the attributive dimension. I will have a
word to say about both of these. Both of them arise only
when two or more meanings are present and considered
in relation to one another. The first concerns only subjects,
the second mostly subject-adject combinations.
First, the objective dimension. There is an intricate network of relations which all possible subjects bear to a
given subject. The most fundamental of these relations,
one \Vhich every subject bears to every other subject, is
that of being other than those others. The German word
gegcnstand-:---stand
over
against-suggests
this
posture
which every subject individually bears to all the others.
Each is over against every other. Now the word gegenstand
is, in German, associated with the same meaning that we
associate with the word "object" in English, and I am
going to suggest now that once a speaker thinks a subject
4
as such, all other subjects become for that subject and
speaker fixed in their relation to that one subject as
gegenstander or objects. This is not to say that they are
any longer subjects in their own right-far from it. But
it is to say that vis-a-vis the subject the speaker has chosen,
all the other subjects have become permanently placed into
an object status. I call the object status of a subject its
objective dimension. Let me make this clearer by an
example.
In the words "John loves Mary," "John" names a subject. The position of "John" immediately before the
adject-name "loves" tells the hearer that its meaning is the
subject which the speaker wants him to unite with the
adject "loves Mary." Now "Mary" names a subject also.
But she acquires the objective dimension now because
another subject, John, has been designated as the subject
in the speaker's mind. Mary, in other words, has the
dimension of object because she is not thought of as simply
by herself-she is not a pure subject, that is-but she is
thought of only as a subject in a relationship, i.e., as an
object.
But Mary remains a subject nonetheless, and so she may
in turn find herself as a secondary subject in a relation
to a third subject. Thus if the speaker should go on to
say "John sees l'v1ary in the garden," Mary becomes the
subject for the adject named by "in the garden." The
subject named by "garden," in tum by its relation to Mary,
has acquired the objective dimension. This kind of "subject-hopping" can go on indefinitely.
Vii e may say, incidentally, on the basis of these remarks,
what "case," as such, is. Subjects that have acquired the
objective dimension have this status, in Greek and Latin,
associated with small changes in their names. Such changes
are calJed ''caseu endings. There are as many "cases" in a
language as there are categories into which speakers of the
language see fit to divide the objective dimension. But
whether there are no case endings in a language or as
many as fifteen, each case ending, as case ending, is
associated with the objective dimension. \V'hether an
object is called a "direct object," an "object of a preposition," or an "indirect objecf' makes no difference at all.
Hence we may say that the ancient grammarians were
right when they declared that there was no such monstrous
absurdity as the "nominative case." The name of a subject,
as subject, is, as it were, its natural name or the name of
the subject by itself. "Cases" only arise when the subject,
as has been said, becomes an object in addition to being
a subject, i.e., when there is a declension from its proper
self-sufliciencv. It is, in such a case, entirely appropriate
for the name of the SUbject to change in Order to reyea]
the changed status of the meaning.
It is also, therefore, quite appropriate, where there are
two subjects but no objects, i.e., in the case of the identitY
of a subject with itself, under another name, as in "John
is a ]oyer," that the subject name remain a subject name
on the other side of the identity statement. In other
�July 1971
words, there is good reason why there should be, in the
language of the vernacular, "predicate nominatives."
·
The other dimension related to meanings taken with
reference to other meanings is the one I call the attributive
dimension. A speaker may, in the course of speaking,
want to signify a subject-adject combination which he
thinks the hearer has either already made for himself or
else will readily, upon hearing it, concur in. For example,
if I say to you that I met your lovely sister last night,
I seem to be assuming that you have already made, or will
r-eadily accept, my combination of loveliness \Vith your
sister as w.ell as my combination of you \:Vith a sister.
This desire of a speaker requires that there be sounds or
other conventions available for his use which a hearer
will associate with the fact that the speaker thinks that
there are some subject-adject combinations which are
not in question between them. In other words, the hearer
must be able to receive signals from the speaker from which
he will know that unions of meanings are being made
without his being asked to notice them or question them.
I call the dimension of such a tacit combination of a
subject v.iith an adject the attributive dimension.
In English the attributive dimension is associated
usually with the placing of the adject name before the
subject name. 11ms the "running boy" or the "blue book."
This is sometimes known as attribution. Where one subject is identified with another, the attributive dimension of
the second subject is associated with placing the second
subject name immediately after the main subject name.
"John, a lover, is faithful." This location is known as
apposition.
I should now like to turn to the dimensions related to
meanings as communicated. I shall mention three of
these but discuss only one.
Communication, as we have seen, consists of shared
meanings. But we have also seen that simple meanings
and their dimensions are already shared, and that there
are some combinations of meanings which a speaker thinks
he either already shares with his hearers or else judges
that his hearers will not question. Hence, the unshared
meanings of communication, those for the sake of which
communication exists at all, must be combinations of
meanings which speakers do not think they already share
with their hearers and which they want to share with them.
Speakers speak for at least three purposes. They mean to
indicate to hearers the actual or possible union or sepa·
ration of subjects and adjects; or they mean to have hearers
examine and indicate whether a subject and adject belong
together; or they mean to move hearers to action. Hence,
'"'hen a speaker wants to communicate, not only must he
make sounds \\'hich he trusts the hearer \vill associate with
the same ordinal)' meanings he has. He must also use
other and distinct conventions for letting the hearer know
\"vhether he means the hearer to unite those meanings,
whether he w;]Jlts him to examine and indicate \\'hether
they belong together, or whether he wants him to act. For
communication to be possible, in other words, there must
be linguistic conventions by which what a speaker says
to a hearer reveals to the hearer what he, the speaker,
means him to do.
But the hearer too, for his part, must have an a priori
knowledge of what a speaker might have in mind in speaking, which knowledge he can then associate with the
linguistic elements in a speaker's words when they come
at him. There must also, in other words, be the same
meanings or dimensions pre-existing in the hearer and
waiting to be brought to consciousness by the hearing
of the sounds that by convention the speaker has associated
with his particular desires. There are, then, three necessary
dimensions of meanings related to communication present
in the minds of speakers and hearers prior to any language.
They are those dimensions in us which make us know that
speakers expect things from us and the presence of which
predispose us to recognize, or, better, to reach out in
anticipation for, meanings we shal1 later categorize as
sentences, questions, or commands in the \Vords of speakers
to us. They are what prevents us from being either recording machines or mere sounding boards vis-a-vis the speech
of others. Specifically, it is the indicative dimension in
us that enables us to categorize some of the sounds we
hear as sentences. It is the interrogative dimension in us
that enables us to categorize other sounds as questions. It
is the imperative dimension in us that enables us to
categorize still others as commands.
The indicative dimension is usually associated in English
with placing the adject name as soon as possible after the
11
subject name, i.e., John loves." Sometimes, in addition,
the indicative dimension is associated with the insertion
of a special sound, such as '~am," "are," and "does." Where
one subject is combined with another, the indicative dimension is usually associated with both position and
special sounds, e.g., "John is a lover/' "John is my son,"
although sometimes position alone suffices, as in "Finders
keepers, losers weepers."
The indicative dimension is also associated with those
sounds which, in addition to being associated with ordinary meanings of contrast, concession, etc., are associated
with the speaker's asking the hearer to combine the
combinations of meanings he has in mind. These sounds
are the so-called <(conjunctions,"-"and," "although," "or,"
('if," "since," ''un1ess,"-and the so-called "adverbs,""on]y," "yet," "hO\li'ever," "nonetheless/' "nohvithstanding," and many others. It may sound surprising, but the
juxtaposition of a dependent and an independent clause is
as much of a verb as "loves."
Discussion of the interrogative and imperative dimensions and of the conventions \Vith which thev are
associated is probably unnecessary at this point.
'
It follows from what has been said that groups of
sounds with linguistic elements associated with the dimensions of d subject dnd an adject, simple or complex,
that ha·s the indicative dimension, are whdt are usually
5
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called "sentences." Those with the interrogative dimen'sion
are called "questions," and those with the imperative dimension are called "commands." It also follows that
sounds associated with simple or complex adjects that have
the indicative dimension only and in which the subject
is ignored are what are usually called "predicates." Furthermore, sounds associated with simple adjects that have the
indicative dimension only and in which the subject is
ignored are what are usually called ''finite verbs." Needless
to say, sounds associated with subjects are usually called
"nouns" when one is looking only to their subject
character. But those very same sounds are also called
"subjects" when one is distinguishing them from sounds
which arc usually called "objects."
If we bear in mind these new definitions of the familiar
terms
noun/'
"finite
verb/'
"predicate,"
"subject,"
"object/' "sentence," "question," and "command," we
will be in a position to answer many questions which
before seemed, at least to me, to offer no hope of solution.
I refer to such questions as "What is a subject?" "V\That is
the difference between a noun and a subject?" "How do
we know the subject of a sentence is the subject of that
sentence?" "\Vby is not 'dog' a sentence, since it is a
complete thought?" "How can we know that a given group
of sounds makes a sentence?"
VVithin the dimensions related to meanings as communicated, then, the indicative, the interrogative, and the imperative seem to me to be the most important. There are
others, such as the subjunctive and the optative, but I will
not speak about them. I submit that the necessities which
these dimensions entail, and the necessities which are
entailed by the dimensions related to meanings as such,
underlie, and, indeed, constitute, whatever order, form, or
regularity of pattern can be discerned in all the vocal
sounds produced by human beings.
IV. Conclusion
I should like to conclude with some remarks about what
is called ungrammatical speech and about the ·possibility
of meaningless but grammatical· sentences.
Just what does it mean to call some speech "ungrammatical"? I will only give a definition without comment:
ungrammatical speech is speech that is at first apparently
nonsensical but which has later been resolved by a hearer
into a matter of merely unconventional usage of sounds.
As to meaningless but grammatical sentences, let me
just say this. Since grammarians talk only about dimensions
of meanings but not about meanings directly, it becomes
possible for them, in thought at leas~ much like the
logicians with their empty forms of propositions, to try
to separate the grammatical component of speech from the
semantic. Hence we are exposed to such gems as Mr.
Chomsky's "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously," or Lewis
Carroll's "The slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the
6
wabe." It is fun to make up these things-"The scale of
C sharp minor reads sweet potatoes." Many persons
will assert that these three groups of sounds are all
sentences, all grammatical, and all nonsensical. That they
are in large measure nonsensical, I agr.ee. But I say that
they are (to that extent) neither sentences nor grammatical. They look like sentences because all the English
conventions associated with the dimensions related to
meanings as such and to meanings as communicated are
rigorously observed. Thus Lewis Carroll's utterance begins with "the," a sound associated with an adject mean~
ing mutually known determinateness in the subject about
to be named; next comes the use of a sound ending in
"-thy," a sound associated with a quality adject. Next
comes Htoves,'-' a word ending in "-es," suggesting the
dimension of plurality in a subject. The very proximity
of the sounds "the," "slithy/' and "toves" to one another
is associated with the attributive dimension of a subjectadject combination. And next come the words "did gyre
and gimble," all of which together become associated in
our minds, through the sound "did," with the dimension
of an action-adject that has the indicative dimension.
Similar things can be said about "in the wabe." Hence
we have presented to us sounds usually associated with
the dimensions of subject and adject with the indicative
dimension, i.e., what is usually called a sentence. And so
we say that the sounds make up a grammatical sentence.
But we should be more careful. For the dimensions we
have been discussing are dimensions of meanings, and
hence when the meanings are either not present, or, as in
this example, merely flirted with, or when they are incompatible, as they are in the case of Mr. Chomsky's
"colorless green ideas," the dimensions are necessarily
absent also. And so the sounds usually associated with
the dimensions can only become dead and dry husks,
having less relation to the dimensions than the discarded
skin of an animal has to the animal. And just as the discarded skin means no animal, so the presence of merely
dimensional signals, or dimensional signals in conjunction
with incompatible meanings, means no sentence. In short,
the examples are not grammatical because they are not
even sentences.
Edward C. Sparrow, Jr. received his B.A. degree from Harvard College and his LL.B. degree from the Han·ard Law School. He then
sen.-eel for a time with the New York Legal Aid Society. In 1957 he
recei\'ed his M.A. degree from Teachers College at Columbia University. A Tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis since that year,
he served as Acting Director of the Integrated Liberal Arts Curriculum
at St. \1ary's College, California, from 1964 to 1966.
�Hell: Paolo And Francesca*
By ROBERTS. BART
This is the Dead End of our Dead Vleek. We have
all been in Don Rags and perhaps it is not inappropriate
that we are going to spend this evening in Hell. And
,·et it is mY hope that it will not be Hell for us. In fact,
looking forward to our discussion together in the question
period, I am confident that it will not be Hell. How is it
possible that we can be in Hell, and yet not be there, too?
You know the answer of course: we will be in Hell by
s•irtue of our imaginations, for images are both what they
are and not what they are.
The world is full of images, images of all kinds. Shadows
and reflections are images. Some people look alike. All
men look more like one another than they look like fish
or flowers. But not only do we find images around us,
we make. them. A portrait, for instance, is an image of a
man: it looks like a man. If we were to point to a picture
of a man and ask a child, "\Vhat is that?", it is likely that
he would say, "A man." I know I would. It is so easy to
accept the fact that the being of any specific image is the
being of what it images.
The picture is a man, and yet it is not. We do not
mistake it for a man; we do not respond to it in the same
ways that we respond to a man. \Ve do not think of
talking to it, or embracing it. We examine it, we study
it, as we examine and study no man. Suppose, for example,
we walked into the living room at home and found the
beautiful Olympia stretched out nude on the sofa, just as
she is in Manet's picture. We would, I assume, beat a
hasty retreat in confusion. And, I guess, Olympia would
not remain unaffected bv our entrance and continue to
'present herself so totally, so completely without· reserve
to our contemplation and study. If she could seem to, she
would be putting on an act. ·
Thus, although man is the proper study of man, no
man can approach another man with the same liberty that
he can approach the image of a man. That liberty is felt
as a freedom from the respect, the reverence, even the
love which is owed by us to all men. It is rude to stare
at your neighbors, or to make personal remarks about
them. But t\·erything in a pictUre is there to be seen and
commented on. Pictures have no embarrassing secrets
and we need have no modestv or courtesy about asking
them to yield up all their truths: it is not a matter of
*A lecture given in Annapolis at St. John's College in February, 1967.
impertinence. All that is needed is to know how to let
the questions take shape and grow from one another,
and all from what is before our eyes.
Moreover, unlike the real world, images do not require
immediate action of us: they only ask our understanding.
Since the\· onh· ha,·e a borrm:ved being, we need not react
to them as we· must to what they image. In a picture we
can behold the Crucifixion or the J\.1assacre of the Innocents, free from the summons to active participation. That
is a relief, and an opportunity. \:Vere we presented with the
events themselves, there is some probability, is there not,
that we would be confused by the situation, as others
have been, and play the fool, the coward or the knave?
But since the pictures are but shadows, we are spared the
responsibility of immediate action: we can cast away the
crutch of prejudice and acknowledge that our opinions
are but opinions, while we search the pictures freely for
what they mean.
I do not mean, however, that this detachment is dispassionate. If what we beheld in imagination did not talk
to ns about our lives and the real world we live in, it
could not move us and involve us in its illusion. It would
be more remote from us than the animals in the zoo.
If, for example, in Giotto's Massacre of the Innocents,
the long pointed sword levelled at the helpless child did
not sear our souls and all but make us catch our breaths,
we would not have seen the picture. Yet that motion
of the soul is utterly different in its kind from any we
would experience if we were present. \Vhether emotions of
horror, f.ear, or rage possessed us, \Ve would never let
our hungry eyes search every detail of the scene for the
mere sake of knowing it completely. The special gift of
the imagination is that it lets us for a moment separate
acting from what we feel and think. Through the distance
it provjdes, we can bear to behold what we might otherwise find unendurable, whether it is the beauty of life or
its terror. Furthermore, if we are \villing to reflect on
v,rhat we have felt and thought as we \vatched, we may
learn things about ourselves hidden from us when we
act. Hmv we respond to an image is not irrelevant to hmv
we respond when face to face.
The imagination then can be an instrument for learning.
If I should read you all of Dante's Hell, we would fancy
ourselves together in the \'ast scene that his \VOrds present,
though we would hear no sighs, feel nci heat, no blast
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of wind or burning sand and ice. Hell would be before
us and yet we would not be in it. We would be immobile,
and yet we would be moved. We would feel strange
feelings, shadows of real feelings, for they would not
prompt us to action as real feelings do. We would not
be so much paralyzed or chained, as at rest from initiating
action, at leisure, our minds alert and questioning, our
wills not asleep but at play, as we apprehend and respond.
\Ve would be perplexed and amazed, and again, satisfied
with the delight of understanding; we would judge, too,
liking this or that character, approving and disapproving
this action or that word, praising and blaming as we went
along.
But as it is, I shall only read a tiny part of the whole,
the fifth of thirty-four cantos. I shall read this canto
so that ,,,e may I-iave it in common to discuss together.
Understanding is our unique goal. Just as we may rejoice
in the illuminating way that horror is presented in a play
like Oedipus, because the truth, even in the small parts
of it that we can grasp, is always a joy, despite the distress
with which we have had to seek it and the disillusionment
we have felt when we have mistaken it, so the truth about
sin, if we can but find it, and know it when we have
found it, will be for us a light in the darkness, even
though sin itself is the only darkness in the luminous
splendor of creation. If we are in Hell tonight, it will
be above all because our minds are taken up with Hell,
and our discourse, now and in the question period, will all
reflect one particular image of it.
Dante and his guide, the poet Virgil, have entered
the gate of Hell with its terrible inscription: You that are
entering, abandon every hope. They have crossed the
river Acheron, passed through the first circle and visited
the noble castle, the eternal dwelling of great poets,
heroes and philosophers. Now they come to Minos the
judge, in the second circle.
Thus I descended from the first circle down
into the second, which bounds a smaller space
and so much more of pain that goads to wailing.
There stands Minos horrible, snarling, examines
their offences at the entrance, judges and dispatches them as he girds himself; I mean that
when the ill-born soul somes before him it confesses all, and that discerner of sins s·ees what
is the place for it in Hell and encircles himself
with his tail as many times as the grades he
will have it sent down. Always before him is a
crowd of them; they go each in turn to the judgment; thcv speak and hear and then are hurled
below.
"0 thou who comest to the abode of pain,"
1\1inos said \vhen he smv me, leaving the business
of his great office, "Look how thou enterest and
in whom. thou trustest; let not the breadth of
the entrance deceive thee."
8
And my Leader said to him: "\~Thy dost thou
make an outcry? Hinder not his fated journey.
It is so willed where will and power are one; and
ask no more."
Now the notes of pain began to reach my ears;
now I am come where great wailing breaks on me.
I came to a place where all light was mute and
where was bellowing as of a sea in tempest that
is beaten by conflicting winds. The hellish storm
never resting, seizes and drives the spirits before
it; smiting and whirling them about, it torments
them. \~'hen they come before its fury there are
shrieks, weeping and lamentation, and there they
blaspheme the power of God; and I learned that
to such torment are condemned the carnal
sinners who subject reason to desire. As in the
cold season their wings bear the starlings in a
broad, dense flock, so does the wind blast the
wicked spirits. Hither, thither, downward, upward, it drives them; no hope ever comforts
them, not to say of rest, but of less pain. And
as the cranes go chanting their lays, making of
themselves a long line in the air, so I saw approach with long-drawn 1vailings shades borne
on these battling winds, so that I said, "Master,
who are these people whom the black air so
scourges?"
"The first among those of whom thou wouldst
know" he said to me then "was Empress of
peoples of many tongues, who was so corrupted
by licentious vice that she made lust lawful
in her law to take away the scandal into which
she was brought; she is Semiramis, of whom we
read that she succeeded Ninus, being his wife,
and held the land which the Soldan rules. The
next is she who slew herself for love and broke
faith with the ashes of Sychaeus, and then wanton
Cleopatra; see Helen, for whose sake so many
years of ill revolved; and see the great Achilles,
who fought at the last with love; see Paris,
Tristan-" and he showed me mme than a thoussand shades, naming them as he pointed, whom
love parted from our life.
\Vhen I heard my Teacher name the knights
and ladies of old times, pity came upon me and
I was as one bewildered.
I began: "Poet, I would fain speak with these
two that go together and seem so light upon
the wind."
And he said to me: "TI10u shalt see when they
are nearer to us, and do thou entreat them theTI
by the love that leads them, and they will come."
As soon as the wind bent their course to us I
raised mv voice: "0 wearied souls, come and
speak with us, if One forbids it not."
As doves, summoned by desire, come with
�July 1971
J\1inos . .. examines their offences
at the entrance.
wings poised and motionless to the sweet nest,
borne by their will through air, so these left the
troop where Dido is, coming to us through the
malignant air; such force had my loving call.
"0 living creature gracious and friendly, who
goest through the murky air visiting us who
stained the world with blood, if the King of the
universe were our friend, we would pray to Him
for thy peace, since tho·u hast pity on our evil
plight [mal perverso J. Of that which thou art
pleased to hear and speak we will hear and speak
with you while the wind is quiet, as here it
is. The city where I was born lies on the shore
where the Po, with the streams that join it,
descends to rest. Love, which is quickly kindled
in the gentle heart, seized this ·man for the fair
form that was taken from me, and the manner
afllicts me still. Love, which absolves no one
beloved from loving, seized me so strongly with
his charm that, as thou seest, it does not leave
me vet. Love brought us to one death. Caina waits
for him who quenched our life." 1l1ese words
were borne from them to us. And when I heard
these offiicted souls I bent my head and held it
down so long that at last the Poet said to me:
"\'Vhat are thy thoughts?"
\Vhen I answered I began: "Alas, how many
sweet thoughts, how great desire, brought them
to the woeful pass!" Then.! turned to them again
to speak and began: "Francesca, thy torments
make me weep for grief and pity, but tell me, in
the time of your sweet sighing how and by what
occasion did love grant you to know your uncertain desires?"
She answered me: "There is no greater pain
than to recall the happy time in misery, and this
thy teacher knows; but if thou hast so great
desire to know our love's first root, I shall tell as
one may that weeps in telling. Vve read one day
for pastime of Lancelot, how love constrained
him. \'Ve were alone and had no misgiving. Many
times that reading drew our eyes together and
changed the color in our faces, but one point
alone it was that mastered us; when he read that
the longed-for smile was kissed by so great a
lover, he who never shall be parted from me, all
trembling, kissed my mouth. A Galeotto was the
book and he that wrote it; that day we read in
it no farther."
While the one spirit said this the other wept so
that for pi tv I swooned as if in death and dropped
like a dead body. [Translator, John D. Sinclair]
Pity overcame Dante. He tells us:
\:Vhile Francesca spoke, Paolo wept so that I
swooned for pity, as though I had died, and
I fell down like a dead body.
9
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Again, at the beginning of the sixth canto, he speaks
of the return of thought
which had shut itself up in the face of the pathos
of the two, the brother and sister-in-law.
\\That stirs this pity? The terrible plight of the two lovers,
buffeted by the black wind, blown about forever in the
dark, without hope of rest, tossed '"On the blast lightly,
like feathers or leaves, they lighter than all the rest. They
are infinitely weary, weary of the motion and the noise.
Francesca knows no greater means to express her appreciation for Dante's first kind greeting than to say
that if she could, she would pray for Dante's peace.
She fancies the whole world is as weary as she is, so
that when she is describing her home a·s situated near
the mouth of the Po, she is naturally led to speak of the
river and its tributaries as seeking peace in the open
sea, an end to the rushing of turbulent waters. If only
she could find peace, too!
The pathos of the lovers is heightened by their gratitude
for the hint of commiseration in Dante's greeting. He, a
visitor, with a poet's imagination, knows what they feel
and he says to them:
0 wearied souls, come talk with us.
He has but to speak these words and Francesca calls him
gracious and kind, regretting that they cannot invoke
the blessing of peace on him. She welcomes his pity.
Now pity, I think, tends to imply a superiority to the
person pitied. \Ve pity those who are worse off than ourselves, those who are poorer, weaker, sadder than we are.
\Ve pity the sick, the helpless, the young. \Ve feel pity
for suffering and deprivation. But when we suffer ourselves as much as others, we tend to withdraw our pity;
and wheri we are in immediate fear of what they are
suffering, we may shut up our hearts and even do violence
to those who might otherwise command our pity. The
plague of Athens shows us such terrible scenes. Any panic
may, as hen a ship sinks, or fire breaks out in· a crowd.
Thus, to a calculatin.g soul, pity is a luxury, an indulgence
reserved for the rich, for the fortunate, for those whom
life has favored. Pride may even reject the offer of pity
as an intended humiliation.
Not so Francesca: her quick response to Dante's pity
opens the way for ours. She reveals at once how much
she longs to talk, and her gratitude shows her goodness
as well as her need. Our pity for the suffering of good
V11
of forces beyond themselves that are responsible for their
undoing. It is not, it seems to me, that Francesca is seeking
to justify herself ~nd Paolo. Nothing she says makes me
feel that she thmks thetr acts need justification. Did
they not give themselves to love? Could there be a higher
commrtment? Nevertheless, they have been subjected to
vwlence, and they. are deeply a:-vare of their own pathos.
Paolo cannot get hrs fill of weepmg. They express gratitude
to Dante just because he has pity on what Francesca c;;Jls
"our perverse misfortune." He shows himself therebv a
friend. If only the king of the universe were their friend!
But he is not, as she says; and she shows it by her story.
She tells that story in three swift stanzas:
Love, which is swiftly kindled in a gentle heart.
seized this man with the beautiful body which
was taken from me; and the manner afflicts me
still.
Love, which absolves no one who is 1ored
from loving, seized me so strongly with his charm,
that as you see, even now it does not leave me.
Love led us to one death: Caina waits for him
who quenched our life.
The word Love begins each of the three stonzas.
Love dominates the whole story. First it seized on Paolo,
using her beauty as its means. And then it seized on her,
using her delight in him. Finally it led them both to one
death. Love is the protagonist. Love did this to them.
They were acted on by it: in themselves they were
essentially passive. Consent is not even mentioned. 'This
is perhaps the the most pathetic aspect of their tale. \Ve
are pitied for what happens to us even more than for
what we do ourselves. \Ve pity the helpless, and we pity
Paolo and Francesca as helpless, helpless in the face of
their passion. The word passion derives from the same
roots as the word passive, from the \vords in Latin and
Greek that mean to suffer. Perhaps we are inclined to
think of ourselves as most active and alive when we
are moved by passion, but does that not disregard the
distinction between what prompts us from without and
what \Ve originate of our own? Francesca makes it cle3r
that their love was passion in the sense of something
that seized upon them, that found them as a pas;in·
material. A gentle heart is swiftly fired with loYe: ler
it but meet with beauty and it is inflamed.
In Francesca's account the word Love is made the
subject of verbs of force and violence. Later on she "'"
of Lancelot, too:
men is deeper than the promiscuous sentiment which ern-
braces from a distance all the victims of a general disaster. \Ve prefer to like those whom we pity.
\Vithout prompting, Francesca interprets Dante's request as an invitation to recount their grief. It is the story
she tells which places the .greatest claim on Dante's pity,
and ours. In it she and Paolo appear as victims, victims
10
\Ve read how love constrained Lance! at.
And of their reading about that ill-fated lm·er, she san
lv!anv 'times it drove our eyes to· meet, but it
was jus·t one point which conquered us.
�July 1971
Love itself leads, seizes and constrains; even the reading
about love drives and conquers.
I think we all know just what she means. Virgil did
when he showed Dido burning with unrestrained desire
for Aeneas, contrary to prudence, her country's interest
and her own solemn vows. But Venus is a goddess whose
might is not to be scorned. 'Nhatever her correct name
and the nature of her power it is something not subject
to our command, something whose im~;act we acknowledge
at once and often praise, but also fear. For we must not
confuse the loveliness of Aphrodite, or her fondness for
youth and beauty, with her ways, which are not, it seems
to me, always gentle or kind. In the Symposium Agathon
calls Eros tender, because he associates with the tender.
But that is bad logic. Most of us hm·e known moments
of \'lo1ence in love, and sooner or ·later, in ourselves or
in others we hav·e seen how ruthless Aphrodite can be,
how implacable. She tells us so herself in the beginning
of the Hippolytus:
Mighty am I among mortals, and not without a
name; and so it is too among the gods.
If we have any doubt what she means, that play shows us.
Francesca, too, proclaims the power of love. She says,
Love, which absolves no one who is loved from
loving, seized me so strongly with his charm, that
as you see, even now it does not leave me.
Love, she argues, begets love by its very nature. Imitation
is the natural response of the beloved. Love cannot
pardon that heart which turns away from it: it is a force, a
force more overwhelming than beauty, for it has the
power to condemn:
Love . . . absolves no one who rs loved from
loving.
Beauty appeals to the gentle heart, but it is not a god.
Love is, and thus is inescapable. It is death not to .return
love. On the other hand, love returned has eternal life.
Francesca says:
Even now it does not leave me.
the deformed or crippled son of the ruler of neighboring
Rimini, presumably for political reasons. She and her
brother-in-law Paolo fell in love. Francesa's tale leads ns
to infer that her husband surprised them and killed them
together. She says he will be in Caina when he dies.
Cain a is named for Cain: it is a part of the lowest depths
of Hell, a frozen pit where Dante finds fixed in the ice
those who are guilty of betraying their relatives.
Terrible were the consequences of their following the
rule and the logic of love, Paolo responding to Francesca's
beauty, she to his love and his beauty. They paid love
all its rites, and now they find themselves in Hell. That
is what they mean by their "perverse misfortune": the
whole world was ordered against their love. Theirs is a
tragic pathos. Love imposed itself on them and they gave
themselves to its high laws wholeheartedly. They risked
everything to giv·e it life. But that love was only a challenge
to the world as it is ordered, a moving defiance not destined
to bring them a joy as lasting as the love itself. They
were fated to a tragic end. Part of their nobility is that
although they weep in Hell, they do not whine. They do
not protest. They are dignified in defeat, not humiliated
by their condition as outcasts. Unlike others Dante will
meet, they do not demean themselves with obscene and
empty protest. They speak of the power arrayed against
them with the formal respect that sovereigns show who
have fallen out and gone to war, but maintain the tone
of former relations. Their enemy is still a king to them.
If only they did not happen to be his enemies, they would
sue to him for Dante's peace. They have something of
the fierceness of the ancient heroes, too, when they think
of the man who quenched their life: there is a quiver
of deep hate and satisfaction at the revenge which his
destiny will provide. That is almost the last word in
Francesca's account; it is brief, final, as .cold as the pit
where he will be found.
Their love is tragic precisely because the king of the
universe is not their friend. They do not have in their
hands the power to control the world, nor does the love
to which they gave themselves. The basis of the tragedy
is that there are many gods, and no justice. The only
justice they can find in the world is that their murder
will be revenged; but they too must endure the endless
frustration and darkness of Hell. Dante may have pity
on them; the king of the universe will not. \Vhatever
name we give to him, Zeus, Fate, Necessity, he is in-
Yet love led them to death together. Mere spirits now
in Hell, in the world above they had their place in the
public eye. Paolo was an able and attractive man, Captain
of the People in Florence when Dante was 17, shortly
before the murder took place. Dante knew Francesca's
nephew well. He was the lord of Ravenna and Dante
lived as his guest during the last period of his long and
bitter exile from Florence. Theirs is a shocking story,
virtually unknown except for what Francesca tells us. She
hersel( speaks of her beauty, and yet she was married to
different to the things we cherish most.
\Ve have come to the low point of our study, to the
dark valley in which the tragic view of the world has
us in its chilling grip. There is no consolation to be seen
beyond the splendor of noble and dignified resistance
to the ruler of the universe, who is no friend of love. Our
pity has developed and revealed its close alliance with
fear. \Ve pity while we think we are exempt or superior;
we only begin to fear when we see we are in danger ourselves. As we ca·me closer to Paolo and Francesca, our pity
ll
�The College
The hellish storm never resting, seJZes and drives
the spirits before it.
is not exempt from a shudder of terror at their fate.
Who is safe from the catastrophe of love, whether it come
by way of a disastrous commitment like theirs, or by
way of resistance or renunciation like Hippolytus'? If love
has the power to command and yet leads to Hell, what
justice is there? Is it only by chance we can hope to
escape? Is the king of the universe a friend of. ours? If
not, are we prepared to resist nobly? D~ we want to? These
questions press us hard, too. If the whole world is arrayed
against Jove and yet encourages and even constrains us
to be lovers, we must indeed search ourselves to know
what part we can and should sustain in the tragedy, be it
that of the hero or the nurse, of the chorus that weeps
or the one whose choice makes the catastrophe inevitable.
•
•
*
•
•
lament. So far we have listened to the story as Francesca
intends us to hear it, and even the translation, not to
mention the original, shows her to be an accomplished
poet. Now if poetry and the imagination, as I have claimed,
have powers that can lead to understanding and right
action, it is also the case that the abuse of those powers
can lead to confusion and sin. Poetry, like love, may invite
imitation, but the invitation cannot be accepted uncritically. I wonder if the poet Dante does not intend us
to find out things about Francesca that she in her tragic
abandon cannot see and only reveals involuntarily. Her
poetry is contained within his. She speaks from Hell.
Dante the poet contrived his encounter with Francesca
among the damned. 'Nhy is she there? Is Hell only, as
she imagines, the place where a triumphant tyrant thrusts
his vanquished opponents? Or is there something damning
about Francesca that works to withdraw her from our
pity, no matter how appealing her figure may be?
The premise of our pity for Paolo and Francesca is not
only their suffering, but its injustice. We feel an immediate pity for the frustrated love of two beautiful
people, who respond to one another with sensitivity; we
feel revulsion at the disproportion between Francesca's
beauty and the deformity and violence of her husband
Gianciotto. But that pity would be tninsformed entirely,
it might even disappear, if their suffering were felt to be
just. It seems to me that if we are to find anything but a
pagan tragedy in the story of Paolo and Francesca, it
will have to be by finding some reason to question the
assumption they make that they are the victims of injustice. It may seem unjust that they who fit so well
together should be barred from the union they so desire,
barred, as some may say, by convention. But are they
in Hell only because they committed adultery? Dante
is silent about their crime. That might be because they
were such prominent figures in his day that he could take
it for granted it was well known to his readers. But there
are adulterers in his Heaven: no less a person than King
David, for one. Dante's silence, as well as Francesca's,
in\'ites us to seek in her mvn words for a deeper source
But there is a prior question: granting that Francesca
sees their story as a tragedy, is there no alternative to her
view? Let us not hasten to her fearful conclusion. Let
us beware of the seduction of the imagination, of the
impulse to adopt the tragic pose, to sound the pathetic
12
of her losing her. way and becoming forever lost. Can we
see misdirection even in \Vhat she says about love? If we
could, we would see adultery as a mere symptom of a
more fatal disease, a symptom Da-nte himself need not
mention by·name, since he reveals the malady itself.
�July 1971
This is not a simple task and I may easily make mistakes
in carrying it out. Even where I do not err, it may not be
easy to follow: our prejudices are deeply involved. But
Dante expected that: in fact, here on the threshold of
Hell, he has done his best to involve them directly in
order that we may become aware of them and know them
for what they are. I hope that in trying to follow him
1Ve may come to agree at least that it is not necessary to
share the tragic view of those whom he pictures as doomed
to spend eternity in Hell.
The fundamental question is the question of justice:
is there a just proportion between the Jot of Paolo and
Francesca and the love they have given themselves to?
But first, what is that love? Let me take as a clue the
follo\\'ing question: why are Paolo and Francesco so pleased
by Dante's affectionate appeal, that they leave their place
in the long file of souls and swoop down with the combi-
as though he had heard them both. Yet only Francesco
had spoken. Again, though he says a few minutes later
I turned back to them and spoke
he actually begins,
Francesca, thy torments
and yet he means the torments of them both.
They are before him in an indissoluble unity, much as
in that tragi-comic fable Aristophanes tells at the banquet
at Agathon's, when the absurd half-men that we are in
that myth, clinging together in longing, beg Hephaistos to
weld them finally into one great round body again, to go
skipping and tumbling nimbly on four feet and four
hands, forgetting their distress for one another.
nation of tenderness and eagerness that Dante remembers
in the dove returning to its nest, just before it alights,
while with wings outspread it glides to rest where its
hearts directs it.
If they are all in all to one another, what need have
they of him? Are they not still together? Certainly that
is the very first thing we are told about them:
Poet [says Dante J I would gladly talk with those two
that go together. Is it not a consolation that they are
companions forever, a compensation for what was denied
them in life? Francesco exults in the fact: it is the measure
of the Jove she has aroused in Paolo. Vi'hen she describes
their first kiss she says,
When we read that the longed-for smile was
kissed by so great a lover, he who shall never be
parted from me, all trembling kissed my mouth.
The kiss of Lancelot, immortalized by the poet, is imitated by the kiss of Paolo, which is an eternal bond between him and Francesco.
But they are even more intimately together than at
first appears. Francesco says:
I will be like one who weeps and speaks.
In fact, however, that task is divided between the two
of them. Paolo weeps while Francesco does all the speaking. She says,
We will listen and speak to you
but only her voice is heard: Paolo's weeping is a constant
accompaniment. Yet Dante regularly speaks as though
the colloquv were with them both. When Francesco stops
for the first time, he says
Now supposing [says Aristophanes] Hephaistos
were to come and stand over them with his tool
bag as they lay there side by side, and suppose
he were to ask, Tell me, my dear creatures, what
do you really want with one another?
And suppose they didn't know what to say
and he went on, How would you like to be rolled
into one, so that you could always be together,
day and night, and never be parted again? Becaus·e, if that is what you want, I can easily weld
you together, and then you can live your two lives
in one, and when the time comes, you can die a
common death, and still be two-in-one in the
lower world. Now what do you say? Is that what
you'd like me to do? And would you be happy if
I did?
V\le may be sure, gentlemen, that no lover on
earth would dream of refusing such an offer,
for not one of them could imagine a happier fate.
Indeed, they would be convinced that this was
just what they'd been waiting for, to be merged
that is, into utter oneness with the beloved.
[Translator, M. Joyce]
Paola and Francesco have achieved what Aristophanes'
lovers desire.
Let me take another image, one that Dante himself
suggests when on the mount of Purgatory he again encounters the sin of lust. There one of the bands of sinners
says b)' way of explanation that their sin was hermaphroditic. As the context shows, he means that it was
between man and woman, but without regard for human
law and proportion. \\Thy does he call that lust hermaphroditic? Paolo and Francesco give us the clue. As Ovid
tells the tale in his Metamorphoses, Hermaphrodite was
a beautiful young man, the son of Hermes and Aphrodite.
One
\Vhen I heard these afflicted souls
da~'
a water nymph, Salmacis, saw him and at once
fell in love with his beauty. He refus·ed her advances.
13
�The College
But then, as he was swimming in a pool unawares, she
flung herself about him in a tight embrace. He struggled
to escape her grasp. But she called on the gods in prayer:
Let no day divide him from me, or me from him.
And the gods granted her request: the two grew into one
so that, as Ovid says,
They were not two but a double form ... neither
and both they seemed.
This is the two-in-oneness Paolo and Francesca have
achieved. Even their death was one, as Francesca says;
and they subsist in death as one, remembering with tears
the day when love bound them together forever. Francesca
says of her companion,
This man who will never be divided from me;
just as she says that her love for him
still does not abandon her.
They are together forever with the same love they always
had. \Vhy is that not enough for them?
Need I ask, with the wind blowing them about in
the darkness, mere wraiths unable to give one another
the comfort and joy of their bodies, that were torn from
them when they left the sweet bright light above?
But is it only because they lack bodies that they turn
to Dante? Do they not in that motion reveal a hunger
which the body can never fill? Aristophanes said no
lovers could imagine a happier fate than to be together,
as Paolo and Francesca are together, in life and in death.
~-But that is not the experience of Paolo and Francesca.
\Ve cannot forget the pathos of their haunting figures.
Dante cannot hear them speak without being moved to
tears. He faints at the end. They frankly claim his pity
with their tears.
_,,~ \Vhat can his pity be to them? Does not Paolo pro, vide for Francesca a sympathy that is complete because
his case is identical? No, apparently not. What is it
that is missing in Paolo? Is he not the perfect listener?
He weeps throughout, and no one better than he can appreciate every nuance in what Francesca says. They are
so close that she can speak for him; he can listen for
her; his tears are her tears. But, by a simple and drastic
substitution we may say: she is talking to herself, he is
listening to himself, weeping for himself, weeping the
tears of self-pity. Like everyone else in Hell, Paolo
and Francesca are SOIT)' only for themselves, each for
himself. Their union has destroyed their individual integrity and their being together is a dazzling deception.
Their predicament is parallel to that of Ovid's Narcissus, who feD in love vhth his own image, when he
14
saw it mirrored m a spring. On discovering his plight
he says:
I am burning with Jove for myself; I kindle the
fire and I feel its heat. \Vhat am I to do? Shall
I entreat, or wait to be entreated? But what shall
I ask for? \Vhat I desire is with me. My riches
make me poor. 0 that I could secede from our
body. It is a novel prayer for a lover, but I wish
that what we love were not here.
Like self-love, self-pity is hard to understand. If it were
not a familiar fact, I would hesitate to propose anything
so strange. Pity is something we seem to feel for another;
it tends, I think, to be felt for someone suffering what
we are exempt from. It implies a detachment from the
actual experience of the sufferer. How then is self-pity
possible? Perhaps it is by virtue of the imagination. I
notice that I seem to feel pity most readily for characters
in a movie, or a book. Perhaps then self-pity is possible
just because we think of ourselves as figures in a story.
That happens especially when we make poetry of our
sufferings in telling them to someone else. We detach
ourselves from ourselves by the imagination, as though
we were watching ourselves in a play, and in that attitude
we behold ourselves in fascination, imprisoned in passivity
by our being spectators. \Ve cannot act as long as the
trance of self-pity endures, any more than we can at the
theatre. But does our pity for the self we imagine bring
consolation? I think not; for pity sees its object as helpless
and weak. Self-pity rivets attention on what has been
suffered, on the past, on defeat; it annihilates hope and
the possibility of action. Yet it is only in action that
men can find happiness. Self-pity arrests acti<m in the
beholder, encourages despair in the self beheld. In itself
it is infinite. It gives neither the joy of consoling nor of
being consoled. It is a form of self-abuse and we rightly
feel humiliated by it. Meanwhile we have exhausted our
capacity to love what is not the self, by turning it back
reflexively through the imagination on the self. Love and
self-pity are incompatible. What pity can Paolo have for
Francesca, or she for him, that is not drowned in the
great sea of pity each feels for himself?
But is it really pity Francesca wants? Pity implies
distance, superiority, condescension. Pity is even com-
patible with stern judgement. Francesca wants the solidarity that comes from sharing what one has been suffering
alone. She wants sympathy. What is the difference'
Sometimes we use the word pity ambiguously as though
it were a synonym for sympathy; sometimes, e\'en, we
accept expressions of pity for those of sympathy, espcciall1·
if they echo our own self-pity. But if pity implies that
the one \vho pities is not experiencing what the sufferer
is, then it can easily be distinguished from S\·mpatl~,-
which always feels exactly what the sufferer feels. Yet
sympathy is a relation between two distinct· persons: 1f
�July 1971
Dante: "Pcet, I would fain
speak 11·it/; these two that go
together."
self-pity
i; :ncTIStrous, self-sympathy is impossible.
Sympathy- ~ like a musical octav.e: two. different _voices
sounding tht o;:occe tone. Its form rs duality, the ratm 1:2.
By contrast ?::-y is like a concordant mterval, two VOI~es
sounding d::'tce:;t but intimately related tones. Self-prty,
as distinct £-:-::n pitY, is not any interval at all, not even
unison. Fe :: E;Jlson is an inten,al, it still requires
two voices ::e: ~G:.:~d. \Yhile in self-pity there is only the one
voice, and ::.~ ·.•:t2r".somc echo.
Perhaps I ::;, 0 ~luitratc the difference I intend between
pity and ss-rc.~:l:·: br tsro episodes from Herodotus. When
his vast am:-' ~c:' oeet were gathered at the Hellespont
Xerxe; c.c_,c,ci to look upon all his bast; so, as
there -,.·c: < :~.:one of white marble upon a hill
near t~.~ :::-. -.··hich thcv of Abydos had prepared
bt'•cctc.:· ~-the bng's bidding, for his
o•
e:.o;:;:::·~: _:.-:. ~(:GC.5 took his seat on it, and, gaz-
inc the:.:e ·cc-:o the shore below, beheld at one
vr;._,_. '-· '-' ·:c"d forces and all his ships . . . .
Ad r.:- ,, '"looked and saw the whole Hellespc,c,' :: ':cc ·':! 1 the s-csscls of his fleet, and all
ll.c ·- ., ·-: o.n pl:~in about Abydos as full
2' : ·
_ c - c," '<;, f'lS congratulated hrmself
or. ·.:: _
:c:unc: but after a little while he
v:c--:::.
There came upon me a sudden pity, when I
thought of the shortness of man's life and considered that of all this host so numerous as it is,
not one will be alive when a hundred vears are
'
gone by.
Xerxes pities man for the shortness of his life: it is a
generic pity far from any sympathy for an individual
soldier. For just a few pages earlier we read of Pythius
the Lydian, who won great favor with Xerxes by offering
him all his Yast treasure of money. Yet when Pvthius asked
Xerxes to sp3re one of his five sons from sen,ice so he
could remain at home, Xerxes was enraged and commanded his men
to seek out the eldest of the som of Pythius and
having cut his body asunder, to place the two
halves, one on the right, the other on the left
of the great road, so that the army might march
out between them.
Thus he granted Pythius' request. This savage jest may
il]m:trate how far his pit~' \V8S from any sharing in the
sufferings of other men. His pitv depended on the height
of his throne above the scene that moved him to tears.
Francesca longs to share her grief. If she is to get beyond
the sterilitY of self-pity, there must be someone else besides herself, a listener who will see independently, and
15
�The College
yet agree with her and respond as she does. Making poetry
out of her suffering is not enough: through its means she
wants to bring Dante, and all the world, to share what
they have experienced. The tyranny of her relationship
to Paolo excludes him as that listener: Paolo's words
are her words, and as such have no power to refresh
her. None of the rest of the spirits are any better. Men
are made to live together, but in Hell everyone is alone.
Even though the spirits in this circle flock together,
they are like starlings and cranes, mere birds that feel no
affection for one another. They move as a bunch, all
subject to the same rule, all blown by the same wind, but
that bunch is made of heartless individuals, each unmoved
by the other. From this circle on down Hell is a city
best: easy, effortless, spontaneous and joyful. But by the
g·entle heart Francesca seems to mean one that falls
quickly in love and is easily inflamed with desire, prepared
by reading and other occupations to welcome and cultivate
appetite. Such would seem to be the case of Lancelot, and
of Paolo and Francesca. The gentleness of heart she is
thinking of is mere intensity of feeling and passion,
not the fruit of reflection and art. The beauty which
moved her and Paolo, she tells us, was physical beauty,
and the activity was that of ungoverned sexual desire.
Dante put it another way when he wrote the sonnet
that begins:
Love that in my thoughts discourses,
without citizens; no one acknowledges a bond with anyone
else. They are all caught in the loneliness of indifferent
and often degrading company. Below Limbo what speech
they exchange can give them no joy, no relief. No one
listens. There is no one to talk to.
Dante on the other hand is alive. The first thing
Francesca says is: "0 living creature." Being alive, he
can still feel sympathy. He can listen, and understand
and care. In all that company he alone can weep with
them: all the rest are deaf.
\Vhat does she say in the last words of hers that
will reach a living ear? She tells him about their love,
beginning each time from a universal proposition and
moving to their particular case.
Love [she says] . . . is quickly kindled in the
gentle heart.
Now there is a famous sonnet of Dante's that begins,
in much the same way:
Love and the gentle heart are one.
Dante wrote a commentary on his sonnet to show
that he meant that the heart is a material whose proper
form or act is love, just as the eye is material to the
. act of sight. The act of love is the proper form of the
gentle heart. The Italian word can mean more than gentle,
tender or soft; it suggests that delicacy and rightness of
feeling which is cultivated by education and training, a
combination of goodness of manners and goodness of heart.
A heart that is what a heart should be, will act in love.
Beauty, the sonnet says, is what brings it to this activity.
The words of Francesca are similar. But there is ambiguity about what they mean. They may mean that a
heart disciplined by philosophy and the arts, religion and
the sonnet which the musician Casella sings just after
the souls land in Purgatory. Love discourses, or reasons,
as the Italian puts it, using reason and discourse
synonymously, just as Greek uses logos for both rational
thought and speech. Love discourses. Animals, on the
other hand, feel the power of sexual desire without discourse. But since reason is intervvoven with our very
being, we are incapable of this separation. There is
always the question of consent for us. A dog or a pig
has not the privileges and responsibilities of consent to
what he experiences as an uncontrollable drive. V.' e, in
consenting or refusing consent, acknowledge a principle
of good, or disregard it, in every act. That is the role
of reason in our actions. Vi'hen we make the distinction
between love and sex, it seems to me that we mean that
love, unlike sex, is always in easy communion with
reason and discourse. I do not mean that love is always
talking, though lovers usually talk a lot. I do not mean
to underestimate the love that expresses itself in silence.
But an account can be given of love, an account which
aims to make sense and show how it is good. Reason is
the connection between action and the good. \Vhen we
give the reasont we show how it is good.
Now to give an account of a love is to show its order
with respect to the whole. Sexual pleasure is only one
of many goods: obviously, we need not condemn sex
to prefer something else to it in a given moment, or in a
given relationship. Vi'hen love discourses, it includes
the whole world in its discourse. In the ceremony of
marriage and its vows a certain kind of love is ordered
to the family, to society, and to God. The discourse of
reason is universal; it is open to a1l \vho can understand it.
Paolo and Francesca's "love," on the other hand, is entireh· secret and private. That is not merely because it
is illegal or dangerous. J'-.:either Paolo nor Francesca seems
good m~mncrs is easily moved to act in love, for that is
to me so timid or so conventional as to give '"'eight to
the natural mode of the heart set free by all those means
and guided by the truth they instill. The love may be a
love of wisdom or the state, the love of the home or the
the law or to danger beside the great fact of their will and
their desire. Their love is private because they see it as
concerning them alone. They think it is their business and
no one else's. The look which they exchanged on that fate·
ful day included nothing but themselves; it excluded
arts, the love of a parent or the love of a man for a woman,
but it will be gracious and· graceful, human action at its
16
�July 1971
\Vhile Francesca spoke, Paolo wept so that I
swooned for pity.
•
everything bevond their consent to one another's desire.
1\:aturally, then, Francesca's tale makes no mention of
her adultery as such. \Vhen she speaks of their region
in Hell, \vhich is designated by Dante as the place of
carnal sinners who subject reason to desire,
Francesca says that Dante is visiting those
who stained the world with blood.
For her the salient feature of her fate is the violence of
her death, not that it was the outcome of disorderly
lust. When she says of her violent death, "the manner of
it affiicts me still," I wonder if she does not have in mind
the shocking and terrible way in which their sweet secrecy
was invaded by an alien and external world, in the person
of her husband. Their nakedness was exposed, their privacy
was outraged and profaned by what in her opinion had
no place in it, no right to intrude. Love for her is
entirely exclusive.
It is a striking thing that Francesca does not mention
her husband except as "the one who extinguished our
life." Vllhen. she does mention him, she gloats that he
will pay for his violence with torments worse than what
·they themselves are enduring. She does not hint of her
marriage, nor Paolo's, nor the children which each of
them had. They do not figure in her tale. In framing
her account of Jove, its power and its requirements, Fran-
cesca succeeds in hiding from herself, and perhaps from
us, any other obligations she may have. The supremacy of
her love for Paolo is unquestioned. It leaves no room for
her to remember anything else.
But is love something we can restrict thus to ourselves?
\Vhat did their love do to the lives they touched on?
\Ve may guess by looking at their companions in Hell, for
their lives are recorded in poetry and history. Paris and
Helen \W> know well, Helen "for whose sake so many
vears of ill revolved," as Virgil says to Dante. Think for
moment of the horrors Homer tells: the spear in the
throat or the bladder; the severed head rolling between
the legs of the men as they fight; the tug of war over
Patroclus' body. See Helen,· Virgil says to Dante. And
a
wanton Cleopatra dressed Antony in her own clothes,
while she played with his sword. In the· end she drove
him on to make the fatal choice between love and
empire, setting up the private in open conflict with the
public. At Actium the battle was joined for the whole
world, with her and Antony on one side, and cold
Octavian on the other. The battle was still undecided
when she deserted her lover, and he followed in her wake.
Here it was [says Plutarch] that Antony
showed to all the world that he was no longer
actuated by the thoughts and motives of a commander or a man, or indeed by his own judgment
at all, and what was once said as a jest, that the
soul of a lover lies in someone else's body, he
proved to be a serious truth. For, as if he had
been born part of her and must move wheresoever she went, as soon as he saw her ship sailing
away, he abandoned all that were fighting and
spending their Jives for him ... to follow her that
had so well begun his ruin and would hereafter
accomplish it.
17
�The College
Semiramis, as Virgil says,
was so corrupted by licentious vice that she made
lust lawful in her law, to take away the scandal
into which she was brought.
'\Vhile the private individual only subjects reason in
himself, though the consequences may be wider, a queen
has the power to overthrow reason's expression in the
law. S·emiramis subverts the whoie order of society to
conceal her disorder and escape censure. But lust cannot
serve as law; knowing no order or restraint itself, it can
only destroy the order of the family and the peace of
the state. The making of such a law brings law itself into
disrepute. If law and lust are synonymous, nothing is left
but tyranny and the war of every man against every other.
Like Semiramis' love, Dido's undid the city she ruled.
\Vhen Aeneas comes to Carthage, as the Aeneid says, he
marvels at the gateways and hum of the paved
streets. The Tyrians are hot at work to trace the
walls, to rear the citadel, and roll up great stones
by hand, or to choose a place for their dwelling
and enclose it with a furrow. They ordain justice
and magistrates, and the august senate. Here some
are digging harbors, here others lay the deep
foundations for theatres, and hew out of the cliff
vast columns, the lofty ornaments of the stage to
be . . . "Happy they whose city already rises!"
cries Aeneas.
But Venus intervenes. Dido falls in love with Aeneas.
Stung to misery Dido wanders in frenzy all
dmvn the city, even as an arrow~stricken deer,
whom ... a shepherd has pierced and left the
flying steel in her unaware.... No more do the
unfinished towers rise, no more do the people
exercise in arms, nor work for safe;ty in \Var on
harbor or bastion; the works are broken off, vast
looming walls, and engines towering into the sky.
\Vhen Dido achieves the unioh her frenzy craves, the
poet says:
That day opened the gate of death and the
springs of ill. For Dido reeks not of eye or tongue,
nor sets her heart on love in secret; she calls it
marriage, and with this word shrouds her blame.
Aeneas, recognizing a higher duty than that to his love
for Dido, abandons her, and she calls down curses on
him and the city he will found:
Let no kindness or truce be between the
nations [she cries] . .- . I invoke the enmity of
18
shore to shore, . . . sword to sword; let their
battles go down to their children's children.
In writing this Virgil intends us to see the Punic .,, "
as the fulfillment of Dido's curses. Carthage fought • ... ..,.:
wars with Rome within 120 years and the strife ·~;.;;
ended wrth the utter destruction of Carthage. All tJ 1•• 1,. ·.
ing inhabitants were sold as slaves.
• ...
This ruin is the background of Dante's dt~c-riptw::
of Dido as the one
who slew herself in love and broke faith with
the ashes of Sychaeus.
\Vhen Dido first felt the sting of desire for Aencc•. ,;.,
swore a solemn oath of eternal faithfulness tu l:c: \._:::~.
husband Sychaeus. Her sister urged her to ren>:·o~c".
asking
Do you think the ashes care for that, or the
ghost within the tomb?
Dido is inflamed by her sister's words, her passion ;rtr•>
and soon she breaks her vow. Dante's words emplu;'.:,
that the consequence of Dido's lust is not in an\' !.arm
to Sychaeus, since he is dead, but in her going hoc!: on
her own word, undermining the integrity of her >pe-e;; L
Vi/hat can words mean when promises are made \'oiC ;;:
pleasure? The next step from the attack on reason i::
speech is the triumph of unreason in her suicide.
Paolo and Francesca belong to Dido's troop. Tirey too
sinned in breaking faith, the faith plighted in marrugc.
That broken faith is the start of the disorder which rhcr
lust brought on the world and themselves. Some c' lt>
consequences we can name: a husbana turned murdc-rc'!':
children orphaned; the community shocked and pery!nc-'.
all the more so because the lovers stood out from othc
men by their position and their gifts. It is an illusion th.lt
the private can be marked off completely from the puhL:.
\Vhen the very nature of man is rational and soci.JL Hu
acts can hardly be so private that they do not ha,·e S<•m:
effect on the realm of public order, of mutual tmst ,r.:
of speech. Semiramis called lust law; Dido called seduor:""
marriage. It is what Francesca does to the word lo•r :<c.:
reveals most clearly how radically she rebells against'~""'"
'Ne have already seen her confuse lO\·e and deSJre c:>O<
what else is she doing when she says
Love . . . absol\'es no one vi·ho is lo\·ed h_,~::
returning that love.
Under these highsounding words, does she not_ ·.:.c.. •.
she had a duty to return Paolo's lm·e? And IS " ' ' "-suggesting delicately that her desire was the proper rc·r:c~•
for his? She' cannot quite say she had a duty to 6"' ·
�July 1971
self to Paolo merely because be desired her. Yet the words
seem to be an acknowledgment of the fact that that is
what she did. Is this an account of love? To me it seems
an abuse of words that have very different meanings
in fact.
It is true that love absolves no one who is loved from
returning that love. In Dante's view God is love and
the whole pity and terror of his Hell is built around
the fact that God's love cannot be refused with impunity.
God cannot pardon the failure of Paolo and Francesca
to return his love. He cannot without violence put himself in their hearts. They have so set their wills toward
one another's desire and against God's love, that they have
finally shut Him out of their hearts. God's greatest gift
to them was liberty, the freedom to reject Him and His
world. That rejection is Hell.
They have set out like gods, to build a private world
of their own. In Greek the word for a private man is
idiot. A private world is a world from which reason is
banned: idiocy reigns. In Paolo and Francesca the rejection of God is at first a kind of moral laziness.
They are all too ready to think that Aphrodite is an irresistible goddess. They elevate their passion into a god
and are passive before its demands. At first they submit
with enthusiasm. But the passivity of their love wearies
them; it makes them weary of each other. In giving themselves up to it, they lose contact with reason, the common
bond between men; reason, that by its habit of looking
to the good provides a basis on which we can consent in
one another's acts; reason, that is the basis of understanding and love. But these are acts, and love for Paolo and
Francesca is nothing but wearying passivity in one
another's company, without thought of any other opportunity or obligation. And that is Hell.
Thus it is that, without being told, Dante immediately
understands as soon as he sees the torment, that this is
the circle of those who sinned carnally. The sinners are
bodies, it would only be superficially different. \Jilere they
alive and free to love as they pleased, they would still
have to face that loneliness in themselves, their isolation
from the community of men.
Yet there is a difference between even the worst of
lives in this world and the sinners' existence in Hell. As
they pass through the Gate of Hell, it commands:
Abandon every Hope. In Hell they are in utter hopelessness, something which is never the case in our life. Life
without hope is unthinkable. Therefore the spirits in Hell
are in a significant way different from us: they have died
the death that is the death of the spirit. That is the
Hell which is in their souls and of which, as I have suggested, the wind of the second circle is only a specific
outward manifestation.
Hope is the hope of something good. It is an anticipation of good. It is based on some knowledge of good.
If all knowledge of good has been extinguished in a soul,
what hope remains? Only the hope of exchanging evils for
one another. Such is the state of the souls in Hell. Virgil
·explicitly says they have lost the good of the intellect.
The good of the intellect is the truth, but in choosing
this name for it, Virgil emphasizes the goodness of truth.
Truth is not merely the goal we seek in learning, it is the
cause of good in the measure in which it is known. \Jile are
apt at times to think of the truth as something like fact,
information which implies nothing about its use for good
or for evil. Gorgias tries to argue that a teacher of rhetoric,
like a teacher of boxing, need teach nothing at all about
its use. But what the souls in Hell have lost is the power
of the truth as a guide that will lead a man straight,
whatever his road, as Dante says of the Sun in the first
in endless, restless motion at the mercy of contrary winds.
Now we are descending into the blind world.
They long for peace, but peace for them can only mean
annihilation. Hell for Paolo and Francesca is to love
one another always exactly as they did in life; to be led
forever by love in the sense that they were led by it in
life. Virgil says to Dante:
Implore them by that love which leads them.
Yet Dante's call to them is all in terms of their fatigue
and their loneliness, and they respond at once. Love
is not recreation for them, not art, not grace, not act;
it is to be blown about fore1·er by a dark blind wind
that blows at random, they the lightest of all on the blast.
Their lo\'e is Hell. It lea\'CS them even more lonely than
the solitary spirits which surround them. \Vhatever comfort Francesca derives from her eternal coupling with
Paolo, it cannot take the place for her of an appeal to a
living heart for its heartfelt sympathy. Had they their
canto.
Thus the visual manifestation of what has been lost
is the darkness of Hell. There is no sun, no light there.
Virgil says when they s·et out into the first circle,
For the darkness which is all about them thereafter, the
black and murky air, is only an outward sign of the blindness of all the inhabitants of Hell. They are deprived of
light, deprived of sight. They can see no good to hope for,
though otherwise they see well enough. But what good
is such sight? Just as the mind of a clever criminal may
function intelligently, so their souls have all their mere
powers intact, but the very principle of action is lost to
them forever.
Let us watch them as thev come before Minos the
judge. He asks no questions.' Each sinner on his own
acknowledges all his sins. \Jilhat makes it possible for
him on arriving in Hell to know himself and confess his
sins as never before? I think it is his blindness~ his loss
of the truth, of the good of the intellect, How is it that
the loss of truth can make a soul truthful? Tire answer
lies in an ambiguity in the notion of truth. The sinner
19
�The College
has nothing to hide, when he has lost all sense of the
evil of sin; his truthfulness omits the central fact of all:
that what he has done is wrong. At most he knows that
other men do not approve. But without the light which
gives goodness and life to things, what has he to hide?
In the dark all cats are grey. He can be honest as never
before: in Hell, even the dissemblers tell the truth about
fhemse1ves.
This same blindness means that whatever sense there
is in the world below will be eternally invisible to the
sinner. The justice of Hell is a cruel mockery to its ·
inhabitants. In the Aeneid, Minos is a silent, majestic
judge. In Dante's Hell he has been transformed into a
grotesque and repulsive monster. He growls like an
angry dog, grinding his teeth in inarticulate rage. He
has a 1·oice, but as he pronounces judgement, he wraps
his long tail around himself as many times as the
sinner mnst go down circles in He11. In his appearance and
manner there is no vestige of the rational order which
in fact he represents. His metamorphosis is an image
of the blindness of the sinners: they cannot see that he
is the agent and minister of divine justice.
When Francesca says,
If the king of the universe were our friend,
it is as though it were a matter of whim or chance that
the powers that control the world are on the other side,
as Hippolytus might regret that he could not placate
both Aphrodite and Artemis. The enmity of Francesca
to God leaves no hope of reconciliation, because she has
no longer any notion that she might be wrong. Even when
she is glad that h·finos will plunge her husband into the
frozen abyss, it is not, it seems to me, the justice of it
that occasions her fierce delight, but the satisfaction that
revenge gives her pride.
Above all it is Francesca's utter lack of regret for what
she has been responsible for that shows her distance
from us, the mark of the dead soul: life and responsibility
go hand in hand. None of the consequences of her love
seem to trouble her: not her husband brought by her
adultery into a temptation to which he was unequal; not
Paolo who, in sharing eternity with her, shares Hell; not
her children left to grow up in the shadow of the crimes of
their father and mother; not her family and her state,
plunged in the agitation of scandal. Her dignity and
reserve, her pride is touched in no way
by an admission
that she has done wrong. It is all only the perverse evil of a
malignant world. She has turned the whole world upside
dov.m.
Now we too have known moments of this kind of Hell
ourselves. Those moments in us are the basis of the
allegorical iJ1terprctation of Dante's Hell. \Ve recognize
something of ourselves in the lost souls. But if we strain
our imaginations to suppose that Francesca never at
all thinks or feels differently, we see how vastly any
20
analogy we frame differs from what she experiences in
their literal Hell. She is set in the state of her heart
and mind; we, I trust, are not. For in us there resides
conscience, and in her it is gone. The metamorphosis of
Minos from the stern and noble legislator of tradition
to a snarling demon, may be an image of the sinner's
transformation of conscience from a reasonable guide to a
hateful executioner. It is conscience above all which is
the avenue of the good of the intellect to our souls,
conscience which in its impregnable resistance to all outer
and inner pressures proclaims its integrity, and in proclaiming that integrity, that liberty, proclaims that it
is the voice of Another and not our own. Conscience,
as its name implies, is a species of knowledge: it is
knowledge shared with another. It is interior to ourselves; yet it commands our assent, try as we may to
deny it. It is intimate, but it is no ·more in our po\ver
to alter than the propositions of Euclid. Its presence
in us declares that there is a judgement not of our own
making by which good and evil are distinguished. It is
the reflection in us of the eternal and original light. It is
not merely the passing judgement we are obliged and willing to make on all sorts of persons and affairs; it is not
shame, which can be induced by education and habit,
or by pride and fear of the opinion of others. It is that
awareness in ourselves that we are watched by a Judge
whose judgement is infallible, the only Arbiter of good.
At its best it is the knowledge that we are not alone,
but have our place equally with all men in an all-embracing
vision. As such it is the basis of our loving one another,
and, I think, the only abiding one. To see men in the light
of conscience is to see them all as ourselves, all sinners,
all children of the Father, all worthy of love. There are
no exclusions for conscience; it allows no ultimate privacy.
It establishes an all-inclusive community, for in it all men
are seen as brothers. In its harsher form, more familiar
from ordinary speech, conscience is the arbiter of our
guilt, a standard from which there is no appeal, a guide
when we have fallen. But I would rather emphasize that
by the light we gain from it, we give form to whatever is
well-formed in what we do.
It seems to me that while we acknowledge all that is
pathetic in Paolo and Francesca, we must admit that they
show no signs of conscience whatsoever. If that is so, it
seems to me that they pass across a barrier through which
our sympathy cannot reach: that barrier divides us forever, however pitiful it may be that human beings of such
grace as theirs should have isolated themselves from
all human affection. In revealing their lack of conscience,
they reveal that they are dead, dead to what gives us
life and hope, the possibility of learning and love.
Let us return briefly to our opening theme, poetry
and the imagination. My discussion has taken Dante's
poem as an occasion for reflection on the questions of the
life and the death of the soul, on love and human fellowship. I assume that such reflections may have their natural
�July 1971
consequences in action. In making such a use of poetry
I intend to share with Dante the understanding of poetry
that dictated his choice of the poet Virgil as the proper
guide on his way to the earthly paradis·e. Vlhy did he not
choose Aristotle, "the master of those who know," as
Dante calls him? Because poetry has powers of persuasion
that Aristotle does not.
Immediately before the beginning of the fifth canto,
Dante and Virgil are met in Limbo by the souls of four
great poets whose leader is Homer. TI1e poets lead them
to the noble castle, where famous heroes and thinkers
live, models of the active and contemplative Jives. Thus
poetry is presented as a guide to .the best in life and
Virgil as well as Dante rejoices when Dante is taken into
that select company as a sixth among equals. Poetry at its
best embodies reason at work and is one of the noblest
of human activities, sharing and reflecting the light gained
from the highest contemplation. The triumph of poetry,
its special ordering in relation to moral and intellectual
virtue, exalts Dante briefly. Yet he cannot think it worth
very much to be even the best poet in Hell.
Poetry is -dangerous. Its very powers of persuasion can
be abused. Right after his encounter with the poets, we
find Dante demanding to know from Francesca the occasion of their making the first step o·n the road to sin,
when conscience was thrust aside by the discovery that
their secret desires were shared and companionship in
guilt made its seductive appeal over against the possibility of companionship in love. Her answer is that it was
the day when they were reading together "for pastime."
V,Tbether that step would have been taken without the
book, no one can say. That the book was in fact the
occasion Francesca makes perfectly plain in full detail.
As she answers Dante we see how step by step each
of them was encouraged by the book to commit himself
to the relation which was so rich in sweet thoughts and
full of desire in the beginning but which in the end led
to the woeful pass.
We read one day for pastime of Lancelot, how
Jove constrained him; we were alone and had no
misgiving. Many times that reading drove our
eyes together and changed the color in our faces;
but one point alone it was that mastered us.
fatal step.
All they did was to follow the book's example.
When we read the longed-for smile was kissed
by so great a lover, he who shall never be
parted from me, all trembling kissed my mouth.
It was the tale of the adultery of Lancelot, the famous
lover and hero of poetry, which became the inspiration
and sanction of the adultery of Francesca and Paolo. Can
what seemed so magnificent in poetry be wrong in life?
Of course it can, not only wrong, but sordid and bitter.
Poetry is dangerous. It is easy for poetry to set a bad
example and make the worse appear the better course.
\Vhat else had Dante done himself, when he wrote
his earlier love poetry? It is Dante himself who is the
censor of that poetry. In Purgatory 'vhen Dante quotes
1
his own sonnet, Cato the Censor is angry with the spirits
who delay the great work of life, which is to purify themselves, while they linger over the lovely occasion of passive
delight as Casella sings of love in Dante's words. Here
in Hell Dante is an even more severe judge of poetry
and his own poems. Francesca speaks in the famous New
Style which Dante helped to establish in his youth. It
is the fonn in which Francesca naturally casts the account
of the Jove which destroyed the life of her soul. She all
but quotes another of Dante's sonnets. On his conscience
as Dante hears her speak is the burden of having published poetry himself, whose theme and style nourished,
if they did not directly inspire, the kind of Jove that
Paolo and Francesca are condemned to act out forever.
Francesca, in pronouncing her judgement on the author
of the Tale of Lancelot, shows how great are the responsibilities of the poet. At the beginning of a poem which
Dante plainly hopes will open the road to Heaven, it is
his duty to show how poetry and a certain poem, even
his own poems, may open the way to Hell.
Robert S. Bart received a RA. degree from Har\'ard College in
1940 and a M.A. degree from St. John's College in 1957. From 1940
to 1941 he )Vas a Sheldon Traveling Fe11ow from Harvard University.
He joined the faculty of St. John's in Annapolis in 1946.
As Francesca recounts that solitary hour, she makes
sweet poetry that dallies with the memory of its sweetness.
But in her final words she passes a sentence of damnation
on the author of that book as harsh as the one she had
passed on Gianciotto her husband:
A Galeotto, that is, A Pander was that book
and he who wrote it.
The poet must bear the guilt of what he wrought in
providing the dear occasion of their making the first
21
�NEWS ON THE CAMPUSES
ITEMS OF MUSICAL INTEREST
The performance of music found
new expression on the Annapolis
campus this past year. First, a fifteenpiece chamber music orchestra, composed of Tutors and students, was
established. Tutor David Stephenson
was director, assisted by student directors Alan Plutzik ('71) and James
Carlyle ('73). The orchestra hopes to
become a permanent activity, rehearsing weekly during the academic year.
In addition to the orchestra, concerts by student performers were
started this year. Leslie Epstein ('74)
and Tutor Douglas Allanbrook performed a concert for recorder and
harpsichord on May 1st. A composition
by Mr. Epstein was featured. On June
6th, Mark Schneider ('73) gave a
piano concert. It is hoped that two or
three student concerts can be scheduled each year.
Also during this past year Mrs. E.
Malcolm Wyatt (Martha Goldstein
'61), Music Librarian, has been conducting an informal bureau of student
performers. Through her auspices
Annapolis Provost Paul D. Newland throws out the first ball of the Spring 1971 baseball season.
Photo: Thomas Farran, Jr.
:·;,
'
• j
• - •
,j\i,;;:. ~:~~~
~~-f;. ·. i~~~fl
-
,........
22
~'·r,:~~~-~.
'- ",<:;;;>)';.....,...,#
folksingers have entertained at homes
in the area, and at least one very successful birthday party puppet show
was performed. In. this way residents
of the area are recipients of top-notch
entertainment, while the students can
earn some extra money.
It should also be mentioned that
there are at the College highly-qualified students who are anxious to teach
music. Again, Mrs. Wyatt has information about these students, and will
be available after the College reopens
in September.
EXHIBITS INCLUDE WoRK OF
INDIAN ARTISTS AND AWARDWINNING SANTA FE
PHOTOGRAPHER
Exhibits in the St. John's Gallery
in Santa Fe this spring included work
by young artists of the Institute of
American Indian Arts and awardwinning photographer Laura Gilpin.
More than fifty students and former
students of the IAIA participated in
a Graphics show of prints and drawings from April lith to May 7th. The
artists represented many tribes, from
Nez Perce to Navajo.
Miss Gilpin, who has been a
photographer for sixty years, is best
known for her photographs of the
Southwest and Indians, which have
been published in her books, including The Enduring Navaho. This year
she received the first Fine Arts award
of the Southwest Industrial Photographers Association, which described her
as "a great lady who stands alone as a
photographic documentarian of the
American Indian."
�July 1971
CAMPUS NoTES
1\lr. and l\lrs. Laurence Berns and
daughter Anna Elena will spend Mr.
Berns's sabbatical year in Cambridge,
England, where he ·will be an Associate
of Clare Hall at Cambridge University.
Tutor Malcolm \Vyatt will assume
Mr. Berns's duties as editor of The
College magazine during the sabbatical
leave.
Treasurer Charles T. Elzey and
Business Manager James E. Grant
represented St. John's College in Annapolis at the annual meeting of the
l\larvland Association of College Busic
ness.Officers in Baltimore on May 13th.
St. John's College was the recipient
of a special award in the May Basket
Contest sponsored by the Garden Club
of Old Annapolis Towne, thanks to
the efforts· of Miss Charlotte Fletcher,
Librarian, and Mrs. LaNece Lvmonte,
Admissions Office secretary. Their
flowers adorned the front door of
McDowell Hall.
Tutor Harry L. Golding delivered a
lecture entitled "\il/hat is a Liberal
Arts Education?" at Shimer College,
1\ft. Carroll, Illinois, on March 24th.
Annapolis Dean Robert A. Goldwin
was the conference leader of the Public
Affairs Conference Center at Kenyon
College frcim April 29th to May 2nd
for a conference on "Violence and
Cid Disorder." The participants were
several members of Congress, elected
officials from state governments, law
enforcement officers, private attorneys,
psychiatrists, and academic people from
several disciplines.
Mr. Goldwin will present a paper at
the American Political Science Association meeting in Chicago on September 8th for a panel on "Politics, Education, and Philosophy."
Michael Ham, the new Director of
Admissions in Annapolis, took a recruitment trip with the Capitol Region
Colleges 'mel talked with high school
coun~c1or.<:. in Connecticut, New York,
and l\:cw Jersey. He states St. John's
College's greatest force for becoming
known "is through our students and
olumni. l\lanr of the counselors }earned
of us from students at St. John's who
carried the word .back home."
Tutor Bryce Jacobsen will teach
February freshmen during the summer
sesions in Annapolis.
Santa Fe Tutor David Jones will be
on sabbatical leave for 1971-72.
John S. }(jeffer is Director of the
Summer Program in Annapolis this
year.
.
Tutor Aaron IGrschbaum and his
wife will spend the summer in Copenhagen visiting former Tutor Brian
McGuire. The Kirschbaums will be
moving to Santa Fe where he will become a member of the southv.,,estern
campus faculty.
Annapolis Provost Paul D. Newland
gave a speech before the Public Relations Society in New York City on
March lOth. The organization includes
the top fifty industrial public relations
executives.
Mr. Newland was the alumni luncheon speake>- in Annapolis on February
12th, and the alumni dinner speaker in
\il/ashington, D. C., on May 23rd.
Tutor John Sarkissian is teaching in the Graduate Institute in Liberal
Education in Santa Fe this summer.
STUDENT SERVES AS CANTOR
Douglas Cotler, a Santa Fe summer
senior, has been appointed Cantor of
Temple Beth Shalom in Santa Fe.
Cotler received his training from his
father, who sings at the temple in
Lafayette, California. Douglas Cotler
studied in Israel in 1966-67 at the
Institute for Youth Leaders from
Abroad.
SANTA FE TUTOR NAMED
VICE PRESIDENT OF
CALIFORNIA COLLEGE
Thomas J. Slakey, a Tutor in Santa
Fe ,:vii} become academic v1ce preslde~t of St. Mary's College of California during July.
Mr. Slakcv graduated magm cum
bode from ·the Christian Brothers's
liberal arts college in 1952. l-Ie first
joined the St. John's College faculty
in Annapolis in 1959. He came to Santa
Fe as one of the original group of
faculty in 1964.
Following his graduation from St.
Mary's, Mr. Slakey attended Laval
Universitv in Ouebec and earned his
M.A. degree ;;; philosophy there in
1953. In 1960 he received his Ph.D.
degree in philosophy from Cornell University. He
V·/35
a teaching assistant at
Cornell from 1955 to 1958.
ZOLLARS CHOSEN PRESIDENTELECT OF CoLLEGE
ADMISSIONS CoUNSELORS
The Rocky 111ountain Association
of College Admissions Counselors has
chosen Gerald F. Zollars of Santa Fe
('65) as President-Elect of the sevenstate organization.
One of Zollars's responsibilities will
be to plan the association's 1972 annual conference at Albuquerque, New
Mexico. He also is on the committee
to arrange the National ACAC Conference in San Francisco this fall.
MONITOR REPORTER TELLS
OF EXPERIENCES AT ST. JOHN'S
SUMMER GRADUATE INSTITUTE
"Socrates and I went back to college
together last summer and he was such
a companionable fellow r think we'll
do it again," is the way Jack \Vaugh
began his article in the May 14th issue
of The Christian Science Momtor.
\Vauoh a writer for the Monitor, and
his ;,ife Lynne attended the 1970
session of the Graduate Institute in
Liberal Education held each summer
at St. John's in Sania Fe.
"I found myself in the section on
philosophy and theology seated between an atheist from Balbmore and
a theist from Gallup, and armed with
the sinale rule laid out by example
centuri:S aao
by the ironic deflater
himself, th~ admirable and kindly
Socrates: Follow the argument whereever it leads."
In the article \Vaugh commented
on the difference between the form
expressed in most classroom arguments
and the dialectic dialogue which St.
John's tutors and students practice or
attempt to practice.
23
---
----~--
�The College
GRADUATKON·l971
Graduation 1971 on the Santa Fe campus of St. John's
College was held on Sunday, June 6, and on the Annapolis
campus on Sunday, June 13. A total of 71 students were
graduated with Steven Michael Moser in Santa Fe and
Holly Ann Carroll in Annapolis receiving the Silver Medal
from the Board of Visitors and Governors. The medal
is awarded to a senior on each campus who has achieved
the highest standing. Six seniors graduated magna cum
. laude; seven received degrees cum laude.
Sheila Bobbs, Jonathan Lippitt Brewer, Paul Futra11 Bustion, Catherine
North Carroll, Maya Narayan Contractor, Stuart Roy Deaner, Sally
Lee Dunn, Paul Gordon Eitner, Ralph David Esdale, Amanda Skouras
Fowler, Bonnie Louise Gage, Margaret Edith Jacobs, Laura Joyce
Kelly, Vicky Manchester, Linda Norton, Gerald Pickard Peters III,
Dennis Patrick Plummer, Donald Malden Stillwell, Dolores Ann
Strickland, LJoyd Chockley \Vestbrook, Edward Bradley \Vhitney, and
Leslie Kenneth \Vilson.
Guest speaker in Santa Fe was Ivan Illich, Director
of the Center For Inter-Cultural Documentation in
Mexico. Stringfellow Barr, President of St. John's College
in Annapolis from 1937 to 1946, addressed the Annapolis
seniors.
Other graduation week activities included a meeting
of the Board in Santa Fe, class day exercises, baccalaureate,
and a reception for graduates and guests at the home
of President and Mrs. 'Neigle.
Magna Cum Laude: Holly Ann Carroll, Jeremiah Andrew Collins,
Richard Delahide Ferrier, Jeffrey Coleman Kitchen, Jr., and Rachel
DuBose Sullivan; Cum Laude: Shire Joseph Chafkin, James Arthur
Cockey, Andrew Alexander Fleming Garrison, and Judy Gail Kepner;
Rite: Douglas Hathorn Bennett, Dennis Dean Berg, Marcia Jones
Berg, Perry Jack Braunstein, Duncan MacRae Brown, \Villiam H. Buell
III, Thomas Gridley Casey, 2nd, Diana Love Collins, Dennis John
Dort, Thomas Leonard Dourmashkin, George Henry Elias, Jr., Marie
Kathryn Erickson, Joanna May Fitzick, Robert Fenton Gary, Jay
Alexander Gold, Jane Sarah Goldwin, James Kent Guida, James Ross
Hill, Katherine Elisabeth Jackson, Diane Palley Joseph, Martha Jo
Kaufman, Christopher Lee, Clifford Alan Martin, Ronny Stephen
Millen, Jocelyn Lloyd Moroney, Alan Roth Plutzik, Lynn Carol
Smith Pomerance, John Robert Scow, Barbara Sherman Simpson,
Jeffrey Sonheim, James Stewart Spirer, Harold Samuel Stone, Leila
Adams Straw, Daniel James Su1livan, Victor Michael Victoroff, and
James Francis Villere, Jr.
SANTA FE
l\1agna Cum Laude: Gail Hartshorne; Cum Laude: Steven Michael
Moser, James Fredrick Scott, and Donald Hugh \Vhitfield; Rite:
24
ANNAPOLIS
�July 1971
'I
I
25
�The College
4
5
1) Five seniors take a final look as students from the
Peterson Student Center balcony in Santa Fe.
2) Santa Fe graduation ceremonies ring the Nina Garson
Memorial Pool.
3) Annapolis senior Holly Ann Carroll receives her magna
cum laude degree from President Richard D. Weigle
and her hood from Provost Paul D. Newland. Miss
Carroll also was awarded the silver medal from the
Board of Visitors and Governors.
4) Steven Michael Moser graduates cum laude in Santa
Fe. He received the silver medal from the Board, and
the Margo Dawn Gerber Memorial Prize for writing
the best senior essay.
5) Vice-President J. Burchenal Ault leads the procession
from the Peterson Student Center to the Commencement site.
6) The center of attention is Gail Hartshorne, the only
magna cum laude graduate in Santa Fe. Photo: Robert
Nugent.
7) President Richard D. \Veigle listens to a graduation
address.
8) Parents and guests applaud (and photograph) Ivan
Illich, speaker in Santa Fe.
26
�July 1971
27
�The College
COLLEGE CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
PRESENTS CONCERT WITH
GuEST PIANIST
The St. John's College Chamber
Orchestra and guest pianist, Mrs. John
W. McHugh of Santa Fe, presented
a concert at Santa Fe on April 14th.
The performance included the first
movement of the London Symphony
by Haydn with Tutor Samuel E.
Brown as guest conductor. Schubert's
"Double Cello Quintet," first movement, was presented by five players
from the orchestra, which is made up
of students and local musicians. Mrs.
McHugh was soloist for Beethoven's
Piano Concerto in C Minor, first movement, with Tutor Richard Stark conducting the orchestra.
NEW BOARD
CHAIRMAN ELECTED
J. I. Staley of Wichita Falls, Texas,
will head the Board of Visitors and
Governors of the College for the 197172 year.
Mr. Staley was elected chairman at
the recent meeting of the Board at
the southwestern campus. He succeeds
Mrs. Walter B. Driscoll of Santa Fe.
The board also named Mrs. Duane
L. Peterson of Baltimore, Maryland, as
eastern vice chairman and former New
Mexico Governor Jack M. Campbell
of Santa Fe as western vice chairman.
A St. John's College alumnus, Bernard
Fleischmann, of New Jersey, was reelected secretary.
Mr. Staley is the president of the
. Staley Oil Company in Wichita Falls
and O\:vns a ranch near Las Vegas, 1\Tew
Mexico.
·
He has been interested in St. John's
since 1940 when he read an article in
Life magazine about the new great
books program initiated on the Annapolis campus by Stringfellow Barr
and Scott Buchanan. His interest was
renewed when St. John's opened its
Santa Fe campus in 1964. He served on
the board from 1965 to 1970 and was
reappointed at the same meeting he
was elected chairman.
l\-Ir. Stalev received his B.A. degree
in sociology" from Stanford University
28
in 1935 and his D.J. degree from the
University of Texas Law School in
1938. He has been on the Santa Fe
Opera Board of Directors since its
inception and is now its vice-chair-
man. He is also a member of the Stanford Associates, the Texas Legal
Foundation, the Wichita Falls Museum and Art Center, and the VV'ichita
Falls Symphony Orchestra.
New members elected to the Board
of Visitors and Governors are: John
S. Greenway, Tucson, Arizona; Jac
Holzman, New York, New York; Mrs.
Everett H. Jones, San Antonio, Texas;
Mrs. Louise Trigg McKinney, Santa
Fe, New Mexico; John Murchison,
Dallas, Texas; and Mrs. Duane L.
Peterson, Baltimore, Maryland.
SANTA FE SENIORS SPONSOR
BENEFIT SHOWING OF WAR
AND PEACE; PRESENT
GIFT To CoLLEGE
The Santa Fe campus of St. John's
College received a gift of $4,957 from
the members of the Class of 1971.
The gift includes $2,380 which the
senior class raised through a showing
of the six-hour Russian film version
of Tolstoy's War and Peace. This
amount was matched anonymously.
About $88 was raised with a number
of "15-minute parties" given by
students on Wednesday evenmgs
throughout the school year.
The class stipulated the money
should be used to diminish the principal of the debt owed by the College
in Santa Fe to the endowment fund
of the Annapolis campus.
"VIe have two things in mind in
wishing to give this amount toward the
repayment of the Annapolis endowment debt," the statement accompanying the gift noted.
'.'First perhaps, it can in a small way
express our thanks to Annapolis for
helping this campus to come about
with its Own critical funds, not to
mention the men and experience it
gave.
"Secondly, this gift is given in the
hope of continuing and yet finer
achievements, through books and· dis-
cussions, by all members of the
college."
Representatives of the senior class
made the presentation at the recent
board meeting in Santa Fe. President
Weigle and the board members expressed their appreciation of the gift
and commended the students for their
support of the College.
PRESIDENT AND MRS. WEIGLE
TRAVEL ON DANFORTH
FouNDATION GRANT
President and Mrs. Weigle enjoyed
several weeks of travel on a grant from
the Danforth Foundation during the
first half of 1971. The grant was in
conjunction with a Danforth program
of short-term leaves for college and
university administrators who have
served with an educational institution
for at least five years.
During January and Febtuary the
couple toured in South Africa, Rhodesia, Tanzania, and Kenya, stopping to
visit universities in Johannesburg and
Pretoria, and Rhodes University in
Grahamstown. In the interior of Tanzania the Weigles visited Morogoro
Teachers College. In addition to viewing Victoria Falls, they also spent time
in the game reserves at Amboseli and
visited the treetops in Kenya and the
Kenya National Park at Nairobi.
In March the Weigles joined eighty
· other educators for a tour of Budapest,
·Bucharest, Moscow, Novosibirsk, and
Warsaw. They visited secondary
schools and universities in all centers
and saw Academic Citv in Siberia, a
concentration of research institutes and
library facilities located 2,000 miles
east of Moscow.
In April and May Mr. Weigle was
a Visiting Fellow at Clare College of
Cambridge University in England. The
couple stayed with Tutor Elliott
Zuckerman who is currently a Fellow at
the College. Mr. VV'eigle explored the
early relationships between St. John's
College in Cambridge and St. John's ,
College in Annapolis. During the last
week of the trip to England the
\~'eigles visited with Tutor Samuel
Kutler and his wife who were on a sabbatical.
�July 1971
NEW ADMISSIONS
DIRECTOR IN ANNAPOLIS
Annapolis Provost Paul D. Newland recently announced the appointment of Michael Vvilliam Ham as
Director of Admissions of the Annapolis campus effective July 1st.
Mr. Ham served as an assistant to
Mr. James M. Tolbert, retiring Director
of Admissions, in April, May, and
June. Mr. Tolbert, at his request, has
resumed full-time duties as a Tutor
at the College.
Following graduation cum laude
from St. John's in 1961, Mr. Ham
attended Dartmouth College on a
teaching fellowship, and received his
I\1.S. degree in mathematics from the
(
Michael W. Ham
University of Iowa in 1968. He taught
mathematics at the Key School in
Annapolis from 1965 to 1966, and
assisted in planning the secondary
school mathematics curriculum there.
Mr. Ham was Coordinator of Data
Processing for the American College
Testing Program in Iowa from 1967 to
1969 when he joined the Westinghouse
Learning Corporation as a system
analyst in Project PLAN's Computer
Systems group. He was Manager of
PLAN Systems Analysis and Programming at the time he left.
Mr. Ham is married to the former
Mary Lou Ryce, also a St. John's
College graduate, and they have three
children, Cecelia, Greta, and Ethan.
ALUMNI· ACTIVITIES
WELCOME ABOARD
Both as an alumnus of St. John's and
as president of the Alumni Association,
let rne welcome the Class of 1971, and
the members of earlier classes who
graduated last month, to the ranks 9f
the Alumni of St. John's College. We
are pleased and proud to have you
join us, and hope that you will want to
participate actively in the life of the
Association.
There are a number of ways in
which \'OU can be an active alumnus,
but th~v all require some sort of invoh·ement. It may be as simple as
participating in meetings of local
alumni groups, or it may be as complex
as organizing a telephone session as
part of the annual giving campaign.
It certainly means attending Homecoming when you can, and voting in
the various and sundry elections as they
occur. It could also mean serving as a
volunteer in the Admissions ASsistance
or Career Counselling programs which
the Association sponsors. And it also
means supporting the College with
such financial help as you can afford.
In whatever ways you choose, be a
part of the Association, the organization through which alumni participate
in thelife of the College. As an alumnus, you
\Vil1
ahvays be a member of
the St. John's community: Exercise
your membership.
Again, a hearty welcome to each of
vou, and the best of luck in your aftercollege life.
'
WILLIAM
R. TILLES '59
ASSOCIATION
ACTIVITIES
Board of Visitors and Governors:
Philip I. Bowman '31 and W. Bernard Fleischmann '50 were elected to
second consecutive terms on the Board
of Visitors and Governors in May. An
election, conducted by mail, was neces~
sitated when Steven Shore SF '68 was
nominated by petition. This springtime election was the first under the
prO\·isions of the new College Polity
and Association By-Laws.
News-sheet:
The Association directors have
started an informal news-sheet to supplement material which appears on
29
�The College
sessions will be continued next year,
and ways are being sought" for the
Service to function more actively as a
job placement center. Suggestions
would be most welcome.
CHAPTER NEWS
Annapolis: On May 14th T. Herbert
Taylor '44 assumed chairmanship of
the chapter, replacing Frank B.
Marshall '45. The local group plans
to continue the monthly luncheons
next year, but would like to have an
occasional night-time or week-end
activity. This would permit attendance
of local alumni who cannot attend
luncheons.
New York: The New York group held
a meeting on Tuesday, May 25th, with
Jacob Klein as guest speaker. l'vlr. Klein
conducted an informal seminar on
~Ia to.
/Washington: Under the co-leadership
DaYid F. Crowley, Jr., '28, v.ras one of the 27 alumni volunteers who helped with the Baltimor~/" of Ca.ro] (~hillips) Ti!les ,:59 and
telethon -during this year's Alumni Annual Giving Campaign. Telephone appeals were also made
Cynthza (S1ehler) Wh1te 66, the
in Annapolis and Vilashington, D. C. Gifts in response to the calls amounted to almost $5,000.
chapter he1d a dinner meeting on May
23rd. Annapolis Provost Paul D. Newthese pages. Scheduled for publication inquiries to certain alumni for follow- land was guest of honor and principal
four times a year, the News will alter- up and possible interview. (If you were speaker.
nate with issues of this magazine. The a volunteer for this program and have
directors anticipate that this plan will not had names sent you, there simply AWARD OF MERIT
permit more timely communication have been few if any inquiries from
The Alumni Award of Merit, first
with all alumni about Association ac- your area.)
Thanks to the efforts of Temple G. presented in 1950,_ may be awarded
tivities.
Porter '62 and a committee of other annually at the discretion of the Board
Programs:
directors, alumni help with admissions of Directors of the Alumni AssociaDuring the coming year the Associa- work is about to enter a new phase. A tion. In June, 1970, the directors voted
tion will concentrate its efforts to help kit for volunteers, developed by Mr. to increase the number of Awards from
the College on three principal areas: Porter with the cooperation of both one to not more than three annually.
the Counselling and Placement Service, Directors of Admissions, will be made
The Award is made to an alumthe Admissions Assistance Program, available during the summer to alumni nus for "distinguished and meritorious
volunteers. Designed to help alumni sen•ice to the United States or to his
and fund raising.
·
Fund raising is an increasingly im- seek out and interview prospective stu- native state or to St. John's College, or
portant fact of life for St. John's as dents, the kit has been acclaimed by for outstanding achievement within his
for other colleges. Alumni involvement, officers of the College. It should prove chosen field."
both as workers and as givers, will be invaluable to alumni as they become
Association President \Villiam· R.
more critical than ever over the next more deeply involved in finding able Tilles asks that confidential letters of
nomination be sent to him no later
several years. If the performance of the students for both campuses.
past fe\v years is maintained, however,
Plans are nm:v being dra\vn up for than August 15th. Each letter should
there will be no lack of alumni support the Counselling and Placement Service. contain sufficient information about
for the College.
In the past year there were three main the nominee to permit thorough evaluA program to help the Admissions counselling sessions held, on graduate ation by the Board of Directors. Letters
officers on both campuses has been in schools, on law, and on careers in busi- should be sent to l\-1r. Tilles, c/o
operation since early 1968. To date ness and governm-ent, but little \:vas Alumni Office, St. John's College, Anit has consisted primarily ·of referring done in the way of placement. Similar napolis, Maryland 21404.
30
�July 1971
REUNIONS
ANNIVERSARY HoMECOMING
This is the vear in which the classes
~While the Alumni Association really
of 1911, 1921; 1931, 1941, 1946, 1951, does not trace its origins back to King
1961, and 1966 should be planning William's School, St. John's College
some sort of special get-together for certainly does. For that reason, the
Homecoming. Those are the special re- College this year will celebrate the
union classes, those who ar·e passing 275th anniversary of the founding of
another milestone, whether it be the the School.
5th or the 60th anniversary of the • As you can read elsewhere in this
graduation of the class. The Alumni issue, the celebration of the big event
Office will help in whatever way it can: will take place in the fall, starting on
lists of classmates, reservations at October 12th, and terminating on
motels or hotels, special tables at the Homecoming Day, October 16th. V-le
dinner. \Ve want to help you have a encourage all alumni to attend as
good time; please give us a chance.
man\· of the activities during th2t
CLASS NOTES
1900
Louis Baer, who must be our oldest living
alumnus, celebrated his 92nd birthday on May
29th.
countrY to be fitted witb a dorsal column stimulator (DCS). The DCS, implanted under the
skin, relays radios impulses from a special transmitter controlled by b.Ir. Dulin; the impulses
set up interference which cancels pain signals
moving to the brain.
1907
A nice note from Mrs. E. S. Bushong of
1933
In }.-larch William A. Ziegler retired from
Boonsboro, Maryland, informs us that her - Bethlehem Steel's Sparrows Point plant. An
father, the Rev. \VaJter B . .McKinley, celeAll-American lacrosse player as well as football
brated his 90th birthday this past spring. Alend and basketball center at St. John's, Mr.
though emphysema prevents his walking, he is
Ziegler was General Foreman, Plate and Flange
"otherwise in good shape," to quote Mrs. BusMills, upon his retirement.
hong. Our congratulations to Mr. McKinley.
1912
We hear
through
Philip
L.
Alger
of
Spencer D. Hopkins, now fourteen years retired from the General Motors Corporation,
where he worked for forty years. Mr. Hopkins
keeps busy helping manage a home for the aged
and helping run a club for retired GM executives. He makes his home in Bloomfield Hills,
lv1ichigan.
1922
William R. Horne}', a member of the SATC
unit at St. John's in 1918, and a retired judge
of the Maryland State Court of Appeals, was
ordained a deacon of the Episcopal Church on
January 16, 197L Mr. Horney serves as assistant to the rector of St. Paul's Church in
Centreville, Maryland.
1928
Louis L. Snyder, professor of history at the
City College of the City University of New
York, deli\·ered the first talk in the current
"Ideas" series for the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation on April 12th. Professor Snyder's
subject for the CBC network was "The Ideas
of Nation and 1\'ntionalism."
1931
\\'ilbur R. Dulin, an Annapolis attomcy and
former State Senator, helped make medical hislory recently. After suffering \\'ith spinal pain
for SC\'eral years following a cancer operation,
Y\-Ir. Dulin became the forty-first pers9n in this
~/alter
1935
F. Evers informs us that Joseph
Novey lost his wife last falL We join Mr.
Novey's classmates in sending belated condolences.
1938
Jack D. EngJar, former vice president of
plant operations for McCormick & Co., Inc.,
and more recently manager of economic development of the Greater Baltimore Chamber
of Commerce, in March was named vice president and general manager of the technologies
division of Tate Industries.
1939
On July lst Frank A. \\lhite, Jr., was promoted to vice president at Pennsylvania Mutual
Life Insurance Company.
1943
On the night of January 1-2, 1971, the
hopes and dreams of the Bay Country School
and of its founder and headmaster, Ogden
Kellogg-Smith, disappeared in $70,000 worth
of smoke and flame. The school'S first building,
literal]\· built bv the brawn and sweat of stu·
dents,· parents,· and faculty 0\'er the preyious
eighteen months, was cle~troyed by a fire of unknown origin. Founded in 1962, the School has
~crved a unique and useful purpose in Anne
.-\rundel County by offering an opportunity to
the student who did not fit the com·entioml
mold. :No\\' the School faces the gigantic task.
period as they can; we believe you will
find them stimulating and very worthwhile.
Details of Homecoming itself will
be published later in the summer,
although a few events are now in place.
Alumni seminars will probably be held
on Saturday morning, the Annual
Meeting following luncheon, and the
annual reception and dinner in the late
afternoon and night, respectively.
IVIake your plans now to join us, at
least for the 16th, and better yet, for
three or four days. \Ve think you will
enjoy the experience.
of replacing its loss. Any of Mr. Kellogg-Smith's
former classmates or other friends who wish
to help should address iv1r. Robert Jenkins, Bay
Country School, Arnold, :tvid. 21012.
This was an auspicious spring for the H. \Villard Stern family: in April Mr. Stern and his
wife had a son, Darrell David, and one month
later, Mr. Stern received his Ph.D. degree from
Rutgers, T11e State University. His dissertation
\\'as entitled: "A Philosophical Analysis of the
Use of 'Comprehension' In An Educational
Context.''
1944
Carl S. Hammen was promoted to professor
of zoology at the University of Rhode Island
on July lst. Mr. Hammen holds master's degrees from Columbia University and the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. degree from
Duke University.
In March James \V. Poe, Jr. received the
\Vriters Guild 1971 Laurel Award, symbolizing the writer "who has ad\·anced literature of
the motion picture through the vears." Several
years ago Mr. Poe won an Acade-my Award for
his movie screenplay "Around the \Vorld in
SO Days." He is the father of Lorna Poe '67.
1945
John L. Lincoln's son Jack '74 politely called
our attention to a misplaced item in the April
issue. It should have been in the 1945 Notes
instead of those for 1950: it was Jack's uncle,
C. Ran/et Lincoln, who was in the class of
1950, not his father. Apologies to all the
Lincolns.
1950
Dean Robert A. Gold\\'in l1ad a special interest in the commencement exercises this year,
since his daughter, Jane, \\'as a member of the
graduating class. Miss Goldwin \\'ill go to London for a year, and has been accepted in a
~laster of :\rts in teaching program at Goucher
College for the follo\\'ing year.
James H. Riggs \Hites to J\fiss 1\Jiriam
Str;mge that he will be entering the study of
psychology this coming fall at \Vest Georgia
College, Carrollton, Georgia.
31
�The College
1953
H:we you ever wanted to chuck everything
and get away from it all? Singer Glenn R. Yarbrough has apparently decided to do just that
at the end of this year. Last February he announced that he will abandon his musical
career and head to sea in his sailboat, Jubilee.
"'ith his wife, Anne, and their small daughter,
Holly, Mr. Yarbrough will cruise the world for
five years or more, to "read and think and
travel ... as an ordinary person."
1956
The Reverend J. Donald Libby has been
rector of Christ Church, I.U. Parish, near
Lynch, Maryland, and rector of North Sassafras
Parish in lower Cecil County, since May 1st.
Before mm·ing to the Eastern Shore, Re\'.
Libby was rector of Severn Parish, near
CrownsYille. 1l1c Libbvs and their three
children make their hom~ in Earleville.
]. Jay W'ase, since January a senior assistant
State's Attorney for Baltimore City, is the
author of "The Federal Gun Laws and You,"
published this past May.
1960
Richard S. Dohanian, who married the
former Linda Powell in April, 1970, is now a
restaurant owner in South Newbury, N.H.
1961
l\1ichael C. Haley since February has been
specializing in the sale of commercial and investment real estate with an Albuquerque,
New Mexico, firm. Mr. Haley and his wife, the
former Linda Levitt '64, have lived in Albuquerque for several years.
MicllaeJ W. Ham ·joined the staff of the College on April 19th as an Admissions Officer,
and on July 1st he· replaced James M. Tolbert
as Director of Admissions in Annapolis. (See
article elsewhere in this issue.}
Theodore B. C. Stincllecum, now performing professionally as Theo Barnes, toured with
the Broadway T11eater of Northeastern Pennsylvania this past winter in the title role in "Hadrian VII."
March 24, 19il, in Beirut, Lebanon. Mr.
1l1omas is with· the USIA.
1964
Stephen Fineberg writes that he is now at
Stanford University working on a dissertation,
"though officially still a Texan."
Sara (Hobart) Homeyer and husband Charles
recently announced that their son Peter has
been joined by an adopted sister, Martha Jean,
who became a Homeyer on April 26th. Our
congratulations to th_e new parents.
Neal 0. \\Ieiner now holds the rank of professor at Marlboro College in Vermont.
1965
The Har\'ard-Radcliffe Chapter of Sigma Xi
has announced the advancement of Bruce Collier from associ<Jte member to member. Sigma
Xi is an honorary organization for the encouragement of scientific research.
Carlos Pereira is now Director de la Escuela
de Cursos B:isicos del Nucleo de Bolivar, Universidad de Oriente, Cuidad Boli\'ar, Venezuela.
The school, organized by Sr. Pereira, has 36
teachers and- 700 students, and offers the first
two years of college. During those two years
the students are selected to enter the different
fields of study offered by the University.
1966
For the past year Dr. Jonathan D. Korshin
has been senring his medical internship in
Tucson at the three hospitals affiliated v.~th
the University of Arizona School of l\Jedicine.
Dr. Korshin received his medical degree in
May, 1970, at Dov.rnstate Medical School,
State University of New York. According to
information received during the spring, he
e>..rpected to move back to the East Coast in
July, 1971.
1967
David C. Dickey was selected in May as the
Republican nominee for commonwealth's attorney for Greene County, Virginia. Mr. Dickey
has been practicing law in Stanardsville since his
graduation from the University of Virginia law
school in June, 1970.
1962
Judith (Levine) Gerberg writes that she is
on the National Committee of the Professional
\Vomen's Caucus. The letter which she sent
explains that "P\VC is a national organization
of professional persons in all fields working for
a social environment that stresses the full development of human potential before sex role
stereotypes.''
John F. l\-1iller \\'as one of 24 museologists
and graduate students who attended the thirteenth annual Seminar for Historical Administrators in \Villiamsburg, Virginia, last month.
T\·1r. \filler is a candiclate for an !\LA. degree in
.\rchitectural 1-:Ii~tory/Art History at the Uni\'trsity of l\'faryland.
1963
Mr. and Mrs. Robert K. Tllomas are the
proud parents of l\'Iiss Rebecca Marie, born
32
Congratulations and a- large vote of appreciation are due Arthur Kungle, Jr., and a large
crew of volunteers whom he recruited, for the
outstanding job they have done in beautifying
the Annapolis campus. Gardens of annual
flowers, a large bed of rose bushes, and many
small trees on the back campus are the results
of their labors. T11eir efforts have given us an
even more beautiful setting in which to work.
1968
A letter from Bettina Briggs (SF) this spring
re\·eals that she expected to receive her J.D. degree in June from Boston University_ After that
she will "tackle the Massachusetts Bar Examinations," in order to join the law office of
Benjamin A. Friedman in Taunton. \Vhile
at the University, Miss Briggs has worked
on the staff of Cambridge Legal Services, helping impo\'erished clients, and with the Long
Range Planning Department of Tufts-New
England Medical Center. In this latter position
she was particularly concerned with the inadequacy of existing mass transit systems for
the handicapped and elderly.
The Army·s loss apparently \\~ll be the legal
profession's gain, as Keith C. Covington has
completed his military service and plans to
enter law school in the fall.
Elizabeth Dobbs writes that she finished
work in April on her master's degree in the
English Dcparbnent of the State Uni\'ersil:y of
New York at Buffalo. She will be starting soon
on her dissertation on medie\'al English.
In May Jinna (MacLaurin) Rie received her
M.Ed. degree from Goucher College in Baltimore.
In March there were sergeant's stripes for
Jonathan Zavin as he graduated from the NonCommissioned Officer Candidate School at Ft.
Benning, Georgia. Sgt. Zavin was Selected for
the course under a specialized program that
grants rapid promotions to outstanding individuals.
1969
Linda E. Davenport has been teaching school
this past year in Chester, Vermont.
In Memoriam
.-1906-Richard H. Hodgson, Salisbury, Md.,
yJ-433-Stanley R. Mitchell, Guilford, Conn.,
M.,ch 7, 1971.
August 17, 1970.
/1908-J. Graham Shannahan, Sr., Balti- \/1936-John
,;v_ Sullivan, Millington,
Md.,
more, Md., June 2, 1971.
..
.
May 13, 1971.
/1913-Robert A. Tennant, Oakland, Cal., !)9-37-J. Trenholm Hopkins, Charleston,
.
May 7, 1971.
S.C., February 2, 1971.
v-1917-----.:.R.
..
Hammond Elliott,
Md., May 3, 1971.
'./1920-Robert E. Coughlan,
Jr.,
Annapolis,.,..- 1938-Lee N. Baker, Pikesville, Md., April
10, 1971.
Baltimore,
Md., March 5, 1971.
;'1923-Dougbs
R.
Bowie,
·1938-John \V. Cook, Frostburg, Md.,
/.
August Jl, 1970.
Cumberland, /1938-Peter
T.
Simmons,
Portsmouth,
Md., 1969.
,).928-Samuel T. Jones, Prince Frederick,
' .
Md., May 16, 1971.
1943-Richard S. Spencer, Jr., Baltimore,
\.-1930-Ferdinand
1970-Mitchel A. Green (SF), Februal)'
Fader,
South
N.J., April 20, 1971.
Orange,
N.H., March II, 1971.
Md., January 28, 1971.
23, 1971.
�275th .
ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION
Calendar of Events
Tuesday, October 12
Concert: Juilliard String Quartet
Wednesday, October 13
Seminar on Plato's Meno
Panel: Literature and Language
Thursday, October 14
Panel: Politics and Society
St. John's College Regular Seminars
Friday, October 15
Panel: Mathematics and Science
Tutor Jacob Klein: The St. John's College Seminar
Tutor Douglas Allanbrook: Harpsichord Concert
Alumni Receptions
Saturday, October 16
Meeting of the Board of Visitors and Governors
Alumni Seminars
Aliu:nni Business Meeting
Academic Convocation
Guest Speaker: Dr. Martin Meyerson, President
The University of Pennsylvania
Alumni Reception for Faculty and Seniors
Alumni Dinner and Presentation of A ward of Merit
�275th Anniversary Celebration
October 12 -16, 1971
Annapolis
See Inside Back Cover for Calendar of Events
The College
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
Second-class postage paid at
Annapolis, Maryland, and at
additional mailing offices.
�
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Description
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St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>. <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981. <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Berns, Laurence
Wyatt, Malcolm
Felter, Mary P.
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Trimmer, Maurice
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Volume XXIII, Number 2 of The College. Published in July 1971.
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�The College
Cover: St. John's College celebrates its
275th anniversary, by Seth Goldwin.
Inside Front Cover: McDowell Hall,
Annapolis.
The College is a publication for
friends of St. John's College and for
those who might become friends of the
College, if they came to know it. Our
aim is to indicate, within the limitations of the magazine form, why, in
our opinion, St. John's comes closer
than any other college in the nation
to being what a college should be.
If ever well-placed beacon lights
vvere needed by American education
it is now. By publishing articles about
the work of the College, articles reflecting the distinctive life of the mind
that is the College, we hope to add a
watt or two to the beacon light that is
St. John's.
Acting Editor: Malcolm Wyatt
Managing Editor: Mary P. Felter
Alumni Editor: Thomas Farran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant: Maurice Trimmer
Tl1e College is published by the
Development Offices of St. John's
College, College Avenue, Annapolis,
Maryland 21404 (Julius Rosenberg,
Director), and Santa Fe, New Mexico
(J. Burchenal Ault, Vice President);
Member, American Alumni Council.
President, St. John's College, Richard
D. Weigle.
Published four times a year in April,
July, October, and December. Second-class postage paid at Annapolis,
Maryland, and at additional mailing
offices.
Vol. XXIII
October 1971
No.3
In the October Issue:
On Precision, by Jacob Klein
I
The Report of the President, 1970-71
9
News on the Campuses
21
Alumni Activities
27
�On Precision*
I am afraid this will be a tedious and annoying lecture.
I do not know how you will stand it. I propose to reflect
on the meaning and the various implications of precision.
Why should I do that? Well, however untidy, vague, and
undisciplined we may be, something like precision rules
over our lives, rules in fact over the Western world as a
whole. And by the West I mean great many parts, although not all parts, of our globe. I said something like
precision is a ruling power in our lives. For the very word
"precision" is ambiguous. To begin with, it is not identical
with "clarity." Something that is clear need not be precise, and something that is precise need not be clear.
Moreover we should note that the English word "precision" does not retain the connotations of its Latin root.
I shall have to come back to this point later on. On the
other hand there is close kinship between "precision,"
"accuracy," "correctness," and "exactitude," but these
words are not synonyms, although very often they appear
to be and arc used interchangeably. (Modern statistical
theories do, by the way, make a distinction between exactitude and precision.) At the risk of treading in the footsteps of Prodicus, the man most concerned with the right
usc of words, the man whom Socrates calls his 0 teacher"a deceptively ironic appellation, which is as much funny
as it is serious-! shall try right away to distinguish the
meanings of these four words. Many examples will be
needed for this purpose.
A tailor has to be very careful about the length and the
width of a suit at different points of the body of the man
for whom the suit is made. The tailor has to be accurate
in his measuring, cutting, and sewing. So has a carpenter
in making a table or a door. Accuracy is required to fit a
part of a machine into or onto another part or other parts
of that machine so that it can do its work properly. If I
am asked by a stranger how to get from the place where
we meet to a certain building in town, I have to be careful in describing the way he has to take, as for instance:
three blocks ahead, then turn to your right, continue for
two blocks and then turn to your left; then you will see
the building you are looking for. In saying this I must be
*A lecture given at St. John's College in Annapolis on February 23,
1968.
By Jacob Klein
confident that the description I give is accurate enough. In
all these cases accuracy connotes carefulness in the work
one is doing or in the words one is uttering. Let us turn
to correctness. I might ask someone to answer a question.
After the answer is given, I say: this is correct. I mean
the answer is a right one. I might advise a friend to behave
in a certain way when he faces Mr. X and Mr. Y or some ·
peculiar circumstances. If he does, he behaves correctly,
that is, in the right way. I might instruct someone how
to pronounce certain words in a foreign language. If he
learns how to do that, he will pronounce those words in
the right way, that is correctly. Children are supposed to
learn (and sometimes do not learn) how to conduct
themselves correctly, that is, according to accepted stand. ards and modes of life. In every case correctness implies
rightness in speaking, behaving, reacting. What about
exactitude? We say: the collection comprises exactly 1163
paintings; or, this lump of metal fits exactly into this hole;
or, I feel exactly as you do about this event; or, the distinction you just mentioned coincides exactly with that
which exists between justice and mercy. Exactitude seems
to point to the perfect matching ot something with something in terms of number or of size or of some other
quantity or even of some yardstick that cannot be quantified. It is in this vein that we speak of various mathematical disciplines as of exact sciences, allowing for approximation procedures which do not detract from their
exactitude.
Thus carefulness, rightness, and perfect matching characterize accuracy, correctness, and exactitude. Do they not
also circumscribe the meaning of precision? They do, and
let me repeat forcefully: they do; and that is the reason
why these words arc so often used interchangeably. But
precision seems to have broader connotations. Let us again
consider some examples.
In a novel by Henry James, we find the following description. I quote, leaving out a great deal:
He [Christopher Newman] had a very wellformed head, with a shapely, symmetrical balance
of the frontal and the occipital development,
and a good deal of straight, rather dry brown
hair. His complexion was brown, and his nose
l
�The College
had a bold, wcii-marked arch. His eye was of a
clear, cold gray, and save for a rather abundant
mustache he was clean-shaved. He had the flat
. jaw and sinewy neck which arc frequent in the
American type .... The cut of this gentleman's
mustache, with the two premature wrinkles in
the cheek above it, and the fashion of his garments, in which an exposed shirt-front and a
cerulean cravat played perhaps an obtrusive part,
completed the conditions of his identity.
Henry James is praised for the "extreme precision of his
style," but we might remain dissatisfied by this description of Christopher Newman. Are the "conditions of
his identity," to use Henry James' own words, sufficiently
delineated? Can this be done at ail?
Let us turn to another example. In an old zoology textbook a precise description of the leech is given, which
again I shaii not quote in fuii:
The leech is an elongated flattened worm, from
three to five inches in length, and provided with a
muscular sucker at each end. The body is marked
externally by a series of transverse constrictions
dividing it into rings of annuli, and is capable
of considerable elongation and contraction . . . .
The shape varies greatly with the degree of
elongation or contraction. The body is broadest
a little way behind the middle of its length, and
is oval in transverse section, the dorsal surface
being more convex than the ventral. _ .. The
anterior sucker is oval, with the longer· axis
longitudinal. ... The posterior sucker is circular,
and larger than the anterior one. . . .
The picture of the leech emerges distinctly, and we would
appreciate its precision even more if I had quoted the text
in its entirety. We note, it is nreant to be precise in the
first place.
The last example is taken from Gulliver's Travels. Most
of you wiii remember that the Liiiiputian king orders a
search of Gulliver's belongings and persuades Gulliver to
submit to the search. Two officers are appointed for the
task. Gulliver lifts them gently up and puts them into his
pockets, although some of them he chooses not to divulge.
The officers examine everything they find and write a
formal and precise report about their findings. Most of
the objects in Gulliver's pockets are unfamiliar to the
two Liiiiputians, and espcciaiiy his watch, which-parenthetically-is odd, considering the Liiiiputians' indisputable
mathematical and mechanical competence and inventiveness. This is what they write:
Out of the right fob hung a great silver chain,
with a wonderful kind of engine at the bottom.
We directed him to draw out whatever was
fastened to that chain; which appeared to be a
globe, half silver, and half of some transparent
2
metal; for on the transparent side we saw certain
strange figures circularly drawn, and thought we
could touch them tiii we found our fingers
stopped by that lucid substance. He put his
engine to our .ears, which made an incessant noise
like that of a watermiii and we conjecture it is
either some unknown animal or the god that he
worships .. _.
The description of Christopher Newman is that of an
imaginary being. The description of the leech applies to
any leech and is a description of a living creature. The
description of Gulliver's watch might also apply to any
watch, although the investigators do not know what it is,
what purpose it serves. Ail these descriptions are as precise
as they could be. What is to he learned from them about
precision?
In every case the description intends to show what the
object described looks like, be that object familiar or
unfamiliar to us. Depending on the degree of its precision,
the description will enable us to recognize the object in
question more or less readily. In the case of Christopher
Newman, we are somewhat doubtful. But we should
certainly he able to identify with the help of the description a leech as a leech. And being familiar with oldfashioned watches, we recognize in the "wonderful kind
of engine" described by the Liiiiputians-a watch. Note
that in every case the description appeals to features assumed to be known: to a "well-formed head," a "mustache," a person "of American type"; to a "worm,"
"elongation" and "contraction," an ''oval" and "circular"
shape; to a "globe," "transparency," the noise of a watermiii. The description brings up a realm of known things
and appearances to which the object described is supposed
to belong. This is all-important: without such a known
realm to which the object described can be allocated,
precision is not possible at all. The closer this allocation,
the better described the object becomes. This is how all
legal documents tend to be precise, so much so that
precision in the domain of jurisprudence is the prototype
of all precision everywhere else. The relation between
persons, or bodies of men, or estates, must indeed be
stated in terms that make it possible to apply the stated
relation precisely to any particular case; or, conversely,
actions of men, together with the circumstances surrounding these actions, must be described in a way which permits us to refer to these actions as precisely falling or not
falling under certain statutes or laws. To point out where
something can he located, to what sort of thing or stuff
something belongs, is indeed the primary task of a precise
description, the primary concern of precision itself. Andto repeat-this allocation is accomplished by describing
what the thing or event in question looks like.
I just said: what something looks like. But should I not
rather have said: what it is? You sense immediately that
the phrases "what something looks like" and "what some-
�October 1971
thing is" can be, but need not be, identical. And you know,
or at least you ought to know, that this phrase "what is
it?" (.rl Ean) is the Socratic question, which-in all its
seeming simplicity-revolutionized human thinking and
human behavior. To answer this question requires indeed
-precision. Both the closeness and the disparity of what
things look like and of what they are have been forever
incorporated in the Greek word <l8o> (or i8ta) and in
its literal Latin translation species (in l'~nglish parlance:
species). These words do indeed signify both the looks
and the what of a thing. The use and abuse of these
words have moulded human thought in various ways for
more than two thousand years. Whether the looks and
. . . this phrase "what is it?" (Ti irrn) is the Socratic
question, which-in all its seeming simplicityrevolutionized human thinking and human behavior.
the what of a thing can be identified or must be separated depends on what the thing in question is aiiocated to, to what sort of group or family or tribe or
genus of things this particular thing belongs. Examples:
an oak looks like a tree and is a tree; a marine polyp (a
coral) looks like a tree, but is not a tree. And let us not
forget: while we were trying to grasp the meaning of
precision~ we had to use examples of precision, and these
examples showed us either something that was like what
we were seeking or the very thing itself. Let us also keep
in mind that the group or family or genus to which the
thing sought is allocated, to which it is supposed to belong
or actuaiiy belongs; is something familiar, something if
not known 7 at least quasi-known to us.
There is hardly any doubt that young and old in Plato's
Academy exercised their powers to answer the Socratic
question, what this or that thing is, with precision. (And
may I say, this entailed more than I had occasion to mention so far.) Not only do Platonic dialogues bear witness
to such exercises in precision-and do that as much seriously as playfuiiy, ironicaiiy, and even critically-but there
are stories which report both gleeful and malicious attacks
on this Academic preoccupation. There is a passage in
Plato's dialogue, the Statesman,' in which Man is described-playfuiiy, to be sure-as a "featherless biped."
And there is the story' that a Socratic extremist, Diogenes
1
266E
2
Diog. Laert. VI, 40
the Cynic, threw a plucked rooster into the Academy,
saying: ~<There you have the Platonic man," whereupon
the Academy is supposed to have added to "featherless
biped" the expression "with flat nails." It is possible that
the passage in the Statesman, far from being the source
of Diogenes' joke, is-among other things-an echo of it.
Athenaeus the Grammarian (about 200 A.D.) quotes' a
fragment of Epicrates, a contemporary of Plato, of Plato's
nephew, Spcusippos, who succeeded Plato as head of the
Academy, and of Aristotle. In this fragment Epicrates, who
must have been an eyewitness of many things in and
about Athens and presumably an avid coiiector of all the
gossip swirling around him, gently parodies the pursuit of
precision in the Academy. I shaH quote it in full. It isunderstandably cnough-'a dialogue. I shall call the two
speakers Q and A. Mentioned in this dialogue are not
only Plato and Speusippos, but also Menedemus, another
follower of Plato. Here it is .
Q. What are Plato, Spcusippos and Menedemus
doing? vVith what are they busying themselves
now? What are they speculating about? What
proposition are these people tracking down? Tell
me this discreetly, if you have reached the point
of understanding anything about it, tell me, by
the Earth ....
A. Oh, but I know how to speak about these
things in ali clarity. For, at the Panathcnaean
festival, I saw a herd of striplings . . . in the
school of the Academy and heard them say
things ineffable, out of all order. They produced
definitions about nature, distinguishing the ways
of life of animals, and the natures of trees, and
the genera of vegetables; and, among the latter,
they scrutinized the-pumpkin, searching to what
genus it belongs.
Q.
And how in the world did they define it and
to what genus did they say this plant belongs?
Reveal it, if you know.
A. First all of them were speechless, then they
looked at it attentively and, bent forward, meditated for quite a while. Suddenly, while the lads
were still bent and searching, one of them said:
the pumpkin is a round vegetable, another said:
a round grass, and another again: a round tree.
Hearing this, a doctor from Sicilian lands farted,
intimating that they were talking nonsense.
Q. They must have been terribly angry, weren't
they? Did they not shout that this was an insult?
For to do that in public is unbecoming!
s II59 D-F
3
�The College
A. The lads didn't blink an eye. Plato, who was
present and exceedingly mild, did not stir a hit,
and enjoined them to define the pumpkin again
and anew and to state to what genus it belongs.
... And they went on dividing.
Some of the comical effects of this parody do not come
through in an English translation. For the words ~'define,"
"distinguish," ''divide," as well as "genus" do not retain
in this translation the flavor of the unusual mixed with
their accepted colloquial meaning. And yet the pomposity of these technically inflated terms is not the least
important element of the parody. These terms arc the
fruit of the pursuit of precision. Accustomed as we are to
them, we understand-and misunderstand-them easily.
There is, however, one word in the last sentence of Epi~
crates' fragment ("and they went on dividing") which
certainly attracts our attention. It is the word "divide."
It is pretty clear, by the way, that many exchmoges between
Q and A, which must have preceded the last sentence,
were not recorded by Athenaeus. What does that word
"divide" mean?
Let us assume that agreement is reached about the
family, the genus of the pumpkin or of anything else. The
family is familiar to us (as in Epicrates' parody "vegetable," "grass/' "tree" arc familiar to the young men),
but is at best only a quasi-known. Does not, therefore,
for the sake of precision, a new question necessarily arise:
What is this genus, that is, to what family does tl1is
genus belong, what is the genus of this genus? This new
genus, this new family, will have to be larger than the
first. And then again the question will have to be repeated
for this new genus, and then again for the next one, and
so on, and so on. Is there an end to this questioning in
the pursuit of precision? If there is, will not the final
genus be the all-comprehensive one? Will it still be a
"genus" then? And shall we be able to comprehend it?
It will have to be something that does not lack anything,
that is self-sufficient, complete,-perfcct. Will it be accessible to us at all? And this question means: Is it within
our powers to be really precise? Let me say haltingly and
unprcciscly that this is the point around which the intellectual effort of Plato and of those who follow him
gravitates always.
Let us consider anew what I have been saying. In order
to grasp what something is, we have to allocate it to a
family of things quasi-known to us, and then to allocate
this family of things, this genus, to another larger family
also quasi-known to us, and to keep on ascending. Only
when and if the last step has been made, can we say that
we have found out what the unknown thing, that X which
started us off on this journey is, can we say that we know
what it is. It is this last step that illuminates-sun-likenot only all the intermediary genera, but the very thing,
the what of which we wanted to know.
4
This entire procedure so far can be likened to an
analysis in mathematics. A mathematical analysis handles
the unknown as if it were known by relating it to known,
or as we say, given, quantities, that is, by setting up an
equation, and then, by reversing itself, finds out what the
unknown is. I say "by reversing itself," because the final
computation is not analytic, but, as the tradition calls
it, synthetic. A 1\uclidean proof is synthetic: it descends
from given magnitudes, through given magnitudes, to the
unknown magnitude and thus makes it known. This is
what is called a de-monstration, an U7r63n~t~, a showing
by starting from something that is known. The finding,
the discovery oi a de-monstration is accomplished analytically: we have to ascend from the unknown, taken as
known, to the actually known. The proof, then, the synthetic de-monstration, is the reversal of the analysis.
What we have been dealing with so far in the pursuit of
precision was the ascent from the unknown, allocated to
the quasi-known, up to the highest point which we have
to assume as actually known. This assumption is fraught
with uncertainty, and yet precision hinges on it. This
much, however, can be said: if we reverse the direction of
our pursuit and descend from the highest point to the
unknown of which we want to know what it is, we shall
"define" it. ''Definition" in the Socratic-Platonic scheme
amounts indeed to "de-monstration" in the strict sense
of the word.
How can this descent be accomplished? The simple succession downwards of the genera that could lead to
Epicratcs' stately and ridiculous pumpkin for instance may
not be immediately and directly available. What we have
to do is to ''divide" every family, every genus, suitably into
parts, into sub-genera (or sub-species, if you please), then
choose that family part in which the pumpkin itself is
finally reached. It is to this procedure that the word
1
4 Had we more of
' divide" in Epicrates' fragment alludes.
Epicrates' text, we could perhaps witness Q's astonishment and A's joking explanations of such ''divisions." As
matters stand, we have to rely on Plato's dialogues. There
we find prescriptions for how to go about dividing a genus.
In the Phaedrus it is said" that we should do the cutting
"where the natural joints are" and not try to break any part
after the manner of a bad carver. But where are the natural
joints? In the Statesman 6 we are enjoined to cut every
genus "through the middle," for in that way one is more
likely to find the species, the "ideas," inherent in the genus
which is being cut. This prescription seems to favor the
halving of the genus so as to get two sub-genera, two
species, and it is not immediately clear why this should
be the most desirable, the most advantageous, the most
precise dividing. Nor is it clear how we can start dividing
the all-comprehensive genus, if there be one.
4
C£. Aristophanes, Clouds, 742
'265E
"262B
�October 1971
In the examples of division given in Plato's Sophist and
Statesman the cutting does not begin that high. The first
division in the Sophist begins with the family of human
arts, the genus ''art," and ''defines/' that is, de-monstrates
"angling" as follows (I quote the summary of the division)7:
manual work, all handicraft; the other, manifesting itself
in any art, as for example in carpentry. The first one, the
purely cognitive one, the one detached from all handicraft,
is then again subdivided, and now I quote the summary of
the delimitation which is given after the two main speakers
in the dialogue had gone to great lengths to reach their
goal":
Of Art as a whole half was acquisitive, and of
the acquisitive, half was coercive, and of the coercive, half was hunting, and of hunting half was
animal hunting, and of animal hunting half was
water-hunting and of water hunting the lower
The purely cognitive knowledge had, to begin
with, a part that gives commands; and a portion
of this was called-from [its] resemblance [to
the way of those who sell what they themselves
produce ]-the part that gives its own commands;
and again the art of rearing li.ving beings was
detached, which is by no means the smallest part
of the art which gives its own commands; and a
species of rearing living beings was herd-tending,
and a part of this again the herding ot walking
animals: and from the herding of walking animals
the art of rearing those without horns was cut off;
and of this in turn the part called the science
of herding animals that mate only with their own
kind will have to be intertwined in no less than
in a threefold way, if one wants to draw together
into one name the very thing we seek; the only
further cut, executed on the flock of bipeds, leads
to the science at herding human beings, and this
is what we were looking for, namely what is
called both statesmanship and kingship.
Plato makes us understand that all artful act1v1ty
has to be governed by the concern for the standard
of due measttre, the standard of the right mean.
part was fishing, and of fishing half was striking;
and of striking half was barb-hunting, and of this
the part in which the blow is pulled from below
upwards rat an angle J has a name in the very
likeness of the art and is called angling, which is
at this moment the object of our search.
It is assumed in this definition, this de-monstration, that
the starting point, the genus "art" is known. Each cut
divides the genus in question into two parts. The smnmary lists only the right-hand parts, as it were, and ignores
of course the left-hand ones and their possible sub-divisions. The procedure thus delimits what is to be found out,
and this is precisely the meaning of the word "definition,"
so unbelievably familiar to us, namely-delimitation. In
the dialogue, this division serves a deeply serious purpose,
but we would be singularly blind if we overlooked its
playfulness. There is still another awfully important aspect
to it which becomes clearer in the first division of the
Statesman. IIere the starting point is the family of know].
edges, the genus "knowledge," and that which is being
defined, delimited, is "statesmanship." Again "knowledge,''
the starting point, is taken as a genus known. This genus
is first divided into two parts: one, detached from all
What this delimitation then finally amounts to is the
statement that statesmanship is the "science of herding
human beings/' which in Greek is only one word
( UvOpw7r0110fW<0) ·
It turns out, as we see, that the way of reaching this
result is far from precise. We do actually see that, in
delimitations, precision may overreach itself. The explicit
delimitation, to which the summary I just quoted refers,
makes this even clearer. On the other hand, the subsequent discussion of the delimitation of statesmanship
reveals that it not only overreached itself, but also neglected to separate statesmanship from other arts and
activities which compete with it in the herding and nurturing of human beings. The delimitation proves to be
not only excessive, but also deficient.
The lesson Aristotle (and perhaps other people in the
Academy) drew from these blemishes of divisional definition was to limit it to the closest family, the nearest
genus, and to add to it the unique feature which, within
this genus, characterizes the thing sought. This remained
the classical wdy of defining for centuries to come, of
defining by the nearest genus and the specific difference
(per genus proximum et diflerent.ian1 specificam). Aristotle
cut the delimitation short, and the etymology of the
8
267 A-C
5
�The College
Latin word praeclSlo reflects this short-cut. 9 We should
not forget that in crucial cases Aristotle does not stick to
this pattern at all. And Plato himself has his own way
of coping with the task of delimitation.
Let me try to pursue Plato's own path or rather paths.
Let us note, first of all, that both in the Sophist and in
the Statesman the delimitation procedure is taken to be
unaffected by the dignity or meanness of the genera it
happens to descend on. The art of generalship and the
art of louse-catching are equally well suited to belong to
the genus "hunting"'; 10 kingship and swineherdship are on
par 11 as sub-genera of the genus "art of herding animals
that mate only with their own kind." The delimitation
procedure "pays no more heed to the noble than to the
ignoble, and no less honor to the small than to the
grcat." 12 It does not prefer the king Odysseus to the
swineherd Eumaeus. It is in this "neutrality" that the
possibility of excess or deficiency in the procedure of
delimitation appears to be rooted. Now, in pointing to this
possibility of both excess and deficiency Plato makes us
understand that all artful activity has to be governed by
the concern for the standard of due measure, the standard
of the right mean. This concern is actually kept alive by a
power that man-and perhaps only man-possesses,
namely the power of making comparisons. It is in comparing-and only in comparing-that we may find different
degrees of size, or of weight, or of beauty, or of worth. It
is comparing that lets us see something as "better" or
"worse" than something else, that makes us discern the
noble from the ignoble, the impeccable from the faulty.
To live up to the standard of due measure we have to
refine our comparing power: we have to learn from "examples." To cope with the danger of excess or deficiency
in the delimitation procedure we have to turn to an
"example.'' 13 This is what happens in the dialogue the
Statesman. But before this happens the very meaning of
"example" is subjected to a close scrutiny. Example, as the
Greek word 7rapU0£~Yf!a implies, is something shown alongside of the thing we want to grasp. To use an example is
to be engaged not in rbroOwwVvat, in ''showing down
from. . .," but · in trapa3nKvVvat, in "showing alongside
of...." This kind of showing mn elucidate the thing we
are after only if there is some resemblance between this
thing and the example used. To avoid excess or deficiency
in the delimitation procedure, this procedure must, then,
be supplemented by the use of examples, based on resemblances. It is thus that the ambiguity of the word ,roo~
finds its ultimate justification: both the what and the
looks of the thing in question become apparent. And it
+ cad a =
9 Pmc
1o Sopll.
pmccido
227B
n Statesman 266C
12 Ibid., 266D
13 Exemplum (from eximo): something chosen out of an assemblage
of similar things
6
is thus that out of "delimitations" and "examples" -or, as
we could say, though perhaps kss precisely, out of definitions and comparisons-the web of learning can be
woven. To rely on examples alone, that is, on nothing but
resemblances (as Speusippos seems to have been inclined
to do) is dangerous: a marine polyp resembles an oak
and could be used as an "example," but not much would
be gained by this. And let us not forget: in the dialogue
the Statesman the Stranger asserts that there are no
examples for the most important cases, that is, on the
highest level of intellectual scrutiny.''
What examples have to provide, according to Plato, are
safeguards against the dangers of excess and deficiency
inherent in the pursuit of precision. They have to lead us
to what must be the ultimate guiding light in the effort
of delimitation. This light is that wl1icl1 is precise in itself,
as it is said in the Statesman pointedly and yet obscurely."
It would follow that the pursuit of precision which is required to answer the Socratic question has the "precise
itself" (aDro raKp,f3i,) as its beginning and its end. Isn't this
mockery! some of you may be tempted to exclaim. What
is this "precise itself"? Let me try to answer this question.
There are quite a few hints in Plato's dialogues and also
explicit statements on Aristotle's part, when he refers to
Plato's intimate views, which allow me to do that. The
~~precise itself" is oneness itself, is the One, not one thing
or one unit among many things or many units which,
when gathered together, form a number of things or a
number of units, but that which makes any one thing
or any unit one, which puts on any one thing the stamp
of its sameness, without which neither a world, nor think~
ing, nor speaking, nor learning, nor precision would be
possible at all. It is, by the same token, that which I hesitatingly called a short while ago the all-comprehensive
final stage to be reached when, facing a thing, we try to
answer the Socratic question "what is it?" Being all-com~
prehensive, it is self-sufficient, perfect. Plato calls it the
Good itself. The "precise itself" is the "good itself" beckoning to the cognizing soul. The pursuit of precision leads
to the Good.
Still, the uncertainty remains: can it be reached? We
tend to assume that it can not. More than that: that it
ought not to be reached. When I say "we tend to assume,"
I do not mean that, traveling the path I have just indicated, we may arrive at this melancholy conclusion. I do
mean that to insist on precision, to persist in being precise, shows, often enough, lack of good manners, is offensive and ruins social intercourse. Does not this insistence
lead to quibbling, a word derived from the formalistic
precision in legal documents? Does not a pronounced and
rigidly maintained tidiness in our living quarters stifle the
spirit of a party? Let us hear Plato himself. In the
14
15
285D-286A
284D
�October 1971
Gorgias 10 he makes Socrates report the opinions of some
well-bred and sophisticated young men to the effect that
one should not be eager to be minutely precise in the pursuit of wisdom. In the Thcactctus 17 Socrates says: "the
avoidance of strict precision is in general a sign of good
breeding; indeed, the opposite is hardly worthy of a
gent1eman, 11 but Socrates adds: ((sometimes though it is
necessary." Wherein lies the necessity? The Platonic answer to this question runs against the most cherished and
most deeply seated habit of our thinking, not only in our
age, but at all times. \Ve are inclined to think that things
just are as they are; to attribute goodness or badness to
It would follow that the pursuit of precision which
is required to answer the Socratic question has the
"precise itself" (avr6 rlixp,f3£,) as its beginning and
its end.
their factual existence is to make "value judgments," as
we say cheerfully and with conviction. Such attribution
is rooted, we think, in our prejudices, in our being conditioned by the prevailing circumstances, in our "culture," as
we say no less glibly, perhaps in our gregariousness, perhaps in divine commandments. The Platonic answer is
that the very being of things depends on Goodness, and
that this alone makes the pursuit of precision possible and
necessary.
But enough of Plato and his kin. Why bring up this old,
old wisdom, this alleged wisdom, some of you might have
been thinking all along. Did I not say in the beginning
that the world in which we live is full of something like
precision? Are not our lives regulated to an immense
extent by schedules which depend on the ever-abiding
motion of the hand of a clock? Do not the marching of
drum majorettes and the twirling of their batons seem to
some ridiculously and to some pleasantly precise? Is not
the step of soldiers-in peace time at least-impressively
precise? But more than that: some of our joys and deep
satisfactions depend on precision. It is my guess that a
piece of music is the more excellent the more precisely it
is constructed. The lasting impact of a poem is tied to
487C
'' 184C
16
its precision. I do not refer to meter and rhyme. In a
poem that deserves this name, no word or, to be very
cautious, almost no word, both in meaning and sound, can
be replaced by another word; the sequence of words and
lines is unalterable; any one line wins its significance only
from the context of the whole. And something analogous
holds for great works of prose. Do we not know that everything in good writing depends on how precisely the words
we usc are chosen? Flaubert, we have heard, spent sometimes one week to complete one page. He is one of those
who are overwhelmed by the insight that what matters is
to know not only what to say, but also how to say it. In all
of these cases, we see, or in almost all of them, precision
evokes praise. This precision does not imply all-comprehensiveness. It implies either regularity or the exclusion of
alternatives.
But what about our knowledge of the world? What is
striking, first of all, is that we use mostly another word
for this knowledge, the word ''science." "Science" is derived directly from the Latin scientia which can only be
translated by "knowledge." Yet, in common usage, we
distinguish knowledge and science. Sometimes we say,
redundantly, it seems: scientific knowledge. Occasiomlly
we identify knowledge and science, as I have done in
naming a sub-genus in the delimitation of "statesmanship."
There is the verb "to know," a cognate of the noun
"knowledge," but there is no English verb corresponding
to the noun "science." Is all this a matter of chance, or
does it have a good reason? It has, and this reason is not
beyond our reach, although we are not always aware of it.
Let me state it in the simplest way. The center-piece of
science, mathematical physics, this colossal edifice which
has been built in the last four hundred years, has-on the
whole-abandoned the Socratic question "what is it?" in
favor of the question "how does it happen?" And the
answers that it gives are indispensably mathematical. The
image of edifice is not quite appropriate. Science is like a
very large city with many suburbs and parks, wide avenues
and many smaller streets, with huge traffic in them, not
too well regulated, and a massive down-town section consisting of quite a few blocks which are constantly renovated. This down-town section corresponds to mathematical physics. We all live in this city or in its suburbs
and, although we might not be close enough to the downtown area, we all get our sustenance from it. It shapes our
way of thinking and our way of living. The country-side
around the city, on the other hand, corresponds to the vast
complex of "social sciences" and to the domain called the
"humanities"-a strange word, as if the life in the city
itself were not a human life. Now, the down-town area,
mathematical physics, thrives on exactitude, that very
exactitude I talked about at the beginning of this lecture.
It is bent on matching the consequences derived mathematically from hypotheses with observations dictated by
these hypotheses. The endeavor to accomplish such a
matching is called an experiment. The mathematical de-
7
�- - - - - ------
The College
rivation by means of differential equations or other equating devices is exact. Only slightly less exact or, as we
usually say, precise or accurate are the experimental measurements made to verify the mathematical results and
thereby the hypotheses. These measurements, in turn,
depend on the efficacy, precision, or exactness of the
instruments used. Precision and exactitude arc indistinguishable in this context. We speak of instruments of
precision to indicate that the results obtained by using
them in observations are as exact as possible, that is, yield,
on the average, numbers irreplaceable by others. Whatever mathematical operations and experimental observations might be performed, they have nothing to do with
anything that could be called goodness or badness, the
dignity or baseness of the events considered. Science is
totally neutral with regard to worth or worthlessness. It is
proud of this neutrality. We are reminded of the provisional neutrality of the Academic delimitation procedure.
The scientific neutrality, however, is not provisional, but
final. It is only its exactitude itself, the perfect matching
of mathematically obtained results with the observable
data, that science considers praiseworthy. This matching
provides the answers to the question "how does it happen?" It is the light that shines over the city I have just
described. It is the peculiar-and intrinsically incomprehensi,b1e-''mora1ity" of science. This has ever been so
since Galileo established that in a motion, which proceeds with a uniformly accelerated velocity, the distances
traversed are as the squares of the times in which these
distances are traversed. The Socratic question "what is
it?" lurks, as it were, behind the bright light of exactitude.
But mathematical physics docs not presume to answer
this question. It is not its business to say what, for example, gravitation, or electro-magnetism, or energy is, except
by establishing in a symbolic-mathematical formula the
relations that bind these entities (if it is at all permissible
to usc this word) to observable and mathematically describable magnitudes. To try to state what something is
otherwise we consider a vain "metaphysical" endeavor, to
use a post-Aristotelian term. We arc still in need of
"definitions" in ·our quest of knowledge, but their character is very different. A definition is now either a readily
acceptable description of the meaning of a term, to which
we are asked to subscribe, or a statement used as an
irreducible element in a subsequent mathematical exposition. However important the role of such definitions may
be, it is subsidiary. A modern book on precise thinking
need not mention the term "definition" at all_1 8
The truly amazing intellectual effort that underlies our
science cannot be disregarded for a single moment. It is
one of the greatest achievements of man. It is the very
foundation of the city in which we live, the city of science,
the source of genetics, of electronic computers, of nuclear
fission and ·fusion,-the source of technocracy. It is our
18
8
E.g. Quine, Methods of Logic
duty, I think, to acknowledge this fundamental fact and
to try to understand its meaning. The more so, since in
the country-side surrounding our city, in the region of the
humanities and social sciences, and in the region of politics
as well, the light of exactitude or, if you like, of precision
tends to dim. Let me give you two random examples of
the dimness of this light, and I readily confess to being
unfair by quoting out of context. Example one from a book
on "personality":
Personality may be defined as that which tells
what a man will do when placed in a given situation. This statement can be formulated: R=
f(S.P) which says that R, the nature and magnitude of a person's behavioral response, i.e. what
he says, thinks, or does, is some function of the
S, the stimulus situation in which he is placed,
and of P, the nature of his personality. For the
moment, we do not attempt to say precisely what
f, the function, is. That is something to be found
by research.
Example two from a book on sociology:
falling in love is a universal psycho-dynamic potential in the human being. Most human beings
in all societies are capable of it. It is not. .. [as
another scholar says] a psychological abnormality
about as common as epilepsy.... Far from being
uncommon, ... love relationships are a basis of
the final choice of mate among a large minority
of the societies of the earth. If all this is so ...
how is the love relationship handled? As can be
seen, this problem is derived from the problem
discussed earlier, the relation of structural variables to the functions of socialization and social
control.
That's what I meant by the dimming of the light of exactitude in the country-side around our city of science.
Beyond this, exactitude, the rule of the clock, of schedules, of tidiness, of squareness in our world today begins
to produce waves of revulsion. You probably know this
better than I do. But the remedy for this disease of exactitude is not rebellion, or vagueness, or wildneSs, or love of
flowers. It is the pursuit of precision in our speaking and
thinking and acting. It is the concern about the "precise
itself."
Jacob Klein has been a Tutor at St. John's Co1Jege, Annapolis, since
1938. He was Dean of the College from 1949 to 1958. He received
his Ph.D. degree from the University of Marburg, Germany. He is
the author of Greek Matl1ematical Thought and the Origin at Algebra
(translated from the German), Massachusetts Institute of Tech·
no1ogy Press, 1968; and A Commentary on Plato's Meno, University
of North Carolina Press, 1965. His "Introduction to b-ristotle" may
be found in Ancients and Moderns, Basic Books, 1964.
�The Report of the President
1971
1970
><-··-·----------------··-·>:
1 AND MAY IT BE ENACTED, by the King's 1
l
most excellent majesty, by and with the advice,
prayer and consent of this present General As~
sembly, and the authority of the same, That for
the propagation of the gospel, and the education of the youth of this province in good letters
and manners, that a certain place or places,
for a free-school, or place of study of Latin,
Greek, writing, and the like, consisting of one
master, one usher, and one writing-master, or
scribe, to a school, and one hundred scholars,
more or less, according to the ability of the
said free-school, may be made, erected, founded,
propagated and established under your royal
patronage. And that the most reverend father in
God, Thomas, by Divine Providence lord-archbishop of Canterbury, primate and metropolitan
of all England, may be chancellor of the said
school; and that, to perpetuate the memory of
your majesty, it may be called King William's
Schoole, and inanaged by certain trustees, nominated, and appointed by your sacred majesty.
_,.,_,_,,___
by the General Assembly to St. John's College.
To celebrate this major anniversary in the life of the
College, special events have been planned on both
campuses. The first was a joint summer celebration with
the Santa Fe Opera in early August, with Mark Van
Doren as the speaker. The principal celebration in Annapolis will be five days of concerts, seminars, and panels,
commencing October 12th and culminating in a formal
convocation October 16th, to be addressed by Martin
Meyerson, President of the University of Pennsylvania.
In December the Santa Fe carnpus will be the scene of
the dedication of the Tower Building. Other special
events are scheduled for the year, including lectures on
both campuses by Sir Eric Ashby, Master of Clare College
and former Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University.
The Provost
~
~-----------·-"-·"
Thus read in part the Petitionary Act passed by the
Council of the General Assembly of the Colony of
Maryland on July 8, 1696. Addressed to "our Dread
Sovereign," King William III, the Act was signed by the
Royal Governor, His Excellency Francis Nicholson, and
forwarded by him to London. So "King William's
Schoole," forerunner of St. John's College, came into
being just 275 years ago this year. It was only after the
War of Independence that St. John's College was
chartered in 1784 and that the property, funds, masters,
and students of King William's School were conveyed
My report of last year told of the creation of the
position of Provost in the latest revision of the College
Polity. This new position on the Annapolis campus
carries presidential powers, though the incumbent reports to the President rather than to the Board. The aim
of this Polity revision was to relieve the President of
administrative detail and to assure a greater measure
of attention to the developing needs of the Annapolis
campus. After extensive search, Paul D. Newland, of
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was appointed first Provost. He
assumed his new duties in January. Mr. Newland had
had extensive experience in the business world and then
had served as Executive Vice President of Franklin and
Marshall College. He has already more than justified
our confidence in orienting himself within the College
and in addressing himself to problems of administration
and finance for the Annapolis campus .
.In his first report Mr. Newland cites the year just
ended as a splendid one from the standpoint of in-
9
�The College
struction. A number of Tutors told him that this was
their most satisfying year of teaching. In the words of
the Dean, "for most of the year almost nothing was
happening except students learning and Tutors teach~
ing." During the second semester, however, there seemed
to be a degree of complaining about the College. Some
students cited the coldness of Tutors, the hypocrisy of
grades, and the allegedly unfriendly spirit of the place.
Any such complaints bear investigation, but certain facts
seem to contradict them. Students did exceptionally wen
in their studies: Only four students failed during the
first semester; more sophomores than ever were enabled;
and an unprecedented number of students are returning
this September. For example, the Junior Class of 86
will be the largest in the College's history.
Dean Robert Goldwin's Statement of Educational
Policy and Program was adopted by the Faculty on both
campuses and reported- to the Board. The Statement
calls for consideration of the question whether the program now requires too much work of the students. Some
claim that students and Tutors are confronted with too
much routine study and, therefore, have too little time
to think for themselves. During the year ahead inquiry
into this question will be pursued.
Others matters to which the Provost and the Dean
expect to address themselves are improvement of student
morale, more vigorous recruitment of new students, and
reduction of the overload of work in the Dean's Office.
The Dean feels he should be, and hopes he actually can
be, "a teacher and studier first, a leader of teachers and
students second, and a manager of affairs last."
The Vice President
On the Santa Fe campus ]. Burchenal Ault of Oyster
Bay, New York, was appointed Vice President with overall responsibility for administrative and financial matters.
Mr. Ault graduated from Yale University and held two
presidencies in business firms. He had also been active
in educational and civic affairs: He served on the alumni
board at Yale and the alumni fund at Phillips Academy,
Andover, and
was a trustee of Hofstra University and
president of the Pro Arte Symphony Association on Long
Island. He assumed his new duties September 1st and has
demonstrated a high degree of imaginativeness and initiative ever since.
Mr. Ault's interest in music and the fine arts has contributed importantly to making the Santa Fe campus a
more exciting place, not only for students and Tutors
but also for members of the community. Showings of
the thirteen-part film series "Civilisation" were arranged,
and Howard Adams, Assistant Administrator of the
National Gallery of Art, came to Santa Fe for the open.
ing. An "Indian Table" was instituted, bringing Santa
Fe residents to the College for a monthly dinner and
lectures by authorities on Indian culture, including N.
he
10
Scott Momaday who is a Pulitzer Prize novelist. A local
radio program called "A College in Action" offered a
half-hour weekly discussion by Tutors and students.
Popular book-and-author luncheons continued to attract
capacity crowds under the auspices of St. John's Library
Associates. The Santa Fe, Los Alamos, and Albuquerque
Boards of Associates met quarterly and continued to work
helpfully for the College's benefit.
The Students
At commencement exercises on the two campuses, 71
seniors received their Bachelor of Arts degree, 45 of
these in Annapolis and 26 in Santa Fe. In addition,
eleven Santa Fe seniors and four Annapolis seniors successfully completed their work in August under the
three-year transfer plan. This was the first such summer
program. It will be repeated next summer, but a decision
has already been reached to discontinue the transfer
program for the future. The total number of graduates
for 197 I, therefore, is 86. Two Watson Traveling Fellowships and one Danforth Fellowship were awarded to
Santa Fe seniors, while one Danforth Fellowship and
one honorary mention went to Annapolis seniors.
Attrition was greatly diminished during the last academic year on the Annapolis campus. Because of the
entering February class of 21, more students were
registered in June than had started in September. Dean
Goldwin believes that a major factor in retention of
students has been the fact that poor and uninterested
students have been asked to leave. This policy has
tended to hold the better students. In Santa Fe, too, there
was marked improvement in retention for the -:year,
though larger numbers than usual have dropped out
at the end of the year. St. John's is not immune to the
"estlessness that pervades this college generation.
Figures comparing the September and June student
enrollments follow:
Annapolis
Men
Sept. june
liVomen
Sept. June
48
45
8
48
45
16
16
18
16
Freshmen
February Class
Sophomores
Juniors
Seniors
69
62
35
36
64
13
59
35
35
Totals
202
206
-130
61
43
33
17
56
40
29
17
154
Grand Totals 356
Total
Sept. june
110
51
54
!09
21
!04
51
51
130
332
336
45
35
22
13
40
30
20
12
106
78
30
96
70
49
29
142
115
102
269
244
348
245
232
601
580
117
Santa Fe
Freshmen
Sophomores
Juniors
Seniors
Totals
55
,\
�------------
October 1971
After sixteen years as Director of Admissions on the
Annapolis campus, James Tolbert has relinquished his
administrative responsibilities and returned to full-time
teaching as a Tutor. In recognition of his effective and
dedicated service, the Faculty passed a formal resolution
of commendation. I, too, would record my deep gratitude
for his devotion to the College. Michael Ham was appointed to replace Mr. Tolbert. Mr. Ham received an
M.S. in mathematics from the University of Iowa in
1968. He has most recently been manager of PLAN
Systems Analysis and Programming for the Westinghouse Learning Corporation.
The September 1970 freshman class in Annapolis was
composed of 117 students from 26 states, the District
of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Eighty-four percent ranked
in the top or second fifth of their respective classes in
secondary school. Five were National Merit scholars,
16 were semifinalists, and eight received letters of commendation. The 23 February freshmen came from nine
states, the District of Columbia, British Columbia, and
Puerto Rico. Three-quarters ranked in the top or second
fifth of their respective graduating classes. Six were
National Merit semifinalists and two won letters of
commendation.
At Santa Fe Gerald Zollars completed his first year
as Director of Admissions. The entering class of 106 on
the western campus was drawn from 27 states and the
District of Columbia. Eighty-eight percent ranked in the
top or second fifth of their class in high school. Fifteen
were National Merit scholars. An innovation this year
was the use of the Educational Opportunity Service
of the American College Testing Program. This introduced St. John's College by mail to over 12,000 students
whose responses on the ACT examination matched the
following criteria: (1)' a considerable interest in writing
in high school, (2) a concern about the intellectual
atmosphere of the college to be attended, and (3) a
major interest in the arts and humanities or indecision
as to a major field of study. Results from this program
have been inconclusive for this first year, since information about St. John's reacl1ed the students late, after
a choice of college had probably already been made.
Comparative statistics on admissions for the two
campuses show an increasing number of inquiries, but
without a proportionate increase in the number of
applications:
Santa Fe
Annapolis
1969-70 1970-71 1969-70 1970-71
------1,839
3,867
3,383
Inquiries
2.904
208
164
178
Visitors
277
241
211
232
265
Applications
!56
182
!58
181
Accepted
50
60
40
59
Rejected
83
80
66
Withdrawn
56
104
108
Deposits Received
125
113
106
106
Enrolled
117
125
Teaching Faculty
Again both campuses were inundated with applications
for teaching positions. Despite 300 applications submitted
at Santa Fe, there was not a significantly larger number
of promising candidates, fully qualified to teach in the
St. John's program. Nevertheless, three excellent new appointments were made for Santa Fe and one for Annapolis. The Santa Fe appointees are Mrs. Vida Chesnulis
Clift, who holds a B.A. from Radcliffe and a Ph.D. from
Harvard, and who taught for two years at Boston University; C. Donald Knight, who has a B.A. from Baker
University and a master's degree from the University
of Toronto, where he was a teaching fellow; and Mrs.
Caroline Higgins Richards, a graduate of the University
of Colorado, who received a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1970 and since has been an instructor in the
history of Western civilization at Brooklyn College. The
only new Annapolis appointment went to John White
who was awarded his B.A. at St. John's College in 1965.
He holds his M.A. from the New School for Social Research, where he has been teaching. Aaron Kirschbaum,
Annapolis Tutor, is moving this fall to the Santa Fe
Faculty.
Two teaching interns, Mrs. Toni Drew and Mr. Paul
Mannick, both of them alumni of the College, were appointed on the Santa Fe campus, thanks to a grant from
the Ford Foundation in its Venture Funds programs.
Both proved themselves to be promising teachers and
valuable members of the Faculty. In reviewing their
work, the Instruction Committee recommended that
they be reappointed for the coming year and that they
be allowed to submit essays in fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts during the
coming year. It is hoped that the teaching internship
program can be expanded in the future.
With regret I report the resignations of two tenure
members of the Santa Fe Faculty. Clarence .J. Kramer,
who had served as Dean of the Santa Fe Faculty and
as Associate Dean of the College for four years from
1964 to 1968, resigned to accept the Deanship of Marlboro College in Vermont. Thomas ]. Slakey, who was
first appointed a Tutor on the Annapolis campus in 1959
and who was one of the cadre that launched the western
campus in 1964, resigned to accept the position of Vice
President for Academic Affairs at St. Mary's College in
California. I should like to record the College's debt of
gratitude to both men for their service over the years.
One of the new Tutors in Annapolis, Brian McGuire,
resigned at the end of the first semester and returned to
Europe. Four other Tutors completed their appointments
and left the College at the end of the academic year:
William B. Pitt in Annapolis, and Elizabeth F. Gilbert,
John C. Rodgers, and Barnett ]. Sokol on the Santa
Fe. campus.
11
�The College
The College's generous sabbatical leave policy continues to pay dividends. For more than twenty years
the College has made is possible for a Tutor to have a
full year away from his teaching responsibilities at full
salary. The first such leave is granted after nine years
of teaching; subsequent leaves follow six further years
of teaching. More recently the College has liberalized
this policy to enable Tutors to take early sabbatical
leave at a salary proportionate to the number of years
served since first appointment or since the last leave.
During the year under review four Tutors from Annapolis were on sabbatical leave: 'Samuel S. Kutler,
Barbara H. Leonard, Michael S. Littleton, and Elliott
Zuckerman; Charles G. Bell and Dean R. Haggard were
on sabbatical leave from the Santa Fe campus. Two
Tutors from Annapolis were on ordinary leave for the
first semester at their request: Mrs. Gisela Berns and
Thomas A. McDonald.
from other institutions. These were Brother S. Robert
Smith, Glenn H. Ballard, and .James Collins from the
Integrated Progtam of St. Mary's College of California;
A. Lowell Edmunds, Assistant Professor of Classics at
Harvard University; Charles E. Butterworth, Associate
Professor of Political Science at the University of Maryland; and Norman S. Grabo, Professor of English at the
University of California at Berkeley.
Once again the Institute received generous support
from the National Endowment for the Humanities. There
were helpful matching grants for fellowships from the
Calritz Foundation of Washington, D. C., the Hoffberger
Foundation of Baltimore, Maryland, and the Richardson
Fund of New York City. In addition, generous grants
for fellowship purposes were received from the Vincent
Astor Foundation, the Jac Holzman Foundation, and the
Henry Luce Foundation, all of New York City.
The Staff
Libraries
Miss Charlotte Fletcher and Mrs. Alice Whelan, the
Librarians on the Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses re~
spectively, report gratifying growth of the College's two
collections. Thanks to the enlarged stack space in reconstructed '1\Toodward Hall, the book collection in Annapolis, which had always been held at approximately
50,000 volumes, has now grown to 62,930 volumes. The
Santa Fe collection has grown to half its goal of 50,000
volumes, with 23,684 volumes catalogued and another
4,000 volumes in special collections. Completion of the
Tower Building in October will enable the Librarian
in Santa Fe to consolidate books, records, and tapes in
two locations~the present library in the Peterson Student
Center and the ground floor of the new building. These
expanded facilities will enable the College to make
excellent use of the three fine music collections now
stored: the Wilhelm Schmidt, the S. Ellsworth Grumman,
and the Amelia Elizabeth White collections, all of them
recent gifts to the College.
GTaduate Institute
Robert A. Neidorf was appointed Director of the
Graduate Institute in Liberal Education this year, succeeding James Shannon, who resigned to study law at
the University of New Iviexico. Under Mr. Neidorf's direction the Institute completed its fifth session this past
summer with great success. Enrollment of I 46 teachers
and other adults was the largest to date. Eighteen students
successfully completed the Graduate Program in the
Liberal Arts and were awarded their M.A. degrees. This
brings to 57 the total number of degrees awarded since
the first class completed the requirements in 1969.
There were twenty members of the teaching Faculty.
Once again most of the Faculty was drawn from the two
St. John's campuses, but there were six Tutors appointed
12
At Annapolis Mrs. Gayle F. Kline was appointed secretary to the Provost in April. Mrs. Ingrid E. Miller replaced Mrs. Amalea Noyes as secretary to the Director
of Development in December, and Mrs. Susan Platt's
place as secreta1-y in the Admissions Office was filled by
Mrs. LaNece P. Lamonte at the start of the year. Mrs.
Virginia S. Schenck replaced Mrs. Virginia West as Resident Head in Humphreys Hall. Miss Phyllis Doyle resigned her position as Laboratory Technician at the end
of the year to undertake studies at The Johns Hopkins
University.
At Santa Fe Mrs. Geraldine Foster left the Admissions
Office to become seo-etary to the President, succeeding
Mrs. Minnie Mae Powell. Ivirs. Esther Lopez moVed into
the Treasurer's Office as Cashier, and her place in the
Development Office was taken by Mrs. Nicki Gonzales.
Miss 1\tfary Lou Neal succeeded Miss Corinne Martinez as
Bookkeeper, and Miss Dolores Vigil became secretary in
the Buildings and Grounds Office. Mrs. Rebecca Lang was
appointed Bookstore Manager, succeeding Charles Webb.
Mrs. Ruth Archer replaced Mrs. Linda McCormick as
Director of Reader Services in the Library, and the
resulting vacancy on the switchboard was filled by Mrs.
Dolores Williams. Mrs. Lois Delaney replaced Miss
Georgelle Durkin as secretary in the office of the Vice
President.
The Alumni
The revised College Polity provides that the alumni
are lile-long members of St. John's College and that
the Alumni Association is the formal means by which
alumni participate in the life of the College. During
the past year the Alumni Association evidenced its active
concern for the undergraduates in two ways: a counseling
program was undertaken, and three discussion sessions
were held~one on graduate schools, one on law as a
career, and one on opportunities in government and
�October 1971
business. These sessions were well attended by juniors
and seniors. A second program sought to involve the
alumni more actively in college admissions. Temple G.
Porter '62 conceived and published a comprehensive
guide to helping alumni volunteers find and recruit able
prospective students. A recruitment kit was assembled
and is being distributed this summer.
At Homecoming in October the alumni elected
William R. Tilles '59 as President and Bernard F.
Gessner '27 as Executive Vice President. Philip I. Bowman '31 and W. Bernard Fleischmann '50 were reelected
to the Board of Visitors and Governors for second threeyear terms. For the first time in the history of the Association, three alumni Awards of Merit were awarded.
Recipients so honored were Philip A. Alger '21,
Schenectady, New York; General Alfred Houston Noble
'17, La Jolla, California; and Luther S. Tall '21, Baltimore, Maryland.
The year just ended was marked by the finest record
to date in annual giving. Under the chairmanship of
Jack L. Carr '50, 880 alumni responded to the appeal
of the College and contributed a total of $30,483. In
addition, there were 17 gifts from alumni for scholarship endowments totaling $1,375. Including the special
gift of Paul Mellon '44, the alumni gave a total of
$400,860 to the College during the year.
New Construction
In October of 1970 a contract was awarded to the
firm of Sewell and Stanton, general contractors of Santa
Fe, for construction of the Tower Building. This twostory structure will enable the College to house all administrative offices under a single roof and thus free
classroom and faculty office space now occupied in Evans
Science Laboratory. Furthermore, the basement will provide space for 20,000 volumes so that the Library can
relinquish space in the women's dormitory complex and
carry on its functions more efficiently. The building is
fully funded, thanks to generous grants from the Fleischmann Foundation of Reno, Nevada, the Kresge Foundation of Detroit, Michigan, and the United States Steel
Foundation of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as well as to
substantial gifts ·from two Board members-Mrs. Walter
Driscoll of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and John D. Murchison of Dallas, Texas. The building will be completed in
October and dedicated on December 4, 1971.
At Annapolis a change in architects was made for
the proposed Harrison Health Center: James Wood
Burch of Annapolis, Maryland, replaced R TKL, Inc.,
of Baltimore, Maryland. Full architectural plans are now
being drawn, and it is expected that a contract for this
two-story building will be awarded this fall. The site
will be between the Carroll Barrister House and Randall
Hall. Meanwhile, the College will use the Chancellor
Johnson House as a temporary infirmary and nurse's
apartment. The College's properties at 5 and 9 St. John's
Street are being sold to the State of Maryland as part
of the site of the new office building of the House of
Delegates.
Finances
One could hardly overstate the immense material and
psychological value of Paul Mellon's superb gift of a
million dollars in December. In effect, it rescued the
College from mounting indebtedness and assured that
both campuses would complete the fiscal year in fully
solvent condition. Moreover, it freed the Faculty and the
stall from immediate financial worries and gave them new
confidence and hope. The gift was divided between the
two campuses in accordance with current needs. Annapolis received $354,562 and Santa Fe $651,000. The
Treasurer in Annapolis applied $40,000 of this figure to
repay a bank loan incurred to air-condition two dormitories, $118,584 to restore the depleted cash revolving
fund, and $70,884 to balance the current operating
budget. This has left the sum of $124,938 as a reserve
for the future.
In Santa Fe the fiscal year had begun with a cumulative deficit from the first six years of the new coiiege's
life amounting to $143,936. Interest charges proved a
heavy drain on the annual budget. Fortunately two special gifts during the early part of the year reduced the deficit to $384,638. Mr. Mellon's generous gift erased this balance and thus made available once again the College's
full line of credit at a local bank. The sum of $130,975
of the Mellon gift was used toward current expenditures,
so that the Santa Fe campus, too, completed the fiscal
year in the black. This has left $135,243 of the Mellon
gift as a welcome reserve against future operations.
The statements of current revenue and expenditures
appended to this report are self-explanatory. It should be
noted, however, that actual expenditures on the Santa
Fe campus were $1,640,010, some $6,500 under the
budgeted estimates of $1,646,539. At Annapolis, too, the
actual expenditures of $1,844,196 were well within the
budgeted figure of $1,856,282.
Steps were taken during the year to place the entire
investment portfolio in the hands of T. Rowe Price
and Associates. By instruction of the Finance Committee,
T. Rowe Price divided the total portfolio into two parts,
one with growth as its primary objective, the other with
maximum income as its aim. This arrangement was
thought to constitute a hedge in investment under the
"total yield" concept. The College draws six percent
of the market value of the fund for current purposes.
A portion of this drawal comes from dividends and
interest, the balance from realized gains on the sale of
securities.
The year just ended has been one of painful adjustment, as the portfolio manager has sold off poorly performing stocks and has made new investments. Losses
13
�The College
of $463,503 were taken. Moreover, real estate previously
donated to the College was sold at a book loss of $95,843.
These transactions reduced the cumulative reservation of
profits on the sale of securities from $895,527 to $336,181.
Drawals under the "total yield" concept further reduced
this balance to $186,385. As of June 30, 1971, the book
value of the College's endowment funds stood at $8,333,008, and the market value at $8,541,349.
It is significant that for the first time in some years
major repayments were made by the Santa Fe campus
to the Annapolis endowment fund against the monies
advanced to construct the new campus in 1963 and
1964. Gifts totaling $85,375 reduced the balance of the
loan to $1,375,625. In addition the sum of $5,000 for
debt retirement was raised by the Santa Fe seniors
through a benefit showing of Bondarchuk's film, War
and Peace. In presenting the gift the seniors said:
We have two things in mind in wishing to
give this amount toward the repayment 'of the
Annapolis endowment debt. First perhaps, it
can in a small way express our thanks to Annapolis for helping this campus to come about
with its own critical funds, not to mention the
men and experience it gave. Secondly, this gift
is given in the hope of continuing and yet finer
achievements, through books and discussions, by
all members of the College. Money as well as the
more magic constituents is needed and nothing
can be put toward projects of an academic
nature until this debt and the many others
are paid.
275th Anniversary Fund
In recognition of the two and three-quarters centuries
of the life of this institution and in commitment to its
program of liberal education, friends of the College
are being invited to contribute to the 275th Anniversary
Fund. This fund is designed to provide a firm foundation of endowment for both campuses, to meet the immediate needs for new buildings, and to supply operating funds for the three years of the campaign period ending in 1974. The goals established jointly by the Faculty
and the Board of Visitors and Governors are $5,000,000
for the Annapolis campus and $10,000,000 for the Santa
Fe campus. As the fund is formally opened, I am pleased
to report advance gifts and pledges of $1,460,462 for Annapolis and $4,357,723 for Santa Fe. Two notable gifts
deserve special citation and acknowledgement: the pledge
of a million and a quarter dollars by Mrs. Duane L.
Peterson for the Student Center and the gift of a million
dollars to erase current indebtedness and to provide
operating funds from Paul Mellon, alumnus and honorary co-chairman of the College's National Committee.
With challenge gifts of this magnitude, St. John's College
14
can move forward into the campaign period with confidence and enthusiasm.
Gifts and Grants
The year just ended has been considered a preparatory
or preliminary year in the College's 275th Anniversary
Fund. Goals for both campuses in the campaign included current operating funds for 1970-71, as well as
for the following three years. Gifts and grants received
at Annapolis and at Santa Fe over the past year have
been credited against the substantial objectives of the
275th Anniversary Fund.
I am happy to report that the Annapolis campus received a total of $779,884 in cash from 1,372 donors
during the course of the year. Apart from the $354,562
received from Paul Mellon, alumni of the College contributed $46,298, parents of students $3,425, Board members $142,685, corporations $23,405 (including $17,251
through the solicitations of the Association of Independent Colleges in Maryland), foundations $171,848,
and Faculty and friends $37,661. These gifts were applied as follows: endowment $267,481, plant $16,674,
and current purposes $141,167. There were also gifts in
kind, principally books for the library, aggregating
$36,535.
St. John's College records its deep gratitude to all
who have demonstrated their friendship and their confidence through gifts and grants over the past twelve
months. I should like to register our particular thanks
to Paul Mellon for his munificent gift; to Mrs. Elizabeth
Myers Mitchell for $125,000 to establish a landscaping
fund in memory of her late mother, Mrs. Kate :Myers; to
the Hodson Trust for an unrestricted grant of $40,000;
and to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for $119,988
for endowment purposes. The Mellon Foundation grant
represents the final installment on a matching offer of a
million dollars for endowment originally made by Old
Dominion Foundation in 1963 and generously extended
by the trustees of the new Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
On the Santa Fe campus gifts and grants for the fiscal
year aggregated $1,869,210. Apart from the Mellon gift
of $651,000, funds were received from the following
sources: Board members $649,850, members of the
National Committee $21,010, Faculty, staff, and students
$15,091, parents of students $5,816, alumni $1,349,
corporations $9,870, foundations $423,705, government
$52,490, and friends $39,029. These funds were applied
as follows: endowment $6,179, construction of the Tower
Building $535,684, retirement of the loan from the Annapolis endowment fund $90,375, the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education $126,145, and current purposes
$459,527.
Again I should like to record the College's gratitude
to each donor. The task of underwriting a new college
�October 1971
which lacks both alumni and endowment is at best a
formidable one. All of us on the Santa Fe campus realize
that our friends must demonstrate a special brand
of confidence and hope in order to give as generously as
they have. Special mention should be made of Mr.
Mellon's gift and of the following: $125,000 from the
Max C. Fleischmann Foundation of Reno, Nevada,
$100,000 from the Kresge Foundation of Detroit, Michigan, $175,000 from John D. Murchison of Dallas, Texas,
and $100,000 from Mrs. Walter W. Driscoll of Santa Fe,
all toward the cost of the Tower Building, $50,000 from
the Ford Foundation, as the initial payment of a threeyear grant in the Foundation's Ventures Fund program;
and $85,375 from Mrs. Duane L. Peterson toward retirement of the construction loan on the Student Center.
Bequests
The Board has already adopted a resolution on the
death of Richard Herman Hodgson '06, who served
helpfully for many years as a Visitor and Governor of
the College. By the terms of Mr. Hodgson's will the sum
of $100,000 will be added to the Hodgson Scholarship
Endowment. These scholarships are awarded on the basis
of character, academic achievement, and promise, with
priority accorded applicants from Wicomico County and
the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The Hodgson Scholarships are a fitting memorial to one of St. John's outstanding alumni.
During the spring Richard Hammond Elliott '17 died
following protracted disability. Mr. Elliott had. a long
and useful career as editor of the Annapolis Evening
Capital. I well recall that he was the first person to interview me after my appointment _to the St. John's presidency in September of 1949. Mr. Elliott's entire estate,
amounting to approximately $300,000, comes to St. John's
College to endow a tutorship in his name. This constitutes a welcome addition to the College's permanent
funds.
Finally, let me record Mrs. Weigle's and my gratitude
for the leave which the Board granted us this winter
and spring so that we could take part in the Danforth
Foundation's program of Short-Term Leaves for College
and University Administrators. We made three separate
trips during the four-month period from mid-January
to mid-May. We spent the first five weeks in South
Africa, Rhodesia, Tanzania, and Kenya. In South Africa
we were afforded the opportunity of visiting a representative number of universities and of conferring with
their administrative heads. In March we spent three
weeks as members of a traveling seminar to study
socialist education in Hungary, Romania, the Soviet
Union, and Poland. The third trip took us to England
in late April. For a fortnight we lived at Clare Hall
in Cambridge, where I was an Honorary Fellow of Clare
College. All three of these experiences abroad provided
not only a welcome change from our regular routine
but interesting new perspectives and insights on education in general. We return to St. John's with renewed
faith in the College and its mission.
RICHARD
D.
WEIGLE
President
September I, 1971
15
�The College
ST. JOHN'S
Annapolis, Maryland
BALANCE SHEETS,
ASSETS
Annapolis
CuRRENT FuNns
Unrestricted
Cash ...................................
Accounts Receivable .....................
Due from SJC-Santa Fe .................
Due from Other Funds ...................
Prepaid Expenses .......................
Bookstore Inventory .... , ...............
Total Unrestricted Funds ............
$
Santa Fe
5,084
59,718
$
$
50,987
4,316
17,878
1,503
442
25,514
100,640
Restricted
Cash .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. $
Investments ............................. .
Loans Receivable ......................... .
Total Restricted Funds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $
Total Current Funds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $
317,331
12,169
840
330,340
430,980
$ 238,505
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
34,956
27,236
23,106
150,100
$
3,226
. ' ' ....
$ 241,731
$ 391,831
LoAN FuNDS
Cash ....................................
United Student Aid Deposit ............. .
National Defense Student Loans .......... .
Other Student Loans ..................... .
Total Loan Funds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
$
5,893
$
146,290
2,031
154,214
$
3,668
1,000
139,782
24,675
$ 169,125
ANNUITY FUNDS
Due From Other Funds
Total Annuity Fund.s
$ 210,910
$ 210,910
$
ENDOWMENT FUNDS
Cash ................................... .
Accounts and Notes Receivable ........... .
Faculty Home Loans ..................... .
Loan to Santa Fe Campus ................. .
Due from Other Funds .................. .
Miscellaneous ........................... .
Investments
Securities-at Cost ..................... .
Mortg-ag-es on Real Property ............ .
Total Endowment Funds ........... .
$
231,677
6,759
141,221
1,375,625
911
830
$
44,000
2,443
.......
.......
.......
15,596
6,531,773
46,677
$ 8,335,473
$
62,039
$
$
91,286
185,000
136,774
.......
PLANT FUNDS
Cash .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
Investments-Real Estate ................. .
Dormitory Trust Fund ................... .
Land and Campus Development ........ , .. .
Buildings and Improvements .............. .
Cons~ruction in Progress ................. .
Equipment and Furnishings .............. .
Library Books .......................... .
Land and Building-s-Other .............. .
64,363
375,677
5,194,326
.......
Total Plant Funds .................. .
$ 6,028,587
$6,401,919
Total Funds ........................ .
16
394,221
5,082,804
284,743
436,757
77,452
107,103
$14,949,254
$7,235,824
�October 1971
COLLEGE
Santa Fe, New Mexico
June 30, 1970
LIABILITIES
Annapolis
CURRENT FUNDS
Unrestricted
Accounts Payable ........................
Deferred Income .......................
Due to Other Funds ......................
Due to SJC-Annapolis ..................
Reserve for Future Operations ...........
Total Unrestricted Funds ............
.
.
.
.
.
.
$
19,478
67,702
Santa Fe
$
$
13,460
100,640
13,627
93,815
20,512
17,878
4,268
$ 150,100
Restricted
Fund Balances
$
Due to Other Funds ...................... .
Total Restricted Funds .............. . $
Total Current Funds ................ . $
329,843
497
330,340
430,980
222,740
18,991
$ 241,731
$ 391,831
154,214
$ 156,108
13,017
$ 169,125
LoAN FuNDS
Fund Balances
Due to Current Funds ................... .
Total Loan Funds .................. .
$
$
. ..... .
154,214
ANNUITY FUNDS
Fund Balances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Total Annuity Funds ................. .
$
$ 210,910
$ 210,910
ENDOWMENT FUNDS
.
.
.
.
.
$ 8,146,627
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
$ 5,964,224
62,446
$ 6,028,587
$2,722,836
1,693,000
199,399
1,375,625
136,774
274,285
$6,401,919
Total Funds ........................ .
$14,949,254
$7,235,824
Principal ...............................
Reservation of Profits-Sale of Securities ...
Due to Other Funds .....................
Unexpended Income .....................
Total Endowment Funds . , . , .... , ....
$
61,769
186,381
270
2,465
$ 8,335,473
62,039
PLANT FUNDS
Invested in Plant ........................
Federal Dormitory Bonds ................
Due to Other Funds ....................
Notes Payable to Annapolis .............
Dormitory Bond Sinking Fund ...........
Unexpended ............................
Total Plant Funds ...................
1,917
17
�The College
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Annapolis, Maryland
CONDENSED STATEMENT OF REVENUE AND EXPENDITURES
Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1971
Annapolis
Santa Fe
.
.
.
.
.
$ 784,578
$ 625,291
418,754
186,190
87,464
18,242
2,833
644,377
40,713
31,573
Total ................................. .
$1,495,228
$1,344,787
REVENUE
Educational and General
Tuition .................................
Endowment Income .......................
Gifts and Grants ........................
Scholarships ..............................
Miscellaneous ............................
Auxiliary Enterprises
Bookstore ................................ .
Dining Hall ............................. .
Dormitories .............................. .
$
47,798
161,390
139,780
$
33,875
140,260
125,355
Total ................................. .
$ 348,968
$ 299,490
Total Revenue
$1,844,196
$1,644,277
EXPENDITURES
Educational and General
Administrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $
General .................................. .
Instruction ............................... .
Graduate Institute ....................... .
Student Activities ......................... .
Operation and Maintenance ............... .
Total .................................. .
Miscellaneous
Student Financial Aid
Federal Programs ......................... .
Capital Appropriations ................... .
$ 205,283
15,391
332,652
159,586
513,771
117,688
25,667
160,013
$1,473,568
$1,182,008
Auxiliary Enterprises
Bookstore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $
Dining Hall .............................. .
Dormitories (Debt Service) ............... .
Total ................................. .
191,571
183,392
750,562
46,127
150,259
$
34,141
103,383
109,302
$ 196,386
$ 246,826
$ 174,242
$ 171,170
17,094
22,912
Total ................................. .
$ 174,242
$ 211,176
Total Expenditures .................... .
$1,844,196
$1,640,010
Excess Revenue ........................ .
18
$
4,267
�October 1971
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
Annapolis, Maryland
PERMANENT ENDOWMENT FUNDS-PRINCIPAL AND INCOME
June 30, 1971
A. W. Mellon
of DonoY
Foundation
klatching Gift
Total Fund
Principal
.$1,989,!153.37
$ 500,000.00
150,215.75
150,000.00
$2,189,953.37
300,215.75
$2,140,169.12
$ 650,000.00
$2,790,169.12
Gift
TUTORSHIP ENDOWMl•:NTS:
Addison E. Mullikin, 1895
Arthur de Talma Valk, 1906
SCHOLARSHIP ENDO\".IMENTS:
Annapolis Self Help
George M. Austin, 1908, Memorial
WalterS. Baird, 1930
Chicago Regional
Class of 1897
$
Class of 1898
Dr, Charles Cook
15,000.00
25,000.00
2,500.00
3,070.00
8,672. I1
87,933.19
$
:!,070.00
135.00
$
23,862.59
4,908.54
28.783.25
45,050.08
16,034.00
300,500.00
45,287.10
1,000.00
72,000.00
28,352.94
20,025.00
7,367.00
150,250.00
2,500.00
500.00
36,000.00
4,44.\.00
45,370.00
22,685.00
9,000.00
26,000.00
28,362.47
52,000.00
6,165.00
1,120.00
12,500.00
7,055.56
3,061.00
3,661.00
7,056.20
1,551.91
560.00
3,']-13.00
$ 323,864.00
$
20,000.00
1,170.00
30,000.00
50,000.00
2,500.00
6,1'10.00
8,672.14
87,933.19
13,705.26
270.00
135.00
2,359.00
26,12'1.25
25,025.08
8,607.00
150,250.00
'12,787.10
500.00
36,000.00
28,352.911
4,445.00
22,685.00
19,362.17
26,000.00
6,165.00
560.00
12,500.00
7,055.56
3,061.00
3,6611.00
3,643.20
1,55!.91
$ 581,715.10
·I
908,579.10
I
13,862.59
6,378.54
-----
-------
i
ALUMNI AND MEMORIAL ENDOWMENTS:
Granville Q. Adams, 1929
Charles Edward Athey, 1.Y8l
William C. Baxter, 1923
Drew H. Beatty, 1903
Dr. William Brewer, 1823
Frederick VV. Brune, 1874
Benjamin Duvall Chambers, 1905
Henry M. Cooper, Jr., 1934
Walter I. Dawkins, 1880
Robert F. Duer, Jr., 1921
Dr. Philip H. Edwards, 1898
Joseph W. Fastner, Jr., 1960
Allen Lester Fowler, 191.?
Edna G. and Roscoe-E. Grove, 1910
Charles W. Hass, 1927
Dr. Amos F. Hutchins, 1906
Clarence T. Johnson, 1909
Clifford L. Johnson, 1911
Helen B. Jones and Robert 0. .Jones, 1916
Jonathan D. Korshin, 1966
Oliver M. Korshin, 1963
Dr. W. Oscar La:tvlotte, 1902
Hi,OOO.OO
25,000.00
13,705.2{)
Corp. George E. Cunniff III, 1930
Faculty
John T. Harrison, 1907
Hillhouse High School, 1927
Richard H. Hodgson, 1906
Alfred Houston, 1906, Student Aid
Houston Regional
Jesse H. Jones and Mary Gibbs Jones
Robert E. and l'vlargarel Larsh Jones, 1909
Arthur E. and Hilda Combs Landers, 1930
Massachusetts Regional
Philip A. Myers II, 1938
Oklahoma Regional
Thomas Parran, 1911, Memorial
Pittsburgh Regional
Readers Digest Foundation
Clifton A Roehle
Murray Joel Rosenberg Memorial
Hazel Norris and]. Graham Shannahan, 1908
Clarence Stryker
Friedrich J. Von Schwerdtner
STUDENT LOAN FUND ENDUWMENTS:
George Friedland
John David Pyle, Hl62, Memorial
$
28,771.13
·I
1,100.00
5,825.00
25.00
500.00
125.00
854.50
2,637.50
1,000.00
$
$
200.00
125.00
507.00
!,000.00
58,682.82
3,265.00
1,135.44
2,000.00
500.00
16,555.96
10.00
658.18
100.00
100.00
18,357.00
200.00
200.00
5,!10.00
335.00
985.00
500.00
633.00
7,563.00
i
50,241.13
$
21,470.00
-----
1,100.00
5,825.00
25.00
700,00
250.00
1,361.50
2,637.50
2,000.00
58,682.82
3,600.00
2,120.44
2,000.00
1,000.00
16,555.96
110.00
1,291.18
100.00
100.00
25,920.00
200.00
200.00
5,140.00
-------
19
�~
The College
125.00
625.00
1,000.00
23,223.16
1,020.00
5,000.00
325.00
441.50
4,000.00
600.00
12,218.68
100.00
5,0000.00
10,000.00
5,133.34
1,000.00
1,107.00
850.66
502.00
100.00
4,300,50
500.00
28,633.39
3,000.00
2,500.00
125.00
625.00
2,000.00
John H. E. Legg, 1921
William Lentz, 1912
Leola H. and Thomas W. Ligon, 1916
Col. Harrison McAlpine, 1909
James R. McClintock, 1965, Prize Fund
Vincent W. McKay, 1946
Robert F. Maddox, 1876
William L. Mayo, 1899
Ridgley P. Melvin, 1899
Wm. S. Morsell, 1922, AthlcLic Fund
John Mullan, 1847
Walter C, My lander, Jr., 1932
M. Keith Neville, 1905
Dr. John 0. Neustadt, 1939
Blanchard Ranc\all, 1874
Susan Irene Roberts, 1966
Leroy T. Rohrer, 1903
Harrison Sasscer, 1944
G H, Schoff, 1889
Henry F. Sturdy, 1906
Rev. Enoch M. Thompson, 1895
John Tucker, 1914
Dr. RobertS. G. Welsh, 1913
Dr. \Villis H. White, I 922
Amos W. W. VVomkock, 1903
23,223.16
2,040.00
5,000.00
650.00
441.50
4,000.00
600.00
12,218.68
200,00
10,000.00
20,000.00
5,133.34
2,000.00
1,107.00
1,180.66
502.00
200.00
•1,300.50
1,000.00
28,633.39
6,000.00
2,500.00
250.00
1,250.00
3,000.00
1,020.00
325.00
100.00
5,000.00
10,000,00
1,000.00
330.00
100,00
500.00
3,000.00
$ 231,306.63
OTHER ENDOWMENTS:
Hertha S. and Jesse L Adams
Concert Fund
Alumni Memorial Book Fund
Philo Sherman Bennett l'rize Fund
Benwood Foundation Library Fund
George A. Bingley Memorial Fund
Scott Buchanan Memorial Fund
Helen C. and George Davidson, Jr., 1916
Fund for Tomorrow Lectureship
Floyd Hayden Prize Fund
Mary Safford Hoogewerff Memorial
Library Fund
Library Fund
Monterey lVIackey Memorial Fund
Emily Boyce Mackubin Fund
Ellen C. Murphy tvfemorial Library Fund
Kate lVloore Myers Landscaping Fund
Henry H. and Cora Dodson Sasscer
Newspaper Fund
Adolph \V. Schmidt Fund
Richard Scofield lviemorial Fund
Mrs. Blair T. Scott Memorial Pri7e Fund
Kathryn Mylroie Stevens Memorial Prize Fund
. Clare Eddy and Eugene V. Thaw, 1947,
Lectureship Fund
Elma R. and Charles D. Todd Memorial
Library Fund
Clara B. \.Yeiglc Memorial Library Fund
Daniel E. Weigle and Jessie N. Weigle
Memorial Fund
The Jack Wilen Foundation Library Fund
in Memory of Murray Joel Rosenberg
Victor Zuckerkandl J\llcmorial Fund
Alumni Endowment
General Endowment
$
31,973.00
$ 266,279.63
60,000.00
$
60,000,00
$ 120,000.00
·I
355.00
308.ll
25,000.00
14,897.00
5,770.00
20,025.00
3,000.00
77.50
25,000.00
3,000.00
25.00
31,683.07
560.00
400.00
75,192A3
1,500,00
124,349.36
400.00
1,500.00
355.00
308.ll
50,000.00
1'1,897.00
5, 770.00
20,025.00
6,000.00
102.50
31,683.07
960.00
400.00
75,192.43
3,000.00
121,349.36
1,500.00
15,627.86
895.00
517.95
1,250.00
1,500.00
15,627.86
895.00
517.95
1,250.00
900.00
900.00
19,500.00
1,195.75
19,500.00
39,000.00
1,195.75
2,500.00
2,500.00
1,000.00
19,325.19
205,270.2 I
523,179.04
1,000.00
19,325.19
391,579.21
523,179.04
$1,155,778.'17
186,309.-00
------$ 295,734.00
$1,451,512.47
------
Andrew \.Y. Mellon Foundation Grants
Not Applied to Named Funds
.$
$2,679,845.67
$2,679,845.67
Reservation of ProfitsSale o£ Securities
$ 186,380.89
.$
$ 186,380.89
$4,327,121.31
$4,005,886.67
.$8,333,008.01
Total Endowment Principal
20
�NEWS ON THE CAMPUSES
CALIFORNIA CoLLEGE
MoDELED oN ST. JoHN's
St. John's has received news that its
educational program has been adopted
by St. Thomas Aquinas College, a new
school in Calahasas 7 California.
"Unabashedly Catholic," the college
will be staffed by laymen and is mod·
cled on the "Great Books Liberal Arts"
program.
Located on a 200-acre campus near
Malibu, the college will feature a curriculum emphasizing the ''classical
ideal" of educating its students to the
"integrative" thinkers \vith "relentless
logic and absolute dedication to the
truth," according to the August 8th
issue of Twin Circle published by the
National Catholic Press.
The founder and president of the
new college is Dr. Donald P. McArthur, a graduate of St. Mary's College in California who received his
Ph.D. degree at the Pontifical University at Quebec.
Twin Circle notes the St. John's
program has enjoyed ''stunning sue~
cess" since its introduction.
COLLEGE AWARDS DEGREES
TO FIRST SUMMER
GRADUATING CLASS
The first summer class to graduate
from St. John's College received B.A.
degrees at Santa Fe on August 18th:
Douglas Cotler, Stephen R. Deluca,
Twyla Fort Deluca, Cleo Fowler, Bruce
F. Glaspell, Jan Goodman, Marc
Haynes, Lewis M. Johnson, Lynda Jean
Lamson Johnson, Patrick E" Porter
and Gretchen Vadnais.
These eleven students participated
in a special program for students transferring to St. John's with credits from
other· institutions of higher learning.
They were able to complete their work
for a degree in three regular school
yeaiS 7 plus the summer course, which
included writing of an essay and oral
examination on it.
President Richard D. Weigle presided at the informal commencement
program. He was assisted in the graduation exercises held in the Junior
Common of the Peterson Student Center by Tutor David Jones, who headed
the summer studies.
ginia; and Frances T. Zender, Illinois.
The Institute offers four eight-week
courses of study: Politics and Society,
Philosophy and Theology, Mathematics and Natural Science, and Literature.
Completion of all four (or any three
if nine hours of transfer credit are
submitted) leads to the degree of Master of Arts.
GRADUATE INSTITUTE
COMPLETES SUCCESSFUL
SUMMER
Recently the City Council of Annapolis unanimously voted to expand
the boundaries of the Annapolis Historic District to include St. John's College and additional areas within the
old city.
One of the new boundaries extends
from the city to College Creek, the
northwest portion of the 36 acre campus.
Last December the Board of Visitors
and Governors unanimously agreed- to
approve the inclusion of the College in
the District after the Annapolis Faculty
Campus Development Committee recommended the action.
The expansion of the District was
made to assure the preservation of the
historic atmosphere of a wider area of
the old city.
One disadvantage to the College
would be the requirement that all
architectural plans for new buildings or
for renovation of old buildings would
have to be approved by the Historic
District Commission.
On the positive side, it would seem
inclusion in the District, which is reg~
istered in Washington, D.C., would
help to assure the long-term future of
the College from any possible incursions by outside organizations.
The College is already included in
a National Historic District, designated
by the federal government.
The summer Graduate Institute in
Liberal Education enrolled a record
total of 140 this year and awarded
Master of Arts' degrees to eighteen
students from five states and the District of Columbia. It was the fifth summer on the Santa Fe campus for the
advanced studies program based on
readings in the major works of Western
thought.
Robert Neidorf, a Tutor at St. John's
College, is Director of the Graduate
Institute. 'T'hc commencement speaker
was James P. Shannon, who directed
the Institute in 1969-70 and is now a
student in the School of Law at the
University of New Mexico.
Members of this year's graduating
class, the third since the Institute was
started in 1967, included: New Mexico-Lucy MacGillivray Dix, Susan
Kinslow, Betty Ann Milligan, Mary
Navratil, Eleanor Bramlett Ortiz,
Bruce Rolstad and Herbert Weinstein,
all of Santa Fe; Maryland-Bela Kissh,
Alice F. Kurs, Paul M. Blackwell,
Cecilia JVI. Holtman and Mary P. Justice; VVashington, D.C.-Juanita Goodson Allen, Edna F. Frye and Lovie W.
Ward; other states-Debbe R. Goldberg, Ohio; Jane G. Lemmond, Vir-
ST. JOHN'S IN ANNAPOLIS
INCLUDED IN HISTORIC DISTRICT
21
�The College
MARK VAN DoREN WRITES
SPECIAL POEM FOR ST. JoHN'S
275TH ANNIVERSARY
OBSERVANCE
lVIark Van Doren, one of America's
most distinguished men of letters, gave
the main address at the August 8th
Anniversary celebration in Santa Fe.
Mr. Van Doren has written numerous poems, plays, novels, short stories
and books of literary criticism. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 for
his Collected Poems. He was a professor of English at Columbia University
for almost 40 years and is a mcm bcr
of the American Academy of Arts and
Letters. The Autobiography of Mark
Van Doren was pu blishcd in 19 58 and
1968. President vVeiglc, in introducing ~
him, cited Mr. Van Doren's book Lib- ~
eral Education as a major factor in Mr. ~
Weigle's decision to accept the presi- ~
dency of St. John's in 1949.
~
''St. John's College more than sur- 2
vives, it flourishes," !vir. Van Doren The poet and the Governor-Mark Van Doren and Druce King, Ne\V J-..rJexico's chief executive·said in preface to his speech entitled at the ''Summer Celebration" in Santa Fe, August 8th.
"How to Praise a World That May
Not Last?" He said Dean Darkey had Place so ermvdcd with his creaturespaintings at T'yson's Corner, Virginia;
suggested he might wish to speak on \Vith us all----{)h, praise the time
a one-man show at St. John's; and a
That's left, ·praise here and now, praise
the act and the art of praise.
Master Thesis show at the University
Him that by his own sweet will
"I said yes, of course, I would come May suddenly remake the world
of Maryland. Her works have been
and talk about praise. And I would Forever, ever, ever, ever.
in sales and rental galleries of the Baleven do some praising. I would not
timore Museum of Art and the Corpraise this or that thing, this or that ANNAPOLIS APPOINTS
coran ~~Iuseum of Art in Washington,
person. I would praise everything and
D.C.
New ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE
everybody. I would have the nerve to
In 1965 she won second prize in the
praise the world."
JVIrs. ~~Iichon Semon, a former grad~ Advanced Art Student Competition at
During his remarks, he quoted three nate assistant at the University of the University of South Florida, and
of his poems and he closed \vith one Maryland in College Park, has been third prize in 1966 at the Annual Sidewritten especially for the occasion:
appointed Artist-in-Residence for the walk Art Festival in Orlando. Her
Annapolis campus for 1971-72.
works were exhibited in the 1966 Area
A native of Portland, Oregon, Mrs. Show of University Teachers and
IIow praise a 1vorld that will not be
Forever? Stillness then. Time
Semon lives in Laurel, Maryland. She Pupils in Clearwater, Florida, as well.
Sleeping, never to wake. No prince's
received her B.A. degree in fine arts in
Kiss. No prince. Praise? E\'en
1966 from the University of South SANTA FE RECEIVES GIFT FROM
'l'he echo of it dies, even
Florida in Tampa, and her M.A. degree
Memory, in the last brain
ARTHUR VINING DAVIS
in fine arts in 1970 from the University
That lm·ed it, withers away, and in mind
FouNDATION
Not even dozes, being done
of Maryland.
\Vith work that mattered not at all.
In 1960 Mrs. Semon taught a sumSt. John's in Santa Fe has received a
IIow then praise nothing?
mer recreation program in the fine arts grant of $75,000 from the Arthur VinYet that day
at an Episcopal summer camp in ing Davis Foundation of Miami, FloriI las ncYer dawned. Here is the world
Florida, and in 1969 an adult recreation da. The contribution to the general
So beautiful, being old, so
class for Prince Georges County in support of the College will be made
:rviindftil of its maker-what
Maryland.
in three payments: $35,000 this year,
Of him when that day comes-you say
In 1970-71 her exhibitions included $25,000 in 1972, and $15,000 in 1973.
It mnst-vvhat then of him, and of this
24
�October l 971
admitted to St. John's on the basis of
NEW APPLICATION PoLICY
AT ST. JOHN'S
their own qualifications, not by com-
parison with other applicants. There-
The College recently adopted radically new application procedures: it
fore, it would be unfair, and even
asks for no irrelevant information and
come, first-served basis."
pointless, not to admit them on a first-
requires no application fee.
Admissions Director in Annapolis,
Michael W. Ham, Class of 1961, stated
in the announcement that "we admit
persons, not collections of numbers and
statistics. Therefore, we try to give the
applicant a chance to tell us of his
judgments and his values."
All of the traditional but non-pertinent requests-for the applicant's
height, weight, age; for the names of
the other colleges to which he has
applied, and whether he was accepted
or rejected; for the parents' name,
oc~
cupations, college background-all are
gone.
Instead the applicant supplies no
demographic data beyond his or her
name, address, and telephone number.
The rest of the application consists of
answers to searching questions on the
applicant's evaluation of his education,
his non-school experience, his experi-
ence with books, and his plans for his
education and his life.
Mr. Ham and Mr. Gerald F. Zollars,
Class of 1965 and Admissions Director
in Santa Fe, recently revised the entire
application form.
The College has also discontinued
the application fee, the non-refundable,
non-applicable charge of $10-25 that
must accompany applications to almost
every college in the United States.
"There is no . reason/' added Mr.
Ham, "why an applicant should have
to pay in order to find out if he is
acceptable as a student at St. John's.
The six to ten pages of essay writing
that are usually written in answering
our questions-and I have seen applications much longer-eliminate frivolous applications."
St. John's will continue its policy of
rolling admissions, in which an application is acted upon as soon as it is
completed, and the applicant is notified immediately of the decision.
Mr. Paul D. Newland, Provost in
Annapolis, noted that "students are
SANTA FE AssociATES
VISIT SEMINARS
Members of the Boards of Associates
for St. John's in Santa Fe gather at the
College from time to time to hear
reports on its progress and to meet
students, Tutors and officers. The Associates are friends of the College in
Santa Fe, Los Alamos and Albuquerque who help interpret St. John's to
their communities. In September they
were invited to have dinner in the
student dining hall and visit seminars
to see how they are conducted.
In July the Associates met at the
Peterson Student Center for dinner
and to hear and see a report from
President and Mrs. Weigle on their
recent travels in Africa, Russia and
England. Although not a fund-raising
group, the Associates contributed
nearly $500 to help pay Commencement Ball expenses as their gift to the
senior class. Mr. A. J. Taylor is the
FIVE TUTORS JoiN
SANTA FE FACULTY
Five Tutors joined the Santa Fe Faculty this fall, including one who transferred from Annapolis-Mr. Aaron
Kirschbaum.
Mrs. Vida Chcsnulis Clift received
her B.A. degree magna cum laude from
Radcliffe, her M.A. degree from Berkeley and her Ph.D. degree from Harvard where she has taught English,
composition and narrative fiction.
Mrs. Carolyn Higgins Richards graduated summa cum laude from the Uni-
versity of Colorado and won Phi Beta
Kappa honors. She received her M.A.
and Ph.D. degrees in history from
Stanford University. She was an instructor in the history of Western civilization at Brooklyn College and taught
English and history at Santiago (Chile)
College, where she also was an assistant
to the Dean of Studies.
Mr. Allan Pearson received an A.B.
degree from Boston College and an
A.M. degree from Boston University.
He attended the University of Munich
on a German government grant in
1964-65. He taught German language
and literature at Berkeley and was a
lecturer in German language, literature
chairman of the Santa Fe Associates,
and culture at the University of Cal-
and he has been very active in efforts
to help strengthen College-community
relationships.
ifornia at Riverside.
MRS. NEIDORF PRESENTS
CONCERT
Mezzo-soprano Mary Neidorf and
pianist Gillian McHugh presented a
concert August 3rd in the Peterson
Student Center at Santa Fe. Mrs. Neidorf is the wife of Robert Ncidorf, St.
John's Tutor and director of the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education.
Mrs. Ncidorf has sung in numerous
oratorios, operas, and musical com-
edies. Mrs. McHugh is a graduate of
the Royal Academy of Music in London, England. She was three times
winner of the Bach piano contests of
Western England and various open
piano competitions. She was a soloist
last spring with the St .. John's College
Chamber Orchestra.
Mr. C. Donald Knight is a graduate
of Baker University, Kansas, and he
received his M.A. degree from the University of Toronto (Canada) where he
was a Teaching Fellow in moral philosophy and also participated in an experimental high school. He was a Fulbright Scholar at Annamalai University
in India.
TUTOR NAMED VICE PRESIDENT
AT SAINT MARY'S
Mr. Thomas J. Slakey resigned as
Tutor at St. John's in Santa Fe this
summer to accept an appointment as
academic vice president of Saint Mary's
College of California. A magna cum
laude graduate of Saint Mary's in 1952,
Mr. Slakcy was affiliated with St. John's
for eleven years, joining the faculty in
Annapolis in 19 59 and moving to .the
·new campus at Santa Fe in 1964.
25
�The College
Minnesota in 1959. Upon his graduation he received fellowships from
the Danforth, National Science, and
Woodrow Wilson Foundations.
He is married to the former Elizabeth Stoltz of Minnesota and they
have five children.
Nominations for the Outstanding
Educators of America awards program
arc made by officials of colleges and
universities including presidents, deans,
and other faculty members. Guidelines for the selection include an educator's talents in the classroom, contribtJ.tions to research, administrative
abilities, civic se1vice, and professional
recognition.
THREE FULL SCHOLARSHIPS
AWARDED TO FRESHMEN OF
INDIAN AND HISPANIC DESCENT
Annapolis Tutor Robert L. Spaeth (left) is interviewed by Paul F. Rhetts, Producer, Public
Affairs, Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting, on a television program, "Crosstalk," which was
broadcast on Channels 67 and 28.
TUTOR CHOSEN
OUTSTANDING EDUCATOR
Robert L. Spaeth, a Tutor in Annapolis, has been chosen an Outstanding Educator of America for 1971.
Nominated earlier this year, he was
selected for the honor on the basis of
his civic and professional achievements.
Outstanding· Educators of America
is an annual awards program honoring
distinguishcd.men and women for their
exceptional service, achievements, and
leadership in the fi'ld of education.
Annapolis Dean Robert A. Goldwin
was named an Outstanding Educator
in 1970.
Newspaper accounts of Mr. Spaeth's
honor led to a television interview on
"Crosstalk," a program designed espe~
cially for educators who have interesting sidelights. A conversation with Mr.
Spaeth covering St. John's College in
detail was broadcast three times in
September on Channel 67, WMPB,
26
in the Baltin1ore area, and on Channel
28, WCPB, on Maryland's Eastern
Shore.
A member of the College Faculty
since 1963, Mr. Spaeth served as an
Assistant Dean from 1966 to 1971. He
was Director of the Summer Program
in Annapolis in 1969 and 1970.
In 1969 Mr. Spaeth was elected an
alderman from the Third Ward of the
City of Annapolis, and in 1970 he was
elected to the Anne Arundel County
Democratic State Central Committee.
He is a member of the City-County
Joint Committee on the Property Tax
Differential and a Commissioner on
the Urban Renewal Authority. He is
chairman of the Housing Committee
of the City Council. Last summer he
was at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., doing research on the
economic impact of airport noise.
The Tutor is a native of St. Cloud,
Minnesota, and a s·umma cum laude
graduate of St. John's University in
St. John's in Santa Fe awarded three
full scholarships funded by the Noyes
Foundation to freshmen of American
Indian and Hispanic descent: Anna
Dean Arcvalos, Fowler, Colorado;
Ernest A. Torres, Farmington, New
Mexico; and Cynthia E. Williams of
Santa Fe.
This is the first year these scholarships have been available. They cover
full tuition, room and board fees, and
a campus job.
INDIAN LEADERS ADDRESS
MoNTHLY MEETINGS
AT SANTA FE
The monthly series of dinner meetings in Santa Fe called "The Indian
Table" has lined up a full schedule of
speakers on politics, education and the
arts for 1971-72. They include, among
others, Governor Robert Lewis of the
Zuni Pueblo, Chairman Benny Atencio
of the All-Indian Pueblo Council, and
Fritz Scholder, well-known artist. Attendance is by invitation and around 30
townspeople, students and Tutors
regularly participate in the lectures and
discussions to be held on the third
Tuesday of each month during the
school year, except for December and
March.
�ALUMNI ACTIVITIES
PROFILE
In the year in which St. John's celebrates the founding of King William's
School, it seems appropriate that we
publish the profile of an alumnus who
is vitally concerned with matters of historical record. In so doing we are also
featuring the first pre-1937 graduate to
appear in this series.
Gust Skordas was born in Washington, D.C., was raised in Virginia, and
moved to Annapolis in 1928. Two years
later, after graduation from Annapolis
High School, he entered St. John's
College. Mr. Skordas majored in economics, and received his B.A. degree
in 1934. In a recent interview he spoke
fondly of Greek classes with John
Kieffer, freshman English with the late
Richard Scofield, and English with
Ford K. Brown.
While at St. John's Mr. Skordas was
historian of the Varsity Club for one
year, which was as long as the Club
lasted, he recalls. He was quarterback
of the football team for two years, and
lettered in basketball his senior year.
The 1934 Rat-Tat alleges that he was
the best passer on the football team
his junior year; frmn the accounts of
the 1933 season, he must also have
been a great running back.
Upon graduation Mr. Skordas performed a variety of j'odd jobs" until he
went to work for the Maryland Hall
of Records on August 2, 1937. He
started as a general research assistant,
and four years later was promoted to
assistant archivist.
The Hall of Records, under the
supervision of the Hall of Records
Commission, is administered by the
State Archivist. It is charged by the
General Assembly with being the repository of non-current documents and
records of Maryland State agencies,
cities, towns, and counties. For exam-
Maryland's Governor Marvin M~mdel and St. John's President Richard D. Weigle examine
the King WilliaU1's School Charter which is exhibited in the Maryland Hall of Records on the
campus in Annapolis. Standing, left to right, are Profile subject Gust Skordas '34, assistant
archivist of Maryland; Mrs. P. James Underwood of Historic Annapolis, Inc., in a costume
of the period; and Paul D. Newland, Provost of the Annapolis campus.
ple, courthouse records which were
created before April 28, 1788, the date
on which Maryland ratified the Federal Constitution, must by law be
deposited in the Hall of Records. As a
matter of interest to alumni, a number
of historic documents of the College
are also stored there.
Gust Skordas, Assistant Archivist of
Maryland, has been a Fellow of the
American Society of Archivists since
1959, and was among the first members to gain that status. (Only ten percent of the membership is elected to
fellowships.)
A contributor to a number of pro~
fessional journals, Mr. Skordas is the
editor of The Early Settlers of Mart
land, Genealogical
Company, Baltimore, 1968. In au•uaw••>
has co-edited or contributed
""·""""'" '
eleven publications of the
Records Commission.
Mr. Skordas is married toth<efj)\(}"
Anita Parkinson of
have a son, Ralph,
ifornia, and who is the
two grandchildren.
�The College
agents, and telephone volunteers who made this year's
results possible. We at the College are most grateful for
their help.
For .comparison, we present the results of the last four
campmgns:
1967-68 1968-69 1969-70 1970-71
ALUMNI ANNUAL GIVING
Perhaps by the time this is published, the final report
on Alumni Annual Giving will be in print; that depends
in large part on how soon we complete Homecoming planning. To cover any eventuality, therefore, we herewith present a brief summary report.
The 1970-71 Campaign was simply the best ever. While
the figures themselves are significant, they become more
important in light of the economic situation which has
existed in this country for the past several years. Our
alumni obviously have not been dissuaded from supporting
their College.
Highest praise must certainly go to the Campaign
Chairman Jack Ladd Carr and the class captains, volunteer
---·
Unrestricted Gifts $14,390
P crcen t Response
13.1%
Alumni Donors
363
King William Associates
$21,200
22.5%
629
83
·----
$26,139
29.2%
828
87
$30,483
30.5%
883
99
(The designation "King William Associates" was first ap·
plied to donors of unrestricted gifts of $100 or more during the 1968-69 Campaign.)
ALUMNI DELEGATES
From September, 1970, through
May, 1971, the following alumni graciously represented the College on the
occasions indicated:
H. Willard Stern '43, at the inauguration of Nathan W ciss as president of
Newark State University; Stephen
Benedict '47, the inauguration of Harris
Wofford as president of Bryn Mawr
College; Jolm D. Oosterlwut '51, the
convocation in observance of the
twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of Montgomery College (Maryland); Dr. Robert L. Burwell, Jr. '32,
the inauguration of Merlyn Winfield
Northfelt as president of Garrett Theological Seminary (Illinois); James M.
Green, Jr. '60, the fiftieth anniversary
convocation and inauguration of Alfonsc Ralph Miele as president of The
College of St. Rose (New York); and
William M. Davis '63, the installation
of John Robert Silber as president of
Boston University.
CLASS NOTES
1921
A call from 'Vi11iam I-I. Y. Knighton informs us that the Golden Anniversaty Class
is planning a class reunion at Homecoming
time. A vety fine turn-out is expected for a
reunion dinner at the Stafford Hotel in Baltimore on Friday, October 15th. (A detailed report will appear in the December issue.)
The group plans then to come to Annapolis
for the various activities on Saturday.
with the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone
Co. According to his brother, the newly-retired Mr. Clark will devote his time to such
interests as travel, golf, and bridge. As a
matter of additional interest in this anniversary
year, the Clarks' sixth-great-grandfather, Colonel
Edward Dorsey, was one of the original trustees
of King \Villiam's School.
1931
James D. Morris's son Jim, whose career with
the Metropolitan Opera Company shows
promise of stardom, is scheduled to give a
concert at \Vashington College, Chestertown,
J'vlaryhmd, on next April 4th.
1935
Mmyland Governor Marvin Mandel recently
appointed John C. Donohue as chairman of the
Board of Election Supervisors of Baltimore
City.
1945
\Ve have just learned that Kenneth G.
Gehret is education editor of the Christian
Science I\1onitor.
The Rev. Christian A. IIovde may be a
bishop by the time this issue appears. An
early summer convention to elect a suffragan
bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago
resulted in a three-way deadlock, with Father
Hovde one of the nominees. Another election
was to be held in October in an effort to break
the deadlock. Father Hovde is director of
the Bishop Anderson House in Chicago.
John D. Mack this summer left his position
as executive vice president of Cbirol Company
to join The Gillette Company as group vice
president of Gillette North America,
1947
Richard S. Harris continues his insightful
probing of the many facets of the Federal government in a series on political campaign spending in The New Yorker.
He i:> now Deputy Director, Office of Population and Civic Development, Bureau for
L8tin America, ALD., U. S. Department
of State, in Washington, D. C. Mr. Davies
makes his home in Riverdale, New York.
Alan S. Maremont is now the Executive
Director of the Mid-Peninsula Coalition Housing Fund, with offices in Palo Alto, California.
Jules Pagano is now a professor of sociology
at Florida Internatimml University in Miami.
Another Pagano, LeRoy E., until recently
professor of management and department
chairman at Federal City College in Washington, ha::; moved to the Department of Industrial Engineering at Newark College of
Engineering.
1950
Last spring the World Research Institute at
Villanova University, John J. Logue, director,
was the site of a three-day "Fate of the Oceans"
Conference. Ecology, Seabed Authority, and
Ocean Wealth were the major topics for discussion by an international panel of students,
scientists, civic leaders, diplomats, and professors.
1951
A recent visitor to the Annapolis campus
\vas Richard J. Batt, in town to do some research for his doctoral dissertation on American
Revolutionary History. Mr. Batt received an
LL.B. degree from Tulane University in 1954,
and was in the private practice of law until
1968. He entered Tvlane 1s graduate school
in 1967, and has taught there and at Newcomb College, Tulane's Women's College, since
1970.
L. Donald Koontz writes that he saw John
Franke, Jr., in Detroit at the annual meeting
of the National Education Association. Mr.
Franke teaches in St. Petersburg, F1orida, and
is a member of the NEA Resolutions Committee. Mr. Koontz, president of the Cherry Creek
(Colorado) Teacher's Association, also leads a
Great Books discussion group in his spare time.
1927
1948
1952
Louis D. Clark writes that his brother, Henry
B. Clark, has retired after 4 3 years of service
Peter J. Davies has returned to the United
States after many years abroad with USAID.
Vlilliam D. Grimes has accepted a two-year
assignment to London as representative to the
28
�r-··
October 1971
United Kingdom for the U. S. Naval Ordnance
I ,a bora tory at White Oak, Silver Spring, Maryland. '11le 22nd staff member to hold this
position since 1941, Mr. Grimes's major role
is to provide for a ready exchange between
British and American nava1 ordnance research
and development activities. Mrs. Grimes
(Diane), son Bill, and daughters Corky and
Lauralce \Vill accompany Mr. Grimes.
1955
Classmates and friends of Elisabeth M.
Chiem will be pleased to know that on August
25th she successfully passed oral examination
on her senior essay, "The Concept of Property
in Karl Marx", and thus completed all_ requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts
from St. John's College.
1956
Pasquale L. Polillo and his vvife Sandi
adopted a baby girl, Liza Sloane, this past
spring. About the same time Mr. Polillo was
elected chairman of the California Assocjatctl
Press Television-Radio Association. He has
just completed his first year as News Director
of KGO-TV in San Francisco.
1962
Wlilliam R Salisbury, Attorney-Adviser in
the Office of the Legal Adviser, Department of
State, was recently promoted to Classs 5 in
the Foreign Service. He is married to the
fanner S. Diane Curns of Detroit.
1964
Mary (Biggar) J\1ain is co-author, with T.
Berry Brazelton, M.D., of an article in the
September issue of Rcdbook. Entitled "Arc
There Too Many Sights and Sountls in Yonr
Baby's World?", the article concerns the effects
of various external stimuli on infants.
John F. White has joined the Annapolis
facnlty this year. Since graduation from St.
John's he has earned a M.A. degree from. the
New School for Social Research and IS a
doctoral candidate.
1965
Jan F. Rlits joined. the faculty in Colby
College in July as an instructor in the department of government. Mr. Blits has taught at
the Cathedral School_ in New York City and
the American International School in Zurich,
Switzerland. He earned a M.A. degree at the
New School for Social Research, and during
this past summer has been studying under
a National Science Foundation Fellowship.
1966
George F. Kramer (SF) rcceived'his Juris
Doctor degree in June from the University of
New Mexico Law School.
July lst brought a visit from Marine Captain
Peter S. Morosoff. He was on his \vay from
Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, to Ft. SiB,
Oklahoma, \Vherc he will undergo advanced
artil'cry training for about nine months.
1968
After leaving St. John's, John L. Bergman
graduated from the State University of New
York, and is no\v studying for a doctor's degree in the history of science at The Johns
IIopkins Universi-ty.
John McCaflery (SF) has joined the Holy
Order of Mans in Chicago. l'ather McCaffery
writes that he is grateful for the \VOrk he did
at St. John's in Santa Fe.
Just after the last issue went to press \ve
received an excellent letter from C. Kerry
Nemovicller. He writes that St. John's is much
on his mind as he pursues his duties as a
second lieutenant in the Israeli Army. Lt.
Nemovichcr is now married to a native-born
Israeli, Miss IIadassah Ben Sasson, a graduate
of the University of Tel Aviv \vith majors in
history and Bible.
The class of 1968 did well with letters this
summer; early July brought one from George
\V. Partlow, yvith the Peace Corps in Jamaica.
He has been \Vorking in a joint nniversitygovernment project to up-grade mathematics
teaching in primRry schools on the ishmd, and
has just extended for a third year. His address
is c/o Peace Corps, P.O.B. 107, Kingston,
Jamaica, \V.I.
Amelia Ruth (Hummel) Rarick graduated
in June from TI:c George _\Vashingt~n U,niyersity, with spccml honors m economiCS. She
has held t11e position of summer research assistant \Vith the International Bank for Rcconstmction and Development, and has been
awardee'~ a Virginia State Library Fellowship
for study at the University of Maryland library
schooL
Sarah (Braddock) WI cstrick has been accepted
this £811 as a student at Ursinus College.
1969
Philip G. Holt and Miss Meredith Morgan
of Austin, Texas, were married on August 23rd.
-Mr. Holt \Vill pursue his classical studies at
St:mford University this fa11, after what he
terms "a very good decompression period after
St. John's" at the University of Texas.
HOMECOMING OcTOBER
15-16
Since a detailed Homecoming schedule was mailed about the time this
went to press, we will not repeat it
here. The July issue listed the 275th
Anniversary Celebration events, to
which all alumni are cordially invited.
Of special interest will he a paper by
Jacob Klein, about the St. John's
Seminar to be presented Friday afternoon. A panel discussion will follow.
Alumni activities that week-end will
include an informal party Friday night;
alumni seminars and a graduate school
discussion for students on Saturday
morning; the Annual JVIeeting in the
afternoon; the Alumni Reception and
Dinner; and informal parties Saturday
night. Make your plans now to join
us in Annapolis.
1
1970
A postcarc'l note from Jolin R. Dean, sent
from r..llunich, Germany, informs us that he
spent the summer in Bavaria_ learning Ge~man,
climbing the Alps, and tcstmg the quahty ?f
German beer. The language study was m
connection \vith his doctoral \vork at the University of l\llassachusetts, the other two activities
purely for enjoyment.
Stephen J. Forman, now in hi~ sec_ond year
at the University of Southern Cahforma School
of l\lfedicinc, writes that he was elected president of the student body of the school last
spring. He comments that while the first year
of medical school may be harder for a St.
John's graduate because of the ~uantity ~f
the information he must absorb, his academ1c
background is a distinct atlvantagc.
In Memoriam
1912-Dr. Mark Ziegler, Olney, Mel .• July
24, 197!.
191 ~-Asa
\Villard
Joyce,
Millersville,
Mel .• July 30, 1971.
1916-Hiram F. Plummer, Jr., Baltimore,
Mel., July 6, 197!.
1921-Gcorge B. Woelfel, Sr., Annapolis,
Md., July 22, 1971.
1931-IIorace H. Snow, Jr., Truro, Mass.,
July 2!, 1971.
1934-W. Thetford LeViness, Santa Fe,
N. M., September 9, 1971.
1935-John H. Von Dree1e III, Annapolis,
Mel., June 18, 1971.
Baltimore,
1953-Bemard H. Ude1, Vi/ashington,
D. C., July 12, 197!.
1923-Gen. \Villiam C. Pnrnc11, Linthicum, Md., June 23, 1971.
1970-Susan Una Schnurr, New York City,
!968.
1922-W. Beaton Connolly,
Md., June 30, 1971.
29
�Friends of St. John's College and the Santa Fe Opera enjoy the "Summer Celebration" honoring the College's 275th
anniversary and the Opera's world premiere performance of "Yerma" by Villa-Lobos.
The College
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
·>i
•·.·
' ····
Second-class postage paid at
Annapolis, Maryland, and at
additional mailing offices.
�
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<em>The College </em>(1969-1981)
Description
An account of the resource
St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>. <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981. <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
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thecollegemagazine
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30 pages
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The College, October 1971
Description
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Volume XXIII, Number 3 of <em>The College</em> Magazine. Published in October 1971.
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Development Offices of St. John's College
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
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1971-10
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Wyatt, Malcolm
Felter, Mary P.
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Trimmer, Maurice
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The_College_Vol_23_No_3_1971
President's Report
Presidents
The College
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/9c778c269b8442bd948db213e9a4e155.pdf
2c1306d437fb1e26230d0721e76dbebd
PDF Text
Text
�The College
Cover: Thomas Jefferson, from a bust
by Tean Antoine Houdon. Inside Front
Cover: McDowell Hall, Annapolis,
sketch by Daniel Sullivan, Class of
1971.
The College is a publication for
friends of St. John's College and for
those who might become friends of the
College, if they came to know it. Our
aim is to indicate, within the limitations of the magazine form, why, in
our opinion, St. John's comes closer
than any other college in the nation
to being what a college should be.
If ever well-placed beacon lights
were needed by American education
it is now. By publishing articles about
the work of the College, articles reflecting the distinctive life of the mind
that is the College, we hope to add a
watt or two to the beacon light that is
St. John's.
Acting Editor: Malcolm Wyatt
Managing Editor: Mary P. Felter
Alumni Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant: Maurice Trimmer
The College is published by the
Development Offices of St. John's
College, College Avenue, Annapolis,
Maryland 21404 (Julius Rosenberg,
Director), and Santa Fe, New Mexico
(J. Burchenal Ault, Vice President);
Member, American Alumni Council.
President, St. John's College, Richard
·D. Weigle.
Published four times a year in April,
July, October, and December. Second-class postage paid at Annapolis,
Maryland, and at additional mailing
offices.
In the December Issue:
•
1
How Praise A World That May Not Last,
by Niark Van Doren
•
Discussion As A Means Of Teaching And Learning,
by Jacob Klein
3
On The Study Of Politics In A Liberal Education,
by Martin Diamond
6
News on the Campuses
Vol. XXIII
December 1971
No.4
ll
Alumni Activities
17
�Discussion As A Means Of
Teaching And Learning*
By JACOB KLEIN
W.AT
follows is a description of a St. John's
Seminar.
A book or a part of it is to be discussed; about twenty
students (usually fewer and seldom more) sit around a
table, and two tutors have to act as moderators of the
discussion. The students are supposed to have read the
book or the assigned part of it before coming to the
seminar. Some have done that well and thoroughly, some
not well and superficially; it may even happen that a
student has not read the book at all. One of the tutors
begins the discussion by raising a question, directly related to what is said in the book. Sometimes a silence
ensues before a student chooses to answer the question;
sometimes the answer follows the question immediately.
This answer may provoke a comment or a refutation or a
new question coming from students or tutors. Thus an
exchange of opinions develops, which can be animated,
even heated, or calm and slow. Quite a few students
participate in this exchange, while some remain silent.
What happens while this exchange goes on? Many
things. What the book is about may be clarified to some
extent. How its content is connected with the content
of other books may be discovered, weighed or subtly
suggested. But more important things do occur. A student
might find his most cherished thought elucidated or his
*Paper prepared for the 275th Anniversary Colloquium at St. John's
College in Annapolis, Friday, October 15, 1971.
most burdensome question answered in the book, and this
gives him the opportunity to bring about a discussion of
this favorite theme of his, which turns the seminar away
from the book altogether. And yet, what is then being
discussed may be something more fundamental for the
understanding of one's world and one's life. Or, on the
contrary, a student may see for the first time that something he had always accepted is actually highly doubtful.
A sentence, even a single word, uttered by one of the
participants in the discussion, may open to him a new
vista, may challenge his deepest convictions, may aggravate the awareness of his ignorance.
It is thus that learning takes place, not in the sense
that the students are being "informed" about opinions
and doctrines uttered in the books, about events and facts
mentioned in them, about plots and stories presented and
narrated. What is achieved is rather an expansion of the
intellectual horizon, a fostering of understanding, a demo~
]ilion of false assumptions. This may not happen at all
in any one seminar or even in a series of s-eminars; but
it is likely to happen after a while, which means that only
a steady continuation of the seminars through a lengthy
period of time makes the seminar exercises fruitful and
beneficial.
fundamental rules determine the discussion.
As the College catalogue puts it: "every opinion must be
heard and explored, however sharp the clash of opinions
I
�The College
may be," and "every opinion must be supported by argument-an unsupported opinion does not count." But
it is not possible to avoid empty or even frivolous talk
altogether. Serious arguments may degenerate into repetitious and shallow assertions. It is the task of the moderators, the seminar leaders, to turn the discussion back
to its meaningful origin. They are not always able to do
that because even wasteful and extravagent claims might
contain points that fascinate the students' imagination
and stimulate their urge to refute and to explore. Even
then learning may take place.
Very rarely is a question fully answered and the answer
approved by all present. The main purpose of the seminar
is not to find final solutions of perennial problems, but
to become aware of a range of possible answers. Nor is
it the purpose of the seminar to interpret the content of
a book once and for all. Be it Homer or Virgil or Dante
or Shakespeare, be it Plato or Aristotle or Descartes or
Kant, be it Thucydides or Augustine or Hegel, be it any
other author, none of the students and tutors is expected
to "master" any one of their works, but everyone is expected to discover the diversity of possible interpretations
that these works give rise to and the depth of the task that
understanding them presents.
Some troublesome aspects of the seminar have to be
mentioned. There is too much to read, and the riches of
the books are overwhelming. The habits of the students,
as far as reading, listening, and arguing are concerned,
vary to a very great extent. This can make the discussion
uneasy or turbulent or even explosive. It is, at any rate,
always unpredictable, as indeed it should be. But there
is always the possibility that some spoken word-or some
word withheld-may provoke a student with an insight
of a penetrating nature, not necessarily related to the
book or topic under discussion. The occurrence of learning itself is indeed unpredictable.
0
NE indispensable-although not' always sufficient
-condition must prevail for learning to occur. It is the
effort on the part of students, a continuous effort, to find
answers to the questions raised. The answer to the question
what learning itself is, is not a "theory of knowledge,"
a so-called "epistemology," but the very effort to learn.
That is why in Plato's Meno Socrates keeps exhorting
Meno and the yonng slave to "make an attempt" to
answer. And that is why, in Plato's Republic (376B),
Glaucon has to agree with Socrates that the "love of
learning" (Til <{nAol'a8i,) and the "love of wisdom (To
rf.HA6aorf>ov) are the same. This "love of learning/' which
leads to the effort to learn, may not result in actual learning-it may indeed be insufficient, just as the "love of
wisdom" may not result ln obtaining wisdom and knowl-
edge. The pursuit of understanding and of knowledge in
2
the seminar is clouded by this uncertainty and unpredictability. But at some point of the discussion some understanding may be gained by some student or students, and
this understanding may then evolve further and further.
Let us also bear in mind that this point may never be
reached.
In what then does teaching consist in a St. John's
seminar? Certainly not in the "pouring" of knowledge
into the learner's soul, just as learning does not consist
in listening and repeating what one has heard. It is hard
for any tutor to resist the temptation to present his own
opinions about the content of a book or about the hidden
meaning of a phrase. Sometimes such a presentation may
even be fruitful because it can provoke counter-argument
and far-reaching discussion. Above all, however, the seminar leaders have to solicit the opinions of the students,
to try to keep the discussion within the limits of the
subject argued about, which is not at all easy, and to let
the students participate as much as possible in the debate.
Not seldom some students remain altogether silent, and
it may become important to the tutors to understand
the nature of this silence by talking to these students
outside of the seminar. Conv.ersations between tutor and
student outside of the seminar are, of course, generally
most desirable and helpful.
the "silent" students, their silence can
ultimately be attributed to two very different causes.
One is a lack of interest which implies the absence of
that effort to learn, on which so much depends. If this
attitude of the student persists and cannot be broken,
it is not likely that the student will continue to be a
student. The other cause is a deep and complex involvement in what is read and said, so deep and complex, in
fact, that the student cannot afford to take a stand and
to open his mouth, because he would have to say too many
things at once. This student listens attentively, and his
inside effort to clear his thoughts, by separating what
does not belong together and by combining what does,
may lead him to learn a great deal. Here again it is not
possible to predict whether this learning will occur. But
when it docs, it is bountiful and precious.
Jacob Klein has been a Tutor at St. John's College since 1938.
He was Dean of the College from 1949 to 1958. Born in Russia,
Dean Klein studied philosophy, mathematics, and physics in Berlin
and Marburg, Germany, where he received his Ph.D. degree, Before
leaving Germany in 1937 he completed Greek Matllcmatica1 Thought
and the Origin of Algebra (translated from the German by Eva Brann,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1968). His Commentary
on Plato's Meno was published by the University of North Carolina
Press in 1965; his "Introduction to Aristotle" may be found in
Ancients and Moderns (Basic Books, 1964). He has lectured on
"Ptolemy and Copernicus," "Leibniz," "The Nature of Nature,"
"On Precision," and others.
�How Praise A World That May Not Las(
By MARK VAN DOREN
Governor King, President Weigle, members and friends
of this College, I consider it a great honor to have been
asked to speak on the occasion of the 275th anniversary of
the College. Two-hundred-and-seventy-five years is a long
time to survive. St. John's College more than survives,
it flourishes. That I think is all that needs to be said
about the College as of this moment; it flourishes and the
evidence is everywhere.
When I was asked by Dean Darkey to come today and
address you, I wrote him as an old friend as well as a
dean whom I respected and asked him if he had any suggestions about what I should talk about. Being a true
dean, he answered my question s·criously. He didn't say,
"oh, anything you like." He said, "I've often heard you
talk about the act and the art of praise. I think I agree
with you," he said, "that praise is the noblest act of man,
and if you have anything that you want to praise, or
any person you want to praise, this might be a time to
do it." I said yes, of course, I would come and talk about
praise. And I would even do some praising. I would praise
everything and everybody. I would have the nerve to praise
the world.
For the world we live in must be praised; or its maker
must, for it is he that we praise when we are s·erious. The
greatest of all songs arc the Psalms, which are songs of
praise.
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the
firmament sheweth his handywork.
* Speech given at "A Summer Celebration" at St. John's College,
Santa Fe, New Mexico, on Sunday, August 8, 1971.
They are songs in praise of things-of stars, mountains,
trees-but only as these things testify to the power
and beauty of their creator's mind, than which there is
nothing more lovable or fearful in the universe we think
we know. It is the presence among us of this mind that
causes us to tremble, now in terror, now with joy. The
Psalmist cried over and over: Praise ye the Lord, and
never tired of doing so, as witness the song he numbered
148, which still was not the last one that he sang:
Praise ye the Lord. Praise the Lord from the
heavens: praise him in the heights.
Praise ye him, all his angels; praise ye him, all
his hosts.
Praise ye him, sun and moon; praise him, all
ye stars of light.
Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters
that be above the heavens.
Let them praise the name of the Lord; for he
commanded, and they were created.
He hath also sta blislied them for ever and ever;
he hath made a decree which shall not pass.
Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons, and
all deeps;
Fire, and hail; snow, and vapour; stormy wind
fulfilling his word;
Mountains, and all hills; fruitful trees, and all
cedars;
Beasts, and all cattle; creeping things, and flying
fowl;
Kings of the earth, and all people; princes and all
judges of the earth;
Both young men, and maidens; old men, and
children;
3
�The College
Let them praise the name of the Lord; for his
name alone is excellent; his glory is above the
earth and heaven.
Praise ye the Lord.
The things he made, the Psalmist sings, he made for
ever and ever. The world he fashioned was, is, and will
be a world without end. Unthinkable that it should
cease. Not only the power and beauty of the Lord, but
his lastingness-perhaps that was his most stunning attribute, since it assured us that the world we walk on is
lasting too. We shall not last, for we are grass, we wither
and blow away; but the world itself-how can that ever
be a thing, a place, that is not?
For centuries, for millenniums, we did not ask this
question; or if we did, we thought we knew the answer.
We kept on praising as best we could the universe and
him who made it. Our poetry when it was serious had no
other subject, though often enough the subject was not
named as I am naming it now. It had its variations, its
disguises; truth at times delights in indirection and even
dares at special moments to be difficult. Yet there was
never a time when we knew how to imagine the world's
coming to an end-literally that, with no trace of it left
anywhere. Whereas we now are haunted by this thought;
as I was, for example, a few years ago when I wrote a
poem called So Fair a World It Was:
So fair a world it was,
So far away in the dark, the dark,
Yet lighted, oh, so well, so well:
Water and land,
So clear, so sweet;
So fair, it should have been forever.
And would have been, and would have been,
If-what?
Be still. But what?
Keep quiet, child. So fair it was,
The memory is like a death
That dies again; that dies again.
The dialogue may be understood as taking place between
two intelligences so far removed from Earth that the
rumor of its extinction comes faintly yet clearly, as
echoes travel; but those intelligences are near enough to
have witnessed the beauty that is gone. The suggestion
is of physical catastrophe; nothing less than the total
disappearance of a planet. The fear does not always
take this form. It is more likely to be the fear that life
and thought will cease, so that no mind will exist to know
the world that still is there-an equivalent catastrophe,
perhaps, but at least a different one, though in fact it
might be the more ghastly of the two.
The strange thing is that at the same time with this
poem, or very near the same time, I was writing a psahn
of my own which contained no hint of catastrophe.
4
Praise Orion and the Great Bear,
Praise icy Sirius so burning blue,
Praise the slow dawn, but then the razor rim
Of sun that in another hour
Cannot be looked at lest it blind you; praise
Mountain tops, praise valleys, praise the silver
Streams that circle to\vns; praise people's houses;
Praise sitting cats that wait for doors to open;
Praise running dogs; praise women, men;
Praise little boys who think their fathers perfect;
Praise fathers who believe their Father perfect;
Praise him because he is, because he has
His being where no eye, no car can follow,
No mind say whence or whither,
Yet he is, and nothing else is
Save as witness to his wonder,
Save as hungering to praise himLet all things, then, great or little,
Praise him, praise him
Without end.
How explain this inconsistency in me, except by saying
that it is in others too: in all of us, no matter who we
are or what we think we know? Or am I correct in saying
all of us? Quite possibly the young are altogether singleminded here: the young, whose generation is the first
one born into a world that wonders whether it will endure. Earlier generations had no such problem. Their
members knew that the world was here to stay-nothing
more simple, nothing more certain. Regardless of what
they felt or did, the earth and the heavens above it
would survive them. To the extent that no one can wholly
believe this any more, those of us who can remember having believed it once are likely to find our minds curiously
mixed: at one moment yes, at another no. But with the
young this may not be true; and so their minds are single;
they do not look ahead because there is nothing to see,
and they do not look behind because only ruins-ghosts
of worlds-are there; they look at the present moment,
and have their own secret way of penetrating its mysteries,
which seem to be for them alone.
If, however, we are mixed of mind we oscillate between
belief and despair: more often than not, I suspect, believing as we did before that the foundations of being
are somehow firm. And better yet, bound to remain so.
For there is something in the mind that cannot be satisfied with less than the prospect of infinite duration,
whether it be of life, or the earth, or the stars, or simply
everything. Let me confess at any rate that this is true
for me. I hear that the earth is six billion years old,
and that is not enough for me. I hear that it has a few
billion years ahead of it, and I shudder at the thought
that they are not innumerable. There was a queer cornfort for me in a chance remark I once heard Harlow
Shapley make-a parenthetical remark, for he was really
interested in something else-concerning the age of the
earth. He said it was roughly as old as the great stars
�December 1971
in Orion, compared to which I had always assumed
that our planet was a newcomer in the universe. Childishly
I was proud and pleased, though I did not risk my happiness by asking him how long he thought either we or
Orion would last: I was afraid he knew, and could name
the term.
The terror of being lost in the ocean of time is something like another terror to which many of us have grown
accustomed. The size of the universe has become so
unimaginable, what with the discovery of galaxies too
distant and too numerous even to count, that space can be
a terror too, particularly if we hold on to the notion that
what is there was once created, and still is kept in view
by an intelligence whose location it is no longer possible
to have sensible ideas about. Yet how to abandon all
thought of that intelligence, even though we cannot even
frame the questions of who, and what, and where? So
I said once in a poem I called The God of Galaxies.
The god of galaxies has more to govern
Than the first men imagined, when one mountain
Trumpeted his anger, and one rainbow,
Red in the east, restored them to his love.
One earth it was, with big and lesser torches,
And stars by night for candles. And he spoke
To single persons, sitting in their tents.
Now streams of worlds, now powdery great whirlwinds
Of universes far enough away
To seem but fog-wisps in a bank of night
So measureless the mind can sicken, tryingNow seas of darkness, shoreless, on and on
Encircled by themselves, yet washing farther
Than the last triple sun, revolving, shows.
The god of galaxies-how shall we praise him?
For so we must, or wither. Yet that word
Of words? And where to send it, on which night
Of winter stars, of summer, or by autumn
In the first evening of the Pleiades?
The god of galaxies, of burning gases,
May have forgotten Leo and the Bull.
But God remembers, and is everywhere.
He even is the void, where nothing shines.
He is the absence of his own reflection
In the deep gulf; he is the dusky cinder
Of pure fire in its prime; he is the place
Prepared for hugest planets; black idea,
Brooding between fierce poles he keeps apart.
Those altitudes and oceans, though, with islands
Drifting, blown immense as by a wind,
And yet no wind; and not one blazing coast
Where thought could live, could listen-oh, what
word
Of words? Let us consider it in terror,
And say it without voice. Praise universes
Numberless. Praise all of them. Praise Him.
The two terrors differ in one important respect: if
there is too much space, there is too little time, and the
second terror is probably worse than the first. But both
are at times intolerable to any mind (always excepting
the young), and both of them therefore breed inconsistencies in us. In spite of what we think we know we
go on assuming. an intelligible cosmos, just as we go on
assuming that there is all the time in the world-an
ancient phrase that comes in patly here. In other words,
we go on writing psalms, and in some of them we betray
our faith that the world will last indefinitely long: will
forever and ever be there for minds to n1casure and for
souls to love. At least there are moments when we do
this, in between moments when we listen to the prophets
and accept their words of doom. For the time beinganother ancient phrase-this is our predicament. And, it
may be, this is our distinction.
How then shall we praise a world that may not last?
What would be praiseworthy about it if it were unable
to endure? But say it may last. What then? Shall we
have been silent on the entire subject? With half our
minds could we not have speculated upon the possibility
that the world is durable after all, and infinitely so? My
final poem, written incidentally for this occasion, com~
menccs there.
How praise a world that will not be
Forever? Stillness then. Time
Sleeping, never to wake. No prince's
Kiss. No prince. Praise? Even
The echo of it dies, even
Memory, in the last brain
That loved it, withers away, and mind
Not even dozes, being done
With work that mattered not at all.
How then praise nothing?
Yet that day
Has never dawned. Here is the world
So beautiful, being old, so
Mindful of its maker-what
Of him when that day comes-you say
It must-what then of him, and of this
Place so crowded with his creaturesWith us all-oh, praise the time
That's left, praise here and now, praise
Him that by his own sweet will
May suddenly remake the world
Forever, ever, ever, ever.
Mark Van Doren, poet, author, and teacher, is a graduate of The
University of Illinois and Columbia University. During the 1920's
he was the literary editor of The Nation. He was a lecturer at St.
John's College from 1937 to 1957 and a member of the Board of
Visitors and Governors from 1943 to 1953. In 1939 he was awarded
the Pulitzer Prize for his Collected Poems. He is the author of
(among other hooks) Liberal Education. In May, 1959, he was named
an Honorary Fellow of St. John's College.
5
�On The Study Of Politics In A
Liberal Education*
By MARTIN DIAMOND
W.
begin by agreeing with what St. John's College and Mr. Klein and Mr. Strauss have taught us, that
liberal education consists in "studying with the proper care
the great books which the greatest minds have left behind."' We know also that the angle of approach to
those great books must vary according to the nature of
what is being studied. My concern here is primarily with
the angle of approach appropriate to the liberal study of
politics.
Let us begin from a solid foundation: Who pays? Who
foots the bill for education? There are no free schools.
Someone always has to supply the books, real estate, food,
shelter, wages-the necessary eqnipment. And, even more,
someone always has to supply the young who are to be
educated-the necessary matter. Neither the necessary
equipment nor the necessary matter belong as of right
to the educators; on the contrary, the physical academy
and the young always belong as of right to someone else.
Someone else always pays and provides, be it philanthropist, church, parent, or the ruling element in the polity.
Now what will the provider-payer ordinarily demand, and
what is he entitled to? Ordinarily he is quite likely to
demand too much; liberal education, whose claims arc
of course ultimately unlimited, is always in danger of
*Paper prepared for the 275th Anniversary Colloquium at St. Jolm's
College in Annapolis, Thursday, October 14, 1971. The author wishes
to thank the Henry Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom of Claremont Men's Co1lcgc for support.
I "What is Liberal Education?" in Leo Strauss, Liberalism: Ancient
and Modern (New York: Basic Books, 1968), p. 3. See also "On
Liberal Education," by Jacob Klein, in Proceedings ot the Colloquium
on The Liberal Arts Curriculum (published by St. Mary's College,
California, 1965), p. 4.
6
being made to conform to the interests and prejudices
of those who pay. But it is not enough to gratify ourselves
in smiting with easy academic rhetoric the philistine foe.
The other question remains: What is the payer entitled
to? Surely he is entitled to some form of fidelity to the
regime or, at the very least, "a decent respect to" its
fundamental opinions. These are the minimum terms
the payer is entitled to demand as a condition for supplying
the educators with his children and his substance. Some
balance, then, must be struck between the unlimited
claims of liberal education and the demands of the regime,
or at least some mode must be found of accommodating
those demands. Both justice and expediency demand
this; there is no earthly reason why the payer should pay
unless the balance is struck, and there is in fact no way
educators can get hold of the children and the substance
without the consent of the payer. It is therefore prudent
for liberal education to take the initiative in striking a
sound balance, a balance that makes possible a true
liberal education while also accommodating those who
pay.
take this prudential initiative means to give
to the regime and its opinions a central and respected
place in the liberal study of politics.2 The political situa2 This presupposes, of course, a decent regime. If the regime is
indecent, then open formal liberal education is impossible; teachers
and student::; will be able to proceed only covertly if at all. After all,
like the good man, the good professor cannot be a good citizen of an
indecent regime. But none of this has anything to do with our situation
here and now. We live in a country that defers to higher education,
clumsily perhaps, hut with an unprecedented1y lavish hand, and that
gives to liberal education an astonishing freedom, even encourage·
ment, to pursue its ends.
�December 1971
tion of liberal education requires this. But not only expediency and justice, that is to say, political reasons, require this, but educational reasons as well require that
one begin the liberal study of politics with the respectful
consideration of one's own regime. There are four such
related reasons. All three turn on the following view: that
the reasonable educational procedure is to begin with the
familiar and then render it problematic. This is especially
the case with political education. Nowadays all will readily
agree with making political things problematic, especially
the most revered things, since it is the doctrine of the
age to do so; moreover, liberal education does indeed require that every opinion be treated ultimately as lacking
in authority, that is, as being problematic, until tested
and endorsed by reason. What is not so clear today is why
you must start respectfully with the familiar.
First, respectful consideration of the familiar is required
because the study of politics is a practical inquiry, one
aimed at producing practical wisdom. That is, it does
not aim primarily at achieving a purely theoretical understanding but at making students capable of just political
judgments and actions. 3 If only theoretical understanding
were the aim, and not the capacity to judge and act,
then the student of politics would not need to know anything at all about his own country; knowledge of Timbuctoo or of life in any remote time and place could
supply the "premises and subject matter" for the theoretical understanding of politics. But the whole point of
the liberal study of politics is precisely to be able to deal
with one's own country, to improve it, to shape it in some
image of justice. The first and foremost political question
is what should we do? "The relation of man to his citizenship, to the obligations that flow from his being a citizen,
a member of a po1itical community-this relation is one
of the great and standing themes of all classical
philosophy." 4 His citizenship, l1is political community;
not just citizenship and political community in general,
but the particular time and place that belongs to him.
For us this means that the liberal study of politics requires a full consideration of the country that belongs
to us.
3 This does not mean that teachers and students are to he activists,
nor that they must study and discuss chiefly the political issues
of the day, Rather, the position argued here offers a mean between
the arid "value-free" political science of positivism and the mere
assertiveness of the new demands for a "relevant" society-changing
political science. Against the former, I would argue that political
science is ludicrous if not pointed to the questions of justice and
nobility and "what we ought to do." But as against the latter, I
would argue that political science professors (and their students) have
no necessary competence (let alone the right) to deal authoritatively
with immediate questions of public policy, T11at is, they lack the
experience and prudence necessary to wise political action; indeed,
professors and students may 8S such be peculiarly unfitted for wise
political action. But what they can and must do is to engage in the
liberal study of politics tha.t forms the capacity in men to judge and
act justly as citizens.
·!Jacob Klein, "On Liberal Education," p. 7.
SECOND,
the natural starting point for learning to
love what is just and noble is the love of one's own. The
aim of the liberal study of politics is to be able to love
justice and nobility wherever and in whomever it is
found. But humans do not begin with that capacity; they
are nahually inclined to love what is close to and belongs
to them. That is where the ordinary human passions
begin; it is good teaching to begin with what the student
already loves or at least is concerned about, and hence
what "grabs" him. But the teacher should not lay rude
hands on this parochial love; it contains what will make
something superior possible. The ascent from opinion
to philosophical knowledge-the final aim of liberal education-should begin with proper reflection on what in
one's own ·is worthy of love. This means an inquiry into
what is just and hence truly lovable in one's own
country, an inquiry which points the student to the
task of perfecting his own regime and, ultimately, to the
question of what is just simply. (What other defensible
reason is there for teachers to cause students to question
the beliefs that they have received from their parents and
their country?)
Third, and closely related to the previous point, is what
I understand to be Aristotle's argument in the Ethics:
namely, that politics cannot be taught properly unless
the student brings to the study a decent stock of received opinions and habits. There can be no ascent
without some such solid starting-point: Political reasoning cannot start from questions and proceed to con~
victions; it must start from convictions in order to be
elevated to philosophic quesions. 5 These convictions are
not to he ignored or rudely challenged; the student is
not to empty his mind of the received opinions, nor is
he to he made to question the very basis of political
morality. He is not to begin by questioning whether the
things he believes to be good are good at all; this
would plunge the student into bottomless questioning
from which he cannot rise. (Surely we have all been
guilty parties as teachers or students to such binges of
nihilistic questionings; Aristotle soberly warns us to avoid
such fruitless pursuits.) Rather, beginning with whatever
the student already takes to be good in his own regime,
the educational task is to consider affirmatively what that
good is, how it works, what its implications are, etc. The
student is to be led from and through the received
opinions toward the full explication of what he believes.
To explicate fully means to develop precisely the meaning,
nuances, the grounds, and implications of opinion. When
;, Although the Republic asks questions which Aristotle does not
openly raise in the Ethics or Politics, on this issue what Socrates docs
is similar to Aristotle's procedure: TI1e dialectic needs as its startingpoint the decent opinion of Cephalus regarding speaking truth and
paying one's dehts. Each actual decent polity supplies the foundation
for the inquiry into what a complete polity would be.
7
�The College
that affirmative development of what the opmwn is, 1s
completed, the deeper questions of why the opinion is
good will have been answered or will then be in a
position to be answered. The full explication of received
decent opinions culminates in philosophic understanding.
Finally, the aim of the political art is to achieve through
reason the regulation of interests and passions; that is, the
political art is the "charioteer'' in action in the public
arena. Since politics seeks a kind of transcendence of
the bodily and spirited demands, the liberal study of
politics seeks to make the transcendence possible. But
there is a danger to be avoided, namely, the danger of a
spurious and delusive sense of transcendence that con~
sists in being able to mouth the formulae of political
reason while remaining destitute of the capacity to govern
one's passions. The danger may be increased when political
study begins with the remote and unfamiliar; it is easy to
be wise about the passions of others. The danger may
perhaps be lessened by the careful study of one's own
political things; it is harder but more rewarding to become wise about one's own fathers. The wisdom thus
gained is an earned and action-guiding transcendence of
one's own prejudices and passions.
Now
these are general reasons why the liberal
study of politics should commence in the sympathetic
consideration of one's own regime. The nature of the
American regime supplies compelling particular reasons
why liberal education in America should follow that
course. These may be stated as four reasons.
First, the defining American experience was the founding of the republic. The major themes of the American
polity were "writ large" in that event. Now founding is
the greatest of political acts; it comprehends all the others.
Moreover, the American founding is unusual in that its
record was quite fully preserved for us; it is there in the
form of writings, "great books," as it were. Accordingly,
we have available to us in our own past, in our own
language, in the words of our own "fathers," instruction
of a profound kind regarding the nature of political things.
Second, this instruction that the study of the Found·
ing affords has peculiarly the merit that it reveals the
relationship between practice and theory (in the modern
sense). In much of political behavior, the principles that
underlie the action are often concealed or inchoate or
confused; but in the American Founding the rival
principles are quite clearly and fully stated, and are in·
telligible to the student when properly presented. He
learns to see very great republican statesmen at work,
adapting principles to circumstances and molding circum~
stances in the direction of principles. This is edifying
political instruction and enables the student to see with
greater clarity the principles that make intelligible the
political life he sees about him in America today.
8
Third, the American political experience tests one of
the great questions of modernity-the problem of democracy. The old-fashioned view was quite correct: The
American regime is indeed an "experiment in democracy";
Tocqueville rightly understood that America was where
the question of democracy was being tested. The student,
therefore, has 11in his bones" the experience with which
to make meaningful to him the problem of democracy.
The proper study of American writings and events opens
the student to broader reflections on that problem.
Fourth, to enlarge upon the preceding point, the
American regime is a paradigm of modernity. It is in a way
the modern regime. The American things are peculiarly
instinct with the virtues and vices that modern men must
understand. To study the American regime is therefore
to begin to consider the conflict between the moderns
and the ancients. This is especially so when the Founders
are studied because they openly grappled with that conflict
when it was, at least in part, a matter of choice; they
were thoughtful partisans of modernity. And if to consider the question between antiquity and modernity is
the necessary preparation today for us to consider philosophy, then the study of American political things
is almost indispensable to a liberal education. In any
event, such a study is likely to have a sobering effect on
the young student who becomes fascinated by antiquity,
which is all to the good. The question between the ancients
and the moderns is far too difficult and poignant to permit any glibness, to permit anything but the utmost
seriousness. One proper approach into that issue is through
an appreciation of modernity as manifested in our own
country.
recommendation that follows from all this is
clear: at the beginning if not at the center of the liberal
study of politics, for this time and place, must be the
respectful, supportive, and ultimately philosophic con·
sideration of the great writings and principles and history
of the American polity. Now this has a happy additional
advantage. It helps insure against a danger peculiarly im·
portant in modern mass higher education. When millions
go to colleges and universities, some of those who are
seeking a liberal education are unfortunately not capable
of it. As it were, the many and the few are now to be
found in each classroom. Liberal education, it must be
remembered, is strong stuff; it can injure those incapable
of handling its demands. Every teacher has had the experience (although not all know it) of unintentionally
injuring some of his students. Some shatter religious beliefs, others debunk sexual "mores," and others mock
the "values of the marketplace." Still other incautiously
or too loudly teach philosophic truths that cannot be
received with understanding and prudence by young students. The danger is not only that individual students
�December 1971
can be left disoriented, less decent, less capable of common sense; but the danger is on a large enough scale
now that the regime may be deprived of the kinds of
citizens it needs. 'l11is danger is averted, I believe, if the
sympathetic consideration of the American regime is
properly stressed in the teaching of politics. When this is
done, each student will be more likely to take from his
education what he is capable of receiving. Those students
who can go all the way will have been given sound
guidance; and those who inevitably "drop out" along
the way will have had their opinions and characters improved by what they were able to understand.
This no doubt has an "elitist" ring to it. But liberal
education cannot avoid an aristocratic implication; however, it is possible to understand this implication as appropriate to a democratic regime.
Liberal education is the ladder by which we try
to ascend from mass democracy to democracy as
originally meant. Liberal education is the
necessary endeavor to found an aristocracy within
democratic mass society. Liberal education reminds those members of a mass democracy who
have ears to hear, of human greatness. 6
The American tradition offers strong support for this
view. For example, Thomas Jefferson often spoke enthusiastically of a "natural aristocracy" and, indeed, considered it a great advantage of democracy that it elevated
to high position men of the natural rather than of the
artificial aristocracy. In justifying an educational scheme
he had devised, which would have sent only "the most
promising subjects" to college, Jefferson argued that
Worth and genius would thus have been sought
out from every condition of life and completely
prepared by education for defeating the competition of wealth and birth for public trusts.7
In short, the American materials permit, indeed necessitate-this is their merit-the kind of reflection on democracy that is proper to a liberal education.
,,
,,
*
IN
responding on behalf of political science to the
question, "what-and how-should a liberal arts college
teach," I have argued that the liberal study of politics,
while opening the student to the just and noble simply,
6
7
Leo Strauss, op. cit., p. 7.
Quoted in Jacob Klein, op. cit., p. 8. Jefferson earlier had put a
similar point in very h1unt language: "By this means twenty of the
best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish annually" (Query XIV
in his Notes on the State of Virginia) .
should commence in the sympathetic understanding of
the American regime. But, as is no doubt well known
to you, not all political scientists take this approach
to the matter. Or to put it another way: Most would
disagree. Given the dominant themes of contemporary
American politic0J science, most would say something as
follows: "There isn't anything 'just or noble' to aim at;
and, in any event, it hasn't anything to do with us because
we, as political scientists, can't know what it is; moreover,
the sympathetic study of the American constitutional
order is emphatically not the way to get to the 'just and
noble,' whatever that is." In short, American political
science manages to combine a continued adherence to
the positivist distinction between "facts and values" with
a hostility to or contempt for the fundamental principles
of the American political order. Such a political science is
profoundly mistaken, I believe, and can offer no guidance
to liberal education; which is no doubt why in fact
political science has been conspicuously so little heard
from on that subject during the last generation.
First, as to the hostility to or contempt for the American
constitutional order. American political science, in large
measure, rests upon the view that the Founders' consti~
tutional ~'frame of government" is either irrelevant_ or
harmful: irrelevant because it has been outmoded by the
informal workings of history; harmful because it places
unnecessary and even crippling restraints on the democratic process. This is not the place to argue these matters
out. I must leave them at the level of assertion as to the
fact, while I offer two reflections on why it is the fact.
The contempt and hostility depend upon a theory of
democracy that is, in n1y opinion, inferior to the understanding of, say, Madison and Tocqueville. That is, the
contemporary view is insufficiently appreciative of why
democracy is problematic and, hence, of what is necessary
to guard against its defects. Being insufficiently aware
ofwhatcan go wrong, contemporary political science tends
to ignore or to be hostile to the moderating and restraining character of the constitutional system. Accordingly,
it cannot see in the American regime the foundation
for the liberal study of politics.
Tms hostility to the regime rests also npon an
utopian theory of progress. The idea of utopia or progress
makes it impossible to be faithful to one's present regime,
or even to wish to live at peace with it. Every actual
regime must be transformed and superseded until the
final conflict has resulted in the final regime (if that word
could then still be used). On this view, politics cannot
consist. merely in dealing with the evils of the day within
the existing political framework, but must always point
toward the transformation of the regime itself. This is a
particularly rich source of contemporary mischief. The
particular mischief that concerns us here is the view that
9
�The College
education, therefore, must be the midwife not of thought
but of historical change, of progress. Education must
be in the service of Utopia. This view rightly leads to
hostility toward the American regime for the good reason
that that regime is profoundly and effectively turned
against the utopian tcnclcncy. 8 But if a sympathetic understanding of the American regime is the necessary startingpoint for the liberal study of politics, then a political
science incJpable of that appreciation is likewise incapable
of guiding liberal education.
Contemporary American political science is incapable of
guiding liberal education for a still more important reason.
Not only does it foreswear the proper starting-point, but
it also denies the traditional end of the liberal study of
politics-namely, an understanding of political things
that enables one to judge and act justly and nobly; moreovcr1 it offers to liberal education no serious alternative
end of its own. It denies the traditional end of purpose
and is unable to supply one of its own, because of an adherence to positivism or, still more radically, to historicism,
both of which deny the "cognitive" status of ends or
"values" like justice and nobility. It cannot speak to the
proper purpose of liberal education, or of anything else
for that matter, because it denies the possibility of
proper purposes or of knowledge of them. Contemporary
American political science abdicates the study or purpose
or ends and consigns them to the realm of "values"
which, according to the positivist "fact-value" distinction,
is radically separate from the realm of reasoned argument, that is to say, from the realm of education. Such
a science has emphatically abdicated its station as guide
to liberal education. Moreover, it is a science that has degraded itself because its view of "values" -that they are
merely the expression of subrational determinants of
human behavior-denies to the political the unique element that constitutes its being. Politics is constituted
by the rivalry of human opinion regarding the just and
noble things. That is to say, politics is an expression
of the uniquely human capacity to reason about such
matters. (And the liberal study of politics consists in
learning to reason well about such matters.) But the
fact-value distinction denies the authenticity of the
human capacity to reason about justice anci nobility;
what passes for such reasoning, it is argued, is mcrc1y
rationalization that has its true causes in the subterranean
social, psychological, and economic forces that determine
the content of human thought. Thus, in denying the
clement that gives to the political its being, the fact-value
distinction is fatal to political science. But it is the
veritable spawning ground of the other social sciences:
They rush to fill the gap created when political science
improvidently abdicates its proper subject matter. Hence
R The frenzied criticism of America by the contemporary Leftconsider, for example, Marcusc-is due precisely to the obdurately
effective resistance of the American regime to its aspirations.
10
the triumphs of sociology, psychology, economics, the
social sciences, the behavioral sciences. (Perhaps there has
been one more tiny triumph in the title given to this
panel session: "Politics & Society," Why "and Society"?
What aspect of "Society" is worth a moment's consideration that does not have primarily a political character
or bearing?)
But if guidance for the liberal study of politics is not
to be found in the dominant American political science,
in what kind of political science is it to be sought? The
answer is easy to give, at least here at St. John's-Aris~
totelian political science, a political science that is above
all an inquiry into what are proper pnrposes. Fortunately
for me, it is not necessary in this place or on this
occasion to attempt to give an account of what Aristotelian
political science is. It sufficed for present purposes simply
to have pointed towards the kind of political science that
is necessary for the liberal study of politics.
*
*
*
*
To transcend one's time requires first to be fully of it.
The road to political philosophy lies through the decent
opinions of one's own regime. The liberal study of politics
requires a political science that can guide the student
safely along that road.
Martin Diamond, the former Burnet C. Wohlford Professor of
American Political Institutions, Claremont Men's College and Claremont Graduate School, is now Professor of Political Science, Northern
Illinois University. He is co-author of The Democratic Republic:
An Iutroduction to American Government, 1966, and is the author
of many articles and essays, including "Democracy and the Federalist:
A Reconsideration of the Framers' Intent," American Political Science
Review, 1959; a chapter on The Federalist in History of Political
Philosophy, 1963; and "Conservatives, Liberals, and the Constitution"
in Left, Right, and Center, 1967.
�NEWS ON THE CAMPUSES
ST. JOHN'S CELEBRATES
AN ANNIVERSARY
pated in all of the panels during the
three day colloquium.
On Saturday, Martin Meyerson,
President of the University of Pennsylvania, spoke on "The I vary Tower of
Babel" at the convocation outside
Woodward Hall. An academic procession composed of St. John's College
Faculty, students, alumni, and the
Board of Visitors and Governors along
with the representatives of over seventy
colleges, universities, and learned societies, began the special afternoon
event. Greetings were read by Miss
Helen Anastaplo, Class of 1972, for the
students; Robert A. Goldwin, Dean
in Annapolis, and William A. Darkey,
Dean in Santa Fe, for the Faculty;
William R. Tilles, President of the
Alumni Association, for the alumni;
Arland F. Christ-Janer, President of
the College Entrance Examination
Board and former Treasurer and Vice
President of St. John's College,. for
the colleges, universities, and learned
societies; and the Honorable Blair Lee,
Lt. Governor of Md., for the State.
President Richard D. Weigle read
a congratulatory telegram from President Richard M. Nixon which praised
the College for its "proud role in the
historv of our nation," and noted that
"gene~ations of its graduates have richly
contributed to the development of our
culture and to the well-being of our
society." President Nixon added that
St. John's "has remained steadfast in
its commitment to individual selffulfillment"
To assist the College in celebrating
its special occasion, the Mayor of Annapolis, Roger Moyer, the Executive of
Anne Arundel County, Joseph Alton,
Jr., and the Governor of the State of
Maryland, Marvin Mandel, proclaimed
Saturday, October 16, 1971, as "St
John's College Day" in their respective
governmental districts.
Additional activities during the anniversary celebration included Homecoming for the alumni and a meeting of
the Board of Visitors and Governors.
St. John's College in Annapolis celebrated its 275th anniversary with a
concert, an academic colloquium, and
a convocation on October 12th through
October 16th this year.
The College was founded as King
William's School in July, 1696, when
the House of Burgesses in the Colony
of Maryland passed and Governor
Francis Nicholson signed the Petitionary Act to "our Dread Sovereigne,"
King William III.
A concert by the renowned J uilliard
String Quartet began the anniversary
festivities on Tuesday, October 12th.
It was sponsored by Miss Caroline
Newton as a memorial to the late
Victor Zuckerkandl, a member of the
St. John's College Faculty from 1948
to 1964.
The theme of the academic colloquium was "What-and How-Should
A Liberal Arts College Teach?" Three
panels met during the week; they were
"Literature and Language," "Politics The Juilliard String Quartet performed works by Richter, Verdi, and Beethoven at the concert
opening the 275th anniversary celebration activities in Annapolis.
and Society," and "Mathematics and
Science." The panelists also participated in a seminar on Plato's Mcno
and visited regular St. John's College
seminars.
Papers were presented before the
panels met and were the basis for discussion. Their authors were Martin
Diamond, Professor of Political
Science, Northern Illinois University;
Holger Olaf Nygard, Professor of
English, Duke University; Alfred
Morton Bark, Professor of Physics,
University of California at Irvine; and
Jacob Klein, Tutor, St. John's College
in Annapolis.
z
Near the end of each of the two- ~
hour meetings, the discussion was open ~
to the audience. Over 20 distinguished oi
educators, writers, and editors partici- i
11
�The College
COLLOQUIUM PANELISTS
Panelists at the 275th Anniversary
Colloquium included (left foreground,
clockwise) : Gertrude Himmelfarb,
Kenneth Eble, William Fishback,
Holger Nygard, Jacob Klein, Mark
Roelofs, Frederic Ness, John Millis,
Alfred Bork, Robert Spaeth, Norman
Podhoretz, Alexander Bickel, George
Anastaplo, Irving Kristol, Winfree
Smith, Martin Diamond, Robert
Russell, Stillman Drake, Rogers Albritten, Robert Goldwin, and Leon
Kass.
Other Tutors participating in the
Colloquium were Robert Bart, Eva
Brann, Howard Fisher, John Kieffer,
Samuel Kutler, Hugh McGrath,
Edward Sparrow, and Elliott Zuckerman.
Panel topics were "Literature and
Language," "Politics and Society,"
"Mathematics and Science," and ' The
St. John's College Seminar."
1
Photos by M. E. Warren
Students, faculty, and other guests listen intently at the "Politics and Society" panel in the
Conversation Room in the Key Memorial Hall.
275TH ANNIVERSARY COLLOQUIUM
Mark Roelofs (left), A1fred Bork, and Jacob
Klein listen to discussion during a meeting of
the panels.
12
Alfred Bark, Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of California at Irvine,
mulls over a point with Edward Sparrow, Tutor.
�December 1971
Charles Finch (left) and Russell Leavenworth 1e8d the academic procession from Francis Scott
Key Memorial Hall to Woodward Hall.
Senior Helen Anastaplo brings greetings from
the students.
275TlH ANNIVERSARY CONVOCATION
Delegates from colleges, universities, and learned societies line the front walk at Woodward
Hall during the convocation ceremonies.
Martin Meyerson, President of the University
of Pennsylvania, speaks on "The Ivory Tower
of Babel."
13
�The College
NEw "ToWER BuiLDING"
DEDICATED IN 275TH
ANNIVERSARY OBSERVANCE
AT SANTA FE
The dedication of the new Tower
Building, an address by Norman
Cousins, a concert by the College
Chamber Orchestra and the opening
of an exhibition of works by Eliot
and Aline Porter were scheduled for
the December 3rd-4th weekend in
Santa Fe. Invitations were sent to
friends of the College throughout the
Southwest for the 275th anniversary
observance.
The Friday evening concert was held
in the Peterson Student Center. There
was a meeting of the Board of Visitors
and Governors Saturday morning and a
buffet luncheon at noon.
The 2:30 p.m. Convocation and
Dedication Ceremony featured an
ad~ ~
dress by Mr. Cousins, former editor of 2
Saturday Review and a member of the
275th Anniversary Campaign National
Committee.
After tours of the new building and
the display of Eliot Porter's photographs of Greece and Turkey and Aline
Porter's paintings, guests enjoyed a reception in the Peterson Student
Center.
The new three-story building, design by architect William R. Buckley
of Santa Fe, is modified territorial
style similar to the other structures on
the seven-year-old campus. There is a
bell tower with a 740-pound bell on
top and a portal on the sides facing
the campus plaza.
The Tower Building provides space
for administratives offices and a large
section of the College Library. It relieves classroom space used for ad~
ministrative offices in the Evans
The new Tower Building is given a snow initiation previous to its dedication in Santa Fe. The
bell was placed in the tower at a later date.
Santa Fe, former chairman of the
jobs as yard work, baby sitting, tutor-
Board of Visitors and Governors, and
Mr. John Murchison of Dallas, Texas.
The 18,000 square feet of floor space
ing, repair, cleaning, and driving.
The advisory committee includes:
houses offices for the president, vice
president, dean, assistant deans, registrar, treasurer, business manager, admissions director, director of the
Graduate Institute in Liberal Education, and public information director,
as well as a conference room, supply
area, space for printing and mailing
activities, and up to 25,000 volumes in
notices of the serviee in its monthly
the library section, including three important music collections.
mailings.
Sewll & Stanton Contractors of
Santa Fe was the general contractor.
ST. JoHN's HosTs
FENCING TouRNAMENT
SANTA FE OPENS STUDENT
EMPLOYMENT OFFICE
Science Hall, and also frees one
student residence building which was
used for faculty offices and a portion
of the library.
Gifts totaling $550,000 for this
project were contributed by the Fleisch-
citizens
mann Foundation of Reno, Nevada;
College. The office advertised in the
the Kresge Foundation of Detroit,
Michigan; Mrs. Walter Driscoll of
newspaper and mailed notices that students were available for such part time
14
Vice President J. Burchenal Ault,
Buildings and Grounds Superintendent
Stanley Nordstrum and Treasurer Kirk
C. Tuttle of the College, and Mr. John
Dcndahl, Mrs. Daniel T. Kelly, Jr.,
Mrs. Abe Silver and Mr. E. R. "Ned"
Wood of the community. Mr. Wood
is an officer of the First National Bank
of Santa Fe which offered to include
Senior Seth Cropsey set up a Student Employment Office at the Santa
Fe campus this fall with the assistance
of an advisory committee of local
and administrators at the
St. John's in Santa Fe was the host
on November 13-l4th for a five-state
invitational fencing tournament, be-
lieved to be the first of its kind ever
held in New Mexico. Fifty-one fencers
from Texas, Colorado, Arizona, California and New l\!Jexico competed in
beginner and advanced divisions.
The tournament was conducted by
Mr. Istvan Fehervary, Director of Student Activities at St. John's.
�December 1971
LIBRARY AssociATES
COMPLETE THIRD YEAR OF
BooK-AUTHOR LUNCHEONS
The St. John's College Library Associates in Santa Fe have completed
their third successful year of community Book and Author Luncheons.
The noon time programs at the
downtown La Fonda hotel were
started in 1969. The thirteenth
luncheon was held November 12th
with Eliot Porter, E. Boyd and Stan
Steiner as speakers.
The purpose of the series is to give
people in Santa Fe the opportunity to
hear and m,cct authors from this area
and to help build the St. John's library
collectwn. The luncheons are directed
by the chairman of the Librarv Associates Committee, Richard :~/Iartin
Stern, who also is president of the
Mystery Writers of America. Some
of the leading writers of the Southwest have donated their time to participate in the programs.
National Committee for St. John's
275th Anniversary Campaign, lives
with his wife at San Patricio, New
Mexico. She is a sister of Andrew
Wyeth. Their paintings have been exhibited in major museums throughout the nation.
The Porters are the parents of a
summer '71 graduate of St. John's,
Patrick Porter. Eliot Porter is internationally known for his outdoor color
photography and books on conservation, including The Place No One
Knew: Glen Canyon, Galapagos, and
In Wildness is the Preservation of the
World.
Mrs. Porter is an outstanding
painter, influenced both by her native
New England and the Southwest,
where they have lived for many years.
The gallery also exhibited a collection of wood block prints by Shiko
Munakata, "Views of the Tokaido"
under the auspices of the International
Exhibitions Foundation, Washington,
D. C.
TITOS VANDIS VISITS ANNAPOLIS
Titos Vandis, star of the film
"Never on Sunday" and several Broad~
way productions, recently performed
parts from Greek comedies and tragedies in Annapolis.
He played the messengers from
Aeschylus' "The Persians/' Sophocles'
"Oedipus Rex," and Euripides' "lphi~
geneia in Aulis." He also directed and
appeared with six St. John's students
in a thirty minute scene from Aristophanes' ''Lysistrata.''
Following the performance the
R.A.M. Film Society showed "Never
on Sunday."
Mr. Vandis has starred in Broadway
productions such as "On A Clear Day
You Can See Forever," "11)'3 Darling"
"Man o f La ~1ancha," and "Zorba."
'
'
l
HURD, WYETH, PoRTER EXHIBITS
AT SANTA FE GALLERY
. Fall shows at the St. John's Gallery
m Santa Fe featured the work of Peter
Hurd, his wife Henriette Wyeth, and
Eliot and Aline Porter.
Hurd, who is a member of the
ADULT COMMUNITY SEMINARS
HELD IN ANNAPOLIS
The Adult Community Seminars for
Fall 1971 have been held in Annapolis
wrth Tutors Geoffrey Comber, Alvin
Main, Nicholas Maistrellis, John Sarkissian, and Robert L. Spaeth leading
the discussions.
The readings have been "The Starry
Messenger" and "Letter to the Grand
Duchecs Christiana" by Galileo, Elements of Chemistry by Lavoisier,
Ongu1 of Specres by Darwin, selected
poems by Donne, selected sonnets by
Shakespeare, selected poems by Yeats
and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Pru:
frock" by Eliot.
PRESS Cum HoNoRs
PRESIDENT WEIGLE
The Santa Fe Press Club awarded
a plaque to President Weigle on
October Jst for his enrichment of the
Santa Fe community through St.
John's College. "Vv'e cite Dr. vVeigle
for offering our young people the
chance to be active learners to read
'
'
to question, to talk and to listen,"
said Club President H. D. Woodruff,
and ''for enriching Santa Fe with a
beautiful college that teaches great
ideas from great books." Referring to
Dr. Weigle's Asian experience, Woodruff added, 'Tic knows the Far East
as well as the Far West; he bring;
the wisdom of the ancient and modern
worlds together into a community of
learning."
'l11e awards are presented monthly
by the club to recognize people making outstanding contributions to the
positive development of Santa Fe.
ANNAPOLIS CAMPUS NEWS
Douglas Allanbrook, Miss Eva
Brann, Thomas K. Simpson, and
Edward J. Sparrow, Jr., were recently
appointed to the Addison E. Mullikii1
Tutorships, and Robert A. Goldwin,
Dean, was appointed to the . first
Richard Hammond Elliott Tutorship.
Douglas Allanbrook and Miss Wye
Jamison, Tutors, were married on Friday, November 26, 1971.
The new address for Mr. and Mrs.
Laurence Berns, Tutors, is: The Pond,
56 Station Road, Haddenham, Ely,
Cambs, England.
Geoffrey Comber, Assistant Dean
and Tutor, and Tutors Harvey Flaumenlraft and J
olrn Sarkissian served on
a 275th Anniversary Celebration subcommittee charged with the responsibility of choosing colleges and universities to be represented at the anniversary convocation in October.
William DeHart, Tutor, and Mrs.
Mary P. Felter, Director of Public Information~ were co-chairmen of the
1971-72 United Fund campaign; they
surpassed last year's goal.
Clrarles T. Elzey, Treasurer, and
James E. Grant~ Business Manager,
were hosts for the quarterly meeting of
the Maryland Association of College
Business Officers at the College on
November 17th. Over 47 business office
personnel from 22 Maryland colleges
attended the meeting; it was the
largest gathering of the personnel in
the association's recent history.
15
�The College
In July the latest Rand McNally
publication in the Public Affairs Series
edited by Robert A. Goldwin was published. It is entitled How Democratic
Is America? Response to the New Left
Challenge. Mr. Goldwin lectured in
Santa Fe at the Graduate Institute on
August 1st, and on September 8th he
read a paper on Locke entitled "The
Politics of Self-Interest" at a meeting
of the American Political Science Association in Chicago. He is currently
planning a trip to the Soviet Union,
Bulgaria, and France under the auspices
of the Comparative and International
Education Society.
John S. Kieffer, Tutor, directed the
February Freshman Program and led
the seminar for that program during
the summer. He will also direct the
February Freshman again this year. Ile
continues to research files of Scott Buchanan in support of Stringfellow
Barr's projected history of the foundation of the new program at the College.
Jacob Klein, Tutor, gave a lecture
entitled "Plato's 'Ion'" at Catholic
University of America in Washington,
D. C., on November II th. He also
participated in a seminar on Plato's
"Sophist" the next day with University
graduate students.
Russell E. Leavenworth, on leave
from his position as Professor of
English at Fresno State College in
California, is serving as Associate
Di~
rector of Development. His daughter
Natalie is a sophomore at the College
in Santa Fe.
Julius Rosenberg, Director of Development, was chairman of the Professional Division (Anne Arundel)
County campaign for the United Fund.
College Nurse Juliana Rugg is on
the Anne Arundel County Board of
Planned Parenthood.
Robert L. Spaeth, Tutor, and his
senior math class were filmed by
WBAlrTV, an N.B.C. affiliate, for a
story on the College and the financial
crisis of private institutions of higher
education.
Edward G. Sparrow, Jr., Tutor, delivered a lecture entitled "Jesus of
Nazareth: Emmanuel and Lamb of
16
God" on October 15th at the new
Thomas Aquinas College in California.
COLLEGE LAUNCHES
ANNIVERSARY FuND
St. John's College in Annapolis and
in Santa Fe has launched its 275th
Anniversary Campaign Fund with a
goal of $15 million, President Richard
D. Weigle announced in November.
In making the announcement Dr.
Weigle also reported advanced gifts
and pledges of $5,818,185, representing
38% of the goal. Of this total, $1,460,462 has been designated for the Annapolis campus and $4,357,723 for the
Santa Fe campus.
The primary objectives of the threeyear drive on each campus are en-
dowed tutorships, lectureships, and
scholarships, as well as unrestricted
monies for current operating expenses.
Annapolis seeks to add $3.25 million
to its present $8.5 million endowment.
Santa Fe requires new substantial
permanent funds, and has set a goal
of $4.75 million.
The chairman of the National Committee for the campaign is Mr. Victor
G. Bloede III, Class of 1941, Chairman of the Board of Benton and
Bowles of New York City. Honorary
co-chairmen are Richard F. Cleveland
of Baltimore, Maryland; Paul Mellon
of Upperville, Virginia; and Mark Van
Doren of Falls Village, Connecticut.
All three are Honorary Fellows of the
College.
Mr. Paul D. Newland, Provost of
the Annapolis campus, notes that the
cost of a college education in the
United States has risen to an almost
prohibitive level and that gifts to endowment as well as current operating
budgets are absolutely necessary if independent colleges are to continue to
survive.
St. John's College in Annapolis is
included in the Annapolis City Historic District, and some of the funds,
he added, would he used to renovate
historic buildings on the campus.
Advance gifts and pledges have assured two small new buildings, one
on each campus, Dr. Weigle said. In
Santa Fe the Tower Building is being
completed this month to house administrative offices and part of the
Library. Gifts aggregating $550,000 for
this project have been contributed by
the Fleischmann Foundation of Reno,
Nevada; Kresge Foundation of Detroit,
Michigan; Mrs. Walter F. Driscoll of
Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Mr. John
Murchison of Dallas, Texas.
The Annapolis architectural plans
for the Harrison Health Center are
about to go out for bid. This structure,
which will also contain two faculty
apartments, is the gift of Mrs. John T.
Harrison of Green Farms, Connecticut,
in memory of her late husband, a
member of the Class of 1907.
Other major advance gifts and
pledges include a million dollars from
Mr. Paul Mellon; $1,250,000 from Mrs.
Duane L. Peterson of Baltimore, Maryland, for the Peterson Student Center
in Santa Fe; an endowed landscape
fund at Annapolis from Mrs. Carleton
Mitchell; and an endowed tutorship
at Annapolis established by bequest of
the late Mr. Richard Hammond Elliott
of Annapolis.
In addition the Annapolis campus
recently received an unrestricted gift
of $1,000 from the Thomas and Elizabeth Sheridan Foundation, Inc., of
Cockeysville, Maryland; an unrestricted
gift of $1,000 from the Sears-Roebuck
Foundation of Chicago, Illinois; and a
gift of $10,000 from the H. A. B. Dunning Foundation of Baltimore, Maryland, to establish the H. A. B. Dunning
Memorial Fund.
SANTA FE CAMPUS OFFERS
Two ADULT SEMINARS
St. John's offered two adult seminars
for Santa Fe residents this fall. "The
Individual and the State" is the subject
of the group meeting Tuesday evenings
from 8 to 10 p.m. with Tutor Samuel
E. Brown.
Dean William A. Darkey is leading
the seminar which meets Wednesday
afternoons at 2 p.m. The general topic
of this study is "Some Ways of Telling a Story."
�ALUMNI ACTIVITIES
pointmcnt, with far fewer attending
than anticipated. The meal was a fine
one and for the first time in many
years, was served as a sit-down meal.
The informal parties on Friday night
and on Saturday after the Dinner were
again successful, and offer the only
real chance for alumni to sit and talk
leisurely. All alumni were most appreciative of the opportunity to use
both the Chase-Stone Common Room
and the Coffeeshop area of McDowell
for these gatherings.
While the Convocation in the
middle of Saturday afternoon compli~ cated some of the Homecoming scheduling, the event itself was an attraction
for alumni and their wives and husbands. And the delegates in their academic regalia added a bright and festive
'note to the day.
1
Alumni greetings are read by Association Presi, .i·
dent William R. Tilles '59.
.;
HOMECOMING
1971
There have been larger crowds at
Homecomings, but seldom has a group
seemed to have a more enjoyable time.
That was really not smprising, for how
often can you celebrate your 275th
birthday? And then, too, the weather
was most cooperative.
Some alumni arrived early enough
in the week to attend some of the
Anniversary activities which took place
Tuesday through Friday. Others came
Saturday morning for the Alumni Seminars or the Graduate School discussion
with students.
By lunch time a fair crowd had
checked in, and the Convocation at
3 p.m. was well attended. A sufficient
group was present for the Annual
Meeting at 4 p.m., and of course by
the time of the Alumni Reception at
5:30 p.m., the maximum number of
alumni were present.
The Alumni Dinner was a disap-
CLASS REUNIONS
As part of the 275th Anniversary
Convocation on October 16th, the
members of the 60th, 50th, and 30th
anniversary classes were invited to participate in the academic procession.
Present from the Class of 1911 were
Clarence L. Dickinson, Wilbur L.
Koontz, and John L. Morris, and each
of these trim and hcartly gentlemen
marched from Francis Scott Key
Memorial Hall to the Library.
The Golden Anniversary Class of
1921, after a Friday night gathering
in Baltimore, mustered Franklin C.
Hall, Earl R. Keller, Elwood E.
Schafer, and Thomas B. Turner;
William P. Maddox was also present,
representing Pratt Institute. Before the
day was ovcr these members were
joined by JosephS. DiGiorgio, William
H. Y. Knighton, and Luther S. Tall.
The Class of 1941, the first to include what were then known as "new
7
o
~
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'
Mrs. Faye Pohllo '56 registers for Homecoming.
program" graduates, was represented
by Victor G. Bloede III, James H.
Clark, Henry D. Cubbage, George L.
McDowell, and Henry M. Robert III.
There were others celebrating at
Homecoming, of course, among them
the following members of the Class
of 1931: L. Jefferson Fields, Edward A.
Kimpel, Jr., William J. Klug, Jr., and
Rudolph Schmick.
The 25-year class, 1946, could gather
only two, George H. Daffer and Henry
T. Wensel, Jr., while 1951 was represented by D. Michael Brown, Larry
Childress, John D. Oosterhout, Robert
L. Parslow, and George Wend.
Armin Ben diner, N ana (May) Dealy,
Leonard C. Gore, Mary (Ryce) Ham,
Michael W. Ham, and Saral1 E. Robinson were the 1961-ers back after their
first decade as alumni.
Showing promising alumni spirit at
their first Homecoming were William
H. Buell, Holly Ann Carroll, and James
A. Cockey of the Class of 1971.
17
�The College
HOMECOMING
ACTIVITIES
Annual Meeting of the Alumni Association.
Bookstore conversation: from left,
Henry Wensel '46; Ernest Hein·
muller and William Ruhl, '42's.
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1921: Elwood Schafer and William Maddox.
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From left: Carey Jarman '17, J. Wesley Everett
'22, Ogle Warfield '19, John Noble '17.
275th Anniversary Convocation procession.
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�December 1971
High command discussion: President Tilles and Vice President
Bernard Gessner '27_
Alumni in Convocation procession: from left,
Earl Keller and Thomas Turner, both '21;
Wilbur Koontz and John I\1Iorris, 'll's; past
president Jack Carr '50; Clarence Dickinson -'11;
and past presidents Ogle Warfield '19 and
\Varren Bombardt '42.
Left to right: John Alexander '20, C. Edwin
Cockey '22, Mrs. Cockey, Ogle \Varfield '19.
John Ponndstone '62 (left), Temple Porter '62
and daughter, and Robert Thomas '63.
Alumni Board representatives John Oosterhout '51,
Myron Vi/o1barsht and John Williams, '50's.
19
�The College
Edward
J. Dwyer
Paul Mellon
William B. Athey
AWARD OF MERIT
One of the highlights of Homecoming 1971 was the Alumni Award of
Merit presentation. For the second
year, the Alumni Association selected
three recipients: William B. Athey '32,
Edward J. Dwyer '30, and Paul Mellon
'44.
The presentation took place during
the Homecoming Dinner on October
16th; Mr. Athey was the only recipient
able to be present for the ceremony.
The three citations read as follows:
Mr. Athey: "'!11c College's eminence
reflects his contributions both as a
member of the Board of Visitors and
Governors, and as esteemed adviser of
our Association."
Mr. Dwyer: "His professional achievements, and his distinguished service to
the College as a member of its Board
of Visitors and Governors, honor him
and this Association."
Mr. Mellon: "His country and the College are enriched because of his deep
concern for their cultural and educational excellence."
ALUMNI GIVING
Although a complete report of last
year's Alumni Annual Giving was
mailed in October, it seems appropriate to ca1l attention to certain aspects
of the Campaign record.
It was a record: $30,483 in unre-
20
stricted gifts from 30.5% of our
alumni. That exceeded the assigned
goal for the third consecutive year, and
the response was more than twice the
national average. Again, we offer our
most sincere congratulations to Chairman Jack L. Carr and the volunteers
who raised the money, and to the 883
alumni who gave it.
And so, flushed with our success, we
arc about to enter another campaign
year. This time, however, there has
been a new aspect added. As President
Weigle announced at Homecoming,
and as Provost Paul Newland mentioned in his letter to Annapolis alumni
last August, we are now in the 275th
Anniversary Campaign. The Alumni
Annual Giving Campaigns for the
coming three years, and indeed for the
past year, arc part of that Campaign.
"-'hat docs this mean to the average
alumnus? Genera11y, it will mean raising his level of giving to the Alumni
Annual Giving Campaign. In certain
cases it will mean making a substantial
additional contribution.
Rcmem bcr, when you arc asked to
make a gift to Alumni Annual Giving,
you are also being asked to help the
275th Anniversary Campaign. Respond
as generously as yon are able. And, if
yon wish to make an additional gift
toward any other of the goals listed in
the Campaign brochure, we will be
most gra tcful.
ANNUAL MEETING
Four members were elected to twoyear terms on the Alumni Association
Board of Directors during the Annual
Meeting at !Iomecoming. J eromc
Gilden '54, Mrs. L. Faye Polillo '56,
and vl'illiam W. Simmons '48 were
re-elected after serving one-year terms.
Miss Charlotte King '59 was elected for
her first term. In addition, Tutor Bryce
D. Jacobsen '42 was appointed to the
Board for one year.
The "~off-year" election was established to provide continuity on the
Board: eight directors are elected every
other year, and four on the alternate
years.
In other Association business, President William R. Tilles reported that
during the past year, the principal activities of the Association had been
Student Recruitment, the Counselling
Program for students, and fund raising.
The latter was carried out largely on
an individual member basis. \Vith the
revival of the Alumni Lecture Series,
Mr. Tilles believes the Association has
a worthwhile set of programs to help
the College.
Mr. Tilles paid special tribute to
Temple G. Porter '62 for developing
a recruitment kit to aid alumni and
others in interviewing prospective students, and to Mrs. Nancy Solibakkc
'58 for organizing a comprehensive program of student counselling.
�December 1971
CLASS NOTES
1928
J.
Edmund Bull, until his retirement i?
1968 a hank vice president in New York, IS
now executive director of the Steppingstone
Museum Association in northern Harford
County, Maryland. The Museum, devoted entirely to Americana, was established in July,
1970. Open only during the snmmcr months,
the Museum contains articles as diverse as
beer pails called "growlers" and a 'Nor1d War
I stocking knitting machine,
1932
Hugh Parker and his wife, after maintaining two homes for many years, have closed out
their abode in Bronxville, New York, and are
permanently in Bermuda. He says their home,
"21 Perches," is on Harrington Sound Road
between "Devil's Hole" and "Angel's Grotto,"
a position "my classmates will not find unusual." The Parkers urge any St. Johnnies
visiting Bermuda to look them up in the
'phone book.
Henry S. Shryrock, Jr., who retired in 1967
after 31 years as a statistician with the Bureau
of the Census ( 2 3 of those as assistant chief
of the Population Division), spent the summer
in Santiago, Chile. Mr. Shryock was a consultant 01ncl lecturer with the Centralamericano
de Demografia, a United Nations regional training and research center. His third book,
Methods and Materials of Demography, is being published this falL He is also a part-time
professorial lecturer with the Center for Population Research, Georgetown University,
1935
E. Roy Shawn, formerly a management consultant and corporate manager for several major
companies in the aerospace industry, has become Bnilding Operations and Business Administrator of Woods Memorial Presbyterian
Church, Severna Park, Maryland.
napolis and subsequently dean in Santa Fe, is
dean of the Faculty at Marlboro College in
Vermont.
1953
The Friday lecture in Annapolis on December 3rd was delivered by Robert G. Hazo.
Entitled "Political Decentralization," the lee·
ture ·was sponsored by the Alumni Association
as part of its Alumni Lecture Series.
1955
Paul A. Lowdenslager is a Ph.D, degree
date at the University of Dallas.
candi~
1958
Caroline (Baker) Brown, who holds an
M.S.VV. degree from Howard University and
who until recently was a casework supervisor
for the Family Service Association of Nassau
County, New York, has just accepted a new
position with the Suffolk County Youth Board.
The Repertory Theater of New Orleans in
September named as its third director Jacques
F. Cartier, founder of the Hartford (Conn.)
Stage Company and until 1968 its artistic
director. Until he and his wife Diana (Barry)
'56 move to New Orleans after January 1st,
Mr. Cartier has been dividing his time between
teaching and directing at C. W, Post College,
and hiring actors and technical workers for the
Repertory.
A card from the former Mary (Bittner)
O'Connor advises that she has remarried and
is now Mary (Bittner) \Viseman.
1959
October brought a ne,v:Ailled letter from
Hugh M, Curtler, Jr., now on leave of absence
from Southeast Minnesota State College, where
he is chairman of the philosophy department.
Mr. Curtler has been granted a Younger
Humanist Fellowship by the National Endow·
mcnt for the Humanities. He is studying intensively in the areas of political philosophy
and jurisprudence, and spent time earlier in
the fa11 in Oxford and Turin, Italy.
1936
1961
The Maryland Division of Tourism, headed
by Gilbert A. Cranda11, this year shared a
national m.vard for the "George Washington
Heritage Trail" project. The Discover America
Travel Award wds presented to Maryland, and
to Pennsylvania, Virginia, \Nest Virginia, and
the District of Columbia, for a project uniting
the areas where George Washington traveled,
fought, or lived.
Don (McQuaid) Reynolds is now living in
St. Andrew's, Scotland, where she is reading
for her doctorate.
1938
Jack D. Englar, former chief economist with
the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan
Baltimore and vice president of plant operations
for I'v'fcCormick & Co., Inc., has been named
president of Tate Indunstrics. He joined Tate
last March as vice president and general man·
agcr of it:; technologies division.
1946
Clarence
f.
Kramer, fanner tutor in An-
1963
H:my R. and Donna (Paramalee) Bryant,
after living in a number of places over the
past few years, arc now settled in Glen Dale,
Maryland. Mr. Bryant works as a systems
analyst at the Naval Research Laboratory in
Washington, D. C.
1967
Clark Lobenstine is cnroUed in a joint program in which he spends two years each at
Louisville (Ky.) Presbyterian Seminary and at
the University of Louisville School of Social
'Nark. At the end of the four-year period he
will receive a master of divinity degree and
a master of science in social work. In a recent
letter he stated that the study of Hebrew
is harder than Greek at St. John's.
1968
The engagement of Mary Chilton Howard
and the Rev. James G. Callaway, Jr., of Kansas
City, IVfissouri, was announced in September.
Miss Howard has earned an M.A. degree from
Columb_ia University, and is a doctoral candidate in biblical studies under a joint program
of Columbia and Union Theological Seminary.
A May wedding is planned.
Harriet (Earnest) Keyser writes that she has
been attending the University of Miami as a
continuing education student, but hopes soon
to attain regular status. Her husband Paul '67
has earned his B.S. degree in biology at Miami,
and is now enrolled as a graduate student in
microbiology.
A brief note from David and Rosemary
(Petke) Roberts announces the birth of Miss
Laura Joan Roberts on September 15th, and
tells us that the new parents last April moved
to an SO-acre farm which they bought near
Houlton, Maine. They have been living in a
barn on the property while he builds their
house; Mrs. Roberts adds that they were seeking warmer quarters for the winter.
1970
Jeffrey D. Friedman again writes from Israel,
where he is studying philosophy at the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem,
Christopher B. Nelson (SF), a second-year
law student, is active in the Associated Students
of the University of Utah in appealing the
tuition increases at the University. The ASUU
has appealed to the Head General Counsel
of the U.S. Office of Emergency Preparedness,
and has retained as legal counsel a recent
graduate. Mr. Nelson will coordinate the research by law students in support of the
counsel.
Patricia Jean \Vl1ite and Friederich von
Sclnverdtncr of Annapolis were married on
August 16th. 11Ie bridegroom is the son of
Ernst von Schwerdtner of the Class of 1917.
1971
Douglas H. Bennett writes that New York
City is becoming his home. He is employed
at the American Dance Center and the Spence
School as dance accompanist, and hopes to
continue with his composing.
Barbara (Sherman) Simpson reports to our
managing editor that she is taking courses in
veterinary medicine at the University of Mary-
lane!.
In Memoriam
Pl~l-ANTUONY J. SciBELLI, Montrose,
N. Y., §eptembcr 3, 1968.
l!]J2~FERDINAND P. THOMAS, Towson,
Md., September 15, 1971.
19/ll-STUART R.
N. M.: July 25, 1971.
DEAN,
Santa
Fe,
21
�Dr. Martin Meyerson, President of the University of Pennsylvania, gives his address during the 275th Anniversary Convocation in Annapolis at vVoodward Hall near the Liberty Tree on the front campus.
The College
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
Second-class postage paid at
Annapolis, Maryland, and at
additional mailing offices.
�
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St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>. <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981. <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Santa Fe, NM
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Wyatt, Malcolm
Felter, Mary P.
Parran,Jr., Thomas
Trimmer, Maurice
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The College
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THE COLLEGE
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
Santa Fe, New Mexico
April 1972
�The College
Front Cover: Portrait of Philip II (ca.
1575) by Alonso Sanchez Coello
(1531/32-1590), Prado, Madrid. Inside Front Cover: l\kDowell Hall, Annapolis; sketch by Daniel Sullivan,
Class of 1971. Back Cover: Harrison
Health Center, Annapolis; drawing by
Dundin, photograph by Richard D.
Bond, Jr.
The College is a publication for
friends of St. John's College and for
those who might become friends of the
College, if they came to know it. Our
aim is to indicate, within the limitations of the magazine form, why, in
our opinion, St. John's comes closer
than any other college in the nation
to being what a college should be.
If ever well-placed beacon lights
were needed by American education
it is now. By publishing articles about
the work of the College, articles reflecting the distinctive life of the mind
that is the College, we hope to add a
watt or two to the beacon light that is
St. John's.
Editor: Malcolm \:Vyatt
Managing Editor: Mary P. Felter
Alumni Editor: Thomas Farran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant: Maurice Trimmer
The College is published by the Development Offices of St. John's College, College Avenue, Annapolis,
Maryland 21204 (Russell E. Leaven. worth, Director), and Santa Fe, New
Mexico (J. Burchenal Ault, Vice President); Member, American Alumni
Council. President, St. John's College,
Richard D. Weigle.
Published four times a year in April,
July, October, and December. Second-class postage paid at Annapolis,
Maryland, and at additional mailing
offices.
Vol. XXIV
April 1972
No.1
In the April Issue:
The Ontological Argument, by Robert A. Neidort .
The Spanish Civil War, by Douglas Allan brook. .
8
News on the Campuses
23
Alumni Activities
28
�The Ontological Argument*
•
by Robert A. Neidorf
For quite a little while, philosophers have been fascinated by the thesis that some things can be known to be
true of· the world by reasoning alone, without reliance
on empirical data. The motives are not hard to understand. Empirical data come and go, and do not seem
to he appropriate foundations for grand universal truths
about the whole of reality; if, then, there are leading
principles that underlie an ordered universe, and these
are accessible to men, it seems that they should be accessible through the exercise of a power itself not dependent upon the contingencies of c·oncrete sensory experience. Again, if there are principles or forces in the
universe that do not flow from concrete events limited
in space and time, but underlie and shape such events,
then the human faculty which grasps such principles
should be commensurate with what it grasps, and similarly independent of the limitations and contingencies
that surround concrete experience via the senses. Reason
suggests itself as such a faculty.
Another motive can be drawn from ordinarv cognitive
experience. There are truths to which we are all committed
that seem independent of experience. Certain propositions
of arithmetic constitute ancient and honorable examples.
7+5=12 seems to be true for all time, and true independentlv of the evidence of the senses. If this is so,
the lure -is dropped, and one wonders what else can be
established in the same wav.
-The sense in which a pr~position like 7+5=12 is said
to be independent of experience must be qualified. No
one (at least no one that I am currently prepared to take
seriously) believes that a man born without sensory equipment would come to know simple arithmetic truths. It is
not in this way that 7+5=12 is claimed to be a priori;
that is, no one claims that it is discoverable in the absence
of all sensation. \Vhat is claimed is that the proposition
oncL· discovered is then held without reference to experienc~_' <lS justification. Imagine 7 eggs placed in a basket,
then 5 more; then the basket is dumped out (the eggs
are lurdboiled) and the contents are counted. Such an
expe-riment might be used to illustrate the proposition
'*Delivered as a lecture on February 11, 1972, at St. John's College
in Santa Fe.
7+5=12. But if ll or 13 eggs were found in the basket,
no one, or at most very few people, would entertain the
notion that 7+5=12 had now been shown to be false;
I believe we would all prefer recourse to any other theory,
even if necessary the theory implicit in having recourse
to a psychiatrist. Thus the experiment, while it illustrates
the proposition, and may aid a learner in grasping it for
the first time, is no part of the evidence for the proposition-is not part of its justification. Thus what is meant
by saying that a proposition P is known a priori-known
independently of experience-is that reference to experi- '
ence does not constitute the justification for P. \:Vhether
or not 7+5=12 is truly known in this way is not part of
my present concern. But 7+5=12 is very unlike "All
swans are white." The latter is easily overturned by experience, showing that its justification rests directly on
experience. The former is not so easily overturned by experience, and perhaps cannot be overturned by experience
at all; it is therefore very indirectly justified by experience,
and perhaps not justified by experience at all. It is plausible on the face of it to regard 7+5=12 as something
known independently of experience in just ·that sense.
In the eleventh century A.D. St. Anselm of Canterbury endeavored to show that "God exists" is a proposition that can be known independently of experience. His
argument, usually referred to as "the ontological argument," has been discussed, refined, refuted, revived, dis~
cussed again and so on repeatedly in the intervening centuries. In recent times it has been revived and seriously
considered among English-speaking philosophers largely
because of the v-.rritings of two Americans, Charles Hart~
shorne and Norman Malcolm. The former is a Christian
metaphysician, the latter a so-called analytic philosopher
very much influenced by \Vittgenstein. i\luch of what I
have to say about the ontological argument is derived from
these two sources. 1
1 Cf. Charles Hartshor:ne. ,\Jan's Vision of God (Harper & Row:
New York, 1941) and Anselm's Discm·ery (Open Court: Chicago,
1965); 1\'orman l'vlalcolm, "Anselm's Ontological Arguments," The
Philosophical Review, LXIX, 1960. Malcolm's article and a selection
from Hartshorne's ~'ision are reprinted in }Jrin Planfinga (ed.), The
Ontological Argument (Doubleday: New York 1965).
1
�The College
I
In truth there are two ontological arguments, appearing in Chapters II and III of Anselm's Proslogium. Let
me look first at the argument of Chapter II, which I present in a paraphrase according to my understanding of it.
It goes something like this:
The term "God" is meaningfully used. It
means a being of maximallf perfect character,
i.e. an entity with such a nature that no entity
could be conceived which is more perfect than
it is. Suppose now that one tries to form, as a
meaningful expression, the statement "God does
not exist." Since the term God is meaningfully
used, God certainly exists in the mind of the
person forming the statement, and such a person
is presumably thinking of a God that exists in
his own mind and perhaps in the minds of
others, but not in reality. But now it is possible
to think of a second God having all of the properties of that first God, plus the property of
existing in reality as well as in the mind of men.
This second God is clearly more perfect than the
first one, the one that was being thought of in
the proposition "God does not exist." Consequently, that first God is not a maximally perfect entity at all, and the statement "God does
not exist" cannot consistently be entertained.
Since the term "God" does have a meaning, and
since "God does not exist" is self-contradictory,
it follows that God exists.
I believe that this argument is ultimately unsound, but
its lack of soundness is not to be established by insult.
Let me review several objections that may be advanced
against it.
I) Concede for the moment that "God does not exist"
is meaningful but self-contradictory, and that its denial,
"God does exist" is therefore conceptually necessary. That
is, assuming "God" is a meaningful term, "God exists" is
a necessary claim or thought for human beings. Still, it
may be objected, a necessity of thought does not entail
a corresponding necessity in the things thought about.
Hence, although we may be forced to think that God
exists, he may nevertheless not exist.
I believe that this objection is based on a confusion.
It amounts to saying that a state of affairs which I must
think to be true I can also think not to be true, which is
self-contradictory. The objection can be sustained only
by denying all contact between thought and reality. Such
a denial, which amounts to radical scepticism, is certainly
possible; but it cannot be defended, because any defense
would involve claims about thoughts, claims that the defender would be advancing as thoughts of his own to
which a reality (other thoughts) corresponds. Because I
2
;
have a taste for defensible positions, I set aside this objection.
2) It is a dogma of modern philosophy that no a priori
reasoning can issue in conclusions about matters of factabout matters of real existence. For example, reasoning independent of experience can show that if there are 7 of
something and 5 of the same things, then the two
heaps taken together constitute 12 of those things; but
a priori reasoning can never show that there are any of
those things; for that, experience is required. Again, perhaps Euclid has shown that if there is a triangle then the
sum of its angles is equal to two right angles; but he has
not and cannot show by a purely logical process that
there is a triangle. Since Anselm's argument purports to
show that something exists by a priori reasoning, it cannot be valid.
This objection rests on the general rule that no a
priori considerations can yield existential conclusions. To
treat it properly we should have to examine the grounds
for the general rule. I will turn to that task later. For
the moment, I will try to hold off the objection by two
considerations. In the first place, there are indeed pieces
of a priori reasoning that yield conclusions of a sort about
matters of fact. For exampk, logical considerations show
that the concept "round square" is self-contradictory;
we usually do not hesitate to infer that no round squares
·exist. If a priori considerations can yield negative existential conclusions, it is hard to see why in principle they
cannot yield positive ones. In the second place, if Anselm's
argument or any other argument that yields existential
conclusions from non-empirical premises is sound on its
own merits, it is questionable procedure to reject it on
the basis of a general rule; it is more in accord with customary principles of open-mindedness to ask whether the
argument shows that the general rule is not so general
after all. I conclude that we cannot escape examination of
the argument on its own merits.
3) On its own merits, I believe that the argument of
Proslogium II is not so good. Anselm has asked us to
compare two conditions of God, God without the quality
of real existence (existing only in the mind) and God with
the quality of real existence (existing outside the mind).
He then asks us to agree that the second condition is
better or more perfect than the first. But what is the relation between the quality of real existence and the subject-God-to which it is attached?
Presumably all qualities attach to their subjects either
essentially or accidentally. An essential quality is one that
the subject must have in order to be what it is; e.g., a
bachelor is essentially single. An accidental quality could
be detached from its subject without changing the essential nature of that subject; e.g., a bachelor is accidentally
white. Now for Anselm real existence cannot be attached
to God accidentally; for to admit that would be to admit
that God can be thought of without the quality of real
existence, and this is just what Anselm wants to deny in
�April 1972
the very heart of his argument. Hence real existence must,
for Anselm, be regarded as an essential quality of God.
But in that case, when he asks us to compare God without real existence against God with real existence, he is
not asking us to compare two conditions of the same
thing, but two quite different things. The meaning of the
term "God" has shifted in the course of his argument,
and the logic of it is no longer clear.
Someone could argue that a man with the quality white
is better or more perfect than the same•man without the
quality white. I would not agree with him, but I would
understand what he is saying because the meaning of
"man" is kept unchanged when '\vhite" is put on or
taken off. But if he argues that a single bachelor is better
than one who is not single, I get confused. I cannot hold
before my mind any notion or image of a married bachelor
in order to compare it with the single kind. The argument has slipped away.
4) If Anselm's argument has slipped out of focus, it
may yet be brought back by some ingenious interpretation. I now bring to it a fourth objection which, like the
third, was suggested by Kant." I think it puts Prosiogium
II beyond the possibility of salvation. Anselm's argument
turns on the notion that existence is a quality that can
be attached to or detached from subjects much like other
qualities, whether essential or accidental. But existence is
not, I think, a quality at all.
To see why, consider an example. Suppose the Dean
were asked to draw up a list of qualiti-es that the ideal
Tutor should have. He might list such things as learnedness, articulateness, ability to work long hours, and so
forth. But if he added to the list the statement that the
ideal Tutor should also exist, we would regard him with
suspicion. At the very least, it is hard to see what information he has added to the original list by adding "existence"
as if it were a property alongside of other properties.
It is certainly true that from a grammatical point of
view "existenCe" can function in sentences in a manner
analogous to ordinary predicate-words. V/e may say
"Teddy is still existing" just as we may say "Teddy is
still running" or "Teddy is still white." This formal
arialogy may lead us to think that the meani.rig of
"Teddy is still existing" is analogous to the meaning of
the other sentences. But if we try forming the denials of
the sentences the analogy quite breaks down. If someone
tells me "Teddy is not any longer white" I have an
rmage of the same Teddy with whiteness gone and some
qualrty contrary to whiteness having taken its place. I
can C\'Cn form a new affirmative sentence that describes
the new situation: "Teddy now has the quality of non\\hJteness." If now I am told that "Teddy is no longer
cx_isting" I have no similar image; Teddy h3s simply been
wrped out. If, indeed, I try to force the analogy by formmg a new affirmative sentence I get something like this:
2
Critique of Pure Reason, A.592·602, B620-630.
"Teddy now has the quality of non-existence," which is
surely absurd. 3
I am not prepared to give an analysis of the statement
"Teddy exists." But I am persuaded that it is not like
"Teddy runs/' because "exists" is not a predicate. Insofar
as the argument of Proslogium II treats "exists" as if it
were a predicate, I think the argument must be rejected.
II
If Anselm's argument is not sound so far, it has at least
suggested an enticing way of describing God. \~le have
been asked to agree that God is the sort of being in which
existence is bound up with its very nature. \Vhatever the
failings in Anselm's handling of the logic of the term
</existence," be has not, in so describing God, made any
very outrageous suggestion. God is after all thought of as
an entity that cannot snap in or out of existence as other
entities may. This is just a way of saying that God's
existence is necessary, not contingent Or, to put it another way, .existence is connected to God essentia11v, not
contingently or accidentally.
·
For the moment, let us assume that the notion of a
being whose existence is necessary-a being immortal in
its very nature-is a possible notion. When we think about
something under the mode of necessity, we usually associate with it a proposition said to be itself necessary.
Bachelors are necessarily single. The proposition "Bachelors are single" is then said to be true necessarily. It is a
common and plausible view to interpret this conditionthat "Bachelors are single" is true necessarily-as meaning
that the denial is inconceivable, i.e. "Some bachelor is
married" is inconceivable.
Apply this view to the notion that God exists necessarily. The corresponding proposition, "God exists," is
then necessarily true. If, then, we can form the notion of
a being that exists necessarily, the proposition expressing
its existence is necessarily true. To recapitulate from another direction: The condition expressed by the proposition "God does not exist" is inconceivable, because </God"
means that which exists necessarily from its own nature.
The opposite proposition-"God exists"-is therefore true
necessarily. Hence God exists.
This, I believe, is the nerve of a fresh argument that
Anselm offers in Proslogium III. I believe it is a strong
argument, although perhaps it does not show quite what
Anselm thought it did.
Let me review the new argument a third time. Any fact
or state of affairs described in meaningful propositions
falls presumably into one of three categories, and only
one. Either it is necessary, or possible, or impossible;
either it must be S0 or it mav be so, or it cannot be so.
Most of what we are interest~d in falls into the middle
1
3 Cf. G. E. :tv1oore, "Is Existence a Predicate?" Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society; XV, 1936; reprinted in Plantinga.
3
�The College
category. \\Thether the man in the bed is to live or die,
whether there will be a sea-fight tomorrow in the Bay
of Bengal, whether unicorns exist-these are all contingencies, things that may be but may also not bei and
whether they will or will not can be found out only with
the help of experience. It is characteristic of such things
that their being so and their not being so are equally
conceivable. I can conceive of the man living or dying,
of the sea-fight taking place or not, etc. Anselm is arguing
in ProsJogium III that the existence of God does not
belong in this middle category. If it did, it should be
possible for me to think of God as not existing in the
same way that I can think of unicorns as not existing. But.
I cannot so think of God, claims Anselm, because "existing" is a necessary part of the meaning of the term "God."
Hence, if the concept of God as a necessary being is
formed at all, then there is such a being.
l) The first objection is very old. The claim is that by
defining God as that which exists necessarily, Anselm has
already presupposed God's existence; i.e. he has presupposed that which he sought to prove. But this objection
simply ignores the nerve of the argument. Anselm claims
that we have a concept of God as a necessarily existing
being, and that unlike other. concepts this one commits
he who entertains it to the conclusion that there is such
a being. One can surely raise questions as to whether any
concept can function in that way, and questions as to
whether Anselm's concept of God is a concept at all. I
will soon raise such questions. But to accuse Anselm of
arguing in a circle because he sets forth a supposed concept which entails the existence of something, is merely
to presuppose the answers to other questions in the
theory of meaning; it does not meet his argument where
it deserves to be met-on its own ground.
2) The second objection is that Anselm is again asking us to think of "existence" as a property or quality of
an object, and we have seen that it is no such thing. But
the advantage of his new argument in Pros]ogium III is
that it does not rest on the notion of existence as a
quality, but on the notion of necessary existence as a
quality. \Vhether or not existence taken simply is a quality,
I think necessary existence just may be a quality. If the
Dean added to his list of qualities for an ideal Tutor that
he should exist necessarily, we would regard him as unusually optimistic, but we would understand what he
means and sympathize with it. \Vho wants a Tutor who
is subject to fatigue and death? Clearly we would like
to have Tutors who are indefatigable and immortal, and
this not by chance, but by nature.
3) This example leads to a deeper objection. If we
understand what the Dean is saying when he expresses
the desire for a Tutor \Vho exists necessarih·, there must
be such a concept. Consequently, on the riwdel of Anselm's own argument, the concept of such a Tutor as not
existing is self-contradictory or absurd. Therefore, there
is such a Tutor. Only ";here is he? 'T'his objection was
4
first raised under different terms by a contemporary of
Anselm.
Anselm himself was rather contemptuous of it. He
argued that the concept of a necessarily existing thing of
any sort except God himself, is absurd. Tutors, islands,
unicorns, are a11 limited entities; by their very nature
they are subject to decay and destruction. I think he is
right about this. Any object thought of as extended in
space is also conceivably divisible. If the idea of reducing
a unicorn, an island, or a Tutor to scattered particles is a
conceivable one, then nothing of this sort can exist necessarily.
So the argument is saved-almost. If there is truly no
concept of a Tutor existing necessarily, how did we understand the Dean when he asked for one? I suggest that
when he asked for one he was not asking us to form the
concept of such a one, but was only expressing his regret
that no Tutor does or can exist necessarily. I am maintaining that while "necessary existence" mai' be a quality, it
is not a quality- that can be added to objects arbitrarily;
yet its absence can perfectly well be noticed and communicated. Let me try to sum up the situation by comparing three pairs of sentences.
"There is a man who is white."
"There is a man \vho is not \Vhite."
I understand both sentences clearly, and the same man
could at difFerent times be the subject of each.
"There is a man who exists."
"There is a man who does not exist."
I understand the first sentence but not the second, because simple existence is not a quality at all.
"There is something that exists necessarily."
"There is something that does not exist necessarily."
I understand both sentences, but the same entity can
never be the subject of each. For the subtraction of the
quality "exists necessarily" changes the nature of the
subject just as surely as the subtraction of "single" changes
the nature of a bachelor.
Finally, then, I claim that there is no concept "Tutor
existing necessarily," but there is a concept "Tutor not
existing necessarily." Formal logicians will not like this
view, but I believe it is consistent \\·ith ordinary usage
and common sense, and therefore takes precedence.
4) \\'hile I am not about to dismiss the notion of
necess;ny existence because of the strictures of certain
formal fogica1 systems, there is a view which denies on
reasoned grounds th8t "necessity" can be a characteristic
of anything real. Briefly stated, the theory claims that
necessity is. a quality of propositions o( sentences but not
of existent objects or real relations. For example, "All
�April 1972
bachelors arc single" is a necessar~' proposition. That it is
is J consequence of the wa~· '"e use words or
concepts; it reflects a decision to use the word "bachelor"
to refer to the combination of two other concepts, "male"
and "single." It te11s us nothing whate,·er about existent
entities. 0IY the other hand, under this thtor\', anY
proposition having existential significance, anY statemen-t
about what is going on i.n the world, is contingent. \Vhatever h3ppens could concei,·ably not happen; ,,-hateYer
comes to be could concei,·ably not conic to be (for there
was a time when it was not); in brief, whateYer is is contingent and an~- proposition expressing what is is itself
a contingent truth that cannot be established a priori.
This theon· ma\ be called positivism. Although it goes
back to 1-Iumc, it is both important and exciting. It is imporhmt because it is very widespread. It is seen in the
curn:nt doctrine that eYcn· scientific account of the world
is pro,·isional and uncert~1in-i.e. not necessan·-because
reason can always conceive alternatives to wllat science
describes; while; on the other hand, the certainties of
logic;:!l deduction bring forth only rearrangements of symbols or concepts but no new knowledge of what is. And
it is exciting because it opens the door to a disproof of the
existence of God. For if one acknowledges with Anselm
that the only concept of God worthY of the name is the
concept of .a being that exists necessarilY, and if necessitv
cannot be a character of any being, theTI .there can be nO
God."
'There is, howe·er, something paradoxical about positiYism. Let me denote the class of true propositions about
matters of fact b,· the letter E. Consider the claim that
all E-proposition.s are contingent, or probable, or not
necessar~·- Is this claim true of such propositions necessarily or contingently? If it is true contingcntly~if it is,
say, an empirical generalization~thcn the possibility exists
that there ma:· :-et be found an E~proposition which
is not contingent, and Anselm's argument mm· be exhibiting just that proposition. On the other hand, sup·
pose the claim about E-propositions is true necessarily.
Then E-propositions are thcmseh·es a kind of thing in
tl~e world, nlthough a Yer:· complex kind, and there is
~omcthing in the \Yorld about which a necessar\' truth
can be known.
T'his difficulty is apparent in Hume's O\Yll exposition.
In the early pages of the Enquir~· Concerning Human
Understanding he argues on the basis of general experience that there are no ideas in the mind which ha\T not
been furnished by antecedent sensor~· imprc:·ssions. This
amounts to S<lying that all our notions r~bout matters of
LKt ;nc dcriYcd from .~ensory experience ~mel share the
qu;ilihcs of th;1t experience not;Jb]y the qu<l1it~· of continscnc :·. So far, the cloctrinc is :lch·ancccl <-1S <1 probable
nr contingent cbim .. -\ftcr noting a tin:· exception, Hume
necess::1r~·
·J
.J.
~.
_Finclby, ··can GCJcl.) E:-:i_c-.tence be Dispron:d? .. .
\find, 19-fS;
•cp•m!cd m Pbnting:L
·
later elevates the doctrine to the status of a necessary
truth, and uses it as a principle to destroy the objectivity
of the concept of causality (necessary connection among
cvmts in the world). He discovers that there is no sensory
impression of necessary causal connection among eventS,
and concludes that there can be no idea thereof because
there cannot be an idea that has no senson' antecedent.
J-Ie starts bv claiming that there is no such iclea, and ends
bv claiming that there cannot be. It begins to look as if
the claims of the positivist position do not themselves fit
easih· into the account about all propositions that posi·
tivists give.
Against this criticism the positivist has a likelv reply.
J-Ie may say that he is only speaking about concrete things
in space and time, and claiming that those arc through
and through contingent, both in their existence and in
their relations to each other. Anv attempt to turn his
doctrine onto itself by considering propositions or con·
ccpts as entities in their own right he will resist, on the
ground that propositions and concepts do not have any
clearly discernible concrete existence in space and time;
what they are may be a problem, but they are probably
not things or beings at all. Consequenth', he may say,
necessary truths about propositions or concepts do not in
the least tend to show that there can be necessarv truths
about matters of fact.
But we must note that Anselm's concept of God is not
the concept of a being located in space and time, for
then it could not exist necessarilv. For Anselm and indeed
for most theologians from PlatO onward, \vhatever functions as a fundamental ordering principle governing what
is, and what is worthy, is not itself located in the world
in the same \vay that other things are. 'll1e issue between
Anselm and the positivist then becmnes a controversy
O\'er what counts as a thing or being. The positivist would
likely refuse to acknowledge propositions or a "necessary
being" as beings; the more platonically-minded would
insist upon it. \Vhat I am suggesting is that the positivist
attack on Anselm's argument is based ultimately OP a
theory of being and not on a theory of meanin.g. . . ne
<:~ttack amounts to saying that there can be no such thing
as God in Anselm's sense, and Anselm's argument is not
really examined on its own merits.
Are there "things" that are not located in space and
time? It is easy to see the case for a negatiYc answer:
things existing in space and time seem more accessible to
us and rclatiye]y Jess puzzling than the notion of a being
which is abm·e or be1m:v or alongside of space ;mel time.
But we cannot settle this question by coolly dismissing
the candid::1tes for such stature Cls "mere abstractions,"
for that just hide~ the issue under a term that is itself
puzzling.
There are, on the other hancl, plau5-.ib1e grounds for an
offirmatiyc answer. A melody inhnbits a sequence of notes,
and Jt first glance one is tempted to s2r that the melody
is sharp]}· located in time. But this viCw \~'ill not stand
5
�The College
up easily under pressure. How many notes can be taken
away without changing the melody? At what moment in
the playing of the notes does the melody come to be?
\Ve speak of playing the "same" melody over again at a
different time, and we think we can play it any time we
choose:-at any time we choose. How, then, can the
melody be rega~ded as located in a certain region of time?
All o{ this suggests that a melody, whatever it is, is not
quite as concrete an entity as a sjngle note played at a
certain moment One might claim that the melody is a
mere arrangement of notes, and that it recurs ,vhenever
the same arrangement recurs. But this will not quite suffice, for there is a peculiar relation between the melody
and the particular notes that it inhabits. Namely, from a
certain point of vie\V the melody governs the notes; it gives
them a noticeable significance that they would not have
in isolation; it provides a context that alters and shapes
the significance of individual notes; and in some cases
one produces notes in search of a melody that is vaguely
grasped, but beckoning. Even if all this be granted, why
should one say that the melody is something? Because, I
think, it governs or beckons; it would be odd to regard
that which governs or beckons as an abstraction or dependent thing taking its existence in some peculiar way
from that which it governs or beckons; it would be still
more odd to say that it is nothing at alL
It will be objected that this example is drawn from a
highly artificial or psychological realm, I think this objection counts for nothing, because things artificial or
psychological are not on that account nothing. More importantly, it will be objected that however difficult it may
be to pin down a melody to a certain time, melodies
nevertheless do exist in time in generaL Perhaps so. But
the peculiar claims that I have been making about melodies-that they govern the particulars associated with
them-can also be made about the logical forms that
govern mathematical demonstrations and the so-called
laws of nature that govern the universe of particulars. I
would not know quite what it means to say that these
things exist in time or space "in general," and I find it
no more awkward to regard them as existing. "outside"
time and space, governing that which exists "in" time
and space.
·
I do not pretend for a moment to have "proved" that
such things exist, or to have laid to rest the many re·
spectable theories that try to reduce laws of thought and
laws of nature to the realm of concrete individuals. However, Hume \Vas fond of saying, " Tis a princip1e generally received in philosophy that everything in nature is
individual." 5 And Hume himself never criticises or defends that opinion; he just receives it. I think I have shown
1
that however widely received, it is certainly contestable
and mav be wrong.
Let ~e nO\V revie\v the state of the argument so far.
5
6
E.g., Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. I, Pt. I, Sec. VIII.
Anselm has proposed that the conce-pt of G:d , c'
concept of a bemg such that no more pcrln--. , , " ~
be concc1ved. Th1sleads to the notion that th, ~- '
of a bemg that exlSts necessarily. If, thc!l, u:;• ~~~
a concept, the notion that God does not e , , ••• """ -!1"111!
bl e t o en t ert a~n, 1.e. G od cannot be conctivt:d !KJ<t ~,
· ·
"'"· .. b.:r "- -,._ <;,
Hence he ex1sts. The chief objections to th' ··•=
Q"";.. ':,:,,
rest on two doctrines: that necessity cannot b.; _....,·to~>-
of am· existing thing; that anyth.ing wlud,- ;.,:;~~,
concr_etc .particular. I have tned to show :lut H~ -~,_
doctrmc m turn rests on the second, and tbt the~
.
1s contestable. During the course of the disctmio;, 1 . " , ' .::f'
been snggestmg somewhat vaguely that we 00 hM 't ' - ..
concept of a necessary bemg, and tha: A.ns-<:!m"s l~o;:~~~ :
may therefore be perfectly sound. I tum fi:di: : ..• • ""'~
objection,
5) The term "God" has been defim·d i:: :·,q, "·'''"'"'
that \\'luch 1s more perfect than anything UJtho~~~
and as that which erists necessarily from its mt ; 1 twt~--
_
_
The first definition probably entails the Y.-cond. T~
difficulty is that both definitions are rather am:oe ..,
vague, so lacking in specific content as to raise tht' "":':•··''"~~'
lion whether we really have such an idea after all
merely playing with words.
That the difficulty is a real one mav be seen from
torical examples. Aristotle, in trying t~ elucidate the m..;:"c""'"'"
cept of "pure actuality," or that which has no gnin
contingency and therefore exists necessarih·, decido li:lli!
it must be eternal, uncornplex, unchanging. utterly
concerned with any particular being, and entirely ·
ble of being affected by them; its sole activity is • t!UM:•
ing on thinking. This is not acceptable to Christian t~ ' .•,,.
logians for obvious reasons. Anselm struggles \\1th tk
problem by arguing that qualities like compassion are .nt>'l
"literally" in God, but somehow proP.erly attributobk 11:1
him from a human and hence defective point of ''""'· ·
A whole medieval tradition of so-called negati,·e ~~ .
ology was based on the notion that God can be urula•';
stood as that which lacks all defects, even thougb fl<> • '
positive concept of the corresponding perfections cooid
be nailed down. Hartshorne argues that God is net
worshipped for the defects he does not have, and sug,~
that the difficulty be removed by substituting a DC'Of
theory of the meaning of necessary being. He claims trol
or
a being existing necessarily may be thought of as a bci~
totally open to the impact of concrete events, complclt~
susceptible to being affected by them, constantlr dun;
ing, only in such a way that no possible event or clung:
could threaten his existence. This opens the door. tc·
thinking of a necessary being as compassionate. lo:.:c:
and creative. It also makes it possible to understand ll"'·'
the necessary being could act in time, creating a umn:-:>:.
or a gift of incarnation, whereas the classical concept t.':
Aristotle and others entailed that there was not and nen:'
could be a moment of creation or of ·di\'ine acti,·it~· d:
rected towards the lives of creatures. But then the notio::
�April 1972
of divine creatil,ity runs afoul of the logical dictum that
one cannot give what one has not got, and we are turned
back to the classical notion of a God who has and is
everything that he will ever give.
These controversies rest on the difficulty of trying to
supply further content for the concept of necessary existence. It is a difficulty that I have already run into.
Usuallv, we explore an unfamiliar concept of a quality
by-so to speak-trying it on for size. \Ve imagine it attached to various kinds of objects to see if the attachments make sense) or we imagine it combined with other
more familiar qualities to see if the combinations make
sense. In Plato's Republic Glaucon, who is having trouble
with the concept of justice as a quality, asks Socrates to
show him the other qualities of a just man. But when I
conceded that there is no positive concept of a necessariJ~· existing Tutor~ or of a -necessarily existing thing of
any sort except God himself, I was conceding that the
quality of necessary existence cannot be moved around
like a checker in the game of logical exploration.
Necessary existence is a very strange quality indeed. It
parades itself as a quality that cannot be attached to any
ordinary object, even tentatively, because the attachment
would alter radically the nature of the object itself. And
if Anselm is right, it cannot be considered in isolation
from the notion of a unique being that has that quality
and has no other qualities with which we are familiar.
Yet the phrase "necessary existence" seems to be meaningful in some way, if for no other reason than the fact
that the phrase "contingent existence" is clearly meaningfuL
In such ways is the mind poised over the notion of
necessary existence-which is no other than the notion of
divine existence or absolute perfection. Is there such a
notion?
!•viy answer at this time is: Yes and no. The concept
cannot be fingered, nailed down and held before the
mind like other qualities; the logic of its use is elusive,
precisely because it cannot be examined in isolation from
questions of real existence. Yet in some wavs the mind
requires it, and acknowledges it. !'den do noi exist necessarily; we know that, we understand it we often regret it.
How could we say with such confidence that all particulars exist contingently had we no notion at all of some
other mode of existence? There are other examples, more
mundane. At various times, and howe,·cr illogicallv, little
billiard balls were regarded by many as necessary beings,
immortal, unbreakable, the fundamental ground for the
regu1arit~· and order of the uni\·erse. No one has expounded the attracti1·cness of this notion better than Lucretius.
Contr~uy to the very meaning of its n~nne, the atom gets
broken, the necessary beings turn out to be contingent
after all. This should have been no surprise because, as
extended in space, they could no more exist necessarily
than Tutors can. Still, the notion of that which is necessarih·, as an ultimate ground for the intelligibility and
1
existence of everything else, governs the mind and beckons
to it.
It has often been maintained, especially in America,
that the pursuit of ultimate grounds is childish, and
should be given up by grown men. Yet if I am to take
such claims seriously I must be persuaded; evidence and
argument must be offered. And then I suspect that he
\vho offers evidence and argument is in that very act himself governed or lured by the flickering image of that
which is so in an unqualified sense; not contingently so,
or possibly so, but necessarily so; that in which one can
rest a case without fear of its eventual destruction; in
short, that which is necessarily. And if once again I am
told that what is necessarily, is only a proposition or a
truth and not a thing, I must still wonder how that which
is a Jure or a governor can be denied existence.
There is a passage in the Republic where Plato puts
these words into the mouth of Socrates:
Not only being known is present in the
things known as a consequence of the good, but
also existence and being are in them besides as
a result of it, although the good isn't being but
is still beyond being, exceeding it in . dignity
and power•
Glaucon, who has been listening, is both attracted and
horrified. He says, "Apollo, what a demonic excess." Now
Glaucon, as he appears in the dialogue, is not the smartest
of men. But I sympathize with him.
III
It will surprise no one to see that I have not settled
the question whether God exists, or whether Anselm's
argument is finally sound. But let me close by stating
some conclusions of which I have been persuaded by
Anselm and his sympathetic commentators.
First, the question of God's existence cannot be settled
by straightforward deductive logic. That God does not
exist cannot be proved by customary logical means, because the statement, "A necessarily existing being does
not exist," is on close scrutiny either meaningless or selfcontradictory. Neither can God's existence be proved by
ordinary logical routines. Anselm's argument is the only
one I know of or can presently imagine that attempts to
set forth something resembling the usual forms of logical
proof and ending in the conclusion, "God exists." But
the attempt to analyze his ~JTgument raises too many unresoh·cd problems in the nature of logic itself. The argument defies conventional modes of formal analvsis and
testing, and when considered on its own merits' it calls
into question m~my of the logical canons that are employed confidently for more routine kinds of arguments.
6
Steph<:inus 509b.
7
�The College
Perhaps the genius of his argument is its abilit\· to force
reflection upon the implicit commitments of logicians.
Second, the question of God's existence cannot be
settled by recourse to empirical experience. Perhaps this
has always been known; certainly eyebrows are always
raised at the notion of a direct empirical experience of
·God that could be known to be just that in the same
way as, say, direct experience of a brick wall or a black
swan. But I think Anselm has pointed the way to a fundamental reason for this suspicion. Anyone who endeavors
to establish or test a proposition by observation or experience makes two claims implicitly. He claims that the
41
proposition, say, X is so," is conceivable to him. And
he claims that the denial, "X is not so," is also conceivable. Otherwise the recourse to observation would
either tell him nothing or it would onlv tell him what he
already knows. Anselm has, I think, shown that the
propoSition, "'That \vhich exists necessarily does not exist/'
is self-contradictory or meaningless. And therefore neither
it nor its opposite can be established empirically.
Let me finally try to say where I am in this tangle. It
was Anselm's conviction that the statement, "That which
exists necesari1y does not exist," is absurd because the
subject, "that which exists necessarily," is perfectly clear
and cannot be combined with the notion "not-existing."
I wonder whether it might be absurd because the subject,
"that which exists necessarily," is itself without meaning.
To put it another way: Anselm has convinced me that
"God does not exist" is meaningless. But the remaining
question, which I cannot answer, is whether "God exists"
is meaningful.
Robert A. Neidorf received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from The
University of Chicago and his Ph.D. degree from Yale University.
From 1962 to 1964 he was a Tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis. He was Associate Professor of Philosophy at the State Universit-y of New York at Binghamton, 1964-6i. He is the author of
DEDUCTIVE FORMS: An Elementary Logic (Harper and Roll',
1967), a book intended to serYe either as an introduction to general
logic or for a first course in symbolic logic. He joined the Santa Fe
faculty of St. John's College in 1967, and was appointed Director of
the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education in 1970.
The Spanish Civil War*
By DOUGLAS ALLANBROOK
It is distressing to study wars but necessary. It is doubly
distressing to look at a civil war. It would be of some
comfort if one could think of them as momentary sicknesses, as abnormal growths which science, good sense, or
noble passion could cut out of the body politic. I don't
think it is possible to regard them as such. \Vars between
nations are perhaps easier to stomach or at least sometimes seem easier to understand. Civil wars, however,
bring different difficulties and lead often to blacker pessimism. Civil wars in particular force upon our attention
facts which are not political, facts which cannot be understood or grappled with in terms of monarchies, republics,
democracies, oligarchies, class struggles alone or economic
drives. Neither political economy nor political science can
deal dirccth' with these facts. Histon' can describe them
from any n~mber of points of view. There are no simple
"'Delivered as a lecture at St. John's College in Annapolis on
May 25, 1962:
8
rational explanations of them. It is for this reason that
both religion and psychology attempt to deal with them.
The science of geology offers a certain analogy. Here
is the surface of the earth spread before us, with its
plains, mountains, deserts, and sparkling oceans. Looking
at it descriptively, one plots rivers, maps mountain ranges,
classifies rocks, and measures the depths of the waters.
From an aeroplane one is dazzled by the prospect and
grasps certain great configurations of systems of rivers,
mountains, and plains. It is a great and noble panorama.
Looking with still more attention at the surface of this
earth, one sees and then theorizes about the rise and fall
of the Rocky Mountains or the lofty Himalavas. The
patient and seemingly infinite work of the rivers in can'ing out their beds, the long sculptural work of the wind
and the rain, plunge one into the midst of a process of
work being done. Glaciers move up and down our map
which now has a fourth dimension of time. One reallr
underlying fact keeps forcing itself upon our attention,
�April 1972
volcanoes. Something under the surface of this earth keeps
erupting. 1l1is happens sporadically in all geological time.·
All rocks are, if traced back far enough, of igneous origin.
This becomes a primal fact in the hard look at the earth.
All volcanic eruptions are studied with intense interest.
Geologists describe great volcanic periods as revolutions,
borrowing a term from politics. \Vhat the middle of the
earth is like can be to some degree postulated, though
with little real clarity. After all we are still on the surface
and can only try to be as profoundly superficial as it is
possible to be. The dear and cherished configurations of
our bays and inlets, our necessary and even noble maps
that Don Quixote is a Spanish book, written in Spanish
by a Spaniard about Spaniards removes it from our view.
I cannot believe that Spaniards are essentially different
from anyone else, though they like to think so. What is
and geologic surveys, are now viewed not with skepticism,
sweeping way it pinpoiots and delineates the characteristics of the general civil war of the IV est, which has gone
on since Scholastic Theology was introduced. Aspects of
but with wonder.
Civil \vars are like volcanoes. They reveal the reality
wh\ch is under civil life and tend to make us suspect that
most of it is virtuallv unknowable. They should make us
cherish whatever grasp we do have on order and to realize
what a tenuous hold we have on civilization. They also,
lest we get overly pious, give us glimpses of splendour. It
is fatuous and inhuman not to admire courage and daring
in the face of death, even if we are not in sympathy with
the faction which ·brought forth the action, or the dogma
which seems to cloak the action.
Officially the Civil War in Spain began in the summer
of 1936 and ended in the spring of 1939. In reality there
had been a kind of civil war in Spain since 1812. \Vhile
the battlefields of this war were in Spain, directly or
indirectly every nation in Europe or America was in-
volved. It was a cataclysm whose end signalled the beginning of a vaster and still bloodier cataclysm. A conservative figure of 600,000 dead is generally to be accepted. It is hard, of course, to distinguish between those
dead in a battle, those beaten to death in a street-fight, or
those who perished of tuberculosis in a crowded prison.
Added to this figure would be, of course, as far as loss
to Spain is concerned, the large number of refugees who
fled their native soil at the approach of Franco's armies.
This war was fought with more ferocity than most wars between nations. Thirteen bishops and 7,000 priests were
murdered. The victors at the end showed no mercy. It is
estimated that two million people had passed through
the prisons and concentration camps of Nationalist Spain
by 1942. It is also estimated that perhaps 100,000 were
executed in the months following the war for crimes
ranging from church burnings to merely having served in
the administration of the losing side. I have chosen this
war partly because it is still close to us; its only victor
on either side, General Franco, still rules in Spain. Also its
dimensions, while reverberating throughout the \vorld,
are still fairh· small. It stirred the conscience of the world
and still should. One should still say firmly that the wrong
side won, without necessarily implying that the side which
lost was not an almost hopeless muddle. The fact that
it \\·as a Spanish war does not dismiss it from being
worthy of our closest attention, any more than the fact
striking is their intransigence in front of many experiences
we all have. Their honesty takes the form of following
either pleasure or ideals. Everyone who visited Spain during the war got his fingers burned. Those who had an
active role in it from the outside were puzzled. The war
seemed to prove no points of dogma for any dogmatist.
Its very extremities teach us something about the civil
war \vhich is in and around every one of us. In a less
this inner and outer revolution we spend over half of our
time studying here at this College.
·
Now we must look at a map. The Pyrenees separate
Spain from Europe. In the middle there is a high, rocky,
and sparse tableland, semi-desert in many places. This is
the austere land of Castile. Around the edges it is richer,
in Catalonia and in the Basque provinces. They point towards Europe and are the most prosperous and European
provinces. They each have their own language. The
Basques are an ancient people of unknown origin. Galicia
in the North, though poorer than the Basque countries,
also feels itself an entity. In the South is Andalusia,
ancient center of the Moorish civilization. It has a population of serfs who have been in bondage since the days
of the Roman empire. The land is somewhat richer but
needs to be irrigated in common if it is to flourish. The
poverty is appalling. The majority of the peasants are
hired as day laborers during half the year only. They
live in large villages and not in farms on the land. The
land in Castile yields grudgingly a sparse crop of wbeat.
It is generally not owned by those who work it. It is
the most frugal and dignified province of Europe. In the
North with much more rainfall peasants are better off
and do usually have enough to eat. In Navarre they are
all owners of their small farms in general and pass the
property from father to son. They are a Spartan people
and own the grazing lands in common from time im-
memorial. The Basques are industrial with a large city,
Bilbao, with factories and important banks. Barcelona,
the capital of Catalonia, is a splendid and throbbing
Mediterranean port, one of the great cities of the inland
sea, the Mediterranean. Madrid was originally an artificial
city, planted dead center in the middle by an autocratic
king, built from nothing to be the administrative center of
the country. Castile is in the middle and Madrid is in
the middle of Castile. Every part of this peninsula separates itself fiercely from every other part. Portugal by accident happens to be independent. Catalonia always
fought to be, and it is the perpetual running sore of Spain.
There is always a fight between Barcelona and Madrid.
The greatest emperor of the \Vest since Charlemagne,
9
�The College
Charles the Fifth, emperor over Spain, Italy, Germany,
Austria, and the Low Countries and most of America, had
to spend great and delicate energy assuaging the local
rights and charters of countless Spanish provinces, cities,
regions and municipal communes. Though proudly feeling themselves Spaniards and always tending to regard the
rest of the world as barbarians, they were seldom ever a
Nation, in any of the usual senses of the word. It may
recall to you the affairs on that famous little peninsula
on the other end of the inland sea, Greece.
I shall now undertake a brief sketch of the political
parties which were important in the years immediately
preceding the war. I shall not label my columns Communist and Fascist and only with some hesitation label
the two columns Left and Right. Both sides have sinister
aspects.
fought with the left-wing students. Another party soon
merged with them and to some extent swallowed them
up. This was the "Falange Espanola," its name being
taken from the Macedonian unit of battle responsible
for the destruction of the remnants of democracy in
Greece in the fourth century B.C. Its leader was a handsome young man named Jose An tonic Primo de Rivera,
the son of the dictator of Spain during the twenties. He
often sounded like a glib but not unintelligent undergraduate who had taken too many courses in political
theory. To quote: "The state is founded on two principles-service to the united nation and the co-operation
of classes." His favorite poem was Kipling's "If" which
he would often read to his followers before a street demonstration. I shall read to you another of his speeches.
His followers were generally high-spirited and longed for
direct action.
CEDA-(Confederacion Espanola de Derechas
Autonomas) Catholic Party
JONS-(J untas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista)
Fascists and the Falange
UME-(Union Militar Espanola)
CARLISTS- (Traditionalists)
UGT-(Union General de Trabajadores) Socialist
Trade Union
POUM-(Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxisla) Troskyites
PSUC-(Partido Socialista Unificado de Cataluna)
Communists
CNT and FAI-Anarchists
The CEDA. It was a reflection of the general Catholic
Action movement in Europe. It was an attempt to found
a Christian Democratic party of the type that has had
success in Italy since 1945. Rigid laws had been passed
by the Republic in 1931 limiting the powers of the
Church. This party then tried to reconcile many points
of view that were not to the left. It had to get along
with rich men upon whom it depended for funds, and
also to try to keep the middle classes from becoming out
and out defenders of the kings who had been deposed by
popular mandate in 1931. It became the most powerful party for a brief period in 1933. Its leader was a slippery and ambitious man called Gil Robles. He flirted with
Fascism and liked to be addressed as "jefe," a translation
of "Duce" or "Fuehrer."
The JONS or Fascist Party. The program of this party
as announced in 1931 included denunciation of class war
and the "impbcable examination of foreign influences
in Spain." The program also included penalties for those
"who speculated with the misery and ignorance of the
people" and demanded the "disciplining of profits."
Catholicism embodied for them the "racial" tradition of
the Spaniards. They opposed the CEDA as reactionary.
They trained and drilled on Sundays. In universities they
10
Paradise is not -rest. Paradise is against rest. In
Paradise one cannot lie down; one must hold
oneself up, like the angels. Very well; we, who
have already borne on the road to Paradise the
Jives of the best among us, want a difficult, erect,
implacable Paradise; a Paradise where one can
never rest and which has, beside the threshold
of the gates, angels with swords.
It must be noted also that the Falange was interested
in faHeaching economic reform, which it called "revolutian." To quote again from jose Antonio:
When we speak of capitalism we are not talking
about property. Private property is the opposite
of capitalism: property is the direct projection
of man on his possessions; it is an essential hu~
man attribute. Capitalism has been substituting
for this human property the technical instruments of economic domination.
This young man was imprisoned and later shot by the
government in the opening year of the war.
CNT and FAI-l shall quote certain words of Bakunin,
the Russian who founded the Anarchists movement. "1
shall die and the worms will eat me, but I want our idea
to triumph. I want the masses of humanity to be really
emancipated from all authorities and from all heroes past
and present." This Russian aristocrat had a feeling for
simple and independently minded people. He offered
them a vision of heaven on this earth. He thought men
not good by nature but good enough to live in a completely free society. His theories have many analogies in
peasant villages where things are organized locally. In
1868 a man named Fanelli appeared in Madrid. Up to
that time in Spain no socialist movement had taken hold.
Fanelli was a comrade-in-arms of Garibaldi and a passionate admirer and disciple of Bakunin. He spoke no
Spanish and addressed a group of perhaps ten men, most
of them printers. By 1872, only five years later, there
�April 1972
were 59,000 followers of Bakunin in Spain. The great
new truths proclaimed may be summed up again: The·
State, based on ideas of obedience and authority, is
morallv evil.
lnst~ad of this State there should be self-governing
bodies, whether they be municipalities, professions, or
other groupings, all of which would make voluntary pacts
with each other. Criminals would be punished by public
criticism. I will quote from a speech made by Jose Garcia
Oliver, one of the leaders of the movement. In 1937 he
was the Minister of Justice in the Spanish Republic. This
must be one of the most extraordinarv statements made
by any minister of the law.
~
Justice must be burning hot, jmtice must be
alive, justice cannot be restricted within the
bounds of a profession. It is not that we definitely despise books and lawv·ers. But the fact is
that there were too many lawyers. [It may be
noted that in 1937 after a year of war, perhaps
127 legal functionaries were dead. D.A.] \Vhen
relations between men become what thev· should
be, there will be no need to steal and 'kill. For
the first time, let us admit here in Spain that
political dialectic. This Anarchist movement obviously
never followed the ways of Marx, the materialist. Education was one of their keynotes. Groups of Anarchists
travelled in the early days of the movement like mendicant friars. Peasants were taught to read in night-schools.
They were also often taught to be faithful to their wives,
to avoid alcohol and coffee. In two contrasting regions of
Spain they were strong and powerful. In Andalusia they
would organize the "pueblos" into co-operating self suf. ficient communes. Pueblo also means People. The middle
and upper class could then be thought of as not "people." This seemed a perfectly air-tight inference to the
movement. In Catalonia the Anarchists attempted to organize the workers of factories into self-sufficient committees which would then deal on a level of parity with other
workers' committees on questions of fqod, lodging, or
even entertainment. They had no faith in prolonged bargaining. They had no strike funds. They believed in
brutal, violent action. It is notable that even in 1936
there was not more than one paid official in the whole
union. Their hatred and increasing separation from the
middle classes often led them to include anvone in their
ranks who protested. These would inclule, obviously,
common criminals. When the secret organization, the
Civil wars should make us cherish whatever grasp we do have on order and to realize
what a tenuous hold we have on civilization.
I
'
I
the common criminal is not an enemy of society.
\Vho is there who says he dare not go out and
steal if driven to it to feed his children and himself' Do not think that I am making a defence
of robbery. But man, after all, does not proceed
from God, but from the case, from the beast.
Justice, I firmly believe, is so subtle a thing that
to interpret it one has only need of a heart.
This movement was and is religious in character. It
had no intention of \\'aiting on or trusting in the historical means of production. Competition was a base
instinct to it as it had always been to the Spanish Catholic
Church. It is another of the cutting ironies that this
war eYinces that the Church, which \\'as to suffer so
cruelly from the Anarchist movement (their truly Satanic
hatred, the Pope was to say), encouraged the very beliefs
which the Anarchists clung to with such mm·ing and impossible devotion. ll1eory, devotion, passion, and blood
seem more often a thing of ethos and character than of
FA!, was organized in 1927, it meant that there was a
secret army of shock troops in a state of perpetual war
against the rest of Spain. They seemed to believe every
word they read. If they murdered the Archbishop of
Saragossa and attempted to assassinate King Alfonso, they
were probably, with what they called the propaganda of
the deed, applying literally certain words of Bakunin suggesting that the new world would be gained when the
last king was strangled in the guts of the last priest. The
idea of becoming a "political party" in any sense whatsoever was repugnant to them. They were not common
criminals but religious dreamers. They numbered two million in 1936. Barcelona was their headquarters.
The UGT. This party or union seemed often the type
one sees in certain Scandinavian countries. It also has a
Fabian side to it. It was centered in lv!adrid and was always in rivalry with the Barcelona-based Anarchists. It
broke with the Bolsheviks in 1920. It was generally respected by the middle classes. Its two leaders were great
]]
�The College
rivals. One was Largo Caballero; an ex-plasterer who had
been a conscientious and hard-working member of the
Madrid City Council and of the Union's board. He
learned to read at the age of twenty-four. He even served
briefly under the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera perhaps
because of his morbid fear of the Anarchists. His rival was
'Indalcio Prieto, who was bald, fat, intelligent and rich.
His genuine qualities of mind are perhaps revealed by his
following words which he wrote after examining papers
left by Jose Antonio in his jail.
Perhaps in Spain we have not examined with
serenity our respective ideologies in order to
dis~
cover the coincidences which were probably
fundamental, and measure the divergences, probably secondary, in order to determine if the latter
were worth being aired on the battlefield.
This union, like the Anarchists, was also dedicated to
education. From 1908 on they built countless "casa de
pueblo," a sort of combined union office, free lending
library, and a cafe. A typical small town square would
now h·ave in it a church, the barracks of the Civil Guard,
the town hall ~nd the Socialists' "casa del pueblo." It must
be remembered that in Spain the number of free public
libraries, apart from these, never exceeded four or five in
the whole nation.
The POUM. This was a Troskyite party, important in
Catalonia. They believed in permanent revolution abroad
and working class collectivism at home. In Spain at the
outbreak of the war they outnumbered the Communists.
They also hated them. By theory they were also opposed
to the Socialists whom they described as "social fascists."
Being forced by circumstance to ally themselves with
someone, they would for tactical reasons often have dealings with the Anarchists. Their leader, Andres Nin, was
imprisoned and later killed by the Communists under
ghastly conditions during the war.
The Communist Party. The Communist Party in Spain
was deemed so unimportant in the twenties that the
dictator of that epoch, Jose Antonio's father, did not even
take the trouble to ban them officially. Yet their increasing importance up to the outbreak of the war and
their enormous influence during the war is not to be
attributed to numbers. It must be clearly borne in mind
that they were in Spain,
by no means, a revolutionary
party. As a matter of brute fact, during the war they put
an end to revolutionary activity and constantly and with
success enforced a policy that there ought not to be a
revolution but a defence of a legal government, whatever the metaphysical jargon on identity with the proletariat may have said to the contrary. This will become
clearer when we turn to the actual events of the war. In
this preliminary stage it will be sufficient to recall that
they were a party of perhaps only 3,000 members in 1933.
It is incorrect to think of the Church and the Army as
parties, just as we had the same difficulty with the An-
12
archists. The Army was a perpetual source of power.
Throughout the nineteenth century there was one "pro.
nunciamento" after another. General succeeded general
in the same sickening pattern which we are so acquainted
with in the history of the republics to the south of us. In
the decades preceding the Civil War, the Spanish Armv
had shown few signs of even competence. It is perfect];·
obvious that it was not a force intended to fight foreig~
wars but rather to enforce order within the borders. Its
defeat in the war with this United States in 1898 lost it
much of its prestige. It also suffered defeats of great
humiliation in its wars with the Moroccans. However
the very comradeship of defeat gave its officers a comma~
heritage.
The Church in Spain in the 1930's numbered nearlr
20,000 monks, 60,000 nuns, and 31,000 priests. T11er'e
were around 5,000 religious communities of which 1.008
were male and the rest female. It was estimated bv Catho.
lies that perhaps two-thirds of the Spaniards at ihis time
were not practicing Catholics. In some villages of the
South perhaps one per cent of the men attended mass. As
has been already noted, Anarchism, another faith, had in
many regions taken the place of church. It must not be
forgotten however that Spain once was the greatest empire since Rome. In this period it was the Church that
held all together. Its theologians preached an egalitarian
relation between the Sons of God on this earth. Theso
doctrines were also economic. I quote from Father Juan
de Mariana, writing in 1599.
It is a duty of humanity for us to open to all men
the riches which God gave in common to all,
since to all he gave the earth as a patrimony,
so that all without distinction might live by its
fruits. Only unbridled greed could claim for itself this gift of heaven, appropriating as its own
the foods and riches which were intended to be
the property of all. ... God wishes then, and
it is laid down by his laws, that now that human
nature, corrupted as it is, has proceeded to a
partition of common goods, they should not be
monopolized by a few, and that a part should
always be set aside for the consolidation of the
people's infirmities .... In a Republic in which
some are overstuffed with riches and others lack
the very necessities, neither peace nor happiness
is possible.
This just and compassionate man of God was ~n no tt:~
speaking contrary to the thought of the Spamsh Ct... "
in its great period. This Spanish egalitarianism,_:·~;~'
spiritual; it detested the bonds of commerce and. ,.o ...
It resisted the material forces of this world and 1" .r"'
lain respects it is a loftier concept of "democr:JCI · ~'.::.
is ours in this country. Their understanding of dcmCd-'-:
is impractical I stress entirely impractical. Hmrcr·c:. '":
practibility d~es not imply impossibility. T11is unde:,::.no-
�April 1972
ing of democracy scorns the use of the word "progress"
and finds "technology" uninteresting. One must be care- ·
ful of the use of the word democracy; this Spanish understanding is not ours, and ours is not the same as People's
Democracies. The understanding of the uses of this word
is one reason for this lecture.
In" 1837 the Liberals in Spain succeeded in confiscating
manv of the lands of the Church. These liberals were entran~ed with the new ideas of Europe and wished to introduce the notions of Adam Smith. The result was to sell
the lands to profiteers and speculators. Partly as a result
of this, the Church began consolidating its monev into
banks and commercial undertakings. Rome was aiso interested in keeping at least one nation in Europe free
from liberal atheism. Much building went on. "Money is
very cat11ohc'·· became a common saying. Two quotati"ons
from the Spanish Church's catechism of 1927 may indicate the character of at least part of the Church. The
question "what kind of sin is committed by one who
votes for a liberal candidate" was answered by "Generally
a mortal sin." The answer to "Is it a sin for a Catholic to
read a liberal newspaper" was "He may read the Stock
sincere thanks to your Excellency for Spain's Catholic
Victory." Despite this, it must be noted that the Vatican
did not condemn the Basque priests as heretics, which
was Franco's ardent desire that they should.
There remains one other party to talk of, the Carlists.
Their stronghold was in the Pyrenees' valleys of Nav~rre.
The modern had penetrated not at all to this regwn.
The king they sought was a pretender, not even the king
that had been recently deposed. Their ideas on politics
were rudimentary. The leader of this party in the Cortes
(Count Rodenzo) was once asked who would be Prime
Minister if the king returned. "You, or one of these
gentlemen," replied the Count, "It is a matter of secretaries." "But what should you do?" "I," said the Count,
"I should stay with the King and we should talk about
hunting." Th.eir motto was "Dios, Patria, e Rey." However there was nothing fraudulent about their deep religious disavowal of the modern world. Their sincerity is
no more to be doubted than that of the Anarchists. They
fought with classic Spartan heroism during the war. There
would sometimes be three generations of the same family
on the front.
One must be careful of the use of the word democracy; this Spanish understanding
is not ours, and ours is not the same as People's Democracies. The understanding of
the uses of this word is one reason for this lecture.
Exchange News." The shooting of priests and the burning of churches was most often done by working class people infuriated by a priest's flagrantly contradicting Christ's
teachings on poverty and hypocritically showing himself
to be a respecter of well-born persons. The decline of the
Church snuffed out not one iota of the uncompromising
intensity it had instilled in the souls of its communicants.
What the Pope called "satanic hatred" is by the same
token a harvest of the faith. In the French Revolution
one is struck by the courage and integrity of the priests.
Time and time again they would risk their lives to bring
the sacraments to the people. In Spain this was sadly
lacking. The notable exception to this was in the Basque
proYinces. Indeed Franco found it necessarv to exile or
imprison Basque priests for their loyalty to' his enemies.
Sixteen of them were executed by the Rebels. At the end
of the war Franco received a telegram from the new Pope
PJUs XII saying "Lifting up our heart to God, we give
Let us trace as briefly as possible the course of events
from 1931 to the outbreak of the war in 1936. There were
three sets of elections, 1931, 1933, and 1936. Primo
Rivera, the dictator from 1923 to 1930, had been deposed and he was succeeded by a year of tight-rope walk·
ing by that giddy but not unintelligent king, Alfonso
XIII. Elections were forced upon him for a variety of com·
plex reasons and his followers were defeated despite an
enormous amount of dirty work at the polls. His last
words publicly to his people were as follows:
Sund~rv's elections have shown me that I no
longer. enjoy the love of my people. I could very
easily find means to support my royal prerogatives against all-comers, but I am determmed
to have nothing to do with setting one of my
countrvmen against another in a fratricidal civil
war. Thus, until the nation speaks, I shall delib-
13
�The College
erately suspend the use of my Royal Prerogatives.
The import of this message is somewhat puzzling though
undoubtedly serious.
This new Republic was in part the creation of the generation of '98. Many of them were men of deep seriousness and intelligence. They often made speeches and then
accused men and Fate because what they said had little
effect. The elections were won simply through a defect
and disruption of all of the old powers of Church, Army,
and Civil Service. All of the conservative forces would
have accepted it if it had changed nothing except the
form of the government, in other words if it did nothing.
This was impossible. Things were too badly disrupted. It
must be remembered also that the Anarchists by theory
resisted government. The people themselves, in all of the
deep misery of their poverty, rightfully expected something from an election in which they had put a government in power. This "government" as constituted was not
socialist. Both Caballero and Prieto were ministers but
they were satisfied for the time being with reforms to be
accomplished by the process of law. No program of
agrarian reform was instituted immediately. Instead the
government turned immediately to the obsession of the
Liberals, the separation of Church and State. This action
only alienated sections of the country and avoided the
deep and glaring questions of the peasants and the land.
Soon there were outbreaks all over the face of the country.
At the same time the Anarchists burned some churches.
The government naturally called on the Guardia and the
Army. There were some minor massacres and much blood.
Part of the pre-election agreements had included provisions for granting Catalonia virtual autonomy. This exasperated every centralist who wanted Spain to be one.
11Vith an incredible indifference to what was appropriate,
they introduced drastic reforms into the Army and the
Civil Service. They retired many generals at full pay,
giving them adequate means and time to plot against the
regime.
·
New elections were called for in 1933 and they swung
the government in the other direction. The CEDA, which
I previously talked of, now comes to the fore. They won
a sweeping victory at the polls. They won because the
workers and the peasants were disgusted that nothing or
not enough had been accomplished by the previous government. Ladies had the vote because of the reforms of
the previous government and mostly voted as their confessors instructed them. The separation of Church and
State was repealed. The Army was increased. Any agrarian
measures already passed were castrated. In early October
of 1934 a ·kind of revolution was declared. The UGT
called for a general strike in Madrid. The Anarchists,
their enemies, did not participate. The government put
it down and the socialist leaders were in prison by nightfall. In Barcelona the opportunity was taken to proclaim
14
a more independent Catalonia. TI1e Anarchists held themselves aloof here also. This was also put down by the
government. In the mining region of the Asturias, however1 the rising had enormous temporary success. It was
carefully prepared by tough-minded and well-organized
miners. There were arms and dynamite and committees.
Timidity gave way suddenly to violence, traversing no
middle ground. \1Vorkers' soviets were organized. It was
a heroic moment for the working class. The amount of
co-operation surprised everyone and even caused the
Anarchists to stop and consider untheoretically for once
the possible uses of organization. Anarchists, Socialists,
and Troskyites got together under the slogan of UHP
(Union de Hermanos Proletarios.) (Union of 1\'orking
Class Brothers.) Even the Communists were involved
through you may recall their number was very small. A
bishop's palace was burned and several priests shot. There
was ·enormous public· excitement and enthusiasm. The
government took severe measures. Generals Goded and
Francisco Franco were made chiefs of staff. These two
generals asked for the African Foreign Legion and certain
Moorish troops. They were immediately successful. After
fifteen days it was all up. One of the conditions of the
surrender was that the Moors and the Foreign Legion be
withdrawn. They were not, and behaved as if they were
a conquering army living off suffering. One thousand three
hundred thirty died and 30,000 were wounded on the
civilian side. There were few casualties on the side of the
Moors and the Legion. Indignities and bestial tortures
were common. It may also be interesting to recall that
the Asturias was the only section of Spain never to have
been conquered by the Moors when they overran the
Peninsula in the seventh and eighth centuries.
It was at this time that Caballero in prison began reading Marx. He began to envisage himself as a Spanish
Lenin. He was almost seventy, a man up till then noted
for his caution and respect for legitimate reform. Prieto,
the other leading Socialist, had fled to France, having
disapproved of the rising against the government. After
the Asturias revolt, civil war seemed inevitable to many.
To have prevented it would have called for genius and
energy which rarely, if ever, can be found.
A great public scandal involving a new type of roulette
wheel called the "straperlo" now erupted. Vast profits had
been promised to government ministers. The American
Ambassador in Madrid at that time reports that at a certain moment in a debate at the Cortes, Jose Antonio
leaned over a balcony, aflame with mischief and youthful
disgust with corruption and yelled "viva Straperlo." You
might imagine this better if you were to conceive of a 1ong
and exhausting session of the l\1aryland Legislature being
interrupted by one of its youthful members crying, "Hurrah for Slot-Machines," and if in addition the young man
was the head of youthful and increasingly violent groups
of street gangs.
The government fell. It was the twenty-sixth govern-
�April 1972
ment crisis since 1931. Seventy-two ministers had served
in one or other of the cabinets. The feeling towards
democracy was perhaps something like that of the French
in 1958 after fifteen years of the Fourth French Republic.
In February 1936 new elections were held. The "Frente
Popular" won. This Popular Front was an alliance between
liberal Republicans and Socialists, Anarchists, and Communists. It was clearly understood that all groups would
be free again once the election was over. Part of the
victory may be attributed to the Anarchists giving up part
of their dogma. Up to now they had by theory abstained
from participation in elections. The Asturias revolt had
taught them the value of co-operation. \\lith the possibili!:J• of power in their nostrils, practicality entered to
some degree. The Communists were behind the Popular Front also. The\• had previously, in defiance of principles, co-operated with the Anarchists, next with the Socialists, and now even with the Republican liberals. The
prc\·ious August in 1\loscow, Dimitrov, a Bulgarian who
was general secretary of the Comintern, defined the aims
of world communism in the face of the threat posed by
Hitler to the Soviet Union. I quote:
The formation of a joint People's Front providing for joint action with the Social Democratic
themselves. Caballero, intoxicated perhaps by Communist
flattery, talked about the dictatorship of the proletariat.
His rival in the party, Prieto, was in violent opposition.
Peasants in many parts of the country began expropriating the land of absentee landlords and dividing it up
amongst themselves. Generals began to get together and
plot, especially Generals Mola and Franco. Franco was
sent to the Canary Islands as governor. The older party
of the right, the CEDA, seemed increasingly powerless
· and Calvo Sotelo, a handsome and ruthless Monarchist,
emerged as a polarizing leader. Four months after the election there seem to have been 160 churches burnt and 269
political murders; sixty-nine political centers had been
wrecked. There had been 113 general strikes and ten
newspaper offices had been sacked. All kinds of groups
were out drilling on Sundays. The Falange, which seemed
to have been an enthusiastic group of upper class boys
under the guidance of a handsome fellow who liked poetry
and political theory, became increasingly violent.
It was outlawed by the government and some of its
leaders imprisoned. The generals had already begun a
flirtation with the Fala·nge. It seemed the part of expedience to have some party dedicated to violence with which
to meet the increasing violence of the Left. The older
members of the Falange did not like the alliance. \Vere
What the Pope called "satanic hatred" is by the same token a harvest of the faith.
parties is a necessity. Cannot we endeavor to
unite the Communist, Social Democratic, Catholic, and other workers. Comrades, you will remember the ancient tale of the capture of Troy.
The attacking army was unable to achieve victory until, with the aid of the Trojan Horse, it
penetrated to the very heart of the enemy camp.
\Ve, revolutionary workers, should not be shy
of using the same tactics.
This was a policy which gave a cheap Machiavellian thrill
to many persons at that time and now. One could have
one's cake and also be clever. In Spain, however, the
Communists \\~ere still too insignificant for their actions
to be important. The Spanish Popular Front would have
won easih· without them.
The n~w government was formed again of liberals. The
working class parties began immediately to fight among
not the Army and the Church and the old forces of
sterility the very forces which the new unified and strong
Spain should abhor? Again chances for action easily overpowered both ideas and ideals, or at least left them
smouldering under the surface. Jose Antonio wrote a
Jetter to a general quoting as usual from a book, this time
Spengler: "After all, in the last resort, it has always
been a platoon of soldiers who have saved civilization."
The Republic failed because it could not from both
ineptitude and inability and principle compromise or
walk a middle ground between Right and Left. The President of the Republic, Azana, an austere and eloquent
man who in other times and places would have been a
writer, from the reaches of the Presidential palace reSected that the Spanish working classes were "raw material for an artist." To one journalist he remarked that
the Cortes was one big cafe. To another journalist he
remarked: "Sol y sombre. Light and shade; That is Spain."
15
�The College
It is to be noted that seats in Spanish bull rings are
named either Sol or Sombra, according to whether they
are shaded on not.
On July 13, Calvo Sotelo, the Monarchist leader, was
shot by members of the official troops of the government
in reprisal for the shooting of one of their members by
the Falangists. It, with reason, seemed to the right, and
perhaps not only to the right, that the government could
not control even its own agents. On the 17th of July the
generals began their rising and the civil war began.
There was a big surprise in store for the generals. The
workers, small people and peasants who may have quarrelled among themselves when their government was unchallenged, rose in fury when it was challenged. What the
Socialists and the Anarchists by themselves could not
achieve, was accomplished in one day by the revolt of
the generals.
North Africa was immediately under the control of the
Rebels and Franco flew in from the Canary Islands to
take charge there. In Spain itself General ]Viola had immediate success in a much smaller area than envisagedroughly Burgos, Salamanca, Navarre, and Saragossa. Seville was taken with great bloodshed by a bragadoccio of
a general, Queipo di Llano. The Basque provinces remained Joyal and found themselves an island surrounded
by rebel territory. Andalusia was plunged overnight into
the most violent of revolution, as was Catalonia. The revolt failed completely in the greatest cities of Spain-Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Bilbao.
Neither side really had either proper equipment, material, or soldiers to fight a long war. Both sides immediately sought for help from abroad. Franco and Mala
had at ]east the Foreign Legion, Moorish troops, about
two-thirds of the Guardia Civil and a good part of the
regular army. The Moors and the Legion were, however,
for a while, the only effective troops. The government
had some of the regular troops. It was forced by the
people in the first days of the revolt to give arms to the
Anarchists and the Socialists. It was loath to do so and its
delay was nearly fatal. The government had in its hands
the only two industrial centers of importance, Bilbao and
Barcelona. It had also the gold reserve of the Bank of
Spain which, interestingly enough, was the sixth largest
reserve in the world. Much or all of this later went to
Soviet Russia as payment for arms. The government had
practically no reserves of arms. The equipment was
dangerously antiquated. There were few trained technicians on either side. The air force on both sides was
in a parlous state.
The chapter of this war on how much and under what
conditions foreign aid was received on both sides is of
fantastic complexity. Let it suffice to say at this point
that Franco almost immediately received aircraft and
equipment and pilots from both Hitler and Mussolini.
He was able to transport across the straits from Africa
the only crack troops existing. It must also be noted that
16
from the beginning of the revolt until the end of the
war he was given unlimited credit by the Texas Oil Company.
The head of the Popular Front government in France,
Leon Blum, was immediately in sympathy with the government and wished to send airplanes and material in
abundance. Members of this government were opposed
to any embroilment and the English, France's most reliable ally, were in general opposed. The English were involved in a delicate dance with both Hitler and Mussolini which culminated in Munich. A diplomatic minuet,
entitled a Non-Intervention Pact, was set up by all interested parties. This group of diplomats continued to
meet throughout the war. In practice what happened was
that both Italy and Germany shipped increasing amounts
of aid and men to Spain and blatantly ignored or effectively reduced to talk any non-intervention on their own
part. Russia was in a tight bind, and was a member of the
Pact. Allied to France,. on the one hand, out of fear of
Hitler, and with the spectacle of a genuine revolution
on the other, she finally began to ship increasing amounts
of war material to Spain. The Russians instructed their
agents to carefully curb the revolution and to make every
effort to preserve parliamentary democracy. The Russians
then could claim to be the only foreign government which
aided Spanish democracy. Stalin probably calculated that
to send enough to win the war would have embroiled
him in a general war with Germany and Italy, and the
Germans and the Italians probably felt the same. It is in
a way the spectacle of neither Russia on the one hand
nor the Germans and the Italians on the other really
wanting their side to win. They did want to prevent their
protegees from losing, however. "Yes, my darling daughter, hang your clothes on a hickory limb, but don't go
near the water." After Munich, however, this changed.
Germany found it could get away, quite literally, with
murder, and Russia moved towards an alliance with Hitler.
The policy of talk, talk, talk, on the part of England and
France proved nearly disastrous for them; especially as
the opponents were doing more than talking. This situlion was reflected internally in the political sketch I gave
of Spain in the years preceding the war-namely the
liberal parliamentarians of the Spanish Parliament could
neither muster the strength nor effectively promulgate any
program which would curb the rising tides of violence.
The first great action in the war was Franco's march
north and east to the gates of Madrid. The northern
troops under the command of Mala struck south down
through the heights of the Guadaramma where they were
stopped. By September 3 Franco had taken the last town
of any consequence before Madrid. Rather than describing in detail many battles, it is now of interest to see as
closely as can be seen from the most dispassionate eyewitnesses to these events, what the war and revolution
was like in towns and countryside on both sides.
Let us begin in Barcelona and Catalonia. The An-
�April 1972
archists took over effective control almost immediately.
\ \1hile the government of Catalonia remained, effective·
control was taken by the people directly. Almost every
church was burnt. One eye witness reports that this was
done sometimes in an almost pious way. It was a duty
to be fulfilled and a fire engine was waiting circumspectly
at the scene to prevent the fire spreading to neighboring
buildings. All owners of factories were either killed or
fled. Hotels, banks, stores, street-car lines were all
requisitioned or closed. l\Ianaging committees of former
workers or technicians were in charge. No one in the
streets wore a necktie, and Spain is generally in its large
cities almost offensively elegant and dandy-ish. Orwell
speaks of barber shops with signs solemnly announcing
that barbers are not slaves. Prostitutes were urged by large
colored posters to stop being prostitutes. The CNT ordered all of its workers to work. The middle classes were
amazed at the sense of responsibility. It certainly was the
only time in history that Anarchists controlled a great
city. The part\· had radio stations, newspapers, and endless periodicals. Certain of the Anarchists saw this as a
decay-their leaders were sullying the purity of the movement by becoming interested in power.
By the following March everyone who visited the city
noted an immense change. It was a city of terror. The
Anarchists were losing control. The POUM was being
was never imputed to his wife. One village abolished the
1
greeting 'A Dios" because, as they said, "there is no more
God in Heaven."
A story of this time which proves no political point
except perhaps the fundamental one is that of a young
girl who after the burning of her convent had to find
a more suitable garb than a nun's habit. She found a dress
covered with sparkling sequins which fitted her. On arriving back at her village, many miles from the city, she
. was stoned to death by the villagers as her dress obviously seemed to be that of a prostitute.
The revolution in Andalusia was, if anything, even more
brutal and extreme. The rebel armies were in several of
the large cities. A kind of urgency for blood was evidenced.
The villages were isolated from one another. The lines of
the two sides were irregular. In some villages the puritanism of the Anarchist movement had such effect as to not
only abolish money, but went so far as to close the village
bar and to prohibit tobacco. Franz Borkenau upon visiting
such a village comments that their hatred of the upper
class was far less economic than moral. "They did not
want to get the good living of those they had expropriated, but to get rid of their luxuries, which seemed to
them so many vices."
However, here as in many other parts of Spain, the gap
between ideals and reality was enormous. The putting
In order to persuade, you would need what you lack: Reason and Right in the struggle.
persecuted, a civil war within a civil war was raging. On
the streets the people again wore elegant suits and neckties and the prisons were full, not of prisoners from the
front, but of political prisoners. The Communist party
was assuming more and more power.
In the countryside of Catalonia the Anarchists took
over as they had· in Barcelona. They wanted to organize
the land in common, to try to abolish the use of money
(an unclean thing), and to procure the objects needed
from the outside world by direct exchange with the trade
unions of the city. However, there was in th~~ry no central
control and the regular Catalan government was not prepared to initiate such a policy, and certainly not the increas~
ingly pmYerful Communist party. Every village had its own
committees, howeyer, and guarded fiercely its newly won
liberties. Generally the priest and his strongest adherents,
the la\\")"tr and his son, the squire and the richest peasants, stood a good chance of being shot. \\'omen and
children were almost never shot and a husband's guilt
into effect of one's good intentions had sometimes nothing to do with the satisfaction felt in merely having such
intentions. It must also be said that often the schemes
worked remarkably well. Peasants would voluntarily cooperate and raise more food than ever raised. Many factories in Barcelona improved production. This is by no
means to be explained away by the euphoria of the first
months of the war. Something seemed to well up which
was native to the customs and instincts of the people.
Madrid looked differently than Barcelona. It seemed on
the surface an ordinary city in time of war. It was re~
bellious rather than revolutionary. It must be remembered
that Madrid is the center of the Socialist party, which had
long habits of working legally and with a central committee. There was perhaps more hidden terror and accusations and counter-accusations than in Barcelona where
the enemies had at first been so quickly and ruthlessly
dealt with. There were no beggars on the streets of Barcelona whereas Madrid was full still of both beggars and
17
�The College
rich. The militia was much better organized here and the
Communists had already formed their famous and courageous Fifth Regiment.
Another aspect evidenced particularly on the Republican side, might be called an absence of pathological excitement. There seemed to be no great upheavals in the
sex life of the country, such as is often noted in other
wars. \Vomen, for example, for almost the first time in
Spain, participated on the Republican side in all kinds
of activities, even as far as fighting with the militia. They
were almost universally respected. There was a lack of
any psychological crisis. This is perhaps another of the
things which cause us to pause and reflect on the nature
of this civil war. Whether we phrase this in the classic
terms of ' idion" and ukoinon," the individual and the
common thing in politics, or in terms of psychological
adaptation, we are merely looking at two aspects of the
same and perpetual problem of man as social. Despite
the fact of a dreadful and bloody civil war and centuries
of unbelievable mis-government and insult, dignity was
not destroyed, nor was poise of individuals. Ethics re1
mained. cOurage, honour, and a resurgent honest}' were
not blotted out.
were much more common than on the other side. \Vives
and daughters of offenders were sometimes raped or had
their heads shaved. Bodies were often left exposed for days
to the public gaze. The working class had to be terrorized
before any general could creep into bed at night and
sleep with any sense of security. The Church insisted
merely that those killed should be allowed to confess.
One priest on Majorca said "Only ten per cent of these
dear children refused the last sacrament before being
despatched by our good officers." Occasionally a more
kind-hearted official would arrange to have a good supply
of wine on hand so that those about to die might drown
their despair in drunkenness. Often prisoners dug their
own graves before being shot in them. It is certain that
General Franco gave orders that no appeals for mercy
were to reach him until after the execution of the sentence. General Mola, after a while, declared himself inconvenienced by the bodies on the roadside and the executions then occurred more discreetly.
The Falange seemed not so given to such works, but
rather they were the doings of the generals or of the old
parties of the right. It must not be thought that the
Falange was in power, however, despite the fact that every-
Those who find in these words merely excess, or merely propaganda, or who can
with obvious facility destroy the meaning with logic, can never hope to understand
politics.
The character of the rebellious half of Spain, henceforth to be known as Nationalist Spain, was completely
military. The lowest of corporals had things easier. Martial
law took over the complete administration of justice.
Everyone was investigated, especially administrative and
judicial officers. They had, obviously, to be completely
pliant to the will of the military. One heard such taunts
constantly as "Those who don't wear uniforms should
wear skirts." Only two movements or parties were allowed,
the Falangists and the Carlists. All members of Popular
Front parties, all members of Masonic lodges, all members
of trade unions, and even in. many regions all who had
voted for the Popular Front, were arrested and many of
these shot. A strike was punishable by death. The number of executions was enormous, though it seemed to vary
somewhat according to the desires of the local commanders. Certainly every provincial governor or official,
if appointed by the Popular Front, was executed. Atrocities
18
one for a variety of reasons clamored to join its ranks.
\Nilly Messerschmidt, a German aircraft manufacturer
visiting Spain in August, commented that the Falange
seemed to have no particular aims or ideas. "They seemed
merely young people for whom it is good sport to play
with fiream1s and round up Communists and Socialists."
The cities in Nationalist Spain were strangely silent.
Posters of the Falange covered whole sides of buildings
saying "The Falange calls you, now or never. There is no
middle course. \\lith us or against us." The Carlists had
also large posters which announced: "Our Flag is the only
True Flag. The Flag of Spain, always the same." As a
matter of fact it was a big issue as to whether the flag
should be that of the l\1onarchy or that of the Republic.
The Falange became increasingly Catholic. It become
obligatory for the regular Falangist to attend mass, confess, and take Communion. The propagandized ideal became for men, half-monk, half-warrior, and for ladies a
�April 1972
kind of combination of Saint Teresa and Isabella, the
Catholic Queen. This was a marked change from the
earlier character of the Falange. Only one bishop, the
Bishop of Vitoria, showed any reluctance in supporting
the movement. Some priests actually fought and the chief
of Nationalist propaganda was the fanatical Fr. Ysurdiaga.
It should not be forgotten that the Inquisition had
only been abolished in Spain in 1837, and that it was
one of the aims of the Carlists to restor.e it. Their periodicals had described it as: "That most august tribunal,
brought down by angels from heaven to earth." It is also
to be noted that Franco would often give propaganda-like
positions to Falangists so that they might feel the image
of power without having any. Carlism looked only to the
past. It wanted neither glory and certainlv not prosperity.
They promised only "order" and respect for "hierarchies."
The Falangists, on the other hand, as we have seen from
Jose Antonio's speeches, were exuberant and drunk on
future glon·. Supreme order in the past or supreme order
in the future and reality and present fact, namely General Franco, 1·ery much in the present. \Ve have then a
civil war within a ci\'il war also on the right. Obviously
reality won this war. Franco finally formed a party with
the jaw-breaking title of the "Falange Espanola Tradicionalista Y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista." The title included both the Falange, the Carlists,
the old JONS. It satisfied no one while paying lip-service
to all. Jose Antonio's teachings, such as they \Vere, were
gradually sluffed off and he was made into the Saint,
the martyred saint of the Nation. This young man's bones
were taken, after the war, from a common graveyard in
Alicante where he had been shot, and after a torchlight
procession of three hundred miles they were interred in
the Escorial, the austere palace of Philip the Second and
the tomb of the Spanish kings. His bach·, his photographs, and his memory became official symbols. An
earnest, stron_g, and even honest man, Hedilla, 1vas the
last independent leader of the Falange. He showed resistance to Franco. After some months of sordid intrigue
which can interest only those with debased lvlachiavellian
tendencies, Hedilla was removed from office and Franco
w~s proclaimed "jefe" or chief of the partY. Hedilla was
placed in solitary confinement in the Canan· Islands and
had no one to talk to except his Jesuit confessor. It was
hoped he might rot to death. His wife went insane during this period and ended her dars in an asdum. Hedilla
resisted. He was a strong man, and in 1941 he was moved
to comfortable quarters.
Most of the most prominent intellectuals of pre-war
Spain were on the Republican side. They \\·ere mostly of
the famous "Generation of '98" and had assisted at a re\'ival, and a genuine reYival, of thought and integrity in
Spain. They signed a manifesto supporting the Republic.
The \'iolenee of the early days and the increasing influence
of Communists caused manv of them to flee the countrv.
Ther had all had much to do with the foundations of tlie
Republic in 1931. Unamuno, the most noted Spanish
philosopher, stayed on the Rebel side in what he called
"its struggle for civilization against tyranny." He was the
author of a book which some of you may know called
The Tragic Sense of Life. I shall quote from the opening
of this book. He says he is interested in:
The man of flesh and bone-the man who is
born, suffers and dies, the brother. There is another thing which is called man and he is the
subject of not a few elucubrations more or less
scientific. He is the legendary featherless biped,
the Zoon politikon of Aristotle, the social-contracter of Rousseau, the economic man of the
Manchester economist, the homo sapiens of
Linnaeus, or ·if vou like, the vertical mammal.
A man, in brie(who is only an idea. That is to
say, a no-man. The man we have to do with is
the man of flesh and bone-!, you, the reader, all
of us who walk solidly on the earth. And this
concrete man is the supreme object of all philosophv. Man should be better defined as an
affective or feeling animal. It fits better than to
call him a rational animal. More often have I
seen a cat reason than laugh or weep.
Man has immortal longings and finds them real; they are
the necessities of the heart and the will. His book ends
with the words "And may God deny you peace, but give
you glory." He tries to solve the problem which cannot
be solved-man's agonized desire to be assured of personal
immortality. There is no such assurance, but out of the
agony comes the energy of our soul.
By October Unamuno had changed his mind. On October 12 there was a great ceremony held in the hall of the
University of Salamanca. In the 'chair was Unamuno, in
his position as rector of the University. Also present was
the provincial governor, Mrs. Franco, the Bishop of Salamanca, and lvlilan Astrav, a much-wounded, violent and
somewhat pathological ~an who was head of the Foreign
Legion. He led off the proceedings with a violent attack
on Catalonia and the Basque provinces, calling them
"cancers in the body of the nation. Fascism, which is
Spain's health-giver, will know how to exterminate both,
cutting into the live healthy flesh like a resolute surgeon
free from false sentimentality." Someone at the back of
the hall piped up with "Viva la Muerte" or "hurrah for
death," which was General Astray's motto. Then there followed the usual clenched fists ;nd cries of Spain-One.
Certain people saluted the sepia portrait of Franco which
hung behind the podium. Unamuno rose and spoke as
follows. I quote:
All of vou are hanging on my words. You all
know nle and are aware that I' am unable to remain silent. At times to be silent is to lie. For
silence can 'be interpreted as acquiescence. I want
19
�The College
to comment on the speech-to give it that
name-of General Milan Astray, who is here
among us. Let us waive the personal affront implied in the sudden burst of vituperation against
the Basques and the Catalans. I was myself, of
course, born in Bilbao. The Bishop [and Unamuno here pointed to the quaking prelate at his
side], whether he likes it or not is a Catalan
from Barcelona.
Obviously there was a silence as of the tomb. No one
had raised his voice in such a manner in Nationalist
Spain. He went on:
Just now I heard a necrophilous and senseless
cry: "Long Live Death." And I, who have spent
my life shaping paradoxes which must have
aroused the uncomprehending anger of others, I
must tell you, as an expert authority, that this
outlandish paradox is repellent to me. General
Milan Astray is a cripple. Let it be said without
any slighting undertone. He is a war invalid.
So was Cervantes. Unfortunately there are all too
many cripples in Spain just now. And soon there
will be even more of them if God does not come
to our aid. It pains me to think that General
This was his last lecture. The professor of Canon t,,.
had the courage to go out arm in arm with his r . -· ·and interestingly on the other arm was Mrs. Franc:·ll;
remamed under house arrest until his death of a b•oL:
heart on the last day of 1936.
· ""
With Franco's armies at the gates of l\!adrid the Republic seemed doomed. The early revolutiona~· suttn,
and the herOIC work of people's militias was not -suffi:ic"!
to fight the Rebels who were being increasingh· ann,.-'
by Hitler and Mussolini. A revolutionarv mm·cn;<">t b~
fought well as guerillas (a Spanish word; vou mas· note\.
Their greatest mistake was in not consolidating the rt:'.-om.
tion in the country. If the peasants had been asrurcd a£
any real policy of land tenure or as was ne=son· gisot
the nature of the land, effective collectivization, tfoc rn<>
lution would have been clinched and Franco would lua
had the solid resistance, the continued resistance of tL-::
villages. This program was fudged. The socialists still cb
liked the anarchists, the liberals were afraid. and "'''"'
one realized that the only nations thev could hope w
gain aid from, would be frightened by the prospc-~t. ,\,
it was, given the farce of the non-intervention pact. only
Soviet Russia helped and it was by no meam a "".,m,.
tionary country any longer. Help they did, howt:'.-a, and
the whole world was galvanized by the defence of l\bdrid.
In the end the mask of reality and the present fact of power conquered.
Milan Astray should dictate the pattern of mass
psychology. A cripple who lacks the spiritual
greatness of a Cervantes is wont to seek ominous
relief causing mutilation around him.
General Astray could not hold himself back at this point
and shouted out another of his slogans "Abajo la Inteligencia" [Down with Intelligence]. Much public support and hand-clapping in the audience. Unamuno went
on.
This is the temple of the intellect. And I am its
high priest. It is you who profane its sacred precincts. You will win, because you have more than
enough brute force. But you will not convince.
For to convince you need to persuade. And in
order to persuade, you would need what you
lack: Reason and Right in the struggle. I consider it futile to exhort you to think of Spain.
I have done.
20
Franco had already made up his lists of those to be >h«
and had trucks of food ready to feed the ci,·ili:m P"i""'
lation. The Radio in Lisbon had alreadv broadcast a description of Franco's entrance into Madrid on a sdut<:
horse. In such a crisis the working class leader.; cnh:'!cd
the government with no surprise on am·one's part. h...,
the Anarchist, Garcia Oliver, whose speech I read to Y""
earlier. The Anarchists' paper spoke of it as "the m::n!
transcendental day in the political historv of the <;"'-'"'
try." A wise Anarchist father, whose daughter l>":u ~'
sumed the portfolio of Minister of Health. told Ins <De.;'··
ter that this meant the liquidation of Anarch~:".':."()~"'~'
in power you \Vill not rid yoursel\'es of power. 1 IJC f.-~·
ernment itself, under the leadership of CabJll<;:.•. ~·
cided it would be safer in Valencia, \\'hich indcn! :: ·-·-"·
and the Communists remained, confident. rn- 1 ~::~·;~:...
and courageous. That extraordinary w.oman kno\~-n :u L!
Passionaria broadcast daily on the radw. . .
• ,. _.
A fantastic battle ensued. On the rebel SJde """ ·• '""
�April 1972
equipped modern army of only about 20,000 troops,
mainly Moors, and the Foreign Legion. They were backed
by German and Italian tanks and aircraft. On the other
side was the populace of Madrid. It must not be said
that the battle was gained by the entrance of the International Brigades. It would have been lost without them
and they fought with the greatest of heroism. But it was
the victory of the people of Madrid. A Republican deputy
on the night of November 8, proclaimed on Madrid Radio:
Here in Madrid is the universal frontier that
separates Liberty and Slavery. It is here in Madrid that two incompatible civilizations undertake their great struggle: love against hate, peace
against war, the fraternity of Christ against the
tyranny of the Church-this is Madrid. It is
fighting for Spain, for Humanity, for Justice,
and, with the mantle of its blood, it shelters all
human beings. Madrid, Madrid.
In the spring of 1937 the process of revolution was
everywhere being slmved down by
Caballero~s
government.
The local committees of political movements in the villages were being replaced by regular municipal councils.
Nationalization of foreign firms was stopped completely
and the other factories were being harassed which were
still under workers committees. The Communists became the heart and soul of the resistance to Franco. It
must be granted to them the organization of a skillful
armv and more effective centralization. The war could not
hav~ been fought without them and no other nation
helped. They demanded the suppression of many parties
and Caballero could resist only to a point. The POUM
or Troskvites were thrown to the lions and their leader
Nin was" assassinated in prison. It must be remembered
that in the Soviet Union at this time the most far-reaching bureaucratic purges were being carried on. The Communists were entirely totalitarian in spirit-their appetite
for power was insatiable and
they were unscrupulous. One
writer compares their actions to that of the Jesuit misThose who find in these \VOrds merely excess, or merely
sionaries in China during the seventeenth century, who,
propaganda, or who can with obvious facility destroy the
meaning with logic, can never hope to understand politics. It might be further said that they are not worthy
of understanding such affairs which deal with life and
with death.
A fierce battle was waged within the University City,
a group of neiv buildings which had been one of the
prides of King Alfonso. There were fights with no quarter
given. Often one found the International Brigades, with
all their babel of tongues, fighting in these halls the
Foreign Legion, the slogan of whose founder was "Down
With Intelligence." (Durutti, the fanatical leader of the
Anarchists in Catalonia in the early days, was killed near
the University City. He had preached a new doctrine in
the last months of "the discipline of indiscipline''-in
other words, participation in government. It is sometimes
thought that he may have been killed by one of the "uncontrollables" who wished to retain the pure faith of
anarchism.) Franco said that he would rather destroy the
city than leave it to the "Marxists" and the German
Condor Legion of aviators was anxious to study 'the reaction of civilian populations to carefully planned bombings. They concentrated, as far as possible, on hospitals
and telephone headquarters. Such calculations often have
different effects than those planned for. The bombardments increased the will to resistance, as \Vas sometimes
to be noted during the Second \\Torld \\Tar on both sides
of the fence. The battle eventually stalemated and the
fierce fighting was limited often to bloody attempts to
regain roads leading into Madrid. The rest of the enormous front had much the character that Orwell describes
in Catalonia and Aragon. There would be knots of dirty,
shivering men gathered around flags on a hillside. Across
the valley would be another such group. Stray bullets
would occasionally whistle back and forth.
the better to convert the Chinese, suppressed the story
of the Crucifixion. There were no ideals in their program
and everything was to be leveled to a dead level of obedience and devotion. The country was flooded with secret
police and the vitality and splendour of the two great
parties, the Anarchists and the Socialists, was drained
away. (There was obviously a foreign Pope also, if one
wishes to keep up the analogy with the Jesuits.) Despite
all of this one must note that the government was moving
towards a somewhat better Spain. There were 60,000
teachers in Republican Spain as opposed to 37,000 in all
of Spain in 1931. Industries connected with the war had
increased production by thirty to fifty per cent. Tenant
farmers and landless laborers disappeared. Typhoid,
diptheria and smallpox inoculations were made compulsory. This was all done in the midst of a war.
The great battle of Gualalajara took place in March.
It was an attempt by the Rebels to encircle Madrid. They
lost, though in many ways the battle was a stalemate. The
Italian troops suffered a particularly ignominious defeat
and Mussolini was angry. The Republicans thought that
the blatant and obvious use of whole army corps under
foreign direction would have some effect on the famous
non-intervention committee. It did not.
The rest of the conflict is long, sad, dreary, and noble.
Towards the end the Russians began to withdraw their
help. It became clear that Stalin would eventually send no
more help and the Communists' influence began to wain.
Caballero was replaced by Juan Negrin, a man of enormous
appetites and abilities. The foreign powers sent him no
help, while the Germans in the last year of the war sent
increasing material to Franco. The Basques fell in 1937.
The Republic still mounted offensives of surprising gallantry and strength. The Republic was cut in two on the
Aragon front,. however, and after that Barcelona, that
21
�The College
great and pulsing revolutionary city, was taken. Hundreds
of thousands of refugees fled to the borders of France
knowing they could expect no quarter from the Rebels.
Their situation in France was lamentable. Madrid fell
inevitably not long after amid scenes of enormous confusion. Finally it was some generals on the Republican
side who surrendered.
Franco telegraphed to Neville Chamberlain on February 22, 1939, assuring him that his patriotism, his honour
as a gentlema·n, and his generosity were the finest guarantees of a just peace. He later said that reprisals were alien
to the Nationalist movement. Britain soon afforded him
recognition, as did France which quickly sent General
Petain as its ambassador.
If we turn back briefly to our original list of parties and
movements we can now sum up various things. On the
side of the left the great workers parties, the Socialists
and the Anarchists, took over the reigns of power and
effected a revolution. They could never agree and the
Communists became the only efficient, organizing group.
Towards the end, a moderate man, Negrin, took over the
reins and of necessitv worked with the Communists. The
liberal and enlighter{ed men of the Republic seemed unable to do anything, though Azana remained as president
to the end. Efficiency was needed and it was bought at
the expense of the revolution, which if carried out in any
degree as far as land' rights and collectivization might
have strengthened the Republic. On the other side the
various parties were all reduced to impotence and at the
end there was only a bureaucracy of greatest corruption
and inefficiency but guided by a shrewd man. Neither
the old orders of the Carlists nor the new orders of the
Fascists were given any more than lip-service. Throughout
the war· on both sides every visitor noted a hatred of
foreign ideas. Both the Anarchists and the Church spoke
the language of Faith. The Anarchists spoke of it as a
living force of humanity and the Church spoke of it in
the dead language of convention. The sincerity exhibited
and the passionate blood spilt were done so by all in the
name of Spain. Soon many people sacrificed reality to
an idea-but the idea seemed to them part of their blood.
In the end the mask of reality and the present fact of
power conquered. The Communists perhaps understood
too well that the revolution had nothing to do with progress or materialistic theory. The Falange never could institute itself on the basis of modern totalitarian progress.
Such ideas were rejected as anathema and heresy. There
were civil wars within the civil war on both sides as a
result. The country wished to be what it was and is, antitechnical, anti-progress and the evils of progress. It wished
to retain honour, individua1itv, and communitv in its
essential meaning.
.
·
I shall quote from a speech given by President Azana
at the height of the war.
\Vhen the torch passes to other hands, to other
22
men, to other generations, let them remember
if ever they feel their blood boil and the Spanisl;
temper 15 once more. mfunated w1th intolerance,
hatred, and destructiOn, let them think of the
dead, and listen to their lesson: the lesson of
those who have bravely fallen in battle generously fighting for a great ideal, and wh~ now
protected by their maternal soil, feel no hat~
or rancor, and who send us, with the sparklinv
of their light, tranquil and remote as a star. th~
message of the eternal Fatherland which sa 1·s to
all its sons: Peace, Pity, and Pardon.
'
If Franco had made any kind of wise and merciful me
of his victory a war-weary country vwuld well han.: ken
behind him. He did not. His entry into Madrid was tilt
signal for what can only be called a stupendous pruscrip
tion. At least a million men and women were hc:d,:..J
into prison and thousands were executed. The popubtiot>
hved for years on the verge of starvation. Spain wa~ forgotten in the bloody years of the greater conflict of the
general European war. This foxy and unattracti1·e little
man played his cards well and still remains as ruler of
Spain. He is building himself one of the biggest and
most durable tombs of modern times, carving it at im·
mense expense out of the living rock. It, if nothing else.
may remain as a memorial to him 1 as he seems to h:t\ e
had the fortune to live until the age of eightv, unlon:d,
inglorious, and shrewd. No one in Spain gained from
this revolution and civil war, not the Church, not the
people, not the middle class, and certainh• not the Falange, which is still kept up as a kind of ideological front.
to be used as a scapegoat or a shield whenever the Church
or the Traditionalists make some abortive mo,·cments.
towards action. One wonders if at his death, his grCJt
new tomb prepared, Franco will have the grcatnc-,., of
Philip the Second, one of his illustrious predecessors in
the rule of Spain. Philip's tomb was his own palace. the
grey and dreadful Escorial. Towards the end he would be
brought down on his cot each day to gaze at the high
altar. He had all the crimes of an enormous empire 011
his head and was ulcerous and swollen, rotting with
gangrene. Few seemed able to stand the stench. "! lud
meant to spare you this scene," he said after partaking of
the sacrament, "but I wish you to see how the monardut:l
of the earth end."
Douglas Allanbrook, a Tutor at St. John's since 1962. r_rc:t'Tl:~-- fC
formed his own works "Five Studies in Black and \\ h1te. .:: ; :
harpsichord concert in 'Annapolis. A graduate of Ban·ard Ccl;~-.:;~- :.:
1948, he was a Fulbright Fello\\' and a Tra\'eling FelJO\\- of IL~Y.'-:
Uni\'ersity. From 1955 to 1957 he taught com'position ~mel tk<··
the Peabody Conscr\'atory of J\-1usic. In 1971 he receinxl an :\:.:::-._-:.:
E. :t·v1ullikin Tutorship. He recently was elected to th~ t;o:po:::;:~
of Yaddo, an artists-writers colony, Saratoga Springs, i\.\ .. an?
·
been serving as a member of the adYisory board of the ?-.bryb.nc .\.----:o
Council.
�1
NEWS ON THE CAMPUSES
JOHN GAW MEEM NAMED
"HoNORARY FELLOW"
i
St. John's College and the citizens
of New Mexico paid special tribute
in ~ebruary to John Caw Meem, a
member of the Board of Visitors and
GO\·ernors. The veteran architect was
a Santa Fe leader in the local effort to
persuade St. John's to establish its
western campus there, and he and his
wife donated 225 acres for the campus
in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo
l'v!ountains.
The round of salutes began Friday,
February 18th, at the Board meeting
in Santa Fe, when President Weigle
announced that the Faculty and Board
had voted to appoint Meem an Honorary Fellow. Only three other persons
have received this honor from the
College-Mark Van Doren, Paul Mellon, and Richard F. Cleveland.
Governor Bruce King proclaimed
Sunday, February 20th, as "John Caw
!v!eem Day" in the state in appreciation for his successful efforts to conserve
and
promote
New
Mexico's
unique Spanish-Pueblo style of architecture during the past 50 years.
A public reception was held that
Sunday to honor Mr. and Mrs. Meem
and to open the College's exhibition
of "A Selection of Churches and Public Buildings by John Caw Meem,
Architect." Hundreds of his friends
came to express their affection and respect and to see the display of photographs and drawings. At the reception,
the Co\'ernor's proclamation was presented to ~If. Meem bv Mrs. Louise
Trigg l\lcKinney, a member of the St.
John's Board and also chairman of the
:-\c11' .\!exico Commission on the Arts.
Finally, the minister and parish council of the Cristo Rey Catholic Church
gave him a certificate of appreciation
for his designing of their monumental
adobe edifice. They also delighted the
life-long Episcopalian by naming him
a "perpetual honorary member" of the
parish.
The citation appointing Mr. Meem
as an Honorary Fellow of St. John's
cited "his understanding of and his
devotion to the liberal arts, his commitment to the active participation in
the program of liberal education at
St. John's College, and his personal
achievement and special distinction in
his chosen profession of architecture
and in his avocation of service to his
feHow citizens.n
John Gaw Meem
LAURA GILPIN
BoARD TO INCREASE
MEMBERSHIP
The Board of Visitors and Governors voted at its February meeting
in Santa Fe to amend its Charter and
the Polity to enlarge its membership
from 40 to 48. The purpose of the
larger body is to provide for a wider
geographical representation and to
strengthen attendance at the quarterly
meetings of the Board.
The President, the Provost, the
Deans, and the Governors of Maryland and New Mexico will continue to
serve as ex officio members. Of the
r"maining 42 members, 36 shall be
elected by the entire Board (instead
of 28 as at present) and six shall be
elected by the Alumni of the College.
The Board also voted to raise total
student fees for tuition, room and
board in 1972-73 to $3,900 to keep
in line with increasing costs of educa~
tion and administration. The current
annual total fee is $3,600. It was noted
that St. John's designates a sizable
share of its budget to student aid.
The next meeting of the Board will
be May 12-13 in Annapolis.
ST. JOHN'S HOLDS SEMINARS
FOR Los ANGELES DOCTORS
\Vhen a group of Los Angeles doctors decided thev would like to start
a series of "great 'books" seminars, they
sent to St. John's in Santa Fe for
mmeone to lead them.
Tutors Samuel E. Brown and Robert
II. Neidorf flew to the west coast January 21st with airline tickets pro·:ided
by the host group. In three days they
met in four seminars to explore some
of the ideas found in Sophocles' Anti-
23
�The College
gone, 1\fachiavelli's The Prince and
Discourses, De Tocqueville's Democracy in America and the American
Declaration of Independence. The
"students" included six doctors, a
dentist and an attorney.
· Mr. Neidorf also is director of the
College's summer Graduate Institute
in Liberal Education, which offers an
advanced
curriculum
centered
on
readings in books which have helped
to shape \\!estern civilization. One of
last year's Institute students was Dr.
Norman Levan, a department chairman with the Universitv of Southern
California Medical School at Los
Angeles. It was Levan's enthusiasm
for St. John's and its seminar approach
to learning which prompted his friends
in the professions to become interested
in having their own seminars with
teachers from· St. John's.
NEW INFIRMARY IN
ANNAPOLIS
St. John's in Annapolis is constructing Harrison Health Center, a new
infirmary, on the north side of the
campus near King George Street, be-
Floors will be of sheet vinyl, ceramic tiles, brick, and carpeting. There
will be painted walls and ceilings.
Structural consultants are Greene
and Seaquist, Engineers; mechanical
and electrical consultant is Wallace
S. Lippincott, F .E.; landscape architect
is John F. Gutting, Jr.; and general
contractors are Stehle, Beans, and
Bean.
Plans for the Harrison Health
Center were approved by the Annapolis Historic District Commission on
December 22nd. The building replaces
Pinkney House, the College's former
infirmarv, purchased by the State of
1\Iar\'land.
Tl1e new structure is the gift of
Mrs. John T. Harrison of Green
Farms, Connecticut, in memory of her
late husband, a St. John's College
alumnus of the Class of 1907.
Projected completion date is midsummer. An artist's rendition of the
exterior appears on the back cover. A
drawing of the interior appears below.
~ '
The two-story building was designed ~ .
by James \Vood Burch and \Vrlharn ~ ·
H. Kirby, Jr., Associated Architects, to ~ :
blend harmomously wrth the Barnster ·
House. TI1e slate roof will be steeply
pitched, similarly to the Barrister
House roof. The building will be m
the shape of a Greek cross, giving
maximum space of 4500 square feet
without overpowering the elegant proportions of the Barrister House. The
exterior walls will be of Oxford handmolded brick made bv Alwine Brick
Company of Hanover, Pennsy~vania.
The interior will house an mfirmary
with isol:ltion ward and small kitchen
on the first Aoor, and nurse's quarters
and a focult)· apartment on the second
Aoor. These apartments will each have
a Jiving-dining room combination, two
bedrooms, a bath and kitchen.
24
Mr. J. Anthony Moran, Washington attorney, was elected a member of
the Board of Visitors and Governors
of the College at its December 4th
meeting in Santa Fe.
Mr. Moran received LL.B., LL.M.,
and J.D. degrees from the George
\Vashington University School of Law
and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Alliance College in Pennsylvania. He has been admitted to
practice before the U.S. Supreme
Court; the U.S. Court of Appeals,
District of Columbia Circuit; the
Maryland Court of Appeals; and the
U.S .. District Court, District of Columbia.
He formerly served as legal and legislative consultant to various federal
agencies, departments and cm;nmissions, and Congressional commrttees.
From 1960 to 1964 he was Consultant
and Special Advisor to President L\11don B. Johnson and Mrs. Johnson.
The interior of the nurse's quarters and the faculty apart:nent in the newJfarrison Health Center
in Annapolis will have a liVing-dining room combmahon, cathedral ce1lmg, and a fireplace.
tween the historic Charles Carroll .
Barrister House and Randall Hall, the ::, ;· ·
College's dining facility and dormi- 0
f
.
tory.
WASHINGTON LAWYER
ELECTED.TO BoARD
�April 1972
From 1966 to 1968 he served as Special
Advisor to Vice President Hubert H.
Humphrey.
Mr. Moran is presently engaged in
private practice in \Vashington, D.C.,
Maryland, and Pennsylvania. He is a
member of the District of Columbia
Bar Association and the American Bar
Association, the Delta Theta Phi Legal
Fraternity, and the \Vashington Board
of Trade:
He is the author of several papers,
most recently an article entitled "Legislative Counsel: His \Vashington
Role" which appeared in the New
York Law Journal.
SANTA FE LIBRARY AssociATES
DONATE BoOKS AND RECORDINGS
The Library Associates Committee
of St. John's in Santa Fe has donated
99 volumes of books and a collection
of recordings of classic French drama
to the College Library. These library
gifts were made possible by receipts
from the four Book and Author Luncheons sponsored by the committee last
year.
The committee gift included 14
volumes of Medieval Science Series,
16 volumes The Complete Works of
Henry Fielding; 26 volumes Hegel's
Samtliche \Verke, 15 volumes The
Art of Mankind, 17 volumes The International Encyclopedia of the Social
Sciences, 11 volumes Tudor Church
Music, and a collection of classic
French drama recorded bv Le Theatre
National Populaire and La Comedie
Fran(:aise.
· The 1972 spring series of programs
will be held this vear on April 14th
and May 12th.
Two SENIORS WIN
WATSON FELLOWSHIPS
The College recently learned it has
two winners of the coveted Thomas ) .
Watson Fellowships for 1972-1973. In
Annapolis Miss Christel Stevens,
daughter of Mrs. Walli Stevens of University Park, Maryland, and in Santa
Fe Jonathan David Krane, son of Mr.
and Mrs. james Krane of Los Angeles,
California, were each the recipient of
$6,000 awards.
The Fellowship program enables
college graduates of unusual promise
to engage in an initial postgraduate
year of independent study and travel
abroad. TI1e Foundation is most concerned with such qualities as integrity,
creativity, leadership capacitv, and potential for humane and effective involvement in the world community.
Seventy Fellows were designated for
the forthcoming year from among 140
ontstanding candidates nominated.
The participating colleges and universities had previously made their nominations from approximately 1200
seniors.
The two students applied for the
Watson Fellowships by writing a letter to the St. John's College Instruction Committee, explaining their plans
for the awards if received. After Committee approval, they applied to the
Foundation and were interviewed at
the College during December. The
awards were announced March 15th.
Miss Stevens intends to study Indian classical dance at Kalakshetra Uni·
versity of Fine Arts in Madras, India.
Sbe has been studying this dance, a
combination of drama and dance, at
the College with a modern dance
group, and for two summers in New
for travel in England, France, and
Spain, investigating by observation and
interviews the legal systems of those
countries, studying their ideals and
realities, and comparing their differences. After his travels he hopes to
enter law school. Mr. Krane was the
1971 winner of the Duane L. Peterson
Scholarship.
ST. JOHN'S APPOINTS NEW
DEVELOPMENT OFFICER
IN ANNAPOLIS
Mr. Russell Edwin Leavenworth has
been appointed Director of Development at the Annapolis campus. His
appointment, effective last January ]st.
was approved by the College's Board
of Visitors and Governors at its December 4th meeting in Santa Fe.
Mr. Leavenworth had been serving
as Associate Director of Development
in Annapolis since july. He has filled
a position that was vacated by Mr.
Julius Rosenberg, Class of 1938, who
has become affiliated with the Associated ) ewish Charities and Welfare
Fund, Inc., in Baltimore. Mr. Rosen·
berg had been a member of the College
staff since September I 968. He will
remain with St. John's as a consultant
and will return to serve on the Board
of Directors of the Alumni Association.
A native of Oak P'ark, Illinois, Ilk
Leavenworth was formerly a professor
at Fresno State College in California.
where he was Chairman of the English
Department and Assistant to the Dean
of the Scbool of Arts and Sciences. In
addition he was a member of the
library, curriculum, graduate, campus
planning, college reorganization, and
York City with Miss Georgia Cushhigher education committees at Fresno
man. She has been a member of the
State.
LBJ SENDS AUTOGRAPHED
Delegate Council, and co-chairman in
BOOK TO LIBRARY
l\1r. Leavenworth served as a lieu1970 and chairman in 1971 of Reality,
The Libran• in Santa Fe has received a spring weekend at the College. She tenant with the U.S. Army Infantnan autographed copy of former Presi- has been director of the Smdicate of from 1942 to 1946 in Europe. A gradudent Lyndon B. Johnson's book, The B<JCchus, an orga-nization 'responsible ate of Hanover College in 1947, he
\ 'Jntagc Point. SJnta Fe businessman
for College social activ·ities, and has received his !11.A. and Ph.D. degree'
A. J. Tom• Taylor, brother of Lady performed in and directed seyeral dra- from the University of Colorado. H.has taught at the University of Cole~
Bird Johnson, is chairman of the St.· matic productions in Annapolis.
f\1r. Krane is interested in interna- rado, at Texas A&l\1 Universitv, anC
John's College Board of Associates in
·
tional law and plans to use his grant at Trinity University.
Santa Fe.
�The College
Among his publications are Interpreting Hamlet (Chandler, 1960),
Poems from Six Centunes (Chandler,
1962), "The English Poets" in College
and Adult Reading List (Washmgton
Square Press, 1962), and Logic for
Argument (Random House, 1968).
He is married to the former Ann
Millis of Carmel, California, who is
a graduate of Swarthmore, the University of California at Berkeley, and the
University of Colorado. J\frs. Leave?worth received her master s degree m
public administration. and her doctorate in Amencan history. She was
elected to two four-year terms on the
Fresno City School Board and served
one term as its president.
The Leavenworths have three children: Natalie, a sophomore at St.
John's in Santa Fe; Jean, a sophomore
at The Key School; and Stuart, a
sixth-grader at The Key School.
PHOTO CoNTEST IN
ANNAPOLIS
The Admissions and Public Information Offices on the Annapolis
campus of the College have been spon,
soring a photography contest. Phase I
of the contest has been completed;
winning photographs were exhibited
the last week of February in the Key
Memorial Hall.
The judges awarded prizes in . five
categories-students, faculty, bmldmgs,
activities and functions, and miscellanE:ous.
Phase I winners were students
Charles Post Phil Rosenberg, Deborah
Ross, and L~e Z!otoff, and Chris Sparrow, son of Edward Sparrow, Tutor.
The contest is open to all members
of the St. John's College community
in Annapolis. Prizes are: first, $50;
second, $25; third, $10; and honorable
mention.
The judges are Stanley Stearns,
]\•brian \Varren, and Stuart \Vhelan
noted photographers in Annapolis.
Phase II of the contest is now in
progress. Awards will he n:ade in May
with an exhibit of the wmners to be
held near the end of the school year.
26
CAMPUS NoTES
reviewed C. F. Snow's book, Public
Douglas Allanbrook, Tutor in Annapolis, has been serving on the
advisory board of the Maryland Arts
Council for the past two years. In
addition he was recently elected to
the Corporation of Yaddo, a writersartists colony in Saratoga Springs, New
York.
He presented a premiere perform·
ance of his own works entitled "Five
Studies in Black and White" during a
harpsichord concert at the College
in Annapolis on January 14th.
"The Lecture Method in Mathematics: A Student's View" by Michael
\V. Ham, Director of Admissions and
Tutor in Annapolis, has been accepted
for publication within the year by the
American Mathematics Monthly.
Edwin Hopkins, Tutor in Annapolis,
expects to receive his Ph.D .. degree ~n
philosophy from Duke Umvemty m
June.
Matthew Mallory, an Annapolis
senior, has filed as a Republican candidate for delegate from the newly
created fourth district in Maryland to
the national convention in San Diego
in August. The primary will be held
May 16th.
Santa Fe Tutor Harvey Mead received his Ph.D. degree in December
from L'Universite Laval in Quebec.
His thesis, "The Middle Science ~f
Astronomy," was a study of Ptolemy s
methodology within the context of the
Aristotelian philosophy of science.
Paul D. Newland, Provost in Annapolis, recently addressed a meeting of
the Annapolis chapter of the Military
Order of World Wars at the Officers'
Club at the U.S. Naval Academy.
Beverly Ross, Registrar for the Graduate Institute in Liberal EducatiOn at
Santa Fe, is teaching an adult education class on writing feature articles
at the College of Santa Fe.
\ViJJiam K vle Smith, Tutor Emeritus in Annapolis, obtained a Th.h1.
degree from Princeton Theological
Seminan• in 1971.
Robe;t L. Spaeth, Annapolis Tutor,
Affairs, in a new magazine,
Perspective,
subtitled "Weekly Reviews of New
Books on Government, Politics, and
International Affairs."
In his role as an alderman of the
City of Annapolis, Mr. Spaeth spoke
at the Greater Annapolis Kiwanis Club
meeting on the city-county tax differential. His speech was reproduced. m
the city's daily newspaper, the Evenmg
Capital.
Richard D. Weigle, President, attended the Education Symposium at
the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library at
The University of Texas at Austm
January 24-25 at which time. the 250,000 papers on educatiOn wntten during the Johnson administration were
made public. Former President and
Mrs. Johnson participated in the twoday series of meetings on "Educa~mg
a Nation: The Changmg Amencan
Commitment." About 300 educators
from "throughout the country attended
the sessions.
Mr. Weigle spoke on the Colleg.e
and its curriculum as well as about his
recent trip to Africa, Russia, and England at a meeting of the Naval Academy \Vomen's Club on February 1st.
STUDENTS TRAIN FOR
RESCUE OPERATIONS
St. John's College boasts one of the
few college search and rescue umts m
the country. Fifteen students on the
Santa Fe campus train for and take
part in search operations for people
lost in the vast wilderness areas of
New Mexico.
The group, under the guidance of
Herb Kincey, a Santa Fe busmessman,
is one of three units which make up
the New Mexico Search and Rescue
Association. James Carr, business manager on the Santa Fe campus, is the
current president of N.M.S.A.R. and
was the College unit advisor hefore
being elected to his present positiOn.
The St. John's unit meets for traming sessions once a \Vee~ and takes an
excursion into nearby wt1derness areas
almost every weekend. Since the be-
�April
ginning of the current academic year,
the group has been mobilized for
searches eight times.
SANTA FE ENJOYS WINTER
MuSIC SEASON
peting Principles in Music." During
that same month, Tutor Charles G.
Bell gave Part II of his illustrated lecture on "The Gothic Arts,'' which included the use of recordings.
The final event before spring vacation \vas Henry Schuman's visit the
first week in March, climaxed by an
informal evening of chamber music on
the 3rd. Mr. Schuman, founder and
director of Our Bach Concerts in New
York, spent several days at Santa Fe
working with the orchestra and smaller
ensembles.
The winter music season at St.
John's in Santa Fe offered a variety of
concert opportunities for the College
community. It started with the St.
John's Chamber Orchestra's 275th
Anniversary Concert on December 4th
and continued through March 3rd
with a special program with New York
oboist Henrv Schuman.
ST. JOHN'S FENCER WINS
· Neither s~ow nor cold could keep STATE CHAMPIONSHIP
Santa Fe music lovers from the AnniEdith "Kit" Callender, a Santa Fe
versary Concert, which featured Tutor junior, won the Women's Fencing
Samu-el E. Brown as guest conductor Championship of New Mexico in
and conductor Richard Stark as piano February. Freshman Frank Skee placed
soloist. The program by the musical second in the Men's Under-19 Foil
group included Beethoven's "Overture Competition, and sophomore Roberta
to the Ballet 'Prometheus,' Op. 43"; Faulhaber and freshman Jonathan
Haydn's "Symphony in D Major, No. Teague won third prize in the women's
104," and Mozart's "Piano Concerto and men's sections respectively of the
in E flat Major, K 271."
championship fencing tournament
On Sunday afternoon, December held in Farmington, New Mexico.
12th, mezzo-soprano Mary Neidorf Their coach is Istvan Fehervary, Di(wife of Tutor Robert A. Neidorf) rector of Student Activities.
and pianist Gillian 1\-lcHugh of Santa
Fe presented an exciting program of FEBRUARY FRESHMAN CLASS
piano classics and vocal numbers rang- IN ANNAPOLIS
ing from American folk songs and
A February Freshman Class of 21
Germ~m lieder to two compositions
began on the Annapolis campus on
by Annapolis Tutor Elliott Zucker- Friday, January 28th. There were
man. Mr. Zuckerman carne to Santa eleven men and ten women. They
Fe in January to present a lecture "On came from Illinois, Maryland, Massaa Measure in Mozart" on the 21st and chusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey,
a week later another Annapolis Tutor, New York, Ohio, Tennessee, and
_Douglas Allan brook, gave a harpsi- Texas. One was a Vietnam veteran.
chord concert, including his own comFour students were early entrants,
position "Five Studies in Black ·and corning to St. John's before graduating
White."
from high school. Ten had attended
The February calendar of musical colleges elsewhere-including Antioch,
events included the Pomona College Bennington, Carleton, Harvard, and
Glee Club on Saturday evening the Shimer Colleges.
Two students were National Merit
5th; the Colorado Academy Chorus
after lunch on the lOth and a Sundav Scholars, two were Finalists, and one
afternoon program of Beethoven b)• received a letter of commendation.
Jack Brimbcrg of Locust ValleY, New Sixty percent of the incoming class
York, on the 13th. The Fridav e1-ening were in the top fifth of their high
lecture on February 18th continued school class.
the theme with Robert Parr, former
TI1e February Freshman Class is
Santa Fe Tutor, speaking on "Com- designed to permit students to com-
1972
plete their college education within a
four-year period. The 'llew St. Johnnies
will take their first semester of the
curriculum during the spring, and finish their Freshman year during the
summer. This enables them to join the
Sophomore Class on an equal status
and to graduate a year earlier than if
they had waited until the fall semester
of 1972 before coming to St. John's.
COLLEGE NAMES DoRMS TO
HoNOR WESTERN BENEFACTORS
The Board of Visitors and Governors
has voted to name several of the student houses in Santa Fe in honor of
New Mexico and Texas benefactors:
New Mexico-Mr. Robert 0. Anderson, Roswell; Mr. Donald R. Kirby,
Albuquerque; and Mrs. Margaret W.
Driscoll, Mr. and Mrs. Oscar B. Huffman, Mr. and Mrs. Marshall McCune,
Mr. Robert M. McKinney, Mr. and
Mrs. John Caw Meern, a'lld Mrs. Sallie
Wagner, Santa Fe area.
Texas-Bishop and Mrs. Everett H.
Jones, San Antonio; and Mr. John D.
Murchison and Mr. Clinton Murchison, Jr., Dallas.
loLA R. ScoFIELD
lola R. Scofield, Tutor Emeritus
in Annapolis, died on Monday,
March 27th.
.
A native of California, Mrs. Scofield held degrees from the University of California at Berkeley,
\vhere she was an instructor in Eng·
!ish and assistant in philosophy.
She taught at New York University
and at the University College of
The University of Chicago before
becoming a Tutor at St. John's College in 1954.
Her dominant characteristic as a
teacher was her devotion to the individual student in her classes. She
was always ready to devote her time
and her energy to helping a student
with a problem or question which
he confronted.
A service in Mrs. Scofield's memory is being planned in Annapolis
for a date in April.
27
i
.____
�ALUMNI ACTIVITIES
A CALL FOR ALUMNI SuPPORT
By the end of January, as Chairman
Jack L. Carr's appeal letter went out,
the Alumni Annual Giving Campaign
was already 38% toward its goal. This
running start is due in large measure
to an unrestricted bequest which we
applied to operating needs. Each day's
mail brings more gifts, and this could
be a banner year for alumni giving of
all sorts.
But it will not be unless more of us
take a truly realistic view of our responsibilities to St. John's. The expression "give 'til it hurts" has been vastly
overworked, to be sure, but that is
really what Mr. Weigle was asking in
his letter of last November. You are
being asked to give more money this
year than you think you can afford.
An average gift of $32, which is what
we achieved last year, should be compared wtih the all-college national
average of $75. While any gift is always
welcome, we must come closer to the
national average if St. John's alumni
contributions are to make a real impact
on the needs of the College.
class-1912, 1922, 1932, 1942, 1947,
1952, 1962, or 1967-then you have
even more reason for planning now for
a short autumn vacation in Annapolis.
The 1972 Homecoming Committee,
under the energetic leadership of
Julius Rosenberg '38, started planning
in January. The Committee's capacity
for hard work is exceeded only by its
ingenuity, so Homecoming weekend
promises to be a memorable one. See
you there.
CHAPTER NEWS
The regular Tuesday luncheon gathering of downtown Baltimore alumni
has a new meeting place. The TwoOh-Three Restaurant, 203 Davis Street
(just north of the Post Office and east
of the Court Square Building) is the
new location. If you like tall stories,
jokes a la Alexander, or just good fellowship, then join the gang at the 203.
WHAT's
IN A
NAME?
"Over my dead body!"
"How about Scott Buchanan College?"
''Never!''
HoMECOMING 1972
Do you like to drink beer to the
accompaniment of rag-time jazz? Do
you enjoy stimulating discussion?
Would vou like to see football return
to the back campus? Are you willing
to counsel with students about what
they might expect in graduate schools?
Or do you delight simply in seeing
old friends and making new ones?
If your answer to one or more o_f
the ~bove is "yes," then you really
should plan to come to Annapolis on
October 13 and 14. That's Homecoming time, and the activities listed are
just a few of those planned for that
\veekend. And if yours is a reunion
28
"If you have to change, I suggest King
William's College."
Several months ago an alumnus suggested ·that, since St. John's is often
confused with church-related colleges
and those with prominent basketball
teams, the task of admissions workers
and fund raisers might be easier if the
College were to change its name.
A committee of Visitors and Governors was appointed to study the proposal; a recent questionnaire to all
a] umni has elicited the responses which
appear above. And reactions continue
to pour in, piling up evidence for the
committee to study.
It would be improper to reveal the
trend of the responses, other than to
saj• that they are both for and against:
St. Johnnies have very firm opinions
on any question. \Ve a\vait with in·
terest the action by the Board of Visitors and Governors in May.
CLASS NOTES
1904
Randall C. Cronin and his wife celebrated
their 60th wedding anniversary a year ago in
January. Our thanks to E. Earl Hearn '06 for
this information, and our belated congratulations to the happy couple.
1926
\V. Dorsey Hines of Chestertown, Maryland,
was appointed last October to a four-year term
as a member of the advisory board of the
Department of Natural Resources of Maryland.
1928
Louis L. Snyder is the author of two more
books published last fall, The Dreyfus Affair,
a Focus Book (Franklin \Vatts, New York)
and Great Turning Points in History (Van
Nostrand-Reinhold, New York). ProfesSor
Snyder was invited in December by the Alexander \'On Humboldt Foundation of the Bonn
Government to be its guest on a two-month
tour of German universities throughout the
Federal Republic.
·
.
1929
Frank Katz, son of Francis A. Katz, had a
one-man exhibit of oil paintings, drawings,
and sculptures at the College during February.
1932
fames F. Campbell in September was named
Assistant Administrator for Administration of
the Agency for International Development. Mr.
Campbell joined AID in April of last year
after 3 5 years with Esso affiliates of the
Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. His
last position \VaS as chairman and managing
director of Esso Standard of South Africa.
1943
As a follow·up of the report last July about
the fire at Ogden Kellogg-Smith's Bay Country
School, we can report that 1v1r. Kellogg·Smith
has embarked on a new \·entUJe, the Bay
Countrv Institute. He seeks to train students
as \\"at~r pollution monitors, to meet a need
created bv federal and state en\"ironmenta1 legislation. J\1r. Kellogg-Smith has applied for a
�April 1972
federal grant, and plans to start training stu·
dents at three public high schools and the
Baltimore Experimental High SchooL
Ed\\'ard H. Grubb in December sent a long
and \U)' welcome letter, bringing us up to
date on his life. The high points are: he mar·
ried in December, 1969, after "many years of
living alone and not liking it particularly," to
a girl he met in Alaska. He and wife Cynthia
haw: a rcd·headed daughter Debby, whose
beauty is C\'ident from her picture. lvfr. Grubb
owns and operates T11e h·1ountain Shop i;
dO\\lltown San Francisco, catering to back
packers, rock climbers, and ski tourers.
1944
In helping us locate "lost" alumni, Vernon
E. Derr writes that Henry R. Freeman liJ is
making films for \VHA-TV in Madison, \Vis·
copsin, an educational tele\·ision station.
1946
Samuel Sheinkman and Florence Marie
Peters, a director of dance workshops in New
York City, were married on December 31st
in that city. Dr. Sheinkman is a psychiatrist
and psychoanalyst in New York.
1956
Joseph P. Cohen, a Tutor at the College in
Annapolis, is spending his sabbatical year as
a Yisiting research fe1l0\v at Yale Law School.
1961
Annapolis Admissions Director Michael \V.
Ham is teaching a section of freshman mathematics, Euclid and Ptolemy, this semester.
Mr. Ham says that the experience is most
interesting and challenging, especially since
some of the students in the tutorial were
"signed up" by him.
Stephen Morrow sent us a new address for
Paul ld. Matsushita. The latter li\·es in Tokyo,
where he is a professor of l;m· at Sophia University. After leaving St. John's he earned a
Ph.D. degree .in jurisprudence from Tulane
University, and then a Ph.D. degree in law
from Tokyo Uni\'ersity. Both of his dissertations were about anti-trust regulations in the
United States, and he is considered a ranking
soholar in these matters.
David P. Rosenfield visited the Col1ege in
Annapolis last fall with his wife. He inforrlled
us that he received a B.S. degree from the
\Vharton School of Finance after lea\'ing St.
John's, and that he is Yery happy working as
a carpenter in Miami.
Apologies for late congratulations to J\1ary
(Horton) Sagos and husband Christ '59 on
the birth of Master Adam Sagos last August
13th.
1964
Peter H. Crippen, \';ho works for the Agency
for International De\·clopment. h:1s been transferred from C:;hhar to Enugu in Nigeria.
A December news release from l'vforavian
Coljege, Bethlehem. Pennsyh·ania. announces
that Dcnuis G. Clew has been promoted from
instructor to assistant professor of history and
classics. Mr. Clew earned an M.A. degree in
1966 and a Ph.D. degree in 1971 from Princeton University. At Moravian he is a member
of both the history and foreign language
departments.
1965
A note from Tlwmas G. Eaton reveals that
he will complete his course requirements for a
doctorate in American histol)' this year. He
is studying at the State University of New York
at Albany. His wife, Florence (Campbell)
Eaton '64, has received her master's degree in
English literature.
1966
James R. Mensch, who studied at the Pan·
tifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto,
after St. John's, is now a doctoral candidate
in philosophy and theology at the University
of Toronto. He is currentlv liYing in Inns.
bruck, Germany, working a~ his dissertation.
chusetts continues to go wdl. Last semester
he taught "a sort of b:!:;i,· introduction.toJitera~u.re course," and is now tc~1ching Chinese
Myshc1sm and Modern Eumpcan literature.
Mr. Dean hopes to study ;1hroad again this
summer, either in England or Germany.
197!
Jane Sarah Goldwin and Don Bandler in
January announced plans to he married in
Paris on March 24th. TI1e bride's mother and
father (Robert A. Goldwin '50 dean in Annapolis) planned to attend.
'
Da~iel
Sullivan .is apparently doing very
well m h1s work Wlth a Toronto Canada
advertising agenc~, according to 'Annapoli~
Tutor Harry Goldm~. l\Ir. Sulli\'an successfully
~anaged the ~edectwn c::nnpaign of the Min"
ISter for Tour1sm of Canada, ;lllcl is co-founding a space institute in Iceland.
r·
1967
B. l'vleredith Burke graciously sent a long
letter to help offset the "paucity of news in
the last alumni bulletin." \Ve are pleased to
-·-19/-DR. RoBERT V. lloFFr...v..N Carmel, Cal., January 2, 1972.
· '
learn that she has earned an M.A. degree from
the University of Southern California. She
.-- 1~EMERSON T. 1-I.\RRlNGTON, JR.,
taught economics last year at Southern CaliCambrid~e, Md., January 17, 19i2.
fornia, and is now in Cambridge, Massachu- -- 1910":._J_ IRVIN HEISE, Bethesda, Md.,
setts, planning to teach in a local community
Jam&ry 1 1972.
college this spring. Ms. Burke is thoroughly
committed to the work of the National Or__ .
A. LoNGAN, New York
ganization for \V omen, and hopes to resume
City, January 20, 1972.
work on her Ph.D. degree next fall.
-·- 1
FRANCis R. DicE Pikes.
J\.fichael S. Feinberg informs us that he is
ville, MyJanuary 15, 1972.
'
now out of the Army and is a full-time premedical student at New York University.
-f--.- 19~LEvr H. DICE, S:1tellite Beach,
Fla., January 15, 1972.
1968
1--- lp.26~JACK R. Fours, Tmcumbia, Ala.,
Rebecca (McClure) Albury, in writing to
Decem~r 3, 1971.
t\'liss Strange during the winter, remarked,
''In addition to producing two daughters since -t-"- 19£9-CARL F. lY.wSoN, Drexel Hill,
leaving St. John's, I receiYed a B.S. degree
Pa., A~t 23, 1971.
from The Hopkins last June." She is the wife
.;;:_l?J"1-\VtLBUR R. DULIN, Annapolis
of \\lilliam Randall Albury, a doctoral candiMd., March 14, 1972.
'
date in the history of science, also at The
Johns Hopkins University.
H. MooHJ·:, Baltimore,
Luther BJackiston completed his work at the
Md., March 11, 1972.
University of Maryland Law School in Janu. 193~CLARENCE K. ANDERSON Salerno
ary, and planned to take the Mal)'land Bar
Fla.~' /
'
'
examination in Febrllal)', Concurrently, he was
working full-time as a law clerk in the Balti19?[-!?R. L. DAviD Fusco, Phoenix,
Ariz./ rember 13, 1971.
more Legal Aid Bureau's Prison Project, thus
fulfilling, he writes, "the dual purpose of
19}>-COL. JAJ\fES L. ll.\YS Phoenix,
meeting my CiYilian Alternate Service obligat<-·1d.~ December 11, 1971.
'
tion and of making the world safe for 'crim1938-THEODORE \ \' ILU.U,IS, Baltimore,
inals'."
Md.;' December 3, 1971.
Donald and Marilynne (Wills) Schell (SF)
are now li,·ing in Lake Charles, Louisiana,
19QJ~ELLIOTT A. Rosn,nn·:RG Los Anwhere 1V1r. Schell is working at the Episcopal
geles," Cal., February 8, 197::.
'
Church of the Good Shepherd. Mrs. Schell
Our most sincere apologies !u the parents
\nitcs that their daughter, Sasha, was t\\'O in
of the lole Stuart R. Dc;JIJt'r SF '71 for
February.
misspelling their son's ll:ttnc in the In
1970
lv1emoriam column of the 1'\w·mber issue.
John R. Dean \\"rites that his work in com.
parati\·e literature at the Unircrsity of ~lassJ-
In Memoriam
19~AMES
~~CoL.
l?~ALBERT
�Harrison Health Center
St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland
The College
St. John's College
Annapolis, l\1aryland 21404
Second-class postage paid at
Annapolis, Maryland, and at
additional mailing offices.
-
�
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<em>The College </em>(1969-1981)
Description
An account of the resource
St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>. <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981. <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
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THE COLLEGE
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
Santa Fe, New Mexico
July 1972
�The College
Cover: Thomas Mann by Alfred A.
Knopf. Courtesy of Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc.
Editor: Malcolm Wyatt
Alumni Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr.
Production: Jeffrey Sinks
The College is published by the
Development Offices of St. John's
College in Annapolis, Maryland, and
Santa Fe, New Mexico. Richard D.
Weigle, President.
Published four times a year in Jan·
uary, April, July, and October.
Second-class postage paid at Anna·
polis, Maryland, and at other mailing
offices.
Vol. XXIV
July 1972
No.2
In the July Issue
The Venetian Phaedrus, by Eva Brann
Old Wars, by Robert Neidorf ................ 10
(The Commencement Address, Annapolis, 1972)
lola Scofield, A Memorial, by John Keiffer . . . . . 14
News on the Campuses ..................... 1 6
Alumni Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 9
�The Venetian Phaedrus
By EVA BRANN
F
OR the next hour I am going to lecture on a work
largely autobiographical, whose hero is a charlatan
and whose author is therefore the same. This is
not my own but the author's opmwn of himself. My
lecture will therefore be an inquiry into the nature of
the essential charlatan-an enterprise in the spirit and
tradition of Plato's Ion.
The work I shall deal with is a short no¥el, a novella,
by Thomas Mann, called "Death in Venice," or, more
accurately, "The Death in Venice," that is to say, "The
Death Appropriate to Venice." Mann considered this
novella in certain respects his most successful work, a
crystallization of all the elements of his artistry.
Having begun in so deprecating a manner, I ought first
to give reasons why this work is worth close study.
The first and general reason lies in Mann's command
of words. Let me make a large claim for him: just as,
perplexed by some event in one's life, say the advent of
friendship, one might go to a classical writer for help in
mastering the matter, so, when overwhelmed by certain
subtle and complex experiences of civilized modernity,
one might read Mann in order to gain an apt and precise
language, a language with which to delineate and fix such
experiences. This descriptive use of words-"eros in the
word" in Nlann's phrase-this courting of things in
language, seems to m.e to be Mann's primary excellence.
Second, and more particularly with respect to Death
in Venice, there is the enormous compositional care that
has gone into the work. If music can be described as the
art without accidents, D·eatb in Venice is a musical
work, a work without unabsorbed events and devoid of
episodes. It is even analogous to a musical composition
in a more exact way, since it has movements, alternating
adagios and scherzi, as well as recurrences and resmp.ptions of themes and motifs. But more of this later.
X
third, and peculiarly, Death in Venice seems to
be absorbingly interesting because it is a timely
work. It begins by giving its own season, year and
century, or rather, the exact year is left blank so as to
exercise the .reader's knowledge of contemporary circumstances. The year, which is also very close to the year of
writing, is in fact 1909, the season, spring. The story is
set during one of beginnings of the end of Europe, during
one of the Balkan crises preceding the First World War.
Mann clearly considers the degenerating political situation as an expression of the contemporary crisis both of
the
~<European
soul," and the artist's "self," a crisis which
he characterizes by the word "decadence." This word was
once much used to describe the modern situation, and
it's going out of use, is, I think, a sign that the mode it
designates has become our second nature" -when a
<I
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preoccupation with the symptoms had ceased to be the
poet's prerogative, the mode became public property. In
Mann's use, decadence seems to me to be a way of
being dependent on one's time; perhaps the very fact of
dependence is itself the essential aspect. The dependence
consists of this: there is a sickness of, and by reason of,
the times which becomes a preoccupation and always
amounts to this, that received goods have lost their savor,
that there is irritability acnd boredom with the forms of
life of the community, a feeling that time must be killed,
and a consequent search for relief in the forms of excess
or perversion-in short, a permanent sort of crisis. "Deca-
dence" has, furthermore, the property that the attempt
of those caught up in this condition to overcome it,
which attempt might be called "reactionary decadence,"
nearly always takes the form of a kind of brutality, be it
exuberant or mean.
The novella is, therefore, timely not merely in the
sense of being firmly sited in its own era, but also in the
sense of courageously attempting to come to grips with
modernity-our own modernity-itself.
H
AVING
given these three reasons, which are really
three main facets of Mann's artistry, I must imme-
diately say that they are equally the ingredients of
his charlatanism-for to be an artist is to be a charlatanso says Plato, so Nietzsche, and so, as we shall see, said
Thomas Mann.
I shall now proceed to trace out in more detail the
manner of Mann's artistry as it appears in the novella.
Death in Venice is, in Mann's term, a "pregnant"
work-it was to achieve this pregnancy that he gave it
the compact novella form. It is a work fraught with
meaning, and this burden takes a peculiar form, the
form o1' references. It is a novella of reference and reminiscence which fairly incites the reader to a scholarly
hunt through the European tradition.
These references belong to a number of separately
discernible spheres, whose elements are mingled but not
blended. I shall proceed to give a very much curtailed
review of the chief spheres.
There is, first of all, the autobiographical sphere. The
writer Gustav von Aschenbach, the chief, and, in a
manner of speaking, only character of the novella, has,
as we are told ;n an introductory biography in the style
of an entry into a poets' Who's Who, a foreign mother
and a North German father and has chosen Munich as
his residence, all just like Mann himself. In the catalogue
of Aschenbach's works there is not one which did not
eventually have a counterpart in Mann's writings: the
"mighty prose epic on the life of Frederick of Prussia"
became an essay called "Frederick and the Great Coalition''; "the novelistic tapestry 'Maja' by name," as well
as the story called "A Wretch," later became part of
Doctor Faustus; and extensive notes for a-significantly
unwritten-essay on "Spirit and Art," a work attributed
2
to Aschenbach and said to have been compared by serious
judges with Schiller's essay "On Naive and Sentimental
Poetry," are preserved in Mann's notebooks. But of
chief importance in the biographical sphere is the inner
history of Aschenbach, the crisis in his working life, of
which more will be said later, and which, up to the fatal
outcome, parallels Mann's own in 1911. Mann once remarked of Goethe's partially autobiographical hero in The
Sorrows of Young Werther that it is typical of poets that
their heroes die young and they grow old. The limits of
the autobiographical element, then, reveal the sober truth
that the poet as hero is not quite the poet as poet.
A
sphere is what might be called the cosmopolitan setting of the novella, whose sign and symbol is a ubiquitous hotel manager with French
tails and French tongue, voluble and agile. His realm is
the international luxury hotel which is the scene of Aschenbach's secret and catastrophic adventure of the soul,
that discreet business organization devoted to the refined
care of strangers, with its subdued, anonymous, and yet
exclusively intimate atmosphere. Aschenbach is brought
to his fatal stay there by a veritable conspiracy of steamers,
busses, motor boats, railroads and his own recalcitrant impedimenta: you may remember that he is deflected from
his flight from Venice because his luggage is misdirected.
Thus the conveniences of modernity, the engines for travSECOND
eling, in Mann's phrase, "on the surface of the earth/' in
short, progress itself, forms the background of the artist's
decline. Mann elsewhere denominates the whole sphere
by the-derogatory-word "civilization" and associates it
with the West, with France, or better, with the French
Revolution, and its rationality, rhetoric, and republicanism. So Aschenbach, in an attempt to regularize and turn
into the shallow channels of social intercourse his relatio"n
to the boy Tadzio, makes an abortive effort to address a
French phrase t9 him.
Yet another set of clearly discernible motifs belong to.
the sphere of what might be called spiritual topography,
that is, the quarters of the earth taken as habitations of
the soul. The story begins with a knowledgeable walk
through Munich, Mann's city and Wagner's, and the
intellectual center of Germany. Aschenbach comes to the
Northern cemetery, and in front of the Byzantine funeral
chapel, a kind of Northern intimation of the facade of
the Venetian St. Mark's, he has a sudden vision of
a teeming swamp and tigers, a lustful and luxurious
vision of the land whence comes the cholera of which
he will die, as well as the stranger god Dionysus. He is
incited to take a vacation trip-"not exactly to the tigers,"
as he puts it to himself-and he chooses to go to the sunny
South,' to take a light version of the "Italian Journey"
which is a stock experience of heavy-souled Germans. But
going south, he ends up in Venice on a day devoid of
sun, and Venice is not "Italy" but the entrance depot of
the abandoned East, Far and Near, architecturally and
�July 1972
atmospherically a European Byzantium. Now Byzantium
is a favorite setting for Romantic poets-a latter-day
Greece, artful, conspiratorial fraught with memories,
decadent. So the coordinates of Mann's spiritual geography are the melancholy North, the decadent South, the
lustful East and the rational West.
Venice, and from this arises his ultimate anti-political
dream of social chaos, in which everything is possible,
and which ends in the disappearance of all mankind but
himself and the boy.
Y
another group of references are those centered
around the name of Goethe. The imitation of
Goethe was a major fact of Mann's life as a writer.
The novella which turned into Death in Venice was originally intended to be about the love of the seventy-threeyear-old Goethe for a seventeen-year-old girl, an episode
by means of which Mann meant to illustrate the theme
of any poet's natural propensity for indignity. Mann later
made a notation against the entry in his notebooks about
Goethe's affair: "this became Death in Venice." Furthermore Mann read Gaeth's novel The Elective Affinities five
times during the writing of the novella, in order to
catch its perfect "balance of sensuality and morality."
Beyond this there seems at first to be no immediate relation between the two works. But not only the acquisition
of a master's style for a novel about a master of prose
who had, so it is said of Aschenbach, become a "textbook
classic," but a more peculiar feature of The Elective
Affinities made it a model for the novella. Goethe's novel
is really what in English is called a "Gothic" novel, a
novel of deliberately undefinable horror, at once earthily
plain and ethereally unspeakable: an innocent child
murder, adultery practised between husband and wife,
unintentional suicide, high-spirited sadism, and so forth,
but all this is delivered in prose so graceful, moderate,
and even dainty, that it is scarcely German at all. The
language of Death in Venice preserves precisely such a
distance from its subject matter and it was for this that
Goethe's novel served as model.
One more borrowing from Goethe: while prevented
from immediate disembarkation in Venice by his luggage,
Aschenbach is accosted by an old drunk dandy in a red
tie, a pitiful and undignified case of old age; later on,
with a wild hope of pleasing the boy, he turns himself
into just such a figure (even including the red tie) by
submitting to a process of cosmetic rejuvenation. This
motif is borrowed from a chapter called "The Man of
Fifty Years" in The Apprentice Years of Wilhelm Meister,
Goethe's biggest novel.
I now come to the .two spheres of reference which are
most at the center of the work.
ET
N
a "Protestant" sphere is discermble. Mann once
commented on Death in Venice that "the character of the whole is, after all, rather Protestant
than antique." In this passage the term "Protestant" has
for Mann no particular theological connotation-rather
EXT
it refers to what is sometimes called an uethos," a circle
of moral meanings grouped around the name of Frederick
the Great and Pru'5ia. Thus Aschenbach's morality has
but one categorical impemtive, "endurance." It is an
ethics of the "despite," of achievement despite "sorrow,
poverty, loneliness, weakness of body, passion, and a thousand hindrances"; it is a kind of Kantianism of decadence.
Its saint is St. Sebastian, dear to Aschenbach, a soldier who
displays "grace under torture" (and is, incidentally, the
saint of the plague), and its hero is Frederick, a ruler
whom Mann sees as a magnificently malicious demon, a be-
ing of incredible industry spurred on by a cold and luckless
passion. Thus Aschenbach's Fredericianism is a passion
for mastery which arises from a "thoroughly pessimistic
relation to passion itself." So Aschenbach, born in Schleswig, the province Frederick conquered for Prussia, will
fall prey to "the revenge of subjugated feeling."
There is a second aspect to what Mann means by
"Protestantism," another peculiarly German aspect, for
whic~ there is no word in English, except that it is possi-
ble Simply to use the German word which can be
transcribed as "innerliness." In its context the classical
opposition of the public and the private realm is supplanted by that of political and apolitical or "innerly."
Rather than to circumscribe the term, let me point out
how it is evidenced in the novella, namely by Aschenbach's
isolation and essential silence. All the weightiest episodes
of the work have a dream-like setting, when awareness of
time, the mark of wakefulness, disappears, just as Aschenbach's thoughts at crucial moments are characterized as
"dream-logic" and the turning point in Aschenbach's
inner catastrophe comes literally by means of a dream,
the dream of the invasion of the Indian Dionysus. But
dreaming is the activity of isolation and marked by the
preponderance of the inner world over the external.
Similarly the silence of Aschenbach is indicated by his
speaking only to officials, to "personnel," and that in the
"Welsh" tongue (a derogatory German term for French),
while he more and more talks to himself. German itself
disappears from the scene as the plague spreads through
Venice and Aschenbach's countrymen leave. Finally he
enters into a conspiracy of silence with corrupt Venetian
officialdom to keep the fact of the plaque quiet so that
the boy without whom he cannot live will remain in
T
first of these I shall designate "Romanticism."
Mann occupied himself much with this term, by
which he meant counter-revolution, in particular
the revolt of artistry against the baldness of political
revolutwn as the primary improving activity, the revolt,
m his manner of speaking, of artful music against literate
logic, of wordless depth against explanatory rhetoric, of
complex mysticism against crude clarity. It means the
HE
3
�The College
prerogative of passion in its remote pathological forms,
and it is essentially submission to, and even a search for,
what already is and always was, especially for death. Such
romanticism might be called decadence in its inner aspect
-in Mann's view, a specifically German decadence.
Music is its characteristic art, because it is· at once most
exact and most inarticulate, most exacting and most in-
dulgent, most artful and most licentious. Aschenbach,
who is given the highbrowed physiognomy of the romantic
composer Gustav Mahler (news of whose death had just
been received by "a respectfully shocked world"), is a
writer of prose in the city of music, that is, a man of
form in a city of dissolution. His relation to the boy
Tadzio is essentially "musical" in the romantic sense:
the sound of the boy's undecipherable Polish tongue
strikes him as music, he hears his name at first as HAdgio/'
a reminiscence of that "unbelievably old-fashioned" adagio
which Nietzsche describes as enchanting him on his last
night in Venice. And at the scene of Aschenbach's death
on the beach of Venice, a black cloth, thrown over an
unattended camera, flutters in the wind, a reminiscence
of the black flag planted on the beach in the first version
of the last act of Tristan, the flag in which Tristan enshrouds himself to die. Parts of Tristan were scored m
Venice, and, of course, Wagner himself died there.
A
Mann did not know it until later, in the
years just before 1912 Maurice Barres had written
an essay called "The Death of Venice," which is
largely a catalogue of romantic pilgrimages to the decomposing romantic Mecca, and which ends with these words:
"The ocean rolls on in the night and its waves in breaking
orchestrate the motif of death by excess of love of life."
The central romantic motif of Death in Venice is just
that-the fatal effect of the writer's revivification through
passion. Appearances and reminders of death and the
underworld abound and are interwoven with the development of Aschenbach's passion for Tadzio, who is typically
seen against the void of the sea. In particular, there is a
recurring death figure, a reddish type with a death's head
physiognomy: the wanderer who outstares Aschenbach
from the portico of the funeral chapel in Munich, the
j'circus director" of a captain with whom Aschenbach,
when boarding the cavernous black steamer for Venice,
signs a Faustian contract, the outcast gondolier who ferries
him-in a swimming coffin-to the Lido, the balladeer
who, spreading fumes of disinfectant, sings a hysteriaproducing laughing song, while Aschenbach sits sipping
pomegranate juice (the pomegranate being a symbol of
the underworld) in the presence of Tadzio. Each of these
wears a yellow piece of clothing as the sign of the "smouldering ugliness" of sickness and, in particular, of the Indian
yellow cholera which will be the physical cause of
Aschenbach's death.
THOUGH
4
But aside from these occurrences within the text, the
theme of death is its tacit background. As Aschenbach
approaches Venice by sea, he recalls an unnamed ''melancholy and enthusiastic" poet who had once approached
the city by the same route, and he recites some of his
poetry to himself. This unnamed predecessor is August
von Platen, a romantic lover of antiquity and of boys, and
a poet of strict forms. It is easy to conjecture what poem
Aschenbach is thinking of. It is a poem called "Tristan"
and has these closing lines:
He who has looked on beauty with his eyes
Is already in the hands of death.
We shall return to them later.
M
ANN
regarded the fourth and central chapter of the
work, which he calls an "antiquicising" chaptet
and begins with a beautiful description of dawr
in the classical style, as its most successful part. This
chapter is filled with references to Greek antiquity, some
of which I shall now note.
'I be first allusion to antiquity (which occurs even before
the central chapter) is that illicit gondolier who ferries
Aschenbach across the lagoon of Venice and whom Aschenbach suspects of being about to'send him to the "House
of Hades"; he is clearly Charon, the ancient ferryman of
the dead, who carries souls over the Styx. You may remember that he is cheated of his pay, and this corresponds
to the fact that Charon will not ferry those who do not
pay him an obol-thus Aschenbach has not truly arrived
and must reenter the city properly a second time after his
abortive flight from the city.
The Lido, the beach of Venice, where Aschenbach is
lodged, with its shoreside life of playful leisure, is described
by a direct quotation from the Odyssey, significantly a
description of existence after death in Elysium where
"easy life is the lot of man, where there is neither snow,
nor winter, nor storm or streaming rain, but Ocean ever
sends a softly cooling breath and in blessed leisure the
days run on." Another time it is seen as Homeric Phaeacia,
the nautical land of artful luxury, and Tadzio, in his sailor
suit, is a Phaeacian youth living in indulgent elegance.
Once the boy Jashu, who plays the role of Tadzio's slave, is
given advice which is a direct quotation from Xenophon's
Memorabilia, from a passage dealing with the ability of
the mere sight of beauty to induce madness: "But my
advice to yon, Critoboulus, is to go and travel for a year,
for that much time at least will you need for recovery."
In fact, most of the classical references are descriptions
of Tadzio. Aschenbach thinks of him variously as
Hyacinth, the boy killed by Zephyr out of jealousy of
Apollo; as Ganymede, the boy carried off by Zeus to be
his cupbearer; as Narcissus, the boy hopelessly in love
�July 1972
with himself; as Cleitus and Kephalus, two boys carried
off by Dawn. He is a sunlit statue of the noblest period,
described in words borrowed from the art history of
Winckelmann, the contemporary of Goethe, who introduced the notion and. appreciation of antique sculpture
into Germany. Once he is described in terms of the famous
Hellenistic statue of a "boy pulling a thorn from his
foot." Another time he is a divinity, Eros, particularly
"Eros self-wounded" -he often wears a blouse with a
red bow, simulating a"~DJ!!:d, 3er_!lis.Jlre5 ~ b!£9se
on the collar of which rested the bloom of the head with
that was match!~."
12 fact the chapter is
full of hexameter @g_s, such as j;J)e fiiCkering blue Of the
aethCr," add "fObsters n:mning off sideways.")
a c!mrm
T
ADZIO
cr
also appears as Eros in another, more signifi-
cant, form. The Greeks, conveniently to Mann's
theme, had the same representation for Love and'
Death, a winged boy of about Tadzio's age, sometimes
recognized as a single deity-Eros Thanatos, the Death
Eros. There is an essay by Lessing called "How the
Ancients Represented Death," which deals at length with
the invariable attribute of this Death in ancient representations: that he stands in a graceful pose with his legs
crossed-precisely the description of Tadzio as he stands
near Aschenbach who is listening to the outcast balladeer
while dri.nking pomegranate juice and inhaling the smell
of the plague. And finally, the boy appears as Hermes
Psychagogus-Hermes, the Leader of Souls, who conducts
the poet, with a beckoning gesture familiar from ancient
representations, out into the void of the sea and into
nothingness.
It is necessary for a moment to consider how antiquity
comes both to Aschenbach and to Mann himself. For
the former it is a tradition imparted in youth, that is to
say, a part of the upbringing. Similarly Mann's familiarity
with Greek myths came from his childhood reading-in
fact he had preserved, and used while writing Death in
Venice, a childhood favorite from his mother's library
entitled "Textbook of Greek and Roman Mythology to
be used in Upper Schools for Young Ladies and Educated
Persons of the Female Sex." But most of the references
to antiquity are accidental finds of quotations or are
deliberately collected from books of reference-lexica,
handbooks, and books of secondary learning. So, for instance, he found Cicero's definition of eloquence as. a
"continuous motion of the soul," with which the novella
opens, quoted in Flaubert. Most of the references, however, come from secondary works somewhat outside of the
philological establishment, such as the book Psyche by
Erwin Rohde, the friend and defender to the classicists of
Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy. From this work Mann borrowed not only the passage from the Odyssey, and the
reference to the figure of Eros, but, most importantly, the
description of the orgiastic cui t of Dionysus on which
Aschenbach's catastrophic dream is based (though he did
read Euripides' Bacchae in addition).
I
HAVE delineated the spheres of reference at some
length and made a point of tracing the sources of
the central one not merely because the work itself invites such an enterprise, but even more because the
intactness and separability of the spheres and the indirection and second-handedness of the sources are an essential
characteristic of Mann's artistry, that is, of his linguistic
virtuosity, of his compositional art, and most importantly,
of his conscientious modernity, by which, I should now
say, I mean in this context precisely a peculiar relation
·
to the past.
Regarded as a characteristic of style, Mann himself gave
a name to his procedure-he called it "parody." By
41
parody" Mann means "a kind of mimicry" of the styles
of the past. The occasion for parody is set out in Mann's
last large novel, written during the Second World War,
Doctor Faus.tus. The composer who is the protagonist
conducts what must be described as a soliloquy with the
devil which is made to take place in the year in which
Death in Venice was written-indeed the time structure
of the book is based on a parallelism between the times
before the First and Second World Wars. The devil has
just commented on the devastating fact that the assumed
and binding conventions of the arts have lost their power
to carry meaning and that the forms necessary to invention have become worn out; whereupon the composer
says: "It might be possible to energize the game by playing with forms from which, as is well known, life has
vanished." And the devil answers: "I know, I knowparody...."
Parody, then, is a nostalgic mode which makes the
tradition accessible by way of remotion and traduction.
By making the tradition a matter of learnedness, not in
the sense of the organized industry of the schools, but as
an illusionistic creaming of secondary books, the playfully
pedantic parodist at the same time makes it serve him
and holds it at arm's length-in so employing the tradition
he pronounces it dead.
I
N
respect to style in the narrow sense, that is to say,
diction, Mann's parodistic treatment is a matter, on
the one hand, of a wonderfully versatile mimicry of
modes of speech, and, on the other, of a descriptive
language precise by the very fact of being somewhat
distant. By "distant" I mean that words are us,ed, as it
were, with raised eyebrows, fastidiously, exquisitely, with
a virtuosity which is essentially a kind of disengagement.
As far as composition is concerned, the parodistic mode
results in something analogous to counterpoint, an inter-
5
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weaving of intact themes, namely precisely those I have
just finished extricating. It might be said that so musical
a use of themes requires a very external relation to events
and people.
But the parodistic mode is most intimately related
to the third facet of Mann's artistry, his specific modernity, for, as the passage from Doctor Faustus shows, it is
nothing but an attempt to do battle with "decadence."
Mann once characterized his literary mission as the loving
dissolution of the tradition, by which phrase he meant a
kind of modern re-use, and therefore abuse, of the past
in an attempt to fill the emptiness of the present.
It is in more than one way no accident that the Greek
past plays a central role along these lines in the novella,
and for this reason: that antiquity offers for re-use not
only conventions and styles but also myths, time-honored
tales full of precise and publicly accepted detail concerning events and persons of divine or grand stature.
To characterize his later works, especially the novelistic
sequence Joseph and his Brothers, Mann liked to use
the linkage "myth plus psychology." By "psychology"
he meant, as we usually do, the exposure of hidden
personal motives, which .he superadded, as a kind of
modernization, to the mythical aura of his characters.
In Death in Venice this "psychological" aspect is absent,
for Tadzio, on whom the use of myth centers, is, so to
speak, not a person at all but a living statue, so that the use
of myth is, as it were, balder than in later works.
N
ow how, precisely, are myths, or rather references
to myths, used to give meaning to the novelistic
present? The answer is simple, sad, and significant:
the reference is the meaning of the work. Tadzio is, or
better, is meant to be, a conglomeration of mythical shadows, he is Eros and Thanatos, Love linked with Death,
but what love and death might be is not itself in question.
I have often been told-in fact by a former dean of
this college-a seminar story which precisely illustrates
the deficiencies of this use of myth. As you know, the
rule for visitors to seminars is that they may not speak
unless there is imminent danger of internal combustion.
One night a certain academic was visiting a seminar on
Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. The question that was being
discussed was why Oedipus chose to punish himself by
putting out his eyes. The visitor, who was beginning to
meet the requirement for contributing before described,
was invited to speak, and gave what he claimed was a
prefectly obvious and conclusive reason: that that was
the punishment Sophocles had found in the myth. Whereupon a student, presumably with a look of wide-eyed innocence, asked: "And why did he choose to punish himself
hy putting out his eyes in the myth?" That is precisely
the question the mode of meaning as reference or allusion
does not consider.
I would like to inject a comment here: this way 6f
celebrating our tradition by making a rite of it, by putting
6
the seal of completion on it, does not seem to me good
or safe-perhaps we can talk about this in the question
period. But we do live in a state of decadence, of falling
away, the more so for no longer naming it as such, and
Mann's way of laying the past to rest seems to me vastly
better than the hatred of it accompanied by ignorance
which characterizes the brutal branch of the phenomenon
of decadence.
But to return to the exposition and now to somewhat
wider considerations.
B
the parodistic style, as its source and ground,
there is a view of the world which we must now
look into. It is caught in the word which Mann
used most often and most persistently of his work-the
word "irony." The signification which Mann gave it has
its origin in the romantic school of writers and their
EHIND
theorists. "Irony" itself is a Greek word which means
"dissembling" and which was made notorious by Socrates.
When, in the Platonic dialogues, an interlocutor refers
to Socrates' "wonted irony" he means Socrates' strangely
arousing claim not to know. It is not that Socrates is
considered to be crudely pretending not to know what
he in fact knows. Rather the interlocutor thinks that the
claim not to know is itself a subtle assertion of knowledge
-the knowledge of ignorance-so that Socrates' dissembling reveals rather than hides superiority. It is precisely
this aspect of irony that tbe romantics abstracted-a certain superiority in intercourse, a sense of holding oneself
aloof and above the conversation. They combined with
this attitude, or perhaps found as its source, the idea of
the human being as a "self" or "subject." By a "self' or
a "subject" is meant an original source of all representa-
tions, or more simply, of all experience, exactly as when
someone, inevitably, says in seminar that "everything is
subjective." From such absolute subjectivity they drew
the sense of a lack of responsibility and obligation, a right
to hover above issues, to play infinitely with the creatiohs
of one's own thought. Romantic irony is thus a negative
principle, an "infinitely delicate play with nothingness"
in Kierkegaard' s words, and is therefore easily seen as the
very principle of art, interpreted as the externalized play
of the subject, which is carried on according to no rules
but those established and recognized by itself. In the
romantic vocabulary the complement of irony is enthusiasm, the-baseless-intoxication of the self with its own
creations.
T
HIS
must be the place to interject once again a
brief circumscription of the term
'~romantic,"
a
term so indispensable to the discussion of Mann's
work. To begin with, there are artless and cunning romantics. By the artless kind I mean children of all ages
engaged in the self-indulgent excitation and expression
of the emotions. The others are the interesting romantics,
�Jnly 1972
in whom-! am using Mann's words-a "yearning and
dreamy" aspect is supplemented by enormous "artistic
refinement." Let me quote from his essay significantly
entitled "Germany and the Germans": "The romantic/'
41
he says, is counter-revolution, the revolt of music against
literatme . . . the pessimism of honesty" as against the
optimism of rational action. "The special prerogative
which it accords to the emotional over reason, even in
its most remote forms, such as ... dionysiac intoxication,
brings it into a special and psychologically immensely
fruitful relation to sickness." For Mann, Romanticism is,
then, essentially a counter-movement, a consequence of
and reaction to optimistic rationalism, that is to say, to
the worJQ·ofapplied science, which defines a counter-world
of emotion, but does so wilfully, artfully, and self-consciously. The romantic is the deliberately passionate, which
we may call the emotional.
With this understanding of romanticism Ma"P-n's "irony"
has the following character. It too contains the notion
of aloofness or hovering. But hovering is always between
something, between two extrem.es or poles, and it is con-
sequently typical of the ironist that he engages in what
I shall call "polar thinking," a variation of thought which
seems to me of great clinical interest since it is deeply
characteristic of modernity. (Of course, it might be argued
that such polar thinking is the consequence of the polar
constitution of the world, but I shall here disregard that
possibility as unlikely.)
are three names behind Death in Venice,
three spheres of thought that Mann has appropriated for his own purposes-Schiller, Schopenhauer,
and Nietzsche-and it is precisely in respect to polarities
that might be extracted from them that Mann absorbs
their thinking. Among these, Schopenhauer is most tacitly
in the background; Aschenbach's novel Maja, a novel
"under the shadow of one idea," is the only explicit reference to him. Mann himself had planned a novel by
that name, and his notebooks explain the connection of
the title with Schopenhauer's "Veil of the Maja," the
web of illusion of isolation and appearance in which we
are caught. The novel was to set out an interpretation of
T
HERE
desire, in particular the desire of the weak for ''life,"
that is for those who have health and beauty, as the
entanglement of the isolated individual in the "Veil of
the Maja," and was to present the artist's mission as the
double one of exposing and preserving the illusion. The
polarity here is that of life, that is, hale and hearty mere
existence, as opposed to deprivation and desire.
The "Nietzschean" polarity becomes explicit toward
the end of the novella, in the fifth and last chapter.
Whereas the fourth, central, chapter is presided over by
Apollo-it begins with a description of the dawn of days
spent within sight of the sunlit Tadzio, the sun-god's
ascent in his chariot, and the sunny beach-the fifth and
final chapter is dominated by Dionysus. It contains an
exact and lengthy description, in the tradition of Thucydides and Lucretius, of the invasion and course of the
plague, the Indian cholera, which is insidiously wasting
Venice and which forms the background of Aschenbach's
growing illicit passion for the Polish boy. Then comes a
night in which Aschenbach has a dream of the orgiastic
entry of Dionysus into Greece and his own soul, which
d~eam con~titutes his internal catastrophe and the beginmug of h1s end. The source of the two gods which
dominate the chapters is Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy,
though, of course, Mann has made this important change
-that the savior god of The Birth of Tragedy has become
the destroyer god of Death in Venice.
T
last polarity is derived from Schiller's essay "On
Naive and Sentimental Poetry," the only work
which is, together with its author, mentioned by
name in the novella, namely when Aschenbach's essay on
"Spirit and Art" is said to be comparable to it. That essay,
which Mann intended to write himself, was to be, in
the words of the novella, a work of "antithetical eloHE
quence," and Mann's extensive notes list the "antitheses"
with which it was to deal: Spirit and Nature, Spirit and
Art, Culture and Art, Will and Representation, and
many more, in Jact so many and so mutually involved
that Mann's largest critical attempt was intellectually
doomed from the beginning by the very excess of polar
opposites. The object of the essay was to be to save the
artist from the imputation laid upon him by Nietzsche,
of being a charlatan enslaved to the "Olympus of illusion," by establishing a type of "literateur" who would
be free of such enslavement, a dignified moral critic of
his times, a man of intellect and psychological insight.
Death in Venice, in which such a writer is invented only
to be shown to be doomed to exposure and destruction,
must have made this enterprise morally impossible for
Mann.
It was Mann's intention furthermore to set off this
modern "sentimental" writer against a naive poet who
might perhaps be healthier and nobler but would not be
so much a man of the times.
Let me here explain briefly what Schiller means by
"naive" and, especially, by the word "sentimental." The
sentimental poet's concerns are sentiments rather than
objects of nature; he reflects on impressions received; he
is "subjective," while the "naive" poet, such as Homer,
who is for Schiller the naive poet par excellence, sets out
nature, that is, natural objects, in shining sculptural
clarity, without introspection or reflection.
For Schiller this distinction is largely coincident with
that of ''ancient" and "modern"-the ancients being naive,
namely "objective," attending to what is given by nature,
and the moderns ''subjective," namely attending to themselves. Now, the founder of German Romanticism, August
Schlegel, on his part, identified the literary distinction of
"classicaP and ''romantic" with "ancient" and "modern"
7
�The College
(and I might interject here that Goethe, by whom Mann's
definition of romanticism was clearly influenced, in his
Conversations with Eckermann abruptly identifies the
classical with the healthy and the romantic with the sick).
An argument might be made, then, that there is a kind
of grouping of terms-naive, classical, ancient on the one
hand, and sentimental, romantic, modern on the other,
which informs the novella as its most specific "polarity."
T
HE latter group circumscribes a notion which plays
a dominating role in Death in Venice, the notion
of "Art." The source of Art, with a capital A,
the Artist, is, for Mann, not primarily one who possesses
art, namely craft or knowhow, but a man whose ultimate
preoccupation is with the conditions themselves of his
production. The novella, then, turns centrally about the
relations of the sentimental, romantic and modern subject, the artist, to his opposite pole, the naive and classical
object of nature, which is therefore very appropriately and
tellingly presented in the guise of antiquity. But just as
the antique form is second-hand and modernized, so what
the artist of the novella faces is not an object of nature
conceived as having its own being, but a product of
natura] art. For the boy Tadzio is always described as a
statue, whose language is music, and is said, in a thought
borrowed from Schopenhauer, to be the product of a
"strict and pure will which, darkly active, had been able
to project this divine sculpture into the light." In a word,
the novella is about the decadent artist's confrontation
with a living work of art.
With a significant ineptitude, for which one hardly
knows whether to laugh or to cry, the proponent of this
problem presents himself under the guise of Socrates.
As always, Mann works from modern prototypes: he has
in mind not only the rationalizing, distintegrating Socrates
of Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, but especially the Socrates
of Hoelderlin's poem by the same name, two lines of
which are twice paraphrased in the novella; they are: "He
who has thought most deeply, loves what is most alive,
and in the end the wise man bows to the beautiful."
But Mann did also read two Platonic dialogues while
at work on the novella, the Symposium, especially
Socrates' speech, which happens to be directed to
Phaedrus, and the dialogue Phaedrus itself.
M
use of what he read in the dialogue is, as
always, thoroughly parodistic, that is to say, the
text, as in the case of Schiller, Schopenhauer,
ANN's
and Nietzsche, serves as an occasion for mimicry and remi-
niscence, not for responsible appropriation. In fact one
might say that the Platonic references in the novella contain nothing but external allusions to the dialogues and
that to explicate the differences wGuld be to set out a new
modern opposition to supersede the classical one of philos·
ophy and poetry, namely that of philosophy and Art in
8
the sense before described-and it is possible to find better
contexts than this for that enterprise. However, it does
seem to me that Mann was in some way sensitive to the
Platonic text, since there are certain salient points which
he quite particularly and sure-handedly reverses.
The passages in question are Aschenbach's two soliloquies, acknowledged by Mann to be the centerpieces of
the work, in which he apostrophizes the Venetian
Phaedrus.
In the first of these, which occurs in the "Apollonian"
fourth chapter, the writer, under the influence of the
ironist's enthusiasm but still in control of himself, raises
the setting of the Platonic Phaedrus, the plane tree and
the turf outside the walls of Athens. There Socrates is
made to court Phaedrus, the wise man the beautiful
youth, and the courtship consists of instruction concerning desire and virtue. This is an adaptation of that part
of Socrates' recantation in the Phaedrus which describes
the behaviour of the temperate and the intemperate lover
of beauty, including an adaptation of Socrates' definition
of beauty as the sole and only one among the beings of
the realm beyond heaven which can become visible, that
is, as visible form. The passage closes with a reference by
the romantic Socrates to the Symposium, to "that perhaps
most tender and most ironic thought ever thought" by
means of which the enthusiast seeks to save his superiority
and his dignity-the passage in which Phaedrus himself
claims that the lover, filled as he is with divinity, surpasses
the beloved.
T
HE second apostrophe is spoken by the cosmetically
rejuvenated, already infected, Aschenbach in the
"Dionysiac" fifth chapter. It begins by once more
characterizing beauty as visible divinity and as such "the
way of the sensual man, the way of the artist to the
spirit," and proceeds to set out the "problem" of the
novella, the problem of beauty. It is not the questio11
"what is beauty" that concerns the sentimental Socrates
but the problem beauty poses for the "artist," which was
expressed by the lines from the poet Platen quoted above:
He who has looked on beauty with his eyes,
Is already in the hands of death.
This problem, which is very much an autobiographical
one, might also be called the problem of "the two
abysses." Aschenbach, like Mann himself, is said to have
been in his youth "problematical and unconditional," by
which Mann means that he indulged in the uncompromis·
ing, dogged, melancholy, conscientiously thorough pursuit
of such insights as lead to the exposure of motives, the
doubting of talent, the betrayal of art, in short, that he
pursued such knowledge as consists of "seeing through" or
"breaking up" things and is usually called "analytic." But
these sharp and bitter insights lose their charm and begin
to be felt as an abyss of dissolute and "indecent psy·
�July 1972
chologism." Aschenbach turns away from them in middle
age as having and conferring no dignity, and experiences
what he terms the "wonder of a reborn naivete." But in
the sentimental poet this new naivete, this moral resolve
to abjure psychology, takes the form of a classicism of
form, a "purity, simplicity, and symmetry" which results
in a "moral simplification of the world," a moral indifference.
I
is in this condition of being under the discipline of
a thoroughly formalistic classicism accompanied by
a strict regimen in his private life, that the emptiness
of his inner life is invaded and the second abyss opens.
For the master of classical form sees a live work of art
which is the realization of his own efforts to become a
"naive" artist. And because it is flesh and blood, it brings
with it Eros and the formalistic poet of the "second,"
T
that is, acquired, naivete has no inner s_ubstance where-
with to withstand his devastation. "For"-I am quoting
from the second Phaedrus apostrophe-"we poets . . .
are not capable of rising, only of straying." In other
words, for the poet of the novella, because he knows
no lovable wisdom and therefore has no love of wisdom,
"the way of the artist to the spirit" which leads through
sensual beauty, that is, through visible spirit, is not viable;
the poet's Eros precisely reverses the erotic motion of
the Symposium-it is not a raising but a demeaning
motion. And not only is the road not viable but (and
this may be the same thing) its terminus is left perfectly
uncircumscribed-there is no indication of what is meant
by the "Spirit."
Let me read a last quotation. "The masterly bearing
of our style is a lie and a foolery, our fame and honor a
farce, the trust of the crowd in us highly laughable, and
the education of the people and the young through art
a risky undertaking which is to be forbidden."
These words are not from Plato's Republic but from
the second Phaedrus apostrophe in Death i.n Venice.
This is what Mann, perhaps in the end not so inappropriately, allowed Socrates to say about "art."· Let me
summarize the reason for his condemnation: the artist
is a man of form and his torrn, or rather formalism, has
a false relation to the passions.
I
in turn, tried to show what the elements of
the artist's forms, of his artistry, are and what the
vices of their virtues might be, such that they impose
on us and can be called charlatanism. Let me summarize
them also.
There is Mann's linguistic virtuosity, his way of using
words. Aschenbach makes nine attempts to describe
Tadzio, to render his appearance in words, only to
realize that this descriptive use of words, which Mann
HAVE,
and is, in fact, a hopeless enterprise. Nor are Aschenbach's words for human communication-perhaps the
most telling reversal in Mann's use of the Platonic
Phaedrus is that a dialogue, which deals with the relation
of eros and rhetoric, suggests to him a soliloquy, that the
writing Socrates has no way to form and control his
love by logos, and that not a word ever passes between
him and the Venetian Phaedrus.
Then there is Mann's mode of parody, a way of battling
decadence characterized by a willfully irresponsible and
yet persistent, somehow loyal, relation to the tradition,
in which the present is referred to the past for its meaning. Associated with parody is a "musical" mode of composition in which themes occur to provide moments of
allusion and reminiscence intended to elicit a pre-set
reaction, a device analogous to what is called "leit-motif"
in Wagnerian contexts.
And finally, there is Mann's manner of disposing of
issues and preparing them for novelistic use which he
calls his "irony"-a way of seeing problems in polar
terms and playing with these, trusting for resolution to
something indefinite called the "Spirit."
me end as I began with an apology for Mann and
the study of Death in Venice. Mann prided himself, rightly, on his laboriously conscientious pursuit
of the problems which he saw-and what he saw and
pursued in the novella was the problem of romantic
reaction. But this problem seems to me to be one of the
most complex and recurrent aspects of modernity, the
one which shows that to attempt to battle the evils of
our times while firmly planted within them only leads
to a deeper implication with them. To put it another
way-Death in Venice is a serious reflection on what it
means to have a false relation to the passions and to the
past.
T
Miss Eva Brann delivered this lecture at St. JohnS College in
Annapolis in the Spring of 1971. Miss Brann has been a
Tutor at St. fohn's College si'nce 1957. Prior to completing
her Ph. D. at Yale l'n 1956, Miss Brann hiJd been a Fellow of
the American Numismatic Society, a -Fellow of the American
Sch-qol of Classical Studies at Athens, and a member of the
staff of the American Agora Excavations at Athens as a
Sibly Fellow of Phi Beta Kappa.
somewhere calls "eros in the logos," is forever inadequate,
9
�A commencement address is covertly a sermon. It
is traditional that a sermon begin with a text. Accordingly, I quote from the Meditations of the Roman
emperor Marcus Aurelius (XI,39):
OLD WARS
Robert Neidorf
Socrates used to say, what do you want? Souls
of rational men or irrational?
-Souls of rational men.
Of what rational men? Sound or unsound?
-Sound.
Why then do you not seek them?
-Because we have them.
Why then do you fight and quarrel?
The one thing that most intrigues me about this
passage is the notion that rational men may be of two
kinds, those possessed of sound souls and those
possessed of unsound souls. I ask therefore that you
reflect with me a while on this distinction. What are
the names that we should give to these two kinds of
rational men, and who are the best models?
First, what can it mean for a man to be both
rational and unsound? Early in Plato's dialogue
Phaedrus, Socrates is made to give a speech in behalf
of a thesis that we have all heard in recent years:
-That it is better to have what is euphemistically
called a love affair with someone who does not in fact
love you. We are not obliged to read the thesis so
particularly. In its most general form it is even more
common: It is the claim that in giving his attentions
to persons or things in the world around him, a man
should preserve the invulnerability of his private soul,
should not become overly committed or engaged,
should in brief "play it cool."
The speech itself begins (Stephanus•237) with a
preamble on the importance of proper method,
especially the importance of defining one's terms.
Definitions are then given, and the speech unfolds
into impeccable arguments based on those definitions. It is in other words a perfectly rational
discourse, and must surely be satisfactory to those
sophomoric souls who love to screech "define your
terms!"
10
Craig C. Elzey
Rob~rt
A. Neidorf, a Tutor and Director of the Graduate
Instztute at St. John's College in Santa Fe, delivers the
Commencement Address at Annapolis on June 11, 1972.
�July 1972
But something more is going on in this dialogue.
Just before the speech begins Socrates is made to say
I shall speak with my head covered ...
I'm afraid that if I catch your eye
I may be ashamed and falter.
So in making this speech the face and eyes of the
speaker are hidden. At one level the significance of
this dramatic device is obvious; it warns the reader
that neither Plato nor Socrates really believes the
claim that is about to be made. But I believe it goes
deeper; I believe it tells us something about the
method and style employed in the speech itself; I
believe it says that the exclusive employment of cool
deductive argument, beginning from clearly defined
terms, is inappropriate to important inquiries because
the face of the inquirer becomes thereby a mask. In
one way we have really known this all along. For in
the presence of important questions the key terms
could successfully be defined only if the questions
were already settled; the hard thing is not the giving
of definitions, but the act of open and open-minded
inquiry, the act of eyes and face in place of the easier
mechanical motions of rational mask.
So with Plato's help we have a possible meaning for
Auerlius' notion of the rational man of unsound soul.
He is the man, ever so rational, who speaks to persuade but hides himself in the process. Models are not
hard to find; in fact, they are unavoidable. Personally,
I find a model in Presidential Advisor Henry Kissinger
when he appears on my television screen to justify in
clear terms and with cool argument the intensification of American bestiality in Southeast Asia. Perhaps
we ought not to blame him for this monstrous use of
mind, but ourselves; for we live and grow among
schools and colleges that exalt the successful de bator
and the overpoweringly brilliant lecturer as the
primary models of men who know how to use their
heads. In special contexts, for example in the law
courts, the arts of rational debate and controversy
may be necessary. But aside from such contexts they
generate-so I believe-vicious misuses of the human
mind. They produce performances that conceal and
dilute the true commitments and true concerns of the
performers, performances that will end by persuading
the performers that they have no commitment other
than to the performance itself. I sometimes feel that
if one could only catch Henry Kissinger's eye he
would, in Socrates' words, "be ashamed and- falter."
Perhaps someone will now say-or think-that I am
right because a rational head is useless and dangerous
unless it is linked in the same body with a warm and
loving heart. Such a person will have a name ready to
apply to the man whose soul is rational but unsound.
The name is: Technician. And after we hear the name
we will be invited to conjure up images of energetic
technological specialists who are slowly squeezing the
heart out of human life and squeezing the life out of
the earth we live on. And after that, we will hear
about the old war between philosophy and poetry, or
the more recent war between the sciences and the
humanities, or the brand-new war between thinking
types and feeling types. And, finally, we will be
advised to abjure clear thinking and to take up sincere
feeling instead. As an alternative to the man ofo
rational but unsound soul, we are offered-not a man
of sound and rational soul-but an irrational man.
I must confess to you what is already obvious: I
find this view every bit as offensive and vicious as the
arrogant posturing of the rational debater. The
question at issue is whether head and heart are one
thing or two. Let me assume for the moment that
head and heart are distinct and separate, and sketch
what I believe are the consequences of this view.
In the first place, it isolates the heart. I know it is
fashionable to claim that real contact between
humans occurs most reliably at the level of feeling
and emotion, and fashionable to speak of the Ian·
guage of the heart. I do not believe there is much of a
language there, for language is an intellectual
phenomenon that puts its user into contact with
universals, while feelings tend to be particular; at the
very least, language moves in the sphere of the public
while the so-called language of the heart tends to be
private. And experience will not bear out the putative
reliability of heart-felt sincerity as a bond between
men. Where I live, in New Mexico, there are too many
communes based on the ethic of total sincerity that
have dissolved into theft and violence. Where I work,
at St. John's College, there are too many articulate
members of the love-generation who cordially despise
each other.
If the heart is elevated into an autonomous
principle, it becomes only a happy accident if it ever
acts as a bond between men. For where hearts differ,
there is on this view no reliable way to reach from
11
�The College
one to another. The road is then open to the most
extreme form of ethical relativism, which is nothing
other than no ethic at alL And where differences
become intolerable, violence becomes the appropriate
response. If head and heart are indeed separate, it is
perfectly legitimate both for individuals and for great
governments to speak one way and act another; we
have all seen it.
In the second place, the same view empties the
head of all significant content. When the activity of
the intellect is taken as irrelevant to human concerns
and commitments, there is then no real point to conversation about important matters. We may talk
together in order to clarify o.ur convictions and
desires, but when differences are located in basic
axioms or in fundamental definitions, talk is at end.
It is astonishing to me that this view is frequently
held even among people who have read Plato. I will
not dwell on the other degradations to which, on this
view, the head becomes subject. For this one alone, I
confess, makes me gag with horror. I repeat it: It is
the claim that conversation and discussion are
appropriate for the solution of trivial problems, but
inappropriate for vital ones.
A while ago I put the question whether head and
heart are one or two. That was not a very accurate
way of stating things. Insofar as they are clearly
distinguishable they are clearly two. What I would
like to be able to prove is that they are one in the
sense that they are inseparable. To make a show of
proving that is quite beyond my power, but I would
like to share with you two sources which suggest
powerfully that in the best sense, and in the best
exercise, the powers of head and heart are indeed
inseparable.
The first source is the ancient philosophers. Both
Plato and Aristotle drew a sharp distinction between,
on the one hand, a faculty of calculation and deduction, and, on the other hand, a higher power that
somehow knows the world by contact and acquaintance. I propose to call the former by the name of
rationality and the latter by the name of reason. The
usage is unusual, because "rational" and "reasonable"
are usually treated as synonyms. Insofar, we moderns
have lost the ancient notion that reason is something
more-and something more important-than logic,
calculation, and record-keeping. Insofar, we have lost
the very possibility of an exercise of reason that
12
transcends both the barriers of private feeling and the
masks of rationality in order to touch the world and
to touch each other; we have lost the ability even to
understand Aristotle's claim that "the primary
objects of thought and desire are the same"
(Metaphysics, XII,7), or his claim that "the soul is in
a way all things" (De Anima, III,7).
The other source is a famous passage from Helen
Keller's Story of My Life (Chapter IV). It records the
awakening of a blind and deaf child to the intellectual
realm of language and universals, and the relation
between the awakening and something else that we
usually regard as quite separate:
One day, while I was playing with my new doll,
Miss Sullivan (my teacher), put my big rag doll
into my lap also, spelled "d-o-1-1" and tried to
make me understand that "d-o-1-1" applied to
both. Earlier in the day we had had a tussle over
the words "m-u-g" and "w-a-t-e-r." Miss Sullivan
had tried to impress it upon me that "m-u-g" is
mug and that "w-a-t-e-r" is water, but I persisted
in confounding the two. In despair she had
dropped the subject for the time, only to renew
it at the first opportunity. I became impatient at
her repeated attempts and, seizing the new doll,
I dashed it upon the floor. I was keenly
delighted when I felt the fragments of the
broken doll at my feet. Neither sorrow nor
regret followed my passionate outburst. I had
not loved the doll. In the still, dark world in
which I lived there was no strong sentiment or
tenderness. I felt my teacher sweep the fragments to one side of the hearth, and I had a
sense of satisfaction that the cause of my discomfort was removed.
We walked down the path to the wellhouse .... Some one was drawing water and my
teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the
cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled
into the other the word water, first slowly, then
rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed
upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt
a misty consciousness as of something forgotten-a thrill of returning thought; and
somehow the mystery of language was revealed
to me. I knew then that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the
wonderful cool something that was flowing over
�July 1972
my hand. That living word awakened my soul,
gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!
As we returned to the house every object
which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That
was because I saw everything with the strange,
new sight that had come to me. On entering the
door I remembered the doll I had broken. I felt
my way to the hearth and picked up the pieces.
I tried vainly to put them together. Then my
eyes filled with tears; for I realized what I had
done, and for the first time I felt repentance and
sorrow.
A sermon is covertly a testimonial of belief. Let me
now summarize the belief I have been trying to
express: There is such a thing as the reasonable; it is
far more than the rational; and in the light of its
exercise the distinction between logic and emotion is
trivialized, and the distinction between self and other
is joyfully eroded.
I began this discussion in the effort to find a name
for what Aurelius called the rational but unsound
soul. The name proposed was Technician; I have no
better to offer. Perhaps it should be modified slightly
to Mere Technician, but in my view the force of the
word "mere" indicates that what is missing is not
passion and heart as such, but reason.
Obviously the name for the man whose soul is both
rational and sound is: Reasoner. It remains to find a
model Reasoner. Marcus Aurelius might be proposed;
he was after all a dutiful emperor and general who
never lost sight of his problematic relation to others
and to the univers. But I confess that the man we see
in the Meditations is turned one degree too far inward
for my taste. Perhaps, then, Socrates? Perhaps; but I
wonder how far the Socrates of Plato's dialogues
corresponds with historical reality. I think it likely
that there is no model Reasoner except in idea; that is
why Marcus Aurelius has occasion to note that even
men who think they have sound and rational souls are
men after all, so they fight and quarrel, and fail to be
model Reasoners.
But the idea of the Reasoner is not on that account
fictitious. I think it functions as a measure, which is
the right way for ideas to function. For myself, I have
come to know that idea, or to feel it (it makes no
difference which word is used) primarily in my few
years at St. John's. I can say that without a blush,
knowing full well how much I, and my students, and
my colleagues, and the institution as such, have all
failed to measure up. It is to me a great gift to have
some sense of the meaning of one's failure.
So I speak now as one failure to a whole group of
failures, and I speak on behalf of all those other
failures who have been your teachers and associates
during the last four years. I hope that in the future
the distinction between rationality and emotion will
not be oppressive to you; I hope that the distinction
between self and other will be cheerfully distant for
you; and I hope that, although you go and I stay,
sometimes you will catch my eye and I yours, and we
will both be ashamed, and falter. Insofar as such
things are ever possible, there is very high accomplishment and something worth celebrating. I hope your
lives are full of such celebrations.
Craig Elzey
13
�lOLA RIESS SCOFIELD
In these pages we honor the memory of lola Scofield, who died on March
27th of this year. She will be remembered by alumni of the College and by
her colleagues for her devotion to the ends that the College seeks to serve
and for her careful attention to the needs and concerns of every student who
made any claim upon her time. She will be remembered by all who knew her
as delightful in conversation. We reproduce the remarks made by John
Kieffer to the College community on April 7, 1972, and a sample of her own
poems and drawings.
It is proper that in this hall where she and her
husband were always present for the weekly lecture,
we. should pause to mourn the death of lola Riess
Scofield, a tutor on the faculty of St. John's College
for thirteen years, but a member, and in a larger
sense, a teaching member, of the St. John's Community for almost forty-five years. When she retired
from active teaching the citation offered by the
College saluted her as a "dedicated teacher" and this
sometimes abused phrase was for her exactly right.
For her, teaching was a necessary part of that life
of learning which had opened to her at the University
of California, (then one of the great centers of
learning of the world). She continued there teaching
for eight years after graduation, meanwhile earning a
Master of Arts degree and completing the course
work for two doctorates, first in English and then in
Philosophy. After a year abroad and two years teaching at New York University, she accompanied her
husband, Richard, to St.John's in 1927.
The coming of the program initiated by Mssrs. Barr
and Buchanan ten years later was a new stimulus to
learning. As she herself has stated, she took every
adult seminar and tutorial the College offered and she
also taught in the adult program. A feminist, she saw
14
no reason why women should not be appointed to
the St. John's faculty. When the College became
coeducational her arguments proved irresistible, and
she at last gained the appointment she had so long
desired.
As a teacher she demanded of her students the
same high standards of study she had set for herself.
Since the opportunity for a university education had
been so precious to her, she could not understand
that anyone could take his admission to St. John's
lightly. So for her students she was exacting but
painstaking and solicitous in her encouragement of
their work.
I would not give the impression that she was a
fussy schoolmistress. Her mind was sensitive and
insightful and she had genuine wit. Her poems and
drawings, published by the Collegian in 19 65, reveal
her gifts of imagination and humor. Perhaps above all
she benefited from her life with Richard Scofield,
learning from him and giving him in tum the intellectual companionship he needed.
Of her final contribution to Richard, caring for
him through seven years of illness, and of her suffering from his death, one ought not to speak.
May we rise for a moment of silence.
�Egypt
While pageantries of East or West
Fade from the ancient land,
These mortal mathematicals
As in the dawning stand,
Constructing their geometry
Of shadows on the sand.
Album
Ah, Valentines of yesterday,
The sullen fire of time
Consumes your lace and satin hearts,
The ribbon and the rhyme!
You too have been in Arcady,
Earth's ambrosial clime.
Holiday
On a crowded beach radios croon
By many a languid knee;
The boy has found in a caverned shell
Ocean's melody
And carries heme this distant voice
That sings of Odyssey.
�NEWS ON THE CAMPUSES
Charles Post
MIRIAM STRANGE
"What St. John's needs
is an archivist."
Miriam Strange said this to Pat
Parslow, who interviewed her in her
column "Lady in the Limelight" in
the Evening Capital for April 1,
1949. Now, twenty-three years
later, the College has got the message. Mrs. Parslow had added the
comment: "and it's very clear that
if such a position were created, Miss
Strange would gladly fill it - as she
does unofficially now." And lo, this
too has come to pass, and all her
affectionate friends, alumni and all
who know her, may greet her with
the title which she has created for
herself during those many years
when she "unofficially" held the
position.
An archivist's work has two
aspects, and in both Miss Strange is
abundantly qualified. One aspect is
that the archivist must have an
16
intimate knowledge of the purpose
and structure of the instutition
whose records he keeps. I can
testify with authority about Miss
Strange's fitness for this part of her
job. So many times, as President or
Dean, I have had to think hard to
answer her exacting questions
about the interpretation of a catalogue requirement, about how our
laboratory classes might be rated in
conventional terms for other
colleges to evaluate, about whether
the performance of a student satisfies the requirements for graduation. Her responsibility was not
only to maintain an intelligible,
accurate record of the educational
performance of students, but also
to interpret this record to other
colleges, universities and accrediting
agencies. Every change the Instruction Committee makes in the
teaching programs has implications
for the permanent account and
with these the Instruction Commit-
tee rarely concerns itself; but Miss
Strange does. After she has carefully explained to the Dean what is
involved, he must make his
decision, basing it on her meticulous marshalling of all the evidence.
With experience like this her organized control of the archives cannot
help but be total.
There is, however, the second,
and much more important aspect of
the archivist's work. The content
and material of the archives are
what it is all about. For a college
this means the students and alumni,
the faculty and the Board of
Visitors and GovernOrs, whose
decisions control the life of the
College. Miss Strange's contact with
the individuals in all these catego·
ries has been marked by her cordiality, her deep interest in the person
and the career of everyone who
comes under her charge. How often
visiting alumni have been welcomed
by her and questioned about their
family, their jobs and their fate in
general. How often an alumnus
returning perhaps after twenty
years to revisit the campus and,
uncertain whether anybody would
remember him, has been thus
warmly received and then ushered
in to see the president and the
dean, or taken down to the coffee
shop to meet whoever· of his former
teachers might happen to be there.
It is such a background that will
convert the cold statistics of the
archives in to a warm and living
soul, so to speak, of the College.
John Kieffer
Dean 196 2-68
�July 1972
The time has come to let Miriam
Strange emerge from the obscurity
she has chosen to dwell in, to show
her true stature, to make manifest
what has for so long been her selfconcealed charm. For all things
high and precious it is not easy to
find the proper words. It is not
easy, therefore, to find the words
to describe Miriam Strange and the
influence she exerted. There has
been no other person at St. John's
who has worked with such zeal,
such devotion, such
conscientious~
ness for the good of the College.
Miriam Strange's work has been
going on for almost forty-five years.
In all these years she was always
fully aware of what was happening
at St. John's, what was helping to
reach the College's educational goal
and what was detracting from it.
Her opinions, rarely uttered, but
often enough noticed by those with
whom she worked, subtly
influenced the decisions that had to
be made. Scott Buchanan - to
mention the man insolubly linked
to the College's destiny - must
have known that better than anyone else.
What has been and is always
most amazing is Miriam Strange's
unique. memory. She remembers
everything that the College must
know and has been told about
every student: age, looks, place of
birth, home of parents, what the
student is doing after departing
from St. John's, whatever has been
said about the student by tutors or
relatives or outsiders, what the
student's successes or failures were.
All the past of the College's life is
Miriam
horizon.
Strange's
ever-present
Her silent role at graduation
exercises vividly symbolizes both
her modesty and her indispensability.
Miriam Strange has now assumed
a new position, that of College
Archivist and Alumni Secretary, for
which she is singularly well predisposed because of her intimate
knowledge of the College's history
and because the alumni, their
interests and capabilities, their
ART GALLERY FEATURES
SCHOLDER RETROSPECTIVE
AND EXHIBITION OF
STUDENT-FACULTY WORK
Spring shows at the St. John's
Gallery in Santa Fe included the
first retrospective exhibition of the
work of Fritz Scholder and the
second annual student-faculty
exhibition.
experiences an~ their desires, are
Mr. Scholder, one of the most
more familiar to her than to popular and controversial contemanybody else.
porary American Indian artists,
displayed paintings, drawings and
June 30, 1972
Jacob Klein
prints from his personal collection
Dean 1949-58
in April. At the same time his work
was featured in a special show at
the Smithsonian Institution, and a
book of his paintings, Scholder/fndians, had just been published by
LIBRARY BENEFIT ENTERS
Northland Press. The studentFOURTH YEAR
faculty show winners included:
The Book and Author Lun- Marilyn Henderson, thread arts
cheons, sponsored by the Library division; Jim Nelson, potteryAssociates of St. John's College in sculpture; Alice Ericsson, paintingSanta Fe, have entered their fourth drawing; and J. R.· Thompson,
year. They provide interesting photography.
noontime programs for local
citizens and extra funds for the
College's library. Speakers at the
14th and 15th luncheons in April
and May included James P.
Shannon, former vice president of
TRIAL BY JOHNNY-THE 1972
St. John's in Santa Fe and now a
ANNAPOLIS SENIOR PRANK
law school student; Nancy Wilson
The Senior Prank-a traditional
Ross, author of The World of Zen
and Three Ways of Asian Wzsdom; St. John's Rite of May-usually
Bill Barker, Denver writer and tele- measures up to the expected crivision personality; gothic writer teria: joyous, clever, inexpensive,
Phyllis Whitney; cultural anthropol- and a complete surprise to the rest
ogist Edward T. Hall; and poet of the College. Pranks of years past
have occasionally invaded normal
Drummond Hadley.
tutorial or lab times, but never
Richard Martin Stem, chairman
of the Library Associates, is master before had a prank displaced the
of ceremonies for the successful hallowed hours of a seminar night.
On the afternoon of Thursday,
programs held at Santa Fe's famous
La Fonda hotel. Another series is May 18, and during dinner, some
students noticed a general absence
planned for the fall.
17
�The College
of seniors on campus. More definite Jimmy Burress, and Nancy Willis
suspicions were aroused shortly had the roles of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd
before seminar time when certain Tutors, Dana Netherton played
seniors were observed descending Mortimer Adler, and Tod Donahue
on ropes from second-floor seminar the 1st Midshipman. The remaining
rooms. Everyone discovered that seniors sang in the choruses of
the seminar room doors all over Amorous Midshipmen and Johnny
campus had been firmly sealed Women.
The most astonishing part of the
from the inside. A notice outside
each door announced that a senior whole production was the seniors'
oral examination of Michael Green success in bringing it to perfection
would be held that evening in the in total secrecy. They wrote the
libretto, built the set, and. rehearsed
Auditorium.
The "oral examination" turned this "Dramatic Cantata in One Act"
out to be Trial by Johnny, an without divulging a single word of
adaptation of the similarly titled what they were doing.
The libretto of Trial by Johnny
Gilbert and Sullivan opus. The role
of Michael Green was sung by and Seminar of the Air (a Real
Harold Koenig, while the real Olympic spoof of the forthcoming
Michael Green played the portrait television seminars) was subseof King William. (The set, it should quently printed by The Collegian,
be explained, was a replica of the the students' weekly newspaper.
King William Room.) Christel Copies, while they last, may be
Stevens played Miss Barbara obtained by sending $1.00 to The
Leonard, Grant Wiggins the part of Co'llegian, St. John's College,
Dean Goldwin, Randy Campbell, Annapolis, Maryland 21404.
Craig C. /£lzey
18
PLAN UNDER STUDY FOR
REGIONAL ALUMNI ASSOCIATIONS
St. John's College needs a structure of alumni groups that would
serve the mutual interests of its
widely scattered alumni from its
two remotely separated campuses.
One suggestion is to create
regional alumni associations (clubs,
chapters) wherever a sufficient
number of interested alumni could
be brought together. Each of these
groups would have the responsibilities and powers now exercised by
the St. John's College Alumni
Association, which serves so well
the Annapolis area: to solicit
members, collect dues elect
'
officers and directors, determine
organization budgets, plan programs for the support of the
College's educational mission, and
nominate Alumni Members for
election to the Board of Visitors
and Governors.
An Alumni Council composed of
representatives from each of the
regional associations could provide
the overall coordination when
needed. The College, of course,
would furnish administrative and
mechanical assistance to each
association in much the same way
as it now does for the Annapolis
group.
President Richard D. Weigle and
Provost Paul Newland would welcome suggestions on how to
accomplish thl' general objective: to
strengthen the impact of St.John's
College in various centers across the
country by the creation of mutually supportive and equal centers of
alumni activity.
At left, Thomas Ascik, author and
conductor of uTrial by johnny", receives
his diploma.
�July 1972
jACOBSEN HONORED
Tutor and Director of Athletics
Bryce D. Jacobsen '42 this spring
was given recognition on the tenth
anniversary of the current intramural athletic program.
Inspired by a student petition,
the Board of Visitors and Governors, in an appropriate resolution,
commended Mr. Jacobsen for the
program which he devised, and for
man Brooks Robinson and first
baseman John (Boog) Powell.
Tickets for the occasion were
presented to Mr. Jacobsen in a
surprise ceremony at the last softball game of the year. Miss Barbara
Leonard, representing Provost Paul
D. Newland, made the presentation.
HOMECOMING 1972
James Grady
the leadership which he has displayed in administering it.
As an additional honor, Mr.
Jacobsen, his wife, and their two
grandsons were the guests of the
student body at a Baltimore Oriole
home baseball game. While there
they met both All-Star third base-
October 13-14, 1972, will be the
time for reunions for all decade
classes: 1912, 1922, 1932, 1942,
1952, 1962, as well as the Silver
Anniversary class, 1947, and the
five-years class, 1967. That will also
be the time of Homecoming in
Annapolis.
And if you want to stay in town
on F'riday or Saturday night, make
your hotel or motel reservations
NOW; there is to be a large yacht
show in Annapolis that week-end,
and rooms will be at a premium.
The Alumni Office will be glad to
help if you act quickly; we cannot
guarantee miracles if you wait until
September.
NOTICE
Nominations for the 1972
Alumni Award of Merit are now
in order, Alumni Association
president William R. Tilles has
announced. All nominations
should reach the Alumni Office
in Annapolis before September
6th, and should contain sufficient biographical data to
substantiate the nomination.
The Award, up to three of
which may be given each year, is
made at the discretion of the
Ass o dation directors to an
alumnus for "distinguished and
meritorious service to the United
States or to his native state or to
St. John's College, or for outstanding achievement m his
chosen field."
CLASS NOTES
1921
LtGen Milton G. Baker, retired from
his position as Superintendent of the
Valley Forge Military Academy and
Junior College, continues as President of
the Board and of the Foundation.
1929
On April 1st john W. Boucher ("Long
John" of lacrosse fame) retired from his
position as regional manager for the
Pepsi-Cola Company in Birmingham, Ala.
in a recent visit to the Annapolis campus,
he revealed his plans to renew his teaching credentials in preparation for entering
secondary school teaching.
Dr. Eugene N. Cozzolino was elected
to membership on the Board of Visitors
and Governors of the College, for a
three~year term which began in May. He
is one of six members elected by the
Alumni of the College. Gene and his wife
Barbara, parents of Robert G. Cozzolino
'63,Iive in Woodbridge, Conn.
William A. Gross, Jr. brought more
than 40 years of Federal service to a close
when he retired in February. At that time
he was chief of the Automotive Division
of the Materiel Testing Directorate,
Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md. Bill spent
his entire career at Aberdeen, starting as a
laboratory assistant and gaining national
recognition for his work in automotive
testing.
1937
One of the by~products of the Annual
Giving Campaign is the information we
receive from class ·captains about their
classmates. A c~se in point is a letter from
Asbury Lee III, sent along by Marcus·
Smith. Asbury is president of the Clearfield Bank and Trust ·Company, Clearfield, Pa. He and his wife, the former
Sally Hoffman, have six- children and six
grandchildren. (For classmates, Sally was
the girl Asbury was 'courting' while he
was at St. JOhn's.) We were pleased to
note that, although Asbury graduated
from the University of Pennsylvania, he
really feels much closer-to St. John's.
1941
Another alumnus elected to the Board
of Visitors and Governors this spring was
Victor G. Bloede, III, chairman of Benton
and Bowles, ·a New York advertising
agency. Vic was vice president and copy
chief of French and Preston of New York
before joining Benton and Bo~les in
1950.
19
�The College
1943
The old Oconomowoc flash, A. Scott
Abbott, has embarked on a new career.
Since late last year Scott and his wife
Kate have been living in Mt. Edgecumbe,
Alaska, where he is teaching high school
for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He
writes that his students are wonderful,
although teaching is different from what
he did at college level. The Abbotts are
enjoying their proximity to Sitka, apparently quite a cultural center, where many
people remember Michael Ossorgin with
great fondness.
1950
On April 6th John L. Willz"ams and his
wife, India, held a reception at their
home in Kentfield, Ca., for President and
Mrs. Weigle. Alumni in attendance were
Stephen W. Cantor '63, Edward B.
Cochran '44, Sanford Feman '64,
Stephen Fineberg '64, Mr. & Mrs. Bruce
F. Glaspell S72, Mr. & Mrs. Philip Holt
'69, Kieran C. Manjarrez 868, J. Morrow
and Carol (Dimit) Otis '63-'64, Mr. &
Mrs. Pasquale L. Patillo '56, Mr. & Mrs.
Robert N. Sperber '50, Mr. & Mrs.
Michael V. Trownsell '60. Also present
and honoring the Weigles were Mr. & Mrs.
Chapman Burk, Dr. F. M. Hinkhouse,
Alan Fox, Susie Weigel, and Mr. & Mrs.
James C. Mackey, parents of Susan ].
Mackey '72.
1954
Last winter Bernard E. Jacob became a
member of the law firm of Fried, Frank,
Harris, Shriver, and Jacobson of New
York.
1955
James W. Stone reports that he received a Ph.D. degree in linguistics last
fall from the University of California at
Berkeley. He still supervises the teaching
of South Asian languages at the Foreign
Service Institute of the State Department.
1958
Thomas S. Yoon is serving as a- special
assistant to the Speaker of the Korea
National Assembly on Parliamentary
Affairs. For some time, Tom has lectured
in philosophy at the Far Eastern Division
of the University of Maryland. For classmates, Tom's address is #106-13 Hoekidong, Dongdai mun-Ku, Seoul, Korea.
1961
Harrison Sheppard writes that he is
now living in the Seattle area (Vason,
Wash.) where he is Assistant Regional
20
Director of the Federal Trade Commission's Northwestern Regional Office.
Stephen Morrow is taking a year's leave
of absence from United Press International in order "to learn a modem
language or two."
Under the head of 'sloppy reporting' in
the April issue, we attributed a number of
things to David P. Rosenfield which are
incorrect. Item: the young lady with
Dave last fall was not his wife; he is
"happily unmarried." Item: the correct
name of his other alma mater is the
Wheaton School of Commerce and
Accounts. Our apologies for our errors.
Meanwhile, Dave suffered a heart attack
in .December, and was (April) in the ''late
stages of recuperation." We wish him
well.
1962
A good letter from Edward C. Green
tells us that he is working in Baltimore as
a psychiatric social worker in the Cherry
Hill office of the Inner City Community
Mental Health Program. Pali is currently
housewife-motheri~g Sanya, 9, Lianne, 8,
and Nona, 3, but Ned thinks she looks
forward to further education, perhaps in
psychology. They both hope to see lots
of '62-ers at their tenth reunion at Homecoming.
1963
Our former managing editor, Mary
Felter, called our attention to the catalog
of the Catonsville (Md.) Community
College, wherein Alan Dorfman is listed
as an assistant professor-. of mathematics.
A:p.other lawyer is working his way up
in the legal world: J. Morrow Otis on
January 1st became a member of the firm
of Cotton, Seligman and Ray in San
Francisco.
Jed R. Stampleman and his wife Suzel
are the proud parents of a son, Luc
Jeffrey, born last November.
1964
Peter H. Crippen (see- April issue) is in
Nigeria; with his wife and son, as an
employee of the U.S. Public Health
Service, working with USAID on mass
immunization programs and infectious
disease surveillance. Peter covers the three
eastern cities of Nigeria, working out of
Enugu.
Jere my Leven and his wife Linda
became the parents of Zachary John on
March 16th, which happens to be the
birthday of daughter Zoe. Jeremy works
for John Bremer (MA '58), academic
dean of Newton College, where Jeremy is
an assistant professor of education in the
Institute of Open Education.
Pierre de Ia R. du Prey and his wife,
julia (Busser) '66, stopped in the Alumni
Office for a short but delightful visit this
spring. He is teaching art history at
Queens College, Kingston, Ontario{ Julia
is studying voice.
Also in Canada, but a distance from
the du Preys, is David E. Rasmussen.
Dave, his wife Tamara, and son Aran, live
in Meat Cove on Cape Breton Island,
Nova Scotia. He is teaching school there,
and writes that he lacks only completion
of his dissertation for an Ed.D. degree
from Harvard Graduate School of
Education.
1966
Ian M. Harris, whom some remember
as hobbling through his commencement
exercise on crutches, has been teaching
science at an alternative high school in
Philadelphia, the School for Human
Services. In April he passed his doctoral
comprehensive examinations at Temple
University, and plans an early start on his
dissertation. He will work this summer
under a grant from the Philadelphia
School District, developing an urban high
school curriculum entitled "Science for
Survival."
Christopher Hodgkin has taken a position as business manager of the Oakwood
School, Poughkeepsie, N. Y.
Somewhat late, because we were late
finding out about it, we annonnce the
wedding, in Great Hall on February 2nd,
of Susan Kennedy and Alan Hile, Jr., a
graduate of the University of Virginia.
The Rev. J. Winfree Smith, also a grad~
uate of 'The University', officiated at the
ceremony.
1967
A very newsy letter from Helen
(Hobart) Feeley brings us up to date on
her activities since graduatiOn: she taught
school in San Francisco for a year, then
spent 2% years hitch-hiking around the
world. In Hong Kong she met her English
husband, and they were married in March
of 1971. She spent three months in
Greece, a "devastating six months in
India and Ceylon", then taught English in
Japan for three months. Helen points out
that this latter activity is a good opportunity for St. Johnnies. In England for at
least another four years, she and her
husband are doing academic work, he
toward a B.Ed. degree, she in social work.
In this day of non-involvement, it is
rare indeed when a private citizen is
willing to help maintain law and order.
�July 1972
Last winter, in downtown Annapolis,
Robert A. Heini'ger witnessed a' pursesnatching, and pursued and apprehended
the suspect. The Annapolis City Council
recognized Bob's action with a certificate
of merit. Our admiration, and congratulations, to you, Bob.
Nancy (Zi'mmerman} and Gregory
Scott asked that we let their friends know
of the death, of serum hepititis, of their
eight-month-old son, Albert Jolyon, last
August. When Nancy wrote in April, she
was expecting another child the following
month. We join the Scott's many friends
in both sympathy and wishes for great
joy.
1968
Bettina Briggs (SF), last reported in
these pages a year ago when she graduated in law from Boston University,
passed her Massachusetts Bar examination
during the winter.
Linda Jean Farrell (SF) writes that she
is now married to John Sanders, and is
living in Gainesville, Fla. She received a
B.A. degree in psychology last August.
She, John, and their daughter Charlotte
"live out in the woods and try to do as
much exploring of all sorts" as they can.
Thomas G. Keens (SF), in his senior
year at the University of California, San
Diego~ School of Medicine, has been
involved in emphysema and chronic
bronchitis research for the past two-andone-half years. In April Tom presented a
well-received paper on his research at the
national meeting of the American Federation of Clinical Research. He has also
served as a member of the San Diego and
Imperial Counties Board of Directors of
the National Tuberculosis and Respiratory Disease Association.
David I. Moss (SF), about whom we
wrote in the April1970 issue, now works
for Key-Rec in Dayton, Ohio, where he is
also continuing his studies in conceptual
design. The April issue of the National
Jewish Monthly featured David's work
designing and painting ketubot - handpainted marriage contracts - for his
friends, and for friends of friends.
1969
Also from Ian Hap-is, we learn that
Linda {Torcaso) Bernstein has finished
law school at the University of Pennsylvania, while husband Mark has completed
his second year. Mark's major achievement, Ian writes, has been in his work for
Senator McGovern in the Philadelphia
area.
Maya Hasegawa has been working as a
temporary office worker in Richmond,
Va., and has also been working for
Senator McGovern. She was elected a
delegate to the Virginia State Democratic
Convention. In September Maya will join
the first class of the new Antioch Law
School in Washington, D. C. She also
writes that sister Kimi '7 3 is in Tokyo
studying Japanese and the Japanese flute.
Mi'chael J. Hodgett (SF) recCived the
Bronze Star medal while serving as a
security clerk with the U . .S. Army
Medical Command in· Vietnam this past
spring. He has since been discharged, and
is employed at a bank in Santa Fe.
1970
SP/4 David D. Cici'a, a graduate of the
National Defense fustitute in Monterey,
Ca., as a- specialist in Russian language, is
now st~tioned in Germany. We are grateful to his father for this information.
Jeffrey D. Friedman is working toward
an M.A. degree in the Philosophy Depart-
ment of The Hebrew University, Jerusalem. In his spare time he is studying the
Talmud with Harry Sinoff '74.Jeff hopes
to see Steve and Nancy {Goldwin) Harvey
'70-'68 in Israel this summer. Jeff is very
anxious to enter into a discussion, with
anyone, of the relation between Jewish
and Western thought, especially regarding
liberal education. (A third St. John's in_
Israel?)
1971
Maya Narayan Contractor (SF) and
Jonathan L. Brewer (SF) were married
last March at Shree Gurudev Ashram,
Ganesch Puri, in fudia, in a traditional
Hindu ceremony. After a brief honeymoon, the Brewers were to go to
Thailand, where Jonathan is to teach
English and English literature at Phet
Buri, near Bangkok.
As a brief follow-up to our April report
of the planned wedding of Jane Sarah
Goldwin to Donald K. Bandler: the
wedding took place on March 24th in the
Paris suburb of St. Maur. The Handlers
had the distinction of being the first
Americans to be married in that town.
Bonni'e Louise Gage (SF) is now a staf{
assistant at The White House; perhaps this
balances out all the McGovern workers
mentioned earlier.
1972
Information from his mother reveals
that summer graduate David H. Carey will
be studying at the Gregorian University in
Rome until1975.
Christine (Ferrarini} Constantz"ne has
been appointed to the newly-created
position of Development litem on the
Annapolis campus. fu this job Chris will
help with almost all phases of the work of
the Development Office.
In Memoriam
1906 -Elmer G. Parsly, New York,
N.Y., March 12,1972.
1907 - Charles E. Tilghman, Salisbury, Md., May 23,1972.
1909 - Christian F. W. Dammeyer,
Annapolis, Md.,June 6,1972.
1910 - Isaac B. Jones, Washington,
D. C., January 1972.
1911 - Henry L. Johnson, Cambridge, Md., March 19, 1972.
1913 - Edgar A. Jones, Princess
Anne, Md., May 1, 1972.
1918
W. Duncan Deringer,
Chestertown, Md., April9, 1972.
1919- Herbert E. Fankhanel, Baltimore, Md., April21, 1972.
~920 - Garland G. Brown, M.D.,
Ch1cago, ill., December 29, 1971.
1928 - Col. Charles D. Wiegand,
Fort Collins, Col., March 7, 1972.
1929 - Hyman Schiff, M.D., Balti·
more, Md., April 26, 1972.
1931 · H. H. MacDonald, Oakland,
Cal., April12, 1972.
1931
Leonard H. McGiincy,
Bridgeport, N.J., January 1972.
1934 - Edmnnd P. Wells, Augusta,
Me., May 21, 1972.
1972 - Mordecai Gist Welling, Jr.,
Annapolis, Md.,Jnne 28, 1972.
�Craig C. Elzey
Recessional closing the 1972 Commencement at Annapolis. The Tutors
moving toward the camera are, from left, Mr. Klein, Mr. Smith, Miss
Fletcher, Mr. Bart, Mr. McGrath, Mr. Thoms, Mr. Sparrow, and Mr.
Allanbrook.
The College
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 2l 404
Second-class postage paid at
Annapolis, Maryland, and at
additional mailing offices.
�
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Wyatt, Malcolm
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Sinks, Jeffrey
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THE COLLEGE
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
Santa Fe, New Mexico
October 1972
�THE COLLEGE
Vol. XXIV
October, 1972
No. 3
Editor: Robert Louis Spaeth
Alumn.i Editor: Thomas Panan, Jr.
Design: John Randolph Campbell
Production: J effrey Sinks
The College is published by the Development Office
of St.John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. Richard
D. Weigle, President. Paul D. Newland, Provost.
Editorial Board: Christine Constantine, Russell E .
Leavenworth, Paul D . Newland, Barbara Oosterhout,
Robert Spaeth, Deborah Traynor, Malcolm Wyatt.
Published (our times a year in January , April, July,
and October. Second class postage paid at Annapolis,
Mary land, and at other mailing offices.
1n the October Issue
Cover: President Stringfellow Barr and Dean Scott
Buchanan on the steps of McDowell Hall. Photo (c.
1940), courtesy of Mr. Winfree Smith.
The New Program at St.John's College
by Scott Buchanan
l
The Report of the President . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8
An Interview with Barbara Leonard ........... 21
�The New Program
at St.John's College
by Scott Buchanan
The prospectus of the New Program reprinted here is
the earliest version to be publicly drculated. Written
in July of 1937, it was inserted in the current
Bulletins that were mailed out pending the issuance
of a new catalog.
The Airns of L£beral Education
Two or three generations ago, when the aims of
liberal education were still adequately implemented
in curricula which had the sanction of both learned
and popular opinion, it would have been unnecessary
to discuss the aims in a college catalogue. Statements
concerning aims would have appeared, and did appear, in the orig.inal charter of the college.
Whereas, Institutions for the liberal education of
youth in the principles of virtue, knowledge and
useful literature are of the highest benefit to society, in order to t rain up and perpe tuate, a succession of able and honest men for discharging the
various offices and duties of life, both civil and
religious, with usefulness and repu tation, and such
institutions of learning have accordingly been
promoted and encouraged by the wisest and best
best regulated States: Be it enacted, etc .
This is the elegant style and certain manner of
founders of St. John's College in 1784, as it was for
the founders of King William's School in 1696. They
could b e thus brief and concise, and their words
stood safe and secure in the steady faith they and
their readers had in the nature of things and of man.
We begin with a looser style and an uncertain
manner, and i t takes many more words to come to
the point. In order to state our purpose we start with
words from a writer, a scientific writer, of the nineteenth century: Education is the adaptation of the
human animal to his environment. We note the play
of the child and the restless activity of the adolescent
in o rder to discern the thread that we wish to follow
on to the end. Somewhere along this thread we must
pass fro m the merely physical aspects of the environ·
ment to the living aspects, and finally to those things
that minister to intellect and spirit. In the process of
adaptation play and activity must make their contribution to work and thought. Human animals must
feed themselves, sense the world they live in, and
move about; in these things they are like other
animals. But they must also imagine, speculate, and
practice the ar ts. These involve man the rational
animal.
We in this country have of necessity been concerned
chiefly with our competence and adaptation in the
useful arts, and in this we do not necessarily go astray. It is by taking the useful arts seriously that we
discover the liberal arts. In the pursuit of our vital
ends we find that imagination, scientific reason, speculation, and observation play an indispensable part,
but we also increasingly realize these are special
activities with special ends that must be pursued for
their own sakes if our more immediate ends are to be
gained. There must be appreciation, understanding,
and knowledge of the truth even for the sake of our
everyday needs. Recent crucial even ts make it
unnecessary to argue this point.
The arts of appreciating, understanding, and
knowing the truth are the liberal arts, and they set
their own ends. They are the arts of the freeman who
sets his own immediate ends in the light of the more
general good. It is only by the practice of the liberal
arts t hat the human animal becomes a free man. It is
only by discipline in these arts that spiritual, moral,
and civil liberties can be achieved and preserved. It is
in such obvious propositions as these that the
founding fathers of 1784 and 1789 gave reasons for
the instit utions that they set up. It is embarrassing to
admit that they are not always familiar and obvious
to us.
It will be an important part of the instructio n at S t.
J o hn's College to keep this part of our past alive in
the minds of the students, but it is even more importarlt that we implement the ends which the propositions celebrate and seek the virtues which t hey die-
�The College
tate. mtimately the ends of liberal eduction are the
intellectual virtues, the development of the capacities
from which they come, and the integration of the
characters to which they contribute.
Tradition
The most powerful controlling factor in any human
environment is tradition, and any system of educa·
tion that tries to ignore or escape the tradition within
which it operates is bound to fail and destroy itself.
The latent dangers in traditio ns become actual only
when thev are ignored and evaded. Conscious sup·
pression or artificial construction of traditions leads
only to cultura l monstrosity. Eternal vigilance within
a tradition is the price of liberty.
But there are many traditions : local traditions,
family traditions, even personal day-to-day traditions;
professional traditions, scientific and literary traditions, political traditions like monarchy and democracy. These provide the mediums in which the
individual lives and moves, moral supports for his
purposes, and ways for his imagination and thought
to travel. Fallen into decay and disrepute tradition
reaches out a dead hand and stops the individual in
his tracks. Traditions live in individual minds and
spirits; individuals find their vital fulfillments in (jving
traditions.
It is the purpose of the new program at St. John's
College to recover the great liberal tradition of
Europe and America, which for a period of two
thousand years has kept watch over and guided all the
other Occidental traditions. All liberal colleges o ught
to be devoted servants of this great tradition, and this
is the secret of their tenacious attempts to discharge
their functions against many odds.
The tangible and eminently available embodiments
and tools of this great tradition are the classics and
the liberal arts.
The Classics
For a long period of European history the ancient
languages and mathematics provided the educational
mediums of this tradition. They were called the
classics. In the last generation it has been known that
they were no longer effective carriers. Our educational system has responded by dropping them. But
we have not been successful in fmding the proper
substitutes, tangible, available, movable objects whose
obvious properties will enable teachers to move, lead,
and disCipline students in the liberal arts. Failure at
this point is fundamental failure, and compensations
in other directions no matter how good in themselves,
no matter how various and interesting they may
prove to be to the mass of students, are unfaithful to
the imperative need of genuine liberal education.
The first step in correction and recovery is
admission of failure, and the second step must be
research in the literal sense of retracing the steps in
the tradition back to the point where the thread was
2
lost. We, the members of the present administration
and staff of St. John's College, have been engaged in
this research for the last decade. By fo llowing the
traces we have found the steps in the great books of
the European intellectual tradition. They not only
throw light o n what has happened to the liberal
heritage, but they are themselves the mediums in
which it can be revived and carried on in the liberal
college. [n short the great books of European thought
are the classics, and in this sense liberal education
should still be classical.
It may be well in this place to state the criteria of a
classic, the standards by which a given book can be
judged to be or not to be a classic. To begin with the
apparently trivial, a great book is one that has been
read by the largest number of persons. To followers
of the publishers' announcements of best sellers this
criterion may seem unworthy. Over the entire period
of E Luopean history, Plato, Euclid, the Bible, and
Shakespeare are the best examples ; barring historical
accidents such as the burning of the library at
Alexandria, the judgment stands. The second
criterion is also apparently numerical: a great book
has the largest number of possible interpretations.
This does not mean that the book must be con·
fusi ngly ambiguous; it rather refers to the
inexhaustibility of its significance, each interpretation
possessing a clarity and force that will allow other
interpretations to stand by its side without confusion.
Dante's Divine Comedy and Newton's Principia are
the te!Ung examJ?Ies under this standard. The third
criterion is more Important and harder to determine:
a great book should raise the persistent unanswerable
questions about the great themes in European
thought. Questions concerning number and
measurement, matter and form, ultimate substance,
tragedy, and God open up mysteries for the human
mind. These questions are met and evaded regularly
by self styled practical men. Faced and explored they
induce, balance, and maintain the intellectual virtues,
and on their constant cultivation hang the issues of
orthodoxy, heresy, and freedom which are always
with us. The fourth criterion is that a great book
must be a work of fine art; it must have an immediate
intelligibility and style which will excite and discipline the ordinary mind by its form alone. Fifthly, a
great book must be a masterpiece of the liberal arts.
Its author must be a master of the arts o f thought and
imagination whose work has been fai thful to the ends
of these arts, the understanding and exposition of the
truth. These five are the tests which a book must pass
if it is to belong to any contemporary list o f the
classics.
But such a list makes a chronological series with an
order that imposes additional powers on each book.
Each book was written after and in the light of previous books; each book was written before other
books which it has influenced. Eacl1 master 'las stood
on the shoulders of another master and has had later
�October 1972
masters as his students. These innucnces, which are
historically vague in some cases, arc impressive in the
books themselves. r.ach is so mething more than itself
in its organic place in the series, and this has many
implications. One cannot internally understand a
given book un til he has read its predecessors and also
its successors. I t turns out that the best commentary
on a great book is another great book. Books now
unintelligible to both professor and student become
approachable and conquerable if the proper path
through other books is followed. Finally the educative value and power o f any given book increases at a
very high ratio as othe r books arc read. This is an
overwhelming answer to inevitab.lc doubts whether
the modern college student has capacities equal to the
tas k of reading which the St. J o hn's program sets. I t
is also intern al evidence from the books themselves
that they are the best instrumen ts of education.
Second-rate textbooks in special subject- matters do
not belong to t he classics; they are the best examples
we can find of books that are detached from the
tradition and therefore doomed to early death.
Several models and a great deal o f teaching and
reading have gone into the compilatio n of the list.
There is the experience with the American Expeditionary Force Uni versity at Baune at the end of the
War, the re is the expenence with ho nors courses at
Columbia University during the twenties, t here is the
experience wit h adult reading courses in connection
with the People 's Institute and the New Yo rk Public
Libraries, there is the experience with undergradua tes, graduates, and high school students at the
University of Chicago, there is the experience with
Litterae Humaniores at Oxford, there is experience in
the Benedictine monasteries fro m the sixth century
o n. But the best model that we have is the Bible, a
series of books so selected and ordered that they have
become the Scriptures of the whole race . This is the
most read book in our list, and its inspiration has
spread backward and forward through all the classics.
I t should be added that any limited list of the
classics must always remain open to revision. There is
no better way of revisi ng it than its continuous use in
teaching in a college. The "best hundred books" is a
variable for collecting the values that satisfy its
criteria. That is the minimum way of describing the
scholarly task that is laid on the teaching fa culty.
A LIST Of GREAT BOOKS TN CHRONOLOGICAL OROER
Homer: Iliad and Od yssey
Aeschylus: Oresteia
Herodotus: History
Sophocles: Oedipus Rex
Hippocrates: Sclcttions
Euripides: Medea and £/ectrtJ
Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesitln Wan
Old Testament
Aristophanes: Frogs, Clouds, Birds
AristaJ'chus: On the Distance of tlul Sun and Moon
Aristoxenus: Harmony
Pbto: Mcno, Republic, Sopilist
Aristotle: Organon and Poetics
ATchimedes: Works
Euclid: Elements
ApoUonius: Conics
Lucian: True History
Plutarch: Lives
Lucretius: On the Nature of Thi>ags
Nicomacbus: Introduction to Arithmetic
Ptolemy: Almagest
Virgil: Aeneid
S trabo: Geography
{,ivy: History of Rom a
Cicero: DeO[ficiis
lloraa:: Ars Poctica
Ovid: Metamorphoses
Quintilian: Institutes
Marcus Aurelius: To Himself
New Testament
Galen: On the Natural Faculties
Plotinus: Enneads
Augustine: De Mvsica and De Magistro
Song of Ro/ond.
Volstmga Saga
Bonaventura: Ott the R eduction.
of the Arts to '11wology
11)0 11'\as: Su.mm(l Th eolo&ricn
Roger Bacon: Opus Maius
Chaucer: Canterbury Tale.r
Leonardo: Note-books
Erasmus: CoUoquies
Rabelais: Gargantua
Copemkus: De Revo114tionibus
Machiavelli: The Prince
llarvey: On the Motion of the Hearl
Gilbert: On the Magnet
Kepler: Epitome of Astronomy
Calilco: Two New Sciences
Descartes: Geometry
Francis Bacon : Novum Organum
Hobbes~ Leviathan
Montaignc: Essays
Cervantes: Don Quixote
Shakespeare: Hamlet, King Lear
Calllin: hutitutes
Gr o t ius: The Low of ll'a r and Peace
Corndlle: Le Cid
Racin.:: Piledre
Molkn:: Tartuffe
Spino-.a: Ethics
Milton: Parad£<e Lost
L<:ibniz: Mathematical Papers
Newton: Principia
lklyle: Skeptical Chymist
Montesquieu: 1he Spirit of the Lows
Swirt : Gulliver's Travels
Locke: Es.say Concerning flu mma Undemanding
Voltrure: Candide
Fielding: Tom ]OIU!s
Ro usseau : Social Contract
Adam Smith: Wealth of Nations
Hume: 1)-eatise of flumon Nllture
Gibbon: Decline and Fall of th e Roman E mpire
Constitution of the United Sta tes
l'"cdcralist Papers
~\n t: Cri~ique of Pr
trc Reason
Goethe: Faust
Hegel: Science of Lol(ic
Schorcnhaurr: 11tc World IJJ WiU and ld~t1
Coleridge: Biographia Literaria
Bentham: Prineip les of Momls mad of Legislation
Mal thus: Esmy on the Principles of Population
Mill : Systc1ta of Logic
Marx : Capital
Balzac: Pere Gon·ot
Thackeray: llenry Esmond
Dickens: David Copperfield
Flaubert: Madame Bovary
Dostocvski; en·me and Pun.islnuont
Tohtoi: 111m- and Peace
Zola: E"perimental Novel
lb:scn: A Doll's House
Dalton: A New System of Chemical Pllilosophy
Oirrord: The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences
Fourier: Mathematical A>llllym of lleat
Faraday : Experimental Researches into Ekctricity
Pcaoock : Algebra
Lobachcvslti: Theory of Parallels
Darwin: Origin of Species
Mendel: Papers
Bemar<l : Introduction to E!!tpt'Tim<'tltal Medicine
Galton: EtllJ"iries into the Htmum Mind and its Faculties
J oule : Scientific Papers
Gauss: Mathematical Papers
Galois: Mathe matical Papers
Book: laws of Thought
llamilton: Q!;tJtemions
Riemann: The Hypotheses of Geometry
Cantor: Transfinite Numbers
Virchow: CeUu/ar Pathology
Poincare: Science and Hy p otl·esir
Hilbert: Foundations of Geometry
james: Principles of Psychology
Freud : Pt~pers on Hystena
Russell & Whitehead: Principill Mallaematica
Veblen & Young: Projective Geometry
3
�The books on this list for t he most part have
recently been republished in cheap editions. The cost
to the student during the four years' course will with
a few exceptions come within the customary sum
paid for textbooks. In special cases, for instance
Euclid's Elements in Heath's translation, the College
will arrange a subsidy. It is therefore feasible to make
and remake such a list and to prescribe it as required
reading of all students at St. J o hn's who enter the
new program of study.
The Liberal Arts
There are two ways of explaining the function of the
liberal arts in a liberal college. The simpler way is to
describe the mechanics of instmction. That will appear in what follows. But first it will be well to make
clear what the basic distinctions were before the
modern chaos buried t hem under the materials of
instruction. In general t he liberal arts are the three
R's, reading, writing, and reckoning. So they still
appear in our primary schools; it is their integrity and
power that still lure us back to the little red school
houses where our fathers and grandfathers studied
and practised them. Before the nineteenth century
they had a higher place and a more elaborate development which gave biith to and nurtured t he aiTay of
subject-matters in the modern university. For fifteen
hundred years they were called the Seven Liberal
Arts, and before that, they were called the Encyclopedia, the " circle for the training of boys." There is a
continuous tradition of these as there is of the books,
and the two traditions are one in the end. Their
formal and operating techniques arc more difficult to
recover than their products in the great books, but
the recovery has proved possible and also illuminating
for the practical problems of instruction that the
books raise.
The dearest historic pattern of the liberal arts for
the modern mind is, curiously enough, to be found in
the thirteenth century. At the Lime of Dante's Divine
Comedy and St. Thomas's Summa Theologies, they
were listed as follows:
Trivium
Quadrivium
Grammar
Rhetoric
Logic
Arithmetic
Geometry
Music
Astronomy
With the medieval emphasis on the rational activities
of man and the central position of the speculative
sciences of theology and philosophy interest cen tered
on the last m·t in each column , and the other arts
were subordinate and auxiliary to them. The master
of arts in the t hirteenth century would most likely
write his books on logic and metaphysics or in music
and astronomy. Other ages made different emphases.
The renaissance found rhetoric, geometry, a11d music
4
(measurement) most productive and illuminating with
the other arts subsidiary. The Romm1s went farthest
in rhetoric, as one might expect from noting their
legal activities. The Alexandrians gave h ighest honors
to the grammarian scholar and the arithmetician and
geometer, with considerable consequent attention in
experimental science. The Athenian Greeks agreed
with the thirteenth century in their ordering of the
arts. It seems that we in our political preoccupation
and economic energy, coupled with experimental
science, are primarily concerned with rhetoric and
music, the Pythagorean name for mathematical
physics.
The order and the shifts in order that this indicates
reflect the shifts of attention and emphasis in the
great books, and these in tum may be said to reflect
the spirit of the ages in which they were written.
These observations can be turned to account in the
manner of teaching which we propose to follow . The
entire period with the books and the patterns or the
arts can be recapitulated in the four-year college
course, the yearly divisions falling respectively at the
end of the Alexandrian period, at the end of the
middle ages, and in tl1e middle of the eighteenth
century, and ending with contemporary writers. The
schedule can be seen in the following scheme:
�October 1972
Schedule of Readings by Years
Languages and Literature
Liberal Arts
Mathc matks and Sdencc
First l"ear
Homer
Hero dotus
Thucydidcs
Aeschylus
Sophocles
Euripides
Aristophanes
Lucian
Old Testament
Plato
Aristotle
HipPQcrates
Galen
Euc~d
Nicomacbus
Aristarchus
ApoUonius
Ptolemy
Archimedes
Aristoxcnus
Second Year
Virgil
Lucretius
Strabo
Leonardo
Horace
Aurc~us
Ovid
Livy
Cicero
Plot in us
Augustine
Bonaventura
Thomas
Roger Bacon
Copernicus
Ca lvin
Spinoza
Kepler
Harvey
Cilbert
Newton
Leibniz
Boyle
New Testament
Quinrilian
Dante
Volsunga Saga
Song of Roland
Chauc<:r
Calilco
Descartes
Third Year
Cervantes
Shakes1>eare
Milton
Rabelais
Corneille
Racine
Moliere
Erasmus
Francis Bacon
llobbcs
Locke
Humc
Montaignc
Montcsquicu
Crotius
Fourth Year
Gibbon
Voltaire
Swift
Rousseau
American Constitution
f'cd("r.llist Papers
Adam Smith
Malthus
Man<
Fielding
Balzac
f'laubert
Thackeray
Dickens
Ibsen
Dostocvski
Tolstoi
Kant
Schopcnhaucr
Hegel
Goethe
Bentham
Mill
James
Freud
Peacock
Boolc
Fourier
Lavoisier
Dalton
Hamilton
Ostwald
Maxwell
Faraday
Joule
Danvin
Virchow
Bernard
Calton
Mendel
Clifford
Cantor
Riemann
Lobachevski
Hilbert
Poincare
Gauss
Galois
Russell & Whitehead
Veblen & Young
This scheme correlates the books with th e appro·
priate contemporaneous ordering of the li beral arts,
and provides the basic pattern of instruction so t hat it
will be most effective and economical. The two
outside columns give the divisions of the books that
are primarily literary and linguistic in medium and
s tyle and those that arc mathe matical and scientific in
these respects. The middle column gives the tests that
expound the distinctions and o rdering principles of
the arlS of reading, understanding, and criticism that
will most efficiently exploit the contents of the
boo ks. Along with these we propose to run laboratories of three kinds throughout the course, one to
study the devices of measurement and instrumen ts of
precision, another to repeat the crucial and canonical
experiments in the history of science, and still another for the focusing and concentrating of t he
devices of a ll the sciences upon such contemporary
problems as the nature of the cell, the chemical,
physical, and biological balances in the blood, and the
basic problems in embryology. These experiments are
the non-bookish classics that the modern laboratory
has produced, and the consequent disciplines will be
provtded for the liberal training of the student. I t is a
fact of modern times that it is ch iefly by experimentation that the classics and the libera l ar ts are kept
alive.
The li beral arts are chiefly concerned with the
na ture o f the symbols, written, spoken, and const ructed, in terms of which we rational animals find
our way around in t he material and cultural world in
which we live. Symbols have practical aspects, as in
rhetoric and industry, which must be understood and
distinguished from their theo retical uses and significances in science and literature. Again there are concrete data and artificial products that must be distin~ished [rom the abstract principles and ideas
wh1ch gove rn them. There arc many connections that
these aspects have \'\lith one another, and it is the
business of the liberal artist to see those apart and put
them together. Success in this constitutes intellectual
and moral health. Failure is stupid ity, intellectual and
mora l decay, ru1d slavery, to escape which the
foundjn~ fathers set up institutions of liberal education. It IS reassuring to know that they had more than
pious hopes in their minds when they made charters
for St. J ohn's College and its sister institutions.
Ma chinery of lustruction
For students who choose to enter this program of
study this year, 1937, there will be a staff of instructjon consisting of men who have come to St. John's
from the University of Chicago, the University of
Virginia, Columbia University, and Oxford. Ideall y
these me n should be equally well trained in each
<L~pcct of the progra m, have read all the books in the
list, a nd mas tered all the arts. Actu<tlly the members
of the staff have been educated during the period of
academic specialization, and they therefore are
5
�The College
specialists who have re-educated themselves in varying
degrees. T ogether their specialties cover the range of
the books and the arts, and stud ents will achieve
balanced training through a scheme of combination
and rotation for teaching techniques; the same will be
true for persons in charge. Such a scheme is dictated
by the books and the liberal arts.
The teaching devices in the scheme arc four: l} reading and discussion of the books in seminars; 2} formal
lectures on special topics in the liberal arts; 3} tutorials; 4 ) laboratories.
Seminars. Meetings of these seminars will occur
twice a week with any additional meetings that
special circumstances or difficul ties may indicate.
There wiJI be two instructors in charge, and the
instruction will make use of a wide range of devices
from explication de texte to analysis of intellectual
content and the dialectical treatment of critical
opinion.
Formal Lectures. T he liberal arts o pera te in the light
of principles which constitute the liberal sciences.
These sciences will be progressively expounded in
formal lectures by various members of t he staff as the
course proceeds. They will be expository and critical
also of themes that arise in the reading of the books.
There will be at least two formal lectures a week.
Tutorials. There will be three kinds of tutorial
instruction for small groups or individuals in original
languages, in mathemat ics, and in writing.
The study of an original htnguage will be initiated in
an intensive manner during a period of six o r eight
weeks a t the beginning of each year. The books will
be read in English transla tion, but their proper interpre tation is most rapid and efficient when they are
studied as translations. This requires only a part of
the knowledge commonly demanded now in language
courses, a knowledge that is rapidly and easily acquired by the study and analysis of texts selected
from the books on the list. T his training will serve
two pw·poses in the course, first as it contributes to a
knowledge of universal or general grammar as we shall
study that in the liberal arts, and as a cumulative skilJ
in the genuine reading of any text including those in
English. Greek will be thus studied in the first year,
Latin t he second, and French and German in the
third and fourth . I t should be noted that these correspond wi t h the original languages of t11e texts in those
years.
T he second kind of tutorial will be ordered to the
elementary study of the mathematical books. Modem
stude nts, more because of the dive rsity in previous
trainings rather than because o f any ge nuine d ifferences in native endo wments, vary a great d eal in their
mathematical abiljties. The mathematical tutorials
will be organized and taught o n the basis of diagnoses
of individual cases with the aim o f leading each
student into vita l inte llectual relations wit11 the mathematical texts. This task will be facilitated by the
6
mathematical laboratory for t hose whose d ifficulties
lie on the operational level.
The third kind of tutorial is concerned with training
in wri ti ng. Selected texts will be memorized, imitated
in style, translated, and criticized. The aim here will
triple: to induce active participation in the tho ught of
the great au thors, to increase the original literary
ability of the student, and to enco urage them in
original literary creation. There are plans for a magazine o f commentary and criticism to which students,
teachers, and friends of the St. J ohn's program may
contribute. This will be closely connected with the
writing tutorials and will be under studen t editorship.
Laboratories. There will be three kinds of labora·
tories: one in mathematics and measure ment; one in
e xperimentation; and one in the combination of
scienti fie findings.
The mathematical laboratory will be equipped with
t he basic instrumen ts of measw·ement in all the
sciences. Here students learn the mathematical principles that have been embodied in the instrumen ts,
learn to operate them, and thus become familiar with
the operational aspects of both mathematics and the
natural sciences. T hey will also acquire the "feel" of
elementary la borato1y techniques for all the sciences.
The second kind of Ia bora tory will allow s tudents to
repeat the crucial and canonical expet;ments in
historic and contemporary science. T here are classics
in e mpirical science, experiments which once un·
covered principles and laid t he foundation for whole
fields of investigation. Some of these go back to the
lever and the balance, some of them, like Gal.ilco's
experiments wi th t he inclined plane founded classical
mechanics, others like Millika.n's measurement of the
force o n the electron have set the themes for contemporary science. Students will study these scientific classics.
At t he end of the course there will be a labo ratory
for combining scien tific findings in order to investigate concrete problems of central importance. The
best prob lems come fro m t.he medical scie nces,
problems of the cell, problems of blood balances,
p roblems of embryology. They will be in c harge of a
member of the staff who is acquainted with medical
sc ience.
These laboratories will provide a pro per pre-professional scientific training, will illustrate the liberal arts
in their liveliest contemporary practices, and will
focus the past on the present for the who le course.
The mathematical laboratory will carry the student
through the first year, the experimental laboratory
through Lhe second and third years, and the combina·
torial labo ratory the last year.
Schedule
A given week will contain a maximum o r approximately seventeen hours of actual classroom and laborato ry work. T his will be divided as follows:
�October 1972
Seminars
Lectures
Tutorials
Language (for 6 weeks)
Mathematics
Writing
Labo ratory
Total
4 hours
2 hours
3 hours
3 hours
2 hours
2Y2 hours
16% hours
St udents entering St. J ohn's College in Septem ber,
19 3 7, will be personally advised concerning t he
opportunities for their education tha t this course
offers, and will be invited to enter it. Old students
who wish to make a new start may also choose to
enter it. It can no t be taken in part as substitute for
one, two, or three years that they still have to com·
plete in the old curriculum. This rule a lso applies to
students transferring from other institutions.
Degree Requirem ents
Actually this total will vary between fo urteen and
seventeen hours with an average of hours for the
week equal to the customary requirements of liberal
colleges in this country.
Admission to tlu:s course
On account of the great vanat10n in preparatory
training for college students, no preparation is
assumed for this course beyond a minimum of read·
ing, writing, and arithmetic; eventually there will be a
formulation of this minimum requirement. At the
start and for some time in the futu.re we shall apply
the usual set of requirements for admission to St.
J ohn's College, with special consideration for candi·
dates of outstanding ability whose previous records
may no t conform to the stated re~:,TJ.ilat ions. This
co urse is no t designed for any special type of student,
either better or worse than t he average. It has rigors
to meet t he abilities of the best students, and it has
excellences and aids for t he conventionally judged
mediocre or even poor student who also should have
the best e ducational material and teaching attention.
The course is a single all required course, and can not
be taken in part. It has within it so many degrees of
freedom not frequently offered at present that no
apology is needed for a formalism that is only
apparent.
Satisfactory work in this course for four years will
be accepted as fulfillment of the req uirements for a
Bachelor of Arts degree. There will be the usual
semester examinations, either oral or written o r both.
There will be a final comprehensive examination, oral
and written, a t the end of the four years.
Specifica.Uy, t he requirements are as follows :
Knowledge of the contents of the required books
of the course.
Competence in the liberal arts.
A reading knowledge in at least two foreign
languages.
Competence in mathematics thro ugh e lementary
calculus.
Three hundred hours of laboratory science.
These requirements more than meet t he demands of
graduate schools in this country, whether medical,
legal, theological, scientific, business, or in schools of
the arts and sciences. There is enough freedom in the
course for the individual studen t to mee t any special
requirements t hat his choice of career and graduate
study may dictate.
Despite daily assertio ns to the contrary, t here is no
educational device for assuring wordly success to the
student. It is more important to cultivate the ratio nal
human powers of the individual so that armed with
the intellectual and moral virtues he may hope to
meet and withstand the vicissitudes of outrageous
fortune .
7
�The Report of the Preside· t
n
All:
Hark, the tower bell is sounding;
Hearts with hope and fear arc bounding,
Anxious voices are resounding
As we congregate.
Soon the tutors and the Dean
Will examine Michael Green.
Now his future is unseen,
Will he graduate?
1971
1972
Miss With pride we come here to extol
Leonard: This College and its noble goal,
Which is, of course, the truth.
For we are liberal artists all,
Our speech is dialectical,
We swoon before the truth.
Chorus: Our speech is dialeclical.
We swoon before the truth.
Middies: T heir speech is dialectical.
They swoon before the truth.
So began Trial by johnny a musical parody on
Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury which the Senior
Class in Annapolis wrote and produced as its "senior
prank" in May. Under the baton o f Thomas Ascik,
'72, "Sovereign and Conductor" according to the
program, the seniors amused and delighted t he entire
college community, which had earlier been locked
out of the seminar rooms in McDowell Hall. Two
choruses, composed of "a motley collection of
Johnny women" and "amorous midshipmen", responded to the lyrics of the principals. Especially
uproarious was the deus ex machina appearance of a
senior impersonating Mortimer Adler with his
Syntopicon. To Sir Arthur Sullivan's music he sang in
five notable verses his autobiography. As he said, "I'll
tell you how I came to be a sage."
This performance was indicative of the excellent
morale which seemed to pervade the Annapolis
student body. Dean Robert Goldwin reported that
"the senior prank was so good-natured , so original,
and so tasteful that there was a visible lifting of spirits
for everyone. " Other events which followed - Reality
Weekend, the Senior Dinner, and Commencement were equally auspicious and enjoyable. Both Paul
Newland, the Provost, and the Dean, in commenting
upon this happy state of affairs, noted that special
attention will need to be paid to the matter of
student morale in the forth-coming academic year
because of the high enrollment. Ways must be found
to alleviate the strain that is always characteristic of
8
study at St. John's, for such te nsion will be
heightened by crowding in class and elsewhere on
campus.
Pleasantly enough , the problem of numbers will be
one of the pressing problems on the Annapolis
campus this fall . A fter years of struggling with insufficient enrollmen ts and with a high rate of attriti.o n,
the College now confronts a record number of 370
students. The Provost and the Dean are gratified that
larger numbers of students arc con tinuing at St.
J ohn 's and that there have been waiting lists for the
rising sophomore and senior classes since May. 1 agree
with the Dean when he writes that "the College
should face these new problems with a glad heart."
The Santa Fe campus has not yet been confro n ted
with the problem of numbers. Dean William A.
Darkey reports a good year from t he standpo int of
instruction, although the retention ra te of freshman
students left something to be desired.
It seems fruitless to speculate on the possible
causes of attrition. The Annapolis campus suffered
from this malady for years. It was on ly in the 1960's
when capacity freshman classes were recruited and
when total emollment fi nally passed the 300 figure
that real improvement began. I remain optimistic that
a similar effect will be seen on t he Santa Fe campus.
This o f course will not occur automatically. Full
freshman classes of qualified students must be sough t.
As a step in this direction the Santa Fe campus will
adlJlit its first January class of twenty freshme n this
year. Greater numbers of students mean more variety
in the composition of seminars and tutorials over the
fo ur years, wider choice of social contacts, and larger
poten tia l constituencies for sports and o ther extracurricular activities--hence a healthier total college
situation.
�Oc tober 1972
Instruction
There were no major changes in the instru ctional
program of the Co llege. Dean Go ldwin regretted that
insufficient p rogress had been made to carry out the
recommendatio n in the Dean's Statement of Edu ca·
tional Policy and J>rogram o f 19 71 that ways and
means be found to reduce the wo rk in the curric u·
lum. At the j oint meeting of the Instructio n
Co mmitlee, he ld in Annapolis in February , a pilot
graduate preceptorial on the Santa Fe campus was
approved, revisio n o f the Graduate Institute cun;cu·
lum in Po litics and Socie ty was decided upon, and
two papers o n the language program, one by Dean
Darkcy and the o the r by Edward Sparro w, were
considered . Further ~t te nti on to the language
program remains a matter of high priority for the
coming year.
Under the capable leadership of the Provost,
reorganization o f duties was undertaken in the Dean's
o ffice in Annapo lis, so that Mr. Goldwin can devote a
greater proportion of his time to instructional matters
in the future. A number o f admin istrative and clerical
functions were reassigned to other ofCices. Further·
more , a n Advisory Committee o n ew Appointments
was created to conduct preliminary correspondence,
screening, and interviewing of faculty applicants. This
committee, composed o f former members o f the
Instruction Committee, will free the time o f the
current Instruction Committee to consider instructional proposals. The Instruction Committee will still
retain fu ll responsibility for all final appointments, as
stipulated in the Po lity, and will also d eliberate all
no n-tenure reappointmenlS and tenure appointments
o n the Faculty.
This year marked the termination of the so-called
transfer program, whereby students entering St.
J ohn's after o ne or more years at another college
might earn the B. A. d egree in three years and one
summer session . Last year Annapolis conducted this
program for five summer seniors and Santa Fe for
eleven. This past summer the figures were ten and
three respectivclr. Both years the program operated
at some rinanc ia loss. The conclusion to be drawn is
tha t this truncated program, originally conceived as a
means of stimulating enrollment, cannot attract a
large enough number o f students to justify either its
cost or the e xpenditure of tuto rs' time and energy.
Th e Tutors
Unfort unately, the College lost ano ther of its
retired senior tu tors during the year. Mrs. l ola Riess
Scofield, widow of Ri chard Scofield, died on March
27, 1972. Sf1e was the second wo man tutor to be
appointed to the College following t he introduction
of co-education in the earl y 1950's. A tutor o f keen
sensitivity and insights, Mrs. Scofield was dedicated
to teaching and to her students . She had retired in
19 68 after sixteen years of d evoted service to the
Co llege.
New tutors appointed for 1972-3 on the Annapolis
campus are: Burton Blistein, who holds the A.B. and
M.A. degree from the Universi ty of Chicago, taught
for eight years at Shimer College, and will no w
become currently Tutor and Ar tist-in-Residence;
Cecil H. Fox, who earned the B.S . and M.S. degrees
from T rinity University, the Ph.D. degree fro m Clark
University, and the Fil.Lic. from Lund University in
Sweden; Leon Kass, who has both an M.D. from the
University of Chicago Medical School and a Ph.D.
from Harvard University and who is this year a
Guggenheim Fellow; 13ro ther Ro bert Smith, who was
for many years head o f the lntegrated Program of St.
Mary's Co llege in Cal ifo rnia and has ta ught before
both on the Annapolis campus and in the Graduate
Institute a t Santa f e; David E. Starr, who graduated
from Gordon College and then received the M.A. an.d
Ph.D. d egrees from 13osto n University; a nd RobertS.
Zelenka, a graduate o f Ri ce University, who was
awarded the M.A. degree by the j ohns Hopkins
University and the Ph.D. degree by the University o f
Maryland. William De Hart and E.rrol Pomerance
completed their appointments and left the Co llege,
while Robert Sacks, who spen t the year in J enasalem
o n sabbatical leave, has decided to move west to t he
Santa Fe Faculty . Laurence Berns, J oseph P. Cohen,
and Ro bert B. Willia mson return from sabbatical
leave, as Ro bert S. Bart, J o hn Sarkissian, David H.
Stephenson, and J ames M. T o lbert begin their sabba·
ticals. Gisela Berns resumes teaching following leave,
while Alvin Main will be absen t on leave during the
fust semester. The Annapolis Facul ty will number 5 3
for the year commencing this September.
On the Santa Fe Campus there were five new
appo intmen ts: Alfred J. DeGrazia III , who has the
B.A. de~,'ree fro m Swarthmore College and the M.A.
from Howard University; Norman S . Grabo, who
holds both the M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of
California at Los Angeles and who taught for five
years at Michigan State University and then for nine
years was Pro fesso r o f English at the University
Californ ia in Berkeley; Philip LeCuyer, a graduate of
the Colorado Co Uege who earned a B.A. at Merton
College, Oxford University, as a Rhodes Scholar and
has been a tutor in the Institute o f Social Research
and Develo pment at the University o f New Mexico
while working to ward a docto rate in Biology; Mary I.
Robinson, a graduate of the University of Chicago,
who is a Ph.D. candidate in bioche mistry at the
Universi ty o f Arizona; and Alfreda L. Verratti, who
graduated from St. J o hn 's College in 1966, became a
Ph.D. candidate at Washingto n Unjvcrsity in philosop hy, and taught at Webste r CoJ/cgc. Last year's report
omitted one late appointment, tha t of Allan
Pearson, whose B.A. was earned at Boston College
and A.l\1. at Boston Universit y in German language
and lj terature and who taugh t for five years at the
University of California at Riverside. 1\lrs. T oni Drew
completed two years as a Teaching Intern and has
now received a regu lar tutor's appo imment. Paul D.
9
�The College
Mannick will continue fo r a third and final year as a
Teaching i ntern, while Pat rick Hanson, a June gradu·
ate, has been appoiJHed as Teaching Intern wi_th
responsibility for organizing and maintaining equipment in the physics and chemistry laboratories.
Tutors returning from sabbatical leave are Robert
M. Bunker, David C. Jones, and Robert D. Sacks,
while Mic hael Ossorgin and J ohn S. Steadman will
take sabbtical leave during 1972-73 . Ellio tt T .
Skinner will be on leave during the first semester to
comple te his doctoral dissertation. Unhappily for the
College, Don B. Cook, a tenured Tutor, decided to
resign from the Faculty in o rder to try p reparatory
sch~o l teaching. Dennis V. Higgins and Henry N.
Larom left the Co llege at the e nd o f the acad emic
year, since they did not receive ten ure appointments.
Aaron Kirsc hbaum resigned in order to undertake the
study of law. The Santa Fe Faculty will number 39
for t he year commencing this September.
Th e Students
On J une 4, 1972, the College awarded 28 Bachelor
o f Arts degrees on t he Santa Fe campus, o ne magna
cum laude and three cum laude. One week later the
College awarded 39 Bachelor of Arts degrees to
seniors on t he Annapolis campus, ~ three of the m
magna cum laude and nine of the m cum laude. Erro l
Po merance was awarded the degree of Master of Arts.
At t he end of the summer Bachelor of Arts degrees
were awa:rded to seven seniors in Annapolis and two
seniors in Santa Fe. By happenstance the latter two
were both women. They therefore constitute the
smallest St. J ohn's class on record and the o nly
exclusively female class to graduate from the College.
Two graduating seniors received Watson T raveling
Fellowships, Christel M. Stevens at Annapolis and
J o nathan Krane at Santa Fe.
Enrollment figures for the beginning and the end
of the academic year were as fo llows :
Women
Men
Sept.
June
Sept.
June
71
62
54
Febmary Class
Sophomores
59
J uniors
46
Seniors
26
Graduate Students
I
Totals
203
II
55
44
Annapolis
Total
Sept.
June
56
125
39
39
19
9
33
37
20
98
85
45
118
20
88
81
47
200
151
155
354
355
34
32
26
17
109
58
37
22
46
28
19
12
105
107
81
47
27
262
81
59
45
29
214
Both Directors of Admissions, Michael Ham in his
first year on the Annapolis campus and Gerald Zollars
in his second year on the Santa Fe campus, did
exceJJent j obs in the recruitment of this fall's entering
classes. Comparative figures for 197-71 and 1971-72
follow:
Annapolis
Deposits Received
Enrolled
[nquirics
Visitors
3,612
277
Wi thdrawn
197 1-7 2
257
202
3,383
AppUcations
Accepted
Rej ected
1970·71
265
18 1
60
80
125
125
319
44
Santa Fe
1970·71
241
182
50
74
128
128
83
108
106
3,867
208
1971·72
256
175
60
81
108
108
5,118
174
Once again there was a wide geograp hical
distributio n of studen ts in the tw o entering classes.
St. J ohn's College continues to be national rather
than regional in its appeal to prospective students. (In
each case the first figure is for An napolis, lhe second
for Santa Fe).
I
4
Florida
Georgia
I
6
Arkansas
California
3
Colorado
Connecticut 6
Mhsouri
D.\..
2
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
3
15
11
2
z
Neb,as)<a
New Harnp.
Hawaii
illinois
2
Indiana 2
l owa
Rhode Is. Z
Kansas
2
Maine
2
0
2
2
Tennessee 2
New Jersey 9
New Mexico New York 21
Ohio
Oregon
Penna.
10
2
10
3
5
6
Texas
Vermont Virginia 14
Wash.
2
W.Va.
2
Wisconsin 2
Wyoming 1
2
Kentucky
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Austria
I
20
4
5
2
2
3
Car'lada
14
England
llongkong
Japan
S ingapore
Turkey
Totals
12 8 108
Th e Staff
Freshmen
27
I
I
I
Santa Fe
Freshn'ler
\
10
49
Sophomores
juniors
Scnion
Totals
44
25
16
134
11
128
The College suffered a real loss when J ulius
Rosenberg resigned as Director of Development i11
order to accept an important position in Baltimore.
!-Je had worked loyally and tirelessly for the College.
Fortunately, the Directors of the Alumni Associa tion
chose him to fill the unexpired term of Baker
Middelton on the Board of Visitors and G overnors.
Russell Leavenworth, of Fresno, Califo mia, was
appointed as Interim Director of Development in
J an-uary. He had been associated with the Provost and
wi th Mr. Rosenberg for the preceding year and a half.
T he Provost effected a number of organizational
changes in the offices o f the Dean , the Registrar, and
the Direc tor of Develo pment. Miss Miriam Strange,
the perennial Registrar of the College, was appointed
�October 1972
Co llege Archivist and Alu mni Secretary. i\lrs.
Margaret l.<auck became the new Registrar. Within
weeks of her appointment, however, she had to
w1dergo a major opera tion from which she never
recovered. Her death is mourned by the entire college
communi ty. Mrs. Ch ristiana Whi te, who had moved
from the Oea1 's office to the Development Office,
1
was then appointed Acting Registrar.
Th01'n as Parran, Director o f Alumni Activities, was
given additional duties in programmed or d eferred
givi ng and certain o f his alumni duties were red istributed to o thers in the Development OHice. Mrs.
Christine Co nstan tine, '72, jo ined the Development
Office as an Intern. The major object ives in making
all o f these changes were to diminish the administrative work in the Dean 's o ffi ce, to increase the
capability and effe ctiveness o f the Development
Office, and to establish a new area of fund-rajsing in a
progra mmed giving o pera tion.
Mrs. Chn"stine Consta11tine
At its May meeting the Board institllled a pension
plan for staff members whereby those who had
completed at least fifteen years o f service and had
altamed the age of 65 while still in the College's
employ would be eligible to rece ive $7.50 per mo n th
per yedr of service, the total not to exceed a maximum of $250 per month. The surviving spouse
wo uld also be eligible to receive half of the pension
for a period of up to ten yea rs from the date of the
employee's d eath. T his plan applies primarily w o lder
staff members. Yo unger and newer members will have
available to them t he same retirement arrangements
as faculty members. The Board also voted to make
available to all staff members major medical insurance, decreasing li fe insurance, and disability
insurance, in addition to the hospital and medical
benefits a lready in effect. These provisions, which
apply to both campuses, constitute appropriate and
well-earned recogrutio n o f the fin e and dcdjcatcd
service of staff members to the College over many
years.
Th e Libraries
I n Nove mber the basement area o f t he new Tower
Build ing was read y to become an auxiliary library for
the Sa nta Fe campus. Mrs. Alice Whelan, the
Librarian, repo rts an amazingly smooth transfer of
three-quarters or the circ ula ting book collection, as
well as all records and tapes. The new facility is
serving the collc~c community well under the
immcdjate supervisio n of Mrs. Beth Floyd. T he major
acquisition proj ect of the year was an effort to bwld
up secondary sources re lating to classic Greek and
Roman authors. Once again the Library Associates
Committee, under the able chairmanship of Richard
Stem, made notable contributions to the Library,
largely thro ugh its successful Book and Author
Luncheons: The Art of Manl1ind ( 16 volumes), Henry
Fielding's complete works ( 16 volumes), Hegel's
Samtliche IVerke (26 volumes), Th e International
Encyclopedw of the Social Sciences ( 17 volumes),
Th e Medieval Scie11ce Series (1 4 volumes), Tudor
Church Music ( l l volumes), and a collection of
classic French drama, recorded by Lc Thea tre
Na_
tional Po pulaire and La Comedic Francaise.
Charlotte Fle tcher, t he Librarian on the Annapolis
campus, reports a new peak in service to students and
t u tors. The re was a rifty per cent increase in the
books borrowed by students during the year. This
reflects an impetus which began with t he beautiful
renovated building a nd with the improvement in the
book collectio n made possibk by T itle lJ gran ts.
Major purchases include the /<."ncyclop edw Judaica, a
new 20-volume editio n o f Hegel in German, Wallis'
Opera Ma tlt errwtica , and a 17 68 edition or John
Locke in four vo lumes. Bo th li braries find that the
spiraling cost of new books res ults in a greatly
decreased purchasing po wer or the annual book
budgets. It seems clear that increased funds must be
made available in the future.
The Graduate Institute
The 1972 sessio n o f t he Graduate Institute
enro Ued 140 stude n ts. At the end o f the summer
eighteen received the Mas ter of Arts d egree, bringin~
the to tal number of Institute graduates to 75. During
the rruddle four weeks o f the session, sixteen
inner-city high school students from Albuquerque,
11
�The College
Baltimore, New York and Washin ~ton_ live~ . on
campus pursuing a program of stt~d•es m pol!t•cal
philosophy conducted by three Institute alumm and
two St. J ohn's College seniors. According to the
testimonials of most of these students, and the
judsments of the staff, t~ey wer~ enormously an_d
positively affected by the Ideal of m tellectual pursUit
to which they were exposed. It is our hope that as a
side-benefit from this program the College ~ill be
able to reach more capable Blacks and H1spanos
interested in enrolling as freshmen; at least three
members of this first group expressed such interest.
CarroU Barrister House immediately to the north. The
infirmary and a colJegc guest suite are located on the
first floor; the upper floor contains apartments for an
assistant dean and for the College Nurse. A construction contract was awarded to Stehle, Beans and Bean,
Inc., in December at a figure of $262,058. The new
structure is largely the gift of Mrs. J ohn T . Harrison
of Greens Farms, Connecticut, as a memorial to her
late husband, J ohn T. Harrison, '07, for many years a
member of the board of Visitors and Governors.
The Alumni
On December 4 , 197 1, a ribbon was cu t by Mr. and
Mrs. J ohn Murchison, of Dallas, Texas, officially
opening the new Tower Building at Santa Fe. Experience of the first ten months confirms the value of
having centralized all administrative o ffices and of
having freed from office use temporarily occupied
classroom and dormitory space. The cost of the
Tower Building, i11 cluding reserves for some furnishings still on order, was $582,932, all of which was
fully funded.
The Alumni Association completed another active
year under the presidency of William R. Tilles '59.
Homecoming was held in conjunction with the 275th
Anniversary celebration of the Co llege wi th a large
number o f alumni in attendance. At the dinner that
evening alumni Awards of Merit were made to
William B. Athey '32, Edward J . Dwyer '30, and Paul
Mellon x'44. Dr. Eugene N. Cozzolino, '29, and J ohn
D. Oostcrhoul, '51, were elected as Alumni representatives on the Board of Visitors and Governors for
three-year terms. As already noted, J ulius Rosenberg,
'38, was later chosen to fill the vacancy caused by the
resignation of J . S. Baker Middelton, ' 38, who retired
from business and moved to New Hampshire.
Under Mr. Middelto n's conscientious chairmanship,
an alumni committee gave consideration to the desirability of changing the name of the College so as to
avoid confusion with church-related institutions and
to re fl ect more accurately the College's program. A
survey was cond ucted which showed that a large
majority of alumni strongly favored continuing the
St. J ohn's name. Both F ac ulties similarly expressed
themselves. The Board voted at its May meeting to
abandon any though t of a possible name ch ange ..
Again this year alumni served the College m a
variety of ways. Counseling sessions with seniors were
held on graduate schools, Jaw schools, business and
government. Interviews with prospective students
were conducted in many parts of the country. In the
area of fund- raising a total of $44,840 was received
in ann ual giving, including a bequest of $12,000 fro m
the estate of the late Vincent W. McKay, x'46. The
su m of $306,890 was received from the estate of
Richard H. Elliott, '17, thus establishing the
permanent endowment for the Richard Hammond
Elliott Tutorship.
IIamson Health Center
Desi~ned by J ames Wood Burch and William H.
Kirby, J r., the new two·story Harrison Heal th Center
on the Annapolis campus will be completed in time
for the faU term. The building is in the shape of a
Greek cross; its configuration, its red brick walls, and
its slate roof blend harm oniously with the Charles
12
Tower Building
Holzman Music and Fine Arts Center
Ground was broken on August 23, 1972, for the
Holzman Music and Fine Arts Center, a wing of the
future library, to be located just south of the
Peterson Student Center on the Santa Fe campus.
Designed by William R. Buckley, the new structure
will contain two music seminar rooms, a music
library, and two practice rooms or offices on the first
floor; a large listening lounge, an office, and a fin e
arts studio on the second floor, and six pract ice
rooms, a ceramics studio and mechanical equipment
on the ground floor. The construction contract in the
amount of $374,500 was awarded to J ohn C. Cornell,
Jnc. of Clovis, New Mexico. Occupancy is planned for
the late spring. Principal donor of the building is J ac
Holzman, x'52, of New York City, a Visitor and
Governor of the College, who is m aking the gift in
memory of his grandparents. T he Kresge 'Foundation,
of Detroit, Michigan, has helpfully voted a grant of
$75,000 toward the cost of the building. A bequest
from the late Miss Flora Conrad of Srulta Fe, an
anonymous pledge from a Board member, and several
smaller gifts accoun t for the balan ce of the financing.
The Campuses
Under the guiding hand of Arthur Kungle, '67,
flower beds bloomed this year in many areas of the
Annapolis campus. Mr. Kungle's horticultural knowfcdge and enthusiasm attracted many students who
worked long hours planting and weeding. The campus
has never looked better, nor have studen ts ever taken
more in terest in its ap pearance. The Provost calls Mr.
Ku ngle's dedication and service invaluable and speaks
for the college community in expressing gratitude. At
�October 1972
1
the same time a tree conditioning program has been
undertaken and new trees have been planted to
replace those which had to be removed as potential
dangers to life and limb.
At Santa Fe the College was successful in preserving its clear and unobstructed vista to the north.
Upon earnest entreaty, the developer who proposed
to buy and seek rezoning for twelve acres of land
immediately adjacent to the campus withdrew the
option to buy and the request for rezoning. It is
hoped that friends will now purchase the property
and give it to the College. In March the residence of
the late Witter Bynner was deeded to the College.
Through the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Dean Haggard
a loan has been advanced to recondition this property
and make it suitable as an off. campus residence for a
dozen students.
St. john 's Film
During the year the San.ta Fe campus commis·
sioned Mr. Carroll Williams to produce a short twelve·
minute color-sound film on the College. The film will
be ready for distribution this fall. It is expected to
help materially with the recruitment of students,
particularly since the Admissions Office plans activity
in the relatively new territory of the mid-West. The
film will be shown to teachers, counsellors, prospective students, and to alumni groups and prospective
donors as well. The seminar sequence in particular
seems to be well done.
Finances
In a year when many colleges and universities have
experienced severe financial difficulties St. John's
College on both its campuses fared surprisingly well.
The Annapolis campus closed the year with a small
deficit of $11,036, all of which was met from a
reserve fund. Expenditures amounted to $1,991,859,
exceeding the budget by $41,000. Total revenues
came to $1,980,823. Th.is surpassed expectations by
$30,000.
The Santa Fe Campus was even more fortunate,
since it completed the year with a modest surplus of
$3,346. Total revenues came to $1,783,916, as compared with expenditures and appropriations o{
$1,780,570. Savings of $75,978 were effected on the
budget which was adop ted a year ago. A considerable
part o f this was in financial aid to students. It is
college policy to ask sch.olarship students to use their
own funds during the first semester and to apply
grants during the second semester. This saving there·
fore resulted from scholarship students who left the
Co llege in the middle of the year and therefore did
not benefit fully from funds awarded to them.
As .Burchenal Ault, Vice President in Santa Fe,
correctly states, ru1 institution's budget is one of its
clearest statements of intention and its most pttrposeful and effective evaluations of priorities. The
budgets for the coming year are the largest in the
College's history, $2,192,508 on the Annapolis
campus and $1,949,080 on the Santa Fe campus. The
new faculty salary scale rangin& from just under
$10,000 for a new tutor twenty-stx years of age to a
maximum of $19,500 represents a needed upward
adjustment in compensation. Furthermore, removal
of any limitat ion on the number of annual service
increments will do greater justice to the more senior
members of the Faculty. At the same time administrative salaries and expenses have been held to
previous levels as far as possible. Increased student
fees of $3,900 have been offset in part by major
increases in financial aid to undergraduates.
On J anuary 1, 1971 the College's investment portfolio was placed under the supervision of T. Rowe
Price and Associates, Inc., of Baltimore, Maryland. By
instruction of the Finance Committee the portfolio
was divided into two parts, one for growth and one
for income. As of J une 30, 1972, the endowment
principal totaled $9,676,130 in market value as
compared with a book value of $8,702,149. The
growth fund had a total accomplishment index of
147.3 with an annual yield of 1.7%; the income fund
a total accomplishment index of 111 with an annual
yield of 6.5%. The College continued to adhere to the
total yield concept drawing down 6% of the average
market value of the endowment fund over the past
three years. As of July l, 1972 the Santa Fe campus
placed $130,330 in the investment pool at a unit
value of $11.7399.
Public Relations
During the year an an hoc committee was
appointed to study the publication, The College.
Members were Russell Leavenworth, Director of
Development, Deborah Traynor, Robert L. Spaeth,
Edward M. Wyatt, Tutors, and Mrs. John Oosterhout,
'55, speaking for the alumni. As a result of the
com1mttee's study publication of The College became
an in-house operation upon an offset press purchased
by the College. Jeffrey Sinks, '73, is in charge of the
new facility which will be used by the Admissions
Office and other offices as well. The cost of pub·
lishing The College annually has been reduced from
$ 16,000 to $5,000 as a result of this change. Much of
the labor cost is expended for student aid. During the
year ahead the ad hoc committee will continue as a
permanent editorial committee. Mr. Spaeth succeeds
Mr. Wyatt as editor.
The Caritas Society and the Annapolis Friends of
St. J ohn's continued their activities on behalf of the
College. The Development Office provides coordination and clerical help to these organizations. The
most noteworthy event of the past year was an
ail-day symposium on "Women in Focus through the
'70's," conducted jointly by the Caritas Society and
the Annapolis Chap ter of the American Association
of University Women. The Key Memorial was filled
13
�The College
for the morning and afternoon sessions which featured such speakers as: De Barbette Blackington,
Director of the International institute for Women
Studies; J ane Howard, author and LIFE writer;
Barbara Mik ulski, Baltimore City Councilwoman;
Anais Nin, author of D£ar£es: and Marlo Thomas,
actress.
In Santa Fe the Boards of Associates from
Albuquerque, Los Alamos, and San ta Fe met periodically to gain new understandings about the College.
Under Mr. J\ult's leadership an Indian Table was
instituted whereby interested persons from outside
and within the College met monthly for dinner to
hear a speaker on L
ndian cuiLUre. A successio n of
interesting sho ws in the gallery o n the balcony of the
dining hall attracted much local interest_ Among
these were the work of Fritz Holder, a jo int exhibition by Peter Hurd and his wife, Henriette Wyeth
Hurd, Public Architecture in the Southwest by John
Gaw Meem, and the Lessing Rosenwald Collection of
15th and 16th century prints by Albrecht Durer, and
others on loan from the National Gallery of Art. The
College and Community Chamber Orchestra gave two
concerts, one conducted by Henry Schuman of 1 ew
York City, who spen t a week in residence on campus.
These activities and the regular Friday evening
lectures and concerts have won for the College a firm
place in the affections of the community.
275th Anniversary Fund
At the end of the first year i11 the three-year
Anniversary Fund campaign, the half-way point has
been reached. New girts and pledges received since
the drive opened J uly 1. 1971, have been less than
hoped for since they amounted to only $1,560,311.
The Annapolis campus sent out over a hundred
proposals to foundations with very little success.
Both campuses have been slow in organizational
efforts, but hopefully city solicitation committees
will begin active work this fa ll. Against its campaign
goal of $5,000,000, the Annapolis campus has now
raised $1,810,1 51; against its goal o r $10,000,000,
the Santa Fe campus has now raised $5,568,345 .
Gifts and Grants
During the year a total of $753,256 was received in
new gifts and pledge payments on the Annapolis
campus and $1,115,393 on the Santa Fe campus. The
two charts below show sources of these gifts and
grants and the purposes to which they were applied:
A nnapoli.s
Donors
Board
Faculty, Staff,
Students
National Committee
Alumni
Paren ts
Friends
Fo undations
Corporations
Government
Purposes
Unrestricted
Library
Scho larships
Graduate Institute
Special Projects
Endowment
Plant
Debt repayment
jeffrey Sinks {'73 ), Editor of the Collegian and
Manager of the St. John's Press.
10,277
3.604
394,732
3 ,095
34,264
106,850
26,934
173,500
$ 753,256
$ 205,155
150
2,665
19,598
352,259
173,429
s 753,256
Sante Fe
$
734,704
8,880
14,738
2,232
43,338
92,351
160,710
13,380
45,050
$ 1,115,393
$
620,982
6,584
48,109
104,670
74,948
155,100
105,000
$ 1,115,393
The College is deeply grateful to all of its alumni
and friends, to corporations and foundations, and to
faculty, staff and Board members, who by their gifts
and grants have demonstrated commitment to St.
John's College and confidence in the future of this
exemplar of the liberal arts upo n its two campuses.
Once again in the year ahead we will need to loo k to
these same friends - and to new ones - for something
over a million dollars, a quarter of the total to
balance the eastern budget ru1d three-quarters to
underwrite the western.
14
l
�October 1972
Television Seminars
Dean Go. dwin devoted considerable time during
l
the academic year to conducting a series of fifteen
one-hour television seminars. Three students partici·
pated regularly, Mrs. Christine Constantine, '72,
Michael Jordan, • 73, and Steven Sedlis, '73. J oAnn
Morse, '74 was an altern ate. For each seminar there
was an invited guest. For example, Alexander Bickel
of the Yale Law Schoo. participated in the seminar
!
on Plato's Crito; Robert Novak, the columnist, in the
seminar on Aristotle's Politics; Senator Charles
Mathias in the seminar on The Prince; Huw Wheldon
of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the
seminar on As You Lihe Tt; Senator Charles Percy in
the seminar on The Federalist No. 1 0; Admiral james
Calvert of the United States Naval Academy in the
seminar on Billy Budd; and Representative Abner
Mikva in the seminar o n the political thought of
Abraham Lincoln.
The project was financed by the Maryland Center
for Public Broadcasting with partial assistance
thro ugh a grant from the National Endowment for
the Humanities. The video tapings are to be shown
over educational television channels this fall and
winter. The Public Broadcasting Service Library has
accepted the entire series for national distribu tion.
The Dean says that in his opinion none of t he
programs disgrace the College and that some are
really excellent examples of good seminar discussion.
He notes that only time will tell whether the efforts
required to produce the seminars were justified.
The academic year that was concluded in June was
the thirty-fifth since inauguration of the present
curriculum at St. John's College. The fall of 1972 is a
far cry from that of 193 7 when less than sixty
freshmen enrolled on a bankrupt and dilapidated
campus in Annapolis. By contrast St. J o hn's College
today is a nourishing enterprise, which has expanded
to a second campus in the Southwest without sacri·
ficing the integrity of its educational program or the
sense of dose community which animates t he Col·
lege. From less than 150 students in 1937, enrollment
has grown to over 650, the Faculty from some
twenty to nearly a hL
mdred. Graduates of St. John's
are indeed fulfilling the goal of the 1784 Charter by
"discharging the various offices and duties of life,
both civil and religious, with usefulness and reputation,..." No longer can this college be termed an
experiment, as it was in the late thirties. The concept
an.d practice of liberal education at St.John's College
have earned for trus small but venerable institution a
respected place upon the American educational scene.
Richard D. Weigle
President
Santa Fe, New Mexico
September 1, 1972
15
[
�1/rl
0\
St. J ohn's College
Annapolis, Maryland
Comparative Balance Sheet, July 1, 1971 - June 30, 1972
ASSETS
LIABILTfiES AND FUND BALANCES
CURRENT FUNDS
1971
s 50,830
Unrestricted
Cash.
ln\'estrnrots ·At Cost
Account. Receh'llble
Due from St. John's College Santa Fe
Other Receivables
Dderred Expenses
Bookstore Inventory
1972
s 44 ,026
157
4,316
17,878
1,503
442
25,514
$100,640
Restricted
Cash
loans Receivable
Investments- At Cost
157
5,094
16,769
14,152
19,376
26,595
$126,169
$317,331
840
12,169
$330,340
S430,980
Total Current Funds
LOAN FUNDS
Cash
Student Loans Receivable
National Direct Studeut Loans
$
7,014
840
278,230
$286.084
5,893
2,031
146,290
s 13,011
$154,214
ENDOWMENT FUNDS
Cash
Friedland Student Loans
Faculty Home Loam
Santa Fe Campus Note
Other
Investment Cash Account
Investments - At Cost
5,680
6,759
141,221
1,375,625
$
225,992
6,578,456
$ 30,354
6,288
159,117
1,265,594
1,0 10
79,354
7,161,370
$8,335,474
s 8,703,097
$
~740
PLANT FUJ\'DS
Cash
Total Plan t Funds
Total Funds
64,363
375,677
5,194,327
394,220
325
79,158
375,677
5,373.537
394,221
6,028,587
$ 6,222,918
$ 14,949,255
$ 15,513,044
Investments ·At Cost
Land and Campus Improvement
Buildings
Equipment
-
s
Restricted
Fw1cl Balllnces
Due to Other Funds
s
19,478
$ 23,583
230
56,279
31,487
14,590
$126,169
44,249
2~,453
13,460
$ 100,640
s 329,843
497
s 330,340
s
$ 430,980
$ 412,253
IS7,~90
$ 159,191
15,585
$ 286,084
Total Current Funds
LOAN FUNDS
Federal Ad\'llnces for NOS Loans
Fund Balances
S
286,084
$174,776
731
161,034
$
Total Endowment Funds
Unrestricted
AccountS Payable
Due to Other Funds
Student Advance lkposits
Deferred Income
Reserve (or Future Operations
641 2,253
$
Total Loan Funds
CURRENT FUNDS
16,624
$ 154,214
s
ENDOWMENT FUNDS
Principal, Unrenricted as to Income
Principal, Restricted as to Income
Reservation of Profits- Sale of Securities
Unexpetldcd Income
$ 7,187,807
958,820
186,38 ]
2,466
s 7,530,05 7
Total Endowment FWJds
$ 8,335,4 74
$ 8,703,097
Total Loan Funds
PLA!-:T FUNDS
Due to Other Funds
Investment in Plant
Unexpended Plant Funds
$
1.917
!>,964.224
62.446
Total Plant Funds
s
Total f'unds
$ 14,949,255
6,028,587
174,776
972,207
199,885
948
$
6,143,435
79,483
s
6,222,918
s 15,513,044
�IW
...:=,,
"'-
-~
St.John's College
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Comparative Balance Sheet, July 1, 1971 - June 30,1972
ASSETS
LIABfLITIES AND FUND BALANCES
CURRENT FUNDS
197 1
Unrestricted
Cash
Investments • At Cost
Accounts Receivable
Due from Other Funds
Prepaid Expenses
Bookstore Inventory
$
-
s
12,740
1,000
144,064
26,402
$169,125
s
s
s
$ 62,039
s
$ 207,125
$ 44,000
2,443
15,596
Total Endowment Funds
s 207,125
$210,910
ENDOWMENT FUNDS
Cash
Receivables
Investments - At Cost
$ 184,206
$210,910
Total Life Estate Funds
Total Funds
s 355,778
3,668
1,000
139,782
24,675
LIFE ESTATE FUNDS
Due from Other Funds
-..J
$ 42,122
174,388
$216,510
s
Total Loan Funds
....
-
$391,831
Total CuJTent Funds
Bond Sinking Fund Investments
Land and Campus Improvements
Buildings
Construction in Progress
Equipment and Furnishings
Library Books
Total Plant Funds
38,480
16,340
11 ,747
.51,072
21,629
s 139,268
$238,505
3,226
$241,731
LOAN FUNDS
Cash
United Student Aid Deposit
National Direct Student Loans
Other Student Loans
Investments
s
5,084
.59,718
34,956
27,236
23,106
$1.50,100
Restricted
Cash
Investments- At Cost
PLANT FUNDS
Cash
1972
$ 135,757
91,286
185,000
136,774
315,495
4,874,412
284,743
436,757
77,452
6,401,919
7,235,824
9,881
-
125,876
s
1,038
18.5,226
154,479
314,024
5,403,448
-
472,567
116,969
6,647,751
s
s 7,530,617
CURRENT FUNDS
1971
Unrestricted
Note Payable
Accounts Payable
Due to Annapolis Campus
Due to Other Funds
Deferred Income
Reserve for Future Operations
1972
s
s
Restricted
Fund Balances
Due to Other Funds
.s
10,000
15,984
16,769
19,631
75,987
897
$ 139,268
13,627
17,878
20,512
93,815
4,268
150,100
s 216,510
$ 222,740
18,99 1
$ 241 ,731
$ 391,831
Total Current Funds
-
$ 216,510
$ 355,778
LOAN FUNDS
Federal Advances for NDS Loans
College Loan Fund Balance
Due to Other Funds
$126,714
29,394
13,017
s 155,600
Total Loan Funds
$ 169,125
s 184,206
$ 210,910
$ 207,125
$210,910
$ 207 ,1 25
$ 62,039
$ 135,757
s
$ 135 ,757
LIFE ESTATE FUNDS
Liabilitv 10nder A!(!'Cements
To tal Life Estate Funds
ENDOWMENT FUNDS
Fund Balances
Total Endowment Funds
PLANT FUNDS
Note Payable
Loan Payable to t\nnapolis Campus
Dormitory Bon<is • Series 1964
Series 1966
Due to Other Funds
Net Investment in Plant
Unexpended Plant Funds
Dormitory Bond Sinking Fund
28,606
-
62,039
$
$
1,375,625
838,000
855,000
199,399
2,722,836
274,285
136,i74
2,154
I, 265,594
824,000
840,000
187.494
3,187,766
186,264
154,479
Total Plant Funds
s
6,401,919
$
6,647,751
Total Funds
$ 7,235,824
$
7,530,617
�ST.JOHN'S COLLEGE
Annapolis. Maryland Santa Fe , New Mexico
CONDENSED STATEMENTS OF REVENUE AND EXPENDITURES
Fiscal Years Ended June 30, 1971 and 1972
ANNAPOLIS
1970·7 1
197 1·72
REVENUES
Educational and General
Tuition
Endowment Income
Gifts and Grants
Graduate Institute Gmnts
State of Maryland Grants
Student financial Aid
Miscellaneous
T otals
Auxiliary Enterprises
Bookstore
Dining Hall
Dorrnito ries
Totals
Total Revenues
s
784,578
418,754
186,190
$ 902,155
414,987
193,329
87,464
18,242
$ 1,495,228
SANTA FE
1970·71
1971·72
s 625,291
2,833
554.932
89,445
$640,126
!>,122
673,744
90,!>84
23,.5 00
87, 11 7
16,465
Sl,550,416
40,713
3 1,573
$1,344,787
45 ,324
34,890
$ 1,489,790
47 ,798
161,390
139,7 80
$ !118,968
48,486
166,03 1
128,773
$ 343,290
33,875
140,260
125,355
$ 299,490
36,147
137,163
120,8 16
$ 294,126
$1,844,196
$1 ,980,823
$1,644,277
$1,783,916
191,57 1
183 ,392
750,562
$ 28!1,220
145,130
817,361
$ 213,14·8
145,674
566,277
151,110
27,160
186.022
$1,289,391
EXPENDITURES
Educational and General
Administrative
General
Instruction
Graduate Institute
S tudent Activities
Opemtion & Maintenance
Totals
Auxiliary Enteq>rises
Book Store
Dining Hall
Dormitories (Debt SeMce)
Totals
15,391
332,652
$1,473,568
-
19,194
338,306
$1,608,211
$ 205,283
159,586
5 13,77 1
11 7,688
25,667
160,013
$1,182,008
s
46,127
150.259
$
49,550
148.950
$
$ 196,386
s
198,500
s
$ 174,242
s
185,148
s
174,242
s
185,148
s
$
~iiscellaneous
Student financial Aid
Federal Programs
Capital Appropriations
Totals
Total Expenditures
Exoess Revenue or
(Expenditures)
18
-
$
51,844,196
34,1 4 1
103,383
109,302
246,826
$
17 1,170
17,094
22,9 12
211.176
33,97!\
89,889
109,303
233,167
s
s
189,348
16,369
52,295
$ 258,0 12
$ 1,991,859
$1,640,010
$1,780,570
( $1 1,036)
$
$
4,267
3,346
�-1'---·ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
Annapolis, Maryland
PERMANENT ENDOWMENT FUNDS,jWle 30, 1972
Gift
of Donor
TUTORSHIP ENDOWMENTS:
Richard Hammond Elliott, 1917
Andrew W. MeUoo
Addison E. Mullikin, 1895
Arthur de Talma Valk, 1906
1.0
-
$ 306,865
$
1,989,953
150,216
$2,447,034
2,679,846
500,000
150,000
$3,329,846
-
SCHOLARSHIP ENDOWMENTS:
Annapolis Self Help
15,000
$
George M. Austin, 1908
25,000
WalterS. Baird, 1930
5,000
Chicago Regional
3,070
Class of 1897
8,672
Class of 1898
87,933
Dr. Charles Cook
13,705
George E. Cunniff m, 1930
135
Faculty
32,463
john T. Harrison·, 1907
25,025
Hillh ouse High School, 1927
9,667
Richard H. Hodgson, 1906
150,250
Alfred and Ruth Houston, 1906
42,787
Houston Regional
500
Jesse H. Jones and Mary Gibbs jones
36,000
Robert E. and Margaret Larsh Jones, 1909 31,533
Arthur E. and Hilda Combs Landers, 1930
5,445
22,685
Massachusetts Regional
Philip A. Myers U, 1938
19,362
Oklahoma Regional
26,000
Thomas Parran, 1911
6,165
Pittsburgh Regional
560
Reader's Digest Foundation
12,500
Clifton A. Roeh1e
7,056
Murray J oe1 Rosenberg
3,356
Hazel Norris and J. Graham Shannahan 1908 3,664
Clarence Stryker
3,668
Friedrich]. Von Schwerdtncr
1,552
$ 598,753
-
A . W. Mellon
Foundation
Matching Gift
ALUMNI AND MEMORIAL ENDOWMENTS
Granville Q. Adams, 1929
$
1,100
6,125
Charles Edward Athey, 1931
William C. Baxter, 1923
25
Drew H. Beatty, 1903
600
Or. William Brewer, 1823
125
Frederick W. Brune, 1874
855
Benjamin Duvall Chambers, 1905
2,638
Henry M. Cooper, J r., 1934
1,000
Helen C. and George Davidson, Jr., 1916
21,025
Walter I. Dawkins, 1880
58,683
Robert F.Duer,Jr. 1921
3,365
Dr. Philip H. Edwards, 1898
1,135
$
15,000
25,000
Total Fund
Principal
$ 306,865
2,679,846
2,489,953
300,216
$5,776,880
s
3,070
-
135
2,359
20,025
7,367
150,250
2,500
500
36,000
-
22,685
9,000
26,000
-
-
560
-
-
3,413
$
$
323,864
-
$
-
-
-
s
200
125
507
1,000
-
335
985
30,000
50,000
5,000
6,140
8,672
87,933
13,705
270
34,822
45,050
17,034
300,500
45,287
1,000
72,000
31,533
5,445
45,370
28,362
52,000
6,165
1,120
12,500
7,056
3,356
3,664
7,081
1,552
922,61 7
1,100
6,125
25
800
250
1,362
2,638
2,000
21,025
58,683
3,700
2,120
joseph W. fastncr,Jr., 1960
2,000
AUen Lester fowler, 1915
500
Edna G. and Roscoe E. Grove, 1910
16,556
Charles W. Hass, 1927
40
Dr. Amos F. Hutchins, 1906
658
Clarence T.johnson, 1909
100
ClifJord L.johnson, 1911
100
He.len B. Jones and Robert O.jones,l916 18,357
jonathan D. Korshin, 1966
200
Oliver M. Korshin, 1963
200
5,140
Dr. W. Oscar LaMotte, 1902
23,223
John H. E. Legg, 1921
William Lentz, 1912
1,020
Leola B. and Thomas W. Ligon, 1916
5,000
Harrison McAlpine, 1909
325
Vincent W. McKay, 1946
9,000
Robert F. Maddox, 1876
650
12,219
The Rev. William L. Mayo, 1899
Ridgely P. Melvin, 1899
100
WiUiam S. MorseU, 1922, Athletic Fund
5,000
John Mullan, 1847
10,000
Walter C. Mylander,Jr., 1932
5,133
M. Keith Neville, 1905
1,000
Dr. john 0. Neustadt, 1939
1,109
Blanchard RandaU, 1874
851
Susan Irene Roberts, 1966
652
Leroy T. Rohrer, 1903
100
Harrison Sasscer, 1944
4,551
Charles H. Schoff, 1889
500
28,633
Henry F. Sturdy, 1906
The Rev. Enoch M. Thompson, 1895
3,000
John T. Tucker, 1914
2,500
125
Dr. RobertS. C. Welch, 1913
Willis H. White, 1922
625
$ 255,843
LECTURESHIP ENDOWMENTS
Fund for Tomorrow
$
Clare Eddy and Eugene V. Thaw, 1947
$
UBRARY ENDOWMENTS
Alumni Memorial Book fund
Benwood Foundation
Mary Safford Hoogcwerff
Library Fund
EUen C. Murphy
Henry H. and Cora Dodson
Sasscer Newspaper Fund
E1ma R. and Charles D. Todd
Clara B. Weigle
j ack \V'
tlen Fou.odation in
Memory of Murray Joel Rosenberg
$
-
633
-
7,563
-
-
-
-
1,020
-
-
$
$
325
-100
5,000
10,000
1,000
-
-
330
100
500
3,000
$
125
625
33,973
3,000
10,900
13,900
$
3,000
355
25,000
31,683
560
1,500
$
1,000
82,294
22,872
5,247
28,119
2,000
1,000
16,556
40
1,291
100
100
25,920
200
200
5,140
23,223
2,040
5,000
650
9,000
650
500
-
$
5
19,500
$
J
-
400
1,500
$
10,000
20,000
5,133
2,000
1,109
1,181
652
200
4,551
1,000
28,633
6,000
2,500
250
1,250
J 289,816
s
-
J
12,~~
3,000
25,000
1,500
19,500
1,196
$
LOAN FUND ENDOWMENTS
George Friedland
John David Pyle, 1962
-
46,400
20,000
1,470
21,470
6,000
10,900
16,900
355
50,000
31,683
960
3,000
1,500
39,000
1,196
1,000
$ 128,694
$ 42,872
6,717
$ 49,589
0
(")
..,.
0
cr
,..
....
-
<0
-...1
1\:)
�N
0
PRIZE ENDOWMENTS
Philo Sherman Bennett
Floyd Hayden
James R. McClintock, 1965
Mrs. Blair T. Scott
Kathryn Milroie Stevens
Millard Tydings
Amos W. W. WoodCO<>k
SANTA F E ENDOWMENT FUNDS
308
77
H7
518
1,250
1,000
2,000
5,61 0
$
$
$
-
Reservation of ProfitsSale of Securities
Total Endowment Principal
$
$
25
$
1,000
1,025
$
OTHER ENDOWMENTS
Hn-tha S. and jesse L. Adams
Concert Fund
$ 60,000
George A. Bingley Memorial l~und
17.600
Scott Buchanan Memorial Fund
5,770
10,000
H.A.B. Ow1ning Memorial fund
Monterey Mackey Memorial Fund
600
Emlly Boyce Mackubin Fund
75,192
124,349
Kate Moo re Myen Landscaping Fund
Adolph W. Schmidt Fund
15,628
Richard Sco field Memorial Fund
1,345
Daniel E. and Jessie N. Weigle Memoria.!
Fund
2,500
19,325
Victor Zuckcrkandl Me morial fund
206,112
Alurnni Endowment Fund
526,404
General Endowment Fund
$1,064,825
Total Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grants
-
60,000
17,600
5,770
10,000
600
75,192
124,349
15,628
1,345
-
-
186,309
-
s 246,309
s
2.500
19,325
39 2,421
526,-w4
",311 ,1 34
4,005,887
Graduate Institu te
Helen & Everett Jones Scholarships fund
Public Scnice Co. of ~ew Mexico
Readers Digest Fou ndation Scholarship Fund
Nina Otero Warren Memorial Schol:ushii>S Fund
General
199,885
s 8,702,150
s
162
31),000
1,000
7,500
1,875
2,103
s 42,640
Library Endowments
Emlcn Davies Memoria l
Angeline Eaton Memorial
Nina Garson Memorial
Edith B. King Memorial
Brad ley Skeele Memorial
Dr. C('Orge Stewart Memorial
Duane L. Peterson ~icmorial
Wi nfield Townly Scolt Memorial
Clara B. Weigle Memorial
Victor Zuckerkandl
Other Memorisls
Life Memberships
Genera l
4,005,887
$
s
Scholarship Endowments
$ 120,000
-
199,885
$4,696,263
$
308
102
457
518
1,250
1,000
5,000
6.635
s
s
1,118
1,150
2,000
500
550
500
800
2,499
600
4,200
13,728
13,005
748
41,398
Other Endowrnenu
Henry Austin Poetry Prize Fund
Fie tcher Catro n Memorial
Margo Dawn Gerber Prize fund
Eliubetb R. & Alvin C. Graves Memorial
.Margaret Milliken Hatch Memorial
Dr. Plorence Kluckhohn
Frank Patania Memorial
E. l. "Tommy" Thompson ~iemorial
Millard E. Tyings Pri7.c Fund
Claro B. Weigle Memorial
jessie N. & Dan E. Weigle Memorial
General
Total Endowment funds
s
s
4.500
1,400
1,14 1
8,881
25,000
1,000
3,340
1.920
1,000
3,600
2,500
306
54,588
$138.626
�'lln Interview with
J3ar6ara f:eonaro
R obert Spaeth, Editor of The College, interviewed
Miss Barbara Leonard in September, 1972.
ROBERT SPAETH: Miss Leonard, you've been a
Tutor at St. J ohn's for 20 years. Yo u came when the
first girls came, when St. John's became co-educational in 1951. Has co-education proved to be a
success at St.John's?
BARBARA LEONARD: Well, I would say that it
certainly has. There were 24 girls in that entering
class - they came in as Freshmen. At the present
time almost half the student body, or close to 180
students, are women. I think if you check the records
of the graduating class, a good share of the honors
have been earned by the women students. In the last
te n years th e silver medal offered by the Board of
Visitors and Governors to the Senior who has the
highest standing has been awarded five ti mes to
women.
SPAETH: T here had becn only men at St. J ohn'sfor
many , many years. Was there a period of adjustme nt
when the men became used to having girls in class and
on the campus?
LEONARD: There was an adjustment in the first
year just getting used to having them around, having
them in the dining hall. It wasn't a problem in the
Freshman class since it was a co-educational group
that came in. It was a problem for the sophomores,
juniors and seniors. The girls who came in were
mainly older ones; some of them were wives of stu·
dents who were already in college so that they had
had some contact with the program. There was
obviously more adj ustment, I think, on the part of
the men than there was on the part of the women.
SPAETH : Do you remember very well the first class
that included women?
LEONARD: Yes, I do, very much so- All o f us, with
the exception of the married ones, lived in Randall. 1
had two rooms there. Three of th e married ones lived
with their husbands in the housing units near the
21
�The College
location of the present Heating Plant. The wife of one
of the present Tutors was a member of that class,
Mrs. Kutler (Emily Jane Martin); in fact her husband
was a sophomore at that time. Mr. Sacks, who is a
Tutor, was also a sophomore al that time. Barbara
Brunner, one of the first women, is now Mrs. J ohn
Oosterhout, the wife of an alumnus who is also a
member of the Board of Visitors and Governors.
There were three wives of students; one was a regis·
tered nurse, Lydia Aston, who after she graduated
can1e back and was College Nurse for two or three
years. There were several who had two or three years
at other colleges such as Barnard and Swarthmore,
and there were - a minority, T think- who entered
right out of high school. One married lady, Ruth
Barron, was in her mid-forties.
SPAETH: Have the girls in the classes of the 60's and
70's been different from those early classes?
LEONARD : Well, that's a hard question to answer
because we've always had some older girls in all the
entering classes. The younger ones coming in from
high school now are more mature in many ways than
students coming into the College 20 years ago would
have been. They have been exposed to more things,
have had more varied experiences than students used
to have at the high school level; things that used to be
encountered first in college are now encountered in
high schools and junior high schools.
SPAETH: You were also the first woman Tutor at
St.John's. Was there any adjustment necessary on the
faculty's part?
LEONARD: Well, I can't speak for the rest of the
facu lty. I had a lot of adjusting to do. It wasn't such a
problem adjusting to being in a male environment
because I had done my graduate work on a men's
campus and had broken in as the first woman &rradu·
ate assistant on the men's campus at the University of
Rochester. My adjustment came in getting used to
trying to learn E uclid and Greek, teach biology with a
new approach - the so-called St. John's approach and co-leading a seminar with Jacob Klein . This was
all rather difficult since I had not been in contact
with anything but zoology since I had graduated
quite a few years before, so that I was forced to think
in areas that had not been my primary concern.
SPAETH: It's also true that you came not only as a
T utor, but as an Assistant Dean, which means that
you immediately plunged into all sorts of academic
and non-academic problems of students. You have
continued to be an Assistant Dean for these 20 years;
could you say why you've persisted in dealing with
22
-
difficult problems for that long?
LEONARD: Well, I must admit that sometimes
wonder myself. However, I do enjoy working with
the students and I think the relationship as Assistant
Dean and Tutor is the ideal relationship. I certainly
wouldn't want to be an Assistant Dean if I weren't
actively engaged in teaching. The students, in addition to experiencing the problems similar to those of
any student going to college, have particular problems
that arise out of the program. One of these is the
problem that appears when on e questions one's
beliefs. And I think the students need someone to go
to who can give them some foundation or can restore
a little perspective and can reassure them that the
world does go on and caution them that it is not wise
to question everything all at once.
SPAETH: Perhaps you would explain what the job
or an Assistant Dean is.
LEONARD: It really amounts to almost everything
that isn't done in the classroom. We arc concerned
with the health of the students, their housing, their
emotional problems, their financial problems. When I
frrst came, the financial aid was all done in our office,
mainly by me. Any placement that was done was
handled through our office. Now there is a special
officer for Financial Aid and Placement. Discipline,
both academic and non-academic, is handled by the
Assistant Deans. The welfare in general of the
students outside of the classroom is really the responsibility of the Assistant Dean's office. Now even
details of class scheduling are part of the Assistant
Dean's duties.
SPAETH: Have the problems of the students that
you've had to deal with over these 20 years changed
from the early 50's to the early 70's?
LEONARD: l think the problems have remained
pretty much the same. Some things have become
more open; things that used to be considered taboo
now are accepted in society at large so that they
don't cause the problems that they used to cause.
There have been changes in the patterns in the students' reactions to problems. At one period violent
hysterics was the way that quite a few of the students
released their tensions. That is now old-fashioned,
and you very seldom see a case of real hysterics. The
students have developed other ways of coping or not
coping with problems. Some of these ways are better,
some of them possibly worse.
SPAETH: 1 remember hearing a story - 1 don't
know for sure whether it is true - that on occasion
you would give a teddy bear or a ragdo ll to one of the
�October 1972
girls who was upset. Is this true, or is it someth ing
that you and the students involved would deny?
LEONARD: Well, the students might deny it, but it
worked at times with certain students.
SPAETH: Throughout these years you've also taught
in the program a great deaL You came as a profes·
sional biologist, but I know you've taught in other
areas of tl1e program. Could you say something abo ut
how you made progress in the St. John's program?
You said earlier that you began co-leading a seminar
with Mr. Klein and that you were lcaming Gree k in
your early years. What parts of the program have you
become invo lved in?
LEONARD: Well, in the first few years in addition
to teaching in the laboratory - the first year then was
biology for the first semester and measurement the
second semester - and co-leading the seminar, T
audited as much as I could. Subsequently, I have
taught in the freshman, sophomore and junior mathe·
matics tutorials. I have taught all the first three years
of the laboratory program and have audited the
fourth year. I've co-led the seminars of all four years
and I have taught beginning Greek class. I have also
audited part of the senior math and part of the Music
tutorial.
SPAETH: Twenty years ago it must have seemed an
unlikely possibility to a biologist that you'd be
teaching Greek. How did you make the plunge into
that area?
LEONARD: It so happens that when I entered
Oberlin College as a F reshman, I was going to be a
classics major. That was before I had taken my bio·
logy course. I had no science until my sophomore
year in college. Then I decided that 1 really preferred
science, and I dropped the Greek. Therefore, I had
had an introduction to Greek and had studied it at
one time, so the plunge might not be as drastic as it
looks at first sight.
SPAETH: Has it been possible for you to keep up
with the field of biology while you've been so busy
with teaching other parts of the program and doing
the job of an Assistant Dean?
LEONARD: It has been very difficult to do that.
The only way I can keep up at all is through reading
and through contacts I have made during my sabbatical leaves. On my first sabbatical leave I taught biology in two Indian colleges; one at the undergraduate
level and one at the graduate level, and during that
time I had a chance to bring myself up to date
somewhal. And this past sabbatical 1 had similar
opportunities to catch up a litt le bit, but I certainly
could not say that I have been able to keep up the
way a research biologist or even a full-time teacher of
biology should.
SPAETH: St. J ohn's students study the entire
program; that means that all of our students study
biology. Have you found in your teaching of biology
that students find it interesting, important, no matter
what their inclination is, or can you reach, in a significant way, only a fraction of the students?
LEONARD: I think you will always find a certain
number of students who cannot see the reason for the
laboratory, whether the subj ect matter is biology or
physics. They put up with it because it is part of the
program. Some of them think that they've had all the
biology they need or just aren't interested in the
dissection part or cannot understand what biology
can possibly offer them. They are the ones,
sometimes, I think, who don't know enough to know
what they are missing.
SPAETH : Perhaps we could talk a little about your
experience in teaching in India. A few years ago St.
John's had an Indian lady as a Tutor, Ida
Doraiswamy, whom you and I both know very well.
Perhaps you could tell us how you made your con·
tacts with India and how you met Miss Doraiswamy
and what teaching you have done in India.
LEONARD: Well, my contact was made through an
association in Oberlin who had connections with the
two colleges in India where I taught, and I went out
there in the summer of 1959 with my sister who was
visiting these colleges, and at that time the principal
of Lady Doa k College wanted me to stay and teach. I
23
�told her I would come back on my sabbatical, which I
did. I applied for a Fulbright Award and went as a
Fulbright Lecturer and Honorary Professor of Zoology .
SPAETH: I believe that was in 1962.
LEONARD: That was in 1962-63. I taught a genetics
course and an embryology course there. The teaching
is done in English, so the language was no problem .
The problem is that there are no textbooks for the
students, so you have to give them the factual information. You have to teach from a syllabus on which
questions for the final exam are based. The examination is given by the University, and anything the
student does in the class during the year has no
bearing on his fmal standing for the year - that is,
you have no control over the grade the student will
get - everything depends upon how the student does
in the examination. This restricts your teaching
pretty much to the material that is given in the syllabus. You don't do the student a favor by branching
off into topics that aren't covered by the syllabus. It
was a little difficul t for me coming from the St.
J ohn's method of teaching to have to confine myself
to lectures, and mainly factual lectures at lhat. However, in the postgraduate program I had more leeway
- that was a co-educational program. While I was
there I filled in in two mathematics classes for a
teacher who had the mumps. Miss Doraiswamy knew
that I had taugh t math at St. J ohn's College. This was
unusual in India because at that time zoologists, once
they had decided to major, which they do at the end
of the first year of college, can no longer take mathematics even if they wan t it. And I also gave a paper at
a post-graduate five-college mathematics seminar,
which again surprised the Indians because zoologists
are not supposed to know math, and in addition, I
was the first woman to address them.
SPAETH: You didn't sav what the colleges were and
where they are located in India.
LEONARD: The women's college was Lady Doak
College. The men's college was American College.
These two colleges are located in Madurai in South
India.
SPAETH: And you were there in 19 62-63, and you
met Miss Doraiswamy and she came here as a Tutor
from 1964-1966 and then you went back to Lady
Doak during your second sabbatical in 1970.
LEONARD: Well, I met Miss Doraiswamy the firs t
time I was in lndia in 1959. Then she came to the
United States to Oberlin College on a fellowship in
1961, and I believe you met her .n Wisconsin in 1961.
i
24
I
Then she went back to Lady Doak College. I, of
course, enjoyed her company there, and then after I
returned to the United States, she expressed a desire
to teach at St. J ohn's College, and she came here
from 1964-66. You asked if I went back to India
again. Yes I did, twice. I visited there in the summer
of 1969 and was there for six months in 1971, this
time staying but not teaching at Lady Doak College.
There is now a University of Madurai in the city, and
I delivered some lectures on Population Genetics to
the post-graduates in the Biology Departme nt there. I
was an advisor on several science projects at Lady
Doak College and gave talks at different functions at
various institutions. I travelled around by myself in
India for over a month visiting game parks and other
places of interest. I spent three weeks birding in
Nepal and northern India (Kashmir and Daljeeling). I
was in Darjceling when the Bangladesh erup tion took
place. I was within ten miles of the border, witnessed
small troop movements and had to sleep in the
Calcutta airport because of the disturbance.
SPAETH: I'm sure yo u had an affect on Lady Doak
College and American College because of Miss
Doraiswamy's reaction to St. John's and the St.
J ohn's method of teaching. I visited New Delhi in
1967 soon after Miss Doraiswamy had left St. J ohn's
and I learned that she was tremendously affected by
the program here. She's a mathematician, as you
know, but her contact with the seminar and with the
other parts o f the program left quite an impression on
her. What is her position today in India?
LEONARD: She is head of the mathematics department at Lady Doak College, and since Lady Doak is
affiliated with the new University of Madurai in stead
of the University of Madras, the affiliated colleges
have had a chance to liberalize their curricula quite a
bit, and Miss Doraiswamy has introduced discussion
classes into the mathematics department. She also has
brought outsiders in who can cross departmental
lines. Her college was chosen for a three-year grant
from the Indian government for a college science
improvement program (COSIP) which allows them to
improve their library and teaching facilities, to give
further training to the faculty and to permi t the
students to undertake projects. Miss Doraiswamy 's
department has had ve ry high ratings from the
government on the basis of what she is doing. She has
said that she would not have been able to do all that
she is doing if she had not had her two years at St.
Joh n's College. She would like to return to St.John's
sometime.
�October 1972
CLASS NOTES
that there is something about t he St. John's
training that tunls 1
>eopJc toward systematic
arld scientific study of language.
1932
1962
Robert L. Burwell, Jr., professor of chemistry at Northwestern University, in August
was announced as the 1973 winner of the
American Chemical Society~s Award in
Colloid or Surface Chemistry. The Award
was established by the Kendall Company in
1952 to recognize and encourage out·
standing scientific contributions in colloid
or surface chemistry in the Un.it.ed States
and Canada. The presentation will take
place next April in Dallas.
Charles Bentley is secretary of the Rio
1938
j. S. Baker Middelton, who last spring
retired from the J<euffel and Esser Company
as vice - resident for Industrial Relations,
p
has taken a position as Deputy Special
Assistant for Manpower (or the State of
New Hampshire.
1948
A first-hand report on Raf>hael Ben Yosef
(better known to his classmates as Ralph C.
f'inkel) comes to us (rom julius Rosenberg
'38, who has just returned from a trip to
Israel. Raphael has been living in Israel since
the early 1950's, is r'narried to an Israeli girt.
and they have t\vo children. lie issued a
most sincere invitation for any St. johnoies
who are in Israel to visit him. His address is
Asavah A.T.l., Inc, Maya House, 74, De.r ech
Petah 'likvah Road, Tel-Aviv. His mailing
address is P.O. Box 14051, Tel-Aviv.
1949
Michael Mok wrote an interesting article in
the August 7th issue of Publishers Weekly
conc(!rning a Publishing Procedures course
offered at Radcljffe. After a number of
years with L•fe magazine, Mike is now News
Editor of the Weekly.
1953
Pt<blishers Weekly crops up again: Paul
Nathan's column "Rights and Permissions"
reports the publishing efforts of jeremy
Tarcher. After a number of years of
"packaging" books for other publishers, .I.
r. Tarcher, ITlc., will release "The Sex·Lifc
Letters'', a selection of rather candid letters
originally appearing in the magazine Pent·
house. Any volunteer reviewers?
A recent note from R. M. R. (Mike) Hall
re ports that he is an associate professor of
linguistic~ at Queens CoUcge, CUNY, and is
at present c hai_ nan of the department. His
n
wife Beatrice, who teaches li nguistics at
SUNY Stony Brook, and he have daughters
aged three years and L4 months. Mike feels
Grande Educational Association. He and his
wife, Dianne (Stone), make their home in
Santa Fe.
john P. Chatfield, working for his Ph.D.
degree in philosophy at the New School for
Social Research, has been made editor of
the Graduate Faculty Philosophy founwL
This is a student publication, sponsored by
the Graduate Faculty, which first appeared
last May. For the time being there will be
one issue a year, and it is availab le by sub·
scription. You may address John at the
Pbilooophy Department, Graduate Faculty,
New School for Social Research, 66 West
12th Street, New York, N.Y. 10011.
1965
judith
At~drea
jacobson received her Ph.D.
degree in psychology from the Johns
Hopkins University on May 26th.
1967
July brought another good l<tter from »o
Meredith Burke~ with news that she is now
in Philadelphia, starting on a research pro·
ject at the Human Resource Center of the
Uni.ersit y of Pennsylvania. She also sends
news of Fred Fedderson, who has finished
his post·graduate course in cultural anthro·
pology at Cambridge. He will now work
with the United Kingdom equivalent of
VISTA on community development in large
cities. A final bit from Meredith's Jetter
advises that Gay (Singer) 8oro.tta has
finished her first year at Harvard's Graduate
School of De.sign.
1968
A Ph.D. degree in the History of Science
wa.• awarded to William R. Albury this past
spring by the Johns Hopkins. Randy's dis·
sertation was on French chemistry and
biology at the e nd of d>c 18th century. This
year he will b e a Macy Postdoctoral Fellow
in the History of Medicine and the Biologi·
cal Sciences at the Hopkins. His wife Becky
(McClure) will be working for her master's
degree in U. S. foreign poJjcy at d~e same
university.
The summer issue of Tire Law School
RecCfTd (corn the Uni\rersity of Chicago
brings news that Bartholomew Lee. one of
last year's Bigelow Fellows at the Law
School, has been named Senior Bigelow
Teaching Fdlow and ln.~tructor. Bart has
been taking courses in the Croduate School
of Business, in addition to teaching fuU·tiroc
this past year at the Law School. Mean·
while, he has found time to write an article,
"A New and Legal Pun in Chaucer: A Signi·
ficatio for the Summoner," which wilJ
appear in Modem Philolog)l.
Mary C. Howard and the Rev. James G.
Callaway, Jr., were married on May 20th at
Union Theological Seminary. Belat<d
congratulations and best wishes.
Domrld j. Schell (SF) is now associate
Episcopal chaplain at Yale University.
Another Santa Fe graduate, Steven Shore,
makes the news: he is now a financial
analyst with Westinghouse Broadcasting in
New York City.
1969
A good letter from john H. Strange lets us
know that he is in his third year of study
toward the degree of Master of Divinity at
Austin (Texas) Presbyteria" 1"heological
Seminary. john anticipatc.s receiving hjs
degree and being ordained as a Minister in
the Presby terial Church next spring. John
and the former Camille Phillips of San
Marcos~ Texas, were married on September
2nd. The new Mrs. Strange, a honors
graduate of Southwest Texas State Univer·
sity, wilJ receive her master's degree in
German literature rrom the University of
Texas next May.
1970
July brought our annual j ohn R. Dean
postcard from fat·away places, this time
from Yugoslavia. J ohn was on his way to
England for a summer of study at Trinity
College, Oxford. He also reports that
l>imitri Devyatkin works in "The l{jtchen".
a "cybcttietics extravaganza in N.Y .C."
In Memoriam
1904 · Burtis N. Coopcr,June 15, 1972.
1907 • The Rev. Walter B. McKinley,
Boonsboro, Md., June 20, 1972.
1915 • Caiman J. Zarnoiski, Sr., Balli·
more, Md., September 3, 19 72.
191 9 ·James K. Wood, Annapolis, Md.,
August 21, 1972.
1921 · George W. Barnes, Cherry Hill,
NJ.,July 26, 1972.
1921 · Wiijjam P. Maddox, Rocky Hill,
N.J., September 27, 1972.
1921 • J. Milton WiUey, Springfield, Pa.,
July 26, 1972.
1922 · Edward W. Cashell, Clarksville,
Md., August 27, 1972.
I 926 · H. Stanley Schmidt, Cockeys·
ville, Md., May 19, 1972.
1927 · Cordon S. Duvall, Edgewater,
Md.,July 5, 1972.
1931 · W. Tate Robinson, Honolulu,
I·la.,July 19, 197 2.
1932 · G eorge E. Rudolph, Baltimore,
Md., August 15, 1972.
1970 · Joan Leslie Kramer, New York,
N.Y., August 1972.
25
,_______
=--
�Photo Credits: ]ames Grady, back cover. M. E.
lllarTtm, page 21 . Maryland Center for Public
Broadcasting, pages 11 and 15. Charles Post.
page 14.
The College
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
Second-class postage paid at
Annapolis, Maryland, and at
additional mailing offices.
�
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St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>. <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981. <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Spaeth, Robert Louis
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lf' h-~
THE COLLEGE
C.Of:'(
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
Santa Fe, New Mexico
January 1973
�THE COLLEGE
Editor: Robert L. Spaeth
Alumni Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr. '42
Design: John Randolph Campbell '72
Production: Jeffrey Sinks '7 3
The College is published by the Development Office
of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. Richard
D. Weigle, President. Paul D. Newland, Provost.
Published four times a year in January, April, July,
and October. Second class postage paid at Annapolis,
Maryland, and at other mailing offices.
In the January Issue
Aristotle's Ethics, by J. Winfree Smith
1
Three Piano Preludes, by Douglas Allanbrook
7
Alumni Profile
. 21
Homecoming 1972
. 22
Alumni Chapter in New York
. 23
Alumni Activities . . . . . . .
. 24
ON THE COVER: The replica of the Liberty Bell
standing on the front campus in Annapolis is one of
forty-eight cast in 1950 by the U.S. Department of
the Treasury as part of a nation-wide drive to
promote the sale of defense bonds. The state of
Maryland temporarily deposited its bell with the
Annapolis Chamber of Commerce, which in tum had
it placed on the campus in 1952. In a speech prepared
for the dedication of the monument: on May 13,
1953, John M. Whitmore said, "St. John's College,
just as this bell, is symbolic of liberty and of man's
constant battle to become and to remain free."
Vol. XXIV
January, 1973
No.4
�A.ristotle ends the Nicomachean Ethics with the
words: "Let us then begin our discussion." Although
Aristotle is sometimes playful, he is not playful here.
The passage that precedes shows that the book called
the Nicomachean Ethics is only part of a larger
whole. The larger whole includes the Politics, and it is
the discussion contained in the Politics that is to
begin where the Ethics ends. To the larger whole
Aristotle gives the name "the philosophy concerning
human things." At the very beginning of the Ethics,
the philosophy concerning human things, as having to
do with "the human good," is called political science
(e11"WT~/1'1 ). This term might be misleading both for
those who know only a little about Aristotle and for
those who know a great deal. For those who know
only a little, since political science as he, and the
ancients generally, understood it is not identical with
political science as it is usually taught in our
universities and colleges today. While Aristotle's
political science is descriptive of institutions of
government, the things they are concerned with, and
the ways they work, it has to do with much more
than the institutions. of government. If Ethics raises
the question of what is good or bad for this or that
man to be or do, that question is not to be separated
from such questions as what is good or bad for him to
do in the place he occupies and in relation to others
within the complete human community, the nOAts, in
what way that goodness or badness may be
determined by the goodness or badness of the mil\ts
itself and its laws, and hence what may be the best
1T61\ts. The term "political science" may be misleading
to those who know a great deal about Aristotle
because, according to what he says in the Posterior
Analytics and in Book VI of the Ethics itself, science
( €71'W7~JJ.f/) is about universal, necessary, and
unchangeable things and proceeds demonstratively
from premisses to conclusions. The model for science
is mathematical synthesis of the kind we find in
Euclid's geometry. But at the beginning of the Ethics
he makes it clear that Ethics is not like geometry. It
lacks the precision of geometry. This lack of precision
is to be found not only in the application of universal
principles to particular matters, but in the universal
principles themselves. Although there is a great deal
that can be said about what is generally good for men
to do, this may not hold in all cases and all
circumstances. The things Ethics is about arc
changeable. Ethics or political soence IS not
Aristotle as conceived by Raphael
in his "School of Athens" fresco in
the Vatican.
ARISTOTLE'S
ETHICS
by
]. Winfree Smith
''science."
Let us come back to the least misleading title of
the enterprise, "the philosophy concerning human
things." That suggests that there may be some other
1
�The College
philosophy that does not concern human things.
There may be things that are what they are independently of man, and to say they are what they are is to
imply there is a way in which things are. The things
that are independent of what man thinks or does or
makes might be called "nature." That name, however,
deriving from the Latin nascor (to be born, to come
into being), as well as the Greek it translates, ¢vatS
(from ¢Vw, to generate, to cause to come into being),
points to a distinction between the way things are as
determining the way they come into being and the
way they are simply. Aristotle accordingly envisages
two sciences (in addition, of course, to Mathematics)
that aim at the vision of truth, at knowledge for its
own sake: Physics, which is about nature as a
principle of change or coming-into-being, and First
Philosphy (which has come to be called Metaphysics,
although Aristotle never called it that), which is
about being as being. Unlike Ethics these are conceived as sciences in the strict sense, as demonstrative
sciences. It is perhaps worthy of note that Aristotle
never produces these sciences. The books that we call
the Physics and the Metaphysics contain observations, the posing and refining of difficulties, and
reasoning leading to principles rather than demonstrations from principles (Jrra'YW"f~ rather than
dn68H~ts). This, I believe, is not accidental. For
Aristotle, like his teacher Plato, was aware that when
man undertakes to philosophize, no matter about
what, he is not, to begin with, in possession of
principles; and whether he actually comes to possess
them should perhaps be left an open question.
One might wonder whether one can enter upon
the philosophy about human things without having
been first engaged in First Philosophy and Second
Philosophy (which name, Second Philosophy, Aristotle gives to Physics or Natural Philosophy). Or, to
put it another way, does his Ethics depend upon his
First Philosophy or his Physics? Can we keep his
Ethics and reject his Physics, and substitute some
other Physics, Descartes' or Newton's, or Einstein's?
Or, can we keep his Ethics and reject his Metaphysics? If we presented these questions to Aristotle,
I think he would say that in Ethics we must begin
with the most obvious perennial facts about human
life; for instance, that men have certain desires for
food and drink and sexual pleasure, for money and
recognition, that for the most part they live in
communities under customs and laws, that they fight
wars at the same time that they fear death, that they,
with some exceptions, worship gods or a god, and
that they have opinions about good and evil which
they take seriously. So we don't need to presuppose
Physics and Metaphysics to begin to philosophize
about ourselves and our fellows and our common life.
I would submit that if one were to read the Ethics
without having read or heard much about Aristotelian
Physics ·Of Metaphysics, he would find it understandable.
2
But one might wonder not whether one can
start, but whether one can finish the philosophy
about human things without entering upon First
Philosophy and Second Philosophy. After all, even if
human things are to be differentiated from those
divine things on which the being of the cosmos
depends or from natural things, it might be argued
that man's being and his doings depend upon his
nature which is part of the whole that includes all
natures. It might make a great difference for Ethics
whether human life is a tiny and transitory happening
in an immense universe which may be friendly or
hostile to human life, or which may be intelligible or
unintelligible, or which may be governed by a
particular providence or not so governed. Is not
Ethics, in order to complete itself, or perhaps even
correct itself, compelled to take into account the
questions with which First Philosophy and Physics
deal? If Aristotle were faced with this query, I think
he would by no means dismiss it. But he would
remind us that just as the weaver may have a good
opinion about what a good piece of cloth is without
knowing the good itself, i.e., without knowing or
even seeking to know what Plato argues was the first
principle of everything, so fathers of families and
soldiers and citizens and rulers may have a good
opinion about what is good or bad for them to do
without embarking upon First Philosophy and
Physics. Moreover, just as the weaver has every day to
attend to his loom, so men have every day to attend
to their tasks in the several relationships of life. One
studies Ethics in order to know how to act, and
action allows not the leisure to wait upon the
solution of speculative questions.
The inference to be drawn is not that one can
only act blindly or thoughtlessly. Otherwise, Aristotle
would not have written his Ethics. It is useful to
consider how he proceeds in the book. He is guided
by what people think to be good or bad, by what
they praise or blame. A few years ago a student in a
St. John's seminar remarked that morals are just
mores. That student perhaps knew some Latin and
knew that the word "morals" comes from a Latin
word which in the plural is nothing other than our
word "mores" and means customs, usages, habits.
Indeed so. The word "ethics" is exactly parallel to
"morals" and comes from a Greek word HeTJ that has
those same meanings: customs, usages, habits. Indeed
so. But the question is whether the customary, usual,
habitual ways of thinking, · the commonly held
opinions, do not embody truth. This seems to be
Aristotle's view. He is, of course, well aware that not
all opinions, even widely held opinions, are equally
worthy of consideration, and that among those that
are, not all are compatible with one another. When
they seem not to be compatible, he tries to see
whether they can be reconciled, and, if not, why one
opinion is to be preferred to another, and how some
kind of consensus within the realm of opinion might
�January 1973
be reached. He himself says of his procedure in the
context of his account of continence and incontinence (or self-restraint and unrestraint):
We must set before us what seems (presumably
what seems to others) to be the case, and, after
first going through the difficulties, exhibit, if
possible, the truth of the common opinions
about these affections (continence and inconti-
nence) and if this is not possible, the truth of
the greatest number and the most ruling ones;
for if both the hard points are resolved and
common opinions remain, the truth will have
been sufficiently exhibited.
Therefore, I have not really entered into Aristotle's ethical or moral teaching, and the reader may
well wonder why he is reading this if not to learn how
to be good and why. Aristotle's general answer to
that question is simple: You should behave in
accordance with reason, and you should do so in
order to be happy. I hope that the rest of what I shall
say will to some degree specify the content that
Aristotle gives to that proposition.
In the first place, Aristotle observes that men
generally will agree that they want happiness and that
happiness, whatever it is, is not something they want
as a means to something else but for its own sake.
They do indeed disagree as to where their happiness is
to be found. Some think it is to be found in pleasure.
But there are some pleasures that man shares with the
other animals, such as the pleasures of eating and
drinking and sexual enjoyment. If human happiness is
a specifically human thing, it would seem that
whatever those pleasures contribute to happiness, it
cannot be found in its completeness in them, though
it might still be identified with some specifically
human pleasure or pleasures. Those who think that it
is to be found in wealth will, upon a little reflection,
see that wealth is good only in its use and so for the
sake of something else. So and so many coins in a
purse or digits in a bank account are not happiness. If
there are men like Hotspur, who think that happiness
consists in honor, they will, if they reflect, see that
they would not want to be honored by just anyone or
for just anything, and so that honor is meaningful
only in relation to whatever excellence a man may
have and for which he should be honored. Hence,
what defines a man's happiness is the excellence
rather than the honor he receives because of it. If he
possesses some excellence, that means that he is
excellent in something or at something such as
swimming or horseback riding or armed combat or
oratory or diplomacy. That is, there is always some
activity in which he excels. Hence the really good
thing is the activity. Just as the parts of the body
have their activities and the activity of the eye is
seeing and of the lungs is breathing, so man has an
activity as man, which must be an activity of the soul
rather than the body, and of that part of the soul
which differentiates him from other animals. His
excellence will consist in his being able to perform
well that ac<ivity, and the activity itself will be his
happiness. But there a]:e many specifically human
activities some of whiGh seem to be for some further
end ·and others to be ends in themselves. Is there
some one activity which is the end of all? Aristotle
"'does not answer this question at the first stage of his
-Philosophizing concerning human things (i.e., in
Book I of the Ethics). He has, however, come to some
,tlhderstanding of the kind of thing that happiness
must be: Happiness must be an activity of the human
·"soul in accordance with some human excellence or
virtue. And that virtue must be complete. The main
~reason that Aristotle cannot at this stage give a better
answer to this question to which at a later he returns
,-is that in order to answer it he has to investigate the
question of what human virtue is. There may be
,many virtues and one among them supreme with the
others relating to it in various ways. Or there may be
,.many, and they may all reduce to one virtue, for
example, wisdom. They may all be kinds of wisdom.
<.Or there may be one supreme virtue for men of one
kind and another for men of another kind.
~
Aristotle, therefore, in Book II begins to inves~
tigate the question of virtue. Having noted that men
,£peak of both intellectual virtue (ap er~ 8 <aV01/TLKTI)
and moral virtue (ciptT-h ~{)~"h), he confines his
,attention all the way through Book V to moral virtue,
returning to intellectual virtue in Book VI and to the
question of how intellectual virtue may relate to
····moral virtue. As Book I was a search for a definition
... of happiness, so Book II is a search for a definition of
·moral virtue. Whether such a definition completes the
... definition of happiness will be still open. For we shall
have to ask whether in tellcctual virtue is in any way
.-necessary for moral virtue. And if there are intellectual virtues not necessary for moral virtue, we shall
... have to ask whether happiness is an activity in
accordance with these or whether it is an activity in
__,._accordance with moral virtue under the governance of
some intellectual virtue or a combination of both
activities. To put it another way, is the philosophic
life the good and happy life, or is the political life, or
. is some combination of them?
But what is a moral virtue? One way to begin to
answer this question is to consider how men in their
earliest years learn to behave. How do parents teach
• their children to behave? Usually they employ
rewards and punishments to make them do certain
.. things and not do other things. By repeatedly doing
certain things and refraining from others, habits are
formed which become second nature so that the
children without being told don't fill themselves with
candy before dinner, are not cry-babies in the face of
some real or imagined pain, and share their toys with
. other children. These good children have become on
some level temperate, courageous, and generous or
.liberal. They have come to possess these virtues of
temperance and courage and liberality. It would seem
�The College
to make sense then to say that a moral virtue is a
habit (e~ts) which the soul comes to possess because
of the repetition of a certain kind of action. The
habit, in turn, in the circumstances that call for it, is
realized in that same kind of action, but it is not
always being realized in action. We don't say of
someone that he has stopped being courageous
because he is asleep and not actually performing
courageous deeds. Indeed, that is why we distinguish
between the habit and the action. Furthermore, a
habit of virtue, like a habit of vice, is a relatively
permanent thing. It is not easily changed.
This, however, would not seem to be an
adequate account of moral virtue as a human quality.
For dogs and other animals besides men can be
trained to behave habitually in certain ways. What do
we have to add? We should say, should we not, that if
a man is to do something virtuous, he must know
what he is doing. Certain acts done in ignorance we
neither praise nor blame. We even pardon or pity the
doer of an action which we would find blameworthy
if it were done wittingly and which upon discovery to
the doer brings sorrow to him. Aristotle mentions a
certain case of striking one's father as such a mistake
done in ignorance. One is naturally led to think of
Oedipus and to conclude that the tragic mistake that
Aristotle speaks of in the Poetics is not a flaw of
character in the sense of a vice, but a mistake done in
ignorance and so involuntarily, and therefore one for
which Oedipus is to be pitied. The virtuous man and
his opposite, the vicious man, are such only if they
act knowingly.
The virtuous man must not only know what he
is doing, he must choose to do that rather than
something else. We often use the word "choose"
somewhat loosely. For instance, we say that the
American people choose their President. They don't
choose him just because they pull levers on voting
machines. Choice requires deliberation. Deliberation
is some kind of reasoning which starts with the
perception of an end to be achieved and weighs the
possible means to achieve it. The virtuous man in
choosing the virtuous action does so after deliberation. The virtuous action that is chosen is in the case
of the moral virtues usually a mean between two
extremes of pleasure and pain or pleasurable and
painful things. For example, the man who is temperate in food will choose the mean between too much
food and too little food. There is, of course, no fixed
rule for making this choice. What is just right for me
might be too little for a heavyweight boxing champion, but too much for an aged clerk who leads a
more sedentary life. Obviously, deciding upon the
mean also requires reasoning.
Finally, we would not say that a person
possesses a moral virtue unless he chooses the
virtuous action for its own sake. Although children
learn how to behave through being rewarded and
punished, we would not say that they have really
4
become virtuous until they do good things and avoid
doing bad things without expecting candy or fearing
the stick.
In some such way, then, Aristotle comes to a
definition of moral virtue. It is a habit of choosing a
mean, a mean relative to the person possessing it and
determined by reason. There are three conditions for
moral virtue: (1) knowing what one is doing,
(2) choosing the action for its own sake and (3) doing
that habitually, i.e., from a certain stability of
character. The first two involve reason, but at this
stage of exploring the question of virtue, the third is
stressed more than they.
At the end of Book II of the Ethics we find a list
of the moral virtues set forth in such a way as to
show how each one has to do with a mean. The
following books through Book V contain a detailed
account of all these moral virtues taken (with one
exception) in the order in which they are listed. Let
me give the list in order, putting with the virtues the
opposite vices which have to do with an excess or
deficiency of whatever pleasure, pain, desire, or
passion is the medium for their exercise. I shall give
first the virtue, then the vice of excess, and then that
of deficiency.
( 1) Courage between rashness and cowardice
(2) Temperance between self-indulgence and insensibility
(3) Liberality between prodigality and meanness
(4) Magnificence between vulgarity and niggardliness
( 5) Greatness of soul between vainglory and smallness of soul
(6) Moderate ambition between immoderate ambition and unambitiousness
(7) Gentleness between irascibleness and unirascibleness
(8) Truthfulness between boastfulness and irony (or
self-irony)
(9) Friendliness between flattery and quarrelsomeness
(10) Wit between buffoonery and boorishness
Notice that justice is not in the list, and
Aristotle says very tersely,
With regard to justice, since it has not one
simple meaning, we shall, after describing the
other habits, distinguish its kinds and say how it
is a mean.
There seems to be something special about justice.
Is there some order in this list? For instance, is
there a steady progression from inferior virtues to
superior virtues? Or is it that there are certain peaks
and that once we reach a peak, we return to a valley
again and climb a lower or a higher peak? Perhaps we
might consult one of Aristotle's best students, a man
who has understandably been canonized and is
known to some as St. Thomas Aquinas. For he wrote
what is probably the most serious and thorough of
commentaries on the Ethics. I shall present a simpli-
�January 1973
fied account of the order that he sees in this list.
First, there is the distinction into two parts between
the virtues that have to do with man:s passions and
desires and those that have to do with his actions. As
to the first part, there are passions and desires that
have to do with man's life itself. Thus courage is a
virtue that has to do with the fear that he feels in the
face of what is destructive of his life, and temperance
with the desire he has for what is preservative of his
life and the life of the species. Then there are passions
and desires that have to do with certain external
goods, namely wealth and honor. The virtues that
establish a rule for the way a man should bear himself
toward wealth are liberality and magnificence, and
for the way he should bear himself toward honor
they are greatness of soul and moderate ambition.
As to the second part, the virtues that have to
do with man's actions are, to begin with, the virtues
which are concerned with the less serious though still
important actions of men in relation to other men.
They might be called social virtues: the virtue of
being friendly or generally affable as distinguished
from the vice of flattery or that of quarrelsomeness;
the virtue of wit as distinguished from buffoonery, a
virtue eminently displayed by Falstaff who was
somewhat lacking in other moral virtues; and the
virtue of truthfulness about oneself by which one
avoids both boastfulness on the one hand, and irony
or self-depreciation of the other. Aristotle accuses
Socrates of this vice of irony, of claiming for himself
less than his due, less than the truth. There are some
who try to save Socrates from this allegation, but I
shall leave him to shift for himself. These lesser social
virtues lead logically to justice which is the social
virtue most of all, that is, the virtue by which men act
rightly toward each other in society.
All of this that Thomas says makes eminent
sense. But there are some things that are strange
about it. In the first place, Thomas makes greatness
of soul not nearly so great as Aristotle makes it. For
him, it is simply one of many moral virtues with
perhaps a certain place in the hierarchy of virtues,
whereas for Aristotle it implies the perfection of all
the other moral virtues and includes them all. In the
second place, Thomas' account of the moral virtues,
when he is speaking more on his own in the Summa
Theologica, is markedly different from the whole of
Aristotle's Ethics and from Thomas' commentary on
the Ethics. This is interesting because the impression
is often given that Thomas Aquinas just made a line
between supernatural revelation and natural reason,
and that as for the latter he slavishly followed the
master Aristotle. Not so. In the Summa Theologica
the account of moral virtues is preceded by the
treatise on law including natural law and divine law,
the latter containing both the revealed law of Moses
and the revealed grace of Christ. As far as virtue is
concerned, the revealed grace of Christ means the
theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity, which are
gifts of God and are discussed next after the natural
and divine law. Then there follows the treatise on the
four cardinal virtues, among which the intellectual
virtue of prudence or practical wisdom is supreme
and is treated first, followed by the discussion of the
moral virtues in the order of their excellence: justice,
then courage, then temperance. All of the other
moral virtues are subsidiary parts of these cardinal
virtues. Thomas makes liberality, truthfulness, and
friendliness parts of justice, greatness of soul and
magnificence parts of courage, and gentleness a part
of temperance. Although he does not subtract from
Aristotle's list, he adds to it: religion, filial piety,
penitence, and gratitude as parts of justice, patience
and perseverance as parts of courage and humility as
part of temperance. Perhaps these remarks about
Thomas Aquinas' transformation of Aristotle's
teaching about morality may make us more alert to
the essential elements of that teaching.
In answer to the question raised above, I should
say that there are in the first five books of Aristotle's
Ethics two peaks, the second higher than the first.
The first peak is greatness of soul. The second is
justice. These are the peaks among the moral virtues.
The question remains whether the intellectual virtues
are not a higher peak.
What is true ot greatness of soul and justice and
is not true of other moral virtues is that each of them
includes all the others. How then do they differ?
They differ in that in the case of greatness of soul all
the moral virtues are regarded as constituting a man's
own intrinsic worth whereas in the case of justice
they are regarded as constituting his worth in relation
to others within political society. The thing that
characterizes the great-souled man is that he thinks
himself worthy of the greatest honor. So he must not
only possess the other moral virtues, but he must
possess them in a superlative degree. The remarkable
thing, and perhaps the offensive thing to persons of
Christian sentiment or democratic sentiment or both,
is that a man would be lacking in virtue if he
possessed the other moral virtues in a superlative
degree and did not think himself worthy of the
greatest honor. One might conclude that he will want
to be honored by others. Not so. He will utterly
despise the honors conferred upon him by nonvirtuous men, and he will not be especially pleased at
those conferred upon him by virtuous men whose
virtue falls far short of his own and who can scarcely
value his superlative virtue at its real worth. Shake·
speare's Coriolanus, who is like the great-souled man
in his supreme sense of his own worth, in his
contempt for the opinion of the Roman populace, in
his unwillingness to flatter them, nonetheless lacks
greatness of soul, for the great-souled man would
consider it vulgar to exhibit a lofty bearing in the
presence of lesser people.
Aristotle's greatness of soul might seem to be
the very definition of pride and the very opposite of
5
�The College
humility. Humility for Christians means a sense not
of one's own worth, but of the tremendous disparateness between whatever worth one may really have
and the infinite worth of God. Could it be that
Aristotle's view that greatness of soul is a virtue
implies a theology and a radically different theology
from that of Christianity, implies that man can be as
god or almost? He does indeed say that the honor
that tbe great-souled man claims is that which we
render to tbe gods, and he compares him to Zeus as
being pleased to be reminded of benefits he has
conferred but pained to be reminded of those he has
received.
Perhaps it might be interesting to see how
Thomas Aquinas manages to keep greatness of soul as
a virtue. We have already seen that he underplays it
by making it a part of courage rather than courage a
part of .it. In answer to the objection that he himself
poses, that greatness of soul is opposed to humility,
he says,
There is in man something great which he
possesses through the gift of God; and something defective which accrues to him through
the weakness of nature. Accordingly, greatness
of soul makes a man deem himself worthy of
great things in consideration of the gifts he holds
from God ... On the other hand humility makes
a man think little of himself in consideration of
his own deficiency; and greatness of soul makes
him despise others in so far as they fall away
from God's gifts .. , Yet humility makes us
honor others and esteem them better than
ourselves in so far as we see some of God's gifts
in them.
Does this not mean, however, that if one does
possess great virtue, one's greatness of soul consists in
seeing that great virtue, not so much as contributing
to one's own worth, but as a gift of God? The one
worthy of honor would then seem to be not so much
the recipient of the gift as the divine giver. That
would certainly destroy the meaning of greatness of
soul as Aristotle understands it.
Humility, it was said, is a sense of the tremendous disparateness between whatever worth we may
really have and the infinite worth of God. Sin was not
then mentioned. It may be that not only is the worth
man has infinitely less than God's worth, but that
man is positively unworthy. Is this not why Thomas
adds to Aristotle's list the curious virtue of penitence,
which consists in the constant recognition of one's
constant unworthiness or lack of virtue? Aristotle
indeed mentions something like penitence, namely
shame. He says that it is not a virtue, that it indeed is
a praiseworthy feeling in young people, for the shame
they feel for past or present failing restrains them in
the future. But it is not praiseworthy in an older
person for he should not and need not do anything
for which to be ashamed. In him it is shameful to feel
shame. What Aristotle says about shame is of a piece
with what he says about greatness of soul.
6
It was said that among the moral virtues the
other peak is justice, that like greatness of soul it
contains all the other moral virtues, and that it is a
higher peak than greatness of soul. Justice is ambiguous. For sometimes it means justice as a whole and
sometimes a part of justice. The reason for the
ambiguity is that justice as a whole is obedience to
law, and law prescribes actions such as courageous or
temperate actions that fall under other moral virtues
and also actions that do not fall under other moral
virtues, such as the distribution by the political
community of honors in proportion to merit or
restitution to be made to the injured party to a
contract. It is justice as a whole that is more excellent
than greatness of soul. The reason is that the common
good is superior to the moral worth of any single man
when that is considered simply as his own worth. To
quote Aristotle, "The best man is not he who
exercises his virtue toward himself, but he who
exercises it toward another." This is said in the
context of moral virtue, and might have to be
qualified in the context of intellectual virtue. It might
still be true. It would depend upon what we mean by
"man" when we speak of the best man. Or what we
mean by "himself," i.e., what a man's self is.
What Aristotle says about justice as a whole is in
many ways reminiscent of what Socrates says in
Plato's Republic, about the justice of the nOAts. By
that I mean that in the Republic justice is not a
particular virtue belonging in a paramount way to a
particular class, as wisdom, or courage, or less clearly,
temperance is, but is all of the virtues together. Of
course in the Republic, while justice is obedience to
the laws made by Socrates with the assent of Glaucon
and tbe others, one might wonder whether the civil
law, obedience to which is Aristotelian justice, would
meet the severe demands of Socrates' legislation in
Socrates' speech.
After discussing the moral virtues and the chief
moral virtue, justice, Aristotle in Book VI proceeds to
the question of whether there can be moral virtue
without intellectual virtue. Earlier in setting forth as
conditions for a morally virtuous action that it is to
be done witb knowledge, choice, and from a firm
character formed by habituation, he had placed the
greatest emphasis on the last, saying, "For the
possession of the virtues knowledge avails little or
nothing, whereas the other things are all-important,
inasmuch as virtue results from repeated performance
of just the temperate acts." It seems now that this
was not the whole story, and that while one can
indeed, and people do, speak of moral virtue in the
way previously described, moral virtue in the strictest
sense requires intellectual virtue, which consists of
knowledge. But what intellectual virtue and what
kind of knowledge? To answer that we must ask the
prior question: What kinds of intellectual virtue are
there? First of all we might speak of that kind of
intellectual virtue which cqnsists in knowledge about
things that cannot be otherwise, the · eternal and
(Continued on Page 19)
�THREE PRELUDES
FOR THE PIANO
DOUGLAS ALLANBROOK
Several years ago I wrote a set of piano pieces called
"12 Preludes for All Seasons.'' I wanted to write a
kind of album for lovers of the piano. Some of the
pieces are difficult, some are relatively easy. At the
request of The College, I have selected three of the
latter for publication. They can all be played in order
at a public concert, or they can any of them be
played separately either in concert or at home. They
are all dedicated to people I know. Whether they are
portraits or not is part of the game.
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�Douglas Allanbrook was born in Boston in 1921. He
began studying music at the age of eight and
composing music at the age of twelve. Subsequently,
his principal teachers in composition and theory have
been Nadia Boulanger and Walter Piston. Mr. Allanbrook's works include four symphonies, four string
quartets, two operas, piano and harpsicord music,
sacred music, songs, and assorted chamber music. Hi's
compositions are being published by Boosey and
Hawkes, Inc.
�January 1973
unchangeable things, and the eternal conditions and
principles of changeable things. It is identical with the
knowledge that is sought by First Philosophy and
Second Philosophy, or if you like, Metaphysics and
Physics. This is, I believe, the first point in the Ethics
~here one might think that the peculiarly Aristotelian teachmgs about being and nature are beginning to
enter the consideration of ethical or moral matters.
B_ut Ari~totl~ refers to such intellectual virtue only to
distmgmsh It from the intellectual virtue that is
concerned with things that change. That itself is
twofold. For on the one hand, there is the intellectual
virtue that is necessary if man is to make things well,
namely art; the sculptor by his art knows what a
beautiful statue is and the cobbler by his art what a
good shoe is and both by reasoning determine the
best means for producing the statue or the shoe. And
on the other hand, there is the intellectual virtue
necessary if man is to do things well. Here, clearly, is
the intellectual virtue required, if any is required, by
moral virtue. For moral virtue is the habit by which
man is disposed to act well in relation to his own
desires and passions and in relation to other men. The
intellectual virtue in question is practical wisdom or
prudence (</JpOV'Ia<s). As art is the virtue by which
one knows how to make things well, so practical
wisdom is the virtue by which one knows how to act
well.
Practical wisdom is, as it were, an eye of the soul
by which it sees the ends of human life, the various
actions that are determined by the moral virtues in
their intrinsic worth and in their order and connection with one another. As such it cannot exist
without the moral virtues and so presupposes a
c~rtain acquisi_tion . of those virtues through expenence and habituatiOn. One who has acquired habits
of_ self-indulgence or cowardice or stinginess is made
bhnd to temperance or courage or liberality and
incapable of practical wisdom. Hence, the primary
role of practical wisdom is to reason from the ends
set by the virtues to the means of acting temperately
~r courageously or liberally in the particular situa~10n. That inv'?lves deliberation, reasoning, and
msight mto particulars. Without those things there
can be no moral action and without moral actions the
moral virtues cannot be preserved. Therefore we must
say that moral virtue is necessary for practical
Wisdom, and that practical wisdom is necessary for
moral virtue in the true and strict sense.
There are special kinds and degrees of practical
wisdom. For the praiseworthy or blameworthy
actwn~ of men are not merely the actions of single
men smgly, but of political communities, and of
single men in their various roles within political
communties. Therefore, practical wisdom is in an
expecially important way political wisdom, and
political wisdom may be that of founders of regimes
such as the authors of the United States Constitution
or of those who have to deliberate in political
assemblies, such as the United States Congress, about
measures to be taken for the common good, or of
those who have to make decisions about the rightness
or wrongness under the law of deeds already done,
such as the justices of the Supreme Court, or of those
ordinary citizens such as you and I who by our nature
belong to society and are obligated to act in society.
It was noted earlier that Aristotle distinguished
practical wisdom, an intellectual virtue which has to
do with particular and changeable human affairs, not
only from art, but also from another intellectual
virtue. That other intellectual virtue is philosophic
wisdom (ao.pia ). Though Aristotle says that practical
wiseom is required for moral virtue, he does not say
that philosophic wisdom is required for practical
wisdom or for moral virtue even in the true and strict
sense. Here he seems to differ from Plato, who in the
Republic argues that the just political community
cannot exist unless kings become philosophers or
philosophers become kings; and philosophers are
those who in their quest for wisdom about the no)us
are compelled to go beyond the nOll<s to seek the
wisdom about the whole of what is~ It is significant in
this connection that Plato uses the words </JpOV1/0<S
and aoq,ia interchangeably.
Enough has been said, I tllink, to show that
what Aristotle says on some early page of the Et.hics
is not to be taken as indicative of his full account.
For example, he says in the second chapter of Book I
that political science seems to be the most authoritative and the architectonic science. Indeed he seems
to imply that is it authoritative and architectonic in
relation to all other sciences. For he says that it
ordains wlllch sciences are to be studied in the noll<s.
But even his calling political science arcllltectonic is
misleading unless we note carefully that the comprehensive end with which political science as described
at the beginning of the Ethics concerns itself is the
human good. By the end of the Ethics we have some
reason to think that, paradoxically, there is a good
for man that is higher than the human good. For near
the end of Book VI Aristotle says that it would seem
strange if political or practical wisdom generally,
which is inferior to pllllosophic wisdom, should be
more authoritative than it, and his final statement in
that book before going to an entirely new beginning
is that political wisdom is not in authority over
philosophic wisdom, that it does not give orders to it
but for its sake, and that "if anyone were to say
o~herwise, it would be like saying that political
Wisdom rules over the gods." Is philosophic wisdom
comparable to God or gods? Or is the wisdom that
the philosophic man seeks and may hope to obtain
comparable to the wisdom God has or gods have?
· Philosplllc wisdom as an intellectual virtue is a
combination of intellectual intuition and demonstrative reasoning resulting in scientific knowledge of
the things that are of most worth. It is then above all
else, First Philosophy, the knowledge of being as
19
�The College
being and of the first principle of the whole being,
the philosophy which in Metaphysics, Book VI, is the
philosophy of most worth, because it deals with the
kind of being that is of most worth and which is there
also called theology, because that kind of being
would be the divine cause of divine things. It is not
political wisdom or practical wisdom, because that is
the philosophy that deals with human things, and
even if men be divine, says Aristotle, there are things
that are more divine in nature than man. What are
these things? They are the heavenly bodies which,
together with the earth our home, consitute the
cosmos. And, of course, the unmoved first mover, on
which as a principle the heavens and nature depend
and whose activity is exclusively intellectual
intuition, would be more divine and the supreme
divine cause of all.
At the end of Book I, having argued that
whatever happiness is, it is activity in accordance with
complete virtue, we left the question of what
happiness is to investigate the question of virtue.
Virtue, we have seen, 1ncans a number of different
things, and we have by no means explored all the
differences that Aristotle, eminent in the esprit de
finesse, perceives. But we have explored the main
ones. The principal difference is the difference
between the virtues of a life devoted to philosophy
and those of a life devoted to action which, at its
best, is political life. As the philosophic virtues are
superior tO the moral virtues, so is the activity in
accordance with them superior to the activity in
accordance with the moral virtues, and accordingly
the happiness of the philosopher is greater than the
happiness of the man who possesses only the moral
virtues, although the second kind of happiness has an
autonomy since, though the intellectual virtue of
practical wisdom is necessary for the moral life,
philosophic wisdom is not. Because of this autonomy
we can speak of the virtue of the great-souled man as
complete virtue or of the virtue of the just man as
complete virtue. Either one is complete moral virtue,
and indeed it is likely that the great-souled man or
the noble statesman will possess certain moral virtues
in a degree that goes way beyond the degree to which
the philosopher possesses them. This raises the
question whether we are right, after all, in attributing
supreme happiness to the philosophic life. For is the
virtue of the philosopher complete virtue? He cannot
be altogether lacking in moral virtue. He has a body
like other men and appetites and passions like theirs.
He will be temperate and, if he has to face the danger
of death in battle he will be courageous. But for the
activity of philosophizing he will not need moral
virtue in a large and spendid sense, and simply
because he has fewer needs, his life and happiness will
be more self-sufficient and complete than the life and
happiness of the great-souled man or the just and
noble statesman.
20
We can now see these diverse types of men in a
new perspective. It was observed that the essential
thing about the great-souled man as such is that his
exercise of superlative moral virtue is always directed
toward himself, toward enhancing his own worth. It
was further said that the just man is better than he
because, while he may possess the same superlative
moral virtue, his exercise of it is always directed to a
higher good than himself, the common human good.
But now we have to revise that somewhat. For there
is a sense in which a man's self may transcend that of
the human community and indeed all human life. We
raised the question whether Aristotle in envisaging
the great-souled man was not envisaging a man who
could be as a god or almost. That might be true
except that for Aristotle God has no moral virtue. We
cannot say that he is temperate or brave. But neither
can we say that he is just or liberal; he neither makes
convenants nor bestows gifts. His virtue, if we may
speak of his virtue, is only intellectual virtue and,
specifically, intellectual intuition; for presumably he
has no need to demonstrate things. In answer to the
objection that the philosopher is grasping for a life
too high for man, Aristotle says,
We must not follow those who advise us, being
men, to think of human things, and being
mortal, of mortal things, but must, so far as we
can, make ourselves im1nortal, and strain--eVery
nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in
us; for even if it be small in bulk, much more
does it in power and worth surpass everything.
This would seem, too, to be each man himself.
There are wide differences among men and different
virtues of which different men are capable. But a
man's true self in the highest sense, a sense perhaps
not relevant to most men, is the divine intellect
whose activity, the contemplation of being, the
philosopher seeks to share.
Aristotle throughout the Ethics has much to say
about the various virtues and how men may come by
them and therefore how men may become happy. In
the first book he raises the question whether
happiness comes as a divine gift and says, "If there is
any gift of the gods to men, it is reasonable that
happiness should be god-given ... ;" "but," he adds,
"This question would perhaps be more appropriate to
another inquiry." We look in vain for that inquiry. He
is entirely silent after that about the question of
whether happiness is a divine gift; but as we have
seen, he is not silent about the question whether
there are any divine gifts.
Mr. f. Winfree Smith, a Tutor at St. John's College
since 1941, delivered this lecture on the Annapolis
campus on May 26, 1972. Mr. Smith received his
B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of
Virginia and his M. Diu. from the Virginia Theological
Seminary.
�January 1973
When John Poundstone was a
St. Johnnie in the early 1960's, he
neither planned to go to medical
school nor anticipated joining the
Navy. Yet only ten years after his
graduation John is both Dr. Poundstone and Lt. Cmdr. Poundstone,
with the resounding title, "Head of
the Tuberculosis and Venereal
Disease Control Section of the
Community Health Branch of the
Preventive Medicine Division of the
Bureau of Medicine and Surgery of
the Department of The Navy."
Dr. Poundstone works in
Washington, D.C. His chief task is
the development of VD and TB
control programs for 800,000 military personnel and a million
civilians.
The trail that led there began
in John Poundstone's senior year,
when he decided to return home
after graduation to Lexington, Kentucky, in order to attend the
University of Kentucky medical
school. He had been admitted on
only one condition, that he fill out
his St. John's education with a
summer's worth of organic chemistry. After that ordeal, John found
med school to be quite manageable,
and he received the M.D. degree in
1966.
By then there was a Mrs.
Poundstone, the former Ann von
Isakovics, who admits to having
"followed John" to Kentucky,
where she received a bachelor's
degree from the University of Kentucky. By 1966, Ann had added an
M.A. in secondary education with
emphasis in the teaching of high
school mathematics. The couple
was married in 1963.
The Poundstones' life changed
significantly with a move to Boston
in '66. John spent a year as an
intern in the Newton-Wellesley
Hospital, then entered Harvard University's School of Public Health. In
the course of three years, he
acquired a Master of Public Health
degree and did a considerable
amount of research on congenital
he art disease. Meanwhile Ann
changed her field to business administration and, in '69, received a
master's degree from Boston University. She subsequently became
active in the computer business,
becoming the first woman ever to
sell a computer.
Another big change occurred
in 1970, when John went into the
Navy. Washington became home,
and John plunged into demanding
work in the Navy's TB and VD
programs. Ann continued her fearless career, now as a law student at
Georgetown University and as a law
clerk to Judge Samuel W. H. Meloy
of Maryland. She expects her Juris
Doctor degree in June.
Both Dr. and Mrs. Poundstone
have vivid memories of their years
in Annapolis. Ann spent only two
years at the College; after much
more academic experience elsewhere, she finds that St.John's had
a "diversity of student population"
hard to match. But the question of
whether her years at St. John's
were "beneficial" still is a troublesome one. Yet she is convinced that
St. John's helped "all of [her]
subsequent relationships."
John Poundstone finds the St.
John's influence following him
wherever he goes. His education at
Annapolis continues to help him
"to bring order to the subject
matter" he works with. And he
believes St. John's has helped him
"to see underlying motives and
basic tenets" in the work and writings of others.
Homecoming 1972 found the
Poundstones cheerful and relaxed
as they visited their old campus and
found time to grant an interview to
The College.
21
�The College
HOMECOMING 1972
It may really be, as one
-alumnus. wrote in. commenting on
33 Homecoming,. that the .very sophistication of the program tends to
~;,,immunize. us, .so. that. we· are .not
seduced by the sort of nostalgia
necessary to lure alumni back to
their college. Or perhaps alumni
just have too many things to do.
For whatever reasons, fewer than
:S"i 200 alumni and their guests showed
3~1 up for. the annual gathering of the
classes in October.
Those classes celebrating some
sort of reunion did help attract
people, with the 60-year class being
represented by Philip L. Alger and
George L. Winslow. The oldest class
present was 1909, represented by
Col. Robert E. Jones from Palo
Alto, Calif. Col. Jones would have
had the. distinction of having come
the longest way, except for David
Cicia '70, who was on leave from
his duty station in Germany.
One of the Homecoming highlights was the dedication of the
Harrison Health Center. Present for
the event was Mrs. John T. Harrison, whose gift in memory of her
late • husband, a graduate in the
,p)
President Weigle and Mrs. John T.
Harrison at the Dedication of the
Harrison Health Center during
Homecoming.
22
Mr. Myron L. Wolbarsht receives
the Alumni Award of Merit from
William R. Tilles.
for 41 years, received a thunderous
standing ovation from alumni,
faculty, and guests. The citation on
her Award of Merit reads as
follows: "As Registrar and counselor for five presidents, ten deans,
and legions of students, she has
served the College with a distinc-~·
tion the more remarkable for her
to greet each by name." / 1
91'-'m>m has an award been more 1
deserved or more humbly i i
1
re<:ei•ve<l.
i
In other act1v1tJes during the
Class of 1907, made the building day, the following slate of officers
possible. Other members of the and directors was elected by the
Harrison family also attended the Association: President, Bernard F.
ceremony.
Gessner '27; Executive Vice PresiPerhaps the most significant dent, William W. Simmons '48; Secevent of the day for most alumni retary, Franklin R. Atwell '53;
took place during the Homecoming Treasurer, Samuel S. Kutler '54;
Dinner. In a very simple ceremony, and directors, Richard F. Blaul '32.
Association President Bernard F. Stephen Main ella '54, E.-- Paul
Gessner and immediate past Pre- Mason, Jr. '37. George R. Selby
sident William R. Tilles teamed up '32, and Carol P. Tilles '59. Still
to present the Alumni Award of with one year to serve are Jerome
Merit. Recipients this year were Gilden '54, Charlotte King '59,
Miss Miriam Strange and Messrs. Barbara B. Oosterhout '55, and
Paul L. Banfield and Myron L. Faye C. Polillo '56.
Wolbarsht. Edward F. Lathrop
accepted the award for Mr. Banfield
in the latter's unavoidable absence. Miss Miriam Strange acknowledges
Miss Strange, a full-time the warm tribute paid to her for her
member of the St. John's com- continuing service to St. John's
munity since 1930, and Registrar College since 1930.
I
I
�January 1973
The Harrison Health Center was
finished in time for the opening of
the fall semester.
NEW YEAR GREETINGS
Mrs. Weigle and I have appreciated the many messages from
alumni and friends, both at the
time of our daughter's accident
and over the holiday season. We
take this opportunity to express
our thanks and to wish each of
you a Happy New Year.
Richard D. Weigle
N.Y.C. ALUMNI
CHAPTER FORMED
IN THE NEW YORK AREA
Recently a number of alumni
in the New York City area decided
to establish a formal alumni ·chapter. After a number of organizational meetings, the following
interim officers were chosen:
Chairman
Francis Mason
Vice Chairman Lowell Shindler
Treasurer
Stewart Washburn
Registrars
Carolyn
Leeuwenburgh
Mary Wiseman
Secretary
Lovejoy Reeves
The following have volunteered to head and organize committees:
Newsletter
Barbara V ona
Seminars
Stephen Benedict
Special Events
Adam Pinsker
Student
Counseling
Michael Gold
Student Liaison Stewart Washburn
Also, the following Board of
Directors has been chosen:
Stephen Benedict '4 7
Tristram Campbell '47
Michael Gold '61
Alan Hoffman '49
Donald Kaplan '45
Carolyn Leeuwenburgh '55
Francis Mason '43
Adam Pinsker '52
Marvin Raeburn '51
Lovejoy Reeves '67
Lowell Shindler '64
Ronald' Silver '63
Steven Shore '68
Eugene Thaw '47
Gene Thornton '45
Barbara Kulaki Vona '64
Daniel Vona '67
Stewart Washburn '51
Mary Bittner Wiseman '58
A number of projects are
already underway. Carolyn Leeuwen burgh and Mary Wiseman are
putting together a registry of
alumni in the area that will not
only be useful to the Alumni Chapter but also to alumni moving in to
the area and to New Yorkers who
are students at the College.
Monthly seminars are planned,
beginning in February, at the New
York Studio School, located at
No. 8 West 8th Street.
In January, one of the teleVISion series, "Dialogue of the
Western World," will be shown to
alumni in the studio of Channel 13,
in New York City. The text for this
showing is Thucydides' "Melz"an
Conference." This is one of a series
of 15 one-hour television seminars
produced by the Maryland Center
for Public Broadcasting, now being
broadcast on Channels 6 7, 7 3 and
28 in Maryland.
Other cities where alumni have
expressed an interest in forming
alumni chapters are Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Information on the
·activities of these groups will be
published in future issues of The
College.
MARK VAN DOREN
(1894-1972)
St. John's College notes
with great sadness the death on
December 1Oth of its good
friend Mark Van Doren. Pulitizer
Prize-winning poet, critic, and
teacher at Columbia University
for 39 years, Mr. Van Doren was
a frequent lecturer at St. John's
during the early days of the New
Program. The College community extends deepest sympathy to Mrs. Van Doren and to
sons Charles '46 and John '47.
23
�The College
ALUMNI ACTIVITIES
1912
Among his many activities, Ph£lip L.
Alger this fall found time to direct a series
of lecture-discussions on "Ethics and the
Professions" at Union College.
1931
"Lou Rosenbush wins Maryland
Futurity," read a recent newspaper headline
in the Baltimore area. Certain that our
alumnus Louis Rosenbush, Jr., was not a
jockey, and doubtful that he had run in a
horse race, we thought perhaps he had
placed a lucky bet. But, no, Lou Rosenbush
did run, not the alumnus but his namesake,
a two-year-old owned by Rosenbush's friend
Nathan Cohen. How many alumni have
horses named after them?
1932
Richard F. Blaul, Annapolis insurance
man and a director of the Alumni Association, is the honorary chairman of the
Development Committee of Fairfield, the
first non-profit nursing home in Anne
Arundel County.
1936
WUliam N. Raz'righ, a native of Caroline
County (Md.}, since 1961 has been administrator of the Kent-Caroline Libraries.
1939
elected resident vice president, Baltimore
Service Office, Insurance Company of North
America. Ken has been with INA since the
mid-1930's.
Thomas L. MacNemar is head of the
Annapolis office of the Maryland State
Department of Employment Security.
1952
Adam Pinsker is currently the president of the Association of American Dance
Companies, and makes his home in New
York City.
Some sort of record was set this past
August, when Alvin Aronson graduated with
the summer senior class. Twenty years and
three months after his original class graduated, Al received his own degree. We know
that it was not easy for Al to become a
student again, and offer our most sincere
congratulations to him. After graduation;Al
left for Israel for an indefinite stay.
1960
1957
fohn Kinloch paid a brief visit to the
Alumni Office in late September; while here
he told us he received his Ph.D. degree in
mathematics last year frOm Vanderbilt University, and is now an associate professor of
mathematics at East Tennessee State College.
1959
Kenneth G. Bennett in November was
24
partner, Charlotte has formed the Annapolis
Counseling Service.
Hank Braun and his wife Mary Anne
(DeCamt'lUs) ;!58 live on Thompson Street in
Annapolis with Stephen, twelve, and Robin
nine.
Wz'llz'am R. and Carol (Pht'lUps) Tilles
were in from near-by Bowie, where they Jive
with their children David, Jenny, and Paul.
Bill has been with IBM for eleven years; his
work concerns use of computers in the
medical industry.
Peter and Pat Schenck live in Annapolis with John, age nine, and Sarah, age
seven. Peter is the psychologist at Henryton
State Hospital for the adult mentally retarded, and was recently made a member of
the newly~formed Annapolis Environmental
Commission. Pat, who received her master's
degree in elementary education from the
University of Chicago in 1970, teaches at
the Key School.
Homecoming brought together several
members of the class of 1959, and Patricz'a
(Garretson) Schenck passed around a notebook and collected the following:
Harvey Goldstein and wife Dale came
in from Miami where he practices law. They
issue a most sincere invitation to anyone
from the College to visit them.
Mary (Bittner) Wz'seman and husband
Charles were down from New York, where
Mary teaches philosophy at Brooklyn College. Charles, Mary, and her nine-year-old
daughter Emily live in Manhattan.
Charlotte King is the student counselor
at the College, and she and her daughter,
Rachel, make their home on campus. Charlotte was recently appointed assistant
director of the Anne Arundel County
Department of Social Services, and is
working specifically to make public housing
into livable, acceptable communities. Together with Henry D. Braun and a third
Capt. fohn f. Lane writes to President
Weigle that he is Chid of the Resource
Management Division in headquarters of the
Air Force Communications Service at
Richards·Gebaur Air Force Base in Missouri.
He is responsible for staff direction of the
Commrmications Computer Programming
Center and of the 2199th Computer Service
Squadron.
Dorothy Luttrell is working for her
master's degree in Learning Disabilities at
San Jose State, and lives in Mormtain View,
Cal.
Kenneth H. Thompson, Jr., associate
professor of political science at the University of Southern California, had a
unique political experience this past
spring. Having filed for Democratic nomination to Congress in the primaries,
he withdrew on doctor's advice after
getting the flu; it was too late to remove his name from the ballot, and he
won in a landslide a month after he
withdrew. (We wish we could bring this
account to a happy ending, but according to our reading of the California election results in November, Ken was not
elected to the Congress.)
1961
Eyvind C. Ronquist is teaching at
Sir George Williams University in Mon·
treal.
�January 1973
The Federal Trade Commission has
promoted Harrison ]. Sheppard to
deputy assistant executive director for
legal coordination. Just settled into a
Dr. A. Stevens RuMn is now an
Army Medical Corps captain, stationed
at the Kimpo Dispensary in Korea for
13 months.
1967
We understand that Alice G. Chalmers is a graduate student in biology at
the University of Georgia.
1968
new job in the State of Washington
within the past year, Harrison will
apparently soon return to Washington,
D.C. His principal duties will be- the formulation of programs of consumer protection and competition, and when these
are approved, to supervise their execution.
Mary (Ryce) Ham is a member of
the neWly-formed Annapolis Environmental Commission.
Ellen M. Luff, legal aid attorney in
Annapolis, wife of one-time College
artist-in-residence Eric Dennard, and
aspirant to political office, won a legal
battle this past summer to vote under
her maiden name. Ms. Luff successfully
contended that she did not have to register under her married name, and that
to do so would damage her professionally, politically, and psychologically
since she had been known as Ellen Luff
throughout her professional life.
1962
fohn F. Miller, writing in November
to Miss Strange, apologized for missing
Homecoming since he was job hunting,
trying to finish his master's thesis, and
teaching at both the University of Maryland and Montgomery Junior College.
1964
Linda Rice is now married to Christopher B. Schaufele; her husband is with
the mathematics department, University
of Georgia.
1966
Maxine Ann Marshall-Shapiro, her
husband, and three children live on a
farm in Mendocino County, Calif. They
intend to start their own school in the
spring.
Alison Karslake (SF) is studying
French at the Graduate School of the
University of Maryland, where she holds an
assistantship and teaches one undergraduate
course.
The November mail brought the first
"annual George Partlow letter," with the
news that George has finished his Jamaican
Peace Corps service, and is presently living
in Michigan. During his period of transition,
George is taking some courses -at the University at Flint. George also reports that
Charles Watson, soon to become an M.D.,
goes to London in February for special
work in tropical medicine; that Gzlbert
Renaut is in law school, as is Lee (Ret"chelderfer) Tyner.
Sally Rutsky is studying law at the
University· of Michigan.
Mt"chael S. Ryan is pursuing Arabic
studies at American University in Cairo,
UAR.
Amy (Hummel) Rarick writes that she
has become "a professional student": in
August she received her M.L.S. degree from
the University of Maryland, and is now a
first-year M.A. student in Canadian studies
and international economics at the Johns
Hopkins University School of Advanced
International Studies. Amy received both a
fellowship and a research assistantship from · 'c'(
SAIS. Amy also reports that Sarah Bell '67
has a fellowship and is a doctoral candidate
in linguistics at M.I.T.
1969
Michael Hodgett (SF) has completed a
tour of duty in Vietnam, and has accepted a
position as Chief Teller in the Santa Fe
National Bank.
Catherine (Allen) Wagner received her
M.A. degree in anthropology last June from
the University of Illinois; her thesis was on
the iconography of Peruvian Indian pottery. ;
Cathy has applied for a Kent Fellowship
from the Danforth Foundation to continue
her Andean studies. She also tells us that 4· ,._.
Alec Himwich '68 and she are in their third
year as teaching assistants in a physical
science course for non-science majors.
Lee McKusick (SF} graduated from
California State University at Los Angeles
last June with a bachelor's degree in
American studies. Lee would welcome
letters or visits from former classmates; 377
Crane Blvd., Los Angeles, CA. 90065.
1970
Patricia Ann Carey and Matthew A.
Frame ('73} were married August 9th in the
Church of St. John and St. Philip, The
Hague, Netherlands. They are making their
home in Annapolis while Matt completes his
senior year at the ~ollege. He, by the way, is
the son of James H. Frame '50 and the
nephew of Rogers G. Albrltton '45.
Brent McAdam (SF) writes that fohn
F. Emerson; now Brother John Houghton,
O.P., made his first vows as a Dominican
friar in September, and is stationed at St.
Albert's Priory in Oakland, Calif.
A brief note from fohn Dean infonns
us that Arthur Luse is teaching at a prep
school in up-state New York, a whopping
load of five courses! John himself anticipates publication of his first article, "The
Two Arguments of John Donne's 'Air and
Angels'," in the Fall '72 issue of Massachusett-s Studies in English.
]ames F. Scott (SF) writes that he is
now living, and working with retarded
children, in Syltholinsgade, a small town "at
the bottom of Denmark, where the ferry
leaves for Germany."
1971
Sheila Babbs (SF) is a Peace Corps
Volunteer teaching English to Senagalese in
Thies, West Africa.
Word has reached us that Alan Plutzz·ck
and Anna Lz"via Thorpe '73 are married,
although our informant did not know where
or when the event took place.
V. Mt"chael Vt"ctoroff is now a freshman
at Baylor College of Medicine at the Texas
Medical Center in Houston. Last year Mike
worked on the Citizens Task Force for
Mental Health in Ohio, apparently a most
rewarding experience.
1972
Dana E. Netherton is a Naval officer
candidate at Newport, R.I., and anticipates
being commissioned in February.
Jean K. Carr is a graduate fellow in
biology at Mount Holyoke College.
Candace G. Lindo is working as an
executive secretary and living in Alexandria,
Va.
It appears that Martha E. Belt and
Donald E. Massell '70 are now man and wife
and arc living in Chico, Calif.
1
1903- Edgar C. Wrede, Brooklyn,
N.Y., October 19, 1972.
.9 1909 - Harold S. Cutler, Weston,
Mass., August 29, 1972.
'"---1914 - S. Maurice Phillips, Drexel
Hill, Pa.,_ ~.eptember 10, 1972.
i ").9'22 The Rev. William R.
Hofuey, Centreville, Md., November 22,
1972.
1,.~_,22·"'- C. Edwin Cockey, Queenstown\ Md~ctober 22, 1972.
t.l-~- Capt. Henry B. MacMannis,
Peter~~~""'Va., August 14, 1972.
J)PZ4 - Jesse E. Smith, Augusta,
Me.
~Dr. James K. Insley, Baltimore, Md., October 6, 1972.
19~- John K. Lucas, Kill Devil
Hills, N.C., September 20, 1972.
~'~
�Photo Credlts: Front and back cover;,, Eugene Jorgov.
Page 1, Encyclopedia of World Art, Vol. 3 (McGraw-Hill,
1959). Page 18, Charles Post. Page 21, Sheldon C.
Heitner. Page 22, Sheldon C. Heitner, Thomas Parran, Jr.
Page 23, Charles Post. Page 24, Cal and Don Young.
The College
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
Second-class postage paid at
Annapolis, Maryland, and at
additional mailing offices.
�
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THE COLLEGE
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
Santa Fe, New Mexico
\
April, 1973
�The Liberty Tree
THE COLLEGE
Editor: Robert L. Spaeth
Alumni Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr.
Design & Production: John Randolph Campbell
Editorial Advisory Board: Michael W. Ham, Paul D. New·
land, Barbara Brunner Oosterhout, '55, E. Malcolm Wyatt.
The College is published by the Development Office of St.
John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. Richard D. Weigle,
President. Paul D. Newland, Provost.
Published four times a year, in January, April, July and
October. Second Class postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland,
and at other mailing places.
IN THE APRIL ISSUE:
What is the Ouest ion? by Elliott Zuckerman . . . . . . . . . .
In Memory of Mark Van Doren, by William A. Darkey . .
An Interview with Robert Bart, by Robert L. Spaeth . . .
A St. Johnnie in the Job Market, by Grace Dawson '65 ..
Black Mountain, by Michael W. Ham ................
Sculpture by Burton Blistein ......................
Conversations with Graduate Institute
Alumni, by Goeffrey Comber ...................
News on the Campuses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . . .
Alumni Activities ..............................
1
3
4
10
11
12
14
19
22
ON THE COVER: "Gallery Ill" is the title of the work of
sculpture shown on the cover. The sculptor is Burton
Blistein, a first-year Tutor and Artist-in-Residence on the
Annapolis campus. The College features other photographs of
Mr. Blistein's work on pages 12 and 13 of this issue.
VOL. XXV
April 1973
NO.1
Tina Saddy, 75, a sophomore on the Annapolis campus
The Tower Building, on the Santa Fe campus
�WHAT IS THE QUESTION?
Before I came to St. John's College, and well
before I came to the Graduate Institute, I used to
direct a summer camp. It was an international camp,
and there were young men from many different
countries. Each boy was required to do what was
called a Project - to make something that would be
of use to the campers of the future. One summer
there was a boy of sixteen from what was then East
Pakistan. His quiet and unaccountable behavior
displayed the characteristics of that part of the world
which, in those days of relative innocence, we still
thought of as the Mysterious East. For his project he
decided that we needed a place to put the various
objects that the other boys had carelessly left behind
or mislaid on the grounds of the camp. So he built a
Lost and Found Box. He got a large orange crate,
which was already divided into two compartments of
equal size. On one side he put a sign which read
"Lost." The other side he labelled "Found."
Since he placed the box outside the window of
my office, I was able to observe the campers who
made use of the completed Project. A boy would
come up to it holding a book, or a fountain pen, or a
shoe, and stand there trying to decide which half of
the box it belonged in. I enjoyed watching the signs
of their Hegelian deliberation. I liked the effect of
that built-in perplexity partly because I myself am
naturally of two minds about almost everything. At
the same time I am capable of the most categorical
pronouncements, of the sort that people are
prompted to call "opinionated" - a term that ought
to be reserved for the utterer and not for the remark
itself. When the division has been built in, one must,
after all, eventually place the pen or the shoe in one
or another section of the orange crate.
Less personal was the illustration of what happens
when correlative words are artificially isolated.
Consider, for example, what happens in any classroom. Who are the teachers and who the students?
When we give or take tests, I suppose the distinction
is the simplest: the teacher is the one who asks the
questions for which he presumably has the answer,
and the student is the one who hopes he can
remember which answer it is supposed to be. But
Elliott Zuckerman, a Tutor in Annapolis since 1961, waS
Director of The Graduate Institute from 1968 to 1970. He
is now Acting Dean at Annapolis. The above address was
delivered at the Institute's commencement in August, 1972.
I ELLIOTT ZUCKERMAN
apart from that technical situation, it's hard to tell
who's really doing what, for there is a constant
reversal of roles. A child asks questions for which we
have no idea of the answer. And the professor, when
he is not merely professing, can do the same thing.
Any good teacher and any good student can multiply
the examples. One wonders, of course, whether the
very distinction between Question and Answer isn't
rather like the distinction between Lost and Foundwhether they don't belong in the same undivided
orange crate. "What is the answer?" Gertrude Stein is
supposed to have chosen as, we are told, her splendidly characteristic dying Question. When no answer
came, she· laughed and supplied it herself. "Then,"
she said, "what is the question?"
At St. John's College we do everything possible to
erase the sharp distinction between Teachers and
Students. We tell everyone who asks about us, and
even those who don't ask, that the Tutors are students
and the students teach. The coffee shop usually displays the two sorts helping each other. In the
Graduate Institute the ambiguity is happily compounded: not only are the teachers students by
inclination, but most of the students are, by
profession, teachers. Better still, we try to bypass the
distinction by asserting that the books are the
teachers. But that places us before the divided box of
the next distinction. Are· the books asking or
answering? In the seminar, where we start out with a
.question, ought we to end up with an answer? And
when we do find ourselves with an answer, surely the
answer ought to pose a question.
Since this is a commencement speech, I have an
excuse for having fallen into one of the refrains of
our indigenous homily. But the paradoxes sound
bromidic enough to tempt me to the opinion that
they ought henceforth to be uttered sparingly.
Perhaps they ought to be reserved for that rarest of
occasions, a profitable discussion. It seems to have
become too easy, for example, to speak the truth
about the importance of finding a question in every
answer. It may even have become too easy, in a superficial way, to practice that discovery. The reader or
the listener who accepts everything he is told is, of
course, discouraging: one sees in him the readiness
finally to choose an authority and adopt a party line.
But I wonder whether we oughtn't to be equally
suspicious of those people who automatically
question everything. Surely they are annoying in
1
�seminar, those participants who can be predicted to
counter every assertion with a Why, and ask about
every word you use "What do you mean?" One
wonders whether in the course of their immediate
and invariable questioning they have learned anything
important about Questions - that there are, for
example, really very few of them, and that they are
rarely seen in anything like their full force.
Because they are few, they must recur at vertically aligned stages of what may be considered a kind
of expanding spiral. My fancy image is meant to refer
to an experience I'll try to describe. At the terminus
of a rare discussion one can find oneself asking a
question which one remembers having asked before.
But this time it seems to have greater force: this time
it is asked more deeply, or more elevatedly. You see
its import in Kodachrome, whereas it had once been
merely in black and white. Or you see it now in the
sharp contrasts of black and white, whereas before it
had had the imitation gloss of glorious technicolor.
You recognize that what had seemed to be a seeing
had been vague and fleeting, and this suggests
analogously that whatever clarity and permanence the
question now seems to have will seem shadowy in the
light of some future terminus of thoughtfulness.
"Why is there not nothing?" There is one of the
great terminal questions, a question that can provide
the impetus for a further turn of the spiral. If we
don't know that this is so, we are told so on good
authority. Yet I think the question sounded silly just
now - not just awkward, in its oddly necessary
negative phrasing, but feeble in the context of here
and now. Anyway I hope that was how it sounded.
For I had no business saying it, except to illustrate
the very point that I had no business saying it. The
question can mean something only at the end of a
series of difficult thoughts - an end which is, as I
have suggested, also a beginning. It should have no
place outside of a discussion, or apart from one's
most valuable deliberations. It certainly has no place
in a speech, when one can at best half-attend to what
one person half-professes. Furthermore, even if the
context had been one of suitable thoughtfulness, I
had maimed the question before I uttered it; for I had
written it down.
Our society - particularly that part of it which is
so disconcertingly called intellectual - has somehow
heard that questioning is a good thing, without
recognizing that what is valuable has to be rare and
difficult. As a consequence we constantly come upon
parodies of the thoughtful life. We are beset by interviewers who ask questions, and experts who answer
them. But we also question anyone at all about
anything at all, as though we had come to believe that
2
there is virtue not only in the quantified tabulation of
answers and indecis:ons, but in the very activity of
asking questions. In and for itself we like the variety
of the answers - so much so that for every assertion
we are required to seek out an "opposing view." Our
ideal of the reasonable life is the confrontation of
conflicting opinions - an endless panel discussion in
which people from all walks of life engage in the
empty activity of exchanging ideas without ever
having had any. It is an extended Symposium at
which nothing is offered to drink. If someone knows
how to do something, we don't simply ask him how
he does it; we ask him, as though his know-how
contained a nest of answered questions, for his
"methodology." Better still, we ask him for his
"philosophy" - his philosophy of film-making, or of
hair-dressing, or of camp directing. We even ask
people indiscriminately to tell us of that special grasp
of the world and their fellow men that ought to be
the exclusive province of the chap whom one finds
standing next to one at a bar: we ask them for their
Philosophy of Life. One wishes, indeed, that we could
learn to be openly trivial - for somewhere in the
etymology of triviality there is some suggestion of the
attention to the meanings of words.
Despite the superficial resemblances, our pieties
at St. John's are worthier than the ones I have just
described. Yet I suggest again (and in conclusion this
time) that the life of questioning, of curiosity, of
wonder, is not so easily to be entered into as even our
pieties would lead us to believe. I am even suggesting
that for most of us there is no such life - that
wonder occurs within a life, in moments that are
hardly won. And there can be hardness in what
follows those moments. The implications of one's
deepest questions may be repellant. For what passes
for an answer may require a commitment or a faith or
a series of hinged conclusions that could rock the
order of a hitherto hidden foundation of action. My
Bengali camper, incidentally, gave us one other
example of his handicraft. It was what at the time we
could only deduce to be an inflammable ashtray. He
had taken half the shell of a coconut, and covered it
with a kind of varnish. When one put one's cigarette
near it, the varnish gave off a sudden blue flame. This
was not a Project. He made it especially for me, and
presented it to me at the end of the summer, during
the closing ceremonies, as a kind of graduation gift.
For a long time I thought it was his hint to me that I
should give up smoking. But I know now that the
true excellence of his handicraft consisted in his
talent for illustrating the more questionable aspects
of what one would someday, to one's great surprise,
find oneself saying in speeches. 1111
�In Memory of Mark Van Doren
(1894-1972)
William A. Darkey
Every time someone dies the whole world
changes. We don't always know this and when we
don't it is because we do not, or cannot, remember
the one who has died. I have called this meeting
today because it is fitting that we interrupt the study
and the labor of the College for a time to remember
Mark Van Doren, who died last Sunday at the age of
seventy-eight. His life has in part made our world, and
his death has changed it.
In a formal way it is right that we should come
together to honor his memory, because he was a
member of the new St. John's from the times before
it began. During important years he was a member of
our Board of Visitors and Governors. For two
decades he was a regular lecturer in the College in
Annapolis and in this way a true teaching member of
this Faculty. He lectured to us on poetry and poets,
and through his teaching many of us learned how to
think about poetry and to love it. He was last on this
campus in Santa Fe io August, 1971, when he
delivered an address to us - to you -- In Praise of a
World That May Not Last. Your world. He praised it
to you and for you.
Not many of you knew him personally. And yet
you do know him through his poetry, I hope, and
also through his book, Liberal Education, which has
for three decades led students to St. John's by
showing them a vision of what this college tries to be.
Many of you are here now because of him.
All of this is formal. But it is not what I should
like to remember with you today. Rather, I should
like to remember with you some things you do not or
may not have thought about Mr. Van Doren. Institutions at their best must be personal because persons
make them up, and it seems to me we should be
personal about Mr. Van Doren.
I knew Mark Van Doren from the time I was a
very young student. The first time I heard him lecture
- I was a freshman - I thought to myself something
like, "This is a real puet." That was the judgment of a
very green and a very callow boy. But I was not
William A. Darkey is Dean of the College in Santa Fe. He
has been a Tutor since 1949. The above remarks were
delivered at a College meeting in Santa Fe on December 13,
1972.
wrong. The privilege of knowing and loving him for
the next thirty-five years, at St. John's, at Columbia
University, and afterwards has been an essential part
of my education, the happiest part, I think.
He was essentially a poet and a very fine one. I
tend to think of him as Vergilian, though Vergil was
not one of the poets he admired most greatly. His
own prime poets, I think, were Shakespeare, Homer,
Dante, and the poets of the Old Testament. But
Shakespeare's plays and the Bible were the poetry he
loved best.
While he was above all a poet, he was also a
scholar, a critic and a great teacher. And, it should bt
added, a sophisticated man of the world and a good
citizen of it.
In him these roles were not separate, as they need
not be. We should remember this and see itdemonstrated in him as a permanent possibility. They were
io fact functions of his role as poet.
As a scholar he was meticulous and learned,
because detail fascinated him - detail of the actual
surface of things the way they are. And he loved
words; their sound; their music together; their history
- I remember conversations interrupted at intervals
by his diving for the dictionary; all the richness of
words; their precision. These virtues of the poet are
the essential equipment of the scholar.
As a scholar he had read and remembered everything, but he hated footnotes and the rest of the
pompous apparatus. To the unwary or ignorant
reader it may appear that he wrote off the top of his
head. A more sober and responsible judgment reveals
how much learning he had digested and gracefully
returned on his page.
His view of the critic's function was again that of
the poet. His last book of criticism, whose prose style
is the equal of any written in this century, is entitled
The Happy Critic, and that says it all. He deeply felt
that the business of the critic, like that of the poet, is
to praise what is excel! en t, beautiful, and wonderful.
He hated the perpetual carping of critics who can find
nothing good, nothing worth their while to praise,
and so write destructively. When there were no new
books to praise, he reread the same old ones, and
praised them. The same old ones: Homer, Chaucer,
Cervantes, Shakespeare.
(~ontinued
on page 18)
3
�AN INTERVIEW WITH
ROBERT BART
By ROBERT L. SPAETH
ROBERT SPAETH: Mr. Bart, you have been teaching at St. John's for about twenty-five years. What
have you learned about teaching during those years?
ROBERT BART: I don't know whether I've really
learned anything about teaching - I've just been
teaching. I think each teacher has to teach his own
way. When I first came to the College I audited a
great many classes. I went to John Kieffer's Greek
tutorial, and Ernst Abramson's mathematics tutorial,
classes of Winfree Smith and Mr. Klein. I guess the
first thing I learned was that everybody teaches
differently and I couldn't imitate anybody else. But I
learned something from watching other people teach.
I think I don't quite know what it is you learn. You
learn how different they are, and you stretch yourself
in directions you wouldn't have tried, but it certainly
doesn't come out anything like the same way.
SPAETH: When you came to St. John's, did you
think that you were prepared to be a teacher?
BART: I think the thing about the College that's
different from elsewhere is really that we don't think
of teaching and learning as entirely separated. When I
was in college the teachers were experts and were
telling us what they knew, and we were listening to
them and taking notes, of course, on what they said;
but here, where the teaching and learning are pretty
much the same kind of thing, I'm not sure that I've
got them completely separate in my mind. I was
excited about what I was learning and when I found
something out, I was eager to share it with the
students and find out what they made of it. And of
course they were studying the same things and I was
very interested to find out what they had seen in the
things that I was reading. So it's just not clear to me
that teaching and learning are separate here. Maybe
that's why we have conversations rather than lectures.
SPAETH: Have teaching and learning continued to
be mixed for you over the years?
BART: Certainly, but with different consequences
than I realized. I remember some years ago I was in a
4
seminar with Sam Brown and he said that I was
talking way over the students' heads all the time. I
suppose that was because I always tried to talk with
them about the very things that I was learning. I
think that can be a fault all right. It's not merely a
question of expecting too much; rather, it's not
finding out what their questions are. Nonetheless I do
think it is pretty essential to the kind of teaching that
we're doing that the very discoveries you're making
can somehow be shared with the students. When
we're reading for our classes I think we're mostly not
reading in a narrow or specialized way; it seems to me
we're always looking for the fundamental questions
and problems which we all share, beginners included.
SPAETH: Do you think that there was some truth to
the statement that you were over the heads of the
students? If you do, do you recall consciously
correcting yourself in certain ways?
BART: Well, only in the directions I've tried to
suggest, because I do think if we are to have a genuine
conversation, everybody in it must have some kind of
equality. Now, I'm not their age and I've studied a lot
that they have never studied, but if I come into the
conversation as somebody on a totally different level,
it seems to me it's not going to make for a very good
RobertS. Bart has been a Tutor in Annapolis since 1946. He
was interviewed by the editor of THE COLLEGE in the spring
of 1972.
�discussion. Of course, when it's a technical matter,
say, if you're teaching mathematics or something
specific in a language, why it's obvious that you know
a lot that they don't know. But I think in all of our
classes we're always remembering that there are
questions that we all have completely in common and
that the technical things are in some sense for the
sake of that. I've noticed it in your classes, Mr.
Spaeth. You know a lot of lab and math, and yet I've
found when the class really gets into conversation in some way you're right there with them. You may
be making more out of the conversation than they
do. You may see more than what gets said, but I
don't think it's the case that you have the answers
and they don't. It seems to me it would destroy our
classes, if in the important things somebody thought
he'd got the answers.
SPAETH: Have you learned something new from
your students each year?
BART: I think so, and almost in each class. In fact I
have the feeling that it isn't a good class if I haven't
learned something. That's the joke about the College,
.it seems to me. The students pay, but it seems to me
that it's the faculty that learns the most in almost
every hour. That seems to me what keeps us going.
Otherwise, we couldn't go over the same material the
way we do. I think the classes would go dead. By the
way, that has happened to me sometimes, and then I
think it is time for me to teach another subject
matter. Sometimes I think maybe one just can't teach
in St. John's forever and ever. But I always get a kind
of renewed hope about it.
SPAETH: I would be interested in hearing you
compare the experience of leading a seminar for the
first time with leading one for the fifth or sixth time.
I believe you have taught at least one seminar that
many times.
BART: Yes, I guess I've taught the freshman seminar
at least that many times - probably more.
SPAETH: Can you compare the experiences?
BART: I think the difference for me has been that
the first time, the danger is that what I am just
discovering for myself is very much uppermost in my
mind. I'm very excited about some things which I
have seen, and I am much more inclined to force the
conversation in my Own direction. On the other hand,
I have a much fresher enthusiasm sometimes than
when I come back to it. I'm more ready to listen, I
think, when I come back to it a second and third
time, much more ready to see what the students are
making out of it. But it isn't quite that simple. It
seems to me most of the time when I am re·reading a
book for seminar, I discover that I haven't read the
book very well the time before. This time I think I
really see what it is saying. Then, of course, the .third
time and the fourth time I still have the same experi·
ence. Nevertheless, it does happen to me when I've
taught a class a number of times, I begin to get a
certain expectation of what the class can do. If
you've taught freshman seminar a good many years
there are a number of themes in Plato, Aristotle, the
tragedies, the histories, that you feel very strongly
ought to get discussed, not necessarily this evening or
that, but somewhere along the line.
SPAETH: Are you saying that, for example, a
Platonic dialogue itself is fresh enough to you each
time so that you don't feel as though you're merely
going over it again?
BART: I would want to subscribe to that assertion
not merely as an ideal, but as a. description of our
common experience. Sometimes, of course, I find
that under the amount of work that I have to do I
don't put much time (or attention and thought) into
re-reading a given seminar text. Nevertheless, it often
goes very well for the students. I just sit back and let
them help me discover things and I don't have any
definite direction in mind. But I guess the main thing
that I would want to stress is that it seems to me a
book that doesn't present discoveries and real
insights, no matter how often you read it, probably
doesn't belong on our list.
SPAETH: You spoke about listening. Do you think
that listening becomes easier as you get more experi·
ence as a tutor or does it go the other way?
BART: I can see how it would go the other way. I
think I probably would have to admit I get increasingly impatient with listening to conventional
opinions. I think the reason it sometimes is said I
drive the seminar too hard is that there are a lot of
obvious things that don't seem to me very well worth
saying, and I am probably impatient with these. But I
would insist for all that, that I just like to hear what
the students have to say of their own. If it weren't for
that I don't think I would want to teach here. I really
want to know what they are making out of the book.
Otherwise, I've only got myself and the book, and all
the books we read are too hard for me to understand
alone. I think I listen more when I have a certain
familiarity with the book. I find it is fairly easy for
me to just sit for an hour and watch the conversation
go on. I try to see how the different elements in the
conversation relate to the book. On the other hand,
when I've just read something for the first time, like
the Supreme Court cases we've been doing the last
two years - some of which I'd never read before I'm just bursting with things I want to say and it is
much harder for me to do the listening iob. But my
students seem to enjoy it when I just get right into
5
�the discussion like one of them and bring my own
confusion and false starts.
SPAETH: These conversations that you've had and
enjoyed in seminar have been, we must remember,
with persons mostly around 20. Do you think that
your students have been, in any sense, too young for
these conversations, or for these books?
BART: That's a very, very difficult question and I
think it is what was being suggested to me by Sam
Brown long ago, that I didn't remember how young
they were. But I think there is a good deal of truth in
what Plato has Socrates suggest in the dialogues, that
the conversation itself carries you along. I think it is
probably true that these young people find themselves saying things that they would perhaps never say
if the conversation wasn't gradually leading them
there. There may be an enormous gap between what
they are led to say by the conversation and they're
really acting on what they've been saying. A conversation often has a certain independence of the age of
the participant. On the other haiid, every now and
then it's just shocking how little re.af:<;xperience they
have. In moral questions they are us!l.ally extremely
narrow and have very, very hard and fast rules one
way or another about how one should behave. In our
seminars on works of literature I feel the greatest
difference between their age and mine.
SPAETH: Does it affect your teaching that the
students have a great length of life in front of them?
That is, do you have certain expectations for them or
do you just simply enter into the conversation for its
own sake and believe that that's quite adequate for
the day?
BART: I think the latter situation inevitably prevails
(for teachers and students - certainly) in a college
like this. We do simply enjoy what we're doing
enormously. I think that that experience of enjoying
study, of enjoying working together, making
discoveries together, is so valuable that I'm not
surprised that while we're engaged in it that's what
we think of. But of course insofar as the faculty is
responsible for making this curriculum and have a
certain intention about it, the other questions are
always present. But I do think we always have to
remember that whatever we plan in a curriculum we
are not going to get out of it any predetermined
results. We are wrong to be too easily disappointed if
a student hasn't gotten some ideas we feel every St.
John's student ought to get. I'm beginning to settle
for very, very simple things that seem to me to be of
the greatest importance - above all that they look
very closely at the terms of any conversation, of anything that they have read or heard spoken; that they
understand that it is built out of words, and all the
6
key words themselves are difficult and demanding so
that they won't let slipshod language go by them
without challenging it. I don't mean to make them
little sophists to challenge everything, but they
should be prepared to ask what it is that the speaker
is meaning by his major terms. And one other thingthat they believe fully in the worth of the conversation. I can't tell how much more I can really count on
that the curriculum will produce for them. Of course,
I have my secret desire - not very secret, it comes
out in my labs - that they would know a little more
about what science is and what it isn't. We are in a
marvelous time in the history of the world, it seems
to me, a time to see the tremendous edifice that
science has produced and yet to have all the most
interesting questions about what kind of thing that is.
SPAETH: Could I ask about your own relationship
with the laboratory program? I believe it is an area in
which you have become a good deal more active in
recent )fears. Have you become more interested in
science?
BART: That is a myth. People like to make myths
about people. No - it's perfectly true that during
most of the years that you've been here I haven't had
much chance to work in the lab. The first ten years I
was here, roughly, I did quite a lot of work with lab.
It was all entirely new to me. I had been in situations
in school and college where the curriculum required
science of the students, but I was always ingenious
enough to get myself exempted from it, so I never
studied any laboratory science of any sort whatsoever. I took the math and science all on faith when I
came here. I thought if Mr. Barr and Mr. Buchanan
talked so wonderfully about everything I did know, I
just had to take all the talk about science on their
word. And the first year I followed the freshman lab,
cut up my cat like everyone else, and weighed my
baros. I was not much older than most of the
students and I learned a lot of lab that way. By an
odd accident I think I never really taught the freshman lab. The curriculum has changed so much and so
many times it's hard to name in current terms what it
was that I taught years ago. Half of what we now do
in the freshman lab I did teach in a sophomore lab chemistry and optics, that is, at9._ms and geometrical
optics, with some wave theory \J;l:j_it. I taught that a
couple of times in my early years in the College. By
the way, with subject matters such as lab that I did
not grow up with, I have found that the limitations
on my own background have made it harder for me
to teach them when I have other pressures, such as
committee work. So there was, as you implied, a big
hiatus during which I wasn't teaching lab. (By the
way, over all these years I have kept on attending labs
�as the curriculum changed.) Of course, as you too
have experienced, my knowledge of certain other
things in the curriculum has kept me teaching them
more often than I might have chosen to do. It has led
to some of the things we were talking of earlier - my
growing stale in teaching a class four or five times in
sequence.
SPAETH: Since you have experience in the labora·
tory, the language tutorials, the mathematics
tutorials, and certainly the seminars, I'd like to get
down to the details of what sorts of things go on in
the classroom. Is what happens in a tutorial quite
different from a seminar or a laboratory?
BART: Yes, although I think perhaps in the language
tutorial the distinction from the seminar is not as
clear. I think it's easiest to start talking of a math
class and then try to arrange the others in a scale or
some kind of grouping around it. In a math class it's
perfectly cleaT just what we have studied and pre·
pared and what the main business of the hour must
be. We go over that material and see that we have
understood it on a fairly straightforward level so that
we can demonstrate it. Ideally the student does all
that, but if no one can I don't see how the teacher
can avoid simply instructing the students in that
subject matter. On a given day one might just push
the thing aside because people weren't prepared; but
if the material is presenting too much difficulty, then
it seems to me that there is no alternative. Of course,
we usually try to avoid that by giving the students
materials that they can present. But we are not
uniformly successful in bringing that about. Now,
when it comes to the seminar, perhaps at the other
end of a scale, it is clear that we don't presume to
instruct, because the questions we are asking of the
books are usually not questions about which instruction is possible. With the language tutonal the biggest
single difficulty is the question of its function. Is it a
baby seminar? Is it instruction in language? Or is it
some kind of closer and more reflective working over
of material? I have had all kinds of language classes
and I think I don't know myself what kind we should
say is the paradigm. I think in the math tutorial the
paradigm should remain the demonstration that the
· student performs, prepares and performs, even
though different texts may bring the teacher into it
more and more heavily, to press points far beyond
what was actually given in the demonstration. By
contract, in the tutorial - for example in the Junior
year - I think it is wonderful that we read Phedre.
There's so much demonstration in the laboratory, so
much demonstration in the mathematics, so much
strict argumentation in the seminar, it seems to me
highly desirable that the language tutorial should be
as far away from that kind of thing as possible.
SPAETH: I would like to ask a question about just
part of that. You referred to the mathematics tutorial
as having phases where the material can be quite
difficult and where a student or the group of students
in the tutorial as a whole would not be able simply to
demonstrate the theorems or whatever might be in
the books - that in those very different areas the
tUtor then must be more of an active instructor. Now
I've found in my teaching of mathematics here that
one of the most difficult books in the program is
Newton's Principia. I know that you have often
taught that book. A certain time after you came to
St. John's you must have run into the reading of
Newton's Principia for the first time in your life. I did
too and I'd like to ask, how did you attempt to
master that book when perhaps you knew already
that it would be extremely difficult for the students?
BART: Oh, I found that out right away, because I've
attended most of the classes of the College in one
form or another over the years I've been here, and I
thought-of course that the best way to prepare myself
to teach Newton was to attend a class in Newton.
And I did attend a class in Newton, but the Tutor fell
seriously ill and there we were, the students and
myself, none of us who had ever seen the book
before, trying to talk about Newton's first Lemma. I
should like to say for the College, "Well, it was
marvelous what we made out of it," but to tell you
the honest truth, we made nothing whatsoever out of
it and we talked and we talked and we talked. None
of us knew any calculus - none of us really knew any
physics - and none of it made any sense to us. That,
I guess, is about the bottom level of what can happen
when you start out. I was struck right away by the
fact that the solution to that problem that was then
offered was for the Tutor really to tell the students
for a very long while exactly what to make out of
these Lemmas. That is always unsatisfactory, because
you can't say exactly what's to be made out of them.
In my experience, you have to present a point of view
about them and then try to get the students to talk
about it. There would be a sentence of text to
prepare and the class would last for an hour on that
sentence. I followed several Junior tutorials and
gradually came to the conviction that we should put
more of these little lectures of the faculty down on
paper. The manual I put together is mostly composed
of that sort of thing - so the student could prepare
more on his own. I think the greatest thing we have
to fear in the College - that any teacher has to fear is passivity on the student's part.
SPAETH: Was there a certain knowledge of
Newton's text present on the faculty from which you
7
�could learn or was it necessary for you simply to dig
into that book yourself, on your own, to understand
what's there? It is a very difficult book ...
BART: It is an enormously difficult book and I
don't pretend to understand very many of the pages
that I have worked over. There are lots of them I
haven't looked at at all. Yes, I think we had the good
fortune to have a few people on the faculty who had
studied it and understood something about it and had
worked together on it. I wasn't here in the earliest
years, but I know in those years, certainly around
Ptolemy and, I imagine, around Newton, several of
the really competent members of the faculty like
yourself who knew some math and physics, maybe
some history of science, were just struggling to read
that book, and began to put together some very clear
understandings with the help of a very few materials
that existed then in the form of commentary. And, of
course, we floundered quite a lot. I think maybe even
lots of things that we tried to instruct our students in
were false, or at least unnecessary and irrelevant. But
I am· afraid in a venture like the one we are engaged in
:: it's probably very hard to avoid actually saying in
:·:class, "This text means so and so," and then finding
., out five years later that it really doesn't mean so and
·so at all.
·SPAETH: Are there experts on Newton's P,-incipia
that you have turned to outside of the faculty commentaries and so forth?
BART: At the time that I was doing most of my
work on Newton I was not aware of many. There has
been an enormous amount of activity in the study of
Newton in the last 10 or 15 years - or at least I have
become· aware of that activity in the last 1 0 or 15
years. There is a good deal more to be studied now. I
still notice among most authors in these matters a
great reluctance to give a running commentary that
will address itself - in the manner, say, of a
commentary on Shakespeare - to every difficulty
that turns up for the ordinary reader. Such a
commentary was prepared in the eighteenth century
using pretty dubious mathematical techniques. We
have all gotten a lot of help from it nevertheless.
SPAETH: Have the students made a success of
reading Newton here?
BART: I think many tutorials as tutorials have been
successful. But I think it is safe to say that there are
many students who don't get vary far with Newton's
argument precisely because the individual propositions can be very, very difficult, particularly the ones
that conclude the argument. I think, without meaning
to praise the manual (which I'd love to d'o without),
that it has helped many students to grapple with the
text fairly successfully.
8
SPAETH: I've heard comments from students and
some Tutors that there is something wrong with the
use of a manual accompanying a text. I think I've
heard that more in Santa Fe than in Annapolis. Do
you think there's something to that opinion?
BART: Yes, I think it is a very sound opinion in
principle and I am completely in sympathy with it.
Those of us who have taken to writing or using
manuals should think very seriously about our
reading texts which seem to require them. But I
wonder if one really does make very much out of
Newton without something like that. The first thing
that has to be said is that Newton's book was not
written for people who know almost no mathematics,
and our students know almost no mathematics.
Second of all, as far as I can make out from the
reading of it, either he was careless or he maliciously
hid a good deal of what he was doing, or both. It is an
extraordinarily difficult book. I regret the apparent
need of a manual, but the actual alternative here was
for a teacher to lecture, informally, but still to
lecture, often for weeks on end. I think that's worse.
SPAETH: Well, do you think that this has a lesson
here - that we must be careful about choosing texts
and that perhaps we should learn to avoid those that
were not written to be read by people of our capabili·
ties and our students' capabilities? I'm thinking not
only of Newton, but in the senior mathematics we
regularly read Einstein's 1905 paper on special
relativity. Certainly that was not written for undergraduates, but yet it is attractive because it is so
fundamental and concise. Some years ago we didn't
read that paper; now we're trying to. Another
example - in the senior laboratory we try to read a
paper on wave mechanics by Schroedinger. That
paper, I believe, is even more difficult to understand
on its o~n terms than Einstein's. Do you think we
might be getting off the right road here?
BART: I just don't know what the answer is. Let me
name one or two things that I would exclude from
that approach, A lot of people say that the later
dialogues of Plato are too difficult. But we all seem to
stretch very, very much when we are given things to
read that are beyond what we are prepared for. When
it comes to certain kinds of mathematical works I feel
somewhat different. There is a specific preparation
for them. Often, our Juniors and Seniors do not have 1
and are unable to get it. I have not had the experience
either of doing the Schroedinger or the Einstein
papers with the students. I hear a great deal of
complaint about our doing them, despair even. I
would guess, to tell you the truth, that we may be in
a situation we were in with respect to the Newtongroping, trying to find out how to use them. I would
�be very reluctant to give up papers that have the
character you're describing, that is to say, that are
fundamental and sweeping, as is the Newton. On the
other hand, I don't enjoy conducting classes where
gradually I am the only person to understand, or
where perhaps there are even three other people, or
four, but the vast majority of the students cannot
follow the discussion at all. I think that's simply
wrong and I believe we do do a certain amount of
that in the laboratory. I think it accounts for the
irritation of some students, and the frustration, in the
laboratory.
SPAETH: I believe you and I agree that there are
papers, books, documents that simply are not
appropriate at all pedagogically. You and I were in a
study group a few years ago on the origins of the
calculus and we read an article by Leibnitz in which a
great deal of the calculus we know was contained
somehow, but I think we all, at least you and I for
sure, had the feeling that if a person came to that text
without a fairly extensive knowledge of the calculus,
he would never get anything from it.
BART: Well, Mr. Stephenson put those materials
together and I haven't had a chance yet to study what
he has done. In general I had the reaction that you
describe and was confident that it would be entirely
up to the teacher to bring out of those materials their
importance - it's in no way accessible to the reader
who doesn't possess the calculus. So as a way to teach
the calculus it seems to me certainly not very
economical. But I think a valid criticism of manuals ,
and of textbooks (of which we use quite a few) is
that the student is not invited to make the same kind
of demand on himself as in reading tough original
texts; he expects to be led by the hand and loses the
opportunity to make discoveries for himself. Ill
The McKeldin Planetarium, on the Annapolis campus
9
�GRACE DAWSON, '65
A St. Johnnie
Grace Dawson,
1n the
ne9 Logerfo, came to St. John's in Annapolis
in 1961 from Long Island. The Urban Institute recently
published 0 The Fiscal Impact of Residential and Commercial
Development, nco-authored by Mrs. Dawson and Thomas
Muller.
Nearly eight years after leaving St. John's with a
degree in one hand, and in the other, a stack of slightly
used Great Books, I am happy to report that I am
pursuing a career which enables me to draw liberally
upon both - and make a reasonable living too. This
fortuitous situation occurred after spending the first
three or four years after graduation discovering for
myself that I, as many St. John's graduates, was ill-
10
Job Market
suited to most traditionally-defined occupations.
Between 1965 and 1969 I held a variety of jobs,
ranging from technical writer and editorial assistant
to "glorified" secretary. Having entered the job
market in the midst of the Great Society boom years
in Washington, D. C. (where I have made my home
since leaving third-floor Campbell), I gradually came
to realize that although there was a plethora of jobs
a)lailable, it was also true that challenging op~or
tunities for female liberal artists without an advanced
degree were few and far between. I found it
extremely difficult to convince a prospective
employer that my Great Books education would be
a greater asset to him than my ability to construct
a simple sentence or type 60 words per minute.
Once or twice each year, usually when I was contemplating a job change, I considered the idea of
returning to school to obtain a graduate degree
cum "work permit" which would make me eligible
for a more stimulating job. However, because of a
mixture of personal laziness and a reluctance to
conform to the working world's demand for yet more
and more credentials, I resisted -after all, I had
learned how to think at St. John's, what more did I
need? (During this time I married a statisticiannovelist who was about to embark upon a career as
a lawyer.)
Moving on to the catharsis of this tale - in the
summer of 1969 I found myself once again searching
for a new job, this time obtaining a position as an
administrative and research assistant at the Urban
Institute, a Washington think tank which was launched
at the end of the Johnson Administration to try to
find solutions to the nation's domestic problems.
Because of a combination of circumsta'nces, most
notably finding myself in a young and flexible
organization and having the willingness to work hard
and the initiative to carve out an interesting job for
myself, I have, over the last several years, been involved
in creative and stimulating work.
At present I am cast in two separate roles at the
Institute. Part of my time is spent as a member of
�BOOK REVIEW
BLACK MOUNTAIN: AN EXPLORATION
IN COMMUNITY
by Martin Duberman
(E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1972)
the research staff of the Institute's Public Interest
Research Project, a group attempting to provide
empirical research to back up public interest
litigation, in areas including racial and economic
discrimination, consumer affairs and land-use
controversies. Here, my generalist education is
particularly useful, since I have worked on studies
of such diverse subjects as the measurement of
differences in the level and quality of public
services provided to different neighborhoods within
a political jurisdiction, and the estimation of the
fiscal impact on a county government of a proposed "Levitt-type" housing development.
The remainder of my time is devoted to helping
develop exploratory research projects which might
be on the Institute's research agenda in the future.
This aspect of my work involves everything from
preparing brief background papers and proposals on
specific subjects to estimating budgets and investigating potential sources of funding. Again, this
aspect of my work allows me to be in touch with
a variety of subject areas including the economic
impact of the patent system and issues related to
airport noise measurement systems.
In all of my work I am given the opportunity to
play an active role in problem definition and analysis,
working alongside economists, lawyers, and political
scientists. In line with this, the ability to ask the
right questions and to exhibit a certain skepticism
toward simple solutions to complex problems (two
St. John's-acquired traits) both play an important
part in my daily work.
I think that there is a place for individuals with
liberal educations in fields which have traditionally
been considered off-limits to nonspecialists. I
would urge other St. John's alumni to pursue such
opportunities (creating their own opportunities where
necessary). After almost eight years doing battle
with the professional biases of the job market I
would be the first to admit that it's not an easy fight,
but the rewards, in terms of personal satisfaction,
have been worthwhile for me. 111
Martin Duberman, Distinguished Service Professor
of History at Lehman College, CUNY, has attempted
three tasks in this book: to tell the history of Black
Mountain College, to write an essay on education,
and to take the first steps in a reform of the writing
of history.
.
He succeeds in his first task. Black Mountam
College, in its 23 years of existence, generated much
history and more myth. Duberman has worked hard
at assembling the facts and documenting them. The
eighty pages of notes refer to his interviews with
almost all of the major figures in his history (two of
whom- John Andrew Rice and Charles Olson- have
since died) and to sources of documents from The
State Archives in Raleigh, North Carolina. Yet
Duberman has not buried the story of Black
Mountain College under a mass of documentation and
fact, but has let the reader witness the life of the
College and the continual struggle of the students and
faculty to define the goals and means of the College,
and to see also the strife generated by this struggle,
which finally destroyed the College.
Black Mountain College was founded in Black
Mountain, North Carolina, (just east of Asheville) in
1933 by John Andrew Rice, who had just been fired
from Rollins College in Florida (essentially because
he was a gadfly) and who led a small group of faculty
and students away with him. Black Mountain College
was deliberately set up as an experimenting college,
to test and to develop ideas of what an educatiOn
should be.
The College was always small; the maximum
enrollment mentioned by Duberman was 90 students.
The College was structured as a community. Rice did
say in the early years that Black Mountain was a
college first, and then a community, but in 1943 by which time Rice, still a gadfly, had been fued by
his own college - the Rector of the College stated
that Black Mountain was "first a community, then a
College." In such a small community there was little
room for sharply divergent points of view, and
faculty fights usually ended with the exodus of the
losing side. Each such departure weakened the
College; Ted Drier, one of the original founders, said
(continued on page 18)
11
�SOME NOTES
ON THE LOST WAX TECHNIQUE
BY BURTON BLISTEIN
Polymorph
Nearly all of the sculpture shown on
these pages was produced by the lost-wax
or eire-perdue process. A model or pattern
is first made in wax. It can be fashioned
directly in wax, the procedure I most often
follow. Alternatively, a negative model can
be made of the sculpture in another medi-
um,
such as plaster, and a wax positive
made from the mold.
Tubes or rods of wax are next attach·
ed to the model. When melted out these
provide channels for conducting molten me-
tal to many parts of the casting simultaneously. Other rods ·are attached to provide
outlets for the escape of air.
The wax pattern with its system of
ducts is then "invested" or surrounded by
a refractory which can contain the flow of
molten metal without deforming. This material is liquid when applied but soon hardens to form a rigid encasement. The invested model is next heated to approximately
1000 degrees Fahrenheit ,sufficient to entirely vaporize the wax.
The void left by the wax is filled with
molten metal. When this cools, the investment is removed, revealing a bronze replica
of the original wax pattern with its network of ducts. The ducts are cut away and
the defaced areas refinished by grinding and
hammering until they blend with the surrounding su rtaces.
A new casting, rid of its investment, is
generally dark brown or grey in color.
Some sculptors prefer to leave it at that.
However, as a rule I clean the casting using
wire brushes, chisels, and dilute acids until
the metal returns to its characteristic light
golden color. I then apply chemical solutions of different types to the surface to
produce the final color or patina. Such solutions may be applied in varying concentrations, for varying lengths of time, with or
without the simultaneous application of
heat. The possibilities are nearly infinite,
and in fact nearly an infinite range of
shades may be obtained.
Some patinas are rather delicate and
need to be protected from handling or
from the atmosphere if they are to survive.
Various lacquers and waxes are used for
this purpose, but they themselves inevitably
change the patina and this effect must be
anticipated.
!
'J1
l·
_)
~~
�Untitled
Sibyl
Five Finger Exercise I
Sailing to Byzantium II
Self-Portrait II
�Conversations With
Graduate Institute Alumni
BY GEOFFREY COMBER
Geoffrey Comber has been a Tutor in Annapolis since 1965, an Assistant
Dean since 1970. He is the Assistant Director of the Graduate Institute.
The following sketches are based on interviews and other personal contacts over several years.
JUANITA WILKINSON, like
several other graduates of the
Graduate Institute, is a Junior
High School teacher in Washington, D. C. Though she lives in
Hyattsville, Maryland, she teaches
at an inner-city school - Lincoln
Junior High School. The school is
only six years old, but is obviously
a test of a teacher's skill and fortitude. "During the first three years
of the school," said Juanita, "we
had four different principals, and,
well, the first one had a heart
14
WALTER DUDLEY would
probably not respond to anyone
addressing him as "Walter" and
maybe not even as "Mr. Dudley."
I don't think I have ever heard
him called anything but
"Dudley." But Dudley is quickly
known to any group he associates
himself with, in spite of his very
quiet voice and soft manners. He
has the ability to make people
aware of his presence in a gentle
,way, and to make them pleased
they are in his company.
MARY PAT JUSTICE was
also a Hoffberger Fell ow who
graduated from the Institute in
19 71. Like Dudley, she was a fulltime classroom teacher, but who
now has had to sacrifice some of
that classroom time for adminis~
trative tasks. While Dudley is now
chairman of his department, Mary
Pat has been associated with Project K.A.P.S. at Dunbar High
School in Baltimore for the past
few years. K.A.P.S. is the acronym
for Keeping All Pupils in School,
�Wilkinson-
Dudley-
]ustz'ce-
attack, and that was due to the
tough job he had." In reply to one
of my questions about violence in
school, she answered in a tone of
commonplace, "There's not very
much, now; but there was a time
when it was almost impossible to
He has been teaching for ten
years at Lombard Street Junior
High School, an inner-city school
in · downtown Baltimore. Most
students are black and from low·
income families, and the school
would probably be regarded by
most of us as a difficult, tough
place to work. But over the years
Dudley has established a rapport
between himself and the students
and so his good working relation·
ship has led to his reputation as a
very fine teacher. This last evalua·
tion is not, of course, his own; he
is too modest. But I have heard it
confirmed from several sources.
Undoubtedly, Dudley would
have been a good teacher had he
never heard of the Graduate Insti·
tute, but he is firm in attributing
much of what he now is as a
person - both in the classroom
and out - to his experience with
the Institute at Santa Fe. He first
heard of the Institute from a small
notice on the bulletin board of his
school, inviting teachers to apply
for a Hoffberger Fellowship. When
he arrived in Santa Fe, these were
his initial reactions:
and it is exactly the kind of pro·
gram Mary Pat would be
interested in and successful aL
Enthusiasm is one of her long
suits.
And so I found her enthusias·
tic in her endorsement of what the
Graduate Institute had done for
her. Her favorite summer contained the Philosophy and
Theology discussions. She is
Roman Catholic, and had been
exclusively to religious schools.
teach in the classrooms, what with
the gangs roaming through the
halls, yelling in doors, and
throwing things into rooms."
But in spite of and perhaps
because of these serious problems,
Juanita continues to teach there.
She, her husband and four
daughters will shortly be moving
even further away from Washing·
ton - to Bowie, Maryland - yet
she still intends to teach at
Lincoln Junior High.
Juanita's first summer at the
Graduate Institute was the
summer of 1968. At first, her·
reason for applying for a Cafritz
the
Fellowship was simple
practical, measurable goal of
getting an M.A. degree during
three summers. But her first
summer in Santa Fe broadened
her horizons and to a great extent
increased her understanding and
expectations of what an education
involves.
It took me a good two weeks
to get adjusted - going from the
atmosphere and pace of the city
into a place where everything is
calmed down, and at a level where
you ca.'l concentrate. That is, conR
centrate on the one thing that you
set out to do, and that was to read
and discuss. In every other college
First of all I was confused
when I got there . I didn't know
what to expect, but at least I
didn't expect what I got. Most of
the courses I've been in have
involved instructors who have
lectured at me, but that place
drew upon your own resource~ to
try to develop answers to
questions that many of us had
never thought about much before.
The Tutors made you develop
your own judgement about things,
and you were forced to use your
own mind rather than repeat what
an instructor had to say. It wasn't
conventional at all ...
I really think my confusion
began to stop when I took the
preceptorial under Bob Goldwin.
There I seemed to gain more
So I had a somewhat slanted
view toward philosophy. Much of
the time we were reading secondary sources. Even with the Bible;
quite a bit of it was second hand
by the time it got to us in the
classroom. But there we were at
the Institute reading all these
books in the original, or at least,
good translations; instead of what
someone said the authors meant.
At first, I was a bit fright·
ened, being a good Catholic, you
know, what it would do to my
religion - make me doubt it. But,
although I changed a lot of my
views, it strengthened my faith it really did. All the books, but
the Bible particularly, came alive
for me that summer, in a way it
never had before.
I use many of these books in
my teaching now. And using the
Bible is particularly a beautiful
way of teaching. So many of these
inner-city kids are familiar with
the Bible, and I find the black
children are very religious, so it's
something they can relate to.
Again, I asked what kinds of
impact the Institute had had on
her personally - that is, apart
from an immediate application of
the work on her classroom tech·
niques. She replied that there were
two effects she was very aware of.
First, for the first time in her
life, she learned how to listen to
other people. Since there was no
15
�Wilkinson-
Dudley-
justice-
I know that doesn't make sense.
You have to run here, and go to
the library to read for au hour,
and be lectured at, and then run
back home to cook dinner.
But to be in a place where you
can concentrate primarily on
ideas, reading and discussing; I
thought that was just ideal.
insight into what the program was
trying to do ...
I've found that, recently, in
the social sciences at least a
similar approach to problem; is
used. No longer do teachers stand
up and get students to repeat
facts. Now you try to get students
to form an analysis of their own
solution - at any rate, in the
social sciences.
note-taking to distract her, and
since she noticed how she was
attended to - particularly, she
said, by the tutors - she slowly
but surely learned how valuable
and important it is to listen to
other people.
Secondly, since the examina~
tions were really conversations
about the books they had read, it
Then again, the classes were
not a tall what she expected. They
were "different from the classes at
other places." In a very special
way, Mrs. Wilkinson likened the
classes at the Institute to an
important aspect of living, viz.,
sharing an experience. All the
other students with their varied
backgrounds being not only
allowed but encouraged to offer
to share their views - this was a
new educational experience. "I
remember a tutorial on a Shakespearean sonnet. We took just four
lines and discussed these lines
back and forth for two and a half
. hours. It was just beautiful."
As someone closely connected
with the Graduate Institute for a
few years, I have often been con~
cerned with how the Institute
affects its students. In what terms
do they try to anticipate the
impact of its program on their
·personal lives, in contrast with any
professional advancement? The
latter is relatively easy to measure;
the former is one of our invisible
products. In reply to a question
along these lines, Juanita said:
Coming back after the first
summer there it took a while to
get used to ordinary school again,
because it seemed as though something was just not right. It's hard
to anticipate what it is, but my
personal feeling was that I was
operating at a different level from
the one that I was at before. I
can't say exactly what the
difference was - it seemed that I
16
The seminar encounter ses~
sions, as Dudley called them, had
a great impact on him.
Usually, when most people
finish with encounter sessions,
they are ready for a psychiatrist
even if they didn't need one
before. But with St. John's
seminars it's different. Seeing the
Tutors operate at St. John's
helped to give me more tolerance
of any students. Because, what
you often see is the two tutors at
each end of the seminar table not
agreeing with one another. This
helps you realize that your
students don't have to agree with
you all the time - and that you
have to be ready to talk with them
to discuss things with them.
Several times during our con~
versation, Dudley made a point of
playing down the "content" of
the Institute program - that is, he
believed it could be any number
of other possible book choices.
And instead of the actual books
read, he stressed the "method"
which, he says, develops your
ability
was not necessary to try to
"cram" and "memorize the books
and notes" as she had been accus~
tomed to. Instead, she learned
better how to understand an
author - to discover for herself
what is important, and how to
.discuss what is problematic.
Like the others I spoke with in
these interviews, Mary Pat was at
first fearful of taking the Mathematics and Science part of the
program. But, like them, she was
appreciative of the fact that she
had been made to study books on
a condition for graduation.
to know how to think, allowing
you to think fast on your feet,
without leaning on an expert, so
you are able to deal with all kinds
of situations that arise, and to
understand them better. I think
the courses at the Institute give
you a better understanding of
human nature and of people.
I thought I spent a lot of
,time reading the philosophy
books, but the math I spent hours
and hours. Mr. Neidorf made me
work like I'd never worked before.
But I found it to be one of the
most exciting things I have ever
put my mind to.
He was very enthusiastic about
Miss
Justice
was
asked
�Wilk£nson-
Dudley-
was able to understand people
better, if that's possible after
spending a summer somewhere
reading some books and discussing. I think what really matters
was that I was maybe more
tolerant of other people's ideas.
Not just tolerant in the sense that
you can have yours and I can have
mine, but tolerant in the sense
that I was more concerned about.
the other person's ideas, and why
he thought that way, and what
formed his opinion. Being from
the South and having experienced
prejudice quite a bit upset me a
lot at one time, but now I can
understand these things much
better. The experience at the
Graduate Institute hasn't made me
like prejudice, or accept it even,
but has helped me to understand
how ideas - get formulated and
molded.
the all-required nature of the
program, again emphasizing that
in a limited sense of being a
history teacher, it is not necessary
for him to know anything of
Euclid and Lobachevski, yet he
found that such a study gave him
a fresh understanding of the process of thought. But in addition to
this valuable result, Dudley
offered the view that for most
who attend the Institute, there is a
spiritual growth of themselves as
persons. He said he had known it
to happen to several students,
including himself. But it did not
necessarily occur in the classroom,
though the classroom experience
was necessary.
Upon further questioning, I
found out that the Institute has
had a lasting effect upon her reading habits. Before going to the
Institute, Juanita "would never
have sat down and read Plato,"
but now she will read Plato or
Plutarch of an evening - before
going to bed - and the experience
is so personal for her that she
expresses it by saying she "sits
quietly with Plato." After hearing
this from Juanita, I was quite
satisfied that the work down in
Santa Fe dtning the summers was
valuable and incalculably
rewarding~ even if it couldn't be
measured on any precise scale. lill
Justice-
I know one student there her spiritual growth didn't actually happen at the school itself she went up into the mountains
one day, and when she came back
she was altogether a different
person - an individual. I just can't
say more - I can feel it and I feel
it now - the difference in myself
- but to put it in to specific terms
is very difficult. Ill
While I certainly would not want the existence of
the Graduate Institute to rest solely on this kind of
support, nevertheless, such testimonials of the benefits it has brought to older people who have participated fully in the graduate program should be taken
seriously. These interviews have struck me as showing
that the impact of the Institute on at least these three
graduates has noticeably, even dramatically, changed
whether, and in what way, the
graduate program could be called
practical. Her reply was an enthusiastic agreement as to its practicality in several senses. At first she
repeated the way in which the
methods and some books were of
direct applicability to the high
school classroom. But then she
added that it helped her use her
imagination to play out many
alternatives to problems - to
follow consequences of opinions
and actions in your mind - to
compare options, in a way she had
never been able to before. She
thought she had, in that respect,
acquired a new freedom which
probably would not have come
about without the experience of
the Institute.
As we know, while there are
many differences between the
undergraduate and the graduate
programs of St. John's, there are
also important similarities. And,
concentrating on the similarities,
Mary Pat offered the valuable
opinion that the Graduate Institute has this most important role
-to play: that she believes she
would not have been able to put
the undergraduate program to the
best use for herself - she does not
think she was ready for it at age
17 or 18. But after completing her
undergraduate work elsewhere,
and working for a few years, she
was able to appreciate and put to
maximum use what the Graduate
Institute bad to offer her. IIi
them, in their opinion, for the better. None of them
would likely have been ready for, or financially able
to, attend the St. John's undergraduate program.
Tnerefore, if the sort of personal profit each interviewee speaks of is available through our graduate
program, then this evidence speaks strongly in
support of the view that we are doing something right
in our summer program at Santa Fe.l!i.l
17
�Mark Van Doren (continued)
Black Mountain (continued)
He was one of the great teachers of our time.
Generations of Columbia students thought no one
had really been through the University who had not
been in at least one of his courses. His admiring
students are numberless, and most of us at St.John's
count ourselves among them.
It is hard to say what makes a great teacher, but
with Mr. Van Doren it was his live and easy learning,
his quality of being a marvelous listener, his intelligent sympathy and enormous courtesy. While talking
to him you always had the sense that he was really
interested, however incredibly, on what you were
saymg.
There is one other thing I should like to say about
Mark Van Doren that seems to me of tremendous
importance to all of us now, and perhaps especially to
you. He was American to the core of his being. He
could not have happened in another country. His
virtues were the best of what is American. He was
hom in Illinois, and one of his heroes was Abraham
Lincoln. He had read, I suppose, every word of
Lincoln's and everything written about him. In
homage to that memory he wrote a very good play,
The Last Days of Lincoln.
I think this is important to say now because we
are no longer sure what it is to be an American, no
longer sure how to hold up our heads in the world as
Americans. To remember Mark Van Doren is to
remember who we are, or ought to be -what we can
be.
It is a great temptation to read many of Mark Van
Doren's words, for he was a man of wonderful words,
and in the end I suppose we shall mostly remember
his wonderful voice. At least I shall. But for now I
think we should read only the farewell he wrote for
himself. It says much, maybe everything, in brief.
looking back at the second large exodus, "You might
say an attempt to recover our nerve after the 1944
split never quite worked."
Dreier himself, with the last of the old guard from
the early years of Black Mountain, left in 1949, and
Black Mountain in the fifties was, under Charles
Olson, more an art colony than a college. The Black
Mountain School of poets and writers, some of whom
were at the College only briefly, dates from this
period. In 1956 the last two faculty members decided
to "knoc~ it off, close the place."
Duberman's interests in ''anarchism, unstructured
education, 'group process', the possibilities (and
history) of communal living" were what led him to
write this history, for Black Mountain combined
these interests. But Duberman also thinks that a
historian has the duty to put himself into the history
- by taking part in the story to expose his biases,
personal reactions, problems with the material,
judgm.tnts, and so forth. In his reactions to the
arguments and experiments at Black Mountain
College, Duberman discusses his own ideas of education. For example, he includes a long section from a
journal he kept on a seminar he taught. It does
explore the difficulties in teaching via an unstructured "group process," but one wonders how much
help it offers in understanding Black Mountain.
Sometimes Duberman is downright obtrusive, as
when he inserts his comments into the transcript of a
1936 Black Mountain College faculty meeting as if he
were actually present and taking part in the
discussion.
The most valuable parts of Duberman's participation are not his comments and ideas nn education,
but his notes on the difficulty of writing the history.
In seeing his involvement, his problems, one can
appreciate what Black Mountain was: an in tensely
personal, intensely experimenting college/
community, building itself around men like Josef
Albers and their ideas, sacrificing the safety of
structure for the risks of continuing growth and
change.
Farewell and Thanksgiving
Whatever I have left unsaid
When I am dead,
0 Muse, forgive me. You were always there
Like light, like air,
Those great good things
Of which the least bird sings,
So why not I? Yet thank you even then,
Sweet Muse. Amen.
18
Michael W. Ham
�I NEWS
ON THE CAMPUSES
NEIDORF APPOINTED
DEAN IN SANTA FE
President Richard D. Weigle has
announced that the Board of
Visitors
and
February
Governors
meeting
at
its
appointed
Mr. Neidorf is married to the
former Mary Frances Morris of
Lima, Ohio. They met at the University of Chicago, where she
received her M.A. from the Divinity
School. They have two children,
David, 15, and Julie, 12.
DEAN GOLDWIN GOES TO NATO
Robert Neidorf
Robert A. Neidorf as Dean at Santa
Fe, effective July 1. Mr. Neidorf
will succeed William A. Darkey,
whose five-year term as Dean will
end June 30. Mr. Darkey will take a
sabbatical leave before returning to
teach in the fall of 19 7 4.
Mr. Neidorf taught at St.John's
in Annapolis from 1962 to 1964
and he has been at Santa Fe since
19 6 7. He also has directed the
summer
Graduate
Institute
Robert A. Goldwin, Dean of
the College in Annapolis since
1969·; has accepted appointment as
Special Assistant to the U.S.
Ambassador to The North Atlantic
Treaty Organization, the Honorable
Donald Rumsfeld. The Goldwin
family left for Brussels on April 1.
Mr. Goldwin, a graduate of the
class of 1950, had taught politicial
science at the University of Chicago
and Kenyon College before joining
St. John's faculty as Dean. He
received the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees
from the University of Chicago.
ACTING DEAN
Elliott Zuckerman, a Tutor
since 19 61, has been named Acting
Dean in Annapolis, replacing
Robert Goldwin. Mr. Zuckerman
holds A.B., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees
from Columbia University and B.A.
and M.A. degrees from Cambridge
University.
Mr. Zuckerman was Director of
the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe
Elliott Zuckerman
m 1968 and 1969. He is the author
of The First Hundred Years of
Wagner's Trz"stan.
SANTA FE HAS FIRST JANUARY
FRESHMAN CLASS
in
Liberal Education since 1970. He
has taught philosophy at Bucknell
University and the State University
of New York at Binghamton.
Mr. Neidorf received his B.A.
and M.A. degrees from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in
philosophy from Yale University.
llis textbook on logic, Deductive
Farms, was published by Harper &
Row in 196 7. Shorter articles have
appeared in Bucknell Review,
Philosophy of Science and The
College.
ELLIOTT ZUCKERMAN NEW
Robert Goldwin
Among Mr. Goldwin's publications are Readings in World Politics,
Readings in American Foreign
Policy, Beyond the Cold War,
America Armed and Why Foreign
Aid.
The first January freshman class
at Santa Fe was enrolled this year
with 15 students. Six of the 15 had
attended other colleges. The new
students were older on the average
than most freshmen and had more
varied backgrounds, Admissions
Director Gerald Zollars reported.
One had just completed Army
service; another worked on a fishing
boat off Alaska; one lived in a
kibbutz in Israel and worked in
Greece, and another gave up a
National Merit Scholarship last year
so he could travel in Europe.
19
�The freshmen represented nine
states. Four were
Mexico, three from
from New
Texas, two
from California, and one each from
Maryland, Pennsylvania, Indiana,
Oklahoma, New Jersey, and
Minnesota.
At the same time Annapolis
began its sixth January Freshman
class. Michael Ham, Director of
Admissions, reported that the 21
new freshmen came from 13 states
including Maryland, Virginia, New
Jersey, New York, Rhode Island,
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa,
Louisiana, Alabama, Oregon, and
California.
Cornell, Inc., of Clovis, N. M., at a
cost of about $400,000.
The St.John's College Board of
Visitors and Governors plans to join
the College community in the
dedication of this most attractive
and useful center at the Board's
May 19th meeting in Santa Fe.
BOARD APPOINTS FIVE
NEW TUTORS
Five' new Tutors, four for Santa
Fe and one for Annapolis, were
appointed by the Board of Visitors
and Governors at its February
meeting. Three of the Santa Fe
appointees are honors graduates of
the class of 1967: William H.
MUSEUM AND FINE ARTS
Donahue, who has been studying at
BUILDING RISES ON
King's College, Cambridge; James
R. Mensch, who received an M.S.L.
SANTA FE CAMPUS
degree in 1970 from the Pontifical
Although workmen were
Institute of Mediaeval Studies in
hampered by one of the most
Toronto; and Howard Zeiderman,
severe winters in Santa Fe history,
the newest addition to the western who received an M.A. in philosophy
campus is scheduled for completion from Princeton University in 1972.
Also appointed to the Santa Fe
before the end of the academic
faculty was Richard L. Michaud,
year.
The Sternberger-Weiss Music who holds an A.B. degree from St.
Michael's College in Vermont and a
and Fine Arts Building is, for the
most part, the gift of an alumnus Ph.D. from the University of
Vermont, College of Medicine. Mr.
and Board member, Mr. Jac
Michaud is currently an Assistant
Holzman '52, of New York. It will
be dedicated to his grandparents. Professor in the Science DepartThe furnishings will be donated by · ment of Webster College in St.
his mother, Mrs. Jacob E. Holzman. Louis.
The Board appointed Mr. Leo
The 10,428-square-foot strucFerraro Raditsa to the Annapolis
ture will house the music library
with reading areas and listening faculty. Mr. Raditsa is an historian
holding the B.A. degree from
carrels, two music seminar rooms,
Harvard College, and M.A. and
eight practice rooms, a large listening lounge, a painting studio, a Ph.D. degrees from Columbia
University. He has been a Fulbright
ceramics room, and an office for an
scholar and a professor of history at
artist-in-residence. It will include
New York University.
the most modem sound recording,
projection and listening equipment
SENIORS RECEIVE
available.
WATSON FELLOWSHIPS
The exteriors will reflect the
modified Territorial style of the
Three St. John's seniors have
other buildings on campus and the been appointed Thomas J. Watson
historic character of its South- Fellows for 1973. They are
western setting. The new building is Prudence E. Davis and Jan L.
being constructed by John C. Huttner, Annapolis, and Mark D.
20
Jordan, Santa Fe.
Miss Davis, whose home is in
Whiting, Indiana, will study
European needlework, embroidery
and tapestry in the United
Kingdom, France and Russia. Miss
Huttner, of Livingston, New Jersey,
will study Israeli educational
administration in Israel. Mr. Jordan,
Dallas, Texas, plans a "liturgical
year" in monasteries of France and
Spain.
The Watson Fellows were
chosen by The Thomas J. Watson
Foundation of Providence, Rhode
Island, from 140 nominees from 35
colleges.
CHARLES BELL CONDUCTS
GRADUATE PRECEPTORIAL
This year for the first time St.
John's in Santa Fe is offering a
program of graduate study during
the regular academic year. The
preceptorial, "Dimensions in
History," is under the direction of
Charles G. Bell, a longtime St.
John's Tutor with many years of
study in philosophy and the fine
arts. In addition to five outside
graduate students, Santa Fe Tutors
Sam Brown, Frank Flinn, Roger
Peterson and Ralph Swentzell are
participating in the preceptorial as a
study group. The program is being
funded in part by a Ford Foundation Venture Grant.
The first semester dealt with
the
transformation
in
Western
Civilization which took place from
the Middle Ages to the Renaissance,
while the second semester has
focused on the Revolutionary and
Romantic upheave! around 1800.
Studies are particularly directed
towards the role played in each of
the transformations by the several
arts.
A public by-product of the
course was a series of Sunday
evening programs on "Studies in
Cultural History" with slides,
music, and readings, presented by
Mr. Bell and other tutors.
�Eugene]. McCarthy
LIBRARY ASSOCIATES
DONATE VOLUMES
The Library Associates of St.
John's College in Santa Fe have
given seven sets of literary, religious
and scientific reference works to
the College.
Funds for the purchase of the
volumes, selected by the library
staff and faculty, came from the
proceeds of the four Book and
Author Luncheons sponsored by
the Associates in Santa Fe during
1972. Another series is planned for
1973 with the first noontime pro·
gram scheduled on April 13 with
the following speakers: Cartoonist
Bill Mauldin; Bertha Dutton, expert
on Southwestern Indian culture;
and Dr. Marcus J. Smith, author of
Dachau.
The new additions to the
College Library are: The Oxford
Illustrated Jane Austen (6
volumes); La Bible de Jerusalem
( 4 3 fascicles with notes and
commentary); The Encyclopedia
Judaica (16 volumes); The
Cambridge Bible Commentary on
the New English Bible (27 val·
umes); The Selected Correspondence of Michael Faraday (2 val·
umes); Miscellaneous Works of
Edward Gibbon (5 volumes); and
The "New York Edition" of the
Works of Henry James (26
volumes).
EUGENE MCCARTHY LECTURES
AT ANNAPOLIS
Former Senator Eugene J.
McCarthy delivered the formal
lecture on the Annapolis campus on
February 2. His topic was "Poetry
and Politics"; the lecture consisted
principally of readings of poetry
written by Mr. McCarthy and
others.
The former presidential candidate has published one volume of
poetry, Other Things and The
Aardvark (Doubleday, 1970). Since
retiring from the Senate in 1971,
Mr. McCarthy has been writing,
lecturing, and teaching. He is
currently a senior editor at Simon
& Schuster, Inc., in New York and
a lecturer and seminar leader at The
New School for Social Research.
FACULTY NOTES FROM
ANNAPOLIS
Louis N. Kurs, Tutor in Anna·
polis, has been appointed Visiting
Lecturer in The Civil Decisions
Quantification Program in the
College of Earth Sciences of the
University of Arizona for the
academic year 1973-74. Mr. Kurs'
wife Alice will be studying com-
puter technology for application to
her teaching at Annapolis High
School.
Elliott Zuckerman, the Acting
Dean in Annapolis, has written a
paper, "Nietzsche and Music: The
Birth of Tragedy and Nietzsche
Contra Wagner" which will appear
in a special issue of Symposium
magazine.
Annapolis Tutor Robert S.
Ze.lenka had two translations
published in the Fall 1972 issue of
Proteus: "Deathfuge" by Paul
Cclon, translated from German; and
"The Ruin," anonymous, translated
from Anglo-Saxon.
Ray Williamson and Howard
Fisher, Tutors in Annapolis, are coauthors (with Mr. Williamson's wife
Abby) of "The Astronomical
Record in Chaco Canyon, New
Mexico," a paper to be read by Mr.
Williamson in Mexico City at the
June Meeting of The American
Association for The Advancement
of Science. Mr. Williamson is also
the co-author of "The Velocity
Structure of The Triffid Nebula"
soon to be published in Astronomical Journal.
Simon Kaplan, Tutor Emeritus,
has published a translation of
Hermann Cohen's The Religion of
Reason out of the Sources of
Judasim. The book has an in traduction by Mr. Kaplan and an introductionary essay by Leo Strauss,
Scholar-in-Residence on the Annapolis campus.
The February 1973 issue of The
American Mathematical Monthly
included an article entitled "The
Lecture Method in Mathematics: A
Student's View," by Michael W.
Ham, Director of Admissions and
Tutor in Annapolis. Soon after
publication, Mr. Ham received a
complimentary letter from R. H.
Bing, the well-known topologist
from the University of Wisconsin,
who noted that he had distributed
copies of the article to his staff and
teaching assistants.
21
�ALUMNI ACTIVITIES
DONOHUE COLLECTS HONORS
John C. Donohue '35 received
two well-deserved honors during
the past several months. For his
professional accomplishments he
received the George S. Robertson
Award for 197 3, and for his athletic prowess he was inducted into
the Maryland Athletic Hall of
Fame.
The Robertson Award is given
annually by the Baltimore Life
Underwriters' Association for
accomplishments and sustained
activity in the interests of the insti-
was referee for the Duke-Oklahoma
Orange Bowl game.
John's selection for the Hall of
Fame brings to six the number of
St. John's men who have been so
honored. In order of their selection
they are: Edmund P. (Ned) Duvall
'05; Valentine (Dutch) Lentz '18;
Robert (Bobby) Pool '3l;John N.
Qohnny) Wilson '13; and Richard
T. (Dick) Porter '22. Plaques commemorating the exploits of these
athletic greats are on display in the
lower lobby of the Civic Center in
Baltimore.
HOMECOMING DATES SET
IN ANNAPOLIS
Homecoming. The awards are made
to alumni for "distinguished and
meritorious service to the United
States or to his native state or to St.
John's College, or for outstanding
achievement in his chosen field."
Nominations, accompanied by
sufficient biographical data to substantiate the recommendation,
should be forwarded to the Alumni
Office, addressed to President
Gessner. Deadline for submissions is
August 1st.
CHAPTER ACTIVITIES
The Annapolis chapter has had
several interesting speakers over the
This year we have paid particular attention to boat shows, Navy
John C. Donohue
tution of life insurance as viewed in
retrospect and in conformation
with the highest standards of professional conduct.
Donohue's athletic interests
and ability were recognized early,
when in 1931 as a senior at Mt. St.
Joseph High School he was voted
Baltimore's outstanding athlete. In
the next four years at St.John's he
earned nine letters in football, basketball, and lacrosse. He was an
All-America selection in lacrosse his
last two years.
After graduation John
coached at St. John's, Mt. St.
Joseph, and at the Naval Academy.
He was for many years a highly
respected official in football,
lacrosse, and basketball. In 1965 he
22
home football games, and other
annoying but unavoidable considerations, and have concluded that
Homecoming 197 3 must take place
on Friday and Saturday, September
29th and 3Oth.
This is the year for reunions
for 1913, 1923, 1933, etc. DO
NOT wait for the Alumni Office to·
prod your class into organizing.
One or two in each class should
start work now, writing, calling,
planning. That's the only way anything worthwhile is going to
happen.
From this end we hope to
have general plans worked out and
published early in the summer. For
now, just mark your calendars and
start writing letters.
AWARD OF MERIT
Association President Bernard
F. (Bunny) Gessner urges all alumni
to think about the possible nominations for the 19 7 3 Alumni A ward
of Merit.
At present up to three awards
are authorized each year, with
presentations normally made at
Robert L. Spaeth
past several months. Most recently
Lt. Gen. Ridgely Gaither '24 talked
about his job as Police Commissioner of Annapolis; earlier speakers
were John C. Donohue '35 reporting on his service as head of the
Baltimore Board of Election Supervisors, and editor and Tutor Robert
Spaeth reminiscing about his term
as an Annapolis councilman.
The weekly Baltimore luncheon group now meets at Humperdinkers, 20 East Fayette Street,
second floor, at 12:30 p.m. on
Tuesdays.
March 20th was the date of
the first New York Group seminar,
led by Annapolis Tutors John F.
White '64, and Acting Dean Elliott
Zuckerman. The second and third
seminars are scheduled for April
24th and May 22nd.
�Reflections on a Homecoming
The following letter was written
for at least two reasons: to answer
one from Thomas Parran, Jr.,
Alumni Director at Annapolis, and
to respond to a request from Dean
Robert Goldwin to write about the
author's reactions to the College.
The author, a graduate in the Class
of 1947, is professor and head of
the philosophy department at Mary
Washington College, Fredericksburg, Va. He worked at the College
a while after graduation, leaving in
1950 to go to Korea with the
Marines. Except to attend the
dedication of the Key Memorial
and Mellon Hall in 1959, he did not
return until Homecoming 1972.-Ed.
November 24, 1972
Dear Tom:
... I suppose an alumnus of any college
has very poignant feelings when he
returns from a long absence. There is so
much about the -atmosphere at St. John's
which is unchanged from 30 years ago .• it
is almost overwhelming. I took the
trouble to walk about a bit on my own
and set foot in almost every building of
the college. I also attended the seminar
on graduate schools and job opportunities. The one thing that impressed me
most of all was the students. Almost
without exception they were polite, very
open, friendly, and interested in seeing a
middle-aged alumnus. It was almost as if
they had received a battalion order to 'be
nice to the old coots or else.' (I say that
because I am sure no such directive was
issued.) I can only conclude that you
have recruited an outstanding student
body, and, as an educator, I envy you.
I was a bit disappointed that there
were not more of my old friends back for
the reunion, and this produced a feeling
of guilt in me for I know how one asks
why it is that we 'old New Program
alumni' don't support alunmi doings
more faithfully? For surely we who date
from the Barr and Buchanan days have
St. John's stamped on our very souls.
This is a very troublesome question and
I'm sure more talented 'old New Programmers' than I have wrestled with it. For
what they are worth, I share with youth(
following highly subjective observations
and suggestions.
The physical environment of the
College is very, very moving to an
alumnus. You are doing a remarkable job
in keeping the corpus in a high state of
preservation. One can quibble over the
King William Roqm and a few other nitpicks but by and large the atmosphere is
spookily the same (catch that adverb!) as
it was almost 30 years ago. And yet the
very sophistication induced by the program tends to immunize us from being
seduced by that kind of nostalgia. I am
sure the alumnus of any college in
America has deep, important, and. tender
feelings when he returns to his college,
but his college experience has not
immunize<;! him from wanting to return in
a sentimental orgy to his dear old alma
mater. I think that the St.John's Program
isolates its students in a very close,
intense and soul-remaking experience.
The College vomits its students forth and
they keep on going, never looking back.
Who is to say whether or not such an
apron-string cutting is bad?
All of us who have graduated from
the College return to our alma mater
every time we look at our libraries. Those
sly old master artificers who concocted
the Program were not just mouthing
platitudes when they said that the books
were, in the end, the teachers at St.
John's. When McDowell Hall, the
wonderful tutors, the games on back
campus, the jug-a-lug in Chase-Stone have
all faded into nothingness, the Great
Books will remain. We, who have been
privileged to attend St. John's, commune
with her every time we step into our
studies and open up and read one of the
books.
Boiled down to their essentials, the
two points I have made above mean that
you, as alumni director, have a very
difficult task. The College will always
tend to produce alumni who have been
profoundly affected by it but [who] will
never look back, and [who] will manifest
their loyalty ... by continuing to reflect
and read rather than reach for the old
check book. I am sure this is nothing new
but these thoughts have struck me as I
ponder my recent delightful visit ....
Sincerely,
George M. Van Sant
CLASS NOTES
1922
just before going to press we received a
fine letter from S. Den mead Kolb, reporting
on his recent visit with Dr. Rafael
Rodriguez-Molina at the latter's home in
Santurce, Puerto Rico. Kolb, his wife, Kitty,
and their youngest son, Charles, were in
Puerto Rico in January, and had dinner with
Roddy, as he was known here, his wife
Marian, and their daughter Anna and son
Manuel. Two older offspring are married.
Roddy has had a most successful medical
practice, and retired a few years ago from
the U. S. Army Medical Corps with the rank
of colonel,
1928
Lout's L. Snyder was recently nam_ed to
the Editorial Advisory Board of the
Canadt'an Revt"ew of Studt"es ~·n Natt"onaUsm.
Lou continues to make his mark as an
author; his The Imperialism Reader:
Documents and Readings on European
Expanst"onism -has just been reprinted by the
Kennikot Press, Port Washington, N. Y .,
while The Dreyfus Case was released by the
Rutgers University Press in january.
Charles S. Smith is the new director of
the property management division of
Donald E. Grempler Realty, Inc.; a Baltimore area firm. Smith has been active in real
estate work since the mid-1940's. He makes
his home in the Roland Park area of Baltimore.
1954
Merle and Priscilla ('55) Shore have
opened a second location for their shop,
The Village Frame. They had their opening
in the new Ruth Shaffer Gallery in Santa
Barbara on january 6th.
1955
Donald A. Phillips is now Alcoholism
Program Manager for the Civil Service
Commission in Washington.
January was a good month for letters;
Evajane (Duvall) McKenney writes that she
will graduate this J unc with an associate
degree in nursing from Northern Essex
Community College in Haverhill, Mass. She
hopes to go on to earn her B.S. degree in
nursing with a minor in natural science.
23
�Evajane is married to a disabled veteran, has
two married stepsons, three grandchildren,
and two teenage daughters.
1957
As noted in the February Alumni
Association newsletter, the name of Navy
Cdr. H. Allen Stafford was on the prisoner
lists pubtished by the North Vietnamese in
January, He was released in mid-March and,
according to press reports, was met by his
wife when he arrived at Clark AFB in the
Philippines. Al, a Navy carrier-based pilot,
was shot down over Haiphong on August
31, 1967, while on his 31st combat mission,
1962
John Franklin Miller in January became
the director of Hampton House, a National
Historical Site located near Towson, just
north of Baltimore. After graduation from
St. John's, John earned a B.D. degree from
Yale, and then taught elementary school in
Anne Arundel and Washington Counties in
M~land. Since 19 69 he has been doing
graduate work in art and architectural
history at the University of Maryland, as
well as teaching 'at Maryland and at Mont·
gomery Junior College.
1963
Daniel T. Devereux writes that he is
teaching philosophy at the University of
Vrrginia, and is especially pleased to have
Evan Dudik '72 and Dennis Berg '71 in his
seminar.
Robert K. Thomas is currently enrolled
in full-time. French language training at the
Foreign Service Institute in Washington, in
preparation for his new assignment as the
deputy public affairs advisor to the U.S.
delegation to the United Nations. Bob says
that the U.S, mission is right across the
street from the United Nations headquarters
in New York, and that all St. Johnnies
would be welcome. He also teJls us that Dr.
Oliver M. Korshin is studying Russian at the
Foreign Service Institute. Ollie is slated to
head the Russian-D. S. health exchange, Bob
reports.
1964
Patricia {Carney) Ceccarelli is a· housewife and stUdent, attending the University
of Nottingham, England.
Miss Barbara Leonard recently passed to
us a long, news-filled letter from Barbara
{Kulacki} Vona. We knew that Barbara has
been giving her time to the New York
Alumni Group as editor of the Group News·
letter, but we didn't realize what a busy girl
she- has been since she and Dan ('67) left
Annapolis. In 1967 she began independent
research in the History of Science, special·
izing in Martin Delrio, a 16th Century
Spanish theologian, lawyer, and man of
24
letters. She has been preparing the first
English translation from the Latin of his
Disquisitionum Magicarum. In 1970 at
Oxford she became a Bodleian Reader; last
summer she participated in the first
symposium on the History of Modern
Science at the International School, Enrico
Fermi, Lake Como, Varenna, Italy. She is
currently negotiating with the University of
Texas Press for publication of her transla·
tion. In her spare time she has helped with a
New York Assembly campaign as Environmental Chairman for a candidate. She now
hopes to enter law school, where she would
like to concentrate in the areas of Taxation
and Land Use. After her schooling she wants
to work on planning and writing tax legisla·
tion, and on sound planning for new urban
areas and renewal of the old.
1966
A brief note from Barbara Hockman's
mother advises that Barbara, after teaching
in Japan until May 1972, has been traveling
in Asia, and is presently in India.
William N. McKeachie, after two years
as assistant chaplain, St. John's College,
Oxford, returned last year to Canada, where
he is special assistant to the Bishop of
Toronto.
1967
Meredith Burke informs us that Fred
Fedderson and his wife are expecti~g -a
baby. They live at 33 Marlowe's Road,
London W. 8, England.
1970
Miss Miriam Strange has sent along a
letter from Katharine Beckman, bringing us
up to date on her life since she left St.
John's. A year was spent in Stockholm,
where she was a page in the Australian
Embassy. After a year at American
University in Washington she received her
B.A. degree in English. Since September
1970 she has been in Gambridge, Mass., first
as a secretary to a neuroanatomist at M.I.T.,
more recently working for the Massachu·
setts Drug Commission.
Word reaches us through his father that
Stephen ]. Forman, now a junior at the
University of Southern California Medical
School, has completed a year-long research
project, has had the paper thereon published
in the official publication of The American
Federation of Clinical Research, and read
the paper in January at a meeting of the
Western Society for Clinical Research in
Carmel, California. The paper was entitled
Red Cell Me_mbrane Deformity in Uremic
Hemodt'alyzed Patients.
1971
James R. Hal now lives in Felton, Pa.,
and is District Manager for the York Daily
Record,
Jeffrey Cole Kitchen is reported by his
parents to be quite successfully involved in
the Ph.D. degree program in applied mathematics at Johns Hopkins University.
1972
Cynthia {Stratton) Dourmashkin
reports that she and Tom ('69} have a son,
Jordan Thomas, born on December 17th.
Tom is enrolled in pre-medical courses at
Columbia University and hopes to enter
medical school in the fall of 1974. Cindy
says she is enjoying motherhood and is very
happy.
Ellen Hearne (SF) writes that she has
now graduated from the University of North
Carolina at Asheville with distinction in art,
Her senior showing in pottery in December
received excellent coverage in the press. She
was commended not only for her pottery
but also for the fact that she constructed
her own kiln, with which she could fire
stoneware up to 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit.
Since leaving St. John's, she studied at
Penland School of Crafts, North Carolina,
rmder Cynthia Bringle, and Jater at the
University of North Carolina under Gene
Bunker.
Probably: the most recent alumnus to
enter the field of journalism is Thomas R.
Ascik, now a copy boy with the Washing·
ton, D. C. Star·News. In what woUld seem
to be a most unusual opportunity for a
young journalist, Tom recently. interviewed
Dr. Andre Helleger, director of the Kennedy
Institute for the Study of Human
Reproduction and Rio-Ethics. The inter·
view, concerning the recent Supreme Court
decision on abortions, was. published in the
Sunday, March 4th, edition of the newspaper. On the evidence thuS far, Tom has a
very bright journalistic futtire~
In Memoriam
19 08
Harold Hardinge, Jr.,
Ventnor, N.J., December 16, 1972.
1922 -The Rev. William R. Horney,
Centreville, Md., November 27, 1972.
1924 - James B. Robertson, Jr;,
Baltimore, Md., December 31, 1972.
1926 - The Rev. Robert L. Bull,
Columbus,Ohio,January 15,1973.
1931 - Emanuel Klawans, Annapolis, Md., February 8, 197 3.
1931 -James D. Morris, Baltimore,
Md., March 5, 1973.
1934
Charles P. Clark, Jr.,
Summit, N.J., February 21,1973.
1935 - Harry Ferguson, Belmont,
Cal., February 7, 1973.
�RESOLUTIONS
The College mourns the death of two of its closest friends and
supporters. Mark Van Doren, former member of the Board and
Honorary Fellow, died on December 10, 1972. Bromwell Ault, a
former chairman, and most recently an honorary Board member,
died in New York City December 29, 1972. The following
resolutions were adopted at the February 24 meeting of the Board
of Visitors and Governors.
MARK VAN DOREN
RESOLVED, that this Board of Visitors and Governors has
learned with great sadness of the death of Mark Van Doren, a
member of the Board from 1943 to 1953 and an Honorary Fellow
of the College since 1959. In him the gifts of the poet, scholar,
critic and teacher were greatly one. He was one of those few men
who helped to conceive the St. John's Program in its beginning.
Through his writings and his regular lectures on poetry and poets,
he taught generations of St. John's students and faculty. He was a
strong contributor to the work of St. John's College in America.
The College was privileged to claim his warm and steady
friendship.
FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Secretary be instructed to
convey to Mrs. Dorothy Van Doren, his wzfe, and to Charles Van
Doren and John Van Doren, her sons, copies of this Resolution
together with expressions of the Board's deepest sympathy.
BROMWELLAULT
RESOLVED, that this Board of Visitors and Governors has
learned with profound sorrow of the death of Bromwell Ault, a
member of this Board for some twenty-five years. Bromwell Ault
was the finest exemplar of a man in the world of business who also
devoted himself to his family, to his church, to his community,
and to education. Though his primary loyalties were to Andover
and Yale, the institutions from which he graduated, he was
fascinated by the challenge of St. John's educational program and
adopted this College when he joined its Board in the late 1940's.
He served for a period as its chairman and in more recent years he
has been an honorary member. His was an active and imaginative
mind, evolving ideas and projects which might be beneficial to St.
John's College.
FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Secretary be instructed to
convey to Allie Burchenal Ault, his wife, and to Burchenal Ault
and Browell Ault, his sons, copies of this Resolution together with
expressions of the Board's gratitude and admiration for his life and
its deepest sympathy for his family.
25
�A familiar figure on the Annapolis campus,
Campus Guard Melvin N. Wilkerson, Jr.
PHOTO CREDITS:
Front cover, Sheldon C. Heitner, '75. Inside Front cover,
Malcolm Handte, '75, Eugene lorgov, '75. Page 3, Robert
Nugent. Page 4, Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting. Page
9, Eugene lorgov, '75. Pages 12 and 13, Michaer Johnson,
Burton Blistein. Page 19, Sheldon C. Heitner, Maryland Center
for Public Broadcasting. Page 21, Bill Grady. Page 22, Valley
Studios, Tom Parran, Jr.
The College
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
Second-class postage paid at
Annapolis, Maryland, and at
additional mailing offices.
�
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<em>The College </em>(1969-1981)
Description
An account of the resource
St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>. <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981. <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Santa Fe, NM
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Spaeth, Robert Louis
Parran, Jr.
Thomas
Campbell, John Randolph
Ham, Michael W.
Newland, Paul D.
Oosterhout, Barbara Brunner
Wyatt, E. Malcolm
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THE COLLEGE
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
Santa Fe, New Mexico
July 1973
�THE COLLEGE
Vol. X)W
July, 1973
No.2
Editor: Robert L. Spaeth
Alumni Edttor: Thomas Farran, Jr.
Editorial Advisory Board: Michael W. Ham, Paul D.
Newland, Barbara Brunner Oosterhout, '55, E. Malcolm
Wyatt.
THE COLLEGE is published by the Development Office
of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. Richard D.
Weigle, President. Paul D. Newland, Provost.
Published four times a year, in January, April, July, and
October. .Second class postage paid at Annapolis, Mary·
land, and at other mailing places.
IN THE JULY ISSUE:
Speech, Its Strength and Its Weaknesses.
by Jacob Klein
1
Two Sorts of Poetic Revision.
by Charles G. Bell
7
An Interview with Alvin Fross and Peter Weiss.
by Robert L. Spaeth
11
Commencement Address-Annapolis 1973
by Ford K. Brown
17
Profile: Louis L. Snyder, '28. . . . . . . . . . . .
20
Graduation 1973
22
...........
News on the Campuses
24
Alumni Activities
26
Valery's "Poesie," translated by Timothy Born.
29
ON THE COVER: Ford K. Brown, the Annapolis commencement speaker for 1973. Mr. Brown has been on the
St. John's faculty since 1925. He is now a Tutor Emeritus.
�SPEECH,
Its Strength and Its Weaknesses
by JACOB KLEIN
To undertake to speak about speech means to embark
upon an endless task. Yet there are strict limits that I have
to observe and to be aware of: limits of time, of redundancy, of attentiveness on your part. I shall have to focus
your attention on what people mostly concerned about
speech have said. These were the people whom we call
oi cfnA6aocf>o,, the "lovers of wisdom" among the Greeks.
But I shall also have to appeal to an understanding of
what usually happens to speech, to an understanding which
those people do not seem to have had. I shall be as brief
as possible, and I hope you will not mind my carefulnay, my pedantic use of English and Greek words.
(Parenthetical remark: some of what I am going to say
I have said before in lectures and in print, but not all
of it.)
Let me begin by quoting from Plato's dialogue entitled
Phaedo. This dialogue pretends to describe what happened
during the very last day of Socrates. Attentive reading
shows that the content of the dialogue is mythical, but
that the mythical frame allows us to become aware of
what Plato understood to be Socrates' unique and overwhelming impact. At a crucial point of the dialogue (95 E
ff.) Socrates, after silently looking back into himself for
quite a while, reaches-in speaking-far back into his own
youth. He wanted very much, he reports, to find out, with
regard to any single thing or occurrence, what was responsible for its coming into being, its passing away, its being
the way it was; but he could not find any satisfactory
answers. Nor could he learn anything from acnybody else,
not even from the great Anaxagoras. He had to abandon
the way in which questions like these were dealt with in
the various versions of the "inquiry into nature" (7rEpt
Jacob Klein is a Tutor Emeritus on the Annapolis campus.
This lecture was delivered at Annapolis in February, 1973.
¢1~t:n:w; iuropla). He decided to embark upon a different
journey, a SCcond journey", which means, he decided to
take to the oars, since the wind had failed. This is the
presentation he makes of his new endeavor.
By looking directly at whatever presents itself in om
familiar world, at things and their properties, at human
affairs and actions, we run the risk of being blinded, as
people do when they observe the sun during an eclipse,
if they do not look at its image on some watery surface.
That may well have happened to those investigators of
nature. To avoid being blinded, Socrates thought he had
to "have recourse to spoken words" ( cl-; Toir<; A6ymJsKam¢vyciv) and "see in them the truth of whatever is"
(99 E).
In the dialogue entitled Philebus, Plato again makes
Socrates refer to men engaged in the study of nature (59
A-C): these men want to understand how this world of
ours came into being, how it is acted upon and how it
acts itself, that is to say, they are trying to discover transient productions of the present, the future and the past,
not what unchangeably always is. To discover the immutable it is necessary to rely on the power of discourse
( 1/ roV 8taA€ywBat 8Vvap,t.;;- 57 E), in exchanging questions
and answers with oneself and with others. The power of
discourse is the power inherent in human speech, this
marvel, let me say, this greatest marvel perhaps under the
sun.
The Greek noun -\6yo' and the Greek verb -\iy<tv have
a vast range of meanings. They may refer to reckoning,
accounting, measuring, relating, gathering, picking up (let
us not forget the English words "collect" and "select",
derived from -\iy"v). But, above all, they refer to speaking,
discoursing, arguing, discussing, reasoning. That's how we
have to understand Aristotle's statement (Politics I,Z,
1253 a 10): A6yov . . . ,Wvov llv0pw7roc;; fxn rWv t~wv, "man
alone among living beings possesses speech", and that
implies: man alone possesses the ability to understand the
11
I
�The College
spoken word, to understand articulated speech.
We mean by speech-everybody means by it-a sequence of sounds uttered by somebody in such a way as
to be understandable to others. The verb "to understand"
refers primarily, though not uniquely, to speech. Hearing
somebody speak, we may say: "! understand what you are
saying". We may, in fact, misunderstand, but even mis~
understanding involves understanding. But what do we
understand in hearing somebody speak? Not the sounds in
themselves, the audible low and high pitched noises issuing
from somebody's mouth (or some machine, for that
matter). We hear these noises, but hearing is not understanding. That is why we do not understand speech in a
foreign tongue. In a manner which, itself, is hardly or not
at all understandable, the sounds carry with them-or
embody or represent-something else, precisely that which
makes us understand, whenever we understand. This
source and target of our understanding consists of units
to which single words correspond as well as of combinations of units to which sequences of words correspond.
The speaker and the hearer share-or, at least, intend to
share-the understanding of those units and of those combinations of units. The speaker transposes what he means
into sounding words variably intoned, and the hearer who
understands reverses that process in reaching back to the
intended meaning. The intended meaning is what the
Greeks called To vo1T6v ( vo1 Tav being a verbal adjective of
vodv, which means "to receive the intelligible"). Among
the intelligible units, the vo1 Ta, there are two kinds: some
are intelligi-ble by themselves, some l1elp us to receive
those first ones, help us to understand what is being said.
Speech and understanding are inseparable. A6yo> means
inseparably both speech and that which can be and is
being understood in speech. It is in man and, to repeat,
only through man that Aoyo> manifests itself conspicuously.
Neither birds nor porpoises nor seals have A6yo>, though
quire to produce those things, and furthermore, the knowledge that guides his arts and skills, not only to satisfy his
most elementary needs, but also to establish customs and
institutions in which his life flows from generation to gen-
they are able to "communicate" with each other and even
characters". Descartes said: "The science contained in the
great book of the world ...". Harvey said: "The book of
with human beings.
We all remember, I think, a phrase that Homer uses so
often when describing human speech, the phrase "winged
words" ( ii1rm 7Tn:p6£vTa). Whence this image? In most cases
the phrase occurs when a personage, a god or a man,
addresses another single personage, a god or a man. Occasionally it is also used when someone speaks to a group
or a crowd of people. Minstrels in Homer are never said
to utter or sing "winged words". Now, words are not
called "winged" to indicate their soaring or lofty quality.
The image seems rather to imply that words, after escap·
ing "the fence of the teeth", as Homer puts it, are guided
swiftly, and therefore surely, to their destination, the ears
and the soul and the understanding of the addressee. It
is more difficult to reach a crowd of men than a single
man. Exertions of a special kind are then required.
What is speech "about"? About everything man is
familiar with-the sky and the earth, the rivers and the
sea, the living beings around him, on land, in water, in the
air, the things he himself builds and produces, as well
as the tools and appurtenances that his arts and skills re2
eration, in happiness or misery, in friendship or enmity,
in praise or blame, and to which customs and institutions
he is attached beyond his most pressing wants. That is
what his speech and his understanding are mostly about.
What we say, however circuitously . or confusedly or
loosely, is said in words and sentences, each of which conveys immediate meaning. The A6yo~ cannot help moving
in the medium of the immediately understandable. But
words and sentences can also be involuntarily or deliberately ambiguous. We can play on words. Plato's dialogues, for example, are replete with puns. However, am-
biguities and puns are only possible, because words and
sentences carry with them several distinct meanings which,
separately, are clearly understood. To be sure, speech can
be obscure. But it can be obscure only because the clarity
of some of its parts impinges, or seems to impinge, on
the clarity of others.
Speech, then, presents to the understanding of the
listener what the speaker himself understands. It presents
to the listener nothing but combinations of vo1Jnf, of
intelligibles. In doing that, however, speech speaks about
all the things and all the properties of things that abound
around us, all the special circumstances and situations in
which we find ourselves. The question arises: do the vo1Jrtf,
the intelligibles, presented to us in speech, have their
foundation in themselves, or do they stem from the things
and circumstances spoken about? Does not human speech
translate the language, the yAwaaa, of the things themselves?
Let me turn for a moment to the way things and events
around us have been and are being referred to. In Galileo's
words: "The book of Nature is written in mathematical
Nature lies open before us and can be easily consulted".
The phrase "book of Nature" is a metaphor used long
before the seventeenth century, but why was this particular
metaphor ever chosen? Is it not because Nature is under-
stood as something that can be read like a book, provided
we know how to read it? But does not that indeed imply
a language that is Nature's own? Francis Bacon was of the
opinion that Nature is subtly secretive, full of riddles,
Sphinx-like. But secrets can be revealed, riddles can be
solved in words. We persist, don't we, in solving the
"riddles of nature". In ancient times the order of all that
exists around us was -taken much more directly as a lan-
guage, a language not heard and not written, yet visible,
and if not visible, one to be guessed at. Human speech
seems indeed to translate that visible or invisible language
of things into the audible language of words. And just as
the sounds of human speech can be traced down to their
ultimate components to which the letters of the alphabet
correspond, things around us can be decomposed into their
first rudiments-the "elements"-the original letters of the
�July 1973
language of things, as it were. Our speech, even our unguarded colloquial way of speaking, may reveal to the
attentive listener the hidden articulations of the language
of things. Aristotle, no less than Plato, was constantly following up casually spoken words. It seems that Heraclitus,
the tjobscure" used the word "logos" in reference to the
language of things. Let me quote from the fragments in
question. First: "Of the Logos, which is as I describe it,
men always prove to be uncomprehending, both before
they have heard it and when once they have heard it. For
although all things happen according to this Logos, men
are like people of no experience, even when they experience such sayings and deeds as I explain, when I distinguish each thing according to its nature and declare how
it is; but all the other men fail to notice what they do
after they wake up, just as they forget what they do when
asleep". Then this: "therefore it is necessary to follow
what is common; but although the Logos is common, the
many live as though they had their own thoughts". Then
this: "Listening not to me, but to the Logos, it is wise to
agree that all things are one". And finally, to supplement
the last fragment: "Out of all things-one, and out of one
-all things". (Kirk and Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers, 1957, pp. 187-188, 191). The Logos makes us
understand, if we follow Heraclitus, what the things themselves are saying, brightly and darkly, in tune and out of
1
tune.
Speaking and understanding what is being said involves
thinking, involves what the Greeks called 8ufvo•a. Let us
hear what Plato has to say about the relation of speaking
to thinking. In the dialogue entitled The Sophist, in which
Plato makes the Stranger from Elea converse with the
young mathematician Theaetetus, the Stranger remarks
(263 E): "... thought (8ufvo•a) and speech ("-6yo,) are
the same, only that the former-that is, 8ufvow.-, which is
a silent inner conversation of the soul with itself, has been
given the special name of thought". Thinking, as Plato
understands it, is not tied to what the moderns mean by
the ''stream of consciousness". It can be imagined as a
discontinuous, not always regular, stepping forward, and
stepping aside, and stepping backward and forward again,
what speech, too, usually does. It is necessary to note that
for Plato, and for Plato alone, this identity of thought
and speech is not a complete one: facing the highest, allcomprehending intelligibles, thought is not able to transpose itself into suitable words. In the seventh letter attributed to Plato we read the phrase "the weakness of spoken
words" (-rO nOv A6ywv &.aOEvE,-343 A 1), and the dialogue
entitled The Sophist itself shows this weakness rather
clearly, as we shall see in a moment. Moreover, speech
and thinking can both deceive us, disconnect our steps,
and thus distort :md falsify the truth of things. The firework of the sophists, for example,-and there are always
sophists around-make things and relations of things assume a most unexpected, dazzling, and puzzling aspect:
things suddenly appear not to be what they are. But who
is doing the lying, if it be lying, the sophists or the things
themselves? A critique of speech and of thinking, a critical
inquisition into speaking, thinking and arguing has to be
undertaken-as it was undertaken by men as diverse as
Parmenides, Prodicus, Plato, Aristotle. The result of this
critique can be stated as follows: to speak does not always
mean to make things appear in their true light. For Aristotle only one kind of speech, 0 A6yo<> &.7ro¢avnK6<>, the
declaratory and revealing speech, and the thinking which
belongs to it, translate and present the language of things.
To be able to use this kind of speech requires a discipline,
the discipline of the Myo,. Everywhere in Aristotle's work,
one senses, to the annoyance of some and to the delight
of others, the effectiveness of that discipline, the effectiveness of what we call (and the author himself docs not call)
the "logic" of Aristotle. (Cf. On Interpretation 5, 17 a 8;
4, 17 a 2; 6, 17 a 25; Posterior Analytics I 2, 72 all.)
Given the ever-present possibility of declaratory and
revealing speech, Aristotle need not, and does not, set
limits to the power of the Logos. For Plato, however, as I
have mentioned, there are limits that spoken words cannot transcend. This becomes quite clear in the dialogue
entitled Cratylus. In it Socrates first invents fantastically
funny "etymologies" of words, etymologies of proper
names of heroes and gods as well as of familiar designations given to the ways men behave and think. Socrates
then contrives rather playfully (422 E ff.) to describe the
letters and syllables of any word as providing an "imitation", a p.lp.ry~<a (423 B; 430 A,B,E; 437 A) of the very
being ( o~uia) of what is supposed to be "imitated". T11is
"imitation" is also said by Socrates-said more accuratelyto be a udisclosure", a "revelation", a 80Awp.a (425 A,B;
433 B,D; 435 A,B) of the thing in question. Finally the
assertion is made that even "revealing" words may well be
interpreted as not fostering our understanding. One has
to agree, says Socrates, that things which are can be learned
and sought for "much better through themselves than
through names" (439 B). And that is only possible if
what truly is is not subject to change, as Heraclitus claims,
but is immutably what it is. Whether this is so or whether
what the Heracliteans and many others say is true, is a
question difficult to decide, but uno man of sense can
help himself and his own soul by relying on names"
(440 C). The power of the spoken word is thus a limited
one, according to Plato, which makes his dialogues as
troublesome and as wonderful as they appear to be.
Let me try to show you this by referring to, and quoting
from, the dialogue entitled The Sophist. This dialogue is
the central piece of a trilogy, namely the trilogy of the
dialogues entitled Theaetetus, The Sopl1ist, and The
Statesman. The conversations and events which are presented in these mimes are supposed to take place at the
very time the suit against Socrates has its beginning-as
you can read at the very end of the first piece of the
trilogy. V/e find in the second and the third dialogue,
namely in The Sophist and in The Statesman, an abundance of so-ca11ed "divisions"
(StapEun~)
which, in The
Sophist, are supposed to be the means to establish what
a "sophist" is. Opposed to the udivisions" are the Collections" ( uvvaywyai), and let me quote what, in the
11
3
�The College
dialogue entitled Phaedrus, Socrates has to say about these
"divisions" and "collections" to that lovable young man,
Phaedrus: "Now I myself, Phaedrus, am a lover of these
divisions and collections as aids to speech and thought;
and if I think any other man is able to see things that can
naturally be collected into one and divided into many,
him I follow after and walk in his footsteps as if he were
a god [this is a playful and ambiguous reference to a line
in the fifth book of the Odyssey J. And whether the name
I give to those who can do this is right or wrong, god
knows, but I have called them hitherto dialecticians"
(Phaedrus 266 B·C). Now, the first five "divisions" in the
dialogue entitled The Sophist do not reach their goal,
except in one very peculiar case. The goal is to establish,
as I said, what a "sophist" is. In this dialogue a nameless
Stranger from Elea performs these dialectical exercises
with the help of young Theaetetus, whose looks resemble
those of Socrates (Theaetetus 143 E). Of Theaetetus we
also know, from the dialogue that bears his name as well
as from other sources, that he was a powerful mathema·
tician, especially interested in incommensurable magni-
tudes and multitudes. Books X and XIII of Euclid's
Elements are based, in part at least, on his work. In the
dialogue entitled The Sophist young Thcaetetus is shown
to distinguish and to count well, so well, indeed, that he
helps us to understand what the Eleatic Stranger, alone,
by himself, could not make us understand. Let us see.
There are five "divisions" in the beginning of the dia-
logue, meant to catch the "sophist". After they have been
made they" are counted up by the Stranger and Theaetetus
in the following way: "Stranger: First, if I am not mis·
taken, he [that is, the "sophist"] was found to be a paid
hunter after the young and wealthy. Theactetus: Ycs.
Stranger: Secondly, a sort of merchant in articles of know!·
edge for the soul. Theactetus: Very much so. Stranger:
And tl1irdly, did he not turn up as retailer ( Ka"'J!>.o,) of
these same articles of knowledge? Theaetetus: Yes, and
fourtl1ly, we found he was a seller of his own productions
( avTom:,J,.~,). Stranger: You remember well" (231 D). I
have to interrupt this quoting to check whether Theactetus
does remember well. By going back, we see that the
Stranger had previously summarized (224 D-E) the third
division in these words: "And that part of acquisitive art
which proceeds by exchange and by sale in both ways
{ &p. r:f>o'ripw<>) as mere retail trade ( Ka7T.,AtK6v) or as the sale
of one's own production ( aVTmrwAtK6v), so long as it be-
longs to the family of merchandising in knowledge, that
part you will apparently always call sophistry". Theaetetus
had then answered: "Necessarily so, for I have to follow
the argument, the i>.oyo,''. Theaetetus remembers well: he
remembers that retail trade and also the sale of one's own
production had been mentioned, but he forgot, he forgot,
the word awpoTlpw' (in both ways), and this makes him
add to the third description a new one, which he calls the
fourth. Both, his remembering and his forgetting have remarkable consequences. In the counting up of the "clivi·
sions" the fourth becomes the fifth, and the fiitl1, which
is the one that reaches its goal, namely the correct descrip-
4
lion of the work performed by a quasi-sophist, namely by
Socrates himself,- this fifth "division" becomes the sixth.
Let us not forget: six is the first
11
perfect" number, and
only a "perfect" number is fit to be applied to Socrates'
work. But, moreover, the forgetfulness of Theaetetus com·
pels us to pay special attention to the word which he forgot, to the word dp,¢o'rEpw<>, or more exactly to the word
al'</>w (both) and to its cognates. We become aware that
this word is used over and over again in the dialogue. Here
is just one example. Speaking of the "sophist", the Stranger
remarks at one point (226 A): "Do you see the truth of
the statement that this beast is many-sided and, as the
saying is, not to be caught with one hand? Tl1eaetetus:
Then we must catch him with both".
The significance of this word "both" becomes fully
apparent when the Stranger and Theaetetus focus their
attention on ''Change" (xtV1Jm<>) and "Rest" (anim<>). I
shall quote again (250 A-C): "Stranger: You say that
Change and Rest are entirely opposed to each other?
Theaetetus: How could I say anything else? Stranger: And
yet you say that both and each of them equally are.
Theaetetus: Ycs, I do. Stranger: And in admitting that
they are, are you saying that both and each of them arc
changing? Theaetetus: No, no! Stranger: Then, perhaps,
by saying that both are, you mean they are both at rest?
Thcactetus: How could I? Stranger: Then you put-before
you Being (To ov) as a third, as something beside these,
inasmuch as you think Rest and Change are embraced by
it; and since you comprehend and observe that these commune with Being, are you saying that they both are?
Theactetus: We truly happen to divine that )3eing is
something tlrird, when we say that Change and Rest are.
Stranger: Then Being is not BOTH Cl1ange and Rest
TOGETHER, but something else, di/lerent from them. Theae·
tetus: So it seems. Stranger: According to its own nature,
then, Being is neitl1er at rest nor changing. TlJCaetetus:
M-hm (in Greek: ax,86v)". The last statement of the
Stranger cannot be taken at face value. And Theaetetus
immediately afterwards recognizes that it is totally im·
possible for Being to be neither at rest nor changing.
The root of the difficulty, of the perplexity in which we,
who listen to this conversation, find ourselves is that, in
the case of Being, Change and Rest, our human speech,
the i>.6yo,, is failing. It is failing when it tries to speak about
such greatest "looks" (!'iywTa ,lSr-·245 C 2-3), that is,
such all-comprehending vo~nf. Being (To ov), Change
{ x[v-,.,m.:,;) and Rest ( anfm<>) appear to be three f_Z81J, three
"invisible looks", while in truth Change and Rest are
C3C
EV
Q
UfL'f'OTfpa OliO •
" h OTIC" (EKUTEpOJI ") 3U d"btht WQ "('""'
''
"')
Botlr together they constitute Being (To ilv). This means
that, according to Plato, Being must be understood as the
eideti.c Two. The eidetic Two is not a mathematical number of hvo indivisible and indistinguishable monads,
among infinitely many such mathematical twos. Nor is it
two visible, divisible and unequal things, two houses or
two dogs or two apples, for example. The eidetic Two is
a unique dyad of two unique EZ81J, of two <lin visible looks",
namely of Change and Rest. And just as they both to-
�July 1973
gether, and only both together, are the .!So,, the "look",
the "invisible look" Being, so the Stranger from Elea and
Theaetetus can only both together deal with the question
of Being. That's why the Stranger says at one point to
Theaetetus (239 C): "let us bid farewell to you and to
me". He means that neither he alone nor Theaetetus alone
can accomplish the task, but that they can do it only both
together. But this they can do "not with complete clarity"
(I'~ .,.,;."11 <m.P~v<i~-254 C 6), because they are speaking
about it.
It is thus that a weakness of speech is revealed in the
dialogue entitled The Sophist. But this dialogue also
shows why there can he falsehood uttered in speech, why
speech can state what is not true. There is, however, a
wide spectrum of the un-true, ranging from falsehood to
likelihood. This is the background of the dialogue entitled Timaeus, and I would like to quote a passage from
this dialogue to make you experience the playful and
saddening ambiguity of this passage. It deals with the
human mouth. It claims that it was fashioned "for ends
both necessary and most good", "as an entrance with a
view to what is necessary and as an outlet with a view
to what is most good". I keep quoting (75 D-E): "For
all that enters in and supplies food to the body is necessary; while the stream of speech which flows out and
ministers to thoughtfulness is of all streams the most
beautiful and most good". Can we forget how much evil,
how much falsehood, how much trifling, how much nonsense also flows out? No, we cannot. But this must be
added: in all those cases I just mentioned speech does not
minister to thoughtfulness, to ¢p6v~"''·
Let me now turn to a character of speech to which the
ancients apparently did pay only scant attention. A most
remarkable similarity obtains between words, spoken words
of live speech, and rnoney,-money, that is, available in
coins and bills. Both are precious, both circulate freely,
coins and bills from hand to hand, words from mouth to
mouth. The imprints on coins and bills are gradually
erased, effaced, rubbed off, just as the meanings of words
seem to become fuzzy, blurred and empty with the passage of time. There is even counterfeiting in language as
there is in money. Human speech can and does deteriorate
to an extent which renders it obnoxious, makes it unable
to reach anyone, deprives it totally of wings.
It was Edmund Husser! who, in modern times, pointed
to this inevitable deterioration of human speech. According to him the signifying power of a word has, by its very
nature, the tendency to lose its revealing character. T11e
more we become accustomed to words, the less we per~
ceive their original and precise significance: a kind of
superficial and vague understanding is the necessary result
of the increasing familiarity with spoken-and writtenwords. Yet that original significance is still there, in every
word, somehow "forgotten", but still at the bottom of
our speaking and our understanding, however vague the
meaning conveyed by our speech might be. The original
"evidence" has faded away, but has not disappeared completely. It need not be ''awakened" even, it underlies our
mutual understanding in a "sedimented" form. "Sedimen-
tation is always somehow forgetfulness" (Die Frage nach
dem Ursprung der Geometri.e als intentional-historisches
Problem, first published by Eugen Fink in "Revue internationale de philosophie", I, 2, 1939, p.212). And this
kind of forgetfulness accompanies, of necessity, according
to Husser!, the development and growth of any science.
(The text about the "origin of geometry" appears alsoin a slightly changed form-as the 3rd Appendix to Walter
Biemel's edition of the Crisis of European Sciences and
Transcendental Pbenomenology-Husserliana, Vol. VI,
1962-and as the 6th Appendix to David Carr's translation
of the "Crisis"-Nortl1western University Press, 1970. The
sentence <~sedimentation is always somehow forgetfulness"
is omitted in Biemel's and Carr's versions. I assume, however, that this sentence is based on Husserl's own words,
uttered in conversation with Fink.)
'T'o be sure, the original evidence can be "reactivated",
and indeed is reactivated at definite times. This interlacement of the original significance and of its "sedimentation" constitutes, we read in Husserl's late work, the true
character of "history" (Ibid., p. 220). From that point of
view there is only one legitimate form of history: the history of human thought. History, in this understanding,
cannot be separated from Philosophy. Husserl's own
philosophy, as it develops in its latest phase (1935-193'7),
is a most remarkable attempt to restore the integrity of
knowledge, of /.,.""~"~' threatened by the all-pervading
tendency of "sedimentation". It has remained an attempt.
But it may help us, in any event, to understand the character of speech, the character of the spoken word. It may
help us to be cautious in our speaking and listening.
When we hear-or read-words intended to convey
opinions about things, about what they are and how they
are, it is amazing to observe their almost total dependence
on the Latin rendering of crucial Greek, and especially
Aristotelian, terms used in searching or revealing speech
or, as we say, in "philosophical" discourse. The adoption of
this Latin rendering by modern western languages usually
involves a radical change and certainly a "sedimentation"
of the very meaning of the terms in question. We hear a
great deal about pollution today-the pollution of air,
water, and land, which burdens our lives. But we hear
rarely about the pollution of our language, which burdens
our understanding. Our daily language, not to mention the
"elevated" language of inquiry and exposition, is perme-
ated and polluted by distorted terms in pseudo-Latin or
even pseudo-Greek guise. Don't we use words like the
following ones all the time: "actual", 11 dynarnic", "potentialities'', "matter", "substance", ''theory", ''information",
"energy", "category", "logical", "formal", "abstract"? How
strange and how discouraging! Do we know what we mean
by these words? I could extend this list quite a bit, but
I should like to add only these six terms: "ideal",
"essence", "concept", "reality", "individual", and-hor-
ribile dictu-"mind".
This tendency of 11 Sedimentation" of human speech
finds, it is true, its counterpart in the tendency to re-
5
�The College
activate its original significance. Beyond that, it may happen that human speech reaches levels previously not experienced at all: they may increase its vigor, lift its signifying power to new heights, elevate it truly. Responsible
for this arc mostly-and rarely enough, to be sure-written
words. New words or new combinations of words can be
"coined", as we so aptly and significantly say. At decisive
points in his dialogues Plato resorts to this kind of coining;
in the dialogue entitled The Republic, for example, but
most notably in the dialogue entitled The Statesman.
(We are aware, of course, that Plato's dialogues, although
presenting lively spoken words, are the result of uniquely
careful editing and writing.) Story-writers engage-sometimes-in this kind of inventive writing, as Joyce and
Faulkner did. The most important cases of newly articulated written speech, however, are found in declaratory
works which intend to convey knowledge, derived from
questioning that is profound and deeply serious. Such
works are those of Aristotle, of Hegel who raises Aristotle
6
to new levels, and of Heidegger who opposes Aristotle
radically. Their peculiar way of speaking sheds new light
on things, on their roots, their relations, their very being.
We have to note: none of these authors has written
works that are easily translatable,-and this cannot be
otherwise.
Let me be fair to people of the Latin tongue and, by
way of conclusion, quote Virgil, the poet. In a letter to a
friend Virgil says that he gives birth to verses in the
manner of bears and according to their custom (parere se
versus modo atque ritu ursina), that is to say, that he
produces his verses the way the mother bear handles her
newly born cubs: assiduously and persistently she licks
them into their proper shape. Such assiduous work, performed on the written word and undertaken to assure the
right articulation of a composed whole, can and does restore and preserve the integrity of human speech. It is
thus that the written word repays its eternal debt to the
spoken word. II
�Two Sorts of Poetic Revision
by CHARLES G. BELL
I doubt if rules can be given for the making or shaping
of poems. Some come easy, some hard, nor will the end
product necessarily betray the manner of its birth. Is anything but curiosity to be served by raking up the files?
Yet we live in a curious age where the exhibition of
process tempts us more than participation in a timeless
goal. And what is more immediate than a draft?
Charles G. Bell is a Tutor on the Santa Fe campus. His
poems, ((Diretro al Sol," ~~Heraclitus in the West," and
"Touch~me-not" arc from Songs for a New America
(Norman S. Berg, Dunwoody, Ga.). "Moonrise" was published in Contemporary Poets of the English Language
(St. James Press, 1970), and "Resonance of Towers" in
Quarterly Review of Literature (Princeton, 1972). "A
Fly Trown into the Fire" has not been previously
published. All poems are copyrighted by Charles G. Bell.
The poems in my first two books (Songs for a New
America and Delta Return) are mostly statements in the
classical manner. They would come to me when I experienced a particular in its universal aspect. I would write
the first sketch as fast as my pen would move, and later
work it up, trying to bring out its implicit form.
By the early 1950's I had turned from the Augustinian
drift of my war years toward a celebration of the tragic
glory in which I thought of America as living. I was teaching Thucydides in Hutchins' College. One afternoon
Elizabeth Mann Borgese drove some of us to a winetasting in the Electric Club high over Chicago, where I
sampled maybe thirty kinds of wine. As we raced back
south through the evening traffic of the outer drive, a
poem came to me. As soon as I could get home to my
desk, I dashed off the following lines, though my head
swam so I could scarcely hold the pen in my hand:
7
�The College
We came out on the high platform above
The city of giant endeavor taking below
The advance of evening and in reddening glow
Clear stars returning, lights of windows round
In band and height to the over-pluming skies
And cars in streams pouring to the suburb homes.
Around us drinking the wines of France
Men of every nation with voices not yet hushed
By the encroaching shadows, speaking in the
Tongues of their native lands,
Of women and the world and who should rule,
Still free in slams and laughter.
And the dusk deepened as the city glowed
And out of the past of another great evening
Through which the spirit lives came the
Voice of Pericles as Athens stood on the
Beach of that mad sailing that bore them down.
These words echo in the mind. In the
living dusk the great towers flash skyward.
Along the water front stream the metal cars.
Planes above, flashing lights, the destinate
roar, South, West and East. And the
voices of free men. And we too on the
beach of the perilous parting.
Well we have lived. To all who
may come-by these presentsHere perilous spirit took the dusk on wings.
(There wa> also an alternate version of the close):
The end is less than the knowledge of having
Dared for vision, if only we truly dare;
Above the blind world-closure of our wasting
Still the incredible promise brightens the shore.
Ships sailing to the dark ...
And the twilight air
... rustles with the rush of wings.
For a week or more afterwards I was working with those
notes, actualizing the meter, stanza structure, assonance
and rhyme, word repetition, etc. latent there. Here is the
result as it appears in my Songs for a New America (the
title from Ulysses' "mad flight", Inferno, 26):
DIRETRO AL SOL
Over the gulf and soaring of the city
We came at dusk to the roof-garden rail.
Darkness flowed in the streets; the dream-world beauty
Of towered steel rose in the violet airBands and heights of light under the sky's plumes;
Cars to the suburbs burn the long road lanes.
Here on the terrace, drinking wine and eating,
People of every nation, hearts unquelled
By the encroaching shadows, mingle, speaking
Tongues of kindred lands. Their voices tell
Of customs and of needs, of the fools who rule;
They are loose in talk and laughter, slurs and dreams.
8
And the clouds relinquish the sun's brown setting.
Twilight deepens as the city glows.
Out of the past of another world-evening
Spirit has suffered, a great voice looms;
It is Pericles-with Athens at the bourn
Of her adventurous sailing into ruin:
"We are the school of Bellas. Wonder unending
Of after ages will be ours. We have
Made sea and land the highway of our daring.
If now obedient to the general law
We invite decay, the greatness we have known
Will he some break of beauty in that gloom."
These words echo in the mind. From dark flashing
Along the gray shore and the wash of waves,
Towers, and cars streaming. Up vibrant air reaching
Cones of light catch at the destinate planes.
The roar west and east.
Here in the hum
Of mingled voices, careless freedom sings.
And we too have lived the dayspring and daring
That all time will remember; we have seen,
Over the earth-foreclosure of our wasting,
Still the incredible brightening of the dream .....
Now promise is almost presence under the dome
Of night stirred with light and the rush of wings.
The same method may be illustrated with another
poem, a little earlier and darker,
~~Heraclitus
in the West".
In March of 19 50, as I was walking by Lake Michigan (it
becomes the Atlantic in the poem), the setting sun broke
from clouds at my back and poured a shaft into the general dark, catching gulls invisible before, shining flecks
against the storm. I was teaching The Heart of Darkness;
to Conrad's symbol I added that of historical east and
west, the turn from the free motion west hack to the
church-close of Eliot's surrender. I scribbled five lines:
And the streaming sun from behind out east
Over the sea; far against the drop of
Dark cloud and above the wind-tossed gray
The wheeling gulls, before swallowed in fog,
Burn silver sparks of searching, motes of fire.
To which, on my return to the house, I added (drifting
toward prose) :
Once we looked west over the sea to the golden oblate
And beckoning sun, dropping under the limb of the unAnd the call was westward, touching
/explored.
the rooks and swallows
On the flat land behind, tentative wings sweeping out
west over the waves.
Here the great globe sets at our hacks behind us, and the
call has been followed to the last limb of land, the wall
struck and the wave rebounds, drawn now down the
stream
�July 1973
of spreading rays, east again east, home to the womb and
mother, the peaceful church close and garden of old
time ... beside the river ... among
For months this remained in my pocket, ineluctable. Then
I saw it as four five-line stanzas, knit together with the
tolling of repeated words (a variant on the line-endings of
the Sestina), thirteen in each stanza: sun, behind, east,
sea, river, light, dark, cloud, gray, drop, gulls, burn, fire-
besides other words echoed, if not so many times: land,
call, west, down, up, wind, verge, etc. 'T'he last stanza
consciously transcends Spenglerian gloom in a timelessness
of light against dark, rounding the poem out with ponderous solidity, at the same time that it sacrifices the
broken poignance of the original sketch. For there is no
gain, even in art, which is not in some sense a loss.
HERACLITUS IN THE WEST
"The way up and the way down is the same"
And the raying sun from behind breaks out cast
Over the sea, opening a river light
Into the dark of cloud and the wind-tossed gray;
Against that drop, the unguessed wheeling gulls
Burn silver sparks of search, volitional fire.
Once we looked west over sea to the golden
Oblate and beckoning sun dropping without cloud
Behind the fired earth's verge; and the call was sunward,
Burning rooks and gulls of the dark eastern land,
Stirred wings west up rivers of light from the gray.
Here the great sun drops at our backs behind us;
The call has been followed to the last verge of land,
The light struck and the wave rebounds; into dark
We burn down rivers of fire, re~entering cloud,
Gulls to the gray-walled close by the eastern sea.
Sunlight before or behind are tides ·of one motion;
The way up and down currents of a single sea;
Beyond east or west rounds the gulf of one darkness;
And every ray of flight burns rivers of fire,
Gulls to the landless drop of the wind-gray cloud.
This classical method of revision remains the same,
whether the first sketch comes from within, or as often in
fiction, from conversations heard. 'T1ms, Christmas vaca-
tion of 1951, returning from Mississippi to Chicago on the
night train, I waked from a doze to a conversation in-
credibly satirizing itself by its own symbols-tourist-talk
from the seat in front of me. I took down in the almost
dark on an envelope:
And the cigar factory, did you go?
Yes, we were there. I bought two boxes
& the Trocadero (?)with the frosted drinks,
diacheris I guess. We bought the banana liquer.
Something going on all the day. Cocktails.
And we never had to walk.
But the people are strangers
Very unfriendly & so many beggars.
Surely sounds interesting-But did you see
the little plant that when you touch it withers all up.
No.
At the side I scratched:
It is the symb.
And in a space at the top, an opening first used m the
poem, then cut to a line, then revised out:
Between waking and sleeping, half in dream
I heard this from the new rich on a train.
I got another paper as soon as I could and noted some
other details they had mentioned, the cruise boat, etc.
The poem came out rather easily in ironic half-rhymed
couplets (as it appears in the revised version of Songs for
a New America):
TOUCH-ME-NOT
"It was wonderfuL The cruise boat stopped at the
stream,
And there they brought a barge and put us on.
We had the deck with curtains; just below,
A marimba band played the whole day through.
So we went up the river. It was nice.
They have beef steaks at fifty cents apiece,
And frosted drinks."
"I guess you docked in Cuba?"
HFor three days."
"Did you see the Tropicana?"
'We were there; the ceiling's made of glass.
And we drank daiquiris, I think it was,
At forty cents a throw."
"Fancy that.
I bought banana liqueur."
"And on the boat
There was something every hour. Cocktails helped.
And when we went ashore we never walked."
"Did you see them lick cigars with their tongues?"
"Sure. I got two boxes, but they were strong."
"Sounds interesting."
"Only the people are queer,
Unfriendly, you know, and beggars everywhere."
"And did you see the small plant touch-me-not
That when you touch it it withers all up
Before your eyes?"
"No, that we did not find."
Go back; it is the essence of the land.
So far I have illustrated only the one method. In most
of my later poems, revision has taken a different slant. The
longer versions here given were already revised poems,
worked up from such sketches as have just been considered. What has happened from that point on is a kind of
9
�The College
modern Revision by Excision-to strike out or dissolve as
much of the poem as possible, until it becomes a kind of
archipelago of mountains, remnant of a drowned continent of discourse. The trick is to keep the poem from
sinking altogether, since there is a certain law of gravity
by which, once it has gone below a critical mass, it tends
to wilt without limit, as a bubble under surface tension
withdraws into a pipe-bowl.
The three poems here given, both in long and short versions, have been revised over five or more years and
through innumerable states. It is to be hoped they have
been arrested at the point where space was about to close
up around them.
MOONRISE (early form)
Long ago I stood with a woma·n by the sea
And saw the moon rise naked and alone.
When we did not love in the hollows of the dunes
Or swim in the moon-spilled troughs of the sea,
I grieved for the wasted beauty of the world.
From the sleeping form of another woman now
I rise and climb the dunes, where another moon
Breaks over an ocean shore, it washes clean.
I am content in the ruins of nakedness.
Listen, waking or sleeping, all I have loved:
The heart of an old man wants nothing more
When the dead moon spills its yellow seed
In the heaving and sighing deep furrows of the sea.
MOONRISE
I rise and climb the dunes. A waning moon
Breaks over an ocean shore it washes clean.
I am content in the ruins of nakedness.
Sleeping or waking, listen, all I have loved:
The heart of an old man wants nothing more
When the dead moon spills its yellow seed
In the heaving and sighing deep furrows of the sea.
INVESTITURE (preliminary)
Tonight for the first time I climb the stair,
Turn on the light, that sends four rays
To the dark quarters of the bay and land.
How many have kept lights burning in their towers?
Milton's solitary Platonist,
Image-seeking Celtic Yeats,
Collins in the mountain hut
Over twilight shires of mist.
Think of Dante somewhere in banishment
Climbing another's stairs by candlelight;
Think of all whose height became a sign
Of the brooding eminence established by the mind.
10
Rats with electrodes in their heads
Jump on treadle for a charge.
Action, passion, peace and war
Shrink to pastime-company bad.
Only rays that reach across dark shores
Find the resonance of what endures,
This lighted web of soul in the world
Communion of Platonists in timeless towers.
RESONANCE OF TOWERS
Tonight, in the lighted tower,
I have outwatched the Bear.
I think of Dante in banishment,
Climbing another's stairs by candlelight;
Collins in the clouded hut
Rockwalled Jeffers, embattled Yeats
Rats with electrodes in their heads
Jump on the treadle for a charge.
The night web of soul in the world
Flickers from tower to tower.
CAVE OF FIRE (preliminary)
When logs have burned in a good draft
To a white-hot cave on the hearth,
And flies roused from their winter torpor
Buzz and stretch themselves,
Take a sleepy one and hurl him in that glory.
Tire black body becomes a stuff of burning;
It shrinks and hisses; stirs, fringed with light;
Then it is all glowing, featureless fire.
The suspensions that made it a living creature,
Stretching its neck, preening its head and wings,
Change into incandescence, clear, all made clear.
As if our world were swallowed by the sun;
Or these small suns we make in emulation,
Kindling against ourselves such instant caves,
Had rendered into light love's diapered shades.
A terrible thing-as the old book warnedTo fall into the hands of the living God.
A FLY THROWN INTO THE FIRE
The black body shrinks and hisses
Fringed with light.
What stretched the neck, what preened
Head and wings,
Changed to incandescence.
All flesh grass
In the hands of the living God. II
�Interview with
Alvin Fross and Peter Weiss
by ROBERT L. SPAETH
ROBERT SPAETH: Mr. Fross and Mr. Weiss, looking
back at being students at St. John's from twenty-five years
later, what would you say St. John's did for you? Mr.
Weiss?
PETER WEISS: It gave me a view of the world; gave me
a view of what a sensible life might be like; gave me a
view of a lot of things that came before that one ought to
bear in mind when one thinks about what things are like
today.
SPAETH: Do you thing it did those things for you in a
way that other colleges would not have or could not have?
WEISS: It is awfully hard to say, not having been to
any other college. But I have talked to a lot of people
who have been to other colleges. I think it is clear that
St. John's does some things for people that other colleges
don't do. I think it is also fair to say that St. John's makes
a lot of claims, a lot of exclusive claims for itself that are
probably subject to criticism. I don't think St. John's is
the only place where you can learn to think. I don't think
St. John's is the only place where you can learn how to
think morally. It is probably true that it is a little harder
to go through four years at St. John's without at least
having made an effort to learn how to think and to learn
how to think morally, than at some other places.
SPAETH: Mr. Fross, what do you think of this?
ALVIN FROSS: I think that in some ways, talking to
our generation, you are talking to a generation that had
a rather peculiar and unusual St. John's experience. When
we went to college we started out with a group of about
200 people who were destined to be there as a group for
Alvin Fross, '46 and Peter Weiss, '46 are lawyers specializing in trademark law. They were students on the Annapolis campus both before and after World War II. This
interview was conducted in their offices in New York City.
Because of the press of business, neither could find time
to review this transcript. Thus, the alumni portrayed here
may or may not be .the real Fross and Weiss.
only six months or so. Shortly after we got there the
great exodus began, and large numbers were called up for
the Army and Navy Reserve, and we became a kind of
extended family for those people. Many of them were
not too far away from the College. We shrank at one
point, I think, to a community of only 50 people in residence, with people swarming in on week-ends. The program was not really a reading and studying prograrn but
in a way it was a constant looking-out into a blinding
light and looking back. Your eyes just kept going back
and forth. There were people who were out there who
were trying to adjust to a radically different world and
radically different situation, and we were trying to adjust
to either. So the books were being read in the light of a
very unstable world to which we were exposed on every
single week-end of that early period. I think that in some
ways some of the books we read had special meaning for us
because of that. I think that maybe the books about war,
particularly Homer, Virgil, had perhaps more meaning
for us than they might have for other people. We were
constantly trying to think about what it meant to go off
to war and to be a soldier or sailor. That is one element
of our special experience. Also, I would say that ours was
probably much more of a heterogenous experience. The
reason I say this is because in some way the thing that
stands out most clearly to me after all those years was
not the books by themselves but the books as a medium
for getting to know a small group of people extremely
well. That is, they provided for people of very diverse
backgrounds, very diverse emotional needs, a medium for
getting to know one another, for dialogue. That is, it
opened up new worlds. I came from a very small community. A large town, but a small community in that
town and at St. John's I met people whom I did not
dream existed. If I had met those people in a large university I probably would never have gotten to know them
that well, but at St. John's you just had to. When you
shrank down to 50 you got to know every one of those people, even those whom you really couldn't really sympathize
with, you got to know them awfully well. As to what I
feel about the program, taken out of context, I think the
program taken out of context is pure nonsense. That is, I
think that to talk about it in terms of the ideology of the
ll
�The College
first catalog is to spin a myth. A very useful myth because
it proposes a hypothesis: if we take this program and we
work with a community of a certain size, something, we
hope, will happen. And to relate it back to a Golden
Age, which is some of the rhetoric of the first catalog, is
also to be a living in a classical kind of mythology. It has
a certain wonder. We rather liked that myth. We rather
enjoyed it. I don't think any of us ever fully believed it.
SPAETH: Mr. Fross, you said a number of interesting
things; I'd like to explore some of them. You mentioned
thinking about certain books such as the Iliad in a particular way because the war was on. Mr. Weiss, you used
the phrase "thinking morally" as something that you
learned at St. John's. Is there something about those books
or the program that encouraged more of a concern with
morality than with intellectual development? Perhaps this
has something to do with the war or perhaps it is more
general.
WEISS: It also has something to do with what AI just
said about the smallness of the community. I think it is
interesting that he said that he saw the books as a medium
of getting to know a small group of people very well,
because I suspect that is at least partly a matter of personal
disposition; some people would find themselves interested in relating to the people around them through almost any medium that happened to be available. The
books arc a very good one for that. Other people might
be pushed more in the direction of intellectual exploration by whatever medium happened to be available to
them. Nobody there at that time or presumably today is
just reading the books, but they are working through the
books. They are grappling with them; they are fighting
them; they are repelled by them and attracted to them.
I think we all shared the experience that some of the best
contact we had with the books, some of the best insights
that were produced by the books, were the result of a total
living and learning experience. You asked about what it
was about the books which made it easier or mandatory,
if you like, to come up with some moral distillation of all
this stuff that passed in and out of our range during our
four years there. I guess the thing about that is that after
a while, no matter what your background, the notion that
the people who wrote the books, or even the people who
thought up the experiments, had something serious to
say about what kind of place the world was. That notion
gets to you and it becomes part of your habit of dealing
with the world around you. Sometimes that means that
people get awfully pretentious in their thinking, and everything that happens is either a playing through of some
great paradigm that you have read about in one book or
another, or it becomes the occasion for some blinding
flash of insight, which upon reflection the next day or
maybe a decade later turns out to be only trivial. I think I
would rather go to a place where you are constantly
prodded into thinking what it all means than to a place
where the habit of thought is that it all means nothing
or where the habit of thought is that it all means whatever
12
this expert says.
SPAETH: When you say that you were induced to get
into the habit of taking life seriously and seeing these
moral questions as serious, do you also mean to say that
there was no particular moral direction that you were
urged in?
WEISS: Oh yes, I think that is borne out by the many
different moral directions in which people go after they
leave the place. It would be awfully difficult to say that
there is a consistent moral and political philosophy that
you are bound to emerge with from St. John's if you have
done your work correctly. As a matter of fact, in retrospect
it is a little disappointing sometimes that people don't
come up with a more consistent moral philosophy, particularly if you happen to believe as I guess I do, that
there are some moral philosophies that are more consistent and more valuable than others. That is both a good
thing and a bad thing about St. John's. I think there is a
kind of looseness, a kind of open-endedness about values
which is not good for people who, for one reason or
another, don't either already come to the College with a
well-developed sense of values or don't manage to work
one out for themselves while they are there. I think people
like that can go through the program for four years.being
titillated by the notion of, say, a comprehensive view of
life and can then go on to lead the most ordinary life after
they have stopped being exposed to it and after they have
stopped being exposed to the constant challenge. I often
feel that that is happening to me.
FROSS: I think that the kind of sojourn which people
experienced had to do, of course, with where they were
starting so that if a person came from a small town on
the Eastern Shore or came from an industrial town in
New Jersey with its special provincial character, as I did,
to suddenly find themselves in a community where people
were in the process of conversion to one thing or another
was quite a shock. You always assumed that the next step
was a little step, whatever step it was to be. It was certainly not going to be to throw over the traces of your
entire past life. Nevertheless, what almost all of us saw,
even in the first month at St. John's, is that people are
really susceptible to very major revolutionary personal
change. I think that for most of us that was both a threat
and a promise. I think that is one of the elements in the
answer to your question as to why did people embark on
moral dialogue. In a sense they knew that they were in an
environment where they were potentially changeable and
changeable radically and had to think about what kind of
people they might want to be if that was really possible.
Then the fact that some of the changes were changes of
a religious nature necessarily raised moral issues. What
does it mean to be suddenly taken by an idea sufficiently
to abandon your family and your history and your friends?
At least one of our friends from my home town left the
world that he knew which was a Jewish world and became,
for a period of time, a Trappist monk. A very major change
�July 1973
indeed. He went through several changes along the way
before that hut that was a very major change. That is
another element but I suppose that one of the largest
elements to be kept in mind when you think about the
moral nature of the dialogue is the people who were the
source of leadership to us. They were people who had been
engaged for a long, long time in a moral dialogue. And
an additional important factor was that there really was
a limiting methodology in approaching most of the books.
That is, it was considered improper to look at the books
from the point of view of critical histories. You were not
supposed to go and find out what others had thought
about the books and therefore you were not likely to come
up with a theory which related to what the author really
meant to say. The methodology required you to decide
what the author said to you and once you do that, what
he said to you, you have limited the kinds of things that
you are likely to be able to focus on. We read those
books for their message. When you speak about message
in that way the message is very likely to be a moral one.
SPAETH: Did yonr approach mean that various members
of the seminar would find that the books were saying
different things to them? Would that imply a difficulty of
communication?
FROSS: No, because although you had to search yourself
for what they said to you, what you experienced you had
to justify by the text. That is, you couldn't say, "I read
this book and it inspired me to think about a sunset."
You had to say, "I read this book and this is what it says
literally and this is what it means to me because it says
that." Somebody said, "But is doesn't really say that, I
mean if you look back on it you will see you missed that
other phrase." Then you had to argue about that. In other
words, the books provided a text which had to be focused
on and they provided a medium through which you shared
your experiences and your reactions to the material. I
would say on the whole that it was a rather disciplined
dialogue, especially since most of us had rather disciplined
leaders.
WEISS: Yes, but of course, that raises the whole question
of whether the methodology might not be too limiting.
SPAETH: Limiting also means confining. Did you find
it that way?
WEISS: I didn't find it that way at the time but I remember Alec Meikeljohn used to come by periodically
and sit in on seminars and get a big kick out of them.
Outside the seminar he used to be rather critical of what
you might call the exclusively intellectual approach to the
books and to the entire program and Meikeljohn used to
remind people that the social scientists who were held in
such low regard at St. John's, at least at the time that I
was there, had a few relevant things to say about the very
same things that the book had relevant things to say about.
They were corning from a different place bnt that didn't
mean that their findings or insights ought to be disre-
garded. In retrospect that seems to me to be a valid criticism. We were rather fanatical, all of us at the time, about
defending the purity of the approach. In retrospect it
seems to me to have been a somewhat misguided fanaticism.
SPAETH: Mr. Fross said earlier something that went
farther than purity. He referred to the "ideology" of the
original catalog and that the program was built on a myth.
WEISS: That is a more drastic way to put it but I would
go along with it. There are really two aspects to that. One
is the purity of the intellectual approach and the other is
the purity of the lifestyle. While our lifestyle wasn't any
more pure than any other college lifestyle in terms of
what we did after hours, there was a kind of pnrity of
lifestyle about involvement in the community which I
gather still survives to this day. I mean the notion that
you really have to take these four years out of your life and
think, and then you will be able to do all kinds of things
for the rest of yonr life, but during those four years you
can't get distracted. You can't get distracted by working
on a job, you can't get distracted by getting involved in
politics, you can't get distracted by what is referred to as
extra-cnrricular activities. That is true only to the extent
that the distractions may preempt the real purpose of )'Our
four year stay at college. To that extent that is a valid
goal. To the extent that it places you in a sterile environment from the point of view of your total activity while
you are there, it is probably not a good idea. I would say
it is probably not a good idea under any circumstances to
create intellectual experiences. Some of the books were
not written out of isolated intellectual experiences. Some
of the books were written by people who were involved
in the most intense way with everything around them. I
don't think Machiavelli could have written The Prince if
he hadn't gotten his hands pretty dirty with the business
of Renaissance politics. I think it is important not to
interrupt the business of living for a four year period
while you go about the business of discovering "truth" in
an abstract way.
FROSS: In our period, to try to flesh out what Peter is
saying, I can recall only two kinds of rather strong contact with the so-called outside world. One of them was a
formal one, a Sunday night meeting which was arranged
to take advantage of the existence in 'Vashington, D. C.
of people who were very involved in the war and in government. They came down and talked to us about current
affairs. Usually they were very cerebral and extremely able
people. We would question them in the traditional St.
John's style, but it was very non-activist kind of thing.
The second thing that did involve some activity but was
so minor as to kind of paint us into our proper picture, as
of those days, was that there was a Great Books Seminar
in the Negro community in Annapolis. There was a relationship between some of the members of the faculty and
the black community which was in these days quite an
extraordinary thing because it was about the only tie that
l3
�The College
existed between whites and blacks in Annapolis.
SPAETH: Has it been true for you gentlemen that what
you learned as relatively inexperienced people had a significant impact as the years passed and you gamed that
experience? In other words, did St. John's have a continuing influence in the last 25 years?
WEISS: I suppose it did in terms of style. I don't think
it did in terms of content. It has had a continuing effect
in terms of style and by that I mean that in the four years
at St. John's, interrupted as they were by three years at
war, I developed a kind of view of the interconnectedness
of things. This is something that I insist on not giving up.
I insist, even though in our profession AI and I arc about
as specialized as you can get. .We insist on two things.
One is to go about our specialized professional work in a
very generalized way, that is, by bringing to it as much
knowledge and experience from other disciplines and other
branches of the law as we can muster. And beyond this
office I, for myself, I insist on not taking isolated events
and dealing with them as isolated events because that is
death to the understanding. I would like to think that has
to do with the habit of thought that I might have acquired
in Annapolis. It becomes more and more difficult to make
sense out of the whole. I mean the kind of cosmic structures that you can erect in your minds sitting around a
seminar table just don't seem to stand up too well when
you start sending probes or tamping at the supports. But
you keep trying. You keep trying to relate what has happened in Viet Nam to what is happening in the theatre
and what is happening in the theatre to what is happening
with the distribution of wealth of the world and you
keep being obsessed by the need to know more so that
you can flesh out the tentative structure that you have in
your head. I am not saying that St. John's is the only place
that can give you that but I think it may be a little easier
to get there.
FROSS: I think that Peter may be saying that to some
extent we have learned to live in a world in which we
sometimes think we have grasped some truths but where
the whole picture continuously eludes us, but nevertheless we keep on looking. That is one of the things that
happened in the four years, that the big prize of the total
picture always eluded us and as far as we could tell it
always eluded everyone else. You can either become a
cynic and say it's not worth bothering about, or you can
learn to live with that and just keep on going. Peter, for
example is a very much more patient person, although he
is not an outstandingly patient one, than he would be but
for his having been at St. John's. I think that he puts up
with more nonsense than he would otherwise put up with.
WEISS: Now you are making too big a claim for the
College.
FROSS: I will go back to what I said earlier; we start out
with certain kind of character propensities. Peter said
before that I am interested in people. He is obviously,
14
from what you know about his career, interested in ideas.
He is very drawn to trying to work up an ideological construct, which he tries to test out and see how It works out,
and obviously both of us have our disappointments. People disappoint me; ideas sometimes disappoint him, but I
think we have developed a certain amount of patience as
a result of our experiences. Am I right about that?
WEISS: Yes, you have got to be right about that to the
extent that unless you slept through four years of seminars
you can't take somebody's proposition that is handed to
you and say, "Yes, that is it" without saying, "Wait a
minute, what about this part? what about that part? and
does it square with so and so and such and such?"
FROSS: And really, if it is basically wrong, is it 100%
garbage? That is another thing that one learns, that somehow or other, if it is an idea that comes from a person
who is a thoughtful person, it may be wrong but it rarely
is totally irrelevant. Usually there is something in it that
needs to be found and thought about.
WEISS: Again, I don't know how much credit the College deserves for that but I have, going back to those
days, a kind of sentimental attachment to the truth and
like people telling me that something happened in _a certain way when I suspect that it didn't, even though It
may fit more conveniently to the overall scheme of things
to believe that it happened the way they said it did.
·
SPAETH: You, very much like the faculty and students,
now refer generally to "the College" as having done this
or that or having influenced you in a certain way. Do you
usually think of it that way, or do you distinguish certain
books, or certain parts of the program-or the Tutors, or
certain Tutors?
WEISS: I can't say that some books taught me more than
other books. Obviously they did because some books I
can't even remember, but the thing that remains is the
habit of dealing with the printed words as it communicates somebody's message. That is what remains from the
entire experience of four years of fighting books. In discussions about the war with young lawyers I keep findmg
myself somewhat pompously coming back to The_ Republic as the one book that really teJJs you what law IS, as
opposed to aJJ the theories you get from books of jurisprudence-or at least it is the book that tells you how
law grows out of the life of the people. I could give yo~
other examples like that but it is not important. What IS
important is the habit of thought and the habit of not
standing still. I wonder what it would be like to start
afresh now, if you didn't already believe that, whether you
reach it or not, there is a way to put aJJ the pieces together. If you didn't already believe that, what would
happen if you just started at St. John's today, say, knowing
what AI and I know about what an impossible thing it is
to grasp it all. What would it be like to say-Okay, now
we know about the fact that technology means that we
are going to die faster than we would if we had not tech-
�July 1973
nology; international law means that people can get up at
the UN and justify almost and kind of genocide or other
atrocity in terms of some branch of international law, that
the world's most respected statesmen can get up and lie
like people on their third bottle of booze. What would it
mean to live in that kind of would and have that kind
of experience every time you pick up the newspapers and
then say, "Yes, but somehow it must all fit together and
I am going to keep looking for the grand pattern."
FROSS: In a way you are asking how we would, if we
went back today, read Plato.
WEISS: Yes, I am asking that.
SPAETH: I think that is a very interesting point, because it is often a criticism made of young people reading
those books, that they are reading books written by older
men, who in fact had a life somewhat like you describe.
That is, the authors saw the world as being rather rougher
than an 18 year old has seen it. Hobbes, for example, wrote
in the context of a quite violent society. I don't know
whether that is an argument in favor of reading these
books at age 50 rather than 18, or against it.
WEISS: It is probably an argument in favor of re-reading
them periodically.
FROSS: I think if I was right in what I said earlier, Peter,
what it comes to is that reading Plato at age 18 forever
conditioned us because even though you made this little
speech, you go right on as if it were possible.
WEISS:, Yes, that is true. For instance at the Center for
Constitutional Rights where I do some of what lawyers
call pro bona publico where civil rights are constitutionalized, I sign my letters "Justice". I don't think I would
be doing it unless I believed there was such a thing. I
work with a lot of radical lawyers. I consider myself a
radical lawyer, and they talk about justice but I am not
quite sure what they mean. In fact, it really doesn't make
much difference. Again, coming from different places, we
know when somebody is being exploited and we know
when somebody is being worked over and we know when
the process of the law is being abused, and we probably
fight it in very similar ways. I have somewhere in the back
of my mind a kind of grey omnipresence that says there
is something called justice.
FROSS: And I think that you continue to be prayerful
that the courts will produce it. You know that they often
do not, but you are not eager to see the courts destroyed
which I think some radical lawyers would be willing to
have happen.
WEISS: We can't afford to have the courts destroyed
just now. When we have a just society we won't need the
courts, but that is something else.
SPAETH: Did you come to current civil rights problems
from an. abstract notion of justice rather than some attachment to the Constitution?
WEISS: I come to it from a sense of deep outrage at
what people are doing to people but, you see, my outrage
is compounded and heightened by the fact that they are
doing these things in the name of justice, Constitution,
democracy. Yes, I am doubly outraged when Spiro Agnew
speaks of democracy because it does have a meaning to
me. I think of it as a beautiful construct in the abstract
from those days when I was reading Plato, and the mere
fact that it doesn't work today does not mean that I can't
still in an intellectual way be in love with it and fight all
the harder to sec if we can get a little closer to its realization. What I am saying is that the fact that the world
is becoming messier and messier, that you find it harder
and harder to get a handle on it, doesn't mean that you
get away from some notion of what justice means other
than what Nixon says, or what some of my friends on the
left are saying. Maybe there were times when what my
friends on the left are saying is closer to what I thought
it was when I read Plato. In some way that is coincidental
because some of my friends on the left don't have any
firmer foundation for what they are saying is the right
kind of society than Nixon or Agnew do.
SPAETH: Mr. Fross, do you want to comment on that?
FROSS. Yes, I would. I think that while an individual's concept of what is justice probably can and must
change throughout his life as he is reflective about what
he has seen and read and what he is experiencing, that a
life without a meaningful concept of justice in it which
is always evolving is an impoverished one. I think that
both of us are prepared to risk being wrong about what
justice is from time to time, but we are certainly not willing to give up trying to find out what it is and trying to
do something about it. In Peter's case it is in terms of the
kind of work that he does outside his office, and in mine,
since I don't have his energy or his willpower, it is in trying to control my immediate environment.
WEISS: And somebody has to keep the office going.
FROSS: I don't think it is a matter of difference in just
plain emotional and physical energy. I limit myself to
my immediate environment and try very hard in that
environment to live out what is my belief about justice.
I certainly am willing to suffer distress because of my
wrongness about it from time to time because I have
been wrong. I think that, to some extent, what you are
hearing about us is temperamental and that in a way the
St. John's experience has been relevant in that it has given
us the strength to do the things that we are temperamentally suited to do.
\"'EISS: If you want to put it in plain ordinary English,
there is an abiding distrust of pragmatism which I carry
through life with me and which I picked up at St. John's.
By that I don't mean that I am not willing to try ten
different approaches to a solution if the first nine don't
work, but I mean that I have no patience with the notion
15
�The College
that things are good if they work and had if they don't
work.
SPAETH: I have heard the criticism from an alumnus
from your era that students now-a-days are less emotional
than you were. He said that seminars used to be much
more of a laying out of your own personal behefs and
questions on the tables, a kind of unburdening of yourselves with respect to the argument in question. Whereas
he observed at the College in recent years a more academic
concern with what is in the books and whether it is right.
WEISS: If he was from our generation then maybe AI
gave you the answer when he talked about the special
quality of our generation in terms of the war period.
SPAETH: I would like to use this opportunity to go
back to that. I am interested in the fact, Mr. Fross, that
you said that the scale of the College in those days was
especially important to you as it related to the reading
of the books. It is often said at St. John's now that a
small college is important (although we have grown to
370 students) and it is also repeatedly said that the particular program is important. But I rarely hear the two
related to one another as you have. I think you might say
more about that.
FROSS: I think that the size of the community forced a
kind of seriousness about one another. We were not quick
to dismisS an idea of someone with whom we were going
to live on a regular basis. We might not like his vision
of the world but we really did feel that we had to come
to grips in some way with what his vision was, and sometimes the vision, especially in the period when I returned
from the war, was one that was very difficult to come
to grips with because it was the vision of a 16 year old
kid who really should not have been in the College at all.
Nevertheless the community was small and there was
some feeling of responsibility. I think that that feeling
of responsibility toward one another was an element of
growth and a tension that was very valuable. I said also
that I thought that we were lucky in that the group
changed several times over the period of our years because of the war moving populations in and out, so that
while we were always very small the population itself
was a changing one. Now at this time in history I am
glad that the College is not 200, I am glad that it is
nearer 370 or so because I think that if the College
were as small as we were and the population stayed
the same for four years that it would be very difficult
to have enough freshness in the group. I would hope
also that if the College does stay as small as this, and I
think it should, that there would be a fair amount of
interchange between New Mexico and Annapolis so that
there would be some freshening of the atmosphere from
time to time. Do you have any reaction to all this, Peter?
WEISS: Yes, I agree. I have a discussion sometimes with
my wife and I guess I will increasingly as our kids get to
be of college age. She went to the University of Wiscon-
I6
sin, which is a huge place, and was very happy there
because there were so many people and so much to do,
so much activity, so much ferment, intellectual, political,
social. She finds it hard to conceive of that level, that
intensity of activity taking place in an institution as small
as St. John's. And there probably is, as AI said, a minimum
size that is required for the kind of community that St.
John's tries to be. Obviously you can have a community
of two people or a community of 10 people or of 100 but
not in a college situation.
SPAETH: What exactly is so important in the smallness? Is it how well you get to know your fellow students?
FROSS: I don't think so. I think that it has to do with
the degree of responsibility which you feel for his condition, particularly if you are in a community that is in
ferment, and ours always was. I can't recall any time when
there wasn't some element of ferment in it, personal ferment. We talked about the early years and the conversions
in that period. For those who had returned from the war,
there were the problems of readjustment, of trying to make
sense out of their experiences. There were very many different experiences involved. I think that we all, regardless
of whether we were interested in people or interested in
ideas, or both, simply tried to deal with one another in a
very responsible fashion.
WEISS: At a large university you can get lost if yon
want to get lost. At a place as small as St. John's you really
can't get lost, you can't hide. Whether you want to have
relationships with people or not they are going to be
forced on you.
FROSS: I think it is also very wholesome not to be able
to bite off people who are not part of your past experience
and just say they are irrelevant. Yon just couldn't do that
in that small community.
SPAETH: That is, you were forced to take all kinds that
happened to be there.
FROSS: Right, they were all part of the dialogue in one
way or another even if they weren't talking.
SPAETH: I came from Catholic schools and we were
always told that if we went to large universities we should
find the Newman club and then we could always associate with Catholics. I never went to a university like that
but it would have been a tremendous waste I am sure. At
St. John's I think there are no clubs at all of the sort that
people use to go to, to be with like-minded people.
FROSS: Now hack in our day, Mr. Kaplan ran a Bible
class in which he did try to give, as I understand it, some
understanding of the Jewish religious tradition but that
class was always attended by a substantial number of nonJews.
SPAETH: He is still giving that class.
FROSS: Is he? How marvelous! 11
�COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS
Annapolis 1973
by FORD K. BROWN
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Freshman Class-of 1969,
naturallyFellow intellectuals, on the democratic premise, necessary to you as to us, that the term "intellectual" implies a
steadfast care for things of the intellect beyond just those
of the intelligible and in so many areas all-too-intelligible
worldBetween 1969 and these present moments a long four
years may have brought about changes in you perhaps
greater than you have realized. A simple example: It would
have been all right for me to address you as the Freshman
·Class back then. Nowadays everybody knows that as a
matter of decency, anti-racism, justice, liberation and so
on you would have to be called the Freshman and Freshwoman Class, which for propriety, justice, decency, liberation and remnants of old-time chivalry would have to
become the Freshwoman and Freshman Class, which of
course in no time-so great our passion for brevity-becomes just the Freshwoman Class.
I feel that the trivial attempt noticeable here, in a
kindly way, to right so great the ancient wrong should be
received with some calmness and sobriety. Back a century
ago Thomas Henry Huxley told us, "The rules of the
game are what we call the laws of nature. The player on
the other side is hidden from us." That player is hidden
from even the triumphant Freshwomen, and he has been
playing (she has been playing?) much the same way for
centuries. No men, perhaps even few gentlemen, have for-
got some sensational feminine characters of the past: that
little Eve for one, and then Clytemnestra and Medea and
all those Roman and Eastern empresses, and Lizzie
Borden and Ma Barker, and the no doubt innocent char·
acter who gave us Howard Cosell, and a character only
now really brought to light, the Abominable Snow
Woman. We know only that her name is Yeta.
I think it was a couple of years before you came that
I happened to listen with an earlier entering class to one
of our own lecturers who, out of the goodness of his heart
-which you would expect from all of us-was trying to
help them learn a mistakenly simple-appearing task, how
to read those of our most difficult books, namely those
that are deceptively simple. I have got permission to
17
�The College
plagiarize a few of this speaker's remarks. Freshmen, he
seemed to believe, on the word (somewhere) of Aristotle,
are by their nature young, innocent, ingenuous and naive,
consequently unsophisticated, idealistic and optimistic,
what is called "generous to a fault"-that is, knowing no
duplicity, trickery or even irony, suspecting none-hence
quite unexperienced in the ways of this novel field of their
intellectual world, given therefore to a feeble acceptance
or a disabling renitency and little competent, even among
the now Freshwomen themselves, to cope with things
attainable only by people who are alert, wary, forewarned
and forearmed and constantly suspicious, in a nice intel-
lectual way, of anything they read.
Discounting now, suspiciously, a good part of that
oracular pronouncement about Aristotle's freshmen, it's
clear that your just being here speaks of a considerable,
in felicitous cases an extraordinary, intellectual and spiritual growth, in some cases (if this class at all resembles
others) almost as if an act of Nature's player, perhaps
even one of those dispensations that leave beholders only
to exclaim mirabile dictul (I speak in Latin to give no
offense) ... and still, even then, with members more than
competent to join with the generality in hosannas along
the lines of an old familiar formula, "What Hath Freshwoman Wrought!", and continuing on devoted solely to
the unflinching pursuit of idle curiosity ... which I perhaps should explain is the curiosity that seeks knowledge
for its own sake. (I interrupt myself here to add about
that paragraph a brand new bulletin fresh from after the
President's Dinner, to the effect that it was a good, civilized show even after the generous booster shots out in
left field.)
I add here, as I certainly ought to do, a trivial incident
but to be sure one that could possibly suit that unknown
player "on the other side," in a conversation I had once
with one of our elder non-statesmen teachers a few years
ago. "Nobody," one of us said, "with such beautiful
violet eyes will ever get a failing mark from me." We
agreed, as I remember. Of course I was joking, and I
think Mr. Kaplan was.
n
It's likely that the nature of this College had something to do with your success, player of Nature or no
player, and, to help explain that, I'm going to take you
back some centuries, to medieval times, and to France,
and particularly to a small town some fifty miles south of
Paris where the townspeople had decided to build themselves a new church. There are extraordinary things about
that clmrch-"cette belle egJise," the preacher there used
to say in modern times, with a monstrosity of modestyand there are two or three things in particular of special
interest to you and to all this College. The first is that
the church was built by scholars; the second is the
peculiar nature of the builders; and the third we might
call "the Epigone Connection."
The church is Our Lady of Chartres, the house of the
Virgin Mary, the Queen of the cathedral; and it was
built back there, from 1194 to 1220, with a care of pre-
18
CISIOn, a meticulous certainty of workmanship, and as
absolute and inspectorate sureness of measure and proportion on the part of the builders as there was in the
imagination of the architects; it had to be that way in this
noblest of all the churches of the Queen, for in it everything was for her alone. There has never been even a
funerary monument in this cathedral and nobody has
ever been buried in it, "Lest there should be a profanation
or contamination of her purity." No other church or insti-
tution possesses the Veil of the Virgin, given in 876 by
Charles the Bald, or the ancient relic known as the Shift,
or Tunic, of the Virgin. The great stained window of the
Bakers' Guild has a little basket of rolls at the bottom, at
the bottom of the Shoemakers' Guild there is a little
shoemaker at work, but it is a notable signature of the
times and the place that of all the sculptured pieces on
and in the cathedral, everywhere, over three thousand of
them, with hundreds of figures of the Old and New
Testaments, and long~ arrays of bishops, saints and martyrs,
not one bears a sculptor's signature, and the name of only
one man is known who could reasonably be assumed to
have worked there; he signed his name and his townChartres-in another cathedral. Even the name of the
greatest of the builders, called the Master of Chartres, is
not known. The sculptures, the figures of the saints and
others in the unequalled stained glass-there are 3,889 of
them-and every magnificent achievement or new discovery of this Gothic period-the flying buttresses that
permitted the great size and number of the windows, the
masterly placing of the glass to let light in-all was a
splendid offering to the Queen of the Cathedral in which
everything was for her.
I'm going to cap this little piece about Notre Dame de
Chartres by citing one sentence from a modern writer,
author of a book called The Gothic Cathedral, published
in the Bollingen Series established by our alumnus Paul
Mellon. This is an extraordinary sentence, eloquent,
oracular and covering a truly large field; but I think he is
probably right.
In our own time, no work of art, religious or
otherwise, has an importance that is even remotely comparable to that which compelled an
entire generation to pour its energies and resources into the construction of the cosmos of
stone that, between 1194 and 1220, rose gradually
and breathtakingly above the town of Chartres.
iii
In the West Facade or Portail Royale of the Cathedral,
with some of the most beautiful statuary in the world,
beneath the large figure of the Virgin is a little group of
characters that I believe you will like. I quote about them
from the Chartraine Chamber of Commerce, or Syndicate
of Initiative, Guide if you prefer.
"The sciences are symbolized by figures of women and
under each of them the man who has most honored the
science in question."
�July 1973
Science ... in a cathedral devoted to the Virgin Mary?
Quite so, and the men who stood for the sciences are
mostly well known to you. It just happens that there are
seven of them.
The figures are:
Dialectic and Aristotle
Rhetoric and Cicero
Geometry and Euclid
Arithmetic and Boethius
Astronomy and Ptolemy
Grammar and Priscian (or Donatus; these little figures are not named and there is some argument about
them)
Music and Pythagoras
These seven sciences furthermore are placed just next
to the throne of the Virgin, their position there, we are
told by Henry Adams, testifying to her intellectual superiority, indicating that she had a perfect mastery of what
we still call the seven Liberal Arts.
At this time it is clear that the modern canonical division of the seven Liberal Arts appears little useful as the
four sciences known as the quadrivium become in every
way all in all. Here a difference in science and art fades
as this whole undertaking rests upon a single brief basic
concept: Architecture is geometry.
To save time I am obliged to call on Professor Von
Simson again:
I. The beauty of the edifice consists of the crystalline
clarity of the structural anatomy.
2. The perfection of this great architectural system is
the perfection of the proportions, proportions that the
master developed not according to his personal intuition
but by exact geometrical calculations.
3. And it is that certainty of procedure that enables one
to speak (I quote again) of "the aesthetic and structural
relevance of proportion."
Again, architecture is geometry.
I turn from this with two laconic sentences ... feeling
that they don't need to be anything else:
I. Nobody, no group, no institution, no country has
ever since the 13th century built a more beautiful building.
2. The Cathedral School of Chartres, as a school, taught
nothing but the seven Hsciences."
believed the word "peculiar" meant peculiar, if not actually mad. We had an odd indication of that some years
ago when a very new member of the College Board pointed
out to them, in a rather eloquent way, that the cause of
our getting too few students was that we were "rowing
against the tide." All other undergraduate liberal arts colleges-and universities-it is true had a few required
courses but offered, in many disciplines, some of them
hardly believable, the (to our mind) pedagogical horror
called the Elective System.
I don't remember how it was gently explained to this
new member that we were actually bending every effort
and sinew to an exactly opposite course. Since then two
things seem obvious; first that since those early days we
have made a very considerable progress, and second that
we still are a peculiar people and we ought to keep in
mind that there are various shades of meaning in "peculiar," one of them being "peculiar,-all too peculiar." I
present a couple of drastic examples out of the Middle
Ages.
The first is a Saint Jean, called the Taciturn, who (I
quote) "never took a bath, that he might not shock his
modest eyes," and the second a rather likely colleague
San Luis de Gonzagua, who (I quote) "had such a terror
of women that he dared not look at his mother for fear
of evil thoughts."
I must say that those saintly gentlemen forcibly reminded me of our own Plotinus, not a saint I believe but
a mere philosopher, who hated his body, we're told by his
official biographer, so greatly that he would never mention
the day of his birth or the names of his father and
mother. I confess to a feeling of some satisfaction when I
found out from an old MS. that Plotinus's body eventually came to hate him. That is what is known nowadays
at least in western movies as a Mexican standoff, the signature line for it being, "He don't hate me no mor'n I
hate him." It appears in the adult westerns too ... the
ones called adult because they use the older horses.
It seems doubtful that we have any real right to claim
that the guarantee of the Almighty (Deut. 14.2) to his
peculiar people has descended on us, though occasionally
you do hear such talk that you might for an instant think
so. But a hosanna is a loud cry of joy and worship, and
it is much more becoming when it is not addressed to
ourselves.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Class of 1973-
iv
Far back in the early Old Testament days some of the
Jewish nation began to call themselves " a peculiar people." This was very sensible of them, as they had received
a direct mandate, Deuteronomy 14.2, "You are a peculiar
people." Of course that meant simply, You are different
from other people-I have declared you my people and
all other people I have not and I'm not going to.
When St. John's College in 1937 began its pure liberal
arts program and its wholly required course of study,
there Was no lack of people, including educators, who
I have overstepped my time alotted, and I would like
to leave you one kind of circumstance that seems to have
some comforting aspects. Forty or fifty years ago the
archeologists found what they believed might be the
oldest piece of writing in the world. It was a fragment of a
letter from an Egyptian father to his son at school; and
this oldest piece of writing said,
"The world is going to the dogs."
Hail and farewell ... Have a good life ... We celebrate
Homecomings in October. II
19
�PROFILE: LOUIS L. SNYDER, '28
For Louis L. Snyder, author of more
than 40 books and a professor of history for 40 years, almost all of his intellectual life finds its roots in his
years as a student at St. John's. Both
his fellow students of the class of 1928
and the faculty were "first-cl?ss/' remembers Dr. Snyder today. Their influence has not diminished with the
passage of the intervening years.
'~My
the smartest boys we ever had/' according to a pal who knew him well.
But to enter St. John's meant digging
up the $150 annual tuition, which
neither Lou nor his parents could
afford. A scholarship was offered by a
interest in history was aroused
by a great teacher, Clarence Stryker,
and my interest in writing by two additional magnificent teachers, Ford
Brown and Thomas Brockway," Snyder said recently. Furthermore, his specific interest in modern German history was also derived from a St. John's
professor, Richard Kuehnemund, who
arranged 'l fellowship for Snyder in
1928 to the University of Frankfurt
am Main.
It is fair to say that Louis Snyder,
in return for what St. John's did for
him, has spread the name of his alma
mater more widely than any other
person. Because he is general editor of
Anvil Books, a Van Nostrand paperback history series, the name of St.
John's College appears as part of his
biography on the back cover of each
tributions in prose instead of poetry."
This
away
In
from
20
advice, Snyder says, turned him
from poetry forever.
1924, Lou Snyder was graduated
Annapolis High School, "one of
non-academic activities ranged from
observing the rising horror of Adolf
Hitler to arranging engagements for
the St. John's Collegians, a jazz band
from back in Annapolis in which Snyder had played alto saxophone.
Upon returning to the United States
he found no jobs, for the Depression
had hit during his stay abroad. So he
returned to studying, at Columbia University, where he met the noted historian Carleton J. H. Hayes. Professor
Hayes gave to Louis his second great
scholarly interest, the study of uationalism.
Hitler and the menace he represented remai-ned in Snyder's mind, so
in the summer of 1931 he wrote a book
prophesying Hitler's rise to power.
This book, Hitlerism: the Iron Fist in
Germany, was published under the
pseudonym "Nordicns" -but not without a prior dismissal by Walter Lippmann, who observed, "Youth is inclined to exaggeration." Snyder today
considers it "a bad book-full of prophecies." He smiles, however7 and admits
of the two million copies in circulation.
It was in Frankfurt that Snyder's
scholarly career first took shape in book
form, with a doctoral dissertation on
Bismarck's personal and political relations with Americans. But his writing
career had begun at the age of ten,
when he submitted a poem to the editor of his home-town newspaper, the
Annapolis Evening Capital. The editor
printed the poem and wrote: "We are
publishing this poem at the request of
the author. We do hope, however, that
in the future he will make such con-
Snyder's studies in Germany from
1928 to 19 31 fixed his in teres! in German history. While in Frankfurt, his
Louis L. Snyder
local bank, and four great years commenced for the future historian.
While he was a student, he wrote for
The Collegian, edited the "Rat-Tat"
(the college annual), and was a stringer
for the Baltimore Sun. He studied history, English, and the German language, and was graduated at the top
of his class. At the 1928 commencement, he was awarded a $15 prize for
writing the best essay on the subject of
World Peace and was off to Weimar
Germany at age 21.
that most of the prophecies were
proved correct by events.
The year 1933 brought Snyder a
teaching position in the history department of the City College of New York.
111at appointment has lasted until
now. His teaching has been the foundation for all of his subsequent writing
efforts. His special fields have been
modern Cermany7 nationalism, the en-
lightenment, intellectual history, and
the two world wars.
"[ consciously write on one of three
levels," Snyder says. "All three give
me special pleasure, and I do not try
to mix them." The levels are: scholarly,
exemplified by The Meaning of Nationalism; general, such as The Bloodand-Iron Chancellor; and children's
books, such as The First Book of
�July 1973
World War I. Some of the children's
books have been written in collaboration with his wife, Ida Mae Brown of
Baltimore, herself a Phi Beta Kappa
from Columbia.
Of all his books, which is the best?
Snyder answers this question in two
ways: "I am most proud of The Meaning of Nationalism, but my most successful book has been The War: A
Concise History, 1939-1945." The latter has been translated into a dozen
languages.
At age 66, Louis Snyder is not slowing down. One of his largest projects
has come off the Rutgers University
Press in May of this year. This is The
Dreyfus Case: A Documentary History
-448 pages of documents and commentary, with 92 photographs. Soon
to be published is A Comparative History of Nationalism.
It is no surprise to hear Dr. Snyder
say that "writing is a compulsion" a-nd
"there is no end to it." He and his
wife, who doubles as his editor and
"unofficial collaborator" on all his
books, are spending this summer in
London where, at the British Museum,
he is working on "a massive project"
on the Tbird Reich for McGraw-Hill.
Snyder spent the past academic year's
sabbatical from CCNY working on this
book at his home in Princeton, N.J.,
and at the Princeton University Library. He left for London with 2000
pages of manuscript in first draft and
with hopes of completing the work in
1974.
Louis Snyder preceded the New Program at St. John's by a decade, but he
has continued to pay close attention to
the College. In I 969 he received the
Alumni Award of Merit. His judge-
ment today on the New Program is
characteristically direct: "plainly and
simply magnificent." He says this time
he agrees with Walter Lippmann, that
the program has made St. John's the
Athens of America.
Snyder, as one would expect of a
professional historian 1 finds one "obstacle" to the program. "This program
is emphatically not for every student,"
he says. "It is for the student who has
a good basic preparatory school education. It is useless to involve the student
with the concept of the Platonic Idea
or Kant's categorical imperative unless
he has some basic training in the ways
of civilization." It would involve only
a slight amount of editorial license for
this writer to suggest that many of the
ways of civilization can be discovered
in the books of Louis L. Snyder himself.
THE PUBLICATIONS OF LOUIS L. SNYDER
1932 Die persoenlichen und politischen Beziehungen Bismarcks zu
1932
1935
Amerikaneru, Inaugural Dissertation, Darmstadt e.V.
Hitlerism: The Iron Fist in Germany, Mohawk Press
From Bismarck to Hitler: The Background of German Nation-
alism, Bayard Press
1936 Mastery Units in Modern History, Colonial
1939 Race: A History at Modern Ethnic Theories, Longmans, Green
1941
1942
1942
1949
1949
1950
1952
1952
1954
1955
n.d.
1955
1955
1957
1958
1958
1959
1959
1961
1961
1962
&Co.
A Survey of European Civilization, Vol, 1: To the End of
the Middle Ages, Stackpole
A Survey of European Civilization, Vol. 2: From 1500 to the
Present, Stackpole
A Handbook of Civilian Protection, ed. with Richard B. Morris
and Joseph E. Wisan, Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill
A Treasury of Great Reporting (with Richard B. Morris),
Simon and Schuster
Vitalized Modern History (with J. Alexis Fenton), College
Entrance
A Treasury of Intimate Biographies, Greenberg
They Saw It Happen (with Richard B. Morris), Stackpole
German Nationalism: The Tragedy of a People, Stackpole
The Meaning of Nationalism, Rutgers Univ. Press
The Age of Reason, Van Nostrand
The \Xlorld in the 20th Century, Van Nostrand
Fifty Major Documents ot the 20th Century, Van Nostrand
Fifty Major Documents of the 19th Century, Van Nostrand
A Basic History of Modern Germany, Van Nostrand
Documents of Germany History, Rutgers Univ. Press
TI1e First Book of World War I, Franklin Watts
The First Book ot World War II, Franklin Watts
The First Book of the Soviet Union, Franklin Watts
Hitler and Nazism, Franklin Watts
The War: A Concise History, 1939-1945, Julian Messner
The Imperialism Reader: Documents and Readings in Modern
Expansionism, Van Nostrand
The Idea of Racialism, Van Nostrand
Masterpieces of \Var Reporting, Julian Messner
The First Book of the Long Armistice, Franklin Watts
Tile Dynamics of Nationalism: Readings in its Meaning and
Development, Van Nostrand
1965 The Military History of the Lusitauia, Franklin Watts
1966 Pauorama of the Past, Vol. 1: Ancient Times to 1815, {with
M. Perry and B. Mazen), Houghton Miffiin
1966 Panorama of the Past, VoL 2: 1815 to The Present, (with
M. Perry and B. Mazcn), Houghton, Miffiin
1966 The Weimar Republic, Van Nostrand
1966 Bismarck and German Unification (with Ida Mae Brown), in
The Immortals of History Series, Franklin Watts
1966 Western Europe: A Scholastic Multi-Text on World Affairs,
Scholastic Enterprises
1967 The Making of Modern Man: Western Civilization Since 1500,
Van Nostrand
1967 The Blood-and-Iron Cbanceiior: A Documentary Biography,
Van Nostrand
1968 The New Nationalism, Cornell Univ. Press
1968 Frederick The Great (with Ida Mae Brown), in the Immortals
of History Series, Franklin Watts
1970 Frederick the Great, in the Great Lives Observed Series, Prentice-Hall
1971 The Dreyfus Affair, a Focus Book, Franklin Watts
1971 Great Turning Points in History, Van Nostrand-Reinhold
1973 The Dreyfus Case: A Documentary History, Rutgers Univ. Press
(In Press) A Comparative History of Nationalism, in the Comparative
Dimensions in History Series, edited by Leonard W. Levy and Eugene
C. Black, Holt, Rinehart and Winston
(In Press) A Survey of Global Civilization (in collaboration with Mark
\V. Hirsch), Van Nostrand
(In Preparation) Reflections ou German History, a collection of essays,
articles, and reviews.
1962
1964
1964
1964
21
�Graduation 1973
ANNAPOLIS GRADUATES
LARGEST CLASS IN HISTORY
The largest class in the history of the
College was graduated at commencement exercises at Annapolis on May 27.
Sixty-two seniors were presented their
B.A. degrees by President Richard D.
Weigle and Provost Paul D. Newland.
Ford K. Brown, Tutor Emeritus, gave
the commencement address. (His remarks appear elsewhere in this issue.)
David K. Allison of Charlotte, N.C.,
dence E. Davis, Ronald J. Deal, Lee
H. Elkins, Peter M. Fairbanks, Jon T.
Ferrier, John H. Fitch, Jean K. FitzSimon, David F. Gilmore, Roger D.
Greene, Jan L. Huttner, Robin Kowalchuk, Maura M. Landry, Russell C.
Lipton, Sarah C. Lusk, Robert I. Main,
was awarded his degree summa cum·
laude. Mr. Allison won the silver medal
for the senior with the highest standing
and also received honorable mention
for his senior essay.
Summa Cum Laude: David K. Allison.
Magna Cum Laude: Peter van Tuyl
Davis, Matthew Albritton Frame.
Cum Laude, Deborah Achtenberg,
Jennifer Blaisdell, Robin Chalek, Richard D. Gasparotti, Debora J. Gilliland,
Nicholas A. Petrone, Joanne A. Rowbottom, Steven P. Sedlis, Elizabeth E.
Unger, Jessica R. Weissman.
Rite, Edward W. Allen, Peter J.
Aronson, Mary L. Batteen, Martha J.
Bauer, Jerrold R. Caplan, Mary L.
Coughlin, Bryant G. Cruse, Patrick J.
D'Addario, Ronald J. Davidoff, Pru22
David K. Allison
Matthew T. Mallory, Melissa J. Matthews, Frederick N. Mattis, Craig V.
Mooring, Jeanne H. Mooring, Jan
Munroe, Katherine O'Callaghan, Daniel S. Pearl, Lee D. Perlman, Deborah
E. Schifter, Michael J. Schneider,
Kathy Sciacchitano, C. Brian -Scott,
Carol D. Shuh, Jeffrey A. Sinks, Daniel
Sohn, Jane E. Spear, James E. Tourtelott, Vanessa L. van Manen, Dana
K. Warren, Doris E. Warren, Bruce
C. Wheeler, Irving H. Williams, Mary
Jane Young, David C. Chute.
AWARDS AND PRIZES
Silver medal from the Board of Visitors and Governors-David K. Allison. The Sen. Millard E. Tydings
award for excellence in speaking-Craig
Mooring. The Duane L. Peterson
scholarship of $1,250 to a JuniorNelson Lund.
Best Senior essay-Sarah C. Lusk.
Best Junior essay-Antonio L. Marino.
Best Sophomore essay-George M. D.
Anastaplo and Frank R. Hunt. Best
Freshman essay-Juliet E. Goslee.
Freshman-Sophomore mathematics
prize-Shiu-Chun Wong. Best Greek
translation-Nelson Lund. Best French
translaticm-Timothy W. Born. (This
translation appears elsewhere in this
issue.) Best musical comment-James
Nelson Jarvis.
Scholarship awards of $1,000 each by
the C. Markland Kelly, Jr. Memorial
Foundation-Janet L. Christhilf, Ted
A. Blanton, David E. Clement.
�July 1973
Mark D. Jordan
Former Senator Eugene ]. McCarthy is shown here awaiting the start of the baccalaureate service
during commencement at Santa Fe. Graduating seniors shown arc Michael E. Mongeau, Steven
L. Goldman, and Eric 0. Spriugstcd. l\.fr. McCarthy delivered the commencement address.
SANTA FE AWARDS
34 DEGREES;
HEARS EUGENE McCARTHY
Former U.S. Senator Eugene J. McCarthy addressed the May 20th Grad-
Edith Kathleen Callender, Mary Rose
Gauler, Leslie Harold Gould, Marcia
Ellen Greenbaum, Robert Morgan
Hampton, Barbara Ann Harry, Jeffrey
Alan Hockersmith, Catherine Tobin
Ingraham, Paul Dale Knudson,
Thomas Alex Lawson, Jan Malcheski,
Constance Dolores McClellan, Michael
Edward Mongeau, Nancy Kathryn
Plese, Kenneth Winston Richman, Jr.,
Barbara Ann Rogan, Lowell Thomas
Rundle, Christian Skinner Smith, Eric
Osmon Springsted, James Ross
Thompson, Jr., David Michael Wea-
uation Ceremonies at Santa Fe7 where
B.A. degrees were awarded to 33 senmrs.
The first Master of Arts conferred
on a teaching intern at Santa Fe went
to Paul D. Mannick. Mark D. Jordan
received the first summa cum laude
degree at Santa Fe. He also won the
Board of Visitors and Governors Silver Medal, he tied with Benjamin
Bergery for the prize for best senior
essay, and he received a $6,000 travel
and study fellowship from the Thomas
J. Watson Foundation.
Summa Cum Laude: Mark Durham
Jordan.
Magna Cum Laude: Benjamin Bergcry, Galen Nately Breningstall, Peter
Joseph Meadow.
Cum Laude: Karl Edward Bohl-
ver, India Williams.
AWARDS AND PRIZES
The traditional awarding of prizes
and scholarships at the Santa Fe campus included a new category: The
Bromwell Ault Memorial Scholarships
"to members of the sophomore and
junior classes for leadership ability, potential for service to society, broad intellectual interests, and academic abilmann7 Steven Lawrence Goldman 7 ity." Amounts depend on need, but a
Gary Worth Moody, Joan Marie Paine. prize of $50 accompanies each scholarRite: Michael Bruce Aaron, Michel ship.
Rene Barnes, Rebecca Ann Brinkley,
They were presented by Vice-Presi-
dent J. Burchenal Ault in memory of
his father, who died last December.
Bromwell Ault was a former member
and Chairman of the Board of Visitors
and Governors.
Winners of Awards and Prizes: Silver Medal from the Board of Visitors
and Governors-Mark Durham Jordan.
Thomas J. Watson Foundation Fellowship-Mark Durham Jordan. The
Duane L. Peterson Scholarship of
$1,000 to a Junior-Alejandro Medina.
The Bromwell Ault Memorial Scholarships-Class of 1974: David Fayon
Gross, Maria Kwong, Paul Andrew McEncroe, Anne C. Ray, Stephen Arnold
Slusher. Class of 1975: Margaret Jean
Donsbach, Mark Paul Habrel, Boyd
Cooke Pratt, Richard Martin Skaug.
Best Senior Class Essay-Benjamin
Bergery and Mark Durham Jordan.
Best Junior Class Essay-Steven Dahl
'Il1omas. Best Freshman Class EssayRobyn Lu Granquist. Best English
Poems-Russell Wayne Mayfield. Second Prize-Christian Burks and Gary
Worth Moody. Best Musical Composition-Russell Wayne Mayfield. Second Prize-Mark Paul Habrel.
23
�NEWS ON THE CAMPUSES
CURTIS WILSON IS
NEW ANNAPOLIS DEAN
Curtis A. Wilson, presently on the
faculty of the University of California,
San Diego, has been appointed Dean
of St. John's in Annapolis. Mr. Wil·
son's appointment was confirmed by
the Board of Visitors and Governors
of the College at its meeting in Santa
Fe on May 19th.
Mr. Wilson is a former member of
the faculty, having served as Tutor in
Annapolis from 1948 to 1958, as Dean
for a four·year period, and then as
Tutor on the College's Santa Fe cam·
pus until 1966.
Mr. Wilson did his undergraduate
work at the University of California,
Los Angeles, and earned his M.A. and
Ph.D. degrees in the history of science
at Columbia University. During 196263 he was a Visiting Research Fellow
at Birkbeck College, University of London. Since 1966 he has been on the
faculty at the University of California,
San Diego. A corresponding Member
of the Academic internationale d'histoire des sciences since 1971, Mr. Wilson is also a former Fulbright Fellow
and author of William Heytesbury:
Medieval Logic and the Rise of Mathematical Physics, for which he did research at the University of Padua in
Italy.
Mr. Wilson will assume his duties as
Dean on July I.
JONES NAMED DIRECTOR OF
GRADUATE INSTITUTE
David C. Jones has been appointed
Director of the summer Graduate Institute in Liberal Education at Santa
Fe.
Mr. Jones has been a Tutor at St.
John's since 1964 and at Santa Fe since
1965.
24
Curtis Wilson
�July 1973
He graduated from the College in
1959 and received his M.A. at the
University of Melbourne. He succeeds
Robert A. Neidorf, who has been
named Dean of the College at Santa
Fe.
The summer program, leading to the
M.A. degree in the liberal arts, is de·
beth Mitchell, Irvin Swartzberg, and
Emmanuel Schifani.
SANTA FE APPOINTS
TWO NEW TUTORS
The Board of Visitors and Governors
has appointed two more tutors for the
Santa Fe campus for 1973-74. They are
Lorna Green and Bruce Venable.
Miss Green, 34, is a biologist holding
a Ph.D. from Rockefeller University.
She is now studying for a second Ph.D.,
in philosophy, at the University of
Toronto.
Mr. Venable, 26, has been teaching
classics at the University of Washing·
ton. He is a summa cum laude grad·
uatc of the Integrated Program of St.
Mary's College in California.
Mrs. Rinder has served as Adminis·
trative Assistant to the Dean at An·
napolis since 1969. Previously she
served as Executive Secretary to Lowe
Associates in Bedford, New York, from
1963 to 1969. She is a graduate of
Packard Commercial School in New
York City.
FORMER VICE PRESIDENT
RECEIVES LAW DEGREE
.··~
David Jones
signed for graduates of colleges other
than St. John's. It is divided into four
subject areas: Politics and Society, Lit·
erature, Philosophy and Theology, and
Mathematics and Natural Science.
BURDGE AND DONNELLEY
ARE NEW MEMBERS
Richard M. Burdge and James R.
Donnclley have been newly elected to
the Board of Visitors and Governors.
Mr. Burdge, of New York City, is
the President of the American Stock
Exchange. Mr. Donnelley is associated
with R. R. Donnelley and Sons Com·
pany in Chicago.
In other action at its May meeting
in Santa Fe, the Board elected the
following officers: Chairman, Dr.
Thomas B. Turner; Vice-chairmen,
Mrs. Clementine Peterson and Jack M.
Campbell; Secretary, W. Bernard
Fleischman; Executive Committee,
Mrs. Eleanor Ditzen, Mrs. Margaret
W. Driscoll, Walter Evers, and John
Gaw Meem.
Re-elected to the Board were Miss
Ruth M. Adams, Mrs. Margaret Bow·
die, Mrs. Eleanor Ditzcn, Mrs. Eliza-
Dr. James P. Shannon was named
"the student best representative of the
ideals of the University of New Mex·
ico Law School" and he was chosen to
give the commencement address for
his own graduating class May 20 in
Albuquerque.
Dr. Shannon, a former Roman Cath·
olic bishop, served as Vice President
of the College and Director of the
Graduate Institute at St. John's in
Santa Fe in 1969-70. He plans to join
the Santa Fe firm of Sutin, Thayer &
Browne and he is interested in law
relating to the poor and the conserva·
tion of natural resources.
He has a Ph.D. in American History
from Yale University. He served as
President of the College of St. Thomas
as well as auxiliary bishop of Min·
neapolis-St. Paul before coming to St.
John's.
ANNAPOLIS APPOINTS
NEW REGISTRAR
Paul D. Newland, Provost in An·
napolis, has announced the appointment of Mrs. Leanore B. Rinder as
Registrar, effective July 1, 1973. Mrs.
Rinder will replace Mrs. Christiana D.
\Vhite who is relinquishing her posi·
tion in order to enroll as a student at
the College. Mrs. White will continue
to work part time in the Registrar's
office.
Anne Ray
CONFERENCE OF CHRISTIANS
AND JEWS HONORS
ST. JOHN'S STUDENT
The National Conference of Chris·
tians and Jews in New Mexico has
presented an award to St. John's stu·
dent Anne Ray on May 2nd for her
work with a Santa Fe drug program.
Miss Ray, who is the granddaughter
of a Baptist missionary and the great·
granddaughter of a Rabbi, directs Out·
reach, Inc., which is concerned pri-
marily with teenage drug abusers. It
is a three-part program offering crisis
intervention, therapy and alternative
service. She enrolled as a freshman at
the Annapolis campus and then trans·
£erred to Santa Fe. She will be a senior
this coming year.
Miss Ray was introduced at the
awards dinner in Albuquerque by for·
mer New Mexico Governor Jack M.
Campbell, who is a vice chairman of
the St. John's Board of Visitors and
Governors.
Her work with Outreach is one of
several community programs sponsored
by Federal Title I funds at St. John's.
25
�ALUMNI ACTIVITIES
ROSENBERG, STERN ELECTED
Julius Rosenberg '38 and Thomas E.
Stern (SF) '68 this spring were elected
to three-year terms on the Board of
Visitors and Governors of the College.
Mr. Rosenberg succeeds himself, since
he has served this past year the unexpired term of J. S. Baker Middelton.
Mr. Stern will replace Myron L. Wolbarsht, who has completed the allowed
maximum of two consecutive threeyear terms. The thanks of all alumni
go to Mr. Wolbarsht, and best wishes
to Messrs. Stern and Rosenberg.
Mr. Rosenberg is a past president oC
the Alumni Association, of which he
also served as treasurer. He was Direc-
tor of Development on the Annapolis
campus from September, 1968, to December, 1971. He is currently on the
staff of the Associated Jewish Charities
and Welfare Fund of Baltimore.
Thomas Stern is a graduate of College in the first class on the western
campus, and the first Santa Fe alumnus to be elected to the Board of the
College. Following graduation he
studied film work and economics at
Stanford University, receiving an M.A.
degree in 197!. He is president of
Kinesis, Inc., a firm he organized in
1971 to produce motion pictures. Mrs.
Stern, the former Nora Gallagher of the
Santa Fe class of 1970, is employed
by the Dow Jones Company, on the
staff of the Wall Street Journal. The
26
Sterns make their home in Palo Alto,
Cal.
COUNSELLING SERVICE
The somewhat on-and-off-again program of alumni assistance to students
in matters concerning graduate school
selection and admission, career counselling, and job opportunity has taken
on new life in recent months.
Building on the groundwork of
Nancy (Eagle) Lindley's efforts several
years ago, and prodded constantly by
Jan Lisa Huttner '73, the then-student representative to the Board of the
Association, the directors have established an Alumni-Student Counselling
Service office. Costs are being borne by
the College, while operations are the
responsibility of the Association. T11e
office is on the second floor of the
Carroll Barrister House.
Under the general supervision of
V. Stephen Mainella '54, chairman of
the Alumni-College Relations Committee, a student assistant, Tina Saddy
'75, opens the office three days a week.
Miss Saddy maintains a file of interested alumni, a list of the interest areas
of juniors and seniors especially, and
schedules meetings of students with
alumni to discuss those interests. In
addition, information about governmental and other job opportunities is
kept on file. Four alumni-student meetings were held during the last few
months of the second semester, and are
scheduled to resume in the fall.
How can alumni help with this most
important project? First, if you can
talk with students on campus, by
'phone, by mail, or in their hometowns,
make sure your name and area of specialization are on file in the Coun-
selling Office. (If in doubt, send it in
again.) Second, if you know of job opportunities for which a St. John's graduate might qualify, let the Office know.
And if you think your company personnel man should consider St. John's
as a source of able young people, tell
him so.
The problems faced by new alumni
are seldom unique, but St. John's alumni may have special problems. Despite
his lack of academic specialization, and
in some cases because of it, the St.
Johnnie can fit into many situations.
We ask all alumni to help our young
alumni find those situations.
ELECTION PROCEDURES
REVIEWED
The May meeting of the directors of
the Alumni Association was devoted in
large part to a review of the procedures
for electing alumni to the Board of
Visitors and Governors.
There was general sentiment favoring earlier announcement of the election, and the desirability of finding an
alternative to the present system of
�July 1973
selecting nominees. Better ways of acquainting alumni with the nominees
was also explored.
Specific proposals, in the form of
recommended amendments to the Association By-Laws, will be mailed later
in the summer, to be acted upon at the
Annual Meeting on September 29
(Homecoming). Probable recommendations are: (I) that a call for nominees by petition go out in the fall,
possibly by way of the October issue
of The College; ( 2) that all nominees
by petition, together with those nominated by the Board of Directors, be
listed in the January issue of the
magazine, complete with biographies
and pictures; and ( 3) that a ballot be
included in the January issue to eliminate costly first class mailings.
Also to be considered is the provision requiring two votes for ballot validation when there are two places to
be filled. This provision was included
in the 1969 revision of the By-Laws to
prevent "single-shooting", whereby a
very few alumni could assure election
of a candidate by voting only for him.
When so few ballots are cast-278 in
the recent election-the results can be
rather easily controlled. Whether this
system should be continued is still subject to discussion. Opinions are welcome; send them to the Alumni Office
in Annapolis.
The last election also brought to
the attention of some alumni two
rather essential qualifications for service
on the Board of the College: Board
members must have the time to attend four two-day meetings a year, and
the money to travel to and from meetings held alternately in Annapolis and
Santa Fe. These two factors, rather
than any policy of the Association or
the College, have influenced past nominating committees to select older
alumni.
letic Director Bryce D. Jacobsen '42,
a trophy was presented to sophomore
Stephen Weber by Association President Bernard F. Gessner '27.
Unfortunately, the women's winner
was not determined until the following
week, so freshman Jacqueline Blue
could not receive her trophy at the
luncheon.
New York
The New Yark group wound up the
year with a series of three monthly
seminars, led by tutors from the Annapolis campus. In March Acting Dean
Elliott Zuckerman and John White '64
led a discussion of a chapter from
Edgar Wind's Art and Anarchy. Assistant Dean Geoffrey Comber was
present in April to help explore Melville's Bart/eby the Scrivener, and the
final session in May, discussion of
Martin Luther King's Letter from a
Birmingham Jail and the Crito, was
conducted by Robert L. Spaeth, editor
of The College.
HOMECOMING 1973
First, our apologies for the confusion
caused by an erroneous entry in the
April issue; Homecoming 1973 will
take place on Friday and Saturday, September 28 and 29, in case any of you
wondered about our calendar. And
again, the early dates were necessitated
by other activities in town the following three week-ends, activities which
fill hotels and crowd restaurants and
which ought to be avoided by Homecoming planners.
Next, the Homecoming Committee
The traditional cocktail party and
dinner are being combined this year in
an effort to trim the cost of activities.
A cocktail party cum light buffet will
be served in the gymnasium in the late
afternoon and early evening. Alumni
will then be free to make their own
dinner plans, perhaps dining with tutors or seniors. Members of the faculty
and the Senior Class will again be invited, and the Alumni Award of Merit
will probably be presented during this
activity.
A detailed program and reservation
information will be sent to all alumni
mid-summer. If you plan to join in the
fun, and want a hotel or motel reservation, let the Alumni Office know
soon. And do plan to be here: we believe that most alumni come back to
see other alumni and their friends
among the Tutors, so you do not need
full schedule details in order to make
the important decision to come to Annapolis in September.
Make a note of the dates: Friday and
Saturday, September 28 and 29. See
you at HOMECOMING.
CLASS NOTES
1927
During the 1973 session of the Maryland
General Assembly, newspaperman Elmer M.
Jackson, Jr. was singularly honored by the House
of Delegates. The legislators passed a resolution
commending Jackson for his 50 years in journnlism, saying he is " ... a fine newspaperman
who has always sought to present the news in
an honest and responsible fashion, unembellished by any malicious or self-serving distor-
tions." Jackson, a fanner president of the Alum-
ni Association, has served on 19 State commissions, and currently serves on the Capital City
event into the schedule. Last year it Commission with St. John's president Richard
was the late-Friday bash at Buzzy's; D. \Veigle. Jack claims that his business keeps
this year it will be a twilight cruise of him more active than ever, but we know that
the Severn River Friday evening, with __ 911 certain sunny days, golf has been blown to
lure him away from his desk.
is trying to introduce an occasional new
beer and sandwiches to accompany the
scenery of a still-beautiful river. For
1929
those alumni wanting more intellectual
WITH THE CHAPTERS
Annapolis
The May luncheon of the Annapolis
Alumni chapter was the occasion for
the presentation of awards to the high
point winners in the College's intramural competition. Sponsored by the
Association at the suggestion of Ath-
John \V. Boucher, who has been taking edu·
fare, there will be a lecture or concert
at the College. Buzzy's could again be
a lateonight rendezvous if we want.
On Saturday the usual events will be
cation courses at the University of Alabama in
Bim1ingham since last June, is now doing grad·
uate work toward secondary school certification. He is also teaching part-time in a preparatory school and coaching the golf team,
and " . . . thoroughly enjoying it."
held: alumni seminars, luncheon, An-
nual Meeting, graduate school counselling, and a soccer game in which the
young and/or agile may participate at
their own risk.
1936
Sharon Warfield Hebb, daughter of Mr. and
Mrs. Charles Parish Hebb, was married on
March 30 in Baltimore.
27
�The College
1937
Dr. Norval A. Kemp this past winter was
appointed associate director of the Perth Amboy (N.J.) General Hospital, heading the new
division of medical affairs. Prior to his appointment, Dr. Kemp was medical administrator of
St. Francis Community Health Center, Jersey
City. A diplomate of the American Board of
Internal Medicine, Dr. Kemp is an associate
clinical professor of medicine at the College
of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
1952
A long letter from Alvin Aronson to Provost
Paul Newland arrived in ear1y May, Alvin is
enrolled in a school for English teachers in
Netanya, Israel, and has a job teaching in a
high school there. Since reaching Jsrael last
fall, AI has met Jerry Cantor '49 and Raphael
Ben Josef '48. Jerry suggests they start a St.
John's in Israel; AI suggests the slogan "Read
The Bible Where It Really Happened." AI has
started a new play, about which he expresses
cautious optimism.
1956
KGO-TV in San Francisco recently received
an Emmy from the local chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and ScienCes for it~ program "Ne\\rs Scene." The award
\vas accepted by the station's news director,
Pat Polillo.
Everett H. Wilson for the past two years
has been coordinator of the Maryland Drug
Abuse Program.
1959
David Jones, a Tutor in Santa Fe since 1965,
has been named Director of the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education. David holds an
M.A. degree from the University of Melbourne,
and studied at the University of Texas before
joining the St. John's faculty.
1960
Jolm E. Gorecki is teaching English at the
University of South Carolina and is working on
his Ph.D. dissertation on Milton. His graduate work has been concentrated on Old English and Renaissance literature.
Miss Miriam Strange passed along a long
letter from Katherine (Hsu) Haas, describing
the latest enterprise in which she and husband
Ray '58 are engaged. Together with her brother,
they operate a cattle ranch near Solen, North
Dakota. That is near the Standing Rock Sioux
Reservation, south of Bismark about 40 miles,
according to the Alumni Office atlas. This new
career comes after five years teaching at the
Key School in Annapolis, four years as head of
the mathematics department at Science Research Associates in Chicago, and three years
as managing editor of the mathematics department of Field Educational Publications in
Palo Alto, Cal. Now it's 1,500 acres, 90
head of cattle (soon to be increased by 60
births), with Ray mending fences, delivering
calves, and plowing and discing the land.
Katherine is teaching school and taking courses
under the Federal Teacher Corps Program
28
at the University of North Dakota. In about
another year she will have her B.S. degree.
Since her students are mostly Indians, she has
learned their dances, and is learning the Lakota
language. (The Haas-Hsu cattle brand looks
like "Two Lazy H", if your editor has not
forgotten how to read brands.)
1962
W'. James Klug III has been transferred by
IBM from Dayton, N.J., to Bethesda, Md. He
plans to move to Poolesville, Md., about the
first of July.
1964
Another IBMer, Jim's brother Robert W.
Kiug, has been transferred from Wilmington,
Del., to Franklin Lakes, N.J. (Did you know
that IBM employs more St. John's alumni
than any other corporation?)
1966
Lauric Fink writes from North Hollywood,
Cal., where she works for a 3-D motion picture
company called Stereovision International. She
is helping to make movies, and is also learning
to be a film editor; she says the work is both
interesting and totally demanding.
1967
Loren and Carole (Picardo) Kelley let us
know in March of the birth in June, 1971,
of son Owen, and also told us Ovven is expecting a brother or sister in April or May. Loren
is still employed in Italy, where he is developing some equipment for Honeywell Italia.
Just in case you missed the item in the
"News on the Campuses" section of the April
issue, three honors graduates of this class are
joining the St. John's faculty for the next
academic year. William H. Donahue, James
R. Mensch, and Howard Zciderman next September will become members of the Santa Fe
faculty. Bill has been studying at King's College, Cambridge; Jim has earned a M.S.L.
degree from the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies in Toronto and Howard received an
M.A. degree from Princeton in 1972.
1968
Thomas G. Keens, M.D. (SF) tells us he
received his medical degree from the University of California (San Diego} School of Medicine in June, 1972. He is at present finishing
his internship in pediatrics at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles, and will start his first year
of residency there in July. Tom married Susan
Elizabeth Keffala in May last year. Mrs. Keens
is a 1971 psychology graduate of the John Muir
College of the University of California (San
Diego.)
Thomas E. Stern (SF), successfully nominated as an alumni representative on the
Board of Visitors and Governors of the College,
was also successful in the election. (See artic1e
elsewhere in this issue.)
1969
Steven L. and Carol Ann (Lightner) Tucker
(SF) are living in Santa Fe, where Steve is
serving as Jaw clerk to Oliver Seth, Circuit
Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals. Carol is
working at
\Vhen his
completed,
practice in
the Sandra Wilson Art Gallery.
service with Judge Seth has been
Steve plans to enter private law
Santa Fe.
1970
Jeffrey D. Friedman, another of our men in
Israel, reports dissatisfaction with his studies
in philosophy at the Hebrew University. He
spent the first half of this year in the Pardes
School of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem (Lydia
Kleiner '74 is also a student there). He is now
at Hartman College, and lives at Rekov HaOr
2, behind the Jerusalem Central Bus Station,
telephone (Jerusalem area code 02) 525162,
in case you are in Israel.
John D. Smith reports he is teaching a course
in "hamburger stands" in the Department of
Architecture at the University of New Mexico.
His wife, Gabrielle (Eershen) '68 is working
with the computer as a device for making art.
1971
Emmie Louise Gage (SF) reports understandable happiness at no longer being a member of the White House staff: " ... a strange
Place and politics is such a heavy racket ..."
seems an apt description. Bonnie is now doing
real estate work on Cape Cod, Yarmouthport,
to be exact.
John Smith also reports that Travis Price
(SF) has founded an organization called Sun
Mountain, to plan solar heated communities.
Travis lives in Santa Fe.
V. Michael Victoroff recently sent greetings
from Houston, and says that medical school
(Baylor) is going just fine.
In Memoriam
1911-Edgar Stanley Bowlus, Jackson,
Miss., January 1973.
1913-W. Stewart Fitzgerald, Denton,
Md., April25, 1973.
1917-Fendall Marbury, Baltimore, Md.,
February 14, 1973.
1918-----.:.0wen Friend, Cambridge Springs,
Pa., August 22, 1972.
1923-James Nelson Day, St. Petersburg,
Fla., April IS, 1973.
1925-Prcston A. Pairo, Sr., Baltimore,
Md., March 25, 1973.
1931-Tiwmas G. Andrew, Baltimore,
Md., May 19, 1973.
1931-Dr. Antonio A. Susoni, Arecibo,
P.R., March, 1973.
1931-Charles M. West, Jr., Centreville,
Md., December 31, 1972.
1937-George R. Hoover, Boca Raton,
Fla., February 28, 1973.
1944-Dr. Robert Wilcox, Iowa City,
!a., May 16, 1973.
�"POESIE" BY PAUL VALERY
English Translation by Timothy Born
Par la surprise saisie,
Une bouche qui buvait
An sein de Ia PoCsie
En separe son duvet:
By surprise seized,
A mouth which had drunk
Removes its lips
From the breast of Poetry:
-0 rna mCrc Intelligence,
De qui la douceur coulait,
Quelle est cette negligence
Qui laisse tarir son lait!
0 :rvrother Intelligence!
From whom sweetness flows,
\r\lhat is this negligence
\Vhich lets your nipple close?
A peine sur ta poi trine,
AccablC de blancs liens,
Me berc;ait l'onde marine
De ton coeur charge de biens;
Hardly in your chest's enclave,
Subdued by white chains,
And I was rocked by the ocean wave
Of your heart charged with gains.
A peinc dans ton ciel sombre,
Abattu sur ta beautC,
Jc sentais, a boire l'ombre,
.l'VI'envahir une clarte!
Hardly in your sombre meadow,
Beaten on your beauty,
I felt, on drinking of the shadow,
Myself invaded by clarity.
Dieu perdu dans son essence,
Et dEdicieusement
Docile a la connaissance
Du supreme apaisemcnt,
God lost in the essence;
And deliciously docile
To a cognizance
Of supreme tranquility ...
.J e touchais a la nuit pure,
Je ne savais plus mourir,
Car un fieuve sans coupure
Me semblait me parcourir...
I was touching the pure night,
And knew death no longer,
As a stream without end
Through me seemed to run.
Dis, par quelle crainte vaine,
Par queUe ombre de dCpit,
Cette mcrveilleuse veine
Ames Ievres sc rompit?
Tell, by what vain fear,
By what shadow of pain
Is severed at my lips
This marvellous vein?
0 rigueur, tu m'cs un signe
Qu'a mon :lme je dCplus!
Le silence au vol de cygne
Entre nous ne regne plus1. ...
0 harshness, you are a sign
that I have displeased my soul.
The silence at the flight of the swan
Between us no longer reigns.
Immortelle, ta paupiCre
.Me refuse mes trCsors,
Et la chair s'est faitre pierre
Qui fut tendrc sous mon corps!
Immortal, your eyelid
Refuses me my treasures,
And flesh, once tender beneath my body,
Turns to stone.
Des cieux mCme tu me sevres,
Par quel injuste retour?
Que seras-tu sans mes lCvres?
Que serai-je sans amour?
You wean me of the very heavens
Ry what unjust reverse?
VVhat will you be without my lips,
''Vhat will I be without your love?
Mais la Source suspendue
Lui repond sans durete:
-Si fort vous m'avez mordue
Que mon coeur s'est arrete!
But the suspended source
Replies softly,
You have bitten me so hard
That my heart is stopped.
I
Timoti1y Born '76, a student on the Annapolis
campus, won a prize at the 197 3 Commeuccment proceedings for this translation.
�Photo Credits: Cover, Cecil Fox; page 6, James Grady '73; page 7, Ralph Hilt; page 23, George Rowhottom '71; page 24, Lynn Waugh '70;
back cover, Chris Sparrow.
The College
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
Second-class postage paid at
Annapolis, Maryland, and at
additional mailing offices.
�
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Spaeth, Robert Louis
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Thomas
Ham, Michael W.
Newland, Paul D.
Oosterhout, Barbara Brunner
Wyatt, E. Malcolm
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THE COLLEGE
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
Santa Fe, New Mexico
October 1973
�THE COLLEGE
Vol. XXV
October, 1973
No.3
IN THE OCTOBER ISSUE:
The Liberal Arts Movement: From
Ideas to Practice, by Amy Apfel Kass
Report of the President, 1972-73
...........
9
News on the Campuses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
27
Alumni Activities
30
.......................
Editor: Beate Ruhm von Oppen
Managing Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr.
Editorial Advisory Board: William B. Dunham,
Michael W. Ham, Paul D. Newland, Barbara Brunner
Oosterhout '55, E. Malcolm Wyatt, Robert S.
Zelenka.
THE COLLEGE is published by the Development
Office of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland.
Richard D. Weigle, President, Paul D. Newland,
Provost.
Published four times a year, in January, April, July
and October. Second class postage paid at Annapolis,
Maryland, and at other mailing places.
�THE LIBERAL ARTS MOVEMENT:
FROM IDEAS TO PRACTICE
by
Amy Apfel Kass
On the morning of November 19, 1929, the
following editorial appeared in The Daily Maroon, the
student newspaper of the University of Chicago:
Today amid scenes of academic grandeur,
Robert Maynard Hutchins will be inauguratedas the fifth president of the University
of Chicago. It is an occasion of vast moment
in the history of the University and we as
undergraduates are inspired with its significance. We are confident of the progressive
~pirit and the sympathetic understanding of
the new administration. We are further
convinced that the program of educational
emancipation which has distinguished the
University in American college circles will
not be neglected.
In a consideration of the occasion's whole
significance one aspect appears to us most
distasteful. The functions and duties of a
college administrator have changed radically
in the course of recent years. He is no longer
an educator, but a salesman and extortioner
ne plus ultra. The planning and execution of
educational policies is no longer his prime
consideration. He must secure donations and
endowments; he must acquire funds for the
University's physical expansion. The
importance of this mercenary and unsavory
function of the administrator is particularly
evident here where the grey towers continue
to rise on a Gargantuan scale.
It is to be hoped that the pressure of this
work will not require the whole devotion of
President Hutchins. We feel that he, like
former President Max Mason, possesses
educational ideals which if given
opportunity for development, will place the
University of Chicago in far greater
prominence than the addition of any
number of new buildings. We urge that the
new administration take heed of its primary
responsibility and its greatest opportunitythe progressive guidance of educational
policies.
The students got their wish, with interest.
Hutchins' ideas rapidly became common knowledge
and the entire campus became a place of debate and
conflict, sometimes verging on open· warfare.
Mortimer Adler's cryptic note to Hutchins on the eve
of his inauguration had been more knowingly
prophetic: "I trust that the University's funds are
securely invested. Otherwise they may have to pawn
the crown jewels before your inauguration. But you
will probably wear the crown lightly in either
·circumstance.. ''
The Department of Philosophical StudieS
As soon as Hutchins was appointed President of
the University of Chicago, he invited Mortimer Adler
to join him as his philosophical guide. Although Adler
did not move to Chicago until the Fall of 1930, by
the Spring of 1930,;the end of Hutchins' first year at
the University, a scheme had been hatched by Adler
to institutionalize work he had begun at the People's
Institute in New York with Scott Buchanan and
Richard McKeon.
Adler proposed that Hutchins create a new department in the University, a Department of Philosophical Studies. Adler thought that such a department
would provide by example a way to integrate learning
within the University. The proposed Department of
PhilosophiCal Studies would be independent of but
related· to all existing departments in the University.
"It would have no more or less to do with the regular
Department of Philosophy," Adler said, "than it
would have to do with the Law School, Medical
School, or the Departments of Physics or Fine Arts."
The members of the Department would be "student1
�The College
professors," "a third class of professors along side of
the already recognized classes of teaching-professors
and research-professors." Their work would be to
analyze and evaluate the principles and methods of
the various subject matters and to relate these to each
other.
"First of all," Adler suggested, the studentprofessors
would study a subject-matter maturely
and critically. Secondly, they would
actively participate in the work of the
department, in class and out. And lastly,
after they had trained themselves and
educated themselves sufficiently, and if
they had achieved a critical re-organization or approach to the subject matter,
they might give others the benefits of this
insight by giving a course which might be
equally profitable to undergraduates,
graduate students, and professors of the
other two varieties.
In practice, the student-professors would go from
one department of the University to another, staying
in one place only as long as they_ found it useful to
themselves. (Adler assumed that when they ceased to
learn from a given department, they would no longer
be useful to that department.) As the studentprofessors passed from one department to another,
they would create "new lines of inquiry into borderline areas and promote integration by offering interdisciplinary courses. For example, as students of
philosophy they could bring philosophy to the Law
School; after immersing themselves in the study of
law they would offer a course in the philosophical
foundations of law. They ·could then bring
philosophy and law to the next department in which
they decided to study, and so on. In addition,
because they were continuing their own education in
different fields, these student-professors would be
unusually well-suited to offer courses in the great
books, an additional means of promoting the "integration of learning. Moreover, Adler thought that these
courses would educate good undergraduates "in such
a way that they might be recruited for the work of
the Department of Philosophical Studies." Thus,
Adler's scheme provided for its own perpetuation as
well as a congenial home for himself and his fellow
"liberal artists," Buchanan and McKeon. For Adler
insisted to Hutchins that the success of his and
Hutchins' plans for the University required the
reunion of the "triune," Adler, Buchanan, and
2
McKeon.
Though the "student-professors" were to be
vagabonds within the University, they were to be
appointed to a separate official department in order
to· make it possible to get an endowment and thus
insure their financial independence from other
departments. Adler innocently thought that if his
department had its own budget it would require
minimal co-operation from other departments, and
therefore, that his plan would not be viewed as a
threat or a challenge.
The "Chicago Fight" and Its Consequences
Many faculty members were, however,
immediately wary of the plan and became increasingly suspicious of its proponents. Members of the
Philosophy Department were especially alarmed,
seeing in the plan the seeds of a revolution against
their kind of philosophizing. Others saw the plan as a
"power conspiracy on the part of the administration,
which was pictured as a 'baby president,' aided by
Savonarola and Richelieu" (Buchanan, Poetry and
Mathematics, page 23). They regarded Hutchins as a
radical upstart against the revered "Chicago School,''
as a man in search of a new religion. Still others saw
Hutchins as dangerously conservative, as a man
seeking to resurrect beliefs and practices of less
enlightened ages.
United by a common enemy, these various groups
joined forces and prepared themselves for a long and
bitter crusade. Their battle cries became "Facts vs.
Ideas," "Empiricism vs. Speculation," "Science vs.
Dogma." The "Chicago Fight" was quickly overshadowing the "Chicago School." One can better
understand the severity of the faculty reaction if one
appreciates the long-standing and pervasive influence
of the "Chicago School."
The "Chicago School" was originally identified
with the names of John Dewey, George Herbert
Mead, James R. Angell, and James H. Tufts. In a
review of some of the early philosophical papers by
these men, William James wrote, shortly after 1900:
The rest of the world has made merry
over the Chicago man's legendary saying
that 'Chicago hasn't had time to get round
to culture yet, but when she does strike
her, she'll make her hum!' Already the
prophecy is fulfilling itself in a dazzling
manner. Chicago has a School of
Thought!-a school of thought which, it is
safe to predict, will figure in literature as
�October 1973
the School of Chicago for twenty-five
years to come.
He concluded with the comment that the work of
Dewey and his colleagues and disciples presented "a
view of the world, both theoretical and practical,
which is so simple, massive, and positive that, in spite
of the fact that many parts of it yet need to be
worked out, it deserves the title of a new system of
philosophy."
John ·Dewey had come to the University of
Chicago in 1894 as Professor of Philosophy. James
Angell was appointed the same year as Assistant
Professor of Psychology and Director of the Psychological Laboratory that had been started the previous
year. Tufts and Mead had been at Chicago from its
beginning in 1892. In 1894, Dewey, the oldest of the
group, was thirty-five, Angell, the youngest, was
twenty-five. They were all interested in psychology.
They all collaborated in their early publications.
When Dewey left the University of Chicago in
1904, the spirit that had come to characterize the
Philosophy Department lingered. In the meantime, it
had spread to other parts of the University as well.
The "Chicago School" came to be identified with a
certain attitude toward knowledge and the nature of
the knowable and, hence, with a certain view of
education and the role of a university. The assumptions underlying this view could be found in the new
mechanistic biology, in behaviorism, in the new
scientific sociology, as well as in writings and ven lures
in progressive education. The ideas of the Chicago
School were related to a more general American
cultural revolt that began at the end of the nineteenth
century; Morton White has called it the revolt against
formalism. It was characterized by the conviction
that traditional learning was inadequate to a proper
understanding of society and incapable of assimilating
and promoting social and cultural progress. Timehonored theories were eagerly attacked. Beliefs in the
existence of immutable truths were ridiculed.
Philosophers, physicists, chemists, and mathematicians, as well as social scientists and even humanists,
vied with one another to break through barriers, to
efface outlines, and to supersede current concepts.
Undergraduate education became pre-professional
training. The devotion to "progress", scientific and
social, required special training in facts, methods, and
techniques.
Adler and Hutchins found this spirit as prevalent in
the Chicago of 1930 as it had been in the Chicago of
1904. Dedicated to their separate disciplines, the ·
faculty correctly perceived Hutchins' animus against
specialization, They made it impossible for Hutchins .
to create the Department of Philosophical Studies by
going through the normal academic channels. Also, it
became exceedingly difficult for him to find a home
for Mortimer Adler anywhere at the University
outside of the President's office.
Hutchins' negotiations with the Philosophy Department on Adler's behalf were doomed from the
beginning. Prior to coming to Chicago, Adler submitted a list of the courses that he was interested in
·offering, a list which included such diverse topics as
the logic of science, the logic of' induction, the
philosophy of law, and the history and analysis of
psychological theory. His proposal was summarily
rejected. Writing on behalf of the Department of
P\J.ilosophy, James H. Tufts stated their position as
follows: "It so happens that these identical courses
have already been announced to be given in the
Department for the next year (at least the copy has
gone to the printer)." No attempt was made to
ascertain whether the coincidence of titles also meant
a coincidence of subject matter. Furthermore, a
perusal of the published announcement for that year
indicates overlap · on only two topics, the logic of
science and the logic of induction. In their later
negotiations, Adler suggested changing the titles of
the courses he proposed to "Apologetics of Natural
Science" and "Theory of Probability." But the
Department of Philosophy held to its original position. By rejecting Adler's suggestions for possible
courses, they made it quite clear that they were not
interested in Adler and that they did not share the
interdepartmental frame of mind that was so crucial
to Hutchins' and Adler's plans for the University. In
the years that followed, Adler's ever-precarious
faculty status at the University became the symptom
if not the chief sign of Hutchins' own failure to effect
fundamental change.
Hutchins was forced to cancel the provisional
appointments he had offered to Scott Buchanan and
Richard McKeon and to sh~lve the plan for a
Department of Philosophical Studies. In its place one
seminar in the reading and discussion of the great
books was offered to undergraduates at the
University. This seminar was Adler's major teaching
assignment during his first year at Chicago. His
co-leader in the seminar was Hutchins. It was the first
of several similar seminars that Hutchins and Adler
taught during the next several years in various parts
of the University, in the College, at the High School
3
�The College
of the University, and in the Department of Education. A more elaborate seminar was designed for the
Law SchooL Despite these signs of retreat, the fires
that had been kindled by the Adler-Hutchins proposal
could not be extinguished. The old guard in the
Department of Philosophy, the venerable George H.
Mead and two of his younger colleagues, resigned, as
did other members of the faculty, .and many more
remained but fumed.
Discouraged but not defeated, Hutchins and Adler
persisted in their efforts to bring the liberal arts to
Chicago. In 1934, McKeon, who had remained in
New York (teaching. at Columbia and at the
Muhlenberg Branch of the New York Public Library),
was once again invited to the University, this time as
a Visiting Professor in the Department of History. By
first bringing McKeon to the University under the
auspices of a department other than the Philosophy
Department, Hutchins was eventually able to secure a
permanent position for him. In 1935, McKeon was
made Dean of the Division of the Humanities and
Professor of Greek, and later, also Professor of
Philosophy. McKeon continued as Dean for the next
twelve years and in that capacity played a major role
in restructuring general education in the College and
the graduate programs in the Humanities.
Unable to secure a position for Buchanan at
Chicago, Hutchins arranged for Buchanan to meet
Mrs. Ethel S. Dummer, a social activist and philanthropist whom he had met in connection with his
fund-raising activities. Mrs. Dummer had read
Buchanan's book, Poetry and Mathematics, and had
concluded that Scott Buchanan could be of some
assistance to her in her study of the writings of
George Boole, the English logician and mathematician, and his wife, Mary Boole. Buchanan was
attracted by the study because of its relation to his
own intellectual interests. George Boole, he explained
in a memorandum to Hutchins, was
really a very interesting and important
figure in modem logic and mathematics,
and his importance extends far beyond
the somewhat restricted developments
that chance and professional techniques
have given his work. He was a real
mathematician and a real logician who
realised what tremendous things could be
accomplished if his methods were applied
to all sorts of subject-matters. He realised,
for instance, that mathematics itself had
suffered a serious degradation on account
of its isolation from other fields of
4
thought, and that its own full development required many varied fields of application. Modem science is an example of
what happens when mathematical
methods spread to other subject-matters,
and mathematics itself gained much from
even this restricted application. But it was
still cramped by a rather arbitrary restriction to numbers, quantities, etc. The
special way he chose to exhibit the greater
possible extent of its domain was the use
of algebraic symbols to express nonquantitative terms. The method was not
understood in its original form. Mathematical logicians founded their science as
a kind of calculating machine and then
became so fascinated with the machinery
that they forgot its original function and
misused its results. It is now difficult to
persuade any scientist that symbolic logic
has any relevance to their work, although
it was for this that Boole did his work.
Mary Boole saw what was happening
and came in to correct the mistake. She
had the insight, but fell for the temptation to make immediate applications
before she had developed the skill and the
improved machinery that was of course
necessary for success. This is the failure
that Mrs. Dummer mourns, and wants me
to recover.
Buchanan was to go to England to look into the
work of the Booles and to try to reconstruct the
method that they had developed. This fitted in well
with a project he had started in New York (with
Adler and McKcon)--an investigation of the relation
between poetry and mathematics, between mathematical and non-mathematical subject matters, that
is, a study of the liberal arts. To Hutchins, Mrs.
Dummer's plan represented a way of keeping alive the
idea for a Department of Philosophical Studies
without further incurring the wrath of his faculty. He
therefore encouraged Buchanan to begin the project.
At the end of his year in England, Buchanan wrote
a small book entitled Symbolic Distance, in which he
developed the themes from his previous book Poetry
and Mathematics: " ...The bridge between the poetry
of the trivium and the mathematics of the quadrivium
was presented as a theory of measurement and
fiction." Reflecting on this later, he commented, "It
seemed to me that it would be through some such
�October
understanding that the modern liberal arts and
sciences could bring the modern literatures and
sciences into intelligible and teaching order."
Since Hutchins was still unable to convince the
remaining members of the Philosophy Department to
hire Buchanan, Buchanan returned to the University
of Virginia after his year in England. Shortly thereafter, he was invited to join a committee at the
University of Virginia whose assignment was to find
"better subject matter and discipline" for Honors
Students. Stringfellow Barr, Buchanan's friend and
former colleague at Oxford University, was then
teaching history at the University of Virginia and
editing the Virginia Quarterly Review; he too was
asked to join the committee. The group sat regularly
from September, 1934, until March, 1935. They
reported their findings in what came to be known as
the "Virginia Plan," the background and contents of
which shall be discussed in more detail below.
Early Great Books Courses
at the University of Chicago
The first great books* course to be offered at the
University of Chicago was unceremoniously
announced in the 1930 Autumn Quarter Time
Schedule. The course was called General Honors II 0
and described as follows: "By invitation and limited
to twenty students ... the one two-hour class session
a week, of a two year course, will be taught by Adler,
Hutchins."
Twenty students, chosen randomly by the Dean of
the College from among the top entering freshmen,
were enrolled in the course. The course and its
reading list were modeled on John Erskine's General
Honours course, begun at Columbia ten years earlier
(a course which Adler had taken as an undergraduate,
and in which he, McKeon, and Mark Van Doren had
taught in the middle 1920's). Students were
examined orally at the end of each year by a group of
outside examiners: Richard McKeon, Mark Van
1973
Doren, Scott Buchanan, and Stringfellow Barr.
Before too long, these afternoon sessions garnered
some fame. People from all parts of the University
came in droves to observe classes. Famous visitors
included Katherine Cornell, Orson Wells, Westbrook
Pegler, Lillian Gish, and Gertrude Stein. According to
numerous reports, the class always provided "a good
show."
The Great Books Seminar generated more than
entertainment. The enthusiasm of its students spread
like a contagion throughout the University. They
brought an eagerness for learning, for exchanging
ideas, and for discussing philosophical matters to the
whole campus. One observer remarked that the
pursuit of knowledge had become the major extracurricular activity. John P. Barden, a student in the
original Great Books class, became editor of the
student newspaper, The Maroon (1933-34). Under his
editorship, The Maroon became a forum for spirited
discussions of the purposes and means of education,
and in its pages students and faculty engaged with
each other in a variety of alliances and oppositions.
Despite its apparent success with the students,
most of the faculty remained hostile to the great
books course and to the idea behind it. Mortimer
Adler remained persona non grata. In another effort
to make Adler acceptable and to institute some of
their ideas, Hutchins organized an honors course in
the Law School for 1933-34. Adler was put in charge
of the course and given a temporary appoin !men t as
Associate Professor of Philosophy of Law in the Law
School. The course followed the same format that
Hu !chins and Adler had used in their original course
in the College: lectures on and reading of the great
books, combined with a discussion seminar that met
once a week.
The following year (1934-35) a much enlarged
version of the course was offered and an enlarged
staff was gathered to teach it. Malcolm Sharp, then a
Visiting Professor at the Law School, agreed to be
Adler's co-leader. Sharp had been an enthusiastic
about the origin of the list of books signified by this phrase
he called the "one hundred best books" in a pamphlet One
Hundred Books.{The number one hundred was used to convey
the fact that there were very few best books, not that there
were only one hundred.) In 1902, the Grolier Club of the City
of New York republished Lubbock's list and asked George
Woodberry to write an introduction to it. At this time John
and by such phrases as "the masterpieces," "the best books,"
"very important books," or "the classics." According to
studying with Woodberry. Shortly after World War I, John
*The origin of the phrase "the great books" is obscure. Adler
and Buchanan consistently used1 it. John Erskine, Adler's
teacher in the General Honours Course, referred to the books
as the "classics" or "masterpieces." It seems likely that the
phrase was coined by Adler or Buchanan. More is known
Buchanan, Sir John Lubbock (an English writer and banker
interested in the education of working men) was the originator
of the modern list. In 1895, Lubbock published a list of what
Erskine was a graduate student at Columbia University
Erskine introduced the General Honours Course at Columbia
University, an undergraduate course in which "masterpieces of
the Western world" were read.
5
�The College
teacher in Alexander Meiklejohn's Experimental
College at the University of Wisconsin, one of the
first programs to emphasize the study of the great
books. Hutchins was delighted to leam of Sharp's
interest in the course and of the Law School's
independent interest in luring Sharp onto its faculty.
Both the course and Adler, Hutchins hoped, would
profit from Sharp's participation.
William Gorman was brought to the University by
special invitation from Hutchins and was made an
assistant in the course. After receiving his bachelor's
degree at the University of Michigan, Gorman had
become the editor of Hound and Horn, a journal of
literary criticism. He had lived in New York City
where he continued to associate with his Michigan
friends, many of whom were then studying with
Richard McKeon at Columbia. Discussions with these
friends had led him to write an article on the new
mode of literary criticism expounded by I.A.
Richards and C.K. Ogden. The article, entitled
"Nostalgia for the Trivium," censured the so-called
new criticism for its claim of novelty and for its
ignorance of the tradition of grammar, rhetoric, and
logic, and it praised instead the efforts of people like
Scott Buchanan and Richard McKeon to restore the
Trivium. Hutchins read the article and, though
knowing nothing else about him, sent Gorman the
following letter: "I read your piece on 'Nostalgia for
the Trivium.' Come to the University of Chicago."
The other course assistants were Arthur Rubin, a
close friend and associate of Hutchins and Adler, and
James S. Martin, who had been a student in the
Adler-Hutchins Great Books Seminar. (Gorman and
Martin were later to join Barr and Buchanan in their
first years at St. John's).
The enlarged course was considered equivalent to
eight regular courses. It was offered to twenty college
seniors headed for the Law School and constituted
their total curriculum. (The current President of the
University of Chicago, Edward H. Levi, was one of
the twenty.)
The course, entitled "Law 201," was organized
into two major parts which were integrally related.
One part consisted of lectures and tutorials in
grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and mathematics. The
second part consisted of reading and seminar discussion of a small number of great works of history,
science, philosophy, and belles lettres. In connection
with the reading of scientific classics, students were
supposed to participate in laboratory research in
order better to appreciate the methods and techniques of science. However, this third aspect of the
6
curriculum was never implemented.
Seminar readings were chosen largely from social
studies, because the course was designed for pre-law
students. The reading and discussion of these works
was supplemented with presentations of factual
material useful for understanding important social
problems. Efforts were made to show the relevance of
the liberal arts and the scientific method for understanding and "solving" social problems.
The methods of instruction varied for different
parts of the curriculum. The first part of the course
was taught by means of one or two lectures a week
and tutorials devoted to exercises, analyses of texts,
and other forms of wlitten and oral work. In the
second part, the classics were discussed in infonnal
seminars which met once a week; further supplementary discussions were often carried over to the
tutorial sessions. Discussion of basic social problems
was carried on in special seminars called for that
purpose. In addition, students were urged to attend
those lectures given elsewhere in the University that
were considered relevant to the work being done in
the course. Students and faculty together determined
what was relevant.
Law 201 was the first institutionalized attempt to
balance literary and scientific concems and to apply
the themes and disciplines of the liberal arts to the
great books. Like its predecessor, the Adler-Hutchins
Great Books Seminar, Law 20 I was extremely
popular with the students and extremely unpopular
with the faculty. Faculty criticism continued to
mount; both Hutchins' mode of appointing tutors
and the character of the curriculum were under
constant attack. In the end, the course did not
accomplish either of its political goals: it did not gain
any further faculty respect for Adler nor any more
faculty support for Hutchins' ideas about education.
The course was repeated in an attenuated form-all
the scientific work, including the mathematics and
the reading of the scientific classics, was abandonedfor three more years before it was permanently
discontinued.
Scott Buchanan, in the meantime, had been
working out a similar course of study at the
University of Virginia as a member of the Virginia
Committee on Honors. The "liberal artists" at the
two universities kept in close communication through
correspondence and frequent visits to give lectures.
Although the objectives of the respective plans were
the same at both universities, the Virginia Plan, as the
Report of the Virginia Committee on Honors came to
be called, was more rigorous and comprehensive,
especially in its scientific aspects, than Law 20 I.
�October
The Virginia Plan
In September, 1934, the President of the
University of Virginia, Edwin A. Alderman,
appointed a committee consisting of six faculty
members and the Dean of the College to consider the
subject of Honors Courses in the University. The
President thought that the University ought to do
more than it was doing for its better college students.
The committee members agreed at the outset to
make a broad interpretation of their assignment. The
problem of Honors Students and Honors Courses at
the University. they thought, could not be separated
from the problem of students and courses in general.
Faculty members devoted most of their energies to
research, indulging their special interests which were
often far removed from the interests and understanding of their undergraduate students. As on
nearly all other campuses, the cuiTiculum was entirely
elective and specialized, all efforts having been
abandoned to design coherent programs for undergraduates. Many students turned to the University's
sideshows, athletics and other activities, partly out of
boredom, partly to secure the discipline which they
found lacking in the classroom. Some students
undertook serious reading, sometimes with a group of
their fellow students, sometimes under the guidance
of a professor. Nearly all looked on the strictly
curricular exercises of the University as inteiTuptions
that must be borne patiently. For these reasons, the
committee decided to address itself to the question of
what an undergraduate college as a whole should be
teaching and learning. l t proceeded on the assumption that all students were capable of and DLrght to
receive a liberal education. The committee members
hoped that the recommendations they would make
for Honors Students would eventually be considered
for the whole college.
The committee met weekly for six months and
then issued its report, drafted by Scott Buchanan,
Stringfellow BaiT, and R. K. Gooch. Although several
alternate proposals had been considered at the
committee meetings, the plan finally adopted and
presented in the report was the one suggested by
Buchanan. In the early discussions, BaiT had been a
severe critic of Buchanan's proposal. BaiT viewed his
emphasis on great books as a kind of patent medicine.
However, after a great deal of teasing from Buchanan,
he began using some of the classics in his history
courses. "For instance, if they were doing undergraduate ancient history, I would let them read
1973
Plutarch instead of something somebody had written
about ancient Greece," BaiT later recalled, "and I
noticed that Scott was right-that if you had discussions on the basis of Plutarch or Herodotus or
Thucydides, something happened to the discussion
that I had never seen happen before. These authors
got under their hides." As a result of this expetience,
BaiT supported Buchanan's proposal.
Rather than propose specific changes in the already
existing cuiTiculum, the report recommended that the
University found a small college within the college
that would be devoted to liberal education. Two
years of required common study would be followed
by two years of special honors work. The two
two-year sequences were designed as an integral
whole, calculated, as the committee reported, "on the
one hand to lay sound foundations for a developed
understanding of our intellectual traditions, and on
the other to permit the student to follow in his
maturer years his special bent."
During the last two years students were to be freed
from routine courses, quizzes, and term
examinations, and allowed to master a subject under
the general supervision of a tutor. The report
emphasized, however, that the work done during
these years was not to be regarded as a "species of
premature graduate work." Tutors were to bear in
mind the objective in view, namely, liberal education.
These provisions for the second two years were not
very unusual. Several colleges, for example
Swarthmore, were already requiring concentration on
particular subjcts or problems during the junior and
senior years in order to make undergraduate education more coherent. The provisions for the first two
years were far more radical and comprised the main
body of the report.
As in Law 201, the first two years of common
study were to be devoted to the study of the liberal
arts and to the application of these arts to the reading
of the great books. The reading list of the Virginia
Plan, however, was much longer-many more
mathematical and scientific classics were added-and
the requirements were much more stringent. Students
were expected to demonstrate a reading knowledge
and competence in the grammar of two languages,
one ancient and one modern, at the end of the first
year. In addition, they were required to become
proficient in mathematics, through calculus, by the
end of their second year.
Instruction was to include seminars (modeled after
the Columbia Honours Course), formal lectures,
tutorials, and laboratories. The lectJJres, to be given at
7
�The College
tutorials, and laboratories. The lectures, to be given at
least once a week, were to be expositions of the
nature and history of the several liberal arts, with
special attention to the ways in which these arts were
practiced by the authors of the great books. Tutorials
were intended to serve for formal drill and supervised
practice during the difficult stages of the learning of
languages and mathematics, for detailed criticism and
discussion of student papers, and for more extensive
discussion of the r..eminar rcr.\d.ings. The laboratory
would enable the students to perfonn the "crucial
experiments" in the history of science.
There was to be a full time staff of instruction,
distributed in their training and major interests to
cover cJl the subject matters in the course of study.
Students were to be selected by the instructors in the
program from those applying to the larger college.
"General intelligence," "'ability as shown by previous
records" in secondary schools, and the instructors'
judgment regarding the variety of complementary
abilities and interests needed to make an efficient
working group were the main critelia mentioned for
selection. The students in the pmljram would be
housed together and would dine together, and they
were to be given special rooms for their studies and
laboratory work.
When the report was submitted, it received a rather
unenthusiastic reception. President Aldennan who
originally appointed the committee had died and the
acting President, John L. Newcomb, was unwilling to
undertake such a radical departure from the elective
system. Other administrators were also hesitant. They
foresaw difficulties in raising extra money for a new
college within the old and anticipated much trouble
persuading the various departments to compromise
their interests in students or in subject matter.
Finally, they agreed to accept the last two years of
the plan-providing tutodal work for the better
students-and to shelve the general education plan for
the first two years.
The plan for the first two years nevertheless
survived, though it was ignored at Virginia. In a more
fully worked out fonn, it eventually became the core
of the "New Program" at St. John's College. The plan
migrated to Annapolis along with Scott Buchanan
and Stlingfellow Barr by way of the University of
Chicago's Committee on the Liberal Arts.
The Committee on the Liberal Arts
In the Spring of 1936, Hutchins delivered the
8
Storrs lectures at Y aJe which were published as a
book entil:lccl The lligher Learning in America. 'fhe
book attracted several wealthy admirers sympat!1etic
to his ideas about education. With funds donated by
some of these people, Hutchins set up a committee
called the Committee on the Liberal Arts to reco'1sidcr the cmTicula of the College and tile Division 0f
the H11manities. He made the Committee directly
responsible to che Dean of the Humanities, then
Richard McKeon. The Dean, in turn, was to be the
Committee's spokesman to the Unive;-sity faculty.
Hutchins assumed that the financial independence of
the Committee (it was to receive an annual allotment
of $22,000) would insure its independence of the
various dep,rrtments and divisions in the University.
Scott Buchanan was invited to join the Committee,
and on Buchanan's suggestion invitations were also
issued to Stringfellow Barr and to two of Buchanan's
graduate students, Catesby Taliaferro and Charles
Wallis. In addition to the Virginia contingent (as they
called themselves), Hutchins invited McKeon, Adler,
Arthur Rubin, R.S. Crane, Norman Maclean, Clarence
Faust and Prescott from the University of Chicago
and three of McKeon's graduate students !rom
Columbia Univero;ity, Paul Goodman, Plochman, and
Barrett, to join the Committee. William Gorman and
James Martin were invited to attend Committee
meetings though they were not made members.
The announcement ot the plan lor thrs Committee
reactivated the "Chicago Fight". The fact that several
of the proposed members of the Committee had
faculty appointments at the University made it
difficult to shelter the Committee as an independent
body. Its financial independence made little difference. The faculty resented what they regarded as
nepotism in the choice of members. There were
independent insunections in the Humanities Division
and in the College. McKeon was defeated in a
Humanities Division meeting in which a motion was
passed to ask the University Senate to instruct the
President that henceforth he would have to consul.!
with a whole division, not only a department or a
department chairman, if he wanted to appoint
anybody in that division. The College faculty passed a
similar resolution. Adler wrote to Buchanan, "They
see that what Bob is up to is a trick of getting men he
wants appointed by hook or crook, and so by hook
or crook they are going to stop him."
Nevertheless, encouraged by Hutchins to believe
that the Committee would be organized regardless of
the opposition, the Virginia contmgent came to
Chicago in the Fall of 1936. Scott Buchanan resigned
from the University of Virginia; Stringfellow Barr,
a
�REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT
TO
THE BOARD OF VISITORS
AND GOVERNORS
1972
1973
9
�REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT
TO THE BOARD OF VISITORS AND GOVERNORS
The close of the academic year 1972-1973
brought a change of instructional leadership on both
thf campuses of St. John's College. William A.
Darkey completed his term of five years as Dean at
Santa Fe and now embarks upon a well deserved
sabbatical leave. Robert A. Goldwin resigned the
deanship in Annapolis as of March 31st to accept a
post as Special Advisor to the United States
Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization in Brussels. Each Dean contributed
significantly in his own way to the ongoing
intellectual life of the College, and I should like to
record my deep gratitude to both for their periods of
tireless, thoughtful, and imaginative service.
Two ·Tutors filled the interregnum of three
months on the Annapolis campus. Elliott Zuckerman
became Acting Dean on April 1st but suffered a
severe illness in May. At this time, J. Winfree Smith
assumed the position until the end of June. Paul
Newland, the Provost at Annapolis, commended both
men for their performance, which he characterized as
"far above and beyond the call of duty." The Provost
also expressed gratification at the willingness of
members of the Instruction Committee to take on
additional responsibilities during this interim
three-month period. The President also records
thanks to Mr. Darkey for continuing as Acting Dean
through the month of July so that the new Dean in
Santa Fe might have a brief period of respite before
undertaking the responsibilities and duties of his
office.
Curtis A. Wilson became Dean of St. John's
College in Annapolis on July l, 1973, the first choice
of the selection committee of Tutors. Mr. Wilson
holds the Master's and Doctor's degrees from
Columbia University in the History of Science. He
joined the St. John's Faculty in 1948 and held the
deanship from 1958 to 1962. In 1964 he was part of
the initial cadre of Tutors who staffed the new Santa
Fe campus. After two years, he accepted a
professorship at the University of California in San
10
Diego for personal reasons. Mr. Wilson's return to the
College is enthusiastically welcomed by all. It assures
wise and firm academic leadership for the years
ahead.
At Santa Fe, Robert A. Neidorf succeeded Mr.
Darkey in the Dean's office on August l, 1973. He
relinquished the directorship of the Graduate
Institute in Liberal Education in order to do so. Mr.
Neidorf's graduate work was in Philosophy at the
University of Chicago and at Yale University. He
holds a Master's degree from the former and a
doctorate from the latter. Mr. Neidorf taught for two
years on the Annapolis campus, then left in 1964 for
a professorship at the State University of New York
in Binghamton. After three years, he returned to St.
John's and has been teaching at Santa Fe since 1967.
Both Tutors and students share my confidence in his
ability to discharge his new responsibilities with
distinction. It is clear that both campuses will be in
good hands as the new academic year begins this fall.
Instruction
Mr. Smith, Acting Dean, reports several
interesting dev~lopments at Annapolis. Two Tutors,
Alfred Mollin and Robert Williamson, .iwere
authorized to prepare a. new text of Greek grammar
to supplant the present text. The intent is to discover
a better way to learn the Greek language than
through the memorizing and brute rehearsing of
paradigms. From a knowledge of personal endings
and of the rules of euphony, the students will be
enabled to construct for themselves most verb forms.
Parts of the new text have already been put into use
with marked success. A new anthology of readings is
being prepared to accompany the grammar text and
to provide a vocabulary for the reading of Plato's
Me no.
A new manual for the biology laboratory was
prepared during the year by Nicholas Maistrellis and
was subsequently approved by the Instruction
Committee for me this coming year. A general review
�October 1973
concepts emerging from these analyses of
data from the numerous disciplines, and
which will develop a pattern for use by
others desirous of forming such a
synthesizing program.
and rethinking of the principles governing the
laboratory program seems called for, so Howard
Fisher will be relieved of part of his teaching
assignment to devote time to this reexamination.
Fin ally, the Instruction Committee recognized
problems in the junior mathematics tutorial arising
out of the fact that some students had already
studied the calculus. Samuel Kutler was asked to
undertake the writing of a calculus text which would
seek to resolve this problem.
When the full report on the preceptorial is completed,
it will be. reviewed by the Instruction Committee to
determine whether the program should be continued
in 1974.
·
Graduate Preceptorial
Liberal Arts Task Force
On the Santa Fe campus, an innovation in
instruction was the· trial graduate preceptorial
conducted by Charles Bell. Three other Tutors were
granted· released time each semester to join a small
group of graduate students in the intensive work of
the preceptolial. Study focused on two periods of
historical transformation: 'hat of the late Medieval
into the Renaissance, and that· which generated the
revolutionary and romantic ferment around 1800.
The preceptorial replaced specialized research with
· broadly based reading of original lexts, coupled with
an effort to synthesize them both philosophically and
historically.
The Director reports that an adequate room was
"liberated" in Evans Science Laboratory and
promptly dubbed "The Culture Lab;" Here, a general
humanities reading room was created by drawing on
the College Library and the personal libraries of the
Director and other Tutors. There were available over
5,000 color slides, all recorded music from the
pre-Bach period, texts in the original languages, and
translations of both primary and secondary works
essential to the study of Western thought and the
arts.
Participants found the J'receptorial both exciting
and fruitful. In a special report, four graduate
students urged that the initial experimental year be
.expanded into a full-fledged graduate program. They
wrote:
Funding has been made available by the
National Endowment for the Humanities for a
promising new instructional venture on the Santa Fe
campus. A task force in the liberal arts will be
established during the coming year similar lO that at
the University of Chicago in 1936-3·7. The overall
purpose will be to examine intensively, but without
immediate practical pressure. the role and nature of
liberal education, from the perspective of 35 years.
Not a "self-study" in the ordinary sense of the
word, the project will aim at the intellectual
improvement of the College. The re-examination will
be a systematic free speculation about premises,
methods, and materials. Emphasis will be on the
unity of liberal .studies. Present investigative trends
within the Faculty suggest that the focus might be on
the relation of poetry and the language arts to those
of the laboratory and mathematics. It seems that the
College has been more successful in assimilating to
one another philosophy, mathematics, and natural
science than at including works of the poetic
imagination in the unity.
William Darkey has happily agreed to direct the
task force. He will devote two months to travel and
planning during his sabbatical year so that the
principal work of the study can be undertaken during
the academic year 1974-75. Working with Mr. Darkey
will be Tutors from both campuses who have
professional competence in at least one discipline and
who have experienced, at St. John's teaching in
several of them. Visiting scholars will be included in
the endeavor. They will be. chosen for their general
awareness of the essential undertaking and their
ability to contribute some specialized knowledge.
Each will be able to articulate the eleme·nts of his
own discipline and to relate it to a unified study of
the liberal arts. The College has high hopes for the
success of this venture. For many years only a dream,
the project now becomes a reality, thanks to the
grant from the Nationa! Endowment.
As we participating graduate students know
from experience, there will long remain
available a sufficient number of graduate
institutes dedicated to the training of
specialists within the various
disciplines-specialists devoted to the
analysis of the increasing data within those
disciplines. What is absent at a time when it
is increasingly needed is a graduate program
that will perform the synthesis of the
11
�The College
The Tutors
The intellectual life of the College depends in
large measure upon the calibre of the Tutors. The
Annapolis Faculty has a larger number of faculty
members with long years of teaching in the St. John's
Program. Three-fifths of them hold tenure
appointments. By contrast, less than half of the
Tutors on the Santa Fe campus are tenured.
Experience has shown that usually only one out of
every three or four new appointees finally achieves
tenure at the College. This would seem to reflect
adversely on the sele~tion process for new
appointments. Yet the Instruction Committee on
both campuses devotes long hours to interviewing
candidates, to examining credentials, and to arriving
at the best possible decisions. The answer apparently
lies elsewhere.
It has become clear that ways and means must
be found to orient new Tutors more effectively at
Santa Fe. With a view to accomplishing this, the
College included, as part of its application to the
National Endowment for the Humanities, several
proposals. Approval of the grant now means that all
of them can be given effect over the next five years.
First, money will be available so that ail new Tutors
can be assigned only a two-thirds teaching load. This
will enable these men and women to audit classes and
to assimilate themselves more rapidly to the St.
John's Program. Second, f4nds will be sufficient to
provide released time for three of the most senior
Tutors on the western campus to serve as archons for
the newer Tutors in different subject matter areas.
Third, it will be possible to •finance, through the
grant, an exchange of Tutors each year between the
two campuses. A more experienced Tutor from
Annapolis may change places with a more junior
Tutor from Santa Fe. Finally, to provide for the
continuing intellectual growth of the Tutors, funds
will be made available for establishing faculty study
groups. These will provide a welcome measure of
stimulation and, at the same time, will enable Tutors
to explore areas that might subsequently be included
in the curriculum.
For the coming year, two new Tutors were
appointed on the Annapolis campus: Leo Raditsa,
who holds the Ph.D. degree from Columbia
University in History, and C. Reed Woodhouse a
Kenyon College graduate who studied at Keble
College, Oxford. Robert S. Bart, John Sarkissian,
David H. Stephenson, and James M. Tolbert return
following sabbatical leave, while Louis N. Kurs, Hugh
12
P. McGrath, Robert L. Spaeth, and Deborah M.
Traynor will be on sabbatical leave. Three other
Tutors will be on leave-of-absence: Alvin N. Main,
Robert A. Goldwin, and David H. Stephenson. The
teaching appointments of Cecil H. Fox and Edwin E.
Hopkins are completed. For the academic year
commencing in September, the Annapolis Faculty
will again number 53, including six part-time Tutors
and the seven Tutors on leave.
The Santa Fe Faculty experienced a large
turnover at the end of June. Harvey L. Mead, lll,
Michael K. Mechau, and George N. Stanciu were not
granted tenure and left the College. Four other
Tutors completed their appointments and left as well:
John S. Chamberlin, Edward H. Porcella, Genevieve
Townsend, and Lenke Vietorisz. Finally, Mrs.
Caroline Richards resigned in order to accompany her
husband on an assignment in Chile. For the coming
year, Charles Bell and Roger Peterson will be on
sabbatical leave, while Dean R. Haggard and Richard
B. Stark have been granted leave-of-absence. Mr.
Stark received grants from the National Endowment
for the Humanities, the International Folk Art
Foundation, and the Spanish Government for a year
of scholarly study and research in Spain.
It is good to report certain strong, mitigating
factors whi\'h will work against any serious
instabilities resulting from this turnover of faculty.
Two senior Tutors return from sabbatical leave,
Michael Ossorgin and John S. Steadman. Don B.
Cook, who resigned a year ago to accept a position in
the Santa Fe Preparatory School, returns to the
Faculty. Thomas K. Simpson is transferring from the
eastern campus to the western campus. Moreover,
three of the new appointees are St. John's graduates
who are thoroughly familiar with the College. These
are: William H. Donahue, who has just completed his
work for the Ph.D. degree in the Histoty of Science at
King's College, Cambridge; James R. Mensch, who
comes with the M.S.L. degree from the Pontifical
Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto; and Howard
Zeidennan, who holds the Master's degree from
Princeton University in Philosophy. Another new
appointee, Bruce E. Venable, is a graduate of St.
Mary's College, where he followed a curriculum quite
similar to that of St. John's;
The other new Tutors are: Lorna Green, who
has the Ph.D. degree from Rockefeller University in
Biology and is working toward a second Ph.D. in
Philosophy at the University of Toronto; Richard L.
Michaud, with a Ph.D. degree from the University of
Vermont in Biology and teaching experience at
�October 19 73
Webster College; Stephen R. Van Luchene, who has
just received the Ph.D. degree from Notre Dame
University in English; and Mrs. Lynne M. Hamilton,
who holds the Ph.D, degree in English from the
University of California, Santa Barbara, and. has had
teaching experience there. Finally, Paul D. Mannick,
who has completed three years as a Teaching Intern,
has now been given a regular, first-year appointment
to the Faculty. Patrick Hanson, a Teaching Intern last
year, continues for a second and final year, teaching
one class and supervising equipment and supplies in
the physics laboratories.
Mention should be made of an amendment to
the College Polity whereby prospective Tutors may
apply for and be granted a special first-year
appointment and subsequent reappointments on a
part-time basis. This legalizes a practice which the
College has followed in a number of cases over recent
years. Should such a Tutor desire to be considered for
a regular appointment, he will be permitted to make
application to the Instruction Committee, and
part-time service already rendered to the College will
be considered on a fractional basis toward eligibility
for tenure and sabbatical leave. Note should also be
taken of the increase in the scale of compensation for
retired Tutors. Five such Tutors emeriti are now on
the College's rolls: Ford K. Brown, Wiley Crawford,
Simon Kaplan, Jacob Klein, and William K. Smith.
John S. Kieffer embarks this year upon his fifth and
final post-tenure appointment as a Tutor.
The Students
At the two Commencements in May, the College
awarded its first two degrees summa cum laude to
Mark D. Jordan, of Denton, Texas, and to David K.
Allison, of Charlotte, North Carolina. This
represented a change in the longstanding policy of the
Faculty that the highest honor was to receive the
Bachelor's degree magna cum laude. It was felt that
the former policy might work to the disadvantage of
the ablest students in their competition for places and
stipends in graduate schools. The Faculty recalled the
literal translation of the Latin words, "with highest
praise," and affirmed the correctness of such an
accolade for the two seniors this year.
In all, 96 Bachelor's degrees were awarded, 63 in
Annapolis and 33 in Santa Fe. Paul D. Mannick, of
Los Angeles, California, was awarded the degree of
Master of Arts. Three graduating seniors received
Thomas J. Watson Foundation Fellowships: Mark D.
Jordan at Santa Fe; and Prudence E. Davis of
Whiting, Indiana, and Jan L. Huttner of Livingston,
New Jersey, at Annapolis.
Duane L. Peterson Scholarships, awarded to a
junior on each campus for academic achievement,
constructive membership in the college community,
and commitment to postgraduate study, went this
year to Nelson Lund, of Annapolis, Maryland, and to
Alejandro Medina, of Gardena, California. It is
noteworthy as well that Anne C. Ray, of Montclair,
New Jersey, received a special award from the
National Conference of Christians and Jews in New
Mexico for her outstanding work as director of the
Outreach program under a Title I federal grant.
Enrollment reached a record figure of 37 5 on
the eastern campus this spring, while the western
campus began the year with 260 students and ended
it with 246 enrolled. A January class was admitted on
each campus, the first such class for Santa Fe. Dean
Darkey has expressed some reservations about the
plan, largely because of fatigue arising out of
intensive work from January through the summer and
into the fall of the sophomore year. He also believes
that the group is too isolated, especially during the
summer semester when very few undergraduates are
on either campus. Finally, he notes the pedagogical
disadvantage that there is no time available for
corrective work should such be needed between the
freshman and sophomore year. These observations
will be considered by the Instruction Committee to
determine whether there should be a change in
policy.
The following chart shows enrollment on each
campus at the opening of the College in the fall and
again at the end of the second semester in the spring.
Annapolis
Men
May
August
Freshmen
February Class
61
Sophomores
56
46
38
55
42
38
201
Freshmen
January Class
Sophomores
Juniors
Seniors
60
Totals
Juniors
Seniors
Totals
56
Women
August
67
May
Total
August
May
128
49
23
32
62
9
50
21
31
105
69
70
118
20
105
63
69
202
171
173
373
375
48
32
20
12
42
5
29
20
12
108
39
25
24
53
9
31
21
24
71
45
36
95
14
60
41
36
148
138
112
108
260
246
II
Santa Fe
13
�The College
Students and their parents continue to find high
fees a real obstacle to a St. John's education. The
decision to hold fees steady in Santa Fe, while
increasing those in Annapolis from $3,900 to $4,150,
did not result in any great flow of students from the
eastern to the western campus. It is significant that
$226,207 in financial aid through grants and jobs was
provided at Annapolis while the even larger sum of
$261,654 was expended for this purpose at Santa Fe.
Approximately half of all students enrolled received
some form of aid. A student employment bureau at
Santa Fe turned up jobs worth $9,000 in the
community, and developed summer jobs worth
$18,000. Elizabeth Goldwin, '74, will continue her
good work in running this agency.
Admissions
Admissions applications for the fall of 1973
followed the downward national trend. As a result,
the freshman class in Annapolis numbers only 105
while that in Santa Fe totals 92. It is hoped that this
will prove to be a temporary phenomenon, since both
Directors of Admissions are convinced that there are
at least 500 high school graduating seniors each year·
who would be strongly attracted to the St. John's
Program. Greater effort will be made this year to
enlist the help of alumni of the College and of the
Graduate Institute in identifying and interesting able
candidates for the Class of 1978. Comparative figures
for 1971-72 and 1972-73 follow:
Santa Fe
Annapolis
1971-72
1972-73
Applications
Approved
Rejected' . ·
Withdrawn
Deposits Received
Enrolled
253
140
44
63
123
123
204
169
24
63
106
105
Catalogues Mailed
. Visitors
3,117
319
1971-72
2,241
231
1972-73
257
60
90
107
108
167
136
23
54
89
90
5,118
4,443
177
151
175·
The geographical distribution of the Class of
1977 appears in the chart below. (In each case the
first figure is for the Annapolis campus, the second
for Santa Fe.)
Alabama
Arizona
California
Colorado
3
1
Connecticut 5
14
5
22
9
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minneso·ta
Mississippi
Missouri
3
2
2
. I
-
~
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island:
Tennessee
Texas
Virginia
9
I
2
-
12
12
Delaware
Dist. of Col. 1
Florida
Georgia
Illinois
s
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Maine
Maryland
17
2
Montana
Nevada
New Hampshire 2
New Jersey
6
New Mexico
Neyv York
13
North Dakota
Ohio
4
5
Oregon
I
3
3
Oklahom:o~
I
8
2
2
2
w.,h;ngton
2
Wisconsin
W. Virginia
Afghanistan
B. West Indies England
Italy
Scotland
Virgin Islands I
2
The Staff
The Provost reports that the year has been most
frustrating in many respects. The Annapolis campus
suffered a grievous loss in the death of Margaret
Lauck former secretary to the Dean, who had just
'
been appointed Registrar of the College. Mrs. Lauek' s
place was then taken by Mrs. Christiana White, who
had been serving as Assistant Director of
Development. This transfer, together with the
resignation of Mrs. Christine Constantine, '72,
graduate intern, aborted the reorganization of the
Development Office. The denouement was the
resignation of Russell Leavenworth as Director of
Development in January. From that point on the
Provost assumed personal direction of fund-raising
and public relations, completing the year successfully,
to his great credit
For the corning year, the Development Office
will be in the capable hands of William Dunham,
whose appointment became effective August !st. Mr.
Dunham is a graduate of Carleton College, who
subsequently earned a Master's degree at the Fletcher
School of Law and Diplomacy. He served in the
Foreign Service for two decades and then resigned to
become Secretary of Carleton College, with
responsibility for its total development program.
After nine years, he resigned to join a college
management and counseling firm in Washington, D.C.
Both the Provost and I have high expectations for the
office under Mr. Dunham's leadership.
In other personnel changes for the past year, the
Provost reports the appointments of Miss Janet
Nelson, '72, as curator of the laboratories, replacing
Thomas Casey, '71; of Mrs. Carolyn Logan, as
secretary to the Provost, replacing Mrs. Barbard Field;
of Randolph Campbell, '72, as manager of the Print
Shop; of Mrs. Lynne. Calhoun as switchboard
operator, replacing Mrs.· lone Moore; and of Mr.s.
Nancy Blackburn as secretary to the Registrar m
March, replacing Miss Susan Timmerman. For the
corning year the Provost has appointed Ray A.
Williamson as Assistant Dean, succeeding Geoffrey J.
�October 1973
Comber, who returns to full-time teaching following a
helpful stint in administrative service.
At the request of the administrative staff, the
Staff Council was created, to keep members better
informed on changing college policies and to
constitute a voice to administrative officers on
matters of common concern. The Provost and the
Treasurer state that the Council has fulfilled its
purposes admirably.
At Santa Fe a number of new appointments
were made, severai of them incident to the change in
the deanship. David Jones succeeded Robert Neidorf
as director of the Graduate Institute in Liberal
Education on June 1. Miss Ellen Gant, secretary to
Mr. Neidorf, moved with him to the dean's office arid
simultaneously assumed new responsibilities as
Registrar, succeeding Mrs. Joyce Ricketts. Mrs. Sue
Boyter, former secretary to the Dean, was promoted
to the position of director of student aid, since Mrs.
Vivian Knight resigned from the College for
maternity reasons. Mrs. Geneva Mantelli was
appointed Executive Secretary to the President in
October, following the resignation of Mrs. Geraldine
Foster.
One of the most important appointments on the
western campus was that of Emery Jennings, who
became business manager on May 1, succeeding James
Carr. Mr; Jennings came to the College with extensive
experience in college business management and
financial matters, having served most recently as
Treasurer and Acting President of Arapahoe
Community' College in Colorado. Ralph J. Quintana
was na;,ed Assistant Dean for 1973-7 4, succeeding
Mr. Haggard, whci is to be commended for both his
fairness and his firmness in dealing with students.
Other personnel changes for the new year included
the appointment of Mary Branham as Assistant to tlie
President and Director of Public Information; the
reappointment of Miss Beverly Ross as secretary of
the Graduate Institute; the appointment of Mrs. Alice
Roybal as cashier, replacing Mrs. Leila Summers; and
the appointment of Mrs. Maria Lopez, replacing John
Stroud in the machine room.
In the library, Mrs. Ruth Haggard resigned
because of illness in April and. was succeeded as
director of reader services by Miss Tracy Kimball.
Mrs. Leona Wright was promoted to be secretary to
the Librarian in April, and Mrs. Julie Gaines became
typist to the Assistant Librarian in May. For the
coming year, a second cataloguer, John Des
Rouchers, has been appointed, thanks to the grant
from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The Libraries
Approximately 2,300 books were added to each
library collection during the year under review. Miss
Charlotte Fletcher, the Annapolis Librarian, reports
the accession of 997 new titles, while 446 volumes
were discarded from the collection. Miss Fletcher
expresses concern over the five-year increase of some
fifty percent in the price of books and urges a greater
a!"iocation of funds for'book purchases in each annual
budget. This becomes particularly crucial now that
the College is no longer receiving the $5,000 annual
grant under the Title II Prograin of the Federal
Government.
· At'.Santa Fe Mrs. Alice Whelan, the Librarian,
reports a significant strengthening of the collection in
sec.ondary material related to program authors other
than the classic Greek and Roman, upon which the
library concentrated last year. Work was begun on
establishing conventional titles for literature, which
will bring together. in one place for the user all
editions, versions, and translations of a given work.
Richard Stern, Santa.Fe author, continues to give
notable leadership to the Library· Associates
Committee. Through funds raised at the
well-attended series of Book and Author Luncheons,
the Committee presented the Library with: La Bible
de Jerusalem. the Cambridge Bible Commentary on
the New English Bible, the Encyclopaedia Judaica,
selected correspondence of Michael Faraday, the
works of Edward Gibbon, the Oxford edition of the
works of Jane Austen, and the New York Edition of
the works of Henry James. Dr. Rudolph Kieve gave a
notable collection of Durer prints. And three fine
collections of books were received from J. Burchenal
Ault, Robert Kohler, and Dr.J oseph J. Jones.
As this report is being written, the music
collection is moving into its new quarters in the
Sternberger-Weis Music and Fine Arts Center. The
music library. there will have ample space for the
regular and special collections, as well as six listening
booths for phono-discs and phono-tapes. The
Librarian reports that the Ellsworth Grumman
Collection has been completely catalogued and work
on the Amelia Elizabeth White Collection is well
underway. Cataloguing of the Wilhelm Schmidt
Collection will begin in the early fall.
The Graduate Institute
On August 17, 1973, the seventh session of the
Graduate Institute in Liberal Education came to an
end with the fifth commencement exercises. A record
15
�The College
number of 36 Master's degrees were awarded,
bringing to Ill the total number of Institute
graduates. This year's Masters came principally from
Albuquerque, Baltimore, Chicago, New York, Santa
Fe, and Washington, D.C., reflecting the success of
the _generous Institute fellowship grants of the Astor
Foun~ation, the Cafritz Foundation, the Hoffberger
Foundation, the Holzman Foundation, the Henry
Luce Foundation, and the Richardson Fund. Robert
A. Neidorf and David C. Jones, outgoing and
incoming directors of the Institute, join me in
expressing the gratitude of the fellowship recipients
and of the College to the trustees of each of these
foundations.
For the fourth and final year, a generous
sustaining grant of $45,985 was received on a
matching basis .from the National Endowment for the
Humanities to support the Institute. This included
modest funding for the second year of the high
school workshop, the Holzman Foundation providing
a matching amount. In the coming year, new
underwriting of the Institute and the workshop wilL
have to be discovered. Letters from both teachers. and
students attest to the value of this annual summer
program for the participants. In expressing gratitude
to the College, one teacher wrote: "It has been a
privilege to attend St. John's and learn und'er many
master teachers. I emulate as many of their
techniques as possible in the public schools." Another
wrote: "I must say that I am very excited by what I
have seen here. The experience appears to be
changing the course of my life in a very subtle, a very
beautiful way."
The Alumni
Thomas Parran, Jr., Director of Alumni
Activities, reports successful involvement of the
alumni in counselling seniors, both as to ·graduate
schools and as to job opportunities. This appears to
be one of the most significant ways .in which alumni
can be of service to the College. A second area, .that
of-student recruitment, is also of vital importance. It
is hoped that more local chapters of the Alumni
Associatkm can be established and that each of these
will assume a measure of responsibility for interesting
guidance counsellors and able prospective students in
St. John's. With the exception of the New York
chapter, which conducted three seminars and
published a monthly newsletter, and with the
exception of the Annapolis chapter, which held a
monthly luncheon, little alumni chapter activity was
16
evidenced during the year. Perhaps this situation
could be changed as the College explains its need for
service from the alumni in both admissions and
placement.
At Homecoming in the fall, Bernard F. Gessner,
'27, was elected President of the Association and
William W. Simmons, '48, Executive Vice President.
Alumni Awards of Merit were given to Miss Miriam
Strange, for many years Registrar and now College
Archivist, to Paul L. Banfield, '23, founder of the
Landon School, and to Myron Wolbarsht, '50,
Professor of Opthahrtology at Duke University
Medical Center. In alumni elections to the Board of
Visitors and Governors, Julius Rosenberg, '38, was
re-eleGted for a three-year term, while Thomas E.
Stern, '68, was elected to his first term, succeeding
Mr. Wolbarsht. This affords the Santa Fe campus its
first alumni representation on theBoard.
Again this year the Alumni Annual Giving was a
part of the 275th Anniversary Fund, the College's
major fund-raising drive. Every annual gift counted
toward the overall objective of $5 million for the
Annapolis campus. In spite of some confusion on this
score, the alumni on the Annapolis campus
contributed almost exactly $100,000 during the fiscal
year. Of this total $37,500 was unrestricted money in
the annual giving campaign, $33,650 was for
endowment, $I 7 ,I 00 for plant additions, and the
balance for other purposes. The College records its
thanks to eaclr of the I 47 King William Associates, to
each of the 532 other donors, and to the many class
captains, telephone volunteers, and committeemen. It
was gratifying that the. annual giving exceeded the
budgeted goal by several thousands of dollars.
The Sternberger-Weis Music and F.'ine Arts Center
Construe t.ion was completed in the early
summer oh this latest addition to the physical plant
in Santa Fe. Designed as a wing of the future library
building, the new structure completes all the
classroom facilities needed by the College. Most of
the furnishings are either in place or on order, so the
building will be in full use at the opening of the fall
term. The main donor of the center is J~c Holzman,
'52, a Visitor and Governor of the College, who gave
$300,000 as a memorial to his grandparents, Estelle
M. Sternberger and Rabbi J. Max Weis. A grant of
$75,000 was helpfully provided by the Kresge
Foundation of Detroit, Michigan, while a bequest
from the late Flora Conrad of Santa Fe, a
contribution of $15,000 from Mrs. Minnette
�October 19 73
Holzman for furnishings, and several other gifts
completed the financing of the building at
approximately $412,000. A dedication ceremony is
scheduled for October 13, 1973, to coincide with the
next meeting of the Board in the Southwest.
The Physical Plants
At Santa Fe, noteworthy gifts enlarged the total
area of the campus to 310 acres. Mr. and Mrs. John
Gaw Meem gave twelve acres of land on the east side
of Arroyo Chamisa, while Mr. and Mrs. LeRoy
Manuel donated three acres to the north of Camino
de Cruz Blanca. An additional nine acres were
purchased from the Manuels, thanks to generous
donations for the purpose by Mrs. Sallie Wagner and
Dr. and Mrs. Edwin Cook, all of Santa Fe.
Acquisition of the Manuel land assures an
unobstructed view to the north from the College.
Finally, Captain and Mrs. C.O. Ward of Santa Fe gave
an additional ten acres of land off Old Santa Fe Trail,
their third helpful gift of property to St. John's.
At Annapolis, a number of campus
improvements were made. The Junior Common
Room in McDowell Hall was redesigned and new mail
boxes were installed, thus greatly relieving the
morning mail rush. The two music seminar rooms in
the Key Memorial were further insulated and given
wall-to-wall carpeting, with gratifying acoustical
results. Additional lampposts were installed in the
Woodward Hall-Chase-Stone House area, considerably
enhancing securitv on campus. The campus has never
looked better, thanks to the tireless labor of David W.
Tucker, Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds,
and his staff. The Treasurer, Charles T. Elzey,
expresses two concerns: one as to the costly effect of
the Williams-Steiger Occupational and Health Act of
1970 if fully invoked, and the other as to the physical
condition of Paca-Carroll House, Randall Hall, and
Iglehart Hall. All three will require extensive
renovation to restore them to first"class condition.
'I must' express my disappointment that the
Board decided not to undertake any major building
program on the Annapolis campus at this time. While
recognizing the financial hazards in adding more
overhead costs to the annual budgets, I had thought
that the timing was opportune to take a first major
step to implement the I. M. Pei plan for campus
development. This plan called for a new athletic
center in the western corner of the campus,
reconstruction of the present gymnasium as a dining
facility, and conversion of the present dining hall and
kitchen in Randall Hall into a two-story coffee shop.
State legislative leaders had expressed interest in
having the proposed St. John's Center designed in
such a way that it would not only meet the College's
athletic needs, but could serve as the scene for several
major state functions each year. I hope that this
project can be revived in the next year or so.
Future California Campus
Agnes, Andrew, and Herman Marks of Salinas,
California, made a gift to the College this spring of
their ranch, subject to life tenancy. This superb tract
of rolling land, some 760 acres in area, lies in the hills
west of Salinas about a quarter of the way to the
Monterey Peninsula. By terms of the deed, St. John's
College must use the land for construction of a
campus within a twenty-year period. The Marks have
agreed that part of the land could be leased to other
educational institutions if not needed by St. John's.
The earlier Marks fam:ily gift of some 20 acres above
Point Lobos has now been deec!_ed to the State of
California by the College. It is an exciting prospect to
think that a third St. John's campus may well
materialize on the west coast sometime in the next
two decades. The necessary conditions would appear
to be the cemjlletion of the physical plant and the
establishment of a substantial endowment at Santa
Fe. Once the Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses are
securely underwritten for the future, the College will
welcome the appearance of a venturesome donor, or
donors, to make the California campus a reality.
Meanwhile, I should like to record the appreciation of
the College community to the Marks family for their
far-sighted and generous philanthropy.
Finances
The Provost is gratified to report that gifts and
grants of $255,090 for current purposes enabled the
Annapolis campus to complete the fiscal yearwith a
modest favorable balance of $2,940. The College's
revenue rose from $I ,980,823 last year to
$2,164,551 in the year under. review, At the same
time, actual expenditures were $2,161,611, well
within the budget figure of $2,192,508. For the
coming year, a tentative budget of $2,216,405 has
been adapted. This will necessitate raising $231,)55
in gifts and grants to achieve a balanced situation.
The Santa Fe campus was not so fortunate. In
17
�The College
spite of receiving the munificent sum of $715, 12!i in
current gifts and grants, the College closed the year
with a substantial deficit of $77,963. It is noteworthy
that the western campus actually expended
$1,939,790, some $13,000 less than the budgeted
figure of $1,952,618. The loss incurred over the fiscal
year was charged off against a m.odest reserve fund
created by a major gift two and a half years ago.
Unfortunately, this leaves only $58,322 in reserve for
future operations. The tentative Santa Fe budget for
1973-74 calls for expenditures of $2,074,639, as
compared to anticipated normal revenues of
$1, i 94,321. This leaves $880,318 to be raised in gifts
and grants, approximately $100,000 of which will be
covered by the new grant from · the National
Endowment for the Humanities.
2'75th Anniversary Fund
As the second year of the 27 5th Anniversary
Fund campaign ended, Victor Bloede, National
Chairman, reported that $2,054,871 had been raised
toward the $5,000,000 goal for Annapolis and
$6,479,053 toward the $10,000,000 goal for Santa
Fe. The most disappointing feature of the drive thus
far has been the College's failure to attract more than
two major gifts for endowment. The situation is
particularly urgent on the western campus where the
endowment funds total only $253,556, as compared
with $8,699,979 at book value in Annapolis. It is
hoped that the third and final year of the drive will
result in substantial increments to the College's
permanent funds on both campuses.
In this connection, J. Burchenal Ault, the Vice
President at Santa Fe, deserves special commendation
for his painstaking work in creating the St. John's
College Foundation Endowment Fund. This
instrument, fully approved by the Internal Revenue
Service, enables a private foundation to close itself
out by gift to St. John's. The funds are then
co-mingled for investment purposes with the College's
endowment. By verbal agreement with the donor
foundation, its wishes as to the application of annual
income are given careful consideration for a specified
period of years. A tthe end of that period, the College
receives the full income earned, as well as the corpus
of the fund. The first such gift was received this year,
$50,717 from the Los Alamos Ranch School Fund.
Endowment for the Humanities. The Foundation
voted an outright grant of $388,150 and a
supplementary conditional grant of $300,000. The
latter will be paid over only if the Endowment
receives gifts of half that sum by December 31, 1973.
Needless to say, the Vice President and l will make
every effort to qualify for the full amount of
$688,150. The Endowment's grant will enable the
Santa Fe campus to do a number of things which
limited budgets have never permitted: released time
for new and older tutors to improve the quality of
instruction, a regular exchange of tutors between the
two campuses, a more rapid rate of library
acquisitions, and establishment of a task force in the
liberal arts. I should like to record the College's
gratitude to the Trustees of the National Endowment
for the Humanities. Tutors and students alike
anticipate great benefits from the grant. They .also
conside• it tangible recognition by the Endowment of
the College's accomplishments to date, as well as
confidence in its future.
The following charts summarize all gifts and
grants received on the two campuses during the
1972-73 fiscal year, showing both their sources and
their application. Gifts in kind of land, equipment,
books, and art objects are not included in these
figures. They would add an impressive total.
Annapolis
Santa Fe
9,526
1 693,302
3,464
99,458
4,140
29,335
135,014
18,682
24,919
15,6HO
3,534
1,483
5,357
198,234
221.814
14,201
___ ,35',,695
$324,538
$1,189,300
$217,982
295
8,750
$' '543,205
8,173
38,575
84,941
'35,785
67,091
318,530
93,000
Donors
$
Board
Faculty, Staff
Students
National Committee
Alumni
Parents
Frie.nds
Foundations
Corpora tio·ns
Government
Purposes
Unrestricted
Library
Scholarships
Graduate Institute
Special Projects
Endowment
Plant
Debt Repayment
28,063
52,246
17,202
$324,538
$1,189,300
In Memoriam
Gifts and Grants
The largest grant recorded during the year was
the welcome five-year commitment from the National
18
It saddens me to record the deaths last
December of two men who served with distinction
and devotion on the Board of Visitors and Governors.
�October 1973
Mark Van Doren and Bromwell Ault. Mr. Van Doren,
poet, critic, and teacher, was a regular lecturer at St.
John's College. He was an Honorary Fellow of the
College and also Honorary Co-Chairman of the 275th
Anniversary Fund. Mr. Ault, businessman,
churchman, and philanthropist, had been Chairman
of the Board of Visitors and Governors and was an
honorary member at the time of his death. It pleases
me very much that his son, Burchenal Ault, Vice
President of the College, has established the Bromwell
Ault Scholarships on the Santa Fe campus in tribute
to his father. The College has lost two great and loyal
friends. They will be sorely missed.
* * *
Let me conclude on a personal note. First, I am
pleased to report that the Governor of the State has
seen fit to reappoint me for a second four-year term
as Chairman of the Maryland Commission on the
Capital City. Members of the Commission include the
Lieutenant Governor, the President of the Senate, the
Speaker of-the House, the State Senators from Anne
Arundel County, the Director of State Planning, the
County Executive, the Mayor of Annapolis, the
Superintendent of the United States Naval Academy,
and three other appointed citizens. The Commission
is responsible for coordinating the plans for growth of
the State, County, and City Governments, as well as
the Naval Academy. We are also charged with
preserving the distinctive character and atmosphere of
Annapolis as the State's capital city. My role keeps
me abreast of all developments which might affect St.
John's College in any way. It also affords me
excellent working relationships with officials of all
the government agencies at the State, County, and
City levels.
Finally, I wish once again to thank each Board
member for giving so unselfishly of his time, his
energy, his counsel, and his substance in support of
St. John's College. No college president has ever had a
finer and more devoted Board to work with. I shall
continue to sing your praises.
Richard D. Weigle
President
Santa Fe, New Mexico
August 31, 1973
19
�;l
0
""
"
(')
.."
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
Comparative Balance Sheet, "July 1, 1972- June 30, 1973'
0
ii'
ASSETS
UABIUTIES AND FUND BALANCES
1973
1972
CURRENT FUNDS
Unrestricted
C~h
Investments- at Cost
'
44,026
157
'
67,264
157
5,094
8,747
16,769
Accounts Receivable
Due from St. John's College
Santa Fe
16,339
8,760
14,152
19,376
26,595
Other Receivables
Deferred Expenses
Bookstore Inventory
126,169
'
130,380
c~
Investments- at Cost
7,014
840
278,230
286,084
Total Current Funds
'
412,253
'
'
'
Fund Balances
9,604
840
284,827
c~h
Total Cunent Funds
425,651
13,011
731
'
$
130,380
'
'
286,084
'
295,271
286,084
'
295,271
s
412,253
$
425,651
'
159,191
15,585
'
164,852
14,164
$
174,776
!__
179,016
230
56,279
31,487
14,590
LOAN FUNDS
Federal Adv.ances for NDS Leans
Fund Bal~ce
s
126,169
23,583
295,271
LOAN FUNDS
Student Loans Receivable·
National Direct Student Loans
27,940
1,574
60,133
23,073
17,660
$
Restricted
Due to Other Funds
'
'
'
--
29,113
Restricted
Loans Receivable
llnrestricted
Accounts Payable
Due to Other Funds
Student Advance Deposits
Deferred Income
Reserve for Future Operations
1973
1972
CURRENT FUNDS
5,336
601
Total Loan Funds
173,079
161,034
ENDOWMENT FUNDS
Total Loan Funds
'
174,776
$
30,354
6,288
159,117
1,265,594
s
179,016
ENDOWMENT FUNDS
c~
79,354
7J6I,370
45,914
5,863
162,938
1,]7:!,594
94,330
40,620
7..307,839
$ 8,703,097
s 8,830,098
Friedland Student Loans
Faculty Home Loans
Santa Fe Campus Note
Other
Investment Cash Account
Investments- at Cost
Total Endowment Funds
$
1,0!0
PLANT FUNDS
c~
lnvestmenta- at Cost
Land and Campus lmpn;wement
Buildings
Equipment
Lap.d and Iinprovemen t California Property
'
325
79,158
375,677
5,373,537
394,221
'
75
919
375,677
5,516,154
394,221
--
584,000
Total Plant Funds
$ 6,222,918
$ 6,871,046
Total Funds
$15,5!3,044
$16,305,811
Principal, Unrestricted as to
Income
Principal, Restricted as to Income
ReseiVations of Profits- Sale of
Securities
Un~xpended Income
lnvestmen 1 Funds Held for
Santa Fe Campus
Total Endowment Funds
$ 7,530,057
972,207
$ 7,559,780
996,2!8
199,885
948
143,981
(211)
--
130,330
$ 8,703,097
$ 8,830,093
PLANT FUNDS
Due to Other Funds
Investment ln Plant
Unexpended Plant Funds
'
-6,143,435
79,483
'
42,026
6,828,026
994
Total Plant Funds
$ 6,222,918
$ 6,871,046
Total Funds
$15,513,044
$!6,305,81]
�St. John'sCollege
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Comparative Balance Sheet. July 1. 19T2- June 30, 1973
LIABILITIES AND FUND BALANCES
I972
CURRENT FUNDS
!973
ASSETS
1973
1972
CURRENT FUNDS
Unrestricted
Cash
Investments- At Cost
Accounts Receivable
Prepaid Expenses
Bookstore Inventory
38,480
16,340
11.747
5!,072
21,629
65.773
56.262
2.870
78.159
21.694
$ 139,268
$ 224,758
42.1:.2
174,388
234
5 Ll60
216.510
10,000
15,984
16,769
]9.63!
75.987
897
_ _J8,32~
139.268
51.394
355,77/1,
Unrestricted
Note Payable
Accounts Payable
Due to Annapolis Campus
Due to Other Funds
DefeneU Income
Reserv~ for Future Operations
$ 224,758
18,962
16,339
33,103
98.032
276.152
Restricted
Fund Balances
c~h
Investments· At Cost
Total Current Funds
s 216.510
----
~
$ 216.510
Restricted
51,394
~
-~76,152
--
$
155,600
28,606
s 170,459
28,625
----
s
!84,206
$
LOAN FUNDS
Total Current Funds
Federal Advances for NOS Loans
College Loan Fund Balance
LOAN FUNDS
c,;,
19,978
!.GOO
149,701
27.232
U73
12.740
1.000
144.064
26.402
United Student Aid Deposit
National Direct Student Loans
Other Student Loans
Due from Current Fund
Total Loan Funds
Liability under Agreements
Total Loan Funds
s
184,206
$
Total Life Estate Funds
s
207.125
s 207J25
----
$ 202.950
---$ 202,950
----
ENDOWMENT FUNDS
125.876
1.428
252.128
!35,757
Investments- At Cost
$ 202,950
$ 207,125
$ 202,950
END0Wfi.1ENT FUNDS
Fund Balance
Total Endowment Funds
$
135,757
s
$
135.757
$ 253,556
253,556
$ 253,556
9,881
c~
5 207.125
199.084
-------------
Total Life Estate Funds
LIFE EST ATE FUNDS
Due from Other Funds
I99,084
LIFE ESTATE FUNDS
PLANT FUNDS
Total Endowment Funds
$
Note Payable $
2.154
Loan Payable to Annapolis Campus
Dormitory Bonds -Series 1964
Series 1966
Due to Other Funds
Net Investment in Plant
Unexpended Plant Funds
2,154
1,265,594
824,000
840,000
I87 .494
1,038
185,226
!54,479
314,024
5,403,448
472,567
116,969
9,625
119,244
!87,25 I
504,777
5,842,7i6
499,324
118,163
13,334
Total Plant Funds
$6,647,75!
$7,28!,160
Total Funds
$7,530,617
$8,212,90:
154,479
1,172,594
810,000
825,000
184,354
3,932,592
!87,251
Total Plant Funds
$6,647,751
$7,281,160
Total Funds
PLANT FUNDS
Cash
Investments
Bond Sinking Fund Investments
Land and Campus Improvements
Buildings
Equipment and Furnishings
Library Books
Due from Current Funds
S7,530,617
$8,212,902
----
3,187,766
??
s
r:r
~
<.0
.....
""
.....
"'
�The College
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
Annapolis. Maryland Santa Fe, New Mexico
CONDENSED STATEMENTS OF REVENUE AND EXPENDITURES
Fiscal Years Ended June 30, 1972 and 1973
SANTA FE
ANNAPOLIS
REVENUES
1971-1972*
Educational and General
Tuition
Endowment Income
Gifts and Grants
Graduate Institute Grants
State of Maryland Grants
Miscellaneous
Totals
Student Financial Aid
Auxiliary Enterprises
Bookstore
Dining Hall
Dormatories
Totals
Total Revenues
1972-1973
1971-1972
1972-1973
$ 902,135
414,987
225,327
$1,027,309
419,357
217,135
$ 640,126
5,122
673,744
90,584
$ 756,446
7,166
550,134
112,682
23,500
25,099
$1,591,D48
22 ,500
43,733
$1,730,034
34,890
$1.,444,464
45,206
$1,471,634
89,079
$ 105,014
$
$
45,324
$
52,310
38,850
154,059
144,974
$ 337,883
$
48,486
166,031
128,773
$ 343,290
$
53,091
168,486
147,380
$ 368,957
$
36,147
137.163
120,816
$ 294,126
$
$2,023,417
$2,204,005
$1.783,916
$1,861,827
$ 289,207
158,007
829,179
$ 290,397
168,280
900,038
19,194
343,618
$1,639,205
20,261
375,469
$1,751,445
$ 213.148
145,674
566,277
151,110
27.160
186.022
$1,289,391
$ 186,460
140,392
651,528
164,681
27,450
186,235
$1,356,746
$
33,975
89,889
109,303
$ 233,167
$
$ 279,381
9,894
41,555
330,830
$1,939,790
EXPENDITURES
Educational and General
Administrative
General
Instruction
Graduate Institute
Student Activities
Operation & Maintenance
Totals
Auxiliary Enterprises
Bookstore
$
Dining Hall
Dormatories (Debt Service)
Totals
49,550
148,950
$
54,197
149,407
$ 198,500
$ 203,604
$ 196,748
$ 246,016
$ 196,748
$ 246,016
$ 189,348
16,369
52,295
$ 258,012
Total Expenditures
$2,034,453
$2,201,065
$1,780,570
Excess Revenue or
(Expenditures)
$
36,942
105,857
109,415
$ 252,214
Miscellaneous
Student Financial Aid
Federal Programs
Capital Appropriations
Totals
(II ,036)
$
2,940
$
3,346
$
*These figures differ slightly from the printed figures ill ·last year's Report of the President. which
omitted current restricted funds.
22
(77 ,963)
�ALUMNI MEMORIAL ENDOWMENTS'
$
Granville Q. Adams, 1929
Charles Edward Athey, 1931
William C. Baxter, 1923
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
Annapolis. Maryland
PERMANENT ENDOWMENT FUNDS, June 30. 1973
A.E. Mellon
Gift
of Donor
Foundation
Matching-Gift
$ 3I3.432
$
Total Fund
Principal
TUTORSHIP ENDOWMENTS'
--
I ,989,953
I50,2I6
2,679,845
500,000
150.000
$2.453,60I
Richard Hammond Elliott, 1917
Andrew E. Mellon Foundation Grants
Addison E. Mullikin, 1895
Arthur de Talman Valk, 1906
5 3I3.432
2,679,845
2,489,953
300,216
$3.329 .H45
55,783.446
-
SCHOLARSHIP ENDOWMENTS'
I5,000 $
$
Annapolis Self Help
25 .ooo
George M. Austin, 1908, Memorial
7,500
WalterS. Baird, 1930
3.070
Chicago Regional
8,672
Class of 1897
87,933
Class of 1898
I3.705
Dr. Charles Cook
135
Corp. George E. Cunniff,lll, 1930
35.429
Faculty
25,025
John T. Harrison, 1907
I50,250
Richard-H. Hodgson, 1906
42,787
Alfred HouSton, 1906, Student Aid
500
Houston Regional
36,000
Jesse H. Jones and Mary Gibbs Jones
36,648
Robert E. and Margaret Larsh Jones, !909
6,445
Arthur E. and Hilda Combs Landers, 1930
22,685
Massachusetts Rl!gional
30,262
Philip A. Myers, II, 1938
26,000
Oklahoma Regional
6,265
Thomas Parran. 1911, Memorial
560
Pittsburgh Regional
I2,500
Readers Digest Foundation
7,056
C).ifton A. Roehle
3,58I
Murray Joel Rosenberg Memorial
Hazel Norris and 0. Gmham
3,664
Shannahan, 1908
3,668
Clarence Stryker
1,552
Frederick J. Von Schwerdtner
9,743
Richard D. Weigle
N
v.>
$ 62I ,635
$
I5.000
25,000
5
3,070
--
--
I35
2.359
20.025
I50.250
2,500
500
36.000
---
-
22.685
9,000
26,000
560
----
3,664
7 ,ORI
I.552
I7 .I 10
3,4I3
-7,367
323,864
30,000
50.000
7,500
6.I40
8,672
87.933
I3.705
270
37,788
45,050
300,500
45.287
I,OOO
72.000
36.648
6,445
45.370
39,262
52.000
6.265
I,I20
I2.500
7,056
3.58I
$
945.499
$
249.983
$
$
·-
125
625
1,000
1.100
6.425
25
600
Drew H. Beatty, 1903
125
Dr. William Brewer, 1823
855
Frederick W. Brune, 1874
2.638
Henry Duvall Chambers, !905
1,000
Henry M. Cooper, Jr., 1·934
58.683
Walter I. Dawkins, 1880
3)515
Robert r. Duer, Jr., 1921
1.135
In Honor of Dr. Philip Edwards, 1898
2.000
Joseph W. Fastner. Jr.. 1960
500
Allen Lester Fowler. 1915
I6.556
Edna G. and Roscoe E. Grove. 1910
40
Charles W. Hass, 1927
658
Dr. Amos F. Hutchins. 1906
!00
Clarence T. Johnson. 1909
!00
Clifford L. Juhnson, 191 I
Helen B. Jones & Robert 0. Jones. 1916 I8.357
200
Jonathan D. Korshin, 1966
200
Oliver M. Korshin, 1963
Dr. W. Oscar LaMotte. 1902
5 .!40
J. H. E. Leg:g, 1921
23,223
I,020
William Lentz, \912
5,000
Leola B. and Thomas W. Ligon.l916
325
CoL Harrison McAlpine. 1909
James McClintock.l965, Prize Fund
466
Vincent W. McKay. 1946
20.800
Robert F. Maddox, 187 6
650
William L. Mayo. 1899
!2.2I9
Ridgley P. Melvin,l899
!00
Wm. S. Morsell, 1922. Athletic Fund
5.000
John Mullan. 1847
!0.000
5,533
Walter C. My lander. Jr .. 1932
H. Keith Neville.l905
I,OOO
Dr. John Newstadt, 1939
I.I09
Blanchard Randall. 1874
85I
7(12
Susa.n Irene Roberts. 1966
Leroy T. Rohrer. 1903
IOO
Harrison Sasscer, 1944
4.550
C. H. Schoff, 1889
500
Henry 1-". Sturdy. 1906
28.633
Rev. Fnoch. H. Thompson.l895
3.000
John T. Tu.:ker. 1914
2.500
Dr. Robert S.G. Welsh. 1913
125
Dr. \Villis H. \Vhitc, 1922
625
Amos W. W. \Voodcoek, 190}
2,000
1,100
6,425
25
800
250
I ,362
2.638
2,000
58.683
3,850
2,120
2.000
1.000
I6.556
40
I ,29I
!00
100
25.920
200
200
5,140
23,223
2,040
5,000
650
466
20,800
650
12,2I9
200
IO,OOO
20,000
5,533
2.000
1,!09
I ,I81
702
200
4.550
I,OOO
28,633
6,000
2.500
250
I ,250
3,000
34.973
$ 284,956
$
-
200
125.
507
1.000
335
985
-
500
633
--
-
7,563
-
-
I.020
-
325
!00
5,000
IO.OOO
I.OOO
330
IOO
500
3,000
0
"
0
~
STUDENT LOAN rUND ENDOWMENTS'
George Friedland
John David Pyle, 1962, Memorial
$
23,660
5,589
$
20,000
1,470
$
43,660
7,059
$
29.249
$
21,470,
$
50,719
o"
...
"
....,
"'
"'
>-'
�;l
"'
C'1
!l:
OTHER ENDOWMENTS:
Hertha S. and Jesse L. Adams
$ 60,000
Concert Fund
355
Alumni Memorial Book Fund
Charles Edward Stuart Barton
500
Memorial Library Fund
308
Philo Sherman Bennett Prize Fund
25,000
Benwood Foundation Library Fund
20,200
George A. Bingley Memorial Fund
5,770
Scott Buchanan Memorial Fund
Helen C. and George Davidson, Jr., 1916 21,025
10,000
The Dunning Memorial Fund
3,000
Fund for Tomorro'w Lectureship
78
Floyd Hayden Prize Fund
Joseph H. Hazen Foundation
1,000
Lectureship Fund
Mary Safford· Hoogewerff Memorial
31,683
Library Fund
Margaret Lauck Memorial Library Fund
789
Library Fund
560
Monterey Mackey Memorial Fund
600
Emily Boyce Mackubin Fund
. .........
Ellen C. Murphy Memcr.iai Library Fund 1,500
Kate Moore Myers :.andscaping Fund
124,349
The Jack Wilen F< undation Library Fund
1,000
in Memory of Murray Joel Rosenberg
Henry H. and Cora Dodson Sasscer
Newspaper Fund
1,500
Adolph W. Schmidt Fund
15,628
Richard Scofield .lv.i.(;morial Fund
I ,368
Mrs. Blair T. Scotts Memorial Prize Fund
518
Kathryn Mylroie Stevens Memorial
1,250
Prize Fund
Charles Eddy & Eugene V. Thaw, I947
Lectureship Fund
15,900
Elma R. and Charles D. Todd Memorial
Library Fund
19,500
Millard Tydings Prize Fund
1,000
Clara B. Weigle Memorial Library Fund
I ,196
Daniel E. Weigle and Jessie N. Weigle
Memorial Fund
2,500
Victor Zuckerdandl Memorial Fund
19,325
Alumni Endowment
206,326
General Endowment
526,724
-
$
60,000
-
-
25,000
-
-
3,000
25
$ 120,000
355
500
308
50,000
20,200
5,770
21,025
10,000
6,000
103
-
1,000
-
31,683
789
960
600
75,192
3,000
124,349
400
-
-~
,..;._~·-
1,500
-
1,500
15,628
1,368
518
-
1,250
-
15,900
I9,500
-
--
SCHOLARSHIP ENDOWMENTS
Helen and Everett Jones Fund
Readers Digest Foundation
Nina Otero Warren Memorial Fund
General Scholarship Fund
39,000
I,OOO
l,I96
186,309
-
2,500
19,325
392,635
526,724
$ 295,734
$ 60,000
10,000
1,875
4,537
$ 76,412
LIBRARY ENDOWMENTS.
Emlen Davies Fund
Angeline Eaton Memorial Fund
Nina S. Garson Memorial Fund
Duane L. Peterson Memorial Fund
Victor Zuckerkandl Memorial Fund
Memorial, Honor and Life Membership Funds
1,000
-
~
~
SANTA FE ENDOWMENT FUNDS, JUNE 30, 1973
$
I ,118
1,150
2,000
800
1,000
31,171
$ 37,239
OTHER ENDOWMENT:
Bromwell Ault, Sr., Memorial Fund
Henry Austin Poetry Fund
Fletcher Catron Memorial Fund
Margo Dawn Gerber Prize Fund
Elizabeth R. and Alvin C. Graves Memorial Fund
Margaret Milliken Hatch Fu!J.d
Frank Patania Memorial Fund
Winfield Townley Scott Memorial Fund
E. l. "Tommy" Thompson Memorial Fund
Millard E. Tydings Prize Fund
Clare B. Weigle Memorial Fund
Jessie N. and Daniel E. Weigle Fund
Other Funds
$
I,037
5,500
1,300
I ,I41
8,881
35,000
3,341
2,535
I ,865
1,000
4,7I3
2,500
20,375
$1,49I,378
-
$ 89,I88
$I,I95,644
Total Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grants
Reservation of Profits Sale of Securities
$ 143,981
$
Total Endowment Principal
$4,694,093
$4,005,886
FOUNDATION ENDOWMENT FUND:
$4,005,886
Los Alamos Ranch School Fund
-
$ 143,981
$8,699,979
$ 50,717
Total Endowment Funds
$253,556
�October 1973
bit more cautious by nature and less enthusiastic
about the project, took a year's leave of absence.
The Committee convened in O~tober. It included
Buchanan, Barr, their two graduate students, Adler,
Rubit•, McKeon, and McKeon's three students from
Columbia. Because Buchanan was less controversial,
having had little previous conn~Gtion with University
affairs, and because he had agreed to become a
pennanent member of the Committee, he was made
the Director. He immediately encountered the persisting hostility first provoked when the Committee
was proposed, and each attempt on Buchanan's part
to clarify the status of the Committee only made
matters worse. As Buchanan complait1ed to Hutchins,
"The Committee must have an authorization of its
status and function fitting to its single-minded end
and aim. The possibility of a decision to stay depends
on this and this alone ... 1 don't think there is any
hope of getting the job done or even underway unless
the Committee has orders from you that cannot be
~ountermanded or shaved down, or diverted by other
academic powers and authorities." After the first few
meetings, however, it became clear that there were
problems internal to the Committee which equalled
and in the end proved even more destructive than the
external oneso
The Committee reunited the New York threesome.
They had seen e<.\Ch other during the intervening six
years, and had sent each other manuscripts for
comrnent
and
revision.
Disagreement about the
nature and interpretation of the arts had often arisen
during these interchanges, but they had found the
arguments fruitful and <c:<citing. The disagreements
that now emerged, however, itad a less happy issue.
Their differences became overwhelming; every
decision became a struggle and every discussion a
battle.
Although they still shared a deep concern for and
commitment to their project, they seemed capable of
agreeing only on the importance of agreement. The
first argument was about procedure. McKeon urged
the Committee to approach the search for a curricu ..
Jum by beginning with the problems of the modern
university. Buchanan and Adler advocated the reading
and discussion of a number of texts. The matter was
put to a vote and McKeon was outvoted.
They next disagreed about which text to read.
Adler urged them to read something by St. Thomas.
But they voted to read something by Aristotle. They
then argued about which Aristotelian text to read.
McKeon said he preferred "something weighty like
Aristotle's Metaphysics or Analytics." Buchanan
wanted to read Aristotle's Poetics and Physics. Each
maintained that his choice better exemplified subject
matter and method in the application of the liberal
arts. They voted to read the Poetics and the Physics
and to use the Oxford translations of these texts.
Adler did not know Greek; McKeon and Buch&nan
Jiad different degrees of competence. These differences provided fuel for the next conflagration. The
next two meetings ended "not merely in explicit
disagreement, but in passionate outrage, each at the
other's distortion of the text." The disintegration of
the group was progressive. After their first three
meetings, they decided to arrange a tmce and to
disband the Committee.
Adler and McKeon met separately to discuss
A1istotle and Aquinas. They encountered the same
problems, and after two meetings, this endeavor was
abandoned. Adler then decided to read and discuss
the Physics with students at the University. McKeon,
with his members of the Committee (Goodman,
Banett, and Plochman) and with other people from
the Division of the Humanities, established a research
team. Barr, Buchanan, Rubin, Taliaferro, and Wallis
reconstituted themselves as a separate group but
retained the name of the Committee on the Liberal
Arts. At the insistence of Dean McKeon, and with the
advice of the Divisional Committee on Policy,
Buchanan's Committee was removed from the
Humanities Division and made advisory to President
Hu tchi.ns. The Committee met semi-weekly and
discnssed the texts on the Virginia list. Committee
members wrote reports on the contributions of the
various authors to the liberal arts.
(It was in the course of preparing one of his reports
for the Committee that Stringfellow Barr finally
capitulated to the idea of the liberal arts. Barr was
converted by his study of Euclid. "l who had
thought, when l determined to join the Committee,"
that the mathematical material would offer the
maximum difficulty (since l had no 'bent' for
mathematics) found Euclid my principal guide." In
the Spring of 1937, Barr officially resigned from the
University of Virginia and cast his lot with the liberal
artists.)
The truce did not mean that they abandoned the
battle. McKeon, Buchanan, and Adler each read more
of Aristotle. When they met, it became clear that
underlying their disagreements about translation were
deeper philosophical differences. Buchanan explained
their differences as follows:
For Adler, Aristotle's Metaphysics was
and has continued to be, as his friend
25
�The College
Maritain has said in his Introduction to
Philosophy, the revelation of truth to the
natural intellect. McKeon and I would see
in this the effect of the use of St. Thomas
as a lens in the reading of the Oxford
translation. For McKeon, Aristotle is the
father of the sciences, and as such, he
uncovered the categmies and formulated
the methods for each subject-matter and
discipline; there are different methods for
different subject-matters and there is only
confusion in finding common methods
and subject-matters. Adler and I see a
somewhat arbitrary postulation of the
first principles of a history of thought in
this position, I am fascinated by the
dialectical processes by which Aiistotle
arrives at his extraordinary insights, but I
shall not be satisfied until! can master the
dialectic and arrive at further insight that
will throw more light on the modem
problems, particularly in mathematics,
that neither Adler nor McKeon thinks
necessary.
It is difficult at first to understand why these
differences in philosophical position became so
important and incapacitating. But, as Buchanan has
pointed out, although "these philosophical positions ... are no more important than any other
scholastic prejudices so familiar in the profession, ...
in terms of the common task to find the intelligibilities that would make good teaching possible they
all seem highly relevant and their incommensurability
rather tragic."
Although Adler, Buchanan and McKeon agreed on
the nature of the problem to be resolved and on the
necessity to restore the tradition of the liberal arts,
they disagreed about what to study, about how to
read, how to interpret, and how to teach the
tradition. Each had acquired through his own learning
and teaching his own attitude toward learning and his
own method of philosophizing. To pursue their
common goals, they had to go their separate ways.
The Road to Annapolis
Shortly after the Committee on the Liberal Arts
disbanded, Scott Buchanan attended a conference at
the Virginia Theological Seminary. Francis Miller, the
Executive Secretary of the National Policy Committee, was also present. Buchanan and Miller had
been Rhodes Scholars at Oxford together, and they
26
used their free time between sessions to become
reacquainted. It was dming one of these betweensessions conversations that Miller told Buchanan
about St. John's College. Miller had recently been
persuaded to join the College's Board of Visitors and
Govemors by his friend and associate at the National
Policy Committee, Richard Cleveland (son of Grover
Cleveland). The College was in a deep tangle of
troubles, financial, intellectual, and moral. The crash
of October, 1929 left the College with a debt under
which it was still reeling. Three presidential administrations followed each other rapidly and unhappily.
Debts increased. The College had lost its certification.
The student body had diminished considerably.
Both Miller and Cleveland were of the opinion that
a new educational idea was the only thing that would
save the College. They thought it would be wise to
define the educational policy of the College first and
make all later decisions in the light of that policy.
Buchanan told Miller about the Virginia Plan and
about what he and Barr had been doing on the
Committee on the Liberal Arts. Miller was quickly
convinced that Buchanan might have the idea St.
John's College needed. After a series of long conversations and consultations with the rest of the Board of
Visitors, consultations in which Buchanan and Barr
and also Hutchins, Adler, and Rubin took an active
part, Barr and Buchanan decided to move to
Annapolis and to try to rehabilitate St. John's College
in accordance with the general proposals of the
Virginia Plan. In June of 193 7, the Board of Visitors
appointed Stringfellow Barr President of the College.
Scott Buchanan became the Dean and Head of
Instruction. Catesby Taliaferro and Charles Wallis
were given faculty appointments. Robert Hutchins
joined the Board of Visitors and Mortimer Adler" was
appointed Visiting Lecturer in the Liberal Arts. At
last, the seeds of a College of the Liberal Arts and
Great Books found fertile soil and rooted in
Annapolis.
This article was adapted for The College from the thrd
chapter of Radical Conservatives for Liberal Education, an
unpublished Ph.D. dissertation {The Johns Hopkins University,
1973). The dissertation traces the efforts of Mortimer Adler,
Scott Buchanan, Richard McKeon, Robert Hutchins, and
Stringfellow Barr to reform ·higher education in America by
reviving and reconstructing the traditional liberal arts. Earlier
chapters explore the beginnings of the Movement and its
principles and ideals. Later chapters discuss the Hutchins
College at the University of Chicago, the Great Books program
for adult education, and the early years of the New Program at
St. John's College. Amy Kass teaches in the Evening College at
Johns Hopkins University.
�October 1973
NEWS ON THE CAMPUSES
LEO STRAUSS
1899-1973
Leo Strauss died in his sleep on October 18. The
world of learning lost a seminal thinker in political
philosophy and a great teacher; St. John's College lost
an old friend and its first Scott Buchanan Distinguished ·Scholar in Residence. He had been with us
in Annapolis since 1969. There will be more about his
life and work in the next issue.
DUNHAM NAMED
DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR
William B. Dunham, a retired
State Department .and Foreign
Service officer, on August 1st
assumed duties as director of
development in Annapolis. There
he will oversee the program of
development, fund raising, alumni
activities, and fund raising.
Mr. Dunham came to St.
John's from a position as senior
consultant and member of the
Washington, D.C. firm, Douglas
Trout Associates, Inc., consultants
in higher education. Prior to joining
that firm, he served for nine years
as vice president and secretary of
Carleton College, Northfield, Minn.
From 1943 to 1963, Mr.
Dunham served in the Department
of State and the Foreign Se1vice.
His last tour of duty was at the
Pentagon in Washington, where he
was on the staff of General Cmiis
E. LeMay, chief of staff of the Air
Force. This was a special
assignment under the first
State/Defense exchange prqgram.
For five years prior to this
special assignment, Mr. Dunham
had been first secretary and chief of
the political section of the
American Embassy, The Hague,
Netherlands.
He also served as chief of
Swiss-Benelux Affairs; assistant
chief of French-Iberian Affairs; and
senior desk officer for Spain and
Portugal, where he was responsible
for all aspects of U.S. relations with
the two countries from 1947 to
1953.
For his outstanding work Mr.
Dunham received the Department
of State's Meritorious Service
Award and the Department of the
Air Force's Excepti>mal Service
Award.
A graduate of Carleton
College, Mr. Dunham also attended
the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy in Medford, Mass.,
where he was awarded the M.A.
degree in 1943.
Mr. Dunham is married to a
professional pianist and teacher,
and he and his wife have a
daughter, three sons, and two
grandchildren.
EXHIBIT OF AMERICAN
DRAWINGS IN SANTA FE
An exhibit entitled "Twentieth
Century American Drawings" was
featured in the Peterson Student
Center in Santa Fe from September
9th through October 7th.
Organized by the University of
Utah Museum of Fine Arts, the
exhibit consisted of sixty-six
drawings by several dozen artists.
The works are from the collection.
of Mr. Edward Jacobson of
Phoenix, Ariz.
Mr. Jacobson, a member of a
prominent Phoenix law firm, has
been collecting all his life, and is
widely known as a discerning
collector and patron.
Artists represented in the collection include: Childe Hassam,
Alexander Calder, Walt Kuhn, Peter
Hurd, Hyman Bloom, Robert
Henri, Peter Max, Gaston Lachaise,
Fritz Scholder, Leonard Baskin,
Philip Pearlstein, Paolo Soleri,
lsamu Noguchi, Larry Rivers,
Phillip Guston, and Paul Jenkins.
27
�The College
English from Kenyon College. He
has been studying under a fellowship at Keble College, Oxford
University, toward a second bachelor's degree.
In other changes, David E.
Wilkinson, recently retired from the
U.S. Army, has been appointed
assistant business manager. James
E. Grant, business manager, will be
on leave of absence this year to
complete requirements for his
degree in accounting at the University of Baltimore. Grant, a former
student at Gettysburg College, has
been attending night school for the
past five years.
DANFORTH FELLOWSHIPS
The 1973 graduating class of the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education.
Smaller representations carne
SUMMER INSTITUTE
from Washington, D.C.: Mary Alice
GRADUATES FIFTH CLASS
The Graduate Institute in
Liberal Education, in its seventh
summer session, had an enrollment
of 134, and awarded the degree of
Master of Arts to 36 students from
eight states, the District of Columbia, and Canada.
Members of this year's graduating class, the fifth since the Institute was started in 1967, included:
from New Mexico: Kenneth A.
Betzen, David F. Gonzales, Lee
Hirst, Mary E. Lane, Mary F. Magnuson, Sue Martin, Jan Mecagni,
and Ann Yeck.
From Maryland: June B.
Chapman, Dawn G. DeForrest,
Virginia Frommoethelydo, William
J. Jenkins, Alice B. Morgan,
Gwendolyn R. Morgan, and Paul N.
Smith.
From California: Ralph C.
Cox, Sister Sharon Cox, James
Farley, Dalton M. Fogle, Robert D.
Graun, James A. Mahoney, and
Jack L. Nolen.
28
Brooks, Constance B. Liser, and
Thelma E. Robinson; from Illinois:
Norma Cotton, Raissa Landor, and
Elizabeth R. Shaw; from New
York: Yvonne M. Davis, Sylvia R.
Green, and Mozell Morris; and from
Virginia: Frazier L. O'Leary and
George Schloss.
From Texas carne Joe B.
Brooks, from Colorado Diana W.
Kinsey, and one graduate, Mary
Jean Bell, carne from Canada.
FACULTY AND STAFF
CHANGES IN
ANNAPOLIS
Two new tutors are teaching
in Annapolis this year, Leo F.
Raditsa and C. Reed Woodhouse.
The appointment of Mr. Raditsa, a
1956 graduate of Harvard and holder of both M.A. and Ph.D. degrees
from Columbia, was announced in
the April issue.
Mr. Woodhouse is a 1970
summa cum laude graduate in
The Danforth Foundation
recently announced the tenth
annual competition for its Graduate
Fellowships for Women. The objective of the program is to find and
develop college and secondary
school teachers among American
women whose preparation for
teaching has been postponed or interrupted for a continuous period
of at least three years.
In general, the Fellowships are
intended for women who no longer
qualify for more conventional
fellowship programs or whose candidacy in such programs might be
given low priority.
,
Thirty-five new Fellowships
may be awarded each year, and are
renewable annually provided certain criteria are met. The appointments are available to women who
hold bachelor's degrees from
accredited colleges and universities
in the United States. There are no
upper or lower age limits. Recipients are expected to undertake
full-time teaching upon completion
of their degrees.
Among the criteria for selection are: (I) a strong undergraduate
record; (2) evidence that the candidate's intellectual curiosity and
�October 1973
vitality have smvived her years of
separation from an academic environment; (3) an .indication of
strong motivation for graduate
work and for teaching.
For more complete information write:
Director
Graduate Fellowships for
Women
Danforth Foundation
222 South Central
Avenue
St. Louis, Missouri 63105
LUCE SCHOLARS
St. John's College is among
sixty educational institutions
chosen to participate in the new
Luce Scholars Program, sponsored
by the Henry Luce Foundation,
Inc., to select a group of young
Americans for a year of study,
work and travel in Asia. "The goal
of the program is not to produce
Asian specialists," J. Burchenal
Ault, St. John's Vice President,
emphasized in announcing the College's participation, "but rather to
develop future citizen leaders who
will have an awareness and an
understanding of Asia."
Scholars are to be selected
from among nominations submitted
to the Luce Foundation by cooperating colleges and universities.
Independent applications will not
be accepted. Candidates must be
between the ages of 21 and 30,
have earned at least a bachelor's
degree, and have given evidence of
outstanding leadership ability. St.
John's will be allowed to submit a
total of four candidates from
among graduating seniors or recent
graduates on both the Santa Fe and
Annapolis campuses. Deadline for
nomination is the first of
December.
Finalists will be called before
one of three regional screening
panels early in March of 1974,
The Sternberger-Weis Music and Fine Arts Building was dedicated on October 13 at the quarterly
meeting of the Board of Visitors and Governors. Largely the gift of an alumnus and Board member,
Jac Holzman '52, the building is named for his grandparents.
Martha Wallace, Vice President and
Executive Director of the Luce
Foundation, says. In the fall the
fifteen young men and women
named as Luce Scholars will leave
to work in law offices, universities,
hospitals, banks, and a variety of
other situations under the guidance
of Asian mentors. The Foundation
believes that by getting to know
their Asian contemporaries and
colleagues in their own setting the
Scholars will gain an intuitive idea
of what it is like to live and
function outside the context of
Western traditions.
Henry Luce III, President of
the Foundation, stresses the
uniqueness of the program in that it
will exclude Asian specialists or
international affairs experts in favor
of young people whose leadership
potential is in other fields. The
purpose of sending Scholars to the
East, Mr. Luce notes, is "to imbue a
greater number of Americans of
leadership potential with a firsthand familiarity of Asia at a
flexible and formative time in their
careers."
The Henry Luce Foundation,
Inc. was established in 1963 by the
late Henry R. Luce as a tribute to
his father who spent many years
teaching at Christian colleges in the
Far East. Mr. Luce was co-founderi
and editor-in-chief of Time Inc.,
which publishes TIME, FORTUNE,
SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, and
MONEY. Since Mr. Luce's death in
1967, the Foundation has gran ted
close to $12 million to specific
projects in the" fields of higher
education, theology and public
affairs. St. John's receives $60,000
annually for Collegiate Fellowships
in the Graduate Institute in Liberal
Education conducted in the
summers in Santa Fe. This year 12
teachers in predominantly black
colleges are the recipients of Luce
Collegiate Fellowships.
29
�The College
ALUMNI ACTIVITIES
ALUMNI BOARD
REPRESENTATIVES
one candidate for each of the two
vacancies. Names, biographical
data, and, where available, pictures
of the candidates will be published
in January.
Alumni interested in starting
petitions are reminded that, in the
wol'ds of the Polity: "Persons shall
be eligible for membership on the
Board . . . who are concerned for
the maintenance, progress, and
vitality of the St. John's educational program and who are willing
and able to discharge the responsibilities of trusteeship with devotion
and energy."
As a practical matter, Board
members must also have the time
and money to attend four meetings
each year, usually in September,
December, February, and May,
either in Annapolis or Santa Fe.
Philip I. Bowman '31 and W.
Bernard Fleischmann '50 will
complete two consecutive terms as
Alumni Representatives on the
Board of the College . next May.
According to the Polity of the
College, these alumni are not
eligible for re-election.
Therefore, in accordance with
the By-Laws of the Alumni Association, I hereby notify all Alumni
that nominations · by petition are
invited for representatives to
replace Messrs. Bowman and
Fleischmann. Signatures of at least
30 members of the Association are
required for validation, and consent
of persons nominated must be
obtained before a petition is subThomas Parran, Jr.
mitted. All nominations by petition
Director of Alumni Activities
must reach the Alumni Office in
Annapolis no IJJter than December
I st.
ALUMNI KITH AND KIN
As also provided by the ByThe class of 1977, which enLaws, the Board of DirectorS of the
Association will nominate at least tered St. John's last month, in-
ALUMNI GIVING AGAIN SETS RECORDS
Once again, for the fifth consecutive year, the
Alumni Fund (Alumni Annual Giving) has
exceeded its· goal of gifts for current operations. In
the year which ended June 30th, alumni gave
$ :n, 4 !II toward a goal of $35,000; as one
considers the escalating cost of living and general
economic uncertainty of the times, this record is
quite commendable.
Until a more detailed report is published, here
30
eludes an. unusual number of relatives of alumni or present students.
Those related to present students are Kenneth Demac (sister
Donna '74), Eric Heylman (brother
Paul '74), and Steven Ross (sister
Debbie '74). Steven was also a
student of William Dunkum '64
(see Class Notes for more on Bifl).
The following are brothers or
sisters of alumni: Janet Hellner
(sister Maureen '68), Susan
Hollander (sister Maureen '69), and
Edward Nelson (sister Janet '72 and
brother Chris SF70); Ed has an
additional St. John's connection:
his father Charles is a graduate in
the class of 1945.
In addition, there are three
freshmen who have alumni parents:
Erica Lerner, daughter of Charles
Lerner '53; Michael O'Mahony, son
of Thomas and Marcia (Del plain)
O'Mahony, both '57; and Robin
Streett, daughter of the Reverend
David C. Streett '50.
Freshman Jody Nesheim's
relationship to the College is
through her uncle, Wayne Brandow
of the class of 1965.
are a few key statistics to compare 1972-73 with
1971-72:
1971-72
Percent response
Alumni responding
Average gift
King William ASsociates
Classes giving $~00 or more
Classes giving $1 ,000 or more
Alu111ni giving $250 or more
1972-73
28.2%
835
$39
117
23
3
13
25%
779
$48
147
31
10
24
�October 19 73
CLASS NOTES
1923
Fred C. Stecker writes that he has
heard from Jim McGraw, Bob Miller, TB.
Klakring, and Hobo Ridgely, and they are
all doing well. Fred says that raising beef
cattle as a "retirement hobby" is proving
very interesting.
1933
Charles H. Schauer, executive vice
president of Research Corporation, was
awarded an honorary doctor of science
degree from Southwestern University at
Memphis. Mr. Schauer was honored for
his life-long efforts to advance scientific
research and the practical application of
new technology. Research Corporation is
a foundation for the advancement of
science.
1934
Gust Skordas, assistant archivist of
the State of Maryland since 1941, was
honored with a retirement dinner on July
30th, to celebrate the end of a 36-year
career at the Hall of Records. Gust plans
to visit with his son in the San Diego area,
and hinted recently that he might even
decide to settle there.
1936
W. Robert Miller, community information speciallst with the Baltimore Area
Council on Alcoholism, in July assumed
new duties as coordinator of the new
BACA-Hopkins program to rehabilitate
and retain problem drinkers on the job.
Bob was formerly a branch manager for
Diebold, Inc.
After 35 years of surgical practice,
Dr. Richard T. Williams is retiring aboard
his "Round The World" sloop, while
M.D. sons Robert and Randolph take
over his work. Dick also writes that son
Richard is with IBM, Rodney with
Connecticut Mutual Life, and Roderick is
attending the State University of New
York.
1941
George L. McDowell is now regional service manager for Allied-Kelite
Products Division of the Richardson
Chemical Company. He and Rocky have
lived in Summit, N.J., since last winter.
1949
After 20 years in the Episcopal
ministry, six and one-half of them with
the Shoshones on Wyoming's Wind River
Reservation, Frederick P. Davis is now
rector of a small parish in Mountain
Home, Idaho. He is located some 45 miles
southeast of Boise, between the Sawtooth
Range and the Snake River valley. Fred,
his wife Rita (sister of Gust Skordas '34)
and son David, 14, are enjoying their new
life.
Attention, all you '49ers! Allan
Hoffman and Jake Brooks are already
planning your 25th reunion next fall. The
20th was so successful that we are
looking forward to '74; make your plans
now.
Nancy (Eagle} Lindley wrote during
the late spring that she had almost completed her work for a master's degree in
music from West Virginia University.
Husband Mark 167 has assembled enough
credits to continue in graduate school.
Barbara (Hager) Palmer has become
director of the Community Child Development Center in Denton, Md. Barbara
writes she is not certain that Greek
grammar will help, but believes that
Voltaire's philosophy surely will, as she
directs "a day-care facility with a cognitive approach to pre-school learning."
1961
Michael C Haley earlier in the
spring was designated a certified commercial-investment member of the National
Institute of Real Estate Brokers. Mike is
1950
with the Albuquerque firm of Roger Cox
Tylden W. Streett informs us that & Associates.
he has resigned as dean of graduate
"Healthfully recovered" from his
studies at the Maryland Institute, College April, 1972, heart attack, David
of Art, in Baltimore to devote more time Rosenfield writes that his carpentry
to his primary career as a sculptor. He is business prospers. He is very active in a
now busy with commissions for architec- research project in interspecies comtural and portrait sculpture; any orders? munication, through the World Dolphin
Foundation.
1952
Apparently the Federal Trade Commission will not let Ha"ison J. Sheppard
For the past three years George settle down. Last January he was transUdel has been running his own film- ferred from the Seattle Regional Office to
making company, G2 Creative Services, Washington, D.C., and at the end of July
Inc., in Baltimore, turning out everything he went back across country to become
from instructional films to social assistant director of the San Francisco
commentary.
Regional Office of the FTC.
1958
Jacques Cartier assumed new duties
as producing director of Baltimore's
Center Stage on July 16th, in a move
which the Board of Directors hopes will
lead the group to first rank among
regional theaters in this country. Jacques
was founder, producer, and artistic
director of the Hartford (Conn.) Stage
Company between 1963 and 1968.
Another non-graduate alurrma who
completed her college work elsewhere is
Marigene (Boyd) Hedges, who received
her B.A. degree in mathematics in 1964
from the University of Denver. Marigene,
her husband, a high school teacher 'in
Denver, their son, 14, and daughters 12
and 8, live in Littleton. Marigene is active
in the League of Women Voters, and currently works as a part-time office
assistant for the Denver and Colorado
Leagues.
1962
After six years as an instructor- in
the philosophy department of the State
University of New York at Stony Brook,
David W. Benfield has accepted an
appointment as an assistant professor of
philosophy in the School of Humanities
at Montclair (N.J.) State College. David
has received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from
Brown University.
Raymond C. Seitz writes to tell of
the Ph.D. degree he received from The
Johns Hopkins University last November,
and of his appointment as assistant
professor of physical Oceanography at the
State University Maritime College, Bronx,
N.Y. Ray also tells us that his former
wife. Gail (Evans) Seitz, and their son
Raymond are living on a farm in
Wisconsin.
31
�The College
1963
Marcia Herman-Giddens tells us
that husband Scott '64 teaches computer
science and does computer- oriented
research in cardiology at Duke University.
She helps run a small "free" school and
she, Scott, and their three children plan
to move soon to a small farm near Chapel
Hill.
1964
Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Chris has started
graduate work in business administration
at Union College, is teaching a computer
programming course, and is writing
programs for study in mathematics.
1967
We wish the very best of good
fortune to, and shall follow with more
than ordinary interest, NBC's new Friday
night television series "Needles and Pins."
It happens to co-star our very own
Deirdre Lenihan, along with Louis Nye
and Norman Fell. Deirdre is fittingly cast
as a dress designer, having studied that
work at New York's Fashion Institute of
Technology, and later worked in the
costume department of the New York
Shakespeare Festival. Remember 9 p.m.
on Friday night, NBC-TV.
In May, William W. Dunkum was
one of several teachers of mathematics
and science in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area honored by the Joint
Board on Science Education.
One of our new Communicards
came back from Saigon, where James P.
Nach is second secretary of the American
Embassy, assigned to the political section.
1968
Jim is in his fourth year in Saigon, and
recently was assigned to Haiphong, North
In July William R. and Rebecca
Vietnam, helping supervise removal of the
mines from the harbor. He will complete (McClure) Albury and offspring moved to
his Far East tour in February, 1974, and Australia, where Randy has taken a position as lecturer in the history and
anticipates assignment to Washington.
philosophy of science at the University of
New South Wales, in Kensington.
1965
John Fanner writes that he is in his
Scheherazade (Friestedt) Smith second year of medical school at the
writes that she is a graduate student at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic
the University of Arkansas.
Medicine, is doing research on vitamin A,
Michael Woolsey this past June and is making an index for a neuroreceived a Master of Arts in Teaching anatomy textbook.
degree from the College of St. Thomas,
Blaine Garson has just received M.S.
but will probably continue his present degrees in speech pathology and audiemployment as a computer progrannner ology-"at last," she says-and is working
until prospects for finding teaching on certification as a dance therapist. She
positions brighten.
has a "lovely 16 month old son Jonas,"
and loves "being educated all over again
1966
by him."
_Another degree recipient is Sarah
Mark B. Bromberg has received a
(Braddbck) Westrick, who was awarded a
Ph.D. degree in physiology and biophysics, although we do not know from B.A. degree in June from Ursinus, with a
what institution. His dissertation was en- major in English literature and a minor in
titled "The Organization of PAD history. She is now considering graduate
Produced by Peripheral and Central school in library science. Husband
Inputs to the Cuneate Nucleus and A Da"el/, better known as Boris, is still
Classification of Cutaneous Forelimb with UNlV AC.
Receptors."
1969
One of our newer lawyer alunmi is
Richard F. Fielding. Dick received his Ia w
James F. Bartram, Jr., last year
degree in June, from the University of received a B.A. degree in musical instruChicago, where he was Comment Editor ment making from the University
of the Law Review.
Without Walls at Roger Williams College
Christopher Hodgkin is still (R.I.). He has been married almost two
working as business manager of Oakwood years, and is in business for himself,
School, a Quaker secondary school in manufacturing Renaissance flutes and
32
recorders.
Mariam (Cunningham) Cohen wrote
in August that she was in the throes of
filling out medical school applications; we
wish her luck.
Andrew Gamson spent the summer
teaching in a teachers' workshop in
Greenwich, Conn., the Open Education
Workshop of the NAIS. He will be
teaching at the Key School in Annapolis
for at least another year.
Mariel/e Mikah Hammett and
Kenneth L. Kronberg (SF68) were
married on June 30th in New York City.
Mark Mandel writes that he received his B.A. degree in linguistics from
the City College of the City University of
New York. He spent the late spring as
coordinator of the Summer Latiil Course
of the College's Institute for Medieval and
Renaissance Studies. After a sununer in
Europe, he and his wife, Rene, will move
to Berkeley, where she will enter the
Ph.D. program in English.
John H. Strange (SF) received the
Master of Divinity degree in May from
Austin Presbyterian Theological
Seminary, and was ordained in the First
Presbyterian Church in Taft, Texas, on
July 8th. John and his wife Camille are
enjoying living in Taft, a rural suburb of
Corpus Christi.
Another Santa Fe alumnus, Joseph
Tooley, is a graduate student in school
psychology at North Carolina State
University. He worked in a clinic for the
blind last year, directed a summer program for deaf-blind children, and will
work in a school for the deaf this year.
1970
We welcome new traditions, especially those such as our annual John
Deai1 letter, this time from Budapest, on
a side trip from a summer in Munich.
John visited at graduation time in
Annapolis, so we knew he was headed for
two or three years at the University of
London, writing a Ph.D. dissertation on
Shakespeare. In May he received his M.A.
degree in comparative literature with
distinction from the University of
Massachusetts.
We were greatly pleased to hear
from Joseph D. Hines, a Graduate Institute alumnus, that he received his
Certificate in Advanced Study in Education in May from The Johns Hopkins
�October 1973
University. He is now qualified as a
guidance counselor.
Cole Kitchen is preparing for his
comprehensive examinations this fall,
enroute to an eventual Ph.D. degree in
applied mathematics (operations
research) at the Hopkins. His fellowship
has been renewed for the 1973-74
academic year.
T.K. (Thomas) Nelson (SF) writes
that husband Chris (SF) is now with the
Chicago law firm of Shiff-Hardin & Waite.
T.K., Chris, Tollof, age three and onehalf, and Gunnar Matthew, born May
28th, make their home in Wilmette.
Thomas Rie in May received an
M.S. degree in elementary education from
Morgan State College in Baltimore. He
worked in a clothing factory for the past
two and one-half years, while Jinna
(MacLaurin) '68 taught elementary
school. The RICs now live in a farmhouse
outside of Dunseith, N.D., where Tom
will teach grades five and six; Jinna now
awaits the birth of their first child in
October.
Another graduate school-bound
alumnus is Mark Sittler, who will start
work toward an M.A. degree in German
at the University of Arizona this fall.
Mark has a graduate assistantship in the
German Department.
1971
JohnS. Bellamy II is another of our
alumni who has completed his undergraduate education elsewhere, in this case
Goddard College in Vermont. He and
Elizabeth Barrett, married in June, are
now in Charlottesville, Va., where John is
working on an M.A. degree in history at
the University.
We were happy to hear again from
Shire Chafkin, whom we had "lost" for
more than a year. He has received an
M.B.A. degree from Harvard, and is
marketing manager for Tri-Chem, Inc.,
Belleville, N.J.
Deborah (Jenkins) Dumeyer
graduated from Salisbury (Md.) State
College in May, and is teaching first grade
in the Wicomico County schools this
year.
Stephen R. Deluca (SF) and family
are now in Blacksburg, Va., where he is
working toward a Ph.D. degree in clinical
psychology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. His wife, Twyla (Fort) (SF) plans
August brought us a most interesting note from Jose Caminero, afomzer member of
the Class of 1914. Senor Caminero has been an engineer, a journalist, a writer, and
ambassador of his native Cuba to Nicaragua, Colombia, and Peru. A resident of the
United States since 1959, this distinguished alumnus now makes his home in West New
York, N.J. We thought you might enjoy the pictures which Senor Caminero so
graciously sent us; the photograph on the right was taken this year, the one on the left
60 years earlier.
to begin studies in soCial work, while home in Maiori.
Amethyst (age three) has been attending
Christine (Ferrarini) Constantine
Montessori school and "loving it."
'phoned in August to report a move to
V. Michael Victoroffhas had a busy Newton, Mass., so that Hank '70 can
summer. He spent some time early in the commence studies in political science at
summer doing an elective in drug abuse at Boston College.
the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic in San
Francisco. He and Joan Mooring '69 did
some rock climbing in Yosemite National
Park, and then were off to Venezuela for
IN MEMORIAM
a session of scuba diving. By now Mike
should be back at Baylor College of
Medicine for his third year.
1912 - Frederick L. Baillere, Tulsa,
1972
Helen Anastaplo has completed her
first year at the University of Chicago
Law School, where Bart Lee '68 was her
writing program tutor.
After a two and one-half year
sojourn in Rome, David H. Carey was in
this country visiting friends and family
this summer. He is now back in Rome at
North American College in the Vatican
State, continuing preparation for Holy
Orders; he anticipates ordination as a
deacon next May. David visited Tutor
RobertS. Bart '57 at the latter's summer
Okla., July, 1973.
1912 - Raymond E. Staley, Little Rock,
Ark., June, 1973.
1920- Earl R. Custis, Suffolk, Va., July
14, 1973.
1922 - Harrison M. Baldwin, Baltimore,
Md. June 16, 1973.
1924 - Joseph E. Coe, Crofton, Md.,
April 1 5, 1973.
1933 - Ralph C. Bayard, Jr., Dover,
Dela., January 7, 1973.
1934 - Gerald L. Kurtz, Paterson, N.J.,
March 26, 1973.
1935 -Elmer A. Jones, Jr., North East,
Md., April 17, 1973.
1969 - James L. Pipes, Dayton, Tex.,
February 17, 1969
33
�A series of eight concerts has
been announced for the current year in
Santa Fe. These will be part of the regular
Friday night lecture/concert portion of
the curriculum.
Sep. 28
The Yale Chamber Ensemble
- 18th and !9th century
music.
Nov. 16
The Baroque Trio of the
Schola Cantorum Basiliensis
- 16th centmy music
Dec. 14
Gilliam McHugh, pianist
works of Bach, Haydn,
Chopin, and John Ireland
Jan.25
Richard Hudson - a lecturereading entitled "BrowningDramatic Monologues and
Lyrics"
Feb. 15
Jack Glatzer, violinist works of Bach and Paganini
Apr. 5
The Tokyo Quartet - classical chamber music
Apr. 26
The New Mexico Chamber
Society Octet - woodwind
music by Mozart and
Beethoven
May 3
Photo credits: Cover, Robin Page West '77; page 29, Don Bandler.
Jack Brimberg, painist Bach's Goldberg Variations
The College
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
Second-class postage paid at
Annapolis, Maryland, and at
additional mailing ofliccs.
�
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<em>The College </em>(1969-1981)
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An account of the resource
St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>. <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981. <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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The College, October 1973
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1973-10
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von Oppen, Beate Ruhm
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Dunham, William B.
Ham, Michael W.
Newland, Paul D.
Oosterhout, Barbara Brunner
Wyatt, E. Malcolm
Zelenka, Robert S.
Description
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Volume XXV, Number 3 of The College. Published in October 1973.
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The_College_Vol_25_No_3_1973
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Annapolis, MD
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pdf
President's Report
Presidents
The College
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Text
THE COLLEGE
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
Santa Fe, New Mexico
January 1974
�THE COLLEGE
Vol. XXV
January, 1974
No. 4
Editor: Beate Ruhm von Oppen
Managing Editor: Thomas Parr an, Jr.
Editorial Advisory Board: William B. Dunham, Michael
W. Ham, Paul D. Newland, Barbara Brunner Oosterhout
'55, E. Malcolm Wyatt, RobertS. Zelenka
THE COLLEGE is published by the Development Office
of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. Richard D.
Weigle, President, Paul D. Newland, Provost.
Published four titnes a year, in January, April, July, and
October. Second class postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland, and at other mailing places.
IN THE JANUARY ISSUE:
Memorials to Leo Strauss
1
What is a Liberal Education? ..
by Leo Strauss
6
High School Workshop
by Ted A. Blanton
10
News on the Campuses
12
Alumni Activities
14
ON THE COVER: Leo Strauss, first Scott Buchanan
Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence in Annapolis.
Photo credits: p. 13, Eugene Iorgov '75; p. 14, Lee ZlatoH '74; p. 15,
Malcolm Handte 75.
�LEO STRAUSS
1899-1973
'We devote this issue to Leo Strauss, whose death could
only be mentioned briefly in our October issue. On 22
October the weekly Collegian had a note by Laurence
Berns which is reproduced below.
Leo Strauss passed away this Thursday evening,
October 18, in his sleep, about 6:30 p.m. His last
days were spent-fighting against an overwhelming
combination of illnesses-as were most of the days
of a very fruitful life, subordinating everything, as
far as he was able, to learning and to teaching. He
was, above all, a great learner and consequently a
great teacher. As Professor of Political Philosophy
especially at the University of Chicago and at the
New School, Claremont College, and St. John's he
trained and inspired a large group of scholars and
students to carry on investigations into the foundations of modern political life and thought, the difference between ancient and modern philosophy and
science, the relations between politics, philosophy,
and religion, the foundations of political life in general, the grounds and origins of philosophy, and other
such questions.
A very important part of this teaching and learning
is included in a large number of difficult, lucid, highly
condensed, and in their special way, channing writ~
ings, among which are Natural Right and I-Iistory,
What is Political Pl,ilosopl1y?, Thoughts on Machia-
velli, On Tyranny, Persecution and the Art ot Writing, The City and Man, and Socrates and Aristopllanes.
He managed to combine an extremely accurate and
capacious memory and the capacity for painstakingly
meticulous analysis with extreme boldness and search-
ing openness of thought. He had what seemed to be
an unerring instinct for getting to the "nerve" of an
argument, for stripping away irrelevancies and stating
the most complicated arguments in simple, direct,
and powerful language. Being faced by great and impressive structures of philosophy and science, he used
to say: Our task is to try to understand the humble
foundations that underlie these imposing edifices.
His relation to St. John's College was very close
for many years. This was a place, he thought, where
what he was trying to do might be understood and
appreciated, where men might be found who are
capable and hardy enough to continue and keep alive
the tradition begun by Socrates.
A memorial meeting was held in the Great Hall on 31
October. At it four speakers paid tribute to Leo Strauss.
They were Jacob Klein, J. Winfree Smith, Ted Blanton,
'75, and Laurence Berns. VIe are printing the texts
of their speeches and the text of a commencement address
which Leo Strauss gave in Chicago in 1959. Its title was
"What is Liberal Education?" Ill
1
�The College
Jacob Klein
This meeting has been called to pay homage to Leo
Strauss who died about two weeks ago. He was the Scott
Buchanan Distinguished Scholar in Residence at St. John's
College in Annapolis since 1969, but not very many students and tutors here knew him or even knew about him.
Let me, therefore, say a few words about his life.
He studied in Marburg and in Hamburg; Germany,
lived many years, doing research and writing, in Berlin,
then in Paris and in Cambridge, England. He came to the
United States in 1938 and taught at the New School in
New York, at the University of Chicago, at a college in
Claremont, California, and finally here at St. John's. He
wrote many extremely important books which I shall not
enumerate. (You will find most of them in the library.)
He was devoted to his work as people seldom are. And it
is at this point that I have to try to lift my words up so as
to reach the level of complexity, uniqueness, and greatness
which characterize Leo Strauss as a scholar and as a man.
His main interest throughout his life was the way man
has to live here on earth. That meant to him the way man
has to be understood as a "political animal, n to use
Aristotle's phrase. He spent all his life as a man engaged
in "political philosophy." He did that mainly by studying
and analyzing the masters of political thought and all the
authors related to them. Let me name the most important
ones: Thucydides, Plato, Xenophon, Aristophanes, Aristotle, Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas, Machiavelli, Spinoza,
Hobbes, Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu,
Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger. Strauss's erudition was
immense. He knew the authors I have just cited better
than anyone I could possibly name. His interpretative
power showed a degree of sagacity, perspicacity, and lucidity hardly equaled today anywhere. He knew how much
depends on every word of those authors, on the way each
word was used singly, on the way each was combined with
others in sequences, in paragraphs, in the entire work,
and how much depended on what was not said, on what
was only hinted at, and on what was scrupulously omitted.
He was deeply aware of the dangers of generalization as
well as the necessity to generalize under certain circumstances and to do it circumspectly. It is thus. that he
achieved an understanding not only of what is written
about political life, but also about what it is and can be.
I have known him for more than fifty years, since our
student days in Marburg, and I have always been impressed
by the way his serioumess was coupled with wittiness,
his depth with simplicity, his intellectual strength with
a love of things far from intellectual. This complexity
made him robust and strong, although on occasion he
appeared shy or even morose. He never forgot what he
was seeking, but he was cautious in his search, never pretending, never ostentatious, only seldom raising his voice.
All this is one of the sources of his attractiveness and of
2
the love so many felt for him.
There is something else that cannot remain unmentioned now as it did not remain unmentioned in the
speeches delivered at Strauss's funeral. It is his profound
awareness of being a Jew. Just as his thinking on man as
a "political animal" had its roots in what the ancient
Greeks thought, had its focus in Athens, his preoccl)pation
with the question of divinity and with the peculiar way
of Jewish life and Jewish history tied his thinking and
feeling to Jerusalem. He distinguished sharply-and did
so always-the political programs and actions of the Jews
from their religious background. There was a time when
Leo Strauss was an orthodox Jew, while yet pursuing his
political goals explicitly and determinedly in an unreligious
way. He later changed his religious orientation radically,
tying the question of god and of gods to his political
reasoning, without letting his own life be dependent on
any divinity or on any religious rites. But his being in a
definite sense a Jew was all-important to him. Nothing
could change that.
All of those who have known him will never forget that
he belonged to two worlds. They bow to the greatness of
his soul and its complexity, to his unique sense of the
important, to his modesty. They cannot do otherwise. 111
J. Winfree Smith
During the past four years St. John's College has been
blessed with the presence of Leo Strauss, and now he has
in body gone from us. He will be greatly missed by those
of us who had known him for many years and by those
of us, students, faculty, and others, who profited so much
from his Wednesday class.
When I came to know Mr. Strauss, which was not
long after I came to St. John's, I was just becoming aware
of the depth and breadth of the "antagonism," if I may
use his word, between Biblical revelation and Greek philosophy. In those days and in this hall he undertook in a
lecture entitled "Jerusalem and Athens" to set forth the
grounds and implications of that antagonism. That lecture was only the first of many of his undertakings in
which he helped me to articulate questions which surely
are important for all thinking persons and which were
and are close to the center of my own being.
This articulation of antagonism in thought was characteristic of much that he did. He was never tempted by
easy and superficial resolutions of great issues. He knew
how to present two sides of a grand argument in such a
way that one could see the strength of the case on each
side. He sometimes called himself a political philosopher
or a political scientist. Of course, he was more.
No doubt his attention was directed particularly to political things. Through him many have come to a greater
insight than perhaps most recent writers have provided
�January 1974
of the differences between the ancients and the moderns
in regard to political things and the more than political
roots of those differences.
He loved to study books that offer special problems for
interpretation, books the authors of which have, maybe
for quite different reasons, concealed their meaning. Some-
times I have not been able to follow all the steps of his
intricate arguments in quest of the meaning. At times I
have found myself in disagreement with this or that inter·
pretation. But one could never put his reasonings aside.
For there was always something very solid to invite, arouse,
and challenge thought.
Mr. Strauss had a special significance for the many stu·
dents of his whose ancestors, like his own, belonged to
that people whom the Lord brought out of Egypt with
His mighty hand and His outstretched arm. He made
them aware of and rightly rejoice in their heritage. "Why
should we," he once said, addressing a Jewish audience,
"why should we, who after all are not gypsies, but have
behind us and within us a heroic past, deny or forget that
past?"
We can all say that it will be impossible to remember
Mr. Strauss without remembering, and thinking on, those
things in the universally human past that arc excellent
and worthy of praise. 11
Ted A. Blanton
I should like to begin by recalling a statement from
Violet Bonham Carter's biography of Winston Churchill.
As the daughter of British Prime Minister Asquith, she
had known Mr. Churchill as a friend for many years, in
and out of politics, in and out of war. Speaking of her
own shortcomings as the biographer of such a man, she
took consolation in this one fact: even a fool can be of
help in aiding one's understanding of a great man if only
he would report what he sees and hears. Great men rarely
walk the earth. Few have the privilege of knowing them.
\Vith such a caution to you, let me proceed.
I shall not forget my first sight of Mr. Strauss. I had
been enrolled in St. John's College for several weeks by
the time Mr. Strauss offered a class on Nietzsche's Beyond
Good and Evil. As I waited for class to begin I reflected
on my introduction to Mr. Strauss' writings. A teacher of
polities where I formerly studied had attracted me with
his own clear vision and spiritedness. This teacher spoke
of days at the University of Chicago and the presence
there of a master teacher, Professor Strauss, for whom he
had the highest respect and admiration. I also remembered
having listened to older students there sit late into the
morning hours discussing such books as Natural Right and
History and The City and Man. Then, just at 4:30p.m.,
a small man, walking with a cane, entered the conversation room on the arm of a younger man and took his seat
at the head of the table. I was taken by surprise. I had
imagined Mr. Strauss a tall, robust man for he wrote in
such a forceful and uncompromising fashion on human
excellence and on the crisis of the Western World. Mr.
Strauss began to speak, and I quickly learned an important
lesson. I had never seen what it was to have a great soul.
Mr. Strauss spoke with authority and with an earnestness
to which I was not accustomed. While not understanding
much of those classes on Nietzsche, I was charmed:
charmed by an old man who while speaking gave every
evidence of being young; charmed by his gcntlemanliness
and his patience in answering questions.
I believe that only in Mr. Strauss's next class, on Thucy·
dides-when I was fortunate enough to bring Mr. Strauss
to class on my ann-did the power of his teaching begin
to strike home. "We read the ancient books not because
of a nostalgic interest but because those books make clear
our situation here and now." It was clear that most of us
in the class stood to him in the relationship of pupil to
master. Yet Mr. Strauss's example of carefully moving
through the text gave us the hope that we could train
our eyes to see some of the things he saw. His teaching
also brought to life for me the advice he had given to an
aspiring teacher years earlier. The general rule for teaching that Mr. Strauss gave at that time was this: "Always
assume that there is one silent student in your class who
is by far superior to you in head and in heart." We have
witnessed the high character of a man who lived by deed
in accord ,with those words.
I was also privileged to see Mr. Strauss at his home. On
some of these occasions he would receive questions from
me, questions that presented themselves from his weekly
class or from my own reading. Once, when our conversa~
lion ended with Mr. Strauss counseling me to make good
use of my youth by studying, I asked for a determination
of the subjects worthy of the most study. After a short
remark on the character of liberal arts colleges, Mr.
Strauss suggested a curriculum built around the study of
four books. True to form, he named only three of themAristotle's Ethics, Aquinas' Treatise on Law, and Kant's
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics ot Morals.
The longer I was acquainted with Mr. Strauss, the more
I was impressed by the care he took in speaking to people.
For I could see that he spoke to different people in differ·
ent ways. I believe he knew what each of us needed to
hear.
When I would leave his home he always took my hand
and thanked me for everything I had done. But truly I
was the one who owed the thanks. Upon leaving his home
I was both restful and restless: restful because of the calmness and the sheer delight of his words to me and restless
because he instilled in me an eagerness to think and to
learn. Friendship appeared to me in a fuller light: friendship is not that relationship where all is relaxed but the
relationship where one's highest faculties are poised for
3
�The College
graceful movement. I believe that in those moments I was
more fully human than at any other time.
Mr. Strauss leaves a shelf full of books behind him,
books raising the same questions he raised in his classes
here at St. John's. He always wanted to be learning something new and to be leading others with him. Those students who knew him, who knew him even a short while,
as most of us here, will have a priceless gift to take to the
study of those books. W c have the living memory of the
character of the man-his bright eyes, his endless wit and
charm, the numberless stories he could recall to illustrate
a difficult point, the precious moments of silence before
he would respond to a question, his determination to arrive
at the heart of an argument only to turn to the class and
ask, "What do you think of it-docs it make sense?" -we
have all of these and more, to carry with us to his books.
We have been taught by example. We have seen what few
others have the opportunity to see: a lover of wisdom in
the flesh.
I would like to close my remarks by reading two things.
Mr. Strauss quotes the first in his essay "What is Liberal
Education?":
Just as others arc pleased by a good horse or dog or
bird, I myself am pleased to an even higher degree by
good friends ... And the treasures of the wise men
of old which they left behind by writing them in
books, I unfold and go through them together with
my friends, and if we see something good, we pick it
out and regard it as a great gain if we thus become
useful to one another.
Most of you will recognize the second as coming from
Plato's Gorgias:
Of what sort am I? One of those who would be glad
to be refuted if I say anything untrue, and glad to
refute anyone else who might speak untruly; but just
as glad, mind you, to be refuted as to refute, since I
regard the former as the greater benefit in proportion
as it is a greater benefit for oneself to be delivered
from the greatest evil than to deliver someone else.
For I consider that a man cannot suffer any evil so
great as a false opinion on the subjects of our actual
argument. Ill
Laurence Berns
I shall try to describe Mr. Strauss's impact on us as
graduate students in the political and social sciences and
philosophy at the University of Chicago. We had, of
course, met teachers who were learned, intelligent and
impressive men. The best of them impressed us not only
by their characters but by their clarity and by the extent
of their knowledge and reading. The goal of reason in our
scientific times, it seemed, was to construct logical systems
4
tl1at were consistent with as many facts as possible. Mr.
Strauss, surely, impressed us with the extent of his learning too. But far more important was the demonstration
by example that progress, personal progress, was possible
not only in extent of understanding, but also in depth
of understanding, depth of insight. System, or better,
"order and orderliness are very good," he once said, "but
I prefer illumination." The quest for wisdom in that sense
evoked by the name of Socrates became for us not just
an object of fond hopes, a poet's dream, but a possible, a
reasonable, even if most difficult, undertaking, an under~
taking that we might be privileged to take part in. Mr.
Strauss provided us with both inspiration and training.
Many of us came into those classes with a fairly high
opinion of our own powers of comprehension. The
courses, usually lecture courses, were mostly on one,
sometimes two books per quarter. There was plenty of
time to read the assignments two or more times. Mr.
Strauss's first few introductory sentences usually summed
up most of what we had gotten from the reading and
then at a lightning pace, which I believe strained the best
of us, we would learn that the books we thought we had
understood fairly well contained worlds more than we
su~pected, that they were far more challenging, fascinating, bold, careful and intricate than anyone had ever led
us to believe. We, of course, argued and questioned,
pressed for more evidence, for more explanation and
reexplanation. In his classes Mr. Strauss was far more
generous about marshalling evidence, about explaining
connections one way and then another with a view to the
difficulties of different questioners, than he is in his highly
condensed lectures and writings. There is scarcely a paragraph, for instance, in Natural Right and History, that
does not crystalize, yet without simplification, sometimes
in a few simple-sounding sentences, hours and days of
lively argument and discussion. The density and thrift of
his published writings, compared with his classes, reminds
me of the difference between the books Hegel prepared
for the press himself and those more expansive publications of notes on and of his lectures.
We students were first of all angry with ourselves. Why
had we not seen what we now saw was really there to see?
We became increasingly aware not only of the distance
between ourselves and Mr. Strauss, but more generally
and more importantly, the distance in care and thoughtfulness between ourselves and the great thinkers. This awareness changed our lives. Much greater efforts than we had
imagined were required: What we had regarded as our
best was not good enough.
This was all very serious, but there is another side to it.
Those classes for all their challenge and seriousness were
simply delightful. Strauss inspired without ever trying. It
was evident that nothing delighted him as much as thinking through, contemplating, explaining and making his
discoveries. The classes always left us with many unan-
�January 1974
swercd questions. More often than not some of us would
pursue him after class; the inquiry and discussion would
continue in the hall, in his office, and on the way home.
I remember more than one class that began at 1:30 and
really ended close to 7 o'clock before his apartment door.
He was never altogether satisfied with what he had worked
out, always testing and trying what he thought he knew
with new questions, new perspectives, and new arguments.
He disliked repeating himself and often when summing
up a previous class, as point of departure for the next, we
would realize that the summary was not just a summary
but incorporated all the advances made in the hall, or on
the way home or in his study the previous night. It made
no difference whether he was talking to 40, 25, 5, 3, or
just one person; the same searching intensity and delight
in learning prevailed. The delight often bubbled over into
humor. He could be very funny. Yet that high humor
never detracted from the seriousness: indeed, we came to
see that they go together, as long as both are high. Some
time after I began to attend those classes I learned that
Nietzsche had written a book entitled Gay, or Joyful
Science: I thought I had an inkling of what he meant.
The life of a thinking man is to be found most of all
in his thoughts. I could not begin to try to do justice to
the memory of Leo Strauss without at least some brief
remarks about the themes of his investigations.
Philosophy and science come into the world, according
to Strauss, with the discovery of nature; and the fundamental intra-philosophic issue, the issue between the
ancients and the moderns, concerns their different understandings of nature and nature's status. Mr. Strauss concentrated especially on the study of human nature. This
is not the place to go into how the study of human nature
is complicated by the rediscovery of exotericism, except
perhaps to remark that the study of what most of the
greatest writers prior to Kant mean by human nature is
inseparable from the study of the implications of their
rhetoric. The connection between nature and human
nature becomes evident by questions such as these: Are
we correct to speak of what is good for man by nature?
Are we equipped by nature to understand nature, to understand what is good by nature? Or is nature indifferent or
hostile to man's highest aspirations? Is it naive to think
that the human intellect is constituted by nature so as to
understand nahue1 that nature is so constituted as to be
understood by the human intellect? If it is naive, as the
moderns argue, is not nature rather to be studied with
a view to its ultimate conquest, with a view to its intellectual conquest by means of the art of symbolic mathematics and experiment and its physical conquest by the
technological arts concomitant with mathematical physics?
Is nature then to be studied with a view to the ultimate
triumph of human art? But if nature cannot provide us
with standards, how are we to determine the purposes to
which that art is to be put? The dilemmas, not to speak
of horrors, consequent upon the modern project require
a careful tracing back of our steps, the rediscovery of the
fundamental notions and assumptions that brought us to
this impasse. That means, to speak in the broadest outline, the rediscovery of the fundamental notions and assumptions that underlie the modern understanding of
nature, the rediscovery of the fundamental notions and
assumptions of the classical understanding of nature which
the moderns reject and thereby presuppose that they understand. And lastly it means the rediscovery of the basic
insights and assumptions that underlie the original discovery of nature, the original discovery of philosophy and
science. This last task brings us face to face with the alternatives to philosophy. Philosophy, either in its quest to
understand itself, or simply as full open-mindedness, is
obliged to examine, to articulate the serious alternatives
to philosophy. Philosophy, as the quest for a rational
account of the whole is always faced by the rival accounts
of the whole laid down by the revealed religions. Both
revealed religion and philosophy look upon such accounts
as indispensable to the guidance of human life.
The most impressive alternative to philosophy in the
life of Leo Strauss is summoned up by the name of a city,
Jerusalem, the holy city. What if the one thing most
needful is not philosophic wisdom, but righteousness?
This notion of the one thing most needful, Mr. Strauss
argued, is not defensible if the world is not the creation
of the just and loving God, the holy God. Neither philosophy nor revealed religion, he argued, can refute one
another; for, among other reasons, they disagree about the
very principles or criteria of proof. Leo Strauss was a Jew,
a Jewish scholar, and, if I know anything about the meaning of the word, he was a philosopher; but he insisted
that strictly speaking there is no such thing as Jewish
philosophy. TI1is mutual irrefutability and tension between
philosophy and Biblical revelation appeared to him to be
the secret of the vitality of Western Civilization.
It may seem immodest, he once remarked, to speak
about all objects of human knowledge, but, and I quote,
"we all really have opinions-and sometimes very strong
opinions-about all objects of human knowledge, and it is
perhaps better to confess that to oneself and to try to
clarify that than just to leave it at the amiable appearance
of modesty."
As much as those of us who knew him miss him, it is
impossible to think about him and what he stood for without somehow feeling better about being a human being,
without being grateful for having been able to share some
part of the grace with which his life abounded. 1111
1
5
�What is a Liberal Education?
by Leo Strauss
Liberal education is education in culture or toward culture. The finished product of a liberal education is a cultured human being. "Culture" ( cu]tura) means primarily
agriculture: the cultivation of the soil and its products,
taking care of the soil, improving the soil in accordance
with its nature. "Culture" means derivatively and today
chiefly the cultivation of the mind, the taking care and
improving of the native faculties of the mind in accordance with the nature of the mind. Just as the soil needs
cultivators of the soil, the mind needs teachers. But
teachers are not as easy to come by as farmers. The teachers themselves are pupils and must be pupils. But there
cannot be an infinite regress: ultimately there must be
teachers who are not in turn pupils. Those teachers who
are not in turn pupils are the great minds or, in order to
avoid any ambiguity in a matter of such importance, the
greatest minds. Such men are extremely rare. We are not
likely to meet any of them in any classroom. We are not
likely to meet any of them anywhere. It is a piece of good
luck if there is a single one alive in one's time. For all
practical purposes, pupils, of whatever degree of proficiency, have access to the teachers who are not in turn
pupils, to the greatest minds, only through the great
books. Liberal education will then consist in studying with
the proper care the great books which the greatest minds
have left behind-a study in which the more experienced
pupils assist the less experienced pupils, including the
beginners.
This is not an easy task, as would appear if we were
to consider the formula which I have just mentioned.
That formula requires a long commentary. Many lives
have been spent and may still be spent in writing such
commentaries. For instance, what is meant by the remark
that the great books should be studied "with the proper
care"? At present I mention only one difficulty which is
obvious to everyone among you: the greatest minds do not
tell us the same things regarding the most important
themes; the community of the greatest minds is rent by
6
discord and even by various kinds of discord. Whatever
further consequences this may entail, it certainly entails
the consequence that liberal education cannot be simply
indoctrination. I mention yet another difficulty. "Liberal
education is education in culture." In what culture? Our
answer is: culture in the sense of the Western tradition.
Yet Western culture is only one among many cultures.
By limiting ourselves to Western culture, do we not condemn liberal education to a kind of parochialism, and is
not parochialism incompatible with the liberalism, the
generosity, the openmindcdness, of liberal education? Our
notion of liberal education does not seem to fit an age
which is aware of the fact that there is not tl1e culture
of tl1e human mind but a variety of cultures. Obviously,
"culture" if susceptible of being used in the plural is not
quite the same thing as "culture" which is a singulare
tantum, which can be used only in the singular. "Culture"
is now no longer, as people say, an absolute but has become relative. It is not easy to say what culture susceptible of being used in the plural means. As a consequence
of this obscurity people have suggested, explicitly or implicitly, that "culture" is any pattern of conduct common
to any human group. Hence we do not hesitate to speak
of the culture of suburbia or of the cultures of juvenile
gangs both nondelinquent and delinquent. In other words,
every human being outside of lunatic asylums is a cultured
human being, for he participates in a culture. At the
frontiers of research there arises the question as to whether
there are not cultures also of inmates of lunatic asylums.
If we contrast the present-day usage of "culture" with
the original meaning, it is as if someone would say that
the cultivation of a garden may consist of the garden being
littered with empty tin cans and whiskey bottles and used
papers of various descriptions thrown around the garden
at random. Having arrived at this point, we realize that
we have lost our way somehow. Let us then make a fresh
start by raising the question: what can liberal education
mean here and now?
�January
Liberal education is literate education of a certain kind:
some sort of education in letters or through letters. There
is no need to make a case for literacy; every voter knows
that modern democracy stands or falls by literacy. In
order to understand this need we must reflect on modern
democracy. What is modern democracy? It was once said
that democracy is the regime that stands or falls by virtue:
a democracy is a regime in which all or most adults are
men of virtue~ and since virtue seems to require wisdom,
a regime in which all or most adults are virtuous and
wise, or the society in which all or most adults have developed their reason to a high degree, or the rational society.
Democracy in a word is meant to be an aristocracy which
has broadened into a universal aristocracy. Prior to the
emergence of modern democracy some doubts were felt
whether democracy thns understood is possible. As one
of the two greatest minds among the theorists of democ·
racy put it, "If there were a people consisting of gods, it
would rule itself democratically. A government of such
perfection is not suitable for human beings." This still
and small voice has by now become a high·powered loudspeaker. There exists a whole science-the science which
I among thousands profess to teach, political sciencewhich so to speak has no other theme than the contrast
between the original conception of democracy, or what
one may call the ideal of democracy, and democracy as it
is. According to an extreme view which is the predom·
inant view in the profession, the ideal of democracy was
a sheer delusion and the only thing which matters is the
behavior of democracies and the behavior of men in
democracies. Modern democracy, so far from being uni-
versal aristocracy, would be mass rule were it not for the
fact that the mass cannot rule but is ruled by elites, i.e.,
groupings of men who for whatever reason are on top or
have a fair chance to arrive at the top; one of the most
important virtues required for the smooth working of democracy, as far as the mass is concerned, is said to be
electoral apathy, i.e., lack of public spirit; not indeed the
salt of the earth but the salt of modern democracy are
those citizens who read nothing except the sports page
and the comic section. Democracy is then not indeed mass
rule but mass culture. A mass culture is a culture which
can be appropriated by the meanest capacities without
any intellectual and moral effort whatsoever and at a very
low monetary price. But even a mass culture and precisely
a mass culture requires a constant supply· of what are
called new ideas, which are the products of what are called
creative minds: even singing commercials lose their appeal
if they are not varied from time to time. But democracy,
even if it is only regarded as the hard shell which protects
the soft mass culture, requires in the long run qualities
of an entirely different kind: qualities of dedication, of
concentration, of breadth and of depth. Thus we understand most easily what liberal education means here and
now. Liberal education is the counter-poison to mass cui-
1974
ttue, to the corroding effects of mass culture, to its inher-
ent tendency to produce nothing but "specialists without
spirit or vision and voluptuaries without heart." Liberal
education is the ladder by which we try to ascend from
mass democracy to democracy as originally meant. Liberal
education is the necessary endeavor to found an aristoc-
racy within democratic mass society. Liberal education
reminds those members of a mass democracy who have
ears to hear, of human greatness.
Someone might say that this notion of liberal education
is merely political, that it dogmatically assumes the goodness of modern democracy. Can we not turn our backs on
modern society? Can we not return to nature, to the life
of preliterate tribes? Are we not crushed, nauseated, degraded by the mass of printed material, the graveyards of
so many beautiful and majestic forests? It is not sufficient
to say that this is mere romanticism, that we today cannot return to nature: may not coming generations, after a
man-wrought cataclysm, be compelled to live in illiterate
tribes? Will our thoughts concerning thermonuclear wars
not be affected by such prospects? Certain it is that the
horrors of mass culture (which include guided tours to
integer nature) render intelligible the longing for a return
to nature. An illiterate society at its best is a society
ruled by age-old ancestral custom which it traces to original founders, gods or sons of gods or pupils of gods; since
there are no letters in such a society, the late heirs cannot
be in direct contact with the original founders; they cannot know whether the fathers or grandfathers have not
deviated from what the original founders meant, or have
not defaced the divine message by merely human additions
or subtractions; hence an illiterate society cannot
con~
sistently act on its principle that the best is the oldest.
Only letters which have come down from the founders
can make it possible for the founders to speak directly to
the latest heirs. It is then self-contradictory to wish to
return to illiteracy. We are compelled to live with books. ·•
But life is too short to live with any but the greatest
books. In this respect as well as in some others, we do well
to take as our model that one among the greatest minds
who because of his common sense is the mediator between
us and the greatest minds. Socrates never wrote a book
but he read books. Let me quote a statement of Socrates
which says almost everything that has to be said on our
subject, with the noble simplicity and quiet greatness of
the ancients. "Just as others are pleased by a good horse
or dog or bird, I myself am pleased to an even higher
degree by good friends .... And the treasures of the wise
men of old which they left behind by writing them in
books, I unfold and go through them together with my
friends, and if we see something good, we pick it out and
regard it as a great gain if we thus become useful to one
another." The man who reports this utterance, adds the
remark: "When I heard this, it seemed to me both that
Socrates was blessed and that he was leading those listen-
7
�The College
ing to him toward perfect gentlemanship." This report is
defective since it does not tell us anything as to what
Socrates did regarding those passages in the books of the
wise men of old of which he did not know whether they
were good. From another report we learn that Euripides
once gave Socrates the writing of Heraclitus and then
asked him for his opinion about that writing. Socrates
said: "What I have understood is great and noble; I believe this is also true of what I have not understood; but
one surely needs for understanding that writing some
special sort of a diver."
Education to perfect gentlemanship, to human excellence, liberal education consists in reminding oneself of
human excellence, of human greatness. In what way, by
what means docs liberal education remind us of human
greatness? We cannot think highly enough of what Jib.
era! education is meant to be. We have heard Plato's sug·
gestion that education in the highest sense is philosophy.
Philosophy is quest for wisdom or quest for knowledge
regarding the most important, the highest, or the most
comprehensive things; such knowledge, he suggested, is
virtue and is happiness. But wisdom is inaccessible to man
and hence virtue and happiness will always be imperfect.
In spite of this, the philosopher, who, as such, is not simply
wise, is declared to be the only true king; he is declared
to possess all the excellences of which man's mind is
capable, to the highest degree. From this we must draw
the conclusion that we cannot be philosophers-that we
cannot acquire the highest form of education. \Vc must
not be deceived by the fact that we meet many people
who say that they are philosophers. For those people
employ a loose expression which is perhaps necessitated
by administrative convenience. Often they mean merely
that they are members of philosophy departments. And
it is as absurd to expect members of philosophy depart·
ments to be philosophers as it is to expect members of
art departments to be artists. We cannot be philosophers
but we love philosophy; we can try to philosophize. This
philosophizing consists at any rate primarily and in a way
chiefly in listening to the conversation between the great
philosophers or, more generally and more cautiously,
between the greatest minds, and therefore in studying the
great books. T11e greatest minds to whom we ought to
listen are by no means exclusively the greatest minds of
the West. It is merely an unfortunate necessity which
prevents us from listening to the greatest minds of India
and of China: we do not understand their languages, and
we cannot learn all languages. To repeat, liberal educa·
tion consists in listening to the conversation among the
greatest minds. But here we are confronted with the
overwhelming difficulty that this conversation does not
take place without our help-that in fact we must bring
about that conversation. The greatest minds utter monologues. We must transform their monologues into a dialogue, their "side by side" into a "together." The greatest
8
minds utter monologues even when they write dialogues.
When we look at the Platonic dialogues, we observe that
there is never a dialogue among minds of the highest
order: all Platonic dialogues are dialogues between a
superior man and men inferior to him. Plato apparently
felt that one could not write a dialogue between two men
of the highest order. We must then do something which
the greatest minds were unable to do. Let us face this
difficulty-a difficulty so great that it seems to condemn
liberal education as an absurdity. Since the greatest minds
contradict one another regarding the most important
matters, they compel us to judge of their monologues;
we cannot take on trust what any one of them says. On
the other hand we cannot but notice that we are not
competent to be judges. This state of things is concealed
from us by a number of facile delusions. We somehow
believe that our point of view is superior, higher than
those of the greatest minds-either because our point of
view is that of our time, and our time, being later than the
time of the greatest minds, can be presumed to be superior
to their times; or else because we believe that each
of the greatest minds was right from his point of view
but not, as he claims, simply right: we know that there
cannot be the simply true substantive view but only a
simply true formal view; that formal view consists in
the insight that every comprehensive view is relative to
a specific perspective, or that all comprehensive views are
mutually exclusive and none can be simply true. The facile
delusions which conceal from us our true situation all
amount to this, that we are, or can be, wiser than the
wisest men of the past. W c are thus induced to play the
part not of attentive and docile listeners, but of impresarios
or lion-tamers. Yet we must face our awesome situation,
created by the necessity that we try to be more than
attentive and docile listeners, namely, judges, and yet we
are not competent to be judges. As it seems to me, the
cause of this situation is that we have lost all simply
authoritative traditions in which we could trust, the
nomos which gave us authoritative guidance, because our
immediate teachers and teachers' teachers believed in the
possibility of a simply rational society. Each of us here is
compelled to find his bearings by his own powers however
defective they may be.
We have no comfort other than that inherent in this
activity. Philosophy, we have learned, must he on its guard
against the wish to be edifying-philosophy can only be
intrinsically edifying. We cannot exert our understanding
without from time to time understanding something of
importance, and this act of understanding may be accompanied by the awareness of our understanding, by the
understanding of understanding, by noesis noeseos, and
this is so high, so pure, so noble an experience that
Aristotle could ascribe it to his God. This experience is
entirely independent of whether what we understand primarily is pleasing or displeasing, fair or ugly. It leads us
�January 1974
to realize that all evils arc in a sense necessary if there is
to be understanding. It enables us to accept all evils which
befall us and which may well break our hearts in the
spirit of good citizens of the city of God. By becoming
aware of the dignity of the mind, we realize the true
ground of the dignity of man and therewith the goodness
of the world, whether we understand it as created or as
uncreated, which is the home of man because it is the
home of the human mind.
Liberal education, which consists in the constant inter~
course with the greatest minds, is a training in the highest
form of modesty, not to say of humility. It is at the same
time a training in boldness: it demands from us the complete break with the noise, the rush, the thoughtlessness,
the cheapness of the Vanity Fair of the intellectuals as
well as of their enemies. It demands from us the boldness
implied in the resolve to regard the accepted views as
mere opinions, or to regard the average opinions as extreme
opinions which are at least as likely to be wrong as the
most strange or the least popular opinions. Liberal education is liberation from vulgarity. The Greeks had a beautiful word for "vulgarity"; they called it apeirokalia, lack
of experience in things beautiful. Liberal education
supplies us with experience in things beautiful. Ill
TI1is article was first delivered as an address at the Tenth Annual
Graduation Exercises of the Basic Program of Liberal Education for
Adults, June 6, 1959, at the University of Chicago, and was later
printed.
© Copyright 1959 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Printed by the University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois,
U.S.A.
Reprinted by permission of the publisher, The University of Chicago.
9
�High School Workshop
by Ted A. Blanton
The students come from Harlem, from westside Chicago, from street corners in Baltimore, from little-seen
neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., and from the arid
shadows of the Sandia Mountains of Albuquerque, New
Mexico. Some come from large families-one girl shares
her roof with twenty-one others-while several come from
almost no family. Their backgrounds range from overcrowded inner-city schools where the first subject is discipline seconded by basketball, to the experimental public
"School-Without-Walls" in Washington, D.C. They
gather at St. John's in Santa Fe for one month in the
middle of the summer to study Plato, Sophocles, Plutarch,
St. Paul, Machiavelli, the Founding Fathers, and Tocqueville.
The High School Workshop was begun under the
auspices of the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education
in the summer of 1972. The workshop was first proposed
by inner-city teachers from Chicago and New York who
were in attendance at the Graduate Institute. Their concern was to invite bright city youth who, by circumstances,
are deprived of opportunities to develop their intellect,
and to introduce them to a program of liberal studies.
The workshop, which has now completed its second session, was organized with the aid of several of the College
faculty members along with Graduate Institute alumni
from Baltimore and Washington. The program is funded
by Mr. Jac Holzman of New York City, who is an alumnus
and a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors
(and a contributor of fellowships to the Graduate Institute), and also by the National Endowment for the Humanities. This funding makes it possible for each student
to participate in the program at no personal expense.
Eligibility for the workshop goes to rising high school
juniors and seniors who are eager academically and who
are likely to lack other enrichment opportunities. Students
are first nominated by teachers in appropriate central city
high schools. After a selection is made, based on interviews in their home cities, the final group is picked by a
lO
committee in Santa Fe. Twenty students-ten boys and
ten girls-participated in the 1973 session. Five came from
Baltimore, three from New Yark City, and four each
from Albuquerque, Chicago, and Washington. There were
fifteen Negroes, two Spanish-Americans, one American
Indian, one Caucasian, and one Filipino. All of them were
housed on campus in two small dormitories. This allowed
for privacy but also for rubbing shoulders with high school
teachers (some their own) pursuing studies in the Graduate Institute.
The staff for the workshop consisted of three Institute
alumni who were teachers in the Baltimore City School
System. Two St. John's College students acted as their
aides for the four-week program.
Mr. Lloyd Parham, who acted as Director of the Workshop, was vice-principal at Joseph C. Briscoe Junior High
School last year. Miss Mary Pat Justice works in a number
of schools with the Keeping All Pupils in School (KAPS)
program. Mr. Walter Dudley, among other duties, serves
as chairman of the department of social sciences in Lom·
bard Street Junior High. Miss Catherine Ingraham, 1973
alumna of the Santa Fe campus, and Mr. Ted Blanton
of the Annapolis campus were the student aides.
The central activity of the workshop occurred in the
classroom. A seminar with all the students and two tutors
took place twice each week along with a ninety-minute
tutorial each day for every student. The tutorial consisted
of ten students led by one tutor and a student aide. The
curriculum for the workshop was as follows:
Seminar
Plato, Euthyphro
Week
I
2 Plato, Apology
3 Plato, Crito
4 Machiavel1i, The Prince
{selections)
II
Tutorial
Plutarch: Lives of Pericles,
Alcibiades
Thucydides: Pericles' Funeral
Oration
Declaration of Independence
Articles of Confederation
�January 1974
5 U.S. Constitution,
6
7
without amendments
U.S. Constitution,
with amendments
St. Paul: Romaus
III
Selected Constitutiona1 Cases
Tocqueville: Democracy in
America (selections)
IV
New Testament: Matthew 2-5,
27-28; John 18-19
8 Sophocles: Antigone
Sophocles: Oedipus Rex
As can be readily grasped from the books selected, the
four weeks of study revolve around fundamental questions
of law.
Another dimension was added to the students' experience by area activities. These included attendance at a
rodeo, two performances at the Santa Fe Opera, an eightmile mountain hike in conjunction with a tram ride to
the mountaintop, a camping trip in Colorado climaxed
by a scenic rail ride, a visit to the Los Alamos science
museum, horseback riding, and an overnight trip to the
pueblo ruins in Bandelier National Monument. Such
events provided an excellent opportunity for the Albuquerque students to introduce the Southwest to those
from the cities. The one Indian student of the workshop
won the affection of all the others and aided in pointing
out elk, golden eagles, hawks, and bear tracks. With
almost every trip he would command an expedition of
his own. The uneasiness of the inner-city students with
regard to the outdoors was demonstrated on the first
car~1ping trip when the teachers were left with the responsrbrhtres of cookmg; then when sleeping hours approached,
over one-half of the students slept inside the large bus in
which the group traveled. Yet by the second overnight
trip, the students were eager to build fires, cook meals,
sleep on the ground, and hike through the woods.
But what about the classroom? How would students
who had read none of the selections save the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, who had
never known discussion but only lectures, who had come
from sch?ols that hardly cultivate one's intellect, respond
to studymg Plato and Machiavelli? Socrates, in their
understanding, proceeded from sophistry (in questioning
Euthyphro on piety) to seriousness (" ... no greater good
can happen to a man than to discuss human excellence
every day ..."). His example provided a reference point
for th~ entire session. Almost all the students were skeptics wrth regard to the worthiness of the United States
government; yet after comparing the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution and demanding the full
rntent of the Declaration ("... all men are created equal
and endowed with certain inalienable rights ..."), the
most able and outspoken critic-who picked up the nickname "Alcibiades" after the first week-spoke of his newfound respect for the Founding Fathers. Tocqueville's
Democracy in America provided some of the most thorough discussions .on such subjects as the far-reaching implicatiOns of equahty, the drfferences between ancient and
modern slavery, and the kind of tyranny to be expected
in the United States. One interesting seminar showed the
facility with which the students spoke of The Prince
("... and, to see and hear him, he should seem to be
all mercy, faith, integrity, humanity, and religion") without the least bit of shame. One tutorial met with success
by dividing into citizens defending or condemning Antigone's action with respect to the city, a discussion moderated by a third body acting as a Council of Elders. Most
of the students thought there would be little to talk about
in the Bible. Yet they learned to wonder how one accounts
for the differences in the crucifixion narratives and about
the meaning of Jesus' temptations in the desert. When
the Epistle to the Romans was read, a surprising amount
of anger was displayed. However, is was unclear whether
the anger was directed toward the content of the scripture or their own education in it. One priceless moment
occurred in that seminar. A tall, easy-going young man
from Chicago was defending St. Paul in Romans 2:13-17.
He began explaining our awareness of our conscience em~
phasizing his speech by pointing at his heart. Suddeniy he
stopped speakmg; he showed some h~sitation but finally
por':'ted to Ius head and contmued hrs explanation. The
enhre senunar puzzled over that hesitation for a few
minutes.
. The general ability of the students to read carefully had
unproved by the end of the session. In the first tutorial
the students came to class having collectively decided
that "Pericles was a great con-artist." They spoke with
little precision and showed no inclination to examine the
end of that "art" or its value in ruling the city. By the last
tutona1, however, there was more precision and independ-
ence of thought. After the reading of Oedipus Rex, a
lengthy discussion by various students presented four clear
alternatives in understanding the relationship between
man and fate.
What lasting effects will the one-month program have?
If a multitude of tears at the airport departure is any ,
indication, there were friendships formed between the
students on a different basis than they had experienced
before. Many of the students commented during the
course of the four weeks on their own reactions to the
program. One student had thought all learning was modelled on mathematics with one right answer. Another had
never realized the shallowness of her reading. A third contended that the public school classroom would be difficult
to re-enter. More important than such signs or even testimony to the value of the program is the fact that three
participants in the 1972 High School Workshop have
enrolled at St. John's in Santa Fe this fall-Arlene Blackwell and Gregory Walker of Baltimore, and Ava Clinkscales of Washington, D.C. 11
Ted A. Blanton, '75, is a student on the Annapolis campus. During
the. summer of 1973 he was a student aide with the High School
Workshop on the Santa Fe campus.
11
�NEWS ON THE CAMPUSES
made a set of disc recordings of some
of the music he heard. Dick Stark has
visited the villages and talked with
families of the singers Sr. Rael knew;
unfortunately, all of the musicians
themselves are now dead. As a result
of correspondence between Sr. Rae!
and Mr. Stark the disc recordings have
been given to the Museum of New
Mexico.
Richard Stark
STARK TO SPAIN
A cooperative venture involving the
National Endowment for the Humanities, the International Folk Art Foundation, the Fulbright-Hays Commission and the Government of Spain is
sending St. John's College Tutor Richard Stark to Spain to complete a research project which began when he
moved to New Mexico more than a
decade ago. He will be tracing the
antecedents of New Mexican alabados,
religious hymns which arc centered
around the Lenten season, especially
Holy Week. The music involves eighty
alabados and several melodies for the
pita (flute).
Very little has been done in studying and recording the music of Spanish colonists in New Mexico since Sr.
Juan B. Rae] worked in northern villages during the thirties. The New
Mexican Alabado by Sr. Rae! was published by the Stanford University Press
in 1951. At the time he was here he
12
Earlier studies by Stark led to publication of Music of the Spanish Folk
Plays in New Mexico, Music of the
Bailes in New Mexico and a children's
book, Juegos Infantiles Cantados en
Nuevo Mexico. These books include
folk music derived primarily from
nineteenth century Mexico. As his research progressed on the alabados he
found nothing in them to lead him to
believe that they were of Mexican
origin. Indications were that they
might be Spanish as they were found
in the most isolated communities of
northern New Mexico where the customs and language of Spain remained
intact longest.
A breakthrough, or a possible one,
came for Dick Stark in November of
last year when the International Institute of Iberian Colonial Art met in
Santa Fe. He sang an aJabado for the
group to show them the type of music
he was discussing and asked for leads
in discovering the musical sources of
the songs. Dr. Luis Gonzalez Robles of
the Instituto de Cultura Hispanica in
Madrid immediately identified the
music as being exactly like certain
Sephardic Jewish chants. His colleagues
agreed and so the first stop for Stark
in Spain is the University of Madrid
Library to study the collection of
chants.
From Madrid he will go south to
the area around Seville and then to
Estrcmadura, the province from which
many New Mexican colonists immigrated. He plans to spend time in remote villages, monastic libraries and
church archives searching for material.
His research will he climaxed by being
there during the entire Lenten season
to hear and record music. In the late
spring he expects to return to Santa
Fe to work on musical transcription of
the alabados and prepare a manuscript.
"I believe that this project will result
in a very important addition to the
growing literature on the long neglected Spanish colonist in the United
States," Dick Stark says.
The whole Stark family has been involved in New Mexico foik music these
past years and has become increasingly
intrigued as the pieces of the puzzle fit
together. Mrs. Stark and their three
sons are looking forward to joining
Dick for part of his stay in Spain to, be
on hand for the completion of the
project which brought them to New
Mexico in 1960.
Dick Stark attended Colorado College, was graduated from Colorado
State College of Education and received his Master's degree from the
Yale University School of Music. He
taught at Fisk University in Nashville,
Tennessee, where he was also director
of the U nivcrsity Choir, and was a
visiting professor of music at Wesleyan
University, Middletown, Connecticut.
In Santa Fe he has served as Curator
of Collections and Curator of Music
Research at the Museum of International Folk Art and since 1965 has been
a Tutor at St. John's College.
�January 1974
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
Charles W. Thwaites, well-known
Santa Fe artist, has been appointed
Artist-in-Residence at St. John's College, President Richard D. Weigle announced. Mr. Thwaites has lived and
painted in the Southwest for the past
twenty years. During that time his
work has been shown in regional, state
and one-man exhibitions, including
one at St. John's in 1965.
Mr. Thwaites, whose style of painting has varied during his career from
objective through non-objective, has
been included in major national exhibitions, both juried and invitational. In
1940 his mural design was chosen for
the Whitney Museum's exhibition of
prize-winning mural designs from the
"48 State Competition" sponsored by
the U. S. Government Section of Fine
Arts.
He was represented in the Carnegie
Institute's
('Directions in American
Painting" and "Painting in the United
States" as well as the Metropolitan
Museum's "Artists for Victory" show.
Mr. Thwaites has shown in both the
Corcoran and Virginia Biennials, and
at the Chicago Art Institute his work
has been selected numerous times for
the Internationals and the American
Painting and Sculpture exhibitions.
At St. John's, which does not offer
painting and sculpture courses in the
curriculum, Mr. Thwaites will be teaching interested students on an extracurricular basis.
BOOK AND AUTHOR
LUNCHEONS
Hugh Nissenson has had short stories
published in Harper's, Commentary,
The New Yorker, Playboy, Esquire,
and other magazines. His books include
A Pile of Stones, which won the Wallant Award in 1965, Notes .from the
Frontier, and In the Reign of Peace.
Marcia Muth Miller is vice-president
and senior editor of The Sunstone
Press. A collection of her poetry, Post
Card Views and Other Souvenirs, was
due to be published this past fall.
Marc Simmons formerly taught history at the University of New Mexico,
and now lives in Cerrillos in an adobe
house he himself built. His latest book,
The Little Lion, was published by
Swallow Press in October.
The luncheon on November 9th featured athlete-author George Plimpton,
Southwestern naturalist Eleanor Daggett, and New Mexico outdoor writer
Michael Jenkinson.
A real-life Walter Mitty, George
Plimpton boxed Archie Moore, played
tennis with Pancho Gonzales, and
joined the Detroit Lions as a rookie,
all in the interest of first-hand, participant's-view reporting. His books include Out of My League, The Bogey
Man, and his best-selling Paper Lion.
Eleanor Daggett is well known to
Santa Feans for her "Nature Trek"
column in the Sunday New Mexican.
Her Chama History, about the section
of New Mexico where she grew up, was
published earlier this year.
Michael Jenkinson was born in England and grew up in Southern California. He has lived in Santa Fe for the
past eight years, although much of his
time is spent traveling in pursuit of
subject matter for books. Wild Rivers
of North America, his newest book,
was to be released in November.
The Santa Fe Book and Author
Luncheons, now in their sixth year,
continue to benefit both the community and St. John's College. Hundreds
of volumes have been added to the
Library of the College from the proceeds of these popular programs.
On October 12th New York writer
Hugh Nissenson, Santa Fe publisher
Marcia Muth Miller, and historian
Marc Simmons were featured. Journalist Walter Kerr was master of. cere-
than 21 years, while "Winnie," as he
monies.
was known to generations of St.
ANNAPOLIS JOTTINGS
Two valued and beloved members
of the College community retired during the fall: Mrs. Florence Mason and
Mr. Winfield Colbert. Mrs. Mason
had been a maid at the college for more
Malcolm Handte
Johnnies, had been a groundsman
since April 1, 1930. Mr. Colbert, coincidentally, celebrated his 75th birthday
on the day he retired.
Ted Wolff, a senior and the son of
Peter C. Wolff '44, has worked for two
years on the restoration of the gardens
of the William Paca House in Annapolis. (For you oldsters, on the site of
the Carvel Hall Hotel.) During this
time he has discovered a considerable
aptitude for horticulture, and plans to
study landscape architecture after graduation from St. John's.
Junior Malcolm Handte, a native of
Binghamton, N.Y., pursues his mountain-climbing hobby by running up the
outside wall of the gymnasium. A
13
�The College
climber for some four years, Handte
hopes to try El Capitan in Yosemite
National Park next summer. "It beats
volleyball," is the way this National
Merit finalist describes his energetic
avocation.
Steven F. Crockett
Rest assured that St. John's students
take time off for personal projects during college as do students elsewhere.
James Mackey of California and Hong
Kong is a case in point: in December
he left for a year's hiatus, sailing a
boat around Europe, and perhaps even
trans-Atlantic back to Maryland.
Mackey has three year's sailing experience, has taught in Maryland and California, and has a Hawaii-Los Angeles
crossing in a 36-footer under his keel.
This must be the year for outdoor
activity: on his 30th birthday Tutor
Stephen F. Crockett and his wife,
Margaret, walked 30 miles. They are
members of the Annapolis Road Runners Club, and he has been running
and walking hard for four years. This
year he has followed a weekly plan of
walking 20 miles, running five or six,
and cycling another 20.
Tutor Douglas Allanbrook performed
a benefit harpsichord concert on November 18th, sponsored by the Caritas
Society, a town-gown organization
which supports the College. Featured
was music by Bach and by Allanbrook
himself.
The former West Reading Room of
the Library has been designated the
Hartle Room, honoring Major General
Russell P. Hartle, USA, an honor
graduate of the College in the class of
1910. General Hartle commanded the
34th National Guard Division, the first
contingent sent to Europe in World
War II.
ALUMNI ACTIVITIES
HOMECOMING IN BRIEF
Perhaps the date was too early, what
with dodging boat shows and Navy
football games, but the weather was
good, and the alumni who came to
Annapolis in late September seemed
to enjoy Homecoming 1973. From the
boat ride on Friday to the last private
party Saturday night, it was fun.
Regrettably, traffic jams kept some
alumni from reaching Annapolis on
time, but more than 70 alumni and
guests of all ages cruised the beautiful
Severn River for two delightful hours
Friday evening. Those of academic inclination then listened to Charles Bell
lecture on "Satanic Math," while
others went on to parties of their own.
Evaluation of the cruise: excellent, do
it again.
14
Sufficient alumni for one seminar
were on hand Saturday morning; each
year attendance for this event has
fallen off, and it may be that an alternative activity should be found. (Comments welcome.)
The Annual Meeting of the Alumni
Association was rather well attended;
the principal items of business were
adoption of changes to the By-Laws to
provide a new method of nominating
alumni for election to the Board of
Visitors and Governors, and election
of five new Association directors:
Martin A. Dyer '52, Richard D. Ferrier
'69, Edward T. Heise '36, Marcia (DelPlain) Reff '57, and C. Edward Roache
'39.
During the meeting the Alumni
Award of Merit was presented to Col.
Robert Edward Jones '09 of Palo Alto,
Cal. Col. Jones entertained the group
with several stories of his student days.
Later on Saturday afternoon a brave
group of alumni challenged a student
team on the soccer field. The game was
hotly contested for about three periods,
and then the difference in ages began
to tell. Final score, Students-2, Alumni-0. (It has been rumored that the
two goals were inexplicably lucky shots
that trickled past Alumni goalie Bryce
Jacobsen '42; maybe.)
At the same time as the soccer game,
another group of alumni met with a
goodly number of students to talk
about graduate school experiences. The
Association and the College are most
grateful to those alumni who took part
in this helpful session.
The new format of a reception with
buffet replaced the reception and din-
�January 1974
Rob Cozzolino '63 (left) and Steve Tibbitt '65.
Col. Robert E. Jone.~ '09 and Mrs. Jones at Award of Merit ceremony;
Bernard F. Gessner '27, rear.
1973
H
0
Goaltender Bryce Jacobsen '42 in action.
Miriam (Cunningham) Col1e11 '69 all(l Tutor
James M. Tolbert.
M
E
c
0
M
Dean Curtis Wilson and Arthur Kungie, Jr. '67.
Student Counselling session in King Wiiiiam Room.
N
G
15
�The College
ncr of previous years, and was almost
unanimously acclaimed as the best idea
in a long time. No more lecture bell
to toll the way to dinner, interrupting
the reception just as it was getting
going; instead there was a natural termination of activities as alumni and
their guests drifted off to other parties.
The Homecoming Committee for
1974 will be in being by the time you
read this. If more alumni arc to be
lured back next fall (gas rationing permitting!), new ideas are needed. Homecomings are for YOU-let us hear your
ideas.
ALUMNI REPRESENTATIVES
Robert Burns once warned us about
the best laid plans-and he was so
right. A key element in the revised
procedure for nominating alumni for
election to the Board of Visitors and
Governors was the use of The College
as the medium for inviting nominations and for announcing the nominees. Unfortunately, production of the
October issue was delayed, so a special
mailing had to be made.
Delays beget delays, so this current
issue could not carry the names and
biographical data on the nominees, as
we had hoped. This information will
be sent as soon after January 31st as
possible, together with a mail-back
ballot. We ask that you cast your
ballot promptly.
Despite adversity, perhaps the most
important aspect of the new nominating procedure has been implemented:
more than one alumnus will be contending for each vacancy in the election. This assures the general membership a greater choice of candidates than
ever before.
STuDENT CouNSELING
This year's Juniors and Seniors in
Annapolis are interested in a variety
of career/work areas; the most popular
(five or more interested) in descending
order of interest: Law, Teaching, Publications (writing, etc.), Medicine,
Philosophy, Music, Classics, Anthro16
pology, Art and Art History, Biology,
Environmental Science, Foreign Service, and Theology.
But that is by no means indicative
of genuinely infonned interest: many
students are unaware of the opportunities open to them, or even what fields
they might like to enter. And many do
not even know enough to ask the
proper questions.
Alumni over the past few years have
been very helpful, giving students the
benefit of their experience, helping to
formulate the questions, and, perhaps,
even helping to find answers. Alumni
can continue to help; if you have not
submitted your name earlier, and would
be willing to talk with students on
campus, or in their hometowns, or by
telephone, please send your name and
field of competence to Miss Tina
Saddy, Student Counselling Service, St.
John's College, Annapolis, Md. 21404.
It would be helpful also if you would
indicate how you would prefer to meet
with the students.
What we are talking about is the
percentage response or participation of
alumni in the Annual Fund. While
dollars are important when one talks
about financial support for a college,
the percentage of alumni who contribute to the Alumni Fund is also most
significant. Corporate officers and
foundation executives are interested in
that figure when approached for help.
If a college can point to 40, 50, 60%
of its alumni making some sort of gift,
that has real impact. (The national
average among private, coeducational
colleges runs about 20%; the prestigious northeastern institutions reach 40
to 60% regularly. St. John's last year
showed 25%, clown from 28% the
previous year.)
So, please know that no gift is ever
too small. Give what you can, but give,
whether it is one dollar or one thousand. It will help St. John's College.
CLASS NOTES
ALUMNI FUND
This year's Alumni Annual Giving
Campaign was officially launched in
early December with letters from the
three campaign co-chairmen. (Col.
Thomas W. Ligon, classes of 1900 to
1925; John C. Donohue, 1926 to 1940;
and Francis S. Mason, Jr., 1941 to
1973.) It will close on June 30, 1974,
the end of the College's fiscal year.
$40,000 is the goal for this year's
Alumni Fund-a new term for the
funds raised by the Alumni Annual
Giving Campaign for current operating purposes at St. John's. While the
greater part of that amount may come
from a relatively few alumni, the College is as vitally interested also in
those alumni who cannot make large
gifts. Younger alumni, still in graduate school or starting new jobs or new
families, cannot be expected to give
in significant amounts. Neither can
older alumni on fixed-income pensions.
But, nevertheless, their gifts can and
do help the College far more than their
face value alone may suggest.
1932
Our July Communicard reached all the way
to Bermuda and Hugh Parker, who writes he
misses Annapolis, crab cakes, and Maryland
oysters; his mention of rum and coconut milk
leads us to believe he has found certain compensations.
Henry S. Shryock this past August attended
meetings of the International Statistical Institute in Vienna, and of the International Unl'on
for the Scientific Study of Population in
Liege. At the latter Henry contributed a paper,
"On Measurement of the Extent of Urbanization."
1935
On October 24th the Ted Levin Memorial
Scholarship Fund of Baltimore honored John
C. Donohue at its annual scholarship banquet.
Alumni present to share the evening with the
Donohue family included Bill Armacost '31,
Bill Athey '32, Fred Buck '39, Buzz Budacz
'39, Bunny Casassa '34, Cal Harrington '31,
Bruz Hoff '31, Johnny Lambros '38, Dutch
Lentz '18, Bob Miller '36, Tom Farran '42,
Julius Rosenberg '38, Tommy Smiti1 '38, and
Ernst von Sd1werdtner '17.
1938
At least in one small area ~'omen's Lib is
doing well: in September Julius Rosenberg was
made an honorary member of the all-female
�January 1974
Caritas Society of St. John's College. The
reason? Julius was one of the co-founde~s of the
Annapolis-area commlmity group whtch supports St. John's College.
1941
Lansdale Hill writes that he is the coauth~r of a book, Complete Guide of Sports
Statistics and Record Keeping, due to he published in January by Parker Press. Danny i~ a
partner in the public relations firm of Danen
and Hill in Santa Clara, Cal.
T
1943
Dr, Douglas Buchanan stopped in Annapolis
last August, on his way south with his family
on their 27-foot sloop. Doug plans to work
a year or two somewhere in the Caribbean
islands under the auspices of the University of
the \Vest Indies,
1946
Daniel S, Parker, chairman of the board of
the Parker Pen Co., in September was named
director of the Agency for International Development.
1954
Edward F. Bauer, an associate professor of
Gennan at Colorado College, is working toward
an M.A. degree in counseling at the University
of Colorado. Ed would like eventually to do
professional marital and family counseling, while
continuing his teaching.
1961
Linda (McConnell) Meriam tells us that she
teaches English and humanities at St. Norbert
College, de PCre, Wis., including a Great
Books course this fall.
1962
Maria (Fiascllberger) Hanneman m~d her
husband have returned from 2V2 years m Germany, and are living in Benton Harbor, Mich.,
where he teaches at Lake Michigan College.
1964
From Athens David R Jordan writes that
h~
is having a great time putting together an ~~
tion of the magical curse inscriptions found m
the Agora excavations. In December he was ~o
give a talk about the inscriptions in St. LoUis,
Mo., at the annual meetings of the Archeological Institute of America. David encourages
travelling St. Johnnies to visit him; the number
in Athens is 733-266.
Ann (von Isakovics) Poundstone sends all
sorts of interesting news: she graduated from
Georgetown University Law Center in June
with a Juris Doctor degree, and took and
passed the Virginia Bar eA:aminations that same
month; John '62 is now Chief, Epidemiology
and Biometrics, Navy Medical Research Unit
No. 4, Great Lakes Naval Station, Ill.; and
last, but by no means least, Ann and John announced the birth, on September 16th, of
Katherine Esther von Isakovics Poundstone.
Kitty and her parents now live in Mundelein,
Ill.
1965
Alenna (Duugan) Leonard is currently
working in the development department at
Federal City College in Washington, D.C.
One of the more recent recipients of an advanced degree is Daniel C. Schiff, who was
awarded the Ph.D. degree in philosophy by the
Pennsylvania State University last August.
1966
A Stevens Rubin, Captain, Army Medical
Corps, is now stationed at Fort Meyer, ya.,
after a 15-month tour in Korea. Steve writes,
"I am returning with the additional karma
provided by a fiancCe, Miss Kim Soung Ae."
1967
From Louisville, Ky., this fall came a most
cleverly-drawn announcement from Joy and
Clark Lobenstine, heralding ("You might call
it a doubleheader") the births, on August 15th,
of Jonathan Clark and Andrew. James Lobenstine. And a double congratulations to all the
Lobenstines from all of us.
1968
Sarah (Manire) Fox is now working at Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C., in the News
Bureau and Information and Publications Offices, and is also taking a course in short story
writing. Sarah's husband Don is in the Master
of Fine Arts program at the University of
North Carolina at Greensboro.
Ceorge Partlow, reoriented after his Peace
Corps stint, is working toward an M.Ed. degree at Johns Hopkins, and is teaching mathematics at Houston·Woods Junior-Senior High
School in Baltimore.
Jinna (MacLaurin) and Thomas Rie are the
proud parents of Andrew Ric, born October
14th.
Maureen Hellner and Dr. John D. Rosenberg, professor of English at Columbia University, were married last June 11th. The Rosenbergs live in Manhattan, where Maureen teaches
mathematics at the Spence SchooL
Steven Shore (SF) proved his athletic prowess by completing 41 of the 50 miles of the
John F. Kennedy Memorial Hike-Run in
Maryland last spring. His time was 12Vz
hours; next year Steve hopes to finish the course
within the 15-hour deadline.
Frederick L, Wicks (SF) is attending San
Francisco State University in advanced biology
and chemistry, and is applying to medical
schools. Last summer Rick, Antigone (Phal~Jies)
J\!Ioore (teaching m Albuquerque), and
Augusta Goldstein (teaching in Pomona, Cal.),
visited former Tutor Thomas Slakey at St.
Mary's College.
1969
David E. Rigg.~ is in Hampton, Va., tempo·
mrily, helping NASA set up a new computer
center operation in that area.
1970
Ronald H. Fielding is working as a financial
analyst with a small bank holding company in
Rochester, N.Y., and is taking courses at night
toward his M.B.A. degree.
Stephen J. Forman continues his fine record
at the University of Southern California Medical School: he was to have a research paper
published in the December ~nna1s of Internal
Medicine, has been accepted mto Alpha Omega
Alpha (medical academic honor society), ~nd
has been asked to join the American FederattOn
for Clinical Research. And this guy doesn't
receive his M.D. degree until next spring!
1971
Holly Carroll is now in her first year at Yale
Law SchooL
Peter V. Lobe11 and Miss Lucinda Anne
Jones of Severna Park, Mel., were married on
August 11th, with Peter's father, the Rev. John
J. Lobeii '46, officiating,
Susan J, Mackey is now a student at Georgetown University Medical SchooL
1972
Thomas Ascik has left his journalistic pur~
suits and is now in officer candidate training
at the Marine Corps Schools, Quantico, Va.
\Vord has reached us indirectly that Brooke
Harris is writing scripts for All In The Family
and other television shows.
Most sincere congratulations are due Navy
Ensign Dana E. Netherton for his successful
completion of Nuclear Power School; apparently few people believed a St. Johnny could
accomplish that feat. All we can say is don't
sell those liberal artists short!
From far-off Kabul, Afghanistan, came a
card from wandering Watson Fellow Cristel
M. Stevens. She was in Madras, India, until
last April, studying theater and dance, and after
her sojourn in Kabul, will return to her studies
in Madras in December.
1973
In September we learned that Deborah E.
Schifter is now living in Israel.
Eric 0. Springsted (SF) is now a student at
Princeton Theological Seminary in the Master
of Divinity program. His wife Marsha (Adams)
S7 5 works for a Princeton shop where she is
the "foremost turquoise jewelry authority" in
the town.
In Memoriam
1922-Albert L. Anderson, Annapolis,
Md., November 2, 1973.
1923-J. W. Barney Gilbert, Annapolis,
Md., October 18, 1973.
1933-Ernest K Krohn,
N.J., September 29, 1973.
Jr.,
Maywood,
�The College
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
Second-class postage paid at
Annapolis, Maryland, and a!
additional mailing offices.
�
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 College </em>(1969-1981)
Description
An account of the resource
St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>. <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981. <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
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
Santa Fe, NM
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
thecollegemagazine
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.
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
16 pages
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
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/.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Development Offices of St. John's College
Title
A name given to the resource
The College, January 1974
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1974-01
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
von Oppen, Beate Ruhm
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Dunham, William B.
Ham, Michael W.
Newland, Paul D.
Oosterhout, Barbara Brunner
Wyatt, E. Malcolm
Zelenka, Robert S.
Description
An account of the resource
Volume XXV, Number 4 of The College. Published in January 1974.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
The_College_Vol_25_No_4_1974
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
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
The College
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