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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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The friend
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An account of the resource
Transcript of an address given on May 16, 1998 by Peter Pesic as part of the Baccalaureate service in Santa Fe, NM.
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Pesic, Peter
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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1998-05-16
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text
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pdf
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Bible. New Testament
Christianity
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English
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24003356
Baccalaureate service
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Remarks at Retirement Dinner Celebration
Christopher B. Nelson
June 16, 2017
This whole affair and the celebratory events leading up to it have been rather overwhelming for me, and I
want to thank all of you for the honor of your presence here this evening. I see friends from my
engagement in every kind of activity associated with the life of this College: from those colleagues who
teach and work with me at St. John's, to members of our governing board, current and former leaders of
our Alumni Association, alumni from all over, including classmates from my class of 1970, parents of
students who graduated from the College in the last few decades, friends from town, leaders of our
Caritas Society, Friends' Board, and the Mitchell Gallery Board, and supporters of our community's
Historic Annapolis Foundation, Opera, Symphony, and Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts, colleagues
from other colleges and leadership from our national and statewide presidential associations. What a
strong, loving community you make! How could I not be happy having been a part of something so farreaching and magnificent?!
My thanks to all for your support of our financial aid program for students, to which you have contributed
by joining us this evening! Also to those of you who have addressed us this evening. I do not deserve
such friends but am certainly the happier for having them.
- To Ron Fielding, my thanks for your friendship from our early days at St. John’s College
some 50 years ago, for your leadership of our Board, and for the board’s confidence in and
support of the College’s future as exemplified in the capital campaign now underway, chaired
by Warren Spector. I’d like to recognize four former board chairs among us: Chuck Nelson,
Steve Feinberg, Greg Curtis, and Sharon Bishop. I add my deep thanks to them and to all of
the members of the Board of Visitors and Governors for the privilege of service these many
years and for their devotion to the College and its distinctive Program of Instruction. Perhaps,
I should recognize one further former board member, Brownie Anderson, who chaired the
presidential search committee who reached out to me in 1990;
- To Mark Roosevelt for his leadership and support of the College as a whole on both of our
campuses; also for his help in our presidential transition. To this I add my warmest welcome to
our incoming president, Pano Kanelos, now about to take the reins in Annapolis. Pano, for
those who have not met you, would you stand and wave a hand so that others can find their
way to greeting you on their own?
- To Joe Macfarland for his very fine assumption of the duties of the deanship during this period
of transition and for his helpful advice throughout the year. I cannot have said enough over the
years about the virtue of our Polity in articulating carefully and reasonably the respective
responsibilities of the deans and presidents to ensure the security of our Program of Study.
And I see that we have among us this evening all of the deans with whom I have served on this
campus, each of whom made my service at the College better for their care and advice: Eva
Brann, Harvey Flaumenhaft, Michael Dink, Pamela Kraus, and now Joe Macfarland. Thank
you all! And thanks to their Santa Fe counterparts over the years, now represented in the
person of Matt Davis, dean in Santa Fe, and his immediate predecessor, Ned Walpin, who is
with us today;
�- To our fellow officers, all of whom have come to the College recently and have worked hard
and successfully to integrate themselves into our governing structure on both campuses: Joe
Smolskis, Mike Duran, Laurie Reinhardt, and Phelosha Collaros; and two of their predecessors
here this evening with whom I worked happily for some two decades before their retirement:
Barbara Goyette and Bud Billups. Most of you knew Jeff Bishop when he was a part of the
leadership team; his widow, Sue, and daughter, March, are with us this evening;
- To the faculty and staff, without whom we would be a mere shell of ourselves. No group of
individuals has given more, or more sacrificially, to the happiness and success of this College
than those who serve it day in and day out, those who give of themselves to educate and
support our students in countless ways;
- To Adrian Trevisan, president of our alumni association, his incoming successor, Tia Pausic,
and their presidential predecessors who are also here: Frank Atwell, who flew in from Hawaii,
Allan Hoffman, Sharon Bishop, Glenda Eoyang, and Phelosha Collaros;
- To Don Nicholson, president of the Friends of St. John’s College, and to Anna Greenberg, Jim
Cheevers and Dennis Younger for the past leadership of the Caritas Society and Mitchell
Gallery Board;
- To David Warren and Tina Bjarekull, the superb heads of our national and statewide
independent higher education associations, and to Beth Garraway, the former head of the
Maryland Association. What a pleasure it has been to work with each of you!
- And to my Executive Assistant, Ashleigh Cadmus, whose cheerful manner, ready willingness
to help in anything asked of her, and whose professionalism I could not have done without.
Then there are three of my classmates who started St. John’s with me 51 years ago: Steve Forman, Susan
Lobell and Ron Fielding. One has a sense of continuity and comfort from, and especially a gratitude for,
such long-term friendships. Thank you for being here!
My father is here this evening. To him and my mother I owe the gift of life and an exposure to a St. John's
education. He introduced me early on to Homer, Euclid, Sophocles, Plato and more. But he also led
Sunday evening seminars at our home on Program readings when I was in high school. There I got my
first taste for a way of learning that allowed each of us in these seminars to make our education our own,
while at the same time helping our fellow learners come to their own learning as well.
Some 22 members of the Nelson clan are with us this evening including all of my siblings, four of our
children and a few nieces and in-laws - some 10 of whom are alumni of the College on one campus or the
other. Even three of our sixteen grandchildren are here to enjoy the festivities: Kinan, Xavier, and Anders.
I thank all of you for coming such great distances to be with Joyce and me this weekend.
There are two more people who deserve special mention this evening. Ken Upton of Ken's Creative
Kitchen has catered this affair. As always, the setting, the tables and presentation are beautiful and
flawless, and the food and wine chosen by him delicious and memorable. Ken and his wife Doran have
been generous, contributing members of this College community. Besides, I've loved him as a friend for
some 25 years now. He and his team have made it easy and a pure pleasure for Joyce and me to entertain
the College's many friends, alumni, faculty and staff over the years, supplementing the fine service of our
in-house catering firm, Bon Apetit.
�And finally there is Joyce! She has asked me to thank you on her own behalf as well, but I know of no
more selfless and generous a person than Joyce, who has given of herself to the College, to its many
friends, to the entertainment needs of the office, to the College’s gardens at home and on campus, to the
many students she has befriended and supported in times of their need, and to the community of
Annapolis and its many cultural and artistic institutions. At her request, Nay, at her insistence, I have
never but once publicly acknowledged her contributions over these 26 years, but now I must break with
her and thank her for her service to the College and for her steadfast support of me. In her retirement from
her own busy career as an attorney for the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, Joyce is now
pursuing a Masters’ Degree in the Graduate Institute, securing her position as a permanent member of the
College community. I could never have served these 26 years without her support and her quick, sober,
and most practical advice, usually counseling a certain kind of restraint that does not come naturally to
me. Joyce, my thanks - with my love.
It is time to turn the attention of us all to our proper object - the College itself. I'd like to do this by
proposing a concluding toast. As many of you know, it is a tradition at the College for the dean to give a
closing toast each year to our graduating seniors at the final dinner held in their honor. It is a toast to the
four republics by which we live and to which we belong. This evening, I'd like to offer a version of this
Toast to the Republics. Former deans in the room will recognize how shamelessly I have borrowed bits
and pieces of this from some of their own. But there it is then. We don't call this a 'community' of learning
for nothing. So --We drink first to the Republic of Letters.
These are the books and authors who have befriended our students and faculty over the course of
their studies at the College. They have spanned several civilizations and a few centuries. The
older works have survived the test of time because they are fundamental to understanding our
humanity; they are the building blocks and cornerstones of our edifices in the humanities, arts and
sciences. The newer ones test our ability to think afresh with each generation about the turns of
thought and discoveries that have been made that will cast a new light upon those deeply human
questions: What is this world I have been born into? What is my place within it? And what am I
meant to do with the life I have been given?
This Republic is a beckoning republic, welcoming every would-be immigrant who is fleeing
narrow-mindedness and willing to engage in serious dialogue across all sorts of boundaries:
disciplinary, national, cultural, and religious.
The second of my toasts is to The Republic of Plato.
This is the indispensable text that sets forth the plan of study for what we call the "Program" at St.
John's College. It provides the model of a liberal education at work. It teaches us both what it
might mean to be enslaved in our own personal caves and how we might climb out of those caves
into the light of the sun, freeing ourselves (with a little help) from the shadows below. This book
articulates the problem of what it means to be a republic, one that must support a kind of
dialectical interplay between the private good and the common good – perhaps even a tension
between the two that cannot ever quite be reconciled.
My third toast is to the Republic of the United States of America, whose foundation in freedom
grounded in law, has made it possible for this College, dedicated to cultivating the arts of
freedom, the liberal arts, to thrive since before the formal founding of this nation.
We owe this republic a debt of gratitude for our very freedom to think and speak critically about
it. We may not owe it our love, but surely many of us do love it for the freedom we enjoy to
�express our individual hopes and dreams, and then to find paths open to us to achieve those
dreams alongside others who see this as the common heritage of us all who belong to this country
of ours.
We drink fourth to this tiny Republic of St. John's College, grown huge by the company of its
many alumni and friends, as evidenced by your fellowship this evening. But it is also in this
republic where we have established a community of learning, in which our students have come to
realize that the conversation and inquiry among fellow learners are a shared experience and a
genuine common good - a good that has impressed itself deeply upon me.
This last reflection then brings me to a fifth and final toast.
This is a toast to that republic laid up high in our imagination, that aboriginal idea of community,
the image in us of a pattern of friendship in its highest and most liberal form, best expressed in
the closing lines of Plato’s Phaedrus. That dialogue embraces a conversation between Socrates
and his friend Phaedrus in which they explore how one might achieve harmony and balance in the
soul by directing the soul to the beautiful. Socrates concludes with a prayer to the gods:
“Friend Pan and however many other gods are here, grant me to be beautiful with respect to the
things within. And as to whatever things I have outside, grant that they be friendly to the things
inside me. May I believe the wise man to be rich! May I have as big a mass of gold as no one
other than a moderate man of sound mind could bear or bring along!”
Socrates then asks:
“Do we still need something else, Phaedrus? For I think I’ve prayed in a measured fashion.”
To which Phaedrus responds:
“And pray also for me. For what friends have, they have in common.”
This is a beautiful reflection that acknowledges that what we have in common are the things of
the intellect and of the heart that do not grow weaker for having been given away, but grow
stronger for having been shared and held in common by us as well.
It is the project of all of us in higher education who care about our students that we give them the
tools they require to struggle with the questions in life that will help to free them to make lives
worth living. It will be our friends - including everyone in this room - who will today and
tomorrow stand ready to give their love, encouragement and support to this generation of students
and each succeeding one in order that they may enter the world beyond this College and continue
to share in this gloriously human project that we call a liberal education.
Let us raise our glasses and drink to the five republics to which we belong and by which we live.
I thank each of you for your support of St. John’s College and for being with us this evening.
Thank you one and all.
�
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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Remarks at Retirement Dinner Celebration.
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Remarks given by Chris Nelson on June 16, 2017 at his Retirement Dinner Celebration.
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Nelson, Christopher B.
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Annapolis, MD
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2017-06-17
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Remarks at Retirement Dinner June 16 2017 (Nelson)
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“Fit for the World”
Commencement Address, May 2017
St. John’s College in Santa Fe
Christopher B. Nelson
My congratulations to all of you seniors and students in the Graduate Institute, and
congratulations to your families and loved ones, who have seen you through these years of joy
and challenge.
Thank you for the honor of the invitation to address you today. Once again a beautiful day in
Santa Fe! I have often spoken to my friends of the wonder of this College, which enjoys 365
days of perfect weather; Santa Fe has 363 of them, and Annapolis has all the rest.
I love returning to my second home here on this campus, where I walked across the platform to
receive my diploma some 47 years ago, back in the days before Weigle Hall was built, when
Camino Cruz Blanca was a dirt road, and when the Graduate Institute was born. But it was in
the year of my graduation when a book was published that ended on a note that has troubled
me for all these years. It is time I came to terms with it.
I am speaking of a comment made by Scott Buchanan in a series of interviews he had with his
old friend Harris Wofford that were collected in a book entitled Embers of the World:
Conversations with Scott Buchanan. Most of you know that Buchanan was the principal
architect of the New Program of study brought to St. John's College in 1937. We are talking prehistory for us on the Western Campus of the College. That New Program, back when Buchanan
was dean, was in large measure much like the program we enjoy today on both of our
campuses.
The book closes with a comment by Buchanan that has bothered me since I first read it some 45
years ago. It was this: "We used to say at St. John's that we were preparing people to be misfits,
and we meant that in a very broad sense. Perhaps misfits in the universe for the time being."
I can imagine that if I were to affirm that statement without explanation and close these
remarks now, some of you would demand a refund of your tuition. So, you can understand why
I have been restless for all these years, wondering at Buchanan’s remark while serving as one of
this College’s presidents. At long last, I thought I ought at least to make an effort to understand
why Buchanan said this, what he meant by it, and whether I thought it was true, for your sake
as well as my own.
The Case for the Misfit
Why might it be a positive good that the College should be preparing you to be “misfits” in the
world?
�Consider, for example, the place of a misfit in a world characterized by conflict, where change is
sought through violence alone, where rhetorical force is laced with fear-mongering or hatred.
Such a misfit might bring reason to bear on the rancor, and imagination to the resolution of
conflict.
Or consider a world that is so conventional that people rarely contribute anything original or
inventive …. where so little of our natural human capacity, and none of our imagination, is
exercised! What kind of world would it be if everyone acted as though they had the answers to
life and no one had any questions of it?
What is the place of a misfit in a world that is out of joint? Or a world that has reduced all value
to an economic metaphor? Where everything has a price and nothing is priceless? Where the
end of life is service to the global economy? And the end of education is simply to fit one for
the marketplace!
What is the place of a misfit in a world governed by one rule only: that it’s what we can get for
ourselves that counts, a world that does not accept that it is in our nature to do good for one
another?
Many of you will recognize those worlds or will imagine that all of these descriptions
characterize aspects of the world we live in. The world is hardly perfect; a misfit may be what it
needs from time to time to get it on a better path. Perhaps when Buchanan spoke of preparing
“misfits in the universe for the time being,” he meant that misfits entering the world today
could help shape the world of tomorrow, one that would be a better fit for the imaginative,
reform-minded individual.
Question: Why is Socrates so beloved of many of us at St. John’s? Is it because he was a misfit in
the world of Athens? Recall his argument for the defense in Plato’s Apology:
“I was attached to this city by the god – though it seems a
ridiculous thing to say – as upon a great and noble horse
which was somewhat sluggish because of its size and needed
to be stirred by a kind of gadfly. It is to fulfill some such
function that I believe the god has placed me in the city. I
never cease to rouse each and every one of you, to persuade
and reproach you all day long and everywhere I find myself
in your company.”
Socrates even likened himself to Achilles, who despised death rather than shirk his
responsibility to avenge his friend and live the life of a coward ever after. If Socrates is a kind of
hero to many of us, dare we ask whether we are prepared to be the gadfly he claimed to be and
run the risks he ran? It is a lot of trouble to speak truth to power, and it takes courage.
�Recall Antigone, a heroine to many! Are we prepared to make the sacrifice she made for her
defense of community mores that were out of favor in a kingdom itself out of joint?
Are these the kinds of misfits Buchanan was talking about? Are these sacrifices to be expected
of you? You want to be a doctor or lawyer, a soldier or farmer, a writer or painter, a scientist or
engineer, a teacher or librarian. You are attracted to politics, or investment banking, or the
revolution in technology. These are all fitting occupations in our world, all useful to it. Was
Buchanan speaking of you when he said what he did? What should distinguish you from others
in the worlds you are entering when you leave here?
When Buchanan made his remark about misfits in the universe, he seemed to have used it as a
punctuation to his reflection on the fate of tragic heroes. He understood that people generally
identify tragedy with calamity or death, but he thought that these were merely accidental to
the real point: that tragedy is about blindness and recognition, what the hero or heroine has
learned from some misfortune, like Oedipus recognizing who he is - his father's killer, his
mother's husband, and his children's brother - and then destroying his offending eyes that were
useless to his recognition of himself as the source of the pollution in Thebes!
This may be why we sometimes call such a protagonist a "tragic hero," someone "willing to pay
the price for a certain kind of integrity and rationality and honesty...," Buchanan would say. He
even went so far as to say that "happiness would be the life of a hero...who's willing to pay the
price" for that integrity for he will have "maintained his soul." Such happiness can extract a high
price, sometimes beyond the breaking point, he acknowledged. (Of course, the tragic hero may
also come to recognize his blindness without enjoying the happiness that might have followed.
Recall Othello, confronting his green-eyed monster; or Lear, his blindness to a daughter’s love.)
Ask yourselves: Is this what you have been up to at St. John’s College: stretching your
imagination, confronting your blindness and ignorance, and coming to some recognition,
however tentative, of who you are in all your imperfection, what propels you to go where you
must, what calls you to do what you will, what gives each of you a singular soul, what makes
you whole?
Do you recognize that you have sometimes been brought to a breaking point, when it hurt you
to accept your blindness of something or someone, or when you heard a voice within you that
you hardly recognized confront you with a truth you wished you could deny but could not? Are
you prepared to keep asking these questions when you leave here, alive to the learning now
begun? Do you have the courage to maintain your integrity in a world that may often seem not
to care for what you think or who you are? Will you continue this search for an understanding
of yourself and your world while engaged in the career you may choose to pursue, even if you
should confront an uncomfortable truth about the work you are doing?
�The Case for the World
I recognize that in trying to make a good home for our misfit, I may have come down pretty
hard on the world, blaming it for our woes, setting up heroes and heroines to confront it. I now
would ask you to look again at that world.
In your four years at the College, you have been asking as many questions of your world as you
have of yourselves. You have studied the heavens above and the earth below, the movement of
planets and the elements of matter, the conception and growth of living things and the relation
of their parts to their wholes, the laws of nature (such as they are) and the forces at work in the
world - even spooky action at a distance.
In the world of human affairs, you have studied political, societal, religious, psychological,
historical, economic, and ethical forces that have more or less shaped the societies we live in …
or vice versa. These forces may seem more capricious than those you have studied in the
laboratory, but they have nonetheless influenced the world you will be living in, the world that
belongs to you as much as you belong to it.
The mysteries of the human heart, and of the soul within you, are every bit as wondrous as the
mysteries of the political and the natural worlds. And so you have asked questions of the world,
in part because it is your nature to wish to know, in part because you wish to know your place
within that world, and in part, I dare say, because it is your world and you are bent on loving it
as you love yourselves. It will be your love of the world that will bridge the divide between you
and it.
Your world needs you; it needs your desire to understand it, your openness to what it has to
teach you, your acceptance of its imperfections, and your sincere wish and best efforts to be
useful to it because you care for it as it has cared for you, however unconscious that care may
have been.
The Case for the Hero in the World
Once again, consider Socrates and how he put the case in his own defense: that he was a gift of
the god, and that he was attached “as upon a great and noble horse” that needed to be stirred.
That great and noble horse was the City of Athens, the world’s first democracy of any sort, the
city that reared and educated the man, the city that Socrates so loved he would not trade a
death sentence in Athens for life in any other city. This was Socrates’s world. He saw his service
as a gadfly to be a divine gift, a gift of love for his world in the hope that he could help Athens
recognize the corruption within it, correct its course and recover its integrity. How different is
Socrates’s world from ours?
In her essay When I was a Child I Read Books, Marilynne Robinson located the American
Western hero on the frontier, something she called “neither a place nor a thing.” Such a hero
could perhaps be located someplace in the imagination, on a frontier of society, a frontier of
�science, a frontier of medicine or law or technology or any other discipline you might commit
yourselves to. The frontier might be on the edge of a habitable wilderness, at a town hall
meeting, in the workplace, or even within the warmth of a household. These frontiers will
always remain open.
Robinson described the archetypal hero or heroine as sometimes a visionary, sometimes a
critic, sometimes a rescuer or an avenger, expressing discontent with the status quo and a
willingness, perhaps even a calling, to seek change, always with a positive interest in the good
of society. But she added something more, a reflection on the beauty of human society:
“Rousseau said men are born free, yet everywhere they are in chains. Since the time of the
Hebrew prophets it has been the role of the outsider to loosen those chains, or lengthen them,
if only by bringing the rumor of a life lived otherwise.”
The Allegory of the Cave in Plato’s Republic reminds us that we need help to break the chains
that have kept us staring comfortably at the mere shadows of things; that we need to be turned
around to face the reality that has been hidden from us; that we need to be dragged up the
rocky slope and out into the light of the sun where we can see the extraordinary beauty of the
world of things as they are; and that the journey up is a painful one. We realize how
exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, it must be to make this journey to understanding alone.
We need that “outsider” to shake us up and help us free ourselves to make lives worthy of our
humanity.
The Case for Your Education
This image of the lone individual in society should be a familiar one. Consider the paradox you
face every day in your education at our College: the learning you each come to enjoy is yours
alone, but you pursue it in the company of others. You make from the bits and pieces that you
have read, heard, and thought through, something entirely new that belongs to you alone. And
yet, you have needed others around you, helping you with your discoveries of the world,
helping you uncover unsettling truths about yourselves, and opening fruitful paths to your
learning.
Nonetheless, what you have learned you have freely learned (it is your learning, not a learned
professor’s or someone else’s.) That freedom has helped you develop an adaptable mind,
equally open to tradition and to progress, one that gives you practice in the art of inquiry, in
asking the questions the human race has asked since mankind first began to speak. They are
questions arising from the depths of wonder; questions revealing the vast extent of your
ignorance about the world and about yourselves; questions demonstrating a startling truth:
that your ignorance is the source of your greatest strength. For it is ignorance, not knowledge,
that will propel you forward. It generates the desire to know, which draws you expectantly into
the unknown.
This humility of the intellect is actually a powerful force. We often call it wisdom, and it is one
of the things the world needs: a good understanding of how to develop and where to direct our
�desire to know and our desire to be better women and men. This generative force is also
something your professions will need, something your co-workers and neighbors will need and
hopefully appreciate, and something your children will need to live well in the world they will
one day inherit.
You are fit to enter the world, having had four years of practice in the art of recognition without
having to pay the price of an Oedipus or an Antigone or an Othello or a Lear. You have had this
practice within the confines of a relatively safe classroom and among friends who have helped
you recognize what you don’t know and what you still need to learn to grapple with what the
world will throw at you. These friends - the books and the natural objects of your study, your
tutors, and your classmates – these friends have helped you understand both the limitations of
your reach and the possibilities open to you. They have freed you from conventional thinking,
freed you to doubt what you have been taught about the world, and thus freed you to imagine
a world different from the one you find yourselves in and the possibility of a future that you
may lay claim to one day, a future you may even help to shape.
This mention of the power of the imagination reminds me of a story that may shed some light
on what Buchanan might have had in mind when he said we were making misfits in the
universe. Stringfellow Barr, president of St. John’s when Buchanan was dean, said this of his
friend: “The difference between Scott and me was that when I see a baby, I’m enchanted with
him; and Scott is always feeling, ‘Well, that’s not the baby I had in mind. Babies ought to do
better than that.’ All human enterprises, including birth, seem to him a little disappointing. He’s
a Platonist in the sense he’s got some notion of the baby in the back of his mind that no baby
lives up to, whereas to me it’s such a miracle the little brat is alive – so what, if he has defects.
His ears stick out and he’s cross-eyed, certainly, but he’s alive.” Barr was talking then about the
birth of the St. John’s Program, but his observations about Buchanan – about Buchanan as a
kind of Socrates – these observations may help us understand how Buchanan saw the world in
general, and that only misfits were well fit to recognize the world as it is and the world as it is
meant to be … and then to make the effort to do something to close the gap between the two.
It is now your turn to take the gift of your education out into the world, which needs the open,
thoughtful, loving stewards, critics, and visionaries you are capable of being. May you fare well
and find happiness in this endeavor!
Thank you!
�
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Identifier
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speechespresentationsotherlectures
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Word doc
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
6 pages
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Fit for the world
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of the commencement address given on May 20, 2017 by Christopher Nelson in Santa Fe, NM.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Nelson, Christopher B.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Date
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2017-05-20
Rights
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St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
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text
Format
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pdf
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
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Nelson, C. Commencement 05-2017
Commencement
Presidents
Santa Fe
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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
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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
speechespresentationsotherlectures
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
audio cassette tape
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:44:35
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Reminiscences of Scott Buchanan
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a discussion entitled "Reminiscences of Scott Buchanan" circa 1973; with Nicholas Nabokov, Ford K. Brown, Simon Kaplan, John Kieffer, Jacob Klein, J. Winfree Smith, W. Kyle Smith, and Miriam Strange.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Nabokov, Nicolas, 1903-1978
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1973
Rights
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Buchanan, Scott Milross, 1895-1968
Brown, Ford Keeler
Kaplan, Simon, 1893-1979
Kieffer, John Spangler
Klein, Jacob, 1899-1978
Smith, J. Winfree
Stange, Miriam
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
lec Nabokov et al 1973
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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
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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
speechespresentationsotherlectures
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
mp3
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:45:53
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
A Conversation with Andrea Mitchell and Judy Woodruff
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a conversation between Andrea Mitchell and Judy Woodruff held on March 18, 2018. This is part of the Great Conversations series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Mitchell, Andrea
Woodruff, Judy
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-03-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College has been given permission to post this online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Relation
A related resource
<a href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/great-conversations" title="Event information" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Event information on SJC Website</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
GreatConversations3-18-18
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Wolf, Mary
Great Conversations
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1b9783e1587090c75a2485aa0540ef51
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
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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
speechespresentationsotherlectures
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:30:32
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Enduring Relevance of Thucydides’ <em>Peloponnesian War</em>
Description
An account of the resource
Video recording of a lecture delivered on April 6, 2022, by Jeffrey R. Macris as part of the LCDR Erik S. Kristensen Lecture Series. <br /><br />Twenty-four centuries ago the ancient Greek world erupted in a fratricidal war that pitted Athens and its allies versus Sparta and theirs. Exiled by his Athenian peers, the general Thucydides penned a history of the Peloponnesian War that drew upon eyewitness accounts and objective evidence. His quest to seek an objective truth, free from bias or national hyperbole, has earned for him the title of “father of scientific history.” Dr. Macris’ lecture, entitled “The Enduring Relevance of Thucydides’ <em>Peloponnesian War</em>,” explores why students of history, international affairs, and war still debate and find meaning in his work today. <br /><br />Dr. Macris is the Deputy Director of the Naval Academy’ Stockdale Center. Previously he was a Presidential Visiting Fellow at Yale University as well as a professor in the Naval Academy’s History Department where he earned the 2016 Military Professor of the Year Award. He has published several academic articles as well as two books on the Great Powers of the Middle East. <br /><br />The lecture is part of a joint lectures series between St. John's College and the U.S. Naval Academy to honor the memory of Lieutenant Commander Erik S. Kristensen. An alumnus of the United States Naval Academy and the St. John's College Graduate Institute, Kristensen, a Navy SEAL, was killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan in 2005. This lecture series aims to create even greater ties between the two schools, as well as to educate the public about civil-military relations and the place of the liberal arts in the education of naval and military professionals.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Macris, Jeffrey R.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-04-06
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John’s College permission to make a recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John’s College Greenfield Library. To make a recording of my lecture available online."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
moving image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp4
Subject
The topic of the resource
Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War--Influence
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Macfarland, Joseph C.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LEC_Macris_Jeffrey_2022-04-06
Kristensen lecture series
U.S. Naval Academy
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PDF Text
Text
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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
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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
speechespresentationsotherlectures
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
10 pages
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
From the virtual to the actual : the painful prospect of liberal education
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of the Graduate Institute convocation address given on June 18, 2000 by David Levine in Santa Fe, NM.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Levine, David Lawrence
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2000-06-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Subject
The topic of the resource
Education, Humanistic
Learning and scholarship
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
24003176
Convocation
Graduate Institute
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PDF Text
Text
������������
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
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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
speechespresentationsotherlectures
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
12 pages
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
A world of worldless truths, an invitation to philosophy
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of the Graduate Institute convocation address given on June 20, 1999 by David Levine in Santa Fe, NM.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Levine, David Lawrence
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1999-06-20
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Subject
The topic of the resource
Philosophy
Learning and scholarship
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
24003175
Convocation
Graduate Institute
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PDF Text
Text
��������
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
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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
speechespresentationsotherlectures
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
8 pages
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Hand-me-downs : or the traditionalization of thought
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of the Graduate Institute convocation address given on June 14, 1998 by David Levine in Santa Fe, NM.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Levine, David Lawrence
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1998-06-14
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Subject
The topic of the resource
Learning and scholarship
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
24003174
Convocation
Graduate Institute
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PDF Text
Text
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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
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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
speechespresentationsotherlectures
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
6 pages
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
You too have read Newton!
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of the commencement address given on May 20, 2006 by David Levine in Santa Fe, NM.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Levine, David Lawrence
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2006-05-20
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Subject
The topic of the resource
Education, Higher
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
24003171
Commencement
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PDF Text
Text
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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
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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
speechespresentationsotherlectures
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
5 pages
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
"I hate books" or making room for learning
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of the Graduate Institute convocation address given on June 15, 1997 by David Levine in Santa Fe, NM.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Levine, David Lawrence
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1997-06-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Subject
The topic of the resource
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778. Emile.
Education
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
24000406
Convocation
Graduate Institute
-
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A DISCOURSE
ON
Published at the request of the Society of the Alumni, and the Faculty
of St. John's College.
-OFFICE OF THEMARYLAND GAZETTE,
J . GREEN, PRINT.
1827.
ANNAPOLIS.
�A DISCOURSE
ON
EDUCATION,
Delivered in St . Anne's Church Annapolis, after the
Commencement of St. John's College
FEBRUARY
22d, 1827.
BY FRANCIS S. KEY, ESQ.
ALUMNUS
OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE.
Published at the request of the Society of the Alumni, and the Faculty
of St. John'1 College.
-OFFICE OF THE MARYLAND GAZETTE,
J. GREEN, PRINT,
1827.
ANNAPOLIS.
�As St. John's College dedicates a new auditorium as a memorial to
Francis Scott Key, patriot, attorney, and educator, it seems right
to reprint his famous address of 1827. Key's concern for education
is our concern for education: real security for a democracy originates
in its liberally educated citizens. Men who can think rationally and
imaginatively, who can write and speak clearly and effectively, and
who can choose with wisdom are the best guarantee for a nation's
future. They must supply the broad perception of executive leadership, the continuing critical appraisal of developing institutions, the
personal initiative for bold enterprise, and the constant responsiveness to social obligations.
Education once equipped free men of this type to establish the
principles upon which our society and government are founded.
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United
States document their genius.
St. John's College since 1937 has been embarked upon a new
curriculum which is the modern equivalent of the education which
the Founding Fathers of this Republic received. Through direct
contact with the great minds of Western civilization and through
rigorous exercises in language, mathematics, music and laboratory
sciences, St. John's College is seeking to develop free and rational
men with understanding of the basic unity of knowledge, appreciation of our common cultural heritage, and consciousness of obligations, social and moral.
To educate a man is an immensely difficult and frustrating task.
There is no guarantee that a college will succeed. It has no other
choice but to try. Key recognized the College's tremendous responsibility when he said that it must "make man master of himself through life". To achieve this end he proposed that a student
be "made familiar with the sages and heroes of antiquity, to catch
the inspiration of their genius and their virtue, and the great and
the good of every age and of every land are to be made his associates,
his instructors, his examples". This is what St. John's College seeks
to do.
D. WEIGLE
President, St. John's College
RICHARD
�ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE.
--
Annapolis, Feb. 22, 1827.
At a meeting of the Alumni, the Faculty, and Visitors
and Governors of St. John's College, held this day at St.
Anne's Church, in this City, the following proceedings took
place.
JOHN C. HERBERT, Esq. was appointed Chairman.
GEORGE SHAW, Secretary.
On motion, the following gentlemen, viz. A. C. Magruder, F. S. Key, and James Murray, Esquires, wereappomted
by the Chairman a committee, to prepare a Constitution for
the organization of a Society of the Alumni of St. John's
College. The meeting then adjourned, to convene at 7
o'clock this evening, at the City Hall.
FEBRUARY 22, 1827.-7 o'clock, P. M.
The meeting convened, according to adjournment. Mr.
Magruder, from the committee, reported the following Constitution, which was unanimously adopted:
Constitution of the Alumni of St. John's College.
1st. This Society shall be composed of the Faculty, the
Visitors and Governors, and the Alumni of St. John's College.
2d. The Officers of the Society shall be a President, two
Vice-Presidents, and a Secretary, to be appointed by the
Society at each annual meeting.
3d. There shall be a meeting of the Society annually, to
take place in the City of Annapolis, on the second Monday
in January, at which time one of the Alumni shall deliver
an Oration. The Society shall appoint the person who is
to deliver the same; and in case the person so appointed
should be unable to attend the next meeting, the President
is required to select another of the Alumni for the purpose.
4th. A committee to consist of nine of the Alumni, shall
be appointed at each annual meeting, and whose especial
duty it shall be to promote the interests of St. John's College.
5th. The Committee may make provision for the admission of Honorary Members.
.)
The Meeting then proceeded to the choice of the Officers, agreeably to the second article of the Constitution,
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when the following gentlemen were unanimously elected:
JOHN C. HERBERT, of Prince-George's county, President
ROBERT H. GOLDSBOROUGH, Talbot
of
county, first Vice
President.
RICHARD HARWOOD, of Thos. of Annapolis, second Vice
President.
GEORGE SHAW, of Annapolis, Secretary.
The Society being organized by the appointment of its
Officers, proceeded agreeably to the third article of the
constitution, to the appointment of one of the Alumm, to
deliver an Oration on the second Monday of January next,
when John C. Herbert, Esq. was unanimously appointed
to perform this duty.
The following gentlemen were then appointed :i, Committee, agreeably to the 4th article of the Constitution.
DR. DENNIS CLAUDE,
A. C. MAGRUDER,
JAMES BOYLE,
ALEXANDER RANDALL,
THOMAS s. ALEXANDER,
JAMES MURRAY,
JOHN N. w ATKINS,
THOMAS H. CARROLL,
DR. JOHN RIDOUT
The following .Resolution was adopted by the Society.
Resolved unanimously, That the thanks of this Association be presented to Francis S. Key, Esq. for the very
able and eloquent Oration, delivered by him this day, to
the Alumni of St. John's College, and that he be requested
to furnish the Principal of St. John's College, with a copy
thereof, for publication.
GEORGE SHAW, Secretary.
A DISCOURSE, &c.
THE Gentlemen who preside over the institution, whose
interesting exercises we have witnessed, have wished to
avail themselves of this occasion to lay its claims before the
public, and to call upon their fellow-citizens to join them
in the great object which they are labouring to promote.
In their behalf, and to fulfil this wish, I appear before
you-teeling myself honoured by such a request, ar.d
bound to endeavour to obey it. For, however excusable
I might have thought myself in declining the delivery ot
the usual address on such occasions, and leaving the claims
of learning to other advocates more indebted for its advantages, and more able to display them, yet a call from
this institution to appear in its behalf, and to plead its
cause, was not.to be resisted.
If gratitude for the richest of all earthly blessings, in the
culture and discipline of my earliest and happiest years; if
an ardent desire to see this venerable seat of learning restored to her former splendour, and dispensing these blessings to the rising generation of Maryland, the future ornaments and pillars of the state; if any degree of this gratitude, and this desire, could impart the ability to perform
what they forbid ·me to decline, then should I appear before
you with no other feelings than those of confidence and exultation--then should I be such an advocate as such a
cause deserves-then could I even trust .to the inspiration
of the moment, and of the scene now before me. If I shall
be found to have undertaken what I may not be enabled to
execute, the impulse that has prompted my obedience will
be my excuse.
It is my purpose to make a plain, and (if I can) a strong
appeal to the understandings of my hearers; to set befcre
them an object of great interest and high duty; and to enforce
its obligations by every motive that should influence them
as men and citizens.
We have the happiness of living under a free government, where, whatsoever the community wills, is to be
done. That it may choose what it shall will, it m ust be
informed; and the subjects that arise are therefore, on all
fit occasions, to be proposed to the people that they may
consider and determine them. We live also in an age of
great improvement. A spirit of enquiry and enterprize is
awakened-Hence subjects new to the public mind, or new
views of subjects, will continua1ly occur, as long as enterprize excites, or experience teaches.
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I have before me an audience composed of citizens of
Maryland forming, in point of numbers, and perhaps also
of influence, but a small proportion of the community to
which they'belong. I appear with no pretensions of my
own to claim any consideration for what I may propose to
them. But I appear in behalf of those who do deserve
that any proposition, they may wish to have submitted to
their fellow-citizens, should be respectfully considered;
and above all the proposition itself deserves such consideration.
If my hearers were less considerable in point of numbers and influence than they are, yet, if they shall favourably receive what I may propose, and shall make it (as they
will do if they so receive it,) their care to excite a common
interest in behalf of a common object, the public mind will
be informed, and the public will, will be pronounced in its
favour.
I have therefore to invite your attention to a subject,
which, if you will consider it, will speak for itself. It is,
as you may suppose from the occasion, the subject of Education.
I mean to shew that the public mind should have higher
views than the public voice has yet expressed upon this
subject; that it is the duty of the state to do more, in this
respect, for the happiness of its people, and its own honour
and interest, than it has done. I mean to speak freely, as
becomes him who speaks to freemen.
A government administered for the benefit of all, should
provide all practicable means of happiness for all. It must
also provide useful citizens competent to the discharge of
the various services the public interests may require. Education confers happiness, and usefulness, and therefore demands attention. No maxim is more readily admitted than,
that a wise and free government should provide for theeducation of its citizens; but the maxim seems not to be admitted to its just extent. A state affords to the poor or labouring class of its population the means of obtaining a
common education, such an one as prepares them for the
ordinary duties of their situation, and of which alone they
oan generally avail themselves, who can give but a small
portion of their time, and none of their means, to such pur-
can be done, even for those for whose benefit what is done
is intended, as I shall hereafter shew. And what is done
for the other numerous and important classes of the community? And why are they to be neglected? In all political
1ocieties there will be men of different cond1t1ons and circumstances. They cannot be all limited by the same necessities, nor destined to the same employments. Nor is
it desirable, nor, from the nature of things, possible that it
should be so. If they could be reduced to the same level,
they could not be kept to it. Idleness and vice would sink
below it, honourable effort would rise above 1t.
There are, and ever will be, the poor and the rich, the
men of labour and the men of leisure, and the state which
neglects either, neglects a duty, and neglects it at its peril,
for which ever 1t neglects will be not only useless but mischievous. They have equal claims to the means of happiness. They are capable of making equal returns of service
to the public.
It is admitted that the neglect of one of these classes is
unjust and impolitic. Why is it not so as to the other? If
it is improper to leave. the man of labour uneducated, deprived of the means of improvement he can receive and requires, is it not at least equally so, to leave the man of leisure whose situation does not oblige him to labour, and
who therefore will not labour, to rust in sloth, or to riot in
dissipation? If there be any difference, it is more impolitic to neglect the latter, for he has more m his power either
for good or for evil, will be more apt, from his greater
temptations, to be depraved himself and the corrupter of
others.
This neglect would be peculiarly unwise in a government like ours. Luxury is the vice most fatal to republics;
and idleness, and want of education in the rich, promote it
in its most disgusting forms. Nor let it be thought that we
have no cause to guard against this evil.
It is perhaps the
most imminent of our perils.* While, therefore, I readily
subscribe to the principle, which all admit, that it is essential, in a free government, that the whole population
should be sufficiently instructed to understand their rights,
and be qualified for their duties, and that for this purpose
suits.
*Whoever observes that we have resident among us four or five foreign ministers from the most luxurious courts of Europe, with costly
establishments and large incomes--that we send our citizens to all
these courts as resident ministers-Whoever notes the change of manners, thus introduced, will see that we have departed far from the republican simplicity of better days, and that it is time fur our people, to
consider whether either of these modes of importing foreignvices and
And it is too generally thought that this is enough--that
the state has discharged its duty-and that what remains
to be done, to fit men for higher degrees of happiness and
usefulness, and to qualify them for a wider sphere of duty,
may be left to itself. But it is not enough. More, far more
luxuries be necessary.
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such an education as their situation will enable them to receive, should be provided for all, yet! will not fear to maintain
(what is not so generally admitted,) that it is just as essential to a wise and proper administration of such a government that there should be found among its citizens, men of
more exalted attainments, who can give their whole youth,
and their whole lives, to the highest pursuits of every da.
partment of useful science.
I might prove this by a general enquiry into the nature
of the services which the various circumstances of a state
require from its citizens, and the nature of the talents, and
how they are acquired, that fit men for such duties. And
I might adduce instances from the history of the world, of
what has been accomplished by the labours of those who
have been thus prepared for eminent usefulness.
But l
need not waste your time in proving what I may assume.
The connection of science, with all the sources of a people's
greatness and happiness, requires no other proof than the
evidence of the senses.
What gives to agriculture her plains of smiling plenty)
To commerce, her wide domain upon the mighty waters?
To the arts, the very materials of their labour, as well as
the skill to mould them? And what gives the power to
defend, and the wisdom to govern the country they enrich?
And has science accomplished all her conquests for man?
Has she no further rewards for her votaries? Is she not
now, in our own days, analyzing the earth for agricultture, and revealing the very elements of fertility? Has
she not just given to the arts that safe and cheering
light,* which descends into its deepest caverns, and makes
its hidden treasures the prize, no longer of the fearful daring, but of the commanding wisdom of man? And is not
her richest boon to commerce, the mightiest power with
which she rules her dominions, the gift but of yesterday?
She has, and will have, as long as man is doomed to labour, rewards for his labour, blessings to fit him for the enjoyment and diffusion of happiness here, and to prepare for
the brighter glory of a higher state to which she teaches
him to aspire.
I may perhaps be told that it is not equally the duty of
the state to provide these means of higher education, because it is not equally necessary; that the wealthier classes
of the community have it in their power, without publie
assistance, to provide such means.
And can it be thought that this is popular doctrine? That
the people are desirous that all, but the rich, shall be ex-
cluded from the higher attainments of learning, and from
all the power and advantage that such attainments bestow?
If the rich can provide these means, and it is left only to
them, the benefits will be confined to them. The state
must interpose if provision is made for others. Surely the
people at large will have intelligence enough to perceive
that such interposition is manifestly in their favour.
But in truth it has seldom, perhaps never, been found,
that the wealth and patronage of individuals, without public aid and encouragement, was sufficient for such a purpose.
And if the state is concerned, (as it evidently is) in the object, why should it not be made its care to secure it?
I do not mean that such persons should have their children educatccl at the public expense, as should be the case
with those whose necessities require it, but that they should
be enabled to find within the state, an establishment founded by its bounty, and governed by its care, where their
youth can he received and trained for the discharge of the
duties required by their circumstances.
The views I am endeavouring to present are intended
to shew that this great subject of public education has not
bee11 sufficiently attended to. There is wanting in Maryland, an institution worthy of her patronage, and adequate
to the wants of her people, where the higher branches of
literature and science should be cultivated. She has established her primary schools, and in this she has done
wisely. She has thus provided, (though not sufficiently as
I shall hereafter shew,) for one class, and an important
class of her population. But she must not aspire to greater merit than that of having done part of a great duty.
Till something is done for her other classes, and for
a higher grade of edncation, her duty is unfulfilled. Till
provision is made for a succession of competent teach ers in
the primary schools, the very foundation of her system is
imperfect.
If the maxim I have referred to, be allowed to the ex!ent I have stated it, if a government is bound to extend a
just and equal care to all its citizens, and see that means uf
education, suited to the different circumstances of its people, are made accessible to all, I have only to ask how Maryland has discharged this obligation, when we know that
her people have not these advantages; that hundreds of her
youth are either excluded from the degree of improvement
required by their condition in life, or obtain it by being
sent to other states?
I might sufficiently prove her obligation to enlarge and
complete her system of education, by the attempts she has
*Sir H. Davy's invention for lighting Mines.
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already made to provide something beyond the primary
schools. She affords support, in most of the counties, to
academies for teaching the rudiments of some of the learn-•
ed languages, and some of the sciences. In this also she
has clone wisely. And not a reason can be given for the
wisdom of this, that does not shew the obligation to do
more, and that without doing more, much that has been
done will be fruitless.
A boy of ten or twelve years of age, at one of the primary schools, or elsewhere, has acquired a plain English
education. His parents are affluent, and have the means
of enabling him to devnte his youth to education, and are
desirous he should do so. When he has passed through
his English School, he must either go home, and spend his
youth in idleness, or be removed to some higher institution,
where he can improve what he has acquired, and engage
in other studies. The county academy furnishes generally
the means of accomplishing this. But in three or four years
he has passed through this also; and though the ability and
inclination of the parent may still continue, the state has
afforded no means of doing more. He is educated.
I ask if it is admitted to be wise to afford the means of a
higher education, and for continuing, under the exercise of
discipline, a boy of twelve, who then leaves his first school?
Does not wisdom equally demand that he should have the
opportunity of learning more than he can have acquired at
an ordinary academy? And is it not far· more important
that a youth of fifteen should be placed under the wholesome
restraint of college discipline, and not turned loose upon
the world, free from the inspection and contronl of authority, to pass the most perilous period of his life? Parents
cannot guard his morals, direct his judgment, restrain his
pass10ns, and guide his- pursuits with the same advantages
as a well conducted college.
Or, if they could, they have
other occupations inconsistent with such asuperintendance.
We all know the character of youth; we see it now, as
painted by the Roman Poet, who in that instance was no
satyrist.
"lmherbis juvenis, tandem custode remoto,
Guadet equis, canibusque, et aprici gramine campi
Cereusin vitium flecti, monitoribus asper,
"
Utillum tardus provisor, prodigus aeris,
Snbl1m1s, cup1dusque, et amata relinqeure pernix."
To permit so interesting a being, at such an eventful period of his existence, with all the attractions of a deceitful
world around him, to throw off the yoke of obedience, and
run the reckless course to which his own passions or
the vices of others may allure him, is the deepest cruelty.
11
Restraint, judicious, gentle and persevering-employment,
•controling the restless energies of an awakening mind and
an excited imagination, are essential to his safety.
Nor is it only as a refuge from the dangers of youth that
such an institution is to be regarded. It is to give strength
and preparation for the whole life. It is then that habits,
principles and tastes, that fix the colour of succeeding years,
are to be formed. Then are the victories to be -achieved over the temper and disposition, over the temptations from within, and from without, that make the
man the master of himself through lite.
Patience in
investigation, accuracy of research, perseverance in labour,
resolution to conquer difficulty, zeal in the cause of learning and virtue, are then to be acquired. Then is science
to display her charms, and literature her delights, and a refined and exalted taste to lure him, by higher gratifications, from the vain pleasures of the world. Then is he to
be made familiar with the sages and heroes of antiquity, to
catch the inspiration of their genius and their virtues, and
the great and the good of every age and of every land are
to be made his associates, his instructors, his examples.
Need I say more to shew that institutions, capable of dispensing such means of happiness and safety to so large and
interesting a portion of the community, deserve the patronage of a state?
But it is not only the safety and happiness of the indviduals, thus benefited, that is to be considered. The welfare of nations, and the improvement of mankind, are
promoted by such establishments.
It requires no argument to shew this-the man enlightened by learning, gifted with the high powers which education confers, strengthened by the habits which order and
early discipline establish, enriched by collected stores from
the wisdom and experience of ages, holds not these sacred
trusts only for himself. His greatest enjoyment is to wield
them for the glory and prosperity of that country which
conferred such privileges upon him.
Will not a grateful sense of these benefits heighten
the ardour of his patriotism, and will he not serve
a country that cherished and adorned his youth with
more devotion, as well as with far more ability?
It
may be that love of country springs from some undefinable and hidden instinct of our nature, wisely given
to the heart of man, to fit him for the filial duties which
he owes to the land of his birth.
But, this impulse,
however pure and high its origin, must submit to the common destiny of all human affections. It may glow with
increasing ardour, elevate itself above all our desires, and
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reign the ruling passion of the soul. And it may grow cold,
languish and expire. A country, like a parent, should meet
this instinctive feehng of her children with a corresponding affection; should call it forth to early and continual
exercise, by early and continual blessings, by setting before
them illustrious examples, and all the high rewards of virtue, and preparing them for all the enjoyments and duties
of life. Such a country will not want patrwts. But the
land that does nothing to cherish or reward the natural affection of her sons, that associates with their early recollections no sense of benefits conferred, sets before them no
ennobling incentives to honourable effort, and fits them neither to !eel the love, nor to discharge the duties, of patriots,
must look for them in vain. She may spread before them
the fairest scenes of nature, but they are regarded with a
sigh. And the name and the thought of their country
awakens no emotions but those of shame and reproach.
It is reasonable, it is just, that it should be so.
That a
nation should be loved in proportion as 1t ments the love
of its people.
And it is so. The history of the world tells us from what
altars the highest and purest flames of of patriotism have ascended. The slave of the despot, who leaves. an ill-fated
country, and wherever he may wander, finds a fairer heritage and a better home, knows nothing of the "maladie du
pays." It 1s the free and hardy Swiss, who hears in distant lands the notes that charmed his ear upon his native
mountains, and sickens, pines and dies, with love of coun-
tions and individuals are alike under obligations to uphold
the general cause of humanity to contribute to the common
stock of human happiness. The beneficent Creator who has
placed us in this scene of probation, has made this both our
duty and our interest.
Our country has already been made the instrument of
signal blessings to many portions of the earth.. In the
science of government particularly, much of the improvement made, and now making in the condition of the world,
is to be attributed to the free and enlightened discussion of
its principles among us, and to the influence of our example. America has held forth the light of liberty to the
world. To exalt still higher the lustre of her fame, to give
perpetuity to our own institutions, and to dispense more
widely the same blessings to others, let her now hold forth
the torch of science. lf it be true, as the oldest and greatest
critic* has pronounced, and a great modern historian§ has
acknowledged, that free governments are best adapted to
the successful cultivation of literature and the arts, then is
it more our duty and our interest to encourage such pursuits.
W c have then before us every motive and encouragement that can excite the heart of man. Love to ourselves,
to our children, to our country, to our fellow creatures, to
God, the giver of all our mercies, who has cast our lot ma
land of light and liberty, and who reqmres us to shew our
sense of the blessings we receive, by the blessrngs we
confer-these are the feelings which we are to cherish or to stifle; these are the obligations which we are
to fulfil or to slight at our peril. However great that
object must seem that connects itself with the improvement and welfare of a country and of the world, yet are
there belonging to it still higher considerations. Weprofess to be a christian people
We have received a revelation, to which every thing within us and around us
bears testimony of the high destiny of man, to which he
is to be exalted when the ever changing scenes of this probationary state shall have passed away, and fo1· which he
is to be fitted, by the due cultivation and employment of
the faculties conferred upon him here. Whatever improves
these faculties, enlarges the understanding, and exalts the
affections, tends to prepare man to receive this faith and
qualifies him to adorn it-makes him a shining light in a
world of darkness, enables him to endure the conflicts of a
life of trial, to "rejoice in the hope set before him," and
try.
.
And is it nothing to a country thus to exalt itself rn the
estimation and affection of her sons? Is it unworthy of her
care to form institutions for her youth, that shall knit their
hearts by the strongest ties to the land of their birth and education? That shall animate them to the highest zeal, and
fit them for her greatest exigencies? To what can a nation
look for her strength, security and glory, but to a succession of patriots thus trained for her service? Wisdom to
discern, firmness to pursue, eloquence and argument to support the measures necessary for her welfare, will all be
theirs. Mental improvement, the attainments of learning,
in some way or other acquired, are generally essential to
the discharge of such duties, and the state that fosters not
institutions to afford them, has no right to expect them.
Nor is it only to his own country that the man, thus fitted for his duties, dispenses blessings. They extend over
the world, and descend to future generations.
Let not this be thought too wide a sphere of duty. Na-
§Hume.
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fits him to communicate the blessedness of that hope to others This faith in the triumphs it is visibly achieving
before our eyes, over the moral and intellectual darkness
of the world, disdains not the aid of human learning. It
suffers the calm lights of philosophy and science to mrngle
with its purer and brighter rays, and shrne upon the path
of its conquests.
If then the institutions of literature have any tendency
to promote such results, upon what principle can any people consent to remain destitute of their advantages? Who,
among those who hear me, can be called upon m vam to
aid in the effort that, I trust, is now to be made for the attainment of such an object?
.
And here I see before me those who are honou red with
the confidence of the people of Maryland, who, I know,
will not consider it presumptuous in me,. or in the houourable gentlemen in whose name I speak, 1f I address myself
particularly to them, upon a subject so interesting to those
whom they represent.
that MaUpon this .subject I know 1t has been thought
ryland has long since expressed her opnuon. That she has
not thought it a matter of public concern to provide these
mea,ns of education for her youth, and has therefore withdrawn the support she once afforded to the only institution
competent to afford them-thus leaving to private enterprize an object, to the success of which she was either indifferent, or supposed would, without her care, be sufficiently attended to.
I undertake, however, to deny that there has been any
fair expression of the sense of the people of Maryland upon the subject. At the unfortunate period to which I refer when the brightest ornament of the state was cast away
fro;n her protection, it was not the voice of the people,
but the strife of party, by which 1t fell. It is notcensori-ous
s to say of the opposing politicians who then divided an d
distracted the state, that in their struggles for pre-emmence,
each class considered its own ascendancy as the greatest
concern of the state. In their eager search for pretexts to
catch the popular ear, the College was thought of. As the
of it, and a great
people at large seldom saw it or heard
proportion of them, from their situation, felt no immediate interest in its continuance, 1t was thought the saving of
the funds could be called economy, and that the many,
who were to be flattered, would be pleased with the destruction of what appeared to be only for the benefit of the
few, Had a fair appeal been made by either side to the intelligence and patriotism of the people, and their own great
interest in the i.nstitution been set before them, there is no
reason to doubt but that the sound policy which had originally appropriated these tunds to such a purpose, and of
which no complaint had been made, would have been sustained. But no such appeal was made. Each party caught
at the advantage to be gained by the apparent popularity of
the measure, and the real interests and honour of the state
were sacrificed by each.
These days have passed away-and their delusions with
them. To suppose that the people of Maryland would
now upon a full and impartial consideration of this great
subject, with all the lights which experience has thrownupon it, and the view which they must now take of their peculiar political relations, refuse to afford support to such an
institution, would be to impute to them a degree of ignorance and prejudice, of which I trust and believe they are
undeserving. If there were once doubts upon this subject,
there can be none now. We have lived to witness the
operation of the politrcal institutions founded by our fathers, E vents of the greatest interest have occurred, questions of the utmost moment have arisen, and principles vitally affecting us have been discussed and settled, and others arc continually recurring. In all these events and
questions and discussions, the people of the United States
have been made to sec and feel the force of talent, the power of mi nd, and sometimes also to see and feel the want of
them. T alent and mental power, if not always conferred,
yet are always increased by education; and that private enterprize is not to be rehed on to provide for their developcment and improvement, experience has proved.
Therefore in almost all the states, particularly in such of
them as have been most interested in these occurrences, oublic attention has been drawn to this subject, and wisely determining to call forth all the strength of their people, the
public patronage has been given to the institutions of education.
Maryland is a member of the American confederacy,
united with the other independent states in one general government. It is her concern that her own political course
should be directed by wisdom, and for this she must necessarily look to her own citizens. It is also and equally her
concern that the general government should be wisely administered, and with a just regard to her own peculiar interests. She must furnish her quota of talent there. Her
duty to the union requires this, her own preservation demands it. It is not enough for her that there should be
fou nd there, wisdom and talent and patriotism; but she
must see to it that Maryland wisdom and talent and patriotism arc found there. There is a great common inte-
�i6
rest among thesestates, a bond of union, strong enough, we
all hope, to endure the occasional conflicts of subordinate
local interests. Bnt there are and ever will be these interests, and they will necessarily produce collision and
eompetition. Hence will continually arise questions of
great national concern, and more or less, according to their
respective interests, of vital importance to the states. These
are all to be considered, discussed and settled. That they
may be settled with justice to herself, Maryland must meet
this competition with all her strength. It is not in the number
of her delegation that she is to trust. She may send one
man who may be in himself a host. It is essential to her
that her interest should be seen and felt, and that those
who sec and feel it, should maintain it with all the power
that talent and patriotism can wield. It is essential to her,
and to every member of the union, that the agitations excited by these collisions should be kept from endangering
the foundations upon which the fabric of our free institutions has been reared-that men of the highest powers and
the purest principles should rule the deliberations of our
·national councils on these occasions of difficulty and danger, and preserve, through every storm that may assail it
the union, the ark of our safety.
It is no reproach to the wisdom of those who framed our
constitution that they have left it exposed to danger from
the separate interests and powers of the states. It was not
to be avoided but by incurring far greater dangers. Nor is
our situation in that respect without its advantages. These
local interests are powerful excitements to the states to prepare and enrich their public men with the highest possible
endowments. Their own immediate interest would afford
a more constant and powerful stimulus to do this, than one
more remote and felt only in common, which too often
leaves its share of duty to others. But for this, a general
degeneracy in talent and principle might prevail, and the
great concerns of a growing nation sink into hands unfitted
to sustain them.
If Providence shall preserve us from these dangers, and
give perpetmty to our institutions, Maryland will continue
to see an increasing necessity (if she would avail herself of
a just share of the benefits they are designed to confer) for
calling forth and cultivating all her resources. And if this
hope fails us, if the union is dissolved, in the distractions
and dangers that will follow, she will, if possible, still more
require the highest aid that the wisdom of her sons can afford, to guide her through that night of darkness.
Time will not permit me to illustrate, as I would wish to
do, what I have endeavoured to say of the peculiar politi-
cal relations of the states, by exhibiting even a brief view
of the various questions that have arisen, and of the principles that are yet to be settled between them. I will mention but one-one, which perhaps now occupies and divides the public mind more than any other. I mean internal improvement. It is yet unsettled whether this great
concern is within the powers of the general government or
is to devolve exclusively on the states. The interest of
Maryland in the determination of this question is obvious;
and if legislation upon this subject shall be assumed by
congress, it is evident that new and continual competitions
of great and increasing interest must arise among the states.
In these how is Maryland to hope for success but from the
ability of her representatives there? Whatever may be her
natural and commercial advantages, it would be madness to
trust to them alone to plead for her.
If it shall be decided that the states alone are to have this
subject within their direction, it becomes no less imperiously the duty of Maryland to call and qualify for that direction, all the talent it requires.
I need not seek to awaken Maryland upon this subject.
She is already regarding it with anxiety. But is there not
an object for internal improvement, which, if overlooked,
will render her anxiety unavailing? And does it not demand
her first and greatest care?
I mean not rivers, roads, canals, nor all the facilities of
commerce--butthat which is above them all-which commands them all-at whose bidding the mountain opens to
its base, and the waters of the cataract are still. I mean
the mass of mind, the native talent of her population. And
what is this without improvement? Inert and dead as the
rocks and mountains upon which it would labour; wild and
wasteful as the torrents it would controul--achaos of confusion, till called into life and form and vigour, by the light
of science; and then, able to reduce into subjection all the
elements of nature. This is the power which has placed
a sister state foremost among the competitors for internal
improvement; that has achieved for her the work to which
she justly looks for the continuance of her pre-eminence.
It is not to the instruments of labour, with which the work
has been accomplished, nor to the hands that wielded them,
that the people of that state are to ascribe the success of their
efforts. These instruments might have been wielded forever in vain, even by their whole population. A far higher
power must be called to these labours. The man of science
must go before, and shew blind strength where he is to
3
�18
strike. And by the side of this man of science, or before
him, must go the man of another and a higher science. The
patriot and statesman, who makes all the powers of nature,.
and the resources of art, tributary to his country's greatness
-who works upon the noblest of all materials-the mind
of man-and achieves higher .conquests than he who overcomes the obstacles of nature. For he has mountains of
prejudice to remove, floods of passion to controul, mightier
than those of nature. He is not only to form his own designs but he is to be ever prepared, to convince, to refute,
to persuade, and to turn the judgments and affections of others into the channel of his own conceptions.
This is the
power which has given to New York the work to which
she owes her ascendancy. And none can doubt to whom
the monument should be erected that is to perpetuate the
memory of the founder of her greatness.
If then the accomplishment of such an object is to be attributed· not to matter, but to mind--and if thecultivation
of the mind is essential to its successful operations, where
is the wisdom of neglecting this, and attending to far inferior subjects of improvement? Shall Maryland apply her
resources to roads and rivers, and make no effort to ohtam
the science that is to form them into the veins and sinews
of her strength? Shall she give millions for canals, and
nothing for the makers of canals?
.
That her institutions of education are insufficient for the
proper instruction of her youth, cannot be denied. Shall
I be told that this is well? That Maryland may save her
own revenues, and avail herself of the expenditures of other states? To this I answer, that it is neither to the honour nor interest of the state that 1t should be so.
But 1t
there be wisdom in such a policy, may not the other states
be expected to adopt it, and thus the means of instruction
be attainable no where? And can 1t be either honourable
or safe to depend on the men of science of other states.
even if we were sure they could be obtained there, when
those very states may be our rivals in the objects for which
we would engage them? We must therefore determine,
either to rest contented in a perpetual and degrading inferiority, or depend, for the necessary means of success, only
on ourselves.
*If
only 100 of her youth
only
are sent to other institutions, (and the
number is believed to be greater,) the amount annually expended
by them would exceed $20,000, which, if applied to an institution
our own, would be adequate to the instruction of a much larger
of
number.
19
There has never been but one objection urged against
the establishment of a college, that has the least appearance
of pfausibility. It may be proper to consider it It is said
to be partial in its benefits,. that its advantages are confined
to its immediate neighbourhood, and to the wealthy of other portions of the state. If this were admitted, it might
be asked if the same objection does not apply to every other
institution? Locate your courts of justice, legislatures, academies, where you will, and some portions of the community will be more benefited by them than others. Again,
place a college where you will, multiply them to any extent, and it will be only those who have some wealth and
leisure that can enjoy their advantages. And shall nothing
be done for the benefit of the community, because some
portion of it may not be equally partakers of the benefit?
It concerns the state that both poor and rich should be educated, as far as their means and situation will permit; but
because it is impossible to give a high degree of education to the poor, shall it therefore be denied to the rich?
But the supposition need not be admitted. It does confer
great though not equal benefits, upon evt!ry class of society. Indirectlr, by the general improvement of the state,
(if such as I have endeavoured to shew arc its effects) its
benefits to all are obvious. But such an establishment may
be so conducted as to present great and direct advantages
to all. It may be mad,e, and should be made, a part of a
general system of education, adapted to the wants and situation of the whole population. A connection may subsist between such an institution, and the academies and primary schools, equally important to all. The want of competent teachers for these academies, and the common schools
in the state, has been long felt. And when the primary
schools, about to be put in operation, call for their teachers, it will be found far easier to pass a law for schools, and
to build school houses, than to procure teachers. The population of our own state, though the most proper on many
accounts to resort to, is wholly insufficient to supply the
present demand. Nor will it be found that they can be obtained from other states, witbout the temptation of exorbitant salaries, nor perhaps even then; for the same want
is felt every where. Even in Massachusetts, where education has always been a most favourite object, the defi•
ciency of teachers has been so great a subject of complaint,
that they are now about to establish an institution for the
purpose of preparing young men for such employments.
�20
Maryland may establish a college which besides its other advantages, may supply this defect. What is to prevent the state's educating, at its college, a sufficient number
of the poor of each county, under engagements that they
shall teach in the primary schools and academies until they
shall thus have repaid the expense of their education? A
system like this, it is obvious, would, in a few years, ensure to those schools and academies, an adequate supply of
teachers, from among our own people, qualified for the important trusts committed to them. Such a system would call
forth, and cultivate, and apply to the most useful purposes,
all the talent of the state, and diffuse its blessings among all
classes of her population. Such a system would be as little partial in its benefits as any that could be devised. It
would afford the only means of giving a competent education to all the poor, and of calling many of them to a still
higher degree of instruction, which in no other way it
would be possible for them to attain.
Let it also be remembered, that every well taught citizen, whatever may be his condition, to whatever station in
life he may belong, is, generally speaking, an advantage to
the public. Therefore, although but a small number, in
proportion to the whole population, may be qualified for
higher usefulness by the acquisitions of learning, yet among
them may be found some whom the state may proudly
reckon as her greatest ornaments-to whom she may be indebted even for her preservation. The Roman historian,
who records the effect produced upon the Roman senate
by the prudence and eloquence of Cato, upon an occasion
of imminent peril to the republic, shews how powerfully
he was impressed by the consideration of what the efforts
&f one man might accomplish, for the welfare of a nation.
He is led, by the instance before him, to look back upon
the past dangers, difficulties, and deliverances of his country, and he remarks of the "praeclara facinora," that adorned her history, that their success and jtlory are to be attributed to the exalted excellence of a few citizens "paucorum civium eximia virtus."
We too may look back upon the short but eventful history of our country, and see a few names standing highly
eminent above jeor associates. Men who first received
in their own exalted minds the great conception, whose impulse they communicated to others-who led the way a
the career af glory, and will ever be remembered as the
fathers of the republic. In this great enterprize, requiring
every faculty that nature could give, or art improve, or
high principles excite, who can say they would have attained-who can say they would have attempted succenp
if destitute of that intellectual and moral power which impelled and fitted them to the crisis?
Take the opinion of one who stood conspicuous amon.g
them-the author of the declaration of that independence
which he had aided in accomplishing, who had employed
a long life and a great mind in observing the springs of human conduct, and the policy of states, has left a memorable
proof of the value at which he estimated literary institutions. His last and most zealous labours were devoted to
the accomplishment of this object for his native state; and
he regarded it as the greatest work he had been permitted
to effect, expressing his desire, in preference to every other
memorial of a life of public service, to b:e remembered "as
the founder of the University of Virginia."
Take also the opinion of another, who stood pre-eminent
above them all-who will ever hold the .first place in the
hearts of his countrymen, and in the admiration of the world
-Read it in his farewell address, and in the generous appropriation uf his private funds, to secure this safe-guard to
the liberties of his rescued country.
Take further. the opinion of your own men-the patriots
and statesmen of Maryland. who in '82, and again in '84,
directed their earliest and most earnest efforts to the establishment of literary institutions under the patronage of the
state, and declared that they considered them "as the surest
basis of the stability and glory of a free republic.''*
Will it be pretended that men like these were ignorant
of the qualifications necessary to form useful citizens, or of
the means of acquiring them, or that they overlooked the
consideration that such means could not be afforded to
all?
Admitting, therefore, to the objection I have been con,sidering, all it uemands-that but few comparatively can
receive the advantages that the establishment of a literary
institution affords-it is still a sufficient answer, that those
few may be looked to with confidence, to make full returns
to the state for her care and patronage. Every eminent
and gifted man, who may be thus prepared for usefulness
becomes the property of the state, will be of more value,
and will be more valued, than all the wealth that a parsimonious policy could heap together in her treasury.
*See in Appendix page i.
�May I not call then upon the legislators of Maryland, who
are to provide for her present welfare, and her future glory,
to consider whether it should not be their first and greatest
care to secure for her service, successive generations of en-
lightened patriots? Whether it be wise to confine the
progress. of improvement to the mere surface of her earth,
and shut ·out its light and vivifyi.ng influence from the bosoms of her children? May I not call upon them to make
perfect and effectual the system of instruction they have
commenced, to apply in this age of improvement, the spirit of improvement to its greatest and noblest objects, and
to lay the deep and broad foundations of their country's
greatness, in the religious, moral, and intellectual culture of
her people.
As I believe that a just consideration of thi,s subject now,
or a further experience of the danger of neglecting it, will
bring us to resolve that the state shall.no longer remain
destitute of an institution for qualifying her citizens for her
service, permit me, before I conclude, to endeavour to
shew that the establishment should be here. I have already said that the state should not only furnish the necessary funds for .its support, but also that care and superintendance, which arc equally necessary for its success.
The public should be made to understand and sec and feel
its interest in the object, to take a pride in its annual displays of cultivated talent, and to encourage, by the incitement of its presence and approbation, youthful ardour to
its highest efforts.
Where else can the interest, inspection and patronage
of the state be adequately called forth, and advantageously
exercised, but at the scat of government? Where else can
it be situated to be made conspicuous throughout the state,
where its progress can be made the subject of general observation, the public care directed to its improvement, and
right views of its importance and usefulness diffused among
the citizens? These attentions will be essential during the
years of its infancy; and when its fruits.shall appear and be
distributed among the counties, when they are seen in the
various departments of .honourable employment, and felt
in imparting new vigour to the enterprize and character of
the state, it will win its way, by the benefits it bestows, to
the favour it demands.
Where else, I may also ask, can the influence and excitements so important to impel the youthful mind to the
arduous prosecution of its labours, be so effectually afforded as here? where the highest talents of the state are col-
lected before them, and called to their highest exercise-where measures of the deepest interest to the state and general governments are discussed and decided, and the exalted feelings and duties of patriotism are mingled with
their earliest conceptions-where they are perpetually reminded, by what they see and hear, of their obligations, as
men and citizens of a free and happy country, and encouraged to perseverance by the examples placed before them
of what diligence may accomplish.
I will further say, that it should be here-because it was
here. Justice demands its restitution.
Thirty years ago I stood within tbat hall, with the associates of my early joys and labours, and bade farewell to
them; to our revered instructors, to the scenes of our youthful happiness, and received the parting benediction of
that beloved and venerated man* who ruled the institution he had reared, and adorned, not more by the force of
authority than of affection. In a few short years I returned;• and the companions and the guides of my youth were
gone--andthe glory of the temple of science, which the
wisdom and piety of our fathers had founded, was departed. I saw in its place a dreary ru,in. I wandered over its
beautiful and silent green, no longer sacred to the meditations of the enraptured student, nor vocal with the joyous
shout of youthful merriment. I sat upon the mouldering
steps of that lonely porticol and beneath the shadow of that
ancient tree, that seemed hke me to lament its lost companions-and the dreams of other days came over me-and
I mourned over the madness that had worked this desolation.
.
If I have ever felt the impulse to mingle in the councilof my country, it was in these scenes and at these moments,
when filial affection to my alma mater, and love to ·my native state, united to impel me to redress the wrongs of the
one, and efface the foulest blot upon the name of the
other.
Though compelled to leave these duties to other sons,
and to become an alien to my state,my heart has been ever
steadfast in its allegiance--and the request, with which I
have been honomed to appear on this occasion, revived recollections and desires I could make no effort to resist.
Let it be shewn then to the people, and legislature of
Maryland, that if the high arid warm feelings of patriotism
cannot be roused to give to the state an institution essential
*Dr. John McDowell.
�to her honour and her safety, the eolder but sterner principle of justice may be appealed to, and must yield it.
Let it be shewn that the state was not the sole founder
of the College--that individuals made liberal donations to
its funds, upon the plighted faith of the state, that they
should bemade available by a public appropriation, adequate to its support.
Though its friends and patrons have long mourned over
its declension, though deprived of the public patronage it
was left to languish and almost to die, and the pathetic 'exclamation of "Troja fuit" was the language of her sons.
Yet are we now presented with brighter views. We owe
our thanks for this to those whose zeal and ardour have
excited them to renewed efforts in her behalf· who with.
limited means, and against many difficulties, haveexhibited
before us on this occasion the interesting and gratifying
fruits of their labours.
But little, compared with the greatness of the object, is
required to be done, to give to the state what it once had
h e rliterary
e , institution,
a
equal in usefulness to any other
in our country.
I may have spoken in vain to the legislators and the citizens of Maryland. Public opinion may be slower in its
discernments and operations, than one as inexperienced as
l am on such subjects, may have supposed. But I have
the consolation of knowing that experience, if a slow, is a
sure teacher; and that it cannot he long before .Maryland
will be made to feel her need of men of high attainments
in political and natural science, gifted with the powers necessary to successful service, and to see that the only way
to secure them, 1s to rear them herself. I have also the consolation of knowing, (and I cannot express the gratification
with which I feel it,) that I have not spoken in vain-that I
could not speak in vam, upon such a subject, to some who
are my hearers--who required no speaker to awaken in
their bosoms emotions that no language could excite; to
whom it 1s excitement enough that they are here-in the
midst of scenes that ,call around them the recollections of
the days that are past, when the morning of life, and the
light of. intellectual 1_mprovement, and the warm associations of early friendship, gave all their brightness to the joys
and the visions of youth. To whom it is still more exciting that they are here together, assembled as brethren,
bound by the same ties ot love, and veneration to their
common mother, to· do her honour, and (may I not say)
to do her service.
*See Appendix.
For shall we separate from these scenes and extinguish
these teelings? May I not call upon the Alumni of St.
John's, and those whom we have this day welcomed to a
participation in her honours, to stand forth and pledge
themselves to her cause? To make an appeal inher behalf to
the patriotism and justice of their fellow-citizens-to make
it till it is heard throughout the bounds of the state-to
make it till it is successful?
Let not this filial duty be delayed. Death has already
thinned your ranks. Your eldest bretheren
* have run their
brief but honourable course, and are no more. He, too, who
had caught within that hall the bold spirit of the ancient
eloquence from its mightiest master; who, if he had been
spared to stand before you this day, would have roused
you from your seats, and called you to join your hearts
and hands in a sacred covenant to restore its honours to
St. Joh n's, and tu swear to its fulfilment by the memory
of the dead, the hopes of the living, an'd the glory of unborn
generations-He, alas! is a light shining no more upon the
earth.
He, also, who excelled in all the attainments of mind,
and charmed with all the attractions of virtue; who could
descend at will from the highest soaring in the regions of
fancy, and be found foremost in the steepest ascents of the
paths of science; he who had here caught
- - - - - "the glow,
"The warmth divine that Poets know.''
And whose lyre, upon a theme that touched these scenes
of his inspiration, would have poured forth its most impassioned strains, and compelled the hearts that eloquence
could not subdue, to bow to the magic of its song. He,
too, the ornament of St. Joh n's, and the leader of her tenth.
legion,§ has had our tears, and sleeps not in an honoured
grave. but beneath the wave of the ocean.
Nor can he\! be forgotten, the last but not least lamented
of our departed brethren, who would have been among the
foremost to offer the feelings of a warm heart, and the powers of a gifted mind, to the labours to which I have invit*Alexander-Carr-Lomax.
¶ John Hanson Thomas, of Frederick.
The allusion is to a passage
in his oration at the commencemept·in which his class graduated, exhibiting a most l1appy imitation of the celebrated oath of Demosthenes. The Virginia University
ity is now indebted to that class for her
Professor of Law, and Chairman of her Faculty.
§ John Shaw, M. D. of Annapolis, whose class used to be thus designated by the c classicVice President of the College.
Henry M. Murray of Annapolis.
4
�ed you. Who had already done so, and stands enrolled
1n the records of the college, among those who repaid, by
their counsels at her board, the honours she had bestowed.
Whose zeal and ability would have performed more than
his share of the duty, while his unassuming and generous
nature would have refused any portion of the praise.
The awful providence which removed him, in the midst
of life and usefulness, from the profession he adorned, the
society he blessed, and the friends he delighted, has called
upon our College to mourn the double loss of an honoured
son, and a devoted patron. But it becomes us not to
murmur under this mysterious dispensation-rather to be
thankful that it has left, to console and animate us, a cherished memory and a high example.
You have lost the assistance of associates like these. And
we who survive, are soon to follow them. But let the
thought of your diminished strength, and the remembrance
of what you have lost, urge you-not to despair, but to effort Remember the truth declared and attested by history, that the accomplishment of great events depends often,
if not always,,on the ardour and energy of a few. And
when Maryland shall receive from the institution, your
labours shall have revived, her able and well trained advocates, the promoters of her future greatness; when, by
the aid thus afforded, she shall attain her just rank in the
American Union, and the full measure of her prosperity,
then shall it be said of her "praeclara facinora," as of those
of Rome, "paucorum civium eximiam virtutem cuneta.
patravisse."
APPENDIX
-♦-
Preamble to an act passed April session 1822, chap. 8.
' "WHEREAS institutions for the liberal education of youth
in the principles of virtue, knowledge, and useful litera
ture are of the highest benefit to society, in order to raise
up and perpetuate a succession of able and honest men, for
discharging the various offices and duties of the community, both civil and religious with usefulness and reputation,
and such institutions of learning have accordmgly merited
and received the attention and encouragement of the wisest and best regulated states: And whereasformer legislatures of this state have, accordmg to their best abilities,
laid a considerable foundation in this good work, in sundry laws for the establishment and encouragement of county schools, for the study of Latin, Greek, Writing, and
the like, intending, as their future circumstances might
permit to engraft or raise, on the foundation of said
schools, more extensive seminaries oflearning, by erecting
one or more colleges, or places of universal study, not onJy in the learned languages, but in philosophy, divinity,
law, physic, and other useful and ornamental arts and sciences: And whereas this great and laudable undertaking
hath been retarded by sundry mcidents of a public nature,
but chiefly by the great difficulty. of fixing a situat10n on
either shore of this state for a semmary of universal learning, which might be of equal benefit and convemence to
the' youth of both shores; and it having been represented to
this general assembly, that it would probab_ly tend most to
the immediate advancement of literature in this state, if
the inhabitants of each shore should be left to consult their
own convenience, in founding and freely endowmg a college or seminary of general learning, each for themselves,
under the sanction of law; which two colleges or seminaries if thought most conducive to the advancement of
learning, religion and good government, may afterwards,
by common consent, when duly founded and endowed,
united under one supreme legislature and visitatorial jurisdiction, as distinct branches or members of the same
ui,iversity, notwithstandmg their distance of situation:
And whereas Joseph Nicholson, James Anderson, John
he
state
�ii
APPENDIX.
Scot, William Boardly, and Peregrine Lethrbury, Esqrs.
William Smith, Doctor of Divinity, and Benjamin Chambers, Esquire, the present visitors of Kent county school
in the town of Chester, have representeu to this general
nssembly, that the said school hath of late increased greatly, by an accession of students and scholars from various
parts of the eastern shore of this state, and the neighbouring Delaware state, there being now about one hundred
and forty students and scholars in the said school, and the
number expected soon to increase to at least two hundred;
and that the Latin and Greek languages, English, French,
writing, merchants accounts, and the different branches of
the mathematics, are taught in the same, under a sufficient
number of able and approved masters; that sundry of the
students are preparing and desirous to enter upon a course
of philosophy, and must repair to some other state, at a very grievous and inconvenient expense, to finish their education, unless they, the said visitors, are enabled to enlarge
the plan of the said school, by engrafting thereon a system
of liberal education in the arts and sciences, and providing
necessary books and apparatus, with an additional number
of masters and profes:sors; and the said visitors have further expressed their assurance, that if they were made capable in law of erecting the said school into a college or
general seminary of learning for the eastern shore, or peninsula between the bays of Chesapeake and Delaware,
(maintaining the original design of the said school as a
foundation not to be violated) very considerable sums
could be raised in a few years, within the said peninsula,
by free and voluntary contributions, for the establishment
and support of such seminary, and have accordingly prayed, that a law may be passed to enable them, the said visitors, to enlarge and improve the said school into a college,
or place of universal learning, with the usual privileges:
Now this general assembly, taking the said petition into
their serious consideration, and being desirous to encourage and promote knowledge within this state, have agreed
to enact."
Preamble, &c. to an act passed November session 1784, chap. 37.
"WHEREAS
institutions for the liberal education of youth
m the prmc1ples of virtue, knowledge, and useful literature, are of the highest benefit to society, in order to train
up and perpetuate a succession of able and honest men for
discharging the various offices and duties of life, both civil
and religious, with usefulness and reputation, and such institutions of learning have accordingly been promoted and
APPENDIX.
iii
encouraged by the wisest and best regulated states: And
whereas it appears to this general assembly, that. many publie spirited rnd1v1duals, from an earnest desrre to promote the founding a college or seminary of learning on the
western shore of this state, have subscribed and procured
subscriptions to a considerable amount, and there is reason
to believe that very large additions will be obtained to the
same throughout the different counties of the said shore, if
they were made capable in law to receive and apply the
same towards founding and carrying on a college or general seminary of learning, with such salutary plan, and with
such legislative assistance and direction as the general assembly might think fit; and this general assembly, highly
approving those generous exertions of individuals, are desirous to embrace the present favourable occas1011 of peace
and prosperity, for making lasting provision for the encouragement and advancen1ent of all useful knowledge and literature through every part of this state."
"XIX. And, to provide a permanent fund for the further
encouragement and establishment of the said college on the
western shore, Be it enacted, That the sum of one thousand seven hundred and fifty pounds current money, be
annually and for ever hereafter given and granted as a donation by the public, to the use of the said college on the
western shore, to be applied by the visitors and governors.
of the said college to the payment of salaries to the principal, professors and tutors, of the said college.
"XX. And, as a certain and permanent fund to procure
the said sum of one thousand seven hundred and fifty
pounds current money annually, for the use aforesaid, Be
it enacted, That the sum of twenty-five shillings current
money, imposed by the act, entitled, An act concerning
marriages, for every marriage licence, and hereafter to be
received by the clerks of any of the counties of the western shore, and paid by them to the treasurer of the
said shore, agreeably to the directions of the said act, shall
remain in his hands, subject to the order of tbe visitors and
governors of the said college, to be drawn according to the
directions of this act.
"XXI. And be it enacted, That every fine, penalty or
forfeiture, for any offence (except only for treason) at common law, or by any act of assembly now in force, or hereafter to be made, and hereafter imposed by the general
court on the western shore, or by any county court of that
shore, or any judge of justice of either court, and every recognizance taken by the general or any county court on.
�iv
APPENDIX.
APPENDIX.
the western shore, or any judge or justice- of either of the
said courts, and hereafter forfeited in the said general court
or county court, and collected or received, shall be paid to
the treasurer of the western shore, and shall remain in his
hands, subject to the orders of the visitorsand governors of
the said college, to be drawn accordrng to the directions
of this act.
"XXII. And be it enacted, That the regulations and
provisions made in the act of assembly, entitled, An act for
licensing. and regulating ordinary keepers, passed at March
session, seventeen hundred and eighty, (except such parts
of the said act as relate to the retailing of liquors by merchants or store-keepers, or at horse races,) shall be and remain in full force for ever, as to the granting licences on
the western shore (except in the city of Annapolis and the
precincts thereof;) and the money hereafter collected for ordinary licences granted on the western shore, and paid to
the treasurer of the said shore, shall remain in his hands,
subject to the orders of the vis_itors and governors of the
said college, to be drawn according to the d1rect1ons of this
OUTLINE OF A COLLEGE.
The following sketch has been prepared in consequence
of a suggestion to that effect from some gentlemen who feel
interested in the subject, and who think it desirable that a
view of the nature of the institution to be established, and
of the manner of its government and support, should be
presented for the consideration of the public.
I have made use of the best means in my power to enable me to do this, having .consulted with some intelligent
friends, and examined such of the most modern systems of
public education; with some of the more ancient, to which
I could have access. As I hope others, who have leisure
will feel disposed to consider this interesting subject,
would recommend them to refer to Rollin's Method, (4th
vol.) and Jardme's Outlmes of Ph1losoph1cal Education.
act."
Since the decision, in 4th Wheaton, 518, of Dartmouth
College against Woodward, it cannot be questioned, but
that the provisions in the charter above specified, operate
as a contract, which no act of the legislature, without the
consent of the college, can constitutionally revoke.
I
GOVERNMENT
I would recommend a modification of the present charter, so as to place the government of the college in the Governor of the stateand two Visitors from each county.
The visitors in each county to be annually appointed by
the Judges of the County Court, or by the Grand Jury.
These should form a body to appoint the Professors and
Faculty, pass by-laws for their government, and determine
the course of study.
The Faculty to consist of the President and Professors
and an Officer* to be annually elected by the Faculty and
Students, called the Rector or Patron, to whom they are to
resort as the guardian of their privileges, to whose recommendations, upon all their appeals to him, they are to submit, and whose consent should be necessary to every sentence of expulsion.
The most important duty of the Governor and Visitors
would relate to the adoption of a pr_oper course of study.
By selectmg two gentlemen of learnmg and experience in
each county, who before they meet, can consider the subject, and then compare with each other the views they
have respectively thought proper to present, the best opportunity will be afforded for digesting a perfect and satisfactory system .
*This idea is taken from an account of the University of Glasgow. Jt
perhaps also usual in the other Scotch Colleges. It is thought to
have a good effect m promoting orcler and submission to authority. If
conferred (as 1t is -generally in Glasgow) upon the most distinguighed
men, they would consequently have considerable influence with the
students. He should deliver an annual address, as is usual there.
is
�vi
APPENDIX,
FUNDS.
The annual amount furnished by the state to St. John's
College, by the act of 1784, was £1750.
If it is determined that there should be but one institution
for the whole state, twice that amount might be given. As
it is intended to propose to institute six fellowships for the
most deserving among the graduates, (as will be explained
hereafter,) estimated at $300 each, and to maintain and
educate* twenty boys gratuitously, which will cost about
$200 each, $5,800 should be added on these accounts.
Making, say $9,300, to be applied annually by the state to
the institution. As, however, it is proposed that these
twenty boys should repay these expenses incurred for
them, by their services as teachers afterwards, $4000 of the
above should be considered as loaned, not given.
But if the state made an annual donation of $12,000 to
such a purpose, it could not be considered unreasonably
applied to so important an object. If it was found necessary to raise it by a direct tax, it cannot be supposed that
the people would consider it a burden, when its objects
and consequences were explained to them, and when
they see most of the states doing so much more. It
some indirect mode must be resorted to, I would suggest
a small tax upon legacies. This would be paid without
being felt, and collected without expense, a very trifling
commission being deducted, and paid into the registry of
the orphans court of each county, on the passing of the
administrator's account.
A donation from the state will also be required at the
establishment of the college, to compleat the library and
philosophical apparatus.
COURSE OFSTUDIES.
This being left, as before proposed, to the determination
of the Governor and Visitors, the following is offered for
their consideration:
The course to be completed in four years, one vacation
of two months in each year, and another of two weeks, dividing the period of instruction into two terms oi four
months and three weeks each. The last two weeks of
each term to be devoted to reviewing the studies of the
term, and preparation for examination.
Public examinations of each class, during the two last
days of each term, and exercises in public.
*These should be selected ln the counties by the Visitors appointed by each county.
APPENDIX.
vii
Studies of the first year, or Freshman Class.
1st Term. Latin. Greek. English Language,* and Literature. Readings and Recitations of English prose writers. Compositions in English. Arithmetic.
2d Term. Same as above, with the addition of Readings and Recitations of English Poets. Algebra. Mathematics begun, and attending a weekly lecture to be
delivered by one of the fellows, or a student of the senior class, on Natural History.
To be admitted to this class the student should be able to
read Ovid and Sallust, and to make Latin exercises with
facility, with a thorough knowledge of the Grammar,
and sufficient Prosody to read Hexameter verse.§ In
Greek, he should have passed carefully through Jacob's
Reader, and be well acquainted with the grammar, (not
meaning the whole of Buttman,) and be able to make
Greek exercises.
He should write a plain hand, read correctly, and know
the ordinary rules in Arithmetic.
The attention to English, duringthis year, I think important. The exercises required in that language will prepare
the students for the translation and themes of the higher
classes, which they will do more easily, and better, after acquiring a knowledge of their own language, and some
practice in composition.
Reading and Reciting English is ·necessary to make them
good readers, and is the only true foundation for properly
teaihing elocution. An hour a day, or every other day,
should be thus employed.
Their teacher ( who should be a man of taste, and a good
reader,) should select passages, requiring all the varieties of manner and expression, from the best authors,
which he should read to them, and make them read to
him, till they could deliver them with proper effect.
And as it would be necessary they should understand
and feel what they read, (the true secret of reading
well,) this exercise would improve their understandings,
feelings and tastes.
The weekly lecture on Natural History, like the readings
I have just mentioned, should be an intellectual treat
to
• Abridgement of Tooke's Diversions of Purley, and a few extracts
rfom Murray's large Grammar, and selections from Blair.
~If the candidate were deficient in this he should be made to acquire
it, (as he could in a week,) before he joined the class.
5
�viii
APPENDIX.
the students; and it . is important to make some of their
studies agreeable.
It should be a sort of introduction to the science, and an
allurement to prosecute it, by setting before them some
of the most interesting researches that have been made
The preparation
into the subjects of which it treats.
and delivery of these lecture would be a highly impruvmg exerc1se to the senior class, to whom, or to the fellows occasionally, it shoulcl be altogether allotted.
SOPHOMORE CLASS.
1st Term. Latin. Greek. English composition, and Mathematics continued. Ancient History and Geography.
2d Term. Same-applying English compositions to translations from Latin and Greek, and themes ·on subjects
proposed in the Lectures; with the addition of French
and lectures on Intellectual Philosophy.
'
Durmg this year Latin and Greek are continued by reading the authors in the usual way. English compositions
in the last term, are _applied to written translations from
those languages. The lectures on Intellectual Philosophy should embrace a sufficient portion both of Logic and
Metaphysics; I mean as they are both now improved.
They should teach the student not only that the mind
has the faculty of reasoning, and how it is to be exercised and improved, but should put it into exercise upon various subjects.
JUNIOR CLASS.
1st Term. Critical reading of select Latin Classics, with
translations from Latin to English, and from English to
Latin. Greek continued. Modern History and Geography. French and Mathematics continued.
2d Term-Same continued, with lectures on Belles Lettres, and Natural History.
Reading the Latin Classics is now made an exercise of
criticism upon passages selected for that purpose, and the
translations should be required to be more free and spirited. Greek is continued in the usual way.
ix
APPENDIX.
SENIOR CLASS.
1st Term. Translations from select Latin Classics, and
from English writers int0 Latir.. Critical readings of
Greek Classics. French and Mathematics continued.
History and Geography reviewed. Study of German
Language.* Natural Philosophy. Lectures on the
Evidences of Christianity.
2d Term-Translations from Latin and Greek to English, and from English to Latin and Greek. Translations from French. Mathematirs. Natural Philosophy
and German concluded. Hebrew. t Original compositions in English, to be read in public. Lectures on
the Evidences of Christianity concluded. Lectures on
Political Economy.
The Greek is read in this year during the first term, only
critically, in selected passages, as the Latin in the former year, and in the last term; instruction in both those
languages is confined to written translations, which
should be given out twice or thrice a week, these should
be read in the class, and commented on by the Professor.
It will be observed, that I propose to continue instruction
in Mathematics and the Classics throughout the course.
I consider them the most important studies. The one
improves the mind, and gives the ability to think better
than any other study. The other, to give taste, and the
power of expressing thought and feeling in the most.effectual manner, is indispensable.
If the classics are omitted, or much neglected during the
last year, (as is too common,) there is not only no improvement made, but what was learned is lost, and the student
is taught the strange lesson of neglecting and forgetting,
for the sake of other acquisitions, what he has already
learned.
The above is rroposed as a course for the under graduates. I have omitted Moral Philosophy, because the Latin
and Greek, and the New Testament, which they will
read, will furnish a better system of instruction, (in the
hands of competent and pious teachers,) than could be afforded in a course of lectures. I have not made a Professorship of Logic, because a little of it will be given in the
lectures of what I have termed "Intellectual Philosophy,"
and the art of reasoning will be better acquired by the
mathematical studies, and the exercises in composition,
than by any regular system of logic.
*This should be a voluntary study.
Voluntary.
�xi
APPENDIX.
APPENDIX.
It is meant that the classes should be regularly examined
upon every lecture they attend, and write th emes upon the
subjects discussed in them, and also that half (or ii necessary the whole) of one day in each week, should be devoted to the review of that week's studies, preparatory to a
weekly examination; and in the same manner a like review and examination at the close of each month, at which
the Principal, and all the Professors, are to attend.
Such a course as is here specified would require the fol.
lowing Professors, in addition to the President:
Professor of Latin and Ancient History and Geography.
Professor· of Greek and Hebrew.
Professor of Delles L ettres, English Literature, Modem
History and Geography.
Professor of Mathematics.
Professor of Natural Philosophy and N atural History.
Professor of French and German.
The duties of the President should be those of a general
superintendence and lecturing on the evidences of Ch ri stianity. He should also perform the daily religious exercises of the College, and preach to the students on Sundays in the hall, or appoint one of the professors to that
duty. Students, whose parents desired it, could be allowed to attend any other place of worship.
THE PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION.
That this is a science, and a very difficult one, will be
admitted. Yet among the number engaged in it, very few
have received any instruction. It is true there are some
good works upon the subject, but there also bad ones. Nor
is it certain that those who are so employed seek for information on the subject.
Every teacher adopts his own
system, and improves it only by his own experience.
This cannot be supposed nght by any one who will consider its importance. The most learned man in sciences
and languages may be utterly unable to excite a desire for
learning in his pupils, to form their minds, dispositions,
habits and tastes, and to impart his knowledge to them in
a way best suited to their capacities. And all this is certainly his business as a teacher. To acquire this, he should
have the benefit of consulting the wisdom and experience
of others, and become informed of the many improvements
that are continually making in this as in other pursuits.*
As it is contemplated to make teachcr.s in the primary
schools and academics, of the students who arc to be gratuitously educated at the college from the different count ies, it will be rnore necessary that a branch of instruction,
so extensively useful, should not be neglected,
x
PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION
For the benefit of such of the graduates as might remain
and such other students as might attend, I would propos;
the following additional Professorships:
1st. Of the Science of Agriculture.
2d. Of Education.
3d. Of Eloquence.
4th. Of Law.
5th. Of Military and Civil Engineering and Mili tary
Tactics.
It will be necessary to explain what is meant by them .
There are branches of Mechanics, Chemi stry, N atural
Philosophy, and Natural History, whose conn ection with
agriculture is obvious. A course of lectures for a year upon
those sciences as thus connected, would afford the best
preparation for agricultural life. They could be made so
interesting and useful that very few educated young men,
rntendmg to devote themselves to that pursuit, would fail
to attend them.
PROFESSOR OF ELOQUENCE
This professorship is recommended by Jardine, t and
would certainly be highly useful, not only to the law students, but to many others. It should occupy one year,
and should be so arranged that it could be attended to with
the two former and with the first year of the law lectures.
Of the remaining two nothing need be particularly said.
The legal course should occupy two years, allowing the
student to devote his third year to the more practical parts
of his profession, in the office of a lawyer in business, and
in attending the courts.
I have omitted two professions, Divinity and Medicine,
not as being less important, but because they can be better
attend ed to elsewhere. The latter, it is obvious, is already sufficiently provided for, at a place where eminent
teachers can be more readily obtained, and greater facilities afforded for giving instruction. The former it is difficult if not impossible to combine with a general system of
See extracts from Carter's Essays Page xiii
See Page xvi
�xii
APPENDIX.
education. Preference could not be given to any particular sect, and to allow, (as is done in the Virginia University, and some others) each denomination to establish a professorship of its own, would it may be feared, produce confusion and controversy. The religious part of the community seem sensible of this, and therefore no attempt has
been made, by any denomination, to avail themselves of
such a privilege.
These professerships, being intended for the graduates,
and other students, need not considerably increase the expenses-of the institution. If eminent men are appointed,
they would, in several, if not in all of them, command
classes that would make it unnecessary to give salaries; or
at least they might be very moderate.
The professor of education would perhaps require a salary competent to his support; and from the. nature of his
services in quahfyrng teachers for all the institutions of
learning in the state, it would be proper to afford it This
would be the more reasonable, as he would have the instruction of the graduates who were gratuitously educated
for that purpose.
There remains one other subject of rem31rk-the Fellowships. I have suggested six. These should be elected by the Faculty, from among the most meritorious graduates. I have estimated them at $300 each, as that sum
would afford a tolerable support to a single man, and at the
same time excite them to exertions to add to their income by
useful publications a:1d improvements. They should have
the benefit of the College Library, and rooms and apparatus,
and devote themselves to such branches of science and literature as they might prefer. To prevent them from becoming sinecures for sloth or amusement, they should understand it to be expected of them, to produ.ce some useful results from their studies, and at the end of each year, there
should be a re-election, when all who had done nothing,
nor given hopes of doing any thing, could be removed.
It wouldalso be useful to adopt the idea of Lord Bacon
in his Nova Atlantis, and send two of theln every year to
visit the other states and foreign countries, for their improvement, and to bring back with them the knowledge of
such important inventions and works, as might be introduced into our country.
It is impossible to calculate the advantages that might result from the labours of a small body of learned men, thus
devoting all their time to such pursuits. If the state had
possessed such men thirty or forty years ago, the many
APPENDIX.
xiii
thousands of dollars thrown into the Potomac river, for
the impracticable pu,rpose of making it navigable by removing the obstructions in its channel, would have been saved.
And this want of men of science is as much felt now, and
the consequences may be the same to some of the many
works now projected.
We are to send to England, or other parts of Europe, for
such men. Besides the consideration that there is something a little degrading in this, is our success certain? Can
our confidence be the same as if a man of our own was selected?
Such men, as we should wish to come for such a purpose, will not come, for they can get, and will prefer employment at home. That some will come, there is no doubt
-and they will do, or undertake to do, whatever we chuse
to pay them for.
The following Extracts are from the excellent Essays
of Mr. Carter upon Popular Education.
"It will do but little good, for example, for the legislature of a state to make large appropriations directly for the
support of schools, till a judicious expenditure of them can
be ensured. And in order to this, we must have skilful
teachers at hand. It will do but little good to class the children, till we have instructors properly prepared to take
charge of the classes. It will do absolutely no good to constitute an independent tribunal to decide on the qualifications of the teachers, while they have not had the opportunities necessary for coming up to the proper standard. And
it will do no good to overlook and report upon their success, when we know beforehand, that they have not the
means of success. It would be beginning wrong, to build
houses, and to tell your young and inexperienced instructors to teach this, or to teach that subject, however desirable
a knowledge of such subjects might be, while it is obvious,
they cannot know how, properly, to teach any subject.
The science of teaching, for it must be made a science, is
first, in the order of nature, to be inculcated. And it is to
this point that the public attention must first be turned, to
effect any essential improvement.
And here, let me remark upon a distinction in the qualifications of teachers, which has never been practically
made; though it seems astonishing that it has so long escaped notice.
�xiv
xv
APPENDIX.
I allude to the distinction between the possession or
knowledge, and the ability to communicate it to other
minds. When we are looking for a teacher, we inquire
how much he knows, not how much he can communicate;
as if the latter qualification were of no consequence to us.
Now it seems to me, that parents and children, to say the
least, are as much interested in the latter qualification of
their instructor as in the former.
Though a teacher cannot communicate more knowledge
than he possesses; yet he may possess much, and still b
able to impart but little. And the knowledge of Sir Isaac
Newton could be of but trifling use to a school while it was
locked up safely in the head of a country school-master.
So far as the object of a school or of instruction, therefore,
is the acquisition of knowledge, novel as the opinion may
seem, it does appear to me, that both parents and pupils
are even more intel'ested, in the part of their teacher's
knowledge, which they will be likely to get, than in the
part which they certainly cannot get.
One great object in the education of teachers, which it is
so desirable on every account to attain, is to establish an
intelligible language of commumcation between the instructor and his pupil, and enable the former to open his head
and his heart, and infuse into the other some of the thoughts
and feelings which lie hid there.
Instructors and pupils do not understand each other.
They do not speak the same language. They may use the
same words; but this can hardly be called the same language, while they attach to them such very different meanings.
We must either, by some magic or supernatural power
bring children at once to comprehend all our abstract and
difficult terms; or our teachers must unlearn 'themselves and
come down to the comprehensions of children. One of
these alternatives is only difficult, while the other is impossible. The direct, careful preparation of instructors for
the profession of teaching, must surmount this difficulty;
and I doubt if there be any other way, in which it can be
surmounted. When instructors understand their profession; that is, in a word, when they understand the philosophy of the infant mind, what powers are earliest developed, and what studies are best adapted to their developernent; then it will be time to lay out and subdivide their
work into an energetic system of public instruction. Till
this step towards a reform, which is preliminary to its very
nature, be taken, every other measure must be adopted in
the dark, and, therefore, be liable to fail utterly of its intended result. Houses and funds and books, are all indeed important; but they are only the means of enabling
the minds of the teachers to act upon the minds of the pupils. And they must, inevitably, fail of their happiest effects, till the minds of the teachers have been prepared to
act upon those of their pupils to the greatest advantage.
"The philosophy of theinfant mind must be understood
by the instructor, before much progress can be made in the
science of education; for a principal branch of the scienee
consists in forming the mind. And the skill of the teacher
in this department is chiefly to be seen in his judicious
adaptation of means to the developement of the intellectual faculties. Every book, therefore, which would aid in
the analysis of the youthful mind, should be placed in the
library of the proposed institution.
"The human heart, the philosophy of its passions and its
affections, must be studied by those who expect to influence those passions and form those affections.
This
branch of the subject includes the government of children,
especially in the earliest stages of their discipline. The
success of the teacher here depends upon the good judgment with which he arranges and presents to his pupils the
motives that will soonest move them, and most permanently influence their actions.
"The mistaken or wicked principles of parents and instructors, in this department of education, have no doubt
perverted the dispositions, of many hopeful children. If
successful experience has been recorded, it should be brought
to the assistance of those who must otherwise act without
experience.
"After the young candidate for an instructor therefore
has aquired sufficient knowledge for directing those exercises, and teaching those branches which he wishes to profess, he must then begin his labours under the scrutinizing
eyes of one who will note his mistakes of government, and
faults of instruction, and correct them; the experienced and
skilful professor of the science will observe how the mind
of the young teacher acts upon that of the learner, he will
see how far and how perfectly they understand each other,
ahd which is at fault, if they do not understand each other
at all. If the more inexperienced teacher should attempt
to force upon the mind of a child an idea or a process of
reasoning,for which it was not in a proper state, he would
be checked at once, and told of his fault; and thus perhaps
6
�xvi
APPENDIX..
the pupil would be spared a disgust for a particular study,
or an aversion to all study. As our earliest experience
would in this manner be under the direction of those wiser
than ourselves, it would the more easily be classed under
general principles for our direction afterwards. This part
of the necessary course in an institution for the education
of teachers might be much aided by lectures. Children
exhibit such and such intellectual phenomena; the scientific professor of education can explain those phenomena and
tell from what they arise. If they are favourable, he can
direct how they are to be encouraged and turned to account
in the developement and formation of the mind. If they
are unfavourable, he can explain by what means they are
to be overcome or corrected. Seeing intellectual results he
can trace them, even through complicated circumstances, to
their causes; or, knowing the causes and circumstances, he
can predict the result that will follow them. Thus every
days experience would be carefully examined, and made
to limit or extend the comprehension of the general principles of the science. Is there any other process or method
than this to arrive at a philosophical system of education?
If any occurs to other minds it is to be hoped that the public may soon have the benefit of it."
Extract from Professor Jardine's Outlines of Philosophical Education, p. 509, on Professional Education.
"The third branch which I have proposed as an addition
to the course of professional education, is a class for the
improvement of eloquence.
"This proposal I am aware, may appear to many persons
to be both less practicable and less useful, than either of
the two former-and besides, as there are already in our
universities professors of rhetoric, whose office it is to teach
at least the principles of eloquence, an additional rnstitution for a purpose so nearly similar may appear unnecessary.
These remarks, however, do not apply to the object whicb
I have in view. It is not the science of eloquence merely
which I would have taught in our colleges; it is the art of
speaking, founded on practice, and illustrated by example,
which I regard as a valuable desideratum in our academical course. But before I can distinctly state the object of
the class I am now proposing, there are two or three points
which must be discussed and settled, in order to establish
its practicability. In the first place,
I should not despair
APPENDIX.
xvii
found being
able to prove, that the seeds of eloquence are to be
found scattered in every mind, in a greater or less degree;
and also, that there is a certain attainable improvement in
that art, to which every student may be successfully carried, by means of judicious training. It is not pretended,
indeed, that even the best system of instruction, in this department, will render a man a Demosthenes or a Cicero;
but it is maintained, at the same time, that much benefit
may arise from cultivating the original powers of the mind,
of the voice, and of the ear, whatever may be their limits;
as well as from presenting an opportunity to young men,
of ascertaining the extent of the gifts which they have received from nature, and of turning them to the best advantage. In this, as in all other branches of education, many
individuals, it is true, will derive little profit from the labours of the teacher.
"Again, I have to observe, that considering the great importance of eloquence to public men, it is an object worthy
of national attention to provide means for improving it,
even though the greater number of students should fail to
attain the qualifications of a finished orator. The advantages attending such a class would not; however1 be confined to a few. The majority of the young men who should
enter it, would infallibly gain improvement, as well from
their own practice, as from the example of others; and if
we estimate aright the high value of a distinct and effective
mode of delivery, in the church, at the bar, and above all
in the two houses of Parliament, we shall find that 1t 1s of
more consequence to promote, even though in an inferior
degree, the general culture of this talent, than to confer the
highest oratorical accomplishments on a few individuals
whose abilities might naturally be fitted to receive them.
"I have to remark, too, in the third place, that the means,
not less than the capacity of improvement, are in the hands
of every one. It is not necessary that the student of eloquence should have recourse to the precepts of Aristotle,
of Cicero or of Quintilian, or that he should sedulously
form himself on the models of a high antiquity Nature,
and the example of an able teacher, will point out the species of eloquence which he should endeavour to acquire;
and a constant well regulated exercise will prove of more
avail for the accomplishment of his purpose, than the most
painful study of all thathas been written by Greeks and
Romans, on the theory of declamation, and on the. art. of
moving the passions. But I forbear at present entering into details relative to the plan of conducting this important.
�iviii
APPENDIX.
branch of professional education, having some intention of
expressing my opinions, in regard to its object, and the
practical methods by which alone this object can be attained, in a separate publication, on a kindred subject. If I
shall be able to follow out my intentions respecting this
third division, one object which I shall keep in view is, to
give up the method of teaching eloquence, by explaining
the abstract systems of rhetoric, as laid down in the work•
of Aristotle, Cicero, or Quintilian, which has been so long
practiced, and with so little success; nor shall I satisfy myself by extracting brilliant passages or figures from celebrated orations, as has commonly been done. I propose to
make a selection of such - orations, ancient or modern, as
will best suit my purpose, to make the whole and not detached parts of the oration, the subject of my criticism, to
direct the minds of youth to the substance, spirit, intelligence, feeling and association, which it contains, from the
beginning to the end; and if I shall be successful in this
part of my work, it will not be difficult to conduct the
other parts of it in such a manner, as to afford a specimen
of teaching by example. This complete analysis leads to
simple and rational rules of elocution and delivery, within
the reach of every student to understand and to apply. "
DEDICATION
Francis Scott Key Memorial
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
1958
Reprinted in 1958 to commemorate the
dedication
of the Francis Scott Key M emorial
�
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A Discourse on Education (reprint)
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A Discourse on Education, delivered in St. Anne's Church, Annapolis, after the Commencement of St. John's College, February 22d, 1827, by Francis S. Key, Esq., alumnus of St. John's College. Reprinted in 1958 to commemorate the dedication of the Francis Scott Key Memorial.
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Annapolis, MD
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1958
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St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.). Alumni Association
Education and state--Maryland
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Text
Inauguration Lecture
St. John’s College, Annapolis
October 28, 2017
Panayiotis Kanelos
St. John’s College is indeed a college. But it is very much more than that. It is both an idea and
an ideal. It is a place designed from the inside out, according to principles that are both unique
and universal. It is its own theorem and its own proof. It is the most vital institution in higher
education. It is a place that inspires love not because it is perfect, but because it is perfectly
itself.
I am the luckiest person in higher education. How many people can claim that they have
passionately admired an institution from afar for a very long time, and then have been invited to
join that community? I’m simply pleased as punch to be here. This is a community, however,
that exacts a price. From the moment one becomes a Johnnie, one finds oneself drawn into that
most characteristic Johnnie behavior, talking endlessly about rather important things.
I have been here just over four months. During that time, I have had the great pleasure of getting
to know my colleagues through conversation. They have pressed me to think carefully about the
project we are engaged in. I have participated in seminars, attended lectures, and read with a
rollicking group through a Shakespearean play. And just this week, I had the honor of leading
my first preceptorial on one of my favorite authors, Jorge Luis Borges. Most importantly, I have
spent many hours in conversation with our students. My admiration for their courage, having
�selected to follow the most rigorous path towards a college degree that anyone might pursue, is
profound. They are much more courageous than I was at their age, or am even now.
My short time as part of the St. John’s community, already rich in conversation, has led me to
think quite a lot about this thing we call liberal education. What I would like to offer this
afternoon is a series of reflections on what we do and why we do it. These reflections are much
too short, too rough and too raw to be dignified with the title of essays. They also lack the
virtues of concision and precision found in a well-wrought aphorism. They’re really just
paragraphs, and not very finely crafted at that. But to make me feel better, let’s call them
something elevated, like folia, leaves. Like the Sybil’s leaves, they are interchangeable and will
fall where they may. Since their subject is the liberal arts, seven folia seems like an appropriate
number.
1. The Liberal Arts are the Arts of Memory
Contemporary culture appears to be averse to the pursuit of liberal education. This should not
surprise us. To call the era we live in "modernity" is to fetishize the present. We live in a
perpetual "now"—this “modern” age—and that “now” is held to be qualitatively superior to the
“not-now,” otherwise known as the past. The newest, the flashiest, the most up-to-date is the
thing most desirable. The state of modernity is thus the state of perpetual forgetting. To valorize
the present is to slough off the past. Liberal education, however, is predicated upon
memory. The heart of liberal education is conversation in shared space, but the soul of liberal
education is conversation across time. To take seriously the thoughts of those who have come
before us is to add dimensionality to the otherwise flattened experience of living in a perpetual
now. This is radically unfashionable, but it is essential nonetheless.
�2. Liberal Education and Liberty
It is commonplace to claim that the purpose of liberal education is to free the individual,
“liberal” coming from the Latin, liber, to be free. Of course, what is not commonly agreed upon
is what the individual is meant to be freed from. In the ancient world, liberal education was the
education of the free man -- that is, one who was not bound to labor and could therefore spend
time cultivating one's mind. Leisure was the precondition of such an education. This was also
the Oxford of Cardinal Newman or Evelyn Waugh, and still lingers in the notion of the
undergraduate years at college as a sort of Arcadia (one populated at most colleges, I might add,
by groups of libertines suspiciously calling themselves Greeks). Another claim made upon
liberal education is that it frees one from prejudice. Human beings are encased within a cocoon
of pre-spun ideas, opinions and preferences. Liberal education splices open that cocoon. We
emerge into the world in an altered state, transformed, capable of flight. Others hold that to be
liberally educated is to be freed from illusions. Our movement is from the cave of shadows into
the searing day. This is the model that promises enlightenment.
I would argue that the telos of
liberal education is to free us from ourselves. Our work is primarily internal, an activity of the
soul. We are bound tightly by our pride. It constrains us. It isolates us. It distorts our
relationships with others, with the world, and with Truth. The first order of business in a liberal
education is to chasten.
3. Virtue or Virtuosity
Modern education has become increasingly oriented towards virtuosity. It promotes the honing
of skills, generally towards useful ends. It is technical and narrow in focus. We have witnessed
�over the past decades the ascendancy of the STEM disciplines, Science, Technology,
Engineering and Math, and the dominance of Business as the single largest major in the nation.
Anyone pursuing a degree in the liberal arts has been cornered at one time or another by a
fretting uncle or a dismissive neighbor: “What are you going to do with that?” Yet the goal of
liberal education is not virtuosity, but virtue. The Greeks used the term, arête, for excellence. It
refers to the single-minded pursuit of an admirable goal. We might seek to become an excellent
X, where X might be a violinist, a computer programmer, or a pole vaulter. Liberal education,
however, challenges the notion that we should be defined by what we do. It suggests, rather, that
we should be concerned first and foremost with who we are. In a liberal education, the primary
object of study is the human being. Turning inquiry back upon ourselves, we find that what
defines us is that we are “thinking things.” We are above all else rational creatures. Our pursuit
of arête ought therefore to be the pursuit of logos. This, then, defines the proper focus of a
liberal arts college. Were we a conservatory we would seek excellence in the arts. Were we a
seminary, we would seek excellence of the spirit. Yet we are something like a conservatory of
the mind, dedicated to the proposition that the most characteristic trait of the human being is that
we are thinking things, and that the virtue we strive for is the excellence of the intellect. This
conviction does not deny nor diminish other forms of excellence in the world -- but it argues that
self-reflective inquiry lays the foundation for the art of being human.
4. Liberal Education Leads to Civil Discourse
A commitment to the arête of being human, leads to a capacity for civil discourse. If the pursuit
of excellence of the mind is predicated upon conversation and discussion, that is, if the arena of
the intellect is the exchange of ideas, one must treat other minds as infinitely valuable. This
�involves a significant degree of humility, accepting that we each superimpose upon the world a
kaleidoscopic set of opinions, which shift and change shape chaotically. It also involves a
degree of confidence, allowing that while we may often be wrong, we are not always so. A
seminar is civil discourse in action -- it is a conclave of those willing to revise and amend
opinion; it is a polis, where the currency is persuasion and the treasury a reliquary of truth.
5. There is no such thing as a "liberal art"
The term “liberal art” is in and of itself an absurdity. There is no singular art that liberates.
Liberal education runs across a network of ways of knowing the world. It understands that as
human beings, we can know the world only imperfectly. Let me offer an illustration. Each of
our five senses communicates something distinct, yet vital, to us. We can smell the freshly
baked apple pie, see the nicely browned apple pie, feel the toothsome pie crust in our mouth,
taste the gelatinous sweetness of the pie on our tongue, hear praise of the pie. In isolation, each
of our senses offers a fragmented perspective on phenomena. Taken together, we experience the
whole. Similarly, the liberal arts have historically offered seven “senses,” seven organs for
knowing the world. In the Middle Ages, these fields of knowledge were categorized as the
trivium – grammar, logic, and rhetoric – and the quadrivium – mathematics, astronomy,
geometry and music. Today, our notion of the liberal arts, as with most things, is more fluid.
Yet what must not be lost is the commitment of liberal education to aspire towards a multivalent
approach to knowledge. A true education must traverse a broad landscape of subjects, from
literature and philosophy to mathematics, the sciences and the languages, and put those subjects
in conversation with one another. Where truth is to be found, it is found only fleetingly, as one
synapse fires to the next, leaping across the arts of knowing.
�6. One Cannot Receive an Education
Words matter. We commonly, and casually, say that we received our education at School X or
College Y. This is a category error of the first order. To receive something is to accept it. It
puts the receiver in a passive posture. To “receive” an education, one would have to be a
receptacle of some sort, a container waiting to be filled. Yet the word itself, education, expresses
the opposite. The term originates from the Latin, “ex ducere”, which means “to lead out.” What
does this tell us about the process of education? It involves movement. It is active. It is
participatory. It entails collaboration between one who is led and one who leads. These leaders
we call “teachers”. A teacher may be another person, present to the learner, perhaps around a
seminar table. A teacher may also be one who has lived long before the student, who has left
traces of profound insight or resplendent beauty, that draw, like a lodestone, one out of oneself.
Teachers do not push, they do not drag, they do not compel. They invite the student on a
pilgrimage, one in which they are fellow travelers. Taking up the call, the student is led out of
complacency, out of docility, out of ignorance.
Some may think that to be led, to follow, is not in accord with the freedom inherent in a liberal
education: Why these 120 books? Why this tradition? This skepticism assumes a rather
desiccated notion of liberty, a rather modern notion, which takes autonomy, self-governance, as
its starting point. Self-governance, however, is the end point of education. To be liberally
educated is to have been led out of bondage. There are many forms of slavery, all pernicious,
and overcoming the first, ignorance, is only the beginning of the journey.
�7. We see through a glass, darkly…
There are, broadly speaking, two ways of knowing the world, both of which are necessary, yet
ultimately irreconcilable. What we know can be divided into two categories – that which we can
measure, and that which we cannot. On the one hand, human life is finite, bounded, defined by
ridges and borders. On the other, we touch the infinite. Because we are more than mechanical,
because we each have a mysterious sort of agency, our lives are imbued with the qualities of
better and worse. We make choices, and try to do so with the best information possible. This is
reflected in the liberal arts, divided into the trivium and the quadrivium. The first set of
disciplines encompasses the qualitative aspects of human experience: speech, expression,
discernment. The latter, the aspects of the world that we can measure – time, distance, breadth,
number. Our work as seekers of truth is to hold all these forms of knowing in our minds
simultaneously and to craft a synthesis that reconciles the whole. None of us is capable such a
project– we see through the glass, darkly – but were we able to achieve this synthesis, we would
approach that ever-elusive quality called wisdom.
I hope you will forgive me for these underdeveloped ideas, forgive me if I have been tedious, or
if I have been simply wrong. That quality called wisdom certainly eludes me. Yet let me
conclude be restating what I do know is true:
St. John’s College is indeed a college. But it is very much more than that. It is both an idea and
an ideal. It is a place designed from the inside out, according to principles that are both unique
and universal. It is its own theorem and its own proof. It is the most vital institution in higher
education. It is a place that inspires love not because it is perfect, but because it is perfectly
�itself. It is an institution that I have come to love rather quickly, and will cherish always. Thank
you for allowing me to join this community.
�
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Presidential Inauguration Speech, 2017
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Typescript of the inauguration speech given by Panayiotis Kanels on October 28, 2017 in Annapolis, MD.
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<a title="Audio recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3445">Audio Recording</a>
<a title="Inauguration Program" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3444">Inauguration Program</a>
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Kanelos Inauguration Lecture 2017
Inauguration
Presidents
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The Virtue of Recollection in Plato's Meno
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Typescript of a lecture delivered on October 8, 2015 by Peter Kalkavage
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lec Kalkavage 2015-10-08
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On Nature and Grace:
The Role of Reason in the Life of Faith
Peter Kalkavage
St. John's College, Annapolis
Theology on Tap
Harry Browne's
2 July 2013
"Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature,
namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived
in the things that have been made." Romans 1:20
My goal this evening is to praise reason-that is, speculative reason-in the context of
Christian faith. Speculative here refers to reason that seeks the truth for its own sake.
Many voices inspired my effort: Clement of Alexandria, who extolled the wisdom of
ancient Greek philosophers; Anselm, who spoke of faith seeking understanding;
Augustine, whose path to God incorporated the philosophic eros for deathless truth;
Bonaventure, who coined the remarkable phrase and title, itinerarium mentis in Deum,
the mind's journey into God; and Dante, for whom the hallmark of heaven is the
perfection of the mind. A more recently composed inspiration has been John Paul's great
encyclical Fides et ratio ("Faith and Reason").
The hero of my reflections is Aquinas. As a young student, Thomas was
unresponsive and seemed dull. But Albert the Great said something about him that turned
out to be prophetic: "We call this young man a dumb ox, but his bellowing in doctrine
will one day resound throughout the world." Aquinas is regularly in need of being
rediscovered. I say this because he is a logically rigorous author, whom some readers find
�dry and uninspiring. Admittedly, his writing lacks the emotional power of Augustine's
Confessions, the rhetorical energy of Anselm's Proslogion, and the inspired poetic flights
of Dante. Aquinas does not tell stories. He argues and makes distinctions. He is what
most people associate with the term "scholastic." And yet there are in the Summa, as I
hope to show, great beauties that cannot be found in other works of theology. Aquinas is
the greatest Christian theologian of nature and the natural. Nature for him is not the
sensuous, immediately given nature that St. Francis loved, nature as the world of trees
and birds, of the sun and moon. I am sure Thomas loved these things too, but nature for
him is something else. It is the realm of the universal and particular, cause and effect,
matter and form, essence and existence. It is the nature of Aristotle. This is nature as the
intelligible order of things that reveals itself to philosophic reason unaided by grace.
But Christianity also goes beyond Aristotle. Nature in Christian thought is the
creation of a loving God. We may therefore say that the world for Thomas does not
merely have but is blessed with intelligibility,just as man is blessed with reason. Nature's
beauty is not confined to the senses but extends to the mind. Shall we say that we
experience traces of God in a beautiful sunset or mountain range, or in stunning works of
art and music, and not in the rational order of things, the order that God infused into
matter? Such an admission would be absurd, indeed blasphemous, since God is the
source of the natural order. Reason, as the power of studying and beholding this order, is
inherently good. We should therefore be able to glimpse something of the mind of God in
things like the amazing structure and workings of our bodies and the mathematical order
of the universe. If Aquinas were alive today, he would surely continue his inquiry into
nature, unimpeded by any fear that such studies would undermine his faith. He would
2
�devote himself to quantum physics, relativity, genetics, and evolution-theories that call
his beloved Aristotle into question. He would persist in believing that reason is inherently
good and that all truths lead to God.
The Summa Theologica is a very big book with a vast range of topics. These
include the function and extent of reason in matters of faith, the existence and essence of
God, the order of creation, our passions, virtues, and vices, angels and demons, the
sacraments, the Trinity, laws human and divine, the resurrection of soul and body, prayer,
vows, and the vision of God reserved for the blessed. In spite of its difficulty, it is a good
book for casual browsing. Open it to any page at random and you will find something
interesting and instructive. The book is filled with arguments, but it is also a treasure
house of memorable sentences. I have selected one of these as the focus of my talk. The
sentence is about the great theme of Nature and Grace, and has always been my favorite
in the entire Summa: "Since therefore grace does not destroy nature but perfects it,
natural reason should minister to faith as the natural bent of the will ministers to
charity ." 1 The sentence occurs in Part I of the Summa, Question 1, The Nature and Extent
of Sacred Doctrine, Article 8, Whether Sacred Doctrine Is a Matter of Argument? Not
surprisingly, Thomas's answer to this question is a resounding "yes."
Before we examine the sentence in detail, let me describe the overall manner in
which Aquinas approaches a theological problem. As you know, the Summa consists of
so-called "questions," that is, topics that are to be investigated. Each questions is divided
into "articles." Every article begins with a well-defined question that invites a "yes" or
"no" answer. In the case of Article 8, as we have seen, the question is: Whether sacred
Quotations from the Summa Theologica are from the translation by the Fathers of the English
Dominican Province, Christian Classics, Westminster MD: 1981.
1
3
�doctrine is a matter of argument? Then Thomas proceeds to a numbered set of so-called
"objections." These usually but not always argue for positions that Thomas eventually
refutes. Then comes a turning point signalled by the dramatic On the contrary. This
section responds to the objections taken as a whole and cites Scripture or the Church
Fathers. Thomas then moves to a longer, more discursive section introduced by the words
I answer that. It mixes arguments from Scripture with arguments based on natural reason,
very often on the writings of Aristotle. The article comes full circle with the enumerated
Replies to the Objections. These are often the most revealing part of a given article, since
here Thomas exposes the error peculiar to each objection.
Thomas's way of structuring his argument is pedagogically effective. In addition to
addressing the theological problem at hand, the argument, in its carefully devised form,
habituates the learner to thinking in an orderly and logical way. The method also reminds
us that the tenets of Christian faith are often anything but clear and self-evident. There are
reasonable differences of opinion and potential confusions that require careful analysis,
sound judgment, and a judicious reading of Scripture. In addition, Thomas's methodical
discernment alerts the reader to the possibility of being deceived by false opinions that
have the outward lustre of piety and right-mindedness. In this way, the Summa, especially
in the Replies to the Objections, teaches us how to discern and expose that most
dangerous of intellectual animals-the half-truth.
Consider, for example, the first objection in our article: "It seems this doctrine is
not a matter of argument. For Ambrose says: 'Put arguments aside where faith is
sought."' How can anyone disagree with this view, which seems obvious, or dispute the
authority of St. Augustine's great teacher? Were it not for Thomas's discerning response,
4
�or something like it, a devout Christian might think: "Yes, that's right. One shouldn't use
arguments from human reason in matters of faith but stick to revelation, since it is the
direct word of God." But as Thomas goes on to show, the objection assumes, wrongly,
that the use of argument in sacred doctrine is an attempt to prove the truth of faith by
means of natural reason, which would undermine faith by making natural reason
supreme. That is not reason's function in theology, as Aquinas explains in the I answer
that: "As other sciences do not argue in proof of their principles, but argue from their
principles to demonstrate other truths in these sciences: so this doctrine does not argue in
proof of its principles, which are the articles of faith, but from them it goes on to prove
something else, as the Apostle [Paul] from the resurrection of Christ argues in proof of
the general resurrection (1 Cor. 15) ."
Thomas's argument proceeds not from the danger of undermining faith but from
the general form of science. Anyone who thought that theology was the attempt to
provide rational demonstrations of faith would only demonstrate his ignorance of what a
science is. Sciences cannot argue unless they have something to argue from, something
that is ultimately incapable of proof. These are called first principles. In the case of
theology, as Thomas explains, first principles do not come from natural reason but from
revelation. To be sure, this limits the power of reason, which can neither prove its first
principles nor in this case intellectually intuit them. But it also opens up a huge arena in
which reason is free, indeed obliged, to search out the logical connections between one
article of faith and another. One cannot argue rationally for either the resurrection of
Christ or the general resurrection of all human beings, for both are matters of faith. But
one can argue, as Paul does, that the one resurrection is the ground of the other.
5
�An important assumption underlying this approach is that revealed truth is logically
self-consistent. Like the truth that is the object of mathematics or physics, revealed truth
is a coherent whole and not a mere list of disparate propositions. It is to this whole of
truth, this "system," that theological inquiry devotes its unstinting efforts. Theology aims
at demonstrating the harmony of apparently umelated or even conflicting elements within
the body of sacred doctrine. In this quest for harmonization, theology comes to resemble
music.
Let us recall the sentence I mentioned earlier: "Since therefore grace does not
destroy nature but perfects it, natural reason should minister to faith as the natural bent of
the will ministers to charity." It occurs in the Reply to the Second Objection. This second
objection is more complicated than the first. It states that arguments are either from
authority or from reason. If sacred doctrine argues from authority, then it is using what
everyone acknowledges to be the weakest form of proof and therefore uses for support
what is unbefitting the dignity of sacred doctrine. And if it argues from reason, then it is
using something that in spite of its strength within its own realm is unbefitting the end of
sacred doctrine. Thomas cites Gregory here: "faith has no merit in those things of which
human reason brings its own experience."
The first part of the argument against argument rests on the misapplication of a
generality. In its attempt to safeguard the dignity of sacred doctrine, the objection fails to
distinguish different kinds of authority, as Thomas will explain. According to the second
part of the argument, the use of reason would subvert the end of sacred doctrine, which is
salvation through faith, not reason. The logic of the whole objection rests on an either/or.
The objection seeks to reduce both sides of this either/or to absurdity, thereby proving its
6
�point. It assumes that there is no third possibility by which sacred doctrine may use
argument without imperilling itself, no third path. This is what our harmonic theologian
Thomas will reveal in his reply to the objection. He will open up a third path.
Whereas the Reply to Objection 1 is very short, the one that responds to Objection
2 is quite long. That is because Thomas must cover a lot of ground. He must find a way
to interweave faith, reason, argument, and authority. The interweaving will be made
possible by the harmonious interplay of nature and grace.
Thomas first takes up the thorny issue of authority. He agrees with the general
point of the objection: an argument from authority is the weakest form of argument.
Strictly speaking, such an argument is irrational, since it depends not on the content of a
proposition but rather on who said it. As I say, this is a thorny issue. We appeal to
authority all the time, not just in matters of religious faith. We trust some people more
than others, some authors more than others, some doctrines more than others. Even
avowed relativists do this. There are, moreover, degrees and kinds of trust. Sometimes
trust has something to stand on, some ground. But sometimes it is no more than a hunch
or gut feeling. Life is riddled with such acts of faith.
To return to the second reply in Article 8, there are different forms of authority.
Sacred doctrine is a special case. That is because its first principles come from faith, not
reason, and rely on the authority of Scripture, more precisely on those to whom God has
chosen to reveal himself. This leads Thomas to assert that although the argument from
authority based on reason is in general the weakest, the argument based on divine
revelation is the strongest. "Strongest" here does not mean "has the power to convince
the greatest number of people." It does not refer to the subjective effect of the argument
7
�but to the objective cause of truth, which is God. This leads us to the crucial question: In
what sense does natural reason function as an authority in sacred doctrine?
Thomas repeats what we already know: that natural reason cannot presume to
argue for the first principles of faith, and that its theological vocation is not to validate
faith but to bring clarity and coherence to what faith has already revealed. This is
Anselm's "faith seeking understanding." Then comes the crucial sentence: "Since
therefore grace does not destroy nature but perfects it, natural reason should minister to
faith as the natural bent of the will ministers to charity."
The first thing to notice is that the sentence does not say "grace perfects nature" but
rather "grace does not destroy nature but perfects it." Thomas means to ward off an
opinion that an unreflective Christian might hold, that nature and grace are inimical to
each other, or more broadly that the supernatural is anti-natural. He means to defend
grace as an altogether positive force.
The core of Thomas' s sentence is an analogy between the order of knowing and the
order of loving. The unity of knowledge and love is characteristic of Thomas, and of
Catholic Christianity in general. The most famous instance is the Divine Comedy, where
Dante's vision of God is mediated by the poet's love for Beatrice. Beatrice incarnates the
unity of nature and grace, of reason and faith. Her physical beauty, most evident in her
eyes and smile, makes the grace of God stunningly visible. To address the objection
regarding the use of argument in sacred doctrine, Thomas harmonizes knowing and
loving. Each realm contains a hierarchy: faith is higher than reason, and charity is higher
than natural love or what Thomas calls "the natural bent of the will." The two higher
levels correspond to grace, the two lower to nature. Grace as a whole is higher than
8
�nature as a whole. But these two realms are not static rungs. There is an organic
connection: the higher realm presupposes the lower and works within it and for its sake.
Let us begin with the realm of knowing, which for Thomas embraces both reason
and faith. Reason should minister to faith, that is, serve faith. How does it do this? The
simple answer is that it engages in theological science. Theology has many functions. It
clarifies first principles and strictly distinguishes them from the conclusions drawn from
faith. It removes apparent absurdities and obstacles to faith. It raises and seeks to answer
questions that believers might have. It clarifies the content of faith and so gives the
believer a detailed account of what he believes. It generates plausible but erroneous or at
least partially true opinions in order to expose their shortcomings. In this way, it staves
off various heresies. Theology inculcates in believers the habit of thinking clearly about
the most important thing in their lives. It serves as a check on emotionality and sentiment,
which tend to warp our judgment and lead us astray in matters of faith. Finally, it is a
check on self-appointed reformers within the Church, who seek to remake sacred doctrine
in the image of their own ideologies, whether theological, social, political, or economic.
At this point, we may wonder: With all this emphasis on reason and intellect,
where is the sense for the mystery of faith? My first answer is that the great Christian
mystics, though not engaged in argumentation, nevertheless sought union with God
through their intellects. This is beautifully conveyed by that phrase and title of
Bonaventure's that I cited earlier: "the mind's journey into God." The true mystic is not
gloppy or vague. On the contrary, he is terrifyingly focused and disciplined. Through
prayer, fasting, and intense concentration, he goes through carefully ordered levels or
stages of divine immersion and divine ascent.
9
�My second answer is that natural reason has its own way of preserving the sense of
mystery, albeit indirectly. This is because the more we follow the path of theological
inquiry, the more we come to realize that our conclusions depend on belief in things that
ultimately defy natural reason and could only have been revealed by a supernatural
source: a God who became man, a God who is One and Three, love that extends to
enemies, and victory over death. When pursued in the right spirit, theological inquiry, by
seeking to exhaust the realm of natural knowledge, makes the believer keenly and even
happily aware of the limit of that knowledge. It is like a runner who runs as fast as he can
and waves his arms in an effort to fly. Unless he is insane, he does this comically, since
he realizes that his effort will never succeed. But his failure to fly does not refute or
belittle his natural power of running. It is rather the happy experience and felt realization
of that which surpasses him. Our comic runner marvels at beings that by nature fly and
feels a kinship with them. By feeling his limits in the power of his muscles and bones, in
the hard work of his heart and lungs, he may come to enjoy his running even more, since
he knows it embodies the aspiration of his whole being to take wing.
My image of the happy runner who joyfully embraces his limit leads me to a larger
reflection. It seems to me that there is a deep connection between the study of God and
the study of music. In each case, we use our rational powers to describe and as far as
possible explain something wondrous. In each case, mystery remains. In our music
program at St. John's College we read an author named Victor Zuckerkandl. What he
says about music applies to theology:
No one need fear that such an investigation will violate the mystery
and do away with the miracle. Music is not a fata morgana and not a
fake that it should dissolve before knowledge. On the contrary, the
true miracle will appear the more miraculous the closer our
10
�knowledge can approach it.2
I conclude this section on the order of knowing with an observation: Not all
Christians are up to or interested in the elaborate workings of Christian theology. Not
everybody philosophizes, not everybody theologizes. Not everybody has to. As Paul
reminds us, the gifts of the Spirit are many, and no single person has them all. But what
binds both sorts of people together, intellectual and non-intellectual believers alike, is the
shared faith in the ultimate vision of God. You do not need to be an intellectual to long to
see, see with one's mind, the face of God. Augustine in his Confessions gives us a
beautiful example of this. In Book 9 he tells the story of what happened shortly before the
death of Monica, Augustine's mother, when he and Monica were at Ostia, near Rome.
They were looking out a window into a garden while conversing about eternal life:
We ascended higher yet by means of inward thought and discourse
and admiration of your works, and we came up to our own minds.
We transcended them, so that we attained to the region of abundance
that never fails, in which you feed Israel forever upon the food of
truth, and where life is the Wisdom by which all these things are
made, both which have been and which are to be.3
This experience of transcendence is shared. Monica did not need to be an intellectual like
her wayward son in order to aspire to the supernatural Feast that was made for us all.
Having talked about the order of knowing, I now tum to the order of loving.
Experience tells us that the two orders are intertwined. To love something is to want to
know everything about it. To love someone is to want to know everything about that
person. In matters of love no detail is too small, no fact insignificant. What lover would
want to believe in but not see the beloved, or prefer a picture to the beloved's actual
2
3
The Sense of Music, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ: 1971, p. 9.
Confessions, tr. John K. Ryan, Doubleday, New York: 1960,p. 221.
11
�presence, or a recording to the beloved's living voice? This does not mean that lovers do
not delight in veils, signs, poetic symbols, and implied meanings. But these are all part of
the knowledge and intimacy that love seeks. They are the indirect, playful ways in which
lovers are revealed to each other. Our experience of earthly love points to why theology
is one of love's highest labors, for the mind too is a lover. The exertions of argumentative
reason in matters pertaining to God are all efforts on the part of the thinker to know the
God whom the thinker desperately loves.
We must bear in mind, however, that theology does not exist solely for the divine
delectation of the theologian. It is also for the edification, to use Paul's word, the
building-up of God's people, his Church on earth. As Thomas writes in his Prologue, the
"Master of Catholic Truth" has an obligation to teach both the proficient and beginners.
The Summa, he says, quoting Paul, is the milk on which beginners must be nourished
before they move on to the meat. Given the difficulty of the Summa, we marvel at what
theological meat might taste like! What I mean to suggest is that Thomas's book is a
work of charity. It embodies a love that seeks to guide and care for the Church, which
draws its strength from sound doctrine. Thomas cares for the young soul in particular,
that is, the soul young in faith.
As we have seen, Thomas's sentence connects the realms of knowing and loving,
and points out an upper and a lower level within each: grace and nature, respectively.
Natural reason ministers to faith by first adopting faith as a source of first principles and
then proceeding to clarify the manifold content of faith.
Something like this must be happening in the order of loving as well, the order in
which "the natural bent of the will ministers to charity." I think what this means is that
12
�the will is naturally directed to God as its ultimate object and First Principle. Our hearts
were made to love the highest good, just as our minds were made to seek the highest
truth. That is our nature. As Augustine so beautifully puts it, "our heart is restless until it
rests in Thee" (Confessions I, 1). Natural love loves God; it just doesn't-can't-love
him enough. Left to itself, natural love cannot obey the commandment Jesus gives in
Matthew: "You must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (5:48)-that is,
perfect in love. Charity through grace takes hold of the naturally loving will and lifts it
beyond its natural capacity in order to fulfil its supernatural destiny. It perfects natural
love by making the will perfectly adequate to its object. Here is how Thomas defines
charity: "By charity I mean the movement of the soul towards the enjoyment of God for
His own sake" (II, II, Q. 23, Art. 2, On the contrary). The perfected love of neighbour is
a participation in this perfected love of God. Thomas's point is that grace does not enter
the realm of natural love and replace that love with something alien to it. Rather it causes
the love that is already there, and which God has made, to transcend itself so that it may
be fully itself, fully adequate to its intended object. To be sure, grace, Thomas argues, is
creative (II, II, Q. 23, Art. 2). It produces something that was not there before and cannot
be there unless grace is infused. But there is a there there to begin with-natural love as
the host of supernatural help.
The natural bent of the will thus ministers to faith, serves faith, by being at the
service of infused grace. And just as natural reason has as its vocation the acceptance of
first principles that do not come from natural reason but only from faith, so too natural
love has as its vocation the receptivity to being transformed and uplifted by a power
beyond itself. Furthermore, natural love is always moving us in the right direction,
13
�toward the highest good. It just needs help to get there, the help that is grace. The natural
bent of the will, natural love, ministers to faith because all our finite loves, and even our .
most trivial likings, are images of the Higher Love. Natural love, like natural reason, is a
runner who longs to fly.
In conclusion, for Thomas there is cooperation- not war, as some Christian
thinkers have affirmed- between the realms of nature and grace: between reason and
faith, and between natural love and divine love. Since grace works by infusion,
something has to be there beforehand to receive grace. Moreover, grace does not merely
change nature but perfects it. It is the vocation of our nature to be graced in both knowing
and loving. The harmonious union of nature and grace is the soul ofThomas's whole
teaching. It embodies his faith in the goodness of God and the goodness of what God has
made.
And so my praise of reason, and of Aquinas, reaches its end. I close with a passage
from a letter written by one of Thomas' s biggest fans, the southern Catholic writer
Flannery O'Connor:
I couldn't make any judgment on the Summa, except to say this: I
read it every night before I go to bed. If my mother were to come in
during the process and say, 'Tum off that light. It's late,' I with lifted
finger and broad bland beatific expression, would reply, 'On the
contrary, I answer that the Light, being eternal and limitless, cannot
be turned off. Shut your eyes,' or some such thing. In any case I can
personally guarantee that St. Thomas loved God because for the life
of me I cannot help loving St. Thomas.4
The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor, selected and edited by Sally Fitzgerald,
Vintage Books, New York: 1980.
4
14
�
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ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY
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31696 01136 5465
Teaching Dante's Divine Comedy
Peter Kalkavage
St. John's College, Annapolis
This material may be protected by
Copyright !av~ (Titlv '17 1.J.S. Code)
"The ideal way of reading The Divine Comedy would be to start at the first line and go straight through to
the end, surrendering to the vigour of the story-telling and the swift movement of the verse, and not
bothering about any historical allusions or theological explanations which do not occur in the text itself"
Dorothy Sayers, Introduction to her translation of the Divine Comedy
Reading Dante for the first time can be one of life's greatest moments, just as introducing
the Divine Comedy to young adults is one of the greatest joys a teacher can experience.
But we must be careful that we make the most of our opportunity.
First-time readers
must be encouraged to throw themselves headlong into the Divine Comedy. Teachers
must conjure the spirit of intellectual adventure rather than provide "background
information," which puts the poem in the past. We should not lecture first-time readers
about Italian political history, or about the influence of this or that author, or about the
Middle Ages, or introduce them to theories about the poem before they have had a chance
to think about the poem for themselves.
The scholarship comes later, and becomes a
labor of love, after readers have been gripped by the poem and desire to know it more
deeply and in more detail.
The Divine Comedy more than invites the scholarly approach. The poem is steeped in
history. It bristles with topical references of all sorts: historical personages and events,
families ancient and modem, books and authors ancient and modem, a flood of references
to the Bible, astronomical and geographical references.
When Dante is not dropping
names,we find him alludingto various people, places, and events through a glass darkly,
as if to enshroud them with a mystic veil. Many of the people to whom he refers are
Italians even highly educated readers would not know about without the help of notes.
Then there are the many allegorical references where something stands medievally for
something else-only it's not clear what. What is the first-time reader of Dante to do?
�What is the teacher of Dante to do ifhe wishes to provoke deep reading rather than mere
scholarship?
At several points in his lectures, Aristotle draws a distinction between what is first to
us and first in itself. The natural path of learning begins with what is first to us and
proceeds to what is first simply. The distinction is of the utmost importance in teaching
Dante. Where do young readers begin? What is first to them? Certainly not the Guelphs
and Ghibellines, or the Donation of Constantine, or Averroism. They begin with their
own expenence.
This includes their questions, opinions, worries, hopes, fears,
frustrations, and desires, as well as anything they happen to have read. In the Divine
Comedy, Dante talks about himself. He tells us about his personal lostness and the
ultimate finding of his vocation. The Comedy is a poem of ideas: it is about universals of
every conceivable sort, just it is about the providential shape of history. But it is also a
confession of Dante's personal experience. In introducing Dante to students, we must
second this personal "pull" that the poem exerts on the reader.
What Is the Divine Comedy?
Before addressing matters of pedagogy, let me offer a brief description of the poem itself
The description will highlight some of the largest things I hope students come to see,
admire, enjoy, and perhaps even love.
The Divine Comedy is the world's most comprehensive poem. Dante appears as both
poet and pilgrim. He recounts a journey that started in a dark wood and ended with the
vision of God. Much happens in between. The journey is the unfolding and revelation of
the eternal order in time. It spans the three-fold cosmos mirrored in the poem's three-fold
structure: Inferno (that is, Lowest Region) or Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. As Dante
imaginatively re-enters the experience of his miraculous journey, he takes us along with
him. We, along with the pilgrim Dante, are constantly made to wonder: Why is the world
the way it is? Why all these levels? Why is this soul here, and that one there?
2
�The poem consists of one hundred cantos: an introductory canto followed by three
sets of thirty-three.
The three main divisions of the poem-Inferno, Purgatorio,
Paradiso--are called canticles. Canto and canticle come from the Latin cantare, which
means "to sing." The Divine Comedy is an exquisitely ordered series of songs.
In
imitation of ancient epic poetry, Dante begins each song-cycle with a call for divine
inspiration. In the Inferno, he invokes the Muses and the gift of poetic ingenuity, in the
Purgatorio the Muses again and especially Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry, and in the
Paradiso Apollo. The invocations are typical of Dante's repeated efforts in the poem to
preserve pagan ideas within a Christian world. But why do this? What do Christians
need to learn from pagans?
The Comedy sings the praises of the divinely established world order. It presents the
reader with a synoptic view of the entire physical, moral, political, and spiritual cosmos.
A strong antidote indeed to the poison of the dark wood! But Dante's journey is not
simply that of an Everyman. He makes the trip not just to see the Whole and tell the tale
but to be reunited with his girlfriend. The Comedy tells us how Dante, who fell in love
with the angelic Beatrice when they were only children, eventually came to be reunited
with her. The dark wood was a fall from everything Beatrice embodied. This beatific
woman is Dante's most direct link with God, and only by being reconciled with her can
he ascend to the final fulfillment of all desire. The reunion turns out to be anything but
pleasant. Having reached the peak of Mount Purgatory, where the Garden of Eden is
located, Dante must endure Beatrice's rebuke and his own burning shame before
continuing his journey. What does it mean, we wonder, for the love of a woman to take a
man to God?
Grace is everywhere for Dante. It is at work in the universal scheme of world history,
just as it is at work in the ultimately mysterious details of our individual lives. Grace is a
kind of mediation, and Dante never tires of singing its praises.
Mediation is what
Christianity is all about for him. When Dante is on the brink of eternal loss, Mary in her
compassion turns to Lucy, who turns to Beatrice, who turns to Virgil. A chain of
3
�mediators reaches from Heaven all the way down to Hell. The chain continues as Dante
progresses. Virgil leads him back to Beatrice, who is superceded by St. Bernard, who
prays to Mary that Dante may reach the end of his desires and remain uncorrupted when
he returns to his mortal life. Every soul Dante meets along the way, even the souls in
Hell-even Satan himself--contributes something to Dante's advancement. What is the
Divine Comedy? It is not only the world's most comprehensive poem. It is also the
world's most hopeful and most grateful poem. The Comedy is profoundly anti-tragic.
What Are the Problems?
By and large, students take to the Divine Comedy. It is, after all, a dam good read. As
Dorothy Sayers has observed, it is really a novel in poetic form. Students usually have
only to read it in order to be drawn into its world in one way or another. The poem is a
rich field of ideas and images that can lure different readers down different paths of
reflection.
But there are problems.
The biggest problem is the one I mentioned
earlier-all the references. The best way to handle the problem is to steer away from
questions and concerns that distract students with historical facts. There is no denying
that the tragic story of Paolo and Francesca, to take a famous example, becomes more
interesting and complex the more one knows about historical facts not found in the poem.
But no first-time reader needs to know these facts in order to be deeply moved by
Francesca, and to be stirred to thought by her and her lover's damnation. Students tend
to be more imaginative than we think and can usually piece together a lot from the little
Dante often provides. It matters little or not at all whether they are piecing together
exactly what we want them to piece together, so long as they are engaged by the poem,
attentive to the text, involved in class discussion, and thinking. So the first rule of thumb
is this: Pose questions that inspire real thinking, and resist the professorial temptation to
infonn. Tmst the students' imagination.
4
�There are obviously limits to this advice. At times Dante's allegorism is baftling, and
no amount of pondering a piece of symbolism on one's own goes anywhere. Notes are
essential. The idea here is to get back to the story as soon as possible. When Dante is
driven back down the sunny hill by the lion, the leopard, and the she-wolf, it is much less
important for a first-time reader to know what each of these beasts stands for than to
reflect on how inveterate bad habits, our beasts in the soul, intimidate us and thwart the
noblest of intentions.
Then there is the figure of Beatrice. Is she real or only a symbol? On this point I urge
students to take seriously the possibility that Dante means her to be taken as a real
person, as the girl he fell in love with when they were only children. By assuming that
she is real as well as symbolic, students can be encouraged to puzzle over the place of
erotic love in the poem, in man's relation to God, and indeed in their own lives.
A
potential liability can thus be transformed into a pedagogical advantage. The Comedy
compels us to rethink the nature and implications of romantic love. From Dante's
perspective, to fall in love is to be violently struck by the divine. It is to be called forth
from the grave of the mortal and the mundane into what Dante calls "new life." Believers
and non-believers alike will have trouble with this idea for all sorts of reasons. Believers
are sometimes offended by Dante's theological eroticism.
Non-believers may find it
objectionable or else just plain weird. The idea is to appeal to the students' imagination
rather than to the customs of "courtly love." We must ask them: What if Dante is right
about love? What would it mean for romantic love to be the beginning of our highest
education and the call of the divine?
Fortunately, one of the most sublime achievements of the poem helps offset the
disadvantage of often not knowing who or what is being referred to in Dante's allusions. I
am thinking of the beautifully crafted stories we hear along the way. I try to make the
most of these stories when I teach Dante. Sometimes I simply ask students, either at the
beginning of the discussion or else somewhere in the middle, what they think of
Francesca, or Ulysses, or Piccarda on the basis of how Dante has chosen to present them.
5
�I urge students to indulge their natural curiosity for the details and destinies of other
people's lives. Here Dante gives students a precious opportunity to hone their judgment
of human character and choice, and to refine their sense for the general teachings of the
poem. Most important of all, students are invited to examine their own lives, dilemmas,
and choices.
Occasionally one hears it said that the Inferno is interesting, but the other two parts of
the poem are not. Readers who stay with Dante usually grow out of this impression.
Still, one must give the devil his due. Hell is garish and gory. It appeals to our love of
sensationalism. Plus, the young admire rebels, and there is an undeniable nobility to at
least some instances of defiance that we meet in Hell. Dante invites us to admire the
greatness of certain sinners even as we condemn their sin. Why is he doing this? What is
the ground of human greatness? What does greatness add to our understanding of
damnation, hope, and bliss? Such questions can be highly useful in getting students to go
deeper into Dante's world and to explore their own opinions about what is, and what is
not, worthy of admiration.
For way too many readers, Dante is the poet of Hell. It is a great mistake to let
students read the Inferno but not the Purgatorio and Paradiso. Given the chance and the
proper encouragement, students can be brought to see that the latter two canticles not
only contain greater poetry than we find in the Inferno but also take on larger themes,
themes that must be pondered if Hell itself is to be rightly understood. Purgatory in
particular can be very appealing to the young. Here alone in Dante's three-fold world
there is time, change, journeying, soul-searching, and a deep fellowship between those
beyond and those here, all of whom struggle, with the help of grace, to rise above sin and
ascend to Joy. Dante's Purgatory feels human. It appeals to the struggling humanity in
us all, regardless of our religious beliefs or unbelief. It does not take much to get students,
who, after all, are struggling with all sorts of personal problems, to begin to appreciate the
virtues of a place dedicated to the clarification of our priorities, the perfection of our
loves, and the revision of our pasts. I have led classes that concentrated on the Inferno
6
�for a period of several weeks.
In the last two weeks, I always assign parts of the
Purgatorio and Paradiso. Even a bit of the whole is better than Hell by itself. My hope
is that students will be enticed to read more about the upper regions on their own. Just as
we must not give up on students' imagination, we must not giveup on their susceptibility
to the beautiful and sublime.
Hell can also be the ultimate stumbling block for readers who refuse to entertain even
the possibility of damnation. To these readers it is useful to pose a series of questions:
Does an individual human life have eternal significance? Do we have souls, and are those
souls deathless? If we have deathless souls, and the world is such that everything in it
ultimately comes to occupy its rightful place, then by living a certain life, by making
certain decisive choices, we in effect "put ourselves" somewhere in the cosmos.
To
confront the possibility of a Hell is to realize that certain choices resound in eternity and
are irrevocable. We can permanently ruin ourselves, and this ruin brings with it certain
consequences within the world order. The torments we witness in Dante's Hell-and
many of them are incredibly gruesome-are opportunities to ponder the specific selfdestructive nature and effects of sin. It is as though Dante were telling the reader, "You
have no idea how much is at stake, how horrible sin really is, and what sin does-what
this sin does-to a human soul."
Much of the Divine Comedy goes against the grain of student opinion and belief
Believers and non-believers alike are sometimes offended by Dante's arrogance. Who is
he to decide who is saved and who is damned? Isn't he simply using his poem as an
outlet for his personal grudges and loyalties? And even apart from Dante's manifest
presumption and agenda, how could a loving and just God ever permit a Hell to exist in
the first place?
As for the first of these objections, there is not much one can do except redirect
students to the reading of the text and the issues it raises. It may be useful to respond in
the following way: Yes, Dante is presumptuous, and he has an agenda. But what can we
learn from him? What does the poem itself show us and cause us to think about?
7
�The second objection is more serious. It is far from clear how it can be that Hell was
made by "primal love," as Dante reads on Hell's gate (Inferno 3). Dante himselfis deeply
troubled by what he reads. The eternal order that the pilgrim Dante comes to experience
does not always harmonize with our sense of justice and rationality. We wonder why
Statius is saved but Virgil is not, or how it can be just that great pagans like Ulysses did
anything to merit eternal torment, or how a pagan can make it to Heaven (Paradiso 20. 67
ff.). The poem invites us to search for possible answers to these questions. But the
answers are far from self-evident and are not to be had in the poem without the experience
of perplexity and even shock. Herein lies Dante's intellectual honesty. Christian though
he is, Dante refuses to bury perplexity and shock under the cloak of dogma. We teachers
too must be intellectually honest. We must not explain away problems by appeals to
historical categories and medieval Church doctrine.
Students must be challenged to
rethink their assumptions and beliefs. They must be challenged, in the case of Hell for
example, to rethink the faulty assumption that what offends their sensibilities is therefore
unjust and irrational. But objections, offence, and general resistance are all part of the
human experience that goes into reading Dante's intensely judgmental poem.
When
students object to something, it is because they have at least begun to take it seriously.
Another problem for first-time readers is politics. Why does Dante take politics so
seriously? What does it mean for a Christian, who inhabits the City of God, to be so
fiercely caught up in the City of Man? Here it is useful to encourage students to think
beyond Dante's Italy. Why should Christians not take a lively interest in politics?
Should God care for our individual lives and not for the largest temporal communities to
which we belong, for human beings and not for human history?
Are we not the
instruments of this care, workers in the temporal vineyard? We need not agree with
Dante's political views to admire his belief, in the face of all the injustice he witnessed
and the disappointments he suffered, that the world is well governed and that the good
wins out in the end. In this regard, it is useful to urge students to think about politics as
an expression of hope.
8
�2. Why is Cato, the warden of Purgatory, so harsh with all those who approach the
mountain?
3. Why is Virgil allowed to lead Dante through Purgatory? What is he getting, if
anything, out of this trip?
4. Why is the terrace of pride adorned with stunning works of art?
5. Virgil tells Dante, after they have walked through the flames that purge lust, that
Dante is now free (27.140-142). What does that mean? What is the freedom that
souls gain by goingup the mountain?
On the Paradiso:
1. Why does Heaven have levels? Why a hierarchy?
2. Hell is the place for those who have lost the good of the intellect. In what sense is
Paradise the place for those who have found the good of the intellect?
3. At one point, Beatrice expresses her approval that Dante can find Paradise
somewhere other than in her eyes (18. 21). What does this show us about the
function of Dante's love for Beatrice?
4. What exactly happens to Dante in that final amazing moment when he sees God?
Why do we not hear about how Dante descended from that divine pinnacle back into
his mortal life?
5. How does the Paradiso help us understand why the poem is a comedy?
A Possible Journey through a Canto
It may be useful to consider how a first discussion of the Inferno might go. There is a lot
to choose from in selecting an opening question: the dark wood, the sunny hill and the
three beasts, the appearance of Virgil, the chain of divine compassion, the Indifferent,
Limbo, the hard words on Hell's gate, the carnal sinners. All this in only the first five
cantos! I usually go straight to Francesca. Hers is the first autobiography Dante hears on
his journey.
10
�Teaching through Questions
Good teaching of any sort incorporates the asking of good questions. In this section I
offer a set of five opening questions on each canticle. The purpose of these questions is
to open a path of inquiry: to evoke the students' active wonder and the striving for
insight. How the questions are to be followed up · is a matter not of method but of
judgment. If the idea is to get students to engagein conversation with one another, a good
rule of thumb is to ask the question but not jump in too soon to provide direction:
patience pays. A teacher's best questions are, of course, the ones he poses for himself as
well as for his students. In introducing Dante, teachers must remember that they too are
"in the middle of our life's way."
On the Inferno:
1.
Why would anyone need to descend into Hell in order to correct his former life and
ascend to Heaven? Why go down in order to go up?
2. Hell is the place for those who have lost the good of the intellect (3. 18). Why is sin
an intellectual loss? Do the sinners we meet manifest a loss of intelligence?
3. Ulysses is one of the grandest figures in Hell. What do we learn from the story of his
last voyage? How is the story related to the sin of evil counsel-and to Dante's own
journey?
4. At one point, Virgil reprimands Dante for weeping out of pity (20. 28). Does Dante
want us to feel pity for the damned? What would it mean to feel such pity? What
would it mean not to?
5. What do we make of the fact that Dante and Virgil get clear of Hell by using Satan as a
ladder?
On the Purgatorio:
1. What is the difference between the torments of Hell and those of Purgatory?
9
�We begin with a question: Why are Paolo and Francesca in Hell? The answer seems
simple: Because this is the place for "carnal sinners who subject reason to desire" (5.3839). That of course is the formal answer, and it is important that somebody refer to it.
But Purgatory also has carnal sinners, and, as we find out later, there are (former) carnal
sinners in Paradise-King David, for example. The difference must be that the carnal
sinners in Hell did not repent of their sin. Usually the discussion gets to this point fairly
soon, and without reference to Purgatory and Paradise.
Then the discussion can go
deeper. Why did Francesca not repent of her sin? Usually someone suggests that she had
no time, that her husband came home unexpectedly and murdered her and her lover. But
how much time does it take? Casting ahead to purgatorial stories, Buonconte ends a
sinful life on the name of Mary and sheds a tear. It is enough. But one need not bring
this into the discussion to urge students to go deeper into the source of Francesca's
damnation. To understand why she is in Hell, we must look to what Francesca actually
says in the speeches Dante gives her.
In this famous canto Dante constructs a window into a human soul. Francesca speaks
for all lovers who gave up everything for the sake of love.
Here students must be
encouraged to look very carefully at the details of her beautifully crafted speeches. One
might call attention to important details during the discussion and simply ask students
what they make of them. These include Francesca's gracious and beguiling manner; her
incantatory repetition of the word Love; the wistful recollection of her birthplace; the
wordless Paolo who weeps while she speaks; her heartbreaking statement that the
greatest misery is the remembrance of former happiness in present woe; her claim that
when someone falls in love with you, you are compelled to love that person in return;
Dante's deathlike swoon as a response to Francesca's second speech.
In particular one might ask at some point: Why does Francesca put the blame for her
and her lover's sin on a book? What does reading have to do with the way we lead our
lives and the choices we make? Can we be corrupted by literature? At some point in the
discussion, unless somebody else has already brought it up, I encourage students to think
11
�about speech as seduction. Is Francesca trying to do to Dante (and indirectly to us) what
the story of Lancelot and Guinevere did to Paolo and Francesca: seduce him into believing
that romantic love, the boy-god Eros, justifies anything? I encourage students to think
beyond the natural sympathy we have for Francesca and to be suspicious of her and her
erotic creed. In this way I try to get them to think about our extreme vulnerability to selfdeception and the sophistries of the heart. Why is Francesca in Hell? Because she did
not repent But why did she not repent? Because, as her speeches testify, she gloried,
and still glories, in her sin-because she clings eternally to the belief that romantic love
justifies anything. That this belief can lead to eternal torment might well make us swoon,
especially if we think, with Dante, that love is the most important thing in life and should
be obeyed in all things.
Students can get a lot out of the Francesca canto and its juicy details. The canto offers
many opportunities for students to confront and examine their assumptions and beliefs.
These include the beliefthat what Francesca did was not really all that bad and maybe not
even a sin at all; that even if it was a sin, she was overcome by love, which no one can
resist; that in general we are the victims of circumstance, society, passion, and our
natures; that Francesca is enviable because she yielded to a "great passion" and is now
with her lover for all eternity; that being in love means being obsessed with one person to
the utter exclusion of all other concerns; that vows are not sacred because, after all, people
change.
Closing Remarks
So here is my advice for teachers of Dante who guide their students through question and
discussion rather than lecture.
First, resist the temptation to provide background
information. Second, arouse the students' thinking by asking questions that have no
factual or easy answers. Third, seize opportunities to connect the poem to everyday life
and experience. Fourth, make the most of the details in the stories that souls tell along the
12
�way. Fifth, use the students' objections and disagreements to get them to formulate and
examine their own assumptions and opinions. Sixth, think less about pedagogy and more
about the substance of the poem. Dante is so utterly provocative that students are bound
to have strong reactions that can, with a bit of skill and patience on our part, become the
starting-point for a good discussion. Seventh, and finally, encourage students not just to
study the poem but to enjoy it.. Calhheir attention to those aspects of the poem that
work on us apart from whether we know what they mean: the vivid descriptions of
characters, places and events; the sudden shifts in poetic tone; the swift pace of the
narrative; the beauty, and at times disarming homeliness, of Dante's similes. All this goes
into what we, as teachers of great works, must seek to do: not bury the book in the past
but make it alive in the student's present.
Recommended Translations
My favorite edition of the Divine Comedy is that of John Sinclair (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1939). The prose translation is faithful to the Italian; the numbered
footnotes are very concise; the list of contents at the beginning of each canto is helpful;
and the commentary is written by a man who clearly loves Dante and finds his teachings
insightful. An index of persons and places appears at the end.
Also highly recommended is the edition of John Singleton (Bollingen Series, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1970). It is especially helpful for anyone who wants detailed
notes. The prose translation is very literal.
Of the poetic renderings of the Comedy the one that is closest to the letter of Dante's
text is that of Allen Mandelbaum (New York: Bantam Books, 1982).
For a delightful translation that captures Dante's vitality in the original rhyme scheme,
the reader is strongly encouraged to consult the edition by Dorothy Sayers and Barbara
Reynolds (New York: Penguin Books, 1949). The notes and commentary are imaginative
and highly useful.
13
�Select Bibliography for Teachers
The most interesting book on Dante is The Figure of Beatrice by Charles Williams (New
York: Hippocrene Books, Inc., reprinted 1983). It is unusual and provocative. For a
powerful modem story about damnation and hope, clearly inspired by Dante, see
Williams' novel, Descent into Hell.
Of the more scholarly books on Dante, the following are the best: John Freccero's
Dante: The Poetics of Conversion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986),
and Gfoseppe Mazzotta' s Dante: Poet of the Desert, History and Allegory in the Divine
Comedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).
Erich Auerbach's Scenes from the Drama of European Literature (Gloucester, MA:
Meridian Books, 1973) contains two helpful Dante-related essays: "Figura" and "St.
Francis of Assisi in Dante's Commedia."
For an insightful account of Dante's political thought, see Joan Ferrante's The Political
Vision ofthe Divine Comedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
For essays that attempt careful readings of specific cantos, see my "Dante and
Ulysses: A Reading of Inferno XXVI" (The St. John's Review, Vol. XL, 3, 1990-91);
"Peter of the Vine: The Perversion of Faith in Inferno 13" (The St. John's Review, Vol.
XL V, 1, 1999); and "Love, Law, and Rhetoric: The Teachings of Francesca in Dante's
Inferno" (The Moral of the Story: Literature and Public Ethics, Chapter 3, ed. Henry T.
Edmondson III, Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2000).
14
�
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Text
Cemetery Thoughts
Peter Kalk:avage
28 November 2011
"Gesang ist Dasein."
Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus (3)
I remember my first encounter with Valery's Le cimetiere marin. Like all first-time
readers, I was baffled by the poem's dense imagery and its curious blend of mysticism
and intellect. The language was obscure, as were the transitions from line to line, and
from stanza to stanza. But the intensely metaphysical-mystical aspect of the poem
strongly attracted me, along with its stunning formal perfection, play of sounds and
seductive rhythms. Over the years I have grown closer to the poem and have learned a
great deal from it about what a great poem is.
The epigram from Pindar's Pythian Ode II, addressed to Hieron of Syracuse, may be
regarded as Valery's note to self: "Do not, dear soul, eagerly pursue deathless life, but
exhaust the resource that is within your means [emprakton]." The French poet here joins
the Greek poet in urging his "dear soul" -the soul he loves and which he seeks to keep
clear of danger-to resist the temptation of longing for immortality. He will inure his
soul against eros, as it appears in Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus. The poem's overt
anti-Christian teaching must be combined with this critique of Plato and the philosopher's
"supersensible world." The poem, in its own way, is in league with Hegel's ideabrilliantly displayed in "Force and the Understanding" -that there is only one world. The
world of appearance, Erscheinung, is the only world that is. For Valery, this identity is
not dialectical in Hegel's sense: there is no identity between time and conceptual
�unfolding. In the end, the thought of the poem is much closer to that of Heidegger and his
Sein-zum-Tod.
The Roman numeral headings are part of the poem and serve to mark time
monumentally. They also emphatically demarcate the stages of the poet's consciousness,
as the poet meditates, enraptured, on the play of images that are before him: the glittering,
beguiling surface of the sea and the human artefact, the cemetery, which reminds the poet
of his mortality and of the attempt to transcend mortality through various sorts of dreams
and illusions, both pagan and Christian. The Roman numerals are imposingly classical.
They recall the grandeur of an empire that is now only an abiding memory.
A 614 rhythm pervades the whole. It is present in the IO-syllable line (4+6), and in the
24 stanzas (the poem is six-by-four), which seem to be in 6 groups of 4. The 6/4 rhythm
recalls the French dance known as courante- "running" or "coursing." The number 24
represents the elements of the Greek language, the books of Homer, the hours of a day,
and no doubt much more.
The Roman numerals go with another prominent aspect of the poem: the abundance of
Latinate words like edifice, altitude, terrestre, to name a few. We must be careful not to
breeze past these deliberate Latinisms, which are embedded in modern French (and
English). They are part of the word-image world and echo of antiquity the poet means to
conjure. Their sound, their look on the page, and their historical resonance affirm the
poet's austere anti-romantic stance. They also suggest, to our modern ears, a scientific
detachment from the human-all-too-human-the objective stance of a soul that braces
itself for the irrefutable facticity of Dasein or what is inescapably there.
2
�I
"This tranquil roof, where doves (or pigeons) walk." The first line immerses us in
perplexing symbols. It is not "the" or "a" tranquil roof but this one, ce-the roof that is
there, now. The poet beholds, and in reading the poem we are one with his beholding.
Reality is dream here: the sea-surface is not a roof, but it looks like one; the little boats on
the water are not birds, but they look like birds. The world is the world of representation,
the world of potent revelatory symbols. To read the poem, we must give ourselvesyield-to this receptive dreamy mood that will reveal, at times, harsh unyielding truths.
The dream-state is also a state of acute awareness, the state in which things usually
hidden from us, or which we hide from ourselves, come to light.
The sea-surface moves but not in a linear fashion. It vibrates, pulsates. We view this
quivering surface, this wave-motion, as framed by the solid objects in our foregroundby the pines (which are ever green, a symbol of eternal life) and by the tombs (the image
of inevitable death). The quivering is not merely visual, in other words, but also eidetic.
The sea quivers between the poles of life and death. As we shall see, it contains these
poles in its dialectical nature, its unity of opposites.
It is high noon or, as the poet calls it, Midi le juste. It is the time of day when the sun
achieves the peak of its arc and divides this arc into two equal parts-equitably,justly. At
high noon there is no escape from the burning light-the truth-that descends on sea and
cemetery alike. One thinks of Joseph Conrad's statement that his goal as a writer of
fiction was "to render the highest possible justice to the visible universe." Conrad
obviously did not mean that he was interested in theodicy, in justifying the world. He
meant rather that his vocation was not to flinch; it was to capture in writing the world as
3
�it is and as it appears, in defiance of all wishful thinking. The composer-god is not a
being but a state or condition, the condition of Midi le juste. The Sun, if we may call it
that, com-poses or puts together a cosmic scene by means of fire: fire is the element here
of divine demiurgy, the fire of creation. But the scene is composed in another way too: it
is the serene godlike composure and peace of a settled way of things-a way that abides.
The scene inspires this very state in the thinker-poet who beholds, whose toit already
hints at the intimate bond between outer world and inner world (tai)-between the
composed-ness of the scene and the godlike composure of the theoros, the one who looks
on thoughtfully. The sea undergoes composition out of fire. To call it "the sea, the sea" is
true to the appearances. The repetition, the rhythm and music of the line, is the
appearance in the poem itself of the undulating sea-surface-and also the poet's moving
in sync with it. A wave indeed has a linear component: it travels. But its periodicity is a
kind of rest: the laws of nature that govern oscillation are the "look of eternity" that
shines through the turbulent world and stabilizes it. One perceives this lawfulness in the
eternal return of waves: the visible music of Same in Other.
All this the poet sees and in seeing thinks. "O," he says-and the exclamation, the
affect of wonder and passionate openness to the whole, resounds through the poem. It
recalls Valery's statement that all lyric poetry "is the development of an exclamation."
Indeed, the poem is full of exclamation points, the first of which occurs right after the
line "La, mer, la mer, toujours recommencee!'' There is thought,pensee, and there is re-
com-pense afterwards. The I thinks and is gratified, at peace with having thought, with
intellectually having seen. The recompense is sweet payback for the act of thinking.
Penso, in Latin, is to weigh, also to counterbalance in an act of justice. (Think of
4
�"compensate.") It is also to weigh in one's mind, to ponder or consider. Here pensee is
godlike, as the poet, in response to the gift-image of the divine poetry of world-making,
identifies with the gods, who contemplate and are calm. The poet, in beholding the
expanse of glittering undulating action (the flash of the whole's beguiling surface), is
compensated for his thought by a godlike peace: he beholds, in a privileged dream of the
mind, the composure and calm of Olympian theoria. The last line of the stanza-Q'un
long regard sur le calme des dieux!-beautifully captures, in its lulling lingering sound,
the state of prolonged godlike peace.
But later (and inevitably), thought will become the thought of the mortal human that
suffers the fate of mortal self-consciousness. The poet will become pensive and
melancholy. His pensee will become grave, ponderous, and oppressive, as he descends
from the glittering surface of eternal shining-forth (Spinoza's natura naturans) to the
humiliation of imperfection, limit, and death.
II
The poem as a whole reads like the revelation of (anti-Christian) mysteries: the secrets of
change. The poem starts high: with images of godlike peace. And yet the fascinating
tremble of the glittering whole must contain death: for a spark to appear, a spark must
die. Scintillation is a perpetual life-out-of-death. This is the "pure work" of stanza II. The
flashes look like thousands upon thousands of diamonds. But they cannot be diamondhard. To use Spinoza's terms, they are passing modes in the great sea of substanceNatura as the god who constantly appears in boundless effulgence. Already in II, the poet
is aware that surface means surface of what is not the surface, the surface of a concealed
5
�depth. This is the abyss: the sea as both infinite expanse and infinite depth. It is not "the"
sun but "a" sun that reposes. Following Heraclitus-"the sun is new each day"-the poet
is true to how the world appears. It is as though the sun died every day and was every day
created anew: its etemality is eternal rebirth. The sun seems to rise up out of the abyss
and sink back down into it. Also, to call the sun un soleil saves the appearance of motion
that has been suspended. The poet is experiencing the Sun not as the body that appears to
move, or the object of scientific theory (sun as revolving body or body around which we
revolve), but as this burning light-source that is there right now in the scene, as if in a
painting, and that seems in the privileged moment of high noon to hover and cease to
move. In the poet's experience, which the poem invites us to share, the Sun is a
revelatory wonder-inspiring symbol.
Why are the ouvrages pure? Perhaps because they are the sheer flashing forth from.
their first principle: they are not altered in any way, not mixed and corrupted by
consoling myths of origination. Nature is, in a sense, the true and only God-Nature not
as effect (natura naturata) but as "eternal cause," as infinite productivity and being-atwork (natura naturans).
Time scintillates rather than marches on. This is because the poet is seeing an image
of the whole of all things sum.med up. In his godlike (and ironic) lookout point on the
hilly cemetery, he is above it all, at least for now. Le Temps scintille et le Songe est
Savoir: "Time scintillates and the Dream. is to know." Two senses are at work here in the
second half of this provocative concluding line. In the first, the dream. is to know because
the hum.an soul, in its eros, longs to know the absolute, to see what the gods see. The
philosophic intellect gazes at the phenomenal world and is tempted to go beyond it, to the
6
�noumenal res ultimae or "things-in-themselves." This is the ultimate Dream of Man, the
butterfly that Man chases without ever catching. But in another, more positive sense, the
poet's dream-state, which appears wondrously as a divine gift (a sort of pagan grace), the
truth that is appearance is revealed-not to discursive reasoning or philosophy but to
poetic intuition and receptivity to the play of images. Time may be said to scintillate only
from this divine perspective that regards things sub specie aeternitatis (Spinoza again).
Otherwise, from the ordinary finite perspective of thinghood, time marches on.
This fmal line, Le Temps scintille et le Songe est savoir, has special weight, as if it
were the culmination of the previous lines in the stanza. The capitals highlight Temps and
Songe, give the words universal stature, and also cause them to be intimately paired.
Time is time that is summed up, seen from the eternal (or apparently eternal) vantage
point; and songe is not any dream but rather this privileged Dream that is a state of poetic
cognition.
III
This is a truly beautiful stanza, breathtaking in fact in its sound, rhythm, and imagery.
Yvor Winters singles it out for special praise, as though to say: "Now that's poetry." Note
the hypnotic effect of the repetition of parallel grammatical structures-the wave-like
flow of appositions. And not a complete sentence to be found! No main verb.
The treasure is "stable." That is, it is solidly, dependably there-a structure. It is
lasting-the source and fund that is never exhausted and never to be budged. It is a
certain kind of structure-a temple or structure for the gods. Simple-yes, unadorned
with artifacts of human sentiment and consolation and therefore truthful. The fire-
7
�composed sea-surface, the dream-image of the whole, is a fitting temple for the goddess
of wisdom-a temple of Minerva. It is not a mass of water but a mass of calm: a massive
condition or state. We can see the glittering sea-roof; it is visible. But what is visible is,
again, not water, not a thing, but reserve. Reserve is a source and place of storage but
also a condition. To be reserved is to be discrete, to have one's inner state composed and
held in check. There are depths within, but they are discretely covered, kept secret, by the
glittering surface. The simple Greek temple stands in sharp contrast with the cemetery's
symbols of Christian consolation-with non-pure, non-simple adornment.
The water, Eau, is also an eye, Oeil-the lens-shaped body of water that the poet
beholds. It is supercilious because it evinces the gesture or affect of a raised eyebrow or
supercilium. This imagined expression of ironic disdain goes with the images of purity,
simplicity, reserve and Olympian aloofness. The poet addresses this Eye or shiny haughty
surface as something that guards within it sleep under a veil of flame. The shiny surface
connotes the daylight world of consciousness. But beneath (ah, beneath!) there is "so
much sleep" (the sheer amount is wondrous), so much potency that is down there below
the conscious world-the world of unconscious, unsounded depth.
The poet continues this sequence of mystical-seeming appositions, as he goes from
treasure to temple to mass to reserve to water to eye to--silence! "O my silence," that is,
"O that which is within me that is deeper than my most brilliantly conceived words! That
which 'sleeps,' buried beneath my words and my intentions! This is my pure potencywhat has not yet risen, and may never rise, to the level of consciousness and language."
Edifice in the soul: the word edifice is one of those deliberate Latinisms with which the
poem abounds. It is a fussy learned word, which means originally the making (facio) of a
8
�temple (aedes). The sea is a kind of undulating never-failing structure made of flashes
and foam. Note that the poet has refrained from thinking of the sea as watery or wet: for
now, sight alone matters. The poet sees himself, the edifice that is himself, in the edifice
that is the sea, with its shining rooftop and its dark Underneath. The poet has built
himself up over the course of years. He has absorbed, and even enhanced, what we call
culture. He embodies the House of Culture (Bildung) that has been built up over the
course of centuries. Much of the poem is, indeed, about the poet's record of an
experience in which inner and outer mirror each other--each other's structures, each
other's truths, each other's play of divine Up Here and mortal Down There.
The mais, "but," is important. The poet has been reminded of his inarticulate, perhaps
inarticulable, depths-the "silence" that is the unfathomable mysterious source and
foundation of his brilliant light-filled words, his glittering, rhythmically undulating
poiemata or "makings." The poet must be imagined as peering down into himself, as if
from a height: he is experiencing his depth from a height. The mais brings him back up to
his surface: "Yes, I am an abyss, like this seascape in front of me. And yet this Dark, this
Silence, is crowned with a glittering surface-like my poems, which somehow emerge
from the Down There that is also my Not Yet." Both together-abyss and surface, the
Dark Down There and the Bright Up Here-form the edifice that is a source of the poet's
abiding wonder. Tait here is experienced as Toi.
IV
The word "temple" derives from tempus, time. "Temple of Time" is an etymological
spelling out, a lesson for mortals about the unity of the divine and the deathbound. The
9
�temple to Minerva was the glittering sea-surface. But now a metamorphosis occurs, as the
image shifts-the poet's meditation shifts-from sea to cemetery. The cemetery is truly a
temple of time, that is, the sanctified solidly present home of mortality. The monuments
endure and are made of stone, but each proclaims to those of unclouded mind: "It is a
stone-like lasting truth that we all die because change rules the whole."
The cemetery is summed up in the feeling-filled exhalation we call a sigh (soupir). It
is the affect of mortal self-consciousness as it contemplates the last release of breath and
the final destination. To think of death is to go down into our abyss. We each carry a
personal grave within ourselves in our dark, pre-representational self-consciousness. To
reflect on ourselves, on our interior, is to go down into ourselves, to retreat from the
daylight world of representation and the consoling aspect of solid thinghood. The poet
mounts to this "pure point." Physically, he had to climb a hill to be where he is now,
sitting in a raised cemetery that overlooks the sea. But his soul also mounts to the truth
that surrounds and pervades him. The poet settles into this truth of death and grows
accustomed to the cemetery-mode, as though it were a rarefied ether that required more
than human lungs. He is surrounded, he says, by "my sea-outlook." The poet is one with
the objective truth that reveals itself. He is keenly aware of himself as this individual here
at this time in this place and is justly proud of his ascent to the divine above-it-all
perspective that he now enjoys. He refers to his "supreme offering to the gods." No doubt
this refers to his godlike creativity-his writing of poems, like this one. The scintillation
has generative force: it suffuses the whole place, the whole altitude or lofty state to which
the poet has accustomed himself, with a "sovereign disdain." Although in a cemetery,
where once living beings descend into the earth, the poet experiences the place as one of
10
�godlike recognition, where, as we have seen, dream is knowledge.
v
The poet shifts from the cemetery-temple to the profound and intimate bond between
pleasure and death. Pleasure, delight, is produced in the act of consumption. The eating of
fruit is, of course, a chemical transformation in which something Other than me becomes
the Same as me in the act of eating-assimilation. But the poet is interested in another
feature of this common act. We eat because we desire. But what do we desire? Not only
sustenance but also pleasure and gratification. Fruit is juicy, sweet and satisfying-a
fitting symbol of life itself. It delights, like the sound of the delicious line: Comme le fruit
se fond en jouissance (the favorite line of students in a Valery preceptorial I once led).
But the delight is born only when the fruit is destroyed, consumed. We think here of
Hegel's notion of desire (Begierde)-negativity, the drive to negate what is Other. The
cemetery is the place of preserved absence: the once-living beings have been consumed
by their fire of life. Their form has been turned into their absence, as the poet will soon
remind us-a fruitful absence that feeds the surrounding grass, plants and trees. This is
the implied connection between stanzas IV and V. We are the always-consumed fruit of
the Whole. We are being urged to think that somehow we are to the cosmos what fruit is
to our faculty of taste, that the cosmos gathers delight from our vanishing form.
In the curious chain of ever-changing images, the poet moves from fruit to smoke-
another form of absence (and of exhalation). He drinks in, breathes in, his "future
smoke," future fumee. The sound captures the fizzle of out-going fire. This future smoke
is life after it has gone up in flames as a natural result of the life-process. Again, this
11
�seems to recall Heidegger's Sein-zum-Tod. The smoke image is combined with the sound
of the waves as they hit the shore: it is the cosmos singing its endless song of change,
beautifully caught in the musically shushing sound of the French changement. The sky or
heaven, the great Ouranos, sings to the poet's consumed soul. The transformation of form
into absence, life into death and cosmic renewal, is the music of the whole. It is not the
soul music of the Timaeus, with its eternal form-like ratios.
VI
We dwell with the sky, which the poet addresses as though it were a god. The sky
combines beauty and truth in its song of change. "Look at me, who changes!" This is
both confession and boast, as the poet puts himself into the light of truth. The pride to
which he refers recalls the earlier suggestion of the poet as a being committed to and in
the grip of intellectual activity. As maker and thinker, the poet is godlike, but there is also
a "strange or unaccustomed laziness," that is, non-activity, non-actuality. Non-actuality,
yes, but "full of power or possibility." In the wake of (apres) all the poet's proud
productivity and sleep-like potency, the poet "abandons himself' to the sunlit place of the
dead. He gives himself up resolutely to everything that the light is and illuminates. The
reference to the poet's "shadow," which is also of course his Shade, is stunning. He sees
his shadow because the sun strikes his body, which, being opaque, turns light to dark,
prevents the light from going straight through him. Shadow becomes symbol once it is
cast on the gravestones: it is the poet's future "smoke" and "shade"-his future union
with the dead. The quivering, frail movement of this shadow tames the poet by schooling
his fierce pride of life, his productive potency and his will to stay integral and individual.
12
�Frail movement masters human will and human pride, however strong.
VII
The poet's soul is exposed to the torches of the solstice, that is, to the high point of the
sun's annual arc. This conspires with high noon, the high point of the sun's diurnal arc, to
intensify the force and violence of the sun as focus or burning point. The poet both
endures and supports (se soutient) the "admirable justice of the light with pitiless
weapons." The light is not a god who loves man. It is Apollo, the god without pity whose
arrows pierce as they illuminate. As my mother used to say when she told me something
she knew I didn't want to hear, "The truth hurts." Yes, sometimes it does. And some
endure the hurt of the pitiless Light, while others cover it up with consoling myths about
the best of possible worlds and a timeless Beyond.
The poet stands on the side of deadly Apollo: he seconds the piercing rays that destroy
illusion and preserve "justice" by showing things to be exactly as they are. The poet is
acknowledging his place within the Whole. Indeed, he has a new pride: a mirror's pride!
"I give you back pure [notice the justice-word "render"] to your original place [that is,
your origin]." Why pure? Because the poet does not flinch and does not mythologize or
corrupt. He takes it, as it were, like a man. But he also acknowledges that in thus taking
it, he fulfills what would otherwise be left unfulfilled: the Whole' s awareness of itself
(the self-consciousness of Apollo). "Regard yourself!" he exclaims. That is, "Behold
yourself face to face." The poet is a shadow being. We already know that. But his
shadow-nature is necessary to the Whole, integral to the structure or edifice of the Whole.
This idea is new to the poem's unfolding. If the Apollo-source is to be one with itself, if it
13
�is to reflect itself and be fully circular and all-embracing, it needs an opaque surface. The
poet is that surface. His opacity, his shadow nature, which includes everything that makes
him non-divine and mortal, fulfills a cosmic function. The world, as we later hear, is the
Great Diamond, which, like all diamonds, has its fault line. Imperfection is not the result
of man's Fall. On the contrary, imperfection-ontological evil-is woven into the very
fabric of the Whole. Creation is the fall. This idea is made explicit in Valery's Serpent
poem, where the biblical Serpent (imagined as a sophisticated French seducer, dandy and
metaphysician) champions gnosticism and sings the praises of Non-being.
I cannot leave the stanza without remarking on the perfect sound of its final line, in
which the poet has captured in words the garbled, opaque character of his inner being:
d'ombre une morne moitie.
vm
Light, so prominent in the preceding stanzas, now vanishes, as the poet descends into his
dark interior, a descent induced by the meditation on the sea. He sounds his depths, which
resound in the lightless world of pre-representational self-consciousness. Sound leads the
way, as the poet accumulates Hegel-sounding terms of self-reference: "O for me alone, to
myself, in myself." He travels backward, as it were, from the bright sea-surface of his
poetic words and the world of representation to the pre-posited dark Inner that is the
wellspring and living heart of the poem. He puts himself in the very moment of poetic
unfolding: pre-creation. He is between the void of non-being and the "pure event" of
poetic discovery (that next word, that next line, that next image). The poem will be his
grandeur, but it is not there yet: it is still a house-a-building. The poet has placed himself
14
�into the very temporality and Dasein of the poem itself, which has a source and a living
heart. He waits. He cannot will the next word, the next line, the next image into being. As
Nietzsche tells us, a thought comes when it wants to.
The poet's Inner is a vast container or cistern-bitter like the sea, somber like the
cemetery. Bitter because it is the nothing that is the self, somber because it is a depth one
goes down into (like a grave). The future of the poem is also the future of the "poem" that
is the rest of the poet's mortal life. What will come out of the hollow that is my self?
Who knows! The inner cistern is in any case a sort of echo chamber in the soul. With
what does it resonate? With the poet's pure unpredictable potentiality-an "always future
hollow," that is, a depth that is truly pro-fond or has its bottom (fond) always ahead of
itself (pro). Heraclitus again comes to mind: "You would in your going never traverse the
boundaries of the soul, so deep is its logos."
IX
The sea is a "false captive of the foliage." From the poet's visual perspective, the sea is
framed, contained, by various tree branches. But it is not really contained: it transcends
all frames and contains all things. The golfe or abyss "eats away" the thin fence-work: it
is a golfe mangeur. No doubt this is because of the diffraction of the reflected light. But it
also refers to the whole as that which ultimately devours all boundaries, which are, in the
end, thin and weak. Again, not really a being but an all-embracing condition (of change),
the sea as image of the whole contains even what is long past.
On intimate terms with the sea, the poet interrogates it dreamily: Do you know? That
is: Do you have within you? The poet closes his eyes, perhaps not all the way. As we
15
�know, this act increases the effect of dreaminess, blurring, diffraction. The secrets are
things hidden from the poet's eyes: he cannot see beneath the dazzling sea-surface. Also,
he is thinking of the mystery that is his total self: his body, his brow, the thought behind
the brow. This thought, the poet's fascination with the Whole, draws him to this "bony
place." It is, as it were, the inevitable encounter of spirit and skull. The glimmer of the
sea mirrors the glimmer of his thought: the sparkle "thinks there" of his absent ones. The
mes here does not refer to the poef s personal dead but rather to all the absent things that
are in the poet's mind and have become intimately "his." He is personally identifying
with their absence, which he experiences as an eternal vanishing.
x
The poet reflects further on the connection between sea and cemetery. The cemetery is
enclosed, sanctified (ultimately not by a Church but by the truth-revealing Sun), and full
oflight-energy. The Latinate "terrestrial" gives an objective, scientific dignity to the
place that is "offered up" as a sort of earthy death-gift to the light. The poet likes being
where he now is, in the place lorded over, dominated, by cypresses (trees that are shaped
like flames). The place is "composed of gold," that is, put together and settled by the rays
of Apollo. The hard gravestones "tremble" because of the light that falls on them, graces
them. They too are a symbol of change. And the sea? It is "faithful." As the next stanza
makes clear, the sea is the faithful watchdog that guards the mysteries of change. La mer
sleeps "over" and "above" the gravestones like a good mere. Here we must put ourselves
into the poet's visual perspective, from which the sea, as observed from the raised bit of
earth, appears to be above the tombs. That is how it would look in a painting.
16
�XI
The "splendid bitch," that is, the dormant sea (symbol of abiding change), keeps off the
idolaters. Here, again, we must be careful to note the Latinate splendide, or else the word
becomes superficial: splendid means "shining, glorious." The idolaters are Christians,
and possibly other believers in personal immortality, who would corrupt and darken the
scene and its revelations with wishful thinking and the denial of world and change. The
poet is the "good shepherd," who, in this inverted world, makes sure people do not follow
Christ and his promise of a timeless Kingdom.
With an amazing near-comic irony, the sunlit gravestones become "mysterious
sheep"-mysterious because they guard the mystery of change, the having-been of those
once present who are now absent (as individuals). Tue tombs are ''tranquil," that is, sealike: composed and dignified. The seeming of the tombs, their being as symbols, keeps
away the thought of providence ("prudent" doves), heaven ("empty dreams"), and angels
("curious" because always poking their noses into our lives to see what's going on,
perhaps in order to record it).
XII
"Having come here." A simple beginning to a fascinating stanza, the theme of which
seems to echo Heraclitus: "a dry soul is wisest and best." Tue future is lazy because the
dead aren't going anywhere and have nothing to do: they have no agenda. They are now
perpetually lying down on the job. The insect, the cicada, is precisely formed (net), even
skeletal in its design. It scratches the dryness and makes the sound it makes: it joins the
17
�symphony of the shore's song of change. All is dryness. This is the new idea, the Dry,
which comes after the stanza about the corrupting influence of "wet" sentimental notions
and symbols. The sun is bountiful, a source of life and warmth. But it also dries out and
cooks what it illuminates and warms (recall Baudelaire's carcass poem).
Thanks to the sun, once-juicy beings become desiccated, stripped down, skeletal,
reduced and analyzed into their elements. Here again, the physical mirrors the intellectual
and the unflinching. "Analysis kills." Yes, and in so doing it reveals elemental truth.
Moisture is "received into the air" and becomes "I know not what severe essence." It is
sublimated. "Severe" because strictly reduced, as well as harsh with respect to our
sensibilities, which like to hold on to the individuality and wholeness of self and thing.
Life is "vast" in the Latin sense of the term: not so much expansive as wasted. In another
inverted world of symbols, life, because it is the place of constant desiccation and moistbecoming-dry, is drunk on everything that passes away in this process. It is an orgy of
evaporation, a constant influx of moisture that once was. We recall the fruit and its
disappearing form in the earlier stanza. Life is drunk on absence or non-being, on a
disappearing act that never quits. "Bitterness is sweet, and the mind clear." To the poet's
mind, which supports and seconds the fact and mystery of change-of life as the process
oflife-becoming-death---desiccation is an essential condition oflife's sweetness; and the
mind that can grasp and accept this is "clear," that is, unclouded by sentiment.
XIII
We are at the midpoint of the poem's arc and life, as the poem itself reminds us (Midi lahaut). The dead are hidden well-that is, well taken care of qua dead people-in the
18
�earth. This continues the composite image of watchdog, shepherd and sheep. Now, in
addition to the Dry, we get the Warm. The earth keeps the dead nice and toasty. It keeps
the mystery of change dry (uncorrupted and unsentimental).
Again there is the reminder of the cosmic condition-high noon, when the sun hovers
in a moment of seeming eternity, the Now of terrible revelation and poetic "absolute
knowing." Again the Whole is personified as intellect. We think of the myth in the
Timaeus, where the cosmic sphere resembles a gigantic always revolving, always
thinking head. The cosmic sphere (for that is what the sky looks like) thinks itself as it
sparkles and creates (like the ultimate Poet that it is) and fits itself, is at home with itself.
The Whole is a tete complete, a filled-out or complete head, and a "perfect diadem." The
line scans the same both forwards and backwards, in imitation of the Whole's perfection.
"I am the secret change in you," says the poet. The large theme here is the one that
pervades the poem: the poet sees in the scene an image and symbol of himself as poet and
thinker. Why secret? Because of the poet's mortal opacity, his participation in murk and
muddle. The poet completes the perfect head and diadem by virtue of his imperfection,
his otherness with respect to divine effulgence.
XIV
Change is a feature of the whole: there is nothing hidden about it. But the sort of change
that the poet qua human uniquely embodies is his inner changeableness and emotionality:
his fear, repentance, doubt and hesitancy. These are all negative and retreating emotions,
feelings that cause us to feel our limits. "You [the poet addresses the Whole with the
familiar] have only me to contain" all these things. The idea here is that these
19
�imperfections had to exist if there was to be any creation at all (creation is a fall from the
"purity of non-being" [the Serpent poem]). The imperfections had to go somewhere, and
human selfhood was that place. Humanity is the dumping ground for necessary cosmic
imperfection made self-aware. And yet, it is for that same reason the elevation of our
imperfection to the status of a cosmic requirement. This idea seems to derive ultimately
from Plato's Timaeus, where human corruption completes and perfects the cosmic
Animal.
The poet experiences himself as the "fault" of the cosmic diamond, the Whole that
shines forth. Then there occurs one of several ellipses in the poem ( ... ), as the poet shifts,
through the word "but," to the change that is going on underground. There is a whole
race of people down there-not a people determined by age, sex, race, nationality,
personality, etc., but rather a ''vague" people. That is, their outlines are blurred. But also
they are a vagrant people: they wander in the sense that their being is in constant
biochemical transformation. They wander in a "night" "all laden with marble." If they
could look up, their perceived "sky" would be the dark underside of the gravestones, and
there would be no stars or moon! The vague people are constantly ''traveling," migrating,
into the roots of the trees. They have taken their part, taken sides, with the fact of change.
They live change, or are utterly committed to the change-advocates (as opposed to those
who sentimentally resist change). They have taken this side "slowly," that is, in a gradual
process of chemical breakdown and transference of nutrients. Perhaps lentement also
refers to our all-too-human unwillingness to take the side of change, which involves the
dissolution of the individuality to which we desperately cling. But slowly-that is, by and
by-we come to be participants and advocates of change, if not in word then in deed.
20
�xv
Being dead is a congealing. This is another inverted world of symbols. The dead are
reduced and dissolved, yes. But they have also been compacted and concretized into "a
thick absence." This is one of the poem's most amazing images. The thickness is the
material substance of nutriment formed by decomposition. The earthy or red clay has
"drunk" the white kind (bone and whatever marrow it contains). Death is life's way of
recycling life. The decomposing dead and the nutrients they contain are a gift passed on
to the flowers.
But then the poet turns to questions that will lead quickly back to the harsh truth of
change and the evanescence of feeling. "Where are the familiar phrases of the dead, the
personal way of being, singular [or colorful] souls?" Well, they have gone back to their
origin in the Whole and its song of change. This fact is stated with brutal irony: "The
worm wends its way (or files) where tears used to form." The worm of mortality replaces
and triumphs over all mortal care.
XVI
The poet's reflection on the passage of all human things into death continues. He lists the
scenes of youth and its flirtations: "the shrill cries of tickled girls [in flirtation]/ the eyes,
the teeth, the moistened eyelashes/the attractive breast that plays with the fire [of sexual
arousal], the blood [passion] that shines on lips that offer themselves/ the final gifts [that
men want to touch] and the fingers that defend them." All this--not just the beings,
bodies, and parts of bodies, but the whole vibrant scene of lusty youth-goes under the
21
�earth and enters the cosmic j eu or game, the play of coming to be and passing away.
XVII
The poet now turns to himself with the formal or respectfully distant (and ironic) vous.
"And you, great soul-who do you think you are? Do you think yourself, a dignified and
non-silly being, immune to the game of the preceding stanza? Do you have lingering
dreams of immortality, a dream that will no longer have the colors of a mere seeming or
lie, colors that wave and light make here on eyes of flesh? Do you think you will one day,
after death, 'see' the Thing-in-Itself and the deathless Ideas of things in their hyperuranian heaven? Do you think, great soul that you are, that you are less mortal than the
tickled girls? Will you sing, write poems, when you are vaporous?" In this last question,
the poet slyly deletes the vous from the quand clause: his future will indeed be a deletion.
Then the poet sides with change: "Go! All flees!" He embraces his mortal fate,
answers his question. His presence, he says, is porous. That is, his presence and beingthere is not solid but full of holes: it is riddled with non-being. He then adds, cryptically,
"holy impatience dies too!" Impatience is the refusal to wait it out, also the refusal to
suffer the change that all things must suffer. "Holy" impatience probably refers to the
Christian holdout who says no to change and refuses to enter into the game, and who is
impatient for immortality. That refusal, in the end, becomes part of the game. It too dies.
XVIII
The rejection of the belief in personal immortality now reaches its peak. Immortality is
"skinny," "black" and "gilded." She is a consoler "frightfully laurelled." The description
22
�is perhaps prompted by a figure the poet has seen among the monuments. This consoling
mother figure makes of death "a maternal breast." She represents "the beautiful lie" and
the "pious ruse." We all recognize death and yet we all (or most of us) reject it: the empty
skull and the eternal grin (death's last laugh)! The stanza is explicit and needs little
commentary. Making Lady Death into a mother figure recalls these lines from Wallace
Stevens' Sunday Morning: "Death is the mother of beauty, mystical/Within whose
burning bosoms we devise/Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly."
XIX
This stanza goes much deeper than the preceding one, which is bluntly dismissive in its
tone and language. The peres profonds are our ancestors, who were also our teachers and
guides. They are deep down now but once may have been profound in the other sense of
the term. In any case, they are now "uninhabited heads," heads with nobody home. Their
profundity is now only their being buried deep in the earth. Indeed, the poet says
addressing them directly: "You are the earth, and you confound our steps." Once, our
profound fathers guided our steps. But now their gravestones just make walking harder,
just as their death is a stumbling block for us, as we make our way through life. Note
again that the poet suggests a personal deletion by suppressing the implied subject vous.
The profound fathers are eaten by physical worms as they lie "under the table" of the
graveyard. But the true worm, which eats away at every still living self-consciousness, is
busily at work above the table. We who live on the surface of the earth are on the table of
life as food for this gnawing worm. We are devoured more deeply, more truly than the
profound fathers. This true worm-the ver that is verum-is "irrefutable." That is, he is
23
�an undeniable part of human experience: the abiding essence of man as selfconsciousness and desire. This worm in the self-.which is the self qua self-referringlives on life (that is, on the living). He never takes a day off: il ne me quitte pas.
xx
The poet continues to meditate on the Inner Worm. What is its right name? Love of self
(amour-propre)-or maybe hate of self? The hate reminds us of the verb remordre: to
experience remorse is to bite oneself back, to punish oneself. The poet observes that the
"secret tooth" of this worm is so close to everything he is and does that it talces on all
names. The statement reminds us of La Rochefoucauld's long maxim on amour-propre,
which pervades our being, takes on many names and lives even in his (apparent) death
and denial. The worm of selfhood is everywhere: its name really doesn't matter. "It sees,
it wants, it dreams, it touches. It likes my flesh." This Worm is so intimately bound up
with me that it even follows me to bed and invades my dream life. There is no getting
away from it, no rest. "I live to belong to this living thing" that constantly feeds on me,
and is me.
XXI
I always like getting to the Zeno stanza, which Valery (with his accustomed cheek)
claims to have thrown into the poem to please the philosopher types. The repetition of
Zeno's name captures the zing of Zeno's argumentative arrows, the brilliance of his
paradoxes. Zeno is from Elea and a student of Parmenides, the philosopher who denied
the reality of motion. Zeno is cruel because he arouses thought only to stop it in its tracks
24
�and kill it. His paradoxes are, simultaneously, birth and death. He stirs us into thought
and then blocks our way. (As Aristotle says somewhere in his Physics, Zeno's paradoxes
are bad for our intellectual digestion: they "block" us.) This too is related to the warning
against every form of immortal longing, not just the Christian form. Philosophy leads to
antinomies and nothing more. It is, in the end, a tragic love affair and instance of Hegel's
Unhappy Consciousness, perhaps best summed up in the critical philosophy of Kant. In
any case, the arrow in this stanza is both the arrow in the famous paradox and the arrow
that is the paradox, the logistical zinger. The arrow quivers, flies-and yet does not fly!
Zeno is the enemy of change. He sings a beguiling song that tries to counter the song of
change in stanza V. The intellectual ring of the famous paradox gives birth to me, wakes
me up intellectually, and the arrow that is the argument kills me, aborts my effort to think
about the world of change and to make progress.
From the Eleatic enemy of change the poet now returns to the sun. He exclaims:
"Ah!" This "Ah!" is not a continuation of the wonder the poet felt earlier. The role of the
sun within the poet's ever-shifting meditation has changed. The poet has caught it in the
act of changing, seen its potential for distraction-and Zeno has brought this to light. The
"Ah!" expresses a truth just discovered about a familiar but until now hidden object. The
sun does everything we have seen in the poem: it is fiery demiurge and cosmic composer.
But it is also a great tempter-the tempter (see the Serpent poem). The sun suspended at
high noon seems to stand still in a moment of absolute knowing and intellectual stasis.
But its shining there, its holding out the prospect of changeless Being (Eleaticism), is in
fact a great shadow in the mind. It moves like the shadow of a tortoise for the soul. It is
glory-seeking Achilles frozen, crippled, in a moment of non-action and thereby falsified.
25
�Philosophic thought has robbed Achilles of his fire-like glory, which he can achieve only
if he is allowed to stride forward-to his death. In sum, Homer is more truthful than
Zeno, or Plato. He does not reduce motion, especially tragic motion, to a changeless Idea.
XXII
The poet rebels. Zeno has made him rebel. Momentarily charmed by the prospect of
changeless Being as it gleams in the sun-god as eternal symbol, the poet utters a decisive
(that is, a cutting) "Non, non!" He commands himself to get up, to get on with life, to
move into "the next era." This is striking language for an individual. It is as though the
poet feels in himself the need for a whole age of humanity to move into its future, to
break free of ideas that constrain its bond with temporal unfolding and possibilities that
have yet to emerge. "Break," he tells his body, "this pensive [or ponderous] form."
Rodin's gnarled Thinker comes to mind. "Breathe in," he tells his breast, "the birth of the
wind." The poet, held in a seemingly timeless meditation on life, death, and self,
experiences a rebirth, a resurgence of the primordial will to live. The stanza suggests, or
perhaps asserts, that thought and life are irreconcilable opposites, that thought (pens er) is
inevitably melancholic and static (ponderous or weighty). Thought is a spell in need of
eventually being broken. It is the ultimate Siren song that charms and distracts
intellectual non-Christians like our poet.
A freshness of the wind restores the poet's soul, which has been stolen away by the
Muse of eventually morbid contemplation. "O salty potency!" the poet exclaims, as he
exhorts himself (and us) to run into the wave, that is, to stop gazing meditatively at the
water and actually get wet and lively!
26
�XXIIT
Just as the previous stanza began with "no," this one begins with "yes"-as if to say,
"Yes, you beguiling one, I too am under your spell, which is undeniable." "Yes! Great
sea gifted with deliriums." We have gone from the sun to an exhortation to run into the
water, and then back to the beguiling sea-surface, which now, in light of the previous
stanza, has become a mythic monster, the Hydra. The "great sea" causes delirium, a
profound confusion of mind-a bad sort of drunkenness and obsession (hence the Pindar
quote). The surface is like the smooth undulating skin of a panther and a Greek
horseman's cloak, or chlamys, riddled with thousands upon thousands of"idols of the
sun," that is, idols of immortality. The image recalls Bacon's four Idols but here no doubt
refers to the various theories of philosophers. It recalls Schopenhauer's observation that
"we find philosophy to be a monster with many heads, each of which speaks a different
language" (The World as Will and Representation I, 17). (Once Valery admitted that
thinking, for him, was a kind of idol or false god, but the best idol he knew.) The by now
familiar use of inversion reappears: the numberless glittering lights on the sea-surface are
really black holes, pits in the fabric of becoming, into which aspiring minds fall (compare
Melville's obiter dictum about how many minds have fallen into "Plato's sweet head" in
MobyDick).
The poet perceives the sea at this point of his meditation as "absolute hydra," that is,
the Water-Monster of Absolute Knowing, or rather the desire for this knowing (which, as
Kant asserted, reason can never possess but can never stop seeking). The Hydra is drunk
on its blue flesh: it constantly eats itself, is turned on itself in an act of eternal self-
27
�reflection and self-consumption (again Rodin's gnarly thinker). The poet addresses the
Water-Monster with the familiar: ''you who bite back [Quite remords] your glimmering
tail in a tumult like silence." It is the image of infinite desire that feeds on desire and
never transcends itself. It is the "place" where the silence of eternity is indistinguishable
from mere noise. In gazing at the tranquil roof, one might think that the sea is summed up
in the calm of the gods and in the knowing silence of repose. But that is not the whole
truth. This silence, from the perspective that has now emerged, is a violent tumult that is
like silence.
XXIV
Stanza XXIII is the only stanza that does not end with a strong mark of punctuation. It
ends with a comma, whose "dynamic quality" pushes on into the final stanza of the
poem, as the poet turns away from the Water-Monster of infinite desire to the wind of
rebirth and renewed life. The wind rises, says the poet: "one must try to live!" He does
not say that one must live but that one must try to. Life is an effort, an act of will or
resolve. One must try to live in the face of all that has been revealed and experienced in
the poem. High noon is a privileged moment, as is the human act of solitary
contemplation. But it is still only a moment of life, not the whole. And so, at the end of
this deep and complex experience, the poet reenters the realm of life and human feeling.
He experiences the return of time as a process of moving forward.
The wind, which is prominent here, is the very life-breath of the Whole that saves the
poet from melancholic meditation. The wind (penuma and spirit) opens and closes the
notebook in which the poet has been writing: it infuses the pages with a kind of life,
28
�corporeal life. The wave now is experienced not as moving on eternally but as finding its
welcome climax on the rocks: it issues forth in a spray, as we may imagine, of delight (an
echo of the earlier fruit). The poet addresses his pages full of brilliant words-words,
which, like the sea-surface, have a rhythm of their own. "Fly away, pages all dazzling!"
he says, as if the book had become a great bird now ready to take on new life and face the
public. He exhorts the waves to break on the shore, and the waters to break the tranquil
roof that for so long held and fascinated him He wants the surface to be tranquil no more.
And he imagines the little boats as now pecking at and penetrating the sea-surface, no
longer merely walking on it. The dream of knowing that the sea has evoked must in the
end be dispelled through a combination of effort and yielding. A poem, once written,
must at some point be given up ...
Summary
The poem is an artfully composed record of a human experience. It both expresses that
experience and makes a statement about it. The poem invites us to be part of the poet's
inspired dream-state. It encloses a sort of intellectual hypnosis in which truths otherwise
not sufficiently felt and known come to light in a privileged moment of revelationpoetic cognition. The poet is at first, and for a while, under the spell of high noon. He
meditates on the mirroring of Self and World, Poetic Composition and Cosmopoiesis, and
the likeness between Poet and God as Demiurge. Pondering the brilliant surface of things
leads to pondering what is beneath: the surface reveals that there is a depth, and the poet,
resolved to endure the Truth-Ray of pitiless Apollo, goes down into that depth-and
down into himself. He encounters the pure potency that is the mysterious source of his
29
�godlike brilliance. Tiris is the resonant Non-Being he carries within himselfand which
presages his inevitable Non-Being in death. This meditation and self-encounter brings out
and emphasizes the ponderous nature of penser or thought. The poet is not pure intellect,
and he is not yet dead. He must therefore break the spell of thought and resolve to come
back to life. He must regain the human perspective and recover the exuberance and nonthought that is life.
He must also stop writing the poem. He must let go of this dazzling bird so that it may
fly out of his hands, out of his control, and into the world. At some point, pure potencyfor a poet or maker-must die as potency. It must give way to the poem that has a life of
its own: it must yield to actuality. A poem, as a finished product, is oddly at odds with
change or process, even though it can, as in the present case, brilliantly capture in its
musical way movement as a series of psychical states.
What, then, is a poem in the cosmic song of change? What does its perfection and
finish tell us about our striving to be more than process, more than change? Is a poem, in
the end, inescapably the manifestation of our longing to be-immortal?
30
�
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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speechespresentationsotherlectures
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30 pages
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Cemetery thoughts
Description
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Typescript of a lecture delivered on November 28, 2011 by Peter Kalkavage.
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Kalkavage, Peter
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Annapolis, MD
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2011-11-28
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FaFi-KalkavageP043 Cemetery Thoughts
Tutors
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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speechespresentationsotherlectures
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John Owens Address for Weigle Inauguaration
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Address of John W. Owens at the Inauguration of Richard D. Weigle
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1950-10-28
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Address of John W. Owens at the Inauguration of St. John's College President Richard D. Weigle on October 28, 1950.
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Annapolis, MD
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St. John's College
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text
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inauguration
Inauguration
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310589d7bc2d7850fc682baa45abc8bb
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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wav
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00:51:28
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Utopia, ideology and grand strategy in the 21st century
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 13, 2018 by Dr. Arthur Herman as part of the LCDR Erik S. Kristensen Lecture Series.
The lecture is the part of a joint lectures series between St. John's College and the U.S. Naval Academy to honor the memory of Lieutenant Commander Erik S. Kristensen. An alumnus of the United States Naval Academy and the St. John's College Graduate Institute, Kristensen, a Navy SEAL, was killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan in 2005. This lecture series aims to create even greater ties between the two schools, as well as to educate the public about civil-military relations and the place of the liberal arts in education of naval and military professions.
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Herman, Arthur
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Annapolis, MD
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2018-04-13
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lec Herman, Arthur 4-13-18 (Kristensen lecture)
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Macfarland, Joseph C.
Kristensen lecture series
U.S. Naval Academy
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PDF Text
Text
In Remembrance of
Jonathan Hand
July 6, 1958 - November 6, 2019
ST JOHN'S
College
SANTA FE • ANNAPOLIS
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
FEBRUARY 1, 2020
3:00 P.M., GREAT HALL
�Lara Fabian ''Mistral Gagnant" lyrics
They say that souls wait around before returning to earth
That's what they say
Sometimes I think of this child of mine which is not yet here
And whom I am waitingfor
And I am so afraid for it
WELCOME
Michael Golluber
Ah to sit down on a bench for jive minutes with you
And watch all the people, Such as there are.
Talk to you ofthe good time Which is dead or which'll come back
Squeezing within my hand your little fingers
Then give something to eat to idiotic pigeons
Aim a few kicks at them in pretend
.
To hear your laughter which splits cracks in the walls
Which can cure above all wounds that I've had.
To tell you for a while how I once was: "Mino
The Fabulous Bombecs", Which we used to pinch from the shop.
"Car en Sac" and "Minto caramels"for one franc
And the "Mistrals" that win a prize.
To walk in the rain for five minutes with you
And watch life go past Such as there is.
To tell you tales ofthe earth feasting my eyes on you
Speak to you ofyour mum a little while
Ofjumping in puddles to make her grumbleRuining our shoes and having jun.
And to hear your laughter as one hears the sea
Stopping then starting offon the way back.
To tell ofabove all the "Carambars" of times past
And the "Coco- hoers" and the real "Roudoudous"
Which used to cut our lips and chipped our teeth enamel
And the "Mistrals" that win a prize.
Ah to sit on a bench for five minutes with you
Watching the sun going down
Talk to you ofa good time which is dead and I don't care
To tell you those in the wrong that wasn't us.
That ifI am crazy it's onlyfor your eyes
For they have the advantage of coming in twos
And hearing your laughter flying up as high
As fly up the cries of the birds
To tell you in the end that you need to love life
And love it even if time is a great killer
And takes off with him the laughter of children
And the "Mistrals" that win a prize.
And the "Mistrals" that win a prize.
Emily Axelberg
David Levine
Ave verum corpus
Performed by the SJC Schola Cantorum
(William Byrd)
Frank Pagano
Allison Levy
Benjamin Storey
Jenna Silber Storey
Mistral Gagnant
(Renaud Pierre Manuel Sechan)
Performed by
Christopher Young (piano) and
Natalie Gammill (vocals)
Thato Kgalema
Walter Sterling
Remarks from Jonathan '.s Family
Reception in the Junior Common Room
Cover image: Athena, Greek Goddess of Wisdom and War
�Tutor Michael Golluber
Jonathan - or "Mr. Hand" as my wife Tracey always playfully addressed him, easily embarrassing
him - he was so easy to tease, and he enjoyed being teased more than most , because he knew
we were all flirting with him. So, for example, one could say to him (as I in fact did) "I'm not
entirely sure what kind of look you're going for, Jonathan, but you've neglected to shave a
noticeable portion of the left side of your face."
Jonathan was a great friend and magnificent colleague. Life here at the college for me has not
been the same since he left us, and I suffer from losing him each and every day.
Jonathan, as everyone knows, was a most enjoyable and joyful interlocuter. I learned so much
from him during my many serious, and my many silly conversations with him (there was of
course hardly any - if any at all - of a distinction between silliness and seriousness when f
spoke with Jonathan - he nailed "that tragedy and comedy of life" thing down).
Jonathan had a twinkle or sparkle in his eye {I imagine he would prefer "sparkle" - "twinkle"
doesn't quite lend itself to the manliness he pretended to care about, dressing up as he did
every day as a lumberjack) . It was that sparkle that I saw, when, at a question period after a
lecture, I had just finished asking a question, and he turned around, and with a wink, let me
know that he knew that my question was not in fact a real question, but rather was a polite and
indirect way of pointing out that the lecturer didn't know what the heck they were talking
about. He was much more bold, straightforward and ruthless in communicating such things
than I, and to my astonishment he always got away with it somehow.
It was that same sparkle that I saw, when , sitting across from me in my Camille Paglia study
group (Paglia, by the way, is someone Jonathan was madly in love with, and he wanted to ask
to her to marry him, despite (and maybe because) she identifies as an "Amazonian lesbian") it was that sparkle I saw when I asked a question of our dear students that he could not quite
believe I could get away with asking, a question he knew he could never get away with as king.
And it was the same sparkle when at one of our many lunch conversations, I would say
something that he decided was exactly false. Behind the smile and that sparkle, he was
thinking: "Michael - there is no way you could have gotten it any more wrong than that! " Or at
another lunch, after things got a little heated, he would back down, acknowledging that maybe,
just maybe there was something I got a bit right and that he might give it some further
consideration.
The final setting for such conversation was in the context of my present study group on Simone
de Beauvoir' s "The Second Sex" (Beauvoir, by the way, was someone Jonathan had no desire
whatsoever to marry). Jonathan came to the first couple of these meetings. But with great
selflessness, sincere selflessness, he decided to leave the group because he was sure his
crankiness about the book would lead to some misbehavior on his part. After all, Jonathan
cared most of all for our students and their education. The strange thing, though, was that
�when I walked out of the Private Dining Room and into the dining hall after these meetings, I
was always greeted by Jonathan, sitting alone at a table, waiting for me to come out. There was
no wave of a hand, there was only that intense sparkle, commanding me to come sit down and
join him. You see, he had been keeping up with the Beauvoir readings as our group was reading
them. And he demanded from me, after each and every meeting, a minute by minute account
of who said what about this astonishing claim or that inexplicable argument, and then
demanded an account of why I thought that this student had said that, and then, applying
psychology to ontology, demanded that we decipher together what this "why", of the "that"
which was said by this particular student, about this book - what that could possibly mean for
the present and future of the human as such. And he grew irritated and delighted at the very
same time.
As deeply irritated as Jonathan may have been with us at one time or another, Jonathan deeply
loved us even more. He and his speeches remind one of how Alcibiades described Socrates and
his speeches as a sileinos, in all appearances a hubristic satyr, the inside of which is really
something altogether divine, having the largest number of images of virtue within, applying to
the whole area that is proper to examine for one who is going to be beautiful and good.
�Student Emily Axelberg
The most difficult part of Mr. Hand's passing, for me, has been accepting the fact that I will
never get the chance to adequately thank him for being my teacher, if such a thing is ever really
possible. With this brief speech, I would like to try to begin to express my gratitude.
I would like, first, to thank Mr. Hand for his seriousness. This one might surprise some of you
who knew him well, because Mr. Hand made a lot of jokes. He seemed never to miss an
oppo1tunity for biting sarcasm, and often didn't appear to pay much mind to whether or not those
around him would deem his humor appropriate to the context. However, I'd like to reference
briefly a commencement address that another excellent teacher of mine, Lise van Boxel, gave
that touched on this point. Sh~ astutely observed in that speech that, "seriousness does not have
to be grave." I think this is one of the most important lessons that I learned from Mr. Hand. He
openly rejoiced in the work that we do here, in the books, and in the company of his colleagues
and students. This rejoicing often took the form of a particularly effusive and lively approach to
teaching and conversation. Mr. Hand's ability to do the work here with impressive diligence and
rigor while unapologetically having the most fun possible is the standard by which I continue to
evaluate my own work. He taught me that the most serious response to the great books is an
ecstatic kind of joy, a lightness. In a document entitled "Mr. Hand's paper advice to freshmen ,"
which he sent to our freshman language class, he wrote, "these authors are suns: we, at best,
mere moons, straining to reflect some of that original brilliance." Mr. Hand's particular sort of
seriousness reflected the original brilliance of our authors to me and revealed the undeniable
vitality of their dusty old books when I was just starting out at the college. He was my first
shining example of what it means to search for humanity in the books we read, and to celebrate
when we find it. His last point of advice in that same document simply reads, " have fun. Really."
I believe this advice, though it might not seem like much, is one of the deepest and most
imp01tant lessons I have learned at St. John's.
I would also like to thank Mr. Hand for his continued commitment to my education. Mr. Hand
demonstrated a persistent dedication to my growth as a student and as a human being, even at
times when I was not so dedicated. A good example of this, which I will relate here mostly
because it's funny, is his contribution to my don rag about my performance in language class
during the second semester of my freshman year. When it was his turn to speak, he very curtly
declared something like: "I think Ms. Axelberg has gotten cocky and lazy." He, of course,
followed this remark by saying that my writing was basically satisfactory and there were no
major problems with my class participation, etc, but his first statement really stuck with me
because it was the truest thing that any one of my tutors said in that don rag. Even though my
work in class had been just fine, he knew that I was capable of doing better and called me to
account for it so directly that I couldn't disregard him . I remember that Ms. van Boxel even
asked him if she should write the first part down in the don rag notes, to which he responded, "I
don't see why not." This story is just one of many examples throughout my time at the college of
�Mr. Hand noticing me slipping, academically or personally, and encouraging me to do better
with the kind of totally unveiled criticism that it seems only he could get away with. The reason
he got away with it, though, is because even when he was at his harshest, I never doubted that he
was in my corner and wanted me to succeed. I know that the only reason he was so tough on me
is because my education mattered to him just as much, if not, at times, more than it mattered to
me. Without his constant support, I don't know how I would have persisted through some of my
roughest patches over the past four years. I don't think I really have to tell any of you how much
it means to have a great teacher believe in you and your work. Obviously, it means a great deal.
I will briefly mention my gratitude to Mr. Hand for his lesson on friendship. He once told me
that he reads to make friends, and the time I spent reading with him over the past four years
proved that to be abundantly true. I enjoyed reading with Mr. Hand not only because I had a lot
to learn from him about how to read the great books, but also because it provided an opportunity
for me to build the kind of trust and mutual respect with him that I had long been searching for in
a mentor. Because of this willingness of his to become a friend to me, I will cherish our time
together not only for how it contributed to my academic growth, but how it came to shape me
more broadly as a human being in my ability to be a better friend .
My last conversation with Mr. Hand was supposed to be on Book II of Rousseau's Emile, but we
ended up returning to a discussion that began for us in my freshman language class when we
were translating the Meno. We often revisited this conversation, which usually began with one of
us asking, "why do we even read these books anyway? What is it we're doing here? What do we
really hope to learn or gain?" Both of us struggled to provide an answer sometimes . It seemed to
me that Mr. Hand, like me, wasn't always completely sold on the promise of ultimate happiness
some people claim you will attain once you manage to figure out all the secrets hidden in the
pages of our most revered texts. Still, though, this work was the work of his life, and I know now
that it is mine, too. Faced with this version of Meno's paradox the last time we spoke to one
another, Mr. Hand and I once again sided with Socrates, agreeing that, " in supposing one ought
to seek what one does not know we would be better men, more able to be brave and less idle than
if we supposed that which we do not know we are neither capable of discovering nor ought to
seek -- on behalf of that I would surely battle, so far as I am able, both in word and deed ."
With Mr. Hand as my example, I feel confident I will continue to side with Socrates and attempt
always, through my seeking, to be better, braver, and less idle. Thank you.
�Tutor Frank Pagano
A few words on Jonathan
I am Frank Pagano, a tutor at the college and like so many others a friend of Jonathan's. I do not think I
am capable of speaking adequately about the personal characteristics that made Jonathan uniq ue like
his sunrise smile that glowed with good will, joy and mischief.
Instead I shall try to speak of the nobility of his mind. My theme, therefore, is Jonathan's daring intellect
and courageous soul, but I must start from afar, for Jonathan was at heart a St. John's tutor. The college
promotes and is defined by the conversation between the students and the great books. The tutors are
peripheral since it is not their education to which the college is devoted. According to the St. John's
Statement of the Program, tutors do not teach directly, they do not profess. The vocation of a tutor is to
ask good questions. Recently this humble calling has become harder to follow because good questions
presume that there are true questions. In our time the value of the truth itself is problematic.
Frequently we ask questions to avoid the truth. Jonathan was one of the few who dared constantly to
ask true questions. Let us try for our sakes to understand the truth of his questions.
Jonathan wrote primarily about Hegel, the man of many answers. Jonathan told me that he regarded
Rousseau as greater than Hegel. Each of the statements in Rousseau's Second Discourse is a hundred
questions. Jonathan did not share publicly his questioning of Rousseau. Instead he devoted himself to
demonstrating for us the inestimable worth of the truth. Thus his turn to Hegel. In some ways Hegel is
the culmination of modernity, but for Jonathan Hegel is not strictly speaking a complete
modern, at least from the vantage of the contemporary moment. Jonathan begins his lecture,
"Reconciling Subjectivity and Substance: Hegel's Critique of Pure Personhood," with the claim:
"Dissatisfaction with or at least ambivalence about modernity is part of modernity1.'' The reconciliation
that Hegel attempted is in one way a departure from the spirit of modernity.
Hegel thinks that he has achieved, according to Jonathan, an integration of the state, society and family
that prevents our person from being empty and our being from descending into nihilism and producing
a human nothingness. If Hegel's philosophical enterprise was successful, then there seems to be nothing
peculiar to our time for us to ask him. What then is the question? Jonathan's lecture is an act of startling
intellectual daring for it reveals how the true question lives. The true question, the question that does
not already know the answer, seeks out the right interlocutor. In our education, we must learn to be the
right interlocutor for the true question. But we do not know what for us the true question is. Because a
true question is a hybrid mixing ignorance and knowledge, our questioner must know and hope and
fear. The question must hold out hope for the truth and fear of the error of self-congratulation.
Accordingly in Jonathan's lecture Hegel is not the interlocutor, he is the questioner. Hegel puts the
question to modernity, including our contemporary pieties. Hegel integrates the human world, family,
society, and state. In contrast the way we like to talk is that modernity is revolutionary. Following
1
Hand, Jonathan. Reconciling Subjectivity and Substance: Hegel's Critique of Pure Personhood, Draft of March 10,
2019.
�Jonathan's Hegel we see this revolution is really disintegration. The contemporary revolutionary
movements in the family, society and state tear apart the Hegelian integration. This has always been the
spirit of modernity. In terms more convivial to my cruder mind, since its founding modernity has been in
decline.
What then does Hegel ask our contemporaries? He asks, What is the worth of your person without the
truth? This in its fullness is a terrifying question. Jonathan suggests that Hegel asks this questi on because
he has seen us once before. Hobbes claims that each of us awards ourselves infinite value and our
neighbors no value in themselves. We are the persistent deceivers of ourselves. Jonathan's Hegel
implicitly reveals that value, that social valuation, is an incomplete understanding of ou r fellow human
beings. It is merely the coin of the social marketplace. "I have my values and you yours" is the social
echo of an empty soul.
Jonathan was not a pure Hegelian. He recognized Hegel as the proper interrogator of our times, not the
least because he developed many of our approaches to our condition. Jonathan revealed how to
suspend the tyrannical spirit of modernity. Without fear he showed how to bring modernity to question
its own spirit. True questioning of ourselves, of the dominant spirit of our time, shining a light in our
cave, requires the strength of soul and the courage of a giant.
�Tutor Allison Levy
Jonathan
Jonathan was a true friend . To the College, to his students, to me and others. He and I got to be friends
back before I was a tutor, when I used to join David for lunch in the cafeteria and observe the fights he
and Jonathan had there over the mean ing of pretty much every seminar reading. It wasn't that
Jonathan didn't enjoy those fights -- I think he liked them, and I know David loved them - but at some
point Jonathan conceived the hope that the wife might prove a less misguided and argumentative
Hegel-hater than the husband, so one day he asked me to lunch alone. From this grew our tradition of
four- or five-hour margarita lunches at Harry's Roadhouse . From me he got less fighting about
philosophy, more drunken gossip, obscene jokes, and petty complaints, which he always treated with
great compassion. From him I got what everyone who's been fortunate enough to call Jonathan a friend
did: a profound, even visceral concern for my suffering and my good fortune, a fierce loyalty that often
defeated the dispassionate judgments of his prodigious intellect, a sensitive and deeply thoughtful
conversation partner, and a lively, irreverently funny drinking buddy who delighted in the ridiculous,
with which life and the College kept him generously supplied. He had a sharp wit and a particular gift for
impressions; if I had his talent and didn't mind getting fired, I'd share some.
But one of the many wonderful memories Jonathan has given me sticks with me and seems fitting to
mention. Last year, I happened to have all five of my senior essay orals scheduled over only two weeks,
which is a bit of a crunch and which occasioned much grumbling from me. Without mentioning it to me,
Jonathan noted the date and time of my last oral; when I came out of it, there he was, with a bottle of
champagne to congratulate me. We drank it in the coffee shop, where he complained to everyone who
walked by about the wrong I had suffered in being subjected to so grueling a schedule; he made sure
everyone knew of my heroic virtue in enduring such a trial, and called angrily for the punishment of all
responsible . little did he know, my feat was much less impressive than he imagined. It was Jonathan's
practice to devote to each senior oral an entire weekend of preparation, which issued in multiple typed,
single-spaced pages of careful commentary for every single essay; it didn' t seem to occur to him that
most of us give of ourselves less generously than he did, which was certainly the truth in my case.
Anyway, after we polished off the bottle I left; Jonathan struck up a two-hour conversation with a
student, about books and the meaning of friendship, a conversation which so impressed the student
that he told me about it many months later.
This was all standard Jonathan, I think. His generosity and intense care for his friends, for his obligations
to the College, for students in general, were central to who he was. As has been said, he was gravely
concerned about the possibility of deep human attachment in the modern world - in his own words,
taken from a speech he gave in honor of his beloved mother on her 801h birthday, "modernity is a world
of self-interest, of commerce, of fluid, contractual relationships, of social ties that are made and unmade
daily." His favorite image of modern human beings, as slices of "kraft singles" cheese -- that is, of
human beings as mass produced, identical " person units," individually sealed off and protected from
one another by plastic wrap -- was invoked often. Happily, Jonathan himself provided a very different
example of what human connection could be. His intensity of feeling and devotion to what he thought
right could make him quick to anger -- but unlike so many bloodless academics, he cared about things
worth caring about, and had the nerve to stick up for what was important even when it didn't win him
any friends. This combination of intense liveliness and awareness of the most pressing human concerns,
�together with an intellect as powerful as his, is extremely rare. Jonathan was a great boon to the
College and great delight and comfort to his friends. I miss him very much, and count myself extremely
grateful to have known him.
�Benjamin Storey
Jonathan Bradford Hand, 1958-2019
I met Jonathan some twentyyears ago. Both of us were graduate students at the C.Omrnittee on
Social Thought at the University of Chicago. It was the spring of 1999; I was finishing my first year,
and was still more than a little green-curious and eager, but inexperienced and poorly read. I was a
kid who showed up from my state school education in the south to find myself surrounded by
people from Yale and other such places, who were infinitely better initiated into the ways of the
academic world than I.
Jonathan was older and wiser; he had read widely and traveled much. But he was also utterly devoid
of academic pretension. He never dropped names; he never jingled his Phi Beta Kappa key. He had
an infinite amount to share with me, which he did with great generosity. But he was also unfailingly
curious, always asking about what I was reading and thinking about, with his eyes always peeled for
new things that might engage his indefatigable attention.
We were both there to study philosophy, and philosophy, for Jonathan, was three things: political,
personal, and comedic. Political: Jonathan had no taste for metaphysical abstractions-he was
interested in the question of how to live, and how the spirit of the laws we live under shape our
souls. Personal: Jonathan thought that the thinkers and ideas that interested us were reflections of
our character, that you could tell a lot about a person from that person's taste in books and ideas.
And finally, comedic. & everyone who knew Jonathan knows, he was a great teacher, and he was
honored with a teaching award while we were in Chicago. Interviewed about that award, he
remarked that a good teacher was pan priest, pan lawyer, and pan comedian. He could do all three,
�but his comic talents were extraordinary. He excelled in imitations of the sages, living and dead,
who surrounded us in Hyde Park His Allan Bloom was forever spraying cigarette ashes about and
saying, "the-ahh, the-ahh, problem of, ahh, lxdng," his Martha Nussbaum was forever droning on in
an absurd falsetto about autonomy and wearing leather pants in solidarity with somebody or other.
He gave marvelous nicknames. For example, the chairman of the Committee on Social Thought,
Robert Pippin, was and is a brilliant scholar who commanded the respect of all of us, Jonathan very
much included. But Jonathan didn't respect him too much to give him a nickname. Pippin was
then writing about Hegel, whose progressive theory of history culminates in the liberal, bourgeois
modem life that we all find ourselves living, with all its material trappings, from the white picket
fence to the microwave oven. Jonathan cut through all the technical, Hegelian vocabulary in which
Pippin was so fluent so as to give him a splendid moniker: "The High Priest of the Minivan."
Jonathan's wit always brought life and thought together. In his way of thinking and talking, I found
the kind of playful, honest, learned but unpretentious philosophy I had come to Chicago to study.
Jonathan was my unofficial but deeply influential teacher, and he shaped my own way of thinking
and talking as much as anyone on the actual faculty of the university.
The classroom in which I got my lessons from Jonathan was a Hyde Park greasy spoon called
Salonica. There, we would meet almost every Sunday for long, leisurely brunches. Jonathan would
peruse the menu, for form's sake, and then proceed to order the same thing every time: skirt steak
and eggs, the steak medium rare, the eggs over easy-plus whole wheat toast, for health's sake. He
would do so in flirtatious engagements with his favorite waitress, a crusty Chicago dame who gave as
good as she got and who plainly enjoyed their repartee.
We would spend about three hours there, drinking large quantities of thin, American coffee and
talking about everything: Plato, Shakespeare, Tocqueville, our teachers, our friends, the young
�women in our circle. It was at that table, in Jonathan's company, that I really learned to think my
life through. For it was at that table that I learned how life and thought come together.
Afterwards, in the summer, we would repair to Promontory Point Park, where would swim off our
brunch in Lake Michigan. It was Jonathan who taught me that swimming in Lake Michigan was in
fact possible, in spite of the frigid temperatures and the occasional e-coli warnings. For he was an
adventurous spirit as much as a learned one. And we never caught either e-coli or frostbite.
Before long, I started dating one of the young women in our circle, Jenna Silber. Jenna and
Jonathan were friends, as well, and the three of us spent many hours in one another's company.
Both of us formed our adult selves in conversation with him, andJenna and I became a couple in
the context of those conversations. When we married in 2003, Jonathan gave a mischievous,
beautiful toast at our rehearsal dinner that people would remark to me about for many years
thereafter.
Eventually, we both left Hyde Park for our teaching careers, mine at Furman University in
Greenville, South Carolina; Jonathan here. You all know Jonathan's work here better than I do, but
I always thought that St. John's was made for Jonathan, and Jonathan for St. John's. For the mind
of a St. John's tutor must be both powerful and ready for anything-two qualities Jonathan had in
spades.
My own teaching at Furman was deeply marked by his influence. I agree with Jonathan that a
teacher is part priest, part lawyer, part comedian. I'm more priestly than Jonathan was, but I make
efforts at wit, as well. And when I listen to myself talk, I sometimes realize that I'm repeating
phrases I learned from him. More than that, my own who way of thinking about philosophy, as
something intimate and personal, something that we can see in all of our everyday interactions, from
the breakfast table to the convenience store, comes from him. One could see this influence in our
�shared love of the gauche Swiss-French philosopher Rousseau, who brought life and thought
together in a sprawling, unholy, but brilliant mess equal parts intellect, honesty, and absurdity.
Jonathan visited my family many times in Greenville, sometimes at Christmas or Thanksgiving,
sometimes just to hang out. Once, we all went for a hike in the mountains near there. On the way
home, we stopped for lunch at a squirrely-looking South Carolina roadside joint called the F-Man.
The proprietor, a guywith a handlebar mustache, a ten-gallon hat, and a brass belt buckle the size
and shape of Texas, took one look at us and decided he'd have some fun. When he found out we
were college professors, he began quizzing us on all manner of trivia he had picked up in his
correspondence school education, which wasn't~ bad. After he'd stumped me, the political science
professor, by asking about the running mates of failed presidential candidates of the 1890s, he
turned toward science, and Jonathan took over. Mr. F-Man had met his match. Before long, he was
sitting slack-jawed at our table, as Jonathan patiently explained the theory of relativity to him, using
the salt and pepper shakers to illustrate.
When we told my kids of Jonathan's death, and were talking about his brilliance and honesty with
them, my middle daughter, Rosalind, reminded us of his bravery. For she remembered the stories
he told when visited us after spending a sabbatical sailing across the Atlantic, through a near
hurricane in a boat that was no match for such weather. Most professors, after all, spend their
sabbaticals in libraries. Not Jonathan.
In thinking about what it means to have and to lose a friend such as Jonathan, a remark of one of
his favorite authors, Alexis de Tocqueville sprang to my mind. In his memoirs, Tocqueville writes
that " Whenever there is nothing in a man's thoughts to or feelings that strikes me," " I, so to speak,
do not see him. I have always supposed that mediocrities as well as men of parts had a nose, mouth
and eyes, but I have never been able to fix in my memory the forms that those features take in each
�particular case. I must constantly ask for the names of such men; yet it is not that I despise them,
but I have little truck with them, feeling that they are like so many cliches. I respect them, for they
make the world, but they bore me profoundly." Who has ever been less of a cliche than Jonathan
Hand? And who has ever been bored by him?
Jonathan suffered and he could be difficult; everyone who knew him well knew that. But I knew
him in the roles in which he was at his best: as my teacher and my friend. A few years ago, the two
of us met up in Roscoe, New York for a weekend. The place was an old haunt of Jonathan's, and
boasted of the two things that, in Jonathan's eyes, guaranteed a good weekend: a very good diner
and an excellent swimming lake. It was delightful, and Jonathan plainly delighted in introducing me
to it. He had discovered many beautiful things in life, and he was always eager to share them. The
man I am, the person mywife and children and students know, was formed by and through him.
He was a singular and decisive presence in my life, whose like I have no hope of meeting again. I do
not know if Jonathan believed in blessings, but he was a blessing, to me and to many others. To his
sisters, and his parents in Ithaca, thank you for sharing this extraordinary man with me and with my
family for so many years.
�Reflection for Memorial Service for Jonathan Hand
February l5t, 2020
J. Walter Sterling, Dean
St. John' s College, Santa Fe
Welcome and Opening
Welcome, thank you for joining us. Thanks especially to Michael Golluber, but also to other
faculty, staff, students, for planning and working on this event, and thanks to all of our speakers
today. I want to recognize Jonathan' s sisters, Sonya, Pattie, and Brooke, and his dear friends Ben
and Jenna Storey, and their children, Eleanor, Rosalind, and Charles, all of whom traveled so far
to be here. You 've heard some music playing now, by the Beatles, music which Jonathan
enjoyed and associated with lifelong memories . We'll hear more music in his honor ... We do
well simply to recognize the sadness and loss that many of us are carrying, but we are here today
to honor the memory of our friend, colleague, and teacher, and to celebrate together the gift of
his life, and in doing so we are strengthened as a community and brought closer together; and we
renew our sense of purpose. In that spirit, I invite our first speaker, Michael Golluber, to begin
when he is ready.
Reflection
Words, phrases, memories, images, quotes .. . jokes, so many jokes ... have flooded my
imagination, daily, since Jonathan 's passing. But it remains so difficult for me to wrap words
around it all. We wish, I wish, to honor and celebrate his life, to express the profound gratitude I
feel for the indelible, decisive mark he left on me, for the outrageously delightful and sometimes
maddening, often delightful because maddening, times we spent together. But my feelings of
sadness, confusion, and, yes, anger at his passing, and the powerful sense that a Jonathan-shaped
hole in my world will travel with me for a long time, forever, are all still with me. I have to
acknowledge that. It wasn't easy living with him as a friend, and it is much harder still to let him
go. His sister Pattie said recently he was larger than life. So true, so beautifully, absurdly,
magnificently true.
Jonathan contained fascinating multitudes within him and even people who knew him well could
be forgiven for not really seeing or believing all of it: his academic accomplishments, most
vi sible for us, perhaps, but also: - his incredible, unscripted, and sometimes remarkably
dangerous travels all over the world; his teaching sailing over many summers; his crewing a
sailboat on a physically exhausting North Atlantic passage on his sabbatical; summers spent
traveling in the Greek isles, or Turkey, or Italy; long daily swims in the Mediterranean; taking
his bike on the train to Albuquerque and cycling all around; his Jove of smart pop culture, going
to see stand-up comedy or Weird Al Yankovic (as he once reported, to my surprise); his serious
study, if I might put it that way, of Mad Men, or Downton Abbey, or South Park. His love of
jokes and impersonations. (One former student once sent him a mix tape, titled "I see London, I
see France .. ." with the rest of that off-color playground taunt left unstated, the tape had British
Invasion rock, the Stones, the Beatles, on one side, and some of his favorite French pop music on
the other - he loved that; he loved how that student got him , his playfulness, his sense of humor
and inuendo, his delight in that pop music, his love of Europe.) - and: his deep connection to
C_
�his family, especially his devotion to his parents, his rootedness in his eternal home in Ithaca. All of that lurking behind his jaunty grin, with a cocked hat on his head.
(
As dean and as a colleague, I will say now what I would say to some people while he was with
us, risking hyperbole: He was the best reader, the best teacher, we had here. He had enormous
intellectual gifts (surprisingly voracious for, obsessive with, mathematics and physics, and with
politics, and with the philosophy and literature that were his foundation) and he combined his
gifts with an intensity, a relentlessness, an incandescence, that was powerful and even more rare
- at times, too powerful to be contained in the word "teacher." One philosopher famously
wrote, "I am dynamite!" and sometimes, often even, Jonathan could feel like such dynamite. He
learned from some of his teachers - Harvey Mansfield, Allan Bloom ... -that it was possible
for these books, for philosophy, and for teachers, to make all the difference, if and only if
teachers, and students, could go right to the nerves of the books and the arguments, where
everything was at stake - to cut through jargon, to risk impoliteness and offense, to (as I long
said of Jonathan, to Jonathan) "strip and wrestle naked," to use a Platonic image for the most
serious business of conversation and dialectic. He got into the game for all of that- not to play
it safe, not to have a career, not to be esteemed or win accolades, but to be ready, like a great
poker player, to push out all his chips when it mattered most, to drop everything and follow the
argument wherever it led. Book after book, conversation after conversation, he was able to take
me, take students, take friends, to the center of things, to the difficult places where our hearts'
and souls' demands were all at stake and in play. But what a risk, and sometimes what a cost! I
know, I know, that sometimes, when he sensed it could matter, he put more hours, many more
hours, sleepless nights, of reading and thinking into, say, preparing for one senior oral where he
thought the stakes were high, more than I believe (from my experience) any of my other
colleagues do, certainly more than I ever had or would - more than once, I saw a senior on the
business end of that preparation, in copious notes Jonathan wrote but especially in an oral
bordering on interrogation, and that wasn't always ... easy to watch. Would they learn from that?
Would they be grateful for it? Would they realize that it came from respect - from seeing them
as worth that effort, that tension? I hope so, but it was a risk, it was teaching without a net, and
whatever the outcome, he poured his lifeblood into that kind of effort.
In reading hundreds of old emails from him in recent weeks, I came across one where a student
who had left the college had written a cringeworthy casual, familiar, and self-deluded, request to
Jonathan for a letter of recommendation, after failing Jonathan's class. Serious miscalculation.
Jonathan was the only tutor I know who would have responded as he did, and he copied me in
(as dean): he wrote a long letter, a brutally honest letter let's say ... and added, is that the letter
you want sent? St John's is forgiving, the world less, so, he said, closing with, " buckle up." He
put hours into crafting that, trying to do good for that student, to jolt that student into waking up;
in fact, hi s sincere plea was that the student really should return to the college. I, like many of us
I think, would probably have written a two-sentence note politely declining.
One of the things that he and I agreed strongly about is that beyond the job as a job, beyond
colleges as institutions, beyond all our rules and practices, beyond syllabuses and curricula,
beyond the books, beyond teaching as a vocation even, at the heart of it all was and is an
uncontrollable, unmanageable, quest to get to the bottom of everything, to get to what matters, to
fight for what matters ... you can' t domesticate that, and for someone like Jonathan who was
�always ready to push his chips out, there would always be risks and costs. Prices he'd pay,
bruises others would take. If all of us were like Jonathan, we wouldn't have a college, but if none
of us are like him, the peak of what we are about ceases to be visible. Without someone like
Jonathan, some of us would never hear the one thing needful, we'd never realize both how deep
and how immediate the books can be in speaking to us. To borrow from a revered author he
respected, Jonathan reminds us of "the sacrifices we must make in order that our minds may be
free." Like Falstaff, like Socrates, life is simpler, maybe easier, without him ... but real education
will always involve such dynamite. Certainly, some of us carry bruises, he carried bruises, from
his not playing it safer - but I know so many students and friends who were given treasures and
riches through his teaching, through that incandescence, and for us it was worth all the costs.
He was my late friend, my last friend, with whom the conversation could, would, go on forever.
Not everyone understands these friendships that are forged through hours and hours of arguing
about philosophy, about the good, the true, and the beautiful, with all that entails, but here at St.
John's I don't think it sounds too strange. I venture to say that for those of us for whom that is
the highest, or one of the highest, forms of friendship, we recognize that you only get a few, a
very few, friends with whom you can share almost everything, understand each other, drive each
other to the edge of what you understand, bring to articulation the questions that are just beyond
that understanding. And if you can do that with shared loves of music, poetry, film, travel, food
and drink, well, all the better .. . what a miracle ... - and, it seems to me, those friendships tend
to come during, and perhaps fade after, a certain season of life.
(
l
I met Jonathan our first week as tutors at the college, in August 2003, sitting at the Coyote Cafe.
I can say now, I never expected at that point in my life to have another friend, to join maybe the
one or two from the previous decades, with whom I could share all of that. I thought that season
of life was over. That friend you see on your way somewhere else ... and end up still at the coffee
shop, the bar, the park bench, driving in the country, hours and hours later, having forgotten
whatever else you meant to do that day. That day, Jonathan and I sat down together over a
margarita and talked - and talked. Our first conversation went on for hours (I still remember
exact phrases and formulations we used), we disclosed our views on religion, our deepest
commitments, our loves and lost loves, the books and authors we had in common, and ... for
many years, all the intervening years, that conversation - though interrupted by days, weeks,
months, and, much later, even years - never ended. I thought the season for such friendship, for
such ecstatic and wonderfully desperate conversation, had ended - but Jonathan at his core was
a kind of eternal springtime of the possibility of such friendship. It was what he lived for agonizingly irreconcilable as it might be with what counts as daily life for many of us. Part of
Jonathan's vocation was to be (as Plato wrote of the Greeks) "forever young" in this way. I think
any of Jonathan's close friends, and his many interlocutors and colleagues with shared interests,
know him as the one who would keep that dialogue going - forever, all night, as in Plato' s
Symposium, as long as we could go to what matters. - It was hard to keep up, and it was hard to
sustain. My memories of Jonathan include so many nights where he would nurse a last drink, or
jealously defend a last bite on a plate from waiters and busboys, or he might end up reclined on
your couch ... and he would seem content if the conversation never ended. You felt, I felt, like a
mortal, who needed sleep and rest, hanging on by a thread, with an Olympian who was prepared
to stay at the feast forever. At the end of every semester, we used to plan one escapist day in
Albuquerque. For years he loved to make that drive in my Miata convertible, top down, music
�playing, driving and talking, walking and talking, eating and drinking and talking ... peripatetics,
dreamers, adventurers of the mind. In search of. .. serendipity. Serendipity: he was with me at the
dinner in 2005, where I chanced to meet Meghan, in the great good fortune of my life, and he
was the first person I talked to the next morning, "see, that is the kind of woman I should be
with ... "
Jonathan was a great acolyte of serendipity: Among his favorite films, one we discussed many
times, for many hours, was Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise, together with the rest of that
amazingly conceived trilogy, tracking the fate of a romance sparked on a train, with one night of
wandering the streets of Vienna, during which two kindred souls passing in the night test their
destiny together. Jonathan consciously and well understood that he lived his life as if the magic
of that movie might strike ... anywhere, any day, as romance, as friendship, as intellectual insight
or epiphany. We all have those hopes in us, but he lived it relentlessly, ever renewed; it animated
his European wanderings, it animated his desire never to end the conversation, it animated his
interest in what surprising next thing might come from a student's first reading of Plato, from the
exigencies of a seminar, from nature, from art. I said of him, to him, that "he loved not wisely,
but too well," like Othello, and I said that from a place of deep sympathy and shared,
unreasonable hopes; I have thought of that phrase often since his passing. That edge of
glistening, romantic hope married to such a rigorous intellect was ... dynamite. As his friend, it
was hard to keep the faith, hard not to disappoint, like Prince Hal with Fal staff, hard not to be the
first one to blink, to give up on the quest and return to ... life, to the demands of the day. But
Jonathan was always ... there ... waiting, ready ... there on the far side of all of everyday life,
ready to renew the quest, to forgive all, if we could just go again straight to the heart of things.
He was larger than life, he was Falstaff (which I intend and he took as the highest praise) - his
ideas and words, his wit, his perpetual youth, his incandescence, will stay with many of us who
were blessed to get close to him, to travel with him, in all senses. With a gratefu l heart, I today
mourn the passing, but celebrate with abundant gratitude the life, of a great teacher, the rarest of
friends, and a bright, restless soul who illuminated the world for me and many others, one with
whom I shared so many adventures, adventures that are the stuff of life.
-
J. Walter Sterling
�Williatn Byrd
(c.1539-1623)
Ave verum corpus
(
Published by
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Troy, New York
Copyright© 2012 Dan Foster, Aoede Inc.
Edition may be freely distributed,
duplicated, performed or recorded.
Please give credit.
________________________________________.
( \_, .._ www.AoedeConsort.org
Aoede@AoedeConsort.org
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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
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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speechespresentationsotherlectures
Text
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paper
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28 pages
Dublin Core
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Jonathan Hand Memorial Program
Description
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Program for the Jonathan Hand Memorial that took place on February 1, 2020 in the Great Hall of the Santa Fe campus.
Creator
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Golluber, Michael
Publisher
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St. John's College
Coverage
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Santa Fe, NM
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2020-02-01
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
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text
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pdf
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Axelberg, Emily
Levy, Allison
Pagano, Frank N.
Sterling, J. Walter
Storey, Benjamin
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English
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SF_Jonathan_Hand_Memorial_Program_2020-02-01
Relation
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<a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/6759">Recording of Jonathan Hand Memorial</a>
Tutors
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