22 20 5655 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/aa24bb0f875328001b92b82ce995f1e5.pdf 5820bce5cbb11f96ba85701cba174557 PDF Text Text THE COLLEGE St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland Santa Fe, cw Mexico BICENTENNIAL ISSUE July 1976 ~~Lf �THE COLLEGE ON THE COVER: This painting was done by .\ athcr Brown 1 in 1786. It is the earliest identified portrait of Jefferson, painted in his forty-third year, just a decacl<: :tftcr the \\Tiling of the Declaration of llldcpcndence. The figure in the background represents Liberty. We chose the picture fo r its enchanting melancholy, but feel obliged to report that two of jefferson's friends did not consider it a true likeness. Vol. XXVT II Ju ly. 1976 umber 2 Editors' Notes The three bicentennial contributions in this issue were given as lectures C011nected with the celebration of the Bicentenary of American independence. A fourth contribution, written b)' Edwa rd Maeierowski of the class of 1970, will appear iu a later issue. As i t is, this issue is the largest in the history of this journal: but we thought we would keep the lectures together. We trust that intcre~t in the questions raised in th~m will persist beyond july 1976. As alwa~s \\C welcome letters concernmg these contributions. B.R.\·.0. Edi tor: Beale Ruhm von Oppen Managing Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr. Editorial Advisory Board: Willia m B. Dtmham, Barbara Brunner Oosterhout '55, E. Malcolm Wya tt, Elliott Zuckerman. THE COLLEGE is published by the Office of College Relations, St. John's College, Annapolis, ~laryland 21404. Richard D. Weigle, President, William B. Dunham, Vice President. Published four times a yea r, in Jan uary. April, July, and October. Second cbss postage paid at Anna polis. Maryland, and at other ma ili ng places. Apologies for not acknowledging the courtesy of the Pierpont Morgan Library in le11ding us photographs of the Thaw Collection, and for hi~ing the credit line for Anne Buchanan Cro~by (Desert Fathers drawmgs) behind the rctum post card. both in the April issue. T . P. Jr. • IN THE JULY ISSUE: Concerning th e Declaration of Independence, by Eva Brann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I l11e Founder~ and Sla\·ery, by Herbert J Storing .. ... ....... .. 17 . Of ~1en and Angels. by Robert A. Goldwin . . ..... . ..... . .... Pichrre cred1ts: pp. I, 17, 25- Uberty Tree by Anne Geddis. Artist in llesidance; p. 35-photos by &tty Lilienthal; p. 36- photo by Darryl Wilson. z; Commencement Address, Annapoli; 1 976, by ). Winfree Smith ...... .. . . ..... . ... .. . . . . ... ... ..... 33 Commencements ..... . .... . . . . ... . . .. .. . . . ..... . .. . . .... 35 Class Erratum: In the cover note in the April issue. Eugene Thaw's class was incorrectl y shown as 1967; Mr. Thaw's class was 1947. otcs . . . . , . . • . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 �Concerning the Declaration of Independence by Eva Brann I A. When American schoolchildren first discover that they have ;~ place in the world they somcti11 1 give their addresses a es wo nderfu l form. Transformed for our ca~c. it would be: " Proper Na111e, St. John's College, Annapo lis, Maryla11d, the United States of /\111Cric:~, the "'orth An1erican co ntinent. the Earth, the Solar System." That is the containing seq uence of places in which we live and have oUT bein~. The effect~ of the document with "hich we arc to concern oursch-es tonight ha\'e pervaded dcd or ill\,1 each of them: "space." our planet. this land, this nation. thi\ state, this city, th is school. I might Sa) right now that thi~ diffusion of its power 11ould not ha1 c astonished ih. author 1·en• much. 1 sh~ll ~ot try to trace its in!lucnce on the large$! realms, which began 1•ith its aclmowlcdgcd ro le in the early. as yet innocent, days of the French R..:volution. Tha t attempt, I am con vineed, wou ld be tan tamou nt t·o t·hnt of giving an account of 111odcrn politi cs. But I do wa nt to poiut to its rc l ~tio n to the smallest rea lm, this college, w ho~c.: i111 111 C.:diatcly postrevolutionary foundation was assisted b> the four Maryland signers: by Paca, Carroll and Stone with subscriptions of 1110ncv, and bv Chase and Stone as member~ oft he first Board of Visil<;rs and Governors. We ma> therefore i111agine that the college was concei1·ed in a spirit much lile that which later informed Jefferson's Uni1·ersity of Virginia. i\nd indeed it 1vas originally to be the Western branch of the University of J\. aryland, commit1ed by its charter to admitting students 1 "according to their 1ne ri t wi thout rt:quiring or enforcing any religious or civil test" and to preparing them " upon a most ~~ fuller tc•1 of the Fnday Nig ht Lecture for Apnl 30, 1976, g1ven to cclcbmte the 200th alliiiVCrsary of the Dcclaralion'< cMccption hy Jefferson in nud-junc, 1 adoption b) Congress on Julv 4, ib prodanlulion in "each of the ts urutc-d states" 111 the days following, and its signine <ll1 Au~ust 2. t776. lihcral piau" for discharging ·'the various offices of life, both civil and religious.'' But even if these original conditions and aims were to have to be termed "pu~t-Rcvol utionarv'' rather than specificall y Jeffe rsonian, it would still be demonstrablethough not here and now-that our present program, a very pure realiza tion of the found ing inten tio n. has more Jeffersonian elt:lncnts than any other well-know11 college plan. Now at J<;ffc.:rson's uui versity, th e Dcclarr1 tion of Independence wa5 to be the first of the "te>.tbook," prescribed by him as the "tc.1chiug norm" for the political educati on of you ng Americam. In thi~ one instance JefferM:»n was the unashamed advocate of iudoctrination- he intended the Declaration as a teaching tool for eo1nbatting certaiu auti-Rcpnblican "heresics." It is probably not necessary to be more liberal than Jefferson. "'oncthclcss let us say that th e Declaration should not so lnuch be taugh t as talked of at every American college, and above all, at th is one. It is conseq uently my ambition and 1 pro ject for tonigh t to ny pcrsu;~dc.: those of you not already so co nvinced tha t th is text · must be to you, as students and as hu man beings in the world, a near and dear, a most personal concern. B. You ma) well be wondering-I would in your place-why a perM>n audibly not native born should prc.:~umc to have such an ambition. But eon~ider: a natmali7ed cili7en, like myself, is a cititen by a second, acquired nature, b> deliberation and choice. Therefore, just as it is a natural stance for young nati\'CS to foster alienation in themselves so it may well be the proper busincss of those whose youth was alien to feel <Jt lu1111C-and to re flect on that feeling. l1 orgivc.: me the n if I began witl1 a pc.:rsvnal apology and C011tin ue with a personal prologue- it is after all my argu ment th;~t the found ing trad ition should he a personal concern. Article II, Section l, of the Constitution requires the President to be native born, except in the founding generation. You �The College ~1AHY LA~ll 't-!frJ:-~rd'~...t?'~ ( 'h,trl"' ( 'un'•1 ll11r ( 'arrulh••t\ / .c.~,,~~~//~:. ~......, S..l lll \Jf-1 ~ 'h<.ll'>l' kuo" , of course, that it is the wa~· of human nah.ue to be scandalized by any inh ibition, eve,{ if it has nul the remotest bearing on one's prac tical intenti ons. Accordingly I have sometimes wondered in J>assing if that article, which keeps me from an office I could never obta i11 and do not re mote ly wa nt, is acceptable to me in princ iple. In consulting Mad ison's notes of the Cou~titutional Conven tion, I find that the rc~triction is the remnant of a debate concerni ng q ualifications. During it Fran klin , Mad iso n and james Wilson, himse lf oue of the several foreign born Founding Fathers, argued against the " ill iberality" of sucl1 restrictions, while oth<.:rs claimed th at the love of an acquired country can never be undivided enough tu make it safe for an alieu to hold high office. Whe n I ask myself whether there is so methiug in the latter clai m, I must admit that the re is, and that the "illiberal" c lause has its wisdom. For naturalization has two aspects. in one of wh ic h it can be explicit, exped itious and complete . while in the othe r it is dilatory ami delicate. TI1a1 latte r aspect has to do "ith "hat I think of as "the conversion of the imagin ation." It is con cerned with th e c hange of ven ue our dreams- I mean sleeping dreams- must eventually unde rgo, and with the slow m igration of meaning to new landscapes. The tard in ess of that conversion is related to a certain repellen t aspect of the American scen e to which Crcvecocur, the colonia l immigr.mt farmer, allud es in his co mparison of the America n land with Europe, where, he says, . . . all the objects of contemplation, all the reveries of the travelle r, must have reference to ancient generatio ns and to ve ry distan t pe riods, clouded with the mist of ages. He re, o n the contrary, everything is mode rn, peaceful and benign. He himself had fallen in love wi th Pennsylvania and found the aspec t of a prospero us present more gratifying than the romantic reverberations oft he past. And yet it is just these whi ch attach the imagination, as their absence most rebuffs feel ing. Add to this circumstance the fact that the benign beauty of America is now much overlaid with the u gly apparatus of convenience. To be sure, this newer modernitv has an exhilaration of its own, but that is an acquired taste: (Another immigrant has. in fact, written a boo k about this matter: abokov's Lolita dwells much on the relation this "lovelv, trustful, dreamy enormous country" has to its overlav, of whi~h the author, rightly, I think, says that "n oth ing is more exhila rating tha n [its] philistine vu lga rity. ") In view of these impedi ments, fo,·e-as di\ tinguishcd from apprec iation- of Ame rica will be uo roma ntic adventure but, to p ut it intimatclr, like " marriage of conven ie nce in wh ic h a woman fiuds herself, to her secret aud surprised delight, .one da) sol idly in Io,·c . I dwell on these ma tter~ of the heart only to set o fT clearl}' a stra ig hter and more accessible road to ci ti7.cnship. It is th e o ne p roposed hy Lincoln. Let me insert here the reasons why l sha ll ~o often appeal to L in coln in this lect ure. First of a ll it is because he is that interprete r of the Declaration who has both most ~tature and most passion. who could say of himl>Clf that I h ave never had a feeling IX> Iiti ca lly lhat did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Indepe ndence. But the re is also somethi ng else. Lincoln and his war, that haunting tragedy in which the sins of omission of the Revolution were expiated, form the backdrop against whic h Jeffe rson's sec ular comedy gains its brightness. You may th ink that it is fri volous to view the American past as a n artn1 l chiaroscuro. but I think th at to partic ipate in the past :ts vie we r of a play is n ot th e worst way to absorb history, especially when. like the American past, it abounds in p rovidential -seeming contrasts and coincidences. All l mean to say, however, is tha t I came to the Declaration through the Civil Wa r and particularly through its dist illatio n, the Gettysburg Address. To return to the po int, Li ncoln says of those i111111igran ts who cannot trace their li neage back to the Revolution: .. . th ey cannot . .. make the mselves fee l that thcr arc part of us, bu t when they look through that old Decla ration of Independence. the)' find that those old me n sa)' tha t " We hold these tru ths to be se lf-evident, that all men are created equa l," and then they feel that that moral sentiment ta ught in that d:ay C\'idenccs their relation to those men, that it is the father of all mora l principle in them, a nd that they ha ve a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh o f the flesh, of the men who wrote the Declaration, a nd so they are . This way, then, would be the highwa y to naturalization. The refore o ne important question I, as au immigrant, must certainly ask myself is: do the sentiments of the Declaration engender moral opinions in me, particula rl y about eq uality? II To begin. And first I have to subject you to a ra ther pedestri an reci tal of two gro ups of facts. partly just to recall and put them on record for )'Ou, partl y for later refe rence. A. TI1e document kuown as the '' Declaration of lndepcndcncc," whic h was dra fted by Jeffe rso n for a commi ttee whose other working members were Franklin and Adams, debated by the Contiue ntal Congress as a Committee o f the Whole, 2 r~--------------------------------------------~ �July, 1976 ·'agreed to" on Jul y 4, 1776, and ordered immed iately "to be proclaimed in each of the united states" - this committee report is not the political act for which it is commonly taken. For on Jul y 2, the Congress h ad already passed a resolution by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia to the effect: 'il1at these United Colonies arc, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they a re absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, aud tha t all political con ncct icm between the m and the State of Creal Brita in is, and o ught to be, totally dissolved. Yo u will recogni ze th ese words as incorporated in the last tXJragraph of the Dccla r;l tio n; they co nstitu te the epocha l po litical act which form:J ily initia ted the United Sta tes. That fact is o f great significance, siucc it means that the IJeclaration is prima ril y a work of justificntion and cxplnnation, an accountg iving, not an act, logos nolergon , a~ the C reeks would say. In Madison 's words, it was intended to provide the rationa l "bas is of the Revolutionary act .., The Resolution of Independe nce had already sa tisfied the urgent political demand made in T om Paine's pamphlet Common Sense half a year earlier: to extract the American colonies from the paradox of " resistance aud subjection,·· by com·crting them from the state of rebellion, in which King George had formally declared them to be, into "legitimate•· rcvolutionish and so to ma ke them eligible for support in the eyes of the world. Paine had indeed also urged that a manifesto be disp.1tched to foreign courts "to set forth the miseries we have endured and the peaceable methods we have ineffectually u~d for rcdrl.'$S." Jefferson took that advice very exactly, giving his document the precise legal form of a declaration of plain till's ca use for action. But the document is no mere apology lx:forc the nations. since no o ne nation has the right to sit in judgment over another, but th e tribunal of o ur co nsciences remain~, and that also of the opin ions of the world. It is ra ther an ingenuous disclosm c by. th e American "mind" and "soul'' - these are jefferson's tr rms- of its principles of acti on. In Lincoln's words: All hono r to Jefferson- to the man who , in the co ncrete pressure of a struggle for nati ona l independence by a s ingle people, had the coo lness, forecast a nd ca pacity to in trod uce into a me rely revolutio nary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men a nd all times .... Accordingly the chief paragraphs, those wh ich caused Madison to call the Declaration a "lucid communication of human rights," is written in that tone of respons ible reasonableness which evinces "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind .., , othing throws this quality into relief better than the contemptuous sectarian language with which the comparably influential document of the next century begins: A spectre is haunting Europe-the spectre of Communism . . . . It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself. TI1c Declaration meau~ not to threaten hut to enlighten. B. The second group of facts concerns the .. merely revol utionary" part oft he document. This is its midd le section wi th its ringing "he h as's, ·• iL-. twenty-seve n acc usations against the .. King of C real Britain." The sum of these is tha t he has had in direct object the Establi~hm cn t of an absolute T yrann y over these Sta tes. To prove this let F'acts be sub mitted to a cand id [i.e. , bcnigu ly receptive] World. The remarkable aspect o f this section is tha t t·he final versio n contaius, aside from two oblique references, no men tion at a ll of Parlia lll e nt and the i11jurics it had infl icted on the colonies. Since it is by means of this omission th at the Declaration expresses its revolu tionary cha racter, let me, very schematica lly, recount what is behind it. I. In the first phase of the quarrel between the mo ther country and her colon ies, their emphasis had been on the colo nials' ancient rights as Englishmen, particul arly in their economic application of "no taxation without representation," since the colonies were not represented in Parliament. The argument had sometimes lx:cn modified by distinctions between permissible and impermissible taxes such as e xternal vs. internal, regulatory vs. revenue-raisi ng taxes. 2. In the second phase the colonial argument, formulated by Franklin among the first, became constit utional and political. Representation was now no longer even sought: instead, the a rgument, an oddly coun ter-revolutionary one, was that the colonia ls were exclusively th e King's subjects; Parliament was considered to have usurped its powers of legislation over the colonies in the G lorious Revolution of 1688, the very event Locke wrote to justify. 3. In the fina l, revolutio nary, phase the Constitutional q uesti on was regarded as decided by its c hief propone nts, like Adams and Jefferson, whose dra ft version of the Declaratio n was to stale flaUy that "su bmission to their pa rli ame nt was n o part of our const itution." I Ic nccfo rth th e argumen t was from the universal rwlural rights of num, through the " F'ac ts" pro ving the object of establishi ng a tyranny, ltJ the revolutio nary breaking o f the last remain ing bond, tha t with the Ki ng. The main logical line of this political argume nt as con tai ned in the Declaration can be unrave ll ed as follows: I. Men are individually endowed with rights. 2. Governments are insti tuted to secure them. 3. When they are destructive of these rights governments may be altered. 4. Facts prove that the Ki ng's government intends to destroy these rights. 5. The p roper agent for an alteration in the government is a people. 6. The inhabitants of the United Colonies are a people. 7. T h erefore they can and shou ld authorize the act of alteration. Now wha t kind of alteration did the facts support? The answer 3 I �The College is set out in the opening paragraph. It is a "course of human Events" ''hich make~ it nccL>s~ary for one people to di~solve the political Bonds "hich have connected them '' ith another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the laws of Natu re and , ature's Cod en title them .... The passage asserts a natural right to revolution interpreted as separation, as independence-self-determination in conte mporary language. 'l11c right to "alter or to abolish" a government and to iustitutc o ucw ouc which wi ll sec ure ind ividual rights is to be exercised by a (X!of>le and by seceding, that is, not by ab:.o lutcly aholis hing th e old government, but by withdrawing from it. Certain ly the Declaration uses the language of revolution: it speaks of "altering former Systems of Government." but it inte nds a territoria l withdrawal together with a revolutionary rc-instilu tion of the true features of the old system. Jefferso n, following Locke, had already argued in his Summa ry View of the Rights of British America of 1774 th at th e very settling of this coun try was an expression of such a natural right of removal, the right of Going in quest o f new habitation ... and establishi ng ne'' soc1et•es under such laws and regulations as shall seem most likely to promote public happiness. lie alludes to th1s ri~ht again in the Declaration in his reference to "the Circumstances of Emi~ration and Settlement here." This individual "natwal right of man to expatriate himself. at '~ill" wa\ ,·cry important to him - it is the personal counterpart of a people's right of separation. ll1c relation between these "' o kinds of political alteration, secession and revolution, became the unhappy dilemma of the Civil War, the Confederates claim ing to have good warrant for secession iu the founding documents, an d the Unionists argui 11g that in this uni<1ue Union secession would amount to a couuter- rcvo iL IIionary, that is, rebe ll ious, destruction of th at system of government wh ich truly e mbod ies the will of the people: such rehclliou is not supportccl by the Decla ration, quite apart from the q uestion whether the states ha ve a Constitutional right to secede from the federation. This issue, like a number of othe rs, was, as we shall sec, settled in e ffect perhaps rather than in pri nci ple by the C ivi l W:tr. T he America n Revol ution. then . derives much of its ben ign character from the fact that it includes no necessary elemen t of destructio n of e:.tablished governments. It seems to me that this happy aspect of the original act is reflected e\·erywhere in American life 111 its reliance on alternatives, particularly those permitted b~ ~p.lclomncs; a~ a c urative for friction . The physical possibilities for exercising the right of removal ma~ now be much narrowed-but happily space is not the only dimension in "hich it can be C\ crciscd. Here \\C shalllea'c that "mcrcl} re,·olutionary" aspect o f the Declaration -~urcl) the use of that a(l\-erb "merely" does as much honor to Lmcoln as C\'Cr he intended for Jefferson - to concern ourselves "1th the pe rennially important paragraphs, those that dwell not on" hat is to be changed but on what is to be ~cured . 4 Ill A. In reading the Declaration it is particularly necessary to consider Fir..! of aiiii'!Jal kind of a tex t we have before us. It is, to begin with, a committee re port, accepted and published as an official document of a rcprcscnta ti,·c body. But what I want to take special pains to bring out is the peculiar relation it bears to its author. Let me begi n by compari ng its authorship to that of the Constitution and the f-ederalist . The articles com prising the f-ederalist were publish ed under a single, suggestive pen name , Publius. But almost every pape r is fnirly sure ly attributable to o ne of three a uthors whose thoLtgh t~ a nd se ntimen ts it expresses. T he Con:.tih ttio n. on the contrary, ma)' ha ve a ·'fa ther" in spirit, Madison, and a for111u lator in commi ttee. Gouverneur Morrjs, bu t its provisions, negotia ted in long debate and continuou~ comprom ise are hardly attributable to any author. It is a tru ly composite work, because in it are absorhccl the varying opinio ns of fifty-five men (incide ntally excludi ng precisely Jefferson and Adam~). but it is not a collective work, because the framers were not pos~essed b) one spirit, unless it were the spirit of compromise. i O\\ consider the Declaration We all know it has one author. John Adams himself reports his own role in the choice of Jefferson , partly because Jefferson was a Virginian, partly because dams had a great Opinion of the Elegance of h is pen and none at all of my O\\ n. Jefferson was proud enough of hts authorship to "ant it to appear in his epitaph first amon~ hi s "orks and to the emphatic exclusion of all his offices. What is more, the drafting committee made on ly minor c hanges in the rough draft. ll1e c hanges made by Congress •ccmcd, to be sure, devastating to Jefferson and ca me ncar to sp<>iling the occa~ion for him. But they were a ll negati ve-Congress cut the text by a quarte r. Yet Adnms kept· repeating that the docullle nt con tai ned nothing original, that thc.: rc i~ not an idea in it but had been hackneyed in Co ttgrcss fo r twn years hc.:rorc. Here is Jefferson'' rc~ponsc a~ expressed to Madison: ... whether I gathered my ide:•s from reading or reflection l do not know. I lnow only that I tumcd to n either book or pamphlet while writing it ... I thought it a duty to be. on that occasion, a passive auditor of the opiuions of others .... And again, he \\rotc that the Declaration was intended to make the proper appeal to the tribunal of the "orld, but l'ot to lind out llC\\ principles. or nc\\ arguments. n c\'er before thought of. not merely to say things which had ne,er been said before, bnt to place before mankind the common ~cnsc nf the ~ubjcct; in terms so plaiu and fin11 as to c<Jlllllland their assent ... :-leither aim in~ at onginali" of princtple or sentiment, nor ret �The Coll ege who have full p<>\\Cr to do what independent slates may of right do. From a reading of the mere text it is impossible to tell "hcther "the United States of America" and the '·Free and Inde pen den t States·· are an entity or a collection. (The issue seeu1s to have been as do ubtfully phrased in the states; for instance, the provincial comenlion of \ laryland resolved on June 28, 1776, to "concur with the other united colonies .. . in declaring the uu1ted colonies free and mdcpcndenl states.") Both the Rcsolul ion and the Dec laratio n we re approved hy the twelve delegations so authori:r.cd, in state conventions and voti ng by states. O n the other hand the ir a uthority is said to come fwm the people as a whole. Did the colonies then undergo their conversiou iulo states in union o r sepa rately? Docs the Union precede the ' tales in suc h a way as tu ha,·e supe rior sove reign ly? The intent of the signers WH~ almost certainh that ··united sta tes" should mean ··states un ited, •· whic h unplie~ the prioritr of the slates. r\ literal construction, however. permits the other reading. Lincoln wa~ the ~trong proponent of this alternative understanding that the Union a nticip;Jtc<i stafl•hood a11<l the even t o f the C ivi l War confirmed this interpretation: the states arc not ultimate ly sovereign. C. ' I he most fruitful que~tion , flna llr, settled in fact but not necessa rily foreve r o r in pri nciple, i ~ whethe r the Declaration entails a particular ~ind of governmcul or not. This is what the text says: ... T hat to ~ccu re these Rights , Covt:rnmenls ;uc instituted anumg :-..'h:n, deriving their just Powers frnm the Conscut of the Coverncd. tha t whenever an} Fonn of Government lx:comes destruct ive of these l•:nds. it is lite Righ t of the People to alter or aholish it. and to institute new Government. laying its Fouuda tinn~ o n su ch Pri nciples, and orga1 1izing its Powers in ~uch Form as to them shall see1n mml likel)' to c:•.ffcct the ir Safel) and 1-lappine!.S. It seems pretty clear that the right of rc\Oiution is hc rc regarded as reachi ng arry govern mcu t \\h<lt~oe, c r. 1\o government is w complete or so pcnnanent an incarnation of the I rue pri nci pl e~ of governmeu l as to he un touchable. Indeed, Jefferson contended that 110 society can 111ake a pcrptl ual constitution. It is eq11nlly clear that a n)' new government must have, as a necessa•> feature. the consent of the govemed. Here Jefferson follows Locke exactly enough. But a whole congeries of great que~tions is not answered by the text: Can consent be passed down through the generations, a proposition )effersou e lsewhere strenuously denied? Ooes government b> consen t nccc~sa rily imply, a~ it did for Locke, majoritarian governmen t? And ought majoritaria n government to be constilntional government? And does constitutional government mean republican i!Overnmenl? And that in turu a representative dcmoeracv? What jefferson h imself thought is 6 clear from his other writings: he was a ma joritarian, a const itu tiona list, an ene my of "artificial aristocracy," or monarchy, a supporter o f the represen tative principle, and America's "greatest democrat"' according to Tocquevillc. No doubt his preferences are somehow beh ind tJ1e Declaration. But the text itself docs not say any of this- it couflnes itself to a mention of "likely" governmental principles. I'or: . .. the sa me original principles, mod ified in practice accordi ng to' the different habits of different na tions, present governments of ve ry different aspects, while the Declaration is iulent on such "original princ iples" only. n1 creforc, although we ha\c in accomplished fact a constitutional, represent~tive repuhlic. consen t to which is plausibly inferred from the mere fact of contin ued habitation, the ultima te t·hcoretical q uestion remo1ius opeu: what is mean t by '·consent" and what go,·ermnents can claim it? And in its urgen t, con temporary applica tion: could any popuh1r government claiming conseut on purely theoretica l grounds. for instance a " people's dicta torship," secure those rights whose prescr\ation is, in the Declaration, the purpose of governmen t? I tl1ink the answer is no and that the natu re of n1c rights en umerated precludes certain kinds of government from claiming co nsent , but this most press ing topic is beyond my scope for tonight. I conclude only that ou r tradition becomes mo re universal b) being regarded as having two ~o urces, o ne o f which, the Declaration, is on a much higher level of ab~lraction thau the second. On the othc r hand. the tradi tion is made more coherent when it is sh0\\11 that th~t second source. the Constitution, is not only compatible but even su premely consonan t with thc fbt. 'J'he most interesti ng \\ork in American political theor) seems to m e to deal with these matters. v 1ow to the paragraph coutaining the ··abstract truths. ·• In \Hcstling with its meaning I shall ta ke into acco unt its na ture as a text of "' harm ou izing sentiments" - and therefore expect neither deep cohe rence rror diffuse generalities, but bou nded J X>ssibilities of meaning. And I shall regard its a1nbiguities not a.\ accidenta l Oaws but a~ revea ling co nsequences of its mode of authorship. A. We hold these Truths to be self-evident , that all tvlen are created equal . .. "all r\1en" As has been shown, the best read ing of "all men·· is that it means all men: ··Thi~ the) said, and this the)' meant'" h Li ncolu·s brusq ue com me nt. F u rt·l1ermore, Li nco In expa nels: these truth~ are "applicable to all men and all times." He is c la imi ng that this par.1graph co utain s tire nnivcr~al political philosophy. It is, I bclie\·e, a correct rendering of jefferson's convictio n th at the United Stntes is fouudcd upon eterna l truth. 'lotice, however, that the text ~peaks not of the class. man, �July, 1976 but of men, that is. of h u man be ings taken individua lly. In logica l terms: ''all men" is a ''universal" subject; "man" would have been " indefin ite" in quantity. By n ot g iving a mark or definition of the class but allowing it to be given ~imply through all its members, the text becomes more concrete. less in danger of being trapped into the requirement of a preliminary definition of "man"-an unnecessary exercise since human beings, when not self-deluded, arc always able to recognize each other's humanity. What is more, the phrase discourages all class-bound equali ty. The discriminable sub-classes of mankind, the religions, the races, the sexes, may present themselves for inclusion as the issut: arises, bu t they are absorbed not as me mbers of the ir sub-class but as "men," that is, as h uman be ings; ne ither equalit)' (nor. it fo ll ows, rights) can be long to "minorities," o r for that matter ··majorities, ·• but only to human being~. ouc by one, as mc•nhcrs of the human class taken, in logical terms, ·'cxtensivclv,'' through :1ll its members. "are created equaf' I. It is usual to minimize th e theological weight of the word "created," not \~ithout good cause, as I will further show under the word "Creator. " Jefferson did believe in a sudden and single creation of the world and its species. Cod 1nade the kinds which then propagate according tn their species nature. Hence, though the species me created, each human being is not a crcatnrc in the direct sense: its crcaturclincss, that is, its dependent re lation on its creator, is n ot its essential ch aracteristic. I lencc the source of Christia n ~;:qua l ity, which is the fact that we arc all souls shaped in the image of our creator, can not be Jefferso n's. We may therefore say that in thi~ text equality is not grounded in theological consideration~. 2. Whence, then, does our equal it)' derive? A second possible source is an original sl"ate of nature, such as Locke set out. Let me quote his whole f.unou~ pas~gc because it echoe~ through the Declaration: The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it wh ich obliges everyone; and reason, which is th at law, teaches all mank ind who will bu t co nsult it tha t bei ng a ll equa l and independe nt [Jefferso n'~ rough draft read: "all men arc created equa l and independent"], no o ne ought to harm another in his life, hea lth. liberty, or possessions . . . . In this state of nature men are in A state of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same sp<.'Cics and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature and the usc of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection. ow Jefferson does o n occasio n make refe rence to a state of na ture a~ havi ng existed before the org;mizatio n of political society, bnt l have found no e vidence th at he co nside red such an original state of nature to be th e source and warrant for human equa lity. or is help to be found in the fi rst paragraph of the Declaration, and its re fe rence to "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's Cod," since the relation of thi~ nature and its laws, and Locke's law of nature are obscure. Indeed, the phrase itself, which Jefferson had already used in his Summary View, is difficult: I low many sets oflaws are intended? '!'hose o f Cod and in addition those of nature? Or are these- this is more likely- one and the same, as in the tradition found in Aquinas' "Treatise on Law", where natural law is but divine law made accc~sible to reason? Again, why are there "Laws" in the plural? Are they the sevcml dictates of reason which arc comprised in Locke's law? Or mo ral laws that "natu re has written,'' in Jefferson's phrase? Or are they ra ther tht: "laws of na ture" as norma ll y understood and, o n a n occasion, referred to by Jefferson him self- Newton's laws of physical moti on? Newton was, alo ng with Bacon and Locke, one of Jeffe rso n's admired "trinity," and it is possible that he had in mind a Hobbesian analogy between the bodr politic and a Ne\•1onian system of equivalent moving atoms organized by mutually exerted forces of repulsion and attraction. Or are they. as Paine implies in the Rights o(Man, sociological laws? It is a hard exerci~e for an other day to answer these questions, not least of all because of the peculiar way, having in it a certain heedlessness born of independence, in which Jefferson's sources were filtered th rough his memory, the words being prcsc•ved bu t the context shi fti ng. 3. So the remai n ing interpretation is tha t equa lity in the Declaration must be taken to a rise in a th ird way, that is, not by the divine crea tion of souls, nor through an original natural stale, but by an ever-present charactt:ristie: our birth, our nature. That uature is ours onlr remotely br reason of our divine origin. More immediately we participate in it by reason of being humankind, thinking bodies, ratiom1l animals, natures bam\\ ithin Nature. Our equality springs from our membership in one Cod-created species and is re-iteratt:d ate\ ery birth. Tom Paine speaks of ''fhe unity of man " by which he means Thnt all men arc born equal, and with cqnnl natural righ t, in the sa111e manner as if posteri ty had been co ntin ued by creation instead of generatio n . . . . We may speculate that Jefferson jibbed at th e unqua lifiecl statement that "all men arc by nature equal.·· Indeed, when speaking of nature directly, he claims, not quite co nsistently, that c lasses. orders. genera and species are the arbitrary work o f men and that ''her creation is of individuals, .. indefinitely varied, and hence, I suppose. incommensurable. "equal" othing ~hould concern us more in the Dt:claration than the delinea tion of the u1eaning of equulitv. ow just as there is evidently 110 reference to equa lity of primeva l co ndi tion, so there appea rs to be no warrau t for supposi11g that there is in the Declaration a defi11itc dcul;llld for a n eq uality of actual condition. The strict inte ntion oft he text is revealed by Jeffe rson's original phra~ing. which became a casu;•lty oft he condensing he himself thought itncccssar} to do. 7 I �The ColJcge It read: We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable, that all men are created equal and independent; that from that equal creation they dcri\·c rights inherent and inalienable. . . . And in a next stage he IITOtc: ... they a re endowed by their Creator with equal rights .... (My itali cs.) These wordings arc clcnrcr than that of the final text. They show what is there left doubtful, namely the relation of men's being a1ual to their be ing endowed by their crea tor with certain rights. In the o riginal version equa lity is explicated as a ground o r source of rights. Equality me;~ns equality of rights. This interpretation was accepted and ca rried to its concl usion by Lincoln. who sa:,-'S: I think that the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men equa l in all res(x!cts. They did n()t mean to say that all 11erc equal in color. size, intellec t, moral developme nts, o r ~ocial capacity. They defined with tolerable distinc tn ess, in what respects they did consider all men created equal-equa l in "certain inalienable rights .. . . " In this understanding, eq uali ty i~ a 11 o rigina l sameness of humanity with respect to one kind of capacity , the ki nd called a right, or rather a definite complex of rights- not needs, not po:,:,e~ions, not virtues, not claims to love, but rights. From thi s point of \'icw equality. which 11011ld seem. after all. to be first of all a quantitati\'e notion, i~ con1ertcd into sameness, a quality. Or even more precisely. cqualitr is a capacil} rather than a property; it plays the role of a substrate 11 hich may be endowed with properties, that is, rights. ( l ienee the full explication of equa lity is thrown forward onto the rights enumerated in the next clause.) This substrate may, in fact, be understood as the matter of humanki nd itself, ns ''th e spec ies," in jefferson's term. One add ition: men having such origi nal sameness of capac ity as I have articulated do not on that account lend themselves to homogenization-to the making alike of all to aJI. F'or this modern miasma there is no, repeat no. warrant in our founding word: Jefferson delighted in the ineradicable variety of men. And ret there is a substanti ve meaning, bearing something of its ordinary quantitatii'C levelling. egalitarian sense, attached to the term equality a~ it has entered American life from the Declaration. It too ought to be given its place, particularly since Jefferson himself had tendeucic~ that way, that is, toward regarding equality in itself as a positively desi rable condit ion. Jefft!rson was, to be sure, a proponent of " natural aristocracy" and <(uite capable of speaking of a school selection process as raki ng geui us from the " mbbish." But he also counted among his greatest accomplishme nts his authorship of the Virgin ia law against primogeniture which resulted in more equal distributiou of landed property. and he once spoke of"lovcly equa lity." So there can be no question that he, and certainly Lincoln, 8 viewed a certain eq uality of condillon , achieved slowl v and lawfully, as a desirable goal for the future. · I think that from these two ront notions of eq uality-equali!)• a~ a capability and as a cond ition taken together arises the f.uniliar and well-founded understanding of equality as equal condition of opportunil). This understanding underlies all legitimate efforts to equalize. for instance, education, which is the pure materialization of opportunit). The 111arl.. oflegitimaC) of such efforts is always that rc~cntmcut pia~;, no role in them and that equa lization is not only in intention but also in effect upward rather than downward. Then it becomes a matter of mere logic that given equa l opportu nity. and assu ming that abi lities were really roughly eq ual, approximate equa lity of co ndition-an eq uality spiced with diversity- will result. Th e outcome co uld be entrusted to time and the long run; a sensitive quc~tion left open in the Dec lara tio n. nnmelv what the notion of equality might conta in beyond equa lity of rights. need uot be settled in principle beforehand al all. It seems to me a reasonable extension of the Declaration- this egalitaria nism not of intention but of effect. But hert! as nowhere else the Declaration is supple enough not merely to support, but to ask for, a personal concern with 1t- to demand a pri1·ate interpretation. l lere is the place to ask myself: b the principle of equality really in Lincoln's sense a moral source to me? I find-and Lam sure I am not alone in this - that I can grow q uite h ea ted when I hear it flatly denied in public, but that within myself I adhere to it with ou t any fervor, although perhaps with a kind of compensating fi rm ness. I think I ought to ;,ay from what moti ves. I ad here to it: I. F'rom ignorance: I have a ~uspicion that in themselves human beings are radical!)' unequal in crucial respects- that if their ;,ouls were ~isible, some would be lit11e and mean and others large and ICJ\<Jble. But I do not know, e1er, what sou l a g11·en body envelops. Recall the "noble lie" of Plato's Republic; the lie of it is not the claim that human souJs arc of different metal, but that the metal of the soul can be unerringly assared. In truth, we cannot even say on what occas ion a human being docs reveal hi msel f trul y, whether at a moment of crucial decision or under the ste:1dy burden of ordi nary life. One thing is ce rta in: tha t those who claim to be the best and the brightest have often mistaken soph istication for exce llence. 2. From the experience of suffe ring: pain is a wonderfu l cqlmli ze r, and while it seems entirely thinkable that the quality of bliss varies widely, it is impossible to feel that misery does. 3. F'rom a sense of scale: under the aspect o f eternity or the �July, 1976 measure of infinity human beings all appear pretty nearly equally tiny. 4. From incommensurability: in their particularity human beings arc so incomparable that one might as well call them equal-equally peculiar. S. From a feeling of fellowship: beca use in the long run the common concerns tum out to be the most serious concerns and ordinary ways the wisest ways. Add to this the direct friendliness that the American principle of equality induces in human intercourse. Aristotle asserts tha t friendship ''holds together" the city sta te; the casual fellowship of American public life seems to me to serve as the appropriate counterpart of that cement for a great national state. I might therefore say that I feel no passion, but a ~teady inclination toward this principle of equality which ca nnot fail to influence my conduct. and so it is a source of morality for me. But my reasons for adhering to it arc very different from those implied in the Declaration- they ha\'C next to nothing to do with an)' inherent nature of man, and C\'erything \\ ith the limitations of the human condition. And yet I shall maintain thai it is permissible, and even appropriate, to uphold the great text in this subversive way ( which ma)' not C\'Cil be so far from that of Lincoln). For to show that a truth may have several roots serves to eonfinn its acceptability. or is its self-evidence impugned by this re-rooti ng, for my motives all come from a kind of immediate, if subdued, se ntimen t and arc therefore somehow axio matic. II note: in his rough draft Jefferson had written "equal and independent. " We may speculate that Jefferson reconsidered the phrase because it seemed inappropriate to affirm the independence of individuals in a document declari ng the founding of an independent nation. B. The paragraph continues: that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, .. . "by their Creator" In the rough draft Jefferson spoke only of "created" and "creation." Then he decided to name the agent. But the theological definition of the endowing Creator is slender. Cod is indeed introd uced in a neat complex of political roles in the Declaration (as he had been in the Dccl:lration of'75). He is the founder of the Uni\-erse ("Nature's Cod''), universal legislator (" Laws of ' aturc''), chief judge ("the Supreme Judge of the World") and chief executive (''the Protection of Divine Providence"). But the very com pleteness of the political metaphor may give warning of this di vi nity's weak theological character- deep critics of the enlightenment have pointed out that its god, the "Supreme Being," ca nn ot help but be a transcendental vacuum. I do not for a minute mean to imply that the Signers did not feel great reverence for th e "Supreme Being," but rath er that it was rational reverence more than the saving faith of traditional Christianity. In fact, as many tennsasJefferson has for the Ruler of man, so many has he for the Maker of nature, for instance. " Fabricator" and "Superintending power." But these tcnns arc no more inte nded as transcendental determinations than the others. Jefferson hated theological speculations (it is probably the only thing he hated.) They are meant rath er as tributes to the product of the divine operation, the well-designed, self-regulating world. In sum: Of the nature of this Being we k11ow nothing Indeed, Cod's defi nition is more than slender, it is selfattenuating. fo'or Jefferson's strongest characteriwtion of Cod happeus to COllie in the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom (the second document he wished mentioned on his epitaph). ow this law begins: Well aware that Almighty Cod hath created the mind free and soon concludes that our civil rights have no clependeucc on our religious opiuions. ''endowed" As in this text, so in Jefferso n'sSummary View oftire Rights of British America of 1774, rights are Cod's gift: Here as elsewhere Jefferson values freedom of co nscience more than substantial truth: The Cod who gave us life, gave us liberty ... l ienee he wi ll always consider the maintenance of Cod-given freedom more interesting than the defense of particular religious truths. blithely disregarding the fact that his warrant for doing so is itself a religious dogma. In this way "the Holy Author of our religion" is himself made to undef\uite the absence of religious substance from political life. Jefferson's Creator is eventually the guarantor of his creatures' insouciant relation to hi m. "certain" In the rough draft, Jefferson wrote: "Equal rights, some of which arc inheren t and inalienable." (M)• italics.) Among the rights not inalienable is the right of property, that is, property not acqui red by one's own labor. Evideutl y he decided to make no mention of such rights at all. But sometimes it is nature from whom rights come immediate))~ . . . man was a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights. And sometimes, in a more pre~ise vein , the people claim their rights as derived from the laws of nature. The chain of derivation is, therefore, not clearly fixed in Jefferson's writings. I speculate aga in that he omitted nature, the intermedia ry between Cod and man, in the text before us because he could not quite support the juxtaposition of equal endowments with nature. Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. 9 r �The College The three primary rights he en umerates a re, again, not the only ones with which human beings are ma/ienabl)• endowed. At th e same time the word "certain" suggests that their number is not to be indefinitely multiplied. Nonetheless it is pregnant with the contemporary inclination to en large substan tially the list of rights. A reflection on the wo rd "unalienable" and on the enumerated rights th emselves can give the clue to wh ich additional rights are legitimate. They would, in general, be the rights whic h arc th e cond itions of possibility of gain ing goods rather than those which give access to goods directly. Jefferson h imself listed quite a few such subs idia ry righ ts, for example, the natural right of free trade, in his Summary View. "unalienable" Jefferson h ad first written "inherent and unalienable." The "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen" of 1789, the fundamental document of the F'rcnch revolution fo r which the American Declaration served, selectively, as a so urce, speaks of "natural, imprescriptible and una lienable" as well as "sacred" rights, and Thomas Paine adds the adjectives ''i ndefeasible" and "he redita ry," and Adams adds "essential." The very profusion of te rms shows tlte indeterminateness of the notio n. It is, in brief, that lhe rights so described can be nei ther taken away from nor given up by any human being. Speaking philosophically, they are primary properties of human nature; in fact, the terms " inherent" a nd ··natural" are practically convertible. What is here most worthy of note is a wonderful inconsistency which arises within the text in connection with the notion of in alienable righ ts. For " in support of this Declaration," the Signers proclaim with state ly enthusiasm, "we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor." How can they ma ke this pledge? The inalienable right to life precludes it. It seems to me the merest sophism to argue that we ;~re precluded from alienating our right to life, but we may a li enate our lives. On that argument any tyrant may claim to be takiug merely the life while leaving the right secure. The ina lienabili ty of life must surely mean something crudely straightforward: that life can be neither taken nor given freely, but only under compulsion of necessity. Yet the Signers offer the ir lives freely. Indeed, someth ing simila r can be said of the other two pledges. Jefferson had de li bera te ly substituted a new right in th e Lockean list of rights which included life, liberty and property. As I have men tioned, he regarded it as a " moot question" whether property, at least inherited property. is an original natural righ t, and hence it is not among the rights to be sec ured by government. At the same time many of the Signers, Jeffe rson included, were men of fortune. (The Annapolitan Cha rles Carroll, heir to Lhc first or seco nd greatest fortune on the continent, defiantly added "of Carrollton," the name of his residence down on Spa Creek, so as to be the more readily identifiable as the rich Carroll.) It was, in fact, their fortunes which gave them the leisure and the means to make a revolution. And finally, they were men of honor, such men as in their own lives consider their duties rather than their rights, including, of course, the Declaration's own sole Duty, that of "throwing off" despotic government. In sum, the Declaration incorporates what I will term the "Founders' Paradox": that the world out of which they acted was in some ways richer and finer-more daring and less selfcen tered-than the one which they fought to found. For that new world was based, at least in its foundi ng theory, on security and self-i nterest. This peculiar deprivation of the beneficiaries of a revolution is th e theme of Liucoln's speech on " the Perpetuation of o ur Po litical Institutions;" it seems to me that it is very much the crux of o ur present much-debated decline in mora le. " Rights" This is the most pote nt and tl1e least lucid word in the text. I low are we to understand these primary properties of our nature? The classica l te rm " natural right" signifies what is right by the nature of things: natural justice o r right as against what is right by hum an convention . Such natural right is disclosed in a metaphysica l inquiry. In contrast the use of the word in the plural, "rights, " implies some sort of patent claim justifiab le in law. Locke's th eory, which Jefferson himself considers a sou rce, is quite consistent with this common use in positing fi rst a "natural law" from which natural rights then immediately a rise. Now it is undeniable that Locke occas ionall y refers to the "properties" of huma n natu re such as life, health and liberty as natural "rights" (Incidentally, for Locke the pre-em inently primary property of human nature is to have property, life be ing bu t our ch ief possession and all the others, liberty first among them, but supports to life). At crucial places, however, he defines rights as quite distinct from original properties or innate desires, like the desire for happiness. The rights rigorously derived from the law of nature, "which is reason," are not, as is sometimes thought, vacuous prerogatives to be what we are anyway, but entitlements to the defense and recovery of whatever state we happen to have placed ourselves in; they are the rights to repel invasions of our peace. So therefore tl1e idea of natural rights follows lucidly enough from the idea of the law of nature, if one can come to terms with the mode and conten t of such a universal command. But the notio n of rights which filtered through Jefferson into the Declaration was a much blunter, not to say, cruder one. Its one and only American theorist was ·n,omas Paine, the first part of whose Rights of Man Jefferson endo rsed when it appeared in 1791 . I thin k Paine's view was a stark version of the common opinio n and can be used to explicate what was in Jefferson's m ind . Paine defines: Natural rights are those whic h pertain to man in right of his existence. Is this in telligible? I may a rg ue that something is righ t (or wrong) by reason of nature, tl1at is, the complex constitution of being, but can 1 assert justifiable claims by mere reason of existence? Existence is a fact , and, it seems to me, from a fact n o claim can follow, but only from a refl ection on implications and relations. The truth is, 1 think, that the so-called "natural rights philosophy" is opaque because it is a covert, an elliptical moral theory, a theory about what ought to be rather than what is. But for a specific rhetorical purpose, namely that of representing 10 • -.------------------------------------------------------~ �July, 1976 that our righ ts were first tl10ught of as coming from nature, for even in its forshortened usc that word directs our thoughts to a scheme of things within which to locate our own requirements and forestalls the chief da nger in the life of indignationinfinite demands. Furthermore, unperspicuous as it is in its philosophical foundation, its ingenuousness ga ins stature, I think, when compared to the alternative derivations which superseded it in the next centu ry, for instance that rights inhere originall y in nations rat her than men, or arc rooted in history or arise dialectically in econ omic classes. c. that a mor1g these are Lif , Liberty, and the e Pursuil of Happiness nature herself as supporti ng its claims, the moral aspect is obscured. or can this m issing moral basis be straightforwardly supplied, because it does not consist of substantial articulable moral principles. It is rather a purely formal imperative, namely the general injunction to take public life morally, to moralize: it does uot concern what we ought to think and do, b ut what we are encouraged to feel , aud that is-indignation. The claim that there are rights by nature is at bottom an invitation to resist ind ignantly the perversions of man. And it furthermore enlists the faculty for indignation on the side of the desires, conveniently interpreted as needs. f'or these are thought to be more irrepressibl y natural and always know their purpose, wh ereas reason is in~trumental and adaptable. You will remember that in Pl ato's Republic, the first text of classical political philosoph y, the reverse is the case: the faculty of indignation, the middle part of the soul, sides with the reasoning faculty. But the first text of our republic, I claim, entitl es us to feel indignation when our needs or desires arc disappointed of fulfillment. Consequen tly tha t feeli ng docs indeed pervade America n modes of argume nt. It seems to me, I should add, a great bless ing, precisely because hum an nature is not wh at the natural rights theory prese nts it to be: self-assertion is not a un iversa l fact. Hum an beings arc capable o f li vi ng with almost indefinitely dimi nished requ irements and even o f resign ing their right to li fe by foregoing se lf-defe nse. The theory is, therefore, false in si mple f;act, but it is sa lutary in ca using people to aetas if it were true. It dri ves the m out of the dreary limbo of resignation, which is the chief blig ht of bad polities. Furthermore, Jefferson himself ga\'c the moral aspect of the theory so noble a cast as almost to return it to its an cient origin in natural justice. One more o~ervation: the Declaration does not explicitly associate the term "natural'' with "rights." So also in current public life when we talk, as we incessantly do, of our rights we make n o reference to nature. Probably rightly, since the theory is almost impossible to pursue to its roots; "nature" turns out-certain!)• for Jefferson - to be chieAy a resting place for reason. He almost routinely appealed to nature as the last resort: nature is responsible for everything from our moral sense to our p ropensity to being either Whig or Tory. And vet the re is something salutary in rem inding oursel\'cs These e nume rated rights together deli mi t the ma tter in the formal notion of rights. Jfor that very reason I sha ll make short shrift of them here, since tonight I am pursuing the formal aspects, the "how" of the.: Declaration r:1 thcr than its "what," its substa nce. "Life" By the fifth article of the Bill or Rights, among whose chief supporters was Jefferson, persons arc protected against deprivation of "life, liberty, or propert) without due process of law" at the hands of the government. But the natural right to life of the Declaration is precisely to be secured by the government; from that point of vic" the Fifth Amendment is a safeguard of a safeguard, the precautionary complement of the Declaration. However, it seems to be the case with us that these secondary safeguards of our civil rights play a more respectable and honored role in public debate-they arc. after all , part of the Constitution-than our private safet)•: We are a nation without political executions and with an appall ing number of private murders. Yet the te,..tofthe Declaration could be c ited in behalf of the "law and o rder" ~ide of th e dchatc. It seems to me to support L co ntention that the right to li fe req u ires th e he governmen t to protect c itizens at:ainst eac h other just as much as it requi res that the c iti1.cn be protected aga inst the government. Afte r all, the more fu ndamenta l o f the two texts says tha t the powers of govern ment arc.: to he orga nized in such a form as is most likely to e ffect ou r safety , and the twen ty-seventh and final accusation against the king deals just with hi s failure to protect his subjects aga inst each other. T he problem of energetic versus iu trusivc government a lready lies wi thin the Declaration. "Liberty" The most complex and most precarious right is liberty. It was, I bclic\'c, the one dcarc~t to Jefferson, especially as it relates to the free "diffusion of knowledge." In writing of the younger generation I.e ~id: We have spent the prime of our lives in procuring them the precious blessing of liberty. Let them spend theirs in showiug that it is the greatest parent of science and virtue . . .. And he was perfectly deaf to the chief problem o f liberty, which II �The College is that of its compatibi lity with eq uality as set out by Tocqucville. The place is the chapter ''Why Democratic Nations Show a More Ardent and Enduring Love of Equality tha n Liberty" in Part II of Democracy in America, whic h is indeed the text to go to whenever in perplexity about America's deepest difficulties. (I recommend also the chapter o n "Liberty an d Equa lity" in Calhoun's Disquisition on Government.) In om itting to discuss liberty, I am in effect leaving out the substance of th e Declaration. One observatio n is necessary with reference to the next right: Jefferson still distinguishes libe rty, as implyi ng an ardous public preoccupatio n, from the private pursuit of happiness. " the Pursuit of Happiness" By the deliberate substitution of "the Pursuit of Happiness" for "prosperi ty" in the Lockean list, Jefferson conveys that th is pursu it is the specifically American right. And furthermore he thcrch)' succeeds in re nlOving from the "abstract" portion of the found ing text for the world's most prosperous co untry any reference whatsoever to any economic system or even to prosperity. Indeed Jefferson's vision of republican prosperity was pastora l, no t ind ustrially productive. The question is: what does the phrase intend? The word pursuit in those days was used more commonly than now to mea n "practice," as when we spea k of pursuing a profession. The Virginia Dec laration of Rights of June '76 in cluded the right of ''pursu ing and obtaining happiness and safety.'' It is possible that Jefferson omitted the reference to "obta ining" as red undant. The Declaration itself spea ks of the form o f govemmen t most likely to effect th e people's "Safety an d Ha ppiness." The phrase was therefo re very probably in tended to mean "living in the practice of happiness. plying it." We may ask what is meant by the "practice of happiness. "To judge fro m Jefferso n's own, if 11{lt quite representative, then certainly exempla ry, way of life, the meaning is not far from Aristotle's defin ition of happiness as a practice, that is, an "activity of the soul in accorda nce with excellence.'' The pursuit; Jefferson thought of as giving happiness were th e perfecting of his estate, Monticello, and study, for instance, mathematics. Thus he evide nt ly lo nged for time to indulge in the "deli cious luxury, " as he termed it, of study ing highe r degree curves, or in the "sublime luxury" of read ing C reek and Latin a uthors in the origina l. Public affairs, on the other hand, he rega rded as an almost unmitigatedly unpleasant duty which removed him from virtuous pleasures, an d would have wrecked his happiness, were not happiness dependent on doing one's duty. We sec that the Declaration embod ies a view of happi ness which is private but not mean or merely material. Yet the common and accepted reading of this righ t is quite d ifferen t, and, I think, not without its fitness. The pursuit o f happiness is usually taken as the " hunting after happiness." as in the pursuit of a fugitive. In this meaning th e rig ht is thought of as an invitation to an endless quest for an end tha t is by the very terms of the right forever elusive, that is to say, an indefinite c hase incited by ever-raised expectations. Tocqueville, in the ch apter "Why Americans are so Restless in the Midst of Prosperity'' speaks of the 12 strange melancholy wh ich haunts the inhabitants of democratic cou ntries in th e midst of their abunda nce. Dea th overtakes them before they arc weary of the bootless chase of that complete felicity which forever escapes [them]. It is implied in this melancholy pursuit of an elu sive goa l that, as Tocqueville observes, true brute materialism is rare in America. The Dec laratiou then fumishes a text for two American ways: either the serene practice of or the melancholy pursui t of a private happiness. But again it embodies something beyond what it projects, since the composer and the signers of the Dec laration were surely sometime in the .cou rse of their activity translated from the mode of a modern state to that of an antique polis, that is to say, ra ised to a ''sublime pleasure," a n unsurpassa ble peak, of public e lation. And if not in its course, then , at least, in its remembrance: why else wou ld both Jefferson and Adam s have died on the afternoon of the Declaration's sem i-ceu teuniaP VI You may have noticed tha t I ha ve so far omitted the beautiful opening iambic pentameter line: We hold these Tmths to be self-evident .. .. The reason was that my main concerns tonight were the modes oftruth-telling of this text, and its reference to self-evident tru ths is obvious!}' cruc ial in this respect. ''\Ve'' vVh o is "we"? As I have mentioned, this document is ne ither stri ctly a political act nor a fundamen tal law, but a declaration of reasons. There was punishmen t for resisting the Resolution of Independence, for instance ''death without bcucfit of clergy and forfei t [of] all estate" in the state of Marvland. T here are penalties for contravening the Constitutio1~ . But since it is neither revolutionary act nor socia l contract (for as such Jefferson regarded only the Constitution), th ere are no enforceable sanctions on denying the " truths'' of the Declarat ion of Indepe ndence. Many people do. F'or examp le, the People's Bicentennial Commission reports that it asked 2 300 federa l employees to endorse the central paragraph. Over two-thirds refused with remarks like these: Looks like trash . Commie stuff. So that's wh at our Founding Fathers were up to. What is this? An anti-C IA thing? Let me say right away that po iJ ing is evidently so distorting a way of extracti ng people's opi ni on that, I firmly believe, hal f an ho ur's rational conversatio n would in many cases have brought out a m uch more orthodox fai th. Still, "we" is a n elusive collection. It may be supposed that the Signers subscribed to the text in a more than perfunctory way, as d id also th e " People" whom they represented and who accla imed it in the days after its approval. Indeed, Jefferson went so far as to call it "tl1e genuine effusion of the soul of our country at that time." But that the �July, 1976 "we" should include later generations and us among them, is, apart from all oratory, ~lcly a function of individual reconsideration and re-affirmation. The recent publication in the local newspaper of texts of the Declaration signed by schoolchildren and citizens is a recognition, although perhaps not very thoughtful. of this circnmstancc. "hold these trulhs to be self-evident" This part of th e opening clause clearl y contains two thoughts: we affirm that the propositio ns following are true, and, moreve r, they are self-eviden tly true. "~elf-evident " How then arc truths he ld whic h ~rc held self-evidently? I thi nk in two ways. I. If the ''we" was tm ly u nivc r~a l , if every one always held, and held with certainty, that the truths to follow we re, as Jefferson said in the first draft, ''sacred and undeniable" - then the question conct:ming self-evidence would never arise. What no one denies is in fact as good :1s sclf-cvidenr. As I mentioned, Jefferson even made an effort to maintain such a consensus. His method was to 111akc the Declaration, as a document containing the political principles "generally approved by our fellow citi7.ens'' one of the required textbooks of political theory at the University of Virginia, and he caused its Board of Visitors so to resolve. In met, of course, there arc, besides the thoughtless detractors. vel) s~:riou~ diS*ntcrs to the Declaration's self-evident truths. Among these john Calhoun is one with real stature, and h~: on a public occasion denied the central proposition, going on to pro,·e its falsit)• word by word. But one thoughtful dissenter can undermine de facto self-evidence. 2. The ~ccond, proper, meaning of "self-evident" is "axio111atie," not in the mod ern mathematical sense of starting poin ts arbitrarily assumed, bu t in the classical sense of being a primary truth so immediate!)• present to the attentive reason as to be deemed worthy of unreserved acceptance and universal appl ica tio n. An axiom is its own and only evidence fo r itself; itis ma nife~t; it shines out; to reject it is the mark of unreason. As Jefferson says in another context, namely his favorite contention that "we may consider each generatio n as a distinct nation,'' independent from the:: preceding one: These axioms arc so self-evident that no explanati on can make them plainer; fnr he is not to be reasoned with who says that non -existence can control existence or that nothing can move something. But the prime examples of such starting points of reason are the axioms of Euclidean geometry, th e "common notions" as they are called in the Eleme11ts. foor instance, the fifth axiom says that "the whole is greater than the part." Such truths can be evident only within a clearly envisioned mathematical universe. When that is breached, when, for instance, infinity is admitted, the axioms may appear no longer to hold, as in this case where the very d~:finition of infinity is that its whole can be equal to its parts. At that moment their self-evidence ca n be saved only by being asserted for a better defined and more restricted realm. Without do ubt the Fuu udiug Fathers' modes of conviction were based on the model of that class ical, immediate, na tural ruatbematics. At Will iam and Mary College Jefferson himself learned a logic based on < rnatlrcnr;• tical model especially 1 stressing sdf-evidence; the ~ource was his teacher, Wi lliam Small, of whom he said that he " probabl y fixed the destinies of my life.'' Hamilton begins the Thirty-first Federalist with a disquisition on geometrical self-evidence as found in politics. And Lincoln wrote must plainlr: One would state with great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler propositions of Euclid arc true; hut, nC\Crthclcss, he would mil. utter!), "ith one who should deny the definitions and axioms. The principles of Jefferson arc the definitions and axioms of free society. In their immediacy such political axioms are, for all their lucid, succinct propositional form, universal passions of the soul, the reliable responses of a "moral sense," to usc a favorite Jeffersonian term. 1l1at is wh)' tire Founders cherished the axiomatic mode- because it holds out hope of an effective consensus, with its basis in individua l sentiment and its public manifestatio n in thtc realm of rationa l discourse: Jefferso n sums up: For the reality of these principles I appeal to the true foun tains of evidence, the head and the heart of every ra tio nal and hon est man. (M>• italics.) And: The evidence . .. of th e right to life, li hcrty, the usc of our fac ulties, the pursuit ofhappiuess, is not left to the feeble and sophistical inve~t igatior1s of reason, hut is impressed ou the sense of every man. (My italics). The Declaration. then, coutaius a public roster of these fervent axioms from which our society is deduced. This fact gives our in~titutions ;a logical cast. They arc to be regarded as derived consequences. as founded . It also means that the founding propositions themselves, insomr as they are axioms, are, on the one hand in no need of proof, since the~ arc presumed to carry im mediate conviction, while on the other, again as axioms, they arc incapable of proof and therefore e,•er \"Uinerable: the foundations arc themselves unfouuded, except in immediate conviction. \Ne live on the knife's edge of a kind of faith of reason. To understand this mode a short philosophical reflection is necessary. 13 �'fhe College But before I begin on this last consideration, I want to observe that the axiom~ltic c haracter especially of the principle of equality has at least one firm conseq uence: every attempt to construct p roofs concerning the political equality or inequality of the human kinds-races, sexes, or any other-is a breach of the Declaration. An attempted proof of ine<1uality, were it co nvincing, would contradict its substance, namely. its ''truths." But an attempted proof of equnlity is almost more pernicious, for it would tacitly contradict its binding form, namely its self-evidence. Self-evidence so assisted must be self-evidence annulled. In any c:1se, either sort of proof rests on a 111isundersta nding of the text: within the l)cclaration human bt: ings arc equally g ifted with rights; a ll o ther gifts ;1re irre levant to their standing. I think that axiomatic equa lit)• is a better equality than the kinds which can be made or proved. VII A. What is the formal significance of the mathematical mode in which the Oeclaration is cast? 'vlathematical reasoning goes downward, it deduces propositions from axioms, bu t it is n(Jt in its competence to go upward to find thei r sources. T his midd le 111ode, this bctwixt-ond-betwccn of thought, is treated with special inte rest by Plato, siucc it is where most of ou r reasonable activity takes place. You will remember that it is aligned with the upper middle part of his ''Divided Line" iu the sixth book of the Republic. This is the realm of ungrounded but rc~souable h ypotheses, of conv in cing assumptions yet awaiting the philosopher's deep-laid justification. It is the realm of the Declaration. To put it iu a stark way: our Declaration of In dependence is a shallow text, deeply shallow. lu that lies its virtue. And now I owe you an explanation, first of the shall owness, and then o f th e depth. Not witho ut design - in order to have a counterweight, as it were- I have been reading Hegel this year. That German philosopher's depth, at least, is unimpeachable, What he says about depth he says in th e contex t of his system. but it seem~ to 111e to hold on its own. He says tha t the deepes t depth is the comprehension of contradiction, a nd of the particularity of hu 111an evil. It is a mark of a deep account of the world that it contains a prec<Jriously resohed opposition and that it regards the embodied soul as a deep dilemma. (An apology: I am not citing Hege l indi~criminately. His Phenomenology contains in th e section ou "Absolute Freedom and the T error" the deepest critiq ue of a mode represented by Jefferson in its bt!st and most benevolent American variation-the Enlightenment.) ow Jeffcrsou-that arch-American-was a model of a ma n: del ica tel y scrupulous in private life, and bold eveu to cunning in public affairs; of strictest reserve iu tlccp-felt personal matters and capable of the highest eloqu ence, as evidenced in the document before us; a man to take ever-fresh pleasure in study, in music, in poetry (a predeliction of greatest moment to the Declaration), in designs, iu inventions; aucl wi th at least one trait of a true philosopher king, a genuine aversion to public office- "! have no ambition to govern men," he wrote-aud a determ ination nevertheless to do his duty. To me the unopulent 14 antique-American grace of his dining room in Monticell o, which is an expression of his nature, represents that form of the good life l can best savor. Yet the author of the Declaration was the reve rse of deep in Hegel's sense. His views were in thei r main lines formed early in life a nd soon attained the crystalliue state of intellectual possessions. The evidence is in the commonplace books of his youth. Ilis opinions were unrcnt by contradictions admitted and maintained ami gave none but passing place to human evil, which he regarded as a curable disease. 1have already referred to his unreflective view of the relation of creature aud Creator. Of man himself he writes in a typical passage: I am among those who think well of the hu man character generally. I cons ider man as formed for society, and endowed by nature with those dispositions which fit him for society. I believe also, with Condor: cet, ... that his mind is perfectible to a degree o f wh ich we can not as yet form any conce ption. He considered that self-love, the sole antagonist of virtue, could be subdued by education, that human knowledge could be increased "indefinite ly'' and that it was the American character rightly ''to consider nothing as desperate; to surmoun t every d iffic ulty by resol ution and contrivance." In philosophy he declared himself, in passing, an Epicurean, that is, an "empiric" in inquiry and a tranquil materialist in theory, whiJe omitting to note the dark and doubtful side of this doc trine; he rejected all "speculations h yperphysical and antiphysical;" he had faith o nl y in "Facts" that could be submitted to the world. He viewed with aversion all texts which "disquiet the mind" by grappling with deep discords: here is what the author of our founding texi has to say to Joh n Adams about the founding text of political philosophy: ... I amt1 sed myself with reading seriously Plato's Republic . . . . While wading through the whimsies, the puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this work, I laid it dO\\ n often to ask myself how it could have been, that the world should have so long consented to g ive reputation to such nonsense. And again, although jefferson mentions Aristo tle as a source for the Declaration, it is hard to point to Jefferson's own usc of an Aristotelian text; of the Politics he 1uerelv observed th at it was unprofitable because it lacked the id~a of rep resentation. Moreover, as I have po in ted ou t, he had a c uriously disjointed relation to the phi losophers on whom he did , in passing, re ly, like Locke. The cause of this was iu part, I am per~uadcd, his very e xcellent memory for phrases, developed in assiduous study. since a vCr) literal partial reca ll of a text ca n stand in the way of reflection upon it. And that mode of study was, in tu rn, the conseq uence of the characteristic instrumental usc h e made of his philosophical reading-a fascinating separate topic. I am noting this e\·idencc concerning Je ffe rson's un- or anti-philosophical, or better, counter-metaphysical, propensiti es for no d erogatory purpose. On the contTary, I intend it to explain no t only how he ca 111c to be so unOawed and authoritative a hanuonizcr of sentiment~ but how, by the same �July, 1976 token by which he did not descen d into the depths of being, he refrained from hacking at the roots of life. The most en lighten ing chapters on ou r times of which I know are those in Tocqueville's book on the French Revolu tio n in which he describes thc"/i/le rateu rs," the political theoris ts wh o are, it is implied, finall y responsible for its ultimate form, the Terror. Tocquevillc says: ... their starting point was the same in all cases; and this was the belief that what was wanted was to replace the complex of traditional customs governing the social order of the day by simple, e lementary rules derivi ng from the exercise of the human reason and na tural law. These "elemen tary mlcs," it must be understood, are qui te distinct from Lincoln's "axioms of a free society.·· For the latte r are working hypotheses, while the former arc the princi ples of a complete system which leaves nothing undetermined, if not in result then in method. Jefferson·s lawyer's training and his early iuvo lvement in affairs both kept him from being such a tota litarian of th<.: reason; so d id the fact tha t his early reading was in English rather than French writers; add to th is h is end less curios ity a nd appetite for inqui ry. But most of all it was the very nature of his intellect which prevented h im from constructing or even appreciating a coherent radical theo ry of politics and its grounds and inflicting it on this country. (For example: he ignored Rousseau.) It was an inteiJect which had a peculiar power oflevitation, a power of making energetic and convincing form ula tions without deep delvi ng: a mathematical inte llect in Plato's sense. But th is very curta ilment of reason ing saves our text, fi rst from the h arsh extremes of reason, an d th en from the J :>etrifuctio n which overtakes expressions of general opinion when the world in which they were all too securely rooted passes. Thus Jefferson's vigorous, indepeuclcntly reasonable axioms are capable of surviving their time and finding a new context. I have tried to give one modest example of such a re-appropriation of the axiom of equality. B. The d ocument whose propositions passed th rough Jeffe rso n's intell ect docs not, then, eontai u coheren t deep-rooted truths. It is ralher, as 1 have just suggested, a writing of practical wisdom, a benign text. 1 have lx:cn concentrating on working out its diversity of possible interpretations and their sugge~tivc difficulties which are the consequence of its curtailed mode. At this moment I would like to recapitulate the substance of the Declaration from the po int of view of its beneficence: I. By its speci fi c;~ lly declaratory character, this "Declaration" places the Un ited States from its very hcg inu iug in a u niverse of reasonable commuuica tion; by their very fouudation her citizens arc obligateu to expla in their actions to t11e ,,orJd. And by the dignity of its diction and the poetry of its rhythm this country"s first communication sets the highest standa rds for public speech. 2. By naming as it~ authorizing power ·'one People"' the document posits a unifiecl social fahric which is prior to an y particu lar governmcu t. 3. By the inclusion o f the term ·'Nature" this political document bears within it a permanent philosophical reference to tile question co ncern ing the being oftJ1ings; and in the ph rase "the Laws of Nature" it co mmi ts the cou n try to an origina l sympa thy with a world accessible to sc ience. 4. By placing "Cod" on a political throne, attention to a divinity is acknowk'<lged as a fundamental aspect of public life, while all doctrinal definition and hence every imposi tion of sectarianism is eschewed. 5. By declaring "'truths·· the text implies that for this nation a determination of tmth originally li es behind action; and by pronouncing them "self-evident" the mode of the found ing proposi tio n is made to be tl kinu o f fa ith of reason wh ich combines convic tio n with rationa lity. 6. By the use oftt.c logica l universal "all me n" the argument made for a specifically American occasion assumes tile dignity of universality. 7. Br the assertion that men are "created equal" the Declaration induces a specific democratic way of life. characterized by public fellowship and private reserve. 8. By in te rpreting equality essentially as eq uali ty in respect to ··unalienabl e Rights," th e Dec la ra tion con fi rms ci tize ns in their sense of dignity a nd in a read iness to mora l indignation, wh ich is the spring o f poli tical activi ty. 9. By enumerating " Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" as the characteristic central rights, the document indicates that the widest spread of actual ··safety and Happiness'" will be obtain ed by insuring the condition of the ir possibility, and not by del ineating and attempting to dec ree directly any particular form of the good life. I 0. By defi ning the purpose of governmen t as being " to secure;: these Rights" the documen t lays down lim its to the government's efforts to pro n10tc the general welfare, limit~ which are ever ready for rcassertion. II . B the explicit inclusion of the people's right to "'alter or y abolish" its government, that is, the right to revolution, the nation acqu ired an incalculable stabilizing force. since the pos.~ib i l ity of radical amendment is a part of its very foundation. And by recommending patience and "Prudence"' as well as by poi nti ng to the precise justificatio n for revolution as "'Tyranny," the Decla ration wisely moderates this righ t of revo lution. 12. By subscribing. at the end of the doc111ncnt, to considerations of duty, sacrifice and honor, the Signers nobly enlarge the sphere of self-interest defi ned by the central truths. t th e end of h is life Jefferson asked himself: " Is m y Country the Better for ll1)' Having Lived at All?" His anS\\Cr includecl the mere listing: ·'the Declamtion of Independe nce" - justly, I think. C. I cannot pretend to have given suffic ien t evidence for the rightness o f the substance of the Decla ration-! am, in effect. assuming it. I am here rather intent on discovering whether it would be possible to point to a peculiar {annal cause for the salubriousness of this text. I think it would be. I .ct me first say wherein it seems to me to consist. A criterion o ught to be applied to foundi ng texts which I think of as the criterion of 15 �The College "least pe rvertibility." A text is benign if its pecul iar doctrines do not readily lend themselves to bad uses. The Dec laration displays this incorruptibility-always cond itioned, of course, on the text's being actually attended to. T he cause of this virtue seems to me to be the very circu mstance that its right-m inded substance is presen ted in an "unfounded" but p regnantly rational form . The classical ph ilosophe rs had a useful te rm for tl. is peculiar curta iled or sha llow mode of the Declaration. They called it opinion, the sum of propositions he ld as true but wi thou t a full accoun t o f their roots in the nat ure of things. And if they were in fact truths, they called it ·'right opinion," orthe doxa, orthodoxy. Right opinions are unthought-out thought. Clearly axio ms a re right opinion s of a pecu lia rl y pure, luc id, rationa l so rt. The Declaration is the ve ry exempl ifi cation of right and re-affirmed. O ur ratiocinations easi ly reac h the found ing axioms themselves. But, 1want to argue, this perma nent debate is securely held within a world shaped by the truths and modes of o ur text: we safely cons ider ou rselves equal participants in a ratio nal enterprise requiring true principles-even when we tell lies and ta lk jargon. In politics the Declaration sets out fairl>' definitely the public conditions of possibility of private comfort, wi tho ut delimiting its character or promising its achi evemen t. So in the realm of thought, the Dec laration focuses the reason withou t determ ining it. M uch in the ma nner of a work of poetry- wh ich indeed it literally is, s ince the gre:1t parag~aph of" abstract tru ths" can be read in near-perfect lines of iambic pen tameter- it offers the greatest defini tion of view wi th the least restriction of thought. T herein consists its depth. opinion. In our best tradition, things are thought of as havin[! a true nature, their being, which is reachable through a directed questir1g activity. The Declaration promotes the pre-figuring of that activity in ordinary life. T hrough the memorable reasona- No phi losophical issue seems to me of more politica l interest and yet more perplexing tha n o ur abi li ty use the inte ll ect in this localized way and yet to use it very so und!)' · lt is a kind of mystery: the mystery of the instrumental use of reason. But this much at least is eviden t: that for d ifferent peoples such " right opinion" is differently related to the depth of being as known to their own sages. In each the practical intelligence laboring wit hin the world is differen tly conn ected with the reflective intellect concerned about the world. Some peoples walk in d irect obedien ce to the law of their Cod; some exist in a st<Jte organized by the kind of radical theo ry called ideo logy; some live enmeshed in the tough but delicate web of tradition; this nation is what it is through bei ng conce ived in Jiber(\' a nd dedicated to a proposition. To give a n example: the way of tradition, the E nglish way whic h jeffe rson's friendly antagonist Adams thought next best to o ur own, is thus described by Ed mund Burke in his Reflections on the French Revolutior1: VIc know that we have made no discove ries; and we think that no discoveries a re to be made, in mora lity; nor many in the great p rinciples of govern men t, nor in the ideas ofl iberty, which we;;re understood long before we were born, as well as they will be after . . the silent tomb sha ll have imposed its law on our pert loquaci ty. And again, in praise of prejudices: . .. we cherish them because the;;y are prejud ices; a nd the longer they have lasted, and the more generally the)' have prevailed, t11e more we ch erish them. We are afra id to put men to live and trade each o n his own private stock of reason: because we suspect this stock in each man is sma ll .... It is clear that we are the opposite. V"'e publicly abhor prejud ices and declare ourselves dedicated to propositions . That is, we intend to hold our o pinio ns as if they we re not "opinion" but deep-founded truths wh ic h each has tho ught ou t as th ought can alone be though t, for h imself. Our public discourse and our pec uliarly American private talk, too, is irretrievably informed by an incessa nt, a ll-pervas ive rationality, in which propositions and their consequences are continually posited and q uestioned 16 bleness of its tone, from the clear immediacy of its pecul iar vis ion and by the many-rooted ness of its truth s, it establishes access from our realm of opinion , however corrupted, to the realm of being and its truth. T h is wordly text has a peculiarly fel ic itous rela tio n to the deptlts from which its opinions spring- therein lies the warra nt for its claim to universality. I have wished to argue that the Declaration, inte nded as an expressio n of the common opi nion, is truly a text of "right opi ni on" in the ancie nt sense, a ben ign practical teJo:twh ich also has a pec u liarly so und relation to the realm of thought. But now I m ust grasp at a metapho r: this "lucid communication' ' is rea l I)' translucent; it is en lightened and en lightening without pos itively revealing the sou rce of its ill umination. It is like a window of ala baster in the cave of our world, a window which does not frame the truth b ut which permits its pursuit. To draw the co nclusio n: In 1854, in a different context, Lin coln gave th is advice. He said: Let us re-adopt the Dec laration of Independence a nd with it, the practices and policy wh ich harmonize with it. It seems to me sound advice. lt may seem to you su pe rfluous advice, if my a rgument, that we already live in the world of the Dec laration, is right. Bllt it is o ne thing to live in a derivative world and another to possess its so urce. And it is th e reappropriation of that old source which .I am proposing. On heari ng such suggestions people observe sagely: " You cannot look to the past." To what the n are we to look? T he prese nt, that moving band of vanishing "nows," always produces the wisdom whic h fits it, evanescen t wisdom. The future, wh ic h we have yet to make and have so me reason to fear, is in its essence n on -be ing, and when appealed to for advice can onl y reflect our presen t ignorance. Bllt our past, which is rea lly our perpetual present, is what we have. So why not re-possess wha t is ours, the more so since it seems to be good? Many of the f~cts and some of the ideas in this lecture come from the following works: �July, 1976 Carl L. Becker, The Declaration of lt~defX'nde11t'f, A Study in the HistOI)' of Political Ideas. Vintage Boob (1 967, first publi>hcd in 1 922). Daniel). lloor;tin, The Lost World offhomas Jq{erS<m, lkat'<ln Press (1948). Adrienne Koch, 'fhe Philosophy of Thornat Jq{crson, Gloucester, ~\1ass. (1957, first published in 1943). A Casebook 0 11 1 he Declaration of lndepen«noo. Anal )'SIS of the structure, meanong and liter:J" worth of the text. cd. Robert Ginsberg. Thomas Y Crowell Company (1967). particularly the artidc& b' S. C . f'isher. W. S. IJ,.cJI and A . M. Schb-inger. Americau Chi/ Rl?ligiot~, ed. Russell E. Richey and Donald C . jones, Harper and Row (1974), particubrl} the article b) 0 . Lillie. George Anastaplo, 'The Declaration of lndepeudence," Saint Louis Universit y Low Journal. IX (1965), 390-41 5. Martin l)huuoud , "'T11e Revolution of Sober l~<pectalion•," Distinguished l .cct nrc Series on tl1e Bicentennial. Americ~n Enterprise Institute for Public Pohcy Re>earch (1974). Harry V Jaffa. "How to T hink About the American Revolution-A Bicentennial Cerebration," prepared for delrvery at the 1975 annual meeting of the 1 mcrican Political Science Association, San Francis<:o (Cop>~ight 197S). \ Elhott Zucl.rman pointed out to me the pentamtt~r p<osody of the whole great JXlragraph ofthc Decbration, and that the rest ofthe-tc•t is.lrot through with "fossil$" or iambic pentameter, like: the l.aws of Nature and or '\ahrrc's Cod, and· our Livel>, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor. The Founders and Slavery by Herbert J . Storing " It is refrt:shing," said one o f the dissentt:rs in the case o[ Dred Scott v Sandford ''to turn to the ea rly incidents o f our history and lea rn wisdom from the acts of the great men who have gone to their account." ' Tt is a common o pinion today, however, that, admirable as th e A111e riea n Founders may be in othe r respects, in their response to the insti tution o( 1 egro slavery the ir example is one to be lived down rather th an lived up to. A good t:xprc:ss ion of th is o pinion has recently come from the d istingu ish ed Ame rican historia n, John Hope F'ra nklin. 2 We n~:ed to face the fact, Franklin con tend s, that the Fo unders "betrayred] the idea ls to which they gave lip service." l11ey fai led to take;: an unequivocal stand against slavery. T hey regarded "h uman bondage and human dignity" as less important than "th eir own political and economic independence." l11cy "spok(t:] eloquently at one momen t for the brotherhood of man and in the next moment den[iedj it to thei r black brolhers." They "degrad[ed] the h u man spirit by equating five black men with three white me n." The moral legacy of the Founders is shameful and ham1ful. '' Having c rea ted a tragically Oawcd revolutionary doctrine and a Constitution that did not bestow the blessings of liberty on its poste rity, th e Pound ing fo'alhcrs set lhe stage for every succeeding ge neratio n of Ame rica ns to a pologize, comprom ise, and tem porize on those T his is the text of a lecture given at St. John's College, Annapolis. on March 5, 1976. Herbert Storing is Professor of Political Science at the Univei'Sity of Chicago. principles of liberty that were supposed to be the very foundati ion of our system of government and way of life." TI1is view of the American Founding- that the Founders exc luded the 1 egrocs from the ·'rights of man'' cxpresst:d in the Declaration oflndcpcndence and sauctioncd ~lavery and 'egro infcriorily in thc: Constitution-is a view that the rad ical abolitionists, from wh otn Joh n Hope Frdnklin cbce nds, share with !heir pro-slavt:ry antagonists. In deed, o ne ofth c best, and su re ly most auth oritative, express ions o f th is view came in the o pin ion of C hicJ justice T aney in the famo us Supre me Co urt case of Dred Scott v Sa ndf ord in 1857, in whi ch the Supre me Co urt, for the second ti me in its history, he ld an act of Congress u nconstit utional, and in wh ic h Taney tried to secure once and for a ll the place;: of slavery under the Conslitution. I want to examine T ant:y's carefully worked-out reasoning, fo r the re one ca n confront most clearl y what is today the dominant opinion about the Founders and slavery. Ored Scott was a sla,·e owned by a Doctor E merson , a surgeon in the United States Army. In 1834 Scott was ta ken by h is master from Missou ri to Rock Island. Illino is, where they lived for about two years, an d from tltcrc to Fo rt Snellin g in the federa l "Lou is iana territo ry," where tltcy li ved fo r another co uple of years befo re retu rni ng to Missouri. O n Emerson's death , Scott tried to purchase his freedom from Mrs. E mer~on . Failing in that, he sued in the Missouri courts for his freedom, o n th e ground th at he h ad become free by virt ue o f h is residen ce in a free state and a free territory. He won in the lower court, but 17 �The College the dec ision was reversed on apt>Cal. The Supreme Court of Missouri , abandoning eight Missouri precedents and departing frorn the then alm ost universal adherence of Southern courts to the principle ''once free, always free," held that, whatever his condition in Illinois and in federal te rritory, ScoH was a slave upon h is return to Missouri. On \1rs. Emerson's remarriage, ScoH became the property of her brother, John Sandford , a citizen of 'ew Yo rk; and this ena bled Scott to sue for his freedom in federal court under the provision of the Constitution tl1at gives federal courts jurisdiction in ca~es between citizens of differe nt states. He lost in the lower co urt a nd appealed to the Supreme Co urt, whi ch in 1857 finally handed down its op inion-or rather its opinions, for all niuc justices expressed their opin ions. most ;Jt cous idera hle length. I will be concerned here only with the opinion "of the court" given b}' Chief Justice Taney. Taney held, in the first place, that because he was a 'egro, Scali was not and could not be a c ili7cn of th e U.S. (regardless of whether he was free or not) and could therefore not sue in the federal courts o n the grounds he had c hosen. (I pass over Taney's dubious assumption th at for a citi.tcu of a state to be entitled to sue under the diversity clause he must establish cit ize nship of the United States. ) l'ancy l1e ld, in the second place, thnt the fede ral act under which Scott c laim ed freedom, the Misso uri Compromise Act of 1820 on tl~1wing sin very in the northc.:rn part of the Loui siana Purc hn~e . wa~ lll ltunstitu tional: for Congress to proh ibit slave ry in fede ral te rri tory was to deprive slave-own ing c itizens who m ight move into that terri tory of thei r property witho ut due process of law. T hese two holdings are the conclusions of two lines of argument, one concerning the status of 'egroes and the other com:cming the statliS of slavery, that provide my two themes. Taney cmphasi..:ed throughout his opinion that he was merel y giving effect to the Constitution. II was not his business to read into the Constitu tion the more fa1orable views toward the cgro that had e merged since the time o f the Founding. Aett1n ll y, as Li ncoln correctl y argued, opi ni on about , egroes had harde ned rather than softened in the seven ty years since the adopliun of th e Co nstitution. 3 But more iu1porta nt is the fact that Tan ey's read ing of the Consl ilnli on a nd the views of the Fou nders was wrong, except perhaps in one very importa nt respect. T aucy take~ up first the quc~li un of Negro citizenshi p. then the qucstiou of ·egroslavery; but it" ill be clearer if I reverse the order and look first at sla1 cl). According to Taney. the Founders assumed the legitimacy of sla1 ery; and b. ck of that , 11·as a uni1 ·ersal opinion of the infcrionty of the Nq;ro race. 4 'cgroc~ "had for more than a ccnhl r) l>eforc been regarded as beings of an iuferior o rder; aud altogether unfit to associate with the white race, e ithe r in socia l or po li tical re h1ti ou~; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to res t>ecl; and that the negro m ight justly and lawfully be reduced to slave ry for his benefit.'' " No one th ought," Taney said, "of disputing" suc h opinions. Ncgrocs " we re never thought of or spoken of except as prope rt y." Only on such a basis, it see1ncd to Tancv, cou ld the fra mers of the Declara tion of Independence I>C absolved from utter 18 h ypocrisy. They said that "all men arc c reated equal and arc endowed by their Creator with certain u nali enable rights." Yet they we re, many of them, slaveholders; and they certainly did not destroy sla1·ery. But there was no hypocrisy, because the writer.. of the Declaration "perfectly understood the meaning of the lan~uage they used , and h ow it would be understood by oth ers: and they knew it wouJd not, in any part of the c ivilized world. be su pposed to e mbrace the negro race, which , br common e<H•sent. had been excluded from c ivilized governments and the family of nations, and doomed to slave ry... TI1e me n of that age (that is, the white men) sin1ply did not regard Negroes as included among the "all me n" who are, according to the Declaration of Independence , "c rcal <·d equal' ': and, Ta ney concluded. '' no on e misun derstood them." This whole argumen t- and 1 repea l, it is ide nti ca l to the conn non view today-is a gross calumuy on the Fou nders. The truth is almost the exact opposite of Taney's ae,·ount. T he Founders understood quite clearly that egroes, li ke men everywhere. were c reated equal and were endowed ~~it~ una lienable rights. They did not~)' that a limen were actually sec ured in the exercise of their rights, o r that they had the power to provide such security; but there was no doubt about the rights . Far from it bemg true that "negroes were never thought of except as property,'' not only cgrocs but ~laves were very frequently spoken of and treated as pcrsous. All of the Co nstitutional provision s relating to slaves, for ex~ 1 nplc, refer to them as pc rsous. And while slaves were typicall y deprived of civil rights, they were regarded as pe rsons unde r criminal law. As rationa l and. to some degree, morally rcspousiblc l1uman beings. they were held ca pable of commi tting crimes a11d they were protected by the law-in principle and \urprisingly often in practice-again~! crimes com mitted a~aimtt hcm . In the first three or four decades of our histol). the •nJ ustice of sla,·ery was very generally acknowledged, not merel y in the North b ut in the South and partieularlv in Southern courts. Since J thin k this is likely to be unfamiliar territory to 1nost of you, let me give a cou ple of examples. In 1820 tile Superior Court iu Mississ ippi wa~ confronted with the question , there being no positive legislation covering the matter, whet her the ki lling of a slave was n1urckr under th e con1111011 law. s T he Court held that it was: a nd this was the usua l view of So uthern courts that conside red this question. The Miss issippi judge began by cmphasiting that "beca use individuals may have been deprived of many of their rights by 'ocicly, it docs not follow that they ha1c been deprived of all their rights ." T he sla1e "is still a human being, and possesses all those rights, of which he is not dcpri1cd by the positive pro1·isions oftl1e law .. _ . "Since the common la1\ definition of murder IS the taking away the life of a resonablc creature with malice aforetho ught and since a ~lave i~ n reaso nable being. ' uc h a killing o f a ,lal'c is murder. Slave ry is the creature, So uthern as well a~ 'orthe rn judges sa id agai n ~mel agai n, of posi tive law on ly; it ha, no support in natural law o r in transcendent princ iples of ju ~ticc . Yet slavery ex isted; it was lawful in the Sou the rn 'ialcs. Eveu when the judges were giving effect to th e posi tive law of slavery (which they had a clea r duty to do) they typica lly ack nowledged the injustice of the institution. �July, 1976 In a Su preme Court case fifteen years before Dred Scott , Prigg v Penna (1842), the Supreme Court upheld the constituti onality of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, wh ich implemented the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution; the Court held that this federal power was exclusive, thereby invalidating state ''personal liberty laws," which had been pass<.'<! in a number of northern states to try to give greater protection to ·egroes claimed as fugitive slaves than the federal law provided. 6 The opinion was written by a strong anti-slavery man, Joseph Story, and man} of Story's friends wondered how he could make such a decision. Story replied that his first obliga tion was to the law but th at, in any case, he thought his opinion a grcat''triumph of frccdo m." 7 It was a triumph of freedom 111ainly beca use while upholdi ng th e Fugitive Slave L1w, Story took the opportunity to stress that slavery is a mere creature of positive law and has no support in natural law. "The state of ~lavery is deemed to be,'' in Story's words, "a mere municipal regulation, founded upon and li mi ted to the range of the territorial h111 ~." That means that the presumption is always against slavery, even while provisions of the positive law protecting sla1·ery arc being enforced. 111c same view was common in the South. Indeed, contrary to Taney'~ claim that no one questioned the legitimacy of slavery, nothi ng was more common than Southern judges givi ng public utterance to the excruei;1ting ago ny of trying to reco ncile the law that protected slavery with the princ iple of justice tl1al condcn1ns it. O ne of the most interesting of these cases is an 1820 North Carolina case, Stare v Mann , where the Court held tl1at a master eannotcommit a legal battery upon his slave. k'J'hc Court had held earlier, that a whi te person could be punished for assault and battery against ~o mcone else's slave. 9 But the Ia\\' cannot protect the slal'e, judge Ruffi n held, against his master, even in case of a wanton, cruel, senseless bcati11g. Ruffin 11as offered by counsel the analogy of parent and child or master and apprentice, where the authority of the superior is limited and supervised bv the law. lie reluctantly, but surely correctly, rcjcctccl the ana logy on the ground that the end of these relations is the good and happiness of the chi ld or the apprentice, whereas in slavery the end is nothing but the profit of the m;~ster. It is the wrongness of slavery that makes it im possible to limit it. "We cannot allow the right of the master to be brought in to disc ussion in th<.: courts of ju~tice." To qucsti011 that right is to deny it, and that cannot be the business of a judge iu a slave stal e. "The slave, to remain a slave, must be made sensible that there is no appeal from his master ... . " ''I most freely confe~s sense of the harshness of this proposition; I feel it as deeply a~ anr man can; and as a principle of moral right every person in his retirement must repudiate it. But in the actual condition of things it must he so. There is no remedy .... It constitutes the curse of slavery to both the bond and free portion of our population. But it is inherent in the relation of master and slave." I should add tha t 20 yea rs later, nevertheless, Ruffin upheld a co nviction of murde r in the case of an especially bru tal, but probably not premeditated, killing by a master of his own slave. 10 Another kind of case that was common in the Southem courts was like Dred Scott; it arose whcr<' a person who had been a slave but who had been taken to reside in a free ~tate and then ·"' ,.,.. ~ .\ 1111 c () ~ (J?1~ ~ S, I I .. ' ( DEC LARA T l 0 ~ :"\I I F [) 'l r \ n:~ 01• .\\II-RI C.\. n l J1 thti.;.J!: .. l-SJ \.11\1~ C .l'\l ;( \1 Lt>="Lif'J 'tS returned to a slave state sued in the courts of the latter for his freedom. As I ha,·e ~id, in such a case the Southern courts held (at least until the 1840's or IS;O's) that such a person was free. Once the chains of slavery enforced by positive law an: broken, they can never be restored. A slave, Lydia, was taken in 1807 by her master from Missouri to free Indiana where he registered her as his servant under Indiana's gradual emancipation law. He sold his right to her bu t when her new master brought her back to Missouri, the court there upheld her claim to freedom. 11 The rights of her master had been destroyed in Indiana, ·•and we arc not awa re of any law of this state which can or docs bring into operation the right of sla\ery when once dcstroy<'d." Can it be thought, the judge asked, that "the noxious atmosphere of this state, without any CX'J>ress law for the purpose, clamped upon her newl)' forged chains of sJa,·ery. after the old ones were destroyed? For the honor of ou r country, we can not for a moment admit. th;~t the bare treading of its soil, is thus dangerous, even to lhc degraded Africa n." The t\mcricnn Founders and their immed iate descenda nts, North and South, not only believed in but emphasized the wrongness of ~lavery, at the sa me time thot they wrestl ed with the fnct of slavery and the enormous difficu lty of g<.:tting rid of it. It was a fact; it seemed for the time heing a necessity: but it was a curse-the curse of an unavoidable in justice. It is true. as Taney said, that cgroes were th ough t to be inferior to whites; but it is not true that this wa~ thought to justify slavery. lu a famous section of his oles on Virginia, published in 1784, TI10mas Jefferson reflected on cgroes and cgro slavery in terms that are today generally found offensive and that arc in consequence usuall y distorted and minmdcrstood. 12 Proceeding in the spirit of the 18th Century stude ut of natural history, and emphasizing the sha mefu l lack of sysll:malie study of th is subject, jefferso n exa mined the cliffcrc nccs between the races. He thought that the blacks "participate more of sensation than refl ection." He judged them inferior to whites in physical beauty, in rc:a~o n , and in imagi nation, though in many physical attributes and in what I.e called "endowments of the heart," or the "moral sense," they arc equal. jefferson did conclude that 19 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollegemagazine Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 19 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of College Relations Title A name given to the resource The College, July 1976 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1976-07 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource von Oppen, Beate Ruhm Parran, Jr., Thomas Dunham, William B. Oosterhout, Barbara Brunner Wyatt, E. Malcolm Zuckerman, Elliott Description An account of the resource Volume XXVIII, Number 2 of The College. Published in July 1976. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Vol_28_No_2_1976 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a305bf94a594734b5ccb3e5845546362.pdf cb575e46aa85d59072c67e7eaef57ea3 PDF Text Text THE COLLEGE St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland Santa Fe, New Mexico October, 1976 �THE COLLEGE Vol. XXVIII October, 1976 Number 3 ON THE COVER: Eden Day ceremonies under the Liberty Tree in Annapolis featured an address by Sir Peter Ramsbotham, British Ambassador to the United States. Others on the platform include Governor of Maryland and Mrs. Mandel, Senator and Mrs. Charles Mathias, President Weigle, former U.S. ambassador to Great Britain Averell Harriman. Not visible are Mrs. Weigle, Mrs. Harriman, and Sir John Eden. Editor: Beate Ruhm von Oppen Managing Editor: Thomas Farran, Jr. Editorial Advisory Board: William B. Dunham, Barbara Brunner Oosterhout '55, E. Malcolm Wyatt, Elliott Zuckerman. THE COLLEGE is published by the Office of College Relations, St. john' s College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404, Richard D. Weigle, President, William B. Dunham, Vice President. Published four times a year, in january, April, july, and October. Second class postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland, and IN THE OCTOBER ISSUE at other mailing places. The Report of the President .............................. . Alumni Class Notes ...................................... 13 Picture credits: Cover, Washington Star; page 3, Lufkin; page6, 8, Tom Parran; page 7, Betty Lilienthal. �Report of the President 1975-1976 This fall St. John's College begins the fortieth year of its distinctive program of liberal education. It is a far cry back to the summer of 1937, when a small Maryland college was turned upside down by the introduction of what was then called. the New Program. From an educational point of view, the new St. Johi1's was controversial. It had its ardent partisans and its caustic critics. From a financial point of view, its continued existence was doubtful. Given its debts, the problems created by World War II, and the acquisitive instincts of the United States Naval Academy, the wonder is that the College survived at all. Nearly four decades later St. John's College is no longer an experiment but rather a paradigm. Its record of solid academic achievement by tutors, students, and alumni has earned the respect and admiration of educators and the general public. The creation of a second campus in Santa Fe has greatly broadened the College's constituency and has made it a truly national institution. Funding has, of course, been a perennial problem, but the remarkable fact is that neither campus is burdened with a cumulative deficit. This in itself represents something of an achievement, when many colleges and universities have been forced to draw down their permanent funds for current operations. From this position of educational and financial strength, the College moves this fall into the most ambitious search for funds that it has ever attempted. The Fund for the 1980's has as its objective the raising of $25 million over a four-year period for the two campuses. The first priority is to raise $10 million in endowment for the Santa Fe campus and an additional $4 million in permanent funds for the Annapolis campus. Of almost equal importance will be the monies needed for student financial aid and for general budgetary purposes on both campuses over the next four years. Finally, though of tertiary importance, the College hopes to raise $3 million to renovate and add to Randall and Iglehart Halls and to PacaCarroll House in Annapolis and $4.25 million to complete the western campus through construction of a physical education building, an auditorium, and a library. The success of the Fund for the 1980's is essential to the stability and vigor of the College in the next decade. Only through the creation of a fully adequate permanent endowment on each campus can the future of the College be assured. Each member of the Board of Visitors and Governors, each alumnus, each parent, and each friend of the College is strongly urged to translate interest and loyalty into a substantial commitment, whether in cash or securities, or in a trust or bequest. St. John's College must have the resources adequate to its mission of providing the highest quality of liberal education to young men and women. Instruction The normal class load for students consists of the seminar, the language tutorial, the mathematics tutorial, and the laboratory. In the sophomore year there is also a music tutorial, which has seemed to produce too much diversity, with the result that class preparation has often been slighted. Curtis Wilson, Dean at Annapolis and current Chairman of the Instruction Committee, addressed this problem and that of the laboratory in the Annual Statement of Educational Policy and Program, submitted to both Faculties in April. He outlined several conceivable schemes for the reduction of sophomore classes from five to four. Meanwhile, agreement was reached by the Instruction Committee to condense the freshman laboratory sequence into 24 weeks, starting this fall; this will make possible the inclusion of subject matter from �The College the sophomore year in the final eight weeks thus freed. The immediate task confronting the Instruction Committee is to work out an acceptable proposal for handling both the music apd the laboratory to submit to the Faculty during the autumn semester. The Dean's remarks about the aims of the Laboratory at St. John's College are illuminating. He writes: "Surely one aim, and surely a primary aim, is to learn something about Nature and Nature's laws. Another aim, also an important one, is to learn something about our knowing of Nature's ways. If we are to speak of a 'liberal dimension' of the Laboratory, then I think it must mean some cognizance of, some reflection on, the processes-conceptual, observational, logical, experimental-whereby we come to know about Nature. Artistry, whether liberal or useful or fine, presupposes a thoughtful and critical awareness of what one is doing. . . . Mere asserted truths, facts to be assimilated, though ever so necessary for knowing other things, are not enough .... Yet, there is a dreadful danger in the focus on instruments and methods. . . . We cannot stop with methods; the thrust of scientific inquiry should be continued on through, towards the object which is Nature. We can discover the appropriate methods only as we learn about Nature in some_ detaiL A certain balance has to be found and actively maintained." In answer to tbe question what a liberally educated person should have some knowledge about in natural science, Mr. Wilson proposes what he terms "general scientific culture," fundamental science, "so as to prepare one to understand more science." Whatever the list of topics, they would have to do with fundamental laws and theories, with fundamental things that modern natural science has managed to say about Nature. "In such a curriculum the emphasis_ must be upon arts of understanding, and not simply upon the end-results of the practice of such arts, asserted information or knowledge," he writes. "The main results of modern science need to be explored, with the closest attention to the thought and luck and guesswork and artistry whereby they were arrived at." Apropos of the Dean's remarks, a successful faculty study group investigated neurophysiology and perception. Thanks to a generous grant from the Surdna Foundation, five ttltors had released time to participate, Harry Golding, Barbara Leonard, Nicholas Maistrellis, John White, and Robert Spaeth, chairman. A comprehensive report was prepared and referred to the Instruction Committee, making specific recommendations of materials and readings to be incorporated into the laboratory program. At Santa Fe, two structural changes in academic procedure were effected during the year. First, requirements as to senior essays were liberalized, following the Annapolis practice. A student whose initial submission is rejected may now present another essay some three weeks later, instead of having to wait until after commencement. Dean Robert Neidorf reports a noticeable improvement in the morale of seniors at essay time, an improvement in the number of essays submitted by the due date without apparent strain, and no increase in rejections of essays. The other change affected the formal enabling procedure, 2 whereby each student's work is reviewed toward the end of the sophomore year to determine which students should be invited to become juniors. Previously, the Instruction Committee weighed all cases in a marathon meeting attended by all tutors of sophomores. Under the new procedure, don rag committees are empowered to enable a student whose record seems to present no question. If the committee is not unanimous, students are referred to the Instruction ComiTtittee for consideration in the usual way. During the year just ended, three-quarters of all sophomores were enabled by don rag committees and thereby relieved of needless anxiety. Others were fully informed of the reasons for referral to the Instruction Co~nmittee. Tutors reported an improved feeling of confidence in the openness and equitability of the procedure. The Student Committee on Instruction continues to function helpfully at Annapolis. It met with the Instruction Committee three times and hopes for monthly joint meetings in the coming year. One subject addressed was dissection in the biology laboratory. The Committee recommended preparation of a statement explaining the purpose of the dissections. A study of the junior year concluded that the work required of students was excessively hard, that seminar readings were often too long, and that some students became lost in the mathematics tutorial and the laboratory. Finally, the Committee evaluated the new Greek text and questioned its pedagogical effectiveness, as being too theoretical for beginning students. The Musicians-in-Residence program was continued at Santa Fe for its second year, with three musicians constituting the "Yale/St. John's Consort." Fr. Manuel Maramba, keyboard, was in charge of the group; he alone was also a member of the College during the previous year in the same capacity. The other two members were Frank Lynch, oboe, and Scott Hankins, violin. The group gave several school concerts throughout Santa Fe and northern New Mexico, provided lessons and coaching for St. John's students, taught freshman muSic, participated regularly in seminars, and gave several concerts on campus. Unfortunately, the program has now been discontinued for lack of adequate funding. Richard Stark, of the St. John's Faculty, will be Musician-inResidence in 1976-77, with responsibility for encouraging and supervising student musical performance. Committee on the Liberal Arts Five tutors at Santa Fe, William A. Darkey, Dean R. Haggard, David C. Jones, Thomas K. Simpson, and John S. Steadman, were on reduced teaching load to continue the work of the Committee on the Liberal Arts under Mr. Darkey's direction. In addition to its internal study and writing projects, the Committee conducted two discussion sessions with the Santa Fe Faculty, one with the Annapolis Faculty as part of a visit that also included several informal conversations, and two simultaneous sessions with the Santa Fe student body on a Friday evening. Three members of the Committee also visited the General Program in Liberal Studies Department-at the University of Notre Dame. There �October, 1976 were two Friday evening lectures deriving from the work of the Committee: by Mr. Simpson on "Newton and the Liberal Arts" and by Mr. Darkey on "Translation." For the coming year, the Committee on the Liberal Arts is planning to complete several writing projects and to sponsor one or two conferences involving faculty from other integrated undergraduate programs in the United States. Mr. Darkey, as Director ofthe Committee, will be the only tutor with reduced teaching assignment. dents moved east, while twenty transferred west. For the fall semester of this year, 21 are moving to Annapolis and 26 to Santa Fe. It seems highly desirable that as many students as can should have experience on both campuses. At Santa Fe 44 seniors received the degree of Bachelor of Arts on May !6, 1976, two of them magna cum laude and seven of them cum laude. Matthew Gale Krane, of Los Angeles, received both the Board's silver medal for highest standing and a Thomas J. Watson Foundation Fellowship. The Duane L. Peterson Scholarship for academic achievement, constructive membership in the college community, and commitment to post-graduate study was awarded to Michael R. Jones, a junior from Marshall, Minnesota. At Annapolis one week later, a master's degree and 64 baccalaureate degrees were awarded, six of them magna cum laude and ten of them cum laude. Marian L. Wolfe, of Stevensville, Maryland, earned the Board's silver medal, while the Duane L. Peterson Scholarship went to Carla Sue Schick, a junior from Maspetti, New York. High scholarship awards in memory of C. Markland Kelly, Jr., were made to Miss Schick, to Terry C. Schuld, '78, of Glen Head, New York, and to Kimberly Ann Schraf, '79, of Latrobe, Pennsylvania. The Joan Yvonne Ronay Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Cherie Lynne Harpell, '77, of Cumberland, Rhode Island. Admissions 1976 Commencement Exercises, Annapolis. The Students At Annapolis the Dean reported a student body of 400, about as large as it could comfortably be, while at Santa Fe the total enrollment passed the 300-mark for the first time. Although there is still difficulty in the recruitment of new students, the rate of attrition among continuing students seems to be declining slowly. Dean Neidorf speculates that, since St. John's offers no vocational preparation, no intercollegiate athletics, and no structured social life, students must choose to remain because of the College's curriculum and its pedagogy. Whatever the explanation, the trend is most welcome. Comparative enrollment figures for the various classes follow: Santa Fe Annapolis 1974-75 107 29 103 83 106 34 107 81 1974-75 1975-76 77 72 339 400 Freshmen January Class Sophomores Juniors Seniors 1975-76 97 20 89 63 26 295 85 16 86 69 46 302 Student exchanges between campuses seem to be settling into a predictable pattern. In the summer of !975 nine stu- Even though the September !975 and January 1976 classes in Annapolis were more than filled, Joanne Aitken, Director of Admissions, states that the College is adversely affected by the shrinking national applicant pool, by increasing need for financial aid to meet high fees, and by the ubiquitous emphasis upon career training. The greatest problem arises with a large group of prospective students who are strongly attracted to St. John's but find the act of enrolling too great an adventure for them. They therefore tend to elect well-known and highly acclaimed conventional colleges and universities where they can obtain a measure of specialization. They like the idea of reading original sources, but they also want a professor, an expert, to give them the answers. The task of the Admissions Office is to define the College better and to help the prospective student to recognize the differences. The characteristics which are essential to St. John's-the books, the questioning attitude, the tutors teaching all subjects, the common program-must not be confused with important but lesser characteristics which may indeed be found elsewhere-discussion, the absence of written final examinations, no lecture classes, and no teacherimposed answers. Faced with this problem, Miss Aitken has revised the small reply booklet first sent to inquiring students. Her aim has been to answer in advance pertinent questions on the distinctiveness of St. John's and to capture and hold the interest of the prospective student. To overcome doubts about what a St. Johnnie might be able to do after graduation, the section of the reply booklet dealing with alumni has been made much stronger. A new 3 �The College publication is contemplated which would detail education and career accomplishments of alumni. Given the vast range of professions and vocations, the remarkable fact is that all alumni received the same undergraduate education in the liberal arts. Alumni themselves have been increasingly involved in recruitment work, in visiting guidance counsellors and in interviewing prospective students. The urgency of augmenting the number of applications and of converting prospective students into enrolled freshmen is clearly demonstrated by the following figures for the fall classes: Santa Fe Annapolis 1974 1975 1976 207 Applications 196 207 178 190 Approved 175 16 Rejected 13 10 71 Withdrawn 74 66 107 Enrolled 107 106 3, 731 4,659 5,963 Catalogues Sent 604 1,006 Portfolios Sent 245 288 318 Campus Visitors 1974 1975 - - - - 1976 169 156 140 145 130 145 17 6 7 55 62 38 97 85 83 4,904 3,195 4,630 149 143 142 The fact that applications and enrolled freshmen neither increased nor remained steady at Santa Fe made necessary a change in the directorship. Gerald Zollars, '65, who had served conscientiously and loyally in this position for six years, left the College at the end of the academic year. Appointed in his stead was Richard D. Stephenson, who had previously served as Director of Admissions at Case Western Reserve University, Vassar College, and Simon's Rock-The Early College. Mr. Stephenson and Miss Aitken plan a carefully coordinated program of recruitment for the two campuses, developing a common set of publications, traveling and visiting schools from coast to coast, and making optimum usc of alumni. I have every confidence that the recent downward trend in admissions will now be halted and that increasing numbers of young people will discover at St. John's what they have looked for in a college education. Counseling and Placement Brenda Robertson, Student Counselor and Director of Placement at Annapolis, reports 40 counseling cases during the year, 28 of them women and twelve of them men. The principal problem for most was a feeling of depression which interfered with their ability to function adequately. The second most frequent reason for seeking counseling was difficulties in interpersonal relationships. At Santa Fe, psychological counseling for students was at a reduced level because of the absence, on sabbatical leave, of Stuart Boyd, the College Psychologist. Dr. Robert Hellman assisted on occasion with advice and referrals. Dean Neidorf believes that the College has long been deficient in providing placement counseling. Properly to help students find their way smoothly and realistically into graduate schools, professional schools, and rewarding jobs requires not only informed advice but also systematic collection 4 and organization of data, development of contacts by mail or in person, and construction of centralized procedures for assembling and transmitting recommendations and other supporting documents. In Santa Fe Sally Dunn, S'71, served as the first Director of Placement during the past year, and laid the groundwork for the development of this service. It will be continued and expanded this year by Mrs. Beverly Smith. I would add that, being a college which makes no curriculum decisions whatever with an eye to vocational or professional preparation, St. John's has a strong moral obligation to its students to provide this service. At Annapolis, Ms. Robertson reports that she discussed career planning with 126 students during the course of the year. The reading room was improved through additional graduate school catalogues, professional study guides, career information, and brochures on job opportunities. A file of information was assembled on over 700 ·alumni who indicated a willingness to advise students on careers. It is instructive to note the 43 occupational areas included and the number of representative alumni in each category: Accounting Advertising Agriculture Armed Forces Arts Banking Business Executives Management Communications Computers Conservation Editors Educators Administration College & Graduate Elementary & Secondary Engineering Finance Foreign Service Forestry Government Historian 3 5 3 22 3 8 18 32 10 25 5 10 28 63 69 12 10 5 1 33 2 Housewife Insurance Law 8 23 53 16 12 Library Science Marketing Medical Administration 7 Medicine 32 Music 6 ]] Nursing ]] Psychology Publishing 10 Real Estate 10 Research 20 Sales 15 Secretarial Work 3 Social Work 23 51 . Students Technical Services 13 Trades 16 Urban & Regional Planning 7 Writers 17 Miscellaneous 7 The Tutors I am happy to record four tenure appointments made by the Board during the course of the year. That of Glenn A. Freitas to the Santa Fe Faculty was effective at the start of the past year. The three appointments on the Annapolis campus begin this july lst: Wye jamison Allanbrook, William W. O'Grady, Jr., and Thomas). Slakey. Mr. Slakey previously held a tenure appointment at Santa Fe but resigned it in 1971 �October, 1976 to accept the deanship at St. Mary's College in California. His return to the Faculty in Annapolis this fall is welcome. Two other appointments have been made for 1976-77: Chaninah Maschler, who holds the M.A. degree in philosophy from Yale and has taught at Yale, Barnard, the City College of New York, and Queens College, as well as in the Graduate Institute at Santa Fe; and Joan E. Silver, who received the degree of Master of Arts from St. John's in June. Returning from sabbatical leave arc Thomas A. McDonald and Edward Sparrow. During the year ahead, Douglas Allanbrook, Harry Golding, Barbara Leonard, Nicholas Maistrellis, and Malcolm Wyatt will be on sabbatical leave and Eva Brann, Amy and Leon Kass, and C. Reed Woodhouse on other leave. Wye Allanbrook will be on leave during the first semester and Brother Robert Smith during the second. Miss Leonard returns to the campus in January, and Mr. Wyatt will teach one class during the spring semester. At Santa Fe there were 40 tutors in residence throughout the year; three on sabbatical leave, Stuart Boyd, Don B. Cook, and E. Ray Davis, Jr.; and two on leave of absence, Charles A. Bell and Toni K. Drew. Five tutors left the College at the end of the academic year: Galen N. Breningstall, after completion of a temporary appointment, to enroll in medical school; William H. Donahue, after completion of appointment; Lorna Green, by resignation; Marc Haynes, after completion of a temporary appointment, to return to graduate school; and Ralph J. Quintana, by resignation. For the coming academic year Philip P. Chandler II, S'68, has received a regular appointment and Mrs. Vida Clift will be a special pm;t-time appointee. Mr. Chandler received the Ph.D. degree in the History of Science at the University of California, San Diego, and then was appointed an assistant professor at the University of Notre Dame. Mrs. Clift was a tutor at Santa Fe from I97I to I974, when she resigned for family reasons. The first exchange of tutors between the two campuses under the development grant of the National Endowment for the Humanities proved eminently successful. Robert S. Bart, of the Annapolis Faculty, spent a most helpful year in Santa Fe, while Lynne M. Hamilton taught on the eastern campus. A second exchange will occur this fall when Thomas A. McDonald travels west, and his place at Annapolis will be filled by Howard Zeiderman from the Santa Fe Faculty. Three Santa Fe tutors will be on sabbatical leave: David C. Jones, Timothy P. Miller, and Thomas K. Simpson. Charles Bell and Toni K. Drew continue on leave of absence. Elliott T. Skinner will be on leave during the first semester and David L. Townsend for the entire year. Happily, the Dean reports a developing stability and fund of experience on the Santa Fe Faculty, thanks in large measure to the development grant from the National Endowment. This made possible reduced assignments for new tutors, who could thereby audit other classes. Senior tutors were also afforded released time to work with younger tutors. It is interesting to note that ten new appointments were made in I973-74, five in I974-75, two in I975-76, and just one for I976-77. Only one-tenth of the teaching stations will now be filled by tutors with only a single year of teaching experience at St. John's. Present indications are that no new appointments will be needed for I977-78. Several tutors will be returning in 1977 from leaves of absence. Moreover, the contemplated reduction of the sophomore year curriculum from five to four classes will reduce the annual need for teaching stations by the equivalent of two full-time tutors. Finally, a petition was submitted to the Faculty from several Santa Fe tutors proposing a change in the structure of non-tenure appointments stipulated by the Polity. Currently, a tutor who stays with the College normally receives three one-year appointments and one or two two-year appointments, necessitating formal reappointment review and decision in each of the tutor's first four years and perhaps in his sixth year as well. Arguing that this placed an inappropriate burden on the candidate and on the College, the petitioners suggested a schema of single one-, two-, and three-year appointments in that order, generating reappointment reviews in the candidate's first, third and fifth years. The proposal was defeated by the combined vote of the Faculties on both campuses, the principal criticism being that frequent review in the early years of appointment is necessary to safeguard the quality of instruction. The Associates Charles Finch, Director of Financial Aid and Tutor at Annapolis, completed his appointment at the end of the academic year. He had served the College well for the past eleven years in several administrative and teaching capacities. Miss Judith Munaker was appointed as his successor on May I, I976, but resigned in mid-July to accept appointment elsewhere. "n1e position was then filled by Gary Spoales, who had been in charge of student aid at Bay College in Baltimore. In addition to the change in the admissions directorship at Santa Fe, I should like to report two other appointments. Mrs. Beverly Ross Smith became Director of Placement and Head Resident, succeeding Sally Dunn. Mrs. Smith had been serving as Registrar of the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education. Her former position was filled this August by Barbara Skaug, S'76. The Staff At Annapolis, the Staff Council continues to function helpfully in speaking for the various members of the staff. To establish a greater sense of involvement in the College's affairs, I invited the chairperson of the Council to attend meetings of the Board at Annapolis. This seems to have been appreciated. Upon the Council's and my recommendation, the Board adopted a staff service recognition plan in April. The plan calls for a bonus of $300 in the month marking the completion of seven years of service by the employee, of$500 after fifteen years of service, and $600 at the end of twenty years of service. Subsequent annual salaries are then correspondingly higher, thus affording monetary recognition of staff 5 �The College members for long and loyal service to the College. I hope that this plan can be put into effect at Santa Fe as well. There were several staff changes at Annapolis during the year. Mrs. Mary Anne DeCamillis Braun, '58, was appointed secretary in the Student Counseling Office in November, replacing Mrs. Thyrrice Marx, who had been on sick leave for nearly a year as a result of a knee injury sustained on campus. Mrs. Janice Easterday succeeded Mrs. Elizabeth Parsons in the Office of College Relations in September. Mrs. Patricia A. Sager resigned her position as secretary in the Admissions Office the end of December and was replaced by Mrs. Margaret Beadle, who stayed only until june. A luncheon was given to honor Lillie Stevens and Edward Hess upon their retirement. Mrs. Stevens came to the College in 1942 and has served faithfully and well as a maid for 34 years. Mr. Hess was first employed in 1963 and has completed over thirteen years of fine service as a carpenter. The gratitude of the College goes to each of these persons. Notice should also be taken of a party given by the Staff to honor Miriam Strange upon her 75th birthday. For most of Miss Strange's 46 years she was Registrar. Now, her infallible and prodigious memory serves the College well in her role as College Archivist and historian par excellence. At Santa Fe, Dr. Alfred Pinkerton was appointed College Physician in January, succeeding Dr. ]. P. Voute. Since Dr. Pinkerton enjoys privileges at St. Vincent Hospital and is a member of a three-physician group that assures unbroken emergency coverage, his appointment represents a desirable upgrading of medical services to students. Istvan Fehervary, Director of Student Activities, was on leave during the second semester. To substitute for him, William Unbehaun, S'75, was appointed and served creditably. In this connection, one must also acknowledge with appreciation the voluntary ser- vices of Herbert F. Kincey, Jr., who has organized and supervised the St. John's College Search and Rescue Unit. The Libraries Miss Charlotte Fletcher, Librarian on the Annapolis campus, reports increased use of the library collection, an average student borrowing of thirty books, as compared to 2 5 in 1971-72 and 22 in 1960-61. New titles catalogued during the year numbered,989 volumes, approximately half of the 2,044 volumes accessioned. A total of 322 books were discarded. The largest single addition to the Library's collection was the National Union Catalogue: pre-1956 Imprints, 425 volumes of which were received. By annual subscription, a total of 610 volumes will arrive by 1980, thus providing an invaluable bibliographic tool. This important acquisition is being made possible by annual Title II grants from the Federal Government and by a generous gift of $5,000 from Peter Lauck in memory of his wife, Margaret Lauck, for many years Assistant Registrar at the College. The set will be dedicated to her memory. An alumni author shelf has now been inaugurated in the Library, and a number of interesting works were contributed 6 Miss Strange (left), Richard Ford, and Charlotte Fletcher at Miss Strange's 75th birthday party. by their authors during the year: William M. Goldsmith, '45, The Growth of Presidential Power; Louis L. Snyder, '28, Encyclopedia of the Third Reich; Eugene V. Thaw, '47, Drawings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Thaw; and Marvin Zetterbaum, '50, Tocqueville and the Problem of Democracy. I hope that this shelf will grow in the years ahead. Action was taken by the Board, upon my recommendation and that of the Archives and Records Committee, to place upon permanent deposit in the Maryland Hall of Records certain archives of the College dating from 1696 through 1937. These minutes, letters, vouchers, bills and pamphlets had been placed on temporary deposit in 1941 as an emergency measure. The conditions governing the permanent deposit are that the collection may not Pe destroyed, nor may it be moved from the Annapolis area. Minute books of both the Board and the Faculty subsequent to 1937 are also being deposited and bound copies of catalogues, yearbooks, and bulletins. The State Archivist has indicated his interest in the collection and proposes to arrange and inventory it in the future. Meanwhile, Miss Fletcher and Mrs. Kathryn Kinzer, the Assistant Librarian, have completed indexing the Matriculation Books of the College for the years 1789 to 1858. A complete list of all St. John's matriculants will now be included in the Bicentennial Alumni Register to be published this fall or winter. Mrs. Alice H. Whelan, Librarian on the Santa Fe campus, reports that the development grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities has enabled the library to expand its holdings to 36,522 catalogued books, 4, 448 phonodiscs, and 1,385 phonotapes. In addition, there are 2, 900 volumes in the Robert Hunt Collection as well as certain other accessioned books, which make the total library collection exceed 40,000 volumes. Over 11,000 volumes, 2, 000 phonodiscs, and 360 phonotapes were accessioned during the first three years of the grant. I should like to record here appreciation for the services of John A. DesRochers, Assistant Cataloguer, who aided James M. Benefiel in the massive work of cataloguing during this intensive three-year �October, 1976 period and who has now left the College. I should also like to express thanks. to the Library Associates, whose generous gift of $3,000 enabled the College to match $4,500 from the National Endowment for helpful acquisitions. Mrs. Whelan reports with gratification that the reference collection has been enriched and that the holdings of world literature have been expanded to the point where the College "can feel reasonably proud." The Physical Plants including Carlos Vigil as Assistant Superintendent, Dolores Vigil as Secretary, three maintenance men, five custodians, four housekeepers, and two security men. Window shades and much of the carpeting in the original dormitory complex were replaced, as were half of the seat cushions in the dining hall, necessary expenditures after twelve years. At the close of the year, the College ended its contract with Gladieux Food Service and awarded a contract to Professional Food Service Manage- James T. Wollon, Jr., AlA, of Havre de Grace, Maryland, completed the architectural study of the Paca-Carroll House on the Annapolis campus. His plans call for the renovation of the original building and a new addition running parallel to St. John's Street. The new project would house thirty-four students and was estimated to cost $443,600. The Campus Development Committee was most pleased with Mr. Wollon's drawings and recommended them to the Faculty, President and Board. All concurred with the proposed plans for the structure, and the project now awaits funding. Michael and Michael, AlA, of Alexandria, Virginia, also completed their architectural study of the renovation and additions to Randall Hall and Iglehart Hall. Both sets of plans modernize and enlarge the existing facilities and have the general approval of the Campus Development Committee, the Faculty, and the President. The cost estimates are $1,125,000 for the Iglehart project and $840,000 for the Randall project. In general, the campus and buildings appear to be in excellent shape. Maintenance has been largely of a routine nature, with two exceptions. The President's House needed a new roof, and certain repairs and new equipment were necessary in the kitchen of Randall Hall, in order to comply with County Health Department specifications. Award of a contract to a new caterer, the Marriott Corporation, dictated other changes. In the area of operations, high fuel oil prices prompted a concerted effort to reduce fuel oil consumption, as the following figures show: Year Consumption Cost 1972-73 1973-74 1974-75 1975-76 236,566 gals. 199,916 gals. 191,583gals. 147,321 gals. $27,387 48,454 61, 5 54 46,254 The College closed for nine days during the Christmas vacation period, and installation of thermostatic controls on indi- vidual radiators also helped save fuel. But the main reason for this remarkable reduction in fuel oil consumption was the continued efforts ofboth William Merritt, Chief Engineer, and David Tucker, Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds. The next area demanding attention will be the consumption of electricity. No general property report would be complete without recognizing the loving labors of Arthur Kungle, Jr., '67, self-appointed gardener, who provides so much floral beauty to the campus. At Santa Fe, Stanley Nordstrum, Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds, reports a stabilizing of the crew at eighteen, ment ofNorthbrook,Illinois. The new arrangement began with the start of the Graduate Institute in June. Eighth class of Graduate Institute: left to right; (Back row) James Doherty, Michael Castagna, Robert Tortolini, Lois Carroll, Carolyn Davis, Edna Gullatt, Charles Coaston, Phyllis Goodman, director Robert Spaeth. (Middle row) Michele Grant, Joan Unbehaun, Linda Stabler, Elizabeth Trujillo, Phyllis Huffman. (Front row) Bro. Michael Avila, Raquel Bech, Joyce Spray, Idell Milling, Arturo Oviedo. The Graduate Institute For ten summers now the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education has functioned successfully on the western campus. It has been an important means of disseminating the St. John's· philosophy and methods to an ever widening group of teachers at the elementary, secondary, and college levels. Fellowship grants from the Cafritz Foundation in Washington, the Hoflberger Foundation in Baltimore, and the Astor, Holzman, Luce, and Thorne Foundations in New York have resulted in a considerable number of teachers earning their master's degrees and returning to teach in these city school systems and in other colleges. I am pleased to report a new grant of$90,000 from the Edward John Noble Foundation of New York, which will enable New York public school teachers, preferably in the fields of art and music, to take advantage of the Institute's program. At the eighth commencement in Santa Fe on August 13, 1976, eighteen master's degrees were awarded, bringing to 186 the total of such degrees which the Institute has granted since its inception. Robert L. Spaeth, a tutor on the Annapolis campus, proved an able director of the Institute during the initial year of his appointment. Mrs. Beverly Ross Smith as Registrar man- 7 �The College aged the office capably, keeping Mr. Spaeth well informed of developments throughout the year. The Alumni Alumni are playing a more active role in recruiting and interviewing prospective students for the College and in counseling with juniors and seniors about graduate school and careers. Alumni seminars were held again this year-in Baltimore, New York, Boston, Chicago, and Washington. Alumni summer seminars in Annapolis were cancelled for lack of participants, but over forty alumni and spouses from both campuses and from the Graduate Institute participated in seminars on the Santa Fe campus during the first two weeks of August. Again, the tutors contributed their talents and their time as co-leaders. Another year, I believe there should be a modest tuition charge to alumni so that tutors may be compensated in monetary terms for their efforts. At Homecoming, Wil1iam W. Simmons, '48, was elected From left: Sir John Eden, William Dunham, President Weigle, and Sir Peter Ramsbotham greet well-wishers on Eden Day. president of the Alumni Association. Mrs. Marcia De!Plain Lathrop, '38, secretary, and Mrs. Carol Phillips Tilles, '59, Senator Charles Mathias of Maryland presided, Governor and Mrs. Marvin Mandel and Governor and Mrs. Averell treasurer. The Alumni Award of Merit was presented this year to Harriman were platform guests, and Sir John Eden, present Colonel Thomas W. Ligon, '16, who died on july 13, 1976. head of the Eden family, spoke graciously at the end of the program. A reception for invited guests followed in the Great Hall. It seemed appropriate that the Bicentennial celebration Reff, '57, was named executive vice president, Edward F. In the election of alumni members to the Board for the term ending in 1979, successful candidates were Sharon Bishop, '65, ofWashington, D.C., and Julius Rosenberg, '38, of Annapolis, Maryland. The matching gift challenges of the past year provided a tremendous stimulus to giving in the Alumni Fund. Con- be held in Annapolis, where Governor Eden is buried in St. Anne's churchyard, and at St. John's College, where McDowell Hall was to have been the Governor's residence. A special series of lectures was given on both campuses to tributions from 757 alumni exceeded the $50,000 figure. mark the Bicentennial. At Annapolis Mortimer Adler spoke There were nine members of the President's Council giving on "The American Testament," George Anastaplo on "Piety, $1,000 or more, eleven in the category of St. John's Sponsors giving at least $500 each, nineteen who qualified as Francis Scott Key Donors with contributions of $250 or more, and the remarkable total of 170 King William Associates, giving $100 and over. If one includes the challenge gift of $50,000, total current alumni giving amounted to $102,324. In addition there were gifts of $14,871 toward endowment and $20,177 for plant. At Santa Fe the first concerted effort Prudence and the Mayflower Compact," Robert A. Goldwin, '50, on "Of Men and Angels: In Search for Morality in the among the first eight classes proved encouraging, for gifts were received from 59 alumni totaling $4,937. The College's thanks go out to all alumni who have been giving generous support, whether in admissions work, career counseling, or annual giving. Constitution," Herbert Storing on "The Founders' Views on Slavery," and Leonard Lutwack on "The American and His Land: The Literary Record." At Santa Fe a townspersons Seminar Evening was held when over 200 citizens were divided among eight seminars discussing works by such authors as Willa Cather, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emersbn, William James, Herman Melville, Henry Thoreau, and Mark Twain. It proved to be a very popular evening. The usual adult community seminars continued on both cam- puses throughout the year. Two other events deserve mention. At Santa Fe, in the early summer, St. John's College was host to the Country The College and the Bicentennial On the morning of June 23, 1976, an impressive ceremony took place under the Liberty Tree on the Annapolis campus, marking the 200th anniversary of Maryland's independence. On that day in 1776 Sir Robert Eden, the last royal governor, was escorted aboard a British warship and left the colony. Sir Robert's descendant, Anthony Eden, now the Earl of Avon, taped a message to the American people marking the Bicentennial. This was heard at the ceremony, after an introduc- tion by Sir Peter Ramsbotham, the British Ambassador. 8 Day School Headmasters Association at their regional meet- ing. All seemed to appreciate the hospitality extended to them, while the College was grateful for the opportunity to make new friends. Finally, at Annapolis, the first Parents Week-end was held the end of April with well over I 00 in attendance. The idea began in conversations between Wil- liam Dunham and the Delegate Council. Both James Walley, '78, and Lawrence Clendenin, '77, should be singled out for their work in making the week-end such a success. It is planned that a "second annual" be held next spring and that the idea be adopted at Santa Fe as well. �October, 1976 Finances Careful husbanding of resources, the vigilance of both treasurers, and the cooperation of the college commun~ty made it possible to keep expenditures close to budgeted figures for the year. Charles T. Elzey, Annapolis Treasurer, reported actual expenses of $2,646,623, as compared with the arrticipated figure of $2,634,622. Emery C. Jennings, Treasurer at Santa Fe, showed savings of $36,475 on an expendtture budget of $2,568,311. The two rrew investment courrselors, Faycz Sarofim & Company, of Houston, Texas, and Endowment Management and Research, of Boston, Massachusetts, performed well and brought the College close to a six-percent return on the book value of the investments. This fact, coupled with a generous flow of contributions, enabled the western campus to close the year with a minuscule surplus of $931. At Annapolis, overall gift income was up ll% over the previous year, thanks in large part to an enthusiast~c ~c~po~se to two challenge grarrts totaling $150,000. Alumm giVIng mcreased by 36%, parent giving by 106%, and giving by friends 99%. Foundation grants were also up by 31%. Despite these increases, however, balancing the books at Annapolis still required the transfer of $33,115 from reserves for future operations, built up by excess gifts in two previous years. The third annual sustaining fund campaign at Santa Fe was even more successful than its two predecessors. Some $38,000 was raised locally for the general purposes. of the College by a devoted group of volunteer workers. Thts compared with $24,000 irr the first year and $32~000 last year. With the College of Sarrta Fe and the UmveiSity of Albuquerque, St. John's participated irr a rrew lobbyirrg organization knowrr as the Courrcil of Independent Colleges and Universities in New Mexico. A strong effort just failed to persuade the legislature to appropriate matching funds so that all institutions of higher education,. both public and private, might have the advantage of the federal State Student Incentive Grarrt program. Fortunately, the three independent institutions have now received approval to use their own matchirrg funds to claim a total of $100,000 in this federal program for the coming academic year. Arr interesting study is rrow being made by Professor Joseph Kershaw of Williams College on a grarrt from the Ford Foundation. Upon the initiative of Presiderrt Thomas Ragle of Marlboro College, the Foundation became interested irr the questiorr of the financial viability of small and relatively new colleges. St. John's Annapolis campus is being considered, in addition to the young Sarrta Fe campus. Other colleges irrcluded in the study are Bard College, Berrnington College, Hampshire College, Marlboro College, and Sarah Lawrence College. The study should be completed this fall. poses for which monies were received: Annapolis Donors 7,324 3,414 110,679 14,252 22,343 147,975 31,076 94,666 46,381 $ 574,669 4,546 4,937 2,346 85,016 110,135 27,789 284,012 53,578 $478,110 $1,147,028 $365,935 17,547 5,639 34,028 34,784 20,177 $ 606,788 110,384 3,145 6,783 260,550 98,378 61,000 $478,110 Board S)C Community Alumni Parents Frierrds Foundations Corporations Government Bequest $1,147,028 $ Totals Purposes Unrestricted Scholarships Library Other Restricted Graduate Institute Endowment Plarrt Totals To each donor I should again like to express the heartfelt gratitude of all members of the college community. We wish that there were room to record the full roster of contributors-alumni, parents, friends, foundations and corporations, many of them through the Association of Independent Colleges irr Maryland and the New Mexico Independent College Association. Such generous support makes us in the College humble and inspires us to continue our best efforts in the years ahead. ' ' ' ' By Board actiorr at the time of the 1975 quinquennial re,' view of the College Polity, the age of 65 was established for the normal retirement of Associates, staff, and other administrators. Extension of service beyond that age might be authorized at the Board's discretiorr. I corrsider it a high compliment to have received from the Board a request that I remain as President of St. John's College for the year 1977-78, my first year after attairrirrg the verrerable age of 65. Subject to my continuing in good health, I have accepted the Board's invitation. The challerrge of the Fund for the 1980's excites me. I hope that each of you will work with me to achieve its goals. Gifts and Grants Orrce again the College had a banner year from the standpoint of the gifts and grants received. The following chart shows the totals in categories of donors and in the pur- Santa Fe Richard D. Weigle President Annapolis, Maryland September 1, 1976 9 �- BALANCE SHEETS 0 ;] June 30, 1976 ASSETS (1) (') LIABILITIES AND FUND BALANCES CURRENT FUNDS 0 (1) CURRENT FUNDS Santa Fi! Annapolis Umestricted Cash ........................... . Accounts Receivable, Net ..... . Due from Other Funds ..... . Inventory-Bookstore-at cost . Investments, at Cost ..... . Prepaid Expenses ............. . 64,080 29,069 11,581 38,812 13,235 3,053 159,830 53,519 101,809 $ $ 46,586 6,500 70,987 --$ 279,401 ........ Annapolis Unrestricted Accounts Payable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......... Due to Other Funds ................................ Student Advance Deposits .. . . .. . . ....................... Deferred Income . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. Reserve for Future Operations ........................ $ 33,640 7,943 62,108 42,896 $ 146,587 13,243 $ 216,348 63,053 $ 11,744 105,202 42,385 57,017 $ Restricted 208,784 3,943 204,680 Cash··············· ··················. . . . . . Due from Other Funds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . Investments, at Cost ........................... . Accounts Receivable.. . . ........... . 524 $ 90,625 36,450 2,500 $ 417,407 $ 577,237 $ $ LOAN FUNDS Cash..................... $ 417,407 $ 279,401 $ 130,099 Total Current Funds .. ............... ....... $ 577,237 $ 409,500 $ 339 170,726 11,703 226,488 29,167 182,768 $ 255,655 $ 7,766,332 2,852 $1,331,509 $ 7,769,184 $1,331,509 $ $ 188,085 409,500 7,762 24,751 210,142 159,830 ....... Restricted Fund Balance . . . . . ...................... 130,099 $ Total Current Funds .. LOAN FUNDS ... . .. . .. . .. . . . ... . .. Student Loans Receivable . . . . . . .. . National Direct Student Loans ..................... . United Student Aid Deposit ......... . Investments ..... . . .... 4,792 601 177,375 1,000 12,000 182,768 Total Loan Funds - - 36,439 1,134,381 630 6,593,734 Cash. Receivables ....... . Pledges Receivable . Investments, at Cost . Due from Other Funds .. 360 4,784 $ 1,325,365 4,000 1,000 $ 7,769,184 Total Endowment Funds . Fund Balance . . . . . . . . . . . ....... . Unexpended Income ........................ . Total Endowment Funds .. $1,331,509 ANNUITY FUNDS ANNUITY FUNDS s Due from Current Restricted Funds Due from Plant Funds . 14,577 173,508 -188,085 -- Total Annuity Funds . PLANT FUNDS Liability under Life Estate Agreements . $ 188,085 Total Annuity Funds . PLANT FUNDS . .......... . $ 375,677 5,685,207 394,221 584,000 $ 533,245 5,906,741 669,346 $ 7,039,105 Unexpected Plant Funds ............. . Investment, Retirement of Indebtedness Total Loan Funds ENDOWMENT FUNDS ENDOWMENT FUNDS Land and Improvements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Buildings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... Equipment, Furnishings, Library Books. Land and Improvements California .. Due to Current .............................. . National Direct Student Loans Balance ............. . College Loan Fund Balance ............ . 255,655 $ $7,109,332 5,766 ..... $ 4,576 262,870 --- - Due to Other Funds ........... . Notes Payable-Other ......... . Loans Payable to Annapolis Campus Dormitory Bonds Payable Net Invested in Plant Unexpended Plant Funds . . . ..... . Retirement of Indebtedness . 11,242 7,027,863 $ 174,508 20,493 988,594 1,544,000 4,381,737 $ 7,039,105 5,766 $7,109,332 4,576 262,870 Total Plant Funds $ 7,044,871 $7,376,778 Total Plant Funds $ 7,044,871 $7,376,778 Total Funds .. $15,574,060 $9,561,527 Total Funds .. $15,574,060 $9,561,527 ~ �ANNAPOLIS ENDOWMENT FUNDS CONDENSED STATEMENTS OF REVENUE AND EXPENDITURES June 30, 1976 Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1976 A.W. MeDon Foundation Matching Gift Gift of Donor .... T""' Principal TUTORSHIP ENDOWMENTS Richard Hammond Elliott, 1917 ....................... . Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grants ...... . Addison E. Mullikin, 1895 .................... . Arthur de Talma Valk, 1906 ...... . Annapolis Auxiliary Enterprises Bookstore ............ . Dining Hall & Dormitories. Outside Summer Programs Dorsey House ... Santa Fe $1,269,516 427,027 316,861 117,838 42,865 $ 908,340 62,820 700,013 284,013 133,768 35,051 $2,174,107 Educational & General Tuition Fees . .... . ...... . .......... . Endowment Income Private Gifts & Grants ... . Government Program and Grants ....... . Graduate Institute . . . . . . . . . . . . ...... . Other Sources . . . . ........ . $2,124,005 --- 53,317 301,790 48,530 64,506 355,382 9,001 10,512 $ 439,401 $ 403,637 $2,613,508 $2,527,642 $ -Total Revenues. . . . ................... . ...... -- Annapolis Self Help ........ . George M. Austin, 1908 .. WalterS. Baird, 1930 ....... . Chicago Regional ........... . Oass of 1897 . . .. .. Oass of 1898 ............... . Richard Cleveland ........ . Dr. Charles C. Cook ........ . Corp. George E. Cunniff, ill .. Mary E. Dodd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..... . Oarence Dickinson, 1911 ........ . Faculty ........................... . John T. and Gertrude L. Harrison, 1907 Richard H. Hodgson, 1906. . . . . . . . . . .. . Alfred and Ruth Houston, 1906 ............. . Houston Regional ........................ . Jesse H. Jones and Mary Gibbs Jones ..... . Robert E. and Margaret Larsh Jones, 1909 .. . Arthur E. and Hilda Combs Landers, 1930 .. . Massachusetts Regional . .. . . .. . . .. . .. . . ... Philip A. Myers, U, 1938 .. .. .. .. . .. . .. ... Oklahoma Regional ......... . Thomas Parran Memorial, 1911 Pittsburgh Regional .......... . Murray Joel Rosenberg. Memorial Flora Duvall Sayles ...... . Hazel Norris and J. Graham Shannahan, 1908 Clarence W. Stryker ............... .. Frederick J. von Schwerdtner ............... . Richard D. Weigle ............. _. ........... . Kieffer Prize Futi"d for Greek Trans.•......... EXPENDITURES Auxiliary Enterprises Bookstore .................. . Dining Hall & Dormitories Outside Summer Programs Dorsey House. Mandatory Transfers ... Total Expenditures ...... . Other Transfers & Additions {Deduction) Net Surplus (Deficit) . . .................. . 2,679,845 500,000 150,000 $ 313,432 2,679,845 2,489,954 300,216 $3,329,845 $5,783,447 $ 15,000 25,000 7,500 3,070 8,672 87,933 7,000 13,705 135 $ 15,000 25,000 $ 30,000 50,000 7,500 6,140 8,672 87,933 7,000 13,705 270 1,000 45,551 42,799 150,250 42,787 500 36,000 43,088 10,000 22,685 30,262 26,000 6,265 560 12,500 7,056 4,431 2,000 3,664 3,818 1,552 10,953 1,000 . 2:359 --- $ SCHOLARSHIP ENDOWMENTS ~~e~sc~b~bfeo.u.~~~~~- ::: : .. Educational & General Administration .. General .................. . Instruction, Undergraduate ... . Instruction, Graduate & Other . Library and Music .............. . Other Programs .................. . Student Services . . . . . . . . Plant Operation & Maintenance . Student Aid ... 1,989:954 150,216 $2,453,602 REVENUE $ 313,432 liS $672,851 '3:070 135 20,025 150,250 2,500 500 36,000 22,685 9,000 26,000 560 3,413 "7;367 - $323,864 -- liS 1,000 47,910 62,824 300,500 45,287 1,000 72,000 43,088 10,000 45,370 39,262 52,000 6,265 1,120• 12,500 7,056 4,431 2,000 3,664 7,231 1,552 18,320 1,000 $996,715 LIBRARY ENDOWMENTS $ 244,911 182,858 1,015,677 2,857 74,111 6,008 169,113 471,207 187,849 --$2,354,591 $ 200,282 88,351 735,994 153,033 120,298 77,109 191,971 281,239 264,965 $2,ll3,242 64,278 214,096 3,146 10.512 $ 292,032 $ $ 348,602 55,070 ---- 52,752 264,432 31,418 ...... $ 355 500 25,000 31,683 200 200 1,000 560 1,000 1,500 1,500 19,500 1,196 $2,516,914 33,115) ($9,797) 931 $ $ .... 25,000 400 1,500 19,500 1,000 $85,194 $2,646 •.623. ($ Alumni Memorial Book Fund .............. .. Charles Edward Stuart Barton Memorial Library Fund . Benwood Foundation Library Fund .................. . Mary Safford Hoogewerff Memorial Library Fund Jonathan D. Korshin, 1966, Library Fund ............. . . .... . Oliver M. Korshin, 1963, Library Fund . . . . . . Margaret Lauck Memorial Library Fund ............. . Library Fund ........................................ . Charles Gomber Mantz, 1875, Library Fund ............. . EUen C. Murphy Memorial Library Fund ........... . Henry H. and Cora Dodson Sasscer NewsP.aper Fund . Elma R. and Charles D. Todd Memorial Library Fund. Oara B. Weigle Memorial Library Fund .. The Jack Wilfen Foundation Library Fund In Memory of Murray Joel Rosenberg . $ 355 500 50,000 31,683 200 200 1,~ 1,000 3,000 1,500 39,000 1,196 1.000 $46,400 -$131,594 0 CT' ('!) STUDENT LOAN FUND ENDOWMENTS George Friedland. . . . .. .. . .. . .. . .. .. . .. . . .. . John David Pyle, 1962, Memorial. 0 (") ...,. $21,919 6.754 $28,673 $20,000 1 &.70 $21,470 $ 41,919 8,224 $ 50.143 -'"' ...... -o -.._] 0\ �N A.W. Mellon Foundation Matching Gift Gift: of Donor Tolal Fomd Principal ALUMNI MEMORIAL ENDOWMENTS Granville 0. Adams, 1929 . . . . . . Charles Edwards Athey, 1931 . . .. S 3 {V~~-F~B~~l,·I~~~ . ..... .... ... ... ... .. ... .... . Drew H. Beatty, 1903 . . . . . . . . . Dr. William Brewer, 1823 Frederick W. Brune, 1874 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,100 7,325 1,100 7,325 ~ 200 125 600 125 855 2,638 1,000 58,683 3,590 1,135 2,000 500 16,556 40 1,000 658 100 100 18,357 5,140 23,223 1,020 5,000 325 466 21,906 4,500 1,650 2,000 12,219 125 5,000 10,000 6,983 1,000 1,109 851 902 100 2,630 4,550 500 28,633 1,065 3,000 700 2,500 125 625 2,000 Benjamin Duvall Chambers, 1905. Henry M. Cooper, Jr., 1934 . . .. . .. . .. . .. . . . .. . ... . Walter I. Dawkins, 1880... . . . . Robert F. Duer, Jr., 1921. Dr. Phillip H. Edwards, 1898 . . . . . . .. ...................... Joseph W. Fastner, Jr., 1960 Allen Lester Fowler, 1915 . . . . . . . . . . . Edna G. and Roscoe E. Grove, 1910. Charles W. Hass, 1927 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John M.J. Hodges, 1904..... Dr. Amos F. Hutchins, 1906 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Clarence T. Johnson, 1909 . . . .. . ... . .. . .. . . . .. . .. . Clifford L. Johnson, 1911. Helen B. Jones and Robert 0. Jones, 1916 . . . . . . . . . Dr. W. Oscar LaMotte, 1902. John H.E. Legg, 1921. William Lentz, 1912 .. . . . .. . . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . . . Leola B. and Thomas W. Ligon, 1916 Col. Harrison McAlpine, 1909 ..... James R. McClintock, 1965, Prize Fund. Vincent W. McKay, 1946. H. Boyns MacMannis, 1924 Robert E. Maddox, 1876 .. . . .. . . .. . .. . .. . .. William P. Maddox, 1921. ...... William L. Mayo, 1899. Ridgely P. Melvin, 1899 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wm. S. Morsell, 1923, Athletic Fund . John Mullan, 1847 .. . .. . . . .. . . .. . . . Walter C. Mylander, Jr., 1932. . .. . .. . .. . .. .. . .. . . .. M. Keith Neville, 1905. Dr. John 0. Neustadt, 1939. Blanchard Randall, 1874. Susan Irene Roberts, 1966. Leroy T. Rohrer, 1903 . .. . . .. . . ... Elliott A. Rosenberg, 1963. Harrison Sasscer, 1944 . . . . Charles H. Schoff, 1889 . . Henry F. Sturdy, 1906 . Robert A. Bier, 1919. Rev. Enoch M. Thompson, 1895 . Col. Guy D. Thompson, 1916 . John T. Tucker, 1914 . ... . . ... . ... . .. . .. . Dr. Robert S.G. Welch, 1913 Dr. Willis H. White, 1922 . . . . . . Amos W.W. Woodcock, 1903. 5ff7 300 25 800 250 1,362 2,638 1,000 60,000 2,000 1,000 7,563 1,020 325 25,920 5,140 23,223 2,040 5,000 650 466 21,906 4,500 1,650 2,000 100 5,000 10,000 12,219 225 10,000 20,000 6,983 1,000 518 1,250 20,900 .1,000 2,500 2,000 .... $3,760,447 $ 249,334 $1,395,072 $ ($ 892,145) $4,005,886 $7,766,333 June 30, 1976 330 1,109 1,181 Gift of Donor TUTORSHIP ENDOWMENT Norma Fiske Day Fund . 100 902 200 2,630 4,550 500 3,000 1,000 28,633 1,065 125 625 1,000 $34,973 $301,507 60,000 $ 120,000 --- 308 20,250 5,795 22,625 10,000 3,000 25 LIBRARY ENDOWMENTS Emlen Davies Fund ..... . Norma Fiske Day Fund . . .... Angeline Eaton Memorial Fund . Nina S. Garson Memorial Fund . Victor Zuckerkandl Memorial Fund ........................ . Memorial, Honor and Life Membership Funds . Bromwell Ault, Sr., Memorial Fund . Henry Austin Poetry Fund Margaret Bridwell Bowdle Fund Fletcher Catron Memorial Fund ... Margo Dawn Gerber Prize Fund ........................ . Elizabeth R. and Alvin C. Graves Memorial Fund. Margaret Milliken Hatch Fund . Frank Patania Memorial Fund Winfield Townley Scott Memorial Fund . E.I. "Tommy" Thompson Memorial Fund . Millard E. Tydings Prize Fund ..... . Oara B. Weigle Memorial Fund. Jessie N. and Daniel E. Weigle Fund . . ....... . Other Funds Los Alamos Ranch School Fund . Other Foundation Endowment Funds . 518 Gain (Loss) on Sale of Securities . 1,000 2,500 2,000 1,118 217,081 1,150 2,000 1,000 38,076 --$261,225 --$ 1,037 8,500 50,000 1,300 1,141 8,881 35,000 3,341 2,535 1,865 1,000 4,713 2,500 1,326 -123,139 --- FOUNDATION ENDOWMENTS 1,668 1,250 20,900 s OTHER ENDOWMENTS 103 1,000 -- 404,349 --- 6,000 10,000 1,050 75,192 124,349 15,628 150,000 200,000 12,500 1,875 14,517 25,000 457 Helen and Everett Jones Fund .................... . Norma Fiske Day Fund . Readers Digest Foundation . Nina Otero Warren Memorial Fund. General Scholarship Fund . Evelyn Mitchell Memorial Fund. . ... Graduate Institute . . ....... . 6,000 700 2,500 :250 1,250 3,000 $ 500,000 SCHOLARSHIP ENDOWMENTS 2,000 308 10,000 1,050 75,192 124,349 15,628 1,668 19,325 396,669 536,942 $ SANTA FE ENDOWMENT FUNDS 1,291 100 100 20,250 5,795 22,625 10,000 3,000 78 1,000 ---($ 892,145) Total Endowment Principal . 186,309 $ ---- Loss on Sale of Securities . 1,000 633 $ 19,325 210,360 536,942 $1,145,738 16,556 40 OTHER ENDOWMENTS $ $ Tolal Fund Principal 58,683 3,925 2,120 500 $266,534 Hertha S. and Jesse L. Adams Concert Fund . Philo Sherman Bennett Prize Fund . George A. Bingley Memorial Fund . Scott Buchanan Memorial Fund . Helen C. and George Davidson, Jr., 1916 . The Dunning Memorial Fund Fund for Tomorrow Lectureship Floyd Hayden Prize Fund .................... . Joseph H. Hazen Foundation Lectureship Fund Maid Compensation Fund .. Monterey Mackey Memorial Fund. Emily Boyce Mackubin Fund . Kate Moore Myers Landscaping Fund . Adolph W. Schmidt Fund .. Richard Scofield Memorial Fund . Mrs. Blair T. Scott Memorial Prize Fund ........ . Kathryn Mylroie Stevens Memorial Prize Fund .. Oare Eddy and Eugene V. Thaw, 1947 Lectureship Fund .. Millard Tydings Prize Fund ... Daniel E. Weigle and Jessie N. Weigle Memorial Fund . Olga Richard Memorial. Victor Zuckerkandl Memorial Fund Alumni Endowment. General Endowment . . ........................ A.W. Mellon Foundation Matching Gift 2,000 335 985 Gift of Donor Total Endowment Funds $ 46,560 3,600 -$50,160 ---($ 7,364) ---$1,331,509 -3 ::r" l1l () 0 l1l ()'Q l1l �October, 1976 Alligators and Music (1976. Boston: Gambit Press), MORE BOOKS WANTED This time the Library wants to buy copies of these three works: Brant, Irving. James Madison 1941. 5 vols. Rush, Benjamin. The Letters, edited by L.H. Butterfield. 1951. 2 vols. Morrow, Glen R. Plato's Cretan City. 1960. If any of our Alumni know where we can find these, would they please let us know? We know that at least some of you frequent second-hand book stores and are collectors. {Our ad in the April magzine brought us the desired Ostwald, Outlines of General Chemistry.) Charlotte Fletcher Librarian illustrated by Clinton Arrowood, a copy of which Don has graciously contributed to the growing Alumni Authors Collection in the Library on the Annapolis Campus. Don teaches at the Garrison Forest School near Baltimore; the book is designed to introduce children to the orchestra. 1950 Former Association president Jack Ladd Carr, one-time city planner for Annapolis and most recently secretary for research and planning for the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, is the new historical-cultural officer in the Mar}'land Department of Economic and Community Development in Annapolis. Robert L. Goldberg in May was awarded the degree of doctor of philosophy by Rutgers, the State University (New Jersey). 1952 Alvin Aronson writes that he is working in the Dean's Office at the New York University Law School, and is considering enrolling at NYU for work toward a master's degree in recreational therapy. 1960 CLASS NOTES 1912 Philip L. Alger journeyed to Zagreb, Yugoslavia, this past July to deliver a paper at a symposium in honor of Nikola Tesla, noted Yugoslavian engineer. He was accompanied on the trip by his grandson, Montgomery M. Alger. 1927 Louis Dorsey Clark in August retired after fortyfour years at St. Paul's School, Brooklandville, Md. He will continue teaching history part-time this academic year. Mr. Clark's brother Hal was a classmate, and brother Jim graduated in 1928. 1942 There may be snow on the mountain, but something still burns inside: St. John's own athletic director Bryce Jacobsen, teamed with Warren Drake of Glen Burnie, Md., this summer won the Maryland State Senior Men's Tennis Doubles championship. Appropriately, the tournament was held at St. John's, the first on the local courts. 1947 The Reverend Theodore Ernst this year resigned as dean of the School of Social Welfare, University of Kansas, but will remain there as Professor of Social Work. This year, however, he is on leave of absence from Kansas, serving as Visiting Lecturer at the School of Social Work, San Diego State University. Ted also serves as Visiting Professor in the Doctoral Program, School of Social Work, Adelphi University. 1948 Donald S. Elliott is the author of a new book, On July lst Kendon L. Stubbs became the Associate University Librarian of the University of Virginia's Alderman Library. Ken is an associate professor and was formerly Head of the Reference Department. In his new position he will serve as the second administrative officer of the Library and as Deputy University Librarian. He has been with the Library for fourteen years. 1963 A mid-summer letter from Miriam (Golub) Duhan advised that she planned to start graduate school in September toward a master's degree in computer science. Dick is working for Welfare Research, Inc., a quasi-state agency, and after a year in Old Chatham, N.Y., they are " ... gradually acclimating ourselves to a non-New York City Life." 1964 Stephen Fineberg writes from Galesburg, Ill., where he has been engaged to put together a program in classics at Knox College. Steve is obviously looking forward with great anticipation to his new job; as he says, "it promises to be lots of fun." 1967 1976 seems to be the year for weddings in this class; two which were scheduled to take place in August are: On the seventh, Elizabeth Love;oy Reeves and William Mairs Duryea, Jr.; On the fifteenth, B. Meredith Burke and Dr. Thomas P. Vogl. The Durycas will make their home in New York City, while the Vogls, after October 16th, will be in Falls Church, Virginia. In news of a non-marital nature, David A C. Moore tells us that he has joined the real estate sales staff of Cozart & Company in Denver. 1968-Annapolis Larry Schleuter has started a small publishing house in New Orleans which he calls Mixed Breed. He is generously contributing a copy of each of his publications to the College Library. 1968-Santa Fe The Reverend Donald Schell has resigned after four years as Associate Chaplain of the Episcopal Church at Yale, and is now Rector of St. David's Episcopal Church in Caldwell, Idaho. 1969-Annapolis The May-June edition of the Public Telecommunications Review (National Association of Educational Broadcasters) carried a review by John Ross of Sex and Broadcasting, a book by Lorenzo Milam. John lives in Spokane, Wash. 1972-Annapolis Christine (Ferrarini) and Hank Constantine '70 announce the birth, on August 19, 1976, of Henry Clay Constantine IV, born at the very civilized hour of 2:06p.m., and weighing in at 7lbs. 6 oz. Our congratulations to all the Constantincs! 1973-Annapolis Mary L. Batteen received the master of science degree in oceanography last May from Old Dominion University in Norfolk. She is presently on a research assistantship in physical oceanography at Oregon State University while working toward a Ph. D. degree. fan (Huttner) Herman and husband David '69 this summer celebrated their second anniversary in Binghamton. N.Y., where she is pursuing her doctorate in philosophy of psychology, and where David is employed by IBM. (continued on back cover) In Memoriam ----., 1921-LtGen Milton G. Baker, Wayne, Penna., July 31, 1976. 1926-George A. Callard, Atlanta, Ga., July 3, 1976. 1929-Dr. Joseph Schiff, Longmeadow, Mass., July 7, 1976. 1934-William T. German, Towson, Md., July 1976. 1935-Dr. Burton Chance, Jr., Philadelphia, Penna., September 6, 1976. 1936-Calvin L. Horn, Jr., Wilmington, Del. 1936-James O'Donnell, Jr., Chevy Chase, Md., July 15, 1976. 1938-Nicholas Dayton LaHart, Jr., Wilton, Conn., August 2, 1976. 1944-James Olds, Pasadena, Cal., August 21, 1976. 1970-Mark L. Sittler, Charlestown, Mass., June 1976. Faculty-Harry C. Kelly, Raleigh, N.C., Febmary 2, 1976. (1941-42) �The College 1975-Annapofis This summer brought a status report from Ensign Gershon Ekman: after receiving his commission last December, he attended (and graduated with distinction from) the Navy's Surface Warfare School in Coronado, CA, from which he moved to more school in advanced marine propulsion engineering in San Diego. By now he should have reported to his ship, the USS DULUTI-I (LPD-6), operating out of San Diego and Yokosuka, Japan. Gerry is an assistant engineering officer, enjoys the Navy very much, and is looking forward to deployment to Hawaii, the Philippines, Okinawa, Japan, and the Indian Ocean. His address for the next thirty-six months: Ensign Gershon Ekman, USS DULUTH (LPD-6), FPO San Francisco, CA 96601. He is especially anxious to hear from any alumni in the Western Pacific. On August 1st Arthur C. "Tom" Horvath completed the pre-master's program at the California School of Professional Psychology in San Diego, a program specifically for those with baccalaureate degrees in fields other than psycholtJgy. Tom plans to take a yea.r's leave of absence before entering the four-year program leading to a doctorate in clinical psychology. Philip Reissman this summer worked as editor for unsolicited manuscripts for the science fiction magazine Galaxy. Phil is currently writing a science fiction book in novel form, and, if he cannot find a publisher, threatens to submit it to The Collegian as a 500-part serial! Then, he says, he is off to Israel. 1976--Annapolis John Bukacek reports that he had a summer job teaching English to Latin Americans, and planned to enter the Washington (D.C.) Montessori Institute in September, taking the teacher training course. The College St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 ARE YOU PLANNING A MOVE? If and when you plan to move or take other actions which will change your mailing address, PLEASE let us know BEFORE you move. Otherwise the Postal Service will clip the address label from the magazine (discarding the rest), stamp on it either your new address or information that the piece is not deliverable as addressed, and .send it back to us. Each such returned label costs us $.25, in addition to the cost of the discarded magazine. With something like 2, 000 address changes a year currently being processed, you can see how expensive it can be to keep up with you. And you can understand, we trust, why we ask for your new address BEFORE you move. Thank you. 1----------------------------------j ATTENTION ALL ALUMNI: CALL FGR NOMINATIONS In the spring of 1977 two openings will be created for Alumni Representatives-on the Board of Visitors and Governors, as David Dobreer '44 and Francis S. Mason, Jr., '43 reach the end of their current three-year terms. Both alumni are eligible for reelection. The directors of the Alumni Association, as required by both the Association By-Laws and the Polity of the College, have been requested to nominate at least one candidate for each forthcoming vacancy. In addition, nominations may be made by written petition of at least thirty members of the Association, submitted to me at the Alumni Office in Annapolis. As a reminder, any potential candidate must give prior permission to have his or her name placed in nomination. All nominations, whether by the directors or by petition, must be in my hands no later than December 1, 1976, so that names, biographical sketches, and, we hope, photographs of the nominees may be obtained for publication in the January issue of this magazine. Thomas Parran, Jr. Director of Alumni Activities Second-class postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland, and at additional mailing offices. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollegemagazine Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 12 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of College Relations Title A name given to the resource The College, October 1976 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1976-10 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource von Oppen, Beate Ruhm Parran, Jr., Thomas Dunham, William B. Oosterhout, Barbara Brunner Wyatt, E. Malcolm Zuckerman, Elliott Description An account of the resource Volume XXVIII, Number 3 of The College. Published in October 1976. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Vol_28_No_3_1976 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf President's Report Presidents The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/f7c7d9bb5da31fbde8d726f7ed368b30.pdf 14113c604b9b298385399c369bc11a64 PDF Text Text THE COLLEGE St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland Santa Fe, New Mexico January 1977 �THE COLLEGE Vol. XXVIII January, 1977 Number 4 ON THE COVER: This Eclelink engraving of a posthumous portrait of Pascal by Quesnel belongs to Brother Thomas Loomc, F. S.C., who was kind enough to lend it to us for reproduction. Editor: Beale Ruhm von Oppen Managing Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr. Editorial Advisory Board: William B. Dunham, Barbara Brunner Oosterhout '55, E. Malcolm Wyatt, Elliott Zuckerman. THE COLLEGE is published by the Office of College Relations, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404, Richard D. Weigle, President, William B. Dunham, Vice President. Published four times a year, in January, April, July, and October. Second class postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland, and at other mailing places. IN THE JANUARY ISSUE: Power and Grace, by Douglas Allanbrook .................. . Trial in Berlin, by Beale Ruhm von Oppen ............. . 13 Truth and Rights, by Edward M. Macierowski .......... . 21 Campus-Alumni News .......... 26 Class Notes ............................................. 28 Picture credits: Inside front cover, Eugene Iorgov; page 17, courtesy of Freya von Moltke; page 27, Tom Parran. �Power and Grace by Douglas Allanbrook Many years ago I was walking with a dear friend of mine, Naples. I am also in this lecture indebted to Erich Auerbach's Neapolitan, in front of the cathedral of Naples. The cathedral essay on the politics of Pascal, and to many discussions I have is a bizarre mish-mash of styles and periods, a proper reflec- had with students in the third-year language classes here at the college. The order the lecture will follow is: first an introduction discussing briefly the Pensees of Pascal. Two parts follow which are the heart of the lecture, and are devoted to a commentary and reflection on Pensee 298 (Brunschvicg). The lecture ends with a peroration. You have already had the preamble. tion of the endless and perennially changing life of the ancient capital of the Kingdom of The Two Sicilies, a city older than Rome and bearing even nowadays a resemblance in its ways to Pompeii, its near neighbor. It has always been a messy place, buzzing and popular, set in the curve of an incomparable bay. It has often been a wondrous place to live in, from Virgil's time down to the present. It has always seemed far from the hurly-burly of politics and Rome, and the reformers and rulers of the world. It has never ruled itself well, and has most often been the victim of rulers from abroad. It was one of the few places under Spanish domination which refused to put up with the Inquisition. On the front steps of the cathedral were stationed four carabinieri, resplendent in dress uniform. The carabinieri are members of the traditional national police force of the mod- ern nation-state of Italy. I rather perkily asked my friend what all the policemen were doing on the front steps of the cathedral and she, without a moment's hesitation and as if it were the most obvious fact in God's world, replied "Whythe Cardinal is a Prince." The answer jolted and tickled me simultaneously. The juxtaposition of the spiritual and the temporal power was foreign to my upbringing and habits of thought, and I experienced that delight in strangeness which is one of the pleasures of being away from home. Though I had recently taken part in a great war, and was surrounded in Naples with evidence of its destructiveness, I had never until that moment reflected long on the nature of power and might; far less had I seized upon any analogy between power and whatever was prayed to for the happy termination of that war. It was on first reading Pascal that I returned to the train of thought that had been initiated by my experience in INTRODUCTION Those of you have read the Pensees are aware that they do not in any ordinary way constitute a book, or even a treatise or a handbook. They are often no more than fragments, and they were left in bundles of various sizes which were disposed of by those interested in Pascal and his doctrines. The vrder in which they are to be read is a matter for debate. They were written in the last years of Pascal's brief life in a time of increasing disease and imminent death. They are fragments which never, with but a few exceptions, grow to full-blown essays. They are unique in their lucidity, wit, blackness, passion, and Christianity. They serve as models of what prose can be, and indeed the subject of some of them is prose style itself. They are aimed at civilized and urbane men and women, and their intent is to shake such readers so as to prepare them for Grace and belief. The French often dubbed such readers "honnetes hommes," a phrase not adequately translated by "honest men," although that catches some of it. Honnete homme came increasingly in Pascal's time to mean a person who would not dream of overturning the existing Text of a lecture given at St. John's College, Annapolis, on October 10, 1975. Mr. Allanbrook has been a member of the St. John's faculty since 1952. �The College orders, but who lived within them and knew his place there. Revolution and civil war would be anathema to him. We should bear in mind as we examine the pensee at hand that the author, in his early manhood a most wordly honnete homme, was a mathematician and physicist, one of the founders of the new science. Some of you are acquainted in Freshman laboratory with his experiments with water. He was the inventor of projective geometry, and also of one of the first computers. As he grew older his passion for truth led him to ascribe less and less importance to his physical and mathematical studies, and to concentrate his heart and mind on the truth-for him the Christian religion. Since he had, by his own confession, been struck by the Grace of God and fully and radically converted to the Christian faith, the natural lucidity of his mathematical nature would in the interest of all consistency insist on the primacy of that part of his person that had been affected by God-the heart. It is sometimes hard to grasp what Pascal intends by the heart; his term includes more than we in ordinary talk intend by the word. Clearly it is to be distinguished from mind or esprit. In Pensee 282 he states, "The heart senses that there are three dimensions in space and that numbers are infinite; and the reason following on this demonstrates that there are no two square numbers of which one is the double of the other." I would propose that he means by coeur the place or part of us that receives primal things and is moved by them. This meaning is what we imply when we call falling in love an "affair of the heart." The heart is also the place that receives the beginnings of Geometry: space, time, movement, extension, number, which Pascal sometimes calls primitive words. In its highest function the heart is where God touches us with his love and power and transforms us radically; it is the organ of the soul which is enabled by Grace. It seems obvious to Pascal, in a manner that he felt it would be folly to demonstrate, that the mind cannot be our way of connection with God. God is for Pascal, as for his theological mentor Saint Augustine, absconditus, hidden. If hidden, then not seeable or knowable. If hidden, then irrational to us humans; powerful, in charge, and capable of actually moving our hearts and giving us new life. Heat rather than light would be a proper image; but not both, as in the well-known image of the sun in Plato's Republic. In divine and supernatural things one must love before knowing. For Pascal to say this implies no dialectic, no path which we with good will 2 and intellect can follow as pilgrims to the Good. We will only know as God wills, and we will only see as the angels may see. In natural, as opposed to divine and supernatural, things, one might suppose that knowing would precede loving. In his essay on The Geometric Mind and the Art of Persuasion Pascal notes that things are upside down. It appears, he says, that God has established this supernatural order completely contrary to the order that ought to be natural to men when they are dealing with natural things. The right order would be loving before knowing in supernatural things, and knowing before loving in natural things. Men have nevertheless corrupted this order by making of profane things what they ought to make of divine things; we only believe what pleases us. If all were well we would love God and know things here. All is not well. We are fallen and corrupt, and we follow our pleasures. They turn us from God and lead us, in things of this world, not to accept proofs but to be swayed by charms and delights. "Tell us agreeable things and we will listen to you," say the Jews to Moses. The heart, which is the place of all loves and delights and persuasions, is the ruler here on earth. It is the Perennial dictator of our understanding. Worldly audiences are peculiarly aware of amour-propre (a mixture of ambition and self-love) and of its comedies and blacknesses; certainly this part of Pascal's writings finds an easy entrance into the souls of the educated and the literate. Scepticism, which in Pascal comes from a mighty faith< and search for the truth, is more generally a worldly doctrine, at best the charming and anarchic reflections of a moderate hedonist. Civilized society generally feels it to be impolite to deny such views, which often seem to be the criteria of civilization itself. All of the writings of Rochefoucault, and most of those of Montaigne, are based on the kingdom of the heart, the place of ambition, on the study of me. Rochefoucault's essay on amour-propre states in its last sentences the scope of this doctrine. "Such is the portrait of amour-propre, of which all of life is an agitation. The sea is a sensed image of it, and amour-propre finds in the ebb and flow of its waves a faithful expression of the turbulent succession of its thoughts and of its never-ending movement." This center of the self, this ego, is for Pascal, and I should think for anyone else with good sense, as hidden, as absconditus, as is the mysterious Godhead. Its agitations are ever-present phainomena, moving in and out of us in a perennial dance. �January, 1977 PART I Let us now turn to the particular pensee which we will consider together. The form of this pensee is as follows: there are three pairs of propositions followed by a dilemma; then comes another proposition aimed at solving the dilemma, and then two sentences introduced in the first instance by ainsi and in the second instance by et ainsi. 298. Justice, force~ (l). Il est juste que ce qui est justc soit suivi,il est nCcessaire que ce qui est le plus fort soit suivi. (2). La justice sans la force est impuissante: la force sans la justice est tyrannique. (3). La justice sans la force est contradite, parce qu'il y a toujours des mCchants; la force sans la justice est accusCe. II faut done mettre ensemble la justice et Ia force; et pour cela faire que ce qui est juste soit fort, ou que ce qui est fort soit juste. (4). La justice est sujette a dispute, la force est tres reconnaissable et sans dispute. AINSI on n' a pu donner Ia force a Ia justice, parce que la force a contredit la justice et a dit qu'elle etait injuste, eta dit que c'etait elle qui etait juste. ET AINSI ne pouvant fairc que ce qui est juste fut fort, on a fait que ce qui est fort fut juste. TRANSLATION (!). It is just that what is just be followed, it is necessary that what is the strongest be followed. (2). Justice without force is impotent: force without justice is tyrannical. (3). Justice without force is contradicted, because there are always bad people about; force without justice is indicted. Justice and force must, therefore, be put together; and to that end we must either make what is just strong, or what is strong just. (4). Justice is subject to dispute, force is most obvious and indisputable. THUS we have not been able to give force to justice, because force has contradicted justice and said that it was unjust, and that force was the one who was just. AND THEREFORE not being able to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong be just. The first balancing pair of propositions do seem notoriously self-evident and tautological: they appear to state in their predicates precisely what is stated in their subjects. "It is just that what is just be followed, it is necessary that what is the strongest be followed." We nod our heads, finding the two statements obvious and redundant, and are for that reason happy to begin with a clear note on what has so often been a discouraging subject. A spade is a spade. A thought which might well follow immediately would be: if it were not just to follow what is just, then justice would be remarkably inefficacious and lacking in force. Still another thought following on the first might be: nothing is said about what justice is. In the second of Pascal's two propositions we again nod easily at the expression necessary: it rings with an admirable clarity. Not to recognize this meaning of force, not to recognize force as force, would be an inexcusable naivete. Pascal says in another pensee ( #82): "One would have to have a most refined mind to look at the Sultan of Turkey surrounded in his harem by forty thousand Janissaries as if he were any other man." How many people for how long were deceived by Stalin and Hitler, and by Mao and Franco, simply because they did not see what is in front of them? They were blinded by the ideologies of political theory, and worst of all they did not sense the terrible yoke of necessity under which subject peoples are bound. We accept Pascal's two propositions easily, and it is the intent of the author that we do so. In accepting the two propositions we assume without realizing it that the strongest thing we know is opposed to justice. The next pair of propositions seize upon the implied opposition between force and justice and again give us statements to which it is difficult not to assent. "Justice without force is impotent, and force without justice is tyrannical." There is a difference in the two propositions to be noted: the first one is tautological, and h3s a privative in its predicate. Impotent means without force. There well may be an emotive meaning in our nodding our heads, since in accepting the statement we are half-way to pitying justice for being impotent, and pity is tantamount to dismissal. The second proposition seems more· forceful in its effect, and strikes one as nearer to a definition. Tyrannical is a mightier adjective than impotent; it is also a famous word, and one which all piety in political 3 �The College thought must frown upon. Tyrannical is a great word, with source except custom and habit would be impious and all of the penumbra associated with great words, and it thrills illogical. In any case the good behavior and lawfulness following on habit and custom are hardly efficacious in heavenly matters. Such lawfulness is not justice at all, if justice is to be a sovereign word. It would be illogical for a faithful man of religion to deem true justice effective in this world. Again we must remember that the Pensees are not directed to persons of faith; instead they mean to bring the worldly to a state of dependence on the eternal word of God-to prepare them for citizenship in the only true Republic. us. Power excites us. The propositions as a pair have the pretty symmetry and elegance of A without B being something or other, and B without A being something much more fear- some. It is a characteristic of both the French and the Greek languages to play with such symmetrical pairs. People who speak these languages must habitually nod and be charmed and find wisdom in such neatness. There is no guarantee of either logic or wisdom in such pairs. They seem most suited for exhibitions of wit, because finesse and intelligence are necessary for their successful construction. "Justice without force is impugned, as there are always wicked people around, and force without justice stands ac- The statement or argument implicit in "there are always wicked people around" is nevertheless not directed at the real dumbbells of the world, those who insist that evil is a result of cused." The subjects of this pair are symmetrical, but not the predicates. The first proposition has the same A minus B form as did both preceeding propositions. the predicate is now impugned, or contradicted, as opposed to the predicate impotent in the previous statement. A reason for the predicate to imagine a conversation taking place there between two is now given, a reason which destroys some of the symmetry eminent but widely differing divines: Cardinal O'Connell, of the construction and thus calls special attention to the destroyer of the symmetry. I am talking of constructions and familiarly known to former generations of Bostonians as "Big broken symmetries because I am not convinced that there is a cogent argument or counter-argument here. The form of the construction would be the form of an argument if indeed arguments were formal as well as reasonable. At any rate we are told that there are always wicked people abroad in this world, and hence justice without force is always contradicted. conditioning or family or state and hence not ever-present, or who even more stupidly say that it does not exist. There is a most apt theological story which speaks to this. The story is obviously Bostonian and is laid in the fields of Hell. We are Bill," and Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy. Mrs. Eddy, upon meeting the Cardinal in the fields of flame, enquires of him the reasons for his being in Hell. The Cardinal, with a more than merely Irish repentance, replies properly that God has placed him where he is for his sins of simony and peculation in administering the archdiocese of Boston, and that he stands before her as a witness of the Almighty's eternal justice and This is a popular statement, eagerly grasped by the faithful as a part of their faith. It is also a source of solace and comfort for those who believe nothing at all. It pleases the good, as it marks them off as special, and it pleases the wicked, as it gives them company. It pleases us if we only suspect that we are good, for it is pleasant to be different from those we suspect of being bad; we obviously need a strong right arm of cal is impugned. No reasons are given, for once again the the law to keep things in check, and to shore up our own faltering virtue. assumption is made that any person would be ashamed to think otherwise. Again the word justice is employed without We should remember that the Pensees are not directed at the faithful, but at the worldly. For the faithful the wicked are ever-present, and incurable by human hands. They are anything having been said as to its nature. The argument often has been made that we innately know anyway what justice means, and if we didn't, we could not recognize it sinful products of the Fall, and we are all fallen. Sin, pride, and ambition are for the faithful curable in this hospital of madmen only by the force and power of God's Grace. To expect the wicked to be politically just in this world from any when we saw it. Pascal often talks of the heart as being the locus of the most fundamental but indefinable beginnings. In his essay on The Geometrical Mind and the Art of Persuasion he says of time what St.' Augustine said of it: "I know what 4 power. He then with a winning candor smiles and asks Mrs. Eddy what she is doing in the fields of Hell. She stamps her foot and says, "I am not here." The second proposition in the pair, "Force without justice is impugned," says little more than the similarly situated proposition of the previous pair. It states that what is tyranni- �January, 1977 time is as long as you don't ask me." Having said, however, that the beginnings or primitive words are simply present and presented to the heart, Pascal does not deny that a most rigorous train of consequences or mathematical propositions, infinite in number, follows after. In his geometrical studies the givens of space, time, and extension lead to considerations of infinite series and ways of peering imaginatively and precisely at projected shapes from one's own point of view. Thinking in series places one in a middle-but not a middle in the sense of a middle, B, with two finite extremities, A and C. One knows, in one sense of the word know, that A and C are on either side of B. They are, however, unknowably distant in the only way you can think of them-precisely in series. This way of thinking is intuitively present in the minds of everyone, and in particular in the minds of children of a certain age. I always remember the picture of the Dutch cleaning girl on the scouring-powder can who held in her hand a can of scouring powder with a Dutch girl on it who held in her hand, ... etc., etc., etc. The mind's conceiving and spawning is for Pascal an image and sometimes a parody of the infinity of the Godhead, and should teach us our place. Our place is some place, for our clear thinking has shown it to us. It is only by being able to cut ourselves down to size in this universe of unknowable and terrifying extension that we have earned whatever dignity we have. Our clear thinking based on what is presented to our hearts shows us the unknowability of anything encompassing, and makes us painfully self-conscious of the pettiness of our small neighborhood of familiarity. I would submit at this point in our discussion that justice may simply be given to us dimly in the heart, but that in our fallen state any train of consequences is perverted by that same heart, whose center is not the Godhead, but the equally unknowable pit of the Ego. We now reach a tentative conclusion in the form of a dilemma. Donc-"then" -we must put together justice and force, and to that end make what is just strong or what is strong just. "Neat," cries the audience, and we are an audience of one when we read. A dilemma has been stated with precision. We have to put A and B together-either add B to A or vice versa. Prudence demands that we should stop and examine with some care the done, the "therefore." We should be able to see clearly that if the first three pairs of propositions are true then the dilemma as stated is valid. Obviously the continuation of the pensee will have to argue for one horn or the other of the dilemma we are considering. What is there that argues we must put the first three pairs in a row and then say "therefore"? Is it that they are true, and does truth mean statements of facts? If they are statements of facts, arc facts simply the phenomena of behavior generally seen about? Does not the witness of martyrs, either religious or political, persist and show us something? Martyrs cannot even exist unless both power in this world and true justice exist together. Can a true political witness ever triumph? Perhaps not-perhaps the truths about Soviet Russia have no force or power when witnessed to, while the ever-present lies and half-truths do have force. In the dilemma of the pensee the more interesting expression is the il faut. You had better put justice and force together if you have any good sense in this world. The pensee may mean that we are forced to put them together. Certainly all of the aspirations of heavenly and of philosophical justice, and the ideologies of historical justice, float impotent above the reality of a Siberian detention camp where the dead hand of wprldly power lies like the clamp of Hell. There ideology is a cynical grimace, a cosmetic on the face of a brute. It is neither horn of the dilemma. Towards the solution of the dilemma we have first off another pair of propositions. "Justice is subject to dispute, force is most evident and indisputable." Compare this proposition immediately with the first proposition in the pensee, the tautology that it is just to follow justice and necessary to follow force. We are not now talking about the A-without-B or B-without-A which raised the dilemma of having to combine them in one of two ways. Now the statements concern what can be seen of either force or justice. Justice, being subject to dispute, cannot be seen with any clarity; if it could, it would be indisputable, like the existence and seeability of the hypotenuse of a right triangle. We instinctively, and I fear a bit shabbily, nod assent to this proposition. We are painfully aware that over half of the conversations we overhear on buses and planes, and engage upon in our own houses, are disputes about what is fair and who is responsible. There are also so many books which do not seem to agree. Second sight should pull us up a bit. It is not self-evident that justice as such is subject to dispute, even if we hear cases of it disputed about always and everywhere in daily life. It can certainly be argued that there could be no dispute about justice unless justice were clearly present. We mainly dispute whether a case falls under an understanding of justice itself. 5 �The College The understanding must perforce be more general than the particular case, or else language about justice would not be language at all. The other proposition in the pair, force is recognizable and indisputable, is at first reading still more indisputable. A bare sword, a sullen crowd, an atom bomb-to be sure they are not actual power until they are in use, nor are we evil until we actually begin to do horrid things. It seemed necessary to show in use the atom bomb twice at the conclusion of the last great war. Pascal finds power or force as the irrational given behind all political associations. A passage from Pensee #304 speaks of this: Let us imagine therefore that we see the bonds (of political association) begin to form. There will undoubtedly be strife until the stronger oppresses the weaker, and in the end there wiJI be a dominant party. But when that has been settled, then the masters, who do not \Vish strife to continue, give orders that the power which lies in their hands shall be passed on in the way that suits them: some leave it to the people to make their own choice; others decree that it shall be hereditary, etc. Pascal, as you may have noticed, seldom argues: he states persuasively what is to him the case. He does see foibles and blacknesses more clearly than any other prose writer; his clarity is a powerful persuasion embodied in short sentences. The pensee I just read is not direct observation, however, but a general statement, remarkably free of theory. It states that the beginning, the principle, is the fact of power. Later manifestations of this power in various polities and types of constitutions are simply crystallized forms of the primitive power; it is in no way thinkable to Pascal that one polity is more just than another. He thinks his favorite writer, Montaigne, is wrong when he speaks of custom as having essential power. Custom, for Pascal, should be followed simply because it is custom, and not because it is reasonable, or just, or loveable, or old-fashioned, or venerable \Vith the accretions of time. Another pensee speaks directly to this (#325): The people, however, follow custom only because they deem it just; otherwise they would not follow it any longer even though it be custom; for one does not want to be subjected to anything except reason and justice. Without that custom would pass for tyranny; but the empire of reason and justice is no 6 more tyrannical than that of pleasure; these are principles natural to man. It would be nice, he says, if one obeyed laws and customs simply because they are that and nothing else; it would be a good thing if it were known that there were no true laws or customs to introduce, and hence we had better stick to the ones we've got; reasoning in this way we would never abandon them. To quote him again directly (#325): But the people are not susceptible of such a doctrine, as they believe that the truth can be found, and that it lies in laws and customs; they believe them, and take their antiquity as proof of their truth and not merely of their bare authority apart from the truth. Hence the people obey; but they are subject to revolt as soon as some one shows them that these customs arc not worth a hill of beans; which certainly can be shown to anyone by making them look at things from a certain angle. The passage which I have just read must be one of the most calculatingly cynical statements ever crafted. It flatters anyone of us who is proud of not being one of the people, one of nature's noblemen. The Pensees are aimed at creatures of pride; behind them lurks a sneer, and a dismissal of any aristocrat who feels that by nature he is anything in particular apart from the station which birth placed him in. Never to be forgotten is the end or reason for the Pensees: the shaking of confidence and pride as a preparation for the truths of the Gospel. Without such an end we are in the closed room of cynicism, and the close-lipped chic of hidden doctrines, and the cold-blooded fascination with power politics. Our fascination with such matters bears a strict analogy to an interest in pornography. Neither power nor sex is a spectator sport. Our pensee concludes with two more principal parts, both of which arc introduced by a form of ainsi, "thus." "Thus" we have not been able to give force to justice, because power has repudiated justice and declared that it was unjust, and has maintained that power was the one that was just. The second statement: ''And thus, not being able to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just." The first of these two statements differs radically in style from the rest of the pensee. Suddenly force itself speaks, in the clause beginning with parce que, "because." It pokes its mighty head up and says that justice is unjust, and that it, force, is the one to bring home the bacon. The entire conclusion of the pensee is �January, 1977 involved in settling the "either-A-or-B" dilemma: having had to put justice and force together we have either to make what is just strong, or what is strong just. It doesn't seem to me that it settles the dilemma to say justice is subject to dispute, but force is indisputable, although it does make good sense to take what seems clear and manifest as a beginning. Language and thought do not necessarily work that way. Quite properly, I should think, we must often take as subject what is only heartfelt, and then try to spell out some clarity in what we predicate of it. But that is oRly possible if we follow reasoning in its habits of twisting through. The conclusion and solution of the dilemma in the first thus statement seem to abandon any kind of reasoning, to say simply that force wins because it is stronger, and what is stronger is more manifest. Who does make the laws after all? Answer given: me, power; or me, powerful Thrasymachus; or me, the general; or me, the manipulator; or we, the people, for that matter. Of course at this juncture in the battle justice seems to have disappeared, and the tautology of the opening of the pensee returns to strike us with new force and harshness. The impotence in the second pair of propositions at the opening of the pensee is similarly and in a similar situation reinforced and rhetorically proven in the last phrase: "and thus not being able (namely being without the power) to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just." One of the best translators of Pascal, Martin Turnell, translates the last phrase: "And so, being unable to ensure that what is right is strong, people have acted as though what was strong was right." Turnell's is a proper translation if we were right in claiming that the pensee means, and intends to mean, that the two words right and might come down to the same thing. This proposition has great force; it does seem to be the working hypothesis-and hence the rule-of the majority of the people who have power or aspire to it. Denying the proposition arouses fury and scorn. It does appear rather sophomoric to deny it unless one is extraordinarily clear in one's own mind, or unless one's own life can stand as a witness against the proposition. Of course from the mouth of Pascal the proposition has radically different overtones and meanings than it does when it is artfully placed in the mouth of Thrasymachus or Callicles. For those passionate and ambitious young men, "might makes right" is the voice of nature itself speaking in their enthusiastic if monstrous souls. For Pascal, "might makes right" is the voice of our fallen nature, and speaks of our fall from Grace and of our innate impotence-our inability to act justly, let alone to justify ourselves. For both Thrasymachus and Pascal, however, the voices of power and persuasion are the only thinkable ways of talking about politics. Reasoning about politics with any purity of discourse is foolishness. In reading over this pensee, and thinking of the rest of the pensees, most of you have probably been struck by the lack of anything that could be called a dialectic of reason, and the complete absence of what a school man would call metaphysical arguments or premises. Thrasymachus might blush when he is caught in a dialectical snare and is well aware that he has been caught, even though he claims to find the discussion childish and unrealistic. Pascal never blushes; his harshness and excess proceed untroubled and unsullied by any voices from either philosophy or tolerant good sense. He writes as a tyrant, and his charms conceal a grimace. His dictum that "all man's ills come from not being able to live in a room by himself' denies all public life, and all fulfillment and aspiration in the city or the commonwealth. Never confuse his stance with that of Hobbes or any other famous downgracler of the dignity of reason. Peace is no particular end for PascaC although he states again and again that civil war is worse than peace. Pensee # 313 speaks to this; its whole tone is a snarl. I will use Martin Turnell's translation: The greatest of evils is civil war. It becomes inevitable if we try to reward merit, because everybody thinks himself meritorious. The evil to be feared from a fool, who succeeds to a position by right of birth, is neither so great nor so certain. The simplicity of all that has been said to this point is startling, and I can only try to restate it. Pascal writes as a tyrant, intent on bullying his reader. The only thing that can be spoken to, according to him, is the heart, and given our fallen natures the heart and its desires arc infinite and tyrannical. Any seeming paradoxes are no longer paradoxes when his doctrine of the heart is once clear. In another pensee (#15) he speaks of "eloquence, which moves us by gentleness and not by authority; as a tyrant, not as a king." The authority of reason or mind is ineffectual, for reason is impotent and we have no clear sight. All of Pascal's writings on human affairs are therefore propaganda. His first fame came in a series of anonymous letters published in broadsheets and distributed throughout the kingdom. I am speaking 7 �The College of his Provincial Letters. These are witty and biting attacks on the Jesuits' contemporary casuistry, and take place within the boundaries of a political as well as a moral and religious struggle. They are the beginnings of modern journalism; there is a traceable line from them to Jack Anderson. In both the Provincial Letters and the Pensees Pascal's geornetrical mind is always behind his scepticism, and his finesse is always busy in the holy work of destruction. No one so interested in the truth, and so convinced that he was blessed by God's converting Crace, was ever more consistent and less fair. PART II. (Introduction) If we, however, are to be fair, from whatever source we may find our fairness .and compassion, we still have to go through the pensee, testing it now for the most accepted and ordinary uses of the word justice. I propose that we take the most common uses of the word~ I think there are two-and try them on for size in each part of the pensee, to see if they can suffer the meanings implicit in Pascal's sentences. If they cannot suffer such usage, or must be altered or thrown out to suit the progress of the pensee, we may in another way have come to understand it. There is no reason for us to abandon our reason and our argumentative procedures just because Pascal has such scorn for them as tools for our humiliation. The final judgment as to whether we surrender our reason is our own lonely one. Even those touched by Grace cannot communicate this judgment to others, nor can others see it in them. The statement that all man's evils come from not being able to live in a room by himself is not necessarily intended to be a negation of politics. It is more a statement of what belief itself is, of what is most essential for man. It must have come upon all of you to doubt in your heart many times that man is a political animal. Certainly the man of faith reciting the creed fully intends the "!" in "I believe." Interestingly enough, the revisors of the Book of Common Prayer have been arguing for the phrase "We believe," out of some mistaken notion of the word community. Justice also may be an interior thing; we are justified by faith as individuals. Even outside the faith one might have the odd notion of being the only true citizen, although a life consistent with such a notion would be nearly unique in common experience. 8 PART II (First Part) We intend the first and simplest use of the word justice when we are talking in ordinary conversation of what is an actual law in a particular state or city. Caesar, for example, broke the most important law of the Republic when he crossed the Rubicon and entered the home jurisdiction of Rome as a military commander followed by the might of his legions. The legions were of course not intended by law to be his legions. In other places to enter the city with one's troops might be a breach of custom; in Rome it was breaking the law. In the sense of the word justice we are now employing, Caesar's action was unambiguously unjust. Plutarch underlines the seriousness of Caesar's law-breaking by recounting that the night before he crossed the Rubicon he dreamt he had violated his mother. To break that particular law was a violation by might of the essence of the Republic, for the Republic is a place governed by law and not by might. This is not to say, however, that the lawful or just place does not employ might. Thus in the first meaning of the word, commonly accepted and understood, justice is obeying the law, and the law is nothing remote. It is written down or present in clean precedents; one can repeat it and say it to oneself; ignorance of it is no excuse. Any instituted government except the most abject tyranny has laws and defines injustice as breaking them. God in the Old Testament takes care to have them written down and engraved. We can with ease employ this meaning of justice in reading the first proposition of our pensee: "It is just that what is just be followed." The second proposition, on the necessity of following force, could be employed in conjunction with the first. The force behind the law is the police. There are no difficulties in combining the meanings here, although of course the fact of Caesar's crossing the Rubicon with an army and taking over in Rome destroys all combinations of meanings. In the next pair of propositions the simplest legal meaning of justice carries no difficulties of interpretation: "Justice without force is impotent, and force without justice is tyrannical." When the Republic is functioning we obviously need a police force and an army, for otherwise we would be impotent. On the other hand, when Caesar is a dictator we have a tyranny. An outside observer,.. however, might only see the same police force and the same legions as were present under the Republic. �January, 1977 The next pair of propositions again bear the legal sense. Legal justice Without force is contradicted because there are always wicked people around, and force without law stands things; he was neither a monster nor an idealist, although he was certainly a tyrant. accused. Cato and Cicero, and I should hope all of us, accuse force when it is illegal; yet there is Caesar with his meaning or translation of justice: "And thus, not being able to make what is legal strong, we have made what is strong demagoguery quick to annul and render impotent the laws of legal." The law by itself has often lacked strength and anarchy has appeared; then to make strength legal we have ended up with Augustus, being lucky on the whole to get the state. So we have to put together what is legal and what is powerful, and make either the legal strong or the strong legal. The last statement in the pensee is also viable with this This dilemma put again in terms of the Roman Republic anyone so good. We must know that in general in making the implies one of two solutions: that we make the lawful Repub- he put his own person at the summit of the legal edifice of the state. He was, among other things, both Tribune and Chief_Priest, and he instituted a principality and a way of strong legal we do not get Augustus, but a parody of the legal, such as the farce of the Soviet Constitution. At least the black old pig of Spain, Franco, had the honesty to write at the head of his constitution that the head of the State is answerable to God and History, and let the legal ride. This may well result in anarchy at the death of such personal rule. If there is no ruling that had more permanence than any other government real legal justice or polity there can be no succession, and in the western world except for the Roman Republic it replaced. It was a reign of some order and stability, and a fair amount of freedom. St. Paul was happy to take advantage of solution for this. lic strong with a proper army and police as Cato would have wished, or we make naked power legal, as Augustus did when its guarantees. In the next proposition-justice is subject to dispute-we run into trouble. Legal justice is not subject to dispute. This blood will decide who next sits on top. Augustus had no good PART II (Second Part) may judge of God's intentions as stated in the Old Testa- The other principal usages of the word justice in common parlance have variously elevated and lowly connotations: justice laid up in heaven, Cod's justice, the justice of aspira- ment. Nor are the law codes of ordinary states and cities tion and dialectic, the noble Stoic sense of the brotherhood of subject to dispute. We have to establish that some one person man, or the justice based on nature or some other similar artifice. We must also try out these second senses of the word on our pensee. "It is just that what is just be followed, it is is certainly the case with the Ten Commandments, if one has committed grand larceny or embezzlement or murder, but not that murder or grand larceny or embezzlement is illegal. The vigor and validity of this sense of legal justice is necessary that the strongest be followed." None of the in its clarity; it is written down and not subject to dispute- above-named understandings of justice necessitate the politi- not laid up in heaven, but here before you, and on your lips, cal; they ascend above or plunge below the political. The theological employment of a high sense of justice will talk of our justification by faith, and of the saving grace of the Lord. and written in clear English prose. We can use the legal sense of justice in two rather pertinent ways in the next pair of propositions: "Thus we have not been able to give force to legal justice, because force has contradicted legal justice and said that it was unjust, and that force was the one that was just." Force can understandably argue that way: Caesar might say that the mess of the Senate and the people and the years of awful civil strife necessitated his becoming permanent dictator, and that the good and survival of the commonwealth demanded it, and that justice (not legal justice) lay in the stability and order he could dictate. We are on the whole lucky if only Caesar says such Such a usage will collapse the meaning of force and justice, of might and right, into two aspects of the same thing. For indeed the Grace of God for the true believer is, in fact and in revelation, power. In the blessed Republic of God and the Angels the seeing or the science of power is the seeing or the science of love and grace. If we are not talking as theologians, and again are employing a high sense of the word justice, the first two propositions in our pensee have inevitable and startling implications. If I were to argue and trust that what can be known and seen in the classic sense of science cannot 9 �The College be other than something which is irresistible, and that the test of the knowing is the inability to stray from the knowable, then the knowable and the mighty and the just are aspects of the same thing, no matter if tyrants prosper and the good don't. Then I would argue with consistency that the tyrant is unhappy and the good man happy. Virtue and justice will follow upon knowledge. Strange statements will emerge, like Socrates' claim of being the only true citizen of the city. In the next proposition, "Justice without force is impotent," we have again to perform several shifts in translation and meaning. If the good, just, and seeing man does good and is happy even though tortured on the rack, then the proposition is meaningless. But in assuming such a meaning we are not in any simple way still talking of politics. The meaning of the proposition changes like quicksilver if we take the theoretical meaning of justice as employed by the sceptical or atheistical philosophers of nature. If, as they claim, nature in its theorized primitive state is fu11 of fear and passion, and life is perfectly horrid there, then the stronger of the passions rules, the stronger man has an upper hand, and reason will step in to contract for some order, calculating and reckoning and producing an out-put which is justice. Justice without force is simply a nonsense proposition when justice is a calculation based on self-interest and arising out of force. Justice without force is unthinkable because it, justice, arises out of force. "Force without justice is tyrannical." This proposition of course can make sense in the understanding of the sceptical nature philosophers, for justice is reckoning~ the calculation of reason. Without it one is thrust back into strife and primitive nature, and there arc no longer bulwarks and safeguards, the contracts of reason. There are again those who use the special and elevated sense of the word justice so as to find in the word "impotent" or powerless a sign of glory. In the reversal of worldly meaning implied in this sense, a man who is powerless and scorned is to be revered. The viewpoint is not necessarily theological or Christian. In co-ordination with the meaning the word "force" would have to shift gears and mean something akin to muscles or vim and vigor~at the very least a squad of submachine guns. The theological import of the next pair or propositions we investigated earlier when we too~ the mechants, the bad, to 10 be sinners. If, thinking of the higher philosophic sense of justice, we are calling them not sinners but simply bad, we must be calling bad those who don't see or intuit the things we see as present and forceful and true. In such an understanding the bad are the stupid-something that Christians are not allowed to say, although I suspect Pascal is often tempted to. When we examine the proposition "Power without justice stands accused," we find perhaps the most extreme shifts of meaning. The elevated meaning of justice may well impugn and dismiss both legal justice and the meaning and force of legal justice. Augustus' reign was a reign of the power of the first citizen, who had gained his power by God knows what devious and bloody means. There reigned under him legal justice. A believer in the higher sense of justice might well impugn such a polity, calling it one without justice. The real dispute would not be between power and justice, but between the two meanings of justice as the word is commonly understood. Here in a most pungent and real way poor Justice is indeed "subject to dispute." The Bible instructs us to render unto Caesar Augustus what is due to him, and unto the Lord what is due unto Him. One meaning of this advice would be, I suppose, to accept the power that is on this earth as God's will, and its pronouncements as legal and binding, and to leave to God's Eternal Law the supernatural ends of salvation and justification. Thus we can immediately stop the dispute to which justice is subject: we accept the force here, and the power and the blood and the guilt implicit in all worldly things, as being legally just, and sanctioned in God's Plan. God's Plan in time, his Providence, is the higher sense of justice, even though it is not open to us or available for our seeing and intuiting. This understanding would offer us a way of reading the next proposition: "We must put justice and force together and either make what is just strong or vice versa." Also the statements "Justice is subject to dispute in this world," and "force is most recognizable" can now be read theologically. God's justice is not known to our minds, and hence we dispute. But his power in the wor1d in parting the Red Sea, in raising Lazarus, and in touching the rough hearts of men with his Grace is manifest-there are witnesses. Reading the pensee in this fashion, we are forced to an untenable position: it has been constantly argued that the Pens€es are not aimed at real believers, and hence Pascal cannot be talking here of such theological matters. �January, 1977 PERORATION The intended audience of the Pensees is a worldly audience. A worldly audience would be attracted by the pair of propositions in the dilemma of our pensie. A worldly audience is neither theological or philosophical. They know the corruption of the world and the vanities of society. Comedies of pride and prejudice constitute the subject-matter of their preferred plays and novels. Out of their cultivated scepticism they will find it good sense to support Augustus, or Louis XIV, or even, as foreigners, Salazar. Whether they themselves are politically al-llbitious or not-and for the more sophisticated among them rule would be vulgar-force and power are facts which they pride themselves on recognizing. They call a sword a sword and let ploughshares be ploughshares. This habit of thinking about power and justice is to them a given-and one which Pascal uses. Persuasion has to hit what is already present in the habits and souls of the persons being influenced. A real persuader must imagine himself inside the skins of those he wants to persuade and then try on for size whatever he is going to say, and see how it moves. He is a student of the heart and of its prejudices, its vanities, and its ambitions. Never forget that "propaganda" is a term originating with the Vatican ministry for-"The Propagation of the Faith."' A theological persuader like Pascal finds ready-made for his use in the hearts of the worldly the opinions necessary to demonstrate the fallen nature and the efficacy and self-evidence of power. Ready-made for his persuasion is the certainty in such minds and hearts of the u nknowability of any thing or of any pure category or species. Ready-made for his persuasion is the new power of mathematics, the power of the new nature studies, the new habits of infinite series. They have all the chic of the new and of the anti-scholastic. Ready-made for his persuasion are also boredom, and the ennui of society, and a sense of the folly of gaming and hunting and the endless pursuit of honor and pleasure. Ready-made is the fear of enthusiasm as being gauche. Ready-made also is the distress a sophisticated mind feels in pushing any new kind of rationalism of science into explaining God or the structure of the Ego. Ready-made for persuasion is the heavy sense of impotence in the face of the endless world and its troubles and foibles, and the near impossibility and bad taste of imagining the possibility of * de propaganda fide. (Ed.) change. Ready-made is the dead hand of complete acceptance of whatever is, and the conviction that any revolution in the world is a sign of folly and of greater evils lying in store. Ready-made is the sense of having no place in the maddening and inane distances of interstellar space. Readymade is the conviction that only power and imagination effect anything in our lives, a feeling evidenced by our interest in style, taste, and literature. Ready-made is the near necessary conviction that all we know of the unknowable and monstrous soul are its gestures, its style, and what it is, superficially, on the outside. Power and force only affect the outside. Our acceptance of the powers of the world meansand this is also ready-made-that we don't want those powers to tamper with what's inside; we will leave them in their place-outside-if they demand no more than obeisance to their might and to their state religion. Such political, such worldly power, has its analogue and complement for Pascal, and also for St. Augustine, in the Grace of God which can shape and change and effect the inward revolution, the only crucial revolution. The tone at the end of our pensie is more than harsh; it is not far from a snarl, and one must wonder at its rhetorical effect. Are there souls which are ready-made for such excess? Are these souls mathematical in their insistence on absolute answers, and in their rejection of all compromise? Is there an organ of faith which is touched by such goings-on? Anyone who can whistle in the dark is offended by Pascal. Not ready-made for his persuasion are men who do not fear death. Certainly Pascal knew most shrewdly and constantly that his real enemy was Montaigne, for Montaigne was talking to the audience Pascal wanted to capture-an audience composed of honnetes hommes. Montaigne's moral jauntiness is insupportable to PascaL His mathematical mind cannot stomach a compromise, although a part of him simultaneously adores and is horrified by his own native wit and finesse. He carries the doctrine of the heart to such a logical conclusion that any worldly manifestation of love is suspect. God is the only enduring object of love; all created things-and all lesser propositions-are worthy of love only in so far as they reflect God's essence. This is traditional belief. It is carried to radical extremes by Pascal, who seemed to feel that to love one's neighbor or even one's sister was to steal from God. Everything in this world is temporary and hence, for his mathematical mind, worthless as compared to 11 �The College Pascal's death mask. the infinite worth of Cod. This radical conviction can stifle compassion, and what is known as Christian charity. The heart becomes a place of horrors, and hate rises from the place of love. The snarl at the end of our pensee reflects this. Nature in the hands of this new physicist is also a place of horror; the old injunction of the Psalmist to worship God in the fulness of his firmament becomes lost in the horror of the infinite. Such horrors and vituperations we ourselves must try on for size-not merely describe. They are part of Pascal's rhetoric, and walk hand-in-hand with power and violence. To be sure, sensible men have always said that politics and power were practical, not theoretical matters, and that persuasion was the very subject-matter of power. In political persuasion if you are moved, then power has been evidenced. There is no distinction between what is said and how it is said, because the saying and the moving are the subject. Pascal, however, takes a grim pleasure in the stark honesty of power, in power which needs no disguises and is an evil manifest in this world, dissociated from God, yet intended by Him to be that way. Can such a view affect a non-Christian? It must have some attraction, or Pascal's rhetoric would have 12 no ground upon which to plant its seeds, and could not with consistency be an Apology for Christianity. His way of dealing with things must test our own feelings, our own hearts, and, if we think, our thoughts. It was Gibbon, the sceptic and accuser of Christianity, who remarked that he had learnt his style in theological matters from reading Pascal's Provincial Letters. Pascal's rhetoric is a double-edged sword. · In reading Pascal on matters of this world, we have to observe carefully and be on guard. Realpolitik-the politics of power and the cool and cynical talk about it-can be a heady and facile temptation for which we are only too ready-made. Those of us who neither are theologians, nor would venture to call ourselves philosophers, find ready-made in us the ground for such persuasions, especially if we are entranced with clarity and have a strong dose of the geometrical in us. Our finesse easily enough points out to us the never-ending muddles of the middle ground. We can hope that our compassion and good sense, from whatever source they may arise, will preserve us from the extremities of either political theory or despair. But a still more sensible voice which acts like a censor keeps whispering that none of this will be possible unless we are lucky, unless we are blessed by fortune. We in this country have indeed been lucky and blessed by fortune, so far. �Trial in Berlin by Beate Ruhm von Oppen The place of the trial was Berlin, the time January 1945; the court the so-called People's Court, the highest court for political crimes, such as treason. It was meeting in a requisitioned building, the court building having been destroyed by bombs. The presiding judge was Roland Freisler, the same that had tried and sentenced some rebellious students in Munich in 1943. He had tried many cases since. The present one now as one of his last. Three weeks later he was killed in a massive air raid on Berlin. The chief defendant in this trial in the last winter of the war was a thirty-seven year old lawyer and landowner by name of Moltke, Count Moltke. He had a whole string of names. The court only used the first, Helmuth. The war was approaching its end. The British and Americans had sustained and defeated Hitler's last gamble, a winter offensive in the West, in the Ardennes. The Russians were about to enter Germany on a broad front in the East. Text of a lecture given at St. John's College, Annapolis, on November 30, and at St. John's College, Santa Fe, on December 7, 1973. Miss Ruhm von Oppen has been a member of the faculty since 1960-63, and again since 1971. The photographs here and on page 17 were taken at Moltke's trial. Frcislcr is the man on the extreme left, Moltke on the right. The People's Court Trials were not open to the public which was, in fact, very carefully excluded from them. Security was extremely strict. But the trials were filmed. Moltke was allowed to sit because, suffering from severe sciatica, he was hardly able to stand. Hence, but for the presence of helmeted policemen, the appearance-almost-of a seminar. The trial in Berlin was a treason trial. But, as the defendant wrote to his wife, "This affair is really somewhat better than the celebrated Huber case. For even less actually happened. We did not so much as produce a leaflet." What he meant by "the celebrated Huber case" was the case of those Munich students and their Professor, Kurt Huber, who had been sentenced to death for writing and spreading leaflets against the Nazis. The group had chosen "The White Rose" as its name. I lectured about it in Annapolis a couple of years ago. In the subsequent discussion the name of the group and the students who chose it were referred to as rather too "exquisite" and concentration on leaflets as a way of fighting the Nazis was criticized as unrealistic: why didn't they rather gather arms. My response 13 �The College was to ask what a handful of students could be expected to do against the kind of regime I had tried to describe. I had probably failed to set if off clearly enough against a mere police state, let alone pre-revolutionary America, or, for that matter, Richard Nixon's. Incidentally, those students had, in fact, carried arms, for strictly tactical purposes: when they went out at night to write slogans on walls and expected to have to shoot their way out if the police arrived. That question "why didn't they?" and the counter-question "what could they do?" stand for a whole range of "why didn't they" questions, questions of methods and purposes, means and ends. And together they raise the question of what is sometimes called "realism." Why did the defendant in the Berlin trial two years later consider his case "even better" than the case of the White Rose? Because, he said oddly enough, "even less actually happened." We shall have to see what in fact did happen. And then we might try to discuss whether we agree or disagree that such a case was "better." The discussion may be difficult and should be delicate; it must be conducted with some awareness of the prevailing circumstances-which there is now no time to describe. When I say that the Nazi system went beyond a mere police state I mean that its legal and extra-legal methods and instruments of persuasion and of coercion were more comprehensive and more dreadful. It was a one-party state in which all rival parties and organizations were forbidden. The press, the media, all publications were strictly controlled, and so were the pulpits, though the regime did not dare go all out in a frontal onslaught on the churches. But National Socialism had the character of a counter-religion. It was especially intent on the indoctrination of the young. To have any kind of career at all presupposed membership in the Hitler Youth, which was officially compulsory, though some managed to escape it. The Nazi Party, or, to give it its full name, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, was not only a party, but a Movement, one which swept much before it that had seemed quite stable before. Once in power it engendered and exploited psychological pressures among the people that were unprecedented in modern society, or, for that matter, in any society. There was, in addition to new laws, prisons and the legal administration of justice, the whole universe of concentration camps, even in peace time; during the war they proliferated and once Hitler had decided on the destruction of the Jews of Europe, death camps were added in the occupied East. Their existence and operation was secret, a State Secret. Rumor was always rife-and always punishable-and reliable and comprehensive information impossible to come by. In peace-time the unauthorized getting and spreading of information could be punished as defamation of the state or of the Party or Movement; in war-time it might rank as treason. Anyone resisting the system had a hard time and a short expectation of life. For someone who had opposed the Nazis from the beginning, the defendant in that trial in Berlin in January 1945 had had a surprisingly long life. But then Helmuth James von Moltke, who achieved the age of thirty-seven, bore a name 14 that was renowned in the annals of German history; and he was a trained lawyer. Hitler hated lawyers. He knew why. The defendant's great-grand-uncle Helmuth von Moltke was the general who had enabled the Prussian chancellor Bismarck to beat the Austrians and the French and to unite the German states in the second German Reich. The name of Moltkc still had some magic in Hitler's Third Reich. The family estate Kreisau, in Silesia, which had been the old Moltke's reward for his services to the fatherland, had passed to his great-grand-nephew. In fact Helmuth James had had to take it on, quite suddenly and not at all enthusiastically, in 1929, at the age of 22, during the world economic crisis produced by the Wall Street crash, which coincided with the discovery that Kreisau was very heavily in debt, with bankruptcy quite probable. He set to work with a will, and within a year he had, by clint of great skill, extremely hard work and negotiations, made Kreisau solvent once more. The defendant's mother was of British-South-African descent. James Rose Innes, her father, was a famous chief justice in South Africa, renowned for his liberalism. His grandson Helmuth James von Moltke's legal flair and training may have been a factor that prolonged his life. In the end it did not save it, though it enabled him to go exhaustively into all the possibilities of defence against the charges brought against him. He even had the effrontery to argue in mitigation the fact that he had never made a secret of his critical attitude, but on the contrary had, as he thought it was his duty and that of any servant of the state, warned against policies and practices he saw as dangerous and harmful. The court's reaction to this line of defence is not recorded. In fact all we have on the course of the trial is Moltke's own fairly full account and comment which he smuggled out to his wife in three letters between being tried, sentenced, and hanged; and the official Top Secret text of the sentence, with reasons. What were those reasons? That the defendant had had knowledge of a plot to overthrow the government, declined to join it and warned his friends against it, but did not report it to the authorities. And that he himself formed a circle to seize power, in case of a German defeat, with people who were not National Socialists. These reasons were spelled out in greater detail, as follows: The accused was administrator and finally owner of the family estate Kreisau in Silesia. He was also a lawyer, specializing in international law and admitted at the British Bar. His membership in Nazi Party organizations was minimal, just enough to allow him to carry on his farming and legal practice. In the war he was employed as legal adviser to the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces. He always took-the official account now adds somewhat suddenly and incongruously-an interest in religious and ecclesiastical questions, in the relationship between church and state and the question of "rechristianization", as well as in agrarian policy and the decentralization of administration. Around 1941, the official account goes on, he began to think about the future in case the war should be lost, and started discussing it with friends and acquaintances, none of �January, 1977 whom were National Socialists and some of whom had since been convicted as traitors. In 1942 and 1943 there were two longer meetings at Kreisau, the first dealing with rechristianization and the relations of church and state. The Jesuit father Alfred Delp-who was a co-defendant at this trial and also sentenced to death-spoke about the Catholic view on social policy, with special reference to the papal encyclical Quadragesimo Anno. And Moltke later checked with a Catholic Bishop that the hierarchy still endorsed that document. The second Kreisau meeting dealt with questions of administration and the relationship of the states and the Reich. There was also a search for people who would be suitable and willing to carry out the policies that were discussed. Meanwhile there had been contact with the conspiratorial circle of Carl Goerdeler, the former Mayor of Leipzig, to which Moltke was opposed because he considered it reactionary, (while he, let me interpolate, was interested in establishing common ground between socialists-many of them very anti-clerical-as well as conservatives and liberals and Christians, between trade unions and the churches of both denominations; the Protestant church being far more to the Right in Germany than the Catholic). The official document summed the case up in the following words: "All Count Moltke did constitutes treason: high treason in the midst of waf. He cannot lessen its gravity by saying that he was only thinking and did not proceed to carrying out plans. For he did more than think: he also gathered a circle for the discussion and development of plans; and finally he looked for men to carry them out . . . " The reasoning of the sentence goes on to argue that even thinking about the case of defeat is criminal; and that the definition of treason cannot be limited to a man out to rob us of our way of life by his own exercise of force. In peace that might be an acceptable limit. But in war the outer enemy counts on the internal opponent and vice versa. Moltke's treason must be regarded as a particularly grave case. He spread defeatism and helped the enemy. At this point two articles of the penal code were adduced: paragraph 83 (on organizational cohesion) and paragraph 91b (on aiding an enemy); in addition, paragraph 5 of the Special Penal Ordinance for War which dealt with activities or utterances detrimental to the national defence or to morale, and which was evidently made to apply to Mo1tke's defeatism and its infectious effects or potential. But, the explanation of the sentence went on, this was not all. From 1940 onward Moltke heard about and members of his circle were in contact with the group of Ludwig Beck (a former chief of general staff) and of Carl Goerdeler. This group was plotting to overthrow the government. Moltkc was against it, on the grounds, inter alia, that he knew from his visits to London before tl1e war that Goerdeler's British contacts were confined to right-wing reactionaries. Yet finally he agreed to a meeting of the two groups at which he explained his opposition to Goerdeler. The meeting broke up in acrimony. Moltke continued to warn his associates against the Goerdeler group. Yet he did not report it to the au- thorities. This omission alone would be punishable by death under paragraph 139 of the Penal Code. But the real point was that all these things were part of a whole and meant that Moltke made himself into a servant of the enemy and therefore had to be punished by death. -So much for a summary of the sentence. Actually the deatl1 penalty was not mandatory under any of the laws that were adduced. Much therefore depended on the judge and his impression of and reaction to the accused. The judge was Roland Freisler, the most radical and ruthless of the Nazi judges-Hitler himself once referred to him as a 'Bolshevik' in his Table Talk. He was, as I have said, the same judge that had presided over the court that sentenced the Munich students. But that was nearly two years earlier, in February 1943. During the last winter of the war and after the initial rage and vengeance against all who were connected with the plot of july 1944 was spent, after thousands of arrests and hundreds of executions, during the winter of the Russian advance on Germany and the last German offensive in the West, it was observed that the People's Court was perhaps getting a bit more lenient in its sentences. Therefore Moltke, who had been opposed to assassination, indeed to any attempt to overthrow the regime by force, and who had been under arrest since January 1944, six months before Stauffenberg planted his bomb and failed to kill Hitler, on 20 July 1944, Moltke had, it would seem, a chance of getting away with a prison sentence. The official arguments, for all their harping on his education and elevated position and the greater responsibility these carried with them, were not very convincing on the need to kill him and Alfred Delp, but not Eugen Gerstenmaier, a Protestant cleric, or church official, another Kreisauer and co-defendant who, unlike the other two, was actually arrested at Stauffenberg's conspiratorial headquarters in the war ministry in Berlin in the evening of 20 july 1944, and who nonetheless got off with a seven year jail sentence. There were, of course, plenty of other things Moltke had done that the court did not know about and that would have laid him open to severe punishment. In the absence of such knowledge and of convincing arguments in the official explanation of the sentence, we must now turn to the trial itself. Moltke's own account of it is reliable and has been preserved~! am tempted to say "as by a miracle" or a whole series of miracles. First the very fact that he was able to write it, able not only psychologically but physically. Usually those condemned to death were hauled straight off to the gallows. Moltke was taken back to his prison cell. Then, the Protestant prison chaplain, Harald Poelchau, was a friend of his and had been a member of his circle, a fact that was never found out in the year of investigation. This chaplain smuggled letters from Moltke to his wife and back. He also managed to smuggle out the account of the trial. And she managed to keep it out of the hands of the police, as she managed to keep all his other letters and the Kreisau plans and papers, though Silesia became a theatre of war and is now Polish. When we turn to Moltke's own account, we find that all those flat phrases in the official sentence about Moltke' s 15 �The College interest in questions of church and state and in "rechristianization"-phrases that were tucked away among get your orders from? You get your orders from the other things like agrarian policy and decentralization-that for you as much as for any other German; and anyone who takes his orders, no matter under what camouflage, from the guardians of the other world, even the mention of Kreisau discussions of Catholic views on social policy concealed rather than revealed the drama of the trial, and concealed it for good reason, the same reason that made Moltke urge his wife to get his account of the trial to people who would make it known. Three times he stated it in his letters. The first time he called it the crux and climax of the whole thing, the second time "the single idea" that got him convicted, the third time the drama or dialogue of the trial. What was that crux, what filled him with such relief and gratitude about the way the trial had gone, the trial that condemned him to death? It was the judge's explicit recognition of the incompatibility of Christianity and Nazism, a recognition the Nazis had always taken a great care not to make openly and officially explicit, however much their actions might bespeak it. The arguments of the official sentence were flat, tortuous, and unconvincing because, although the document was Top Secret, the court did not dare put in writing what had been elicited from the mouth of the judge, forced from him by the complete and incontrovertible non-violence of the defendant, a defendant who was able and willing to take his stand on principle, willing to stake his life, able to manage his defence Fuehrer and the National Socialist Party! That goes is taking them from the enemy, and will be dealt with accordingly." "And so it went on," commented Moltke, "but in a key which made the earlier paroxysms appear as the gentle rustlings of a breeze." After this climax, he added, the end came in about five minutes. He summed up this first account of what went on in court in these words: This concentration on the church aspect of the case corresponds with the intrinsic nature of the matter and shows that Freisler is a good political judge after all. It gives us the inestimable advantage of being killed for something which (a) we really have done and which (b) is worthwhile. A bit later in the same letter he commented: The best thing about a judgment on such lines is this: It is established that we did not wish to use force; it is further established that we did not take a single step towards setting up any sort of organization, nor question anyone as to his readiness to take over any particular post-though the indictment in a way that did not permit his accusers to pervert the cause of his condemnation as was commonly done. Let me give you those three places in Moltke's own words, translated: I am convinced they are an accurate reproduction of what went on in that court. He had a lawyer's memory. stated otherwise. We merely thought. . . . And in face of the thoughts of ... three isolated men, their The first. After the discussion of the charge of defeatism and of preparations for the time after the Nazis, Moltke goes We are to be hanged for thinking together. Freisler on to Freisler's diatribe: But now came the crux of the whole thing. "And who was present? A Jesuit father! Of all people a Jesuit father! And a Protestant minister, and three others who were later sentenced to death for com- plicity in the July 20 plot! And not a single National Socialist! No, not one, I must say: that does remove the figleaf! A Jesuit father, and with him, of all people, you discuss questions of civil disobedience! And you also knew the Provincial Head of the Jesuits! He too came to Kreisau once! A Jesuit Provincial, one of the highest officials of Germany's most dangerous enemies, he visits Count Moltke at Kreisau! And you are not ashamed of it, even though no decent German would touch a Jesuit with a barge-pole! People who have been excluded from all military service because of their attitude! If I mere thoughts, National Socialism gets in such a panic that it wants to root out everything they may have infected. There's a compliment for you . . , . is right, a thousand times right; and if we are to die, I am in favour of dying on this issue. But he hoped that their death could be turned to some immediate account and added: I am of the opinion-and now I am coming to what has got to be done-that this affair, properly presented, is really somewhat better than the celebrated Huber case. For even less actually happened. We did not so much as produce a leaflet. It is only a question of men's thoughts without even the intention to resort to violence. . . . All that is left is a single idea: how Christianity can prove a sheet- anchor in time of chaos. And just for this idea five heads . . . look like being forfeited tomorrow. . . . Because he made it clear that I was opposed in principle to large estates, that I had no class interests at heart, no personal interests at all, not even those know there is a Provincial of the Jesuits in a town, it is almost enough to keep me out of that town altogether! And the other reverend gentleman. What was he after there? Such people should confine their spread the story and make full use of it. And indeed, in my view, this should be done both at home and attentions to the hereafter and leave us here in abroad. For our case histories provide documentary peace! And you went visiting Bishops! Looking for something you had lost, I suppose! Where do you 16 of my outfit, but stood for the cause of all mankind, for all these reasons Freisler has unwittingly done us proof that it is neither plots nor plans but the very spirit of man that is to be hunted down .... a great service, insofar as it may prove possible to �January, 1977 Hitler? Where lie your loyalty and your faith?" Rhetorical questions, of course. At any rate Freisler is the first National Socialist who has grasped who I am. Then there was a pause during which the Catholic prison chaplain visited Moltke and he was shaved and given some coffee and something to eat, and then he resumed the letter: The decisive phrase in the proceedings was: " . . . Christianity has one thing in common with us National Socialists, and one thing only: we claim the whole man." And later this letter, which supplements and amplifies his earlier report, goes on to describe how the Christian compo- nent of the case came to be singled out, by the providential elimination not only of all connections with plans for a violent overthrow of the regime but also of co-defendants and charges and motivations that would have enabled the court to All this was written after the prosecutor had asked for the death sentence for Moltke and four co-defendants, but before the court had pronounced. The next day, January II, brought the decision: Moltkc and Delp and one other were to pin blame on individual or sectional interests. "And so finally I am selected," Moltke writes, as a Protestant, am attacked and condemned primar- ily because of my friendship with Catholics, which Moltke once more returned to the drama of the I Oth when he means that I stood before Freisler not as a Protestant, not as a big landowner, not as an aristocrat, not as a Prussian, not as a German-all that was definitely . .. eliminated earlier in the trial. . . . No, I stood wrote: there as a Christian and as nothing else. "The figleaf die, Gerstenmaier got off with a prison sentence. On that day The following, as it turned out was the really dramatic thing about the trial. During the proceedings all factual charges had proved to be untenable and were dropped .... Schulze [the prosecutor] in his summing-up expressly stated that this case "differs radically from all parallel cases, for in the conversations there was no mention of violence or is off,'' says Freisler. Yes, every other category had been removed. Yau can read those letters in a little book.' There is also a full-length biography** that gives some of the historical and sociological context of the life that culminated in this trial. The question is-though it does not figure very prominently in that biography-whether there is a real and necessary organised opposition" -whereas the question under connection between the Christian convictions of this political discussion was the practical demands of the Christian ethic, nothing more. And it is for this alone that convict and his life and actions up to that final dialogue. I think there is. Moltke himself certainly thought there was. we stand condemned. Moltke continues: In one of his tirades Freisler said to me: "Only in one respect does National Socialism· resemble Chris- tianity: we demand the whole man." I don't know if the others sitting there took it all in, for it was a sort of dialogue between Freisler and me-a dialogue of the spirit, since I did not get the chance actually to say much-in the course of which we got to know one another through and through. Freisler was the only one of the whole gang who thoroughly understood me, and the only one of them who realized why he must do away with me. There was no more talk of me as a "complex character" or of "compli- cated thinking" or of "ideology," but: "the figleaf is off." But only so far as Freisler was concerned. It was as though we were talking to each other in a vacuum. He made not a single joke at my expense, as he did against Delp and Eugen. No, in my case it was all grimmest earnest. "From whom do you take your orders, from the other world or from Adolf ' * * It was in the summer of 1940, when France had fallen, Russia was still neutral and in league with Germany, and Hitler was at the pinnacle of his power and seemed invinci~ ble, that Moltke had started, systematically, to collect the secret standing seminar of conservatives, liberals, socialists, Protestants, and Catholics, for the discussion of a human political order to supersede the Nazis' so-called New Order. One of the first things the group found itself in agreement on-and that included the socialists-was the need to rechristianize Germany if it was to be re-humanized. This did not mean a clericalization of politics or education. It meant a restoration and defence of the ·freedom of religion and of conscience. This experience of the rediscovery of the central political relevance of Christianity during the years of Nazi rule is *A Gennan of the Resistance. The Last Letters of Count Helmuth fames von Moltke. Third Edition (Berlin: Hcnssel Verlag, 1972). **Michael Balfour and Julian Frisby, Helmuth von Moltke: A Leader Against Hitler (London: Macmillan, 1972, and New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973). 17 �The College described at greater length in a chapter of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethics. I have often been struck by the way Bonhoeffer's writings are exemplified or paralleled in Moltke's life. The two men knew each other. They even travelled together to Scandinavia on a wartime mission, in the spring of 1942, for the Abwehr or Counter-Intelligence department, the "outfit" Moltke referred to in his prison letter, a hotbed of conspiracy against the Nazis, whose heads, Canaris and Oster, were later executed too. Otherwise Moltke and Bonhoeffer had little contact and they did not see eye to eye on the desirability of assassinating Hitler. But more of that anon. What matters here is the discovery both men and many others made in the Nazi years that there was a close connection between Christianity and civilization and between apostasy and barbarism, or, as Bonhoeffer put it, that "Reason, culture, humanity, tolerance, and self-determination, all these concepts which until very recently had served as battle slogans against the church, against Christianity, against Jesus Christ himself, had now, suddenly, surprisingly, come very near indeed to the In such an undertaking one needed a faith to sustain one, faith that fortified one against being overwhelmed by the historic events of the moment and their massive psychological effects, and faith that had indeed a connection with "another world" from that dominated not only by the Nazis but by all those who thought like them elsewhere: or those who, at any rate, could not free themselves from the coils of collective thinking. This, of course, is natural enough in time of war, even one that, like the second world war, has an aspect of international civil war about it. Even in peace people find it difficult or even undesirable to think of themselves and others except as parts of collectivities. In fact nowadays that is how "identity" tends to be defined: in terms of membership of this or that collective: black, white, red; racial, religious, national, or sexuaL But in war the need to feel one belongs to some group or other becomes even stronger. And nations, naturally, lay claim to their nationals and require them to perform services and observe loyalties. Christian standpoint." Or, more starkly, also in the Ethics: Moltke, incidentally, did at one time think of emigrating, "There seems to be a general unconscious knowledge which, leaving his Silesian estate-to which he was very much attached-leaving his law practice in Berlin, leaving his German roots and connections, and trying to make a go of it in the hour of ultimate peril, leads everything which desires not to fall victim to the Antichrist to take refuge with Christ." After which Bonhoeffer goes on to comment on the truth of both statements in the Gospels that "He that is not against us is for us" and "He that is not with me is against me." It could, of course, be argued, and often is, especially once in England where he qualified as a lawyer by virtually commuting across the Channel in the late 1930's; but he had understandable hesitations, and when the war broke out, he was in Germany. earlier phase of the Nazi regime. But subsequent experience He then worked as a legal adviser to the German High Command and did his uhnost to persuade his superiors of the benefits of international law. He laboured to prevent or taught him otherwise. During the war, in the spring of 1942, reduce breaches of it by the Germans, even to interpret the crisis is over, that decency could be restored and defended without religious sanction. Moltke himself thought so in the in a long letter on the German situation which he managed infractions by the other belligerents in ways that favoured to get to a friend in England, he wrote: them. In human terms this meant, for instance, getting people classified as prisoners of war whose status under the Geneva Conventions might be rather dubious, or arguing Perhaps you will remember that, in discussions be- fore the war, I maintained that belief in God was not essential for coming to the results you arrive at. To-day I know that I was wrong, completely wrong. You know that I have fought the Nazis from the first day, but the amount of risk and readiness for sac- rifice which is asked from us now, and that which may be asked from us tomorrow, require more than right ethical principles, especially as we know that the success of our fight will probably mean a total collapse as a national unit. But we are ready to face this. This last consideration must have been a very serious one. Among his oppositional friends and associates Moltke was probably unique in not only not being a nationalist but not even a patriot. The others felt that in opposing Hitler they were the real patriots, however much the Nazis might arrogate a monopoly of patriotism to themselves. But Moltke was above even those considerations and the consolations and conflicts they gave rise to. Yet he knew that the fight against the Treaty of Versailles had been Hitler's trump card at home and abroad and that the threat of another such treaty or a worse one made domestic resistance a desperately lonely undertaking. 18 against the slave trade: that foreign labour should not be forcibly drafted to Germany but that people should rather be allowed to man their own industries at home in the occupied countries, or it might mean fighting against Hitler's order that any captured Russian political Commissars should not be treated as prisoners but were to be shot at once. Moltke was indefatigable in this work and achieved an amazing amount of success considering his relatively junior rank. Some of his successes might not be lasting-but even just prolonging sorneone's life or liberty was worth the effort. His powers of persuasion must have been prodigious. What he ascribed them to himself, apart from hard work (he was always in command of his facts), was the appeal he could make, beside all arguments of expediency he might marshal, to the residual decency in people, who might even be relieved, on some occasions, to hear someone say things that had once been generally accepted as true and good, but which were now as generally relegated to the status of sentimentality or worse. In the pursuit of such "sentimentality," or one might call it "justice" or "humanity", he had to keep and use his head. Theatrical gestures would have helped no one. But this need �January, 1977 to keep his head worried him at times, when he wondered whether he was getting hardened, just as he had already worried earlier whether the mere fact of staying and carrying on might not help maintain the facade behind which the Nazis did their devilish work. The strain of this sometimes became almost unbearable. A letter of October 1941 may give you an idea of this. It was written at a time when Russia was but America was not yet in the war. In his official position Moltke had access to classified information, the kind of thing that never got into the press. He writes: The day has been so full of ghastly news that I can't write collectedly although I came back at 5 and have had tea. What I mind most at the moment is the inadequacy of the reaction of the military. Fa]. kenhausen and Stuelpnagel (they were the generals in charge of Belgium and France) have returned to their places instead of resigning after the latest incidents, new and horrible orders are going out and nobody seems to care. How can one bear one's share of guilt? In one part of Serbia two villages have been reduced to ashes, and of the inhabitants, I, 700 men and 240 women have been executed. This was called the "punishment" for the attack on three German soldiers. In Greece 240 men were shot in one village. The village was burnt down, the women and children were left on the spot to mourn their husbands and fathers and homes. In France extensive shootings are going on as I write. In this way certainly more than a thousand men are being murdered every day and thousands more Germans are being habituated to murder. And all that is child's play compared to what is happening in Poland and Russia. Is it right for me to learn of these things and yet sit at my table in a well-heated room and drink tea? Do I not thereby make myself into an accomplice? What shall I say when I am asked: "And what did you do during this time?'' Since Saturday they have been herding the Berlin jews together. They are collected at 9.15 in the evening and shut into a synagogue overnight. Then they are sent, with what they can carry, to Lodz and Smolensk. The authorities want to spare us the sight of how they are left to perish in hunger and cold and that is why it is done in Lodz and Smolcnsk. A friend of Kiep's saw a Jew collapse in the street; when she wanted to help him get up, a policeman intervened, prevented her and kicked the body as it lay on the ground, so that it rolled into the gutter. Then he htrned to the lady with a last vestige of shame and said: "Those arc our orders." How can one know of such things and still walk about a free man? His actions gave the answer. It was not a question of the "right" to refrain from an instant reflex. It was a case of duty. There were things he could do or could try to do, and those he did, accepting the risk of arrest, but not courting it. Hatching or joining a plot to kill Hitler was not among those things. This was not because he lacked the courage but because, unlike Bonhocffer, he judged it to be wrong, for several reasons. One of them was his conviction that the assassination of Hitler-even if it succeeded, and he had his doubts about that-would not cure the Germans of Hitlerism but might, on the contrary, make a martyr of him and give rise to another legend, worse than the one that had vitiated politics after the first world war, when it was said and widely accepted that the undefeated German army was stabbed in the back by traitors at home. Moltke was convinced that the only cure for the German disease was a clear military defeat-not the whole cure, of course, but a necessary part. And the Nazis would have to be in charge until that defeat was accomplished so that the responsibility for it should be unmistakably theirs. This does not mean that he was enthusiastic about the Allied policy of demanding "Unconditional Surrender," especially about the way that slogan affected propaganda. It was launched by Roosevelt and accepted by Churchill at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, at a time when the Russians were bearing the brunt of the war and clamouring for a second front in the West. The battles at Stalingrad and in North Africa were, at last, turning the tide of the war, and Roosevelt probably got carried away by historic echoes, by the elation of America's growing power, and by the desire to assure the hard-pressed Russians, and more particularly the ever-suspicious Stalin, that the Western allies would never conclude any kind of negotiated peace with whatever kind of German regime. Whenever Germans opposed to the Nazis regime tried to establish contact with the West, Roosevelt refused to have anything to do with these "East German Junkers" as he called them and the British government rejected all such feelers as aiming at a "soft peace" or a split in the coalition between the West and Soviet Russia. When Stauffenberg finally tried and failed to kill Hitler and remove his regime, the official mood in London was one of relief at the failure; the reason given was Moltke's: that the plot, if it had succeeded, would only have meant another stab-in-the· back legend. Publicly Churchill made a scathing comment, in the House of Commons, on the German top-dogs now being at each other's throats. Much later, after the war, he made amends for this and paid tribute to the plotters. But there was another reason for the unwillingness in London and Washington to consider any oppositional German approaches. It was the feeling that Germany needed a thoroughgoing social revolution or re-construction and that this would have to be brought about or facilitated by Allied occupation, by American, British, and Russian occupation (the French were included at a later stage, at de Gaulle's insistence). The Russian part has, actually, happened. Moltke and his friends had their own plans for social change-including, incidentally, the nationalization of some key industries. They proposed to take mining, iron and steel, the basic chemical industries and fuel and power into public ownership. They also had their own plans for the purgation 19 �The College of the body politic and the punishment of war criminals and of Nazis who had committed crimes in Germany. They were convinced that punishment by Germans in conjunction with the International Court at The Hague, rather than by the victors, was not only desirable and possible, but would also be more efficacious. Others of the Kreisau discussions and proposals still have a curiously prophetic ring about them, especially those concerned with the need to create smaller social and political units, units in which people can once more feel they belong and amount to something, feel responsible. The plans for a federal structure of Germany and for a united Europe anticipated some actual later developments. The need for the re-christianization of Germany that they felt so strongly in the hell of the Nazi counter-religion may have found some counterpart in the growth of Christian Democratic parties in Western Europe; and it is probably no accident that it was the Christian Democrats in France, Germany, and Italy who made the first bold moves after the war to get away from the stranglehold of nationalism and the nation state, to found some kind of European unity. These developments may not quite have taken the form that was or indeed could be envisaged by the internal opponents of Hitler's Fortress Europe, but their recognition of the dangers of totalitarianism in all its forms and of the manipulability of mass societies, their search for remedies, retains its relevance to the problems of our day. The People's Court in Berlin knew of the Kreisau discussions and their outcome only in vaguest outline. The incriminating evidence was very sparse. Moltke and his associates had been extremely careful and circumspect while at liberty, and brave and resourceful under interrogation, some of it-though not in Moltke's own case-accompanied by torture. The court did know of the selection of Regional Commissioners that were to take over after the removal of the Nazis and of the instructions that the Krcisauers had drafted for them. But the chief emphasis in the trial was on their temerity in thinking of and providing for a German defeat; not on working for it, but on thinking about it. Freisler knew as well as Moltke what narrow limits are set to effective action against a totalitarian regime. He had no inkling of Moltke's effectiveness within those limits. But he sensed and said what was the basis of that effectiveness and the real danger to the regime: the faith that was opposed to the Nazi faith. The Christian faith had, since the Reformation, split Germany into mutually hostile Protestant and Catholic factions and had been subject to erosion in the decades before Hitler, who exploited the split and the loss of faith and offered himself as the new Saviour. It must have been this realization that made Moltke, the Protestant, so determined and methodical in his contacts with the Catholics, not only with the Jesuits, but also with laymen and with the Catholic Bishop of Berlin, Count Preysing, who happened to be the most clear-headed and recalcitrant member of the German hierarchy as far as the Nazis were concerned. (Incidentally, Preysing had written a rather interesting article on Thomas More on the occasion of More's 20 elevation to the sainthood, in 1935, four hundred years after his death, and at a time when such a canonization had clear political overtones.) Moltke saw Preysing quite regularly for the discussion of current problems and what could be done about them, right down to the content and style of pastoral letters. Moltke had the reputation-rightly or wrongly-of being incapable of telling a lie. He was certainly capable of telling less than the whole truth. In the conduct of his court case he withheld as much incriminating information as he could, and that was a lot. He was very careful, as were his associates, to limit the damage, and blame what could not be denied on the dead or on those who were for other reasons beyond the reach of the regime. The prosecution never learnt of the third Kreisau meeting (one concerned with foreign policy, the punishment of Nazi criminals, and the instructions to be given to the post-Nazi Regional Commissioners). It did not know what went on at countless smaller meetings in Berlin, at meetings with resistance leaders abroad or with representatives of the German occupation-military or even SS-on whom Moltke got to work to reduce the harm they were doing and to increase the good. He did not volunteer information to his interrogators about his part in the rescue of the Norwegian Bishop Berggrav or of the Danish Jews. So what he says in his letters about his trial is true: he was condemned not for what he had done but for what he was. His widespread and energetic and dangerous activities on behalf of victims of the regime, his efforts to foil and counteract the purposes of the Nazis and to prepare for a human political order to supersede theirs (and that very preparation, those discussions, were, of course, invaluable for the preservation and fortification of mental health in Hitler's madhouse)-all these activities were the expression of the kind of man he was, a man who took his Christianity more and more seriously. George Kennan, who only knew him in the early stages of his clandestine activities, described him, in his Memoirs, as "the greatest person, morally, and the largest and most enlightened in his concepts" that he met on either side of the battle lines in the second world war. I did not know him at all. I have only read hundreds of his letters, letters in which he is very much alive, in his integrity, his intelligence, his seriousness, and his caustic wit. They give a picture rather different from that in the literature about him. On the basis of my knowledge of the period and of those letters I would even suggest that he was a realist. �Truth and Rights by Edward M. Macierowski One fitting way to celebrate the Bicentennial Anniversary of the promulgation of the Declaration of Independence, which marks the conception of the United States of America, is to study the central theme of that document: human rights. What are the principles that determine them? Are they ultimately grounded in the way things really are? To investigate this theme, it is appropriate to begin with a discussion of the classical philosophical sciences and their application to politics, since here is found a tradition of inquiry that can open up the metaphysical realm that provides the origin of our rights. After that, the view that man's nature as a person is the foundation of human rights will be discussed, along with an example from legal history in the West showing how the natural law tradition animates legal rights. Finally, the Supreme Court decision on abortion and the proposed "equal rights" amendment will be used as examples of recent attempts to deal with the problem of rights without using the theoretical instruments of the tradition. The method of approach is metaphysical throughout, although politeness and the occasion require omitting precisions that experts would expect to be argued out at length. A science, in the classical notion, is an articulate knowledge of things through their causes. 1 Things that do not depend on our action for their being comprise, in general, the subject of the theoretical sciences. Things that depend on our action for their being, however, comprise the subjects of either the practical sciences (concerned with the behavior of individuals, of the family unit, or of cities) or the productive sciences (the crafts). More precisely, the theoretical sciences all have truth as their goal; the practical sciences are in general concerned with activities. These practical sciences are directed towards the well-ordered actions contributing to the perfection of the individual person, the family, and civil society, each of which is a distinct subject. Thus, it is not for private families or merchant corporations acting on their own to determine public action, such as war or peace; nor is the State the prime or natural authority in the education of children, since distinct entities are concerned with distinct activities. According to this view, for example, the State is essentially incapable of fulfilling the role of a mother as educator. The essential work of the practical sciences is, as we have said, action. Now, no one would willingly choose to do something unless he thought it in some way a good. Indeed, everything that exists strives for some perfection. 2 If one looks very attentively at trees in the springtime, he will see a clear example of this principle at work. This principle can, with practice, be seen operating everywhere. Yet human beings do not achieve their perfection as automatically as do trees. Some persons, for example, are dreadfully unhappy because of a sense of meaninglessness in their lives. Although unhappiness seems somehow proportional to aimlessness, it is not enough to decide on any random aim. This is obvious from experience. The peculiarity of human striving for perfection consists in this: that we must first apprehend our good intellectually before we can strive for it. This causes a good deal of difficulty, since this means that we must always be exercising our power of judgment with every action, so as to avoid error. Why is it that trees seem generally able to achieve their perfection, while man has such difficulty? Aristotle gives a clue to the answer of this question when he explains the phenomenon of human knowing. "The soul," he observes, "is somehow all beings" ( ~ tfivx~ -rO. 3v-ra 7rw~ l~n 7rdv-ra -De anima III, 8: 43lb2l). In man's striving for the good through intellectual judgment, then, there is a vast array of beings to choose from. The trouble is that no single finite thing or group of things is enough to satisfy man's intellectual nature, as anyone who has ever thought "If only I had that ... " can readily verify a few weeks after getting it. In contrast to this, the Christian is taught that man's reason for existing is God, Who created man to know Him, to love Him, to serve Him, Edward Macierowski graduated from St. John's College, Annapolis, in 1970. He is now doing graduate work at the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy in Tehran. 21 �The College and to share with Him the everlasting happiness of heaven. But although this points to man's proper end, it frees neither the believer nor the non-believer from the problem of judging things correctly. What does classical philosophy have to do with all this? The answer is that it was the Greeks who first discovered and systematized this body of sciences. These sciences help us to know the truth of things. It is true that some difference exists between the Greek doctrine of being (which they called <f>vuL<) and the notion of a world of beings created out of sheer nothingness in time. This does not mean, however, that the Greek insight into being, particularly that realm of being which they called physis, has no truth to it. The Christian is confident that it is right to look for truth wherever it is to be found, since both nature and Revelation proceed from the same Creator. This is why the sciences, ancient and modern, deserve to be studied. Gazing now upon the beings found in the world, let us try to understand the physis of man. Even with the aid of classical philosophy this is no easy task; for even Aristotle hesitated over which science should do the job-physics or metaphysics. Physics or natural philosophy is the science of things as moveable or changeable in some way; such beings cannot be understood without reference to their sensible material character. Metaphysics is the study of beings irrespective of whether or not they depend for their very existence on matter. Where does man fit in? He is rather a strange entity for Aristotle, since he is literally amphibious. For although man seems, in part, at least, to be of an animal nature and so a fit object for physics, he nevertheless seems to be endowed with a marvelous power that the other animals lack-the intellect. The point is that the power of intelligent judgment points to a realm that transcends the material order, and this fact suggests that man should be studied in metaphysics. The fact is that man is on the horizon between spiritual and material entities. On the one hand, as we shall see, he is capable of the act of cognition, which is free from matter; on the other hand, we can see with our own eyes that every human being has many operations in common with the class of animals called mammals. A distinction may help to clarify what is meant by this immaterial operation of cognition. When anyone looks at an apple, a number of activities are going on all at once. By the law of gravitation, the man and the apple are ever so slightly attracted to each other. Moreover, light reflected from the apple can be observed on the back of the man's retina. Thus, there is a physical relation or interaction between the man and the thing in front of him, in which each is related to the other. Knowledge, however, is an entirely different sort of activity. In so far as I know the apple-that is, considering the relation of my knowledge to the tl1ing-l am dependent on the apple, and not vice versa. Let us focus on this cognitional activity. We understand that the apple is in us somehow when we knmv it; and yet we gain weight not by looking at apples or thinking about them, but by eating them. This fact points the way, crudely perhaps 22 but sufficiently for present purposes, toward a sphere of non-material entities. This is the realm in which those who study metaphysical science take particular delight. For the man in the street, however, this realm has its own importance. For where there is an act, there must be a fitting agent of that act. Now, if cognition is an immaterial act, the agent of that operation~the intellectual soul-must be immaterial. Only material substances are capable of corruption; hence, the human soul is immortal. Once such a conclusion is demonstrated rigorously, it does not, of course, tell us whether the soul does anything after it is separated from the body at death; the Christian believes that God infuses knowledge into the separate soul, but there are no philosophical data available to prove that, any more than there are to prove the resurrection of the body. The science of metaphysics can, however, prove the soul's immortality from human experience. The practical significance of this truth will become clear as we proceed. The late Roman philosopher Boethius defined a person as "an individual substance of a rational nature." A human person is composed of two complementary principles, a soul and a body. For this reason, neither the intrinsically lifeless corpse that we can see, nor the animating soul that we never can see, is a complete human person. This notion of a human person is pre-political; it is the basis for all subsequent developments of personality, including human rights. What is the distinctive ground of being human? In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, some Aristotelians held that, in human generation, a principle of life, which they called a vegetative soul, first initiated the most rudimentary vital activities; later an animal soul brought the being to a higher ontological and operational level; and finally an intellective soul supervened to bring the animal nature to human perfection. If this account is understood to require three distinct co-present substantial forms for the same entity, it sets up a fundamentally incoherent nature for man. Thomas Aquinas disagreed. He thought there was only one substantial form, the intellective soul, with all subsequent growth and development coming from it. 3 Now, as we have indicated, the intellectual soul that' is characteristic of human nature is immaterial. Hence, the sexual act of the parents, which is instrumental in initiating the biological process, is not responsible for producing the soul as such. When something more than the material preconditions of life, which the parents supply, is present, a continuous process begins, and, unless interrupted, this process involves growth, articulation, birth, education, and a number of other accidental perfections before its natural existence is interrupted at death. The principle governing that continuous acquisition of new accidental perfections is called the substantial form; this is the principle that characterizes an entity as human. It is the intellective soul. What is the place of this "something more," this intellective soul, in man's political and social life? The most important thing to understand is that the soul is not the subject of the practical sciences, any more than the body is. Ethics is �January, 1977 concerned about the man, the individual person, not about the soul considered in itself. The soul is, however, the principle for all man's actions and must never be ruled out of account, since it is the source of a man's understanding and his will. Both of these powers-intellect and will-are necessary for human choices. Nevertheless, in human affairs, as in legislation, for example, man is considered in his concrete existence. How this philosophical orientation is incorporated into legal activity so as to animate it is also worth considering. Perhaps a look at some quotations from a textbook for students of Roman law will help to show how justinian I, who commissioned its writing, intended to bring philosophy into civic affairs. 4 "Justice is the constant and perpetual will that assigns everyone his due (ius suum). Jurisprudence is a cognition of divine and human affairs, the knowledge of the just and the unjust" (Institutiones I, 1). "Natural law is what nature teaches to all living things. For that law does not belong exclusively to the human race, but to all Jiving things that arc born-those in the heavens, those on land, and those in the sea. Hence devolves that bond of man and vmman which we caU matrimony; hence devolves the procreation and education of children. For we see that the other living things too arc thought to have some experience of this law" (I, 2). The law of persons is discussed in the following chapter, wherein is said "all men are either free or slaves." The text then goes on to distinguish bchveen liberty and slavery: "Liberty is the natural faculty . . of doing whatever one pleases, except \:vhat one is kept from by force or by law. Servitude is an institution of the law of nations, whereby one is unnaturalJy (eorztra naturam) subjected to the control of another" (I, 3). For present purposes, the essential point to note is that-liberty is a natural faculty, whereas slavery is opposed to nature. Liberty is thus a capacity for action that proceeds from what man is. This power is not unrestricted, since there are things that lie beyond one's power and there arc also things that ought not to be transgressed even if one had the power so to do. Slavery, on the other hand, is a counter-natural state imposed on a man; it is somehow a violence against his humanity. It would seem fitting, then, for Justinian to abolish it. Yct the emperor's power is limited; the law of nations sanctions slavery. Nevertheless, within his own realm, Justinian's official text-book is clearly directed toward mitigating the calamity, just as the Christian philosophy of the person would suggest. In the practical order such a task is not easy. Even in the United States, for example, slavery was abolished only relatively recently; in the Soviet Union, on the other hand, this principle of personal liberty is not yet recognized by the ruling party. The difficulty is that progress to this principle is a spiritual and an intellectual advance, not a historical necessity. For in some places men have not yet become aware of it; elsewhere, they may, much to the detriment of the commonwealth, forget it. Taken to heart, however, the Christian adaptation of the principle of natural law (ius naturale) does provide a powerful legal instrument for the diffusion of liberty, if we take on the task of employing it: The free-born (ingenuus) is one who is free as soon as he is born-whether as the offspring of a marriage of two free-born parent'i, or of freed parents, or of one freed parent and the other free-born. But even if someone is born of a free mother with a slave for a father, nevertheless he is born free (ingenuus . . . nascitur) . ... Moreover, it suffices that the mother be free at the time of birth, even if she conceived as a slave. And, on the other hand, if she conceived while free and gave birth after becoming a slave, it has been decided that he that is born should be born free (liberum nasci), since the misfortune of the mother ought not to harm him who is in the womb. (I, 4.) Clearly, then, despite economic and political institutions of long standing, slavery could in principle at least be mitigated, if not entirely and frankly abolished at the time. Moreover, it is well today to let these forgotten words penetrate to heart: non debet calamitas matris ei nocere, qui in utero est. "The misfortune of the mother ought not to work harm on him who is in the womb." Such liberality of principle is to be treasured. This venerable Roman legal maxim embodies a spiritual insight not lightly to be cast aside: Liberty is a good that deserves to be diffused as far as it can shine. In the order of nature, this right to liberty, which is guaranteed by the natural law, extends to the unborn. And if liberty could be recognized so liberally in an age of slavery, we arc honorbound not to do less. Though obscured a bit in the hands of Hobbes and Locke, the insight of the natural law tradition still speaks to us through these \Vords: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men arc created equal; that they arc endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these rights arc life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Though human equality in fact goes no further than equality in being essentially human, still all men arc created by God . with an intellective soul that serves as the principle for their corporeal and intellectual existence, as we have seen. Aside from an equality of existential character, however, men have a vast array of talents, social stations, interests, and so on that all call out for being set into harmonious order. The true justification for the admission of blacks and women into full civil equality with other citizens is that, among this variety of talents, interests, and training, the Republic could count on blacks and women having the virtues and skills needed for citizenship. Indeed, as the traditional doctrine of natural right and law shows, there is nothing that essentially prevents any person of normal natural endowments and proper formation from contributing his free and responsible actions for the good of the commonwealth. Accidental impediments, however, ought to be removed. But there are some whose vision has become clouded by looking at their m:vn concepts rather than at what exists in 23 �The College nature, and who fail to understand how broad and encompassing this natural law is. The Roman child is guaranteed liberty if, at any point from conception to birth, his mother should be free (/nst. I, 4). So great a thing is liberty! Today, however, there are many who are willing to go further than reducing the unborn to servitude. The abettors of abortion do this not out of malice, however, but because they have tried to disengage their practical decisions from a knowledge of the truth. Let us examine a recent instance of this constriction of vision in Mr. Justice Blackmun's majority decision in Roc v Wade (in section IX, B.): Texas urges that, apart from the Fourteenth Amendment, life begins at conception and is present throughout pregnancy, and that, therefore, the State has a compelling interest in protecting that life from and after conception. We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer. There follows a list mentioning the opmwns of the Stoics, the Jews, the Protestants, the common law, physicians and scientists, the Medieval and Renaissance Aristotelians, and the modern position of the Roman Catholic Church-all in a single paragraph-clearly intended to prove a "wide divergence of thinking" on the topic, with no effort to sort out a common principle from the seven classes of opinion so as to bring them all into usable order. Having thrown up his hands ("We need not resolve"), Mr. Justice Blaekmun begins the next section (X) with his own account: In view of all this, we do not agree that, by adopting one theory of life, Texas may override the rights of the pregnant woman that are at stake. These are of course the right to personal privacy discovered from the amendments to the Constitution. Still, one can hardly help being shocked by the moral implications of Mr. Justice Blaekmun's metaphysical position implicit in this sentence, viz., that one way of understanding life or another is a matter of little moment. But what if, we might ask, the way of understanding life by which the Texas legislators oriented their deliberations was true? It would mean that, in the balance weighing between the right of privacy-which, like the rest, flows from a person's rational nature so as to perfect such non-political spheres of life as colleges, schools, a private business, the Church, the family, and the integrity of private individuals-and the right of the innocent not to be slain, there is no conflict at all: The mother's right to privacy, in this case, is none other than her right to protect the life of her unborn child. To suggest that the natural relationship between mother and child is one of essential indifference or even warfare is obscene. It is a grave error, to 24 disengage the consideration of the exercise of rights from the essential purposes which those rights serve-in various ways to further the perfection of the human person. If Texas is right, the right of privacy is here directed toward the protection one who either is or will very soon be of a fully rational nature, in the substantial order, and who is, in the accidental order, from the point of view of operation, acquiring fuller perfections of his accidental existence with each beat of his mother's heart. Moreover, by giving birth to a child, a mother acquires the natural right to educate it in accordance with natural law. Furthermore, mother, father, and child constitute a society with rights of its own, by nature. All these rights are integrated. Indeed, these pre-political rights are presupposed if the State is to exist at all naturally. Yet Mr. Justice Blackmun points to a lack of agreement on when "life" begins. Of course, it is well known that life is present from the moment of conception; what is much more mysterious is when that life begins to be human life. If human life-animated by an intellectual principle that transcends its material preconditions~is sacred, tampering and tinkering would of course be simply forbidden, once it is really present. Where no one is quite able to agree on the exact moment of its presence, however, one must exercise that cautious and prudent judgment without which human perfection is lost. Now, if an engineer has heard that a man is in a mine, he would be criminally negligent to flood it without even checking, particularly if there was disagreement as to whether the man was still down there, even if the project would be delayed and a great deal of money lost. If the engineer saw the man reported to be in the cave with his own eyes, right by him, dispute would be over; if not, he would have to inquire diligently after the man in the cave. In the matter of the sacredness of innocent life, the question is not based on convenience but on the likelihood that the man is down there. What is the real likelihood? Innocent human life must be taken as an absolute value; but the question of likelihood, too, can legitimately be asked. Similarly, when a potential mother applies for an abortion, which is the greater likelihood, that her mental or physical health will improve, or that another human life is present? In extreme cases, the mother is sometimes even faced with the choice between saving her own life or that of her child. The physician is charged with saving both if he can: Prudential judgments are always necessary. Attempting to dodge the issue will not prevent the situation from existing. Here, however, the choice presented in the Supreme Court decision is not an on-the-spot decision in a case where only one life of hvo can be saved, but a decision between two other considerations: the right to life and the right to privacy. Among the features that have to be weighed in such a decision is not' only whether the right is actually present, but also the relative weight of the rights involved. Which is more fundamental? Clearly there can be no privacy exercised if one is dead, and so the right to life is more fundamental. Yet if the intellectual soul is not yet present, does the living entity in its pre-human state have any c3pacity to exercise a right to privacy? Or any other rights? If one could establish a clearly �January, 1977 defined caesura between the pre-human state and the human state, one might be able to decide. If there were a naturally observable decisive break that everyone could agree on, point to, and say, "Yes, that's it," one might feel less squeamish, and even be able to justify such an action, for good cause. But there is no unanimity. We must ask whether it is prudent, since in large measure the laws and the Constitution have a powerful formative effect on the ways that citizens understand right and wrong, to pretend that the right of one person's privacy extends as far as to conceal what many citizens understand to be, in all likelihood, something very close to homicide. If subsequent embryological evidence positively shows that the embryo is human, what sort of compensation can be given for those who have been sacrificed to the right of privacy? We have ample precedent justifying a policy of liberality toward the unborn, from conception to birth, in the example of Justinian. There was no niggling over what moment it would be permitted by the State to kill the unborn; the unborn were promised personal liberty. In a way, these voices from the past are judging us, and asking us whether we shall be as liberal with our diffusion of rights as we ought to be. What is the Supreme Court teaching in its capacity as civil educator? In its words, it is discovering a new right in the Constitution for all to enjoy, with particular reference to a certain class of women who want to procure an abortion; in fact, it is loosening the public sense of the sanctity of human life, and the natural rights that flow from human personality. Such a teaching urges people to be concerned more with the convenience of the moment than with caring for the future of their families or other institutions, including the State. This teaches them not to give of themselves for the perfection of the societies in which they live, but to sink into personal isolation. Now, as we have tried to show, man is not just an individual body, but a human person endowed with an immortal intellectual soul. Endowed with the power of intelligent speech, a human being exhibits an intrinsically social dimension. We must now examine the logical consequence of attacking or ignoring the true principle of personality. When the sacredness of the human person is not recognized, it is obvious that the sacred character of matrimony, too, will be attacked. Indeed, the whole array of private institutions that a man or woman may wish to associate in comes to be dissolved. Nothing stands between the individual man and the direct power of the State. The natural order of institutions is subverted, and all acts of human association come perforce to be mediated by the State. These are a few of the less pernicious consequences of closing one's eyes to the natural law; for there can be no rights except as a bare abstraction without the natural order to ground them. No truth; then, no rights. The tradition knew better than to attempt destructive testing with all of human society as the laboratory. It is with dismay, therefore, that we hear of a movement to go beyond natural justice in what is called the "equal rights 1mendment," since it is difficult to see how a constitutional measure to end sexual discrimination could be enforced in such a way as to include the precisions needed to safeguard the sacred integrity of the family. If someone were to urge that the only rights that were intended are those that belong to women by nature, so that they would not be subject to capricious and unfair practices by employers, he ought to know that these rights can be found already in the Constitution. For surely the ninth and tenth amendments cannot rightfully "be construed to deny or disparage" natural rights, which more often than not involve "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States." Moreover, in so far as these unfair practices are systematically describable, they are more appropriately remedied by precise statute laws enacted by the various states, which can take into account the just needs of women, particularly unmarried women, who already have the vote and are thus fully capable of electing persons who understand their difficulties in the labor market. Further, since the amendment fails to distinguish between married and unmarried women, there is some danger that the rights of married women within the family would be affected detrimentally by the amendment. What guarantees do they have that certain non-political rights which they now enjoy will not be legislated against in an effort to enforce the proposed innovation? What will be the principles that govern the interpretation of this proposed amendment? Recent Supreme Court decisions have tended more and more to depart from the natural law orientation. Where there is no will to use the intellectual equipment left to us during the past three or four millennia, however, it is not unreasonable to expect that many rights that we are still willing to recognize today will become blind spots for those who are educated under our laws; this traditional intellectual equipment, however, does us no good whatever in unread books, since an unknown alternative is prudentially useless. 1 ****** For the background of the discussion concerning the divisions of the sciences, see Aristotle, Metaphysics E, I (1025b18-l026a23); K, 7 (l064al0-b6); Topics VI, 6 (l45al5-18); Nicomachean Ethics VI, 2 (1139a26-33). Compare also The Metaphysica of Avicenna (Translated not from the Arabic text which came to be known in the Latin West, as the title would suggest, but from the Persian, by Parviz Morewedge), sect. l, pp. 11-13. (London, 1973.) Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas The Division and Methods of the Sciences, translated by A.A. Maurer, C.S.B., 3rd ed., rev. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1963) pp. 6-9. 2 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I, I(I094a3): Td.ya86v, olJ 7nfV'r• £cj>lerat. 3 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 76, a. 4, corpus. 4 The Corpus Juris Civilis consists of three parts-the Institutes, the Digest, and the Code-with additions called the Novellae. 25 �The College CAMPUS-ALUMNI NEWS Contributors: NOTICE TO PARENTS OF CURRENT STUDENTS The Parents' Weekend, held in Annapolis last spring, was, as some of you remember, a considerable success. While full details have yet to be developed, and will be sent to each of you later on, we can at least announce the dates for Parents' Weekend, 1977: the 6th, 7th, and 8th of May. Klein Essays Available The hoped-for has become real! On November 6 the first printing of Essays in Honor of Jacob Klein went on sale in the Bookstore in Annapolis. This volume, containing essays presented to Mr. Klein on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday, represents the first publication by the St. John's College Press in several decades, and, we hope, marks the start of some sort of regular publication schedule for the Press. The pre-publication sale announced last April resulted in sales of almost 100 copies of the Essays. For those who may have missed that announcement, or who were waiting to see whether the printing would become reality, the Bookstore in Annapolis would be pleased to have your orders. The cost is $10.00 plus $1.25 for postage and handling. As a reminder of the authors represented in the Essays, here is the table of contents: ESSAYS 1N HONOR OF JACOB KLEIN As Presented to him on the Occasion of his Seventy-fifth Birthday Introductory Letter by Richard D. Weigle Preface by Curtis Wilson 26 Douglas Allanbrook-Study in Black and White (for harpsichord). Robert Bart-The Shepherd and the Wolf: On The First Book of Plato's Republic. Seth Benardetc-Euripides' Hippolytus. Laurence Berns-Rational AnimalPolitical Animal: Nature and Conven- tion in Human Speech and Politics. Eva Brann-An Appreciation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: An Introduction for Students. Anne Buchanan Crosby-Eight Sketches. Robert A. Goldwin-The State of Nature in Political Society. Simon Kaplan-Plato in Hermann Cohen's Philosophy of Judaism. John S. Kieffer-Mythos and Logos. Samuel S. Kutler-The Source of the Source of the Dedekincl Cut. David R. Lachterman-Self-hood and Self Consciousness: An Inquiry into Kantian Themes. Beale Ruhm von Oppen-Bach's Way with Words. Robert Sacks-Ptolemy as a Teacher. Richard Scofield-The Christian Phaedra or Farewell to Tragedy. ). Winfree Smith-"Watchman, What of the Night?" Brother Robert Smith-Clues on How to Read Palladius. Leo Strauss-On Plato's Apology of Socrates and Republic. Robert B. Williamson-Eidos and Agathon in Plato's Republic. Curtis Wilson-Newton and the Eiitviis Experiment. Elliott Zuckerman-Four Sketches for a Study in Prosody. Bicentennial Register Progresses The 1976-77 edition of the Alumni Register, the seventh to be published since 1900, was scheduled to go to the printer shortly before the Christmas holidays. If all goes well, copies will be available in February. This newest collection of alumni information features occupational data on about 45% of all listed alumni. In addition, of course, this is the first Register in which alumni of the Santa Fe campus are listed. Similarly, recipients of the M.A. degree from the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education are also included. For assistance in preparing the Register, special thanks go to junior Roberta Rusch, sophomore Ann Schwartz, and alumnus Frank K. Wilson '35. French Dead Honored Once a year the Naval Academy pays St. John's a visit. That is usually on the 11th of November, when the Academy French Club holds ceremonies honoring the French soldiers and sailors who died during the American Revolution, and who lie buried on the back campus. Continued on page 28 �January, 1977 Homecoming 1976 Jacob Klein, Tutor Emeritus and former Dean, and his wonderful wife "Dodo" were special guests at the Homecoming dinner on November 6, as "Jasha" was made an honorary member of the Alumni Association in honor of his thirty-eight years with the St. John's community. The event was the finale of the twoday Homecoming which saw the Board of Visitors and Governors also gathered on campus. This circumstance in turn permitted a joint meeting of alumni and trustees on Saturday afternoon, at which the future of the College was discussed, especially as it can be affected by the newly-launched Fund for the 1980's. (See President's Report, October issue.) A number of Board members attended the Homecoming dinner. The annual Alumni Award of Merit was also presented at the dinner. Fred J. Bielaski of the class of 1916 was one recipient (in absentia), and the other was Julius Rosenberg of the class of 1938. Mr. Bielaski is the former president of A.T.&T. de Mexico, and still makes his home in that country. His Award was for "Outstanding achievement within his chosen field." Mr. Rosenberg is a former treasurer and president of the Alumni Association, and has been a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors since 1972. From 1968 to 1972 he was director of development on the Annapolis campus. While in that position he was co-founder of the Caritas Society, an organization of local friends of St. John's. Mr. Rosenberg's Award was presented for "Distinguished and meritorious service to St. John's College." At the Annual Meeting of the Association on Saturday afternoon, the following officers and directors were elected: President: William W. Simmons '48; Executive Vice President: Marcia (DelPlain) Reff '57; Secretary: Edward F. Lathrop '38; Treasurer: William F. Cone '67; Directors: Franklin R. Atwell '53, Gilbert A. Crandall '36, Thomas L. MacNemar '39, Janet A. Nelson '72, Lee Perlman '73, E. Roy Shawn, Jr. '35, Carol (Phillips) Tilles '59. Colonel Robert E. Jones '09 shared the distinction of coming the longest distance to attend Homecoming (from Palo Alto, Cal., as did James H. Frame '50), but he clearly represented the oldest class present, and, being a mere 90 years young, rightfully claimed the honor as oldest alumnus on hand. President William W. Simmons '48 {L) presents the 1976 Award of Merit scroll to Julius Rosenberg '38 at the Homecoming dinner. Pearl Rosenberg watches as her husband speaks to the assembled dinner guests. Jacob Klein (L) thanks Samuel S. Kutler '54 after the latter presented Mr. Klein with a copy of the newly-published Essays in Honor of facob Klein. Association President Simmons leads the applause as Jacob Klein is made an honorary alumnus. 27 �The College This year the ceremonies were held in October to coincide with the presence of warships of the French Navy, in this country on a Bicentennial visit. Leading the French contingent was Vice Admiral Philippe De Gaulle, commandant of the French Navy and son of the former president of France. Admiral De Gaulle joined Rear Admiral Kinnaird R. McKee, superintendent of the Academy, in placing a wreath at the base of the French Monument. The Academy Band played both national anthems, and French and American midshipmen, speaking in each other's languages, described the significance of the monument. Distinguished visitors were headed by Vsevolod Blinoff, honorary French consul in Baltimore, and by Lieutenant General Clair E. Hutchin, Jr., U.S. Army, retired, executive director of the Maryland Bicentennial Commission. In addition to the midshipmen, participants included officers and crew members of the French cruiser Colbert and the frigate De Grasse, as well as an honor guard and color guard of U.S. Marines. Words from our Readers To the Editor: During the tense, hot summer of 1941, another great scholar joined the neophyte St. John's College community. He was Dr. Harry C. Kelly, the new "Director of Laboratories," whose goal was to unify the sciences in the Program according to a reasonably coherent plan. In those days that was a difficult task. It was with deep regret that I learned this last summer of the death of Dr. Kelly on February 2, 1976, at the age of 68. He had recently retired as provost of the North Carolina State University at Raleigh. Those of us who remember him would have been in the classes of 1942-1945. We of the class of 194 2 found in him a friend and adviser, one who could comprehend our difficulties as students, since he himself was not far removed from his own student days at MIT. No question was too trivial for him to answer. No student was of "unscientific mind," but needed only to be persuaded through those mysterious labyrinths of structured experimentation and the works of the great scientists to strive for that sudden, inexplicable insight. And, for Dr. Kelly, no effort toward those ends was without worth. In February of 1942 he was "requisitioned" by the government to return to MIT for radiation research; we all know why. He did not wish to go, but it was no invitation: it was a mandate. After World War II he became adviser on radiation damage during the occupation of Japan, working directly for General Douglas MacArthur. 28 While in Japan, he persuaded the scientists of that conquered nation to emerge from their withdrawal and to rejoin the collective efforts toward understanding and controlling a necessary but terrible weapon, and to utilize whatever peaceful advantages might be derived from that implement of war. With them, he organized the Science Society of Japan. He was later awarded a special medal by the emperor for his success. After returning to America in 1951, he became assistant director of the newly-formed National Science Foundation, and remained with that organization for some twenty years. He often told me that those few months at St. John's College were the happiest of his life. He missed us when he left our campus, and although the years have passed all too quickly, we who remember still miss him, a dedicated scholar truly devoted to inquiry and discourse as a means to learning. Warren C. Barnhardt '42 CLASS NOTES 1942-Annapolis Bryce Jacobsen continues to show his winning ways on the tennis courts: in September he and Warren Drake won the doubles competition in the Middle Atlantic Lawn Tennis Association Senior 55 tournament. To qualify, players must be at least 55 years old-or young, depending on one's point of view! 1947-Annapolis The New York times Book Section on Sunday, November 28, contained a review by Alan M. Dershowitz of Richard Harris's latest book, Freedom Spent (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1976). Mr. Dershowitz terms Richard Harris "among the most important legal writers in America today." 1950-Annapolis On October 30 former Annapolis dean Robert A. Goldwin resigned his White House staff position as special consultant to the President to join the staff of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Bob also had three articles published within the past six months: "The Future of Liberal Education," Educational Record, Spring, 1976; "Locke's State of Nature in Political Society," Western Political Quarterly, Summer, 1976; and "Of Men and Angels: A Search for Morality in the Constitution," Vital Speeches of the Day, June I, 1976. (The last of these also appeared in the July issue of The College.) Theodore W. Hendricks on December 14 received a Master's degree in Sacred Theology from St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore. 1966-Annapolis Jane Anderson has just had her first book, Inn Perspective: A Guide to New England Country Inns, published in paperback by Harper and Row (New York, 1976). She writes that £ter leaving St. John's, she was a reporter for sevetal newspapers, was graduated Summa Cum Laude with a philosophy major from the Univerdty of Hartford, and married architect Peter J. B. Vercelli of London and Washington, D. C. Peter illustrated Jane's new book, by the way. She is now a reporter for United Press International in Hartford, Conn. 1968-Sante Fe Antigone (Phalares) Moore wrote in September to give us a new address (Bemidji, Minn.) and to bring us up to date on her full life. She and Erv are parents of Heather Louise, born in December 1975. Armed with his master's degree in public health, Erv is sanitarian for two Chippewa Indian reservations. Antigone is learning furniture refinishing and repair, and is happily busy with cooking and canning and sewing and all the things which keep a housewife occupied. 1969-Annapolis Philip Holt completed work on his Ph.D. degree last spring at Stanford University, and is now teaching at California State University at Sacramento in the Department of German, Classics, and Russian. William F. A. Lang, a recent recipient of the M.LS. degree from Drexel University, has accepted a position as a reference l-ibrarian in the Department of Social Sciences and History at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Linda (McConnell) Mueller and her husband Robert are the proud parents of Miss Adeline Otis Mueller, born October 30 weighting 10¥2 pounds. Linda wrote that she took three weeks off from teaching English and Humanities at St. Norbert College, De Pere, Wis. 1969-Santa Fe James Morrow Hall writes that since 1970 he has managed the family business, New Mexico Abstract Co., in Estancia, N. M., and also serves as Mayor of Estancia as well as Chairman of the Torrance County Planning Commission. He is married to the former Melinda Brown of Estancia. He says that Joel Shearer S69 graduated from Marlboro College and is now studying law at the University of Texas in Austin. Morrow also tells us that Robert Scott Massey S70 has become an excellent jeweler and lives in a cabin in Cochiti Canyon in the Jemez Mountains. 1971-Annapolis Martha Jo Kaufman and Steven B. Stone were married on June 20 at her parent's home in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Martha is a student at the University of Chicago Law School. 1971-Santa Fe David Esdale, still with Daystar Corporation, reports that he is now living in Somerville, Mass., that the solar energy business is booming (see note on Travis Price below), that he enjoyed the Boston area seminars last year {they will be resuming in January or February-T.P.), and that he recently saw Bonnie Gage; she is doing very well as a salesperson for Sterling Drug. Travis Lee Price III is the author of "Lowtechnology Solar Homes That Work with Nature," in the December 1976 issue of Popular Science. Travis is a principal in Sun Mountain Designs, a Santa Fe-based group of architects, planners, and engineers. �January, 1977 1972-Annapolis Evan Dudik writes that he defended his doctoral dissertation (successfully, we trust) in philosophy at the University of Texas in September. His paper examines the ontology of the American pragmatist, C. S. Peirce. Evan has now commenced a year's study in Frciburg, Germany, to research pragmatism's influence on the "local metaphysical brew." "If the question's too hard, well, man cannot know it." As a follow up of our note about Anne Kilborn in the April issue, Anne and William F. Zietlow were married during the summer in the District of Tralee, County Kerry, Ireland. 1973-Annapolis Roger Greene received his M.F.A. degree in film from Columbia University in May. His thesis, written under the guidance of critic Andrew Sarris, concerned the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Roger now lives in Manhattan, works as an Audio-Visual Production Specialist for the Navy Resale System in Brooklyn. Working freelance earlier in the year, Roger researched and wrote a chapter on actress Jane Wyman for the forthcoming book, "The Forties Gals." 1973-Santa Fe A most welcome note from Kenneth W. Richman, Jr., reporting receipt of his J.D. degree last May from Stetson University College of Law. He has passed his Florida State Bar examination and is an associate with the firm of Parks, Gillette, White, and Manz in Naples, Fla., where he also makes his home. India Williams writes a long letter filled with information about her classmates and friends. Here are some of the items she sent Laurie Franklin works in a European bookstore in San Francisco, and plans to make that city her permanent home. Katy Moffatt lives in Denver, but was recently in San Francisco singing at the Boarding House; Katie has had one album released. Chuck Savitt has moved to Washington, D.C., where he works for Youth Project. Erin (Murphy) Williams lives in Malibu, Cal., and has daughters three and one. India herself has been working for Coldwell Banker Real Estate Co. for two years, selling residential real estate in Marin County. She lives in Tiburon. 1974-Annapolis Erica F. Chaney and Gregory S. King, both lieutenants in the Marines, were married in Decatur, Ga., on November 27. Erica's father performed the ceremony. Jay Gottlieb this fall became an environmentalist with the State of Washington Game Department's Environmental Management Division. Jay, a 1976 recipient of a B.S. degree from Huxley College of Environmental Studies, makes his home in Olympia, Wash. (How about an address, Jay?) 1974-Santa Fe Further word about David Gross and Harvard Law School (sec April issue): Kate Gordon tells us that David finds the second year easier, at least so far as time and pressure are concerned. Eliot Marseille and Judith Sharlin S75 live in Berkeley, Cal., where he is working toward a degree in city planning. Stan Stinnett writes that he is now a student in the School of Architecture and Environmental Design at California Polytechnic Institute, San Luis Obispo. 1975-Annapolls A note from Fred Ellis tells us that Sara (Coulson) has left Quaker Oats Company, and is now a copywriter for Scars. Geoffrey Harris informs us that he has three jobs: political science instructor, Los Angeles Trade Technical College; part-time second grade teacher of literature and spelling, St. Martins of Tourist; and football coach, St. Martins. Craig Schweickert this past spring graduated from McGill University in Montreal, and is hoping to get a job in that city teaching English as a second language. In Memoriam----. 1907-Col. Eli Elmer Bennett, Bradenton, Fla., September 30, 1976. 1916-Col. Thomas W. Ligon, Gibson Island, Md., July 10, 1976. 1929-John Leslie Basil, Annapolis, Md., November 17, 1976. 1932-John D. Warfield, Prince Frederick, Md., November 1976. 1941-Bruce J. Edmonston, Baltimore, Md., September 9, 1976. Alumni Representatives on College Board There being no nominations by petition, and the directors of the Alumni Association having nominated incumbents Dr. David Dobreer '44, of Alhambra, Cal., and Francis S. Mason, Jr., '43, of New York City, for second consecutive terms on the Board of Visitors and Governors of the College, in accordance with the Association By-Laws I hereby announce that these two alumni are re-elected for terms ending in 1980. Thomas Parran, Jr. Director of Alumni Activities Alumni Summer Seminar Program Schedule Again in 1977 Alumni Summer Seminar Programs will be offered on both campuses. The Annapolis session will take place from june 12 through 25, and will consist of two one-week segments. In Santa Fe the program will be offered from july 31 through August 13; as in Annapolis, there will be two parts, each one week long. Participants may attend either or both of the weeks in either or both locations. These programs are open to all alumni of both campuses and their spouses; a special invitation is extended to alumni of the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education and to former students of the Institute. Program details-reading list, names of tutors, fees, and related matters-will be published later in the spring. You are urged to mark your calendars now, however, and plan to spend part of your summer in an atmosphere of intellectual stimulation and good fellowship on one or both of St. John's campuses. We think you would enjoy it. 29 �The College St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Second-class postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland, and at additional mailing offices. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollegemagazine Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 29 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of College Relations Title A name given to the resource The College, January 1977 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1977-01 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource von Oppen, Beate Ruhm Parran, Jr., Thomas Dunham, William B. Oosterhout, Barbara Brunner Wyatt, E. Malcolm Zuckerman, Elliott Allanbrook, Douglas Description An account of the resource Volume XXVIII, Number 4 of The College. Published in January 1977. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Vol_28_No_4_1977 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/702954c48a3a805538c3bbec3caec69e.mp3 4bca00508eb4a792837d2381f7166f2c 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 St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library 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 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 CD Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:01:40 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 privilege of reason : evolution and history Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given on November 17, 2006 by James Carey as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Carey, James 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 2006-11-17 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 sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Reason Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 20012118 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/7bf4882279bf15027abdad1feab7764f.MP3 db4d659cccbe720caffce0fd35d723ad 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 digital Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:58:20 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 Patriotism in the 21st Century Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 13, 2016 by Seth Cropsey as part of the LCDR Erik S. Kristensen Lecture Series. The lecture is the first in a newly established 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. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cropsey, Seth 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 2016-04-13 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Beall, James (Introduction) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Cropsey_Seth_2016-04-13 Kristensen lecture series U.S. Naval Academy https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/838eb23cd19155f7993ebd85918c1ad9.pdf 121fe1b25b81245bd3765ba409c36431 PDF Text Text �THE COLLEGE Picture credits: Cover, Santa Fe staff; inside front cover, Tom Farran; page 3, Craig G. Elzey; page 5, Santa Fe staff; page 7, Tom Farran; page 9 (right), Cecil Fox, (left), Tom Parran. OCTOBER 1978 The Report of the President to the Board of Visitors and Governors is published annually by the Office of College Relations, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland Z1404. Richard D. Weigle, President; Thomas Farran, Jr., Director of College Relations. �Report of the President 1977-1978 TO THE BOARD OF VISITORS AND GOVERNORS Both campuses of St. John's College experienced grave financial difficulties during the past year. Like other colleges and universities in the private sector, St. John's found that inflation increased its costs substantially. Neither student fees nor philanthropic giving could keep pace with the need. At Annapolis, the deficit amounted to $52,893, a sum which was charged against the reserve for future operations, thereby reducing it to $274,716. At Santa Fe, revenues fell $361,141 short of meeting expenditures, the largest current deficit in the College's history. The reserve for future operations covered only $93,826 of this sum, so the auditor's report shows a cumulative deficit of$267,315. The College's line of credit is meeting the need for current cash, but interest charges will weigh heavily upon the coming year's budget. The College suffered the loss of two substantial gifts for current purposes at Santa Fe and of one such gift at Annapolis. Alumni and parents responded generously and enthusiastically to a special appeal which I made by mail in June for the Annapolis campus. Over 250 individuals contributed some $18,000. Most gave for the second or third time that year. Many were new givers. Such concern and support are both gratifying and inspiring. Sharply reduced budgets for the coming year will help, but the ultimate solution lies in the building of adequate endowments for both campuses through the Fund for the 1980's. Meanwhile, the College must look to every alumnus, alumna, parent, and friend for even more liberal assistance than in the past if the current budgets of the two campuses are to be balanced. I felt so strongly about the present plight of independent colleges and universities in this country that. I addressed an open letter to President Carter on June 30th. It seemed to me that my 29 years as the President of St. John's College made it appropriate that I write as a self-appointed spokesman for these institutions in the private sector. Even though St. John's College is a very small college on each of its campuses, it represents in microcosm the problems confronted by almost all of its sister colleges and universities. My letter listed the practical problems created by government policy over the years that make the continuing life of St. John's College precarious: the proliferation of reports to government agencies; the requirement to use "prevailing wages" on construction projects; compliance· with rules of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration; meeting the needs of the handicapped; establishment of a funded pension plan; extension of the retirement age to 70; potential Title IX litigation; and rising scales for minimum wages and Social Security contributions. Escalating inflation is the real and continuing threat. Faculty salary scales cannot keep pace, nor can tuitions be increased to a point where students are driven into moderately-priced public institutions. Tax reform should not make more restrictive the deductions for philanthropic giving; instead it should encourage voluntary support of private colleges, universities, hospitals, and museums. My letter recognized that the social goals envisioned by government in many of its programs may we11 be desirable, but it questioned whether co11eges and universities were institutions adequately equipped and funded to become a means of achieving them. I also questioned the wisdom of uniformity in regulations and requirerrients as laid down by agencies in Washington without an understanding and appreciation of the distinctive characteristics and problems of our disparate educational institutions. My concluding paragraphs read: What is the answer? I am not expert in matters of governmental administration and finance. Nor do I envy you and the Congress as you continue to confront the problems of the country which are now impinging so gravely upon St. John's College and the rest of the private sector of American education. We are certainly appreciative of the federal funding of student financial aid and of other programs like those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Larger appropriations for education �The College cannot be the answer. There must be a way to put the American economy on a sounder and steadier basis, to slow or even stop the terrible erosion of inflation. I am struck by the great discrepancies between salaries which the government pays and those which a college like St. John's can afford. Here a Ph. D. starts at age 26 at $12,000. Having achieved tenure after five to seven years, the faculty member would receive $16,850 at age 36 and $21,000 at· age 46. The top salary of $27,125 would be reached just before retirement at age 65. Any increase in scale is terribly difficult to fund. I wonder at the relative security and well-being of government workers whose pay increases are mandated by law to keep pace with rises in the cost of living. I wonder at retired military personnel receiving pensions before age 65 and earning regular salaries and social security credit in civilian occupations. I wonder whether there is not something fundamentally amiss in our society when the cost of one bomber would build and endow forever a St. John's College of 300 students. You and the members of the Congress hold the fortunes of our universities and colleges like St. John's in your hands. We want to survive and flourish, but our future now indeed is in the balance. Teaching and Learning Turning from matters of finance, I am pleased to report that a splendid year was experienced on both campuses from the standpoint of instruction. The two Deans, Edward G. Sparrow at Annapolis and Robert S. Bart at Santa Fe, adjusted rapidly to the demands and responsibilities of their new offices and provided academic leadership of a high order. Both men paid tribute to their respective faculties and assistants for cooperation and understanding during the initial year of their appointment. Mr. Sparrow described his transition from being a tutor to being a dean in this paragraph: For not only did he [I] have to move from a life of teaching to a life of administration-from a life of "contemplation," to a life of action-from a life where clocks and calendars were the concern of others to one where those same clocks and calendars provided the measures and standards of his thought: he had also become accustomed to being a public man from having been a private man, from being a somewhat patriarchical ruler in a domestic house- 2 hold to being the dean of a faculty composed of men and women greatly superior to himself, from being a maker of rules and a final arbiter of the competing claims of children to being a listener, adjuster, mediator, and silent observer. Mr. Bart's report for the year addressed, among other matters, the subject of attrition. He says that part of the problem is imbedded in the very nature of St. John's College. It is one of the very few remaining alternatives to an almost completely uniform conception of college education in the United States. As such, it interests many applicants' who are repelled by our schools and colleges but who do not and cannot understand its curriculum or the quality of its very high expectations. Even visits do not seem to help sufficiently with this problem. In reading applications this year, I am discouraged to see that it is only a minority who have any sense of what the College really is and what their experience is likely to be. Among the rest there are bound to be some who are in fact not real cand.idates for the degree and who may be expected to withdraw before graduating. Yet some of them will prove entirely worthy students and will discover themselves and the life of the mind at St. John's. There is no way at this time that St. John's can have a really selective admissions program: much of the selection must occur during the fir~t two years, and of course that is not always clone well. The Dean also notes that the problem of standards at the College is related in some way to attrition. Figures for this past year were favorable. He asks whether this fact might imply any lowering of standards and replies that it would be hard to give conclusive answers. Our curriculum is almost certainly more demanding than it once was, in terms of intense study and hard work. Yet it is less clear whether we may not be becoming lenient in ways that are bad for students. This can come about by our adjusting to the increasing inadequacy of high-school preparation as well as to our own awareness of the difficulty of what we are doing. I am considering focusing my statement of policy on this question next spring. We need, in my judgment, to find ways in which the student will see unequivocally and in good time that he cannot progress fruitfully without a better grasp of grammar or �October, 1978 calculus, for example, not to say without a much better attendance record. In the face of the poverty of the high-school preparation of students, we should once again ask whether we have not exaggerated the irrelevance of memory and specific skills in the life of a developing mind. The Tutors Thirty-nine tutors taught full schedules at Annapolis during the past year; seven others had partial teaching loads. Four tutors were on sabbatical leave, Harvey Flaumenhaft, J. Winfree Smith, Curtis A. Wilson, and Elliott Zuckerman. Five were on other leave, Amy and Leon Kass at the University of Chicago, Leo F. Raditsa at Stanford University, Robert L. Spaeth at St. John's University, Minnesota, and Ray A. Williamson on a fellowship from the Smithsonian Institution. David Starr began a tenure appointment last July. Tenure appointments were approved for John White effective this july first and for Leo F. Raditsa, commencing july I, 1979. Reed Woodhouse, who returned from leave at the start of the year, completed his appointment in june. Thomas E. Flynn and Mary Pol1ingue, new appointees this year, resigned to undertake further study in the fall. Thomas McDonald taught for the second and final year on an exchange program with the Santa Fe campus. He returns to the Annapolis campus in the fall. For the 1978-79 academic year four tutors will be on sabbatical leave, Joseph P. Cohen, Samuel S. Kutler, Michael S. Littleton, and Robert B. Williamson. Five tutors will be absent on other leave, Saul H. Benjamin at Oxford University, Eva T. H. Brann at Whitman College, Beale Ruhm von Oppen in Europe, Robert L. Spaeth at St. John's University, and, for the first semester, Curtis A. Wilson at the Johns .Hopkins University. Four new faculty appointments. have been made: David Guaspari, who holds the Ph. D. degree in mathematics from Cambridge University and has been Visiting Lecturer at Texas Technological University for the past three years; Thomas Mark, with an M.A. in French literature and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University, who has been Assistant Professor at the University of California in San Diego since 1971; Kelton R. McKinley, who recieved both the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Michigan State University in aquatic ecology and has been an Associate Research Scientist at the Johns Hopkins University since 1976; and Stephen M. Winters, who holds an M.S. degree in engineering and an M.A. degree in philosophy from the University of California in San Diego and who is currently completing his dissertation for the doctorate at the Johns Hopkins University. At Santa Fe the Faculty consisted of 28 tutors teaching full-time and four part-time. In addition, three tutors were on sabbatical leave, Glenn A. Freitas, R. Thomas Harris, and Robert A. Neidorf, and three were on other leave, Charles G. Bell, Ralph Swentzell, and, for the first half of the year, Bruce Venable. Richard L. Michaud completed his appointment at the end of the academic year and leaves the College. Howard Zeidennan, who spent a second year on the Annapolis campus as an exchange tutor, will not return to Santa Fe but will become a member of the Annapolis Faculty. For the coming academic year, Robert Bunker, Robert Sacks, and john S. Steadman will be on sabbatical leave and David Townsend and John Verdi on other leave, the former studying at the Yale Law School and the latter at the University of California at Berkeley. Two new part-time appointmeTits were made for the fall: Mrs. Grietje Sloan, who holds the M.A. degree in comparative literature and the Ph.D. degree in history from the University of California at Berkeley; and Sharon Garvey, a graduate of the University of Notre Dame in the fine arts, who received the M.A. degree from the St. John's Graduate Institute in Liberal Education this summer. All parts of the Title IX complaint against fhe College filed by a former tutor, Mrs. Lynne Hamilton, were dismissed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Mrs. Hamilton had alleged discrimination against herself and against women, Blacks, and Hispanics in recruitment, appointment, and treatment. She has now brought a class action suit against the College in United States District Court. She asks an affirmative action program for the College, and, for herself, reinstatement on the Faculty as well as pecuniary compensation. At its January meeting this year the Board approved the policy recommendation of the President and the two Faculties that the College reaffirm its historical adherence to nondiscrimination in all matters concerning the Faculty and the 3 �The College Staff, as well as in student admissions. With respect to tutors the statement reads: Campbell, Vice-Chairman of the Board of Visitors and Governors, presided and conferred the degrees. The Board's medal for the senior with the highest academic record was St. John's College appoints and reappoints tutors without regard to race, religion, sex, or ethnic origin of the candidate. Decisions on appointment and reappointment of tutors are made solely on the basis of individual merit and fitness to teach throughout the Program. The integrity of the College as a community of teachers and learners is at all times paramount. The College encourages and welcomes applications from candidates of both sexes and of all races, religious persuasions, and ethnic origins. awarded to Victor Austin, of Woodward, Oklahoma. The Duane L. Peterson Scholarship was shared by Nigel Hinshelwood, of Christianburg, Virginia, and Stephen Houser, of Denver, Colorado, members of the junior class, for academic achievement, constructive membership in the college community, and commitment to post-graduate study. Commencement at Annapolis took place a week later on May 28, 1978, when 71 seniors were granted the B.A. degree. Mark Steitz, of Bethesda, Maryland, received the Board's medal, and Alan Lee Bowers, a junior from Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, was awarded the Peterson Scholarship for his senior year. For 1978-79, C. Markland Kelly, Jr. Scholarships were received by Lynne Gummert, of Silver Spring, With respect to admissions, the policy calls for admitting stu- dents "without regard to their race, religion, sex, or ethnic origin, and without regard to the number of qualified applicants in any category or the composition of the existing student body." Maryland; Harold Pugh, of Annapolis, Maryland; and Florence Roessler, of Arlington, Virginia. Kimberly Schraf, of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, was awarded the Joan Yvonne Ronay Scholarship for her senior year. Admissions The Students Both St. John's campuses experienced drops of between The admissions picture is distinctly brighter than a year ago, as the comparative figures show: five and six percent in enrollments for the fall and spring semesters. Apart from the financial implications, the reduction in the size of the student body at Annapolis seemed beneficial, for it made the campus less crowded and returned common rooms from temporary dormitory usage to their in- tended social purpose. At Santa Fe, the smaller enrollment resulted from a critically small entering class of only 62 men and women, followed by a January class of sixteen. Compara- tive enrollment figures for the various classes in 1977-78 follow: Annapolis Fall Spring 110 100 27 107 106 72 69 74 75 363 377 Freshmen January Freshmen Sophomores Juniors Seniors Santa Fe Fall Spring 62 59 16 64 80 60 63 54 54 259 253 Fcnty-nine seniors were granted their bachelor's degrees at Santa Fe on May 21, 1978. Because of my absence in the People's Republic of China, former Governor Jack M. 4 Annapolis 1976 1977 1978 196 197 210 Applications Approved 175 175 188 100 107 116 Deposits 106 107 116 Enrolled 10 10 10 Rejected 66 75 78 Withdrawn 5, 946 5, 750 5,888 Material Sent 318 277 295 Campus Visitors Santa Fe 1976 1.277 1978 140 121 128 130 108 115 83 62 82 83 62 81 7 7 5 ' 38 42 38 4,630 5,846 6,049 142 122 128 At Annapolis the class was filled by june 1st for the first time in my experience. This represents a great accomplishment on the part of Joanne Aitken, the Director of Admissions over the past four years. Her report for the year cites as the strength of the office the discovery of the necessary recruitment tool in direct mailings, and the tailoring of every aspect of the office work to support it. She suggests three reasons for the fact that direct mail is the chief means of obtaining students: (!)The St. John's Program appeals to a diverse group of students from disparate locations; (2) St. John's is not well known at the second;uy school level, so students do not seek the College out; and (3) The students who come tend to �October, 1978 Director and then as Director of Admissions, was also aided by the concerted efforts of alumni in Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, under the able volunteer direction of Mary Gallagher, '60, a Visitor and Governor. In June Clark Kimerer, of the graduating class in Santa Fe, was appointed Assistant Director of Admissions to work with Miss Ferron in the year ahead. Miss Aitken's final report ends with the admonition that the Admissions Office should reflect the kind of life the College provides. She writes: be independent and find St. John's on their own without the guidance of counsellors or other professionals. The most effective brochure has been the one entitled, "The Following Teachers Will Return to St. John's Next Year." The cover then lists the authors of the books which are read in the Program. A new piece developed during the year under review was "The Perplexed Parent's Guide to St. John's College." It was inspired by Sharon Bishop, '65, a Visitor and Governor, and written by Mrs. Rebecca Wilson, Director of Public Relations. These publications, together with travel to schools, visits by prospective students, alumni involvement, and the cooperation of the Faculty Admissions Committee and of David Doremus, '79, Admissions Counsellor, help account for the extraordinary success of Miss Aitken's efforts. Unfortunately, a career in architecture beckons, So Miss Aitken is resigning her position in the early fall to enter the Architecture School at Harvard University. I should like to record here the great debt of gratitude which all of us at St. John's owe Miss Aitken for her imaginative and tireless work and for the four excellent classes that she has recruited for the college. After a long and careful search, the Admissions Committee recommended to me and I to the Board John Christensen, of Providence, Rhode Island, to succeed Miss Aitken. Mr. Christensen graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara and then earned master's and doctor's degrees in literature from Northwestern University. At the University of Rhode Island, where he has been teaching, he has become increasingly involved in the area of student motivation, including college and career choices. At Santa Fe Susan Ferron, '77, has done a spectacular job in turning the admissions situation around and in producing a class a third larger than that of last fall. Richard Stephenson seemed unable to handle the demands of the office, so his appointment was terminated in early March, when the class was only an eighth filled and applications were twenty-five percent below the preceding year, in itself the poorest year in the College's recruitment history. Substantial mailings and fine publicity helped to turn the tide. Miss Ferron, as Acting We demand a great seriousness and maturity of our students and we treat them as if we believe they possess both. In a way, each-the expectation and the treatment-reinforces the other. Everything I've learned about admissions at St. John's convinces me that if we act as if we are dealing with sincere, intelligent, searching, and extraordinary students we will attract them and we will convince them that St. John's is the place they belong. The difference be-tween St. John's and other colleges isn't something to think of as an admissions disability. The value of that difference on the academic side should persuade us of its value in admissions. Student Services When Miss Beverly Smith resigned from the Placement Office on the Santa Fe campus at the end of December, a single office of Financial Aid and Placement was created under the capable direction of Miss Alberta Rivera. Mrs. Marsha Drennon became Assistant Director of Financial Aid. The space assigned was the Dean's former office, since he preferred a smaller office in the western corner of the building. On the Annapolis campus, financial stringency prompted a reduction in available services to students. Brenda Robertson, Student Counsellor and Director of Placement, accepted part-time work in counselling students. Mary Ann Braun, '58, assumed the placement responsibilities, and Philip Aaronson continued as Director of Financial Aid. Both Alberta Rivera and Philip Aaronson again performed immensely helpful service to students on their respective campuses in funding the cost of their education. Aid in the form of grants, loans, and jobs was extended to 40% of the 40 I students who were enrolled on the Annapolis campus for all or part of the academic year. The total demonstrated need of $602,236 exceeded the maximum of $559,869 which was made available to the 161 students who were helped. At Santa Fe, 147 students received some form of financial assistance out of a total student body of 277, or 53%. Their aggre- 5 �The College gate demonstrated need was $646,765, and the College met $632,254 of that amount. Mrs. Mary Lou Neel resigned to accept a position elsewhere. She was succeeded by Mrs. Ann Ferkovich, who had operated her own computerized office services business. Mrs. Dolores Williams, switchboard and mailroom supervisor for seven years, also resigned at the end of the year and was suc- The Staff Because of a physical ailment, David Tucker retired in ceeded by Mrs. Shirley Anstey, the duplicating and supplies March from the position of Superintendent of Buildings and supervisor. Grounds on the Annapolis campus. For fourteen years he had done an exceptional job in maintaining the College's operator, left the College upon the graduation of her husband in May. Miss Linda Dansby was appointed part-time Mrs. Merrie Higa, part-time switchboard physical plant. I should like to record the gratitude of the entire college community to Mr. Tucker for his long and effective service. In April Charles Wallace became the new receptionist-typist in the Dean's Office in February, when Mrs. Marsha Drennon became Assistant Director of Student Superintendent. He had been construction foreman on the past three years, completed his assignment on June 30th. Financial Aid. Perry Plummer, typist in the library for the Harrison Health Center. The College is fortunate in finding a man with 23 years of experience working for a mechanical and general contractor. Another major loss for the College was retirement of Walter J. Rausch in May. For years he had been the untiring and loyal head of the security force. His abiding concern was for the safety and welfare of the students, whom he termed his "other family." In the early fall, after this report was first writ~ ten, Mr. Rausch died of cancer. He will be memorialized by the erection of a bench just outside the entrance to the Key Memorial. The College community mourns the loss of a real friend. The Libraries Two notable collections were donated to the library at Annapolis this year. Dr. Henry Lee Bowen, former professor and Air Force Historian, gave his personal library of som~ _!600 volumes to constitute a special permanent collection on mythology, symbolism, and architecture. The books will be kept in a separate cage where Dr. Bowen can continue his work on a book, to be entitled The Importance of Mythological Symbolism in the History of Architecture. The other major gift was a coliection of over 200 volumes, classics in detective There were a number of changes in personnel in offices on fiction, from Mrs. Ford K. Brown, their author. The collec- campus. Mrs. Eileen Pabst replaced Mrs. Joy Sparks as secre- by Mrs. tion includes various editions and translations of the fifty novels which Zenith Brown wrote under the pseudonyms of Judy Maistrellis, '71. Mrs. Dolores Donihi became secretary in the Admissions Office in May. Miss Deborah Cullers had resigned from the position in December, and Miss Pattie Sol- Three books of wartime spy romance are included, written under the pen name of Brenda Conrad. There is also a rare tary to the Assistant Deans; she was in turn replaced lars, '80, had served temporarily in the interim. Mrs. Elizabeth Bolotin became Music Librarian following the resignation of Mrs. Karen Holland in December. Miss Sharon O'Neil Was appointed secretary in the financial aid office, succeeding Miss Elizabeth Tan, and Mrs. Marion Slakey became part-time secretary in the office of the Fund for the 1980's in February. Two members of the Santa Fe staff retired during the year and qualified for pensions under the recently adopted staff pension plan. Miss Julia Koontz had ten years of service to her credit. As Assistant Admissions Officer and Secretary she had been a mainstay of the office under four different Directors. Mrs. Beth Floyd began her employment at the College in 1967. She had been Music Cataloguer since 1970 and was responsible for establishing the music library in the new Steinberger-Weis Building. Both staff members served the College well. They have our thanks and best wishes in their retirement. · After seven years as Bookkeeper in the Treasurer's Office, 6 Leslie Ford in the United States and David Frome in Britain. copy of Mrs. Brown's first book, Murder of an Old Man, published in I 929. The College expresses its appreciation to Mrs. Brown and to Dr. Bowen, as well as to faculty and alumni authors and many others who contributed volumes to the Library. The Librarian, Miss Charlotte Fletcher, reports that during the year the first complete library inventory was accomplished since I 948. As a result, I, 3 I 6 books were discarded, as compared with 1,894 volumes and scores that were added to the collection. Unfortunately, inflation continued to take its toll, as the average price paid for a hardback book this past year rose to nineteen dollars. A welcome grant of $10,000 for library endowment was received from the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, of Washington, D.C., thus raising the total permanent funds of the Library to $144,188. Miss Fletcher wisely urges that the library endowment be augmented as rapidly as possible to the $250,000 figure, in order to maintain an adequate level of book purchases. At Santa Fe, Mrs. Alice Whelan states that an effort was �October, 1978 made during the year to enrich the holdings in Program liter- contributions to the western campus will grow more rapidly. ahne, by acquiring editions of the Great Books in the original languages, as well as additional translations, secondary works, bibliographies, and the complete works of certain authors. Limited funds curtailed the program but the groundwork was laid for future acquisitions. During the year 907 volumes were catalogued, thus increasing to 42,569 the number of books in the library collection. The overall total in the collection, including 5,032 phonodiscs and 1,461 phonotapes, is now 49,062. In addition, there are 2,900 volumes in the Robert Hunt Collection, which have not been catalogued. St. John's College can be proud of having built such a superb collection in the short space of some fifteen years. Much credit is due Mrs. Whelan. Acknowledgment should also be made of the extremely helpful funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities through its five-year development grant. The Graduate Institute in Liberal Education The Alumni In his final report as Director, Robert L. Spaeth statecLthat 119 students enrolled for the eleventh session of the Institute in the summer of 1977. Of these, 91 were active members of the education profession, 80 of them teachers. The wide At Homecoming in November the St. John's Alumni Association celebrated the !50th year of its founding. Three Awards of Merit were presented by President William W. Simmons, '48: to Bernard Gessner, '27, retired business executive and former President of the Association; to Dr. David Dobreer, '44, Los Angeles physician and member of the Board of Visitors and Governors; and to Robert A. Goldwin, '50, former Dean of the College and Special Assistant to President Ford, now Resident Scholar with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. Thomas Farran, '42, Director of Alumni Activities, was also honored for his fifteen years of service to the College and to the Association. james H. Frame, '50, of Los Altos Hills, California, and William W. Simmons, '48, of Annapolis, were re-elected to the Board of Visitors and Governors for second three-year terms. Citations were awarded at the dinner to some fifty alumni who had worked as class captains for at least three years in annual giving drives. Once again, giving by this im- portant part of the college family showed a marked increase range of careers among the remaining participants is indicated by the following roster: bartender, carpenter, clinical psychologist, consultant, documents recorder, investor, planning officer, policeman, salesperson, secretary, tennis professional, waitress, and warehouseman. A quarter of the students were members of racial minority groups, 27 Blacks and 4 His- panics. Interestingly enough, twenty students already held M.A. or Ph.D. degrees. Well over half of the students received fellowships, ranging in value from $200 to full fees, plus a stipend and travel allowance. These fellowships were generously provided by the Astor Foundation, the Cafritz Foundation, the Hoffberger Foundation, the Luce Founda- tion, the New York Riot Relief Fund, the Noble Foundation, and the Thorne Foundation. Fifteen of the twenty faculty members for the summer were St. John's tutors, seven from the Santa Fe Faculty and eight, including the Director, from the Annapolis Faculty. Five over previous years. The number of donors was 787, as com- came from other colleges and universities: William Allen, pared with 678 in 1976-77. The amount contributed rose from $57,874 for current purposes and $37,040 for capital purposes to $74,966 for the current budget and $41,127 for from Harvey Mudd College; David Cressy, from Pitzer College; C. Grant Luckhardt, '65, from Georgia State University; Lucian Marquis, from Pitzer College and the Claremont Graduate School; and Neal Weiner, '64, from Marlboro College. Thirty-eight master's degrees were awarded at the end of the summer, thus bringing to 224 the number of M.A. de- endowment. In addition, there was an anonymous challenge gift of $50,000 last year and $125,000 this year, that proved immensely helpful in stimulating alumni giving and in alleviating potential deficit situations. At Santa Fe, alumni giv- ing was still quite modest, $4,726 for current purposes, and $2,484 for endowment. Now that the first class has marked the tenth anniversary of its graduation, I hope that alumni grees earned since the Institute began. For the first time, a small concurrent session of the Institute was offered on the Annapolis campus. Seventeen students were enrolled in a new segment of the curriculum on 7 �The College history. Eight members of the groups were teachers, two were nurses. The others were a design consultant, a librarian, a neurologist, a recording engineer, a student, a tobacco store manager, and a writer. The four faculty members were all Annapolis tutors who had had previous experience teaching at come from the College's endowment; the interest received closely approximates the annual return on the portfolio. The home loans have proven a great boon to faculty members on both campuses. the Institute in Santa Fe. Geoffrey J. Comber, who instituted the program and served as Associate Director of the Institute, reported a most successful introductory summer and predicted a doubled enrollement for 1978. The Two Campuses In December the College received a welcome grant of $125,000 from the Hodson Trust of Morristown, New Jersey, toward renovating and adding to Randall Hall on the Annapolis campUs. A new kitchen and enlarged dining area are envisioned. The total cost of the project will be just under a million dollars, half of which will be available on a matching basis from the State of Maryland. The architectural firm of Michael and Michael, Inc., of Alexandria, Virginia, is being commissioned to work with the Campus Development Fund for the 1980's The ambitious hopes for the College's Fund for the 1980's were dealt a serious setback when Charles Cooley, Assistant to the President and Director of the Fund, suffered heart problems and had to relinquish his responsibilities. To meet the situation I asked Burchenal Ault, Vice President on the Santa Fe campus, to assume direction of the campaign. He was relieved of administrative duties, which were assumed by Emery Jennings, the Treasurer. Upon Mr. Ault's recommendation after careful investigation and study, the firm of Charles R. Feldstein & Company, Inc., of Chicago, Illinois, was engaged as fund-raising counsel, and Lee and Marie Hirst, of Albuquerque, were retained for work in public relations. A new plan for the Fund for the Eighties has been drafted Committee and to prepare final working drawings and speci- which moved away from over-reliance upon large gifts and fications. It is hoped that sufficient funding will be in hand so that construction can begin in 1979. The College has also received a challenge grant of $250,000 from the Kresge Foundation, of Troy, Michigan, toward the renovation of and addition to Iglehart Hall, the gymnasium of Annapolis. The overall cost of this project is estimated at $1,500,000, half of which will be available through the State bond issue. The Kresge challenge gives St. John's until April of 1980 to obtain the balance of the funds to complete the project. Preliminary sketches have been prepared by Michael and Michael, Inc. They include a swimming pool, playing areas for volleyball and badminton, squash and handball courts, and locker room facilities for men and women. The old gymnasium, with its much be- seeks instead a balanced program of gifts and grants tailored to the resources of people at all levels of wealth, both now and loved running track, will be retained, and the new addition constructed on the western side of the present building. At Santa Fe the Treasurer reports that accounts payable were computerized in January, thus completing the conversion of the old manual records to a more efficient computer system. In the area of plant operation, it was found necessary to replace carpeting in the dormitories with vinyl tile. The project began in June, but will not be completed until two summers from now. Finally, the Treasurer reported on the faculty home loan program, under which Tutors and As- sociates may borrow up to $10,000 for down payments on new homes, to be repaid over a ten-year period at an interest rate of 6%. Twenty-three such loans are now outstanding in the aggregate amount of $86,876. Funds for the program 8 on into the future. At the same time, the fund-raising ap- paratus of the College has been reasonably centralized .. William Dunham, Vice President in Annapolis, has been freed of administrative duties to concentrate his energies on the campaign. The new program calls for (!) the continuing search for, and cultivation of, large potential donors, wher- ever they may be found, and (2) fifteen city-area campaigns involving alumni, parent~, and friends, each relying on the active participation of a Board member. City-areas chosen are: Boston and New York in the Northeast; Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore-Annapolis-Maryland, Virginia-North Carolina-Georgia, and Florida in the Southeast; Chicago and Pittsburgh-Toledo-Cleveland-Detroit in the Middle West; Dallas-Houston-San Antonio, Albuquerque-Santa Fe-Los Alamos, Colorado Springs-Denver, and Phoenix-Tucson in the Southwest; and Los Angeles and San Francisco on the West Coast. The plan also envisions a continuing search for and application to potentially receptive foundations. Because of the disruption caused by Mr. Cooley's illness, the Fund made little progress during the year. As of June 30, 1978, $8,015,193 had been raised toward the goal of $25,000,000. The Annapolis campus had received $1,494,436 and had pledges of $1,663,291. The Santa Fe campus had received $1,398, 142 and had pledges of $771,371. A total of $2,687,953 was promised in future bequests, $1,059,953 for Annapolis, $425,000 for Santa Fe, �October, 1978 and $1,203,000 without designation. An analysis of gifts and interest in the College's well-being. Edward S. Pinney, a grants received on both campuses during the past fiscal year partner in the New York law firm of Cravath, Swaine and follows: Moore, served on the Board from 1961 to 1964 and demonstrated an active interest in the founding of the western campus. Paul L. Banfield, '23, founded the Landon School in Bethesda, Maryland, an institution recognized for its sound traditional preparatory education and for its well-conceived athletic program. The College benefited from his active participation on the Board from 1949 to 1960. Ford K. Brown died on September 16, 1977, at his home in Annapolis. The sorrow of the College is well expressed in the Resolution adopted by the Board at its meeting one week later: Annapolis Alumni Parents Friends Foundations Corporations Government (State) Totals Purposes Unrestricted $ 56,757 2,804 243,877 18,455 40,167 202,445 46,065 108 419 $718,989 $284,734 10,004 7,210 9,456 54,280 257,985 31,262 Santa Fe $430,063 $378,903 75,452 Board St. John's College Community Santa Fe Annapolis Donors 35,602 134,765 105,661 Restricted for Library Scholarships, etc. Graduate Institute Endowment Plant Totals 88,469 125,005 $718,989 $654,931 $654,931 The last member of the Faculty to have taught under both the old and the new programs, Ford Brown had endeared himself to countless generations of students. They respected him for the scholarship that produced Fathers of the Victorians; they learned under the stimulus of his teaching; they responded tohis gentle wit and his elegant use of the English language. For forty-three years, from 1925 to his retirement in 1968, this perennially young Rhodes Scholar was a familiar and beloved figure on the St. John's campus in Annapolis and, for one year, in Santa Fe. The College mourns his death as the passing of an era. Jacob Klein, Dean of the College and member of its Board for the nine years from 1949 to 1958, died on July 16, 1978, at his home in Annapolis. His death brought sorrow to the whole college community, as evidenced by the Resolution drafted by his colleagues and adopted by both the Board and the Faculty: In Memoriam St. John's College sadly records the deaths of three former members of the Board of Visitors and Governors and of two well loved members of its Faculty. Robert M. Hutchins, former President of the University of Chicago and founder of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, played an important role in bringing into being the present curriculum of St. John's College. He served briefly as Chairman of the Board and demonstrated a constant and continuing A young emigre scholar with a Ph.D. degree from the University of Marburg, he joined the St. John's Faculty in 1938, where he continued as a Tutor, even after his retirement. All students who had the good fortune of being in his classes remember him as the best of teachers. All members of the College felt the inspiration of his wise guidance. None can forget the depth of his intellect, his passion for learning, his love for the young, and his care for his colleagues. He wrote three books: Greek Mathematics and the Origin of Algebra, A Commentary on Plato's Meno, and Plato's Trilogy, as well as many essays and lectures. But for him philosophy was never so much a matter of books as a living conversation. In his modesty he would have refused a comparison 9 �The College which the whole community felt: that he was, like Socrates, able to elicit from his friends truths beyond their own expectation. The College's Public Role In the Dean's Statement of Educational Policy, Edward Sparrow addressed the question as to why the St. John's Program has not aroused more interest among other institutions of higher education in the United States. He called the lack of interest perplexing and somewhat alarming. "It is perplexing," he wrote, "because one would expect that the success of a co11ege program which is said to have in large measure inspired the 1945 Harvard Report, General Education in a Free Society, and which had caused such a stir at its inception, would be of particular interest when the question of overspecialization in the undergraduate curriculum had once more been raised. This neglect is also alarming because it bespeaks a dismissal of the significance of the content and procedures of the Program in many quarters and thereby also discourages applications to the College, financial support of it, and, more importantly, respect for those traditions of our civilization which it so strongly seeks to support." Mr. Sparrow asked, in the light of his observations about the state of American education and about the shape of contemporary and future American public life, to what extent we should continue to consider the St. John's Program relevant to American undergraduate education or even to American life itself. He asked whether we should think of St. John's "as a bizarre but immensely fascinating anomaly . . . an essentially private place for private ends ... a refuge of sanity for intelligent and sensitive persons whose lives can find no warm echoes in other institutions." He concluded that the answer to his original question was a bold "yes", that the Program was most relevant, and that it should be once more presented "vigorously to men of power." The two Faculties heartily concurred in Mr. Sparrow's conclusion and adopted a resolution reaffirming the conviction that the St. John's Program is a standard of American undergraduate liberal education and urging the Instruction Committee of the College, the Deans, the President, and the Board to find appropriate means for presenting the College's aims to the American public concerned with the quality of undergraduate education. The Board recognized the need for more vigorous action and approved a suggestion made by Mary Gallagher, one of its members, that a new committee be created on the College's public role. In this connection, it is heartening to take note of the chapter on the St. John's Program in the new volume by David Riesman and Gerald Grant entitled, The Perpetual Dream. 10 Mortimer Adler's recently published autobiography, A Philosopher at Large, singles out St. John's College as the only institution where a real liberal education can be obtained. Finally, it is gratifying to report that the Rockefeller Foundation is calling a conference in New York City in late September on the subject "Toward the Restoration of a Liberal Arts Curriculum." Participants will include St. John's tutors, Harvard faculty members, and representatives of foundations, educational organizations and the media. Eva Brann, an Annapolis tutor, will give a paper on the St. John's Program, Gerald Grant one on the relaxation of curricular standards in the 1960's, and Dean Henry Rossovsky one on the new required curriculum at Harvard. ' ' * ' As I conclude this annual report, I should like to express my own personal gratitude and that of the College to Board members whose terms expired at the time of the annual meeting: Victor G. Bloede, '41, Mrs. Walter B. Driscoll, Walter F. Evers, '35, Jerome LaPides, John E. Robson, A. Paul Thompson, Dr. Thomas B. Turner, '21, and especially to Alexander K. McLanahan, who served so capably and so selflessly as our Chairman and who presided with such grace and diplomacy at our meetings. I look forward to working closely with the new officers: Charles A. Nelson, '45, Chairman; Jack M. Campbell and D. Robert Yarnall, Jr., Vice Chairmen; and Mrs. Louise T. Trigg, Secretary. I also wish to express appreciation to the Board for permitting Mrs. Weigle and me to make a trip to The People's Republic of China in May of this year, even though it meant missing the Santa Fe commencement. It was a fascinating experience to return 33 years after I had left Nanking at the end of World War II. We were well received in all of the eight cities that we visited, and we returned with a better understanding of the progress which had been made by the Chinese people over the last three decades. I now look forward to my thirtieth year in the presidency of St. John's College with mixed feelings. The disappointing financial year that we have just ended sobers me as to the future viability of this and other independent colleges and universities. On the other hand, I believe more firmly than ever in the validity of the St. John's concept of education. It must survive and flourish on its two campuses. Richard D. Weigle President Santa Fe, New Mexico August 25, 1978 �BALANCE SHEETS June 30, 1978 ASSETS LIABILITIES AND FUND BALANCES CURRENT FUNDS CURRENT FUNDS Annapolis Unrestricted Cash . Investments ............. . 5,024 287,793 98,999 Accounts Receivable, net. Santa Fe $ - Notes Receivable ...... . Due from Other Funds . 5,216 39,590 18,295 Inventory, Bookstore, at cost . Prepaid Expenses ........ . 25,153 500 119,302 80,996 14,835 40,023 66,085 94,500 Assets Held Pending Sale. ~~ 454,917 441,394 --Restricted 5,924 143,410 253,801 C~h Investments, at cost .... Due from Other Funds . Accounts Receivable . $ 7,487 42,901 135,253 6,073 -- 403,135 $ 41,076 Student Loans Receivable ..... . National Direct Student Loans . $ 8,990 21,922 305,042 1.000 213,948 -- United Student Aid Deposit. 255,024 Total Loan Funds $ 336,954 ENDOWMENT FUNDS Total Endowment Funds 6,521 7,049,083 1,000,944 480 15,925 $ 8,072,953 s s 890 1,433,588 43,060 1,477.538 ANNUITY FUNDS 176,226 Total Annuity Funds . PLANT FUNDS Investment in Plant Land and Improvements. Buildings Equipment ........................ . Land and Improvements-California. $ 454,917 $ 708,709 $ (267,315) $ 454,917 Total Current Funds . $ 441,394 403,135 Restricted Fund Balance 191,714 858,052 633,108 $ Due to Current Unrestricted . National Direct Student Loans Balance ........ . College Loan Fund Balance. Total Loan Funds 5,545 $ 304,831 26,578 254,193 831 s 255,024 $ 10,224 8,044,912 17,817 s 336,954 Investment Cash Account-Overdraft . Fund Balance . , ................... . Unexpended and Unearned Income .. Due to Other Funds .............. . Total Endowment Funds s 8,072,953 s 1,476,001 1,537 $ 1,477,538 ANNUITY FUNDS 11,134 165,092 Due from Current Unrestricted Funds Due from Plant Funds . Unexpended ......................... . Investment Retirement of Indebtedness . 347,500 109,368 146,387 44,726 60,728 ENDOWMENT FUNDS $ Due from Other Funds . $ LOAN FUNDS c~h Investments . Receivables ...... . Pledges Receivable ..... 50,000 13,654 269,726 71,844 49,693 633,108 LOAN FUNDS C~h Fund Balance Reserve for Future Operations (cumulative deficit) $ 191,714 858,052 Total Current Funds Santa Fe Annapolis Unrestricted Notes Payable-Bank. Accounts Payable. Due to Other Funds ........ Student Advance Deposits . Deferred Income 176,226 Liability Under Life Estate Agreements. -176,226 Total Annuity Funds . ~- 0 PLANT FUNDS 135,613 $ 4,576 276,368 394,929 5,685,207 394,221 584,000 533,245 5,906,741 739,664 Total Plant Funds .. $ 7,193,970 $ 7,460,594 Total Funds. $16,379,999 --$10,084,420 = Unexpended .............. . Retirement of Indebtedness . Invested in Plant Due to Other Funds ... . Notes Payable-Other ............ . Loans Payable to Annapolis Campus Dormitory Bonds Payable Due to Annuity Fund .... Net Investment in Plant . .... 0 () $ 135,613 5,216 s 4,576 276,368 $ 7,053,141 9,022 9,321 899,394 1,482,000 165,092 $ 4,614,821 Total Plant Funds. s 7,193,970 $ 7,460,594 Total Funds . $16,379,999 $10,084,420 cr (1) ,.., ...... >0 --.] 00 �N CONDENSED STATEMENT OF REVENUE AND EXPENDITURES ;2 ANNAPOLIS ENDOWMENT FUNDS (1) June 30, 1978 () Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1978 Gift of Donor A.W. MeUon Foundation Matching Gift ToW Fund Principal TUTORSHIP ENDOWMENTS: REVENUES AnnapoUs Educational and General Tuition Fees Government Programs and Grants . Private Gifts and Grants . Endowment Income. Other Sources . Total Educational arxl General Auxiliary Enterprises Bookstore .................. . Dining Hall and Dormitories . Outside Summer Progrnms. Summer Coffee Shop, Vending Machines Dorsey House . Total Auxiliary Enterprises . Total Revenues. 1,488,674 238,752 353,677 512,018 40,505 $ 2,633,626 Santa Fe 304,233 460,907 100,268 35,246 s 1,981,267 63,095 401,944 16,441 11,614 10,216 60,329 295,122 64,947 503,310 420,398 $ 3,136,936 $ 2,401,665 Total Educational and General . Auxiliary Enterprises Bookstore Dinin~ Hall and Dormitories .. (Outside) Summer Programs . Dorsey House ................... . Plant Operations and Maintenance . Mandatory Transfers . Total Auxiliary Enterprises . Total Expenditures and Transfers - Other Transfers Total Expenditures and Transfers Excess (deficit) Revenues over Expenditures (1) $ 313,432 1,989,954 150,216 2,679,845 500,000 150,000 $ 313,432 2,679,845 2,489,954 300,216 $3,329,845 $5,783,447 15,000 25,000 7,500 3,070 8,672 87,933 8,850 13,705 . 135 1,000 46,753 93,809 150,250 42,787 15,000 25,000 30,000 50,000 6,396 s 860,000 99,983 243,428 451,022 Annapolis Self Help. George M. Austin, 1908 . WalterS. Baird, 1930 . Chicago Regional . Class of 1897 . Class of 1898 ..... . Richard Cleveland .. . Dr. Charles C. Cook ........ . Corp. George E. Cunniff, III . Clarence Dickinson, 1911 . Faculty .............................. . John T. and Gertrude L. Harrison, 1907. Richard H. Hodgson, 1906 . Alfred and Ruth Houston, 1906 Houston Regional. Jesse H. Jones and Mary Gibbs Jones ..... . Robert E. and Margaret Larsh Jones, 1909 . John Spangler Kieffer .................... . Arthur E. and Hilda Combs Landers, 1930 . Massachusetts Regional ... Philip A. Myers, II, 1938 . Rev. Theodore O'Brien Oklahoma Regional .......... . Thomas Parran Memorial, 1911 Pittsburgh Regional . 7,500 3,070 6,140 8,672 87,933 8,850 13,705 135 270 1,000 2,359 20,025 150,250 49,112 113,834 300,500 45,287 2,500 500 500 1,000 36,000 36,000 46,656 72,000 46,656 4,000 4,000 16,000 22,685 30,262 19,000 26,000 6,465 9,000 26,000 560 Murray Joel Rosenberg Memorial Flora Duvall Sayles ....................... . Hazel Norris and j, Graham Shannahan, 1908 Clarence W. Stryker ......... . Frederick J. von Schwerdtner. Richard D. Weigle . 560 2,000 3,664 3,413 7,367 323,864 760,5?6 380,793 16,000 45,370 39,262 19,000 52,000 6,465 1,120 12,500 7,056 4,851 22,685 12,500 7,056 4,851 2,000 3,664 3,818 1,552 12,533 157,556 5,275 6,132 $ SCHOLARSHIP ENDOWMENTS: ~lift~e:sc~~~~~feo_u_n_~~~~ .. 1,106,270 83,449 258,892 646,224 282,621 234,034 7,231 1,552 19,900 -1,084,430 -- LIBRARY ENDOWMENTS: 50,788 $ 2,617,886 $ 2,254,977 71,776 226,348 14,268 18,233 293,517 62,201 160,332 37,025 624,142 $ 495,409 169,518 66,333 $ 3,242,028 (12,420) 355 500 Alumni Memorial Book Fund ...................... . Charles Edward Stuart Barton Memorial Library Fund BenWood Foundation Library Fund ............. . Mary Safford Hoogewerff Memorial Library Fund Jonathan D. Korshin, 1966, Library Fund . Oliver M. Korshin, 1963, Library Fund . Margaret Lauck Memorial Library Fund Library Fund ............................. .. Charles Gomber Mantz, 1875, Library Fund . Eugene and Agnes Meyer Library Fund. Ellen C. Murphy Memorial Library Fund ............ . Henry H. and Cora Dodson Sasscer Newspaper Fund . Elma R. and Charles D. Todd Memorial Library Fund ... Luther A. an"d Clara B. Weigle Memorial Library Fund. The Jack Willen Foundation Library Fund In Memory of Murray Joel Rosenberg s 3,189,829 ($52,893) $ 2,762,806 ($361,141) $ 200 200 1,000 700 500 200 200 1,000 1,100 1,750 10,000 400 1,750 10,000 1,500 1,500 19,500 3,600 1,500 3,0110 19,500 1,500 39,000 3,600 1,0110 1,000 98,488 355 50,000 31,683 25,000 25,000 31,683 $ 2,750,386 52,199 -$ 46,400 144,888 STUDENT LOAN FUND ENDOWMENTS: George Friedland ............... . John 'David Pyle, 1962, Memorial . (1) (]Q $2,453,602 $ 1,080,613 EXPENDITURES Educational and General Instruction ........ . Academic Support . Student Services .... . Institutional Support ............. . Plant Operations and Maintenance . Student Financial Aid . Other Programs ........ . Non-Mandatory Transfers Mandatory Transfers . Richard Hammond Elliott, 1917 . Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grants. Addison E. Mullikin, 1895 . Arthur de Talma Valk, 1906 2... - s 24,081 7,180 20,000 1,470 31,261 21,470 $ 44,081 8,650 52,731 �Gift nf Donor A.W. Mellon Foundation Matching Gift Total Fund Principal ALUMNI MEMORIAL ENDOWMENTS: c;. Granville Q. Adams, 1929 ..... Charles Edwards Athey. 1931 . laude Bailey, 1911 Baxter, 1923 ..... . 1,100 7,925 ~ $ 500 25 1,039 1,065 125 1,414 855 2,638 1,000 58,683 3,590 1,135 2,000 eatty, 1903 ...... . Robert A. Bier, 1919 ..... . Dr. William Brewer, 1823. Ford K. Brown, 1970H. Frederick W. Brune, 1874 ....... . Benjamin Duvall Chambers, 1905. Henry M. Cooper, Jr., 1934. Walter I. Dawkins, 1880 ... Robert F. Duer, Jr., 1921. Dr. Phillip H. Edwards, 1898 Joseph W. Fastner, Jr., 1960. Allen Lester Fowler, 1915 . Edna G. and Roscoe E. Grove, !910. Charles W. Hass, 1927 . John M.J. Hodges, 1904. Dr. Amos F. Hutchins, 1906 .. Clarence T. Johnson, 1909. Clifford L. Johnson, 1911. Helen B. Jones and Robert 0. Jones, 1916 Dr. W. Oscar LaMotte, 1902 .. John H.E. Legg, 1921 . William Lentz, 1912 .................. . Leola B. and Thomas W. Ligon, 1916. Col. Harrison McAlpine, 1909. James R. McClintock, 1965, Prize Fund .. Vincent W. McKay, 1946. H. Boyns Mac Mannis, 1924. Robert E. Maddox, 1876 ... William P. Maddox, 1921 . William L. Mayo, 1899 . Ridgely P. Melvin, 1899 ........... . Wm. S. Morsell, 1923, Athletic Fund John Mullan, 1847 Walter C. Mylander, Jr., 1932. M. Keith Neville, 1905 ..... . Dr. John 0. Neustadt, 1939. Blanchard Randall, 1874 .... Susan Irene Roberts, 1966 . Leroy T. Rohrer, 1903 Elliott A. Rosenberg, 1963. Harrison Sasscer, 1944 ... Charles H. Schoff, 1889 . Henry F. Sturdy, 1906 ........ . Rev. Enoch M. Thompson, 1895 Col. Guy D. Thompson, 1916 . John T. Tucker, 1914 Dr. RobertS. G. Welch, 1913. Dr. Willis H. White, 1922 ..... Amos W. W. Woodcock, 1903 200 125 507 1,000 335 985 500 500 16,556 40 1,000 658 100 100 18,357 5,140 23,223 1,020 5,400 633 7,563 1,020 325 325 466 21,906 4,500 1,650 2,000 12,219 125 5,000 10,000 7,683 1,000 1,139 851 902 100 3,840 4,550 500 28,633 3,000 700 2,500 100 5,000 10,000 - 1,000 330 100 - 125 625 1,000 125 625 2,000 271,527 500 3,000 1,100 7,925 500 25 1,239 1,065 250 1,414 1,362 2,638 2,000 58,683 3,925 2,120 2,000 1,1100 16,556 40 1,1100 1,291 100 100 25,920 5,140 23,223 2,040 5,400 650 466 21,906 4,500 1,650 2,000 12,219 225 10,000 20,000 7,683 2,000 1,139 1,181 902 200 3,840 4,550 1,1100 28,633 6,1100 700 2,500 250 1,250 3,1100 --- --- 34,973 $ 306,500 60,000 120,000 308 20,250 5,820 24,125 10,000 6,000 103 1,1100 300,000 1,1100 10,000 1,650 75,192 124,349 2,1100 25,000 1,668 518 1,250 25,900 1,1100 2,500 s OTHER ENDOWMENTS: Hertha S. and Jesse L. Adams Concert Fund . Philo Sherman Bennett Prize Fund George A. Bingley Memorial Fund Scott Buchanan Memorial Fund ............... . Helen C. and George Davidson, Jr., 1916 Fund . The Dunning Memorial Fund Fund for Tomorrow Lectureship Floyd Hayden Prize Fund .................... . Joseph H. Hazen Foundation Lectureship Fund . William R. Kenan, Jr. Fund ......... . John S. Kieffer Memorial Prize Fund . Maid Compensation Fund ......... . Monterey Mackey Memorial Fund . Emily Boyce Mackubin Fund ......... . Kate Moore Myers Landscaping Fund . Olga Richmond Memorial. Adolph·w. Schmidt Fund Richard Scofield Memorial Fund ........ . Mrs. Blair T. Scott Memorial Prize Fund. Kathryn Mylroie Stevens Memorial Prize Fund .......... . Clare Eddy and Eugene V. Thaw, 1947 Lectureship Fund. Millard Tydings Prize Fund ........................ . Daniel E. Weigle and Jessie N. Weigle Memoria! Fund $ 60,000 308 20,250 5,820 24,125 10,000 3,000 78 1,1100 300,000 1,1100 10,000 1,650 75,192 124,349 2,1100 25,000 1,668 518 1,250 25,900 1,000 2,500 - 3,000 25 Gift of Donor Victor Zuckerkandl Memorial Fund. Alumni Endowment . General Endowment 19,868 213,478 542,883 A.W. Mellon Foundation Matching Gift $ - 186,309 - Total Total Principal s 19,868 399,787 542,883 $1,472,837 $ 249,334 $1,722,171 ($1,049,255) - {$1,049,255) $4,039,026 $4,005,886 $8,044,912 ---Loss on sale of securities . Total endowment . SANTA FE ENDOWMENT FUNDS June 30, 1978 Gift of Donor TUTORSHIP ENDOWMENT: $ 500,000 Norrria Fiske Day Fund SCHOLARSHIP ENDOWMENTS: I $ 150,000 200,000 12,500 25,000 1,875 30,000 50,000 17,056 842 Helen and Everett Jones Fund .. Norma Fiske Day Fund ..... Readers Digest Foundation . Evelyn Mitchell Memorial Fund ..... Nina Otero Warren Memorial Fund. C. Michael Paul Fund .... Thome Foundation Fund . General Scholarship Fund Graduate Institute Fund . -486,913 -- LIBRARY ENDOWMENTS: 1,118 217,149 1,150 2,1100 800 1,1100 43,581 Emlen Davies Fund .... . Norma Fiske Day Fund ...... . Angeline Eaton Memorial Fund Nina S. Garson Memorial Fund ..... Duane L. Peterson Memorial Fund . Victor Zuckerlandl Memorial Fund . Memorial, Honor and Life Membership Funds . --$ 266,798 - OTHER ENDOWMENTS: Bromwell Ault, Sr., Memorial Fund Henry Austin Poetry Fund. Barr-Buchanan Fund . Margaret Bridwell Bowdle Fund. Fletcher Catron Memorial Fund . Margo Dawn Gerber Prize Fund. Elizabeth R. and Alvin C. Graves Memorial Fund . Margaret Milliken Hatch Fund . Frank Patania Memorial Fund .......... . Winfield Townley Scott Memorial Fund .... . E. I. "Tommy" Thompson Memorial Fund. Millard E. Tydings Prize Fund .. Clara B. and Luther A. Weigle Memorial Fund Jessie N. and Daniel E. Weigle Fund . Other Funds FOUNDATION ENDOWMENTS: Los Alamos Ranch School Fund ..... . Other Foundation Endowment Funds . ...... 1,037 8,500 23,441 50,725 1,300 1,141 8,881 35,000 3,341 2,535 1,865 1,1100 10,000 2,500 25,941 () 46,516 3,600 ,"" -50,116 Gain (loss) on sale of securities Total endowment . 0 8" u --s 177,207 -- -5,033) ---$1,476,001 (b - ~ -,_] 00 �The College St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Non-profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 66 Lutherville, Md. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollegemagazine Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 13 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of College Relations Title A name given to the resource The College, October 1978 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978-10 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Weigle, Richard D. Parran, Jr., Thomas Description An account of the resource Issue of The College featuring the Report of the President 1977-1978. Published in October 1978. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0010-0862 The_College_October_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 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf President's Report Presidents The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/3401f8b5b914477fbaf33ec00bc50842.pdf 2f1b6d176960ee90a0be70ec7557c85d PDF Text Text �Report of the President 1978-1979 TO THE BOARD OF VISITORS AND GOVERNORS This fall Three Dialogues on Liberal Education will be published by the St. John's Press. In this small volume William A. Darkey, Chairman of the College's Committee on the Liberal Arts, has edited the conversations which took place at a conference on the Santa Fe campus in April of 1977. Participants included representatives from the various institutions of higher education making use of Great Books in their curriculum. It seems appropriate to begin this annual report with significant quotations from Mr. Darkey's Afterword concluding the volume: Two main educational principles seem to underlie the conversations. One concerns the relation of the undergraduate college to the university in our educational system, while the other has to do with the nature of learning itself. With respect to the first, the persons of our dialogues take the position that the only activity proper to the undergraduate college is liberal education, often termed general education. The second is more difficult to state succinctly. One way of putting it is to say that learning can only be the act of the learner. Learning may be assisted by a teacher, but it is never the necessary result of the teacher's act. Put another way, learning is not a passivity of the student before the teacher who informs him, but an activity of the sh1dent which the teacher may be able to help with. Both of these views are profoundly opposed to the present theory and practice of American education. If they were generally adopted, they would without doubt be subversive of our educational status quo. But since almost everyone finds some faults in our educational institutions, the consideration of a radically conservative position may be of some value. Mr. Darkey criticizes American colleges and universities because their organization seems based upon the assumption that the proper and essential business of any undergraduate college is to assure its students admission into a good graduate school or into a good job situation. He deplores the accelerat- ing trend to introduce pre-professional and specialized courses into the undergraduate college. The radical position of St. John's College and of the other institutions represented at the conference is that liberal education should precede professional training. It must assure that students possess common intellechtal grounds for communicating with others in their vocations and professions and also with their fellows in the world at large. The second root principle underlying the conversations states that human learning is an act which can be performed only by one's own act, by one's own desire, and for one's self. The stndent cannot be a passive recipient of facts. The teacher's role must not be one of simply imparting information. Memory is an important faculty, but training it cannot be education in the sense of teaching the stndent how to think for .himself. The teacher's role may consist of encouraging the student not to give up his effort to understand, of prodding him, of pointing out his errors, and of providing him with examples and references. Mr. Darkey calls the possession of any truth "the activity of the possessor." He notes the need to create, even in our largest institutions, the physical conditions in which real conversation can take place. This he says is one of the most effective means to learning. He writes: But the prerequisite intellectual conditions of interest and discourse must also be established sufficiently to let real conversation happen. And simultaneously, a community of mores must exist to impart the willingness for conversation, and an understanding of its importance. This is something very like friendship. To take both principles seriously in the undergraduate college might imperil the departments. On the other hand, it might also generate new and revitalizing ways to teach. And it might be at least the beginning of a search for intellectual wholeness, a reversal of the accelerating movement towards specialization and the continuing fragmentation of knowledge .... Finally, it may perhaps be pointed out that the two principles here argued-the first, that undergraduate education ought to be liberal, and the sec- �October, 1979 ond, that learning is essentially a personal activity of the one who learns, even though an essential condition of that learning may be the maieutic participation of a teacher-are at bottom one principle. For to desire to understand the truth of any matter is to enter by at least one step into the kingdom of ends. St. John's College is extremely fortunate to have abandoned a departmental structure in 1937 and to have united its faculty in a concerted program of pure liberal learning for all its students. The College realizes the primacy of good shared conversation in all its classes and outside classes as well. Inspiring and encouraging the activity of the learner is a constant challenge to every tutor. The temptation is always present to revert to quasi-authoritarian presentation of facts. Such temptation must be stoutly resisted. Instead the learner must receive the torpedo shock of Meno's slave boy-must realize that he does not know-but must be stimulated to want to know. The tutor can then help in this process. And the result can be not only understanding of the subject being explored, but also acquisition in some measure of the liberal skills, or thought processes, which are the means to all future learning and to the fullest exercise of the intellectual powers. At St. John's College the goal is recognized; the actual practice can only approach the goal. The Deans At Annapolis Dean Edward Sparrow termed the year one of transition. He cited the deaths of two of the College's most venerated tutors, Jacob Klein and Simon Kaplan, during the academic year. Ford Brown had died in the preceding year, and before that John Kieffer, lola and Richard Scofield, Victor Zuckerkandl, and George Bingley. Only William Kyle Smith survives of this splendid generation, a generation which Dean Sparrow says was the College both for him and for many others as well. The deaths of Mr. Klein and Mr. Kaplan marked the end of a certain European tradition at the College. But it also marked the passage of persons who had been responsible in great measure for the intellectual vigor of the College and for its resultant high reputation in the academic world. Mr. Sparrow concludes: "The challenge of emulating this vigor now belongs to a younger and larger group of faculty members. These are remarkable persons and they will be, I am convinced, able to meet it. The challenge of maintaining this vigor is nonetheless a great one." In the area of curriculum, the Dean reports that the Instruction Committee agreed upon the program for the senior laboratory, to include the former Atoms Manual and eighteen weeks of biology. This change, to become effective in the fall, is the last part of the revised laboratory program resulting from the decision to eliminate the sophomore laboratory in favor of more stress on music. The Instruction Committee also decided to recognize freshman music as an integral part of the curriculum and to award it appropriate credit on the College transcript. The Dean reports that grades and grading procedures were a subject of considerable debate during the year. Much of this was stimulated by a senior who withdrew from the College because she felt she had been unjustly treated by the Fellowships Committee and that she should have been granted an interview about her application for a fellowship. A new publication, D.emocracy Wall, sought to express student opinion. The Student Committee on Instruction debated the entire matter of grades and procedures. The final decision of this Committee and of the Delegate Council was that current policies and practices were adequate, and that no change in these or in the transcript need be recommended to the Dean and the Instruction Committee. At Santa Fe Dean Robert Bart notes that the Faculty has grown in strength in natural ways over the past two years. New tutors have been assimilated remarkably well. All tutors have pressed forward into unfamiliar areas. There have been no losses in the Faculty. Dean Bart says that sharing a seminar with another tutor builds up the deepest of bonds and that sharing the work of a major committee can have a similar result even when divergencies create tensions. He concludes that the Faculty is somewhat more disposed to work together constructively than it may have been in the past, though he is disturbed that some of the members of the F acuity have shied away from Instruction Committee membership. This may indicate an unwillingness to devote time to such an assignment or it may mean a refusal to bear the responsibility of making judgments on the teaching of one's colleagues. The first year of the revised junior laboratory program could not be called a complete success, but any judgment should be delayed until more experience is acquired. The new laboratory sequence for seniors differs somewhat from that to be used in Annapolis during the final weeks in biology. The Instruction Committee discussed the basic problem presented by the heavy dependence on conventional textbooks in one of the laboratory sequences. The Committee holds to a fundamental conviction that textbooks, even those written by St. John's tutors, tend to stultify the kind of learning the College seeks to engender. In this connection, Ralph Swentzell has been setting up a course of study in the calculus from original texts, continuing the work begun by David Stephenson in Annapolis and Robert Sacks in Santh Fe. Mr. Bart, as Chairman of the Instruction Committee of the College, had responsibility during the year to submit, for discussion by the Committee and the full Faculty, a Statement of Educational Policy and Program. His statement, which will be presented to the Board in the fall, is a plea for more writing at St. John's College. Mr. B'gt notes that the College is primarily a talking college and that writing is always a "lonely activity," from which a student can easily be tempted away by good conversation. He says, however, that a writer can be more responsible for what he has said than a speaker in a conversation usually is, even in seminar. I do not mean to deny the responsibility one has in a conversation not only to the participants but to the logos itself. Nevertheless in writing, the goal is to make oneself responsible for everything �The College said, for a whole. Conversation is always unfinished whereas good writing has an organic unity that artfully suggests completeness. Knowing the end and the whole, on{l can make sure of the coherence step by step .... Writing at its best can only imitate living speech, but it stays fixed and invites reflection; it returns a steady gaze. My thesis is that while words are spoken most tellingly in conversation, fully to know and speak one's mind calls for intervals in which to col- lect the thoughts one has and order them together in writing. Mr. Bart proposes that the College plan to do more writing in a regular way in the curriculum, making room for it by eliminating something else. He states that his proposal is not to be confused with a proposal that the students learn to write better. Nor is it designed to make them more "creative." The first semester only. Miss Brann and Mr. Wilson have returned to the Faculty. For the coming academic year Mrs. Wye Allanbrook, Laurence Berns, William W. O'Grady, Jr., and john Sarkissian will be on sabbatical leave, and Douglas Allanbrook, Saul Benjamin, and Harry L. Golding will be on other leave. Thomas A. McDonald, who spent the last two years on the Santa Fe campus, will be on leave during the first semester but will return to teach January freshmen. At mid-year Anthony James Carey was appointed to the Faculty to assist in teaching the January freshmen. He had attended St. John's College for two years and received the B. A. degree from the University of South Carolina and the M. A. in philosophy from the New School for Social Research. For the cori1ing academic year six new teaching appointments have been made: Charles Collier, a graduate of Reed College with a doctorate from Yale, who has been teaching at the University of Hawaii; Miss Marilyn Douville, who holds two degrees in mathematics from the University of goal, he says, is "to make them more responsible for their thoughts and more active in their education." He believes Michigan and who has been working at the johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory; Joseph deGrazia, a former tutor that they would thus become "more fully the origin of what they say and think." on the Santa Fe campus, who has a master's degree from The Tutors The Annapolis Faculty suffered a number of serious losses Harvard University; William ). Lenkowski, who has lectured widely in philosophy, notably at the New School for Social Research and at Elizabeth Seton College; Thomas ). May, a graduate of Loyola College of Baltimore, who received his master's degree from Fordham University and is now working during the year. Bert Thoms died suddenly of a heart attack on his doctorate there; and Jonathan S. Tuck, who has twin in December as he was walking from one class to another. He bachelor degrees from Columbia University and Brase nose had taught at St. John's for fifteen years and held an Andrew W. Mellon Tutorship. Robert Spaeth, who contributed so College, Oxford University. much as tutor, Assistant Dean, and Director of the Graduate pus was that of Scott Stripling at the start of the second semester. Mr. Stripling holds the Ph. D. degree in philosophy from Pennsylvania State University. For three years he had taught Institute, resigned to accept the deanship of his alma mater, St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota. Ray Williamson left the assistant deanship of the College to become a Congressional Fellow in Washington, D.C. Alan Dorfman The only new teaching appointment on the Santa Fe cam- at the University of Alaska and at Anchorage Community completed his appointment in June after five years as a teach- College. During the year Robert Bunker, Robert Sacks, and John S. Steadman were on sabbatical leave, and David ing member of the Faculty. Leon and Amy Kass, who had Townsend and John Verdi on other leave. For the coming been on leave of absence at the University of Chicago, re- year Dean Haggard, Philip LeCuyer, and Elliott T. Skinner will be on sabbatical leave; Charles G. Bell, Richard B. Stark, and David L. Townsend will be on other leave. signed their positions at the College and plan to remain permanently at Chicago. Upon completion of his tenure appointment, James M. Tolbert was named Tutor Emeritus, joining the Reverend William Kyle Smith and Wiley Crawford in this honored category. Mr. Tolbert had come to St. John's in 1953 as a teaching intern in the program supported by the Fund for the Advancement of Education of the Ford Foundation. Then for sixteen years he performed outstanding service as Director of Admissions and was a part-time tutor. In 1971 he embarked upon full-time teaching, and he ended his career as an Addison E. Mullikin Tutor. During the 1978-79 academic year, four tutors were on sabbatical leave, Joseph P. Cohen, Samuel S. Kutler, Michael S. Littleton, and Robert B. Williamson. There were five tutors on other leave, Saul H. Benjamin at Oxford University, Eva T. H. Brann at Whitman College, Beate Ruhm von Oppen in Europe, Robert L. Spaeth at St. John's University, and Curtis A. Wilson at the johns Hopkins University for the 2 Adequate compensation for the Faculty continues to be a difficult problem in the face of rising inflationary costs. For the current year only a 5% increase in compensation was possible. For the coming year, however, the College wil1 assume the full premiums for the retirement programs in the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association and the College Retirement Equities Fund, previously shared between the tutor and the College. This change in policy, together with a modest increase in the faculty salary scale, will assure each tutor of a considerably higher income for the corning year. In this connection, I should note the completion of the six years of the development grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to the Santa Fe campus. The main thrust of this grant was to enable the College to improve the quality of its educational program. A goal of increasing the faculty salary scale by $1,250 was set in 1972. In actual fact the College was able to increase its base scale by $2,850 over �October, 1979 a six-year period. At the same time it raised its increments for a year of age from $225 to $335 for each year of a tutor's age. Other parts of the grant enabled the College to assign new httors partial teaching loads, to relieve senior tutors to work with their younger counterparts, to effect exchanges of tutors behveen the two campuses, and to appoint teaching interns. The value of this grant in producing greater stability in the western Faculty cannot be over-estimated. The College owes a deep debt of gratitude to the Endowment. The Students A total of 646 undergraduate students were enrolled on the two campuses for the fall semester. This number rose to 654 students in the spring semester since the addition of 51 January freshmen more than offset the attrition of the first semester. Both campuses registered modest increases in enrollment over the preceding year, though the Santa Fe campus continues to suffer from the extremely sma1l entering class of 62 men and women in the fa11 of 1977. Enrollment figures for the year follow: Santa Fe Annapolis Fall 116 96 85 74 371 Spring Ill 30 92 81 73 387 Freshmen January Freshmen Sophomores Juniors Seniors Fall 81 70 72 52 275 Spring 68 21 62 63 53 267 Ray C. Cave, '48, Managing Editor of Time and a Visitor and Governor of St. John's College, addressed some 50 graduating seniors on the Santa Fe campus on May 13, 1979. One week later 70 bachelor's degrees were awarded at Annapolis, where the address was given by Michael Comenetz, a member of the Faculty. The Board's silver medals for the highest standing were awarded to Benjamin Haggard of Santa Fe, and, on the Annapolis campus, to Charles F. jones II, of Waterville, Maine. The Duane L. Peterson ,Scholarships, awarded to juniors for high academic achievenient, constructive membership in the College community, and commitment to postgraduate work, went this year to Dawn Ellinwood of Albany, New York on the western campus and to Jean B. Oggins, of Vestal, New York, on the eastern campus. On each campus a graduating senior was chosen to receive the traveling Thomas j. Watson Fellowship for the coming academic year, Henry Horsey, of Dover, Delaware, on the Santa Fe campus and Charles F. jones II, of Waterville, Maine, on the eastern campus. Dean Sparrow reports that attrition is considerably less on the Annapolis campus than it was formerly. The graduating class usually represents over half of the starting freshmen, occasionally even three-fifths of the number. This fall a total enrollment of 395 students will present real housing problems. At Santa Fe the story is different, because a considerable number of students dropped out during the year. Nonetheless, 275 students are expected to enroll, the same number as last year. Dean Bart cites inadequate preparation on the part of some entering students, as well as a failure on the College's part sufficiently to challenge some of the more talented students. He writes: "My own sense is that we should do more now to make the College more satisfactory for the best students, while always working with those less effectual students who want to learn and acquire good habits. . . No radical changes can be expected in our problem of attrition as long as our students have so little stability in their souls and in their habits." The Dean plans to invite the coopemtion of the Faculty in addressing the problem of attrition in the year ahead. Admissions John Christensen turned in a most credit<lble performance in his first year as Director of Admissions at Annapolis. The Class of 1983 was filled by early summer and a waiting list had been established. At Santa Fe Susan Ferron completed her first full year as Director of Admissions with a considerable incre<lse in the number of applications and the deposits for the August class. It is heartening that there is no apparent diminution of interest in St. John's College and its unique curriculum on the part of secondary school graduates, as the following comparative figures show: Annapolis 1977 1978 1979 197 210 205 175 188 184 107 116 106 10 10 6 78 92 75 5,750 5,888 7,522 277 295 354 Santa Fe 1977 1978 1979 Applications 121 128 157 Approved 108 115 135 Enrolled 62 81 96 Rejected 11 7 5 Withdrawn 42 38 36 Material Sent 5,846 6,049 4,982 Campus Visitors 122 128 167 Unfortunately for the College, Miss Ferron decided to embark upon graduate study this coming fall. She had demon~ strated that intelligence, resourcefulness and tireless dedication could produce significant results in admissions. Her loss will be keenly felt, though the office should be able to move forward with a policy and a momentum that she imparted to it. After wide advertisement of the position and after interviews with a number of candidates, both professionals and amateurs, the choice fell to Stephen Van Luchene, a tutor at the College, who had served as a member of the Faculty Ad. missions Committee and who had undertaken some recruitment travel during the past year. At the same time Samuel H. Larcombe, Jr., a Santa Fe graduate in the Class of 1966, was appointed Associate Director of Admissions and concurrently the western campus's first Director of Alumni Activities. It is planned that Mr. Van Luchene will serve for one year to provide continuity between Miss Ferron's incumbency and Mr. Larcombe's possible assumption of the directorship in 1980. The College is extremely fortunate to have two such 3 �The College able men undertake this critical work of recruitment in the forthcoming year. Mention must be made of the fine work performed by Clark Kimerer, a young graduate in the Class of 1978, who assisted Miss Ferron with travel, interviewing, and other recruitment responsibilities. The Dean states that his great intelligence, versatility, and good will proved even more valuable than had been hoped for. For the coming year there will be no young graduate in the Admissions Office, which may prove to be a mistake. In any event, it is planned to return to such a young graduate in the next re-structuring of the office, for the example of such a person can offer an immense attraction to prospective students. Mr. Christensen states in his report how fortunate he was to inherit a well-organized office from his predecessor, Joanne Aitken. He and the Admissions Representative, Elizabeth Brown, of the Class of 1975, faced their greatest difficulty simply in coping with the enormous volume of correspondence. A fourth staff member is being added at the start of the new year, to help with the workload. A major accomplishment of the year was the substantial revision of the College catalogue under Mr. Christensen's direction. Probably the most significant development of the year was a change in basic admissions policy for the College as a whole. Previously students accepted at one campus were not automatically accepted at the other. This will no longer be the case. The foundation of the new policy is the proposition that prospective students are, in fact, applying for admissions to St. John's College, a single entity located on two campuses. Henceforth a student admitted to one campus is admitted to the College as a whole. This agreement, confirmed by the Board, was reached with the understanding that the procedures of the two Admissions Committees should be as nearly identical as is reasonably possible and that financial aid should be awarded in like manner by the two Financial Aid officers. It seems dear that this policy shift implies closer communication and cooperation between the two admissions offices than previously existed. Student Health Services From a statistical point of view, the Harrison Health Center in Annapolis was much more heavily used than the infirmary in Santa Fe. Marilyn B. Mylander, the College Nurse in the east, reports 1,810 visits during the past year and, fortunately, no major epidemics. By contrast Mrs. Peggy Elrington, the College Nurse on the western campus, reports only 631 visits to the infirmary, almost equally divided between men and women. These figures invite further research. They may be an indication of the relative healthfulness of the two cities. Dr. Charles W. Kinzer continues to serve well as College Physician at Annapolis. He saw one in seven of the students who visited the Center. The College appreciated the volunteer services of Dr. Richard Berkowitz, a gynecologist and St. John's parent, who arranged to see interested students periodically. Dr. Sigmund Amitin again served as College Psychiatrist, and Ms. Brenda Robertson worked closely with him as 4 part-time College Counsellor. Carol Lackman, a registered nurse, shared the nursing responsibilities with Mrs. Mylander. She graduated from St. John's College in june. It will be difficult to find a worthy replacement for her. At Santa Fe Dr. Albert W. Pinkerton resigned at the end of the year as the College Physician. Fortunately, Dr. Paul Kovnat from the same office has indicated his willingness to serve the College in the year ahead. Dr. Stuart Boyd, a tutor and a trained psychologist, served helpfully in counseling 66 students during the year. He noted that the hours spent this year increased by about a third and the peak periods of difficulty and depression were in the settling-in period early in the new academic year and what he termed the post-Christmas "dark-of-the-year" in February. Only four students were referred to off-campus psychiatrists. Only one student had to drop out to undergo therapy. Student Financial Aid Both Philip Aaronson in Annapolis and Alberta Rivera in Santa Fe did superb jobs of administering shtdent financial aid throughout the academic year. At Annapolis there were 182 recipients of aiel, 44.6% of the students enrolled during the year. At Santa Fe 161 students received some form of aiel, 52.8% of the 304 students enrolled during the academic year. The total average aid extended at Annapolis was $3,620 to 182 students. Of this $2,556 was in the form of a grant, scholarship, and/or a job; $1,064 in the form of a loan. At Santa Fe, the average total aid was $4,046 for 161 recipients. There the average grant, scholarship, and job came to $3,282; the loan to $761. An analysis of the various aid programs on the two campuses follows: Federal Programs Educational Opportunity Grants Basic Grants Supplementary Grants (Initial) Supplementary Grants (Renewed) College Work Study State Programs State Student Incentive Grants College Programs Co1lege Grants Endowed Scholarships Other Scholarships Total Grants, Scholarships & Jobs Loan Programs National Direct Student Loans Federally Insured Student Loans Total Loans Total Student Financial Aid Annapolis Santa Fe $ 60,882 28,574 25,936 90,360 $ 77,075 30,531 43,691 ]]0,747 $ 60,810 $ 13,350 ll7,205 59,643 21,811 $465,221 198,028 29,420 25,565 $528,407 109,327 84,387 $193,714 65,361 57,481 $122,842 $658,935 $651,249 An exceptional burden is placed upon St. John's College as upon other colleges by the phenomenon of the independent student. Such a student is declared to be independent of his parents in the sense that he does not draw upon them for support and that he is not considered an exemption in their income tax return. Thus the problem of financing his educa- �October, 1979 lion is shifted from the family at home to the college. On the Annapolis campus, the Financial Aid Committee reviewed schools, fellowships, and job opportunities. An extremely useful booklet was written by Saul Benjamin, a tutor, providing the policy of the College toward independent students and information about foundations and fe11owships. Announce- determined upon a change for the coming year. Because the ments of job opportunities and graduate schools appeared weekly in the Collegian. Mrs. Braun organized a resumewriting program. Internships in the Maryland General Assembly attracted eight St. John's students throughout the session. Alumni have helped in this whole placement effort by State of Maryland provides grants of up to $1,400 for residents attending the College, students wishing to be considered as independent students will now be required either to provide $1,400 in self-support or to become residents of Maryland and thus estiblish eligibility for Maryland State Student Incentive Grants. The Santa Fe campus has yet to address this problem. Another problem which has plagued colleges and universities all over the country has been the rate of default in the National Direct Student Loan Program. Both Directors of Financial Aid devoted considerable time and effort to improv- ing the record of St. John's alumni in this respect. In June of this year I received a letter from the Bureau of Student Financial Assistance in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, congratulating St. John's for a default rate of only 6.75%, substantially less than the national average of 17.6%. Since that time the Santa Fe campus has reduced its default rate to less than 5%, Annapolis to less than 1%. Miss Rivera resigned her position at the end of the academic year. Her motives had largely to do with a desire to develop other career opportunities. She had proven herself unusually effective in gaining the needed funds under the replying to a questionnaire about their graduate education and job experience. Success of Mrs. Braun's efforts in collab- oration with the Fellowship Committee is evidenced by the fact that a senior won both a Watson and a Danforth Fellowship; a sophomore won a Truman Fellowship for the District of Columbia, a first for St. John's; an alumnus was finalist in the Luce competition; and another senior was a semi-finalist for a Rockefeller award. The Libraries Charlotte Fletcher, the Librarian at Annapolis, reports participation in a number of meetings over this past yea-r spon- sored by the library consortium of the Maryland Independent College and University Association. These sessions addressed such topics as the Federal Work Study Program, bibliographic instruction, budgeting, and cooperative ventures in staff training, photocopying, and networking. A valuable ex- federal programs. She is to be commended for her administra- change of ideas occurred, but only occasionally did an area tion of the Financial Aid Office. To replace her, the College appear where St. John's College could cooperate to its advantige and to the benefit of others. There seemed to be nothing advertised on a restricted regional basis. In the end the position was offered to Mrs. Marsha Drennon, who had served as Miss Rivera's assistant. The Dean believes that Mrs. Drennon has sufficient technical skill to carry on Miss Rivera's achievements and qualities of mind and character that will enable her to deal congenially with the people at the College, both students and others. Placement A year and a half ago Miss Rivera assumed the position of to gain from following four other Maryland institutions into the computerized Ohio College Library Center, a network of academic libraries using on-line terminals for cataloguing. Miss Fletcher writes that a small compact library like St. John's that supports a curriculum based on the reading of books and not on research does not need automated services: "We can efficiently handle our circulation, interlibrary loans, inventory, book orders, serials and acquisitions without automation; and, in the process, become familiar with materials in our Library. A well-informed staff is what makes a small Director of Placement on the western campus concurrent selective library so effective: we can know our collection and with that of Director of Financial Aid. By her own account Miss Rivera found little time for placement work. The placement library was considerably expanded but the major problems of placement remained. It is not enough to have how it supports the Program." Further, Miss Fletcher points out that a terminal would not reduce the cost of operation, for the library would still need three professionals to handle acquisitions, cataloguing, and circulation, as well as a small available information about job and career possibilities. Be- army of student assistants to man the desk, to shelve books, to fore students will avail themselves of that information they file, to bind books, and to assist with inventories. must want to have a career. Dean Bart believes that many An adequate library endowment for book purchases re- students come to the College without any career in mind. To a certain extent Dr. Boyd has been able to do career counseling, but only a fraction of the seniors and other students have mains the best assurance of building the collection and maintaining its quality. At the present time the various permanent taken advantage of his advice. An active placement program must be designed for the coming year. At Annapolis such a well-established program is in place under the able supervision of Marianne Braun, of the Class of 1958. She reports over 400 contacts with seniors and a like number with underclassmen and alumni during the past year. She has been able to counsel students about careers, graduate library funds aggregate $146,039. Miss Fletcher hopes that they can be built up to $250,000, yielding $15,000 annually for new acquisitions. For the next two years annual gifts of $5,000 from Eugene Thaw, '47, a Board member, will bolster the purchase funds, pending a successful effort to achieve the larger endowment. During the year two new endowments were established, the Bert Thoms Library Memorial Fund by Josephine Thoms 5 �The College and the Faculty Memorial Book Endowment, to which proceeds from the sale of gift books will be added. Two fine collections were donated to the College, the library of Ford K. and Zenith Brown and the library of Mrs. Eleanor Morgan of Annapolis. A total of 2,710 books and scores were catalogued, while 226 books were discarded. Circulation increased from 15,20 I volumes last year to 16,215 volumes this year. The entire College community was saddened by the death of Virginia Mylander in December. She had been a valuable member of the Faculty Library Committee in her position as manager of the Book Store. In the year and a half following her retirement she had voluntarily worked one day a week in compiling an index to the first two volumes of the Minutes of the Board of Visitors and Governors. This index has already proved useful on several occasions; it wiJI continue to be a valuable tool in any archival work. At Santa Fe Alice Whelan, the Librarian, reports a discouraging year for lack of sufficient staff. The Library there functions in three locations pending the erection of the future library building. This makes for problems in manning the various desks at the same time that other business in the Library must go forward. Mrs. Whelan had graciously relinquished two position slots this year to aid the College in balancing its budget. One of these will be restored in the year ahead. In spite of the stringency, the library collection grew to 44,793 volumes, 5,096 phonodiscs, and 1,476 phonotapes. In addition there is the uncatalogued Robert Hunt collection of 2, 900 volumes. Emphasis in purchasing was on secondary sources relating to authors of books in the Program. The largest number of new books was in American and European literature and in history, followed by science, philosophy, religion, and economics. The Staff The most significant accomplishment of the past year was the development of the Associate and Staff Position and Salary Plan for each campus. Small committees were appointed under the chairmanship of the respective Treasurers. Differing procedures were followed, but there was acceptable comparability between salary ranges for various positions as devel- him "everyone's Man Friday." His position was filled by Augustine Uleckas. Elizabeth Brown, '75, was appointed Admissions Representative for the academic year replacing David Doremus who left for Santa Fe to complete his senior year on that campus. Mrs. Virginia Chase retired in August after 23 years of splendid service to the College as switchboard operator. Her position was then filled by Mrs. Dolores Smith. Other appointments during the year included Mrs. Kathleen Collins assistant to the Book Store Manager, replacing Mrs. Joanne Brown, and Mrs. Donna Dyckma, secretary in the Campaign Office. Mrs. Judy Maistrellis, '71, resigned as secretary to the Assistant Deans in order to attend law school. That position was filled by Mrs. Janice Easterday, from the Office of College Relations. Mrs. Easterday was in turn replaced by Joyce Hardy. Finally, Mrs. Marge Bryan resigned at the end of the year from her position as addressograph operator and was re- placed by Frances Cheng. At Santa Fe John DeJournett resigned from his position as Director of Laboratories in order to move to Denver. He had done a splendid job and fitted well into the college community. He will be succeeded by Hans von Briesen, who is a very capable scientist. In the Admissions Office MaryMargaret Moore served helpfully as assistant to the Admissions officers but left in May to move to Taos to start a school for children. Paulette Levi-Hall succeeded her. In the Book Store Judy Kistler, '78, served as assistant manager. She departs for graduate school this fall. In the Dean's office Kathy Mizrahi succeeded Anne Burrage as secretary and Mary Hightower replaced Linda Dansby as clerk-typist. Jill Davis took Polly Rose's place as secretary to the Vice President. Mrs. Rose had occupied this position for nearly six years; she resigned to devote full time to her family. Cheryl Schmitt was appointed secretary to the Librarian in August, succeeding Peggy Hogan, who moved to Denver. Shirley Anstey resumed her former position of supervisor of duplicating and supplies in January. At the switchboard her place was taken by Marcia Sanches. Dolores Williams returned as night switchboard operator, and Ann Kern becam' relief operator. Finally, mention should be made that Jose "Delma" Archuleta, who had been employed as chef in the Dining Hall for twelve years under three different food service oped on the two campuses. The two plans were adopted by contractors was made an employee of the College in January, the Board at the annual meeting. The committees will continue for one more year to review appeals, to refine position descriptions, and to advise the President on salaries. It may much to the pleasure of students and faculty members, who well be that standing committees should be established in the forthcoming quinquennial review of the Polity. The Alumni look upon him as a fixture. At Annapolis there were a number of personnel changes in Franklin R. Atwell, '53, was elected President of the St. the course of the year. William B. Dunham, Vice President, left the College in the fall after serving for five years in that office. The College is grateful to him for his contributions in John's Alumni Association at Homecoming in September. Once again three Alumni awards of Merit were presented: to effecting better communication and coordination within the college community and in creating greatly improved relations with the Annapolis community. Joseph A. Jackins, Jr. resigned from his position as Business Manager in April in order to pursue a career in accounting. The Treasurer called 6 Elmer M. Jackson, '27, of Annapolis, Maryland; to Bryce Jacobsen, '42, Director of Athletics at St. John's; and to Victor G. Bloede, '41, of New York City. In the spring Sharon K. Bishop, '65, of Washington, D.C. was re-elected to the Board of Visitors and Governors for another three-year term; Allan P. Hoffman, '49, of Lawrence, New York, was elected �October, 1979 for a first term, succeeding Julius Rosenberg, '38, who had served since 1973. Mr. Atwell's program for the Association called for the creation of a more active western branch. Anthony B. Jeffries, '72S, agreed to head up alumni association activities in the west. As a result the first Santa Fe Homecoming was held on Commencement weekend in May with nearly sixty alumni returning, many from the first five graduating classes. The appointment of Samuel H. Larcom be, Jr., '68S, as Director of Alumni Activities for the Santa Fe campus bodes well for future alumni interest and activity. In the balance of the academic year. Fifteen students enrolled for the first semester, 24 in the second semester. At Commencement on May 13, 1979, three of these students had successfully completed their requirements and were awarded the master's degree. The pro- gram seems to have proven helpful, so the Faculty has recommended that the program be continued for 1979-80. At the conclusion of last summer's session, Dean Haggard submitted his resignation as Director of the Graduate Institute for personal reasons. Fortunately, David Jones, a former Director, indicated his willingness to resume his role of guiding out the country to help with the recruitment of students, with the Institute. The Faculty endorsed this suggestion and he was accordingly appointed for two years to fill out the balance of Mr. Haggard's term. Mr. Jones took over the task immediately and fulfilled every expectation with respect to enrollment and budget. Barbara Skaug, Registrar, deserves great praise for carrying virtually the whole burden of the of- job placement, and with fund-raising. fice during the interregnum. country regional seminars have been held in Washington and in Chicago, the former organized by Edward Grandi, '77, the latter by Christopher and T. K. Nelson, '70S. City committees of alumni were organized in half a dozen areas through- Giving by alumni showed a regrettable decline in 1978-79. There were only 655 contributors among the Annapolis alumni this year, as compared with 787 in 1977-78. The loss was particularly noticeable in the smaller numbers of Presi- dent's Council members, three fewer at 19; St. John's Sponsors, one fewer at 14; Francis Scott Key Donors, nine fewer at 30; and King William Associates, 56 fewer at 131. Total current gifts amount to $64,077, a sharp decrease from last year's figures of$74,966. On the other hand, alumni giving for capital purposes moved up significantly from $41,132 a year ago to $347,306 this year. Every effort must be exerted to build the annual giving by alumni up to at least $100,000. This would require a gift of at least $2 5 from every known alumnus. At Santa Fe steady progress continues in the growth of alumni giving. More of the younger alumni gave than ever before, two of them at the thousand-dollar level. Gifts on the western campus amounted to $8,898 as contrasted with $7,210 a year ago. The Campuses At Annapolis Charles Wallace demonstrated a high degree of competency as Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds. Last summer, when underground pipelines needed to be re- placed, a contractor quoted a price of $16,500. Mr. Wallace directed his grounds crew and completed the job, including all labor, for half the figure. Similarly, the cost of replacement of an exterior brick wall of Mellon Hall had been estimated as high as $25,000. Mr. Wallace did the job for oneeighth this sum. The College was fortunate to find him as a replacement for David Tucker, who had retired. Preliminary plans for the renovation and addition to Ran- dall Hall and to the Paca-Carroll House have now been completed and have been approved by the Annapolis Historic District Commission. The Board also acted favorably at its annual meeting and instructed the President to have final plans and specifications completed by the two architectural firms, Graduate Institute in Liberal Learning Michael and Michael in the case of Randall Hall, and James T. Wollon and Robert Hammond in the case of Paca-Carroll During the summer of 1978 the enrollment at the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe numbered 103, that at Annapolis 37. This was the second year of the operation of the House. Two further sums have been received toward the Institute at Annapolis. Two segments of the program were offered. An interesting cross-section of professions and backgrounds was apparent: five business executives, three students, two editors, an architect, a book reviewer, a computer programmer, a design craftsman, a law clerk, a legal secretary, a librarian, a legislative aide, a management consultant, a neurologist, and a research chemist. There were students on both campuses from Middle East countries, thanks to a sharing of their expenses by their home governments, by the Agency for International Development, and by the Reader's Digest Foundation and the DeWitt Wallace Foundation. For the first time a year-round Graduate Institute was conducted on the western campus. This arrangement entailed matching offer of the State of Maryland, a generous grant of $140,000 from the Trustees of the Hodson Trust toward the Randall Hall project and $300,000 from an anonymous donor toward the total construction needs of the College. It is hoped that both building projects can be undertaken in the course of the coming year. To combat overcrowding of campus dormitories, the Col- lege decided this year to use the apartments in the Dorsey House at 211 Prince George Street for the housing of students. The property had previously been rented to outside tenant<;. Thirteen students were housed in the building, so that dormitory common rooms were freed for their original intended purpose. The main section of the Dorsey House was retained to serve as a center for faculty receptions and other full-time work by Graduate Institute student' in each of the two semesters. It means the possibility of earning the St. gatherings. The Dorsey House garden provided a beautiful setting for parties in the fall and spring. The faculty members all agreed that the Dorsey House affords a convenient and John's master's degree in two summers and the intervening attractive facility, a welcome alternative for college entertain- 7 �The College Randall Hall Paca-Carroll House mg. At Santa Fe the College confronts a real problem, for Stan- Over $2 million was actually received during the year, half on each campus. At Annapolis a total of $360,246 was given ley Nordstrum decided to retire as soon as the fall session is without restriction. This enabled the eastern campus to close well underway. He has been an invaluable Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds and has earned the respect and the friendship of his staff, of the students, and of the entire com- the fiscal year with a surplus of $41,252. At Santa Fe a total of $957,882 was given for general purposes. This made it possible to conclude the fiscal year with a sizeable surplus of $143,536, thus reducing the cumulative deficit to $123,779. An analysis of gifts and grants received by St. john' s College during the past twelve months follows: munity. He and his friendly wife have entertained several generations of St. Johnnies in their role as Senior Residents on campus. Both will be sorely missed. Carpeting was removed in six additional dormitory units and replaced with vinyl tile. The remaining six units will be tiled in the spring of 1980. The College acquired a Xerox 9400 copier in October to facilitate reproduction of instructional materials. Current volume is about 72,000 copies per month at an average cost of 3' a copy. Finally, Saga Food Service was engaged during the spring to replace Professional Food Service Management as the caterer for the College commencing with the Graduate Institute session in June. It is hoped that this change will improve the quality of the meals served to the co11ege community. Donors Board St. John's College Community Alumni Parent~ Friends Foundations Corporations Government (State) Totals Purposes College Finances The latest progress report shows that $11,025,070 has been given, pledged, or promised in bequests in the Fund for the 1980's. This represents an increase of about $3 million over the status of the Fund on june 30, 1978. j. Burchenal Ault traveled widely as Director of the Fund. He has made a special effort to find $2 million in endowment gifts and pledges to match a challenge offer of $1 million for Santa Fe from a Annapolis Santa Fe 39,754 4,097 411,383 16,536 23,405 372,799 56,739 116,836 $1,041,549 $ 769,045 3,399 8,898 19,344 96,715 201,974 40,137 $ $1,139,512 Annapolis Santa Fe Unrestricted Restricted for Library, Scholarships, etc. Graduate Institute $ 360,246 $ 957,882 175,853 Endowment 62,350 443,100 $1,041,549 19,725 39,430 76,475 46,000 $1,139,512 Plant Totals member of the Board of Visitors and Governors. In his efforts The President takes this opportunity to thank members of he has been bolstered by Charles R. Feldstein & Co. as fund-raising counsel, and by Lee and Marie Hirst of Al- the Board of Visitors and Governors, alumni and friends of the College, and corporations and foundations, as well as governmental agencies, for their generous and welcome sup- buquerque, as public relations specialists. Thomas Parran, Jr., served as Director of College Relations on the Annapolis campus. Mary Branham filled the same position on the Santa Fe campus. The campaign is presently scheduled to continue until December 31, 1980. 8 port of St. John's College. It would be almost impossible to identify and thank the thousands of persons who believe in the College's mission and who are willing to support it by their friendship, their confidence, and their substance. �October, 1979 The College and the Public Concerted efforts were made on both campuses during the year to relate the College to its home communities, Annapolis and Santa Fe. In the east the first weekend in December was designated by proclamation of the Mayor as St. John's College Week. The program included the opening of an art exhibition, a motion picture, and an open house, all of which were well attended. In the spring another series of events was held to mark the opening of a fund-raising drive. Finally, in the early summer a concert was arranged by the Annapolis Brass Quintet in the garden of the Dorsey House. A capacity crowd enjoyed the music on a summer evening. Throughout the year the Caritas Society scheduled events, including its notable fall feast. The devoted work of these ladies, under the presidency of Rebecca Wilson, has resulted in scholarship gifts to the College of many thousands of dollars. Officers and members of Caritas have earned the gratitude of the College and of many of its students. The position of Public Relations Director was converted to a full-time one during the year with the result that even more newspaper releases were sent to local papers and to the news services. Mrs. Wilson has devoted herself unstintingly to the task of making the College better known in the community and along the eastern seaboard. At Santa Fe two Book and Author luncheom were held, as weB as several Evenings with Authors. These events have become a traditional part of the intellectual life of Santa Fe. They are well attended and much appreciated by townspeople. The day of community seminars at the College was more heavily subscribed this year than ever. It has proven an excellent means of taking the College's educational program and methods to local citizens. Finally, mention should be made of the constantly changing exhibitions in the Art Gallery. Openings on Sunday afternoons never fail to bring a large number of visitors to the campus. All of these activities have translated themselves into friendship and support for the College, as evidenced by the success of the local sustaining fund campaign among the College's friends this year. In September St. John's College was well represented at a small conference called by the Rockefeller Foundation at its headquarters in New Y ark on the subject "Toward the Restoration of a Liberal Arts Curriculum." Eva Brann wrote a splendid paper on the St. John's Program. Five members of the St. John's Faculty and Administration participated, as did Ray Cave, alumnus and Managing Editor of Time. It appears that this conference will lead to a second conference on medical school curricula in the spring of 1980. St. John's has already been invited to participate in this session as well. Publication of Three Dialogues in Liberal Education is expected this fall. The study by St. John's faculty members constituting the Committee on the Liberal ArtS, the conference in Santa Fe in April of 1977, and the production of the Three Dialogues have all been made possible through the development grant of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The plan is to distribute copies of the volume to all college and university libraries, to alumni, and to such other persons as might be interested. The hope is that the substance of the discussions will have a stimulating effect upon the thinking of faculties in other institutions. This winter and spring St. John's College proposed to the Trustees of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara a plan for taking over the Center and its activities. The Santa Fe Faculty in particular was strongly in favor of the proposal. The College believed that it could return to the original concept for the Center which Robert Hutchins had envisioned but which had been lost sight of in recent years. The College welcomed the opportunity to publish the Center Magazine and to reach a wider constituency through the Center membership. Unfortunately, the Trustees decided to accept the competing proposal of the University of California at Santa Barbara, thus keeping the Center on the West Coast. This would have been an important new out- reach for St. John's College. Exploration is now going on as to alternate ways to accomplish some of what the Center's acquisition might have made possible. In Memoriam During the course of the year St. John's College mourned the death of a member of the staff, a tutor, a tutor emeritus, and a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors. Walter Rausch was one of the first security guards employed by the College. Over his ten years of service, his patience, good humor, and thoughtfulness won for him and for his fellow guards the affection and respect of all members of the community. A bench is being erected as a memorial to him on the walkway leading into the Key Memorial, where he used to station himself on lecture nights. On December 5, 1978, Bert Thoms died suddenly of a heart attack. The Board paid tribute to him at its meeting in January: RESOLVED, that this Board of Visitors and Governors has learned with sorrow of the untimely death of Bert Thoms, who was in the fifteenth year of his tutorship at St. John's College. Philosopher and teacher, Mr. Thoms earned his first degree at George Washington University and his doctorate at the Johns Hopkins University. He first joined the St. John's Faculty in 1949. For fourteen years he was Chairman of the Philosophy Department at Washington and Jefferson College. In 1969 he returned to St. John's College where he held an Andrew W. Mellon Tutorship. Students appreciated him for his patience, the keenness of his mind, and the concern he always expressed for them. His fellow tutors respected and admired him for his scholarly talents and his thoughtful commitment to the College's task. Simon Kaplan, a highly respected: and greatly beloved tutor emeritus, died of cancer on March 13, 1979, after an ex- tended stay in the hospital. He was memorialized by the 9 �The College Board at its April meeting: RESOLVED, that this Board of Visitors and Governors has learned with deep sorrow of the death of Simon Kaplan, a respected and devoted member of the Faculty on the Annapolis campus since 1943. Born in Libau, Russia, in !893, Mr. Kaplan received the degree of doctor of philosophy at jena, Germany in 1927. A refugee from Bolshevism, he did scholarly work in Berlin and Paris, notably on Hermann Cohen. His translation of Cohen's "Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism" was later published in 1972. Through his friendship with the late jacob Klein, he was led to St. John's College when he and his wife came to this country in the early 1940's. His thoughtful teaching drew students to him. Many of all faiths enrolled in his extracurricular Bible classes on Tuesday evenings. His idealism and sincerity, his warmth and his modesty, his unfailing sense of humor and his strong moral principles were an example and an inspiration to generations of St. John's students. It may truly be said of him that he obeyed the Prophet Micah's Biblical injunction "to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God." In early July the College lost a firm friend and devoted Board member when john Dabney Murchison died of a heart attack in Dallas, Texas. He was a member of the Presidential Search Committee and of the Finance Committee at the time of his death. The Board passed the following resolution at its annual meeting this summer: RESOLVED, that the Board of Visitors and Governors has learned with deep sorrow of the untimely death of john Dabney Murchison, a member of the Board since 1971. A graduate of Yale in 1947, john Murchison and his wife, Lupe, lived and worked in Santa Fe before returning to Dallas to engage in the family's widespread business interests. His was the first gift to launch the western campus in 1961. Since that time, he has been a steady and generous contributor of his time, his energies, his counsel, and his substance. Besides St. John's College, his philanthropic interests were many, notably Outward Bound and the Boy Scouts of America, of which he had just been chosen the incoming President. John Murchison combined great wealth and influence with simple tastes, high principles, and considered judgment. One of his many devoted friends on the Board has aptly characterized him in these words: "Modest, courageous, and unassuming, his life was an example of the best and noblest traditions of liberal learning." * ' * The year ahead will be a momentous one for St. John's College, since the Presidential Search Committee must recommend to the Board a successor to this President whose thirty-one years in office end on June 30, 1980. During the year the Polity of the College must undergo its regular quinquennial review, one would hope with the active participation of the new President. I shall do my best to work closely with whomever is chosen so as to effect as smooth a transition as possible. As I close this penultimate annual report, let me express my appreciation to all the members of the Board of Visitors and Governors and especially to the officers and to those Board members whose terms of office have ended: Richard M. Burdge, Jack M. Campbell, James R. Donnelley, Edward ). Dwyer, Ahmet M. Ertegun, John T. Harrison, Jr., Daniel T. Kelly, Jr., Julius Rosenberg, and Charles H. Watts. No college president could ask for a finer group of men and women with whom to work. Richard D. Weigle President Annapolis, Maryland August 7, 1979 The Report of the President to the Board of Visitors and Governors is published annually by the Office of College Relations, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland. Richard D. Weigle, President; Thomas Parran, Jr., Director of College Relations. Picture credits: Cover, Betty Lilienthal; page 8, left to right, Wollen and Hammond, Tom Parran. 10 �October, 1979 BALANCE SHEET June 30, 1979 ASSETS LIABILITIES AND FUND BALANCES CURRENT FUNDS CURRENT FUNDS Annapolis Unrestricted Cash Investments .............. . Accounts receivable, Net .. Notes receivable ... Other receivables . Due from other funds ....... . Inventory Bookstore, at cost . Prepaid expenses . Assets held pending sale. $ Santa Fe 1,053 364,706 16,298 58,619 120,000 76,407 5,996 96,436 5,235 7,533 40,100 51,742 57,004 39,270 39,617 $ 562,615 Annapolis Unrestricted Notes payable-bank . Accounts payable .. Due to other funds ........ Student advance deposits . Deferred income . Santa Fe 283,100 63,006 120,367 14,804 353,801 92,0!8 60,740 43,255 31,452 521,363 $ 417,401 Fund Balance Reserve for future operations (cumulative deficit) 237 Restricted Fund Balance $ 41,252 541,180 $ (123,779) 562,615 Restricted 8,255 171,869 353,801 Cash , Investments .. , .. , .. , .. Due from other funds . Accounts receivable 46,284 110,734 4,423 ---- $ 533,925 Total current funds 5,250 13,302 20,328 336,245 1,000 293,588 $ $298,838 National Direct Student Loans balance ....... . College loan fund balance Receivables . Pledges receivable ..... Due from other funds . Total Endowment Funds 10 6,966,665 946,080 $ 1,577 I ,480,638 58,710 370 450 $7,913,125 298,838 Fund balance ................... . Unexpended and unearned income Total Endowment Funds $ 7,900,416 12,709 $ 1,541,375 $ 7,913,125 $ 1,541,375 $ 169,853 169,853 PLANT FUNDS Total Funds . 169,853 $ Liability under life estate agreements Total Annuity Funds . $ Total Annuity Funds . Total Plant Funds. 370,875 ANNUITY FUNDS 9,183 160,670 Due from current unrestricted funds . Due from plant funds , ........... . Investment-retirement of indebtedness. Investment in J?lant .......... . Land and Improvements .. Building .. . Equipment ........................ . Land and improvements-California . $ $1,541,375 ANNUITY FUNDS Unexpended •.•••.•................... 347,887 22,988 298,007 831 ENDOWMENT FUNDS $ Investments .. 579,079 $ 370,875 ENDOWMENT FUNDS Cash . $ LOAN FUNDS $ Total Loan Funds Total Loan Funds $ 1,096,540 $ 579,079 LOAN FUNDS Cash ...... , ........... . St. John's College Loans .. , .. National Direct Student Loans . United Student Aid Deposit. 161,678 $ 161,678 $1,096,540 Total Current Funds . 417,401 533,925 PLANT FUNDS $ 578,563 7,076 282,111 394,929 5,685,207 394,221 584,000 563,244 5,906,741 749,983 $7,636,920 $7,509,155 $16,945,423 $10,170,337 Unexpended ............ . Retirement of indebtedness ........... . Investment in plant Due to other funds ... . Notes payable-other .............. . Loans payable to Annapolis campus . Dormitory bonds payable . Due to annuity fund. . . ................... . Net investment in plant 578,563 . 1,485 14,492 7,056,872 854,394 1,444,000 160,670 4,744,277 Total Plant Funds. $ 7,636,920 $ 7,509,155 Total Funds . $16,945,423 $10,170,337 2,135 II �The College CONDENSED STATEMENT OF REVENUES AND EXPENDITURES ANNAPOLIS ENDOWMENT FUNDS June 30, 1979 Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1979 Gift of Donor REVENUES Total, Educational & General Auxiliary Enterprises Bookstore ............... . Dining Hall and donnitories. . .............. . Outside summer programs .............. . Summer Coffee Shop, vending machines . Dorsey House . Total Auxiliary Enterprises . Total Revenues .. $1,655,471 358,769 303,684 Santa Fe $1,26!,062 263,951 6J,J27 $2,931,492 $2,728,201 Total Educational and General . Richard Hammond Elliott, 1917 ... Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grants . Addison E. Mullikin, 1895 . Arthur de Talma Valk, 1906 $ 66,665 70,657 338,313 427,779 20,792 65,190 17,906 8,575 $541,717 $474,160 $3,473,209 $3,202,361 $ 313,432 1,989,954 150,216 $ 2,679,845 500,000 150,000 $ 313,432 2,679,845 2,489,954 300,216 ~~~--~~- 1,055,319 96,909 50,960 552,041 $2,453,602 $3,329,845 $5,783,447 ~~~--~~- SCHOLARSHIP ENDOWMENTS ........................ Annapolis Self Help ..... $ 15,000 George M. Austin, 1908 . 25,000 WalterS. Baird, 1930 ......................... 7,500 Chicago Regional . 3,070 Class of 1897. 8,672 Class of 1898 ........ 87,933 Richard Cleveland .. 14,450 Dr. Charles C. Cook ........ ............ 13,705 Corp. George E. Cunniff, III . 135 Clarence Dickinson, 1911 . 1,1100 Faculty ............................... .50,3.50 J~hn T. and Gertni9e L. Harrison, 1907. 123,110 Rtchard H. Hodw.;on, 1906 ..... 150,250 Alfred and RUth Houston, 1906 ............... 42,787 Houston Regiornil. . ...... 500 Jesse H. Jones and Mary Gibbs Jones 36,000 Robert E. and Margaret Larsh Jones, 1909 . 46,656 John Spangler Kieffer 5,691 Jacob Klein .. , ......................... 3,662 Arthur E. and Hilda Combs Landers, 1930 18,500 Massachuseus Regional 22,685 Philip A Myers, II, 1938 .. 30,262 Rev. Theodore O'Brien 19,023 Oklahoma Regional ........... ....................... 26,000 Thomas Parran Memorial, 1911 6,465 Pittsburgh Regional .................... 560 Readers Digest Foundation . 12,500 Clifton C. Roehle . 7,056 Murray Joel Rosenberg Memorial .................... 5,026 Flora Duvall Sayles ........................ 2,000 Hazel Norris and J. Graham Shannahan, 1908 3,664 Clarence W. Stryker .......... 3,843 Frederick J. von Schwerdtner. 1,552 Richard D. Weigle .. 12,533 ............... $ 15,000 25,000 30,000 50,000 7,500 6,140 8,672 87,933 14,450 13,705 3,070 135 . 270 1,000 2,359 20,025 150,250 2,500 52,709 143,135 300,500 45,287 500 1,1100 36,000 72,000 46,656 5,691 3,662 18,500 45,370 39,262 19,023 52,000 6,465 1,120 12,500 7,056 5,026 ............... EXPENDITURES Educational and General Instruction .. Research ........ . Academic support Other programs .. . Student services ... . Institutional support ........... . Plant operations and maintenance Student financial aid . . . ......... . Mandatory transfers .......... . Total Fund Principal TUTORSHIP ENDOWMENTS Annapolis Educational and General Tuition fees .................... . Government programs and grants. Private gifts and grants .. Endowment income .... Other sources . A.W. Mellon Foundation Matching Gift $1,187,051 70,175 83,092 $ 922,682 87,243 12,500 237,772 567,831 178,715 422,997 50,751 254,83:i 634,029 276,705 283,430 4,514 $2,793,329 $2,480,491 22,685 9,1100 26,000 560 2,1100 3,664 3,413 7,256 1,552 19,900 7,367 ~~~--~~- $ 807,140 Auxiliary Enterprises Bookstore ................ . Dining hall and dormitories . Outside summer programs . Dorsey House ................. . Plant operations and maintenance allocated costs Mandatory transfers $ 323,864 $1,131,004 ~~~--~~- 79,296 240,885 21,610 9,374 287,463 $ 70,063 178,583 35,588 192,130 81,698 Total Auxiliary Enterprises . $ 638,628 $ 558,062 Total Expenditures and Transfers $3,431,957 $3,038,553 LIBRARY ENDOWMENTS Alumni Memorial Book Fund ............. ·........ .. Charles Edward Stuart Barton Memorial Library Fund Benwood Foundation Library Fund .. Faculty Memorial-Book Endowment ..... Mary Safford Hoogewerff Memorial Library Fund Jonathan D. Korshin, 1966, Library Fund . Oliver M. Korshin, 1963, Library Fund . Margaret Lauck Memorial Library Fund ........... . Library Fund ................ . Charles Gomber Mantz, 1875, Library Fund. Eugene and Agnes Mey-er Library Fund. Ellen C. Murphy Memorial Library Fund ............ . Henry H. and Cora Dodson Sasscer Newspaper Fund . Bert Thoms Memorial Library Fund ................ . Elma R. and Charles D. Todd Memorial Library Fund .. . Luther A. and Clara B. Weigle Memorial Library Fund . The Jack Willen Foundation Library Fund In Memory of Murray Joel Rosenberg "' $ $ 500 "' 500 25,000 25,000 50,000 151 151 ~1,683 31,683 200 200 1,1100 760 2,1100 200 200 1,000 400 1,160 2,0011 10,000 1,500 1,500 1,030 19,500 3,600 10,000 1,500 3,1100 19,500 1,500 1,030 39,000 3,600 1,1100 1,1100 ~~~--~~~ $ 99,979 $ 46,400 $ 146,379 ~~~--~~- STUDENT LOAN FUND ENDOWMENTS George Friedland . John David Pyle, 1962, Memorial. $ 24,081 7,180 $ 44,081 8,650 21,470 $ 31,261 20,000 $ 1,470 52,731 ALUMNI MEMORIAL ENDOWMENTS Granville Q. Adams, 1929 . Charles Edwards Athey, 1931. Judge L. Claude Bailey, 1911 William F. Baxter, 1923 . Drew H. Beatty, 1903 . Robert A. Bier, 1919 ..... . Dr. William Brewer, 1823. 12 1,100 8,900 $ $ 600 25 1,100 8,900 600 25 1,039 1,065 200 1,239 1,065 125 125 250 �October, 1979 Gift of Donor A. W. Mellon Foundation Matching Gift 1,569 855 2,638 1,000 58,683 3,590 1,135 2,000 500 16,556 Ford K. Brown, l970H ... . Frederick W. Brune, 1874 ....... . Befliamin Duvall Chambers, 1905 . ~~i[lr r.-rfa~~:~. fssJ~~:: · 1 Robert F. Duer, Jr., 1921 .... Dr. Phillip H. Edwards, 1898 . Joseph W. Fastner, Jr., !960. Allen Lester Fowler, 1915- ........... . Edna G. and Roscoe E. Grove, 1910 .. Charles W. Hass, 1927 ............ . John M. J. Hodges, 1904 .... . Dr. Amos F. Hutchins, 1906. Clarence T. Johnson, !909. 507 1,000 335 985 500 1,000 100 100 2,000 58,683 3,925 2,120 2,000 1,000 16,556 I ,291 100 100 18,357 1,000 5,140 23,223 1,020 5,400 325 466 21,906 4,500 1,650 2,000 12,219 125 5,000 10,000 7,978 1,000 I ,139 851 1,407 100 4,610 4,550 500 28,633 50 3,000 700 2,500 125 625 7,563 1,020 325 25,920 1,000 5,140 23,223 2,040 5,400 650 100 5,000 10,000 225 10,000 20,000 7,978 1,000 330 100 500 3,000 2,000 1,139 1,181 1,407 200 4,610 4,550 1,000 28,633 50 6,000 700 2,500 125 250 625 1,000 3,000 1,250 $ 34,973 $ 310,350 OTHER ENDOWMENTS Hertha S. and Jesse L. Adams Concert Fund . Philip L. Alt:er, 1912 Fund .... . Henry Austm Memorial Fund ............ . Robert Maynard Hutchins Memorial Fund. Philo Shennan Bennett Prize Fund George A. Bingley Memorial Fund Scott Buchanan Memorial Fund ................ . Helen C. and George D"avidson, Jr., 1916 Fund .. The Dunning Memorial Fund ... Fund for Tomorrow Lectureship Floyd Hayden Prize Fund ................... . Joseph H. Hazen Foundation Lectureship Fund. Wilham R. Kenan, Jr. Fund ................. . John S. Kieffer Memorial.Prize Fund . Maid Compensation Fund ;- ....... . Monterey Mackey Memorial Fund . Emily Boyce Mackubin Fund .......... . Kate Moore Myers Landscaping Fund .. Olga Richmond Memorial . .-.......... . Adolph W. Schmidt Fund ..... . Richard Scofield Memorial Fund ........ . Mrs. Blair T. Scott Memori.al Prize Fund ....... . Kathryn Mylroie Stevens Memorial Prize Fund . Clare Eddy and Eugene V. Thaw, 1947 Lectureship Fund ......... . Millard TydinjY! Prize Fund .. . Daniel E. Weigle and Jessie N. "Wi~.!:id. Memorial Fund ................. . Victor Zuckerkandl Memorial Fund. Alumni Endowment ... General Endowment . 3,000 3,000 120,000 4,685 1,000 500 308 20,250 5,820 24,125 10,000 6,000 78 1,000 300,000 $ 25 103 60,000 4,685 1,000 500 308 20,250 5,820 24,125 10,000 Total endowment . 60,000 1,000 300,000 1,000 10,000 1,950 75,192 124,349 2,000 25,000 1,668 518 1,250 10,000 1,950 75,192 124,349 2,000 25,000 1,668 518 1,250 25,900 25,900 1,000 1,000 $1,483,389 Loss on sale of securities . $ 1,000 2,500 19,868 215,843 544,585 SANTA FE ENDOWMENT FUNDS June 30, 1979 186,309 2,500 19,868 402,152 544,585 $ 249,334 $1,732,723 ($1 ,256,219) ($1,256,219) $3,894,529 $4,005,886 $7,900,415 GUt of Donor TUTORSHIP ENDOWMENT Norma Fiske Day Fund $ 500,000 SCHOLARSIDP ENDOWMENTS Helen and Everett Jones Fund Norma Fiske Day Fund . . ..................................... . Readers Digest Foundation ..... . Evelyn Mitchell Memorial Fund . . ....................... . Nina Otero Warren Memorial Fund . C. Michael Paul Fund ...... . Thorne Foundation Fund .. . Henry Austin Fund ..... . General Scholarship Fund Graduate Institute Fund ............................................... . $ 150,000 200,000 12,500 25,000 1,875 30,000 51,573 7,000 18,236 482 $ 496,666 466 21,906 4,500 1,650 2,000 12,219 2,000 $ 275,377 1,569 1,362 2,638 1,000 633 658 Helen B. Jones and Robert 0. Jones, 1916 Francis A. Katz, 1929 ....... . Dr. W. Oscar LaMbtte, 1902. John H. E. Legg, 1921 ........... . William Lentz, 1912 ..................... . Leola B. and Thomas W. L;jgon, 1916 .... . Col. Harrison McAlpine, 1909 .......... . James R. McClintock, 1965, Prize Fund. Vincent W. McKay,. 1946. :_ .. H. Boyns MacMimnis, 1924-. Robert E. Maddox, 1876 .... William P. Maddox, f921 .. ·. William L. Mayo, 1899: Ridgely P. Melvin, 1899 ........... . Wm. S. Morsell, 1923, Athletic Fund John Mullan, 1847 · Walter C. Mylander, Jr.,.l932. M. Keith Neville, 19Q5 . :. · .............. . Dr. John 0. Neustadt, 1939. Blanchard Randall; 1874 . Susan Irene Roberts, 1966 ............... . Leroy T. Rohrer, 19Q3 ... Elliott A. Rosenberg, 1963 ............. . Harrison Sasscer, 1944 ... . Charles H. Schoff, 1889 .............. . Henry F. Sturdy, 1906 ................. . Luther and Caroline Tall ~ Fund . Rev. Enoch M. Thompson, 1895 Col. Guy D. Thompson, 1916 . John T. Tucker, 1914 Dr. RobertS. G. Welch, 1913. Dr. Willis H. White, 1922 .... Amos W. W. Woodcock, 19Q3 Fund 40 40 Clifford L. Johnson, 191 I .............. . Total Prindpa1 LIBRARY ENDOWMENTS Emlen Davies Fund .... . Norma Fiske Day Fund ...... . Angeline Eaton Memorial Fund Nina S. Garson Memorial Fund ................................ . Duane L. Peterson Memorial Fund ........................... . Victor Zuckerlandl Memorial Fund .................. . Memorial, Honor and Life Membership Funds ............. . $ 1,118 217,149 ],150 2,000 800 ],000 47,114 $ 270,33! OTHER ENDOWMENTS Bromwell Ault, Sr., Memorial. Henry Austin Poetry Fund. Barr-Buchanan Fund .......................................... . Margaret Bridwell Bowdle Fund ................. . Fletcher Catron Memorial Fund Margo Dawn Gerber Prize Fund ........... . Elizabeth R. and Alvin C. Graves Memorial Fund . Margaret Milliken Hatch Fund . Frank Patania Memorial Fund .......... . Winfield Townley Scott Memorial Fund . E. I. "Tommy" Thompson Memorial Fund Millard E. Tydings Prize Fund . Marion Beeson Wasson ...... . Clara B. and Luther A. Weigle . Jessie N. and Daniel E. Weigle. Other Funds $ 1,037 1,500 47,417 50,975 1,300 1,141 8,881 35,000 3,341 2,535 1,865 1,000 15,000 10,000 2,500 61,150 $ 244.642 FOUNDATION ENDOWMENTS Gain (loss) on sale of securities Total endowment funds $ 47,044 3,600 $ Los Alamos Ranch School Fund Other Foundation Endowment Funds 50,644 ($ 2\),9Q8) $1,541,375 �The College St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Non-profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 66 Lutherville, Md. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollegemagazine Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 13 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of College Relations Title A name given to the resource The College, October 1979 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1979-10 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Weigle, Richard D. Parran, Jr., Thomas Description An account of the resource Issue of The College featuring the Report of the President 1978-1979. Published in October 1979. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0010-0862 The_College_October_1979 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf President's Report Presidents The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/cac145312e492b31a4334f8fa9bb5b7a.pdf 3cf0481f7188a112d1aeeb43eab289a8 PDF Text Text THE COLLEGE St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland Santa Fe, New Mexico April, 1977 �THE COLLEGE Vol. XXIX April, 1977 Number I ON THE COVER: Sunset on College Creek. The pier in the foreground was replaced during the fall of 1976, but the replacement was destroyed by ice during the now-infamous Winter of 1977. Editor: Beate Ruhm von Oppen Managing Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr. Editorial Advisory Board: William B. Dunham, Barbara Brunner Oosterhout '55, E. Malcolm Wyatt, Elliott Zuckerman. THE COLLEGE is published by the Office of College Relations, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404, Richard D. Weigle, President, William B. Dunham, Vice President. Published four times a year, in January, April, July, and October. Second class postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland, and at other mailing places. IN THE APRIL ISSUE: Translation of Poetry, by Jonathan Griffin Rimbaud, translated by Jonathan Griffin ................... . 5 The Power of the Word in Oedipus at Colonus, by William O'Grady . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Picture credits: Page 26, Nonnan Goldberg; page 27, Tom Parran. Campus-Alumni News ................................. 26 �Translation of Poetry: Some notes on theory and practice by Jonathan Griffin Even computers can have trouble with translation. Some years back, a British computer was set the task of translating an English phrase into Russian and then translating its own Russian phrase into English. The phrase fed in was: "Out of sight, out of mind." The phrase that came out was: "Invisible idiot." In theory, translation is impossible; in practice we get down to it and do it. Mainly because there is a need for it. Translations of scientific papers, or again of diplomatic documents, are regularly required, and in those fields the problems are relatively few and usually manageable. But what concerns us here is the need for translations of literature. In the present time, probably more than in any earlier one, people wantand feel they need-to read the best that has been written in other countries than their own, and most of us cannot hope to learn many laniuages; so the demand for translations is now huge, and they ought to be good ones. Any translation of a fine book or poem will involve problems different in kind from those presented by scientific papers or even (except rarely) by diplomatic documents-problems like the one which made that British computer good for a laugh: elusive ones, which it takes a human being, and sometimes a poet, to pin down, let alone manage. I think most people would say that translating poetry is the extreme case, though there are competitors: for instance, the translating of farces. Jonathan Griffin is an English poet, playwright, and translator. This text is substantially the same as that of a lecture given at St. John's College, Annapolis, on February 22, 1974. Some of the thoughts in it appeared, in their first form, in The Dancer in Chains, The Journals of Pierre Menard, London, vol. 4, which consisted of essays and translations hy Jonathan Griffin. Some of the Rim baud translations which follow the lecture were read by Mr. Griffin at a second visit to St. John's, Annapolis, on February 25, 1977. They are to be included in his forthcoming book Rimbaud: All the First-Rate Poems. It will be a bilingual edition. Academic people, just because of the high standard they spend their lives on upholding, tend to dismiss the translation of poetry as impossible: many of them maintain that it should not be attempted, while others say that this is at least true of all metrical poems, let alone of any rhymed one. Well, is it true? We all know Robert Frost's judgement, that poetry is the part of a poem that will remain untranslated; du Bellay said the same thing four centuries earlier. But facts, facts: some very fine poems have been translated into real poems closely similar to them. When I was still young I stumbled on a vivid example of this. I came across, in the Oxford Book of Italian Verse, a poem that thrilled me, a sonnet on the ruins of Rome, by Baldassare Castiglione; and a little later, reading for the first time du Bellay's Ruines de Rome, I suddenly felt: "But I know this!" -it was the same sonnet, in French. Later (I have to admit) I found the same sonnet in English by Edmund Spenser. Each of the three is a genuine, singing poem in its own language: they are in the same exacting metrical form: they are the same poem in content, though they sound different-a's they must and should, being written in languages whose sonorities differ. There is another well-known instance, the translation of St. John of the Cross into French by a seventeenth-century French monk, Father Cyprien. Valery, when he discovered it, was so excited that he wrote: "This ex-lnspecteur des Finances or high-ranking Treasury official, turned Carmelite, was a consummate artist in the fine art of writing verse in the pure state . . . The translation being extremely faithful, nothing was left to the versifier except the very narrow freedom jealously allowed him by our severe language and the strictness of our prosody. It was a case of having to dance when loaded with chains ... His originality is to admit none, and yet he makes a kind of masterpiece by producing poems �The College whose substance is not his, and whose every word is prescribed by a given text:" These two cases, of course, contain exceptional factors: in the first the three poets shared the same culture, that of Renaissance Europe, to which their theme, the ruins of Rome, was central; and in the second the two poets had a common commitment to the same vision of the Christian faith. Nonetheless, in face of this evidence, it cannot be maintained simply that poetry is untranslatable. The translatable part of poetry is, I think, larger than many people suppose. It includes, for instance, those parts of a poem that affect us in the way in which, say, Utrillo's paintings taught people, early in this century, to see Paris. But to the obvious elements of this individual vision-to the simple images, the word-pictures-I would add the myths, many of the symbols, most of the metaphors. (Shakespeare is much more translatable than Racine because his writing is so rich in metaphors that something is bound to come over). Indeed Mr. George Steiner contends that "arguments against verse translation are arguments against all translation." That judgement-and indeed the whole of his superb introduction to a Penguin Books anthology called Poem into Poem-is worth careful thought, for it restores a sense of proportion. So do a couple of lines from a fairly recent poem by Adrienne Rich: "When they read this poem of mine, they are translators. Every existence speaks a language of its own." The fact remains: to create an equivalent poem in another language-and that is the question-takes a lot of doing, and many translators fall short of this. Ought poetry therefore to be translated into prose? Robert Lowell has said flatly: "Most poetic translations come to grief and are less enjoyable than modest prose translations." But surely the truth is that prose paraphrases of poems are wonderful things to have by you when-and, with few exceptions, only when-you can also read the original poems. Not all that long ago, for instance, the Penguin Mallarme brought me nearer to Mallarme than I had ever been before: it gives the poems in French with plain English prose cribs at the bottom of each page, as well as an excellent introduction. I find, too, that Mr. Burnshaw's The Poem Itself has plenty to teach me. But if the original poem is out of reach, only a verse translation will convey it as a poem. With long narrative poems the case for a prose version may at first seem strong; but experience appears to qualify it. To me, for years, when I wanted to read the Divina Com media, the 2 Temple edition-which gives Dante on the left-hand pages and on the right a line-by-line prose crib, plus a few useful notes at the end of each canto-has seemed (since I do know some Italian) a pretty well perfect arrangement; so it did to Ezra Pound, until Lawrence Binyon's translation of the In- .. ferno came into his hands. Pound says in a letter: "Binyon sheds more light on Dante than any translation I have ever seen. Almost more than any translation sheds on any original. Gavin Douglas and Golding create something glorious and different from the originals. I strongly suggest use of Binyon in place of Temple edition for introducing student to the Commedia." Similarly with Homer: I myself have still just about enough Greek to be able to read some of the original, rather slowly, and so I have been very grateful for the straight prose translations by Rieu and by T. E. Lawrence, which enabled me to read the Odyssey quickly, like a novel; but now there is Robert Fitzgerald's translation of the Odyssey. It has everything: it is scholarly and it is poetry: sustained, with plenty of the surprises of beauty, but also easy, carrying one through like a novel (and so making questionable the often repeated contention that epic is a dead genre). I shall go back to the original whenever I have time, but from now on probably never to a prose version. So then it is worthwhile to translate a poem into a poem. But how? What is required? The first requirement, to my mind, is the one stated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti: that "a good poem shall not be turned into a bad one." A daunting dictum. What it implies is that, for a translator of poems, priority number one is ambition. The surest way to betray the original poem is to offer, as a translation, dead words set out as verse, an academically correct non-poem. After (perhaps) a learned and appetising introduction, the reader turns eagerly to the specimens of the poetry so highly and convincingly praised, but soon turns away in disgust, thinking; "Is that all?" It would have been better to offer a plain prose crib, which (as I have said) can be a great help to readers who can at least partly follow the original; those who cannot will need a translation that is a poem, a real one, both singing and faithful. So the translator of a poem must be ambitious. Its author was ambitious-he was a poet. The second requirement is fidelity to the content of the original. I put it firmly second, but I also believe that in most �April, 1977 cases it ought to be a good second: in many, neck and neck. And by "the content" I mean not just the prose sense of the original, though this is very important, but its deeper meanings and often elusive overtones. Is it really possible to convey all this and still achieve a poem? To reconcile such faithfulness with the freedom which the translator-poet is likely often to need? Cecil Day Lewis said simply: "No translation can do everything; you concentrate upon reproducing one element in the original, and hope that some of the others will follow." And Mr. jackson Matthews: "Deciding to translate a poem is, at the start, a matter of perceiving what the translator hopes to be faithful to." myself have found it to be rarely as simple as that. You partly discover what you can be faithful to, and what there is to be faithful to, as you work. Cecil Day Lewis expressed my own repeated experience when he said: "If I fully understood the meaning of a poem, I should feel no need to translate it, any more than a poet would want to compose a poem out of experience which he altogether comprehended." As I see it, a translator of a poem ought to go on working until he has been faithful to more of it than he expected. There may well be a good many cases-though fewer than is generally thought-where great freedom is essential if the translation is to beCome a poem. Largely because of the genius of Pound, an old genre has come into new favour. Dryden called it "imitation" (as distinct from "translation"), and condemned it; we welcome it frankly. Taking the original poem as a basis, you write a quite new poem which, by being outwardly very different, may restore through shock the effect the original had on its early hearers or readers. I personally think "imitation" is a misleading name for something that is trying to be so little like its original (though of course I see how its use arose); what I would like to call such a poem is "a take-off." The pejorative sense of the word is an accurate warning; but the other sense also can be true~such a creative mistranslation can really take off, become air-borne and soar. Pound's Homage to Sextus Propertius does just that. So does Christopher Logue's Patrocleia, a very free adaptation of Homer's Iliad, book 16. An "imitation", a "take-off', a "creative mistranslation" demands extremely high imagination and craftsmanship, and can deserve them ..If I ever achieve one, I shall be a happy man. And yetAnd yet close translation of poetry into poetry must go on being attempted. Because it is wanted. It is what is chiefly wanted: there are more and more readers who, if not given something very near what the foreign poet actually said and the shape he said it in, will be either disappointed or deceived. At the same time, in very many cases (including some that at first seem unlikely), a close translation into a real poem is what will serve the source-poem best: wiJI serve it much better than a free adaptation could. We should never lightly assume that infidelity is necessary. To me, personally, this is a strong conviction, based on early experiences of my own and often confirmed. When I was very young, the mq_~ic of Bach, Couperin, Purcell, and earlier composers was played on instruments it was not written for: piano instead of harpsichord or clavichord; great galumphing orchestras; violins, not viols; etc. Suddenly I came across Arnold Dolmetsch. A pioneer, still at that time ridiculed as a crank (though understood by Pound and Yeats among others), he devoted his life to finding out what instruments the music was written for, collecting or making them, learning and then teaching the authentic. style of playing them, what the composer's expression-marks and abbreviations meant. The chief thing he taught me was that scholarship applied to an art is not dry and dulling, but revealing and life-giving: that Bach, for instance, had devised not only marvelJous structures but ravishing sounds; that there was a wealth of fiery music lying neglected and despised because it didn't sound well when condescendingly falsified. Then I heard the pianist Artur Schnabel and, soon afterwards, came to know him. At that time most people played Beethoven's piano sonatas, for instance, from heavily edited text'>, sometimes inaccurate and always overlaid with the editor's expression-marks~which quite often contradicted the composer's. Schnabel went back to the manuscripts and in every way tried to find and do what the composer had written and intended. And yet-this is the point-this strict scholarship did not prevent his performances from being the most passionate, tender and surprising that I have ever heard. He was faithful, he was logical-but he was always spontaneous. You knew you were hearing the music itself, the truth-and this although, or because, he never played it exactly the same way twice. He said to me once, about Schubert's great piano sonata in B flat, that when he sat down at the piano to play it he had in mind thirty different ways of playing it; and he 3 �The College meant thirty ways, each of which would fit all Schubert's indications of what he wanted. The principle that interpretation should be both scholarly and passionate is by now accepted genera1ly among musicians. I am convinced that it has its applications to other arts. Certainly to poetic translation. A translation of a poem is likely to become a more vitally beautiful poem in itself if the translator has "wrestled closely with the original" (Day Lewis again), if (in Valery's phrase) he has "danced when loaded with chains"-has tried hard to find the languages-there is bound to be some resemblance. To of rhymed poems rhymed? It depends-chiefly on how vital out and carry out what the composer intended. take facile refuge in the present prevalence of unrhymed, Translation-the process of doing it-is a dialectic. At the start, or soon after, it will seem quite impossible to render everything in the poem, essential to decide which bits to be faithful to; there will be a ruthless, perhaps snatched-at, deci- take a crude instance, a translation of a sonnet into prose is unlikely to be very satisfying. Then must translations of metrical poems be metrical, and the metre and rhyme-scheme are to the essence of the original poem. The chances are that, if this is a true poem, the metre and rhyme are indeed part of its essence: otherwise the poet would not have used them. So the translator must not sion on priorities. But then, very early on, an assertion of non-metrical poetry and in the profound reasons there are for this. But equa11y, he must not sacrifice to conventional scansion and rhymes either faithfulness or naturalness. Here, again, a firm decision on priorities: in translating a-- rhymed poem, rhyme is likely to be necessary: necessary, but nearly freedom, the start of a lively alternation of freedoms and revisions. And, personally, I find that very often, as the dialectic always secondary. I have come to think that the right solution is, at least in principle, quite simple: to take a fresh look at proceeds, revision coincides with a perception that to make my version more nearly true to the original as a whole will rhyme-to shake free from conventional rhyming and to involve making it faithful to details which I had at first re- be used, but in addition to, and in meaningful contrasts with, nounced rendering. all sorts of other rhymes, half-rhymes, broken or inverted Is it possible to be faithful to the whole content of the original and not be faithful to its form? As I have stated already, more and more people require a poem-translation to give rhymes, which the ear thinks up. These can be infinitely various, beautiful, sometimes surprising, sometimes elusive. And this much wider choice of rhyme-words gives the trans- them something very near what the original poet actually said lator the free play which he must have if his poem is to sing and be faithful and natural. What can happen then is that the discipline of metre and and the shape he said it in. But obviously the verbal music of the translation must sound very different from the original, simply because the two languages differ greatly. (The contrast between the sounds of English and of French, for instance, is particularly deep in spite of the amount of Latin they have in common). And yet between the musical forms of the two poems-the translation and the original-there ought, in my view, to be a close organi-c connection, not direct but at one remove: through the content. A poem is a work made of words, in which a content and a form (or verbal music) have become one-they have indeed grown together and shaped each other. A translation of a French poem into English should be an English poem with the same content as the French one, a poem having the English form (or music) which fits that content. So the two poems will sound clearly different, and yet-masked by the obvious contrasts between 4 rhyme by ear. The rhymes established by convention can still rhyme, instead of distorting the translation, shapes it closer to the content, and makes it more alive. How? By the closer questioning which it provokes, by intensifying the dialectic. Yau have to decide, early on, which are the lines or phrases that absolutely must be brought across straight. More often than not, these are the places where the original poem becomes either poignantly simple-perhaps a hair's breadth from banality-or raw. Then you have the job of building the rest so that the pattern fits round these. And the effort keeps forcing you a"':'ay from facile word-for-word rendering (which, however, must not be ruled out, but used frankly when it is the best), to find some free equivalent for the content, and so to ask yourself more searchingly what the content is. Translating is one of the closest ways of reading. �April, 1977 OPHELIE Sur l'onde calme et noire olt dorment les Hailes La blanche Ophelia flotte comme un grand lys, Flotte tres lentcment, couchCe en ses longs voiles ... -On entend dans les bois lointains des hallalis. Voici plus de mille ans que Ia triste Ophelie Passe, fantOme blanc, sur le long fleuve nair. Voici plus de mille ans que sa douce folie Murmure sa romance a la brise du soir. Le vent baise ses seins et dCploie en corolle Ses grands voiles bercCs mollement par les eaux; Les saules frissonnants pleurent sur son Cpaule, Sur son grand front reveur s'inclinent les roseaux. Les nCnuphars froissCs soupirent au tour d'elle; Elle eveille parfois, dans UTI anne qui dort, Quelque nid, d' oil s' Cchappe un petit frisson d' aile; -Un chant mystCrieux tombe des astres cl'or. II OPHELIA Upon the calm black waters where the stars are sleeping The white Ophelia like a great lily floats, Onward very slowly floats, reclined lapped in Her long veils ... -From the distant woods you can hear morts. More than a thousand years it is, the white Ghost, sad Ophelia, has haunted the long black stream; More than a thousand years it is, her sweet Madness has murmured to the evening breeze its dream. The wind kisses her breasts, fans out to a corolla Her great veils which, softly, the ripples dandle; The willows, shivering, are weeping on her shoulder, Over her great dreaming forehead the rushes bend. The waterlilies that she brushes past sigh round her; She wakens sometimes, in a sleeping alder, A nest, from which escapes a single small wing-shudder -A mystery song fulls from the stars, from their gold. II 0 pale Ophelia! belle eomme Ia neigc! Oui, tu mourns, enfant, par un flcuve emportC! -C' est que les vents tombant des grands monts de T' avaient parle tout bas de !'a pre liberte; [Norwcge 0 pale Ophelia, beautiful as snow! Yes, you died, still a child, abducted by a stream. -lfs that the swooping winds from Norway's peaks had low Voices for you, which spoke and spoke of bitter freedom. C'est qu'un souffle, tordant ta grande chevelurc, A ton esprit reveur portrait d' Ctranges bruits; Que ton creur Ccoutait le chant de Ia Nature Dans les plaintes de 1'arbre et les soupirs des nuits; lfs that a gust, twisting your great glory of hair, Brought to your dreaming spirit strange rumours; that your heart Was always listening to the song of Nature, there In the plaint of a tree and the sighs of each night. C'est que Ia voix des mers folies, immense r3le, Brisait ton sein d' enfant, trop humain et trop doux; C'est qu'un matin d'avril, un beau cavalier pale, Un pauvre fou, s'assit muet tes genouxl a Ciel! Amour! LibertC! Qucl &ve, 8 pauvre Folie! Tu te fondais lui comme unc ncigc au feu; Tes grandes vis-ions etranglaicnt ta parole - Et l'lnfini terrible effara ton oeil bleu! a lfs that the vast death-rattle voice of the mad seas Was shattering your child breast-too human, too gentle; It's that, one April morning, a handsome pallid noble, A poor mad man, sat down in silence at your knees. Heaven! Love! Liberty! What a dream, poor Mad Maid! Into it, a snowflake in fire, you'd melt away: Those great visions of yours tho ked the speech in you dead -And dread Infinity gripped your blue eye! III Ill -Et le PoCtc dit qu'aux rayons des etoiles Tu viens chercher, la nuit, les fleurs que tu cueillis, Et qu'il a vu sur l'cau, couchCe en ses longs voiles, La blanche Ophelia flatter, comme un grand lys. And so, the Poet tells, by the rays of the stars You come seeking, at night, the flowers you did cullHe's seen, too, reclined in her long veils on the water's Darkness, the white Ophelia float like a great lily. 5 �The College LES EFFARES THE SPELL-BOUND Noirs dans la neige et dans Ia brume, Au grand soupirail qui s'allume, Leurs culs en rond, Black in the snow and in the haze, A genoux, cinq petits-misere!Regardent le boulanger faire Le !mud pain blond. Five children-0 poverty!-stare At the baker making fair Bread from dull lumps ... Ils voient le fort bras blanc qui tourne La p:lte grise et qui l'enfourne Dans un trou clair. They see the strong white arm kneading The grey paste and with it feeding A hole of glare. Ils Ccoutent le bon pain cuire. Le boulanger au gras sourire Chante un vieil air. They hear good bread cooking within. The baker, with a shiny grin, Sings an old air. lis son! blottis, pas un ne bouge, They're huddled-not one of them movesTo the breath of the red oven, Warm like a breast. Au souffle du soupirail rouge Chand comme un sein. Quand pour quelque medianoehe, Plein de dorures de brioche On sort le pain, Quand, sous les poutres enfumCes, Chantent les crolites parfumCes, Et les grillons, Quand ce trou chaud souffle la vie, Kneeling near the big oven's blaze, With rounded rumps, And when in brioche forms-to embellish Some midnight feast-out, sizzling, yellow, Is brought the bread, When, below beams with the soot clinging, All the sweet-smelling crusts are singing, The crickets too, lis ant leur :lme si ravie Sons leurs haillons, And life puffs from that warm hole, Under their rags they have their soul So ravished through, Ils se ressentent si bien vivre, Les pauvres Jesus pleins de givre, Qu'ils sont Ia, taus, They feel themselves so well alive, Poor little Christs full of hoarfrost -That there they are, all Collant leurs petits museaux roses Sticking their small pink snouts right in To the barrier trellis, singing things Through its holes, Au treillage, chantant des chases Entre les trous, Mais bien bas,~comme une priere . Replier vers ces lumieres Du ciel rouvert, -Si fort, qu'ils crevent leur culotte - Et que leur chemise trcmblote Au vent d'hiver ... 6 But very softly-like a prayer . Bent over towards that glare Of heaven unclosed, -So hard over, they split their breeches, -And from the slit the white cloth twitches To winter's blast. �April, 1977 ROMAN ROMANCE I On n' est pas serieux, quand on a dix-sept ans. -Un beau soir, fain des bocks et de Ia limonade, Des cafes tapageurs aux lustres eclatants! -On va sous les tilleuls verts de Ia promenade. One's not serious, when one's seventeen. -One fine evening, to hell with bocks and lemonade, cafes and clustered lights, dazzle and din! -You walk under the linden green of the promenade. Les tilleuls sentent bon dans les bans soirs de juin! L'air est parfois si doux, qu'on ferme la paupiere; Le vent charge de bruits,-la ville n'est pas loin,A des parfums de vigne et des parfums de biere ... Lindens smell good in the good nightfalls of June! Sometimes the air's so soft, you close your eyes; Loaded with noises-it's not far, the townThere are vine scents and beer scents in the breeze . II II -Voila qu'on aperc;oit un tout petit chiffon D'azur sombre, encadre d'une petite branche, Pique d'une mauvaise etoile, qui se fond Avec de doux frissons, petite et toute blanche ... Now you notice a quite small scrap of sombre Azure stuff that a small branch hems in tight, Pricked by a sinister star, which with soft shivers Dissolves-it is a small one, perfect white ... Nuit de juin! Dix-sept ans!-On se laisse griser. La seve est du champagne et vous monte a Ia tete ... On divague; on se sent aux Ievrcs un baiser Qui palpite Ia, comme une petite bete ... June night! Seventeen!-You let joy take its course. The sap's champagne, goes to your head, the mere smell ... You wander; you feel on your lips a kiss Which quivers there, like a small animal. III a III Le coeur fou Robinsonne travers les romans, -Lorsque, dans la clarte d'un pale reverbere, Passe une demoiselle aux petits airs charmants, Sous l'ombre du faux-col effrayant de son perc ... The daft heart goes Crusoeing through romances -When, in a pale street-lamp's space of light colour, A girl passes, with enchanting demureness, In the shade of her father's grim stiff collar .. Et, comme elle vous trouve immensCment nalf Tout en faisant trotter ses petites bottines, Elle se tourne, alerte et d'un mouvement vif. .. -Sur vas Ievres alors meurent les cavatines ... And, since you strike her as immensely nalf, While she still, with her small boots trotting, trips Along, she turns, alert (one movement, lively) . Then cavatinas die upon your lips ... IV IV Vous etes amoureux. Laue jusqu'au mois d'aoUt. Vous etes amoureux.-Vos sonnets La font rire. Taus vas amis s'en vont, vous etes mauvais goUt. -Puis l'adon~e, un soir, a daigne vous Ccrire!. .. You are in love. Till the month of August, taken. You are in love.-Your sonnets make her laugh. All your friends go away. You're out, forsaken. -Then, one evening, she's deigned to write-she, your love! -Ce soir-13, ... -vous rentrez aux cafes eclatants, Vous demandez des bocks ou de Ia limonade ... -On n' est pas serieux, quand on a dix-sept ans Et qu' on a des tilleuls verts sur Ia promenade. That evening ... -to dazzling cafes you return, Order bock after bock or lemonade ... One's not serious, when one's seventeen And has green lime-trees on the promenade. 7 �The College EVIL LEMAL Tandis que les crachats rouges de ]a mitraille Sifflent tout le jour par l'infini d u ciel bleu; Qu'Ccarlates ou verts, pres du Roi qui les raille, Croulent les bataillons en masse dans le feu; While the red gobbets the quick-firers fling Whistle all day through infinite sky azure; Tandis qu'une folie epouvantable broie Et fait de cent milliers d'hommes un tas fumant; While an appalling folly is grinding, making A hundred thousand men a smoking hillock; -Pauvres morts! dans l'ete, dans l'herbe, dans ta joie, Nature! 0 toi qui fis ces hommes saintement!. .. - -Poor dead! in summer, in grass, in your mocking, -II est un Dieu, qui rit aux nappes damassE:es Desautels, 3 l'encens, aux grands calices d'or; ~There Qui dans le bercement des hosannah s' endort, Et se reveille, quand des metes, ramassE:es Dans l'angoisse, et pleurant sous leur vieux bonnet noir, Lui donnent un gros sou liE: dans leur mouchoir! While, green or scarlet, near their taunting king, The bunched battalions crumble in the fire; Nature! yes, yours, who did make these men holily! .. : is a God, laughs at the damascened Altar-cloths, incense, big chalices of gold; Who drops off, in the hosannahs' rocking lulled, And wakes up, when a few mothers, convened In anguish, weeping under their old black caps, Give him a coin their screwed handkerchief wraps. MABOHEME MY GIPSY LIFE (Fantaisie) (Fantasy) Je m'en allais, les poings dans mes poches crevCes; Mon paletot aussi devenait idCal; Off I'd go, with my fists into killed pockets crammed; )' allais so us le ciel, Muse! et j' etais ton feal; Oh! Ia Ia! que d'amours splendides j'ai revees! I'd go beneath the sky, Muse, and I was your vassal; Oh! Ia! Ia! the gorgeous loves I've dreamed! My overcoat, too, was getting to be ideal; My only breeches had a huge hole in them. dreaming Tom Thumb, all the way I'd still Mon unique culotte avait un large trou. -Petit Poucet &veur, j'E:grenais dans rna course Des rimes. Mon auberge etait 3 la Grande-Ourse. -Mes {toiles au ciel avaient un doux frou-frou. Be sowing rhymes. The Great Bear was my hostel. From my stars in the sky a silky swishing came. Et je les ecoutais, assis au bord des routes, Ces bons soirs de septembre oll je sentais des gouttes De rosee mon front, comme un vin de vigueur; And to them I, sitting at road-sides, listened, Those good September evenings when, like a lusty Wine, I could feel drops of dew on my forehead; OU, rimant au milieu des o·mbres fantastiques, Comme des lyres, je tirais les elastiques De mes souliers blesses, un pied pres de mon coeur! When, rhyming in the midst of the fantastic Shadows, I plucked my wounded shoes' elastics Like lyre-strings, close to my heart one foot. a 8 ~A �April, 1977 LES POETES DE SEPT ANS Et Ia Mere, fermant le livre du devoir, S'en allait satisfaite et tres fihe, sans voir, Dans les yeux bleus et sous le front plein d' eminences L'3me de son enfant livree aux repugnances. Toutle jour il suait d'ob€:issance; tres Intelligent; pourtant des tics noirs, quelques traits Semblaient prouver en lui d'3cres hypocrisies! Dans I' ombre des couloirs aux tentures moisies, En passant il tirait la langue, les deux poings A l'aine, et dans ses yeux fermes voyait des points. Une porte s'ouvrait sur le soir: ala lampe On le voyait, lcl-haut, qui r§Jait sur la rampe, So us un golfe de jour pendant du to it. L' ete Surtout, vaincu, stupide, il etait entete A se renfermer dans la fralcheur des latrines : Il pensait Ia, tranquille et livrant ses narines. Quand, lave des odeurs du jour, le jardinet Derriere la maison, en hiver, s'illunait, Cisant au pied d'un mtu, en terre dans la marne Et pour des visions ecrasant son oeil dame, I1 ecoutait grouiller les galeux espaliers. Pitie! Ces enfants seuls etaient ses familiers Qui, chetifs, fronts nus, oeil deteignant sur la joue, Cachant de maigres doigts jaunes et noirs de bone Sous des habits puant Ia foire et tout vieillots, Conversaient avec la douceur des idiots! Et si, l'ayant surpris a des pities immondes, Sa mere s' effrayait; les tendresses, profondes, De l' enfant se jetaient sur cet etonnement. C'etait bon. Elle avait le bleu regard,-qui ment! A sept ans, il faisait des romans sur la vie Du grand desert, oll luit la LibertC ravie, Forets, soleils, rives, savanes!-11 s'aidait De journaux illustrCs oil, rouge, il regardait Des Espagnoles rire et des Italiennes. Quand venait, l'oeil brun, folie, en robes d'indiennes, -Huit ans,-la· fille des ouvriers d'a cOte, La petite brutale, et qu' elle avait saute, Dans un coin, sur son dos, en secouant ses tresses, Et qu'il etait sous elle, il lui mordait les fesses, Car elle ne portait jamais de pantalons; -Et, par elle meurtri des poings et des talons, Remportait les saveurs de sa peau dans sa chambre. POETS AT SEVEN And the Mother, closing the lesson book, Went, satisfied, very proud, didn't look, In his blue eyes and under the forehead crammed with bulges, At her child's soul given over to revulsions. All day long he would sweat obedience; Tres Intelligent; and yet black twitches, certain traits Seemed proof of deep-down sour hypocrisies. In the gloom of the mildew-papered passages, Sliding by, he'd put out his tongue, keep knotted at his Groin his two fists, and in his shut eyes he'd see dots. A door opened on evening: the lit lamp Would show, upstairs, him on the bannisters, champing Below a gulf of light hung from the roof. Most Of all in summer, crushed, stupefied, he'd insist On bolting himself into the john's cool: There he'd think in peace, giving his nostrils their fill. When, in winter, the back garden, cleaned Of the smells of the day, became illuncd, He-bedded out in marl at the foot of a wall And, to get visions, squeezing a dauzy eyeball~ Listened to the spreadeagled mangey trees' swarm noise. Pity! his only real friends were those Children who-stunted, barehead, eye over cheek leaking, Hiding thin yellow fingers, muddied black, in Antiquated clothes stinking of ordureWould gossip with the gentleness of idiots. And if his mother took fright when she found him Out at unclean pities, the child's profound Tendernesses would rush to that surprise. It was good. She had the blue gaze,-which lies! At seven he spun novels about life in the great Desert where ravished Liberty shines bright, Forests, seas, shores, savannahs.-He used as aid 11lustrated journals where, red, he stared At Spanish girls smiling; also Italianesses. When there came, brown-eyed, crazy, in printed calico dresses -She was eight-the child of the workpeople next door, A small she-devil and, catching him in a corner, She had jumped on his back and shaken her long hair Down, and he was under her, he'd bite hard At her buttocks (she was never wearing drawers); -And, punished by her with her fists and claws, He brought the savours of her skin back to his room. 9 �The College II craignait les blafards dimanches de decembre, Oil, pommade, sur un guE:ridon d'acajou, Illisait une Bible a Ia tranche vert-chou; Des r€:ves l'oppressaient chaque nuit dans l'alcOve. II n'aimait pas Dieu; mais les hommes, qu'au soir fauve, Noirs, en blouse, il voyait rentrer dans le faubourg Otl les crieurs, en trois roulements de tambour, Font autour des Cdits rire et grander les foules. -11 r€:vait la prairie amoureuse, all des houles Lumineuses, parfums sains, pubescences d'or, Font leur remuement calme et prennent leur essor! He dreaded the pallid Sundays made of December When at a mahogany table, in a cloud of brilliantine, He read a Bible edged with cabbage-green; Every night, in the alcove, there'd be dreams oppressing him. He didn't love God; but the men he saw come home At savage evening, black, in working kit, To the outskirts where with three drum-rolls the criers got The crowds laughing and growling around the proclamations. -He would dream of the fields in love, where ocean Swells of glow, wholesome scents, downinesses of gold Perform their calm swirling and into flight unfold. Et comme il savourait surtout les sombres chases, Quand, dans Ia chambre nne aux persiennes closes, Haute et bleue, acrement prise d'humidite, Illisait son roman sans cesse m€:dit€:, Plein de lourds ciels ocreux et de forets noy€:es, De fleurs de chair aux bois siderals deployees, Vertige, ecroulements, deroutes et pitie! - Tandis que se faisait la rumeur du quartier, En bas,-seul, et couche sur des pikces de toile Ecrue, et pressentant violemment la voile! And how he savoured the sombre things most, As, in the bare room with the shutters closed, The high blue room which damp had gripped and soured, He read his novel, ceaselessly considered, Dense with grave ochre skies, with forests that had drowned With flesh flowers unfurled over sidereal woodland, Vertigo, aValanches, routs and pity! -While the neighbourhood went on with its talk and clatter Below,-alone, and stretched out upon lengths of whole Holland, and forefeeling violently the sail! 10 �April, 1977 LES PAUVRES A L'EGLISE THE POOR AT CHURCH ParquCs entre des banes de chene, aux coins d'Cglise Qu'attiCdit puamment leur souffle, tours leurs yeux Vers le choeur ruisselant d' orrie et la maitrise Aux vingt gueules gueulant les cantiques pieux; Between oak benches in church corners, penned in Where their breath putridly warms the air, their eyes all Seeking the chancel's wash of gilding and its twenty Chorister craws crowing the pious canticles; Com me un parfum de pain humant 1' odeur de eire, Heureux, humiliCs comme des chiens battus, Les Pauvres au bon Dieu, le patron et lc sire, Tendent leurs oremus risibles et tetus. Inhaling like a bakery fragrance the wax stink, And happy like whipped dogs in their humiliation, The Poor are offering, to God the boss and king, Their laughable persistent supplication. Aux femmes, c'est bien bon de faire des banes lisses, AprE:s les six jours noirs aU Dieu les fait souffrir! Elles bercent, tordus dans d'etranges pelisses, Des espE:ces d'enfants qui pleurent mourir. The women find it good to be wearing benches smooth After the six black days that God tortures them with! They rock, screwed up in strange garments, and try to soothe Creatures like human babies crying to death. Leurs seins crasseux dehors, ces mangeuses de soupe, Une priE:re aux yeux et ne priant jamais, Regardent parader mauvaisement un groupe De gamines avec leurs chapeaux deformi:s. Their grimed bosoms showing, these feeders upon soup -A prayer in their eyes although they never prayAre watching now the sinfulness of a group Of girls in hats pulled shapeless, posturing away. Dehors, le froid, la faim, [et puis] l'homme en ribote. C'est bon. Encore une heure; apres, les maux sans nom! -Cependant, alentour, geint, nasille, chuchote Une collection de vieilles fanons: Outside, the cold, hunger, -and one's man on the booze. Right. There's an hour, still; then the evils beyond naming! -Meanwhile, there's round them, whimpering, snuffling, whispering news, A miscellany of ancient, dewlapped women. a a Ces effari:s y sont et ces i:pileptiques Dont on se detournait hier aux carrefours; Et, fringalant du nez dans des missels antiques, Ces aveugles qu'un chien introduit dans les cours. Et taus, bavant ]a foi mendiante et stupide, Ri:citent la complainte infinie Ji:sus Qui reve en haut, jauni par le vitraillivide, Loin des maigres mauvais et des mi:chants pansus, a Loin des sen.teurs de viande et d'etoffes moisies, Farce prostri:e et sombre aux gestes repoussants; -Et l'oraison fleurit d'expressions choisies, Et les mysticiti:s prennent des tons pressants, Quand, des nefs oil pi:rit le soleil, plis de soie Banals, sourires verts, les Dames des quartiers Distingui:s,-8 Ji:susl-les malades du foie Font baiser leurs longs doigts jaunes aux bi:nitiers. Among them are the obsessed and the epileptics, those From whom one turned away, yesterday, at the crossroads; Also, poking at weathered missals with their noses, The blind ones who come led by a dog into the courtyards. And they all, drooling that crass mendicant faith, say Over again the endless plaint to jesus, who Dreams on high, yellowed by the deathly stained glass, way Off from skinny sinners, from fatted bad lots too, Way off from the odours of meat and well-mouldered cloth, That grovelling dark farce whose gestures are repulsive; -And now the orison puts choice blooms of phrase forth, The mysteries take on tones that become compulsive As, leaving a nave where the sun withers, their silk Folds hackneyed, smiles green, the Ladies of the better Districts-0 jesus! it's their livers that went sickGet their long yellow fingers kissed by the holy water. 11 �The College LES S<EURS DE CHARITE SISTERS OF CHARITY Le jeune homme dont l'oeil est brillant, Ia peau brune, Lebeau corps de vingt ans qui devrait aller nu, Et qu'ellt, le front cercle de cuivre, sous la lune Adore, dans la Perse, un GE:nie inconnu, The young man with the shining eye, brown skin, Handsome twenty-year body (should go nude), Who might have been-moonlit, brow copperboundAdored in Persia by an unknown )inn, lmpetueux avec des douceurs virginales Et noires, fier de ses premiers entetements, Pareil aux jeunes mers, pleurs de nuits estivales, Qui se retournent sur des lits de diamants; Impetuous with virginal dark moods Of sweetness, flaunting his first self-will fights, Like the young seas, the tears of summer nights, That twist and turn on beds of diamonds; Le jeune homme, devant les laideurs de ce monde, Tressaille dans son coeur largemcnt irrite, Et, plein de Ia blessure eternelle et profonde, Se prend dbsirer sa scx:ur de charitb. The young man, seeing this world's deformities, Shudders in his generously stung heart And, full of the eternal deep wound's smart, Longs now for his sister of charity. Mais, 0 Femme, monceau d'entrailles, pitib douce, Tu n'es jamais Ia Scx:ur de charitb, jamais, Ni regard nair, ni ventre oil dort une ombre rousse, Ni doigts lbgers, ni seins splendidement formes. But, 0 Woman, heap of guts, sweet compassion, You never are charity's Sister, never,Your dark glance, belly where a russet shadow slumbers, Deft fingers, no, nor those breasts, splendidly fashioni'<[ Aveugle irrE:veillee aux immenses prunelles, Tout notre embrassement n'est qu'une question: C'est toi qui pends nous, porteusc de mamelles, Nous te bergons, charmante et grave Passion. Unwakened blind thing with huge irises, All our embracing is merely a question: Breasts-carrier, it's you who hang on us, We dandle you, bewitching and grave Passion. Tes haines, tes torpeurs fixe's, tes defaillances, Et tes brutalites souffertes autrefois, Tu nous rends tout, 0 Nuit pourtant sans malveillances, Comme un exces de sang epanche tous les mois. Your hatreds, your set lethargies, your faints, And the brutalities you suffered onceYou pay us it all back, 0 Night and yet no fiends, As an excess of blood spilled every month. -Quand la femme, portee un instant, l' epouvante, Amour, appel de vie et chanson d'action, Viennent la Muse vcrte et la Justice ardente Le dechirer de leur auguste obsession. As he quails at the woman he carries for an instant, At Love, the call to life and song of action, Here come the green Muse and Justice ardentTear him to bits with their august obsession. Ah! sans cesse altere des splendeurs et des calmes, DClaisse des deux Soeurs implacables, geignant Avec tendresse apres la science aux bras almes, II porte a Ia nature en fleur son front saignant. Ah! without cease thirsty for splendours and for calms, Deserted by the two implacable Sisters, For motherly-armed science tenderly he whimpers, Carries his bloodstreaked brow to nature's bloom. Mais Ia noire alchimie et les saintes etudes Repugnent au blesse, sombre savant d'orgueil; II sent marcher sur lui d'atroces solitudes. Alors, et toujours beau, sans degoU.t du cercueil, Yet he, wounded, pride's sombre scholar, flinches At dark alchemy and the holy studies; He can feel, marching at him, cruel solitudes. Then, and still handsome, not disgusted by the coffin, Qu'il croie aux vastes fins, Reves ou Promenades 1m menses, travers les nuits de Verite, Et t'appelle en son 5.me et ses membres malades, 0 Mort mysterieuse, 0 soeur de charitC! Let him trust the vast ends, Dreams or Immense Rangeings, across the nights of Verity, And call you Into his soul and his sick members, Mysterious Death, sister of charity. a a a 12 �April, 1977 LES PREMIERES COMMUNIONS THE FIRST COMMUNIONS Vraiment, c'est bete, ces Cglises des villages Oil quinze laids marmots encrassant les piliers Ecoutent, grasseyant lcs divins babillages, Un noir grotesque dont fermentent les souliers: Mais le soleil Cveille, travers des feuillages, Les vieilles couleurs des vitraux irrbguliers. Really it's ridiculous, these village Churches-fifteen plain brats who leave marks on the pillars And listen, gargling the r's of the divine verbiage, To a grotesque black figure in fermenting slippers. But the sun rouses up with gleams through foliage The bumpy stained-glass windows' ancient colours. La pierre sent toujours Ia terre maternelle. Vous verrez des monceaux de ces cailloux terreux Dans Ia campagne en rut qui frbmit solennelle, Portant pres des bibs lourds, dans les sentiers ocreux, Ces arbrisseaux bn11Cs otl bleuit la prunelle, Des nceuds de mtl.riers noirs et de rosiers fuireux. The stone still has the smell of mother earth. You'll see heaps of those earthy boulders where The rutting countryside solemnly quivers, Bearing, near heavy wheat, by the ochre bridle-paths,. Those scorched brakes with the sloes bluing, with Tangles of blackberries, of rose briars shilled. Taus les cent ans, on rend ces granges respectables Par un badigeon d'eau bleue et de Jail caille: Si des mysticitCs grotesques sont notables Pres de la Notre-Dame ou du Saint empaille, Des mouches sentant bon 1' auberge et les <tables Se gorgent de eire au plancher ensoleille. Each hundred years these barns are rendered nice once rilore By a coat of whitewash-junket and blue water: If grotesque rituals put up a show before Our Lady or the stuffed Saint's altar, Flies that give out a wholesome inn-and-cowsheds odour Gorge themselves with wax on the sunned floor. a a L' enfant se doit surtout la maison, fa mille Des soins na'ifs, des bans travaux abrutissants; Ils sortent, oubliant que la peau leur fourmille Ou le Pretre du Christ plaqua ses doigts puissants. On paie au Pretre un toit ombre d'une charmille Pour qu'il laisse au soleil taus ces fronts brunissants. A child belongs first to home, family, The simple cares, the good labours that stun; They go out, forgetting the way their flesh goes crawly Where Christ's Priest pressed his potent fingers down. Priest gets a hornbeam-shaded house to make sure he'll Leave all those browning foreheads to the sun. Le premier habit nair, le plus beau jour de tartes, Sous le Napoleon ou le petit Tambour Quelque enluminure ott les Josephs et les Marthes Tirent Ia langue avec un excessif amour Et que joindront, au jour de science, deux cartes, Ces seuls doux souvenirs lui restent du grand Jour. One's first black coat, the heyday of jam tarts, Napoleon or the Drummer Boy skied on the wall above One of those colour-prints where the Josephs or Marthas Hang their tongues in a leer of drooling love, Flanked (it's the day of science) by a couple of charts,Of the great Day just these sweet memories are saved. a Les filles vont toujours l'eglise, contentes De s' entendre appeler garces par les gar~ons Qui font du gt:_nre apres Messe ou vepres chantantes. Eux qui sont destines au chic des garnisons, Ils narguent au cafe les maisons importantes, Blouses neuf, et gueulant d'effroyables chansons. The girls keep up going to church, their pleasure's To hear themselves called trollops by the mashers Who strut about after sung mass or vespers. Lads destined for the high life of the garrisons Crowd the cafe, run down the established in stage whispers And bawl, in new tunics, atrocious songs. Cependant le Cure choisit pour les enfances Des dessins; dans son clos, les vepres dites, quand L' air s' emplit du lointain nasillement des danses, 11 se sent, en depit des celestes defenses, Les doigts de pied ravis et le mallet marquant; ~La Nuit vient, noir pirate aux cieux d'or debarquant. The Cure's still choosing, for the small boys and girls, Pious pictures~vespers said-in his garden, while Distant dancing's begun, with its twanging the air fills; In spite of the celestial bans he feels His calves beating time and his toes beguiled; -Night comes, black buccaneer landing on skies of gold. 13 �The College II II Le Pretre a distingue parmi les catE:chistes, Congn2ges des Faubourgs au des Riches Quartiers, Cette petite fille inconnue, aux yeux tristes, Front jaune. Les parents semblent de deux portiers. ~ Au grand Jour, le marquant parmi les CatE:chistes, Dieu fera sur ce front neiger ses benitiers. ~ III The Priest noticed among the catechists Congregated from the Suburbs or the Rich Quarters This unknown little girl with her eyes sad, Forehead yellow. (Her people seem to be humble janitors). "Singling her, on the great Day, from the Catechists, God will snow on that brow, from His stoups, holy water." III La veille du grand )our, !'enfant se fait malade. Mieux qu':l l'Eglise haute aux funebres rumeurs, D'abord le frisson vient, -le lit n'etant pas fadeUn frisson surhumain qui retourne: ~ Je meurs ... ~ a The eve of the great Day, the child falls ill. Better than in the tall Church with its eerie flying Murmurs, there first comes-bed not dull-the thrill, A superhuman thrill that echoes back: ''I'm dying ... " Et, com me un val d' amour fait ses s~urs stupides, Elle compte, abattue et les mains sur son coeur, Les Anges, les Jesus et ses Vierges nitides Et, calmement, son arne a bu tout son vainqueur. And like a love theft from her stupid sisters, She counts-limp and with both hands to her heartAngels, Jesus on Jesus, His Virgins who all glister: Serenely her soul has drunk its conqueror at one draught. Adonal! ... -Dans les terminaisons Iatines, Des cieux moin~~s de vert baignent les Fronts vermeils, Et, taches du sang pur des celestes poitrines, De grands linges neigeux lambent sur les soleilsl Adoniii! ... In the Latin endings, shot-with-green Heavens are bathing the vermilion Brows And, spotted with pure blood from the celestial breasts, Great snowy linens fall across the suns. -Pour ses virginites presentes et futures Elle mord aux fra1cheurs de ta Remission, Mais plus que les lys d'eau, plus que les confitures, Tes pardons sont glaces, 8 Reine de Sionl -For her virginities now and to be she bites Into the cools of your Remission of sin, But more than waterlilies, more than any sweets, Your pardons are of ice, 0 Queen of Zion! IV IV Puis Ia Vierge n'est plus que Ia vierge du livre. Les mystiques elans se cassent quelquefois ... Et vient Ia pauvrete des images, que cuivre L'ennui, l'enluminure atroce et les vieux bois; Soon the Virgin's no more than the book's little maid. Mystical impulses sometimes break ... And there comes The poverty of the·images, brassily overlaid With boredom, hideous colour plates, fusty woodcuts; Des curiosites vaguement impudiques Epouvantent le &ve aux chastes bleuites Qui s' est surpris autour des celestes tuniques, Du linge don! Jesus voile ses nudites. Stirrings of vaguely indecent curiosity Alarm the dream that has, in its chaste bluenesses, Caught itself prying round the heavenly tunics, the Linens where Jesus veils His nudities. Elle veut, elle veut, pourtant, 1'3me en detresse, Le front dans 1' oreiller creuse par les cris sourds, Prolonger les eclairs supremes de tendresse, Et bave ... -L'ombre emplit les maisons et les cours. She wants, she wants still-soul in distress, Forehead and muffled cries digging the pillow hardTo prolong the supreme flashes of tenderness, And she dribbles ... Dusk fills the houses and each yard. Et I' enfant ne peut plus. Elle s' agile, cambre Les reins et d'une main ouvre le rideau bleu And the child can't go on. She starts up, bends Forward, with one hand draws the blue curtain, -desires 14 �April, 1977 Pour amener un peu Ia fra1cheur de Ia chambre So us le drap, vers son ventre et sa poitrine en feu ... v To bring, a little, the cool of the room in under The sheet, towards her belly and breasts on fire . v A son n~veil,-minuit,-la fenetre etait blanche. Devant le sommeil bleu des rideux illunes, La vision la prit des candeurs du dimanche; Elle avait reve rouge. Elle saigna du nez, When-midnight-she woke, the window was white. In front of the illuned curtains at their blue Slumbers, the vision took her-of the whites Of Sunday; she had dreamed red. Her noise bled, Et, se sentant bien chaste et pleine de faiblesse, Pour savourer en Dieu son amour revenant Elle eut soif de Ia nuit ott s'exalte et s'abaisse Le coeur, sous l'oeil des cieux doux, en les devinant; And feeling all chaste and full of weakness, in haste to Savour in God her love walking again, She thirsted for night, where a heart lifts, is abased Under the eye of mild heavens, and divines their reign. De Ia nuit, Vierge-Mere impalpable, qui baigne Taus les jeunes emois de ses silences gris; Elle eut soif de Ia nuit forte oil le coeur qui saigne Ecoule sans temoin sa revolte sans cris. For night, impalpable Virgin Mother who washes All young passions in her grey silences: She thirsted for strong night where the gored heart releases To flow without witness its revolts with no cries. Et faisant Ia Victime et Ia petite epouse, Son etoile Ia vit, une chandelle aux doigts, Descendre dans la cour oil sechait une blouse, Spectre blanc, et lever les spectres noirs des toits. And her star saw her-candle in fingers, playing The part of the victim and of the child wifeSlip down to the yard where a blouse was drying, A white ghost, and raise up the black ghosts of the roofs. VI Elle passa sa nuit sainte dans des latrines. Vers Ia chandelle, aux trous du toil coulait !'air blanc, Et quelque vigne folle aux noirceurs purpurines, En de9a d'une cour voisine s'ecroulant. La lucarne faisait un coeur de lueur vive Dans Ia cour ot't les cieux bas plaquaient d' ors vermeils Les vitres; les paves puant I' eau de lessive Soufraient I' ombre des murs bon des de no irs sommeils. VII Qui dira ces langueurs et ces pities immondes, Et ce qu'illui viendra de haine, 0 sales fous Dont le travail divin dHorme encor les mondes, Quand Ia Iepre Ia fin mangera ce corps doux? a VI She spent her holy night in some latrines. Towards her candle, through holes in the roof, flowed The white air-and some sort of rioting vine, laden With purplish blacks, crumbling across from a neighbour yard. The attic window made a living lustre heart in The yard where the low heavens plated the panes with vermeil Golds; the cobbles stinking of launderwater Were sulphuring the shade of walls crammed with black slumbers. VII Who will tell of those languors and those soiled Sympathies, and what hate will come on her, you bawdy Idiots whose divine work still warps the worlds, When leprosy in the end eats that sweet body? 15 �The College VIII VIII Et quand, ayant rentre taus ses nreuds d'hyst€:ries, Elle verra, sous les tristesses du bonheur, L'amant rCver au blanc million des Maries, Au matin de la nuit d'amour, avec douleur: And when, having swallowed all her knots of hysterias, She sees under the sadnesses of joy Her lover dreaming of the white million Maries, At the love night's morning, hear her grief say: ~ Sais-tu que je t'ai fait mourir? J'ai pris ta bouche, "Do you know I have killed you? I took your mouth, Ton coeur, tout ce qu'on a, tout ce que vous avez; Et moi, je suis malade: Oh! je veux qu'on me couche Y o~r heart, all anyone has, all you have; Parmi les Morts des eaux nocturnes abreuv€:s! <.%: J' eta is bien jeune, et Christ a souille mes haleines. II me honda jusqu'a Ia gorge de degouts! Tu baisais mes cheveux profonds comme les laines, Et je me laissais faire ... Ah! va, c'est bon pour vous, And !-I'm ill: 0 someone lay me with The Dead whom night's waters have slaked and lave! "I was young, truly, and Christ has fouled my breath. He stuffed me with disgust up to my throat! You kept kissing my hair in its wool depth And I would let you ... ah!, there, it's all right ~ Hommes! qui songez peu que la plus amoureuse Est, sous sa conscience aux ignobles terreurs, La plus prostituCe et Ia plus douloureuse, Et que tons nos elans vers Vous sont des erreurs! "For you, Men! little you dream the most loving ~ Car rna Communion .premiere est bien passCe. Tes baisers, je ne puis jamais les avoir sus: Et mon coeur et rna chair par ta chair embrassCe "For look, my first Communion is past And done. I never can have known your kisses: Fourmillent du baiser putride de jesus! ;,. And my heart and my flesh your flesh embraced Are crawling with the putrid kiss of jesus." IX IX Alors !'arne pourrie et !'arne desolee Sentiront ruisseler tes maledictions. -lis auront couchC sur ta Haine inviolCe, EchappCs, pour la mort, des justes passions, Christl 6 Christ, Cternel valeur des energies, Dieu qui pour deux mille ans vouas ta paleur, a Cloues au sol, de honte et de cephalalgies, Ou renversCs, les fronts des femmes de douleur. 16 Woman, under her conscience's base terrors Is the most prostituted and most grieving, And all our impulses toward you are errors. Then the rotted soul and the desolate Soul will feel, pouring out, Your maledictions. -They'll have lain down on Your inviolate Hate, Escaped, and all for death's sake, rightful passions. Christ! 0 Christ, eternal energy-thief, God Who, two thousand years, pledged to Your pallor -By shame and head-aches nailed to the soil, or Thrown back-the foreheads of women of grief. �April, 1977 LE BATEAU lYRE THE HIGH BOAT Comme je descendais des Fleuves impassibles, Je ne me sentis plus guide par les haleurs: Des Peaux-Rouges criards les avaient pris pour cibles, Les ayant clouCs nus aux poteaux de couleurs. Down the stolid Rivers I navigated, Sensed myself no longer steered by the haulers: Screeching Redskins had taken them as targets After nailing them nude to posts of colours. J' etais insoucieux de taus les equipages, Porteur de bles flamands ou de colons anglais. Quand avec mes haleurs ont fini ces tapages, Les Fleuves m' ant laissC descendre ml je voulais. I had no use for any crew at all, Stuffed hold, English cottons or Flemish wheat. When that cry had made short work of my haulers The rivers let me float down where I would. Dans les clapotements furieux des marCes, Moi, I' autre hiver, plus sourd que les cerveaux d'enfants, Je courus! Et les PE:ninsules dCmarrCes N' on! pas subi tohu-bohus plus triomphants. The other winter, into the tide-rip Tumult I, deafer than the brains of children, Ran! and Peninsulas with their moorings slipped Never have been through more triumphal shindies. La tempete a bCni mes Cveils maritimes. Plus Ieger qu'un bouchon j'ai danse sur les £lots Qu' on appelle rouleurs eternels de victimes, Dix nuits, sans regretter I' reil niais des falots! The storm gave blessing to my ocean-goer Awakenings. I danced, no cork so lightly, On waves men call eternal victim-rollers, Ten nights, not yearning for the goof eye of the lights! Plus douce qu'aux enfants la chair des pommes sures, L' eau verte pCnCtra ma coque de sapin Et des taches de vins bleus et des vomissures Me lava, dispersant gouvernail et grappin. More sweet than to a child the flesh of a sharp apple, The green water entered my hull of pine And, as it washed away rudder and grapple, Cleaned me of stains of vomits and blue wines. Et dCs lors, je me suis baigne dans le PoCme De la Mer, infuse d'astres, et lactescent, Devorant les azurs verts; oil, flottaison bleme Et ravie, un noye pensif parfois descend; And, since then, I've bathed in the poem of The sea-the infused with stars and milky-wayed-, Devouring the green azures; where at times, ravished mauve Flotsam, a pensive drowned man downward sways; a Oll, teignant tout coup les bleuites, delires Et rhythmes Ients sous les rutilements du jour, Plus fortes que l'alcool, plus vastes que nos lyres, Fermentent les rousseurs amCres de I' amour! Where, suddenly dyeing the bluenesses, deliria And slow rhythms below day's renewed flush, Stronger than alcohol, vaster than your lyres, Ferment the bitter rednesses of love! Je sais les cieux crevant en eclairs, et les trombes Et les ressacs et les courants: je sais le soir, L'Aube exaltee ainsi qu'un peuple de colombes, Et j' ai vu quelquefois ce que l'homme a cru voir! I know skies splitting to lightnings, waterspout-hovers, Undertows, currents; I know evenfall awe, Dawn exalted like a people of doves, And I have seen sometimes what man has thought he saw! J'ai vu le solei! bas, tache d'horreurs mystiques, Illuminant de longs figements violets, Pareils des acteurs de drames trCs-antiques Les flats roulant au loin leurs frissons de valets! I've seen the low sun spotted with mystic horrors Illumining long forms, violet clotted, Like actors posed in very ancient dramas, The waves rolling afar shudders of shutters! J'ai reve la nuit verte aux neiges eblouies, Baiser montant aux yeux des mers avec lenteurs, La circulation des sCves inoUies, Et I' eveil jaune et bleu des phosphores chanteurs! I've dreamed the green night with the dazzled snows, Kisses rising to the eyes of the seas slowly, The circulation of saps no-one knows, Singing phosphors-their waking, yellow and blue. a 17 �The College J'ai suivi, des mois pleins, pareille aux vacheries Hysteriques, la houle l'assaut des re:eifs, Sans sanger que les pieds lumineux des Maries Pussent forcer le mufle aux Oceans poussifsl I've followed, months on end, the ground-swell, like Byres of crazed cows charging the reefs, crashing, Not dreaming the Three Maries' feet of light Could force the muzzle of each lumbering Ocean. j'ai heurte, savez-vous, d'incroyables Florides Melant aux fleurs des yeux de panthhes peaux D'hommes! Des arcs-en-ciel tendus comme des brides Sous l'horizon des mers, de glauques troupeaux! I've struck, d'you know? Floridas unbelievable Mingling with flowers eyes of panthers-their hides Human! Rainbows bent like bridles to receive Below the seas' horizon glaucous herds! J'ai vu fermenter les marais enormes, nasses Oll pourrit dans les jones tout un Leviathan! Des ecroulements d' eaux au milieu des bonaces, Et les lointains vers les gouffres cataractant! I've seen the swamps fermenting, enormous traps in Whose rush-meshes a Leviathan addles whole, In the middle of the calms waters collapsing, Distances cataracting toward hells! Glaciers, soleils d'argent, flats nacreux, cieux de braises! Echouages hideux au fond des golfes bruns OU les serpents geants devan~~s des punaises Choient, des arbres tordus, avec de noirs parfums! Glaciers, silver suns, mother-of-pearl waves, ember Heavens, -and ghastly wreck-snares sunken in the brown Creeks where the giant snakes devoured by vermin From twisted trees with black musks drop clown! J' aurais voulu montrer aux enfants ces dorades l would have liked to show children those dolphins Of the blue wave, those fish of gold, those fish that sing. Spumes of flowers have blessed my high sea clriftings, Ineffable winds at moments gave me wing. a a a Du flat bleu, ces poissons d'or, ces poissons chantants. ~Des ecumes de fleurs ant berce mes derades Et d'ineffables vents m'ont aile par instants. Parfois, martyr lasse des pOles et des zones, La mer dont le sanglot fais.ait man roulis doux Montait vers moi ses fleurs d' ombre aux ventouses jaunes Et je restais, ainsi qu'une femme a genoux ... Presque 1le, ballottant sur mes bords les querelles Et les fientes d'oiseaux clabaudeurs aux yeux blonds. Et je voguais, lorsqu'a travers mes liens f&les Des noyes descendaient dormir, a reculonsl. .. Or moi, bateau perdu sous les cheveux des anses, Jete par l'ouragan dans I' ether sans oiseau, Moi dont les Monitors et les voiliers des Hanses N'auraient pas repeche Ia carcasse ivre d'eau; Libre, fumant, monte de brumes violettes, Moi qui trouais le ciel rougeoyant comme un mur Qui porte, confiture exquise aux bans poetes, Des lichens de soleil et des morves d' azur; Qui courais, tache de lunules electriques, Planche folie, escorte des hippocampes noirs, Quand les juillets faisaient crouler coups de triques Les cieux ultramarins aux ardents entonnoirs; a 18 At times, when the poles and the zones had me martyred, shattered, The sea, whose sobbing then made sweet my rolling, Would lift toward me her yellowcup blooms of shadow, And I remained there like a woman kneeling, An almost island with my rim that bandied The feuds and shit of blond-eyed slanderous birds, And floated further while through my frail ribbands Drowned men were going down to sleep, backwards ... Now I, a boat lost under tousled halyards, Cast by the hurricane up to air with no bird, I, whose drunk-on-water carcass no Hansard Sail, no Monitor, would have fished aboard, Free, smoking, a mount for violet mists, I, who would pierce the reddening sky, that wall Which bears (a jam good poets find exquisite) Sun lichens, azure mucuses and galls, Who would run spotted with electric lunules, A mad plank the black sea-horses escorted, When the Julies crumbled, so hard they clouted, The ultramarine ski~s with the burning funnels, �April, 1977 a Moi qui tremblais, sentant geindre cinquante lieues Le rut des BE:hbmots et les Maelstroms E:pais, Fileur eternel des immobilitbs bleues, Je regrette I'Europe aux anciens parapets! I, who would tremble, sensing from fifty leagues Groaning the thick Maelstroms and the Behemoths' heat, Ceaseless spinner of the blue immobilities, I yearn for Europe, the ancient parapets. J' ai vu des archipels sidE:raux! et des 1les Dont les cieux dblirants sont ouverts au vogueur: -Est-ce en ces nuits sans fonds que tu dorset t'exiles, Million d'oiseaux d'or, 6 future Vigueur?- I've seen sidereal archipelagos! isles Whose madding skies are open to the drifter: Those fathomless nights-in them d'you sleep your exile Sleep, you million gold birds, 0 future Vigour? Mais, vrai, j'ai trop pleun§! Les Aubes sont navrantes. Toute lune est atroce et tout soleil amer: L'3cre amour m'a gonfle de torpeurs enivrantcs. 0 que rna quille eclate! 0 que j'aille Ia mer! But, true, I've wept too much. The dawns are anguish. Every moon tortures, every sun is sour. Acrid love has swollen me with strong languors. Oh! let my keel explode! Oh! let me join the sea! Si je dCsire une: eau d'Europe, c'est la flache Noire et froide otl vers le crCpuscule embaumC Un enfant accroupi plein de tristesses, Hlche Un bateau frele comme un papillon de mai. If a water of Europe fetches me at all, it's The black cold puddle on which, !'wards balmy twilight, A child, crouching, full of sadness, launches A boat frail May butterfly. Je ne puis plus, baignC de vas langueurs, 6 lames, Enlever leur sillage aux porteurs de cotons, Ni traverser l'orgueil des drapeaux et des flammes, Ni nager sous les yeux horribles des pontons. I can't any longer, bathed by your swoons, waves, Filch from the cotton carriers their wakes, Or pass right through the pride of flags and flames, Or row on under those awful eyes of the hulks. a 19 �The College The Power of the Word in Oedipus at Colonus by William O'Grady Shortly before his disappearance from the human world, Oedipus speaks these words to his daughters: "All the things that are mine have perished, and no longer will you have the toilsome tendance of me. It was hard, I know, daughters. But one word by itself cancels all these agonies: to phi/ein, the action of loving.... " But we ask: even if love itself could be thought to prevail over great suffering, could be thought somehow to count for more than suffering within a life shared between persons, why should the power of the word be so exalted? How can a mere word dissolve actual sufferings? The strangeness of the matter is accentuated by the Greek word order, which by postponing the word epos (which means "word") first pits one thing against many, hen monon against ta panta tauta, and then, as starkly as may be, finishes the line by placing epos im-, mediately and tensely next to mochthemata (agonies, sufferings). To understand a little the meaning of the power of to epos in this drama of Sophocles' old age will be the attempt of this lecture. But first a number of other matters must be discussed. I shall organize my thoughts under these headings: the terrible darkness acknowledged by the play; the significance of the Athens of Theseus as worthy receptacle for Oedipus; Oedipus himself-how he thinks of himself and what he hopes for and demands; what happens at the end of the play, or at any rate how this happening can be distantly characterized; and finally how the utterly mysterious ending of the play throws us back upon the saying, just as mysterious in its own way, about the power of to philein, with its strange dependence upon the power of to epos. I. The most terrible words uttered in any play of Sophocles are uttered in the play he wrote when he was ninety years old. Text of a lecture given at St. John's College, Annapolis, on February 4, 1977. Mr. O'Grady has been a member of the faculty since 1970. 20 The chorus says: "Not to be born (Me phunai) prevails over all meaning uttered in words. By far the second best, when one has come to light, is to go to that very place from which one came as swiftly as may be." We must try to understand what moves the chorus to speak as it does. Let us listen to a translation of the strophe which immediately precedes the words just quoted: "Whoever craves the greater portion in living, having disdained the moderate, will be manifest in my judgment as cherishing perversity. For the long days pile up many things closer to pain; as for the things which give delight, you would not see them anywhere, whenever one falls into more than is fitting." So far we seem to be hearing a lament upon old age: life is without delight and full of pain for the old. As we learn later (to our surprise, until we reflect a little on how such things are likely to be), the chorus is thinking not so much of the ancient Oedipus as of itself: the second strophe begins: "In such a condition ~s this wretched one, not I alone." We must remember that the chorus of old men have recently been humiliated, have had their impotence unmistakably demonstrated as Creon's forces have carried off Antigone and Ismene in their presence despite their pledge of protection to Oedipus. But as the chorus hears itself uttering this lamentation, a more universal lamentation is kindled: "The Ally brings equal fulfilment to all when the doom of Hades has blazed up, without wedding-song, without lyre, without festive dancedeath in the end." That death comes to men as an ally or deliverer (the Greek word, epikouros, even suggests that tl1ere is something youthful about death), that it comes equally to all and somehow fulfills, might seem to make death not at all inimical to men. But in describing its coming the chorus hears itself stringing together privatives whose very sounds seem mournful-anumenaios, aluros, achoros. Weddingsong and the lyre and festive dance are things which give genuine delight; to be deprived of them is a cruel pain. What if, as sometimes seems true, the delights are simply in the service of the pain, for the sake of the pain, are made briefly available only so that the great pain of losing them may sweep over men? Then might one not be impelled to say: Not to be �April, 1977 born is ineffably the best. Second best is to leave, as swiftly as may be, this world of torture, of grievous pains and of delights which mock by their transience? not only allowed to enter the human world, but in a manner secured there against annihilation by the human propensity to ignore and forget and scale down to manageable dimensions, But do we not object: that might be true if there were only a propensity understandable enough as flowing from the one generation of humankind, but in fact men and women soul's desire-with which, however, others of its desires and leave sons and daughters behind them-there is always delight in the lyre, not indeed for me but for some human be- needs may conflict-to shelter itself against what cannot be somehow mastered in thought, allocated and defined, against what Antigone later calls ta alogista. But the needs of our psychic economy-even if it could be established that those ing, and even for some human being whose life would not have come to be without my life. But can the chorus do justice to this fact, the fact of generation following generation so that delight in the lyre never dies, without doing a terrible injustice to the spectacle which has just been present before its eyes? We recall: Oedipus has just been told that his son wishes to speak with him. He says: "My son, King, hateful to me, whose words I would endure hearing most painfully of any man's." It has come to this in the life of Oedipusexactly how the blame is to be apportioned seems of secondary importance-that his son's voice is the most painful thing in the world for him to hear. And, the chorus knows, he must nevertheless endure hearing it: he will not be spared even this final agony. Of all the terrors and grievous specta- cles in the tragedies of the Greeks, there is perhaps none more excruciating than this, that a father has come, irrecon- cilably, to hate his son. It is under the impact of this spectacle most of all, I think, that the chorus says that it would be better never to have been born. But is this not, after all, an unwarranted generalization from an insufficient number of cases? In some lives things turn out very painfully indeed, but surely most lives are not so full of agony as the life of Oedipus. Would not a broader, more balanced view be more just? I do not think so. For the chorus is not really engaging in "generalization", in such a way that it is appropriate to adduce counter-examples, to survey in detachment, having stepped back from the immediate event, the full range of human experience and to find therein the proper place, alongside other happenings, of such a happening. The chorus is constitutionally incapable of such a stepping-back. And for that very "limitation" we must be grateful to it. For as the chorus allows the intensely painful spectacle before its eyes to fill up the whole world for a moment -the intensive finding expression in the unlimitedly extensive-a sort of justice is accomplished: the moment receives its due, finds truthful voice in the human world. I do not mean merely that the chorus is (psychologically) incapable of stepping back and placing this moment alongside other needs include distortion of what is-is not the only legitimate consideration; there is also the requirement in justice that what has happened, what has appeared, be given its due, be given a place in the human world in and through human speech, however "irrational" that speech may be. For Athens to be a proper place for the appearing of the disappearing of Oedipus, not only the detachment, balance and capacity to generalize of Theseus is required-of Theseus who says, upon encountering Oedipus for the first time: "I know that I too am a man, and that tomorrow my share of the day is no greater than yours" -but also the capacity of the chorus. to lend its voice unreservedly to certain terrible moments, maintaining no "broader horizon," and thereby allowing those moments to appear as what they are. II. But if Theseus without the chorus does not constitute an Athens which is a proper receptable for Oedipus, neither does the chorus without Theseus constitute such an Athens. What is the Athens of Theseus? Theseus himself declares its aspiration in these beautiful words: "Not by speeches but by great deeds done are we zealous to make life radiant for ourselves (ton bion Iampron poieisthai)." To make life radiant, to create and sustain a realm in which deeds of shining brightness may be done, may appear without distortion or obfuscation, may be seen and spoken of and remembered, may inspire and measure-all of this (it is, of course, object of hope and energy rather than seemed fact) takes on its full meaning only against the background of the identification throughout the play-by no means only in the chorus which we have considered-of phunai and phanein, of being born and of appearing, coming to light. For the Athens of Theseus' aspiration the right response to the miracle of appearance- I appear in a world which appears to me-is not the longing for disappearance, but the transfiguration of appearance into radiant appearance, of coming into the light of day into com- moments in some sort of "balanced" way or even merely that ing into the light of glory-this transfiguration understood, (morally) it would be somehow indecent for the chorus to try to do that. I mean fully that truthfulness about such momentary spectacles requires that they be allowed, for a moment, to occupy the whole world and all time. There is indeed-and it is to be cherished-a kind of truthfulness which tries to do however, not as a violent alteration but as a sort of continuation and culmination. justice to human experience in its wholeness, but that presupposes truthfulness about particular experiences, and this truthfulness, it seems to me, is greatly jeopardized by objections against the "exaggerated," "one-sided," "insufficiently detached and comprehensive" mode in which certain terrible spectacles are originally spoken of, given voice to, and hence That Athens longs to shine, to make life radiant for herself, is somehow understood by Oedipus even prior to Theseus' declaration. In charging the chorus not to repel him, not to make the gods to be nothing for themselves by failing to honor them in the only form in which they can be immediately encountered, namely in the presence of such bearers of divine dooms as Oedipus himself, he enjoins them: "Do not, by giving service to unholy deeds, obscure happy Athens (eudaimonas Athenas kaluptein)." Eudaimonia must 21 �The College be understood as something essentially visible~earlier a stranger says to Oedipus: "You are noble, to one who sees you, except for your daimOn" -and to obscure it, to darken and conceal it, is the worst injury Athens could suffer. For eudaimonia is not happiness in our sense, something which may or may not show from the outside-even if it usually does, we regard it primarily as a quality of consciousness, which must then be expressed in order to become visiblebut is essentially and originally a mode of appearance within the world: to make it less manifest is to make it less. Connected with Theseus' serious eagerness for a radiant space of appearances is his abstention from intimacy with Oedipus, from the compassionate· closeness which the presence of great suffering seems to urge. His first address to Oedipus is truly wonderful in this way, in the way of preserving the distance which respect requires between persons who do not know each other well. For Theseus not to preserve this distance would be for him to see nothing in Oedipus except what calls forth compassion; it would not only annihilate that in Oedipus which transcends fitness for compassion, but it would make it impossible for Theseus and Oedipus to appear to each other at all. For such appearing seems to require not only separateness, but even some measure of distance; it is likely that lovers only seldom appear to each other, and then as disconcertingly alien. At any rate, Theseus' attitude is clear from the wording of his fundamental promise to Oedipus. Twice he uses in the first person singular verbs which one expects to take a personal object, namely Oedipus. But in both instances Theseus avoids so direct a relation between himself and Oedipus. First, he says, "Something terrible would be the action you m;ght happen to mention to be of the sort from which I would stand aloof (exaphistaimen)." And then-my translation here follows the Greek word order as closely as possible-40 SO that no one who is a stranger, just as you are now, would I turn away from (hupektrapoimim)"-it looks as if Theseus is promising not to turn away from Oedipus himself; but then he completes the sentence-"helping to save." He would not turn away from the action of helping to save Oedipus: an action, not a person, is directly intended by his pledge. The "impersonal" character of Theseus' discourse, this preserving of distance out of respect, seems to me a marvel of Athenian civility, when it is joined, as of course it is here, with a willingness to act and to incur risk on behalf of the suppliant. Ill. But who is this Oedipus, what does he think of himself, what does he hope for and demand? Perhaps his crucial statement is that who he is, who he is in his very nature (phusin) or taken by himself (kathauton) as he variously puts it, has not yet been revealed. His story, known to all,-the story of the murder of his father and marriage with his mother-does not reveal who he is: such is his claim. At first he tries desperately to keep the chorus from learning his name, not because he thinks that name designates a monstrous self, but because it has come to designate the pro- 22 tagonist of a monstrous story, and he knows from experience that the chorus is unlikely to make this distinction: "You diive me away, having feared my name alone," he says to the chofus. Men encounter his name in such a way that an encounter with the man himself seems impossible. This seeming impossibility drives Oedipus to a breathtakingly radical defense. Not only does he claim that in respect of his infamous deeds he himself was more acted upon than acting"My deeds are things which have suffered rather than acted" -but he indicates an apparently inhumanly severe criterion by which acting must be distinguished from suffering. He asks: "And yet how was I evil in my nature (phusin), who having been acted upon was acting in return (antidran )?" The immediate referent of this· question-the whole passage is cast in extraordinarily unspecific, one is tempted to say distilled and metaphysical, language-must be the provoked slaying of his father at the crossroads. But ultimately he is thinking of his whole life, which in his twenty years of trying to understand-he calls himself the wanderer Oedipus (in Greek, "the planet Oedipus''), but his wanderings have had a hidden center-has formed itself into a sort of standing now, removed from sequential time in which one moment follows another. For Oedipus as he thinks back upon his life every moment is present in each moment. That is how we must understand what he says next: "As it was, knowing nothing, I came where I came (we understand: to the crossroads where he slew his father). I was being acted upon by others, I was being destroyed by those who did know {we understand: what they were doing when they exposed me as an infant)." The earlier moment is not only effective in the later moment; somehow in Oedpus' thinking it has come to be indistinguishable from it. Time as non-sequential, every moment fully present in each moment-perhaps this experience of time is what Oedipus names when he speaks of "vast time which is with me" (makros chronos sun/in). Vast time is with him, not behind him as if he were within time in such a way that his very existence creates a difference between future and past, between what lies ahead and what lies behind, with reference to which all moments can be sequentially ordered. But what we must primarily try to understand is the meaning and bearing of Oedipus' claim that only those actions reveal who one is, reveal one's own nature and one's self taken by itself, which originate wholly within the self, which are truly doings, not sufferings, whereby-and this is the radical part of the claim-acting-in-return is merely suffering in disguise. Only in and through radically spontaneous action do I reveal who I am. But who ever heard of such a thing? Are not all of our actions in one way or another actions-in-return, not indeed mere conditioned reflexes, but actions considerably shaped by the fact that we are not absolute beginnings, but merely ne~comers upon a scene in which many things have happened before our appearance? Does there exist anywhere in the world the sort of absolute freedom, the possibility of wholly unconditioned action which Oedipus not merely dreams of but insists upon if there is ever to be any action which can fairly be taken to be revelatory of my very self, of who I am in my own nature? �April, 1977 But on the other hand does Oedipus not have good reason for this insistence? Should he unprotestingly accept as truly and adequately revelatory of who he is, the story of which he has become the protagonist, in such a way that the very name Oedipus has come to mean the protagonist of that story and now stands in the way of any genuine encounter with the man himself? Cannot that very self ever come to light, not merely so that others may know it as Oedipus already knows it, but so that Oedipus himself may come to know it, in the measure that men can know themselves? Oedipus' most farreaching claim at the beginning of the action of Oedipus at Colon us, whose premises are that a man's true self is revealed by his doings rather than by his sufferings, and that doingsin-return are merely sufferings in disguise, is that Oedipus himself has been revealed not at all through all that has happened. We shall have to consider later whether the wondrous happenings at the end of play-or, perhaps, which of the wondrous happenings-affect this situation. But although Oedipus does not know who he is in his innermost self-except that he is sure that "the man who murdered his father and married his mother" does not even begin to answer the question-he does know that he has come to be the bearer of certain characteristics, and these he declares unequivocally. The only perplexity is that the characteristics which he bears contradict each other. He expresses to Theseus the contrast between the unseemliness of his presence and the benefits which will flow from it: "I have come to give my wretched body to you as a gift, not lovely to look upon, but the benefits from it are greater than a beautiful form." And more intimate than the contrast between his looks and the consequences of his presence, though still not touching his very self, still a matter of properties of which one happens to be the bearer, is the contradiction between these two utterances of Oedipus: first, to the chorus: "I come here sacred and pious" and then, in an access of gratitude to Theseus after the recovery of his daughters: "And now, lord, stretch out your right hand to me so that I may touch it and, if it is permitted, may kiss your head. And yet, what do I utter? How could I, having become wretched, wish you to touch a man in whom"there dwells every stain of evils?" Sacred and pious, yet so stained by evils that having invited contact with an unstained man fills him with horror. And we must notice that his feelings are actually even more complex than this opposition, since it is clear from the context that Oedipus' piety consists largely in the recognition of his own sacredness, that is, in the recognition that in such bearers of divine doom as he himself is the city encounters the divine more authentically-and in a manner more subject to divine judgment-than it does in ritual worship; and in this recognition there is surely as much of bitterness as of pride for Oedipus, who knows from within, through unprovably, how little being the bearer of this or that divine doom has to do with who one really is. And as there is bitterness in his claim to be sacred and pious, so there is pride in his avoiding contact with those who are not polluted: certain sharings, he tells Theseus, are available only to the "experienced" (empeiros} among mortals. IV. But what does happen to Oedipus at the end? This question, though inevitable, must not 'be treated as a problem to be solved or as a riddle to be guessed. Theseus, after all, is not entrusted with a secret which might or might not be kept depending upon the fidelity of the trustee, but rather he witnesses a happening that is essentially beyond words. Let us try to gather such indications as the play offers. First, it appears that Oedipus cannot be said to die, if by dying we mean coming to the end of a lifetime which can be represented as a straight line whose beginning is a point representing the moment of birth and whose end is a point representing the moment of death (all questions of the continued separate existence of the soul in another place being left in abeyance}. Rather, the drama induces us to imagine a curve which returns to its place of origin, and which is the course for a motion of reversal, not a mere retracing in opposite o_rder of what has already been traversed, but a reversing motion which cancels and undoes. This strange notion is hinted at in Oedipus' early prayer to the Eumenides, in which he recounts an oracle given to him from Apollo, according to which he would find at the sanctuary of the Eumenides a termia chora, a final place, where he would kamptein ton bion, end his life, bringing benefits to his friends and ruin to his enemies. This at any rate is the most ordinary way of understanding these expressions. But immediately before uttering his prayer Oedipus has said: "However much I may say, all that I say will sec." Oedipus does not claim that he himself sees, even metaphorically, but he says emphatically that his words are knowing; his words, early in the action, know more than he himself does. In view of this, it seems important to observe the original and most concrete meanings of terma and kamptein. For terma means originally not the end or final point but rather the post or mark around which runners or chariots turned to complete the race by returning to the place from which they began; similarly, kamptein means originally not to end or conclude, but in general to bend, and in particular to guide one's horses around the turning point as one enters the home stretch. Has Oedipus come to Colon us, more particularly to the sanctuary of the Eumenides, simply in order to end his life or rather so that he might undergo a motion somehow opposite to the motion which has brought him there, and which is to issue in a reversal of the effects-and perhaps more than the effects-of the original motion? The same strange image is suggested by the chorus which we considered earlier. Second best in relation to me phunai, not to be born, is not thanein, to die (swiftly) but rather "to go back to that very place from which one came." Here again human life is not understood as following a rectilinear course. But if there is somehow in the life of Oedipus at Colonus a motion which reverses the original motion, how are its effects visible within the play? Without pretending to be exhaustive, I shall give three examples. First, Oedipus, who throughout his life, and even before he was born, has been the obiect of prophecy, now becomes the author of manifestly authoritative prophecy. Early in the play, when Ismene comes reporting 23 �The College that there are new oracles respecting Oedipus, he asks "Of what sort? What has been prophesied, child?" Ismene answers, tellingly: "You have been prophesied as about to become a thing sought." Not merely events involving Oedipus but Oedipus himself is the object of prophesy. But by the end of the play Oedipus himself is accepted both by Antigone and Theseus as the one who issues authoritative prophecies. Theseus says: "I see you prophesying many things, and none falsely." And Antigone says something similar about Oedipus' prophecies (in all three instances the precise term thespizein is the human world, a shapely void, a definite nothingness-he has left a place in the world which cannot be occupied by another. But if we must say that Oedipus undergoes a sort of reversal and return, and that in the end he becomes a sort of wellformed nothingness, we must also say that he becomes in some manner a god. This takes place both indistinctly and distinctly (though not on that account comprehensibly). Indistinctly there is a sort of merging of Oedipus with and into the Eumenides, the "fierce-eyed mistresses'' (potniai deinopes) used) in trying to dissuade her brother from his intended ac- who can be at the same time "sweet daughters of ancient tion. darkness" (g/ukeiai paides archaiou skotou) because they are Again, the word menis, meaning "wrath," a word generally reserved for the anger of gods (the exception being the anger of Achilles) also undergoes a striking reversal in respect to Oedipus. He says to Creon regarding his own infamous deeds: ''For so it was pleasing to the gods, who were perhaps wroth with our family from of old." But in the interview between Polyneices and Oedipus, the son speaks of his father's "heavy wrath" toward him and asks to hear fully the reasons why he is so wroth. But the most striking turnabout-we remember that Oedipus had prayed to the Eumenides for tis katastrophe, some catastrophe, which seems to mean, rather indefinitely, "some turnabout"-which the play presents is visual (or imaginative) rather than verbal: from having been, from his first appearance before our eyes, pathetically in need of a guide and leader, Oedipus becomes, in the closing moments of the action, himself the leader: "Children, follow along this way. For I, new and strange (kainos), have been made manifest as leader to you in turn, just as you were to me." But the play's indications of a sort of reversal and returnthe replacement of the image of the straight line by the image of a curve which returns, and the several verbal and visual specifications of katastrophe, turning-about-are only one aspect of the matter. Just as fundamentally the play seems to insist that life and death must be understood essentially in terms of appearance and disappearance, of being present and being absent. The identification of phunai with phanein, of being born with appearing, seems to require as well the identification of dying with disappearing. And the simplest answer to the question, "what happens to Oed.ipus at the end of the play?'' is-he disappears, he is no longer present. Moreover, as the messenger reports, he is seen no longer being present: "When we had gone away, after a short while we turned around, and we saw the man, him, I mean, nowhere still being present (ton andra oudamou paronta eti)." His absence itself is present in the world. From this moment, the name of Oedipus is not pronounced. Repeatedly he is called keinos, that one. He is no longer houtos, this one, the one right here, but rather that one, the one over there. In the closing lines of the play the word keinos veritably clangs in our ear-we hear it, emphatically placed, three times within nine lines. It happens that keinos, as well as being a demonstrative pronoun, is sometimes used for kenos, poets finding the lengthened syllable useful. Kenos means "empty". We are tempted to hear his new name as meaning that Oedipus has now become, within 24 not exactly persons but rather powers. This merging, as it is adumbrated within the play, emerges as these words uttered by the chorus in prayer: "As we call them the Eumenides (those of kindly temper), may they receive with hearts kindly in temper (eumenes) the suppliant unto salvation" are echoed by these words of Theseus in reference to Oedipus: "Who would cast out the being kindly in temper (eumeneia) of this sort of man?" There is also a more distinct way in which Oedipus, in a manner, achieves divinity: he is, audibly to the city of Athens, admitted into the company of the god-there is no article in the Greek-who speaks of himself and Oedipus as "we." The messenger reports: "And god calls him man)l times and in many ways. 'You there, you there, Oedipus, why do we delay to go? For a long time there has been delay from your side.' " And Oedipus hearkens to the call. However difficult it may be to understand the merging of a human person with the somehow impersonal-individually nameless, for example-powers which are the Eumenides, or the divinization through admittance into the company of a god who addresses human beings audibly to all in humaneven homely-speech, the difficulty is enormously compounded when we put together-as we seem to be required to· do-these indications of divinization with the indications already considered of annihilation or de-creation, a sort of creation into nothingness. How can Oedipus both become a god, and be undone (not merely have this or that feature of his condition reversed, not even in some more intimate way become other, become a "changed man", but proceed from being into nothingness in a way comparable in its radicalness to the bringing forth of something from nothing)? Is Oedipus more than a man as the play ends, or less than a man, less even than a stone? Or can there somehow be a unity of such opposites? Let us withdraw from this question for a moment to con- sider another opposition. At the play's end, Theseus tells Antigone that it is not right to mourn since grace (charis) has been made available to Oedipus in the form of chthonian night-and-darkness (nux). Disappearance from the human world, no longer standing in the light, is equated with night and darkness. And yet the vision itself of Oedipus disappearing leaves Theseus "holding his hand in front of his face shading (episkion) his eyes" against what appeared. In the face of the brilliant radiance of Oedipus' disappearance, Theseus seeks shade (skia ), seeks darkness-one is as little able to see �April, 1977 in superabundantly brilliant light as in utter darkness. Divinization against de-creation, radiant light against darkness-have these opposites perhaps some hidden unity? Perhaps, without uncovering that unity itself, we shall have gained something if we can come to see the unity of these opposites as having its ultimate source in the unity of another pair of opposites, the most primordial unity of all. I think the play guides us in this direction. Could it be that these oppositions are experienced as mere stumbling-blocks, scandals, objectionable contradictions which do violence to human thinking, only by those for whom the earth on which men walk and the Olympos of the gods are ultimately two, not one? The messenger reports that shortly after Theseus is seen shading his eyes, he is seen "reverencing the earth and the Olympos of the gods together in the same speech (ho autos logos)." Theseus for a moment must somehow understand that the two are one-"the same logos" surely does not indicate merely a prodigious synthesizing feat of human intellect. And if we are to understand Sophocles at all-1 do not pretend to understand him very well-we must try to understand this oneness in such a way that no reduction is performed: neither are the Olympian gods-or anyhow the Olympos of the gods-merely a noble lie in the service of decent human life on earth, nor is human life on earth a mere field for divine operations-men are not in that sense the playthings of the gods-in such a way that it is foolish for human beings to take their own lives-their joys and their sorrows-seriously. But it is very difficult to understand the oneness of the earth and the Olympos of the gods. Let me add one remark. If I am right in thinking that something like the de-creaton of Oedipus-his creation into nothingness-takes place in the play-not merely the exalting of someone who has been cast down, or the rewarding of one who has passed a test, or the recompensing of someone whose sufferings were, after all, not merited (or at any rate out of all proportion to merit)-if, that is, I am right in thinking that we witness, however obscurely, not merely the undoing of the effects of what has happened, of what has been, but the very undoing of what has happened itself, the creation of what has been into what is not-then I think we are not very far from the belief and hope in Him who takes away the sins of the world, who takes away not merely their "natural" consequences, but who takes away the very sins themselves, so that they are no more; or very far from the need that there be a second Adam (deuteros and eschatos as Paul says), not merely forgiveness of the sins of the first Adam. Perhaps ultimately there can be no forgiveness without annihilation. But this takes us far beyond the human realm, since surely no human being has the power to undo what has been done, although the experience that nothing less than this would be sufficient docs seem to be a human experience, though perhaps not a common one. V. But, we must ask, does the wonderful ending of his mortal life, whatever its "content" be, satisfy Oedipus' hope and demand that who he himself is be made manifest? We must answer unequivocally that it does not. We are glad, to be sure, for the mildness of his passing, for the "kindly intent" (eunoun) displayed by the gods' final visible action upon him. But we have heard Oedipus insist fiercely and implacably that he himself must be separated from the story of what has befallen him (which includes even what seem to be his own actions). The incomparably privileged passing is part of his story, but it is not, any more than his earlier monstrous deeds, part of himself. And yet the inclination to ascribe to Oedipus himself what properly belongs to the final action upon him, is very difficult to resist. We hear the messenger succumb to it: "For the man, not mourning nor pained with disease, was being led forth, if ever anyone among mortals, wonderful (thaumastos)." The properly adverbial has been made adjectival; what properly characterizes the "how" of the being led forth is made part of the "whaf' of the man himself. And does it not indeed seem impossible that this marvelous happening should have nothing at all to do with who Oedipus is in himself, in his very own nature? Yet is it not true that he is now led into glory as earlier he was led into ruin, that once more he is simply an object of divine action? The chorus prays: "May a just divinity augment him back again." He was acted upon before; he is acted upon again in a way which,_ if it is not simply capriciously related to who Oedipus is, at most manages to vindicate without revealing, to deprive the earlier divine action of its appearance of having authoritatively revealed who Oedipus is. Vindication without revelation, the nullification of a previous pseudo-revelation-does this not leave Oedipus still longing for the making manifest of who he is? Or has this manifestation already occurred, without immediate divine involvement? Perhaps the very opaqueness of the ending of the story of Oedipus throws us back upon an earlier moment, the moment when Oedipus says to his daughters: "It was hard, I know, daughters. But one word by itself cancels all these agonies: to philein, the action of loving." In this utterance we find one alone pitted against many, and not even the action of love pitted against many sufferings, but the word, the mere word. What can this possibly mean? First we must understand: it is clearly the saying of the word that counts, the human action of declaring it. And the ultimate reason why this is so is that the declaring of such a word is, in Oedipus' sense, the only truly free, hence genuinely revelatory, human action. For consider: how does one know that love cancels suffering, or fails to cancel it? Surely not as one knows that in a given instance water quenches or fails to quench fire. There is in the contest between love and suffering no process there to be observed-not even an interior one from which outside observers are of course excluded but which the self can observe. There is no process which is there to be observed so that its outcomelove quenching or failing to quench suffering-can be accurately reported as the word conforms itself to what is there. Nothing is there, in that sense; there is no accomplished fact for the word to conform itself to. But that means that the saying of such a word is a radically free act, not a beingacted-upon, not an acting-in-return; and as radically free it is, 25 �The College according to Oedipus' radical requirement-to which he has been driven in his resistance to the reduction of himself to the protagonist of a dreadful story-genuinely revelatory. Now we know who Oedipus is in his own nature, taken by himself, not as the bearer of this or that divine doom, not even as the one who nobly endures such a doom or who comes to be the conduit of certain effects or the bearer of certain properties as the result of such a doom, but as he himself is: Oedipus is the man who pronounces the word philein, who says and means that the love in his life is more important than the suffering, who says that not as a result of observing an antecedently existing state of affairs, as if the power of love in his life had triumphed whether he affirmed it to triumph or not, but out of the mysterious depths of human freedom in unconstrained and unconformed affirmation, which creates the self even as it reveals it. CAMPUS-ALUMNI NEWS Jr. Robert S. Bart Edward G. Sparrow, New Deans Appointed bachelor's degree of arts in 1951, and at Harvard Law School, where he was awarded a bachelor of law degree in 1954. In 1957 he earned a master's degree from Columbia University's Teachers College. He has been associated with St. John's since then. Mr. Sparrow has served on a number of important faculty committees. He was chairman of the committee which led to the opening of the Santa Fe campus in 1964 and has served as chairman of the Polity Committee, which periodically revises the College's constitution. He is currently a member of the Instruction Committee, which acts on all academic matters at the College. The appointment of new deans for St. John's eastern and western campuses was announced recently by President Richard D. Weigle. Named for five-year terms beginning July 1st are Edward G. Sparrow, Jr., who will be dean in Annapolis, and Robert S. Bart, who will assume that post on the Santa Fe campus. Both are now members of the Annapolis faculty. They will succeed, respectively, Curtis Wilson and Robert Neidorf. Born in Paris, France, Mr. Sparrow was educated at St. Mark's School, at Harvard College, where he obtained a 26 Mr. Bart received his early education at the Phillips Exeter Academy and obtained his bachelor of arts degree from Harvard College in 1940. He was a Sheldon Traveling Fellow at Harvard from 1940 to 1941. In 1957 he was granted a master's degree by St.John's. Mr. Bart has been a tutor at St. John's since 1946, teaching in most parts of its program. A former member of the Campus Development Committee, he is a current member of the Instruction Committee. He has also served on the faculty committee which helped plan the new western campus, as well as on the Polity Committee. The author of manuals and commentaries used in connection with St. John's language and mathematics programs, Mr. Bart was associated with Santa Fe during the past academic year, teaching there under an exchange arrangement financed by the National Endowment for the Humanities. February Birthday Party Because we had been concentrating on an appropriate celebration in conjunction with Homecoming (see back cover), the actual !50th anniversary of the Alumni Association founding almost went uncelebrated. To their credit, the students kept this unfortunate oversight from occurring. The Association, or the Society of the Alumni of St. John's College, as it was originally called, was founded on February 22, 1827 (which was Commencement Day in those times), by a group of �April, 1977 alumni, faculty, and Visitors and Governors. The committee which drafted the first constitution wa:s composed of A. Con tee Magruder 1794, F. S. Key 1796, and James Murray 1802. The result of their efforts was read at a meeting held in the then-City Hall in Annapolis, convened at 7:00 p.m. an the 22nd. One hundred and fifty years later, to the hour, a few students and alumni met in Great Hall on the Annapolis campus to mark the occasion. Sophomore Phil Leatherwood arranged the meeting, and his remarks opened the ceremony. His theme was "renewal of pride," a restoring of the feeling of honor and pride which was so obvious in alumni of older days, but which today seems largely to have been lost. Alumni Director Tom Parran '42 then traced the life of the Association from its origin to the present, and mentioned briefly some of the men who were responsible for that "Society of Alumni." Arthur Kungle '67 first spoke for those alumni who could not attend that evening, especially Julius Rosenberg '38 and "Bunny" Gessner '27, both past presidents of the Association. In so doing he recounted some of the highlights of the life of the College and its illustrious alumni. He then spoke for himself, asking why there was so little spirit and interest among "new program" alumni, and hazarding a guess that perhaps too much reliance has been placed on the intellectual virtues, on the intellectual life being a sufficient end unto itself. Senior Christopher Rote, president of the Delegate Council, then expressed the hope that the meeting would mark a new awareness of unity between students and alumni. This was of particular interest to him, as he hoped very soon to cross over from one group to the other! President Weigle, honorary alumnus in the class of 1949, spoke of the need to find better ways to reach the alumni. He talked about, and read pertinent extracts from, F.S. Key's "A Discourse on Education," first delivered at the 1827 commencement. The brief celebration ended with punch and cookie refreshments on the back veranda of McDowell Hall, it being an unusually fine spring evening in Annapolis. The February, 1977, issue of The Reporter, published for alumni, parents, and friends of the Annapolis campus, covered in some detail the 80th birthday party for former St. John's president Stringfellow Barr, so we will undertake only a summary here. Held in Princeton, N.J., the event provided alumni, their families, and others of Winkie's friends with a chance to honor his four-score years. Those "new program" classes which were in college while Winkie was president~ 1941 through 1950-were invited to the party, and representatives from all ten were present. Your managing editor was among the joyous celebrants, and caught the above on film; clockwise, from the upper left: Mr. Barr and his birthday cake; Francis Mason '43 presents the guest of honor with two volumes of testimonial letters from alumni and friends; The Reverend J. Winfree Smith recalls his days as a student of Winkie in Charlottesville; Peter Weiss '46 tells of his long association with Winkie, during and after St. John's; Winkie and a "classmate", Allan Hoffman '49. Hoffman, Mason, and Smith, together with Douglas Buchanan '43, Paul Comegys '41, and William Darkey '42, were co-planners of the celebration. Transcript Requests Mrs. Lee Rinder, the Registrar in Annapolis, reminds all alumni of the following concerning requests for transcripts: Such requests should be sent to the Registrar's Office. Federal regulations require that the request be in writ- ing; when time is a factor, however, transcripts may be requested by telephone, with a signed request sent promptly thereafter. Mrs. Rindcr also states that each alumnus is entitled to two free transcripts after leaving the College. After that, a fee of $2.00 per copy is charged. 27 �The College Nancy Coiner, Cool, Collects Rhodes Scholarship Shortly after her selection as a Rhodes scholar, Nancy Lee Coiner of the class of 1977 was seated in the Coffee Shop of McDowell Hall, being interviewed by a Baltimore television news crew. To even the casual bystander, it was immediately obvious that this charming young woman was a winner. Poised, confident, completely at ease, she considered all questions seriously and answered -them clearly, responding thoughtfully even to the banal and trite queries which inevitably creep into such an exchange. Here, clearly, was a St. Johnnie who could handle herself in almost any situation. And this seems an appropriate characteristic for a person who is one of the first 13 women ever selected for the prestigious scholarships to Oxford University. Not surprisingly, Miss Coiner has had a rather broad background of experience somewhat different from that of the average 23-year-old college senior. Among other activities she has: acted extensively both in high school and college; managed a banana field during tl1e Israeli Alumni Address Changes From the Alumni Office comes the following: The official Alumni Mailing List for the entire College is kept in the Alumni Office in Annapolis, and labels for mailing The College are printed from that list. Please notify the Alumni Office of all alumni address changes; as changes are made for Santa Fe alumni, copies of the changes will be sent to the western campus. As a matter of information, a person is considered to be an alumnus of the campus from which he graduated or last disenrolled. The class year assigned is that of the class with which the person started; no matter on which campus. CLASS NOTES 1929 Would you believe: a man who started his first organized physical exercise at the age of 66, and at 74 covered 26 miles and 385 yards in an official 28 War in 1973, the only Christian in her kibbutz; lived in Scotland on an organic farm operated by a woman theologian and her husband; worked the midnight shift at a wheel press in a roller skate factory; and worked as a junior clerk for the Tulsa, Okla., telephone company. Miss Coiner came to St. John's after graduation from Nathan Hale Senior High School in Tulsa, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Henry Coiner of that city. She once considered the priesthood (she teaches Sunday school at nearby St. Anne's Church in Annapolis), and went to Israel after her sophomore year at St. John's. Among other things she learned Hebrew there, adding to her reading knowledge of Greek, Latin, French, and Italian. Miss Coiner is the first Rhodes recipient from St. John's since Stephen W. Terry, Jr., was selected in 1945. Mr. Terry is now state chairman for the Rhodes selection committee in Indiana. Modestly, the new Rhodes selectee suggests that any St. John's student who makes it to the interviews should make it all the way through. "This is partly because at other colleges people generally time of five hours and 46 minutes? Yes, there is such a man, our own Everett R. Amos of Knox, Indiana, practicing dentist and former professor of diagnosis at Indiana University School of Dentistry, who spends his winters in Guadalajara, Mexico. The marathon was run last Majr, and for those of you who keep up with your own readings, three hours after that race Dr. Amos's blood pressure was 110 over 70, his pulse 66! And whether at his In~ diana or his Mexico home, he jogs-walks about five miles a day. (Our thanks to Dave Crowley '28 for this item.) 1934 The Reverend Robert Lewis Jones, retired rector of St. Andrew's (Episcopal) Church, Hanover, Mass., and his wife, the former Adaline Moss, moved to Annapolis in 1974. For Mrs. Jones this was a homecoming, since she is a native Annapolitan. Bob is serving as a part-time parish visitor, helping the rector of St. Anne's Church with hospital calls and other visits. In early January he filled in for the rector of Christ Church, Stevensville, Md., during the latter's illness. 1935 Dr. Phillip J. Russillo, another native Annapolitan, was honored in December by the St. Francis Community Health Center, Jersey City, N.J., for his "long and distinguished service to the health care facility." A room at the Center has been dedi- Nancy Lee Coiner don't talk in class, and when they do talk outside class, they tend to discuss things which really aren't important." While at Oxford Miss Coiner wants to study early church theology and theological literature. Present plans calL for all United States scholars to meet in New York in September, and to go to Britain together on the Queen Elizabeth II. Bon voyage, and good luck, Nancy Coiner. cated to Dr. Russillo. 1939 From the pages of Yachting magazine we picked up information on two members of this class (quite a nautical group while in college, as we recall): C. Thomas Clagett is a co-sponsor of a new 12-meter America's Cup challenger, while James R. McQueen, former head man at Trojan Boat, is now president of Chris-Craft. 1950 Our thanks to Peter Whipple for this bit of news: Jerome Lansner, Assistant Director of the Code Authority, National Association of Broadcasters, will become Director of the Code, it was announced in January. Jerry has been with the NAB since 1963. 1954 On Janua_ry lst, Bernard E. Jacob and Phyllis Rosner Gangcl were married in New York City. Our congratulations and best wishes to the Jacobs. 1955 Barbara (Brunner) Oosterhout, now in her third year at the University of Maryland Law School, is making a specialty of architecture barrier legislation, laws affecting the handicapped, and will have an article on the subject appearing in the summer issue of the Maryland Law Journal. Currently she is serving as a law intern with the Development �April, 1977 Disabilities Law Project of the University of Maryland Law School, a project financed by HEW. 1956 Leo L. Simms has been named personnel director at Avco Everett Research Laboratory, Inc., Everett, Mass. Leo was formerly director of personnel at Children's Hospital Medical Center in Boston, and is the holder of an M.B.A. degree from the Boston College Graduate School of Business Administration. He lives with his wife and four children in Chelmsford, Mass. 1%0 The February 16th edition of the Annapolis Evening Capital featured as "Cook of the Week" Katherine (Hsu) Haas. Kathy, a third- and fourthgrade teacher at nearby Key School, has been teaching Chinese cooking at the Annapolis YWCA for many years. Her husband, Raymond '58, also teaches at Key. The Haases have three daughters, the eldest a freshman at Oberlin College. At 2:18 a.m., Dect:mbcr 27, 1976, at the Wilmington (Del.) Medical Center, Master Frank Grahame Murray increased the size of the Frank Murray (Fiona Paul) family by 50%. In a most cleverly composed announcement, Fiona and Frank reported the arrival of their first-born. ("He was particularly pleased that his father, an occasional professor of child development at the University of Delaware, was now taking his discipline more seriously, and he began quickly to educate the professor on a number of theoretical points in the field.") Young Grahame is, at least for the while, making his home with his parents in Newark, Del. 1%5 Grace (Logerfo) Dawson, a research assistant at the Urban Institute's Land Use Center in Washington, D.C., is the author of an article on the development of Fairfax County, Va., which appeared in the December II, 1976, edition of The Washington Post. C. Grant Luckhardt was recently promoted, with tenure, in the philosophy department at Georgia State University. He will have some released time this spring, with a monetary grant, to visit England to finish a translation of Wittgenstein. Next winter the Camel! University Press will publish Wittgenstein: Sources and Perspectives, an anthology of invited essays which Grant will edit He and his wife, Arabelle (Davies) '67, make their home in Atlanta. 1968-Santa Fe By way of the Santa Fe campus comes a report from Frederick L. Wicks on his activities this past year. Rick and a colleague have established the Butterfly Children's Center, a day-care center, using the facilities of the Turnagain United Methodist Church in Anchorage, Alaska. His story is one of frustrations and gratifications, as the project got Underway last June, financed largely by a personal loan he and his colleague obtained. As of December, the time of Rick's report, they were successfully underway, and had applied for a financial grant from the city of Anchorage; we join Rick's many friends in hoping that the application was successful, and that his plans for improvement of program and expansion of facilities can soon be realized. For anyone who would like to write to Rick, his address is 3521 Knik Avenue, Anchorage, AK 99503. 1%9 Mark Mandel and his wife, the former Rene Szafir, are the proud parents of Susannah Rachel Mandel, their first "joint publication", with a "release date" of December 15th. Mark also writes that he received a small grant from the University of California at Berkeley, Graduate Division, to run a pilot program to test the connection between iconicity in signs of American Sign Language and the ease of learning them for hearing people who know no sign. Mark is, as this should indicate, a graduate student in linguistics. 1970 From far-off Tehran comes a postal card report from a "postcard Herodotus," Edward M. Macierowski. Ed finds the Iranians "amazingly polite," and is realizing how much he, as the foreigner, is the eccentric there. Ed also says he has met David Riggs '69, who, our records indicate, works for a computer firm in Iran. 1971 Just as these notes were being put together, there came a fine letter from Douglas Bennett, to report on his doings since graduation. He reminds us that during his time at St. John's he was more interested in writing music than words (in the spring of 1970 he did a short dance piece for the Modern Dance Class of Georgia Cushman '57) and since then there have been several shorter dances for New York choreographer Marcia "Plevin. His most recent piece is a "disco" ballet, to be performed at the University of California at Santa Barbara April 6-9. Doug's more regular work for the past fourteen months has been as a "disco jockey" in his own discotheques, These are part of two restaurants, each named "The Monster," in which he has been involved as business manager, partner, and maitre d' for nearly six years. They are located in Cherry Grove, Fire Island, N.Y., and in Key West, Fla. Doug's letter closes with the following: "I send this letter from a feeling of comradeship, in thought at least, for those who like me have kept a love of having learned well at a school which teaches how to learn at all." Lelia Straw (Cookie) writes that she has lived in San Francisco for the past four years, working for a small pharmaceutical firm (Alza) as an administrator and sometime chemist. "That makes me living proof that a liberal artist can do anything." She says she cooks a lot, and takes ballet lessons. In the letter was information on other alumni: Jeff and Karen Crabtree (see 1972) arc parents, George Elias is working toward an engineering degree at the University of California at Berkeley, Frank Freeze threatens to go back to live in France again, and Michael Victoroff is a very tired doctor in Rochester, N.Y. 1972 Karen (Shavin) and T. Jefferson Crabtree report the birth on December 9th of Lauren Alisa Crabtree. The Crabtrees have bought an old house in Baltimore and arc busy restoring it. Jeff is a part- time architecture student at the University of Maryland, while Karen is completing an M. Ed. degree at Johns Hopkins University in early child education, and is working full-time in the library there. The December, 1976, issue of Independent School contains an article by Grant Wiggins entitled "Philosophy? In High School?" Grant teaches at the Loomis-Chaffee School in Windsor, Conn. 1972-Santa Fe Stephen DeLuca and Elizabeth Bell were mar~ ried on August 21, 1976, in Nephton, Ontario. He is scheduled to begin graduate school in film production in Austin, Tex. The DeLucas live at IIIO-C, Lake Austin Boulevard, in Austin. 1973 A usually reliable source informs us that Debora Gilliland is a third-year medical student in Philadelphia, but said source didn't know which school. Sorry, Debbie. 1974 Tom Dolan is now a child-care worker at Perkins School for the Blind, Watertown, Mass., working with deaf-blind children. Edmund F. Raspa Ill and Sallie Ann Dobreer '75 were married on what must have been the last rainy day in the Los Angeles area last August. Sallie is a legal secretary for a Beverly Hills law firrn,_and plans to work fur a para-legal certificate sometime this year. Ed has been working on the administrative staff of Price Waterhouse, and hopes to resume architectural training soon. 1974-Santa Fe Thomas Jelliffe is in Germany studying philosophy at Tiibingen on a projected two-year ground work for a Ph.D. degree. David and Christy (Pierce) Maclaine are in Chicago, where David is writing and Christy is working as a legal secretary at Baker and McKensey. Donald Merriell is working for Mortimer Adler in Chicago. And the Windy City has claimed another of this class: Celia Yerger (Cici) report~ completion of her first semester of classes at Northwestern University School of Law. 1975-Santa Fe Giselle Minoli lives in San Francisco and works in the advertising end of CBS Records. She studies (Continued on back cover) ,-----.In Memoriam _ _ _.., 1915-Robert S. Ennis, Annapolis, Md., February 23, 1977. 1922-Frcderick G. Madara, Orlando, Fla., january 7, 1977. 1924-Sydney S. Handy, Jr., Baltimore, Md., November 27, 1976. 1926-William Davidson, Sr., Baltimore, Md., January 28, 1977. 1926-Davicl S. Matthews, Chestertown, Md., January 12, 1977. 1931-Joseph M. Warfield Owings Mills, Md., October 25, 1976. ' 29 �HOMECOMING BIRTHDAY PARTY Library Needs From Miss Charlotte Fletcher, the Librarian in Annapolis, comes a new "shopping list" of out-of-print or very costly books which are needed by the Library. If anyone could contribute any of these, or would like to give the purchase price, the College community would be most grateful: Adams, ). T. New England in the Republic, (Scholarly, $27.00) Bowers, Claude, The Tragic Era, (out-of-print) Cushing, F.H. Zuni Folk ·Tales, (AMS, $35.00) Hart, Albert B., Fonnation of .the Union, 1 (out-of-print) Hull, Cordell, The Memoirs, (out-ofprint) Means, Gaston B., The Strange Death of President Harding, (out-of-print) Marshall, Alfred, Principles of Economy, (Folcroft, $45.00) Nevins, Allan, Grover Cleveland, (Books for Libraries, $39.50). This year Homecoming will be held on September 30th-October 1st. The "theme" is ready-made: the sesquicentennial celebration of the founding of the Alumni Association. Yes, it was indeed one hundred and fifty years ago last February 22nd that a group of alumni, faculty, and Visitors and Governors, including a sometime poet named Key, met to form a Society of the Alumni of St. John's College. And while the origins of other alumni associations are somewhat vague, we see no reason to doubt that we arc least the third oldest. We hope to include as part of the celebration those classes which will be marking special reunions this year. In order to do so, the Homecoming Committee must know by mid-summer which classes can be counted on. We already know that the Class of 1927, under the leadership of "Bunny" Gessner, has started its planning. And for the Class of 1937, members as widely separated as Alan Pike in Hawaii and Merrill Mitchell in Virginia have been in touch with the Alumni Office. Other classes, especially the 25-year class, 1952, should be getting things together soon. Successful reunions require long lead-times and much communication. The Alumni Office can help with address lists, mailings, and other administrative activities, but someone in each dass must take the initiative to get things started. In short, the Alumni Office and the Association do not plan reunions, classes do. And in a most practical vein: hotel and motel rooms in Annapolis on any weekend are difficult to find; in the early fall they are ·especially hard to locate on short notice. Our best advice would be to make your reservations now, even if circumstance forces you to cancel later. The Alumni Office cannot work any magic with local lodging places, so please do not rely on us for last minute help. So make your plans now to join in the Association birthday party-and watch for more detailed plans and program announcements in the July issue. dance every night after work, with an eye perhaps to an eventual career in musical theater. Giselle 1976-Santa Fe has seen Elliott Marseille S74, Judith Sharlin S74, Derk L<Jeks S73, Gary Moody S73, and India Williams S73 in the Bay area. Bridget Houston is living with her family in Okla- 1976 Kimberly Beaton and Joseph L. Quintero of Austin, Tex., were married last year. Kimberly finished her tour of duty with the Army, and she and her husband moved to Springville, Utah, where he is a sales manager for Heathman Chevrolet-Buick. Joe and Kimberly became the parents of Rachel Aurelia Quintero on January llth. The College St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 From the Santa Fe campus comes word that homa City and working as a draftsman for Cities Service Oil Company. She wrote that ". . it's been nice to just let down and take it easy for a while." Katya Shirokow is working in Munich, Germany, in journalism and the news media, and wants to continue her studies in economics and international affairs. She writes: "I hope that things are going well for St. John's; the education I have received I have occasion nearly every day to be thankful for: for one thing I can read, and I can talk about m._rly anything. But now I am ready to be involved in the business community and look forward to acquiring the necessary tools. Incidentally, by the purest chance some weeks ago, I was in a large crowd in the center of town (Munich) on Marienplatz, and looked up to find Matt Krane S75 standing in front of me. He is also living here for some months and we have had the occasion to get together a few times already. The world is a very big place but St. Johnnies always find one another I suppose." Second-class postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland, and at additional mailing offices. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollegemagazine Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 29 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of College Relations Title A name given to the resource The College, April 1977 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1977-04 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource von Oppen, Beate Ruhm Parran, Jr., Thomas Dunham, William B. Oosterhout, Barbara Brunner Wyatt, E. Malcolm Zuckerman, Elliott Description An account of the resource Volume XXIX, Number 1 of The College. Published in April 1977. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Vol_29_No_1_1977 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/89e448e5a38b2d326eb90556bbab80a1.pdf 4db7b6a9407633d11763b64ac87b0bb3 PDF Text Text ~ I Li? ISSN 001 0-0862 THE COLLEGE St. John ' s College • Anna polis , Maryland - II II II II II II Santa Fe, New Mexico II II II U II II July 1977 �THE COLLEGE ON THE COVER: .Academ ic processio n ~ on tile two campuses start the 1977 Commencement exercises (22 May in Santa Fe, 29 May in Ann;~pol is). Ed itor: Beate Rull 111 von Oppe n Managing Editor: Thoma~ P;lrran, Jr . Wi ll iam B. Dunham, Barba ra Brunner Oosterh out '5 5. E. Malcolm Wyatt. F.lliott ZuckerF. dito ri;l l Adv isory Bo ard: Vol. XXIX July 1977 umber 2 Editor's Note T his issue ma rks the commencement of two new deanships. lt includes final ~tateme nts hi' the two deans who served fou r ''ears in S;1111a F'e and Annapolis 'respectively: Robert Ncidorfs State;11ent of Educational Policy and Program of April 1977 and Curt is Wilson's Commencement Address. T he status of the statement of the Dean of Santa Fe is explained in its in troductory pa ragraph . The-document has already been distributed fairly widely; but it will probably be of interest to an even wider audience. It is my hope that th e jux1<1positi on of the Commencement Address give n by C lenn Cray in Santa Fe nnd Leo Rad itsa's Annapo lis Ch1 ss Day speech will provoke written responses. And I am sure that all our re<Jde rs will join me in the very best wishes for the St. John's quartet of deans - the two plavers who now have a rest and the two who start to play-for happy sabbatica I year~ for Robert Ncidorf and Curtis Wilson and propitious beginnings for Robert Bart and Edward Spa rrow. B.R.v.O. lnan . THE COLLEGE is published by the Office of College Relations, St. Joh n's College, An napol is, Maryland 21404, IN THE JULY ISSUE: Ri cha rd D. Weigle, Pres iden t, Will iam B. Dunham, V ice Preside nt. Commencement Address, Annapolis, 1977, by Curtis Wilso n .. . ....... . ... ..... ..... .. . ..... . . . . . Pub lished fo ur tin•c> a year, in Janua ry. April , Ju ly, an d October. Senn d class postage pai d at Annapo lis, Marylan d , Statement of Educational Policy and Program, by Robert Neidorf ..... ... . .. ..... .. . . and at other ma iling places. Words to the C lass of 1977; Class Day Address. Annapolis, by Leo Radi tsa . ........................ . . ... . .. . . .. . 10 The Sense of It All; Commencemen t Address, Santa Fe, 1977, by ). Gle nn Gray . .. ... .... ...... ...... ... . .... . ..... . 13 Commencements . .. . . .. . . • ... . . ....... . . Picture credits: Sa11ta F'e sta{f: co~r. pp. 5. 14-17; Paul Kneizel '77: pp. II, 18, 25; Tom Parran: cover, pp. 1-4. I 1- 12, 18-19. 21 -22 . - ..... .. .... 17 Eight-Year T itle Index ..... •. . ......... . .... .. .. . . . . . .... 20 Campus-Alumn i News . . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . . . • . • . . . . 21 �Commencement Address A nnapolis 1977 by Curtis Wilson \llem bers of the Graduating Class: fi ni~ h- linc. ou hope, crossing th e If I am Y.not are glad, I to\\ill. to bethose qualities bit of pluckpraise get there has taken a and mistaken, patience and good For in you, I four yea you have given good deal your to F oryou haversreadnking, thought.aspeaking andof\Hitingtimeinreading and thi and to ahoul what and A certain amount of you, and also thank you. T hey are important quJiities anywhere; they can be mo re important in intellectual work than b sometimes rea lized; but they are especinll y important for the community of lea rni ng th at St. John's tries to be. We at St. John's arc a tiny band. We believe, and at our best act on the belief, that we have been entrusted wit!. ~omc­ thing special. Recently a candidate for admission. after visiting the College, wrote of tile ~tudents he had met and talked "ith here: they cart)' a ~crcd flame. To an older tutor the name is not always vbible, but he must nevertheless ackn owledge that he would not be so alive or so moved to exert himself in his ow n effort~ to lea rn and undersh1nd, did he not co nfront these students da y by day, with the light of intellige nce and quizzicality in thei r fuces, and th e desire and the de mand to know in their hearts. Togethe r we have aimed at the high goals of the progr:un. In old books we have sought the wi~dom \\hose price b above rubies. For you and for us, self-educati on has been a matter of pa~sionatc personal concern. That concern, and th e quixotic quests it has led us into, join us together in a certain complicity today. We wo uld be hard put to explain it to our visito rs. In that respect as in othe rs, Commencement resembles a f< )' affair. ullil But tile bell tolls, and it is as if the great world were calli ng ~~~ to account. Your request and the Presiden t\ invitation that I should speak here is a great honor, but it ha~ abo caused me some trepidation. Of the great world, I have little to say that is not cheap wi~dom , readily available cl~cwherc. I must rat her speak primarily of what you have been primarily doing here: lea rning and thinking. And all that I have to say is simple in the extreme. formation you have no doubt ;~cq uired: but much of that you have forgotten or will forget-a fact over which yon should uot fret, for the shadow of tl1ings forgotten will protect yo u from many ill usions. If yo n go now to one of the professiona l schools, yon arc likely to have to shift intcllcctuu l gears. and to start taking in inform11tion at a considerably more rapid pace, in order, I assume, to he protected from yet more illu~iom. But here at the College you were primari ly :~~ked to do something different: to think. To ponder on certain book:. and pa ragraph~ and sentences; to mediMe on certain questions that were posed to yo u, or that you posed to yo ur~el ves; to spe~k ,md to write ou thc'c books and pa ragr~ ph s . sentences and questions. What was this engagement of yours, ;1nd what did it do for you? To descrihe thinking is well-nigh impos~ible. John von Neumann, the mathcmatici:m, compared thin king to riding in an airplane, and now and then going up front to do a bit of sleerins;. We can do thi., \\ ithout being able to know what keep~ the ;~ irplane aloft or moves it forward. T hinki ng involves a temporal process. Wh:~ tever i~ accompl ished iu thi nki ng, whate\'cr i~ grasped or undc r~tood, is grasped or understood tJ il the basis of succes~ i ve steps. At a certain mo ment I believe myse lf justified in saying: " I see; I undcr~tand. " What led to tl1at? The thing I hil t is understood is a complex of elemeut\, with their propertie~ aud rela tions; if it were only a solitary th ing, witl10ut anv internal comple>.'I his is lhe te't of the Con11neuce111ent Address gi, en I>) Cmh< Wit.on 0 11 29 Muy 1977 in Annapolis. T he 'f'C·•kcr ""'himself about to cro;; the finrsh line 10 hi$ second round as Dc~m �T he College COI'ry Milleo ity or any reh1 tion to anything cbc, we would speak not of undc r~ta uding but pe rhaps of trance. Understanding is th erefore always of something that is somehow many. And so in coming to understand a situation, I have presumably been tracing out the relations between th e elements of the situation, presumably one b} one, and then I say: ''I underst<Jnd nO\\," But at this moment in which I ~•Y that I uudcrstand, it docs not seem possible that all thc~e relat iom are present to me at once, in their full significance; and it becomes a problem a~ to how they are present. It i~ c'·idcnt that the acquisition of any understanding iuvolves 11ecessarily a kind of evanescence; different :•spect> of the situation to be understood have to fall successively into the background, into the past. And when I try to understand my unde rstanding, to grasp rcnectivcl y wha t has gone;: on in th e process of undcr>l< lllding, it seems I must either reactivate the original process. step by step, or else I am liable to fall into superficiality or false generali1.ation. The problem of evanescence goes beyond any single process leading to any single act of understanding. A// intellectual work is based on previous acquisitions which have become a~ though embedded and ~ubmcrged in one's thinking. Previous acquisitions, in ord er to be transmittible from one person to another, or eveu to remain accessible to one perso n, have in general to be fram ed in words, written or ~po ken. And written or spoken words exercise a seductive power. Increasing familiari ty with ce1 ·toin words and patterns of words makes possible a certain kind of passive and supe rfici;d understanding, which carri es us forward to another stage without our necessarily having grasped the fu ll meaning. Even thinking that has seemed satisfying and adequate always iuvolvcs an interlacing of what is grasped centrally and with a degree of clarity and distinctness. aud what is accepted passively as pre-given. Learning never starts from a zero-situatjon, complaining members of the teaching profession to the contrary notwithstanding. ow this un derstanding of understanding has N consequences for oneam depeudentunderstand. \.Vhenever wh o wou ld I understand anythi ng, I in my understanding on the man ifold of relat ions and elements that are passively there, iu the background, waiting in the wings and ready to appear on stage, should the further progress of my thought 2 req uire it. Were my understandi ng not thus ~ urrounded and su pported, it would consist of enti rely isol:Jted thoughts, which would be incapable of being improved and euriched by fu rther rc nection. At the same time. thi~ dependence on a passively maintained background is a dange r for thought. Whdt is now passively accepted may be the rc~id uc of thought undertaken earl ier, thought that has been intense and that has taken account of some of the complexity of things. On the other hand, it may be the residue, and much of it has to be the res idue, of what has been pa~~ivcly and unthinkiugly accepted with the learning of language and with the words of others, tha t I have somehow absorbed and come to use, from childhood onwards. My depende nce on this passively accepted background means that only with effort can 1 escape the ill or misleading effects of c liche and jargon, of convcuti ou~ l vocabulary or of the deeper :assumptions of the culture in which I was raised. To begin to ta ke responsibility for my thought. what is required are circumstances in which m> tacit as~umptions can be challenged. as rigoro usly as pos~ibl c . and then, on my part, not anger or rejection but a special atten ti,·eness and effort to be thoughtful. A further consequence of this UIHier~tanding of understanding i' that whateve r I accomplish in thinking remains open to modification or qualification by a series of future thinkers, including me. If I clai111 to understand or grasp anything with ;my kind of completeness, there )'et rcmai m the npcn possibility of graspi ug furth e;:r relations, dctcrminatious, conn ections, so that wha t has thus far been grasped appears as < special l case of ~ome thi ng else. ow that, with of ing taken Nnded.supposefor premiss,this understandi ng theunderstanda program of studies is to be fou its aim being not simpl y or primarily acquisition of information, but rather chiefly the improvement of the mind. The founders will surely know that it i~ not possihle for us to start from a zero-situation. They will know that it is neces~ary to begin in the middle of thing~. AI the same time, they will warn the participants, namely us, agai nst taking anythi ng for gr~ntcd; they wi ll ~sk us to take the vow of poverty of knowledge. This mea ns, not that we;: should become sceptics, ;ettlcd in our ignorance, but that we should begin to exercise ;111 ~ l crt scepsis, a looking that seeks to know that and what it docs not know. What should be studied, given that there are no absolu te starting-points, that we have to begin in the midd le of things? Surely we must avoid current fashions and jargon. surel}' we must allo\\ ourselves some distance, surelr we must find the meam that will enable us to probe most deeply and to see farthest, that will make us most thoughtful. h it not evident, then, that we should choose books and paragraphs. sentences and questions, that first-rate minds have ra ted as first-rate, and that have significantly shaped langu;Jgc and thought? Is it not clear that we should turn to them- questioningly. indeed, and yet wi th tentative trust, entertaining the possibility that I he sense they make could be deeper than we have yet dreamed possible? So we embark on a cou rse of reading and th in king. speak- �Jul y, 1977 ing Jnd writing \Vith our comtxmions and our hooks, '"e enter into a sequence of intemctions. A play of ideas begins. Alwa} ~. for each of tt>, there is the central core of what is attended to; it stands out in a clear pattern aga inst an allenveloping vagueness. But fo1 each of n~. the core is fringed wi th fa int pattern\ that CHn be brought to distinctness. Queer things go on in the fringe, sometimes related and sometimes not, to what is occurring at the center. T he activities in the fri nge include th e elements of the play of myth, the goa t-play tha t become~ tmgcdy, the apparentl y sill y associations of words, the c hi ld i~h hubris th:tt appears in ever} mge. T he ' obscure s i ~<l pe~ in the fringe undergo strange evolutions, and there are flash~ of significn ncc which emerge from the fringe or fr01 n bt:yond it, the re latedness of ideas emerging from images or out of the hlnc. T he re is a play of opposite~. The ideas generall y come in pairs, su hstaucc and accide nt, the fixed and the fl ux, form ami fu uction, the actual and the possible, subject and object. If we try to catch these opposites in act, they change sha pe and mul tiply, reuppe<Jring at differen t levels. In the cour~c o f ou r convcr~a t ion and tho ught, eonfigur;Jtiom of idea\ fonn :md dissolve. Each configuration is a whole of a kind, but also partial and relative, becau~e there is always n1orc in the fringe and beyond. But one configuration can le:1d to ;mother, and there are rela~· effects, configurations which c:m sen·e as stepping stones, if we can somehow capture them in words or i mage~. For we need the word and the nnage to fix our thought, if we arc to advance. We cannot be sure that we kno" what \\C think, till we see what we say. Do we in fact advance? Changes in us and in our th inki ng do, I believe, occur. We arc no longer so quick to accept or reject. We become more soberly and critically thoughtful. It is with a changed and no longer eristic spirit that we now engage in the battle of words. We have learned to listen more pat ientl y, to wai l, to consider wha t the progress of the conversation demands. We have become more adept at noting and bringing forth what is in the fringe, or as someone has put it, at "thi nking as ide." Increasingly. our thi nking and our spea king can be governed and guided by the idea of totality, that is, of tl1c wo rl d- of a whole not encompassed but to be eneo111passed. Inc reasins:ly, thoughtfu lness and wonder can be at the center. Now ;md aga in, in the play of thought, configurations arise which are acco111 pani cd hy a sense of resolu tion or completion. This is discovery. It can be preceded by arduo us labor, but it cannot be regarded as the simple res ult of th~t labor. And the colllplctiou of a whole, when carried into full awareness, b accompanied hy :1 sign or mark which may be called beauty or radi;mcc. Such is my attempt at a description of the process in which we have been engaged. Jeff Cothran ·69 critics once and for <11 . T hat is because t·hc issues < peren1 He nia l and go deep. Call icles in the Corgia.~ says tha t liberal education is a kind of play that b good for chi ldren, hut ~hamcfu l fo r grown-ups; so muc h so, he add~ . thai when he ~ee' a man continui ng the study into la ter life, and not leaving off, he 110uld like to heat hi m. No11 I dbagree wit h Callicles. Yet, contained in his position is a propo~ i tion that I believe to be correct. T his is the proposition that educntion occ ur~ under the aspect of play. It is an old thought; in Plato's Laws it i<, pointed out that the word~ paideia, education. and /XIidia , play. arc almost the ~ame. Both arc derived from the word for child. What, Callicles is demanding, do paideia ;mel paidia have to do with adult life? f\ncl he i<o impl ~ ing tha t the answer should be: nothing at all. Adult\ through the ages have tended to view play as m ere play, neither scnous nor useful. \ Vhen we become grown-up, we put 3\\ a} childi,h things. Yet this opposition bet\1 een play and the grown-up leads to a play of oppo;.ites. such as I referred to earlier; it is dialectical, ;mel i ~ capable of tmn~format ion in 1nanifold ways. The notion of play i ~ not adequa tely defin ed by the opposition to the serious, the useful. the adult. We can be wa rned of this if we notice how the business 3nd politics of the world are pervaded by terms th::. t arc derived from play. Busi ness men take ri.sks ;md phi}' the 111arket; sophisticated descriptions of economic behavior are co uched in terms of the mathemJtical theory of ga mes. Politics is the game of politics, and includes the staging of scenari os, hcncficcnt or nefarious; logro ll ing, and puhlic contests for votes and ;lpproval. War itself has been conducted within recent memo ry on one side as a game in the allocation of 1ncn and materiel, against ;m enemy that would not play that ga me, but played another ga me of wit and will. Playful nes~ was even attempted, though awkwardly, in the protests aga inst the wa r. T he playful finds its way into art and music ;mel every cultura l form . In families and professional life. adu lt~ play rol e~. sometimes griml y and sometimes with flair. Abo, they play at pia)', or work at play. sometimes in ways tha t may be too emotionally demanding for health and wholeness. So play and the playful arc by no means absent from the grown-up world, but appear in ma nifold forms, soonetimes frightening, sometime~ pleasing. liberal cducahon that is of is e into we quiet affair; it doe' not operate under lights, or N ow P.A. systems, or in-circuitworthykliegtheorname witha Wplaycan see farther How the p.1radox ifintentexamine the of children. serious and it can be! blaring television, anything Child's play is utterly it is an exploration, an fancy. It is not easily characterizable. It will never answer its ~c ri ous bccau~e 3 �T he College advance into ;1 field of forces ~llld possibili ties where chance must be coped with, where th e unknown and the unexpected ha ve play. where one's po\\ er~ and guesses arc te?!>ied. In Plato's Laws, th e paradigm of child's play is leaping. Leaping is not done in empty, undifferentiated space. It is only po~ i­ ble in a sufficient gravitational field; it could be very dangerous on one of th e small ~atclli tcs of Mars; I launch myself, I hope, only nfter having learned that there i~ that against which my lea p is launched. and which suffice~ to bring me hack. The mastery of leapin~ is part of the ma~tery of the erect bipedal posture, a major fact in human development, a gift of evolution that has to be appropriated anew by each individual human being. Wi th it , one acq uir<.:s an orientation with rc~pcct to what is before and after, above and below, in ~pecificall y human wa ys. The spatially up an d down, right ;md left, forwards and backward~. become metaphor~ for what i~ valu<..od and sought, sinister or righteou~. rejected or leA behind. \1 astery of the bipedal mode of locomotion. to the point of free and unrestrained ndvance, becomes a metaphor for simila r :Jdvances into qui te different rea l m~, where the forces in play are of different kinds. Wherever play and the playful appear, whether within designated playgrou nd or ehcw!Jerc, we may expect that there is a field of forces and possibil ities withi11 which the play takes place; that chance is involved. and risk, and the unknown, and tension, and possibly joy. If we are dc.:aling with the unknown- and when ;1re we not?-then the playftJI or something li ke it i~ likely to come into pl~1y. w~lter Lippma nn, in his book on Public Opiniou, while criticizing th e notion that reality is a fixed thing to which we must adjust ourselves, points out why the unknown is ineo,citably pre~ent for us. The real environment (he ~ays) is altogether too big, too complex, and too nceti ng for dirc;ct acquaintance. 1 \nd although we have to act in th at environme nt, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage with it. . . . [So we must recogni?.c] the triangular relationship between the scene of action, the hu man pictme of that scene, and the human response to that picture working itself out upon the scene of ac tion. . . The ra nge of fiction extends all th e wa y from com plete hall ucinatiom to the scie n ti st~· perfectly self-conscious usc of a ~c hematie model. . . . The very fa ct that men theorize at all is proof that their pse udoenvironments, their interior representatiom of the world, llfC a determining element in thought, feeling, and action. And Einste in, writing about suc h theorizing, s;1ys: All our thinking is of the nature of a free play with concepts; the justification for this play lies in the measure of survey over the experience of the senses which we are able to achieve with its aid. With these quotations, J am seeking to support the notion that thi nking and learning iuvolve necessaril y the playful, th e imaginative arrangemen t and rc;m ;mgement in thought of relations and possibil ities, with a view to takin g accou nt of the whole of them. 4 e should and st ri ve to hope come Wtrue,tothat l1ope, then, playfulour livesrnake our thoughtfulat the center of there would be an openness possibility. a aud inquiring ness. Liberal education should be a training in a11s and ha bit~ that continue through life: the habit of attention; the art of "thinking aside;" the re~1 diness to assume at a moment's not ice a new intellectual postu re; the art of entering quickl y into another perso n's thoughts; the l1abit of sulmJi tl i11g to censure and refutat ion; the art of indicat ing assent «nd dissent in grad uated terms; th e habit of precise accuracy where this is required; the habit of working out what is possible in a gi,·en time; the art of carrying conAict to high leveh of rational articulatio n; above all, the virtues of intellectual comage and intellectual sobriety. These thi ngs we ea11 pn1 icc and et continue to practice, and so lc.:~rn to be pb yful with the playful, as life r<X]uires of us. So learning, we may also learn to be serious with the serious. The phl)ful and the serious, Plato tells us, arc twin sisters. \Ve C<Jn disengage our~c l vcs fro m the magic circle of play only by recognizing the playful as playful, ~111d by tu rn ing toward the ultimate-two movements that join finally into one. One recognition of the ultimate and th e scriou~ that has remained memora ble for me occurs in a stor) told of the aged Immanuel Kant. A few days before his death, two strangers arrived for a vi~it. They wanted him to stay seated, for he was feeble . lie insisted on rising to greet them. despi te the effort, the embnrrassmcnt, ;md the time it req uired. Recovering his bre~ th and composure, Kant explained: "The sense of humanity ha~ not ye t left me.'' So, with the ritunl net of greeting, Kant expre~~cd his recognition of that which must ever be trea ted as an end, never a' a means. \Vith some such recognition, I think we could lea rn to be trul y pla)'ful with th e playfu l, and serious with the seri ous. That is what I wi$h for you. Go forward, then, and do not look back; and, to echo Socrates at the end of the Republic, may you fare well both now and in the journey of a thousand yea rs. �July, 1977 Statement of Educational Policy and Program by Robert N eidorf worth ~urpa~~ e,·erythin.;. T lri' would ~ecm, too, to be each man hrmself. since it is the arrthorilalivc and better part of him. It would be strange. then, if he were to choo~e not the life of Jri, self but that of SOIIIetlring el\e. Arrd . . . that ,~hich is proper to each thing b hy rrature hc't and most plca~ant for each thing; for man. therefore, the life acco rding to reason is be~t and plea<antc~t. since reason more than anything ebe is rnan. 2 (The Polity of 1976 Mipulates that the Chairman of the Instruction Committee. who is alternately the Dean on one or the other campus. shall wbmit a Statement of Educational Po/ic)' and Program to tire faculty for discussion after consultation with the Instruction Commit tee. and that it shall thereafter be presented by the President as a report to the Board of Visitors and Governors. Unlike tlrl! care in earlier rears, the Statement is thus a letter of report which does not require formal faculty action unless it incorporates a formal instructional proposal; the fc>llowing does not.) I. In 1954 th e L)cnn of St. John's College wrote this statemen t: The intellectual powers of man- of any man-a re hi, highest power~. They 111:1kc hi m what he is. To educate a man means, then, above everything else. to help hirn develop these powers, to help him acquire intellectual virtues. 1 Somewhat ea rlier, way: ~peak irrg of rc;~son, Aristotle had this to We rnust . . . strain every nerve to li ve in accordance with the best thing in us; for even if (reason) be small in bulk, much more does it in power and L:ut monrh :11r. John's, Santa Fe. 'eodorf romptercd hi> four·~ear term as Dean of Sr. I believe that these statement< arc true, tha t they convey the ce ntral purpose of St. John's College, and that largely for those renso ns the College provides the finest undergrad uate education available. O ne may qua rrel wi th th e clrr im that reason is man "more than anyth ing t:lse." We urc 110t ulways reasoning; we are therefore sometirm:s told th:rt reason is :111 instrumen t which we may decide to use or not, like pliers. /\gai n, reason may he tra ined and improved; we arc therefore so metimes told that it is po tentia ll y qu ite separable frorn what we are, like the ability to shoot a bow. Like reason, des ire and emotion are powers of ou rs, so r n ctirnc~ act ive and someti mes not, capable of train ing and improvemen t; but it wou ld be strange to thin k of desires as things rehrted to m so loosely that we might put them on or take them off as indifferent I>' as eyeglasses; and no one would think that our emotions arc attached to us like talents or acquired crafts, a~ if " c were no more involved with them than with our ~kills at chcs~ or hridge. Still less is reason separate from wh at we arc. \Vhcn we seck its betterment, we 'Jacob Klein, t9H Statement o{ £ducat ronal Polrc:y and Ari>totte. Nioomachran Ethier. X, 7 P~ram. 2 5 �The College " usc" it; it is less co nfusing to ~ay we exercise it. Wheu we deliberate whether o r not to "use" it, we exercise it once aga in . If it i ~ not lite rall y what we are "more tha n anvthing else," it is yet close to being j \l~t th;~ t, too close for us to tolerate the easy metapho r~ that would degrad e it into a tool or skill that we manipul ate or mauife~t /Tom some d<Jrk unreasoning place of self behind the sccmes. lt is a mark of the deformity of st;~ndards in ou r time that undergraduate colleges are often characterized, like commercial cntcrpri\cs, in tcnm of their offerings and products. l11at a college should stand for something inv•te~ the judgment that it h quaint or sectarian; that it should stand first and last for the culti,·ation o f rea~on im 1les contempt. usually genial hu t occa\iOnalh ho,tilc. \Vhy is reason held in such low esteem? Special pleading, wishful thinking and dcccpti\C persuasion are the most frequent fonm of deficient reasoning. When they arc so recognized, the domin:mt presence of the individual interests and concerns of the reasoner is vividly manifest; it is then supposed that th:tt reasoning is best which leaves human person hood fa rthest behind. Calculation and record-keeping can then be take n ,1, p<Hadignh of good reasoning, a nd the in tell ect comes to be rcgn•ded as a faculty of putting th ings and ideas at a di~ta ncc in order. so to ; peak, to wa lk round them nnd scru tini7 the m . never to IOl lch or be touched. Practice .C follows theory; in sti tuti ona lly approved rcasoniug becomes indi fferen t to dim ension s of perception, des ire, worth a nd com1n uui ty; i11Crcas iugly ih exe rci~e i~ fe lt to iso late us fro m wha t is mcaui ngfu l iu o ur 'mroundiug~ a nd val ua bl e in each othe r; to re~ i~t these CO II'eque nccs, ma ny become convinced tha t they m ust ei ther hold " rcamni ng'' in the m iddle distance as :1 mean s to so111c be tter end, or press it furthe r away as a threat to a ll th ~t is a li ve nnd lnu na n. However, being hu man doe~ not req uire the kind of ind ivid uality that make~ good rea~on ing impossible, for "hu manity" and ''individuality" are not synonyms. Reason by its very natu re cannot conform to th e idios) ncracies of individuals, and in n seu>e it cannot be mdividual; it docs not follow that it must be non-human, or that ib exercise is impersonal and isolating. The mi~ologi\h :unong 11~ are like stagemanagcrs who, noting that the individuality of the actors is spoiling the scene, first replace them \\ith u1arionettes and then, rightly, despair of the dra ma. The better course would be to ask them to act beUcr, and primaril) thi~ mean~ asking them to act together. If we can :1void ~hallow notion.<. of what intellect is, 6 and escape the dogmn that it cm 1 have nothing to do wi th wha t we a rc, th en we ca n at l ca~t make tria l as to what its lim its and powers may be, and wha t it ca n be li ke to exercise it. Actu ally to rca~o n , frequen tly, ~eriousl y. and cooperative ly, i~ the w:ty to do th at; and the College is a place for doing it. The poet Mark Van Doren could be polemica l about the p lace of the reasoning intellect in education: "The more WI.. live hv 0111 intellect," \aid Tobtoy, ''the Jc .. s we nnder\t,ll1d the mcanmg of life." This could he true m som e oh,c me and terrible sense for a man of hi' gcnnh, hut it h,., no meaning ''hen parroted by commonplace persons who fear intellectual education a\ narro,,, cold, or d1y-their favorite adjectives, none of which is ever missing from the indictment. Tho~c who tim~ attack it as " me re,'' implying ~o•nc whole of whic h to he su re it would make a good part. u~ually want none of it at all, and show in th e ir .\pccch tha t they do not knO\\ what it is. At any mtc, they ~hould be asked whether they have undergone it, and if ~o whether they were able to ob~ervc tha t it h~d nothing to do with emotio n or love. It has everythi ng to cl o with them, though it respects them c uough to desire that they he rescu ed fro m c heap juclgmcnts of their worth . The arts o f th e in te ll ect . . . can be ta ugh t; and th e traditional du ty of th e college is to teac h thcm . 3 II. It wou ld be 'tra nge indeed if the typical accusa tions" n arrow, cold and dry" - we re not ~omctimes djrccted a t the College. and sometimes, too, wi th good grounds. I. It should be a cause of joy and not of ~orrow that there are more things \\Oith ~tudying than Lhere is time in a lifetime to study them. 'o t all are equally rewarding, nor equally accessible, nor equa lly likel y to complement e;1ch other as parts of a colleijiatc cuniculum ''hose purpose is the eult i\'ation of the intellect. The curriculum at St. John's is therefore almost enti rely prescribed. This rcAects the serious1 ~1ark Van Doren, Ulwrall£duratio11. pp. 6 1-2. �Jul y, 1977 nc~s of the cho ices made in its des ign, for it· if> pri ma rily the c m ric nl u111 which p rovides com mon m~ttcr for conversation and opportunity for the cxcrc i ~e of reason ~~ a public and cooperative enterprise, which is in accordance with its nature; it aho reflects the fact that not all arc at the sa me place in respect to their intcllcctu,ll power~. there bcin~: othel"'·ise no purpo;c for the exi~tence of a coll ege. Thai there are almo;t no cho ices for studcnb in the curriculum cu taib several conseque nces whi ch may be taken as fonm of narrowness. T here arc topics wide ly .-ludic<.! in Ar uc ricau co llege; which ;uc treated a t St. Jo hn's mi n i111ally o r not at a ll; for exam ple, vbual arts. recent behal'ioral science~. Ea>tcrn philosophy. Often there arc sound reaso ns. but rarelv conclmive one~. for the;c and other exclu,iom. In the end," some thiugs must be exclude<) because there is not room for everything of value; not roo111, tha t is, un less variety is pursued for its 0\\ n sa ke, in whic h case the e ncoun te r wi th each piece of materia l beco m e~ unavo ida bly casua l and impnson;d , leading by ;Hro lh cr road to the dehunrn niz,, tio n of reaso n. T here is no gro n nd for the c la im that the topics presently e nc losed withi n the St. John's curriculum constitute a uniquely privileged list; but a glance at them , and <Jt the position~ rcprc~entcd by the author~ ~tudied, 11 ill revea l that there is no d.rngcr of a narro" ue~s of content. F'rom a nother di rection. it has been suggested that beca use the College des igns its curricu lum o ut of cons iderations o f intrinsic in tellectual wo rth ra ther than the rcquc~t' ;111cl re 4 Ui rc men ts of com me rce, iml ustry, a nd gradua te ;m d p rofessional schools, i t~ ~tudeu b a rc too n anowly pr~:parcd for later careers. The pragmat ic val ue of specia li1ed tra ini ng a t the collegiate level b contc;tablc; recent natioual experience suggests that overly specific preparation can become a tragic embarrassment when the \tructure of soc ieh•'s needs and wants c hanges u npredictably. There is, howe~•cr, no reason why the College should avo id concern wi th the transi tion of its students from withi n to with ou t; ind eed, sin ce the c urric ul um is not desig ned to facil itate th at trnnsitio n in a ny ; imple o r speci fic terms, it is a ll the mo re an o bl igation wh ich the Co llege must and does assu me to he concerned with it in o ther wars. St. john·~ \tu dents are suited to and do pu rsue C>sentially the same spectrum of activi t i~ and careers as the ~raduates o f other colleges. 111at th is is so shou ld occasion no surprise; it is a repented lc~son in the e;~rly dialogut'l. of Plato that the re is no spec ia li zed pursu it which const itutes un ique ly llld just life . llowcvcr, stude nts need the prac tice of the good < a nd hnve a righ t to expect the pro fessio na l acq u is itiou a nd orgaui7.at ion of informa tion •111d ~dvice concerni ng opportu nil ie~ for ~chool ing, employment nnd enterprise; the ma tter ' irnply i; that complel.. Po r that reason, we mmt be intensely grateful to the placement officer; on each campu; "ho ha1e recently provided expanding ~crvices in this domain. t\ more scriom form of the accu;ation of narrowness 1s this: that in its pursuit of in tellectua l excellence th e Collc~e neg lect; moral virtue. ' I he briefe;t con t(rct with the concrete life of re~son in the College-that is, witlr its co n vc 1 ~a t iom­ ~h ows to the con trary. It remains to wonder whc lher the vigor of mora l concern in th e College i; despi te reason rather than becau~c of it. It wa~ a widespre<Jd dogma of the mid-twentieth centurv. not unknown in other times. that rea~ou i\ cntireh• distinct from that in u\ which e~timates worth; th1\ \\a~ of~ piece with its depersom1 li..:atiou. \Ve were told, and ~ome­ ti mc' nrc still told, that "value judgmen ts" have rro cogn itive sta tus, that reaso n de termines what is bu t leaves to other fac u lti e; tl1c cle te rm im1 tio n o f what is best. T he logical a nd phi losoph ical grou nds for this view are n otoriously debata bl e. We re it correct, the comc(jucnce~ for college education wou ld he enormous. F'or on thi~ view, "hat i> 110rthy is so only because of iudi1·idual likes and wants or because of arbitrary cu ltural preference\; no matter of worth is appropriate to the intellect because nothing ;, really worthy in il~clf. It foll ow~ that those who would ~uppl cmcnt intellectua l trai ning with mo ral educatio n seek to ~ u hject stude nts to illu~i ou . Van Doren aga in: In tel lectual ed ucation . . . scarcely recogni1c~ th e dbtance wh ich ~omc 1\0uld put between moral education and itsel f. . . . The dnnger in separating character from iutellcct . . . is that men "ill then be Iicensed to ha ndle moral ideas as th ough they were not ideas . . . . /\ popular fom1 of ignora nce is the belief that life ca n lx: o rdered by th o~e who do r1 know what they are doing; fe rvor is enough. O m 0t si ncerity depends on o ur knowledge o f wh at we are t;rl king abou t. Mo rals cannot be better th an thought. The sou ndest method of moral educat ion is tc.1ching h ow thought is done . "Let us endeamr, then, .. says P,J\cal, "to think 1\Cll; this i~ the principle of mora lil y." 4 4 /bid .. 1'1'· 62-3. 7 �The College T here is fi nally a form of narrowness which threatens the College inel uctably. There must be withi n the school persons who do not share its fundamental convictions (w hether or no t I have identified them properly), but choose it for some other qualities which, perhaps right!)•, they identify as of equal or of greater importance. That is to say, there 111Ust be dissent within the College, and of the strongest kind: without it there is a truly constricting narrowness and the danger of uncritical orthodoxy. On the other hand, one cannot pretend that difference about fundamental matter' i~ unimportant and makes no difference, for then the College stands for nothing. In sustaining this tension, the greater hardship falls upon those who dissen t from the views most widely held, and to them th e others must be correspondingly grateful. 2. I have been appa lled to find even a few students at St. John's who confuse seriousness with solc111nity, and think that laughter has no proper place in the ~eminar room. Again, there are some who believe that the feelings and emotions of participants to a conversation are of no legitimate interest except insofar as decency requires that one avoid giving offense. In these respects, I believe that the practice of reason within the College becomes on occasion inappropriately cold. No doubt the classroom is at its best when each speaking participant is more concerned with what he says than with the fact that he is saying it, and when th e regard which each has for the others is independent of the regard which the others have for him or her. But the parties to the conversation are not therefore ciphers. I am concerned to know what a student feels about Hamlet, even if he or she cannot at once say why; the feelings of a serious participant in the enterprise of reason are starting-points of consequence and legitimate material for consideration. The elevation of likes and dislikes into items of terminal interest and incorrigible stature is to be sure one way of paralyzing reason: but the exclusion of feelings as "merely" private and as hopelessly opaque is one way to render the activity of reason pointless. 3. "Dry'' is so frequently a term of opprohrium for austere texts and droning professors that it has almost lost its metaphorical quality in this context and become instead a synonym for "boring." T he appropriate images are the closed and dim places of libraries and notebooks, repositories of bits of knowledge which are recondite, esoteric, abstract and-no do ubt- triviaL Reason threatens to dessicate whenever it is 8 regarded as a means to the manu facture of products-recipes and formulae-distinct frorn itself, rather than an activity worth)• for itself. This is not to say tha t the pursuit of truth is better than its attainmen t; it is to say that the exercise of reason is the characteristic way in which hu man beings relate to each other and to what is. the acquisition of encapsulated ''results" being only a byproduct by comp:ui~on. BooiG are for reading. and re-reading, and conversation; not collection. In the Colk-ge we sometimes make reason dr)' and dead when we allow an emphasis to fall too heavily upon the contents of a notebook, ach.aal or metaphorical. Demonstrable skills. precise theorems and clearly formulated propositions are not to be despised; they are the usual signs of the presence of reason alive, and their systematic absence is cause for alarm; the)' are the sorts of things usua lly offered in response to the question, "What have you learned?" But possession of such things does not constitute reason at work. The outcome of the first few propositions in F:uclid's Elements is a few statements of fact and a few simple techniques of construction which the student could grasp in a few minutes; but what is important is his time-consuming acqua inta nce "ith the proofs and their difficulties, an e:-.perience usuallr called "thi nk ing through" the material. In the same vein, the structure of the mammalian body is ;available in models, books, and movies; but the personal experience of dissection has a deeper learning significance. Again, a student can memorize rules of Creek Grammar, and memorize passages from Homer alo ng with reputable transla tions; none of these are of as much val~ae as the effort to make one's own translation, or at J ea~t to give an acco unt of the suitability of the one supplied. Finally, the informed listening to music or poetry is as much or more an exercise of intellect as the development of an analysis, and indispensable for the latter. These are all common examples of situations in which the personal intellect at work constitutes a self-actualizing activity that we treasure at least as much as the "results"; for it is in the reliability of this activity that new results can be obtained and old ones verified, it is in the activity itself that results of any kind are made ours, and perhaps it is in the activity itself that we arc most alive. T he early dial ogue~ of Plato constitute more sublime models of the same principle. Although they usually fail to exhibit a formulable answer to the question of record that will withstand even simple criticisms, they never fail to reveal important qualities about important matters. T hey provide, in �July, 1977 short, an e xperie nce for the read er of open mind and hea rt. Sometimes, the n, the prope r answer to '"Wha t have you learned?" may go something like this: "I ca nnot sta te what I have learned, but I know that during this hour o f study or of conversation I was in a fine place where I should like to be again, and wh ich if it has changed me has done so for the better." Were this not so there would be no justifica tion for ou r traditio nal e mphasis upon active participatio n in the classroom, particularly in Semina r. Every "result" available to the student who speaks in Seminar is likewise ava il able to the one who is silent. However. although the College must ahvays be pre pared to tolerate the exceptional student wh ose participation is active th ough silen t, I believe it is right to insist that overt participation in the conversatio n of the c lass room is the primary man ifesta tion of that intellectual act ivity for which the College exists. We ask students to speak in c lass not to prove that they have done their assign ments but in o rder that they may have the experience of reason. T here are mauy inte llectual activities of a fairl y routine so rt, often regarded as un interest ing or "dry" a nd pursued only to a minimal exten t, and the n o nl y for the sake of other studies to which they seem to be necessary means; examples arc the memorizing of passages and paradigms in Creek or French, the solving of many routine problems in geometry o r calculus, the dissect ion and drawing of a plant or animal, the careful writi ng of short anal ytica l papers. Yet paradoxically, these are elementary expe ri ences in the exercise of reason and we someti mes neglect the m at o ur peril in ou r eagerness to advance to the high planes o f philosophical discussion and poetic perception. No doubt there is a way of em phasizing ''exercises" and "drills" so as to dry up the spirit. But there is a joy in them for themselves that is lost when they are held in contempt and neglected as mere means to the " real" goals of thought. The skill s which they engender arc then present only in appearance, and some of the most accessible and proper pleasures of intellect arc foregone. The vitality of reasoning is secured neither through some transparent sublimity of style nor novelty in the objects of thought, b ut through the coope rative and d isciplined spirit in wh ich it is conducted and the quality of th e materials presented to it. ITT. Again, therefore, the contents of the curriculu m emerge as the crucial determ inants o f the qunlity of education that the College provide~. But great book~ do not come so labelled. and the test of time is therefore important; it is primaril)' for this reason that 1110~t of the texts in the curriculum are old books, and n ot beca use of veneration of the past or despair of th e present. O n th e other h and, our intell ects arc imperfect and our circumsta nces change; consequently, the curriculum must be criticized constantly and revised frequently, lest its imperfections become traditions and that which is new receives less than its due accou nt. There was, after all, a time whe n I Iomcr had not sung. C lea rly the balance between stability and change is a matter of ba hmcc. We are c urrentl y committed to and at wo rk on a large change in the laboratory p~rt of the curriculum, and always considering o ther possible modifications; yet the emphasis in the College is p rimarily upon the continuing study of tested ma teria ls. T he parts of the cu rriculum arc no t arranged in the best possible way nor do they constitute a list o f those things most unique ly worth studying; both are impossible. However, what we have been studying is, in practica lly every part of it, decently a rranged and eminently worth atten tion. TI1at in itself is an enormous gift. In that pen.pective, we can proceed to curriculum change without feeling that the re arc fata l diseases thereby to be cured or some uniq uely perfect c urric u lum th at we are obligated to find; the process itself may then be a proper pleasure, free o f artificia l urgency and grou ndless anxiety. 'I his must be said bluntly: The contents of the cuniculum and the procedures of instruction at St. John's College are excellent. They are that in and for themselves , and only fo r th at reason they arc also appropriate preparation for la ter life. Simply to be content with that fact would be sm ugness, and this wo rld being what it is, the fact itself would vanish ; but if, as I think, it is a fact, we have no need to igno re it :md ought not to forget it. 9 �The College Words to the Class of 1977 by Leo Raditsa In my drcau1 and fnncies I am always giviug speeches. s which is perhaps why 1 came here to leach where teachers ;1rc supposed lo li~lcn. For me that is a lot harder than talkin~. as a lot of you lwve had to find out. But today you h~ve offered me a chance 10 say some II tiug and thnl on the eve of you r hJ. l s day as undcrgmduates- and indispulahly on your own time. I am mighty pleased. You have probably begun to understand thai most men, including yourselves, to the extent tha t yo u have learned anyth ing, are self-educated and that knowing is as IIlLlCh a reaching out for life as love. Also, that it i' a~ natural as breathing. That il is ouc of the areas of deepest freedom where evcl)thing is unexpected and yet at the same time tu rns out somehow to fit and to be appropriate-an ;1rea where a man if he moves al all moves of hi~ own. As a result it is an area where a man experiences all hi~ slavishne~\ if he is at all slavish, an area where he experiences all thai keeps him from loving life, if he does not love life entirely. In this sen~c :ill knowing iuvolves self-knowledge. 1 expect abo yo u have had some inkling of the dread which accompanies knowing. It is a dangerous business, bul not half ~o dangerous as ignorance. Knowing req uires courage and self-respect and is not to be taken for gra nted. ~llhough we do in fact take it for granted much of the time. I 1nean especially most of yon-you take it for granted. as if knowing is something )'Ou do at your stage of life if you want, a convention and, therefore, entirely ~afe. Perhaps we take knowi ng for gra nted beca use it is too much for us. and because we wish lo deny it is too much for u;. Besides the dread, knowing affords loo much pleasure. dclllands too much slmggle. Taking knowing for gran ted means pretending il i~ neither pleasur<Jble no r fearful - when we kn ow very well it is both. Knowing seems too much for us, because we find it difficult to accept that it like life is bigger than we. I think tha i is wha t Socralc,' blunt experience of his ignorance is all Thts is the text of the Tutor'' address g"-cn at the Cla.s Da> F.<erci~ \nnapolis on \lav 28, t977. 10 111 about. It remind~ himself thai life is bigger than he. Because of thi~ experience of his ignorance, Socrates knew thai life would have lo leach him and not he it- if he was lo learn at all. In other words reasoning and for tltnt matter living has a good dea l lo do wi th letting things occur of tl1 own. cir Co~::thc's Egmont meant th is too when he said the best things in life come unasked. But all these things are much easier to tal k about than to allow to happen. If in four years of talking and ~ltlempted conversation some truth stirs of its own. once or twice, and surpri~cs you-thai is a good deal. So hard is it for u~ lo do the simplest things. I suppose also that you have experienced in these )•ears somdhing li ke isola tion from the tradition, although-a nd because-you have been in continual contact with il and fell close to it. The voice~ that speak lo u~ from the past arc very distant. They are clear, distinct, but distant. This is partlv because perhaps we are more tm pped in our time~ than most tim e~. hc. ;lllse we arc trapped in our assumptions, precisely, c because our ideal i~ to operale-1 expl icitly do not say, live- wilhoul 3\\tunptions. II does not ~eelll to us that we speak the same language as other times. In fact we fear to speak the same language as other times, lc~l we di~covcr how differen t we actually are fro 1t1 them. This isolation me;ms you C:ln visit, inspect and become familiar with the words of the past, bul thai it is difficult to inherit them and to imitate them. to lea rn from them. We can remem ber the past, ad mi re it, but f1 0ill a distance. i\ nd yet we draw susteuance from it. Aeschylus, for instance, can teach us courage and the distinction between rational aggression and murder. But that kind of sustenance somehow remains private- it mrely becomes a pad of our public life, which seems to function with almost no memory of any past, eveu of the receut past. So afraid are we of ourselvc~ . In pari this reluctance to remember the past is becan~e our poets and historians no longer seem to know how lo imitate the ancients, lo lea rn how lo make comedies or traged ies from them. But there is no reason why thi~ has to continue to be so or why it should be so. I am simply suggesting those of us who are interested in making things, dramas, histories or �July, 1977 trcati•cs, 111ight turn to the wo rh of the past we admire as models ralh(;!r tl wu as obtect~ simpl y of asto nishment. A~ I have followed your ed ucation these four year~, teaching mo~t of you, I have con,tantly compa red it to my own undergraduJtc education. It wa' not a'' illing comparison but one that forced it\clf upon me <l\ 1 tried to keep up with what wa\ happcnim: to you - and to me. As vou well Lno" the rules are changed here-in fact some would cla1m that there me no rules. It ~truck me when I first came that the cduc;~tion vou ''ere about "as close to the one I dreamt of ha\lng "hen I was an unden:raduate But when I came here 1 had gro\\n old enough to be pretty suspiciom of dreams- and c;pcci:lli) of ~:cttins; what }OU dreamt. I mean, J kne'' the trouble rea II} starts" hen you get what you de~ire. Above all. 1 wa\ wan of believing too much in what I was doing, became belief>. a' oppo,cd to comictions, too often get in the way of doing an} thing, because beliefs had too often pro\ed to be merely di,gui~ed shackle~. To put it in the dcvaslalmgly Frcudi.m manner which made up the air I breathed as an undergraduate, principles are largely unfulfi lled de~ir(;!~. I remember ~ometime in my first few weeks here-which were also your fir~t few weeks-Winfree Smith ask ing how I found myself at St. John's, and my answering that il wa~ an enc h;mtcd i ~land Hnd that that mea nt you had to keep you r wits abou t you l e~t you turn in to a pig. I still feel that way-bu t four years ago, I had no idea of how much wi t it took. In fnct a ~ WIIIC of you know, I have 'ear found it necessnry to retire to tile Pacific next > in order to Ann BrO\\nmg ~nd Br.W l},t\ld-on dl i\ta\ Cotilhon catch my breath, to ~harpcn my wih and to shake the trail of students. In fact at thi~ place the dcm.md for wit is cumulati\·e. fhe reason it takes ~o much wit to mn·h·e here is, of course, that the line' dcfinins: 'tudcnt and teacher are remarkal>ly fluid. In fact, sometnne~ they appear to me to be wntten in water. But for all that. a~ we all know, there are ~tuden ts and there arc teacher>. 1he quc,tion i' "ho are the students and who <Jre the teachers. It probabl y 'ccms to you pretty late in the d;t)' to \tart t;tlking abou t that. Of course, for )Oll. for the students, it 1s vcr} convenient to pasture in the illu,ion th.1t all arc teachers and students at once, but it i~ not very beneficial to you-and, of course, no teacher worth his salt could put up witt. it. T he question is how not to put up with it and th at is not easy in the maskedball atmospher(;! in whic h ed ucation goes on here. Underneath it all, we all kn ow that what is goi ng on here is a life-a nd-death ~ t rugglc-wc igno1e it, we deny it, you wail alo ud that it is uot so. tha t such things are not eve n thought of here, that yo ur though ts nrc only honourable (which is hardly what I would ~ay :~hout all of mine), that this place is different-as if all places were not diffcreut. But no matter how much we deny it, we all know it is a life and death struggle. A life-and-cle,1tlt ~truggle iu lite way life-and-death struggles are earned out 111 the few nations on the present shameful face of thi~ earth that kuow the '"cctncss of freedom. f'hat i~. nohod) i~ murdered, but the stakes are ne~ertheless our 11\·es and \'Ours. ,,hcthcr )OU arc ~oing to let your eyes run wild in their beholding or live forever wandering in the 'hacb, a' Freud put 11. -,md drag us down back iuto them. What I mean i\ that \Ome of the be>t of vou and \Oille of the wor~t of ~ou are prett~ much bent on fiuding out ''hether 11 �The College Rachel McKay jonathan Wells we really are adults or are simply types that have done more time th an you. Now it seems to me th at that is a legitima te question and a question th at you with all your ostensible devotion to words know very well cannot be asked di rectly in words . It m ust be asked and a nswe red in controlled experiments of which yo u are past masters. In fact, some of you make Zuleika Dobson look like an ama teur, which, of co urse, serves Oxford righ t. Considering the fact tha t according to some of you the catalogue prohibits testi ng, )'O U do a great deal of it and with mo re success than I would like - for your successes make it all the more difficult for you. T hat is the worst of being young, that your trium phs, especiall y the ones you e ngineer by your own devices, tend to undo you. It is o ur job to foi l these triu mphs a nd someti mes we succeed. In some ways th ese last four years h ave mad e up my second unde rgraduate education-my fi rst o ne took pl ace a lmost exactly twenty years before - ! consider them bo th unsatisfactory. I hope you conside r yours unsatisfacl'ory a lso-otherwise you will ha rdly unde rsta nd why we are in the midst of celebra ting a beginning. The time of my first u ndergradua te educat ion was the time of th e Cold Wa r, now almost tm iversally considered a mista ke, for reaso ns I h ave never been able to understand. In many ways it was a stifling time- that is, if you think it is stifl ing no t to suffer fools gladly. For those who had the daring to c riticize, it had the utmost respect-that is, it d id not encourage them. I think the most striking difference between my undergraduate years and yours is that you appea r to be in nocent of thinking psyc hoa nalytically. For me and, I think, for many of my contemporaries psych oanalytical ways of thinking were the air we breathed. In fact it might be said that the amateurs 12 drove many of us to the professionals. 'We felt that until we came to terms with psych oanalytic thi nking, a ll our interests were somehow evasive. Of course, this was not true o f all of us. But a ll of us had to face psychoa nal)•tic thought in one way or another, if only to learn the di fference between a reaso n a nd a ration alizatio n. It was the stuff of our m anne rs and of our fran kness and be hind it all there was a desire for ruth less h onesty which had at ti mes more th an a to uc h of nobility abou t it. It seems to me that that is all different with you and that seems to me s ignifica nt. I do not mean that yo u do not want to be honest-bu t tha t you thin k you can do it without tangli ng wi th psych oanalysis. That gives me pause. In closing I should like to say something abou t the Republic- for that is so meth ing that we all have in common besides St. Jobn's- and wh ich this college ma kes it easier to love. I think we take it too much for gran ted. I think we take it too much for gran ted because some of us, perh aps all of us, suspect it is too good for us. Of course, we say it is not good enough. But what we mean is that we are not good en ough . 1 am baffled that I find the deepest appreciations of freedom in the writings of me n living in totalitarian cou ntries whose every word risks their lives. I should like to read you a passage from an essay by one of these writers, M ikhail Agursky: A ma n who has been acc ustomed to breathing fresh a ir ·a ll his life does not notice it, a nd never realizes what a blessing it is. He thin ks of it only occasionally whe n e nte ring a stuffy roo m , but knows th at he need only open the window for the air to become fresh again. A man who has grown up in a democratic society and who takes the basic freedo ms as much for granted as the air he breathes is in m uch the same position. People who have grown up under democracy do not value it highl y eno ugh . �July, 1977 The Sense of It All Commencement Address Santa Fe 1977 by J. Glenn Gray Mr. President, fa culty colleagues, parents, fr iends of St. Johns, graduatiug Seniors espcc i ~lly . I. It is an honor to be asked by )'OU to speak a final word at this nod<Jl point in your careers. Though the ritual of Commencement is hard ly important in itself, what it commemorates is a significant change in yo ur Iives. After these many years of study, Lelrrjahre, as the Germans call them following ancient Creek usage, you are about to embark on years of wandering, Wanderjahre, in either a literal or metaphorical sense. The clas~ical tradi tion has it that after you complete the Wanderjahre, having st udietl sufficientl y "the great book of the world," yo u will return and settle into productive lives of service to your generation. The present age b hard ly classical, however, ~o that this third ~tage may be indefinitely delayed! In fact I have been impressed and depressed of late by the perception of how disorienting the college experience tends to be, at least for many of my stude nt ~ at Colorado College. t\ genera ti on ago we college students en joyed the pleasant ill usion that a college education was supposed to orient one for th e future. Nowadays I am frequently visited by former graduates who after three, four, or five years of wandering are still trying to discover what to do with their lives. I am highly sympathetic with their plight. Things are doubtless more diffic ult today than they were for us even in the C real Depression years of the Thi rties. F'or one thing the scarcity of opportunities for employment ma kes a decision about vocation harder and drives many graduates into professional schools which increasingly signifies merely a post- ponement of the search for a sui table career. For another the state of marriage has become more problematic than it used to be. When I asked the other day one of o ur Seniors who is marrying this summer whether marriage upon gradua tion is in or out of fashion again, she amwcred quickly: "definitely out." From her defensi,•e attitude I g,1t hered that she has been twitted ;1 lot about fl eeing into marriage as an c~capc from " th e real world'' as students still call the life outside academia. Important as they are, 1 suspect that ma rriage and career arc only aspecb of a larger problem confronting many of us and not only the youth. It is the problem of making ~nse of our lives. And it is about this effort to make sense of it all that I wish to speak to you. The theme has been ncar the center of my reflections iu recen t times; in fact ever since my late friend Han nah Arendt taught me a distinction between truth and meaning which seems to be of cardinal importance. Indeed I hope to articulate the distinction more explicitly than she was able to do llCcause of her untimely death a year and a half ago. I trust that you will forgive me for broaching this we igh ty theme on ~uch a festive occasion. By issuing the invil~lion you might have known what yo u were in for! You This is the text of the Commencement Address given at Santa F'e on I\ lay 22. 1977. J. Glenn Gray is Professor of Philowph) ot Colorado College. He t< also Gener•l Editor for llarpcr and Row of the translations of Heideggcr publoshcd and to be puhli1hed by tltat home. His books include /lege/ and Creek T hought (llarper Torchbooks, I969~ U nderstanding Viole net Philosophically and Other l£1says (Harper Torchhooks, 1970); The Promise of Wisdom: A Philosopllica/ 1'1leory of Education ( Harper Torchbooks, 1972): and The Warrio~: Re{le<;tion• 011 Men irr Battle (Harper & Row. 1973). Hi1 edittons include G W. F'. Itegcl, On Art. Rtligio,, Philosophy (llarpcr Torchbool:s, 1970). 13 �'The College sho uld have guessed that [ would give you a somewhat hum orless liHic lecture on a ph ilosop hical subject I a m tryi ng to clarify for myself. Staled q uite simply in my own wo rds, the distinction between truth and meaning runs this way. In the first instance the search for tru th is a cognitive en terprise, our attempt to discover the way th ings arc in the world and in ou rse lves. It is what engages us as stude nts and professors in labo ra tory and c lass room. ln the Humanit ies we seek truth th rough read ing a nd disc ussing the lasting book~ of our heritage; in the sc ien ces we e ndeavor to discove r the secrets of natu re by con trolled observ;~tions and experiments . We thi nk of tru th in thi s way as wha t resul ts from kn owledge, and the acq uiring o f knowledge is what engages the ra tiocinative elements of our m in ds, ou r i ntellecL~. However, beyond the desire to know, which Arbtotle decla re d to be ''by nature" in all of us, is the quest fo r mea ning. Once we h ave acq uired a considerable stock of kn owledge abou t whatever subject matte r, we can still be ha un ted hy the quest ion: wha t does it ma Her to me, what is the sense of knowing a ll this? ' n1en comes the dismayi ng awareness that it is poss ible to k now everythi ng abo ut a subject a nd to u nderstand precisely nothing . Recogni tion of the vast di fference between knowing a nd u nde rsta ndi ng le nds to in crease as we grow older, especiall y if one g uards aga inst becom ing a confirmed acaJemic! Whi le in schoo l and college it is tempt ing to bel ieve that the desire to know, in the sense of knowing I have just me ntioned, is the chie f motivation of human kind. But iu luc id moments we realize tha t the need to discove r the place a nd purpose of our lives has a highe r priority. A colleague of m in e a t Colo rado College said to me the other day with nearly comical seriousness: "Th ese studen ts of ours really wa nt to know the truth abou t the world. " With some effort I refTained fro m responding to h er aloud with what was in my m ind. "l don' t believe it for a min u te . What they wa nt instea d is to ma ke sense of thei r experien ce, to learn what a nd who they a re, and whe re they fit into the scheme of things. A tiny minority may give first place to tru th, but even they can do so on ly if they a lready know their place in existence." T ho ugh re lated to the search for truth a bo ut the facts of natu re and h istory, th e q uest for sense o r meaning engages 14 different powers of the mind than our in te ll ects. I refer to that meditative or musi ng powe r whid1 we ca ll thinking a nd whi ch Plato defined as "the d isco urse which the mind carries on with itself." According to hi m, th inking is " the mind simpl y talking to itself, asking questio ns anti answering them, and saying yes and no. When it reaches a dec ision- which ma y come slowly or in a sudden rush-when do ubt is over and the two voices affi rm the same thi ng, then we call that its 'j udgment'." (fheaetetus 190) As you know, he asc ribes this creative powe r to mem ory or rather to M11emosyne, wlto i$ th e mother of the n ine Muses, not to our im poverished defini tion of memory as merely the power to rec~ ll something in our pasts. It is to thi s silent d ialogu e with in us, going on incessan tly, tha t we owe whatever sense and sign ificance our lives t11 <JY possess. I am fond of the ve rb 'to muse' for this act ivity because of its etymology: ''to sniff arou nd o r cast about for a scen t." Interpretation of ou r expe rience, whe ther it be fi rst- hand or vica rious, requ ires in any event mo re of us than knowledge gained by sense observa tion a nd intellectual calculation. If, for exa mple, we have achieved a genui ne friends hip or su ffered a n unha ppy love affai r, in tellectu al knowledge alo ne will never enable us to assess the signi ficance o f th ese eve nt~. T he ir factna l tm th is not the same as their mea ni ng. When we read Dante's grea t poetn we a rc h<trd ly co ncerned with the truth of its C hristia n cosmology, completely unacceptable to us modems as it has become; wther with how we can inte rpret the sense of the Comedy in ways that wi ll make it present to us and th us give om da ily experience a deeper dime nsiou. T his life- lo ng effort to approp riate and in te rpret what h appens to us, nowadays go ing u nder the fash ionable na me of hermeneutics, is in s hort a differen t kind of effort from acquiri ng cogn itive truth. Whereas tru th is knowledge of the actua l state of aff~ i rs in the world, meani ng is my a ttempt to belong to th at world. i\t lo ng l a~t I have hegun to rea lize tha t tlte c hief b us iness of philosoph y is not the att-Ji nment of kn owledge a bo ut ma n and wo rld . To this worth y e nterprise the sciences, natma l a nd socia l, are devoted. Most of them, to be sure, have sprung from philosophy bu t now they rightly clai m au tono my from their paren t. Tnstead, philosoph)' -and by tltat I understand muc h more than th e ~cademic d isc ipli ne hy th ~t title-is primaril y di rected to the sea rch fo r the 111eaning or sense of hu ma n experience. My wise old friend, Ha nnah Arend t, who m l thi nk of as ~~ modern Dioti ma, helped me to understand that the mea ni ng of mea ning is belo nging. But alas, she cl id not I ive long e nough to explai n how belonging in turn is to be understood. Ce rtain ly she did not think of it as adj usting omsclves to our cu rren t envi ro nmen t o r accepting a comfortable niche in a n econon1ie chm in su bmb ia. Snrely it can not be the goa l of a thoughtful person to be a well-adjusted me mbe r of the spec ies self-styled homo sapiens. The sto ry is told of a college president in the East who was so well ndjustecl to his environ ment that o ne co uldn't te ll whe re the environme n t le ft o ff and the Presiden t began! To beco me really at home in mode rn society is at o nce more tlt ~1 n many of us ca n ac hieve and less tha n we rea ll y des ire. �July, 1977 ll Wh at then do I mea n by belonging. if not to one's society and to one's age' It is a hard quc~lton, the amwcr to which \till dude~ me in anv concrete \Cil~C. But let me hazard a general answer and th~n try to nuke 1t a~ concrete as possible b~ illmtr~tiom. I believe that to learn to Jo,c the beautiful is "hat 11 means to belong to the world. I .carnmg to Jo,·e \'isible and im bible beauty in all its mynad nmmfcstations in the events of history and the spectacle of nolture i'> to make ~ensc of our ]i,·es. The more we learn to lo\e the bea utiful, a difficult learn ing indeed. the more sen;e our lives wi ll make to us and to others. Since college days I have been pleasa ntl y lt~unted by those f:1 mous words of the poet John Keat~: " 'llc<nt ty is truth, truth beau ty' that is all ye know on ea rth and all ye need to know." They occur at the close of hi~ Ode 0 11 a Grecian Urn and are the outcome of hi~ mming on the scene depicted there of a sacrifice to the gods that i~ at the same time a celebration. At the beginning of the Ode he "onders aloud: What men or gods are the.~e? \VItal nwiden\ loth? What mad pursuit? \Vhat struggle to c~capc? Wh<Jt t)ipes and timbrels? 'What wild ccsta,y? (;O il I inues to muse on these mysterie~. the great age of the urn. its preservation by good forhn1 c for the enjoyment of cou ntJc::,s ge nera tions before him and proba bly for more still to co me, ltc ponders hi ~ own lram icncc and imm inent end. The poiguanl contrast causes him to excbim: i\nd as he Fair youth. beneath the tree~. thou eamt not lca\c ') h)• song, nor C\'Cr can those trees be bare. Bold lo,cr, never, never, camt thou ki~. Though wmning near the goal-ret, do not grie,·e: She cannot fade, though thou h.1~t not thy hliss. For ever wilt thou lo\c, and she be fair! t\s he con tin nes to medita te upo n this strange and wonde rfi1 l scc·nc, lte i' sudde nly ca ught 11p, in the concluding stanza, by <t n epiplt~ny beyo nd reflectio n. In hi~ language "that Attic shape, that silent fon n, dost tease us Ottl of though t as doth eternity." Thcu in a lightning flash the un 1 spe;~k~ lo him the word~: ''Beauty is tmth, truth bc:tuty ·• That the words come from th(; urn, not from the poet, he atte~t.:. b)' putting them beh,een im·crted commas. i\s a college ~outh I was ,·aguelr thnllcd by the'e words but could not hegin to under;tand them. B~ rc,tdi ng wme commcu tarie~ recentlr I discover that others have had a like difficulty. F.\'CII \o perceptive a poet a' ' I . S. Eliot declared that these concludi ng lines seemed mca ningl cs~ or at least their me;ming c:sc;~ pccl hi m. llowcvcr, I lta\C hcc n fortunate during the last decade in being closely itn·olvcd with the though t of Ma rtin I Jeidt:!gger. lie takes poet ry with ultimate seriousness as a disc losure of truth . Accord ing to !tim, great art is a setting into work of truth; and one fom1 which truth assumes is the r~d iancc which shines forth from the \l'ork of art. T his radiance he calls beauty. Por him bea nty is not some ~1spcc t or attribute of the genuine work, IIliich les~ so111ething we the beholders suppl y or even the artist who brings tlt c work into bcin~;. On lite contrary, beauty is a disclosme of reality itself or in his language ;m appeara nce of Rein~"' ~ uch . In other 1\'0rds, beauty speaks to us in the art work of the truth of Bcin~:, a non-cogniti' e truth to be sure ,md one most of us arc ohli\'iOm to most of the time. Though llcidcggcr did not kno\\ Keats's Ode in all likelihood, he lm\ helped me to undcr~tand what the urn re,·ealed to that great)} gifted )OLmg poet. Let me try to ~tate th is understandi ng in my O\\ n more pro~aic language. Beauty is not truth in tru th\ nwa l connotation ;t ~ th e corrc~pondcnce of our ideas wi th a slate of affairs existing inclepencl cn tl y of us. That is to say, the trutlt which Keats learned fro nt medi tation on the mn is not the tru th of fact and knowledge that we acqu ire from our ~cn:.c~ and intellects. Rathe• th e truth that is at the sa nte lime bca nty is a way of being in the truth. It is the correspomlcnce of the entire h nm;ltl bc1ng, not simply hi ~ logical propmlfiom. to the \\Orld abou t him and within him. Bcaul) a~ truth is the momentary fu sion in thought and feeling of the qrcatest subjcctinh '~ith the greatest objectivity. M \uch moments when \\C Judge the C\ents and spectacle~ of the \\Orld to he beautiful we :1rc wddc nl > aware how we bclonfi: to ami in the order of thing>. Bei ng in the truth in contrast to " Ita \ ing" the truth is what I unde rstand by meaning ns belonging. Contrary to common notions of the bcattti fu l as synonymous with tlte plt:asa nt, snch di~c l osurc' of h~.:;H tly <ts truth may often be terrib le. At some level of ~1ware11 ess most of us acknowledge th is, for we have experie nced ~uch a fusion in ancient and modern trJgedies like Oedipll~ at Colonlls or the 15 �The College concluding scenes of Hamlet . But ever and again we lend to ~upprcss this awareness by assoc iating the be~ u ty of tragedy wi th artistic productions alone and not with so-called real life. llowc,·cr, there is something still harder to realize than terrible beauty. It is the beauty of the ordinary, the fam iliar, the commonplace. For in reality. as lleidegger has remarked: "the ordinary is not ordinary: it is extra-ordinary.·· Alas, we usuall) lack bot!. the semes to perce1ve :md the minds to meditate these ,·isible and im1siblc beauties which lie about us. Rather we are ensnared in da ilincs~ and its practic:•l concern~ . being neither sufficie11 tly subjective nor sufficiently ohjective to appropriate tJ.e extrao rdi na ry beauty of the ord inary. It has frcquent·ly been observed how di fficult it is for moderns to fathom what beauty mc;:~ 11t to the ancient Greeks. T o the m beauty was a concrete and mighty power rather than th e pale a b~traction it has become for us. ot freq uently observed but equally difficult for us to unde rstand, I fear, is what they understood by love. Love or friendship, eros and philia, which their thinkers often employ interchangeably, was equally concrete and powerful. To gra\p, therefore, what the love of beauty meant to a Plato, let us ~>.1)', is doubly difficult for us. For love and beauty are dialectically related. Beauty is the objective stimulus of love: it incite~ i11 us the sense of wonder, at once the delight in seeing and the desi re to understaud. Yet the origin of this act ivity of mind and sense is remote from its fu ll developme nt. Both love and beauty exist in inn umerable gradations or deg rees and hence require great disci pline of eye and mind to hcco111c actual to any extraordinary extent. It is easy aud natural as we say, to fall in love, but to be in love with the truly beautiful as a state of mind and character- this is anything but easy or natural. Only as we learn to love arc we able to perceive the beautiful in any depth and only when we perceive the beautiful are we able to advance from the lesser to the greater mysteries of love, as Diotima put it. Each requi re~ the other if either is to become more than a mere capacity. To become fully subjective, in other words to become what we tru ly arc, is a task COIIIparable in difficulty and dialecticall )· re lated to becoming fully objective. Ill I lavi ng said this, I am still troubled by the abstractness that clings to the word beauty and to my efforts to th ink the beautiful as an ontological power of things. A similar difficulty affiict~ me with the word love when I try to consider it as a separate power in its entire range from the procreative drive of all li ving creatures to its creati,·e dominion in all the arts and sciences. Yet this abstractness is ameliorated at least when I succeed in thinking love and beauty together and perceive their intercon nection in sense experience. In ra re moments th is abstractness disappears altogeth er when I am able to leap out of the dail> round, divest myself of intellectual pre' occupJt ions, become really open to the beautifu l. I am persuaded that these ra re pre-reflective and post-reflective moods disclose the world to us and provide wha tever strands of 16 Debbie Cai'IOII ami Rohin Riddcl mcnni ng our short lives ca n :~ tta i n . At such moments we hold at bay the conti nual threat of the meaningless and absurd, the blind contingencies and sheer evils of existence. Inevitably we cannot sustain these epiphanies; at bc~t we can hold fast the recollection of them during the long interim periods. F'or beauty is by no means the only power in the world as love is not the only force in us. As I see it, beauty pervades the world, it does not enco m pao;.~ it. If we are to learn to belong, we must discover beauty in the midst of the disorder of event; and spectacles. If we are to make sense of it all, that sense cannot be won by refusing to acknow ledge the senseless 111d and the rad ical evi l which arc also present < real. If the world we re only beautiful and our hearts a11d minds solely directed hy love, we would not requi re the discipline of long education and experience to make progress in the difficult art of belonging. Instead, meaning must be wre~ted from the encompassing realms of the indifferent and the meaningless. Love mu~t a~~rt itself painfull y, sometimes tr:1gicall), in an environment of the uncaring, even the hateful. Once we recogni1:e tha t love of beauty i~ :1 per\asive rather than an inclusive power in life, it tends to become more concrete. Then too we rea li7.e tha t belonging is not :m absolu te goal whose achievement at s0111e ripe age marks our careers as complete. On the contrary, the love of bea uty must be wou auew during every stage of life nnd belonging is at most a partial attain ment, varying for each of us in the endu ring struggle with estrangement or alienati on. T here is indeed one further stage i11 the endeavor to make the love of beauty a concrete power in our lives. Un like the rest of us, art i)IS possess the gift for incorporating the beautiful in their works, from which it radiates to m as the invisible made visible. For them the love of beauty is an activity; they learn to love it b)• making beautiful thmgs. symphonies, poems. sculptures, dances. For thinkers, on the other hand, the temptation is to take the love of beauty as :1contemplati"e idea only, something to be talked about ::1~ I have been doing to you. We who are not artists ;md only on occasion philosophers should strive to enact the be:111tiful in our deeds and characters. In fact we must do so if we arc to esca pe ~ final ~bst rnctncss. Even then, I fear, we arc able to do so only in privileged momen ts. F'or actio n li ke theo ry :1lso can become abstract. It becomes so when the specific goal of any act is lost �July, 1977 from sight or when uncreative repetition sets in, or when ti redness threatens to make our actions mechanical, and so on. There is probably no final victory in our incessant struggle to attain the concrete love of beauty; there are only tactical and momentary triumphs. Living the love of beauty will not provide us with immortality as making beautiful things can sometimes provide for artisl~. But living this way can save us, or so I believe, from the fear that life is a mad experiment and that man, in Sartre's dreadful word;., i~ "a useless passiOI'l." In conclusion, let me wish for you, gradua tes of St. Johns, good fortune in your search for the sense of it all in the Wanderiahre before you. Thinking and doing may not add as much to your store of \:now ledge as have th ese undergraduate years. But with the requisite discipline and patience, they ma y bring }'Ou ;omething e\·en more importa nt, if I am right in "hat I have just said. They may bring } a gradual rec'Ou ognition of how and where you belong in the \\Orld. I salute you with the fine old Latin greeting: ave atque vale, hail and farewell! COMMENCEMENTS Uppcr ri~ht: Vice r ,e,ident Burchennl Auh wnits with student~ fi>r gracfu:tlion ce•e- mony. l.owe1 righl, Michael Creer and Su>:m Otto. Santa Fe Commencement The tenth commencement on the southwestern campus took place on Sunday, 22 May 1 977. Forty-three 1ncmbcr~ of th e cl;~ss of 1977 received their degrees from Pre~idcn t 'vVeigle, and heard an addrc~s by Professor J. Glenn Gray of Colorado College (see elsewhere in tllis i;suc). Recipients of the degree of bachelor of art~ were: Samuel Gorton Atwood, Lauren Kcir Bai llard. Marlene Benjamin, Paula Jane Bunni e>'· Luis Alberto Cabanillas Ramirez, Debra Deanne Carroll, Jane France~ Ruth Chamber~, Kim Brian Childs, Lawrence Hume Clendenin, Elizabeth Coc hra n , Thomas Elio t Conroy, Steven B. Corneli, Catherine Ann Crimmins, Rebecca Anne Davis, Stephen Ellison Deane, Michael Edgar Dubetz. Walter T. Feath erly, Ill , Su~;111 Marge ret Ferron. Arma Flamand. Stephanie Forrest, \1ichael Cordon Creer, R. James Ham, Keith Michaelc H:mison, Laurie Amory llaskell, Janet Lynn Hellner, Carol Anne lligh>aw, Michael Ru therford Jones, Judy K~ y Kistler, Paula Lundy, William Andrew Malloy. Michael Edward Nolan, Lydia IV!ikhailovna Ossorgin, Susan \1. Otto, David Allen Pex. Robin Ann Riddel, larga ret Ann Ryan, \l;mcy Ca) Sample, Joseph Burner Smith, Jr., Thomas Walter Stepnowski, Andrea William~. Gragory Reinhold Winter, Eric Woods. Ann Eli zabeth Worth. Awards and Prizes-Santa Fe T he awa rds and prizes presented during the Santa Fe commencement ceremonies were as follows: The Duane L. Peterson Scholarship for a Junior-Ronald W esley Mawb)'. The Bromwell t\ult Memorial Scholarships-juniors Victor Lee Austin, Teresa Engler, Honald Wesley Mawby, Michael Gerard Theriault; sophomores Elaine Bomford, Nigel A/au Hinshelwood, Allen Dean McCollaum, Donald Howard Schwimmer. St. Joh n's Community Scholarsh ips-j uniors Em lyn 1/iga, Suzan Porter, Colleen Regan; ~op h outo res Betty llussa nder, William S readman Il l,; freshman fohn Watkins. The Senator Millard E. Tydings Memorial Prize for 17 �T he College Ted Hendrich excellence in speaking, for a senior- May Cotill ion in Great Hall Carol Anne Highsaw. The Alfred ). Verratti Scien ce Scholarship- junior William Randall Fryer. Ack nowledgements of Excellence for performances as indicated: Senio r Essay (Margo Dawn Gerber Memorial Prizc)-Susan Ferron; Junior EssayPhilip Regier; Sophomore Essay-Joan Haralani and Donald Harold Schwimmer; Freshman Essay-Anne Wu. Poems (Hen ry Austin Poetry Prize)sopho more Lisa Rappaport. M usical Composition - junior Michael Gerard Theriault. English tra nslation from Creek-sophomo re Nigel Alan Hinshelwood. Eng lish trans lation from Fre nc h-ju n ior Leland Giovanelli. Essay on Ma thema tics - junior Gary Fletcher. Annapolis Commencement T h e !85th Commenceme nt exercises in Ann apo lis were lte lcl under the ve nera ble Liberty Tree, on the front campus, as they have been, ba rring incle men t weather, since 1929. It was an especially noteworthy occasion, it fcat.ured the largest group of degree recipien ts sin ce the start of the presen t academic p rogram, as we11 as the first class to grad uate wi tho ut any des igna tion of honors degrees. (T he joint decision of the two fac ulties was linked to the role which grades p la)•-or do not pla y- a t St. John's. After many years of d issatisfaction wi th the honors ~ystc m , it was con cluded 18 Nancy Coiner, Rhod(;S Scholar Chris Rote tha t gran ti ng of honors deg rees " . . . co uld not be carried ou t with a sufficiently strict an d clear just ice," to quo te Annapolis Dean Curtis Wilson). The graduates then, in a lphabetical order, were: Cliff Bowen Adams, Sara Maria Anastap lo, Karen Elizabeth Ben t, C h a rles Woodbridge Borde n, T imothy Walker Born, M < Geraldine Bra ndon, An n H)' Browning, Edwa rd Theodore Burke, W illiam Martin Castne r, Ca thy Anne C hester, Stephen R,111dolph C hew, Debora h Cohe n , Na n cy Lee Coiner, Catherine An ne C raig, Richard Bennett Daven port, G irard Bradfo rd Davidson , Susa n F itzpa trick DeBacker, W ill iam Doherty, Harriet Dopkin. Robe rt Charles Elliott, Rollie Stephen Feuchtenberger, Grant H;J II F ranks, Lynne Fran ces Gatel y, Steven Ala n Gilbert, Rosanne Gleason, Robert Bruce Godfrey, Leslie Kerin Combiner, Patrick Allen Goold, Jul iet Elizabeth Gos lee, Edward Fra ncis Gra nd i, Jennifer Susan Haggerty, E l1c n Litt lefield Ham ilton, C herie L. Harpcll. Theodore Willitllll Hendric ks, Eliza bet h M. Hen nessey, Andrea B. Hollan der, Susan Valerie Ho lton, Dan iel Lee Jerrems, Edward Joseph Kaitz, Kenneth Ki mhlc, Joel Jean-P ierre Kle in, P<1u l K11eisl. Elizabet h Kocsis, E rica Lerner, Pa111ela Maxon LobdelL James Clyde Mackey, Jack Terence .\tlcArdle, Joh n Edward McCon naughy �Ju ly, 1977 Annapoh$ pnzes and award, upper left. Cwnt Frank' rctciw:~ sliver meda l from Charle< 1'\elsou '45 . vrce chainm n of the Bo:u·d of V"itors aJid Covcrnm~; above, Sara i\nastaplo submitkd the he,t Scnio• 1::>>3)'; upper • ·ight, Pamela Lobdell, and luwcr right. Robert Elliott, rccci•e their ma"""' hl.,er< from Association prc,ident William \V Smunom '48, Rodne' Anne StrJbucchi wrote ong~nal English poem. the best 111, John Todd Vanderpool McDowell, Rachel Gardner McKay, Ma ureen Palric ia Mcidt, Peggy Wclb Meyer, Corneli<t Petronella Joh;um t Miller, Cynthia Dcni~c Nash, Ed\\'ard Charles 1'\clson, Jodv Rae \Jesheim, !"rank T homas O'Brien, ~laura O'Connell. Willia m 1-ICnt} 0\len, Julia Perkin~, Vicki Cass Phillips, Richard 0Jvid Plaut, Gerard /\ Icicle Poissonnicr, Janis Sam Popowicz. Will iam Joseph Rnda, John Christopher Rote, Linda Jane Rutkowski, Eric Michael Salem, Carla Sue Sc hick, Christ ian Jenifcr Melinda Smith, Richard Daniel Smith, Rodney Anne Strabucchi, Marlene Prances Strong, \1ich,tel Murray van Beuren, Carolyn \Vade, Chela Ro> Weiler, Jonathan Rus~ell Wells. As of the Cl as~ of 1973, James Carlyle; as of the Class of 1969. !;. Jeffries Cothran, Jr. A wards and Prizes-Annapolis The gr~nting of h onor~ degrees is now a thing of the past, hu t the award ing of prizes for noteworthy performances in activities still fl ouri~ hes. At the Annapu lis comme ncement cxcrc i~cs the followiug honors and prizes were presented: A ~ilvcr medal from the Board of Vi~itcm and Governors to the Senior who hJ~ the highest ~tanding-Grant 1-la/1 Franks. T he Duane L. Pc tcr~on Memo rial Scholarshi p to a jun ior to be applied to senior >'ca r fees -Michael foseph Ciba. The C. Markland Kelly, Jr., Memorial Scho hush ip~; for 1976- 77-junior Terry Schuld, sophomore Kimberly Ann Schra{, freshman Harold Patrick Pugh; for 1977-78-Kimberly Ann Schraf, 1-laro/d Patrick Pugh , freshman Florence Marie Roessler. The Joan Yvo nn e Ron~>' Memorial Schol!lrsh ip-sopltomorc Eloise Peeke Collingwood. The Senator Millard 1~. Trdings :-.temorial Award for c"ccllencc in speaking-senior Eric l\lichael Salem. The Susan Irene Roberts 1966 .:-.tcmorial Prize for the best senior e~sa> -Sara Mario Anostaplo. The Kathryn Mylroic Stcvcus Memov;lriou~ rial Prize for tlte best junior es\:J}'-Don Raymond Edwards. The Judge Walter 1. Dawkins 1880 Vlcmot ial Prize for the best sophomore essay--Charles Nonnan Hu rl. For the best freshman c~\a\Stephanie Ann .'!e/son. The John Spangler Kieffer 'VIemorial Prize for the best English translation of a Creek text-sophomore Christopher Daniel Bore/en. For th e best English translation of a French poem-juni or Rebecc" Ulllram Brown. For the best original musical compmition-wphomore Scott Michael Cooper. For the be~t original Em:lish poemsenior Rodney Anne St"'bucchi. T he General Amos W . Vv . Woodcock 1903 Frcshman/Sopho tuo rc Mathematics Prize-sophomore Kevi11 William Parker. The James K. l'vicCiiutock 1965 Junior/Se nior MathematiC\ Prizejunior 1\tlork Bernard Pobi. The Alumni Association athletic blazer awards- seniors PamelCI Maxon Lobdell and Robert Charles Elliott. 19 �The College E IGHT· YEAR TITLE INDEX Author TW~ In lstut \lltlllOt) or Mark Vau Doren Willi;om A. l)•rkc) '42 April 1973 Of \1cn and Angel~; A Starch for An Address for th<t Rededication of th< Llbror)· Aristotle's D.tin~ion of Motion Anstotk's t:thict S..h·, Rhetoric Boolosrc.ol e.pi.Mtion Bloc• M otmlain: a boo&. re,·iew Brocheu of Our Fath<r )<>usrh~ Pen1teotes or the Southwest llre Collection of Mr. & Mn. Eugene V. Thaw T he College and the Underpnvileged Comrnenremtlll Addre~s, 1\nnapohs, 1970 Annapolis, 1973 1\onapoli<, 1974 1\nnapoh., 1975 Crocluate lru1uut<. 1975 1\nnapohs, 19i6 Cor>eemins the Dedarahon of lndtpendencc: Con\f'JUIIOttJ .;th Cradu:ltt HIJ&h P. McCrath Joe Sachs '68 ). Wmfnx Snuth lkote Ruhm •on Oppcn Robert A 'leodorf Mich.el W !lam '61 Mary Martha Weigl< '65 Dec<mbtr Janu:rJ) )anua') )an\Dry April April 1969 1976 1973 197> 1970 1973 )ul)• 1975 April 1976 L'li,H~ncc Hems .. J \Vmftee S•uith . April 1969 Ford K. 8r010<n [\;~ T II. Bn.mn Robtrt S B.1rt E•-. T. H. Brann J \Vmf1~ Smith July 1970 July 197l )ul) 1974 July 1975 January 1976 )uly 1976 E.. T. H. Brann July 1976 lmtuute Alumni Ccoffrc) Combtr 041ntt. ~sfure. and The MarritJge Apoil 1973 of Figaro David Mou: Profile of an Alumnus l)i.scussion as a Means of 'I c:tchmg and Learning E•ceqMs freym the W•tory of the Desert F'nthet$ F't• rad~y·s ~n,ought on Eledr<>-ma3netism The Fiul Annual ProVOQtion Addre<• The Foundw and Slave') f"r1nt Plundt1 A CrviJIC of A«ounts rhc llabit of Literature H<ll Paolo and Franoesca High School Workshop Hommage i Di<>trich Buxtehude How Does One Cure a Soul? Bow to Pra1 ;~ World Th:at May se Not Last "Ilow b the Seminar?" I deal~ 11nd Action: Santa F'e Commencement Address, ) 974 An lute:rview with Robert Bt~rt An lmcrvitw with Alvin FrOM :~nd Peter Wtsss An J n t crv~ew with Bar~ra Leonard lol• Scofield. A Memorial Jacob Kkin at 75 )ohn Poun<ht01r<: Profile of nasm or p,ra<Jigm? 'llr< IJberal Arts \1o•-cment &om ldeos to Practice l..og1c and Reasc>n Louis L. Snyder. Profile of an Alumnus The Magie Fire and Tht Masic Pluto Mrethematics aJ a Liberal Art Memori:als to Leo St:rau.ss W>" J. Allanbrook Ap<il 1974 April1976 December 1971 Jacob Kleur Brother Rober't Smith, F.S.C lloom<l'i K Snnp.on '50 . Mark Van Doren Michod O,;sorgin Oe<;ember 1971 Aprill969 David Cinlhurg Robert L. Sp;~cth )uly 1974 April 1973 Robert L.. Spocth Robert L Sp;~cth )ohn S. Ko dTtr Curti-s A. \Vabon july 1973 October 1972 July 1972 .~p<i] 1974 Rrchard D. w..,~e w..p. Arny Apfel Kass Edward C. s.,....,.. January 1973 April 1975 Scptcmbtr 1969 Octobtr 1973 April 19il July 1973 Elliott Z uckern•nn Samuel S. Kutler 'S4 I...aurence Berm $rot1 Buchanan n10m;as K Snn1~n 'SO EAw.ud C Sp;~no" CharltsC. Bell )ames P. (Kimo) Mocl<q• 'i6 Robert A. Nerdorf Robert A. Neidorf Evo T . II. Brann Thono:JS ). Slokey Jacob Klein Ray ami Abig,1 i1 Williamson December 1969 July 1969 fan\rory 1974 July 1976 Oeccmbtr 1970 October )anuaJ)' July July April 1972 1976 1971 1970 197S July 1972 April 1972 April 1975 September I970 January 1975 July 1974 Po#8i1, by J>oul Valery: a lr'3nsl;khOu The Poet of the Ori)-...y •ndCr... The P""cr of the Wool rn Owdipus at Colonu.s p.,.., On Prcemon 'Inc Problem of Frttdom A R<'Ml11rg of the C<tll•burg Address Re;uonabte Politics and I eclmology ReOectiom on the Idea of Sci<: net Hcporl of the Pr et>ideut 1imothy llorrr 76 E,.,. T. B. Brann Dougw All•nbrool W1U ram C. o·crody Michael S. Littleton )ul) 1973 Ap<il 1974 January 19n April 1977 )ul) 1970 )>alb Klein Octobn 1971 Jaa>b Klcrn l:l<ttmba 1969 Eva T. H. Rr.mn April 1969 LaurenC'e Be1 ns September 1970 Curtis A. Wil!on Ridrord D. Weigle Deeember September September Octobtr D<•ober October Octobtr October October 1970 1%9 1970 1971 1972 1973 197-t IQ75 1976 )Ill) S<pember April fanuat) 1974 1970 1977 197) July 1970 July 1969 )ul) 19i6 lui) 197'1 Aprill970 December 1969 lull 1971 January 1974 January 197S A(l<il 1976 Richard D Robert A. Cold"'" Jxob Kkio April 1976 Robert A Goldwin '50 Herbert I Storin~ William o\ Darke) '-12 J;K'()b KlC'm and Leo S1Y011uss Rrchard SeoGeld Roberts Ban Ted A Blanton 75 Robert S Zcknb Wolf!;;tng L<derer 'l'<d A Blanton '75 Jocob Klem J, \V infrc~ Snuth 20 The OurologiC'.al Argument The Perfections of )one Austen Pc:rsounl Freedom Plato's Pho<do Pb,tering Dar Pra)CIJ an Alumnw )ohn Sp;~nskr Krdfer ubaal Arts CoiJece: Anachro- Morality in the Constitution lloe M11h of VuJil's A<n<id The New PrOGJ>rn al St. John's College Nc:<>1on and the Liberal Arb 'loun and Vtrb !'he Numba of My Loves Tire Ody&;scy of the "Crest!" Okl Wars Annapolis Commence. ment Addreos. 1972 Riclmd O:mid Wtrde: Celebration of :m Annl\'ersary Rkhard Scofield, 189$.1970 Rnnbaud 1'ron<lations )ooothan Gnffin Tltt: R.,nn, a 1rarubtion Robtrt S. aknlo Some NOits on the L.osl \Vax Proceos Burton Blistcin 'J'he S(»nllh Ci1•il War Dongl:n Alldnb•ook SJ>ec:ch, Its Strength and Its We:.kne.s.sc:s Jacob Klein Grace Logerfo D•w:.On '6S A St. Johnnie on the Jo~ Market St. )olur'• A•k• John I <x:~e Some Que..tion.s Robed A. l<>ldwin '50 On tlo Study of Polrtic. in e Mattin Diamoud a l.iberol F.ducalion Th• Te.rchinc of Theology to u.Kicr,paduatrs J. Winfree Smith 'rhre< Prelude> f<>r the Pi>no Oougw i\ll.nb<ook 'rhUC)'drd<O. Amtotk's Politics, and the Peloponnesran War L<o Radii... T r.ansbtloru o( POdtr some notts on thtory and pradicc: )on•than Coffin Trial 111 Bttlin Bate Ruhm '·on Oppen Truth and Rrghts EA~"rd M:ocre..,.>ki 70 Tw<nty Yea11 in Reirospt<t Twcnty~five Ye~us in Retrospect Two Sorts of Pottic R~sion Chari<> C. Bell Two Writing In the Sand: Sorlto F'e B•ccalo\lrtale Address. 1974 Michael O.sorgin The Venetian l"h~edrus Eva T. H. Bta1 1n What is o L.ibem1 Education? Leo Strauss What Is th< Qu<stion1 Elliott Zuckerman "When is St. John's Going to Resume Athletics1" Bryct D. Jacobsen '42 A World I Never Mode John S. Kieffer April 1973 .~pril 1972 )uly 1973 1973 .~pl'il Aprrl 1971 December 197 t July 1969 Jonu:rry 1973 July 1975 Ap<ill9n January 19n J•nuary 19n SeptembeT 1969 Octobtr 1974 )uly 197l )uly 1974 )uly 1972 January 1 974 April 197 l April1970 April1969 �Jul y, 1977 CAMPUS-ALUMNI NEWS On the Frida) ommcdi•telr prttcdin~: ~radu.1t10n the fucult)' and stalf are traditionallv im otcd to ha•-e lunch in the: Collq:e Dining Hall . The \tudenh ehose that time to pr=nt Curtis Wilson "ith J dep.>rturc gofl .•\ ctuall) it " "' two gofts: a matched >el eon>oshng of a shop'< clock and a b.uomcter In tlo~ picwre. abo•c· (ldi) \1r, Wii<On has just recewcd the first ttofi. the clock. (left to right are fre>IHnnn Calhenne Sims. Mr. Wol:.on. senior Cliff Adaons Sldndong, and Moria nne Deeamillis Braun '58, of the pbceonent office.) \11r. Woi'>On displays the gifts in the ne•t t"o pictu res. Ford Brown Receives Key Honor Key School in Annapo l i~ pcr~on a li zctl a )mall but vital facility la~t 1110nth and named its uppe r school libra ry after Ford Keeler BrO\\ n as a way of expre,sing it~ appreciation and affection for the retired St. John's tutor, a hoard member there for fifteen ye:m. Friends of the preparatory school and of Mr. Brown gathered in the amphith eater for the event, which was followed by a reception at which a bust of Mr. Brown, executed hy P.ric Dennard of the Key f<tC ulty, was unveiled. The 82-ycarold tu tor wa~ ;tccompan ied by his daughter Janet, .1 New York attornC)'. for the occasion. Mrs. Brown's health made it impos~i hlc for her to be there. Tho111a~ K. Simpson '50, St. John\ tuto r now with the Santa Fe facult) , \\ ho \\ a~ one of the Kev founder> and a student of v ir. Brown. at St. John's, said no one hnd worked so continuou,ly an d slcadfastly ;Js Mr. Brown. He spoke of the fitn ess of the library in ho noring Mr. Brown: freq uentl y crowded and located iu the campus buildi ng kn own ;ts "the Barn," the library is a "place where Key School people come together and learn,'' SECOND ANNUAL SANTA F E ALUMNI FUND CAMPAIGN R EPORT 1976-77 (3/1176 - 2/28177) Dollar Totals $ 88 905 35 2.084 1975-76 (for A>tTOlJf Domm 4 9 1 8 Gift Cla$$1!3 $ 22 10 t8 1968 t%9 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 t975 1976 1977 A>·erage 85 5 t7 9 9 9 9 1 2t 17 62 1 6 15 Cr{t $100 Doroor> 22 1 11 3 1.470 88 6 1 14) 7 182 1.078 11 S3.480 261 185 1H 561 142 IS Dollar Totois compari~011) 49 $ 100 380 34 7 H7 22 20 16 215 5 Annapoli" 320 160 Alumnl Crad l11st. Alumn . 68 4 17 S-1,64 1 71 s 65 1969. 1973. 1974. 1975. 1976 (lied "ith 9 .,ach) $2.084- 1971 $ 261-1971 li1ghe" Donor I otal 1969 and 1974 (toed ~<ith II .,ach). Jl oghe.t J)olta• Total Hoghest c,A A•·('rage $ 1,470- t97t 247-1971 Two li i.OOO gift< One S I. 400 gift Three S 500 gift~ Mr. Simpson said. " It is modest but at the center of the school. " Felix Morley, former edilot of The Washington Post, former fellow Rhodes s Scholar, and friend for half ;J ccnlury, spoke eloquently of Mr. Brown's infl u- ence on both Ke)' School and SJ. John's College. (conti11ued) 21 �The College The College community p;~id tribute to Oca11 Cur1" Wilson a11d his wife, Becky. on Saturday. 30 April. ~ew Santa Fe Dean Robert Bart and his mother "ere host> at a reception in the lobby of the Franci> Scott Ke) Memorial Hall. Folio.. u\g the recep4ion there \\,1\ a dmner in 1M Coll~e Dining llall . In the pictures above: at left. Bo•rd member and former chairman j . I StJ ie)' chats " ilh Mr. Wil<on: right, Becky W.l$0n enjoying her p;11ty (with outgoing Santa Fe Dean Robert Ncidorf 3t right). St. J ohn'~ president Rich ard D. Fourth Ward in Easton, Md . Ernie Hill$ the F.a.v Weigle spoke on the importance of ;1 li- ton office of Monroe, the calculator COITIP"IlY· brar> . 1943 "It is most fitting that Ford Keeler Fro111 the spruce-covered shores of BJranof IsBrown should today have his nnme at- land, Afasb . to Arizona< Pai nted l)ese rt tac hed to the li bra ry at Key School," he country-that's the move A. Scott Abbott made snid. "No one better than he unclcrst:mds h1>t summet. Altho ug h <till teaching high school for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Scotty h now and appreciates the role of the li brary iu worklng with Hopi and NtwaJO lutlmus in Tuba lhc life of a school or college. Mr. City, Anz., rather than with ~ :skimo-.. lie and his Brown has been an outstanding teacher Kate plan to be at Oxford thi< suonmer. she ;tudy~ince 1925 . .. . He h:ts been with u~ a ing 19th ccntUI)' Englosh lite1atme. he the Engli>h medieval town. The Abbotts ha\'C daughters in long time. and I hope for a long time to far-off Nepal, icy Alaska, and \\ ith the Peace Corps come. The inspiration of hi~ name will in Guatemala. inspire students for many yea rs to come.·· 1949 Allan P. Hoffman, CLASS NOTES 1929 l ull in C;Jse there are some who doubted the news about Everett Amos's (tmning (April 1977 issue), be ~dvisc-cl that he has done it again ! 111is time ol w•s the Boston Marathon m April: he CQ\~rcd all twenty-six miles and 185 yards in fo,e hours and forty-nine minutes, the oldest ~ntmnt and the oldest finisher. At age se\Till}· fhe that\ a fair bit of runnmg. e'-en if he did finish "ith ten blisten OUI congratulations to Dr. Amos. 1938 Coorge Tyler Coulson and Doroth~ I lohman Lyon were married on 27 April 1977 in Round Pond, Maine. 1942 In a kind of running q uite different from that of Do Amos ($ee :obove), for the fir<t time in his life . Emt$t 1. Heinmuller ventured into pol itics. and o n 2 May found himself the new councilman from the 22 vic~ president of the Handy Andy Specialty Company, Inc . . of \Jew York City, on I June joined the board of di"-cto" of the Na· tional Bath, Bed. and Linen A\Soci,olion for o thrce·year term. 1953 Prestdent Weigle. on a March tnp to the West Coast, visited with C. Eugene Dietrich and his wife, Dorothy. in Santa Barbara. Cal. Gene is in ehargc of the Equipment Dc•·clopment Dcp;~rt· ment fo• Allied Magnetics Corporation in Golola. He has built an electric car "hich he hopes to put mlo production in the not-too-distant future. 1954 Mr. Weigle also reports a 'isit with \lerle and Priscilla('S5) Shore at then Santo Barbaro home. She continues to leach art at the City College there, and they are about to open o >ccond >hop i n downtown Santa Barbara. For 1omc yctnl they have operated the Village F rame in Montecito. 196 1 Martha (Goldstein) Wyatt has brtn appoinlt-d an associate in the Annapolis law firm of Legum. Cochran, and Clmrtraru) 1962 One of the nice events or the c.orly Sllllllller \\<)5 3 visit from James W. Porrester, his wife, Mary. and their children, Jim and Stmh. Jim. senior, is an associate professor of philosophy with tenure at the Univcr.;ity of Wvoming, where he has been fo r tht· • past fouo rears. Foo the prccceding seven years he taught at Columbia University, after earning his Ph. D. degree from Johns ttopkim Uni•ersity. \llrs. Forrester is a graduate of Randolph-~·lacon Woman's College, :md al<c> ),., • Joctor.>te in philosoph) from llopkim. 11>e f'o rrcsters make their home in Laramie. W)oming. 1964 Last winter Sharon (Kaplan) Wallo! represented before the Supreme Court a Philadelphia girl who sued because she wn< refu<cd admission to an all boy high school, Central t liglr of Philadelphia. We are not aware of the OutCOII\C Of the case. 1967 Thomas H. Farrell, hi< wife, Ann (Lyons) '69. and their daughter 'lell, four years old, are living in Sa nta Fe " hile Tom complete> his disser1ation in analytic pholosoph)' foo the University of Colorado. just in time lor inclu1ion m this issue comes a card &om Mark S#gliu. \1ark is starting work on his dissertation in ps'chology at the 'lew Schoof in New York, .rud i< \\Orling at Rut~e" Unh~rsity. 1968 Fro m /oel Finemtm. "ho left St. Jolm's alter his sophomore year, comes ,omc welcome news of his activities since 1966: he received a B.A. degree from the University of California at Berkeley. and then a l'h . D. degree in Enqlish fro m the State Uni versity of New York at Buffnto. joel has taught in Jerusalern and at Hunleo College in New York. and is currently an Andrew W. Mellon Post- �July, 1977 ALUMNl AWARD OF ME RIT Kieran C. Manjarrez is a deputy district attorney at Tulare County courthouse. Visalht, Cal. William W. S im mons, president of the Alumni Association, has issued the an nual invita tion for alum n i in good standing to submit confidential letters of nomination for the Alum ni Award of Meri t. The Award was first authorized a t the Annual Meeting of the Association on 22 October 1949. The enab ling resolution, as su bsequen tly amended, reads as follows: 1969 After eight years and, 'tccording to him, two pre· vious fuilures to write an acceptable essay, B. Jeffries Cothran. Jr.. finally did just that. On 6 May be publicly defended his essay, most ably, we should add, ;md on Sunday, 29 May, received his Bachelor of Arts degree with the Class of 1977. Congratulations, Jeff. Resolved: I. T hat no more than th ree Awards of Merit, in the form of written scrolls, may be made an nually by the Alum ni Associa tion and presented by the President thereof on Homecoming Day to a lumni of the C<>llege for distingu ished and meritorio u,~ service to the United States or to their native states or to St. Jo hn 's Coll ege, or for outstanding ach ievemen t withi n the ir chosen fields. 2. That the rec ipients of the Awards be selected at its discretion by the Board of D irectors of the Association from among couficlen tia l le tte rs of nom ination sen t to the Pres ide nt of the Association by members in good stand ing of the Alum ni Assoc iat io n. (To be in good ~tandi ng is defined by the Association By-L~ws as h aving pa id curren t dues.) T he fi rst award was present ed to Dr. Amos F . Hutchins of the C lass of 1906 on Conunenceme nl Day, 12 June 1950; the occas ion for the presen tatio n was specified by th e origina l resol ution. That was subseque ntly cha nged to Homecomi ng Day, and sin ce 1954 the Awo rds ha ve been presen ted on tha t Day. with the exception of 1963, wh en no awa rd was made. The number of aw~trds, origina lly one, was c hanged to not mo re than th ree in 1970; as a res ul t, there h ave been th irty-five awards in twe nty-seven yea rs. Letters of nomi natio n should be addressed to Mr. Simmons in ca re of the Alu mni O ffice, St. Joh n's Co ll ege, An napolis, Md., 21404, a nd sho uld arrive no later than I September 1977. Doctoral F'cllow at Tloc Center for the Humanities Weslyan University in Connecticut. Next year ~t Joel has tln appointmen t ::.s assistant professor in th e English departoncnt at The University of Ca lifornia at Berkeley. From Bart I .e.e, who also gave us the information about the F'arrells (see 1967), comes word that Dr. John Falenki, after an internship at Yale, ha. finished his residency in family med icine at the Seattle C roup Health Organization. John and his wife Edre have a four-year-old daughter, Emily. A note from Michael Rycm's father revea ls that Mike is a doctoral cand idate at Harvard, presently abroad on a Fulbright Fellowship. 1968-Saota Fe 1976-7 Alumni G iving· 'vir. & Mrs. Rich;Hd W. Flint. Augusta Goldstein, Thomas Keens, F'rcdcr· ick L. Wicks. Bruce H. Baldwin is a resident of Annapolis these days, working for the Anne Anmdel County tious· ing and Community PlRnning Office. He is currently developing a housing rehabilitation program. Christopher Ballmer. we learn from the Santa Fe legs, skillful surgery and prnycrful support oHamily and friends pulled him through. Ch ris, his wife, Lea nne, and their two-year-old Danny rent a small house near St. joseph's Jiospital in Albuquerque, where he goes for physica l therapy twice a week. l ie has been asked to jo in in a panel discussion before a clinical psychology class at the University of New Mexico on the part religious faith plays in recovery from severe accidents. The Ballmer's addrc~ is 50 I Y, Aspen S.E., Albuquerque, '. M. 87102. Vicki Sue Brown is spencllng '' year in Taiwan, doing editing work under Professor Canna Chang, o well-known Buddhist scholar and author. She writes that it would be nice to hear from fo iends; her address is P.O. Box 86, Hsinchu, Taiwan, Republic of China. Vicki pl;ons to enter graduate school in journalison at the University of Wisconsin in the fall of I978. ''/\ couple summers ago l wt·n t bicycling in En· 1969- Santa Fe I 976- 7 Alumni Giving: Frank 1-1. Adams, Mar· garet L. Bluon, William ). Cromart ie. )r., Margaret M . Gaffney, James Morrow Hall , Peter Naumberg, the Rev. & Mrs. john I I. Strange, Allan Lee Swartzberg, joseph H. Tooley. 1970 On 14 May 1977 Theda Braddock and Allan A. Hitchcock were married in Piedmont, Cal. 1970-Sanla t'e t976-7 Alumni G iving: Beth Kuper, Mr. & Mrs. Christopher Nelson. 1971 '!'hanks aga in to Mr. Weigle, we learned that George 11. Elia$ and Kare n Evje n were married th is past spring. l11e Eliascs arc living in Berkeley, Q ,J. 1971 - Santa Fe 1976-7 Alumni Giving: Gail (Hartshorne) Haggard. Margaret )<1cobs. M:u y Pat justice. Vicky (Manchester) Miller, Gerald P. Peters, Ill. Mary Rebecca Schwab , Capt. & Mrs. Carlton Severance. 1972 Janet Ann Nelson and /ames Kent Guida '71 were married on Saturday, 21 May, in New York. Among the old gang present were Shire Cha/kin '7 1, Chris Lee '7 1, Dennis Dort '7 1, and Jane Sheret. Janet is gelling her M.B.A. degree froon tlo e University of l'vlaryland this ono11t h. and will be keeping her maiden na me, Kent is invo lved in a new busines."'i venture. B~l)' Contractors. a marine construction company. An .. Alumni Communicard'' fro m Dana £ . Netherton. now a lieutenant in the Navy ("equiva· lent to but of course slightly better than an Army C<lptain"), also tells us that his ship, nuclear sub· marine the U.S.S. Nathan Hale, is now !lased in Charleston, S.C. He has made several Atlantic pa· trois, one of which took him to Edinburgh, Scotland, for a few days. Dana ha' been studyi11g for certification to direct the maintenance, training, and operatious associated with a nuclear propulsio u plant, and was due to take his examinat ion i1 1 April. 1972-Santa Fe 1976-7 Al umni Giving: Seth Cropsey, G lenn C . ·1. C b dfelter, Jr., Charlotte 1 Gray, Janning D. Kastler, Louise Romanow. From Seth Cropsey comes all sorts of news ahout his classmates: we will p<lss this along essentially as c.ampu.'i, wa$ severely hurt in a mining accide nt gland and fell in love with both England and bicycling," starts a note from Auue Harlan . She goes on to say that she has not yel been able to return to England, boot that she rides a bike to work, four mile), fro1n New Haven. Court., where she lives. ne;or Grants, N.M., last November. Although it appcar~-d for a time that he might lose one or hoth to llamden. \\'here she is the children's librarian al \VC the public library. date-tine was I December 1976: received it (with only occa~ional editing); the 23 �T he College COMMENTS ON THE ALUMNI REGISTER As our alumni have probab ly noticed, the 1976 ed ition of the Register of Alumni has bee n pri n ted a nd distrib uted. New in th is edition, in add ition to bringing up to date the Annapolis classes, i~ information on the Santa F'e c lasses since that campus opened, degree recipients of the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education. and, where suc h information was provided by the people concemed, occupational data for alumni and alumnae. Just how useful this Reg ister will prove to be depends largel y on the reader understanding somethi ng about registers iu genera l and this o ne in particula r. First, the accuracy o f e ntries is almost di rectl y proportio na l to the valid ity of the info rmation on fllc in the Alu mni Oflice. (That doem' t cou n t typOgraphical errors, of which there are some; for these, I apOlogize.) Where informat ion did not CQme directly from the person concemed, there are liable to be errors. Second, transfer~ between campuse'i have caused some problems in the c i a~• lists, and we are now aware of several mistakes in the Register. (In dete rmi ning the class to which a person belongs, the gu idel ines shown in the section " How to Use the Register" a re fo llowed by th is office.) Third, what shou ld be tlae most usefu l part of the book, the addresses, turns out to be the least accurate: sin ce we process abo ut seven ty-five ~ddrcss cha nges a month fo r ulu mni, you can see what h as happened in the five month~ since the Register went to the printer. By nexi Nlarc h perh~p~ one-third the addresses will be worthless, w use addresses with ca ution , and 11 here you have reason to doubt. double-c heck with the Alumni Office. Recognizing these limitations, and despi te the m. we hope you will en joy the 1976 Register of Alumni. When you find errors, please le t us kn ow, a nd if you send an add ress, we ask yo u to be specific: "F reel told me Jane Smi th lives in New York" is not rea ll y of m uc h help. In short, we must llave a complete mailing address for it to be of usc. One last word: please help by keeping us informed of where )Oil are, what you arc doing, and yes, e1·en what your name is. Unless you tell us these things, we often ha1e to rely on well-meaning b ut often inaccurate friends. 1973 Eben~zer CooU reports that his "riling car""r is progressing; his cuncnt pror«t IS planning a long A nice note from Peter Fairb<lnlr't wife Ccnita ~m on the subj«t of Mal) land history lcll< us lhal Peter is an auctioneer and IS in clurge 'vlarc Hayttt.l after ~r>dualion served as a te-•ch- of Ihe paintings at the \\'111 l)oyle Galleries, Inc. , ing intern on the Sanln Fe e•mpus, and lasl fall ;-lew York City. <m<llhnl llrcy are lire proud parents resumed his graduale ' ludies in philosoph) and of Antonia Elizalxlh, born 21 \ltarch, weighing six classics at the University of Texas. pounds six ounces. Our cor~gralulalions lo the Juan Ho1>ey is a rcp01ler for the Oakhmd (Cal.) Fairbankses on all t-ounls. Tribune. Hobin (Chalek) /annes i< the edilor of Tattwa &i~<•ard C. McCrath, after leaviJ,g St. John''· Katha. A Tale of Truth. Part I, &om the leachings organizt"d anti·war demonstrations; moved to of Cuna Pumananda Paramahaus:a. et al., New C:Jna<b and built a cabrn m the Yulon; came York: Ahapa Yoga Foundation. 1976. south lo the Universil) of Colorado al Boulder lo study classics; wenl b.1ck lo the Yukon ag<~in. -.here 1973-Sanla Fe in the company of hippie> he built geodesic domes; lhen moved on the Alaska. where, in Fairbanks, al 1976-7 Alumm Crvmg: Mr. & Mrs. Galen Bre· the University of Alaskn, he " ~t uclying journalism ning;tnll, Margaret C reishton. Mark D. jorcl:111 , and French. He is working on a book, ond expccl> Mr. & Mrs. Paul D. Knudsc11 . Michael Mongeau. Kenneth W. Richman, Jr., Mr. & Mrs. Eric 0 . lo have another published <oon by Celestial Arts of Mill brae, CaL Ed is IIHrrried to Catherine Springsled, Mal)' Tarail, David Weaver. Elizabeth Giwms S73. Stephen SI.W.er was due lo graduate from the Martlta Nordstrom met her husband. Stephen Uruvcrsity of New Me,ico l..a" School in May. He ray. in Greece. and ha• been married for three is joining lhe bw fim, of Brauch Jnd Colem•n. years. She li= in Creal B..rrington, Mass., and P.A.. in Albuquerque has ~n assisling journalrsl and author William 1974 Sh irer in writing hi~ memoin. Louise Romanow graduated in January 1976 Thoma$/. Do/on, /r. i' a technical information from the University of Massachnsctts at Amhersl, specia list for the Federal rood :md Drug Admi nisand is now studying ecology at the University of tration in Silver Spring, Maryland. North C:Jrolina al Raleigh. An April press release fro 111 the Fund for Jared R. W. Smith received B.A. and M.A. de- Th<ologic:al Education, Inc .. announces that one grees from New York University, and informs Seth of il> fellowships in ils North American Ministerial that he Ius published I SO poems, essays, and Fello~> ship Progrnm for 1977-78 has been awarded stories in ..national literary magazines since I970 " to Patricia Pitti•. l11e program is aimed at en/ooep/r M . Wrtnn is slud)rng management train- couraging a deepening concern for the Church in ing in Chicago. anlicipalion of a vocation of 111inislry within lhe Catherine T. Ingraham is at Johns Hopkins Uni- Church and leadership in the Church's mission in versity studying comparative literature (incl uding the world, stales the release. Palricia . one of Plato) as a graduale < Iorden I. eighty-five selected from more lhan five hundred 24 T ho mas Parran, Jr. Director of Alu mni Activi ties applicants. will attend Union Theological S..minaf) for the next academic )"Car. 1974--Santa Fe 1 976-7 Alumni Gi ving: Salt) R. Bell, Jennifer (lord~n) Brede II, Thomas B> rnes, Car herine Gordon, Jor Hunncr, Do11ald Merridl, Rachel T rue1 blood , Celia Yerger. Anne (While>ide) \Vein. /ar~et Braziel was scheduled 10 receive her degree from the University of Ne" Mexico l..nw School in May We apolog1u- lo Elliot Marsetlle for incorrect informolron on what he h., been dorng Qanual) 1977 i"ue); our inforn1ation came from a da>Smale "ho ob,;ously erred. So. ralhcr than a degree in cit} planning, in June E:lliol was scheduled to receive his rnasler's degree in public policy from the Urrivcr ·•ily of California al Berkeley. His principal areas of concentration hav~ beeu school finan('t, desegregat ion. container rec•clirrg, and consumer prott ction . Elliot also irlh u> llral he and Judith Sharlm plan to be married in July, •ml "ill leave 111 August for a )""'' in India. I lc has a research positron al l\'chru Urmer>ity, whole Judith .,;II work with ) oung children al a \ltontcssori school. She has been suhstilule leachirrg al a Montessori nur$ery school m Berkeley. and "ill undertake forrnal lroining when they rclurn from India. 1975 Sometimes m::.il is well wo1th w:Jiting for. as in the rcccnl im1ancc of a long feller from James N. /anis: lwo pages of most inlcrcstrng "gossip" (Jim's term) about classmates and friends. Jim himself is studying ruediciJle at the Unil·ersrlr of Vermont (finishing second rear. we thrnl): he completed three months of surgery on March. a toke arnounl of internal medicine in Jnnc (not wild aboul lhe former, loved the latter). His feclrng now inclines �July, 1977 ' I he tow~ud ;r career m acmlt.:uuc climc.tl llll'tllctnc Jim reporllthat/ant Hud~on '76 o; also loving m Burlington. tali11g <'hcrnhh) nnd -malom) course' to strengthen on :ontocop:ott~l npplicalion for mt'liical school Jnn al1o hope; to sec Joseph DoCeorge 76 in Bnrlin~ton thi>summer. In March )io n had a vosit from \lrchaell)ink. on vacation from his stud ies at Catholic Uni\'cr>ity. t\nolher cla>>Jil,IIC, r.wl Pi.loleder, vbileJ last September, ;md hn'i tentative plam fo1 gwdun te school this full , t:>erlonp< :ol Columbia. Jim','\ rinal hit of gmsip couc:cru" Janel llcllucr. who graduate<! from S"uta Fe ou 22 May; >he pl;m, to take :o yc:or ofT before cnlcri u~ the scnoiu:uy. T he lengthy epistle clo<cs wollo Ihi" .. l.ct rue hear from some of the alum<l 'l'hi, ' UU IIuer I'll be doin~ a rather low·kC)' psychiatl)• rotnliun, and woll loa,·e lob of time for vi>otOr> ... T he JUUJC>' 431 Main Street, Burlin~ton, VI' 05401. T he Ne"s BurcJu of the Uni\'ct>it) of Nor th Carolina at Chapel I loll tells us thai Nancy (Polk) King ha< h«n awarded a \1orchead Fello..sho in p Law at that institution '11lree of these are awarded annual!) b) the John \!otley Morehead Founda· lion, and each "valued al $3,000 plus tuolion and fee$, to ro'er three )C.ns of stud) al the School of La... 11>< purpose of the fdlowshil" 1> to atlrdCI to the School of l.1w, 111 each )I!'Jr\ entering cUSli, students of \upcnor character. ac-.idenuc achre\'e· ment, and potential, according to the announcr· ment. Nan<)' is cunentl) a copy <'<lrtor for the pub· lishing house of Williams and Willms 111 llafti. lar~~ l(raduJtin~t cb" under the .. new.. program poses for ~some-, hat informal portuol "'' lh< frnnl ''Ct" of \ lcl)omell H.1ll. \nnapolis. mort". and !'VIal)' ( Rogen) Kniaz arc happy lo :011 nou11Ce their first ..,edding anni\ersar} . The) \\Cre married on 19 June 1976 at St. Anne's Church in Auuapoli;, the Reverend J. Winfree Sonith official· ong. Pet<!f 1975- Santa Fe Ann Claassen, Margaret Donsl:>ach, Kri<lin R. Lucas. Mr. & Mrs. Thoma; Myers, Judith Shari in, Meg Sheehan, Richard Skaug, 1VIr. & M11. Jonathan Teague, Wendy Wells. From the south\vcstcrn t•ampus t'om(·s wurd t1 mt William Unbehaun. c.optain of the Search and Rescue team during the 197 5 rescue nen r T ao; (April 197S issue). completed his cssa), wa~ ex· a mined and passed, and in a family-type ceremony in Pre.ident Weigle's office. last March •ecei"cd his Bachelor o f Arts degree . To Bill , our congraiulat iom. 1976 Marion Iris \Volfo and Arthur Roy Doxon '74 v.ere married in Sl. Anne's Church, Annapolis. on Tuc"'la). 31 May. l11e Rev J Winfree Smith of 6ciatcd. 1976-Santa f'~ 1976-7 Almnni Giving: Khahl . \)Oub. ~Jr. & o \Irs. Christian Burks. Pablo Collons, Errc Freeman, Charles Cunte•. Bridget Houston, Alan C. McVay, Da\id Shapiro, Barbara Skaug. \dditoon.ol onfonuatior1 about Katya Shu<Jkow !April 19-7 i\\ue) \he is '"itin~ for a ma~a1ine called £Item in \1unich. German,·, and has decided to apph to business school for the fall of 1978: Jpparcntlv ~~ mini11111111 of ~hteeu month~· work c:•qx:ricncc: ., dc)irablc. ami ll iO)t European bnsiues; ;chool; prefer their applicants to be ,Jightly older than K:o ly.r, ; he says. .----- In Memoriam - ---, 191 1- Wi lbur L. Kuvnt~. Baltimore. Md., 'I Vlay lf.J77. 1917-Dr. Jn mC> Brown. Jr.. Brooklyn P3rk. \hi ., 19 May 1977. 19 I 9-E u~cnc I I. Beer, Jr .. Baltimore, \1d., 10 \1.u ch 1977. 19111- Ed"Jill ~: I kuge>t. Jr.. Baltimore. \1d ., z.1 October 1976. 1921- l)r, J. Elmer Harp. \1 idd lctown. \lei ., 9 October 1976. 192i - llowJrd W Gilherl, o\nnJpolis, Md., 19 \1J, 1977 19H Wolliam I I!Jrrmgton. Cambridge. 1\ld . 5 Jun< 1977 19H Will iam C. Sandrock. Pa>adena. 1\ ld • 19 1\larth 1971. 19}7 Carl B. Howland. Jr. Former Board Robert \la)nard llutchom. Santa B•rl:>ara. Cal .. :11•> 1977. 25 �TENTATIVE PROGRAM , HOMECOMING 1977 Friday, 30 September: L!:vening .. . Lecture: (Spea ker to be 'mnounced) Post-lecture .Alu mn i Welcome i\boarJ Party Saturda)'. 1 October: Vlorn iug . .. Registration; ·\nnual Meet ins; a nd E lection of Directors. :\fternoon ..Student/Alumni Coumclli ns; Alumni Seminars Student/Alumni Soccer Classic EYcning ... Homecoming Reception and se,quiccutcnnial Dinner, :\nnapolis I hlton Inn T he complete and detailed schedule ''ill be marlcd to .111 alumni about mid-.-\ugust, and "ill reflect am chan~c~ from the abo\c. If you plan lo sta' in Annapoli~ th.rt \\'Cck-cnd , you arc urged to make >our room rc.,crvatiom immedr,rlcly· the day has long since passed when one coul d 'imp!\ dri\e in to t 0\\11 and find a room. The College St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Second-class postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland, and at additional mailing offices. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollegemagazine Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 25 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of College Relations Title A name given to the resource The College, July 1977 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1977-07 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource von Oppen, Beate Ruhm Parran, Jr., Thomas Dunham, William B. Oosterhout, Barbara Brunner Wyatt, E. Malcolm Zuckerman, Elliott Description An account of the resource Volume XXIX, Number 2 of The College. Published in July 1977. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0010-0862 The_College_Vol_29_No_2_1977 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/0a39b1b7239c091290cdfde51303b9cf.pdf ece99ffde68a15a29811daefcbe0c460 PDF Text Text THE COLLEGE SL John 's College • Annapolis. Maryland- Santa Fe. New Mexico October, 1977 ISSN 0010-0862 �THE COLLEGE Vol. X:>..1X \lumhcr ~ Ford K. Brown 1895-1977 0' 11-H CO\ ~J{· ·1 he olmo-t rmpo..,thh hot d.1" uf '""'' mer hJ\-.: c.i,cn ''J' to the t:nldcn dJ,) of a ~ IJn·l~ud Julunm ..md the return of the >lndenh to the \nn.tJIOii< ~•mpu> hn.,hh lhe <~1rt of .mother .rc.rrlcnlt<' ~COlT St John\ College 15 grim:d I" tire de:~th uf ford I( Bro" n on Frid.t• mommg, September 16. Iq--. Jl hi~ home in \nnJpoh>. lie "·" the h\1 of the fJ<ult} mcmbcr' "ho >pann<-.1 the old and the """ progran" of Sr. John'> Coll<.'ge. \ppotnlcd ongm.tll• a. dll \\>octJic p,..,fe<<nr of [ngh>h 111 I'll). he \Uett«fulh adapted lum<clf to the pre'Cnt cumculum m 193- .md bught dlmo\t con1inuou\ly unhl h1) retirement m 1961>. \ Rhude, Scholar, \lr. Bromt furthered hi• careful ill\e•ha;.thun of ll!th CentnT) clerics on Gnt;gt'llhcim fello11ship' "' ~nglaml. fruit5 of hi\ rocardt dppeatt'(l in 1 961 in J JJr~c •olnmc cnhllcd Palhv" of tire Vit'/oriam Thh dcult with the rcfunn lll(liCntcnt in Britain in lhc late 18th Ccntun. pJrtieu1urh the lc"dershitl of \\'illurm 1\'ilbcrfurce \pproptiatdy enough, the Libr.m• uttlte K Sci tool \\,1\ c• dcdrc.tlcd to :>1r, Brown thrs spring. O ne of the College's best lo•·ed tutors, l\k Brnwn "'"' .tdtni rccl hy >U tccs>tvc jiCneralions of St. John'> ,fudent> fw hi\ c"tcling >th~>l· nr<ht[l, hi< tcoching • bilil) , .mel hi' cn~aging wit lie belonged tn hnlh ca rnpuiC>, for he h•d joined the inilwl cndre nf f.rcult~ litem her' who pioru.:cn:c.l tlu.: wc~lern Cilffi[llli in Sautu Fe in th~.- .tc.tdcmic \'CoH 1 964-65. There too h~ lx:c:unc a living legend. '" cvidencrd hv hi' n,e Edrtor: Bt·alc Rul mr von Oppen ~l.lna~ing Editor. rhum.ts P.rmm. Jr. Edilnriul \ dvl'o" Bo.ncl· Will iam ll. DunhJIII, BtnbutJ llruuuer Ooslerhonl ·s;, ~.. ~l.tlcol m w,,,ll, Ell lnll z , cler· lllU11 cntltu,i;J\fiL reception when he: returned to Jechnc u yt:~t r or 'u lutc1 E\ell citilCJl( of Baltimore and t\ lltiJpoli.-. hcucfitcd rrol11 hi) \\1\clom nnd his ~entle hu mor. for he conduclt-d populur adult cla"c' fur"'·'"'' \'C!lr}, Till. COl I ECE i• publt,hcd ltv the Office of Colk-gc RclJliOrl\, St. John\ Colleg~. \nnapolu. ~Ia" ],ntd 2HCH. Roch.nd D 1\'crelc. Presrdent, \\ illiam B Dunham. \'r~ l'tesrdenl Pnhli'h•-d four lime' ,, ) ear, in J•nuaT), \pnl. Jul•. Jnd <Xlober Second clJs.> po>b!;c p.tid at \nnapoli•. \Ia f) land. Jnd at other mArlin~ plat<". \ cro"docl memonal<cmcc """ held in the Creal l l.tll "" ;\ lnml,l\ .rfternoon, September l'l, l'JT'. far mcmh.:r' ufhoth the Culk~c .nul the ·\nnapolh comnmntlln. I :uu happ~ to annuunc:c tll.lt .llumnl .1ml ollrer friend\ arc c'<tabliiltiug d permnncnl cndo11cd fund 111 lu, tlltlll· ory \Jr. Brown i< mnin.-d b) lri> 11idm•. Zcmth llmwn, the 11cll· Lno\\ll lll\\fcf\ 1l0" IHtter. and b1 • d•ughler, Jonct Bru'"'· 11 hu pr.r~ticc' law iu 1'\e" Yorl Cih. 'Inc dt-.:p "mJJ.tlhk.., uf tire u•lk>:e dr~ e'tendcd to both. ·nru.\C "bhin~ to do w. liM\ '"''• to them .11 ~ l5 Kin~ C..'ttll\C Street. Annopoli.<. ~ bn·bud IN THE OCTOBER ISSUE: I'JCII'~ cralltc Con-t. LIJCil.IIJo.Jl .\1 1::. \\'grn-n: P>fl' t,, nm .. Report of the Pr<-sidcnl ... :>1cmoriah to Fencl 1(. Jlm,m . . .. .. ...... ..... .. . .. . Cia" :"\ole> , . .. . _. _ Rohcrt ~bm,ml ll utthin,, b) Strntgfellrm Bon ........ __ .. .......... , , .... . , • • • ........................ 1 7 �October. 19- Report of the President 1976-1977 TO TI-ll=: ROARD OF VISITORS AND GOVERNORS • \!though S1. John'• ronsi.<lenll) sbnds among lh• m<Xt selective college> in the nation. and i< gcnernlly r<'Cogni>.ed in the academic world ·~ nn exemplar of liberal educalion, il nevertheless cunfront< difficull problems in recruiting student<. In the"' days of national inflalion. lhe l11gh cosl of prh':lle '~ public cullcgc and univcr<ity education. and a decline in the 11<1lion's college-age population. e<•cn the best of pri\ate colleges must now struggle each rear lo prc<·cnl a decrease in thei1 puol of applic-ant> nnd to maintain >lcady lc•eh of enroll ment on compus. For all uf its distinctivcne<< of progmm and quality, St. John's is no cxe<ption. Despite these problems, the Adrni~sions Office on lhe Annapolis campm continues to recrllll a full class of approXJmaldy 105 studenb each &II and of 10 to H student> each January. The Sanln Fe campus. ho11e,er. has been cxpcncncing difficulties. A year ago a new Director of Admission; Wll> appointed in the person of Riclmrd Stephenson. II was ~nticipatcd that he 1\0uld need two )car. to turn the ~ituution around. Thi• appears to be true. for .1pplieatium. as \\til as frnhmen. arc IO\\Ct in number lhi> )COif than last b) approxnnalely a quarter. m spite of Mr Slcphmsun's best efforl> and those of h" nsSISbnt. Dem"" Waxman. of the Cln« of 1976. Mr. Stephenson hos written u thoughtful and provocative nnalysis of the ;ituation on the Santa Fe campm wh1ch it ~ems appropriale to summari1.e 111 tlus report. His fo~ obscr'"'bon u that the Sanb Fe campus appc:tr< to he mctt>Smgly dependent upon lhc East for studcnu. 11\o-fifth< of the enrollment coming from that side of the Mississippi River. lie fonds a hardening of the altitude in the Southwest r111tl the West toward the cosl of higher education, as fcl,cr students and their parenb arc "illing to accept good ofl'<rs of financial aid from the College. It is Mr. Stephenson's sense 1h01 the henl:lge and e"J)Crienee of "estcmcrs are more of the utilita- rinn prnchcality of the land-grant college than what t• pet· ccm:d to be "the irrclc\1ml prcc1ousneS> of lhe libcrul artLHe pomb also lo a iu>lifiablc pride m many of the sbl< unt\Cf\itit-,, 11 hich ha<·e become gr<':lt and imporbnt Ill>tintlions \nothcr consideruliun which l'vlr. Slcphcn~on cite• " tl the ,o\nnnpolls canopul i1 in u part of the country where Ilk ~ arc onany independent imtilulion> and \\here the bsl ol S• John's Colk1:c is 10 difl'crcntiote ibe!f from the mas.' b) It'<' ing 1b unique eharacleristics. As a prhatc college St I College h~s no real counterpart in the \\'CS!. with the o.cphon of some independent colleges 111 C.lifomia. Reed College. The Colorado College, unci ccrtnm 1mbtut1on' m Tc'"'· many of ll1cm church·rclolcd. Mr Slcphemon da1rns that admbsions procedure< in the p;~>l ha'-e bc:.:n mtupictal b' people in thb region as signifying that the Coli~ ns non-competitive and nun·~ltdJ«,. He argues tmt the ne-ed uf the Santa Fe campus "' thus not dii><>Ci•tion from G!ba mdcpcndent insliluliom hut rather aswciation. \\ i1hou: pruposmg in ony wny IO d1minish the imp;tcl of the Collct:e"s unique educational program. he argues thut the parlieuur ad<'llohlgcs of I he San~J Fe locotion should be stressed.. Jm".>CULul) those that might appeal lo young people With the agreement of the Dear" and the .-\dnnmom Oi ficcs on both campuses. proposals ha1e hem accepC<d f= l!x coming year "hkh "ill associate ll1c adm1Non• p;mcm cl John'> Cullcge in Sanln Fe with that of othct .... ~ ""leges. An early admissions plan "ith 2ccumpm}i:!;; financial-aid commitment wlll cncour.~;.-.: tudcms to oppl1collons before Fchruary 15th. Th00c ::am 4Jiimli bc:fore Apnl I ;1h "1ll he notified of both "'I' • ....! financial-aid dcciSIOIU on that elate. niOas on Mn I >ili !\! the s,amc time St. John'< College m S..na Fe •1ll """ a group of institutions in adopting tho Common \ppiJC:Il.100 plnn. This will he an allcnuti<c to the n:r;ubr .JdmJSsoom applic.1tion and will associalr Sl John'• an the miods cl KC· ondary school student> "ith other gvod amtlliitlOm :ocross the couniTy. Mr. Stephen"'" plans t cor.:inuc uudmt Kan:h am �The College rnoilings. awrnpriatc puhliC3tions. and nlt!Ul\C >ChOOJ \ISit· mg. He c<pcets to bring small ~ruups of hcadma<tcrs of inde· pendent <ehnols to the ompus for nsits. He hop<!s th.ot nc" t>ubheahons ,.,u not only t>rcscnt the College'< umquc cdnca· ticmDIJ>mgmm m a provocative way, hut will olsn dcocubc Ihe College\ locatinn in Santa F'c .,, Jn atlrnclht <itt for one\ cdnculiun . Joanne Aitken, the Director of Admissiom un lhc cnstcru campus, is also concerned about the relatively ;nmll nu1uher of upplicntlons the College receives for each entering d:t». She woulclprcfcr to how three opplic~tiom for every pl:ow in the tlo« . noth •he nood Mr. Stcphcoco;on plan In c<>nrclin.ttc their tmvcl for the year ahead and to make incrc:os1 n~ ll'le of alumno of the Cnllegc 111 the admiss1om program ·noc lit~ure' hclo" speak eloquently to the d1fficult1e1 in "hich the Cnll~ li1Kh itself. l"Jl<-riall} on the Santa F'e campm .-\mtllpolu 19~5 1'16 20" ICJO J7) I !17 11)6 1112 ll t•n 1976 1977 IUU 19" 175 107 107 HI Ill 74 66 7S -f,6;9 5,96l S,8qi 288 118 277 \pplic:ttions Appr0\00 Deposits Enrolled Rejeett'd Withdrnwn Mall:rial Sent C.unptu Vi~itun Santa F< 19"6 1977 1)6 IH Ill) 811 81 Sl 6 H11 81 7 1!1 lOS 62 62 i \8 62 42 l.l91 4,610 5,845 141 H2 122 O"c:r the \Car~ a principal source of application< for .ttllnis\iou to both tJmpuses has been the \\ord of tho~ "lou kne\\ tl1c Cnllegc-p:o.sl <tudent>, alumni, friends, fJcult~ oncmbcn. and Bo.ud members. II is to all sudo mcrnbcn of the College bmil~ thai "c must no" tum of the di>tumong tn:nds of the p.11t st:\-erol )'e<ll"S are to be r~\trxd No more nieful contrihuhon can be made tn the "ell-being of St. Julon\ Col· lege than suggc,Jing application heft' to an able prospechve ~tudcnl, perhaps the daughter or son of a fnencl By the same token, c<tnbli<hing 1nformal contact w1th gt~~dnncc coun· <elors. p1111C1pals, and headmasters of both publoc nnd 111dc· t><:ndcut schools can often he of greot help 1 re1nmding them 11 of Ihe nvoilnbility of this kind of education. The Dea.ns By mohapp) coincidence the Dc:.ns on hath campusc> rc· qucsll'd that the) bc relie•-ed of their admini5tr:1tive responsibilities at the c:nd of the academi<' }C"Jr under revif:\\. one yar before the conc:lusion of their li\c·)·tar tcnm. Both felt the nc:-cd for rr:st and study afier the demanding tasb "hich they had performed so ably and so willingl) The President pays trobute to Curtis Wilson on the Annapolis campus and to Robert Ncodorf on the S.1nta Fe campus for the splendid edn· caboual lenderohip lh~t they have proVIded SL John's College O\"er the past four years. Any regret over their dep.1rturc is considcr:obl) lc~<cned by the knowledge that c:nch reh1rns to 2 the Facull) after .abbabcallea'< to a<mmc full-time leaching R'S)XImibilitie~ Both men a~<· '"Jl<rh t<Jthe" In accordance "ith the p10\"ion< of the Polil). a commit· lee of six tenured tutors, three: from t':lch ompus. was elected lo con~uh '"th lltl· Prl'Mdcnl upon the nommahons to the Jwu denn<hip>. 11te Cnllcgc 11 fortunate that the Board hn< AJ>pointed tl1e nominee> recommcnclcd by thc cununiNee and the Prcsidcnt-Ed"·"d C. Sparrow nnd nohert S. Bart to be the new Dean< on ll1e AIIII:OJx•li< ~ncl Santn l'e canopusc; respecti vely. The l'rc<idcnt lms the highest degree of confidence In both incoming Deans. The) n\mmcd their new respon· sibilitics in July. Robert S. Bart IS a Harvard alumnus. l11e year of his graduation he was awarded n Sheldon Tru,-eling Fd[O\,~hip br the Universil} St John's Colle~c awnrdtod him the !\laster'< degree in 19> He lirst tnmcd the St John's F'acull)· in 19-16 and ha> lx.'t.'ll an Addoon ~ \lullikin Tutor <ince 1968. During the aeadenuc l~':lr 19-;.76 he taught on the Santa Fe campus under the ''change •rr•n~menl m;ode possible hr the :-.lalioual Eudu"mcnt for the llumanities. Mr. Spano" al"" grodmtcd fron1 llan'Oird CoUq;c and from tl>c Han·nrd l.;o" Sehvvl. He 1eccivcd :111 1\I.J\ Jt Teachers College. Colmnbi.1 Uni\'Cr>lly, and roincod the SL John'> Faculty in 19)7 For two years on lca<e of absence, he wns Acting Director of the lntegmtccl L1hcrnl Arts Curriculum ut St. Mary's College in Callfnnoin . l lc is currently an Addison ~. Mullikin T utor in Anuapol i~. The Tutors lne large spring enrollment of 400 ,tudcnt> placed a heavy demand upon the forl)·ciglol onembc" of the Annapolis Fat· ulty. fin, of \\hom were on \abl..,hc:al lca\c ond six of \\hom w<rc on otl>cr IC3\C' durong oil or part of the academic ~""". 11re onl)' new tenu1c appointment \\a$ that of Oa<~d Stan. to be effccbvc on )ul) lst of tim \CJI In this connection a study showed that 70% of the Annapolo< Facull) IS currentlr tenured, as corn pared '"th 5~% of the Santa Fe Faculty. Since o nuonbcr of Annapoli< tutors wtll be rc:oclung their 65th b1!1h· d:J)'i ,d1cn they musl )Urrcndc:r h,:nurc:, but not nccc.~aril)~ tc~ching rcspomihililies, the pcrccntnge uf tenured tutor• will actually decline >lightly between 110\\ and 1981. wh.ilc the percentage on tlte Sunl:l Fe cnmpu< will increase only tu 61%. Five of the 1\nnapoli5 tutors con1pletcd their appointmcnhl al the College at the end of the academic year-Burton Blistem, Steven Crockett, Alfred Mallin. Joan Silver. ond Jonathan Slwmcr After mlcrvoc" on~ nineteen candidates from <~.mong 106 applicant>. thnl)··li'" of them women. the Denn and the lrutructinn Committee recommended to the President Ji,"t nc" appointmenb. ull of "h1ch "t-n: appro,·ed b) tlte Board to become eff<'tll\c July I. 19--. Donald Conmy has been te"dclliug in the intq:mted program at St. \lary's College in C:Jiifomia after coming the Ph. D. dcgrcc: from Princeton UniversitY in clossics and philosophy. Robert Dmeckcr, who JOined the Faculty in January this )'Car, graduated from Marquette U11 lvcr>OI)' and most recently held �October, 1977 on Americon-Scandinav~an Fcllowsho at the lnrtitulc of p Matl1cmotie> in Oslo. Thumns f'lynn holds the M.S. nnd Ph. D. degrees in mathenoutic; from the University of Chi""go :md has hccn teaching in the intcgr.~tcd progr.~m al St. Mary'> College for the past four year5. Peter Kalluwage has hem rtudying at Pcnm ]•h-Jui<o State Urdvcr.ity for a doctorate in philosophy Jftcr doing undcrgrJduate work there in mathematics, physit'S, ond music. Mnry Pollinguc holds a .\<laster'; de~<ree from the University of Kansas anti a Plo. D. degree from the University of Chicago and has been teaching polilic.11 science at Northern Jllinois State University. During the ycnr under review Douglas t\llanhruok. Harry Golding, Barbara Leonard, Nicholas Maislrcllis, and Mal colm Wyatt were all on sabbatical leave, while Wyc Allanbrook, Eva Brnnn, Arny .ond Leon Ko> Soother Roher! s. Smith , and C. Reed Woodloome 11erc on ollocr leave for all or !)3rt ufthc year. For Jhe coming year Harvc') Flnumenhoft. Winfree Smith, ami Curtis Wilson "·ill be on full sabbatical leaves, and Samuel Kotler and EllioH Zuckennan on halfsabbaticals. Other leaves of absence arc lx:ing taken by Leo Rndibia to do research nt the Hoover Institution at Srnnford un iversity. Robert sr eth to head lUI intcrdistoplinnry pro.. gram at St. John's Univmily in Minnesota. and Ray Williamson to work and study at the Smilhsonhm lnslitution on n fellowshit> . At Santa Pc there were 36 tutors in residence. three OJI sabbatical leave, and three on other l<·avc. David )ones, Tlnoothy Miller. aud 11ooulll> Sio np;on wer< awarded sabbatica l leaves. and Charles Bell. Toni Drew and David Townsend held lea,·es of absence from the College. F'or the coming academic venr Glenn Freilas. ·nlonms Hnrris. and Robert Neidorf will go on sabbatical leave, and Charles llell will conrinue his leave of absence from the College. Ralph Swcntzdl has had leave approved for the year. as has Bruce Venable for the first semester on ly. Toni Drew resigned front the Facu lty at the end of the year in order to have onore time 1\ilh Iocr family. Edward Clark, Alfred DeCrnzia, Lynne Hamilton, Donald Knight, nod Philip Long leave the College after completion of their respective appointments. Mrs. Haonilton has filed n complaint with the Equal Employment O pportunity Commission charging tl1al tl1c College di.scnmin.ntcs against women o n the hasis of sex and against blacks and Hispanics on the basis of rnce and national origin. Sll<' claim> tl1at the College has lnilcd and refused to recruit, hire, pmm ote, and provide equa l treatment in lerms, privileges. and conditions of employment for women and those of minority background. 11oc complaint is now under in"cstigation by the Albuquerque office of the EEOC. As legal counsel the College has retuiJied Owou Lopez, .ottomey with the form of Montgomery. Federici. Andrews. and llannuhs. 1\vo new tutors have been appointed by I he lloard to the Sa nta F'e campus. Paul Mannick returns to the College after an absence of three years. during which he was studying classics :lml philosophy :lt St. Andrews University in Scotland. Lynda Lamson Johnson, a graduate of the Santa Fe campu.< in 1972, eamed ;m M.A. degree in classics at the University of North Cnrolinn and os now engagL-d m a grnduatc program in philosophy at the Catholic Uniwrsity in Washington. D. C. Philip LeCuyer was aw:ndL-d n tenure appointment to commence July I, 1 977. During tilt' yc:or just ended :mother helpful exchange of tutor. between the t"u campmc< was acL'tlmpiL<hed, ' Jhumas McDonald \")lending tloc vc"r at Santa J?c wlo lle J -Jow"rd Zciderman taught in Ammpoli>. Bolio lutors plan to remain for a st•cond year of this exchange. I rtsl ructi01t ·nu: year um.l<:r rc\'itw was 111arked by a 111U!Or in!tt ructioua l change in the St. John's Program. After long and careful consideral'i on. the Instructlou Committee of the Faculty determinrd upon a plan to rt'<luce the lahorotory prograno from four to three ycarst thu,i necessitating rcvi.1. ion o f the worL in ' biology. physic>. and cherni>'try. Tloc nmin reason for this change was the excessive lt"Jad of L.hc sophomore year ever sint-c the music lnlorinl had been oddccl some years ago. It was found that students had difficulty dividing their time and c nc rgtcs among five courses, with the result that one or ;mother phase of the Program had to be slighted. The Fnculty was by no mc.:nns unanimous in its reaction to this iustructional proposal hut the Faculty on the h\O campuses did approve it. The new arrangement calls fur a division of the ihld) of biolnro' iooto plloTh of two years and for eumprcs.ion of the work now done in phySi05 and chem istry. 111e pre.'l<!nt January freshmen began work under the ne11 plan, wul thcir experience will help to shape the program for all fre<hmen entering tlus fall . I should record the thanks of the College to John Verdi and Gerald Myers on the Santa Fe campus and to llarlma Leonard, Dnvid Stephcmon, ond John White on lhc An napolis campus for their planning of th<· freshman program. A major tn>k now confronts the Colkge in making appropriate cloangc> in Uoc matlocmatirs and laboratory classes In the junior and senior yc;ors. David Stephenson amJ Philip U:Cuycr will be relieved from part of their regular hwcloi ng assignments on their respective cam puses to dr.1ft the revisions nnd to present tlocm to the lnstno ction Committee. 1 am pleased to report that the Surdmo Foundation, which underwrote a faculty study group on percephon and neuropsychology a ye.r ago, ha; now made o sceund gront to the Annapol.io~ campm, lhis one to be utiJi,ed in connection with the laborator)' revision. The Students It is interesting that lxan Ncidorf reports gcncr.~l enthusiasm at the prospect of h•ving more time for music and the other studies of the .ophomore )'Cllr. ile also notes that the members of the freslnnun class who hnve been the first students undertaking the mod ified curriculum have "accepted in good spirit and with n sense of adventure the uncertainties they h:ove had to sus~•iu for the curricul mn in slore for them ." II has been nn interesting phenomenon that student allri- 3 .. w �The College lion on c~ch campus has lessened markL-dly, particularly in the year just ended. Dean Wilson, in his report, invit'od attention to the fact that the Class of 1977 was the largest senior class in l" history of the CoU hc cgc Seventy-seven graduated. nnd the one remuining member complctl-d his work five tlays later. 111is meant that ncnrh• two-thirds of the entering freshman class of four }'Curs ogo successfully completed the work at the College. Another significant indicotor wns the F.1ct thai 82% of the previous year's freshman class became sophomores, a figure 10% higher than that of the preceding year. Dean Nddorf commencel> his report in a similar vein by shlting that the first and most encoumgiug fact L~ Utal the percenmgc of studentl lcnving the College is declining. The Sanln Fe campus has not yet reilched the point where it can enroll as seniors half of those who originally en rolled as freshmen. Nevertheless the senior class of fifty-one was the largest in the history of the western campus, the third consecutive year this has been the case. l'wo yoars ago only 24% of entering freshmen graduated. last year 37%. and this past M:a)' 45% graduated. It is most heartening that the Santn l"e campus appea rs to be retaining a higher percentage of students than the Dean prcditk-d a year ngo, <-specially In the light of the smaller SIZ¢ of the freshman class anticipated for this f•ll . Comparative enrollment figures for the vnrious classes in 1976-77 follow: Santn Fo Fall Spring Artnapo/is Fall Spring 1 06 105 11 5 31 109 82 Jl. 384 74 ___§!_ 400 Freshmen )an. Freshmen Sophomores Juniors Senior• 83 78 63 __i!_ m 75 18 72 59 _..12_ 273 Commencement was held on May 22, 1977. nt Santa Fe 977, at Annapolis. l11erc was one si~nifi­ and on Mny 29, 1 canl change from earlier years in thot no degrees were awnrded with honors. For se~•eral y<'3rs sentiment had been building up in the Faculty and omong the seniors against the granting of degrees cum laude nnd magna cum la ude. Many believed thnt it was incousislcnt for the College to deemphasize gmdes throughout the four years and then to recogn i>.e superior achic••ement in the gmdc of diploma granted. There wa; nlso the problem of ""olving differences among students to dctenninc which stndcnll full into each ontcgnry The fallibility of l'aculty judgment wa< readily admitted hy tutors thcmsel"'-s. l11c decision of the Faculty on hoth campuses to abandon the honors awacds gencr::Uiy met with approbation by members of the senior class. At the Santa Fe Commencement tbc Duane 1.. Peterson Schola~hip for academic nchievcment, constructive member· ship in the college community. and connuitrnent to postgraduate study was awarded to Ronald Wesley Mawby. of Suttons Bay. Michigan, and on the Annapolis campm this award went to Michael Joseph Ciha. of Baltimore, Maryland. At Annapolis the C. Markland Kelly Scholarships were awarded to Kimberly Ann Schrof, of Latrobe. Pennsylvania; Harold P. Pugh, of Scvcn1a Park, Maryland; and Florence M. Roessler. of Arlington, Virginia; the Joan Yvonne Ronoy Schobrship was awarded to Eloise P. Collingwood, of Boston, Massachusetts; and the medal offered by the Board of Visitors and Governors to the senior with the highest sta nding went to Grant Hall Fmnks, of Arli ngton. Virginia. Counseling and Placemenl Student services appear to be improved on both campuses. At Annapolis Brenda Robertson saw 49 students for personal eoumeling during the year. 38 of them women. Dr. Sigmund Amitin wa.< avoiloble for those in need of psychiatric assist:mcc, though his counseling was limited to two or three session;; <tuclent> needing more extended t~1tmcn l were rcfi:rred to other psychiatric cow!Sclors. On the Santa Fe campus Stuart Boyd. a Tutor who is also an cxpcricuccd psychologist, met the net..:! for psychological counseling. referring problem cases to Santu Fe psychiatri>is. Mr. Boyd point< to October. November and Fchmary as th~ months of b'l'cntcst stress among students. He says that the kinds of problems do not •·ary much from year to year-difficulties in personal relationships with the opposite sex, worry over problems at home, difficulty in a particular class, and p10blems with a particular tutor. The Collt-ge is fortunate to have such able and sympathetic counst:ling resources on its two camptliiCS". Miss Robcrt.<on aiS<l SCI\'CS .1s Director of PI:!Cement at Annapoli;. She advised over 150 students and 20 alumni a> to careers this pa>i vcax. An excellent collection of grnduate nnd professional school <-amlogucs was built up in the placement library. Files of alumni were also developed so that interested students could discover those institutions which alumni had attended and could correspond or speak to alum m 111 vanous fields of endeavor. For the coming year the l'lncemenl Office plans to institute an extem program where!>}' it will arra nge with :m :tppropriatc nlumnus or nlumna for n student in~ !crested in a particular career lo <pend a 1\t'Ck in his or her uffice during spring \'lltation. lu Utis nod oU way~ alumn i 1cr will he able to contribute helpfully to career exploration on the part of St. John's juniors nnd senio~. Mrs. Beverly Smith performed the same function on the Santa Fe campus. Dean Ncidorf called the Placement Office there "a center of inlcrL'It' and fruitful activity." Mrs. Smith arranged for Stak recognition of the St. John's degree of flachelor of Arts "·' qualification for a variel) of State jol~•. She .rlso helped to l=tc special courses for stu(k·nl\ heade-d to medical and other profession:1l sehoob. The Annapolis file of alumni willing to assist in placement w"" duplicated for the Sanlll Fe campus. An iudircd benefit of the acquisition of dntn about alumni may well be of assistance with the recruit· ment of freshmen. Both Director$ of Placement seem to be engendering an atmOSJ>hcrc of confidence about the futme in St. John's students. �October, 1977 Studen t Financial Aid studcnl<. fm an individual student might receive n,;sistnncc Miss Albertll Rivero has continued to do an outstanding job 1 administering the financial aid progrnm on the Snnl:l Fe 11 cnmpus. She was assisted by tltc Faculty Finnncial Aid Committee. lo which two students were added for the llv;t tin1c, Miss )nne Chambers and Mrs. Suzan Porter. O nly three appeals from tllc lhtaociaJ aid dccisious made by the Commillce were entertained. At Annapolis Philip Aaronson took O\•cr the rcspon$ibilitics of lhc Financial Aid Office on Fcbrual}' 15th when the fonncr Di rector left. Prior to coming to St. John's Mr. Aaronson served as Dircdor of Professional Field Services of the B'nai B'riih Career and Counseling It is apparent from the figures above U the Annapolis u1t campus has not :1warded ns much financial aid to students as the Santa Fe campus. l11u disparity becomes all tl1e more Service and as a counselo r at Cato nsv1 Community College Jic and the Un ivcrsity of Mal}'land. He has extensive experience in working with college students in counseling. He has done nn unusunll)' good job in organizing the office. in admin btcriug tl1c progrnm. and iu obmini11g >ub.tmtially huger federal funds for the coming year. It Is instructive tu sec the •ourc<.,. of financ ial aid on the lwo campuSC$. AruraJ)f>lir Nmuhet of Crnnts s li.M'l 9 >.271 I t7 ll.St> 16 t tl.mt Number of Tot:~ I Cr:mts A\\1irdcd Tool A......-.rdro 39 Scmla Fe 126 St71. 195 12.1>0 Ptdual Sou~ B:uic Educational Opporhm it~· Cr:1 nts Supplonc-ntnl t-.ducntion Opportunity Cr.mb 61 H ~ 59,1 t2 i7.~09 98 5;.115 66 61,9;; fo..edernlly Jnmredl 60 61.760 Stale Saurwa Sbut S!utlent lncentl\'t t8 27.000 Coll.-;c Wurk SJudy (l'cdcrnl Share) N'l.llionaf Ohect Stmlenl Loan• Cuaruutced Loam Cro~nb 224 lOS.S&I Colltg.t Soul(;tt ltu-lituttonal Grants tH 208.560 (I 17) 19.90! Collcg< Work Study ( ?8) t&.m 57 18.228 Othet Colle~e Jol» 632 S518.075 'fotnl Aid Fmm All Included Enduwmenl und Nnmed Funds !College ShJrc) Sources ;; I S5<1Y.t94 It should he noted U1at the Annapolis C11mpus rccch·cd no federal money in the National Direct Student Loan program for U year under review. "Inc swn of $1), 325 was loaned 1c from repayment< reeci\'ed by the College on earlier loans. It should also be noted that the College \\'ork Study money from the federJI government must l>c matched by the illstilu tion on the ratio of $1 for each M gmntcd. Finally. let me note that the number of grants far exceeds the number of under a number uf prugramt. pronounced when one considers that the cnrollmcn1 at An- 7 napolis is nearly half again as large as that in Santa Fe. 1ortunutely, Mr. '"aronson has been able to mcrease substantial ly the su ms which the College will receive in the <'Oming ,tt-,dcmic year from federnl sources. The following chart details the amounts which have been approved for the two cam· puse>. Sontu l•'r t\nttdpolls 1976·77 1077-78 s s.zn S 22.;02 13.800 i 7.i7S lll.32S) 66.897 SI9.07Z SJl6,8H 1976-77 SuppJemcnlill')' EduOIIJOII.JI Oppor,unity Cr.tnb Coll'l" Wur\ Sho d)· 1977-78 S 60.H9 $ 71.902: (F'o:Ucr•l Sl,.n:) il.ilS M.iH Loaru 34,204 -l3,i84 -- National Oii'C'ct Student Totah SH7,97t St70,8t9 The Staff On the Annapolis campus there were a number of personnel changes in the course of the year. For ten yea r.; i'vl rs. Virginia Mylandcr lms served tile College cumii iU Hil)• cheer· fully and well in her role as Manager of the Book Store. ·n ,e last day of January she retired, but she continues to >-olunteer her •crviccs a.< a rc.=r~her for tl1e L.ibml}'. She is engaged in a project to catalogue and make an inventor) of the archival material :tbout St. john'> College in the 1-Jall of Records. The College is gmteful to Mrs. Mylandcr for her \\Otk over tile yeors, just ns it was gmtdul to iler lute lou>btolld, Walter Mylander. '32. f01 his tcn11 as Sccrctar)' of the Board of Visitors uud Governors. Mrs FmiiCCS lloyd was pruniOlcd ho the r•>sition of Book Store Manager. She had scf\·cd '" A..,btunt Buok Store Mnn:lger for a dec<~de. To assist her Mrs. JoanTlc Bro\1•1 was appointed, dfcctivt· Fcbnmry lsl Mr>. Carolyn Logan. who had been the Dean ·~ ~ecretnT). moved to the Campaign Office to a<sLu Charles Cooley, the Director of the Fun.d for the 1980's. At the entl of the year she resigned to accept a position in W:J<hington, nnd her plncc wns l:lkcn by Mrs. Gdda Peter. Meanwhile. Mrs. Therc.<in MeCuirc was promoted to the secretaryship in the Dean's office, while her fum1cr poSIhon as SecrelnTJ' tu the 1 \ssistant Denns was filled by Miss Joy Sparks. In the Admissions Office Mrs. )nncl O' FI)'Illl , '74, replat"<'<l l\1iss Jane Young. '73, as A.sistant to U1e Director. ~li~< Ruth :vtaassen, 75, <ucceeded Miss Ja nice Barton, '7-1, •~ Secretary to the Admissions Office for tho )'<'Or. She re$igncd in June and was replaced by Miss O.:bornh Cullers. l11crc wert rclntivcl) fc" change; iu the >t.lff at Santa Fe. Susan Ferron. S77. succeeded Denise Wnxmun. 5'76. "' 1\>si;tnnl Director of Adm issions. Mrs. Joyce Jimenet. who had done an excellent JOb ns Se-cretary to the Treasurer. resigned 5 �The Col lege thh ;ummer. ''""" her first child was about to arri\'C. ~ln. Lucinda Victor. Sc:crctJI} to the Libr.uun, "'" promoted to the po>t in the Treasurer\ Office. \I rs. Kahc Stack, Duplicot· ing and Supplies Supcrvi«>r, resigned on ~larch Ist bcc:~u«: of incrc;~>in~ IC>pomihilitie> .rt hum~. She WU> >uccccded b)' Mrs. Shirley Anstey, the rc~ular rdkf upe111tor at lhc ,witch· board. Merrie Hilfol. a p.lft-ti•nc swltchbo.~rd upemtor, took O\'Cr ~Irs Anstey's former position. In the Book Store Mary-1\lnr~:aret Moore \\~S appoontcd \ssast.mt to succeed Dean Rlob:tum, s--;6, \\hO had held the po>lbOn on 3 tempor.:uy ha\i\, Th~ Libraries \cquasition of the '\atiunnl Union Catal111;11t U) the \nnapoliJ l.iUraf\ is proceeding according tu \Chedulc. \li" Fletcher reports that thu~ f.u the first 36'1 •olumL" nrc in the L.ibmry's J lO>sC<.<aon. Over und olxwc thi; n1.qur purchase, the L.ibr.cl}' hough! 9)6 volumes. In all 1.807 volu me< were ac· ce.>ioncd nnd 1,)78 volmnc> were cntalogued. To mark the Bicentcnnm l )car a number of books m <'llrl) t\ rncncan hisIDI) and thought \\trc purchased. amon~ them Franc" Hutchewn\ Complct~ \\'orb in """" •olum.-, and Da• ul Fol'liylho's Dialogu• Conccrmng EduraJiun in l\\0 •olumc>. !\lis; Fletcher "'"' pkn<cd to report that the i\rchi\cs dllU Records Committee hocl iK:Cn active during the year. making usc of Ihe Records Room 111 the basement of the Ke\' Memo· real. 'flte Committee added Bryce )ncoh~n. faeultv 'repr=:n· l:ltin:. \llan Hoffman. ·~9. llumni rcpn:scul:ahvc. and \I ". Virgima Mybnder, mdcxer of the Board minutes. It is the hope the Committee th~l the propo'"' ICOO\'ahon of Randnll Hall mn)' include a centrnl wcll-ettanppcd nnd au· conditioned location for the Cullege archiw;, 'l'he Committee ngret-d thai it ••o uld be: .rppruprilltc lo dc.<ignote the Nc•• Prognim orchi•'<!t as the Rarr-Budtanan Arcln-.'\ The project of microfilming college public:ttions and minul~"'. as \\Cll J\ the Matncubtion Book. goc. forward At Santa F'c 1\lr.;, Alice Whd~n. the Labr.arinn, reportt'<l a l:uge nnmbcc of gifts from friends of the College. Noteworthy W:l$ tlu: gCilcrOLU donatiOn u records .and originnl music from r Jac llolwaan, '5L, to I><: .added to hh collectioo in the Sternber~er-\\'c:iJ 1\lusic and Fine Art; Bualding The: finest prh·ate labrary to be: donated tluL' fur to the L.abral)· was that of the late Mr. ami ~Irs. Albert C. Simms of .\lbuquerquc, New 1\lcxicu. ·nae gift wots made by their ncphc\\ a11d hi\ wife. Dr. and Mrs. Albc:rt C. Simms. 'lbe collection mure tl1o n 3.)00 volumes reflect~ the broad and di<crimin•ling cntcrests of ab former owners; it as particulJrl~ \lrong in ihc field of histOr)'. ~lost of the Simms gcft u being addt-d to the College\ collection. !'he prOtcd of acceuauning and cab· loguing \\Ill go fOrward an the year rmmediatcly ahead Meanwhile, the main collecliun of the l.abrttl) hns ri<en to n total of 46,969 cotalogucd vulumes, 40, 184 nf them book> ami the bolnnce phono di<c' and plcono lntJC$ These figure~ do not include the Robc:rt I Junt <'Ollection of 2. 900 \'Oiumes. which contmues to be housed in the librJry of the Rohcrt Hunt House. the Pr01idcnt'~ residence or o r 6 The Alumni lbomos Parran. 'i2, Director of .\lumni .\ctl\illc\, a< to be commendt'<l fur pubhmmg a nc\\ Re&"'ter of. \ lumna for Ihe 183-)e:ar pcrand from li93 to 19i6. The last prevaou> rcgcstcr wu1 published ten )'tan ago. 'I'll< Ro;ard of Diccctors of the Alumni i\"ucintion hope• thai a ne•• edition c.cn appear every three In n )tar.. in the future. 11re Clltft'lll Rcgi;tcr •• contaitu not onh Ji1ts of clmc• .md alphahcticol and gt.'Ogrnphical indices but \'Ocational and profc>sional ideutifica. tion of alumni \\ hcrcYcr these Jrc known. \lr. Parr.m continued to ~1 \\i(t the- Editor, ~ li~( Be.1 te Ruhm \'Oil OtlJlCil, m puhli<hrn~ The Co/leg<, 1101\ in its eighth year Twcl other publicn lion< deserve 111cnhon. In 'lovcmber, ~s«r)< en Honor of Jacob Klein ;appeared. 'll>ese h...J originalh hc:<'ll prepared fur \lr Kldn'~ se1enty-l'illh birthda). T"u ~)>h) former Prc"ck.'fll JohnS. Kacffcr were published thh 1pring in a liHic p.1mphlet entitled "On tlrc St John's Progmm." ·nrrough mch J>ublitation< and through the continuing progrnm nf alumni and adult seminars, the Cuilege seck• to add iu its ow11 way to the live$ of it> alumni ~nd friends. AI l:lomccormn~ in the f.rll of 19i6. \\'ilham \\ . Simmons, '48. was re-clmed Prc.,dcnt of the Alumni. lllrs. \larcia Del J >lam Rclf. '57. 1-:X<'Cuhvc Vice Pre\Jdcnl, and Edward F. 1.1throp. '38, Secrct1ry. Willi~m F. Cone, '67, ••.rs n;amcd 'f'aensurer. AI the Hurnccumlng banquet, jacob Klein wa; houort-d by being m,ade an Honorary Alumnus of St. John's College. Alumni t\\\Mili of :>.tcril \\ere prexnll-d to Fred Bida<li, '16, of Cnem••·ICJ, ~lc"co. •nd to Julim Rosenbc:rg, '38, of.>\noopolis. \lol')lond. Da•id Dubree:"· ''H. and F'rnncis S. Mason, 'i3, ••ere re-elected for \CCOlld consecuhve lema> on Ihe Board uf Vasilors und Governors. William B. Dunham, Vice President of the College in Annapolis, <q)Orl< thol iil\·aluahlc alumna invnlvcment :rnd participation ha> been g:uncd an odmissiom "ork, career COUnseling, p)aeemL'Ilt, and Ill Certain part; of the alumni annual ghing and the Fund for the 1980's, He odmib to a �October, 1977 degree of fruslraliun in .1chicving the strong]) based geneml snppor1 of the College which he hoped the alumni might give. Some gains in giving "ere achieved. Alumni contributed $57,874 for current purposes in n;,;pomc to a challenge gifl of $50,000. At the sao time gifts for capital purposes, ne endowment. and plant amounted to $37.040. The total number of donors declined slightly and the avcmgc gifi in· creased. At Santa Fe, gifts from alumni doubled mocr the l 976 figures. The College received $8,028 for current purpO>e> from :llumni and $1,414 for C:lpitol pu rpose\, A )'l":lrago the figure was $4,937. Let me con\'ey to oil .Uumni 1\ ho contributed so generously of their energy. their time, and their substance, Ihe deep gratitude of those of us nt both Annapolis and Santa Fe. We continue to hK>k to the olurnni as ~1e strongest proponent< and supporters of the College in the years ahead. the Institute b under the direction uf Gcoffrc)' Cumber, 1\v <oci:~tc D irector. who originally propostd this cxten~iott to the castcrn campus. It is interesting to note thnt scverul gmdnoles of U1e Jn.stitutc enrolled for this fifth <egmcnt even though it would lead to no :1dvanccd degree. Robert Spaeth completes two years as Diwclur of lhe Institute at the end of the summer. l·lc hns rcstgned in order In tnkc a year of leave from the College at his 01111 alma mater. St. John's University, in Collcgcvilk, Minnesota. Let tne record here the gratitude nf the College for the two years nF ltis able leadership. I am pleased that Dean Haggard. nf the Santa Fe Factdly. ha~ been uppuinted Director to succeed Mr. Spaelh in early September. I am confident that he wiU The Cwduate Institute in Liberal Education Nancy Coiner's appointment as one of the first thir1cen women tu become Rhodes Scholars brought first-page covaagc to Sl John's College in both Washington ncw>pnpers. even I wa> reported in Ihe New York Tim!?$ ami received rnnjur treatment in Oklahoma paper>. She was featured on Tulsa and Baltimore television stations and was interviewed h)' the Voice of Americ-A. ' ntis in tum precipitated another interview ahout the College when the Voice uf Americ<> spoke with Hugh McGrath of the Annat>Oiis campus. Mrs. Rebeet·u Wilson has done an outstanding job of bringing the College before the public. Presentation of an nf!ihoot of the Liberty Tree by the Carita.' Society lo Kc11 Gardens hroughl men liun of the College in 01c London Times and the London 'l'elegraph lhi, < priug. A pre>.' release on the fortieth anniversory of the St. John's Program resulted in men lion of 01c College in Time Itt a >lory concerned with liberal education in Americ". Editorial< on the death of Robert M. Hutchins in the Wasltingtott Post and the National Obsarver both referred to St. john 's. The National Oh- The Graduate lmritutc in l.ilx:ml Education contitHIC> to llc one of the most satisfying and stim uloting parts uf SL John's College. Designe-d originally to alford • unique ccluC'Jtional opportunity for public sehoul teachers, the Inst itute drnws its enrollment increasing))' from those who teach miuorlty sludcnt.s in coHcgc!i nnd inner city schools. TI1e.sc dedicated and enthusiastic leamers atlcnd under full fellowships provided by the Cnfritz Foundahun in Wushington and by the Vincent Astor. Edward J. Noble. and Henry Lucc Foundations in New York. The eight-week summer program at S:mht Fe enables the College In test its lx:licf lhnl lt> cdt""'tionnl aims tmd pmctices have a fundamenrnl effectiveness hy ou means limikd to undergraduate collegiate education. The t!$timony of tenehers \\ ho have completed the Master's dcb'fCe in the Institute bears wih1css that the College i; sueccctling in its originol objcctivc.li. • • In the summer of 1 976 there were I J7 studcnb enrolled. 41 for the first time. T he 1-'aculty was composed of stx tutor.; from the Santa Fe campus. eight tutors from the Annapolis campus, including the Dircdor, and six tutors fron1 o01er college. aud uni1•ersities. Those from oul,idc the College were Philip E. Ch:mdl~r. S'68, and Walter Nicgorski from the Un iversity of Notre Dame, C. Grant Luckhardt . '6), from Georgia Stntc University, Mrs. C haninah Maschler from Bank Street College of Education. Lucien Muntuis from Pitzer College and the Claremont Gn1duate SchooL and David Schulz of the University of Ddowarc. One of the hope.< of the Institute has always been that fuculty members from other mstitutions rnighl hove the experience of teaching in the St. John's Program. For 5l11111ller of 19n. 119 students were registered for the deventh session nl Santa Fe. For the first time one .egment of the Institute's curriculum was offered on the Annapoli.< campLU, with 20 students cnrollt.'<l. The Instruction Committee appro\'ed the offering of L uew .egment in Hislli.; tory with the undcrstnnding that •iudents wishing to earn the Master's dtgrce would then need to complete at lc:Jst two summers on the Santa Fe campus. T he Annapolis branch of o,e prove a ~\orth} successor. The College and the Public ·n,c slfn'(tr wrote: "Left alone now ns outpost< of t)li; classica l humane education arc the St. John's Colleges of Annapolis. Md. and Santa Fe, which prove 01nl Aristotle, Pinto. Dcs<.'llrtcs, and Augustine have 1110re lo say about life tltnn franklin Delano Roosevelt, Henry Kissinger. Timothy Leary, or Johnny Ca>h." Relations between town nnd gown nppl'llr to lx: good nl Anuapolis. The College has made a continuing effort not only to publici1,.e and wcknmc Annapolit:ms and othcn to evenb on campus but also to ~ncournge the use of the 211ditorium. the lobby. the Conversation Room, und the Creal Hall for various e\'cnts and RC!tivili.cs. There M\'t bcrn roncer1s. opems, conventions. polltical r.tllit:$, jazz festival.., high school play>, fashion shows, and ballet>. all of "hicl1 h.l'c hrought disp<~ratc groups nf people on c:nnpm. Many of these had not known about the College befOre. The spontaneous support which the College rccci,..,] in the last sessJon of the General Assembly attests to the wtsclom of th11 policy By th~ �The College same token the dforls of the Caribs Soeid) to n1ise schol•~lup monoes through ''ilrious C\'CIIts hJ'" been great!) appr«iated Fino II). mention should be made of the second >Utces>ful Porcn"' Weekend. which was held in the fllring ond attrnctcd 87 parents. At Santn Fe Mory Brnnham continued to work smoothly ond extrnordinorily w.tl as Oirector of Public Information. In nddition to providing newspaper releases, sloe worked d T echvcly with the various constituencies of the College $Uclo ros the Librnry Assoco ates. the Indian Table. and tloc Sustnin ong Campaign Committee. Her experience and practicnl tudg· mcnt hciJX.od consiclerobly to persuade the Legislature to pass a State Student lncenth·e Grant Prugrom. Once ogain towoupc:ople \\C~ invited to porticip;ltc in "'monon and then to :ottcnd d dinner in the Dining Hall afterward. '11oi\ public seminar night d~" ncar!) Z50 people and helped matcrialh to ontcrprct the College to the connnunil). Book and Author luncheons continue \\ilh stimuloting fPC3kcr>. A nC\\ E\en· on~ "oth \\ roters senes was inaugur•tcd and attracted a con51deroble number of people. The College and Government In 1976 the National Association of Independent College> oooJ Univcrsitic,< came into being for the purpo;c of providing " voice for independent education ut tloc national level. It succeeded tloc National Cot~ncil of lou]cpcndcnl Colleges nnd Universities. which had been n port of the A1sociation of American College<. There wns a geneml fcclong thnt the i\ssocintion of Ano erocnn Colleges could not speak for the onde· pendent in1titutoons \\1thout offense to ots pnhhc member>. During the lint full ye2r of its operatoon t\,\JCU h3< ~en >UCC:<'S<ful in hdpmg to pcnuadc the lntcm•l Re\tlllle Sen· ice not to treot <eholarships for faculty <pou>a Jnd children •• oncoone. in rcducin~ popen,ork requirement> Jt tloc Veterons Admini;trnhon. and in >tnnulating ~..,,,,..~< of the indepen· dent sector of higher education by the m<-dia In Mo.,•land for some years St. Jolm's Colk'!le hn< been a member of the corresponding stnte ossocoatoon, kn0\\11 as the Maryland Independent Colk-gc and Unovcrsot) Assocontoon. ~ lis; Beth Carraway. its ExccuH '" Director, hn< done n splendid /oh in coming to know State legishoto" ,nod in adwo ncing t tt cause: of the independent imtihotinns. This spring the General Assembly approved u bill which wmold increase the per capitn eontributiou froru the Swlc tu the private in' tttutlnns In the fiscal years 1979 and 1980. \1 the present time each independent in>titution in M~rvland rcccovcs for each enrolled full-time student I)% of the CO>ttu the State of cduc•tinc a student on the public onstitutoons Under the nC\\· Act tho< increa~ to 1- Y.:'k next year ;md to 20\l. on the followooog )e•r Maryland has one of the rno.t progrc,.wc program• of aod tu independent colleges and urmcl\ohc' on the United Sl.ltc>. St. John\ also benefited greatl)' In the IJst >cs>ion uf the Cencml i\sseoubh· tl1ruugb passage of a bond bill \\hieh \\ill provide mntthing fumi< for various projects of rC110\iOiiun and additional con,tnoction on the Annapoli' caonpu1 hctwecn 8 now and 1981 The State had ondicated an interest in acquiring just O\-er three acres of College land in the "estero comer of the campus as a sole for a Sbtc Center for the Fine ond Pcrfonning Arts. In the opinion of the Board and the Faculty this piece of property tu the wuthwcst of St. John's Street was surplus to the future needs of the College. lnste2d of selling it, I proposed the po.soge of the bond bill in the amount of Sl, 750,000. Tiois means that the College will have half of ~Jc funds needed to o ccoOO>truct and ad<l to Pacn-Carroll House. Randall Hnll (the dining hall ). and Iglehart Hall (the gym· n:osium), as motching funds nrc: found from priv.~te sources. The effect of the bill will be to cover lo:olf ~1e cost of complct· ing the physical plant • I Annapolis. At Santa Fe the College t-ontinu<od ots involvement in the \\Orl: of the Council of Independent Colleges and Univenitics in ;.~.., .\ lcxit-u. tl1e counterpart of \ IICUA in the cast \\11tre dfort> faikd a )·t-:or ago. the independent colleges were successful in the last session of the Legislature in obtaining funding to match the federal appropriation in the State Student lnccnb,·c Grant Program . Unfortunately, from the standpoint of St. John's College. the Board of Educational Finance ruled that no gmnb might gu tu students who were not citizens of 'Jew Mexoco. nor on o grnnts go to up· ght pcrelossmen unles> they loud ftrst rcech-cd tl1cm as freshmen. This temporarily restricb tht· monks tloat might be beneficial to SL John's Coll<·gc, hut I non happy to say that tloc College will again be able to provide noutcloing fuuds of its o"" and will therefore benefit from federal funding in an omuunt of approximotcly $12,000. The Two Campuses To aiJe,·iate a stcadil) \\Oncning porkong Slhoation on the Annapoli< campus • """ loghted porlong lot w:n constructed off St. John's Strttt bet"CC11 ~ldlon Hall and the PO\\Cr PlanL Tioe nL"' lot acconunod.1tcs 28 \chicles at a cost of 519.2>2. In addition to tloe U\ual p;linting projects through· out tlo< campus thi< swnmcr, a new ;urfuce was placed on the Chase-Stone parking lot, n major <ewer line was replaced. and hand mols were insmlled on the entnonce to MtDu\\cll 1-lull tu comply with fedcr.ol rt·gulntions. ') he dock at the Boat House was destroyt-d by the henv) o during l:ost winter's ce frigid weather. Thi> 1om hecn rchoo llt , lout the pier at the President's hunsc remains unusnhlc.:. Twu m:~inr projects are cnr· rcntl) being undert:okcn Burner$ a~ being replaced on aU tlor<-c boilc" in order tu c(onfurm \\ith cmirnnmcllt~l ~­ quiremcnts. Major repair> tu the roof of the Ke-y Memorial and Mellon Hall must L.: unoert•kcn nt a ,.,.t of SSO,OOO to pre\ent further water damage In the interior of the buildings. Utihty costs ha'-e conbnu<od to soar. The College paid three tnn<-s os much for fuel ool tins >Pring as it did three )C'ilrs ago. The atrcmd) low temperatures of last "mlcr thwarted all effort. to cun«:l\ c food lloc College burned 168,128 gallons l:ut \Car,"' compored to 147, 321 gallons a \'C:tr ago. The ca>t went up to Sti-1.170 from S46.2H in 1975-76. Finally, mention <hoooiJ b( noudc that monthly salarv �October, 1977 checks went on a computer in mid-year. The sallie dat:tprocemng finn m<:<l on tl1t Sa11ta Fe eaonpw is taking ewer ~ opcmlion in Annapolis. Hoe result will be more expeditious operutions as well as closer control over budgeted expendiltnes. At Sanlll Fe the computerized dam processing now octends to the payroll , tl1e general ledger. and student accounts. Jnvestig11tion is proceeding on the possibility of pntttng accounts payable on the computer as well. The only major problem with respect to the physical plant during the year wa> the need tu replal'C certain uf the uriginal alltural g•s di>tribution lint> where dangerous leak< were dis=·crred. Jn general. the condition of tl1c campus is excellent. .and It is difficult to rt'fllizc that thirteen years have elapsed <incc the College begun usiug U1e variou> buildings. finally. one might note that the food service contrnetor, PFM, Inc., of Northbrook, Illinois, completed its first year of service to the College in a generally satisfactory manner. A new manJger is lllking over this summer at the request of the Treasurer. who has spent a great den I of tim~ nnd effort nS>uring the highest stnndnrds of foml service for the students. Fincmces It is a source of gratification that both campu.scs of St. John's Collt-gc completed the fiscal year with an excess of revenues over expenditures. Undoubtt-dly the special fnndrnising efforts rd•tt-d to tht· fund for the 1980's contributed importantly to U1is happy outcome. An Annapolis tot•l income amounted to $2.'l70.50), as compared with the budgeted figure of $2,839, >30, and actual expenses amounted to 52,930.8)) again•! the anticipated figure of S2.839, 530. '11.tis ~;ulted iu an cxcc:s< of rc\'cnucs over expenditures of $39,650. In Santa Fe actual figures on expenses came in at 52,620.999, some 514,000 under the budget. Tom I revenues amounted to S2,65 1, 772, thus making it possible to curry forward the sum of S30,773 into the reserve for future opcr:atiuns. Since July I, 1975, both cnmpuscs have b<:ncfitcd from ahlc new managt·mcnt of tl1c College's portfolio, l!:ndo\\1nent Management and Research. of Bnston. Mass.1chusetn. holds two-thirds of tlte Annapolis endowment fund. Ill market value on June 30 was $4,782.811, as compan.-d to a book value of $4.616,389. The yield on market w:IS 6.1% and un book 6. 3%, boUt above the goal of 6% which had bcc:n set as au o bjective b\• the Board's Finance CommiH cc. Faye:z Sarofom & Co .. of llnuston, Texas, held the other third of the Annapnlis pnrtfolio and the entire fund of the Sanht l'e campus. These holdings were listed on Ju ne JO at $~. 750.729, ns compared to book value adjusted for contributions of $), 102,239. The yield on funds contributed amounted to 6.9% nnd the yield on market value was 6. 1%. It is interesting to note that 32 of the 36 companies in the equity K<et ion of this portfolio Increased their dividend rntes tluriug the past twelve months. Thi.< brought tl1c Santa Fe campus endowment income of $87,027, n figure $12.000 higher than that projected in the budget. Neither campus would have eomplctt-d the foscal year in such excellent shape witl1out the geucrous giving of the St. John's rnmily. of foundntiun< and corporations. of friend.< nf the College, and of government agencies. It is impossible to recognize all who are committed to St. Juhn's College and who cn,.ble us to offer this unique learning experience to shtdents and tutors alike. I would be remiss if I did nut express sincere appreciation to every donor whose gifts ure summarized below. Annapo/ir StOUH -lt6,340 39,80' !> 482. t!H 3.891 9,+12 UZI 93. t94 >10.132 21,594 $S64.1JIH $1' 118.857 49),42+ i89,364 H,65t t61,0t7 H4,829 t6,051 (,7,200 S864, 9(14 lloartl St. John's Collc2e Communi!) Santa F1· $t.J ts.m 3.265 Alumni 146,409 f'ricnds 26.7t9 l,nrcnt.s t9,1» Frmmdntions Cofl)Otatiom t07.876 C<wc:miiiCJII PurfJO$'$ Unrcsh-ictc....:l Rcstnctcd for I .tbr:lfy, Schotar>hips. etc. Gn1 du;;~tc ln ..titutc Rnclowm-.:nl Plant t93.2iq R>.m The Kersh a11' Report A year ago I rcpoc1l'<l that Profc.s>or joseph Kcr~haw, of Williams College, had cmhnrked upon :1 study of the On:mcial viability of seven small colleges on n gmnt from the Ford Foundation. Those cxnrnrned were Bard, Bennington, Hampshire, Marlboro, and Sarah Lawrence, in addition to the two St. John's campmes. T he l~eport d\\elt at some lc.:ngth on the problem~ of recruitment and admissions. particularly in those institution> with capital debt which must b<: servkcd at foxed rates. It also stressed the point that none of ihc colleges were charging high enough fees for room and board to meet the overhead chargcabk to alL\iliary enterprises. After gcncrnl remarks on the gmup of e<1llcgcs, the Report examined each institution at some length. Let rne quote from the set-lion dc•ling w1th St. John's: The fiscal health at Annapolis seems tu stem fmm stn:ral factors. First nn $8 million endowment gcncraiD amund HOO,OOO uf incom•· each )'Carnearly 20 percent nf J::ducational and Ccncrnl incontc. Second, U1crc i; no debt at all. Third, the laws of Maryland bring subvention> to Annapolis of about $100,000 annunlly. i\nd finally. tlaere nr< a small number of generous givcrs- individu:!ls and foundations-which assures that current ~ivrng rc9 �The College m;nn< consistent!) high. St john 's •s ~bout to l.1unch a ~pita I campaign JOint!) for the 1\1 n cam· pn~es. If mcc=ful, "''en though t>•o-tl111d' uf the capi~1l i< fur the Santl Fe eampm. ti1L' 'huuld assure <'Ontinued vi;~bilily for Annapolis The Snnhl Fe situntion is a very dirTcreul cone. The <·amp"' is new. and while the St. John'~ mnnc has undoubtedly helped in gcttmq the institutiOn c'tabli< hcd, the period over wh1ch it hns been tryin~ to rnakc It' >lllrt '"" been a difficult one l"he student body goal \\3$ >25. a figure "hich hu; nc•cr been rc"chcd . . In spite of these trouble> the current bud~ct ha; been ncar b3Jancc O\'Cr the )e.lr\.. • The mu>t fucinating det.Jil about tl1c Sant.a f'c fi~eal sihlllion ha, to do "ith current gifts. This il regarded at S:mb f'e as the b:llancing 1tcm '" the bud~ct •\nd 11 1s enormous. In a school "'th I= than 300 students. csscntialh• no alunuu, and Educahonnl ond General b'udgct of rmt about S2.0110.000, current gifts 111 1964-5 \\Crt Si6>,UUU ond S717,000 in the )'Car just endedl . \\c <II!· peel that it may be unique to find current ~iving .1 1 ouch n level. und of course it raise> tl1c t~uc>tiun uf whether the ~ltuotio" can continue.... l~ach ye.11 these ~ifts nrc intensely solicited (U the year's end approaches. and each vear the fi11nl dollnrs come 111 (by pony express?) just as m1dnight on June 30 ;, reached: the next day tbe prcmlent's <'tlngrntulatory \\lfC goes out to the "Friend; of Sanln Fe.. announe· ing once again "We ~1ade Ill .. n ,., Mr. Schmidt I"" :mum<-d responSJbilil)· for approochmg a number of foundations. .\ b.;e deferrcd·g•v•ng comuutkc ,. now bemg con<blutl-d In stimnbtc contnbuboru through trusts. insurance, ;md bc.'luc<t< At the end of June the report of Jcmme LaPides, the Campaign T reasure•, > huM..! U1nt 56.890.867 had been rJiscd to· ward the ovcrnJ I go.d of $25.000.000. '01e Annapolis campus had •ccch·cd 5864,409, of "hlch $>·H.72Q \\'OS designated for endowme nt. The Sn ntn l• cnmpus had ICccivcd 'e $787,207. all bu t S 1 9.0)1 (or current purposes. Pledge.< out· stnnding 0 11 July ht tutnk-d $1.735.399 for Annapolis and $880.852 for Sanm Fe. l"innlly, the College had been informed of S99),00U in IX.'IUC\b incluckil in \\ ills for the cusl· ern camp"-'. SHS.OOO for the "'"tern campus. and Sl.l03,000 •• 'et umk.'\ignatcd for e1ther campus. It is noteworthy that the C'fl"ll~ of the l111Dp:!ign to date hos amounted to $86.101. or 1rnt 0\cr one P"rccnt of the lobi r;nsed. The Fund h:u had a ~ood mitial 1car, but subst.lntial work li<s ahead of tU all • r\t the end of June 111) ICC<md full term n~ Chairman of the Maf)land Comminion on the Capitol Cit) cnme to an end. I have Uwruughly enjO)cd thi< :moclation with go,•cmmcnt leaders and others in Anuapoli> lhcsc p:!St len yea~. M) cxtrn·eurricuJar activitic> tuntinuc n~ a Trustee of SL Mnry\ College of Maryland, a Tnl\t<'C of the Yale-China A'ISociahon. •nd n Consultuut for the National Endowment for the Humanities. In conclusion I unght note that the College nnd its prohlems look 1wt os ch•llengmg on th1s s1de of age 6) as thl")· have for the p;l't t\\ent)-c•ght )'<'Irs. The Fund for the 1980's rhe Fund for the 1980's was launched"''" ophm1~m and entlnnia>m at a dinner at the Unh·ersil) Cluh in 'Jt\\ Ynrl City on the c'·ening of September >O. 1976. Visitors and Covemon, alumni, and special friends of tl1e College heard from Co-Chairmen of tl1e camp.Ugn. Abander K. I-Icl..1113· han, of Houston, Texas. and Adolph W. Schm idt. of Ligomcr, Pennsylvania. as well as from me. Since that dntc Charles Cooley, Assistant to the President and D~rector of 1J1c Fund , hns de1110nstrntcd a high degree of initiative 1n nrrnng· ing > uccessful dinners nnd area solicitatiom 111 Philadelphia ond Baltimore in December, in Houston in March, in Bdleair-Cieamatcr and Palm Beach in mid-April, and m Washington and Wilmington in late April. Plum ,lfc being formulnttd fur the next area dinner. to be heJd in Bo>ton, the end of Septtmber. The llO<lrd'< Steering Gom.ruttcc bas done '-.oman «!nice in helping to plan the campaign and in suggetting p10mising a'-cnucs of action to Mr. Ault. to ;\h. Coole). to .\lr. Dunham, ~nd to me. The Committee has been composed of Victm Bloedc. James Donnelley, :.Irs. Walter Driscoll, )ames Frame, Mary Gallagher. John Ham.on. john M111ch•· son, William Simmons. Mrs. Louise Trigg. J I. Stale). and . Dr. Thoma> TUJncr, in addition to the t\vo Go-Chairmen. I (I )ul\ 30. 19/ Richanl D. Weigl<· Presidrnl �BALANCE SHEETS June 30. 1977 ASSETS LIABILITIES AND FUND BALANCES CURRENT FUNDS tJ•unlfi(tc\1 C»h • •• Rc~:nVllbl..-. lid . • • •• •• • . • •• ................. .......... Rtcc,nbk ...•... Due rmM Ckiwl' FIIN!t /ll!)lft • •.w ~ S* ..... •• lt.m ,_, l C..Iil •. .• .. IM•nti!M'111t, a1 c:o.c .•.••. , D11« hewn l"'htt fll.nlh .• • • ••• R«elv•'* u.~ ,,_000 , .0.9ll RnU'k~- Acc;cur~'" tl011,111\t · .:J6 U S.llft hl¥tMOt)', flooblort'.eleotl. AucU lfdlt . .,,,,. "·t» '21ol.16 "·':J 7'ii,OM .. ............. .. IRv..-um•nn, at~~ ................... . ft«t.Mifllt , , • .,. • • , •• , , , , ,, s J9,)U 12.911 u:: N,l'lt J.Uil - .......... . IMflUIW'Jit,, .a ~ s..... '-• kriwll* " ...... Q.,«< Sllldnll lout u.... S..• Dqrolfit U70 I I ...... , .•• , , ••• , •• , JIKII\<'•I•Ict " ! ! , , ,, ... " . . ,, ,, , f'lrohtc• lte(,_.nlll• • •. .. • . • . . •• .. . . . Ow "rh•m 0 1 lintd• , .•••• , • lwl' ., , Toul £ndo"'*"' tltnd\ ......... .. .......... I I ....... I --- l 4;..A)I ~C!dlwMD~Ii!k.fl I o.tr.. ..... f..S. I TM """'"'' FuM• PLANT FUNDS ~~:!!'!':~~ Kctin'. ;ni Oi i;.dd,t~~;;,; ·· ••• ... . l.,.., ~ l11'tl'f9\'l1M~c.Lr. . . .... , , , ......... . I --s 4)0,%19 11:..,111 1111.1H J ···~· .... I II).I:S) ' :t'l-"' 1MJU7.~ .. I l lflllal t. llllCJll l ll ..lh Ul1 7.,00oi,J14 - .. ., -·· National DirKt St!Mkflt lAill'l\ c. . l.au .... fWMc:• ToW a....,..... J I.JJI.o;o.t t I.JJ;t,f19l ... tlfUI"J ,... I '"' --'·"' JS.OM.JM --- o.t.... o.m.~~ .... .... 1,0011 I,U0,7, U 11,2.)4 I,CJ;\0,110 ANNUITY FUNDS ...,..... ... SIIJ.In ENDOWMENT FUNDS c..t~ .......... . •...•.• . ~ _. n.ooo :u.m 1>9.!&1 Toul&..-.f'lllllb ,..,. J-1).1.).1 I .... ---- ...... .. ...... 9'!,414 ....,1.tft .,.,. ,.._.., . "·"" ..,J71 .,.., 116.9}9 ' l}.t_ ~ l69,111 SSM,:I1 I * Hulkl•nt.' ., I 1o.m I . 19,1M 201,115 LOAN FUNDS """ l.lli'IIIIWI4 lll'll!f'O't'f'IM:nu I .. ....... ..... ~forhtwrc-~ ,.,...""" S«ZIUI1 LOAN FUNDS 1 ln""' lnl~•n• 11wu .. ...... ......... .. . ....... .... ....... ..... ..... . All••,c•lk \ 11-,MIJ!Ib .nt,:•• \-4)(1.210 IIJ eotl Ucn!•hkttll Notct PIIY'bk- H•"'" Ai:'«n.tR1, 111)"1blc Due.~ Other l'llllhh . , SW4t!M Ao.ltll*;.C" l)JIPII'\11, • Ocfcm4 IIICOIM •• J-4)<1.,6)1 :'06.100 To111 CllrR"nl f'u""' ••. ~~-~~tmuu•, ........ CURRENT FUNDS !illd& .... All•lpc~lll ,...,.. "-'" ENDOWM ENT FUNDS f\llld U..lh nc• • UM.Artltlkd hiCCim~ , 4,001 Du11 t o Othcot 1!\mdl , '" U.JJ9,MJ .,.,...., 1UJ.1 I -l&USI l ' J~.%21 7,061.·~ ),t>IIJ.lm ree.. ,...Fu.t:s --s 1 7.0USA T•.t11111h ,,..u.s••-. $ Ja.t.ooo I lll.lll Tout A.,.., t=.o.d• • I • lll.JJI PLANT FUNDS • •~1b :7J,UCI B.!.Uj J,9!lt!,141 7:<1.... J~UH ANNUITY FUNDS ......,.,L.... llkr.... ~ t.Jn.»l Uaupccdnl • 'J,... ,... Retifl!ml!nt ur 111 t:hledf!cl\ ln \'tt.tmctllllll P111t1t INc 10 Other F11nllt ,• Nute.s r•r•t-.le-Otl\fr . . . . . . . . _ I.M.II' P•r•blo lit AM~I' Cllmfl~•t IJOI"mllot)' b.lnlh_ PliY!It!lc Dao to Ann:..t)' 1"11111! l'rk1 hnc-t:lmorftf Ml ............... ""*"' .. •••• _. o.on J,l l ~ s 4,51t. 27J,Uf• Ult.7 ll't,lJ~ 9'2:4.39-4 I.Hl OliO 169•.11f s 7,1)6.1,111,.. s J,(W,&... J-1 Toc..l,...t'wloft ... Taull.... s ... ..... -••• s l..UU}t S16.1lJ,I90 I t,&n.JU ' 4.)}.).7_,. 0 0 o(') (!> !'"' -· .... -o -..1 �"' CONDENSED STATEMENT OF REVENUE AND EXPENDITURES ANNAPOLIS ENDOWMENT FUNDS June 30, 1977 Fiscal Year Ended June 30. 1977 Glftfll ._ TUTORSHIP ENDOWMENTS: kidultd ttUllllllbt t.a.loh• •• ,, .-,_•.-u. ,...... ,. 11,4),,11(1 II 061,~ REVENUES r4utiiiiO!MI ~n.l C'ffnffill 1\t!tlnn h e• . C".cn't 1\lllll•u• !lnd Cnml1 C!lh 1111.1 (lnoul\ (,.do-rucnt I•ICuthr Othn Scnw(n ll$, 1H "'""'* SZ.A9J,ll0 T IJIW '-'Nntlonal ..t CkM:na1 • • ••. , , , , , , """*--.. . . . -. . . . . . . . ............. A•--'JlWJ l!.lltt,.,ru.. Boci:W.-t - - -• • . ,•• ~"··~·..... .., ······ .......... • • •• •· ....... • • • .. s . - c.a-,....,.. ,...,.. M.M~ Tou,t A~ E.cc:rpn"ft • Toul~~_.. t."k... 81.DZ7 1011.~\l ......1 n,eo. I - 11JIIA ".... II A» .................. ······ -•••..•••••• ••• • •••·• .• ............ ..... ..•. ··H E.c:cn kn rnu« owr 1.' r-N.Ltllrn 6.2,674 JlUS7 ,,..,._,., • ,,,Moll I ,,._.,, 10.1181 . .l'lO.I-tti U ... .•••• ,, g:~~~ S. B.Unl, 19JO .• , , , , •• .. : ~:: Cla.1itefii'JI . . . . . . . . . . . Riduwd Cle.vtlald ...... .,, , "'""""' ,._, .... - St\llkQf Sd-rico l.lbtilllbOII.. ~ .. .. .. .. ... ...................... •••••••• ••••• • • • • •.••••.•••••••••• ••••••, , S..•FI-.:I,,AW •••• 000. 0 0 0 ti,Q)I.7•l IJ.~ m .... ""·"' • • • ••••• , . _ ,. . . ••••• ,, , , , , , , ................... . • ..•.••••• .. ......•• Z!J,II4 ........ . .. ..............."" ~-·~·,_. """' oooo•u .•.••••. ...••.•.........•.... Auaal-.ry E.tcrpnw• 1\cM)k\CUH Doni)' II CI..M Wl'O.OQ) t7,6.1CI 13,02:S Out.W. S41mmtr l"fO!Pm• lt.•U UU::J , , f'IA111 Opc:ruion• 1c M•l"'"'•ftet . Mtlldltot)'TN!IIII(C'It o, >O fot1l AU\III.,yllnlttf)th.n •• , o· • •• oo Olh., rnut~~fen • , , , .... fot1l ll•.pt•ldil11't' ••ld 'lb.MCcn . •• •• ,. ,, , , ,, 4"!1 •.(!1 t«U0.1 n:..w "'"" ..... UJII • Jl4,mt , DlniJII IIall & OOrmllonh 92...411 -90) N_.w.....iNOr)'Tr...Cft't. ••••••••. ••••••· ............. ~l'rliltd~ •••••••• ·······- · ·· ·····-··-·· r..a~.to.r.,.. ..,....... ..... S • )' I .~'M Jv,:m tl.9JO,.Ijl '1. . . n.m..... ' ,.,no 166.211 MA Ul ...... s oOO ., . , . ............. . .. . , . o.. ..... ·o o,,, OO•OoO Dr. Clllltn C. CooL . • . . JoM-t ... Mwy Qit!h, J_. ~~~-~-~·~A.n:bur E.. am l.AIIIkn, lflO Had&~ a. '"' .. O~Jtc&illftll ........ . "111omas Pan-an Memorial, 19f I PJlubuf)h Rta:lllflll •.. , ••• ltc.Mier"t. Diaut f!OUflda.ll-. ... , .. , , ,.,, .. , , 14.0110 l:l;W ......... .. ., ... ~ ,. o ••• •• , . w " ....."' 19M, ~ . N.:rd.'!,_,.,........ • o~.n.•n 11,1).1] u.~999 ,. ..... .,,.., ...... ........ .,_,., ..... T,6j0 u.~ n...,. .,..... .... 14.000 •s.no ..,.. l9.26l $!.GOO ... 1th000 l.oiU 'l.W> · !:ttl 10,9.5) 7olfl7 I ,)10 ,.... MM 4,7)1 • , . • • .. , , , 1.sn "!V7.1.!-6 ill.J6A - j·''' SI.OOI.O~ .., • ,...., ... ... ""' ... .,...., .... '-"" '""' ,..... ,....., ..... .... ,.,, '"""' ".... ... ..... ""' ,.. ....... . :l.IDJ llAAl - ).000 1.3«1 3.211 1.000 s STUDENT LOAN I'UND ENDOWMENTS: • --- .., ,.. • ,_,...., • ........ ....... - Ocorp PriedUAd • ., ... , ...... ......... ...... . . ... Jotlft. Da'rid 1")1 .. IU6l, MemoriaL ... .. . . .... ...... 4 1,1:0 11 ,)00 7.U.tfl 7,0~ IU,JU ' ff,9)) J,l\111 ,,,. .... . a...tac:.o..bu-N.a.u.lr1J, U~f'nlt •: EOao C. l_(cnry H Dodtoa SM.m- Nno~ P.llllll .•.• E:ku Jl.W O.k1 0. TOIW MHWOIWI FVIICI ••·• LartJ-.cr A. and Clan R '4'fttte M~ I.JhrWot 1-'\ukl ••• • The J-Kk \\'ilk• PwlllldU. . Ubrv)' .......114 IJ1 Memory of' Nw-.,_y Jod IWMI\bcfl . , .. ·, , • • • . ,ti),OOO T.lOO 6,1..0 1,672 ,...,.. "" AludiN Mctnlllnlf u.L n.J Cbarlu u-nt Sf-' a:.rto. M.....W Utwwy ,;;..;.; Bm~ F~ I.Rnry F\IM -.. - ·• Nary Wont H~cta' ~WUinry filM •. _.._._.....,,_ ............ • 10,000 ,.ooo ,.,000 6.J6' LIBRARY ENDOWMENTS: Olrr-u 1 .UIIl,.U7 l'UIL.1 lO.l<2 ' .. tM.~\tN ) 00,216 UlO ....., ..... Hntl N otn1 1od J, Ouhlltt" Sfllnlt.t.hJil. I \108 Cbrcncc W ~l ty'kcr , . . . • , , , , Frederick J, von S.:t.-.· ffduw:r , , ftkh..-4 o. w~1t. . .. .. .. .. ~o~ l,&lt,tJ.& """" '""" ... ,....,., .... . .......... ......... . . - 36.000 < 1.117 .. !'·000 >.000 ) 1);4)1 116-?J...) I.IJt 67.Jll 150:,230 OOOhO•• . . Maaud•nern RttaK.at ,• """• A. ,.,..._ ....... ... ,.., IUO! ... <Jcnnak L tlam.oa. IWl. RkMrd J:l. t~ IJ06 .•• Alfrc4 .,.a lbdl H - - . tVI» tlonao. .,.._.. .• - • ' '·""' ,.., u-n '·""' ,.,. ... ... ..... T• • f),9)) .............. • .. """' ~ ft. Cluoift', Ill Clltuc::t Oicli-. 1911 I.S,OOO 1$,000 1.j0() , ..... , .......... .. Mu:rn,y lod R.:>t.cabc-ft MttnOriAJ •• , , o, • , PIOflt. l>uvlljl Sayk• ... , , , •• , .... , , , , , , , , &NuriooMI Mil 0.•f111 l.nr.lnlltt101l l..t.7Y,IU S J.)29,1LU .. .-:::. :::::::::::::::::::.. WtJ~ Oif\tmC. Rochlt~ EXPENDITURES l """" XO,OOO IJO,((I(I An•poiK Sell Help , .. , .. ,, ,,, ... ,, ••. ,., ... , ....... . CloofpM, A\Illl",l901 - - 1). I -""' ........... 1)0,~16 SCHOLARSH II' EN DOWMEN'rS: '01.6)6 lCI,n, l,9lr9,fl4 ..... A--,.,_ ,.... $ 2•.-J:},tm ......,..s .. llMI .m - 0 ... .... • ,., .,.., 17.4>< 1 JU.;tU W. Mclua ~1-0JMtt .• Add!- E. Mlllli\ln. Ill,_, " ••• ., .. • .. .. . .... . .. "'nh~:~rclcTill.tn. Vllk.• l~ ..... o . . . . . . . , •• ~ -l • • 01.111'1 2<1.011 7.180 Jl,l61 ' ....... '·"" • •,..lilt s 10,001_ 1 I .....0111 • 21,4111 ' U.lJt i.A7i.i -- U.IO ::r g ~ ;:;- ~ �nf ..... ,_ ~l, ~ ~~; ~~ 1 i ~") 'I ~J =IIi ~~ I ~ ~ 1{ , ;. i1 :. ~ ;; e .. -' ~ !i f ~ :r .. .. •J JJ u J .. ~ i e :t - -1 ~ ~~ October, 1977 i ~ J .. ~ ~ -' 8 3 " " ~~~!s~v i! -. ~ . . . .. . . . . ... . .. . . . . .. .. .. . • •• ~ 0 " g 0 • • •• ••• - •• 0 0 z a.! z ;:;; "' 8 ~ 0 z ~ ;:;; c z Ul i! iHJih ., ~d·1Efl :I: ~ • ., !! 0: "' fi 0 i. 5 !- < "' ]i.ti~ c ~H!di u ,..) J: "' • • 0 • • • • ~ ~ " ;; •••• •••• - : ; .. l.tl c. .! J: 0 • , .! c. • ~, t:. .., ~ ~ " ~ ~ . : ...: ..: . : : ........ . . .. .. . . ...... . .. : : . :: : : : : : :: •• ~r : ~ ~~ ~~ ' 0 '. . --· - = . ..... . ....... ' ....... . ....... .'' . 0 0 ~ c ~~~~~~~~3~~~~~ ~ --~ -- -=~ 1..... . . 0 ••• 0 z Ul .... en • 0 • • il!~;·! ,._ "' .... < E- • • •••••• 0 ~ HI!:: 0 •••• ' • • c. tr.. • •• ~ Ul 0 • u.. E- 0 ;;; ~ ~ ~ ::::> ~ §~3~§~ I! ~ en z ~ i .. . . ..; .; :: ;.f ' l.... . " -. .3 ~ ;:;; "' ~ 8 z ~ : :~ ... 'f i· l E!:J ;~Jl ::t2~ l~:rfi: c.,.:: g l.tl ... I ~.;.nJli~ >- ~It .. ..J~a: ~ :J ·r~ · §· !,,Jj~;;~ z l.tl 0 c .1 • - ~'lJ rr ~ 'i<!3f'" ~ Q X 5! z .! .. g ,; "' ;:;; ... ~~ . . -lU ... . j "' H .. "' :!: ~~ l:H}J i<" : "' iii!=:r~<. tij : z ~ ~f 1- "' ~ .. . '~'i~ 'll J J Iii !z "' ;:;; :0: f . - jJ]~eJ1I:rJ!i .. • ' :!: ,; i ~~~lAJH~~i,;"1 n d t.~ ~u 5 :I: I 111 :0: 8 If! z ~i! z <'i '-~~~:xt=~~ 1 3' . l.tl '"l/·"2 ... gJ ~ 0 (::: < c z :::l 0 ~"' ~1 jl ,§g :< ~ g ~ ~ ~ u. ,!n1 1 1 It 1 1 t 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 l3 �The Col lege FoRD K. BROWN At tht memorial servrr.1 i\lr Weigle tfod a tnbute {rom Dr Felix ,1/orle) and inlrodu~d the fh·~ s~akcrs: senior Mark \ Sugg, Dr. Elizabeth J/1({, Cup/. Edward P L<ttlirop, '38, /ames J\1. Tolbert. a11d Curtrs \Vi/ron. Mr. Tolb.rt's Tl?marh rnrludrd these memories of Ford 1\ Braum: Ford wn< oken colletl >cholurlv, but not to Ill> face. I thmk l:le would ha~·e repudlotcd, gcni311). the implrcd tribute. l ie was ><hul•rh rn his attotudc toward his te;ochmg, 111 hi; ~rt Cor lan~u.,~e •nd re<pce~ fnr langu.Jge, ~n hi, rcadinJ: of seri· om boob in huge"""'~"- But once hr~ lue hwl. fathm of the Victoriuru ICambrid~c lfnh·er~il) Pre-.>). "PJ>C"red, .'" 1961, he ~vc hirmclf tu nn SIIS I:u11ed ,cJoularly cnterpmc that I know of. lie look time for the \1111111 plcJsurcs, and adorned Ihem. He liked to go to baseball ~JIIIe;, for example, as I do and I u~-d to dme him to Saturd.w-aftcmoou game< in Ralt:morc:: the excrrmon al""l~ included, atlm msistence, lunch nt n good rotmr:rnt . R) the 1\,1\, hi' mtercst in baseball, Jol, IO\'C of goO<! EngiL<h. and h., 1Chol;orl) tu~ of mind co11vcrgcd In a hoh!J,. of hi' Inlier>"'" "- lie kept n h!t of tbc outruge; ugaimt the l.111guu~c pcrpetrnted !J, ,, 1>rclcnho111 tefc,·i~icm \poll\ commc:nbtor. I ha'e ,1\onk-d supeJIJii'c'. out of res~t for Ford's horror of S\\Ollen rhclonc, but ot" hJrd to amid tlrcuo 1101\, for no" I w;mt to <peJk of his COli ric.~· \\'c ha\·c all t•pencnet.-d rt, for he 1\J< courtem•< to Cl'trybudy, 1yithonl hn' 111~ to work at it, beco1mc: he \\a~ the "oul uf comtcsy. He .l iWII)-~ ~c:cmcd delighted to meet C\'CI)Ouc he knew. a11u he kn"" ur:my kind. of rco1>le. high and lui\, and <eemed to JCCl'!'t them all. \\hate1er tl1cir idiol\llcr.l\il'\ I thmk rt ""' h~> COur· to1·-\\ltich. uf course,""' J curollan· of h" iutctt>t in oth<r people nncl hi' liliJ1g of them - that accounll-d fur hi1 almo<t llCI'Cr <peakiug of hirmelf. lie ""' never the hero of hr< f.l· mous anecdotes. and he <eldorn uocd the prnno11n I. During the ve:r,.., tlrut I tral'eled for the College ull OI'Cr the countn, •luri11u rlf Jll Jge>. of the Old Program and tire '"''· 1\0uld a<L me. "How i' \h. Brrl\l n>" \nd tb~ \\Ould > nulc, and t\\inlle .olmmt hle .\It Brmm hnn.clf. "hen the~ J>kcd, and their \\Ord1 IIIII \\Oulu .hn\\ their .lff~tion. Sun:l) ol Wlll hi, courte>)', h" delight in other\, Jl \\ell rl\ hi1 wit Jud hi' teaching ,kiiJ,, lh:rt \I'UII him thil 1:1\ling Jffcctinn, Form"' Dtan Curtis Wilson tht11 .r(loke I ha,• kno\\ n Ford Brown <ince I c;nne to SL John's rn e 1948. During one of those earl) )'l>ars, I sat in on n freshn~:ru Creek cla~1 he brught. He had then a< alwa)\ a '"'Y of puthng thing> thai printed them unforgcttab~) 111 mtmon . He "'3' utao..,lou~h· infonncd about llldlll thmgs He tl ""-' through \\horn I I~Jrncd .rbuut l~lltf'cu\ \\llrb nn gr,~rnmJ.r, Jnd H about the studio of Yug01fa, eprc-singing, and the •tudic:s_ of the intonation of Sarul-rit, and hOI\ thev \\ere ~rng •pplocd to the rnterpremtiou of the llomeric poems. He rt w.u "ho made forc•·cr clear for me the drfference between oe<:urJcy and precisron, b) pointing out tloal one could be prrcrsely wrong. I n:mcmher. too, hi• lmisteuce that when you w~re to '"rile an e>>J)' the first thing to do ""' to make a•.• outhne of "hal •·ou wanted to .sa1• and then you should begm tile essay ; b'· ..,;ng what \OU were gain, to"''· and then )Ou •hou!d and finalh yon should ""' that )'011 had •aid ot. It is. a wouderful n tlc. •ud I should like to "''l' that f had follo"et! rt, but the truth i> I hnvc never succeeded in doing ~0. owing to mnple weaknc« of mind. Still, Ford's rule hus nlwov; stood out for me 111 the dutauce ai the rdcal to be nnnetl nt I could at least h) to Jcllle•e. tow:rrd the end and after much destruction of foohcap, tht str.nghtfomard claril) and outline that Ford had Jskcd from rrs at the shut Ford 1\~h ,, n1:111 who regarded the recognition of concrete fact as neces"'a;, .rnd the failure to rccogniLC il '" rtprchensi· hie: bul he knew, too, tlrat '"ch recognition """' he it~ a proper stvle, free of despair or of unwarr:rnted or un~on11~ enthuna.sm. He much rcgrctted the Colle;:e'< obandoument of Lntm, and COill<!qllentl~ o{ certDm Latin authon. 1\ ho he felt h•d a <pecr.ol ttppredation of the prnctrc-al ond the concrete, a worldly wi<dom that hnd nothing grubby ur petty nbout il, but wn< combined with .nl upprcciotion of ~reatuess. Those qualitic; \\ere l11s, "' well . . Some of hi1 lecture; become legeud :\lumm fi-out the -10 s speak lfpeatcdh, \lith "'Onder. of hi; lecture entitled "Shaie\pc:tre". "hich turned out to be, 1\itlr entire oppropn.oten"'-<. o lecture on the Cnthedrnl or Chartres. lie knew that there were certnm things that couldn' t he >aid, or •hould not be aHem pled to be '" id, nnd he knew that there were othc<> one ,Joould go to the trouble of spelling out m detail I remember "itlo especial dart!) his definition and rllurtr:otron of the rmaginatron, gi1en 111 this \1~') room mnny )COt> "&0· \\ e would know what the uuaginotion 1\d> he >:tid. rf \\c could . visuali1e :olop the pia11o here a blue ;pherc. 11 ft iu diorncter. and poi><'<~ ntup It, another 'Jlhcre, green, 8 A in diam· eter, and dtOI> that, sUII anotloer 'Phcre. tl1i> time tl~l. •!nd + A. in diameter. Jlld Jtop that-b11t I fear the un,Jge 1\lll no longer hO'· the meaning it once dod-atop that the then e <uperintendtnt of buildings ;wd erounds, Arclubald ~lcCourt, ) ft. hrgh, with his unpcnetmble Scotch brogue. giving order\ to the lured honds . . It is In tl1c l:nt 13 thnt my fnendly acqunmt~ucc wotb Ford Brown hal meant tl1c mo<t to me. In '(\4.'65 1\e were together in Santa Fe, during the operuug 'car of the College there: and durin'! that ,.,.r. he"'" the gwod old mnn of the campus, lo\'ed b' the students. >OU§ltt out b, them. ,tpprec.,tcd b) them "' one of the \CCIIfe J11d dcpendnble f.1c~ of the College mod mdeed of lrfc itself. And <o he lrM re· mnined for me. A iocular. ironic \\'It; gentlem:mlmcM nnd generosity of sprrrt: "" old-school \I~V with words, combming the courth with the clipped, the ancedoml wrth the trcn· chant; a lcrhit of ol~n·ing. \l'tlhout unnecessa') tll>l\tt'ncc or .un trace of bittemeu, tl1at there i\ ,, proper "~' of clomg ''" u : >""" �October, 19T th.ngs hen-"heni' being JWI anywhere )OU happened to he: all these wen mrmrtahle featurn of Ford's .tyle •nd of being in tho \\Orld and o~rving it all and making hi> tom· ment and therch) lc•ching. Forgive me for mentioning tlut in these l•st yea11 I '"' <specially touched b) the prai1e he directed to my-.elf, wlrich wa> given out of no knowledge 011 his part of rn) ju>t dt>erls, b11t out of, first, the pure, oprion conccptio11 that there were things proper for a dean to be doing here, nnd out of. second, the purely gencrou< ni>UIIIJItion thnt I w:rs pcrhnps doin~ some of tho>e thing\ rnthcr thnn other ones I w:JS grateful to hmr for hl' not "anling to know the grubb), embarrnssing det:nl<, and gr•teful, too. for his gcnllcmanlinc:ss and generosil) and un£ailnrg "·it. Ford had a great spirit II \\01.1 clearl• >Onrewhal difficult for him at the last. U.<ing his walker he made it to the eoifee shop almost every day this past summor, till the shop dosed on August II. Ho did for hiomelf -.hal Ire ••peeled others to do for themselves, to excrcose n brt of self-d iscoplnrc ami to hn•• e n bit of courage. And so we ;htlll ld We , lurll mr;, his famil· inr figure. And we shall not forget. ""> CLASS NOTES 1938 R. Cmap INm. pu.Jaw, Fft'dmd tMd J Cornmum-" or h.uNncu t.r. )On, \fid111C'I C;.11t'lh l'1ndlt'll11le Rltndulph- R:tcl l.o~l:c ), "''+n brim cmc mund1 alttt lite rct•ci,'t'd, ht'r lnv.•de-er« In 19'"0 K!i> •rttJ Botbcrtd lloclmart '66 nude .- trip Ct:~Ut'l\. b.u bern J.~ pointed 10 the 'lttucul P4JKI (I( Arbil'"'tM of the Arnmc.tn Arbur.rlitm -\~'OLLibl:ln. Crc:wp lw btm • mtmbd o( lhc Ct»nlnuauh col~ &cu1:tv wncc 1'168. and hold• I~ dc:c= ollum llodm IJom t~ Um\'t:Dil\ uf \1.-u~Uncl•.n •dl .;~., the de~ o( ~LHttt of Uas from C"..cmgcw.n Ullt\l.':nif) Htm..lrs hu hnmt> In Snuthbuq. \ld. lfol7 Archtr /oun h.at rclmnt>tl tu Nortb O.t.lot'.. Stile Unh'e'nit>' ;tftt:t .. )Qf) lr.t\'C' OlbKniX iu uccupv the John F. C\lorrhon Chnlt uf Military His-tory at the: CommnnJ lltld Ccnet.11 Staff Cc,U t~t. F'ort LtowC!Il~~o t th , lr\.111 Sinct 1%8 An lin has ~en al Nnrth Daknt;, St;JtC, v.hu-c: he it 110\, p!Of(;))ollf or hiktmy ~lid tit;& II of d.r Colle-t;e llum.:mdit\ and Soc:t;JI Sc:n:ucc:• or or 1955 H1110/d &un left lm ph.dKJon .11 \huic Uartd"ot rJ tbt (rae r.. ) rtull...rmon;c • .and hn ...,.unu.:d. ut'tl ~tnturr· affiJuJ'-~ ~1tb 1hc Coil~ of ~ m Ck u f Jh n Ill Ht: too ttl J~p;.u 011 iupe:nwm: the fomuhnn ft( 11 rM:Wo \\IIJplkln) .tnd c:Mmhe-r ffft"hn.JQ-C11UIII) ~ lpopuJ.abun 6)0.0001- 1!166 \hc1 :t numl~~t"'f o( )COin.~.., bu.nte» m;,nao=r :.nd luchrt Jl lht O.al-..IJUd Sc-~ in ~lccpNc. S Y CAmtopAtT I hiJ,hn n "'" busillC'SS nunSt.atc:n hl.and \t".kfan\ (ChnJ holch au M S drgrr:c m lnChl~trulm.tn.:.gunc:rrt &om Uwon • • .11 c..tln:c 1968 Duvtd /ohnJOtt wtlh the United St.ttn fftnmmc:nl 111 RJhttllfln; on a prnh;~bun offih n~ \I.Ofllll.l cer. 196H-Sanla F• tiJ..t lm v.ifc. loa. blnh on june 26th lu Jan Weslt~· .B:dd"'·m. then fint Yuun; lan "ctght'il in o~l 111m: poundJ, Brott D.oldnw ~llttu utte.:() g;w~ foul t~u•u~, Rtnc.c \~.till\ fur Aunt \tundcl Cnunl) r\1d J r~ July U\U~). o~nd the,. raadt at 121 Cnnlt'\ Dmc. \ttu..;polt\ 21-t{}l, 'f.hont lOI ~61.;)71, Sruu; ut"'oa ollll S..nt.1 Fe- 'o d ~rd" thr olfr• ft) u·.u h lun1 fhru T.....,. C K«m. \1 0. b.. rU>I fonuhcd in J r.-,..\'C".U fCK".UCh fclla."lhlp In palutnc ro:plr.ltoc"y ph\'tOIOC'- at the Ho.piiJI lot Stel Ch1ldrro tn Tomntn. Ont l ~ .. )IIU nl~r \1 0 •.._ bn •01'- "~ 1U \c.ttr.lo~tun t11ll\(k mputtk: to btcrc.ual m.pu~ton lo.ich ) Upccb o( lu~ "'otl. ha,c b«n pcC1C"ntcd ot SC\Cr.ll mccllnC'. 11nrl hC' h.1~ pn:p;tml m<~m&nph 1!157 lhg p;t\t )'~IU \V r>ouglcu \\ li'tr. M. D .. wn1 m:~de" Fclluw urthl Amerl~n Pm:hl:t.tric l\J- pomhncnt •It l.tnHllllll pro(C\SOI or p«<l;)IUCf at the Uui''C!n.it) u{ Suut!lt·ut C.-llfutiiM School of Medicine i• lnclmiC'fl or Dunn~: ttl!Ci Jtion for publlc.&liou lie b no" dl Childrt'ru llospibl in l.o1 Aogt"ln, ftn the (;a("ulf) nf thr Otnuon of N't"orutulut;> and Rt,ptf.ttut) OociUO. Au llp-- 1958 \ nott> rnnn llmma• S Yoon tnf'um,, u" !lw he is ..t.ll \loculme ... S1X'Jti.,l A»isllnl tu the Spakt of the Korean ~111nn•l \urmhl) on lntcrP.trl&alrK"nUr\ -\fUin.. t %9-S.nta •·· Vt.l the ~:mt:t Fe ,..,IUJ)m I,.'Qtttl"\ ucv.~ of C;apt Curlto, Snncwtf' JIMl lu\ "'ft. 1\c~:.::n f,\fflUC'!t) s- J 11H~ Sc.-\cunca )t_,\~; II\\.'1Jill \diUli~ , I'Uil:c), fm ~ \at. tmtJ <nuu~tlt. C,tlsou "'"· 1tu1 the\ nn Jon~ fttl ~~~ .thC'tn frow o1 difftrC'OI pbnd TIIt"- 196' K") lttln.lol/>h ltlh u• dut Jhc ts ' " ;U:tomc:,. b .. t.On. u dl\..wcrd fwrn l.nc a..d. ku daa.nP hn ru:mt tu Nry ~nd.JpJ..&.d :md tl aorb"3 in lhr: \hthqpn Sl;~tt fMcfnmmt 10 hulth L... and poiIC)" and Stnkt'1 •nt~ahon. SI\C' rcccncd ~r b'A ckgrcc fltt~n C"..rl•f!i::lt~n Uni\coth" m IQ':'i, ouKI 'l'<l.S ~dmnttd t•~ tltt t\hdta~n Bat tn 19ii. llrr .-,lholrt ~n tntc-rprcto. ;y,.J lawt.c )..,,~ bco• J~bk 10 tr.t\d_ Lucch the- \4tathc-m com and ct"llf:ttl \n;~tulu ~til to bt \l\ttcd u hO", to .-h&eh ~ lah loot. fonurd C.uhon'• romm<nb :~bout dx tc.unln .ttt •uuh fl"'''lu~: on \crbJhm. ·r~ ,\mc:nc.t cffiutllt') t• tlllpoll!lnf In Twl:f) h<npt t.tl.-h ..-. tnlJH'IIIJnl I url.n· ,..,. .. cut mitT wtth Utlc.' (tXrl Ill tltC' mud o( ll~oe \ill.t~ .md thr OlhetOU b.l\T k'..n~ lllll!llllhng rnr httth or lh • t 9711-Santa Yt In .a mtd·"\tttntnC'I kttn to \"rcc PresHic-nt J 8 \uh. Tont llot"'' ' mo~lt:t. .a-.t..tmttT~t •h1ch f"C'nct'b the feelinJ o( m.an) o( uu1 rJUn-~u..tc- o~lumni -n\C' bit" of dte \oehvol ""''Jf'tn .a '~e-el pLum ID) mand, ..1nd thouch b.tc ;alw K't':IW lo dttrtt tl...t I mTQm ~ro~ttd, I ,1111 C'r•tc-rum hope:\ .md &n- dur I lll.l~ ..., )On~ ruiUIC timr be Kjofncd '" rh~ """huul; lhc gt\11:'1 o( the folio v..u An xtuac out o( OM ur UlO\e .bnb:uo and " lokn of fututc- hoJ)C'l '" ('I um h.1d '5Cfll ;a ~:iff to tbo.o. .md be- of kf\1\"t" I and a1ll Wt~ud both cmcmhfa ll.uold rcc:cnd) n:tunm! (rom .a fhr·•«l '"""" conduchng trip in Europt. "'lth I\'~ wntcrb m PoUod ~and 11 !i1t· conctrt tour thr: Sp.lrtf\h C;anal') blmd:s With the S)Jllphony Orthcihil ur ... , r ••llll.;U+ the !lctdcl.lli)l of •• dbcl hueL n.c tcm:iuu\ lhull Cfe:Jtt'd h;nc II('('U •uffKttfll lmL•h rht C.rll<¥<-1 P 1 19'71-Samla f ' t /c-nnr c.,,m t'ntl II• htr 11tV. ;te.ldrt.., hl Fne-l!lllll, 1md t.t\\ lh.tl \IUt't 19-1 the: liM \\·mlt"d In K(ljll C::S.t.fot Otll .111d 111 \l.nl.t then "' C".cn1.un) ~uJ S~AiUctlllud. amJ. fo1 the- pti).t \(";11, In Fn:g-. bnd She ~~orldi lhJI ~ he hnpe' to be h.:ld; m tf.te LlnUC"d State! hl Jfhll 1972 \"rrltorrtnq \Ult\.."' llul he h 11~ qn;alif'W to \Uptl\tK IlK" tf,llflillt. rn.;ainlcn.antt.,. M1d opn;~hmt nf ' "lhtturmC" 1nKk.1r PfOPUh.lon pLtd. "''*J i• tntollnl an tf~e Suhm.1rmc Ofl'~«t \d\;lllttd C.Mif'oc -'' lht ,...,. lut.Jon, Conn., \ubrruntk b.t~ \\hen fim.J.c.l, .thuur die' t>ttd o£ ~~~ \t;Jf, lhnJt •Ill 10111 lite" U S S Lapan honac·porkd m 'ur~JI~. ,... lie- ttpartt il rettnl t.:tl~ ~~<llh \unc- tC:Icrm) CruJr -b. ,hC" lc--.JchC'I htt,inc>~ mhi«h In 11 Ctthullc 1.1111'1 't'hwl lit P..aht\cnl. Md • II~.U the: ,,1\JI \n Sl.llton whcrt' her lul,hand. Rf)•lnt -1, llh. umlho.tugmcJ JUO)>., d1or !lltc:t,,ft, frrl'm>· Whlpp/11, luuutl fur ;I \I~Jt !.'llh h,, rllln· eee. \hamfl:o I"'.1'11L1. ·• Jo~J.Mttt;e cou~tt mg.auid., wnt<'t th;~t h<" '' 11111 wori:m't fur till' O.iti-tcht \Juhutl L1f~ hi\Ufilllll Cu. 111 I dl\O, JUincrPJik ib :11 lr.ln\blot llr, ut.uu ltohiJ) h nt· " cytlmg tu thc• nuruntml\ ot the bC'JLh lJ Oa"n f. 1972-Srrnta r. \ cnnd kr~rt fmm I "1~ Su"'" FCM1 Dtlt~C~t tdh lu \ctd.Ufl.: OIJI. U\ tfut \Ill: n.'1;t.:nd • &JoulJac•UUfOI 8 S. drQtt in ~~cfM)iOC\ JIMI nur•lll( tn )41':"/t t~a: l\., fJ'}chr.Wle fl:'\.). .md o ..~lttt.,lm, \lhhn l"rt J Praho.ren.au l'heoJocK-.11 Scmarun to ~~ ., M~cr or O.,,mn m 19,11. lkr tl.mahtc•, '\n~thur. unofhc- )C'.In old Suun .md Sttplr.rn IMum .1rc d ... \Or«d. he ;~ntl h11 tin "1ft- f-".lluhcdt Rcll, Ihe In :1 ,m;all commune m \\Oh:-111 C.uud.t • .lttd 1.1rc O· ckvtt L'i �The College I1C'C1tnl an ..dd1tjon In thtu f,Ullll) s.oon, v.c: undn,l.md S fkbmt~ll ~ctu{mon, ul oue hmc n 'ew Yark rl\lllUu hurn. i,) nO"' II stod.hw).('l In the S!1Pt2 Fe office of \fc.rnU, trnch, l'lc:rcc:, Fenner aud Smith. Ou Sml(b), .-\ug:ult 21. ,J~t· W.t'l the tuhjttt of ot lcng,h) profile by lo;.irk l.4dcndcHf in the S.111t;~ h \'N Mmm.n l)c.bor.~h hl.a the oltlllmpl,c-rc 111 Slnb 1-'e. .-+wac )he can -.mk ciO'('I\ .tnd ~non­ .llh '"'" bn cltcnb.. -\Ia .oldn~ 111\C\ICJI kntlf b ton-.r \OR. ,_he CXJftlpltkd il •U--rtKJollth tr.nui~ counc 111 the ~eo.· l'mk offK'C' of \kmll. l.mcl1 111 ruepoU.UIOu ftn lu:r ptoml powhon Sht bdte\o tl•c:te ,,_a ckr.mte pbct' fur \\"Uincn ln het bu,incu, but. ,he •l~'t. '"'You·,_'(' 1;01 tube •tmnc: '"II mmt Cattn StC'\c pduatrd from 'C\'o York lJm,·cmt) Sehoul ur Mnllc-lnc:, and wall mtem u1 mh:rn.:al medacme 111 NYU Mr<hc;~l CtMt-r lk1• o( luck to the Or,. Stlllh 1973-Sanll f< .,. \ftcltuft \hmp.m .md hh ~1k ln""C" 10 l'hibdd· phU. when ~lllc tcxhn ill lhc friencb Selcc;t School Plulo D1bhlr h!l\" pmcd tb£! oral n.:am•naiiOm for thc ..oretcn SC"";«. ~Ltc.l u tm the "'·:llttnt lfo;t fot ('.Ill up lli75-Sanll t·• t\l.luut 11 yc:ar ar:o Ci.,~Jit. Mlnolt ld1 AllmQUCt4Ut" fo, S.tn f."rQnCI1eo. ~·here- hn lir,t tOI, 'A:t'4 11 lt.mpo'•"' one ColumhQ RC'C\l"b One thine led to 11uothcr, 3nd 1hc- Cound hmc.lf" pcmuncm C'm· pf011cc Rce-r:nrl~ 1hc- •.ou promoccd 10 fidd mer· cluudtUT for the C'OntJU"' m California .,1], Otl.ea nr:..h·'ILC'Cb .2rc C'AJrol V CAlhoun .,,..,. l. •lw wen m~med on June 1976 lcJtn ,.. Hutoet:A: i, now .. lttidcut or ChllUI· theu Lnt n.uua. Vrrgmtd Md\rm11 (now 1-:w, Vrrgmta Pron•J p.u;n. 111., \\here be te:acha m the ~hmrc,\Ori cnmmce them (c henll) llut '1'011 1Ut tllpJble: h)· WOJb fu1 tht 1 1 11~tlnh·Ltlli:U:U~t' 11C:W'ir'o1JlC'1 •fht ~lt uul lie repnrho th.:ll Slrp/!tn Whllr Sift h o1 hC'utl: luowlecl~,,ble ;and co111i~cul Ap11.1K11Ih l'-nlklltm Po.l .IJ 1 COJ)Y editor, and p:lrt•timc: for 11 srudcnl <~I the Uuh·c:nitr or Jtli uor~ \he hendr meets thc.w tlilc!llt ,.,drmmhly l'>ovid Cit'lfll'nl k:t"t'p'lo m in(om1cd 11t.111 he v. illlic:l.tMC:I She olttc:nch 0\·t hour\ or llc:hrc'4 c:l.t\\ " 11nd hoP'"' to lltttnd ,choolln Jerusalc:ut wlu:u IUJ1.in; lrll fird tnp to Europe: lhlt Co~ll, olll(l hopt1 lll73 111 ttrtcr Cfildu.llt' worL upon In, rdum. firri tn "lac bccumo pror.ckut In the l;angu..gt f"hc monum:; nud on an fltht'r" 1st gloom\ 'tuth Llhn, French. ;and Cc-wuu. o~twl tltc:n tu \htndl\' ~~ .1 uocc frcttu ~tc:ltol•t Piltron~. tr-.amk-r mlo compaatr.~ lrkr-..tlurc. lli7'-Sanlll'e ]fill lludu "-nfd l in ~ItKin to thc •~\ .ahuul \1 D.• b.:in&i~ m up to eLk tH1 hJ• a.huhC' He AIW74nJro \ ftJuw1 -.:nta dut br: n. hx\ in thtas In • ~w )'Qt tl pt.,chulnc: mtdcnr, .1.1 tht hu nt•~• th:d br •-as not ,.~dm fi..lio~ 1 ~ from r..n •• -·~'" he rC'ttncd .his t....xnc. th pllC'C" tn the •-ottd of totrnulmu, •ncJ dut he •nd Ut11\Wit\ of '-ottla C:.rvliiY 'rtt 'ummn M ~it ftout dtc Scnhormt •htlc •orlu.e ..1. \fanoq .ate nM;ng to l"hllat.. r~ . ..,fw::te I.e ••11 \llrt ~nothn rcsidnr• m tntcnulm«flltnk' 011 ~ Cuohn:. Uni,cnth ()., the 291t• of (ktobtt '\icl mo-.t full tame: .n o1 ~fet.:att ll1ld rtttptn:.unJ m • lliC'" l:r• 1fndcnt ..t Southm1 ~ldhutlhl Unhcntt) Fr-tue:h pri\".1lc" \C'COrttJ.o~n !14;..1tuOI lie plam nat to .uu! I "-o11'l~) "'111 lte murncd . lht it dncribcd :n ll ·•uon·St JohnnJe !Jut 11 (~&ul.a.\IIC penon dud)· tn (:Cnnilll), Ilim adding :1 (ourlh bru;umar 1976-Sanla Fe to hi.s tepertolte lhh may lead, he tlunl.,, 10 the uuneth~len" br hr r mtrndN Mr. Ault Ius $Cnt on from the "''nlcm eo~mpm a lmgm,rtt, '"'lhc( th.m hi\ prc:sent Add of COtforc: thcy'rt dl!OU~tll. the rucmbtts chi' lield lctiCI from RJc/wnJ LiBhlhum. RJd " "been nllhe phDusuph) cl:au ma~ sd some lOll u:wrd rm the: n umber Unn""t:nit)' af Colo~do thi.s tunuucr. Cinitlainc up C111C'nn& onr field e:udcnu~ rc-.1 on btJo,~ lntmrluctmy counes In rm.them.ll..la, gncl at thrs lll75 T.P.} ptttt\1 aho"ld be "ell into v.lut he km'ttl "re;al"' f'rntn \ft/WQ .\latthn-, o1 -.cll!on-.c oott rnc.;~f, Launs BmJ&mun t .1 puhlit hc-.a.lth nur:sc •1th p;aJuatc •mL 11-lc- c.unf'tosKs dut hiS ptU )til V.Al noi onl\' Uut tilt- 3nJ St~ ~/u .11c numcd. but the Viuttnc "-'unc ~n.r:e or Vorl HI V.('l dc'uttd Llrrely to findinc oul h...- ~tK mahes tNt tOO cxh r~ hon-e .;m \t D decree \ \lanhattm JNJthtmaha ;U a b~ um'-c."~'•'>~ kmnc ron-~udu•tc uf Ohio SUk Uuntrttt\ Colkcc' ·'"""'" y CooJo, ....J fiiiUh -6 ~rtucrcd tlut hurdl~ he Wl)"l. hr- •• dutuc ..,tfJ ;,~nd \tt!dtcmc. \ld.tna 11, Of toOO ••II he-, on •n rnk:m· "'nc: munal 111 l..t'IH\hmc, & .• ou )ul~ !nd (~ cnto)'"C hts Rudin. ) ~Jup m pcdi:l~ 2t '\ev. nu-l Uu,,-cn.tf\ \1ecbal ' 1'1"61 Al.o H.t \h. Auh orne J teport (rom Clf'ndtt Holloday, l«ttbry Cur lhn cbu She eotupletc:d hcl fir<l )<011 o( lt1Khing •I lhc Cru•dr School In Okblmm11 City in June. :;ru cxpc:ric:rwe ~h r found both t1tlflne :and ttlulw.tlng. She ~nl :alonf: the (ollowlug i n(omutiun on some o( her ellol\.\tiiOIIt:s: Milt M«Donn/J l:nl Y"'' <Omplcrcd • 1.000Two openings \\ill ~ created for \lumni Repr=nt1tivc' on the Board of milc biqck trip o'·cr the- C:uc.td'- and l'cton Visitors and Ctwcmon In the <pring of 1978. as /amn H f'ram• '50 and mountain ,..,l~CS~ In the prOttM hr ,."'ted Dun R.oJJ, ~~ on hb ~Ionian.~ bm• O.n '-' doinc \V.Uinm IV. Simmon1 "-18 come to the end of thcit currcnl th=-~r !emu. •ell .md tnJOYtng his •""Ork m ~ulhu.: Mile Both alumn1 arc eligible for rrdcction, and have ind•rntc:d a willingne>o to hoped lo wn .....t lhK fill on •• \l Ed rktt« sen-e •gain if elected. Barbara Slv~r& is Jqidur !be C1adu.>k I•••· Pdu/ Rcw-n""'- ' 4 !Gtlt~ l.JCJ~h Jtt lrtllllllttC w,: .,n or or or or 'ew: ,....,fur. ); or ATIENTION ALL ALUMNT: CALL FOR NOMINATTONS The dircctor1 of the Alunnu Association, as rcqui1ed b' both the Association By-Laws and the Pohly of the College. have been requestc:d to nominate al least one candidate for each of lhe forthcoming vacancies. In addition. nominahom be made by written petition of~~ least th 1rty 111cmbcrs of the Associalion, ; ubmittecl to nw nl lhe ,\lumni Office in Annapolis. As a reminder, any potential candidate must give prior permission to lm' c her ur hi< name placed in nominatio n. All nominations, \\hellier b) the directors or hy petition, must be in mr hands no Iuter than ~mMr I. 19n. The announct:mcnt of the slate of nommces will be carn<-d in t.h c Janu"') issue of this moga1ine. "'"l' Thomas Parrnn. Jr. Dirtetor of Alumnt Activitict 1 6 or tutc •r'ld I)C:31C) R:$Nkn.t on lhc S.ntJ ...c a:rnpu""' Pablo Collim ·~• .scheduled to commence U\ad1e:s ~~ the LYI!don 8 Juhmun Sc:hool o( PubltcAfruln Jrr Austin, Tex.. tlll.s Call. lll77 Anrt 8rowmng, ur:wl)'..oclextrd ~c:cret.try of this ebu. hopa dut WI ib memben "'ill kttp in touch wtth her She: lh"'C'J :.t J6Z South llth Strt"Ct, SaJt Lalc C.t), Ut 84t01. Tt<l Butir. hit PA;/o ();bbl< C'« I~Sk lw <ompl<tcd !be l'ocngn S.mtt oab, ""' lropn hi, •"J•I Cor CJU up it not aoo lone.. £newt IAmrr ;and DaliJ Cia• -6 •>cK rn.2mcd aftt't her crMtutinn thi:s \-qr, iJnd Jtc hnnc in Arf,ngton, Va �October, 1977 Robert Maynard Hutchins by StringfeUow Barr When I first met Bob Hutchim . I thought he wns nn Horatio :\lgct hero From Brooklyn, cheeky, often in bad taste, witty to be sure, but ccrtainlv not my kind of boy at all. Scott Auchanan, who was uo toady. welcomed him to the Univet~il) uf Virginia, wltcrc Scott and I were botb tt"nching at that lime. Scott s~w to it that I met Bob, nncl told llll" storic.:s ;]bout him that made 111) picture o him n r bit wobbly. l.1ter he made Bob bd ic"c I wa> really not as stuff\· a lJ Va. boy·" I Jppearcd to be. But hnnall llk.:<l 1110~t of l·h rtcltitb' assault. on undcrgradlla lc curricula i11 AJnt·Tican unht-rsitio_ Before lonJ;, Hutcltill>. 11 ho lmd become President of the Uni\'er<itv nf Ch1cago, waut<.·<.l Budumn n and me to 1 oin Mortiincr Adler nnd Rtch"'d ~ lcf..:ctm ns members of a committee on the liberal art' at C hicag<>. t\Aet a rear at Chicago Buclmnnn and I wm t to :\nnapolis. he to bt· Dt·an and I to he: Presitk·nt nf St. )<lim\. I110nc:nliJI tnc:mbe" of the: St. John's Board had \c:cn tlmt the egg 11e were hatching at Chlcasu c<111ld t•nnhk St. )uhn's, lh< thi rd ul~csl t'ollcgc in Lhc country. lo rcgnin 1l:s original function. what for Cl'11• turic:s in Europe had been n 'tudy of the seven libcrn l arts. expressed in thl tnvium and quad rivium. Those Board members were only u fr" . We necdc·cl u rc-organjzation uf the Boord. I mana~cd to get them to elect Hutchim as a mcmb<r. then to relieve our chn itmnn: then to elect Hutchin> '" ehuirmnn. The fnd tlml the: hcnd of n maior univcr.ity was will ing to hcud our Bonrd Ill)'<· ti6ed utany Aunapolihut> but ga<'~ the niOr<' "Ueuti\'c of them the feeling that our "'\ic" l'rngram" " "' infmiug life into a college that was very old and had seemed to he dy· ing. Hutchins could nul devote more than n few months to St. John's. but he got It around a perilous curve in its relarion to Annapolis. Maryland, and o good many other places too. I ncvet asked Bob H.. tchin> in lntc• life ru>l why he let w. JCademic lepers to11ch his clothing. though both Buchomut .md I sa" a good deal of hill in hb l11 ter year> at the Center for the Study of Democratic lnsti tutiotr> in Santa Barbara . I su.<pcct he <enscJ that little St. John's "'"' daring to c-11 other "colleges of liberal arts" back From the • elective system that llarvard had led them In ond into the c:ttitemcnt of li"ing. not with textbooks of dubious value md in curiously unrelated >ubtcds. but with what great -mn<k had wntten fmn1 the Grech to tht· prc·scnl century. \t the Center Bub Hutchins tried. in effect. to set up o . ' John'~ scminnr for the: Cc:uh:r !lbff ;md p:rrticip:tntli in - -ted from outside. '111e book; cited \\ere oftc11 not "great .h*. but they did shed light on important problem> - sometimes dangerous pruhlems. '11>c discu~~ion \\JS nut o> free as in a St. John's >cminar. The participunb lwd to a> k to spcttk. What tht·y had read in con> man nns rarely grcul. m el) of earlier times, though often timely. But Bob Hutchins' chainnanshtp was typ1cnl, even towards the: encl. m ~~~ pn;cis1 his goud humor, and hh. 0n, tt'al desire lo lead us into an open discussion. When there were politic;J) dist1usiom he \\'a\ not intcrc.~tcd in who might ~et dr:ded to office hut in what pmhlcn" he mighl lace if he got elected and \\hal prohlcm< the voter\< who nould chOO>< him might face. Buchanan ,.t on llutchins' right at the head of the ~minor l.thle and t'Ontinucd to dn >O untilshortl) hcforc his dcJth in Santa Ba rbara in 1969. I am ccrtnn that Hutchins. who could follow ao intricnte urgumcut n.s few men could, ~orcly massed him. Now f lutchim is gunt:. \Vb31 manne-r of man \\o1S H J lt1 tchin~? The: nns'"··r is ob not ,;mple. He hod n hrlll innt nnd cl ive"IOed n1 ind He humorum. clcar-ht'lldcd, lugicnl, courteous, loral. lie was amhitiou>. I rc<nll tltnt he uncc thought 11111 lllll) uf nu active polilicnl life, but of runuiug fur Prt·sident of tl1c Un ited Stalt>. Allll he might ha<·c hccn hn rd to slop. I would not have called hun eloq uent. But his public uttcr:anccs shU Cc.l his dcnr·beacledness. his trainin~ in lnw. \\ ;and his t:II J OYIUL'nt of compdiho n. Luddl)· for ttim :mel his friends. he had an ~:.·\ceiiL'nt ~cnw o f hum(n . Hutchi1h. unlik(: nu.,..t proft:~!\ors l h:-~,·c knuwn , "-:~~ in•Linctivcll• a teacher \\'hile Prc~idcul of the UniH•r>it) 11f Chicago It lrled. God know•. tu inlcrc.<l the Etculty in the lihcrnl arb implied i11 th< "Ba<hcl"r of ,\rl\" ucgrcc, rather thnn in fncts. It '"" rough going. lie happened to >c:e a dmwi11g in Tltc Ncu Yorker with the eoptiou: "All he knows is facts." lie asked the artist. James Thurlx:r, whether he would sell lum the ongu>nl for his office. 11mrber replied thnl he could not hu)' it. hut thnt it wn< • Iready on the ""Y to him :lS ,1 gift. Hutchin> i mmcdi:~td)' framed it, and plneed it m1 the office \\ ,til where it cuuld be seen by :I ll)' of lite facullj who came ln 1-lc suggc•ted to me thnt must uf the f>Jcull)· whu came in hh uffiec got illl· point. Nfany of his enemies Jccused him of being u •mrtrt aleck. At least he was not n dull aleck. Hc wns serious in his purposes. hut never solemn about hO to achieve \\ them . When he tnught ht< colleagues, his parables tended to he- jest~, :l) if he kne\\ that j..:~t~ ~<.:em kinder thr Iaring m do1 the lall'. And he h:td long ago rliscovered that the m dull nc" of conv.:,.,tliuu. or uf n plntform b-ptcch. or t\'CII of J das~-ruum k·ctun.·, is no guarnnkt: o f intellectual con· "'ll li �leul So he rcmaiucd )'Oung uutU hi> ucnth. I never saw him mistake stuffine;s for dignity. When I sa" ill the New York ·rimtf thai death had fi. nail)·come to Rob llutchins. I feh • ccrbin relief for him. ·n,e Center for th• Stud) of Democrdht Institutions was no longer on lui ,huulders, and the shoulders for some lime just barcl) sa,ed the dream. llonr; lalct, I >loud on th,· wc.<1crn slope of my l•wn willr my l~,bmdor retriever. Cri{C au l.ull, at my 'ide, when I suddenI) fell tire full force of Lh~ Timrs llC\\S. I rcali•ed that never in thi; life "uuld I sec him ugain. To amnemcnl, I rcaliud I loved him. loved him for what he had clone for hi\ gcncmtiou and also for the fewer thinp he had tritd. hut miled. to do. 'l11cu I was 'lnietl) <Obbing. Ca{t looktd up at my contorlcd f•cc in terror. looled again. then ran to g<t a neighbor to help me I wish that all Ill) neighbors could fed the '"cuurn hi\ death has C"Juscd and could comprehend the command "Lo,•e lh) nctghhor as thyself." All of them could then know what a loveless. cn1cl sucicly they have been absentmindedly asking for. B Hntchi11> wos n man, and munlrolld is hord to oh •chicvc in a rat race. 10)' ..----In M~moriam - - - - . . . , Frcuc;ll, v.n;l of J ul) Its, 190~ H uv..ud 1077. I'lOS-Charles II Schlllicr. Srr,..,, ~ ld . June 2 1 9~i. 9. IOJU-C~org~ F Rulhu:an. -\nn;apoli,, \ld . )uh 11. I919H- O. 110) Smdh, )un< !D l<r" . IQI- -BnE- Ccn \\ Clncl H:~ll. ~ngu51 IH. 19T' 19ll-Ju$Cph E.. IHl\'ln~r. Hagrrttown, ~td .• June 8, 1977. 19N-Colem.1n Md.. Julr H. 19n ~·1 Antkrmn. B:ahunorL·, 1925-J ohn I) Wllrficld. Pnncc Md • Au~t 10, 19·· Fr~dcnck. 19!+-C.ul C . \I.XC:.rtcc, lktl.....b. \ld . ?9. I cr- ~IIC"" hculh. -Ford ~ RllJl\U , .\mupoh~ Md. Scprcmhcr 16. (Q-; Dr fmc1 1h F Wcts~Lopr. llorhe..JJ, ~!d.. )uh !1. 197' 110>0. 1941 1 The College St. John\ College Annapolis, Mar:•land 21404 Second-cia'~ 1\nn apolt~. posl.u,:c paitl al ,\ larvl;md, ~nd ~~ m!d iliunal m:u li ng office:.. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollegemagazine Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 17 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of College Relations Title A name given to the resource The College, October 1977 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1977-10 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource von Oppen, Beate Ruhm Parran, Jr., Thomas Dunham, William B. Oosterhout, Barbara Brunner Wyatt, E. Malcolm Zuckerman, Elliott Weigle, Richard D. Description An account of the resource Volume XXIX, Number 3 of The College, featuring the Report of the President 1976-1977. Published in October 1977. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0010-0862 The_College_Vol_29_No_3_1977 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf President's Report Presidents The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/cdb0e6ec753cfced4013695e53366121.pdf 0a68f1a944d7ceeab5787d96838aa96c PDF Text Text f/L~ THE COLLEGE ISSN 0010-0862 St. John's College • Annapolis, Maryland- Santa Fe, New Mexico January 1978 �THE COLLEGE Vol. XXIX January, 1978 Number 4 Editor's Note ON THE COVER: Charles C. Post '74 captured the bell tower of McDowell Hall in a mood appropriate to the winter season. Editor: Beale Ruhm von Oppen Managing Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr. Editorial Advisory Board: William B. Dunham, Barbara Brunner Oosterhout '55, E. Malcolm Wyatt, Elliott Zuckerman. THE COLLEGE rs published by the Office of College Relations, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404, Richard D. Weigle, President, William B. Dunham, Vice President. · Published four times a year, in January, April, July, and October. Second class postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland, and at other mailing places. Last summer Tom Parran, our indefatigable managing editor, wrote a memorandum on the periodic college publications, this journal and The Reporter. In his other capacity as director of alumni activities he had come to the conclusion, after representations from William W. Simmons '48, president of the Alumni Association, and various other communications, that The College in its present, hybrid, form does not and cannot give enough attention to news or stories about alumni. The other half of the hybrid was not fully itself either, having to meet a quarterly schedule with texts of lectures, articles, poems, or translations~which might or might not be available m sufficient quantity and quality. We had had much praise and many requests for back numbers, sometimes from quite unexpected quarters, but there had also been puzzled enquiries from people who wondered why they were getting our alumni magazine. A separation of the two halves seemed indicated and is about to take place. This issue is the last in the old format. At a special publications meeting held on the Annapolis campus on 2 5 September 1977 representatives of both campuses and Mr. Simmons found themselves in agreement on the following points: (I) that increased publicity about alumni and their activities is desirable; (2) that the magazine of the college should be limited in content to material which reflects the intellectual life of the college; (3) that The Reporter is the proper vehicle for news items and other dated material and alumni notes and should expand its coverage of the alumni; (4) alumni of the Santa Fe campus should be more adequately represented in print. It was therefore decided that The Reporter was to expand in size and increase in frequency, from five to seven issues per year, two of them done by and for Santa Fe. The first Reporter of the new type will probably be published by Santa Fe in May. (Continued inside back cover) IN THE JANUARY ISSUE: On the Imagination, by Eva Brann Picture credits: Cover, Charles C. Post '74; pp. 12-17, Lester Miller, courtesy of Historic Richmond Foundation; p. 25, State of Maryland, Tom Parran '42; p. 27, Abingdon Press. A Preservationist Looks at Housing, by Michael W. Gold '61 ............................... 12 An Open Letter to St. John's Alumni, by William M. Goldsmith '45 Campus-Alumni News .......................... 18 .................................. 25 �ON THE IMAGINATION by Eva Brann Tonight I shall commit the deliberate indiscretion of trying to say what may be, all in all, unsayable. Let me, therefore, begin with a little disquisition on ineffability. First, there often exists an insuperable inner resistance to speech. We may declare something to be unspeakably terrible, or unmentionably shameful, or, again, unutterably beautiful or inexpressibly deep. W c do not mean that we have made a laborious effort to find the right words and have failed, but rather that we do not want to speak, that we do not want to rekindle or precipitate, tarnish or dissipate, amplify or diminish our inner experience by exposure. (Of course, there is also the trivial reluctance to find language, expressed in the routine adjectives "incredible" or "unbelievable" or "fantastic," which stems from mere indolence.) Second, and at the other extreme, it is conceivable that, as the very consequence of the most faithful and methodical pursuit of speech, it may come to its own end. For by speaking thoughtfully and searchingly it may be possible to talk oneself, as it were, to the very edge of the realm which speech intends, there to confront immediately that which speech is about-whereupon there would be only the silent passage into being. Third, the outer world, in its multifariousness, may outstrip speech, which is, for all its copiousness, inadequate to the infinity of appearances. Speech not only expresses and searches, it also describes, weaving itself around things in their inexhaustible variety and detail and failing for lack of world enough and time. For we live, as one of. Pascal's Thoughts observes (I, 72), in a double infinity between the Miss Brann delivered this lecture in Annapolis on November 18, 1977, and in Santa Fe on December 2, 1977. minute and the enormous, which makes our researches endless and our speech incomplete. I might add that the bulkiness of the most characteristic modern novels is the consequence of a strenuous effort to master the appearances in words. Fourth, it is barely possible that there arc experiences which are inherently private, ineradicably internal, ultimately unique, and hence incommunicable. And fifth and finally, I come to the kind of ineffability with which my discourse tonight may be afflicted. There may be a realm which solicits speech but never yields to it, not by reason of being ifself the object of speech or by being affected with infinity, but because it is the other of what is sayable, that which always absconds from speech. It is what Valery intends when he says: The beautiful perhaps demands the servile imitation of that which is indefinable in things. Only I shall not call it beauty but, more widely, appearance, or better, apparency, meaning precisely that in things which speech so often hopefully intends and always hopelessly misses: their extended, shapely, shining looks. I say "shining" not for effect, but to render the sense of our Greek word for the appearances, phenomena, that is to say, whatever comes to light, shines out. To put it briefly and simply: think of a picture and all that can be said about it. The words will be larger in scope than the image, but the image will not be contained in the words-that latter difference is appearance. Now we have a special capacity for entertaining pure appearances, and it is that to which I want to devote the evening. Our ability for consciously taking in sensation, for bring- �The College ing together our senses and our understanding, is technically called perception. We perceive "real" appearances, appearances in which some thing evidently appears, which have behind them some stuff that is there, externally at work. Attention to perception necessarily leads to its substrates, to things. But we also have a curious capacity for mere or pure appearance. Here strictly no thing appears, no immediate other source, no sensory stuff, no supporting substrate. This capacity has two names, one Greek, one Latin, and unlike "perception" these are not philosopher's terms. ThE:y arc fantasy and imagination. "Fantasy" is the noun from the Greek action verb phantiizo, which comes in turn from the verbal form of the same verb, phaino, to shine, whose passive yields the word phenOmenon. In sum, therefore, "phantasy" means "that which renders apparent," a faculty for bringing to light. "Imagination" on the other hand, is related to the Latin verb imitari, to imitate. The imagination is therefore a faculty for images, for likenesses of things. Taking both aspects together, then, it is·a capacity for appearances without "real" reference. I should note here that although perception is more frequently and more technically discussed, the imagination, too, in its most sober as well as its most splendid functions, has had its share of treatment. But not so the peculiar and perhaps somewhat private aspect of which I want to speak tonight. In the many writings on the imagination covering its laws and its magic, its bodily basis and its transcendent source, there are few, and those not easily found, which deal with that.* Now when engaged in the dubious and delicate business of expounding a recondite matter in public, the safe course is to delimit it as rigorously as possible. And so, I shall begin with a review of the ordinary, well recognized imagination. Not that there would be much profit in reciting to you the multitude of understandings that have been proposed: it has been regarded as a faculty, a function, a structure, a condition, an instrument, a mode, a power, a potency, a process, a treasury, a theatre, a place in the soul, an organ of the body. For these are, all of them, determined by the position which the imagination is assigned within the topology of the soul, and that is how I ought to begin. In all major accounts the imagination is an intermediate power, positioned somewhere between the outermost reception performed by the senses and the inmost work done by thought. Furthermore it is neither the lowest faculty (except * Brief Bibliography: Aristotle, On the Soul, Bk. III, 427 ff., on phantasia. Augustine, Confessions, Bk. X, on memory. Pico della Mirandola, On the Imagination. Jean Paul Richter, The Life of Quintus Fixlein, Ch. I, "On the Natural Magic of the Imagination". Hegel, Encyclopaedia, Philosophy of Spirit, 455 ff., "The Imagination". Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, Ch. XIII, "On the imagination, or esemplastic power". Ruskin, Modem Painters, Pt. III, Sc. II, Chs. II-IV, "Of Imagination: Associative, Penetrative, Contemplative". Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, Time Regained, Ch. III. Sartre, The Psychology of the Imagination. 2 for certain moralists for whom it is the source of evil imaginations) nor the highest (except for certain mystics for whom it is a theophantic power). Let me convey to you the range of these positions by sketching out their outer and inner limits, as it were. You will recognize them as derived from Plato and Kant respectively, but the provenance is not the point~the scheme is. On the other hand, it is not entirely insignificant that these positions are philosophically formulated. For the imagination is not a distinguishable power until the world begins to appear. But in the ever present and ever recurrent condition not implausibly called "pre-philosophical", the world docs not, properly speaking, appear to us at all; rather it is at hand for our use and absorbs us as we absorb it, just as in a warm embrace the human appearance is eclipsed in closeness. For the world to become phenomenal, we must tear ourselves away from it, and look and reflect. Therefore, I ought to begin where the philosophers have already been at work. First I must dispose of the slightly mad hyperbolic case proposed in all degrees of sophistication by people who place the imagination outside the soul altogether, in an effort to recapture the satisfying immediacy of prephilosophical existence. For them appearance is simply the outer shape or envelope of solid stuff, and the imagination is a bodily organ on which material things leave a negative imprint or trace of themselves. They mean to save the world from any possible imputation of unreality by making appearances perfectly inseparable from matter. What is absurd is that they choose just such non-bodies as negatives or traces to testify to the handy, plump solidity of things. The scheme itself lies all within the soul. It begins with the fact that when our senses are stopped the world disappears. We then conclude l. that something comes to us, is conveyed into us; and 2. that it comes through receptors, ducts, as it were, such as Augustine calls the "cinqueport" or "fivegates" of our body. What comes, insofar as it comes by the senses, is called sensation. But even as it comes it is taken in and taken up, judged to be mountain, man, or mouse, as the case may be. Usually this judgment seems simultaneous with the reception of the sensation, not only when there is an, instant recognition of something previously known, but when we know merely that a shaped "something" is present. (When I worked in the excavations in Athens, we had a catalogue classification called "little mysteries", namely recognized "somethings" which it was, however, a scholarly triumph to "identify" specifically.) Sometimes, to be sure, 'twixt sleep and wake, for instance, the judgment lags and we get an apprehension of mere sensation, a raw "manifold" as Kant would say. But usually we pronounce immediately, and such judged sensation, sensation met at the gates of the soul, is what Plato calls phantasia. For him phantasia is simply the noun for phafnetai, "it appears", namely the "mixture of sensation and judgment", or "the contact of sensation and understanding". (Sophist 264, Theaetetus 195.) Here imagination occurs at the interface of outside and inside, at the junction of soul and world. I pass quickly over Aristotle's most important intermediate �January, 1978 placing of the imagination, now well within the soul but still facing out. He denies that it is the event of judged sensation and declares it a special potency for receiving and holding sense objects but without their matter. The resulting "phantasms" represent the accommodation of the world to the soul; without them there can be no thought about things. (On the Soul 428, 432.) So finally I come to that view of the imagination which places it at the other extreme, in the very center and depth of the soul. It is still a mediating faculty insofar as it is the hidden common ground of the outer and inner faculties. To explain its position it is necessary once again to treat of the phenomena, now in Kant's Way. Kant, as you will remember, claims to be effecting a second Copernican revolution. Copernicus, having failed to "save the phenomena" when making the stars turn about the observer, tried turning the observer himself. So Kant, unable to become perfect master of the appearances when they were allowed to move the soul, had the soul itself make the motion: the appearances do not come to us but arise within us in our faculty for representing appearances or sights to "look at", our intuition. To be sure, some amorphous sensory stuff arrives from the outside, but it brings no informing news and is a mere occasion-we provide the shapes and schemes in which sensation and understanding are synthesized to make what Kant calls "real appearances", reality, the things as they represent themselves to us. ("Reality" is, after all, merely Latin for "thinghood".) When I say "we'' provide the schemata within which sensation is shaped and understood, I mean, or rather Kant says, that our faculty of imagination does this work. (Critique of Pure Reason B xvi, 180 ff.) And so the imagination is a faculty first for producing things and then for knowing them, a faculty for "real" recognition, the very world-making and world-knowing power. But as we all know, in the ordinary understanding the imagination is assigned no such tremendous function. Often the fantasy or imagination is thought of merely as a capacity for inner pictures, "another craftsman in our souls", or "a painter who . . . draws likenesses . . . in the soul", as Plato says; it is for him the source of what he calls the "phantastic" art, the art of making deceitful semblances, or as we say, "works of art." (Philebus 39, Sophist 2 35.) Kant, too, recognizes an imagination productive not in the sense of bringing together the faculties according to fixed "schemata" to form real appearances, but in sponsoring that free interplay between them which he regards as the source of art. Coleridge fixes this distinction when he writes: The IMAGINATION, then, I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception. . . . The secondary Imagination I consider as an echo of the former. . . . It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate; . . . to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead. The passage hints at an interesting circumstance, namely that the value placed on the secondary, re-creative, imagination in fact varies directly with the centrality of the primary imagination. As it turns out, its potency varies inversely. What I mean is that where the imagination is placed toward the outer regions of the soul, receiving appearances from the outside, the secondary or poetic imagination is represented as a mischief-making faculty of dissembling semblances, phantasms of a grade still lower than an at least scrupulous imitation of the inherently illusory appearances might produce. But who does not know the potency Plato accords the poetic imagination, particularly in using it to eclipse the enchantment of the world of appearance by means of myths of other worlds? Furthermore, the imagination, in painting the shapes of pleasures into the soul, engenders desire; accordingly in the Christian tradition the origin of "evil dispositions" is located there. Here the imagination is dangerous and potent. On the other hand, where the- primary imagination is itself the maker as well as the knower of the world, the poetic imagination is invariably highly, even anxiously, valued. For the first imagination makes a uniform, rule-governed, ordinary world, a mundane, not a cosmic order: That inanimate cold world allowed To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd, as a poet s'cornfully says. Therefore the power of a second, extraordinary creation, of introducing colorful singularities into a rule-ridden world is more than welcomed-it is nearly worshiped. But the more eagerly it is courted the less vigorous arc its products and its effects. Let me propose a reason, which has to do with the distribution of this power among us. The primary imagination (if it exists at all) is universal; all normal humans are capable of having real appearances. To be sure, its reflective cognitions, that is to say, the contents of the science of nature, do not come equally easily to all, though every responsible plan for universal education acknowledges that they are inaccessible to none. The secondary imagination-"genius" and "originality" are its Kantian names-is, on the other hand, very rare. Those who are gifted with the nimble play of the faculties needed to produce coherent appearances in the absence of sensation, and with the mental and physical talent needed to materialize them and set them back into the world as real appearances, form a small elite; that is a human fact, but evidently a fact next to unbearable in a mundane and egalitarian world. So whereas at first the "genius" is encouraged to value himself alone infinitely, soon a public conscious of its rights assumes for itself the same power: "creativity" is universalized. There fo11ows a rage of making, a frantic constructiveness, sometimes aridly geometric and again wantonly amorphous, an obligatory originality which plays havoc with craft and tradition. And sure enough, all manner of poetry declines in public power. I am treating you to this diatribe only because, we being to some degree· in the condition described, I want to summon attention to yet a third, a "tertiary" imagination, which is neither 3 �The College so very ordinary as the cognitive nor so very special as the re-creative imagination. I can do that best with reference to the two names, fantasy and imagination. As it happens, the former term, in its English form, the fancy, has in the tradition come to connote a lesser faculty, a faculty of pure unreality, of dreams and phantasms, of either inadvertent or arbitrary inner appearances. So Kant calls the imagination, insofar as it produces images involuntarily, "phantasy", while Coleridge includes an element of wilfulness. "The Fancy", he says is indeed no other than a mode of Memory emancipated from the order of time and space; while it is blended with, and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will, which we express by the word CHOICE. These two apparently opposed aspects of fancy are in fact complementary, as the day dream, that half wilful, half passive exploitation of memory in the interests of desire, shows. Let me say right now that I would not deprecate day dreams, which are the lubricant of life and corrupting only if they are constructed out of indigent wantonness in such a way as to ask to be rebuffed by life. But as the open-eyed, imaginative inner shaping of our ardours they are the very emulsion from which our sober and sustained plans float up. I here uphold day dreams~much maligned by the maturity-mongers-as indeed a prime product of that tertiary imagination I want to defend tonight. Why should I? It is because unlike the cognitive and poetic imaginations it is neither universally active nor rarely found. Instead it is, I believe, present in many people, but often only potentially, for it can be starved and polluted and drowned out. It has always been beleaguered: by the exposed hardness of life or its debilitating comfort, by classical formalism or romantic exploitation. But in our day it is endangered from all sides at once: from expectations of doom and constructions of convenience, from the enormity of our universe and the tainting of our earth and even more by the over-stimulation of our senses and the overstraining of our expressive abilities-but most of all by the abuse of our intellect; for when the intellect is desiccated into mere rationality the imagination also withers. Later I would like to give some reasons why we should value this third imagination communally, and right now I can give some of the negative conditions for returning it to vigour~though many of you will probably find them off-putting and objectionable. These rules for the recovery of the imagination would be: to desist deliberately from artless, therapeutic self-expression, to inhibit mightily all originality and "creativity", to invent little, contrive little, construct little; either to recall to awareness or to turn off all stimulation-musical or visual-which is a circumambience rather than an object of pointed attention; and finally, to exercise the intellect strenuously and incessantly, especially in respect to our emotions and passions and feelings. So finally I am ready to come directly to the description of 4 this third imagination. It is first and last a capacity for momentary panoramas, for wide visions. A sight will rise up, filJ the inner fram.e, fade. It is, next, a faculty at once passive and active; its works are affections and its affections works. It is involuntary insofar as its sights. cannot, in their full enchantment, be summoned at will (though we can always provide ourselves with their pale replicas). It is voluntary insofar as we can make ourselves ready and receptive by seeking out certain sights and sounds and texts, and nurturing an aversion to others. I shall not now advertise its magic and its meaning, but read to you instead a descriptive sample. To be sure it is a musical rather than a visual example, but it will serve to exemplify the kind of incident this imagination gives rise to. It is taken from the novel of novels, War and Peace. The youngest Rostov, Petya, has run away to war and joined a guerilla band in their camp. It is the morning of his first battle-and his last. The auditory vision arises-as it is not untypical-on the border of dreaming. Rain-drops dripped from the trees. There was a low hum of talk. The horses neighed and jostled one another. Someone snored. Ozhik-zhik, ozhik-zhik . i • • hissed the sabre on the whetstone. And all at once Petya heard a melodious orchestra playing some unknown, sweet, solemn hymn. Petya was as musical as Natasha, and more so than Nikolai, but he had never learnt music or thought about it and so the harmonies that suddenly filled his ears were to him absolutely new and intoxicating. The music swelled louder and louder. The air was developed and passed from one instrument to another. And what was played was a fugue-though Petya had not the slightest idea what a fugue was. Each instrument-now the violin, now the horn, but better and purer than violin and horn-played its own part, and before it had played to the end of the motif melted in with another, beginning almost the same air, and then with a third and a fourth; and then they all blended into one, and again became �January, 1978 separate and again blended, now into solemn church music, now into some brilliant and triumphant song of victory. 'Oh yes, of course, I must be dreaming,' Petya said to himself as he lurched forward. 'It's only in my ears. Perhaps, though, it's music of my own. Well, go on, my music! Now! . . . ' He closed his eyes. And from different directions, as though from a distance, the notes fluttered, swelled into harmonies, parted, came together and again merged into the same sweet and solemn hymn. 'Oh, this is lovely! As much as I like, and as I want it!' said Petya to himself. He tried to conduct this trem·endous orchestra. 'Hush, now, softly die away!' and the sounds obeyed him. 'Now fuller, still livelier. More and more joyful now!' And from unknown depths rose the swelling triumphal chords. 'Now the voices!' commanded Petya. And, at first from afar, he heard men's voices, then women's, steadily mounting in a slow crescendo. Awed and rejoicing, Petya drank in their wondrous beauty. mention in passing, though the chief one is in place right here; it is that he is more hell-bent on exploiting these moments to assuage his literary anxieties than on fathoming them. However, no more shall I succeed, and, except for an attempt to formulate the possibilities, my lecture will have to be aporetic. The most immediate beginning of our inquiry into the imagination is given by its sensory triggers. For although imaginative appearances have no sense content (or perhaps precisely because they have none) they are often set off by an accidental sense impression; for example most people have had the experience of the sudden vivid resurrection of a scene by an odor. Indeed, it is, oddly enough, the very senses which are most "sensual", the senses activated by ingesting, inhaling, clasping, that is, taste, smell, touch, which most effectively set off the imagination. Petya hears the knife on the whetstone. In Proust's novel the taste of a tea cake, the feel of a napkin, the touch of a pavement, play a great releasing role. They bring back in a magical mode scenic memories The singing fused into a march of victory, and the rain dripped, and ozhik-zhik, ozhik-zhik . . . hissed the sabre, and the horses jostled one another again, and neighed, not disturbing the chorus but forming part of it.' It is not by chance that the incident occurs in a novel. It is in novels that such epiphanies are most at home. Novels, namely long works of fictional prose, are a very modern genre. They are essentially faked documentary reports, case histories of the ordinary world synthesized by the cognitive imagination. Their great bulk is a consequence of that attempt to master phenomenal infinity I spoke of before. It is within this prosaic world that the episodes of the imagination become acutely valuable, and they do indeed play a central role in many of the most massive novels. But they are the very crux of the longest of them, Proust's In Search of Lost Time, usually known by the English title taken from the Shakespeare sonnet: When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, (30.) Proust proposes to himself one great problem: how to penetrate the mystery of what he calls the "privileged moments" of the imagination; in particular he is determined to find a solution in the last book, Time Regained, which contains the point of departure for the writing of the novel itself. He does not succeed, for a number of reasons some of which I shall *Translation by Rosemary Edmonds {Penguin Books). of Venice, of Balbec, of Combray which his "descriptive efforts and pretended snapshots of memory had failed to recall". His explanation of the magic is, first, that since the recall is required to be inadvertent, ordinary, flattening, wilful intelligence plays no part in the recapture, and, second, that, since the sensory identity occasions a virtual resurrection of memory, the resulting visions are released from mundane, weary, enslaving temporality. But that does not explain why the imagination, a faculty of mere, or true, appearances, namely of asensual but vivid aspects presented for our attentive contemplation, should be so intimately related to the senses of repletion, the senses sometimes called "subjective" because they cause an effect in us while leaving the appearing object itself obscure. I can only speculate that it is because as a rule for us the way to delight is through desire: we must want before we truly see-hence the body makes the beginning, then the soul takes over. Next I want to ask after the very imaging character itself, the imitative nature of the imagination. Aristotle makes a most undeniable statement when he begins his discussion of the imagination with the words: "Things are unclear concern- 5 �The College ing the imagination". (On the Soul, 414.) For what could an appearing form without sensory freight be? What is a bare appearance, an imitation of reality? Jean Paul Sartre, who wrote much on the imagination, is preoccupied with it for just this reason-because it is the capacity for the nonpresent, the absent, the non-existent; it is a sterile and derivative mode-there is no world of the imagination. He echoes the classical, deprecating view of images: that they are not what they are, that they are a curious interweaving of being and non-being, and that phantasms are something less even than seeming, a pseudo-seeming. (Sophist 240.) Such views turn the imagination's activity into a central metaphysical problem while depriving it of all lustre. Arc they adequate? Now it seems to me that there are three kinds of imaging: the world imitates itself, in shadows, reflections, mirrors, usually with the loss of a dimension but without any tampering intention, as it were. Next, human beings copy the world either faithfully according to .ability, or mechanically by measure, or in a modulated version according to an inner appearance. These first two kinds of imagings result in a real image, that is to say, a material likeness. They are problem enough, but my interest is in the third imaging, which IS entirely internaL How does it differ from real or realized imaging? Here is the problem of appearance at its acutest. Inner sights arc somehow according to the outer world, they echo or imitate it. On the other hand, they arc without givcnness: without thisness or hereness or nowncss. They arise "out of nowhere", out of all context: they endure indeterminately, unamenable to exact delineation or measurement, and their fading seems to be spurred by the very effort to hold them. But for all that, they shine. The word "phantasy" says Aristotle, comes from phdos, light. And indeed, these imaginative images display a pregnant perspicuousness, a significant patency which I have called pure appearance because it is not the appearance given off by some thing. They have that unfolded extendedness, that spreading openness, (whose body is color), which is the chief mark of visual appearance. But what is it that appears, and what is it that is imitated? In search of this answer let me insist once again that the imagination is primarily visual. To be sure, there are auditory imaginations, like Petya's music; and Keats can claim that Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter. . . . But music is too essentially a temporal development to have a place in this faculty of singular moments; it is usua1ly the occasion but not the content of images. It can make the clouds of heaven open to show riches even to a Caliban, whose isle . . . is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Or it can be the accompaniment of a sudden vision, as in this 6 account of a man surveying his ancestral estate: Sebastian heard the music and saw the vision. It was a tapestry that he saw, and heard the strains of a wind orchestra, coming from some invisible players concealed behind the trees. His thoughts turned to the house itself, and there also found their satisfaction, for there also was activity; the pestle thumped in the kitchen; the duck turned sizzling on the spit; ... (Sackville-West, The Edwardians.) Tangibility, on the other hand, is entirely excluded. It is possible in the imagination to see oneself touching, say, a face, but is impossible to imagine touch-one can only feel it. Imaginations are intangible precisely because they are immaterial, unbodily, and for the same reason they are also undynamic- they lack all the characteristics of naturally moving bodies. They do not have a principle of motion within themselves. They may be transmuted but they cannot be transported. Nor can we move through them as we do through the natural world. Think, for instance, of making a landfall. A pale blue shield floats up on the pale blue water; in an hour it has turned into a grey arid green-faceted range lapped by dark blue waves, and yet an hour later we arc clambering about in the hot and fragrant ravines of an Aegean island. We cannot similarly close in to make contact in our imagination or, for that matter, engage in increasingly precise observation. We cannot turn on it the mental microscope or reversed telescope through which Gulliver sees the gross-textured Brobdingnagians and the insect-like Lilliputians. The inner world has no coordinates, no perspective and no scales-only shapes, places, and the absolute attributes of delicacy or grandeur. What appears internally is static because it appears in its one privileged aspect. But precisely as they are intangible and unapproachable, so inner images form a world. For that is just what a world is: a �January, 1978 region of regions" as C. S. Lewis defines it, a setting, a scene, a theatre which forms our background, the containing environment for our more collected moments~for when it is necessary to come too urgently to grips with it, it disappears; at such a moment we lose the wood for the trees. What I mean by a world is perhaps best illustrated in those Renaissance paintings in which human beings carry on-pray, mourn, celebrate or just smile-against a lovingly rendered backdrop of a wide and vanishing, yet enclosing, landscape, full of city walls, steeples, hillocks, thickets and winding paths-their world. Again, think of fairy stories: how much of the tale, particularly of the English sort, is apt to consist of world-building, of the devising of a characteristic topography as a frame for wonders-its terrain is often laid out on the end papers. Or, on the other extreme, what is if that turns that tool of mere transience, the car, into a rushing cubicle of confessions and confidences for the American imagination, if not the exhilaratingly enfolding vistas of the passing continent? But, of course, I am thinking not only of landscapes but of cities and buildings, those more concentrated enclosures of human life. Now insofar as these scenes are· in us, we are not in them; indeed they are unpeopled. In this they differ from dreams. For often the very burden of a dream is a distillation of the peculiar pathos of a person, whose essence, however, appears not so much to us as through us; it is our feeling of them that we reveal to ourselves. And though the redolence of dreams is probably far more significant than their plot, still, unlike phantasms, they are compositional efforts-there is work in dreams, as Freud says, So also landscape paintings or architectural vedutas may contain people, albeit faceless. But the scenes of the fantasy have no figures, as is amply attested in written accounts: witness Proust's visions of Combray, Martinville, Balbee, Venice, or Thomas de Quincey's accounts of his opium dreams. De Quincey precipitated himself into the hells of opium eating partly to recapture and enhance the imaginations of his childhood, and he is a knowing, though tainted, connoisseur of the imagination. He speaks of his visions as follows (Confessions of an English OpiumEater): . the splendors of my dreams were indeed chiefly architectural: and I beheld such pomp of cities and palaces as was never yet beheld by the waking eye, .unless in the clouds, From a great modern poet I cite the part of a passage which describes as an appearance actually beheld in the clouds, what in many of its circumstances I saw frequently in sleep: The appearance, instantaneously disclosed, Was of a mighty city-boldly say A wilderness of building, sinking far And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth, Far sinking into splendor-without end! Fabric it seem'd of diamond, and of gold, With alabaster domes and silver spires, And blazing terrace upon terrace, high Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright, In avenues disposed; there towers begirt With battlements that on their restless fronts Bore stars~illumination of all gems! (Wordsworth, The Excursion, II) Nonetheless, if we ourselves do not appear within the inner scenes, yet we are there. An acecdote is told-at least I recall it as being told-of a Chinese or Japanese landscape painter, who on having completed his masterpiece, picked up his ink and his brushes and disappeared off into it. In such a way we ourselves have been absorbed into our inner sights, and con- 7 �The College sequently as we scan them they look back at us familiarly: Man wanders among symbols in those glades Where all things watch him with familiar eyes. (Baudelaire, "Correspondances. '') Augustine gives a vivid account of such an inner circumambulation: And I come into these fields and spacious p3laces of my memory, where are the treasures of innumerable images of every kind of thing conveyed into it by the senses. . .. And all this I do withiny in the huge court of my memory. For there I have in readiness even the heavens and the earth and the sea. . . . There also I meet with myself. . . . (Confessions X.) Since Augustine is speaking particularly of the memory rather than the imagination, the next thing is to investigate the close relation between them which is generally observed. Is all memory imagination and all imagination memory? Arc they convertible terms? All memory, it seems to me, is indeed imaginative in this sense, that whatever is remembered has the form of an appearance, and primarily (but not exclusivc1y) a visual appearance. That is attested by the ancient and now forgotten art of "topical" or place memory, in which every item to be remembered was assigned a place in an imagined mansion, theatre, or cosmos, there to be located and recalled at will. (Sec Frances Yates, The Art of Memory, 1966.) So, also, if a poem is to be remembered, it is as if an inner prompter whispered it, so that we have an auditory appearance. In short, in the memory things re-appear-Kant calls it the "re-productive imagination," a faculty for reinscribing into the consciousness former appearances, voluntarily or involuntarily. (The peculiar reminiscence of invisible being called mythically "recollection" in the Platonic dialogues no reader of the Meno will confuse with ordinary appearance-memory.) Conversely, al1 imagination is memory-though that is also, in a strange way I will attempt to articulate, not all it is. There is, however, general agreement that the imagination can only re-compose, re-arrange, re-form real remembered appearances, but it can bring forth no hitherto unseen shape. The unicorn is but a white horse with a horn on its forehead. (Indeed those extravagantly extended and strenuously contrived novelistic fantasies, like MacDonald's Phantasies, most intrusively display the character of being mere mosaics of fanciful constructions and literary reminiscences.) But what is of more interest than the fact that the memory is the sole source of imaginary forms is that in being so it casts all imagination in the mode of pastness. A fairy tale properly begins with "Once upon a time". Hence the notion of the "lost paradise" figures large in theories of the imagination. Schopenhaucr, for example, holds that "the sudden remembrance of scenes of past and distance flies by us as a lost paradise" because in them we 8 have forgotten the "subjective" tortures of the will and its· striving that all present reality brings with it, and recall only the pure "objective" appearance. (The World as Will and Representation, 38.) And in a general way, events are well known to undergo purification and enhancement in remembrance-past picnics are without mosquitos, and even the mundane sprawl of daily business can in retrospect be turned into a nostalgia-laden world: Thus the telescope of fantasy draws a diffuse region of brightness about the blessed isles of the past. . (Jean Paul, "On the Natural Magic of the Imagination".) Through the past things grow perfect. For Proust, above all, "the true paradises arc always the paradises one has lost," -but he has a different explanation, touched on before. It is not so much the perfective power of the past which makes imaginative reminiscence blissful, as the very fact-the mere fact-that the renewal of a memory betokens a liberation from the bondage of the inexorably COB:tinuous flow of time. To be precise: a "hard law of our nature" allows us to imagine only that which is really absent, which is without reality. In those privileged moments, however, a remote childhood scene is suddenly recalled in all the vividness of its perceived presence: it is at once devoid of weary reality and ful1 of shining existence. The sensory trigger has therefore by a stratagem effected a contact between the dreams of the imagination and that of which they arc habitually deprived, namely the idea of existence. Mundanity has been transmuted into timelessness. The difficulty of this explanation, the fruit of twelve laborious volumes, is patent: The explanation is purely formal, for it attributes the enchantments of imaginative scenes not to something in them but solely to their relation to time, which is, after all, a mere form of appearance. But those childhood scenes whose resurrection is the source of such felicity, what was it in them which made them memorable? Yet, however unsatisfactory Proust's solution may be, it docs bring to the fore the roots the imagination has in childhood. Its capability in adults is altogether dependent on the proper cultivation of that "dream-theatre" which, as de Quincey observes, is naturally rich in children. The malnutrition of the imagination in childhood, or its contamination by amorphousness and crudity is, I will argue, a recognizable public problem. However, to return to the question of the association of the imagination with the past: I speculate that it is only a similitude. The archetypal impressions of childhood, and indeed a1l deep impressions, already include even at their first occurrence the element of recognition, and hence the dimension of the past. Images are not memories because they come out the past but they seem to come out of the past because they are the cause of memorableness; they stand behind all �January, 1978 memorable real appearances to give them their depth and significance, and their past mode is only a likeness for their priority. Neither can the perfective power of the past be by itself responsible for the most remarked and remarkable aspect of the imagination, which is that is a faculty of fleeting but deep felicity. Proust reports: . the intoxicating and elusive visiOn softly pervaded me as though it said: "Grasp me as I float by you, if you can, and try to solve the enigma of happiness I offer you." Whence the happiness? It is of a specific sort, not to be confused with the detached pleasures of pure sensation, such as the liquid silver of a single flute tone; nor the blissful absorption in an object of love, such as the facial topography of a human being, nor the_ engrossed perception of the formal perfection of beauty, such as a classical temple. The beginning of the answer lies in the fact that images are affectively charged. Now there are various affective modes not characteristic of the imagination. For example, there is lively emotion tending toward expression-but the delights of inward imagining induce silence rather than eloquence. There is passionate desire which seeks possession-but the sights of the imaginative theatre are for contemplation rather than appropriation. Then there is rapt feeling, which suffuses the soul-and this is the mode of the imagination. Here a possible objection has to be disposed of. There is a romantic extravagance which Ruskin terms the "pathetic fallacy". (Modern Painters, Ill, Pt. iv. ). It is the wilful fancy of endowing external nature with feelings and moods, especially of the morbid and maundering sort, like revery, brooding, nostalgia, all quite contrary to cool fact. But happily the inner landscape has no principle of motion within it and is neither nature nor a cool fact, so there can be no pathetic fallacy in regard to it. On the contrary, it is its very character to be invested with feeling, for it occupies the very locale of feeling, the soul. It is precisely by this affective investment that the imagination goes beyond the mere reproduction of previously perceived forms. It begins with a tuning of the soul, a musical mood or coloration-that is why music, though not often the content, is the surest occasion for fantasy, far more so than isolated sensations. This scenic eros, as one might call it, breeds and sustains the image, just as its failure lets it fade away into flatness. It would be false to say that the image "expresses" feeling; rather it contains it. That is the mode in which we are in our own visions-they are both the scat and the theatre of our feeling. Such feeling is, as I have noted, not a particular, nameable, passion or property-not pride or love, not elegance or magnificence-but that strong aura which gives the appearances meaning. So far the question "Whence the felicity?" seems to have this answer: it is the appearance in the images of the very feeling that conditions them. But again the answer is insufficient. For it does not tell how imaginative sights contain the affections of the soul. What is it in these colored silhouettes that responds and corresponds to the summons of feeling? Here is the source of a whole class of curious, laborious, but irresistible musings, all of which are approaches to the prime question concerning imagination, namely "How can sights appear in the soul?'' and its converse, "How can the soul be contained in sights?" Plato acknowledges th~se questions by presenting a mythical answer, as Plotinus admiringly points out (Problems of the Soul); in the Timaeus (36) the soul encompasses the world of appearances-the cosmos is in the soul, not the soul in the cosmos. Hegel, on the other hand, presents a rigorously systematic answer. (Encyclopedia 452 ff.) It is given in terms of the selfdevelopment of spirit, at the stage in question called the intelligence. The intelligence is memory insofar as it internalizes (Hegel exploits the fact that a German word for memory is literally internalization, Erinnerung) those most immediate intuitions which come to it as mere feeling, turning them into inner pictures which are as yet isolated, out of context, indeterminate. The intelligence as active among these memories is called reproductive imagination; it is responsible for once again bringing forth these pictures in the inner mode proper to the self. Its consummation is the fantasy, that stage of the intelligence which organizes the images and appropriates them into a connected self-intuition. This fantasy, an "inner workshop", then gives coherent pictorial existence to the contents of the intelligence; it is everywhere recognized as the central agency in whose formation are unified the spirit's own and inner possessions and its outer, adventitious, and intuitive acquisitions. However, such answers are too grand to solve those more precise puzzles raised by immediate imaginative experiences. For example, how can a face, a figure, a scene, in their much constrained mobility, in their mere surface structure, evidence the motions and meanings of the soul? Why would it be futile (if it were possible) to take a magnifying glass to an imaginative appearance to learn more of its significance? Do we look into eyes and into panoramas, or do they look out at us? Is the infinite significance of any object of imaginative attention tr{lceable, so that we can eventually answer the question: 9 �The College What is your substance, whereof are you made, That millions of strange shadows on you tend? And why is double vision, the superposition of contrary visions, so poignant a part of the imaginative pathos? Take, for example, that most amazing of Homeric similes, used in behalf of an obscure warrior, a very casual casualty, who happens to come in the way of an arrow meant for Hector: Like a poppy he dropped his head to one side, a poppy in a garden, weighted with fruit and spring moisture, so he bowed his head heavy with his helmet. (Iliad VIII, 306.) But most enigmatic of all is the question: why we are continuously drawn to attribute meaning or reference to our imaginative visions, although strictly speaking only words can have meaning, (for they alone naturally intend thoughts or things), and only symbols can have reference (namely insofar as referents have been conventionally assigned to them)? Such are the questions, entrancing even to distraction, intriguing even to irritation, which are posed by the imagination. I do not mean to leave them totally unresolved. But before I make an attempt not so much to give answers as to articulate possible solutions, let me go to a more tractable task. For I want to conclude with a grand defense and apology in behalf of this tertiary, this entirely internal, quiescent, faculty of phenomenal contemplation. Shelley makes such a defense of poetry, "the expression of the imagination", calling poets "the founders of civil society" and poetry "the great instrument of moral good." I want to praise the private poet, the painter within, as indispensable for both theory and practice. First, the imagination is the great helper of the intellect and not only, because, as Aristotle observes, there is no thinking without images. (On the Soul 432.) Rather, precisely by reason of being not one wit irrational-and yet certainly a-rational-it is designed to be the support and complement of thought, the refuge and renewal of the inquiring intellect, which leans into it, much as a child leans against a parent \vhile gazing into the world, in secure curiosity. The imagination invests the world with that richness and resonance which makes it an attractive dwelling for the intellect. Again, the imagination is the complement of thought because it holds its matter in the mode of a unique totality, while the intellect works toward comprehensive wholeness; the former contains worlds of the most arresting particularity, the latter tries to reach the realm of universality. The best exemplification of the complementing of intellect by imagination is to be found in those panoramic philosophical myths each of which imagines a brilliantly particular cosmos designed as a visible consummation of the intellectual endeavor to encompass the whole. But the imagination is indispensable to action as well. For the real world is worth our exertion only insofar as an inner scene is projected on it, or rather behind it-only \Vhen the visionary imagination sets the scene for action. No community can be an incitement to intense effort until it is resonant 10 with remm1scences and until it is situated not only on the grid of the earth but also in a place of the soul. Of course, as I have shown, this place is often reached through the past, which also lies "behind" communities. (I think that the much disparaged liking for architechual reminiscences, like fake half-timbering, for instance, is an expression of the wish to give depth to the habitat by adding that temporal dimension.) Such are what might be called the utopian, public functions of the imagination. And as it calls forth action in communities, so it stands behind action in individuals. Thomas Mann, who was particularly charmed by this discovery, finds what I am talking about to be a typical antique mode: The antique consciousness stood, as it were, open toward the back, and absorbed much of what is past, in order to repeat it in the present. . . . Ortega y Casset expresses it in this way: that antique man . . . seeks an exemplar in the past, into which he slips as into a diver's helmet, in order thus . . . to precipitate himself into the present problem at once protected and disfigured. . . . But this living as a re-living, a re-vivification, is living in myth. These enabling myths arc the works of the scene-setting imagination; I do not see why they should be the preserve of antiquity. And finally, even-or especially-in ordinary private existence, the imagination serves to make life livable. For it occasionally breaks out into that sober daily routine which is our predominant mode to unveil the golden fond of life. Such occasions are the inner <fountcrparts of public celebrations, only without calendar. The imagination is the impresario of these private festivities as the city is of public festivals; both serve the same purpose: the illumination of daily life. I have described and defended this appearance-producing, world-making, meaning-laden capacity of ours. But what in the world, or out of it, does it betoken? As I warned in the beginning, I do not know, but I do have a roster of possibilities. Here it is: First, it is conceivable that such imaging is merely a kind of open-eyed hallucinating. If Hume and other dissipators of the human mysteries were right, and if the imagination really, as he says, "amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials offered us by the senses and experience" that would indeed be the case. (Enquiry II.) Second, and at the other extreme, imaginations may be virtual recollections, or even current influxes, the remembered or present intimations of a world beyond, of an actual "lost paradise," where "paradise" means another world, a world of self-sufficient ultimate appearances. Whether there is such a paradise, and whether the embodied soul has access to it by being, as it were, open and receptive not only in front toward the "real" world, but in back, inwardly, toward that final realm-those arc serious theological questions. But certain it is that the recurrent written accounts of such revelations usually refer to cities, replicas of the "holy city, new �January, 1978 Jerusalem, coming clown out of heaven from God" (Revelation 21, 2), though bearing different names; for example: Then, between sleeping and waking, there rose before me a vision of Trebizond: not Trcbizond as I had seen it, but the Trebizond of the world's dreams, of my own dreams, shining towers and domes shimmering on a far horizon, yet close at hand, luminously enspe11ed in the most fantastic unreality, yet the only reality, a walled and gated city, magic and mystical, standing beyond my reach yet I had to be inside, an alien wanderer yet at home, held in the magical enchantment; and at its he.irt, at the secret heart of the city and the legend and the glory in which I was caught and held, there was some pattern that I could not unravel, some hard core that I could not make my own, and, seeing the pattern and the hard core enshrined within the walls, I turned back from the city and stood outside it, expelled in mortal grie£ (Rose Macaulay, The Towers o{Trebizond.) (There is a secular pendant to this understanding, proposed by Jung, namely that each separate human soul has access to a supra-individual soul from whose archetypes it derives its images. I cannot bring myself to consider it seriously.) Third, there is the possibility, first set out by Plato in the Phaedrus (2 50), and strongly fixed in the tradition, that beauty, "the most shiningly apparent and loveliest" of the ideas, is precisely the very shining out of being in appearance. while being itself is only mythically a realm of "whole and simple and calm and happy phantasms" which were once beheld by every human soul. That is to say, all appearances that have any radiance at all, and so certainly imaginative appearances, are an expression, an externalizing, an epiphany, an incarnation, of the sightless intellectual world; everything truly visible signifies a thing of thought, essentially invisible. Fourth and finally, the imagination may be in its very nature a faculty of infinite reference, the striving of the soul in its sensing body to make appearance itself significant. What I want to convey is difficult (but not impossible) to express. I mean that the soul endows its own appearances with essentially incomplete references which keep us continually casting a'bout for a meaning, so that we turn first to temporal prototypes, that is, memories, and eventually hypostatize even prior experiences, out of time. But in vain, since in the very search we remain enmeshed in appearances, and it is in them that the enigma is seated. For, on the one hand it is of the very essence of appearances-if they can be said to have an essence-that they should have transparency and let a background shine through. Yet, on the other, these inner images are fairly saturated with the inimitable fragrance of their self-sufficient singularity. To say it once again: When the attempt is made to catch particular appearances in a verbal net, that aspect which eludes any articulation-that is the locus of the mystery. As Thomas Mann, ever laborious in the service of verbal sufficiency, confesses: How many literati before me have moaned over the unfitness of language for achieving visibility, for bringing forth a truly exact picture of anything individual! The word was made for laud and praise. To it has been given the power to admire and bless and characterize appearance through the feeling that it arouses, but not to invoke or reproduce it. (Doctor Faustus, Ch. XLIV.) This plaint is doubly and triply applicable to the inner appearances. One might conclude that the imagination is engaged in its own, peculiarly competent version of the old project of "saving the phenomena", not, as thought does, by making them rational but by making them inexpressibly enchanting. I can think of these four possible answers to the problem of the fantasy, but I cannot fix on one of them and be finished with the inquiry. I see that it must be a permanent pursuit, that all answers are premature and only preparatory approaches are possible. Indeed, no preoccupation can bring closer to home Socrates' saying that philosophy is a preparation for dying and being dead. (Phaedo 64.) For then it will most certainly have to appear whether the whole mystery is to be dissolved in the blankness of oblivion: or whether luminously invisible intellectual sources will blot out the shadowy phenomenal shapes; or whether another world of substantial ultimate appearances-above or below, as our case may': be-is to receive us; or whether the enigma of sights has still another, as yet unimagined, solution. And so a certain consolation for the ending of our life is as much the gift of that most wonderful power of the soul about which I have tried to speak tonight, as is the illumination of our daily existence. II �The College A Preservationist Looks at Housing by Michael W. Gold has been but the past several years, inhe crux of the is not I cluding thelittle noticed, of theforcurrent presidential admin- T enough money tohousing problem is that isthere willful first months maintain all housing. It the t istration, there has been a relative neglect of housing policy discussion. Undoubtedly the reason is that the programs of the preceding administrations have been acknowledged by their proponents and administrators to have failed in the main sphere to which they were addressed, namely, adequate housing for the poor. Revenue sharing has now largely supplanted the categorical grants of the Johnson administration, and local governments arc using the revenues for more modest programs which, in general, may be expected to succeed, but which are directed to goals more limited than those in the past. This is known as "a more conservative mood," and seems to have been greeted by most people with some relief. However, ignoring the critical matter will not make it go away. One day, not too far off, "the housing crisis" will be discovered all over again. The corps of Program Planners will be ready with a whole new set of ambitious programs, the fifes will play and the drums will roll, and in the absence of any resistance born of true understanding, we will be swept along in the tide of new programs, such as Slum Clearance, until we are exhausted and become "conservative" again for a while. It would be good if we could break this cycle. Is there a true understanding upon which far-sighted policy can be based?, or which, at least, can be used as a touchstone for foolish policies? This is a suggested outline. Michael W. Gold, a graduate of St. John's in the class of 1961, is the director of the Historic Richmond (Va.) Foundation. Before assuming that position about three years ago, Mr. Gold was director of New York City's Landmark Preservation Commission. 12 avoidance of this simple fact which spawns futile programs. It is hard to believe that experts and political leaders can be unaware of it, but pronouncing it is forbidden, and ignoring it, and forgetting it, are therefore assured. Constituents will not know it unless they are told, and those who can tell will not or cannot. Yct it is neither mysterious nor difficult to understand. A simple comparison of the cost of housing and median family income is sufficient. We can calculate the cost of housing roughly but adequately for our purpose. In 1976, the median price paid for a new house was $44,200. Let us take a minimum house, which today would have to sell, if not subsidized, for between $30,000 and $35,000: say $32,500. (It might seem that the cost of a dwelling unit in a multi-family structure would be much less, but in fact it is about the same). The builder of such a unit would have about $30,000 in costs. The major components for owning and operating this house are: the cost of the investment, real estate taxes, maintenance, and depreciation. 1. The cost of the investment in homeowner's terms would he interest on the mortgage plus the interest or other dividencls lost on the equity. Profit, which is necessary to make it attractive enough for anybody else to own it, would be a fair word for it too. 8¥2% is the present cost of money. At that rate an investment of $32,500 should return $2,763 a year. 2. Real estate taxes. Let us take $2 per $100 of assessed value, which is a good figure, if on the low side; and let us assume assessment at fair market value, but where the assessor too has erred on the low side. If the unit is assessed at �January, 1978 FUk Y~ _; l~fLr~J'l.~d l(d! J'N- 2317 ~ 2315 E;...t 8~ ,J'J;,..J; R~~~<~. )0;,(~ (in 1975, the last year for which figures are available), is under $14,000 per annum. Thus more than half the households in America do not command the income necessary to encourage new investment and proper maintenance in a low-priced house. Another way to say this is'that, apart from subsidization, units cannot and will not be provided, or existing houses reinvested in and maintained for long-range survival, for over half our population. {h,;,a ?~ Jl~. 21fu1 ['cu:trJ~ J'z;;_,_a }(-tfl{Vf~ '(JI~;c.lf,;4~o-J ~cl~ $28,000 the taxes would be $560 per year. 3. Maintenance used to be calculated at 1% per year of the value, but now, and especially for an inexpensive house, 1Y2% per year is better. $488 is probably still not quite enough, but we will usc it. 4. Depreciation is not just a tax term. The full value of a unit must really be reinvested every 30 years-not for maintenance, but for modernization, replacement of worn out plant and major, non-recurrent repairs. Let us say 40 years, rather than 30: at this rate the cost for our unit would be about $800 a year. The annual cost of this house adds up, then, as $2,763 for interest paid or lost, $560 for real estate taxes, $488 for maintenance, and $800 for depreciation-a total of $4,611, or about $385 per month. Using the accepted rule of thumb-a good one-that a person should pay no more than 25% of his salary for rent, this unit would have to rent to someone with an annual income of over $18,000 in order to be properly maintained and to call forth the investment necessary to provide it in the first place. The national median income for all families, all races his conclusion must be however, take T count of people's hope ofmodified,gains in realtoestate accapital investment. This is an important factor. Its effect is that some people will be willing, either with knowledge of what they arc doing or~as often-without, to disregard the cost of their investment for the sake ultimately of benefiting from the appreciation in the value of their property. That hope rarely warrants total disregard of the investment cost, and few people do disregard it totally: the most unsophisticated homeowner or investor is perfectly aware of how much interest he is paying on his mortgage loan, and he certainly takes it into aci count in deciding if his budget can support it. But for the sake of the argument, let us totally disregard it. The owner will still have the costs of maintenance, real estate taxes and replacement of the obsolescent. For the unit under consideration these add up to $1,848 per annum, or $154 in twelve monthly payments. This is for a unit which is completely paid off: there are no mortgage payments, and we arc ignoring the lost income of the whole investment. This is also discounting greed: the assumption is that every investor is going to pay his taxes, replace what is obsolescent, and maintain the property before paying himself for his investment, or even for the time and considerable nuisance involved in the ownership. This, too, is obviously a false assumption. Still, it will take an annual income of over $7,400 to support this piece of property. Thus any housing unit which is being rented at less than $154 per month, or any owner-occupied unit-if owned free 13 �The College I?O<r!M -PhVI_..._t/JiotU<-< ~ 7(£._p___,_JJ!J-«-U-,16oo~,..J 2to.:< f'-f&,.J.I.... sJW f?~~d, 'VMif~ and clear-where the owner's family income is under $7,400 a year, cannot have adequate maintenance. 20% of American households make less than $7,400 a year. There arc somewhat more households than there arc housing units, but it follows that something very close to 20% of our housing units are not being properly maintained and hence are in the cycle of deteriorating-and this is calculated on the most minimal basis. Adding in the factors of financing and the reasonable and proper necessity for some return on investment, not to mention greed, the figure must be much higher. If this is a "housing gap," it is a gap of such magnitude that government cannot fill it without disastrous moral and economic dislocation. The fiction that the "housing gap" could be filled at all is undoubtedly a major source of the continuing "housing crisis". What then? the that live in deF irst, facingclearlyfactwhen manyanpeople must spectre. bad teriorating housing is not pleasant, but it is not as as it is unutterable To when viewed begin with, not all housing which is deteriorating is unhabit- 14 able. Most of it is quite habitable., When income does not keep up \\'ith expenses the first thing to go is usually not maintenance but replacement of obsolescent features. It is essential that housing standards-both official standards and the unarticulated standards that form the bases of our everyday thinking about housing-be pitched according to a relative and not an absolute measure. Unfortunately our official and unarticulated standards are being guided by an ideal which is not only excessive but is improperly universalized. For example, central heat certainly is taken for granted as a minimum necessity for modern living. It is undoubtedly shocking to most middle class people that space heaters persist as the standard heating system for the poor in many places. It is a fact, however, and people who have been raised with wood or coal stoves do not find it a hardship until they are taught to do so. It would perhaps take personal experience (as I have had) to show someone unaccustomed, say, to coal that it is an excellent source of heat, requiring minimal initial investment, easily controlled and operated, and inexpensive to run. The cost of a BTU produced by burning coal at $100 per ton is almost half that of a BTU produced by an electric heat pump, the most economical modern system. Purchased wood is even more economical-and many poor people with rural roots have access to wood which is theirs for their labor. At the same time, the cost of fuel oil and electricity have reached the point where they have created a gypsy class of renters who must move continually under assumed names because they have defaulted on their electric bills. Yet the replacement of space heaters with oil or electric furnaces is an unquestioned part of housing standards. Besides, the fact that poor people must live in poor housing really should not be such a scandal. That is what it means to be poor. It is the unpleasantness of being poor that makes people strive to become rich. We may institute a dictatorship to take from everybody according to their abilities and give according to their needs, but until we do we must not be scandalized if poor people live harder lives than rich people. �January, 1978 J~M~-fi',J J(=",J5JOf:a-Jr~.tf.;._J'~ i?d.~~J, 'V.c,,~.w. his account obviously housing T expert nor ais sociologist.the product neither ofa alayman's It is unashamedly presentation to laymen. Though the account is simplified, and though peripheral, and even some modifying arguments arc left out, the overall argument is so simple that it is the experts who owe an apology for obfuscation and not the layman for simplification. Leaving aside a certain amount of cant which he undoubtedly had to include in order to be acceptable to his professional peers, the thrust of George Sternlieb's two authoritative books on the subject' hardly differs from this simple argument. I am, however, if not an expert, at least a professional employed in the field of historic preservation. The following brief suggestion that the attraction of the best old houses can be the key to the efficient channeling of investment where it can do the most good is based in my area of competence. ' * * W hat is proposed is a doctrine of "Housing Darwinism" -a doctrine which is not at all obnoxious as applied to inanimate things like houses. Many forces governing housing investment already favor survival of the fittest; other forces which inhibit survival of the best housing are artificial, arc doing no good, are vestigial in any case, and 1George Stcrnlich, The Tenement Landlord {New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1966). George Sternlieb and Robert W. Burchell, Residential Abandonment {New Brunswick: Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers UniVersity, 1973}. Sternlieb's findings, especially his finding that the slum property investor-owner was not reaping much profit, and that the maintenance of most slum property could not be improved without displacing lowincome renters, was attacked when it appeared by those whose living depends on the pretence that It is only the grasping slum landlord who stands in the way of a solution to the housing problem, but his findings have not been refuted, and arc generally accepted. tUdf J/tn&U, J. 70 2 co4' 0/l.CLU.- J'4ed' If~~) y.v-,1_,;,_~ should be done away with; and yet other forces which arc necessary are already present and only need to be encouraged. It is a sad reflection on contemporary building, but any redistribution of investment from new construction to rehabilitation will tend to bring about a higher standard simply because older houses arc better than new ones. The main factor favoring rehabilitation is the recent increased cost of building materials out of proportion to the cost of labor. But the vastly increased cost of labor, too, is such a factor: more labor goes into rehabilitation than might be thought, but less than into new construction. Much rehabilitation labor requires no great skill-but care-a specialty of the resident owner. Any forces which favor the city over the suburbs favor survival of better houses because, excepting tenements and recent construction, town houses are better than the past twenty to thirty years' crop of suburban houses. There are a number of these forces, among them increasing suburban taxes, increasing distance of reasonably priced housing from places of employment, the increasing cost of gasoline, which will 15 �The College m~ c.11~r, 2 5(i(). r;J c~ -r.tw:r O,_,..J £.;- J/;.IQ,u. I?.J,~d F-d~mount endlessly, and the returning receptivity of inner city school boards for neighborhood schools, Perhaps most important is the very fact of the deterioration of inner city housing, which has brought the cost of many urban residential lots with houses below the cost even of undeveloped suburban lots. One does not wish to beat a dead horse, so the vestigial forces which inhibit survival of the best housing will not be dwelt on. These arc, mainly, code enforcement used for harassment, which is based on the false premise of windfa11 profits, and condemnation for slum clearance, which creates an artificial market for slum property after it has been milked, and has the effect, therefore, of providing an incentive for milking slum property instead of putting it on the market before it hits bottom. These are largely discredited and well on the way to being abandoned. the absence expected to I nhappen is whatofisdistorting forces what may benamely, that generally happening now, neighborhoods go through thirty to fifty year cycles of investment, decay, and reinvestment in existing stock or redevelopment. It is a pity that neighborhoods are not more stable, but in order to make them so we would have to countenance changes in our dynamic society that we would in fact not countenance. What happens now, to put it crudely but accurately, is that the segment of the population which cannot afford enough in rent to support adequate maintenance occupies each neighborhood in turn as it approaches the nadir of its decay cycle. It is proper that the plight of these people be ameliorated as much as possible; and that should be done, but it is not specifically a housing problem. As far as housing goes, they are occupying better housing than if they lived in housing built specifically for them. In the natural course of things the succeeding phase will be redevelopment or rehabilitation. If it is redevelopment, the chances arc that it \Vill be "luxury housing", \vhich may or may not be to everyone's taste architecturally but docs at least 16 represent the highest practical standard of which we arc capable at this time. If it is rehabilitation, the chances are that it will be by resident o\vners or small-scale speculative operators. In both cases a portion of the labor will be contributed by the owner himself. This is by far the most efficient way we have of providing good, imaginative housing in the $30 to $50 thousand range. Forces which arc necessary to get the best out of this process are mostly already present. Each of them points to private and governmental policies which need to be argued in detail and at length. Here we will only list them. he most important thing public opinion, and so T occasion should be lost foris portraying the advantages no of older houses. Wherever possible, rehabilitation should be linked up with historic preservation: the line between a slum and an historic district is a fine one, and the energy available for historic preservation is enormous. Local government and private preservation organizations should have a clearly understood, if not necessarily publicized, priority ranking of neighborhoods-in general the oldest first. Local government should enlist the aid of the preservation organization to publicize the historic and architectural quality of the target neighborhood, and should consider channeling rehabilitation funds through its "revolving fund" rather than through the local housing agency; or, perhaps it should engineer a marriage between the two. In its budgeting, government must, much more than it has done, look ahead to consider where historic quality may be a factor in rejuvenation even twenty or thirty years hence. In those areas it must maintain such things as distinctive pavings and fencing around parks. Tax abatement is extremely complex, but there must be some assurance to the renovator that he will not be penalized. Lending institutions must be flattered, cajoled, and forced to loosen up a little more in making construction loans and permanent financing available for restoration. Much, very much, can be done by preservation �January, 1978 C'""'""Y/h. rf~, 71~.-:131J-O'!-o7Ead-C~ .f'.fi<<P/t R.:d,,.z,,.,., 4, Y;,~~~.v organizations with their own funds, and by charitable foundations and individuals inducing banks to make loans by guaranteeing them. W ith all this, two things ought to be done to alleviate the dislocation of low-income tenants in a neighborhood which has started back up. First, an effort should be made to retain some number of them by subsidizing rents. There are governmental programs set up to do this. They have not worked well, but they could be improved, especially if they are viewed purely as an ameliorative measure and not as a solution to the housing problem. Rents could also be subsidized, in effect, by charitable organizations and wealthy individuals seeking a tax shelter and a good deed. This is sometimes calJecl paternalism; it would be better to call it kindness and take advantage of it-it can work extremely well. Second, every effort should be made to get low-income tenants to buy when their neighborhood is at the bottom of its cycle. The same house they arc renting for $100 a month can probably be bought for under $10,000, with lower monthly payments. This requires: that someone, somehow, help them \:vith the down payment; that they be persuaded by someone they trust (because they have never thought of being property owners); that someone help them with budgeting and management on a continuing, personal basis. Most important, the people who arc in a position to help this happen must give up the idea that poor people can live in good housing. A family that can afford $125 a month can afford to buy a $10,000 house but they cannot afford to improve it or to maintain it any better than when they were tenants, except (which could be considerable) for their pride of ownership which would make them impart their own labor. They may actually derive little improvement in their housing. The improvement will be in their environment and in their equity. Realistically they will probably move out of the neighborhood as their taxes go up, but by that time their house will have at least doubled in value. 1/M~ 7/tfUA-<. ) 308" EWL! Gh4U S'~ 0Whd ~ ~~~~ I?~AMO><c/ ;/OUA<c(ai".um. * ' * must be more I tstable nowremembered that our population level This in than at any time in recent memory. IS itself will be a big factor in diffusing the housing crisis. It seems possible to resume now what surely must have been the pattern of housing in all normal times: "the inevitable cycle of growth and decay". If we arc wise and alert, however, we ought to be able to throw out of the inevitable cycle, each time around, some of the worst houses of each generation, and lift out of the cycle each time around, some of the best. Houses do belong, after all, if they arc reasonably good to begin with, to that select class of things which start getting more valuable with age once they get over the hump of being merely old. 17 �The College An Open Letter to St. John's Alumni by William M. Goldsmith August 24, 1977 Early last summer [1976] I received a letter from (then) Dean Curtis Wilson containing an invitation to give the Friday night lecture at homecoming weekend in the fall. It dawned upon me that I had not been back to Annapolis in twenty-five years and I was not sure what to expect. I had experienced some intermittent contact with the Alumni Office and occasional1y received fund appeals from the class representative, but what St. John's was really like after my absence of a quarter of a century began to intrigue me. I reflected upon my self-imposed exile from the old place; why was it that I had not gone back to any of the previous homecomings or other events? Why had I drifted away from the concerns of the College during those years when it apparently needed its old friends very badly? A sense of guilt permeated these reflections. I Certainly there were reasons and explanations available. Much of it was wrapped up in Scott and Winkic's decision to withdraw from Annapolis and the refusal of the Board to go along with that decision. I was very close to Scott in those clays, in fact I later worked with both Scott and Winkie on several foundation projects and I was a dyed-in-the-wool loyalist. It is not my intention to open up dated argument<; or throw salt into old wounds, but Scott and Winkic's sudden departure from Annapolis had created an initial breach with the College for many of us from which we had never quite . recovered. They had both symbolized the idea of St. John's so concretely, that their departure constituted something of a per- Mr. Goldsmith, a graduate of St. John's in the class of 1945, is a professor of history at Brandeis University. 18 mancnt rupture for many of us, a wound too deep to heal very quickly. Perhaps that is putting our estrangement only in its best light. All of us who left, whether as graduates or not, went out into the world to tilt with its imposing windmills. We had our lives to build, our careers to establish. We left the family hearth to strike out on our own and we were eager to do it . . . at least most of us were. We wanted to test theory against practice, ideas against reality. We had been true believers, in a sense, and the world, or perhaps more circumspectly the country, became our laboratory where we could test our theories, try our skills, measure our worth in the public marketplace. I think most of us felt we were ambassadors of the program, and our success or failure(s) would in some way test its validity. I know Scott had counseled us that we would be misfits, but then we wanted to be striking misfits, oracles, Cassandras, able to retain our .bearings while those all about us might be losing theirs. For many of us this was too heavy a burden to bear. yYe discovered initially just the opposite of what we had expected. We stepped forth into our chosen occupation (whether job or profession) with a somewhat arrogant feeling of our own special virtues (if I dare) and quickly discovered that we were not so recognized by those around us. In fact, we had to play "catch-up" to stay alive. We were surrounded by many who were far better prepared than we were to fit into the roles laid out for us, and although we had been warned about this, I venture to say we were not quite prepared for it. Whether we became students of law or medicine, academics or young advertising account executives, those around us appeared to be making far greater progress, even understanding better what was expected of them and certainly better prepared for the circumstances that confronted them than we were. We might, as Winkic used to put it, "have read the notes of. the previous meeting," but some of them had memorized those notes, at least those that were considered to be immediately expedient, and they could operate in the new (for us) circum- �January, 1978 stances with far greater facility than we could. We consoled ourselves with the thought that our qualities would surface "in the long run", but then someone told us that "in the long run" we would all be dead. Nice thought. I guess survival, pure survival was the first order of business. For some reason, neither the pons asinorum nor the divided line 'provided ready guidelines in this endeavor. Perhaps the myth of the eave suggested the closest analogy to our present condition, for in our return to the environs of the world of reality, we were stumbling blindly, dazed by our previous experiences and lost in a maze of shadows which were distorted in our confused and myopic vision of the past, present, and future. We had to learn the rules of the game and the tricks of the trade in which we were _immersed, and our previous experience which drove us always to ask "why", did not particularly help in this phase of our worldly education. I think most o(us suff~red humiliations, even despair, during such periods and wondered many times why we had spent four years in preparation for such traumatic failure. Little by little, after long periods of loneliness and rejection, many of us began slowly to find our way. I'm sure many compromises, or what we thought were compromises, and much soul searching marked this period of exile. W c had to come to terms with reality, to join the human race largely on its terms. just as Scott had "to become regularized" by getting hi,s Ph.D. ·at Harvard, we had to pick up our degrees, serve our apprenticeships, and demonstrate our ability to master the liturgy of the field we had embraced. This was a trying time for most of us but it was not without some compensations. We did learn some necessary things. Vocational education is not devoid of its own discipline, its own values, its own merits. I began to learn something about my own country and its history that went beyond the Federalist Papers and the Constitution. I discovered that history is not simply a reenactment of ideas and classical models, but is made .up of continuing crisis and response, and men and events. I discovered that the Constitution provides a framework, a skeleton for our institutions and laws, but that the muscles, nerves, and fatty tissue of the body politic are forged in the crucible of ongoing events, problems, and responses, and one has to encompass this rich body of material to know where we came from, and what are our resources for moving on. But at this point in our development, having learned the new rules of the game and read its accompanying literature, we met, if not Plato and Socrates, certainly Scott coming back. Once we had mastered the idiom of our new disciplines, we were in a position to raise questions again, questions which those who memorized the minutes of the previous meeting could not begin to answer or even recognize. This did n-ot always increase our popularity or our standing with our new colleagues, but now that we had established our bona fides, convinced them by our commibnent and mastery of the operational level of the field that we now "belonged", our right, not necessarily our sanity,- in raising such questions was acknowledged. In other words, we began to employ the deeper resources of our St. John's experience, and although this didn't always provide satisfaction, it did give us something of the special identity we had earlier expected and also provided a sense of the integrity we thought that we had all but lost. When the questions didn't come, at least in the beginning, there was always Scott around to remind us of our larger responsibility to the community of ideas. I can remember the occasion when many of us got together with him for the last time at Ping Ferry's place in Westchester before he and Miriam left for the West Coast. [May 31, 1958] We hadarranged a little celebration for him, and there was, of course, some speechmaking and good discussion. Winkie was there and Mark Van Doren, Kip Fadiman, Jasha, Jack Neustadt, and a large number of students. Scott used the occasion to give us all a don rag, reminding us of our intellectual responsibility to push the questions further than they were being pursued in the public discourse currently going on. It is vintage Buchanan: For a few minutes I want to stage a little tableau for you, a composite oral examination and don rag. I have some questions I want to ask you, questions for St. John's graduates and questions for American citizens. As I understand the questions, one leads to another, and they all add up to: How are you doing? The first question is: Do you believe in and trust your intellect, that innate power that never sleeps? This is not a -theoretical nor a dogmatic question, but rather one of experience. Do you recognize the action of this power as you live and learn? Many of you have gone on to graduate and professional learning, and, I happen to know, many of you have lived a lot in addition. You have fallen into the hands of scholars and into the grooves of practice. You have suffered the winds of doctrine, and have gotten lost in the jungle of ideologies. Latterly you have been stormed by scientific miracle and guess. In all these learnings and practices have you listened to the small spontaneous voice within that asks continually if these things are true? Have you allowed this voice to speak louder and remind you that you do not know, that you know you do not know, and that you know what you do not know? Do you believe that knowledge is possible, that truth is attainable, and that it is always your business to seek it, although evidence is overwhelmingly against it? That is the first question; I shall not just now press for an answer. The second question seems to flow from the first. Have you in the course of your life, before, after, or while you were at St. John's, become your own teacher? Perhaps this is not quite the question that I intend. This may be better: Have you yet recognized that you arc and always have been your own teacher? Amidst all the noise and furor about education in this country at present, I have yet to hear this question raised. But it is basic. Liberal education has as 19 �The College its end the free mind, and the free mind must be its own teacher. Intellectual freedom begins when one says with Socrates that he knows that he knows nothing, and then goes on to add: I know what it is that I don't know. My question then is: Do you know what you don't know and therefore what you should know? If your answer is affirmative and humble, then you arc your own teacher, you are making your own assignment, and you will be your own best critic. You will not need externally imposed courses, nor marks, nor diplomas, nor a nod from your boss-in business or in politics. My third question is different from the first two, more superficial perhaps, but fateful, nevertheless. Under the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, have you persuaded yourself that there are knowlcdgcs and truths beyond your grasp, things that you simply cannot learn? Hnve you allowed adverse evidence to pile up and force you to conclude that you arc not mathematical, not linguistic, not poetic, not scientific, not philosophical? If you have allowed this to happen, you have arbitrarily imposed limits on your intellectual freedom, and you have smothered the fires from which all other freedoms arise. Most of us have done this and come short of what that threadbare slogan, human dignity, really means. We arc willing, and shamefully relieved, to admit that each has his specialty, his so-called field, and the other fellow has his, and \:VC are ready to let the common human enterprise go by default. We are willing to become cripples in our minds and fractions of men in our lives. Some of us are willing to crush the Socratic formula and say, I know nothing. The fourth question: Do you accept the world? This is reminiscent of Margaret Fuller's saying to Carlyle: But I do accept the universe, Mr. Carlyle. I am thinking of a slightly different context in The Brothers Karamazov, when Ivan tells Alyosha that he finds it easy to believe in God, but that he finds it impossible to believe in the world. The second clause follows from the first in a crushed syllogism: Because he believes in God, he cannot accept the world. For most of us these days, the case is that we have believed in some things so \:vcakly or fanatically that other equally or more real things have become absurd or impossible. This results from our crippled minds, our self-imposed limits on understanding, our deafness to the voice that asks: Is it true? I am persuaded that the cure for this sickness of mind is in some vigorous and rigorous attempt to deal with that most puzzling and mysterious idea, the idea of the world. It is not a simple idea, nor even a merely complicated idea. Kant called it an antinomy, an idea of speculative reason governing 20 all other uses of the intellect. There have been other such ideas that have governed thought, the idea of God or Being as it puzzled and dazzled the ancient world, the idea of Man as it stirred and fermented the world from the Renaissance on. God and Man have not disappeared as charts and aids to intellectual navigation, but they are in partial eclipse at present, and the world is asking us the big questions, questions in cosmology and science, questions in law and government. They are not merely speculative questions; they arc concrete and immediately practical; they are as much matters of life and death and freedom as the old questions were. Most of us have made, with Ivan, a pact with the devil, an agreement not to face them and accept them-yet. I am not going to mark you on any attempt you may make to answer these questions here today; we don't mark at St. John's. But I would guess that none of us, certainly including myself, would stand very high, if we tried. Perhaps we ought rather to ask whether these are valid questions. If they are valid, they may come somewhere ncar indicating a standard by which we judge our common intellectual life, and therefore our common education in this country. I myself think the questions arc valid, and I draw a drastic consequence, namely, that we need a national system of education, from university to kindergarten, from federal to local, and that it should aim at the intellectual confidence which would dare to act freely and go wherever it pleases, wherever it ought to go. No one has asked us questions like that since then, and with Scott gone we will just have to develop the habit of asking ourselves. When we do, the New Program will have more than justified itself. Another reason for my disappearance from Annapolis and estrangement from Scott for so long was that I didn't really want to face either until I accomplished some intellectual fask in which I could take real pride. I was certainly not ashamed of the unsuccessful labor struggles I was involved with in the South (five years of lost strikes), nor the Civil Rights efforts and work at compensatory education for the underprivileged in Boston, but I felt very strongly that I had to use my mind in some creative way and complete some major piece of work before I could really look Scott in the eye again. The tragedy of that perhaps foolish notion was, that although it inspired me to go beyond my natural limits and attempt something that I never really thought I would finish, Scott died before it was finished. Only he would have understood the truly comic aspect of what for me \:vas something of a personal tragedy. Annapolis is a confusing city when one has been absent twenty-five years and I got lost more than once when I strayed away from the immediate central area. West Street has become a typically American jungle of stores and used car lots and the outer reaches of the community have grown enor- �January, 1978 mously, with shopping centers and suburban real estate. But the heart of the inner city is remarkably unchanged, despite some expansion of the Naval Academy, and the chic development of a number of jet-set watering spots around the market place at the foot of Main. Carvel Hall, alas, is no more, but there is quite a comfortable little Hilton, of course, at the foot of Main, right next to the Yacht Club and overlooking the harbor. I brought my wife and three children with me, and we had great fun eating cherrystones and oysters on the half shell at the market, walking the grounds of the College, and even smelling the unprofessional sweat of the old gym. Nostalgia set in. It was a delight to see the old buildings, along with some striking new ones, in such good shape, and my immediate reaction was that those who had stayed behind had minded the store well and kept the lamp brightly lighted. More important than the plant, the College appeared to be very much alive, students still very enthusiastic and quite willing to transfer that enthusiasm to returning old fogcys. The faculty has changed but that was to be expected. Mr. Kaplan is still there and remembers and so arc Jasha, Winfree, Bob Bart,* and a few others, but for the most part there are new faces, as there should be, and things appear to be in good order. Of course, I cannot report on the quality of learning on the basis of a weekend's visit, but more intensive observers like David Riesman and Gerald Grant, along with considerable criticism and a remarkable insight, have concluded fairly recently: Its (St. John's) curriculum raises questions and doubts more than it increases confidence. It tests and encourages the development of a fairly narrow range of important skills. It teaches appreciation more than it spurs the ambition to create something at least marginally new. Too many students, perhaps, learn at St. John's how great a failure they arc, at how great a distance they lie from the masters. Yct the program that exist<; is remarkable. Its community is founded on a radical faith in the ability of liberal education to teach men and women to think for themselves and to become conscious of their moral and social obligations. It has embodied a vision and fostered a dialectic in the culture because it has been there to be criticized. It has kept alive an ideal of the liberal arts and a concern for the wholeness of intelJectual experience in a pure form. It has been a kind of conscience of the liberal arts college, a goal to all higher education, and a declaration about how men should live. 1 ll considered one of the best small universities in the country. We came into existence not too long after the New Program at St. John's was instituted, in the post-war years when the famous Harvard Redbook-General Education in a Free Society-provided the ideas and the curriculum for undergraduate education, not only at Brandeis University, but most of the other institutions of higher learning in America. The Harvard Redbook was itself a response to the challenge that Hutchins and St. John's had hurled out upon the unfriendly ears of higher education in America. It granted the argument that there existed a body of ideas and subject matter that were the foundation of a liberal education, and it rejected the Elliot concept that students should be entirely free to select their own course of study, from beginning to end. It proposed the outline of a core curriculum that should be common to all students in higher education, embracing substantial exposure to the humanities, the physical sciences, and the social sciences. The faculty at Harvard and later at Brandeis and other institutions adopted this concept, and in its early history, Brandeis even organized its course of study around these categories and eliminated the highly specialized deparhnents. But as the centrifugal forces of research and scholarship took their toll in a rapidly expanding university, the overall divisions grew into departments, and the core curriculum gradually disappeared. It was replaced by a watered down successor: "distribution requirements" which allowed students merely to fill out their programs with several courses of their own selection in each of the aforementioned general categories (i.e., physical science, humanities, etc.} The gradual erosion of any coherent curriculum of study under this scheme led to a Faculty-Student Task Force created by the Dean of Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard recently to review the last twenty-five years at Harvard where the poficies of the core curriculum proposed by the Redbook were in practice. With regard to the growing freedom of choice where students can select almost any course in the university to fulfill the core curriculum requirements, the draft report of this Task Force observes: No doubt many students could profit substantially from an unfettered opportunity to find their way through two thousand or more courses now offered in the Harvard catalogue. Our judgment, however, is that more students are bewildered than stimulated by this cornucopia. Though they cherish their freedom, they also seek guidance, and at present that guidance is not forthcoming from the one group that ought to be an important source-the Faculty. A student member of the Task Force goes even further: There was never a time when American higher education needed a conscience more than it does today. I have been teaching for the past seventeen years in an institution which is *This was written before Mr. Bart's translation to Santa Fe. Ed. Harvard has gone soft. . . . Increasing numbers of alternatives exist to meet requirements, and minimal 1 Change 6 (May 1974) No.4, p. 63. 21 �The College competence is required to fulfill them . . . . The potpourri of courses leads (students) to suspect that there are no educational guidelines structuring course content, that there are no goals to provide some kind of organizing focus to the diversity. Faced with the formidable task of shouldering the burden of intellectual development single-handedly, many retreat from the challenge. In designing a course of study the concern shifts from achieving such growth to finding an easy "A". The Harvard Task Force goes on to quote John Stuart Mill on the subject of liberal education on the occasion of his inauguration as the Rector of St. Andrews in 1867: Universities are not intended to teach knowledge required to fit men for some special mode of making their livelihood. Their object is not to make skillful lawyers, or physicians or engineers, but capable and cultivated human beings. It is very right that there should be Schools of Law and Medicine . . . . But these things are not part of what every generation owes to the next, as that on which its civilization and worth will primarily depend. . . . Men are men before they are lawyers, or physicians, or merchants, or manufacturers; and if you make them capable and sensible men, they will make themselves capable and sensible lawyers or physicians . . . . Men may be competent lawyers without general education, but it depends upon general education to make them philosophic lawyers-who demand, and are capable of appreciating, principles, instead of merely cramming their memory with details. Sound familiar? I place so much emphasis on this Harvard Report, not yet accepted by its Faculty, because Harvard has always been a leader in educational developments in this country, and because this report records the failure of liberal education at Harvard over the past twenty-five years, a failure even to implement properly the very modest requirements outlined in the Redbook drawn up by a similar Faculty Committee a quarter of a century ago. In concluding its appraisal of the currently almost nonexistent core curriculum at Harvard, the Task Force argues that the purpose of requirements in the curriculum "is to insure that all students are exposed to those significant intellectual skills and elements of culture that, given free choice, they might well neglect to their own regret and loss." Specific proposals follow which include the enumeration of eight (8) areas of study in which every Harvard student will be required to meet standards reflected in comprehensive examinations. These areas include: (a) Expository Writing; (b) Mathematical Reasoning and its Application; (c) Physical Sciences; (d) Biological Sciences; (e) Western Culture (1) Western Literature and Art, (2) Western Thought; (f) Nonwestern Civiliza22 lions and Culture; (g) Political and Moral Philosophy; and (h) Modern Social Analysis. Both course work and examinations in these eight fields will be required and provision will be made for close Faculty supervision of the designation of courses to meet these requirements. What all this means is that American higher education is slowly awakening to that fact that it is facing another major crisis, particularly obvious among private institutions. With the astronomically rising cost of higher education, greater pressure is being brought upon the leading institutions in this area to justify their high tuition costs, and consequently to defend their undergraduate educational programs. Upon careful scrutiny they arc or increasingly will be discovering that their performance has not kept pace with their rhetoric, and the restive consumers of tl1eir product are becoming increasingly aware of the shortcomings of what they are being offered and dissatisfied with the results. In such an explosive, even revolutionary environment, the role of St. John's, the "liberal conscience" of American higher education, becomes even more significant. I have never thought that the St. John's program contained the final answer to all the problems of American higher education. And yet, as Riesman and Grant argue, St. John's with its "radical faith" and unswerving commitment to its program tends to goad the rest of American Higher Education into deeper reflection of its own shortcomings. It serves as a point of reference of comparison, an irritating gadfly like Socrates, constantly to remind all of the others what is possible when the courage and the commitment to a coherent value system are present. In my own university, I have flooded the Educational Policy Committee with stinging inquiries and appeals for careful self-examination, and have recently run for election to that Committee and the Faculty Senate (successfully) in order to pursue my criticisms with more constructive action. I have also been leading a sem.inar on higher education in America, which has drawn a good number of the more critical student leaders together and provided them with some substance to accompany their already inflated critical rhetoric. Reform. is in the air, but the critical question is still: what kind or'fcform? What will be the concepts and values that mark the coming reconstructiOn of the undergraduate curriculum in American higher education? Will they follow the pattern of the post-war changes, where something was promised to every gfoup making substantial demands, and the end result was a patchwork quilt of timid "core curriculum" proposals and "distribution requirements"? These reforms never did get to the root of the problem, and with the passage of years, whatever constructive substantive changes they did make were easily eroded. The centrifugal forces of the modern university, particularly in the physical sciences, dominate the educational structure of the university and weaken its commitment to undergraduate liberal education. As the Dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences recently put it: For a long time there has been a contradiction in the mission of this faculty. W c are all scholars intent on �January, 1978 moving forward in our particular subject. At the same time, we are also charged with educating undergraduates . . . . In the former capacity, we act as specialists seeking to communicate with other likeminded individuals. In the latter capacity, we should be generalists, communicating on a more fundamental level with young people. No university college can avoid this contradiction. . . . Nevertheless, this contradiction has to be minimized if the social contract within the university is to be preserved. But the question is how and under what terms? I am trying to suggest that in this very sensitive and potentially explosive period of reform of undergraduate education in this country, the St. John's program and its influence appear to me to be even more important than ever. Now let me address myself to that aspect of the question. III The burden of my argument from the outset has been that too many of us, for one reason or another, have become estranged from St. John's and its ongoing effort to survive and flourish in an otherwise hostile educational environment. Too many of us have left it to those who stayed behindDick Weigle, Jasha Klein, Simon Kaplan, Bob Bart, Winfree Smith, and others-to carry on the struggle, not only of keeping the college alive and the quality of its program flourishing, even expanding, but also of carrying on the struggle that Winkie, Scott and Bob Hutchins initiated-of affecting the quality of undergraduate education in this country. This is not a simple nor an inconsequential issue. The future of all our institutions and the quality of our civilization depend upon the future of our educational system. Granted that most of us came to St. John's because we believed it offered us the best college education we could obtain in this country, we were also concerned at that time with its impact upon education in the country at large. Some of us were even active critics within the program and at various times raised our voices in order to bring about consideration of changes aimed at improving the program. For too many of us, that once-active concern and those critical voices have been silent too long. Individually, we may have had some influence within our own areas of activity, but for many of us our links with St. John's have been severedor almost so. Many Of us were overjoyed at the chance to meet one another recently at Winkie's eightieth birthday, but for some of us the occasion ended too quickly and we hardly had time to exchange vital statistical information (married, single, how many children, etc.) when the afternoon was over and we drifted away for perhaps another ten or twenty years. It more closely resembled a reunion of Spanish-American War veterans than a meeting of committed cducatio.nal revolutionaries. And maybe that's where it's at. I don't want to admit this is true, however. From visiting with the Board and the active alumni, I have discovered how important the interest of the New Program graduates is to the future of St. John's. Every nickel raised from foundations and corporations depends on the level of participation and interest demonstrated by St. John's own graduates. If we don't give a damn or a cent, how can we expect others to show any interest? After all, we are the ones who ought to know the significance of such an education better than anyone else, and if we are indifferent to the future of the College and its influence, what can we expect from the rest of the country? But over and beyond this critical problem, I think the College needs the benefit of our vastly differing experiences and points of view. Barr and Buchanan never looked at the Program as a static idee fixe and I don't think it ought to be. No idea or institution can continue to flourish without the revitalizing force of constructive internal criticism. I want to find out more about what has taken place since I left Annapolis twenty-nine years ago, and I damn well intend to put some effort into the exercise. I want to discover what has happened to many of you, not simply the vital statistics concerning marriages and jobs, but what's going on inside your heads and hearts. I think one of the criteria of the quality of the St. John's education is our ability to communicate with each other after ten or twenty years. A dead silence on the part of a majority of St. John's graduates in the faec of a potential revolution in American higher education is something of an admission of failure and an indication that we have nothing to contribute. I don't think this is true. As I have carefully examined the rather vacuous discussion of the content of liberal education in the professional journals and among leading American educators, from Harvard to Way Below Normal, I think we do have something terribly important to contribute. Many of the colleges and universities are filled with brilliant minds, interesting and dynamic faculty members, and bright and eager students. That is not the problem. What is lacking is a clear and coherent idea concerning the purpose of undergraduate education, a program for implementing it and the educational leader-ship to put it into practice. We arc approaching a period when the intensity of the debate will rise astronomically, and the quantity of words will multiply geometrically. But what the outcome will be is still very problematical, and there arc not many en-< couraging signs that the right steps will be taken. I think St. John's ,College and St. John's graduates ought to be heavily involved in this ongoing discussion and I would like to propose that we begin right now among ourselves. I think to begin with, we ought to reconsider Participating in the endowment drive-the Fund for 1980's. Without this economic base, St. John's and the St. John's idea are not going to be able to survive the competitive and inflationary era of high educational costs. Furthermore, many of us enjoyed the luxury of financial aid while we were at St. John's, either from the Government through the V cteran' s Administration or through grants raised by the Administration. That made it possible for many of us to attend who would never have been able to accumulate the funds to do so on our own. If this "money-blind" admission policy is to continue at both schools, this large-scale underwriting of the expanding cost of education is a sine qua non. And here the small contributions 23 �The College arc as important as the larger ones, because as I indicated above, the large contributors, such as foundations and corporations, base their contributions on the interest expressed by the immediate consumers-the graduates of the college. If the school is not able to attract the participation of its own, its chances of obtaining the support of outsiders will be greatly diminished. A second concrete proposal I want to make is to establish something like a committee of correspondence-an enlarged symposium. I think there are a lot of us who might be interested in communicating our thoughts to each other if th·ere was such an intimate medium of communication. I am not suggesting another alumni journal, God forbid, but rather a symposium of letters, articles, essays, and what have youanything worth communicating to others with whom you have been out of touch for many years. I am certain that my ideas will draw many negative responses, along with perhaps some positive ones, but this might be a way of getting things into motion. Be patient, I'm almost finished. I'm comfortably ensconced at a desk I made out of the scraps of lumber left over from the house I just finished building with my own hands on Martha's Vineyard. Of course, I had some help, but its been one of the great experiences of my life. When my wife, Marianne (if she gets a few minutes off from her internship in Pediatrics a\ Children's Hospital in Boston) and my three kids-Cricket, Mike, and Suzy-climb to the top of the craw's nest we have built on the roof, we can see at least ten miles of Nantucket Sound, all the Elizabeth Islands and the rolling Vineyard landscape that tumbles into the sea. And the sunsets-wow! In this mood and under these conditions I bid you farewell. I want very much to hear from many of you and I know many of you feel the same way about others you have not heard from or about in decades. What ever happened to our Rhodes Scholar, Steve Terry? I got a scribbled note on the back of a match box with his address on it ten years ago, brought to me by a student who had been interviewed by the Rhodes Committee in the Midwest. What about R. 0. Davis, our spellbinder? What does Don Kaplan have to say about the New Yark City School system and Mike Keane on the same subject? Where is John Larkin Lincoln IV, Verne Schwab, Cas Krol, Rogers Albritton and dozens of others? Can't all we prodigal sons (and more recently daughters) come home agaih and keep the conv(;':rsation going? William M. Goldsmith 162 Heath's Bridge Road Concord, Massachusetts 01742 PARENTS' WEEKEND St. John's will sponsor a weekend on the Annapolis campus for parents again this year. A student committee, as in each of the past two years, will plan and organize all events and will be in charge of managing the weekend's activities. Parents may plan to visit classes on Thursday and Friday, seminars on Thursday evening, and attend the all-College lecture on Friday evening. There will also be seminars for parents, and students who wish to participate, on Saturday morning. A more detailed announcement will be sent to all parents later in the winter. Meanwhile, experience dictates that hotel reservations be made at the earliest possible date in order to avoid possible disappointment. THE DATES: MAY 4-7, 1978 24 �January, 1978 1 CAMPUS-ALUMNI NEWS Bunny Gessner (left) and Bill Simmons Boh Goldwin and Bill Simmons Maryland's acting Governor Blair Lee III signed the St. John's College bond bill last summer. The bill provides matching funds for various renovation and new construction projects on the Annapolis campus between now and 1981. In the picture above, from the left: seated, President of the Maryland Senate Steney Hoyer, Governor Lee, Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates John Hanson Briscoe; standing, St. John's seniors Daniel Jerrems, Christian Jenifer Smith, Rollie Feuchtcnberger, President Weigle, {almost hidden is Miss Beth Garraway, executive director of the Maryland Independent College and University Association), senior Nancy Lee Coiner, St. John's vice president William B. Dunham, and Charles Cooley, until recently director of the Fund for the 1980's. Alumni-in-Residence The availability of one dormitory on the Santa Fe campw makes it possible for the College to try an experimental Alumni-in-Residence Program. We believe that alumni and their spouses might enjoy spending a day, a week, or a fortnight in residence, visiting seminars and tutorials, and meeting and talking with tutors and students. Actual participation in any class will require the permission of the tutor, but auditing will be welcome in any class. "Students themselves seem to welcome the opportunity for discussion with their seniors, as the presence of occasional retired persons in the student body attests. Other attractions in Santa Fe include skiing on the nearby slopes, shopping, sightseeing, or ju~t relaxing. The charge for a single person for room and all meals is $8.00 a day, for a couple $15.00 a day. The weekly rate is $50.00 for a single person and $90.00 for a couple. The College is not equipped to provide care for small children, but teen-agers will be welcome at the rates which I have quoted. Space is limited so reservations should be made as soon as possible by writing to my secretary, Mrs. Geneva Mantelli, St. John's College, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 87501. The telephone number is 505-982-3691. Richard D. Weigle President A ward of Merit Awards of Merit were presented this year at the Homecoming dinner to three alumni: Bernard F. Gessner '27, Dr. David Dobreer '44, and Robert A. Goldwin '50. With appropriate ceremony, William W. Simmons '48, president of the Alumni Association, presented scrolls to Messrs. Gessner and Goldwin. Dr. Dobreer was prevented from attending the dinner by professional commitments. His award was delivered later in October by Alumni Director Tom Farran, when Parran was on the West Coast to meet with alumni in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas. Bernard "Bunny" Gessner served as executive vice president of the Alumni Association from 1970 to 1972, then as its president for three years. His service to St. John's includes also three years as junior varsity coach in football, basketball, and lacrosse. (In the first and last of these Gessner had been a stand-out as a student.) He has been very active in the affairs of the Annapolis Association chapter since his retirement from the CocaCola Co. in 1970. 25 �The College Dave Dobreer, a physician in Los Angeles, since 1950 has been the St. John's "key man" in the Southern California area. He has been particularly helpful in the alumni admissions assistance program. He has served with distinction since 1974 as an alumni representative on the Board of Visitors and Governors, and just this past spring was re-elected to a second three-year term. Bob Goldwin has had a distinguished career in education at St. John's, the University of Chicago, and Kenyon College. He was the first director, and one of the planners, of the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education. He served as Dean on the Annapolis campus from 1969 to 1973, leaving to be special advisor to the Ambassador, U.S. Mission to NATO. Subsequently he became special consultant to President Gerald Ford. Mr. Goldwin is now a resident scholar and Director of Seminar Programs at fhe American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C. Golden Anniversary Gift At the Annual Meeting of the Alumni Association on October I, the fifty-year reunion class, 1927, presented the College with a unique gift, an idea. The idea was the creation of an Alumni Great Hall, a structure to commemorate the accomplishments of alumni of the past, present, and future. It would house records and memorabilia, with particular emphasis on our first "famous" alumnus, Francis Scott Key 1796. Presentation of the gift was by Edward J. Lush of the donating class, who was responsible for the concept. Mr. Lush stressed that St. John's should have some suitable location on campus where the many accomplishments of St. John's alumni could be recognized and displayed for all to see. He thought it unfortunate that there was no proper exhibit centered around Key; such a place would be a natural drawing card for tourists, and St. John's would in the process become better known. During the subsequent discussion, it became clear that, even if a suitable building were given to the College, and a place on campus found to erect it, the added maintenance and operating costs 26 would be beyond the College's capability. President Weigle suggested that perhaps a location could be found in one of the several buildings slated for renovation or expansion. The Association consequently approved in principle plans to honor alumni, and urged that all possible steps be taken to establish a fitting memorial for that purpose. Association president Simmons subsequently asked Association past president Bernard Gessner to head a committee to study ways of implementing the Association's action. Back Issues Available Listed below are issues of The College which are in stock and available to our readers. There will be a charge of$. 50 a copy for postage and handling, with a minimum charge of $1.00. Since supplies of certain issues are limited (shown by an asterisk), orders will be filled on a first-come, first served basis: 1971: April', October', December'; 1972: January ('73); 1973: April, January ('74); 1974: April, July, October, January ('75); 1975: April, July, October, January ('76); 1976: April, July, October, January ('77); 1977: April, July, October, January ('78). Directors Reelected Among other actions at the Annual Meeting on October I, the Alumni Association elected four directors: Janet Nelson '72, Thomas MacNcmar '39, Edward Heise and Gilbert Crandall, both '36. Their terms expire in 1979. This was the off-year election, involving only four of the elected directors. At Homecoming 1978 all four officers and four directors must be chosen. This provision of the By-Laws assures continuity in the direction of the Association. Homecoming Reunions Several classes made a special effort to hold reunions at Homecoming, and the results were most gratifying. From the sixty-year class came John W. Noble and Ernst 0. von Schwerdtner. (They and their wives were joined at the dinner by Helen Davidson, Alumni Representatives There were no nominations by petition of alumni representatives to the Board of Visitors and Governors in response to the announcement in the October issue. The directors of the Alumni Association have nominated incumbents James H. Frame '50 and William W. Simmons '48, whose terms expire this spring. In the absence of other nominations, and in accordance with the provisions of Article VIII, Section lll, of the By-Laws of the Association, Messrs. Frame and Simmons are considered elected for three-year terms terminating in 1981. Thomas Parran, Jr. Director of Alumni Activities Addresses, please! If you're moving, the Office of College Relations would like to have your address change· six weeks prior to your move. It will save the college 25• for each address change. The office receives between 300 and 400 changes every month, so your help can save a lot of moriey. whose late husband, George, was a member of the class of 1916.) The Golden Anniversary class-fifty years out and one-third as old as the Association itself-was led by Bernard Gessner as chairman. From the class of 1927 he brought Frank DeSantis, Elmer Jackson, Edward Lush, Lee Nichols, Frederick Smith, and Richard Williams, the last all the way from California. Merrill Mitchell and Alan Pike combined efforts with the class of 1937; with them were John Brown, Ernest Cory, Okey Michael, and Robert Snibbe, for a reunion dinner on Friday. (Pike was the "longest-distance-traveled" winner: all the way from Honolulu.) The thirty-year class, 1947, was under the command of Col. George Van San!, and a fine group it was: Stephen Benedict, William Elliott, Gerald Hoxby, William Ross, W. Kyle Smith, Jr., and John Van Doren. (John's son Daniel is a freshman in Annapolis this year.) �January, 1978 This year's Silver Anniversary gang, 1952, was chaired by Thomas Carnes of San Francisco. For the reunion Tom brought in Paul Cree, John Fuller, joseph Manusov, David Napper, and Adam Pinsker. The twenty-year class, not really having a formal reunion, was represented by joan Cole, John Kinloch, and Marcia De!Piain Reff. From the class of 1967 were Gay Singer Baratta, Nancy Goldwin Harvey, Arthur Kungle, and Mark Lindley. And off to a fine start by coming to their first Homecoming reunion were Ted Burke, Dan Jerrems, Pamela Lobdell, Rick Plaut, and Jenifer Smith. Looking forward to next year, how about you alumni from the classes of 1918, 1928, 1938, 1948, 1953, 1958, and 1968? We are especially interested in the classes of 1928 and 1953, for the golden and silver anniversaries, but certainly hope that Clyde Bourke, Charlie Burton, Russell Cook, Tom MacMannis, and others will represent that sixtyyear class. If we have half-a-dozen classes making a special reunion effort, a successful Homecoming just sort of fol1ows naturally. Start making your plans NOW. CLASS NOTES 1911 At age 90, Clarence L. Dickinson has been made a Life Member of the Automobile Club of Maryland. He has served for thirty-seven years on the Cluh's Advisory Board in Salisbury, Md. Pheme Perkins and Edward Stevens were married 3n June 7, 1977. 1968 Another medical doctor among our alumni: John fi'armer writes that he is Post Surgeon at Ft. Ritchie, Mel. He was married in April, 1976, and he and his wife, Rosaline, just had their first son, Martin. Rosaline is a nurse-midwife. Nancy (Goldwin) and Steven Harvey '70 and their children, Joshua (4) and Eliana (I), have just moved to Silver Spring, Mel. Steve received his Ph. D. degree in Ncar Eastern Languages and Literature from Harvard University, is working on a translation of Averroes under NEH sponsorship, and is teaching at the University of Maryland. He and Nancy have started a successful business designing, manufacturing, and marketing innovative products for infants and children. 1969 S. Paul Schilling '23 School at Yale University. (At about the same time, Harris's daughter Eloise '79 was elected president of the Student Polity on the Annapolis campus.) 1950 From Daisy Goldwin, wife of Robert A., mother of three graduates, mother-in-law of another (with a second son-in-law three-quarters of the way through the Graduate Institute), she herself having completed three G. I. summers, comes a fine report on the Goldwin family, circa 1977-78. Husband Bob is a resident scholar and Director of Seminar Programs at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington. Bob and Daisy plan to spend a month visiting seven countries in the mid-East, he as a member of the Presidentially appointed Board of Foreign Scholarships. For news of the rest of the clan, see notes under 1968, 1971, and 1973-Santa Fe. In October John M. Ross wrote that he had-just returned from two-and-one-half months in London, where he attended a course given by the British Broadcasting Corporation in "Management of Resources in Broadcasting." His studies and the chance to live in London "were a marvelous experience," John writes. His home hase is Seattle, where he works for KRAB, "trying to hustle money for listener-supported radio." John reports that Paul Ollswang had an exhibit of satirical drawings in the Eugene (Ore.) Public Library in September. 1971 Jane (Goldwin) Bandler and her husband Don live in Washington, D.C. Jane is director of Little People, a nursery school in Georgetown, and ·is furthering her training at the Washington Montessori Institute. Don is a Foreign Service Officer on the West African desk in Cultural Affairs, and attends George Washington Law School. He has completed three summers at the Graduate Institute in Santa Fe. Jane and Don have a daughter, Lara, who is one and one-half years old. 1972 S. Paul Schilling, author of God Incognito (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1974), has just published another work, God and Human Anguish (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1977). Dr. Schilling is professor of systematic theology emeritus, Boston University, and makes his home in Centerville, Mass. Both of his hooks are now part of the Alumni Authors Collection in the library in Annapolis. lations at Boston University. AI was recently married, and wonders in. his last letter why he waited so long. (As he readily admits, he graduated twenty years after the rest of his class; in this, as in marriage, better late than never, AI. And our most sincere congratulations on the latter-also a bit late!) 1948 Ray Cave, former reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun and later a staff member of Sports Illustrated, in September was named managing editor of Time magazine. Ray moved from SI to Time in March, 1976, as assistant managing editor. cessfully passed her Maryland Bar examinations, and was scheduled to be sworn in as a lawyer in December. A letter in September from Theophus Smith, reporting the good news that he and "Rahbit" (Marguerite Judson '74) arc expecting a baby in February. The Smiths graduated together from the Virginia Theological Seminary, receiving Master of Theological Studies degrees. They currently live with Russell and Margaret Frame Lipton '73 & '74, in Santa Cruz, Cal. The Liptons have launched a religious retreat there, and were expecting a baby in November. Marguerite is interning with a therapy program for persons convicted of driving while intoxicated. Thee is working as a writer and research assistant for Eldridge Cleaver in Palo Alto. Thee's evaluation of Cleaver, "for those interested in personal opinion": ". he is not a charlatan, nor even a 'super Christian,' but a mature, travel-wise, ex-radical from the 60's-'born again' after seven years of political and spiritual exile." 1966 David Z. Landow is spending this year as 1973-Santa Fe Elizabeth "Liz" Goldwin is also living in Wash- On Thursday, October 20, the Reverend G. scholar-in-residence at the White Burkett Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, doing a study of the "legislative veto." ington. She completed training at the Montessori Institute there in 1976, and now teaches two Montessori classes in the Arlington County (Va.) Public 1923 Harris Collingwood was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity hy the Berkeley Divinity 1952 Alvin Aronson works in the Office of Public Re- 1955 Barbara Brunner Oosterhout during the fall suc- 27 �The College Reproduced to the left are the obverse and reverse of a photo postcard from fudith Sharlin S75 and Elliott Marseille S74; the reason for their joy is obvious. the world. She has been named editor for a new company-published architectural review of international projects. 1977 Schools. In November she exhibited her soft sculpture and batik work (her avocation) in a Washington gallery. 1974 October brought a welcome note from Valerie Kozel, who lives in Takoma Park, Md., and works for the World Bank in Washington, D.C. She is, she reports, "generally absorbing as much as I can of the world around me." She plans to return to school next year, for graduate work in systems analysis/transport planning. 1974-Santa Fe Virginia Boyle writes that she spent her first post-St. John's year laboring on construction projects to finance a six-month stay in Europe. Working, studying, and skiing in and around Munich were hard to beat, she says, and the stay lasted two years. She is now back in Colorado, attending real estate school, and is planning to enter law school in the fall of 1978. 1975 Elizabeth (Betsy) Bassan is enrolled this year at Columbia University's School of International Affairs. One of our Alumni Communicards arrived the other day from Dale Mortimer, bringing us up to date on his wanderings the past two and one-half years. After hitching around the West Coast in the fall of 1975, looking for the ideal place to live, he found the spot in Oregon, Ashland,· to be exact. He has been a naturalist's assistant in several nature preserves, fought forest fires as a forestry technician, driven an ambulance, and played crew medic as an emergency medical technician. He is currently helping start a Great Books discussion group; learning chemistry, human anatomy, and physiology; and is avidly investigating altered states of consciousness such as self-hypnosis, dream control, and meditation. Dale's long-range plans involve medical school after he learns "lots of chemistry." 1975-Santa Fe Leslie Marie fohnson, for two years "lost" from our alumni records (for which we apologize), has been found! She and Teff Shea '75 are classmates at McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, Cal., and through Jeff Leslie found her way, via the mails, to the Alumni Office. She says she is having a good time in first year law school. 28 On November lO Dan M. Roddy represented St. John's at the inauguration of Dr. William Anthony Shields as president of the College of Great Falls (Mont.). Dan will continue working on his family's farm until January, when he hoped to start graduate work in the Plant and Soil Science Department, Montana State University. He has been employed by the USDA-Agricultural Research Service for the past seven months. 1976 William W. Campbell is in his final year at Tulane University Law School. Last summer he worked at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama-"exciting"-under the sponsorship of the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council. He lives in the New Orleans Free School, and frequently sees Larry and Hazel Schlueter '67 & '69 and their son Charlie. Hazel teaches at the School, and they get together to play old-time musicheavy on "fiddles and mandolins." Geoff Cockey '74 has roomed with Campbell on and off during the past two years. fames C. "Kimo" Mackey is a curator (we are not certain of t}lat title) at the Smithsonian Museum of History and Technology, caring for the boat collection. 1976-Santa Fe Pablo Collins, as reported in the October issue, is studying at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at tl1e University of Texas, Austin. Pablo says the only undergraduate requirements not met by the St. John's program are microeconomics, macro-economics, and introductory statistics. These, he advises, can be met by inclc_: pendent study. Until next June David Shapiro will be a resident of Kirchheim-Teck, West Germany. There since last June, David builds· and repairs fiberglass sailplanes, and flies them as weather permits. His employer is Schempp-Hirth and Co. Katya Shirokow, back in the United States after a sojourn in West Germany (April issue), writes that her direction has finally crystalized toward multinational business; she will be applying to schools of management in this country as well as to the In- stitut pour l'Etude de Methodes de Direction d'Entreprise in Lausanne. Meanwhile, she lives and works in Santa Barbara, Cal., for a company which markets architectural products throughout September brought us, among other visitors, Daniel ferrems, both by letter and in person (Homecoming). Dan spent the summer doing construction work near Juneau, Alaska, before entering the two-year Health Associate Program at Johns Hopkins University. The program yields a B.S. degree and certification as a Physician's Assistant. The Jerrems Five Year Plan, as of September 16, involves two years (summer included) at Hopkins; one year working and gaining experience; and hvo years in the Peace Corps. After that he's keeping his options open: a Ph.D. degree in Public Health, medical school, or continuing as a Health Associate. 1977-Santa Fe Sam Atwood, an active member of the mountain rescue unit while at St. John's, is at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. He is assistant operations manager for logistics for the Ross Ice Shelf Project of the University of Nebraska. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the project involves drilling through tl1e lee Shelf to the sea surface and down to the ocean floor, acquiring data and samples for scientific purposes. Sam was crossing the International Dateline on his twenty-first birthday; the result was a birthday only a couple of hours long. Sam's parents reside in Annapolis Roads, just outside the Maryland capital. In Memoriam 1913-William A. Ruhl, Sr., St. Michaels, Md., November 28, 1977. 1914-The Hon. Godfrey Child, Pocomoke , City, Md., November 25, 1977. 1918-Dr. Earle E. Broadrup, Bel Air, Md., October 5, 1977. 1923-James Sudler Cockey, Stevensville, Md., September 21, 1977. 1932-George R. Vickers, IV, Ocean City, Md., October 6, 1977. 1934-Bernard Casassa, Bowie, Md., November 20, 1977. 1936-John S. B. Hodges, Baltimore, Md., November 16, 1977. 1940-C. Osborne Duvall, Annapolis, Md., October 20, 1977. 1946-Thomas J. Cosgrove, Washington, D.C., November 5, 1977. The class of John D. Warfield, whose death was reported in October, should have read "1932". Ralph Borsodi, Exeter, N.H. October 27, 1977. (MA 1942) �January, 1978 (Continued from inside front cover) The first issue of The College as a journal without a campus and alumni section will appear in the early summer. We have in the past had profiles of alumni (e.g., David Moss in The College of April 1976) and articles by alumni, as in the present issue. Otherwise the contents of the front part were made up of the texts of lectures (sometimes in expanded form), of articles written for or submitted to the magazine, poems and translations of poems, music, drawings, and photographs. The last may help to explain why a semi-annual journal {with the President's Report making up a third issue) may open up new possibilities. Years ago there was a marvellous lecture by Curtis Wilson on "Kepler and the Mode of Vision". It was richly and tellingly illustrated in the oral delivery. Printing it would have meant tracking down copyright holders for months and probably years (in some cases), to get permission to reproduce. A quarterly journal could not do it. There was never enough time. A semi-annual might. Also it could easily print such a lecture with il- lustrations in one-larger-issue. Until now this kind of thing was ruled out, as were long serious articles or student papers, by considerations of space. The new journal will have more flexibility. It was expected that I should remain its editor and I was looking forward to the new venture and continued collaboration with Tom Parran. But I am not going to be here next year and there will be a new editor. He (or she) will have the support of an editorial board (which includes the previous editor ex officio) and he (or she) will have Tom Parran's invaluable experience and generous help to lean on. TheCollege in ·its new form should attract and be able to carry a good deal of interesting material it did not get and could not give before. May it prosper and continue to show the country and the world what goes on at St. John's. B.R.v.O. �' " :; •• ',. The College St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Second-class postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland, and at additional mailing offices. ' � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollegemagazine Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 28 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of College Relations Title A name given to the resource The College, January 1978 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978-01 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource von Oppen, Beate Ruhm Parran, Jr., Thomas Dunham, William B. Oosterhout, Barbara Brunner Wyatt, E. Malcolm Zuckerman, Elliott Description An account of the resource Volume XXIX, Number 4 of The College. Published in January 1978. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0010-0862 The_College_Vol_29_No_4_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 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/b31340dce514cdc45dee1e3a1b12b28e.pdf 7a4a109c143fa37f4f06790c59666705 PDF Text Text THE COLLEGE ISSN 0010-0862 St. John's College • Annapolis, Maryland- Santa Fe, New Mexico July, 1978 �THE COLLEGE Vol. XXX July, 1978 Number l ON THE COVER: The Liberty Tree, McDowell Hall, and the walkway from the Library somehow seem appropriate for this, the last of the "old" magazmes. Photograph by Lawrence Ostrovsky of this year's senior class. Old Editor's Note: Managing Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr. '42 This Issue of The College IS devoid of a Campus and Alumni section and is thus a first step in the new direction indicated by my editorial Note in the January issue. Subsequent steps will be taken by the new editor, Leo Raditsa, who is away this year and will assume his duties in the new academic year. He wilt I am sure, do bold and interesting things. I am happy to have such a seasoned and energetic successor, and wish him well in his new task. Edito.rial Advisory Board: William B. B.R.v.O. Editor: Beale Ruhm von Oppen Dunham, Barbara Brunner Oosterhout '55, E. Malcolm Wyatt, Elliott Zuckerman. THE COLLEGE is published by the Office of College Relations, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404, Richard D. Weigle, president, William B. Dunham, vice president. IN THE JULY ISSUE: A Reading of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, Published twice yearly, normally· January and July. 111 by Edward G. Sparrow ............................... . Freud's "Dora," by Alan Dorfman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . . . . 9 "The Scientific Revolution Will Not Take Place," by Thomas K. Simpson '50 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chaos, Gauss, and Order, by Michael Comenetz . . . . . . . . . . . . Credits: Cover photo by Lawrence Ostrovsky '78; pages 1-8, sketches by Lydia H. Sparrow. 16 28 �A Reading of the Parable of the Prodigal Son by Edward G. Sparrow f I ask you to listen to a lecture about the parable of the it is of us I prodigal son, somebecauseinI believe that there is none chalwho has not at time his life had to meet the lenge of forgiveness, and who, having had to meet it, has not wondered to some extent about what it was that had challenged him. We might have had to meet it as a demand made on us by a parent that we forgive a playmate who had injured us. We might have met it as a request from someone that we forgive him. Or we might have sensed sometime that now was the moment for saying something to another person that would transform the tension between us into a bond of peace. But we cannot have lived long without being challenged to forgive. I would like this evening to share some thoughts about forgiveness with you. And I hope that if some of you have not wondered about these things much before, well, perhaps you will wonder about them with me tonight. The thoughts I have in mind have to do with such questions as these: What is forgiveness? How does forgiveness differ from forgetting? Can we forgive somebody else if he does not ask for our forgiveness first? Can anybody forgive? Can we forgive ourselves? Can anybody be forgiven? To be sure forgiveness is the first among those things that it is more important to practise than to know. But we surely cannot be the poorer for knowing what it is-or, at least, for Text of a lecture given by Mr. Sparrow, the Dean of St. John's College, Annapolis, at Santa Fe on 27 January 1978. Mr. Sparrow took his B.A. and studied law at Harvard (LL.B., 1954); after an M.A. at Teachers College, Columbia University (1957), he became a Tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, in 1957. He served as Acting Director of the Integrated Liberal Arts Curriculum at St. Mary's College, California, from 1964 to 1966, was chairman of the St. John's Polity Review Committee, 1974-75, and became Dean in 1977. ... trying to know what it is. There are some important things that we cannot truly understand unless we have given some thought to what forgiveness is. to consider looking the parable the prodigal son. That all about I want us of because it forgiveness byaparable itistogether at forgiveness; and is a parable, story, can give us an image of what we want to understand in terms that we can easily recognize and readily appropriate to our own experience. The word "forgiveness" itself does not appear in the story. But the prodigal, at an important moment in his life, when he is hungry and among the swine, resolves to go and say to his father, "Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. Make me as one of thy hired servants." Later, however, he is found in his father's house feasting and dancing. We have to say in view of these two strikingly different moments in his relation to his father, that, whatever forgiveness might be, and although it is not mentioned by name in the parable, the father has forgiven his son by the time the son has gotten home. We can attach no meaning to the word forgiveness if we deny that the father has forgiven his son. Let us read the parable now with these questions in mind. Where is the forgiveness in it? When does the father forgive his son? And how does he do it? After I have read it I will give you some of my thoughts on these questions. A certain man had two sons: and the younger of them said to his father, "Father, give me the portion of goods that fall unto me." And he divided unto them his living. And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his sub- �The College his son. He divides his property into two parts, assigns to each son his part, and makes these parts available to the two sons. "And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living." When his father obliges him, the son at first stays at home for awhile. But then he begins to find his life at home offensive. And since he has no need to be there, where the presence of his father and elder brother are irritating reminders of his disloyalty, and since he can live well in just as fine a place elsewhere, he collects his part of his father's estate and goes off to a far country. Once in the far country, he behaves in a new way, a way thoroughly in keeping with his new freedom and independence. He is his own man -there. self to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into What has happened? By denying his father's life, and his life in his father's house, he has done all he possibly can to un-son himself. He has, therefore, at the same time done all he can to un-father his father. He has broken two relationships: the relationship which he had to his father, and the relationship which he had, through his father, back to him- his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: self as a son. For him, his father is no longer a father; for himself, he is no longer a son. stance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. And he went and joined him- and no man gave unto him. And when he came to himself, he said, "how many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee and- am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants."' And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, What does it mean for the son to take offense at his father and at his life iri his father's house? It means for him to resent the presence of his father, and of the order of things at home,. because they do not provide him with what he thinks he deserves to have from them. It means that he thinks he has a claim to have things h1rn out the way he wants them to because of some merit of his own which he has just by virtue of being alive. It means that he thinks he is just, that his justice has no root besides himself, and that this justice within him makes him worthy of getting whatever he wants. He is con- and kissed him. And the son said unto him, "Father, vinced that his deserts justify all his desires. For him to take I have sinned agairlst heaven, and in they sight, and offense does not require that anyone have given him offense. Offense does not have to be given in order for it to be taken. am no more worthy to be called thy son." But the father said to his servants, "Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: for this my His father has done nothing to offend his son, and yet the son is offended at him. "And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. And he went and son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him found." And they began to be merry. into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him." Want and perhaps self-pity now preoccupy the T et me make some comments about this part of the story. L "A certain man had two sons; and the younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me."' The younger son, perhaps because of what he consciousness of the son. He is no longer intent on leading an independent and sovereign life. Rather, he is glad enough to submit himself to someone who can promise to give him thinks is an inferior status at home, perhaps as the result of an argument with his father or his elder brother, takes offense at his condition of dependence at home. More specifically he is enough to eat in exchange for some kind of hard labor. But offended that his father, by continuing to live, keeps him from having what he regards as his rightful share of the give him anything in addition: he has no friends-and if he is not to live in utter m·isery, he will have to steal from the domestic wealth. And so he makes an extraordinary demand on his father. He makes a demand which, in effect, is that his husks assigned to the pigs, that is, he will have to go out by night to feed at the pig trough. He is in a condition of ex- father remove himself, get out of the way: that he die. For he demands that his father's property be divided among his heirs, treme abjection-he has nothing of his own now: no family, no property, no friends, and no assurance whatever about tomorrow. And he has no memories that do not sharpen the pain of his present condition. and this is what would happen if his father were to die. "And he divided unto them his living." The father obliges 2 even this turns out to be an illusory hope: he does not get enough to eat to satisfY his bloated appetite, and no one will �July, 1978 "And when he came to himself, he said, 'How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!'" He suddenly remembers a far more comfortable place of work for servants than the one in which he now is, and he sees his current situation in strong contrast to the remembered one. But to recall this comfortable place is to recall that this place is his father's place. It is, that is, to recall his father. He remembers that his experience is of his own home, and that there is (or was) at this home one who is (or was) to him "my father." But to recall his father is for him to remember that his father is not only just to his servants but gives them more than they deserve. They have bread "to spare." Because he can remember his father now, he can begin to have hope for a way out of his condition. He has an "in" at his father's homestead, as it were. However, he necessarily also remembers that he is the son of this father. And he cannot remember his sonship without remembering that he has tried to rid himself of this sonship. No sooner does his father's superior condition come to mind, and, with it, his remembered being as the son of his father, than there comes to him also the memory of his having taken offense at his father and at his father's house and of his having cut his father out of his life by asking for the inheritance prematurely and leaving home with it. Sketches by Lydia H. Sparrow. A nd he now begins to contrast the memory of the largesse I\. of his father with the niggardliness of his present master. And he realizes that this is the man he wanted to die. A feeling of dismay and shock and revulsion at himself, overcomes him. What a good father he had! And he never knew it! What a terrible offense he must have given to his father! And how terribly his father must now be offended at him. He takes offense at himself as his father's would-be murderer. He now abhors himself. The sonship to which his memory has brought him is the one which he has wrongfully destroyed. "I will arise and go to my father." Yet his needs are pressing, there is probably no famine in that land of his father's, nothing else is available, and there may be work for him there. Despite his offense he must return home or perish. But a return means that he has to face his father, for it is his father who will hire him. More than that, however, he has to acknowledge before his father his wrongful destruction of himself as a son and of his father as a father. He has deeply offended his father, and he knows that he cannot approach his father with any request without the matter of his having broken their relationship to one another being confronted. At the same time he thinks the generosity of his father makes him approachable. "And say unto him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee .... "' This will be his confession to his father. It is doubtful that much can be said by way of explaining a most compelling moral fact, the fact that when we see persons again whom we think we have in someway wronged, and whom we have not seen for a while, we must, before anything else, if we are to be able to live with ourselves, confront that past with a confession of wrongdoing. It seems that we want to remove the offense we have given them by telling them we were wrong to take offense at them in the first place. Perhaps we sense that we hurt them by taking offense at them, and now, by telling them we do not take offense at them any more, we hope to heal that hurt. '" ... And I am no more worthy of being called thy son." The son wants his father to know that, although he may be his father's blood offspring, he has destroyed the moral foundation for any obligation that his father might have to him. Nothing now flows from his being the offspring of his father. He is dead as a son, just as his father must be dead as a father. And so he determines to pronounce his condition of non-sonship. He determines to appear before his father as would any other laborer seeking a position from a rich and generous landlord. "Make me as one of thy hired servants." Once the truth of his wrongdoing has been acknowledged, he will make his request to be allowed to serve his father like any other hired hand. However, because the rich and generous landlord is his father whom he has wronged, the request to be treated as one of the hired servants cannot avoid having a penitential dimension or even perhaps cannot avoid being in fact a request for a life of penance in permanent exile from his father's house. Before any other rich employer the famished son might say, "Make me one of thy hired servants." But since it is his father who is the landlord, and since it is he, the son, who has offended him, he has to say "Make me, i.e., your son, as one of thy hired servants." That is, pay no attention to what I would deserve from you if I were your son. Do not look at my former sonship. Do not give me what a father should give a son. Give me, rather, what as a sinful ex-son and patricide I deserve, and what as a hungry stranger l beg: the opportunity to earn my bread by being merely one of your hired hands. He will ask that his father give him the suffering that he deserves to have by virtue of his wrongdoing. "And he arose, and came to his father;" the son starts to carry out his plan. "But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and 3 �The College given offense to his son and only deserves good things. The father understands the remorse that his son is now feeling, and he sees his humility, He is aware of the offense that his son, in his repentance, is now taking at himself. He knows that the closer his son gets to his house, the more he feels the anguish of having done wrong. And out of his sorrow for the pain that he knows his son is experiencing, the father rushes out to reassure his son that he has never taken offense at him for his disloyalty. When he falls on his son's neck and kisses him, he presents himself to his son as his father; that is, he tells his son that he is indeed his son's father and has always been so; that his son is indeed his son, and has always been so. He enacts his thought in his deeds. He has never abandoned his son although his son. has abandoned him. He has never thought of himself as not his father. He has never taken kissed him." Things do not, however, go according to the son's plan. It is still as a father that the old man sees his son when he is yet a great way off. He sees that he has walked through the famine-ridden land a great distance, and that he is desolate, hungry, ragged, but determined to see his father; and it is a father that, moved with pity, runs to greet his son, fall on his neck, and kiss him. There is no indication in the story of how far the father has to run to find his son, how rough the terrain is or how old he is, but there is no reason to suppose that the father is not looking out anxiously for his son during the whole time of his absence, that he does not have good eyesight, that he does not run as fast as he can, and that there are smooth paths on which to run. In short, there is no reason to suppose the father does not exhaust himself running out of his house to greet his son. l'l Jhy offense at his son, and so his son has never offended him, has never given him offense. His relation to his son, his son's relation to him, and the third thing that springs out of their mutually recognized relations to one another, their mutual love for one another, is all that matters to him. "Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son." The son then makes his confession in preparation for his request. The son begins to make his speech. But his father interrupts him, and does not let him make his request that he be made as one of the hired laborers. When he draws back from his embrace of his son, and when he looks into his son's eyes with tears of joy on his face, he hears his son call him "father" and he hears him make his avowal of wrongdoing. '"Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet. And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry. For this do things not go according to the son's calculation? my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is V VWhy does not the father wait for his son to knock at the found.' And they began to be merry." In his joy the father orders that the best robe, presumably his own, be brought for door of the house and make his request as his son had thought he would? Because the son does not know his father, i.e., he does not know that his power to break off his relation to his father has\ an uncrossable limit, a limit which is deter- mined by his father's love for him. Although he may on his side un-son himself and un-father his father, he cannot, by this action, make his father do to him the very same thing that he has done to his father. He cannot make his father un-father himself and un-son him. If the father does not take offense at his son for having taken offense at him-that is, if the father does not condemn his son, although his son has condemned him-he may remain the father of a son and his son may remain the son of a father. The son does not have the power to make his father condemn him if his father does not himself will to condemn him. And the father does not will to condemn him. The father, seeing his son returning openly to his home after all these months in his wasted condition, understands that his son has determined to meet him and acknowledge his wrongdoing. He understands that his son will avow that he has broken the relation that he had to his father; he understands that his son regrets the hurt he did to his father when he condemned him. He understands that his son knows that his father has neVer 4 him; he has a ring, symbol of union, put on his finger; and he orders the fatted calf, perhaps prepared every year for just this moment, killed in honor of his homecoming. It is meet to do this. His son was dead, and is now alive. Since the son was always in some sense alive, what the father means is that his son is now again alive as his son when before he was dead as a son. His son's un-sonning of himself ari'd his un-fathering of his father has been undone. From his son has soared again the relation to a father. The destruction of the relation has itself been destroyed. Father and son once again, or perhaps for the first time, can meet one another in the freedom of the mutually recognized love relationship. In his father's recognition of him as his son the son can recognize himself as a son and his father as a father. In his son's recognition of him as his father the father on the other hand can recognize himself as a father and his son .as a son. When the father says that his son was lost, and is found, he means the same thing. His son was lost as son. His father looked, but could not find him, i.e., his son was not there, next to him, in his proper place, next to his heart. He was lost, not so much in the sense that his father did not know where he was, as in the sense that the son himself did not �July, 1978 know where he was. And when the father says his son is found, he means, likewise, not so much that the father now knows where his son is, as that the son now knows where he is; that his being is to be near his father as son; that he can say "I am found." The son says nothing more during the story. I think we have to assume from his silence that he concurs in his father's judgment-at least for awhile. He was dead, and now he is alive. He was lost, and now he is found. So much, then, for the story. Where is the forgiveness? When does it happen? How does it happen? T et me approach these questions by first making some re- .L marks about the word "forgive." The word "forgive" is one of the class of English words whose prefix, the prefix "for-," has the effect of undoing what the root words posit. Thus the "for-" in "forget" undoes what "get" posits. The "for-" in "forbid" removes what "bid" posits. Similarily, the "for-" in "forgo" and "forswear" deny what "go" and "swear" assert. To "for-give" is thus to "un-give" or "de-give," i.e., to take away. Confirmation that to forgive means to take away comes from an examination of the other expressions that are used to express forgiveness in English. There are three of them at least. They are "pardon," "remission," and, of course, "taking away," itself. Of these, the first, "pardon," is evidently nothing but an English adoption of the French "pardon." But "pardonner" is the French word for forgive. And the parts of pardon "pare" and "donner" exactly reflect the English "for-" and "give." The English "for-" is the very same word as the French "par-" and "give" is "donner." (The German word for "forgive," "ver-geben" is also composed of the two same elements, "for-"-"ver", and "give""geben.") The second English word, ''remission," is based on the Latin "remittere." And this word means to send back, and so also to take away. But if to forgive is to take away, what is it that the forgiver takes away? The evident answer is "sin," "trespass," or "debt." Although we speak often of forgiving somebody, the more customary usage always makes the "somebody" forgiven the indirect object of the action of forgiving rather than the direct object. The direct object of the action is always either "sin," "trespass," or "death." "Forgive us our trespasses" is probably the most common expression. Sin is always forgiven, or taken away from, someone. But if forgiveness implies the presence of sin, to see where there is forgiveness in the story of the prodigal son, we first have to see what sin the prodigal has in him when he is with the pigs and that has been taken away by the time he gets to the feasting. And then we have to see how this sin is taken away. What does the son have when he is with the pigs that can be called "sin" and that can be taken away? here senses that the "sin" of three are But three, T whichaare several very prominent. word of thesecan have,only two have sense that allows a meaning of something that can be taken away quickly. The first has to do with a human act, a deed, a temporal phenomenon, such as a killing, a slander- ing, or a thinking evil of someone. Such a thing has a temporal beginning, middle, and end. It is a being of time. It is finished when the time of its performance is over. There is nothing that remains behind to be taken away. The very act carries with it its own destruction. The act of sin disappears in the first moment that succeeds the last moment of sinning. True, the memory of it remains, but that is not itself a sin. It is his memory of his having committed acts of this sort, acts of sin, that leads the prodigal son to say, "I have sinned ... .''Clearly, however, those acts are no longer with him. They have ceased to be. They are not forgiven him by his father because they were forgiven by the first instant of non-sinning. A second sense of the word "sin" has to do with the internal dispositions that lead to a sin in the sense mentioned above. This is a sense of the word "sin" that is used in the phrase "seven deadly sins." It is sin in the first sense, the sense of acts of sin, that finds its appropriate response in the circles of hell imagined by Dante in his Inferno, but it is sin in the sense of a disposition, or a vice, or habit, for example, anger, greed, envy, lust, that is purged on the various terraces of Mount Purgatory. Here too, although perhaps rrot so clearly, we must say that the son's sins have not been forgiven by his father by the time he gets home. But this is for a totally different and even opposite reason from the other. It is because such dispositions are not readily or instantaneously made to disappear. A third sense of the word "sin" is a sense of the word in· which it means the condition that results from an act of sin, the condition of guilt. This condition is an abiding sense of dislocation, discomfort, anguish, or anxiety. The "Ennui" of which Beaudelaire speaks in his preface to the reader, the "Vrai rongeur" of Valery's Cimetiere Marin, and the disorientation and sense of alienation of modern times, all have something to do with it. Within it lies the fear of death, the terror of the abyss. Unrepentant guilt leads to fear of discovery, to lying, and to the destruction of what threatens to expose it. Repentant guilt leads to a desire for confession and punishment, to a desire to place all worth and justice in the one whom the sinner has offended, to the acknowledgement of deserving condemnation, and to a fear of its being immi- 5 �The College that in his father's eyes he has only merits and that those merits are his only because his father loves him. What is it then to forgive sin? It is to remove from the one forgiven his assurance of condemnation· by the one who forgives him. ll. Je nent. The word "sin" is used to mean guilt in the phrase "original sin" and "sin came into the world." Sin in this sense, i.e., guilt, can be taken away if the fear of death can be replaced by the hope of life: if the source of condemnation turns out not to condemn at all. he son is in the condition of repentant guilt as he returns that his his He is quite T home.presumptuous:sureattempt tofather will athink thatrelaan count on broken return is tionship, and so he determines to proclaim right away that he renounces any claim to special treatment as a son. He determines to put himself in the position of a suppliant, not of a claimant. He intends to ask only for the position of a servant, not for the status of a son. He only wants the opportunity to serve out a life in penitential exile from his just father. He thinks his father may refuse his request, and he knows that he cannot contest such a refusal. He is convinced that his demerits make him worthy, at most, of being a hired servant of his father for the rest of his life and if need be, of returning to death in the land of famine. The demands of justice are clear to him. Only something he thinks is wholly different, mercy, can save him. He is not so convinced of the power of his guilt, however, as to make his forgiveness impossible. We will see later what would happen were he to dwell on his worthlessness and so refuse to accept the robe, the ring, the shoes, the fatted calf, and the merrymaking because they are not what he deserves. It is clear, then, that the son, as he returns, is in sin, and that this sin is his guilt, his fear of death based on his conviction of his deserts. He does not know that he deserves absolutely nothing in his own name from his father, not even a life of penance. How can the father forgive his son this sin? How can he take away this ignorance from his son? How can he make his son know that he does not deserve bad things from his father? He can do so, arid he does do so, by running down to embrace his son and, embracing him, telling him that he deserves only good things from his father. The father's exhausted and tender grasp of his penitent son, and his gifts to him, rid the son of his ignorance about what he deserves in fact from his father. The father's gesture reveals to his son 6 can now try to answer some of the questions which V V were raised earlier. Can sin be forgiven if the one who is to be forgiven does not first ask for forgiveness? Yes. The prodigal son never asks for forgiveness. All that is necessary in him is repentance and a willingness to face the possibility that he is in ignorance about the power of his wrongdoing to prevent his being loved by his father. This willingness constitutes in him the capacity to have his sin forgiven. Does forgiveness differ from forgetting? Yes. The two are almost direct opposites: forgiveness is a taking out of ignorance; forgetting is a plunging into it. Can one forgive oneself? No. Forgiveness presupposes an ignorance that wrongdoing cannot compel condemnation. But only another's telling a penitent that he does not condemn him can remove that ignorance from him. For a penitent cannot in good conscience tell himself that he does not deserve to suffer. Is it possible to forgive someone who is not repentant? No. Why? Because such a one is in ignorance not only about the impotence of his wrongdoing to compel condemnation. He is in ignorance about something prior to that. He thinks he deserves to have something good in his own name. To see how this is so, we must look at the story of the elder son. Now his elder son was in the fields; and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants, and asked what these things meant. And he said unto him, "Thy brother is come; and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound." And he was angry, and would not go in: therefore came his father out, and entreated him. And he answering said to his father, "Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends: But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf." And he said unto him, "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found. T et us look at this story carefully also: "Now his elder son L was in the fields; and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard music and dancing." It is the end of the day, and the elder son is returning home. But he hears unusual noises coming from the house. "And he called one of the servants, and asked what these things meant." Music an4 dancing! What does this rejoicing mean? What can there be for his father to rejoice about? His �July, 1978 father has been anxiousiy looking for that younger brother of his all these months. Can he have come home? Can the music and dancing be for that no-good wastrel? The elder son is on his guard. He does not trust his father. Before he can join in the celebration, he must judge whether the occasion for it is fitting. He must find out what this is all about. But be must do so without showing himself. For if his younger brother has come home, he doesn't want to make a scene in the house in front of all the servants and musicians. And so he does not m.n to the house but stops nearby. "And he said unto him, 'Thy brother is come; and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he has received him safe and sound."' The servant tells him that his brother has indeed returned, and he tells him what his father has done in his joy. "And he was angry, and would not go in." The news confirmed the elder son's worst fears. Floods of resentment swirl within him. He feels the burning constriction in his chest that blocks out thought in a turmoil of rage and hate, and he proceeds no further. No, no, no,-this is not for him, this music and dancing. His father has done a terrible thing. It is all wrong, all unjust. It is an abomination. It should not be. His father has wronged him terribly". He has in no way given him what he deserves. His father should never never welcome in this way this brother of his who has used up so much of the family fortune, and, even worse, used it up by spending it on doing wrong! Here he has been working in the fields all day long for years, helping his father, and such a reception has never been given to him on his return home. But the minute this no-good son of his father returns, his father kills a fatted calf for him and orders music and dancing. No, no, no. It is too much! "Therefore came his father out." Perhaps a servant has told the father about his son's angry reaction to the news. Perhaps the father, waiting to tell him the news when he got home from work, has been looking out for him, and, seeing him stop on his way home, runs down to tell him. In any case, once more, the father goes out to greet a son who has taken offense at him. "And entreated him." But the meeting with this son is very different from the meeting with the younger son. The elder son does not speak first. And the father does not fall on his son's neck and kiss him; or if he does, the son draws baCk from him in anger. When the father ran to greet the younger son, the younger son was moving painfully but steadily to.:. wards home. l-Ie spoke first, and his first word was "Father." Now, however, the older son is standing still, scowling in anger at this man whom he calls his father. The sullen silence moves his father to speak first and urge him to enter the house. He implores his son to join him in the merrymaking. But the son refuses. "And he, answering, said to his father, 'Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment; and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends. But so soon as this thy son was come which hath devoured thy living with harlot<; thou hast killed for him the fatted calf.'" '\'I Jhy does the son speak? He speaks to answer his father's V V plea that he come into the house and make merry with him. He speaks to justify his refusal to comply with his father's request, to justify his remaining outside. He knows that his staying outside hurts his father and is contrary to his will; that it is, for him to dishonor his father. And he thinks he must justify himself to his father. His justification is that the hurt he inflicts on his father is a just punishment of his father. His depriving his father of the joy his father would take in his presence at the feast is rationalized by him into a punishment; as a justifiably inflicted hurt. His father deserves punishment because he is guilty of injustice toward him. His father has wronged him by giving him less than he deserves. His father has given "this thy son ... which hath devoured thy living with harlots," "the fatted calf," whereas to him who "served thee these many years neither transgressed ... at any time thy commandment" he "never gave[st] . . . a kid." lf justice is giving to each his due, the father is not giving his sons their due. He is not just. The worse is getting the better. The superior son is getting less from his father than the inferior son. Such a crime deserves punishment, and the elder son is prepared to punish his father by staying out of his father's party. "Son ... " The father begins to speak and addresses the elder brother as "son". He shows with that word that he still considers him a son, and himself a father, although this same son has condemned him as unjust-although he, too, like his younger brother has un-fathered him and "un-sonned" himself. The older son has done that because, by referring to his brother, before his father's face, as "this your son," rather than as "my brother," he has said that since the younger son is not his brother, the father of that son is not his father. "Thou art ever with me." This is as much as to say, "you have all that you deserve as my son. You have all the comforts of the house and of a land where there is no famine. You have also the opportunity to be near me, to know me, and to learn from me, and you have had these all your life." More importantly, these words mean "you are ever in my thought and love. Your welfare is always on my mind." In other words the father tells his son, "I have always been, and still am, everything to you that a father should be." 7 �The College The elder son now is in exactly the same position as his brother once was. But he does not know it. He still thinks he deserves something in his own name. He thinks he deserves not to have a brother who has behaved as his younger brother has behaved and that he deserves not to have a father who treats his younger brother in this fashion. Can this sin of his be also forgiven? Can the father remove the ignorance from him as well as from his younger son? The parable does not exactly say, but the context in which it is told suggests that he cannot. If the younger son had said in an outraged voice to his father, condemning him, "Father, I have devoured thy living with harlots, and you propose to have the fatted calf killed for me on my return! What kind of justice is that! What kind of father are you? And look! What have you done for my brother? He has served you these many years, and he has He then adds, "And all that I have is thine." Not only has he given his son what his paternal relation requires: he has gone far beyond his son's deserts by giving him prematurely his share of the family property, as we saw earlier, and he now reminds him of this. So much, then, for the verdict of guilty on the charge of injustice because the elder son has gotten less than he deserves. just the opposite is true. He has gotten much more than he deserves. The father is not guilty. \1: Jhy does the father speak, since he has been already V V condemned by his son and is now suffering punishment? To lighten the punishment? Only indirectly. Yes, of course his son has hurt him, and he wants the elder son to join him in the celebration. But this is not for his sake. It is for the elder son's own sake. He speaks because his delight is in the knowledge that his sons are in delight. He therefore speaks not to be declared innocent before his son's justice but to give him the chance, by considering his words, to withdraw his charge against his father altogether. He wants to give the elder son a chance to see that he is good and generous. He wants him to stop taking offense at him and he wants him to begin to take offense at himself for speaking this way so that he can then forgive him. "It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad." The father meets the elder son's objection straight on. That objection is that it is not proper to celebrate the return home of a worthless spendthrift and sinner. His father contradicts him. He says that it is meet to do that. Why? "This thy brother was dead, and is alive again. And was lost, and is found." The elder brother has condemned his younger brother just as he has condemned his father. But his father points to his continued love of his younger son. The younger son has remained the son of his father even in his worse excesses. Because of this the same son can be at one time dead and then alive, lost and then found. The elder son does not know the love that the father has always had for the younger son. He does not know his father's burning desire that the younger son be with him always-just as the older son is-for the sake of the son's own happiness. It is meet to make merry, says the father, because now the younger son can be where the elder son has been all along. 8 never transgressed a single commandment. But have you ever given him so much as a kid, that he might make merry with his friends? A fine father you are!" If the younger son had spoken this way, he could not have been forgiven by his father. He would have refused his embrace and refused the gifts his father offered to give him as unjust. But the younger son does not act and speak this way. Conceptions of the things he deserves to have in his own name, even though they be bad things, are not at the foundation of his life. But it is not clear that this is the elder brother's case. The elder brother's life may well be centered on conceptions of what he deserves to have because of his own innate justice. The parable stops at the father's last words to him, and it may be that he will finally enter the house. But it looks more as if because of the strength of his conviction of his own merits he will not repent and so will continue to be ignorant of the nonexistence of his merits. Hence his father will probably also not be able to reveal himself to him as one who gives him everything and cares nothing about his wrongdoing. it possible to someone who is not repentant? as the forgive someone is to I Why? Because forgiveparable tells, tobeen taken at him.No. reveal to him that offense has never by s another from whom he has everything that he deserves. But if someone is not repentant, he still thinks he deserves to have things in his own right. Finally, we must ask who can forgive? Only he who, loving deeply, very, very deeply, is willing to drink the cup of death in utter desolation in order by revealing the depth of that love to show the ones he loves that he never has condemned and does not now and never will condemn them. �July, 1978 Freud's "Dora" by Alan Dorlman I shall tonight examine the evidence for Sigmund Freud's theory of psychoanalysis. More exactly, I shall examine the evidence as it appears in one of his case histories and consider his theory as it appears in one domain, that of the psychoneuroses. All who read Freud's General Introduction to Psychoanalysis must be impressed by his claim that his theories derive from his own extensive observation and treatment of psychoanalytic patients, an experience which is inaccessible to his critics, and to the ordinary reader. A psychoanalysis is a private affair, which cannot be observed by the outsider, nor even adequately described to him. To judge fairly of his theories we must trust Freud, or else ourselves become analysts or analytic patients. Nevertheless, since Freud did write some, although not many, detailed case histories, he does offer us some opportunity to stand on his own ground. I believe it can aid our judgement of psychoanalysis, to study these case histories. The one I have selected tonight is entitled "A Fragment of an Analysis of Hysteria". It is a fragment because the patient-named "Dora" -broke off her analysis abruptly at the end of but three months. It is the first of Freud's psychoanalytic case histories, and the most complete. It was written at the turn of the century, and there is reason to think Freud regarded it-along with his most important work, The Interpretation of Dreams-as marking the beginning of a new era of mankind, in which man would finally understand himself scientifically, and guide his course by that science. Of the Fragment itself, Freud wrote, in a letter to a friend: " ... it is the subtlest thing I have so far written, and will put people off even more than usual. " 1 Our limitations will be severe. We will be unable, for example, to explore in depth the issue of the unconscious. We will be limited to telling a psychoanalytic story written when psychoanalysis was young and most simple. We will be able, This is the text of a lecture given in Annapolis on 20 May 1977, and in Santa Fe on 3 March 1978. Mr. Dorfm"an graduated from St. John's in 1963 and joined the faculty in 1974, after further studies at the Johns Hopkins University and teaching in the Math Engineering Division of Catonsville Community College. in fact, to tell only part of that story, leaving out much that Freud would consider important. The lecture divides itself into two parts, namely ( 1) The Story of Dora and (2) My reflections on that story. There will also be a brief epilogue. Part I. The Story of Dora The story concerns a young woman, "Dora", turned 18, suffering from a variety of hysterical symptoms, which have gotten noticeably worse the last two years. She has become isolated socially, complains life is meaningless, and has even threatened suicide. Others, who, besides of course Freud himself, play a role in Dora's life are: Dora's Father, who brings Dora to Freud, and in Freud's words, hands her over Herr K, a friend of Dora's father, and, m earlier days, a frequent companion of Dora Frau K, Herr "K's wife, and Dora's father's mistress A nameless governess of the K's A nameless young man, who sends Dora a Christmas present Dora's mother. Freud regards her as suffering from "housewife's psychosis", and being somewhat of a pest, but of little consequence. As a rule, mothers have but a small role in Freud's case histories. We are first introduced to Dora by her father, who describes to Freud what he thinks the problem is, while she, I assume, is sitting out in the waiting room. Two years ago, he says, when Dora was 16, she was supposed to spend the summer with the K's in a house they had in the lake region. He had accompanied her there, but when, 9 �The College several days later, he was about to depart, she insisted on leaving with him, and wouldn't explain why. Only some weeks later did Dora tell her mother that Herr K had tried to seduce her, as the two of them were walking by one of the lakes. He had written Herr K at once demanding an explanation. Herr K claimed to know· nothing of any such incident. Frau K had informed her husband that Dora had lately taken to reading Mantegazza' s Physiology of Love, and other such stuff. The scene she described was no doubt the product of a teeming imagination. Since then the K's and Dora had not spoken to each other. "'I have no doubt,' continued her father, 'that this incident is responsible for Dora's depression, and irritability, and suicidal ideas.' " Now Dora is always bothering him to break off relations with Frau K, but he can't do this. It is an honourable' relationship, and he can't disturb it for the sake of Dora's phantasies. Can Freud do something? Dora's analysis begins, and she soon tells Freud of another, earlier, incident that was, he says, "even better calculated to act as a sexual trauma." She was 14. Herr K had arranged for them to be alone in his shop, had closed the shutters, and then had passionately kissed her. She had felt disgust, and, without saying a word, run out of the shop. Neither she nor Herr K mentioned the incident again, to each other, or to anyone else, except now, Dora to Freud. Freud notes the disgust Dora felt, the lack of pleasure at a sexual approach. He says, "I should without question consider a person hysterical in whom an occasion for sexual excitement elicited feelings that were preponderantly or exclusively unpleasurable.... " A healthy girl, in Freud's view, would have responded genitally, and not in her alimentary tract, where Freud locates disgust. The disgust could not have been due to the person of Herr K, whom Freud had met, and found "of prepossessing appearance". Freud, in a lengthy theoretical aside, elaborates his view of the roundabout sexual and somatic mechanism of Dora's disgust. We note, that besides Dora's disgust, there was also her pervasive silence. She runs from K wordlessly. Afterwards she neither complains to him, nor confides in anyone else. We are intrigued to know what Dora's silence means. What was she feeling? And we wonder if her absence of speech concerning such an event can be without consequence. Freud does not pursue these questions. Curiously enough, one of Dora's symptoms is aphonia, a loss of voice which can last for weeks. This symptom should be sharply distinguished from the simple act of not talking. There is a difference between not being able to bring forth sounds, .and not attempting, or wanting, to speak. As the analysis proceeds, Freud surmises two things: ( l) Dora is in love with Herr K, and she matters to him, and (2) the incident at the lake actually occurred. Let me elaborate. After the attempt behind the shutters, K began to woo Dora, sending her numerous presents, giving her flowers every day for a year, whenever he was in town. These, of !0 course, young Dora accepted, as well as his frequent company. Her parents, who to be sure knew nothing of the kiss, saw nothing strange in this married man's behavior. Freud interprets Dora's aphonia in terms of a love on her part for Herr K. He used to go away on business for short periods of 3-6 weeks. Dora's loss of voice, Freud asks, how long did it last? 3-6 weeks. Now Dora's sharp eyes had noted how Frau K would get sick, just when Herr K returned home, revealing in this way her lack of conjugal affection. Was not Dora's case just the opposite: she would be ill just when Herr K was away: it was as if she said, now there is no one left worth talking to. Dora, however, adamantly denies that there is anything between Herr K and herself. Freud has a hard time getting her to talk about him. She is much more interested in complaining about her father, whom she accuses of carrying on a relationship with Frau K, the true nature of which he disguises. She declares he is hypocritical, dishonest, and interested only in his own pleasure. In her most bitter moments, she complains that he had formerly handed her over to Herr K as a kind of barter for Frau K. Although Freud thinks her charges against her father have foundation, he notes that these complaints of Dora's did not arise till after the lake incident. Prior to that moment Dora did little to discourage her father's affair, and, in fact, tacitly encouraged it. - -What happened at the lake? Dora had been at the K's resort home for several days. One morning, Dora and Herr K went for a trip together to one of the more distant lakes. In the midst of a walk, they stopped and Herr K lit up cigarettes for Dora and himself. He began a long speech, the intent of which soon became clear. He said, "You know I get nothing from my wife .... "This is the only sentence Dora actually remembers. But it was enough. Dora slapped Herr K and ran off. On the return home, apparently by steamer, K again approached Dora, pleaded for forgiveness, and asked for secrecy. Dora turned away, and did not reply. Later, in the afternoon, Dora was in her room napping, when she woke to find Herr K at her bedside. She asked him what he was doing there; he left, but not before replying that it was his house, and he could go where he pleased. Dora got a key from Frau K and locked the bedroom door that night, fearing an intrusion. Sometime the next day, she realized the key was missing, and suspected Herr K of taking it. She left the K's three days later, with her father, and some time afterward told her mother of K's proposal. Freud tl1inks that, despite the offense, Dora still loves Herr K, but out of pride and other motives, she denies the very existence of any ~uch inclination to Herr K. Only a powerful inner force could bury it so effectively. Dora, thinks Freud, has raised from the depths a passion for her father, active in childhood, but dormant since, and now calls on it, as it were, as a substitute for, and protection against, her feelings for Herr K. She flees a real affair with Herr K, by indulging in unconscious phantasies of relations with her father. This re- �July, 1978 newal and exaggeration of her old love for her father accounts for her jealous intrusiveness in his affair with Frau K. It is interesting to note here that the psychological movement, as Freud describes it, is not from father to Herr K, as we might expect, but from Herr K to father. Herr K is not here viewed as a father substitute; rather her father is a Herr K substitute. The movement is from the later to the earlier relationship. All this is soon confirmed by a dream. Here it is: "A house was on fire. My father was standing beside my bed and woke me up. I dressed myself quickly. Mother wanted to stop and save her jewel case, but Father said: 'I refuse to let myself and my two children be burnt for the sake of your jewel case.' We hurried downstairs, and as soon as I was outside I woke up." The dream, it turns out, is a recurring dream. Dora recalls having dreamt it at the lake, and, as it seems, on those very nights after K had taken the key from her door. The dream, Freud suggests, represents a resolution to get out of the house in which she feels herself endangered. In the dream, her father replaces the dangerous Herr K, by her bedside, and leads her to safety. And, of course, in actuality, she does take advantage of her father's leaving, a few days later, to leave herself. Freud continues at length his analysis of the dream, focussing on the sexual inclinations and worries of Dora as a child. The image of her father beside her bed in the dream, seems to reflect the distant memory of when he would wake her in the night to prevent a bedwetting incident. Thus, in repressing her desire for Herr K, Dora retreats to her father, who stood by her, lovingly and protectingly, when she was a child. But Freud asks himself: "If Dora loved Herr K, what was the reason for her refusing him in the scene by the lake? Or at any rate, why did her refusal take such a brutal form?" The analysis goes on. Dora has a second dream, in which her father is dead, and she is a wanderer. We shall not go into it in detail. Suffice it to make the following assertions: ( 1) The dream reflects a revenge phantasy against her father. Freud is emphatic concerning Dora's "morbid deSire for revenge" against her father, and K, and, as we shall see, against Freud as well. (2) Dora associates a scene in the dream to a certain young man, who has shown interest in Dora, and has recently sent her a Christmas present. Freud thinks he may have matrimonial interests. (3) Some nine months after the lake incident, Dora had serious stomach troubles, which the doctors had uncertainly diagnosed as appendicitis. She had also a difficulty in her leg, so that she had to drag her foot, a fact the dream recalls. Freud suggests that this difficulty with walking was Dora's symptomatic way of saying, she'd taken a false step. In her unconscious phantasy, she had succumbed to Herr K at the lake, and nine months later, manifested her "pregnancy". Dora does not object, as she usually does, to Freud's suggestion, and he takes her silence for assent. The last day of the year comes and Dora begins her session by saying, "Do you know that I am here for the last time today?" and Freud replies, "How can I know, as you have said nothing to me about it." Dora indicates she had decided to put up with the treatment until the New Year. Freud says: "You know that you are free to stop treatment at any time. But for today we will go on with our work. When did you come to this decision?" One notes that if Freud is pained at Dora's surprise announcement, he does not show it. We should also note the form his question takes. Most of us, I think, would have asked what made her come to that decision, but Freud asks when. Dora replies, "A fortnight ago, I think." Freud remarks, "That sounds just like a maidservant or governess-a fortnight's warning." Amazingly, this comment touches off the denouement of Dora's story. She responds, "There was a governess who gave warning with the K's, when I was on my visit to them that time at ... the lake." Freud: "Really. You have never told me about her. Tell me." Dora tells the tale: this governess and Herr K had been- on strange terms. "She never said good morning to him, never answered his remarks ... and in short treated him like thin air." Not long before the lake incident the governess had confided in Dora: Herr K had seduced her. He had approached her-the governess-saying things like, "I get nothing from my wife". These words, which t11e governess reports to Dora, were, of course, the very ones K later used, in addressing Dora herself. Dora must have been shocked and jealous, when he made the same speech to her, which he had made to this other woman. Freud's earlier question, why Dora had behaved so bruta1ly to Herr K, seems answered. Dora completes the governess's tale: After a while, Herr K had grown tired of her, and they had entered into the silent war to which Dora had been witness. Even so, the governess entertained hopes that Herr K would seek a divorce, and marry her. When this didn't happen, she finally gave notice. Freud concludes that in telling the governess's story; Dora is telling her own. After giving K a decent interval to approach her again (two weeks in fact), she had told her parent' of K's attempt with her in the hope of indirectly inducing K to seek her out. In this way, Freud suggests, her longing for him would have been appeased. To F'reud's surprise, Dora actually nods assent. Freud tells Dora the sih1ation as he sees it. There had in fact been talk between the K's of divorce. It's not impossible that K' s speech at the lake was meant to be a proposal, not a mere proposition. Freud points out to her that she had not let Herr K finish his Speech, and so can't be sure what he meant to say to her. An arrangement, whereby she would marry K, and Frau K would go to her father, would not after all, Freud tells her, have been so impracticable. Had she gotten preg- 11 �The College nant, it would have been the only way out, satisfactory to all concerned. (Freud seems here to have forgotten the mother.) This is why she, Dora, so regretted the actual event, and emended it in the phantasy which manifested itself in the appendicitis. Dora must have been very upset, when at Frau K's instigation, Herr K had not only not come to her, but had actually denied her story. Freud reminds Dora that nothing makes her so angry as its being thought she merely fancied the scene by the lake. She had thought K's proposal was serious, and that he would not leave off, until he had married her. Freud tells the reader: "Dora had listened to me without any of her usual contradictions. She seemed to be moved; she said good-bye to me very warmly, with the heartiest wishes for the New Year, and-came no more." Part II. Reflections It would be hard to overestimate the importance of symptoms, for Sigmund Freud. It is the symptoms that reveal a person as neurotic, i.e., as ill, and the symptoms which, by tying up his life's energies, incapacitate him for work and love. Freud extended the idea of symptom well beyond its ordinary usage, to include symptomatic actions and the elements of dreams. His genius lay in determining the meaning of these symptoms, that is, of what, in the patient's unconscious thoughts a.nd feelings, they were symptomatic. Correlative with this emphasis on symptom and meaning of symptom is a depreciation of the idea of character. Freud begins one of his essays as follows: "When the physician is carrying out psychoanalytic treatment of a neurotic, his interest is by no means primarily directed to the patient's character. He is far more desirous to know what the symptoms signify, what instinctual impulses lurk behind them .... " 2 The notion of character as something that leads us to act despite influences and temptations, is missing in Freud's work, or barely adumbrated. The word "habit" occurs almost nowhere in his writings. When character is talked of, it is generally as a collection of character traits, that is, symptom-like formations, the residues of early experiences. The emphasis on and widening of the idea of symptom, and the banishment of character, have an important corollary. Psychoanalytic tl1erapy aims solely at the removal-the permanent removal, to be sure-of symptoms. There is .no notion, in Freud, except perhaps late and grudging, of a character analysis, that is, of an attempt to turn a person about from one mode of life to another. All there is, is the removal of symptoms, and the shifting of mental contents. Interestingly, however, symptomology is not the whole story of neurosis for Freud. At one point in Dora's analysis, Freud tells Dora that the whole purpose of her illness is to get her father to break off with Frau K. He goes on to say: "I felt quite convinced that she would recover at once if only her father were to tell her he had sacrificed Frau K, for the sake of her health." 12 So a neurosis is here regarded, not just as a collection of symptoms, but as a single thing, with an aim, that can be overturned at a single blow, under the right circumstances. There is a purpose, a motive, for being ill. Freud emphasizes the distinction between the motives of illness and the material-the thoughts and wishes out of which symptoms are formed. This distinction is not easy to understand. What is the difference between the wishes from which particular symptoms spring, and the motives that actuate a neurosis as a whole? I think what Freud means is that the wishes of a neurotic give rise to fantastic, that is, imaginary, satisfactions, that are embodied in the symptoms. The motives, by contrast, are real, in the sense that the neurotic is-through his neurosis-really trying to accomplish something. Dora,_ e.g., is, according to Freud, trying to separate her father and Frau K, not only in her phantasy, but in actual fact. Not every neurosis seeks to manipulate the environment in this way. Sometimes the motives are, according to Freud, "purely internal-such as a desire for self-punishment." At the very least, "falling ill involves a saving of psychical effort; it emerges as ... the most convenient solution when there is a mental conflict (we speak of a 'flight into illness') .... " This is exemplified in Dora's case, by her flight-both literal and figurative-from Herr K, and her turning to fanciful, but unconscious, satisfactions with her father. In this regard, Freud, reflecting on the case, raises the question: what would have been Dora's reaction, had Herr K (informed that Dora's "no" was not wholehearted) persisted in his attentions. The result, Freud says, might have been the total overthrow of her defenses, "a triumph of the girl's affection for him over all her internal difficulties." But she might equally well have taken it as an opporhmity for revenge, and rejected him again. The repression of her tender feelings for him could have been lifted, or it could have been reinforced. One can't tell which. Freud elab~rates: "Incapacity for meeting a real erotic demand is one of the most essential features of neurosis. Neurotics are dominated by the opposition between reality and phantasy." What they long for in phantasy, they will flee from, if it presents itself in reality. Neurosis is the flight from reality into unconscious phantasy. We should emphasize several things: (1) Freud is saying a neurosis need not wait for psychoanalysis to be cured. There are more straightforward possibilities. In Dora's case, her father, certainly, and Herr K, possibly, could have acted in such a way as to take away Dora's illness. We wonder, though, whether there was anything Dora herself could have done. (2) In his willingness to envisage Dora and Herr K together, Freud seems strangely blind to Herr K's moral failings, and his generally poor relations with women. Is it not at least possible that a relationship with K would have worsened things for Dora? (3) When Freud says neurosis is the flight from reality into unconscious phantasy, he seems to define neurosis, and, by implication, distinguish it sharply from normality. However, �July, 1978 he avoids such a definition, and, later, in, e.g., the General Introduction, explicitly maintains the lack of a theoretical distinction between neurosis and normality. 3 As an important consequence, the theory of psychoanalysis in his view applies to all men, not just to those who are clearly neurotic. (4) That from which and to which Dora flees is the sexual, retreating from her lust for Herr K, to her lust for her father. Freud says: "Sexuality ... provides the motive power for every single symptom, and for every single manifestation of a symptom." And again he says: " ... I can only repeat over and over again-for I never find it otherwise-that sexuality is the key to the problem of the psychoneuroses .... " In a 1908 essay considering the question why modern man is so much more nervous that his predecessors, Freud allows some weight to factors suggested by others: discoveries and inventions that bridge time and space, increasing competition, hurry and agitation, participation in political life, the stimulation of modern literature, and so on, but he concludes "the injurious influence of culture reduces itself in all essentials to the undue suppression of the sexual life in civilized peoples .... " 4 The case of Dora seems to confirm this. The tale seems to be, in overwhelming measure, the tally of her sexual inclinations and difficulties. Although not all of Freud's interpretations strike us, nor, I imagine, Dora herself, with equal cogency, still, the impression of the importance and relevance of sexuality is inescapable. On the other hand, reading the story, we also gain the impression that Freud has a particular orientation, and is on the lookout for the sexual. The possibility arises that there arc other factors, important in neurosis, which Freud overlooks. One of the aspects of Dora which Freud the theoretician ignores, even as Freud the storyteller reveals it, is Dora's silence. The fact of her non-speech is striking: it is present during, and after, the kiss when she is 14, and in the crucial incident at the lake, and during her analysis, especially at the end, when she waits till the last hour to let Freud know her plans. Dora, in fact, has the habit of not speaking on crucial occaswns. Now it is curious that Freud does not attend very much to Dora's silence. For, in the first place, psychoanalysis is the "talking cure"; speech is the tool of Freud's trade. We might expect to find something commensurate and opposite in the condition it treats. In the second place, words have a curious and perhaps irriportant role, as it happens, in Freud's psychology. 5 It is they which allow for the existence in us of that which is distinct from the primal psyche, from the unconscious. In a way hard to understand words give tone and quality to the purely quantitative charges and excitations of the unconscious mind. We should note, though, that there is no good account in Freud, of speech, as opposed to words, or, as he sometimes calls them, word objects. In the third place, the symptoms themselves "speak", as Freud puts it, and can even enter into the dialogue, during therapy. Did not Dora's aphonia tell Freud of her love for Herr K? We would be curious to know the connection between Dora's deliberate not speaking on certain occasions, and her occasional helpless voicelessness, lasting for weeks. It may not be unimportant, therefore, to reconsider Dora's story, especially the crucial lake incident, from the viewpoint of her silence. To begin with, I think we should assume that Dora was a fairly isolated young person. Her parents, certainly, do not have the proper concern for her. There seems to be no one to whom she feels able or willing to confide important things about herself. It's a lonely and loveless existence. Now Herr K kisses her when she is 14. He and Dora establish a silent pact of silence on the episode, and then, this weak man, ignored by his wife, begins to pay court to Dora. He brings her gifts and woos her with flowers, beneath her parents' unseeing eyes, for two years. What does Dora feel for him? We do not, and cannot, know precisely. This much seems clear: he means a great deal to her, and he is the principal and perhaps only buffer against her isolation. It is likely, too, in a ripening young woman that her sexual feelings are stirred up, with all the uneasiness that entails, and that her vanity is tickled. In addition, he is a friend of her father, and she must feel towards him, what a child feels towards grownups: he is one of the revered them, someone slightly fearful. Now K's awkward proposal at the lake, whatever its immediate sexual intent, could have the effect of clarifying Dora's posture towards him, and his towards her. K may even have that intc::ntion, in part; he is, in effect, asking Dora to drop her childlike and passive role, and tell him where he stands in her eyes. It is important to keep in mind that he does not know about Dora's knowledge of his affair with the governess. Dora cannot be certain what direction the relation will take, if she speaks, nor can we. If she had spoken-! mean spoken plainly from her heart-it is most likely that at that moment her first expressions would have been colored by an anxious and jealous rage. Herr K is insulting her; he is trying to seduce her with the very words he used on someone else. To have expressed her wrath and the cause of her wrath would have marked the moment as a turning point: this couple would have had to come clean with each other. Their relationship could end, or it could clarify itself into some form of friendship, or into something else. It is impossible it would stay the same; for Dora, by expressing her wrath directly, would have established her young self as Herr K's equal, a being of moral judgement and responsibility. Her words would have stung Herr K much more sharply than her slap. But at least he would then have known the charge, and would have had the opportunity to explain, and to show himself in either a better or a worse light. Dora does not speak, and by running away, denies Herr K speech as well. Not speaking at this moment becomes decisive for Dora's life, for her relationship to Herr K, and for her neurotic state of soul. By not truly responding to him-by acting out some Victorian pantomime~ Dora loses all. 13 �The College She also keeps all. The relation never has a spoken ending, and, in her secret imagination, can continue forever. Her feelings for Herr K were never acknowledged to him; she can be safe in the thought there was really nothing between them. She can derive the sweet pleasure of the vengeance of denial, at the same time that she denies that anything was ever at stake. She maintains her childish innocence, and her womanly pride. It all remains confused, conflicting, and murky, and Dora soon finds herself in that comfortable and agonizing state of isolation called neurosis. We now have two stories of Dora, centering on the lake incident, Freud's, Which describes Dora as a woman in conflict, and in which her sexuality plays the key role, and another, in which her isolation and her silence predominate. The impulse to reduce the second story to the first is '!>trong; to see, for example, Dora's silence as the manifestation of some, as yet unknown, sexual inhibition from childhood. But would it not be equally possible to see the first story in terms of the second? Would Dora's sexuality have been so important in her life had she had a decent grounding in the human sphere of speech? Moreover, it would seem better to take Dora's speechlessness on its own terms, at least at first, and possibly always. We have, by implication, characterized it, as a way of gaining very great satisfactions, with a minimum of effort, or responsibility. Dora can, through it, stay passive, and confused. At the same time, she gets the bitter satisfaction of punishing K, and a sense of being righteous. But that is a false sense, since she treats K unfairly, for she does not give him a fair trial. Her non-speech is a lying non-speech, for it is she who, before K, denies that anything happened at the lake. But what about psychoanalytic therapy? Is not its effectiveness the warrant of the strict truth of Freud's hypotheses? Let us assume for a moment that effectiveness. In what way must that therapy be understood, to be taken as confirming Freud's theories? Freud says (in the General Introduction): "The solving of [the patient's] conflicts ... succeeds only when what he is told to look for in himself corresponds with what actually does exist in him. Anything that has been inferred wrongly by the physician will disappear in the course of analysis ... and be replaced by something more correct. " 6 The words of the physician must correspond exactly to what lies buried in the patient's unconscious. The patient is cured when he finds in himself what the physician has proposed. Only the literal truth has any effect, and a cure is a vindication of that truth. But ~ince when have people been so moved by an exclusive use of the literal truth? Must not the story of herself that Freud gives Dora contain the seeds, at least, of an encouragement to be different from what she was? Let us examine the therapeutic advantage of Freud's vision of Dora, from this viewpoint. I think Freud's account and his approach can help Dora in several ways: first, it makes clear to her that something was at stake, that she did, like an idiot, give up a great deal, with little recompense. Second, it gives her a story of herself, 14 which, although not flattering or precise, still does picture her as a grown woman, with lusts and loves and even pregnancies. It gets her thinking of the person she could be, as if she already was that way. Thus, there is an element of encouragement. Third, it portrays Dora as having precipitously fled from the possibilities of womanhood, into shameful and childish phantasies. So there is an element of reproach as well. Fourth, it gives her the example in Freud's own speech, of honesty and candour, not as an explicit teaching, but as something to be absorbed, as it were, through the skin. Facing the forbidden topic sexuality is important in itself, but important in this regard as well. We conclude that psychoanalysis can help Dora even if as descriptive truth it is partial or even distorted. Nevertheless, we can't help thinking that a therapy based on a limited view of human nature, must, in the long run, prove itself limited. If it is possible to generalize from Dora, and claim that every neurosis involves an evasion or a distortion of the human power of speech, then any complete therapy, if such there be, must take this into account. Psychoanalysis is, as it were, the laying on of words. But human speech is more that that. Speech must be two-sided. If an important part of the patient's neurosis is the retreat from the unpredictable two-sidedness of speech, then should not such speech play an important part in psychothera_py? Freud himself raises the question whether it would have been beneficial for him to have bestowed on Dora the affection, the "warm personal interest", she so much needed. To do so, he says, would have been deceitful. Freud implies he felt no affection for the girl. We must wonder: did he feel no affection for the girl? In his desire to be scientific, to be objective, Freud places a severe hindrance on the very therapeutic enterprise that he inaugurated. By avoiding the human communion, which speech affords, the analyst himself becomes less than candid, · his theory less than sound, and every psychoanalysis no more than a fragment. Epilogue Some 15 months after the end of treatment, Dora paid Freud a visit. She said that after leaving treatment, she'd been "all in a muddle", then h~r attacks had grown less, and her spirits had risen. One of the K's two children had died in May and Dora took the opportunity to visit them. Freud says: "She made it up with them, she took her revenge on them, and she brought her own business to a satisfactory conclusion. To the wife, she said, 'I know you are having an affair with my father', and the other did not deny it. From the husband she drew an admission of the scene by the lake which he had disputed, and brought the news of her vindication home to her father. Since then she had not resumed relations with the family." To us, Dora's outspoken revenge marks her as half cured. The callousness and passivity of her timing make clear it is at best half a cure. �July, 1978 To Freud's surprise, Dora tells him that in October she'd had another attack of her aphonia, which lasted six weeks. He asks her what might have excited it. Dora is evasive. "She had seen someone run over by a cart. Finally she came out with the fact that the accident had occurred to no less a person than Herr K himself. She had come across him in the street one day . . . he had stopped in front of her as though in bewilderment, and in his abstraction he had allowed himself to be knocked down by a cart. She had been able to convince herself, however, that he escaped without serious injury. She still felt some slight emotion if she heard anyone speak of her father's affair with Frau K, but otherwise she had no further concern in the matter. She was absorbed in her work, and had no thoughts of marrying." There, pretty much, is the story of Dora. Freud let quite some time elapse, before handing it over to his publisher, a fact which allows him, and us, the following ending: "Years have again gone by since her visit. In the ... meantime the girl has married, and indeed-unless all the signs mislead me-she has married the young man who came into her associations at the beginning of the analysis of the second dream. Just as the first dream represented her turning away from life into disease-so the second dream announced that she was about to tear herself free from her father and had been reclaimed once more by the realities of life." All works cited below are by Sigmund Freud. Quotations which are not annotated are from the Fragment. (May be found in Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria. [New York: Macmillan, Collier Books, 1974], or in The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud [London: Hogarth Press, 1962], [hereafter cited as Std. Edn.], vol. VII). 1. The Origins of Psychoanalysis: Letters, Drafts, and Notes to Wilhelm Fliess (1887-1902) (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., Inc., Doubleday Anchor Books, 1957), Letter 140, p. 327. See also letters 139 and 141. 2. "Some Character Types Met With in Psychoanalytic Work (I 919)", Character and Culture (New York: Macmillan, Collier Books, 1974), p. 157; or Std. Edn., vol. XIV, p. 311. One should not be misled by the conclusion of this paragraph to think that character in the ordinary sense becomes of primary interest. For Freud, "character" is a perpetual, occasionally benign, set of symptomatic traits; that is, it is the superficial reflection of something deep, instinctual, and past. The rest of this essay, as well as the fundamental essay, "Character and Anal Eroticism," bears this out. 3. See A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (New York: Simon and Schuster, Pocket Books, 1972) Chapter 23, pp. 366-367; or Std. Edn, vol. XVI, p. 358. Also see Pocket Books edition, Chapter 28, pp. 464-465, or Std. Edn., vol. XVI, pp. 456-457. 4. "'Civilized' Sexual Morality and Modern Nervousness," Sexuality and the Psychology of Love (New York: Macmillan, Collier Books, 1974), p. 24; or Std. Edn., vol. IX, p. 185. Why is the question (of what is peculiarly "modem" about nervousness) no longer much raised? 5. See The Interpretation of Dreams (New York: Avon Books, 1965), Chapter VII, pp. 613, 656;orStd. Edn., vol. V, pp. 574,617. See also "The Unconscious," General Psychological Theory (New York: Macmillan, Collier Books, 1963), Section 7, pp. 142 seq.; or Std. Edn., vol. XIV, pp. 196 seq. 6. General Introduction, Chapter 28, p. 260; or Std. Edn., vol. XVI, p. 452. 15 �The College "The Scientific Revolution Will Not Take Place" by Thomas K. Simpson "The Scientific Revolution will not take place." Surely this proposition, which I have taken as the title of my lecture tonight, makes a very curious claim. I have not altogether lost my senses of sight and hearing-I recognize that we are surrounded, beset by evidences that something enormous is going on, something which by common consent we call the "Scientific Revolution," or its products. I understand that we have ''split the atom," that we have begun our exploration of "space," that we are, at an ever-increasing rate, raiding the Earth of its natural materials, and converting them by art into synthetic surrogates, or into a new Earth of wastes. Let me make clear: this is not a lecture in which I will attack modern science and its triumphs- I am, I attest, one of its most devoted admirers. And not only what we call "science," but that even greater rational order which we call "technology," in whose service for the most part science works-and even beyond these, that still more vast and impressive technology of corporate structure, law and finance, wi)ich energizes and directs the motions of the whole. All of this immense system of thought and action, in which "science" in the strict sense plays a relatively Jimited role, constitutes our modern, technical world-the world of our "Scientific Revolution." I am not unaware of it, and I do not fail to respect and admire it. We cannot move in any direction, even in thought, without sensing that it is present, that we are in some way part of it. How, then, can I possibly assert that "The Scientific Revolution will not take place"? Let me repeat: there is no doubt that something has taken place, and we know that we call it the "Scientific Revolution." But we know, too, that there is something deeply, pervasively wrong with it. It has, it seems, This is the text of a lechue given at St. John's, Annapolis, on 27 January 1978, and at the University of Notre Dame on 21 February 1978. In the latter instance it was as a university lecture under the sponsorship of the General Program of Liberal Studies at the university. Mr. Simpson is a member of the Santa Fe faculty. 16 a serious internal defect-perhaps it should be "recalled." This new world, which is so pervaded by rational technologies, is also obviously mad. It is hardly possible to find a kinder term: we live in a world which is insane. I realize it is not polite to call attention to such things, and these days it is hardly done-we no longer refer in public to the fact that our world is poised to blow itself to piecesmen, women, and children-on the instant, and that our most advanced and luxurious technologies are dedicated first of all to this very purpose. Our most intelligent mathematical strategies, our most intricate electronic techniques, are devised specifically to compute and implement mass death and long-term debility. Ranked beneath this master-madness is a hierarchy of destruction of the Earth and tyranny over the human race, all masked with a verbal technology of hypocrisy, of "freedom" and "peace" and "progress," which is itself perhaps the ultimate affront to reason. I have said too much, beyond the bounds of politeness, and I will not labor this point: but I take it as evident that we live in a world which, while it is pervaded by reason in a limited technological sense, is at the same time dominated by irrationality on a scale which can only be called madness. Now this, I submit, is not the real Scientific Revolution. We have had something else, we have not had the Scientific Revolution. And I fear that we never will. So the title of this lecture is seriously intended-not, perhaps, as an absolute assertion, but as a proposition worthy of anxious attention: as a problem for serious concern. Well, if this is not the Scientific Revolution, what would that real Scientific Revolution be? To answer this question, I suggest that we seek help, and where better than from the authors of the original Scientific Revolution themselves? Something has gone wrong. Very well, let us go back to the original designers, to the Instruction Book, and determine, if we can, where we have made our mistakes. There would be, �July, 1978 of course, many worthy candidates as consultants in the case-Galilee, Descartes, Newton; some maverick might even suggest Ptolemy-but I propose to turn to Francis Bacon. In many ways, Bacon can be faulted-for not having adequately anticipated the role of formal mathematics in the new sciences, for not having contributed to scientific discovery himself, even for having been out of touch with the science of his own time, or for having made some bad judgments on topics such as Copernican astronomy. But Bacon drew up a set of plans for the Scientific Revolution with a boldness of vision and thoroughness which are unique. The very fact that Bacon did not devote his life to science per se, but rather to the law, to Parliament, and to affairs of stateand yet all the while kept in the forefront of his mind his own project, to introduce a new era of reason for mankind-may suggest that he would be better able than most to view the Scientific Revolution synoptically, in its social aspect, as a human proposition. That is, Bacon may have most to teach us precisely in that aspect of the Scientific Revolution about which we have most gone wrong. So, for tonight, I shall take Francis Bacon as author of the Instruction Book for the Scientific Revolution, and seek his counsel about our errors. Bacon wrote a very great deal, the largest part of it about "science" in the broad sense in which he took the term. In part, the complexity of his writings-overlapping, unfinished, attacking the same topics by way of a variety of literary forms and disguises-has to do with the delicacy of the rhetorical problem which he faced. He, too, thought he faced a world gone mad-seized, he said, with a kind of frenzy he called idolatry-and he hoped, as a practical proposition, to persuade the world that it was indeed in such a condition, and that it should undertake on a large scale a course of radical therapy. Conversation with a madman about his problem is always touchy. But what made Bacon's problem unusually difficult was the fact that he was addressing these suggestions to his employer, the King of England-Bacon was Lord Chancellor, a kind of Henry Kissinger, to King James, and he was intent on persuading James of the urgency of funding a variety of projects of deep reform. Therefore he tended to disguise his purposes and adjust his methods in the manner of practical politics. He finally drew together, however, his program under one great heading, as the Magna Instauratio-the Great Instau- ration, the "great restoration," or "renewal". By this he meant the restoration to mankind of an original governance of the Creation-or the restoration of the Kingdom of Man. The Great lnstauration required many parts, of which Bacon could not have hoped to complete more than a few in his own lifetime. In fact, what we have consists primarily of the first two parts, the Advancement of Learning (put into the common tongue, Latin, and enlarged, as de Augmentiis Scientiarum, "On the Increase of the Sciences"), and the Novum Organum, which is the text I beli.eve currently on the list of Great Books. These are the two works, the first, cgmpleted works of the Great lnstauration, which I will have primarily in view tonight, though some others lurk in the background. THE BACONIAN ACCOUNT OF THE "SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION": THE NEW ORGANON AND THE OLD Bacon, as we see, did not call his project the "Scientific Revolution," but rather the "Great Restoration," or "Great Renewal." Why Bacon thought of his project as a "renewal," rather than a "revolution," as we do, I think we shall see. But with this interesting difference, his "instauration" is the real "revolution" -in effect, we may without injustice think of his overall work, his book of books, as if it had been entitled The Scientific Revolution instead of Magna Instauratio. In it he tells us, through stages of preparation, analysis and example, what the new era is to be, and what it is to bring to manwhat, indeed, man is to become under the new dispensation. We should, then, be able to extract from Bacon's work, if not exactly a definition, at least a characterization of the real Sci- entific Revolution. Let us try. Bacon tells us, directly enough, that he intends the "resto- ration of the Kingdom of Man" -but what might this mean? It appears to mean to Bacon the restoration of man's reason, at least in part, to a state of integrity it possessed before the Fall, and a corresponding return to man of his dominion over the Creation, including above all the rational direction of his own life. It means the cancellation of all the counsels of despair which have burdened him over the ages: dark advice from the ancients, in the mode of tragedy; and admonitions 17 �The College from the theologians, concerning the Fall and the corruption of human powers. These counsels have, one or the other, over the ages denied man's competence to guide his own affairs, or to command his own resources or the resources of nature toward goals of his own determination. Although there seems to have been abundant evidence over the ages to support these dark views, this long era of denial Bacon tells us is to end with the advent of the Instauration. It is, surely then, a bulletin of Good News, a Gospel message; and I think indeed Bacon saw his own work-as Newton later was to see his-as a stage in the historic work of the Holy Spirit in the world, a stage on the way to the Final Days. He calls it, not an invention of his own, but a "Birth of Time." What is this renewed, restored reason to be, and how is it to function as the basis of a liberated world? To answer this question, Bacon writes that part of the Instauration called the Novum Organum, or New Organon. This is the body of logic in the broadest sense, a theory of language, which is to answer to, and replace, an old "Organon," which is Aristotle's. To grasp the character of the great reversal Bacon intends, we will do well to begin by contrasting the new organon with the old. Aristotle's Organon consists of a body of works, beginning with the Categories, going on to the work called On Interpretation, and extending through the so-called Prior and Posterior Analytics, the Topics and Sophistical Refutations. To these we should in principle add the Rhetoric and the Poetics, which together project the account of language and the theory of scientific argument onto the looser subject matter of human situations, on the one hand in the enthymeme of rhetorical argument, and, on the other, in the logic of plot and character in works of poetics. When this body of work, the Old Organon, is taken as a whole, we see that it constitutes a formidable bastion of the liberal arts, indeed the foundation in the arts of language of Aristotle's body of works on the sciences and the arts. And all of it, Bacon in effect claims, is based on error, and must be taken down and reconstructed from the beginning. One often hears it said that Bacon introduced a new theory of induction, called "scientific inference" or something similar, and thereby introduced the Scientific Revolution: but in fact his own view of his task was very much broader. Although induction is indeed at the center of the enterprise, as we shall see, the foundations of IS the new human reason are very much more extensive. At the outset of the Organon, in the Categories and On Interpretation, Aristotle explains what words are and what a proposition is: we might say, he begins by teaching us how to talk. And it is exactly here that Bacon's criticism beginsAristotle, he claims, has taught us to talk wrongly. Aristotle, according to Bacon, misunderstood what words and propositions are, and therefore his "categories," his modes of predication, are systematically misleading. In turn, his syllogisms, whose theory is developed in the Prior Analytics, become chains of reasoning based on invalid words and propositions, and hence arguments of mere words, words empty of meaning, and thus, finally, empty arguments. For Bacon, then, the Scientific Revolution begins at the beginning, by teaching us to talk anew-nothing less will do the trick. How can this be? Roughly speaking, Aristotle's theory of language can be thought of in terms of f/tp.:rycrt.r.;, imitation. For he tells us at the outset of On Interpretation that there are in the soul likenesses (oftOtWft<:<m) of the things which are in the world {rO! Ovra); words, in turn, are conventional signs of those likenesses. That is, the human soul is for Aristotle in a direct and natural relation with the world: the careful, studious mind reflects the world in this mimetic mode, and in turn, the world is projected into human speech and the written word. So it comes about that in Aristotle's Organon-the Old Organon-the structure of the world is reproduced in the relations among words and propositions; the theory of language is a theory of the grammar and logic of the world itself. For Aristotle, then, learning and speaking are direct and natural acts. They are not necessarily easy, but they are within the compass of human virtue. One measure of this is simply in terms of scale: one man, in a lifetime devoted to study, might hope to gain mastery of all the principal arts and sciencesafter all, Aristotle did! For Bacon, this is all wrong; not because of technical errors, correctable by a new adjustment of the theory of induction. On the contrary, I think Bacon respects the integrity of the Old Organon from a technical point of view: it is a correct Organon, but for the wrong world: the right Organon, for the wrong world. As Bacon explains, he and Aristotle really have no argument with each other-they cannot possibly, because, strictly, they do not speak the same language. �July, 1978 The abyss between the old world, the world of the Old Organon, and the renewed world of the Novum Organum is so great in Bacon's view that one world can barely communicate with the other. Aristotle would be right about language, that is, if the world we lived in were indeed the world he describes in the Physics-a world of eternal forms, without past, future, or history: without beginning or end in time: an uncreated world, a world which does not have ruling over it a Lord God, omniscient and omnipotent, its Creator. Forms would then inhabit the world in the way Aristotle imagines they do, and mind would then have easy commerce with them, by nature, in the mode of JLLp:YJcns. But, Bacon says, the ways of the Lord God in the Creation are totally different from this, and man's ways of thought and speech must be correspondingly different, as well. Creation is a mystery: Aristotle is altogether right to argue in the Physics that there could not have been a creation, because from the point of view of reason it is indeed unthinkable that being should arise out of nothing. The world created by the Lord God, then, incorporates the impossible; it is not an object natural and accessible to the mind, but rather divided from mind at the outset by the mystery of Creation. Those forms which God made in the first days are not the eternal forms of the Physics, natural objects for the mind, but themselves mysteries of the Creation, secrets, not impressed on the surface of nature where mind can have easy commerce with them, but embedded deep beneath the phenomena. Mind, then, cannot grasp them by mere .uLf.t'l}O"t,s-the forms of cats and gold and heat are superficial, our ideas of them are correspondingly erroneous, and the words of our language, signs of these erroneous ideas drawn from superficial forms, are not !he right words. To find the real forms, to learn to speak the real words about the secrets of the Creation, requires not nature but art, and long, strategic effort: that newly discovered art which Bacon sets forth in the New Organon, and which he calls "The Interpretation of Nature." In the interim, at the point of tangency of the old and the new worlds, the encounter, Bacon's rhetorical strategy is to use the old words, for we have no other common coin-but warns us to read with caution: a word like "form" in its old and new uses will not mean the same things, words will not mean even the same kinds of things. Not only did Aristotle, according to Bacon, speak the wrong words; he misunderstood predication. Aristotle teaches us in the Categories to say of a certain white object, not simply "This body is white," but more strictly, "Whiteness is in the body/' or still more strictly yet, "A particular whiteness is in the body" (To i..evKov €v Tiji rrwJLom eO"'T[). One thinks of whiteness as a form, a quality, which has come to be in this particular body, this stone. The crucial notion in predication is being: the stone is white, or whiteness is in the stone. Even in the triumphant formulation of motion in the Physics, Aristotle understands motion as occurring between two states of being, actual and potential-thus if the stone is bleached. or painted, it is first potentially and then actually white. Between the states of potential and actual whiteness, the motion of becoming white is something of a blur. For Bacon, this again requires radical correction: predication is not fundamentally of being, but of action or operation. "Form," he says, means law or pure act. Law ordains the act; so, for example, where there is heat, that law which is the form of heat is present, and so is the act which the law ordains. If we heat our white stone, it is not that somethinghotness-comes to be there, but that something comes to happen there. Heat will not be something in the stone, but something going on in the stone. Whiteness, or heat, will be something going on. Let us look at one specific example of predication from the New Organon, to see what it will mean to predicate law rather than Aristotelian form. This example happens to be a negative proposition concerning heat, one of the initial findings of a sample "interpretation of nature" Bacon offers as a paradigm of the new method, namely a search for the form of heat. The investigation has shown that, although in some cases such as that of air, a substance when heated becomes rarefied, this is not universally the case, and so the following negative predication is to be made: "Rarely does not belong to the form of heat." This sounds innocent enough as a propositional form, but that is because it has not yet been recast into the appropriate mode of predication. The real predication will express law and action. Transposed into the predicates appropriate to the New Organon, which is to say, appropriate to God's Creation, we get the following pair of expanded propositions: 19 �The College "It is possible for man to superinduce heat in a dense body." and "It is possible for man to reduce or prevent heat in a rarefied body." The first, short form was merely a mode of predication borrowed from another world. The expanded form, the true mode of predication for the new world, is operational: it tells us what works the law of heat permits us, or does not permit us, to do. The true meaning of "form" is just such a law of operation. The Creation is ordered, not by static forms which are objects of contemplation, but by fixed laws ordaining action. These, too, are intellectual objects-but objects of a faculty which is itself new, despite its old name: intellect primarily ordered to works, not to thoughts-or better, to thoughts which are works. . Bacon intends no deprecation of intellect here. It is crucial for him that the first work of the Creation was Light-but that Light is the beginning of a sequence of Works. In turn, he sees the Sabbath of the Creation as contemplative, but that contemplation is a contemplation of works completed and good. Bacon's understanding of form and intellect might be seen as a counterpart to other theories of forms: and the Creation story, as Bacon interprets it, as a surrogate for the Platonic myth of recollection. That is, Plato and Bacon deeply agree that truth exists and is accessible to man-that learning is possible. They agree, too, that this means that forms exist, and are the objects of our intellectual search. But the new forms are not within us, or to be sought by a dialectical examination conducted in private, as an inquiry into the content of our own souls. They are within the Creation, but external to us, and the possibility of learning is assuredMeno's question, which Bacon asks himself, is answered-by the possibility of conducting a dialogue with Nature. Our "forgetting," our Lethe, was the Fall, in which, in the vanity of false philosophy based on a false understanding of the nahue of knowledge, man turned away from God's Creation and thereby lost the power to seek true forms. But that power remains latent within us, and can be restored by an act of free will, an act of deep humility, in which the vanity of the philosophers is rejected, and man turns instead to a long, patient 20 dialectic with Nature. This is the Baconian peripety, which would make man once again teachable, and this willingness to be taught by God through the Creation is for Bacon the foundation of the Scientific Revolution. Against Plato's visions of the Forms, Bacon sets the image of the Garden. The Garden is of course an object of contemplation; but it is not simply an image of order and beauty, it is an image of Works: in which man will find, not static truths, but an intellectually luminous task. That Garden is the Creation; man's intellectual task is to know it, and thereby to govern and cultivate it, in the Kingdom of Man. Otherwise said, the Kingdom of Man is Bacon's counterpart of the Platonic Republic. Where the Republic is ordered to the forms, that is, to knowledge as the highest good, for Bacon God's forms, the laws of Nature, are ordered to the Kingdom of Man as the Light of the First Day is ordered to the Creation. It is as a Work that the Creation is to be grasped by intellect as luminously good. BACON'S INDUCTIVE LOGIC I have been anxious to emphasize the total reconstruction of the arts of language which Bacon undertakes, and therefore have spoken thus far about the first elements of the Organon, the word and the proposition. It remains true, however, that the central issue is "induction" -for it must be by a reformed mode of induction that the new secret words and operational predications are to be found out. We should consider first what we may mean by "induction" in general, and then very briefly compare the accounts of induction in the Old and the New Organons. Our Latin word "in-duction" means a leading-in; Aristotle's terms, irv-aywy'f} or €7T-aywyr], suggest leading-up to a goal, and of course the Platonic imagery is of an upward ascent. Whether we figure the process as moving inward or moving upward, it is in any case the primary phase of the learning process. Induction is the mode by which we move from initial confusion to clarity, from the obscurity of common opinion or sense perception to the light of first principles-or, as Aristotle says, from what is most knowable to us, to what is most knowable by nature: i.e., from what appears to be clearest, to what really is clearest to the mind. This is of course not the only kind of learning that we do: �July, 1978 when we learn from Euclid, we are, in the first instance at least, moving the "other way"~taking the first principles as known, and deriving a long series of consequences from them. This is "de-duction," the motion "downward". Aristotle caBs this second operation of reason &7T6-0Hgt..~, or in Latin de-monstration, showing the consequences which follow from the first principles, which are either best known, as in true scientific argument yielding €1TLa-TiJfL'YJ, or are granted by the learner for the sake of the argument, as sometimes has to happen at the outset of our study of Euclid, in relation to the definitions of "straight line" and "point." Now this second phase of reasoning can, in some sense, be carried out by that method which Aristotle teaches in the Old Organon, calling it (]1)/..-!..oy'a-!"O<;, syllogism, the art of weaving propositions together into a binding demonstrative chain. If you have ever tried to apply Aristotle's theory of syllogism to Euclid's text, 1 think you will have discovered something that Aristotle, or the fate of his texts, has omitted-namely, the th<ory of the relational· syllogism, 0'1J"J\.Aoytcr!J..6r; in the case in which the predications are of relation, 7rp6r; n; all that seems clear about this is that Aristotle did not really intend to omit it. But with all this theory of deduction, Bacon has no serious complaint. The issue between Bacon and Aristotle or Plato is over induction-but since this is the original, generative motion of the human mind, it is really reason itself which is at issue. Bacon claims that Aristotle and Plato are wrong about the very nature of human reason, in being wrong about induction. With this understanding of the significance of the question of induction in general, we can turn now to Aristotle for his own account of the inductive process. I take the following passage from the close of the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle's book about science; although it is likely to be familiar to most of you, I am going to quote it at some length because it epitomizes that concept of a natural process of induction which Bacon feels is a fundamental and ruinous error: Thus from sense-perception (aZcrlh]crtr;} arises memory ... and from repeated memory of the same thing arises experience (€!J..7TEt..pia); for memories which are many in number are one in experience. From experience, or the coming to rest of the universe (TO Ka()6Aov) out of the many in the soul-of the one out of the many, the one which is the same in them all-arises the first principle (apxi}) of art or of science .... Thus these powers (~gets) arise from senseperception, just as, when a retreat has occurred in a battle, if one man halts so does another, and then another, until the original position is restored. The soul is so constituted that it is capable of having this happen to it. ... It is clear then that for us the first things (n~ 7rpWTa) are known by means of induction (E7Tl>ywyi}). Now, we certainly do the sort of thing Aristotle describes here, all the time-the process is altogether familiar. But according to Bacon, what results is not at all the true first principles, TCx 7Tp&Ta, but only popular wisdom, an account of the mere surface appearance of things-what both Bacon and Newton call vulgar, i.e., common, impressions, as opposed to truth. Experience does not in this way present us with the true universal; it is not present in that first "halt" in the soul. The soul is not "so constituted," as Aristotle claims, that it can in any such natural way arrive at serious truths. When Aristotle goes on to say here that "it must be intuition (v6Vr;) that apprehends the first principles" he is, for Bacon, sealing his error. Unaided voVr;, in its natural, spontaneous operation, merely assembles our perception of the surface of things: to take this for truth, and the objects of vOvr; thus arrived at as the true 7TpWTa, first things, is to substitute the surface for the underlying reality of the Creation-to substitute a merely human concept of truth for the Divine. For Bacon, this imposition of an opaque screen between man and God is the real temptation by which Satan, through the offer of an illusory "truth," led man to sin and the loss of Paradise. Aristotle, and mankind in his train, are not simply in philosophical error; this substitution of vain voVr; for Divine truth is idolatry and sin. Thus we sec the momentous significance, for Bacon, of a correction of the theory of induction. The way to the new understanding of Reason and Truth, then, is through a total repudiation of intellectual intuition in its natural operation. Only after such a cleansing repudiation will we be ready to turn our minds toward the immense task 21 �The College Bacon now lays before us-the New Induction, the lntetpretation of Nature. The New Induction is a great construction, an art, and for guidance in its design Bacon calls upon various existing arts as sources of suggestion. Since the universe has become for Bacon a cryptic text, full of truth, but requiring penetrating analysis, the art of interpretation, a branch of the art of rhetoric which flourished out of the need to unveil Scriptural secrets-a kind of inverse, or mirror-image of the art of speaking-becomes the overall paradigm for the New Induction. On the other hand, since the problem is that of coming upon hidden things, or discovery of secret axioms and true arguments, Bacon looks as well to another branch of the art of rhetoric-that aspect which was traditionally regarded as the highest and most esoteric mystery-the art of discovery, coming-upon, or, in Latin, in-venting truths or lines of argument. Aristotle dealt with this as part of the Organon, in the Topics, Tinrot., literally "places." This is a collection of loci of argument in all areas of thought, collected to facilitate invention of new lines of logical attack. Bacon is of course not interested in such stale collections, but the notion of tabulating places or instances as powerful resources for invention is taken over from the Topics in a massive way as a fundamental method of the New Organon. If we think of the Creation as a cryptic text requiring interpretation, Bacon's tabulated instances become organized collections of crucial passages in the text, and at the same time, tables of phenomena, or natural histories, arranged so as to be in the most powerful way spurs to the discovery, invention, of hidden things. We thus see Aristotle's Topics transformed into tables of scientific phenomena and data, clues to the discovery of hidden scientific laws. A third model for this new art of induction is suggested by the fact that the object of search is law-and is no doubt also suggested 'to Bacon by his own principal training and experience as a lawyer. Since the search is for law, the problem is not unlike that which regularly faces a judge, and which was a particular preoccupation of English common law. Where the law is indefinite, or where it is a law of custom and precedent rather than positive legislation, it may fall to the judge to determine the law, by the analysis either of disparate written formulations, or from precedents. When this is the problem, documents and precedents will be arrayed before 22 the judge, perhaps in opposing tabulations by opposing attorneys, and the judge's task becomes that of determining the one consistent interpretation of the underlying law, sUpposed to obtain in all the instances. This legal procedure is on the one hand a problem in interpretation, and on the other a problem of discovery and an application of the rhetoric of invention, so that these three methodological paradigms converge in the New Organon. The legal model is in fact perhaps the most prominent: Bacon sees scientific method primarily as a problem in the law. We might add that one of his own greatest interests was---in the rational reformulation of English common law, the transformation of Common Law into a written, rational code: Bacon was, at least strategically, a Royalist, and in matters of law, a Roman. For him, English Common Law was one of the urgent and exasperating instances of an alchemy in need of reformation by the New Organon. The actual implementation of the new logic is extensive and complex, and need not detain us here. The Creation is to be searched for the widest possible spectrum of instances in all fields of learning, which will then be channeled by vast efforts of imagination into Tables of all sorts, for presentation to reason for judgment; each judgment will suggest new works, which will on the one hand be fruits of the new method, for the use of mankind, and on the other, will put tentative judgments to the test. Because Nahue's secrets arc so deeply hidden, works will often take the form of experiments, in which by art Nature is forced out of her normal channels, to yield revelations which would never otherwise come to light. In all of this, we recognize the roots of the enormous, brilliant system of research and publication which is the working structure of modern science; the system which Bacon summarized as "Literate Experience." It may be criticized, but not because its results are not interesting-they are interesting, and of the greatest importance: the question is not of their value or importance, but of what we do with them. Avoiding any discussion of the details of Bacon's method, let us try briefly to draw up a first characterization of new human intellect which emerges from the New Organon. First, we see intellect conceived as judge, and hence the subsuming principle of judgment on the strength of valid evidence. Where the object of intellect, truth, is embedded in the Creation, external evidence is the lifeline of intellect, the �July, 1978 essential clue leading to its goal. Hence every effort will be bent toward gathering, arranging and reading those signs. Second, since mind no longer moves in the ancient circle, but advances constantly to new discoveries, new intellectual worlds, then foresight, anticipation, and inventive imagination will support intellect in its process of learning. Probing new depths and reaches of the Creation, the intellect will itself, in the shock of its discoveries, seem creative-science will move closer to poetic, the intellectual object will be new to history, and in turn, it will no longer seem inappropriate to speak of the poetic artist as "creative." For Bacon, the dominant symbol of the Great Instauration is the discovery of the New World-which is both an "emblem," as he says, of the new endeavor of the human intellect, and a sign in history that he lives at a time which is giving rise to new births. Third, the new intellect will combine humility on the individual level-for no one thinker can carry the work of mind forward far alone, where the scale of the endeavor is so vast and the ultimate goal so remote-with new courage and hope on the level of mankind as a whole. The new intellect will be social, and the individual will draw upon this and contribute to it in an inquiry which is essentially a rational dialogue on the part of mankind as a whole. Fourth, perhaps as a corollary to mind's new social context, progress will often occur through negation. The denial of the partial and erroneous insights of any one mind in any one time, by the larger findings of mankind over the generations, will not mean a chaoS of wasted efforts and abandoned ideas, but a dialectical progress of mind to which any one individual, however heroic, can do no more than contribute. This conviction of the overall positive rOle of a limited or negative result, the understanding that refutation is the way, not to despair, but to deeper insight-the dialectical principle-Bacon rightly sees as his fundamental debt to Plato. The passage through negation must be .sustained by deep conviction-for PlatO, belief in the possibility of knowledge of the forms, through recollection; for Bacon, faith in God's truth, impressed upon the Creation, and attainable through the new method of Interpretation of Nature. Finally, the new intellect learns through experiment, and contemplates its results in the mode of Works. As mind's grasp of the axioms of nature deepens,· their operational form yields growing power over nature: this power to command Nature, to rework the Creation by art, to re- create, Bacon calls metaphysics, or "magic." The new intellect, then, unites a contemplative side, in which it is metaphysician, and an operative side, in which it is magician. The fusion of the two reflects the new concept of created forms. THE SCOPE OF THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION To what extent is this new intellect a counterpart of v6Vr;? We have seen the enigmatic union of contemplation with operation, and the new paradigm of judgment by art on .the basis of external evidence, rather than learning by nature through inner recollection. Truth is attainable, knowledge is possible, but Bacon's intellectus is surely not quite the same as vOvr;. Let me add now another consideration, through which intellectus and vOvr; may seem after all to move a little closer together. I think in so doing I will take us closer to the focus of our initial concern with the threatening version of the Scientific Revolution which now surrourlds us. Recall the difficulty Socrates describes concerning his early enounter with Anaxagoras-or rather, with the book Anaxagoras had written, entitled NOvr;. Socrates had begun with the human question "Why?", and had seized upon Anaxagoras' work because he thought a book entitled NOvr; ought to deal with his question. In fact, he found that it answered the question "Why?" in all the senses except the interesting one, "To what end?" -that is, Anaxagoras had failed entirely in the real enterprise of intellect as Socrates understands it, because he omitted consideration of the good. Now, our modern science is generally understood, and generally understands itself, to be Anaxagoran in this sense: it is "objective," it says, or purged of what it calls "value judgments," and hence, it, too, omits consideration of the good. Insofar as it rises above mere skepticism to speak about truth at all, it believes it can deal with truth precisely to the extent that as it does not deal with the good. Hence our image of what we call modern science: austere, sterile, morally neutral-all those characteristics symbolized by the white laboratory coat-which, when coupled with the Baconian magic it obviously does command, breed terror in the hearts of mortal men. Now, is the Baconian intellectus morally neutral in this way? Is the Great lnstauration indifferent to human value and 23 �The College purpose, in the way we ascribe to our supposed Scientific Revolution? The answer is decisively, "No." Perhaps a shudder of apprehension will greet his report: the only thing more terrifying than a science which is morally indifferent, might seem a science which presumed to pronounce on moral issues. But I think it is already clear that Bacon does not mean by intellect and its object what we refer to as "science" and the "scientific object": though he typically uses the term scientia, science, he intends it, it seems, in a way after all much closer to its ancient meaning. Let us see how Bacon deals with the relation of the new science to the human good. You might expect Bacon to say that we have two texts before us: the Creation on the one hand, and Holy Scripture on the other-and that, although we turn to the first for intellectual knowledge of the laws of Nature, we must turn exclusively to the second for guidance in human action. On the whole, our western world has taken this path, confining what we call "science" to so-called "objective" questions, and seeking moral light by other means. But that is not the answer Bacon gives. He turns again to the account of Creation, his Myth of Recollection, as paradigm. The Lord God carried out the Creation, which in this context means for Bacon that God im-pressed upon Nature forms in the mode of laws-and with each day's work, pronminced that it was "good." The Sabbath is the contemplation of a whole work which is very good; and the Garden is a vision of an order which is at once intellectually luminous, and good. That is, for Bacon there is no doubt of a deep and total union of the intellectual and the moral object: of the True and the Good. This faith in the goodness of the Creation reflects Bacon's faith in the goodness and power of God. Allowing for an infinite difference between worlds with and without God, we might nonetheless say that this faith of Bacon's is a counterpart to the Platonic belief that the intellectual object is illuminated by the Good-that v6V~ in answering the question "Why?" does so ultimately in terms of what is best. For Aristotle, this same conviction of the union of the intellectual and the moral object is reflected in the priority of the Final Cause over other causes in the account of the cosmos. Bacon is thus able to assert that the New Organon is inclusive. It does not merely define our intellectual relation to a limited class of natural objects, called "scientific" -but ex24 tends to all intellectual objects. The entire Intellectual Globe, as Bacon calls it, is the object of the new scientia. This will, then, include for example ethics, politics, law, history, and economics. Though in some of these areas we can more safely borrow from the old learning than in others, in principle all are equally concerns of the new science. "Science" properly deals with all aspects of human thought and action. We begin to see that Bacon understands the lnstauration to be coextensive with the body of Aristotelian learning: founded on a New Organon which defines the new human speech and reasons as totally as Aristotle's did the old, Bacon -new proposes to ·construct counterparts to all the Aristotelian arts and sciences. This is the scope of the real Scientific Revolution, of which we can now see our so-called "Scientific Revolution" must be only a small and relatively minor part. To go directly, then, to the crux of the matter: how does Bacon understand the new science to deal with the human good? How does value, the weighing of human purpose, enter the forum of scientific evidence and rational judgment? Bacon's answer is very simple in principle: we look at the evidence of human goals, human a-p-petitus, "appetites," and inquire with the same rational care as in other investigations, what it is which human beings by nature want. Just as he sees other natural forms lying deep beneath the surface of things, he believes that we have yet to inquire deeply into our own nature. He suggests that when we do, we will find three levels of human intention; individual appetites; social goals at the level of political loyalties, the proximate community; and finally, deepest and truest though not yet popularly recognized, what he calls philanthropia, the projection into human nature of the Christian virtue of charity, a love _of mankind as a whole, or of man as human. It is this philanthropia, he senses, which has moved him throughout a long legal and political career to bend all efforts towards defining and instituting the Instauration. In short, Bacon has profound faith in human nature, reflecting his faith in God: faith that we can safely ground the ethics of the Kingdom of Man on a candid effort to know human nature better, and to achieve our natural human goals-not natural appetite as vulgarly conceived, but human desire as truly and deeply known. To avoid misunderstanding, let me add without delay that Bacon was anything but nai've about human "nature" as commonly encountered: in his political function as Lord �July, 1978 Chancellor, he moved in a realm of constant deception, strategy, villainy, and treachery; his brother, with whom he had close relations, had been Queen Elizabeth's CIA man in France for many years. But Bacon had also perceived the possibility that man's nature, restored to itself, and above all, to faith in itself, in a.n era of a new use of reason, could indeed make a Garden of the Earth. Man need be no more helpless in relation to himself than he will be in relation to other parts of the Creation. Man's nature, once better understood, can be liberated from the alchemy of social accident and superstition, and can then find its way to a society more consonant with its own deeply felt aims. This reasoning together toward common human goals is the highest work Bacon intends for the New Organon, and the Great lnstauration-this highest function, we might say, defines for him the new era. And it seems that it is precisely this which we have omitted from our abortive "Scientific Revolution." We reason massively and precisely about everything except our goals, or rational means for achieving them. We have embraced the Scientific Revolution in its easier and minor aspect, that part which omits man's purpose; and have systematically eliminated from the scope of reason, ourselves, and what we most care about. THE MEASURE OF OUR RELATION TO THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION Let us now review certain bench-marks of the true Scientific Revolution, by which we may appraise more carefully our distance from it. (1) The true Scientific Revolution is neither an exercise in empiricism, nor in skepticism. Though it moves by way of evidence, it follows a road toward truth. It finds laws of nature which are true, and the power which they convey is not the power of the empirics, as Bacon calls them, who move by analogy from work to work, but of intellect, which has grasped a universal object. Thus the lnstauration does not set us on that skeptical path through Hume and Kant; if the modern world has indeed taken that route, it is not from following Bacon, or, we may add, Bacon's disciple, Newton. (2) The true Scientific Revolution is not materialist, nor does it look to either mathematics or mechanism as paradigm for the forms of nature. Insofar as we understand "laws of nature" as "binding" mathematical equations or mechanisms, we have followed Descartes, not Bacon, or, again, Newton. Bacon sees mathematics as important, but in the rOle of appendix to the real enterprise, on the simple principle that the Creation contains a rich variety of things, and it is primarily important to know them directly, and distinguish them, before measuring them, and reducing them to undifferentiated magnitude. Our algebraic reduction of all things and all human acts to number, whether in the laboratory by way of rulers and balances, or in the market place by way of exchange of all things and our very selves as commodities, owes nothing to Bacon. What is at issue, and becomes the crux of our misunderstanding of Bacon and of our frustration with our own scientific era, is the concept of "law." We tend to think of scientific law as an iron bond, a restraint on freedom: and indeed, in self-fulfillment of our prophecy, our science becomes just that. But "law" does not mean that in principle, and it does not mean that to Bacon. He is a student of the classics, of Scripture and of English law, not a mathematician or a machinist. What does Bacon mean, then, when he asserts that the forms will be laws? He means that they are intelligible rules of action, meaningful and significant elements of an organic whole. The better we grasp them, the better we will grasp their significance as well. His image of Nature governed by law is not that of a machine-shop or a computer, but of a Garden. Laws of Nature, then, are not blind connections, like links within a machine, but ways of acting, like the ways of flowers which the gardener comes to know, and to love. If we moderns respond to Bacon by reporting to him that he was unfortunately mistaken in this, and that we have found that the laws of nature are indeed strictly mathematical, Bacon might be puzzled, but Newton would offer an answer. He tells us in the Principia that we are in danger of misunderstanding mathematics~that we have failed to see that mathematics itself can bear intelligibility, and be meaningful and not blind. The same book that taught us how mathematics rules nature, teaches also that this mathematics can be the subject of as luminous interpretation as any other text. Unfortunately, we have understood the first message of the Principia, but not the second. When I say that the lnstauration does not propose a materialism, I mean not only that its laws are those of a Garden 25 �The College and not of a machine, but that Bacon has no notion of reduction of the Creation to the motions of matter. We should not forget that the laws of human nature are at the very center of his concern, not as bonds upon us, but as a rational grasp of our rOle in the Creation, as Gardener. Gardeners who know what they are doing can be very creative; they are not in bondage to their work. (3) The true Scientific Revolution is at its very center a social enterprise. With the depths and expanse of an unexplored Creation as the object of inquiry, man can only learn in the company of all mankind. And since learning immediately and continuously weaves with action, we will act, as well, in the company of mankind and in relation to history. In this, ·we modems are in one sense close to Bacon. We understand and practice this new art of reasoning and acting in common, on what is rapidly becoming genuinely a world scale: our vehicle for this is our de facto world community of scientists, technologists, and businessmen, ordered by the social structure of a network of international agencies and corporations which they serve, Our position seems to be, then, that the limited rationality of our science and technologies is rapidly forging this community of mankind de facto, on a correspondingly limited basis, without our having understood or endorsed what we are doing. We retain a mythology of society which is pathologically out of touch with its reality, a disparity which leaves society effectively unguided. I think it is clear that between our world and Bacon's vision, the distance is very great. With these observations to guide us, let us now, as well as we can, take the measure of our present distance from the real Scientific Revolution, as Bacon envisioned it. That real revolution, the Instauration, was to have been founded on a renewal of man's faith in himself as a rational being, and in the power of a new form of dialectic to seek truth in broad areas of human concern, including, above all, man himself, his goals on this earth, and the forms of social institution best adapted to achieve these aims. It was to take the form of a free and open dialogue on the part, ultimately, of all mankind-a dialogue not at all unlike that which our scientists presently conduct world-wide, based upon evidence and the critical, logical examination of positions and proposals. But the Baconian dialectic would draw not only upon evidence from na- 26 ture and the laboratory, but would draw as well upon careful study of our history, our institutions, and in general, the vicissitudes of our common human experience. It would yield a continuous series of works, which would at the same time be the vehicles of the new dialectic, and fruits leading to a better life for man on earth-works which would include not only new substances and new powers, but new forms of government, of production, and of human relationship. Can we put our finger on the crux of our difference from this Baconian invitation? I suggest that it lies in the lack of that faith which lay at the foundation of his enterprise. We are-highly prematurely, I believe-disillusioned about any relation between science and "truth," and we do not dare subject our human aims and institutions to the free rational · study which we bring to bear on atoms or on animals. We fear science as mathematical, mechanical, sterile, and threatening to the human spirit. As a result, we hide our thoughts concerning such matters as politics and economics under veils of superstition and illusion, we persecute those who bring these beliefs under serious critical attack, and we insulate the discussion of them as nearly as possible along rigid national or cultural boundary lines. All this, I suggest, reflects lack of faith-in humanity, and in the possibilities of far-reaching rational discussion of our common human situation, WILL THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION TAKE PLACE? Not everyone will be persuaded by Francis Bacon, or by me, that the Great Instauration-the real Scientific Revolution-would be desirable, or even preferable to the abortive "Scientific Revolution" we are now having. I for one would be very much interested in a change of Revolutions before it is too late. But what are the chances that the real Scientific Revolution might after all take place? It appears to me that the chances are very slight-that the auspices for a broader and deeper reign of human reason, or for the free and ra:tiorial government of our human affairs, are highly unfavorable. I will not try at this point to analyze the present situation even briefly, although it is interesting to note in passing that this problem, too, falls within the compass of investigation by the new method, and that Bacon devoted a great deal of his own effort to the analysis of the prospects for �July, I 978 the Great lnstauration in his own time. He thought then that the prospects were pretty good-a prognosis which, as it turns out, is perhaps not a very good advertisement for the prophetic powers of the new method! Bacon diagnoses the obstacles to the Great Instaurationthat is, to a free application of human reason to human affairs-in terms of a theory of idolatry. Idols for Bacon are all those factors which together block the motion of reason. Without considering his theory at this point, let me simply mention the one great obstacle which I think today decisively stands in the way of human freedom. This is, very simply, the effect of our abortive Scientific Revolution on the power of thought itself. Thought has become the principal victim of the technology it has devised. Virtually every medium for the conduct or dissemination of thought-every forum-is itself enmeshed in a hierarchy of technologies-technologies, that is, of our barren kind which seal themselves off from evaluation and re-direction with respect to the human good. I do not mean only what are called the "media" -television, publishing, the press with its special technology of the wire service and the press release, or advertising, with its subdivision called education: but as a cumulative consequence of all this, our very language, our concepts, the questions we ask and the principles we reach for in attempting to answer them-the very structure of our language and our thought itself become impenetrable to criticism, and hence to rational understanding of change. Bacon thought he faced just such a problem in confronting the closed system of Aristotelian and scholastic thought-but while it was closed, it was not technologically closed. Now, closure appears to be sealed by the very powers which Bacon's original invitation, so misunderstood and misapplied, has unleashed. It is because of this technological closure that I fear we are now locked into a sterile misunderstanding of the Scientific Revolution, and that we will never be able to find the moral and intellectual purchase which would be needed to wrench ourselves free. It would be tempting to describe our situation of powerlessness as "tragic," but I fear we cannot lay claim to such depths of mystic insight; it would be fairer to say that we are simply in a very bad pickle. If there is any hope for the real Scientific Revolution-any hope that reason will break free from this silent, faceless tyranny of technology-! think it must come from the fact that our present system, for all its complacency and appearance of totality, is in fact deeply in conflict-with itself, on the one hand; and with a certain ineradicable sense of man's purpose, on the other. Perhaps out of sheer exasperation, despair, or disgust beyond the ability of technology to neutralize or veil, mankind will succeed in turning from the present order of things to one not unlike Bacon's vision, in which reason, unbound, may after all come to guide and serve mankind. 27 �The College Chaos, Gauss, and Order by Michael Comenetz This is a bicentennial lecture! Gauss was born in 1777. He was a very great mathematician, perhaps the foremost of all mathematicians. Archimedes and Newton may be his peers. Gauss deserves to be honored by us: he may be the greatest thinker we don't read. But it is difficult for us to approach Gauss. His work, like the man himself, is forbiddingly austere; and it comes not at the beginning of modern mathematics, but at a time when it was already well under way. Nevertheless, I'd like to try to bring one small part of his work before you tonight. I'm going to tell you about an idea Gauss had in 1795, when he was 18, and continued to develop for some 30 years. I'll try to show how his thought evolved; and perhaps there will be something to be learned about the way mathematics is discovered. I should say that other men worked on the idea too; but I'll talk only about what Gauss did, which was quite enough for one lecture. Gauss was concerned with the problem of drawing conclusions from astronomical observations. His ideas apply to all kinds of observations. That he was led to the problem by astronomy gives us one more indication~as if we needed morel-of the central role astronomy has played in the development of scientific thought. Suppose that I want to determine the value of some unknown quantity, by taking observations. I will encounter two kinds of difficulties. The first is that I may not be able to observe directly the quantity I want to determine, but may Michael Comendz received his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University in 1965, M.A. from Brandeis University in 1967, and Ph.D. from Brandeis in 1972. From 1972 to 1975 he was Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of Kansas. He has been a Tutor at St. John's, Annapolis, since 1975. With regard to this article, which derives from a lecture given there on October 28, !977, he writes: "The present text represents as nearly as possible the lecture as delivered. (The 'placards' were large cardboards on an easel; the other items centrally displayed in the text were written or drawn on a blackboard during the lecture.) Certain mathematical inaccuracies arc present; these arc, I hope, only such as are almost inevitable in a popular lecture of this kind, and not so grave as to result in any serious misrepresentation of Gauss's thought." 28 have to observe other quantities and deduce the value of the one I want from the observations of the oth~rs. In astronomy, I can see only what is put before me. If I want to know the shape of a planetary orbit, for example, I can't directly observe its length and width, but must deduce them from observations of such things as the planet's height in the sky. The second problem is that no matter how careful I am, my observations are affected by errors. Some I can compensate for: if the atmosphere bends the light of a star, I can allow for the amount of bending in my use of the observations of the height of the star. Others seem entirely beyond my grasp. My own vision is not quite LmifonTI;· the air shakes in a random way; the telescope is not quite firm on the earth. The resulting errors I consider to be chance errors. With care I can make them small, but I cannot eliminate them; my repeated measurements of the height of a star will vary slightly, although I assume the height to be actually constant. Given the results of such variable measurements, what conclusion can I come to as to the best value to accept? Here is another example. According to the law of gravity, the force with which two bodies attract one another depends on the square of the distance between. them; that is, on the distance to the power 2. Is that "2" quite correct? Only observation can tell me. But I can't observe an exponent! I have to observe certain physical quantities as well as I can, and deduce the value of the exponent from these observations. Let me give one more example. Suppose I want to know the average height of a student here. To estimate it, I measure a few of you. Your heights vary! But I am somehow to use them to estimate the true average height of all of you. This example is quite different from the other two, as ybu may see; but the same ideas illuminate both. I hope it is clear that this problem is one of the most fundamental importance, having to do with all our precise knowledge of the world of things. l hope it also appears as a mystery. Now in considering this problem of observations I become aware that the observations not only vary but are afflicted by the presence of a kind of chaos. The errors occur helterskelter. When I look at the star I have no very good idea in �July, 1978 advance what height I wil1 observe. How can I hope to comprehend this chaos in order to find what I seek? Well, I can make a beginning this way. I classify my observations, as follows. I make a wooden box If I look once more and see it at 64° again, I put another pebble in slot 64. ~ 1>-< ~ J 61 61 62 64 63 65 66 67 with a bottom and a back and a glass front and vertical partitions, open at the top, and I label each slot with a numbersay, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67; these could be degrees above the horizon at which a star can be observed. Each time I take an observation I put a pebble-! have lots of pebbles, all the same size-into the slot corresponding to the measurement I made. Thus, if I look at the star and see it at 64°, I put a pebble in slot 64. 1\. 63 '' J 64 65 66 67 62 63 64 65 66 67 and let's look at the curve formed by the tops of the columns of pebbles . h 62 63 And so on. The pebbles go in now here, now there, without rhyme or reason-in a perfect chaos. Or is it? Let me take more observations and put in more pebbles, so they start to mount up, 61 61 62 .) 64 65 66 67 If I look again and see it at 62°, I put a pebble in slot 62. 63 1,........, 61 62 1,........, 63 64 "' 65 66 67 64 65 66 67 (Actually, it will have steps; but if the slots were many and narrow, as would be the case if I were taking more precise observations, the steps would hardly be noticeable. I shall ignore the steps.) I would expect the pebbles to cluster about 29 �The College the true value-say, 64-but what I find is that the curve gradually takes on a definite shape!-something like this: Gauss did not think of questions 2 and 3 at first. When he was 18, he decided on an answer to the first question, his so-called Method of Least Squares. Now you may be thinking: the first question is easy to answer. If I observe a quantity PI•:BBLE-CURVI•: "" several times in the same way, the best value of the quantity is the average, or mean, of the observed values. For example, if I observe a star at heights f __. 64", 63", 66", 63" the accepted rule is to estimate its true height at ~ IH \9 60 61 62 61 64 6\ 66 67 6H 69 70 Placard I Of course it gets bigger and bigger as I put in more pebbles; but it acquires and keeps a definite form. This doesn't look like chaos! To say that the curve has a 64 + 63 + shape as the pebbles went in, one would have a deeper chaos, more difficult to comprehend-to make something of, as here I have made this curve. Now th:Jt experience has shown me that there is hope of comprehending my data, I can formulate two questions: + Suppose I want to know the value of a quantity X. (X, X. I wanted to keep X out of this talk, but when it heard I was giving a- serious lecture on Gauss's work it insisted on being let in. Now that it's here, it's going to bring Y and Z with it. But I won't let them take over. What you have to keep in mind is that X is the quantity I want to know~ and Y and Z will be the quantities I can observe.) If I can observe X itself, I take as the best estimate of X the mean of the observed values. This is the usual rule. If I can't observe X, but I can observe one other quantity Y which is closely related to X, then I simply apply the usual rule of the mean to Y, and then get X from Y. For example, l. HOW COMBINE RESULTS OF OBSERVATIONS TO GET BEST VALUE OF UNKNOWN? suppose I know from theory that 2. WHAT IS SHAPE OF PEBBLECURVE OF OBSERVED QUANTITY? and I observe these values of Y: 3. WHAT HAVE# l AND #2 To Do WITH ONE ANOTHER? Placard 2 l. How should I combine the results of a number of observations so as to get the best value of the quantity sougl)t for? -That's my fundamental question. 2. What is the shape of the pebble-curve of a single observed quantity? And if I am very thoughtful, I can formulate a third: 3. What have questions 1 and 2 to do with one another? 30 63 ~ 64". Most people know that. So did Gauss. But remember the other problem with observations: I may not be able to see what I want. Let's see what difficulty this will cause us. form is to say that each measured value has a particular likelihood-a particular frequency of occurring-relative to every other. For example, if the pebble-curve is twice as high above 64 as it is above 62, twice as many pebbles go in at 64 as at 62: 64 is twice as likely to occur. If one could never make such a statement, if the curve continually changed its 66 4 y = xz 64, 63, 66, 63. Then I estimate the true value of Y to be the mean 64, y ~ 64, and therefore I estimate X to be 8, since X2 = 64. There is nothing new here: I apply the standard rule to Y, then find X from Y. But what if I am lucky enough to be able to observe not just Y, but also another quantity Z? This ought to be cause for rejoicing. The more observed quantities I can use, the better my determination of X should be. (And this is the usual circumstance: several observed quantities for each unknown.) So suppose my situation is this: �July, 1978 X WANT TO KNOW: CAN OBSERVE: Y ANDZ OBSERVE = 64 AND sma11 at once. To make them all small, I'll make their sum small. But some of them might be positive and some negative, so that cancellation would occur in their sum, and the sum might be small while they were not. So I'll make them all positive by squaring them. Then I choose X to make l Z = 2X { Z: (THEN X 2 choseTI values-that is, the errors. So I want all these errors y = X2 ~ KNOW FROM THEORY: Y: 62, 66 14, 22 2X = 18??) Placard 3 I want to know X, and can observe Y and Z, and theory tells me that, say, Y = X2 and Z = 2X. I observe the values 62 and 66 fur Y and the values 14 and 22 for Z. Proceeding in the usual way to take means, I find the mean of the Y-values to be 64 and the mean of the Z-values to be 18. Since Y = X2 and Z = 2X the best estimate for X must satisfy X2 = 64 and 2X = 18. Then what is X -8 or 9? 1 don't know what to do. 1 mustn't throw away any data, but it is tempting. Should 1 average 8 and 9, and say X = 8Y2? That would be a desperate act. It is one thing to average observations of the same kind, but quite another-and entirely unacceptable-to average derived values such as these. Thus 1 see that the means of the observations of Y and Z don't give me X. I need a new approach. Gauss furnished it in 1795, saying: When I choose a value for X, 1 am also choosing values for Y and Z, since Y = X2 and Z = 2X. What I want is to choose X so that Y = X 2 , Z = 2X WANT Y CLOSE TO 62 y " " 66 14 22 z z " " " " all at once. If I do choose Y and Z, these differences will be the amounts by which the observed values differ from the WANT SMALL ERRORS Y - 62 SMALL y - 66 " 14 " 22 " zz- MLS: CHoosE X So THAT (Y-62)2 + (Y-66) 2 + (Z-14) 2 Is AS SMALL AS POSSIBLE + (Z-22)2 (Y-62)2 + (Y-66) 2 + (Z-14) 2 + (Z-22) 2 as small as possible. This is the Method of Least Squares: to choose X so that the sum of the squares of the differences between the corresponding values of Y and Z and the observed values of Y and Z is as small as possible-that is, so that the sum of the squares of the errors is as small as possible. This choice of X is easily made by using calculus. The details needn't concern us. (You might like to know that the result in the present case is 8. 02-very different from the 8. 5 we desperately considered before.) The precise formula needn't concern us too much either. What is important is this: There was an old working rule: when you observe a quantity several times, the best estimate of its true value is the mean of the observations. This usually fails to help when only indirect observations can be made. For that case Gauss gave a new working rule: Choose X by the Method of Least Squares. It reduces to the old one in the case of direct observations. For this method we have the authority of Gauss, aged 18. That's something, We have more: the method proved very successful in astronomical applications. That's fine, but there is something arbitrary here, Granted that one wants to make these errors small, and even that it is appropriate to form their sum, why square them? Why not use their absolute values, or their fourth powers? Gauss said that the calculations were easiest his way. Very well, but one could ask for a firmer basis for something so important. Gauss was not satisfied, and two years later he thought about the first problem Placard 4 Y is close Y is close Z is close and Z is close to to to to 62, 66, 14, 22, all at once. That's the same as saying I want Y-62 small, Y-66 small, Z-14 small, and Z-22 small, l. How COMBINE RESULTS OF OBSERVATIONS TO GET BEST VALUE OF UNKNOWN? 2. WHAT Is SHAPE OF PEBBLECURVE OF OBSERVED QUANTITY? 3. WHAT HAVE# 1 AND #2 TO Do WITH ONE ANOTHER? Placard 2 31 �The College again, in a new way. So we'll begin again too. We have no Method of Least Squares; we are again facing question I. Let me think about this problem from the point of view of likelihood, and see if I can find a logical approach to it. Given my data, what I would like to find is the most likely value of X. What does that mean? Well, if I considered two possible values of X equally likely before i had the data, I will consider one of them more likely than the other afterwards if the data I did get are more likely to have been obtained if the first value was the true one than if the second one was. Let me illustrate this in the case of direct observations of X. DIRJ<:CJ'0BSERVATIONS OF X Tl-n•: DATA 64, 63, 66, 63 MAKI·: X = 64 MORF. LIK~:LY THAN X = 60 JJJ1lUiNJl 57 58 59 60 61 AXIOM: X = 62 63 64 65 66 67 Ml<:AN Is MosT LIKELY Placard 5 Before observing, I considered 60 and 64 equally likely to be the true value of X. I observed 64, 63, 66, 63. Here is where the pebbles fell. Now if the pebble-curves for the two values 60 and 64 look like this, I can see that pebbles would be much more likely to fall where they did if X was 64 than if X was 60. So I consider 64 a more likely value for X than 60. And by this kind of reasoning I can make sense of the most likely value for X. This approach can be extended to the case of indirect observations~where I can only see Y and Z; so I would seem to have a logical principle for choosing X: just take the most likely value. But there is a hitch: this method depends on the shape of the pebble-curve. If I don't know that shape, I can't compare the likelihoods of different values of X to find the most likely. And I don't know it. What to do? Gauss said: In the case of direct observations of X I already have an accepted rule: use the mean. Suppose I assume that that rule in fact gives me the most likely value. That is, I take as an axiom that the mean of several direct observations is the most likely value for the unknown. Does this help? Does it help to assume that I know how to handle this special case? Yes! The astonishing thing is that if I alter the working rule of the mean to that axiom, there is only one shape the pebble-curve-can have! (I could write down a formula for it.) With this shape determined, I can pursue my approach of finding the most likely value of X; and that turns out to be precisely the value given by the Method of Least Squares! That method is thereby re-established, this time as the method which chooses the most likely value of X. And questions 2 and 3 are answered. But what about that new axiom of the mean? What Gauss did was to take the working rule of the mean-"Take the 32 mean and you will get the best value, whatever that means"-alter it to a specific prediction-"Take the mean and you will get the most likely value" -and then elevate it to an axiom, from which the Method of Least Squares could be deduced. But the axiom is stronger than it looks: its acceptance entails the acceptance of a precise shape for the pebble-curve. If that shape is in fact slightly different, the axiom fails, and can no longer provide a foundation for the Method of Least Squares. Now experiment does show that the shape predicted by the axiom is approximately correct for all kinds of observations, and the discovery of its precise description was an achievement of the first order. Nevertheless, Gauss was ag.lin not satisfied. So we face question 1 again. l. HOW COMBINE RESULTS OF OBSERVATIONS TO GET BEST VALUE OF UNKNOWN? 2. WHAT Is SHAPE OF PEBBLECURVE OF OBSERVED QUANTITY? 3. WHAT HAVE#! AND#2 To Do WITH ONE ANOTHER? Placard 2 Almost a quarter-century later Gauss adopted a different approach, perhaps closer in spirit to his original naive one. He thought of the act of determining a quantity by taking observations as the playing of a game-gambling-a game in which there are only losses to be had, no winnings. The game goes like this. I observe Y and Z several times, and then I say, "I think X is ... this!" In so saying, I probably miss the true value by a little. I count the miss as giving me some loss, and I ask: What is my best strategy for choosing X, the one which makes this loss smallest on the average? I have a new principle for choosing X: I seek to do well in the game of estimation. Now to choose my strategy, I need first to decide how much loss a given error represents to me. Should I consider that the losses increase as the errors-that an error twice as big as another means a loss twice as big? Gauss admitted that the choice is somewhat arbitrary-under what rule do you play? -but chose the square of the error as the measure of loss, thus: THE ESTIMATION GAME X Is REALLY 64 = 65, I " , , X = 66~ , , , , X = 67, , IFI SAYX Placard 6 LosE$! , , $4 $9 �July, 1978 If you agree that large errors are much less frequent, and more serious, than small ones, this is not unreasonable; and besides, said Gauss, it is mathematically simple. With this version of the game, Gauss proved a remarkable theorem, namely that there is a best strategy, and it is-the Method of Least Squares! no matter what the shape of the pebble-curve is. This is remarkable because it says that no matter how the errors occur-no matter how the pebbles go into the box-the same computational method gives the best value of X. The Method of Least Squares is established once more, no longer as the method which gives the most likely value of X-it does that only for one shape of the pebblecurve-but as the method giving the most prudent play in the game of estimation. Let me recapitulate. We can regard these successive developments as giving choices of the proper meaning of "best value" in the problem of choosing the best value of the unknown X. OLD RULE: 1795 RULE: 1797 DEF: AXIOM: THM: 1821 DEF: AXIOM THM: BEST VALUE Is Mean by MLS BEST VALUE Is Most Likely BEST VALUE Given MEAN IS SUCI-l 1. SHAPE OF P-C KNOWN 2. MLS GIVES BEST VALUE BEST VALUE Minimizes Loss LOSS GOES AS SQ. OF ERROR MLS GIVES BEST VAL. FOR ANY P-C Placard 7 The old rule was: If X is observed directly, the best value is the mean of the observed values. In I 795, Gauss proposed a new rule: The best value of X is that given by the Method of Least Squares, in which the sum of the squares of the errors is minimized. In 1797, he offered this definition: The best value of X is the most likely one-the one which makes the data most likely to have occurred. To use the definition he needed an axiom: In the case of direct observations, the mean gives the best value in the sense of the definition. From the axiom he could prove a theorem, or rather two theorems: The shape of the pebble-curve is known; and because of its shape, the Method of Least Squares gives the best value of X. Finally, in 1821 he employed a new definition: The best value of X is that which results from the strategy which minimizes loss in the game of estimation. Again, he required an axiom: Loss in the game goes as the square of the error (a doubled error means a quadrupled loss). And he proved a theorem: The Method of Least Squares gives the best value of X, regardless of the shape of the pebble-curve. Now what of this long study? What kind of achievement does it represent? First, Gauss was right. The Method of Least Squares and Gauss's curve have dominated the theory of observation and its applications in all areas of science since his time. It is really difficult to exaggerate their practical importance. Only recently has there been significant departure from these ideas. One can still say that the world of chance phenomena is to be seen essentially as Gauss saw it. Thus, Gauss's mathematics was good: it applied where he meant it to. But how did he come to be right? Did he proceed deductively, as mathematicians are sometimes said to do? No; there was nothing from which to deduce his method. Yet the Method of Least Squares is a theorem-at least, Gauss felt it to be one. So the theorem came first~ not itself a first principle, nor an established fact from which one could induce with all certainty. Rather, it was a perceived truth, perceived with confidence if not certainty. Perhaps the ability to discover, or to recognize, such truths is the essence of the mathematical intellect. Proofs often come later; so do axioms. We are privileged to see here the search for foundations which did come after. Axioms are called up by the theorem-and, of course, are bound by it. Now sometimes such a search may appear to be nothing but a clearing up -of details. For example, the great work of the nineteenth century on the foundations of calculus may appear that way-as mere necessary criticism. But in the present case we see the probing of a mystery which is open to everyone's attention. The seemingly "logical" approach of choosing the most likely value of X did not come first. When it came, it needed an axiom to support it; and that axiom was felt to be too restrictive, and so was replaced by another, representing another point of view. A very interesting development! And of course the appropriateness of the axiom we are left with is open to dispute. And the search for foundations was undertaken in the full knowledge that this might be so. Gauss may be considered the founder of the modern axiomatic method, in which axioms take their place as tools of discovery rather than unalterable truths. We observe the world-insofar as observation is a matter of precise measurement-only through a chaos. Faced with this apparent chaos, the chaos of observations, Gauss showed us where to see what we look at, and discovered a fundamental shape hidden in the world. He penetrated to the connections between his intuitions of error, likelihood, and the game of estimation, on the one hand, and the order waiting to be perceived, on the other. The foundations he provided arc as firm as his sight was clear. They were not the last word; there is no last word in these matters. But in looking over the sequence of his thought we see that one might say that order was first brought out of chaos by fi-at-as we are also told elsewhere. Thank you. 33 �The College St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Non-profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 66 Lutherville, Md. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollegemagazine Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 33 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of College Relations Title A name given to the resource The College, July 1978 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978-07 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource von Oppen, Beate Ruhm Parran, Jr., Thomas Dunham, William B. Oosterhout, Barbara Brunner Wyatt, E. Malcolm Zuckerman, Elliott Description An account of the resource Volume XXX, Number 1 of The College. Published in July 1978. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0010-0862 The_College_Vol_30_No_1_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 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/88c372f25073028fb8b6a84690a5bcc0.pdf 8cfa3f89d0300a1aec8fab03ef4b7bb4 PDF Text Text THE COLLEGE ISSN 0010-0862 St. John's College • Annapolis, Maryland- Santa Fe, New Mexico January 1979 �THE COLLEGE Volume XXX Number 2 January, 1979 Editor: Leo Raditsa THE COLLEGE is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404; Richard D. Weigle, President, Edward G. Sparrow, Dean. Published Managing Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr. Consulting Editors: Eva Brann, Beate Ruhm von Oppen. twice yearly, usually in January and July. IN THIS ISSUE: Three lectures by Jacob Klein: The Art of Questioning and the Liberal Arts The Copernican Revolution ....................................... . 6 On a Sixteenth Century Algebraist ................................... 17 Texts from the Memorial Service for Jacob Klein ................................................... 20 An Unspoken Prologue to a Public Lecture at St. John's, by Leo Strauss ................................................... 30 About Jacob Klein's Books About Plato, A Commentary on Plato's Meno and Plato's Trilogy, by William O'Grady ........................ 32 1 should like to thank Douglas Barton for reading proof and for helping put together the lecture on "The Copernican Revolution."-L.R. Cover and end photographs by Charles Post '74. �The Art of Questioning and The Liberal Arts by Jacob Klein 1. I propose to talk about what questioning means, what it entails, what it presupposes. Let me state from the outset that I could have said as well that I propose to talk about thinking. For thinking and questioning are inseparable. To raise a question means to be engaged in thinking. And to keep on thinking means to try to find answers to questions. If we ever reach a state of knowledge, we are in possession of the right answer to a question or a series of questions. And if there is such a thing as an assimilation of a body of knowledge without previous questioning-something we are al1 familiar with from our early school days-this thing has very little to do with learning and even less with thinking. 2. It is necessary, I think, to distinguish different kinds of questions, better perhaps, different kinds of questioning attitudes. I have to give you a number of examples to characterize the various kinds of questions. ® I may need a pencil. I may ask anyone of you: do you have a pencil? or: can you give me a pencil? A question of this kind is raised with a view to an action. I am, strictly speaking, not interested in knowing whether you have a pencil at hand or not. All I am interested in is to have a pencil in my own hand which I could use to write something down. Or I may wonder whether it will rain today, the question itself being whether I should A lecture given at St. John's College, Annapolis, Md., on Oct. 5, 1956 Brackets [ ] indicate a word inserted by the editors. have an umbrella or a raincoat or whatever else could protect me from the rain or whether I should not do so, because I have to go somewhere for a definite purpose. Here again, I am only interested in something that I have to do: my interest concerns an action and the means I have to use to carry it out. Questions of this kind are, as we say, practical questions. And most of our questions are of this kind. ® Another kind of questions is of a very different nature. I meet an old acquaintance whom I have not seen and have not heard of for many years. I inquire: what have you done all these years? How many children do you have now? Or: what are you doing now? How is your wife? I may or may not be genuinely interested to know the answers. If I am not genuinely interested, these questions can be called polite questions. If I am, they may be characterized as affectionate questions. In the first case, they are not really questions, but rather manifestations of my desire to show some interest which I actually do not have. In the second case, the questions, although genuine, reflect not so much an interest in the answers as in the person to whom they are put. I may mention in this connection another kind of questions which are really not questions at all, the so-called rhetorical questions, that is, questions which anticipate the answer as an obvious one: for example, And who voted against this bill in Congress? it being understood that the obvious answer is: the Democrats, or the Republicans, depending on the audience to which the question is put. ® and ® have this in common, that the answer is in itself not important to the questioner. But then again there are �The College questions of a very different kind. © You might hear somebody ask: what did Mr. X say to Mr. Y? Or: what kind of dress did Mrs. Z wear last Wednesday? The questioner may indeed be genuinely interested in the answer, and yet it is clear that the answer merely satisfies a desire of the questioner to add some fuel to his malice or to his grudge or to his vanity or to his envy. The answer may also satisfy something in him that may be called "idle curiosity". He may traverse a street and suddenly notice that some house has been altered in some peculiar way, which observation may lead him to wonder: How come that Mr. Z, the owner of the house, decided to do that? It is of no importance to the questioner one way or another, and yet he is interested in knowing. All such questions can be characterized as gossipy questions. But it is worth while to stop here for a moment and to reflect upon the nature of "idle curiosity", a curiosity, that is, not guided by malice or similar feelings or passions. All gossip has an element of curiosity in it, of wonderment, and that means some quest, however infinitesimal, however distorted, for knowl- edge. lf we use the metaphor "body of knowledge", we may perhaps say, paraphrasing Winston Churchill, that gossip constitutes the underbelly of knowledge. And it may even reach far nobler parts of this body if it is channeled in a certain direction. One may say that gossip is the small tribute that our passionate and appetitive life pays-in very, very small coins-to intellectual life. ® And this brings me to still another kind of questions. We might wonder: what is beyond that formidable mountain range? We question other people, who might know, about what is over there, what sort of vegetation, what animals, who the inhabitants are, what they do. We raise these questions because we are curious to know and for no other reason. Odysseus in his journeys constantly displays this kind of horizon of our daily lives, which includes the familiar and the surprising, routine and novelty, that which has precedents and that which has not. The usual and the unusual are labels put on things and events within the frame of our common experience. The unexpected is still within the frame of the expected. And it is this frame of the fundamentally familiar that actually allows [us] to formulate our questions. That is: they can be put in words. We are guided in our questioning by language itself, which is oriented towards the world around us, as we know it, including those parts or elements or factors that in some way remain hidden to us. There are usually some dark corners behind or in back of pieces of furniture in a room full of light. The world is full of such dark corners. Questions of the kind I mentioned before are like flashlights the beam of which we direct towards these dark corners. This beam is our language. And it is not too difficult to see that the articulations of language correspond to the various ways of questioning which we address to ourselves and to others as beings having a primordial although not always habitable home, namely the world. For being in a world is the most elementary and the most crucial character of our existence. Aristotle was if not the first then perhaps the most careful to analyze the articulation of language and thereby to indicate the various modes of our being in a world. He looks at the various ways in which we speak about things, in which we say something about something, and calls these various ways "categories" (Ka'rljyopim). (The word means colloquially accusation, accusation in a court, in a public assembly. For example, this man stole my horse. More generally [and cer- tainly in Aristotle] it means the way in which we say [not casually, but seriously, willing to defend what we say] something about something, in which we predicate something of something.) And in each case the mode of our speaking, pre- curiosity, which we may caB idle, but which seems to deserve dicating, is an answer to a question. The categories are in fact a better name. In a trial, where crucial facts have to be estab- the various kinds of questions that can be asked to which cor- lished, in our travels, where we meet with unfamiliar customs, we ask questions in order to win certainty about things, situations, people and their characters and so forth. Such responding kinds of answers can be given. First of all, we ask: what is this, or what is an electronic computer, or what is the questions could be properly called exploratory questions. And what size is this room? We also ask: how is this car-gray, in raising such questions we want to know, either in order to powerful? How is this man-kind, violent, lazy? We also ask: what is the relation of this to that, of this man to that man? of this tree to that telephone pole? We also ask: where is he? and also: when will he be here? or when did this happen? We ask: base a judgment on the knowledge obtained or just simply in order to know. It must be granted that it is not always easy to draw the line between "idle curiosity" and a nobler sort of curiosity. North Pole? We also ask: how many people are present? Or: in what state or condition is he-awake, sleeping, resting, 3. However different these kinds of questions, they have breathing? We ask: what does he or it do (or did do or will do something in common. They are all confined within the or might do)? He cuts wood; or she was preparing a meal; or 2 �January, 1979 the hurricane might smash this tree. We ask: what did he suffer: he was beaten by Mr. Smith, he was told to go to a Giorgionc, Frieze with Attributes of the Liberal and Mechanical Arts, Castelfranco, Veneto, about 1500. movie. In each case we can easily discern that the question (as weB as the answer) requires a kind of word or word form, to which a specific grammatical form can be attached. To the question what? corresponds a noun. To the question how many? a numeral. To the question how? an adjective. To the question what relation? a genitive or dative or a preposition. To the question in what state? an intransitive verb or a participle. To the questions where? and when? adverbs; to the question: what did it do? and so forth, a transitive verb in the active voice and the indicative, subjunctive or optative mood; to the question what did it suffer? the passive voice. And beyond that questions and corresponding answers require the building together or separating of words, that is, conjunctions. All our speaking and conversing with each other, making statements, declaring, proclaiming, lecturing, is a web of questions and answers, even if the questions can sometimes [be] the answers, be tacit or inexplicit. And it is important to note-in our context-that the very possibility of our questioning depends on the grammatical structure of our language and correspondingly the grammatical structure of the world around us. Does this mean that we could not raise questions unless we knew some grammar? Or are we in the position of one of the characters in a Moliere play who, not having heard of the term "prose" before, is surprised to learn that he has actually always been speaking in prose. I think we are. Our speech, and that means our questioning and that means our thinking, is grammatically structured even if we never studied grammar. That is, it can be, and so often is, faulty and artless. The art and science of grammar has its origin in our becoming aware of the pitfalls in our speech. This becoming aware means that we begin to reflect on what goes on when we speak. And I shall have to say more about this reflecting a little later on. The discovery of rules and canons and patterns in our speech converts or at least may convert our questioning from an artless one into an artful one. To give you perhaps the most impressive and most significant example of this, let me tell you or remind you that the first and foremost question of Socrates is: what is this or that (justice, virtue, courage, but also tragedy, comedy, and also star, man, dog, stone): Ti €ern ... and some of you have seen and some of you will see how far such a question leads. But the discovery of rules and canons and patterns in our speech leads also to the establishment of the art of grammar itself which, pursued for its own sake, becomes the liberal art of Grammar. And most important, with this discovery the horizon of our daily lives recedes: a new domain, a new dimension of our lives comes to the fore. And with it a new }jossibility, a new kind of questioning, quite distinct from the one I mentioned before. But before I enlarge upon this point let us look at another aspect of the phenomenon of questioning. 4. I am permitted at this point to ask the question, What is a question? Let me try to answer: it is a state of mind in which I want to know what I do not know. But then what is the condition of my knowing or my thinking (rightly or mistakenly) that I know? I shall try to answer: it is my abilitY to locate that which I do not know within a greater whole that I do know or, note please, do not know. I come to a city for the first time. There are houses and streets and bridges in a confusing array. I feel lost. I want to know where I am, where the street corner I happen to find myself is. I look at a map. After some searching I establish where I am in relation to the whole city on the map. I have found an answer to my question. I do not know the city, and yet I have now some tiny bit of knowledge concerning that street corner I am on. Taking my clue from this example, I can say: A question is not merely a state of mind in which I want to know what I do not know, but it is one in which I also anticipate that there is a greater whole, in which that which I want to know is located or of which it is a part. In my questioning then, I am always anticipating a greater whole, which ultimately means that the simplest question supposes a hierarchy of wholes @lJ That's why any classification is an answer to a question or a series of questions. And that's why all thinking always implies a connecting of particulars to universals. And that in turn means that our questioning depends on logical relationships which are always relationships between particulars and universals. Does this mean that we cannot raise questions unless we know some logic (Mr. Jourdain in Moliere again)? No, the logical relationships are within our thinking, whether we are aware of it or not. But being aware of it may actually help us to avoid mistakes. Here again the reflection on what goes on in our reasonable speaking as far as the discovery of rules, canons, and patterns in the relationship of particulars and universals that guide our inferences leads to the establishment of the art and science of Logic. And the art and science of logic, pursued for its own sake, that is, liberally, makes it 3 �The College possible for us to transcend the horizon within which we live. We have yet to consider another aspect of the phenomenon of questioning.* 5. I have said three times that some reflection on what we are doing in speaking, thinking and questioning must precede tioning ultimately depends of these primordial scier.ces and not the other way around. Even our gossiping may ultimately the establishment of the liberal arts of Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric (Trivium). Now I have to take up this theme of reflection, to reflect upon it. In all the kinds of questioning I put on the board, we stay within the confines of our daily horizon. But it is within our capacity as questioning beings to adopt a questioning attitude of a totally different kind. possibility of a total conversion.) I said before that within the confines of our horizon, there is the expected as well as the unexpected, the old and the new, the known and the unknown, the familiar and the unfamiliar. We do, however, experience a kind of question which, as it were, tends to smash those bounds which limit us. We do occasionally, and I trust you know what I am speaking about, stop altogether and face the familiar as if for the first time. Anything: a person, a street, the sky, a fly. The overwhelming impression on such occasions is the strangeness of the thing we contemplate. This state of mind requires detachment, and I am not at all certain whether we can con- trive its presence. We suddenly do not feel at home in this world of ours. We take a deep look at things, at people, at words, with eyes blind to the familiar. We reflect. Plato has a word for it: J-tETaa7po<pij or 7TEpuxywyij, a turnabout, a conversion. We detach ourselves frOm all that is familiar to us, we change the direction of our inquiry, we do not "explore the unknown" anymore. On the contrary, we convert the known into the unknown. We wonder. And we burst out with that inexorable question: why is that so? This "why" seems to have its roots in those other worldly questions. Obviously, I can ask, why did it rain yesterday and does not rain today? Why did Mr. X say this or that to Mr. Y? And this "why" I am talking about now is itself of a different kind. It seems not to assign causes to the existence of things or to events, but rather to find reasons for the being of things as they are, among other things for our language and questioning being guided by rules of Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric. It seems (again in the phrase of Plato) to account for what is the way it is-!..6yov lhll6vat. And that's how the arts and sciences of the Trivium become established. We may begin to understand that our simple and common-day ques- rest on the transcendent power of this "why". (Even the children's "why", repeated endlessly, to the disgust of their mothers and fathers, may ultimately derive from the human Can I give other examples of answers to this kind of why? (Other, I mean, than the arts of the Trivium.) I think I can. I shall try to indicate three of such possible answers. (A) I gave you the example of the man who wants to find out where he is in a city that is totally unfamiliar to him. He has recourse to a map. Please reflect [on] what sort of thing a map is (or a blueprint). There is nothing on a map of a city remotely resembling the city it is supposed to represent. In fact, the detachment needed to conceive that a multitude of lines on a piece of paper represents a city requires an immense intellectual effort on our part, an effort of detachment from the familiar, which is difficult to understand, very difficult indeed, once you try to look at a map with unfamiliar eyes. A map is one possible result of detaching ourselves from the usual and the familiar. Note please that the detachment which is at the base of the conception of a map is not to be confused with the fact that maps are familiar things for most of us. Imagine now that we try to answer the question: why are things, all things, the way they are, by giving a map of the world. I do not mean of course an astronomical map including all galaxies. I mean to project in a certain order, according to certain rules, all that we are more or less familiar with, living and inanimate things, vices and virtues, passions and sciences, monsters and trivia, onto something resembling a geographical map. It would contain all relationships (not spa- tial ones) that bind everything together and separate some from some. Such a map is something called a philosophical system-and sometimes a poem and sometimes a novel. (And if it is not such a map we might as well disregard it.) (B) We have seen before that even the simplest question presupposes a hierarchy of wholes. We may justly wonder at that. How can there be many wholes? We may reach in the state of /LETaurpo<p1) the idea of the one whole, not lacking anything, which we may variously call The One, or God, or the Idea of the Good, as Plato did. (C) In answering the question how many and what size, we can reflect on the strangeness of this question itself and what it presupposes. We may (just as in the case of the Trivium) raise the question about the intrinsic possibility of these ques'" A section on Rhetoric is missing from the manuscript at this point. 4 tions: how many and what size. We would reflect about the �January, 1979 nature of numbers and of spatial arrangements. And we include the contemplation of motion in relation to numbers and spatial arrangements. We should establish the liberal mathematical arts, which would give us an ultimate account of why things are as they are. Such procedure is the way of science (Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, Astronomy-today, mathematical physics). To preserve the detachment in all these three cases is not at all easy. Not in the sense that it is perhaps difficult to remain for any length of time on the top of the Himalayas, in the profound pit of a coal mine. The reason seems to be the ambiguity of the why? It is one thing to pursue the exploring within the confines of our horizons, another to detach oneself from them. And yet the confusion necessarily arises. In all these cases we begin to interpret the ultimate answer in terms of our worldly experience. We tend to understand a philosophical system, a poem or a novel as a mere extension of our horizon. We say it enriches our lives. If it does, we run the risk of misunderstanding it. We tend to reduce the One, or God, or the Idea of the Good to the level of our gossipy curiosity. We tend to interpret our scientific insights as a re-statement of our daily experiences, [a] confusion of exploration with this different "why?"~-not only [a] confusion, but [one which is] essential to science. I can't help ending all this by inviting you to look at this strange word: responsibility. It obviously implies response, that is, answer. Answer to what question? I think it is the answer and the proper reaction to the nature of questioning itself. For who or what is it that does the questioning? Man? But Man facing himself and the world. His very existence raises these questions. They may be of very different kinds, as we hope we have seen. Responsibility seems to me to demand from us an effort not to confuse the nature of the questions. We have to answer on all levels. Not to confuse these levels seems to be the life of a responsible man. 5 �The College The Copernican Revolution by Jacob Klein This is an historical lecture. And that means that it will hardly be convincing and the best it can do is to raise in you some questions and to make you try to answer these questions and perhaps to read some books. And in this sense, it may be useful; otherwise, it is not. 1 Copernicus' book, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres appeared in 1543. That was the year he died. He had no way of supervising the publishing. When the book first appeared, and even in later editions, the text was fu11 of misprints. Hardly a number is correct. Now the main significance of the book is, as you know, that it tells that the earth, our earth, is one of the planets moving around the sun and, in addition, rotates daily on its own axis. Furthermore, as you all know, I am sure, there is a third motion, and we'll talk about that a little later. This theory, let me use this modern word, this theory was in itself nothing new, and Copernicus insisted on its not being new. A number of people in antiquity and later on, especially in the 14th and 15th centuries, had envisioned the possibility of a daily rotation of the earth, in antiquity Heracleides of Pontus, in the 14th century Nicolaus Orcsmus and in the 15th century Nicolaus of Cusa. But, above all, Aristarchus ofSamos, around 275 B.C., had a heliocentric system. We know that from Archimedes. Also there were more or less legendary Pythagoreans who thought of the revolution of the earth in an orbit around the center of the universe. And all the consequences or, rather, the necessary assumptions connected with this theory were certainly known in antiquity. The Copernican astronomical theory is in itself no revolution. It gained its revolutionary character through the interpretation it was subject to and through the immediate, far-reaching conclusions drawn from it and, I hasten to add, latent in it. By the way, you know the title of l. For many years Jacob Klein gave a yearly talk on Copernicus. He spoke from notes without a written text. The following text is pieced together from transcriptions and tapes of three of these talks. I have made minor changes throughout and bracketed them only in instances where they were important enough to need notice. In several instances I have omitted sentences, for the most part, asides to the audience. Winfree Smith edited the first section (until the asterisks). For the sake of clarity he slightly expanded the sections accompanying the three diagrams. I should like to thank him for his help and the instruction that necessarily came with it, given as always unstintingly. L.R. 6 the book is On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres, and our word "revolution" [as used in reference to certain historical events] is indirectly related to this title. Now the Ptolemaic theory and all classical ancient theories, like those of Eudoxus and Hipparchus, are based on a mathematical-physical postulate, which can be formulated as follows: all motions of celestial bodies must be deducible from, or reducible to, regular, that is, uniform motions on circles. You probab,ly know that in the 17th century a law was formulated by Newton and others, which is called the law of inertia. You know about it, I think, because you heard about it in school. This law of inertia says that a body, if nothing troubles it, continues in its motion uniformly in a straight line. When I was about 16 or 17, I thought that was perfectly self-evident. Well, it is far from being self-evident. It is not even true. One of the great difficulties in this law is the notion of a straight line. You will all remember the fourth definition of the first book of Euclid where the straight line is defined and that the definition is not quite clear. Now the postulate I just enunciated, that the motion of celestial bodies must be deducible from or reducible to uniform motions in circles, can be called the classical law of inertia. That's how bodies behave. That's what this postulate says. It is implied in this postulate that the motion in the circle is uniform about the center of the circle. The tradition attributes this postulate, and the attribution may or may not be true, to Plato. A late commentator on Aristotle, Simplicius, quotes other commentators such as Sosigenes and Eudemus to the effect that Plato posed a certain problem out of which classical astronomy arose: What are the uniform and orderly movements, the assumption of which permits to save the appearances in the movements of the planets? The phrase "save the appearances" seems very simple. It isn't so very simple. To be cautious, it is pretty certain that Simplicius understood that in an Aristotelian way. That means that, given a certain phenomenon that is not quite understandable, you have to make certain assumptions so that from these assumptions you can make the phenomenon un- �January, 1979 derstandable, intelligible, rational. By doing that you save the phenomenon as phenomenon. That is, if a certain planet makes strange motions in the heavens which are observed as strange and you don't quite understand what they mean, then if you introduce certain assumptions or, as the classical term is, certain hypotheses, then these hypotheses will make you understand what goes on in the motion of the body and will save the appearances. It is not certain that Plato ever formulated this problem the way it is reported, i.e., whether he meant it the way Simplicius and the entire tradition, and certainly Ptolemy, meant it. So what we have is that the fundamental hypotheses are necessary. These are made in Ptolemy. They include, for instance, circles called deferent circles because the centers of other circles called epicycles are traveling on them, the motions of planets on the epicycles and of the epicycles' centers on the deferents being uniform. Furthermore, I am sure you remember, Ptolemy proves the total equivalence of the epicyclic and eccentric hypotheses, the eccentric hypothesis being that something moves on a circle the center of which is not the earth's center. Now this is one way in which Ptolemy deviates from the fundamental postulate. He assumes the equant. You all remember the equant, right? He assumes that a body can move on a circle while its motion is uniform about a point that is not the center of the circle. That is not what the classical postulate demands. Ptolemy is quite aware of all the difficulties his view presents. He apologizes for them. In Book IX of the Almagest, Chapter 2, he says: We are compelled by the very subject we are dealing with to use devices that go against reason, as for instance, when for the sake of convenience we carry out demonstrations on simple circles described by the movement of the planets in their spheres and supposed to lie in the plane of the ecliptic. We are also compelled to lay down some fundamental hypotheses, starting not directly from an appearance, but conceiving them after a continuous series of trial and adjustment. (This seems to refer to finding the center of the equant.) We are, moreover, compelled to assume for all the planets not one and the same kind of motion and, as to their circles, not one and the same kind of inclinations. We agree to do all that because we know that the use of those devices does not lead to any· appreciable difference in the results and, consequently, does not impair in any way the solution of our problems; and also because we know that the hypotheses arrived at in a way that cannot be strictly demonstrated, once they are found to agree with the appearances, could not have been arrived at without some methodical thinking, though it is hard to describe how they are got hold of, which is not surprising since universally the fundamental principles have either no cause at all or one that by its nature can hardly be grasped; and also because we know that as far as the hypotheses of circular motion are concerned their diversity cannot be considered strange or unreasonable, since the appearances of the planets themselves are found to be different for every planet; provided that we save in qualifying in all cases the regular motion in circles and give a demonstrative account of each of the appearances according to a higher and more universal similitude in all the hypotheses. Now let's turn to Copernicus and remind ourselves of what Copernicus does. First of all, Copernicus is much more Ptolemaic than Ptolemy. That happens very often in the history of human thought. He rejects the equant. There can be no equant. Then, in addition to the rotation of the earth and its revolution about the sun, he assigns to the earth a third motion. For he supposes that without this third motion the SUN • Figure 1 axis of the earth would not during a single revolution about the sun point to the same place in the sky, whereas in fact it always points to a place very near the "pole" star. The picture we would get would be like this (Figure 1). Why does Copernicus suppose that? Because he still thinks of a moving epicycle. He thinks of the equator of the earth as an epicycle with aphelion F and perihelion G. So he has to introduce a third motion; namely, such a motion of the axis that in a wonderful way describes a double cone in a little less time than it takes for the earth to complete its revolution about the sun in relation to the fixed stars. 2 Just by making the time a little less, Copernicus accounts for the great phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes. Now let us compare the way Copernicus explains the motion of an outer planet, for example, Mars with Ptolemy's explanation. Figure 2 exhibits this very well. What this figure shows is the superimposition of the Copernican view on the Ptolemaic view. For Ptolemy the earth is at E. The center of the deferent is D and the center of the equant is Q. Then 2. For the double cone see figure XXV in Ptolemy and Copernicus, Theory of the Planets (St. John's Press). 7 �The College Figure 2 there is an epicycle with center Mt that moves around the deferent. This Ptolemaic figure takes care of both the socalled heliacal anomaly and the zodiacal anomaly. But there is that villain, the center of the equant, the point Q. It is only in reference to Q that the motion of Mr on the deferent is regular. Now, if we take Copernicus' view, then, first of all, we replace the earth at E with S, the sun; and the earth moves, right?, the earth moves. It moves in the circle Er E2 Sr S2. In the Ptolemaic diagram Mr, the center of the epicycle, is the mean planet, while the planet itself is moving on the epicycle. Now Copernicus chooses as center for his deferent circle not D, and certainly not Q, but a point halfway between Q and D. That's point C. This is the center of Copernicus' deferent, which is a deferent because it bears an epicycle, the little circle with center A in the figure. This little circle is much smaller than it appears in the figure-this diagram doesn't reproduce the relative sizes of things but is really only the pattern in which the circles and their motions may be conceived. On this little epicycle the planet really moves. Now Copernicus might have substituted the planet for the Ptolemaic mean planet, the center of the Ptolemaic epicycle. Then he would have had a single circle for the planet's motion with center 0, and if we take the positions E, Pr, and Mr as Ptolemaic starting positions for earth, planet, and mean planet and S, Et, and Mt as Copernican starting positions for sun, earth, and planet, then with the Ptolemaic planet and mean planet, after a certain time, at P2 and M2 and W as the angle of observed motion we would have the Copernican earth and planet at E2 and M2 and W* as the angle of observed motion. It is easily proved, as you must have done, that W* = W. But then the planet would have its · motion uniform about the equant point Q, a thing intolerable 8 for Copernicus. Copernicus, therefore, introduces the little epicycle with center at A. Now, once more we assume the same Ptolemaic and Copernican starting positions. Only we suppose that Copernicus' position for the planet is on the litttle epicycle on which the planet is moving in a clockwise direction and with the same uniform angular velocity about A with which the center of that epicycle is moving on its deferent circle about the center C. Now, as you remember, the planet will not describe the circle which the mean planet describes in Ptolemy. For instance, the point I on the left does not coincide with the point Mz. Moreover, the diagram here has two angles, W* and W'. W', which equals W, is the angle of vision, or observed motion, in Ptolemy and W' is the angle of vision in Copernicus. These two are not quite the same, so that, if Ptolemy's angle agrees with the observations, Copernicus' does not. But the difference between the angles is very, very small, much smaller than the diagram shows, so small that it couldn't really be drawn in a diagram [or detected with any instruments that Ptolemy or Copernicus had]. Now, therefore, the planet does not describe, strictly speaking, a circle, but something which is very close to a circle, very close. [The dotted curve FGL in the diagram on page 742 of On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres.] And there is an eccentric deferent circle and an epicycle. Everything is totally Ptolemaic. Now I have to say two things here. This diagram presupposes something very important which you all know; namely, it presupposes that the sphere of the fixed stars is at an immense distance from the system of the planets. Let's say that the earth is at Er in Copernicus and we on the earth look at the sky at a certain hour of night, perhaps in the direction of Et F. We see certain stars. Then the earth moves, let us say to the position E2. So it changes position. We again look at the sky and locate one of the stars we saw before. It is exactly where it was before in relation to the other stars. No parallax. Why? Why? Let's formulate it this way. The stars are so far away, so terribly far away, that it doesn't make any difference where our earth on this ridiculous little orbit is. No matter where Ez is, the distance between E2X andErF, though it may be millions of miles, is as nothing compared with how far away the stars are. That's one thing. The second thing has to do with Ptolemy's observations. You know that Ptolemy possesses the first of many kinds of observations. Certainly he himself made some observations; and these are on the whole very precise. The word "precise" is a very difficult word. By the way, they are very precise. And the margin of error is about ten minutes, ten minutes of arc. 3 Ptolemy and those people whom he quotes could make measurements that were that close and, by the way, they had 3. It used to be thought that this was the Ptolemaic margin of error. But it is now generally agreed among those who have really studied the question that this is not so. Ptolemy must have made some observations with the instruments he describes; but, since it is known that some of what he reports as observations are not genuine observations, it is hard to tell which are genuine and which are not. One, therefore, cannot say anything with certainty in comparing Ptolemy and Copernicus as observers. J. W. S. �January, 1979 very simple instruments. But they had great patience. They could do this good measuring because the sky over the Mediterranean is clear and wonderful. But Copernicus sat somewhere in East Prussia and Poland where the sky is awful. Copernicus never could measure and observe anything well. And all the observations he made are certainly not within the Ptolemaic margin of error. And then Copernicus has the conviction that all observations preserved through the centuries from Hipparchus and Ptolemy on to his days were good. And, therefore, they must all be accounted for. And, therefore, incredible hypotheses must be made. And he accounts for all his observations, be they right or wrong. That doesn't matter. They must be accounted for. In his way Copernicus is an incredibly great artist. Now, the thing is that when finally Copernicus decides that the Ptolemaic account is not right, he publishes this book, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres; by the way, he worked on it for years and years and years, and there were pupils of his that helped him to work and one of the most important ones is a man whose name I am sure you have heard. His Latin name is Rheticus, his real name George Joachim, and before Copernicus published his book Rheticus published a first report (Narratio Prima) on it from which we learn many things. Now, for example, this is what Rheticus says about what Copernicus is doing: My teacher was especially influenced by the realization that the chief cause of all the uncertainty in astronomy was that the masters of this science-no offense is intended to the divine Ptolemy, the father of astronomy-fashioned their theories and devices for correcting the motions of the heavenly bodies with too little regard for the rule which requires that the order and motions of the heavenly spheres agree in an absolute system. 4 There is a book which is called The Hypotheses of the Planets. This book is attributed to Ptolemy. It is probably written by him, though some doubt is allowed. This book is to some extent an attempt to make the world, to see the world, as one body. But, while I am saying that, I must call to your attention that this is not necessarily the intention of this book. One can say only this much, that it tries to give a view of the solid body of heavenly motion; I mean, of the heavenly motion in three dimensions. Whether one can really connect the different planetary motions which are given by Ptolemy, namely, those of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, jupiter, and Saturn, to make one big body with spheres that fit into each other with solid rings or drums where the epicycles are located is a big question. It would certainly be a very difficult undertaking. Now that's what Rheticus criticizes, and he means that in Copernicus it is not this way. In Copernicus we have one work; there is unity and congruity and simplicity. For instance, as Rheticus says, all irregularities in the motion of the earth and, by the way, there are quite a few (some that are truly irregularities and others based on faulty observations), all irregularities are determined by the motion on one tiny little circle. How many of you know this? Please raise your hands. How many know? That all irregularities in the motion of the earth on its orbit are_due to the motion of a certain point on a tiny little circle. I know you know it because Mr. Winfree Smith told me that. Aha, we'll see, we'll see. Look at the diagram (Figure 3). And Copernicus himself says: Former astronomers have not been able to discover or to infer the thing which is chief of all, that is, the form of the world and the certain congruity, or symmetry, of its parts. But they are in exactly the same fix as someone taking from different places hands, feet, or head, and the other limbs, very fine of themselves, but not formed with reference to one body and having no correspondence with one another. So that such parts make up a monster and not a man. 5 That is, he means that if you take together all the statements Ptolemy makes in the Almagest and, by the way, the tradition on which it was made, then. you do not get an orderly world, a cosmos, but some monstrous construction. 4. From the Narratio Prima translated by Edward Rosen in Three Copernican Treatise.~. New York 1939, 138. 5. From Copernicus' Preface to On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres. Figure 3 According to Copernicus, the earth has three regular motions, the daily rotation, the annual revolution, and the motion of the axis that makes the double cone. Of these the third motion is affected by two irregularities which can be thought of as librations of the poles, and the second, the annual revolution, is affected also by two, a change in eccentricity and a motion of the line of apsides, the line that joins aphelion and perihelion. Now look at the diagram (Figure 3). If you understand the earth as moving counterclockwise, eastward, on the circle that has C as center and make G revolve clockwise on a little circle, with center C, that does not enclose the sun, which is at 0, then the eccentricity will change from maximum when C is at E to minimum when G is at F, and 9 �The College so on. This change constitutes, according to Rheticus, the wheel of fortune. Have you never heard of that? Surely you have heard of the wheel of fortune. That is the wheel of fortune. It determines all irregularities, 6 including the motion of the apsides which it produces as the whole wheel with its center C moves regularly with the signs, eastward, 24 seconds annually. Now let me read what Rheticus has to say about the wheel of fortune. I am sure some of you have heard it. But it is good to hear it again. "I shall add a prediction." It is Rheticus who says that. We see that all kingdoms have had their beginnings when the center of the eccentric was at some special point on that small circle. Thus, when the eccentricity of the sun was at its maximum, the Roman government became a monarchy; as the eccentricity decreased Rome too declined, as though aging, and then fell. When the eccentricity reached the boundary and quadrant of mean value, the Mohammedan faith was established; another great empire came into being and increased very rapidly, like the change in the eccentricity. A hundred years hence, when the eccentricity will be at its minimum (by the way, this is written in 1540), this empire, (the Mohammedan empire, the Turks), will complete its period. In our time it is at its pinnacle from which equally swiftly, God willing, it will fall with a mighty crash. (Now it is true that a hundred and forty years later the Turks were chased out of Europe.) We look forward to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ when the center of the eccentric reaches the other boundary of mean value, for it was in that position at the creation of the world. This calculation does not differ much (not much, but somewhat) from the saying of Elijah, who prophesied under divine inspiration that the world would endure only six thousand years, during which time nearly two revolutions are completed. Thus it appears that this small circle is in very truth the Wheel of Fortune, by whose turning the kingdoms of the world have their beginnings and their vicissitudes. For in this manner are the most significant changes in the entire history of the world revealed, as though inscribed upon the circle. 7 6. There is no obvious link between the irregular change in eccentricity and the irregular librations, which are crosswise to one ;mother, of the poles of the earth. Of these lihrations (which, of cOllfse, have to be reduced to regular circular motions) one gives the change irr'the rat~ of the precession of the equinoxes and the other the change in the angle of obliquity of the ecliptic (the angle between the plane of the earth's ·equator and the plane of its orbit around the sun). Copernicus supposes (without giving sufficient reason) that the period for one complete cycle in the change of eccentricity (i.e. one complete motion of point G in circle EGF in figure 3) is 3434 years, the same period that he assigns (without reason) to the change in the obliquity of the ecliptic (Narratio Prima, 121) and which he claims (also without reason) is double the period of the change of rate of precession. That is what is meant by saying that "all irregularities are determined by the motion of one tiny little circle." J.W.S. 7. Narratio Prima, 121-122. 10 Why did I read that to you? I read it to you to show you that what goes on in this book, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, is more than astronomy. It implies certain things which regard the whole world and which concern us men here on our earth. That is how Rheticus understood it from the very beginning. And that's how I think we all should always understand anything that's presented to us as a theory. Now let me continue with the report. The tendency to what is unity and simplicity is especially clear in the fact that the one orbit of the earth, and I will have to repeat it later, replaces five Ptolemaic circles, namely, three epicycles in the outer planets and two deferent circles in the inner planets. And this again is determined ultimately by the little circle, the small circle, the wheel of fortune. ' ' * * ' What now does the Copernican system accomplish, simply and strictly, in terms of a mathematical description of the universe? It does unify the universe by means of the great circle of the orbit of the earth. It does give a greater unity to the whole thing because there are [in Ptolemy's conception] these whirling epicycles with their tremendous radii from which certain inconveniences arise, namely, if you take Venus' epicycle, which is much larger in that it is actually three quarters of the radius of the deferent circle, and jf you notf: Venus at the perigee and Venus at the apogee, then it's clear that Venus ought to appear, I think, something like sixty times larger sometimes than at other times-which it never does. That's the case of the moon, too, but not very important there, because Ptolemy could have changed that also. Then if I were to trace the path of the planet in Ptolemy, I would get an incredibly involved curve. I have a book in which anyone interested can see the path of Mars, for instance, in a period of approximately twenty years. It is a very beautiful curve with incredible loops and so on, but terribly complicated. If you trace the path of the Copernican planet, as you will remember, you will get in each case what he calls almost a circle, a quasi circle, so that although the planet itself does not move in a circle its motion is simply the result of certain circular motions. There is a certain unification and, in virtue of this, a greater simplicity. Let us not forget that this greater simplicity is brought about at the expense of a fantastic complication with incredibly many irregularities. Also the sun, although being the center of the universe, has nothing to do with the whole thing. Each planet has its own center around which it moves and each center is at a different distance from the mean sun. And then the mean sun is at a certain distance from the big sun-and the big sun simply is and shines and does nothing else. The question that is very much in my mind is this: why should anyone have accepted the Copernican hypothesis? And that is a terribly difficult question to answer because the physical arguments advanced by Ptolemy are simply not negligible. Any kind of proof and any kind of evidence for the plausibility of the Copernican system was not available for hundreds of years afterward. Further, certain great and really �January, 1979 important discoveries that were made following the publication of this book and which culminate in the discoveries of Galileo when he first looked at the sky through a telescope at no point could justify the acceptance of Copernican astronomy. Now I must talk about these discoveries because they are essential to what I want to say. First, in the years between 1543, when the book appeared, and 1572, and then later in 1604, there were two incredible appearances in the heavens. Now such things occur often, not daily, but often. (You read about them in newspapers and magazines, although you don't pay too much attention to them.) These are called the appearances of a nova. Now a nova is a new star and that means that at a certain spot in the heavens where there was no star (not even through a telescope) suddenly a star appears-an unbelievable star, brighter than all the others. And it burns brightly for years and then declines and, after a certain time, disappears. This happened especially in 1572 and 1604. Now of course these stars had appeared before, too, and people, since at that time they looked at the sky more carefu11y because there was not so much electric light from cities, being aware of the sky as sometimes we aren't, noticed this. The understanding of these phenomena was that they occurred within our own atmosphere~within, in Ptolemaic or Aristotelian terms, the sublunar sphere. Beyond this nothing could change. For if it could, such an appearance as a bright new star would indicate an incredible change up there in the divine intelligence. That could not be. Now, when these phenomena occurred in the 16th century, Tycho Brahe, one of the greatest observers of all times, began immediately to calculate the possible distance away of these new bodies. He found that they could not be so close to the earth as people imagined, and his observations were impeccable. You know there are certain difficulties the moon presents to all of us, including Ptolemy, since you can never observe it accurately because of the parallax. The position of the moon differs because of the position of the observer on earth. Now if a thing appears within the sublunar sphere, then the parallax would be very bothersome. But Brahe established by extensive travel and observation that these new bodies involved no parallax. Therefore, these bright objects could not be closer than the moon. He wrote a book about that; by the way, quite a few people did. It was a tremendous thing to find that there are changes beyond the moon. The next thing is that a comet appeared. Now these, too, appear very often and these, too, had been understood to belong to the sublunar sphere. And Brahe again, by computations of a very ingenious kind, proved that this comet traversed the outer regions of the world. Moreover, if one observed it carefully, it was clear that it had to traverse other spheres-the spheres of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars, which at that time were supposed rigid, transparent but rigid. Let me mention that there is nothing particularly dumb or archaic about that because, even until 1905, the ether, in which all the electromagnetic motions were supposed to take place, was considered to be a rigid body-mathematically necessarily so. But certainly comets could not pierce this rigidity and, if they did, obviously these spheres could not exist. Therefore, Tycho Brahe did one very important thing, quite apart from Copernicus, in his computations and his observations. Due to his work-mostly the work of observation, by the way-he did away with the notion that celestial bodies move on spheres or by means of spheres, which made it more imperative to find out how they did move. Now Tycho Brahe, as you know, never agreed with Copernicus. On the contrary, he thought Copernicus was dead wrong. Copernicus said that this transition could only take place if the stars are very far away. And Brahe proceeded to compute how far away they must be if they were not to show parallax. By the way, I can't guarantee the figures I writethey are only approximately correct, but the order of magnitude is right. In the ancient view, the distance from the center of the universe, namely, the earth, to the sphere of the fixed stars was approximately 20,000 radii of the earth. Now Brahe computed that, in order for the stars not to show paral1ax in the motion of the earth on its orbit, the stars had to be 60,000,000 earth radii away, that is, 3,000 times farther away as a minimum requirement. Then he argued: look what happens. Here is the sun, according to Copernicus, at the center: Then there are, in _this succession, Mercury, Venus, the earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, and then the stars are very far away. That means that between the region of Saturn and the fixed stars, especially since there is no rigid sphere anymore, there is nothing. Nothing. Could God have done that? Such a waste of space. And, furthermore, which is much, much worse, if the stars are that far away and I can still see them, twinkling at this immense distance, think how big they must be. One must be bigger than the solar system-certainly bigger than the great circle. How can one imagine such a thing? These are the two arguments of Brahe which, by the way, were absolutely reasonable. You, of course, are accustomed to this sort of thing-tremendous galaxies and so on. How do you know, by the way? These things are very difficult to understand and Brahe had a perfect right to put this difficulty before everyone. I suspect that Copernicus had asked himself the same question because, obviously, he was as intelligent as Brahe. I suspect that this has something to do with that strange and immensely interesting little remark which he makes in the first chapter of the first book. He says that it is possible that this world of ours, including the sphere of the fixed stars which are far away, is simply a big hole in an infinite solid universe. He simply envisages this possibility. The best example is Swiss cheese. There might even be more holes. One of the holes is ours and there we sit and enjoy life. Now the question is, by the way, there are many questions: why did Copernicus envisage this possibility? There is one thing about it which might have something to do with Brahe's objection. If there is this big hole extending to the sphere of the fixed stars set in the infinite solidity, then it is not quite impossible that there are 11 �The College many huge, fiery objects at the edge of this solid, which is also perhaps a kind of solid fire. And Brahe's objection was, since there was no solidity anymore beneath and beyond the moon, that there was an incredible expanse that could not be justified. Nevertheless, he said that Copernicus might be right. Within Ptolemy's account of the planetary motions, we could adopt the hypothesis of the moving eccentric circle for the outer planets and the hypothesis of the epicycle for the inner planets. In that case we have the centers of the eccentric circles and the centers of the epicycles all moving with the speed of the mean sun. Then, why not identify those centers with the sun itself? 8 And so Brahe had this simple and wonderful system in which all the planets move around the sun, and the sun and moon move around the earth. Now I maintain that all appearances and phenomena from 1543 for centuries after are completely justified and made intelligible by Brahe's theory. This includes Venus, by the way, which does not appear sixteen times bigger at some times than at others. Even all the things that Galileo saw fit completely into Brahe's pattern. And now I must tell you what Galileo saw. In 1610 when he looked at the sky by means of a teleseope~one of the most exciting moments in the history of man-he saw, first of all, that the moon's surface is like that of the earth. That is strange, although we are very used to it. (One of the craters here is now called Copernicus, but that doesn't mean much.) Secondly, he saw that the light of the stars was conspicuously different from that of the planets; thirdly, that the Milky Way is a conglomeration of stars. He saw the four moons of Jupiter and that Saturn had a strange shape which he called threecornered. Not until a little later did it become clear that this last was not three-cornered, but a ring. After a while he saw that Venus had phases like the moon. And then finally he saw the spots on the sun which everyone had seen before but never interpreted as belonging to the sun. They also were supposed to have belonged to the sublunar sphere. [These things do not necessarily support Copernicus' view.] You must understand what the incredible excitement was when people looked through this rude kind of telescope and saw that. Nevertheless, simply looking through a fantastic new machine didn't vitiate anything. What went on in that machine had to be evolved into a theory. People were deeply impressed by these new phenomena, but every single one could be explained by Brahe's theory. And now this is the important thing. Many people of the time did accept Brahe's theory. That is, in 1610 and after, many respectable professors of astronomy in all the universities of Europe accepted Brahe's theory. And it was the right thing to do: it was reasonable, accounted for all these appearances, and it preserved the theories and savings of the other phenomena as they were done by Ptolemy. Don't forget that Brahe's theory is, again, merely a transition. And, yet, there were some peoPle who said no. There were 8. Winfree Smith wrote the sentences up to this point in this paragraph to substitute for a murky passage in the transcription. 12 some people who said that Copernicus was right, and only Copernicus-that the earth does move and there is nothing hypothetical about it. There was no physical evidence for accepting the Copernican theory until the 19th century. Instruments that could show the distances of the stars and the parallax came much later, in 1837. The rotation of the earth can be shown by a certain experiment which was first performed in 1851. It had been tried before but never was conclusive. The question is: what made some people, not too many, don't forget, claim that Copernicus was right? I spent some time in counting the number of people who accepted this theory. I cannot guarantee the accuracy of this because, if I kept searching and kept reading books and I don't know what, I would come to a greater number. I know of 25 people certainly who, in the course of 70 years, accepted the Copernican theory. I don't think that this number can be increased to more than 40 with any amount of research. So 40 people accepted that. And the interesting thing is how they accepted it. They accepted it as if everything depended on it, as if this were the only thing, as if the life of mankind would be different after acceptance of this. Men of the greatest importance~certainly Galileo and Kepler~accepted it. Giordano Bruno accepted it. And what I want to ask is~ why? I shall read part of the Preface to On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, which, as you all know, was written not by Copernicus but by his pupil, Osiander, who feared certain things: Then, in turning to the causes of these motions or the hypotheses about them, he must conceive of a device, since he cannot in any way attain to the true causes. He must conceive of and devise such hypotheses as, being assumed, would enable the motions to be calculated correctly from the principles of geometry, for the future as well as the past. (This is what is done in Ptolemy all the time.) The present author, Copernicus, has performed these duties excellently. For these hypotheses need not be true nor even probable; if they provide a calculus consistent with the observations, that alone is sufficient. Perhaps there is some person so ignorant of geometry and optics that he regards the epicycle of Venus as probable and thinks that this is the reason why Venus sometimes fo11ows or preceeds the sun by 40° or even more. Is there anyone who is not aware that from this assumption it follows that the diameter of the planet at perigee must appear more than four times, and the body of the planet more than sixteen times, as great as in the apogee-a result contradicted by the experience of every age? In this study there are other no less important absurdities which I will not state here. It is quite clear that the causes of the apparent, unequal motions are simply unknown to this art. And if any causes are devised by the imagination, as indeed very many are, they are not �January, 1979 put forward as if they were true, but merely to provide a correct basis for calculations. When, from time to time, different hypotheses are offered to explain one and the same motion (as, for instance, eccentricity and an epicycle), the astronomer will accept above all others the one which is easiest to grasp. The philosopher will perhaps seek the semblance of the truth. But neither of them will understand or state any such thing as certain unless it has been divinely revealed to him. Let us, therefore, permit these new hypotheses to become known together with the ancient hypotheses, which are no more probable. Let us do so especially because the new hypotheses are admirable and also simple, and bring with them a huge treasure of skillful observations. So far as hypotheses are concerned, let no one expect anything certain from astronomy, which cannot furnish anything of the kind, lest he accept as the truth ideas conceived for another purpose, and depart from the study a greater fool than when he entered. Farewell. 9 say: why wasn't that accepted? Why, on the contrary, should a certain man, 80 years later, say of this very good Osiander that he is "an ignorant and arrogant ass, who pretends to help Copernicus, but who only permits people like himself to pick lettuce and vegetables in that book"? Let me say that the usual understanding is that Osiander wrote the preface in order to protect Copernicus from persecution by the Church. This seems to me a terribly simple and, I would say, not quite true statement. It is true that, from the very beginning, everybody was a little apprehensive about what the ecclesiastical authorities would say. By the way, it was not only the Catholic ones; it was also the ones in Wittenberg, especially the Protestants and Lutherans. And immediately after publication of the book, a whole literature sprang into being (Rheticus among the first of these writers) to prove that this astronomical theorizing did not in any way contradict scripture. This literature persisted, literally, for a hundred years. Everyone participated in writing some kind of book or pamphlet or letter to show that what is stated in the scripture is not contradicted in any way by what is stated in Copernicus, that the scripture talks a certain language which is not scientific language, and that it is silly to assume that divine revelation has to be of an astronomical nature. This is perfectly true by the way and I, personally, don't think that this is the essential point in the struggle. Further, I do not think that Osiander simply meant to protect Copernicus from the persecution of the Church. I rather think that he was, in this preface at least, quite seriously of the opinion that truth about these matters can only be revealed divinely and that we men must be satisfied with certain mathematical devices, according to the lights that God has given us. Also, it is not the job of astronomy to state the 9. From Osiander's address to the reader at the beginning of On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres. The translation is Klein's. truth. I do not state this as true, but it is quite possible that Osiander felt this strongly. And let me also say that, later on, when Galileo, who is the great Copernican, was indeed convicted by the Church in Rome, the charge wasn't for entertaining such hypotheses. He was convicted for stating these hypotheses as truth, and the only truth. There is no other reason. The Church did not forbid men to try to show that the appearances in the heavens could be saved and made intelligible by the Copernican assumptions. The Church forbade men to state this as the truth; as a matter of fact, there was something right about that. Why are the Church and Protestant authorities so concerned about this-concerned not immediately after 1543, by the way, but about 60 years later? This is not simple. This is very dark at this point. Do not forget that the vulgar kind of arguments for the salvation of the soul and such cannot be advanced, for they simply don't hold water. It is too easy to show that Copernicus doesn't contradict scripture. It is easy to show that what the Church teaches is affected not at all by heliocentric or other systems. On the one hand, there is a kind of black obdurance on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities and, on the other, a kind of wonderful insight on the part of the "scientists." It doesn't seem to me that this is simply the ease. r think that it can be shown that this is not true. People insisted that the Copernican system was truth without sufficient evidence, and the ecclesiastical authorities combated this opinion without ever stating why. Now this is a very interesting thing,, because it is in this that the Copernican revolution truly consists. The question is then: what are the reasons? And I will give you four-four very different reasons which do not at all, by the way, go together. I wish they would go together, but they don't. I would even say that they contradict each other-at least in part. The first one is simple. I must repeat the question: why did people so fanatically claim that something was true, although there was no real evidence? And, on the other hand, why did the Church and other authorities oppose this, although it wasn't clear why it was so terribly important that they should do so? Now I am concerned with 25 or 40 people. Historically, and now I must speak historically, this is the time when nothing pleases more than that which is not accepted. Such times are called revolutionary. This is the time when the authorities of Aristotle and all the ancients, of Thomas, of the Pope, of kings, become shaky. It suddenly seems wonderful to come up and say: that which I learned from Ptolemy is all nonsense; it should be just the other way around. And sometimes this is one of the strongest ways to convince people. I give you a diabolic device: in seminar, sometimes, try this. Don't pick simply a little point, but say about the whole: that's all wrong-it's jUST THE OTHER WAY AROUND. Shortly, e\'eryone will agree with you, maybe. Now this general kind of opposition is one of the reasons that one can advance. It pervades the times and there is something very attractive about that. Let me hasten to add that it's a rather poor reason, not unimportant, but poor. And in this case it is important-the universe is stated to 13 �The College be just the other way around. In Ptolemy the earth is in the middle and the sun revolves around it at a certain distance. And now Copernicus and all of his immediate and later followers say that the sun is in the middle and the earth is where the sun was. Simply a reversal. And you must not forget that this is not simply stated as a geometrical transposition and astronomical theory, but as the truth .... Now [there] is something which I will call the Protagorean fascination. I refer to the man called Protagoras, whom you have met in Platonic dialogues, among other places. Now we know from tradition that Protagoras has a famous sentence which is called, in the sixty-four dollar phrase, the homo mensura proposition, and you have all heard about that "Man is the measure of all things, of those that are that they are and of those that are not that they are not." Now Copernicus in the dedication to the Pope says, and I quote: I finally discovered through long and intensive study that if the movements of the other wandering stars were referred to the circle of movement of the earth, and if the movements were computed in accordance with the revolution of each star, not only would the phenomena they present follow from that but also the order in magnitudes of all the planets and of their orbits, and it would bind the Heavens together so closely that nothing could be transposed in any part of them without disrupting the remaining parts in the universe as a whole." Then in the beginning of the fifth book he says, "The mobility of the earth binds together the order and magnitude of the planets' orbital circles in a wonderful harmony and sure symmetry." Rheticus, again in that first report says, I quote: These phenomena, the apparent motions of the planets, besides being ascribed to the planets, can be explained, as my teacher shows, by irregular motion of the globe of the earth, that is, by having the sun occupy the center of the universe while the earth revolves, instead of the sun, on the eccentric circle which it has pleased him to name the great circle. Indeed, there is something divine in the circumstance that a sure understanding of celestial phenomena must depend upon the regular and uniform motions of the terrestial globe alone. By the way, the expression "great circle," (the Latin is orbis magnus) is used until the late 17th century, even Locke uses it. About the six moving spheres of the other planets, Rheticus says, "their common measure is the great circle which carries the earth, just as the radius of the earth is the common measure of the circles of the moon, the distance of the sun from the moon, et cetera.'' And, by the way, he has something to say about the expression "great circle." He says, "if emperors have received the surname "Great" on account of successful exploits in war, of conquest, of peoples, surely this circle deserves to have that august name applied to it. For 14 almost alone it makes us share in the laws of the celestial state, corrects all the errors of the motions and restores to its rank this most beautiful part of philosophy." The orbit of the earth, then, is the great unifying factor in the spectacle of the wandering stars. Moreover, the daily motion of the earth, its rotation around its own axis, accounts for the daily motion of all the other stars. The higher and more universal similitude in all the hypotheses of the planets becomes an identity in Copernicus. We see the earth's motion in its orbit projected into the heavens in the guise of the irregular motion of the planets, especially their apparent retrogradations. The irregular motion of the planets is the result of their own regular motion plus our regular motion. The appearance of irregularity is clue to the different rates of speed of the planets and of the earth. Our own motion, more precisely, the difference between our motion and the other planets, projected outside of us, is visible in the heavens. we· see it, as it were, in a mirror, as an image. I quote Copernicus: "When a ship floats over a tranquil sea, all the things outside seem to the voyagers to be moving in a movement which is the image of their own. And they think, on the contrary, that they themselves or the things with them are at rest." We determine by our motion the appearances in the heavens. Once we understand that, we also understand that, to quote Rheticus, "the order and the motions~ of the heavenly' spheres agree in a most absolute system." The Protagorean proposition receives an absolute twist: applying the right measure, namely, our own motion, to things outside our orbit, we grasp their true and absolute order. The measure becomes an absolute measure. Kepler's astronomy, as well as his physics, is under the spell of what I have been calling the Protagorean fascination. The earth is to him "the home of the contemplative creature," that's a quotation, "of the measuring creature," and occupies a position in the universe most suitable for measuring purposes. The orbit of the earth is the yardstick of the universe. Far from detracting from the dignity of man, which some people say the Copernican theory does, the new function of the earth gives man an unprecedented dignity and priority .... Any cosmology is a science of the order in which and through which everything exists. This cosmology, as any cosmology, has certain metaphysical and theological implications. Now, for the first time in a long period, the sun has recovered its former position of dignity, which we observe in Plato, in the nco-Platonic tradition, and in a certain cult called the Mithras cult. The Mithras cult is the cult of the sun-god. In the early centuries A.D., it was as popular as Christianity. At certain points in the history of Christianity it is very difficult to distinguish the part that Jesus plays from that of Mithras, the sun-god. This, by the way, is not my opinion-it is part of a long tradition that stems from the Orphic and other ancient mysteries. Macrobius, a pagan writer of early Christian times, says: It is not a vain supposition to believe that almost all �January, 1979 gods, to wit, the celestial ones, refer to the sun. A divine reason support'i this belief. The sun is the ruler of the universe. Behind this is that tradition I mentioned before, which goes back unbroken to the early Greeks. You can find such statements everywhere-the sun is the ruler of the universe, the king of the universe, the father of the universe, the selfborn father of the universe. Proclus, whom you know as one of the great commentators of Plato and Aristotle, wrote a hymn to the sun. And I will quote a bit of it from the translation by Thomas Taylor: Hear Golden Titan, King of Mental Fire, Ruler of Light-to Thee Supreme belongs the splendid key of life's prolific font. And from on high, Thou pourest harmonic streams in rich abundance into ... [the] world. Hear, for, high raised about the ethereal plains and in the world's bright middle orb, Thou reignest. While all things by thy sovereign power are filled with mind exciting providential care .... Now this tradition, and there are many more examples of the kind, was perfectly well known to Copernicus and his followers. Copernicus himself mentions in the tenth chapter of the first book that the sun is the lamp of a very beautiful temple, lantern of the world, mind of the world, mentor of the world. He quotes Hermes Trismegistus (a fantastic man who is quoted by everyone in a broad nco-Pythagorean and gnostic literature, and no one knows who he is) as having called the sun the visible God. Copernicus also, as you remember, quotes Sophocles: "The sun is that which sees everything." Now he translated Sophocles from Greek into Latin and he knew him very well. And in Sophocles you can find many things of this sort; for instance, in Oedipus, he says: Sun, God of all gods, the father of everything .. . everyone worships the whirling disk of the sun ... . Rheticus, when he comes to speak of the sun in the Narratio Prima, says: The sun was ca11ed by the ancients leader, governor of nature, and king. But whether it carries on this administration as God rules the entire universe, a rule excellently described by Aristotle in De mundo, or whether, traversing the entire heavens so often and resting nowhere, it acts as Cod's administrator in nature, seems not yet altogether explained and settled. Now let me repeat this thing of Rheticus in order to be perfectly clear. There are two ways in which the ancients seemed to see the sun, either as God ruling the universe or as the administrator of nature empowered by God. Which of the assumptions is preferable, he leaves to be determined by the geometers and philosophers who are mathematically equipped, for without mathematics this cannot be solved. In the trial and decisions of such controversies a verdict must be reached, not in accordance with plausible opinions, but with mathematical laws. The former manner of rule, that is, that God rules the universe, has been set aside, and the latter accepted, that the sun does not rule as God rules, but as an administrator empowered by Cod. He goes on: My teacher (that's Copernicus) is convinced, however, that the rejected method of the sun's rule in the realm of nature must be revived, but in such a way that the received and accepted method retains its place. For he is aware that, in human affairs, the emperor need not himself hurry from city to city in order to perform the duty imposed on him by God; and that the heart does not move to the head or feet or other parts of the body to sustain the living creature, but fulfills its function through other organs designed by God for that purpose. He's saying, then, that if the sun moves around in the heavens a controversy might arise, since the ancients spoke of the sun as the ruler of the universe. Does it mean that the sun is God? Or does it mean that God entrusted to a divine messenger the subsidiary role of a minister who goes aro~md the universe to see that everything is in order. That controversy has been adopted, but his teacher now says that that is all changed now because the others move around but the sun stays fixed~ right in the center. Now it seems to me (this belongs to the 30% opinion in this lecture) that this had something to do with the fanaticism with which the Copernican theory was adopted, in the sense that a suppressed ancient theology of the sun rose to the surface. This then would be what the ecclesiastical authorities were afraid of really, because this would mean a real revival of pagan understanding. And Rheticus seems to me, in what I have quoted, to state that quite clearly. It was certainly, you understand, not a very popular movement. It was confined to a small group of people who had an esoteric cult, who nowadays would be called intelligentsia-a strange word from Russia. That is a thing which has happened, and which will happen, often. It is a thing which has many possibilities if once you understand the full implications of it. I don't think you can ignore this when you look in the middle of the 16th century and see the whole world in a great excitement over the very foundations and meanings of religion. So I think we can call this one of the reasons why Copernicus was put forward by certain people .... Now we have a curious document. And that is a book called The City of the Sun by Campanella. [Campanella was one of the people who championed Copernicus.] He was born in 1568 and died in 1639. He lived mostly in jail, mainly for political reasons-the attempt to overthrow the kingdom of Naples to establish a republic, and so on. He wrote a defense of Galileo in 1616, the year of his condemnation, and began 15 �The College writing The City of the Sun in 1602. It was first published in Italian in 1614, then translated into Latin and published in 162 3. The book is conceived after the model of Plato's Republic. It is written in direct opposition to The City of God. And throughout the book there is a constant transposing, and upsidedowndom. Somewhere in the book, speaking of the people in that city, he says, "they praise Ptolemy, admire Copernicus, but place Aristarchus and Philolaus before him." In fact, the cosmological basis of the book seems to be not Copernicus but Tycho Brahe. But it is not difficult to see its Copernican roots. Let me quote: They (the people in the city) say it is very doubtful whether the world is made from nothing, or from the ruins of other worlds, or from chaos, but they certainly think that it was made, and did not exist from eternity. Therefore, they disregard Aristotle whom they consider a logician and not a philosopher. From analogies with other writers they can draw many arguments against the eternity of the world. The sun and the stars they regard, so to speak, as the living representatives and signs of God, as the temples and holy living altars, and they honor but do not worship them. Beyond all other things they venerate the sun, but they consider no created thing worthy the adoration of worship. This they give to God alone, and they serve Him that they may not come into the power of a tyrant and fall into misery by undergoing punishment inflicted on them by creatures of revenge. They contemplate and know God in the image of the sun and they call it the sign of God, His face and living image, from which light, heat, life and the making of all things good and bad proceed. Therefore, they have built an altar like to the sun in shape, and the priests praise God in the sun and in the stars, as it were, His altars, and in the heaven, as it were, His temple; and they pray to good angels who are, so to speak, the intercessors living in the stars. For God long since has sent signs of the beauty in heaven and of His glory in the sun. (They reject Ptolemy's and Copernicus' eccentrics and epicycles.) They say there is but one heaven. And the planets move and rise by themselves when they approach the sun or are in conjunction with it. Campanella seems to have been the first champion of what became known later as the natural religion. All positive religions, including Christianity, were considered by him merely political and social institutions. He saw himself as entrusted with a great mission to establish before the end of the world the religion, the laws, and the perfect republic of the golden age. In 1632 he writes to Galileo as follows: "l venture to say that if we could spend one year together in a country house great things would be accomplished. These novelties of ancient truth, the new worlds, new stars, new systems, new nations, are the beginning of a new era. May he who guides the 16 universe make haste. As for us, let us help him on our small globe. Amen." He considered Columbus the greatest of heroes: "Spain found the new world so that all nations could be gathered under one law." The City of the Sun is the blueprint of the new order, of the one law, under which mankind was to live in the approaching golden and last age. The high priest personifying the new law was called Sol, which is the Latin word for sun, in the edition of 1623. And Campanella also uses the astronomical symbol 0 for the sun to designate him. The main helpers of the priest are Pon, the abbreviation for potentia, power; Sin, abbreviation for sapientia or scientia, wisdom, knowledge; and Mor for amour, love: the natural trinity-and this is under the direct influence of Giordano Bruno. The sun for Campanella is not God. It is an image or a symbol of divinity. God itself is the universal reason. To worship God is to follow reason, that is, to free oneself from all institutional chains, to be a "free thinker". In the letter to Galileo I just mentioned, Campanella refers to the personage who in Galileo's dialogues represents unbiased reason, as a "free mind". And, by the way, Kepler calls Copernicus that too. But Rhetieus had already chosen as a model for the first report (Narratio Prima) this sentence of Alhinus, which was attributed to Alcinous, and he quotes the sentence again in his book. And the sentence is: "Free in mind must he be who desires to have understanding." That's what Copernicans saw in Copernicus. And that's why there has been a Copernican revolution. [There is finally] the question of the immensity of the universe, which seemed to be foremost in the minds of certain people, notably a man named Giordano Bruno. It is the idea of immensity that fascinates Bruno. Copernicus himself, as you have seen, hesitates to attribute infinity to the world. He says that "the heavens are immense and present the aspect of an infinite magnitude." Bruno blames Copernicus because he does not say whether the universe is finite or infinite. "If the first principle is the creator of the world," Bruno says, "he is an infinite one and the creator of an infinite effect. As the active power of God is infinite, so is the subject worked upon by it. If he intended body and dimensions, he intended them to be infinite .... The intelligible species of body is infinite." The intelligible species of body is space. Why is this so important? The finiteness of the world is a main point for the ancients and for the medievals. The Aristotelian philosophy stands or falls with the finiteness of the world. For Aristotle, there is nothing outside, not even nothing. There is a dear understanding of what 7rf.pas means. This seems to be in contradiction with the infinite power of God. The understanding of God as an infinite being begins in the sixteenth century. One of the assumptions of our mathematical science is the infinity of Cod. We have forgotten that the Copernican revolution is a revolution. May I repeat again that everything that I said cannot be convincing, can only raise certain questions and lead you to consider certain problems and read certain books. It is now ten to ten. I am perfectly willing to sit here and answer questions. �January, 1979 On a Sixteenth Century Algebraist by Jacob Klein After reading the title of this paper you certainly did not expect that it would deal with mathematics. And I think you were right. I feel, however, that the short historical survey I am going to make may interest you on account of its relation to the foundations of modern mathematics. Although the development of human thought is continuous, it can be fairly said that the foundations of modern mathematics were laid by two men: Francois Vide (or Vieta) and Simon Stevin. I will deal with the latter only. In the first place I must admit that the title of this paper is misleading, since Slevin died in 1620 and belongs, therefore, also to the 17th century. But his main work, entitled Arithmetic, appeared in 1585. The time at my disposal is very short. So I can talk only about the first pages of this work which contain to my opinion propositions fundamental to the modern understanding of mathematics-especially Algebra. But let me first say a few words about the life of Stevin. He was born in 1548, five years after the publication of the great book of Copernicus. He was of Flemish stock and lived in a part of Europe, namely the Netherlands, which after their declaration of independence in 1581 became a centre of learning and education and actually the first European country having religious tolerance. Like many men of his time, Stevin -was active in very different practical and theoretical fields. lt is characteristic of his way of thinking never to separate theory and practice. He was an engineer who constructed dams, bridges, marine fortifications; furthermore, he was Quartermaster General of the Dutch army, General Comptroller of t.he finances; he thought out improvements in the methods of bookkeeping; he was an astronomer, a geographer, a linguist; his main interest, however, lay in the mechanical arts, especially statics, and in mathematics, especially Algebra; he made the discovery of the principle of the parallelogram of forces and is best known for that; and he was A lecture given on December IO, 1938, to the Mathematical Association of America, at the University of Maryland, College Park. the most advanced algebraist of his time. He was very much aware of the peculiarity and novelty of his intellectual preoccupations. His own interpretation of his work-and this is important-is characteristic of the way in which modern science thinks about itself. He was captivated by the idea of an "age of wisdom" which had existed before the Greeks _and which he and his contemporaries were going to renew. The 16th century as a whole strove for a renewal, a rebirth, a restauration of almost lost or forgotten wisdoms. Stevin is peculiar in that he goes back beyond the Greeks. He gives a "definition" of the "age of wisdom" thus: We call age of wisdom that age wherein men have had an admirable knowledge of the sciences, and this age we recognize infallibly by certain marks, although we do not know who those people were or where they lived or at what time. At any rate, he calls the entire period from the Greeks to the 15th century the "age of barbarism". And he thinks that the leading personalities of that age of wisdom which precedes the age of barbarism were for example Zeus, Hermes, Apollo and other Greek gods as well as Abraham, Isaac, Moses and other people in the Old Testament. For him all these personages were actually scientists whom the age of barbarism misrepresented as gods or shepherds. Ii1 order to restore the "age of wisdom," he proposes a general plan of scientific research-the first of this kind, I presume-containing four articles: l) As many observations as possible should be made, especially in Astronomy, Alchemy (that is to say, Chemistry) and Medicine, by a great many people living in different regions of the earth and belonging to different nations; 2) The results thus obtained should be expounded methodically, according to the mathematical method used by Euclid. The order followed by Euclid is to Slevin's mind the "natural order" which that Greek author had gotten somehow from the "age of wisdom"; 3) It is possible to carry out so many observations by so many people only if these people use their own language and not the scholarly Latin, the command of which is possessed by 17 �The College but a few people. Even the Greeks used their own language and not a special learned or artificial one; 4) It might, however, be very convenient to use the Flemish idiom, because of the abundance of monosyllabic words in that language. For science requires terms, and terms are often very complex words;. the composition of words is easily done, if the words are monosyllabic. Hence the usefulness of the Flemish idiom, which is much richer in monosyllables than French or Latin or Greek, as Stevin tries to demonstrate statistically. As a matter of fact, Stevin taught mathematics only in Flemish and wrote most of his works in this language, although he knew Latin and himself translated some of his works into French. His official title at the University of Leyden was "Professor of Dutch Mathematics". (Flemish and Dutch were identical at that time.) It is noteworthy that Descartes, who probably was his disciple in 1618-1619, writes in a letter of January 1619 that at that time he is mostly concerned with the study of the Flemish language (sermo Be/gicus, as he calls it in Latin). We shall see why the influence of Stevin on Descartes is so decisive. Stevin himself considered the question of a right language highly important and was rather pessimistic about the possibility of renewing the age of wisdom merely on account of the unfortunate fact that the Flemish language was used on this earth by a comparatively small number of people. But on a different level he found the proper, and at the same time universal, language in the symbolism of Arithmetic and Algebra. And that is the topic which we shall now approach. What reason did he have for going back beyond the Greeks and for formulating the hypothesis of an "age of wisdom"an hypothesis accepted by many of his contemporaries, and by Grotius among others? Mainly this: the Greeks had no notion of the Zero. The entire "age of barbarism" is characterized by this ignorance, whereas the "age of wisdom" is distinguished by the knowledge of the Zero and the Arabic numeral system. The Arabic numeral system had been brought into Europe in the 12th century and had been in constant use since then. But it was Stevin who first recognized the tremendous importance of this innovation. Of course, the Greeks also were able to reckon and to solve problems, which we today call arithmetical and which they called logistical. But calculation and also the solution of numerical equations did not belong for them to Science in the proper sense of the term. Stevin ascribes that fact to a fundamental confusion on their part with respect to their use of this sign : ". ". According to Stevin the point"." was the sign for 0 in the "age of wisdom". The Greeks, however, misinterpreted this Zero-sign as the sign for the Unit. Hence a great many fundamental errors, for ex18 ample: the definition of number, the definition of the principle of number, the distinction between Geometry and Arithmetic, the misunderstanding of the nature of Algebra. According to the Greeks, the definition of number is "multitude of units," a definition universally accepted until the 17th century. The principle of number is the Unit, in the sense that you cannot count without distinguishing the single units of a number, whatever the number or the units in question might be: apples or horses or stars or pure mathematical units. The Unit or the One is, therefore, not a number itself. The main consequence of this understanding of the Unit and the Number is the sharp distinction between the numbers, as consisting of separated, discrete units, and the continuous magnitudes, as lines, planes or solids, that is to say, the sharp distinction between Arithmetic and Geometry. Furthermore, numbers in the precise sense of the word (in Greek aptOp.oi) are only integers. Fractions are understood as parts of the unit occurring in the calculation. Fractions are not numbers. Scientifically they can be dealt with as ratios, more exactly as ratios between integers. "Negative" and "irrational" numbers are not conceivable at all. During the 15th and 16th centuries irrational numbers, although actually used by calculators and algebraists, are called "absurd" or "inexplicable" or "deaf" numbers. As late as 1560 a French mathematician, Peletier, admits readily that we cannot avoid making use of such "inexplicable" numbers, especially in measuring continuous magnitudes, but goes on to say that their relation to true or "absolute" numbers (as he calls them) is similar to that of beasts to men. According to Stevin, all this is the consequence of the wrong definition of the principle of number. Says he: "0 unhappy hour wherein was first uttered this definition of the principle of number! 0 cause of the difficulty and obscurity of things which in Nature are so easy and clear!" To him, "in Nature" the true principle of number is the Zero, which he calls the "arithmetical point," in analogy to the principle of the line, namely the "geometrical point". That is even more than an analogy. To understand the full extent of Stevin's radicalism in mathematics, we have to consider for one moment the arabic system of numeration in itself. The Arabic numeral system has two main features: 1) it is a decimal system, and 2) it is a system of positional numeration. TI1e composition of signs in 333 is of the kind that the sign 3 in the middle means thirty and the sign 3 on the left means three hundred, merely on account of their respective positions. The decimal numeration as such is common to many peoples. The positional numeration as such was already used by the Babylonians, or more exactly Sumerians, but on the basis of the sexagesimal system. The arabic system is �January, 1979 unique in that it combines both, the decimal and the positional numeration. Stcvin was the first to draw the final consequences out of these characters of the numeral system of the Arabs, whom he was inclined to consider as the true heirs of the unknown peoples of the "age of wisdom". To begin with, he identified the ciphers, the signs meaning the various numbers, with the numbers themselves. Thus he was able to argue as follows. We can see that the Zero and not the Unit is the principle of Number and that the Zero is the equivalent of a geometrical point by comparing directly the succession of ciphers with the extension of a line. A line is not extended through the addition of one or many points. Nor is a number increased by addition of one or many Zeros. But even if we think of a quasi-extension of a line through the addition of a point thus: we could speak of rational as well as of irrational numbers. Stevin also understood an expression like this: 4x 2 - V5x+ 3 as one number, which he called a number representing an "algebraic multinomial". He was also the first to understand subtraction as the addition of negative numbers. I mentioned the usc of decimal fractions by Stcvin. Actually, he was not the first to use them, but he was the first to understand them as basically connected with the general system of numbers. The "tenfold progrcssion"-as he says- of the decimal numeration can be continued infinitely not only to increase the numbers, but also to diminish them in the same way. Thus we can get rid of all fractions in the ordinary sense of the word. Whenever we deal with numbers, we have to put them in certain columns, as for example: @G) A B B c we can conceive a quasi-increase of a number through the addition of a Zero, thus: 0.6, 0.60. This argument involves the use of decimal fractions. I sha11 return to this point in a moment. But the argument shows clearly that Stevin could not conceive of a difference between the nature of a continuous magnitude and the nature of a discrete number. The unit and any fraction of the unit are parts of a number, and consequently numbers themselves, just as a fraction of a line is part of that line, and consequently a line itself. The Zero, however, is not a part of a number, but a principle of number, just as the point is not part of a magnitude, but a principle of magnitude. Therefore, number and magnitude are not to be distinguished through discreteness and continuity. He says: "As to a continuum of water there corresponds a continuum of humidity, so to a continuous magnitude there corresponds a continuous number. Again, as the continuum of humidity of a1l the water undergoes the same division and separation as the water, so the continuous number undergoes the same division and separation as the magnitude." In other words: for Stevin there is not only an analogy between the Zero and the point or between number and magnitude, but perfect correspondence. In this respect his influence on Descartes cannot be overestimated. In fact, Stevin thus contributed more than anybody else to Descartes' discovery of Analytical Geometry. Descartes-and this applies more or less also to Fermat-interpreted Apollonius, as it were, through the eyes of Stevin. A further consequence of Stevin's understanding of the ambic positional numeration was the recognition of irrational quantities as true numbers. It has been only since Stevin that ®®® 6 3 0 4 5 4 0 1 0 2 0 7 8 We would write the first number of this series, namely 6. 304, in the following way: 6 (1/10) 0, 3 (1ho) 1, 0 (1/to)Z, 4 (1/to)' The ciphers within the circles are really decimal exponents. "He had understood that any decimal fraction was identical to an integer but for a decimal coefficient," as George Sarton put it. Thus he became the real discoverer of the decimal fractions as we use them today. Moreover, not only did he suggest the universal use of the decimal fractions, but he suggested also the application of the decimal system to all kinds of calculation and measurement. He demanded that all measures and weights be expressed in decimal units, a demand which was to be fulfilled in France during the French Revolution and which was later on followed by practically all the world, except for England and the United States. Strangely enough, Stevin linked his symbolism of the decimal system with that of his Algebra. He writes what we express as follows today as the unknown quantities x, x2 , x3 , x4 . CD, ®, ®, @ . . . , whereas @ means not-as we may think-the unit, but any known number. I cannot speak about his Algebra any further, because my time is up. But I should like to emphasize that Stcvin's idea of an "age of wisdom"-that is to say, a golden age of science or, more exactly, an algebraic age of science-is still leading the modern conception of Science in general. The only difference between the idea of Stevin and the modern outlook is that we place that golden age not in the past but in the future. It is a question, whether we arc right. !9 �The College MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR JACOB KLEIN Born: March 3, 1899, Libau, Russia Died: July 16, 1978, Annapolis, Maryland St. John's College, Annapolis September 29, 1978 Presiding-President Richard D. Weigle Order of SpeakersPresident Weigle Curtis A. Wilson Simon Kaplan Samuel S. Kuder '54 Brother Robert Smith J. Winfree Smith Mr. Weigle spoke without a written text. He ended his remarks with the following passage from Jacob Klein's Dean's Statement of Educational Policy and Program 1958. All a school can do-c:md St. John's is no exception-is to establish the conditions under which learning may take place. In some important respects the College has succeeded in doing that. The curriculum provides a wide basis for the exercise of the skills of discussion, translation, demonstration and experimentation which in turn help the learning mind to experience the discipline of the Hbeml arts and to acquire an understanding of them. It is not a panorama of opinions, or styles, or disciplines, or systems, it is the sharp edge of a crucial question, the stumbling block of a massive contradiction, the labyrinth of complexities in a given problem, that furnish link after link to the chain of learning offered to the student at St. John's. One of the great virtues of teaching that goes on at St. John's is the patience with the shortcomings of the students, with the difficulties of a given subject matter explored in common, with the disappointments and frustrations, the faithful satellites of all teaching and learning. All improvements of instructional patterns depend ultimately on the way the teacher follows them up, responsibly, patiently, generously, and full of fear before the immensity of the task. zo Music by Douglas Allanbrook Robert S. Bart Robert G. Hazo '53 Barbara Dvorak Winiarski '55 Elliott Zuckerman F,va T. H. Brann Curtis A. Wilson During a number of years-exceedingly memorable years for many of us-the first Friday-night lecture of the College year began with a statement that is likely to seem unremarkable enough when repeated now, but which I have never heard made by anyone else but the lecturer of those years, the then Dean of the College. Nor can I imagine its being made, with the same meaning and effect, by anyone else. I cannot quote exactly, but with some huffing and clearing of the throat, the lecturer would say something like this: I have to begin by saying that, before the immense, the immeasurable difficulty of my task, I am filled with trepidation. The task he was speaking of was, of course, to speak of the task of education, the task of this College. He proceeded to do that with a certain soberness, slowly, deliberatively, choosing words with care. The words were not fancy or technical; they were simple and arresting. We were asked to think-and first of all to think on the fact that our understanding of ourselves and, hence, of everything else was, of necessity, bound to intellectual traditions. And these traditions, while preserving the traces of the original insights and experiences from which they had sprung, necessarily did so only in a veiled and distorted way. That was an unavoidable consequence of our dependence on language, and of the �January, 1979 evanescence to which every understanding is inevitably subject. Hence this task: to penetrate through the layers of forgetfulness and distortion, to recover the foundations of our views and attitudes, and to assess, as far as possible, their truth. An enormously difficult task; extravagantly ambitious, incompletable in a lifetime. Yet not to undertake it is to remain prisoner, chained, with vision confined to the shadow-play on the cave's wall. Hence an inescapable tension. On the one hand, there is the finitude of our human condition, of which we must not lose sight. And on the other there is the extravagant goal which is implicit in, yet transcendental to, every attempt to say the truth. This is the peculiar twofoldness in the Delphic Oracle's enigmatic command: know thyself. jasha Klein, who often remarked with a special appreciation that someone or something was in some way remarkable, was himself the most remarkable person that many of us are ever likely to know. His gifts of imagination and intelligence and judgment were truly extraordinary. But more remarkable still was their union with qualities of heart-spiritedness, warmth, a spontaneous and irrepressible energy, abundant enjoyment and delight in many things. And with such qualities of mind and heart, during many years, he devoted himself urrstintingly to the teaching and learning at this college, believing, as he said, that the annoying and time-consuming efforts and tribulations that necessity imposes upon the teacher are-I am quoting-"beyond measure compensated by the insights he gains in the struggle with young and vigorous minds and in the witnessing of intellectual growth." Teacher, guardian, guide, friend: it is impossible to think that he is gone, impossible not to imagine that he is looking on with a certain quizzical smile that some of us know. As for us, we shall pay proper tribute only if we recollect the meaning of the task of which he spoke so unforgettably, its difficulty, the constant danger of misconstruing it or reducing it to something other and less, its fearsome immensity. Simon Kaplan Mr. Weigle and Mr. Wilson spoke about Mr. Klein and his contribution to this College. I would like to say a few words as a friend of Mr. Klein, and trace our friendship, which lasted for more than a half of a century. More exactly, we first met in Berlin in 1925. I remember the day when a friend of mine told me that he had met a young man who was studying philosophy, and he proposed to invite him to our group, the members of which were mainly Russian emigrants interested in philosophy and theology. The participants of this group were Russian scholars of philosophy, theologians of the Russian Orthodox Church, and an Orthodox Talmudic scholar. There were also a few young people, such as Mr. Kojeve, Mr. Klein, who brought also Mr. Strauss, and myself. The fact that most of us were Russian emigrants who spoke Russian made this circle more personal and intimate. Mr. Klein was not an emigrant. Although he was born in Russia Mr. & Mrs. Kaplan and Jacob Klein, 1938. (as it turned out, in the same town as 1), he was educated in Belgium and later in Germany. This made him a kind of cosmopolitan, speaking fluent Russian. He soon became one of us, and more intimate relations developed between the younger members of this group. Mr. Klein's penetrating mind, open to all kinds of problems, as well as his benevolent attitude toward his fellow man and his good-hearted readiness to help, impressed all of us. It was in those years that Mr. Klein helped a common friend, who had difficulty in expressing himself, to write a logical treatise on negative judgement. It was also at that time that Mr. Klein translated from Russian into German a book on Dostoevsky by A. Steinberg, a common friend of ours. I think that it was at the same period that he helped somebody to write a Ph.D. thesis. All this was done at the time when Mr. Klein must have had enough worries about his own fuhue. But he seemed not to be concerned about it. At this point I have to say that this kind of selflessness and unconcern about his time and his own tasks and achievements has been a basic character trait of Mr. Klein, and this trait accompanied him until late in his life. He could patiently converse for hours, sitting with people in a coffeehouse, disregarding any time limit. With his open and inquisitive mind, he could for hours listen to people as if he were trying to find out what lies behind the words of his not too articulate interlocutors. This same selfless attitude, combined with an intellectual and humane interest in people, made Mr. Klein always generously available to everybody in the College, to a degree which seemed to some people a waste of time. There was in the College a few years ago a tutor who greatly admired Mr. Klein, but he used to say about him that he never saw a man so generously wasting his time. In 193 3 all of us had to leave Germany. Our group dispersed, and what remained was a lasting friendship between Mr. Klein, Mr. Strauss, Mr. Kojeve, and myself. Mr. Klein, 21 �The College Mrs. Kaplan, and I met briefly again in Prague, and then we left Prague in different directions: Mrs. Kaplan and I went to Paris, and Mr. Klein to London and then to this country. We met again in 1941 in this country. By that time Mr. Klein was already at St. John's. He immediately suggested to Mr. Buchanan that I should teach at St. John's. When we came to Annapolis it was again Mr. Klein who was very helpful in introducing me to the program and in helping us to settle here. These were the years of enthusiasm for the program of this college, and of endless discussions about it. For many years, Mr. Klein and other friends met regularly in our apartment after the Friday night discussion periods, and continued to converse, drinking tea until late at night. All of us were at that titne younger, and drinking tea helped us to stay awake until late. It was on one such midnight that Mr. Klein and Mr. Winfree Smith appeared in our house with a shiny samovar to facilitate the tea drinking and the discussions. After Mr. Klein's marriage, many years of friendship with Mrs. Klein and Mr. Klein followed. I shal1 conclude my reminiscence about Mr. Klein by saying that Mrs. Kaplan and myself will always cherish the memory of our friendship with Mr. Klein and feel deeply indebted to him. His rare metaphysical gift, the precision and elegance of his mind, and his noble generosity to his fellow man wi11 be long remembered by all of us in this community. Samuel S. Kutler '54 There is a difficulty in speaking on just this occasion, for I am aware of how well jacob Klein appreciated that precious gift that we all share: speech. It is easier to describe this in its negative instances. His anger would flare up when he heard speech being misused. Even late in his life, upon hearing in a question period a discussion of whether or not the apparent hierarchical ordering of the world was real or not, he shouted out, "What do you mean by real?" For he was quick to notice the presence of unrevealing speech. He called it seclimented speech. He said that he himself meant nothing by real except what he had learned, and that meant through years of dedicated study, from Plato and Aristotle. That same anger was turned, with even more emphasis, on himself: "What was the subject of your doctoral dissertation, Mr. Klein?" "It was on Hegel, and it wasn't worth the paper it was written on. IT WASN'T WORTH THE PAPER IT WAS WRITTEN ON." He knew that in his early life he had spoken and written in unrevealing ways, because later, with the help of his teacher, Heidegger, he had learned to get beneath the surface of things. He had learned to ask penetrating questions. Through careful study, he had formed illuminating opinions, which he recognized as opinions. "Don't believe this ... " he would begin, as he offered a radically new way for me to look at a Platonic dialogue or a work of Nietzsche. These were amazing attempts to understand. His thoughtfulness was not back there in antiquity. It was 22 Klein, Gisela ami Lawrence Berns, and Eva Brann at Commencement <lt Annapolis, 1967. present, right there and then, in whatever happened.- Stalin's daughter had left Russia. She appeared on television. We each saw that program. "Do you understand what that shows?" "Nothing," I answered. "There was nothing important." "Don't you see that the nature of man was supposed to be changed by that revolution? She is just like everyone else." What was Mr. Klein for me? I want to ask you to think of him, as I do, as a wealthy man. Not the kind of wealth that inspires envy. No one need have less, because he had more! I had arrived in 1950 at St. John's College with whatever stars were in my eyes brought there by the catalogue. By then Jacob Klein was Dean of the College. I couldn't tell very well the difference between Mr. Klein and the College, and it was for this reason: he was the very soul of the College. And at this College I became open to thoughts which began to touch me, finally very deeply, thoughts which otherwise, in all likelihood, I would never have entertained. I learned much from Jacob Klein, hut I don't know how! He was not one of my classroom teachers. It must have been magic. But some of it must have a prosaic explanation. Turn for a moment to that unjustly despised part of the St. John's Program: the formal lecture. I am not thinking now of the fine occasions when Mr. Klein lectured on a Platonic dialogue, on Aristotle, on Leibniz, on speech, on nature, on precision. I am thinking of how-week after week-as each lecturer appeared in the question period, when the discussion had been perhaps quite good, perhaps not so good, almost unfailingly jacob Klein would ask a probing question which invited the lecturer, and all of us, to question one of the foundations of his whole talk. Maybe this would lead to fireworks as others joined in. At best it would lead to nothing decisive then; but years later those questions could be stirred �January, 1979 up in someone's thoughts, and a new way of looking at things would become possible to him. With his striking way of putting things, Mr. Klein was a wonderful teacher. Of course this was not a surface cleverness. It was backed up by years of careful study in those early years, when I knew him not at all. But the fruits were there. There was the wonderful summer when the Meno book was written and last minute smoothing was taking place before it was sent to the publisher. For those of us who had not deserted tropical Annapolis, there were gatherings at the Kleins' to hear jacob Klein read from his book. Because of the more than 750 footnotes, it was difficult to guess that the book was written to be read aloud. Mrs. Klein served one magnificent meal after the other, and in the evenings we discussed wh<lt was read. This went on for days. I don't believe that I have read that book all the way through. A lot of it must be in my bones. And what about the earlier book on the notion of number that the ancients possessed and that we have lost thanks to the art of algebra and the works of Descartes and all? That book did not exist for the students, since it was then untranslated. Yet it was alive, for Mr. Klein would give talks at just the right time of year and share the fruits of his study. These talks were not easy to follow. Nor is the book. This isn't jacob Klein's fault. Some things need to be studied many times. The paradox is that mathematical things ought to be preeminently learnable. Yes, Mr. Klein had great wealth, shared wealth, which he bequeathed to all of us. Rather than make a speech about this, I want to ask myself what I am inspired to do. I know that when he was honored by the alumni association last year, he spoke a few words. He spoke of his long association with St. John's College. He said that he had tried to do his best. He cared so much for that activity of trying, of making a noble attempt. To me it implies that to his memory I dedicate myself in these coming years, to trying ever harder to understand, and to caring for this College in which he invested so much. To you-! don't dare, or hardly dare to say it-you should do so too. Brother Robert Smith From the beginning of the New Program I began to hear about St. John's. One of my teachers was acquainted with some of the original committee on the Liberal Arts at Chicago and had told me about the work clone there and the decision to transform St. John's. I made up my mind to visi't the College as soon as I hac! an opportunity. In the summer of 1943 I was able to do so. When I arrived, armed with letters of introduction, I had only heard vaguely of a brilliant addition to the original faculty, Mr. Klein. As was proper, I arranged to meet Mr. Buchanan, and was invited to lunch by Mr. Barr. So much for the power of letters. Then began the serious work of visiting classes and talking to everybody I could find. Jasha was teaching Ptolemy at the time-it was a hot Annapolis summer. The College then had a summer semester. Jasha was asking about the relations between epicycles and eccentrics. Some students couldn't see how they could be used interchangeably. One explained the matter quite clearly. What he left unsaid Jasha completed brilliantly. He had everyone in admiration of how each explanation in its way helped to tell a likely story. The center of reasonableness and order seemed to be right there in that classroom. just before the class ended Mr. Klein turned to one of the students who had not been able to speak well about either eccentrics or epicycles. The young man was an oriental, I believe (though memory may be playing tricks with me). Jasha pointed at him and said, "Mr. Chu, you are not a sinner. You need not look like a mourner. You just did not study. Tonight you will study, and tomorrow everything will be fine." Mr. Chu looked up shyly, half smiling. Those two impressions of a brilliant teacher who made it seem that some things are wholly reasonable and of a man who spoke directly to his students in such a way that they could hear have remained. Nothing in the many years of intermittent association since that time has superseded or fundamentally changed those initial impressions. During the next few years I saw Jasha on many occasions and in a number of places. Once I met him in New York, just after he had spoken in Russian on the Voice of America. It was still, I think, war-time, or shortly afterward, and there was no jamming of American broadcasts. His subject was St. John's College; the talk was part of a series on American education. We had lunch afterwards, quite appropriately, in the Russian Tea Room. When Jasha told me the subject of the broadcast, he said, "Now my worlds are coming together." That comment was appropriate and important. We are all so used to thinking-and quite rightly-of St. John's as his world, that we may forget how many other worlds he belonged to, and how easily he moved in them, always showing the same intelligence, seriousness and wit that he displayed year after year in Annapolis. For instance, his work, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, written in Germany, was published in Germany in 1934-1936, when jasha had already left that country. To publish anything by some one named Jacob Klein at such a late date was bold, even dangerous. jasha expressed admiration for those responsible, though I believe he was in disagreement, on other subjects, with one of those concerned. Their action showed how highly some people in Germany thought of his work, and how much his thought was part of what remained of German academic life. One more illustration of Jasha's essential sameness in widely different settings. At least once, though somehow I think twice, jasha came to visit Quebec while I was still living there. Once he came with Mr. and Mrs. Kaplan. Quebec was an international center then. Refugees from everywhere were there. Some were students; some were professors in the University; some simply lived there, talking of the war and planning their return to Europe when it would be over, or in some cases making plans for their part in a European future that seemed far off. 23 �The College I remember Jasha talking to two professors-one a Belgian, one a Frenchman recently escaped from extreme hardship in France. Hardship did not make him forget the manners of the French salon. There was an artful appeal to Jasha-who had gone to secondary school in Belgium-to confirm or perhaps discredit the Belgian's claim to the importance of his native and minuscule village. Jasha's response was all nuance and irony, as if his world too were that of the salon. In fact, it was the true world neither of him nor of the otl1er two. Very shortly they turned the conversation to an author named Meyerson and to the question of truth in sociology. Not long ago I met the Frenchman who took part in that conversation and he asked about the professor brought up in Belgium who talked so well about Meyerson. He remembered Jasha for what was essential in him. Berlin and Raymond Aron. What they shared was a belief in and admiration for reason as it occasionally shone on .the world of human affairs. Jasha spoke many languages easily and comfortably. What one must say is that in all of them he spoke well and about what was important to him, to his hearers, and to all of us. This last phrase alone is important. He used his power in the service of what is best in us. That is why he and his wife could give so much of themselves without weariness or condescensiori. Jasha, when he was in middle age, called himself an Averroist, with full attention to what he was saying, and with his usual seriousness about how he used language. Averroes interpreted the words of Aristotle in the de Anima to mean that when we saw something of the eternal, the imperishable, it was the living light that was shining through us. In the last public meeting where Jasha and Buchanan~so far as I know-addressed one another, Buchanan was talking of the perils to which the life of the mind was exposed. He said, "If reason lives ... " Jasha interrupted him to say ... "Reason lives." Buchanan smiled, and went on to say whatever it was he intended to say. Some seconds later he relapsed and said, "If reason is to live ... " Jasha again interrupted, "Reason lives." This time Buchanan said, with, I think some sense of what he was saying and to whom he was talking, "Yes, reason lives." J. Winfree Smith Portrait of father and son, Brussels, about 1914. This international side of Jasha is not an accidental or unimportant fact about him. No one saw through sham and low-mindedness better than he. But almost no one else that I have known believed as much as he did in the possibility of Human greatness. What he admired in Virgil and Dante (witness what he said in his lecture on them) is that there could be nobility in political action. He admired greatness where he saw it. No one but Jasha would have used the opening pages of de Gaulle's memoirs in a language tutorial. On the other hand, failure on the part of gifted men to measure up to high office offended him personally. I remember that he once said of a man who held high office, "He is very intelligent, and extremely vulgar. The combination is hard to take." No doubt Jasha thought other matters than politics were of the highest importance. He could and did say of the first seminar of the year, "This is the beginning of a great adventure, and what its result will be nobody knows." Still he remained a friend of Kojeve. He knew and admired Sir Isaiah 24 My acquaintance with Jacob Klein began in 1939 shortly after he had come to be a Tutor at St. John's and when I was a graduate student in philosophy at the University of Virginia. He came in that year to the University of Virginia to read a paper to our philosophy club. The paper was about the way the Greek mathematicians understoOd numbers and the importance of that for Greek philosophy, especially Platonic philosophy. He took us back to the sixteenth century. He made us forget all modern sophistication about numbers, look at &ptOJLot, and share with the Greeks the questions that they raised about the &pd}/Loi and that have to become our questions. He led us by simple steps to see that these questions lead to questions which are at the center of Plato's philosophizing about being, which questions are equally our questions. It was all done in a dramatic and exciting way. I mention this particular episode because it seems to me that it typifies several things about Mr. Klein as a teacher. He believed that modern thought generally has so formed us that it puts a screen between us and the world, so that it is very difficult for us to look at things simply and directly. Yet he had a remarkable ability at least to produce certain moments of such looking and a remarkable ability to lead students (and I mean to include faculty as students) to see that, whatever we may make of the answers, there are genuine questions raised by both ancient books and modern books and that those questions are inevitably our questions unless we unphilosophically simply decide to turn our backs to them. He also knew that the dialectical art needs a rhetorical art to bring these ques- �January, 1979 tions out as 1ive questions. Hence the drama and the excitement. The range of Jacob Klein's interest and understanding and learning was immense. When on his 75th birthday he was presented with a collection of essays, Mr. Kutler read a list of the titles of lectures he had given here. Those lectures covered a tremendous variety of books and themes, great poetic works such as the Iliad, the Aeneid, and the Purgatorio, dialogues of Plato, the philosophy of Aristotle, the philosophy of Leibniz, the 19th century with Hegel and the antiHegelian Hegelians, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche; and many, many more. Every one of these lectures contained something solid and something fresh. It was Mr. Klein, I believe, who was responsible for the addition of certain of the writings of Kierkegaard to our seminar list. There is one lecture he was thinking of giving, but did not give. The subject of ihat was to have been the thought of the apostle Paul. Klein and Dr. Irwin Strauss, 1972. I have already mentioned his concern with the effort to recover the insights and the questions of ancient philosophy. No doubt that concern was central, especially in recent years when his preceptorials always had to do with Platonic dialogues. Moreover, of the three books he wrote, two are about Platonic dialogues and even the third is designed to show how intimately connected the difference between ancient and modern mathematics is with the difference between ancient and modern philosophy. Insofar as we know how to read the dialogues of Plato, we have learned that from Jacob Klein, which, of course, does not mean that when we become participants in what is happening in a given dialogue we necessarily agree with him as to what is going on at some given moment. He would expect us to argue our case as tenaciously and searchingly as he would argue his. For nine years, from 1949 to 1958, he was Dean of St. John's College. As Dean he led the College to realize as it never had before the dream of Scott Buchanan. He was never one to be blind to faults and failures, and he knew very well that St. John's was far from being a perfect community of higher learning. But he knew what was good and even precious about St. John's and he embodied it in his own person and his own work. May that person and that work live in our memory. Douglas Allanbrook Mr. Allanbrook played a composition, the fifth of Five Transcendental Studies, on which he was working at the time of Mr. Klein's death. Robert S. Bart Mr. Klein was a great man. We have occasion to speak often of the greatness of books, but rarely of the greatness of men. He was a great man, not only because, as Richard Scofield said, unlike all the rest of us, he possessed genius, but because he had a great soul. He disliked even a hint of praise, not, I think, because he feared flattery, but because he always had better things to think of than himself. Nonetheless, perhaps he would not mind too much our thinking of him today. He himself thought a great deal about other people: he cared to understand them exactly. On the occasion when we met together like this to honor the memory of Victor Zuckerkandl, he spoke briefly but faithfully and vividly. Above all he hated what was pompous, inflated, sentimental. He had a distaste for the expression of feeling, perhaps because he was indeed passionate. Yct his mighty indignation rarely obscured his wonderful fairness. He was generous in judgment, liberal with his hospitality and his time. He was without pretense, though he always had many crotchets. As Mrs. Klein once said to me, and it was an extraordinary truth, he had no vanity. He must have turned upon himself that open, dark-eyed brilliant gaze, his light eyebrows slightly drawn together and curling upward in cheerful scepticism. He could lose himself better than any other man in order to enter into his passion for the College, for a text. He was the most exciting of readers, and the best of teachers. In the course of his life he loved a vast variety of young people. He said once with utmost seriousness that the most beautiful sight in the world was the face of a young person learning. As a teacher he guarded the spontaneity of thought in those who would learn from him; he could be almost cruel to anyone who would be a disciple. I knew him best when I was young myself, young enough to be disappointed that he was reluctant to talk about Plato at dinner, but young enough, too, to relish it when he and Mrs. Klein would tease one another, for all the world like Antony and Cleopatra. Some of you have heard me tell the following anecdote before. But I know he would be glad that I should tell it now. A few years ago, on one of my by then rare visits to the house, I betrayed my interest in his writing by asking him what he was doing. Instantly he replied in indignation, "Studying. Studying." As if to ask, "What else would a man be doing who had any sense?" 25 �The College "Studying," he said. Let us then all honor him always by studying, studying the world, studying the books and the men and the women in it. Robert G. Hazo '53 The year 1949 was a very long time ago, but I have no trouble at all recalling the original and enduring impression Jacob Klein made on me. His reverence for intellect was the central feature of his personality. He delighted in reason and design. In an age when humility was fashionable, he did not disguise the fact that he was a man of high intellectual pride. His artistry and dedication in the development of intellect were both obvious and acknowledged. He always managed, while many others failed, to say something important about something important. Using a language he learned only fairly late in his life, he spoke interestingly and compellingly to a wide variety of people, on an even wider variety of subjects, with a very high degree of success. I, for example, as a devoted student of his for a very long time, and then later as an equally devoted friend, never had a serious conversation with him, studied any of his books, listened to any of his lectures, read any of his correspondence (or reflected on any- of these experiences) without learning something. Since being called a real teacher is one of the best-and rarest-things that can be said of any man, saying it without qualification of the man we honor today is the best memorial I can offer him, and the one he would have most appreciated. Jacob Klein was a man who, in an altogether extraordinary degree, understood what he was dealing with in the various phases of his life and encounters. He measured a whole panoply of changing events and confused situations in political life, in the public life of this College, and in the private lives of those who passed his way, with remarkable accuracy. His judgments regularly shed light where there had been darkness. His insights (for that is what they were, flashes of intellect rather than conclusions from labored syllogisms) were frequently of astounding excellence and authenticity. I have never met anyone before or since who, in dealing with both theoretical and human material, was able to bring so much order out of chaos. I am not suggesting, through eulogistic exaggeration, the absence of error in his judgments. He understood very well how fallible human judgment is, and how sad it is to see it made subservient to rosy feeling or depression, to hopes or fears or, for that matter, any distorting emotion. The measures of his singular concern for the truth were his contempt for self-deception, in himself or others, the care with which he would draw a conclusion and, above all, his willingness to alter his views when he saw that they were not in harmony with reality. The example of his uncompromising intellectual integrity serves as a reminder of just how rare a real reverence for truth is, and also of how much discipline and courage are required to sustain it. That consistent reverence for truth was, I am sure, behind 26 his many years of devoted service to St. John's. In a very real sense he was, for a very long time, it') intellectual guardian. The result of what he accomplished through endless effort should, I believe, be recorded in high relief and given a foremost place in the annals of this College. I do not think it is any exaggeration to say that St.· John's College would not be what it is-or perhaps not even be-were it not for what he did. I loved Jasha Klein. My personal debt to him is measureless, but !loved him as much for what he was as for what he did for me. Those who were familiar with him know that his tact, his graciousness, his charm, his taste, his hospitality, his patience, his consideration for others, his unfailing sense of propriety, his constancy, and his courage set an example for all of us. The love of truth is what guided his life and the stature, weight and elevation of his work showed again and again that there is no substitute for intelligence, particularly a trained and gracious intelligence. Through it he was able to see and signal the exceptional, the noble and the excellent amidst the commonplace, the mundane and the pedestrian. With exquisite artistry and care he caused wonder for the sake of learning. He had the sharpest eye for seeing the slightest mental glint or spark, and was nothing less than a genius in cultivating it, knowing that there is mixed with our mortal dust a precious fire to nourish. I can never forget him. He was a very, very rare and special man. To find another like him I would take the brightest lantern on the brightest morning of the brightest day of the almanac and look and look and look. Barbara Dvorak Winiarski '55 I cannot speak about Mr. Klein directly, but must borrow words: "You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied, one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly-Tom's Aunt Polly, she is-and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book-which is mostly a true book; with some stretchers, as I said before. "Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece-all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher, he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round-more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize �January, 1979 me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no longer 1 lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back." A student tribute to Dean Klein, before 1958 -with a perhaps inadvertent recall of Rodin's Balzac. Eventually, of course, Huck becomes to some extent civilized. Not civilized according to the standards of the town of Hannibal, but perhaps more truly civilized than Hannibal ever dreamed of. And, in reading about his "civilizing"~the first time he is required to live according to decent standards and to attend school-we learn about the important differences between the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson, her sister. Miss Watson, "a tolerable slim old maid," was, of course, very civilized by Hannibal standards. She was ideally suitecl·to teach Sunday School, with all the unfortunate limitations therein implied. She was just about perfect at imposing restrictions. The Widow Douglas, on the other hand, would not have done to teach Sunday School in Hannibal. She had, we infer, a larger acquaintance with the world, that escaped Hannibal as a general thing. She had also a faintly raffish air that, had her ties with respectability been less substantial, Hannibal would have regarded as not quite nice ... not to say dangerous. Beyond all this, she is, I think, in all of Tom Sawyer and all of Huckleberry Finn, the one adult who combines being civilized with being interesting. And she is, perhaps not incidentally, the naturally kindest, most generous adult in both novels. Now, about Huck. He was an outcast, a friendless soul, worse than an orphan because he was tied to his natural, still-living father. The first person Huck is attracted to in Hannibal is Tom Sawyer~the only artist in town. Tom is the first person Huck knows who passes on something of the larger civilization~beyond Hannibal, beyond the Americas even~who passes on his knowledge in an inviting, a palatable, a digestible way. But Tom, being an artist, is not reliable. And Huck somehow perceives that Tom can't be relied upon in his fireworks of gorgeous information. In addition to being an artist, Tom is a hero; and Huck is his natural and innocent accomplice, not to say foil, within limits, with the result that Huck becomes a hero in his turn. As such, he is brought to the attention of the authorities. The final result is that the widow~a more substantial vessel than Tom-tmdertakes to civilize Huck, and succeeds in doing so more than anyone else can do. Mr. Klein had a very good eye for the Huckleberrys of fhe world. In turn, the Huckleberrys generally came to be very fond of him; and, by his means, came to submit to restrictions and demands which would have been unthinkable when suggested by the Miss Watsons. Because of him, we managed to get to class long enough so that the classes eventually got to us. Eventually, even we became subject to the power of discourse, which Mr. Klein once called "this marvel . . . this greatest marvel perhaps under the sun." Elliott Zuckerman I wish I had been able to consult )asha about this speech. He always knew precisely what to say on these occasions. He would have told me whether the sentiments were appropriate. He might have objected to certain words; and I would then have known that those words had to be strictly scrutinized, and probably replaced. Our friendship, indeed, was in large part based upon an interest in words. He would be indignant when they were mispronounced~and it was a joke we shared that my instinct for accenting Russian names on the wrong syllable was almost as unfailing as that of the news broadcasters he listened to every evening. Far more important was his objection to certain words even when they were pronounced correctly. It is well known that in his final years there were words that, regardless of the context, could not be used safely in his presence. At lectures, for example, he would respond to those words as though they were blemishes on the texture of the discourse. Behind this categorical rejection there lay, of 27 �The College course, the most serious concern for meaning, particularly for uncovering those unexamined misconceptions that creep in attendant upon the favorite terms of philosophical jargon. I learned from him how certain words-'reality', for example, and 'mind' -may have implications that vitiate the arguments in which they are embedded. He could have had no better justification than that he wrote so precisely himself. In the most immediate way, to be precise was to be good. Before I knew him, I had known some very articulate people. But for the most part they contented themselves with saying what they had already discovered to be easily sayable. Or they were so proud of their articulateness that they had little concern for whether what they said ought to be said. jasha, in contrast, could succeed in saying with simplicity the most profound and difficult Mr. & Mrs. Klein with the physicist, Werner Ehrenberg, about 1951. things. And he did so without ever deceiving us into thinking that those things had been easily arrived at or easily understood. Contained in his sentences is the acknowledgment that it is the simplest things, such as Being itself, that few of us ever even begin to wonder about. Hence his prose could sometimes achieve what all teachers ought to consider their highest task, which is to nurture some glimmer of that wonder. He could also write beautifUlly, as in those passages of hard-won simplicity. And he did so in a language which, according to a favorite anecdote, he didn't, when he was a young man, think he'd ever have to use. He was not concerned with the superficial decorativeness of the sound of words, and not usually with the mere charm of a metaphor. I remember that once, when he was visiting me in Santa Fe, we had a rare talk about poetry. I had just begun to see, as I think the Ion requires of us, that one's love of poetry is scarcely earned until one has entertained the possibility that we are being deeply deceived by even the greatest poetry-1 should say especially the greatest. In the discussion I was reluctant to think of Homer or Shakespeare as deceptive. I recall that jasha alluded to a kind of poetry that could be called Philosophical. I did not understand then, and I still don't 28 understand, how one could tell whether poetry was of the philosophical sort or the sort that misleads. The most obvious interpretation was that he wanted to place in a special category those aspects of the Platonic dialogues that are dramatic, or mimetic, or metaphorical, or mythical. But I wonder now whether both the words philosophical and poetic couldn't also be applied to those passages of his own in which difficult things are said simply, and in which the understatement leaves space for the beginning of wonder. The sound of those passages is that of spoken words. When I first arrived here, Jasha was engaged in reading the manuscript of the Meno book to his friends. I was too new to be among them. But fifteen years later it happened to be to me alone that he read, twice through, the manuscript of the book called Plato's Trilogy. As a kind of preliminary editor, it would have been easier for me to see the manuscript-and eventually, of course, I did have to look at it. It turned out that I wasn't very much needed as an adjustor of pronouns and commas. It was as listener that he wanted me to serve, for it was the teacher who was speaking. And in the months since he died I realize how much I miss the sound of his voice-as I heard it in the long periods of his last readings, as I heard it in those brief and clear questions he asked on the telephone, as I heard it in words of advice and encouragement. But more than the speech I shall miss the silence. Even more than the words, the silences were eloquent. I ierllember that five years ago, when I was ill and he was elderly, he visited me almost daily. There was little to say that was new or amusing, but his presence alone was touching. In his final months, when he sometimes confined himself to his upstairs room, I could, in return, visit him. There was no manuscript to read, and by then he seemed to have lost interest in what was happening at the College, or in the world. I sat there in silence while he silently rested. He would break the silence only to thank me for being there. We both knew that one thing we could never share was the love for music. But now I think of those silences as a kind of music-or, to say it more daringly, as the sort of stillness that must be the ultimate aim of even that music that moves the most. jacob Klein was never formally my teacher or officially my dean. I knew him best in his years of waning activity-the same years which have so far counted as the second half of my adult life. I heard the stories of his thoughtful and worldly early years, of his importance as a scholar, of his inspiration as a teacher, of his strength as dean-and some of the qualities that marked those eras were still remarkably present up until almost the very end. The true end of his life-the telos, which is, as he often said when talking about Aristotle, the beginning-that end is still alive in the people he has taught and those whom they in turn shall teach. But he was not allowed to die as Socrates died. There was a brief and final decline that preceded the ending of his life. It was difficult to watch, and until very recently I found it hard to find my way behind the mask of death. Yet at the same time I feel that there was a certain privilege in witnessing the end. What that is I find it hard to articulate. Part of it was to notice the echoes and reminders of his wisdom and his humanity. But �January, 1979 perhaps my sense of privilege has to do with something I learned mostly from Jasha himself: that one must try to see things in their wholeness. Right now the final days seem mysterious to me. I still feel haunted by them, and I feel bereft. Eva T. H. Brann A memorial meeting such as this, which is intended at once to confirm and to foil a death, seems the proper occasion for careful and clear-eyed recollection of the man we have lost. He was, first and last, every inch a teacher, a teacher who stymied discipleship in the very effort to induce learning. He did, indeed, have some teachings to convey-a few, though those were powerful and of large consequence; above all, the understanding of the arithmetic structure of being set out in his book on the origin of algebra. But these doctrines, central as they were, were obvious; obvious, that is, once they had been told. It is doubtful that they would have been soon discovered without him. As they went home in their obviousness, they displayed their originality. They were not cleverly fabricated by reference to the opinions of others, but direct and deep. As they were original, they were faithful, faithful to the text of which they were interpretations. For he spent his most characteristic effort in recovering the way to the conversations of that most artfully communicative lover of wisdom whom he followed. Yet as his readings were faithful, they were fresh, as immediately the thought of jacob Klein as of Socrates. His way into the dialogues was emphatically not a method. He insisted that each had to be approached in its own terms. But as he shunned unthinking method, he practiced unfailing meticulousness. His manuscripts, written in a small, fine hand, were thickly annotated with precise references to the text. Nonetheless, for all this carefulness, he was blithe to cut sweeping swaths through the blind thickets of scholarship. In sum, his learning was at once inimitable and influential for the reason that it did no more and no less than rouse a sort of recollection. I often ask myself whether I learned anything or everything from him. He was solid; he possessed himself what in his commentary on the Meno he called a solid soul, that is to say, a soul with dimensions enough for inward depth. Yet as he was solid he was plain and also playful, inventive in the explanatory and evocative devices of the talented teacher. He preserved the humaneness of his energy by reserving it for a small community, for this college; he chose this life in accord with the verse of the Preacher spoken on a mellow Maryland summer day at his grave site, as close as could be to our campus: The words of the wise man are heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools. In behalf of his school he was fiercely parochial, though by personal and political fate the complete cosmopolitan, a wanderer who in spirit never gave up his Nansen passport, determinedly unrooted. And yet he achieved a home, the most Jacoh Klein about the age of 6 in Russia with grandparents. comfortable and animated, hospitable and private domesticity anyone could wish for. He was fully free from his own time, but as he was free of it, he was a most knowledgeable contemporary, a passionate bystander who listened to the hourly news as one appointed to be the world's monitor. As his world was large, he cherished immobility and its accumulations. His study was the repository of sacrosanct piles of undusted and outdated documents. He was altogether an indoor man, who would take the car from Market Street to campus, but he was light and supple, and could break into a sudden caper. In looks he was at once small and grand, soft and manly; in bearing he could be excitedly mobile and regally dignified. He lived a life bare of all esthetic paraphernalia, but he was the most sensually appreciative of men, not least, of all the pleasures of the table. Caught off guard, he would admit that he had no ear for music, but he loved epic poetry, especially the spacious warmth of Russian novels. He spoke English with a soft, gravelly Russian accent, and he wrote it in a strong, sound style. As his life's preoccupation was the wonder of the word, so he battled with ever-fresh fury it' smart and thoughtless perversions. In the small world he had chosen he was ubiquitous. As dean he would station himself at the bottom of the McDowell stairs to take the pulse of the place. Yet he was devoid of all intrusive curiosity and his gossip was without smallness. He suffered his own fools gladly and met youthful contentiousness with sweet serenity, but he could be royally irascible with incompetent meddlers. 29 �The College He came conveniently equipped with those eccentricities-he called them his pathologies-which are the joy of student communities, and he was balanced and sane-the Greeks would say, sound-minded-above anyone; he was harmonious in his oppositions. He could be shamelessly affected by others' grief, and he could be stonily unforgiving when the bounds had been overstepped. He was coolly reserved in the face of pretentious impertinence, but his usual way was the warmest, most irresistible pedagogic eros. And finally, he was in birth and in appearance unmistakably a Jew, but his soul belonged to that unending enterprise which has its origins among the Greeks. He was a man, take him for all in all, we shall not see his like again. * ' * * * In conclusion Mr. Weigle read Miss Eva Brann's and Brother Robert Smith's tribute to Jacob Klein, adopted by the faculty on September 6, 1978: All students who had the good fortune of being in his classes remember him as the best of teachers. All members of the College felt the inspiration of his wise guidance. None can forget the depth of his intellect, his passion for learning, his love for the young, and his care for his colleagues. He wrote three books: Greek Mathematics and the Origin of Algebra, A Commentary on Plato's Meno, and Plato's Trilogy, as well as many essays and lectures. But for him philosophy was never so much a matter of books as a living conversation. In his modesty he would have refused a comparison which the whole community felt: that he was, like Socrates, able to elicit from his friends truths beyond their own expectations. An Unspoken Prologue to a Public Lecture at St. John's by Leo Strauss The common sense of mankind has granted old men certain privileges in order to compensate them for the infirmities of old age or to make it easier for them to indulge those infirmities. Not the least of these privileges is the permission granted to old men to speak about themselves in public more freely than young men can in propriety do. I have always regarded it as both an honor and a pleasure to come to St. John's to lecture and to meet faculty members and students. But I also had a private reason for enjoying my journeys to St. John's. St. John's harbors-it is a perfect harbor for-my oldest friend, Jacob Klein. Permit me to pay homage to Mr. Klein on the present occasion, the first occasion after his sixtieth birthday. What I intend to do I regard as an act of duty, Leo Strauss sent this statement to Jacob Klein on April 7, 1960. Published by the kind permission of the Executor of the Estate of Leo Strauss. 30 although of a pleasant duty. Yet however innocent our actions may be as regards their intentions, the circumstances in which they are performed may cloak those actions with an appearance of malice. In such a situation one must not be squeamish and still do one's duty. In addition-such is the complexity of the things of the heart-even if we are virtuous men, we may derive some pleasure from the appearance of malice, provided we keep within certain bounds. In the present case the appearance of malice arises from Mr. Klein's idiosyncratic abhorrence of publicity-of anything which even remotely reminds of the limelight. I always found that Mr. Klein went somewhat too far in this but all too justified abhorrence. When we were in our twenties we worked every day during a longish period for some hours in the Prussian State Library in Berlin, and we relaxed from our work in a coffee house close by the Library. There we sat together for many hours with a number of other young men and talked about everything which came to our mind-mixing gravity �January, 1979 Klein (upper left) in Marburg, 1923? 1924? The man in the center with his right hand up to the side of his face is Nikolai Hartmann, Professor of Philosophy at Marburg. Hartmann played a major part in bringing Heideggcr to Marburg about this time .. and levity in the proportion in which youth is likely to mix them. As far as Mr. Klein was concerned, there was, I am tempted to say, only one limit: we must not appear to the public as young men cultivating their minds; let us avoid at all costs-this was his silent maxim-the appearance that we are anything other than idle and inefficient young men of business or of the lucrative professions or any other kind of drones. On such occasions I derived enjoyment from suddenly exclaiming as loudly as I could, say, "Nietzsche!" and from watching the anticipated wincing of Mr. Klein. Nothing affected us as profoundly in the years in which our minds took their lasting directions as the thought of Heidegger. This is not the place for speaking of that thought and its effects in general. Only this much must be said: Heidegger, who surpaSses in speculative intelligence all his contemporaries and is at the same time intellectually the counterpart of what Hitler was politically, attempts to go a way not yet trodden by anyone, or rather to think in a way in which philosophers at any rate have never thought before. Certain it is that no one has questioned the premises of philosophy as radically as Heidegger. While everyone else in the young generation who had ears to hear was either completely overwhelmed by Heiclegger, or else, having been almost completely overwhelmed by him, engaged in well-intentioned but ineffective rear-guard actions against him, Klein alone saw why Heidegger is truly important by uprooting and not simply rejecting the tradition of philosophy, he made it possible for the first time after many centuries-one hesitates to say how manyto see the roots of the tradition as they are and thus perhaps to know what so many merely believe, that those roots are the only natural and healthy roots. Superficially or sociologically speaking, Heidegger was the first great German philosopher who was a Catholic by origin and by training; he thus had from the outset a pre-modern familiarity with Aristotle; he thus was protected against the danger of trying to modernize Aristotle. But as a philospher Heidegger was not a Christian: he thus was not tempted to understand Aristotle in the light of Thomas Aquinas. Above all, his intention was to uproot Aristotle: he thus was compelled to disinter the roots, to bring them to light, to look at them with wonder. Klein was the first to understand the possibility which Heidegger had opened without intending it: the possibility of a genuine return to classical philosophy, to the philosophy of Aristotle and of Plato, a return with open eyes and in full clarity about the infinite difficulties which it entails. He turned to the study of classical philosophy with a devotion and a love of toil, a penetration and an intelligence, an intellect~al probity and a sobriety in which no contemporary equals him. Out of that study grew his work which bears the title "Greek Logistics and the Genesis of Algebra." No title could be less expressive of a man's individuality cmcl even of a man's intention; and yet if one knows Klein, the title expresses perfectly his individuality, his idiosyncrasy mentioned before. The work is much more than a historical study. But even if we take it as a purely historical work, there is not, in my opinion, a contemporary work in the history of philosophy or science or in "the history of ideas" generally speaking which in intrinsic worth comes within hailing distance of it. Not indeed a proof but a sign of this is the fact that less than half a dozen people seem to have read it, if the inference from the number of references to it is valid. Any other man would justly be blamed for misanthropy, if he did not take care that such a contribution does not remain inaccessible to everyone who does not happen to come across volume III of section B of"Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematik, Astronomic und Physik" and in addition does not read German with some fluency. One cannot blame Klein because he is excused by his idiosyncrasy. I hope that you, faculty and students of St. John's, do not accuse me of trespassing if I say: soine man or body of men among you should compel Klein, if need be by starving him into submisSion, to close his eyes while you arrange for a decent English translation and its publication. The necessity for this is in no way diminished by the fact that Mr. Klein is said to prepare now a new book which may contain a very long footnote giving the first intelligent account of the Platonic dialogue and which will probably be entitled Mathematics in the Curriculum of the School of Gorgias. But it was not in order to make to you the foregoing suggestion that I made these prefatory remarks: I ask you to rise and join me in giving Mr. Klein an ovation. 31 �The College About Jacob Klein's Books About Plato* by William O'Grady The best human being Plato knew or could imagine spent his life thinking and conversing and wrote nothing down. Plato himself made more than thirty thought-things which have endured and become part of the world. Of these writings Plato wrote (Second Letter) that they are not his, but rather belong to "Socrates who has become new and beautiful". The Dialogues exist when Socrates becomes new and beautiful, that is, when under his inspiration living conversation comes to be. The Dialogues exist fully only when they pass away as written works. But first they must be encountered as written works, as made things, wholes with parts, dramas with decisive moments. jacob Klein's two books about Plato, A Commentary on Plato's Meno and Plato's Trilogy, help us more than any other books I know, both to encounter the Dialogues as made things and to remember that living speech-conversation between people who are trying to understand important matters-is better, more truthful, than anything that can be written down. That they are so helpful has many causes, but one of them is a certain clarity about the wrongness of trying to do in writing what can be done truthfully only in living speech. By this I mean that the great insights in his books-which are simple, definite and, I think, undeniable, though very few of us, if any, would have come to them without his helpare emphatically not conclusions or solutions: they settle nothing. Rather they are beginnings, at once secure and exciting, of a wondering reflection that requires to be worked out in endless conversation. By taking the dialogues seriously as made things, by noticing, counting, remembering, checking, comparing, and being ready to smile, he is able to make sense of much in them that is otherwise merely baffling and even tedious. But he does not clear up what we were wondering about. Rather our wonder is educated, directed to where *Jacob Klein, A Commentary on Plato's Meno {Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965). - - - - - · Plato's Trilogy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977). 32 it will do the most good, provided with simple and direct words so that the question to be faced is distorted as little as may be. I shall give three examples from the Meno book. First, the dependence of image upon original is the model proposed by Plato for trying to understand the relation of visible and tangible beings to beings in speech and thought. Second, the slave boy questioned by Socrates has a choice in answering but the choice is not between "yes" and "no"; rather it is between answering in submission to the necessity inherent in the matter itself and revealed by his thinking, and answering "personallY", that is, in a way determined by the memories, desires, hopes and fears that are uniquely his. Third, in order to understand "rcco11ection" as a descent of the soul into itself beyond memory (the ana of anamnesis and analabein indicating "up" as well as "again"), one must be able to speak unapologetically of the depth of souls, so that the likely story of the Timaeus attempts to show that "depth", a "third dimension", is somehow intelligible as prior to body: to speak of souls having depth is no more metaphorical, no more derivative, than speaking of bodies having depth. Such insights as these clearly cannot become part of a system; but to have made them, in some measure, one's own, is to have learned something unforgettable about what is truly worthy of wonder, and of discussion. What is true of the Meno book is true of Plato's Trilogy. In the Theatetus, Sophist and Statesman (with the Parmenides somehow present), it could appear that we are concerned not so much with the being of the learning soul, as in the Meno, but rather with the ruling beginnings or sources of Being itself. But this appearance is somewhat deceptive. For although it turns out that there is evidence, beautifully assembled by Mr. Klein, that Aristotle was right in saying that Plato posited two ruling beginnings (how after all could Aristotle have been wrong?-Mr. Klein must have spent a great deal of time imagining what it was like when Plato and Aristotle talked together, as they did for twenty years), the remarkable fact is that Plato called these ruling beginnings by a variety of �names. For one of the two sources "beyond Being" he used the names: the Good, the One, the Same, the Limit and the Precise itself. "Which of these words is chosen depends upon the context in which it is used" (p. 174). For example, in the Statesman the context is provided by "the faultiness and imprecision that pervades the conversation." "Why is there so much stress on faultiness and inaccuracy in the drama of the dialogue? Is it not because the theme of statesmanship requires it? There is nothing that imposes a greater burden on human lives than faulty statesmanship, and no greater fault than that which occurs in governing states" (p. 161). Thus the context is always determined by the particular inquiry of the learning soul. Because it is a learning soul, it cannot say that one of these contexts is simply prior to the others, hence that one name is most revealing. It is far too much in the middle of things to be able to do that. That is why, although for Plato "at any time of his adult life" (p. 6) as much as for Aristotle, the question is the question concerning Being, for Plato there can be no systematic metaphysics. Mr. Klein's great thought is that the question concerning Being is inseparable, not from the question concerning soul in general (still less, of course, from the question concerning the Transcendental I), but from the question concerning the learning soul. What the learning soul might be shows itself as now Meno, now the slave boy, now we ourselves, respond to the injunction to make an attempt, to try to "recollect", to try to think "impersonal1y" about the question we face rather than being dominated by the "menonic" memory of which "all of us have a share" (Meno book, p. 188) .. The response to this injunction is an utterly personal matter, and in it human excellence is at stake and Being somehow comes to light. �The College St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Non-profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 66 Lutherville, Md. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollegemagazine Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 32 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The College, January 1979 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1979-01 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Radista, Leo Parran, Jr., Thomas von Oppen, Beate Ruhm Brann, Eva T. H. Description An account of the resource Volume XXX, Number 2 of The College. Published in January 1979. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0010-0862 The_College_Vol_30_No_2_1979 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/1af51b700969c9379f5e8d0303b1e0a7.pdf f4a4f393e3faca6fcc6943ee013f0e7e PDF Text Text �THE COLLEGE Volume XXXI July, 1979 Number I The Great Electrical Philosopher, by Howard J. Fisher .................................. . Odysseus Among the Phaiakians, by William O'Grady . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Kant's Empiricism, by Arthur Collins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Some Classical Poems of the Tang and Sung Dynasties, translated by Julie Landau . . . . . . . . . . . 25 For Bert Thoms, by Eva Brann, Janet Christhilf O'Flynn, Patricia Pittis Sonnesyn, Leo Raditsa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Don Giovanni, or the Triviality of Seduction, by Wye Jamison Allanbrook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Inner and Outer Freedom, by Eva Brann..................................... . . . . . . . . . 43 The Collapse of Democracy at Athens and the Trial of Socrates, by Leo Raditsa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 German Resistance to Hitler: Elites and Election, by Beate Ruhm von Oppen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 R. G. Collingwood, An Autobiography, review by Fred Baumann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 R. F. Christian, ed., Tolstoy's Letters, review by Laura Bridgman.......................... 62 Talking With Pictures: 'Les Bandes Dessinecs', by John Dean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Letters ............................................................... Inside back cover Editor: Leo Raditsa Managing Editor: 1-1IOmas Parran, Ten Years Jr. Consulting Editors: Eva Brann, Beatc Ruhm von Oppen, Curtis A. Wilson. THE COLLI:<~Gg is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's <Allege, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Richard D. Weigle, President, Edward G. Sparrow, Dean. Published twice yearly, usually in January and July. Front cover reproduced from Michael Faraday, Experimental Researches in Electricity III, London, !855. © 1979, St. John's College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. With this issue The College completes its first ten years. Whatever good will become of it in the future will owe a good deal to the skill and tenacity of my predecessors, Laurence Berns, Malcolm Wyatt, Robert Spaeth, and Beale Ruhm von Oppen-and to Tom Parran, who has seen to the demands of organization for the past six years. I have opened several departments: Between the Old and the New which deals with books that are not forgotten but are not or are not yet classics; At Home and Abroad which means to look both at the world right around us but not in our books, and the other worlds beyond the seas and to the north and south of us whose distance tests the understanding; Recent Readings which will look at books new enough to start the critical faculties of the plainspoken. I should like to publish a series of essays on almost forgotten authors of genius, of which there are a great many (Clarendon, Simon Bolivar, Cavour, Giannone, Lucan, Mirabeau-to name a few at random), and on authors more remembered than read. There is space for poems and narrative.-L.R. �The Great Electrical Philosopher Howard J. Fisher In 1965 I attended a gathering whose guests also included tremendous weight in his account to two of its aspects: first, Jacob Klein. During a quiet moment in the evening, so quiet the establishing of natural laws; and second, the application there was no possibility that the incident could escape unnoticed, Mr. Klein fixed me in his sight and demanded, to natural phenomena of analytic mathematics. So impressive "Who is your hero?" have become in our time the almost unquestioned paradigms of our intellectual powers. Now I did not then believe that I had any heroes; moreover, I had been educated, if that is the word, according to a fashion which he1d that there were no heroes-there were opinions and deeds, to be sure, and these were to be judged, affirmed or denied-but the individuals who happened to affirm those opinions or to accomplish those deeds had only a very loose, accidental, and dispensable relation to them. Had one of their number never been born, it was sometimes af- have been the achievements of these twin endeavors that they Though I cannot easily explain why I think these are false paradigms, why they are at best narrow and at worst stultifying, I can at least invite you to share with me the reading of a scientific work which is utterly different in character yet no less a part of our own time. In Faraday's laboratory, experiments do not generally issue in "laws." In his writing, moreover, descriptions of things are always in English prose, firmed, someone else would have come upon the scene, with never in that pure syntax of symbols which is algebra. If I about the same effect upon the world's history. What a surprise, therefore, to hear myself reply to Mr. Klein's question, after only slight hesitation, with the name "Thomas Jefferson." This answer actually proved to be a good one. Jefferson has turned out to be one of my heroes indeed, remember rightly there is not a single equation to be found anywhere in the Experimental Researches, or even (it has and there are others too. I am here tonight to say something about one of the others-that is Michael Faraday, styled "the great electrical philosopher" by the man who is responsible for Maxwell's Equations. Faraday's Experimental Researches in Electricity is the title of a three-volume collection of reports of his experimentation and speculation about electrical matters during the period been said) 1 a statement of the kind that one would want to put into the form of an equation! Instead there are accounts-reaHy, histories-of the actions of electric and magnetic powers. These are not forensically arranged so as to eliminate this hypothesis while confirming that one, nor are they linked as the confirmations of predictions which were deduced from stated premises. But they are episodically linked, one theme or subject continually evolving, suggesting another, reappearing in a new form or with new associations, until at last we begin to feel that the story told gives a likely from 1831 to 1855. It is a remarkable record of discoveries and also of the designing and construction of all sorts of ingenious experimental apparatus. It is the account of a mam- account of what the actors and agencies did; but, more important, it reveals who and what they are. moth investigation into things in the heavens and under the out equations, without proofs or theorems-why, anyone can Someone might say, patronizingly, "A physics book with- earth-things which, as I hope to show you, defy in every read it!" If it is true that anyone can read Faraday, that is of way the notions of science which were then, and stili are, in vogue. If someone were to give an account of what the scientific course a good thing. And if true, it is not because the absence of algebra makes Faraday's book an easy book. It is at least as difficult to read the Experimental Researches as it is to read Don Quixote. Or, for another comparison, Thomas Simpson once said that Faraday wrote like no one so much as like enterprise is, I suppose he would be unusual who did not give A lecture read on January 16, 1976, at Annapolis, and on MayS, 1978, at Santa Fe. Aeschylus. That remark was, for me, the single most helpful guide to the study of Faraday's writings. Our knowledge of nature has become for us nearly the same as our mathematical and symbolic understanding of na- �The College lure. We can, I think, just barely imagine what it might be like if things were otherwise, by conceiving the bygone age of forms, and disposes both before our eyes and in secret. If we can only view the exercise of natural agencies we will have which Socrates told Phaedrus: 2 "a time when men were con- science~that tent to listen to oaks and rocks." (That is, I understand, a known. is, knowledge in the presence of the thing time when our apprehension of nature and divinity was im- mediate.) In our time we don't do much listening to the oaks and the rocks, but we speak, powerfully and often beautifully, about them. This our speech has become our science. Like all speech it is symbolic~but where do the symbols, with which we weave prize-winning explications of nature, come from? Since the rise of the- scientific laboratory as a social institution, this question has only one answer: the symbols adequate to natural appearances arise out of experience. This pronouncement is the manifesto of the scientific labo- ratory, and from it follows the genesis of the laboratory as an institution dedicated to the deliberately artful and exhaustive production of experience and its interpretation. II. Seeing At the very opening of the Nineteenth Series of experimental researches, in the year 1845, Faraday takes the Indeed what we really want is the one true physical signification of that which is rendered apparent to us by the phenomena and the laws governing them. (3303) But it requires the exercise of considerable ingenuity to put ourselves in the position where we can observe nature, and more ingenuity still to read aright the fascinating interplay of powers and effects, to see them as they really are and not just as a list, however accurate, of descriptions and laws about them. For Faraday, science requires more than accuracy or even generality. It demands a species of "agreement" between nature and our representations of it, an agreement which I think it is fair to say has for Faraday nothing less than visual similarity as its paradigm. A visual emphasis is meant, I think, by the word "agree" in his declaration: opportunity to correct a misapprehension that had arisen over his use of the title, "The Illumination of Magnetic Lines of Force." Apparently it was thought that he claimed to have rendered the lines of force luminous. "This was not within my thought," he explains. I intended to express that the line of magnetic force is iJluminated as the earth is iJJuminated by the sun, or the spider's web iJJuminatecl by the astronomer's lamp. Employing a ray of light we can tell, by the eye, the direction of the magnetic lines through a body; and by the alteration of the ray and its optical effect on the eye, can see the course of the lines just as we can see the course of a thread of glass, or any other transparent substance, rendered visible by light; and this is what I meant by illumination . . . . (Zl46n.) 3 Thus does Faraday express, in a footnote, what is in fact for him the paradigm of science: to make visible to the eye the powers of nature. In the almost comical misunderstanding which called it forth we can glimpse a striking difference between Faraday and the scientific community at large, for while some of his readers thought he was announcing the achievement of a new electrical effect, namely "glowing lines" -and this was scarcely an unjustified expectation to have of the most celebrated experimentalist of the day~ Faraday's real intentiori. was to announce a new exhibition of magnetic actions which up to then had been hidden; it is just this disclosure of what was formerly only surmised that marks the opportunity for scientific knowledge. Nature acts, trans- z When the natural truth and the conventional representation of it most closely agree, then are we most advanced in our knowledge. (3075)4 Now the science of the philosophers-of-science usually turns out to be divided into two steps. First the facts, the "data"; and second our reasonings and analyses upon them. The "data" are not general, or even intelligible, that is to say they are low. And yet they are supposed to have the authority of Minos to consign the "high" inteJlectual theories either to long life or to oblivion. This, .I say, is the science of the philosophers-of-science, but the science of the philosophers is not like this. Though Faraday certainly respects a difference between "speculation" and what he calls "the strict line of reasoning" (3243), this is not the difference that is alleged to obtain between theories on the one hand, and facts on the other. I think that for Faraday the scientific enterprise has, really, only one part, and that I would call interpretation. What is interpretation? First, it is sightful. It is concerned with things that are before us and which lay hold of us, calling forth surmises and anticipations. Second, it is re-creative, for the things which unfold to interpretive sight represent themselves in images which collect and associate the multiple articulations of appearance into a rhythm of emphasis, as the accented syllables both collect and articulate the spoken word. Thirdly, it is rhetorical, for it attempts to elicit for the things of nature the assent and trust of the intellect. The activity by which we interpret is not homogeneous, it is not always strictly under our control. Sometimes we have to construct new arrangements of things, sometimes we only attend to what is already there. But we are always, always looking. �July, 1979 The deliberate exercise of the senses, aided by appropriate .\ artifice, for the sake of interpretation of nature, is the express mark of the scientific laboratory. Ill. The Image The single most powerful, influential, and controversial image in the Experimental Researches is certainly that of the "line of force." With respect to this image, I am going to assert a claim which will seem excessive and romantic, and about which it will b~ difficult to be persuasive. For I will claim that this image of the line of force has a career. It does not remain the same with itself but evolves, and through it the magnetic phenomena from which it derives show more and more their true identity. Furthermore I will claim that this evolution of imagery is found within the phenomena themselves, and not introduced from the outside by the Figure 2: (Adapted from Faraday). writer's craftiness or prejudice. At every stage, including the last, the imagery that Faraday employs constitutes a vision in the first shows a single "line of force" being traced with a which the natural powers proclaim themselves to us; so that compass needle by moving the compass always in the direc- science is achieved when the phenomena explain themselves. tion to which its needle points (Fig. I). The second shows a Later I will return to his view of the phenomena, but now let us mark the first stage in the story of the lines of magnetic force. When they first appear in Faraday's accounts the lines are thought of as nothing real. They are only the materials for complete pattern of lines as indicated by iron filings scattered a simile, a mere construct by the imagination out of the successive orientations of iron filings or smal1 compass needles in regions surrounding a magnetic body. Here are two pictures: over a sheet of paper that conceals a bar magnet beneath it (Fig. 2). These are lovely and intriguing shapes; but of course we hasten to remind ourselves that there is nothing really there that has shape; no more than when a bouncing ball leaves behind it, as its wake, an ethereal series of inverted parabolas. So at least is the teaching of Newtonian mechanics which holds, rightly, that form without material is not physical but purely mathematical; but holds wrongly, in my opinion, that "material" is little hard massy particles which are capable of sustaining forces-so that where there is no matter there are neither forces nor shapes. Newtonian principles teach us that each end of the compass needle is subject simultaneously to two forces, one attractive and one repulsive, and that it is the combination of these, in their action upon the needle, that in every place establishes the direction of attraction. The "shape" that we find in the curve is not the shape of anything, and therefore not a shape at all, but only a kind of continuous chronicle of the successive directions in which a needle may be urged. The actual forces are completely dependent upon the presence, in each position, of a material body for them to act upon. So according to the Newtollian way the magnetic curves are nothing in themselves. They are neither powers nor the vehicles of powers. They are not even appearances, for they can never be made wholly apparent-they can at most be indicated piecemeal by discrete bits of matter. To the physicist they are useful, possibly, as a mnemonic or as an aid to the imagination; but no more than that. This view of the lines of force as a merely temporary aid to the thinker is a view which-excepting a few of Faraday's readers such as Kelvin and Maxwell-remained dominant in Figure 1 the scientific world during his lifetime. We will now ignore 3 �The College that Newtonian assessment, and return again to view the line-patterns of the magnet, for in truth they are very inviting, and interesting questions arise concerning them. First question: In what do the lines terminate? Are there active puddles or points within or on the surface of the magnet? If we could make a magnet small enough, would the lines all come together at two points, as the "magnetic pole" theory seems to hold? Second question: Where do those lines go which extend beyond the limits of the drawing? Do they eventually return to the magnet, or do they terminate somewhere else? Need they terminate at all? Third question: Why don't the lines cross or touch each other? Can they move? If one moves, do they all move? Even if we admit that the meaning of the lines of force at this stage is only a pointing, we may still ask, at what do the pointers point? The Newtonians have their answer: the pointers attempt to point at the (distant) sources of force that act upon them; only, because they are simultaneously acted upon from two different directions, the needles point to neither one but to some direction in between, favoring whichever pole is the nearer. But I think we can admit another interpretation, not only in harmony with the shapes of the curves, but even suggested by them: namely, that the needles point, but not to some distant center of attraction; rather they point along the axis of some structure or process which exists right where they are, in their own neighborhood, and which also has a character everywhere else, though the needle not be there to show it. A compass needle would in this way be interpreted more nearly like a weathervane. A weathervane does not really point at the distant source of the wind, you know, but it turns so as to lie in whatever direction the wind happens to be blowing in its own immediate vicinity. To make this comparison is to reverse the order of discovery and to make the curves in some sense prior to the -iron filings! Those doctrines of scientific methodology called "operationalism" would be most censorious of this reversal. But why shouldn't we do it? If we attend to the curves themselves, and do not continue to give decisive weight to the accident that they were first understood only through the actions of compass needles, who would fail to be moved by their legible character of form, or fail to respond to them as he would to any other interesting natural object? Faraday makes just such a response, and he is moved to do so by the discovery of a new kind of magnetism, "diamagnetism," which differs from ordinary magnetism in this way. When an ordinary magnetic body, such as an iron filing or needle, is placed within the influence of a magnet and left free to turn it will "point," as I have said, along paths which ultimately tend toward the polar regions of the magnet. What Faraday discovered was that whereas needles of iron, nickel, platinum, and other materials which had been recognized as magnetic would point axially, toward the north and south poles, there were a number of substances (2253, 2996) which pointed in the perpendicular direction, that is, equatorially (Fig. 3). A compass needle made not of iron but of bismuth, 4 Eguotoviol~ Axially Figure 3 for example, would always point east-and-west! It is even true that most materials turn out to be of this "diamagnetic" character, although their pointing tendencies are so weak it is not surprising that it was the magnetism of iron~from now on called "paramagnetism" by Faraday-which people noticed first. Other diamagnetic materials listed by Faraday include water, iodine, caffeine, sealing wax, bread, apple, leather, mutton, and fresh beef (2280). All of these substances point equatorially when formed into tubelike shapes and suspended between the faces of a magnet. How is this "pointing" to be understood? One of the reasons I delight in reading Faraday's experimental histories is that he is so sure-footed in asking questions. His writings also betray an instructive caution about what a question is. He very seldom asks a question in words, and when he does it its usually in a context that he calls "speculative." When he engages in "speculation" it is always with cautions and warnings to the reader. Questions asked in words arc dangerously self-moving; because they have the appearance of rightly dividing the world and its alternatives, they give rise to disputes and doctrines that have a logic of their own and leave nature behind. It is far better to ask questions without words, and this is what Faraday does again and again, and it is this activity that really constitutes "experiment": he asks questions in practice. The "question" about diamagnetism is, whether pointing is the key to its understanding. Is diamagnetism (or' paramagnetism, for that matter) essentially a power to point, or is it something else? The question arises tacitly, because while observing the pointing behavior of a bismuth bar he noticed also another effect, a recession of the bar as a whole from the magnet's pole faces (2259), (Fig. 4a). �July, 1979 By "conducting power" Faraday intends to express-with the usual cautions about hypothetical speaking-the "capability which bodies may possess of effecting the transmission of magnetic force" (2797). So we should judge those to be the better conductors which sidle up towards the places of greatest magnetic force, and the poorer that are displaced from there (2798). Quickly, however, the imagery of the lines of force begins to direct the discussion; to effect the transmission of magnetic force is to conduct the lines of force; so those conductors are better which gather up the lines of force, conveying more of them onward through a given space. And those conductors are worse which gather up fewer, or even disperse the lines of force within themselves (2807). Here is a picture to show the difference (Fig. 5). I I I I I I (a.) (b) Figure 4: In (a), bar does not hang vertically but recedes from the pole. In (b), ball cannot "point" but nevertheless recedes. v Are the causes of pointing and of recession one and the same? If so, under which aspect will we see most clearly the meaning of diamagnetism? This question is not even spoken: instead Faraday proceeds immediately to substitute a small bismuth ball (2266, 2298) in place of the bar (Fig. 4b). A ball is radially symmetrical and hence cannot "point," but it can approach or recede as a whole; and in a series of trials Faraday succeeds in formulating what he calls the "ruling principle" of the motion: that diamagnetic material tends to go by the nearest course from stronger to weaker points of magnetic force (2300). Diamagnetism under this aspect, the aspect of migration from strongly-magnetic regions to weaker ones, takes precedence over and interprets the action of pointing, for if the portions of material dispose themselves into the weaker regions the result will be, in an elongated body, that it points away from the strong, polar regions. Faraday explicitly subordinates pointing to migrating in this passage: The cause of the pointing of t11e bar ... is now evident. It is merely a result of the tendency of the particles to ~110ve outwards, or into the position of weakest magnetic action. (2269) In the same way, paramagnetism is viewed as migration towards the regions of strongest magnetic action. Yet the account docs not rest here. The interpretation of diamagnetism and paramagnetism as migration is itself transcended, this time with the aid of another image according to which bodies are viewed as magnetic conductors. The refinement of this image of "conducting power" accomplishes finally that reversal of priority which I indicated before, namely, that reversal by which the lines of force acquire more explanatory power than the bodies which first made them manifest. " a.\ 0 \ j/ aI I Figure 5 Faraday does not take pains to distinguish them, but there are two different manifestations of this gathering power. If the conducting bodies be stable and fixed, inspection shows that the lines of force are drawn towards the better conductors (2807), while, if the bodies are free to move, they will migrate as described before, the better conductors occupying those positions in which the greatest concentrations of lines of force are found. I think I know why Faraday does not labor to distinguish the two cases: it is because to do so would require license to promote matter over lines of force, or lines of force over matter; and he has no cause to do either. Material body, on the one hand, and the lines of force, on the other, stand forth on a perfectly equal footing. It is as much correct to say that lines of force are drawn along by the iron as it is to say that the iron is enmeshed and entangled in a web of force. We have completed a miniature Odyssey of successive reinterpretations, viewing the magnetic actions first as instances of pointing, then of migration, then under the image of conducting power, and finally as a gathering up of the lines of force. In this evolution the image of the lines of force has become increasingly dominant and indispensable; while the role played by matter in the magnetic story has correspondingly diminished. Even the image of "gathering up" does not exalt the gatherer over the gathered, for as I have just explained, the materials march to the tune of the lines of force just as readily as do the lines of force follow the lead of their material partners. The relations between matter and lines of force are those of mutual action, stress, and equilib- 5 �The College rium. They are no different from the relations that obtain between matter and matter, or between one line of force and another. The new-found equality between material bodies and lines of foree is the heart of a thoroughgoing reinterpretation of matter. The same considerations, moreover, will lead equally to a reinterpretation of space. All the magnetic experiments prior to the Twenty-eighth Series of experimental researches-that is, prior to the use of the Moving Wirerepresent moments in the evolution and employment of the image of the "gathering and dispersing" of lines of foree; and they culminate in the simultaneous reinterpretation of matter and, by necessity, space. When I speak Of a reinterpretation of matter, I should make clear that I mean in respect of its relation to force. In the Newtonian mechanics, matter was always invoked as the seat of action of, and reaction to, any force. Even when forces were thought to act "at a distance," as in gravitation, the primary phenomena to which the laws of foree applied were the actions of bodies upon bodies. This situation might have sufficed if the only "distance" force had been the gravitational one, for all matter gave rise to and was subject to gravitation. But the attempt to include magnetic and electric forces into Newton's mechanics, forces to whose influence not all bodies were subject, naturally 1;1ade it imperative to formulate a theory of the relation between certain species of matter and the forces that were specific to them. In his 1854 paper' on magnetic philosophy Faraday expounded and criticized three theories of magnetic action, two of which are what I have been calling Newtonian, for they portray matter as the foundation of relations of force. One of these Newtonian treatments is Coulomb's theory which, positing active powers of matter, comes under conscientious scrutiny by Faraday. Coulomb's polar theory is that of "two magnetic fluids, which being present in all magnetic bodies, and accumulated at the poles of a magnet, exert attractions and repulsions upon portions of both fluids at a distance, and so cause the attractions and repulsions of the distant bodies containing them" (3301) 6 Coulomb's theory is uncomfortably hypothetical, because no one has ever seen this magnetic fluid or demonstrated its properties. Nevertheless, the theory is in perfect harmony with the great Newtonian principle that Foree is ultimately dependent on Matter. Now the imagery of the "gathering up" of lines of force leads us to an interpretation of polarity that is completely different. According to this image, the disposition of lines through an elongated sample of paramagnetic material, like an iron needle, looks like this (Fig. 6): The ends of the needle, under the influence of the dominant magnet, appear to take on the character of origins or seats of force; but we now see that this is the necessary result of the gathering up of the lines of foree by the iron. Sinee the lines pass through the needle and are not severed, their increased concentration within the iron results in their mutual approach and increased concentration in the areas near its two ends, where they enter and exit. 6 s N Figure 6 The meaning of "pole," therefore, is a plaee of concentration of force, and not a fountain of creation or a place in any way distinguished in kind from its surroundings. We see that Coulomb's theory embodied an important assumption which the "gathering" image escapes: Coulomb's theory had identified the cause of origin of the foree with the fact of its localized action. But these are two distinct topics, as -Faraday perceives: "My view of polarity," he writes, "is founded upon the character in direction of the force itself, whatever the eause of that force may be ... "(3307). Thus any disposition of conductors which results in regions of more and less concentrations of lines of force will approximate to the appearance of "poles," and artful fashioning of the shapes of conductors can establish fields which run the whole spectrum from near-uniformity (no poles) to near-perfect polarity. Here is a picture to show how changing the shape of the conductor also changes the course of the lines of force external to the conductor (Fig. 7). Figure 7: Left: ncar-uniformity; right: ncar-polarity. In this way the imagery associated with the lines of force performs an indispensable interpretive function: it reveals the character called "polarity" as a geometrical one (since it has �July, 1979 to do only with the pattern of disposition of the lines) and at the same time makes matter quite irrelevant to the question of the origin of the lines of force. This no longer takes us by surprise; we are becoming accustomed to the idea of the equality of matter and force, and so we no longer look to the former for an explanation of the latter. The view of magnetic matter as conductive, and especially the interpretation in these terms of diamagnetism, leads to highly interesting questions regarding the role of space. For under the image of conducting power, of different degrees of gathering or dispersing of the lines, space itself becomes a conductor; for it stands midway between paramagnetic and diamagnetic materials. One of Faraday's early classifications of materials in their magnetic order from paramagnetic to diamagnetic lists "vacuum" (that is, space 7 ) right in the middle (2424): Figure 8 Is "mere space" magnetic? There is no doubt that it is a conductor and in this respect it does not differ in kind from 0° Iron Nickel Cobalt Manganese Palladium Crown-glass Platinum Osmium Air and Vacuum Arsenic Ether Alcohol Gold Water Mercury Flint-glass Tin Heavy-glass Antimony Phosphorus Bismuth This serial order of magnetic power was ascertained by repeated "pointing" experiments of the kind I first described. The image of gathering-power interprets what experiment had already shown; that the "paramagnetic" or ~<diamagnetic" behavior of materials is relative to the surrounding medium in which they are immersed. Any material will appear paramagnetic, that is, it will move towards the concentrations of force, if it is placed in a medium having poorer gathering ability than itself-look at Figure 8 to see this-for then the lines of force flock to the sample and, if constraints permit, orient both it and themselves so that the greatest number of them may pass for the greatest distance along the superior conductor. Likewise any material will appear diamagnetic if it is placed in a medium which has greater gathering ability than itself (2348). Even a bubble of air or vacuum, if suspended in or adjacent to another material, can be made to exhibit at will either of these two magnetic characters. iron or bismuth, standing as it does midway between them! But is space really a middle degree, itself a kind of material? Or is it a zero state, falling between the two great classes of materials but belonging to neither of them? Whether space should be counted as one of the materials is a question which, I think, Faraday was never able to ask in a "practical" way to -his own satisfaction. His views shifted tentatively over a seven-year period. In 1845, for example,-the year of the pointing experiments, he declares himself unwilling to follow the experimental intimations that would include space as one of the materials: Such a view ... would make·mere space magnetic, and precisely to the same degree as air and gasses. Now though it may very well be, that space, air, and gasses, have the same general relation to magnetic force, it seems to me a great additional assumption to suppose that they are all absolutely magnetic, rather than to suppose they are all in a normal or zero state. (2440) The possibility of a material interpretation of space is there, I believe him to be saying, but the experiment lacks the compellingly luminous character which would present the image directly to us. It remains only a "great additional assumption." In 1850, no new experimental articulations of the question having been achieved, he is even stronger in his insistence that space is a state between materials, and not a material itself. He says, "mere space cannot act as matter acts" (2787). But what is this "acting" power which matter has but space cannot have, and in the name of which we are asked to hold back from embracing a world-picture which is through-and-through material? Faraday has already undercut the Newtonian notions of matter's alleged power to originate force-why does he hold on to a supposed power of gathering it? He needs another experiment. Not the so-called "crucial" experiment that purports to decide between alternative 7 �The College theories, but an interpretive, illuminating experiment which was really the only kind Faraday ever performed: an experiment that will teach us how to talk about space (3159). Such an experiment Faraday never found, but I believe he did find enough to cause him to cool somewhat in his defense of the uniqueness of space. In 1852 he delivered what was, I think, his last word on the subject: "Experimentally mere space is magnetic" (p. 443). But the experiments did not satisfy, for though they were brilliantly successful at putting into practice some of our dearest questions about magnetism, A wire loop or ring thrust over the end of a bar magnet "cuts" lines of force, which lines emerge in all radial direc- tions from the bar. A current, detected by a galvanometer, acts in one direction when the ring is placed over the magnet; in the opposite direction when removed (308 5). Suppose this ring were placed like a wedding ring at the magnetic equator of the bar-position B in Fig. I 0-having initially resided at ----- A they left this one-the question of the materiality of spaceawkward, merely verbal, hovering about the regions of Hypothesis but never bursting into the strength of Vision. The experiments I mean are those clustering about the phenomena of the Moving Wire, which will constitute our next section. / I I IV. The Moving Wire As I have so far described it, the evolution of the line of force as a symbol has been the result of experiments which disclosed the various shapes, groupings, and courses of the lines (3234, 3237). With the Twenty-eighth Series of researches, Faraday turns our vision toward their quantity, their number, and above all their power (3070, 3073). "The Moving Wire" is Faraday's name for a device, or class of devices, which make manifest the magnetic production of electricity. He had experimented with it in his earliest researches•, long before he began to employ the Line of Force as an interpretive image. Now his return to the topic after an intermission of twenty years is distinguished with a series of exercises that depend upon the image of the line of force for their very design. One of the earliest such exercises . is this one (Fig. 9): Figure 10 some distant point A. The ring would cut, exactly once, nearly all the lines of force which emerge from the ll1agnet (3102, 3133). Now the galvanometer, by which the currents of electricity are indicated, was already understood by Faraday to be an instrument which indicates the quantity of electricity evolved in its circuit (361-366); and provided that the electricity fully completes its action before the (slow-moving) galvanometer needle has departed very far from its original position, the needle will be hurled to a maximum deflection, according to the amount of electricity evolved (3103-3105). The galvanometer is therefore a kind of bucket in which quantities of electricity, which may in fact have been evolved not all at once but in succession, can be collected together into one single action. \ \ / / ./ / I 11 I '"" ,,, r three times and so on upon the magnet, the galvanometer would indicate the amounts of electricity evolved by these ' \. '- '-- I ~ \ 8 unit of counting. If the ring were placed quickly once, twice, l { \ (Adapted from Faraday). the ring upon the equator of the magnet cuts the same number of lines of force, and this number thus becomes a I \ Figure 9: When, therefore, I first read Faraday's account of the bar-magnet and equatorial ring I thought I could guess the use to which it would be put. For each instance of placing l multiple actions, respectively. The galvanometer-and-ring by this means would become "calibrated" in units of lines of force. The apparatus would become an instrument with which we would, in principle, "count" the lines of force of any magnet; or we could count the number of lines of force which inhabit any region through which the wire can be made to move. This "calibration" experiment was indeed performed by Faraday, but only to confirm a relation that he had already found out about in a different way. This relation was that the quantity of electricity evolved is exactly proportional to the �July, 1979 number of lines of force cut by the moving wire in its transit. Now in the modern, axiomatic formulation of electrodynamics this law, the "Law of Electromagnetic Induction," as it came to be called, appears as one of the four cardinal principles of that science, much as do Newton's Laws appear in the science of mechanics. Nevertheless, for Faraday the proportionality is regarded not so much for its magnitude as for its meaning: it is a "principle" not because of the testable consequences which follow from it, but it is a "principle" in the sense of being the totally revealing form under which the magnet displays itself. What I mean is that, if a quantity of electricity is strictly proportional to a quantity of magnetic lines, then each line may be acGounted responsible for a determinate share of the total effect; and the lines of force come to be seen, for the first time, as agents, each exercising a determinate power. The moving wire experiments are experiments of power, and with these experiments the lines of force come before us under a new and pressing image, that is as axes of power. The power of the magnet resides in the lines of force, and moreover it is through the electrical exercise of this very power that the moving wire is able to count them so faithfully. For the electrical activity in the wire, Faraday thinks, is not a mere signature or concomitant of the magnetic force, but is itself the equivalent in power to that force which constitutes the magnetic system. He writes: When [the wire] is moved across the lines of force, a current of electricity is developed in it, or tends to be developed; and I have every reason to believe, that if we could employ a perfect conductor, and obtain a perfect result, it would be the full equivalent to the force, electric or magnetic, which is exerted in the place occupied by the conductor. {3270) The interpretive consequences of the growing image of power as the essence of the magnet are immense. Through the moving wire, power is revealed directly in the form of power; moreover, it is shown to occupy place, for the force which the moving wire brings to light is exerted, not at a distance, but in the very place occupied by the conductor! The magnetic power is not to be thought of as an endowment of the material of the magnet but is proportionally distributed throughout the places about it. The power resides in the lines of force, and each line is the locus of a constant action which is neither lost nor diminished with distance. The system of lines extends to indefinite size and therefore-contrary to action-at-a-distance theories-the magnet does not act "where it is not," for it is everywhere. The images of power are the first fruits of the moving wire and in fact the final experimental interpretation of the magnet will be obtained under this imqge. But the moving wire is also a probe of great subtlety which can illuminate even the conditions existing within the interior of the magnet; a place from where iron filings are necessarily excluded. The moving ------~~------- ' ' ~ ' '' / I '' '' '' ' Figure II wire can disclose the fate of the lines of force when they enter the magnet. Here, if anywhere, the question concerning the relation between the magnet and its own lines of force will be met. As one of a series of experiments which route the galvanometer wire through passages made in the interior of the magnet, Faraday constructs this arrangement, in which a loop is guided down the axis of the bar, emerging at the equator {Fig. II). It is thus partly interior and partly exterior to the bar. When the whole apparatus is revolved, no current is produced to the galvanometer, although the external part of the wire is certainly cutting lines of force (I should explain that Faraday previously showed that the lines remain stationary, even when the bar revolves). "We must look," Faraday says therefore, "to the part of the wire within the magnet, for a power equal to that capable of being exerted externally, and we find it in that small portion which represents a radius at the central and equatorial parts" (3116). When this radial portion of the internal wire-which I have labeled aE in the sketch-is revolved, it produces a current equal to and opposite to that which the exterior wire produces when it alone is revolved (3116). Since the current is equal, it must be that all of the lines of force external to the magnet must therefore continue through into the interior of the magnet, and, moreover, continue in directions parallel to the axis, such that they can be cut by the radius wire! Furthermore, since the current evolved is opposite we can conclude that the direction of the lines from north to south exterior to the bar is continued unchanged within. For example, if the loop is at the north end, the magnetic action from north to south passes from inside to outside the loop, in those portions exterior to the magnet. To produce an opposite current in the interior, the action must pass from outside to inside the loop-simply a continuation of the direction of the external line of force! I will quote Faraday's summary: So, by this test there exists lines of force within the magnet of the same nature as those without. What is more, they are exactly equal ~n amount to those without; and in fact are continuations of them, absolutely unchanged in their nature, so far as experimental test can be applied to tl1em. Every line of force therefore, at whatever distance it may be taken from the magnet, must be considered a closed circuit, passing in some part of its course through the 9 �The College magnet, and having an equal amount of force in every part of its course. (3ll7) of the materiality of space are all taken up into a single powerful image, the most comprehensive, and yielding the most explicit interpretation of the magnet. This image is the System of Power, and it is most completely set forth in Faraday's paper titled "On the Physical Character of the Lines of Magnetic Force . " 10 This paper is, by itself, such a high and humane model of scientific rhetoric and teaching, as to be the most rewarding conclusion to this history. V. The System of Power N Through the action of the moving wire, the magnetic line of force was carried to its highest development as a symbol. 1D be not onlythe moving wire magnet's exterior line of but the sign of the locus of the has disclosed the --=~~~~-~~i~~~~~~~~~~~-~~==~=-Forinterior condition as well. The line action, forceunchanged its of force is in its nature, whether we view that part of it which resides within the iron bar, or its continuation outward into the sur- rounding places; power resides equally in both phases of the Figure 12 The lines of magnetic force are closed loops. They have no beginning or end. They only appear to rise and to terminate at the extremities of a magnet, but we now see (Fig. 12) that they are continued uninterruptedly within, compressed together but unchanged in nature. This is the same condition as was represented, in the case of a material which was not itself a magnet but which was subject to the action of an external magnetic field, by the image of gathering power. 9 There is no longer any obvious fountain or sink of the lines, such as was postulated by the theory of poles or magnetic fluids, and therefore there is no longer any reason-or even any possibility-to identify the place of appearance of the lines with the cause of their existence. In the sense of limited centers or active origins of the lines of force, "poles" do not exist! (3289). The word "polarity" retains a meaning, but it is a geometrical meaning only, marking the sense of direction to and from along the lines, and distinguishing the places of concentration of the lines as they enter a new medium. Accordingly, the relation which the magnet (l should say, the iron) has to its own lines of force does not seem to be any different from the relation which the surrounding medium has to its lines of force, that is, the relation of a conductor. To be sure, we do usually want to think of the iron as somehow the active cause of the lines, and this conventional view was given perfect expression in the theory of poles. But now that notion is rendered untenable or at any rate occult: as we find there is nothing in the unfolding of the magnet's power which gives any visible confirmation to the idea that ponderable matter is "originative" of the lines of force. What the magnet's relation to its lines is, has not become a settled question; but it is growing in its status as a question that can be asked in practice. Through the Moving Wire, first, the unfolding of this relation, second, the rendition of "conducting power" as geometrical in content, and third, the articulation lO line of force. Therefore we must not suppose that division of the magnet into an "inner" or iron portion and an "outer" or air portion is a division between the active and the passive .. The inner, iron, part of the magnet is not the active origin of the magnetic power; nor is the surrounding space the passive stage whereon the magnet displays its peculiar action. The outer medium, no less than the iron, is essential to the magnet and defines what Faraday calls the system or atmosphere of power (p. 402). The family of closed magnetic curves filling and surrounding a bar magnet constitutes an atmosphere whose shape is that of a solid of rotation-really a nest of surfaces of rotation-about the bar's axis. This interesting shape Faraday calls "sphondyloid," from the Greek word for "beetle" (Fig. 13). ~---- Figure 13: c -----------------------B --~ --- -, "Sphondyloid." "All the phenomena of the moving wire," Faraday writes, "seem to me to show the physical existence of an atmosphere of power about a magnet, which, as the power is antithetical, and marked in its direction by the lines of magnetic force, may be considered as disposed in sphondyloids, determined by the lines or rather shells afforce': (3271). The sphondyloid form is characteristic and exemplary. Even those magnetic systems which do not display the sphondyloid shape have forms which can be viewed as distortions and transformations of it. The atmosphere about a spherical magnet, for example, comprises lines of force whose �July, 1979 will be a corresponding irregularity imposed angles of refraction are rather gentler than those of a hard, well-charged bar magnet; the shape of the atmosphere is somewhat stubby by comparison, but in it the characteristic sphondyloid structure can readily be perceived. Another example is the horseshoe-magnet, which is really just a barmagnet bent into a U-shape. Bending the bar produces a cor- upon the pattern of distribution of power; and the sphonydyloid (or whatever shape) will distend, indicating by this the new equilibria of power that have been set up within the system (Fig. 15). Faraday writes: "if a piece of cold iron responding distortion in the shape of the atmosphere, a comi- by air or even mere space, there is a concentration of Jines of cal one, I think: it turns the sphondyloid inside out (Fig. 14). force onto it and more power is transmitted through the space magnet, there . . . is introduced into a magnetic field, previously occupied thus occupied than if the paramagnetic body were not there. . . . A new disposition of the force arises; for some passes now where it did not pass before, being removed from places where it was previously transmitted" (3279). In the old rhetoric of action-at-a-distance one would have described that event as an action between two bodies~the magnet acting upon (attracting) the iron sample. But here, one speaks not of the action of a magnet upon another body but of the coming-to-be of an irregularity in the atmosphere, the transformation of the sphondyloid into some other unnamed but perfectly definite shape. The subsequent motion of the intruding iron sample is viewed, not as a passive submission to the magnet's force, but as non-equilibrium. The original sphondyloid and its various distortions are like forms of a soap-bubble. Ordinarily the spherical shape of a soapbubble is stable, just as the sphondyloid magnetic atmosphere is stable. But if the bubble is stretched or elongated a new disposition of tension arises in the surface; and the offending Figure 14: Lettered regions correspond to those of the Sphondyloid in the previous figure. body, if unconstrained, will tend to be drawn back into the bubble as the latter regains, so far as possible, its spherical shape. In just the same way that the shape of a bubble indicates the conditions of stress and strain within itself, so does the shape of the magnetic atmosphere stand as the visible symbol of the plurality-a plurality of relations but not of agents~that constitutes the magnetic system. The magnet resolves itself into Form and Material in a way quite independent of the nature of its iron or other ponderable "inner" medium. The true magnetic material is not iron or nickel or anything other than power, and this power is a magnitude possessing quantity and location just as much as any ponderable body does. The power is disposed in an atmosphere of lines or surfaces of force whose presence and number are displayed by the Moving Wire. It is because the lines or surfaces are continuous and because they, not intersecting, contain one another, that we are permitted to speak Figure 15 So the shape of the tangible core of magnetic material has much to do with the form of the magnetic atmosphere, but as Faraday says, "the condition and relation of the surrounding medium has an essential and evident influence" (3274). One change that can be made in the surrounding medium is to introduce an inhomogeneity into it. If this is done, for example by bringing a piece of iron into the vicinity of the so emphatically of shape. The magnetic atmosphere has shape and place in an Aristotelian way, that is by containing and being contained. Shape in this sense is independent of size. As a System of Power, the magnet has shape without size, and I mean this in two different ways. The first way that the atmosphere has shape without size is in that it is a nest of forms (Fig. 16). Now many bodies have shape only "on their surfaee"-think of a marble statue, for example. We imagine that if we could plunge into its substance, we would have left form behind, and that everywhere beneath its surface there is only undifferentiated stuff. Not so the sphondyloid of power. Like an onion, or like the figures of Silenus, each of which contains another within itself, its form extends throughout all of its ll �The College Figure 16: "Dissection" of sphondyloid. parts. Beneath every surface there is another, for it is a nest of surfaces rather than a solid with a surface. No matter how much or how little of the atmosphere we look at, form is present. And this is the first way. The second way in which a magnet has shape without size is that it has no inherent size. An isolated magnet would be of infinite extent, for there is no container or surface of accumulation of magnetic power so long as the magnet is absolutely alone (3255). (In another place, Faraday calls empty space "the great abyss" for lines of force [2852].) Every magnet is, potentially, an infinite body; yet its atmosphere of power can be compressed, contained, and distorted by other systems of magnetic power. If a small bar-magnet is immersed in a strong, alien magnetic field-such as the Earth's-and if it is constrained so that its poles face toward the like poles of the exterior magnet, from which poles they would normally repel; then the two atmospheres will not mix, and the first will be virtually contained in the second; as though it were a drop of oil contained in a volume of water (Fig. 17). power of the system, however contained or bent, remains the same. In the case of the small atmosphere contained by the larger one Faraday declares: "I have no doubt ... that the sphondyloid representing the total power, which in the experiment ... had a sectional area of not two square inches in surface, would have equal power upon the moving wire with that infinite sphondyloid which would exist if the magnet were in free space" (3275). We are now in possession of the final experimental interpretation. A magnet represents a fixed and constant body of power. Like that of a volume of gas, the distribution of this power has no inherent size, but it can be given size by confinement. In a manner very much unlike a gas, however, the magnetic atmosphere, a structure comprising shells or surfaces, has shape throughout itself; and this shape, though tending to secure its own geometry, can be penetrated and distorted by other magnetic systems. Tangible material is not what defines a magnet. The iron in a bar-magnet is only a sort of skeleton: it is the magnetic atmosphere, the sphondyloid of power, that can be named the body of the magnet, and so revealed the magnet stands forth as an infinite elastic corporeal extension, variable as to shape but incorruptible as to power. That a magnetic system has corporeality independent of its skeleton of ponderable matter is the capstone of the discoveries of the Moving Wire. The magnet is above all a geometrical body, neither n1atter nor space. Geometry resides not in a fictitious empty space, but in the articulate extensive continuum; and the magnetic articulation of this is what has been brought to sight. The magnetic world is a new geometrical world, shapely, visible, and fluid. Epilog: The World-Traveler N Figure 17 In the figure the dotted curve AB represents the boundary between the two magnetic systems. Though the space be ever so densely filled with lines of force, there will always remain such a curve as AB which divides all the lines of the smaller atmosphere from all the lines of the larger. And the total 12 There are two questions, each of which leads to an aspect of Faraday's scientific practice which is distinguished and excellent. They are, "What is rhetoric?" and, "What is experience?" In my section called "The Image" I narrated the course of appearance of space among the magnetic materials. Under one view of. this appearance, space is to be considered the neutral, passive ground through which materials-the only true agents-relate to and interact with one another. According to a second representation, which I have associated with Faraday's use of the Moving Wire, the division between space and matter is subverted; and along with that the seat of natural power is ascribed not to isolated material centers but rather to the great continuum of extension, with respect to which the former "active centers" become only the boundaries. These views differ in imagery. They do not differ in predictive power. Insofar as they are able to generate predictions at all, the two views are indistinguishable. Their predictions are the same. There is a current of thinking which holds that, therefore, the two views are the, same: that it is their testable content which constitutes their entire standing as scientific pronouncements, and the additional differences between �July, 1979 them are only, as Hertz once wrote, "the gay garment" in which we clothe them. 11 But I will affirm the contrary, that it is the image, and nothing else, which carries our knowledge of the object. It is the image which tries to reveal what the object is. The following out of one image into another is rhetoric. The evolution of the image of space as a passive ground, into the image of space as a conductor among conductors is a rhetorical achievement-it is exactly insofar as an account is deliberately and faithfully rhetorical that the account is scientific. Natural science is rhetoric. Earlier in this talk I labeled as the "manifesto" of the scientific laboratory, a pronouncement that symbols come into science through "experience." It is important to emphasize the artfulness through which this experience is gained, for the experience of which I speak is to be contrasted with the experience gained by, say, a world-traveler. There is a sort of traveler, of whom let me take Gulliver or Herodotus as examples, whose experience is gained artlessly. They find themselves in a place and report what has happened. They return with stories, legends, even with what might be called factsall of them of a new and strange character, which is why we are so eager to hear about them. What kind of thing do these experiences go to make up? The answer is already seen in the relation which these "artless" storytellers have to their own stories-they carry them back with them in the same way that they would carry back riches and gifts from the far land. At home, the stories are assembled into a picture, a mosaic; they depict the world for us. This world that is depicted has its most important character in being large and therefore, for the most part, distant. It is varied. And it stays put whilst we come and go. This last points to the most important effect that travel stories have upon us, for they incite us to give up the feeling that our "place" is our immediate (Aristotelian) container. Thus the contiguity between the storyteller and where he is, is lost; and the first ground is cleared for the appearance of that duality between the self and the world, of which thinkers have made so much. So. I am claiming that the "artless" encounters of travelers are of a type, and that they go to articulate an order which comprises knowing selves and objects. The objects are always at a distance, the speech all on the part of the selves, and the objects wait to be described. It so happens that there is one traveler who is anything but artless and does not fit this picture; that is Odysseus. Faraday is like Odysseus. 12 Faraday's journey is a journey of sight, speech, and image. Home is a world that is knowable and known, a world enriched by powers newly brought to light. These powers are not monsters like Polyphemus, that they must be tamed and controlled by gods, wiles, or magic; and likewise Faraday's art is neither magical, devious, nor divine. Faraday's rhetorical art establishes an occasion in which the distance between an act of speech and the things spoken about may become absolutely minimal. The result of this is that, under his art, the things transform so as to become more articulate. They do not become other than they are, or more perfect (his ex- perimental art is not that of "eliminating errors'')-they only become more articulate. This scientific activity may also be compared to what we may imagine of the philosopher who returns to the cave 13 . He does not tell travel-stories-about the perfect world there and the degenerate here. He does not scoff and deride. He does not jeer, "Your fire is trash compared to Fire." What he does is tell stories and legends that enable us to see Fire in fire. We then love it, as one loves the Beautiful in the beloved. It is not the man who has seen perfection that mistreats the world, it is the ignorant man who thinks things are merely what they are, mere givens, pragmata, facts. The hero's return from the land of the sun at once elevates and shames. The two are forever connected! Most people read the hero's return as destructive, in that the cave is to be judged by an impossible high standard; but such fears are appropriate only when the hero returns from another world literally. When the perfect is not "other" but is seen in the object at hand, then does the object have meaning and value; and one who has gained this vision acts, not bestially and tyrannically, but honorably and well. I. Thomas King Simpson, A Critical Study of Maxwell's Dynamical--Theory of the Electromagnetic Field in the "Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism," Diss., Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University, 1968. Available through University Microfilms, Ann Arbor. For other important studies on Faraday, Maxwell, and electromagnetism in general: "Faraday's Thought on Electromagnetism," The College 22, 2, Annapolis: St. John's College, July 1970; "Some Observations on Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism," Hist. Phil. Sci., 1, 3, 1970; "Maxwell and the Direct Experimental Test of His Electromagnetic Theory," Isis 57, 4 (number 190), 1966. 2. Plato, Phaedrns, 275 B. 3. Michael Faraday, Experimental Researches in Electricity, 3 volumes, London: Bernard Quaritch, 1839 and New York: Dover, 1965. References in parentheses are to article number unless otherwise indicated. 4. In the context in which this remark is introduced by Faraday, it has in part the function of justifying the image of the line of force, the most visual of all of Faraday's images. 5. Faraday, "On Some Points of Magnetic Philosophy," Philosophical Magazine, February 1855. Appears as articles 3300-3362, Exp. Res. 6. Faraday states the theory here, but he does not ascribe it to Coulomb until article 3307. See also Charles Coulomb, "Sur I'Eiectricit€: et le Magnetisme-2e Memoire" (1785}, Collection de Memoires, Paris: Societe Franpise de Physique 1, 1884, 116. 7. Faraday frequently, but not uncritically, uses the words "space" and "vacuum" interchangeably. See especially articles 2784 and 2787. 8. Faraday, Exp. Res., article 36, November 1831. 9. Compare Figure 12 with Figure 6. Hi. Philosophical Magazine, June 1852. Appears as articles 3243-3299, Exp. Res. ll. Heinrich Hertz, Electric Waves, trans. D. E. Jones, London: Macmillan, 1893, 28. 12. Simpson, A Critical Study. 13. Plato, Republic, 519 D. 13 �Odysseus Among the Phaiakians William O'Grady When Odysseus awakens alone on Ithaka after an absence of twenty years, the land looks strange to him and he fears that he has been betrayed by the Phaiakians, who promised to take him home. Odysseus says, "Come, let me count my goods and look them over," lest something have been taken away. "So speaking, he counted up the surpassingly beautiful tripods and caldrons, and the gold and all the fine woven clothing. Of these things nothing at all was missing." Having returned home, Odysseus needs to know what he has brought with him, what he has to offer. The most important things, the things he most cares about, the things he must possess if he is again to be husband to Penelope, father to Telemachus, son to Laertes, king to his people, are not things that can be counted and looked over. Still, there is some solace in count- ing what can be counted, and finding that of these nothing is lacking. But in the measure that Odysseus is able to trust that he has also managed to return home with what is most impor- tant, with a heart that is whole and brave, he is greatly indebted to the Phaiakians, the people of Scheria, among whom he stayed for three days. They are indebted to him as well, as I shall try to show. My attempt here is to understand something of what happens while Odysseus is among the Phaiakians. Odysseus' encounter with the Phaiakians immediately prior to his homecoming is not a chance encounter. Two assemblies of the gods on Olympus (recounted in books one and five) have been held to arrange that his return, which is clearly a big and difficult matter, should come about in the right way. In particular, both when Athena comes to Nausikaa in the form of a dream, bidding her to think of her marriage and to do her laundry, and when Athena herself goes through the city calling the Phaiakians to assembly, she is said by Homer to be "devising the return of great-hearted Odysseus." The assembly culminates with Odysseus weeping boundless tears as he hears the story of the fall of Troy. We must try to understand in what way the encounter with Nausikaa is important for Odysseus, supplies him with something needful; and, we must try to understand the meaning of the tears shed by Odysseus as he hears his greatest victory sung. The premise of my attempt to understand is that according to Homer the gods sometimes make available to human beings what they need most. That Odysseus' needs as he comes to the land of the Phaiakians are urgent and delicate appears most vividly in this A lecture read at Santa Fe on January 12, 1979. l4 simile describing his shelter during the first night. "As when a man buries a firebrand beneath the dark embers in a remote place where there are no neighbors, and saves the seed of fire, having nowhere else from which to kindle fire, so Odysseus buried himself in the leaves." The fire has almost died in Odysseus; only a seed remains from which however the full blaze of fire might grow again. But if the seed dies, there is no other source from which fire might be kindled. And this seed has come to be, in a strange way, outside of Odysseus: he must dispose of it, protect it, care for it, in an anxiously self-conscious way. Odysseus and Nausikaa are together only twice, the second time very briefly. Nausikaa asks Odysseus to remember her, since he owes her his life. Odysseus, promising to remember her always, uses a different and extraordinary word:--"You have given me my human life" (the difference in Greek between bios and zoe). One could almost translate: "You have en-humaned me." Odysseus means, to begin with, that when he first saw Nausikaa in her loveliness and innocence he knew for certain that the world does not contain only, or even chiefly, monsters. He has, after all, seen so many monsters that as he swims toward the island of Scheria Athena must specially intervene to supply him with presence of mind when, afraid of being dashed against the sharp rocks or, again, of being carried farther out to sea, a third fear suddenly rises up-a monster may appear. Thus the wholly convincing gentleness of Nausikaa's appearance is immeasurably important. But even more important, perhaps, is a discovery Odys- seus is led to make about himself. He hears himself saying to Nausikaa: "I have never seen anything like you, neither man nor woman. Wonder takes me as I look on you. Yet in Delos once I saw such a thing, by Apollo's altar. I saw the stalk of a young. palm shooting up. I had gone there once, and with a following of a great many people, on that journey which was to mean hard suffering for me. And as, when I looked upon that tree, my heart admired it long, since such a tree had never yet sprung up from the earth, so now, lady, I admire you and wonder." Not only is Nausikaa herself invincibly lovely and innocent, but she reminds of other lovely and innocent things seen long ago and almost forgotten: there have always been such things in the world. Above all, Odysseus becomes aware that just as long ago-so much violence ago and so much hideousness ago-his heart was capable of responding in awe and gratitude to the appearance of lovely and innocent things, wholly without reference to how they might be useful to him; so now his heart is capable of the same: it is somehow the same heart. This is a very difficult thing to �July, 1979 know, and it is the sort of thing that human beings, sometimes, most need to know. This is the deepest meaning, perhaps, of Odysseus' gratitude to Nausikaa for having been an indispensable source of his human life. Athena in arousing Nausikaa to go to the river where she will meet Odysseus is said to be devising the return of Odysseus. The very same words are used as she summons the Phaiakians to assembly. Why is the assembly, described in book eight, of such importance for Odysseus, even before he begins to tell his story? Near the beginning of the meeting Odysseus weeps, though he tries to conceal it, as he hears the minstrel sing of a quarrel between Achilles and Odysseus. Then athletic contests take place, and Odysseus' heart seems to lighten. After his victory in throwing the discus, he speaks "in language more blithe," as Lattimore translates. Again, Odysseus seems to share fully in the enjoyment of all the Phaiakians as Demodicus sings of the adultery of Aphrodite with Ares, although this enjoyment is perhaps not altogether easy to understand. (The gods are of course immortal, so that their doings always seem somehow comic, but here Hephaestus is so pained as to utter the wish that he had not been born; moreover, Poseidon's urgent attempts, apparently inspired by compassion for Hephaestus, to bring to an end the unseemly spectacle of the vulgar laughter of Apollo and Hermes, remind us disconcertingly that Poseidon is other and more than the mere persecutor of Odysseus.) After these incidents, and before he reveals his name, Odysseus weeps again, but this time in a vastly deeper and wider way, as he hears the song, which he himself requested of the strategem of the horse and the fall of Troy. What do these tears mean? How have they come about? Is it good that Odysseus should shed them? Before trying to understand this happening, let us listen to a translation of Homer's astounding words: "So the famous singer sang his tale, but Odysseus melted, and from under his eyes the tears ran down, drenching his cheeks. As a woman weeps, lying over the body of her dear husband, who fell fighting for his city and people, as he tried to beat off the pitiless day from city and children; she sees him dying and gasping for breath, and winding her body around him she cries high and shrill, while the men behind her, hitting her with their spears on the back and shoulders, force her up and lead her away into slavery to have hard work and sorrow, and her cheeks are wracked with pitiful weeping. So Odysseus shed piteous tears from under his brows." The earlier tears, the tears over the quarrel with Achilles who has died, are perhaps not too difficult to understand. But what of these final tears, necessary before Odysseus can name himself? How can the tears of the victor be likened to the tears of the vanquished, the tears of the sacker of cities to the tears of a woman trying to hold on to her dying husband, which she cannot, to shelter him from further blows from his enemies, which she cannot? I think the pain in Odysseus' soul at this moment has two sources. The first has to do with Odyssesus' request to the singer that he sing Kosmos hippou which means, to begin with, the ornament of the horse, the device of the horse, the horse as the product of resourcefulness, artfulness, cleverness, the horse as the manifestation of wit and talent considered in isolation from all else. But Kosmos hippou, as the singer well knows and truthfully sings, means finally and fully the world of the horse, the world out of which the horse came to be, the world of prodigious single-mindedness, of goals to which all else becomes subject, of the breaching of Troy as the end, an end justifying all things, including the perversion of worship represented by the horse. Again, the world of the horse is the world the horse leads to, the fall of a holy city, the broken-heartedness, homelessness and utter forlornness of Andromache. Odysseus weeps because he is deeply implicated in the perversion of high things and in vast human suf- fering, and because his delight in the play and display of his own incomparable resourcefulness has in some way distracted his attention from what he has been implicated in. But this sorrow felt by Odysseus, a deeper sorrow perhaps than most human beings ever know, is not the deepest sorrow felt by Odysseus, who has come to Scheria from the island of Calypso, where deathlessness and agelessness are available to human beings. The deepest and widest sorrow that Odysseus feels, which somehow makes bearable all that is involved in facing his responsibility for the fall of a city whose men and women also prayed to Zeus, is sorrow over a world-the world of mortals-in which all dear things perish and in which all attempts to shelter those dear things are doomed to failure; which attempts, however, except in the eyes orutterly base human beings, are never objects of scorn or condescensiOn. The breadth and impartiality of Odysseus' sorrow shows itself again in book twenty-three. When Odysseus and Penelope are finally in their bed together, and after they have made love, Odysseus tells stories. He begins after the fall of Troy, and what he tells is "all cares, both so many as he had placed upon human beings and so many as he himself, sorrowing, toiled through." As Odysseus weeps these tears in which the whole mortal world is bathed, Alkinous, king of the Phaiakians, asks Demodicus to cease from singing, and tells Odysseus that the time has come for the stranger to reveal his name. But Alkinous, who surely suspects strongly that this stranger is Odysseus, in whom Poseidon is going to be exceptionally interested, if he is in the fate of any storm-driven wanderer, "digresses" remarkably. After requiring of Odysseus that he declare his name, he recounts what he has heard from his father, namely that some day Poseidon, angry with the Phaiakians for giving conveyance to some man, will turn the re- turning ship to stone and surround the city with a great wall to hide it. Alkinous gives Odysseus a chance to lie, to deny that he is Odysseus, or at least to present himself as an Odysseus on good terms with Poseidon. At any rate, if Odysseus does present himself as persecuted by Poseidon, he had better have some great good thing to offer the Phaiakians, in gratitude for which this people would be willing to run a very great risk-this people which has enjoyed, ever since its removal from the vicinity of the Cyclops who harried them savagely, a perfectly riskless existence; an existence, moreover, requiring no patience: the fruit trees are always in season, and 15 �The College human sorrows are understood to be fashioned by the gods "so that there will be a song for men who are to come" -as if to say: let's get the sorrows and the lives over with, so that the song can begin. And it turns out, after Odysseus has told his story, that it seems to the Phaiakians that he has given them a great good thing, namely, the most wonderful stories they or anyone else and ending his life. The alternative, as he puts it to himself, is not simply to go on living, but rather "to go on being among men." All that Odysseus and his companions have shared during ten years at Troy seems to stand revealed as mutual infidelity: there is mistrust, jealousy and resentment at ingratitude on the one side, and on Odysseus' side absentmindedness, lack of imagination and complacency. That have ever heard; moreover, he has somehow brought them to Odysseus brings these charges against himself is clear from understand that it is not quite right for human beings who live and choose to live a riskless existence to delight in stories about human beings whose lives are full of risks. The Phaia- two considerations: first, in narrating the adventure to the kians somehow understand, when Odysseus has finished Phaiakians, Odysseus speaks of the prospect of an early return having been ruined by "our own folly;" and, second, Odys- return, namely, conveyance to his homeland, regardless of seus after the fact is able to reconstruct in his previously inattentive imagination the pained and resentful conversation among his men which he did not hear because he was asleep. Odysseus decides to endure in silence and remain, but he the risk to themselves; but also that in order truly to possess conceals himself (kaluptesthai) and withdraws, as, we under- Odysseus' wonderful stories, genuinely to enter into them, they themselves must run risks, must not lead an altogether stand, do his men: no one has the heart to look anyone else speaking, not only that sheer gratitude for a wonderful gift requires that they try to give Odysseus some good thing in sheltered-hence storyless-existence. And so they risk the thing they love best, their access to the sea, for the sake of Odysseus, and for their own sake. It is not entirely clear how their risk turns out, partly because of a textual question: Zeus says to Poseidon either "Turn the ship to stone but do not surround the city with a mountain to hide it" or "Turn the ship to stone and surround it with a huge mountain to hide it" (in Greek the difference between mede and mega). But in either case, we are told by Homer that Poseidon turned the returning ship to stone "and then he went away." in the face. In what follows the aloneness of Odysseus is not spoken of, but rather presented in three tableaux. When they come to the island of the Lastrygonians, after the adventure of the winds, the other nine ships drop anchor inside the harbor, Odysseus' ship alone outside the harbor. On this island, as again on the island of Circe, Odysseus alone climbs up to a high place of outlook and there takes his stand, a solitary figure against the sky. But then, on the island of Circe, a sort of miracle happens: as Odysseus is returning to the ship, "Some one of the gods pitied me, being alone, and sent a great stag with towering antlers right in my very path." Odysseus slays the stag and, with much trouble on account of its size, man- II. Now let us consider for awhile the tales Odysseus tells to the Phaiakians during the wondrously long night of the assembly. The tales are full of monsters of various kinds and it is difficult for us to understand the status of these beings. Perhaps it would be good for us to keep in mind Socrates' statement in the Phaedrus that to know myself includes knowing whether I am a being as fierce and complicated as the monster Typhon or one to whom a gentler and simpler na- ture belongs-it seems difficult to speak of the human soul without speaking of monsters of one kind or another. But however uncertain we may be about what account to give of the Cyclops, Skylla, the Sirens and others, Odysseus' tale is never unintelligible to us. This is so, I think, because centrally the tale is about human companionship, human pain at its being fractured, and human joy at its being restored. Let me try to sketch briefly what happens to this companionship in the tale he tells the Phaiakians from the Adventure of the Bag of Winds to the Adventure of the Stag, and then make a suggestion about how such stories co.me to take shape. When Odysseus sleeps, and while his ships are within sight of Ithaka, his companions open the bag given to Odysseus by King Aolius and a hurricane drives the ships far from Ithaka. Odysseus immediately considers throwing himself into the sea 16 ages to carry it back to the ship. And then "I threw him down by the ship and roused my companions, standing beside each man in turn and speaking to him in kind words: 'Dear friends, sorry as we are, we shall not yet go down to the house of Hades. Not until our day is appointed. Come then, while there is something to eat and drink by the fast ship, let us think of our food, and not be worn out with hunger.' So I spoke, and they listened at once to me and obeyed me, and unconcealing themselves (ek-kaluptesthai, the undoing of the concealment and withdrawal resulting from the Adventure of the Bag of Winds), along the shore of the unresting sea, they wondered at the stag; for truly he was a very big beast. But after they had looked at him, and their eyes had enjoyed him, they washed their hands and set about preparing a communal high feast." Well, I think that it is not exactly the stag they are wondering at, big though it be, but rather, shyly, they are wondering at the miracle of the restoration of companionship and the possibility of communion that has somehow taken place. A number of important events affecting their reconstituted fellowship follow, events which show that not only has their fellowship been re-constituted, but it has been constituted at a deeper level. The next morning Odysseus addresses his men in a way he has never addressed them before. He says that none of them, including himself, knows the place of the rising of the sun or of its setting: they are deeply ignorant regarding the encompassing things. But perhaps, all the same, there �July, 1979 is some metis, some device, some plan, says polumetis Odysseus, the man of many devices. Then he says: "But I do not think so." Odysseus is at a loss, and says so out loud. Events, however, arrange themselves, and Odysseus must risk' emasculation, that is, in some way risk his relation to Penelope for the sake of his men whom Circe has turned into swine. This adventure has a happy ending, and Odysseus' men, having feared that he was lost, tell him in winged words, "0 great Odysseus, we are as happy to see you returning as if we had come back to our own Ithakan country." But this moment is not enough. As Circe says to all of them_, "Now you are all dried out, dispirited from the constant thought of your hard wandering, nor is there any spirit in your festivity, because of so much suffering." Odysseus recognizes the truth of this: the companionship, which is not forever, needs festive time spent together. And Odysseus must let his companions tell him how much time is necessary. They come to him at the end of a year spent on Circe's island and say that the time has come to go. Once more they make for home. But of course only Odysseus returnp. The others perish at sea for having eaten the sacred cattle of the Sun, after valiantly resisting this temptation for a long time. In response to their urgent plea not to measure their endurance by his own endurance, nor to ask of them that they make his endurance their own measure, Odysseus wanders off while his companions choose likely death at sea over starvation. Once again, Odysseus knows exactly what they say to each other without having been present. He knows their ways and respects their dignity. Above all, he has heard Elpenor, the youngest and most foolish of them all, who fell to his death because of athesphatos oinos, "more wine than even a god could say," pronounce his blessing upon the time "I was among my companions." Let me try to say a few words concerning this story Odysseus tells to the Phaiakians about his experiences in companionship in the middle of a world populated by monsters. How does it become a story rather than a mere sequence of happenings? For me this question means especially: how does Odysseus know that the appearing of the mighty stag was brought about by some one of the gods-he does not say which one-who pitied him because he was alone? For after all, only on this "interpretation" of the appearing of the stag does the stag become the beginning of reconciliation and the restoration of communion. My suggestion would be that, although at tl1e time of this happening Odysseus was somehow aware of its meaning, he comes to comprehend its full meaning only when he puts it into a story. I mean two things by this. First, Odysseus does not describe his feelings of loneliness; rather, he describes one ship outside a harbor and nine within, and a man twice taking his stand by himself on a high place of outlook. Again, he describes himself and the others withdrawing into concealment and emerging from concealment. Happenings seem to be more important than feelings for story-telling. But second, and more important, and in some way qualifying my first suggestion, I think it is of decisive importance that Odysseus tells his story to Alkinous and Arete, not to himself. It is probably true that important stories, true stories, the narration of the truth of what happened, must be prepared in solitude: perhaps Odysseus could have said nothing true about what happened if he had spent any fewer than seven years in concealment with Calypso. But, I suggest, the most important truths of any story are the truths we hear for the first time as we tell the story to someone else, try to reach his soul with our words, try to make him understand how it was. I cannot, of course, prove this, but I firmly believe that when Odysseus heard himself telling Alkinous and Arete that the stag appeared because some one of the gods pitied him in his aloneness, he knew immediately that this was the truth of the matter, although he had never before said any such thing to himself, even tentatively. As we read in the first lines of the Odyssey, Odysseus suffered many sorrows deep in his heart struggling to achieve his soul and the return of his companions. These two objects of his striving seem to involve each other deeply. The return of his companions turns out to be impossible. This impossibility is rooted both in the nature of the world-the adverse winds holding Odysseus and his companions on the island of the Sun cannot change until the prohibition against eating the sacred cattle has been violated; and in the nature of the companions-as the encounter with the Lotus-eaters indicates, to become forgetful of one's return follows frOrTI~ not being ready to bring back tidings: unlike Odysseus, his companions are not able in imagination and speech to make their life before the departure to Troy and their life after that moment into one life~that is why they cannot return. But, as the next line informs us, what Odysseus desired most of all was to draw his companions to himself (erusthai). This was his ultimate task in relation to them, as theirs was actively to allow tl1emselvcs to be drawn to Odysseus. In this task both Odysseus and his companions succeed. Their success receives its perfect seal in Elpenor's words to Odysseus in the underworld, that is, from beyond life in which of course it is always possible to re-appraise what has happened. Elpenor, the youngest of Odysseus' companions, wholly affirms his life in the companionship. He asks Odysseus to remember him, and he asks that the oar with which he rowed be erected on his burial mound as a memorial to the time when "I was among my companions." These final words spoken by Elpenor, and the affirmation they contain, render articulate and therefore somehow bearable the sheer gesture which Odysseus describes as "the most piteous sight my eyes beheld in my sufferings as I questioned the ways of the sea": six of his companions seized by Skylla reach out their hands toward an impotent Odysseus and utter his name. Let us leave Odysseus for now. He has many troubles still to face when he reaches lthaka. But for now we can with Homer be happy as the ship of the Phaiakians carries him homeward: "She carried a man with a mind like the gods for counsel, one whose spirit up to this time had endured much, suffering many pains: the wars of men, hard crossing of the big waters; but now he slept still, forgetful of all he had suffered." 17 �Kant's Empiricism Arthur Collins According to Kant, nature is the system of interconnected spatia-temporal objects and events comprising the total range of possible hum~m experience, and nature is the subject matter of all human knowledge. At the same time, nature is itself a product of the activity of the human cognitive constitution, and it would not exist at all were it not for human mental activities. The mind creates nature. This is a summary expression of a radical subjectivist tendency in Kant's thought. He says that we are affected by an unknown and unknowable reality, and this provides a raw material that excites the operation of our various faculties. In particular, it activates the sensitive aspect of our cognitive constitution which organizes the input as a system of "intuitions" in space and time, and it also awakens the conceptualizing aspect of our mental makeup which works up intuitions into representations of objects and thus gives rise to conscious experience and to the realm of objects of such experience. All of the objects with which experience can ever acquaint us must be found in this spatiatemporal world of perceptual experience. Even philosophical knowledge as expressed in principles like the principle of universal causality is only knowledge about the empirical world of possible experience. Kant never tires of warning us against interpreting such metaphysical principles as are accessible to us as truths about reality outside the mind-imposed conditions of possible experience. His Transcendental Dialectic is a catalog of erroneous theories produced by philosophers who have made the very mistake that he so urgently requires us to avoid. This is radical subjectivity because the only reality we get to know, on Kant's theory, even though it is called "nature" and is the subject matter of all science, is not a reality that is independent of our existence as subjects of experience, and not independent of the occurrence of our thinking processes as subjects. The content of our experience cannot be characterized at all without ineliminable reference to contributions that we make in working up raw materials into a unified and comprehensible system of objects of experience. The objects we get to know would not exist at all, they would be nothing, in Kant's own explicit and dramatic way of putting it, without our mental activities. That is, the very mental activities that go into our getting to know about the existence and character of objects of experience help to create those objects and to determine their character. Without our thought nothing Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York, Professor Collins is finishing a book on The Critique of Pure Reason. 18 would be caused by anything else, nothing would be prior to or later than anything else, or simultaneous with anything else either. For space and time and causality are among the features of empirical things that owe their standing entirely to the contribution of the knowing subject. Of course, the things that originally set in motion all of this creativity of the mind would exist even though we did not exist. But these are, as Kant calls them, things as they are in themselves, and we can never know anything at all about them. Things in themselves are never objects of our experience and the failure to realize that we can know nothing about them is the greatest source of error in metaphysics according to Kant. I think that the magnitude and the daring of the claim that the mind itself fabricates the world it experiences has always been one of the reasons for great interest in Kant's philosophy. At the same time, it is generally believed, and I believe also, that Kant was not only one of the great original figures of philosophical thought, but that his philosophy contains insights of permanent value, insights from which we can learn, and which make the arduous penetration of his obscurity and his inconsistency worthwhile. It is his thinking about experience, objects of experience, and consciousness, that is, it is his radical and unattractive subjectivist theory, that also embodies his most valuable permanent contributions. It is of these contributions that P. F. Strawson speaks, in his wonderful book on Kant, saying that Kant made " ... very great and novel gains in epistemology, so great and so novel that, nearly two hundred years after they were made, they have still not been fully absorbed into the philosophical consciousness." 1 What I have to say here is organized with a view to showing how this permanent and large contribution of Kant's thinking can be approached in the setting of an explicit doctrine the subjectivism of which appears so extravagant. I have already said that Kant holds that all human knowledge, apart from appreciation of merely formal truths of logic, has for its subject matter the realm of possible experience, which is the perceivable natural world. This much is in itself appealing to empiricists like all of us because it is a powerful empiricist commitment. Kant is indeed an empiricist of sorts. We can think of empiricism as a doctrine concerning knowledge or as a doctrine concerning reality. As a theory of knowledge, empiricism is the view that all knowledge claims rest ultimately on appeal to perceptual experience. As a theory of reality, empiricism is the view that the world accessible to us in sense experience is reality. Kant's thinking has a �July, 1979 major anti-empiricist component corresponding to each of these two conceptions of empiricism. First, there is his theory of synthetic a priori knowledge, that is, the claim that we do possess factual knowledge about the world which is not justifiable by appeal to experience. So Kant thinks that there is knowledge which is not empirical knowledge. Second, there is Kant's doctrine of the thing in itself, that is, a reality which we never do, and cannot possibly, encounter in experience. So Kant thinks that there is reality which is not empirical reality. Both of these central themes of Kant's philosophy are crucially connected with his subjectivism. The theory of synthetic a priori knowledge is connected with subjectivism in that the constitutive role of the mind in forming the spatiatemporal world is the foundation of Kant's explanation for our possession of synthetic a priori knowledge. Kant is persuaded by Hume's analyses that no necessary propositions and no universal propositions can be given a rational justification, if the admissible foundation for such justification is limited to experience. Experience cannot prove that, in the future, it will not itself overthrow any universal generalization that we find supported today. And any factual proposition defended by appeal to experience can hardly be necessary, since further experience might always show it false. Kant accepts this much from Hume, He does not follow Hume in simply abandoning the task of justification of our necessary and universal beliefs. He does not fall back, as Hume does, on mere naturalistic explanation rather than justification of our possession of such beliefs. How can we simply abandon justification here? What leads Hume to his famous scepticism is precisely what sets the fundamental question for Kant. If knowledge of scientific law cannot, and if knowledge of causal necessity cannot, be justified by experience, then Hume says we do not really have any such knowledge. Kant agrees that such knowledge cannot come from experience, so it must be a priori. It is not merely analytic knowledge, that is, these known truths do not reduce to formal and barren identities, so it is synthetic knowledge. But we do have such knowledge. It is absurd to suppose that scientific and mathematica.J understanding, the greatest achievement of human reason, is in fact no achievement at all but, rather, a collection of rationally unsupported beliefs with which nature happens to endow us. Thus, for Kant, the question cannot be whether we have synthetic a priori knowledge but only, "How is synthetic a priori knowledge possible?" Many philosophers before Kant thought that man has some inner source of knowledge or other. What is special about Kant's view on this point is precisely the empiricist element in it. What we know on the basis of our constitutional resources are, for Kant, truths about the world of experience even though they are not truths derived from the world of experience. It is beliefs about the world of experience that Hume's scepticism undermines. The general disparagement of perception in rationalist thought led to the idea of siphoning away the perceptual as the locus of secondary qualities and mere phenomena. Rationalists thought that scientific grasp was attainable only when an intrinsically misleading perceptual pic- ttue of reality was replaced by mathematical representation. Kant rejects both the scepticism engendered by radical empiricism and the downgrading of perceptual reality by the rationalists. The world of which mathematical science is a true representation is the world of objects in space and time. That is the realm of perception. The second major anti-empiricist theme in Kant's thought, the concept of the thing in itself, is also directly connected with his subjective theory of the constitution of the natural world. That there must be another reality apart from the one that is created in the course of our attainment of conscious experience is a fundamental feature of Kant's theory from the outset. Although the end product of the activities of our mental constitution would not exist without those activities, and although this end product exhausts the range of scientific investigation, the subject is not also asserted to be the source of the initial input upon which these lavish creative powers are to operate. Kant's notion of affection by things is patterned on the analogy of perception. This is only an analogy, however. To say that we are affected by outer reality is not just an extremely abstract way of saying that we perceive things. The objects we encounter in perception, according to Kant, are produced by our mental faculties working on a raw input which first awakens their creative potential. We cannot suppose that Kant is referring to objects of perception as the items that originally affect us. He cannot be telling us that the input that awakens our faculties comes from the finished product that their activity creates. It must be reality independent of our thinking that provides the origina] source of affection out of which we construct objects of experience. We know, for example, that these objects all exist in space and time. But this is because the raw material of the initial encounter with outer things is subjected to the fonns of our sensibility. Space and time, according to Kant, are those forms and they constitute a framework provided by the subject upon which the materials of receptivity are deployed. The original sources of this affection are not spatia-temporal things at all. Thus, the idea of a second reality composed of things in themselves is a fundamental part of the theory of nature that ascribes it to the creative activities of the knowing subject. This is reflected from the start in Kant's use of the word "appearances" ("Erscheinungen") as a general term of reference for the constituents of the world of possible experience. There would be no point in calling the items encountered in experience "appearances" without a correlative reality that is not merely empirical. There must be things in themselves even though we cannot get to know anything about them. Another deeper aspect of the relationship between Kant's subjectivism and his conception of things in themselves is illuminated by comparing Kant's position with Berkeley's idealism. Early reviews of the Critique of Pure Reason were disappointing and rather shocking to Kant because they bracketed his views with Berkeley's idealistic philosophy. The attitude of those who saw an affinity with Berkeley is not any mystery. Berkeley, too, rejected the theory of secondary qual19 �The College ities and insisted that the reality we encounter in our perceptual experience is the only reality we come to know. Furthermore, in his way, Berkeley makes the empirical world depend for its very existence on the mental activities that we naively think of as giving us access to it. Is that not a view like Kant's? It is not, in the first instance, because for Kant perceptual experience is founded upon an affection by a nonmental reality even though the object of which we ultimately become conscious is not that nonmental reality. For Berkeley, there is no reality apart from empirical reality, and that means, apart from the content of consciousness. Kant never entertained such a view and was legitimately alarmed when his ideas were taken to endorse it. At the same time, this distinction which was so crucial to Kant tends to shrink in significance just because Kant holds that we do not and cannot know anything about this nonempirical reality. His theory then seems quite like Berkeley's with the difference that Kant adds a gratuitious commitment to a wholly unknowable reality. I want to use the difference between Berkeley's and Kant's subjectivism, as the motif for a first effort of rethinking Kant's thoughts in a way that captures what is valuable in them. I said that the thing in itself is the core of the difference, but the fact is that, though Kant mentions it, he does not emphasize the thing in itself when he argues at length against the viewpoint of idealists and distinguishes his position from theirs. Instead, Kant tries repeatedly to formulate a surrogate distinction between subjective and objective, although both sides of the distinctions he introduces inevitably appeal to empirical reality, that is, to the reality that is thoroughly undermined by the subjectivism of his overall view. In the Prolegomena, for example, Kant offers a distinction between "judgments of perception" and "judgment~ of experience". If I judge that the room feels warm to me, the correctness of this judgment of perception requires nothing more than my own perceptual state. In a judgment of experience, however, I judge that the room is warm, and if I am right an objective quality exists in the object of my experience. Therefore, my judgment is objective and generates predictions about the experience of others which are not entailed by assertions limited to my perceptual states. This distinction is supposed to divide public intersubjective knowledge from mere private appreciation of one's own mental states. Kant tries to make the distinction within the realm of natural objects of experience all of which are products of our own constitution as subjects of experience. In the second edition passage entitled "The Refutation of Idealism" and in the Paralogisms dealing with spurious philosophies of mind, Kant makes similar and more complex efforts to distinguish between a level of subjective experience and a level of objective fact, again without relinquishing any of the overall subjectivism of the thesis of the minddependence of nature. Kant organizes his views with reference to a philosophy of mind which he rightly takes to be held in common by many philosophers of both rationalist and empiricist schools, and which he regards as the foundation of various species of idealistic philosophy. The definitive and 20 most influential articulation of this philosophy of mind is Descartes'. Descartes' scrupulous pursuit of indubitability led him to a revolutionary conception of the conscious mind and its immediate objects. This conception has dominated philosophy and determined the schedule of philosophical problems since the time of Descartes. Kant, of course, shares this inheritance. It is prominently reflected in his notion of "representations" as immediate objects of consciousness. Kant also recognizes fundamental limitations and illusions of the Cartesian philosophy of mind. He rejects outright the essential premise that, as conscious subjects, we are in direct touch only with the private contents of our minds, and that all other realities are at best subject matter for relatively tenuous hypotheses. A line from Hume's Treatise is a fine statement of this Cartesian premise and an indication of its power over philosophers of all schools:" ... 'tis universally allowed by philosophers, and is besides pretty obvious of itself, that nothing is ever really present with the mind but its impressions and ideas, and that external objects become known to us only by those perceptions they occasion.'' 2 This is the view that engenders idealism. It does so when arguments for the existence of extra-mental realities are left problematic or are flatly ruled out, as they are by Hume and Berkeley respectively. If we cannot get beyond our ideas, beyond "perishing" mental existences, as Hume calls them, with which we are i:n_direct contact, then perhaps those perishing ideas are reality and nothing beyond and in addition to such mental things exists at all. This epistemological starting point, shared by Descartes, the classical empiricist tradition, and so many later thinkers, does not offer a minimally coherent account of conscious experience according to Kant. \Ve cannot start with the idea of a conscious subject surveying wholly self-contained and ephemeral materials, such as Hume's perishing impressions and ideas. The missing ingredient necessary for the coherence of this viewpoint is the enduring conscious subject for whom the transitory contents are objects of consciousness. For we are not given any self except as one among other objects of experience. Experiences of a self are just experiences of "empirical self consciousness" and they are, as such, together with their content, as transitory as other experienced contents. We do not experience our selves as an enduring content that goes with all the other transitory contents. The empiricists actually share elements of this insight with Kant, but they do not pursue it to the end. Berkeley recognized that the concept of a perceiver, a thinking self for which ideas are conscious contents, could not be simply another idea. So Berkeley posited the notion of "spirits'' to fill in for the missing idea. To Hume, this account of a needed owner of impressions and ideas was not only unconvincing but also incompatible with Berkeley's own brilliant demolition of the corresponding concept of a material substance as the needed owner of sensible qualities. Paralleling Berkeley's repudiation of material substance, Hume repudiated mental substance. The only reality to which experience attests is the reality of the conscious contents of experience. Thus, ". . . when I enter most intimately into what I call myself . .. I never can �July, 1979 catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception. " 3 This is much the view that Kant expresses when he limits knowledge of the self to empirical selfconsciousness. Transcendental selfconsciousness (or apperception), the principle of the necessary ownership of all my experiences by a single subject, corresponds to nothing that I experience and is, therefore, reducible to the barren analytic formula: "All my experiences are mine." An "abiding self" contemplating hypotheses that might account for its fleeting conscious states is not a part of any epistemological starting point to which we are entitled. An abiding self is not given, and our idea of an abiding self is itself something that needs to be accounted for. Kant's solution to the problem posed by a starting point that lacks a given subject of experience is more or less dictated by the problem. The stability and unity of experience does not come from an antecedently given enduring subject. Therefore, the antecedent existence of enduring objects of experience must provide the foundation of stability and unity. Kant expresses this saying that there must be a "pennanent" in perception. The content of experience must support the thought that the same object is encountered again and, thus, the object must endure unperceived in the interval between perceptual encounters. Then the sameness of the object of perception can introduce the fundamental stability which the absence of the given sameness of the subject leaves wanting. For this, objects of perception must be independent of our perception of them. Kant reads this independence as the necessary existence of enduring objects in space. Space is the presupposed region for the existence of unperceived things which, a fortiori, cannot be found in the given temporal sequence of our perceptions. The concept of an enduring self as an accompaniment of experiences is itself derivative and depends upon the continuity provided by episodically perceived but continuously existing spatial objects. Kant thus solves the problem of the external world by refusing to allow it to arise and rules out all solipsistic philosophies and all the conceptions of mind that give rise to the theories he co11ects under the pejorative title "rational psychology." Perceived objects in space must exist unperceived, our acquaintance with them must be direct and no mere question of inference or hypothesis, and they must not depend upon our perception of them for their existence. The core of Kant's profound contribution to metaphysics and epistemology ·is to be found in these views about the concept of experience, the subject and the object of experience, consciousness and self-consciousness. It is in just these areas that much remains to be learned from Kant, for just these views have "still not been fully absorbed into the philosophical consciousness" as Strawson says. I cannot try to restate these views here in a way that satisfies us and conforms to current philosophical perspectives and usage. I will address the much more modest question of the compatibility of this promising view of e~perience with the pervasive subjectivism that we find in Kant's conception of the empirical world. For notwithstanding his anti-idealist arguments for the indepen. dent existence in space of immediate objects of conscious- ness, Kant never retreats from his contention that space is itself subjective and that perceived objects exist "only in our faculty of representation." Here, as in the contrast between judgments of perception and judgments of experience, Kant tries to substitute a distinction within subjectively constituted nature for a distinction between subjective experiences and objective realities. How can Kant have supposed that his anti-idealist views could be consistent with his assertion that the mind makes nature? How can we find these strands of Kant's thinking compatible? If we are to regard his opposition to idealism and the philosophies of mind that engender solipsistic problems as part of his permanent contribution, we need a way of looking at Kant's subjectivism that mitigates its seeming irretrievable unattractiveness. I want to look again at the premise that makes Kant's theory seem so extravagantly subjective. The continuously existing spatia-temporal. world of perceivable objects is our own creation. The a priori knowledge we have of it is explicable precisely because we have made this system of things ourselves, and that is why we are in a position to say what the fundamen.tal principles of its structure must be. Given this understanding, all our knowledge, and not merely synthetic a priori knowledge, must be regarded as knowledge of a-~mere construction, a world that is a creature of our thought and, therefore, a world that deserves to be called imaginary. This is why Kant's subjectivism seems to collide with his refutation of idealism. In his refutation he insists that immediate acquaintance with independent objects is essential if we are to have experience and not just imagination of outer things. How can this distinction move us if Kant presents the whole of possible experience together with all objects in space and time as products of our own minds which exist only in us? It appears that we are asked to distinguish between reality and imagination in a context which is all imagination to begin with. It is imagination that carries the burden at crucial junctures in Kant's own construction. Imagination is at the heart of memory and all synthesis. Imagination, for Kant, is the capacity to think a non-given object. All the mental activities upon which conscious recognition of objects depends involve appeal to something not presently given. Imagination enables us to conceive the existence of objects unperceived, and to appreciate the continuous existence of what is experienced intermittently. Imagination is Kant's fundamental tool for the construction of a stable world out of transient receptions of raw material. Thus, that stable world is an imaginary world. I have intentionally pressed Kant's subjectivism to the limit, reading it as the view that the world is a figment of the imagination. I mean to show how very close Kant's view is, even in this extreme form, to another passage of thought about experience which can be presented so as not to seem extreme at all but, on the contrary, so as to seem quite common-sensical. This view does not promote a despairing ignorabimus concerning things in themselves, nor does it generate Humean scepticism concerning the empirical world. 21 �The College Finally, this view is quite like the thoughts that Kant presents and sometimes it seems to be none other than just Kant's thought. This alternative interpretation can be expressed within the framework of a rough empiricism that endorses the general idea of a perceptual foundation for knowledge while remaining noncommittal on the analysis of perception and a11 other matters of detail, crucial though they must be in the long run. One thing is certain for any such empiricism: The perceptual experience upon which our knowledge is thought to depend is episodic. Our visual experiences, for example, start and stop as we open and close our eyes. The content of visual experience shifts gradually and abruptly depending upon our movement, and the movement of obstructions to vision, and upon what it is that happens to be visible. Tactual impressions require contact and are interrupted or broken by broken contact. There are comparable discontinuities affecting the other perceptual modes. Sleep ends experience altogether and awakening restores it with new content. This is the character of our experience. It is for this episodic character that Hume said that impressions and ideas, the only things truly "present with the mind," are perishing existences. Episodic character is not a disappointing or regrettable fact about perceptual experience. It is not feasible at all to suppose that experience of all the things we perceive would be better if it were more continuous, or that our perceptual experiences would be more helpful to us if they coincided in duration with their objects. In saying that we are empiricists we mean that we take this mass of episodic experience to be the only foundation we have for knowledge of the world. That world of which we do get to have knowledge does not have an episodic character, and its constituents are not perishing things as all of our experiences certainly are. On the basis of intermittent and relatively chaotic visual, auditory and tachtal experiences we get to know a stable world of things that has permanent existence globally and of which prominent local constituents are relatively enduring things. These enduring things are not given. I state rough empiricism in this way in order to suggest Kant's conception of representation. Kant says that appearances exist only in our faculty of representation and this strikes us as a hopelessly subjective conception, giving nature the status of an imagined world. But in one way Kant only means that objects are never the given content of any perceptual experience, and that such content is all that ever is given. Properly viewed this is undoubtedly correct. The given content of a perceptual experience is, for example, a view of a bridge. The bridge itself is not given. It is this view that perishes, should the viewer close his eyes. The bridge does not perish. The view, not the bridge, is, as Kant says, necessarily locatable in time with respect to all other mental contents of the subject. One might say, speaking of the view, that part of the bridge is obscured by an office building. This sort of thing is true of the given content, but not of the enduring object. This content and not a stable object is what is given. Such reflections will always eliminate the possibility that the content of an experience might be an object in nature. 22 Our thinking is complicated by the fact that we can only describe the given content of experience in terms of objects which are not given in the experience. This is Kant's view. Only when quite a bit of collecting, comparing, abstracting, in short, a lot of synthesis has taken place can we have an idea of an object of perceptual experience such as a bridge. Only then can we describe anything as "a view of a bridge." All description, being irreducibly comparative, necessarily goes beyond the immediately given and alludes to a range of related contents. Furthermore, consciousness of perceptual experience is itself dependent upon the same synthesis that makes description possible. Consciousness presupposes that experience involve recognition. So, in order that experiences be conscious at all, they must be recognized as experiences of this or that, and that means just that they must fit descriptions framed in terms of objects of experience. Therefore, it seems that we can only describe our experiences in terms of a picture of stable objects that we form on the basis of episodic and perishing experienced contents. Intrinsically, that is, apart from all comparison, the given is indescribable, for description is comparative. So we can describe the given only in terms of the non-given. This dark sounding formulation means that to describe our experience at all we have to say things like, "] can see part of the bridge from here," although the bridge itself is not given for it does not perish, and~ the bridge is not. in itself partly obstructed, and so on. After we have attained consciousness and can describe our experiences in the language of objects, it remains the case that what is truly given is not objects but always perishing views, or representations. Empiricists generally concede nowadays that we can devise no language of empirical description short of the so-called material-object language in which descriptive terms fit, in the first instance, relatively durable public objects. This is certainly part of what Kant means in arguing for permanence as part of our necessary conception of objects perceived. That is the argument that Kant depends on in opposing subjective idealism and the Cartesian starting point in epistemology. It rCmains to be seen whether this conception of permanence in immediate objects of perception is compatible with the subjective tendency of Kant's own commitment to the transience of the given in experience. So far we have seen that Kant shares this commitment with all roughly empiricist viewpoints. The known world of permanent existence is not what is given. Certainly from the point of view of empirical learning theory, it must be supposed to take some doing on the part of any organism to get to recognize what it is in experience that betokens objects of continuing existence. But we do succeed here, and when we do, we have a picture of a stable empirical world of which our experiences are transitory representations. We speakers can describe our experiences precisely by characterizing them as experiences of that stable world. The natural philosophical question here is, what is the status and the validity of the conception of the stable world to which we attain. Sticking to the factual level which is itself undercut by sceptical speculation, we all tend to think that the picture we �July, 1979 have of the stable material world is something like an automatic interpretation we make of our episodic experience quite early in life. What I want to emphasize is that, however it is formed, it must be formed, for it is something like a picture of the world and not the world itself which we come to possess. What is given, when we have matured and learned a bit, is still a transient content. The attainment of the level of conscious description gives us two things to talk about. One is the now-describable experiential episodes themselves and the other is the picture of the world that we form on the basis of those episodes. We form the picture. Doing so is coming to understand our experience. As a picture, it exists only in our thinking and without our thinking processes this picture of the world would not exist. intuition must represent objects since "the properties of things in themselves cannot migrate from those things into my faculty of representation. "4 Thus, to say that we must represent things is just to say that the things we get to know cannot themselves enter our minds. This is hardly a limitation or a reason for any discouraged subjectivism. The idea that our knowledge is drastically limited requires the further thought of a contrasting cognition of reality that does not involve representation. If we could go beyond mere representation, or strike through the veil of appearances and, thus, encounter reality itself, then our knowledge would be unfiltered by subjective mediation. It is this thought that supports subjectivist conclusions. But this thought is very implausible when explicitly stated and examined. Surely it is only because we are able to represent the world that we are able to get to know anything about it at all. Representation is a necessary means At this point 1 think it looks as though Kant's subjectivism will inevitably follow and it will not be compatible with the objective claims of his refutation of idealism. Kant thinks, and it seems that we shall have to follow him, that one kind of request for objectivity is inevitably going to be disappointed. Suppose we ask, How does our picture of a stable world compare with reality? Is it a good representation? Or does it fall short? When he is at his most subjective, Kant thinks, first, that these questions cannot possibly be answered and, second, that the fact that we cannot answer them has .something to do with the limited character of merely human cognitive capabilities. For have we not agreed, as empiricists, that the accessibility of the world consists in our possession of a picture of it in terms of which we describe and interpret the ephemeral given? We are in no position to compare reality to knowledge, not an obstacle. We noted above that the episodic and perspectival cht_uacter of perceptual experience cannot be thought a regrettable feature of it. Essential properties of experiences can never be properties of objects, and essential properties of objects can never be properties of expe- riences. This is as it should be. Objects could not possibly be given. They cannot migrate into our minds, as Kant says. We have to see the world from somewhere. But an object does not exist from somewhere. The world does not start and stop~~ but how could we expect that our experience of it might be other than transient? A continuous experience of everything at once, from nowhere in pa-rticular, would not be experience at all. Exactly what is required is transient experience (in which objects are not given) which we come to recognize as experi- ence of objects. with our picture, as though both the world and our picture of it were available for comparison. The closest we get to reality is the picture. There is no comparing to be done. At the same time, Kant continues in the conviction that just such a comparison would have to be made in order to justify any claim that the picture we have in our minds is not just something created by us, but is also a valid indication of things as they exist apart from our experience and our capacity to create conscious pictures in terms of which fleeting impressions are Kant loses sight of these relations because he always thinks in terms of an alternative mental constitution, superior to the human, namely, the mind of God. In the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries, philosophers still commonly adverted to God's thinking, not merely as part of a theological commitment, but also as a convenient vehicle for expressing we cannot compare the picture with the world itself, for we views about necessity and objectivity. The greatest philosophers thought it profitable to argue about what God might have done, and what He could not have done; and whether He might have created the universe earlier than He did; and only know the world insofar as we have this picture. Kant whether He preceives the world; and what sufficient reasons ordinarily reads this as entailing a limited subjective horizon for human knowledge. But no such discouraging conclusion actua11y follows from the character of our experience and our conception of the world based on experience. Subjectivism He has for creating as He does. Along with its other functions, the idea of the mentality of God operates in Kant's thought to make our human intellectual undertakings seem interpretable. We have only our picture of the world of stable objects and here is an intellectual illusion to which Kant and many other philosophers are susceptible. Things must be represented if they are to be known and representation does lead to knowledge of things and not to knowledge of itself. Kant is sometimes partially aware of this himself and that is why he never abandons the idea that the needed distinction between subjective and objective must be formulable within the framework of the assumption that stable objects are "thought" by us but never given. In the Prolegomena; for example, Kant says that comparatively inadequate. This encourages Kant to read the necessary role of representation in knowledge as a limitation and a falling-short of theoretical possibilities. For example, Kant says that human intuition is sensuous, meaning that we have to be affected and thus representations have to be engendered in us. These representations and not the affecting reality are given. God's intuition would not suffer these limitations. God knows reality without having to be affected. He does not really have to look down through the clouds, nor wait for a propitious moment for his apprehension of things. 23 �The College He does not, then, rely on representations as we must. The idea of this kind of mentality is just what makes our apprehension of reality seem disappointing. Consider Kant's conception of space and time in this light. Men have to apprehend things from somewhere and at some time. Since a thing must be viewed from somewhere, if it is going to be viewed at all, its being somewhere relative to a man's viewpoint is a necessary condition for its intellectual accessibility to him. But this is a consequence of the fuct that men must rely on representations. If we did not have to take a look in order to know reality, as God does not, it would not have to be somewhere in order to be known. If we knew everything without bothering with a sequence of transient experiences, interrelatable in time, and, therefore, surveyable by memory and understanding, then time would be all at once for us. There would be no time. These are precarious speculations. The idea of the mind of God helped Kant to feel supported by thoughts on the margin of intelligibility like these. God does not have to create a picture and then face the unanswerable question of its adequacy. He grasps things as they are in themselves, without a perspective and without imposing subjective conditions. Further, while human intuition is passive and receptive and only our understanding is active and creative, God's intuition is called "creative intuition" by Kant, suggesting the theory of Malebranche inherited by Berkeley that God's thought of realitY is the same as his sustaining creation of it. Naturally, God does not have to acquire and collect subjective views of things, retaining old ones for the sake of comparison and eventually for the construction of descriptions cast in terms of abstracted empirical concepts. But this is just what man must do. This fanciful thinking about divine cognition prevents Kant from recognizing the potential of his own theory, not as a quasi-factual account of our mental faculties, but as an ex;Jloration of the very concepts of cognition and experience. If we do reinterpret his thoughts as philosophical analyses of these concepts, then they do not have to carry nearly the burden of unattractive subjectivism that Kant himself ordinarily presents along with his best insights. Verbal expression is a form of representation and a helpful model for the relationship of representation and reality. Consider propositional expressions as our pictures of the world. To contemplate the world at all we have to frame propositions. To believe anything we have fo assent to propositions. To know anything is to assent to a proposition in a context wherein other complex conditions are satisfied. It looks as if our knowledge will always be mediated by propositional expression, and this looms as an obstacle to some fancied unmediated objectivity. Are propositions, then, an unavoidable distorting lens, imposed by our needs, through which we have to approach reality? We are tempted here to complain about a logical feature of the perspective of any knowing subject as if it were a factual obstacle to human knowledge. Propositionality makes thought possible. We cannot put a natural object in the place of a propositional subject. A structure of words makes it possible to say something. A structure of objects says nothing. Therefore a structure of objects does 24 not say anything that might be true, or believed, or known. Still we come back to Kant's question: If all we have is the proposition, then how do we know it is true? Kant often thinks that the fact of the matter is that we do not. Our picture of the world goes no further than the systematic interconnectedness of our thought1, for it can go no further. Then Kant leans toward something like a coherence theory of truth. Scientific knowledge is the coherence of appearances. But his thought about perception and his refutation of idealism pave the way for something better than this. As empiricists we ought to answer the question, How do we know that propositions are true? by appeal to experience. Of course, when we have attained consciousness and our experiences have become describable, we cannot literally follow the "plain historical method" Locke envisioned. We cannot retrace our epistemological steps back to the unsynthesizecl and indescribable given. But we are entitled to call attention to simple situations where "I see it" is the only right answer to give to questions like, "How do you know that the mail has arrived?" This is a good answer and one that Kant's understanding makes available for epistemology. For does he not say that enduring objects in space must be the immediate objects of perceptual consciousness? Idealism is the thesis that the objects of consciousness are all mental things, that is, that they are all ideas. Ideas are dependent upon thought for their existence. But Kant a-rgues that the things of which we are conscious in perception are not mental things but objects, independent of our thought, that exist in space. These are the immediate and not the inferred objects of perceptual experience. Of course, this is inconsistent with the Kantian claim that there are no spatial things apart from our mental activities. To say that objects are "independent" has to mean that they exist in themselves. It is the comparison of human with divine apprehension of things that encourages Kant to make space and time systems of purely subjective relations, and not just systems of relations, following Leibniz. If we drop the rhetoric of the limitations of mere human faculties, we are free to characterize the objects of consciousness in perception as spatia-temporal objects while conceding that such objects are never given. The given is always a perishing content. As such, the given is not an object of consciousness at all. Synthesis of the given, that is, integration and learning which results in a conception of a stable world of objects is required for all recognition, description and consciousness. When we attain consciousness we can recognize an experience as a view of a bridge. Only thus recognizable can experience be conscious at all. The experience retains the perishing and perspectival features of a representation. That is its subjectivity. But when a perceiver does see a bridge, for all the subjectivity of his experience, the object of which he is conscious is a bridge and not a representation. To say that objects are not given is to say that objects do not migrate into our thought, as Kant put<; it. Upon reflection, this cannot be a shortcoming of our thought. Objects could not migrate into God's thought either. We can and do become conscious of objects. That we do is a presupposition �July, 1979 of consciousness in general, according to Kant. That means that self-consciousness and consciousness of our representations as such are conceptually dependent upon our success in attaining consciousness of enduring independent objects. As objects of consciousness, the status of mental things, of ideas, is derivative. This ordering of things is quite the reverse of idealism. It is at the center of Kant's most valuable philosophical insights. 1 The Bounds of Sense, London 1966, 29. Selby-Bigge, Editor, London 1888, 67. 3/b;d .. 252. 4 Section 9. 2 Some Classical Poems of the T'ang and Sung Dynasties translated by Julie Landau Meng Hao-jan Li Po (689-740) (701-762) Spring Dawn Spring sleep: dawn takes me by surprise The birds sing everywhere All night there was the sound of wind and rain How many blossoms have fallen? Wang Wei (701-761) Autumn Dusk m the Mountains Deserted mountain, fresh from rain, The air by evening turns autumnal Moonlight spattered among the pines, A clear spring over rocks, The rustle of bamboo around the washing girls Water-lily leaves part for a fishing boat Spring fragrance has vanishedBut why not linger? Julie Landau has studied Chinese at Columbia University and for a year (1967-1968) in Hong Kong. Trained at the University of Hong Kong, David Fung translated at the United Nations from 1946-1970. Fighting South of The Wall Last year war At the Sang Kan source, This year war Along the Ts'ung, Swords washed in the sea at T'iao Chih, Horses put to graze in the snows of T'ien Shan: Miles of war, years of war, The armies aging. The huns think killing cultivates the land And reap, time and again, white bones in yellow sand. The Ch'in built the wall against them, The Han kept the beacons burningThey burn on ... and on, Expansion never ends In the fields, men fight and die, Butchered horses scream to heaven, Black ravens carry human entrails And drape them over withered branches Soldiers are smeared over the grass, Generals act-but to what end? An instrument of evil, that's what an army is, Good prince, don't use it, 'til all else fails! "War Chariot Song," "For WeiPa, Living in Retirement," "Autumn Dusk in the Mountains," "Spring Dawn," "Song of Ch'ang Kan," "Hard Road I," and "The People North of 'The River" were done in collaboration with David Fung. 25 �I A Hard Road I Gold goblets of clear wine, ten thousand a measure, jade plates, rare food, worth ten thousand more I put aside the cup, throw down my chopsticks Draw my sword, look desparately about, I'd cross the Yell ow River; ice blocks it! I'd attempt Tai Hang; snow darkens the sky! Oh to drop a line and fish beside a stream, Or sail, dreaming, to the sun's edge. It's hard to go on, hard, hard, The road forks again-now where? Oh, for a long wind and the breaking waves And a tall sail to carry me over the sea. A Hard Road III Have you ears? Don't wash them in the Yin! Have you a mouth? Don't eat bracken in Shou Yang! Hide your light, obscurity's valuable Why compete in lonely pride with moon and cloud? Observe: from antiquity the worthy who rise high And do not then withdraw, end badly, Tzu Hsu was thrown into the Wu Chu Yuan drowned himself in the Hsiang Lu Chi, despite his talent, could not protect himself, Li Szu regretted not drawing in the reins earlier And never heard the Crane's cry in Hua T'ien. Only Chang Han, famed for perception, Felt the autumn wind and turned toward home. Drink while you canWhat are a thousand years of fame to the dead? Climbing the terrace to watch for your return~ Sixteen now, and you far away, Up the Yangtze, past gorges, torrents and rocks. The fifth month I could not stand The sad cry of the monkeys rising to heaven, Your footprints where you lingered, Covered by new moss, Moss too deep to sweep away. Falling leaves, early autumn wind, The eighth month, a flurry of butterflies Two by two in the western gardenMy heart aches, My looks fade. When at last you come back through San Pa, Send word ahead, I'll meet you, however far, Even to Ch'ang Fung Sha. Tears for Old Chi, Master Brewer of Hsuan Ch' eng So, Chi Sou, you've gone down to the Yellow Springs Still brewing your best wine, no doubt. On the terrace of night, where there's no dawn, To whom do you sell it? Yellow Springs means Hades. Tu Fu (7I2-770) War Chariot Song Song of Ch' ang Kan My hair still in pigtails I picked flowers, played by the gate, You, astride a bamboo pole, Trotted round the well, juggled green plums, Shared childhood on a lane in Ch'ang Kan, Easy together, not suspect, untroubled. At fourteen I became your wife Too shy to raise my eyes in your presence, I averted my face, looked at dim corners: A thousand calls, not one turn of the head. At fifteen I dared laugh and look up, Desired to mingle our dust and our ashes. Like the lover in the story I keep my vigil, 26 Chariots rumble Horses neigh The men are ready, bows and arrows at their waists Fathers, mothers, wives and children come Dust rises, the view to Hsiang Yang Bridge is blockedThey pull, they stamp, they block the road, The noise of their cries rises to heaven At the side of the road, an old man asks the soldiers why? They blame the endless call-up: "At fifteen sent north to man the river defence By forty moved west to work the frontier farms." �"Before you leave, the elder binds up your black hair White haired, you're garrisoned still!" At the front, blood flows like water But doesn't quench the emperor's ambition You must down ten cups in sequence. Ten cups and I am still not drunk just warmed by your long affection. Tomorrow, high mountains rise between us Our course, vague and uncertain. "Don't you know? East of the mountains China has two hundred divisions? A thousand villages, ten thousand towns, gone to seed." When women work hoes and plows, Rice grows helter skelter, you can't tell east from west The men suffer Driven like dogs and chickens "And, old man, we don't even dare complain Take this winter, no rest at the front But here the district officer wants rents and levies Where's the money to come from?" "One thing is certain, a son's a misfortune Have a girl A girl can be married to a neighbor A son will be buried in alien grass." "Don't you see piled to the peak of Ch'ing Hoi Generations of white bones no man mourned?" New ghosts protest a futile sacrifice while old ghosts cry The dark sky weeps for them. For WeiPa, Living in Retirement Life keeps us apart I move with Lucifer, you with Orion But tonight, just tonight, We share this candle. Youth, health, how long can they last? We're grey already And when I ask about old friends I find that half are ghosts. How could I know twenty years ago That only now I' cl step again into your hallYou weren't yet married, Now suddenly a row of sons and daughters With happy faces honor us And ask me where I'm from. Ask, answer, ask and are not done When you bid them set out food and wine. In night rain, spring chives are cut To eat with steaming rice and millet. You toast our meeting face to face~ so rare Ch'en T'ao {9th Century) The Journey West Sworn to wiping out the huns at any price, Five thousand in fine sables fell in the Mongol dust. Alas, the bones on the Wu Tung's banks, Are men still, in dreams, within the inner chambers. Wang An-shih (1021-1886) The People North of The River The people of the North Endure the bitterness of two frontiers Families teach the young to farm and weave Paying taxes to officials and tribute to the huns. This year's drought left a thousand acres bare, Still conscripts are hustled into river service Old lean on young and struggle south, But there, even in good years, people starve Sorrow extends from heaven to earth, dawn to dusk. On the roadside, ashen faces, Born too late for the great Sung times, They measure out the grain and a few coins, without war. 27 �Su Shih Li Ch'ing-chao (1037-1101) (1084?- c. 1151) Sheng Sheng Man Searching, searching, again and again Cold and still, cold and still Yung Yu Lo P' eng Cheng: I lodge for the night at Swallow Pavillion, dream of P'an-p'an, and write this tz'u. Bitter bitter, cruel cruel sorrowFever, chillsNo stay, no rest. Two three cups of thin wine Can not hold off the evening or delay the wind The geese have passed And left me sick at heart Though once, we were old friends The ground is full of yellow flowers piling up Dry, brittle, wounded Who can pick them now? I keep my vigil by the window Alone, how can I stand its getting dark? And the Wu Tung, and thin rain? Dusk, day fades, bit by bit, drop by drop One thing after another How can one small word 'grief' tell it all? Geese were considered messengers. The Wu Tung is a tree whose leaves make a distinctive melancholy sound in autumn. Last to lose its leaves, it is a symbol of autumn, which, in turn, is a symbol of age, as spring is a symhol of youth. Wu Ling Ch'un The wind has dropped leaving the earth fragrant with fallen flowers I know it's late, but what's the use of doing my hair? Things go on-all but you! Everything is finished, And all I had to say has turned to tears. Along the Suan, I hear, it's still springIf only I could take the skiff there! But I'm afraid-that light boat in the Suan, How could it carry so much sorrow? 28 Bright moon like frost Fine breeze like water Clear view without end Fish jump in the pond Round lohts leaves ooze dew Not a voice, not a soul. The third watch sounds A leaf shatters on the ground, Breaks my erotic dreamIn the vast night I can not find it again Awake, alone, I walk in the small garden. I have traveled to the borders of heaven Mountains block my return Eye and heart strain toward home until they break Swallow Tower is empty What has become of its lovely lady? Now only swallows are locked in The past is like a dream When one wakes Pleasure fades, regret lingers . You who will come To my Yellow Tower on such a night Will sigh for me. P'an-p'an had been a beautiful singer and dancer, favorite of the military governor of Hsu-chou, cenhnics earlier. Hsu-chou had built Swallow Tower for her, and she had lived there after his death, faithful to his memory. Yellow Tower was built hy Su Shih himself in the same area. �Hsin Ch'i-chi (1140-1207) Chiang Ch' eng Tzu Man Chiang Hung On the 20th day of the first moon, 1075, I record the night's dream. Traveling on the river, rhyming with Yang Chi-weng Ten years living and dead have drawn apart, I do nothing to remember, But I can not forget Your lonely grave a thousand miles away, There is nowhere I can talk of my sorrow. Even if we met, how would you know me, My face full of dust, My hair like snow. In the dark of night, a dream: suddenly, I am home, You by the window Doing your hair. I look at you and can not speak, Your face is streaked by endless tears. Year after year must they break my heart, These moonlit nights, That low pine grave? These selections come from two outstanding periods in the three thousand years of China's unbroken poetic tradition: T'ang (618-907) and Sung (960-1279). From the sheer volume of poems-48,000 in the complete T' ang anthology by over two thousand poets, and much more in the Sung-it is clear that people who wrote poetry didn't think of poems as monuments. It was an everyday form of expression. Often it simply recorded an event-a meeting, a holiday, an excursion. Most poetry was written by officials, or aspiring officials. For centuries, examinations, which gave entrance to the bureaucracy, centered on poetry. Quite naturally, therefore, the poets thought of themselves primarily in their political role, and only secondarily or not at all as poets. Most of the greatest poets aspired to political success. Few achieved it. None achieved it for long. Of the great T'ang poets, Li Po went unrecognized until after he was forty. He enjoyed favor at court for only a year or two before court intrigues and a series of unfortunate accidents forced him into exile in remote, disease-ridden provinces. Tu Fu failed the imperial examinations three times and spent his life drifting from one miserable post to another. Meng Hao-ian, too, failed, gave up, and became a recluse. Of these poets, Wang Wei had the least troubled career, but even he had periods out of favor and in exile. For almost all poet-bureaucrats, it was a life of constant wandering. Three years was the normal time of duty in one place. In Sung times, Wang An-shih was the most controversial states- I have seen the mountains and rivers We're quite old friends I still remember, and in dreams can travel everywhere South of the river and north. Lovely places one should visit with just a staffThe shoes I've worn out in a lifetime! 1 scoff at the world's work-what a waste for thirty nine years, Always the official, the wanderer. The lands of Wu and Ch'u Rise to the east and south, The great deeds Of the rivals Ts'ao and Liu Have been blown away by the west wind And left no trace. By the time the watch tower is finished, its occupant is dead, The banners are not yet rolled up, but my head is white I sigh over life's vagaries, now sad, now happy, Now as in ancient times. man. Radical even by our standards, his ideas shaped China for almost two decades until a new emperor rescinded his reforms. History did its best to forget him until recently. Su-Shih was his main political rival. Although Su's opposition to Wang's policies led to repeated exile, the two remained friends and exchanged poems. Li Ch'ing-chao is virtually the only woman poet most Chinese acknowledge. Other women are known to have written, but almost nothing has been preserved. Li has fifty-odd poems out of an oeuvre known to have been much larger. The two poems included here were written after the death of her husband. The T'ang poets brought several older forms to excellence never surpassed. They added two of their own that had, not only a fixed number of words per line, but a fixed number of lines and an exacting prosody. Partially as a reaction to these constraints, the Sung poets, while still using these forms well, began to experiment with a form that came out of the singing houses: tz'u. These were lyrics "filled in" to tunes that came to China from central Asia. In the beginning, it was a much freer style: length was not fixed, there were long lines mixed with short, and enjambement was frequent. Initially, it was sung. With time, the tunes were lost and the patterns codified, and all thought of singing tz'u forgotten. About all that remains of their not quite respectable origin is these song titles which now identify simply a pattern. Over six hundred are commonly used. In the preceding selection, the tz'u have their pattern-titles simply transliterated. -J.L. 29 �For Bert Thoms July 15, 1917 Between classes at about ten fifteen on the morning of December 12, 1978, Bert Thoms collapsed of a heart attack. He died soon after in the hospital. His colleague and friend, the Reverend J. Winfree Smith, conducted the funeral service in a crowded Great Hall on the morning of December 16, a soft, bright, almost balmy day. He is buried in St. Anne's Cemetery within sight of the College in Annapolis. I have asked several friends, colleagues, and students to write on him.- L.R. Eva Brann Some of the masters whose influence left a trace upon my character to this very day combined a fierceness of conception with a certitude of execution upon the basis of just appreciation of means and ends which is the highest quality of the man of action. Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea Bert Thoms, whom I shall miss over and over as the seasons roll round, was my friend. Our friendship flourished largely in one element. We saw each other on land only occasionally-just to exchange a word of agreement on some plan or situation-and during the annual spring scraping, when the boat's bottom was cleaned and painted in his yard. This nautical working bee had a ritual tinge, and it was topped off by a hearty and hilarious lunch, hospitably provided by his wife, Josephine. But twice or thrice a year we were thrown into the closest proximity, for a day or two or even for a fortnight. That was when he invited me to sail as part of his crew for a Sunday sail on the Chesapeake or for the school-end northward cruise to Buzzards Bay, where he always brought the boat for the summer. I think he was pleased with my pleasure in sailing and regarded me as permanently signed on. For the rest, he was an inveterate recruiter of crews, usually St. John's students. Now and then he even made a press gang of me, for it is not easy to find an able-bodied-and sound mindedcomplement of four, free at the same time; and to be on board of that boat with a passable crew was, I think, the great recreation of Bert's life. I am already regretting the times I backed out, unable to get away and sometimes, truth to tell, unwilling to subject myself to the heat and the head and the green stuff in the drinking water-for the small tortures of each trip were transfigured by marvellous moments. 30 December 12, 1978 Bert's last and best-loved boat was called the Cygnet. There are many fancy and funny names to be seen on sterns in Annapolis harbor, but the Cygnet was unwhimsically named after its class, and a stumpy little swan of a boat it was. Bert himself was a no-nonsense sailor; he wore old slacks and a visored cap and some ratty but warm gloves preserved from his days as a pilot in the Second World War, when he ferried planes across the Atlantic. He was totally without nautical affectation, but to his crew he was the Skipper, and that, quite untinged by facetiousness, is the image I have of him. For he knew what he was doing, at every moment and in every situation. Of course, pleasure boating in a sloop of little more than twenty foot length may not seem a major enterprise, but nasty, even dangerous, situations can arise: you can run hard aground or be becalmed in a shippiiJgJane or caught in a squall. Bert could work us off, get the outboard going (we had a standing bet of a quarter on its starting by the third pull), take in sail. And so, in the comfort of his competence, we enjoyed our scrapes. He was infallible-almost-but when something did go wrong it was wonderful. One night, on the dreary waters of the Delaware Bay, I had gone below early to sleep off a headache. The next morning my bunk partner, Janet Christhilf (later O'Flynn) woke me up with the unforgettable words: "Have a look, we're sitting in a meadow." I made a rude reply and raised myself to the porthole. We were sitting in a meadow. The Cygnet, which had two flat keels for just this contingency, had somehow-Bert never vouchsafed an explanation-come to rest on a water meadow in the delta of the Maurice River, only a few miles of knee-deep black muck away from the town of Bivalve. Our consolation was apparently to be that we were not in the Cohanssey(?), a river famed for flies, and indeed turned in Bert's telling into a kind of £luminal Lord of Flies. It was typical of sailing with him that a river, so obscure that on no map in Walla Walla is its name printed, should have become a byword to me. Oddly enough that day turned into a cosily memorable one. When the wind failed, the mosquitoes came in black clouds, but we closed the hatch, sipped Southern Comfort, the boat's universal elixir, read novels and gave ourselves over to a swamp existence. Noon tide came in and went out without us. Night tide would, Bert had said, be higher. A wind sprang up; clouds were chasing across the moon. A fishing skiff with two drunk anglers turned up and offered to tow us off in return for being pointed toward home port, Bivalve. No success for either side. Finally Bert with Donne! O'Fiynn kedged us off, having packed the other half of the crew into the dinghy to �July, 1979 lighten the boat, which, suddenly swimming free, flew off into the night. All these events are told in the Cygnet's log. But usually the mistakes were committed by the crew, si- lently noted and silently rectified by Bert. They rarely perturbed him, though once, during a night watch off Point Judith, shared by Meredith Anthony and me we managed it thoroughly. Bert had given us a course and told us to hold it; then he and Michael Anthony had gone below and stuffed themselves into their quarter bunks. Soon the wind stiffened, but we, intoxicated by the blowy black night air and secure in the roguish pretense of sticking by orders, sailed on as we were, heeling hard and the deck awash. Presently he shouted up, and on bending down I saw him hugging the ship's store of liquor to his bosom and angrily accusing us of causing "internal shipwreck." In my kitchen there still hangs~and always will~a carefully engrossed Greek quotation from Sophocles, which he later presented to me, advising that "he who will not slacken sail betimes, shall sail home sitting on the keel"-a very Bertian present, savoring at once of round- about rebuke and affable reminiscence, not to speak of learned wit. 1942 Said quarter bunk, a coffin-like ·container extending under Hence he knew about the aeronautical significance of the the cockpit seat, was my joy: To be lapped in the leeward bunk, with the boat going fast and the water soughing against the side, made for the most delicious naps available this side of Lethe. There were a number of other specific delights so acute that they overbalanced hours of mild torture~which flight patterns of wild geese and how to catch and clean fish~under his tutelage I used a mackerel tree to haul in my first and last catch: five mackerel and two pollock at once. He could judge a distance, spot a buoy in a fog, show up a cheating car mechanic, fell a tree so that it would fall between two others. He knew materials: what glue would stick what to Bert, however, never seemed to regard as an avoidable evil but as a source of stoic relish. For example, he would rarely let us land to eat or shower, partly because it was a source of pride to sail frugally and self-sufficiently, but ultimately, I concluded, because he liked discomfort on board better than luxury on land. But those delights were worth it: ghosting on a zephyr up an Eastern Shore creek on a frosty fall morning with the sky covered by honking wedges of wild geese and white flights of wild swans, floating through the meadows of the inland waterway watched by a heron on the banks, sailing into a lovely New England town harbor for a rare bowl of clam chowder, warming up at anchor after nightfall with a cup of cocoa-cum-Southern Comfort accompanied by lots of clowning. The boat was often resonant with Bert's intoning of hymns and ballads, of which he had a cyclically boundless repertoire, including my favorites, "The Christian Cowboy" and "Ballad of the Dismal Swamp." Bert had an often-foiled longing to sail down to the real source of this latter mournful song, the North Carolinian Dismal Swamp, and that had been the very destination for this coming spring cruise-but now that trip will never be. Once, in Long Island Sound, I discovered that he knew by heart more stanzas of the "Internationale" than I knew it even had. But then he had more curious knowledge~which he retailed with sly unobtrusiveness on the proper occasion-than anyone else I know, knowledge stored away in the course of his varied occupations: he had been music major, labor organizer, lumberjack, pilot, hunter, mechanic, professor, and, of course, St. John's tutor. what at what temperature and under what tension. He knew what doohickey would turn what trick and what tool was exactly right for what job~although he could always devise a jury rig, in a pinch. He could fix anything, under the most unlikely conditions, going to work with inexhorable, slow, sure doggedness, pitting his patient know-how against the re- calcitrance ofthe thing. He sailed with seasoned correctness, like someone who could write the manual as soon as read it. Like any good captain, he was a tyrant, but a tacit tyrant, who would spot an incorrectly tied knot right away but let it go until he was at leisure to amble over and retie it with pedagogically ostentatious wordlessness. He persisted in hinting for lunch at 1300 hrs., when the landlubberly cook was willing at one o'clock. I understood his insistence as stemming from that uncompromising sense of appropriate procedure which sometimes suddenly becomes crucial on a boat. He had that nautical "fierceness of conception" combined with "certitude of execu- tion" of which joseph Conrad speaks. I wanted to learn, but I was a little unnerved by his ways. So eventually I quietly resigned my position as anxious navigator and became a con- tented galley slave, handing up always welcome cups of black coffee laced with spiritual substance and unobtrusively giving the captain the lion's share of the noodles; he needed it. For on board he was indefatigable. The crew might goof off, curl up in the sun with a book or retreat below out of the cold rain. He sat in the stern, apparently impenetrable to cold and wet. At home he had a reputation for deep and welltimed sleep~that is, when he had put everyone to work. But 31 �The College on board he always had one eye open-incidentally, a blessing to a crew to whom his ship-shaking snoring was a legend. He was, though not young, and lumbering rather than athletic, agile enough in an emergency, and tireless and tough. Once, off the coast of New Jersey, we ran into a squall, one accurately predicted by him, I should add. He sent us below, closed the hatch tightly and battled the elements. Stupefied by excessive carbon dioxide and the mad heaving and a heady sense of safety-in-danger, we were startled scared just twice: when the storm jib blew with a loud report, and again when Bert urgently beat on the hatch door: his cigarette lighter wanted refilling. On board we seldom talked of teaching, but I did learn a lot about certain sides of the college, especially about those students who had made outsiders of themselves by their wild and weird behavior and who had found in Bert someone to calm and tame them. He was, as I said, a tacit though not a taciturn man, especially where he felt deeply. l think there were long-standing silent resentments; he thought that his projects had been too often slighted and his opinions neglected. Perhaps I ought to have learned more of all this on our long watches together, but he was a proud man, and I was not sure that it was my place to ask. This pride showed itself in an odd and characteristic mannerism. A mood would seize him for sesquipedalian utterance. For example, homeward-bound he would hand me the binoculars with instructions to find the black nun buoy a point off the port bow-only he would say to sight "a navigational marker of the female ecclesiastical class," an order which strained more than the eye. I took it for a signal that his practical know-how was not to eclipse his verbal versatility. For he had a passionate relation to the logos, and it was that which drew him back to the college after an enfOrced absence. And this passion came in rare conjunction with a capacity for action in Conrad's sense: not political activity or technical efficiency, but a kind of masterful intimacy with man's tackle and nature's tricks. We needed such a man in the St. John's community, and we shall miss him very much. Walla Walla, Washington Janet Christhilf O'Flynn '74 Bert Thoms declared the supremacy of reason over passion. From the first he carried this out in a most original way. At the age of four Bert left home. For fuod he took along a box of sawdust: he figured that since he couldn't eat much of it at a time, it would last quite a while. The experiment ended when his path led by the schoolyard where his sisters were playing and he was returned to his mother. I first met Bert during my sophomore year at St. John's College. He had become a teacher in the years since he first left home and he led his students into the same life of courage, originality, and respect for reason. He was hospitable, welcoming the opportunity for discourse outside as well as 32 inside the classroom, and he was loyal. When lack of funds threatened to make me take a year off from school, Bert invited me to live with his family, rent-free. His family had welcomed live-in students before, at Washington-Jefferson College, and a rich friendship with the whole family always resulted from the arrangement. It is a privilege now to have one p1ore paper to write for Bert. Bert knew that the practice of reason demands faith and he took to heart the warning in the Meno that misology is the greatest evil into which a man can fall. So far was he from misology that his daily work and play centered around words. The work lay in awakening his students to the full weight of meaning in speech and in being faithful to the conclusions reached. The play lay in examining each English word anew for its alliterative and rhythmic oddities, for its punning possibilities in any of several languages, and for the humorous consequences of its careless and habitual use by lazy tongues. In Bert's sophomore language class we used C. S. Lewis's Studies in Words as a beginning for our discussion of the shifts in meaning that occur through time. Bert pointed out, for instance, that the word "discrimination" as it is used in talk about racial or sexual bias today actually means "lack of discrimination," or judging the individual on the basis of a stereotype. He used this clarity of definition in seminar discussions to shock students into hearing themselves in similar contradictions. Since grammar aids clarity of thought,- he read the assigned language papers as thoroughly for form as for content, and marked them accordingly. His award for achievement, whether in Greek grammar or in geometric propositions, was a button reading, &.peTi, €7TtO"'Ti,f.L7} ~<TTLv: knowledge is virtue. Bert did appreciate the deliberate ambiguities of meaning used in poetry. One of his favorite poets was John Donne and "Batter my heart, three-personed God" one of his favorite poems for complexity of images. He also prized Donne for his logic. Donne's poem, "The Flea," prompted comparison with Marvell's poem, "To His Coy Mistress." Although Donne attempts to seduce his mistress by belittling the action desired, his poem is logical and, Bert suggested, his argument should be more convincing to a reasonable woman than Marvell's attempt at seduction which, though lyrical, is based on a false syllogism. We were assigned one poem to memorize for class, with the recommendation that we make memorizing a regular habit. Bert claimed to have in his memory thirty hours of verse which had stood him in good stead whenever he did not have access to books. Unfortunately for his friends, Bert's memory included verse far worse than any of Donne's. The doggerel which he delighted in rendering, usually in song, included the "Ballad of the Dismal Swamp," "Psalm 40" rerhymed and set to a nursery tune in which all the unaccented syllables came on the down beat, and the spiritual which began, "Oh, I'm a cowboy, a Christian cowboy. I round up dogies for the Lord." Some of these treasures came from his childhood in Michigan, as did the only piano piece he had mastered, the "March of the Little Sages". An earlier and sweeter memory was of the many names of �July, 1979 flowers, some in Latin, that his mother taught him as she grew them to sel1 in town. Bert's love of names and renaming of familiar objects created a Thomsian world around him. A newcomer was taught to say "fraudulent discomfort" for cham-pagne, and "rational quadruped" for poodle. Even his students were affectionately renamed. Donnel turned into Donnelovitch, Janet into Janeticule, and Claire into Clairenon-de-la-lune. In this Thomsian world, Bert reigned. His special throne was at the helm of his sailboat, a Signet named Cygnet, where his competence compensated for many errors of skill and judgment on the part of the accompanying student crew. He was a benevolent despot. Once, out on the open ocean, we hit a storm at night and all but the captain went below out of the heavy rain. We huddled in the hatch, growing drowsy from lack of oxygen and queasy from the violent pitching, while the indefatigable doggerel songs wafted happily from above in the wet wind and lightning. Bert at times fell into despondency, as do we all. One such low period came after the death of a long-time friend and neighbor in Onset, Massachusetts. During the ensuing months Bert lost his appetite and became silent and withdrawn. He sought fortification, but not comfort: he read Epictetus and held fast to the statement that one must not regret that which is not in one's power to change. This encapsulated Bert's struggle not only against grief but also against attacks of other passions such as desire, anger, and jealousy: he willed that reason should win out over passion. But of these things he said very little. One clue to his silence is in the playful wedding gift he gave to me and Donne!. It is a handmade cribbage board, carved with an inscription that is a translation into Greek of c1 sentence from Eva Brann's lecture in praise of Jane Austen: "Happiness is more deserving of speech than unhappiness". In speaking of Bert's life there is much more that deserves to be said. But I am inadequate to the volume of it, and so I dose here. Patricia Pittis Sonnesyn '74 One day in Freshman Laboratory our professor plunged his large hand into his pocket and retrieved a Kleenex. He proceeded to separate the "two-ply" tissues, delicately and carefully he folded one and returned it to its former place, while with the other he blew his nose. This meticulous thriftiness fascinated me. Although I considered myself to be thrifty, the idea of separating Kleenex tissues had never crossed my mind! Bert was thrifty; nothing was to be wasted with Bert, almost everything could be reused or used for some other purpose. Even his green work pants were creatively patched after a saw had eaten through the pants and Bert's lower leg. Be1t ate everything that was served to him~even the apple core. Even as a dignified professor Bert had a great sense of humor. In our early acquaintance in Freshman Lab I managed to persuade my lab partner to concoct a solution which proceeded to explode the test tube and cut his finger. I feared 1969 the worst from Bert but he only laughed uproariously, probably thinking that my partner had to be more stupid than I to allow himself to be duped in such a way. Bert was a. surrogate father to me. He always encouraged my questions and answered them whenever he could. I remember how when I would get annoyed because the seminar readings were entirely too philosophical for my taste, Bert would invite me over to help him fix the engine of his truck, or build some new contraption for his boat. And still he managed to find some way to bring in Freshman Lab. In the first years of our friendship we were most of the time doing things: fixing a motor, building a dinghy, repairing or cleaning and painting Cygnet. He had the knowledge, I had the interest and the small hands. It made a good team. Here was a man who had integrated his love of philosophy with the practical world in a very tangible way. He loved to work with his hands as well as with his mind. I was vastly impressed~ here was someone worth listening to. 33 �The College But Bert was not only a great teacher, he was also a man of great compassion and understanding. When I was in the hos- of forgiveness. As one who made few mistakes himself, I could understand how he might hold this view. He was a pital he was the first to send a cheerful card in which he said "it's times like these when all the poetry you have stored in your memory comes in handy." When I found out that I had hepatitis in my Senior Year, Bert dropped everything at a moment's notice and drove me from Annapolis to Long Island without a second thought. When I wrote to him in great distress from the Santa Fe campus, he responded im- persistent, stubborn man. He preferred to repair the situation mediately. His friendships were important to him, this was obvious, and his loyalty was unmatched. As far as Bert's own life was concerned, I do not remember a time when he sought sympathy from others. He patiently endured his own personal trials in silence. Others could only conjecture the amount of pain and sorrow he might be suffering. In his last year I experienced him as more silent than usual; he was a solitary and lonely man yearning for a sparring partner-someone with a mind equal to his own. Yet, in rather than admit a mistake and leave it at that. One summer Bert, Josephine, and I took a weekend sail around Martha's Vineyard. One day we decided to fish instead of sail because the weather was unfavorable. By dusk we had barely caught enough for dinner, nevertheless, we rowed back to Cygnet, and Bert proceeded to clean the five porgies. It was raining, cold, and the sea was thrashing. While rinsing the porgies Bert managed to lose two of them. You could not imagine the face of a more dejected man than Bert's at this moment-we had worked all day in the cold and Bert had managed to lose two-fifths of our meager prize. He practically threw himself headlong over the side in .an effort to retrieve them. Every nerve and every muscle was concentrated on the immediate task at hand. Bert's attention could hardly have been distracted by anything short of a greater castastrophe. the eight years that I knew Bert, I cannot recall him ever After much persistence, he managed to retrieve one of the having complained about anything. Nor was he ever sick in those years. At least, if he was, no one ever knew about it. He was a man of great strength and few tears. two, but we mournfully followed with our eyes the other fifth of our meal as it floated downward and away and was finally eaten by others less deserving. Bert's hands fascinated me; they were powerful hands. I did not know him when he played the piano with those hands, Bert did not dwell on the negative. He was a man of few words-we often sat at meals in which long periods of silence were not uncommon. Bert rarely got angry, but when he did, watch out! His fuce would take on a darker complexion; one could almost hear, and feel, the rumblings of a volcano ready to erupt inside him; but he rarely let it. out, instead he would become stone cold and deathly silent. He rarely let you know explicitly why you made him angry; that was for you to figure out for your- self. Bert had a slow, steady pace when he worked. I do not remember him ever getting flustered or angry if what he was doing was not going right. He was careful, cautious, and very precise in his work. I cannot remember him ever swearing when a tool slipped and he scraped his knuckles or cut himself on a sharp edge. His speech likewise was slow and care- fully worded. He walked at a studied, controlled pace. I do but it would be hard to imagine, for they were not a musi- cian's hands with long gangling fingers and a wide ieil"ch. They were not the usual hands of a scholar either. Bert was unusual-after all, who still wore a crew cut in the 70's or narrow bow ties when wide ones were in? His hands were the hands of an engineer, a mechanic. He built from nothing, he repaired, he remodeled with those hands. He was an artisan as well as a builder of minds. Often in the evenings we would make popcorn, and Bert would grasp half the bowl with one hand. On the Cygnet we often had hot soup and saltines; Bert would take about five and with one hand he would pulverize them like a compressor then drop them into his bowl of soup. When he lighted a match he enjoyed entertaining his students by waiting until the last moment before he extinguished the flame. not remember ever having seen him hurrying somewhere. One of Bert's hobbies was to outsmart the auto manufac- Most everything that he did was carefully and thoroughly done. talents until they were needed. His next door neighbor in Onset once boasted that he was an excellent cribbage player and pestered Bert to play with him. Bert put it off many times until finally he could put it off no longer and beat the man so badly that he never asked Bert to play with him again. In times of crisis (particularly sailing), Bert would become turers and auto parts dealers. Whenever he did he would chuckle and be happy with himself for the rest of the clay. On one occasion I had a fuel injector in my VW which did not seem to be working properly. The dealer told us it would be $3 5. 00 for a new part. When we took the old one out of the car we found that it was just the tubing (which had been crimped) which was defective. When the tubing which cost all of ten cents had been replaced, the injector was as good as new. Bert chuckled whenever he recalled that little maneu- increasingly more calm. In a controlled, quiet tone he would ver. Bert was a modest man; one usually did not know of his give orders and his "deck apes" would carry them out. He It was on his boat that Bert was most content, I think. With thrived in the challenge of the moment. Fear was not known when one was with Bert. He was in charge; we all knew we were in good hands, even when the raging seas pounded our good company, lively conversation, "Southern Comfort," lemon drops, pork & beans or corned beef in a can, saltines, small craft. Bert did not believe in forgiveness. He thought forgiveness was ultimately harmful to both the forgiver and the recipient 34 and a light breeze to move Cygnet along, he was a happy man. On the night watches, when he thought his crew was sound asleep, one occasionally heard old Christian hymns floating from the stern. �July, 1979 Leo Raditsa Bert Thoms was careful-a care which showed itself also in his exactness of dress. He was bold, shy, in some matters almost the creature of his conviction, courteous, not anxious to please. There was something disconcerting in his grace, something fierce in his softness that kept me awake and my eyes open in his presence. He impressed me as a man who knew something of courage-who knew the wonder of words but also their limitations, the frontiers beyond which they have little consequence. That is, he knew the distinction between action and words: he knew when you had to do something instead of talking and wben you could talk freelywhich always meant to him, more than anything else, careful listening with eyes bright in attention and recognition. Because he had known courage, he also knew beauty, although he hardly ever talked about it (to me): the knowledge of beauty was evident in his eyes and in his smile which illuminated his whole face in intelligent recognition. This love of beauty made it possible for him to help some students yield to the best in themselves. What first brought me to his friendship was wonder at a Senior Essay he had supervised: every word, every observation in it moved of its own sweet will. At my admiration he remarked, a spark in his eyes and modesty passing through his face for a moment like a shadow, that he too thought the paper "pretty good." He knew something of the art of midwifery and the toughness of love it requires. His presence made you recall independence of mind-and with it the surprises and disappointments of freedom. He made you aware you were standing on your own two feet on the turning earth when you talked to him. He knew about danger also-that was evident in the respect he gave to people and things. That respect meant also he would not suffer casual blunders in simple matters one could be expected to know something about, like the position and angle of the sun at various times in the year. But when I asked him real questions, for instance, on the meaning of a passage in Ptolemy, the care he took in his explanations and drawings told something of the love with which he had studied that author. He did not devour books but questioned them. He did not substitute them for life. I always felt there was a world elsewhere ·for him-in that sense he was worldly. He saw what was going on before his eyes. He knew other people lived; his courtesy and grace-and his ferocity-came of that knowledge. He spoke little but he did not have to speak to make you feel his presence. In fact the silence, the pauses, in conversation with him taught me often more than the words. They taught me about pace and thereby reminded me life moves of its own. They showed me my impatience. They encouraged me to reflect and to Jisten to myself. There was something deliberately slow about his pace-but it also had its own lilt which came unmistakably of nature. This capacity to teach with few words sometimes made his presence insistent, even occasiona1ly insistently oppressive. His greeting was almost always joyous and deep as if he were welcoming you to his 1952 own house. He had an appetite for thought, knew its strength and its capacity to strengthen. With gaiety in his eyes and energy in his voice he told me a few weeks before his death that the struggle of reading Michael Oakeshott's On Human Conduct, which he was reviewing for this journal, was well worth it. Earlier he had rejected with some impatience my suggestion that he review a first-rate study of Adam Smith. He did not like secondary sources: they did not have enough fight in them and yielded (as a result) little sustenance. He remembered vividly. When he talked of his former teachers in graduate school critically, almost vehemently, it brought me up sharp: it was as if he had just walked out of their classrooms. I could not find the words to talk to him of the War when he was a Navy pilot: it is still too big and intimate an event for easy words. But his remarks about the Depression, .wbich had left its indelible mark on him, taught me unforgettable things about those years-about the teachings of rough necessity. He did not remember; he recalled: the past lived in him strongly enough to be palpable. I suspect he wondered whether people who had not suffered through disaster could summon the courage to avoid it in the future-but he never said a word of it. Of his death, this much can be said in thanks, it was swift and painless. Cum semel occideris et de te splendida Minos fecerit arbitria, non, Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te restituet pietas; infernis neque enim tenebris Diana pudicum liberal Hippo]ytum, nee Lethaea valet Theseus abrumpere caro vincula Perithoo. Horace, Odes 4, 7 35 �Don Giovanni, or the Triviality of Seduction Wye Jamison Allanbrook One striking feature of El Burlador de Sevilla y convidado di piedra, the first Don-juan play, 1 and of many versions thereafter, is its beginning in medias res, with cries of rape and pursuit in the darkness. If in the earliest versions of the first scene some of the names and faces differ from those Mozart's Don Giovanni has made us familiar with, nevertheless all the openings share the same silhouette, and for sound dramatic reasons. The story itself has the thinnest of plotlines: Don Juan is a libertine, so Heaven punishes him. For a successful presentation of the plot on stage two scenes alone are indispensable: one to make a compelling display of the depth and depravity of Don Juan's crimes, and another to bring the final vengeance of Heaven down on his head. In between these pivotal scenes the author was meant to improvise, inventing as large and varied a bouquet of seductions as might please him. Tradition, however, fixed the outer scenes firmly in place in order to assure a modicum of dramatic power and coherence in a work which could be easily weakened by diffuse and errant improvisation in its episodes. Final vengeance took the shape of the "Stone Guest," whose visitation became the hallmark of the legend. The opening and indictment scene, with Giovanni bursting from a darkened house pursued by an outraged noblewoman, provided evidence of at least one sin commensurate with the high degree of celestial attention afforded by the Statue's visit and gave the play a dark and galvanizing opening. By the eighteenth century the traditional beginning had been supplied with a brief upbeat-a monologue by Don Giovanni's comic servant as he plays sentry for his master outside the house of Donna Anna. It was left for Mozart to bind the two traditions-of low comedy and high tragedy, This essay is taken from a longer essay on Don Giovanni which is part of a book entitled Two Mozart Operas: A Grammar of Musical Gesture. I. The Jester of Seville and the Stone Guest, written by the Spanish playwright Tirso de Molina in the early seventeenth century. 2. "A desperate fury" (I, i, 102-103). (The measure numbers given throughout this essay are from the Eulcnberg miniature orchestra score.) 3. "Constantly trying to conceal his identity" (measures 79-80). 4. "Chi son'io tu non saprai" (measures 81-83). 36 opera buffa and opera seria-into perhaps the most stunning opening scene in all operatic literature. Leporello introduces the subject of seduction in an aria which is a vulgarly hearty smack of appreciation for the cavaliere's way of life, delivered with rolling eyes and the occasional leer. The high passion of the chase is grafted directly onto his final cadence. Donna Anna enters on the wings of opera-seria indignation, moving to the rhythms of a quick and passionate march: '"' 14 .. ... 14" spe· ~ "' .. sc. ,..,., ,..•~o.c- ..,._ J..i1 d8o h" 1<- sei ~1- 11" .... ·I : '- v She characterizes herself as a "furia disperata," 2 and has the bearing of a classical tragic heroine. Nobility is as full-blown and majestic in this opera as buffa is salacious. We are used to this combination of modes, and rarely let it raise the questions it ought to about the tone of an opera which today is largely presumed, probably due to the accounts of its nineteenth-century admirers, to be about the seducer as superman. But at the least the supple farce of buffa would seem bound to undermine the monolithic intensity of the grand style, suggesting a rather ironic perspective on the postures of passion. Furthermore, the protagonist's music is not of either mode, neither comic-the style of a sardonic rake-nor heroic. At his first entrance he wants only to identify himself as No-Man. The stage direction describes him as "cercando sempre di celarsi," 3 and his response to Donna Anna's challenge is oddly oblique: not "you will never detain me," but "you will never find out who I am. " 4 He also conceals himself in his music, adopting for his first utterances Donna Anna's vocal line and never in the remainder of the trio (Leporello supports the duo throughout with patter imprecations about approaching trouble) originating any of its rhythmic or melodic material. It is hardly surprising that a �July, 1979 pursued seducer should try to conceal his identity from his intended victim. Yet although Tirso's Don Juan, pursued by Isabella and several Spanish nobles, also at first calls himself No-Name, he finally cannot resist revealing himself, crying out "Fool! I'm a gentleman!" (nor could Odysseus leave the Cyclops without informing him that No-Man was Odysseus, son of Laertes 5 ). Giovanni is strangely free from this besetting vanity. Chameleon-like, he doesn't even betray himself in speech, borrowing Anna's music, and Leporello's and Anna's words. 6 The most striking thing about him is that he sees nothing demeaning in escaping, pursued and nameless, into the darkness; he feels no need to regain his public dignity. In fact if the music of the movement were not so elevated, Don Giovanni's first appearance on stage would amount to a simple sight gag. Certain musical images in Leporel1o's ariahorn calls, and triplets for galloping horses-made the hunt a live metaphor for seduction. Now suddenly the gentleman hunter sprints out, determinedly stalked by his erstwhile prey~" exit, pursued by a bear." In other eighteenth-century versions of Don Giovanni the chase scene might well have been played for laughs. Don Juan Tenorio had fallen into disrepute in the eighteenth century. His story belonged primarily to the popular theater, where it had degenerated into the spectacle of a comic gentleman scrambling out of windows, inventing adroit lies to cover misdemeanors, and taking the occasional pratfall. Of the two eighteenth-century versions beside Mozart's of any reputation, Goldoni's Don Giovanni Tenorio is merely, on his own account, an undercover attack on a lover who had spurned him, while in Giuseppe Gazzaniga' s popular opera II convitato di pietra the tale is eyed from a certain remove, placed, as it were, in quotation marks. It is presented as the second act of a two-act opera, the first half of which shows the members of an Italian opera company travelling in Germany debating what work to produce, and deciding on Don Giovanni despite the fact that it is a vulgar farce. In his choice of libretto da Ponte was perhaps less to be praised for prescience than he was to be censured for panderiflg to low tastes. For the eighteenth century the subject of hellfire and damnation had lost both its dignity and its shock value. 7 And to the refined libertines of the Enlightenment seduction as grand guignol must have seemed merely adolescent. To be 5. Ody'"Y IX. 500-505. 6. "Questa furia disperata/Mi vuol far preeipitar" ("This desperate fury wants to make trouble for me") combine.~ Anna's epithet for herself with Leporello's predicate-"Sta a veder ehe il malandrino/Mi fara preeipitar" ("It's clear that this rogue will make trouble for me"). 7. In Tom Jones, Fielding remarks on the status of hell as a literary subieet matter that "Had this history been writ in the days of superstition, I should have had too much compassion for the reader to have left him so long in suspense, whether Beelzebub or Satan was about to appear in person, with all his hellish retinue; but as these doctrines are at present very unfortunate, and have but few, if any believers, I have not been much aware of conveying any such terrors. To say truth, the whole furniture of the infernal regions hath long been appropriated by the managers of playhouses, who seem lately to have laid them by as rubbish, capable only of affecting the upper gallery-a place in which few of our readers ever sit" (Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, Book XII, Chapter XII). caught out in attempted seduction was ridiculous and unmanly, behavior beneath a gentleman's dignity; the preferred sport was drawing-room intrigue with the tacit consent of the seduced. Most eighteenth-century works which are notoriously about seducers turn out under closer scrutiny to be about something quite different. The burden of Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe is the unflagging virtue of the heroine, and the role of Lovelace her seducer is to make it manifest. Tom Jones is a doughty adventurer whose amorous interludes happen to him because of his winsome beauty and sheer niceness. Even the arch-rogue Rousseau- of the Confessions is passive in his escapades; he makes a point of describing his frequent amours as the result of his weakness, and not a matter of premeditated pursuit. In fact, although there is much talk about the "Don-Juan type," it is difficult to name any other representative of ihe class except for Don Juan in his various manifestations; when dealing with such a character, writers seem to have been drawn exclusively to the Don as sui generis, the full and sufficient expression of a creature which, although perhaps frequently enough encountered in ordinary life, did not cut a very attractive figure as the center of a play or a novel. For the straightforward seducer is a difficult literary hero in any era; depending on the sophistication of the audience his exploits will be either too horrible or too banal to be witnessed with approval. The reason for the extraordinary popularity of the Don-Juan figure previous to the eighteenth century may have been that he was inextricably paired with as galvanizing a figure invented for his despatch-the famous Stone Guest. When sin was punished by damnation, the audience need not be uneasy about enjoying either. But with hellfire emasculated and seduction reduced to a vulgar and demeaning pursuit, the eighteenth century could have little interest in a morality play. Where the theme of sin and just damnation was retained, it was. usually so thickly veiled as to be unrecognizable: in Choderlos de Laclos' Les liaisons dangereuses 8 the seductions are cerebral campaigns of the utmost refinement, and the seducers are punished by natural, not supernatural, causes. 9 In the face of these fashions it is surprising that da Ponte retained the traditional armature of the Don-Juan story, even discarding the disclaimer provided by Gazzaniga's ironic introduction, and that Mozart played the chase scene seriously. Of course the elevated gesture is Donna Anna's, and Giovanni remains almost a cipher in the scene. But the potential joke of the hunted turning tables on the hunter must have been intended to comprise a more significant image. Starting from Mozart's vignette of the hero locked in ungraceful flight from a bristling fury, we must somehow manage to assimilate faintly ridiculous behavior into the account of a man whom, variously damned or worshipped for the past two centuries, Kierkegaard termed the 8. Published in 1782, iust five years before Don Giovanni was produced in Prague. 9. A duel, for the Vicomte de Valmont, and for the Marquise de Mcrtcuil a disfiguring disease. 37 �The College "expression of the daemonic." 10 The extraordinary reputation of Giovanni the superman must be squared with the thin melodrama of his story, the insignificance of his introduction, and the banality of his pursuits. The conclusion of the first scene reveals more of the Don. Donna Anna's father, the Commenclatore, enters and challenges Don Giovanni to a duel. Giovanni refuses, having no desire to cross swords with an old man, but the Commendatore persists, and Giovanni finally accedes in exasperated decision ("Misero! Attendi,/Se vuoi morir" 11 ). He battles with and kills the Commendatore. Then with Leporello gaping from a nearby hiding-place he stands over the old man as he dies. Musically the five through-composed sections of the overture and first scene are arranged in a symmetrical hierarchy of gesture. From the supernatural heights of the grim 0-minor fantasy introduction the affect declined to the bright clarity of the D-major galant style, touching bottom with Leporello's ribald buffa grousing. The high galant with Anna's stirring exalted march began the reascent and, at the entrance of the Commendatore, there returns the somber pathos of the fantasy style: ' / Jll,hCI .(:1-.f.f. .... vt .. ,V'uC~~ c..-..,, .... ~ .;. . . . . . .. .(. 1' • f. . ' . . ' g, d, f: tragic fantasy ~ant, courtly ma~ ~~: highgalant, exalted march F: buffa foot march In the fantasy section time is taken in very special ways. The fantasy gesture is suited to the depiction of high tragedy because, unlike the galant and buffa styles, it is free from the normal gestural and temporal restraints of the dance and of the period. Here the fantasy communicates both the immediacy and the enormity of the event, first by a pantomimic choreography of the actual challenge and battle-a literal representation of time's passing-and then by a surreal distention of time to mark the Commendatore's death throes. Time is taken first below and then above the threshold of periodic 10. Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, "The Immediate Stages of the Erotic." His full appellation for Don Giovanni is "the expression of the daemonic as determined by the sensuous." II. "Poor wretch! Look out, if you want to die" (I, i, I 55-56). I2. "Ah, the poor devil falls alr~ady" (sciagurato is related to sciagura, "bad luck"). 13. The alia-breve sign (¢) is an appropriate choice for the death music with its motet-like quality, since the eighteenth century thought of it as originally an ecclesiastical meter with its roots in the sacred style of the Renaissance. I4. Giovanni's words are a dispassionate report of the Commendatore's death throes: "Cia dal seno palpitanteNeggo !'anima partir" ("Already I see his soul departing from his throbbing breast"). The Commendatore's words are almost the same. 38 . ' Figure I d: fantasy, ombra dance structure, the normal time element of the opera. The fantasy and its temporal distortions cause a sense of the portentousness of these events to pervade the scene, fulfilling the less specific portent of the overture; its tone is never again matched in the opera until the Stone Guest appears in the next-to-final scene. Giovanni's behavior throughout the challenge and battle is marked by an insouciant and natural nobility; it is honorable and properly formal. The sequence of challenge and refusal, second challenges, and final assent, is portrayed musically by a series of formal antecedent-consequent phrases (measures 139-46), not set in a continuum of ordinary periodic rhetoric, but meant to be directly mimetic of the ritual formality of the meeting. Giovanni's acceptance follows a decisive measure of silence and is couched in a squared-off phrase of eight measures which puts the brakes on the semi-regular phrase rhythm set up at the outset; it has the stern and ceremonial flourish appropriate to the occasion of a formal calling-out: For Giovanni to refuse the Commendatore's challenge would be an insult, a violation of the code of honor. That he is acting from the sense of a nobleman's necessity and not from viciousness is made clear by the detachment of his death knell for the Commendatore after the fatal blow is struck. His words, "Ah, gia cade il sciagurato," 12 are coolly free from either triumph or regret. A careful choreography for a sword fight follows until, at the moment of the death blow, time and pantomime are arrested by a fermata. The new time signature, alia breve (2/2), and the instruction Andante slow the tempo by half, 13 making the previous d equal .I. The strings mark time with gravely ticking triplets over a dominant pedal; they measure out the precious seconds of life remaining to the Commendatore. The very deliberateness of their ticking puts the scene out of time. Time passes normally only when attention is not called to it and the shapes of events in time themselves are left to measure its passing for us. The monotony of the measured triplets is temporarily open-ended, fixing on the bare phenomenon of time's passing to make the present moment seem capable of enduring forever. Over the ticking of the triplets the low murmurs of Don Giovanni and Leporello seem automatic, elicited from them involuntarily. They are not singing to us or to another character, but are transfixed and private in awe of the moment at which "the vital spirit leaves the throbbing breast." 14 Giovanni's first music is again not of his own invention; it uses Anna's "come furia disperata" of �July, 1979 the chase music cast in F-minor and slowed to twice its original tempo: Hearing the familiar figure in sl~w motion and in the minor heightens the dream-like effect of the scene. Giovanni's voice emerges from the sepulchral mix of bass tones occasionally to sculpt a phrase, either by a sharp dissonance or by a reach for a high note. His torpor underlines the preternatural quality of the moment: "real" time has been suspended so that the audience may be made to recognize the grave import of the Commendatore's death. A chromatic line in the oboes descending from the dominant marks the flight of the soul from the body and returns us to familiar measured time. By supplying the implied resolution of the chromatic line which ordered the swordplay and by turning directly mimetic again (although now of a "supernatural" event-the hushed gravity of the death scene made such a fancy possible) this second chromatic descent puts time back on the track, heightening the fantasy's quality of parenthesis, of a moment frozen in time: behavior of an arrant blackguard. He wears no mask in either episode; he is not "playing a role." It is precisely this perplexing contradiction in his nature which brings many delineators of the character of Giovanni to elevate him. George Bernard Shaw's counter to Ruskin's outraged attack on the libretto of the opera 16 cheerfully embraces the prodigy of the Don: As to Don Giovanni, otherwise The Dissolute One punished, the only immoral feature of it is its supernatural retributive morality. Gentlemen who break through the ordinary categories of good and evil, and come out at the other side singing Finch'han dal vino and Ld ci darem Ia mana, do not, as a matter of fact, get caJJed on by statues, and taken straight down through the floor to eternal torments; and to pretend that they do is to shirk the social problem they present. Nor is it yet by any means an established fact that the world owes more to its Don Ottavios than to its Don Juans. 17 Attacking Ruskin for prudishness, Shaw displayed his habitual reverse prudishness as far as the question of the existence of the Divinity is concerned. A visit from a stone deus ex machina (or machina dei) may be a bad way to solve the "social problem" posed by Don Giovanni, but Shaw clearly did not in truth consider the Don to be one. In the Don-Juanin-Hell sequence of Man and Superman 18 he ultimately installed the Don in heaven, there to ponder through his high intellect a mysterious quantum called "Life: the force that ever strives to attain greater power of contemplating itself'; his task in heaven was to be "the work of helping Life in its struggle upward." For Shaw Giovanni's intent pursuit of earthly pleasure was n)erely a passing phase in the evolution of a superhuman intelligence. Kierkegaard's word "daemonic" imputes so111ewhat the same kind of surpassing worth to Don Giovanni's nature, and the word has since become the adjective most commonly associated with encomia of the Don. It< orthography is intended to recall its derivation from the Creek llat!Lwv-divinity, genius, or tutelary deity-and to extend its implications be- 15. "Leporello, where are you?" "I'm here, more's the pity . . . . Who's dead? you or the old man?" "What a sh1pid question! the old man" (I, ii, But returned to ordinary time Giovanni is impatient of last rites, and forestalls the anticipated tonic by hissing out for Leporello. The drop from high fantasy to the lowest buffa dialogue in recitative secco ("Leporello, ove sei?"/"Son qui, per disgrazia ... ./Chi e morto? voi o il vecchio?"/"Che domanda da bestial il vecchio." 15 ) is immediate and stunning. It only underlines Giovanni's polymorphic nature: a gentleman when answering the Commendatore's challenge, at his opponent's death he slips back down into the seamy 194-98). 16. "And yonder musician, who used the greatest power which (in the art he knew) the Father of Spirits ever yet breathed into the clay of this world; who used it, I say, to follow and fit with perfect sound the words of the Zauberfl6te and of Don Giovanni~foolishest and most monstrous of conceivable human words and subject of thought-for the future amusement of his race! No such spectacle of unconscious (and in that unconsciousness all the more fearful) moral degradation of the highest faculty to the lowest purpose can be found in history" (quoted in G. B. Shaw, Shaw on Shaw, ed. Eric Bentley [New York 1955], pp. 50-51). 17. Ib;d., pp. 51-52. 18. Man and Superman, Act III. 39 �The College yond the limits of the field of Christian demonology. 19 For Kierkegaard "daemonic" signifies the supernatural not as above the natural, but as quintessentially natural. To him the Don is a life force, a power of nature-in his own words, "primitively controlled life, powerfully and irresistibly daemonic." Giovanni's cruelties and vulgarities are to be excused-or veritably embraced-because "his passion sets the passion of all the others in motion ... the existence of all the others is, compared with his, only a derived existence." The daemonic man's sins are sins only in the eves of the petite bourgeoisie, whose restricted vision is mean and crippling. The daemonic man is above the morality of the vulgar, and properly the only moral being: as Shaw has the Devil observe after Don Juan departs for heaven, "To the Superman, men and women are a mere species ... outside the moral world." The music of Mozart's opera will not, however, suffer a similar apotheosis of the character of the Don. Let us for the moment characterize as "natural" the mode of behavior appropriate to the galant and buffa worlds which formed the full and resonant cosmos of Le nozze di Figaro and which reappear in Don Giovanni more narrowly circumscribed. Then Giovanni is a man whose behavior is both super- and sub-natural. The opera's melange of musical styles, and more particularly the brilliant mobile inverted pyramid of social gestures which constitute its overture and first scene (see Figure I), carry the theme of the opera with them. The hero is a buffoon; the buffoon is a hero. By being both he is fully neither. Were he only an obsessive seducer he would be of no interest to us, but he can behave like a Don as easily as not. He redeems himself from mere vulgarity in the battle with the Commendatore, acting with clean and spirited disinterest: secure in the propiety of having granted Anna's father an opportunity to avenge the insult to his daughter, "L'ha voluto: suo danno, " 20 he says indifferently to Leporello afterward, his elevated disinterest degenerating into a careless flippancy. He is a galvanizing and disturbing figure-daemonic, if you must-because his sphere of action encompasses the highest and the lowest possibilities of human behavior. Rarely do we encounter a man at once of such silliness aDd such intensity, such spirit and such utter lack of humanity. Nor can it be said-although it might save the dark hero-that Giovanni runs the moral gamut in a conscious or wilful manner. There are some striking similarities of attitude between Don Giovanni and the notorious seducer of Les liaisons dangereuses, but one crucial difference separates him from the Vicomte de Valmont: Valmont is all selfconsciousness and calculation, 21 while Giovanni's conduct cannot be explained by recourse to any principle or deliberate intent; he is not purposefully anarchic, or involved in a willed rebellion against ordinary moral standards. Early in Act II, in response to Leporello's importunities, Giovanni makes an insouciant defense of his way of life: 40 Gio: Lasciar le donne! Pazzo! Lasciar le donne? Sai ch' clle per me Son necessarie pill del pan che mangio, Piu dell' aria che spiro! Lep: E avete core D'ingannarle poi tutte? Gio: E tutto amore: Chi a una sola fedele Verso l'altre crudele. Io, che in me sento Si esteso sentimento, Yo' bene a tutte quante. Lc donne, poi che calcolar non sanno, II mio buon natural chiamano inganno. 22 e He delivers his sophistical argument with an easy indifference to its truth or falsehood, taking the lazy pleasure in casuistry a child might display. And Leporello, easily giving up the protest, answers him in the same spirit: "Non ho veduto mail Naturale pill vasto e pill benigno. " 23 But Giovanni's first lines state the truth of his case: women are to him like food 24 and the air he breathes; he pursues them at the command of a stimulus-response mechanism as natural to him, and as automatic, as the instinct to maintain one's life by taking nourishment. Accounts don't interest Giovanni, and he is in fact incapable of giving one. Obsessive natures don't have in- 19·. Goethe, to whom the word "daemonic" was of great importance, defined it as "that which cannot be explained by Reason or Understanding," and which "manifests it~elf in the most varied way throughout all nature." He denied that it was an attribute of Mephistopheles (on the ground of his being too "negative" a creature), and when asked whether it entered into the "idea of the Divine," he responded, "My good friend, what do we know of the idea of the Divine? and what can our narrow ideas tell of the Highest Being?" (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Conversations with Eckerman, March 2-8, 1831). 20. "He wanted it-it's his loss" (I, ii, 201). 21. His most effective enemy, Madame de Volanges, says of the Vicomte: "He has never, since his youngest days, taken a step or said a word without having a project, and he has never had a project which wasn't dishonest and criminal. ... His conduct is the result of his principles. He knows how to calculate all the evils a man can allow himself without being compromised; and so as to be cruel and wicked without danger, he has chosen women as his victims" (Choderlos de Laclos, Les liaisons dangereuses, Lettre IX). 22. Gio: "Let the women alone! Madman! Let the women alone? You know they are more necessary to me than the bread I eat, than the air I breathe!" Lep: "And yet you have the heart to deceive them all?'' Gio: "It's all a matter of love. Whoever is faithful to only one woman is cruel to all the others. Since I feel in myself such a generous sentiment, I love them all. Then the women, because they don't know how to reckon my good nature, call it deceit" (II, i, 82-95). 23. "I have never seen a more broad or more kindly nature" (II, i, 95-97). The two go on then to plot the seduction of Donna l'::lvira's maid. 24. Frequently the Don describes the attractions of his new favorite with the imagery of food. Zerlina has a "viso inzuccherato" (a "sugared complexion") and fingers "like curds" (I, ix, l06, 115-116). Giovanni's canzonetta describes a beloved with "la bocca dolce pitl che il miele" ("a mouth sweeter than honey") who carries "zucchero ... in mezzo al core" ("sugar ... deep in her heart"-II, 3, 25-28, 29-32). �July, 1979 sights; they can hardly be said to have sight, insofar as that sense is a human faculty. The objects of his obsession swim into his ken conducted by one or another of his senses-he picks up a scent, 25 he pricks up his ears at the sound of a female voice-but he lacks the impulse to combine these impressions into the articulated whole which brings men to the threshold of a moral world. He is merely inexplicable-a monstrum, a prodigy, spontaneously at the service of an obsession. Questions of morality can have no relevance to his actions. Although one function of Leporello in the opera is to project, as a pale double of Don Giovanni, the trivial vulgarity of incessant womanizing, he also serves to provide a realistic moral standard for the measure of base behavior. He helps us to remember that most ordinary men cleave to one woman, with occasional lapses, and fear God, although an occasional touch of pride may make them forget their proper place; their sins are committed, judged, and shriven in a familiar moral sphere. There are certain depths beneath which even Leporello refuses to sink. He probably regards his own seductions as mere flirtations, the prerogative of a bachelor who will eventually settle down with some Giannotta or Sandrina. When Giovanni flaunts his seduction of one of Leporello's girls, Leporello asks in an aggrieved tone: E mi dite la cosa Con tale indifferenza? ... Ma se fosse Costei stata mia mog1ie? 26 And although he comes to take a certain delight in playing 25. So he greets the first entrance of Elvira: "Zitto: mi pare/Sentir odor di femmina! ... "("Hush: I think I smell the scent of a woman! ... "-I, iv, 254-55). 26. "And you tell me that with such indifference? . . But what if she had been my wife?" (II, xi, 212-213). Giovanni answers "Meglio ancor!" ("Better still!") 27. "Quasi da piangcre/Mi fa costei./Se non muovc/Dcl suo dolore,/Di sasso ha i] core,/0 cor non ha" ("She almost moves me to tears. If he isn't moved by her grief, he has a heart of stone, or no heart at all"-II, xiv, 247-302). 28. In I, iv, Leporello tries to chide Giovanni for his wicked ways, but is immediately bullied out of it. In the buffa duct "Eh, via, buffone" opening Act II Leporello threatens to leave Giovanni, but easily changes his mind after a bribe of four gold pieces. 29. "Il padron con prepotenza/L'innocenza mi ruhO" (II, 7, 22-33). 30. I, II. The traditional sobriquet "Champagne Aria" is not actually appropriate to the aria. Its music is inebriating, and its text speaks of intoxication, but strictly in anticipation of the coming festa. To have the Don sing with champagne glass in hand is to obscure the point that his galvanic energy arises from the spur of his obsession, not just from .strong wine. 3 L The contredanse "democratized" social dance: it moved the activity from the court into the dance hall, and, with its emphasis on walking through follow-the-leader figures rather than performing a series of difficult characteristic steps it opened the field to the enthusiastic amateurs of the bourgeoisie. 32. "Let the dancing be without any order: make some dance the minuet, some the follia, some the allemande" (I, II, 33-56). the stand-in for Giovanni with Elvira in Act II, he is moved to pity for her in the finale to Act II when Giovanni pitilessly mocks her efforts to make him repent. 27 That his attempts to reform Don Giovanni or to leave the Don's service 28 come to nothing, does not change his function as moral measure. We are not concerned to find in Leporello a model of perfection, but merely to discover in him some vague consciousness of a moral imperative no matter how feeble or fleeting. In indulgent self-defense he pleads subornation: Giovanni has robbed him of his innocence. 29 His besetting sins are all too human, his very moral weakness an acknowledgement of a nodding acquaintance with the way things ought to be. Don Giovanni's actions, on the other hand, are characterized by a moral neutrality: he is not evil but banal, not noble but punctilious, and without fear where true courage would discern what properly is to be feared. His "baseness" amounts to a trivial obsession with seduction, his "nobility" to mere freedom from the passions of hate and fear. The obsession and the freedom are opposite sides of the same coin-an habitual disposition which forfeits the right to be judged as excess and thus traps him outside, not above, the limits of human virtue and human vice. The moral world of the opera is delineated by the familiar ga/ant and buf{a-courtly and peasant-dance gestures. To be fully human in the opera is to move in such-and"such a way, to be defined by a particular gesture or stance. In the anonymity of his moral void, Giovanni is strangely denatured. Moving across the hierarchy of classes quickly established by the opening music he gives allegiance to none, although he partakes of them all by imitation; he is veritably No-Man. Mozart marks Giovanni's non-participation ingeniously, casting almost every one of his solos as a performance or a disguise. The Don woos Zerlina in the guise of a nobleman in "L3 ci darem la mano" (I, 7), serenades Elvira's maid with a canzonetta, providing only his voice for Lepore11o dressed as Giovanni {II, 3), and sings to Masetto and his band disguised as Leporello {II, 4). He does, however, have a "theme song," sung in a private moment, when he is giving Leporello orders for the peasants' ball-the famous "Champagne Aria," "Fin ch'han dal vi no. " 30 Mozart made a telling choice of gesture for Giovanni's sole unguarded moment-a rapid and feverish contredanse. The contrcdanse had no place in the hierarchical vocabulary of eighteenth-century social dance. Resembling our modern square dance, it was a new dance, cutting across the established order of classes and affects, 31 and hence the true dance of No-Man. The text and the macro-rhythm of the aria expand the social connotations of the contredanse into a thorough-going metaphor for Giovanni's nature: Senza a1cun ordine La danza sia: Chi'l minuetto, Chi Ia follia, Chi 1' alemanna Farai ballar." 41 �The College Giovanni's command to Leporello calls for the very anarchy the contredanse had introduced into the orderly cosmos of the social dances. Another antithesis of this hierarchy is the famous list which Leporello keeps for his master; Giovanni reminds us of it here: Ah! la mia lista Doman mattina D'una decina Devi aumentar. 33 The insatiable cry of "just one more" grants the preceding units no particular identity, and hence no dignity or worth; the counter is interested in the counted only insofar as they resemble each other and thus deserve a place in the list. Mozart perceived the listlike nature of the contredanse-an additive dance in which phrase piles on phrase as the dancers intemperately improvise yet another figure-and took pains to make Giovanni's music reflect it To leave the impression of additive or chain construction on the form of the aria (going against the grain of the essentially dramatic plan of the Classic movement with its clearly delineated beginning, middle, and end), he built with clear-cut and even-measured units, repeated without alteration. The staple of the piece is a "tonic phrase" -three similar two-measure units punctuated by a fourth: This phrase is deployed as a stabilizer whose mere recurrence marks the aria's major hinges. Lost in a relentless moto perpetuo we know where we are only when we hear yet another tonic phrase. Since the list as a form of ordering is in truth an analogue of anarchy, it is one with the middle-class contredanse, which is placeless and classless. The Greek word 1:f-r07ro,, literally "without a place," came to mean "strange," or "paradoxical," and, particularly when applied to human beings, "repugnant," or "harmful." Giovanni's menace seems to be of the same nature. Just as the contredanse cut across the established orders of dance gestures, so does the Don cut across the world of Donna Anna and the other characters, threatening to subvert it. What brought this rootless creature into being is left unexplained. He is merely a phenomenon whose nature has 33. "Ahl hy tomorrow morning you should increase my list by a decade" (I, ll, 70-85). 42 been molded not by the proper moral orders, but by an illusory liberty whose obverse is an idee fixe. Although he is hardly aware of the threat he poses, its power to destroy the world of the other characters is unmistakeable. To counter Giovanni's anarchic contredanse no human music will suffice. Only divine justice can take on a man for whom there is no judgement on earth, and only the superhuman rhythms of the alla-breve pathetic fantasy can be measured against the breathless, intemperate music of the "danceless dance." Yet, symptomatic of the Dan's moral neutrality, the instrument of his punishment must issue from a situation related only indirectly to the crimes he is to be punished for -a situation in which, according to some criteria, he can be said to have acted well. The murder of the Commendatore, by redeeming Giovanni from the perpetual venality of a career of seduction, makes him worthy of punishment on a grand and celestial scale. Giovanni's transgressions are all concentrated into that one stroke of the sword. The spectral hush of the Commendatore's requiem music raises the moment out of the opera's time, to compel. recognition of the horror and pathos of the act itself free from any moral palliative (the Don's quasi-decent behavior, for example). It renders inexorable the ultimate arrival of the divine avenger: his retribution will be postponed only until Giovanni has thoroughly demonstrated the mean and trivial preoccupations of the dedicated seducer of women. There is music in the overture, first, and last scenes which is cast in the high tragic style, but it would be a mistake to consider the "tragedy" to be Don Giovanni's. If there is any pity and fear to be excited in this opera, it is for the lives of the people he has left behind him. Their habits and pursuits have been denigrated and diminished by the mere existence of a man who cannot be touched by the moral order; in the opera's bright commonplace of an epilogue they reappear briefly to repair things as best they can. Not the tragic mode itself, but the mixture of genres, of exalted style and low farce, manifests this diminution to us throughout the opera in increasingly dark and turbulent colors. Don Giovanni gives us a panoramic view of all the orders of society, showing them stretched to the breaking point; the mixed genre has a vision both less noble and more encompassing than tragedy. �Inner and Outer Freedom Eva Brann Vast topics are notoriously easy to avoid, and those who undertake to wrestle with them in public owe their audience some concrete reason for their choice. Let me begin with mine. First, this summer I had occasion to study Supreme Court decisions bearing on freedom of religion and the public schools. The graduate students with whom I read these included a number of inner-city school teachers, who were both black and strong churchwomen. They were peculiarly alive to a jolting paradox powerfully suggested by these decisions. Baldly stated it is this: In the interest of freedom of religion, that is, in order to protect the possibility of living by one's beliefs, it is required to keep the public realm, in which students and teachers spend the most strenuous part of their waking life, vigorously free from all particular beliefs and all religious exercises. In other words, freedom of religion requires freedom from religion. This quandary raised for me a general question concerning freedom as it appears in the external world. What is this notion which feels so exhilaratingly rich and yet requires so stringently enforced a void, which holds such promise of fullness but presupposes the most carefully constructed vacancy? Second, in one of my classes this term we are reading a work by Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, which culminates in a consideration of human freedom. For Kant, freedom is entirely internal, ciur inner power to overcome all the natural laws of psychology by which we are determined and driven, and to act original1y and independently as rational beings. Freedom is inner selfdetermination. It is a harsh view, for it means that the only clear index of the actual exercise of our freedom comes when we are opposing our natural inclinations and desires, when we do not as we want, but as we ought. Freedom is preemmiently self-control. It is a noble but negative test that it is neither possible to accept nor to forget. Eva Brann is Arnold Professor for 1978-79 at Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington. This is the text of the Arnold Lecture read on ~o~cmber 6, 1978. At present reviewing its curriculum, Whitman College mv1ted her as a representative of St. John's College. With materials and meth_o?s used at St. John's, she is teaching courses in Kant, Hegel and Marx, Euchd s Elements and Lobachevski's Theory of Parallels, the Parthenon, Oedipus Rex and the Phaedrus, and on "Education in a Republic." The University of Chicago Press has just published her book, Paradoxes of Education in a Republic. And finally, the following observation gave food for thought. When I first arrived in Walla Walla, I discovered Pioneer Park as a lovely place to jog. You all know the place. The point is that it is a small park, but laid out on the lines of a grand European city park, and very handsome. Every day I ran by a sign that read as follows. It said that the park was closed to vehicular traffic for a month in order "to determine the possible effects such an action might cause." (I don't need to tell you that the actual effects such an action did cause were dozens of letters to the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin.) I kept asking myself why the public prose writer hadn't found it in him just to say "to see what will happen." And it came to me that this magnificent prose had a point to make: The park is not just a place of beauty but also the scene of passionate contention and rational compromise, a microcosm of the double nature of the free world. Of course, I shall make myself clearer later. Let me begin my inquiry, then, with a description of the sense of freedom, and with examples of the feeling of freedom, both to recall to you the familiarity of the notion and to have evidence for certain observations. Case 1: When I first drove into the Walla Walla valley I was amazed by its-oddly unsung-beauty, by the contoured hrlls, colored mocha and mauve and mat gold, and the velvet-faceted Blue Mountains. With that sense of beauty came a feeling of expansiveness, of beckoning aspects and accessible vistas and magical destinations, in short, a sense of the freedom of the land. 43 �The College Case II: Long ago, when I set off in my first car to leave home for graduate school-! was going from Brooklyn to New Haven, from the frying pan into the fire, a Westerner might say-! recall feeling, all love and gratitude to my parents notwithstanding, an enormous sense of being out from under, a ballooning feeling of freedom from constraint. Case III: I have worked hard all week, and there is a friend on the phone wanting to know if I would like to go for an exploratory ride in the country and then perhaps tea. There is a little click of satisfaction. I'm exactly in the mood and free for the occasion. Case IV: We're in the car, ready to take off from Walla Walla, with the map before us. East to the Blues, west to Lake Wallula, north to the Snake and south into the Wallowas-each is a possible direction; all we have to do is exercise our freedom to choose. Such personal examples are, I am sure, familiar to everyone. They are the small daily appearances of freedom in our lives, modest recurrent phenomena which add up to a free life. I could, of course, have begun with examples of unfreedom, of daily oppression, which can take an equally small, even trivial or absurd shape. For instance, I have been told that in a popular restaurant in Moscow ice cream dishes come in cosmic form: there are nine planetary choices named from Mercury to Pluto. But what a disappointment: if you order Pluto, you get vanilla-flavored state base with plum jam, and Mars turns out to be vanilla-flavored state base with marmalade, and so on; thus freedom of choice is covertly frustrated. The trouble is that the relation of small personal freedoms to the grander notion of civic freedom is different from the relation of small deprivations to political oppression. Except on certain ceremonial occasions, freedom with a capital F does not itself make anyone wildly happy. It is its small consequences that we cherish. The obverse for oppression, however, does not obtain, for the political unfreedom from which those small frustrations arise is by no means innocuous; it can itself cause the most terrible suffering, suffering too great to speak of in a lecture like this. That, incidentally, is what refugees from oppression, like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, sometimes fail to understand. They are so accustomed to the soultrying enormities of unfreedom that they cannot properly value the diffuse, unextreme, even unedifying appearances of freedom. But these are the ones with which a positive inquiry, the kind that is appropriately carried on among us, who daily experience freedom, should begin. So I will return to my cases, which I listed only in order to go from observation to theory. (When I speak of theorizing I do not mean the vigorous but dry exercise of attempting to find a definition of freedom, but rather the attempt first to articulate the perplexities contained in the phenomena and then to penetrate the appearances themselves.) Notice, then, that in all the instances freedom is followed by a preposition: freedom of the road, freedom from parental supervision, free for tea, free to indulge my preference. (I omit such familiar phrases as freedom under the law, freedom through discipline, freedom in Christ, because these reflect 44 on the conditions of freedom rather than on its nature.) These prepositions, "of, from, for, to," seem to be almost unavoidable when we speak about freedom. Now when used of ordinary situations and notions and things in this world, prepositions are not particularly mysterious; they usually express spatial relations: sitting under the apple tree, passing through the looking glass. But what about the case of freedom, which is nothing spatial? I think the prepositions of freedom also express situations and motions and relations, but not of bodies to bodies as when lovers sit under the apple tree, but of souls to the world. Freedom of the road, or, more importantly, freedom of speech or of religion, then means being in a situation to take hold, to take advantage of the outer world. For example, we have the ability to utter words, which means literally to "outer" them, to make loud meaningful sounds. Freedom of speech means being in a position to appropriate this power. Freedom from constraint, on the other hand, or those old freedoms articulated during the second World War, freedom from want and fear imply an aversive motion, a motion of shaking off the shackles of the world. Again, being free for anything, from a talk to a new friendship, means being so well-ensconced in the world as to be receptive and ready for it, while being free to choose means being set up for action, ready to sally out and do things._ In sum all our feelings of freedom express various aspects of a relation we have to the external world as we range through its beauties, realize our powers within it, secure ourselves from its oppressions, ready ourselves to receive it and reach out to act on it. The fact that this relation has a number of facets, expressed in the various prepositions "of, from, for, to," must follow from the different ways human beings, souls, are in the world: they take possession of it, withdraw from it, await it, step into it. That is outer freedom. How the world can be constituted so that our relation to it must have these half-metaphorical aspects is the subject of a different-and deeper-inquiry usually called phenomenology. But what is the relation of freedom itself? Let me give a two-word answer. Outer freedom is real possibility, that is, power not over people but over things and circumstances. Again, I must leave aside the most abysmal question, namely, what the world is such that we, embodied souls, can have within it what in mechanical systems are called degrees of freedom. I shall assume that we all have a working knowledge of possibility. Then external freedom is real possibility. "Real" is Latin and means pertaining to things. Real possibility is to be distinguished from mere, logical possibility. Let me take you through an example. All of us have some property. Now it is logically impossible for all of us, legally and responsibly, to give that property up. For although it is in the very notion of property that we may sell it or give it away-alienate it, as the term goes-it is also part of its meaning that we are responsible for disposing of it to another person or quasi-person, like a government. We have no right, for instance, simply to abandon our house so �July, 1979 that it becomes a dangerous neighborhood nuisance. Consequently it is logically impossible for all persons to give up their property at once, for each must, as I said, give it to someone: humanity holds property like a wolf by the tail-it cannot let go. But it is logically perfectly possible for half of all the people to give up what they own to the other half. The other half might, perhaps, be willing to receive it (though once they had the stuff they might be sorry). Yet is it not a real possibility. It will not happen because it is against human nature and worldly circumstances. Finally, that one or two people we know should give away all they own is both logically and really possible, though it takes a good deal of preparation and arrangement. Some people are free, by nature and circumstance, to get rid of the gear of ordinary life. Now the point is that to be free, either from things, or for them, takes much planning and careful arrangement. A world of chaos and inchoateness, the tohuwabohu of the Bible, holds no real possibilities except for a divine creator, and we are not creators, but only organizers. A perfectly structured, motionless world, on the other hand, has no scope for action either. In Dante's Divine Comedy there are two kinds of hopeless hell, the heaving horror of the upper circles of sinners, and the nethermost circle of perpetual ice in which Satan is suspended. Real possibility exists in a world which is at once organized and open. Outer freedom therefore requires a land crisscrossed by paths surfaced with road metal, bridged by toll booths, edged with service stations, lined by fences, and marked by signs setting limitations and giving directions. And what holds for the freedom of the road goes for all the other freedoms. They ali require multifarious physical and mental arrangements, arrangements for production of goods and prevention of evils, for delivery of services and collection of debts. But most of ali our freedom demands the ten-thous~nd real constraints of the liberating law. (Incidentally, those pioneers who first found these paths, like the two local heroes, Lewis and Clark, had far fewer freedoms than we who follow them, though they had one in an irrecoverable degree: that of really acting in the world.) One more observation on the character of external freedom: it goes the way of self-abrogation, of self-cancellation. Free time without engagements begins to hang heavy on our hands. Long aimless travels suddenly begin to pall and we want a destination. Too many options with no preference drive us crazy. It is the natural fate of freedom to terminate in commitment. We all know that perpetually free spirits, who fail to foreclose on their freedom, acquire a peculiar reek about them, as of stale ozone; a world fixed up for freedom compels us to take advantage of it. That is why we are all so busy. For, in Shakespeare's words: "Lillies that festersmell far worse than weeds." It is in the very nature of real possibilities, then, to compel us to realize them, and external freedom is secured by innumerable constraints. People who are not born free but released from slavery by human arrangements are called freedmen. With respect to outer freedom we are all freedmen, for such freedom is established by myriads of positive contri- vances. But we are also free simply-not free to or for or from, not free as situated in the world, but simply free. This freedom-let me call it inner freedom -cannot be secured by external arrangements. For example, the law can protect freedom of utterance, but a legal freedom of thought is an absurdity: who could stop us? Nor does this freedom push us to take advantage of the world. On the contrary, its index is often a capability for serenely sitting it out. What, then, is inner freedom? Let me begin by sketching out two extreme answers, not the most extreme answers possible, but such as will yield a useful framework. The first is sternly and soberly deflating. It is that there is no such freedom. There is none because we have no inside, no interior. Our psychic system is continuous with or, at least, analogous to our physical organization. Our inner and outer natures obey the same mechanical (or statistical) laws. As in physics we rely on observations of motions for our theory, so in psychology we depend on the evidence of behavior (indeed, this view is usually called behaviorism), and that tells us that human beings are pushed by needs and pulled by incentives as bodies are moved by collisions and attractions, and that interpersonal behavior is as predictable as are the actions and reactions of bodies. This view is difficult to deal with in its own terms. It will not do to produce some_tmpredictable behavior because, first, such behavior would itself be a mere reaction, and second, because inner freedom does not display itself as erratic behavior The freest people are also the most reliable. Perhaps the ultimate defense against this view lies in the difficulty this sehool of thought has in saying what it means by, and how it comes to care about, its stern and sober truth; but that development is beyond this lecture. At the other end stands the Kantian view I mentioned in the beginning. It is also severe, but it is grand as well. Kant agrees that we are natural beings, subject to the pushing and pulling laws of psychology, to our wants, desires, and inclinations. But, he claims, there is also a universally acknowledged fact, a moral fact. It is not known through any outer or even inner evidence because it is entirely internal-internal even beyond our inner sense of ourselves. It is the fact that sometimes we determine and lay down the law to ourselves: we withstand our own nature, deny our own inclinations and do not as we want but as we ought. Freedom is an inexplicable fact; it makes itself known in moral action, which in turn is eVidenced as rational opposition to our natural inclinations. Human freedom shows up as radical, reasoning resistence to human nature. It is a grand view because it assigns to us, as rational beings with a supernatural root, infinite responsibility for our actions. But it seems to me to make too harsh a division between our reasoning and our feeling self. Let me, therefore, take a great chance and tell you what I think inner freedom, what being free simply, means. I think it means nothing more and nothing less than having an inside, that is, a plaee where one is genuinely and literally by oneself-though not alone. One way to remind ourselves that we are capable of having such a space is to think of cases we know where it has become 45 �The College vacuous or obstructed. It has become vacuous in people who have gained the whole world and lost their own soul by allowing themselves to be entirely, hectically, absorbed in exterior business, especially the kind that has no solid substance. It appears obstructed in obsessed people, who have what is so graphically called a "hang-up;" that is to say, their own inner space is strung through with psychic barbed wire in which they have entangled themselves. Indeed, every loss of human interiority points to some personal or public pathology, as fearful as it is instructive. Positively speaking, it is in this inner space that imagina- tion and thinking have their place. Or perhaps better, it is in this place that we think things out in the imaginative presence of everything we care about. I feel sure that everyone here knows just what I am talking about, and why one might say that the possession of such an inner place is identical with being free: here, inaccessible to the world's manipulations but not isolated from its gifts, we fulfill our most intimately proper function, which is-! think-to think. By thinking I mean simply our episodic efforts to recover and clarify our life within ourselves. But this inner freedom is not a set of real possibilities, that is, possibilities supported by things, but an actuality within the soul. For when we are within ourselves we are already in the act of being what we were meant to be, whether we are shaping images, or pursuing a perplexity, or reaching a reso- lution. This freedom is not in what we might do but in what we are. And that has important external consequences, for what we are issues in what we do. For, although this activity usually takes place in secluded and quiet episodes-what Shakespeare calls the "sessions of sweet silent thought" -once it is done, it consolidates into conviction and clamors quietly but insistently for expression, for communication and common action. And that is the source of the problem which made me attempt this lecture. are, of course, the schools which are generally considered to be the great public facilitators of opportunity. ("Opportunity" is, evidently, another word for real possibility.) So, naturally, the Court was eventually asked to decide whether the governments, particularly state governments, might facilitate ex- pressions of the inner life through the schools by making it easier for parents to send their children to religious schools, or by releasing children to attend religiou-s instruction, or by giving them opportunities to say a non-sectarian praxe!~ By and large, the court has held that all such facilitations were unconstitutional, since they tended either to establish one religion in special benefits or, by sanctioning religion in general, to interfere with the consciences of non-believers. Consequently, in the interests of conscience, religion must be banished from the ever-expanding public scene. And that is what my students found at once persuasive and perplexing: that the public scene, which is full of means for the enjoyment of outer freedom, requires vacancy with respect to the expression of inner freedom. hibiting the free exercise thereof." It is usually understood to I think we succeeded in formulating the resolution this country has worked out. It consists in the fact that we all lead double lives, sometimes exhilarating, often dangerous, always wearing. This is our double life: we are all, always, both members of factions of interest and participants in fellowships of conviction. have two clauses. One says that no government, federal or state, shall push or prefer one religious organization over the Factions-the word is Madison's; we would say interest groups-are the numerous shifting col1ection of externally others. The second says that no government shall make difficulties for individuals over their religion. The author of free people who band together to get the public to facilitate their rationally selfish way; they have a perfectly legitimate, if not very noble, common cause. Indeed Madison thought that a well-constituted polity was precisely one which gave these inevitable groups scope by exerting themselves to delimit each Let me revert here to those Supreme Court decisions I mentioned in the beginning. They were concerned with reli- gion in the public schools, and they were all based on that section of the First Amendment which says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or pro- these clauses, Madison, was crystal-dear about their purpose: they were equally intended to protect and to strengthen the expression of the life of conscience, and so of religion, since that is precisely what religion, in one of its aspects, is. Con- other. Parties, unions, business organizations are examples of science, a Latin word which James Joyce rendered in English factions of interest. The space of factional activity is the pub- as "inwit", or "inner knowledge," is, of course, a principal mode of inner freedom. So far so good. But recall that worldly freedom demanded lic realm in its official and civil forms. Fellowships of conviction, in contrast to factions of interest, are communities of people who draw together as in- not only constraints to keep us from interfering with each ternally free human beings, that is to say, as human beings others' enjoyments of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," but, even more, conveniences and facilities to make whose inner lives have some agreement and who are therefore in some manner friends. Churches and private schools are such enjoyment a real possibility. Chief among such facilities examples of fellowships of conviction. The place where the 46 �July, 1979 life of conviction is carried on is the inward looking, semiprivate association. Of course, parties, unions, and chambers of commerce are based on some principles and will, insofar as they recall them, be communities of conviction. Conversely, churches and schools are going businesses, albeit very much non-profit businesses, and have interests to defend. Indeed, how communes of conviction behave as interest groups is a fascinating matter. For example the Maryland college where I ordinarily teach was founded in the year after the Revolution, in 1784, as a non-sectarian, secular state school with the eager support of the local Catholics, who, in the absence of a Catholic seminary in which to train their priests, were anxious to send them to a school that required no religious test and attendance at all; in this they obviously acted as an interest group. There are, incidentally, some associations that have lost all sense of this distinction. Those are called movements, that is, ideological interest groups. Let me interject a very biased remark: the recent tragedies of Europe are the consequences of such unsober politicizations of faith (which is precisely what totalitarianism is), and this country doesn't need them. That we all belong to these two kinds of groups, and usually in a somewhat fused and simultaneous way, is a fascinating fact of American life. But how in the world do we do it? For these groups are not merely different in flavor-lifestyle would be the current word-but evidently incompatible in mode. Let me sketch out how that is. Interests are eminently negotiable. A friend of mine, who used to be high in the councils of government, Robert Goldwin, says that a really brilliant negotiator is not one who finds a compromise, a middle ground, but who devises an alternative that gives the parties something different but more attractive than they had ever thought of demanding. But who can compromise, not to say negotiate, his genuine convictions? In the early Christian church a long and even bloody battle was fought over the littlest letter in the Greek alphabet, the iota. The iota's difference was between· the words homoiousios and homo-ousios which mean respectively "of like substance" and "of the same substance." The issue was whether Christ was merely like God the Father but not equal with bim, or whether the godhead was a trinity of equal persons. This battle between the so-called Arians and Athanasians has been the laughing stock of moderns (though so great a scientist as Newton was still deeply involved in it). But is it really so comical that people should be unable to compromise their convictions about the nature of God? There are numerous other contrasts between the worlds of conviction and interest, which show themselves, and are very familiar to us, in their different atmospheres. Let me briefly delineate these appearances. The world in which we associate by interest is on occasion brutal but ordinarily impenetrably bland. It is calculating and civil, hard-headed and reasonable, selfish and serviceable. In accordance with the evanescent character of external freedom, it shifts constantly to provide new means, but it also requires accretions of the most rigid emptiness, like bureaucracies. We all recognize its various dialects. For example, we all understand and, I think, approve of the calculations that go into the instructions which the girl at the check-out counter in the super-market has to say: "Have a pleasant day." It is a bland civility which is intended to give a tiny edge on the competition by lubricating the shopper's exit. Or, again, take the park prose I cited in the beginning. It signifies that Pioneer Park is not only a little paradise for the recreation of the soul, but also the scene of contending interests, namely of those who want it to be free to cars and those who want it to be free from cars, interests to be satisfied by objective experimentation and compromise. This broad and multifarious, but at bottom uniform, world in which we float fairly free, as in a medium, secures us the means for what Hobbes called "commodious living." It is therefore not to be despised. There are even occasions when it becomes a community full of pride in the rational decency, reciprocal respect, and staunch reliability which founded and which preserves it. The world in which we unite primarily by conviction, in contrast, is intimately exclusive and inevitably quarrelsome, alternately stagnant and ardent, intense and durable. This is the world of expressed interiority, of "spiritual substance" or, rather, of many substances, for the very way such communities float in the free world tends to multiply and even competitively differentiate them, both from that world and from each other. That is the blessing and mystery- of pluralism. That pluralism is a blessing because it permits us to live at once in both worlds, the outer and the inner. That it is a mystery is plain when we ask ourselves how in the world we emerge from the concentration of our convictions to live civilly and reciprocally with those who think otherwise or not at aH or, again, how we ever succeed in collecting ourselves out of the dispersion of the external world into communities for furthering the life of the soul. Of course, there are perfectly practical circumstances that make for toleration of each other's secular selves: the steep loss of interest, like a rapidly diminishing field of force, which comes from the distance a big continent affords; our mandatory public affectation of fallibility {we might be shocked to hear a minister declare in church that "''m probably wrong, but I feel that we may well have immortal souls," but we would not be utterly amazed to hear him say it on a talk show); the fact that the follies of the wide world are grist to the mill of faith and as such induce a certain fondness. Of course, equally, there are human-all-too-human reasons for joining communities of conviction: for social purposes, out of convention, as a kind of insurance. But when we look beyond these circumstantial explanations, there is still the undeniable fact that we-all but the most lukewarm-have found a way to exist, like doppelgangers, in two ultimately diverse worlds. You must forgive me if I have done little more tonight than to formulate an inquiry. I do know one thing though: the attempt to resolve this mystery must always run concurrent with the preservation of the fact, the fact, namely, that in this country we can live a life both of outer and inner freedom. 47 �The Collapse of Democracy at Athens and the Trial of Socrates Leo Raditsa Thucydides did not finish his account of the "intense movement" (so he named it) among the Greek peoples that he judged to be the greatest event of history including the Trojan War. The incompleteness of Thucydides' account suggests the war never ended-and perhaps there is some truth in that. For the kind of war-and in his opening paragraph he carefully defines it-Thucydides describes, without specific political aims and which proceeds by revolution, is difficult to end. One can terminate hostilities-but to make peace: that is another, much more difficult matter. The crisis which we call the Peloponnesian War did, however, come to some sort of end and it is about that end and what came after it, especially the trial of Socrates, that I am going to talk to you tonight. The period runs. roughly from 410 to 399, the year of Socrates' trial. The historical question I wish to face is what is the relation of the trial of Socrates to the collapse of democracy which occurred at Athens with the slow ending of the war. To put it simply, why was Socrates prosecuted in 399 instead of some time earlier, for instance, in 423 when Aristophanes had the Clouds produced? Xenophon, who begins his narrative about where Thucydides leaves off, does not mention the trial of Socrates, although he does mention Socrates' attempt when he was in Prytany to prevent the illegal trial of the generals who had commanded at Arginusae in 406. Diodorus Siculus mentions the trial, but only in passing, the way he mentions the death of Sophocles in 406. I think ancient historians did not include the trial of Socrates in their compositions because they understood history to deal with the public life of a city, of its officers and of its citizens in public assembly and in battle. They did not conceive history to include the relation of private to public life, something which was the subject of much of Socrates' activity. Although Socrates was charged with a public crime-a -ypacf>.f), not a 8tK'I), which referred to a civil suit, as Socrates reminded Euthyphro at the start of his conversation with him-he was charged as a private citizen, not as an office holder. There was another and deeper reason for not including the trial of Socrates in the ancient accounts of the period. In contrast to Plato-and in this he is profounder than PlatoXenophon admits that he does not understand how it could have happened that Socrates was tried and condemned. That A lecture read at Annapolis on February 18, 1977 48 is, Socrates made him question the world his eyes saw-and this involuntary questioning is Xenophon's greatest tribute to Socrates. But this questioning did not extend to history. For Xenophon, history bore some relation to tragedy. But public men and cities suffered tragedy. To include the trial of Socrates in his composition Xenophon would have had to conceive of the tragedy of a private man. He could not-like most Athenians. Think on it a second. All the Athenian tragedies are about public individuals, kings and princes, when they are not about gods. There is something radically wrong with the way we read tragedies, as if they were about the lives of private individuals. The private individuals, the individuals who hold no office, appear in comedies. There they trip over their fantasies which they take for actions, grow embarrassed at -themselves, at the greatness they feel trapped in their insides but which betrays them when they open their mouths. There they grow haughty with their magnificent and outrageous gods. It is a measure of what happened to Athens that a generation after he had been subject to a comedy Socrates became protagonist of an event that the best of his contemporaries knew they could not understand. 1 For it was the tragedy of a private man. Even now we cannot easily integrate the trial of Socrates into the history of Athens and of the other Greeks-just as historians of the Roman empire hardly ever include the trial of Jesus in their accounts of that period. The Collapse of Democracy at Athens The last ten years of the war, the period from 411 to 401, represent the precipitation of that crisis in leadership which we call the Peloponnesian War. It is the period of the war in which the war became more and more something that happened to Athens and something that Athens did to herself. It is also the period in which Sparta took to the sea and in which Persia became increasingly deeply involved. 2 The events of 411, the formation of the oligarchic government of the 400 and then of the Five Thousand, which represented a reaction to the Sicilian disaster, not only shook Athens' domestic political confidence. They isolated Athens in the Greek world. The oligarchic revolutions in other allied cities which had accompanied the changes at Athens in 411 had not served, as the oligarchs at Athens had expected, to �July, 1979 make settlement with the Lacedaimonians possible, but had lived on the brink of civil war. At Athens itself the situation was tense. In 410 the returned democracy had passed strict laws encouraging the punishment of those who had been involved in the oligarchic movement of 411. There were many exiles. The division which had occurred with the coming of Of these events the collapse of Athens or the time of the Thirty, as it is usually called, was the most devastating. The experience of Athens during this period left an indelible impression on the whole ancient world. People thought of it with the same horror as the men of Colonus looked upon the face of Oedipus. Sallust's Caesar, written during the death agony of the Roman Republic, in the face of the proscriptions of the young Octavian, recalls the horrors of the years of the the oligarchs in 411 had not been overcome. In an important Thirty at Athens with a vividness which makes one imagine sense Athens in 410 was no longer one city but two. This meant nobody knew what might happen next. With the weakening of the predominance of Athens and Sallust had lived through the time. The Thirty, who were led by two of his close relatives, and Socrates' trial-these are the two central experiences of Plato's life. Somehow no matter what she did Athens always wounded herself. This is the terrible sense of this last decade and earlier-for it really started at Melos in 416. When the Athenian people illegally condemned commanders they suspected instead contributed to bringing these cities under Lacedaimonian sway. Everywhere there was instability, and the cities her instability, other Creek cities grew more aggressive in their views. For the first time during the Peloponnesian War Greek leaders, especially the Spartans, reckon with public opinion outside of their cities. For instance, Pausanias, one of the Kings of Sparta, is said to have intervened in the Athenian civil war at the end of the period of the Thirty because he feared the consequences to the reputation of Sparta if the slaughters of the thirty continued. In the first part of this period, the six years leading up to the destruction of almost the entire Athenian fleet at Aegospotami in September 405, the war is largely at sea for both to be innocent after the great victory at Arginusae in 406, they hurt themselves. As Socrates later pointed out, the)'_discredited themselves, destroyed their public life and made themselves incapable of recognizing and standing up to their real enemies, when they violated their own Jaws. In Socrates' presence Athenians knew they were doing this to themselves. This is the meaning of Alcibiades' wonderful sides. The sea war of these six years takes place mainly in the and terrifying remark that Socrates was the only man in Hellespont and in the Bosporus, and along the adjoining Athens who made him feel ashamed. In Socrates' presence he could not fool himself-he knew that what he did somehow coasts of Thrace and Asia Minor with its three major islands, Lesbos, Chios and Samos. It was through these straits that betrayed what he was. Alcibiades meant Socrates made him many of the Athenian grain ships sailed. When she chal- feel alive. Socrates gave men something like the feeling you lenged Athens in this area Sparta was aiming at her life lines sometimes get from infants when they make you wonder how you have become what you are. but not, in the beginning at least, for total victory. For after several of the major battles she attempted to negotiate with Athens. For the first time in the War Athens was on the defensive in a way she had never been when Sparta had wasted Attica in the first years of the war. For her part Sparta appears to be without a coherent policy in this period. Her most noble commander drowned at the battle of Arginusae, Callicratidas tried to keep free of Persian entanglements, but Lysander, the Spartan commander who was to bring the war to an end, had no scruples about taking all the money he could from Persia for building the fleet and paying its crews. The main events of this period are the return of Alcibiades to Athens in 408; the victory of the Athenian fleet at Arginusae in 406 and the unlawful trial and execution of the generals of the fleet which followed upon it; Lysander's destruction of the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami in the fall of 405; and the collapse of Athens in the period 405-401, espe- Alcibiades' return to Athens in 408, with his appearance before the council and the assembly and his election to position of Commander in Chief, made a deep impression on Athens. They saw him now almost like an outcast, like Oedipus, forced to live beyond the protection of the laws, his life always in danger, in Sparta and in Persia. Here was the man who in his life, almost in his person, summed up most of the destructive and constructive actions of the years since 415: the castration of the Hermae and the parody of the mysteries (from which he was now exonerated), the expedition against Syracuse, the Spartan fortification of Decelea in Attica, and the involvement of Persia in the war-and constructively and more recently, the prevention of civil war during which run from May 404 to August 403, when the Thirty the oligarchic crisis in 411 and the re-establishment of Athenian control of the Propontis and the Bosporus in 410. When Alcibiades sailed into the Piraeus he waited cautiously, without disembarking, for his friends and relatives to escort him up to the city. To many, both rich and poor, democrats and oligarchs, he seemed like the one individual were in power. capable at the same time of overcoming the division which cially after the siege and surrender, in the fifteen months 49 �The College remained within the city and of prosecuting the war with in- telligence. But something like six months later he is either not reelected or removed from his command because a subordinate-against his express orders-engages Lysander and loses fifteen Atpenian ships. He goes into exile on his estate in the Chersonese. The great expectations had come to nothing-the crisis continued. Almost a year apart, the two great naval disasters of Arginusae and Aegospotami were in a sense both self-inflicted. l call Arginusae a disaster even though it was an Athenian victory, because its repercussions at home did much to discredit the unstable democracy. When Athens learned that the Spartan commander Callicratidas had encircled the Athenian commander Conan at Mytilene she sent out a hastilygathered fleet of II 0 ships which she manned with free men and slaves (who were later awarded their freedom). Immediately after the Athenian victory a storm suddenly rises which prevents the Athenian commanders from picking up the several thousand dead and survivors floating in the rammed and waterlogged ships that had not sunk. At Athens, the news of the losses blunts the joy of victory. Following a little after the news the Apaturia, a festival which draws together families to acknowledge births and marriages, makes the grief worse. The matter comes up in the council and the assembly. Under the influence of their politicians the people seem unable to accept that some things are not under human control, that a storm occurs in "divine necessity," as one speaker puts it. Their politicians dominate them by nourishing their yearning to make someone responsible for everything. tion for sentencing from the assembly. The generals are condemned as a group and immediately executed. Sometime later the people regret their action, as they had been warned they would in the assembly. They turn upon their leaders and prosecute them, depriving one of them of fire and' water. But it is too late. All along they had known what they were doing was wrong, but they could not stop it. Against the speaker who had opposed them they had shouted that it was unthinkable that the people should not be allowed to do whatever they desired. After Arginusae the tension in many of the cities increases. Returned as acting Commander of the Spartan fleet, Lysander, with headquarters at Ephesus, supports the so-called oligarchs in a bloody seizure of power at Miletus. Four hundred of the wealthy and prominent citizens of Miletus are executed in the market place. For his predecessor Callicratidas' attempt to lead the Greek cities with words, Lysander substitutes terror, for which party labels are mere pretexts. In Karia, a city allied to Athens is wiped out. Sailing from Samos, the Athenian fleet finds no support among the Greek cities. Except for Mitylene, all Asia turns away from Athens. When news comes that Lysander is retaking Lampsacus on the Hellespont almost the entire Athenian fleet, one hundred and eighty ships, sails to Aigospotami, a barren stretch of beach just fifteen stades ( a slade is 600 feet) across the water from Lampsacus. Despite Alcibiades' warning-from his estate on the Chersonese he watches the whole disaster take shape before his helpless eyes-the Athenian commanders remain in their exposed position and offer bly is adjourned. In a subsequent assembly it is proposed to vote on the guilt battle to the Spartans for four days. On the fifth day Lysander surprises the Athenians after they have disembarked and destroys or captures more or less their whole fleet. It is the Fall of 405. At Athens they prepared for siege: all the harbours except one were filled up, walls were repaired and guards put on them. The city sought a hasty and incomplete unity in the restoration of full citizen rights to those who had been partially deprived in the previous troubles. But they did not recall the exiles. At Aegospotami in assembly with the allies of Sparta, Ly- of the generals as a group and to count their previous tes- sander executed one of the Athenian commanders, because timony as a trial-all highly illegal. A brave speaker in the assembly attempts to stop the proceedings on the grounds of unconstitutionality (the ypacf>Tj 7mpavoJLwv); but the people, turning into a mob, threaten him. This is the first, crucial attempt to resort to the ypacf>T, '11'apavoJLWV since it had been restored after the Four Hundred had abolished it in 411. 3 It fails. But the grounds of the illegality have been clearly stated in the assembly. The crowd also intimidates all of the council except Socrates when it seeks to keep the mo- he had been the first to break the international law of the Greek cities. He had hurled the captured crews of two ships of Sparta's allies from a precipice, and in the assembly at Athens he had supported a motion to cut off the thumbs of all Theramenes, an important and able politician who had been a subordinate commander at Arginusae, accuses his superiors of neglect. There is debate both in council and assembly, and the six generals who had dared to come back to Athens defend themselves ably and with witnesses, even though they have not yet been formally accused. At the point when it appears the generals will win some kind of release the assem- 50 prisoners of war and make them incapable of ever rowing again. Lysander also showed himself as the undoer of other Athenian outrages: at Melos, Torone, Scione and Aigina he restored the remaining original inhabitants. From Chalcedon and Byzantium on the Bosporus and �July, 1979 elsewhere, Lysander set the Athenian garrisons loose on con- dition they sail nowhere else but to Athens. He wanted to burden Athens with as many mouths as possible. Everywhere the Greek cities turned to Sparta. But at Samos, the other port of the Athenian fleet, the democracy .held, and again knew itself in the slaughter of prominent citizens. For the first time since before the Persian wars, Athens is cut off from the sea, closed in upon herself, Athens, whom almost ten years before, Peisthetaerus in the Birds had called "the city of the lovely triremes." Throughout the whole winter and until April of the following year, 404, Athens and the democracy resisted-and writer, son of Cephalus and brother of Polemarchus, who appear in the first book of the Republic), believed in them at first. The commission delayed the reform of the laws, but appointed magistrates and council, and started to rule. Before the council and with public ballotting, they tried and killed notorious sycophants, individuals who had used the threat of prosecution for extortionary purposes. Although illegal, these killings won wide consent among the citizens, because men felt they were justified. Soon, however, Critias, a close relative of Plato, and an interlocutor of Socrates, asked Lysander for a Spartan gover- people starved. There was an early attempt at negotiation in nor and garrison to support him in dealing with unruly and which Athens offered to accept Sparta's leadership in alliance, a situation that would have allowed her considerable independence. But at Sparta the Ephors insisted on tearing down part of the walls. In response the people at Athens forbade subversive elements. With Spartan troops behind them, the Thirty now began to kill all individuals who might oppose them, and whose property would furnish the money necessary for the support of the Spartan garrison. At these outrages many went into exile, including Anytus · (who later instigated the prosecution of Socrates) and Thrasybulus, who was to lead the democrats. Megara and Thebes teemed with Athenian exiles despite Sparta's order forbidding any Greek city to receive them. (By January 403, when the Thirty left Athens for Eleusis, where they had exterminated the population, perhaps as much as half of the male population had left Attica.) Among the Thirty themselves the outrages also produced any motions concerning peace. Men grew convinced that any terms with Sparta meant the fate of Melos. In this tense and dangerous situation Theramenes managed to persuade the assembly to let him find out from Lysander whether the Spartans wanted to destroy the Long Walls to reduce Athens to slavery, or simply as a guarantee of their good conduct. Theramenes remained with Lysander, who was besieging Sames until, with the worsening situation at Athens, the assembly granted him power to negotiate. The new terms which the Lacedaimonians and their allies opposition. Theramenes, who knew the distinction between a offered were much harsher than the previous demands of the moderate oligarchy and terror, told Critias that they were now much worse than the sycophants of the democracy who had extorted money, but not killed for it. Critias answered, brutally, that changes of constitution required killing: "How do Ephors: Athens was to have the same friends and enemies as Sparta. (In our terms this meant Athens lost the capacity for an independent foreign policy.) She was to tear down the Long Walls. Her fleet was not to number more than twelve ships. The exiles were to return. When Theramenes returned to the starving city with these terms, men crowded around him in fear-but in the assembly there was still some resistance to surrender. In acting as go-between between the Athenian democrats who desired to resist to the end and the probably undecided Spartans Theramenes had saved his native city from total destruction-or rather from destroying itself. To the intoxi- cating sound of flutes, Lysander had sections of the Long Walls tom down. The Spartans and the returning Athenian exiles, according to Xenophon, imagined that that day meant the beginning of freedom for the Greeks. It was April 404. In the following month the Athenian assembly, in the presence of Lysander, voted to give thirty men the power to revise the laws and reform the constitution. The Thirty promised to make the city clean and honourable and to impell the citizens to justice and excel1ence. Plato, then twenty-four years old, and many others, perhaps even Lysias (a speech you think thirty can rule over many without terror?" Critias now disarmed all the population except three thousand of the more wealthy. All, except these three thousand, could be arrested and executed without trial. As Socrates later pointed out in his own trial, Critias sought to dominate by involving as many as possible in his outrages. Under the swords of the Spartan garrison he compelled the three thousand to condemn the inhabitants of Eleusis to death. When he could no longer tolerate the freespokenness of Theramenes, he made the council his accomplice in his death. Sometime during the early winter of 404, Thrasybulus, with about seventy followers, took the border fortress of Phyle which overlooked the whole Attic plain to Athens. The Thirty immediately responded, but were repulsed in a minor skirmish. This minor set-back shattered their confidence and showed their cowardice matched their brutality. Sometime after this Thrasybulus, now with something like seven hundred badly armed followers, took the section of the 51 �The College Piraeus called Munychia. There in pitched battle the men of the Piraeus, as they now came to be called, managed to defeat the Thirty and the three thousand. Critias, first cousin to Plato's mother, and Charmides, his uncle, were both killed. Mindful that the enemy dead were citizens, the men of the Piraeus did not strip their bodies. They sought instead to use their victory to shake the by now largely forced loyalty of many of the three thousand (especially those who had not committed crimes) to the Thirty. Shortly after the battle the three thousand removed the Thirty from office and elected twelve to rule. The Thirty and their followers fled to Eleusis. It was January, 403. At this point Athens was no longer a living city but three factions, one in the city, one in the Piraeus, and one in Eleusis. From Eleusis the Thirty sent men whom they fancied ambassadors to Lysander, saying there had been a revolt of the mob at Athens and requesting his help. Intent on surrounding the democrats at the Piraeus, Lysander managed the forget did not cover the Thirty, "the twelve" who had committed their "executions," and several other categories. It was contractual and could only be enforced upon appeal from in- appointment of his brother as naval commander .and authorization for himself to hire mercenaries. But Pausanias, one of the heroes of Phyle and Piraeus had been few. Lysias tfilderstood the deep struggle for self-respect Athenians waged during this time. "The Thirty killed my brother" he says, "they even made it hard to bury him-! will not forget." 'Then, under the Thirty, you were afraid," he tells the judges, "but the kings of Sparta, alarmed at the thought that Lysander might turn Athens into his private possession, convinced the Ephors and the Spartan assembly to send him to Attica with companies of the regular Spartan army-ostensibly to help Lysander, but actually to prevent the destruction of the men of the Piraeus. Pausanias' expedition, with the Spartan army, amounted almost to a reopening of the war. In fact, Thebes and Corinth refused to join, because they said Athens had not violated any of her treaty agreements. With Spartan authority to come to a settlement, Pausanias managed to negotiate an agreement in which both the oligarchs of the city and the democrats of the Piraeus agreed not to fight each other. At Pausanias' insistence the oligarchs also agreed to return prop- erty expropriated under the Thirty to its owners. The consitutuion of th" democracy was restored. It was probably August 403, fifteen months after the assembly had first elected the Thirty. For the next two years Athens lived in fear of renewed attempts to undo the democracy. In 401, upon rumours that the Thirty at Eleusis were hiring mercenaries, the whole city took arms and went out to meet them. During the ensuing negotiations the men of the city killed the commanders from Eleusis and managed a reconciliation with their followers, with the help of their relatives and friends in Athens. Either at this time or two years earlier, in August 403, dividuals in court. (Andocides, for instance, appeals to it in his speech "On the Mysteries" in 399, the year of the trial of Socrates. )4 II Athens After the Thirty and the Trial of Socrates The atmosphere in Athens after the Thirty was somewhat unreal. It had become a city that feared disturbances and feared itself. It also remained in an important sense two cities. When you spoke at Athens during this time you always addressed two audiences, the men of the city and the men of the Piraeus. In these years Lysias speaks directly to a deep sense of unease and complicity with terrifying events which must have prevailed among the majority of Athenians. For now there is nothing stopping you from voting the way you desire, now there are no excuses." Lysias attacks Theramenes, not distinguishing him in any way from Critias. Theramenes had betrayed the trust the people had shown him and brought the city down in starvation. Everything which had occurred in the assembly that voted authority to the Thirty in the spring of 404 had been arranged beforehand, secretly, between Lysander and Theramenes. The vote had not been freely taken. If the Thirty had not killed Theramenes the democracy would have had to-a remark that, in its inverted way, pays a deep compliment to Theramenes. In all the violence the only obvious palpable tie that remained between the factions was the gods; to them the city now made appeal. Of the Thirty, Lysias said, "they wanted us to participate in their shame instead of the gods, to substitute complicity with them for our common relation to the gods." He also described the Thirty as men who believed their power to be firmer than the vengeance of the gods-something quite like what the Melians had said to the Athenians. When the men of the Piraeus addressed the three thousand after their defeat in January 403, they spoke first of their when Pausanias negotiated the reconciliation, every individual in Athens swore not to beiu grudges for anything in the past. This meant nobody could prosecute for offenses under common gods. Immediately after Pausanias had succeeded in the Thirty, probably including the expropriation of property which Pausanias had sought to undo. The agreement to belonged to Athene, who lived on the Acropolis. Perhaps Euthyphro exemplifies this new-found, somewhat showy 52 bringing peace between the factions Thrasybulus went up to sacrifice on the Acropolis: he meant to reaffirm that Athens �July, 1979 piety of Athens after the Thirty. It is full of unquestioning assurance~and yet at a loss for words. With this piety there is a forced and unconvincing blustering patriotism. Andocides does not blush to compare the Athens of the year of Socrates' trial with the Athens of the Persian wars. Anytus shows the brittle, touchy confidence of these years when he takes "personal" {as we would say) offense at Socrates' observation {in the Meno) that the sons of the pillars of the community had not turned out so well. People yearn for conviction, but are incapable of it. Socrates came from another world. The world of Athens and the Greeks before the Peloponnesian War. At its outbreak in 430 he was about 40, and already famous throughout at least the Greek world. Men came from as far as Cyrene to listen to him. 5 This is the Athens of the fifty years between the Persian and the Peloponnesian War, the Athens that neither feared itself or others. It was a city that did not fear the unexpected. A city in which important things beside crime happened on the streets. In fact, to that street life and its casual encounters, to how one can live on the streets, Socrates is one of our greatest witnesses. I think his refusal to wear sandals speaks of his feel for that life and of his insistence on its importance. Another witness to that street life is Herodotus, whose book, like the Odyssey, is also a book of manners. Although-or perhaps because-careful and cautious, Herodotus is confident and respectful of his readers' intelligence, of their capacity to think. Socrates has the same respect for the intelligence of the people he encounters. He could tolerate the movement of other peoples' minds {when they did actually move) and he knew that movement to be as unexpected as truth. That is why he preferred to talk, to listen as well as to speak, rather than to write or teach. Unlike Herodotus, Socrates did not travel-as he remarks, he never left town. Even when everybody went to a festival, he remained behind with the cripples and beggars in the deserted silent city. Herodotus instead went everywhere with the same ease that Socrates stayed at home. Both give an example of the best kind of courage, the unassuming kind, the kind that does not have to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet. The Athenians of that time were used to living in a world that strengthened them, in a world where the throbbing flow of the sky was palpable, in a world that knew nuance, that could see the shape of the human body because it knew it to be more than the sum of its parts. Pericles says Athens was largely free of the jealousy of the lives of others which contributed so much to the later hatred of Socrates. In the presence of Herodotus and Socrates one feels one's pretensions like a kind of awkwardness that one could drop. The only man who breathes this confidence during the Pe1oponnesian war besides Socrates is Aristophanes. Aristophanes knows in the way he appears to know everything, that in this time you can only breathe it in laughter, his kind of laughter which serves for reverence and respect. Alcibiades knew this confidence lived, but it always eluded his grasp although he traveled the world to seek it-when he knew perfectly well (but only Socrates could make him admit it) you could only find it at home. This kind of unassuming confidence cannot be experienced without remembering Aeschylus, a man with strength enough to have compassion for a god. Significantly, during the time of the war it is only Aristophanes who can approach Prometheus with something equivalent, but at the same time entirely different from, the pitiless tenderness of Aeschylus. Most of the spectators and judges at Socrates' trial knew nothing of this world of Athens before the Peloponnesian war except what they saw before them in Socrates. Plato was~ born in 428, Xenophon, who was not at the trial, perhaps in 435. Meletos, Socrates' official accuser, was perhaps Plato's age, certainly not much older; "a youthful defender of the youth," Socrates calls him. Ashamed at appearing in Court-for the first time in his life, he emphasizes-Socrates at his trial feels the weight of seventy years of living and the dignity they demand. He says he did not prepare a speech because it was not something for a man of his age to do-especially since his whole way of life with its love of justice speaks for him-in his defense. Plato knew, of course, that Socrates came from another world; in fact one major part of his work is remembering and recreating a world he had never entirely known, but which he knew to be destroyed. Remember that Plato lost Socrates just after the experience of the Thirty had forced him to acknowledge the dishonour of his family, perhaps not of his parents, but of the brothers of one of his parents and of another close relative. His repudiation of their acts is strong, and it awakens admiration. For Plato, the trial of Socrates was as terrible as the time of the Thirty. Plato's love for Socrates is for a dead man; everything he writes is about a man who has disappeared. Unlike Aristophanes, Plato never had to face Socrates with any of his writings. His writings were meant to substitute for Socrates, to replace him, to keep him alive once he was dead. This is the hardest illusion to deal with when you read Plato, the illusion that you are inside Socrates, that you are hearing his voice. It is also the drama of reading Plato, who is an artist, a different kind of artist than the poets, for he thought he was not an artist. With Xenophon it was different. He stayed outside of Socrates. In Xenophon you can hear how Socrates' vmce 53 �The College sounded to somebody who did not entirely understand Socrates but who knew he did not understand him, who knew he was out of his depth but had the courage to stay there-that is rare. "I cannot forget him, I cannot forget him, the memories keep overwhelming me," Xenophon says somewhere with wonder. But unlike Plato, he never forgot they were memones. Socrates was charged with impiety. The specific charge, which is preserved, with slight variations, by Xenophon and Diogenes Laertius, was that he did not worship the gods that the city worshipped and that he introduced new gods. The second charge is that he destroyed the youth. There are other examples of charges of asebeia with other charges attached to them. For instance, Aspasia was charged with asebeia and letting Pericles meet free women in her house. There is a text of Aristotle that associates asebeia with disrespect for parents and corrupting the youth. In any case it is clear that corruption of the youth was a prosecutable offense. 6 Plato's stress on corruption of the youth accords with Anytus' own views. In the only direct quotation from his speech we have, Anytus told the judges he had not expected Socrates to appear in court, but once he had, they had no choice but to condemn him. Otherwise, he would ruin their sons. In this Anytus agreed with the Thirty, who had actually attempted to order Socrates not to speak to the young. Anytus' argument to the fathers to protect their sons is the strongest kind of appeal. As Socrates points out in his questioning of Meletus, it makes him responsible for all the troubled youths in the city. How lucky they would be if I am the perhaps even death. 8 These disturbed relations between futhers and sons were intensified by the war. Thucydides mentions the enthusiasm of the youth for the war at its beginning. Pheidippides would have been brought up in the country if it had not been for the war. Socrates was one of the few people in Athens willing to look these troubles in the face rather than deny them and, by denying them, wish them away. Anytus instead wanted to wish them away, in somewhat the way locasta tried to talk Oedipus out of what he had learned-and then committed suicide. "Because I can help," Socrates says with something like astonishment, "I am overwhelmed by their jealous rage, as you put it, Euthyphro"-the word is ¢8ov€w used elsewhere of the gods' resentment of overreaching human bemgs. Anytus' relation to Meletus shows something of what Anytus thought the proper relation of the elder generation should be to the younger. He put Meletus up to charging Socrates, Meletus who was just a kid in Socrates' astonished but fearful eyes. How did he dare accuse him of impiety? Socrates asked, Did he not know what he was getting into? With a charge of impiety anything could happen. Meletus was one of those young men for whom the world is unreal, for whom, as Socrates said of others, everything is thetaerus, where Pisthetaerus manages to show him, by con- upside down. He was one of those youths who wished to be serious but did not dare to be, who wanted to be a hero but feared the risks. Anytus offered him the easy way out, the illusion of self-respect, the easy way· to grow up: the role of protector of the city and of his peers. Socrates is fierce when he questions Meletus, catching all the irresponsibility of that pretended earnestness. Anytus trapped Meletus with his conceit-and to all intents and purposes he ruined him. Contrast Anytus' manipulation of Meletus with Socrates' handling of Glaucon, Plato's brother, as Xenophon tells it. Like Plato, Glaucon at twenty wanted more than anything else to go into politics. Uncontrollable and the despair of his family, he was making a fool of himself climbing up to speak in public, and doing the other things you did to have a politi- versation not unlike those of Socrates in Xenophon, that he cal career at Athens. belongs on the Thracian front. Aristophanes means to show here-and it is probably meant as a compliment to Socrates-that the youth can be talked out of these wild fan- Socrates cared about him because of Plato and because of Glaucon's uncle Charmides, and because he must have had all the charm of intelligence awakening. (There is always cies if there is anyone around who knows how to take the something important to be said for young men who dare time to talk to him. (Incidentally, in our world, where we do not call things by their proper names, the would-be father- make fools of themselves in defiance of their family-as long as it is on their own-and not to please somebody else.) Socrates asked Glaucon some questions which incidentally show something that I do not think is apparent from Plato, that Socrates had a fairly extensive knowledge of the facts of Athenian politics. He asked how long could Athens live off only one who ruins them, Socrates remarks. There is plenty of evidence of disturbed relations in Athens between fathers and sons during the Peloponnesian War. The son of Pericles in Xenophon speaks matter-of-factly of Athens as a place where sons held their fathers in contempt. 7 You remember the struggle between Pheidippides and Strepsiades in the Clouds, where there is little question of the father holding the respect of his son. In the Birds there is a scene between a youth who desires to murder his father and Pis- killers pass for revolutionaries.) There is in Xenophon also a remarkable conversation of Socrates with his son who is deeply angry with his mother. In all this we should keep in mind that disrespect for parents carried severe penalties, 54 �July, 1979 the agricultural production of the Attic countryside, how much food did she need in general, what were her expenses, what were her revenues-the list reads like a catalogue of the facts Pericles had at the ready when he spoke to the Athenians. Glaucon cannot answer any of these questions. At one point he answers, "But, Socrates, I can make a guess." "No, when you know we will talk." Then Socrates asks him something else, "Why don't you run your uncle's estates?" Glaucon answers innocently, "Because I cannot persuade him to entrust them to me." "You cannot persuade your uncle, but you think you can persuade the city!" This is pretty much the opposite of what Anytus did to Meletus. It is the kind of humiliating conversation which teaches the difference between dreams and facts, between illusion and life-without learning that distinction (and it is not something you learn in the head), you live your whole life among the shades. Politics is also a struggle to distinguish the actual from illusions, enemies from friends, war from peace, what you can do from what you cannot, and, most importantly, aggression from goodwill and life from death. In the fifteen years preceding the trial of Socrates Athens had clearly failed in that struggle, over and over again misjudging situations. When the consequences of those misjudgements turned to disaster, it grew difficult to put up with Socrates: he reminded people of too much. Without wanting to he made Anytus feel he was a bad father, and that there might be a connection between the kind of father he was and the kind of political leader he was. More generally he made people feel they might have been responsible for what had happened to them. Or, as he puts it to the judges, "You cannot hurt me but you will hurt yourselves putting me to death." Nobody in public life after Pericles, and probably not even Pericles, had been able to make people feel responsible for what happened. Socrates made them feel responsible because he came in between the relations between generations. You remember how he says, "if I went abroad and had conversations, the fathers would drive me into exile; and if I did not, the sons would." In Athens it had taken collusion between generations, between Meletus and Anytus, to prosecute him. For it is the relations between generations which determine whether cities live or die or merely survive. People had gone through disaster; they had seen their fathers and brothers and children and friends killed. They had taken that, but they could not take the dim but unmistakable sense they had in the presence of Socrates that these disasters were of their own doing, that these disasters had to do with how they thought and talked and what they were. When Socrates told them they took better care of their slaves than their friends, of their bodies than their lives, he reminded them, quite unwittingly, of that. Because he knew his own smallness Socrates struck other men as grand, boastful, even arrogant. Because he took his own measure, he appeared to tower over other men who had trouble telling themselves from gods. And this was intolerable, especially after the events of the last ten years had held up their smallness to them. A generation before they had laughed at him and respected him-now in the narrowness of defeat, possessed by memories they could not face, they killed him-because they feared themselves in him. l. For the relation of The Clouds to Socrates, Bruno Snell, "Das fruehste Zeugnis ueber Sokrates," Philologus 97, 1948, 125-134; Wolfgang Schmid, "Das Sokratesbild der Wolken," Philologus 99, 1948, 209-228; T. Gelzer, "Aristophanes und sein Sokrates," Museum Helveticum !3, 1956, 65-93. 2. On the sources for this period, S. Accame, "Le fonti di Diodoro per Ia guerra Deceleica," Rendiconti della R. Accademia dei Lincei (Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche) l4 (sixth series), 1938, 347-451; "Trasibulo c i nuovi frammenti delle Elleniche di Ossirinco," RiviSta di filologia classica 28, 1950, 30-49. 3. J. Hatzfeld, "Socrate au prod:s des Arginuses," Revue des Etudes Anciennes 42, !940, 165. 4. For the character of this agreement, Ugo Enrico Paoli, Studi sul processo Attica, Padua, 1938, 121-142, especially 122; also, Studi di diritto Attica, Florence, 1930. 5. J. Burnet, Plato's Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates and Crito, Oxford, 1970 (orig. ed 1924), especially V and the commentary to the "Apology". 6. For the charge, A. Menzel, Untersuchungen zum Sokrates Processe, Abhandlung der Sitzungsber. d. kais. Akd. zu Wien 145, 1901-1902, especially 7-29. Also E. Derenne, Les proces d'impiete intentes aux philosophes d Athfmes au yme et au JVrne sif!cles avant J.-C., Liege, 1930; N. Casini, "II processo di Socrate," Iura 8, 1957, 101-120. For the association of asebeia with disrespect for parents, Aristotle "On Virtues and Vices," 1251" 31: lxfJ8{3eta J.LBv 7j 1rep't 8eoV~ 11'A'TJJ.LJ.LBAeux Ka't 1rep't fiai.J.Lova~ i) Ka't 1rep't ToV~ KO'.TOtXoJ.LBvov~ Ka't 'TT'ep't yovels Ka't 1rep'i 7ratpl.fia. Also J. Lipsius (with Meier and Schoemann) Das Attische Recht und Rechtsverfahren, Leipzig, !908, 359. 7. On the relation of Xenophon's "Defense of Socrates" to Plato's "Defense," U.V. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, "Die Xenophontische Apologie," Hermes 32, 1897, 99-106; J. Mesk. "Die Anklagerede des Polykrates gegen Sokrates," Wiener Studien 32 (1910}, 56-84; E. Gebhardt, Polykrates Anklage gegen Sokrates, Diss. Frankfurt. 1957. For the attitudes of Socrates' judges, see Larissa Bonfante and Leo Raditsa, "Socrates' Defense and his Audience," The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists, 15, 1978, 17-23. 8. For the death penalty for disrespect of parents (KaKWrrew~ yovBwv ypmpi)) Lysias, 13, 91. As with many crimes, the penalty for disrespect of parents was probably not specified (for leeway in Attic legal procedure after conviction, U.E. Paoli, Processo Attica, Padua, 1938, 86-89). Recent scholars think disrespect for parents was usually punished with partial loss of citizen rights. (0.nJ.Lf.a) for life, for instance with loss of the right to hold office and speak in the assembly-but not with the loss of private rights, such as the right to hold property. L. Beauchet, Histoire du droit priv€ de Ia Republique Athenienne, Paris, 1897, I, 362-371; A.R.W. Harrison, The Law of Athens, Oxfmd, !968. !, 78-8!. 55 �German Resistance to Hitler: Elites and Election Beate Ruhm von Oppen It is my task today to start with German resistance to Nazism, such as it was. The title of the whole conference is "The Role of the Educated Elite" and the subtitle "An examination of the response of the professional, intellectual, and religious communities to the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust." Yesterday's speakers have addressed themselves, among other things, to intellectual and political antecedents and developments, and social or sociological conditions and preconditions of the Nazi period. We also had a brilliant discussion of some goings-on in the bureaucracy. It is now my task to say something about German resistance. In thinking about the subtitle, I stumbled over the word "communities." It gave me pause. It sounded so American, so un-German, so inapplicable to the German social configuration-and yet it was Germans who made so much of Gemeinschaft, community; as, for instance, contrasted with Gesellschaft, or society. The togetherness of community or Gemeinschaft was the soulful thing, the thing engaging the inner man, the thing which could cure or counteract the ills of society, Gesellschaft. Perhaps there's the rub-and a method of access to the subject. If one proceeds by word association, by listening to overtones and compounds, one may get into it. The rub seems to be that Gemeinschaft or Gemeinschaftserlebnis, the experience of community, did not, on the whole, provide the human cohesion that acted as an effective barrier to inhumanity. No, on the whole not: but what barrier, what resistance there was, did depend on community or communities, on family and on friendship. Perhaps what is awkward-and helpful-about the subtitle is that it elicits the difference between, say, America and Germany, certainly the Germany before 1945. The point of difference seems to me to be that Germany had no professional or intellectual communities, or had at This is the somewhat shortened text of a paper presented at a conference, sponsored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews, on The Holocaust: The Role of the Educated Elite, held at San Jose, California, March 27 to 29, 1978. 56 best some pockets of solidarity in the professions, or some degree of professional ethos. Community did exist in somewhat higher degree among co-religionists and that may have been a difference in kind as well as degree. Christians speak of the communion of saints; and the German word for that is Gemeinschaft der Heiligen: Gemeinschaft here has to do for both communion and community. By "communion of saints" is meant the community of the faithful. But it is salutary, not just an archaism, that the sacramental word, the name of the sacrament, is kept in English. It may have contributed to the German perdition that they only had one word for the religious and the secular community, that that word, charged with religious connotation and increasingly perverted, was appropriated for the paramountcy of the People's Community, the Volksgemeinschaft. The other communities the Nazis broke up and atomised and used the atoms to fill the totalitarian system. That is what totalitarianism is and does. It absorbs the de-structured or destroyed. As you know, all parties, unions, and associations but one, the National Socialist, were destroyed, that is, abolished or nazified. Only the churches remained. Why did not a sense of danger make the opponents to Hitler and his victims into a community? There may be several reasons: Hitler's uncanny gift for timing and deception; an inadequate discernment, among his opponents and victims, for seeing where the greatest danger lay; an inadequate talent for apprOpriate and effective combination; economic insecurity; an almost nationwide resenbnent of the Treaty of Versailles and the Western powers which had imposed it and were still enforcing it-and looked like giving to Hitler what they had denied to his predecessors. This was probably Hitler's strongest card in the months and years of consolidation of power. His promise of removing "the Shackles of Versailles," getting rid of reparations and removing unemployment-promises which he seemed, surprisingly, to be able to keep-helped him immensely and hindered the formation of early and effective oppositional groupings. And then, of course, there was a whole series of punitive decrees and laws, brought in with breathtaking speed, which punished any banding together and any protest or dissent. A legal profession brought up on an overemphasis on positive �July, 1979 law and without a tradition of natural law (a lack probably due to the prevalence of Lutheranism), applied these laws, decrees, and regulations-even if many members of the profession did their best to circumvent them or to interpret them in ways favourable to the accused. And then there were the extra-legal means of coercion, concentration camps and, in the summer of 1934, the blood purge ostensibly directed against rebellious Nazis, but in fact also against anti-Nazis, such as the Berlin head of the Catholic Action. The records of the Gestapo and Security Service show where resistance persisted, where groups that had avoided Gleichschaltung continued to cohere in some sort of fashion and continued not to conform. The Secret Police files are the chief source for what resistance there was. On the subject of sources, the following needs to be said: they have to be read in the original, because the business of wrong translations goes on and seems to be getting worse. Because of these mistranslations there is a risk that written history will seriously misrepresent what happened. Let me give you an example. On 29 April 1937 Hitler addressed a gathering of Party Kreisleiter or District Leaders. It contained what is, to me, the most telling and-on the sound recording which I have heard-most frightening utterance by Hitler on the subject of the jews. Lucy Dawidowicz in her book The War Against the Jews 1933-45 even translates it correctly, but gets the setting wrong. She calls it "a speech before a regional NSDAP meeting. " 1 The important point, however, is precisely that it was only the medium level party hierarchs-a section of the Nazi elite, if you will-who were thus addressed, in confidence, which is why the speech was only found and published long after the war. It was not generally known at the time. The significant paragraph was a response by Hitler tO a question in a newspaper why more was not being done against the Jews. Its gist was the inexpediency of uttering a clear and premature challenge to the enemy one means to destroy. Before this audience of Party Leaders Hitler explained, in a voice rising with emotion, how he does not tell his enemy to fight, but calls on his own inner wisdom to maneuver him into a corner before striking the final blow. The translators of that passage, in a book containing some background papers prepared by members of the Munich Institut fiir Zeitgeschichte for the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt in the middle sixties, have Hitler telling his audience that he shouts louder and louder as he tells his enemy what he has in mind for him. 2 There are probably two reasons for this misrepresentation; the translators' insufficient knowledge of the subject and their failure to notice a pair of square brackets that show that Hitler on the sound recording shouts louder and louder as he tells this select audience of his internal dialogue: "and now, wisdom .... " 3 In the case of Hitler but also in that of Goebbels, historians should hear the original, not just read a transcript. In this case, however, punctuation showed what happened. If that speech had been generally known at the time, if it had been published-let alone broadcast-in April 1937, many jews would not have waited until November 1938 before beleaguering foreign consulates to get out of Germany, now an unmistakable .death trap. Because they did not know, despite the Nuremberg Laws and everything else that had happened and been written, it took the pogrom or Kristallnacht on November 10, 1938, to step up the rate of emi. gration. Like the victims the bystanders, including the "educated elite," also did not know about the threat of physical extinction. Before Hitler had come to power I had read Mein Kampf, secretly, because of its obscenity (sex, sadism, an obsession with syphilis and the "racial" pollution of blood) and other objectionable features that, to put it mildly, made it unsuitable for a nice young girl. Among other things that reading prompted me to leave the country in the summer of 1934, at the age of 16. But put yourselves in the position of fathers of families, perhaps aging fathers with unexportable professions, in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis and unemployment everywhere and restrictions on emigration not only to the Western democracies but also Mandatory Palestine, and you will see why many stayed so long-many too long. As for Hitler's old book-few seemed to know how seriously to take it. You will also see why friendly and decent gentiles did not think of removing Hitler by force until 1938 and why the final plot did not happen, and miscarry, until 1944. But to turn more specifically to the reactions of the--educated elite in Germany, let me start with the professional academics~or rather with the leading luminaries in the politically and ethically most relevant disciplines. There was quite a spectrum, from instant and continuing collaboration to instant and persistent recalcitrance and resistance. There was also early collaboration, or at least toleration, and later resistance, and vice versa. In some cases there was more than instant co1laboration, there was anticipation. And remember, the student organizations were nazified before the Nazis came to power. Much of academic youth, inasmuch as it was political, was in the vanguard of the Nazi Movement and exercised pressure on the professors._ Not all students were Nazis, and there were many spontaneous nationalists and even some Nazis on the faculties. The organized student body, however, was far more advanced in Nazism than its teachers. This readiness to embrace Nazism among students may have had something to do with the economic crisis and academic unemployment as well as with the restlessness of youth. Speedy faculty adaptation to the new regime was enforced from below as well as above, from the students as weB as the Party and government. Some professors, many of them, were responsive to pressures, including at times physical violence, from the students and the younger faculty. The leading German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, was not, one would think, intimidated; more probably he thought his Moment had come with the momentous upheaval in the country. He was probably not mainly or merely or primarily subject to the mental climate prevailing in 193 3 because of his philosophy. I think it was his relationship with language that was his temporary undoing when in 193 3 he made a nauseating Nazi speech as the newly-installed Rector of Freiburg University• and when later, in the fall of that fateful 57 �The College year, he fulsomely endorsed-as did the prominent theologian Emanuel Hirsch-the government's decision to leave the League of Nations and to put that decision to a plebiscite that won the nation's overwhelming support. 5 Heiclegger's philosophical language was so deep, his spirit dwelt on such heights, that he could be badly mistaken about what happened in the middle ground of politics where people's livelihoods and lives are at stake. I would say that he had a tin ear for everyday political language-and he had never read Mein Kampf. This was, admittedly, a distasteful reading-but I think it was a duty, certainly for anyone who took part in the political dialogue. There was a general weakening of the sense of language among the educated; not only because political emotions were inflamed and the language in which they were expressed of Holy German Art, even if the wicked and shallow West were to make the German People and Holy Roman Empire fall apart, or the patriotic and anti-Eastern harangue of King Heinrich, Henry the Fowler, in Lohengrin, that are the most objectionable. What strikes me as bound to be either acutely uncomfortable or dangerously de-sensitizing is the combination of massive rejection of single figures that resemble Wagner's "Jew" and the incestuous narcissism of the rejectors, the heroes and heroines, whether human or divine, or half-and-half. The desensitizing language in which all this is transacted leaves those who submit to the experience with an impairment of their sense of language or linguistic judgment. Whoever sits through a work by Wagner without at least tended to extremes, but also because nineteenth century phi- some reservation or revulsion is bound to be brutalized by the exposure. Can opera or music drama really have such an effect? Yes, but, of course, mainly on people whose German is losophers, from Hegel to Nietzsche, had disdained common comprehensibility and played their own games with language only _mitigating circumstance about the Anglo-American and which, in Nietzsche's case, was often aphoristic or poetic. But in a nation as given to music as Germany, music provided the chief corrupter: Richard Wagner. In all the discussion of Wagner's contribution to Nazism (and we know what a Wagner-addict Hitler was ever since his attendance, in his teens, at a performance of Rienzi in Linz) and in all the discussion of Wagner's anti-Semitism, too little attention has been paid, so far, to his destruction of the sense of language (and of shame) among his compatriots. Whatever he served up as language (written, remember, by himself: he did not employ librettists), with its compulsive alliterations and hypnotic music, cast its spell, its destructive spell, on the music-loving educated elite-to the extent that it went to the opera and did not avoid Wagner. Remember Mime in the Ring? He is the excessively unattractive foster-father of Siegfried. He has also been interpreted as an incarnation of heartless capitalism. Remember the terms and manner of Siegfried's rejection of him before storming out, free at last, into the world? Take Mime himself. Although he is a mere mythological dwarf, he sounds exactly like "the jew" who, in Wagner's article on "The Jew in Music," is said to be incapa- ble of human speech and therefore also of music. Everyone knows about Beckmesser in The Mastersingers, that sunny work (when compared with the gloom of the others): he was meant to represent Eduard Hanslick, Wagner's "half-Jewish" critic. What people do not seem to realize or to have, so-to- up to understanding the language of the work. That is the Jungian new wave of Wagnerism. Its followers and afficionados know not what they hear. The Berlin opera celebrated Hitler's arrival in power, in early !933, with a Wagner opera. In my remaining months in Berlin-until june !934-I got most of my operatic education: it included quite a dose of Wagner. I am grateful for the experience. While finishing high school in Holland after leaving Germany, I noticed that other "intellectual" young German refugees, including especially Jewish Germans, were not only reading Thomas Mann, with whom I was acquainted, but also Stefan George, whom I did not know. For me it was the beginning of an interest in George which was both philological and political. I had not got much beyond Christian Morgenstern before, in German poetry. Stefan George is not much in favor now, largely because he and his circle are rightly regarded as "elitist." There are those who consider him a counterpart to Wagner. They are wrong, I think. There may be snobbery in the Wagner cult, but one can hardly call its devotees an elite. George's poetry had power, although it strikes many as forced; it helped to keep the language truthful and forceful. The George Circle was elitist and it included Jews. They left the country as did George himself. He evaded Nazi approaches to him by going to Switzerland in !933, where he died in December. Led by brothers called Stauffenberg, some speak, any gut-reaction against, is the frightening text of Beckmesser's garbled version of the prize song in Act III. I do not see how any solid citizen, Bildungsbiirger, or opera buff can sit through that scene of the good people of Nuremberg all turning against the limping plagiarist who delivers a nonsense-text full of frightening metaphors, among other things about hanging and deprivation of air. True, few people really hear or know the text-but that is what Wagner, as always, wrote first, read to others, and published separately. What no-one can help noticing in this scene of ''radiant joy" and apotheosis of peoplehood is the all-against-one scenario on the sun-drenched Festwiese outside Nuremberg. It seems tion in listeners who could be expected to share Stauffenberg's detestation of the regime and, possibly, his willingness to take to me it is not so much Hans Sachs's aria about the survival risks to remove it. Stauffenberg made it his business to brief 58 young disciples took care to foil the new German government's attempt to claim George as its poet laureate at his fu- neral. Claus Stauffenberg was the man who tried to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944. Until their execution for complicity in the plot to remove the Nazi regime, Berthold and Claus Stauffenberg were George's literary executors. To denounce the regime and rally opponents, Claus Stauffenberg recited "The AntiChrist," a poem not in George's usual hellenic and pagan manner. This was not just a case of using an appropriate old poem of George's to elicit recogni- �July, 1979 himself on the theology of resistance and tyrannicide, both Catholic and Protestant, in order to overcome the conscientious scruples in the pious men he recruited for the conspiracy. It may sound strange that this needed doing. But it is not strange if you put yourselves in the shoes of a Catholic or Calvinist or Lutheran. The Lutherans especially had the greatest difficulties of conscience. Gestapo interrogators knew the connection between religion and resistance. They always asked those they questioned about church connections and religious ties. I am inclined to say, after what I have seen and heard of the surprisingly pervasive presence of Christian faith among those who did resist, among the educated elite as well as among common folk, that Bonhoeffer was right in his statement, in his Ethics and elsewhere, about the rediscovery of the Christian· foundation of Western culture brought about by the attack of the neo-pagan barbarians. It was the turn or return of so many men of conscience to their faith that made Helmuth James von Moltke-a landowner and lawyer far removed from George and his circle, though acquainted with the lawyer Berthold Stauffenberg...,-work quite systematically to bring Catholics into his own group of planners for a better Germany. He may not have been far from the truth in a letter to his wife written during and after the trial that sentenced him to death: he commented sardonically that he was dying as a martyr for St. Ignatius of Loyola. A Protestant, he had had the temerity to bridge the denominational gap and to bring three Jesuits into his circle. One of them, Alfred Delp, was sentenced to death in the same trial. And it was not just the judge's, Roland Freisler's, personal aversion to Jesuits that caused his diatribes and death sentences. Hitler himself had, on the one hand, officially deplored and, on the other, energetically exploited the religious schism in Germany. To oppose him effectively one had to overcome the division between Protestants and Catholics. It is surprising that the cultural historians of our time have paid so little attention to the factor of religious faith and theological foundation, and only little more to its attenuation and perversion. An Israeli, Uriel Tal, 6 seems to be the notable and laudable exception. He limits himself to the Second Reich, but within those limits he traces, with great seriousness and subtlety, the differences between "Christian" and anti-Christian anti-Semitism and shows the deadly danger of the replacement of the first by the second. Attention to or neglect of this aspect may be a matter of generations and personal experience. The generation of Thomas Mann and Max Horkheimer saw the significance of religion in the Jives of those who had it, in times of pressure and persecution. The younger generation that stayed in Germany and did not succumb to the National Socialist pseudoreligion saw it too. The small group of student rebels who were executed in Munich in 1943 for a campaign of anti-Nazi leaflets deplored the failure, the sins of omission of the educated majority. They pleaded for a recognition of guilt and for an uncompromising struggle against Hitler and his all too many helpers. In their indictment of the most~detestable tyranny the German people had ever put up with, they mentioned the misguidance, the regimentation, the revolutionizing and anaesthetizing of a whole young generation, in order to make it into godless, shameless, and conscienceless exploiters and murderers. Their~at first cautious, at least circumspect, and finally quite reckless-campaign against the regime ended in a proud and willing expiation on the guillotine. One professor died with them. It was he who had undertaken to help them to get something like a real education-both in his classes and in extra-mural meetings involving some of the leading figures of Munich's displaced intelligentsia, such as Theodor Haecker and Carl Muth, the former editor of the Catholic monthly Hoch/and 7 Among these students, too, there was the realization that an education without a metaphysical and religious dimension was making their academic generation into tools of the regime. They made up the deficiency as best they could and were fortunate in finding older mentors to help them. "Elites" are apt to be faithless. The part of the educated elite which resisted the Nazis found its faith again in surprising measure. And I think there are enough records left, if one knows how to read them, to show the role not only of a proper education, but of faith, in a person's ability to resist the devil and his works. Perhaps I should not end without saying that these eoneh!sions were reached by an agnostic observer. l. Lucy Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews 1933-45, New York 1977, 488. 2. Helmut Krausnick and Martin Broszat, Anatomy of the SS State. Translated by Dorothy Long and Marion Jackson. London 1970, 51-2. 3. "Es spricht der FUhrer": 7 exemplarische Hitler-Reden. Hcrausgegehen und erlii.utcrt von Hildegard von Kotze und Helmut Krausnick, unter Mitwirkung von F. A. Krummacher, Giitersloh 1966, l48. 4. Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universitiit, Brcslau 1934, 22. For a fuller treatment of the subject see the texts of two lectures, "Student Rebellion and the Nazis," St. John's College Press, Annapolis 1972. 5. Bekenntnis der Professoren an den deutschen Universitiiten und Hochschulen zu Adolf Hitler und dem nationalsozialistischen Staat. Oberreieht vom Nationalsozialistsehen Lehrerbund Deutsehland/Sachsen. (Dresden, n.d., pp. 13-14 and 36-37 [Heidegger] and 15-17 and 38-40 [Hirsch]). 6. Urie1 Tal, Christians and Jews in Gennany: Religion, Politics, and Ideology in the Second Reich, 1870-1914. Translated by Jonathan Jacobs. Ithaca, N.Y. 1975. 7. See "Student Rebellion and the Nazis," (Note 4); also loge Scholl, Students against Tyranny: The Resistance of the White Rose, Munich 19421943. Translated by Arthur R. Schultz, Middleton, Conn. 1970; Christian Petry, Studenten au{s Schafott: Die Weisse Rose und ihr Scheitem, Munich 1968. 59 �The College BETWEEN THE OLD AND THE NEW The people had been misled, but so An Autobiography, by R. G. Collingwood. 167 pages. Oxford University had their leaders. They had been taught by philosophical "realists," obsessed by Press 1939. the task of refuting the "idealism" of Green and Bradley. According to ColIn 1933, at the end of his life, the pro- lingwood, Green and Bradley were not fessional English philosopher R.G. Col- "idealists"; their school was critical and lingwood wrote a short autobiography. derived from Hume. Its criticism did not He called it the story of the thought of a paralyze, though, since "it sent out into man whose business was thinking. It is public life a stream of ex-pupils who carnot, however, directed to others in the ried with them the conviction that phibusiness. Its audience is the moderately losophy, and in particular the philoswell-educated public which cares more ophy they had learnt at Oxford, was an about the front page than philosphers' important thing, and that their vocation disputes. The Autobiography records was to put it into practice." The realists held that "knowing makes how Collingwood came to understand the importance of the link between the no difference to what is known." Their front page and philosophy. A revolution model for all knowledge thus was those in the teaching of philosophy at English disciplines which give a formal, quanuniversities had broken that link around titative description of relations among the turn of the century. The conse- phenomena but do not say anything quence, he learned to believe, had been qualitative about the phenomena themthe corruption of public life. selves. These disciplines make up modThe Autobiography itself reforges that ern natural science. Just as the "realists" link. It contains a clearly argued account understood modern natural science to of the English philosophy of his youth. reduce natural things to a common, It leads us step by step through a life of mathematical standard, so they wanted thought on apparently unrelated to reduce human things to some comsubjects-philosophy, history, archae- mon, formal standard. Traditional moral ology-yet shows us how all his pur- philosophy, it now appeared, had been suits turned out to be parts of a single based on a mistake, because it went beconcern. And it is written with the pas- yond a formal description of moral besion of a decent man whose country havior and claimed to teach students had, in the year he wrote, forfeited its how to be moral. "Realism" set to work on a "new kind of moral philosophy, decency. The process of corruption had been purely theoretical, in which the workgradual. Newspapers had stopped ings of the moral consciousness should educating active citizens; instead they be scientifically studied as if they were had started to treat public affairs as spec- the movements of the planets, and no attacle and turned their readers into voy- tempt made to interfere with them." The new moral philosophy came to eurs. The public had learned "to forgo that full, prompt, and accurate informa- nothing. The realists soon discovered tion on matters of public importance that the very words and categories they which is the indispensable nourishment used to describe "moral behavior" were of a democratic society." It had devel- shot though with qualitative, "unscienoped a "disinclination to make decisions tific" assumptions. The notion of "moral in the public-spirited frame of mind behaviorism" was, as B.F. Skinner has which is a democratic society's life- most recently demonstrated, a contradicblood." Moral debasement had culmi- tion in terms. In the hands of the "realnated in the betrayal first of Abyssinia ists," every part of philosophy suffered and then of Spain and Czechoslovakia. the same fate. Even the theory of knowlAppeasement of Fascism abroad, Col- edge, where "realism" had begun, lingwood concluded bitterly, had been turned out to involve self-contradiction. accompanied by surrender to Fascism at How could a theory of knowledge be home, for the essence of Fascism was the developed on the implicit assumption of politics of naked self-interest, the appeal the impossibility of actual knowledge? to fear or greed. As the masters of realism fell silent, its 60 students learned that philosophy was a "futile parlour game" which could not help men to live. Taught to reject reason, the British ruling class could only turn to passion for direction. They had been trained, Collingwood lamented, "as the potential dupes of every adventurer in morals or politics, commerce or religion who should appeal to their emotions and promise them private gains .... " Collingwood rejected "realism" on philosophical grounds before he became fully aware of its political consequences. Among the best passages of the book are those which recount how he groped his way to an initial break with the realists. He brought his experience as an archaeologist and historian to bear on their chosen field of logic. Both the realists and their opponents, Collingwood came to see, held that truth inhered in propositions which were in turn understood as analagous to a grammatical sentence. Thus the realists were "intuitionists," maintaining the existence of a one-to-one correspondence between the factual truth and its expression in a logical prop<?:~ition. By asking himself what he was doing when he excavated a Roman site or contemplated the supreme ugliness of the Albert Memorial as he walked through Kensington Gardens every day, Collingwood came to the view that the propositional model of truth was a fallary. Before you could judge the truth of a proposition you had to know what question the proposition had been advanced to answer. Until he could comprehend what the architect of the Albert Memorial had thought he was doing, Collingwood's aesthetic judgment, formulated perhaps in respect to quite different problems, would be unfounded. Collingwood was not preaching relativism; he did not mean that aU "questions" were equally intelligent or appropriate, much less that anything, no matter how muddled, could be justified as an "answer." By his logic of questiOn and answer, he insisted on carrying into the elements of rational discourse the principle that you have to understand what is being said before you can refute it or agree with it. When the realists refuted their predecessors' "errors," it usually meant that they misunderstood them because they misunderstood what it was their predecessors had been trying to do. Those who refuted the ancients' "theories of moral obligation" translated f:iel as though it contained the notion of moral �July, 1979 obligation. It was, Collingwood contended, like saying "trireme" meant "steamer" and then proving that the ancients did not understand steamers. Collingwood found support for the logic of question and answer in much of the philosophic tradition, notably in the Baconian-Cartesian scientific method, in Plato and in Kant. Contemporary philosophy, however, was dominated by propositional logic; it had taken a philosopher who was also an historian to see the difficulty. It is therefore not surprising that for Collingwood history became the discipline which served as his model, as natural science had been the model of the realists. The historian, after all, worked by setting himself a series of questions whose purpose was to understand the actions of the past. The historian tried to put himself in the place of other men, now dead, and think their thoughts. This reliving was never total; the historian relived Caesar's thoughts on the banks of the Rubicon while remembering that he was not himself actually Caesar. But though the reliving was "incapsulated," kept apart from the historian's life in the present, it was real. Collingwood brought philosophy and history close together. The study of a problem, he argued, was actually the study of the history of thought about that problem, and the study of history was actually the study of past thought. He might then appear to be simply an historicist, supplanting philosophy with history as the subject for rational attention. Quite the opposite seems true to me. The characteristic mark of historicism is that time changes everything, even human consciousness. Consequently each age is unique and the experiences and thoughts of its men cannot be recalled by the changed minds of later generations. Collingwood's absolute assurance that re-enactment of thought is possible, that time can be crossed as readily as space, is diametrically opposed to the- historicist view. If anything, that assurance could be questioned. Is that "capsule" in which reliving takes place, really airtight, i.e. timetight? On what prior assumptions does this assumption rest? In turning to history and the logic of question and answer in reply to a philosophy of propositional logic that based itself on natural science, Collingwood was trying to "save the phenomena," the way human things appear to human beings and the way humans talk about them. He understood the futility and perversity of studying human beings by pretending they were not human. In this case, the measurer and the measured are the same-the human mind. A standard alien to the measured is alien to the measurer as well. A mathematical description of moral "behavior" does not help someone with a moral problem, though it may tell him the untruth that there is no such thing as a moral problem. Through history, Collingwood tried to save philosophy from sterility and the language of human discourse-of feelings and judgments, of praise and blame-from degradation. For us, Collingwood's Autobiography raises disturbing questions. We seem more confused and cynical than Collingwood's England in some ways. His shock at newspapers which substitute entertainment for sober information seems quaint today. Our political language is poorer than England's in 1940. just compare the debates of the 1976 presidential campaign, with their timid reliance on social science jargon and meaningless accumulations of incomprehensible statistics, with parliamentary speeches of the thirties and forties. Or consider the Mayor of New York who followed contemporary convention in finding no epithet worse than "senseless" for the murderous bombing of Fraunces Tavern. Even when moral issues are faced directly, the terms in which they are treated often blur them beyond recognition. A high government official extends the term "political prisoner" to criminals whose poverty may have influenced them to commit their crimes. The same official uses "racismrr for insufficient sensitivity to the problems of racial minorities. Others extend the term to mean those who oppose policies of race preference. (And the United Nation smears as "racist" anyone who defends the existence of a Jewish state.) Recently, however, our academic philosophy has begun to show lively concern for moral and political issues. Books with titles like A Theory of Justice and Taking Rights Seriously have had great success outside departments of philosophy. They have even demonstrably influenced high public officials. Has this new moral philosophy begun to clarify our discourse? There is evidence that its effects are at least mixed. A liberal professor of law, for instance, justifies his belief that liberals (but not conservatives) should be exempt from the libel laws by referring to a principle laid down by the author of Taking Rights Seriously. The principle is that "inequality to enhance human dignity is permissible." A justice of the United States Supreme Court follows the same author's argument that discrimination against an individual by reason of his race is permissible if that race is not thereby stigmatized as inferior. Will the revived concern with moral philosophy among those who determine policy improve the health of our democracy? Or will it merely provide the attack on its fundamental principles with new and sophisticated weapons? Was Collingwood right in longing for a revival of philosophic interest in the ruling class, or were we better off without it? Are the basic principles of our republic properly revealed as inadequate in the new thought? or; perhaps, is there something unphilosophical about some of the new philosophy which accounts for the curious results that can obtain when it is applied to contemporary political problems? Collingwood's Autobiography advocates the logic of question and answer as opposed to the logic of propositions. Philosophy, he contended, should return to the Platonic "dialogue of the soul with itself" in order to escape the dogmatism of a teaching that assumes its own categories. The power of the view of philosophy as dialogue extends beyond Collingwood's attack on a particular dogmatism, the positivism that sought to replace philosophy with its version of natural science method. Philosophy conceived as question and answer excludes all dogmatisms, all ways of thinking that start with the answers already in place. If one wanted to pursue further the question of the new moral philosophy-its authenticity as philosophy-Collingwood's Autobiography would be a book to reflect upon. It is not only that its argument reminds us of what philosophy must be if it is not to become sterile. Rather it is that it shows us what real philosophy looks like in action as it records the life of questioning and answering of a genuinely undogmatic man. FRED BAUMANN Fred Baumann is a program officer at the Institute for Educational Affairs in New York. He is finishing a book on the concept of fraternity in Schiller and the late eighteenth century. 61 �The College RECENT READINGS Tolstoy's Letters. Selected, edited, and heart." translated by Mr. R. F. Christian, 2 volIn the 1850's letters to the editors of umes. New York: Charles Scribner's current literary journals appear as Sons, 1978. Tolstoy then in his mid-twenties begins to write for publication. He forms close Professor Christian has selected whole associations with a few among the sociletters and portions from 608 out of the ety of writers, with whom he corremore than 8,500 of Tolstoy's letters now sponds over the years. He reads extenpublished in the Soviet edition of sively the contemporary novels, drama, Tolstoy's works. The letters are pre- poetry, and criticism. His letters to felsented chronologically in nine periods in low writers give his opinions on works Tolstoy's life, each with a short introduc- written, advice and criticism of the use tion. Bibliographical notes introduce of characters and plot, his evaluation of each of Tolstoy's correspondents as they the grace, clarity, authenticity of style appear. Tolstoy wrote the earliest letter and its lack of contrivance. Tolstoy is in 1845 when he was seventeen; he dic- critical of his own writing while imtated the last a few days before he died mersed in it; he does not know whether in November 1910. it is good or bad. He needs to share it As a young man Tolstoy writes fre- with others, to read it aloud, to see its quently to certain relatives: to tante effect upon himself and the audience. Toinette Yergolskaya, and to his second For him dishonesty and lies are exoldest brother Sergey. These letters are ceedingly ugly. informal, conversational, affectionate, He travels in 1857 to Paris and Switfull of descriptions of what he is doing zerland. During his travels he writes of and people he has met. He tells of plans the impression scenes make upon him: to study music, drawing, languages, and peasant women about their domestic work, a horrifying experience of a public law. Interrupting his university studies, he beheading in Paris, a night stagecoach goes with his brother Nikolay to the ride through Switzerland sitting beside Caucasus to serve as a soldier. In his the driver. He speaks about the state of travels and his life in the army he is con- mind and health of Russians living tinually interested in the customs of the abroad: the social freedom and the people, in army life and the character of charm of living abroad changes many. the officers with whom he associates. In He, however, considers the state a conhis leisure time, which appears to be spiracy designed to exploit and corrupt abundant, he spends much time hunt- its citizens with loathsome lies. He caning, gambling, debauching, reading, not distinguish between the greater and and beginning to write. He is frequently the lesser among the lies politics speaks. sick. At times bored with army life, he "I will never serve any government feels a lack of rapport with his compan- anywhere." ions: " ... there's too big a gap in eduOn his return to Moscow and cation, feelings and outlook on things Petersburg Tolstoy finds people conbetween myself and those I meet here tinually shouting and angry. for me to find any pleasure in being Everywhere he sees incidents of patriwith them." archal barbarism, thieving, and lawlessHe keeps himself busy with quiet ness. He feels disgust for his country. pursuits such as reading and writing, The only salvation is to be sought in a and the intimacy of a few friends. Yet he moral life, in art, poetry, and friends, evaluates this period as a beneficial ex- undistrubed by government intervenperience in the trials of life, in activities tion. Yet it is" ... not possible to create and physical deprivations which teach your own happy and honest little world, him to yearn for the tranquillity and in which you can live in peace and peaceful delights of love and friendship. quiet, without mistakes, repentance or But after almost two years he says he's confusion". "To live an honest life, you bored beyond endurance-everything have to strive hard, get involved, fight, seems meaningless. "If only there were a make mistakes, begin something and single person one could talk to from the give it up .... " 62 In the early 1860's Tolstoy feels that he will not write again, that he is ashamed of all he has written. He had not said what urgently needed saying with courage and strength. He gives himself to farming at his estate, Yasnaya Polyana. He starts a school for boys and girls and for older people that are interested. He is impressed by the disproportion between educated and uneducated Russians: the majority remains ignorant. With no regard for the children's needs or for society's interests, Government schools make pupils stupid. Tolstoy develops methods of teaching and materials such as a primer and selected readings. He appoints teachers and supervises the teaching. He is enthusiastic over the response of the children, their fondness for him, their attentiveness and good behavior. "I don't reason about it, but when I enter a school and see this crowd of ragged, dirty, skinny children with their bright eyes and often angelic expressions, alarm and terror come over me, not unlike what I feel at seeing people drowning." Real life is too rich in events for anyone to have time to think. In-- Ofder to write, he must arrange to be free of interruption. He must "get off the anthill," where one is continually intruded upon and struggling with pretense and falsehood. Tolstoy withdraws to a distance (without closing his eyes), in order to allow creation to occur. When so inspired he plunges into his work with enthusiasm. In his early years as husband and father, he feels happy in family life: "I've never felt my intellectual powers, and even all my moral powers, so free and so capable of work. ... Now I am a writer with all the strength of my soul, and I write and I think as I have never thought or written before." Of War and Peace, Tolstoy in 1865 says, " ... I describe events and the feelings of people who have never existed." They are marvelous people, nhis children," whom he loves very much and would like to move his readers also to love. Art must tell the truth, must convey what real people do and feel. The reader can participate only if the author understands his characters. The artist desires to show his readers the wonder of life: The aim of an artist is not to solve a problem irrefutably, but to make people love life in all its countless inexhaustible manifestations . . . . if I were to be told that what I �July, 1979 should write would be read in about twenty years' time by those who are now children, and that they would laugh and cry over it and love life, I would devote all my life and all my energies to it. In the 1880's, distressed by the futile and frivolous life in Moscow, Tolstoy returns to the country or travels in Russia. Partially estranged from his family, he writes to his wife distantly, but says he will be delighted to return to the family and to her if she wishes. For his peace of mind he needs to love her. But repulsion for the family's way of life shows through. In 1896 he writes his wife of the pain of seeing in his family just the opposite of everything he considers good: they have proved unresponsive to his pleas and urgings to amend. He becomes acutely aware that his way of life with its material advantages and vanity contradicts his beliefs and undermines his credibility in his own eyes-but also in the eyes of others. He rejects his great property and struggles to change personal habits; he withdraws from social pursuits that do not conform with his professed ideals and seem evil and meaningless. To change the evil in the world each individual must try to live well and to love. The answers to these questions of the heart are translated into actions in the ritual of the church. Tolstoy will submit to tradition when it accords with what lives in his heart. He seeks to understand the meaning of life given by Christ. For him prayer is asking for God's help-but also asking another person for help. Tolstoy wants to know what he should do when he sees a mother beating her child, when he sees bribery, terrorism, censorship, religious persecutions. Activity must satisfy the needs of the soul but it must also help others. At times miserable, confused, he wants to rest. He wishes to die, yet feels that he is living the last years of his life badly, angry with those around him, a grumbling old man. Tormented by his relationship to his wife, he writes to her describing his state of mind, asking forgiveness, anticipating recriminations, reviewing disagreements, and solutions. He fears to lose his freedom and betray his own convictions in a false reconciliation. But he wishes not to hurt her. The weakness of his physical powers intensifies his sense of going downhill without the ability to resist-and with the world's wrongness mercilessly before his eyes. From conviction he continues to do the work he can do best of all and which he considers pleasing to God and useful to other people. He corresponds extensively with people who are interested in his social, ethical, and religious ideas, with artists, teachers, philosophers, and musicians. He writes to foreign newspapers about the persecution of the religious community of the Dukhobors. He writes to authors and editors of journals about ways to convey to the public an attitude toward life in accord with Christian principles. Many letters are to his children growing up. The tone of his letters to everyone is honest, wonderfully candid; he is open in his words. Tolstoy does near the end leave his wife, to go he knows not where, a mystical sort of departure. He travels with friends, and then, falling ill, dies in a train station. He had said goodbye to everyone. LAURA BRIDGMAN '75 A registered nurse, Laura Bridgman works at St. Luke's Hospital in New York. AT HoME AND ABROAD Talking With Pictures: 'Les Bandes Dessinees' Paris: One aspect of individual selfassertiveness in French culture is the cult of disrespect exhibited in French literary graphics, a type of art which is sometimes labelled caricatures de moeurs and one in which French artists have excelled since the time of Honore Daumier (1808-1879). Literary graphics are drawings produced in a printed or lithographed form that satirize morals and manners. They are composed in a literary, compositive manner, relying upon the combined use of dialogue, narrative sequence, and linear representations to achieve their effect. They encompass a wide range of subjects, including the lower classes and their way of life, caricatures of societies' "solid citizens" such as businessmen, doctors, lawyers, politicians, the petits bourgeois, and well-known literary characters. The modern school of French literary graphics was greatly affected by les evenements of spring 1968, the shortlived, student-led "revolution" which resulted in the liberalization of many previously ossified French institutions (such as the Sorbonne) and encouraged an atmosphere of inciteful, witty commentary among the Paris intelligentsia. One way this criticism of society was expressed and subsequently distributed throughout France was in the monthly bandes dessinees journals such as Pilote, Metal Hurlant, Charlie Hebdo, Hara Kiri, L'Echo des Savanes, and (A Suivre). The majority of these journals were estab- lished in the aftermath of les evenements of spring 1968 and contain much of the best work of contemporary French literary graphics. In addition to the work published in these and other journals, deluxe, largeformat albums are regularly produced as individual roman by Parisian publishing houses. The work of these artists and their predecessors is regularly evaluated in the French academic quarterly Les Cahiers de la Bandes Dessinees, now in its tenth year, and the less scholarly, intermittently produced Phfnix. Since its establishment in 1959 Pilote has offered the general reader a comic assessment of everyday French life. Curreritly one of its best artists is the fortyfive year old Claude Klotz who has al- 63 �The College ready published twenty-four romans and is especially well-known for his Le cafi de la plage stories. These stories are concerned with droll caricatures of the ambitious, middle-class Frenchmen, who are portrayed, as David Overbey has written in The Paris Metro, as "suave dogs, cats, and other creatures, on the make for money, fame, and romance, but whose minds are so crammed with dreams and illusions fostered by the popular media and filtered through a nutty self-psychoanalysis that they rarely succeed in being anything but funny." Most of the work which appears in Metal Hurlant represents a future in which men and women are oppressed by machines, totalitarian political regimes, or their own uncontrollable psychoses. There is also a tendency in Metal Hurlant to focus on images to the exclusion of words, as in the work of F. Cestac, Michel Crespin, "Moebius" Q. One of the more striking ads for the Pilote Giraud's pseudonym), Philippe Druillet series of roman. and Bihannic, that lends this collection a cinematographic quality. Charlie Hebda and Hara Kiri offer, as the latter's name might suggest, highly pointed out, this use of black-and-white satirical, sometimes distasteful and vi- graphics is effective because it directs cious parodies of contemporary French the reader's attention first to the use of life. They represent a strain of trium- space, of light and shadow, and thereby phant nihilism in French literary imparts a purity of line to the narrative graphics in which the idea is no longer that cannot be gained with color. In to criticise in order to illuminate a par- other words, with color literary graphics ticular problem or to bring about the reader's attention is distracted from, humorous relief-but to criticise for the rather than directed towards, the actual sake of criticism. An internationally story and the language that is being aimed example of their distinctive brand used. Probably the best example of this of nihilism could be seen on a recent cover of Charlie Hebda which showed a technique in (A Suivre) (whose name is vomit-yellow caricature of a Chinese the English equivalent of the "[to be soldier and a Vietnamese peasant trying continued]" message that comes at the to bite each other's mouth off-with a end of a serialized story) would be the huge caption emblazoned above their surrealistic work of Tardi-Forest, Monheads: "GO! GO! YELLOW PERIL!" tellier's bleak stories of the wastelands of The artists of L'Echo des Savanes are suburban life north of Paris, the more more in touch with the mundane prob- adventurous material of Hugo Pratt and lems of life such as pollution and French Deschamps-Auclair, and the sardonic politics. They try to combine their caricatures of Benoit Sakal. criticisms with a sophisticated use of French bandes dessinies artists proudly black-and-white graphics. The editor of trace their tradition back to Honore L'Echo des Savanes recently explained Daumier. A set of his literary graphics their artistic philosophy, "I see L'Echo which St. John's readers would be espedes Savanes as living up to its title ... cially sensible to would be Daumier's il[for it] means to me the echo of things lustrations for Homer's Odyssey, first heard in open space ... the sounds of published in the journal Charivari in 1842 as part of the series Historie Anthe city heard in images." The most consistently sophisticated cienne. One lithograph of june 26th, 1842, use of black-and-white graphics can be found in (A Suivre), which first appeared Ulysses and Penelope, is meant to illusin Paris in February, 1978. As the trate Odyssey, xxiii, 295ff., the final bedAmerican critic David Pierce has room reunion of Odysseus and 64 Penelope, which Homer lovingly described in the following manner: They then gladly went together to bed, and their old ritual. [And when they] had enjoyed their lovemaking, they took their pleasure in talking, each one telling his story. She, shining among women, told of all she had endured in the palace ... [While] shining Odysseus told of all the cares he inflicted On other men, and told too of all that in misery he had toiled through. She listened to him with delight, nor did any sleep fall upon her eyes until he had told her everything. (Od. xxxiii, 295-296; 300-303; 306-309) In contrast to Homer's version, Daumier's illustrated version of this scene shows an octogenarian, petits bourgeois Odysseus lying back in bed, sound asleep, probably snoring, with a huge stocking cap covering -his bony skull, while a chubby, slovenly, throughly middle-aged Penelope stared down at her returned beloved with an adoring but bewildered look on her face-as if she were about to say, "What? You're asleep?" john Dean '70 �LETTERS March 18, 1979 To the Editor: The Jacob Klein memorial issue of The College was most welcome. In particular, it was good to have a record of Mr. Klein's spontaneous speaking manner, irresistibly turning even a speech into a kind of dialogue, in the lecture on the Copernican Revolution; the silent presence of the student audience could be vividly felt. One phrase in the transcription puzzles me. On page 16, paragraph 2, line 8, there is a sentence beginning, "But Rheticus had already chosen as a model for the first report (Narratio Prima) this sentence of Albin us ... " I spent some time wondering in just what ways a sentence could be a "model" for a treatise and what the significance of that description was, and ended by wondering whether Mr. Klein had not said "motto". As you know, Albinus' sentence is the motto of the Narratio Prima. Further, this would lend point to the following remark that Rheticus also used the sentence within the report. Could you clarify this? The photographs were also welcome. I well remember the snow sculpture. There was a lot of excitement building it, and then everyone waited impatiently for Mr. Klein to appear, to hear what he would say. He approached it with faultless self-possesion, stood contemplating it for a moment, his body as still and stable as Ptolemy's earth-he had a curious choreographic capacity to transform anyplace he stood into a center-, but with his eyes full of animation. Finally, waving his arm at it, he passed his judgement: "It's a good symbol. It melts," and dissolving back into motion went on to his office. RICHARD FREIS '61 Millsaps College Jackson, Mississippi Professor Freis' conjecture is correct: the tape of December 6, 1967, says "motto," not "model." Also, the translation from Osiander is Edward Rosen's, not Klein's, as I wrongly stated in footnote 9.- L.R. �The College St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Non-profit Org. lJ. S. Postage PAID Permit No. 66 Lutherville, Md. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollegemagazine Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 64 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The College, July 1979 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1979-07 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Radista, Leo Parran, Jr., Thomas von Oppen, Beate Ruhm Wilson, Curtis A. Allanbrook, Wye Jamison Brann, Eva T. H. Description An account of the resource Volume XXXI, Number 1 of The College. Published in July 1979. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0010-0862 The_College_Vol_31_No_1_1979 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/48a468e8bfb1e09ce367da286c7d0529.pdf 443a089c343c96aa7a42fe832152647d PDF Text Text THE ST. JOHN'S RE\' w St. John's Coli ge ~ • Annapolis, Maryland-:-Santa Fe, New Mexico .-;-I ' I \.( -r- ( January, 1980 ' ��THE COLLEGE: Volume XXXI January, 1980 Number2 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW For Progress, by Raymond Aron 1 Prodigal Father (a narrative), by Charles G. Bell 9 The Birth of a Literary Language, by Giuliano Bonfante 16 On the Discovery of Deductive Science, by Curtis A. Wilson 21 Life Beyond the Reach of Hope, by Philipp P. Fehl 32 Kant's Imperative, by Eva Brann 40 Boyle, Galileo, and Manifest Experience, by Martin Tamny 46 Prometheus Unbound, by Thomas K. Simpson 55 Memorials for Simon Kaplan 64 Aristotle Gazing, by Michael Platt 68 Plato's Euthydemus, by Samuel Scolnicov 75 Between the Old and the New Memories of John Dewey Days, by Sidney Hook 79 First Readings Ancient Astronomy and Ptolemy's 'Crime', by Curtis A. Wilson Carrillo and the Communist Party in Spain, by Gary Prevost 89 At Home and Abroad Letter from Budapest and Pees, by Leo Raditsa 92 Notes 84 Inside back cover �Editor: Leo Raditsa Managing Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr. Editorial Assistant: Barbara J. Sisson Consulting Editors: Eva Brann, Beate Ruhm von Oppen, Curtis A. Wilson. THE COLLEGE is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Richard D. Weigle, President, Edward G. Sparrow, Dean. Published twice yearly, usually in July and January. ISSN 0010-0862 Front cover: copy of a Galileo manuscript at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence. ©1980, St. John's College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. �For Progress After the Fall of the Idols Raymond Aron Marx is not dead; in the secondary schools, in the lycees, even in the universities, he remains very much alive, an inexhaustible mine of quotations, concepts, and dogmas, an almost inevitable reference, if not an undisputed master. In England, sociologists have never read and discussed him so much. Althusser has disciples, almost a school there. He enjoys the same popularity in the United States. I open the june 29 issue of the New York Review of Books; I come across a remarkable article, "Inescapable Marx," by Robert L. Heilbroner, dedicated to an impressive list of books on Marx, his life, his theories of history and revolution, his heritage, and the meaning of his thought today- not to mention a magazine entitled, Marxist Perspectives, which reminds me of the collection of the 30's, In the Light of Marxism. Much of this work amounts to Marxology, rather than Marxism, although the majority of Marxists, even members of the Communist party, justify their position through an interpretation of the master. What distinguishes the "new philosophers" is the simultaneous condemnation of Marx, Gulag, and the Soviet Union (even if they also have to condemn capitalism and socialism at the same time). A fraction of the high- or presumably highlevel Parisian intelligentsia, today as yesterday, does not distin- Raymond Aron's latest book, In Defense of Decadent Europe, has recently appeared in English (Regnery/Gateway). He writes a valuable weekly column of political commentary in L'Express. He is one of the sponsors of the important new quarterly, published in France, Commentaire, where this article first appeared in the Autumn of 1978. guish between l\!Iarx and the Soviet Union with an inverted accent of value. The approach of hell is replacing the hope of paradise. Alexis de Tocqueville had foreseen that the superficial agitation of democratic society would not spare intellectual life. Paris is the capital of fashionable ideas, no less than fashion. Gurus are revered for a few years or months, make their rounds and then move on. The new gurus who kill the gods of yesterday are not fundamentally different from the gurus of the 50's or 60's. Whether one discovers a structuralist Marx or excommunicates the philosophers of German idealism by dint of collages of quotations amounts to the same thing in practice. The style changes, the talent varies; sometimes the good news-the 1977 vintage guaranteed-reaches the general public and the international weeklies; later the s_ect returns to the obscurity from which the press had snatched it. Does the present moment-the death of l\!Iarx by and for "the princes of intelligence" -have a different historical significance from the preceding ones, the quarrelsome association between the existentialists and the communists, the Camus-SartreMerleau-Ponty debates, the rise of Louis Althusser and his decline, the Maoists in Paris? I hesitate to answer. The books that reveal the truth of the day do not seem to me, as works of thought, superior to -those of the recent past. Quite the opposite. But I do not trust my judgemerit, because of my probable bias in favor of the men of my generation. Moreover, it matters little. What interests me is that a prolonged phase of economic crisis coincides, not with a revival of 1 �The College Marxism, but, at least in appearance, with a completely opposite reaction. The delayed recognition, under the influence of Solzhenitsyn, of Soviet reality has provoked a sort of total rejection in some people, not only of Marx, Marxism, and the Soviet Union, but of the master thinkers of modern civilization. The ambition of philosophers to change the world by interpreting it is becoming the primal sin, and, since its source was historical materialism, we find these young people ready to charge intellectuals and their optimism with all the crimes of the century, from the slaughters at Verdun to Gulag-a word emptied of meaning by misuse. Even the Bastille of Louis XIV is baptized "Gulag." Radiant socialism in opposition to sordid capitalism? There is no longer any question of it: both of them, avatars of the same capital, would show two barely different faces of the same barbarism. Let us read a few lines from the book that enjoyed remarkable success: It is therefore meaningless to "criticize" the idea of progress. It is also meaningless to attack its "illusions." And it is meaningless again to set up other mechanisms and other real processes in opposition to it. We must believe in progress, believe in its infinite power, and grant it all the credit it asks for. But we must simply denounce it as a reactionary mechanism which is leading the world to catastrophe. We have to say what it says, see the world as it does, record the signs of its devastation wherever it rules. And it is precisely for that reason that we must discredit it, and only in that sense that it must be analyzed, as a uniform and linear progression toward evil. No, the world is not wandering nor lost in meanders of possibility. It is heading straight for uniformity, the shallows, the mean. And in order to protest against that, now, for the first time, we must proclaim ourselves antiprogressive. 1 This sort of prophecy defies the old practice, dear to French education, of the explication de texte. Progress, I suppose, designates economic development, more or less identified with science, technology, and industrialization. Has this progress become reactionary? How? Why? Is it a one-way road to Evil? What Evil? Is it leading the world to catastrophe? What catastrophe? The catastrophe foreseen by the Club of Rome? ls it producing uniformity, levelling, and mediocrity? Levelling or mediocrity? There is no longer any choice or hope. Progress, like Marxism, leads inexorably to catastrophe, but, in distinction to Marxism, it promises no after-catastrophe. To this abdication before a mysterious and pitiless destiny, I still prefer the optimism of the rationalists of the recent past. The eloquent and naiVe voices that irritated me so much a half century ago are recovering some freshness for me: The history of human industry is rightly the history of civilization and vice versa. The propagation and discovery of the industrial arts both was and still is fundamental progress. It permitted a happier and happier life for ever greater masses over ever vaster territories. It was the industrial arts, through the development of 2 ideas and societies, that made possible the development of reason, sensibility, and wilL It was the industrial arts that made modern man the most perfect of animals. The industrial arts are the Prometheus of ancient drama. Keeping them in mind, let us read the magnificent verses of Aeschylus and let us say that it was the industrial arts that made men out of those weak ants that haunted dark caves, out of those children who did not see what they saw, did not understand what they heard, and who, throughout their lives, blurred their images with the phantoms of their dreams ... Beyond any doubt, it will be the industrial arts that will save humanity from the moral and material crisis in which it is struggling. Science and industry are superior to fate rather than subject to it. They are the third God that is putting an end to the gods, to the tyrants of heaven and earth ... 2 As soon as I left the sheltered 1itt1~ world of the university, I collided with the calamity of the Germans, their nationalistic delirium. I revolted against the faith of these men of good will; I no longer shared their confidence in the capacity of science to save humanity from its moral and material crisis. To reflect on the course of human history is to become conscious of the human condition,. of an incoherent world, torn by conflicts among classes, nations, and ideologies. A dramatic condition that forbids immoderate hopes but does not justify resignation. Forty years ago, I meditated on history in the shadow of the Great Depression, my glance turned toward World War II, whose warning symptoms only the blind did not perceive. Today I am writing in the shadow of an economic crisis, completely different from that of the 30's. The "undiscoverable" war, the war of Superpowers, remains improbable. Ever since the cultural revolt of the 30's, however, modern civilization in its entirety has been on trial. If socialism is no better than capitalism, where does the blame fall if not on science, progress, technology, and, indeed, economic development? An accusation as old as the accused: Rousseau against the Encyclopedists; the counterrevolutionaries against the Enlightenment and the Revolution; Nietzsche against the petty bourgeoisie or socialism. Was it with the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment, or in 1789, at the time of the French Revolution, that the West took the fatal turn? I leave to others this historical trial and its verdict. Today there is no longer any point in unmasking Marxist mystifications. It is nihilism, the opposite of the Marxism of yesterday, one has to denounce today. The death of Marxism or the defeat of the left threaten to carry off hope as well. As early as twenty years ago, Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote that Marxism was not one philosophy of history among others, but historical Reason itself-which he condemned along with Marxism. A generation later, the same line of argument goes even further. The failure of Marxism would reveal modern civilization in its entirety as irresistible progress toward Evil. We who remain faithful to democracy, science, and liberalism, let us accept the challenge. Let us have no polemics, but begin to examine our consciences. Let us think back to the years immediately following the War. No one raised his voice against growth or industrialization, either �January, 1980 on the left or the right. The left blamed the Malthusianism of French bosses. Statisticians compared the number of persons nourished by the French peasant and by the American farmer. For years, the Soviet growth rate challenged West Europeans. Ordinarily more clairvoyant, many economists foresaw the imminent lowering of the iron curtain by Westerners themselves, incapable of bearing the comparison between the lot of the workers in France and that of the liberated proletarians to the East. If the French economy had not kept pace in the race, or if it had progressed in the manner of Great Britain~that is, half as fast as the German Federal Republic-the French, in their humiliation, would again, as they did in 1938, denounce the inefficiency of capitalism and capitalists. After the War, we had no other choice than to give up forever or to renew our old structures through science, technology, or industry. A nation that was one of the greatest in Europe, and which still desires to maintain its rank in the world, had to submit to the imperatives of work and productivity. (Let us say progress if others prefer the word.) Are we to call this kind of progress "reaction"? Quite evidently, it does not lead us backwards, it leads us toward a society without precedent~a society that no one is forced to prefer to those of the past. But toward which societies of the past are we to turn our glances and regrets? Those who knew the France of 1938 do not miss it: the condition of the worker was incomparably harsher, and peasant life was narrower and more painful; only the children of the bourgeoisie and a few hundred or thousand scholarship-holders had access to secondary and higher education; the establishment jealously guarded its powers and privileges; more closed in on itself than ever, France was unaware of the universe and feared the future, Germany, and war. Do we wish to go back farther, to the France of the peasants who elected Napoleon III by plebiscite? Or had those French_men, eighty percent of whom lived still in the countryside or little towns, already been wounded by "progress/' because the intellectuals believed in the Enlightenment, and because individuals no longer accepted, as a decree of God or nature, their place in society or the established order? I do not believe that those who call progress "reaction" go so far as to eliminate, in their nostalgia, the equality of individuals before the law, the citizenship of all, as formal as it may be, and, with them, the liberties that were baptized the rights of man. Promethean ambition and the rights of man (or universal citizenship) have nothing in common, one will probably object. Logically, the objection is valid. The will to become master and possessor of nature in no way explains the participation of all in the government of the city and the respect for individuals. But, historically, these two movements of ideas and events are interrelated. Learned men are eroding the prestige of men of quality or birth. Certainly, Jean-Jacques Rousseau observed or foresaw the corruption of morals by the arts and sciences; citizens as he conceived them, poor and virtuous, do not resemble those of today, producers, consumers, taxpayers, and television viewers. The Encyclopedists and Saint-Simonians both applauded the future, our present, of which they had a presentiment. Rousseau detested it in advance; he liked the Ancien Regime no better. Civil liberties, in an austere city~a dream on the edge of the historically possible. I would not, however, say that progress, as it is unfolding, leaves no way out. If we suppose that progress embraces "science, technology, and economic development," it is absurd to decree it "a one-way road to Evil." If, in their recovery from ideology, these philosophers will no longer permit the sacrifice of the humble to the constructions of the master thinkers, why do they forget that the science that produced the bombs and nuclear centers also eliminated epidemics and, for the majority of mankind, famine? Goats have devastated the terrain of civilizations more often than pollution. And knowledge has a greater chance of arresting the spread of the desert in the Sahel than prayers to the gods and invectives against science. I am ashamed of these remarks, worthy of Mr. Homais, but those who beat their mea culpa on the chests of others and replace their delirium of yesterday with another, opposite in kind, arouse my bile from time to time. There is no good, in history, that does not include a share of evil. The least costly and most effective investments are perhaps those of hygiene. They save millions of lives; they do not assure the means of living decently. Teaching every child to read and write does not suffice to elevate him to culture. Are we to prefer the illiterate to the semi-cultivated? Are we to prefer the peasant who, a century ago, hardly left his village, to the agricultural producer of today who drives a tractor, knows the world through television, and whose daughters desire an urban style of living? Understand me well: I take the quarrel with industrial society seriously, whether it comes from the Club of Rome (shortage of energy, nonrenewable resources, and pollution) or from thinkers who fear the deterioration of man or of the quality of life. Serious questions ca1l for inquiries and answers. What I am attacking is cheap pessimism, historical fatalism, and "irresistible progress toward Evil." Toward what "evil" is "progress" leading us? War, totalitarianism, concentration camps, mediocrity, or egalitarianism? The wars of the nineteenth century were bloodier than most wars of the past, but, at the same time, they have left fewer traces from a material standpoint. In 1920, Spanish influenza wiped out the lives of about ten million people, as many as the war. The voids were rapidly filled and no population was bled as that of Germany during the Thirty Years' War (reduced by half). Perhaps, in terms of percentage of population, losses in combat have risen in the twentieth century. Some estimate at a million the number of Algerian victims between 1955 and 1962. The Algerian people today exceed fifteen miilion. At the time of the conquest, Algeria numbered two or three million souls. Must we weep for the dead of the conquest and the liberation? Yes. Must we imagine what Algeria would be today if the French had not conquered it in the preceding century? That would be an exercise in counterfactual history, devoid of meaning. No one can answer. How can we compare the evils inflicted to the benefits disseminated, even involuntarily? Wars always assume the form of the societies from which they emanate. Weapons depend on industry; military organization depends both on social organization and on weapons. In 1914, universal suffrage was in accord with conscription; weapons, still 3 �The College relatively simple, permitted the mobilization of millions of combatants. The growing cost of arms now tends to reduce the number of combatants. Some of them, the pilots, need gunner-mates. We are free to prefer other military institutions, for example, those of the Ancien Regime, with the recruitment of officers from the nobility, and of simple soldiers from the lowest classes of society. If we condemn war on moral grounds, we must condemn it also when politico-technological circumstances limit its ravages. War, the settling of conflicts among political entities by force, is not an invention of modern civilization. Democracy, nationalism, technology, and science make possible the mobilization of millions of men, the manufacture of tens of thousands of cannons, and wars of peoples and of propaganda. But the same capacity to produce and act in common permits the reconstruction of material ruins in a few years. Let us compare the Western Europe of 1955-ten years after the end of the Third Reichwith that of 1935; aside from the concentration camps, tombs, and the massacre of the innocents, the Europeans of the West found themselves freer, less divided, and more prosperous than twenty years earlier. A materialistic and cynical reckoning? I agree. Each person is "unique and irreplaceable." How many Menuhins perished at Auschwitz before revealing their genius? How many Cavailles or Lautmans whose deaths deprived humanity of the works they bore within them? Who can forget? Who can forgive? But neither history nor the species, judging from the experience of centuries, cares about individuals. As for peoples, the decline in the birth rate threatens them with extinction more than warwith the exception of the holocaust, which is without example. Conquerors have more than once run their swords through hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children, but never was the extermination of a human group conceived cold-bloodedly, never organized and executed so methodically, and, I dare say, so rationally. Are we to incriminate rationality, because it can be made to serve life and death indiscriminately? Similar methods of organization apply to the movement of armored divisions and of drivers on vacation, to concentration camps and to the camps of the Club Mediterrane. No, rational organization does not bear its soul within itself. In a famous lecture, at the 1965 Congress in Heidelberg, to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Max Weber, Herbert Marcuse denc:unced the distinction between formal and substantial rationality, or more precisely, the incompatibility between the two. He denounced "the neutrality of technical reason with regard to all external affirmations of substantial values." Marcuse imagines the reconciliation of formal and substantial rationality in automated production, which would liberate man from socially necessary but dehumanizing work. Until today, he admits, Max Weber has had the last word. The rational organization of production does not, as such, determine its goals: private or public, production serves ends imposed upon it from without. And rational bureaucracy risks being subjected to the irrationality of a charismatic leader. According to Marcuse's criticism, Max Weber had at the outset assumed private enterprise and the market, along with das 4 Gehiiuse der GehOrigkeit, that is, the edifice of power or the servitude of the majority. The experiments with public enterprises and planning have all crystallized das Gehiiuse der GehOrigkeit. It is therefore, Marcuse argues, necessary to imagine enterprises that would remain efficient without the separation of labor and management, or even to imagine automation that would combine formal and substantial rationality without submitting it to political, and therefore, often irrational, will. Herbert Marcuse's polemic against Weberian rationality, which was acclaimed in 1965, reminds us of the debates of the Weimar Republic. Capitalism or socialism, privately- or publiclyowned property, the market or planning: these antitheses set the terms of debate and discussion at that time. But now the demystification of Soviet reality strips the old notion of the nationalization of the means of production of its charms. Utopia has to be sought at the farthest reaches of progress in a technology that is liberating in its own right-and even then data processing occasions nightmares as well as rosy dreams. The case against rationalism turns -easily into the case against totalitarianism. Do not the means of communication figure among the conditions indispensable to totalitarianism? Only those regimes deserve to be called totalitarian in which a single party holds a monopoly of activity or political legitimacy-a party that professes an ideology, that the State decrees a political, indeed, a human, truth. The Soviet regime comes closest to the perfect example, because, in the name of atheism and materialism, it combats the faith of the Church, the Christian religion: The claim of the State-party to possess the supreme truth explains the monopolization of the means of communication. The State ideology must not, in the main, be called into question. Does such a regime require radio and television? The founders of the Soviet State, Lenin and his companions, had neither at their disposal. Marxist-Leninist fanaticism, the kind that animated Lenin and his companions, characterizes certain features of our civilization; it presupposes the weakening of transcendent faith, the de-Christianization of the masses; perhaps the pseudoscience of Marxism borrows its authority from the cult of true science. Even Hitler's racism covered itself in scientific ragged finery. In this sense, these totalitarian ideologies have some affinity with modern civilization. They caricature science at the same time that they mimic religion or the Church. Toynbee defined Marxism more than once as a Christian heresy: the proletariat will save humanity; the most disinherited will rise to the top for the good of all; the way of the cross-"the class struggle" -will end with the reconciliation of men with one another and with nature. Alain Besan~on interprets Leninism as a gnosis, with the perfect ones (the party) confident in their election and in the abyss between them and the others, between the corrupt world and the world that will emerge from the revolution. I doubt that any century has been spared the superstitions and sects that swarm around Churches. The media did perhaps facilitate Hitler's rise to power; Lenin owes his victory above all to the war. Totalitarian ideologies (I am thinking of Marxism and its derivatives) mingle half-truths, vestiges of Christianity, ancestral dreams, and scraps of science and science-fiction. As for the techniques of communication, they do not seem to me to be �January, 1980 either the origin or the supporting pillar of totalitarian regimes (as is often said). Of course, they provide power with additional instruments; they make it possible to mislead crowds, to broadcast the litanies of the State's truth or Philippics against the eternal, forever elusive enemy, capitalism or imperialism, to the last village, and into the brush. But before television or the computer, the police, denunciations, and bureaucracies functioned with pen and paper. I even wonder, at the risk of paradox, whether State propaganda does not bring saturation and, indeed, provoke rejection. Hitler did succeed in casting a spell over crowds with his voice-but not Stalin, hidden in the Kremlin and in his cunning. After the attack of the Nazi armies, when he finally brought himself to address the country, he appealed to perennial sentiments, to patriotism, to the defense of Holy Russia. In the countries of Eastern Europe, not even governments dare to use stiff, emotionless language any longer. In Hungary, the scaffolding, mounted in ten years by the conquerors and their servants, collapsed in a few days in the year 1956, and free of a carapace of lies the Hungarians came to themselves. In an even more spectacular, non-violent manner, in Czechoslovakia twelve years later, the truth broke out in a storm. In spite of all technical means, the State had not convinced its subjects. Perhaps millions of men had lived in two universes at the same time, the universe of the official truth that they heard, and the universe of the other truth that they harbored deep inside themselves without even knowing it. Was the totalitarian outcome in some way predetermined by the intellectual origins of modernity? If the answer is, "yes," the Enlightenment, liberalism, capitalism, socialism-those moments of thought and of Western history-would form a necessary sequence and the verdict is final. I myself wrote the following words that I have not yet retracted: The philosophy of the Enlightenment, liberalism, naturally, if not necessarily, ends in socialism, indeed, in Marxism, just as rivers end in the sea. Words probably dictated to me by Montesquieu's formula: monarchies tend toward despotism. In appearance, nothing is more contrary than the thought of the Enlightenment, of Montesquieu or of Voltaire, to socialism or Marxism. By what route did Spengler, and many others with him, embrace, in a single historical movement, the Enlightenment, liberalism, and socialism? Simplified to the point of risking caricature, the path is traced as follows. The philosophy of the Enlightenment exalts reason and even individual reason; it destroys the authority of the Church and, at the same time, the authority of religion, although belief in a clock-god or a vague theism survives. It is an optimistic philoso. phy, which preaches the education of the human race, roots out superstitions, and places trust in science. The liberalism Of the economists accords with the inspiration of the Enlightenment; the image of an organic society-each of the states or persons occupying an appropriate position, and together forming a coherent and hierarchical whole-gives way to a completely different image: a society constantly agitated by thousands and thousands of individuals in pursuit of their interests, wealth, and advancement. These individuals no longer obey higher authority, whether God or legitimate or semi-sacralized powers. Once man has rejected masters and gods, once all possess the same right to happiness, socialism dogs liberalism. For a long time biological analogies (the survival of the fittest) or the invisible hand (from the clash of egoisms emerges what is best for all) justified economic liberalism. For a long time political liberalism sought justification in the efficacy of dialogue: by exchanging vpinions, by bringing together their knowledge, citizens would arrive at the truth or right decision. But the argument continues: what remains of the utilitarian or rationalist foundation of liberalism? Free competition among individuals does not assure the rise of the fittest: the starting points are too unequal. Qualities that favor success are not those that inspire respect and obedience. In commercial or electoral competition, victory does not of itself turn the victor into un homme de qualiti-unless public opinion considers success a criterion of worth. Once success is taken to be arbitrary or unfair the less favored demand not so much the right to the pursuit of happiness as the guarantee of a piece of it. Political debates focus more and more on the national product and its distribution. The richer the societies, the more bitter the struggle for the standard of living. Can our civilization rise above the alternative of commerce or tyranny? Or is it actually in the throes of both extremes which it falsely sets in opposition? The commercial and monetary order of the West means also multinational corporations, tentacular bureaucracies. "Prometheus putting an end to the tyrants of heaven and earth?" Yes, perhaps, but perhaps also: No one knows who will live in this edifice; whether at the end of this transformation entirely new prophets will emerge; whether the old ideas and ideals of yesterday will regain new vigor, or whether, on the contrary, a mechanical petrification, adorned in its shrivelled importance, will prevail. In that case, for the "last men" in this evolution of culture, the following words would become true: soulless specialists, heartless men of pleasure; this nothingness boasts of reaching a summit of humanity never yet attained. (M. Weber) Let us abandon these distant perspectives. Promethean and organized, our societies continue to contain das Gehause der Geh6rigkeit, the structure of material production and bureau· cracy in which more than eighty percent of the population-the wage-earners-spend their working hours. Outside of this edifice, do not our societies resemble Tocqueville's vision: family cells, exclusively concerned with their little affairs, reading the same books, watching the same programs on television, unaware of, and yet imitating, each other. I see a countless crowd of similar and equal men on treadmills, in pursuit of vulgar little pleasures with which they fill their souls. Each man, aloof, is like a stranger to the destinies of all the others: his own children and personal friends constitute the whole human 5 �The College race for him; as for the rest of his fellow-citizens, he is next to them but does not see them; he touches them but does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone, and, if he still has a family, we can at least say that he no longer has a country. How many times this text has been cited as proof of the prescience ofTocqueville! Let us translate into sociological jargon: the nuclear family, the narrow horizon of the petty bourgeois, egoism set up as the norm of life, in short, a hardened humanity, a swarm of mediocre men, each concerned with himself and unaware of his nothingness. What does their number matter, since all are cut on the same model; how much they resemble one another without knowing it! The same scorn came of Nietzsche's pen a few decades later. Less blinded by hatred of capitalism than Marx, too aristocratic to love the democracy of the common man, both Tocqueville and Nietzsche saw the rise of the class whose numbers economic progress was to inflate. Let us call this class the petty bourgeoisie, which ranges from the most skilled workers to average white-collar employees. The peasantry is disappearing; what remains of it is being transformed into wheat and meat producers~into machine operators. Are we to condemn this society without precedent, whose urban style reaches into what used to be called the country, this society that is striving to teach all its children to read and write? In the name of what are we to condemn it? Did the peasants that Balzac described represent a human type superior to our farmers who know how to draw up the budget of their enterprises and how to respond to the market? Are white-collar workers victims of progress? Can we call progress "reaction" when this progress reduces the number of blue-collar employees; when it multiplies middle-class wage-earners, those who deal with figures and symbols, and reduces the number of paid laborers, those who grapple with matter? What right do we have to scorn these ordinary men? Who has the right to scorn them? Faced with these kinds of questions, I feel paralyzed. One man says the great majority will, of course, be mediocre. Another says the few will save humanity. He goes on: I prefer the wisdom of the illiterate peasant to the semi-cultivated, who catch, in passing, at bits of ideas, at the favorite phrases of journalists, and discuss the world's future. Civilizations have always had an aristocracy of thought, if not of position. Today, it is the scholars, the authentic scholars, who constitute, along with the great artists, the aristocracy of the aristocracy. But these aristocrats do not offer a model of how to be a man that other men would try to imitate. As for those surrounded by the the clamour of popularity and considered the priviledged par excellence (from singers, movie actors, or writers, to corporation executives or government ministers), they permit millions of fans vicariously to live prestigious lives, but they themselves have almost nothing in common, and do not teach the same lesson. I wonder whether Tocqueville's two affirmations are self-evident. In what way do men of our societies resemble one another more today than yesterday? Do they know less about their fellow men, their neighbors, and their country than our ancestors? Universal education has suppressed dialects. The customs of cities are spreading to the countryside, and city-dwellers are buying 6 the old furniture that villagers replace with Grand Rapids. This sort of homogeneity of language, maintained by the diffusion of the same words, of a few fashionable ideas, hides entirely different existences. Did villagers once differ from one another more than office workers do today? Were the habitues of the court of Louis XIV, as we know them from Saint Simon, better than the courtiers of the President of the Republic or the president of a corporation? Close-knit families, near their peasant origins and still far from the fashionable neighbourhoods, differ from their parents or grandparents less in the narrowness of their life styles than in their ambition. The curse (or merit) of modern civilization is to shake the rules of tradition and the inheritance of trade and status, to make parents aware of social competition, of the opportunity for some to rise and of the risk that others will fall. Even if social mobility is less than our ideals suggest, it dominates the thought and conduct of families. It creates the obsession for education and, at the same time, it makes disappointments inevitable. Not all the young can win in either the genetic or the social lottery. Endowed with consciousness, and therefore aware of their interests, have these atoms lost their country, and are they, as Tocqueville foresaw, concerned exclusively with their well-being? Certainly, our civilization tends toward a utilitarian or hedonistic morality. Who still evokes the categorical imperative? To the superficial observer, everything in our Western societies happens as if the distribution of the national income constituted the only stake in political quarrels, as if citizens no longer conceived any goal other than the improvement of their standard of living. This impression rests on well-founded il1usion and, to some extent, on reality. But the "materialism" of democratic politics is the result of the separation of religion from the state, and of ideology from the State. Lay or neutral, the State does not give citizens reasons for living. It leaves to individuals the freedom or the burden of finding them of themselves. The partisan State, whether Soviet or Nazi, broadcasts a message, sometimes arouses enthusiasm and devotion, presents itself as "idealistic", and indulges in murder. Is there less authentic "idealism" in the commercial societies of the West than in the tyrannical societies of the East? Solzhenitsyn detests slovenliness, sexual licence, the noise and vulgarity of public life or of the press in the West. But he does not confuse these evils with Evil par excellence, namely, the absence of law and the institutional lie of totalitarianism. He does not announce, as predestined, the triumph of Evil, and the fall of the West. I belong to the school of thought that Solzhenitsyn calls ra· tiona! humanism, and says has failed. This rationalism does not imply certain of the intellectual or moral errors that Solzhenitsyn attributes to it. Montesquieu maintains a balance between the Eurocentrism of the Enlightenment and historicism. Science's universal vocation is not incompatible with a diversity of cultures. It is the leaders of the Third World who desire the spread of Western technology throughout the entire planet. Who refuses the instruments of power and wealth? Now become the Far West, Japan will perhaps better safeguard her identity than other countries whose masters would like to separate machines from the thought which makes them possible. �January, 1980 In what sense can we decree the failure of rational humanism? The rationalist is not unaware of the animal impulses in man, and of the passions of man in society. The rationalist has long since abandoned the illusion that men, alone or in groups, are reasonable. He bets on the education of humanity, even if he is not sure he will win his wager. The West has ventured further than any other civilization in pursuit of the moral and intellectual freedom of the individuala freedom in apparent contradiction with the structure of organizations, das Gehiiuse der GehOrigkeit. There is a growing discordance between the culture of the West and its economic institutions. Pitilessly, Solzhenitsyn notes the symptoms of weakness of the West, and finds their profound cause to be the eradication of faith. "In itself, the turning point of the Renaissance was ineluctable; the Middle Ages had exhausted its possibilities, the despotic crushing of the physical nature of man to the benefit of his spiritual nature had become unbearable. But, this time, we leapt from the Spirit to matter, in a disproportionate and exaggerated manner." The history of Europe, since the Renaissance, is full of adventures and battles that only a simplistic Marxist would reduce to the passion for profit or the love of gold. Religious wars and wars of the French Revolution witness more to men's attachment to truth as they see it than to an exclusive concern for money and comfort. In the final analysis, Solzhenitsyn reproaches the West for its loss of Christian faith, where Tocqueville, after the fall of the Ancien Regime, saw and foresaw societies stirred more and more by the envious and universal pursuit of well-being. To reproach a person or a society for having lost faith seems as ridiculous to me as calling a believer "still a prisoner of superstitions." The rationalist of today is not unaware of the limits of scientific knowledge. He neither scorns nor condemns those who populate the world beyond knowledge with the images of their faith or the ideas of their intelligence. He does, however, condemn ideologies with totalistic pretensions, ideologies which are but poor replicas of religions that once gave a civilization a deep unity. The clericalism that had to be fought yesterday now assumes the form of the partisan State or of State ideology. At least initially, the totalizing ideology calls for devotion, sacrifices, and self-abnegation on the part of the faithful or militants. Are the young people who followed Hitler-young people that I knew in 1931-and even a number of today's communists to be called idealists? Neither the historian nor the philosopher, and even less the futurologist, possess the answer to the questions that the West and, in particular, Western Europe, is asking itself. Can a civilization prosPer without a faith shared by the great majority? Will individuals tolerate the moral desert from which they are suffering and for which they reproach "society," that elusive entity that is blamed fot everything, including the crimes individuals commit? Many intellectuals are enraged by capital punishment, though murderers, thugs or political commissars once did, and sometimes still do, leave them indifferent or indulgent. In the name of ideas, terrorists usurp the right to execute-a right the state is no longer supposed to exercise. The liberal applauds the desacralization of the State; he is uneasy at the contempt displayed for laws, for he knows that without laws men cannot live together peaceably. He is disturbed too at the contradictions of the loudest, roughest and most widely-listened-to speakers of the market place-speakers who expose power and attack it wherever it still exists and who, at the same time, advocate the immunity of the individual who is to be sole master of himself. At what point of the disintegration of the state will men be held accountable for their acts? Certainly, individuals are moulded by their families, their social milieu, by chance encounters, and by the schools they happen to attend. Regardless of the strength or weakness of the state, individuals interiorize the norms of the city and draw a winning or losing number at the social lottery. In Western societies, they still, nevertheless, have the opportunity to fashion their characters in the benignity of liberty, and not at the risk of liberty or life in defiance of official truth. The European nations haVe populated the New World; they have spread their science and their weapons of production and destruction across five continents, but have not, for all that, converted the other civilizations to their true gods. (Europe has had greater success with its idols.) In one sense, Europeans have exhausted the historical mission which Auguste Comte or Karl Marx, in a different sense, entrusted to them at the beginning of the last century. Because the passions that set them against one another almost destroyed them, they even doubt the- words for which their grandfathers endured four years of martyrdom in 1914-18. Today, Gulag, the emblem oftotal tyranny in the name of total liberation, weighs, a remorse and a threat, on Communist parties (at least in Western Europe) and paralyzes mass ideological movements of the left or the right. The memory of Hitler and the persistence of Soviet totalitarianism do not protect the European West from its own demons: workers revolt against the rationalization of production, against the uprooting of communities that are the victims of economic growth, and against the disintegration of society under an invading State. Better than any other, the Italian people can survive without a State and in a kind of anarchy. But for the Italian people also, there are limits to patience-limits that France or Germany would rapidly reach. With their mission accomplished (on the assumption that this teleological or quasi-theological language is acceptable), have the European nations no longer anything to say or do? Are they condemned to vegetate in the mediocrity of comfort and of the middle class, slaves of progress-reaction? Drawn into themselves, half-united for the purpose of prosperity but incapable of acting together on the world-stage, will they submit willingly or be forced to submit to an Empire which utilizes science but disowns its inspiration? An Empire at once despotic and ideocratic that will at all costs combine scientific method in arms production with a pseudo-scientific superstition in order to perpetuate an omnipotent oligarchy? In spite of everything, "progress" leaves us with one hope. Despotism requires an educated work force: scientists, engineers. It cannot close its borders to radio and television, to the images coming from the world outside. To be sure, data processing will permit control of the entire population, individual by individual-it makes possible the nightmare of 1984. But Europe's progress has not been solely or essentially that of machines; it 7 �The College has also been the progress of science and individuals. Thanks to Prometheanism, a growing portion of the population is gaining access to the opportunities of liberty. The pressure of technical rationalization and the religious desert incite and renew revolts. Are Europeans perhaps better immunized against the totalitarian temptation than others? More and more isolated within a league of States that scorn the rights of man as we conceive them, in action and often in thought, Europeans appear weak in the face of the totalitarian empire. But they retain a strength that Solzhenitsyn underestimates, the strength of liberalism, tried and vigorous, which rests on no foundation other than the conscience of the individual. Perhaps Spengler is right, and pitiless decadence is striking at formless and godless urban and commercial civilizations. Per~ haps Toynbee is right to hope for a Christian and even a Catholic revival to rescue the West from the final fall toward which it is moving. The forecasts of historians are no more certain than the 8 prophecies of sooth-sayers. Science and economic prosperity have given societies the means to enlarge their circle of citizens. The ideas of the Enlightenment that stem from the Greco-Christian tradition are still alive in the theory of the rights of man. They recover their lustre and youth in the experience of revolutions. Reason "will not put an end to the tyrants of heaven and earth", but her struggle with them will endure as long as a strange animal species aspiring to humanity. translated by Violet M_ Horvath I. B. H. Levy, Barbarism With A Human Face, New York 1979, 130. 2. Marcel Mauss �Prodigal Father Charles G. Bell She was sitting on the sidewalk scrunched up in a doorway, on a pad with a pale sick-looking boy. Her father walked up and stood smiling. Carla, pasty and undernourished, a belly bloated by hunger or enlarged liver, her feet bare, the rest of her draped in loud-colored gypsy rags, Carla looked up with a blankness that might have been his-she the ghost to be recognized. Then light broke; she sprang up and fell on his shoulder, hugging him, laughing and weeping, while she said to the pale companion: "I told you about my Daddy? Well this is my Daddy, my real Daddy." Had he overplayed the self-interest of her responses? She had never been much at letters, and it was often need that had got her over the hump, most of all after she threw herself from marriage into Fillmore and drugs; though by that time the pleas from jail or lawyer's office for bail or fees used to come by phone, collect. But there had been scrawls not so aimed, "love-you's" on yellow or blue torn notepaper postmarked from crashpads of her wandering. Right now anyway she expected nothing of him, support, salvation or a fix; and what was he on pilgrimage for but to quit his proprietary perch, sit down on her spitty pavement, and ask about Berkeley and the Street? "You should've been here last night. I was on that corner when about two hundred people in Halloween costumes came running, with a blow-torch and wire cutters, yelling about the People's Park. We all stormed up and they cut the fence and the police came with helmets and gas masks. They came down the street real slow; but the people had brought their children; so they didn't gas them this time. Because last time they gassed everybody." A sleep-dancing powerful Black leaned in: "You see anybody wants anything, let me know." "Sure will, honey. Meet my Daddy." Far off it had seemed plots of the murderous Mafia. Was this the eye ofthe storm? "That's my true love Zulu. Only man ever got me to a climax, and he never could do it but once." "A fate worse than death," the Delta judge her grandfather would have moralized, though he had taken a black sharecropper's case to the Supreme Court and been vexed by Time's irreverence: "Independent as a hog on ice." Gone, that First A tutor at St. John's in Santa Fe, Charles Bell has published two books of poetry (Songs for A New America [1953], and Delta Return [1956]), and two novels (The Ma"ied Land [1962], and The Half Gods [1968]). Kingdom of the Law. Second Kingdom seeker for these Holy Ghost children of the Third (the smoky flame on their forehead and gabbling in tongues), to her black hustler? fixer? lover?, he smiled. "Come on, I'll show you the People's Park." She led him past the bulletin board by the old bookstore, the apocalyptic pictures under glass: the occupied city, bayonet men, gas-spraying aeroplanes, a slugged priest, guards firing buckshot into the watching crowd, James Rector, observer, fatally wounded on a roof. Goodby hometown U.S.A. Down a cross street she guided him to the galvanized barrier around the new blacktop with the window-dressing basketball goal. Communal hopes gone underground. "So that's the People's Park." "And it was so beautiful. All flowers and sandboxes, and over here a huge deep pit with an ever-burning giant fire and a cauldron with soups boiling. I slept there every night. The cops would come and ask everybody how old they were. But I've been here so long they know me. They wave and say 'Hi, Frankie, how are you today?' And I say 'Fine, I'm fine. How are you?' I can't help liking them. Behind their masks and guns they're people." A big black dog wagged over, Park exile too. "Hi Bucky!" She gave him a pat. A police car sirened past. "And there was our rock-and-roll band, and a huge hole, man, with big fish; And there we had dug the underground palace and the caves, all kinds of groovy things for children, nothing like it anywhere in the world. And they came and destroyed it." Her voice a Gospel whisper: The blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. "What's that up there?" He was looking at the top of one of the eight-foot steel fenceposts. "There's an old rag up there. Above you. Somebody's thrown a quilt on top of the fencepost." She raised her eyes from the ground. "That's mine," she cried. She was climbing the forbidden fence, her toes in the two-inch lattice. "Hey, let me go up." Faustian fathers vaulting since childhood into forbidden places. But she had got the tousled comfort off the pole. It was ripped and charred from some Halloween prank of the night before. He dropped to the ground. She flung it to him in a cloud of dust, all in his face, eyes, hair. "Wooh! It's dirty. I say, that bed· ding's in bad shape." A louder siren. "Here they come. Get on down." She lowered her toes slowly, musing: "Somebody's burnt it. I wonder who did that?" 9 �The College "How' d they get it? Where do you keep it?" The siren was on them. He wheeled. Ambulance. "Well, that one's on a mercy call." She was turning the rag over: "At least I have a blanket now. Because I was sleeping in those bushes." She pointed across the street to some fir trees in the yard of a proper white gingerbread establishment of ancient widow or maiden aunt. "Right over there, behind that hedge, there's a little cubby hole. I used this for my pillow and mattress, it was so torn up. And I had a sleeping bag. They were gone last night. But it's weird I'd find the q1.1ilt on the fence of the People's Park." :'You mean you live under those bushes? Wouldn't it be better up in the hills?" He waved at the green amphitheater above the town. Though her friend Chuck Abrams had told him not an hour ago, in the crowded restaurant of the Street's most broken block, of finding her on the pavement, black and blue, robbed in those hills by goons she had guided there. Her voice betrayed none of that. "Oh, it's beautiful. Real big trees and woods and everything. In the summer I used to meet people on the Street and they'd say 'You know any place I can stay? I can't sleep on the street, I'd get arrested.' I'd say, 'Don't you worry; I got a sleeping bag and five blankets' -cause that's what I had, and now all I've got is just one blanket; so I'd take everybody up and show them the woods and say 'Whenever you need to sleep, you come up here'" She waved. "It's right at the top of this street, and you can see the whole Bay area.'' She was bundling up her quilt. ''I'm going to put this back in the cubby hole." "It's too burnt," he said. And then, "Watch your step on the road." She thrust through the hedge, her walk a writ of ownership. He had read them Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn almost from infancy, and now she was Huck Finn herself- though how everything had hardened, Jim, the raft, the river. The old bard squinted at the sun, weatherwise. Carla ran back through a traffic thickening all the time. "Why don't we go up there," he said, "before it clouds up." But they hadn't gone half a block when she turned toward the Street. Her face was sad, as when in the pain of adolescence she had made up those blues that still stirred in the soul. "Have you got a guitar? I want to hear you play while I'm here." In the loss of everything, even her regret had a kind of dreaming joy: "I had a guitar. I had a beautiful guitar. Until they closed the Park and I went back on junk." Her backward gaze reminded him of Chuck, waiting in the restaurant. "Maybe we ought to go back and eat with Chuck, like I told him, and then go up the hill." The loophole she was after: "Maybe I better go back myself and make some money.'' "How you gonna make money?" "Sell some dope.'' "How much money you need?" Silence, then low: "Twelve dollars.'' "How often?" "Not too often.'' He glanced at the misty hills. What a plucky walker she had been when she could hardly toddle up the rocky hill past Prince· 10 ton, when he would cyde them out, Octavia in the basket and Carla behind, and the day he swerved and chewed her foot in the spokes, and she, responding to the shock in his face, stifled her sobs. Such hopelessness took him. "So you can't. You'd pass out with the shudders before you ever got to the top." Challenge reached her always: "I wouldn't at all. I'm strong." "If you need your dope, you'd go nuts." "I haven't had it all day. It's only a desire." A desire. Well, he had desires too-as to climb those hills. "Is it possible, from where we are, just to walk up there?" "Uh huh.'' "Then let's go right now, and let Chuck and lunch wait." They worked through jammed cars. What were they all there for? That ambulance a while back, sirens. He asked a guy and a girl in a red convertible, "What's up?" Like bug-eyed fish they stared at anybody who didn't know that- they tricked in blazers and pennants like cheerleaders- "The football game!'' Crowd-happy boosters. As in the 'thirties at Virginia, when it was the style of Our Town; but he had turned his back, heading for the trails of the Ragged Mountains; so they started in earnest up the sloping street, he pushing the pace, his blood and lungs set for the Rockies, looking at her. Whatever her cough meant, she must be undernourished, her liver bad, diabetes maybe; but she never lagged or complained, pegged on, panting, chattering. A glance at her opened past and future. She had always been strange and overcharged, smiling, kissing, pouting, sobbing. The time she came crying: "0 Momma, Momma, Tavia hurt myself.''-"Tell her you're sorry, Tavia;" it was she who ran to Octavia, blubbering, hugging: "I'm sorry, Tavia; I'm sorry." Her future: his mother in the bad time, out the long west street of the alien city, praying, smiling, dying in the old folks home for strangers. He reached for Carla's hand, and there was another link; he should have brought the nail clippers, as when he went to the nursing home. "Don't those nails break and bother you?" "They never bother me. Only when I play guitar I have to cut them.'' A measure how long. "But to be hooked and have to trap other people to make your fix ... " She found a bright side: "It was worse at first, when I was hooked bad and prostituting myself." (When clap fulfilled the curse of Lear: Dry up in her the organs of increase.) "But I won't do those things any more.'' "If you want to beg and bum like God's folk in old Russia-all right, but not this slavery." "I know. It's so dumb, when I'd stayed off for years." -My God: their worst encounters in those rosy years, when he brought her from California to escape the psychiatrist who had got her unhooked, but by using amphetamines, and she flung off the plane in her rags with her tousled sleeping bag and into his arms, desperately needing a father's rescue, but too far gone for him to know how to give it-off heroin, but onto anything that would dodge the accommodations of the real, convinced reality was nothing but a congeries of psychic trips. She had lived for him in a solitude no actual voice could penetrate, from which she emerged only to the extent of going to the �January, 1980 dentist to have her teeth pulled, the front pair neglect and drugs had rotted, and a little bridge made, of which he, crass materialist insisted: "That bridge is not imaginary; it belongs to the world in which the bill will come and I will pay, the world you countenance by wearing it." It was then, when he had told her, as teacher and father of the younger two, that drugs were out either at the school or at home, that she went straight to the former and returned to the latter ripped on marijuana; and in protective rage he almost called the cops, but shook her instead (as his grandmother and father used to say) until her teeth rattled (those costly new pearls); then phoned friends in Baltimore and gave her a chance at therapy for herself and work with handicapped kids at John's Hopkins hospital; but she opted for New York, wandering on her own, and as he had promised not to hold her if she came, he put her on the bus and paid her fare_ And then the phone call, remember, the loving child-rapture: "0 Daddy! I've run into a friend named Merrie from Reed College and I'm staying at her aunt's beautiful penthouse high over Greenwich Village, and they're so nice to me and let me do whatever I please. And thanks, Daddy, for the teeth; I'm all pretty again." He growling at so much easy transport and that she hadn't buckled down for the cure, could hardly keep from telling her, "Wait and see. You're going to bust it. I give you three days in that lovely penthouse doing what you please, before you get thrown out." And sure enough, next thing he heard she was on the streets; so he phoned his writer friend Hanrahan, who lent her the key to his downtown studio. But it wasn't many days before the landlady called the police_ Carla must have run an open house for Village bums, and the place was a shambles. When the cops came the rest had vamoosed, but not Carla; she was on hand, and she tangled with the sergeant as if he were the offender against law and order- would have mauled him too, if they hadn't ganged up and toted her off to Bellevue. Which was where the paternal dignity saw her next-a horrible madhouse, she more frenzied then ever, though he took her an old guitar and talked with a young doctor there, so moved by her case he wanted to take her home for special care; but next day she climbed out somehow and split. So if that was when she was off heroin, God help her now she was on. {Though she seemed to have grown more sane-or was it the old prodigal who had come round?) She stooped for an orange somebody had dropped in the gutter. There was a jingle on the road. "Hey,'' he said, "you're dropping your money." He bent down. She brooded: "What might save me is my music. Because when I take heroin I don't feel music. I don't feel anything but-Arrgh!" She hawked up a Iunger. "I'll have to go to the hospital, but on my own ... " She took the quarters, nickels, pennies as carelessly as she had thrown her college money into junk. Her being, alien to him before, was clearing and opening, a sad human light shed on what had seemed dark and sinister. "What about that time you used to phone from New Yark in the middle of the night-weren't you on something then? After Bellevue; and those big parties roaring and banging. I thought you were with the Mafia or lord knows what." "No, no. It wasn't a very big party, and I hate the Mafia with all my heart." It came back over her, and her voice sang, as when she had phoned and he thought she was stoned: "It was a juke box, in our very house. I tried to tell you on the telephone: 'And we have a juke box in our own house.' But you wouldn't listen." He had been so sure that tie was criminal. "But what about the telephone? You said they had a private line the company didn't know about-not a credit card, you said- and I thought, that must be the gangster ring to end all rings." She laughed until she coughed. "They were Yippies, college Yippies (I told you they were going to the Convention); they knew about phones, so they plugged into the main line-I don't know how-and we didn't have to pay." "What about that sailor who phoned afterward, said he'd found you beat up on a roof, and now his ship had to sail, and would I help send you west? 'That phone-pluggin gang has dumped her,' I thought, 'and it's a wonder she's not dead.'" "But that didn't have anything to do with it. That was after I came back from Boston, and I met this black guy, a biker, on the street, when I was high. 'Hey you're awful handsome,' I told him. So I went off and fornicated with him, and I must have made him mad, because he said something and I hit him and he hit me; and that was how !lost those teeth you paid for. But the Yippies were kind and gentle." "Pity you didn't stay with the Yippie~ instead of taking up with some motorbiker." "I only met him one evening; and I was lousy drunk on wine and cough syrup, which'll kill you a lot faster than heroin.'' It must have hit them both together, that was in the time she had talked of being free: When I had stayed off for years. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't like the way I feel naturally, so I want to drink something, or take something to feel better. Dumb, I guess.'' They were panting now, the steepest part of the hill, her bare feet padding the road, the hiss of his corduroys. Her face had come full cycle-the mask of gloom. "You got a steep hill here," he said. She raised her eyes to the green crown. "A little more and you see the whole Bay Area." "You won't see it today; it's too misty.'' She looked back for the first time. "Aw, that's a pity." But you could see plenty: the smoky bowl, the Bay and industrial cesspool, surrounding hills slashed with highways, powerlines; and everywhere through old forested slopes bulldozed bare earth for new apartment towns, shopping centers. The derogate body of the landscape as a nude. And Carla in her rags, with her lost teeth and fish-belly skin: I bruised myself. .. calcined myself. .. no reason . .. the ways of my love. "Where's the ocean?" he said. "Ocean? You don't see any ocean. It's behind that big range across the Bay." The paved road ended among lanes and private estates. She led him down a path to the left which plunged into a little valley dense with leafy evergreens_ The steep earth gave; she slipped. They caught each other, leaning on the sheer slope. "We're sliding." ll �The College To a little stream tumbling clear over sedimental black dirt, where a rope hung from an arching limb. "I made that for some children. They had the rope, so I climbed up and tied it where they could swing over the stream." He looked at the dark foliage. "Must be live oaks." "Oaks?" He crushed a leaf. "No, you're right. Myrtle, I guess. Smell." Their voices in the grove hushed and low. Hers: "Like some sort of menthol, only super-good. But where are the Eucalyptus?" He saw them up the other bank, soaring over the myrtle, mottled green and pale. "There." She was searching the ground. "No, no. Here." She pressed through a tangle of briars-bare feet and legs. "Look out for the thorns." She never noticed. Bending she scooped up a handful of scented balls. "These are what really smell good." She poured a bunch in his pocket. "Take some to Cheryl"~the youngest, on whom they had dreaded Carla's sway. Up the other slope she drew him to a burrow under a peelybarked Eucalyptus-Melusinda in the hollow tree. "I dug it out," she said. "It's my Hobbit Hole. It was good to sleep here; but some boys found it. .. A real Hobbit Hole." It might have served a rabbit or a fox, but a person couldn't have squeezed in out of the rain. "You'd need a roof on it though." "The roots of the tree would be the roof," she said. "But I'd have to dig it way down. A gigantic cave." The throaty ecstasy of those elf-tales she would make up when she was tiny for her sisters. "But those kids were sure to tell." He was searching her black eyes under the tow-headed mop of hair for a way: "You like living like that? You like it better than trying to go back? To get in the deal?'' Mounted on Pegasus. "Ugh! I wouldn't want to get in the deal." He pulled the noose: "You're in the deal anyway, like it or not." It brought her down. "That's what's creepy about it. I'm right in the deal. It's what everybody tells me. And six months ago they couldn't have said it, because I was a new child. And now I'm working for them again, police and junkies and capitalists." (The birds that wait on the rhinoceros; the little fish that clean the shark's teeth.) "If you oppose a power," he said, "you have to keep clear of it." She sat down, her feet in the Hobbit Hole. "The only thing that strung met out again was the power." "You mean when they broke up the Park?" "When I saw how the messed up majority that run things can send armies with guns and gas to destroy what's beautiful, it freaked me out. And Dona kept coming to my basement some people had left me and shooting up and asking me if I didn't want some (because when you're clean, just the scraping of a wet spoon makes you more loaded than they are), and I thought I'll forget those robots. And I didn't care any more, and since then I've never stopped. And it's really sad. But if I could have stayed off three years after being hooked the way I was, it can't be that hard; it's just a matter of going and doing it." 12 "Let's go, while I'm here. It's not like Cheryl in Washington. You're no child." "I don't know. Maybe it's easier for a child. At least a child thinks there's something to live for." She brought out the orange. "Want some?" "Better you." "Well, I'm thirsty when I sweat so much." She peeled it into the Hobbit Hole. "You've got to go through with it. And then clear out. You said your friend Dona helped hook you. You can't stay with these street people and not fall back." "The Street People," she pronounced with a mouth full of orange, "are very pure and very beautiful. They smoke grass and they take a little acid, and they play a lot of music. Those are my people. The Junkies," she spat seeds, "are another thing. They live in apartments and have money; they come on motor bikes and hustle all the time." A hopeful separation for pilgrims of the Third Kingdom, but it seemed to leave no place for her. "Then who hustles the acid the Street People use? Don't you hustle?" "It's not real. You think what I'm selling when I make my money ... ? I don't sell no dope. I sell you a vitamin pill and get your money. I'm a burn artist." He stared. "No wonder the police don't bother you: embezzling from the poor to pay the Mafia to pay them." She got up, her coat trailing. The money fell out, this time into the pit. Hardly worth picking up, in a life of loss, but he bent down. She knelt too, and he saw a patch of scab and blood on her scalp. "What's that? You've knocked a hole in your head somehow.'' "When I shoot smack I claw my head." She fingered it: "Oh! What a horrible hole." The sky was Overcast as they walked down. She went to the Street and he to his room ... He had given his lecture in that University which had closed the Park. It was louring dusk. Carla had hustled and got her fix, a "cotton" of somebody's leavings. Queened in a blue evening dress of cast-off voluminous sateen, she led him down the fierce Street: Hell's Angels gunning motors, Krishnas dancing in eternal drugless joy, a pack of acid Red Rockets howling, beating a mailbox like a tom· tom. They settled down on her usual packing case in shadowed talk~ something about her worst years and a "beautiful old Spade man" ~back when he was wondering if his duty was to come with his father's pistol and track her down. Gentle tall Dona, of the brown eyes and hair, swayed in, unstrung in every joint, a carton of orange juice loosely held: "I bought a big bottle cause I thought you'd like some, and you weren't even here, you bum." She had been Carla's excuse lately for stalling on the cure: "I'll go as soon as I can persuade my girl friend; she's worse strung out than I am." That anyway seemed a statement of fact. If he was going to do anything before he left, there was only tomorrow. "Why don't we get a meal and you come to my place? There's an extra room and a mattress. In the morning Abe Shahn can drive us to Mendocino. Dona can come tonight or meet us in the morning, whichever she wants." Euphoric Carla noted the address, hugged him, said she would �January, 1980 come later for a sleep before the ride. In the upstairs apartment lent him through friends, furniture unpacked, crates and boxes, on a mattress thrown on the floor he tossed as formerly-after the day's appeasement the night's remorse, and the debate of "Why remorse? You tried righteous· ness. Time you found another way." Hours he listened for Carla, while police sirens of the beleaguered city screamed. Before dawn he gave up, dozed into the day. At ten he met Abe and Chuck in the restaurant. Ride available but not the rider. It was two when she appeared, hung over as on other days, but in proud pace beside the sagging Dona. And Dona, for a wonder, had decided it was time for a cure. She had been nagging Carla all morning to get her started. Now the others pitched in, with Dona saying hurry before her shot wore off. "But I don't want to be taken; I want to go on my own." "You mean your own feet? We're only offering you a ride." No. Zulu had mentioned an underground movie about the People's Park showing at six. Outcry had named Carla the star-in fact: "Sqper-star Frankie, mad toothless Frankie, pregnant ragamuffin of the streets, infant of a civilization which murders its children because they dare to dance and sing, because they dare to plant a flower in a muddy parking lot." Carla had promised to get Zulu in free. Dona turned on the klaxon: "I've got to get up there. I'm going out of my mind, see. If I wait around here I'll get the fuckin creeps." She snivelled off, Carla calling after her, calm as a church and as crazy: "It'll be over by seven, and we'll go then." Zulu never showed. That didn't upset Carla. Only the ticket girl's refusing her a pass. Sugar Daddy was about to pay. "Pay for yourself; I'm the star." She strode past the booth, down the dark aisle, flung herself into a seat. He took his place beside her. The Park blossomed around them. The daughter he had come to help yielded to the other on the screen, in her fanciful robes, singing, playing with the children, swinging upside down from the crossbar, sleeping with the rest by the ever-burning fire. "The joy and anguish of being human at any cost." Her moody guitar yields to the closing voice: "On this flowering square block of sanity in civilization's asphalt madness, the bitter, the disgusted, the sick and wretched still huddle together; and if the National Guard of Fear should peek through the bushes, they will still find us smiling, still saying: 'Let a thousand parks bloom!'" They left arm in arm, her scarred and shell-pitted landscape wrapped as in a softening shower of tears. And there stood the great-bearded Abe in front of his M.G.; Dona hove into sight through the crowd, swinging an almost finished bottle of the ~ grim white port. "Afraid of the creeps," she murmured; "no fix since morning." Chuck hurried from the bookstore to wave goodbye, looking in at Carla with a deserted smile. Even speedblasted black-genius Zulu floated up from somewhere: "Don't worry about Mendocino, honey; it's a good trip." And now they had slipped north past rowed flashes of mercury and neon; the city fell behind; they were headed for redwood country under moonlight, a long night drive. Nestled in the back, under the hum of car and road, the two could talk together, hearing only from the front a murmur of indistinct words. A time for memories. Should he keep them smiling? The summer at Long Beach Island, a circle of kids crouched around a wave-stranded jellyfish as big as your head, incited by whom but three-year Carla, crying: "Poker-man, poker-man, poker all the way"-jabbing it with their fingers until it melts into a muck of foam. Or night in the little cottage, the scribe with a lamp in the low garret wording his Earth Epic, to the rhythm of Carla's chants from below, and the smothered laughs of the others. No-what was needed were the dark secrets of her life: the year she slashed her wrists and was sent back East. "Before you came to us that year, your mother wrote-! wasn't supposed to tell, but we're past that now-about a rape-a child you bore dead, and buried?" Her voice a duck's back that sheds the water of tears: "Yeah." "You were a virgin until then?" "No. That was the worst of it. The boy J' d really loved, took me out there for the others, three guys; told me there was a party and then pulled me into the loft. "I didn't want the child. As it grew I kept hitting myself in the stomach. I killed it. And only after it came I knew how much I wanted it. I'd been in labor for about a week and never told anybody. And that night-! must have been in shock-! took it down the bluff, ran all the way to the stream, and rolled that huge stone over it-when they wanted to check, it took two men to move it-and I ran all the way back up. I think I stayed in shock a long time after." "Why didn't you tell your mother?" "I never could tell her anything. As if she lived in a dreamboth of us-different dreams." "And then you came to us ... " "You wrote that already," she said, "in that novel. 'The seed you sowed in Sibyl's darkness.' I thought of it often when I was hooked: is this what you wanted, what you prophesied?" (As if to write were to spring the trap. No transmoral art; no lives probed without effect. He was doing it still.) "You remember the night the marine brought me home latethe one I ran off with the next day-and you scolded and said if I kept on you'd have to send me back to IVIother-when it was Mother who'd sent me to stay with you and Lucy." (His eyes adjusting to the moonlight by the door, until her face shows dim around the Maya cenote pools he had known in Sibyl also and been divorced from: "Two loves have I, of comfort and despair" -as if to banish from the new Married Land those eyes of Eve in the garden, serpent-lured to forbidden fruit.) "You remember what I told you? That since I was a child I hadn't been loved. Since you went off and left me with Mother, and now she had sent me to you, and you were threatening to send me back to her-as if I didn't have a horne.'' "You didn't make it easy. Lucy's mother dying in the next room; and to nm off with a Marine you didn't even know, and have the police phoning in the night ... "So you went back to your mother, and your allergy got worse." "I was clawing myself all the time, raw and burning." 13 �The College (Yet how her music had grown, as if only anguish could pluck those strings.) "So we found that ranch school, in the desert." Abe had stopped at a park-in; they rode on washing down clam-burgers: Dona with white port, Carla with red, Hollowdaddy with a tenth of Zinfandel. Carla lowered the bottle, wiped her mouth with her hand and let fly at the Arizona school: "Terrible place. Coldest man I've ever seen. No more feeling than a snake. All he wanted was money ... "Then I met Carlos, and we were in love. I came back to you for the summer, to be near his boot-camp. You were on our side then, persuaded his parents." (Her only hope; and who could have reasoned her out of it?) "So we married, and my skin cleared up. Even now it's clear, except when I shoot smack I claw my hair, freaky." Thus the miracle of housekeeping Carla, in the graduate student bungalow squeaking to each other like lovely mice-three years, until the plunge into the Berkeley ferment of Free Speech, action, four-letter words, Carla like a tuned receiver, vibrating it: she began to slip off nights, weekends, then out of sight altogether, her husband hunting in whatever locales rumor guided him to, sometimes with a loaded gun, whether for her or the locale unclear; until her married sister Octavia joined in the search (unarmed), and they found her in Fillmore with what Octavia called a horrible old Black Man, her contact, Carla burnt out on heroin, with the whoring and stealing to earn twohundred bucks a day (besides gonorrhea), lucid only a few hours after her shot, then down again in a sickness from which she surfaced next day not remembering what had occurred-days blotting into weeks, months, a year, under the chronic agony of trying to get her off: state hospitals, Synanon, which she had tried twice and left, calling it a fake scene. And now her other sister Monique flew in from mystical pursuits in India, fresh to the conquest of soul over matter, took Carla to the house of a Zen friend, seemed to be succeeding, until Carla swallowed an overdose of sleeping pills, and Monique, finding no pulse, panicked. So it was the emergency hospital, Carla coming to, sobbing "I'm a junkie; I'm a junkie. Help me!" The cloudy seer wrapped her in his arms, as if body's hold might resist the downward power. "Like a nightmare, it must be, · that time, that horrible Black Man Octavia begged and threatened and got nowhere with." Instinct should have told him it would be the one she had spoken of before: "A beautiful old Spade man." "Octavia didn't know anything about him." Had she none of the antibodies of blame? "But he was the one you were giving two hundred a day for dope, and prostituting yourself?" "Uh-huh. But he helped me get off, when he knew I really wanted to. He'd let me come to his house and he'd shoot up in front of me, but he wouldn't give me any; and I got to where I could watch him without going crazy for it. He used to say: 'Yau look beautiful now, and your soul is beautiful; but when you're strung out, you're mean and ugly.'" The front seat talk had died down. The car-noise privacy of the back yielded to Dona's chime-in: "It's true, you change completely." (She, who had offered the ruinous cottons.) The terrible thought hammering itself home, that for Carla, as !4 for society maybe, the only safety would be in righteous and repressive rage: to shun all touch of that past, never go back, even in mind to that ambiguous old Spade, but to indict him, hound him, hang him; be moral, vindictive, bourgeois, forewarned. The salutary hypocrisy of law, against the soul's range. All the ride (and sipping port) she had grown more amenable, hopeful, human. She who had been so stubborn against leaving the Street, now nestled up to him like a child, her tousled head on his cheek, saying how happy she was, how glad he'd taken her away, that back there she had seen no future but dope and hustling, and now it seemed a delirium from which she might awake. "That's why you've got to find a new life," he said, "get away from that Street, not just heroin, but all those cough syrups and acids ... " Her voice had never been more open, more sure: "0, I love acid. I'll always take acid. It saved my life. That's why I kicked the first time. I took some acid when I was strung out and everything came clear." The car threading the moonlit valley of giant redwoods, he wondered why love and nature should fail to be enough. Though he too sipped Zinfandel. .. "I have to take acid to play really good music. At People's Park, before I messed up again, my music was so beautiful, my own kind of Mississippi blues. It flows in rivers, hardly out of me at all. I feel guilty: people crowd up and ask for more; they think it's me, but it's not. But heroin kills sex and love and music." Standing on the hopeful verge of cure, she looked back on the badlands of pain. "If I don't get dope enough, I wake up in cramps, coughing and vomiting, with diarrhea and sick sweat; and every morning chills, and the blankets wringing wet." He groaning: "But what a price, my God, and not to be much higher than soul and spring water will get you.'' "Right. For two years I'd wake up rejoicing, because I didn't have to run out and get a shot. And the third year I forgot, can you imagine? I could still wake up rejoicing; and I never did when I was young. So there's some gain, if I could just keep it." "The hardest thing to understand," he said, "is how you could leave Carlos and your boys and go to that Spade in the first place." Though he knew what she would say: "jealousy." "But you had run around yourself?" "Only when he did. It's true I didn't know. But I felt it, like a snake coiled round my throat. That was when I had an affair, and then I found out what I had already known, that he'd done it before. I wouldn't feel that way now. But I was so young. I didn't know about jealousy." " 'As cruel as the grave.' Your mother and I should have taught you." "If only I had married him later. Such a trivial thing-as he told me, it meant nothing at all; yet to me it was doomsday. That's my great sadness. It's what ruined my life. And there's nothing I'd love more than to go back with him, but he's scared and doesn't want me any more ... Though I will love him always, and deep down he still loves me." (And when there is nothing but ash ... the mill of grinding wheels we have built and are setting the torch to, calcined -would that ghost of love remain, a luminous lost inwardness?) �January, 1980 They turned off the highway into the hospital drive-a lawn of trees under the moon. Dona's siren whine filled the car: the hospital fears they cultivated on the Street, of being penned in vomiting convulsions; she couldn't stand it, she would go crazy; while Carla said nonsense, they had come on their own; they knew what the program was; everybody said it was a good trip. At the office Abe went in. They saw him through the window gesturing at the receptionist. Something must be wrong, and one could guess what: they had come without papers, banking on appeal. In the dread, after so much buildup, of offering nothing but return to the Street, the Old Guy went in too. Abe's doctor friend had been sent for. He appeared, one of the blessed Blacks. They would take them tonight as guests and worry about legality tomorrow. In the car the girls had almost lost heart. Now they were brought in, but there was a long wait while the secretary filled out forms. Ox-eyed Dona sat in a blue funk, no fix since morning, the wine wearing off, the red barbiturate she had gulped as they waited outside not taking effect, the horror of prison coldturkey come on her; she reached a trembling hand in a graylipped mouth, caught one of her snaggly carious teeth, pulled half of it out and dropped it into the metal waste-basket. The doctor called her to the examining room-the routine needle-scar check to confirm junky status. She had worried he might not believe her, since she was using her fingers, where the marks didn't show. Though as he would tell them, one had only to pull up her sleeves to see why she was shooting under the fingernails: every vein blown with scar tissue. Carla Was waiting alone, her father and Abe phoning Berkeley for the neglected referrals. And now she, who had seemed strong, heard a cry somewhere far off down the hospital corridors, and everything came flooding back, as from before birth, the soul's claustrophobic fear of bolts, chains, cave-walls, an archetypal hell-dread enforced by years of bad jails and barred asylums (to have usurped a word of refuge for those thronging snake-pits she had hardened in and escaped from). The secret sharer entered to see her being change with her face. She was levelling, as at an enemy, at the black doctor, her friend. "Then I won't stay. I ask you a straight question and you don't answer straight." A defiance known from his own youth, against father, law, police, all canons of coercion and restraint, most of all the army's absurd claim to brutalize his acts. But in her case, wide of the mark. Though the doctor's smile was vaguely equivocal: "Frankie, I don't know how you listen. I said it's hard enough to get you in anyway, that you're a guest here and you choose your own program. But it's a hospital and I'm the doctor, and I can't say you're free to do whatever you please." "Then it's a creepy bad place-a jail-and I won't be locked in like a crook when I came on my own." The wanderer's hand went out, groping. He could no more tell than the blind what it would reach: the nestling daughter of the car, the chemical body of rage. He touched her cheek. She shied, his hand in league with tyranny and rape. He tried again, caressing. "Carla, love. Listen. Don't act crazy. You can see he's a fine man. He's on our side. You know I love you. You think I would leave you in a jail? But it's what you came for. A new start." She moved toward the door, repeating under the Medusa stare: "I put a straight question and he won't give a straight answer." But softer. As in Gluck's taming of the infernal spirits. So once again the Orphic lyre: "Carla. Remember: the hustling, always hustling, and sweats and sickness. You're no child. Stay on and work with them. I'll get you a guitar. Think of your music..Sad, to back out now." She sank into the chair with a gesture of profound defeat. Bending over, he kissed the red-chapped scales of her streetsleeping harried face. In her cloudy vault she did not stir. He walked out tormented, as through all the years, with the first and last denial: at the tree of life, the sword turned every way. He put his hands to his father-aged face under a tumbling whiteness of hair ... And in four or five days or a week, when the methadone was tapered off and she fled (redemption so rare, however clewed and rainbowed with tears) and she hit the Street bleak under November rain; when Chuck would shelter her in the bookstore, the drug scene spilling in, and as threatened before he would get the sack, and the promised sleeping bag and guitar would have gone the way of all Carla's possessions; when poor Dona would be back shooting heroin into the veins under her tongue-it would be easy to say "I told you so" -almost ashamed of hopeful sentiment, almost swayed by the law-and-order hardening, willy-nilly, toward a police state and purgative euthanasia. Though all it would have proved in the end was that a little love might go a little way. So if a total love should offer itself in total sacrifice, it might once more be written: " 'Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit!' And they were amazed and said, 'What is this? With authority he commands the unclean spirits, and they obey him.' " Even for Carla. Even for the earth she images. 15 �The Birth of a Literary Language Giuliano Bonfante Romanticism (already wonderfully anticipated in the eighteenth century by Giambattista Vico) held sway throughout the nineteenth century and still exerts its influence in the twentieth; unfortunately, as often happens, mostly with its more secondrate characteristics: fascination with madness, dreams, fantasy, interest in science fiction and horror stories. Among its many great accomplishments, Romanticism taught us how to study history and the development of languages, i.e., historical linguistics. We owe it a great deal. But no movement, no man can be complete or perfect. In its disproportionate enthusiasm for the spontaneous, for all that came from the people, for the "vOlkisch," the Romantic movement neglected, when it did not outright despise, "literary languages." It held literary languages to be artificial constructions which arbitrarily troubled the natural flow of the people's unwritten speech. You can see this romantic attitude in the suspicion with which historical grammars handle so-called "learned" words as distinct from words of spoken speech or of"direct tradition." (For example, words like the French chose, which made its way into French from the Latin causa directly through spoken speech, handed down for generations from father to son, in contrast to the French word cause, which also comes from the Latin causa, but was introduced into the written language by medieval or Renaissance scholars.) But great civilizations live in written languages. What is a Literary Language? What is a literary language? How is a literary language born? Incredibly, because of Romanticism's uneasiness with literary languages, no one has studied this question. l. When Americans and British use the commercial term, An Indoeuropean linguist, Giuliano Bonfante concentrates on what languages tell of history. His most recent works include I dialetti Indoeuropei, 1976, Latini e Germani in Italia, 1977, and Studii Romeni, 1973. He left Italy in 1931 to teach in Spain and from 1939 to 1954 in the United States at Princeton. Upon his return to Italy in 1954 he taught first at Genoa and then until 1978 at Turin. He now lives in Rome. This article represents a revised version of "Come nasce una lingua letteria," published in Atti dell'Accademia dei Lincei, 1978. 16 "standard English," they mean the same thing as the Italians who, following their aesthetic tendencies, call their national, official language a "literary language." Standard English, like any "literary language," looks to its best authors for models. (In Italy, Manzoni above all is the Bible for whoever desires to speak Italian well. In English, we look up correct usage in the Oxford English Dictionary.) Standard English, and every literary language, follow stricter rules than dialects and spoken speech. For instance, proper English usage will not allow, "I don't know nothing about it," which can be heard on occasion. In Italian you should not say as some do, incorrectly, "ci b dato illibro" instead of "glib dato illibro." Without clear rules, there can be no such thing as literary language. 2. Literary languages exist, despite differences in usage, in geography, and even in nationality. The Spanish used in Spain and South America is a single literary language, for example. So also are British English and American-although a foolish nationalism on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, of the "pond" as the Spaniards used to call it, would distinguish the two. There are always grey areas in life: to deny the existence of any real "literary languages" because of slight differences means to deny the existence of night and day because twilight intervenes. When we speak of German, English, French, Italian, or Russian, we have a clear idea of a language in mind; we know exactly what we mean. To be "literary," a language must be written. There are, of course, borderline cases, especially of languages that were once literary, but which have since broken down into spoken languages or dialects: Provenc:;:al, "Folksmdl" (the spoken language of the Norwegians), dimotike (contemporary spoken Greek), Catalan, Basque, Sardinian, Venetian. The doge of Venice once said to an ambassador reluctant to go to Turkey because he knew no Turkish: "Va dal Gran Turco e parlighe venexian." (Go to the Sultan and speak Venetian to him.) 1 He meant that even the Sultan would understand Venetian. There are also instances of languages that had once little or no literary stature, but enjoy today the status of literary, national, and official languages: Gaelic, Albanian, Lithuanian, Lettish, and many other languages of the peoples within the Soviet Union. Another borderline case is the famous lingua franca, derived from Venetian, and spoken widely in commerce throughout the Mediterranean until the last century. It was never written. The �January, 1980 French troops that conquered Algiers in 1830 carried a little booklet of instruction in lingua franca, which today is one of the most valuable sources for that idiom. You only have to read the end of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme to learn that lingua franca is not French, as a well-known French scholar argued years ago. Pidgin English-"pidgin" is the Chinese pronunciation of "business" -until recently widely spoken in the Far East, represents another instance of a widely-spoken commercial language that was never written. As I have said, a literary language above all is written. Dialects, instead, are usually spoken. When Sardinians, Calabrians, the Piedmontese, or the people of Friuli have to write a letter to a compatriot (a "paesano"), they do their best to write in Italian-an often very incorrect Italian. They resort to Italian when they write, because no one has ever taught them to write the dialect they speak among themselves. Learning to write is difficult. Even a child who does not speak a dialect learns at school to write a language somewhat different from the one he is used to speaking. For instance, an American schoolboy may learn to write he is not instead of he ain't, man instead of guy, father rather than daddy. Frequently, especially when they speak dialect, children learn to write a language entirely different from the one they usually speak. For sixteen centuries the Basques spoke Basque but wrote in Latin; and then they wrote in Spanish. Certainly already spoken in the time of Julius Caesar, Basque did not come to be written down until the sixteenth century. 3. A literary language-which is the way a civilization knows itself and makes itself understood-has many more words than a dialect. A dialect has, at most, some ten thousand words, words necessary for the daily life of country folk. A literary language, in contrast, numbers about sixty thousand words. F. Palazzi's Italian Dictionary (2nd edition, Milan 1957) contains roughly this number. Webster's Dictionary of the American language boasts five hundred fifty thousand words. But most of these are technical terms from architecture, chemistry, physics, mathematics, astronomy, linguistics, and so on, terms used only by specialists. Like Italian, "Standard" English in fact counts about sixty thousand words. When men who speak dialects come to cities, they learn words from the literary language. In schools, teachers try (or used to) above all to teach students new words. D' Annunzio boasted he had used, in his works, forty thousand words; Dante used seventeen thousand, Anatole France, four thousand. To these we must add scientific and technical words like bronchitis and carburetor, which anyone with an average education knows, though they are more rarely used in literature. D'Annunzio surely knew more than forty thousand words~and Anatole France more than four thousand, but they consciously limited themselves to this number in their writing. In addition to being written, and having a greater number of words, a literary language is usually much more widespread than a dialect. Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, English, and Russian were written and spoken over large parts of the world. A literary language also nearly always extends to foreign-speaking peoples who learn it in school. 4. Lastly, a literary language, in contrast to a dialect, has a written grammar with precise rules, elaborated by grammarians and taught in schools. Someone who does not know these rules, or violates them, suffers ridicule and contempt. He cannot obtain public (or, for that matter, private) employment. A person's way of speech and the words he knows betray his social. standing, as is shown beautifully in Shaw's Pygmalion. These grammatical rules, which some take for mere prejudice, ·keep a language from breaking down into dialects. They make it possible for an Australian to understand an American, and so on. Dialects, in contrast, with no fixed rules or written grammar, change rapidly and within small areas. The dialect of Prato differs significantly from the dialect in Florence, only a few miles away. There are instances where a literary language is written but not spoken. In German Switzerland, for instance, everyone speaks SchwizertUtsch, which is the name for various closely related German dialects of Switzerland, but writes in literary German, bon allemand (the name implies that German dialects are bad German). In Italian Switzerland farmers who speak the Lombard dialect learn Italian in school, but they never speak it! Attempts to fashion a new literary and official language to substitute, in a small area, for an already established language which holds wider sway usually fail, because of the difficulty of singling out a single dialect as the national and literary language. In Switzerland the attempt to fashion a Swiss koine failed because there was no way of choosing between the different dialects-between the speech of Berne and of Zurich. In the end the official and literary language remained le bon allemand, das gute deutsch: that is, literary German. The people in FaerOer Islands attempted to fashion an official language to substitute for Danish, but they could not agree on which FaerOrish dialect to adopt. In 1977 the writer Gavino Ledda, in an interview after the release of the film Padre padrone, based on his best-selling novel, pointed out that it made no sense to speak of a "Sardinian language," when the people in the south of the island of Sardinia could not understand those in the north. In Norway, since about the beginning of the century, the attempt to substitute the indigenous spoken language, the Folksm.9.l, for the official Danish language, failed for a different reason: the written language, Danish, is the language of Ibsen and Bjornson as well as of all modern Norwegian literature. You would expect to have more success in instances where the language which is to substitute for the official literary language differs entirely. But this was not the case in the attempts to substitute Welsh for English, Breton for French, Irish Gaelic for English, Basque for Spanish- all of which failed. There is a continuous borrowing between the literary and the spoken language, whether this· is a dialect, as in Italy, or jargon, which in the United States tends to take the place of dialects. Usually the written language contributes more to the spoken language than it takes~ and the words it does take are of not much practical use. When a trolley car conductor tells you, for example, that he has seen an "atomic blonde" (bionda atomica), he is borrowing the Greek word "atom," which everybody understands, from the written literary language. Something similar occurs when we use technical terms like "gastritis" or "nephritis" in spoken speech. They come from the written language where, at first merely specialized terms, they gradually won themselves a place. 17 �The College PARADISO II Beatrice to Dante: Dentro dal ciel de Ia divina pace, si gira un corpo ne Ia cui virtute l'esser di tutto suo contento giace. Drawing by Sandra Botticelli How is a Literary Language Born? How is a literary language born? Someone once said that a literary language is a lucky dialect. There is much truth in this, especially if we keep in mind that luck comes usually to the deserving. Among the European languages Italian was the first literary language of importance. How was Italian born? From the Florentine dialect. But the Sicilians say, "The Tuscans robbed our language." And there is much truth in this too. In the thirteenth century, down to 1266, Sicilian poetry was read and imitated, as Dante observed, throughout peninsular Italy and beyond; in Genoa it was used by Percivalle Doria, in Bologna by Guido Guinizelli. With the defeat of the Swabian kings in 1266, Sicilian, which had been their principal court language, disappeared. By that time, however, Sicilian poetry had been read and imitated by poets of the Dolce Stil Novo in Tuscany, including Dante. These poets read .Sicilian poetry in '~tamed" manuscripts where the Sicilian had been "Tuscanized" enough to make Dante imagine that the language he was inventing already existed. All these poets incorporated many Sicilianisms in their poetry. But it was Dante's greatness which gave his native Florentine pre-eminence. After the publication of the Divine Comedy no one doubted the superiority of Florentine, even though certain dialects like Venetian continued as official languages for some time after. (From 1500 on even Venetian ambassadors write their accounts in excellent Tuscan.) In fact it was a Venetian, Pietro Bembo, who gave the Italian language its definitive form. From Dante onward all great non-Tuscan writers write in Florentine. They strive to rid their language of all regional peculiarities. Ariosto wrote three versions of Orlando Furioso before he succeeded in writing Tuscan quite well in the third. 18 Several writers (Alfier~ Foscolo, Manzoni) went to live for awhile in Florence to perfect their language, "to rinse their clothes in the Arno," as Manzoni said. But how did Florentine turn into Italian? In the Divine Com· edy Dante uses a great number of words unknown to the common people of Florence, unknown too to the tradesmen and the aristocracy. At one stroke he enriches his native Florentine and turns it into a full-blown literary language, capable of coping, as it does in his poem, with physics, astronomy, psychology, theology, philosophy, history, and much other knowledge. Where does he find these words? Dante knew French and Provenc;al very well, but he avoids them when he can. His new words come from Latin. He gives these Latin words Florentine phonetic and morphological forms and weaves them into the everyday language. The Italian literary language is thus born. Before Dante it did not exist; after him it exists. It is the child of a "lucky" dialect (Florentine) and of the imitation of another literary language, in this instance Latin. (Dante did not know Greek.) The case of one man creating a literary language is not rare-think of Mohammed and Luther. A literary language, then, is born of a dialect through the imitation of one or more literary languages. Born on the lie de France,2 French first drew from Latin, 3 and then after 1500 from Italian, became a full-fledged literary and official language which extended to the whole of France. At this time (1500-1600) Italy exercised great influence in France, in music, the arts, literature, navigation, war, gardening, court etiquette, in all that makes life pleasant and refined, including war-"ed indite arti a raddolcir Ia vita" (Carducci, "Alle Fonti del Clitunno'').' Something similar happened with Spanish. There the "lucky" dialect came from Madrid and Toledo. After absorbing, during the Middle Ages, some words from Arabic, Provenyal, and �January, 1980 French, 5 aU literary languages in their own right, Spanish reached its classic form, in imitation of the Italian literary language, in the seventeenth century. All this occurred under the impact of the Spanish conquest of Italy, in the sixteenth century. Previously dedicated more to Mercury than to Minerva, as a Spaniard observed -more to commerce than to the artsSpain was overwhelmed by Italian superiority in the arts and sciences.6 In Horace's words: Graecia capta ferum uictorem cepit et artes intulit agresti Latio. In the three centuries after 1066, French was the official language of England. It has left very deep traces in the English of today: "commerce," "industry," "university," "author," and so on, are all words that came from French. During these centuries Latin was also widely used. In the fifteenth century English developed out of the dialect of London and the imitation of the Latin and French literary languages. English is also full of Italian words; nearly all of which (except musical and artistic terms, like opera, chiaroscuro), however, came through French and have a French form. In contrast to the indirect influence of the Italian language, the direct influence of Italian arts and sciences was enormous, from Chaucer who took inspiration from Boccaccio, to Shakespeare, described by an American as "a geographically Italian poet" (with the exception, of course, of his historical plays) 7 Both in England and France, I should like to add parenthetically, this strong Italian influence in the arts and sciences found opposition: "A gentleman Italianate is a devil incarnate." The Anglican Church's break with Rome, like Protestantism in France, meant in some respects also a break with Italian influences, which had reached the point of threatening national characteristics. Among German Protestants the cry was: Los von Rom ("Away from Rome!"). Literary German grew very slowly, to reach full stature with Luther in the sixteenth century. Beginning in the Carolingian period, German took much from Latin. Masked by German renderings of Latin words, called "loan-translations," this influence of Latin is still perceptible today. For instance, Barmherzigkeit was modeled after misericordia, Gewissen on conscientia, Eindruck on impressio, Begriff on conceptum. There are countless other such words. They all look German, but they are really renderings of Latin words. Ancient literary French, primarily through Alsatia (Gottfried of Strassburg, The Nibelungen, etc.) also exercised an influence on German, from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries. It brought the new phoneme tsch into German, as in putsch, or kitsch. The Scandinavian languages first imitated Latin, and then German, because of the immense importance of Germany's culture in that area. 8 I now can hear myself accused of begging the question. If, as I have said, a literary language is formed by imitation of one or more literary languages, how did it all start? Where was the first literary language born? We have worked back to Latin, which inflUenced, directly or indirectly (especially through .French and Italian), all the languages of Western and Southern Europe. On what language was Latin modelled? On Greek, more precisely on Classical Greek, the language of the philosophers, the historians, and the orators of the fifth and fourth century B.C. 9 Cicero, Caesar, and Sallust did not look to their Greek contemporaries, the Graeculi of their contempt, but to the great authors of the classical period: Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Xenophon, Lysias, Demosthenes. After Cicero, Lucretius's repeated complaint of the meager resources of his native tongue, patrii sermonis egestas, is no longer possible. Cicero, before he died so tragically, fashioned for Rome a great literary language, modelled on Greek. On the model of the Greek word poi6tes, fashioned by Plato from pofos, Cicero made up qualitas; on the model of Plato's mes6tes he made medietas (Timaeus, 720: Vix audeo dicere medietates, quas Graeci mesotetas appellant); on the model of Aristotle's word pos6tes, the Latin word quantitas was later formed, following Cicero's example. 10 Likewise from the influence of Greek in Latin, the word human us took on the meaning of philCmthr6pos, ingenium of physis and so on. 11 When you shop and ask for "quality meat" or speak of "quantity," you are in debt to the Greek philosophers. In the East, where the Byzantine church dominated, the process was only slightly different. Russian, Bielorussian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Romanian also took the Greek literary language as their model, specifically the Christian literary language of the ninth century A.D. The alphabet itself betrays this late influence [Cyrillic H (eta) is pronounced il as in Greek at that period]. The Slavic languages borrowed from Greek in the same way that German borrowed from Latin-through so-called loan translations. In the former case, the spirit is Latin, the matter Germanic; in the latter, the spirit is Greek, the matter, Slavic, as my teacher Matteo Bartoli put it. 12 On the model of the Greek word zogrilphos, the Russian language formed Zivopisec; syneideia 'conscience' is s6vesi. My conclusion should not surprise anyone. Western and Eastern, in a word, all of Europe, is indebted to Greek for all of its-often very different-sounding-literary 1anguages. 13 Greece alone made a literary language out of nothing, a language which all European peoples, directly or indirectly, took as their model. When we drop Greek from our schools' curriculum we are cutting ourselves from our roots. 14 Translated by Alessandra Bonfante Warren l. I have been unable to trace the source of the Venetian cited above, bu.t B. Dudan in Il dominio Veneziano in Levante, Bologna 1938, 268, note 2, cites a similar phrase (along with other important material). 2. Mis langages est bans, car en France fui nez writes Garnier de Pont Saint-Maxence in Thomas le martyr, 168, 10 between 1170 and 1173. By "France" he meant the region around Paris, now called Ile de France. 3. A perceptive anonymous Lorrainer chronicler wrote, around 1350: Pour tant que laingue romance et especiaulment de Lorenne est imperfaite et plus asseiz que nulle autre entre les laingages perfaiz il n'est nulz tant soit bon clerc ne bien parlans romans qui lou latin puisse translateir en romans quant a plusour mots dou latin, mais couvient que per corruption et per 19 �The College diseite des mots franr;ois que en disse lou romans selonc lou latin sicom 'iniquitas' iniquiteit, 'redemptio' redemption, 'misericordia' misericorde et ainsi de mains et plusours aultres telz mas que il couvient ainsi dire en romans comme on dit en latin. (Lothringischer Psalter, published by F. Apfelstedt, 1. Cf. also MeyerLiibke, Historische Grammatik der FranzOschen Sprache I, Heidelberg 1934, 13.) 4. For Italian influence on French, B. Migliorini, Storia della lingua italiana, Florence 1961, 417, 495, 582, 666, 743; see also W. MeyerLi.ibke, Grammatik, Heidelberg 1934, 14 ff, and Brunot, cited therein. My lamented colleague and friend, Professor Franco Simone, whom I remember always with affection and sorrow, has written beautifully on Italian influence on French literature. See also F. Brunot, Histoire de fa Langue franqaise, II, 209 and following, and B. H. Wind, Les Mots ita· liens introduits en franr;ais au XIVe siecle, 1928. It appears that the very word franr;ais, the national name of the French, is derived from the Italian pronunciation, cf. Meyer-Lobke, 81. The name Fran<;:ois, instead, is authentically French. The Italians had difficulty pronouncing (raswe. This is the opposite case from that of "Buonaparte": the French had difficulty pronouncing the uo, and the name became "Bonaparte." It is simply a mistake (no doubt an oversight) to say, as docs the etymological dictionary of 0. Bloch and Von Wartburg, that franr;ais is found in the Chanson de Roland (where we have franceis): cf. instead, Gamillscheg's Etymological Dictionary, 2nd edition, under franr;ais. The Italian form triumphs because Italian is the language of the court (one has only to think of Catherine de Medici). 5. On the, at times, enormous influence of French literature in Italy, England, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Holland, etc., see also MeyerLilbke, 31 ff. But here too, Meyer-Lilbke does not go far enough: the pronunciation ts, still in use today, for example, for c in Latin words in Germany (censur for our Latin censura), is a result of Carolingian influence, which he does not mention, and the introduction of the phoneme C (written tsch), which today gives a jocular connotation to its words (and is very wide-spread: kitsch, klatsch, putsch, rutschen, etc.) is also a result of French influence. On French words in Italy see R. Bezzola's laudable and accurate, albeit somewhat neogrammatical study, Abbozzo di una storia dei gallicismi italiani nei primi secoli dal750 al1300, Zurich 1924. 6. On the Galla-Romance influences in Spanish, seeR. Lapesa, Historia de la lengua espafwla, Madrid-Buenos Aires 1942, 96, 110, 207, 213, 217-9,262. On Italian influence there, 139, 142, 153, 199-200,211,213, 219-20, 262. On Latinisms see 141-2. 7. On the acquaintance with Italian in England, see S. Gamberini, Lo studio dell'italiano in Inghilterra nel Cinquecento e nel Seicento, MessinaFirenze, 1971. John Florio in 1598 published the first bilingual dictionary of two living languages, Italian and English, A Worlde of Words, reprinted in 1611 under another title, and again in 1659 and 1687-88. 8. In a communication to the Xllth international congress of linguists, held in Vienna August 28-September 2, 1977, J. Konsg~rd showed the ways Danish absorbed Latin before 1300. In the Edda (ninth century), too, there are Roman pagan elements as well as Christian Latin influences: a Scandinavian scholar has observed that the opening of the Thrymskvidha: 20 Angry was then Vingthor (Thor) when he awoke and did no more find his hammer (stolen by Loki). imitates Horace, Odes I, verses 10 ff.: . ........... puerum minaci uoce dum terret, uiduus pharetra risit Apollo. Here, Mercury has stolen a quiver and corresponds to Loki, who has stolen a hammer. 9. Augusto Rostagni makes a valuable observation here. Latin literature is a direct continuation of the Greek literature of the fourth and fifth centuries, except for the poetae noui, a group of queer people who inspired no one. 10. For this process, Antoine Meillet's splendid Esquisse d'une histoire de la langue latine, Paris 1933, 208 ff. Direct Greek influence through the spoken language is likewise frequent. II. Meillet, Esquisse, 316: Pour 'parler' on se sert soit de paraboldre (franyais parler, etc.) soit de {dbuldre (esp. hablar, etc.); c'est ce qui arrive quand, en fran<;:ais populaire, on dit: "Qu'est-ce que tu racontes?" pour "Que dis-tu?". Si !'on remonte en arriere, parabola, dont le verbe Paraboldre est derive, est un mot tres savant; c'est un terme de Ia rhetorique grecque passe tel que! en latin; les demi-lettres qui ant Ccrit I'Evangile s'en sont servis pour nommer les enseignements donnCs par Jesus sous forme de recits, de comparaisons; et de Ia langue du christianisme le mot a passe dans !'usage populaire. The history of cause and chose is analogous (Italian: causa, cosa; Meillet, Esquisse, 346). We are also indebted to these "demi-lettrCs" for the penetration of the Aramaic periphrastic form, Jj'v (h0&uJlwv, common to Italian, Spanish, English, and Old and Middle French. 12. The Polish jakoSC and the Bohemian jakost, both culturally Western languages, are formed on the model of qualitas; the Russian word kiiCestvo, documented in the eleventh century, derives instead directly from the Greek poi6tes (but was much strengthened by its frequent usage in Western languages). 13. There is no need to insist on the well-known fact that the modern European vocabulary of all the sciences is full of Greek words, more so every day. 14. Greek influence on the Romance languages was great. The Romance languages were born out of the special kind of Latin spoken by men who were used to speaking Greek. The article, the present perfect, the conditional, the new future tense with habere are all due to Greek. Sanskrit, a pure Indo-Aryan creation, is to the East what Greek was to the West. It became the sacred language, and often the vehicle for culture and literature, in Indonesia, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Tibet, Turkestan, China, Korea, and Japan. The resemblance between the creation and diffusion of these two great languages is stunning. �On the Discovery of Deductive Science Curtis A. Wilson rr 1111 1111n 1 I :nnHu = II, II l l[nu[~C7~~--; 1 llll..l~;:x::::.iJl:::R 111111.11 , I II ...:9.=-<9-r r 1 rn ® e I'C?{C;7 ® 1 r 1 rnc:>'l-11 ll""g =-=11<=>'!It! , 11 1 r ® ~ii~C:> "'C' ® I II 1 1 rnnn e a I J I R=tll 11 --1 111n-<2> g 1!!!11.-;;::7 :; t AI I I 1nnn r -11.- /f) ®~ ~~ r 1 R§):t= te71f4. a r How did the notion of deductive science-science based on definitions, postulates, and axioms, science consisting of a sequence of propositions, each of which is deduced, either from previously deduced propositions, or from the definitions, postulates, and axioms initially set out-how did this notion first come Figure I This illustration is taken from van der Waerden, Science Awakening I (1971), Plate 5, facing p. 44; also W. W. Struve, Mathematical Papyrus des Museums in Moskau, Quellen und Studien A l. to be thought of, and then realized? For there seems to have been a particular moment in which this idea was first conceived; so far as we can tel1, it did not make its appearance at different times and places, independently. Can we learn anything about the original conception? I am going to pursue this question, although as you will at once realiZe, it is not the sort of question that is likely to receive a non-conjectural answer. The ground here has been worked into a deep and slippery mud by the trampling feet of contending scholars; mere non-classicists or not yet classicists like myself are liable to stumble over the mouldering carcasses of defunct theories, not yet decently interred. Certain questions of historical fact that are material to this discussion I am able to answer only conjecturally. At the same time, I wish to affirm that my primary aim is not to establish historical facts, nor yet to hypothesize possible causes for those facts, but rather to locate the meaning of facts that, it seems to me, come nearest to being reliable. 1 I want to begin by saying something about pre-Greek mathematics. The oldest mathematical documents known from any place on this earth are Egyptian papyri stemming from the Middle Kingdom, 2000-1800 B.C., and clay tablets dug out of the sands of Mesopotamia, and stemming from about 1800-1600 B.C. A lecture read at St. John's College, Annapolis, on September 14, 1973. Curtis Wilson has just finished Perturbations and Solar Tables from Lacaille to Delambre, being published by the Archives for the History of Exact Sciences. In figure l you see a transcription from a papyrus now in Moscow, showing the computation of the volume of a truncated pyramid with square base and top. The base is four cubits on a side, the top two cubits on a side, and the height or distance between base and top is six cubits. The text says: "Add together this 16 with this 8 and this 4. [16 is the area of the base, 4 the area of the top, and 8 the product of the side of the base by the side of the top.] You get 28. Compute one-third of 6 [the height]; you get 2. Multiply 28 by 2. You get 56. Behold: it is 56. You have found right." Now the result is right. It is something you might want to know if you were building pyramids; but by the time of the Middle Kingdom the Egyptians had ceased building pyramids, enjoyable though that occupation seems to have been, as we gather from the inscriptions of rival work gangs. It is not clear that there was any immediate practical reason for anyone in the Middle Kingdom to know the rule for computing the volume of a truncated pyramid. But the real puzzle is how this rule was discovered in the first place. It is a complicated rule, and there is no plausible empirical way of arriving at it by, say, weighing certain objects; therefore reasoning was involved. But on the other hand, the Egyptian mathematicians would not fall back on algebraic transformations in the modern manner, since their mathematics dealt explicitly only with particular numbers. There are a number of hypotheses as to how the Egyptians' procedure could 21 �The College have been arrived at, the most plausible, I think, involving a slicing of the pyramid into parts. Let us take another example. always numerical. Are the problems practical problems? Once again, yes and no. Here is an example from the time of Hammurabi, 1700 B.C.: "A square and a second square whose side is 2 + 4 of the first square, have together an area of 100. Show me how to calculate this." 2 "Take a square of side I, and take 2 + 4 (3/4) of I as the side of the other square. "Multiply 2 + 4 by itself; this gives 2 + 16. "Hence, if the side of one of the areas is taken to be l, and that of the other is 2 + 4, then the addition of the areas gives 1 + 2 + 16. "Take the square root of this; it is 1 + 4. "Take the square root of the given number 100; it is 10. "How many times is l + 4 contained in 10? Answer 8." The two squares then have sides 8 X l = 8 and 8 x 3/4 ~ 6, the sum of their squares being 100. "I have multiplied length and width, thus obtaining the area. Then to the area I added the excess of the length over the width. The total result is 183. I have also added the length and width, with the result 27. Required: length, width, and area."4 Now Egyptian mathematics has certain general characteristics. First, Egyptian mathematics, whatever it is dealing with-areas, volumes, numbers of bricks or loaves of bread or jugs of beer-is always a matter of numerical calculation. The mathematician is a computer who uses both integers and fractions. Second, there are no explicit proofs whatever, but reasonings have to have been employed in the solution of problems. Finally, while the problems presented in the papyri seldom appear to be actual practical problems, they give the general impression of being the sort of problems that an instructor might think up for his students, in order to prepare them for solving practical problems. Instructors seldom succeed in being strictly practical, but the Egyptian ones appear to have understood their activity as occurring within the horizon of the practical. Aristotle claimed that the mathematical arts had been founded in Egypt, because there the priestly class was allowed leisure; but this is incorrect. The Egyptian calculative art was the possession not of a priestly class, but of scribes who had practical functions in the state, and among whom there was rivalry. So we find one scribe ridiculing another: You come to me to inquire concerning the rations for the soldiers, and you say 'reckon it out.' You are deserting your officet. ... I cause you to be abashed when I bring you a command of your lord, you who are his Royal Scribe. A building ramp is to be constructed, 730 cubits long, 55 cubits wide, 55 cubits high at its summit .... The quantity of bricks needed for it is asked of the generals, and the scribes are all asked together, without one of them knowing anything. They all put their trust in you .... Behold your name is famous ... Answer us how may bricks are needed for it? 3 It seems likely, then, that the mathematical papyri were textbooks used in the school for scribes. In Babylonia, the mathematical texts appear to have been produced by a similar class of scribes. The texts give problems with their solutions; proofs are entirely absent; the procedures are 22 I omit the solution. For us it would involve the solution of a quadratic equation. This Babylonian problem does not strike me as a practical problem, or a near neighbor to one. The adding of a length to an area seems to me decidedly impractical, perhaps even nonsensical This is mathematics gone a bit haywire: a pedagogue might invent it to bemuse his pupils, always understanding, of course, that calculating is a good thing. Babylonian mathematics, however, is a good deal more powerful than Egyptian mathematics. When the Babylonian scribe wrote: .J2 - I; 24,51,10 (I am using the Indian numerals in place of the Babylonian), he meant This is the Babylonian approlimation to the square root of 2, or diagonal of a square of unit side. The Babylonians definitely knew and used the proposition we call the theorem of Pythagoras, which is involved in getting this approximation, but nowhere do any of the clay tablets that have been deciphered give a proof of this or any other theorem. The approximation, which is probably the result of a series of successively closer approximations, is good to one-millionth. Ptolemy will still be using it, having acquired it probably indirectly from the Babylonians, when he computes his table of chords in the second century A.D. Now if we turn to other civilizations besides the Egyptian and the Babylonian, but still uninfluenced by Greek thought-the civilization of the Yellow River valley, say, or Mayan civilization-I think we shall once again find a computational art, often highly developed, but not explicit deductions. You may on occasion find the contrary asserted. Joseph Needham in his Science and Civilization in China (II, p. 22) gives a passage from a Chinese mathematical text which perhaps originated as early as the 4th century B.C.; it is accompanied by a diagram which he labels "proof of the Pythagoras Theorem" (See Figure 2). I quote from the text: "Of old, Chou Kung addressed Shang Kao, saying, "I have heard that the Grand Prefect [that is Shang Kao] is versed in the art of numbering. May I venture to inquire how Fu-Hai anciently established the degrees of the 'Celestial sphere? ... I should like to ask you what was the origin of these numbers? �January, 1980 J / / ~ ,I " ""' ' ...... " ,L I "' " ' - Figure 2 ' ..... / / I ~/ [In the course of his reply Shang Kao says:] "Let us cut a rectangle diagonally, and make the width 3 units, and the length 4 units. The diagonal between the corners will then be 5 units long. Now after drawing a square on this diagonal, circumscribe it by half rectangles like that which has been left outside, so as to form a square plate. Thus the outer half rectangles of width 3, length 4, and diagonal 5, together make two rectangles [of total area 24]; then the remainder [that is, of the square of area 49] is of area 25. This is called 'piling up the rectangles.' "The methods used by Yu the Great in governing the world were derived from these numbers ... He who understands the earth is a wise man, and he who understands the heavens is a sage. Knowledge is derived from a straight line. The straight line is derived from the right angle. And the combination of the right angle with numbers is what guides and rules the ten thou~ sand things. "Chou Kung exclaimed, 'Excellent indeed!' " Nothing here, I would urge, has really been proven, certainly not the theorem of Pythagoras, so-called. Needham has shown in overwhelming detail that between the 5th century B.C. and the 15th century A.D. no people on earth exercised more technical ingenuity than the Chinese. Long in advance of the West, they possessed cast iron, an escapement clock, the navigational compass, gunpowder, printing by movable type, the segmental arch bridge. But as for deductive science, the Chinese would not encounter it until the Jesuits came to China in the late 16th cen- tury, bringing the textbooks of their fellow jesuit, Christopher Clavius. It is a curious fact that, for some centuries thereafter, Chinese students reciting their Euclidean theorems out of Clavius would finish not with our Q.E.D. but with the Chinese word for "nail." Apparently they were citing their authority: "clavus" being the Latin word for "nail." It is conceivable that some day, in the investigation of early civilizations uninfluenced by Greece, evidence will turn up for the existence of some pieces of deductive mathematics. On the basis of what is known today, the prospects for such a find are dim. Deductive mathematics is a rare bird, which first settled, so far as we know, in Greece. How did it happen? What did it mean that it happened? Seeking an answer, I turn to a document of late antiquity, a commentary on the first book of Euclid's Elements written by Proclus in the middle of the 5th century A.D. Proclus was a member of the Platonic Academy in Athens during the last century of its 900-year existence. The commentary includes a kind of catalogue of ancient geometers which is based on an earlier history of geometry, now lost, by Eudemus, a disciple of Aristotle writing in the late 4th century B.C. The account begins by saying that geometry was first discovered among the Egyptians, and originated in the remeasuring of their lands necessitated by the annual flooding of the Nile. Proclus then proceeds as follows: Thales, having travelled in Egypt, first introduced this theory into Hellas. He discovered many things himself, and pointed the road to the principles of many others, to those who came after him, attacking some questions in a more general way, and others in a way more dependent on sense perception. After mentioning the names of two other ancient geometers, Proclus continues: After these, Pythagoras transformed the philosophy of this (geometry) into a scheme of liberal education. He surveyed its principles from the highest on down, and investigated its theorems separately from matter and intellectually. He it was who discovered the doctrine of irrationals and the construction of the cosmic figures. A little farther on we read: Hippocrates of Chios, who invented the method of squaring lunules (crescents formed from arcs of circles) and Theodorus of Cyrene became eminent in geometry. For Hippocrates wrote a book on elements, the first of whom we have any record who did so. With respect to Hippocrates of Chios, there is no reason to doubt what Proclus says. A fragment of Hippocrates' work on lunules still exists, and it shows a high level of rigor. Thus Hippocrates may very well have written a book on the elements of geometry. At the time Hippocrates was teaching geometry in Athens, around 430 B.C., the process of turning geometry into a deductive science was in all probability well advanced. 23 �The College Thales, who was active about a century and a half before Hippocrates of Chios, is a much more shadowy figure, and it is unclear how we should interpret what Proclus says about him. Proclus attributes to Thales the discovery and proof of five propositions: (1) (2) (3) (4) A circle is bisected by any diameter. Vertical angles of intersecting straight lines are equal. The base angles of an isosceles triangle are equal. Two triangles such that two angles and the included side of one are equal to two angles and the included side of the other, are themselves equal. (5) The angle at the periphery of a semicircle is right. Now these are general, theoretical propositions, theorems, propositions to be contemplated rather than mere rules for solution of problems. The enunciation of them may therefore mark a decisive step in the emergence of theoretical science. But how were they proved? The usual guess is that it was by superposition, the visual showing that one figure or part of a figure would coincide with another. If this is right, then it is unlikely that we have here the notion of a logically constructed theory which begins with expressly enunciated premises and advances step by step. Thales need not have enunciated any premises explicitly. He pointed the road to the principles, as Proclus says; the extent to which h~ laid out principles is totally unclear. As for Pythagoras, whole books have been devoted in recent times to showing that the ancient accounts of his mathematical exploits are unworthy of trust. 5 These accounts stem from members of the Platonic Academy from the 4th century and later, men who saw in the 6th-century Pythagoras a forerunner of Plato, and who tended to attribute to him discoveries that had been made later on in the Pythagorean tradition. Pythagoras cannot have known all the five cosmic figures, because two of them, the octahedron and the icosahedron, were first discovered by Theaetetus, a contemporary of Plato. Contrary to what Proclus says, there is no good evidence that Pythagoras knew anything about the doctrine of irrational lines. The old verse quoted by Plutarch, according to which Pythagoras, on making a certain geometrical discovery, sacrificed an ox, cannot be true, because it is well attested that Pythagoras was a vegetarian, who believed in transmigration of souls and was opposed to the killing of animals. What we can be fairly sure of, with regard to Pythagoras, aside of course from his having had a golden thigh, is that he had made the flight to the Beyond and had become the leader of a cult, a medicine man, a shaman. He can well have taught that odd numbers are male, even numbers female; that five is the marriage number; that ten is perfect, being the sum of l, 2, 3, and 4. Somewhat similar beliefs have been found all over the world, in connection with rituals and creation myths, and have not led to deductive mathematics. Pythagoras' thought seems to have been cosmogonic, concerned with the coming-to-be of our world out of something prior and more fundamental. There is no trustworthy evidence that Pythagoras ever carried out an explicit proof. On the other hand, the transformation in the character of mathematics that Proclus attributes to Pythagoras may well have been brought about by Pythagoreans. The old accounts speak of 24 a split within the Pythagorean tradition; the Mathematikoi, those who wished to discuss and teach openly the mathematical disciplines, separated off from the secret cult, the Akousmatikoi, the hearers of the sacred and secret sayings. Reliable 4th-century sources speak of the arithmetical studies of the 5th-century Pythagoreans. Aristotle says that the so-called Pythagoreans were the first to deal with mathemata, mathematical disciplines. According to the Epinomis, a dialogue written either by Plato or a follower of Plato, the first and primary discipline or mathema of the Pythagoreans was arithmetic. Now it is possible to make a plausible reconstruction of some of this early Pythagorean arithmetic. When this is done, we find ourselves before a piece of deductive science, quite possibly the earliest that ever was; it is the science of the odd and the even. It is a science in which the principles are explicit, and in which the theorems are, to use Proclus' terms, investigated independently of matter and intellectually. The reconstruction necessarily starts from Euclid's text, which appears to be, to a certain extent, a compilation from earlier texts which it drove out of circulation, and which are now wholly lost, so that we know of them only from certain references by Aristotle or Plato or other ancient authors. The reconstruction proceeds by a kind of literary archaeology. Permit me to give here a set of not very reliable dates. Flourishings Thales Pythagoras Parmenides Hippocrates of Chios Archytas of Tarentum Theaetetus Plato Aristotle Euclid !lor. 585 B.C. !lor. 550 B.C. flor. 475 B.C. flor. 430 B.C. !lor. 400 B.C. c. 415-369 B.C. c. 428-348 B.C. 384-322 B.C. flor. 300 B.C. Flourishing was something Greeks did as a rule at age 40, just as they often died at 80, to suit the taste for symmetry of a certain 2nd-century B.C. chronographer named Apollodorus. Euclid wrote about 300 B.C. There are good grounds to believe that much of geometry had been organized as a deductive science by the time of Hippocrates of Chios, about 430 B.C.; and there are plausibilities in assuming that portions of arithmetic had been organized deductively even earlier. In discussing this development, I shall want to refer to Parmenides, who lived in the first half of the 5th century; to Archytas of Tarentum, a Pythagorean and friend of Plato living around the turn of the 5th and 4th centuries; and to Theaetetus, another friend of Plato, who died as a result of battle wounds in 369 B.C., and was one of the great mathematicians of antiquity, being the author, in all probability, of nearly all of books X and XIII of Euclid's Elements. In 1936, Oskar Becker pointed out a number of peculiar facts concerning Propositions 21-34 of Book IX of Euclid. These theorems are for the most part so obvious that it is hard to imagine why anyone would be so fussy as to want them proved. "If as many even numbers as we please be added together, the whole is �January, 1980 even." Certainly. "If from an even number an even number is subtracted, the remainder will be even." Who will doubt it? The proofs, with one exception, do not depend on any previous theorems in Euclid's Elements: they depend rather on certain definitions given at the start of Book VII, the first of the arithmetical books. The one exception, IX.32, depends on IX.l3. But Becker suspects the proof as we now have it to be Euclid's emendation of the original proof; he shows that IX.32 follows quite straightforwardly from IX.31. Thus Propositions IX.21 to IX.34 are a selfsufficient set of propositions dependent only on certain definitions. Moreover, with one curious exception nothing else in Euclid's Elements depends on these propositions. The exception is the last proposition of Book X, which modern editors delete as not fitting into the argument of Book X. It is the ancient proof of the incommensurability of the side and diagonal of the square, and what it depends on is the doctrine of the even and the odd, and more specifically, Propositions 32~34 of Book IX. Becker believed that, originally, before incorporation in Euclid's Elements, the doctrine of the even and the odd had led to another consequence, the traces of which have been left in Euclid. Propositions 21~34 of Book IX are followed by two final propositions, 35 and 36; 35 is used for the proof of 36, and 36 shows how to construct a perfect number-perhaps all perfect numbers, but that I believe is not yet known. Euclid's proofs for these two propositions depend on propositions in Book VII having to do with ratios of numbers. Becker shows that 35 and 36 can be proved on the basis of the immediately preceding propositions of Book IX, independently of any reference to ratios. Thus Becker's conjecture is that, long before Euclid, there existed a treatise on the even and the odd, including Propositions 21-36 of Book IX and the last proposition of Book X; that out of piety Euclid or some ancient editor added this treatise to the Elements, then, in an effort to integrate this addition with the whole, changed some of the proofs (32,35 and 36), making use of propositions on numerical ratios from Book VII. This hypothesis at least accounts for the peculiarities of Book IX that I have cited: the fact that, with an easy revision of the proof of IX. 32, propositions IX.21 to IX.34 form a treatise independent of the rest of Book IX, to which IX.35 and 36, with revised proofs, can also be added. Such, then, is Becker's reconstruction of the doctrine of the even and the odd. That such a doctrine existed in the fifth century is supported by the fact that Plato defines arithmetic as the doctrine of the even and the odd, and refers to this doctrine as a familiar discipline. Following Becker, van der Waerden has argued that most of Book VII of Euclid had also been worked out in the fifth century. One of his arguments is that Archytas of Tarentum, in a work on musical theory written about 400 B.C., depends on propositions found in Book VIII, and these propositions depend in turn on propositions found in Book VII. Since Archytas is punctilious in working out the most trivial syllogisms, it is unlikely that he merely assumed the propositions he needed; he must have known them to be already proved. If the propositions of Book VII existed in any form in Archytas' time, then van der Waerden concludes that they must have been in almost exactly their present form and thus in apple-pie order; for Book VII is worked out with great care and in such a strictly logical fashion that no step can be removed without the whole collapsing. There are other clues that lead van der Waerden to believe that most of Book VII was complete before Hippocrates of Chios wrote on lunules about 430 B.C. These two pieces of deductive arithmetic-the doctrine of the even and the odd, and what became Euclid's Book VII-along with Hippocrates' quadrature oflunules, constitute the available presumptive evidence for the character of fifth century deductive mathematics. Can we learn anything from them, which might throw light on the question of what it meant for them to come to be? I want to take up, first, the demonstrations, then, the premises on which they are based. Every Euclidean proposition ends with the stereotyped formula, hoper edei deixai, meaning: the very thing that it was necessary to show. The infinitive here, deixai, seems to have had the original meaning of showing visually. Thus in Plato's dialogue Cratylus Socrates says: "Can I not step up to a man and say to him, 'This is your portrait,' and show him perhaps his own likeness or, perhaps, that of a woman? And by 'show' (deixai) I mean, bring before the sense of sight." (430e) Early geometry must have been primarily a kind of visual showing, the pointing out of a symmetry, or the possibility of the coincidence of two figures, superposition. But in Euclid's text every effort is made to reduce the dependence on superposition to a minimum. We come to suspect that there was present a kind of anti-illustrative, anti-empirical tendency in mathematics, as it was being transformed into deductive science. This tendency is detectible in arithmetic as well as geometry. Pythagorean arithmetical doctrines seem to have been originally worked out and taught with the aid of calculating pebbles. There is a fragment of the comic poet Epicharmus, written prob· ably before 500 B.C., that runs as follows: "When there is an even number present, or, for all I care, an odd number, and someone wants to add a pebble or to take one away, do you think that the number remains unchanged?'' "Not mel" "Well, then, look at people: one grows, another one perhaps gets shorter, and they are constantly subject to change. But whatever is changeable in character and does not remain the same, that is certainly diffenint from what is changed. You and I are also different people from what we were yesterday, and we will still be different in the future, so that by the same argument we are never the same." 6 Presumably the sly rogue goes on to argue that he need not pay the debt he contracted the day before. Aristotle, too, speaks of the Pythagorean pebble figures, the triangles, squares, and rectangles formed of pebbles with which the Pythagoreans taught arithmeticfll truths. We can easily see 25 �The College how they could have satisfied themselves, with their pebble figures, of the propositions concerning the even and the odd. Take Proposition IXJO: if an odd number is the divisor of an even number, then this same odd number is also the divisor of half the even number. (See Figure 3). ••• ••• ••• I• •• ••• I••• ct I I I I I I I ~- even number Figure 3 The number will be a rectangular number, with our odd number, the divisor, represented by the pebbles forming one of the sides. But the number as a whole is even, hence divisible in half, as by the vertical line. We see at once, then, that our odd number is a side of the half rectangle, hence a divisor of the half. The proof of this in Euclid is quite different. The numbers are not represented by points, but rather by lines. We know that Archytas represents numbers in this way, by lines, as a matter of course, and presumably, therefore, this mode of representation had become conventional before his time, that is, already in the 5th century. Now by looking at a line which represents a number, one cannot tell whether the number is even or odd, since any line can be halved; consequently, Euclid's visual representation of the numbers does not help us at all to see why the proposition is true. A pebble configuration could only represent visually a particular number; the new representation has the advantage of generality, but it also has the disadvantage that it forces one to look for an entirely new proof. The new proof that Euclid gives us involves the famous reduction to the absurd, or indirect demonstration. The important step is to show that the odd number a, the divisor, measures the even number (3 an even number of times, or in other words, that the quotient, 'Y is even. Euclid's argument runs as follows: I say that 'Y is not odd, for if possible, let it be so. Now a multiplying 'Y makes (3, and a was taken at the start to be odd, and an odd number multiplying an odd number yields only an odd number, as Euclid has previously shown. Therefore it would be odd, which is impossible (adunaton), because it was taken at the start to be even. The anti-illustrative tendency brings with it the reductio ad absurdum proof. It is surprising how many reductio proofs occur in the arithmetical treatises that, according to Becker and van der Waerden, stem from the 5th-century Pythagoreans. In propositions 21-36 of Book IX there are six such proofs, or eight if we accept Becker's reconstructions of 32, 35 and 36. In the first theorems of Book VII there are 15 such proofs. Moreover, the proof 26 of the incommensurability of the side and diagonal of the square is also a reductio, and in this case we have to do with a truth which is altogether non-visualizable. Let me pause to review the strategy of that proof. Suppose, if possible, that the side and diagonal of a square are commensurable. Then there would be a length that measured both, and also a largest such length. Let this largest such length measure the diagonal a times, and the side (3 times, where a and (3 are integers or whole numbers. Now a and (3 cannot both be even, for otherwise our unit length could have been doubled, and the numbers halved, contrary to the assumption that the unit length was the largest possible; so at least one of the numbers must be odd. The sequence of the proof then shows that both must be even, or as Aristotle says in referring to this proof, that the same number must be both even and odd. For cl = 2(32; therefore cl is even, whence a is even. Let a = 2')'. Then a 2 = 4')'2 = 2(32 , or (3 2 = 2')'2 • Therefore (3 2 is an even number, and so (3 is an even number. Adunatonf 'The only alter· native left is to relinquish the original assumption that a and (3 exist, or that side and diagonal are commensurable. In this demonstration human reason exhibits a rather astonishing power, the power to discover what eyesight could never in any way disclose. This discovery would encourage the anti-illustrative tendency, and the recourse to indirect proofs. It also implies that geometry cannot be subsumed under arithmetic, and needs therefore to be built up as an independent science on its own right, for magnitudes if incommensurable do not have to one another the ratio of a number to a number, while surely having a relation with respect to size. But the relevant point at this moment is that the emergence of deductive science appears to be connected with an anti-illustrative tendency, and with the closely-connected introduction of reductio proofs. What about the principles or premises of Pythagorean arithmetic? I have already mentioned that the premises of the doctrine of the even and the odd are to be found among the definitions of Euclid's Book VII, and only there. The same thing goes for the doctrine concerning divisibility and proportionality found in Book VII itself. And fundamentally, all the definitions of Book VII rest on the first two definitions, the definition of number-a number is a multitude composed of units or monads-and then the definition of monad: monad is that according to which each of the things that are, each of the beings, is called one. What these definitions do, above all, is to limit the following discussion to whole numbers. Comparing this Greek arithmetical theory with Egyptian and Babylonian numerical work, we see that the Greek theory is sharply distinguished by its careful avoidance of fradions; and the first definition, whatever else it is doing, is expressing this prohibition against fractions, this insistence on the indivisibility of the one or unit. This insistence was already traditional in Plato's time. In the Republic Socrates speaks of "the teaching concerning the one" (he peri to hen mathesis), and explains what he means by it: ... You are doubtless aware that experts in this study, if anyone attempts to cut up the 'one' in argument, laugh at him and refuse to allow it; but if you mince it �January, 1980 up, they multiply, always on guard lest the one should appear to be not one but a multiplicity of parts ... Suppose now ... someone were to ask them, "My good friends, what numbers are these you are talking about, in which the one is such as you postulate, each unit equal to every other without the slightest difference and admitting no division into parts?" What do you think would be their answer? This, I think-that they are speaking of units which can only be conceived by thought, and which it is not possible to deal with in any other way. Socrates' explanation tells us why the indivisibility of the one had to be insisted upon; if the one were divisible, then it would be a multiplicity of parts, hence many, not one. In other words, the thought that the one is divisible is self-contradictory. Thus the insistence on the indivisibility of the one, which is Euclidean and also, according to Plato's Socrates in the Republic, prePlatonic, is the conclusion of an indirect demonstration, a reduction to the absurd: The one is indivisible; for if not, then it is divisible, and therefore a multiplicity of parts, hence not one; therefore, etc. I have not yet taken up the principles used in early deductive geometry, but let me recapitulate what I have said, and consider what it suggests. The earliest deductive science, as far as we can tell, was the arithmetical theory of the so-called Pythagoreans of the 5th century. Their science differs from all earlier mathematics, first, in exhibiting an anti-empirical tendency, which sought to eliminate mere visual showing, as with the pebble figures; secondly, in making use of indirect demonstration, or proof of something by reduction of its opposite to absurdity; thirdly, in insisting upon the indivisibility of the one, on the ground that admission of its divisibility would contradict the very meaning of the word "one." Now these features call to mind certain lines that remain of a poem written early in the 5th century, the poem by Parmenides of Elea; and to no other author of this time can these features be related. I must try to say some words about the poem of Parmenides. Only fragments of it remain. Their interpretation is thoroughly controversial There is widespread assurance that, whatever it was that Parmenides meant, he was wrong. On the other hand, it will be little contested, I believe, if I say that Parmenides was the founder of Dialectic. Aristotle says that Zeno of Elea, Parmenides' pupil, was the founder of dialectic; but I think that may be because Zeno wrote out arguments in prose, whereas Parmenides wrote a poem in epic verse, while dialectic has essentially nothing to do with verse. I believe there is also rather general agreement that Parmenides, in composing his poem, was responding to, and attacking, earlier cosmogonies, which sought to derive all the variety and diversity of the world out of some underlying stuff, understood to be the real stuff of the world. The poet begins by describing his journey in a chariot, drawn by mares that know the way, and escorted by the Daughters of the Sun. They arrive, high in the sky, before the gates of Night and Day. The Sun Maidens persuade the Goddess Justice to open the gates, and Parmenides is welcomed by the goddess who takes his hand and assures him that it is right and just that he, a mortal, should have taken this road. He must now learn both the unshaken heart of well-rounded truth, and the unreliable beliefs of mortals. The goddess describes three ways of inquiry: first, "That it is (esti), and cannot not be; this is the way of Persuasion, for she is the attendant of Truth;" second, "That it is not (ouk esti), and must necessarily not be; this I tell you is a way of total ignorance;" third, "That it is, and it is not, the same and not the same; this is the way that ignorant mortals wander, bemused." An initial difficulty that we face is tha~ although the pronoun "it" is not expressed in Greek, we can hardly resist the impression that there is something that is being talked about, and we should like to know what it is. The next fragments may be helpful. "It is the same thing that can be thought and can be." "What can be spoken of and thought must be; for it is possible for it to be, but it is not possible for nothing to be. These things I bid thee ponder." In a preliminary and superficial way I think I can conclude that the subject of the verb estin is: that which is intended in thought, what we call the object of thought. The goddess is presenting an argument: that which thought intends can exist; but nothing cannot exist; therefore that which thought intends cannot be nothing; hence it must exist. The syllogism holds, I believe, although at that point in time logic had not been invented. But what does it mean? That which in no way is cannot be entertained in thought. Thought always is of something, it is intentional in character. Hence I must accept the Goddess' rejection of the second way, or non-way, of inquiry. But the Goddess means something more. Some of this "more" emerges as she proceeds to dispose of the third way of inquiry. This is the way whereon, she says, mortals who know nothing wander two-headed; perplexity guides the wandering thought in their breasts; they are borne along, both deaf and blind, bemused, as undiscerning hordes, who have decided to believe that it is, and it is not, the same and not the same, and for whom there is a way of all things that turns back upon itself. "Never," says the goddess, "shall this be proved: that things that are not, are; but do thou hold back thy thought from this way of inquiry, nor let custom that comes of much experience force thee to cast along this way an aimless eye and a noise-cluttered ear and tongue, but judge through logos (through reasoning) the hard· hitting refutation I have uttered." "It is necessary," adds the Goddess, "to say and to think that Being is." Now in one way, this is all simple and undeniable. When I entertain an idea, when I use a word to signify some idea, I intend what I am thinking of as a constant, invariable. Never mind that my thought, my intending of what I am thinking about, is a shifting and not very controllable process. What is thought and named is intended as having a certain fixity. Otherwise, as Aristotle puts it, to seek truth would be to follow flying game. We would be reduced to the level of Cratylus, who did not think it right to say anything, and instead only moved his finger, and who criticized Heracleitus for saying that it is impossible to step twice into the same river, for he, Cratylus, said that one could 27 �The College not do it even once. On one level, the words of the Goddess are simply telling us what the prerequisites and necessities are for speech and thought that will be free of contradiction. Parmenides' poem is the earliest document preserved from the past which speaks explicitly of the logical necessities of thought. Yet the discourse of the Goddess is more strange and frightening, or insane, or as Whitehead might say, important, than I have been making it out to be. The Goddess is not concerned with just anything that might be thought; she is concerned-she says so again and again-with Being. What is all this silly talk about Being? What else is there for Being to do but be? "It is necessary," says the Goddess, "to say and to think that Being is." Is it? Then is it necessary to say and to think that rain rains, that thunder thunders, or that lightning lightnings, and are not these parallel cases? I shall later come back, very briefly, to this question. It is just here that the poem becomes exasperating and impossible, prompting Aristotle to say more than once: the premises are false, and the conclusions do not follow. From the fact that Being just is, the Goddess proceeds to conclude that Being is precisely One, and contains no plurality, no mriltiplicity or differentiation within it, and no motion. In particular, and to Aristotle's great disgust, the Eleatics claim to have discovered the self-contradictory character of motion. It is Zeno, Parmenides' pupil, who formulates this discovery in the most memorable way. The flying arrow is in every instant exactly where it is, is at rest in the space equal to itself, and since this is true of every moment of its flight, it is always at rest, it does not move. Never mind the mortal wound we think it can inflict; this does not answer the argument, it does not tell us how motion can be consistently thought. The question is not whether Zeno is wrong but how. It is still being debated in the philosophical journals. In the case of Parmenides, a more insistent question is what he can have meant by his poem. There is a second part to it, called the Way of Seeming or Opinion, of which 40 lines remain, and this speaks of the coming-to-be of the visible things of our ordinary world out of Fire and Night. Did Parmenides intend the Way of Opinion to have any validity at all, or only to present the bemused and erring beliefs of mortals? Plutarch remarks that Parmenides had taken away neither fire nor water nor rocks nor precipices, nor yet cities ... for he has written very largely of the earth, heaven, sun, moon and stars, and has spoken of the generation of man. Traditions credit Parmenides with having given laws to the city of Elea, and with having been the first to say that the Earth is round, that the Moon shines by reflected light, and that the morning star is identical with the evening star- momentous discoveries every one of them. But such actions and discoveries do not seem easily compatible with the teaching about Being that the goddess has set forth, with such emphasis, such imperial absolutism. The heart of well-rounded truth, Being which is precisely and only One appears to have no place in it for human law, for the earth's rotundity and its conical shadow, for Venus and her irregularities, or for Parmenides or you or me. The speech of the Goddess is nevertheless fateful. With Par- 28 menides, as I have said, dialectic takes its start. The age of those called sophists begins. One of the earliest of them, Protagoras, is clearly reacting to Parmenides when he makes his famous statement: man, he says, is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not. Who but Parmenides had raised these questions about Being and not-Being? Protagoras has concluded that the Parmenidean standard of truth, that is, freedom from contradiction, is unreachable; thought, he thinks, inevitably involves contradiction. Therefore he turns to sense-experience, and asserts his right to say that the same thing can at one time be, and at another time not be, according as he, Protagoras, holds it to be or not to be. In Protagoras' time and later, there will be other objectors with other formulations, rejecting the speech of the Parmenidean Goddess in other ways. Gorgias, for instance, argues, first, that nothing is; second, that if anything is, it cannot be known; third, that if anything is and can be known, it cannot be expressed in speech. Among the Parmenidean sequels, I want to suggest, was deductive arithmetic. For according to Aristotle, Parmenides was the first to speak of the One according to logos, according to definition; and arithmetic seems to have become deductive just when the Pythagoreans set out to found the doctrine of the even and the odd on the definition of the One, on its essential indivisibility, and proceeded in Parmenidean style to formulate proofs which relied no longer on visualization but rather on non-contradiction of the logos. Of course-and this is a crucial qualification-no arithmetician could fo11ow the teaching of the Parmenidean Goddess strictly. When the deductive arithmetician took his start from the indivisibility of the One, he was proceeding in accordance with a Parmenidean necessity of thought. When he went on to multiply the One, in order that arithmetic might be, he was violating the Parmenidean Way of Truth. Parmenidean-wise, how could there be many ones, each exactly the same as every other, and yet each retaining its identity to the extent of remaining separate from the others? The way in which these many ones can be, or are in being, is a question not for arithmetic, but for meta-arithmetic, but apparently the arithmeticians recognized that their discipline depended on the question about being. The Euclidean definition of Manus, One, reads: Monas is that in accordance with which each of the beings i::. called one. A plurality of beings-what they are remains unclear-is here presupposed. As for geometry, the violations of the Parmenidean logos that are necessary in order for it to become deductive are more drastic. The definitions of point and line with which Euclid begins Book I were no doubt modelled on the definitions of One and Number, but there is a world of difference between the cases. The definitions tell us that a point is without parts, that a line is without breadth, but we cannot go on to derive any geometrical proposition from these rather problematic denials. It was the questionable character of the geometrical things that led Protagoras to reject the possibility of geometry altogether: a wheel, he said, does not touch a straight pole in one point only; therefore geometry is impossible, Q.E.D. But even if the geometrical definitions are granted, they do not provide a sufficient basis for the organization of geometry as a deductive science. �January, 1980 At the beginning of Euclid's Elements three kinds of principles are set out. First, definitions or horoi; second, postulates or aitemata; third, common notions or koinai ennoiai. About a century ago, it was argued that the term koinai ennoiai had to be of late Stoic origin, and therefore not due to Euclid. Was there an earlier Greek term? It may well have been axiomata; this is the term that Proclus constantly uses instead of koinai ennoiai, and it may have been the term in front of him in his Euclidean text. Instead of horoi for definitions, Proclus commonly uses hupotheseis; this usage is found earlier in Archimedes, and earlier still in Plato's Republic, where the odd and the even, and the various kinds of figures and angles are said to be treated in the sciences that deal with them as hupotheseis. All three of these terms, hupotheseis, ait?!mata, and axiomata, were connected at one time with the practice of dialectic. The term aitemata, postulates, comes from the verb aiteo, to require, to ask. "Whenever," Proclus tells us, "the statement is unknown and nevertheless is taken as true without the student's conceding it, then, Aristotle says, we call it an aitema." The term axiomata comes from axioo, which can also mean to require, to demand; it is often so used in the Platonic dialogues. To be sure, Proclus says of the axioms that they are deemed by everybody to be true and no one disputes them. I believe this statement reflects an Aristotelian and post-Aristotelian usage. Aristotle himself refers to the earlier, dialectical usage when he says: axioO is used of a proposition which the questioner hopes the questioned person will concede. As for the term hupotheseis, there is perhaps little need to mention its dialectical use. At a certain point in Plato's Republic, Socrates speaks of the principle of non-contradiction, the presumably unshakeable principle according to which it is not possible for the same thing at the same time in the same respect and same relation to suffer, be, or do opposite things. And having enunciated the principle, he says, "Let us proceed on the hypothesis that this is so, with the understanding that, if it ever appear otherwise, everything that results from the assumption shall be invalidated" (437a). And as even the not-so-dialectical Aristotle recognizes, this principle can only be established controversially, that is to say, dialectically, against an adversary who offers to say something. My general point is a simple one. The first book of the elements of geometry of which we have record was written in the middle of the fifth century, by Hippocrates of Chios. An antivisual, anti-illustrative tendency that had first emerged, so far as I know, in Parmenidean dialectic, is already present in the geometrical proofs of Hippocrates of Chios that have come down to us, e.g. proofs of inequalities that would be obvious to visual in· spection. The fact that at an early stage the terms adopted for the premises of geometry were terms of dialectic, terms referring to assumptions or concessions that do not entirely lose their pro· visional character but are required in order that a discussion might proceed, reinforces the impression that the transformation of geometry into a deductive science was carried out in a context determined by the practice of dialectic. It is also important to realize here that the premises of geometry had to be concessions: propositions needed to derive what not only geometers but even surveyors and carpenters knew, yet propositions which violated, in the most obvious way, the canons of the Parmenidean logos. Two things equal to the same thing, Euclid tells us, are equal to each other. But what is equality but sameness, and how can three things that are exactly the same be three? How, moreover, are we to perform the absolutely impossible feats that the aitemata require-to draw a straight line from point to point, to extend a line, to describe a circle? Part of the paradox here is described by Socrates in the Republic: "The science (of geometry)," he says, "is in direct contradiction to the language spoken by its practitioners. They speak in a ludicrous way, although they cannot help it; for they speak as if they were doing something and as if all their words were directed towards action. For all their talk is of squaring and applying and adding and the like, whereas the entire discipline is directed towards knowledge" (527'b). It is probably this peculiar mixture that Timaeus is referring to when he speaks of geometry as apprehending what it deals with by a bastard kind of reasoning. I should like to conclude with a short summary of and comment on what I have been saying, followed by a brief epilogue. Deductive science appears to have been first discovered by a few Greeks; so far as I know, this discovery remained unique. Knowledge of it fell into oblivion during certain times; at whatever later times the possibility of deductive science has been recognized, the recognition has come through the recovery of Greek deductive science. What did the original discovery involve, what did it mean, for those who made it? That is the question I have sought to examine. From a plausible reconstruction of Pythagorean deductive arithmetic, I am led to conclude that the essential moves were (l) the turning away from visualization and taking recourse in logos; (2) the application of a negative test, the method of indirect proof or reduction to the absurd. Now these two steps are dialectical steps, they are the steps of the method that Socrates in the Phaedo describes as his own: "I was afraid," he says, "that my soul might be blinded altogether if I looked at things with my eyes or tried to apprehend them only by the help of the senses. And I thought I had better have recourse to the logos . ... This was the method I adopted. I first assumed some principle, which I judged to be the strongest, and then I affirmed as true whatever seemed to agree with this, and that which disagreed I regarded as untrue." But in all the features that Socrates mentions, Socratic method is essentially Eleatic, Parmenidean dialectic. The search for the sources of Pythagorean deductive arithmetic thus leads us back to Parmenides, or to someone else, who lived about the same time, and whose utterances had the same effect What was so special, so peculiar, about the discourse of the Parmenidean Goddess, that it could precipitate what followed? "Thinking and the thought that it is," says the Goddess, "are one and the same. For you will not find thought apart from that which is ... ; for there is and shall be no other besides what is, since Destiny has fettered it so as to be whole and immovable." "It is necessary to say and to think," the Goddess adds, "that Being is." These words are spoken not by Parmenides but to Parmenides. He is being called upon to say and to think, and the saying and thinking are not separated, although the order in which the Goddess names them is worth noticing, being the opposite of that which we moderns tend to choose. The thinking, 29 �The College we had better remind ourselves, is Greek thinking; the verb is noein, which once meant: to perceive by the eyes, to observe, to notice. It is not to conceive, to analyze, to grasp, to attack in our thinking. And that which Parmenides is asked to say and to notice, what will it do for him to say and to notice it? The sentence, "Being is," does indeed offer nothing to grasp, nothing to conceptualize, nothing to attack in our thinking, nothing to analyze. Except-there is a twoness there. There is the noun and the verb, essentially, of course, the same word. Yet, there is that which is present, and there is its presence. To say and to notice not only what is present but its presence is to be arrested in front of something. It is to be, at least a little bit, astonished. It is to respect what lies before us. It is to think appropriately, as befits the matter. At some point Greek thought ceased asking: Out of what do the many things come to be? and began to ask instead: What is the Being of that which is in front of us? Ti to on is the Greek: what is the being? In this question, there are implicit the so-called laws of logic: A is A, A is not not-A. Deductive science, I am proposing, takes it start here. What seems to have been important, for these beginnings, was not answering the question but pursuing it. Even Aristotle, from whom we have received more answers than questions, nevertheless says: Both formerly and now and forever it remains something to be sought and something forever darting away: Ti to on? Suppose, if you will, that the account I propose is something like the truth. Then deductive science came to be and perhaps still comes to be as a result both of a logos from beyond the gates of Night and Day, and of the fracturing of Being and of the Motion going on in the Realm of Fire and Night. Or can deductive science proceed on its own way, simply leaving behind what triggered its coming-to-be? It has sometimes attempted to do this: to become, for instance, purely formal, with the specification of every element and every rule of operation, and the exclusion of every bit of explicit or implicit ontology, with the intent of insuring logical completeness and consistency. The effort has led to many refinements; but the odd result of modern metamathematical study is that the effort cannot succeed in its original intention. Mathematics does not succeed in being completely in itself and for itself. Its triumph lies not in isolated grandeur, but in coping as best it can with necessities that appear. Deductive mathematics, not quite a century after coming to be, underwent a crisis with respect to its foundations. The discovery of incommensurability can well have been early in the 5th century. It implies, rather obviously one would think, the falsity of the old Pythagorean doctrine that all is number, whatever that doctrine may have meant. But if the discovery was early, an important consequence of it was somewhat slow in being realized. The teaching concerning ratios of magnitudes was originally conceived in a numerical fashion: four magnitudes are proportional when the first is the same part, parts or multiple of the second that the third is of the fourth. That definition was still being used by Hippocrates of Chios. Archytas, around 400 B.C., was saying that logistic, the doctrine of ratios of numbers, has the highest rank among the arts, and in particular it is 30 superior to geometry, "since it can treat more clearly than the latter whatever it will." Archytas thus fails to notice that the fact of incommensurability sets a new task for mathematics, the formulation of a new definition of proportionality, one which will apply to magnitudes that may be incommensurable. The problem is solved by the early fourth century, possibly by Theaetetus; at least he is the first we know to have used the new definition, and he did so extensively. The new definition of same ratio or proportionality is not the one embodied in Euclid, the definition due to Eudoxus, but a precursor of the latter, one which we can argue Euclid excised from Book X as it came down to him from Theaetetus. The manner of the new definition is worth noting. At the beginning of Book VII of Euclid, a method is given of determining the greatest common divisor of two numbers; it has come to be called the Euclidean algorithm. What is the greatest common divisor of 65, 39? 65 - 39 ~ 26 39 - 26 ~ 13 But 13 measures 26. Ans: 13 is g.c.d. (65,39). The lesser of the two numbers is subtracted from the greater until a yet smaller number remains. This smaller remainder is subtracted from the preceding subtrahend in the same manner, and so one continues, obtaining a series of decreasing remainders, until one arrives at a remainder that measures the preceding remainder. In the case shown, this number is 13, which is the greatest common divisor of 65 and 39. This same procedure of successive, in-turn, subtractions -its Greek name was antanairesis-can be applied to magnitudes, in order to determine their common measure. But suppose they are incommensurable; then the subtractions would go on forever, without any remainder being found that measured the preceding remainder. A particular such situation is shown in the following diagram, which shows the side and diagonal of a square: (See Figure 4). A DE ~ EB (symmetry) CD (isosceles rt. 6] CD~ AC- AB CE ~ AB (or CB) - CD (or EB) And so on ad infinitum. ~ Figure 4 �January, 1980 First the side is subtracted from the diagonal, leaving CD; CD is then subtracted from the side CB twice, and so on; I will not go into the proof of incommensurability here, which necessarily involves a reduction to the absurd; but one can get a hint from the diagram as to why the process would be infinite. Nevertheless, this infinite process of antanairesis would go on in a determinate way, for a given pair of original magnitudes. The nth remainder, for example, might subtract two times from remainder n-1; and remainder n-1 might subtract three times from remainder n. The two and three, along with the corresponding numbers for all the other subtractions, would characterize and define the antanairesis as a whole. Then same antanairesis could be the definition of same ratio: a first magnitude would have to a second magnitude the same ratio as a third to a fourth if the first and second magnitude had the same. antanairesis as the third and the fourth. With this definition, it is possible to prove, for example, that rectangles under the same height are to one another as their bases, because one sees that the antanairesis will go on in the same way with the rectangles as with the bases, even though the antanairesis be infinite. There are other mathematical exploits of Theaetetus, embodied in books X and XIII, and they are of a kind with the formulation of the definition of proportionality that I have just described. Using theorems about numbers in new ways, Theaetetus succeeds in rendering what was inexpressible expressible. Such achievement, I would suggest, should be put down under the rubric of Pascal's esprit de finesse, rather than under his esprit de geometrie, the geometrical turn of mind, which Pascal so berates for its blindness to the problem of the principles. The Pythagorean mathemata, arithmetic, geometry, and the rest, are not liberal arts merely or primarily in being deductive, in pro· ceeding stepwise in accordance with certain rules. Their liberality, it seems to me, has an essential relation to the awareness not merely of logical necessity, but of that necessity with which they are designed to cope: we are free men when we are aware of that necessity and can begin to cope with it. The liberal arts become fully liberal only as we turn toward the problem of the principles, toward the matrix of necessity in which those principles are embedded, toward the question of being from which those arts take their rise. 1. This lecture owes everything, or nearly everything, to a number of studies by historians of mathematics, particularly; 0. Becker, "Die Lehre vom Geraden und Ungeraden im neunten Buch der euklidischen Elemente," Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematik . .. , Abt. B, Band 3, 1936, 125-145; B. L. van der Waerden, "Die Arithmetik der Pythagoreer," Mathematische Annalen, 120, 1947-1949, 127-153, and Science Awakening, New York, 1971: G. Vlastos, "Zeno of Elea" in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, VIII, 370; 0. Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity, 2nd edition, 1969; and above all articles by Arpad Szabo: "Zur Geschichte der Dialektik des Denkens," in Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, II, 1954, 17-62, and "The Transfor· mation of Mathematics into Deductive Science and the Beginnings of its Foundation on Definitions and Axioms," in Scripta Mathematica, 27, 1964, 28-48 and 113-139. For the Proclus text I depended on Procli Diadochi in Primum Euclidis Elementorum Commentarii, ed. Freidlein, Teubner, 1873, and the recent translation by the late Glenn R. Morrow, A Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements, Princeton, 1970. In the section on Parmenides there may be recognized a certain inspira· tion, much diluted, of Martin Heidegger's What is Called Thinking?, tr. Wieck & Graz, New York,: 1954. 2. I note that Egyptian fractions, with one exception, are unit fractions, fractions we would write with l as numerator. They are written by put· ting a line above the number we call the denominator. The exception was 2/3, written by putting two of these lines above the numeral 3. 3. Quoted in 0. Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity, 2nd edition, Dover, 1969, 79. 4. Paraphrased from van der Waerden, Science Awakening I, 63. 5. In particular, see Walter Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism. 6. Quoted by van der Waerden, Science Awakening, I, 109. 31 �Life Beyond the Reach of Hope: Recollections of a Refugee, 1938-1939 Philipp P. Fehl For Katharine and Caroline The central Jewish cemetery in Vienna is composed of two very large fields of land which are narrowly planted with graves. Located at the outskirts of the city, it forms part of the constantly busy, huge municipal cemetery which, at the time of its founding nearly a century ago, was a model of enlightened planning in the matter of regulating the public inconvenience of the disposal of the dead in a large city teeming with progress and expansion. Even today the effects of this foresight make themselves felt. There is a steady coming and going on the streetcars of somberly dressed people, women whose eyes are red from crying, and embarrassed men clutching garden tools or flowerpots. A small colony of women selling candles and flowers has sprung up at the principal gates; long rows of stoneyards line the last stretch of streetcar rails and display the wares of the monument makers. It is an awkward city of the dead, clumsily, perhaps, but lovingly cared for by the living who come to it from inconvenient distances, handicapped, burdened, and sometimes also upheld by the anonymity of a well-regulated public service in which even the individuality of grief obtains the form of a cliche. The Jewish sections of the cemetery, such as I remember them from the few visits on which I was taken as a child, were not really touched by this flow of traffic; one came and went Professor of Art History at the University of Illinois, Philipp Fehl is author of The Classical Monument: Reflections on the Connection between Morality and Art in Greek and Roman Sculpture, New York 1972. After serving in the U.S. Army from 1942-1946, he was an interrogator at the Nuremberg trials for a year. 32 with it but was detached from it upon entering the gates of the Jews. There was even in the air a certain touch of surprise as one left the crowds and went, as it were, the wrong way. Inside the cemetery an air of discreet prosperity prevailed. I remember the gleam of gold buttons on the frock coat of an attendant at the gate, the simple dignity of the architecture of the old ceremonial hall, and above all, the impression of stability in the form of the old fashioned tombstones, and their substance. Out of respect for the second commandment there were hardly any figurative pieces. Instead, the tombstones spoke with lettering: the names of the dead, honorific titles, often antiquated and now quaint, and the sentiments of the survivors in German; pious sayings in Hebrew. The magic of certain family names more or less peculiar to Austrian Jews enhanced, in the very place where death ruled, a sense of belonging, of lastingness, and the continuation of family. Stones bearing the names of famous men filled us with pride joined to melancholy, as did the names of rabbis we knew and revered. One grave was that of the rabbi who had married my parents and whose father (as my father was fond of pointing out), my grandparents. Visitors ever seemed to be few in comparison to the vast expanse of the Jewish graveyard. It is against the Jewish law except under strict necessity to bury more than one body in a grave, or to move bodies to make room for others. This explains the disproportionate size of the premises. On many graves one could see a few pebbles, tokens of a pious visit, which relatives and friends would leave at the tombs instead of flowers for, among conservative Jews at least, flowers counted as a vanity. From time to time one could hear the voice of a man who was somewhere near, but could not be seen for the dense rows of �January, 1980 stones, in the familiar chant of the prayer for the dead. On one occasion as we were visiting family graves my father said to me quietly, "Remember those graves; you must learn to find them on your own." I was still quite young and the realization that he thought he must instruct me, and that I would lose him as a guide, pained me. I could think of nothing better to say but that the graves all had numbers, and that the plan of the cemetery was readily comprehensible, but he repeated what he had said and spoke no more of it. This was long before Hitler's annexation of Austria. To me the world seemed stable and at least as predictable as the security of the well-kept cemetery. My father, who was a practical man, had no such illusions and I remember I was a bit ashamed of that. His sentence had an echo in it of an ancient Jewish caution regarding tombs; we may have to leave the graves behind, but we should remember where they are and, times permitting, be able to find them again and put them in order, we or our children. It was, I thought, not only unwarranted but ungenerous, uncomprehending of the spirit of modern times, even to consider the possibility that we might have to flee, like our ancestors, when they were ruled by the whim of princes. These were not the Middle Ages. I have gone back on occasion to the old cemetery and inevitably remember this unfinished conversation. The cemetery is now deserted; the streetcar no longer even stops at the farther gate. It is extremely difficult to find a grave that is not on a main road; the section markers are in part lost, impenetrable thickets of underbrush obscure the boundaries between individual graves. There are also great holes in the ground, piled high with tombstones that slipped or fell into them. Some of these holes are the results of erosion, others of artillery fire. A battle was fought across the cemetery as, at the end of the war, the Russian troops advanced on Vienna. In the early years after the war, now and then one could see the marker of the grave of a Russian soldier with its Soviet star incongruously placed among the Jewish tombs. The Russians buried their dead where they fell. There also were signs of the desecration of the cemetery during the Nazi years; the ceremonial halls were burnt out shells. Like the synagogues in the city of the living, they had been put to the flames. One of them is now rebuilt, the other, in the oldest part of the cemetery, has become a picturesque ruin. The inscriptions on the old tombs are hardly legible anymore-only here and there one sees a new tracing of the old lettering or a lawn actually cared for; they stand out incongruously against the mass of lonely graves and stones slowly tipping over or sinking into the ground. Here and there an added inscription on an old tomb recalls people who were murdered in faraway places or who died abroad as refugees. And there is a section of graves with little wooden markers, the names long worn off, where those who died in Vienna during the war, before the deportations were effected, found their burial. The markers were improvised, often from shop signs of Jewish stores, and one can now read on them fragments of texts announcing wares or skills. There also are a number of small gravestones erected after the war by mourning relatives, to take the place of these impermanent signs. The cemetery authorities, quite justly, do not permit large stones in this section. Quite at the border, in a no-man's land between Jews and Christians, but marked with crosses, are the graves of Christians of Jewish descent who were buried in the Jewish sector because what was called their 'race' denied them access to the cemetery of their co-religionists. Remarkable in the Jewish cemetery proper are also islands of neat rows of old tombs carefully straightened, many of them with inscriptions entirely in Hebrew. These are the tombs transferred to Vienna since the end of the war from ancient Jewish communities in the provinces where there are no Jews left and where the Jewish cemeteries continued to be exposed to vandalism or were in the way of local building expansion. Everywhere the grass grows over the cemetery. It is a gentle wilderness, a seemingly endless expanse of melancholy peace. Birds are at home there as if it were a nature preserve and on and off a rabbit will be startled by our steps into running. Some years ago my wife and I took our two children there. Adventuresome as they were, and willing to help find graves we could no longer find, they soon were out of our sight. They could not have been far but we both felt a strange, sudden fear that they would be gone forever, as if they had been given to us in a dream from which we were now awakening. But they soon came back to us, with their sweet American voices, and we awoke from the awakening. It was then that I decided to write down these memories, but it took years before I actually began. What I have to say is in praise of silence. The terror of the German persecution and finally the mass murder of the Jews of Eu· rope is a matter of record~even of German record that boasts of it. I saw very little of it (if it had been otherwise I would, probably, not have lived to tell the tale) and I do not, at any rate, want to speak of that, but rather of moments in which a kind of insight was communicated that escaped words. My memory holds them up to me in the form almost of pictures that fill me with an in· finite longing, and with gratitude that I can still see them. It was, I am tempted to say, my privilege to see how people I loved prepared themselves for death-and I saw it with open eyes for I was young and so wanted to learn-not at the time when death was actually upon them, but when there was still time to reflect, during the lull, when normal life had come to a halt for Jews but no one knew, perhaps not even the eventual devisers of mass murder, just what the end would be, or how long it would take. We knew, however, that those of us who could not emigrateand there were not many who readily could: there were no countries open to refugees at the time; at best, they had only restrictive quotas-would be doomed to a cheerless existence without means of support and at the mercy (if that is the word) of a hostile government, to a life without a future. Suddenly, there was time on our hands, and the opportunity, the invitation, to marvel about the purposes of life, to wonder how to support each other, and to prepare for death. I do not know how those who stayed behind when I finally escaped met their death. It must in its horror and panic and fatigue have been incongruously different from what they anticipated. I cannot speak of that but I do want to recall, such as I could discern it in the silence, what they discovered about the dignity of man when they still had the leisure to do so and hold on to it in the lull of the months that preceded the outbreak of the war. 33 �The College The Germans moved into Austria suddenly. Their arrival took us quite by surprise, though, in hindsight, it seems quite astonishing that we had not expected it. The invasion threats, the invectives, the call for a new order, had been going on for years. But they were not taken seriously because they kept on being repeated. It was only journalism, it seemed, just words~the deed was against the law of nations; it was unreasonable, if not scandalous, to expect it. In the view of many-certainly in mine (I was then a high school student of seventeen)-this kind of violence no longer was possible; the modern democracies would not tolerate it. But the surprise came. There was to be an important announcement over the radio. We knew the political situation was tense; and suddenly there was the tired voice of the Austrian chancellor, abdicating and acceding to the German demands in order to prevent, so he put it, Gen'nan blood from being spilled-that is the German blood of the Austrians as well as the German blood of the Germans, a kind of fratricide. And then there was music, variations on the Austrian national anthem by Haydn, and then the voice of the new chancellor-designate Seyss-Inquart (he later became the German governor of the Netherlands and after the war was hanged at Nuremberg), addressing his audience as 'fellow Germans'. He represented a new law and order, and in a strained, passionate way, invited the German troops to enter Austria. And then suddenly we knew we were trapped, that the conditions of our lives had changed, that we had no future in the terms of living as we had been living, that aU was insecure, that our days_ had turned to night. We had a neighbor, a gentile woman who had come in to listen to the radio with us. She was a devout Catholic and a devoted partisan of the Catholic party that ruled Austria. She was disconsolate and almost fainted during the broadcast, and we, the obviously doomed victims of the invasion (the others, the German-blood Austrians as they would say, were now being liberated from the presumed dominance of the Jews), we the Jews, had to comfort her and take her home. "My Franz," she said of her son, who was a minor civil servant, "Will he keep his post, will they now refuse to promote him because he is a faithful Catholic?" We said, "there, there," to her and as we said it we knew that our exclusion from the sharing of speech with our compatriots, or new ex-compatriots, had begun. From that day on the same woman, a lonely, pleasant enough elderly widow whose son Franz was her only purpose in living, cut herself off from talking to us and avoided my mother, whom for a long time she had made a not altogether willing but tolerant partner of daily conversations about her hopes for her son. But now she would not talk to the old neighbor who suddenly, without changing, had become a 'Jewess,' a controversial figure. But some weeks after the invasion she appeared beaming at the door, and announced, "My Franz told me it is all right that I talk to you again ... it won't harm him in his career." She had wanted to come for days, she said, to invite my mother to her apartment. She had taught her parrot to say "Heil Hitler!," and he did it so well. For some reason she thought-if thinking is the word-that this would please my mother. The German invasion was masterminded quite impressively. Soon after the announcement of the surrender on the radio- 34 which the very next speaker turned into a liberation and a welcome to the new times-the German air force, flying very low, was over Vienna. For days a carpet of airplanes with their low drone was spread over the silent city, and the hum of these gray machines and the finality of their threat went on and on and with its reverberation affected every thought, every word one spoke; it was an object lesson in the 'facts of life'. These airplanes, clearly equipped for spreading death, dropped little pink leaflets, friendly jubilating messages, "the German air force greets German Vienna"; and as the sky was filled with the view of death so the ground was covered with these confetti of national fraternization. But upon Jews a new reality was imposed-there was not a day that did not bring vilifications in the ugliest language that the press and radio could devise. It was so astonishing to me that people in order to express their joy, their professed hopes for the good, should join with it so much hatred, that scorn could be so alive. But there it was, a simpleminded brutal explanation of the nature of evil in the world: there were Aryans and Jews, and the ones were good, shining examples of what man could be, and the others evil. The world, they said, needed a 'solution of the Jewish problem'. And my former compatriots, with the exception of those who now became as shy, as cautious, as lonely as the Jews, and saddened unto death by the shame of the country, readily accepted this formulation. Antisemitism, which before had been regarded as vulgar, now was indulged in by high and low, gladly and pompously. It became the natural expression of a new patriotic highmindedness. No appeal was possible, not to reason nor loyalty. I remember a conversation with one of my fellow students who had been a friend. He was now a genuinely converted Nazi but, as a former friend, he felt the need of securing my approval of his now having to hate me. It was something that I, too, would have to honor, as it were, for we were natural enemies of each other. But I did not understand and argued, not to defend myself but to reach, such as I could, for what we both, however dimly, had comprehended in our studies, and above all, in the love of literature which we shared, especially that of the German classics, for the definition of what made life worthwhile, something that I now loved and needed with a new urgency, to accompany me and hold me up in the loneliness unmitigated by friendship and the sharing of trust that was now before me. He listened to me as if I were presenting a siren's song and nodded like one who understands what he must reject, and concluded not coldly but sadly that what I said was quite right, as long as it was seen from my position, but that I could not rise to his and we could not argue the matter out because our blood was different. No matter what I thought, my understanding would be governed by my blood-my very argument showed it-and I could neither see nor feel the truth of what he advocated because in him spoke the knowledge of nature and God that. suited the German mission in the world. And so on. We never spoke again. Short of the flood of official vilification and occasional, policeinspired acts of murder and vandalism against Jews, nothing much happened to change the routine of our lives. My father continued to work in his store, my brother and I continued going to school, doing homework. But we knew we were no longer citi- �January, 1980 zens. Our presence in our city was, for the time, being tolerated but also scorned, and we were no longer protected by the law. We lived on grudgingly bestowed sufferance, provided we were not 'noticed'. And going out meant that you no longer could be reasonably sure you would come home again. Apart from other obvious distinguishable traits Jews could readily be identified in the streets because their lapels were not decorated with the ubiquitous swastikas, and, more readily than that, by their sadness, the loneliness of the unjustly persecuted for whom there was no hearing, in the midst of a city now teeming with a new jollity filled with that joie de vivre, a veritable delirium of pleasure, that had descended upon Vienna where everyone was making, collectively, a new start in life. We disturbed the millennium that was just dawning upon the others. And there were so many petty insults to Jews to accompany the obvious great threats with which we now had to cope. You could no longer sit down on a park bench unless it was marked as one particularly reserved for Jews, on streetcars you were not allowed to take a seat, and the conductor when he collected your fare would no longer say "Thank you." And every visit we made had the aspect of a last farewell. There were so many suicides. There was not a day when we did not hear of a friend, an acquaintance, a relative, who chose so to end his life, and the news was acknowledged not with the shock that normally accompanies one's hearing of such an end, but with a nod of the head, an understanding, even a hushed envy, or a gesture of loving respect, for we knew they died because they would no longer be offended. The news of these deaths came and fell like soft snow, drifting, and enveloping us with a great loneliness. It even brought a kind of comfort, an affirmation of the dignity of man that defined itself in choosing death. And similarly it could define itself in the choice of staying alive and in mourning, and in the choice of one's words, and in the listening to what was barely spoken. One day soon after the "liberation" there was to be a great parade. Our house was situated on a road traditionally taken by processions. Every year, on Corpus Christi Day, a temporary altar was erected directly across the street from us. I remember that we always left our places at the window when the celebration of the Mass was begun there; it was not right to watch it for the sake of curiosity. But this time the street and the windows were festively decked out with swastika flags and across from our window someone had decorated his window with a huge picture of Hitler framed elaborately with flowers. It was an official holiday and we were all at home. There was no place to go. And there was nothing to say. We did not speak until my father, who had been looking absentmindedly and yet with a kind of fascination at the Hitler picture, said with such an astonishment in his voice, as if he had hit upon the solution of an enigma, "Look, that guy-dieser Kerl-parts his hair on the wrong side of the head_" And then after a pause he added, quietly, "If they will only let me keep on working ... ''That same evening was the parade. It seemed as if all of Vienna was marching below our windows. Among the neatly divided groups with banners there was, of course, a contingent of children; then there came a huge group of little boys dressed in T shirts and very short knee pants, a sort of freedom through fitness demonstration, marching with anxious adroitness. They were much applauded in the streets as at regular intervals they cutely went through the exercise of giving the Hitler salute in unison. When they came by our windows, which were identifiable as Jewish windows because they were not decorated, they broke into a chant rehearsed for such occasions: Wenn's Judenblut vom Messer spritzt~a threatening invocation of a day of reckoning yet to come: "When Jewish blood will drip from our knives ... "-and marched on, ever so many. It was a cold night in March, and my mother looked down with such a sadness, and in the same matter-of-fact way in which my father, before, had spoken of Hitler's hairdo, she .said, shaking her head, "These children down there will catch cold ... " I do not think many Jews in those days 'explained' themselves to each other. Everybody knew that the other was moved by the same loneliness. A certain intimacy of loving understanding held the victims together without words; looks sighed and then withdrew into themselves, out of politeness, perhaps, mingled with compassion, so as not to break out in fruitless tears and disturb the other's grief with one's own. We began to learn to live with desperation, to be social in solitude. There was a Jewish old age home in Vienna that was also a home for the incurably ill My mother had long made it a practice to go there once a week, to speak to people, to bring them little gifts. She always dressed for the occasion, it was festive, and she often took my brother and me along. Once she was introduced to a very old lady and she kissed her hand, because this was the way to honor old age. It was no longer done in the new time, that of the Republic of Austria that was then 'my time', and the gesture which was spontaneous, natural, and so obviously well mannered surprised me in its beauty and touched me as it still touches me. We continued these visits under Hitler, and there were now many people visiting in the home. Many were paying a last call to relatives, some were on the verge of emigration or flight, whether abroad or into death. All had time on their hands because they had lost their jobs_ The old and the infirm in the home were more lively, and the visitors dejected; the roles had been reversed, the old now comforted the young. For they were already marked for death-only waiting-and now almost grateful, that they (as one then thought) could no longer be disturbed. They were so sorry for us because our lives were threatened unnaturally, by the society of our fellowmen, rather than illness and the death that cuts off old age. The dying blessed the living and wept for their fate. There was so much love alive in the sunlit courtyard of the ancient building when I went there for the last time to bid my farewells, shortly before I left Austria. And the peace of a world retreating into the tomb. My first and lasting lesson in loneliness was imposed upon me in the first week after the invasion, when I still rebelled against accepting the obvious fact that we were proscribed people and outside the protection of the law. It was the first Sunday under the new state of affairs and my father was anxious to find out how his relatives were faring. It clearly was not wise to be seen in the streets, but I argued, with too much acerbity, that Nazis or not, the nation lived by laws, and if we observed them-even though we obviously could not endorse them-the authorities would have no reason to harm us. I remember insisting with what now would be called teenage defiance that it was coward- 35 �The College ice, feebleness, to give in to fear and sit at home when we had the tight to use the streets. If one gave it up, no wonder they would riot concede it to us, etc. My father, more to stop the noise of the argument though also irritated by his son's sharpness, merely said to me, "Come, let's go." And off we went. It was a peaceful Sunday morning and many Viennese were in the streets, walking their dogs, chatting, all or almost all wearing a swastika in their buttonholes. In their festivity they looked at us with joy, ready to greet us, and to be greeted with a hearty Heil Hitler! but as we looked away they realized we did not belong and looked at us oddly before they looked away themselves. "See," I said to my father, "it works." From time to time we saw small crowds in the streets, gathered about a central group; we did not venture nearer to find out what was going on; it would have been a provocation so to become a part of a group. But it did not take us long to find out. A young man pu1led up a bicycle near us; he wore a red arm band with a swastika in the center of a white field, a young believer recruited into the auxiliary police. He stopped us and, without meanness, as if it were a merely diagnostic routine, addressed both of us, "The gentlemen will please excuse me for stopping them, but are the gentlemen by any chance Jews?" And upon our saying yes-it was as if we were admitting to a crime-he pointed~ his finger at me and said, "The young one" (he was himself just about my age) "comes along with me!" He made me run in front of his bicycle, and he wanted me to run smartly, "Chest out," he cried, and "move your arms!" Soon we arrived at one of those circles of onlookers my father and I had noticed before. It was a particularly large gathering, and together we pushed our way into the center. I saw some people squatting on the ground, obviously all Jews, who were scrubbing the pavement on which slogans had been written only a few days ago, when Austria was still free, exhorting people to unite behind the government i11 a plebiscite that was to demonstrate to the world that Austria treasured its independence. It was now proposed that the Jews had conspired to bring about this show of resistance and the Jews therefore had to clean the words off the pavement. It was oilpaint and we were not given any solvents or soap, just brushes and water. All of us squatted there, and scrubbed, and when we ran out of water one of the overseers poured more on the pavement, caring to be careless, and splattering us with the water. There was no jeering, just hundreds of eyes glued on us in silence, a wicked, fascinated curiosity to see how we would 'take it'. And take it we did. From time to time a new victim was brought in, and an earlier one duly released, the crowd making way for him, not courteously but as if he were infecti0us or a ghost. There were women in the crowd, beady-eyed. "I know a really bad Jew," said one, with the eagerness of a witch, "really bad." And one of the young attendants: "Where do I find that Jew?" And two or three women crowding around him, gave the address, dtsputing the quickest way to get there. Once an old man, a rabbi, aged and infirm, was pushed into the circle: "No, let him go," murmured the crowd, "he is too old." "No, make him do it," said others, "he is only pretending." "Beat it," said the guardians to him after a quick consultation, "beat it and never show your dirty face around here again." And so it went. I worked there, with a fierce eagerness, in anger first, and then 36 in silence, concentrating on the pavement, and from time to time looking up, still marvelling whether this was real, and for the very marvel of it wanting to see it all. I so well remember the eyes turned on me that even now, as I write this down, I can see some eyes turning away, as I look up to see, to remember, to comprehend. And then someone tapped me on the shoulder, a guardian; a new victim had been brought in. "You can go now." He said it almost tenderly. I had served my turn, the ordeal was over, and they were not, he seemed anxious to assure himself by this arrogation of the aspects of fairness, members of a gang, but police: if their measures were harsh they were just also because they were administrated in an orderly fashion. I walked off quickly, moving towards the line of houses so as to have their cover, a protection of anonymity, as near the wall as was practical. And I heard my father's familiar whistle from a doorway. He had followed me from a distance, waited, and been at the ready to help if help were needed, if help he could, all this time. It had been perhaps two hours. We then walked on through side streets, like shadows, my father guiding my steps, for he knew, from his service in the war, how to be on one's own on patrol. When we came to his brother's house they were astonished to see us and even reproachful ("How dared you venture out?") when they heard the story. And so we lived. The adventure cured me of arguing. It also made me very silent, as were the rest of us. I sometimes still see that silence in old passport photographs. So many of tis had to have pictures taken, for all sorts of documents that were needed for the rigamarole of applying for passports, emigration visas that one knew only in the rarest cases would be granted. But one left nothing untried. Almost everyone spent day after day standing in long queues before embassy doors, only to be given a form to apply which was but a prelude to rejection. This practice of foreign governments to protect their labor market from a sudden influx of penniless Jews weighed heavily on us. One expected nothing from the Nazis who breathed murder and contempt in every one of their utterances regarding Jews, but outside there was what one called "the world". The world at best, however, responded grudgingly to our desperate need for help and reassurance, exactly because our needs were so desperate. But to return to the photographs. There is such a sadness in those pictures. It was then still customary that the photographer would try to make you smile for your picture-and no one, no one ever smiled. The picture, one knew, might well be the last record of one's life. When mine was taken by a cousin who dabbled smartly in amateur photography he took me outside and lined me up against a wall for the obligatory neutral gray background. As I stood and waited and looked at the camera I saw one of the slogans of the new regime written in large letters on the wall opposite: "Juda verrecke," a singularly brutal exhortation to Jews to just up and die. We saw and heard things like that all the time, and no one spoke to us. I do want to report one silent act of kindness that probably saved my life. It all happened as if in a silent movie, in slow motion. I was on my way to school, and, as often happened to me, nearly late-the presence of horrors in the streets had not changed the bad habits I had lovingly acquired in the years of coping with school. �January, 1980 As I hurried along with my books under my arms I saw a young woman standing in the doorway of a house, looking at me insistently, anxious to catch my attention. It was the first time since the disaster had occurred that a non-Jew had looked at me, wanting to be noticed, to be recognized. I saw her, with her mouth open as if she wanted to scream, beckoning me to come over to her, into the house. I wanted to walk on, but I saw the terror in her eyes, and crossed the street. Quickly, quickly, she motioned, and when I came into the house she was gone. As I turned around I saw a whole row of storm troopers walking in step along the width of the street, a net of men spread out to catch Jews, to arrest them as they came upon them. There were quotas, I learned later; so many victims to be brought in per day, to be interrogated, perhaps to be sent to concentration camps, just to keep the Jews in line, I suppose, and themselves busy. We kept on going to school becaUse there was nothing else to do and because the habit of working for the final certificate, the Matura, which.in normal circumstances would have entitled us to enter the University, was ingrained. At school, Jews and Gentiles now sat apart. Our teachers, with the exception of the Jewish ones who had been replaced, were the same we had before. Some, dearly and shamelessly traitors to their teaching of just a few weeks before, now aired Nazi convictions with a sternness full of contempt for us, the Jews. They ignored us as if we were not in the room. Before this they had preached other sermons with the same tones of highmindedness that now accompanied the new texts. We watched ever so carefully, hoping for a word of recognition, a sign of secret support, but none really came, though we saw that some of our old teachers were embarrassed when, according to their instructions, they began every day's lecture with the Hitler salute. As far as dealing with Jews was concerned, they-the best of them-found refuge in an exacting correctness; the grading (as it always had been in our school) was strict but fair. In that respect there was no change. Only conversation had died, and with it the occasional corrective or encouraging comments on our papers, ever sparse though they had been, that would have invited a discussion with the teacher. Nor was there talk with our gentile fellow sh1dents. Some were now members of Nazi youth outfits and came to school in uniform. All, with a strange solicitude, watched each other's behavior, especially vis d vis the Jews. Any civility would have amounted to a protest against the regime. And so did we watch them, furtively and amazed. Our fellow students were still the boys we had known, but there was now a new element of optimism in them. Even if they remained playful they now knew, with an unbecoming resolve, where they were going. They felt liberated and proud to be members, participating members, of that great political and military machine represented by Greater Germany: formerly citizens of a small contemptible state that had no power, they had suddenly become members of a nation which, they were sure (and for reasons more formidable than hindsight now is capable of seeing), would inherit the world. They were not, or not just, opportunists but idealists who had learned or were learning to see the duties of man in a new way, a more joyful and life-assenting conviction that turned the lust for power into a moral asset. Instruction at school took on a new direction; education served the new state and affirmed new values. We, the Jews, received the same instruction, the same assignments as the other shldents, but were treated as if we were shadows. By and large the teachers turned their faces to where the gentiles sat. With some it was shame, with others a veritable lust to humiliate. Small clues would show a world, and young eyes see keenly. As far as my Jewish friends and I were concerned it was now the teachers who were being tested. But I took no pleasure in seeing them fail; sadness overcame me, and a new kind of loneliness that came of the effort, I think, to escape from disgust. Some of our old teachers, however, I loved, or learned to love, because an occasional accent of regret or a sigh of fatigue indicated how troubled they were. I could see, or thought I could see, that they were mourning the death of Austria and that they lived in silent pain. I felt sorry for these elderly men to the point of tears, because of the burden they carried within, because they were compassionate when it was stylish to be hard. Two encounters in school, not in themselves lovable, but quaint, stand out in my memory for their indefinable oddity, a result of the contrast between the habits of civilization that still made themselves felt, like dead weight, and the order of the new orientation. One of the substitute teachers we had (he took the place of our beloved teacher of German who was a Jew and was now gone, replaced without explanation) was a thoroughly interesting figure. His name was Thiel, he was young but was what one then called an 'old Nazi'. He had, so gossip among us had it, been living for years as a political refugee in Germany, making a living as the conductor of a jazz band. He had, in fact, something of the politesse of a musical performer about him. It was the rule that students would get up when a professor entered the room. Every time this man met his class he performed a ritual he had himself invented. Like the other teachers he turned towards the gentile side of the classroom and gave the Hitler salute, very smartly, but then he turned to us, the Jews, and responded to our having stood up for him with a polite, elegantly clipped bow. He was the only one in the whole crowd of professors who openly acknowledged our existence. The other moment of courtesy occurred after we had taken our final examination, the Matura. By that time Jews and Gentiles had been altogether segregated into separate schools. The school I had been attending was now a school for Jews only, the empty places filled up by Jewish students who were moved to ours from other districts of Vienna. The Matura was a solemn, if not awesome event in the life of students and the school upheld all the appearances of tradition. The examinations were rigorous but fair, except that the Ministry of Education had decreed that in case of doubt a Jewish student should receive the worse rather than the better grade. It was an effort to be just in the full rigor of the law, uncornpromised for members of the accursed race, by charity. The chairman of the commission that administered the examination was, as usual, an outsider to the school; in our instance a man who had been called back into service from retirement, to replace someone who because of his origins or his allegiance to the former regime had been removed from the board. He was, so gossip had it, known for his very old Nazi sym· pathies, and for his tried antisemitism. He turned out to be a 37 �The College very old gentleman, with nice, easy manners, a little deaf and, if a Nazi and antisemite, still formed by the old ways of civility. His antisemitism was more a matter of private prejudice than a manifestation of civic pride, a sort of crabby dislike of what was alien that has a tradition all its own and that was, before it merged with the rabid, modern hatred of the Jews, more ridiculous than monstrous. Our man presided fairly, if with some disdain, over our examinations. The time for the festivities having arrived, we filed into the assembly room and the professors took their seats. He rose to give the speech for the occasion, which he may easily have given fifty times before. He was fond of that speech, one could see. He began, "Gentlemen!" And then he looked about the room-it was a part of his initial speaking gesture-and disappointment spread about his face. He had forgotten we were all Jews and now he remembered and his speech would not fit the occasion-which was a first (and probably also a last) in the history of Austrian education. There was nothing for which he could express a pious wish. Our certificates, though valid, did not entitle us to enter the University, because we were Jews. And what would we be doing in the world? If anything good or prosperous, could he as a loyal civil servant of the new order wish for it? "Gentlemen!", he began again, and his embarrassment grew quite visibly, as did our keen attention. And then he spread his arms, palms upwards, with a gesture of polite helplessness. "Well, gentlemen, I congratulate you." He sat down. The ceremony was over. In this school, during the last weeks of classes, I made a new friend, a young man who stood apart. He had just recently come to our school to take his final exams with us. One day we stood on a balcony looking into the school courtyard teeming with students, none of them knowing what the next day might bring, all perhaps too busy talking about the exams because there was no future beyond that, most of us still very much schoolboys in the slang we spoke, the old ways still about us and no longer fitting our new situation which was not a situation at all, our lives altogether undefined, and each one of us unspeakably insulted, and each in his own way trying to cope with it. As we stood there then and talked of what it meant to be alone, and I looked for words, or images, in the plays of the German and Greek and French classic authors which we were rereading for the examination, and which I had always loved and which now began to mean so much more, he told me that he had come to this Jewish school by his own choice, that he was in fact not a Jew but wished to become one. His story was singular. His widower father, a prosperous farmer, had brought him up as a regular country boy. "It was natural, among young people in our part of the country," he explained, "to be active in the illegal Nazi gangs. It was, so to speak, a sporting activity; once we broke the windows of the one Jewish store in our little town. When Hitler moved into Austria, heroes of the underground movement were needed. It was suggested that our gang be inducted into the storm troopers as a special unit. It was an honor for the entire village. In order to fulfill the entrance requirements everyone of us had to show proof of his German (i.e. non-Jewish) ancestry to the fourth generation. When I asked my father for my dear mother's birth certificate he 38 had to break down and tell me that she had been jewish. It was as if a whole world had collapsed, and I ran away from home and lived in the fields for weeks. There I figured things out, and now I want to become a Jew, and take my examinations in my capacity as a Jew, and at the first opportunity I shall go to Palestine and live there." I do not know what became of him. I do remember that I wondered at the time, as I wonder now, whether his desperate rejection of his father, who had betrayed the rllemory of his mother because, I presume, he had wanted the child to grow up happy, adjusted, as it were, to his environment, was not a continuation of his original commitment to fight things out in the terms of whatever happened to be your origins, as if that determined what was right, and not justice. But I do know that his reasoning was earnest and original and brave and that he was touched by sorrow as we looked down upon our schoolmates milling about and that he was sorry-not just because he had changed sides or fortune had changed sides on him-but because he had learned about compassion and the nature of guilt only when he himself was a victim. I also want to record a story I only heard. As is well known, on November lOth, 1938, all or almost all the synagogues in Germany and Austria were blown up by order of the government and many Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. I was then no longer in the country, though my parents and my brother were. Our family had a good friend, an elderly gentleman who was a pious Jew and made his living as a Hebrew teacher. On the day after the burning of the synagogues there was a knock at his door early in the morning and he thought he was going to be arrested. But instead he found a young gentile woman at his door with a bundle in her hands which she pressed upon him. She knew he was a good Jew, she said-she and her husband had often seen him go to the synagogue nearby. After the fire the two of them had poked about the remains and they had found the object in the bundle. It was a Torah scroll; it would bring them no luck. "It was a pity what was done," and she asked his blessing and wept and left. Our friend and his very old father, another Hebrew scholar, examined the scroll and found it charred and in places torn. So they went to the Jewish cemetery with their bundle and, as the Jewish law prescribes, buried the Torah scroll. I sometimes see them in my mind's eye standing there in the loneliness of twilight, two small huddled figures furtively burying a book. Once in the night after a number of terrible things had been reported and friends had disappeared, I all of a sudden was seized by a desperate fear. I lost all nervous control. I so desperately wanted to be saved. I don't remember what I said-or shouted-at my parents, but I do know that I asked, demanded, that they must save me, that I was afraid of death, that I did not know what to do. They had already gone to bed and I startled them from their sleep, from their own sadness. My father listened and then to stop the terror and to state the truth spoke ever so quietly, with a disappointment in his voice that was only too genuine. "But," he said, calling me by my name, "have you forgotten that we all share the same danger?" I had, indeed, forgotten, and I was changed, I think, in my manner from that moment on and tried to learn, to learn as best I could, to live con- �January, 1980 siderately in a world full of fears and beyond the reach of hope. Still hope there was for me once again, when I fled to Czechoslovakia. But my cares followed me, and my hope was never free; it had no wings. It was more like wondering how it would all turn out, when the night would cease. Would anyone I cared for be left? Escaping to Czechoslovakia was a relatively easy thing if you found the right corrupt connections, and if you had the money to pay for the assistance you needed. Perhaps it was the fear I had exhibited so rudely that moved my parents to decide on the matter. But also I was, in fact, the most exposed member of our family. The Nazis especially had it in for young Jews about my age-for at that age people can be hotheads and cause trouble. It was clever police minds at work that first, on any pretence, singled out the unpredictable young for detention and worse. Visitors' visas to Czechoslovakia that normally were not made available to Jews because, of course, they could not go back to Austria, could, however, be bought, on a kind of black market in which lives were for sale. At a great sacrifice, such a visa was secured for me and I left the country very hurriedly. I remember the farewells, the dazed realization that I might never again see the beloved faces of the members of my family. I was tempted very much not to go and yet, for their sake even, saw that I must. My mother took me to the station. It was my first railroad trip on an express train. There was all the excitement of the journey before me and the well~wishing conversation, to take care not to catch cold, and all the things one says when one sees a child off in ordinary times. As the train pulled out of the station I bent out the window ever so far to see my mother once more and she, who had kept her poise all along and was tall and beautiful as she stood there talking to me-so she wanted to be rememberednow was a lonely figure on the platform, her hands clasping her face and weeping. I had seen her weep only once before, when her mother died. I sat down in my compartment, and was all alone. (to be continued) 39 �Kant's Imperative Eva Brann I have called this lecture "Kant's Imperative" so that I might begin by pointing up an ever-intriguing circumstance. Kant claims that the Categorical Imperative, which is the Moral Law, is implicitly known to every fullyformed human being. And yet its formulation is absolutely original with him. Thus to study that hard philosophical gem, the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, the little work in which Kant first sets out his imperative in its various versions, is to be in the curious position of laboring to acquire an utterly new principle which yet makes the almost persuasive claim of having been always in our possession. Out of this arises a common experience which, I am sure, you will have -or are already having-with the Categorical Imperative: you will probably find yourself ultimately unable to accept it, but you will never be able to forget it. But what we can neither accept nor ignore, it only remains for us to understand. The purpose of this lecture is to offer you some help with Kant's Imperative. Let me waste a few of our numbered minutes by setting out what kind of help I can try to give you. You might at first smile to hear it, but I think if it is put to you rightly, you might eventually agree that Kant is an easy author, easier, say, than Plato or Nietzsche. He is easy precisely because he seems difficult: laboriously explicit, forcibly systematic, rigorously technical. This is the kind of ruggedness meant to make a text accessible to straightforward explicatory industry. I shall engage in just so much of such explication of terms and their connections (gratifying though it be) as is necessary for our common discourse. There is, however, another kind of help I can offer, though it might be a little premature. Some people might say that we should go farther in unravelling the text before coming to this part of textual interpretation. It also has to do with the precise sobriety, the systematic self-sufficiency and the deliberate authority of our writer. For these qualities all work to veil from view the real roots of the system~the stupendous assumptions that are packed into its technical terms, the strange abysses opening up beyond its well-delineated foundations, and the human pathos implied in its projects. To raise these roots is not, in my opinion, the worst way to begin to understand the system, and is probably the most profitable way to use our short time together. A lecture read at the University of Chicago in March, 1979, at the invita· tion of Leon Kass in a series sponsored by the Dean of the College and the staff of "Human Being and Citizen." 40 Let me end these introductory remarks by pointing out that it is precisely because they have such a rewarding surface and such unsettling depths that Kant's works have attracted the most effective explications and the most pertinent criticisms, among both of which I shall mention only the one full-scale commentary on the Foundations, which is by Robert Wolff and is called The Autonomy of Reason. I shall make a straightforward beginning, then, by giving a brief explication of the literal meaning of the terms "categorical" and "imperative." The word "categorical" comes from a Greek verb which means to say something of something or somebody, and to say it flat out, without modification, without ifs and buts, as in accusation. A categorical assertion is an unconditional assertion. The word "imperative" means a formulated command. A command, marked by an exclamation point, is the irruption into the world of an intention, an intention to change the course of events by an imposition of purpose, to cause a re-routing of the flow of events. Not every command, however, has a formula, since it may take the form of an imperious gesture, or an only incidentally intelligible sound, like "Heel" to a dog, or "Let there be light" to the elemental darkness. Obedience to such commands is a measure of the bidder's power to be an efficient cause, to have an irresistibly powerful purpose. An imperative, on the other hand, not only articulates a projected move, it also gives a reason for it. It conveys not only the what, but also the why, of a command. It is an order directed to a rational being. To understand what a Kantian imperative is, then, we must know what a rational being, a being having reason, is. Reason is the chief of those terms which carries in it far more than Kant's bone-dry and matter-of-course presentation exposes. Indeed, it carries within it the whole system. Reason, then, in its rock-bottom aspect, is first of all a faculty, a power. A rational being is above all a being capable of functioning to some effect. Next, reason is a faculty for laying down the law, for law-giving. Reason is a legislative power. What, next, is a law? A law is an instrumental formula that subjugates, or brings under itself, those elements that are reached by it. Yet it does not accomplish this in the wanton, arbitrary manner of a despot, but in the mode of universality. The law commands, for it binds (indeed, that is what the word means), but it binds universally, or better, by means of universality, so that in binding it unifies. To say that reason is legislative �January, 1980 is to say that it is the unifying power of universality. That, in turn, means that it is a power of principles, for "principle" is the name in logic of a first law, a law of thought which in unifying all that we have in mind applies universally to whatever may come before us. Let me interject here an observation: Nothing in Kant's system seems to me more difficult to penetrate than his legal metaphor for reason as judgment given under law. I shall bypass that problem here, because its resolution is not immediately required. An imperative, then, is a command given to a being that is itself a source of lawlike commands. Such a command, to be acceptable, must therefore take the form of a law, a universal rule of reason, or more simply, of a reason why that command should obligate any and every rational being. It follows immediately that, strictly speaking, no com· mand can be externally issued to such a being; at most a law may be suggested to it for its own internal adoption. What is mofe, if a law is truly rational, namely unexceptionably universal, it will be adopted by any perfectly rational being, and will thus scarcely need to take the form of a command. It will be a principle of reason simply. In sum, therefore, a categorical imperative is an unconditional law-like command, formulated so as to be fit for adoption by a being which by its very nature deals in universals. The next question must then be: Is there such a command? To be sure it may seem a little back-to-front to define a formula and then to ask whether it has a matter. The question has a point only because we are all already aware of the fact that the Categorical Imperative is Kant's term, taken from logic, for the Moral Law. Therefore the question really is: Is there a moral law and does it and it alone have the form of a categorical imperative? Or, in brief: What is morality? You may have found the title of the first section of the Foundations, "Transition from Common Rational Knowledge of Morals to the Philosophical," a little strange, because it expresses the intriguing circumstance to which I have already referred, the fact that Kantian moral philosophy claims to be nothing but an elaboration of common knowledge. Note that this beginning means that the principal problein of most moral inquiries-are there moral rules and whence are they known?-is settled before philosophy ever begins: Kant claims that we all know that there is morality; we are all directly acquainted with the fact of morality. This moral fact consists merely in the experience we have (all of us, Kant means, even the most hardened sinner) of having said to ourselves: "I ought ... ;" I ought to do this or that, quite apart from profit or pleasure, quite against my desires and inclinations. I must say that Kant's claim seems to me to ring true: We have all heard that contrary inner voice of command, and the moral monster in whom it is dumb is simply not imaginable to most of us. Now notice that Kant does not begin with the highest good, nor with virtue, nor with habits, customs, good deeds or tables of commandments. (To be sure, we have already anticipated the fact that Kant will maintain the tradition linking right behavior to commands which is established in the Bible, but their number, source, claim to authority will all be radically altered.) Kant, one might say in sum, takes the path of morality rather than ethics, where I mean by ethics the concern with right conduct and by morality the concern with good intention. Morality, then, or better, moral worth, is the next term to attend to. Moral worth is what is to be valued in the agent's mode of action. "Nothing in the world-indeed nothing even beyond the world-," Kant begins, "can possibly be conceived which could be called good without qualification except a good will." To begin like that is precisely to begin with morality, for it is only the agent's faculty for initiating action-that bejng what the will is-which is good in itself. All other possible goods, the actions themselves, talents, acquisitions, circumstances, or, above all, the end to be achieved. are only conditionally or relatively good, since they might all be in certain situations, productive of harm. I want to say in passing that it is a very deep assumption that only the will and never its object can be simply good. At any rate, the will is clearly the central notion of morality. The perfectly good will, which Kant calls a holy will, is one which always obeys its own "ought." Human beings do notalways do as they know they ought. That is Kant's second moral fact. The first was that we all experience an inner obligation to certain actions; the second is that we by no means always discharge it. Kant never confuses, as he is sometimes accused of doing, the universality of the moral command with the frequency of its execution. When the kind of being that knows an "ought" but does not, from merely knowing it, necessarily obey it-when such a being does do as it ought, it is said to be doing its duty. Duty is the morality of beings whose will is handicapped. "The concept of duty." Kant says, " ... contains that of a good will though with certain restrictions and hindrances." When, however, such a being, a human being, can be said to do its duty, it must do so from no ulterior motive but out of mere respect for its own inner voice, not by compulsion of command but for the sake of the law. Here I must go outside of the Foundations to deal with two related matters: the reason why Kant founds his philosophy on the good will rather than on an objective good, and what it means to be a human being, a being with a defective will. This necessary tangent requires me to set out in the briefest way Kant's system as reflected in the major texts. You know that the central works are all called "critiques": There is a Critique of Pure Reason, a Critique of Practical Reason, and a third critique I shall barely mention at the end of the lecture. The word "critique" is used by Kant for an inquiry into the grounds of human knowledge, and that means for him, into the human faculties. The purpose of each critique is to certify some knowledge or activity which is already ours, to give us certain guarantees of its possibility-the desire for certainty is the guiding motive of Kant's enterprise. The Critique of Pure Reason inquires into the faculty of ex· periential knowledge; it grounds what for Kant is the sole mate· rial knowledge we can have, the science of nature. The second critique gives the grounds of moral action for which the term "practical" is reserved; later we will see why. Each of these texts is preceded by a short preliminary work which analyzes respectively the established natural science and the common moral experience to discover what faculties we 41 �The College must possess to make them possible. The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, the work we are at this moment studying, is one of these; it was actually published three years before its critique, in 1785. The critique itself is named from the faculty which is disclosed in the last section of the Foundation, the "practical reason," of course. (Just for the sake of systematic completeness, I might mention here that both critiques are followed by works giving the actual metaphysical systems grounded in the faculties, namely the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science and the Metaphysics of Morals.) The main point of this sketch of Kant's works is to document their all-determining, fundamental division into theoretical and practical philosophy. To quote from the first critique: "The lawgiving of human reason (i.e. philosophy) has two objects, Nature and Freedom, and thus contains both the law of nature and the law of morality, initially in two separate, but eventually in one philosophical system.'' Now I think that the practical reason is the centerpiece of Kant's philosophy, but that it is circumscribed and negatively defined, silhouetted, so to speak, by the pure reason. Morality begins where nature ends. So I must try to do the impossible and supply a three-minute review of the Critique of Pure Reason, which contains the account of nature. The account of nature and the account of the science of nature are for Kant identical. That is because the system of nature is determined by the way our Sensibility forms and our Understanding functions over the sensations that come to us. This Understanding is a sub-faculty of the Reason, and its function is the structuring of appearances so as to unify them into a lawful system of things, the system of nature and natural laws. What is here relevant to the exposition is that while we ourselves are the legislators who constitute nature, we are not so freely and consciously; our understanding does its regulating, as it were, behind our backs; we cannot alter or abrogate its dispositions. What is more, we ourselves are a part of rule-bound nature. For nature consists of ordered external appearances, the physical appearances of space, but also of inner appearances, the physchological events of our temporal consciousness. So, as human beings, we are at least partly of a piece with nature. Our behavior is controlled by inexhorable psychic mechanisms, akin to the laws of nature in being invariable sequences of cause and effect. Our desires and inclinations are as tendencies to motion, psychic lunges, incited by an object of desire or fear, as bodies are attracted or repelled by other bodies; we go after our natural ends not because of their intrinsic worth, but because they push or pull and bend us systematically-by inclination, as Kant says, using a physical term. Consequently, Kant has a most melancholy understanding of happiness: It is simply the-ever elusive-sum total of achieved desire, the successful completion of all psychic motion. (Let me, incidentally, remind you that this theory of happiness was set out within a decade of the Declaration of Independence and its inalienable human right to the "pursuit of happiness," a pursuit which has been understood as a similarly infinite chase.) As natural beings we are, then, in Kant's term, "pathological," meaning that we suffer rather than act, that we are passive rather than "practical" (Kant uses the word practical to signify a willed action, a deed.) 42 Now we can see why our morality is a morality of duty. The Will, our power of initiating action, is defined by Kant as a faculty for causing the reality of objects through ideas, that is to say, a faculty for realizing our conceptions. But our conceived object is naturally a wish or a desire. Yet by a desire, as I have just pointed out, we are but passively drawn; our motion toward its object is but a pseudo-action, not a genuine exercise of the Will. (Kant has a special word for such an object-determined choice: Willkuer, usually rendered in English "will" with a lower case w.) Aristotle says in the Ethics: "If anyone says that the pleasant or the beautiful exercise compulsion on the ground that they are external to us and compel us, we must answer that this would make everything compulsory, seeing that we do everything we do for their sake." Kant wants to say just that, namely, that all motion after external goods is compulsive, but he also wants to assert that we do not do everything for the sake of an external object. He proceeds, in sum, by conceiving human beings as rational and natural beings, as double beings with a double will, a pathologically affected faculty of choice as well as a practical faculty for initiating action. This latter, pure Will, is lead by no external purpose, aim, or object, but only by its very own laws and ends. Therefore, to act from duty is to follow the internal command, the Ought of the pure will and to resist the pull of desire. Duty is, to begin with, to be negatively apprehended as resistance to the mechanisms of nature. We can never experience ourselves as doing as we ought except when we deny ourselves as natural beings, for only nature has sensible appearances and can be experienced, and we can feel the will only as thwarted happiness. That is by no means to say that morality lies in opposing our natural inclination-only that its sole evidence is of this negative sort. All we can know of our willing is that we are capable of doing our duty. But how can we know even that? Here, half way through the exploration, let me recapitulate. We saw what a categorical imperative in general was, namely an unconditional command so formulated as to be capable of adoption by any rational bf:':ing. Next we saw that Kant's moral philosophy is a philosophy of intention, and begins with the moral fact of the sense of duty, an internal command of the will; furthermore morality takes the form of duty for those rational beings who have a will whose agency is sometimes blocked by the rriechanism of their nature, namely the pull of desire. Finally we saw that human beings are beings of just that kind, for whom to will means to come into conflict with the natural self. What remains to be articulated is the positive aspect of morality. How is it that we nonetheless believe ourselves able to exert our will freely? And what actually is the command it issues? That, after all, comes near the problem with which we began: Does the moral law, which, as we have seen, appears as the Ought of duty, have the form of a categorical imperative? Now is the moment to draw together the two terms, Will and Reason. The Will, Kant repeatedly reveals, is nothing but the Reason in its practical capacity. It is not merely associated with rationality; it is reason. Note that this identification is another crucial juncture, a tap root of the system. Will is reason initiating action, or, as Kant says, determining itself to action: By being "determined" is meant being pulled together out of the laxness �January, 1980 of abeyance to become a spring~board for specific deeds. Recall that the subfaculty of reason called the understanding constitutes and consequently knows nature and that therefore natural science is certain. The upper reason, however, Reason proper, has no object of knowledge; the critique of pure reason is, among other things, a criticism of the unwarranted uses of reason as a faculty of knowledge. Instead it is a power of action, a practical faculty. The understanding regulates appearances, but unconsciously; the practical reason, on the other hand, consciously legislates. To make laws for itself is, as we have seen, for Kant the very essence of reason and to enforce them its very life. Reason is self-controlled, self-determined, self-legislating. It is autonomous: the word means simply "self~legislating." Such autonomy is what Kant calls Freedom. We have a free will; we can obey the command of duty because it is our innermost, supersensible self that issues it. The idea of freedom and the will as a faculty of freedom are discovered as necessarily implied by the fact of morality in the third and last section of the Foundations. Note that I am holding the great middle section in abeyance for the moment. What, then, is freedom? Negatively it is what is not nature-a mystery, namely a non-natural causality, an invisible, supersensible source of change in the time- and space-bound sensible natural sequences and connections, the occasion of natural motions with supernatural significance. Positively, freedom is nothing but that very autonomy, that power of being a law unto itself, which characterizes the practical reason. What makes freedom possible is beyond all knowing, but what makes the moral law possible-that is to say, what makes it possible to obey the moral law-is freedom itself. The fact that we have a faculty of freedom is the critical ground of the possibility of morality. The moral law is in need of such grounding because, while a mere analysis of the concept of desires will inform us that we will follow them, nothing in the mere concept of a moral law tells us that we can obey it. It therefore needs a ground on which the command form "You ought!" is ef~ fectively conjoined to the thing to be done. (Incidentally, Kant calls such a proposition in which terms are conjoined on grounds other than their mere meaning a synthetic proposition, and when it is given from beyond experience, he calls it a synthetic a priori proposition.) Morality, therefore, demands freedom and freedom grounds morality. We can now collect all the chief terms of Kant's moral discourse: Freedom is the radical power of the Reason to become practical, to determine itself as a Will, a supersensible cause of natural events. The human being is a rational being that can, however, appear to itself only as a part of nature. Therefore it apprehends the rulings of its will as an "Ought," as a command to do its duty in the face of the compelling mechanisms of its nature. The injunction of its will is the moral law. That law, being laid down by reason for reason, must have the form of rationality. It is therefore an imperative. Furthermore, it must command an action in no way contingent on external circumstance. It is therefore a categorical imperative. Finally, it must as a law of reason have the mark of universality, of covering all cases, and hence it must be unique. It is therefore the Categorical Imperative. And now, at last, I return to the middle section where it is actually formulated in three main versions. The first formulation is: "Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." Let us see what this formula contains. It contains a new term, "maxim." A maxim is my private, individual, "subjective" reason for a choice. It is intelligible enough, but it is individual in being contingent on my desires. A maxim is whatever subjective reason articulate beings give themselves for acting. Now the imperative says precisely that those private reasons must be regulated. It says that they must always be required to have the character of a law of Reason. They must not be merely subjective but must be capable of being universalized. TheCategorical Imperative commands only this: that every action should be performed for a reason having the character of a law. It does not command this or that particular action. It does not even lay down this or that specific law. It only requires lawfulness itself. The first version of the moral law simply requires the will to act as a Will, namely in accordance with its character as Practical Reason. Let me right here forestall what seems to me to be a niggling, logic-chopping objection to this grand rule. It is said that anyone can undercut its authority by so particularly specifying a maxim that the class of actions to which it applies contains only his own, and its universalization is emptily guaranteed. For example, I can take the maxim that I, standing at precisely my co-ordinates at precisely the present moment, may tell you lies. The universalized version of this maxim will then say that anyone in my precise position may tell lies, there being, however, no one else in that class. But of course, Kant intends no such craftiness. The working import of his severe and noble rule is plain enough: Never take the easy way; never make an exception of yourself! The illustrative cases he immediately furnishes make that per· fectly clear. Another immediate criticism, derived precisely from a loose reading of one of these cases, is a simple mistake. Kant says that a maxim may fail to be a fit rule of moral action for one of two reasons. The first is because its universalization is self-contradictory: If I lie, and so all may lie, speech itself, the instrument with which I meant to deceive, is destroyed. The second is because the universalization is clearly undesirable: If I will not aid others, they need not aid me. Now it has been argued from the latter example that Kant's morality is after all enmeshed in a calculus of convenience and desire. But the desire for help from others is not the reason why we ourselves must not adopt a maxim of selfishness. The reason for rejecting that maxim follows from the pure formalism of the Categorical Imperative: It is that we cannot reasonably universalize such a maxim, whether we ourselves will ever need help or not. Clearly, the major problem connected with this version of the imperative arises from the framing of maxims and the testing of universalizations. I shall return to it at the very end. 43 �The College Let me now go to the second version. It says: "Act so as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only." It is almost unnecessary to remark that however repellently severe Kant's moral law may seem, this version at least goes straight to our republican hearts. The reason is plain: It is clearly the rule which gives the moral basis of our own political disposition, our democratic way of life, which requires that we accord others the respect belonging to self-determined beings capable Of making their own decisions for themselves, and that when we use them, as Kant knows we sometimes must, we do not only use them. Indeed, in the afore-mentioned sequel to the critical inquiry, the Metaphysics of Morals, justice, the principle which binds human beings into a political system, is directly derived from this version: Justice is so dealing with others as to make my freedom compatible with theirs. For that is precisely what it means to regard others as ends in themselves. It means considering them not as things but as persons, not as the means to our happiness, but as, in their turn, independent, ultimate law-givers, free beings whose will consults no end but its own. That is also precisely how Kant connects the first and the second formula. And that is where trouble starts. For, to begin with, there is in the Kantian system no external appearance by which to recognize a fellow will in its interiority. One may only conjecture that some exemplar of the natural species homo sapiens is in fact a rational being. But let that deep problem of intersubjective recognition be. What is more immediately to the point is this question: Why should I, and further, how could I, take another free being as an end? For that it is an end in itself cannot logically make it an end for me. Furthermore, its very worth lies in the performance of its duty even to the point of thwarting its own happiness; what sense does it make for me to meddle with its external well-being, which plays no part in its self-sufficiency? (You may immediately be reminded of a problem in political morality that is always with us, namely how to minister to the welfare of human beings while preserving their self-determination.) The most appealing version of the Categorical Imperative is also the most shaky in its systematic derivation. Let me do no more than read the third version, because you will see right away that it is nothing but the sum and substance, plainly stated, of all that has gone before. Significantly it is not even framed as an imperative, but simply as a condition, the condition that the will must harmonize with universal practical reason, or as an idea, namely "the idea of the will of every rational being as making universal law." It is the ultimate formulation of Kant's Moral Law. I invite you to consider how remarkable it is that a principle so formal, so empty of specific content, gives rise to so characteristic a morality. Indeed, all the criticisms accusing it of excessive formalism or excessive flexibility seem to me misconstructions. Kantian morality issues in concrete kinds of conduct and definitely predictable deeds: uncompromising adherence to principle; the exclusion of any sentimentality from the effort to do good; unwillingness to let circumstances, private or social, lift 44 responsibility for his deeds from the individual. Accordingly literature, especially German literature, abounds in vividly severe Kantian characters who perform their duty in the face of their natural humanity; they are evidently drawn from life, especially from the Prussian military and officialdom whose harsh virtues came from a Kantian training. Therefore, the most telling criticisms of Kant's moral philosophy have to be dredged up, it seems to me, from the substructure of the system itself. Although I must be very brief, I do want to run through some of those difficulties, because, as I mentioned in the beginning, this sort of critical rooting-about in a system is not the worst way to work one's way into it. Besides, you have probably already formed suspicions of your own which I might help you articulate. Clearly all the difficulties begin with Kant's idea of reason itself as a law-giving function. (There are, of course, other conceptions of the intellect, for instance as a receptive capability-such a conception precludes, to be sure, epistemological guarantees of certainty.) Band in hand with the radical self-determination of Kantian reason goes the pathological mechanism of the temporal consciousness, a sharp opposition of freedom and nature which disallows in principle the possibility of any object of desire which is also good in itself, and so forestalls the very inquiry which interests most of us above all. Again bound up with the uncompromisingly mechanistic view of desire is Kant's repellent view of happiness as the unattainable satisfaction of all desires. Now that conception is belied by any moment of real happiness we have ever had, not only by the fact that we have attained it, but also by its quality: fulfilled desire is not what happiness feels like. Besides, in being quite disconnected from the performance of duty, such happiness is related to moral goodness only through the worthiness to be happy and the cold comfort of that strange exception to the strict separation of reason and the emotions which Kant has contrived, the moral feeling of self-respect. (The guarantor, by the way, of an ultimate concurrence of moral worthiness and pathological happiness, is a mere hypothesis, a god posited to serve just this function.) But some direct connection between acting well and living well seems to me to be both required and indicated by human experience. Virtue is the realization of morality in a living disposition, and therefore the notion of Kantian virtue will display the quandary in the disconnection of morality from the good life. For, just as one might expect in view of the stern demands of Kantian morality, human virtue is presented in its place, the Metaphysics of Morals, as essentially fortitude, strength of character acquired by rigorous ethical training. But what possible role can such an acquired, habitual disposition of the phenomenal consciousness play, when the Categorical Imperative requires precisely a radically rational response to every case? Indeed, one would think that there could be no direct, positive, persisting external structure of Kantian morality, no visible and exemplary virtue-no such thing as the firmly and finely moulded moral excellence of antiquity. The Kantian mah of duty does, to be sure, bear the strong stamp of his morality in his respectability, but that is the consequence and not the source of his deeds. The emphasis on the continuously radical agency of the will shapes moral life as a succession of knife's edge decisions �January, 1980 and of crucial moments in which our self-respect is forever in the balance. It seems to me that there are such moral moments, when all comfortable contexts, all decent habits, fail and our naked integrity is at stake. For such crises the Categorical Imperative is made, but not for the continuous stream of reasonable life which it seems to me that a moral science ought to shape. Instead of a conclusion let me end with a coda of a slightly technical but also of a consolidating sort. Almost by the way, and not counting it among the standard versions of the Categorical Imperative, Kant offers the following formulation: "Act as though the maxim of your actions were by your will to become a law of nature." The formula appears in the Critique of Practical Reason with much more emphasis under the title of "Typic of pure practical judgment." It is essentially a rule of instruction for forming maxims, or rather for testing maxims to see if they can be made into universal laws. In sum, it is the founding rule for the-very necessary-moral science ef maxim-making. For obviously to do as I ought, I must, albeit incidentially, also know what to do; the "So act" must have a content. So we see that although for Kant virtue is not knowledge, yet the decisions of the practical reason are imbedded in the judgments of pure reason. We must know a criterion for deciding what maxims bear universalization. Such a criterion, the formula informs us, is to be derived from the science of nature. We must know nature's works, its interactions and reciprocities, its harmonies and balances well enough to be able to make a speculative projection of our maxims, and to imagine what the world would be like if the contemplated choice occurred inevitably, mechanically and universally, as a law of nature. What, for instance, would a world governed by a maxim of selfishness look like, a world deterministically devoid ofbenev· olence-a question which we require a certain experience of nature to answer. Thus, as Kant had promised, there is a reapproachment of the science of nature and what he calls the "casuistry" of morality. And that was to be expected. For first, we ourselves are, through the structuring functions of our understanding, the makers, and immediately also the knowers, of nature. Yet the rules of our understanding, the fac- ulty which structures appearance in its basic reality, do not determine particular occurrences, but only the general system of things and their relations, which is precisely what Kant calls nature. That indeterminacy enables us, as knowers of nature, to turn her to our own puTposes, to move mountains and manipulate people. Such acts of applied science are performed according to what Kant calls a technical or a hypothetical imperative, which is the very contrary of a categorical imperative, since it always has the form: "If you desire such and such a result, do such and such because it is technically or prudentially appropriate:" If you would level a hill, lay a charge of dynamite; if you would win a crowd, promise things. Such technical interferences with nature are certainly phenomenal, in both senses-apparent and sometimes spectacular. They appear because they are, after all, but the interaction of inner psychic and outer physical nature; they are not deeds of practical reason. Moral action, on the other hand, is a true irruption of rational purpose into the course of natural events. It is a second law-giving which grafts upon nature a second, an invisible order which is yet of the "type" of a natural law-a system of harmonious lawfulness. The act of nature-making which the understanding accomplishes automatically is to be consummated by practical reason consciously. But the effects of the free will can never be evident as such: however our moral purpose may re-route nature, what appears will still be the course of nature. First and last, there can be no phenomenal morality. And yet there is at least a visible symbol of the possible unity of the two law-givings. It is an appearance which stands for the possible harmony of natural and moral lawfulness. Kant introduces it in the last critique, the Critique of Judgment. It is the beautiful. For beauty raises in us a pleasure, which is without desire, at the harmonious interplay of our free sensual imagination and the lawful nature produced by our understanding. Therefore a thing of beauty is analogous to a moral deed in which our free will, without regard to inclination, must work in the world of determined nature. So, although beauty is only a symbol, it is yet a source of hope for the possibility of effective obedience to Kant's Imperative and for its product: a morally informed nature. 45 �Boyle, Galileo, and Manifest Experience Martin Tamny The scientific revolution of the seventeenth century is properly viewed as overturning the Aristotelian tradition which had dominated the thought of the West for nearly 500 years. But there is disagreement as to what, precisely, is meant by Aristotelian ism. It was a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, containing a variety of schools, each with a large number of differing tenets. We could, with some difficulty, find some doctrines that were shared by all these schools (e.g., the four qualities, five substances, four causes, etc.) and identify this core of doctrines as Aristotelianism, and I do think it is just this sort of thing that is generally meant when historians and philosophers speak of the Aristotelianism that was overturned by the new science. But even this core Aristotelianism is complex, consisting of a large number of claims. For this reason, accounts of the scientific revolution differ widely in which claims they center on. And these differences, in turn, affect our understanding of the remaining claims. Differences about the core of Aristotelianism, however, are not limited to those who write about the history of the scientific revolution. They were also problematic for the very people who overthrew Aristotelianism and brought about the triumph of the new science. Many of them, indeed, were self-conscious revolutionaries, and wrote a variety of polemics against Aristotelianism. Two of the most articulate of these polemicists were Galilee and Boyle. Living in Italy, Galilee was familiar from his childhood with nUmerous schools of Aristotelian thought, from the relative spirituality of Averroism to the stricter materialism of Alexandrism. Yet, when he launched his polemics on Aristotelianism it was not a particular school he attacked, but rather that amorphous core of Aristotelianism-the doctrines held in common by a wide variety of thinkers. In England Boyle was almost certainly less familiar with the numerous schools of Aristotelianism and thus, perhaps, had a Assistant Professor of Philosophy at The City College of The City University of New York, Martin Tamny is at present preparing (with J. K McGuire) an edition of one of Isaac Newton's early notebooks, Quaes· tiones quedam philosophiae. 46 more amorphous view of it from the outset, though doubtless the texts from which he imbibed the dominant view in his childhood did represent some particular school or other. 1 In any case, we shall see that Boyle's characterization of Aristotelianism appears to have been largely derived from his reading of Galilee. Galilee did, of course, create an Aristotelian, Simplicia, to argue against. Simplicio is perhaps the sole Italian representative of the amorphous core of Aristotelianism he espouses in the Dialogue and the Discourse, but he is not on this account a straw man. He represents a legitimate conflation of widely accepted Aristotelian views. What is more, he has an English brother in Robert Boyle's creation, Themistius. Simplicia first appeared in 1632, in Galilee's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Themistius, a younger brother, first appeared in 1665, in Boyle's New Experiments and Observations touching Cold or an Experimental History of Cold Begun. Themistius seems clearly to be modelled after Simplicio, and shares with him the same basic v'ie'w of Aristotelianism. What I wish to do is, first, to identify one feature of this core Aristotelianism, a feature that I will refer to as the "Doctrine of Manifest Experience" and the associated method of "Ocular Demonstration," and then, to examine how both Galilee· and Boyle understood this doctrine and how it influenced not only their attack on Aristotelianism but also their conception of the new science. When we look back at Aristotelianism we don't think of it as being characterized by the appeal to experience. Aristotle, of course, did use sense experience as the foundation of his scientific methodology in that one begins with sense experience and moves "upward" to more and more general statements until one reaches the most general statements that characterize that science. But when we wish to draw the lines of demarcation between Aristotle's own thought, on the one hand, and Aristo· telianism, on the other, we usually do so on the issue of the relevance of sense experience to knowledge. The Aristotelians, believing that Aristotle had discovered the most general truths, no longer bothered to test the tenets of their thought against experience. This approach to Aristotelianism is quite correct as far as it goes but it ignores one important point. The Aristotelian �January, 1980 picture of the world is remarkably consistent with ordinary experience. One might even say it has a kind of common sense appeal which is lacking in Newtonian mechanics, for example. It was precisely this aspect of Aristotelianism that made it so pervasive for so long. We, of course, find it difficult to recover for ourselves that feeling of plausibility, since we have grown so accustomed to regard Aristotelianism as wrong. Thus, although the Aristotelians were convinced that their basic doctrines had the force of necessity, they nevertheless supported them when under attack by referring to their common sense consistency with experience. These references were to what they termed "manifest experience," and they believed that by these references they had offered an "ocular demonstration'' of certain of the truths of Aristotelianism. Both Simplicia and Themistius are presented as making such appeals to manifest experience. Which shows that both Galilee and Boyle saw such appeals as part of core Aristotelianism. From early in the first day of the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems Simplicia continually opposes Salviati's Copernicanism with references to experience. SIMP .... He [Aristotle] held in his philosophizing that sensible experiments were to be preferred above any argument built by human ingenuity, and he said that those who would contradict the evidence of any sense deserved to be punished by the loss of that sense. 2 And again, after Salviati has called several Aristotelian principles into question, SIMP. There is no doubt whatever that since you wish to deny ·not only the principles of the sciences, but manifest experience and the very senses themselves, you can never be convinced, nor relieved from any preconceived opinion. 3 In the same way Themistius supports the Aristotelian doctrine of antiperistasis4 by affirming it on the basis of manifest experience. THEM. As for Antiperistasis, the truth of it is a thing so conspicuous, and so generally acknowledged, that I cannot imagine what should make some men deny it, except it be, that they find all others to confess it. For though in other cases they are wont to pretend experience for their quitting the received opinions, yet here they quit experience itself for singularity, and chuse rather to depart from the testimony of their senses, than not to depart from the generality of men. 5 And continuing a page later, Themistius says, And as if nature designed men should not be able to contradict the doctrine of Antiperistasis, without contradicting more than one of their own senses, she has taken care, that often times the water, that is freshly drawn out of the deeper sorts of wells and springs, should manifestly, as I have seen it, smoke, as if it had been but lately taken off the fire. And this may be said, without a metaphor, to demonstrate ad oculum the reality of Antiperistasis ... 6 These references to sense experience introduce an interesting problem. It is commonly thought that the scientific revolution introduced sense experience as the arbiter of the acceptability of scientific claims. But this is an oversimplification. The Aristotelians of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. were viewed by our revolutionaries as supporting their false claims with sense experience. What Galileo and Boyle show us is that it is not experience that is the arbiter of truth but experience properly interpreted.7 The Aristotelians' appeal to sense experience as such is not to be attacked, but rather their notion that such experience is ever manifest, evident, or obvious. Both Galileo and Boyle attack this concept of manifest experience by having Simplicia and Themistius support an Aristotelian doctrine by reference to manifest experience and then undermining that support not by contesting the sense experience itself, but by showing that the same sense experience is consistent with the denial of the Aristotelian doctrine in question. Two examples show this kind of attack on manifest experience: Galilee's demonstration that sense experience is not inconsistent with the doctrine of a moving earth; Boyle's demonstration that sense experience is not inconsistent with the denial of antiperistasis. I think that a comparison of the two arguments and their respective participants will reveal that it is very nearly certain that Boyle's dialogue is a product of his reading of Galileo's Dialogue in the sense that both the characters and the issue of manifest experience as well as the arguments used are borrowed with little change from Galileo. Galileo's Dialogue contains three characters. In addition to Simplicia, the Aristotelian, there are Salviati, the Copernican, and Sagredo, the intelligent, uncommitted layman, who listens to both views and is moved only by the truth. In The Second Day Salviati and Simplicia construct an argu· ment for the non-rotation of the earth. If a stone is dropped from the ceiling within a high tower and it is observed that the stone does not hit against the walls but falls parallel to them, then the earth does not rotate. For if the earth rotated the stone could not fall perpendicularly. The argument can be reformulated as follows: A. If the earth rotates, the body cannot fall perpendicularly. B. But the body does fall perpendicularly. therefore, C. The earth does not rotate. 8 Salviati, after getting Simplicia to accept this argument, then argues that it is really a paralogism. The minor premise (B) presupposes the conclusion in the sense that what we see (the stone not hitting the walls of the tower) is an indication that the stone falls perpendicularly only if we assume that the tower (and thus the earth) is not moving. And, since this is the conclusion that is claimed to follow from the premises, the argument is flawed by a 47 �The College petitio principi. We do not ''see'' the stone fall perpendicularly to the earth. All we see is that the stone fails to hit the walls of the tower. Not content to show that the simple-minded Simplicia can misinterpret experience without his realizing that he is interpreting anything at all, Galilee goes on to show that even quickwitted Sagredo can make the same mistake, in a more sophisticated way. SAGR. As to the simple movement toward the center, depending on gravity, I think that one may believe absolutely without error that it is a straight line, exactly as it would be if the earth were immovable. SALV. As to this part one may not only believe it, but experience renders it certain. SAGR. But how does experience assure us of this if we never do see any motion except that which is composed of the two, circular and downward? SALV. Rather, Sagredo, we never see anything but the simple downward one, since this other circular one, common to the earth, the tower, and ourselves, remains imperceptible and as if nonexistent. Only that of the stone, not shared by us, remains perceptible; and of this our senses show that it is along a straight line always parallel to a tower which is built upright and perpendicular on the surface of the earth. 9 Simplicia did not see motion perpendicular to the earth but Sagredo did, while Simplicia thought that he did and Sagredo thought that he did not. But this apparent paradox is removed by recalling that Simplicia began by assuming the earth did not move while Sagredo assumed that it did. In short, the difference in Salviati's (Galilee's) description of their respective experiences depends upon their different presuppositions. Once again the point is that the experience is not manifest; it is dependent upon the correct interpretation. In order finally to drive home this point, Galilee presents the bewildered Simplicia saying, But, good heavens, if it moves slantingly, why do I see it move straight and perpendicular? This is a bald denial of manifest sense; and if the senses ought not to be believed, by what other portal shall we enter into philosophizing? 10 It is indeed a denial of "manifest sense" but not in the way that Simplicia means. Galilee simply has Salviati state the interpretation of the experience which makes it relevant to the philosophical point at issue. With respect to the earth, the tower, and ourselves, all of which all keep moving with the diurnal motion along with the stone, the diurnal movement is as if it did not exist; it remains insensible, imperceptible, and without any effect whatever." 11 In this way Galilee has shown that our experience of the fall- 48 ing stone is consistent with the Copernican view and there is neither manifest experience nor ocular demonstration. Before we go on to look at our example from Boyle, let us look at another way that Galileo has approached this problem and which has misled some scholars into thinking him a believer in the Platonic theory of anamnesis. 12 Seeking to convince Simplicia that the earth reflects more light than the moon, Salviati claims, "What you think is a cause making the earth unfit for illuminations, Simplicia, is really not one at all. Would it not be interesting if I should see into your reasoning better than yourself?" 13 Salviati begins by asking a question about Simplicia's experience, viz., "Tell me, when the moon is nearly full, so that it can be seen by day and also in the middle of the night, does it appear more brilliant in the daytime or at night?" 14 Simplicia answers, "Incomparably more at night." 15 And describes how he has seen the moon in the day among the clouds and no brighter than them. Then Salviati asks a question concerning the interpretation of the experiences described by Simplicia, "Do you believe that the moon is really brighter at night than by day, or just that by some accident it looks that way?" 16 Simplicia answers that it shines in the day the same as in the night and that it is in comparison with the dark night sky that it seems brighter at night. Salviati then points out to Simplicia that we never see the earth lighted in the night, i.e., we have had no experience to refute the claim that the earth shines more brightly than the moon. If knowledge is to rest on experience, we must compare the experiences of earth and moon we have had, which is to say as seen in the daytime when both are illuminated. But Simplicia has already reported his experience of the white clouds around the daytime moon shining as brightly as the moon itself, and Salviati adds, More so, if you will recall in memory having seen some very large clouds at times, white as snow .... If we were sure, then, that the earth is as much lighted by the sun as one of these clouds, no question would remain about its being no less brilliant than the moon. 17 Sagredo then ca~ls Simp1icio's attention to the fact that the moon has risen and its brightness is less than the third reflection of the Sun's light upon a wall within a room. Salviati then makes the following Platonic sounding statement: If you are satisfied now, Simplicia, you can see how you yourself really knew that the earth shone no less than the moon, and that not my instruction but merely the recollection of certain things already known to you have made you sure of it. For I have not shown you that the moon shines more brilliantly by night than by day; you already knew it, as you also knew that a little cloud is brighter than the moon. Likewise you knew that the illumination of the earth is not seen at night, and in short you knew everything in question without being aware that you knew it. 18 This is not Platonism, but a parody of it. All the things already �January, 1980 known by Simplicia are matters of comicaHy simple experience-that the moon appears brighter at night than during the day, that a little cloud appears as lucid as the moon in the day sky, and that the earth (the part we see of it) is not illuminated at night-not matters of rational principle as in Plato's Meno. What Galilee is showing us is that these experiences are not, by themselves, sufficient to give us this knowledge; what we need is not more experience, but a way of "looking" at the experiences we have already had. Galilee parodies the notion that Simplicia already knew that the earth shines more brightly than the moon, but is quite serious in believing that he could have known it earlier if he had interpreted his experience correctly. This, then, is an answer to Simplicia's earlier statements that Salviati is arguing contrary to manifest experience. Experience is not a simple notion. For it involves both perception and interpretive judgment. The problem is that these judgments a,re often "transparent" and made without our awareness. We must become aware and somehow make only correct interpretations. Therefore, after we have looked at Boyle's similar arguments against manifest experience we must return to the question of how we are to precede so that our interpretations will be correct. The dialogue section of Boyle's History of Cold is titled, "An Examen of Antiperistasis as it is wont to be Taught and Proved." There are three interlocutors: Themistius, an upholder of antiperistasis and spokesman for the schools; Carneades, a natural philosopher of the modern school, who does not reject antiperistasis outright, but shows that there are no arguments that establish its truth; and, Eleutherius, a quick-witted philosopher, who neutrally listens to both sides and is convinced by Carneades. In short, Themistius is Simplicia, Carneades is Salviati, and Eleutherius is Sagredo. The doctrine of antiperistasis as applied here consists of the claim that naturally hot bodies will become hotter when surrounded by cold bodies in order to preserve their heat against the onslaught of cold; while naturally cold bodies, on the other hand, will become colder when surrounded by hot bodies in order to preserve their coldness. Themistius begins with the attack on doubters of antiperistasis quoted above; he asserts that they doubt the evidence of their senses merely to be different-to depart from the established view. He claims that he has conclusive arguments for antiperistasis derived first, from authority (viz., Aristotle); second, from reason; and third, from experience. Themistius decides to forego the arguments from authority, because he feels that it was precisely the revolt against authority that led his adversaries to deny antiperistasis. His arguments from experience are simply the recounting of various "manifest experiences" such as the steaming of water when drawn from a well in winter, the warmth of such water to the hand, the coolness of cellars in summer and their warmth in winter. Concerning these experienced phenomena, Themistius asserts, These phaenomena ought the more to be acquiesced in, because they may safely be looked upon as genuine declarations, which nature makes of her own accord, and not as Confessions extorted from her by artificial and compulsory experiments, when being tortured by instruments and engines, as upon so many racks, she is forced to seem to confess whatever the tormentors please. 19 This statement comes as close as any to Boyle's definition of manifest experience, and provides a hint on how we are to overcome the errors of manifest experience, for the very method that Themistius rejects, Carneades accepts. Eleutherius casts doubt on the significance of the claim that well water feels warm when freshly drawn in winter on the grounds that the same water that feels warm to a cold hand will feel cold to a warm hand. He says, For I frankly confess to you, that when I consider what interest the unheeded dispositions of our own bodies may have in the estimates we make of the degree of cold and heat in other bodies, I should not lay much weight upon the phaenomena, that are wont to be urged as proofs of Antiperistasis ... 20 I call your attention to the term "unheeded" in the foregoing, for it characterizes both Boyle's and Galilee's attitude toward manifest experience. They don't deny the experiences, only the naive claims made on the basis of them. The claims are naive because they fail to heed various critical factors. When Carneades joins the discussion he claims not to be attacking the doctrine of antiperistasis but rather the grounds upon which it is maintained, or as he puts it, "I have not been wont to deny an Antiperistasis, as it may be, but only as it was wont to be, explicated." 21 Carneades deals quickly with Themistius's arguments from reason and turns to the arguments from experien~e, of which he says, I might represent, that of those examples, some are false, others doubtful; and those, that are neither of these two, are insufficient, or capable of being otherwise explicated, without the help of your hypothesis-" Our interest here is not in those experiences that Carneades says are false or doubtful, for they could not be called manifest experiences. Rather, we are concerned only with those he says are true and certain, btit can be "otherwise explicated," than by recourse to antiperistasis. For example, Carneades accepts Eleutherius's contention that water freshly drawn from a well in winter will seem to be warm because the observer's hand is cold. He goes on, however, to use this to explain the supposed coldness of cellars in summer. He says, In summer our bodies having for many days, if not some weeks, or perhaps months, been constantly environed with ~n air, which, at that season of the year, is much hotter than it is wont to be in winter, ... our senses may easily impose upon us, and we may be 49 �The College much- mistaken, by concluding upon their testimony, that the subterraneal air we then find so cool, is really colder than it was in winter ... as they that come out of hot baths think the air of the adjoining rooms very fresh and cool. .. 23 A similar argument is offered for the supposed warmth of cellar~ in winter. The testimony of our senses ... may in this case easily and much delude us. For those places being sheltered from the winds, and kept from a free communication with the outward air, are much less exposed than others to the action of those agents, whatever they be, that produce cold in the air. So that our bodies being constantly immersed in the air refrigerated by the winter, and consequently brought nearer to the temper of that air, when we bring those bodies into cellars, the subterraneal air must seem warm to us, though in itself it were unvaried as to its temper.2 4 Among the manifest experiences that were to prove antiperistasis there remains only the steaming water drawn from wells in winter. This last argument from experience is answered by Carneades as follows: The smoking of waters drawn from deep places in frosty weather ... does not necessarily conclude such water to be warmer in winter, since that effect may proceed not from the greater warmth of the water in such weather, but from the greater coldness of the air. For we may take notice, that a man's breath in summer, or in mild winter weather, becomes very visible, the cold ambient air nimbly condensing the fulginous steams, which are discharged by the lungs, and which in warmer weather are readily diffused in imperceptible particles through the air.2 5 In the foregoing the notions of ocular demonstration and manifest experience are clearly as much at stake as antiperistasis. And here, as in Galileo' s Dialogue, the attack is not on the visual or tactile "facts" but on their interpretation. Carneades does not deny that the phenomena described by Themistius occur but shows, instead, that they can be explained without reference to antiperistasis. The similarities between Boyle's dialogue and that of Galileo should be clear from what has been said. There is a strong similarity between the characters of the two dialogues, as well as a concern with the same issues. On the other hand there is a naturalness in Galilee's dialogue that is absent from the awkwardness of Boyle's style. Further, whereas there are arguments against antiperistasis itself in Boyle's dialogue, there are no experimental arguments for Copernicanism in Galileo's. But this is in the nature of the case, since there existed readily accessible evidence against antiperistasis and none for the motion of the earth (the coriolis effect and foucault pendulum were not discovered until some time later). Thus the similarities are more 50 telling than the differences, especially in light of the accepted fact that Boyle read the dialogues of Galileo in both Italian and Latin. Thomas Birch writes in his biography of Boyle, with which he prefaces his standard edition of Boyle's Works in 1744, that "The rest of his spare hours he [Boyle] spent in reading the modern history in Italian, and the new paradoxes of the great star-gazer Galileo, whose ingenious books .. were confuted by a decree from Rome."26 Although I contend that Boyle was strongly influenced by Galilee's arguments against core Aristotelianism, I do not mean to claim that their attack on manifest experience was unique. The philosophic and scientific thought of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century was much influenced by the publication in 1562 and 1569 of the works of Sextus Empiricus and the rediscovered Pyrrhonian scepticism that emerged from them. 27 Pyrrhonian scepticism, both the ancient variety and that of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, can be characterized as the belief that both those who claim that absolute' knowledge is obtainable and those who claim that no knowledge is obtainable have weak arguments for their positions and that one should suspend judgment on all matters where conflicting evidence can be evinced, including the issue of whether or not knowledge is possible. Reason and sense experience are both attacked as faulty grounds upon which to base knowledge claims. Nearly all of the figures of the early scientific revolution were familiar with the new Pyrrhonism; 28 it presented them with both an opportunity and a problem. On the one hand, the sceptical arguments helped to undermine the prevailing Aristotehanism, including its claim of ocular demonstration by manifest experience. On the other hand, it seemed also to undermine all possible alternatives to the Aristotelian views. Yet both Galileo and Boyle clearly believed that their own views were safe from sceptical arguments. This strange mixture of scepticism and optimism was not, however, unique to Boyle and Galileo. It had a tradition going back tO Erasmus, Montaigne, Charron, and others, but reached a peak in joseph Glanvill's The Vanity of Dogmatizing (1661), a book which is almost a caricature of the seventeenth century's form of this "doctrine." Glanvill writes at one place that, "to say, the principles .of Nature must needs be such as our Philosophy makes them, is to set bounds to Omnipotence, and to confine infinite power and wisdom to our shallow models. " 29 And at another, "The last Ages have shewn us what Antiquity never saw; no, not in a Dream." 30 Glanvill's scepticism, which was rooted in Pyrrhonism, led him to distrust the senses. He writes, for example, It is conceiv' d to be as certain, as our faculties can make it, that the same qualities, which we resent [represent] within us, are in the object, their Source. And yet this confidence is grounded on no better foundation, then a delusary prejudice, and the vote of misapplyed sensations.31 Yet he believed that there existed, at least in principle, an antidote against these errors of "misapplyed sensation." This belief becomes clear in his extremely interesting notion of Adam as �January, 1980 observer. Glanvill presents Adam before the fall' as an ideal observer. Since Adam originally had all the perfections of which man is capable he had no need for all the devices we use to improve our senses. Adam needed no Spectacles. The acuteness of his natural Opticks (if conjecture may have credit) shew' d him much of the Coelestial magnificence and bravery without a Galileo's tube: And 'tis most probable that his naked eyes could reach near as much of the upper World, as we with all the advantages of art. ... and 'tis not unlikely that he had as clear a perception of the earth's motion, as we think we have of its quiesence. Thus the accuracy of his knowledge of natural effects, might probably arise from his sensible perception of their causes .... And whereas we patch up a piece of Philosophy from a few industriously gather' d, and yet scarce well observ' d or digested experiments, his knowledge was completely built upon the certain, ex· temporary notice of his comprehensive, unerring faculties. 32 All of which makes it sound as if there is a manifest experience-albeit not manifest to us-which allows for immediate knowledge of causes. Yet such a conclusion does not really do justice to Glanvill's position. In the Preface to The Vanity Glanvill deals with some possible objections he fears may be raised regarding the perfection of Adam's senses. Granting Adam's eye had no greater Diametrical wideness of the pupil, no greater distance from the Cornea to the Retiformis, and no more filaments of the Optick nen~es of which the tunica Retina is woven, than we: the unmeasurable odds of Sensitive perfections which I assign him; will be conceiv' d mechanically impossible. 33 Glanvill attempts to get round these objections by arguing that although the image on Adam's retina was the same as that on ours his critical faculties were so much better that he saw as through a telescope or microscope. But if the perfection of Adam's sensibility was a product of his critical faculties, then it is clear that we are no longer dealing with manifest experience but with the interpretation of sensations. It would, however, be a mistake to take Glanvill's Adam too literally. His function is not that of a piece of history, but as an ideal against which man's shortcomings are to be measured. The quality being measured is not excellence of vision but the ability to acquire knowledge of the world through what Glanvill takes as the only possible method, namely, empirical science. As an ideal observer, Adam is capable of knowing all that man might know were it not for his imperfections. Why Adam, rather than God, as the model of perfection? Because Adam, unlike God whose omniscience is unconditioned, obtains knowledge through sensation. Adam knows the cause of gravity and magnetism through the sensations that mechanical causes produce in him. God simply knows how he made the world. We can now return to the questions we previously raised. Why do Galileo and Boyle believe we can make correct interpretations of experience? What methods can we use to recapture that critical power of Adam? Here we shall find a fundamental difference between Galilee and Boyle. For the mathematically minded Galileo, the method that guarantees correct interpretation is a quantitative oneanalysis and synthesis (or something much like it). For the nonmathematically minded Boyle, it was a non-quantitative notion-experiment, the rack on which the truths of nature would be extracted. The methods are not inconsistent, of course, since experiment can use quantitative methods and Boyle crudely did so from time to time. To the question, "How is one to go about interpreting experience?" Galileo's rather broad answer is the method set forth by Aristotle himself-not that of the Aristotelians of the sixteenth century. Galileo clearly distinguished between Aristotle and the Aristotelians and emphasized the difference over and over again; he asserts that had Aristotle looked through a telescope he would have become a Copernican. 34 In the Dialogue, Galileo has Simplicio assert, Aristotle first laid the basis of his argument a priori, showing the necessity of the inalterability of heaven by means of natural, evident, and clear principles. He afterward supported the same a posteriori, by the senses and by the traditions of the ancients. 35 To which, Salviati responds, What you refer to is the method he uses in writing his doctrine, but I do not believe it to be that with which he investigated it. Rather, I think it certain that he first obtained ft by means of the senses, experiments, and observations, to assure himself as much as possible of his conclusions. Afterward he sought means to make them demonstrable. That is what is done for the most part in the demonstrative sciences; this comes about because when the conclusion is true, one may by making use of resolutive methods hit upon some proposition which is already demonstrated, or arrive at some axiomatic principle; but if the conclusion is false, one can go on forever without ever finding any known truth-if inde~d one does not encounter some impossibility or manifest absurdity. And you may be sure that Pythagoras, long before he discovered the proof for which he sacrificed a hecatomb, was sure that the square on the side opposite the right angle in a right triangle was equal to the squares on the other two sides. The certainty of a conclusion assists not a little in the discovery of its proof ... 36 The last sentence in Salviati's statement makes it appear that Galileo has merged the physical and the mathematical in a way tl:1at is not typical of Aristotle. It also seems to assert that Pythag- 51 �The College oras was a follower of Aristotle's methods, which is either a sim· pie mistake or a profound insight. We shall assume the latter. The method here ascribed to Aristotle is that of resolution and composition-a method which moves from sensory experience of particulars to general principles and then explains those par· ticulars by deducing them from the principles.37 There existed in mathematics a structurally similar method known as the method of analysis and synthesis, but it is quite clear that Aristotle, at least, saw these methods as distinct. 38 What we will try to show is that Galilee conceived of himself as having combined the two methods and having thereby created a notion of a mathematical physics. The Dialogue makes it quite dear that it is a mathematical method that allows us to go beyond Aristotle in both the interpretation of our experience and in the ability to acquire demonstrative knowledge. Aristotle's claim in the Metaphysics" that one should not always expect necessity of the mathematical sort in dealing with nature is reiterated by Simplicia and then ironically echoed by Sagredo.40 But the Dialogue as a whole refutes this view. Galilee's belief in the central role of mathematics in the correct interpretation of experience is also made evident through the irony of Sagredo who, in criticizing Chiaramonti, says, Now if, from the observations mentioned and from all the calculations made on these, the height of the star can always be inferred to have been less than that of the moon, this would suffice the author to convict of the crassest ignorance all those astronomers who, whether they erred in geometry or in arithmetic, could not deduce the true conclusions from their own observations.41 The application of Aristotle's method of resolution to our physical sensations resulted in natural laws or principles. But the method of analysis, on the other hand, resulted in mathematical statements. Such statements could never serve as explanations of our physical sensations, inasmuch as, according to Aristotle, mathematics lacked any force regarding efficient and material causes. Mathematics was not of the physical or material but of the abstract. To use Aristotle's favorite example, the results of resolution are to those of analysis as "snub" is to "curved."42 What Galileo does in the Dialogue is to attack this difference at its root. He shows Salviati and Simplicia discussing the applicability of mathematics to the material world. Salviati has just completed a demonstration of the fact that a sphere touches a plane in a single point and Simplicia responds by saying, "This proves it for abstract spheres, but not material ones."43 Salviati asks that an argument be given why what holds "for immaterial and abstract ones" should not hold for material spheres. Simplicia identifies the immaterial and abstract sphere with the perfect, and the material with the imperfect, saying, "doubtless it is the imperfection of matter which prevents things taken concretely from corresponding to those considered in the abstract." 44 It is thus being maintained by Simplicia that the immaterial, abstract and perfect are logically identical. Salviati, however, argues that the 52 perfect is logically independent from the abstract and immaterial. It may be the case that there are no perfect spheres, but it is not a necessary truth that there are none. What keeps a material object from being a perfect sphere is not its material nature but certain ''accidents" whose effects might (depending on the particular case) be discounted. Salviati says, I tell you that even in the abstract, an immaterial sphere which is not a perfect sphere can touch an immaterial plane which is not perfectly flat in not one point, but over a part of its surface, so that what happens in the concrete up to this point happens the same way in the abstract. It would be novel indeed if computations and ratios made in abstract numbers should not thereafter correspond to concrete gold and silver coins and merchandise. Do you know what does happen, Simplicia? Just as the computer who wants his calculations to deal with sugar, silk, and wool must discount the boxes, bales, and other packings, so the mathematical scientist (filosofo geometra), when he wants to recognize in the concrete the effects which he has proved in the abstract, must deduct the material hindrances, and if he is able to do so, I assure you that things are in no less agreement than arithmetical computations. The errors, then, lie not in the abstractness or concreteness, not in geometry or physics, but in a calculator who does not know how to make a true accounting. Hence if you had a perfect sphere and a perfect plane, even though they were material, you would have no doubt that they touched in one point. 45 Galilee's point here is that when we consider the net weight of the sugar in a bag we are not dealing with abstract or immaterial sugar~not even an abstract or immaterial bag of sugar. The analogy we are supposed to draw is that when we are considering a frictionless inclined plane we are not considering an abstract or immaterial inclined plane. Thus mathematics, though of the perfect, is applicable to the material world, suitably considered, and not only the abstract and the immaterial After having shown in this way that the perfect-imperfect distinction cuts across the material-immaterial distinction, Galilee has Sagredo and Simplicia push the point by claiming that any material object has the shape that it has, perfectly. The mathematical method is, then, a way of obtaining certain knowledge of the material world. Galileo tempers his oPtimism, however, not by denying the certainty of our knowledge but by restricting its range. His optimism concerning human understanding is put over against the view that man knows practically nothing (which he identifies with Socrates and the oracle). Galilee marks a difference between intensive understanding and extensive understanding. The few things that man can know he can know perfectly, but compared to the number of things that are to be known he knows little. Referring to mathematics, he has Salviati say, Such are the mathematical sciences alone; that is, geometry and arithmetic, in which the Divine intellect in- �January, 1980 deed knows infinitely more propositions, since it knows all But with regard to those few which the human intellect does understand, I believe that its knowledge equals the Divine in objective certainty, for here it succeeds in understanding necessity, beyond which there can be no greater sureness.46 Boyle's solution to the problem of how to correctly interpret experience was experimentation. This can be seen first in Themistius' very definition of manifest experience as what nature freely gives of herself in perception over against what can be tortured out of her by experiment. But this constitutes evidence for experiment as the method only on the grounds that what Themistius the Aristotelian rejects, Boyle, the new scientist, accepts. More positive evidence is to be found in Boyle's postscript to the dialogue, which is titled, "A Sceptical Consideration of the heat of Cellars in winter, and their coldness in Summer," in which he writes, The foregoing discourses of Carneades seem to have sufficiently shaken the foundation of the vulgar doctrine of Antiperistasis, so far forth as it is superstructed upon the vulgar observations and phenomena, whereon men are wont to build it. . . for as to the obvious phenomena, that nature does, as it were, of her own accord present us, they seem to have been perfunctorily considered, and our senses only being the judges of them, we may easily, as Carneades argues, be imposed upon by the unheeded predispositions of our organs. And as for contrived and artificial experiments, there scarce seem to have been any made to clear the difficulties ... 47 Boyle is generally optimistic about the ability of science to discover truth. This optimism seems grounded in his belief that we can overcome the mistakes of mere observation through experimentation. Boyle qualifies observation with the term "vulgar" which is not meant to tell us how the observations are carried out but rather to point to the fact that they are, by their very nature, uncontrolled. But experiments, because they are controlled, will somehow free us from the errors of "manifest experience." Boyle is not, of course, telling us to shun mere observation when nothing else is possible, but rather to use experiment whenever possible. The problems of perception to which Boyle draws our attention are not, then, meant to dissuade us from the enterprise of science; on the contrary, they are meant to point the way. What is called for is not mere observation but wary experimentation. Scepticism regarding our sense experience becomes a method for Boyle. This view of method leads Boyle to reject investigations into metaphysical problems as a proper part of science, or physiology, as he calls it. Indeed, he appears to have defined the metaphysical as that which lies beyond the reach of experimentation. In The Spring of the Air, he writes, And the reason why there cannot be a void, being by them taken, not from any experiments, or phenomena of nature, that clearly and particularly prove their hypothesis, but from their notion of a body ... seems to make the controversy about a vacuum rather a metaphysical, than a physiological question .... 48 The means presented by Galileo and Boyle as solutions to the problem of the interpretation of experience-the conflation of mathematical and physical methods of discovery and proof, and the method of controlled experimentation-are surely the most important methods of contemporary science. They are not1 ·however, the answers to Pyrrhonian scepticism that Galileo and Boyle thought them to be. The answer to scepticism lies not in the search for certainty, but in the recognition that today's claims may be refuted by tomorrow's considered experience. If this itself sounds like scepticism it is because we have accepted so many of the sceptic's premises. The truth is that our considered experieJ:)ces can be trusted over the long run, for it is experience itself that reveals our past errors. These errors, once revealed, refine our consideration of future experience and we move toward the truth. In so far as Galileo and Boyle thought of their methods as yielding certain truths, irrefutable by any future experience, their position was as assailable as that of the Aristotelians they attacked. I. Boyle was educated at Eton (only two years), and in Switzerland by a citizen of Geneva named Marcombes who seems to have been a rather remarkable educator. It was under his tutelage that Boyle was introduced to Aristotle. 2. Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, 2nd edition. Edited and translated by Stillman Drake, Berkeley, 1967, 32. 3. Galileo, Dialogue, 34. I have replaced Drake's words "palpable experience" with the more literal "manifest experience" for Galileo's words "esperienze manifeste." 4. The doctrine holds that resistances or reactions are roused in a body against actions, and that this fact can be used to explain various kinds of change, including projectile motion and the behavior of hot and cold bodies. 5. Robert Boyle, The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, ed. Thomas Birch, vol. 2: New Experiments and Observations Touching Cold or an Experimental History of Cold Begun, London, 1772, 659. 6. Boyle, History of Cold, 660-661. 7. The emphasis given to interpretation is not unique to Boyle and Galileo. It is, in fact, one of the cornerstones of Baconianism. Galileo and Boyle, however, present us with the opportunity to see how working scientists view the role of interpretation. 8. Santillana reformulates the argument in essentially the same way in Galileo Galilei, Dialogue on the Great World Systems, Introduction and revisions by Giorgio de Santillana, Chicago, 1953, 154. 9. Galileo, Dialogue, 163. 10. Galileo, Dialogue, 171. ll. Galileo, Dialogue, 171. 12. See, for example, Alexandre Koyre, Metaphysics and Measure. ment, London, 1968, 42-3. 13. Galileo, Dialogue, 87. 14. Galileo, Dialogue, 87. 15. Galileo, Dialogue, 87. 16. Galileo, Dialogue, 88. 17. Galileo, Dialogue, 89. 18. Galileo, Dialogue, 89-90. 19. Boyle, History of Cold, 660. 20. Boyle, History of Cold, 661. 21. Boyle, History of Cold, 662. 53 �The College of Cold, 664. of Cold, 670. of Cold, 671. of Cold, 676. 26. Robert Boyle, The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, ed. Thomas Birch, vol. 1: The Life of the Honourable Robert Boyle, London, 1772, xxiv. 27. The rise and influence of the rediscovered Pyrrhonian scepticism that emerged has been chronicled and masterfully dealt with in Richard H. Popkin's The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes, New Ymk, 1968. 28. It is possible that Galileo was not directly aware of Pynhonism and the writings of Sextus Empiricus since, as the tradition has it, he was not a "bookish man." There is, however, ample evidence of his knowledge of the major sceptical arguments, whether he arrived at them on his own, or in discussion, or in his reading. 29. Joseph Glanvill, The Vanity of Dogmatizing: The Three Versions, ed. Stephen Medcalf, Hove, Sussex, 1970, 212. 30. Glanvill, Dogmatizing, 188. 31. Glanvill, Dogmatizing, 89. 32. Glanvill, Dogmatizing, 5-6. Compare this with the last paragraph of Francis Bacon's Novum Organum, where he writes, For man by the fall fell at the same time from his state of in· nocency and from his dominion over creation. B9th of these losses however can even in this life be in some part repaired; the former by religion and faith, the latter by arts and sciences. 33. Glanvill, Dogmatizing, Preface. 34. Salviati rhetorically asks Simplicia, Is it possible for you to doubt that if Aristotle should see the new discoveries in the sky he would change his opinions and correct his books and embrace the most sensible doctrines, casting away from himself those people so weak-minded as to be induced to go on abjectly maintaining everything he had ever said? (Galileo, Dialogue, llO.) 35. Galileo, Dialogue, 50. 36. Galileo, Dialogue, 51. I have replaced Drake's words "analytical method" with the more literal "resolutive method" for Galileo's words "metoda resolutivo." It is curious that both Santillana and Drake have used the term "analytical method" where Galileo has clearly written "resolutive method." Salusbury in his translation of 1661 writes "resolutive method" and Santillana, whose translation is presented as a revision of Salusbury's, has replaced it with "analytical method." I believe that both Santillana and Drake thought that Galileo must have meant analytical rather than resolutive, since the method he describes 22. 23. 24. 25. 54 Boyle, Boyle, Boyle, Boyle, History History History History more properly corresponds to the analytical method of mathematics than it does to the resolutive method of Aristotle. However, one could argue the other way since Galileo clearly attributes the method of which he is writing to Aristotle. It is my opinion that Galileo was quite consciously conflating the two methods here and was surely aware of the fact that they were commonly distinguished, therefore I will take Galileo at his word. 37. The method of resolution and composition has its origin in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. The Italian Aristotelians claimed that they derived the terms "resolutio" and "compositio" from Galen, Cicero, and Boethius. But the Arabic commentator on Galen, Hali ('Ali ibn Ridwan), writing about 1060 describes its source as Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. For a discussion of the history of this method see John Her· man Randall, Jr. The School of Padua and the Emergence of Modem Science, Padua, 1961, 27-67; also, A. C. Crombie, Robert Grosseteste and the Origin of Experimental Science 1100-1700, Oxford, 1953. 38. The method of analysis and synthesis is attributed by Proclus (410485 A.D.) in his Commentary on Euclid to Plato. T. L. Heath in The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements, New York, 1956, val. I, 137-138, indicates that a definition of analysis and synthesis is to be found interpolated into the MSS of the Elements. This definition, as given by Heath on page 138 of the Elements, is as follows: Analysis is an assumption of that which is sought as if it were admitted <and the passage> through its consequences to something admitted (to be) true. Synthesis is an assumption of that which is admitted <and the passage> through its consequences to the finishing or attainment of what is sought. Heath argues in his A History of Greek Mathematics that the method of analysis was known to the Pythagoreans. 39. Aristotle writes in the Metaphysics, Book a.2, 995~15, The minute accuracy of mathematics is not to be demanded in all cases, but only in the case of things that have no matter. Hence its method is not that of natural science; for presumably the whole of nature has matter. 40. Galileo, Dialogue, 14 and 410 respectively. 41. Galileo, Dialogue, 281. 42. See Aristotle's Physics, Book 11.2, l93b30. 43. Galileo, Dialogue, 206. 44. Galileo, Dialogue, 207. 45. Galileo, Dialogue, 207-208. 46. Galileo, Dialogue, 103. 47. Boyle, History of Cold, 683. 48. Robert Boyle, The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, ed. Thomas Birch, vol. I: New Experiments Physico-Mechanical Touching the Spring of the Air, London, 1772, 37-38. �Prometheus Unbound Karl Marx on Human Freedom Thomas K. Simpson Rumor has it that toward the end of his life Marx read through the works of Aeschylus in Greek every year. This has the feel of a biographer's exaggeration, but even if it does to some extent strain the facts, it is one of those fictions which ought to be true: many of us reading Marx are, I suspect, intrigued by the sense in which Marx is drawn to the Greeks, most obviously to Aristotle, but to Aeschylus as well. Marx is writing at a time-his time and ours-which is in some ways at the greatest possible distance from Athens, a time in which reason in the sense of the use of mind in the pursuit of the human good is in eclipse. Marx devotes his own enormous energies, culminating in his great work, Capital, to the formulation of the theory of this darkened period, a period in which rational man is in bondage to what Marx calls the fetishism of a commodity society. But out of that very theory comes the perception that the pendulum, now at the extreme of its negative swing, is destined to swing back once more, toward a restoration of the rational polity. Hence, in anticipation, Marx is already close to Aristotle. And the poignancy of the foresight of release from present suffering, out of the depths of human bondage, is an Aeschylean principle. Consider the opening line of the Oresteia trilogy, in which the Watchman, paradigmatic figure for both Marx and Aeschylus, cries out: I pray the gods release from aU this suffering ... Ow Us p,€v lnrW ;WvO lx1rcxAAcx"(~V 1r6vwv . .. Both the burden, 1r6vos, and the release, the reversal, b-JrcxAXcx"f~, are seen together, the one nested in the manner of the Greek genitive within the other, rWvO' &1rcxAAcx"(~V 1rdvwv. The release comes slowly, through the long cycle of the tragic development, in the final persuasion of neccessity in the Eumenides. Marx, in the same way, will see the nesting of a future release in the very laws of operation of a mindless economic order-and like that Protagonist, who is first the Watchman, but ultimately Agamemnon and Orestes, he reads the signs of an era yet to come. But the figure who seems to me to come closest to Marx's sense of man's position is Prometheus. Prometheus is the old god, the Titan, who has been bound to a rock cliff by Zeus, as punishment for giving to mankind the symbolic gift of fire. He Thomas Simpson, a tutor at St. John's College, read this lecture at Santa Fe on Aprill4, 1978. appears in on1y the one play Prometheus Bound, the rest of that trilogy having been almost entirely lost. In this case, then, we see only the first phase of the trilogy, that of bondage, and must envision for ourselves how Aeschylus would have composed the release: but I think it is in any case in that bondage that we best grasp, through the figure of Prometheus, Aeschylus' definition of man. And that definition, it seems to me, can be very helpful to us in attempting to understand Marx's vision of man as well-both in his bondage, and in the state of freedom which is implicit in the powers the bondage reveals. If I am not mistaken, Aeschylus and Marx are very close to one another in this vision of the Promethean spirit in history. Let me explain before 1 go further the objective 1 have set for this discussion. 1 want, if I can, to formulate Marx's concept of human freedom. In a way, considering all the dimensions of Marx's concerns, this single focus on his concept of freedom would seem a very limited objective. But of course a concept of human freedom lies at the very center of any political enterprise, so that if we can understand this one concept we are well on the way to understanding the whole. Therefore, we do have, after all, a major undertaking before us. And this question may be of special interest to us, here at the nuclear center of America in these last dark decades of the twentieth century. For our major single national effort, to which our science, our technology, and our national economy are directed, is the continual preparation for ever-more-advanced nuclear warfare. And the target of all this preparation, the offense which is so terrible that we are ready at any moment to destroy life on a large part of our planet-is what we call "communism." It seems, then, that it would be well to knoW, before we go, what it was we were objecting to. And it is precisely because Marx is officially anathema to us, that it is probably more difficult in this country than in most to get any perspective on his writings, and in particular to grasp his concept of human freedom. I do not, of course, mean to imply that many Marxists understand Marx much better than we do, or that those societies which today call themselves "com· munist" represent the goals he intended for men. But there is the very real, and disturbing, possibility that some do understand something we don't-and that if we and they understood each other better, we could at least have a more interesting conversation before we proceeded to destroy a large part of the human race, or all of it, over our differences. 55 �The College Let me go back to Prometheus. I digressed because I wanted to make clear the particular sense in which I am interested in him tonight. I think he stands, both for Aeschylus and for Marx, as the figure of man himself, and that in that figure we can find a characterization of the essence of human freedom. First, then, who is Prometheus? Prometheus is, as I have said, a Titan, which means that he is one of the oldest of the gods, older perhaps than Zeus himself. At the outset of the play, Zeus has completed a revolution against his father, Cronos, with Prometheus' aid; but as the new tyrant of Olympus, Zeus has attempted to annihilate mankind, by denying them, or us, the arts by which to exist. Prometheus, as man's friend among the gods, philanthropos, has thus in his turn revolted against Zeus, on our behalf. He has stolen fire from Hephaestus, as the principle of all the rational arts, and passed it on to us. In punishment for this transgression-that is, for insisting on the continued existence of mankind-Prometheus at the outset of the drama is being riveted by Hephaestus to a rock-face in Scythia. We, as spectators of the drama, become witnesses in effect to the crucifixion of that god who has saved us from destruction: he is the source of our rationality, and he is impaled precisely because he has dared to stand on our behalf against Olympus. The last spike is driven through his breast, but he cannot die; as a Titan, son of Earth herself, he sees beyond Zeus, both before and after, and it is his doom to endure. His is not simply the rational mind, but the historical mind: he in effect has Zeus bracketed, first having lent him reason, the secret weapon, to overthrow old force-but now knowing, as Zeus does not, the contingent fate of the new regime as well. Zeus is to be overthrown, in his turn, by a son of his own-a potential fourth in the terrible cycle of gods which so preoccupies Aeschylus-if Zeus consummates a marriage which, unbeknownst to Zeus himself, has been proscribed by Fate. In time, over the ages, the thousands of years, Prometheus will trade that knowledge of Zeus' fate for his own freedom, and during that unimaginable span of punishment, Prometheus will all the while be fortified to unending defiance of Zeus by the knowledge that ultimately pro-methean mind will prevailmind which knows ahead, -promanthanei. It is this bold and unrelenting, principled defiance of Zeus which constitutes Prometheus' special fascination for Aeschylus. As a play, Prometheus Bound is a tour-de-force of the dramatic art, a drama in which the Protagonist, literally pinned to the earth, cannot so much as offer a gesture or change his position from beginning to end: action, then, is distilled to pure will Prometheus, as mind riveted in time and space and forged by Zeus' repression to sheer will, becomes the fixed center of the world for both men and gods. He becomes, I think, a self in a unique way-a center of energy, willing and reasoriing his way into a future which he in part foresees, and in part designs, and which will bring not only his own release, but through his defiance of tyranny, a new order in the cosmos. He will in time be released, he foreknows that. He will reveal to Zeus the secret of the forbidden marriage, and will thus in the nick of time prevent Zeus from fathering the son who would have overthrown him; and in exchange for that cosmic tip-off, Prometheus will be given his freedom. Thus in a way Prometheus becomes the surrogate for that Fourth God, successor to Zeus-the god who never was. As surrogate successor to 56 Zeus, then, we have Prometheus himself, unbound. Though Prometheus is a god, and a timeless god, a Titan, I think we must recognize that he becomes for Aeschylus not merely philanthropos, the friend of man, but man himself, and Prometheus Unbound is man in his fuJI powers, free man. This is not, I think, ho eleutheros, the free man of Aristotle's Politics or the Platonic Republic. Aeschylus, Promethean himself, seems to have reached beyond the rational soul which contemplates eternal forms, to a new kind of soul in which will is primary, and in which reason does not intuit forms, but rather thrusts into an historic future in which things will be new, and of its own making. At least, I suspect it is this new definition of man, a Promethean principle of will and act, which Marx finds in Aeschylus, and identifies with his own. When the pendulum of dialectical history swings back to rationality, then, I think Marx foresees it will be Promethean man, not the philospher of the Republic or the statesman of the Politics, who will inherit the new era. And this succession Marx will see as a higher order of personal freedom, more radically individual and, yes, creative, than freedom within the Aristotelian polis. I. SELF-ACTIVITY With Prometheus, we seem to have foreseen a world-change: a leap out of the ancient world, into the modern, from the world of forms, to the world of will. Another figure comes forward, parallel to Prometheus, namely Faust: and indeed there is one precise moment in which Goethe permits us to watch Faust weighing that world-change, appropriately enough, as an act of translation. Faust is re~translating the opening line of the Gospel According to John: lev b:exii ~v b AO-yos-"in the beginning was the ... "what? Faust, taking on our behalf that fateful step into a new world, senses that it can no longer be translated "in the beginning was the word." He concludes by translating: "in the beginning was the deed." His German is "am Anfang war die Tat." Tat is the noun-form of the verb tun, to do or to act. It will help us with our study of Marx if we tentatively take that shift from word to act as the key to the new world. What will it entail? Faust abandons his study-a library which is not merely his own, but is inherited, and full of wisdom stored in books out of the long western tradition-to commit himself to action. This is not an abandonment of his rational effort, but a thrust of restless mind into a new mode. Clearly Goethe is inviting us to a new, dramatic model of the workings of human reason-reason which works itself out not in relation to a form written with finality, but anew, through act itself. But perhaps, as with Prometheus, the crux of the difference is in the notion of self. Faust is radically a self, in a sense in which the rational soul for whom Aristotle writes the Politics and Ethics is not. If men are individual simply as instances of a species, differentiated by their "matter" as Aristotle says, but so deeply alike that in the act of understanding two minds become, as it were, fused into one undifferentiated intellect-then words reflecting forms are true vehicles of understanding: form is then first in the comos. But Faust is to be understood in terms of that Creator God, the Lord, who, through Mephistopheles, in effect gives Faust his assignment in �January, 1980 the drama, his own role, unique in history. Such a created self is in a different world from the individuated soul inhabiting the Aristotelian cosmos. This new self, radically individual, radically important, radically alone, we might say, has its own way to make in the world, and this is freedom in a new sense. It is a self with terrible options. We have been a long while getting to Marx, but the transition through Goethe will, I believe, be helpful. The centerpiece, the keystone, of Marx's thought is a word built out of Faust's word Tat. Since it has no direct English counterpart, it will be worth a minute to trace the expansion of that little word Tat into Marx's own larger term. Tat, which, as we saw, means act, in its first expansion becomes Tiitigkeit, the abstract noun, activity. A second expansion identifies that activity with the self, in German, Selbst. The result, a German mouthful, is Marx's term: Selbstbetiitigung. The most literal translation would be self-activity, and that is the term the translators give us. But of course that is a manufactured term, for we have no such word in English, so that the most central of Marx's words does not convey much in our language. We have to circumnavigate it with words like initiative, vitality, restlessness, or spontaneity. I take the liberty now of suggesting that this is the very Promethean principle, that drive which will not let the self rest in chains, or under tyranny: thus where we lack a word, Aeschylus, looking beyond his own world, may have provided us with an image. "Self-activity" sounds a little like Aristotle's physis, nature: an indwelling principle of motion. Marx is immensely drawn to Aristotle's terms and concepts, and indeed he calls the opposite of self-activity "accident," very much as Aristotle does, as if he were simply transcribing the Physics. But we must be careful, and indeed it will be instructive to contrast physis, nature, and Selbstbetatigung, self-activity. One way to do that will be to set Aristotle's notion of making, craftsmanship, against Marx's account of what he calls the "labor-process." Aristotle sees art, techne, as a rational process in his own sense. The competent craftsman has first a form in mind. This is the telos, the end of the work. The artist, in short, knows in advance what he is doing; there will be a word for it-let us say he is making a chair-and there will be a definition to go with the word. Form is primary, here as everywhere in the cosmos, for. Aristotle. The crux of techne, the art, is to confront matter, the formless, with pre-existing form, and to know how to shape matter so as to bear form as fully as possible. The more complete the techne, the more smoothly and effortlessly this motion of poiesis, this making, takes place. If ships grew by nature, says Aristotle in his inimitable way, that effortless process would be like the work of a fully competent shipwright. Some of the things Marx says about the labor-process sound very much like this, but as the account unfolds (in Chapter VII of Capital, a chapter which we might regard as J\!Iarx's Physics) we begin to recognize signs of the world-change. Form and matter suddenly reveal a certain curious symmetry: not only the object, but the workman undergoes change-work and workman develop together in the unity of the work-process. Marx says, "The work is objectified, as the object is worked." The work has clearly taken on a new sense, as something in its own right, something subiective, which finds expression in the objective result. What does this introduction of the terms "subject'' and "object'' do to our understanding of art? There was not such subject/ object split in Aristotle's account of techne, or in his cosmos. Aristotle's workman was not a subject, but merely a rational mind going about its business in an orderly way. Marx has turned craftsmanship into Faustian drama: what was simply telos, an intelligible end, has become Zweck, a goal, and the artist is characterized, not by the easy competence of his work, but by what Marx calls der zweckgemiisse Wille, the goaloriented will. The instruments of labor, which for Aristotle were merely rational methods of the prudent mind, are now Leiter der Tiitigkeit, conductors, perhaps lightning rods, of the artist's activity. For Marx, then, art has become process, in which the goalseeking will of a subjective self finds its way to objective expression, a product which is partly foreseen but at the same time something new, while in this process the artist discovers himself objectively as something he had never known, perhaps had never been, before. At the seat of this drama is self-activity. We need only contrast this with Aristotle's quiet remark, "Art does not deliberate," in order to sense the full measure of the worldchange, which will reflect in turn upon the contrast between physis and self-activity. We have, incidentally, witnessed the birth of our modern word art, which today leans so far on the Faustian, Promethean side that we cannot safely use it to translate techne, a pregnant difficulty which often troubles discussion in our seminars and tutorials. The making of the world in the Timaeus, for example, is a craftsman's job, not a work of Promethean art. In his account of the drama of the labor-process, Marx shows us in effect how we can understand art as creative, without misusing terms: something genuinely new, not an imitation of a pre-existing form, is emerging. Similarly freedom of speech is important to us today, and troubles us in our reading of theRepublic, because free speech is vital when there is the possibility that something new may need to be said. That little word ·~new" perhaps contains it- all. Aristotle in the Physics argues convincingly that time does not exist (that is what he means when he says that it is nothing but the measure of motion); it is contrary to reason that there be anything new. For if it is anything at all, it must be an instance of being that always was. By contrast, one way Marx has of epitomizing the labor-process is to say that in it, Unruhe leads to Sein-out of restlessness comes being. Self-activity leads to new being. Marx is not joking -he really means this. There are forms ... but we make them. The forms have a history. And among the forms, is the form of man. Yes, man has made man: what man is to be is a question not yet answered, a question for history. Marx did not invent this notion, or this new world. He inherits it from many sources-from Goethe, as we have seen, and even from Aeschylus; but above all he takes it to a large extent from Hegel. Hegel, Marx says, must be stood on his feet: where Hegel sees the making as ideal, in man's self-consciousness, Marx sees it as real, in man's practice. But Hegel, while being stood right side up, remains, I suspect, to some important extent intact. As you can see, we are now in momentous conflict with those most powerful arguments out of the Platonic dialogues. Has being been reduced to becoming? Becoming what? If forms change, how can words mean? What of justice, and the moral choice? If 57 �The College there are no unchanging standards, have we not fallen into moral chaos, slipped completely into the hands of the lonians~ is all, then, relative? Marx says, in effect: brace yourself! He and Hegel are not speaking of chaos, there is a way in which reason can be reconciled with history-in which the new can be meaningful, and in which the moral can be unfolding. Theses on Feuerbach:' Theses I- IV ·There is always a difficulty, of course, in lecturing about books which only Seniors have read in the course of the Program. In order that we have some common ground, I have distributed a selection from Marx's so-called "Theses on Feuerbach". Feuerbach, I should explain, was a student of Hegel, who after a couple of years became disaffected and left to try to say as completely as he could the opposite of what Hegel was saying-for Hegel's idealism, Feuerbach substitutes a thoroughgoing materialism. What Marx says in the "Theses" is essentially that Feuerbach did not go far enough. I suspect you may not have been able to make much of these Theses out of their context, but let us see now whether they will help us as a response to our concern about a mode of human reason which proposes to join being and becoming, and for which the forms have a history. Thesis I. The main trouble with "materialism" ... up to the present time is that it thinks of its subject matternamely, reality, the domain of the senses-always as an object, or an observation. It thus has not included action -tangible human activity, or praxis . ... In this first thesis, Marx appears to be defining a new "materialism," "materialism" in a sense which he says has never before been ascribed to the term. Other materialisrns have always dealt with things as objects, objects, he says, to be looked upon (an· geschaut); this is, of course, pretty much what we mean by objective science. Marx's new proposition is this: our own, subjective selves take objective form in the working out of our activity-in doing things. (Marx-uses the Greek word, praxis.) This is what we have just seen in his account of the labor-process, in art. In such praxis, the self makes itself objective, visible. Hence, Marx says, human activity, Tiitigkeit, must be recognized as belonging to the domain of the senses, and in this way the active self becomes the concern of an inclusive materialism. All that Marx means here by "materialism" is that discipline whose subject-matter is the domain of the senses, whatever enters sensation. Evidently this one realm of reason, or science, is very far from "materialist" in any ordinary sense: it does not confine itself to inert objects, matter, bodies subject to laws of motion, but it includes all that enters the real world, especially men, not as objects, but as subjects, selves, manifest in their actions. The subjective and the objective coalesce as the concern of one science of the real Thesis II. The question whether human thought attains to objective truth is not at all a question for theory, but a practical question. We have to establish the truth of our 58 thoughts in praxis: the truth, that is, the reality and the power, the this-sided-ness, of our thoughts .... In the first thesis, Marx looked at reason in terms of its object. In this second thesis, he looks at the thinking process itself. Is there objective truth? This is very much like our question from the Dialogues: does dialectic have an object-do the forms exist? Marx shifts the ground of the question: Man must establish the truth ... of his thinking in praxis. What is it to have a thought? Marx is suggesting here, I believe, that we have the thought (the German word might mean, we manifest the thought, establish it, prove it, or show it) in praxis. When we do so, it will be real, powerful, and as he says, "on this side" -that is, on the side of our real lives. The thought will be part of our lives; in that way we have the thought. Thus, the first thesis argued the significance of praxis as object: through his action, we see the self of the artist. This second thesis argues the significance of praxis as the vehicle of thought: in praxis, our own action, we manifest to ourselves our own thought. In this second thesis, we might say, the thought-process and the work-process, art, have coalesced. The new science does not regard human activity with detachment: its very mode of knowing is action, it is inherently involved. Thesis III. The (old) materialist doctrine of the changing of circumstances and of education forgets that circumstances are themselves changed by men, and that the educator must himself be educated .... This third thesis shifts the ground again, from the individual thought process, to history. Evidently, at any given moment in history, today, for example, we live in the midst of circumstances given to us in the form of social relations, social institutions inherited from the past. It is not clear how much we might be able to do about this, but on the whole we have to work out our lives as best we can in terms of these given conditions. A crude materialism-the old materialism-would say that they determine our lives. Feuerbach has said, "Man ist was man isst"-"Man is what he eats". Marx does not say this. He reminds us that "circumstances are changed by men" -that is, that history consists of an interplay, self-activity acting through and upon conditions. When he speaks in this thesis of the "fusion of the changing of circumstances with human activity," I understand him to be saying that history is praxis, art, writ large. Elsewhere he speaks of our inherited social structures as "material" or <(inorganic", and of our own activity upon them as "organic". Hence, acting in history, we are the workman as artist, giving scope to his own purposeful will-and if we combine this insight with that of the second thesis, we see that history has become for Marx our thought process writ large. To think seriously is to act boldly, in history-that is, to seize inherited social structures as material on which to work, and to change them, to turn them to our own goals. Such action Marx calls not just praxis, but revolutionary praxis. �January, 1980 Thesis IV. Feuerbach begins with the fact of religious selfalienation, the doubling of the world into one which is religious, and another which is worldly. His task is to dissolve the religious world into its worldy foundation. But the fact that this worldly foundation takes off from itself and establishes for itself an independent realm in the clouds, can only be explained in terms of the inner strife and self-contradiction of this worldly foundation itself. ... This fourth thesis turns to religion. Marx is not only a materialist, he is an atheist. However, just as his "materialism" embraces self and the subjective, and the praxis of his "materialism" becomes the medium of thought itself, so his atheism takes religion extremely seriously. Christianity suffers the same fate as Hegel: it too must be stood on its feet, but, like Hegel, to an impressive extent it is preserved as an invariant of the rotation. The Christian dream Marx sees as a transformed projection of the real world-a realm in the clouds. The Christian brotherhood of man is a wish and an idea, born of the violence and contradiction of a dark phase of the world's history. Christianity is thus a dialectical insight, a moment of thought, but the real task for thought is to establish that insight in praxis, to realize the vision of brotherhood, in our lives. The fact that the suffering and negation of a commercial, class society generates the idea of its opposite illustrates the dialectical progress of thought, in history. As in a Platonic dialogue, thought advances through refutation. In the dialogue, Gorgias, for example, learns what he is by discovering, through the anguish of refutation, that he is not what he thought he was-he is better than he knew. In history, we make our way by discovering that the institutions we have inherited in fact deny ourselves. Historical praxis is dialectical thought. That is why Marx says that it is inherently revolutionary praxis: it questions, and dares to change, inherited forms. II. ALIENATION Thus there is, in our modern society, a general sense of frustration, dismay, and something we tend to call in a vague way "alienation". We sense that the world of modern technology, modern finance, class-divisions (however covert), and nuclear warfare is not really a proper home for man: the self sees in the world in which it lives not its own image, but its opposite. This extreme negative swing of the pendulum, away from the valid expression of the human self, is a dialectical crisis for us. Let us leave the examination of the "Theses on Feuerbach" for a mo· ment to consider this situation of alienation more carefully. Although everywhere the processes of our society are devastatingly rational in detail-to say that they are "computerized" sum its up-the net result makes no sense for man: senseless and increasing devastation of the earth's resources, escalation of poverty and hunger in the face of growing quantities and concentrations of food and wealth, the proliferation of unsought and unwanted technologies, and, most serious, most unbelievable of all, the world poised at every moment for instant nuclear de- struction. We sense that we live in a world gone mad, but we sense, too, that there is nothing we can do about it. No available act of political decision will have any significant effect on itnobody is asking our opinion about the real questions. So we are left with a sense of alienation, and possibly a heightened will to make a better world for man if there is any way to do so. Already in the midst of the nineteenth century, Marx experienced essentially these feelings, which he diagnosed technically as "alienation", and he traced them to their source in the structure of society. As so often, here too Marx brings Aristotle forward as consultant, and I think it may help us to look with Marx at a passage he quotes from the first book of the Politics. Aristotle is here helping us to locate the art of economics by making a basic distinction between economics (oikonomike, housekeeping) properly so-called, and something else, a spurious economics, which he calls chrematiske, "chrematistic,'' from the Greek word ta chremata, money. One kind of acquisition therefore in the order of nature is a part of the household art (oikonomike), in accordance with which ... that art must procure ... a supply of those goods, capable of accumulation, which are necessary for life and useful for the community of city or household. And it is of these goods that riches in the true sense at all events seem to consist. For the amount of such property sufficient in itself for a good life is not unlimited .... But there is another kind of acquisition that is specially called wealth-getting (chrematiske), and that is so called with justice; and to this kind it is due that there is thought to be no limit to riches and property. Owing to its affinity to the art of acquisition of which we spoke, it is supposed by many people to be one and the same as that. .. This distinction between true economics, which is rationally limited and measured by the httman good, and spurious economics, or chrematistic wealth-getting, which is uncontrolled by any rational measure, but moves only from quantity to greater quantity, already seems to point to the central fault of our society. Aristotle's analysis continues to the fundamental distinction between two ways of appraising goods; this becomes the foundation of Marx's analysis of our capitalist society. With every article of property (Aristotle goes on) there is a double way of using it; both uses are related to the article itself, but not related to it in the same manner-one is peculiar to the thing, and the other is not peculiar to it. Take for example a shoe-there is its wearing as a shoe, and there is its employment as an article of exchange . ... To say, then, that we live'in a society which has gone chrematistic, is to say that our processes of production and distribution are ruled not by use value but by exchange value-that is to say, we make things not because they are good, but because they will sell. Our society is governed, Marx stresses, not by considera- 59 �The College tions of the good life-human use, or human purpose-but by the infinite and essentially irrational criterion of ever-increasing quantity. There is no limit to increase of quantity, since one quantity is as such exactly like another, and we are always at the same starting-point, driven by the same urge, to make another cycle of profit. What we caH "economics" is therefore not the choice of effective means to achieve human ends, but that false "art or skill" of getting more, and more, and more. Progress is measured by growth in the GNP. In these terms, we already see the roots of alienation in the separation of life from human ends, and that this alienation is intimately associated with our capitalist society, a society which is "economic" only in the chrematistic, and not in the true, sense. Beginning with this distinction out of Aristotle, Marx lays the foundation for a scientific study of the modern economic order in his book, Capital. Capital is as a scientific work in many ways strikingly analogous to Newton's Principia, and I shall point out one of these ways in a moment. But we should notice also one huge difference: Newton writes of eternal natural laws; Marx writes the theory of a passing set of social relations, a moment of history, and his theory reaches to the very laws of their passage. In this sense, Capital belongs to the new understanding of reason: it analyzes, not timeless truth, but truth incorporated in man's praxis. The Theses have shown us that praxis bears man's self-expression, and his understanding of himself-his knowledge-so that the study of a passing social structure is in no way to be despised. Nor is it a matter of regret that, if Marx is right, his great work, Capital, will one day have no object. Thought belongs to history. With this disclaimer before us we can observe that the first and fundamental likeness between the Principia and Capital is that each is built on a strict and universal mathematical quantity. Where Newton first defines quantity of matter, and thereafter secures all of his analyses of the physical world on this one quantitative foundation, Marx defines exchange value equally quantitatively and exactly, and thereafter constructs all of his analyses of the functioning of the capitalist economy on this one fixed ground. It is ironic that our contemporary economists tend to fault Marx most for his preoccupation with this supposedly unnecessary foundation-it is as if one were to fault Newton for his insistence on a firm definition of the "quantity of matter"! We cannot, of course, deal adequately with this concept tonight, but let me say simply that Marx adopts from such radical predecessors as Adam Smith and Benjamin Franklin the postulate that the exchange value, or simply value, of any commodity arises from the investment of labor in it. Value is then measured in hours of labor time. To be strict, as Marx is, we must reduce energetic and lazy labor, efficient and inefficient, highly trained and simple, to one common unit: thus, more exactly, Marx defines the value of any commodity, such as Aristotle's shoes, as the amount of socially necessary, socially average simple labor time which has gone into its making. Money is merely an expression of this labor value. Almost everything we can point to in our surroundings is an object of exchange in our chrematistic world, which means only that it has, or has had, its money price-and that in turn means that it has been reduced by the appraisal of the market process to equivalent labor hours. Why else do we 60 pay for a book, or for shoes, or for a house-or an educationwhat we do, except that ultimately they, and the materials and machines which have gone into their making before them, have a common measure-have cost so much of human time? Aristotle, Marx is very much interested to point out, balked at just such an analysis-pricing, Aristotle decided, was simply irrational, for he could find no common measure between a coat and a house. That historic aporia which Aristotle faced, Marx says, was highly significant: Aristotle was right to stop where he did. For in his time, in a society including slave labor, there was no common measure. Only when men become socially equal do their labor hours constitute a common measure. Hence our political statement that men are created equal, and our economic principle of the universal exchange of their products as commod~ ities in one single network of markets, reflect each other, and, more deeply, correspond to our conviction of the universal worth of the human self. Beginning with Aristotle, we have once again taken a major step beyond him, and that step, towards a universal, quantitative chrematistic of our commodity world, is at the same time the passage from use value-a society which is a home for man-to exchange value, and a society of total alienation. When a man makes a product, as we found in our consideration of self-activity, his purposeful will shapes an object in which he as worker finds expression: the self knows itself, and finds satisfaction, in the product. We assumed when we spoke that way that the product was indeed the object of the worker's will-that it was for him a goal, a good thing, a use-value. If on the other hand, he makes it as a commodity, not because he prizes it but in order to sell at the highest price he can command, the product's significance for him is evidently eroded. And if, finally, he works not for himself but for someone else, so that the product is not even his own to exchange, the bond between the worker and the work is altogether severed. He may or may not in some distant way approve the product, but if his labor-power has been purchased and commanded, and he does not work out of free will, but from necessity, the significance of his work is lost. This is the deeper root of modern alienation, according to Marx. Still further, the man who sells his labor-power to another has himself become a commodity. Not only is the product not his own, but his very time, his energy, and his will are not his own-in short his life during the hours he has sold to an employer, is not his own. The ultimate analysis of alienation is not, then, that the product of man's work is not his own, but that his own activity, his life, has been alienated. That is not just a matter of hours. What is lost is the opportunity for the expression of self, which js at the ce~ter of Marx's concern for human freedom, and no doubt the center of our own concern as well. When we make ourselves commodities, we perform the original act of alienation, reducing what is most personal, what is most original and strictly creative, self-activity, to common coin. When we market ourselves, we do that-and every one of us who works for another, has performed that act of alienation. We might at this point pause to correct some false impressions about Marx. It is commonly supposed that Marx is concerned with fair, or uniform, distribution of the product of labor. He is not unconcerned with that; however, we see that this js not the �January, 1980 center of his concern, which is rather the free command of one's own time, one's own life. It is commonly supposed that Marx recommends a uniform or regimented society, in which the individual is engulfed in a mass. We see that the situation is precisely the opposite, for Marx takes as his measure the total freedom of the creative individual. Marx, looking at us, says that the freedom we imagine we possess is to a large degree illusory, precisely because we do not freely command the hours of our working days-we alienate ourselves in a way he regards as a fundamental violation of personal freedom. Finally, readers of Capital often make the initial mistake of supposing that Marx recommends the reduction of all labor to a homogeneous measure, while, on the contrary, he describes with surgical precision what in fact he observes happening in the commodity society, our society, for which he is building the theory. Marx does not write Capital because he loves capitalism! He writes it to show us our own situation, to help us see where we are in history, and hence to determine where, in strict realism, we may expect to advance. We do not always reflect on the fact, but whenever we turn to the classified ads in the local paper to begin the process we call "getting a job," we alienate ourselves. Marx is not recommending this, but simply pointing it out. III. HUMAN SOCIETY In the logic of dialectic, recognition that we are alienated from our true selves in an automated, chrematistic society leads not only to a sense of human frustration, but at the same time to a growing perception of what a genuinely free human society might entail That is the way we learn. It is not Marx's mannerindeed, it would not be compatible with his account of the operation of human reason-to begin by writing down a prescription for a new society: we must find our way to it, according to Marx, in and through a commitment to new praxis. Readers of Capital who seek in that work a schema of a proposed life under socialism come away disappointed; in that respect, it would be much more useful as a handbook for readers of the Wall Street Journal. Yet it is possible in Marx's writings-and out of our own experience, if Marx is right-to identify a new direction. Let us see what guidance we can get from Marx, turning back to certain of the remaining Theses on Feuerbach. Thesis VI. Feuerbach dissolves (or "resolves") religious essence into human essence. But this human "essence" is no abstraction dwelling in each individual person. In reality, it is an ensemble of social relations. When Marx says, here, that " ... the human essence is no abstraction dwelling within each single individual," -what really is this proposition which he is rejecting? It is, I believe, different in an important way from Aristotle's understanding of the form of man. Aristotle's forms are not "abstract," and for Aristotle the form of man draws man essentially into the community-he can be himself only in the polity. Feuerhach .speaks instead of abstract form, a universal separately present in each individual man. Marx denies the existence of such abstract form, but he does not go back to Aristotle either. What, then, is man for Marx? Our essence (or perhaps now, we should translate, our be~ ing) is the ensemble of our social realtions. What am I? I am not man simply: I am late twentieth-century American man, in a number of more particular social relations which are quite decisive for me. Does such a social definition limit me arbitrarily? No, I think Marx is saying that it is simply a realistic appraisal of the fact that I essentially have a place in society, and in history, and that to grasp that reality for what it is, is to gain new and more human power. Note in particular that it does not cut modern man off from his predecessors~it shows the way back to the ancients, for that way is part of the historical, social relation which defines us. Does man have a nature? Only in the sense that we are reshaping our nature, as we are reshaping the rest of the natural world: man is not limited by his nature; we are full of possibilities, and we cannot at any point know what they might yet be, though we can in part foresee them. In place of an eternal form, a definition of man-whether Aristotelian, or abstract, in the modern manner-we have Prometheus: the unity and direction of the rational principle, the unrelenting self What keeps it on course? Not eternal forms, but one inner principle, about which Hegel and Marx seem after all not to be in such fundamental disagreement: mind, finding its way to new forms embodied in new modes of human society, new Republics-and with them, new possibilities for human freedom, If we understand the term "materialism" in the very special way discussed in connection with the earlier Theses, we can give this course of striving through history the name, dialectical materialism. Thesis VIII. Let us move on now, directly to the eighth Thesis: All social life is in its essence practical. All mysteries which turn theory into mysticism find their rational solution in human praxis and in the understanding of this praxis. What does Marx mean here by "mysteries which lead theory to mysticism," and the claim that such mysteries "find their rational solution in human practice?" I think we can illustrate this, and thereby clarify it, with a rather familiar example. We in the United States have had a long-standing desire to bring freedom to peoples of other parts of the world. I think at our best we have, over the years, been quite sincere about that. We have given loan~. sent technicians, established trade, made investments, even dispatched armies and waged fearful wars. Yet we have seen over the years a widening gap between our~ selves as "haves" and other nations as "have-nots;" and we have discovered that what we thought would be "development" has proved the systematic development of underdevelopment, as third-world economies have retrograded, and those nations have grown to be ever deeper in debt. The theory of freedom has thus become a mystery: we continue to speak of the "free world," but we know that it is everywhere marred by political police of our own training, dictatorship, corruption, and economic distress. The idea, thus floating over reality like Laputa, becomes a mysticism. Marx here gives us a piece of direct and sound advice: the 61 �The College solution will not be in the domain of theory or abstract ideas-a rational solution will come in and through concrete human practice, and in the comprehension of that practice. Promethean reason will in time work its way around such mysticism. Of course it is not we, but other, revolutionary, forces which are breaking through the fetters of an ineffective, confining theory. And of course, it is not by accident that we keep finding ourselves on the wrong side of such issues. Thesis IX. The highest point to which observational materialism attains-that is, materialism which does not grasp the domain of the senses as practical activity-is the observation of single individuals and civil sOciety. We spoke earlier of the contrast between an "old" materialism, which was that of objective science, seeing reality at a distance, as an onlooker, and the "new" materialism proposed by Marx, which is involved in praxis, and sees human reason as moving in and through concrete activity. Marx now knits that earlier consideration of two forms of materialism-which are really simply two ideas of human reason itself-to two corresponding political ideas. When the old materialism looks at society it will see man "objectively": that is, it will see abstract man, man as an isolated individual Of course, the social scientist will see huge numbers of such men, but their groups will be simply aggregations of isolated individuals, heaps of social atoms. By contrast, when the new reason looks at man, it sees him as an inherently social being, social in his very essence-and the new reason itself will operate dialectically, through its own involvement in these social processes. The old reason is objective, cold, distant; and it sees abstract, isolated objects-things. The new reason moves through involvement, and it will see man as a social being, whose groups are not accidental to him, but essential. What society will the old mode of reason describe? It will be a society in which people relate to one another competitively, for individual gain, or group together out of convenience or necessity; this is what Marx calls "civil society." The corresponding political motto will be, "The best government is the least government." Each citizen will be as independent as possible of others. The highest aim of the political structure will be to guarantee equal individual rights, meaning the right of each individual to this independence. The political unity will thus be formal, unifying a daily reality of practical life which is as free-that is, as atomic-as possible. We see this as coming close to describing our own political ideals, and our own society-and of course we have seen the corresponding "old" materialism as characterizing our concept of "objective" science. Marx prizes highly such political freedoms, and the rights we enjoy under our Constitution; he suffered immensely under the denial of such rights in his own time. But they yield the alienated society we have described, and we are thus caught in a contradiction. Politically and legally, the individual self in our society is treated with great formal respect, and is set as free as possible. But the realities of civil life in the same society leave the self alienated, without a home, and thus deny it real freedom. This very contradiction is 62 teaching us dialectically, Marx would suggest, that our society is not yet the highest form. Any move from our present form must preserve political and legal freedoms inviolate, but it must at the same time shift from the irrationality of isolated civil life to a new rational polity-a polity rational in the new sense of "reason," reason which does not merely collect statistics and turn the handles of existing mechanisms, but which is prepared to learn through dialectical commitment. We can say very simply, in a general way, what that change would be. Man would reshape existing social structures so as to turn them to serve human purposes-but to do that would be a social effort, and could only be consequent upon man's recognizing that he is not in essence an isolated entity, but an inherently social being, who cares not only for his private castle, but for that social home in which we all collectively live. To take such effective social action toward freedom, man must learn, Marx says, that he is both a Promethean self and, like Prometheus, a social being whose thinking, to be effective, must take social form. Individual freedom and social thought and action are not contradictory; they are two aspects of a single Promethean principle. Prometheus chained in isolation, gives all his thought to the future of the polity. Thesis X. The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society, or social mankind. We had given a name to the old polity; now Marx names the new. Where the old society, our own, is called civil society, the new he names human society-one in whose structures man can recognize himself and his own purposes. When he calls the members of this society "social mankind," he clearly does not mean mass society as in the caricatures of socialism. He means individuals, freer than we are, who have won that freedom by recognizing that it cannot be gained through retreat from so· ciety, but through rational social commitment. Thesis XI. Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. This final claim, in the eleventh thesis, is a corollary of those which have preceded. Objective reason looked upon the world, and interpreted it; real reason, the new philosophy, which knows that theory is fused with practice, and that the object of reason is form which is evolving, will know that it can only learn by entering upon practice. Its modus operandi will thus be practice, dialectical practice which does not accept but questions old forms. Hence its "point will be to change the world." Not for the sake of change, but because history is a dialectical argument, and that argument has not yet reached its end. CONCLUSION It might well seem that Marx is merely a dreamer, and that by insisting on a serious definition of freedom as self-activity, full �January, 1980 command of one's own time, and envisioning this as realized to a new extent in something called human society, he has left realistic possibility behind. There are, I think, two modes of response to this objection. One is, that the technological possibilities now in our hands are almost unlimited, and certainly at least beyond anybody's present reckoning. It is impossible to say what might be accomplished if we turned over our present factories and skills to production for rational human ends. Vast quantities of unwanted products could be quickly eliminated, vast hours of time now wasted on efforts to persuade ourselves to buy things we do not want, could immediately be saved. Public transportation could be re-invented; we could rebuild our devastated cities, and restore the blessings of life to the pedestrian. The list of such rational transformations, which are physically within our present grasp, is virtually endless. Beyond these immediate possibilities, we have before us the almost unlimited ability to set machines to work for us, and through automation, to release ourselves from a very large part of the labor we now perform, even with respect to necessary or wanted functions. The length of the working day could certainly be cut to a fraction of the present hours. From an engineering point of view, these things are available to us. What is it which stands between us and the redirection of our society toward such rational, human ends? The obstacles are not physical. We have all the Promethean arts at our command-except perhaps one, the real fire: the ability to reorganize our society so as to make these physical possibilities socially attainable. We are Prometheus, fully able to foresee a new order, but pinned to a system which denies us the realization of all that lies within reason's grasp. This is perhaps the most acute form alienation takes for us, and the sharpest goad to dialectical thought. At least, so Marx might diagnose our case. The other answer is that Marx is in much of his work a scrupulous realist, and he labored with enormous energy for years to come to grips with the realities of the system within which we live. The result is his book, Capital, certainly a powerful analysis of the structure and function of the capitalist system. This theory is perhaps Marx's Promethean secret. Capitalism has of course taken new forms over the century since Marx wroteabove all, the corporation has become the capitalist of first instance, and monopoly capital has absorbed much of the market process which Marx, like Adam Smith before him, tends to presuppose. But beneath this, his analysis may remain sound, and the laws of motion which he derived, implying secular trends to ever-increasing crises, may be holding true. The consequence that Marx drew was that capitalism is not a system which can remain viable over the very long run; it contains inner contradictions which will force a move to new social forms. In other words, Marx is not so much a dreamer as a Promethean analyst, and there may yet be reason to take his predictions into account. He foresaw as inevitable a revolution in which the chrematistic society, capitalism founded on private ownership of the rrleans of production, would be replaced by a use-value society, in which human reason would master rather than serve its instrument of production. How man would guide the forces of production to human purposes if he had such a chance, there is no way for Marx to say, since man has never been in that position. Man has never had command of his own time, has never been asked to decide how he would use it. Social forms of a free society would have to be developed almost from scratch, through the excruciating dialectic of praxis. But the Promethean principle is constant: Man will not accept life under conditions of contradiction and alienation forever without rebellion, and he will contrive new ways to bring reason to bear on social forms, in something like what Marx calls, "human society." Marx asks us to move from an individualistic society to a commitment to human society, and thereby to advance to a new understanding of ourselves; not as isolated beings but as what Marx calls speciesbeings-that is, human beings. The free human self-the Promethean self, unbound-ends its alienation, and finds itself at last free by being in a society in which it can be at home. The individual is then both a free self, and truly a member in good standing of the human race. Only by endorsing our common life together in this way as truly our own can we be individually free, or can we achieve rational lives directed to human goals. Marx says somewhere that Prometheus' greatest gift to man is that he showed him the way out of the darkness of the cave in which he had always lived, and gave him a "dwelling full of light." In that image, I think, we come as close as we can in this brief discussion to Marx's concept of rational human freedom. l. To be found in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, (New York 1965), 197-199. 63 �Simon Kaplan Bam: December 5, 1893, Libau, Russia Died: March 13, 1979, Annapolis, Maryland Texts from the Memorial Service m the Great Hall of St. John's College, Annapolis, April 22, 1979 J. Winfree Smith Simon Kaplan was during all the time that I knew him a living challenge to the Christian teaching about original sin. Few people whom I have known have in their lives exhibited as he did such simple goodness, a goodness consistently maintained and unmarred by self-righteousness. I believe that he was what he was because he was a Jew with a clear and profound understanding of what that meant. He would sometimes disclaim being a really good Jew. As far as I could see, his failure to be a really good Jew consisted in his teaching at St John's College instead of meditating on the Torah day and night. Mr. Kaplan and I came to St. John's at nearly the same time. Scott Buchanan thought that St. John's students were mistakenly, however understandably in the circumstances, making a religion of the St. John's program, and that the College itself should do something about that. Consequently, he encouraged Mr. Kaplan and me to undertake extracurricular classes in the Bible. I remember that there was a question of how the classes were to be announced. Mr. Kaplan obviously would not want his called "Old Testament," and I would not want mine called anything that would imply that the New Testament was not Bible. So his came to be called "Bible" and mine "New Testament." We attended each other's classes for a certain time. What I learned from him was of inestimable worth to me. It was a corrective of the mistaken views of Judaism that Christians so easily fall into, such as the view that the six hundred and thirteen precepts that a Jew is bound to observe can only be a woeful burden leading to nothing but despair. I can remember the glow in Mr. Kaplan's eyes when he would say, "The law is grace," or "The law is life" or when he spoke of "living in the law." Our friendship was based in large part upon the common recognition that Judaism and Christianity are irreconcilable, that there is no neutral "theistic" religion that might unite Jews and Christians provided that they slough off the things that divide them from one another. I did not pretend that a Jew could remain a Jew and reduce the law to a few ordinary and easily 64 acceptable rules of human decency, and he did not pretend that a Christian could begin to attain some reconciliation with Judaism by weakening the traditional Christian claim that God is truly and altogether identical in person with one who is truly and completely human. Year after year almost up to the very present he gave a preceptorial in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason from which his students profited greatly. His interest in Kant was in some way of a piece with his Judaism. As a Jew he believed that God had given man the Bible not to be a starting point from which the speculative reason might come to know God as He is in Himself, but rather as a law showing him what he ought to do. He, therefore, found something congenial in Kant who sought to remove man's claim to any knowledge of God through speculative reason and who sought to establish the primacy of practical reason as directing man in what he ought to do. Of course, it goes without saying that Mr. Kaplan would not identify "the moral law within" with the Torah. Once he humorously proposed a revised St. John's program which went as follows: First year: Bible with beatings; Second year: Kant to show the limitations of reason; Third year: Hegel to show how reason can go astray; Fourth year: Bible without beatings. We remember him today as a man who was lovely and pleasant in his life, good in word and deed, in whom we have lost one who gave something unique to this community. Harvey Flaumenhaft Remembering Mr. Kaplan brings to mind Samuel Johnson's dictum that we more often need to be reminded than instructed. Mr. Kaplan's presence made it harder to forget what needs to be remembered. He was born into another age. You students here are some- �January, 1980 Petrograd, 1922 what younger now than Mr. Kaplan was when cataclysmic war broke over Europe, and, amid that great destruction of a world, the Russia of the tsars collapsed in revolution. I am somewhat younger now than Mr. Kaplan was when the last European war erupted, destroying all except a tiny remnant ofJewry in Europe, and ending the hegemony of Europe in the world. Over the prostrate middle lands where Mr. Kaplan had matured, there stood in fateful post-war confrontation the masters of the eastern land in which he had been born and spent his childhood, and the leaders of the western land in which he'd found a refuge. The national socialism most cruelly incarnate in the Stalinist regime and in that of Hitler did not get Mr. Kaplan as a victim, though it got at him by getting at many of those dear to him. The storms that battered down the old world brought Mr. Kaplan to the new, where he found his work in helping keep alive some portion of the decency and devotion from of old which new horrors had not managed to obliterate. In addition to his regular classes in the program that's required at this college, Mr. Kaplan regularly taught an outside class devoted to the Bible, particularly to the Torah. Torah is, the Torah teaches, wisdom of a kind, and particularly from Mr. Kaplan did students learn to seek that kind of wisdom. Peculiar might have been the source of such instruction; parochial it was not. Torah, it is written, will go forth from Zion; for the righteous, it is written, light is sown. Under Mr. Kaplan's guidance, many became familiar with the Torah as a guidebook to the source of righteous living. Mr. Kaplan with his students sometimes also read writings of Yehudah Halevy. Greek wisdom may adorn our life with flowers, wrote Yehudah, but it does not bear the fruit that nourishes our life. The wisdom of the Bible is a tree of life. But its fruits that nourish us are nourished by its roots. To sever the roots of the faithful city is to sever the roots of the city of righteousness. Mr. Kaplan was a cosmopolitan; rootless he was not, uprooted though he may have been by deadly storms that burned or blasted many others. Annapolis, 1974 Settling safely on this distant shore, he did not turn his mind away from those grim deeds which make of history a slaughter bench. He solemnly recalled the victims, and admonished the potential victims, of murder and oppression. Mr. Kaplan was a stern critic of American naivete and complacency. Marvelling at the abundant wealth, mechanical ingenuity, and unrestrained pursuit of pleasure in this country, he had doubts of its capacity to withstand for very long a ruthless and relentless foe respecting only strength and resolution. He was especially a critic of his people in America, who ought to know what need only be remembered. At worship in the S}nagogue during the Days of Awe last autumn, Mr. Kaplan whispered: "In America the Jews are rich, they are contented, they look as if Messiah has already come-it's an affliction." It was also then, and in my hearing only then, that Mr. Kaplan praised a prayer. During the chanting of the Unetanneh Toke{, which is recited during the service on the Jewish New Year and also on the Day of Atonement, more than once he said: "This prayer is good!" The prayer, envisioning the Judge of all the world before an open book remembering all the things forgotten, tells us that on Rosh Hashannah it is written and it's sealed on the fast of Yom Kippur: who shall live and who shall die-who by fire and who by water, who by sword and who by wild beasts, who by hunger and who by thirst, who by earthquake and who by plague, who by strangling and who by stoning-who shall rest and who shall wander, who be at ease and who afflicted, who be made poor and who enriched, who be brought low and who exalted. This catalogue depresses, but there follows an encouraging reminder that those who've gone astray may yet, according to the ancient triple formula, by return, and prayer, and righteousness, affect what is to be-for the Power that is highest wishes not the death of him who strays, but rather that he turn and live; that Power waits for him to turn until the very day he dies. But that day comes, sooner or later, and the prayer comes to a close in con- 65 �The College With Mrs. Kaplan, Annapolis, 1973 templation of the death that finally must close our life: man's foundation is of dust-it says-and return to dust, his end; his bread he earns at peril of his life; he is like a fragile potsherd, like the grass that withers or the flower that fades, like the wind that blows or the dust that's blown, like a vanishing dream. The prayer's last word, however, is not a whimper, nor even a sorrowful sigh; its last word elevates the spirit, affirming that over flesh and blood there is a higher Power that fosters righteousness and gives it life-and itself is ever-living. What was it in this prayer that so appealed to Mr. Kaplan? Two things, it seemed. "In Russia," he remarked as the prayer was chanted, "in Russia when they said it people cried; the poverty was not the whole of it-there were also the terrible pogroms." It should be noted now that at the time of Mr. Kaplan's birth Alexander III was tsar. To borrow words from one historian: "It was under Alexander III and thanks to Alexander III that anti-semitism in Russia became institutionalized, respectable~and violent''; "Jew-beating and killing-the organized pogroms ... distinguished Alexander's reign," and, indeed, "for a time the pogroms ... were supported by certain revolutionaries, brimming with ideals,'' who argued "that in killing the Jews the masses had embarked on the course which would end in the killing of all oppressors everywhere." The historian finds it "not too much to say" that "the official attitude towards anti-semitism and pogroms ... contributed as much as any other single factor towards encouraging and perpetuating that paralyzing lawlessness from above which was to do so much to undermine the dynasty and then to set the tone for the successor regime." But it was not just by reminding him of sorrows such as these, and of the later versions of the same old story, that the prayer moved Mr. Kaplan. I believe that he was moved as well by feeling the joyful trust the prayer so well expressed~joining to a 66 Annapolis, 1974 vivid sense that human life is frail a love profound of this our earthly life, holding as inseparable this love of life and righteousness, and confident that while a man has earthly life a way for him is open to return for his renewal to the source of all our righteousness. Indeed, the only passage from the Bible that within my hearing Mr. Kaplan ever urged to be included in the common reading that is required at this college was the eighteenth chapter of the Book of Ezekiel; Ezekiel 18 speaks about this threefold theme of righteousness, return, and life. When Mr. Kaplan's dear friend Jacob Klein was buried, Mr. Kaplan said, at the gathering right after, to someone who did not feel much inclined to eating or to drinking then: "A Jew should eat and drink after burying the dead-we are obliged to-for the sake of life.'" Mr. Kaplan on the following night invited to his home a few of us his younger friends to share with us his memories of the prime of jacob Klein. It troubled Mr. Kaplan that we only knew his friend in his declining years, when we could not see that extraordinary philosophic intellect most fully at its work, or that extraordinary philosophic generosity in its abundant overflow. The years that we knew Mr. Kaplan cannot be called the years of his decline; for though his vigor had by age been much diminished, age had raised him somehow to his peak. We seem to think not quite of Mr. Kaplan if we try to think of Mr. Kaplan without his seeming venerable. Not that he tried in any way to make himself appear ·so; the dignity with which he bore himself excluded anything of vanity. He was humble with no vain show of humility. It was, indeed, with proper pride that he recounted all the youthful skill that placed his name forever (or for what passes for forever) on the wall display of one of Heidelberg's most eminent establishments for playing billiards; when he was eighty-four years old, he said that someday he'd retire, and then become a real teacher- �January, 1980 if the college would provide him with a title and equipment, he would give instruction, as an expert, in the art of billiards. Mr. Kaplan was a man with a past he chuckled to reveal. He was formal but not stiff; he was firm although not harsh; he was kind but he was not sentimental The twinkle in the eye of that lovely old tease deflated any puffed-up self-importance; but he teased without malice or envy. Pettiness diminished near him: whenever in his company, one had to take a wider view and try to be a bit more upright. He did not bow to what was low; he elevated those whose privilege it was to know him; he had reverence for what is high. He was loyal to the people from which he grew, loyal to the culture in which he was educated, loyal to the government by which he was protected, and loyal to the institution at which he was employed-but concerning each of them he harbored no illusions. He had a gift for friendship that was extraordinary. We first met when he was seventy-five years old. By that time, many men have lost both interest in the world's news and capacity to interest newer men who fill the world-not, however, Mr. Kaplan. Almost till the time _he passed away, he passed his time a neighborly citizen of the world, reading Kant and the Bible with his newest students, telling his friends of the newest Russian books, exacting home-made apple pies from the newest of the college wives, and finding out about the newest of the children. He inspired affection and respect for him in many very different people. We'll better remember what we should remember, because we cannot forget Mr. Kaplan. His memory will be, as we say, for a blessing. Laurence Berns Part of Simon Kaplan's success as a teacher stemmed from the fact that he never ceased being a student. He never ceased to be fascinated by the great problems of philosophy, theology, ethics, religion, and in particular the meaning of Jewishness, the Jewish tradition. His clarity of mind and love of learning was communicated to all those with whom he conversed. His students enjoyed a rare blend of graceful old age with a youthful spirit of inquiry. He taught as much by what he was, as by what he said. One of his favorite words was the word "appropriate''. It is difficult, if not impossible, to describe appropriately the unusual combinations of characteristics that made him what he was. His courtesy was unfailing. But as many people came to know, his courtesy was more than courtesy; in a perfectly natural way it reached over into friendship. His capacity for friendship was extraordinary. He seemed to have a universal sympathy for everything healthy and decent. Yet as I came to see and to wonder at, he was utterly unsentimental. Warmth, kindness, and gentility were joined in perfect blend with dignity, wit and abundant good humor. He could at times be impish, but still dignified. It also took me some time to realize how acute and critical he could be: acute, critical and witty, but never unkind. He seemed to have whatever virtues a cynic could have with none of the vices. He was not inclined to take himself or his views too seriously, but if asked about himself he sometimes replied, "I am a refugee from Bolshevism." It argues much for the essential rightness of this college and this country that men like Simon Kaplan can find here a congenial refuge. Yet with something akin to the same fatherly and grandfatherly regard many of us experienced, he was concerned for the land of his refuge. What troubled him has been called many things: pseudo-sophistication, permissiveness, moral decline. His own way of putting it was much simpler, barbarism, and most dangerous of all for America, hedonism. What seemed to bother him was the fact that when people cease to observe and impose limits on themselves, it becomes natural to think more about having limits imposed by others from above. Democracy with no clear sense of hierarchy, he said, is on the way to tyranny. And tyranny, for him, was no abstraction. Tyranny meant and means countless acts of human cruelty, personally suffered and personally perpetrated. The Russian experience and the experience of European Jewry, he thought, had alerted him to dangers of which Americans in general were dangerOusly innocent. We Russians, he once said, have an enormous political experience of tyranny behind us, of which you Americans have not the slightest idea. It was with a certain sad but bemused pity that he looked upon those who thought that this tyranny in its latest form was, as he once said, "just one step on the way to the millenium." At once tender-hearted and cool-headed, he was also learned, cosmopolitan, and beautifully simple. As Mrs. Kaplan, who so appropriately shared his interests, concerns, and life, said, he was truly a man of a pure heart, no vanity and no petty ambition. He was and is for us a model of civilized humaneness. We were enriched and gladdened by his presence, we keenly feel his loss, but we also cannot help somehow being cheered by our memories of him. 67 �Aristotle Gazing Michael Platt Illustrations: Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer, Rembrandt Harmensz, van Ryn. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Purchased with special funds and gifts of Friends of the Museum, 1961. Pendant with head of Alexander (detail) What should arrest us about Rembrandt's Aristotle is his gaze. To reach the original in the Metropolitian Museum in New York, however, we must be in motion. We must make our way to and then through a modern city. There is no way to approach this painting on foot and in silence. No wonder then that when we arrive at the original we find it hard to enter into the solitude of Aristotle. Nor does the museum always help us. The voices of the paid guides are hard to ignore; and their loud familiarity is as distracting as the silent familiarity of the guards who shift from foot to foot, vacant·eyed. Meanwhile, the crowds shuffle past. Most are disappointed. These visitors to Rembrandt's Aristotle are attracted or they would not visit, and yet they move on. 1 Perhaps philosophy always disappoints mere visitors. We learn from Aristotle himself of a visit which some curious men made to Heraclitus: An anecdote tells of an explanation that Heraclitus is said to have given strangers who wanted to approach him. Upon approaching they found him warming himself at a stove. They stopped surprised and all the more so because as they hesitated he encouraged them and bade them come in with the words: 'For here too there are gods present.' (de part. anim., A5, 645a 17)' Professor of English at the University of Texas, Michael Platt has re· cently published Rome and Romans According to Shakespeare (Salzburg 1976). 68 Heidegger has stressed the important things about this passage: The group of unknown visitors in its inquisitive curiosity about the thinker is disappointed and puzzled at first by his abode. It believes that it must find the thinker in conditions which, contrary to man's usual way of living, show everywhere traits of the exceptional and the rare, and, therefore, the sensationaL The group hopes to find through its visit with the thinker things which, at least for a time, will provide material for entertaining small talk. The strangers who wish to visit the thinker hope to see him perhaps precisely at the moment when, sunk in profound meditation, he is thinking. The visitors wish to experience this, not in order to be affected by his thinking, but merely so that they will be able to say that they have seen and heard one who is reputed to be a thinker. Instead, the inquisitive ones find Heraclitus at a stove. This is a pretty ordinary and insignificant place. True enough, bread is baked there. But Heraclitus is not even busy with baking at the stove. He is there only to warm himself, and so he betrays the whole poverty of his life at this spot which is in itself prosaic. The glimpse of a freezing thinker offers little of interest. And so the inquisitive ones at this disappointing sight immediately lose their desire to come any closer. What are they to do there? This ordinary dull event of someone cold and �January, 1980 standing by the stove one can find any time in his own home. Then, why look up a thinker? The visitors are about to leave again. Heraclitus reads the disappointed curiosity in their faces. He realizes that with the crowd the mere absense of-an expected sensation is enough to make those who have just come leave. Therefore, he heartens them. He especially urges them to enter with the words ELVm ycxp xm tvTcxv8cx Ot:ovs. 'There are Gods present even here.' This statement puts the abode [~8os] of the thinker and his doing in a different light. Whether the visitors have understood the statement immediately or at all and then seen everything in this different light, the story does not tell. But that the story was told and transmitted to us today, is due to the fact that what it reports is of the bearing of this thinker and characterizes it. xm EVTcxv8cx 'Even here,' at the baking oven, at this common place, where all things and every condition, each act and thought, are familiar and current, i.e., securer, 'even there' in the sphere of the secure HPm Otovs, it is so 'that even there there are gods present.' 3 Yet the disappointment ancient visitors felt before Heraclitus differs from the disappointment modern visitors feel before Rembrandt's Aristotle. Rembrandt's Aristotle is not freezing and precisely this may disappoint the modern visitor. He would prefer to find the philosopher beside a stove in a bakery or a hut, or in the garage, the hospital, or the bedroom, or along the barricaded streets. Everywhere but in a study. To disappointment may be added offense. Nothing offends the modern visitor of Rembrandt's Aristotle more, I think, than the philosopher's rich dress. Is it not enough to be handsome? Need one dress so splendidly? Look at the speckles of gold which shine from his large dark beret. Need a philosopher or any man adorn himself with rings and earrings and drape an expensive glittery chain across his breast? How well his jewelry is set off by his dark garments. This splendor is deliberate. But for the modern visitor the most offensive glory is likely to dwell in the sleeves with their thousand hand-sewn folds, the work of many a seamstress for many an hour. I learned how offensive the rich dress of Aristotle is to the modern visitor from an outspoken student a few years ago who announced that such dress is incompatible with philosophy. He wanted, I think, philosophy to be clothed in the rags of St. Francis or the overalls of Marx. Or in a combination of rags and overalls: the dress befitting Simone Wei!. The sight of the wealthy, handsome, and richly-appareled philosopher is not edifying. If we want the world all denim and corduroy and no silk, we are bound to be offended or disappointed by Rembrandt's Aristotle and our preference in dress will also insure that we are not arrested by Aristotle's gaze. Today he who would live the vita. contempla.tiva. has a bad conscience; he will be shy, and he must be furtive. To others he must pretend that time spent walking with friends and with thoughts is "for the sake of health.'' Finally, he will believe it himself and taste leisure only along with a bad cold. That solitude is a pleasure must not be mentioned among those who cannot bear to be alone with themselves. Where in antiquity one was embarrassed to labor or enter business, today one is embarrassed to loaf and invite thoughts. 4 We moderns know perfectly well how to hurry. Our life is filled with errands, engines, and phone calls. What is hard for us is to sit still and gaze. To learn how to gaze we must strain against what prevails around us-crowds in museums, and not only in museums. Tonight I am looking at Rembrandt's Aristotle not in the museum but in my study, but I do so after a day spent taking apart the engine of my Old car. 5 A more modern machine or a more modern activity I cannot think of. (Couldn't the superiority of modernity over antiquity be stated rather simply: the ancients did not have motor cars?) An engine is an exacting teacher, and it dirties all its pupils. I have bathed and put on fresh clothes to approach Rembrandt's Aristotle. Still, under my nails some dark thick grease remains, a m·ark of the day's immersion. Heraclitus might say, "There too, in the garage, the gods are dwelling.'' 6 But Rembrandt's ancient Aristotle would reply, "Elsewhere as well. He who has an old car or an old house in the country has need of clothes in which he cannot pull a head, grind a valve, mow a field, hoe nine bean rows, or tend the honey bees." Dressed as Rembrandt's Aristotle is, there are very few things you can do. Dressed as he is, one is almost compelled to think and to gaze. Titles are meant to guide our eyes, but the title this painting now bears, "Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer,'' troubles our eyes as much as it guides them. If we look at Aristo· tle and carefully trace imaginary lines from his eyes, we readily discover that his eyes do not rest upon the bust of Homer at alP A minute ago he may have been looking at the bust, but now he looks beyond it, not elsewhere or at random but in a mental direction suggested by the bust. Aristotle's hand lies on the bust, while the thought which put it there goes beyond it (as it should). So perhaps Aristotle contemplates Homer but certainly not the bust of Homer. Let us leave until later the adequacy of the word "contemplation" and turn instead to the word "Aristotle" in the title with a beginner's question: is the title correct? Is this really meant to be Aristotle? Evidence from the time of the painting's commission suggests that this is indeed meant to be Aristotle. 8 From faraway Sicily a wealthy nobleman named Don Antonio Ruffo sent to Amsterdam to commission from Rembrandt a "philosopher." The family records) only recently brought to light, confirm that the philosopher here depicted is Aristotle, for they mention "copia del costa e spese del quadro dell' Aristotle." 9 The choice of Aristotle to fulfill the general instruction of Don Ruffo's c;ommission seems to belong to Rembrandt himself. 10 Perhaps also the inclusion of Homer (in the bust) and of Alexander as well (for the image of Aristotle's most famous pupil appears on the pendant which hangs from the chain he has given to his teacher). Don Ruffo seems to have responded favorably and discerningly to these inclusions, for a few years later he ordered both "a Homer" and "an Alexander" to go with his "philosopher." It is not unnatural to think that he meant them to hang on either side of Rembrandt's Aristotle. What then is the correct title? The family records speak of an "Aristotle.'' Do we need more? Perhaps what is enough for the family record-keeper, enough to say "yes, that one" and pass on 69 �The College these two, Aristotle, wrote as "a teacher of those who know" (in Dante's phrase) and the founder of a school. Raphael's "School of Athens" is Aristotelian in its emphasis upon school for while the pupils of Plato or of Socrates differ quite a bit from each other, the pupils of Aristotle naturally make a school. By showing Aristotle gazing, Rembrandt shows philosophy and Aristotle in quite a different lightY What most strikes us about Aristotle is his gaze. As we gaze at him gazing, we begin to find out something about gazing. Gazing is not staring. To look steadily at something, to stare at it, is not at all easy. As children we engaged in staring contests. To win them you had to make your opponent turn his eyes away, either by embarrassing him, making him laugh, or simply outlasting him. To keep your own eyes staring, you must go blank, not see what is in front of you; the trick is to keep one's lids open and one's mind shut. 14 Our natural way of looking at things seems to require that we move our eyes around, move from feature to feature, and also alternate periods of resting our eyes on some thing with periods of looking away: Wahrend ich einen Gegenstand sehe, kann ich ihn nicht vorstellen. Aristotle Contemplating down the list rapidly, is enough for us too, even though we do not intend to pass on rapidly. While we are looking we do not need titles; only later and far away, in the course of a conversation far from the Metropolitan Museum do we need something short to call up the right image to the mind's eye. For such occasions Rembrandt's "Aristotle" will do. But if we wish something more inviting and something which will encourage the right expectations, in ourselves as well as others, then I believe we will do better to refer to Rembrandt's "Aristotle Gazing." Meanwhile, seated here gazing, we can ignore the title. Rembrandt stood before this very canvas many times. When he first stood before it, it was blank. What questions faced him? The commission from Don Ruffo said, "give me a philosopher." Very well, which one? Which philosopher would we choose to paint or choose to commission? Descartes? II Machiavelli? Plato? Shakespeare? Nietzsche? 12 Galilee? Bacon? Rembrandt chose Aristotle. (Or if indeed Don Ruffo himself asked for Aristotle, then Rembrandt, in accepting the commission, chose Aristotle.) Perhaps we will understand Rembrandt's choice of Aristotle better if we ask another question he must have faced: how is a philosopher to be portrayed? How is philosophy made visible? Could one paint a man in such a way that, even without the title, everyone would know him to be a philosopher? The most famous pictorial answer to these questions, before Rembrandt, is Raphael's "School of Athens," a picture in which Aristotle figures prominently. It is a crowded scene. Several figures seem cloaked in the walking solitude of thought, but the emphasis falls upon activity, upon teaching and learning. It really is a school. Such an emphasis is proper to any attempt to make ancient philosophy visible. Socrates may have philosophized without forming a school, Plato may have written without ever revealing his true teaching (Letter VII), but still the pupil and inheritor of 70 While I am looking at an object I cannot imagine it. Wittgenstein, Zettel, 622 Hence, to reflect upon an object in front of us, to think about it, we usually look away from it as well as look at it. In conversation, for example, eyes make contact but not all the time; so the person who looks you in the eye all the time is just as deficient as the one who never looks you in the eye. Then with persons or objects there are those moments, not the least pensive, when we put our eyes to the side of the person or object, leave them open, but really look with the mind's eyeY' This is exactly what Aristotle does. He looks away from the bust of Homer; while he rests his open eyes a bit past the bust, he views Homer with the mind's eye. To think of Homer or dwell with him, you must look away from the bust of Homer. The bust is an image, something which invites its viewer to "look for Homer" elsewhere than in stone. While I have been writing tonight I have been "looking away" from the painting. In order to write I must look down at the page, but my mind is not wholly where my eyes are; in my mind's eye I see the painting. I both imagine it and in addition think about it. Thinking about it, I treat it as an image, as an invitation to understand Aristotle and to understand this very "looking away" which characterizes Rembrandt's image of him. In other words, this painting shows a certain way of looking and does so so as to provoke that very way of looking in its beholder. This provoking is not the least way in which the painting shows us what it would mean to be Aristotle. When the beholder asks, what does Aristotle see? or what kind of seeing is this?, questions which the painting provokes, he is beginning to understand what it means to phi_losophize. Philosophizing, here painted in the person of Aristotle, is visible in a certain kind of looking, one which is ocular and direct but in· �January, 1980 complete without a looking away which helps the mind's eye open. According to Rembrandt, philosophy cannot be made truly visible except if it be painted so as to arouse a philosophic gaze. Any description of philosophy which does not incite to philosophy must be made from the outside, from the vantage point of a non-philosopher or of a philosopher who has forgot himself, who adopted the stance of a visitor when he knew better, when he knew that there are no visitors in philosophy, only dwellers. Rembrandt chose to portray Aristotle philosophizing, and to do so he has recourse to something common, to the look in a man's face which we call a "faraway" look. We look at such a man, and we know he is seeing something else than what is right before his open eyes. Certain landscapes, ones which lift the valley-dweller's eyes to ridges and mountains, make this look more common among one people than another. While walking with friends or thoughts in alpine landscapes, one's eyes involuntarily alight on some peak or high meadow. Such sights not only draw one's steps on but also one's thoughts, giving eye and mind something faraway to feed on. The Italian painters love to place such clear Alpine landscapes in the distance behind their Madonnas and other Biblical scenes. Not only distant but pointless things are conducive to thought. Everyone knows the contribution which a flickering fire can make to conversation, permitting thoughtful silence which would otherwise be awkward. Smoke curling gracefully from a teacher's pipe has made many a silence in a class productive. In Moliere's Misanthrope one man explains that he came to despise another when he watched him "spend three-quarters of an hour spitting into a well, so as to make circles in the water," not appreciating, perhaps, the wonderful thoughts which can arise from spreading circles in a pool. Here too there may be gods dwelling. Amsterdam, of course, does not provide such views; nor does Aristotle need them to look as he does. What is important is that the gaze of the philosopher is the deepening of something common, or something commonly available. Here as elsewhere in his work Rembrandt works the same way; to understand and make visible the rare, remote, or past, he has recourse to the immediate, available, and common. To discover what Christ looks like, he inspects the faces in the streets of the Amsterdam Ghetto. To show what Aristotle looks like, he looks at the way a faraway thought overcomes a man. Because he saw what was in front of him, he could see the faraway and because he saw what was far away, he could see more thoughtfully what was in front of him. In this respect he and his Aristotle are alike; both gaze. But while an Aristotle without hands is possible, a Rembrandt without hands is not. Rembrandt has not given us a familiar Aristotle. We do not see "the Stagarite,'' an epithet which the too familiar always employ. Nor do we see the famous teacher and law-giver, "the teacher of those who know." The Aristotle of Raphael's School of Athens is such a teacher and law-giver. One admires and even worships philosophy in his person, but one does not understand it from within, and indeed one is not invited to. Only in Rembrandt's Aristotle do we see the source of these impressive and effectual teachings. Before teaching there was learning, before school there was thinking. To non-philosophers philosophy is a teaching which makes a school, and they value it especially for those of its consequences which make ordinary life more amusing (paradox), more secure (astronomy), or more comfortable (mathematical physics). Raphael has portrayed philosophy primarily from this point of view. It remained for Rembrandt to uncover the source of all these things, a source which like a fountain running over takes no thought of the basin it falls into or of the citizens who draw daily water from it. To the question "how should the philosopher be portrayed?" Rembrandt answers, "how else but philosophizing." In a way it is an obvious answer, but also one which can only be given by someone who has it in him to philosophize. By exhibiting philosophy as a certain look in the eye Rembrandt characterizes philosophy as a way of looking at all things human, divine, and natural. This way of looking is something chosen, cultivated, and habitual with Aristotle. A whole way of life goes with it, supports it, ~nd in turn is crowned by it. That philosophy is a way of life Rembrandt has emphasized by reminding us of other ways of life which differ from the philosopher's. The bust of Homer reminds us of the life of the poet, and the image of Alexander reminds us of the life of the political man. How right Rembrandt is to include these ways of life and just these persons. The very theme of the most choiceworthy way of life is often treated by Aristotle himself. Early in the Ethics (IV), it seems that the palm will go to the gentleman or great-souled man; leave out the eyes of Rembrandt's Aristotle, and you have a portrait of such a man. Put those eyes back in, and you have a visible gloss on the last books of the Ethics where something higher than the gentleman or great-souled man appears, the man who cultivates the divine nous in himself, the philosopher (1177a-1179b). Nor are poetry and Homer out of place in Rembrandt's Aristotle. In the course of his instructive treatise on poetry, Aristotle most often and most highly praises Homer. The same is true of politics and Alexander. Aristotle treated the political life in his Politics and his Ethics, and his relations to Alexander are manifold. Alexander was first his pupil and later his benefactor. That Rembrandt's Aristotle wears a gold chain from Alexander reminds us that it was Alexander who endowed the Peripatetic School in Athens. Nor is the rank which these three lives have in Aristotle far off from the rank suggested by Rembrandt's painting. The eyes tell us the ranking. The pensive eyes of the philosopher find no answering light in the dim eyes of Homer, while the eyes of the political man, Alexander, are not visible at all beneatp. his miniature visor. Since Aristotle is turned toward Homer, we may well do the same. The opposition of the blind Homer and the deep-eyed Aristotle seems an absolute one. Most men with eyes find the sight of a blind man discomfitting; they feel both privileged and vulnerable, and both feelings make them uneasy. 16 What makes most men uneasy prompts a philosopher to thought. Aristotle is not discomfitted by the blind Homer; instead he thinks about sight. In order to be a poet, you need not have eyes; blind Homer shows this. To be a philosopher, need one have eyes? It is hard to say. Aristotle has eyes, and we know of no notable example of a philosopher without eyes, yet there seems no necessity in this coincidence. (There is a man for whom eyes are necessary, but 71 �The College Bust of Homer (detail) we will speak of him later.) Isn't the blind Homer only a more absolute case of "looking away" (as we were saying of the philosopher); isn't Homer only a more striking case of a man with a "faraway look" in his eyes, and if so, then is not poetry akin to philosophy? Something of the kind is suggested by the fact that Aristotle has a bust of Homer in his study, by the sensitive way he touches the bust's head (not with a flat hand, but with the heel and the finger tips), and of course by his thoughtful turning in the direction of the bust, but the precise nature of the kinship is elusive. The stone bust of Homer manages to convey both the blindness of Homer and at the same time his intelligience and nobility, to show us both the vacant eyeballs of Homer and at the same time the marvelous mind's eye from which flowed those clear, beautiful images. Is it the quality of that mind's eye which justifies the admiration of Aristotle and constitutes the kinship of philosophy and poetry? A few years later Rembrandt painted a separate Homer; even more than the bust of Homer, this painting shows us the mental concentration on some faraway thing which constitutes the kinship of the poet and the philosopher. Yet two differences remain. Judging from the painting of Homer dictating, 17 the concentration of the poet is not pure. He concentrates in order to make something present; for the gazing Aristotle, some thing simply is present. Homer waits for and at the same time invites and welcomes the Muses. He is like a man who awaits a rider on a white horse in the distance and by so doing welcomes him closer. In this respect Rembrandt's Homer reminds us of his Matthew with the angel at his ear. (What Rembrandt's Aristotle 72 thinks of such muses and such angels is by no means clear.) One difference remains. The gazing Aristotle is silent, and Homer speaks. What Homer speaks, his scribe records on a scroll, while to writing and teaching the gazing Aristotle pays no heed whatever. The relation of poetry and philosophy has long been characterized as a quarrel. The teacher of the teacher of Aristotle was Socrates, and as he explains in his Apology, the first attacks against philosophy in his person were brought by poetry in the person of Aristophanes. The counterattack by the immediate pupil of Socrates is well known, as also is the reconciliation offered by Aristotle's Poetics. Rembrandt's Aristotle accords with that reconciliation. There are differences between Aristotle and Homer, but not enough to make a quarrel. In writing of this painting I have used the word philosophy and the word philosopher, and the other pair, poetry and poet. These words come easily to one's pen; they are familiar and especially familiar as opposites. Already, however, in the course of our gazing together, that thoughtful gazer and maker Rembrandt has taken us beyond that familiar opposition. For he indicates a higher ground which unites the two. In Homer we see a wonder which speaks, in Aristotle a wonder which gazes. Each of these wonders shares something. Each is a certain kind of attention: perhaps we should say they both behold something, the one with the eye and mind's eye, the other with the ear and mind's ear. Who is to say which is higher or- more comprehensive? Aristotle the philosopher turns to Homer ... perhaps Aristotle's writings are only a spelling out of Homer's poems. Perhaps Aristotle's works are only long footnotes to Homer. This would make Rembrandt's view of Aristotle something like Heidegger's view of himself, for Heidegger contemplates the bust of 1-Iolderlin. It is surely a long question. In any case Homer and Aristotle, poetic wonder and philosophic wonder, sh~re more than the old quarrel of poetry and philosophy would suggest. In what follows then, while I use the old words "philosopher" and poet, we must remember that while the one gazes and the other hearkens, they are united in wonder. In addition to poetry there are two other arts present in Rembrandt's Aristotle. The bust of Homer is the fruit of the sculptor's art, while the painting as a whole is the fruit of the painter's art. For their appreciation and for their production, both arts require men who are not blind. Something of the quality of a sculpture can be appreciated by touch alone, but the blind cannot judge how the light falls on a figure. It is possible to be a blind poet or even a blind philosopher, but not a blind sculp~ tor or a blind painter. Yet while blindness is equally to be feared by sculptor and painter, sight is not equally appreciated by both. Sculpture lasts longer than painting; it is more readily copied; it can be walked around; it can be touched; it has a physical presence; it succeeds beautifully in representing bodies, their solidity and weight, and the sens·e of presence which goes with these. But sculpture cannot equal painting in the representation of the most expressive part of a man: the eyes. All sculpture is a little like the bust of the blind Homer. The light, the expressive~ ness, the intelligence, and spiritedness which come from the soul and give motion and liveliness to the body are found most often in the eyes, and !tis painting which best represents them. If it is �January, 1980 just to call Rembrandt tlw painter (as Aristotle is called tlw philosopher), it is because he so excels in the representation of the eyes. The painter understands the philosopher to gaze in the very way he does. Indeed, to paint the gazing Aristotle, Rembrandt must have gazed as his Aristotle does. The kinship of the way of life of the philosopher to the poet and to the painter is further emphasized by Rembrandt's inclusion of a way of life which is distant from all these-the life of the political man, represented by the image of Alexander which hangs from the chain which adorns the philosopher. The philosopher's left hand touches this chain, the gift of his pupil, but there is no sign in his disposition or in his hand to suggest that the pleasures of the political life merit comparison to those of the philosophic life. It is fitting that the prince offer gifts to the philosopher, that he see that he is adorned with rich attire, and see that his school is amply endowed. The suggestion that such chains bind philosophers to princes is, in this case, 18 a misinterpretation. Alexander was the happy exception among princes, one who knew how to honor philosophers because he esteemed philosophy above politics. Rembrandt's Aristotle is a portrait of antique philosophy in a truly antique setting, with the philosopher flanked by his chief rivals, the poet and the prince; and it is composed so as to emphasize the difference between antiquity and modern Christianity, for the figure of Aristotle in his study with a bust should remind us of all those pictures, by Rembrandt and others, of the saint in his study. These modern Christian saints do not contemplate a bust of Homer; in its place we find a skull. 19 Of course Homer is dead, and perhaps this contributes to the pensiveness of the philosopher, but it does not disappoint or agitate him. It is a Christian conviction that "death is the wages of sin," that death is unnatural, that it does not belong to our original Edenic condition, and that, consequently, the ways of God need to be justified to man (Milton). The skull is a fitting image of these convictions, one quite "foreign to antiquity which pictured death as a "sleeping youth" and called it "the brother of sleep" (Homer). 20 The sobriety of ancient convictions are fully represented in Rembrandt's Aristotle. Rembrandt's portrait of antique philosophy is also to be distinguished from Jewish Biblical religion. Rembrandt often paints Rabbis conversing together or studying alone; almost always they have their precious books with them. The relation of antique philosophy to books is not less serious, but it is both less exclusive and less absorbed. Not knowing or acknowledging a book revealed by God or a god, it did not subordinate all books to one and study it alone with fervor. So, the shelf which we see behind the bust of Homer in Aristotle's study has more than one book on it. Rembrandt's Jews are students and readers of their precious book, but he does not show us the moment of its divine revelation. To understand such revelation, we must look at one of his Christian portraits, his St. Matthew, where the rapt gospel writer listens to a beautiful angel. The angel whispers, and he writes. No such angel visits the antique philosopher's study, for Rembrandt's Aristotle trusts to unaided human powers Jo appreciate this sunlit world and fathom the mysteries which border it. Now the antique Aristotle speaks of wonder, but not of Bust of Homer (detail) mystery, and this should suggest to us that Rembrandt's Aristotle is not purely antique. The antique Aristotle appreciated the sunlit world of appearances, and he ascended from them to the even brighter sun of mind (nous) itself. The clear sunlit air of Raphael'~ School of Athens (all is clear and sunlit, even though the school is set in the new St. Peter's imagined by Bramante21 ) better accords with the antique Aristotle than Rembrandt's. An Aristotle with light pouring in a window and a more tranquil look upon his face, an Aristotle by Vermeer, would capture the antique Aristotle better. Here, as so often in Rembrandt, the setting for the study is cavernous, and here not even the usual faint or baffled light of day shines in. We cannot tell whether Aristotle contemplates in the day or in the night. Here, as elsewhere in Rembrandt's work, light stands out from darkness; it does not vanquish the darkness or sweep it away; it dwells uneasy and also more bright in a darkness from which it cannot separate itself utterly.ZZ Judged by natural understanding, this light is mysterious. Without a natural source, it arises from page, hand, face, and cap, from both the mind and the thing it ardently sees. Perhaps the soul of Rembrandt's Aristotle is taught to burn more bright in darkness by Biblical religion 23 with its sense of silent depths. 24 If Rembrandt's Aristotle is truly antique, then it is the antique Aristotle as discovered by Heidegger, one who points to the hiddenness of Being as much as to its unhiddenness. In his Aristotle Rembrandt has portrayed the spirit of ancient philosophy. For the spirit of modern philosophy according to Rembrandt, we must turn to his Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp. 25 Ancient philosophy begins in wonder and dwells in won- 73 �The College der; it gazes like Rembrandt's Aristotle. Modern or scientific philosophy begins with a corpse and dwells in the fear of death; it calls for a conquest of Nature, and fashions weapons for the coming war, weapons like the method of Descartes, the mathematization of physics, and the scalpel of Dr. Tulp. The modern philosopher proposes to relieve man's condition, while the ancient philosopher proposed to understand it. 26 The latter dwells in the study; the former will be found in the palaces and senates, in garages and laboratories, in the streets and in the hospital. The cool competence of the modern philosopher is well exhibited by Dr. Tulp, but for his fundamental restlessness we may look to Rembrandt's print of Dr. Faustus in his study. Modern philosophy according to Rembrandt is the hand of Tulp with the soul of Faustus. In his Aristotle Rembrandt has portrayed not only the spirit of ancient philosophy but philosophy itself, for the vividness with which he represents Aristotle gazing suggests that this way of looking and living is not dependent upon the times but available everywhere and always. Even if one begins with a corpse instead of a bust of Homer, one may gaze as Aristotle does. The man beside the corpse in his later Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Deyman holds in his hand a section of the corpse's skull; meanwhile he gazes with a faraway look. This "faraway" look is closer to the look on Aristotle's face than to the look on the face of the distracted Dr. Tulp. 1. This essay was delivered to the Philadelphia Political Philosophy Seminar at Bryn Mawr, The Independent Journal of Philosophy in Vienna, at the University of Dallas, Dickinson College, and Russell Sage College; I would like to thank my hosts and these audiences for the occasion to share and perhaps improve these reflections. 2. The translation of this passage from Aristotle's Parts of Animals is from Edgar Lohner's translation of Heidegger's "Letter on Humanism" in Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, ed. W. Barrett and H. D. Aiken (New York, 1962), 296ff. 3. Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, Mit einem Brief iiber den "Humanismus"(Bern: Francke Verlag, 1947), paragraphs 76-78; again the translation is that of Edgar Lohner. 4. Here I follow Nietzsche, Frohliche Wissenschaft, 329. 5. For supervision in this task and for many a good conversation, I wish to thank my friend Lee Gohlike. 6. So, too, might Robert Pirsig whose Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (New York, 1974), has much to say about techne and its place in our modern Western lives. 7. See the sensitive observations ofJulius Held in the title essay from his Rembrandt's Aristotle and Other Rembrandt Studies (Princeton, 1969); throughout, I am indebted to his observations and his learning; his dedication to the task of preserving our precious heritage by ardent study is, to my mind, exemplary. 8. Held, 5ff. 9. Held, 12. These words are "found in a copy written in November 1662 of the original shipping bill of 1654." 10. Held, 12-13. 11. Would it be possible to paint Descartes in accord with his own teaching? As a thinking ego and a mechanical body? Frans Hals's portrait of Descartes may be the solution; the solitary thinking ego stares out of a pale face itself engulfed in darkness; towards the bottom of the painting an awkward hand appears; it is so awkwardly placed that it hardly belongs with the face above. This reminds us that in Descartes' teaching the relation between the thinking ego and the body is quite perplexing. 74 12. Edvard Munch's ideal portrait of Nietzsche places the philosopher on a bridge beside an abyss; he listens to the scream which pierces nature but he does not join it. See Reinhold Heller, Munch: The Scream (New York, 1973). 13. According to Otto Benesch, Rembrandt (New York, 1957), 92, Rembrandt was familiar with Raphael's image of ancient philosophy. 14. Here the contestant might be aided by modern accounts of sight which regard sight as merely a matter of "cones and rods." By repeating "it is only cones and rods," one may succeed in ignoring what one sees. 15. This expression is Shakespeare's gift to all English speakers (Hamlet 1.1.112 and 1.2.185); its Italian equivalent is Dante's gift to his people (Paradiso X). 16. Consider the way the one-eyed stare of Julius Civilus in Rembrandt's "The Oath of the Batavians" affects his potential coconspirators and also the viewer. For grants which helped me travel to Stockholm to study this painting I wish to thank NEH and Franklin and Marshall College. 17. Part of this painting, a part which seems to have included two students taking dictation, has been cut away. Held, 11. See also Herbert von Einem "Rembrandt und Homer," Wallraf-Richartz Jahrbuck (KOln, l 952), XIV, 182-205. 18. Here I disagree with Held's interpretation of the thoughts which this chain brings to Aristotle. Held adduces many examples of scholars who felt they were chained to princes whose chains they accepted. These examples tempt us to forget something unusual in the relation of Aristotle and Alexander. Alexander was the pupil of the· man he rewarded. The chain is not a temptation; just as Aristotle acknowledges with his right hand that philosophy is stimulated by poetry, so does he acknowledge with his left hand (touching the chain) that philosophy needs to be supported by politics. While lower than philosophy or poetry, politics cannot be ignored. 19. True of other painters, but of only one Rembrandt I have discovered (#175, Bauch). 20. See Lessing's essay, "Wie Die Alten Den Tod Gebildet," Gesammelte Werke, Zweiter Band (Muchen, 1959), 963~1015. 21. Kenneth Clark in his Civilization series. That Aristotle and Plato stand in the place of Christ crucified seems to me an unavoidable conclusion. 22. The contrast of darkness and light seems in accord with the empha· sis which Rembrandt has given to the contrast of blindness and sight. So far as 1 know, Aristotle himself never refers to the blindness of Homer. 23. It should be noted that Rembrandt's Christianity seems in turn to be sweetened by something which may be antique, for unlike so many others, he never, or almost never (see Note 19 above and also his etchings of St. Jerome in his Study) o.ffers us a skull for contemplation. 24. In the first cha_pter of his Mimesis, (Princeton, 1968) Erich Auerbach contrasts the narrative intention of Homer, who wishes to make everything visible, with the narrative effect of the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, whose every brief word is surrounded with silence and fraught with depth. Cf. the remarks of Paul Valery on the sense of inner depth which Rembrandt likes to create around his shut-in philosophers, in his essay "The Return from Holland," Collected Works in English (Princeton, 1968), IX, 82. 25. For a fuller exploration of this painting and what it suggests about modern scientific medicine, see the present author's dialogue, "Looking at the Body," Hastings Center Reports, V, 2 (April, 1975), 21-28. The contrast of Tulp and Aristotle might serve to remind us that the current discussion of medical ethics should not be confined, as it largely is, to isolated situations, quandaries, and cases, but must, for the very clarification of these cases, include consideration of the way of life of the participants. Often we do the deeds we do because we have long ago chosen to be who we are. If we find the conduct of modern doctors wanting, we should examine not only their conduct, but the education which formed them. So, too, if we are discontented with modern medicine, we should ask what we most desire from medicine and whether a contented way of life can be based on this desire. 26. In terms of Plato's image of the cave, as Allan Bloom has stressed in his commentary on the Republic (New York, 1968), 403, the ancient phi· losopher is a guide: he leads a few cave dweflers out of the cave; while the modern philosopher is a torch-bearer: he brings light into the cave. �Plato's Euthydemus by Samuel Scolnicov The Euthydemus is a caricature, to be sure. But, as all good caricature, it has a serious intent. It shows the degeneration of the Sophistic approach to education, in some of its aspects. More importantly, it distinguishes Socratic education from the methods and effects of its Sophistic counterpart. Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, the two sophist brothers, are reminiscent of the great Sophists of the Protagoras in more than one way. They are polymaths like Hippias, and, at one time or another, have taught a variety of arts, from forensic rhetoric to armed combat. Also, they have Prodicus' penchant for linguistic analysis. But most of all, they are Protagoras' epigones, down to the smallest details: they walk around the courtyard with their entourage of disciples, who follow them from city to city; they promise to teach human excellence with speed and efficiency; with the change of fashions, they have come to think of the other sciences (apart from the teaching of excellence) as valueless; they deny the possibility of contradiction; they can argue equally well either side of a case. 1 But where Protagoras had intellectual stature and moral integrity, the two brothers are no more than unscrupulous quacks. Nevertheless, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus are a direct and presumably inevitable product of Protagoras' views, much as Callicles is a product of Gorgias'. For the two brothers, philosophy has become the science of argumentation. They are experts of verbal fight, capable of refuting any position, true or false. It is significant that the brothers had previously taught the pancration. In this Greek variety of"catchas-catch-can" almost anything was permitted, regardless of whether the opponent still stood or had already been downed. The brothers' type of argumentation is not much different. As in the other types of litigation which they practiced, such as forensic oratory or armed combat, victory over the opponent is the only goal, and means are evaluated solely in respect to that goal. The brothers too, like Socrates, equate virtue with knowledge. But their concept of virtue is the knowledge of how to succeed at all costs; of how to get the better of others in any circumstance. As a result they teach mockeries of the traditional excellences: litigation instead of justice, techniques of fighting instead of courage, and above all eristic instead of wisdom. The brothers' logic is purely formal and argumentative, equally appropriate to any content or circumstance. Since the Samuel Scolnicov is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is at work on a study of Plato's thinking on education. technique of argumentation is presumed to be indifferent to the content of the argument, refuting the truth is, for the Sophists, a live possibility. There is a technique of refutation that works equally well on either side of the case. Not so for Socrates: "If I am not mistaken," he says to Dionysodorus, "even you will not refute me, clever as you are." 2 Socratic elenchos is the refutation of false or confused ideas. But truth cannot be refuted. There are two sides to each argument only so long as we do not know on which side truth lies. Socrates, indeed, claimed not to know. He therefore kept both sides of the argument as possibilities. But this did not preclude the supposition that one side was right and the other wrong. Protagoras claimed to be able to teach excellence, and to make his students better "from day to day." Socrates, not less than !socrates, doubts the claims of that "new-found art of making good men out ofbad." 3 For him, education is too complex a matter to be summarized in a collection of foolproof techniques. But the two sophists promise even more: they are capable of"delivering" or "handing down" excellence "in the quickest way" (273D 8-9). Indeed, as Socrates remarks at 2728 10, "last year or the year before they were not yet wise." Plato is drawing an exaggerated picture, but his point is valid: there are no shortcuts in education, no crash-courses in virtue. Instant wisdom is a sham; the way of education is long and difficult (presumably somewhat like the curriculum of the Republic), and, what is worse, its results are uncertain until one reaches the very end of it-if one ever does reach it. It is true that Socrates seems now and then to achieve some encouraging results with his method of interrogation, but he never claims, for instance, that Clinias in the Euthydemus, or the unnamed boy in the Meno, have actually attained wisdom or knowledge. He only prepared Clinias for learning, aroused his interest. It would be a good thing if excellence and wisdom could be handed down. 4 But these are not the sorts of things that can be transmitted; they can only be slowly developed by each person for himself, with some outside help and no guarantee of success. The first question raised by Socrates, as soon as the conversation gets going, is the question of motivation. Should the student be willing to learn, or be convinced that he can or should learn, from his particular teacher, or is this unnecessary? 5 If teaching and education consist chiefly in the impersonal handing down of certain beliefs, then the student's learning is indifferent to any involvement with a teacher. Learning is then somewhat like re- 75 �The College ceiving an object which is given to the learner: there need not be much, if any, activity or initiative on the part of the receiver. To hand down intellectual content requires at most suitable preparation. In such instances arousing interest means removing the emotional or intellectual elements which block the way to new information. It does not mean bringing the student to seek or produce knowledge himself. There need, therefore, not be any personal relation between teacher and student. When asked if the brothers Would mind conversing with Clinias, Euthydemus answers that it doesn't matter to them, so long aS the boy is willing to answer their questions. They merely need a respondent. 6 They are not worried, as Socrates is, by the possibility that the boy's studies may do him harm rather than good.7 For them, all respondents are equal, and, to a certain extent, the questioners too are interchangeable. It does not matter too much who leads the questioning, the one or the other, so long as he abides by the rules of the art. 8 Socrates, in contrast, refused students. He felt that some persons would not profit from him, on grounds of intelligence or of character. A personal relation· ship between teacher and student was for him a necessary condition of education.9 Once the sophistic display has actually started, Socrates' first words stress his interpretation of the elenctic, in distinction to the sophistic, process. At 275D, Euthydemus asks young Clinias a question not unlike Meno's: "Who are those who learn, the wise or the ignorant?" 10 As Clinias seems perplexed by the question, Socrates entreats him to answer "courageously, whichever answer it seems to you. For," he says, "maybe you are to get the greatest of benefits." Socrates ironically presents the two brothers' sophistry as on a par with his own elenchus. Each question requires a courageous answer, no matter which, so long as it is what really seems to the answerer to be the case. In contrast Dionysodorus immediately makes it clear that Clinias' answers do not matter in the least. Whatever the boy says, the outcome will be the same: "And I foretell you, Socrates, that whichever way he answers, the boy will be refuted." The technique is so set up that the interaction of teacher and student plays no significant role in it. There is only a sequence of steps to be followed that can be mastered with relative ease. It is, in effect, a teacher-proof and student-proof method. In the Sophistic elenchus, there is no way in which the answerer canalter the course of the argument. Despite its superficial similarity to the Sophistic interrogation, Socratic elenchus differs from it in a crucial respect, not immediately apparent in the written dialogue. In the Socratic dialogue each of Socrates' questions brings the answerer to a fork in the road. At each point in the conversation the answerer himself must decide which way to take: The course of the dialogue is jointly determined by Socrates' presentation, and his partner's choice, of alternatives. Socrates' emphasis on the joint search for an answer is not mere rhetoric. He leads the search, but his partner confirms or denies the suggestions Socrates makes. When this is done in good faith-and it is not always so-both sides are responsible for the outcome of the dialogue. Because the dialogue is always carried on withi~ a context, not all possible alternatives are explored in one dialogue. Frequently only one pro- 76 posed solution or one type of proposed solutions is examined. Alternatives not followed in one dialogue are sometimes developed by Plato in another, sometimes dropped altogether. Taken as a whole, the schema of all possible bifurcations provides a sort of matrix of possibilities to be explored. Rarely is such a schema to be found in one single dialogue. 11 Socrates conceives of instruction in earnest as essentially an individual matter. It depends on the personal convictions of the learner at each stage of the discussion, and for different people the discussion branches off differently at different points. No two processes of instruction can be alike, not only in regard to how instruction is conducted, bu! also in their content, in what actually is learned or discovered. Socrates correctly sees the two sophists' verbal equivocations as degenerate offspring of Prodicus' insistence on the correctness of names. He considers all such linguistic distinctions mere play. They do not teach us anything about the world itself. Such knowledge allows us to make rather broad fun of others, but little else. The brothers' view of language is none too subtle: the function of language is to designate; to speak truly is to succeed in designating, to speak falsely, to fail. But if one speaks, one obviously succeeds in doing something, namely speaking, which is supposed to be just a way of designating, like pointing. Obviously, if one points, one has succeeded in pointing. Therefore, if one speaks, one necessarily speaks truly. Such a simplistic approach is bound to break down. Ctesippus spots the flaw in the argument. "Speaking" is not a two-place predicate, like "pointing," but a three-place predicate, like "naming" or "identifying." Not "A speaks of x," but "A speaks of x as N" (cf. "A points at x," and "A names x 'N'," or "A identifies x as N"). To speak falsely is then not to fail to speak of x, but to speak of x as M (when x is in fact N). To call a spade a spade is to speak truly. To speak falsely is to call it something else; it is not to fail to speak.IZ But Dionysodorus and Euthydemus will have none of this interpretation. They stick to their view of "speaking of" as a twoplace predicate, and accordingly allow modifiers such as "truly" and "falsely" to be understood only adverbially, i.e., as referring to the act of speaking or designating. Speaking truly means speaking in a certain manner, like speaking slowly or loudly. Further, if to speak truly is to speak of what iS as it is, then, on their view, this amounts to speaking of each thing in a manner appropriate to it, for instance, speaking badly of bad men, and tastelessly of tasteless men. 13 Consistent, as far as it goes, the sophist brothers' argument is self-defeating, as Socrates points out: 14 if there is no contradic· tion, or alternatively, if one cannot speak falsely, then refutation too is impossible. But Plato does not seem to think that there is a formal contradiction in the argument, only a circumstantial one which depends on the particular speaker. When Socrates points out to Dionysodorus that on his own view refutation is impossible, Euthydemus takes over. Since the contradiction is between the proposition "Refutation is impossible," and Dionysodorus' demand that Socrates refute him personally, a change of speakers should take care of the problem. It should be noted that if cor,ttradiction is impossible, so is error and teaching. This is, of �January, 1980 course, Protagoras' view. Only Protagoras is· much subtler. Circumstantial contradiction can be ignored if one is stubbornly prepared to disregard the need for consistency in one's several utterances or between one's utterances and one's actions. The price would seem too high. But Dionysodorus sees himself at liberty to disown what he has said before. He considers each argument in isolation. There is no overall coherence (or even consistency) in his argumentation and no commitment to the issues that he raises. 15 Socrates too changes his views in the course of many a dialogue, at least apparently (for instance, in the Protagoras, or in the Meno), and he certainly causes his respondents to change their minds, but he always stresses the consistency of the argument as a whole and the commitment to finding out what the case is. When one changes one's views, this should be done in honesty and with responsibility for one's utterances, not merely because of expediency in argument. Because Dionysodorus' approach is purely verbal and formal, with no regard for either the coherence of the argument or for the matter discussed itself, the discussion degenerates into personal insult. If one is not committed to one's answer, and conducts the inquiry on a purely verbal level, without paying attention to things as they are, then there is nothing ridiculous, or shameful, or absurd one cannot say. Once semantic criteria have been discarded as not formal enough, even the rules of syntax are not of much help. Language itself breaks down. 16 The consequences of such an education are obvious~a spurious art of argumentation. Its results can be seen in the exchange of insults between Ctesippus and Euthydemus, earlier in the dialogueP Ctesippus makes progress indeed in the argumentative art, and manages in a short time to master it well enough to engage the sophists in their own game. His youthful impetuousness prevents him from reaching Clinias' stage of proficiency, however. Ctesippus can see through the sophists' tricks, but because of his psychic make-up he is unable to participate in serious discussion. In contrast, Socrates gives an example of conversation which will move a mind to pursue wisdom. 18 As usual he begins with the obvious and close-at-hand. All men desire happiness. He at first describes this happiness in conventional terms: the possession of the goods of the body, such as health and beauty; good birth, power and honour; the virtues such as temperance, justice and courage. But on further examination it is found that only wisdom brings success. All the so-called goods turn out not to be good or bad in themselves. 19 If accompanied by wisdom they are good and bring happiness. Without it they are liable to be misused. This is an example of the protreptic argument Socrates had asked for at 275A. Clinias is now at least initially moved to philosophize, to seek wisdom, insofar as he thinks it is to his advantage. The question, whether wisdom is teachable, is passed over (282C), since it would require a full examination of the nature of wisdom and its relation to happiness~to which a great part of the Republic is devoted. Even without going into so long an inquiry, a second, more limited question now arises: Is wisdom the whole of knowledge or is it a specific knowledge? In other words, is there a science of happiness and excellence, or is the aim of education encyclopedic knowledge? The Republic will claim that these are not alternatives, but that wisdom, the knowledge of the right conduct of one's affairs and of the affairs of the state, is in fact synaptical (but not encyclopedic) knowledge. The difference be· tween encyclopedic and synaptical knowledge will be made clear only in the Republic and in the Phaedrus. 20 Now philosophy, Socrates summarizes, is the acquisition (or possession)21 of knowledge. He does not explain how this acquisition comes about, or what such a possession consists of. He implies such an acquisition occurs not in receiving information, but in the process Clinias is undergoing at that very moment. Some analytical discussion of this process-one of Socrates' few successes in educating an interlocutor in the early dialogue 22 ~is undertaken in the Meno. Here Plato is interested in the nature of the knowledge that constitutes wisdom, i.e., of the knowledge they had earlier agreed was worthwhile. Socrates resumes the utilitarian line and suggests that knowledge worth acquiring is knowledge that will benefit us. So far this is nothing but an explication of the utilitarian assumption of the argument. But the interlocutors had earlier agreed that nothing is beneficial unless wisely used. Knowledge worth acquiring must, therefore, be knowledge of using things, not of making them, or getting them. 23 The argument now turns to the need for a hierarchy of crafts and sciences. Such a hierarchy makes it possible to distinguish between the encyclopedic knowledge of the sophists, and the synaptical knowledge Plato favours. The organizing knowledge is the art of kingship, identified with politics. Individual educa· tion thus becomes inextricably linked with political thinking. There is here a prefiguration of the Republic: not only is the Philosopher-King presented both as the final outcome of education and himself the educator, but also there are hints of the hierarchical relations among the sciences, dialectric and the political art 24 The art of the Philosopher-King as the art of educating men, however, occasions some difficulties. For one thing, unlike the other arts, it does not seem to have a product of its own. The ruler as educator gives the citizens a share of knowledge. 25 His art consists in infusing the state with knowledge, in the different degrees which the capacities of each citizen allow. The art of kingship is to make others good. There can be no separation between politics and education, no ideologically neutral education. In what way does the art of kingship make us good? In what way is it different from the "newly discovered art of making good men out of bad"? We cannot answer that it makes us capable of educating others, and these still others, etc., for such an answer does not help us find out what the art is. A characterization of education in terms of "initiation" or preservation and continuation of the patterns of the society or of the culture will not do without further specification. Plato is after the cqntent of such art But apparently the analogy to the other arts, which leads us to look for the content, is misleading. Its content cannot be universal, "carpentry, and cobbling, and all the rest," and it cannot be the knowledge of itself. 26 These questions cannot be adequately discussed in the context of this dialogue and they are 77 �The College merely hinted at, as a demonstration of the Socratic method. Socrates' inquires in the Euthydemus reach an impasse, and seem to lead nowhere. The sophists' tricks too lead nowhere. Yet, these two negative conclusions are of different types. Socrates' aporia shows the need for further investigation, and incites the partner to such investigation. The sophistic quandary puts down its victim and makes him despair of inquiry. The Euthydemus' aim is to set out the difference between the Socratic and the sophistic method. But Plato is well aware that the difference is not easy to grasp. Many felt Socrates also put down people, led them in circles by means of sophistic tricks and in the end paralyzed them with questions from which there was no escape. At the end when the dialogue returns to the framestory, Crito tells of an outsider to whom Socrates appeared ridiculous and embarrassing. Crito himself-no fool, but a man seriously concerned with his sons' education, and Socrates' friend-agrees, to some extent, with this appraisal of SocratesP It takes a keen eye-the eye of Plato, presumably-to spot the difference between Socrates and the sophists, and to be aware of the problems in the Socratic method. The Socratic method can often be misused or mistaken for ridicule. Socrates more than once, not the least in the Euthydemus, was taken to be indulging in such ridicule. 28 An educational approach which uses irony is bound to be limited to the few. For Plato, the political man, the difficulties would be obvious. But Plato could also appreciate the positive value of Socrates' irony when properly understood. l. Polymathy: Euthydemus 271C 6 with Hippias maior285B ff.; linguistic analysis: Euthydemus 277E; peripateticism: Euthydemus 273A 3 with Protagoras 314E 4; instant arete: Euthydemus 2730 8-9 with Protagoras 318A 5 ff.; disregard for other types of knowledge: Euthydemus 273D l-4 with Protagoras 318D 5 ff.; denial of contradiction: cf. Euthydemus 285D ff; arguing both sides: Euthydemus 275D ff., and for Protagoras, cf. above. Cf. also Socrates' introduction of Clinias to the two brothers, at 275AB, with his introduction of Hippocrates to Protagoras, at Protagoras 3168C. 2. Euthydemus 287E 4-5. 3. Euthydemus 2858 4-5. 4. Protagoras 319A, Euthydemus 274A. 78 5. Euthydemus 274D 7. 6. Euthydemus 2758C. 7. Euthydemus 275AB; cf. Protagoras 313A ff. 8. Cf. Euthydemus 297 A 9. Cf. Theaetetus 150E-151B. 10. The second horn of the dilemma is developed as a variation on this theme: see 276D. 11. The second part of the Parmenides is perhaps the best example of an exhaustive presentation of a field of discourse-achieved there at the cost of extreme formalism. 12. Euthydemus 284C 7-8. Cf. also Meno 82B 9-10, Cratylus 429E, Republic 477-478. See further G. Prams, Platon und der logische Eleatis· mus (Berlin, 1966), 125 ff.; S. Scolnicov, Plato's Method of Hypothesis in the Middle Dialogues (Ph.D. Thesis, Cambridge University, 1973), ch. VI. Problems notoriously do arise in further analysis, as Plato shows in the Sophist. 13. 284C 9 ff. A similar doctrine appears in the Cratylus; cf. the previous note. 14. 286E 2 ff. One has to presume a sullen silence on the part of Diony· sadorus after Socrates' words at E2-3. 15. 287 A 5 ff. Contrast with Socrates' insistence on the coherence and the unity of the personality. 16. JOJA 7-8. 17. 2988 ff. 18. 278E ff. 19. This was later to be an accepted Stoic doctrine. 20. Meno 810 l-4 already enunciates briefly the Platonic counterpart of Euthydemus 294A 2-3: if only one knows one single thing, one knows all. 21. Ktesis. The Greek is ambiguous. 22. Socrates' brief interchanges with Clinias in the present dialogue is another limited success. 23. Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics l098b 32. 24. For a discussion of the Philosopher-King in this passage and in other dialogues, see R. K. Sprague, Plato's Philosopher King: A Study of The Theoretical Background (Columbia, S.C., 1976). 25. "To give a share" translates 292B 8 metadidonai; cf. 273D 8 paradidonai, ''to hand down." 26. Cf. the Lysis. 27. 305A ff. Cf. 307A l-2. It is difficult not to suppose that the reference is to !socrates, although other identifications have been proposed. Crito himself is, of course, quite close to this description. 28. I cannot follow Leo Strauss' analysis ("On the Euthydemus," Interpretation, I (1970), 1-20.) which leads to the conclusion that "In the Euthydemus Socrates takes the side of the two brothers against Ktesippos and Kriton.'' �BETWEEN THE OLD AND THE NEw Memories of John Dewey Days An Autobiographical Fragment Sidney Hook John Dewey, by Diego Rivera, from the Special Collection, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, with permission. I have related my memories of John Dewey in many places and on many occasions. 1 Sometimes I suspect that these reveal more things about me than about him. But this seems unavoidable because, among other reasons, Dewey was and remains one of the most controversial figures of his age, despite the mildness of his manner, the softness of his speech, and his kindly disposition. When I got to know him well-which was after my student days-we fought in so many "causes" together that he himself and the ideas he stood for became one of the central "causes" in my life. In some quarters this earned me the sobriquet of "Dewey's bulldog" because of my efforts to clarify his views and to defend them against the misunderstandings of critics and sometimes the misstatements of fancied disciples. In these pages I shall write of my experiences and observations as a graduate student at Columbia from 1923 to 1927. The time I spent in classes and on the campus was limited until the last year when I received a University Fellowship. Since I was shouldering a heavy economic burden and found it necessary to teach in a Brooklyn Williamsburgh public school from 9 A~! to 3 PM and at the East Side Evening High School from 7:15PM to 10:15 PM, I took my courses in the afternoon hours. In the first years in consequence I missed Dewey's lectures because of scheduling disparities and enrolled in courses with W. P. Montague, F. J. E. Woodbridge, and Irwin Edman. I had first heard of john Dewey when I was a high school stu· dent. Casual references were made to him as an educator. That didn't mean very much to me at the time and for some years to Sidney Hook is at work on his political autobiography, Out of Step. His latest book, Philosophy and Public Policy, will be published in the spring by Southern Illinois University Press. come. As a young Socialist I was almost automatically an advocate of progressive education or of anything that would break the educational lock~step. My own educational experiences, looking back, were devastating confirmations of Dewey's criticisms of conventional education. Elementary school was a period of prolonged boredom and high school was a succession of nightmares and persecutions. My familiarity with Dewey's writings began at the College of the City of New York. I had enrolled in an elective course in social philosophy with Professor Harry Overstreet who was a great admirer of Dewey's and spoke of him with awe and bated breath. The text of the course was Dewey's Reconstruction in Philosophy which we read closely. (Before I graduated, in connection with courses in education, I read some of Dewey's Democracy and Education and was much impressed with its philosophy of education without grasping at that time its general significance). Overstreet was a colleague of Morris Cohen with whom I studied at the same time. In marked contrast to Cohen, Overstreet was a devoted follower of Dewey and a teacher of great charm and histrionic talent. But I was taken aback by the weakness of Overstreet's defense of Dewey's views. His enthusiasm outstripped his philosophical sophistication. What did impress me about Reconstruction in Philosophy, and later in other writings of Dewey, was the brilliant application of the principles of historical materialism, as I understood them then as an avowed young Marxist, to philosophical thought, especially Greek thought. Most Marxist writers, including Marx and Engels, made pronouncements about the influence of the mode of economic production on the development of cultural and philosophical systems of thought, but Dewey, without regarding himself as a Marxist or invoking his approach, tried to show in detail 79 �The College how social stratification and class struggles got expressed in the metaphysical dualism of the time and in the dominant conceptions of matter and form, body and soul, theory and practice, truth, reason and experience. Even at that time, however, I was not an orthodox Marxist. Although politically sympathetic to all of the social revolutionary programs of Marxism and quite sympathetic to Dewey's commitment to far-reaching social reforms, I had a much more traditional view of philosophy as an autonomous discipline concerned with perennial problems whose solution was the goal of philosophical inquiry and knowledge. I was prepared to grant that the acceptance of philosophical ideas, and possibly their origin, could be explained by the social interests and struggles of the time rooted in the economic substructure of society~just as the emergence of certain scientific problems and the motives for some types of scientific theory could be related to extra-scientific causes and considerations~ but I denied that this had anything to do with the problem of validity or truth in either field. I recall doing a piece of homework for Overstreet, subsequently published in the Open Court Magazine, a philosophical dialogue between Pragmaticus, whose position was Dewey's in Reconstruction in Philosophy, and Universalus, for whom philosophy was the vision of the world sub specie aeternitatis in which time and place had no role. While taking work with Overstreet I was also studying with h~s colleague, Morris R. Cohen. My stimulating bitter-sweet experiences with him I have described elsewhere. 2 Cohen was a highly articulate and harsh critic of pragmatism. For him pragmatism was primarily the philosophy of William james and the philosophy of William James was primarily the doctrine of the will to believe. And the doctrine of the will to believe was simply indulgent wish thinking, and damned as a transparent piece of intellectual dishonesty. Although in his writings Cohen distinguished between the views of James and Dewey, remaining critical of both, in class he lumped them together. He mocked the categories of "life," "experience," "the dynamic," associated with pragmatists and their writings. He dragged in references to pragmatism at every opportunity but I do not recall him ever assigning us any specific text in the writings of James or Dewey. "Pragmatism," he would declare, "is a philosophy for people who cannot think." I embarked on the study of philosophy at Columbia University completely unsympathetic to the philosophy I expected to be professed in the classrooms of its most noted figure. * * * * A student wandering into a class given by John Dewey at Columbia University and not knowing who was delivering the lecture would have found him singularly unimpressive. But to those of us enrolled in his courses, he was already a national institution with an international reputation~indeed the only professional philosopher whose occasional pronouncements on public and political affairs made news. In that period he was indisputably the intellectual leader of the liberal community in the United States, and even his academic colleagues at Columbia and elsewhere who did not share his philosophical persuasion acknowledged his eminence as a kind of intellectual tribune of pro- 80 gressive causes. John Dewey's classes were always full but never really crowded for long. There was a considerable number of students of mature years in his audience who had come to Columbia from various regions of the country to study with him. Those from foreign countries were most likely to be enrolled in his courses at Teachers College which, to the best graduate students in the Faculty of Philosophy, was intellectually off limits. As a teacher Dewey seemed to me to violate his own pedagogical principles. He made no attempt to motivate or arouse the interest of his auditors, to relate problems to their own experiences, to use graphic, concrete illustrations in order to give point to abstract and abstruse positions. He rarely provoked a lively participation and response from students, in the absence of which it is difficult to determine whether genuine learning or even comprehension has taken place. Dewey presupposed that he was talking to colleagues and paid his students the supreme intellectual compliment of treating them as his professional equals. And indeed if the background and preparation of his students were anywhere near what he assumed, he would have been completely justified in his indifference to pedagogical methods. For on the graduate level students are or should be considered junior colleagues. But when they are not, a teacher has an obligation to communicate effectively. Dewey never talked down to his classes, but it would have helped had he made it easier to listen to him. Dewey spoke in a husky monotone, and although there was a sheet on the desk at which he was usually seated, he never seemed to consult it. He folded it into many creases as he slowly spoke. Occasionally he would read from a book to which he was making a critical reference. His discourse was far from fluent. There were pauses and sometimes long lapses as he gazed out of the window or above the heads of his audience. It was as if he were considering and reconsidering every point until it was toned to the right degree of qualification. I believe it was Ernest Nagel who first observed that Dewey in the classroom was an ideal type of a man thinking. Despite the fact that his listeners sometimes feared that, because of his long pauses, Dewey had lost the thread of his thought, if they wrote down and then reread what Dewey had actually said, it was amazingly coherent. But at the time, because of the absence of fluency or variation of tone in his speech, except for an occasional and apparently arbitrary emphasis upon a conjunction like "and" or "but," which woke most of his auditors with a start, the closely-argued character of his analysis was not always apparent. Every experienced teacher knows that because of the vicissitudes of life, he or she sometimes must face a class without being properly prepared. This is not always educationally disastrous. Some individuals have a gift for improvisation and a skillful teacher can always stimulate fruitful discussion. Dewey never came to a class unprepared and there were plenty of family crises in his life. Rarely did he miss a class. There was an exemplary conscientiousness about every educational task he undertook, all the more impressive because it was so constant His posthumous papers reveal draft upon draft of lectures and essays. Despite the distracting extrinsic features of Dewey's teaching, it was impressive. The high seriousness of his concentration, un- �January, 1980 relieved by any irrelevant humor, affected us in the same way as it did his colleagues. Dewey seemed to exemplify not only man thinking but nature itself thinking. In some letters that have recently come to light by Bertrand Russell to his inamorata, Lady Ottaline, after his first meeting with Dewey in 1914, when their paths crossed at Harvard, he wrote, "To my surprise I liked him very much. He has a slow moving mind, very empirical and candid, with something of the impassivity and impartiality of a natural force". (Royce he dubs "a garrulous old bore"). In a sub· sequent letter, he refers to Dewey's criticisms of a paper read before the New York Philosophical Club at Columbia on "The Relation of Sense-data to Physics" as very profound, and all others as worthless. This turned out to be the high point of Russell's appreciation of Dewey. From that time on, save for an extended article on Dewey's Essays in Experimental Logic in 1918, Russell's strictures on Dewey were an expression of misunderstanding and malice. * * * * During the first year of my study with Dewey-the course may have been Types of Logical Theory-! constituted myself, so to speak, the official opposition. I did the apparently unprecedented thing of interrupting him from time to time with questions that reflected the metaphysical and logical standpoints, as I understood them, of Russell and Cohen. This annoyed some of my fellow students whom I awoke out of their somnolent drowse. Others informed me with some acerbity after class that they had paid money to hear John Dewey speak, not to hear me ask him questions. But Dewey showed not the slightest annoyance or impatience. Before the year was out there were others, too, who had questions. What I remember only about these questions is that whenever they caught him up on a terminological inconsistency or on a purely dialectical difficulty, he would smile and with a twinkle in his eye resolve it. Years later I asked him whether he had resented my persistent questioning which must have sometimes interrupted his trend of thought. "No", he replied, "it was obvious to me that you were eager to find out, and struggling to come to grips with a position unfamiliar to you." He had easily divined the quarter from which my questions had come. He made an invidious comparison between me and another student, who had studied with him shortly before my time, whom he characterized as an exhibitionist who asked questions only to parade the answers to them before Dewey could respond. Nothing Dewey said in class convinced me of the validity of his general position. It was only at the end of the year when I sat down to write a definitive refutation of pragmatism that I discovered to my astonishment, as I developed my argument, that I was coming out in the wrong place. Instead of refuting Dewey's views, I was confirming them! They involved judgements of perception,_ the nature of theories, and the ultimately existential character of the laws of logic. My point of departure was Peirce's fallibilism and his theory of leading principles to which I had been introduced in my CCNY days by Morris Cohen. I was intellectually distressed by this outcome, and the first thing I did was to repair to Cohen to find out what was wrong with the way the argument was coming out. He shrugged off my complaint that he had not done justice to Dewey's views about the nature of the "practical" -which made the practical synonymous with the "experimental" and not with the "useful"-and that in some respects he had not sharply enough differentiated Dewey's theories of meaning and truth from those of James. After he read the draft of my article, to my astonishment Cohen said: "What you have written is true enough. If that's pragmatism, I'm a pragmatist. But it isn't Dewey." I then went to see Dewey, whose office I had been reluctant to visit until then because of my critical role in his class, and said in effect: "I started out to criticize your positions but I seem to have come to the conclusion that they can very well be squared with Peirce's arguments, his rejection of Cartesian dualism and his doctrine of leading principles. I think something is wrong, for instead of refuting your views here I am confirming them." I can still remember his grin as he took the paper and suggested that I return later. When I did, he handed the paper back to me with the smiling observation: "I don't see anything wrong with it." Subsequently I was to come to the conclusion that Dewey rarely found anything wrong with the position of anyone who philosophically was moving in his direction. At the time it was clear to me that although kindly and amused, Dewey was rather impressed with my development, not so much perhaps because it strengthened his convictions of the validity of his own views as because someone who had been close to Cohen and sympathetic to Russell's Platonic realism, and who had advertised himself as a resolute opponent of Dewey, had found some of Dewey's most formidable critics wanting. To outsiders it looked as if Dewey had won over one of Cohen's disciples. It certainly looked that way to Cohen himself who never forgave me for my defection despite his expressed gratitude for my published encomia about him as a teacher and philosopher. It had a bearing on our subsequent relations. We rarely met without heatedly disagreeing with each other about Dewey whenever his name came up. During those years we never socialized with our professors. What we got to know about them was largely hearsay or inferred from public prints, reviews, association meetings, sometimes news stories. Dewey and F. J. E. Woodbridge dominated the Department, too much so, and the degree of their agreement and difference on key issues was the subject of much speculation and debate among us, something which we could easily have ascertained had they and the other members talked back to each other in joint meetings with us. Only William Pepperil Montague would occasionally in his classes venture on indirect criticisms. But he was the odd man out and I believe remained in a state of genuine puzzlement about the strange doctrines his eminent colleagues propounded. Montague was devoted to Dewey as a human being, supported all his liberal views, but was baffled by his technical philosophical doctrine. Cohen truly remarked of him: "What he sees he sees clearly but what he doesn't see, he doesn't see at all." The primary difficulty with the teaching of philosophy when I was a student was that it was insufficiently systematic. WOodbridge was a thinker of deep insight thoroughly steeped in the history of philosophy who was convinced that epistemology was 81 �The College a mistake. He was always asking "simple" questions that had, he insisted, "simple answers" but it required considerable philosophical sophistication to understand the meaning of the questions, and preternatural powers of intuition to grasp the answers ~which we did by guessing. Dewey at the time was challenging the confusion between cosmic and ethical issues on which the Greek classical tradition in philosophy rested, and the mistaken theories of experience on which the whole of modern philosophy rested. Long before Wittgenstein, he denied that there was any philosophical knowledge and dissolved questions like the existence of the external world, the traditional mind-body problem, etc., by showing that on their own assumptions they were insoluble or question begging. This approach as well as that of Woodbridge would have been stimulating and challenging to students already well trained in the analysis of the traditional problems, but to the miscellany of theological students, ·social workers, teachers, seekers of wisdom or beauty or social salvation that constituted during those days a considerable part of the classes in philosophy, Dewey and Woodbridge were obscure. But to return to the teaching scene, I doubt that the teaching staff got much philosophical stimulation or challenge from those they taught except in a few small seminars. There was not enough intellectual kick-back. Woodbridge enjoyed asking questions that stumped his class but didn't fancy getting them. Montague was always wary of the philosophical quarter from which they came. The younger men were suspicious that someone was trying to catch them out. Everyone except Dewey and Montague seemed to me to be trying to understand why the philosophers of the past said the things they did, not whether what was said was true or even formally valid. In later days, when linguistic analysis became the rage, the pendulum may have swung to other extremes, and the historical dimension of philosophical problems not sufficiently appreciated. No one who was genuinely interested in philosophy, however, was discouraged, but if he caught fire intellectually, it was from an outside source, usually from something read. A few of us kept abreast of the professional periodicals which in perspective seemed more exciting than those today, possibly because the issues discussed seemed larger and not so specialized. Dewey was the soul of kindness· to questioners whenever they were bold enough to interrupt him, which they did as the course wore on. He never put any student down. If a question was obscure or made no apparent sense, he would find an intimation of relevant significance in it that encouraged some students to take themselves more seriously as thinkers of profound grasp than was warranted. As a rule I have discovered that students seem to resent their classmates who ask questions more than their teachers do. In my own case I recall an act of extraordinary kindness on Dewey's part which was all the more surprising to me since at the time I had little contact with him During that period, to qualify as a doctoral student, one had to pass a preliminary oral examination of two hours on four philosophers, two from the ancient and medieval period and two modern. I selected Plato, Plotinus, Schopenhauer, and Charles Peirce. We were required to hand ~n questions or extended topics on each of them which would indicate the area and range of our interests although the 82 faculty could question us about anything it chose. Usually I am in good form with interlocutors but for the first hour and a half I was conscious that I was not doing well. I tangled with Montague on Plato-he was nettled by my rejection of the subsistence doctrine of universals to which he subscribed. I answered inadequately a question from Woodbridge on the relation between Plotinus and Christian theology because I had concentrated on some of the more difficult points in the Enneads (the course on Plotinus was the first one I took at Columbia with Irwin Edman whom, I fear, I terrified because I had read the same secondary sources he consulted. Neither of us knew Greek). Some quirk impelled me to antagonize Woodbridge, who had been quite friendly to me in his classes since I could guess the answers to his "simple" questions better than others, by differing with him on his view of Schopenhauer's Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. What was worse, I outraged him by gratuitously revealing in one of my answers that I believed that Book II of Spinoza's Ethics was not logically out of order although I knew that for Woodbridge it should have preceded Book I. We can find our way up to God but if we begin with Him we cannot come down. Woodbridge's own position was fundamentally materialistic and I really agreed with it, but his textual reading of Spinoza seemed to me arbitrary. By the time Dewey began the questioning on Peirce I was rather rattled. Dewey began in words that I still recall at least in part: "I wish I could take the time to read the questions Mr. Hook has submitted on Peirce's doctrines. They reveal a thoroughgoing grasp and mastery not only of Peirce's doctrines but of their revolutionary impact on traditional philosophy." And he went on in this vein for a minute or two before he put his own questions. It restored my nerve and I finished with some fine rhetorical flourishes about Peirce's seminal ideas that I owed to Cohen. I am confident that Dewey would have done the same thing for any other student in the same position. Some years later Edman told me that he and Dewey had carried the day for me, and that his own contribution had been to assure them that having heard me give a report on Plotinus' theory of space and time (aspects of Plotinus that he was profoundly uninterested in), he had no doubt about my philosophical competence. I was never able to confirm Edman's account. Nor was it necessary. I began publishing while a graduate student and reactions from Harvard and elsewhere were favorable. Woodbridge beamed on me more and more as my powers of divination in responding to his "simple questions" increased. By the time I faced the Department at the final examination in defense of my dissertation The Metaphysics of Pragmatism, which I had stitched together out of the articles I published, everything went smoothly. Only Montague held out. He tried to tax me, unfairly I thought, with having committed the fallacy of the undistributed middle term in one of my arguments. I was startled when Woodbridge broke in on our wrangle to say: "Maybe, but it is not important to the argument." I was startled because I still had-and have-enough of Cohen's training left in me to believe that anyone capable of making such an elementary logical error was not qualified to teach philosophy. Dewey's kindness to me extended to his willingness to write an introduction to my dissertation which enabled me to find a commercial publisher for the volume. �January, 1980 Although at the time the world seemed in turmoil, looking back from where we are today, and despite the hurried quality of our student days, Columbia during those golden years seemed an island of peace and calm and yet of intense intellectual excitement. We were filled with hope and a tremendous expectation that great things were in the offing and that the ideas we were debating would play a role. Memories of the First World War and the inglorious post-war years in America (1919-1921), when the worst cultural excesses in American history had occurred, were receding. The Palmer raids and deportation proceedings against radicals as well as hysteria against the German language (sauerkraut became "Liberty cabbage"), literature, and music had characterized these years. We sensed the presence of intellectual giants on the campus-not only Dewey but Robinson, Beard, Mitchell, Boas, and others. The only extra-academic issue that mildly stirred the campus was the Sacco-Vanzetti case. Together with a few other students and the help of a young woman from the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee I organized a demonstration for Sacco-Vanzetti on the steps of the Low Library. It was a mild and tepid affair which attracted few passersby, drawn more out of curiosity than sympathy. One of the junior members of the Department of Philosophy was outraged by our action although in sympathy with our views. Such things, he told me, "were in bad taste." I replied "To hell with taste when men's lives were at stake." At that time I was convinced that Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent but ten years or so later Carlo Tresca, the Italian-American anarchist leader, who ought to know, told me that Sacco was guilty. It was indisputable, however, that they never got a fair trial, and like many radicals, then as now, I was prepared to believe the worst about American justice. I recall that Dewey was deeply moved by their fate. As events were moving towards the end, he once said to me in a tone of wonder and despair, "She was right after alL She kept telling me that they would never let them go regardless of the appeals." I didn't know to whom "they" referred. "She" was Celia Polisuk who had come to see him to enlist his aid in the defense of Sacco-Vanzetti. I don't know how the no~ion got about those days at Columbia that I was a dangerous radical I never concealed my strong interests in Marx, whom hardly anyone read or cared about, and whose views were considered irrelevant to any particular philosophical issues. Dewey had never read Marx systematically and was inclined to judge him by the doctrinaire vulgarisms of his orthodox proponents. Again and again I was struck, in studying Dewey, to find worked out in detail certain views that Marx had expressed in cryptic and undeveloped form. Dewey was at first non-commital when I communicated my impression to him. A few years later he was inclined to be more sympathetic to my reading of Marx than to Max Eastman's, with whom I was engaged in furious controversy, and who caustically reviewed my books on Marx under the title "What Karl Marx Would Have Said Had He Been a Student of John Dewey's." But after Dewey's experience in Mexico at the Trotsky Hearings, Marxism for him meant Marxism-Leninism, the state philosophy and religion of one of the most terroristic regimes in human history. Hedevoted a large part of the last fifteen years of his life to combatting it, a struggle in which, our differences forgotten or shelved, Max Eastman and I loyally and cooperatively participated. I leave to others the assessment of the validity of my interpretation of Marx's philosophy and its anticipation of the key doctrines of pragmatic naturalism. I cite here only one point which seems central to my view. Neither Marx nor Dewey's philosophy would hold water if one believed, as so many philosophers have, that we have immediate and certain truths of fact. The most apparent of such truths are allegedly immediate truths of sense perception. Marx denies that there are such truths on the basis of his Hegelian heritage but since he rejects Hegel's theory of Mind, he offers no supporting analysis. Dewey, however, in a complex and suhtle analysis argued that despite Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, and a long line of distinguished thinkers which indude philosophers as divergent as Husserl, Carnap, and Russell, that there are no immediate truths of perception in our observation. Tradition for him has more to do with the actual starting point of knowledge than what is apparently given in anything called sense-knowledge. Sense perception as a distinctive activity occurs within a subject matter which is primarily determined by a social tradition. That is to say, the whole system of customary beliefs as they are handed to us from one generation to another, not only by speech patterns but also by the patterns of overt action, enter into what we observe. Sense perception tends to be dominated by the beliefs, meanings, and habits which individuals incorporate into their own reach for knowledge while reacting to the speech and behavior of others. This analysis does not deny or reduce the value of sense perception, but establishes that it is in a derivative and mediate position. It is a deliberately used activity to check on the validity of the primary subject matter of belief, but is not itself warranted knowledge. Finally, there was Dewey's denial of the autonomy of anything that can be called philosophical knowledge, the view that all genuine knowledge was scientific in the broad experimental sense and involved an element of activity as integral to the knowing process, that all philosophical problems which were not problems of the special sciences or disciplines and of their assumptions, were problems of value that were open to rational analysis and possible solution. This brought philosophy centrally into the area of public affairs where both Marx and Dewey believed it belonged. I have travelled some distance philosophically since the days of my youth when I thought I could fuse Marx and Dewey-a journey that has taken me further from Marx than from Dewey. In the fifty odd years that have elapsed since then, the world it seems to me has changed more radically with respect to beliefs, manners, and morals than in any other comparable time span ip history. It would be odd if I h::H:l not learned something from the transformation of our youthful socialist dream into a totalitari~~ nightmare abroad, and from the spectacle at home, not only of heartening social and political reforms, but of riotous excesses of students, abetted by a goodly number of their teachers, against the background of bombed and burning libraries and classrooms. All this and more I shall discuss elsewhere. l. cf. Chap. 6 in Pragmation and the Tragic Sense of Life, originally written in 1952, and John Dewey: An Intellectual Portrait, N.Y. 1939. 2. "Morris Cohen-Fifty Years Later," American SchoWr, Summer 1976. 83 �FIRST READINGS ANCIENT AsTRONOMY AND PTOLEMY'S 'CRIME' A History of Ancient Mathematical As~ tronomy, by 0. Neugebauer, 3 vols., 1458 pp., Springer Verlag 1975. The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy, by Rob· ert R. Newton, 411 pp., Johns Hopkins University Press 1977. Ancient astronomy had its culmination in the writings of Ptolemy. So Delambre, a great astronomer (the first to apply the for~ mulas of Laplace's celestial mechanics) and in his last years an indefatigable historian of astronomy, wrote at the start of his Hisloire de l'astronomie moderne (1821 ): The most exact and the most scrupulous investigations have not enabled us up to now to discover any other [premodern] astronomy than that of the Greeks. Everywhere we rediscover the ideas of Hipparchus and Ptolemy; their astronomy is that of the Arabs, the Persians, the Tartars, the Indians, the Chinese, and that of the Europeans until Copernicus. This statement would today require some modification, but it retains a large measure of truth: astronomy on the Eurasian landmass from the second century A.D. to the 16th was predominantly Ptolemaic in content and method. Delambre also contended-again correctly, as I will maintain -that Ptolemy fabricated many of his observations. Until 1975, the most extensive and thor· ough account of ancient and medieval astronomy was provided by Delambre's volumes: Histoire de l'astronomie ancienne (2 vols., 1817) and Histoire de l'astronomie du moyen age ( 1819). For the period up to A.D. 700, Delambre's work has now been superseded by Neugebauer's monumental History of Ancient Mathematical Astron· amy (hereinafter abbreviated HAMA). And Neugebauer, like Delambre, gives a pre- 84 eminent place to Ptolemy: Book I of his history (some 420 pages in all, counting 100 pages of expertly drawn figures) is devoted to a close analysis of the mathematical content of the Almagest, along with its immediate antecedents in the work of Apollonius and Hip parchus. "In general", Neugebauer quotes from Jacob Burckhardt's Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen, "one should begin in one's studies with the beginnings, but not in history." In ancient astronomy, Neugebauer would argue, the beginnings are so obscure that one can get one's bearings only from the final achievement, which is Ptolemy's. In Book V of HAMA, on astronomy during the Roman imperial period and late antiquity, Neugebauer devotes another 200 pages to the other works of Ptolemy, includings his Planisphaerium, Planetary Hypotheses, Geography, and Handy Tables. All told, more than forty percent of the entire history is devoted to the achievement of Ptolemy, which Neugebauer regards as decisive in shaping geography till Columbus and as· tronomy till Kepler. In his treatment of the ancient astronomy that is not Hipparchan or Ptolemaic, Neugebauer goes far beyond anything that Delambre could have achieved; and while the work of some other scholars like Schiaparelli (who reconstructed the homocentric spheres of Eudoxus) and Kugler (who first discovered the astronomical content of the Babylonian cuneiform tablets) plays an important role here, it is above all Neugebauer's own scholarship, extending over fifty years and into every aspect of ancient Babylonian, Egyptian, early Greek, late classical, and oriental astronomy, that makes the difference. A large number of published analyses and carefully prepared textual editions (of which the Astronomical Cuneiform Texts, 3 vols., 1955, and with Richard A. Parker, the Egyptian Astronomi· cal Texts, 3 vols., 1960, 1964, 1969, are the chief) bear witness to Neugebauer's enormous industry and care, his persistent devotion to factuality to the exclusion of every premature attempt at generalization, and his insistence on thorough understanding of the mathematics involved. Into HAMA go thousands of the analytical re· suits of this scholarship. None ofthem are more important than those resulting from the decipherment of the Babylonian astronomical texts, begun by Kugler at the beginning of this century and carried to completion by Neugebauer and his students. Book li of HAMA is devoted to Babylonian astronomy. In the last three to five centuries before our era, the Babylonians, using the sexagesimal notation which their scribes had developed a thousand years before, worked out arithmetical procedures of surprising ingenuity and precision for the prediction of lunar and planetary 'phase' phenomena, such as first and last visibility following and preceding immersion in the Sun's rays, station points, and lunar eclipses. Absent here were geometrical models of the solar, lunar, and planetary motions; as far as the evidence goes, the Babylonian astronomers were solely interested in prediction of the phase phenomena, and their predictive devices were purely arithmetical algorithms. Their results were influential. With the decipherment of the cuneiform texts and the resulting identification of the numerical constants used in the Babylonian procedures, it has become possible to trace their influence as far as India, where they were still being used in the 18th century for the prediction of lunar eclipses. But their most consequential effect may have been that on Greek astronomy. Prior to Apollonius and Hipparchus, Greek mathematicians like Eudoxus and Aristarchus constructed geometric models of the heavenly motions, or wrote about procedures for determining solar parallax, but no attempt that we know of was made to apply the procedures to accurate data or to render the models quantitatively predictive. Hipparchus, using Babylonian numerical constants, appears to have been the first to endeavor after a geometric model that would fit the phenomena with quantitative accuracy. Is it not probable that recognition of the success of the Babylonian predictions was here the triggering cause? The drive towards an exact geometrizing science, based on accurate data and capable of exact predictions, probably dates from this moment. �January, 1980 Neugebauer's analysis of the complexi- emy's equinox and solstice observations believe, be plausibly maintained. The ties of Babylonian procedures occupies had to have been fabricated, and in general times for all of them are too late by about a some 240 pages (counting the figures). He dismisses the charges against Ptolemy's in· day or more; the errors as deduced from then turns to Egyptian astronomy, which tegrity. The interest and importance of Bryant Tuckerman, Planetary, Lunar, and he dismisses in the eleven pages of Book Ptolemy's work, in Neugebauer's view, lie Solar Positions, A.D. 2 to A.D. 1649 (AmeriIII: for despite the ancient and ever resus- in the structure of the theories; I cannot can Philosophical Society, 1964), are as citated claims of the wisdom of the Egyp· disagree. Still, the charges of dishonesty follows: 1 tian priests, Neugebauer, who has examined every surviving document of Egyptian Times of equinoxes and solstices reported by Ptolemy astronomy, finds in it nothing in the way of Year Day Hour Error in Hours technical achievement. To the Egyptians A.D. 132 Sept. 25 14 + 33.2 we owe the 24-hour day, and astrology A.D. 139 Sept. 26 7 + 34.4 owes the decans; there is little else. A more Mar. 22 13 A.D. 140 +21.5 extensive treatment is accorded early A.D. 140 June 25 2 +37.0 Greek astronomy, the subject of Book IV (225 pages, counting the figures). Although Hipparchus' observations of equinoxes, in the Greeks introduced geometrical meth- cannot be swept under a rug. ods and models into astronomy, their work Serious doubts concerning Ptolemy's contrast, seldom err by more than a quarup to the second century B.C., as Neuge- prowess as an observer were already rife in ter of a day; and the errors in the spring bauer shows, takes the form of mathe- the 17th century. Tycho Brahe in his Pro- and fall are opposite, as one would expect. matical exercises, and aims largely at gymnasmata (published in 1602) showed For any instrument aligned so as to give demonstrating the abstract power of math· (253-256) that the observational deter- the fall equinox late, would give the spring ematics. Book V, on astronomy during the minations of the longitude of the star Spica equinox early, and vice versa, but would Roman imperial period and late antiquity, by Hipparchus, Albategnius, Copernicus, not affect the time of the solstice. Faced with this puzzle, Longomontanus occupies more than 300 pages; but with and himself lead to a strictly uniform rate the exception of 200 or so pages devoted to of precession of the equinoxes over the in the early 17th century and Euler in the Ptolemy's 'minor works', the story is of centuries, while the observations of Timo- early 1750's proposed adjusting the dates charis and Ptolemy diverge markedly from that Plotemy gives by a day. But as the asdecline and non-achievement. In Neugebauer's treatment the impor· this uniform rate and hence (so Tycho con- tronomer Tobias Mayer explained to Euler tant developments in mathematical astron- cludes) are suspect; later astronomers have in a letter of 22 August 1753, 2 an interomy between 700 B.C. and A.D. 700 followed Tycho in rejecting the Ptolemaic calated day would change the longitude of reduce to: (I) the Babylonian work from observation. Gassendi in the middle of the the Moon by 13 ° and so introduce an unabout 500 B.C. onward, in which 'phase' century and Flamsteed in its last decades acceptable discrepancy between modern phenomena such as first visibility of moon found modern values for the obliquity of theory and ancient observations of lunar and planets after immersion in the Sun's the ecliptic to be in fair agreement with eclipses. Mayer preferred to conclude that rays, are rendered predictable by means of one another but in decided disagreement Ptolemy had "borrowed the solar motion periodic arithmetical functions; and (2) the with the larger ancient value that Ptolemy from Hipparchus without any particular Greek introduction of geometrical models attributes to Eratosthenes (third century investigation." Hipparchus' year was too and development of plane and spherical B.C.), and which he claims to have con- long by about 7 minutes, which in 260 trigonometry, with their application, in the firmed by his own observations. Even after years adds up to the I 1/4 days by which period from Apollonius (200-170 B.C.) and 18th-century observations and Euler's the- the Ptolemaic equinoxes are found to be Hipparchus (fl. 150-130 B.C.) to Ptolemy ory had established the hypothesis of a too late. "It can be that Ptolemy perceived (ca. A.D. I 00-178), to the construction of slow uniform diminution of the obliquity, this error of his solar tables in his observageometric, kinematic hypotheses yielding Ptolemy's alleged observation of the arc tions of the equinoxes, which are the very quantitative predictions as to the where· between the tropics had simply to be re- last of all his remaining observations; only, abouts of celestial bodies, not just at partic- jected as some 20' too large, and so because he had already built his whole sysular phases, but at any time. irreconcilable with the rest of what was tem upon it, perhaps he had rather wanted In regard to the question of Ptolemy's known. Most disconcerting of all were the to discard his observations than to attempt accuracy as an observer and his integrity as "very accurate observations" that Ptolemy to revise his system from the outset. Since, a reporter of observations, Neugebauer has claimed to have made of equinoxes and however, no one could object to it, he preoddly little to say. Following the work of solstices. From Brahe and Kepler onward it tended that the erroneous equinoxes of his some earlier scholars such as Boll, he con- was recognized that the acceptance of tables were true and observed." cludes that it is not plausible to assume these observations as genuine would throw In 1819 Delambre showed in detailed that there was an Hipparchan star cata- the computation of the length of the trop- calculations what Mayer had surmised: logue from which Ptolemy's star catalogue ical year into total confusion. Ptolemy's alleged observations of the equiThe genuineness of these alleged obser- noxes follow computationally, to the hour, could have been derived. He passes over in silence Delambre's argument that Ptol- vations of equinoxes and solstices cannot, I from the equinox observations of Hippar- 85 �The College chus together with Hipparchus' erroneous value for the length of the tropical year. 3 For instance, Ptolemy's allegedly observed equinox of 26 September A.D. !39 at 7 a.m. was just 285 Egyptian years (each of 365 days), 70 days, and 7 hours after a fall equinox observed by Hipparchus. According to Hipparchus, the length of the tropical year was 365 114 - 11300 days. But 285 (1/4 - 1/300) ~ 70.3 ~ 70 days, 7.2 hours. The other two equinoxes and the solstice that Ptolemy claims to have observed are similarly derivable from observations of Hipparchus and Meton. In a recent, careful review of the situation, John Phillips Britton states: "The conc;lusion that Ptolemy's equinox observations can have been scarcely more than the results of computations is unsatisfying but I can find no other explanation of the errors in his reported times and their agreement with Hipparchus' observations and length of year." 4 That not only the equinox and solstice observations, but also a large number of other observations that Ptolemy claims to have made or claims that others made, were fudged or fabricated so as to agree with Ptolemaic theory: this is the conclusion of a series of detailed analyses published in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1973 and 1974, and now drawn together and amplified in a book, The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy, by Robert R. Newton. Ptolemy's 'crime', according to Newton, included deriving his star catalogue not from observation as he seems to claim to do (Almagest VII, 4), but by calculation from an earlier catalogue no longer extant, that was constructed about 130 tion of the fractional parts of degrees used departures from the expected distribution in reporting the longitudes of the 1028 can be accounted for if we assume that the observer's eye allotted more space on the stars in the catalogue. The arc of the original instrument of ob- arc to the whole and half degree divisions servation was probably divided into whole than to the other (unmarked) divisions. or half degrees, without finer subdivision, The distribution for the longitudes, he so that smaller fractions of degrees had to goes on to argue, is inexplicable if we be estimated. Some of the longitudes and assume it resulted directly from observalatitudes are given simply in whole degrees, tion. The fraction l/4 occurs only four without fractional addition; for the others, times, and the fraction l/2 + l/4 never; Ptolemy uses the Egyptian-style fractions whereas probability would require that 1/6, 114, 113, 112, 2/3, 112 + 1/4, 1/2 + each of these fractions occur about l/12 of l/3. Expressing these fractions in minutes the time, or about 1027/12 ~ 86 times. of arc, we shall have 10', 15', 20', 30', 40', But what if Ptolemy derived his catalogue 45', and 50'; and we see that they do not from an earlier catalogue, constructed in divide the interval of the degree into equal Hipparchus' time, about 130 B.C.? The parts. Let us assume that the positions of derivation would consist in adding 2°40' to the stars are randomly distributed, and that each of the longitudes, for this is the the observer in assigning longitudes or lati- amount of precession that, according to tudes uses the nearest of the above Egyp- Ptolemy, had occurred between Hippartian fractions. Then the stars reported as chus' observations and the epoch of his having a longitude of some whole number own catalogue (20 July 137). Now adding of degrees plus 116 ° will have longitudes of 40' to one of the Egyptian fractions 116, between 5' and 12 112' beyond the whole 1/3, 112,2/3, 1/2 + 113leads to a sum exdegrees; those reported as having a longi- pressible in terms of one of these same tude of some whole number of degrees fractions. But adding 40' to 114 and to 112 plus l/4° will have longitudes between + 114 yields 55' and I 0 25' respectively, 12 112' and 17 112' beyond the whole which are not expressible in terms of the degrees; and so on. The number of stars Egyptian fractions used. Let us assume falling in one of these intervals can be ex- that Ptolemy rounded the 55' up to I 0 , and pected to be about the same fraction of the rounded the I 0 25' down to I 0 20'. (He total number of stars, that the interval is of could have rounded in the other direction the whole degree. But the interval from 5' in each case; but hold on!) Assume further to 12 112' is 1/8 of the whole 60'; the inter- that the distribution of fractions in Hipparval from 12 112' to 17 112' is 1112 ofthe chus' catalogue was about the same for the whole 60'; and so on. The expected num- longitudes as for the latitudes. Add 40' to bers of cases with the several fractions, as such a distribution of fractions as you find compared with the actual numbers re- in the latitudes, carry out the roundings ported by Ptolemy, are given by R. R. mentioned, and compare the resulting disNewton (245) in the following Table: tribution with the distribution of fractions among the longitudes as given by Ptolemy; the result is shown on the following page Number of cases with this fraction (R. R. Newton, 250) (See next page). In the Fraction In the The agreement looks too good to be (minutes) longitudes latitudes Expected mere coincidence. Another hypothesis 226 0 236 171 may account for the facts; but R. R. New10 !82 106 128 ton's proposal at least cuts the ground from 4 15 88 86 under the earlier arguments of Boll and 179 20 112 128 Neugebauer. The likelihood that Ptolemy's 88 198 30 171 catalogue was derived from Hipparchus' 246 40 129 128 catalogue is very strong indeed. 45 0 50 86 Newton's study makes it evident that !02 50 107 128 none of the observations reported in the 1027 Totals 1026 1026 Almagest-of Moon and planets as well as of Sun and stars-can be trusted as gen· Newton urges that the distribution for uine, unless reliably attested by indepenB.C. probably by Hipparchus. The evidence emerges from the statistical distributhe latitudes should cause no surprise: its dent sources. It further shows that Ptol- 86 �January, 1980 Fraction (minutes) 0 10 15 20 30 40 45 50 Number of cases with this fraction With 40' added In original sample & suggested roundings 236 106 88 ll2 198 129 50 107 emy's solar, lunar, and planetary theories would have been considerably better, that is, more empirically adequate, if they had been based on but a modest number of observations accurate to, say 10' of arc. Newton concludes (379): "I do not know what others may think, but to me there is only one final assessment: The Syntaxis [Almagest] has done more damage to astronomy than any other work ever written, and astronomy would be better off if it had never existed. Thus Ptolemy is not the greatest astronomer of antiquity but he is something still more unusual: He is the most successful fraud in the history of science." That Ptolemy lied about his observations-as this reviewer believes to have been sufficiently shown-is deplorable. 5 But R. R. Newton goes further: he implies that Ptolemy fabricated data in bad faith, in order to support theories he knew to be false or inadequate. Newton's picture is of a scientist greedily seeking fame by means of fraud. To this reviewer, the portrait seems anachronistic and implausible: Ptolemy was not a modern scientist, nor was the community for which he wrote a community imbued with the aims and ethos of modern science. By his detailed analyses Newton has done a great service; but in his general interpretation he has given too little attention to a number of considerations that-in our immense ignorance of the particulars of motive and circumstancemust not be ignored. (l) A first fact to keep in focus is that Ptolemy, by writing the Almagest, the Planetary Hypotheses, the Geography, the Handy Tables, consolidated ancient astronomy and geography. Can we assume that, had he not done this, it would have been done? The available evidence is negative. If these textbooks had ancient rivals, they are unknown to us today; in their kind they 200 198 0 179 107 236 0 106 In star catalogue 226 182 4 179 88 246 0 102 were either unique or uniquely successful. There is no evidence that Ptolemy be· longed to a community of active scientists, with a vigorous, ongoing tradition. He appears to have been an isolated figure, in his own time and also during a stretch of many centuries. The more 'immediate' predecessors he mentions are: Theon, who may have been his teacher; Menelaus, who lived a few decades earlier, and whose theorems enabled Ptolemy to do spherical trigonometry; Hipparchus, two and a half centuries earlier; and Apollonius about a century earlier still. The seven centuries spect to observations. No astronomer before Tycho Brahe made the accumulation of accurate observations a primary goal, taking precedence over every effort at theory construction. A promising start was made by the Islamic astronomers in Bag- dad under the Caliph al-Ma'mun in A.D. 829-830; the tradition there begun of building large instruments for solar observations continues into China in the 13th century under the Mongols and into Samarkand in the 15th century under the Tartar Ulug Beg. Already in the late 9th century Albategnius (al-Battani) by observations at Aracte and Damascus had detected the necessity of revising Ptolemy's solar and lunar constants: Ptolemy's value of the obliquity was badly off; contrary to Ptolemy's claim, the solar apogee was not immobile with respect to the ecliptic but was moving eastward; the annual precession was more nearly 55" than 36". These discoveries implied the need for a thorough revision of all Ptolemy's numerical constants; for his planetary theories and observations depend upon solar and lunar that followed Ptolemy yield no sign of sig- theory. 'Nhy was that thorough revision never nificant theoretical activity in astronomy. And from the 9th century to the 16th, little carried out during the middle ages? We theoretical work is done in astronomy that suspect: a lack of cash, patience, interestis not minor variation of Ptolemy's hypoth- and not merely conservative traditionalism, powerful though that may have been. eses. Planetary tables were used primarily to The transformation of ancient astronomical theory carried out by Copernicus draw up horoscopes, and horoscopy did and Kepler involves specific geometrical not presuppose a highly accurate positransformations of the Ptolemaic theories: tional astronomy. And if Ptolemy seems to we cannot understand that revolution have shown insufficient concern for obserunless we understand the Ptolemaic vational accuracy, the same has to be said theories, nor can 'we imagine in detail how of nearly every astronomer before Tycho. It is significant that the concern for ob· modern astronomy could have come to be servational accuracy became urgent for had there not been the Ptolemaic consolidation of theory to learn from, to work on, Tycho under new circumstances, and with the prompting of a dramatic event. Coperto oppose. Truth, says Francis Bacon, is nicus had but recently carried out an exmore likely to emerge from error than from tensive revision of astronomical theory, confusion. And Kepler says: it is perhaps relying strictly on the accuracy of ancient better to have a wrong theory than none at observations as well as later observations all. Alternative histories are no doubt including his own. In his earliest observathinkable, sans Ptolemy. Given the rare- tions Tycho learned that both the ness of innovation in traditional societies, Copernican and Ptolemaic theories failed there can be no assurance that the way to miserably in predicting such an event as a modern, Keplerian astronomy would have planetary conjunction. Then in 1572 a proved shorter rather than longer. Mean- nova appeared, and Tycho was able in while, the historical development that ac- three weeks of observation to show that it tually occurred has Ptolemy as an essential was free of parallax, contrary to the Aristo· starting-point. telian doctrine about the immutability of (2), Secondly, we must take note of the the celestial realm. From that moment ancient and medieval situation with re· Tycho was a revolutionary. His turn to ob· 87 �The College servation occurred at a juncture in which the available theories had been tested and found Wanting. Concerning the pre-modern attitude towards astronomical observation, we would add these further remarks: (a) A reasonable choice of instruments for naked-eye observation requires considerable trial and error, and hence expense, as Tycho's example shows.6 We can seriously doubt (despite R. R. Newton's claim to the contrary) that the instrument Ptolemy calls an "astrolabe", essentially an armillary sphere provided with sights, was a reasonable choice; the machining tolerances were in all likelihood low, and the alignment of the polar axis and the ecliptic, poor. The instrument is too complicated. Ptolemy here falls prey to the temptation to design an instrument which will mirror the imagined coordinate circles in the sky, rather than make possible the most easily checkable and repeatable determinations. (b) Even if the available instruments are supposed accurate and easy to use, good naked-eye observers, with the requisite acuity of vision and patience, are yet few and far between. Not all who have believed themselves to be making the best observations possible were in fact doing so; Riccioli in the mid-17th century, for instance, with the example and precepts of Tycho before him, still commonly made errors of 10' or more. (c) It should further be realized that the observations most easily made, for instance of altitude and azimuth, required mathematical reduction in order to yield the position in ecliptic coordinates; and these reductions in turn presupposed such numerical constants as the obliquity, solar parallax, and refraction (the latter was first taken into account by Tycho). Such constants were likely to be taken over from tradition. A true "starting from scratch" is exceedingly arduous, and even Tycho did not succeed in going the whole way;· for instance, he accepted the ancient, erroneous value for solar parallax without adequate testing. It was Huygens, Auzout, and Picard at the Paris Academie in the 1660's who made the first thorough attempt to start over again from the very beginning, without assumption (find north!). That Ptolemy did not make such an attempt is clear; he relied again and again on unreliable transmitted constants. 88 (d) The understanding as to how theory is to be based on observation was different in ancient astronomy from what it is in modern astronomy. The statistical approach used since Laplace was absent. The attempt was to derive a theory from a very few cleverly chosen, and supposedly decisive, observations. The constants of solar theory were derived, for instance, simply from the lengths of the seasons: a tour de force, it must have seemed. There was no doubt a sense of power and pride in such achievement. Given the difficulties of observing well, the lack of motivation and funding for such activity, the trust in numerical con· stants furnished by tradition, and the premodern view of the way in which theory was to be founded on fact, one should not wonder if fudging and fabrication occurred; and indeed Willy Hartner has assembled evidence that it was common enough. 7 The tendency to find what one is looking for, to obtain the results one wants, is strong in any time. Kepler in a letter to Galilee in 1597 says that, if he cannot win astronomy for Copernicanism by valid arguments, he will not hesitate to use fraudulent ones. Isaac Newton, in Book III of his Principia, arrives at the accepted value of annual precession by an incorrect argument and the most unconscionable fudging of data. 8 In an earlier time the restrictions imposed by scientific rivalry, the restraints felt because there are two or five or twenty pairs of eyes on the lookout for one's least misstep, were not yet sharply felt. Ptolemy, in his time, iS on the verge of a country he has not imagined to be there. He is setting forth the first extended geometrical science of phenomena; he cannot have even dimly guessed at all the progeny that the Greek effort of geometrization would have in a later time, and in particular he cannot have guessed how precise the science of celestial things, the only science that the ancients thought capable of mathematical precision, would in the end become. He claims to have observed cmefully. He presents his science as exact, as more exact than it could have been, although its exactness could have been much improved with further effort. He seems to have taken it as his task to save astronomy from doubts and confusions. He notes, for instance, that the constancy of the tropical year was doubted by Hipparchus, whom he refers to as "that truthloving man". He proceeds to assert the constancy of the tropical year, using observations that surely are fabricated. I would conjecture that the theory that enabled him thus to fabricate had worked fairly well for him, in his earlier planetary studies; he was not supposing that it was in error by as much as it was, a whole degree. It was a case of wishful thinking. (3) Finally, we should give attention to what Ptolemy says about his subject-matter as a whole, and his motives for studying it. He wrote as a pedagogue, presenting the astronomical topics in the "order of knowing", seeking to lead the student "out" and "up" from his natural, provincial standpoint to a cosmic standpoint, whence the Earth appears as a point in relation to the heavens. The stars, in his view, were divine beings. At the start of the Almagest Ptolemy provides a general characterization of his subject matter, and hints at his motives for studying it. Of the three genera of the theoretical part of philosophy (as distinguished by Aristotle in Metaphysics El), theology, the science concerned with the ''outermost" original source of motion ''up high somewhere with the loftiest things of the cosmos", and physics, the science of material qualities like warm and cold, dry and moist, within the sublunary sphere, have a largely conjectural character; for the one deals with the totally invisible, and the other with what is always in flux. Only mathematics represents a certain and irrefutable science. "By these thoughts [says Ptolemy] we were led ... to study to our utmost ability a theoretical discipline of such a sort, especially insofar as it concerns divine and heavenly things, for it alone is involved in the inquiry concerning things which are always as they are and because of this is able, since the kind of apprehension proper to it is neither unclear nor disorderly, to be always much as it is- which is the peculiar property of science ... " 9 But the divine things, the gods, cannot really be circumScribed by our mathematics, Ptolemy implies. In the Planetary Hypotheses, he compares the motions of the planets to the flight of birds. And in Chapter 2 of Book XIII of the Almagest, devoted to the latitudes of the planets, which are horribly complicated in a �January, 1980 geocentric frame of reference, Ptolemy says: Let no one, seeing the difficulty of our devices, find troublesome such hypotheses. For it is not proper to apply human things to divine things nor to get beliefs concerning such great things from such dissimilar examples. For what is more unlike than those which are always alike with respect to those which never are, and than those which are impeded by anything with those which are not even impeded by themselves? But it is proper to try and fit as far as possible the simpler hypotheses to the movements in the heavens; and if this does not succeed, then any hypotheses possible. Thus our mathematical devices are not to be imagined to be copies of heavenly mechanisms. Yet the mathematics qua mathematics has the character of certain knowledge, according to Ptolemy; it has for him a divine character; our initiation into it, in his view, is a way of approaching the divine things. What else can we say of this Ptolemy? He was an astrologer, though temperate in his claims for this discipline, admitting its lack of certainty. It is likely that his Aristotelian doctrines came to him through Stoic channels, and one may conjecture a kind of Stoic religiosity in this contemporary of Marcus Aurelius. He was a modest man, a traditionalist, who regarded mathematical astronomy as a cumulative affair: "And so we ourselves try to increase continuously our love of the discipline of things which are always what they are, by learning what has already been discovered in such sciences by those really applying themselves to them, and also by making a small original contribution such as the period of time from them to us could well make possible" (Almagest I, preface). Judging by the number, size, and complexity of the books he wrote, we must acknowledge that he was a hard worker. He was a summarizer, a putter-together of results, one who completed symmetries and rounded out theories, a defender of the constancy of the divine things. And in the process of neatening up his pedagogy, he told what he no doubt regarded as little fibs about his observations. We cannot make of this intellectual forebear of ours a giant or hero or profound thinker. It seems equally presumptuous to rate him a criminal. To be sure, his fabricated equinoxes put Copernicus to an enormous labor, the devising of the theory of the "twisted garland"; and his unreliability as a reporter is frustrating to an R. R. Newton who would seek to use ancient observations to determine the secular accelerations of the Earth and Moon. But ancient theoretical astronomy as consolidated by Ptolemy was an essential beginning for the coming-to-be of modern astronomy, and without it there is no saying where we would be. Malcolm Miller, lecturing on the stained glass and the statuary at Chartres, reminds the tourists that, according to medieval Christian doctrine, the whole of the consequences of a man's life and actions will not have accumulated until the end of time, the day of judgment, when all will be known. Perhaps the judgment of Ptolemy should be postponed until that time. CURTIS A. WILSON l. The errors as given by Robert R. Newton in The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy, 87, are 28.1, 28.4, 27 .6, and 36 hours, respectively; these numbers imply a larger eccentricity than that embodied in Tuckerman's tables. The errors derived from Tuckerman agree very nearly with those calculated by John Phillips Britton, On the Quality of Solar and Lunar Observations and Parameters in Ptolemy's Almagest (Yale University Ph.D. Dissertation, 1967), 26. 2. Eric G. Forbes, The Euler-Mayer Correspondence (1751-1755) (New York: American Elsevie,, 1971), 73-76. 3. Delambre, Histoire de l'astronomie du moyen age (Paris, 1819),lxviii. 4. Britton, op. cit. in Note 1, 44. 5. In the March, 1979 issue of Scientific American, 92, it is claimed that on the basis of arguments by Noel Swerdlow, Victor Thoren, and Owen Gingerich, "Newton's case against Ptolemy collapses because it is based on faulty statistical analysis and a disregard of the methods of early astronomy." Since writing the present review, I came across Noel M. Swerdlow's "Ptolemy on Trial" (American Scholar for January, 1979, 523-531). Swerdlow argues that R. R. Newton's use of statistics is wrongheaded and misleading, and that his scholarship in some further respects is untrustworthy. Swerdlow's critique seems to me largely justified, but I do not believe that the main propositions argued in this review anent the reliability of Ptolemy's reported observations~that in all likelihood he fabricated the observations of the equinoxes and solstice of A.D. 139 and 140, and that in all likelihood he derived his star catalogue from a previously existing one constructed two and 2/3 centuries earlier~are thereby undermined. 6. See Victor Thoren, "New Light on Tycho s Instruments", Journal for the History of Astronomy, IV (1973), 25-45. 7. Willy Hartner, "The Role of Observations in Ancient and Medieval Astronomy", Journal for the History of Astronomy VIII (1977), I-ll. 8. See Richard S. Westfall, "Newton and the Fudge Factor", Science CLXXIX (23 Feb. 1973), 751-758. 9. For the translation as well as the paraphrase that precedes ,it, I have depended on Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (tr. Eva Brann; Cambridge, Mass.: M.l.T. p,ess, [cop.) 1968), 256-257. CARRILLO AND THE CoMMUNIST PARTY IN SPAIN Eurocornrnunism and the State, by Santiago Carrillo Laurence and Hill Co., Westport, Connecticut 1978 A strong argument can be made that Santiago Carrillo's Eurocommunism and the State is in large measure simply a codifi~ cation of the political practice of the West European Communist parties since the 1930's. More specifically, however, it is a response to attacks on the Spanish CP leadership from two directions-from those who argue that its avowal of demo- 89 �The College era tic principles is only a cover for plans to seize power by force, and from those who accuse it of presenting Social Democratic views. While the tactics of Eurocommunism include a greater willingness to enter into coalitions with the Social Democrats, the Communist Parties of Western Europe continue to insist on their difference. In Spain, in particular, the CP, which receives only about a third as many votes as the Soci~l Democrats, must avoid being swallowed up by its rivals-a problem not encountered by the large Communist Parties in France and Italy. At the same time that he argues that advances in culture and social organization are changing the capitalist states, Carillo also maintains that the capitalist state can now be transformed without a violent revolution-because of the change in the relationship of forces in the world brought about by the Russian Revolution, the appearance of new workers' states in Eastern Europe after the Second World War, and the collapse of the old colonial empires under the impact of the colonial revolution: What is the concrete reality today? The reality is that despite the power imperialism still has as a social system, it has been destabilized, first by the great October socialist revolution, and subsequently by the advance of socialism, with all its limitations, failings, and imperfections-which we do not hide and have no interest in hiding-in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America; and by the whole process of decolonization. This destabilization increases continually and is stimulating currents of change in the countries that have until now dominated the world. Carrillo's view that the gradual transformation of the capitalist state has been made possible by the increase in the power of the Soviet Union and other workers' states that arose in its shadow is clearly an offspring of Stalin's conception of "socialism in one country": worldwide revolution depends on the progress of the Soviet Revolution. For many years Stalin justified the subservience of the Communist Parties around the world to Moscow with this policy. Critical of the Soviet Union in some respects, Carrillo, however, reaffirms the link between Moscow and the West European 90 CP's. At the same time that he argues that the new world relationship of forces makes the capitalist state more susceptible to change, Carrillo maintains that the division of the world into blocs dominated by the two nuclear "superpowers" rules out revolutionary processes of the "classical" type that would overthrow the existing systems by force. In the past all such revolutionary upsurges have been by-products of the defeat of the capitalist state in war, but in lhe nuclear age no such possibilities exist because nuclear war would destroy all the gains of humanity. Because violent revolution is not a plausible option, Carrillo argues that the system must be changed by "getting the representative democratic institutions which today fundamentally serve capitalism to serve instead the causes of socialism." In the Spanish context this means working to make the capitalistic system more "rational." As one party leader told me in an interview, "Our main goal is to make Spain more like Sweden, an advanced welfare state." 1 To achieve such a transformation the PCE goes out of its way to demonstrate that the party is willing to work within the framework of the Spanish parliamentary system and also to accept the monarchy. Carrillo's view that revolution is unlikely and undesirable in the advanced capitalist countries corresponds entirely to the Soviet leadership's conception of peaceful coexistence. Identical positions, down to the details, have been put forward by the Kremlin and representatives of such superloyal Stalinist parties as the American CP for many years. The Spanish CP head does, however, pose this non-revolutionary perspective in a somewhat different way from Communists in the past. The notion of the continuous "transformation'' of the state allows him to drop the prospect of socialist revolution in the distant, hypothetical future. This approach reassures West European industrialists and political leaders that the Eurocommunist CP's are not thinking of revolution or of spreading revolutionary propaganda among workers. At the same time, the concept of an uninterrupted process raises the possibility in the immediate future of structural reforms going beyond the framework of capitalism. This approach allows the PCE to respond, with more success than the French and Italian CP's, to ideas popular among radicalizing youth in the universities and the factories. By taking more radical stances on women's liberation and nuclear power, the PCE has won the adherence of some radical workers and youths, In addition, Carrillo argues that capitalism, rotten through and through, is on the decline. Carrillo builds his case for the decline of the capitalist state on alleged changes in major establishment institutions such as the Church and the Army. He cites bishops who state that the principles of capitalism are contrary to Christian morality. Such playing up of the Catholic hierarchy's demagogy has been standard practice of Stalinist parties throughout Western Europe and Latin America for more than a decade. In an effort at "national reconciliation," in the mid-fifties Carrillos' PCE made positive gestures toward the Church. Carrillo called religion not the opium of the people but, "objectively," "the yeast of progress."2 "We will build socialism with a crucifix in one hand and the hammer and sickle in the other." 3 At the trade union level, direct contact between the Church and the PCE occurred with important results in the early sixties, Cooperation between Catholics and Communists was crucial to the development of the Worker's Commissions which have become powerful trade unions since Franco's death and a major source of support for the PCE. Carrillo also sees change in the Army and the police. In discussing the events of the May-June 1968 crisis in France, he observes that the police began to balk at the "repressive" role they were assigned, and started to develop a notion of serving the society as a whole rather than the privileged few. He argues that such a trend must be encouraged in the police and spread to the Army-which can be transformed into an instrument of reform. He says the left should create "an identification between the Army and civil society ... That will overcome the historic equation that the oligarchy plus the armed forces equals conservatism and reaction." Because, in his and the Soviet conception, the world relationship of forces cannot be rapidly altered without risking a �January, 1980 nuclear disaster, Carrillo virtually excludes the possibility of exploiting a confrontation between workers and soldiers to break the army. In his view, the military must be maintained as social necessity but must not be allowed to be the exclusive instrument of right-wing elements in Spanish society. Carrillo envisions the Communists coming to office like any other party, "if through a vote the majority of the population grants them such a mandate." Aware that many conservative political figures and members of the Spanish public question the democratic credentials of the PCE, Carrillo stresses the Party's "democratic" internal functioning, its openness to criticism, and its critical stance toward the socialist states. In an unusual move for a Communist Party, the Party, in fact, per· mitted factions to form in the period before its Ninth Congress in 1978. With less than ten percent of the vote the opposition within the Party, however, did not seriously challenge Carrillo's leadership. 4 Carrillo would probably not be tolerant of a more substantial challenge to his dominance. Carrillo has to face Spain's past. A significant minority has positive memories of PCE's role in the Civil War, especially its participation in the heroic defense of Madrid in the early months. A greater number of Spaniards from the generation of the Civil War, however, remember the PCE as a party that used its connections with Moscow for its own factional gains and resorted to violence against its opponents in the workers' movement, particularly the anar· chists and the Trotskyists. During the Second Republic in the thirties, the PCE had almost no base in the trade union move· ment, dominated by the Socialists and the anarchosyndicalists. During the early 1930's, under direction from the Comintern in Moscow, the PCE shunned any cooperation with other workers' parties. Beginning in 1935, the party, however, in accordance with Stalin's policy of alliance with Western democracies, began a "popular front" strategy which involved electoral alliances with socialists and cooperation in the youth and trade union movements. The party grew rapidly but it did not hesitate to weaken its opponents through the denial of Soviet arms shipments to some of the forces defending the Republic. The party probably undermined the war effort and definitely gained the enmity of its political opponents within the workers' movement. Although the socialists and particularly the anarchists are less strong today than during the Civil War, "political memory" in Spain makes it necessary for the current PCE leadership to dissociate itself from its most negative acts of the past. 5 Although it denounces some isolated Communist acts of the Civil War period, the PCE does not, however, accept blame for the defeat of the Republic. On the contrary, Carrillo argues that the outcome in Spain would have been different if the other leaders and Parties had allowed the CP to participate in the Republican government from the beginning. With the CP in the government, he argues, the fascist uprising might have suffered defeat before the Civil War. He adds that if the CP in France had been in the French popularfront government, "the fate of Spain and Europe might have been different." For F ranee might not have denied aid to the Republican government. Many observers, however, think the PCE in its refusal to support all political forces opposing Franco damaged the Republican cause more than the absence of the French. 6 In his campaign for a more positive image for the PCE, Carrillo praises the economic gains of the socialist countries but goes on to say that "there mlist be channels for- criticism and it must not be repressed by methods that are intolerable." In this regard, Carrillo has gone beyond the criticisms of the French and Italian parties who concentrate largely on the Soviet handling of dissidents. Carrillo is certainly aware that the Spanish CP is not going to convince anyone that it is not a totalitarian-minded party if it denies the facts of the bureaucratic dictatorship in the USSR, which have long been obvious to anyone who cares to look. "The October revolution has produced a state that is obviously not a bourgeois state, but neither is it yet the proletariat organized as a ruling class, it is not yet a genuine workers' democracy." Recognizing that such criticisms are heresy in the world Communist movement, Carrillo defends himself by saying that the PCE "cannot be the last to face the facts." Carrillo specifically rejects the Soviet Union's argument that the future of the CP's in Western Europe depends on de- fending the prestige of the USSR. The Spanish leader strives to dissociate his party from the totalitarian socialist states, because the Spanish workers he appeals to are not interested in a Spain without democratic rights: I think that all this will confirm for our friends and honest enemies that the "Eurocommunist" phenomenon is not a "tactical maneuver by Moscow ... " Anyone who judges us impartially must recognize that this strategy is not designed to "extend the influence of the Soviet Union" or shift the relationship of military forces on our continent. On this level, it is designed to mitigate the policy of blocs and assure the independence of each one of our countries, and of Europe as a whole, within a socialist perspective, and to increase the weight of Europe in maintaining peace, international cooperation, as in establishing more equalitarian and democratic inter· national relations, especially with the Third World. The current stance of the PCE is not a mere tactical maneuver. Carrillo and other PCE leaders have for most of their political lives worked to forge alliances with nonCommunist forces for the purpose of reestablishing "bourgeois'' democratic forms in Spain. The party is not about suddenly to become a revolutionary party. It has too much to lose-especially a dominant position in the Spanish labor movement. To state, however, that the PCE is sincere in its commitment to the parliamentary pro· cess in Spain is not to say that it has become liberal or social democratic. The ex· amples he gives of democratic pluralism, the Spanish Republic during the Civil War and governments of the "people's republics" in Eastern Europe, show the limitations of Carrillo's notion of a "democratic state." In spite of its criticisms of the Soviet Union, the PCE retains a special relationship to Moscow and the October Revolution which will not allow it simply to become a liberal or social democratic party. Gary Prevost Assistant Professor- of Government at St. John's University in Minnesota, Gary Prevost spoke about Carrillo and the Communist Party in Spain at the meeting of the American Political Science Association in Washington, D.C., last September. 91 �The College 1. Interview with Refael Ribo, member Central Committee, PSUC, Barcelona, Spain, July 13, 1978. 2. Carrillo, quoted in Guy Hermet, The Communists in Spain, Lexington, MA 1974, 156. 3. Carrillo, quoted in Jon Amsden, Collective Bargaining and Class Conflict in Spain, London 1972, 93. ism in the Spanish CP," Intercontinental Press, june 5, 1978. 5. For the PCE's role in the Civil War see Burnett Bolloten, The Grand Camouflage, North Carolina 1978. 6. See Pierre Broue and Emile Temine, The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain, Cambridge 1970. 4. Michael Rovere, "The Debate Over Lenin- AT HOME AND ABROAD Letter from Budapest and Pees I came to Budapest after a few days in Vienna. In Vienna I saw a production of Lessing's Nathan der Weise good enough to let you feel the strength of reason, and a play about Freud which betrayed embarrassing niggardliness of soul in facing home-grown greatness. In its overgrown familiarity-Freud at home blustering about "academic" charlatanry-the play told of a city that could not remember Freud because it dared not remember itself. To Lessing's play, the prosperous, formally dressed audience listened with a naked eagerness that told of a deprivation other than economic, of living too long without words that make sense enough to show the world in its danger and beauty. Lessing's words, and his actors moving with the proportion that inhabits Italian painting, sounded bolder, more straightforward and, therefore, more intimate (because not "personal") than any of the words of the Freud play which so obviously sought refuge in the commonplaces of private chatter because they feared strength and the necessary plain spoken ness that accompanies it. I left for Budapest with eagerness and apprehension: no city I have seen tells more of what Europe has done to itself in this century than Vienna, which now shamelessly introduces herself as the home of OPEC in her official brochures. If Vienna tries to behave as if it had no past, like an immigrant to the new world who still feels the impress of the sounds of his native tongue but no longer recognizes their meaning, Budapest instead feels like a city with nothing between itself and its past. A city with no time, with no present, 92 where without warning and without choice you could fall back to 1956, to 1945, to 1939, a city that cannot forget anything, but must act as if it does not remember. At the International Congress of Classical Studies I attended, I was embarrassed to the quick to hear my American colleagues talk breezily of Hitler (but not of Stalin), classes, and economic causes, for Budapest is a city where those words still draw blood-and silence. They did not fear to make fools of themselves. That was admirable. But their assurance depended too much on not acknowledging what was going on before their eyes. In the city the first thing that hit me hard was something I had often thought but was startled to see before my eyes: the was is not over. You could touch it with your eyes, not so much in the obviously rebuilt buildings or in those still shell-scarred, but in something unmistakable in the air everywhere, that nothing appeared capable of resisting, in an unearthly quiet pervading everything that tells of deprivation and subjection. Something else came to me that I had not understood before: this was Europe, as much Europe as the rich and active countries to the West. If you think of Europe at all, you have to think of all of Europe. Areluctance to think of all of Europe may explain why there is little thinking about the political (as opposed to the economic) unification of "Western" Europe-which is nothing but a geographic expression for a historical accident. But the "Western Europeans" I saw (with the exception of the Germans) acted as if Hungary were on BoczGyula Flower, 1971 another continent, as if its history were not a part of theirs, as if it had less to do with them than with us. At a reception a Hungarian scholar told me in a way I shall not forget "We are European-we feel European; that will not go away." I do not think he believed me when I told him I knew that. The light on Budapest is soft and thick, not unlike the light of Turner but more yielding, for it does not have the sharpness and cutting glister of the sea. In the morning it wraps the city in a glowing haze that softens more than blurs the shapes of the buildings and makes the nineteenth century gothic parliament on the edge of the Danube look as if it were in Venice. The river, the Danube moving through the center of the city at its own sweet will, lends the city strength and the proportions of nature. It opens it to the soft but powerful movement of light and air. In contrast to Buda with its wooded green hills that rise like waves, Pest stretches flat in streets with remarkable buildings dating from the end of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth. They are the only streets I have seen anywhere in which architects �January, 1980 managed to make the surface of a building much more than a facade, so that the sides of the sometimes cave-like streets are not merely flat walls but undulate. These buildings have gone for decades without repair so they look much older than they are, almost at moments like ancient ruins. The decay occurs more slowly than almost anybody can tell, but irresistibly as if it were the only way to mark time. I found myself looking with the eyes of an archaeologist, for the life there had been-with the aid of bits and phrases I had gathered in New York which remembered Budapest before the war as "elegant" and "with the best service in Europe." It was as if time had stood still. In all its beauty the city feels empty and abandoned, like an intruder from another world, as if nobody dares look upon it with full eyes, as if all the former inhabitants had left and some others unknown to us and to each other had taken their places. It looks like a conquered city, that is made, daily, to conquer itself. For the Soviets, unlike the straightforward empires of the past to which careless and ignorant writers compare them, pretend that those they subject rule themselves. It looks like a city with the stuffings pounded out of it, that knows it and exists in the knowledge of it and has dignity because of that knowledge-and because it has not given up but is only waiting. That is the sense I got, constantly, of waiting and silence. In contrast I ca1led up the confusion of Italy, of Western Europe, of the United States that cannot tell when it is in danger. But not to know danger is the nemesis of those who do not aid the brave. 1956 came sharply to my mind. In offices of the most modest sort, at the state airline, at the hotel, you could feel fear of responsibility, palpable, in the face of almost any question. There was evasiveness and secretiveness which felt like a habit acquired to replace civility. The rudeness and sullenness aimed at making you feel you were of no importance. On a transatlantic call when I spelled my name an operator who had before spoken in broken English, suddenly said with clear sarcasm, "Yours is obviously an American name." You began to understand you were not a customer but a visitor who paid the state for permission to stay overnight or eat a meal-a permission "they" could at any moment withdraw or refuse. You sus- Barta Lajos pected you had no control over anything. I was struck at how few Hungarians I met in museums, in stores, or on trains spoke major European languages. That tells something of a generation of isolation. In some instances, especially with German, I had the sense they knew the language but would not speak. But when you attempted a word of Hungarian they were sometimes overwhelmed. Towards Americans they app~ared indifferent, even sullen but not hostile, as if they wanted to keep their country to themselves, to hide in it and its language-but knew there was no way of doing it. Tourism from Western Europe and the United States does not mean contact with Hungarians, necessarily. I had the sense that some were pretending they could not see me. But the concert I heard left its mark on me forever. Music tells in the silence-you learn to listen. When my wife and I ate at a canteen for ordinary people, not a restaurant for tourists, the cook who worked hours that took my breath away came out from behind the counter to embrace us. It was the deepest welcome we got. I knew enough to know I had to get out of Budapest (a city of more than two mil· lion in a country where no other city numbers much over one hundred and fifty Wave, 1960 thousand) if I was to have even the barest sense of the country. I chose Pees in the south, because I had heard its museums showed the work of Csontvary (1853-1919) and contemporary Hungarian painting and sculpture. I left Budapest just after dawn with a thick, blue softening mist just beginning to glow over the country. The train at first followed the Danube which, even more magnificent in the countryside than in a city, looks like a moving sea. The light over the country, growing brighter, moved and billowed. Fields of corn and sunflowers stretched out in the flat Hungarian plain whose vastness made me wince at the absence of the sea. There were many horsedrawn farm wagons. From the first moment I stepped out on Lenin Square, Pees made me aware of the extent Budapest kept up appearances. In Pees there was no pretence, no posturing, but a nakedness, the nakedness of a coat turned inside-out. There was the same uniform plainness as in Budapest but the people kept their distance from it. They were courteous, courteous with warmth. The young people in the central square on the steps of what had once been the Turkish mosque looked less subdued, more energetic than those I had seen in Budapest- 93 �The College simpler, openly baffled as if not knowing where to turn, alone but not isolated from each other. The friendliness, the absence of pretence made the city worldly, more worldly than Budapest which was so obviously, and so obviously not, just another European city. One of seven museums scattered through the center of Pees, the Museum of Contemporary Hungarian Art, fills three or four good-sized rooms in a country house on what must have been the outskirts of Pees fifty years ago. About six sculptures like rocks in the sea lay in the grass surrounding it. It is hard to tell the joy I felt coming upon these works which were unmistakably alive and unplanned, looking in fact almost as if they had sprung from the ground. The work was obviously good. There was no bragadoccio, no sawing the air, and it knew its limits. Above all these artists knew how to learn from masters like Brancusi without aping them and confusing their talent with his genius. Inside the museum there is a collection of painting and sculpture from around 1900 to the present, a collection obviously selected (in contrast to the collection of contemporary art in Budapest) by people who can see and dare to look, for there is hardly a work in it that does not have its own life. I spent most of my time with artists born since 1944. There were only one or two works for each artist, so I could not get a sense of their consistency or range. But almost everything I saw had real content, sometimes more content than the masters whom it had taken for teachers. All this work told unmistakably of living-in a world I knew. I blushed shame even to have wondered whether Europe was here too: every work in this museum told of painters and sculptors who throughout the century knew the work of Paris, Vienna, Rome, Berlin, and Oslo and knew how to remain true to themselves in the face of it. There was little posturing, no drive to impress, little impatience, no fear of modesty. The museum taught me something about arrogance. My own. LEO RADITSA 94 Kmetty Janos Woman with Tumbler, 1916 Pictures from the Gallery of Hungarian Modern Art, Pees. �NOTES "1784: The Year St. John's College Was Named" Charlotte Fletcher, The Maryland Historical Magazine 74, 2, June 1979, 133-151 In honor of whom was St. John's named? St. John Chrysostom? The College at Cambridge, itself named after St. John the Evangelist? Or was the name given as a compliment to a Masonic fraternity-a St. John's Lodge-in Annapolis at the time of the College's founding, a theory proposed by Bernard Steiner in 1894? In such a case the College could have been named either for the Evangelist or St. John the Baptist, since the Masons honored both. Charlotte Fletcher dismisses St. John Chrysostom, argues against Cambridge and denies Steiner's theory. She concludes that some special influence-perhaps Masonic-at work within the General Assembly during December of 1784 determined the College's name. On December 27, the feast day of St. John the Evangelist and a festival day for Masons, the Maryland Assembly, after working with a Virginia delegation headed by George Washington, an active Freemason, passed the first piece of cooperative legislation of the Confederation following the Definitive Treaty of Peace of 1783the Potomac Bill to improve navigation on the Potomac River. Three days later, on December 30, the Assembly approved the College's charter and named the College St. John's, perhaps to commemorate the date of this remarkable legislative performance. LEO PICKENS �The College St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Non-profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 66 Lutherville, Md. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollegemagazine Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 94 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The College, January 1980 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1980-01 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Radista, Leo Parran, Jr., Thomas Sisson, Barbara J. von Oppen, Beate Ruhm Wilson, Curtis A. Brann, Eva T. H. Description An account of the resource Volume XXXI, Number 2 of The College. Also referred to as The St. John's Review. Published in January 1980. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0010-0862 The_College_Vol_31_No_2_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 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf St. John's Review The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/c8b4815049d61e5b92a5d87971f0f192.pdf 90a85aa528d7934547da808e024536c1 PDF Text Text THE COLLEGE St. John's College • Annapolis, Maryland-Santa Fe, New Mexico REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT, 1979-1980 Richard Daniel Weigle President, St. John's College, 1949-1980 October 1980 �The College Report of the President 1979-1980 TO THE BOARD OF VISITORS AND GOVERNORS This is the final report of my presidency of St. John's College. The year just ended was a gratifying one of accomplishment and of promise for the future. The single most important event was the election of Edwin J. Delattre as the nineteenth President of the College. He was the overwhelming choice of members of both Faculties and of the Board. His education in philosophy and the liberal arts, his work as Director of the National Humanities Faculty, his experience with foundations and with secondary schools, and his extensive writing and speaking all augur well for the future of St. John's under his leadership. I heartily endorse the Board's action in selecting him, and I have done what I could to effect a smooth transition of office. The Deans Dean Edward G. Sparrow states that morale on the Annapolis campus seemed high, as evidenced by comments of campus visitors and by tutors' remarks in don rag reports. In the course of the year yet another transcript was devised by the two Deans in response to what they considered legitimate objections to the one composed last year. A statement concerning the meaning of grades and procedures for objecting to them was adopted by the Instruction Committee. A new student periodical appeared, the Gadfly, conceived as a complement to the Collegian. It met with a generally favorable reception. Finally, Mr. Sparrow comments upon a remarkably improved Reality Weekend. In recent years this celebration of the rites of spring had degenerated into bacchanalian mindlessness. This year both tutors and students worked together to produce events of real fun. The climax was a new and lively production of the Perils of St. fohn's by faculty and staff members and their spouses. Re-named Perils before Swine, the musical comedy was an adaptation of the earlier version written in the late 1960's by Jeremy Leven, 1964, with music by Michael S. Littleton, Tutor. Dean Robert S. Bart writes that the College in Santa Fe gained in stability during the year. Let me quote from the first paragraph of his report: This was to be seen in part in the comparatively smooth functioning of classes under the leadership of increasingly more experienced and effective Tutors; it was also to be seen in the resiliency of the community of learning in the face of a number of very diverse changes in personnel and challenges to its life within and without. The College addressed itself in an orderly and confident way to the supreme challenge in choosing a new President at a time when only a handful of Tutors could remember what the College was like before Mr. Weigle was President; on a much smaller scale but one intimately felt by all, the departure of Mr. Nordstrum as Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds created a set of problems that daily revealed how heavily the whole campus had depended on him and Mrs. Nordstrum. In these and other similar radical interruptions in its routines the College at this campus showed the strength of its organic life as an institution. It faced the challenges, went on unaffected in all of its usual activity, while feeling the shock and adapting to it successfully in its own context. ... Accustomed as it is to living on the brink of financial disaster, th€ faculty devoted itself to its work respbnsibly, not without deep sympathy for the President's burdens, but trusting in his leadership as demonstrated through his extraordinary past achievement. In short, while there were several occasions that could have turned into crises, the fundamental well-being of the College was manifested in them all, as it developed its inner ~;esources to an ever-increasing maturity and selfassurance. The Tutors Two new endowed tutorships were created by the exceedingly generous gift of a million dollars from Mrs. Elizabeth Myers Mitchell, of Annapolis, whose brother, the late Philip A. Myers II, graduated from St. John's in 1938. The Fund, to be known as the Philip A. Myers II Endowment Fund, establishes chairs in the names of Stringfellow Barr and Richard D. Weigle, in accordance with the request of the donor. The Reverend J. Winfree Smith, former pupil of Mr. Barr's and member of the Faculty since 1941, was �October, 1980 designated the first Stringfellow Barr Tutor. Douglas Allanbrook, who was initially appointed Tutor in 1952, was named the first Richard D. Weigle Tutor. At the same time Laurence Berns was designated the Richard Hammond Elliott Tutor and Brother Robert Smith an Andrew W. Mellon Tutor. To accomplish all of this, Mr. Smith relinquished his Mullikin Tutorship and Mr. Berns his Mellon Tutorship. The Annapolis campus was awarded a significant grant of $150,000 for faculty development by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. These funds, to be expended over a three-year period, w~re given to make possible faculty study groups on released time, as well as individual projects of auditing and studying. Various awards to tutors were made upon recommendation of the Dean and the Instruction Committee. A shidy g~o~p of four or five tutors on Einstein's general theory of relativity has been constituted for the coming academic year. Last September there were six new appointees to the Fac- ulty, Charles Collier, Marilyn Douville, joseph de Grazia (who had previously taught at Santa Fe), William J. Lenkowski, Thomas ). May, and Jonathan S. Tuck. For the second semester Georgia Knight of the Santa Fe Faculty taught at Annapolis, and Thomas A. McDonald transferred to the western campus. Four tutors were on sabbatical leave, Wye Allanbrook, Laurence Berns, William W. O'Grady, Jr., and John Sarkissian. Tutors Douglas Allanbrook, Saul Benjamin, and Harry L. Golding were on other leave, as was Thomas McDonald for the first semester. For 1980-81 two new tutorial appointments have been made, William Mullen who received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas in classics and has been teaching at Boston University since 1974, and Robert Raphael, who received the Ph.D. from Harvard University in physics and is currently an Associate Professor at Emory University. Scott Stripling and Kent Taylor of the Santa Fe Faculty will teach at Annapolis during the coming year; Robert Drueeker, William W. O'Grady, Jr., and David Starr of the Annapolis Faculty will teach on the western campus. Louis Kurs, Thomas Slakey, David Stephenson, and John S. White will be on sabbatical leave, and joseph de Grazia, Jr., Thomas Mark, Deborah Renaut, Brother Robert Smith, Beate Ruhm von Oppen, and Curtis A. Wilson will be on other leave. Finally, it should be noted that David Bolotin and Michael Comenetz were granted tenure ap- pointments as of July I, 1980. There are now 29 tenured tutors out of a total full-time faculty of 52, or 56%. At Santa Fe there was one new tenure appointment, that of Stephen R. Van Luchene, who currently both teaches and serves as Director of Admissions. As of July I, 1980 this bnngs to 27 the number of tenured tutors out of a total fulltime faculty of 40, or 67%. It is an interesting commentary that the Santa Fe Faculty on the average now presents slightly longer experience in teaching the St. John's program than its parent Annapolis Faculty. One new appointment was made in January at the start of the second semester, that of Cary Stickney, a 1975 Annapolis graduate, who had been studying philosophy in Germany. During the academic year three tutors were on sabbatical leave, Dean Haggard, Philip LeCuyer, and Elliott T. Skinner; three were on other leave, Charles G. Bell, Richard B. Stark, and David Townsend. At the end of June Alfreda Verratti Goodrich completed her appointment, and Philip Chandler and Richard B. Stark resigned from the Faculty. Three new appointments were approved for the coming year: Char- lotte H. Gray, a member of the 1972 Class at Santa Fe who subsequently received her B.A. degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Ph. D. degree in classical studies at :Soston University; Michael C. Dink, honor graduate on the Annapolis campus in the Class of 1975, who is completmg work for the Ph. D. degree in philosophy at the Catholic University, and Peter Pesic, who holds a doctorate in classics from Boston University and has been teaching in the struc- tured liberal arts program at Stanford University. During the year ahead W1lham A. Darkey, Michael Ossorgin, and Roger S. Peterson will be on sabbatical leave, and Charles G. Bell and David Townsend will be on other leave. Mr. Bart reports that the Faculty continued its own development in teaching unfamiliar areas of the program. He wrote, however, that he tended to encourage tutors to gain strength from repeating a class they had just taught for the first time. The Dean hoped that a proper balance would thus be maintained "between the enthusiasm and fresh insight of the amateur and the riper but more authoritative control of the expert." Routine teaching, he wrote, must be combated by exploring new areas or by penetrating deeply into subject matters to reveal anew their intellectual substance. In this connection the Dean expressed a modicum of envy for the Annapolis faculty development grant. He concludes: There ~a~ be no 9uestion that the faculty in Santa Fe badly needs mmlar occasiOns to work together in deepening their understanding of the disciplines, topics, and texts we teach. This campus needs above all encouragement to truly liberal scholarship. It has the intellectual leaders who could focus such efforts. It must be said by the Dean that it suffers from an excess of classroom teaching under trYing circumstances. The life of a Tutor at St. John's may well be the best human life. Only, however, by the renewal that comes from study groups, independent shldy, and sabbaticals can the College maintain the intellectual vigor which is ultimately the source of its teaching power. �The College The Students filled by mid-May. Late applicants were encouraged to con- Enrollment remained surprisingly high and steady in a period when many colleges and universities are reporting decreased numbers. The statistics for the two campuses show a total of 663 undergraduate students in the fall, as compared with 646 a year ago. The spring semester figure was 673, as compared to 654 in 1979. Annapolis Fall Spring 105 99 31 123 114 84 79 79 78 391 401 Freshmen January Freshmen Sophomores Juniors Seniors Totals Santa Fe Fall Spring 96 84 18 79 73 45 46 52 51 272 272 On May 18th, 76 seniors received their diplomas at Commencement exercises in Annapolis. One week later 52 B.A. degrees were awarded to graduating seniors at Santa Fe. On both occasions by request of the class the speaker was the retiring President of the College. The Board's silver medals for highest academic standing were awarded to Joshua Laurence Kates of Queens, New York, at Annapolis and to Anne Wu of Worthington, Ohio, at Santa Fe. Duane L. Peterson Scholarships for academic achievement, constructive membership in the college community, and commitment to postgraduate work were won by two juniors, Jamie Scott Whalen of LaSalle, Indiana, on the eastern campus and John Watkins of Mt. Ida, Arkansas, on the western campus. Two Annapolis sophomores were awarded Harry S. Truman Scholarships, thus carrying on the tradition started last year by Mary Filardo, of the Class of 1981, who was named Truman Scholar for the District of Columbia. This spring Rae H. Ely of Gordonsvi1le, Virginia, was named Truman Scholar for Virginia and Joel Weingarten of Nashua, New Hampshire, was designated Truman Scholar for his native state. A Thomas J. Watson Fellowship was awarded to Anita Norton of Annapolis, Maryland, a Danforth Fellowship to Wilfred McClay, 1974, of Annapolis, Maryland, and a Fulbright Fellowship to Eric Salem, 1977, of Bronxville, New York. Admissions During the year the two Directors of Admissions, John M. Christensen and Stephen R. Van Luchene, made highly commendable progress in giving effect to a joint admissions operation and cooperative recruitment strategies. Common promotional materials were developed. A nation-wide mass mailing was undertaken to 130,000 prospective students whose names were obtained from the Student Search Service of the College Entrance Examination Board. Considerable travel by the Admissions staff and by Tutors Geoffrey Comber and Howard Fisher reinforced the other efforts of the Admissions Office. As a result the Annapolis Class of 1984 was z sider enrollment at Santa Fe or to defer admission to January. The Santa Fe class filled more slowly but gave every evidence of exceeding last year's figure of 96 students. The comparative figures on admissions show the following trends: Santa Fe Annapolis 1978 1979 1980 1978 1979 1980 210 205 241 Applications 128 157 154 205 Approved 115 135 138 188 184 116 106 108 Enrolled 81 96 97 10 6 17 Rejected 5 11 3 Withdrawn 78 92 97 38 36 38 5,888 7,522 12,361 Material Sent 6,049 4,982 8,705 295 354 372 Campus Visitors 128 167 175 An interesting study was undertaken on the Annapolis campus to discover sources of applications for last fall's and winter's freshman classes. The largest number of applicants, some 29%, stated that they had learned about St. John's from friends or relatives. Twenty-two percent heard about the College through direct mail in the student search. Alumni, tutors, and students prompted 19% to apply, and teachers, counsellors, and professors accounted for 11%. Only 4% of the applicants discovered St. John's in a college guide and only 3% in a book, notably Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book. Only three students learned about the College from a newspaper article, while another -three came as a result of an admissions visit to a high school or a college night. The St. John's catalogue provided an introduction to St. John's for nine students. One applicant even credited "a lady at a bus stop" with giving the word. Another study analyzed the reasons that applicants withdrew after submitting their applications. Thirty-two simply transferred to a subsequent St. John's class, and another eleven went to Santa Fe. A total of 31 enrolled at another college, two each at Columbia, Dartmouth, Reed, Swarthmore, and the Universities of Chicago and Virginia. Ni.ne said that financial considerations prompted their decision to withdraw. Nine were uncomfortable with the St. John's program and wished to major. One wanted an accelerated B.A. program, one a more complete sports program, and nine gave no reason. Student Financial Aid Mrs. Marsha Drennon more than fulfilled our hopes and expectations as Director of Financial Aid on the western campus. At Annapolis it became necessary to replace the Di- rector of Financial Aid in November. The person appointed was Mrs. Caroline 0. Taylor, who had had useful experience in student financial aid at Goucher College. She did a remarkable job in assuming her responsibilities in mid-course. The College was truly fortunate in having two such able, �October, 1980 cragc these students received $4,190 in grants and jobs and borrowed $918, thus making a total of $5,108 in average aid. Two-fifths of all recipients were independent students, which caused a heavier drain on College resources in Santa Fe than in Annapolis. Mrs. Drennon was successful in appealing the allocation of College Work Study funds and received from the federal government $15,671 additional for 1979-80 and $12,767 for 1980-81. On federal loans St. John's default rate at Santa Fe is 3.4%, that at Annapolis 1.6%. Both are well under the national rate of 17%. Health and Counseling imaginative, and understanding individuals to administer a record flow of financial aid, as summarized in the following table: Federal Programs Educational Opportunity Grants Basic Grants Supplementary Grants College Work Study V ctcrans & Social Security Benefits Annapolis Santa Fe $148,493 74,753 140,176 15,570 $140,935 76,343 116,500 32,190 55,440 12,000 188,867 66,050 43,204 $732,553 219,833 29,800 42,607 $670,208 $ 64,975 186,090 $251,065 $983,618 $ 81,719 65,000 $146,719 $816,927 State Programs State Student Incentive Grants & Scholarships College Programs CoHcgc Grant~ Endowed Scholarships Other Scholarships Total Grants, Scholarships and Jobs Loan Programs National Defense Student Loans Federally Insured Student Loans Total Loans Total Student Financial Aid At Annapolis 210 students were recipients of financial aid in the course of the year, or just over half of the student body. The average demonstrated need of this group was $4,830. In order to distribute available funds as equitably as possible, the College sought to meet all but $250 of each individual's demonstrated need. This meant that the average grant and job to each of the 210 aid recipients came to $3,415, and the average loan to $1,195, or a total of$4,610. For the coming year increased fees and new federal eligibility rules will cause a larger percentage of the student body to qualify for aid. Moreover, the average need will rise by between $1,094 and $1,639. A growing problem is the so-called independent student, one who does not live with his or her parents, who is not claimed by them as an income tax dependent, and who receives no more than $750 in assistance from parents. Onequarter of the students receiving financial aid at Annapolis belonged in this category, thus shifting a greater share of responsibility from the family to the College. At Santa Fe the College was able to meet the full need of !59 students or 57% of the full-time enrollment. On the av- The Assistant Deans in Annapolis report that the campus had more than its share of student emotional and mental distress. One in six students was apparently disturbed enough to seek professional help from the College Psychiatrist or the Student Counselor. just over three-fifths of these students were women. The problems which seemed to loom largest in the minds of the students seeking help were among others sexuality, depression, fear of failure, family relationships, and alcoholism.- Various steps were taken in the course of the year to improve the mental health of the students. Fortunately, these seemed to be effective. At Santa Fe Stuart Boyd, the College Psychiatrist, saw 79 students for a lesser number of hours than in the preceding year. What he termed predictable peaks of tension and unease occurred during October and February, the first being the month when the full force of the academic program is felt and the second being the month when mid-winter doldrums often set in. Mr. Boyd did considerably less work in career counseling, thanks to the appointment of Mrs. Janet Lange as Director of Placement. He nevertheless continued with some interviews and gave psychological tests to determine specific capacities of students. The Harrison Health Center was again greatly appreciated by all who used the building. Mrs. Marilyn B. Mylander, the College Nurse, reported nearly 1,900 student visits to the Infirmary, over a third of them for upper respiratory problems. Mrs. Mylander writes that all three of the physicians served helpfully, Dr. Charles W. Kinzer as College Physician, Dr. Sigmund Amitin as College Psychiatrist, and Dr. Thomas M. Stubbs as Gynecologist. Miss Glynis Smith served as Resident Nurse, replacing Miss Carol Lachman. Mrs. Peggy Elrington continued to serve diligently and well as College Nurse at Santa Fe. Dr. Donald Romig, whc shared the responsibility of College Physician with Dr. Alfred W. Pinkerton, wrote at the end of the year about Mrs. Elrington's "unique abilities of handling the students and other problems that arise. Her communication has been impeccable and the information she imparts is quite to the point and useful to the physician." Both College Physicians in Santa Fe withdrew at the end of the college year. They will be replaced by Dr. Weng Ssu and Dr. Donald A. Paul, both primarily in the field of adolescent care. The Dean predicts that their approach is likely to be more individual, tending to include 3 �The College longer discussion with each patient about his or her health problem. It is interesting to note that Dr. Weng will be the first woman doctor on the College staff. Career Counseling Dean Bart reported that a great step forward had been accomplished in the appointment of Mrs. Janet Lange as Director of Placement. He wrote that students flocked to her office and that they were given sound advice as to meeting employers' expectations and as to assessing personal capabilities in a realistic way. Mrs. Lange was able to draw on the special talents of faculty members in the counseling process. She also assembled a reference collection of basic information about graduate schools, internships, and job opportunities. In the ten months of her service, the Dean states that Mrs. Lange has added a new focus to student life. At Annapolis Mrs. Marianne Braun, the Director of Placement, reported a large number of visits from every class as well as over a hundred contacts with alumni. In her report she categorized the visits as follows: graduate and professional schools (213), fellowships (131 ), jobs (200), career counseling (94), resume writing (29), internships (94), personal problems (21), and foreign study (12). Mrs. Braun served as a permanent member of the Faculty Fellowship Committee and also supervised the Student Employment Office. During the fall and winter she sent survey cards to all the alumni of the College and received responses from over one-quarter. They are enabling her to set up a useful and accessible file which will benefit future seniors considering careers. voted much of her time and energy to increasing the book endowment and to acquiring books by purchase and gift. The generous offer of Eugene Thaw, 1947, Chairman of the Board's Visiting Committee, to underwrite the book budget at a $15,000 figure for two years made it possible to concentrate all efforts on building the book endowment toward a $300,000 goal. By action of the Board and with permission of donors, certain rare volumes and items not needed for the library collection were auctioned or sold. The result was an addition of $31,227 to the endowment through sales and gifts. Permanent memorial funds were established in the names of Bert Thoms, John Parker Gilbert, 1946, and Jacob Klein. An endowed fund was also created in the name of Hilyer Gearing Shufeldt, 1955, through the auction sale of a rare four-volume Pitt English Atlas, donated by the Henry Shufeldts several years ago. Throughout the year the Library received much appreciated gifts of books and mementos from The Libraries Mter ten years of loyal and professional administration of the Library at Santa Fe, Mrs. Alice H. Whelan retired from the position of Librarian at the end of June. James M. Benefiel, Assistant Librarian, becomes Acting Librarian until a permanent appointment is made. Mrs. Whelan will continue to work on a part-time basis. In her final report she writes that her years at St. John's have been "a happy privilege, stimulating and rewarding." She states that she finds "some solace from the fact that I shall be able to continue, under less responsibility, to serve in this community which I so enjoy." The main collection at Santa Fe now numbers 45,673 catalogued volumes, 5,392 phonodiscs, and 1,500 phonotapes. Holdings are strongest in American and European literature, in science, in music, in philosophy, and in history. During the past year only 1,384 books were added to the collection, but cuculation significantly increased by 40 per cent to over 17,000 items. The Library is now quite adequate for the college community, but it would still benefit from more funds for book purchases. Dean Bart writes that many alumni and friends. Over 2, 300 volumes were added to the colleciion by purchase or gift; some 300 volumes were discarded; circulation exceeded the 15,000 figure. Finally, it should be noted that revision of the main catalog to conform with the new Anglo-American cataloging rules was com- pleted. The Staff The entire college community in Annapolis was deeply saddened in August by the death of Mrs. Leanore Rinder, the Registrar. Mrs. Rinder had fought valiantly against cancer for many long months. She first came to St. John's in 1969 to work as secretary to the Dean. Four years later she was appointed Registrar. She enjoyed the respect, admiration, and love of tutors, students, and staff members alike. In October Mrs. Nancy Winter assumed the position of Registrar. She gives promise of carrying on the office in Mrs. Rinder' s high tradition. As noted above, Mrs. Caroline Taylor succeeded Philip Aaronson as Director of Financial Aid in November. Mrs. easily to be defined. He writes that it will "depend on the Ann Cruse, 1976, was appointed Development Officer in the early fall. Mrs. Linda Cruciano, who had succeeded Au- restoration of an adequate sum of money for acquisitions and gustine Uleckas as Administrative Assistant in the Business the consequent search for the best available Librarian." At Annapolis Miss Charlotte Fletcher, the Librarian, de- Office, left in April to have twins. Her position was then filled by Svend Schmidt. Mrs. Susan Mark served as a labora- the directions of major future changes in the Library are not 4 �October, 1980 The Alumni tory assistant during the year. Miss Jean Monroe became secretary to the Graduate Institute in December replacing Miss Rita Bahus. Mrs. Mimi Koeppen, Miss Cynthia Miller, and Mrs. Marion Slakey all served at various times as secretary in the Development Office; Mrs. Mary White was part-time secretary in the Admissions Office. At Santa Fe the College suffered a great loss when Stanley Norclstrum retired as Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds on November I st. He had served the College faithfully and well for fourteen years, keeping the physical plant in top shape, utilizing his green thumb on campus shrubs and trees, riding his tractor or snowplow ad the season dictated, and, with his gracious wife, serving cookies and conversation to student visitors to the Nordstrum campus apartment. His place is not easily filled. Special acknowledgment of loyal service to the College is also due Seferino Quintana, who retired as Head of Security in September after fifteen years of protecting the campus and the students. The new Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds is Carlos Vigil, senior staff employee, who had been Assistant Superintendent for fifteen years. In a reorganization of the plant operation, the Assistant Superintendent position was abolished and the position of Head Custodian created for Lawrence Martinez. Dolores Vigil, for twelve years a staff employee, was named Secretary and Assistant to the Superintendent. In other staff personnel actions, Margaret Twyman was appointed Coordinator for the Fund for the 1980's campaign; Mrs. Barbara High and then Mrs. joan Allen became secretary to the Vice President, Lucinda Victor resigned as secretary to the Treasurer and Payroll and Benefits Officer and was replaced by Priscilla Singleton for three months and then by Lee Tzu Chan. Mary Lou Neal returned to the College as Accountant, succeeding Ann Ferkovich, who resigned. Marcy Ridgeway was appointed to the new position of Accounting Clerk, but was shortly succeeded by Katya Clark. Miquela Sanchez was named Word Processing Machine Operator; Suzanne Gill, 1979, became secretary to the Director of Financial Aid; and Martin Stone served as clerktypist in the Library. Finally Gurutej Khalsa was appointed Chief of Security in October, succeeding Seferino Quintana; and Margaret Allen became Assistant Book Store Manager in August, replacing Judy Kistler, 1978, who resigned to pursue graduate study. Thomas Farran, Jr., 1942, Director of College Relations and Alumni Activities, reports that the Annapolis Homecoming was "a most enjoyable and enthusiastically attended event. The memorable reunion of classes of the '40's, the honoring of Stringfellow Barr as President Emeritus, and the presentation of the Alumni Award of Merit to President Weigle combined to make it a weekend to remember." In the business meeting of the Association there was discussion about possible ways of reorganizing so as to make the Association more useful to all alumni. Already the efforts of Samuel Larcombe, Jr., l968S, as Santa Fe Director of Alumni Activities are succeeding in activating alumni groups in the West and Mid-West. Dr. David Dobreer, 1944, and Francis S. Mason, 1943, both completed their second consecutive three-year terms on the Board of Visitors and Governors. To replace them the alumni elected: Gay Singer Kenney, 1967, of Concord, Massachusetts, and Stephen L. Tucker, l969S, of Santa Fe. It is encouraging to report that Annapolis alumni giving rose to $68,967, an increase of some $5,000 over last year. The number of contributors made an eVen more substantial gain-760, as compared to 655 in 1978-79. In addition, alumni gifts for endowment amounted to $82,698 and for plant to $4,783. From Santa Fe alumni $9,737 was received in current gifts and $7,915 in additions to endowment. Though alumni on both campuses made progress over last year, their giving records fall far short of what is needed for supporting the College's ongoing academic program. Graduate Institute The Graduate Institute in Liberal Education was originally designed to provide a unique educational opportunity for public school teachers. It continues to direct its energies toward this goal, while acknowledging the beneficial participation of students from other backgrounds. This emphasis-is appropriate because many teachers have a professional and economic motive for pursuing studies which lead to an M.A. degree. But, as David ]ones, the Director of the Institute, points out, St. John's College believes that its educational aims and methods have a fundamental correctness not limited to undergraduate collegiate education. In choosing to concentrate on recruitment of teacher as students, the Institute tests this supposition in the context of graduate education. At the same time it acquaints persons of diverse education with the College in a direct and thorough manner. The 1979 session of the Institute enrolled Ill students at Santa Fe and 41 at Annapolis. Of these totals 74 in the west and 18 in the east were actively involved with education as a career. The others represented a wide range of' professions and jobs. At Santa Fe one-fifth of the student body were members of racial minority groups. Middle Eastern countries were well represented on both campuses, thanks again to funding by the International Communications Agency, the Reader's Digest 5 �The College 1980. To replace him the Board appointed David E. Starr, who moves from Annapolis to the Santa Fe campus for the two years of his directorship. At Annapolis Geoffrey Comber, who had effectively established the Institute in the east, indicated his desire to be relieved of the associate directorship at the end of this summer's session. Both Mr. Jones and Mr. Comber have earned the College's gratitude for jobs well done. The Campuses Foundation, and the DeWitt Wallace Foundation. Twentynine students received the M.A. degree during the academic year, 22 in August at Santa Fe, three at the Institute's first Commencement in Annapolis, one in December, and three at Commencement in May. The total number of Master's degrees awarded now stands at 274. During the thirteen-year history of the Institute 679 individuals have enrolled, of whom I 06 are still active ongoing students. This means that 56% of all who entered the Institute are either graduates or active shtdents. For the second time, a year-round Graduate Institute program was offered on the Santa Fe campus with 23 students enrolled. One segment of the curriculum was offered each semester, philosophy and theology in the fall and politics and society in the spring. The year-round plan enables a person to complete the work for the M.A. degree in two summer sessions and the intervening academic year. At Annapolis Geoffrey Comber, Associate Director of the Institute, succeeded in obtaining approval from the Maryland State Board for Higher Education for the eastern branch of the Institute to award its own degrees. The National Endowment for the Humanities granted $50,000 to St. John's to fund the Extended Teacher Institute. This enrolled twelve participants at Santa Fe and seven at Annapolis during the summer of 1979. To become an N.E.H. Fellow a teacher from either a public or private school was required to submit a proposal for significant change in his or her school, classroom, school-community relationship, or method of teaching. During the single year of attendance at the lnstitute.projects were discussed and refined as part of the curriculum. Then the teacher was subject to evaluation through an on-site visit during the following academic year. Group workshops were also arranged to discuss a book and to exchange reports on projects. In addition to the grants already mentioned, the Institute received greatly appreciated fellowship support from the Vincent Astor Foundation, the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, the Edward W. Hazen Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Edward John Noble Foundation, and the New York City Riot Relief Fund. David C. Jones, who graciously agreed to return to the directorship in the fall of 1979 when the director suddenly resigned, performed his duties in exemplary manner. As originally understood, he serves only through the summer of 6 Final plans and specifications have been approved by the Board and the Historic District Commission for the renovation and addition to Paca-Carroll House and to Randall Hall. A contract was signed in the early summer of 1980 with J. Vinton Shafer and Sons, Inc., of White Marsh, Maryland, at a figure of $1, 110,810 to complete the work on Paca-Carroll House by the fall of 1981. The Randall Hall project was expected to be let out to bid in the early fall. An anonymous pledge of $500,000 from a generous friend of the College made possible undertaking the Paea-Carroll House reconstruction. Another welcome grant of $155,000 from the Hodson Trust of Morristown, New Jersey, completes the funding for Randall Hall. Thanks to a favorable financial year, when Charles T. Elzey, the Treasurer, performed miracles with the College's reserve funds in the high-interest money market, many needed items of equipment were purchased and much deferred maintenance was accomplished. TI1e Key Memorial Auditorium was greatly improved by new stage lighting controls, a stage backdrop curtain, and an excellent 16mm. sound projector. In the Print Shop a color head and an expensive collator were installed, thus considerably enhancing the capabilities of Chris Colby, the College Printer. A new station wagon, truck, and Gravely lawnmower were also purchased. In the area of maintenance, the six blind music practice rooms in the Key Memorial were converted into four enlarged rooms with windows; photo-electric cells were installed on campus lights; control valves were replaced on old-fashioned radiators; and the entire rotted cornice of Chase Stone House was replaced. Electrically operated smoke detectors were placed in all buildings and centrally wired to the fire alarm system. Finally, brick walks were constructed to provide access to all buildings for the handicapped in conformity with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The major campus project at Santa Fe was the re-roofing of Evans Science Laboratory and Santa Fe Hall, necessary after sixteen years of service. Metal capping was installed on the parapets of Santa Fe Hall and Weigle Hall in an experimental effort to stop the leaching of lime into the stucco of the walls. This proved successful so other buildings will be done as funds become available. Replacement of carpeting with vinyl tile in the dormitories was continued and should be completed by the end of the summer. Monies for this work came from the repair and replacement reserve established in accordance with regulations on federal dormitory loans. Fi- �October, 1980 nally, a word processing machine was purchased during the year and installed in the Admissions Office. This greatly facilitates the reproduction of form letters for all college offices. Saga Food Service did a superior job during the first year of their contract with the College. Particular commendation should go to Wayne Chinander, who proved an effective and imaginative manager, and who established excellent rapport with the students. In fact, the experience with Saga Food Service has proven so satisfactory that the Annapolis campus has decided to retain Saga for the coming academic year. College Finances I am especially pleased in the final year of my presidency to report that both campuses completed the fiscal year with substantial surpluses. At Annapolis expenditures of $4,015,084 were more than offset by revenues of $4,063,223, thus creating a surplus of $48,139 that was added to the reserve for future operations. Higher enrollment, savings in financial aid co1lege grants, and excess interest income on current funds accounted for the favorable situation. At Santa Fe gifts and grants of over a million dollars, substantially higher income from endowment, and the sale of certain excess land and other unneeded assets all contributed to the total current revenues of $3,463,470. Expenditures of $3,402,045 exceed the budget by over $62,000, but the year nevertheless ended with a surplus of $61,425. This sum reduced the cumulative deficit of the Santa Fe campus from $123,779 to $62,3 54. An analysis of all gifts and grants received by St. John's College over the past twelve months follows: Donors Board College Community Alumni Parents Friends Foundations Corporations Government Totals Annapolis Santa Fe $1,008,596 3,368 156,648 12,031 131,013 294,538 61,060 257,588 $1,924,842 $ 485,561 10,175 17,652 10,386 126,913 541,072 28,409 130,711 $1,350,879 $ 461,137 $ 897,386 99,099 31,417 100,934 266,748 54,394 $1,350,879 Purposes Unrestricted Restricted for Libmry, Scholarships, etc. Graduate Institute Endowment Plant Totals 1,204,785 159,821 $I,924,842 ). Bu~chenal Ault, Vice President, reports that the College received generous support from the citizens and businesses of its two communities, Annapolis and Santa Fe. In the east a volunteer group of Friends of St. John's raised $22,622 in its second annual drive, double the amount pledged a year ago. Credit is due Thomas Parran, D{rector of College Relations, and Edda Peter, Development Officer and Director of Community Relations. The growing awareness and support of the College can be attributed in large degree to the various events scheduled by Mrs. Peter to involve local citizens. The ongoing continuing education program of the College and the policy of expanded use of college facilities by local organizations have also helped to build good will. Significant impact came too from the tireless and imaginative work of Rebecca Wilson in the field of public relations. She has effectively presented the College through newspaper articles, radio and television exposure, and interesting issues of The Reporter. The seventh annual sustaining campaign in the west yielded $91,289 f"om 369 Santa Fe residents. Mary Branham, Director of College Relations, earned high praise for what Mr. Ault characterized as "her remarkably successful efforts to integrate college and town. Hers have been absolutely critical labors, conducted deftly, with the lightest hand, and in a warm and pleasing style." Miss Branham has worked with the Library Committee on Book and Author luncheons and Evenings with Writers, with the citizens' Fine Arts Committee, with the Music Library Committee, with the monthly Indian Table, and with the Arnold Schoenberg Festival for Santa Fe. All these efforts, coupled with media assistance from Newsome and Company, have produced the splendid financial backing of the College in its annual sustaining campaign. Endowment Fayez Sarofim & Co., of Houston, Texas, continued to do an excellent job on managing the portfolio of the College's 7 �The College pooled endowment funds. Earnings for the year represented a 6. 67% return on book value, or a 5. 8% return on market value. As of June 30, 1980, the endowment principal at Annapolis totaled $9,229,244 in book value and $10,611,092 in market value. At Santa Fe the endowment principal totaled $1,826,596 in book value and $2,186,974 in market value. In an effort to discover whether the College's extensive land holdings in Santa Fe might yield a helpful source of new income, the College commissioned Stephen Fiance and Associates to compile a land inventory and to analyze all basic data. This first phase was completed in May at a cost of $18,562. The second phase will call for identifying a builder-developer-architect who might suggest imaginative ways in which the land could be utilized without sacrifice of admired educational program, with a strong teaching faculty, with a talented student body, and with a firm administrative and financial base. St. John's is now a larger college on two campuses with effective interchange of persons and ideas between them. Women are no longer excluded from its life and learning; their introduction in 1951 was a wise move. The Graduate Institute in Liberal Education has brought the substance and the teaching methods of the Program to hundreds of teachers and other adults. The College and the Reporter enable St. John's to communicate ideas and news to an everexpanding constituency of alumni, parents, and friends. In looking back over these three decades, I thought that the Board, the alumni, and friends might appreciate reviewing several charts that chronicle in perspective the progress of the aesthetic and environmental values. A grant from the Inde- College on its two campuses. The first set of appended charts pendent College Funds of America was awarded to St. John's, whereby the services of New Sources of Funding, Inc., of New York City will be provided to aid the College in de- shows enrollment, class by class, and year by year. It is amaz- lineating its possible future courses of action. shows revenues and expenditures with resulting surpluses or Fund for the 1980's As the terminal date of December 31, 1980, approaches, the Fund for the 1980's stands at $15,078,119 in gifts, grants, pledges, and bequests. This constitutes an increase of better than $4,000,000 over the total of a year ago. It is unrealistic to hope that the goal of $25,000,000 can be achieved, but the College can be proud of achieving at least three-fifths of the ambitious objective it set for itself in 1976. At Annapolis three-fifths of the endowment goal was realized, but at Santa Fe less than one-sixth of the $10 million endowment goal was raised and none of the funds needed for the last three buildings to complete the physical plant. It should be noted that a concerted effort was begun in the spring under the leadership of Mr. Ault and of Campaign Coordinator Margaret Twyman to endow a permanent chair at Santa Fe, to be named for John Caw Meem and his wife, Faith. The first $65,000 to this end had been obtained by the end of the fiscal year. Finally, it is worth noting that the four-year campaign expenses, which were shared by both campuses, amounted to $376,835, or only two and a half cents for each dollar raised. Again I should like to express the deep gratitude of the College, as well as my personal thanks, to all who contributed or pledged so handsomely, to all who worked in the campaign, and to all who expressed their confidence and support of St. John's by serving on its National Committee. Thirty-One Years It has been my good fortune to preside over the destinies of this College for thirty-one years. Little did I realize that it was to be a life-long commitment when I arrived on campus September 17, 1949, to meet the Visitors and Governors after they had elected me President. I believe that I have discharged my stewardship responsibly. I now feel that I can turn the College over to my successor with a respected and 8 ing to think that St. John's only enrolled 40 freshmen and 85 other students in the fall of 1953. The second pair of charts deficits for the entire period. They also record the growth of the College's endowment. It is a sobering thought that the combined budgets of the two campuses today amount to $7.5 million, about sixteen times the modest budget of $462,000 which I inherited in my first year. And the endowment too has grown tremendously, from $247,000 in 1949 to an aggregate book value of $11 million and a market value of $13 million. The last two charts summarize the gifts, grants, and bequests which the College has received since the inception of the Santa Fe campus in !961. If one includes gifts, grants, and bequests for the twelve-year period prior to 1961, the grand total of funds raised exceeds $40 million. The figures are a remarkable demonstration of the commitment and dedication of the members of this Board of Visitors and Governors and others to the College. * • ' As Mrs. Weigle and I take leave of the College, we express to all Board members, past and present, our heartfelt appreciation for the concern they have showed for St. John's and the friendship they have expressed for us. For these thirty-one years we have been blessed with wonderful people to work with on the Board, in the Faculty, Student Body, and Staff, and. among the alumni and friends of St. John's. We wish that there were some way to thank each one individually. This general acknowledgment of a debt of gratitude will have to suffice. Let me end this final report with some excerpts from my commencement address of last May, which was at the same time a personal testarrient, a valedictory message, and a chal- lenge to the graduating seniors: What attracted me originally to St. John's College was the matter and the manner of the Program. It seemed to me that St. John's provided much that my own education had neglected. There was a wholeness to it rather than a fragmentation. There was full participation rather than somewhat passive exposure to great lee- �October, 1980 turers. Most important of all, there was a clear delineation of the liberal arts, which I had previously wrongly equated with subject matters like the humanities . . . . I have come to have great respect for St. John's Tutors and for their willingness to engage in study and conversation far outside their fields of expertise. For me there has been a great opportunity to learn from both the faculty members and the students. In turn, I have sought to spread "the gospel according to St. John's." . I guess that the College has generated in me the evangelistic fervor of an educational missionary. As you leave this college, I would hope that you had eXamined your beliefs and developed for yourself a philosophy that will stand you in good stead throughout the balance of your life. Each of you should be able to say as Luther did, "This I believe." In my own case I hold to the Christian position, the fatherhood of a loving God, the redeeming grace of his Son, and the brotherhood of man. In my actions I have tried, not always with success, to be true to this position. I hope that you wi11 hold to three commitments for the future. The first of these is a commitment to principle. You have now read many books and discussed many theories. Only if theory is put into practice will your education have ·been of any value ... Your second commitment, I hope, will be to liberal education. This means that you must continue to be intellectually alive, that you will fi.nd a wise use of leisure in reading good books, in attending good lectures and concerts, in carrying on meaningful conversation. Finally, I hope that you will cherish a commitment to this College. Do not forget that you remain members of the St. John's community through the provision of the College Polity, which states that alumni are lifetime members of the College. For this is a community not limited by geographical location or fixed periods of time. You have an opportunity and an obligation to make a St. John's education possible for future generations of young men and women by guiding prospective students here, by contributing your time and substance to the College, even if it be the widow's mite, and by exemplifying in your own lives what the books and the tutors at St. John's College have meant to you. I suspect that you and I have a devotion and a loyalty to this place from which we can never willingly escape. It has changed my life. I am sure it has done the same for you. Hail and farewell! ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE Student Enrollment-1949-1980 Annapolis Freshmen 1949-50 1950-51 1951-52 1952-53 Sophomores 71 47 63 36 42 41 29 54 42 40 1953-54 66 80 27 30 32 Total 20 21 12 139 166 179 212 225 107 104 1959-60 1960-61 1961-62 1962-63 1963-64 115 122 117 126 131 1964-65 196s.66 1966-67 1%7-68 1968-69 123 84 59 55 116 119 102-19 128-22 107 65 61 53 1969-70 1970-71 1971-72 1972-73 1973-74 125-21 117-21 125-20 128-20 105-22 1974-75 1975-76 1976-77 1977-78 1978-79 107-29 105-34 106-31 I 10-27 I 16-30 103 118 115 107 % 1979-80 105-30 123 Sophomores 1964-65 1965-66 1966-67 1967-68 Freshmen 84 86 73 55 1968-69 1969-70 1970-71 1971-72 119 125 106 107 58 81 1972-73 1973-74 1974-75 1975-76 108-15 92-22 97-20 85-15 1976-77 1977-78 1978-79 1979-80 83-18 62-16 81-16 96-18 47 44 53 61 72 74 23 18 29 30 33 Seniors 33 36 28 20 24 1954-55 1955-56 1956-57 1957-58 1958-59 94 30 Juolors 45 38 46 49 92 93 44 56 82 64 22 27 24 35 40 38 42 196 173 151 133 125 257 280 293 313 319 93 85 56 54 321 341 333 316 71 62 40 323 "' 59 110 66 51 54 98 85 45 105 110 69 84 70 70 368 353 373 392 391 72 85 77 71 81 74 74 399 404 415 390 401 84 79 421 Juolors Seolors 41 40 35 Total 84 148 168 178 31 28 55 47 32 33 30 27 240 262 269 262 71 45 "' 32 63 69 36 33 26 46 276 78 80 68 79 63 63 83 76 82 611 Santa Fe 62 54 40 76 78 89 86 72 45 51 54 52 52 275 295 301 293 275 289 290 Richard D. Weigle President of St. John's College, 1949-1980 Annapolis, Maryland August 25, 1980 The Report of the President to the Board of Visitors and Governors is published annually by the Office of College Relations, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland. Thomas Parran, Jr., Director of College Relations. Picture credits: Cover, page 7, Tom Parran; page 1, M. E. Warren; page 3, John De Journett; pages 5 & 6, Betty Lilienthal. 9 �The College ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE Summary of Financial Reports-1949-1980 Gifts and Grants-1961-1980 (All Figures in Thousands) (Figures in thousands) Annapolis Annapolis Foundation Endowment 1949-50 1950-51 1951-52 Revenues $ 459 Expenditures Surplus/(Dcftclt) Board Members {B(Hlk Value) $ 462 $ (3) $ 247 455 433 456 414 (I) 19 274 350 1952-53 1953-54 1954-55 500 529 484 484 555 16 (26) 504 (20) 672 759 1,428 1955-56 528 565 675 532 622 679 (4) (57) (4) 1961-62 1962-63 1%3-64 1964-65 I%H6 1966-67 1967-68 1956-57 1957-58 1,602 1,951 2,190 1968-69 1969-70 1970-71 1971-72 1958-59 800 923 965 785 914 1,030 (6~ 6,281 6,193 1961-62 1,077 1,051 1,140 1,248 26 26 26 6,307 6,490 6,679 1959-60 1962-63 1963-64 1,166 1,274 1,244 15 9 5,650 1960-61 1964-65 1965-66 1966-67 1,228 I ,378 1,339 16 6,948 1.396 1,344 18 5 7,926 8,205 1967-68 1968-69 1%9-70 1,457 1,523 1,702 1,482 1,508 1,716 (25) 15 (14) 8,667 9,218 8,776 1970-71 1971-72 1972-73 1,844 1,981 2,204 1,844 1,992 2,201 (II) 3 8,333 8,702 8,700 1973-74 1974-75 1975-76 2,345 2,479 2,614 2,237 2,458 2,647 108 21 (33) 8,803 8,087 7,766 1976-77 1977-78 1978-79 2,971 3,137 3,473 2,931 3,190 3,432 40 (53) 41 8,057 8,045 7,900 1979-80 4,063 4,015 48 9,229 Santa Fe 1964-65 1965-66 1966-67 Revenues $ 474 Expenditures 902 1,021 $ 491 835 1,172 1967-68 1968-69 1969-70 1,203 1,436 1,276 1970-71 1971-72 1972-73 Surplus/{De6cit) $ (17) Endowment $ (151) 22 27 33 1,199 1,429 1,528 4 7 (252) 63 1,644 1,784 1,862 1,640 1,781 1,940 3 (78) 1973-74 1974-75 1975-76 2,128 2,344 2,528 2,125 2,343 2,527 1976-77 1977-78 1978-79 2,652 2,402 3,202 2,621 2,763 3,058 1979-80 3,462 3,402 10 67 4 41 50 62 136 254 337 I ,234 1,332 (31) (361) 144 61 I ,340 1,478 1,541 I ,826 1972-73 1973-74 1974-75 1975-76 1976-77 1977-78 1978-79 1979-80 Totals 16 9 4 2 I 14 Alwnol $ 33 41 19 II 29 44 10 189 4 143 10 10 209 147 61 418 395 99 10 10 7 105 57 40 75 _____1Q_!Q $1,651 157 137 147 244 411 157 $2,834 Friends & Community $ 39 17 7 6 243 39 & Corporations ' 44 144 $1,078 80 80 80 119 99 199 190 131 124 681 280 93 574 1,052 12 173 " 234 166 179 456 249 430 2% $3,646 Totals $ 263 62 195 134 154 37 60 49 61 Government $ 80 201 364 61 89. 31 41 41 23 46 31 43 21 25 289 84 809 25 253 753 325 35 377 50 429 478 865 719 1,042 1,864 $11,145 " 108 108 117 257 $1,936 Santa Fe 1961-64 I%4..S 1%5-66 1966-67 1967-68 $ 429 1968-69 1%9-70 1970-71 1971-72 1972-73 1973-74 427 284 650 735 693 547 202 684 393 501 123 200 $ 628 3 4 (Included 129 5 5 42 50 61 106 146 126 81 159 223 134 172 225 434 174 236 217 13 $ 80 with 1974-75 1975-76 1976-77 1977-78 1978-79 1979-80 Totals G=d Totals 691 friends' gifts) 652 2 I 4 4 166 138 $ $ 1,260 18 32 28 777 45 36 156 663 1,869 1,115 1,189 1,058 2,057 1,147 1,120 792 1,219 1,180: $17,862 $29.007 52 575 5 482 285 769 421 $ 8,768 10 7 9 18 $ 1,042 982 145 102 74 1!9 139 $3,292 289 242 487 $3,369 214 284 194 137 80 115 $1,391 $10,419 $3,876 $4,370 $7,015 $3,327 332 420 821 500 675 �October, 1980 BALANCE SHEET June 30, 1980 ASSETS LIABILITIES AND FUND BALANCES CURRENT FUNDS CURRENT FUNDS Annapolis Unrestricted Cash ........ . Investments . Accounts receivable, net Other receivables ....... . Inventory-bookstore-at cost ......... . Prepaid expenses and deferred charges Due from other funds ... Assets held pending sale. 3,020 566,184 19,898 62,203 41,934 38,243 3,503 $ $ 81,424 185,495 44,469 47,402 734,985 Restricted Cash ... Investments ......................... . Due from other funds .. Accounts receivable ... 35,614 26,835 461,303 $ $ 370,794 89 36,851 76,506 7,823 523,752 $ 121,269 $ 1,258,737 $ 7,785 $ 333,606 11,841 20,416 391,895 $ 341,391 425,152 $ 10 LOAN FUNDS Total Loan Funds ..... Total Endowment Funds 1,000 146,755 128,771 68,054 14,665 74,903 .. . . . . . . . .. .' .. .. $ 443,148 $ Restricted Fund Balance Total Current Funds .. ................. 89,391 734,985 $ $ ............. $ $ Fund Balllllce Reserve for future operations (cumulative deficit) 645,594 523,752 $ 121,269 $ 1,258,737 $ 492,063 340,560 $ 400,847 24,305 (62,354) 370,794 National Direct Student Loans balance . . ........... . College Joan fund balance ................... . Total Loan Funds $ 831 $ 341,391 $ 425,152 $ 3,502 9,229,244 8,200 $ 415 1,826,181 ENDOWMENT FUNDS $ 8,253,496 987,220 24,057 1,667,047 135,492 220 $ 9,240,946 $ 1,826,596 ANNUITY FUNDS Due to other funds .. Fund balance ...... . Unexpended income Total Endowment Funds $ 9,240,946 $ 1,826,596 ANNUITY FUNDS $ 7,079 156,772 $ Due from current unrestricted funds Due from plant funds 163,851 Liability under life estate agreements $ Total Annuity Funds . 163,851 163,851 PLANT FUNDS PLANT FUNDS Unexpended ...................... . Investment-retirement of indebtedness Investment in plant Land and Improvements Buildings . Equipment ..................... . Land and improvements-California $ 24,706 97,253 62,332 461,303 ............. LOAN FUNDS $ ENDOWMENT FUNDS Cash Investments ............................. . Receivables ..... . Pledges receivable $ Santa Fe 492,063 $ Cash ............ . St. John's College Loans ..... . National Direct Student Loans . United Student Aid Deposit .. Annapolis Unrestricted Notes payable-bank Accounts payable ........ Student advance depoSits . Deferred income. · Due to other funds 12,004 $ Total Current Funds Sllllta Fe 824,491 394,929 5,685,207 394,221 584,000 $ 7,451 274,924 523,644 5,906,741 799,294 Total Plant Funds ............. . $ 7,882,848 $ 7,512,054 Total Funds ... $18,723,922 $10,419,716 Unexpended ............. . Retirement of indebtedness . 824,491 Inve~:~~ igtC!~%nds ..... . Notes payable-other ............ . Loans payable to Annapolis campus Dormitory bonds payable . Due to Annuity Fund ... Net investment in plant $ 7,451 274,924 15,626 1,000 7,058,357 800,000 1,406,000 156,772 4,850,281 Total Plant Funds. $ 7,882,848 $ 7,512,054 Total Funds $18,723,922 $10,419,716 II �The College CONDENSED STATEMENT OF REVENUES AND EXPENDITURES ANNAPOLIS ENDOWMENT FUNDS June 30, 1980 Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1980 TUTORSHIP ENDOWMENTS Annapolis Total Educational and General Auxiliary Enterprises Bookstore ............... Dining hall and dormitories ............ . Summer Coffee Shop, vending machines . Outside summer programs ............. . Dorsey House ............ . Santa Fe $1,937,350 479,457 300,391 619,056 90,897 $1,401,871 305,092 899,026 180,295 78,323 $3,427.151 $2,864,607 78,268 507,200 19,493 20,054 8,800 $ 80,041 462,328 Total Auxiliary Enterprises .. $ 633,815 $ 542,369 Total Revenues ............... . $4,060,966 $3,406,976 EXPENDITURES Educational and General Instruction ... Research . . . . . . . . . ......... . Academic support Student services .... Institutional support ........... . Plant operations and maintenance Student financial aid .. . Mandatory transfers .. . $1,296,217 37,025 96,343 308,316 747,183 366.116 383,077 4,862 $1,005,702 Total Educational and General $3,239,139 77,012 195,447 37,077 379,537 236,122 79,001 Total Auxiliary Enterprises $ 773,688 $ 624,659 Total Expenditures and Transfers $4,012,827 $3,349,929 103,396 271,964 628,196 208,048 459,316 48,648 $ 313,432 $ 2,679,845 1,000.000 1,989,954 150,216 500,000 150,000 $ 313,432 2,679,845 1,000.000 2,489,954 300,216 $3,329,845 $6,783,447 $ $ SCHOLARSHIP ENDOWMENTS 1,217 15,000 25,000 27,500 3,070 8,672 87,933 15,050 13,705 Annapolis Graduate Institute . . ............ . Annapolis Self Help ...................... . George M. Austin, 1908 . WalterS. Baird, 1930 . Chicago Regional . Class of 1897 Class of I898 ....... . Richard F. Cleveland ................. . Dr. Charles C. Cook ......... . Corp. George E. Cunniff, III .. Clarence L. Dickinson. 1911 Faculty ............................. . John T. and Gertrude L. Harrison, 1907. Richard H. Hodgson, 1906 ..... Alfred and Ruth Houston, 1906 Houston Regional .................. . Jesse H. Jones and Mary Gibbs Jones Robert E. and Margaret Larsh Jones, 1909 . John Spangler Kieffer . Jacob Klein . . . . . . . ..................... . Arthur E. and Hilda Combs Landers, 1930 . Massachusetts Regional . . . . ............. . Phillip A. Myers, II,- !938. Rev. Theo O'Brien Oklahoma Regional ......... . Thomas Parran Memorial, 191 I Pittsburgh Regional ....... . Readers Digest Foundation . Leanore B. Rinder . Clifton C. Roehle ....................... . Joan and Bela Ronay ............................... . Murray Joel Rosenberg Memorial Flora Duvall Sayles ....................... . Hazel Norris and J. Graham Shannahan, 1908 Clarence W. Stryker ....... . Frederick J. von Schwerdtner Richard D. Weigle . $2,725,270 $ 88,348 274,352 23,646 7,805 Richard Hammond Elliott, 1917 ....... . Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grants . Phillip A. Myers, ll, 1938 .. Addison E. Mullikin, 1895 .. Arthur de Talma Valk, 1906 Donor $3,453,602 REVENUES Educational and General Tuition fees Government programs and grants .. . Private gifts and grants .......... . Endowment income . Other sources A. W. Menon Fouildatlon Total Fund Matching Girt Principal Gift of 15,000 25,000 3,070 1,217 30,000 50,000 27,500 6,140 8,672 87,933 15,050 13,705 135 270 1,000 2,359 20,025 150,250 2,500 135 1,000 52,909 154,676 150,250 42,787 55,268 174,701 300,500 45,287 500 500 1,000 36,000 50,481 4,250 3,862 36,000 72.000 50,481 4,250 3,862 21,000 45,370 39,262 19,023 52,000 6,465 1,120 12,500 5,165 7,056 70,845 5,189 1i:~ 22,685 9,000 30,262 19,023 26,000 6,465 26,000 560 560 12,500 5,165 7,056 70,845 5,189 2,000 3,664 2,000 3,664 3,843 1,552 16,514 3,413 7.367 7,256 1,552 23,881 $ 948,320 $ 323,864 $1,272,184 LIBRARY ENDOWMENTS Auxiliary Enterprises Bookstore . .. . . . . . .. . .. . . ......... . Dining hall and donnitories Outside summer programs . Dorsey House .................. . Plant operations and maintenance, allocated costs .. Mandatory transfers Alumni Memorial Book Fund .......... . Charles Edward Stuart Barton Memorial Library Fund ..................... . Benwood Foundation Library Fund ... . Faculty MemoriallJook Endowment ....... . John P. Gilbert, !964, Memorial Book Fund .. Mary Safford Hoogewerff Memorial Library Fund ................................ . Jonathan D. Korsbin, 1966, Library Fund .. Oliver M. Korshin, 1963, Library Fund ............ . Margaret Lauck Memorial Library Fund .. Library Fund ............................ . Charles Gomber Mantz, 1875, Library Fund. Eugene and Agnes Meyer Library Fund .. Ellen C. Murphy Memorial Library Fund Henry H. and Cora Dodson Sasscer Newspaper Fund Hilyer Gearing Shufeldt, 1955, Library Fund .......... . Bert Thoms Memorial Library Fund ......... . Ehna R. and Charles D. Todd Memorial Library Fund .............................. . Luther A. and Clara B. Weigle Meniorial Library Fund ........................... . The Jack Willen Foundation Library Fund in Memory of Murray Joel Rosenberg $ 455 455 $ 500 500 25,000 25,000 50,000 151 151 1,070 1,070 31,683 31,683 200 200 1,000 200 200 1.000 15,313 2,200 10,000 1,500 1,500 !6,000 1,400 1,500 19,500 15,713 2,200 10,000 3,000 1,500 16,000 19,500 400 1,400 39,000 3,600 3,600 1,000 1,00! $ 132,272 $ 46,400 $ 178,672 $ 24,081 7,180 $ 20,000 1,470 44,081 8,650 $ 31,261 $ 21,470 STUDENT LOAN ENDOWMENTS George Firedland .............. . John David Pyle, !962, Memorial. 12 $ 52,731 �October, 1980 ALUMNI MEMORIAL ENDOWMENTS 1,100 9,500 600 25 1,039 1,165 125 1,569 855 2,638 1,000 58,683 3,590 1,000 1,000 1,000 1,135 2,000 500 16,556 40 1,000 1,000 658 100 100 18,357 1,000 5,140 23,223 1,_020 5,400 Granville Q. Adams, 1929 ................ . Charles Edwards Athey, 1931 . , 1 W~r~-F~~~~~~e~ai~l'3 .1 ~~ . . · Drew H. Beatty, 1903 RobertA. Bier, 1919 ..... . Dr. William Brewer, 1823. Ford K. Brown, 1970 .... Frederick W. Brune, 1874 Benjamin Duvall Chambers, !905. Henry M. Cooper, Jr., 1934, Walter I. Dawkins, 1880 .. , .. ,, .. , .. , ....... . Robert F. Duer, Jr., 1921 . . .. , ..... , .. , ..... . Douglas F. Duval, 1891 Edmund P. Duval, 1905 .. Richaffi J. Duval, 1892 ...... Dr. Phillip H. Edwards, 1898 .................... . Joseph W. Fastner, Jr., 1960 .. , .. , ........ . Allen Lester Fowler, 1915 ..... , .. , . Edna G. and Roscoe E. Grove, 1910. Charles W. Hass, 1927 ..... John M. J. Hodges, 1904 , .. Carl B. Howland, Jr., 1937 ... Dr. Amos F. Hutchins, 1906 .. Clarence T. Johnson, 1909. Clifford L. Johnson, 1911 ............... . Helen B. Jones and Robert 0. Jones, 1916 .......... . Francis A. Katz, 1929 Dr. W. Oscar LaMotte, 1902. John H. E. Legg, 1921 William Lentz, 1912 ................ . Leola B. and Thomas W. Ligon, 1916. Col. Harrison McAlpine, 1909. James R. McClintock, 1965, Prize Fund. Vincent W. McKay, 1946. . ....................... . H. Boyns MacMannis, 1924 ..................... . Robert E. Maddox, 1876 ................... . Wi11iam P. Maddox, 1921 . William L. Mayo, 1899 .. Ridgely P. Melvin, 1899 ............. . Wm. S. Morsel\, 1923, Athletic Fund . John Mullan, 1847 ......... . Walter C. Mylander, Jr., 1932 ............... . M. Keith Neville, 1905 Dr. John 0. Neustadt, 1939. JohnS. Price, 1931 ..... Blanchard Randall, 1874 .. Susan Irene Roberts, 1966 Leroy T. Rohrer, 1903 . .. . . .......... .. Elliott A. Rosenberg, 1963. Harrison Sasscer, 1944 . Charles H. Schoff, 1889 ........... . Henry F. Sturdy, 1906 ........ . Rev. Enoch M. Thompson, 1895 ........... . Col. Guy D. Thompson, 1916 . John T. Tucker, 1914 ....... . Dr. RobertS. G. Welch, 1913. Dr. Willis H. White, 1922 ..... Amos W. W. Woodcock, 1903 $ 125 625 1,000 1,100 9,500 600 25 1,239 1,165 250 1,569 1,362 2,638 2,000 58,683 3,925 1,000 1,000 1,000 2,120 2,000 1,000 16,556 40 1,000 1,000 1,291 100 100 25,920 1,000 5,140 23,223 2,040 5,400 650 491 22,906 4,500 1,650 2,000 12,219 225 10,000 20,000 7,978 2,000 1,189 2,600 1,181 1,417 200 5,315 4,550 1,000 28,633 6,000 700 2,500 250 1,250 3,000 200 125 507 1,000 335 985 500 633 7,563 1,020 325 325 491 22,906 4,500 1,650 2,000 12,219 125 5,000 10,000 7,978 1,000 1,189 2,600 851 1,417 100 5,315 4,550 500 28,633 3,000 700 2,500 125 625 2,000 100 5,000 10,000 1,000 330 100 500 3,000 $ 284,417 $ 34,973 $ 319,390 60,000 4,685 1,000 308 20,250 5.820 25,125 10,000 3,000 $ 60,000 500 1,000 300,000 1,000 50,000 10,000 2,250 75,192 124,349 2,000 25,000 1,668 518 1,250 120,000 4,685 1,000 308 20,250 5,820 25,125 10,000 6,000 103 500 1,000 300,000 1,000 50,000 10,000 2,250 75,192 124,349 2,000 25,000 1,668 518 1,250 275 275 25,900 1,000 25,900 1,000 2,500 6,219 4,500 ~jle ~~h~o~~~;~~~~~:~ -~~~~- Afojph W. Schmidt Fund ....................... . Richard Scofield Memorial Fund ...... . Mrs. Blair T. Scott Memorial Prize Fund ..... . Kathryn Mylroie Stevens Memorial Prize Fund Luther and Caroline Tall, 1921 Fund ... Clare Eddy and Eugene V. Thaw, 1947 Lectureship Fund ................ . Millard Tydings Prize Fund .......... . Daniel E. Weigle and Jessie N. Weigle Memorial Fund ............... . Richard D. and Mary Weigle Fund ................... . Charles R. and Nancy Zimmerman, 1929 .. . 186,309 $1,551,961 Loss on sale of securities ............ . 19,868 219,181 547,525 19,868 405,490 547,525 $ 249,334 $1,801,295 ($1,171i,475) $5,223,358 Total endowment . ($1,178,475) $4,005,886 $9,229,244 SANTA FE ENDOWMENT FUNDS June 30, 1980 Gift of Donor TUTORSHIP ENDOWMENT Nonna Fiske Day Fund ..... John and Faith' Meem Fund $ .500,000 46,468 $ 546,468 SCHOLARSHIP ENDOWMENTS 150,000 200,000 12,500 25,000 1,875 40,000 51,573 7,000 .50,000 19,356 492 Helen and Everett Jones Fund . Nonna Fiske Day Fund ...... . Readers Digest Foundation Fund Evelyn Mitchell Memorial Fund . . .......... . Nina Otero Warren Memorial Fund. C. Michael Paul Fund . . . . . ............................. . Thorne Foundation Fund . Henry Austin Fund Lapides Fund .......... . General Scholarship Fund Graduate Institute Fund . . . ........................ . $ 557,796 LIBRARY ENDOWMENTS 50,975 1,118 217,149 l, 150 2,000 800 1,350 1,000 54,026 Margaret Bridwell Bowdle Fund. Emlen Davies Fund ... Norma Fiske Day Fund ...... . Angeline Eaton Memorial Fund Nina S. Garson Memorial Fund ... Duane L. Peterson Memoria! Fund .. Richard D. Weigle Fund ............ . Victor Zuckerkandl Memorial Fund.. . ........................ .. Memorial, Honor, and Life Membership Funds $ 329,568 OTHER ENDOWMENTS 2,500 6,219 4,500 OTHER ENDOWMENTS Hertha S. and Jesse L. Adams Concert Fund Philip L. Alger, 1912 Fund ... . Henry Austin Memorial Fund .... . Philo Sherman Bennett Prize Fund George A. Bingley Memorial Fund Scott Buchanan Memorial Fund ................ . Helen C. and George Davidson, Jr., 1916 Fund .. . The Dunning Memorial Fund ...... . Fund for Tomorrow Lectureship ... . Floyd Hayden Prize Fund ............... . Robert Maynard Hutchins Memorial Fund ..... . Joseph H. Hazen Foundation Lectureship Fund. William R. Kenan, Jr., Fund ............ . John S. Kieffer Memorial Prize Fund .... . Lapides Fund ......... . Maid Compensation Fund . . . .. . . . . .. . . ........... . Monterey Mackey Memorial Fund .... . Emily Boyce Mackubin Fund ....... . Victor Zuckerkandl Memorial Fund. Alumrii Endowment . . . ................. . General Endowment . $ 78 3,000 25 !,037 1,500 50,b51 1,300 1,141 8,881 35,000 3,341 1,250 _2,535 1,86.5 1,000 13,228 10,000 2,500 117,083 2,038 85,831 Bromwell Ault, Sr., Memorial ... Henry Austin Poetry Fund. Barr-Buchanan Fund . . . . . . . . . . . ............. . Fletcher Catron Memorial Fund Margo Dawn Gerber Prize Fund ................ . Elizabeth R. and Alvin C. Graves Memorial Fund . Margaret Milliken Hatch Fund .. Prank Patania Memorial Fund Junior Prize Fund ................... . Winfield Townley Scott Memorial Fund E. I. "Tommy" Thompson Memorial Fund. Millard E. Tydings Prize Fund . Marion Beeson Wasson Fund ..... . Clara B. and Luther A. Weigle Fund Jessie N. and Daniel E. Weigle Fund ...... . Richard D. and Mary Weigle Retirement Fund Weigle Senior Prize Essay Fund Other Funds $ 340,181 FOUNDATION ENDOWMENTS $ 47.994 3,600 $ Los Alamos Ranch School Fund .. Other Foundation Endowment Funds 51.594 574 Gain on sale of securities .. Total endowment funds $1,826,181 13 �The College St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Non-profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 66 Lutherville, Md. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollegemagazine Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 13 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of College Relations Title A name given to the resource The College, October 1980 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1980-10 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Weigle, Richard D. Parran, Jr., Thomas Description An account of the resource Issue of The College featuring the Report of the President 1979-1980. Published in October 1980. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_October_1980 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf President's Report Presidents The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/2a389f629bc89b2778a43e81f6b5becc.pdf 6221e084e36174ac99def3e99b708274 PDF Text Text FIL.E ULY1980THECOLLEGET IESTJOHNSREVIEWTHE :OLLEGETHESTJOHNS~ ~VIEWTHECOLLEGETH ~TJOHNSREVIEWTHEC I · .LEGETHESTJ 0 HNSREV ~WTHECOLLEGETHESTJ )HNSREVIEWTHECOLLE :TETHESTJOHNSREVIEW ~HECOLLEGETHESTJOH ~SREVIEWTHECOLLEGE ~HESTJ 0 HNSREVIEWTH �ECOLLEGETHESTJOHN 1 Kepler and the Mode of Vision Curtis Wtlson 16 Affirmative Action and the Rights of Man 25 John Paul II and the World of Tomorrow jean Lafoy 29 0 "Plato's Theory of Ideas" Fred Baumann Eva Brann 38 Three by Meyer Liben 45 Scientific Discovery, Logic, and Luck Sttliman Drake 49 On Sophocles' Ajax David Bolotin 58 FIRST READINGS Leven's Creator George Doskow Eyes of His Own-and Words Leo Raditsa 61 AT HOME AND ABROAD Letter from Moscow 64 Stephen Deane FROM OuR READERS Editor: Leo Raditsa Associate Editor: Wilfred J\.1. 1\lcC\ay (July I) l\.lanaging f.ditor: Thomas Parmn, Jr. f.ditorial Assistant: Barbara J. Sisson THE COLLEGE is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, 1\larylancl 21404. Richard D. Weigle, President, Eelward G. Sparrow, Dean. Published twice yearly, usually in July and January. Consulting Editors: Eva Brann, Beate Ruhm von Oppen, Curtis A. Wilson. Volume XXXII )ULYl980 Number 1 ©1980, St. John's College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0010~0862 Composition: Britton Composition Co. Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co. �Kepler and the Mode of Vision Curtis Wilson How do we see? Opening our eyes, looking outward from the eye sockets in our heads, we perceive-unless perhaps we are being subjected to an experiment by a psychologist, or are about to faint away~we usually perceive objects in a world: chairs, the floor, walls, windows, trees, houses, automobiles, dogs, cats, birds, people; each object situated at any moment in some place in an environment that spreads out from here, that is, from wherever we happen at the moment to be. Visual perception, almost always, is of persisting, stable, space-occupying things or objects, things not only extended and shaped in length and width but modelled in depth, and located with respect to certain background surfaces, like the floor or walls of the room, or the terrain outside, or the surface of the bay. The solid objects look solid, the square objects look square, the horizontal surfaces look horizontal, and a person who approaches me from 100 feet away does not grow to ten times his previous size. The visual world with its stable, meaningful objects remains patiently there for my inspection, in all its meaningful known-ness and unknown-ness. It is all so familiar. And yet the performance of seeing, all of you surely know, is a complex affair. It depends on certain organs or instruments and conditions. In order for anyone to see, there must be light to see by; the eyes must be open, and must focus and point properly; certain sensitive cells of the retina of the eye must react to light in certain ways, nerve fibrils must transmit impulses to certain nerve ganglia, and these must transmit impulses on to what has been called the enchanted loom, the brain. Let anyone of these conditions not be fulfilled, and seeing will not occur. Yet, seeing does not "feel like" a. complex, physical process. Rather, it "feels as if' things are simply An earlier version of this essay was read by Curtis Wilson in September 1974 at the Annapolis campus, the traditional Dean's opening lecture that year. TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW there when we open our eyes. The fact that, on the basis of physiological processes occurring in my head, I should see a world out there, a world that I believe I share with you, though at any moment I acknowledge~and I think you acknowledge~that we are seeing it under different perspectives: this, when I start to reflect on it, seems little short of miracle. Please do not expect me to explain away that miracle. The world that I perceive before me, into which I enter perforce, and where I meet you on a basis of essential equality~that perceived world I take to be a primary datum. Its existence seems to me to be presupposed, in one way or another, in whatever I may say, on any subject whatsoever, even when, seeking to philosophize, I pretend or imagine that it is not so. My language and hence my thought are deeply rooted in the human experience of the humanly perceived world. My seeing and my knowing seem to be from within that world. True enough, I can be persuaded that the humanly perceived world is not the world simply. It differs from a eat's world or a rabbit's world, painted only in shades of gray; it differs from the world of an arthropod, a bee, say, with its compound, movement-sensitive eyes. The human eye, we are told, responds only to a narrow band in the spectrum of radiation frequencies. Does this mean that our seeing and hence our knowing are fundamentally perspectival and partial? Is there some act of prestidigitation, whereby I can gain a perspective on my seeing and my knowing as though from outside my world? Such questions were raised in antiquity. One is reminded, for instance, of Protagoras' assertion that "each thing is as it appears to him who perceives it" Protagoras is identifying perception with what is. He is attempting to surmount the paradox presented by earlier cosmologists, for example the atomists, who on the one hand insisted on a sharp disjunction between appearance and reality, between what appears and what is, while on the other 1 �claiming sensation or perception as the basis of their theories. Protagoras proposes, in contrast, that there are no abiding elements underlying the world, but that the world consists of motions. Such motions, encountering one another, produce both the thing perceived and the perception. Neither the perception nor the thing perceived exists of itself, but only each for and with the other. Where nothing is perceived, nothing exists, and conversely, whatever is perceived, exists. Protagoras concludes, "my perception is true for me, since its object at any moment is what is there for me, and I am judge of what is for me, that it is, and of what is not, that it is not." Protagoras is asserting that it is impossible to err. The implication, unfortunately, is that the notion of truth is empty, no statement being controvertible. Protagoras attempts to encapsulate his doctrine in the famous formula, "Man is the measure of all things." But it seems to be human beings in the plural he is referring to, and they disagree. Moreover, it is not dear why other creatures, say cats or crustaceans, should not be the measure of all things. How maintain the Protagorean thesis against one who denies it, since he, too, is a 'measure of all things'? Issues of this kind were being talked about and argued over at the time modern science came to be. Skepticism with regard to the possibility of true knowledge arose out of the religious conflicts of the 16th century; out of the discovery and exploration of the New World, which revealed the existence of plants, animals, and peoples unknown to Aristotle; out of certain challenges to traditional medicine and astronomy posed by Paracelsus and Copernicus. The men most notably responsible for setting modern science on its way, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, were each of them aiming to make a new beginning, to lay new foundations for human knowledge. The attempt at a new beginning becomes most radical and far-reaching in Descartes. It is with the theory of visual perception as it relates to the emergence of Cartesian thought that I am here concerned. My account will begin with the development of Kepler's theory of the eye as an optical instrument, including his discovery in 1603 of the formation of the retinal image. I shall go into some detail as to how this discovery came about, as an example of learning and discovery. Then I shall turn to the Cartesian interpretation of the Keplerian result. For Descartes, Kepler's theory of the optics of the eye becomes an inspiration and vindication of Cartesian physics and philosophy. In the final section, I shall undertake a brief critique of the Cartesian interpretation. Prior to the publication of Kepler's theory, from the 13th through the 16th centuries, the generally accepted theory of vision in the European universities was that due to an Arab optician of the 11th century, Ibn al-Haythamthe Europeans referred to him as Alhazen. Without describing this theory in much detail, let me say, first, that, following Galen, the Greek physician, Alhazen supposed the sensitive organ of the eye to be the crystalline humor, 2 what we how call the lens. This crystalline humor was supposed to be right in the center of the eye, a notion not challenged till the second half of the 16th century. The ciliary muscles and ligaments, connecting the lens to the coatings of the eye, were thought by Galen to be nerves, and this was a reason for supposing the crystalline humor to be the sensitive element. Secondly, Alhazen assumed that not all the light rays entering the eye were effectual in producing vision, but only those rays which started from the surface of the object, crossed the surface of the eye perpendicularly, and came to an apex in the center of the crystalline humor, thus forming a pyramid. If more rays were to take part in the production of vision, Alhazen thought, the result would be indistinctness and confusion. He had no notion of the bringing to a focus of a bundle or 'pencil' of rays within the eye, nor did anyone before Kepler; it was Kepler who introduced these terms pencil and focus into optics. Thirdly, as to what the soul senses, Alhazen essentially followed the Aristotelian account. The soul senses the sensible form of the thing seen, without its matter. This is not a copy theory; no images are involved; it is an identity theory. To perceive the sensible form of a thing is to perceive the object as it is. The soul is passive; it receives the sensible form. What is received' in the eye must travel along the optic nerve to the brain, according to Alhazen, in order for sensation to be completed. But already in the eye, the motion of light has somehow brought about a sensation, that is, the reception of the sensible form. How did Kepler come to break with this optical tradition of the universities? Certain anatomical discoveries played a role. In the latter half of the 16th century, it was discovered that the crystalline humor was far forward in the eye, and that the cutting of the ciliary processes does not prevent vision. But at a crucial point, I believe, Kepler was dependent here on a tradition that was not an academic one, the tradition of perspectiva pingendi. In this term, perspectiva means not what we mean by uPerspective," but rather the same as optics, the science of vision. Optics as studied in the universities went under the name "perspectiva"; thus the standard university textbook of optics for 300 years up to Kepler's time was Johannes Peeham's Perspectiva communis, where the adjective "communis" or "common" apparently meant merely that the text was the standard one. Perspectiva pingendi, in contrast, was the optics of painting, the science that forms the basis of the art of drawing in perspective, to use the term in the sense that it has now come to have. Perspectiva pingendi was sometimes referred to as a "secret art," with its rules passed orally from one painter or draftsman to another in the 15th century. But Kepler was able to read about it in a book by Albrecht Durer published in 15 38, and entitled Instruction in Mensuration. I shall be pursuing this connection shortly. The starting point of the train of thought that led Kepler into an intensive study of optics was an astronomical anomaly. In April of 1598, Tycho Brahe, the famous obJULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE �servational astronomer, wrote to the professor of mathematics at Tilbingen, to report his observation of a solar eclipse earlier that year. What was especially remarkable was the apparent size of the moon when eclipsing the sun. Truly [Tycho wrote], it must be recognized that the moon when it is the ecliptic and when it is new [this means it is going to eclipse the sun] does not appear to be the size which it is at other times at full moon, even though it is then at the same distance from the earth; but it is, as it were, constricted by about one part in five, from certain causes to be disclosed elsewhere. on The causes were to be disclosed elsewhere, but not by Tycho, who was totally ignorant of what they were. The only thing he did conclude for sure was that there could never be a total eclipse of the sun, in which the sun was completely covered by the moon, and in this he was wrong. Kepler read of the anomaly in a letter from Maestlin, his former teacher at Ttibingen, in july. He was at this time 27 years old, and employed as a school teacher in the Duchy of Styria in Lower Austria. The report of a twenty percent shrinkage of the moon during solar eclipses perplexed and intrigued him. He imagined various hypotheses to explain the appearance, for instance that the moon had a transparent atmosphere. He also studied medieval books on the perspectiva of the schools, seeking an optical explanation. On july 10, 1600, there occurred another eclipse of the sun, and Kepler observed and measured it with special apparatus set up in the marketplace of Graz, in Styria, By the end of the month he had correctly resolved the Tychonic paradox in terms of optics. As he reported a little later to Maestlin: Figure l the wall, through which the rays of the sun are admitted (Figure 1). The idea of using the camera for quantitative astronomy goes back at least to the 13th century, but its common use for the measuring of eclipses dates from the 1540's. The figure is from a book on astronomical measurements published in 1545. It shows a double cone of imagined light rays passing through the tiny aperture in the wall, and it clearly depicts the inversion of the solar crescent on the wall. Let me incidentally call your attention to the fact that the depiction is in focused or linear perspective, that is, the lines that we take to be receding perpendicularly from the plane of the drawing are so oriented as to intersect at a point, called the vanishing point. ... I have been fully occupied in calculating and observing the solar eclipse. While I was involved in preparing the special instrument, setting up the boards under the sky, some fellow took the opportunity to observe another shadow and it produced not an eclipse of the sun but of my purse, costing me 30 Gulden. A costly eclipse, by God! But from it I have deduced the explanation why the moon shows so small a diameter on the ecliptic at new moon. And so in what was left of July, I have written a "Paralipomena" to the Second Book of the Optics of Witelo. Witelo's Optics had been written about A.D. 1270, in northern Italy, and was based largely on the Optics of Alhazen. Paralipomena means "Things Omitted." When Kepler's book on optics finally appeared, in 1604, it had swollen from a brief explanation ofTycho's paradox into a 450 page treatise, the foundation of modern optics, the science not of vision but of light. But it still carried the old title, Things Omitted by Witelo. Now what was Tycho's paradox, really, and how did Kepler resolve it? You must first understand that in Tycho's time, eclipses were being observed by means of the camera obscura, a dark room with a single, small hole in THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Figure 2 Kepler's eclipse measuring instrument in 1600 was not an obscure room, but an obscure tent (Figure 2). It consisted like the camera of a small aperture and a screen for receiving the image. The bar carrying the screens could be adjusted so that the receiving screen would be perpendicular to the rays of the sun. When an observation was in progress, the whole apparatus, including Kepler himself, not shown here, was covered by a black cloth. Now Tycho's shrunken moon is actually a shrunken shadow. To understand the shrinking, we have to understand how a luminous object forms an image behind an aperture that is not a point, but has a finite Size. In the camera obscura, it won't do to use a very tiny aperture, because then the image is feeble, and its boundaries be- 3 �I I Figure 5 cil, which in his day meant painter's brush or pencil. The medieval analysis takes the object as its starting point; Kepler's analysis takes the point source of light rays as its starting point. Although the pencils and the pyramids encompass exactly the same rays, the analysis in terms of pencils is probably the more helpful in letting us see what the shape of the image will be. In the case of the luminous crescent of the partially eclipsed sun, for instance, it will be a crescent with rounded horns. The quantitative analy- Figure 3 come indistinct. But let the aperture be the size of a pea, as Kepler did, and the size of the image will be affected in the way shown by Figure 3. On the left imagine a luminous triangle. The rays of light emerging from any given point of the triangle, and passing through the round aperture in the middle, form a cone. On the right you can see that the illuminated portion of the screen will not be triangular, but will be of such a shape as one obtains from a triangle by augmenting it on all sides by a border of uniform width; that is, it will be a three-sided figure with rounded corners. The width of the border depends on the distance of the object and on the distance and size of the aperture. If the luminous object is distant enough so that the rays of light coming from any point of it and passing through the aperture are very nearly parallel, then, very nearly, the width of the border will be half the diameter of the aperture. I I e:>AI~ Figure 4 Actually, there are two ways of conceiving the formation of the image. One can think of the whole luminous object as being projected through each point of the aperture, as in Figure 4, to yield innumerable overlapping images on the screen. This was the standard medieval way of analyzing the rays coming from an object: that is, to think of them as forming a pyramid with base on the object, apex in the eye, or in the case here, in the aperture of the camera. The other way of analyzing the image formation, the one Kepler used, is shown in Figure 5. Here one considers all the rays emerging from each point of the object. To the cone of rays emerging from a given point and passing through a round aperture, Kepler gave the name pen- 4 Figure 6 sis of Tycho's paradoxical phenomenon is now easy; see Figure 6. The crescent image of the sun has been augmented on all sides by a border of width equal to the radius of the aperture, while the shadow of the moon has been diminished by a border of the same width. This Keplerian solution to the Tychonic paradox happens to have been very important in the history of 17th century astronomy, but it is so straight-forward that I do not anticipate your being moved to rapture over it. It simply makes a rigorous application of the rectilinear propagation of light to the camera obscura. Had this never been done before? It had, (by Alhazen), but the correct solution was unknown in Europe before Kepler. The medieval treatises discussed a special form of the problem, namely, why it is that, behind an angular aperture, when the screen is sufficiently distant, the image cast by the sun is round. The most common solution among the medieval opticians was to say that light has a tendency to round itself out, that it contains an active power which brings this about. Light, it was said, was the bearer of all creative and causal action, and thus had this power. Kepler read these medieval discussions. He was even attracted to the neoplatonic theory of light that they contained. He has left us a very explicit account of the way in JULY 1980 • 1HE COLLEGE �Figure 7 which he came to reject the notion that light could round itself out, in violation of rectilinear propagation. A certain light (he writes in the Paralipomena) drove me out of the shadows of Pecham several years ago. For, since I could not comprehend the obscure sense of the words from the diagram on the page, I had recourse to a personal observation in three dimensions. I placed a book on high to take the place of the shining body. Between it and the floor I set a tablet having a many-cornered aperture. Next, a thread was sent down from one corner of the book through the aperture and onto the floor; it fell on the floor in such a way that it grazed the edges of the aperture; I traced the path produced and by this worked out, at least in part, in ancient times, apparently in connection with the painting of scenery for dramas. It was the Greeks who first entered upon the path of trying to produce, on a flat surface, the illusion of three-dimensional figures and scenes; in the painting of other ancient peoples before they come under Greek influence, there is almost no evidence of an interest in such illusion. The difference seems to be connected with the Greek interest in fiction, epic and drama freed from ritualistic constraints. So on countless Greek vases and mixing bowls, one finds painted scenes in which something wicked and interesting is going on. The photograph of Figure 7 shows a scene from the ambush of Dolan in the Iliad. The mastery of techniques for producing the three- method created a figure on the floor similar to the aperture ... [He goes on to describe the tracing of the aperture from each salient point of the book]. And so it became possible for solving the problem to bring in circularity, not of the rays of light, but of the sun itself; not because the circle is the most perfect figure, but because it is the figure of the shining body. were mastered over a period of some centuries. Ancient So it is a thread that leads Kepler out of his perplexity, and to the vindication of rectilinear propagation of light, and of the invariant size of the moon. It may seem preposterous to ask where the idea of using the thread came from, but Stephen Straker, a recent student of Kepler's optics, has made an interesting guess. It has to do with perspectiva pingendi. What is perspectiva pingendi, focused or linear perspective, Renaissance perspective, as it is variously called? The rules of linear or focused perspective seem to have been authors who write of the history of painting, like Pliny and Quintilian, record it as a series of triumphs in the produc· bon of progressively more persuasive illusions. In the final stages of the Greek progress, the paintings were painted not on vases, which tend to be preserved, but on walls which tend to crumble. However, the accident of the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79 has perserved for us some of those paintings in the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Such signatures as one finds on the paintings are Greek. A large part of the art lay in learning to rely on the imagination of the beholder, which is very obliging, and THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW dimensional illusion was progressive. Foreshortening, con- sistent handling of light and shade, the increasing mistiness with distance-the various tricks of illusionist painting 5 �Figure 10 Figure 8 assures us that the young woman in Figure 8 is a creature of grace and beauty; we can never know whether it is good luck or bad that she can never turn around. In Figure 9 we have an imaginary, sacred landscape, in which spatial re· cession is suggested by an adroit handling of light and linear perspective. Also present is what Leonardo will call Figure 9 aerial perspective, the increasing indistinctness as the scene recedes into the distance. But linear perspective emerges most clearly in wall decorations from about the middle of the first century B.C., that represent theatre sets, apparently a common form of wall decoration for homes. In Figure 10 the lines of the colonnaded court, seen above the facade wall, recede to a single vanishing point, as they should because of their parallelism. 6 That a mathematical theory of linear perspective had been worked out in antiquity is suggested by certain pas· sages in the book on architecture written by Vitruvius about 25 B.C. He describes "scenography" as the sketch· ing of the front and of the retreating sides of buildings and the correspondence of all lines to a fixed center, the 'van· ishing point' of the later theory of linear perspective. "It is necessary," he says, "that, a fixed centre being established, the lines correspond by natural law to the sight of the eyes and the extension of the rays, so that certain images may render the appearance of buildings in the painting of stages, and things which are drawn upon certain surfaces may seem in one case to be receding, and in another to be projecting." During medieval times the interest in visual illusion faded, to be revived in the late 13th and 14th centuries by the artists that Dante praises, Cimabue and Giotto. But it was not till the early 15th century that a mathematical theory of perspective reappeared. It was the work of Brunelleschi, the architect of the great dome of the cathedral in Florence, and a reader of Vitruvius. Brunelleschi' s procedure started from the architectural ground-plan and elevation; lines were drawn from every salient point of these plans to the position of the eye as projected onto the same plane; the intersection of these connecting lines with the picture plane gave the dimensions to use in the perspective construction. Brunelleschi's procedure came to be called the costruzione legittima. Other, less timeconsuming procedures for producing a similar result were later introduced. The first treatise on painter's perspective was written by Leon Battista Alberti in 1435, and Alberti makes much of the sottilissimo vela, shown in Figure 11 in a somewhat uncomfortable representation by Durer. It is a grid of threads through which the object to be drawn is looked at from a fixed point. It has sometimes been asserted that a curvilinear system of perspective would be more correct than the linear perspective used in JULY 1980 • 1HE COLLEGE �Figure 11 the Renaissance. Panofsky, the late historian of art, endorsed this notion, claiming that Renaissance perspective was a mere convention, comparable to the conventions of versification in poetry. This is surely wrong. Linear perspective is based on certain constraining assumptions, namely that only one eye is used and that the head is kept immobile. But given these assumptions, it does what the Renaissance artists thought it did; it sends to the eye the same pattern of lines and points as the object itself would. It has nothing to do with the shape of the retina or with neurophysiology or psychology; it is simply a matter of rectilinear light rays and projective geometry. The rectilinear light ray is materialized in the procedure represented in the picture by Durer in Figure 12. A perspeCtive picture of a lute is being constructed. A needle or nail having a large eye has been fastened into the righthand wall. A heavy thread is led through the needle, a weight being attached to the lower end of the thread. Between the needle and the lute, a frame is set up which has a little door hinged to it that is free to move in and out of the plane of the frame. Crossing the rectangular space enclosed by the frame are two other threads which the picture does not clearly show; they are free to be moved across the plane of the frame; they intersect at right angles and so define a point of the plane. The free end of weighted thread is led through the plane of the frame and held on a point of the lute by the man on the left. The threads crossing in the frame are moved till their intersection coincides with the point at which the weighted thread cuts through the plane. The weighted thread is then taken away, the little door bearing the paper is shut, and a mark is made on the paper where the movable threads intersect. The process must be repeated for other points of the object-as many as the draftsman feels are necessary for its proper portrayal. The finished picture will show the lute as it would be seen by a single eye situated at the position of the needle in the right-hand wall. It was a standard problem for Renaissance artists to avoid the undesirably sharp foreshortening that results when the beholder's eye is only an arm's length from the plane of the picture. Durer's apparatus solves this problem mechanically. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW It is Stephen Straker's conjecture that Kepler's thread was the direct offspring of Dtirer's thread. Whether this is so or not, Kepler's choice of the pencil of light as the element of his analysis of the camera obscura surely stems from perspectiva pingendi, the projective geometry of light rays, rather than the perspectiva communis of the schools, according to which the light rays had the capacity to round themselves out. Later on Kepler himself, as we learn from a letter of 1620 from the English ambassador Henry Wotton to Francis Bacon, used a ·camera obscurain this case a black tent with an aperture for admitting light-to obtain projections of landscape scenes from the Figure 12 outside; ensconcing himself within the tent, Kepler proceeded to copy the landscapes in detail, producing drawings "not as a painter but as a mathematician," to Wotton's great wonder and admiration. The evident principle was rectilinear propagation. Rectilinear propagation had resolved Tycho's paradox and accounted for the operation of the camera obscura. But Kepler did not stop here. His Paralipomena is a big book. In the fifth chapter he went on to consider the operation of the eye. 7 �The eye evidently resembles a camera obscura: the substances within are transparent, and the external coverings exclude light except where the pupil or aperture is. But the eye could not be a camera obscura, because as Kepler had learned, the larger the relative size of the aperture, the fuzzier the image, and the pupil of the eye was large enough to produce a total confusion of overlapping images at the back of the eye. Kepler turned to the accounts of the anatomists. All but one held to the standard view, according to which the crystalline humor was the sensitive element. A certain Felix Plater, however, had learned that what were supposed to be the nerves to the crystalline humor could be cut without loss of vision, and further that the crystalline humor was far forward in the eye. To him the eye looked like a camera obscura with a magnifying glass in front. Such instruments had been constructed in the late 16th century. It was left to Kepler to explain how a lens forms an image. Convex lenses had been in use as burning and magnifying glasses for centuries; eye-glasses had been in use since the 13th century. But Kepler was the first to account for their operation in terms of geometrical optics, the paths of light rays. He recognized that there could be a one-to-one correspondence between luminous points outside the eye, and illuminated points on the retina, provided that the cornea and crystalline humor were understood to act as lenses which refract the diverging pencils of light from each bright point outside, and bring each of them to convergence to illuminate a single point on the retina. With a globe of glass containing water, he constructed a model of the eye to show how it worked. He it was who first formulated the simple quantitative rules governing the distances and sizes of images formed by lenses. He was the first to be able to give an account of nearsightedness and farsightedness, the function of eyeglasses in correcting these defects, and why, despite the finite size of the aperture, a sharp image can be formed. And he always describes the geometrical optics of the eye in terms that remind us of painting: the image he calls a pictura; he speaks of its production as a process of painting the world outside on the retina of the eye; and for the conical bundles of light rays that do the painting, he introduces the term pencil, meaning painter's brush. What about the upside-down-ness and left-for-right reversal of the retinal image? Kepler regards these as simply necessitated by the behavior of light. How, given the retinal image, vision then occurs, he does not offer to say: I leave it to be disputed by natural philosophers (he says) how this picture is put together by the visual spirits that reside in the retina and nerve . ... The impression of this image on the visual spirits is not optical but physical and wonderful (ad- mirabilis). Kepler is saying that what happens in the retina and optic nerve and brain surpasses the powers of the mathematical optician; not being reducible to mathematics, it seems to 8 be, in Kepler's view, ultimately inexplicable, analogous to the mystery of creation. Just as the eye was made to see colors (he writes), and the ear to hear sounds, so the human mind was made to understand, not whatever you please, but quantity .. .. It is the characteristic of the human understanding which seems to be such from the law of creation, that nothing can be known completely except quantities. And so it happens that the conclusions of mathematics are most certain and indubitable. Kepler's view of the world was profoundly affected by the theory of perspectiva pingendi. The theorists of perspectiva pingendi had resurrected the famous formula of Protagoras, "man is the measure of all things." But they meant by it not the denial of the possibility of knowledge, but in a special way, the contrary. Seeing is perspectival, no doubt, but the perspective can be understood. Perspective measures space; space is known through quantities; quantities measure the permanent order of nature. At the center of every perspective system is man himself, who becomes the judge and standard for all comparisons. It is he, for instance, who apprehends and judges the beauty of things, as consisting in harmonious proportions. (This is almost a quotation from Alberti). Kepler shared these ideas. He viewed the whole cosmos as a divinely created, three-dimensional work of art, an im- age of the Divine Trinity, the structure of which we can determine from the perspectives we have of it. Man, cre- ated in the image of God, is the contemplative creature, the measuring creature, as Kepler repeatedly calls him. He is placed on the midmost planet, so that by taking account of his changing position he can carry out triangulations, like a surveyer, and determine the distances of the primary cosmic bodies and their harmonious arrange- ment. Travel, Kepler explains, is broadening. We view the cosmos always by means of a continually changing perspective, but by calculating for our own displacement, we can use that very perspective to determine the cosmic dimensions and harmonious order. And so doing, Kepler says, the soul which is like a point, becoming contemplative, expands as it were into a circle. The sphere is re- served as the image for God himself. I turn now to Descartes. In a letter of 1638 to an acquaintance, Descartes acknowledged Kepler as his "first master in optics." Descartes was not in the habit of admitting intellectual indebtedness; I do not know of another case where he did so. But for Descartes, the Keplerian theory of the eye as an optical instrument was both an inspiration for and vindication of Cartesian physics and philosophy. With Descartes, optics displaced astronomy as the key science for the understanding of the world. The Keplerian theory of the eye as an optical instrument presents itself to Descartes as banishing mystery from the eye. Following Kepler, it becomes possible to construct a model of the eye, complete in just about every detail, down to the image at the rear that one may catch JULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE �on a translucent piece of parchment. Of course, we do not see the inverted, reversed, perspectival images on our own retinas. For that, there would be needed an eye behind the eye, and there is no such eye. As to what happens in the optic nerve and brain, in order that vision may be completed, Kepler leaves this mystery as deep as he found it. The Keplerian theory of image formation means, for Descartes, that the traditional Aristotelian and scholastic theory of visual perception is wrong. Sensation is not the reception of the sensible form of a thing without its matter, because, in the first place, visual sensation is perspec~ tival. At the very beginning of the first book he completed for publication, a book entitled The World, Descartes wrote: It is commonly believed that the ideas we have in our thoughts entirely resemble the objects from which they proceed ... but I observe, on the contrary, several experiences that ought to make us doubt it. One of the experiences Descartes has in mind here is that of looking at pictures: ... you can see that engravings, being made of nothing but a little ink placed here and there on the paper, represent to us forests, towns, men, and even battles and storms, even though, among an infinity of diverse qualities which they make us conceive in these objects, only in shape is there actually any resemblance. And even this resemblance is a very imperfect one, seeing that, on a completely flat surface, they represent to us bodies which are of different heights and distances, and even that following the rules of perspective, circles are often better represented by ovals rather than by other circles, and squares by diamonds rather than by other squares; and so for all other shapes. So that often, in order to be more perfect as images and to represent an object better, they must not resemble it. But Descartes' critique of the traditional account of perception goes deeper. According to Aristotle and the schoolmen, things were very much what they appeared to be. The objects perceived were themselves colored; heat and cold were what in ordinary experience we apprehend them as being; the qualities of objects were the specifications of the things that made each one of them to be what it was. But how can such perception occur? The traditional theory fails to explain how such resemblance or identity is physically achieved. The proponents of this theory cannot show us how sensations "can be formed by these objects, received by the external sense organs, and transmitted by the nerves to the brain." Now if the traditional assumption of resemblance between sensations and their objects is questionable or without warrant, then the traditional attempt to found the sciences by a step-wise advance from sense perception is also questionable or without warrant. In that case, how are the sciences to be founded? THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW At the beginning of his book The World, Descartes proposes to construct a fable of a world, "feigned at pleasure." Matter in this feigned new world, Descartes proposes, should be something of which we cannot even pretend ignorance. This requirement is met by extension, for "the idea of extension is so comprised in all other things which our imagination is able to form, that it is necessary for you to conceive it, if you imagine anything whatsoever.'' Having seized upon this first principle, Descartes proceeds to frame in terms of it a fabulous account of the world and of man. All is to be accounted for in terms of matter, that is, figured extension, shaped portions of space, in motion. Some features of this system can be deduced from the first principle, others must be constructed. The fabulous world that results is scientific in the sense that it involves only what can be clearly conceived; it thus embodies the rigor of mathematics. In this fable of a world, Descartes is able to provide a clear conception of the way sensations are formed by their objects, received by the external sense organs, and transmitted to the brain. First, All the external senses ... serve in a purely passive way, precisely in the manner in which wax receives shape from a seal. We have to think of the external shape of the sentient body as being really altered by the object precisely in the manner in which the shape of the surface of the wax is altered by the seal. This description applies not only to touch but also to sight, in which light, conceived as a pressure transmitted through a. medium, plays the same role as a blind man's stick. Since with our two eyes we apprehend a single thing, with our two ears a single sound, with our two hands a single body, when we are touching one, Descartes concludes that there must be a center in which the incoming stimuli are coordinated; this he identifies with the single organ in the upper brain which he knew to be single and central in position, the pineal gland. The whole process of vision Descartes now describes as follows: If we see some animal approach us, the light reflected from its body depicts two images of it, one in each of our eyes. The two images, by way of the optic nerves, form two others on the interior surface of the brain which faces its cavities. From these, by way of the spirits (or subtle fluids) which fill these cavities, the images then radiate towards the small gland which the spirits encircle, and do so in such fashion that the movement which constitutes each point of one of the images tends towards the same point of the gland as does the movement constituting that point in the other image which represents the same part of this animal; and in this way, the two brain-images form but one on the gland, which acting immediately on the soul, causes it to see the shape of the animal. The Keplerian optics of the eye is thus interpreted as a mechanism for transmitting pressure, and this same 9 �clearly 'and distinctly conceived, provided it fits all the facts, is true. 1 shall not pursue this argument here, my concern being rather with our perception of the visual world. Nor shall I deal further with the detailed mechanisms of perception in Descartes' fabulous physics. Action by pressure is not regarded today either as the mode of action of light, or as that of the impulses in the nervous system. Among neurophysiologists today there is considerable doubt that anything is to be gained by supposing that the nylon ball perspex stalk neural processes copy or are isomorphic with the contents of consciousness, are for example triangular in some way when one sees a triangle. Nevertheless, we still hear from neurophysiologists such statements as the following one by Lashley: All phenomena of behavior and of mind are ultimately describable in the concepts of the mathematical and physical sciences. contact lens The problem about how we are in or related to the world, so insistently posed by the Cartesian theory, here recurs. Descartes' great achievement, it would appear, was to make the world safe for mathematical physics; but this achievement has left us outside, puzzled and questioning ·eye Figure 13 mechanism is imagined as transmitting the patterned pressures onward from the retinas through the nerves to the brain, with final composition of a single image on the pineal gland, or sensus communis or imagination as Des~ cartes calls it. The entire process, up to the final apprehension by the soul of the image on the imagination, is to be considered as consisting simply in the alteration of the spatial disposition of the parts of the body, not less, says Descartes, than the movements of a clock or other auto- as to what we are. Once more, in this final section as in the beginning, I must ask you not to expect me either to do miracles or to explain them away. What I can attempt is to point in directions in which non-Cartesian perspectives open up. term, as Descartes does, sensations. Between our sensa- Let me begin by citing a certain number of results of recent studies of human visual perception. (I) To begin with, it is worth noting that the eye is in constant motion. It has a tremor with a frequency of between 30 and 80 cycles per second, and with an amplitude such as to shift a focused pencil of light from one retinal cell to the adjacent one. There are also wider flicks of up to a third of a degree, coming at irregular intervals of up to five seconds, with slow drifts in between the flicks. The apparatus shown in Figure 13 is attached to a contact lens, and because it moves with the eye, it produces a stabilized retinal image. The effect of this is, first, within a few seconds, distorted vision, and shortly afterward, the complete breakdown of vision, in the sense that the viewer can no longer see anything at all, although a clear tions, on the one hand, and that which provides the occa- image is being focused on his retina. Vision is thus an ac- sions for these sensations, namely the patterned pressures tive process, and fails altogether when it ceases to be so. (2) Next, let me point out that the clues to depth are maton. Readers of Descartes' Discourse on Method and Meditation are familiar with the course of reflection whereby he undertakes to justify, and to lay unshakeable foundations for, this fabulous physics and physiology. According to this physics and physiology, we, that is our Souls, have immediate knowledge only of our ideas, including in this on the pineal gland, there opens an abyss. On one side is a qualityless world of matter in motion; on the other, worldless qualities in a consciousness that is out of the world, is extramundane. Between world and self, Descartes attempts to construct a metaphysical bridge, taking for starting point his certainty that the isolated, extramundane self, even when it doubts everything it can, at least exists as the source of the doubt. He calls it a thinking thing. The central arch of the construction is theological; it finally enables Descartes to conclude that what can be 10 multiple, more, in fact, than can be reviewed in brief compass. There is, to begin with, linear perspective, as in Figure 14. Note also here a size-distance relation, which reminds us how drastically the perceptual system transforms what is presented to it. As the little man walks into depth he appears to increase in size, although the three images in fact take up the same size on the plane surface. This has to do with what is called perceptual constancy, which I shall discuss in a moment. JULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE �Figure 16 There is motion perspective, the differences in apparent relative velocity of different parts of the visual field as one moves one's head. The diagram in Figure 17 is for the more drastic case of an airplane pilot approaching the landing field. Figure 14 Gradients of texture immediately produce in us the sense of continuous surfaces stretching backward (see Figure 15). Such surfaces generally provide the background against which we locate objects. oCcG&:«m / Figure 17 Figure 15 Then there is lighting. Light usually comes from one side, so the surfaces facing in different directions are differently illuminated. In late antiquity, four-tone mosaic floors like the one shown in Figure 16 seem to have been popular, despite the treacherous appearance of being other than flat. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW There are also binocular clues, impossible to illustrate in a single picture. There is the convergence of the two eyes, for example, and the accommodation of the lens in each. By far the most important is binocular disparity, a fact which only came to be recognized after Charles Wheatstone's invention of the stereoscope in the 1830's. The retinal images received by the two eyes are not simply superposable, but are notably different; and this difference by itself can produce the visual perception of depth. (3) Scenes may be ambiguous. In particular, pictures being stationary and flat cannot provide motion perspective or the binocular clues to depth, and since the different three-dimensional shapes that can give the same projection on a plane are unlimited in number, it is evident that two-dimensional shapes can be ambiguous. The surprising thing is that we are so seldom misled or made aware of the ambiguity; the perceptual system quickly adopts the interpretation that satisfies the available clues. Shown, however, in illustration 18 is a figure called the Necker cube, which forces its ambiguity on our attention. No clue is offered as to which is the back face and which the front; both squares are of the same size. By an act of 11 �yet we interpret the former as a black piece of coal in the sunlight, and the latter as a white piece of paper in the shade. The colored light with which the retina is presented is analyzed in perception into a constant surface color belonging to the object, on the one hand, and the illumination to which the object is exposed, on the other, the latter being drastically variable. Besides color constancy, there is shape constancy and size constancy. Size constancy, for instance, means that when an object doubles its distance from us, so that the retinal image of it is halved in size, we perceive it not as shrinking but as retaining its objective dimensions. To experience this, look at your two hands, one held at arms' length and the other at half the distance. They will probably look almost exactly the same size. But if the near hand is brought to overlap the far one, then they will look different in size, in the way the laws of perspective require. Figure 18 concentration on one square or the other, we can cause the perceptual shift from one to the other of the two possible interpretations of the figure as cube; we can even, by putting the mind to it, cause ourselves to see the figure as flat, though the spontaneous interpretation is a threedimensional one. But suppose we gaze at the Necker cube steadily, without any attempt to have one perception or the other: then the perceptual shift occurs spontaneously. It is as if perception were a matter of suggesting and testing hypotheses; of the two most satisfying ones, each is entertained in turn; but since neither is more successful than the other, neither is allowed to stay. Figure 20 Figure 19 The ambiguities of two-dimensional representatives have been used by Escher and others to depict wonderful and impossible places and objects. Figure 19 shows an impossible object. Perception shifts back and forth, making sense of each part of the object, and trying but failing to make sense of the whole as an actual object. (4) Perceptual processes exhibit a characteristic called Perceptual Constancy, and this is another indication that perception is ceaselessly and actively oriented toward the interpretation of impressions in terms of objects. A piece of coal in bright sunlight sends to our eyes maybe 100 times more light than a sheet of typing paper in the shade; 12 (5) Certain well-known distortion illusions turn up ever and again in psychology textbooks. These, too, appear to be explicable in terms of the perceptual system's orientation towards interpreting patterns as objects in a world. In Figure 20 the upper horizontal bar appears longer, though it is of the same length as the lower one. The explanation that now seems likeliest is that the perceptual system is set to measure lengths appropriately to the normal world of three-dimensional objects as seen in linear perspective. The bar that would be more distant is scaled up on size in accordance with constancy scaling. That we do not see the inclined lines as parallel, receding railroad tracks is due to the countermanding of the threedimensional interpretation by textural features of the surface on which the figure appears. The same kind of explanation can be made for the famous arrow illusion, in which two identical lengths appear different because of added fins (see Figure 21). If the two lines with fins here pictured are constructed of wire, painted with luminous paint, and looked at in the dark, the left-hand one appears as an inside, receding corner of JULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE �lures beyond the immediately sensed ones. They have pasts and futures; they have hidden aspects that manifest themselves under special conditions; they change and interact with one another. How is it possible, on the basis of the fleeting clues,-to perceive the objects? Our perceptual system, faced with multiple, fleeting clues, in effect makes a guess, launches into belief. Taking into account its previous beliefs, it hypothesizes that an object of suchand-such a kind is the invariant something of which the fleeting clues are perspectives. In some moments, some few of our perceptual processes may become conscious processes; for the most part, it is only the results that we are aware of. And where are we, and what are we, in relation to this world that our perceptual processes lead us to posit? Is it not our primary experience that we find ourselves in the world, turned toward the world, in direct encounter with an Other that is over against us? Our observing is not neuFigure 21 a rectangular room, the right-hand one as the outside projecting corner of a rectangular block or building, with sharp foreshortening. Even when, because of surface texture, three-dimensional depth is not perceived, it seems that constancy scaling goes to work on the basis of the clues that would normally indicate depth, to produce the illusion. (6) Finally, consider the famous Distorted Room constructed by Adelbert Ames some 25 years ago (Figure 22). The far wall slopes back to the left at an angle of 45°, and the floor also slopes downward to the left, but linear perspective is used to make this oddly shaped room give, from a viewing point in the center of the front wall, the same retinal image as a normal rectangular room. The person in the far left-hand corner looks too small because the image is smaller than would be expected for the apparent distance of that part of the room. Evidently our perceptual system has so accommodated itself to rectangular rooms that we accept it as obvious that it is the objectshere twin sisters-that are of odd sizes, rather than that the room is of an odd shape. The perceptual system has, as it were, made a bet, the wrong one, but then, the experimenter has rigged the odds by choosing such an extremely odd shape for the room. Familiarity with the room gained by touching its walls with a long stick, or a strong emotional relation to the persons seen in the room, will reduce the distorting effect of the room on other objects until it is finally seen for what it is-a distorted room in fact. From all the foregoing, I conclude: Our perceptual system seems to be-behaves as if it were-an instrument acting purposively with a view to identifying, placing, classifying, and judging objects in a world. What the senses initially receive are but the slenderest and most fleeting of clues, varied and varying patterns of energy. Objects, on the other hand, have indefinitely many feaTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Figure 22 tral, from behind centimeters of bullet-proof polaroid. We are beset by what we see; we are affected, caught, seized by what confronts us. Wind, heat waves, rain, and sleet obtrude themselves upon us. Things appear attractive and repulsive. What is presented has inherent distance, depth. The object is apprehended as over there in its suchness and thusness. The perceived object reveals itself insofar as it presents a surface. But while surfaces reveal, they also hide. Beyond what is directly revealed, in any experience, there remains that which is hidden, the substance of things. Depth and distance are not merely visual. We are mobile-indeed, we believe ourselves to be self-moved. We can be purposeful, adopting goals, moving up or down or along paths, going from a Here to a There and from a 13 �well as pushes. But whether we take the Cartesian or the Newtonian or even a more recent quantum mechanical version of the geometrized world, we become puzzled if we try to place ourselves in it; how do we connect with it? Descartes supposed that the soul-the "thinking thing"could act upon the extended world, namely by influenc· ing the direction of motion without changing its quantity, which he believed to be conserved. That supposition was shown to be impossible when Newton and others demonstrated that the conserved quantity is vectorial or directed. So natural science in its advance always appears to aim at an account from which we would be absent, a silent, nonhuman world of deterministic connections. Conscious life could only be explained away, in such an account. There is something odd about the totalization of the Cartesian geometrical view of the world. Long before Descartes, already in the 13th century, Henry of Ghent characterizes those in whom the geometrical imagination dominates over the cognitive faculty as suffering from an ailment: Whatever they think, is a quantity, or is located in quantity as is the case with the point. Therefore such men are melancholy, and become excellent mathematicians but very bad metaphysicians, for they cannot extend their thought beyond location and space which are the foundations of mathematics. This very melancholy is pictured in Durer's famous engraving of 1513 or 1514, the Melencolia !(Figure 23). Here we see a winged, presumably celestial being, staring fixedly, evidently in despair. The scene is lit with an eerie light Figure 23 from the moon, a comet, and a lunar rainbow. Strewn Now to a Then, with changing perspectives. This is our primary mode of being. But our being is then a becoming in relation to an Other, the Other that is the world stretching out in depth before us, in its manifold familiar· ity and strangeness. We seek the unity or unities underlying the varied, perspectival perceivings, the invariant somethings of which we would conceive the world to be made. We are ever potentially learners; each of us, in Kep· ler's metaphor, a point seeking to expand into a circle~ some of us no doubt more ardently than others. Can the circle become a sphere? Kepler, you will recall, denies it. Descartes would push on, geometrizing as he goes. In the geometrized and mechanized world that he imagines, everything that happens, or almost everything, is to be accounted for in terms of displacements, pushes. Later, with Newton and his successors, we get pulls as 14 about in bewildering disorder are the tools of geometrical and architectural construction. She, the celestial being, is afflicted, we surmise, with a sense of spiritual confinement, of insurmountable barriers separating her from a higher realm of thought. Diirer's conception of that highest realm is presented in another engraving which he made at the same time as the Melencolia, and distributed with it as its appropriate counterpart: St. Jerome in his Cell (Figure 24). Here Jerome, comfortably seated in his warm, sunlit cell, which he shares with his contented animals, is absorbed in his theo· logical work. Even the skull looks friendly. Jerome's incorporation into the strictly mathematical projection of our perspectival system, though it reveals his contentment, in no way reveals the secret of it, which may remain for some of us inaccessible. I would acknowledge the perspectivity of human know- JULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE �ing-using the term perspective here in an extended and metaphorical sense. Accordingly, I would not disregard the fact that natural science is formed by human beings. Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature, it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning. Is this a skeptical conclusion? I think not. For all we know, the perspectivity revealed by the fact that we opine, and that opinion is not knowledge, may be the correct perspective. In any case, our perspectival viewing reveals a world into which we, along with others, are launched as essentially equal citizens. We recognize others, equally with ourselves, as potential measures of the truth. The claims of others call us out of our particularity into discourse, into the search for Right Opinion. This is a category unknown to skeptics, a human category revealing both our poverty and our power. For the account of Kepler's Paralipomena I have depended very heavily on S. M. Straker's analysis in his unpublished work, Kepler's Optics: A Study in the Development of Seventeenth-Century Natural Philosophy (Indiana University Ph.D. Dissertation, 1971). Other works to which I am much indebted are: E. Cassirer, "The Concept of Group and the Theory of Perception," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research V, 1944, l-35; Hiram Caton, The Origin of Subjectivity, An Essay on Des· cartes; James]. Gibson, The Perception of the Visual World; E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion; R. L. Gregory, Eye and Brain; William H. Ittelson, The Arne.~ Demonstrations in Perception; Erwin Panofsky, Albrecht DUrer; Erwin Straus, The Primary World of the Senses and Phenomenological Psychology; John White, The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space; and J. S. Wilentz, The Senses of Man. Figure 24 Notes on Figures 1-24. I. Gemma Frisius, De radio astronomico, 312, as reproduced in Stephen Straker, Kepler's Optics: A Study in the Development of SeventeenthCentury Natural Philosophy, Indiana University Ph.D. Dissertation, 1971, 319. 2. Kepler, Ad Vitellionem Paralipomena, Frankfurt, 1604, 338. 3. Straker, Kepler's Optics, 19. 4. Straker, Kepler's Optics, 24. 5. Straker, Kepler's Optics, 23. 6. Straker, Kepler's Optics, 26. 7. British Museum, London. 8. Museo Nazionale, Naples. 9. Musco Nazionale, Naples. 10. Museo Nazionale, Naples. II. DUrer in E. H. Gornbrich, Art and Illusion, New York, 1960, 306. 12. Oiirer, Underweysung der Messung, in Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 251. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 13. Ditch burn Experiment, R. L. Gregory, Eye and Brain, 2d ed., World University Library, New York, 1973, 46. 14. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 280. 15. Gradient of texture, James J. Gibson, The Perception of the Visual World, Boston, 1950, 86. 16. Mosaic floor, Antioch, 2d century A.D., in Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 41. 17. Motion Perspective, Gibson, The Perception of the Visual World, 121. 18. Necker cube (source unknown). 19. Impossible object, Gregory, Eye and Brain, 235. 20. Scaling illusion, Gregory, Eye and Brain, 137. 21. Arrow illusion, Gregory, Eye and Brain, 136. 22. Ames' Distorted Room, Gregory, Eye and Brain, 178. 23. Diirer, Melencolia I, in Panofsky, Albrecht Diirer, 2d ed., Princeton, 1945, 11, 209. 24. DUrer, St. Jerome in his Cell, in Panofsky, Albrecht Diirer, 11, 208. 15 �Affirmative Action and the Rights of Man Fred Baumann To the memory of my late friend, Victor Baras According to its spokesmen, among the present administration's proudest accomplishments is raising the issue of human rights to the fore in its foreign policy. Leaving aside the host of questions about the execution of that policy, the administration is right to be proud. Human rights are universal because they claim to apply to all men as men. Moreover, it is a striking fact of con- temporary politics that this claim to universality is accepted, at least in the abstract, even by the worst tyrants of the day. Human rights are, however, the particular in UNESCO of establishing support for government control of the press, in the name of the right to information. So-called "second and third generation" human rights have been discovered such as the right to equality of income, or even, simply, peace. This redefinition of the content of human rights has not been the exclusive preoccupation of undemocratic, unliberal regimes. The American Bar Association (with initial funding from the Ford Foundation) has now set up a committee on human rights that sees its purpose as spreading knowledge of, and product of our own tradition, part of the inherited custom acceptance for, the "international" standard of human and natural vocabulary of liberal democracies. To raise the standard of human rights is to define debate in terms rights in America. congenial to ourselves, and to do so, for once, in a way to hold the conduct of all nations to their own traditional standards. They also can be, and increasingly are, a vehicle for transforming the principles and self-understanding of the liberal democracies themselves. In their adoption of the concepts of human rights and in the understanding of the content of these concepts, which follows logically from these terms of reference, the liberal democracies differ fundamentally from other kinds of regimes, traditional or modern. For the United States, the seminal documents of our polity, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights to the Constitution, root themselves in concepts of human rights. The famous Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789 is the foundation not only of French but of all continental European liberalism and even social democracy. It is also the titular referent for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is now the text that United Nations debates and resolutions on human rights undertake to gloss. Although human rights that meets no direct opposition. Vigorous efforts, however, are underway in the world to redefine the contents of human rights in order to make them more comfortable for the despotisms that pay them lip service. Even Mrs. Gandhi, who never quite arrived at full-fledged despotism, in a striking formulation, once justified her policy of compulsory sterilization with the assertion of the "human right" of the nation to survive. Third World nations have in recent years been pursuing a policy This essay is based on a paper given at a symposium in memory of Victor Baras in October 1978 at the Telluride House on the Cornell University campus. From 1974 to 1977 Fred Baumann worked for University Centers for Rational Alternatives ami the Committee on Academic Nondiscrimination and Equality where he investigated the effects of affirmative action on the universities. At present he works as a program officer at the Institute for Educational Affairs in New York City. 16 Human rights serve as a means for 1ibera1 democracies JULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE �claim, and are claimed by, all, we are their special familiars. If they are changed fundamentally, then so are we. The redefinition of human rights in America to meet the "international" standard is, however, by no means simply an accommodation to the countermeasures of unliberal nations defending themselves against the painful imposition of liberal standards. In at least one cmcial respect-affirmative action-we have, completely on our own initiative, undertaken to redefine human rights in a radical way. (For present purposes, affirmative action only means preferential treatment on the basis of race, religion, ethnic group, or gender, in selection for places. It does not here mean "quotas" or ogoals" or "underutiliza- tion studies" or "special recruitment efforts," all of which play a role in its ungainly structure). This redefinition of human rights did not come about suddenly, but in timid, gradual steps that long concealed its fundamental character. Consequently, the whole subject of affirmative action, not least its name, chokes in euphemism, jargon, and exoteric language. Some of this evasive language arose through misunderstanding and careless thought. Some of it, I believe, was purposefully devised to mislead. To define affirmative action as preferential treatment is unlikely to shock anymore. But it is worth remembering that just five years ago it would have been highly controversial. Five years ago, the supporters of affirmative action (especially those in government), denied that affirmative action involved preference. Either they got angry at those who said it did, or just pitied their naivete. The case of Alan Bakke, decided in 1978, marked a turning point in the argument. A white, Bakke sued the University of California Medical School at Davis, claiming racial discrimination. The case involved the clearest sort of preferential treatment, since black applicants were treated separately as a group and judged by lower standards than white applicants. Despite the previously general denial that affirmative action involved preference, most defenders of affirmative action took the line that a decision favorable to Bakke would mean the end of affirmative action, including those forms where preference was not, or less clearly, involved. As a result of the discussion surrounding the Bakke case, the fiction that affirmative action did not actually involve preference was wholly exposed and consequently, for the most part, quietly dropped. In the Bakke case, and the Weber case that followed it in the next year, the Supreme Court was faced with a fundamental constitutional question, which, given the Constitution and the Bill of Rights' dependence on assumptions about human rights, was also a fundamental question of human rights: can preferential treatment by skin color be brought in harmony with the right to equal treatment by the laws? The specific constitutional arguments of due process and equal treatment have been rehearsed in hundreds of amicus briefs and scores of articles. To cast some light on the more general perspective of human rights, let THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW us take the admittedly artificial step of consulting a nonAmerican document, The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, which is, again, the grandfather of the present "international" standard of human rights. Article I of the Declaration says that "men are born and remain free and equal in rights." Article 2 holds that "the aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man." These rights, it says, are liberty, property, security, and resistance to op~ pression. Since everyone's rights must be protected, they must be protected to the same degree. Consequently law, we learn from Article 6, "must be the same for all whether it protects or punishes. All citizens being equal in its eyes, are equally eligible to all public dignities, places, and employments, according to their capacities, and without other distinction than that of their virtues and their talents." 1 Equality before the law remains the core of the traditional democratic position on the rights of citizens. It was the fundamental argument of the American civil rights movement, from Frederick Douglass to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (and in many cases thereafter as well). The principle of equality before the law not only gave the movement an unshakeable confidence in the justice of its cause, it also paralyzed the will and conscience of its opponents, themselves liberal democrats with a "But." Equality before the law seems to rule out all forms of race, sex, ethnic, or religious preference in selection, no matter the excuse. And the principle of equality before the law remains, for principled liberal opponents of affirmative action, an arsenal of telling theoretical and practical arguments in polemic. These arguments tell not because they are self-evidently true. Many nations and teachings would find artificial and even bizarre the intellectual context from which they emerge. These arguments tell because they appear self-evidently true, because most of the proponents of preference agree, or think they agree, with them in principle. Obviously, in depending on theories of natural right, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, like the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, depends on assumptions one need not share. Perhaps there are no such things as "natural and imprescriptible rights." Consequently, perhaps civil society has some other character than a mechanism designed by men to assure them of the maximum feasible exercise of these natural rights. Perhaps the state is merely the formal expression of the particular state of the class stmggle reached at present, or perhaps it is the formal expression of a nation's eternal racial character. If so, we know that the "bourgeois rights" defined by the two Declarations will find themselves swiftly relativized and superceded by the supreme right of class or race, as represented customarily by the even more supreme right of the party leadership. That is, if the end of the class struggle requires class dictatorship, and within that class, dictatorship by the party, or if the end of Aryan dominance requires absolute allegiance to the will of the 17 �Leader, then equality before the law will yield. And to the extent that it continues to exist, it will be justified as furthering the class struggle or the race's strength, not as expressing those natural and imprescriptible rights of the indjvidual that the regime teaches are a naive and malignant myth. The Civil War may be said to have settled in principle that the words of the Declaration of Independence about the creation in equality of all men, meant what they said. America was, its history determined, to be the first nation founded and created by agreement on an abstract principle, a principle that America's existence made increasingly less abstract: states exist to allow men to fulfill their natures, and more specifically to exercise their natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The outcome of the Civil War settled the issue in principle; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made that principle a practical reality. With its passage, America became the nation where citizenship transcended nationality most purely. While ties of family, language, common ancestry, and culture remained strong (if not quite so strong as in other multi-national countries such as, for instance, Canada), still, from 1964 on, America asked everyone to put aside the advantages of group membership and, in the public realm, to take their chances on fair treatment from the great and anonymous society. The demand of equal opportunity involves a great gamble for society because it involves a great gamble for each of its citizens. The demand that people generally live up to their legal and moral responsibilities only becomes feasible if there is strong faith in the reality of equal oppor· !unity. The risks inherent in equal opportunity inspire anxiety precisely about its reality. (For along with a power· ful interest in equality, there goes at least as powerful an interest to cheat). Viewed from this perspective, it is hardly paradoxical that in the fifteen years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act there has been a revival in affirmative action of group consciousness and group competition. Superficially, it might seem that the American project was simply too ambitious, too frightening, and that affirmative action therefore merely represents a retreat to easier, less just days. The renewed search for legally based group ad van· !age, however, emerged from the thinking of those who imagined themselves most wholly devoted to the principle of equality of opportunity. In name and purpose, affirmative action was not meant to reaffirm group membership in defiance of the attempt to neutralize it in the public realm. It was understood originally as something vague but extra-a helpful shove to a too-timid liberalism. One of the chief formulators of early affirmative action policies, when he was employed by the Labor Department in the Nixon administration, Lawrence Silberman, described nine years later the anxious desire he had originally shared with his colleagues to find some way to make concrete the abstract equality of opportunity guaranteed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and at 18 the same time •to avoid the practices of racial preference the Act had rightly prohibited. Silberman and his colleagues had developed "goals" which were meant to be fundamentally different from discriminatory "quotas." These goals, their inventors had asserted, did not legislate preference, but only encouraged attentiveness to the existence of well-qualified minority members. Nine years later, Silberman concluded, ''goals" were indistinguishable from "quotas." He and his colleagues had failed. 2 Eventually, almost all had to admit that affirmative action, understood as "goals", meant at least some kind of preference, if not exactly "quotas." One could not draw up most favored ethnoi lists, and urge their selection, without making ethnicity a criterion of selection. However genteelly one did it, one lent the authority of the law to discrimination based on ancestry or gender. Interestingly, only a few, like Silberman, drew back in remorse. Most pressed on, seeking to justify preference if it worked in a direction opposite to older forms of preference. Mr. Justice Blackmun, in his dissent in Bakke, spoke candidly, if with disregard for legal principle shocking in a Justice of the Supreme Court: I yield to no one in my earnest hope that the time will come when an 'affirmative action' program is unnecessary and is, in truth, only a relic of the past. ... At some time, however, beyond any period of what some would claim is only transitional inequality, the United States must and will reach a stage of maturity where action along this line is no longer necessary. Then persons will be regarded as persons, and discrimination of the type we address today will be an ugly feature of history that is instructive but that is behind us. 3 It is not surprising that there was something tentative and uneasy in the formulations of those who came to praise affirmative action as a distasteful but medicinal poison. Not all of Blackmun's utopian posturing and nostalgia for the future could wholly blind him and those who shared his views to the injustice they were doing, according to their own principles, in the present. As a result, the task of justifying affirmative action reached a new stage. The embarrassment of pursuing equal opportunity by discriminatory means suggested the argument that the discriminatory results of these discriminatory means were only apparently discriminatory. Begun without excessive deliberation and meant to be something "extra," affirmative action now began to place a heavy burden on the dialectical skills of its advocates. It was a burden they would in turn pass on to the liberal tradition out of which they came. How could someone who is Taking Rights Seriously, (to cite the title of Ronald Dworkin's popular book), take rights seriously and at the same time show that race and sex could legitimately be added to "virtue and talent" as criteria for admission to "public dignities, places, and employments?" A number of arguments were adopted that merely begged the question. A typical example was the notion that by establishing a minimum for "qualificaJULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE �tion," (so that above that minimum no gradations of merit could apply), one could thereby avoid the moral issue arising out of race or gender preference, since officially one would not be allowed to know that the better candidate had been denied the position. A number of other arguments were raised that, however various, in the end all rely on the claim of utility. For instance, it was alleged that the state had a compelling interest in overcoming the de facto separation of the races, or the underrepresentation of women; or that minority members needed role models from their own groups in places of respect and authority; or that there is urgent need for professional services in the inner city that only minority professionals can reasonably be expected to supply. These arguments coexist fairly comfortably with Blackmun's hope in the merely transitory character of affirmative action, but rely on the claim of utility, not just on hope. Arguments of utility must be addressed at two levels. First, they must be correct on their own terms. Not only must the advocated policy actually produce the intended results, but those results must actually be beneficial, given the general standard of social utility the advocate adopts. But second, every regime, by its fundamental laws and traditions, erects a standard of what is right and seemly. If the means suggested to achieve the social utility the advo· cate suggests violate that standard, then it must be shown that this violation is less important than the good that is being done. This can of course be done in two ways: first, by emphasizing the comparative urgency and benefit of the advocated policy; second, by denigrating the worth of the regime's inherent standards of what is right and seemly. A strong case has been made that the arguments for the utility of affirmative action do not even meet the first set of tests. Some of the most powerful and striking counterarguments have been made by scholars like Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams who themselves happen to be black. In a paper presented to the United States Civil Rights Commission and later published in a revised form in The Public Interest, Professor Sowell demonstrated that in universities-chief among the targets of affirmative action enforcement in the early nineteen-seventies-great advances towards equality, in terms of salary and repre· sentation, occurred among faculty between the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the advent of affirmative action around 1971, whereupon, for whatever reason, they ceased. 4 The evidence of these writers suggests that the factual premise of affirmative action, that equality of representation and living standard could not come about given mere legal equality of opportunity, may not have been correct. Critics (and recently, even advocates) of affirmative action point out that in many areas the chief beneficiaries of affirmative action have not been the group whose plight inspired affirmative action and seemed to justify it-the blacks-but women, in particular middle class women. For critics like Professor Sowell, the price in THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW cynicism, revived racial hostility, and apparent confirma- tion of paternalist racial stereotypes typified by the thought that blacks cannot make it on their own and must be given something, is far too much to pay for the few marginal rewards that affirmative action offers its "beneficiaries." I share the critics' views on this point. Given the fact that affirmative action, by moving beyond the abstract standard of the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act, involves an ever more active governmental interven- tion in, and interpretation of, concrete equality of opportunity, and given the fact that the groups that are to be the beneficiaries of affirmative action are still, as groups, relatively weak in American politics, one would think that the long and even middle term dangers of preference would outweigh its short term charms to those primarily concerned with the interests of those groups. For what can be given by an act of policy by the strong to the weak can also be taken away. And if no generally accepted moral or constitutional principle remains to prevent it, even more than was given can also be taken away. Let us grant, for argument's sake, however, that affirmative action really does create new benefits for its beneficiaries. Does it meet the second test of not violating the fundamental principles of the American regime? At first sight, given the identification of the American regime with principles of the Rights of Man, it would seem to do so. Article I of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen says that "social distinctions can only be based on public utility." 5 But in fact, we must first ask what the standard of a human rights regime is for judging utility. One could imagine a regime, for example, that sought by its laws and traditions to encourage a warlike character in its citizens. Such a state might find that public utility coincided with the constant repression of a servile, helot class or race. That regime would not find public utility represented by affirmative action for the helot class. The betterment of previously oppressed and victimized groups seems self-evidently to promote public utility in the United States. Therefore, affirmative action would seem not to conflict with our fundamental principles. But while our sense of the self-evident justice and practical benefits of the claimed results of affirmative action clearly does betoken affirmative action's origins in a characteris- tically liberal, characteristically American outlook, it does not settle the question whether the means whereby those results are achieved do not conflict with our most fundamental principles. When the Declaration of Independence speaks of natural and inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or when Article 2 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man says that the aim of all political associations is to preserve the natural and imprescriptible rights of man, they state those fundamental principles. They are the preservation of rights, and among them, of course, the right to equal treatment by the laws. Unless it can be shown that the race and gender preference involved in affirmative action does not violate these 19 �fundamental natural rights, then, no matter how attractive the benefits of equality and harmony it promises, it stands in conflict with the most basic principles of the regime. The claims of utility, understood as material advancement and greater social equality, cannot by themselves carry the day. Their advocates must show either 1) that the necessary means do not, despite appearances to the contrary, violate the right to equal treatment by the law; or 2) that the violation is outweighted by the benefits; or 3) that the violation is itself a good thing, or at least a matter of indifference. Let us take the easiest argument first. If one admits, like justice Blackmun, both that the natural rights standard is a good and important one and that affirmative action does violate it, how good must affirmative action be to justify the violation? The words "natural and inalienable" and "natural and imprescriptible" of the two Declarations suggest the obvious answer: there is no immediate good that justifies the alienation from citizens of inalienable rights. Or, at best, there is only one. If the regime that is the living embodiment of those rights is mortally threatened and can be preserved as the preserver of those rights only by a unique violation of them, then perhaps such a violation would be justified. Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War could perhaps be justified as violating the Constitution in order to save it. Clearly, no such case can be made for racial quotas. But may it not be the case that rights, while fine and socially useful things, are not really "natural and imprescriptible," and that, therefore, a much weaker standard of measurement may be adopted for affirmative action? Here we must recall the theoretical origins of rights. Only then will it become clearer why the right of equality before the law is peculiarly important to liberal regimes, in contrast to the traditional states of the ancien regime which found neither natural rights nor equality before the law to be self-evident or even very sensible. Living amid the rich intellectual complexity of traditional states, where religious, feudal, and national strands of argument and allegiance intermingled, the great theorists of modern natural rights, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, brought a remarkable abstractness of perspective to the subject. They looked beyond the welter of passionate and conflicting allegiances of their times to a natural state where men were and states were not. These apolitical, natural men are dominated by their most fundamental desires. To these desires correspond their natural rights. The right to life is for Hobbes and Locke natural and imprescriptible because, as a rule, the desire to survive is the strongest and most basic desire. But if man wants life, then consequently he must want the means to assure himself of survival. Therefore, liberty, the liberty to assure oneself of the means to live, is also a natural right. But while these natural rights are limited by no governing state in nature, their actual fulfillment is severely limited by nature itself. These desirous men, therefore, come together to construct civil society, as a mechanism that is to 20 assure each of them much of what they want in and by nature. The right to equal treatment and equal opportunity is thus derived from the natural liberty to provide for oneself. It assures men they have not been singled out for special deprivation in exchanging their natural rights for their political, civil equivalents. If the right to equal treatment, although derivative, is grounded in natural and inalienable rights, and is in fact the chief guarantor of the acceptability of a society's founding principles and of its claim to be just, then it is plain that a law that violates equality before the law does enormous damage to that society's legitimacy. If in contrast the rights that citizens enjoy are not correspondent to natural and inalienable rights that express the most fundamental desires of men as men, then civil rights themselves lose all compulsory power on us and either have to be allowed to decay or have to be refounded on a new basis that either reinterprets nature or abandons it altogether. If the right to equal treatment under law is not grounded in natural and inalienable rights, the very ends that affirmative action seeks to achieve as a matter of selfevident public utility, could and would be called into question. For, as argued above, those ends depend upon a standard for utility that is part and parcel of the natural rights tradition. At the heart of the claim of utility is a failure to take itself seriously enough. This is evident when affirmative action is defended as an urgently needed corrective for a basically racist society. Whoever argues this, and many do, simply cannot really mean what he says. For in order to mean it, he must actually believe that the consent for equal treatment for minorities like blacks is so solid that it will not be imperilled even by laws that mandate preferential treatment for those minorities, and thus arouse resent- ment from the others. If he genuinely feared, as I do, that the consent to across-the-board equal treatment (much less affirmative action) is by its very nature fragile, he could hardly be oblivious to the possible consequences of laws that violate equal treatment by the law in the name of equality of opportunity, and thus inevitably damage the very name of civil rights and equality of opportunity. His actions bespeak a blind confidence in the tractability of the majority before laws that disadvantage them; his words accuse them of the very opposite, of racism. In view of the weakness and self-contradiction of the simple appeal to utility, it is not surprising that the case for affirmative action has sought to show that the preference in which it engages is actually only apparent, and that it can be reconciled with the right to equal treatment by the law. A simple version of the reconciliation begins by noting that the law can be the same for all only metaphorically. An agricultural law affects farmers and non-farmers differently, and affects small farmers differently from large. By analogy, could not apparent differences of treatment by race still perhaps not violate equality? Might not racial preference be in accord with equality of treatment under law? JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE �There is a vital difference between laws whose results apply differently to farmers and consumers, and laws that apply differently to races or genders. Professions and oc· cupations, as the words suggest, are chosen; race and sex are unchosen. When we recall the Declaration's familiar description of liberty as the power to do anything that does not injure others, so that "accordingly the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those that secure to the other members of society the enjoyment of these same rights," 6 the difference between the two cases becomes clearer. A law that regulates farmers excludes no one, at the outset, legally, from birth, from trying to be a farmer. By contrast, a law that regulates selection to schools by race fundamentally limits an individual's opportunities legally and from the outset. It creates places for which it is impossible for some to compete. That is, it violates the natural right to pursue happiness. For the right to pursue happiness must be just that, the right to pursue. It cannot be the right to attain, for the right of one to attain must be the denial to another of the right to pursue. Where an agricultural law establishes rules for a competition that the law prevents none from entering, a law entailing racial preference establishes rules that prevent some from competing and thus from exercising their natural right to pursue, to act. Once men are conceived as active, energetic beings, who accept the necessary limits of civil society in order to pursue their activities more securely, and once, therefore, rights are conceived as recognition of their inevitably active, desirous nature, it becomes very difficult to mount a satisfactory challenge to accomplishments, virtues and talents as the only standards for selection. For it will appear a fundamental injustice to check some and not others in the pursuit of their activities, unless they thereby are preventing others from acting. (We must keep in mind here that acting means competing for a place, not enjoying it). Because of the impossibility, within the framework of our inherited thinking about natural rights, of arguing for selection on the basis of race and gender instead of ability In reply, Dworkin separates equality of treatment into two parts: Hequal treatment" and "treatment as an equal." 8 Kurland and Bickel think DeFunis deserved "equal treatment." Actually, he only deserved "treatment as an equal," since "treatment as an equal" turns out to be our deepest natural right. What then are "equal treatment" and "treatment as an equal?" Their names are similar, but they are sharply opposed in content. Equal treatment means just that, equal treatment. Treatment as an equal, however, means "the right to be treated with the same concern and respect as anyone else." This right does not extend to not being excluded on grounds of race. Dworkin's immediate explanation sounds familiar. In an article in The New York Review of Books, "Why Bakke Has No Case," he denies that the use of the racial standard is in principle different from the standard of intelligence, or, in the case of a basketball player, skill.'' None are chosen qualities and whoever is excluded by their criteria may not be being excluded by prejudice "but because of a rational calculation about the socially most beneficial use of limited resources for racial classification."10 Only if racial classification expresses contempt for the excluded group as a group is it illicit. Here Dworkin seems merely to suggest another version of the utilitarian argument we have already ruled out. We are once again before the question of the standard of utility. If, on one view of the social good, it is permissible to discriminate in favor of blacks, may not another view of the social good make it possible to discriminate against them? How would one choose between these conflicting views of the social good? Neither would appear to be rooted in the natural and inalienable rights of man. Aware that utilitarian arguments could be turned against him, Dworkin seeks to ground his view of the innocence of "reverse discrimination" on something stronger than util- ity, and concedes by the way too that without this grounding the criterion of contempt also falters. At this point the right to treatment as an equal, to equal respect and con- and talent, recently some have striven to reinterpret cern, comes into its own. For Dworkin has discerned in natural rights doctrine radically to allow the use of racial criteria in selection. In Taking Rights Seriously, Ronald Dworkin devotes a chapter to the case of Marco DeFunis, the forerunner of Bakke. Dworkin desires to refute the traditional liberal position, argued in the DeFunis case in the classic brief amicus curiae by the late Alexander Bickel of Yale and his colleague from the University of Chicago, Philip Kurland, on behalf of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith.' Bickel and Kurland argue that discrimination against a white because he is white is legally indistinguishable from discrimination against a black because he is black. DeFunis, who was excluded from consideration for a number of admissions places in the University of Washington Law School, was therefore denied the equal treatment by the law as much as if a black had been denied consideration for some places because he was black. john Rawls and adopted from him the "deep theory" that the fundamental natural human right is equality, 11 in the sense of a right to equal "concern and respect in the design and administration of the political institutions that THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW govern" men. For Dworkin, equality is not, as in the Dec- laration of the Rights of Man, a derivative because postcontractual right, a civic right designed to guarantee the contract and justly to distribute the legal capacity to enjoy individual natural rights. In its new meaning it has become the most fundamental, primary, and natural right of all. Consequently, social policies that bring about greater equality, though they may seem to violate the traditional meaning of equal treatment, in fact exemplify its deeper, its natural, content. 12 "Benign" or "reverse" discrimination, which promotes "treatment as an equal" in its result and exemplifies it in its action, can therefore justify itself in terms of this deeper content. Those who would dis- 21 �cnmmate against a disadvantaged minority like blacks may well raise utilitarian arguments in favor of their policies. They cannot, however, support them with the ideal argument of furthering equality. Reverse discrimination, in contrast, rests on the firm foundation of egalitarian natural right. In his review of Taking Rights Seriously,Il Thomas Pangle strikes at the root of Dworkin's project when he notes the absurdity of Dworkin's claim to have discovered "natural" rights "through a reflective process that never steps beyond the conventional horizon of contemporary culture," since that amounts to an unexamined assump- tion that those particular conventions of our culture faithfully represent nature from which all conventions spring. Pangle is right in questioning what is natural, i.e. true to nature, about Dworkin's theory of rights. In Dworkin's own view "the assumption of natural rights is not a metaphysically ambitious one .... " It requires no more than the hypothesis that "the best political program, within the sense of that model, is one that takes protection of certain individual choices as fundamental. ... " 14 But to demonstrate why any individual choices are fundamental and, beyond that, why particular choices should be looked on as fundamental, requires enormous !!metaphysical ambition" if it is to end in something more than a scheme of the author's wishes. Moreover, one may wonder about the implications of those wishes, since Pangle also rightly suggests that Dworkin's defense of reverse discrimination could equally be used to justify a compulsory program of levelling eugenics, since both policies would seem to be justified by the deep principle of promoting equality. It seems to me that, in reinterpreting the natural rights tradition to make the conflict between race preference and natural rights seem to be only seeming, Dworkin has fundamentally departed from that tradition in two ways, one regarding form, the other content. The natural rights Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau talked about had to do with the most fundamental drives of men. Because it was folly to oppose these drives, politics had to accommodate themselves to natural rights. Despite all the problems Hobbes faced in dealing with obligation, he still thought that the Leviathan was the best possible political arrangement for passionate, unruly, fearful men who, above all, desired to live and stay alive. Rousseau insisted on the natural right of liberty and its recognition by states, because he denied that man can possibly consent to slavery since thereby he yields control over his very existence to others. Right or wrong, the natural rights teachings of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau have power as an account of the world because they rest on assertions about what men are really like and what they really want. Does Dworkin mean, therefore, when he speaks of a fundamental natural right to equal respect and concern, that, if there is one thing to know about human beings, if there is one irresistible force that drives them, it is their desire to be treated with the same concern and respect as everyone else? Of course not. Yet what then does he 22 mean by calling the wish to be treated with equal respect and concern a "natural" right? Dworkin defines a right as an interest that men are entitled to protect if they wish. Rights are "not the product of any legislation, or convention or hypothetical contract,"15 and their status as "natural" comes from an assumption the philosopher makes in order to unite and explain "our political convictions." 16 It is just ''one basic programmatic decision." As far as I can tell, Dworkin thinks that a natural right is an opinion, found on examination to coincide with our other political opinions, that a claim to protect a certain interest is simply valid and may not be relativized. It would seem then that Dworkin happens to entertain the opinion of the unquestionable validity of equality. A Carl Schmitt, however, might, with equal attention to his own political convictions, assert as a unifying and explicating assumption, the unquestionable validity of inequality. In the guise of natural right, Dworkin has reintroduced the very kind of ungrounded claim, based on political opinion, that natural rights thought had tried in the first place to evict in favor of an account of what men are really like. Hobbes contended, in his polemic on "Darkness from Vain Philosophy" that the Grecian schools were unprofitable because of just such ungrounded claims: The natural philosophy of those schools was rather a dream than science and set forth in senseless and insignificant language . ... Their moral philosophy is but a description of their own passions. For the rule of manners, without civil govern· ment, is the law of nature; and in it, the law civil that determines what is honest and dishonest, what is just and unjust, and generally what is good and evil. Whereas they make the rules of goad and bad by their own liking and disliking; by which means, in so great diversity of taste, there is nothing generally agreed on, but everyone does, as far as he dares, whatsoever seems good in his own eyes, to the subversion of commonwealth.17 There is no teaching of right that does not at least imply an understanding of what men are really like. Let me assume that Dworkin is right in asserting that our most fundamental right is obtaining "equal concern and respect in the design and administration of the political institutions that govern" us. What does the assumption of a right to "equal concern and respect" tell us about ourselves and about the "political convictions" that lead us to make that assumption? We know something of Hobbes's and Locke's natural men. Struggling in labor or in battle with their surroundings, taught by hard experience to set voluntary limits on their actions and on their capacities to compel others and nature to their individual ends, they come cautiously, mistrustfully, to civil society, because the exercise of their faculties is life itself to them. Liberty, as much as is compatible with the preservation of life, is understood as natural, irrepressible, and primary. Equality, in contrast, lives in the service of liberty because equality guarantees JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE �that liberty to pursue one's happiness and enjoy one's rights will be preserved. What kind of men reverse the order and place equality before liberty? In contrast to the rights of Hobbes and Locke, which have to do with what men do or want to do, with living, getting, pursuing, the fundamental right to equality, in Dworkin's formulation, is strikingly passive. In contrast to Hobbes and Locke, and especially Rousseau, for whom natural man existed without government, in Dworkin's quasi~state of nature, government already exists since there men enjoy respect and consideration from government and its institutions. What this government does, we know: it administers. But what do Dworkin's natural men do? Like their cousins, Rawls's unpersoned wraiths, who can only be trusted to choose for themselves when they do not know who they are, they seem curiously insubstantiaL These men do not seem to want to do anything in particular, except possibly to make sure their neighbors are getting no more or less consideration than they. Who are these good children, these model citizens? After the worker's revolt in East Berlin in 1953 had been crushed, Bertolt Brecht, who had returned there from corrupt and capitalist America to live as a free man, made a famous quip. Since the people had lost the confidence of their government, he remarked, the government should dissolve the people and select a new one. Dworkin's men, it seems to me, are just the people that government would have selected. They are pure political subjects, asking for no more than to be properly arranged, ordered, and regulated. They are the pipedream of the social engineer and the tyrant's delight, bloodless, identical, undemanding, distinguished only serially, in the most administratively convenient way. Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after. And the poetry he invented was easy to understand. Procrustes, too, was like the tyrant Auden describes: devoted to the aesthetic ideal of symmetry. And here are the men of their dreams. If I am interpreting Dworkin's implicit anthropology correctly, we have learned something about "our political convictions." Equality of opportunity-Dworkin's "equal treatment" and what the Declaration means by the stan· dard of virtues and talents in selection-is the concept of equality from the viewpoint of the citizen, the active, living individuaL Equality of respect and considerationDworkin's "equality of treatment" and what others have called the equality of result-is the concept of equality from the viewpoint of the ruler. From the citizen's viewpoint, politics fundamentally means deliberating, per· suading, and voting. From the viewpoint of the ruler, which Dworkin shares, politics fundamentally means administering, ordering, and manipulating. From that perspective, mere equality of opportunity is too messy, for it lets the chips fall where they may. Government is called THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW upon to arrange the chips symmetrically, in the most aesthetically pleasing way. It would be a mistake to think that the exercises of theorists like Dworkin or Rawls have no correspondence to developments in the political world. The gulf between ruler and ruled, governor and citizen, is becoming wider on this issue, precisely along Dworkinian lines. Affirmative action is a deeply unpopular policy, at least according to public opinion polls. According to one Gallup poll, eighty-three percent of all Americans object to preferential treatment. Strikingly, a majority of the very group that are the bene· ficiaries of affirmative action agree with their fellow citizens.18 At the same time, there is an unmistakeable and unmistakeably growing tone of hostility towards political democracy among officials responsible for developing and administering affirmative action. It is as though we were coming to the final alternative sketched above. If the violation of natural rights principles cannot successfully be justified by the benefits that violation brings, and if the at· tempt to explain away the conflict also fails, (or rather succeeds only by radically transforming and denaturing the natural rights tradition which it seeks to reconcile to racial preference), then only the third alternative remains, which is to denigrate or dismiss the tradition itself. A straw in the wind blew by when Dr. Mary Berry, then Undersecretary for Education at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, gave a speech upon her return from a trip to Communist China in 1977. (The Department of course is deeply involved in supervising affirmative action programs). In her remarks, Dr. Berry expressed enthusiasm about almost every aspect of Chinese life, including the practice of employing grade school children at productive manufacturing. She also praised the re· gime's frank and rational administration of its system of ideological and class discrimination in education, which excludes the children of former "bourgeois" in favor of the children of "untainted" class elements. The most charitable, and probably correct, interpretation of her en· thusiasm is, I believe, that she came to admire in totalitar· ian China the social engineer's freedom to get on with the work, unhampered by "near-hysteria and confusion," that is, by public opinion, 19 which has hampered those who must implement affirmative action policies in the United States today. In sum, the attempt to fashion a theoretical defense, within the liberal tradition of natural rights, for affirmative action, which was viewed as only a minor refinement on traditional human rights liberalism, has led, step by step, from the refinement of liberalism to its abandon· ment, to the abandonment of everything but the mere name of natural rights, and is now apparently leading to the eventual abandonment, first of liberty and then even of politics itself, in favor of administration. There is something deeply disturbing in observing the gradual awakening into self-knowledge and self-confidence of this anti-political politics. The rejection of the liberal human rights tradition may 23 �seem to be a matter of merely academic interest to those who are not liberals. But liberalism has a special importance for Americans. I spoke of the peculiar abstractness of Locke and Hobbes as they articulated the state of nature. It is an abstractness that has been criticized since Rousseau. Undoubtedly there is something fictional, (more fictional perhaps even than the historical status of the state of nature), about the liberal idea, stated in Hobbes and Locke, of what men are by nature and how they com·e, without race, culture, or prior history to create in equal partnership a free and civil society. But if it is a fiction, it is one of very special significance to us, for it tells our story, and has thus, astonishingly, ceased to be, in crucial ways, a fiction. America is the liberal state par excellence. Precisely through our historical struggle with the question of race, we came close to vindicating our claim to be a state based on the rights of man as man, and not on the history of a particular people. Of course that does not mean that we do not form a people, but rather that, paradoxically, our peoplehood is grounded on liberal ideals, embodied in the Declaration of Independence, and thus on the denial of the primacy of peoplehood. Our history, as Tocqueville knew before Louis Hartz, is the history of liberalism, and our greatest historical test has been living up to liberalism in the hardest case. Unlike the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, which in some sense is still a par- makes it only the more, not the less astonishing. For it is ultimately only by recognizing the fundamental precariousness of our situation, by recognizing how fragile must be the consent to transcend family, race, and heritage, that that precariousness can be prevented from forcing itself on our attention by the breakdown of that consent. Affirmative action sprang from a contemporary liberalism confident enough of its foundations to forget them and even radically to undermine them for the sake of a temporary and minor structural improvement. By now affirmative action has revealed itself as straightforward race arid sex preference and thus a fundamental threat to liberal principles of the rights of man as man. Paradoxically, it is because our paradox, our enduring paradox, no longer seems a paradox, because the transformation of the liberal idea into a liberal people, a liberal nation, has been so successful, that that transformation now threatens to be reversed, as we fall apart into the ancient, pre-American and pre-modern quarrels of sect and race for political dominance and possession of the power to promote our own and harm others. A few years before affirmative action began to gestate in the Nixon administration's Department of Labor, I heard the president of Cornell University give his annual Com· mencement address. As I recall the speech, he sketched out for us his view of the structure of politics. I remember he told us there were always three groups: the majority, the tisan document in France, all Americans can take pride in minority, and the managers. He was a manager, he said. the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Assimilation into the American people is relatively easy, not because there is no such thing as an American people, This memory, with all its unhappy resonances and prefig- but because liberalism's willful ignorance of men's origins, their family, nation, and religion, has allowed assimilation to mean essentially no more (and no less) thai) becoming a citizen, one with rights who believes in rights along with the citizen's responsibilities they imply. This willful ignorance, which justice Harlan called the colorblindness of the Constitution, lies at the heart of America's peoplehood, its nationality. At one point, in his discussion of reverse discrimination, Dworkin astutely observes that the phrase I just cited-the colorblindness of the Constitution-means "just the opposite of what it says: it means that the Constitution is so sensitive to color that it makes any institutional racial classification invalid as a matter of law."20 Here Professor Dworkin is perfectly right, and he thereby draws attention to the extraordinary daring involved in trying to create and preserve a country where one is limited only by one's own capacities in what one attains, and not by acci- dent of birth. His remark also illuminates the necessity of the severity of those restrictions, especially equality before the law, that alone can make such a rash undertaking feasible. A liberal people, based on the rights of man as man, is a paradox, because it makes particularity out of universality (not, as with countless historical peoples, universality out of particularity). That our paradox is a paradox of two centuries more or less successful duration, 24 urations, both particular and general, may serve as a pro- phetic emblem for the America in which affirmative action will have taken full hold. Citizenship will have been even further devalued; instead only coalitions or racial, ethnic, religious, gender, and social-condition groups (like the handicapped) will matter. For they will contend, not as now, for marginal advantage within a framework still generally guaranteeing equal treatment by the laws, but precisely for the political control of that framework. This will naturally be a desperate struggle, because failure could mean loss of both liberty and equality, even subjection and deprivation. Meanwhile, serenely arbitrating the grim battle, much like Botticelli's Venus regulating the dance-battle of the Graces in the Primavera, will be the Managers. For them, that struggle will be an administrative, or rather, more fundamentally, an aesthetic problem, a matter of arrangement and manipulation. For they will easily be able to give all they consider is really being asked of them, they will give "equal concern and respect" to each group, each force, precisely for what it is, a force, a part of the Big Picture. 1. Constitutions and Other Select Documents Illustrative of the History of France, 1787-1907, ed. Frank M. Anderson, New York, 1908, 59-60. 2. Lawrence Silberman, "The Road to Racial Quota·s," The Wall Street Journal, August 11, 1977, 14. ''I now realize that the distinction between goals and timetables on the one hand and the unconstitutional quotas on the other, was not valid. Our use of numerical standards in pursuit of JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE �equal opportunity has led ineluctably to the very quotas, guaranteeing equal results, that we initially wished to avoid." 3. Regents of the University of California, Petitioner, v. Allan Bakke, Opinion of Justice Blackmun, June 28, 1978, 1-2. 4. Thomas Sowell," 'Affirmative Action' Reconsidered," The Public Interest, Winter 1976, 47-65. See especially 54, 57, and 63-64. 5. Constitutions, 59. 6. Constitutions, 59. 7. Alexander M. Bickel and Philip B. Kurland, Brief of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith Amicus Curiae, In the Supreme Court of the United States, October Term, 1973, #73-235, 19. "The Court is, nevertheless, asked here to hold that the exclusion of a non-black applicant from the law school of the State of Washington, solely because of his race, is a valid racial classification. We respectfully submit, that the rule of equality mandated by this Court in Sweatt v. Painter compels the reve~~al of the judgment of the Supreme Court of Washington in this case 8. Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously, Harvard University Press, 1977, 227. 9. Ronald Dworkin, "Why Bakke Has No Case," New York Review of Books, November 10, 1977, 13-14. 10. "Why Bakke Has No Case," 14. 11. Taking Rights Seriously, 180-181. 12. Taking Rights Seriously, 231-239, especially see 239. 13. Thomas Pangle, The Public Interest, Winter, 1977-78, 157-160. 14. Taking Rights Seriousl)', 176-7. 15. Taking Rights Serious!)', 176. 16. Taking Rights Seriously, 177. 17. Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan, Parts I and II. Hobbs-Merrill, 1958, 6-7. 18. Measure, {the bulletin of University Centers for Rational Alternatives), number 42, April, 1977, I. The reference is to The New York Times, May 1, 1977. 64% of non-whites objected to preferential treatment in the poll. 19. Measure, number 46, April/May 1978, 4-5, article by the author. On November 17, 1977, Dr. Mary Berry gave a lecture in Chicago called "The Chinese Experience in Education: What America Stands to Learn." In discussing the Chinese use of quotas, she said: "In this last respect, the Chinese are moving rationally and realistically in a field that has led to confusion and near-hysteria here." 20. Taking Rights Seriousl)', 229. John Paul II and the World of Tomorrow Jean Laloy Readers of the encyclical letter, Redemptor Hominis, of John Paul II 1 divide into at least two groups: those that delight in his teachings on social justice and the rights of man and those who find his affirmations (but perhaps not his warnings) in doctrine and moral matters of more importance. But it is the relation between the two sides of John Paul II's teaching, between the teachings on social justice and on doctrine, which counts. Taken as a whole the letter strives to encompass the two aspects of John Paul II's teaching and to define their relationship. This letter is not only an encyclical, it is also circular in its mode of composition. It begins with the reforms instituted in the Church since Vatican II. It sounds the mysJe;m Laloy is a retired French diplomat who while on active duty concentrated on cultural relations with eastern Europe. This article first appeared in 1979 in the Summer issue of Commentaire. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW tery of God who has become man and returns to man in the world of today to end with the Church-a community of the friends of God whose presence makes itself felt beyond its visible borders. Set in the context of the other papal speeches and remarks of the last six months, this tightly written, sometimes difficult letter shows the Pope trying to answer the question everyone asks him. What do you have to say to us that we have not heard already? We have heard that it is better to be good than evil; to help rather than kill one another. But who really believes that? What about you? Before addressing myself to what is to be done, the Pope answers, let me tell you what is. "Man cannot live without love" (RH II, 10). God whom your heart seeks has come to you. Turn toward him and you will know what to do. I testify that he is here among us. I leave it to those more competent than myself to dis- 25 �cuss the theology of the letter. Any discussion would have to underline the letter's constant insistence on its fidelity to the thought of )2aul VI and, with somewhat less emphasis, to that of john XXIII and to the two constitutions of Vatican Council II, Gaudium et Spes-on the Church in the world-and especially to the second, on the Church Lumen Gentium. It would also have to show the letter's central emphasis on the mystery of a God who makes himself man in order to save all men and who remains among men in order to associate all men from this moment in his divine work. Everything in the letter is clearly stated, without murkiness. Free from the jargon of contemporary ideologies, the language tells of God's transcendence and the transience of the things of the earth. It frequently appeals to, or warns, theologians (III, 9), married couples, priests, catechists (III, 21), those of a critical turn of mind or those who dream of an ideal past, (I, 6) and some others. "Classical theology"? "Worn-out cliches"? "Nothing new"? These are the judgements of an editorial in Le Monde (March 16, 1979). The writer was perhaps too much in a hurry. Seen against the background of the everyday life of men today, the great truths, enunciated in the papal letter we are studying, show the originality hidden in the affirmation (which is after all not as banal as it appears) of the actual existence of a God, creator and saviour, who is a friend of man. * * * What does the Pope from Cracow say about this world? Does he curse communism? Does he reject the exploitation of liberalism? Does he advise each individual to fulfill honorably the duties of his station in life without prejudice to his moral obligations to his neighbor? That is not the way he talks. "I would like most of all," the Pope said on March II, 1979, "to join the mission of the Church with the service of man in his unfathomable mysteriousness-to join them in the same way in which I see and feel the relationships between the mystery of the redemption in jesus Christ and human dignity. Here is the central task of my ecclesiastical ministry."' The Pope has taken the trouble to point out that we are here at the heart of the letter. "Way" is the somewhat surprising word john Paul II uses to designate the relation between the Church and man-four billion men. It appears twenty times in the third part of the letter: "Christ on everybody's way," "Every way of the Church leads to man," "Man is the way of the Church." There are several meanings hidden in this image taken from the gospels. The way is the way of Salvation, the movement which leads man, individually or collectively, towards the truth, first as an object of faith, and one day as an object of vision. In this meaning, "jesus is the way of the Church" and everyone moves on it toward him. This is the way when it leads to an end. But the way can also be a means, the necessary point of passage for redemption. In this 26 sense, "the way of the Church is man." This means the church is responsible for all men-"every single man." The Church cannot ignore anything that happens to man; her mission in space and time is limitless. But what does "mission" mean? It means, "the way that unchange- ably passes through the mystery of the Incarnation and the Redemption." Not only does the Church proclaim these mysteries, it lives them out. The more these mysteries take root in the lives of men ("individual. .. Family ... society ... nations ... peoples ... humanity"), the deeper the life of man becomes, the more it opens up, the more it is transformed and the more those mysteries take on meaning and reveal previously hidden powers. As a result the Church is answerable for all men, she is touched by their history (to say nothing of what happens to them individually). She is capable also, indirectly and almost as an incidental by-product, of aiding men to find proper orientation for their actions in the world. She will pay attention to the "opportunities" that beckon, to the gathering "threats"-in short to "everything that appears contrary to the effort to make human life always more human." These words amount to a description of the possibility of progress, not a progress without mistakes, falls, or even collapse, but, nevertheless, an invisible or spiritual progress, a deepening and interiorization of life. Another progress, temporal progress, the "construction of the world" spoken of in Gaudium et Spes, might come from this spiritual progress. But in contrast to Vatican II which appeared at times inclined to describe contemporary man with optimism, "as on the way to a fuller development of his personality and an ever increasing assertion of his rights," 3 john Paul II, fifteen years later, above all remarks on the ambiguities of "progress." Contemporary man is terrified of the consequences of his activity. "Today's man appears always threatened by what he makes-by the works of his hands and even more by his intelligence and the directions taken by his will" (III, 15). Now that man has the means to destroy the whole human race, he can annihilate the natural environment in which he lives. Above all he can follow "the tendency to use all material, technical, and productive progress to dominate others" (III, 15) and thereby smother moral progress. By insisting on this matter the letter affirms the ambiguity of the movement of history-an idea that appeared in the parable of the wheat and the cockle, that St. Augustine developed in The City of God. Forgotten or perverted in modern times and flatly denied by modern ideologies, this idea has been rediscovered and deepened, notably in France, by several currents of philosophical and theological thought since the beginning of the century.4 This idea of progress as a movement in two directions, toward evil as well as good, of progress as a tension between two unattainable but real poles, springs unmistakeably from the experience of our century. This idea basically challenges all fanatical political systems: there is no perfect city! The other side of a city where no one JULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE �hungers is a society where men are glutted. A society that achieves perfect equality turns into a world in which no one moves. And so on. Do we have to settle for an overfed city? Is man's history no more than a blind struggle for more or less elevated but always limited goals? The answer is that progress is possible but that it occurs for all intents and purposes above the level of history and most often without human awareness. Temporal progress does not move straight ahead. At best it zig-zags. The horizontal movement ahead runs into a vertical movement descending from above it: purpose. Historical space is measured in two or three dimensions. The Pope uses this idea of "progress or threat," of progress that becomes a threat, of a threat that can lead to progress, in two ways. He first turns to the dramatic result of the progress that accentuates the inequality between rich and poor nations. Citing the parable of Lazarus and the wicked rich man (Luke 16, 19-31) and even more the scene of the Last judgement (Matthew 25, 31-46) "For when I was hungry you gave me nothing to eat. .. ," John Paul II takes up with energy the topics he developed in Mexico. Even though fundamental "structures and mechanisms are under accusation," there are possible solutions. His sketch of such solutions stresses compromise, the necessity of bringing economic "competition" and "redistribution" of riches, and "planning" and "freedom" into harmony (III, 16). He speaks out against the money swallowed up in the arms-trade. For two reasons I do not agree with Father Cosmao, the successor of Father Lebret, who sees the turning point of the letter in this part. First, the Pope in his letter as well as in his speeches looks forward to a slow progress, marked by interruptions and all sorts of starts forward and backward. Secondly, I do not think John Paul II shares either Father Cosmao's view that "Man makes himself on earth ... and in making himself ... moves toward God" 5 or his notion of the "collective autocreation of man." Both of these ideas of Father Cosmao neglect the ambiguities of progress, the fact of evil in history. As a result they run the real risk of leading to myths different from the perspectives shown in the letter. There is a difference between the "autocreation of man" and the Pope's clear unwillingness to settle for the present situation. Conversely, the Pope greets the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man as real progress but progress that is far from achieving all its desired effects. For at the same time that we have made progress in achieving human rights, the "great totalitarianisms" have spread, the "letter" of the Rights has been accepted at the expense of their "spirit," "powers are imposed by a limited group on all other members of a society," the "fundamental right" of "religious liberty" is denied. Because of these abuses there is danger of war, for in the final analysis peace rests on respect for the inviolable Rights of Man-opus iustitiae pax-while "war springs from the violation of these rights THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW and brings in its wake even greater violations" (III 16, 17). Here there is the unmistakeable ring of the experiences of the Archbishop of Cracow. Not a word about Marxism or communism but the call for respect for man, for the fundamental rights, for the elementary rights for the sake of peace between citizens, between nations, and between religions. Without respect for those rights, peace is impossible. "The principle of the rights of man touches profoundly on the area of social injustice and provides a basic standard for testing for its presence in political institutions." * * * What does john Paul II mean by the "new Advent" at the beginning of his letter? He means that the passing world, however rich and varied, however many new and unheard of things emerge in it, depends on something other than itself. As soon as this dependence is recognized, even simply sensed, or more modestly still, not denied, then the "dignity of man" has a foundation. The more the Church concentrates on the mystery of its beginnings and its final goal, the more it serves men even in their tem- poral existence-the more it opens up "ways" that lead not to the abyss, to nothingness, but somewhere. The "new Advent" means the end of the time of ideologies. It opens up the possibility of a new time, a time that will also have its light and darkness but combined differently. This coming age will probably learn something from contemporary disasters. The twentieth century was supposed to have given individual liberty, social justice and the light of reason their definitive foundation. To some extent it has. There is more of this in our societies than ever before. But there is more of something else also that has sprung up at the same time like the cockles in the wheat field. Faced or even burdened with the weight of this other fact, men today turn away from the repetitious monotony of political speeches. They search high and low for something else. According to John Paul II, the Church, in the fullest sense of the word, must become more and more itself in order to help men see. "The Church crosses beyond the borders of temporalty and at the same time looks with anxiety to everything within the dimensions of this temporalty that affects the life of man, the life of the spirit of man ... : the search for truth, the insatiable craving for the good, the hunger for freedom, the yearning for the beautiful, the voice of conscience ... " (IV, 18). In the letter the three themes of the speech at Puebla reappear: first, the service of the truth which in its turn allows the unity of man and provides the foundation for his self-respect. Otherwise, the world drifts aimlessly in the manner of Vladimir Soloview's dictmn, "Since we are all descended from monkeys, let us love each other." The letter would teach something else. "Since we come from elsewhere and are going elsewhere, let us try better to understand what we can do." Such words answer to the expectation of a new period when temporal action, desa- 27 �cralized and without pretensions to absoluteness, will nevertheless retain its own coherence-a coherence at the same time important and unimportant. Very important because of its reference to absolute values which every man sees we cannot do without, unimportant because condemned to fleetingness. Temporal action never succeeds fully, never realizes more than an approximation of justice, peace, equality, liberty. It never realizes justice itself nor peace itself nor anything whole or wholly reliable. In this perspective it is surprising that the Pope nowhere touches on the necessity of limiting the "absolute sovereignty" of states in order to make a little progress toward ending violence,- even if it does not lead to peace itself. But the Pope could not speak about everything. The chapter on the rights of man implies limitations on sovereignty. * * * A comparison of john Paul's letter, Redemptor Hominis, with Paul VI's first letter, Ecclesiam Suam, published August II, 1964, shows their similarities and differences. The spirit is the same in both letters. Paul VI speaks of openness and dialogue, john Paul II of presence and "caring." But Paul VI's letter is calmer and gentler, john Paul II's is more abrupt and full of fire. Both letters address the world in an entirely new way. The Church is no longer to rule or command in the traditional manner. In both the Church is simply there, radiating less by its instructions than in its presence, which allows the light to shine through. This new relationship between the Church and the world makes greater demands on each. Purer and more transparent, the Church is also more vulnerable, less protected. More open and less self-important, the world is also more aware and less confident. There is nothing easy in the relationship between the two. Because of the letter's original approach to the world, I do not share the worries of Paul Thibaud who, writing in Esprit, fears lest the letter-despite the merits he acknowledges-define "a spiritual authority above politics" and lead to ''ecclesiastical interventionism.'' 6 Responsible, of course, for facing the future, john Paul II, in my judgement, wants first of all and above all to let a light that does not come from him shine through. To take his stand where the vertical and horizontal intersect-that is his conception of the mission of the Church and its service of man. As a result of this conception, he limits himself, in relation to the world, to indicating directions in the area of rights and inequality and of the stmggle against poverty. He does not dictate. He notes points of reference. He indicates some of the ways. Because of his past, however, he belongs to that class of men who have known modern prometheanism and its frustration, who know you have to look elsewhere. He has no need to reason and to cast about in search of direction now that he has unique and universal responsibilities. 28 The way is there, open, self-evident. But the masses of men do not see it yet. So he says what he is there to say. And his words are heard. There are already answers, even from Poland. For example, Adam Michnik, in name of the lay left:* Religious freedom is the most visible sign of the actual exercise of civil liberties. For the state's attack on religious freedom is always a sign of the totalitarization of intellectual life. 'l'here are no exceptions to this rule, because totalitarian power alone cannot accept St. Peter's exhortation to the apostles: We must obey God rather than men (Acts 5, 29). In the language of the lay left these words mean that man's human nature endows him with rights that no power has the authority to annul. 1 Here Michnik echoes Bukharin who said in a conversation with Boris Nikolaevsky in Paris in March, 1936, that the "ten commandments of Moses" provide the foundation for all humanism-' He also echoes Benjamin Constant, who wrote in I 815: L'universalite des citoyens est le sou vera in ... II ne s'ensuit pas que l'universalite des citoyens, ou ceux qui, par elle, sont investis de Ia souverainete, puissent disposer souverainement de la liberte des individus ... L'assentiment de la majorite ne suffit nullernent dans taus les cas pour legitimer ses actes: il en existe que rien ne peut sanctionner ... There are indications that something very different from what many French Catholics had made out is occurring in the world. Among these indications is John Paul II's letter which distinguishes between "the mission of the Church and the service of man" in order to show the inspiration that unites them, without confusing them in practice. Translated by Brother Robert Smith *The phrase "la gauche lai"que" means the left that is not dogmatically atheistic.-tr. -- --------c~ 1. Redemptor I--lominis, text in La Documentation calholique, 7, April 1979,301-323. 2. La Documentation catholique, 7, April!, 326. 3. Ecumenical Council Vatican II, L'Eglise dans le monde, Paris 1966, ch:IV, section 41, 1, Ill. 4. Especially Jacques Maritain, Pour une philosophie de l'histoire, Paris 1959. Henri de Lubac, Catholicisme, les aspects sociaux du dogme, Paris 1941. Henri Marrou, Theologie de l'histoire, Paris 1968. 5. V. Cosmao, Redempteur de l'lwmme, Lettre encyclique de Jean-Paul II, un guide de lecture, Paris 1979, 21. 6. P. Thibaud, "Vcnu de la dissidence," Esprit, t\prill979, 3-10. 7. A. Michnik, L'£glise et la gauche, le dialogue polonais, Paris 1979, 170. 8. Boukharine et !'opposition d Staline, Sotsialislitcheskii Vestnik, 4, New Ymk 1965, 93-94. JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE �"Plato's Theory of Ideas'' Eva Brann My subject, as proposed, is "Plato's Theory of Ideas". Whether that subject actually interests you, or you think that it ought to interest you, you will, I imagine, regard it as a respectable topic. And yet I have to tell you that every term in the project is wrong-headed. Let me therefore be· gin by explaining why that is. First, Plato's Theory of Ideas is not a subject at all. I mean that it is not a compact mental material to be pre· sented on an intellectual platter. Plato himself refrained from making it the direct theme of any of the twenty-five or more dialogues which he wrote. Instead, the ideas ap· pear in the context of conversation, incidentally and in scattered places. He gives the reason directly in a letter: There is no treatise of mine about these things, nor ever will be. For it cannot be talked about like other subjects of learning, but out-of much communion about this matter, and from living together, suddenly, like a light kindled from a leaping fire, it gets into the soul, and from there on nourishes itself. [Seventh Letter 341 c] It follows that my lecture, like all the similar scholars' efforts, is an outsider's attempt to short-circuit a required initiation, an attempt which betrays my lack of genuine participation in the truth I am conveying as a molded mat· ter. There is, however, also much in Plato's works which invites such an exposition of his doctrine: much explicit and provocative argumentation and many promises of an explicitly communicable way to insight. I have another reason for thus boldly ploughing in. Two summers ago there died that man, that teacher in this school, who, as it seemed to many of us, best knew the way into the Platonic dialogues. His name is jacob Klein. While he was alive, I, for one, resting secure in the fact of his existence, postponed a bald confrontation of my own with this ultimate philosophical matter, the "Platonic A lecture delivered at St. John's College in Annapolis on Septem· ber 14, 1979, and in Santa Fe on February 15, 1980. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW ideas." But now, I thought, the time had come to be bold in acting on the advice Socrates gives to his friends in the course of the last conversation of his life. When he is asked where they will find someone to charm away their fears that philosophy is impossible once he is dead, he tells them that not only among the Greeks, but also among the barbarians-that, of course, includes us-there are many good people who can clo this for them. But then he adds: And also you must search for them among yomselves, for probably you will not easily find people more able than you are to do this. [Piwedo 78 a] We speak of "Plato's Theory", and let me now say something about that. Its chief sources are, to be sure, the works of Plato, and he is its ultimate master.' Yet within ll!S works, theDialogues, it is not Plato but his teacher Socrates who originates and maintains the theory. Plato presents Socrates as having a life-long hold on it, though he speaks of it under continuously changing aspects. There is a so-called "late" dialogue, the Parmenides, in which the elderly author imagines a boyish Socrates-a wonderful turnabout-and in which Socrates' claim to authorship of the ideas is elicited by the father of philosophy, Parmenides, himself (130 b). There is another dialogue, also written late in Plato's life, the Sophist, in which an old Socrates, just a few weeks away from death, listens silently while a stranger brings the theory to its height with the solution of its deepest difficulty. And finally there is a "middle" dialogue, the Phaedo, in which Socrates, in the last conversation of his life, addresses the theory more directly than anywhere else. Plato, at least, wished the world to think of "Socrates' Theory of Ideas". But then, more accurately, he would not have had us think of a "theory" at all. By a theory we usually mean a conceptual construction designed in principle to yield satisfying explanations for every problem brought before it. A theory ought to be falsifiable, which means it should be capable of being made to reveal its incompleteness or in- 29 �consistency by strenuous formal reasoning so that if need be, it may be discredited and discarded. Therefore it is its author's responsibility to present it in the most impregnable form possible. Scholars do find such difficulties aplenty in the Theory of Ideas. But here is a curious circumstance: they are all anticipated in their boldest form in that very dialogue, the Parmenides, which represents a boyish Socrates as first proposing the Ideas.' Can you think of another philosophical theory which is presented from the very outset in terms of a series of devastating dif. ficulties, never to be explicitly resolved? The point is, the Ideas are not a theory.' Socrates calls his bringing in of the Ideas a "supposing" (Phaedo 100 b); the Greek word for a supposition is a hypothesis. A hypothesis is, literally, an underpinning, a prop. It comes to him and he comes on it at every departure and at every turning. It is a condition he acknowledges so that he can carry on as he must; it is not a conclusion presented for verification but a beginning which then becomes as well the end of inquiry. It is at first the condition that gives him heart for a search by making it possible for him to launch a question that has in it an arrow making for an answer. One might say that it allows him to turn the unknown into a suspect to be interrogated (Meno 86 b). Thereafter, however, the Idea-hypotheses-for the hypothesis is not the proposition that there are Ideas, but each Idea is itself a hypothesis-are to be used as stepping stones to their own conversion into something not merely supposed but truly beheld, "seen" (Republic 511 b). Such suppositions are surely not fruitfully accosted by formal hammer-and-tongs argument, though they are, of course, amenable to careful and critical inspection. 4 I keep calling these Socratic suppositions Ideas. The word idea is a transcription of a term Socrates himself uses idea. Nonetheless it is an infelicitous term. For ask yourselves what we usually mean by an idea, for instance when we say: "That's her idea of a good lecture." Clearly we mean an opinion or a mental image or a concept something "in our minds," often in opposition to Hthe real thing." This modern notion of an idea, the result of an earth-shaking intellectual upset, is that of a mental representation, something before or in the organ of ideas, the mind. The use of the term would cast my exposition into a false, albeit familiar, frame, and I would only make things worse were I to insist that Socrates' Ideas are ''real", and worse yet, "really exist." Socrates' own chief word is eidos. Like the word idea it is built on the simple past stem of the word to see, which signifies the act of seeing once done and completed. Scholars have collected the many meanings of eidos which flow continuously from the broadly ordinary to the narrowly technical: shape, figure, face form, characteristic, quality, class, kind. But, of course, when we dwell on the multiplicity of Greek usages, we are standing the matter on its head, for they are all revealing differentiations from the dead-center of meaning. Eidos means sight, aspect, looks, in that eerily active sense in which a thing that has 1 1 1 1 1 30 looks or is a sight presents itself to our sight and our looking. "Looks", then, and not idea or form, is the most faithful rendering of eidos. 5 But it sounds too curious, and so I shall tonight speak simply of eidos. The plural is eide. Eidos, then, is the word Socrates chooses for his hypothesis. For that choice he might, for this once, be called a "Greek thinker", since he cherishes and yet overturns the wisdom of his language which associates seeing and knowing: "I know" in Greek is built on the stem of "I saw." Eidos is a choice full of witty depth, for Socrates' eidos is invisible, and that is surely the first of all those notorious Socratic paradoxes. So let me convert the falsely familiar title "Plato's Theory of Ideas" to "Socrates' hypotheses: the eide". I shall pursue the Socratic eidos under seven headings, for it shows as many aspects as there are beginnings to Socrates' inquiry. Indeed, that is what makes his hypotheses compelling: that such diverse roads lead to the eidos 6 I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. Excellence and Commonness Speech and Dialectic Questions and Answers Opinion and Knowledge Being and Appearance Same and Other Original and Image L Excellence and Commonness "Philosophy" means literally the love of wisdom. Therefore it begins in desire (Republic 475 b, Symposium 204 a), in desirous love, in erotic passion, the most acute of all passions. That is what we might call the young beginning of philosophy.' It is that love which arises when another human being appears "all-beautiful in aspect," in eidos, as the Greek phrase goes (Charmides 154 d). We might simply say that this love arises when someone suddenly becomes visible for us. For beauty, Socrates says, has the part of shining out eminently and being most lovable, and of coming to us through sense, through the most acute of senses, the sense of sight Beauty is brilliance, attractive visibility. Beauty is sightliness par excellence, and a sight is that which, without going out of itself, draws us from a distance. But such a sensual sight, such a bodily idea (Phaedrus 251 a), which draws us from afar, affects us with an exciting and utterly confounding sense that it is a mere penetrable veil, a mere representation of some divinity beyond. That is why we speak of such love as adoration. It draws us not to itself but through itself-the enchantedly attentive fascination with sensual looks goes over into something on the other side of that surface. Desire drawn through distance is called love, and if what beckons is on the further side of surface sight, it is called philosophy. For, Socrates says, there is a road-whose first station is the beckoning irritation aroused by one beautiful bodywhich leads us to develop an eye first for all kinds of beauty and finally to sight its self-sameness everywhere in the JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE �world and in the soul (Symposium 210 a). And that sight, the very source of visibility, is beyond sense, and is the eidos itself. There is another beginning in what is extraordinary and captivating, a little duller in its visible aspect, though its luster is life-long (Phaedrus 250 d). It is the outstanding, the excellent. All of us are at some time overcome by admiration for the fullness of being of certain people and their deeds, or even by an animal or a tool (Republic 353 b, 601 d). Such potency of being, such authentic goodness, is called in Greek arete, which means effective excellence, potent capability (Laches 192 b). It is more than ordinary usefulness or humanity or sincerity. It is rather a kind of superlativeness-it's name is related to aristos, the best. It is competitive, ('agonistic," as the Greeks say, and uncom- mon, although we speak rightly and yet paradoxically of a "standard" of excellence; we recognize the rare as the ex- emplary. Excellence and how to engender it is a topic of pervasive fascination. It interests the good, the crafty, the curious, parents, citizens, the corrupt-perhaps them most peculiarly (Meno ), them and the young. But again, as in the case of beauty incarnate, every outstanding human being, every fine deed, appears as a mere instance, a mere exemplification of excellence. It is spuri- individuality, that inarticulable deviation from the common which he never thinks of as a source of particular fineness. He pursues the common eidos because it is more revealing than the world's idiosyncracies. For we do not learn of this eidos by looking at individual things; on the contrary, we can look at them only because they display this eidos, this look. For example, Socrates would agree that equal objects-say, scratched lines of equal length-are needed to call up in us the thought of equality (Phaedo 75 a). But they do that only because they take part in that eidos which makes them look equal to us, even though they are but uncertainly, passingly, approximately equal, and from them we could never gather the sharply precise idea of equality, anymore than we can identify goodness by watching human actions from now till doomsday. That look of things which not one of them has fully or purely but which is common to all, that is a wonder to Socrates. Both outstanding and common sights, then, point to an invisible eidos beyond. II. Speech and Dialectic We have a passing strange power of reaching the things that share a look, all of them, at once. We can say the word, their name. When the eye sees a sight, the tongue can utter a sound which is the sensual appearance of a word, of speech (Third Letter 342 b). One word reaches, picks out, intends what is the same in many things. One word presides over many things (Republic 596 a). A word is not a symbol for Socrates, for it does not stand for something by reason of some sort of fit between it and the thing; rather it reaches toward something utterly other than itself: it intends, it has meaning. Socrates thinks that what words mean is precisely that common eidos. Further- ous for being a mere instance and not the thing itself, deficient in being abstracted from the complete complex of virtues, deformed by being bound to a particular setting. We all know that even the best-founded hero-worship eventually loses its edge and luster as the admirer gains perspective. But the longing to see excellence and be excellent is for that ever-bright, undeformable shape which looms behind each tainted earthly example. The beautiful and the best, the fine and the goodthrough these is the enthusiastic first access to the eidos. But there is also a more sober beginning, one by whose implications Socrates himself was a little put off in his first youth, because of their meanness (Parmenides 130 c). Besides the high and shining eidos of what is beautiful and ramic familiarity of daily sensory sights leaves obscure: that the visible world, particularly the natural world, ap- excellent, there is also a common eidos, or better, every- pears to be compounded of more and more encompassing thing, from a small bee to a grand virtue, displays or "has'' an eidos. (Meno 72). Everything we see, everything that appears in any way at all, looks (or sounds or smells) like something-excellences, elements, animals, tools, perhaps even mud. Everything wears the aspect of being of a sort. Unless it has the looks of something, we cannot see it, for it has no coherent shape to draw us; we cannot point to it or name it. To see is always to re-cognize; just imagine trying to focus on something-! shouldn't even say "something" -which is truly unique and looks like nothing. Whatever wears a look at all wears that look in common with other things. One look presides over numerous things and that is why we can "identify", that is to say, make out the sameness, of things, of people, elements, animals, tools. It is not in their multifariousness and difference that we lay hold of things but "by their being bees" or beds or excellences (Meno 72 b). Socrates is far more interested in this common look than in what we call THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW more, in fixing on speech he discovers what the pano- visible "sorts," rising finally into totally invisible kindred groups. The Greek word for a visible sort is, of course, eidos and for a kindred group, genos. The Latin word for eidos is species. Socrates discovers the organization of the world into species and genus,s and that things can be placed, defined, by thinking about the meaning of names and connecting them properly in speech. All the world seems to be at the roots akin (Meno 81 d), and that kinship, is articulable in complexes of words. Such connected speech is what the Greeks call logos. It is, first of all, inner effort, movement, attention, intention; indeed, it is the same as thinking (Sophist 263 e). It is always an activity of discerning and picking out on the one hand, and comprehending and collecting on the other; in fact that is what the verb legein means: to select and collect. Socrates thinks that such speech can reveal the interconnections of the world, but only if it "looks to" (e.g., Republic 472 b, 532 a) the interweaving of the invisible 31 �eide. Meaningful and true speech is speech in accordance with the eidos (Phaedrus 249 b); names reach for the eide singly and sentences for their interconnections. Socrates calls such reaching speech dialectic, "sorting through" (266 c). But he uses that word in another, wider, sense also. Dialectic is serious, and, if necessary, uncompromising conversation with oneself or with another, argument. (I might say that if the enthusiasm of love is young philosophy, argumentative dialectic might be called the youngest philosophy because bright children make lovely dialecticians.) Now dialectic does not only reveal the articulated unity of the world. It can also shake our easy acceptance of its oneness. Speech can rake up the obtuse self-contradictoriness of things. Such self-opposition comes out when speech is used in a very original way, in "telling," as the old term goes, in counting. Take this index finger. It is larger than the thumb but smaller than the middle finger. It is both small and large. It has both looks at once. They coincide in the thing and yet we can tell them apart and count them as each one, and two together in the thing. Whoever takes the deliverances of words seriously will find this provoking~provoking of thought (Republic 523). Socrates can account for this revelation only by supposing that the eidos greatness and the eidos smallness, which are each one and forever separate beyond the finger, can be fused in the finger. Even if the finger is confounding, the eide are pure and intelligible. The eidos saves the telling power of speech. III. Questions and Answers Socrates asks questions, of himself and of others, and he urges them continually: try to say the answer. His questions are not quite the usual kind, namely requests for information or provocations of acknowledgement. Nonetheless people see charm or dignity enough in them to try to respond. Socrates' kind of question is preeminently framed to elicit speech. He asks after that in things which can respond, which is answerable, responsible. The Greek term for what is answerable in that way is aitia, the responsible reason. Socrates thinks that such a responsi- the cause is not to be reduced or evaporated in inquiry but kept in sight and pursued; that granted, the answer can then be safely elaborated (Phaedo 105 b). For it poses a new and deeper question: What is beauty~or excellence or knowledge? I should say here that Socrates does not go about idly asking what scholars like to call the "What is X? question." His questions are not one function with variable objects, but each is asked differently in each conversation, for each is set differently into Socrates' life and each reaches toward a unique aspect of the complex of being. We all know that the answer to the question what something is can take many forms. Socrates sometimes begins by showing people that they quite literally don't know what they are talking about and can't mean what they are saying~a charming but dangerous business for the young (Apology 33 c, Republic 539 b, Philebus 15 a). Sometimes he proposes a startlingly revealing, seemingly paradoxical, and dubiously convertible identification, for instance that excellence is knowledge. And once in a while he does what Aristotle (Metaphysics 987 b) persuaded people to think of Socrates as doing first and preeminently: he looks for a definition by genus and species and differentiae. There is no one method for interpreting all the dialogues, as Mr. Klein used to say. 9 And yet it is equally the case that Socrates is always after the same end, on a trail of speech on which the one-word answer is a trail blaze. The trail, however, approaches its goal without meeting it, asymptotically. This goal is the eidos named in the simple-minded but safe answer to a Socratic question. Ultimately, to be sure, the eidos toward which the word points cannot be attained through speech but only by itself and through itself (Cratylos 439 b), for it is not speech which determines the eidos but the eidos which calls forth speech (Parmenides 135 c). Logos is utterly diverse from eidos since its very nature is to be merely about being; it might be said to climb along the eidetic structure, articulating, so to speak, the lattice of an impenetrably crystalline complex. But meanwhile the question which is steadfastly answered as it itself directs, focuses the soul on the eidos as responsible cause. ble reason-we smnetimes say "cause" -cannot be some external linkage of events. It is a trivializing answer to the IV. Opinion and Knowledge question "Why is Socrates sitting in prison?" to say that he is flexing his joints in a certain way in a certain place. Although he is too modest to say so, he knows he is there because of his peculiar kind of courage. Similarly, if the question is "What makes this face beautiful?", the answer he insists on is that it is beautiful not by a certain incidental shape or color, but "by beauty." He calls such answers unsophisticated but safe (Phaedo l 00 d). They are indeed so simple-minded as to seem at first futile~ they are answers for those whose ambition is not to go onward but inward. For their safety is in keeping us to the question, in directing us through its words to a word. To accept that things are beautiful by beauty means that Socrates comes to grips with the strangest of human scandals: that we are able to talk without speaking and to believe without acting. Human life is peculiarly capable of glorious heights and excruciating failures, and it is these heights and depths we most avidly chatter about and have powerfully ineffective beliefs about. Indeed, public talk about them is obligatory. It is an incantation to keep the spirit of excellence from fading. It consists of certain partial lopsided truths whose deficiency is obscured by their familiarity. Socrates calls such speechless talk, such logoslike utterance without present thought, belief or opinion. (D6xa. Our favorite phrase signal that an opinion is coming is: "I feel that ... ".) He thinks further that it is be- 32 JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE �cause we do not know what we mean when we talk of excellence, that we fail to be excellent. By "knowing" he does not mean being familiar with certain arguments and definitions or having some sort of competence or canniness in getting what one wants (1-Ii(Jpias minor 365 d). He means that our souls are alight with, are filled with, what truly is. He means a knowledge so live and rich that it goes immediately over into action without leaving room for the mediation of a wavering or perverse will. Socrates' first interest in knowledge is therefore practical, but I should say here that that knowledge vivid enough to pass immediately into deed will also be an end in itself, a realm in which to dwell beyond all action, and that this is yet another one of the great Socratic paradoxes (Phaedo 66 b, Phaedrus 247, Republic 517 b). To be cured of being caught in mere opinion we must know how this state is possible. Socrates finds only one explanation plausible. What we have beliefs and opinions about cannot be the same as what we think seriously about (Republic 477). The name of our object may be the same, but we cannot have the same thing in mind when we just talk and when we truly speak. We are using our powers so differently when we have opinions and when we think that they amount to different powers and must have different objects. That is not really so odd an idea: We seem to switch mental gears when we pass from pontificating to thinking, and the matter we have gone into deeply is no longer what it was when we "knew" it superficially, just as the friend well known is often a wholly different person from the friend of first acquaintance. The superficial glance is reflected by a mirror-like surface of seeming that masks the depths which thinking seeks and in which it becomes absorbed. That first aspect of the world that is the object of opinion, the world whose very nature it is to seem and then to vanish before closer inspection, Socrates calls becoming, because it is always coming to be and never quite what it is. It is the world which is before our eyes. Our first fascination is with the shifting, inexact, contradictory things before our eyes, or with the obtrusive opinions of our fellows. These are our unavoidable beginnings (Phaedo 74 a). But as we penetrate the visible surface and search into those opinions, a new world appears, now not to the eye of sight but of thought, steadfast in being such as it is, of a powerful "suchness," shapely, unique. Socrates calls this world being. l-Ie understands it to be all that knowledge requires. In knowing we have a sense of being anchored, rooted in something stable and lucid that the eye of the soul can behold (Phaedo 99 d). It is the world of the eidos understood as the object of knowledge, the knowable eidos (Republic 511 a). Yet Socrates by no means regards the knowable eidos as a mere contrivance for granting himself knowledge_ On the contrary, he thinks that we are, all of us, capable of the experience of going into ourselves in thought, led on by the beckoning eidos, a process so vividly like the raising of a memory that he calls it, mythically, "recollection," THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW the calling-up of a primordial memory (Meno 81, Phaedo 73). The way to the eidos is by a passage through our own souls, not by a penetration of external things-or better, these two ways are one. The eidos, I must add, is knowable, but it is not knowledge. It confronts the soul and is not of it. To put it in modern terms: It is a presence to the. soul, but not a representation within it. We might say that Being is for us irreduceably aspectual: We look at it and move among its articulations for it has a power of affecting the soul and being known (Republic 511, Sophist 248 e). We may even, speaking figuratively, comprehend it. But we cannot pass into it. For Socrates philosophy, the desire for being, remains forever literally philosophy-an unfulfilled longing for knowledge. V. Appearance and Being The eidos is steadfast and lucid. But the world which envelops us is shifting and opaque. Yet the Greeks call what appears before our eyes the phenomena, which means ''what shines out," "what shows itself," for the things that appear glow and ensnare us by their kaleidoscopic spectacle: we are all lovers of sights and sounds (Republic 475 d). I should note here that although I cannot help talking of "things," the appearances are not things in any strict sense since they have no "reality" (which is but Latin for "thinghood"), no compacted, concrete character. Socrates sometimes uses the word "business," "affairs" (prdgmata), for our world. The "phenomena" sparkle busily, but it is all surface. Now the systematic illusions and the serried variety of appearance can be mastered by various sciences, for example, the sciences of measuring, numbering, and weighing (Republic 602 d). Yet there is still a recalcitrant residue, an incorrigible phenomenality that shows itself as a two-fold multiplicity. First there are always many irreducibly diverse items of a kind: many different beautiful things, many different just acts. And second, no particular beautiful thing and no particular just act is that way perfectly, unbudgeably, purely, but each changes as our perspective on it changes in time or place. Appearance as appearance is scattered and shimmering, fragmented and iridescent. But most of all it is not what it shows, or to put it plainer: Appearance is appearance of something, it points beyond itself_ What is that whose refracted form appears to us in appearance? What appears in appearance must be in itself invisible. This invisible eidos is what Socrates thinks of as the being behind appearance, and appearance is becoming regarded as a manifestation. This eidos which is a being, is all that appearance and becoming are not: not scattered but one; not multiform but of a single look (Phaedo 78 d); not mixed but pure (66 a); not passive but potent (Sophist 247 e); not elusive and illusory but steadfast and true; not for busy show but the thing in its verity, the very thing (to auto pragma); not self-contradictory but 33 �self-same (Phaedo 78 d, Cratylos 386 e); not dependent and of something, but itself by itself, absolved from subservience, or uabsolute" (as later commentators render Socrates' deliberately naive term "by itself"); unique, immortal, indestructible (Phaedo 78 d), outside time and beyond place (Phaedrus 247 b). All that lies in Socrates' simplest expression: the just, the BeautifuL Whatever has this characteristic of potent, shapely, and, one might almost say, "specific", self-sameness is called a being. It provides such "beingness" (ousia, Craty- los 386 e, Meno 72 b) as appearances have, and it does this by somehow "being by," having presence in them, (parousia, Phaedo 100 <.1)- The eidetic beings are responsible for the fact that the question "What is it?" asks not only what the thing is but also what it is: every "whatness," all quality, brings being with it. Beings, once again, are not ''real," for they are not things and do not move in the categories true of things, nor do they "exist," for to exist means to be here and now. 10 But they are not unreal or non-existent either. They are, in the way described, and as they appear they give things their looks, their visible form (Phaedo 104 d). VI. Same and Other The being I have named so often is not Socrates' discovery. It comes to him from those so prejudicially called Presocratics, in particular from Parmenides who entered the sanctuary of being in a blazing chariot. Thus it comes to Socrates already fraught with established controversy and difficulties. Even he has an inherited legacy of "problems," that is to say, of questions posed in terms of his predecessors' inescapable doctrines. Questions posed in this way, as problems, notoriously have resolutions which pose more and tighter problems, and thus is launched the tradition of professional philosophy. Socrates does notescape this unfresh beginning. This is the problem Socrates takes up when still almost a boy: the being Father Parmenides discovered is and nothing else. It is, one and only, without distinction or difference, for we cannot think or speak what is utterly not. There is no sentence which does not contain, audibly or latently, an "is", an assertion of the truth of being. Such austere attention to what speech always says is not primitive. Listen to W. H. Auden: Words have no words for words that are not true. ["Words"] What Parmenides says-that what is, is, and in merely being is without inner distinction, all one-is compelling since we have no immediate speech with which to deny it; we cannot say: "Being is different from itself; being is not being; being is not-being." But it is also monstrous: it negates both our multifarious world, the one in which we are at home, along with the very possibility of articulate speech itself, since we may never say anything of any- thing other than that it is. Because Parmenides' grand insight brings all articulating speech to a halt, his zealous 34 follower Zeno does not attempt to defend his position, but, instead, cleverly attacks the opposition, who continue to talk and say that being is not one but many. He understands the claim that being is many to require that being be at once like and unlike itself, self-contradictory, unthinkable. But Socrates knows both that the visible world, at least, is like that and that thoughtful speech cannot bear such self-contradiction. He offers a supposition which saves at the same time the integrity of that which speech is always about, namely this "is" which is at the heart of every logos, and the manifest multiplicity and inconsistency of appearance as it is revealed in speech. He saves Parmenides from sinking into the white silence of being. Socrates' supposition is the e!dos, which is not being itself but a being. His resolution is that being is many, but not confused. The eide are each self-same, as being should be, but they are also diverse from each other. The appearances somehow ('participate" in these beings in such a way that the diverse beings intersect in them and are superimposed. Thus the appearances become self-opposed; the eide save at once the purity of being and the alloy of becoming. Young Socrates shrugs off Parmenides' problem .about multiplicity with the phrase: "Where's the wonder?" (Parmenides 129 b), the universal paean of those who have resolved another's perplexity. An older Socrates will say that philosophy is wonder. Socrates' solution, that there are several and diverse beings, of course poses new problems. The most telling of these is that each being is also a non-being-at least it is a not-being; it is not what the other beings are. Hence Zeno' s problems with the self-opposition of the world of appearance has been but raised into the realm of being. A few weeks before the end of his life Socrates is present at a great moment in the course of philosophy when a visitor from Parmenides' country presents, by way of resolving this higher problem, a momentous elaboration of Socrates' supposition which, while turning it almost irrevocably into a "theory," advances it greatly. For if Socrates had shown how we can come to terms with the inherent and unavoidable self-opposition of the world of appearance, the visiting stranger will go on to show how we can account for the spurious being deliberately invoked in false and fraudulent human speech. The stranger begins his solution of Socrates' problem by establishing that all the eide are beings, and that they must therefore all take part in being itself; they all belong to a highest eidos, the eidos Being. But then the stranger boldly claims that there is also another, unheard of, eidos which ranges in a peculiar way through all the eide. This eidos is indeed not-being, but not-being rightly understood, understood as a being (Sophist 258 c). He calls it the Other. The eidos of the Other runs through all beings and makes them other than each other-not what the other is. By being scattered through all being the Other is the cause of its pervasive distinction and difference. It is a peculiar principle which relates by opposition and unifies by diverJULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE �sity, for since all have otherness in common, their very community makes them different. It makes all beings confront each other. It is the very eidos of relativity. It is not a new name for non-being that the stranger contributes but a new view of the world as articulated and bonded through difference. It is a world in which the fact that we take one thing for another and speak falsely, as we surely do, is accounted for: to say what is false is not to say nothing or what is not, but to say something other than what is the truth. The stranger mentions in passing also another principle, evidently not itself an eidos among eide, but comprehending, surpassing and beyond all being. He calls it the Same (254 e), in antithesis to the Other. It is that which gives the eidos of Being, and through it all the beings, their very own nature, their steadfast abiding by themselves, their being what they are through and through: the Same gives the eide their self-sameness. It is the culminating principle. Depending on how it is approached, it is also called the Good, because it gives beings their vividness and fittingness (Republic 509 a), and in Plato's "Unwritten Teachings" -recall that he declined to write down the most central things-it seems to have been called ·the One, because it is the first and final totality. Socrates speaks of it explicitly, though in metaphor, but once, likening it to the sun because it gives the eide their luminous sight-likeness (Republic 509 b). Aristotle told a story of Plato's famous lecture on the Good, which he held at his school, the Academy. People came in droves, expecting to hear something fascinating to themselves, about health or wealth or power. But it was all about arithmetic and how the eide are a certain kind of number, ending up with the just-mentioned revelation that the Good is the One. So they got disgusted and drifted off (Aristoxenus, Elements of Harmony II, 30). Mr. Klein used to add-as if he had been there-that only one person stayed, comprehending and critical. That was Aristotle · himself. What Plato spoke about then was what is called dialectic in the last and strongest sense, thinking by and through the eide (Republic 511 C, 532), attending to their grouping, hierarchy, interweaving or "intertwining" (symploke, Sophist 240 c). Such dialectic, the ultimate use of the logos and the philosophical activity proper, appears in the dialogues but once, namely in the Sophist, and scholars have not succeeded in recovering much of it. There is, I might add, a chapter in Mr. Klein's book on Greek mathematics which engages in true dialectic and tells how the eidos Being can be understood as the number Two. 11 VII. Original and Image There is one greatest, almost overwhelming, perplexity about the eide which Socrates knows about from the very beginning (Parmenides 131 c). How can an eidos do the very business for which Socrates has submitted it to us? Are not the eidos-units, THE ST. JOHNS REVJEW being each one and ever the same and receptive neither to bec;oming nor to destruction, ever steadfastly the same? But having entered into becoming, must such an eidos-unit not be posited either as scattered and having become many within the things that are becoming, or, if it is still whole, then as separated from itself, which latter would be the greatest impossibility-that one and the same thing should be at once in one and many? [Philebus 15 b] Then how can the eidos be the source of the appearances · around us, how can it have truck with what is always changing and multiple? This question can be called the "lower participation problem" since it deals not with the community the eide have with each other but with that which is below them. How do we understand the working relations which the eide-once we suppose them to behave to the variety, the passages and the contradictions of our world of appearance? It is the most pressing Socratic problem. Socrates uses a number of terms to name this relation. He speaks of the partaking, the "participation" (methexis, Phaedo 100-102) of the appearances in the eidos, but, of course, he does not mean a part-taking as when people take up a part of an awning they sit under (Parmenides 131 b). He speaks of a community of the eidos, and the appearances, of the appearances being named after the eidos, of the presence of the eidos in them (e.g. Phaedo 100 c,d, 103 b). These terms indicate that the two realms are strongly related, but they do not reveal what the appearances can have in common with beings, or why they merit being named after beings, or how the beings can be present in them. But Socrates does use another group of words which tell more. He speaks of participation through similarity, likeness, imaging, imitation (Phaedrus 250 a, Phaedo 74 e, Timaeus 39 e and, above all, Republic 510 b). The thought that our world should stand to the realm of eide as copy to exemplar (Parmenides 132 d, Timaeus 48 e) has a certain high plausibility. It conveys a falling off from the fullness of being, an imitative, derivative mode. It suggests that one original eidos will have many imageappearances, and that no appearance can stand free, but most appear, like all the images with which we are familiar, incarnate in some stuff, as the statute of Socrates is worked in marble (Timaeus 52 c). It indicates how every appearance could be doubly dependent: on the eidos for being visible, and on our sight for being seen. If the appearances somehow image the eide, their inferiority, multiplicity, materiality, and sensuality becomes comprehensibleand so does the fact of their inescapably beguiling books. There are, however, apparently devastating difficulties with this primordial imitation. Of these one is most vulnerable to formal argument: If the eidos is what is originally beautiful, and beautiful things are copies, and if the likeness of copies to their originals comes from their sharing the same quality, then both have the quality of being beautiful. It follows that the eidos of beauty is beautiful, as the eidos of justice is just-and Socrates does not scruple 35 �to say just that (Protagoras 330 c, Symposium 210 c). But that way of speaking, that beauty is beautiful, is an insup· portable redundancy, called by scholars "self-predication". Furthermore, if the function of the eidos was to account for the fact that anything is beautiful, then another eidos beyond will have to be posited to account for the fact that the eidos itself has been said to be beautiful. Aristotle calls this dilemma the "Third Man", because behind the man and the man-like eidos of mankind there must appear a third man-eidos (Metaphysics 9~0 b). But these terrible perplexities, whose various versions Socrates knows about (Parmenides 132 d, Republic 597 c), miss the point. Socrates so often chooses to employ the phrase "the beautiful" rather than the noun of quality "beauty," not because he is simply deaf to the fact that in Greek, as in English, the former phrase sounds as if it meant a beautiful thing, being an adjective turned into a substantive. He speaks that way because he means to make us face the self-same "suchness" of the eidos, to divert our desire from the apparent beauty of the appearances to a better but invisible beauty, to convey its greater desirability, to persuade us to "look to" it. The turns of speech that call the eidos verily beautiful, through and through beautiful, the beautiful itself, are philosophical rhetoric. They intend to evoke a new kind of longing, so that we may turn more willingly from that which appears as beautiful to seek that hidden sight which first makes it possible for us to see and say that anything on earth is beautiful. The eidos beauty is certainly not ugly, but no more is it to be described by the adjective "beautiful;" it is rather such as to be itself the sole source of the attribute in others. The word "beautiful" does not describe this suchness, but it reaches for it. How then can beautiful things be images of beauty if it is not, as seems indeed to be impossible, by likeness, that is, by sharing the same quality? It is because imaging, mirroring, turns out to be the deepest capability of being, the accompaniment of the pervasive otherness which haunts it, that non-being which dogs every being. Each being confronts another as its other, and its own otherness is mirrored in the others. For the image nature of an image is not really caught when we point out similarities, say of conformation and color, between it and its original. The closest we can come to telling what an image is, is to say that it is, in truth, not what it images, and then again it somehow is. We are apt to say of a little statue of Socrates looking like a pot-bellied satyr: "That's Socrates", but we know at the same time that it is not. We mean that Socrates is in some sense pres~ ent in the stone-"represented" -but not genuinely, not in truth. For an image is that which in its very nature is not what it is; it is an interweaving of being and non-being (Sophist 240 c). Now among the beings, the eide, each is self-same and truly what it is, and also other than and not what the others are; its not-being is only with respect to the other beings; the interweaving of beings is not a commingling: 36 the strands of being and non-being remain distinct. But becoming, Socrates explains, is an amalgam, a blending, of being and non-being (Republic 477 a). The appearances commingle within themselves non-being and being; they have neither steady self-sameness nor fixed difference, and yet they seem somehow enduring and definite. In their very nature they are not what they are, and might on that account be called images of being. So here is a formal way of conceiving the claim that appearance images the eidos. But it must be said that it in no wise solves our greatest problem: how the eidos drops down from the context of being to become entangled with non-being in a new and world-making way-how there can be an eidos incarnate (Phaedrus 251 a). Socrates ascribes to us an initial power-most startling to see in children-of image recognition (eikasia, Republic 51! e), by which we identify a counterfeit as a counterfeit at the same moment that we recognize the original lurking in the imitation (510 b). In its developed form it is a sense for what Mr. Klein once called the "duplicity of being." It is our capacity for philosophy. I have said what I think Plato's Socrates thought, but I do not want this lecture to be what is, wonderfully, called an "academic" exercise, so I must now say what I think. But before I do that, let me make mention one last time of the name of jacob Klein to whom this lecture is most certainly dedicated in loving memory and who-so good a teacher was he-taught me nothing but what l could straightway recognize as my own. Socrates himself says of the eide that they have become buzz-words (Phaedo 100 b); there are even those people known, a little absurdly, as "the friends of the eide" (Sophist 248 a). That kind of thing comes from being drawn and fascinated by Socrates' sights without having ourselves seen them. What is more, Plato does not reveal, indeed conceals, in the dialogues the answer to the question: did Socrates himself view the eide? did anyone ever?; in short: are there accessible eide? Therefore our attention naturally turns to the Socrates through whom we hear of these matters and to his trustworthiness. And I find the man who is commemorated in the Dialogues trustworthy beyond all others. I trust his slyness and his simplicity, his sobriety and his enthusiasm, his playfulness and his steadfastness, his eros and his dignity. Yet it is not mainly his character that I trust, but his presuppositions, and I think that they must have formed him more than he did them. I make Socrates' presuppositions out to be these: That there is that in human life which stands out, that there are heights and that there is a way to them, an ascent. That what is desirable is at a distance, by itself and in itself, and therefore sight-like and yet invisible, and that there must be a means for reaching it. That this mediating power is speech, which is able to shape our irritable wonder at common things into that springboard of thought called a JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE �question. And first and last, that where there is a ques· tion, an answer has already been at work, and it is our hu· man task to recollect it. These presuppositions are not at all necessary. Our spe· cific human work does not have to be thought of as arising from enthusiasm about the extraordinary or marvelling at the common, as Socrates says philosophy does (Theaetetus !55 d). It can come from a cool, sober sense that the ways of the world should be exposed and explained, its myths dismantled and its depths made plane; that not what is best but what is individual, not what is common but what is ordinary, should preoccupy our efforts; that we should not view but master, not play but work, not suppose but certify, not ask but determine, not long but draw limits. I am describing that self-controlled maturing of philosophy which is responsible for all that we call modernity. I do not think for a moment that we should play truant from this severe and powerful schooL But I do think that Socrates' suppositions are that philosophical beginning which can be forgotten but never superseded. l. Let me add here that the next most important source of the Theory of Ideas, very difficult to use, is Aristotle, who reports its technical elaborations and problems and looks at it, as it were, askance. 2. I am thinking of the so-called problems of participation and separation, of self-predication, of the Third Man, and of eidetic structure. Incidentally, in the Parmenides Socrates is portrayed as the supporter of that THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW very version of the theory-that the ideas are "separate" from thingswhich Aristotle explicitly denies he held. Aristotle makes this claim in a puzzling passage which is the prime source for all denials of Socrates' authorship of the theory (Metaphysics 987 b). 3. The meaning of theoria in Greek is, however, that of a viewing, a sight seen, contemplation, and in that sense the Ideas are very much a "theory." 4. A Socratic hypothesis is unlike a post-Baconian hypothesis in not being a conjecture to be verified by observations, that is, experience. It is a little closer to an astronomical hypothesis such as Plato is said by Simplicius to have first demanded. He required of astronomers an intellectual construct, a mathematical theory, devised to "save the phenomena," that is, to display the anomalous appearances as grounded in regularities acceptable to reason. A Socratic hypothesis, however, is not a postulated constmct hut a discovered being. 5. Nor is the translation "form" quite good, because it is too reminiscent of the Aristotelian distinction between form and matter. The eidos may "produce" a form in a thing (Phaedo l04 d) but it is not its form. 6. I have given this presentation a questionable coherence by ranging through the dialogues as if Plato's works constituted a planned-out whole. But then 1 believe that they do, and that what scholars consider the "development" of Plato's thought from early to late dialogues is largely the advancing of one or the other of these different beginnings and aspects. 7. Accordingly the Phaedrus, in which this beginning of philosophy is preeminently set out, was once, probably wrongly, thought to be Plato's earliest dialogue. 8. Of course, the visible things do not constitute the eidos, nor is the eidos their concept, that is, an abstraction from a class or the definition which selects its members. I want to mention also that, although it is not his fixed usage, Plato does refer to the greatest eide as gene, genera, kindred groups (Sophist 254 d), thereby indicating that in the highest reaches eidetic shapeliness yields to associative characteristics. 9. For Socrates methodos means a path of inquiry (Republic 533 b) indicated by the inquiry itself, not a pre-set investigatory /Jrocedure. 10. (a) The word ousia did play a role analogous to modern "reality" in common language. As we speak of "real" estate, Greeks used ousia to mean one's property or substance. (b) Scholars attribute to Socrates the distinction between two uses ofthe verb "to be," the predicative and the existential. In its predicative use "is" acts as a copula, a coupling between the ~ubject of discourse and what is said of it, as in "This face is beautiful." The existential "is" occurs in the chopped-off sentence "Justice is," meaning "is to be found sometimes, somewhere in the world;" but "Justice exists." But distinctions in verbal usage are not Socrates' aim. When we say that "this face is beautiful," he will ask what beauty is, or, again, when we assert that "justice exists" he may want to know in what realm-and it will not be one which has time and place. II. Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (The M.I.T. Pcess) 1968 7 c, 79 ff. In brief, it goes like this: According to the stranger the eidos of Being is composed of two eide, change and stillness (Sophist 254 d), since first of all everything that is, is either in motion or at rest, though never both at once; these eide never mingle. Being is not either of these alone, or their mixture, but precisely both together. That, however, is just how number assemblages behave; Socrates himself draws attention to this fact in that favorite formula: each one, both two. (H.ippias major 301 a, Phaedo 97 a, Republic 476 a, Theaetetus 146 e). Each unit in a number remains what it was, one, but both together have a new name and nature, two; they are together what neither is by itself. Being, the highest eidos, would then be the eidetic Two-not anything above or beyond the two eidetic units, change and stillness, which constitute it, but simply their being together. Aristotle reports the Academy's interest in the arithmetic organization of the eide. (Metaph)'sics 987 b). He also points out that the eidetic units are not, like arithmetic units, indifferent, and so capable of being "thrown together" any which way, that is, added, (1081 a). They can only associate into unique eidetic numbers, each according to its nature; such eidetic counting, which drives speech to and then beyond its limits, is dialectic proper. 37 �Three. by Meyer Lib en from New York Street GamesStories and Memories LADY, I DID IT in a moment of dissatisfaction and restlessness. It was a late evening in early spring, darkness swarmed softly over sidewalk and stoop, softly filled in the cracks of light, remnants of a day forever gone. We had finished an afternoon of hard and concentrated play and had enough of that, prefiguring the days not too distant when our play would be put off as a childish thing, opening up long periods of dissatisfaction and restlessness, for nothing rushed in to fill the vacuum created by the lost possibilities of play. We wanted adventure, activity outside the internecine play on which we had fed for so many years. "Let's have a track meet," one of us suggested, but nobody budged. "Let's find the !15th Street Gang," one of us suggested, but nobody budged. "Let's play Lady I Did It," one of us suggested, and that was just right, being midway between the play we could not leave and the power of the outside world we did not quite dare approach, for the ll5th Street Gang was an older gang, all-powerful in the area stretching from the Harlem to the Hudson between l!Oth and !16th Streets. So we started to play Lady I Did It. This is a game which stands midway between the play and fantasy spirit of childhood and the demands of the outer world. It is a group testing of the Reality Principle. It is a simple and insolent game. Any number can play. We approached a ground-floor apartment in a house up the block and one of us rang the bell. There was the sound of footsteps, and a woman opened the door, looked out at us. "Lady I Did It" and we ran off. Though any number (more than one) can play this game, it requires at least five to work up the necessary gang spirit, bravado, and sense of protection of the guilty one to give the game its interest. Part of the interest is in the woman's surprise at the number of kids, also as to the reason for our presence. This was the insolence of the game, that we stayed to tell her what we had done, that we had done it. This was much different from the antics of the little kids on the block, who played the game of Ringing Doorbells, then ran off before anyone answered. Meyer Liben (1911-1975) was a New Yark writer. I remember him in the names and the sights of the various neighborhoods of the times of his life: the West Ill th Street in Harlem of his childhood, the Washington Heights of his youth, the Village and Chelsea of his adulthood. He went to City College ('32) where he was editor of the college newspaper, The Campus, and played on the basketball team. Trotsky, he told me they used to tell him at City, was really a City graduate. Unprepossesing and simple, he had a life in his eyes which I will not forget, and a gentleness which was quite capable of letting you know when you were un" fair-without scolding. He knew where he came from and where he had lived and did not forget or hide it, which meant he was loyal with a loy- alty that was never a burden to others. Every word of his I have ever read tells you that. For more than thirty years he published in many magazines. In 1967 he published a collection of nine short stories and a short novel, Justice Hunger, that went unnoticed. Shortly after his death, George Dennison described him (New York Times, August I, 1976), probably correctly, as "a writer of a kind most of us don't believe exists, an unknown first-rate writer." Most of his work remains unpublished. The three stories published here come from an unpublished collection of twelve stories and an essay on New York street games called, New York Street Games, Stories and Memories.-L.R. A bunch of us were standing on the corner, future-bound, 38 JULY 1980 • TilE COllEGE ·. �With us the confrontation was the game-the band of us, emboldened by numbers, staring down the confused woman in that instant of silence which preceded the disclosure. Properly speaking, the disclosure did not answer the woman's question (which we rarely gave her the chance to ask), that question being: "What do you want?" Before she could ask that question, for which we had no formulated answer, one of us announced his guilt and off we scooted. The announcement by the guilty one made it no easier for any one of us who happened to be caught, because we were all equally blamed. This was one of the hazards of the game, we came up against it on our very next venture, when a man answered the ring. "Mister I did it," one of us said feebly, for the heart was not in the formulation, partly because it was an irate man facing us and partly because it was not the formulation and so violated the rules of the game. Quick as a flash, he went after us, just missed the trailing one with a kick which, had it landed, would have pro· pelled that trailer much closer to the front of the line. Our next ring was answered by a little girl of about three years old, whose smile and interested surprise was in sharp contrast to our nervous belligerency. She looked around from one to the other, pleased at our numbers, un- aware of our defiance, which, under her infant scrutiny, withered fast. We felt very foolish, standing there with our stored energy directed against a target insensitive to our needs and power. When she called out: ((Ma, boys are here," the spirit of the gang softened more. Grumbling and cursing, we broke up, moved away aimlessly, disregarded the door which was slammed behind us. "Baby I did it," one of us yelled, and we laughed, recovered our spirits a bit, tried our luck in another apartment • house. Here we were again disappointed, for there came to the door a very old man, he was wearing a yarmulke, and peered at us through eyes half-shut, without saying a word . We were again at a loss, stymied by the presence of another impervious object, for even had he asked us, in a voice cracked and torn, what it was that we wanted, and had one of us announced that he was the culprit, the daring bellringer, the old man surely would not have reacted with any resentment or even any interest to this disclo- sure, which, for an instant, bound the guilty one to us with the feelings we reserved for the hero in danger. But there was no danger. We had nothing to say, and the old man only looked and shrugged at this unexpected image of adolescent solidarity, now breaking up before his bleary eyes, for with mumbled imprecations we again scattered, while the old man swiftly, and in a voice much clearer THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW than any one of us imagined he owned, uttered an incomprehensible prayer, probably of deliverance. Then, on our next venture, our game succeeded per- fectly, we were pleased the way a troupe is pleased when after all the rehearsals, all the fumblings and imperfections, the play is suddenly performed to the utmost limits of its meaning and its form. We chose, by one of those random universal choices where the inclinations of the warring individuals are for the moment subsumed in a joyful group harmony and solidarity, a top floor apartment and stood for a moment in front of the chosen door, enjoying the possibility of the imminent appearance of the key figure and the swift completion of our curious game. During this pause we chose, by an intangible stirring, a movement of the group spirit, a series of lightning calculations, stray memories, movements of withdrawal, by the prominence in the foreground which one of us suddenly assumed, by a curious exigency of space, by the discipline of a gang, by a (finally) unanimous inclination-we chose one amongst us to step forward and commit, for all of us, the predetermined act. He stepped forward swiftly, with a courage partly determined by the presence of the rest of us, partly by the role towards which he advanced, and partly by the ordinary amount of the spirit of play which he possessed, and pushed the button. He stepped back into the anonymity of the group, and we closed ranks about him, as a .protective cover, until the moment when he would step forward and expose himself as the culprit. The bell rang and almost immediately we heard the footsteps, vigorous, of the person coming towards the door, down the long hallway into which were built the bedrooms. We were quiet jn the moment. before the confrontation, one of us looked back towards the head of the stairs, measuring the distance to safety. This was in a way a very satisfying moment-the thing had been done, for better or worse, together we awaited the issue, bound communally in face of the danger which we ourselves, by our collective will, had brought into being, for we didn't have to be in front of this door, awaiting the answer to our insolent summons. We could have been playing in the street, in some violent opposition to each other, or been standing on the corner, talking of the heroes of the world, those who had left their blocks and made their ways in far-off realms, figures shadowy and real, gods we dreamed of approaching and rivalling. Instead we stood in front of this door, our rivalries, jealousies, and dreams buried for the moment in this unified thrust against the adult world. The door opened, and there appeared in the doorway, slightly harrassed, interrupted in household work, a rather young woman, who gazed quizzically, without fear, at the band of boys who formed a semi-circle in front of her door. She was genuinely puzzled, not the suspicious type who assumes that because strangers are at her door, harm 39 �is meant, and shuts the door swiftly before the harm is done. Nor was she one of those who recognized this game, like the smart-alecky woman, who seeing us crowd her door, exclaimed: "Lady I did it" with the hysterical glee which some show in destroying the pleasures of others. No, the woman now at the door was genuinely puzzled, could not imagine what it was that we wanted, tried in fact to collect her thoughts, to shake off her household distraction, to concentrate on the meaning of this little gang which stood defiantly in front of her, betraying an excitement which she could not understand was created by the imminence of a disclosure which in itself would be rather pointless to her, though certainly annoying. Then, when the pause had reached its fullness, not too early, before the suspense had been built up, and not too late, after the novelty had worn off, our chosen one, before the lady had a chance to make a comment or ask a question (and it was always more dramatic when we broke the silence) shouted out, in a voice of triumphant selfconfession: Lady, I Did It, and we all beat it down the stairs to the street, where we exulted for a moment in our victory. KING OF THE HILL Because of the date of his birth and because of the regulations of the Board of Education (lucky for this story) Davey Flaxman entered public school in midterm, February. He was not quite six, and had been in this strange new world of school no more than a couple of weeks when the teacher, Miss Dawson, announced that the next day, February 22, was a holiday, to celebrate the birthday of our first president, George Washington, and there would be no school. Indeed, the school would be closed (but Davey's best friend, Chick, wise in the ways of the world, said that the school custodian, Mr. Ogden, would have to come in to take care of the furnace). Miss Dawson was not one of the strict ones. She was tired and kind. She said that George Washington was the father of our country, that he led us in both war and peace. Davey was puzzled by the idea of a holiday. There was no school on Saturday and Sunday, but it was not called a holiday. He was of course aware that not all days were the same, that his parents fasted on a certain day in the year, that firecrackers were shot off on another day. These were some of the unusual days in the changing daily scene, but here after going to school regularly, he was told that he would not have to go to school because tomorrow was a holiday, and a Thursday. A holiday meant that you did not have to go to school, just the way, for his father, a holiday meant that he did not have to go to the store. But he usually went to the synagogue on those days. 40 "Do we have to go anywhere on George Washington's birthday?" Davey asked his older brother Daniel. "Are you crazy or sumpin'?" asked Danny. "you don't have to go anywhere, you just don't have to go to school." There was an assembly and a big picture of George Washington on the wall. He looked very serious, but not angry. If he is the father of our country, thought Davey, who is the mother of our country. He asked his brother that, but his brother thought that was very funny. He even laughed, and didn't bother to answer. Davey thought it was maybe because he didn't know, but most of the time his brother answered Davey's questions. Nor had Miss Dawson said who was the mother of the country, but she had said that our country used to be a colony, that it belonged to England, and then came the Revolutionary War to make America free from England. Davey repeated it at the supper table that night. "Of course," said his father, "he was like Moses, he led his people to freedom." "Is there a holiday for Moses' birthday too?" asked Davey. Although he had only been in school for a few weeks, and although Miss Dawson was not strict, like some of the other teachers, but tired and kind, Davey liked the idea of no school somewhere in the middle of the week. He did not find it much fun to sit in one place for about five hours every day. Mr. Flaxman laughed at Davey's question. It seemed that most questions about holidays made people laugh. "Passover is the celebration of the freedom of the Jews," he said. "I don't know about Moses' birthday. I don't know if it's written in the Bible or not." On that day, in that year, February 22 was cold. It had snowed the day before, snowed heavily and steadily, and then, in the early hours of the morning, it had stopped snowing, a bitter wind quieted down, and snow lay evenly on the streets, with the far-off quiet of snow. The kids came out early, lured by the snow, the heaviest snow of the season. Some of the bigger kids carried ice skates, on their way to the park, from which news had spread that the lake was frozen, kids of all ages came out with sleds, the older ones off to Snake Hill in the park, the younger ones to belly whop on sidewalk and in gutter, racing one another, or seeing who could cover the most distance (complexities of time and space). In those notexactly pastoral days, play in the gutter was conceivable, actual. Davey, like most of the little kids, came out to play in the snow-filled streets; they made curious designs in the snow, wrote their names, and the names of others, in the snow, wrote random numbers or showed their arithmetic powers in more detail, made little houses and other architectural shapes, made snowballs and hurled them at likely targets, including one another. Snow is not a pervasive element for New Yorkers, some winters there is hardly any snow at all, not enough to JULY 1980 • TilE CO!l.EGE �make a firm snowball, to say nothing of a minihouse, and to say less than nothing of the great hill which was slowly formed by the work of many hands, a firmly-packed hill, with a solid base, not so much soaring as rising to a height of eleven, twelve feet, no Mount McKinley, but a fine, even impressive hill in the eyes of Davey and his friends to play on, and what game is more likely to be played on such a hill than King of the Hill? Of all the simple, basic games in the world, what can compare (for basicness and simplicity) with King of the Hill? Someone, by decisiveness or speed, or after formal choosing, gets to the top of a hill, most often stone, but the material is indifferent, snow is just fine. Why should he be on top of the hill? Why should he have the greater view? And above all, why should he look down on everyone else? Why should he be alone up there, even in splendor, and the rest milling about on the flat earth, hardly possessing that ground, sharing it, certainly not in control, and he up there King of the Hill? These were some of the questions that went through the minds of Davey, of Chick, Richie, Benjy, and the other kids, as they looked up at Allie, secure atop the snow hill, gazing down in disdain at the groundlings, daring them, by his presence and manner (for few on top of the hill will act in a modest or casual way, in an unkingly manner) to dislodge him from his lofty perch. That is not the most difficult of tasks, it sometimes takes time, there are repulses, the would-be king can be pushed off, even tumbled ignominiously down the hill, but after a while, in the fullness and necessity of time, by a swift ascent, by curious distractions, by a planned movement, maybe flanking, of two or three aspirants ("you go slow up that side, you start to holler, I'll sprint up the other side") the king was dethroned, and a new King was in command of the height. No one of them was king forever. Now, while these efforts were being made (the succession was always violent, not hereditary), jerry appeared on the scene. He was one of the big guys on the block, Chick's older brother, a sophomore at CCNY, and a keen and eager analyst of any situation at all. He paused to observe the scene and then to comment on it. "Some day to play King of the Hill." "Whatdya mean?'' asked Benjy. "I mean," said Jerry, "that today, as you well know, is George Washington's birthday, and there were some people in America who thought that he ought to be made king, forgetting the nature of the colonial struggle." Jerry, in making his point, forgot that he was talking to six year olds, then remembered that he was talking to six year olds, and said: "I mean, some people forgot that we got rid of one King George by fighting a war, so what was the sense of having another king. It turned out that his name would have been George, too." "A president is better'n a king," said Benjy. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW "Why?" asked jerry, suddenly seeing himself as Socrates. "Because," said Benjy, ((he's elected." "So what's so great about being elected?" asked jerry, suddenly seeing himself as the Devil's Advocate. Benjy seemed puzzled, couldn't come up with an answer, so Chick chimed in: "If you're elected, it means you know what the president stands for, he has to tell you, a king doesn't have to tell you nothing if he doesn't want to." Benjy made a swift movement up the snow hill, was easily repulsed, just about managed to come down on his feet. "That's very good," said jerry to Chick, suddenly seeing himself as the Encouraging Older Brother, rather than the older brother. "Yah," said Benjy, "all you have to do to be a king is to be a king's son." Noting that Allie seemed bemused up there on top of the hill, Richie sprinted up, but Allie shook off his bemusement at the sound of approach and thwarted this new challenge, more than ever King of the Hill, though truth to tell, he was becoming a bit bored with the loneliness of his position and somewhat yearned for the company, commonplace though it was, of the groundlings down there. He was no doubt ready to be toppled, but aware of his own vulnerability, he showed the greater determination in a fierceness of mien, a stubbornness of posture, to remain King of the Hill. jerry was a Freudian, and he thought, watching the game, that here was another illustration of the theory of the Primal Horde, the banding of the brothers (though on a somewhat individuated basis) to topple the father from his throne and then to win the mother, though she seemed to be nowheres in the game (murder, he also thought, is much less of a taboo than incest). Chick moved up the hill warily, and while Allie covered his movements, Davey sprinted up, pushed Allie (who was ready to be overthrown) off the top of the hill. He slid in a babyish way down the slope, and now Davey was King of the Hill. jerry was also a Marxist (it was before the time of the Freudo/Marxists) and he saw this game as another illustration of the endless struggle for power that was going on everywheres, but the kids would soon be finished with this game, and start on another, for it was George Washington's birthday, no school all day. THE RELAY RACE On a late afternoon in june 1924, a group of kids were coming to the end of their track meet on a street in the North Central Park area. It was a contest between the upthe-blocks and down-the-blocks, not one block against another, but these internecine struggles can be the bitterest of all. It was close to the median point between the end of the war (not which war) and the beginnings of the depression, 41 �and these are always the greatest points. Calvin Coolidge was filling out Warren Harding's term, and jokes about the New Englander's taciturnity were heard: "Mr. President," said a woman reporter, "I've wagered that I can make you speak three words." "You lose," said the unsmiling Cal. But these youngsters were more interested in the Olympic games which were coming up in Paris, and were following avidly the exploits of Jackson Scholz, DeHart Hubbard, Harold Osborn, to say nothing of Paavo Nurmi, the "Phantom Finn/' who, stop~watch in hand, was run~ ning all competition into the ground. Considerations of a technical and human nature restricted the scope of these street track meets. The high jump, for example, proved impractical in competition because it was not possible to trust the steadiness (or the neutrality) of the two rope-holding lads. And nothing could be thrown. That cut out the javelin, the shot-put, the discus, the hammer. But most everything else was in-the sprints, the jumps, the middle and long-distance runs, the relays, even the Marathon (which was omitted in this particular meet for lack of time, it being a race ten times around the block). The pole vault had not yet penetrated the popular athletic consciousness. Though Davey and Chick lived in the middle of the block and considered themselves middle-of-the-blocks, for purposes of competition they allied themselves with the up-the-blocks, partly because that area was less populated than down-the-block, for up there was the Yiddish theatre, whose side wall took up space which otherwise would have been taken by apartment buildings. The meet was over, except for the relay race, and it had been very close. The running broad jump had just ended, and the contestants were crowded around the scorekeeper, who was keeping count, chalking up the score in the gutter. "What's the score? What's the score?" "Lemme alone, Iemme figure," said the scorekeeper, Pimples, who had been chosen not so much for his arithmetic ability, but that he was one of the older guys, and therefore in a sense above the battle, and mostly because he was around and willing to take on the job. The starter and judges were picked out of the same complex of reasons. Pimples was scribbling away furiously. The scoring was spread 10-5-3. "It's 84-78," he said, "the score is 84-78." 11 Favor who?" "Favor the down-the-blocks," he said, "who do you think?" What he meant was that anyone who had been keeping score wouldn't be asking such an idiotic question, but certain of the up-the-blocks argued, from what he said, and from the tone of his voice, that he was obviously on the side of the down-the-blocks. "Whats the difference who's ahead?" asked Davey, "it all depends on the relay anyway." 42 That was because the relay counted lO points for the winners, 0 for the losers. This procedure had been agreed on, that is, it had ostensibly been agreed on, for now there came forth a champion from the lists of the downthe-blocks, one Wally, to ask since when did the relay count 10 points, when from time immemorial the relay had always counted 5 points. But Wally was so obviously trying to pull a fast one (the combined weight of the scorekeeper, the starter, and the judges being against him) that even his own teammates pulled him back. "He's just kiddin'," said one of them, but nobody took it very humorously. "Cut the stallin'," cried one of the spectators, "and let's get the relay started." There were spectators: girls, non-running boys, older kids, even a few stray adults. They sat on the curb, or stood on the sidewalk. There were viewers too, from the apartments; they leaned out the windows, silently watch· ing, or crying out encouragement to their favorites. The relay race was a four-sewer race, each contestant running one sewer, which was 331/3 yards, that is, if three sewers made up 100 yards, which was the popular notion. This notion rested on a legend that many years back, someone (long grown and moved into the great world off the block) had actually measured three sewers-though it was pretty clear that the sewers were equally spaced-and had come up with the 100 yard figure. It was, of course, a fine figure, the classic sprint distance and all that. We always thought it was pretty intelligent of the city authorities to figure the distance between the sewers that way. So this relay wasn't much of a race from the point of view of distance covered. But two sewers each man was out because there weren't enough sewers on the block. There was another possibility: each man running two sewers and then the third man doubling back. But this had led to many arguments in the past-the third man tended to overextend his welcome to the oncoming runner, meeting him before he had completed his stint. There was another reason why this double-back relay, where you ended up at the start, was not favored. It lacked a significant character of a relay race, whose primary charm is in the fact that distance is cooperatively covered, that the precious stick has been carried further into the distance. The circular track, of course, has helped to destroy this aspect of the relay race. They were getting ready for the relay race. There was jockeying for position-both sides trying to anticipate the other's line-up, to put a strong man up against a weak man, etc. The general procedure was to put your fastest man last; in the case of up-the-blocks, that would be Benny, a stocky lad who ran like a streak, with absolute absorption, everything propelled him forward-legs, arms, and heart. Davey was a brilliant starter and the obvious choice for lead-off man. In so short a race, a slow start could be fatal. Chick and Allie were running second and JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE �third, in that order, though it was difficult to say what motivated this choice. Allie was the fastest runner, so you had double strength at the end of the race, but it was as easy to argue that it was more important to get off to a strong start, and then depend on the last runner to make up for the third man's weakness. The line· up of the teams always led to interesting, and sometimes vehement discussion, with undertones of character analysis. There always seemed to be one weak man on a relay team. "Why don't they get started?" asked a bystander. "They're getting the sticks," said another. The "sticks" were tightly-rolled sections of newspaper. The officials were rolling these papers, making sure that both "sticks" were the same weight, and the same length, for they had to meet the extraordinarily detailed scrutiny of both teams. "] hate the relay race," said one of the kids watching, and there was some agreement. They thought it was somehow not a real race, it being the only non-individual event in the track and field program. After the first runner, it became a kind of continuing handicap race. "You're making a great mistake, kids," said Chick's older brother, Jerry, a sophomore at City College. He had just come out of the candy store with a pack of cigarettes in his hand; he lit one of the cigarettes with the awkward nonchalance of a beginner. He was I 7, having skipped twice and then gone to Townsend Harris Hall. He was standing down the block, near the finish line. "A great mistake, kids/' he said, "the relay is something special." "What do you mean special?" By now the "sticks" had been analyzed, measured, and approved, and the eight runners were moving slowly towards their places at the manhole covers. Some of the runners were limbering up. "I mean," said Jerry, and you could see he was torn be- tween not talking over the kids' heads and showing off his newly-won knowledge and vocabulary, "that the relay is a cooperative event, people working together for something." "What's so great about that?" asked one of the kids. "Plenty," said Jerry, "that's how things get accomplished in the world. Take science-one scientist does the work, and then he dies. So another scientist carries it on. It's like a relay race. Copernicus to Galileo to Newton to Einstein. What a team!" "I'll take the Yankees," said another kid, who was working with a soft ball, trying out different positions with his fingers, for curves and drops, perhaps dreaming of the fade-away and double shoot. "Where do you think the word relay comes from?" enquired the young collegian. There was a pause devoid of expectancy. "It comes from the French," he went on, "it has to do with relays of dogs and horses, you've seen in the movies how a team of horses and carriage comes into an inn, the THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW horses are exhausted, foaming white spit, then a new team of horses takes over. It's a relay." "Now that we have autos," said a youth, "who needs those relays?" "That's not the idea," said Jerry, "it's one man taking the load from another, carrying on. And let me tell you, it's much faster too. Do you know what the mile record is?" "That's Nurmi's record." "It must be about 4:11." The kids were interested. "That's pretty close," said Jerry, "It's 4:10.4 and it's held by Nurmi all right. And let me tell you what the mile relay record is. It's 3:16.4. Almost a minute difference." "Well naturally," said one of the kids, "there's four guys running." 11 "That's just it/' said Jerry, doing it cooperatively, cut- ting down the time almost a minute." He introduced the word "cooperatively" in a rather gingerly way, but nobody paid too much attention, because up the block you could see Davey and his opposite number, Mitch, take their places at the starting line. Now the relay race we are about to describe is one of those events where the description will surely take a longer time than the duration of the thing described (unless, in the utmost baldness of narrative, we were to say, simply: the up-the-blocks took the lead, kept it on the second leg, lost it on the third leg because of faulty passing of the stick and then regained the lead on the anchor leg to win the race. That is what happened, and takes less time-to read or write-than the what? 30 seconds it takes to run this race). In the first place, there were two false starts, one by Davey, the other by his opponent. This was blamed on the starter: seasoned observers contended that there was too much of a pause between the Get Set and the Go, that the kids were too nervous and bound to "break" in the long interval. Then, as they got set for the third try, an automobile turned the western corner of the block. Now there were guards at each end of the street, and had the race started, the car would have been stopped (as cars had been stopped during the running of the other events) until the race was over, but since the relay had not started, the car was allowed to proceed, and then all the runners started limbering up again, some of them quite desperately, as though their muscles were undergoing some unusual tensing as the car travelled over the stadium. "No more cars," cried the starter. This message was heard by the traffic official up the block and was relayed to the one at the other end of the street. "It'll get dark by the time this race starts," grumbled one of the spectators, but he was talking of a race whose duration was-what? 30 seconds?-and the afternoon sun, though sinking, was quite a way from its home in the Hudson. The starter cupped his hands around his mouth. "On your marks . .. " 43 �"Get set . .. " and taking to heart the criticism which had been hurled at him, he pushed ahead of his natural inclination, with a swift "Go" and off went the two lead-off men. They got off to a pretty even start Mitch, a little taller, had a longer stride, so he took the lead. But Davey was a fleet lad, a form devotee, he would not hesitate to see a movie through again so as to get back to the newsreel which showed Charley Paddock streaking off to another sprint victory. Davey flailed his arms, plunged forward towards the waiting Chick, whose hand was outstretched. In such a short relay, the handling of the stick is, of course, fundamentaL Moving slowly away, Chick took the stick smoothly (the fruition of long practice between the friends) and tore off towards the third man, Allie, with an edge on his rivaL This was an edge that Chick maintained, but when he came to pass the stick, there was a moment of confusion. The handling was not smooth-either Chick was anxious, or Allie held on, the timing was bad, the transitional instant was prolonged, so that Allie was a couple of steps behind his opponent He strove valiantly, ran with a kind of stubborn chagrin, picked up a step, and then made a perfect relay to Benny, who tore after his rival as though he had been shot from a gun, and, head bobbing, came even with him, passed him in the last few yards, and kept running almost down to the end of the block. Then he turned around and ran springily to the finish line, for the plaudits of the crowd. Th')t was how the up-the-blocks won the track meet; 44 then most of the kids stood around in front of the candystore, discussing the various events, the turning points, the key performances. "You kids ran a terrific relay," said Jerry, "and that pass from Allie to Benny, that was perfect." "Yeah," said Chick to his older brother, but the relation between affirmation and agreement was not clear. "Benny ran some race." He was in this way lowering the importance of the passing of the stick (because of his difficulty in that maneuver) and contradicting the cooperative point of view of his brother by fastening on to the exploit of the anchor man. He was also just contradicting his older brother. Jerry waved off his kid brother. HWhat do you know?" he asked, in the immemorial way you treat a kid brother who is disputing you in public. HPlenty," answered Chick, in the immemorial way a kid brother stands up to an older brother who is putting him in his place in public. "The worst thing that can happen in a track meet," said Jerry, "is when one of the runners drops the stick, particularly when it's a close race. You don't realize how important that stick is till you drop it The runner is ashamed, angry, the crowd's sympathy is spontaneous. And when the runner picks up the stick and starts on his hopeless quest, the crowd is with him." HFor a minute/' said Davey, "then they forget him." "Certainly," said Jerry, "their attention then falls on the ones who are carrying on their task victoriously. That's natural.'' Then the kids began to drift home, for supper. JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE �Scientific Discovery, Logic, and Luck Stillman Drake Innovation in science frequently appears to have started from mere hunch or chance observation. But when one man introduces several innovations, it might seem that in science luck is not random, which is a contradiction in terms. The books written about "the logic of discovery" was Galileo. It contributes nothing to an understanding of his achievements to say that he had many precursorsmen who saw, or were on the brink of seeing, the law of free fall but did not assert it and develop its implications; or who invented telescopes but did not turn them to the have been by logicians, not discoverers, and have been heavens; or who did, but saw no more than many unre- more of interest to philosophers than of use to scientists. corded fixed stars; and so on. Nor does it diminish Galileo's physics to note that full recognition of the law of inertia, Since an element of luck enters into every scientific dis- covery, and luck does not lend itself to logical analysis, the most that has been concluded is that "fortune favors the prepared mind." There is nevertheless a sound reason for the invariable presence of some element of luck in scientific innovation, and that reason also has a bearing on the curious historical pattern in which, time after time, an era of brilliant inno- vation has been followed by one of methodical progress before another burst of discovery. The reason, and the pattern, depend on the fact that science is developed by logic, of which the rules must never be violated, but it is also suddenly advanced by unexpected innovation. What· ever can be rigorously deduced by logic from things a]. ready established cannot require luck in any useful sense of that word. An enormous amount can be deduced from a single basic discovery-usually more than the discoverer lives long enough to work out, and often enough to keep a whole generation of scientists busy. That is why we do not regard a product of rigorous logical deduction as a startling new discovery, at any rate for the most part. Innova- tion requires something more than logical development of things already established-and that "something more," being itself not logical, lends itself to classification as hunch, insight, chance, or luck. It has often happened that a scientist has made an ob- servation or has hit upon an idea that he himself did not follow out, but which later, at the hands of another, became extremely fruitful. We have then the case of the "precursor" in science, usually a man who was too logical to pursue anything not previously established, or was too weak in logic to perceive all possible implications of his observation or idea. In contrast, there appear from time to time men extraordinarily fruitful in scientific discoveries, one of whom Stillman Drake's latest work is Galileo at Work: I-Iis Scientific Biography, (Chicago, 1978). THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW or surface tension, or strength of materials came only later. The discoveries that the pendulum is not precisely isochronous in large and small oscillations, and that the path of a projectile is not truly parabolic, improved Galileo's science after his death, without thereby detracting from the value of his initial approximations. In cases of men who made several innovations in orie field, or new discoveries in several fields, it seems to me a poor procedure to charge those contributions off one by one to good fortune-although if my view is correct that can always be done, inasmuch as there is some element of luck in every innovation. I think that instead we should accept the adage that luck favors a prepared mind, and then see how the mind of a Galileo was prepared for so many strokes of luck by watching how he worked when confronted with one. As an example I shall use not a famous discovery of Galileo's, but one that is hardly known except to specialists-one that did not require genius, and that anyone can easily follow. At the same time it was not trivial, having both scientific and practical implications. On 7 january 1610, Galileo noted some tiny stars that on the next night seemed to have moved; within a week he knew them to be revolving around jupiter. By a habit of mind now common among scientists, Galileo soon opened a journal of observations, putting down each time of observation, a diagram of the satellite position, and a numerical estimate of their separations. It is anything but clear what use for such detail Galileo had in mind, but thinking quantitatively is how scientists prepare, even when they know not for what. By 12 March Galileo's Starry Messenger was already in print, announcing telescopic discoveries that at once be- came the subject of widespread popular admiration and vehement philosophical contradiction. Having had so short a time to study his observations, Galileo contented himself with saying that the closer a satellite was to jupiter, the more rapidly it went around, and that the period 45 �of the most remote one was semimonthly-he prudently preferring at this early stage a noncommittal word to any number. In September the German astronomer Johann Kepler confirmed the existence of Jupiter's satellites by observations of his own and remarked that, though Galileo had assigned a fortnightly period to the outer one, the periods of the others were not known and might never be. Kepler was by far the most expert, practiced, and imaginative astronomical calculator of the age. One would think that if anyone could discover all four periods it would be Kepler, and that he would have known how to do it, had he thought it worth the bother. Yet all he ever offered was an estimate, in April-May 1611, that the next lowest satellite had a period of eight days. By that time Galileo not only knew the approximate periods of all four satellites, but had begun predicting their future positions. Kepler's pessimism was surely not based on inability to think of a logical and systematic way to find the periods, for even I can do that. Rather, Kepler was pessimistic because he knew all too well the practical difficulties of carrying out the obvious logical procedure. This obvious logical procedure would begin with determination of the exact period of the outer satellite, now called IV, in the same way that Galileo had first estimated it. The outer satellite conveniently separates itself visibly from all the others by moving much farther east and west than any other. After many recorded observations, one could find two times of greatest departure from jupiter either way, and derive from them the hourly advance of IV in its rota-. tion around jupiter, assumed uniform. Armed with this, by the simplest trigonometry, one could next remove IV from all the previously recorded observations. In such diagrams, III (the next lowest) would have the previous unique qualities of IV. But in cancelling IV from the original diagrams, some other satellite that occasionally had happened to be in line with IV might also be eliminated, and real difficulties might also arise in deciding which of two satellites to eliminate when another one was near IV. The ensuing steps would simply repeat the process; but here is where Kepler, from long experience, foresaw problems that might be insuperable. Thus, as jupiter is more closely approached, the number of unintended cancellations and mistaken identities increases; innumerable trials might turn out to have been in vain, and hence the logical method seemed hardly worth the trouble. Galileo read Kepler's remark and. was not a bit discouraged. He had gone on making observations as regularly as he could, despite his move from Padua to Florence, a new job, other activities, cloudy nights, and the inevitable period each year when jupiter is too close to the sun to be observed (or requires one to get up too early). He continued to record observations as exactly as he could, but did not attempt any systematic search for the satellite periods, at least so far as any of his surviving notes show. This was not aimless; Galileo knew very well what he was doing. Unkindly put, he was waiting for some lucky 46 + Galileo manuscript Figure 1 chance in order to save needless labor; more kindly, he was biding his time and watching, like a cat at a mousehole. The only difference is that a cat knows what it expects-a mouse-and Galileo did not know the exact form the clue he needed would take. Nevertheless, he was confident he would recognize a valuable clue when he saw it. On 11 December 1610, Galileo wrote to the Tuscan ambassador at Prague, through whom he had been previously in touch with Kepler: "I hope I may have found the method of defining the periods of the four Medicean stars, deemed with good reason by Sig. Kepler to be almost inexplicable." Now, what kind of a way is that to talk? How can you announce possession of something and at the same time attribute good reason to someone who doubted its existence? Only by recognizing the logic behind Kepler's pessimism and by having found a completely different solution to the problem. After a quarter-century of attending closely to Galileo's exact words, I took these particular words to mean that Cali leo had hit on a method of approach that could not reasonably have been known to anyone else. I therefore examined his journal of observaJULY 1980 • THE COllEGE �tions to see if anything had recently shown up, and sure enough, there was Galileo's "mouse." Beside Galileo's record of the observation on the night of 10 December 1610, he placed a cross. The only other such marking among his observations stands beside the entry for the night of 3 December, just one week before (or to be exact, one hour less than a week). Those two observations provide the key to the "method" that Galileo said, in his letter of the next day, might lead him to the determination of the periods of all the satellites. To understand this key, you need to know the meanings of the markings in Figure 1. First, Galileo entered the day and the hour of observation; the month and year are found by looking through his journal. He gave the hour after sunset at Florence (not a casual, but an astronomical point in time each day). He represented jupiter by a circle and each satellite by a star. Between each pair he put his estimate of separation, in units of one visual diameter of jupiter. Above each star Galileo generally placed another number, which represented his judgment of its telescopic magnitude on the traditional scale of six for naked-eye observations. His reason for doing this was that before he could systematically calculate satellite positions, he had no possible clue to their individual identities except relative brightness-not a very good clue, but one that might turn out to be useful. If we add up the indicated separations between adjacent pairs to get the distance of each satellite from jupiter's nearest edge, east or west of jupiter as the case may be, Galileo' s reason for having marked these two particular observations with crosses (and for writing his optimistic letter the next day) becomes clear: 3 Dec., Hour 5 10 Dec., Hour 4 El4 E6 E6 0 W4 WlO Wl4 0 W4 W10 Galileo had made about ninety observations before 3 December, but nothing like this had previously occurred. It was the kind of clue he had been waiting for. We might say, "What luck, hitting on these two similar positions just a week apart, so that they came close together on the same page!" We might equally well say, "What luck, the cat pouncing on the mouse the very moment it came out of the hole!" But if we knew that the cat had been sitting beside the hole for an hour waiting for a mouse, we would not say that; we would say, "What patience!" Galileo had not been wasting his time making useless observations, even though nothing had previously turned up that he could see how to use. The observation of 3 December had not been remarkable by itself, and I am sure the cross was placed beside it on lO December, not when he first recorded the position. What Galileo had felt confident about was that sooner or later something must turn up that he could get his teeth into. But it was not exactly this arrangement he was awaiting rather than some other, such as the remarkable situation which we THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW shall see occurring on 15 March. It was mere luck, purely random, that produced the particular pair of similar observations which Galileo actually used as his start on the serious work of determining periods, but it was not mere luck that he recognized its value for that purpose. Recognition is the act of a prepared mind. Next comes the place at which I fear that logicians will merely throw up their hands in despair at Galileo's credulity. No other satellite than IV had ever been seen near another one at such a distance from jupiter as 14 diameters, and none at all had been seen beyond 15 diameters. Galileo now assumed that while IV had gone nearly from one extreme position to the opposite, each of the others had returned to its previous position. Of course, all kinds of possibilities of interchanges might have occurred, whence logicians would have advised Galileo not to jump at such a conclusion. He, on the contrary, jumped even further-because it is more efficient to go as far as you can with any clue to scientific discovery than it is to proceed with great caution. The important thing is not to be cautious, but to be ready to back down, or even throw the whole clue away, if it fails to produce. Galileo reasoned that if the period of III, which he could not logically identify in his diagram, was one week (or rather 167 hours), then that of II was probably half a week, or about 84 hours, since if it made more than two revolutions in one revolution of III, II would be going awfully fast. The period of I was probably a quarter-week, or about 42 hours, since if it made only three revolutions in one revolution of III, it would have an even chance of being out of phase with it, and it was not. Galileo did not write this down, but what he did next shows that he tested this· idea and it worked. The immediate problem was to find a starting point for testing the idea. Only IV could be safely identified, and only when that satellite was very distant from jupiter. To test his idea, he had to identify others. On 17 December, one week later, it was probably cloudy, since Galileo recorded no observation. On the 24th he again saw all four, but no longer in similar positions, which showed that the periods were not exact submultiples. Galileo would hardly have expected them to be, in the light of his many previous observations. It was on 29 December that Galileo was first lucky enough to identify a satellite at perigee. That was very important, since maximum elongations were not good for close timing, partly because thus far Galileo' s estimates of distances from Jupiter were not very accurate, and partly because the greater its elongation, the more slowly the satellite appears to move. Here was his next valuable clue: 0 29 December, Hour 2:30 7,00 m2o ' 2' ' * 6 2 2 ' ' '5/6 2' 5 0 3 5 0 2 ' ' 3 ' 47 �One satellite disappeared in the middle observation, passing across Jupiter's disc. When it reappeared on the other side, Galileo could assume uniform speed for it when so close to Jupiter, and could estimate when it had passed the center. Its westerly direction showed that it had passed in front of Jupiter, so at center it was at perigee. Galileo wrote this note: "At 5:30 a satellite was at perigee," and then added the words, "that is, satellite !." He could be fairly sure it was I because that is the swiftest and in nearly eight hours it had moved about 4 diameters, including one across Jupiter. In the same time, those to the east approached Jupiter by only about one diameter, and the one to the west moved only three. The next day Galileo wrote to Father Christopher Clavius, mathematician at the Jesuit College in Rome, describing these three observations, though he did not reveal his own analysis of them. Fair play, but no favors. To check his hypothesis, Galileo still needed one more disappearance of I. On 6 January, at the 6th hour after sunset, two satellites could not be seen; the two that could be seen were far to the west (at 5 and 13 diameters). Hence one of the two not seen was probably satellite L Galileo noted that the night was cloudy, making this observation anything but certain. The hours that had elapsed since 5:30 on 29 December came to 192; dividing this by 42 gives a little over 4 1/z, so that if I was at perigee on the earlier date it should be a short distance past apogee at this time. As a matter of fact it was, just about at the minimum distance from Jupiter that Galileo should have been able to see it. But the night was cloudy and he did not see it, so he now made out the first little table of predictions found among his notes. It is a simple listing of times during the next two weeks at which satellite I should reach apogee, perigee, or maximum elongation, obtained by adding 10 1/4 hours repeatedly to the 6th hour on 6 January 1611. No observation Galileo made during that period conflicted with his list, though of course many positions listed came during daylight hours and could not be checked. The period of I is in fact not 42 hours, but 42 1/z, as Galileo found out in March. On 24 January an observation enabled Galileo to time the apogee of III, duly confirmed by looking back at observations made previously on the 17th and 20th, which until the 24th could not be definitely associated with the disappearance of IlL He judged the period to be 170 hours; it is really 172. On 12 February he wrote to Paolo Sarpi, mentioning his belief that he knew how to get all the periods. I think it likely that Galileo had already anticipated apogee of II for the following night, which was then observed and indicated a period of 85 hours, only twenty minutes short of the modern figure. On 7 March he caught IV in conjunction with Jupiter and by the 9th knew that this had been at perigee, since it had moved far to the west. The approximate period of IV had presented no problem, as mentioned earlier; Galilee's first surviving close estimate was recorded late in March, and was within a very small margin (eight minutes in over 16 days) of our modern value. 48 In this way the problem Kepler had judged hopeless of solution six months earlier was cracked by Galileo. Satellite periods were found, not in the logical order IV-III-II-I, but (except for a very rough estimate for IV) in the order I-III-II-IV. To improve his estimates, Galileo needed an independent set of apogee or perigee times to apply to each satellite. This he got at one fell swoop on 15 March 1611, when all four satellites became and remained aligned with Jupiter for four hours at a stretch. Or rather, Galileo thought that to be the case, and proceeded as if it had been, though during this "great conjunction" (as he called it) there were also eclipse phenomena and confusing periods during which a satellite was merely too near Jupiter to be seen by Galileo. But science proceeds by the method of successive approximations, and the information gained on 15 March 1611 enabled Galileo to improve his previous findings so that he could soon calculate satellite positions forward and backward at will. There is much more to the story, but this suffices for my purposes here. The historical problem was to discover how Galileo had known enough about the periods of the satellites to be able to proceed as rapidly and as systematically as he did from 15 March 1611 on. If we were to rely on logic alone, and had no clues from letters and Galileo's journal of observations, we might perhaps assume that he proceeded in the only obvious, logical, and tedious way; that Kepler had been mistaken in his pessimism about reaching success in that way, and that Galileo must have thrown away his earlier notes. That would be what I call "constructed history," very logical and persuasive, but unrelated to actual facts. Constructed history must be accepted when we have no other recourse. What we want instead is what I call "structured history" -not a mere chronicle of events, but a documented and credible account of discoveries and their subsequent development. Logic alone seldom explains discoveries. They do not violate the laws of logic, but to understand them we must also credit early ·scientists with common sense. Thomas Henry Huxley, in the nineteenth century, characterized science itself as "organized common sense." That is what the science of his day was, and that is how Galileo's science was born. It is all too easy for historians to forget this, now that science has again become a logical and philosophical enterprise of looking for the ultimate secret of the universe through technical jargon and logical virtuosity, as was much of medieval science. Galileo, breaking away from that, turned to observation, calculation, and common sense. Respect for logic-with always an eye on the main chance-led him to discoveries in which fortune, as always, favored the prepared mind. To catch Galileo's method, biographers and historians must watch patiently like a cat at a mousehole, confident that something will emerge from his notes which will be recognized, much as James Bernoulli had recognized an anonymous proof of Sir Isaac Newton's when he said: "I know the lion by his paw." JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE �On Sophocles' Ajax David Bolotin Ajax's Third Monologue (vv. 646-692) Ajax: All things does long and uncountable Time Bring forth unclearly, and once they have come to light, it buries them. And so there is nothing not to be expected, but even The dreadful oath and the obdurate heart are found out to be weak. For indeed I, who once was so tremendously steadfast, Like iron from dipping, had my edge softened By this woman here. I feel pity To leave her a widow among enemies and my son an orphan. But I shall go to the bathing places And the seaside meadows, so that cleansing my stains I may escape the heavy wrath of the goddess. And going where I can find an untrodden place, I will bury this sword of mine-most hateful of weaponsAnd dig it into the earth where no one will see. But let Night and Hades preserve it below. Since from the time when I received it in my hand As a gift from most hate-filled Hector, I have not yet obtained anything dear from the Argives. But it is true~ the saying of mortals" Gifts of enemies arc no gifts;" they are not profitable. Therefore, for the time left I will know to yield To the gods, and I will learn to revere the Atreidae. They are rulers, so one has to yield. Why not? For even things dreadful and most steadfast Yield to offices. Thus snowy·pathed winters Give way before fruitful summer. The gloomy vault of night stands aside for Day with its white colts to kindle light. The blast of dreadful winds puts to sleep The moaning sea. And among these, all-powerful Sleep Releases what it has bound, and once it has seized, it does not hold on forever. And as for us, how shall we not learn to be sound of mind? 1 will. For now 1 understand that We must hate the enemy so much as is suited To one who will also love us some day; and toward the friend. In doing service I shall wish to benefit him so much As is suited to one who always is not going to remain (such). Since for the many Of mortals the haven of friendship is not to be trusted. Yet concerning these things it will be well. But you, Woman, go inside and pray to the gods That my heart's longing may be completely fulfilled. And you, friends, honor as she does these wishes of mine And tell Teucer, if he comes, To have care for us and at the same time to be well inclined toward you. For I shall go where my fourney must be made. And you do what'l tell you, and you may well learn, Though I am now unfortunate, that I have been saved. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW A fter Achilles' death at the siege of Troy, the Achaeans decided to award his armor as a prize of excellence to the best remaining warrior. One might well have expected that this award would go to Ajax, the son of Telamon. Homer, or his Muse, speaks of Ajax as by far the most ex· cellent of the Achaeans, after Achilles (Iliad B 761-69). Yet the Achaean judges chose Odysseus instead of Ajax to receive Achilles' armor. Ajax was enraged at this decision, and in retaliation he attempted to kill, under cover of night, all the other chieftains of the army. But the goddess Athena thwarted him by driving him insane. Instead of killing his enemies he merely butchered the; army's live· stock, under the delusion that these cattle were the Achaean chieftains. Sophocles' Ajax, which begins on the morning after these events, falls into two halves. The first half of the play leads up to Ajax's suicide, and the second half culminates in his burial. A brief retelling of the play's story will suffice to bring out the difference in character between these two halves. Early in the play, after Athena has shown the still deluded Ajax to Odysseus, Ajax recovers his sanity. He despairs of revenge, and he soon resolves upon suicide as the only noble action left to him. His mis· tress, the captive Tecmessa, pleads with him to live, and for a moment it appears as if she has succeeded. In a pow· erful monologue, whose theme is the necessity for accept· ing the changes that time brings, Ajax leads her to believe that he will live. But his apparent yielding turns out to have been a deception. Soon we see him give a final speech, and then he falls upon his sword. The second half of the play presents the aftermath of Ajax's suicide. It is largely occupied with an ugly dispute over whether Ajax is to be denied burial in punishment for his treasonous attack. This question is debated be· tween Menelaus and Agamemnon, who prohibit the bur· ial, and Ajax's brother Teucer, who tries to change their minds. Nothing is accomplished, however, until Odysseus reappears on the scene. Although Odysseus had recently David Bolotin read an earlier version of this essay at St. John's College in Annapolis on January 7, 1977. His book, Plato's Dialogue on Friendship: an Interpretation of the Lysis, has recently been published (Ithaca, New York, I 979). 49 �been Ajax's most hated rival, and his intended victim, he openly defers to his rival's superiority (1339-41) and persuades Agamemnon to allow Ajax to be buried with the highest honors. The play ends as Ajax's corpse is being carried out for burial. The theme that binds together this seemingly disjointed story is the theme of friendship. (The word "friend" will be used throughout this essay to correspond to the Greek <jJCAos, which has a wider range of meanings than the English word "friend" normally does. The Greek word </>iAo< was used not only for friends in our sense, but also for relatives, especially those in one's immediate family. Moreover, Ajax's mistress Tecmessa, and his comrades-in-arms of the Achaean army, are referred to in the play as his "friends." Friendship in this wider Greek sense exists among all those acquaintances who live together as a community, and who may be expected to continue to do so.) More particularly, the play's theme is that of justice and injustice, or loyalty and disloyalty, to friends. In keeping with this, the first half of the play centers around Ajax's response to Tecmessa's plea that he not desert, and thus betray, her and their infant son. And throughout the second half, the quarrel concerns how to respond to Ajax's treasonous disloyalty as a comrade in the army. Although Ajax does turn against his comrades and later desert his nearest ones, these facts alone give a quite mis- leading picture of his character as a friend. The play reminds us that Ajax had been an unusually valiant and trustworthy soldier when the army was in its greatest danger (1272-82). And Ajax shows himself within the play to be deeply concerned about what is owed to friends. In his view, the Achaeans who failed to award him Achilles' armor were ungrateful comrades, violators of the Hcorrect law" (3 50) of friendship. His turning against them stems in part from his very attachment to friendship and from his awareness of the demands that it imposes (cf. Aristotle, Politics l327b4l-l328a 18). Friendship, and the difficulties that accompany it, are of central importance to Ajax. Accordingly, it is not surprising that his third monologue, which stands out within the play by its conspicuous beauty, should culminate in a thought about the weakness of friendship. 1 The purpose of this essay is to examine the Ajax as a whole, with a view to a better understanding of Ajax himself and his relations to his friends. But in order to do this properly, we must first note that a concern with friendship was not the core of Ajax's character. He had always wished above all to be excellent (or virtuous), to show his excellence through victory in battle, and to crown his victories by receiving the aristeia, the army's prize for supreme virtue (434-40; 470-72). His chief ambition was the Homeric one: aifv &pwnUcw xed. inrcipoxov 'i/1/1EVCXt 0:-AA.wv, p:qOE 'YE'vos 1rTx.T€pwv o:iaxVvEJLEv-a1ways to be excellent and to be pre-eminent above others, and not to bring shame upon the family of one's fathers (Iliad Z 208-09; cf. A 784). Ajax could not be satisfied unless his excellence gained him victory and honor, but he was too 50 noble to settle for any undeserved success. And since he knew that intervention from the gods could give occasional victory even to a worthless man (455-56; 766-67; cf. IliadP 629-32)2, he openly scorned such easy gains. By his noble reluctance to be indebted even to the gods for his victories, Ajax angered the goddess Athena (758-76); and it was Athena's anger that led to the failure of his attempt to retaliate against his comrades. Ajax's concern for friendship, although subordinate to his attachment to excellence and nobility, was closely bound up with it. His striving to be excellent went together, for most of his life, with an attachment to friendship, and to friendship as something permanent. Now the primary reason that Ajax had been a true friend is simply because of his love, since it is only natural for human love to want to continue. But the natural bonds of friendly love were greatly strengthened for him, as he expected them to be strengthened for his friends, by the concern to be noble. Human nobility, as Ajax understood it, demands both excellence in war and loyalty in friendship. And Ajax did not foresee that his noble attachment to excellence could ever come into conflict with his love, or with his duties, as a friend.3 T his essay will show how the Ajax calls into question the understanding of friendship, and of virtue, that has just been sketched. The argument of the essay has two main sections, corresponding to the two halves of the play. The first section focuses primarily on Ajax's third monologue (646-92), for that is the peak of Ajax's own thinking about friendship and virtue. But since that monologue is Ajax's response to an unprecedented situation, we must first look briefly at the events and speeches that lead up to it. Finally, the second section of the essay will examine the dispute over whether Ajax is to receive burial. What is especially striking in Ajax's first monologue (430-80) is his speedy recovery from the shame of having slaughtered the Achaean cattle (contrast 364-66, and ·'400). He is confident that Achilles himself, if he had been alive to judge, would have awarded him the highest prize for valor. And it is only Athena's intervention, her afflicting him with madness, that prevented him from taking revenge upon the chieftains. Ajax implies that the temporary madness during which he mistook cattle for the hated chieftains was no true failing on his part, since a god can enable "even a base man to escape from a worthier" (455-56). Although Ajax's humiliating madness does not cause him to doubt, for very long, that he is noble, he is nevertheless at an impasse. He can hardly remain with the army, for he is a public enemy. And he cannot return home, where he must face his father Telamon, without having won a prize of excellence such as Telamon had once won. He also rejects the alternative of a singlehanded, and suicidal, attack against Troy, on the grounds that such an attack might benefit his Achaean enemies. JULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE �But some such enterprise, he says, must be sought for in order to show his father that his nature, at least, is worthy of his ancestry. The enterprise that Ajax has in mind is suicide. Suicide is apparently his only choice, since "a no- ble man (Eiryev~) must either live honorably (xaAGls) or else honorably (xaAws) be dead" (479-80). By killing himself now, thinks Ajax, he will show his father and others the nobility of his nature. He will show a noble refusal to accept any consolations for his single greatest defeat, his defeat in contest for the armor of Achilles. Ajax's first monologue thus ends with a reaffirmation of his claim to be noble. Ajax's mistress Tecmessa responds to his monologue (485-524) with a challenge to the view of nobility that leads him to seek death. She pleads with him to live, and her plea has several aspects, including an appeal for pity. But it culminates in a demand for his gratitude.' "A man ought," she says, '(to remember if he has received any delight" (520-21). And she gives a reason for this claim. "For kindness is that which brings forth kindness (or gratitude) always" (xapn x<'<pw -yap kanv ~ Tinoua'aei, 522). But this thought of hers, though beautiful, does not seem to be wholly true, as we can see from her own threatened situation. Accordingly, Tecmessa adds a further argument: a man who does not hold in memory the benefits he has received would not remain-whatever he was before-a noble man (eu-yev1)s <h~p, 524; cf. 480). 5 Tecmessa here appeals to Ajax's sense of the noble, and she points to what may well be his greatest failing-ingratitude, or the thoughtless disregard of help received (cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1124b12-15; contrast especially ll32b31-1133a5). Ajax, who prides himself on the great things he has done, does not easily remember those benefits he has received from others. But Tecmessa compels him to acknowledge what she, the mother of his son, has given to him. Is he not obliged to her and to their son? And wouldn't it be ignoble for him to fail to give in return for what he has received? Ajax himself has said that a noble man must either live honorably or else honorably be dead. But would it be honorable for him to flee, in dying, a debt to the living? Ajax's second monologue, however, gives little evidence that Tecmessa's appeal has moved him. His resolve to die, and his confidence that this is noble, remain un· changed (550-51). He does show concern for his infant son, and he expresses confidence that his brother Tencer will be able to take care of the boy. But he offers nothing, not even any hope, to the captive Tecmessa. In her alarm, Tecmessa implores him in the name of the gods not to betray them. The suggestion that Ajax is about to betray the gods, as well as herself, strengthens her earlier rebuke that he is being ungrateful,' and it provokes him to his most extreme statement: he claims that he no longer owes any service to the gods, since they too now hate him. Tecmessa warns him not to blaspheme, but he ignores the warning and commands her to leave. Tecmessa's last words to Ajax are a renewed appeal in the name of the THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW gods that he relent. But he replies that she is a fool if she intends at this late date to school his character. The chorus, which consists of Ajax's followers from his homeland Salamis, next calls into further question the nobility of his intended suicide. They sing of him as a man still afflicted by madness (611; 635; cf. 278-80, and contrast 274). In their view, the self-absorbed Ajax no longer lives up to the excellence of his former deeds, and he does not maintain the noble disposition of his race (616-20; 636-40). By choosing a death that serves no one, except perhaps himself, and that brings grief to his friends (614-16), Ajax appears to his followers as a man no longer worthy of his ancestry. L et us now turn to Ajax's third monologue, in which he reveals that Tecmessa's plea has shaken the foun· dations of his way of life. The breadth of his thought is in· dicated by the opening word c¥7rav0c_all things. 7 "All things does long and uncountable time bring forth unclearly, and once they have come to light, it buries them" (646-47). Ajax does not mean by this that all beings come into being and then perish. For his reflections encompass immortals as well as mortals-' Rather, his contention is that time denies to all beings an uninterrupted pre-eminence and an unshakeable trustworthiness. Permanence in visible excellence and permanence in friendship have been Ajax's two deepest desires, and it is the claim to these that he now attempts to renounce. "And so there is nothing," continues Ajax-and in particular no change-"beyond expectation, but even the dreadful oath and the obdurate heart are found out to be weak." A solemn oath had bound Ajax to serve Agamemnon and Menelaus. Yet this oath was broken by his traitorous attempt to kill the Achaean chieftains. And Ajax's obdurate heart has yielded, or so it seems, to Tecmessa's entreaties. "For indeed I," he goes on, "who was once so marvellously steadfast. .. , had my edge softened by this woman here. I feel pity," he says, "to leave her a widow among my enemies and to leave my son an orphan."9 Ajax's new feeling that pity forbids him to leave Tecmessa is the crucial change that makes his entire speech possible, and indeed necessary. 1 For it is this pity that prompts his apparent decision to live and thus to learn all that is implied in coming to terms with the world of gods and chieftains. Ajax's next words are, "But I shall go to the bathing places and the seaside meadows, to cleanse my stains and so to escape the heavy wrath of the goddess." Apparently, he now intends to perform a ritual of cleansing and purification, in the hope of appeasing Athena's anger. He must make peace with Athena if he is to live, and he now seems ° to want to live in order to care for Tecmessa and their son. To be sure, it might appear that this interpretation is excessively straightforward and that it rests on a superficial reading of his ambiguous words. For like much of the 51 �monologue, these phrases about "cleansing" have a hidden aspect that points to his eventual suicide (cf. footnote 9). But I hope to show that Ajax's surface meaning, rather than the complex undercurrents of his language, is the necessary beginning for an understanding of his deep. est thoughts as well. Ajax next resolves to bury the sword he had received in the exchange of gifts that followed his famous duel with Hector (cf. Iliad H 54- 312). And be gives a reason for doing so. "For from the time when I received it in my hand as a gift from most hate-filled Hector, I have not yet obtained anything dear from the Argives. But it is true-the saying of mortals-'Gifts of enemies are no gifts'; they are not profitable. Therefore (rotyap, 666), in the time remaining I will know to yield to the gods, and I will learn to revere the sons of Atreus." By his use of the word "therefore," Ajax implies that his willingness to yield to the gods and to his commanders follows directly from the fact that the gifts of enemies are unprofitable. 11 What can this mean? To answer this question, we must go back a little. Ajax has just decided, it seems, to seek continued life for the sake of Tecmessa and their son. In order to live, he will try to appease Athena's anger. But Ajax, even when moved by pity, cannot bring himself to live solely for the sake of a captive woman and a child. If he is to live, he too wants to receive those benefits that would make life attractive to him. He wants above all to receive honors, such as the armor of Achilles he has recently been denied. And he now blames his failure to win Achilles' armor on his comrades' resentment at his exchange of gifts with the enemy Hector. Consequently, he now goes to bury Hector's sword, which had been such a costly gift. In other words, he seeks to become reconciled with his own community, and he decides to yield to the gods and to his commanders. All this is for the sake of his own benefit, which he seeks because he chooses to live; and life in turn he chooses out of pity for Tecmessa. What his pity teaches him is that to be concerned to live is to be concerned with what is profitable-for oneself and for one's intimates-and that one must therefore be on good terms with the divine and human leaders of one's community. F or a better understanding of Ajax's decision to bury Hector's sword, and to yield to his commanders, we should look more closely at the duel and exchange of gifts with Hector. The encounter between Ajax and Hector figures prominently in the play (815-20; 1026-35; 1283-88)12 Much of this prominence can be attributed to the following consideration: victory in a single combat is a less ambiguous sign of excellence than success in a public competition, such as the contest for Achilles' armor. As opposed to those who depend upon judges for their honors, the contestant in a duel can obtain his reward directly and by his own unaided efforts (cf. Iliad H 77-83). And more importantly, there is little uncertainty about the standards of judgment in a duel: victory, or even an 52 honorable standoff, against a great rival is a clear sign of excellence. Judges who award public honors, by contrast, have every temptation to favor their friends and benefactors at the expense of the most excellent man. Although public honor is said to be awarded for excellence, even in the best case it is awarded primarily for those excellences which most benefit the community (compare Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1123b35 with ll63b3-8). The enemy, though he may win respect, receives no medal of honor. The community honors its benefactors and speaks of them as being the men of excellence (cf. Xenophon, Hellenica VII 3. 12). Less justly, a community may honor a potential benefactor in hope of future services (cf. Aristotle, Rhetoric l36la28-30). And what is worse, those whose excellence most benefits a community may also serve it through secret baseness, and yet they are typically not dishonored on this account (cf. Philoctetes 78-85, 119, 1049-52). Since the men who award public honors often allow their concern for the community's advantage to out· weigh their attachment to excellence itself, public honor is always something suspect; it is ambiguous evidence of virtue. Accordingly, Ajax's duel with Hector can be seen in part as an attempt to win a more truthful sign of his excellence than the army could bestow. And the sword he received from Hector can be regarded as such a sign. Just as Ajax's duel with Hector involved a certain defiance of the army's judgment, so his decision to bury Hec· tor's sword is an act of submission to it. It is not, however, complete or wholehearted submission. One sign of this fact is that Ajax shows no sense of guilt over his recent attempt to kill his chieftains. In his view, the Achaeans did him an injustice in the contest for Achilles' armor; his attempt to kill the chieftains was merely retaliation. And in yielding, he goes no further than to abandon his claim to revenge. Life as Ajax now sees it does not allow the "luxury" that the community honor excellence truthfully. Rather than do harm to all around him, Ajax seems to have accepted his place in an imperfect community. To do this, he must bow before the gods and his com· manders, and he must content himself with only so much honor as they choose to award. Hitherto, Ajax's loyalty to the Achaean cause had been subordinate to his deeper wish to be excellent, to show his excellence in battle and in single combat, and to receive the high honors he be· lieved himself to deserve. Though he had not been fully aware of it, his loyalty as a friend had been limited by the condition that his friends be noble enough always to award the highest honor to the highest excellence. But now this impossible condition will be removed. Now for the first time, Ajax appears to have become a true member of his community; he appears to have learned to accept the union, or alternation, of self-interest and selfsurrender demanded by public life and its friendship. Ajax lessens somewhat the pain of yielding to his rulers by observing that "even things dreadful and most steadfast yield to offices" (Ttf'CX!s lnrEix«, 670). "Thus snowy· pathed winters give way before fruitful summer. The }ULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE �gloomy vault of night stands aside for day with its white colts to kindle light. The blast of dreadful winds puts to sleep (by abating) the moaning sea. And among these, all powerful Sleep releases what it has bound, and once it has seized, it does not hold on forever." 13 The most important, and most difficult, word in this passage is np.a<s, which may be translated as "offices," or "honors." It refers in the first place to the rulers, or to their offices, before which Ajax must yield. But the word also refers to Ajax's own motive for yielding to his rulers. Only by yielding before np.c{ts, or uoffices," can he hope to win again those public honors, or np.<is, which the army bestows. For Ajax to yield before honors is in large part to yield before his own desire to receive honors. And in order to receive honors, Ajax will accept the terms under which honor is generally awarded. His yielding implies an agreement that the excellence that most benefits the army is most honorable, and most worth striving for. His yielding also implies an admission that the lawful commandershowever they should decide-are the authoritative judges of honorable action. T here is still, however, a barrier in Ajax's way before he can expect reconciliation with his Achaean rulers. He has been a traitor to the army, and as such he deserves to die. The threat of public stoning, as punishment for his night attack, had been hinted at earlier in the play. How can Ajax submit to the sons of Atreus if they intend to execute him? Yet perhaps there is a way out of this impasse. The main argument by which Menelaus and Agamemnon will later condemn the dead Ajax is that behavior such as his threatens the establishment of law and the preservation of armies and cities (1071-83, 1246-50). But on those very grounds, in the interests of the army, it would obviously be prudent for them to accept the submission of a still living, still useful, and still dangerous (721-32) Ajax. Moreover, no serious harm came to the army from Ajax's abortive attack. Perhaps, then, the chieftains can forget his fault, just as Ajax himself is willing to forego his hopes of revenge. If the Achaeans could disregard his excellence when they awarded Achilles' armor, why wouldn't they disregard his brief attack in consideration of the services he might yet perform? The threat of stoning is probably not a serious one. Tecmessa and the men of the chorus, at any rate, once they have been persuaded that Ajax intends to yield, give no further sign of being afraid for him (693-716, 787-88). Since it is apparently to everyone's advantage to let bygones be bygones, no external obstacle seems to prevent Ajax from making his peace with gods and men 14 If even the mightiest immortal powers-continues Ajaxcan yield and submit, "then how shall we (mortals) not learn to be sound-minded?" All Ajax must do is to learn to be uw</>pwv, sound of mind or sane. Now this lesson of submission is admittedly difficult for Ajax, and events will show that he even finds it intolerable. But why? Ajax himTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW self hints at an answer in his following words: "For I have lately come to know that we must hate the enemy as much as is appropriate to one who will also love us some day; and toward the friend, in doing service I will wish to benefit him so much as is appropriate to one who always is not going to remain a friend. Since for the many of mortals the haven of friendship is not to be trusted." These lines are striking in their bitterness. And at first, such bitterness seems strange, since it follows immediately upon Ajax's avowal that he will learn soundness of mind-the way of life that is dearest to the gods (677; cf. 132-33, 757-77). On further reflection, however, we can see that Ajax is merely elaborating the hidden implications of his decision to yield to his community. The extremity of Ajax's bitterness can be best seen by contrasting his remarks with oth-er versions of this same maxim about friends and enemies (Aristotle, Rhetoric l389b24-25; cf. Bias, as reported in Diogenes Laertius I 5.87). What is most strikingly unique about Ajax's statement is his avoidance of the verb </>tA<'iv, to love, when he speaks of his relations to his friends. By contrast, he does not hesitate to speak of the possibility that an enemy might some day come to love him (</>t'A~uwv, 680). Moreover, he is quite willing to speak of the need for his group to hate, and not merely to harm, its present enemies. When he tells of his own posture as an individual toward his friends, however, his roundabout mention of services and benefits makes all the more noticeable the absence of the simple verb "to love" (contrast Oedipus at Colonus, 1615-19). T o better understand Ajax's new attitude toward friendship, one must recall that his willingness to return to the Achaean community followed from a wish for benefits from the group (665-66). He now sees friendship, or at least the friendship among fellow soldiers, as an association held together against its enemies in the expectation of mutual benefit. Toward this end, it may require forgetfulness of earlier hatred and oblivion of former love. Those who may cause future harm must now be treated as enemies, and only those who can bring future benefits are to be treated as friends. Who can be sure that old enemies might not some day find it profitable to do a good turn? And who can be sure that old friends will remain useful? The mutability of friendship is not merely a fact; it is a reasonable fact. A sensible man will therefore refuse to extend an unconditional loyalty to his friends. Because of the world's instability, and the apparent primacy of selfinterest, Ajax is now unable to regard himself as a loving or trustworthy friend (cf. Aristotle, Rhetoric 1395a31-32). Ajax's coming to know the weakness of friendship is especially painful for him at this moment, since he has just promised to return to the Achaean community and to renounce the higher claims that had kept him apart. Previously, his striving for excellence, together with his demand for appropriate honor, had been in tension with 53 �his loyalty to his Achaean friends. This tension had come violently to the surface after he failed to win Achilles' ar· mar. Ajax's readiness to bury Hector's sword has shown, in contrast, a new appreciation of the claims of the com· munity. It has shown him to be willing to be a true subordinate to his army's officers. Yet the renunciation of his higher demands, which was to have brought him closer to his comrades, instead makes him unable genuinely to love them at all. There is one further, and still more abhorrent, aspect to Ajax's new understanding of friendship. The same reasoning that leads to a withholding of genuine love might on occasion lead to active treachery. The Achaeans themselves abandoned Philoctetes from such motives. Similarly, an individual might find it safer or more profitable to betray one or more of his friends. This thought, however, is especially intolerable to Ajax. Though he was not ashamed of his attempt to retaliate against the Achaean judges, he could never stoop to cold-blooded and calculated treachery. Yet his proposal to yield to his rulers has implied a readiness even for that. For this reason, more than for any other, Ajax rejects the proposed yielding and silently renews his earlier decision to die." Ajax thinks that he can free himself from the baseness of life only through suicide. Even suicide, however, will not offer Ajax an entirely noble alternative to life's meanness. His suicide will itself be an instance of betrayal. In particular, it will be a betrayal of Tecmessa. Though she has served him faithfully, he will leave her unprotected in a hostile Achaean army. Moreover, the manner of his leaving her is unchar- acteristically deceptive. He is never explicit, in this last speech to her, about suicide, and he concludes the speech in such a way (684-92) as to encourage her wishful thinking that he will live (cf. footnote 9). Not only does Ajax desert Tecmessa, but he does so deceptively (cf. 807-08). Even in his dying, he is not wholly free of the baseness he despises. Ajax himself, to be sure, does not admit that his suicide is in any way ignoble. He does not acknowledge the justice of Tecmessa's reproach that to abandon her would be base (524). Some words of his own, however, may hint that Sophocles disagrees with him. In the speech preceding this third monologue, Ajax had prayed for his son to be more fortunate than himself but like him in all else. "And then," he continues, "you would not be base" (w 1rcd, "{€:vow 1fetrp0~ tUrvxEarepos, r& 0' fx'AA Op..oto'!i. xed "(Evot' ih "co'6', 550-51). What Ajax means is that although he is unfortunate he is still noble-as noble as he could wish his son to be. But perhaps these words convey a further thought as well, one that contradicts Ajax's own meaning. Both parts of Ajax's prayer might have to come true in order for his son not to be base. Sophocles may be suggesting that Eurysaces must combine his father's character with a better fortune if he is to become, and to re- ou main, "not base." Might there not be misfortunes in which it is impossi- 54 ble for anyone, no matter what his character, entirely to avoid baseness? Hasn't Ajax himself fallen into just such a situation, in which any action he chooses will be base in some respects? And hasn't this impasse arisen in part as a consequence of his very nobility (consider 763)? To act nobly, and to avoid basenesS: is impossible without ex- ternal supports, supports that nobility itself tends to undermine. Though Ajax does not see this far, the truest significance of his death is that it reveals this weakness of nobility. A jax's suicide, and the reflections that lead him to it, present a deep challenge to the Achaean community. Though Ajax hopes to become reconciled, in death, with the divine order of the world (692, 865),"' he seeks no reconciliation with his fellow Achaeans. His final speech even contains a prayer that the sons of Atreus may die miserably, and he extends this curse to the whole Achaean army. Ajax has suggested, more generally, that human communities are above all the homes of faithlessness and treachery (677-84; cf. Philoctetes 446-50 ff.). What are we to think of this? Ajax's death not only leaves the question of whether he deserves, despite his faults, an honorable burial. 17 It raises the still more important question of whether the Achaean community can bestow any but the most hollow honors. Does the community even have enough strength to withstand Ajax's curses? Does it deserve to withstand them? just as the Achaeans must judge Ajax in deciding whether he is worthy of burial, so they too are being measured. It might be objected that Ajax's failure to become reconciled with the Achaeans is his own fault. Even his temporary readiness to yield to the commanders might seem to have been less than he owed them. This readiness did not stem from a sense of duty, but from his awareness that submission was the more profitable course, for himself and for Tecmessa. Admittedly, he was briefly willing to forego his claim to vengeance, but is it entirely certain that he deserved to win Achilles' armor? What kind of submission would it have been for him merely to forego vengeance over a decision that was possibly correct? Should he not instead have asked forgiveness for his treasonous attempt to kill the other chieftains? And is it not outrageous of him to curse the entire army? The case against Ajax, however, or rather the army's title to make that case, is seriously weakened by its commanders' behavior in the aftermath of his death. By refusing to allow him burial, Menelaus and Agamemnon disregard the divine laws that forbid this form of punishment (1029-32, 1343-48). Moreover, their arguments to Ajax's brother Teucer, when he protests the denial of burial, attempt to reduce the question of justice to that of what serves the army's interests. So limited is their perspective that they condemn Ajax's disloyalty to the army without even mentioning that he was bound by a sacred oath to serve with them (cf. 648-49; 1111-14). ' JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE �Menelaus, who is the first to condemn Ajax, makes only one strong argument against him, an argument based on the interests of the army. An army, he says, (like a city) cannot be ruled soberly without obedience to authority, without fear, and without shame. He emphasizes the need for fear. But he forgets that an army also needs men of outstanding virtue (1273-82), and he ignores any obliga· tion to honor such men truthfully. When Teucer later ac· cuses him of having cheated Ajax in the contest for Achilles' armor, Menelaus refuses to discuss the matter. He doesn't even claim that the judging was honest, let alone that the outcome was correct; instead, he threatens to punish Teucer unless he drops the subject ( 113 5-38). By his failure to respect either human excellence or divine law, and by the arrogance he shows in other ways, Mene· Teucer to abandon his brother's corpse. But since he himself does not defer to anything higher than the army, he can hardly ask Teucer to do so. He is therefore compelled-just as Menelaus was-to make the dubious suggestion that the army's interest coincides with the private interest of each soldier.l9 He accompanies this suggestion with a warning for Teucer to watch out for himself. Indeed, his argument for loyalty to the army comes to little more than a threat of violence. Teucer, however, who is too noble to submit before such a threat, claims that he would rather die for his brother than obey Agamemnon's order (1310-15). The unyielding severity with which Agamemnon tries to strengthen the army seems instead to weaken it. Apart from his main argument on the basis of the laus undermines respect for the army. He seems to con- army's interests, Agamemnon does offer one further argu- firm the low view of human communities that had emerged in Ajax's third monologue. Although Menelaus looks up to nothing higher than the ans are as much "real men" (~vOpH, 1238) as Ajax ever army's interest, he is aware that he must offer an incen- tive for men to subordinate their private interest to that of the group. Threats of punishment for disobedience are not forceful enough without a promised reward for obedience. Menelaus therefore accompanies his threats with the (dubious) assertion that obedient fear and shame guarantee an individual's safety, as weli as that of a commu- nity (1077 -80). 18 His demand for loyalty to the army is thus ultimately based on an appeal, questionable even on its own terms, to the individual's desire for security. T he commanders' attempt to deny any higher claims than the army's interest, and the consequent weakness of their appeal for loyalty, are even more apparent in Agamemnon's speech than in his brother's. Agamemnon is less indignant than Menelaus at Ajax's unsuccessful attempt to kill them. And he regards the prohibition of burial less as a punishment of Ajax, who is already nothing in his eyes (1231, 1257; contrast 1068), than as a useful warning against future offenders (1250). Agamemnon does, to be sure, refer in passing to the "justice" (1248) of the award of Achilles' armor, but he probably means by this no more than adherence to established procedure. Agamemnon is so little concerned with the question of who deserved Achilles' armor that he confuses the judges' decision in that contest with his own decision to prohibit Ajax's burial. He seems to identify Tencer's protest against the denial of burial with Ajax's rebellion against the award of armor (1239-56). In Agamemnon's view, one decision is the same as another, and of equal validity; to object to either is equally to challenge established authority within the army. The army's interest, as he sees it, requires that the rulers' decisions always be accepted as final (1246-47). Agamemnon knows that his interpretation of the army's interests is not a strong enough motive to persuade THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW ment. He contends that he and the others of the Achae· was. And in addition to denying Ajax a higher place than the rest of the army, he tries to assign Teucer to a lower one. He even challenges Teucer' s right to speak publicly in support of his brother, by alleging that Teucer, whose mother was a foreign captive, is not of free and noble birth (1229, 1235, 1259-60). Tencer's response, in addition to deploring the army's ingratitude to Ajax, is to hurl back some shameful truths about Agamemnon's own ancestry (1290-98). And this reproach is not merely name-calling: it calls directly into question Agamemnon's title to deference and respect. Unlike Ajax, who had insisted on showing his nobility through his actions, Agamemnon apparently thinks it enough to have a noble family name. But Agamemnon's family was never so noble as he would have men believe. And respect for that family does not keep Teucer from threatening forcible resistance to the decree against burying Ajax. A t this point Odysseus reappears on stage. It is he who prevents bloodshed and who secures an honorable burial for Ajax. More importantly still, it is he whorestores the commanders' authority and the integrity of the army. Odysseus begins his appeal by establishing his posi· tion as Agamemnon's best friend among the Achaeans (1331). He then gives three arguments, which, taken together, succeed in persuading Agamemnon to allow Ajax's burial. We will consider each of these arguments separately. Odysseus' third and last argument is that he (Odysseus) himself will some day be in want of burial. Agamemnon interprets this statement simply as a sign that every man is out for himself. Odysseus, though in all likelihood he was moved more by pity than by such a calculation (cf. 121-26), does not openly object to his commander's low interpretation of his remark. He even adds that it is reasonable and proper for him to labor for himself above all. To give Odysseus his due, we should note that the self- 55 �interest he speaks of is a farsighted self-interest. It is the higher aspect of that view of the world which to Ajax had meant primarily the denial of true friendship (1354-61). Odysseus, in accordance with this farsighted self-interest, offers friendly service to a recent enemy. More than that, he offers to serve a dead man, from whom he can hope nothing in return. And in this, too, Odysseus acts in accord with his long-range interest. It is not prudent to help only those who can be expected to return the service, since everyone will eventually be in want of a service he cannot return. Everyone dreads the prospect of lying unburied, and so it is wise for all to permit, if not also to assist in, the burial of all others. To do this sets an example of humanity which serves everyone's interests. This last argument, by which Odysseus seeks to "enlighten" Agamemnon's self-interest, seems enough to overcome the commander's faltering resistance. But it fails to resolve the most important questions that have been raised within the play. It says nothing about what honor is owed to Ajax in particular, and it suggests too little about the sources of authority within the army. A second argument of Odysseus is his appeal in the name of the gods and on the basis of divine law. Divine law forbids the prohibition of burial, no matter whether the dead man was an enemy or a friend, a bad man or a good one (1332-33; cf. 1129-32, and Iliad TI 453-57; 667-75). The laws of the gods, says Odysseus, could be ruined by denying burial to Ajax (1343-44). And although Odysseus doesn't say this, showing respect for divine law might help Agamemnon to preserve the army's respect for him. In a number of ways, the argument from divine law goes further than the one based on self-interest. But this argument, which would hold equally no matter who had died, is overshadowed by Odysseus' repeated references to the goodness, nobility, and excellence of Ajax (1340, 1343-45, 1355, 1357, 1380; cf. 1415-16). Odysseus' chief argument in support of burial, the argument in terms of Ajax's own worth, is amazingly silent about the question of his innocence or guilt. Odysseus divides the world into friends and enemies, but there is not a word about traitors or disobedient subjects. He never says anything against Ajax for having tried to kill him and the other Achaean chieftains. But neither does he try to mitigate the gravity of Ajax's treason by recalling the outcome in the award of arms. Odysseus is silent also about the great services Ajax had done for the Achaeans while he was still a friend. He does not try to balance Teucer's case for gratitude to Ajax (1266-82) against Menelaus' desire for revenge. Odysseus, who never even thanked Athena for saving him from Ajax (cf. 45 ff.), 20 does not always show gratitude to friends. But together with this, he does not expect it always in return. He does not allow the confident hope of friendly service to inspire in him the angry sense of disappointment at having been betrayed (1052-54, 1266-67). Because he knows the weakness of friendship, as well as the reasons for it, Odysseus has a certain distance from 56 both gratitude and the desire to punish. And though his lack of gratitude stems in part from self-interest, he at least knows not to confuse one's true interest with the seeming profit in revenge. R ather than defend Ajax's claim to burial in terms of his past services to the Achaeans, Odysseus d'oes so simply on the grounds of his excellence. Odysseus, the winner of the disputed prize for excellence, claims that his rival was plainly (or in his eyes) the one best man among the Argives, after Achilles (E"v '&vop' !oeiv '&pwrov 'Ap-yEiwv, 1340). Perhaps because he knows that the one warrior who is openly the best is not always best for, or of most service to, the army as a whole, Odysseus does not reproach the judges who had awarded him the prize. But he does say that it would be unjust now to dishonor Ajax. justice, he says, forbids men to harm-that is, to dishonor-a good man who has died (1343-45). Odysseus never claims that it is unjust to harm a good man while he is still alive. Such a man might be an enemy (cf. 1347), and it would be dangerous if not fatal to believe that one must never harm a good man who is an enemy. If he should die, however, it becomes a demand of justice to honor him, or at least not to dishonor him by withholding his corpse from those who would bury it. Odysseus explains his intervention on Ajax's behalf by saying that virtue "defeats" him, or that it weighs far more with him than hatred (vtx?c -yixp &per~ I'' rii' 'Ex8pa' 1roAv, 1357; cf. 1355). Not friendship or love, but virtue, prevails over the hatred between Ajax and the Achaeans. Odysseus' suggestion that virtue "defeats" him seems also to imply that his rival, or at least the virtue to which his rival had been dedicated, has won the most important victory. Yet his homage to Ajax's virtue could also stem in part from a sound calculation of the army's interest, and his own. For although Odysseus implicitly acknowledges that public life usually has more urgent demands than the demand for truthful honoring of virtue, he may also have understood that loyalty to one's community cannot be the supreme law. He may have seen that the principle of loyalty, whenever it is separated from virtue as a whole, tends to be supplanted by the rule of private self-interest. A community that looks up to nothing higher than its own law, and its own interests, is always prone to disintegra- tion. There is admittedly a danger to any community from excellence, and from individuals' attachment to it. But not to give excellence its due is also dangerous-dangerous to the whole community, and especially to its rulers (along with their closest friends). Through their disrespect for Ajax, the Achaean commanders endanger their own title to respect, and to any obedience more reliable than that from self-interest. And this threat to their ruling offices is not sufficiently met by reliance on the nobility of their family names (cf. also 1093-96). Odysseus' success in persuading them to show a noble respect for Ajax is therefore necessary for the army's stability. His generous honJULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE �oring of Ajax's virtue helps to maintain the threatened Achaean community in its integrity, whether or not his primary aim was to do so. By openly deferring to his rival's excellence, Odysseus complements that excellence with a more serviceable, and unobtrusive, excellence of his own (cf. 1356-57). As Ajax's body is being carried out for burial, his brother Teucer makes a final public statement about him. He says that Ajax is, or was, a good man in all respects (rQ 1ravr' Cx'"(cx8Q, 1415). The play itself, however, has raised serious doubts about such a boast. Even apart from the question of political loyalty, the mere thought of Tecmessa (who is probably on stage until the end) would make us doubt that Ajax had been entirely virtuous. Yet it may be necessary for the Achaean community, and for any healthy community, to disregard some failings in its heroes. l. Compare B. M. W. Knox, "The Ajax of Sophocles," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology lxv, 1961, l-37. See also Heinrich Weinstock, Sophokles, Leipzig, Berlin, 1931, 50-51, and Kurt von Fritz, "Zur Inter· pretation des Aias," Rheinisches Museum 83, 1934, 124-25. 2. The importance of this fact and its relation to the whole question of heroic virtue is examined in "The Aristeia ofDiomedes and the Plot of the Iliad," AGON, Journal of Classical Studies 2, 1968, 10-38, by Seth Benardete. 3. Compare Achilles' self-reproach upon learning ofPatroclus' death; n iad I:98-104. On the importance of loyalty as a Homeric virtue, see also Hugh Lloyd-Jones, The Justice of Zeus, Berkeley, 1971,26 et passim. 4. The weight ofTecmessa's argument, and of her character, has been recognized by G. M. Kirkwood, A Study of Sophoclean Drama, Ithaca, 1958, 105-06. 5. Tecmessa does not assert that gratitude suffices to make a man noble; rather she says that an ungrateful man would no longer remain noble. She admits, in other words, that nobility has some higher source than the memory of benefits received. 6. 588; cf. 522. For the kinship between gratitude and loyalty, consider 1267: xttpts Ow.ppE~ xai 1rpoOolh' &A~axt:7m. Gratitude, or the recollection of good things, may be at the root of our acceptance of the duty to be loyal. Consider Xenophon, Cyropaedia I 2.6 and Anabasis V 8.26. 7. The word order, as well as the sense, suggest that we treat the word 'cX071Aa as a proleptic adjective and translate it as "unclearly." 8. Contrast Knox, "Ajax" 2, 19, 20. 9. As Jebb has noted, the normal meaning of this sentence is "Pity forbids me to leave her", though it could also imply that his leaving is imminent. Here a word is necessary about the much-disputed question of deception. According to Knox, if Tecmessa and the chorus are deceived by Ajax's speech, "they have no one to blame but themselves" (14). Yet misleading phrases such as this one argue in favor of the older view that· Ajax deliberately deceives his hearers-or at least deliberately encourages their self-deception (See Jebb's Introduction, 124; and compare Stanford's Appendix D, London, 1963). Now it could well be, as Knox argues (10-14), that Ajax begins his monologue without thinking of his listeners. But he is surely conscious of their presence by the end of his THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW speech. Then, at least, he has renewed his resolve to die, and yet he encourages Tecmessa and the men of the chorus to believe otherwise. That he should encourage the wishful thinking of Tecmessa and the chorus is, of course, compatible with the veiled truthfulness of his words. 10. Compare I. Errandonea, "Les quatres monologues de l'Ajax et leur signification dramatique," Les Etudes Classiques 26, l, January, 1958, 34. See also Kirkwood, 103-04. 11. H. D. F. Kitto, in Form and Meaning in Drama, London, 1956,189, 194-95, has called attention to the importance of the word 70t"(i:tp in line 667. I do not, however, follow his interpretation, which ignores the simplest and most obvious train of thought. 12. Compare Kitto, 194. 13. On these lines (669-76) see especially Kamerbeek, The Aiax, Leiden, 1953, 140-42. 14. To suggest that Athena is willing to forget her anger is one of the dramatic purposes of Calchas' warning to Teucer. For a fuller interpretation of this warning, see M. S. Wigodsky, "The Salvation of Ajax", Hermes 90, 1962, 149-58. 15. Compare the somewhat different analysis of Weinstock, 51. Kitto, 194-95, among others, has argued that these maxims about hate and friendship are not so much ignoble as enlightened and humane. But to argue this, and to turn attention away from the acceptance of betrayal among friends, Kitto has had to focus on the surprising beneficence to Ajax of his former enemy Odysseus. (See also Bowra, Sophoclean Tragedy, Oxford, 1944, 41.) Yet before interpreting Ajax's statement in the light of subsequent events, we must first understand it as it appears in its own context. 16. Martin Sicherl, "Die Tragik des Aias," Hermes 98, 1970, 14-31, especially 29-30. Compare also Wigodsky, and cf. footnote 9. 17. Bowra, 47. 18. Kamerbeek, 210, finds the logical sequence of Menelaus' argument here to be unsatisfying, and Stanford, 195, even suspects misplacement or interpolation at 1077-80. But while Stanford is right that "Menelaus jumps back and forth from the individual person to the 11"0>-.n, without warning of a change of subject, in 1081," this confusion mirrors precisely the inner flaw in Menelaus' position. 19. In lines 1250-52, and especially in the words &.u¢aAf.(J7a.7ot (1251) and xpa.7oi.lut (1252), it is unclear whether Agamemnon is referring to armies or to individual men. In the light of the preceding argument, these lines seem to justify the award of arms by the claim that men like Odysseus, rather than Ajax, contribute most to the survival and success of the army (cf. Kamerbeek, 238). But in connection with what follows they look more like a warning to over,confident. men like Ajax-and Teucer to watch out for themselves. 20. It could be argued, indeed, that Odysseus did not really owe gratitude to Athena, since in her punishment of Ajax she may not have cared that this would also save the lives of the other chieftains. James Tyler, in "Sophocles' Ajax and Sophoclean Plot Construction," AJP 95, no. 1, 1974, 24-42, has noted the absence of any mention of such concern on her part. To Tyler's argument one could add that Athena never claimed to be punishing Ajax for his violation of an oath to serve the army. Yet despite Tyler's careful discrimination between the avowed motives of Ajax's divine and his human adversaries, it is strikingly fortunate for the army, to say the least, that Athena chose the moment she did to intervene. This coincidence alone might be enough to keep alive at least the hope that the gods, while hating those who are bad, also love and care for those who are sound-minded (cf. 132-33). 57 �FIRST READINGS LEVEN'S CREATOR Creator, by Jeremy Leven, 450 pp., Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc, New York 1980. Creator, Jeremy Leven's first published novel, is cast in the form of a series of notebooks written during the last year of his life by Dr. Harry Wolper (born Jan. 1, 1900, died December 25, not inappropriately Christmas, 1969), and published by his son as a condition for receiving his father's legacy. The notebooks themselves are a record of the experiments, reflections, autobiography, family history, philosophical meanderings, sexual exploits and fantasies, marriage, paternity (both literally of sons and daughters and metaphorically of a son in a novel he has been writing) and, most importantly, the attempt by Dr. Wolper to recreate parthenogenetically his dead wife (he has been culturing a number of her cells for many years), and of his thoughts about what creation, both biological and artistic, means, hence the title of the novel. Harry Wolper, then, God, creator as parent, biochemist, and novelist, and ultimately, the creation himself, perhaps, of the protagonist of the novel he has been writing, is the medium through which Mr. Leven, himself, reflects on the meaning of creation and the philosophic questions which fall out of such a concern. The book is multi-layered and subtle, and it is clear that Mr. Leven has read widely and carefully and made good use of what he has read. I Gannot, in a brief review, do justice to the care and wit with which the book is worked out, but I will look at several of the opening journal entries with some attention to detail to give an indication of the way our creator works. The first journal entry is for January l, 1969, Harry's 69th birthday and the first day of a new year. The sixty-nine is both a sexual allusion and the age of Socrates when he was condemned. Socrates is im- 58 portant in the novel for a number of reasons, but first as the narrator of the m'yth of the cave, for "The World's Oldest Operating Metaphor" (january 13) is one of the more important recurring images of the book. The New Year and the new beginning it represents begins a comic version of Genesis. It opens: lst. To begin with, there is no earthly reason to begin. Heaven knows. and, one hopes, a day of rest. But we find that Harry is not as efficient as God, and although he apparently disposes of the first tasks in one sentence each in the journal entries for Jan. 1-5, problems arise on the sixth day. 6th. Ah yes. And now for the beginning. Damn, I forgot to mop the floor. Where the hell is my list. Harry is not the tidiest of creators (his Harry's creation does not begin with 'laboratory we see later is near chaos, a conearthly motives, or at least none that he is dition he sees as particularly appropriate aware of. Perhaps Heaven knows, but for creation), the water is still sloshing there is a strong suggestion later that even around, and hell and damnation enter the God wasn't too sure of what he was doing picture very early. It becomes clear that he when he created man. The question of will not do the job in a week, and the book what man as creator knows, however, is will not end with the enfry for the 7th. opened, and the rest of the novel wrestles 7th. What a lousy week this has been. I with this central question. haven't accomplished a damn thing. I After some mention of his advancing need a rest. Badly. years and consequent decrepitude, Harry observes, "Together, body, mind, and soul And we do, in the novel, get a temporary are in the last lap of a sweepstakes to see who will be the first to his agony's jack- rest from his creative labors as we move pot," which reminds us of that other thinker back to his first meeting with his Eve, who mulled over that problem of the rela- Lucy, to whom he indeed cleaves in a variety of positions as they become one flesh tion of mind, body, and soul, and recreated his world in the seven days of his Medita- (though not without some hellish interruptions, Descartes, who enters the novel tions) and engender Arnold, their Nioses explicitly in the entry for Jan. 18 in a reflec- (jan. 20). The final entry for January once again tion on man's relation to nature and of his raises the issue of the relation between soul to his body. Harry, faced with the emotional and God and man and poses it in a way which physical disorder of his own life, begins his informs the rest of the novel. journal, he then tells us, to protect himself 31st. Here's another thing about God. against Boris, his fictional protagonist, his I do not accept that God made man, creation, who has gotten out of hand and is as my mother told me when I was six, asserting his independence. Harry observes because he was lonesome. My mother that he "must get organized" and sets out had an alcoholic husband, and she was his "week's chores." lonesome. God created man as a joke. l. Pull up shades. He was bored. 2. Do Zodiac. Take, for example, Adam and Eve, 3. Mop floor. Water plants. reaching all over themselves to hide 4. Replace lightbulbs (outdoor spots and their nakedness, ashamed, and quaking nightlights). at the very thought of being banished from their garden. 5. Check incubator. Fill birdfeeder. It has always seemed to me that if 6. Create life. Jehovah, in his omnipotence, had really 7. ? not wanted man to eat the apple, He So we get Harry's version of the creation would not have made a man who does in Genesis, the creation, in order, of light, exactly the opposite of what he's told. the firmament, the gathering together of Man is God's practical joke. Believe me. the waters to allow the dry land to appear Here's another joke. God made man and the creation of plant life, the lights in in his image. the firmament, the creation of all animal I'm concerned With the Almighty's life other than man, the creation of man, sense of humor tonight because I'm JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE �convinced that I'm only days away from discovering the secret of life. God must be in hysterics. The relation of God to man is reflected in the relation of man to the things he makes. If man is God's practical joke, so are our creation, our practical jokes, or, at least, the novel tells us, they often turn out that way whether we intend it or not. Our children turn out to be made in our image though recalcitrant in ways we never intended. Our works, novels, poems, inventions, destructions, reveal us and tell us things about ourselves we might not have wanted to know. And, finally, if we could find out how to make life, if we could really be Godlike, would our creations, too, think that we made them as a practical joke? Harry does discover the secret of life. He finds out how to implant cells of human beings into the unfertilized ovum of a woman and return the egg to the uterus to grow. The young woman, Meli, whom he hires to be the incubator turns out to be a major character in the novel. Starting as a totally ignorant post-adolescent, she acquires by extensive reading in Harry's library and by long, sometimes very interesting conversations with him, a good liberal education. And she finally ends up as his second wife, carrying in her womb not only his first wife but, as a twin, Harry himself who will have gone Oedipus one better. Counterpointed with Harry's drama is the life of Boris, his fictional Stephen Dedalus (entry for January 9) whose life resembles in many ways Harry's own and whose arguments with Harry, his creator, are implicitly those between Harry and his God. I hope I have given some suggestion of the formal and intellectual complexity of the novel-a novel which discusses and embodies many of the most interesting questions. The discussion is witty throughout, the structure ingenious and well executed, and the novel is certainly intelligent and sharp and perhaps profound. George Doskow George Doskow teaches at St. John's College in Annapolis. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW EYES OF His OwN- AND WORDS Oilers and Sweepers and Other Stories, by George Dennison, Random House, New York 1979. Dennison's work is important because he knows himself as an artist, because he knows how to make things and how to let things happen. He knows how to live with his mistakes; he knows what he can do and when the works he fashions call for things he cannot do. This means his faults strengthen his work rather than distort it, as they would if he tried to hide them-or worse still, pretend they were not there. His work has the intelligent ambition of restraint, not the stupid ambition that takes recklessness for freedom. Because his stories do not give false assurances, they make you love the world, and hate things worthy of hate: There was one human intelligence, one human pride, one human integrity and giving-forth. How wonderful mankind was, that monster! Tears were standing· in his eyes, though he was filled with rejoicing. These four stories and a "Vaudeville Play," which together make up a whole that is all the more one because unplanned, could appear in a newspaper, if our newspapers employed reporters who could see. Dennison's accounts tell "news" that The New York Times looks desperately for in its "human interest stories"-"stories" which tell of no city on heaven or earth and make the Victorians look worldly because, in contrast to many of us, they knew when they were afraid and when they were embarrassed, and knew that there were things that were rightly embarrassing. Of Dennison's accounts, the strongest are "Oilers and Sweepers," which deals with looking, but with a remoteness that approaches coldness; "The Author of Caryatids," which addresses itself to creation, a creation good enough to remind you of the creation of Ivlichelangelo's God touching Adam or Rodin's hand opening with a man and a woman unfolding like an embryo within it-but with daring laughter; and "The Smiles of Konarak," which tells of success in love and art and their relation, in the streets of the lower East Side of New York, and almost ends with a recreation of Coriolanus in Tompkins Square Park: What would you have, you curs, that like nor peace nor war? The one affrights you, the other makes you proud. He that trusts to you, where he should find you lions, finds you hares; where foxes, geese. The vaudeville play, "The Service for Joseph Axminster," wants the severity and solace of the rites of death and burial, is somehow empty, perhaps because it needs a living audience rather than silent readers. Set somewhat awkwardly in a France too familiar to be recognizable, really the France of the American expatriates in the 20's, "Larbaud, A Tale of Pierrot" tells of the ravages of superior powers of intelligence on those who struggle to let them come to something. At a carnival a mime enamored of Ivlinot Larbaud makes a casting of his face and head and moulds a mask on it. There is no hint of a death-mask, but you cannot help thinking of it. Wearing this mask of himself Minot discovers he has a gift of jumping high-of soaring. The discovery of this gift, although unexpected, does not entirely surprise, for there is something with the hint of the god-like about Larbaud: "He could not divest himself of authority." The leaping shows him forth, quite unexpectedly, as a man who knows enough of life to live without self-imposed limits, without self-restraint. "It was a joy to leap, a joy to give way utterly to my powers," he writes later in recollection to the narrator. And the public, at least his first public, recognizes this giving way utterly and the strength that rises from it: "When Minot leaped now, our cheers expressed more than mere enthusiasm. Some deeply lodged hope, if hope is the right word, had been stirred into wakefulness." After the carnival J'vlinot becomes a champion in international competitions. To his delight, at the circus clowns with springs on their feet imitate his leaps. But in the newspapers and at radio round- 59 �tables charges, never challenged by those who knew them to be lies, are voiced that Larbaud uses a trampoline. When a few spectators "boo" him, Larbaud leaves the amphitheater, never to jump again. Even earlier, the narrator had counseled withdrawal: " ... I urged him to put an end to this career. For I had come to believe that his talent was a meager thing compared to the rare intelligence he possessed; compared to his character which was perhaps the rarest thing of all." Minot leaves the South for Paris where he prospers with the establishment of an electronics factory. Suddenly, he collapses: his self vanishes. This collapse, an astute young psychiatrist recognizes, shows a struggle for self-cure, rather than sickness: His face [the face of the psychiatrist] came alight. "He [Minot] is vital," he said. "He is extraordinary. He is like a baffled animal who gathers himself within his fur and waits. l'vly treatment-." Here he smiled in such a way as made me want to take his hands. It was a smile that told me much. It lit his face with an expression that men inherit from their mothers; and I understood that this austere young aristocrat had come from a working-class home; I even fancied I could see his mother bending at her work, harassed, overburdened, vehement in opinion ... and intellectually free. "-my treatment," he said. "is to keep away. No drugs. No talk. He is curing himself. I know he is." As Minot comes again into himself, he studies birds and their flight, their soaring. Two important works come from him and he dies-farseeing the time of his death like an ancient hero. There follow like an elegy a few pages of the narrator's boyhood recollections of Minot. This story is of greatness, shyly about greatness but about greatness. It is also about strength and the fearfulness of giving in to it. It amounts to the story of a life. Its own strength comes from its modesty which has all the resilience of assurance. For this modesty comes of the author's respect for what he does not understand but will not ignore-life itself, moving of its own sweet will. All of these accounts have real subjects and real content, because Dennison hardly ever tries to instruct, but simply surprises 60 without appearing arbitrary. When he contrives, it is with the assurance of convention, of a convention he does not always acknowledge. The clarity with which he sees New York, with which he can distinguish the few actually murderous from the many fearfully struggling to come to life owes something to distance, the distance of a gentleman in Russia in the 19th century who could always leave the city for the country. Without breaking into a smile he can describe a man in his late thirties living off a trust fund on the lower East Side going to Sixth Avenue for "greens" and University Place butchers for steaks. But the revolution he remembers is the Mexican, which, ten years before the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, took its own course without ideology and without the lust to export its sufferings (one million dead)and is, therefore, now largely forgotten. He can describe death with enough compassion to make you weep. There is a place for children in his work, unobtrusive but unmistakable. He can describe the sky, the sun on the trees. He can make you hear The Magic Flute. He does not quot~· Moliere or even Shakespeare but lets them speak. The test of all that has gone before in "The Author of Caryatids" is the capacity to describe the dawn at the end without great and wordy preparations (except for a moment of forced quaintness), just because his account leads him to it. Dennison's capacity to describe these simple and obvious things comes from his respect for the surface. In this respect for, no, love of, the surface, from which he never asks more than it can give and so receives more than you expect, Dennison is like the Impressionists, but like an Impressionist painter after the Cubists, the Futurists, Suprematists, Abstract Expressionists, and so on. He is like a man who can return to his eyes and see, because he has been through all the complications without mentioning them, a silence that tells of hard passages. He does not restore the surface but discovers it anew: he comes upon the simple things because he has gone through all the complicated brilliance and been left with the simple things almost self-evident before his eyes. Dennison's capacity to alternate between real thought and seeing and not to confuse one with the other shows that his love of surface does not come of a fear of depth. Dennison's thought reaffirms the world and leads you into it. It makes you capable of seeing, just as his seeing encourages you to think. He knows, in the way few people dare know, that a work of art" ... is a large, bold, dazzlingly energetic manifestation of self in which intelligence and feeling [support] each other." In all this Dennison owes something to Goethe, w.ho never thought anything he could not see. But he would not have been able to learn from such a master had he not been smart enough to take Paul Goodman as a teacher. For in this Goodman (in his stories, poems, plays, and novels) was great without qualification, in that he could learn from the masters and teach you to learn from them-and, thereby, put naturalism in perspective, the naturalism many writers rebel against but cannot get rid of. Like Goodman's style, Dennison's is classic; that is, it respects facts, knows the difference between words and action (and their relation), between thought and brooding, between imagination and fantasy, and it does not flatter. Without Goodman's learning, Dennison is also without his coldness, which in Goodman was a fear of feeling, a fear that he would tear up the world if he got too close to it. Yau cannot have intelligence, surface, and depth, in short content as well as feeling, thought as well as sight, without experience of art, which will guide you when you are fashioning a work. Without an apparent esthetic theory, Dennison has an artisan's practical esthetic awareness, rare these days, that at other times might have been called taste. This awareness allows him to discover instead of "experiment." More importantly, its clarity of outline and the excitement it occasions awaken the reader to active attention. Every one of these stories shows respect for the reader and knows his presence in give and take. LEO RADITSA JULY 1980 • THE COllEGE �AT HOME AND ABROAD Letter From Moscow: A Rude Introduction On the sixth day of my stay in the Soviet Union, on my way to meet fellow American students of the Pushkin Institute for dinner, I was stopped and questioned for about two hours by a man from the KGB. For the next several weeks the recollection of the ordeal gripped me. I told myself that I had not been in any real danger and that the incident might have ended quickly had I had my passport (school officials had collected them to prevent theft). But reasoning didn't help. I hated life in the Soviet Union, and I knew I had to stay there for the next four months. It turned out that this incident was not repeated and that I greatly enjoyed my stay, thanks to the friends I made. But I did not know that then. On my first trek downtown, I noticed that policemen stand on every corner, and I was awed to see droves of soldiers and officers in uniform. They were everywhere, in the subways, in restaurants, on the streets. The city seemed an armed camp in which an invading army had set in-yet it was the Soviets' own army. On November 7, the anniversary of the Revolution, we students, and probably most of the nation, watched on television as soldier after soldier marched and tank after tank, missile after missile rolled onto Red Square and past the Politburo members, who stood at attention and saluted. On that day, the regime celebrated brute, awesome military might instead of the supposed ideals of the revolution. The Propaganda The propaganda-strong in all the cities we visited (Leningrad, Kiev, Tallinn, and Lvov) but most incessant in Moscow-depicts a world of the past: the central hero is Lenin and the main events are the Revolution and World War II. A visitor who knew THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW no history would imagine that these events had just happened. This frozen concentration on the past, this attempt to fix it forever in the present, continually amazed me. The Paradise-bound tone of idealismof building Communism and the New Soviet Man-is curiously out of place in the fast-paced, apathetic world of present-day Moscow. The war is the subject of countless books and movies with one-sided heroes and villains; Germans from World War II are never called "Germans" or "Nazis," but only "Fascists;" a common slogan declares, "Nothing is forgotten, no one is forgotten" who perished in World War II-but where is one word, where is one statue to the millions whom Stalin had murdered? A common street poster saying, "The Communist Party of the Soviet Union is the honor, mind, and conscience of the 20th Century -V.I. Lenin" angered me whenever I saw it; I thought of Stalin henchmen and Hitler youth. Lenin is portrayed not merely as the founder of the Soviet Union but as a prophet and god-infallible, just, and virtually immortal. Our visit to Lenin's corpse (skeptics say, only a wax imitation), enshrined in the temple-like Lenin Mausoleum, left us with an eerie feeling of having taken part in a pagan rite of worshiping the dead. Lenin's body, dressed in coat and tie, is protected by immaculately clad honor guards with long rifles and bayonets and deadly serious faces. A hushed silence reigns. On most days hundreds of Russians and foreigners pay homage to Lenin, like :Moslems on a pilgrimage to Mecca; many newlyweds come straight from the wedding ceremony to lay wreaths at his feet. Often the line stretches along the Kremlin Wall, past Red Square, past the Historical Museum, and onto Gorky Street. His diminuitive yet commanding figure seems to prove true the street slogans which declare, "Lenin lived, lives, and always will live;" "Now he is more alive than the living." _l_'he unrelenting barrage of posters and billboards that line the streets dazzles the newcomer, but Russians have developed a faculty for tuning it out. In a private conversation with one of my teachers, who naively but sincerely believes in the Soviet regime, I mentioned a poster which said, "A driver-an interesting profession!" My teacher said she had never seen the poster, and when I teased her, she insisted vehe· mently that I had made the whole thing up. This struck me: the poster was, in fact, one of the most common in the city, yet even my teacher, despite her conventional· ism, had blocked it out of her mind. I can only wonder how many other posters she blocks out as well. How much of the propaganda do the people believe? We students met numerous Russians who consider the United States aggressive and the Soviet Union defensive. They stressed that the Russian people want peace because their suffering in World War II has taught them the horror of war. They insisted Americans do not understand because they never really suffered in World War II and now they have forgotten altogether (the title of the documentary "The Forgotten War," which was shown in the Soviet Union, convinces many of them of this). Some of these persons were elderly, simple, kind-hearted folk who had little education. Others were 20 and 30 year-olds who worked instead of going to college. And several of my teachers, who were sophisticated and well-educated, expressed these opinions in candid conversations with me. But many other Russians whom I knew held contrary views. They were all deeply ashamed of their country for its invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Many told me, "The United States has fallen greatly in our eyes," because it has not retaliated militarily against Iran. To prove to me their own country's militarism, one couple showed me their 14 year-old son's text· book, with pictures on how to clean a rifle and how to protect it while crawling through fields on your belly. Despite-or because of-the propaganda against the decadence of the West and the attempt to prevent contact with it, a cult does exist, particularly among the young, of things Western, a cult so intense that, in our eyes, it amounted to a worship of anything with Roman lettering on it. The black market in jeans, watches, records, and American dollars is fierce and the prices exorbitant. Jeans, which sell for 200 rubles each (equivalent to almost two month's average salary) are a special status symbol: at a party in honor of a man about to emigrate (parties common enough to have a special name in Russian), the guests, who were all formally dressed, considered 61 �the best dressed among them a scientist in jeans and blue denim jacket. Russians shower Americans with questions on the latest trends in rock and jazz, in theater, and in clothes. Elvis Presley is a favorite of the young Russians I met, who showed me a half-dozen "obituary" columns that had seized the occasion of the singer's death to denounce him for "hourgeois decadence." The attempt to insulate Russia from the West shows the meaning of the Russian proverb, "The forhtdden fruit is sweet." Many Russians. hov.:ever, do consider the West corrupt. One man, a professor deeply impressed by his recent travels on his own in America, insisted to me that the American government should censor pornography and reports of crime, since their incessant repetition in sordid detail depresses individuals and society. Another man, upon learning of an attempt on Senator Kennedy's life last fall, told his son, who was planning to apply for permission to emigrate, "America is ahead of us in many things, in many things. But there is so much crime there, so many murders. They killed Kennedy, their own president, they killed his brother, they killed Martin Luther King. Why do you want to go there?" This man's views deserve consideration because he feels deeply the injustices of the Soviet regime, and like his son had once considered emigration. He told me that the Soviet constitution is good on paper but not in practice. Soviet citizens have the right to file charges against discrimination, but no case of antiSemitism has ever been brought to court. In contrast to Tsarist Russia (Vera Zasulich) and Nazi Germany (in connection with the Reichstag fire), no court in the Soviet Union has ever acquitted a political defendant. His passion grew with each example and culminated in bitter anger in his account of the first trial of Alexander Ginsburg. Defense lawyer Zolotukhin had submitted his speech to the Bar Association for censorship and received permission to deliver it in its entirety. After the trial, the Bar Association had his membership in the Communist Party revoked and disqualified him from the further practice of law. The Bar Association warned fellow lawyers who protested to keep silent if they wished to avoid similar punishment. The man telling me these stories was in a position to know their authenticity. 62 The propaganda works not just through false assertions, but through silences and omissions. One of our teachers, a highly educated woman, was astounded to learn that Solzhenitsyn is still alive, and she showed intense curiosity to learn what he is saying and writing today. Other Russians I met knew Solzhenitsyn's works, all of which-including Gulag Archipelago, First Circle, and Cancer Ward-circulate privately in smuggled or in clandestine domestic editions. l\!ly friends knew Solzhenitsyn's speech at Harvard University in detail. An elderly couple who had never before criticized the Soviet Union said at the farewell dinner they held for me: "We respect Solzhenitsyn for his role as citizen: he said the things that everyone feared to say but that needed to be said." The two other Russians present, a professor and his wife, agreed. To obtain banned books is difficult, to own them fraught with danger. A friend who showed me drawers full of poetry from the 1920's and Bulgakov's short novel, The Heart of the Dog, said that these works "are deeply anti-Soviet," and that he kept them despite his fear. The teacher who did not know that Solzhenitsyn is still alive perhaps hints at a Russia in which many remain in ignorance because their genuine interest in the truth does not outweigh their fear. Nor does the availability of the banned books console the Russians who dare to read them: a graduate student-who had previously gotten in trouble for the books he owned-told me that the necessity for secrecy fills him with shame for his country, with a gnawing sense of indignation, and has led him to decide to emigrate to America. The Living Conditions In the face of the difficult daily living conditions, the propaganda, with its praise of the Revolution and its blessings, struck us with its irony. Living was a struggle: to some extent physical, since nourishing food was hard to find, and to a great extent psychological, since daily conditions exasperated us. Adjusting to Russia took aU our energies. And the Russians' way of dealing with the conditions exasperated us more than the conditions themselves. They constantly pushed and shoved and shouted at each other (and at us). They had reason to do so: cashiers were desperately overworked and customers were tired and hungry;. one teacher ~whom we considered the kindest of all our teachers-once told me that she had no shame in pushing others out of her way to get into a bus, since the alternative was to wait in the cold for an extra hour and be late for class. Living conditions disgusted almost everyone in our dormitory-students from Eastern and Western Europe, Africa, and North America. Only the Vietnamese looked upon the Soviet Union almost in awe as a miracle of modern industrialization and as a friend which had helped them in need. At our Institute's Party of Friendship, an informal get-together in which students from each country performed on stage, the Vietnamese alone sang patriotic Soviet songs and shouted out Soviet slogans with fervor. l told myself l had to tolerate these conditions for four months only-the poor Russians had to suffer them for a lifetime. I realized the luxury of the conditions I had taken for granted in America. Russia Disguised: The Tourist's View While the real living conditions drained me of energy and patience, the false view of them purveyed to tourists filled me with indignation. They stay at plush downtown hotels-which they do not select-such as the Rossiia, a huge hotel whose single rooms cost 100 dollars a night. Its guests may dine at any of the hotel's twelve restaurants, never having to wait in line at a cafeteria for a typical meal of greasy soup and exceptionally fatty meat. The hotel has its own Beriozka, a special store where foreigners alone may shop-no Russians allowed-and where they must pay in foreign currency only-no rubles accepted. The stores for Russians display some of the high-quality merchandise found in the Beriozkas, but sell none of it. Taken on of. ficial tours, guests are shown only the very best of Russia and hear its worth exaggerated by the rapturous and mendacious speeches of the tour guides ("The Olympic stadiums show that Soviet technology is the greatest in the world-America had better learn a lesson from us"). Several times when I tried to enter the hotel-to JULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE �dine at the main restaurant or to go to the post office-the doorman denied me permission-guests only. Some tourists take the carefully constructed facade for the country itself and leave the U.S.S.R. satiated and impressed. Our trip had the opposite effect on us: most of us came with not-too-unsympathetic a view of the Soviet Union and left detesting it. At our Thanksgiving dinner we raised our -glasses to patriotic toasts we would have scoffed at just a few months earlier. Incidentally, that dinner was held at the Natsional restaurant, the very place in which I was questioned by the KGB in the first week of my stay. By my second visit, I had learned that the restaurant, perhaps the best in Moscow, serves only top Party officials and foreigners who pay in their own currency, not rubles. On that first visit, I had been chased through a large chandelier-lit dining room where elegantly dressed foreigners ate five-course meals with champagne and caviar as a live singer and band performed romantic Gypsy songs in the background. On my return visit, I was treated to the hospitality lavished on foreigners and to a meal of turkey, cranberry sauce, and other extravagances. Our Own Isolation As a rule our friends in Moscow did not visit us in our dormitory. They were not officially banned, but they knew visits to us could get them into trouble. Our dormitory was monitored by kind maternal old ladies (dezhurnaias) who took turns guarding each floor around the clock, and who wrote daily reports to the KGB. Two Russian males who were our age hung out on our floor, professing great interest in the West, speaking excellent English and German, ingratiating themselves among the Westerners, and taking careful note of the few Russians who did visit us. They said they had been expelled from the university and were unemployed but independently wealthy. And my American classmates believed them!-and called me paranoid for saying the two were spies. "Are Americans really still that naive!" said a Japanese diplomat. The dezhurnaias allowed the pair to carouse freely, but they stopped a Russian friend who tried to visit us discreetly and demanded to-know her identity, occuTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW pation, and nationality ("Ahngleesh," said our friend, in her attempt at English). The friend told me that the wealthiest Russians are the managers of restaurants and clothes stores who deal on the black market and trade through blat. Blat Often I wondered how the Russians manage to survive in such intolerable conditions. (Some do by drinking, as we saw on the streets daily at all times of the day and night.) I learned the answer only gradually because a large part of the economic life is hidden from public view. Some things in the Soviet Union are built impressively: hotels and restaurants for foreigners, the Olympic stadiums, tanks and missiles. Besides these priority items, however, no one and nothing appears to work: outside our dormitory piles of bricks crumbled unused; one morning we saw construction workers lean on their shovels and lie down in the field to go to sleep. The Soviet professor who had been to America told me that his greatest impression, along with the friendship Americans offered him, was their "pure attitude toward work." He said he saw carpenters accomplish in one day what a brigade in Russia would struggle to achieve in a month-and, if they did, would be awarded medals of honor. Russians, who have jokes for all the absurdities of Soviet life, have one that captures the national attitude toward work: "In Russia two groups know how to make believethe Party, which makes believe that it pays people real wages for their work, and the people, who make believe that they work for their pay." But outside the public view exists a dazzling world of barter known in Russian as blat. A waiter and a shoe salesman will quietly exchange quality meat and fruit for a new pair of shoes-commodities almost impossible to get otherwise; factory managers will keep their plants running by trading indispensable materials that official suppliers fail to deliver on time. My roommates helped our dormitory's construction chief by hauling mattresses for several hours, and in return he gave us the parts to a closet which we assembled on our ownthereby getting one three months before our neighbors did. An artist painted portraits ofBrezhnev's physician and foot doctor in exchange for their medical servicesor so surmised a Russian friend of mine when we saw the portraits in an exhibit. Our Friends Although our Russian friends could not come to us, we could go to them. (We never had any real problems in doing so, although one of my friends said that, on the night after my first visit, his father, a lawyer, could not sleep because he expected the KGB). As I would leave the bedlam and coldness and rudeness of the streets and enter my friends' homes, I felt as though I were entering another world, one of warmth and generosity and kindness. They always fed me extremely well with large and tasty meals, never letting on what sacrifices it took to get the food. Once I offered to help make the meal but confessed that I didn't know how to. "That's okay, you don't need to," said my friend. "To make up for it, you eat very well." My Russian friends had a special depth. They talked over disappointments and larger problems, listened to others' and my own, and were ready at a moment's notice to help out a friend, no matter what the sacrifice. We Americans felt that our friends had protected us from the cold world of Moscow. One of my friends never took a music lesson but taught himself to play jazz by listening to songs on the radio, and now he is Russia's leading jazz musician. He has a total purpose in life: to bring jazz to Russia and to make a Russian contribution to it. To do so, he tours the Soviet Union constantly, choosing this grueling life over the easy one he could have playing schmaltzy music in Moscow. Another friend, a twenty-eight-year old graduate student, thought-and did not shrink from telling me-that I had the habit of setting overly ambitious projects for myself, that I would begin feverishly, and soon abandon them in frustration with nothing accomplished. He thought I had potential but needed discipline. And that he had: he was the most organized person I have ever met, thriving in the face of obstacles.:_ Russian living conditions compounded by intractable bureaucracies- 63 �which would overwhelm and devour lesser persons. The evening before we departed, he gave me and one of my roommates a paternal farewell lecture, urging us to set intellectual goals and to woik in spite of all obstacles to achieve them. If we forsake intellectual endeavor, he warned, our lives may seem satisfying, or fun or financially rewarding, but when we grow older we will recognize them as empty. Nly teachers knew they could not become our friends outside the classroom, and perhaps to make up for that, they put themselves into their work inside the classroom. The core courses, those on Russian phonetics, conversation, and grammar, were the best I have ever had (and I have been to three of the best colleges in America that teach Russian). Our teachers not only felt the language's nuances, but knew how to articulate them. One of them told me that a teacher must always strive to improve, must never be self-satisfied. Although they were supposed to address us on the formal vy, several of our teachers switched to the informal ty when they got to know us. In the homes of my friends I discovered that Russians live in two distinct, even opposite worlds-a public and a private one. If my experiences had been restricted to the public one my sojourn would have been unbearable. It was the personal, private world of Russia that redeemed my stay. STEPHEN DEANE ---~~-- Stephen Deane spent four months in the Soviet Union (September-December, 1979) after completing his studies in the Soviet Union Program at Harvard University. FRoM OuR This is a venture which should succeed as well or better than the Kenyon or Sewanee Reviews of yore and serve as a splendid introduction to St. John's for that diminishing but still wide community of thoughtful citizens who still don't know what we're doing. Let me confess, incidentally, that I was particularly and quite personally taken with two pieces in your issue-Fehl's reminiscences of Vienna in 1938 and your own "Letter from Budapest and Pees." I am a survivor of that same dreadful time in Vienna and indeed was moved for general examinations (admission to, in my case, rather than graduation from, the Gymnasium) to the same all-Jewish school Fehl describes. I'vly impressions of the place were of a generalized terror contained within the forms of propriety and rationality of a dimension which strikes me with dread forty-two years later. There was more laughter among the inmates of a Vichy French concentration camp that I experienced in 1940 than in the corridors of the Chajes Gymnasium. In that c_onnection your aside about the rapt attention of the Viennese audience to a performance of Nathan der Weise was most telling. If today's Viennese remember 1938 and after, it is in clandestine and secretive ways. The overt attitude to those days is best described by a Viennese folk expression, which incidentally long predates the twentieth century: "Das ist ja nicht mehr wahr (that isn't true any longer)," an expression with which all unpleasant memories may be dealt in the interest of contemporary Gemiitlichkeit. Submersion is so complete that Vienna's best circulated yellow rag, the Kronenzeitung, can offer caricatures of Nienachem Begin and of Austria's (Jewish) Chancellor Bruno Kreisky in the style of Der StUrmer without arousing commentary, let alone protestations. READERS BERNARD fLEISCHl\IANN New York City February 16, 1980 To the Editor: To the Editor: ... I was most pleased ... to read in this month's Reporter that the last issue you edited was no one-time accident but in fact heralds the birth of a St. John's Review. In "Prometheus Unbound: Karl Marx on Human Freedom" (The College, January, 1980), Mr. Simpson speaks of a new freedom that Marx suggests but cannot detail 64 in advance because history alone can reveal it. Marxism has no "schema," he tells us, but history will show its veracity and significance. We are justified, then, in judging Marxism by that history. The century since Marx's time has shown "present suffering ... (and) the depths of human bondage" (Mr. Simpson's words) in the Soviet Union. In the name of Marxism, the self-styled dictatorship of the proletariat has arrested and murdered millions; and it has deprived Russia of the liberties it gained in 1905, dismissing them as merely "bourgeois." Yet Mr. Simpson exercises the liberty enjoyed in America to praise "Marx's concept of human freedom" and to criticize our "society (for) ... deny(ing) real freedom." He says: "Marx prizes highly ... political freedoms," but I read differently the Communist Manifesto's call for "centralization of the means of communication ... in the hands of the state." By insisting that historical action alone can really define the new social and political structure, Marx opens a Pandora's box of tyranny. Because many of the old Bolsheviks deemed historical action the progressive unfolding of dialectical materialism, they could say nothing when the "wi1l of history" turned its terror on them. Mr. Simpson says we could attain enormous productive capability "if we turned over our present factories and skills to production for rational human ends." But who is to determine those ends? Without answering that question, Mr. Simpson lacks justification to state: We are Prometheus, fully able to foresee a new order, but pinned to a system which denies us the realization of all that lies within reason's grasp. The irrationality, inefficiency, and worker alienation that in Mr. Simpson's view characterize our economy are incomparably worse in the Soviet economy. When I lived in Moscow, I saw how poor Russians are (and how comparatively wealthy Westerners are) and how thoroughly alienated (and often dnjnk) Rus~ sian workers are-precisely because they own nothing and have no competitive incentive to work. Power, not supply and demand and price, determines who gets what: scarce items are low-priced, but high officials alone can obtain them. JULY 1980 • THE COLLEGE �Mr. Simpson says: "Our major single national effort. .. is the continual preparation for ... nuclear warfare. And the target. .. is 'communism.' " That assertion, as well as the belittlement of our "bourgeois" freedom, reminds me of the propaganda I heard in the Soviet Union. The United States has nuclear arms not to wage war against the U.S.S.R. but to deter it from waging nuclear war against us. When the U.S. alone owned nuclear weapons, it did not use them against the U.S.S.R. According to General Haig, the U.S.S.R. worked feverishly to catch up to the U.S. in nuclear arms-and after it did so, it has continued at the same pace. The Chinese are no better: in the 1960's they castigated the Soviet Union for not putting nuclear power to political advantage and declared that nuclear war would result in Communist victory. America has deep problems. Marxism, however, would not solve them, while it would take away our prosperity and freedom. STEPHEN DEANE Regional Studies-Soviet Union Program Harvard University Mr. Simpson replies: I appreciate the opportunity to respond to Stephen Deane's critique of my "Prometheus" article. Perhaps in so doing I can clear up positions which were unclear to other readers as well, and even carry the argument one stage further. My purpose in the College lecture from which the article was taken was to track down Marx's concept of human freedom, as well as I could, and to look for relations to our contemporary experience. If there is any doubt about it, let me make clear now that I do not know of any society on earth today which exemplifies those freedoms J\!Iarx envisioned. I certainly did not intend an apology for the Soviet Union. The concepts Marx advanced do not stand or fall by the test of the Russian society, which has been twisted and distorted from the original intention of socialism into the horrors of Stalinism and all of its contemporary legacies. These are consequences of one specific history, not the least part of which is the initial fact that at the time of the revolution Russia was one of the countries least prepared to THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW move into a socialist future. The first point, then, is that the Soviet Union is nothing like the free society Marx describes, and it is not useful to the discussion to bring it forward as a model for comparison with our own or other societies. The question remains, however, whether the Soviet tyranny is an inevitable outcome of any attempt to achieve Marx's goals. It is commonly assumed, as Mr. Deane argues, that since history is proposed by Marx as the only forum in which political thought can advance-history is the arbiter-then an historical outcome must be accepted as the decisive verdict upon any political experiment. By this reasoning, Marx is held responsible for the Soviet Union, and the conclusion is drawn that socialism leads to the Stalinist tyrannies. Now, of course, anyone who sees the praxis of history as the true vehicle of dialectic, must take every aspect of that dialectic very seriously. We cannot turn our backs upon historical consequence. But the motions of that intricate dialectic resist this sort of simplification: we do not get "A leads to B" in history any more than we do in the Meno. Certainly there is historical consequence, but it must be traced with more care. We cannot validly conclude, from that one dark train of events out of the October Revolution into the present Russian tyranny, anything in general about the inherent implications of Marx's concept of human freedom. "History" is a theater much too large to admit of easy inferences. J\!Iankind is seeking freedom: we do not yet know where to look-we have not yet even got the question well formulated. I invoked the concept of a society which directs its efforts to rational human ends, and I take it as a manifest that to a very large degree, ours does not. I did not address the question, which many people have quite properly raised, how those ends are to be defined. Behind the mask of reason, we suspect tyranny. Let me try to speak to that question now. It is characteristic of our time to be disillusioned with democracy, but I do not share that disillusionment. We are plausibly skeptical of "government", which we have seen merge with the ubiquitous business corporation; we doubt the efficacy of a voter's choice between essentially equivalent options; we have watched public rela- bans and communication technologies preempt the political forum. But is it not, nevertheless, historically premature to despair of democracy? New democratic forms emerge in the midst of the rigid frameworks which are no longer responsive to the popular mind. These initiatives should be welcomed: they are the living tradition of democracy, which necessarily has its true roots at the bottom, not at the top, of a political structure. Can the people be trusted to make valid judgements of the complex, technical issues of the modern world? For my part, I trust the people far more than I do the experts of the Pentagon, the National Security Council, or the ancillary universities. We have to ask again the classic questions: how can the heterogeneous collection of popular judgements take shape as a reasoned policy? Well, there is always something rough-and-ready about reason in its freshest form. We need that fresh, human reason. The old patterns of metered confrontation among nations have become stale; they are locked into arrays of madness. There are not i!-lst two ways open to the world, "capitalism" and "communism." We must be open to third possibilities. I lectured on Marx, and I urge the reading of his texts, as an opening to that larger conversation. I should like to add a word about St. John's, because the College has been on my mind as I formulated these last thoughts. I think the New Program at St. John's was established to open a stale academic conversation to new possibilities. Our rejection of conventional scholarship was designed to invite new readers to the books, with new questions and new readings. We proposed a special kind of responsibility: responsibility to the conversation itself, a dialectic in which every voice was welcome to be heard. I think that was a deeply democratic impulse, and an intentional move in the direction of the rational democracy I have tried to suggest. How far does that conversation, which in this case begins at the seminar table, extend? I guess I am saying that it is inclusive, finally, of all honest human discourse. Much of that discourse in the world today has been deeply moved by Marx. I think we should recognize its community with our own questions, and be prepared to listen, and respond. We really may have something to learn, even about ourselves. 65 �The College • The St. John's Review St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Non-profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 66 Lutherville, Md. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context thecollegemagazine Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 65 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The College, The St. John's Review, July 1980 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1980-07 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Radista, Leo McClay, Wilfred M. Parran, Jr., Thomas Sisson, Barbara J. von Oppen, Beate Ruhm Wilson, Curtis A. Brann, Eva T. H. Description An account of the resource Volume XXXII, Number 1 of The College. Also referred to as The St. John's Review. Published in July 1980. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0010-0862 The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_32_No_1_1980 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf St. John's Review The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/87e170932b9d02dd230eee3225a20fd3.pdf fa6d46f628203be7d53057326a080c68 PDF Text Text �Editor: Leo Raditsa Managing Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr. Editorial Assistant: Barbara]. Sisson Consulting Editors: Eva Brann, Beate Ruhm von Oppen, Curtis A. Wilson. Editor's Note Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome, but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope in each instance. Requests for subscriptions should be sent to The St. John's Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD 21404. Although there are currently no subscription fees, voluntary contributions toward production costs are gratefully received. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW (formerly THE COLLEGE) is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, Edward G. Sparrow, Dean. Published twice yearly, usually in winter and summer. Volume XXXI! WINTER 1981 Number 2 © 1981, St. John's College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0010-0862 Cover: Library of Hadrian, west facade. Photo by Alison Frantz. Composition: Britton Composition Co. Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co. �~HESTJOHNSREVIEWWINTER8] 1 The Libraries of Ancient Athens Homer A. Thompson 17 Guardian Politics in The Deer Hunter Nelson Lund 29 The Scientific Background of Descartes' Dualism Arthur Collins 43 Family Pages, Little Facts: October George Dennison 49 The Latin-American Neurosis 53 The Origins of Celestial Dynamics: Kepler and Newton Wilson 66 Recent Events in the West Leo Raditsa 82 The Streets on which Herman Melville Was Born and Died Meyer Liben 85 DeGaulle's Le fil de /'epee 95 FIRST READINGS Irwin's Plato's Moral Theory 98 101 THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Carlos Rangel Curtis Will Momsey Davtd Bolotin AT HOME AND ABROAD Letter from Nicarauga and Guatemala Honor Bulkley FROM OUR READERS t �Figure 1. West side of the Agora; view from the southeast, 1956. tl WINTER 1981 �The Libraries of Ancient Athens Homer A. Thompson Our knowledge of the Athenian libraries is now, and always will be, exceedingly scrappy. For the Classical and Hellenistic periods we have a little, but tantalizingly elusive, literary evidence, supported by virtually no archaeological remains. For the Roman period, in contrast, we can point to a couple of actual buildings, but the literary testimonia become extremely meager. Nor need I remind you that none of the individual libraries known from ancient Athens can compare in fame or in institutional importance with the libraries of Alexandria or of Pergamon, which stand out above all others. Athens, moreover, could not vie in the sheer number of her libraries with Rome; according to the regional census of Constantine in A.D. 350, Rome had twenty-eight public libraries. Nevertheless we shall find reason to believe that it was Athens which contributed the expertise, the "know how," essential to the organization of the Alexandrian Library. The kings of Pergamon, in turn, in setting up their library a century later, undoubtedly drew heavily on both Athens and Alexandria. As for the contents of these justly famous libraries, there can be no doubt that the contribution from Athenian authors was greater than that from any other national group. Interesting also ·is the variety in the kinds of libraries known to have existed in ancient Athens. We read about private collections, academic libraries, and public libraries, ranging in date from the Archaic period into Roman Imperial times. The money for setting up and maintaining these libraries came from various sources: private philanthropy, culture-conscious foreign princes, the Roman emField Director of Excavations from 1947 to 1967, Horner A. Thompson has worked on the most recent excavations, since their beginning in 1931, of the ancient Agora in Athens, where clearance of the Agora of Classic'al times is now nearing completion. He has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J., since 1947. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW peror. The testimony of such non-Athenian writers as Polybios and Plutarch indicates that Athens was a good place in which to carry on serious scholarly research. Aristeides of Mysia, writing in the second century after Christ, observed that Athens had stocks of books such as you could find nowhere else in the world, together, Aristeides adds, with splendid baths, race courses, and gymnasia. (Panathenaicus XIII, 188). According to a widespread tradition the first library in Athens was formed by Peisistratos, the tyrant who with his sons dominated Athens for much of the sixth century B.C. He is reported to have made his collection accessible to the people, and after the expulsion of the tyrant's family in 510 B.C. the people are said to have added to it. The collection, we are told, was carried off by the Persians in 479 B.C., but was sent back to Athens after Alexander's conquests by Seleukos Nikator. All this sounds rather too good to be true. How many books were available anywhere in the Greek world at this time, and how many Athenians were capable of reading in the sixth century? We know, however, that there was a great upsurge of interest in the arts, notably architecture, sculpture, and painting, in the time of the Tyrants. Distinguished poets such as Simonides and Anakreon were induced to come to Athens. Peisistratos and his son Hipparchos were credited with bringing together the Homeric poems into their canonical form, and with making the recital of those poems a regular part of the newly founded national festival, the Panathenaia. In view of all this I am prepared to believe that Peisistratos may indeed have put together a small personal collection of books; if so, he may well, in keeping with his genial character, have allowed these books to be consulted by interested citizens. But I would stop short of having this collection carried off by the Persians: if readers were few in Athens surely they would have been even fewer in Persepolis! 1 �Figure 2. The Athenian Agora in the 2nd century A.D.; view from the northwest. Drawing by John Travlos. There is little record of book collecting in Athens in the century and a half between Peisistratos and Aristotle. The Athenians perhaps, were too busy writing to have time for collecting. Yet this period witnessed a marked growth in the reading public in Athens. One of many indications is the fact that the practice of publishing official docu· ments such as laws, decrees, treaties, and financial accounts began for all practical purposes at the end of the sixth century and increased steadily through the fifth and fourth centuries. This was a costly procedure, and it was not likely to have been followed had not a large proportion of the citizens been able to read the inscriptions. The growing interest in the theater in the course of the fifth century may also have been a factor in stimulating the circulation and collection of written texts. Scripts were needed, after all, by the performers, and they were no doubt wanted by literary-minded citizens. In this connection it is interesting that Euripides should have been sufficiently well-known as a book collector to have drawn jibes from Aristophanes in his Frogs (!. 943) and to have been credited by Athenaeus (1, 4) with the possession of "one of the largest libraries in the ancient world." Another collector of the late fifth century of whom we read was Eukleides, presumably the archon of 1 2 403/2 B.C., the year in which the Athenians turned officially from the old Attic script to the Ionic. Let me note in passing that a date around 400 B.C. ap· pears to have been a turning point in the history of the state archives of Athens. Public records had of course been kept in earlier times, but in a random way, whereas from now on procedure became more regular. About this time a new meeting place for the Council of 500 was erected on the west side of the Agora, and the old Council House seems now to have been made available for the storage of all manner of official records. One should be careful not to equate archives with libraries. In antiquity, however, official documents were written on papyrus or parchment just like books, and they were rolled in the same way. Consequently the methods of storing and of cataloguing must have been similar. The same feeling for orderly arrangement was essential to success in the keeping of both records and books. (Figures 1-5.) We are woefully ignorant of the physical arrangements employed in the Classical period for the storage of books. We get some help, however, from the school scenes that appear occasionally on red-figured vases of the fifth cen· tury. In these scenes the rolls stand upright in wooden chests with folding lids of a type used for many purposes WINTER 1981 �in the Greek household. It seems probable that in the Classical and Hellenistic periods books were stored in similar containers even in large libraries. In the Roman period, however, we know that the rolls were stacked hori· zontally on wooden shelves, sometimes set in cupboards. Men of letters are often shown with book boxes by their sides: round or rectangular cases in wich the rolls stood vertically. (Figure 3a.) Strabo, writing in the time of Augustus, observed of Aristotle that he was "the first man of our knowledge to col· lect books" (XIII,!, 54: -rr:p&roo, §'v 'iop.<v, ovvor-yaywv {3.(3f..ia). If by this Strabo meant, as he probably did, the first to build up a library as distinct from amassing volumes, his statement is entirely plausible. Let me remind you that Aristotle came back to Athens in 335 B.C. as a mature, indeed a distinguished scholar. He rented some buildings in a grove sacred to Apollo Lykeios and the Muses, and there set up the school which took its name, the "Lyceum," from the divinity. Various indications, some archaeological and some literary, point to a location in the area of the modern Syntagma Square and the Na· tional Garden, i.e., outside the ancient city wall toward the northeast. Here Aristotle lived and taught until he was obliged to leave Athens because of anti-Macedonian feeling in 323 B.C.; he died the following year in Chalkis. Aristotle's style of scholarship necessitated a new conception in the handling of books. His range was wide: the natural sciences, moral philosophy, politics, literary criticism, to name only the principal areas. In addition to his original writings on these subjects he put together various lists for general use such as records of the victors at the Delphic and Olympic festivals and at the dramatic con· tests in Athens. He must have worked with great intensity himself, and he also employed assistants. As an example of the amount of research that might go into the making of a single book let me remind you that in preparation for the writing of the Politics Aristotle had monographs composed on the constitutions of no less than !58 states; only Figure 3. (Above) West side of the Agora in the 2nd century after Christ (view from the southeast). Model by John Trllvlos. Figure 4. (middle) Tholos and Old Bouleuterion (view from the southeast, ca. 450 B.C.). Drawing by W. B. Dinsmoor, Jr. Figure 5. (below) Headquarters of the Council of 500 (Boule), ca. 350 B.C .. Old Bouleuterion and Tholos are dark, New Bouleuterion and its Propylon light. Drawing by fohn Travlos. Figure 3a. Attic red.figure Lekytho' (450-25 B.C.) attributed to the Kluegmann painter, Louvre. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW one of these special studies has survived: The Constitution of the Athenians. From the tempo of Aristotelian scholarship we may be sure that it was based not only on a large, but also on a well organized collection of books. Aristotle, we must remember, was not only a great scholar; he was also a busy teacher and the head of an active school. We have no knowledge of where he kept his books or of how freely they were made accessible to his collaborators and pupils. One thing, however, is certain: the library remained the personal property of Aristotle, and as such it was bequeathed by him to his successor, Theophrastos. Theophrastos added his own holdings to Aristotle's and bequeathed the lot to a friend and fellow 3 �Figure 6. Marble head of Aristotle, copy (lst century A.D.), probably of a portrait commissioned by Aristotle's pupil, Alexander, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum. scholar, Neleus, who was presumably thought to be in line for the succession. But Neleus was not appointed; he went off home to Skepsis in the Troad, taking the library with him. (All this we Jearn from Strabo [XIII, l, 54], and I continue to draw on Strabo's familiar and hair-raising account). Neleus's heirs in the Troad were ordinary people who paid little attention to the library until alarmed by the efforts of the kings of nearby Pergamon to collect books for their new library. The heirs then concealed the books in an underground vault. Here they lay, suffering from moisture and bookworms, until eventually they were sold for a large sum to one Apellikon of Teas. The sale included the books of both Aristotle and Theophrastos. Apellikon is described as an ardent collector but a bibliophile rather than a philosopher. He had copies of the damaged texts made, but the gaps were restored with many errors. The result of all this was that the Peripatetics who came after Theophrastos had virtually no books and so were not able to philosophize in any practical way. After the faulty copies became available they were able once more, to be sure, to philosophize and Aristotelize but were forced to call most of their statements mere probabilities. Apellikon, Strabo continues, perished in the Mithridatic Wars. The original library fell into the hands of the Roman general, Sulla, and was taken by him to Rome in 84 B.C. There the texts suffered once again through being carelessly copied for unscrupulous booksellers. The next step is reported by Plutarch in his life of Sulla (XXVI, l-2). The grammarian Tyrannion, a lover of Aristotle, saw to it that a set of copies was sent to Andronikos of Rhodes, later to become head of the Peripatetic School. This set was used by Andronikos as the basis for the complete edi· tion on which subsequent Aristotelian scholarship has for the most part rested. 4 The account given by Strabo and Plutarch is very circumstantial and seems credible. But according to another version preserved by Athenaeus, Neleus, the heir ofTheophrastos, sold the library to Ptolemy Philadelphos, King of Egypt (283-246 B.C.). It may well be that the collection was in fact divided, part going to Skepsis and so eventually to Rome, the rest going to Alexandria. So much for the most famous of all the libraries of Athens. It has had few rivals in the number of its vicissitudes, and fewer still in the extent of its influence on scholarship. Strabo, after describing Aristotle as the first man known to have assembled books, went on to say that it was Aristotle who taught the kings of Egypt how to organize a library. This is an interesting but incredible statement. We do know, however, that Aristotle's successor, Theophrastos, was invited to Alexandria by the first Ptolemy. Theophrastos declined, and Ptolemy had to be satisfied with Theophrastos' pupil, Demetrios of Phaleron. In inviting to his court a distinguished scholar such as Demetrios, Ptolemy was following a practice already familiar at the courts of Philip II and Alexander. Such persons were commonly expected to act as tutors to the royal family, to advise the monarch on matters cultural and scientific and to enhance the tone of the regime. Although there is little hard evidence for the role played by Demetrios, Peter Fraser in his masterly book on Ptolemaic Alexandria (1972) concludes that Demetrios' advice was significant in shaping the two closely related establishments through which Alexandria made its chief contribution to the culture of the western world,-! mean, of course, the Museum and the Library. The Museum has been regarded in various ways. I have heard it described as the ancestor of all institutes for advanced study. A contemporary poet, Timon of Phlius, however, had this to say: "In the populous land of Egypt many are they who get fed, cloistered bookworms, endlessly arguing in the bird-coop of the Muses" (trans. P. Fraser). But there is general agreement with the view that the Museum of Alexandria, as a small and intimate society of research scholars committed to the service of the Muses, was patterned chiefly on the Academy and the Lyceum of Athens. A similarly close link with Athens may be hypothesized for the sister institution, the Library, or rather the Libraries, of Ptolemaic Alexandria. The older and much the larger of the two libraries was included, like the physical facilities of the Museum, in the palace complex. It would seem to have been regarded chiefly as a research library at the disposal of members of the Museum. The smaller library, sometimes referred to as "the daughter", was incorporated in the Sanctuary of Sarapis founded by Ptolemy Euergetes in the third century B.C. Here again we are woefully lacking in specific information, but there is good reason to believe that the Alexandrian Library, in its breadth of scope, in its aim at universal coverage, and in its careful organization reflects Athenian, more specifically Aristotelian, practice. In its turn, the Ptolemaic founWINTER 1981 �Figure 7. Ptolemy I Soter; obverse of a coin of Ptolemy II Philadelphos, British Museum. dation was to exercise a role of incalculable importance in the preservation, editing, and dissemination of earlier lit~ erature both Greek and non-Greek. A word about the personalities, and first Aristotle. The marble portrait now in Vienna admirably corresponds with the image that can be recovered from his writings: a man of great intellectual capacity seasoned with a little affectation and a good deal of astringency. (Figure 6.) Demetrios of Phaleron, alas, has not been recognized with certainty in any ancient portrait. He is said to have have been recognized. Even the extensive excavations carried out in the Sanctuary of Sarapis in the 1940s failed to bring to light any plausible candidate for the daughter library. The most probable physical remnant of the Library is this block of granite 17 1/4 inches in length. Found in 1847 in the garden of the Austrian consulate in Alexandria, the stone is now in Vienna. In the top, as you see, is a shallow rectangular socket; on the front is the inscription: !lto<IKOVp[O~<I r TOfWL (Dioskourides 3 volumes). The block has generally been regarded as a container for books, and for over a century scholars have been exercising their in~ genuity in fitting three papyrus rolls into the cavity. As an alternative solution I would suggest that the depression held a carved portrait of the author, either in the round Figure 8. Granite base found in Alexandria, inscribed: flwaKoup[O"']S r6p.ot, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum. Figure 9. Ptolemy III Euergetes; obverse of a silver coin of Tarsos, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts. been honored by the Athenians with 360 bronze statues in recognition of his services to the city. But when he was driven out on the coming of Demetrios Poliorketes (307 B.C.) these statues were pulled down, sold, cast into the sea, or turned into chamber pots. Aristotle on being asked "What grows old quickly?" replied, "Gratitude." Of Ptolemy I Soter we are fortunate in having some magniQ.Fent portraits on coins. Here we are face to face with a Churchill-like figure: a great warrior, national leader and serious historian. Through the compatibility of temperament between Ptolemy and Demetrios much of the learning accumulated by the old Greek world was passed on to the new, and the principal channel was the Library of Alexandria. (Figure 7.) The structures that housed both the Museum and the Library were in all likelihood much more modest than their fame would imply. In any case no structural remains THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW r or in relief, and that copies of his writings were kept nearby in a box or on a shelf. (Figure 8.) Under the later Ptolemies the Library's holdings continued to be built up, and the pace of acquisition became feverish when competition developed between Alexandria and Pergamon in the second century B.C. The channels of acquisition were both regular and irregular, and the governing ethics were all too anticipatory of the modern commerce in rare books. Let me remind you of the well known story told by Galen of how Ptolemy III Euergetes (246-221 B.C.) acquired a set of the works of the Figure 10. Eumenes II; obverse of a unique silver coin, British Museum. 5 �Figure ll. Pergamon: Sanctuary of Athena Nikephoros (view from the southwest). The Sanctuary lies between the Theater (lower left) and one of the Palaces (upper right). Model, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. F1gure 12. Pergamon: Sanctuary of Athena Nikephoros (A); Library (B); Palace (C); Theater (D); Altar ::: : ·' = = -···-" = :~~:::·: of Zem (E). (H. Kahler, Pergamon, 66). three Attic tragedians: Aischylos, Sophokles, and Euripides. Learning that an official copy of these texts existed in Athens, Ptolemy asked for their loan so that he might have them copied for his Library. By way of security he deposited with the Athenians fifteen talents, a truly enormous sum. The copies were made on exceptionally fine papyrus. It was these copies that Ptolemy then sent to Athens with instructions to the Athenians to keep both the copies and the deposit. The originals remained in Alexandria, and the Athenians could do nothing but consent. The silver coin of Ptolemy Euergetes now in Boston 6 WINTER 1981 �Above, figure 14. Athena Parthenos, Varvakian copy, National Museum, Athens. Photo by Alison Frantz. Left, figure 13. Athena from the Library in Pergamon, Pergamon Museum, Berlin. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW shows you with what manner of man the Athenians were dealin&. (Figure 9.) Another distinguished personality led to the formation of the other most famous library of the Greek world, that of Pergamon. There is a portrait of Eumenes II (197 -159 B.C.) on a unique silver coin now in the British Museum. It was this ruler who was chiefly responsible for making Pergamon one of the greatest artistic and intellectual centers of later Greek time. (Figure 10.) Here, as often in the Greek and Roman world, the library was incorporated in a sanctuary. Above the Theater and the Altar of Zeus and just in front of the royal palace lay the Sanctuary of Athena Nikephoros, the patron goddess of the city. This old sanctuary was modernized by Eumenes and enclosed on three sides with two-storied colonnades or stoas. The south, outer side was left open so that the temple could be seen from the lower city and the countryside. (Figures 11, 12.) The Library occupied a suite of four rooms that opened on the upper floor of the north stoa. Excavated by German scholars in the late nineteenth century, the structure figures in all serious publications regarding Greek libraries. Nevertheless some problems of interpretation remain and the ruins need to be thoroughly re-examined in the light of our present knowledge. Without going into the technical evidence let me state my own view briefly. The books, I believe, were stored in wooden containers of some sort in the three smaller rooms. The large north room was a splendid lobby for the users of the library, and at the same time a veritable art gallery. A massive stone pedestal that bordered the back and two side walls was not intended, as commonly supposed, to support book cases, but for the display of sculpture. A central place was occupied by a great marble figure of Athena that was found in front of the Library. (Figure 13.) The goddess was flanked by statues of famous literary figures of the past with emphasis on those who came from Asia Minor. Inscribed bases bear the names of Homer, Alkaios, Herodotos, Timotheos. Dowel holes high up in the walls of the room may have held paintings done on wooden panels. The broad two-a isled colonnade in front of the four rooms provided a promenade where scholars might take the air in a characteristically Greek way while enjoying a magnificent view over the city and countryside. Plutarch reports that Mark Antony bestowed on Kleopatra the contents of the Pergamene. library, some 200,000 volumes (Antonius 58, 9), presumably to compensate her for the destruction caused in Alexandria by the fire of 48 B.C. Even if this account be well founded, the loss did not put an end to libraries in Pergamon. We now know, thanks to the German excavations of the 1930s, that a substantial library was erected , in the time of Hadrian, in the Sanctuary of Asklepios by a woman, Flavia Melitine. By this time the center of intellectual life had shifted from the splendid but arduous heights to this more luxuriously appointed establishment in the plain. As we leave Pergamon let us glance back at the figure of Athena which once presided over the Hellenistic Library. 7 �Figure 15. Athenian Agora: the Metroon. Draw- ing by John Travlos. Figure 16. Athenian Agora in the 2nd century A.D. (view from northwest). Model by John Travlos. Figure 16a. Athenian Agora. Standing 3.5 meters high the statue is clearly a free adaptation, at a scale of one to three, of the image of Athena Parthenos made by Pheidias for the Parthenon. (Figure 14.) Such a recall is symptomatic of the close sympathy, cultural as well as political, that existed between Pergamon and Athens. In recognition of their debt to the older city the rulers of Pergamon one after another made splendid gifts to Athens: a park in the Academy, a group of sculpture on the Acropolis, a stoa beside the Theater at the south foot of the Acropolis, another two-storied stoa on the east side of the Agora. This last building, erected soon after 150 B.C., was reconstructed in the 1950s to serve as a museum for the finds from the excavation of the Agora. In Athens about the same time, in the third quarter of the second century B.C., another major building project took place on the opposite, i.e. the western side of the Agora. Here the Old Council House that we believe, as noted above, to have housed the official archives of the city since about 400 B.C. was demolished to make way for a large new building, the Hellenistic Metroon. The remains are slight, but sufficient to justify the restoration which shows the Metroon in relation to the New Council House and to the round Club House of the councillors, the Tholos. The primary function of the Metroon as of its predecessor was the safekeeping of the state archives. A wide range of material is mentioned in inscriptions and ancient literary testimonia: decrees, treaties, public accounts, even on occasion the will of a prominent citizen. 8 Some of the old original texts of decrees were regarded as "collector's items," and in the first century B.C. one lot was stolen by Apellikon, the notorious collector of librar· ies whom I have mentioned above (Athenaeus V, 214d-e). In plan the Metroon comprised four rooms of which the northernmost was much the largest. All four rooms faced eastward toward the open Agora through a broad Ionic porch. The second room from the south has the scheme of a temple; an altar stood in the open square in front of this room. In this compartment, presumably, we must place the famous seated statue of the Mother of the Gods, the "M~r~p 8t0lv," who gave its name to the building. The statue was a work of Pheidias or, more probably, of his pupil Agorakritos. The goddess is referred to by Deinarchos (I, 86) as "guardian for the city of all the rights recorded in the documents." The rooms that flanked the shrine were presumably the repositories for the storage of documents which would have consisted for the most part of papyrus rolls. The north room contained a small courtyard open to the sky: this, we assume, served as a cloister where users of the archives, including research scholars, might work quietly, emerging occasionally for a stroll in the outer colonnade. (Figure 15.) The similarities between this Athenian building and the only slightly earlier Library in Pergamon are so many and so striking as to indicate some close relationship. I venture to suggest that the construction of the Hellenistic Metroon may indeed have been one more benefaction from a Pergamene ruler to the venerable city of Athens. The kings of Pergamon were not the only benefactors of Athens in the Hellenistic period. At some as yet unknown point near the north foot of the Acropolis and to the east of the Agora was a gymnasium called the Ptolemaion, so named after its founder. The earliest references to the establishment date from the middle of the second century B.C. Which Ptolemy was responsible remains uncertain: Euregetes (246-221 B.C.) and Philometor (180-145 B.C.) have been proposed. For our present purpose the interesting point is that the Ptolemaion certainly contained a library. In the Hellenistic and early Roman periods the Ptolemaion rivalled the famous old gymnasia WINTER 1981 �as a center both of secondary education and of intellectual life. One would like to think that the library was part of the original foundation. That would certainly have been appropriate in a Ptolemaic context, but our evidence con~ sists only of a number of inscriptions beginning in the year ll7/6 B.C. which record an annual gift of one hundred books to the library in the Ptolemaion from the graduating class of ephebes, that is the young men who had completed their two-year course of training in the gymnasium. These books were presumably for school use, and the annual donation may have done little more than compensate for wear and tear. But the Ptolemaion certainly became more than a secondary school: describing a day in Athens in 45 B.C., Cicero tells of hearing a morning lecture by Antiochos, then head of the Academy, in the Ptolemaion. The Ptolemaion remains to be found. Libraries are known to have existed in gymnasia in other Greek cities, but it is very difficult to identify specific library facilities even when a gymnasium has been excavateo. All the more welcome, therefore, is a bit of evidence which came to light in the Sicilian city of Taormina in 1969. In red paint on the white plastered wall of what was evidently the library of a gymnasium were written short biographical notices of various writers: Kallisthenes of Olynthus, Philistos of Syracuse, and Fabius Pictor of Rome. The transcription of the entry for Fabius will serve as a sample: first the name, then a brief listing of the author's principal works: the arrival of Herakles, Aeneas, and Askanios in Italy, the story of Remus and Romulus. A date for the inscription about 130 B.C. is proposed by Professor G. Manganaro who has published the new find in the Romische Frilhgeschichte of Andreas Alfoldi (1976). We may be sure that these notices were in convenient proximity to the book containers, and we may suppose that similar aids were a regular feature of school libraries. We return to Athens to consider the oldest Athenian library of which actual remains have been found. It was a modest establishment founded by one T. Flavius Pantainos ca. A.D. 100 at the southeast corner of the Agora. Its excavation began in the 1930s and was completed in the 1970s. The remains on the ground are slight, chiefly because the building was demolished in the late third century after Christ to make way for a new fortification wall in which was incorporated much of the stonework of the Library. (Figures 16, 16a.) _ The Library stood just to the south of the Stoa of Attalos. Between the two buildings passed a marble-paved roadway that led from the old Agora eastward to the Marketplace of Caesar and Augustus. The principal room of the Library was a spacious hall measuring about 9.75 x 10.75 meters. This room opened on a colonnaded courtyard which was bordered by ranges of small rooms to north and west; these in turn were flanked by Ionic colonnades. The main, probably the only, entrance led through the middle of the west side. Some surely, and perhaps all of the small rooms had no direct connection with the Library. Certainly the suite of two rooms to the south of TIIE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Above, figure 17. Library of Pantainos (view from north), 1975. Left foreground, the south pier of arch between Library and the Stoa of Attalos. Right, figure 18. Southeast corner of Agora in 2nd century A.D. (north at top). Drawing by John Travlos. Below, figure 19. Library of Pantainos (view from the southwest). Model by fohn Travlos. the entrance had served as a sculptor's studio. We came on quantities of his marble chips and on some pieces of his very second-rate sculpture. Some of the other small rooms may have been shops-the location at this busy corner was suitable. (Figures 17, 18.) With the construction of the Library this became, architecturally, one of the most attractive parts of the Agora. The building faced westward across the Panathenaic way toward a small plaza that was bordered on the south by a 9 �Figure 20. Odyssey and Iliad from the Library of Pantainos, Agora Museum in Stoa of Attalos. temple and a large fountainhouse. The west colonnade of the Library was continued southward by the porch of a slightly later shop building. Northward, between the Library and the Stoa of Attalos, was another small and intimate plaza partially closed on the side toward the old Agora by an earlier monument and defined on the east side by a marble arch closely contemporary with the Library. (Figure 19.) Although the walls of the Library were of coarse, rubble masonry the marble work of its porches was of good quality. The floors of the great hall and of the courtyard had both been paved with marble, and the lower part of the walls faced with marble. Of this revetment only the imprints remain in the mortar. One would dearly like to know how the books were stored in the Library of Pantainos. The walls seem too thin to have accommodated niches such as are commonly found in libraries of the Roman period for book cupboards. We may therefore suppose that the books were carried on wooden shelving set against the walls as was certainly the case, for instance, in the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum. Figure 21. Odyssey. Figure 23. Iliad. The right hand held a sword, the left probably a spear. 10 WINTER 1981 �Figure 22. Odyssey: cmass. The central figure is Scylla; on the lappets: Aiolos, three Sirens, Polyphemos. Ancient libraries whether private or public were normally adorned with works of art, above all with statues or busts of famous authors. Our library was no exception. Its most striking ornament was undoubtedly a marble group comprising a seated figure of Homer flanked by standing figures of the Iliad and Odyssey personified. Only the two female figures have survived and they only as torsoes which had been used as filling in the late Roman wall that overlay the west front of the Library. They came to light in 1869 near the northwest corner of the Library, and they THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW are now displayed nearby in the Stoa of Attalos: robust figures clad in armor and slightly over life size. They were conceived of as daughters of Homer. The Iliad, traditionally the older poem, is appropriately shown as larger than her sister. The Odyssey is signed, on one of the lappets of the cuirass, by Jason the Athenian. Since it is altogether probable that the statues are contemporary with the Library (about A.D. 100), they are important in the history of sculpture as among the few closely dateable Athenian works of imperial times. (Figures 20-24.) 11 �Figure 24. Inscribed base of the Iliad, Agora Museum in Stoa of Attalos. The figures were Identified long ago by Georg Treu, who recognized on the cuirass of the smaller statue motives appropriate to the Odyssey: Scylla with her dogheaded extremities, Aiolos, god of the winds, Sirens, and Polyphemos. The identification of the Iliad followed naturally, especially since there are traces of a sword, her normal attribute, held at her right side. Both figures show marked weathering on their upper parts, and both have the rich honey color characteristic of Pentelic marble that Figure 25, Marble relief commemorating a victory in a literary coniest By Archelaos of Priene, 2nd century RC, British Museum. Left, figure 26. Arch between Library of Pantainos (right) and Stoa of Attalos (left), (view from west). Drawing by W. B. Dinsmoor, Jr. Right, figure 27. T. Flavius Pantainos(?), marble head found near Library of Pantainos, Agora Museum, Stoa of Attalos. 12 WINTER 1981 �has long been exposed to the elements. We may be sure, therefore, that the group stood out of doors, and indeed it was long ago observed by Paul Graindor that the bold treatment of both torsos and drapery favored an architectural setting. (Figure 22.) In 1953 from the curbing of a well of the Byzantine period just to the west of the Library the excavators recovered the many fragments of the plinth of the Iliad. The inscription is enigmatic, but nevertheless helpful: "I the Iliad both before and after Homer stand by the side of him who bore me while young." This text justifies therestoration which I have already proposed, i.e. a group of Homer flanked by his "daughters." Several such groups are known, the most familiar being that at the lower lefthand corner of a relief of late Hellenistic date now in the British Museum. The sculptor, Arkelaos of Priene, has obligingly labelled all the figures. Homer seated, staff in hand, is flanked by the Iliad and Odyssey, here shown as small kneeling figures. (Figure 25.) The chief question still outstanding about our group is its original location. The Library has now been completely excavated, and no base suitable for such a monumental group has come to light within the building. In any case, as we have already seen, the group must have stood outdoors. Since there is no reason to question its association with the Library, we must look for a location outside the building but close enough to it so that the association would be obvious. As a possible location I believe we should consider the top of the marble arch that spanned the roadway between the Library and the Stoa of Attalos. Of this arch there remain the lower parts of the two lateral piers, the threshold between the piers, and one block of the crowning course. We do not have time to go into technicalities, but I do wish to point out that neither the arch nor the adjacent colonnade of the Library would have made architectural sense without the other. Moreover, the care with which the Library colonnade is fitted to the arch leaves little doubt that they are parts of one building program. (In contrast, the colonnade bordering the south side of the street leading eastward toward the Market of Caesar and Augustus is related to the arch very awkwardly. That colonnade, however, belongs to a slightly later building program which, as we know from an inscription, was financed by the People of Athens.) An arch of this type would certainly have carried sculpture. No other candidates have been found apart from our Homer group, and that group, as we have seen, cries out for such a location. (Figure 26.) Portraits of other great literary figures of the past may well have figured among the furnishings of the Library, and such may someday be recognized among the fragmentary sculptures found on the site. Nor is the founder of the Library likely to have gone unhonored. As a candidate for a portrait ofT. Flavius Pantainos, I should like to propose a marble head, well over life size, that was found near the northwest corner of the Library in 1933. The piece is so fresh as to indicate that it had not travelled far. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Figure 28. Dedicatory inscription from the Library of Pantainos. The haircut and the tooling point to the time of Trajan, and an identification with that Emperor has indeed been proposed. But it really doesn't look like Trajan. Moreover, the head is crowned with a laurel wreath that would be unusual on an emperor. I prefer to regard it as representing the actual wreath or crown which the people of Athens would surely have bestowed on Pantainos as a benefactor. It is identical for instance with the wreath worn by Tiberius Julius Aquila, the builder of the beautiful Library of Celsus in Ephesus. (Figure 27.) You may wonder how I can speak with such assurance about the donor and the date of our Library. My source is the dedicatory inscription engraved on the lintel from above the entrance to the building; it now forms part of the late Roman fortification wall. (Figure 28.) The text in translation reads: To Athena Polias and to the Emperor Caesar Augustus Nerva Trajan Germanicus and to the city of the Athenians, the priest of the Muses who love wisdom, T. Flavius Pantainos, son of Flavius Menander head of the school, dedicated _the outer stoas, the peristyle, the library with the books, and all the embellishment of the building, from his own resources along with his children, Flavius Menander and Flavia Secundilla. Figure 29. Notice from the Library of Pantainos, ca. A.D. 100, Agora Museum, Stoa of Attalos. 13 �The emperor's title points to a date close around A.D. 100. Pantainos was a man of some consequence in Athens. He is known to have held the archonship (which at this time implied wealth) probably in A.D. 115/6, and he had been honored for some reason with a portrait Herm. Nor is it impossible that he was the grandfather of the Pantainos who is known as the head of the first Christian Figure 31. Library of Hadrian, west facade. Photo by Alison Frantz. Figure 32. Library of Hadrian, model in Musco della Civilta Romana, Rome. Photo by Alison Frantz. Figure 30. Hadrian; in the Agora excavations. school in Alexandria and the teacher of Clement, the early church father whose writings betray a wide knowledge of pagan Greek literature. The books presented by Pantainos have· gone beyond recall. The building and all its embellishments are sadly ruinous. What does remain to us, and that in its pristine state, is a library notice. The text was engraved at convenient height on the shaft of a Herm. It reads, "No book 14 shall be taken out, for we have sworn an oath. The building shall be open from the first hour till the sixth." Who were the "we" who took the oath? The expression used here, coupled with Pantainos' description of himself as "priest of the wisdom-loving Muses", makes one suspect the existence of some society, perhaps a local "Museum" such as is attested for Athens and for some other Greek cities, the forerunner of modern Athenaeums. (Figure 29.) Pantainos' building, modest though it may seem, is important as representing the type of public library that must have been a normal component of the community center of many a city throughout the Roman Empire. We tum, finally, to a library of a quite different stamp. The Emperor Hadrian is well known as a great philhellene, and above all as a devoted friend of Athens. His attitude toward Athens is happily symbolized in a marble portrait statue found near the west side of the Agora in 1931, the first season of excavation. Athena, patron goddess of Athens, stands on the back of the Wolf of Rome. The Wolf has her fosterlings, Romulus and Remus: Athens has her owl and sacred snake; the goddess is being crowned by two Victories. (Figure 30.) In all her long history Athens never had a more generous benefactor than Hadrian. The Emperor contributed to many departments of the city's WINTER 1981 �"" lo • • • - ·- - - · · ''---"' .di:o Figure 34. Library of Hadrian; quatrefoil church of the 5th century appears in the middle of the court. Figure 33. Library of Hadrian; inner face of back wall of principal room, showing niches for book shelves. Photo archive, John Travlos. life: he completed the colossal temple of Olympian Zeus, erected a temple of Hera and Zeus, built a sanctuary of all the gods, a gymnasium and an aqueduct. At the end of his well-known list of Hadrians's benefactions, Pausanias (I, 18, 9) remarked, "Most splendid of all is (a structure) with 100 columns; walls and colonnade alike are made of Phrygian marble. Here too are rooms adorned with gilded ceilings and alabaster, and also with statues and paintings: books are stored in the rooms." (trans.). G. Frazer). The identification of this building, the Library of Hadrian, is now securely established. It stood in the middle of the city, just to the north of the Market Place that had been built with the aid of grants from julius Caesar and the Emperor Augustus. It rose a stone's throw to the east of the Classical Agora, and it represents the final increment to that centuries-old community center. The Library was also the last fine building to be erected in Athens in Classical antiquity and the most splendid of all ancient libraries known to us. Although the great building has not yet been completely excavated, and much of its area is still cluttered with modern buildings, its visible remains, rising in a slum district of the city, startle one with their monumental quality. (Figure 31.) Since a good publication of the building by the English scholar M. A. Sisson is readily available I shall be brief. The principal facade was enlivened by fourteen monolithic columns of green marble once crowned with statues. Through a columnar propylon in the middle of that facade one entered an enormous colonnaded courtyard with a long pool on its axis; the open area was un~ doubtedly planted. Pleasant alcoves opened out from the lateral colonnades, three on each side. (Figure 32.) The richly adorned rooms mentioned by Pausanias are recognizable at the far end of the court. A great central THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW chamber was undoubtedly the principal repository of books. Two corner rooms, as demonstrated recently by john Travlos, were certainly lecture rooms with sloping floors and elegant appointments. Smaller intermediate rooms were perhaps intended for special collections of rare books that required greater security. Whether the bilateral symmetry implies a division between Greek and Latin as in the Library of Trajan in Rome we cannot say. Enough remains of the back wall of the central room to show that here, as in the Library of Celsus at Ephesos, the books were stored in cupboards set into the face of the wall on three levels. (Figure 33.) Despite the monumental scale of the building and the dazzling wealth of the building materials, the basic plan is beautifully clear and straightforward. What is more, we find here the same elements that we have observed in earlier libraries from Pergamon onward: one room of im~ pressive scale, ample provision for strolling in colonnades, and quiet areas for more peaceful study or discussion. The design is undoubtedly the creation of some gifted architect chosen by the Emperor, perhaps a man who had assisted in designing the several libraries in Hadrian's own villa at Tibur, and surely someone who was thoroughly familiar with the great buildings in the capital, above all the Templum Pacis ("Forum of Vespasian") and the Forum of Trajan. The Athenian building may be dated in the l30s. It appears to have suffered severely in the Herulian sack of A.D. 267. Its subsequent history is intriguing but full of major uncertainties. Some of the surviving bases of the main colonnade are of crude workmanship and presumably belong to some post-Herulian reconstruction. In the propylon, high on the wall to the left of the doorway, if you arrive when the sun is right, you may just detect a 15 �British Museum, by permission of the Trustees: Figs. 7, 10, 25 Deutschcs Archiiologisches lnstitut: Fig. 12 Alison Frantz: Figs.14, 31,32 Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna: Figs. 6, 8 Museum ofl"ine Arts, Boston: Fig. 9 Pergamon Museum, Berlin: Fig. 13 Staatliche Museen, Berlin: Fig. II John_Travlos: Figs. 33-35 Short Bibliography Figure 35. Quatrefoil church in the court of Library of Hadrian; second period, 7th century {view from the southeast). Photo archive, John Travlos. metrical inscfiption recording the dedication of a statue, apparently a large one. The honoree was none other than the high-ranking imperial official Herculius, Prefect of []. lyricum from 408 to 412 A.D. The one who dedicated the statue was Plutarch, founder of the Neo-Platonic School and its head. In the epigram Plutarch describes himself as "steward of letters", Hercu1ius as "steward of the laws." My colleague, Alison Frantz, has argued persuasively that Herculius may have been responsible for the repair of the Library. The interest shown in the undertaking by the famous philosopher Plutarch favors the view that at this time the establishment still served the world of letters. This is understandable, for even at this late period Athens continued to be one of the most active intellectual centers of the ancient world, attracting distinguished scholars from near and far. Later in the fifth century the pool on the axis of the library courtyard was filled in, and a church with an unusual quatrefoil plan was erected in the middle of the court. The church was rebuilt, with altered plan and inferior technique, in the seventh century. It may be assumed that the whole complex had suffered, like several buildings in the area of the Agora, from the Slavic incursions of the 580s. There is no indication that the library facilities survived this devastation. We know from our excavations in the Agora that by the seventh century lamps had virtually ceased to be made in Athens. One may infer that reading had declined to the point where neither lamps nor libraries were needed. Here then our story ends. (Figures 34, 35.) Grateful acknowledgement for the use of illustrations is made as follows: American School of Classical Studies at Athens (Agora Excavations): Figs. 1-5, 15-24,26-30 16 General Christian Callmer, "Antike Bibliotheken," Acta Instituti Romani Regni Sueciae X (1944) 145-193 H. Kahler, "Biblioteca" in Enciclopedia dell' Arte Antica, vol. II (1959) 92-99 J. Platthy, Sources on the Earliest Greek Libraries with the Testimonia, Amsterdam (1968) Athens: Library of Aristotle W. Jaeger, Aristotle, 2nd. ed. (1948) Ch. XIII: The Organization of Research J.P. Lynch, Aristotle's School: a Study of a Greek Educational Institution (1972) Athens: Metroon H. A. Thompson, Hesperia 6 (1937) 115-217 H. A. Thompson and R. E. Wycherley, The Athenian Agora XIV (1972) 25-38 Athens: Ptolemaion R. K Wycherley~ The Athenian Agora III (1957) 142-144 (testimonia) J. Delorme, Gymnasion (1960) 146f. C. Pelekidis, Histoire de l'Ephebie Attique (1962) 263f., 266f. M. Thompson, "Ptolemy Philometor and Athens," American Numismatic Society, Museum Notes XI (1964) 119-129 Athens: Library of Pantainos Hesperia 4(1935) 330-332: IS (1949) 269-274; 15 (1946) 233; 42 (1973) 144-146, 384-389; 44 (1975) 332ff. (excavation reports); 15 (1946) 233 and Supplement VIII (1949) 268-272 (dedicatOry inscrlpti0r1) J. Travlos, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Athens (1971) 432-437 H. A. Thompson and R E. Wycherley, The Athenian Agora, XIV (1972) 114-116 Athens: Library of Hadrian M. A. Sisson, Papers of the British School at Rome 11 (1929) 58-66 A. Frantz, "Honors to a Librarian", Hesperia 35 (1966) 377-380 J. Travlos, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Athens (1971) 244-252 Alexandria R. Pfeiffer, A History of Classical Scholarship (1968) 95ff. P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria (1972) Ch. 6: Ptolemaic Patronage: the Mouseion and Library Pergamon R. Bohn, Altertilmer von Pergamon II (1885) 56-75 E. V. Hansen, The Attalids of Pergamon (1971) 272-274, 355f. 0. Deubner, Das Asklepieion von Pergamon (1938) 40-43 C. Habicht, Die Inschriften des Asklepieions (Altertilmer von Pergamon Vlll, 3. 1969) 15-18, 84f. Ephesos W. Wilberge, M. Theuer, F. Eichler, J. Keil, Die Bibliothek (Forschungen in Ephesos V, I) (1945, 1953) F. Hueber and V. M. Strocka, "Die Bibliothek des Celsus," Antike Welt 6 (1975) 3-14: restoration of facade W. Oberleitner eta\., Funde aus Ephesos und Samothrake (Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien) (1978) 113-115 Pompeii L. Richardson, Jr., "The Libraries of Pompeii", Archaeology 30 (1977) 394-402 WINTER 1981 �Guardian Politics The Deer Hunter (1978) • 1n Nelson Lund I NIVERSAL PICTURES' THE DEER HUNTER is not about the Vietnam war. The film makes no statement about the justice or prudence of our participation in that conflict. Instead, it dares to remind us that most Americans-soldiers and civilians alike-gave little thought to the great questions of foreign policy raised at the time. And it dares to suggest that they are not to be damned for that This seeming indifference to large issues of political morality probably accounts for much of the hostility that critics have expressed towards the film. But if we refuse either to disregard this indifference or to be prejudiced by it, we can find our way through the film's deeper exploration of the grounds of political morality. Though The Deer Hunter is. set in an era that most of us remember vividly, we see in it almost nothing of what that era recalls to us. The film begins by focusing on three young Americans as they prepare to serve in the Army during the late 1960s; it shows a few startling scenes from their experiences in Vietnam; and it examines the aftermath of their service. But the fall of Saigon is the only historic event that plays a part in the film; no politicians appear or are mentioned; we hear nothing of the anti-war protests or other civil disturbances of the time; and the film's notorious Russian roulette sequences have no known basis in fact. The Deer Hunter makes us think about politics and war and our country. But because it addresses these issues only indirectly, and because of its odd juxtaposition of U Nelson Lund is a graduate student in the Department of Government at Harvard University, THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW wrenching violence and unfashionable sentiment, the film is apt to leave the viewer shocked and disoriented. As I hope to show, the film can lead us beyond this painful confusion to an uncommonly true and useful view of ourselves and our society. The film's protagonist, the deer hunter, is named for the Archangel Michael, who guards the gates of hell, brings to man the gift of prudence, and will in the final judgment weigh the souls of the risen dead. The Archangel is the leader of the army of heaven, and is traditionally pictured bearing both sword and shield. As we shall see, the deer hunter's name suits him welL At many points in the film, Michael reminds us of the most typically American hero, who is perhaps most familiar from the film Casablanca. The everyday manners of this figure are cynical, independent, and somewhat disreputable. In fact, as we know, he lives by principles of decency and is prepared in extraordinary circumstances to sacrifice his own pursuits for the common good. Reluctant to become the hero of others, he always becomes the guardian of decent people when they truly need him. Most American art presents this character in his maturity and reveals enough of him to provoke our admiration and respect. The Deer Hunter is unusual because it examines the difficulties of his genesis, and thus brings a special clarity to the complexities of his relations with the people who rely on his virtues. Its most valuable effect is This essay owes a great deal to my father, Horace N. Lund, who first taught me much of what I learned again from The Deer Hunter. I am a~so indebted to several friends who talked with me about the film, espeCially Leon Kass and Amy Kass. Larry Sonnenfeldt and Leo Raditsa read early drafts of the essay and offered many sharp and generous criticisms; all these suggestions were helpful, and the ones I accepted enabled me to present my views more clearly and precisely-N.L. 17 �to help us add a new understanding to our old admiration and respect. about. The film's attention to this great question gives it a significance beyond the obvious issues that are raised by our country's experience in Vietnam or even in war generally. W HEN WE FIRST MEET MICHAEL, we are confronted with a natural leader. He is more talented than those around him, and more reckless. But the skill and daring with which he drives his magnificent '59 Coupe de Ville show us that his talents and his inclina· lions have few outlets better than those he can find at the wheel of his automobile. He lives in a rather ordinary working-class community in Clairton, Pennsylvania; most of the men work in the steel mills, most of the women stay in the background. The mills themselves appear as a kind of earthly helL The flames, the roaring noise, and the men's protective garments convey a little of the sense of modern warfare. But while war is the true earthly hell, life in the mills is routine, depressing, and without the fascination that real violence and sudden death can bring. In the background, the steeple of the Russian Orthodox Church soars above the residential part of town with cool, distant grace. Early in the film, we enter the church to watch a wedding that is truly majestic in its setting and forms; but the magnificence of the ceremony appears slightly comic because religion is so small a part of the lives of the participants. The bride is pregnant, the bridegroom's mother is distraught, the priest is a cipher. Michael himself is openly amused by the rituals of piety, and he appears truly interested only in the maid of honor, Linda, who is also his best friend's girL Young and restless, Michael is eager to escape the suf· focating life that Clairton and the mills impose. But he lacks the licentious and childish impatience for which so many of his contemporaries of the 1960s are still remembered. In the past he has lived for his occasional hunting trips to the mountains, and now he has enlisted in the Army. He wants adventure and challenge, but he betrays no desire to rebel against Clairton or to cut his ties with the town. The Army promises him a respectable way out of his dreary and grimy home. - Michael's maintenance of his ties with Clairton is emphasized by the fact that two of his friends have enlisted with him for the war. Like him, they seem motivated by restlessness. This desire for adventure is a private passion, and to pursue it is to risk the protection and supports that we find in social life. These men hope to reduce that risk by leaving Clairton together and maintaining their friend· ship in the Army. In this they are doing nothing unusual or hard to explain; but they encounter unforeseen troubles in the war. Can men form friendships that allow them to pursue their private passions while preserving the benefits of co· operation and social dependence? The Deer Hunter shows us difficulties that are easy to overlook; and it suggests that the solution is hard to accept and harder yet to bring 18 II on the wedding day of Stevie, one of the enlistees. That morning, Michael proposes that he and his friends go on one last deer hunt before the departure for Vietnam; and he gives an odd reason for the T HE FILM OPENS proposal. Upon noticing an atmospheric phenomenon in which a kind of halo appears around the sun, he says: "Holy shit! You know what that is? Those are sun dogs .... It means a blessing on the hunter sent by the Great Wolf to his children .... It's an old Indian thing." This casual paganism is the first sign of how very different Michael is from those around him. That afternoon, Michael talks about the hunt with his roommate Nick; Nick, who has also enlisted in the Army, appears a little scandalized that they are discussing the hunt just before Stevie's wedding. In the course of the conversation, Michael makes a serious attempt to state who he is. He firmly asserts his preference for the moun· tains over the town; and he vehemently asserts the importance of killing a deer with one shot. According to Michael, this is the right way to take a deer, and the fail· ure to accept the principle indicates a lack of human stature: "Two is pussy .... 'One shot' is what it's all about. A deer has to be taken with one shot. I try to tell people that, but they don't listen." Nick indicates that his own interest in the "one shot" ethic has declined and that he has grown fonder of the natural beauties of the mountains. Nevertheless, Michael insists that their other hunting companions are defective: "They're all assholes. I mean, I love 'em, they're great guys, but without you, I'd hunt alone. Seriously, that's what I'd do." Nick calls Michael a "control freak," without explaining how Michael's desire for control is excessive; Michael responds by saying, "I just don't like no surprises." This scene foreshadows two of the major themes of the film: the ambiguity of Michael's relationships to his friends and the question of his own being. Quite clearly, he does think of his hunting companions as friends, but it seems that only his relationship with Nick makes his friendships with the others possible. Michael treats Nick as an equal because Nick has accepted the "one shot" ethic. And yet, Nick is apparently not content that just the two of them should hunt together, so Michael tolerates the presence of the inferior hunters for Nick's sake. Though Michael wishes to treat Nick as his equal, Nick is less committed than Michael to the "one shot" ethic and more emotion· ally dependent on those who do not accept it at all. Michael seeks to overlook this difference between himself and Nick; he apparently believes that they are or can be WINTER 1981 �equals in friendship if they maintain their allegiance to a common principle. Only later do we discover how crucial the dissimilarity between them is; but we are enabled here at the beginning of the film to see that it exists. As Michael originally states the "one shot" principle, it appears to be a statement of the right way to hunt; his commitment to it appears as a striving for excellence, here for the hunter's excellence. His vehement statement of the principle suggests that only ignorance or self-indulgence could account for the failure to adhere to it. If this is so, Nick's characterization of Michael as a "control freak" is misleading because it tends to confound excellence with power, self-control with control over other beings. Nevertheless, Michael shows that he shares Nick's confusion when he replies: HI just don't like no surprises." Here Michael is obviously wrong about himself. One who dislikes surprises does not find his greatest satisfac· lions hunting wild game in the mountains; such activity is anything but routine. And one who wants to avoid surprises surely does not volunteer for hunting's great counterpart, war. Michael may believe that he wants to do away with surprises, he may believe that he seeks power or control in the broadest sense. But if what he is truly seeking is excellence, he is a better man than he knows and so should prove able to learn. Before the film ends, Michael learns a great deal indeed. During the subsequent hunting trip, Michael shows that his commitment to a standard of excellence is no mere private passion. A small base person named Stanley has forgotten to bring some essential piece of gear; he now expects to borrow Michael's spare. Stanley has a long history of such irresponsibility, and Michael refuses to lend him the gear. Stanley gets out a small revolver and insults Michael's manhood by commenting on his unaggressive behavior towards women. Michael, who happens to be holding his rifle, takes a cartridge from his pocket and very forcefully says: "Stanley, see this? This is this. This ain't something else. This is this. From now on_you're on your own." Michael slams the round into its chamber, and the conflict continues until finally Nick intervenes; he chides Michael for his stubbornness and gives Stanley Michael's spare equipment. Michael angrily raises his rifle and fires into the distance. Just before the argument, Michael had noticed a deer running through the brush; no one else was watching. 41 This is this" means first that weapons have purposes. They have their proper uses, for example in hunting deer; and they have their typical abuses, as Stanley's behavior vividly illustrates. Michael must sense that this does not apply only to weapons. Perhaps he sees it most clearly in weapons because they are men's most necessary tools; the way he drove his fancy Cadillac is enough to remind us that an instrument's proper use is not always so easy to see. Unlike most people, Michael insists on this standard of what is proper when he can discern it and seeks it when he cannot. The insistence is shown to us here at the be· TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW ginning of the film; his seeking will be the spring of his later education. Michael's speech to Stanley has a further meaning implied in the conclusion, '(From now on you're on your own." Those who are too ignorant or self-indulgent to confront the world as it is become irresponsible. Like Stanley, they tend to become derelict and apt to do unintended damage to themselves and others; as a result, such people force others to take responsibility for them. Michael would refuse to tolerate Stanley's excess, but Nick interferes: to prevent the group from breaking into factions, Nick has to deflect Michael from the natural course of his principled intolerance. In frustration, Michael ap· pears to violate his own principle by firing his rifle without a target. Were it not for his friendship with Nick, Michael might become a solitary hunter; as we shall see, it will be hard for him to become anything else. . URIN. c THE FILM, Michael becomes larger; by the end, he would no longer insist so harshly on the "one shot" ethic and he would not make such truthful but difficult assertions as "this is this." But though he does undergo an education, the film presents no educator: nowhere in The Deer Hunter is there any man better than Michael or any indication that such a man could exist. His great triumph lies in his later mastery or education of himself, but the film leaves no doubt that he is superior to ordinary men from the beginning. From the first, Michael is highly spirited; he is eager for war, sure of his strength, and remarkably capable of doing without the company of women. But in addition to this raw virtue, Michael has a drive to understand what he D sees and hears. An example of this drive occurs when Michael and the other enlistees, fairly drunk and full of bravado, encounter a Green Beret at the wedding reception. Michael inquires about Vietnam and Nick expresses his eagerness for dan· ger; Stevie echoes Nick's sentiments. When the soldier snubs them by refusing to say anything but "Fuck it," Michael begins repeating the formulation in different tones of voice, as though he is trying to discover what it means: "Fuck it ... Fuck it." Finally, in a simultaneously challenging and curious tone, he asks: "Fuck who?" While Nick and Stevie seem surprised and worried, Michael seems almost intrigued. He is sufficiently eager and indelicate to interrogate a veteran about his experiences, so he must have some of the illusions common to spirited men who have not seen combat. We would expect someone as combative as Michael to respond to the man's rebuff with mere anger or perhaps with awe. But Michael wonders about the meaning of the man's behavior. It is very rare to find a man as self-assertive as Michael and also so ready to learn. The film offers no explanation for the cause of this superiority and so encourages us to infer that it has come about by nature. By calling atten- 19 �lion in this way to the natural inequalities among men, the film commits a breach of the etiquette of our time. Eventually the film suggests that these inequalities result in a politically relevant hierarchy of human types; this challenge to one of the deepest prejudices of our time has probably caused much of the misinterpretation to which the film has been subjected. That challenge, however, is neither idle nor gratuitous. Events have made it necessary, and the film is careful to remind us of that fact. Stevie, the boy who marries just before leaving for war, is the most ordinary of the three main characters. l-Ie has no great strengths or failings, no burning passions or re- markable idiosyncracies. l-Ie is decent, but ineffectual-a natural follower and indeed a natural loser. l-Ie loves his fiancee and insists that she loves him. However sincere he may be, his hopes seem preposterous since he has never slept with this girl who he knows is pregnant. Stevie appears to be her dupe and perhaps also the dupe of the child's father; later we learn that the father is almost certainly Nick. In war, Stevie proves incompetent, unlucky, and weak. Michael repeatedly must save his life; and at least once, he has to take a terrible risk with his own life in order to rescue Stevie. Stevie loses an arm and both legs in the war; and even after they return to America, Michael has to carry him from the deadening comfort of the V.A. hospital and force him to rejoin the town. Time after time we are reminded that merely decent people cannot take care of themselves. Someone might protest against the harshness of this view. But though the film does expose Stevie's shortcomings, it leads the viewer to see a problem rather than an indictment. We might not have to emphasize Stevie's weakness if his decency had sufficient support in the institutions of his community. The weakness of those institutions is the great problem raised by the film's treatment of Stevie. with a tanker-truck rolling into Clairton at dawn, reminding us that the towns of this country are connected to one another by close ties of economic interdependence. But besides this, what signs of a national community can we find in the film? We see a football game on television and we hear popular T HE FiLM OPENS music on jukeboxes; and there is a veterans' organization, whose only role in the film is to provide the hall where the wedding reception is held. These shared amusements mark the people of Clairton as typically American; they are typical, too, in their lack of curiosity about the nation's public affairs. Working people, without much schooling, they do not have much leisure or incentive to enlighten themselves about the world beyond their city. Certainly America's political institutions encourage this insularity. With our complicated federal system and our traditions of local independence, we have always inclined towards the sort of provincialism that we see in Clairton. The fact that 20 this narrowness so often seems benign does not imply that the nation as a whole is either unified or well-ordered. Our own recollections of the late 1960s should be enough to remind us that the strength of this country's social fabric cannot be taken for granted. Despite the lack of interest in public affairs, Clairton is supplying three volunteers for the government's war. Obviously, then, the people here must feel that they belong to the nation and that they owe her their allegiance. But the United States has always been too large and too diverse and too young to draw its greatest strength from patriotic sentiment. At the wedding reception, the bandleader introduces the three young men who are leaving "to proudly serve their country"; everyone listens in respectful silence, and afterwards they cheer. But none of the volunteers ever indicates that his enlistment has been motivated by a sense of duty or political responsibility. Patriotism lives in Clairton, but the people seem not to be formed by it any more than by discussion of the affairs of the day. And again, we can easily remind ourselves that patriotism did not flourish during the 1960s in America's more enlightened and vainly cosmopolitan cities. Our political tradition, of course, has never sought the sort of national enthusiasm to whose absence the film directs our attention. In this country, we have expected po- litical liberty to bring the greatest possible freedom from government intrusion into our private affairs and volun- tary social activities. This proud tradition of individuality and local independence has always acknowledged that direct national needs are the rightful concern of the central government; accordingly, we hear of no draft-dodging in Clairton. But the cultivation of citizens and decent human beings like Stevie has not been regarded as the necessary or proper concern of the government, except through the local public schools. Moral education has been left largely to the church and family; it is there that we must look for the institutional underpinnings of the decency that Stevie represents. The looming presence of the Russian Church in Clairton reminds us that Christianity is a religion with univer- sal claims. It addresses us from beyond all political horizons and promises to provide a framework for human decency that is both loftier and more solid than that provided by any merely political order. But the church in Clairton fails miserably at its first task: helping its adherents to see the world as coherent and ultimately benign. Stevie's mother is extemely distraught about the behavior of her son, who is marrying a pregnant girl and volun- teering for war. just before the wedding she approaches her priest as he mechanically prepares the altar for the service, and tearfully appeals to him: "I do not understand, Father. I understand nothing anymore. Nothing. Can you explain? Can anyone explain?" The priest stiffly embraces her but he has nothing to say. When priests can no longer even attempt to answer the most pressing ques- tions of an ordinary middle-aged woman, the church can WINTER 1981 �hardly be thought to play a significant part in the moral education of the young. A church that cannot even articulate a defense of Stevie's conduct can hardly provide the basis for cultivating and protecting the kind of human character that he displays. And one would have trouble showing that any major church has recently been doing better than this one does in Clairton. What little family life we see in The Deer Hunter is a mess. Stevie and his mother are without a common ground of discourse, so they only quarrel; Nick's girlfriend is beaten by her drunken father; Stevie's wife goes quietly mad while he is away in the Army. Neither Nick nor Michael seems to have any family at all. Early in th~ film we see Stevie instinctively reaching for the stability of family life: deprived of the psychological protection that a strong home offers, he anxiously tries to establish a family of his own. But his attempt is doomed. He seems to believe that a ceremony is sufficient to establish a marriage, for he foolishly leaves for war a day or so after the wedding. But even without this fantastic misjudgment, the prognosis for his marriage would be very bleak. His bride's pregnancy directs our attention to the disorder in the social institutions that surround and affect the family. A leading purpose of the institution of marriage is to fix responsibility for the care of children. When we see as decent a man as Stevie reduced to undertaking responsibility for some otl1er man's child, we have to con- clude that the private behavior of women has broken loose from the restraints that are needed in any political community. We might believe that he is just being generous if we were given any indication that he had much chance of finding a more respectable wife. Since we are not, we have to see his marriage as a pathetic, futile ges- neither lust nor flirtation: he looks intently and thoughtfully at her, as though he is powerfully aware of some ignorance or other defect in himself. This expression comes to his face again when he sees her at the reception. To their surprise and embarrassment, Nick encourages them to dance together. We see right afterwards that Nick did this in order to free himself to pursue a sad and lonely looking girl nearby; and then we see him repulse an earnest male friend in order to toy with this vulnerable girl. While Michael is with Linda, he seems uneasy with himself in a way we have not seen before; he appears caught between his attraction to her and his loyalty to Nick. He has been drinking, and just as his attraction to Linda seems about to win out, Nick interrupts them and she hurries out of the room. Unlike Michael, Nick treats Linda carelessly, as though she is merely one of several goods that he wants but by which he does not want to be confined. After the disturbing encounter with the Green Beret, he proposes mar- riage to her; when she eagerly accepts, he qualifies the proposal so severely that it becomes merely hypotheticaL Disappointed, she remarks: "Anything that goes through your mind comes out your mouth." After the reception, Nick tells Michael of his attachment to Clairton and his fear of not being able to return there from the war. We can guess that his attitude towards Linda is similar. He wants what she offers and he fears losing her forever, but he desperately wants something more; and he senses that Michael can lead him to a better life than Clairton and Linda promise. Were it not for Michael, Nick might attempt, like Stevie, to arrange for a comfortable and regular existence; but in the presence of Michael, even Stevie is drawn away from Clairton to the war. ture against the social disintegration that began to be- Though Nick's behavior towards women is more obvi- come evident in the nation at large during the years when ously blameworthy than Stevie's, Nick also senses more clearly the real difficulties of doing well. We saw before that Stevie's decency is bound up with his weakness and blindness. Nick, on the contrary, is strongly aware of the dangers of leaving Clairton and Linda. While alone with Michael after the reception, he proclaims his love for Clairton and asks Michael to promise not to leave him in Vietnam. In order to permit Nick to keep his pride after such a humbling request, Michael replies with a casual formulation; but his tone of voice is quite solemn: "Hey this story takes place. Because it points so clearly at the weaknesses of the family, church, and government, the film implies that those institutions are not likely sources of the social re-integration that is so obviously desirable. And the film certainly does not suggest that men like Stevie are plausible agents of improvement. NLIKE STEVIE, Nick is neither ineffectual nor very decent. And unlike Stevie, he is quite handsome and graceful. We have seen that he is not as emotionally self-sufficient as Michael. Neither is he as competent. Michael accomplishes feats with his car that Nick did not think possible; Nick loses to Michael at pool; and Michael takes the buck that we see them tracking together. But more important, and despite his admiration for Michael, Nick is more irresponsible than his friend. U We can see this most clearly in their relations with Linda, Nick's girl. Nicky, you got it." At this moment, Michael's dilemma becomes more clear. As we know from Stanley's insults on the hunting trip, Michael does not pursue women in the careless way that Clairton's customs encourage. But his reluctance to pursue Linda stems mainly from the conflicting claim of his friendship with Nick. This suggests that Michael has a normal male attraction to women, and that he restrains it for the sake of his friendships with men. When we recall that he would rather hunt alone than with men he dis- As we observed earlier, Michael's attention at the wed- dains, it appears that he is seeking in human relationships ding is directed most forcefully at Linda. His face shows primarily the equality that might foster sharing of the best THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 21 �experiences. The experiences that now seem most impor~ tant to him are hunting and its great brother, war. Michael knows that his attraction to these pursuits is essentially male; hence he rather reasonably sets his attraction to women aside for the sake of his friendships with men, and especially with Nick. And as his promise to Nick reveals, Michael is ready to commit himself to those friendships as firmly as one would commit oneself to marnage. But Nick's need to hear Michael make the promise reveals the difficulty with Michael's reasoning. Nick shows here that he is very dependent on Michael's strength, so it is unlikely that they will prove equal in war or able truly to share its experiences. In view of that, it might make sense for Michael to reconsider the subordination of his interest in women. By the end of the film, he does so. But it is a mark of his nobility that he refuses to accept the implications of Nick's inferiority as easily as our argument sug~ gests that he might. III the men return to a tavern that one of them owns. The hour is late, they are tired and alone with each other. The tavern owner, who sings in the church choir and regrets being too unhealthy for military service, plays a Chopin nocturne at the piano. The music soothes the men and provides a moment of peace between the hunt and the coming trip to war. With an unforgettable rudeness, the film cuts suddenly to a deafening, fiery helicopter assault on a Vietnamese village. This transition vividly suggests the painful and exhilirating shift that soldiers experience when they truly leave civilized life by going into battle. Michael's education begins here in Vietnam. At the scene of the assault, we find Michael lying amid the rubble and corpses; apparently there has been a firefight, he has been injured, and is just now regaining consciousness. As he comes to, he sees a solitary enemy soldier hunting for survivors. Finding some civilians hiding in a bunker, the soldier throws a grenade in among them. By chance, one woman survives and emerges with a child in her arms; the enemy coaly machine-guns her and the child as she runs from the bunker. While this is happening, Michael grabs a flamethrower and charges him. Though too late to save any of the civilians, Michael sets the killer afire. And though the soldier has just signaled to some other troops, Michael pays no attention to his own safety; now in a frenzy he shoots the enemy again and again, even after the monster is obviously dead. Michael's anger and disgust seem to have taken control of his conduct; but though his act itself is neither moderate nor beautiful, he is obviously moved by a deep revulsion at the shamefully unnecessary violence. As in the scene where he responds to Stanley's misuse A 22 T THE END OF THE HUNTING TRIP, of weapons, Michael loses some of his own self-control when faced with an abysmally indecent man. But here the goodness of Michael's anger is more clear. Michael is not one of those eerie aficionados who are fascinated with war, but neither does he seek to retain the equanimity and outward dignity appropriate to most civilian situations. In this scene, Michael seems very disturbed-even slightly deranged-but the cool efficiency of the enemy soldier indicates the danger of carelessly importing moral standards from one world to another. with the murderer, more American troops arrive by helicopter. The group includes Nick and Stevie, and they are all taken prisoner shortly thereafter. We now watch the VietCong torture American and South Vietnamese P.O.W.s by forcing them to play Russian roulette against each other; the captors amuse themselves by placing bets on the matches. While waiting their turns, Stevie and Nick both lose their composure. Stevie becomes hysterical and Michael tries to calm him; Nick also needs Michael's help but he cannot speak loudly enough to ask for it. When Michael and Stevie are made to play against each other, Stevie flinches and his cowardice saves him from destroying himself; but the VietCong just throw him into a pit to die. Perceiving the hopelessness of allowing the games to continue as they have been arranged, Michael conceives a bold but very dangerous scheme. He persuades Nick that they should play against each other with extra cartridges in the revolver; he hopes to clear two of the chambers, and then use the gun against the captors. Quite against the odds, the trick works. But Nick has to be coaxed and bullied through the game: though it is his only chance of surviving, he does not have the strength to put his life so clearly in the hands of an unfavorable chance. Michael is at least as averse to dying as Stevie or Nick, but he can play if he has to; and he can arrange an even more dangerous ver~ sian for the sake of overcoming the game. Russian roulette will become the movie's most insistent and memorable metaphor, and thr0 ugh it we can discover some of what Michael learns. In an obvious way, the game begins as an image of the experience of modern battle. Nearly all articulate combat veterans speak of the terrible disorientation caused by living where men die frequently, violently, and with seeming total randomness. Some men go mad, most become superstitious, and virtually all become cynical about the moral standards that regulate peacetime life. The horror of this experience seems to arise largely from the fact that other human beings are intentionally causing all this random death-and perhaps too from the soldiers' awareness of their own active role in maintaining the hostilities that make war what it is. Russian roulette is an especially rich image because it emphasizes the participation of the victims in an activity that makes little sense in terms of their most basic self-interest. W HILE MICHAEL IS ENGAGED WINTER 1981 �Through this metaphor, the film turns our attention away from the grand sweep of battle to the great psychological demands of combat. Here we find the basis of the film's statements about human excellence and its bearing on our political life. Since war cannot be done away with, there have to be men who play that form of Russian roulette. The most common way to play is probably Stevie's. Men like him can be lured or pressed into the arena, and they can be pressed and coaxed to participate up to a certain point. But once they have to face what warfare brings, they in· stinctively recoil and seek to escape it as quickly as possible. In the terrifying moments before he has to play, Stevie screams: "I don't belong here .... I want to go home." Though one's sense of natural justice grants his proposition and makes one wish that his desire be satisfied, the conditions of battle usually allow very little scope for acting on such sentiments. At least in part, Stevie's manifest unfitness for war must account for the extraordi- nary risks that Michael later takes for his sake; but after Stevie has been thrown into the pit, Michael orders Nick to forget about him and concentrate on the requirements of his own survival. Nick thinks that Michael is playing God, but his command has to be obeyed if Stevie himself is to have any chance of survival. Nick seems less weak than Stevie and he has a closer friendship with Michael, so Michael chooses him to play the more difficult form of the game. In order to enable himself to go through with his plan, Michael deliberately generates a terrific, concentrated hatred towards the captors. This hatred is not pretty, but it is necessary, as we can see by contrasting it with Nick's paralysis. Though Michael tries to bring out courage in his friend, Nick's attention is too focused on himself to allow him either to hate or to respond calmly to the demands of the situation; even with Michael's encouragement, he almost fails to act. Michael's hatred gives him the detachment from himself that is needed to perform the unnatural act required in Russian roulette. As in the earlier combat scene, Michael's anger is the engine of an appropriate though ugly action. Under Michael's governance, Nick also manages to perform the necessary act, but he is obviously acting beyond his own capacities: without Michael and the inhuman ferocity that he calls out of himself, Nick would be as helpless as Stevie. Here Michael's spiritedness-his violent and even savage self-assertion-is irrefutably justified. It should not diminish our sense of that justification to point out that Michael's hatred is not autonomous. His intelligence is responsible for the plan that he executes, and his savage anger is therefore directed by a superior principle; but only through his brute courage does Michael's intelligence come to rule him. Nick too can understand what needs to be done; only Michael's stronger reserves of selfassertiveness and even brutality save him from falling into Nick's confusion, self-absorption, and impotence. And THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW lest we think that Nick is somehow finer or more human, the film shows him furiously beating one of the VietCong corpses after the danger is past. the three soldiers get separated. A helicopter tries to pick them all up, but Stevie falls into a river and Michael jumps off after him. Stevie's legs are badly injured; Michael carries him out of the jungle and turns him over to some South Vietnamese troops who have a jeep. At this point we lose sight of them, and the film shifts to Nick's experiences in Saigon. Several scenes take place in which Nick shows signs of intense inner disturbance-he speaks only with difficulty, A FTER THEIR ESCAPE, weeps easily, looks twice at Linda's picture, and imagines once that he sees Michael in a Saigon bar. Finally an urbane Frenchman lures him into a house where people amuse themselves by betting on Russian roulette matches between men who play for money. Though Nick does not see him, Michael is there watching the games. Unlike most of the other people present, Michael seems neither excited nor indifferent: his face reveals an intelligent, concentrated, absolutely serious-looking. At this moment we know that he has been trying since we last saw him to understand what he has been through. As soon as he sees Nick, his concentration vanishes and he reaches towards his friend. When Nick sees the game, he frantically interrupts it; after grabbing the revolver, he dry-fires at one of the players, dry-fires at himself, and rushes out of the building. Michael chases after, only to see the Frenchman driving Nick away in a car; with a gesture of final hopeless abandon, Nick throws a fistful of money into the air above the crowded street. After what Nick has gone through, the sight of men taking these risks without compulsion is too much to bear. Nick's character has always been ambiguous or undefined: in Clairton he was discontented with the goods within his reach, and yet unable to find principles or direction for himself. Like most people whose finest gift is a longing for the good, Nick has tended to be dominated by the most fascinating influence in his surroundings. So long as that influence was Michael, Nick might safely have sought the noble life; but once he faces Russian roulette without Michael's help, Nick cannot resist its gruesome magnetism. That magnetism is founded in war's tantalizing suggestion that nothing good can stand up in the violent onslaught of brute chance; when Nick sees Russian roulette played voluntarily in the midst of civilization, he cannot resist the implication that human life is no more than warfare, that everything is permitted, that nothing is of enduring worth. The film later confirms this scene's suggestion that Nick has just given himself over to a career as a Russian roulette player; from now on he will play for money and for love of the game. Like other men who become enthralled by the spirit of war, Nick will live 23 �on for awhile, but only as a kind of ghost. He becomes indifferent to his own life and his own good; he moves in our world but his eyes are open only to the incoherencies that we all naturally resist. As a human being, Nick is now dead. Unlike Nick, who is captivated by Russian roulette, Michael appears here as a student of the game. In its first use in the film, Russian roulette was a metaphor for war as experienced by ordinary men in battle. Most soldiers experience combat as something for which they are drafted or for which they find that they have imprudently volunteered. The sight of war has its charms, but these are ac· cessible chiefly to its observers, just as the pleasures of Russian roulette are available to the spectators who bet on the games. Seen from a distance, both follow fairly regular patterns or rules and hence have a kind of coherence. But these patterns so threaten the self-preservation of the participants that voluntary acceptance of life under them appears to most men in combat as prima facie evidence of insanity. This should not be surprising since the love of living there is indeed conclusive evidence of insanity. In Saigon, Michael returns to Russian roulette as a spectator, but we do not see him betting on the outcome and we see in him no love for the game he is watching. Since he has not simply turned away from the game, he must know that he may play again. Since he betrays no desire to do so, he must also believe that playing can be justified without reference to maxims of insanity. To sec war as necessary and yet not as an end in itself is easy for those who have little experience of it; it is not anticipating too much to say that Michael's special excellence is to live as a warrior without ceasing to govern himself. He differs from enthusiastic mercenaries because he does not love war; he differs from merely dutiful soldiers because he does not take his bearings from the goals offered in civilian life. We saw Ivlichael exercising the warrior's courage almost by nature in the first Russian roulette scene; his looks in the Saigon scene indicate how difficult it is for him to include such activity in his way of life; the madera· tion he displays here enables him to appear in the film's third and final section as the man whom justice would require to rule in Clairton. W he goes on a hunting trip with his old friends; Stevie is too crippled to come along and Nick is missing in Vietnam. During the trip, Stanley begins stupidly threatening another man with a revolver that he seems to believe is unloaded. At the sight of this, Michael becomes very angry; he takes the pistol away, discovers that it is loaded, fires a bullet into the ceiling of the cabin, and removes the cartridges from the gun. He then chambers one round, spins the cylinder, points the gun at Stanley's 24 rule. But in order to appreciate that conclusion, we need to re-examine Michael himself. Let us recall that the insanity of war is most evident when one considers the threat war poses to the combatants' self-preservation. Any justification of war requires IV HEN MICHAEL RETURNS TO CLAIRTON, head, and pulls the trigger. The gun does not discharge. By our usual standards, Michael's conduct in this third Russian roulette scene is unreasonable. For how could the attempt to educate a person as vile as Stanley is be worth the risk of committing murder? In part, Michael's action may be an unthinking passionate objection to Stanley's carelessness with human life; to the extent that this is so, his conduct would resemble Nick's interruption of the game in Saigon. But what Michael does is more measured and purposeful. Unlike the players in the Saigon house, Stanley is a danger primarily to innocent people; further, Michael is tied to most of Stanley's potential victims, and even to Stanley himself, by some ties of friendship; and unlike Nick, Michael does not turn the gun on himself. Above all, Michael's act is not a gesture, as Nick's is; it certainly is dramatic, but the drama points very clearly to a simple and important lesson. After Stanley survives-and the odds were quite high that he would-it is very unlikely that he will forget what Michael has taught. At least he will probably stop playing with guns, and he may even be moved to begin living in a generally more subdued and responsible way. At the end of the film, his careful treatment of Stevie's wife suggests that he may be rising a little from his habitual petty vanity and self-absorption. To whatever extent Stanley is improved, we can attribute it to Michael's deliberate extra-legal coercion on the hunting trip. Michael has stepped outside the law to exercise a rule that justly belongs to him; the film clearly and correctly implies that unless men like Michael rule, there will be no rest from the ills occasioned by the base and irresponsible. Since American institutions make little provision for such rule, private justice like Michael's can be seen as a beneficial supplement to our officially political life. But the unlawfulness and riskiness of Michael's open assertion of rule over Stanley remind us not to expect that such rule will ever play a powerful part in our government; and the dangers of trying to institute such domination should be obvious to us all. At the end of the film, we shall be able to discover Michael's substitute for open the introduction of considerations beyond the preservation of the combatants' lives. For them to accept such a justification, they have to see their self-interest in broader terms than those comprehended in self-preservation; and rarely, if ever, can their motives for fighting be quite the same as those of the army or nation as a whole. The same difficulty arises in explaining Michael's participation in the game of Russian roulette with Stanley. From the narrow perspective of self-interest his behavior is senseless, even demented: he has very little to fear from Stanley, and much to lose if Stanley dies by his hand. When we examine Michael's conduct in the light of the common interest WINTER 1981 �Nick broke under the pressure of war. One might think that this merely proves Nick's inferiority, and that Michael should wait for friendship until he meets a man truly like himself. His failure to do so indicates that he no of Stanley and his potential victims, we can see the good in what he does. But why should Michael risk himself for these others? The fact that he displays such strong anger in this scene suggests that something of his own is at stake. In order to see what that might be, we have to look once again at Michael as he is alone. just before the Russian roulette scene with Stanley, we watch Michael in solitary pursuit of a handsome buck. After some time, the animal stops at the edge of a clearing. Michael draws a bead on it, and we expect to see his "one activity that can be shared among equals. Is friendship then impossible? Michael relaxes his "one shot" ethic when he spares the deer, and he spends most of the rest of the film caring for the people of Clairton. His masculine virtue enables him to help them; but that shot" virtue reconfirmed. But just as he seems about to same virtue conflicts with his decision to care for them take the shot, he jerks the rifle up, and shoots over the deer. He appears agitated, and he asks in a strained vbice: "Okay?" Though he seems to be talking to the deer, the question must really be addressed to himself because we then hear him answer in a long drawn-out shout: "Okay." While the answer is being given, we do not see Michael himself but look instead at the surrounding landscape. As it sometimes happens in the mountains, the shout echoes back: "Okay." This echo suggests that Michael finds himself in accord with nature. rather than to despise or try to dominate them. The echo in the hunting scene vaguely hints that nature supports his decision, but the decision is also clearly a difficult one for him to make. And we simply do not know why he HROUGHOUT THE FIL", Michael has been a laconic man. The fact of the film's title establishes the im·portance of this scene in which Michael chooses not to slay his deer; but the one word he utters offers little indication of his motive for throwing away the shot. The significance of the scene lies partly in its mystery. From this point forward, Michael's motives are not explained to the other characters and they have to remain somewhat obscure to us, too. Fully to overcome this obscurity would require knowing all that Michael knows, and perhaps more; the film does not pretend to provide the viewer with that knowledge, even for a moment. But we can attempt to see why this obscurity is necessary. If we think back to the first section of the film, we can see Michael has a kind of prisoner of his natural superi- T ority. His· dominant impulse was the masculine love of hunting and war; his superiority emerged in his great com- petence at those activities. Had he pursued his passion for the development of his masculine superiority, he might have become a solitary hunter or a mercenary soldier; had he pursued this passion in his relations with his friends, he would have tended to become a despot of one kind or another. At times his speech suggested that masculine, se1f-serving superiority is what he most desired: "Two is pussy; 'one shot' is what it's all about_ ... This is this. From now on you're on your own." But we never see him live as though he completely accepts his own principles. He is prevented from doing so by a different, and not specifically masculine, impulse: the desire for friendship, the desire to share the best activities with other human beings. Michael set aside his interest in women in order to pur- sue that friendship with Nick in which he hoped to share the most masculine activities. This project stopped when THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW longer thinks that the exercise of masculine virtue is an makes it. From this point forward, we must confine our- selves largely to examining the effects of Michael's activities in his new role as guardian-hero. When Michael puts himself into a position to kill the deer and then spares it, he enters into a peculiar relation- ship with the animal. While it had previously been merely a natural being, it now owes its freedom to Michael's choice. Despite the deer's ignorance of Michael's responsibility for its future existence and activity, Michael now rules it more nobly than he would have had he chosen to destroy it. Similarly, Michael's rule over his decent Clairton friends will be much less visible to them than his direct but temporary domination over Stanley. For that reason he will be able to begin establishing a community rather than a mere reflection of the natural hierarchy among human beings. This change in Michael's relation to the people of Clairton first emerges through the replacement of Nick by Linda as the link between Michael and the others. When Michael first returns to his hometown, he avoids a party at his house arranged in his honor. Linda has been living in the house, and he goes there after the others have left in the morning. When the two meet, there are moments of awkwardness, just as one would expect. Dur- ing this first meeting, Linda brings out a sweater she has made for Nick, and she tries to see whether it could fit Michael; it is not the right size, but she is tearfully confident that she can alter it. Very clearly, Linda has little notion of the important and unalterable differences between the two men; since she cannot truly appreciate what Michael is, her present urge to give up Nick does not indicate that any great change has taken place in her since the beginning of the film. When Michael offers to escort her to her place of employment, she reveals both her appreciation of his outward appearance and her inability to understand what lies below his surface: "Mike, you're so weird. You're always such a gentleman." Like Nick, Michael has been attracted to Linda from the start. Nick carried a picture of her to Vietnam, and we saw him look at it twice just before his breakdown. Michael carried the same picture, but we do not see him 25 �look at it until just before he returns to see her. With Nick missing and probably dead, Michael now tentatively begins to reopen his own relationship with her. Though we might have expected him to be offended by her confusion in the scene with the sweater, he soon chooses to offer a most generous and helpful interpretation of her ambivalence: "Linda, I just wanted to say how sorry I am about Nick. I know how much you love him; I know it could never been the same .... " We can be sure that if Nick were to return, Michael would try gracefully to avoid standing between him and Linda. By paying such respect to the prior claims of the old relationship between Nick and Linda, Michael acts to preserve Linda's sense of the worth of such claims. We know enough about Nick and Linda to know that they are not the source of whatever strength such claims might have; we saw before that Nick's commitment to her was less than wholehearted, and the film hints that she has not been faithful during his absence. But Michael knows enough about the fragility of the bonds among human beings to be careful with those that exist; he is opposed to overturning them for the sake of what might be a specious improvement. Because Linda is a woman and understands little about Michael, she is impatient to feel the security that she hopes he can offer: very soon, she desperately proposes that they comfort each other by sleeping together. He seems unoffended, but he only reluctantly allows her to accompany him to his motel room; and we are permitted to infer that he tries to comfort her without accepting her offer of sex. Besides the problems that he must so clearly recognize in establishing intimate ties with people who cannot adequately understand him, Michael has just learned that Stevie is alive and back in the United States. just as Michael seeks to help Linda preserve a healthy respect for her past love, he must recognize the possibility that she could undermine his loyalties to the friends who followed him to war. After the hunting trip and the encounter with the deer, Michael returns to Linda and offers himself without his previous reluctance; he now takes her for the first time to his own bed at home. After she falls asleep, he looks at the hunting trophies in his room and at the mills in the distance; now, finally, he goes out to visit Stevie. In war, Michael was Stevie's protector. But in civilian life, friendships between men require that the natural distinctions among them be very much obscured; this is what made his relations with other men so difficult before he went to war. Michael's new friendship with Linda, which is based on the clear and acl!:nowledged natural distinction between the sexes, allows him to begin taking care of Stevie in the artificial circumstances of civilized life. There is order in Michael's relationships with the people of Clairton, an order made possible by his decision to relax his insistence on the primacy of his masculine, self-serving virtue. When he visits Stevie in the hospital, Michael learns that Stevie's wife has been receiving small carved ele- 26 phants and large amounts of cash from Saigon; she forwards the souvenirs and money to her crippled husband, maliciously enclosing it all in socks. Michael immediately knows that Nick must still be alive; though he does not tell Stevie or anyone else, he also knows that Nick must be getting the money by playing Russian roulette. Nick's sudden intrusion disrupts the order of Michael's relationships in Clairton. to the Communists and the city is afire with the frenzy of America's final evacuation. Bombardment by enemy artillery provides the flames that light the nights; the harsh light of day exposes the desperate fever to escape among those who sense what the victors from the north will bring. Somewhere in this doomed city Nick, or what is left of him, continues to pursue his private obsession. Michael is intent on finding him, and by some miracle of cunning and daring, gets into this earthly hell. He appears as resolute- almost as monomaniacal-as a man in Nick's occupation would have to be. In the course of tracking Nick, Michael encounters the Frenchman who seduced him into his presenf career. During their first conversation, Michael says that he wants to find Nick in order to play Russian roulette against him. Since we know that he has no such desire, we have to wonder why he expresses it. He could as plausibly have said that he wanted to see the famous American play the game; in fact, one would think that the European could more easily have understood such a motive. But Michael must know more about Russian roulette than we do. The first time he played, he not only won but he overcame the game itself. We have seen him studying its mercenary variety, and we have seen him use the game as a tool of education in the United States. What began as a metaphor for war has been subtly expanded so that it points towards greater questions about the responsibilities of human beings to themselves and one another. By so mastering the game that he can play it usefully in civilian life, Michael revealed that his own relation to it is one of aversion and attachment. He never shows any love for this purest form of exposing one's own well-being to dark and uncontrollable forces. In this way he has shown that his S AlCON IS ABOUT TO FALL early statement about his aversion to surprises has a core of truth: in his heart, Michael has remained more a deer hunter than a warrior. At the same time he appears to have concluded that bravery and skill in Russian roulette are conditions of the excellence he has always sought. He plays it not only when it is obviously necessary, but also-as with Stanley-when he judges that it can bring some important good. In the last deer-hunting scene, Michael appeared to turn away from the solitary pursuit of his own excellence; he is a member of the Army's elite Rangers, and the film gives no indication that he intends to leave the military now that the war is over. WINTER 1981 �Knowing so much about Russian roulette, or war broadly conceived, Michael has to know that Nick's life since he disappeared will have put a great deal of distance between the two of them. We see him taking great risks to find Nick; he must know that he will have to take greater risks to bring Nick back. Michael has gone into hell after his friend and he must somehow foresee that he is going to have to play yet another round of Russian roulette before he returns. When Michael finds him, Nick shows no recognition. He is intent on the present; except for the strange fact that he sends elephants and his winnings to Stevie's wife, he seems to have lost all touch with his past. In a desperate attempt to give Nick back his memory-to bring this ghost back to human life-Michael arranges to play the next game against him. When he first came into the house where Nick plays, Michael had been visibly distressed to see another player kill himself. Now, at the table with Nick, Michael begins urgently trying to talk him back to himself: "We don't have much time .... Don't do it." When the spectators have finished placing their bets, Nick still has not heard Michael. Nick takes the first turn; the hammer drops on an empty chamber. Since mere speech has failed, Michael picks up the pistol and asks, "Is this what you want?" After saying sadly, "I love you, Nick," Michael's face twists up with a terrible dread that we have seen in no professional Russian roulette player. He puts the revolver to his head and pulls the trigger; again, the weapon fails to discharge. But Nick remains oblivious to Michael's efforts to reach him. As Nick picks up the gun again, Michael grabs his wrist, sees track marks on his arm, and begins talking urgently of home, of their friendship, of the mountains. Now at last, what Nick would most remember about Michael returns to him: he says, "One shot," laughs softly, and blows his brains out. Screaming with grief, Michael grabs the corpse and starts shaking it in an instinctive effort to bring it back to life. This scene invites us to interpret it in terms of Michael's love for Nick. That love is surely what enables him to risk himself in the game. But what is the basis and framework of the love? Michael must know how small are the chances that Nick could be retrieved from the living death in which he finds him. By virtue of what principle did he take upon himself with no visible hesitation this illicit 12,000-mile trip to hell in search of a man who is not sane enough to return from there by his own will? And by virtue of what principle does Michael risk Nick's life in the round of Russian roulette they play? In this scene, love is the passion that carries Michael through the hardest part of the game, just as hatred or anger carried him through the previous games he played. But in no case do these passions simply rule Michael's conduct. In the other games, Michael was ruled by his insight into the justification for his participation. Here the only visible justification for the risks he takes is the old THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW promise he made to Nick not to leave him in Vietnam. By holding himself and Nick to that promise, Michael affirms the gravity of a human relationship to which he has committed the word of his honor; he thus establishes the superiority of the relationship implied by a promise over either of the human beings who participate in that relationship. We see in this last Russian roulette scene how much Michael dislikes what he has to do; not once does he seem tempted to protect his own human feelings with callous notions about imperatives of abstract duty. Still, he does set the authority of his promise above himself and others, and he thereby brings that authority into being. The Deer Hunter correctly teaches us that love and decency would not exist as goods were it not for this harsh-and painful-insistence on self-respect. As we saw before, Michael's earliest and highest hopes have not been met: he has not found his equal and has not found perfected friendship. Nor has his struggle against the rule of chance in human affairs been wholly successful. It would be hard to imagine a man who takes firmer responsibility for himself and for his own activity; because of this he can be said to have done as much as one can do to prevent chance from living within oneself. But in order to achieve this victory, he has had to live where chance does virtually rule: he has had to face enemies out beyond the protecting conventions and institutions of civil society. In the film this is presented through his experience of war; but the contrast between him and the other two soldiers shows that what truly distinguishes him is his understanding of what war reveals about himself and others. To reach that just estimation of men, Michael has had to take enormous risks and exercise great courage and moderation. Men with his natural talents and inclinations are rare to begin with, and they are more likely than most others to die in battle. The blessing of his survival will enable him to help others more than they can fully appreciate. After Nick's funeral, his friends go to the old tavern to have breakfast alone together. The scene is similiar to the one just before the first transition to Vietnam. But this time it is day, now there· are women present, and one of the group is very conspicuous by his absence. While in the kitchen preparing the food, the tavern owner tries to choke back his tears by humming and singing a little of "God Bless America." In the earlier tavern scene, the orderly motion of his music helped provide a brief but satisfying relief from struggle; now, however, the pain that Nick's death has brought seems as likely to break out in violent weeping as in the reconciliation of song. Sensing that a critical moment is at hand, Linda begins to sing with a shaking voice: "God bless America/Land that I love .... " Nick has lost his life, Linda and the others have lost him; this prayer, with its patriotism and its assumption about the cosmic supports for patriotism, might allow those present to T HE STORY ENDS IN CLAIRTON. 27 �believe that these sacrifices were worthwhile. But their hesitation to join in the singing betrays their doubts about the song's credibility. One man can ease those doubts. Michael once said that these others were "assholes"; there is nothing to indicate that they have changed much during the film. Michael has always been skeptical of piety, adhering to a pagan hunting religion if to any at all; nothing in the film indicates that he has found in the world the coherence that could make this song even remotely plausible. Whatever Michael may once have felt towards the others, and whatever he may now believe about the world, he joins in the singing. As he is thereby ratifying their belief in the comforting words, his attention seems directed mainly at Linda; but he performs the function of a priest for them all. Michael has always had a natural air of authority, and now his credentials are strengthened by the fact that he has been with open eyes where none of them could go. Without Michael's assent the singing would be ludicrous-by joining in, he protects the others from having to admit how much reason there may be for despair. And he protects them, too, from having to admit how dependent they are on him for protection from the horrors he has survived. He bestows on them what freedom they are 28 capable of, much as he did for the deer he spared in the mountains. The image of the deer should remind us that one of the dangers he protects them from is his own urge to dominate them by force. At the last moment, Michael reminds his friends-and us-that the reconciliation provided by the song is a little too easy. The edifying words of "God Bless America" could not be said to foster bad beliefs, but by themselves they are empty. So at the conclusion of the singing, Michael raises his glass and says: "Here's to Nick." By reminding the others of the importance of keeping the memory of the friend who died, Michael tries to prevent them from going too far into the refuge of comforting sentiment: he imposes on them at least a little of the difficult work of cultivating the grounds in which a noble sense of freedom and community can grow. They respond by repeating the toast in unison, and the film ends. Michael knows how costly this communion has been, and how fragile are the supports that make it possible; his work has only begun, and may never be completed. But if we have gained a greater understanding of the deer hunter and of his place in our community, the film has achieved its principal purpose. WINTER 1981 �The Scientific Background of Descartes' Dualism Arthur Collins Dualism is the thesis that all the finite individual things that exist in the universe are either minds or bodies. Bodies are material things whose principle and defining feature is extension or the filling of space, and minds are nonmaterial things and their principle and defining feature is thinking or being conscious. The most important aspect of Descartes' dualism is its characterization of a human being as a composite entity. In an individual man, mind and body are closely associated. In some sense they are united. However, they cannot lose their distinctness as two separate substances, that is; as two entities each of which endures through time, undergoes its own changes, and thus accumulates its own history. Changes the mind undergoes are changes in thought and consciousness, and the history of a mind is a sequence of mental states, mental contents, and mental activities. The body undergoes physical changes and has a physical history, the history of a material object. The crucial claim of dualism is that the body is not the thing that thinks in a man. The fundamental nature of body is being extended and this contrasts with and excl!ldes being conscious. Descartes' philosophical arguments for this dualism are most fully rendered in his Meditations on First Philosophy. It is worth reminding ourselves that this work bears the subtitle, "In which the existence of God and the distinction between Mind and Body are demonstrated." 1 The same arguments are prefigured briefly and partially in Part Four of the Discourse on Method. They are recast in Part One of the Principle of Philosophy, and they appear elsewhere in Descartes' writings. Although Cartesian dualism still exerts an immense influence in philosophy, Descartes' arguments for his dualism, from their earliest presentation, have been found wholly inadequate by most readers. Even those who ac- Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York, Arthur Collins has published articles in numerous philosophical journals on epistemology, philosophical psychology, and the history of philosophy. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW cept or share his dualist convictions have found his defense of them quite unsatisfactory. The inadequate arguments represent an effort to frame definitive demonstrations for convictions that were deeply held by Descartes and that were understandably compelling to him. But the thinking which actually led Descartes to these convictions is remote from the matters that figure in the official proofs of his late metaphysical works. Descartes' Argument The Meditations can be divided into two unequal parts at the end of the second day's thinking. Under this division the first part contains the initial encouragement of systematic and radical doubt, culminating in the two general skeptical hypotheses: the dream hypothesis, and the deceiving demon hypothesis. This first part also contains the cogito argument by which doubt is at last halted in the unshakeable self-knowledge of the thinking subject. It concludes with the recognition in the latter part of the Second Meditation, that the immediate contents of consciousness, construed only as "ideas" in the mind, all share the indubitability of the cogito. At this point, the existence of the thinking subject and the existence and content of all his ideas are guaranteed. Preparation has been made for the survey and classification of ideas in the Third Meditation. Everything but this sphere of consciousness remains in doubt. The existence of a material order and of the thinking subject's own body remain to be argued for. Even the simplest mathematical propositions have yet to attain standing as truths. To this day, every philosophical intelligence feels the power of this representation of the subjective starting point for philosophical thinking. Although modern philosophers owe so much to the phenomenological starting point discovered in the first two Meditations, almost nothing in subsequent thought has been influenced by arguments and claims found in the second part of the work. 29 �But the whole of Descartes' official defense of dualism is found in this second part. In the Third Meditation Descartes turns to God in devising an escape from the threatening prison of solipsistic consciousness. Few have followed him in his view that the idea of God is the first for which we are able to know a corresponding existence. Of empiricist philosophies, only Berkeley's accords comparable prominence to theological premises in moving from the flux of immediate experi~ ence to a more stable independent reality. Empiricism has generally rejected the uses of theology on which Descartes relies. The function of Descartes' theology in the Third Meditation is precisely to prepare the ground for the proof of the existence of material things. The causal argument, there mounted, claims that the existence of God is implied as a needed causal antecedent both by the existence of an idea of God and by the subject's possession of that idea. This reasoning is supplemented in the Fifth Meditation by Descartes' version of the "ontological argument" for God's existence. The intervening discUssion concerns the nature of human error and establishes the compatibility of man's imperfection with the conclusion reached in the Third Meditation: Man's creator is an infinite and perfect God. This is Descartes' highly intellectualized version of the traditional problem of evil. His solution emphasizes human freedom and places responsibility for human deficiencies on men themselves, while God is asserted to have made men capable of correcting all the errors to which they are susceptible; This reconciliation of divine perfection and human inadequacy is not original. Saint Augustine presented much the same argument, although he vigorously rejected optimistic attitudes concerning man's power to correct his shortcomings. Augustine adverts to the freedom of man in order to deny God's responsibility for human vices. In his proof of the existence of a material world and its distinctness from the mental, Descartes exploits an aspect of the argument never contemplated by Augustine: If God is absolved from responsibility for human failings only because man is free and, thus, responsible for himself, then, insofar as man is not free, it should follow that God is responsible for him. As we shall see, it is just this contrapositive entailment of an earlier solution to the problem of evil that Descartes invokes in moving from our ineluctable belief in the existence of a material world to the justification of that belief. The very same pattern-exploitation of an old argument for new ends-recurs in the use of the ontological argument in the Fifth Meditation. This argument is best known in the eleventh-century formulation of Anselm of Canterbury and in the framework of its later rejection by Thomas Aquinas. Descartes has proved the existence of God in the Third Meditation. Is another proof added as reinforcement? No, in the Fifth Meditation, the material world is Descartes' real objective. The ontological argument serves to focus the discussion on the concept of es- 30 sences that Descartes requires in his subsequent reasoning. The discussion consists in an extended comparison of our idea of God and our ideas of material things. Both are construed as formulations of essences. For our purposes, we can think of an essence as a cluster of characteristics that define an entity of a certain type. In the case of extended things such as triangles, the investigation of essence provides answers to the question, What must an existing thing outside the mind be like if it is to be a triangle? Then theorems about triangles are said. to be entailments of the essence of triangles. Such propositions, formulating geometrical knowledge, do not assert the existence of anything. In the example considered by Descartes, knowledge of essence yields only an entirely secure but hypothetical statement: If there is actually a triangle somewhere, then it has an angle-sum of two right angles. A parallel examination of the essence of God as indicated by our idea of God reveals, according to Descartes, that the proposition "God exists" is entailed by this idea, just as the angle-sum theorem is entailed by the idea of a triangle. Descartes' interest in the ontological argument really lies in the contrast it affords between the essence of God that sustains an existence claim and the essence of matter that does not. In the last Meditation the existence of material things is proved via complicated appeals to the known essence of material things and the now-known existence and character of God. Because his power is infinite, God could have given us the ideas that we have of material things in our geometrical thinking and in perceptual experience even though there were no such material things outside our thought. He could have planted ideas of external things directly in our consciousness, or he could have induced them through some intermediate reality, sufficient for the production of those ideas, but entirely unlike a material world. Such possibilities, however, would be inconsistent with God's infinite goodness. For we have an irresistible disposition to refer our perceptual ideas to material things outside us. If no such material things were in fact the source of those ideas, our disposition would be a systematic misinterpretation of our experience that we could never correct. Just here Descartes employs the optimistic principle introduced in the Fourth Meditation: God enables us to correct any errors to which we are susceptible. This justifies the proposition that there is a material world which is the source of our perceptual experiences and which is the nonmental subject matter of which geometrical truths are true. The dualism which is the final objective of the Meditations now requires only the proposition that bodies and minds, both of which are known to exist, are also distinct existences. Descartes argues that, though it may be that every mind is an embodied mind, minds could exist without bodies and God could have made our conscious minds just as they are without equipping us with bodies at all. He seems to regard this appeal to God's power as a needed premise for the distinctness of minds and bodies. WINTER 1981 �This is likely to be confusing to his readers. After all, if the essence of triangles is to be three-sided, and of pentagons, to be five-sided, then, obviously, existing triangles cannot be existing pentagons. But Descartes writes as though he takes seriously the possibility that the thing that is conscious might be a corporeal thing, even though its essence is consciousness, while the essence of corporeal things is extension, and even though these are distinct essences. We notice that the essence: being conscious, does not obviously exclude the essence: being extended, on logical grounds, as three-sidedness and five-sidedness exclude one another. But this difference is not the only foundation for Descartes' conviction that further reasoning is needed. Prevailing scholastic-Aristotelian conceptions explicated the relationship between mind and body with the help of a ubiquitous form-matter distinction. Applied to human existence, the soul is taken by this tradition to be the form of the body, so that the animated body is a single substance, and not a composite of soul and body, each possessing an independent substantial existence. In light of this doctrine, the immortality of the soul and its survival of the dissolution of the body in death became special problems for scholastic philosophers. In addition to this tradition, Descartes takes into consideration common-sense intuitions which make it difficult to think of a person as a mere association of a spiritual being and some inert clay. In the famous phrase, he allows that "I am not present in my body merely as a pilot is present in his ship," 2 and he draws attention to pains, which are experienced and not merely observed as a pilot might observe events damaging to his vessel. This intimacy with the corporeal nature of one's own body arises "from the mind's being united to and, as it were, mixed up with the body." In a letter to his sometime disciple Regius, Descartes says that an angel inhabiting a body would perceive impinging motions but would not feel sensations as we do 3 An angel would be like a pilot in a ship. In this letter Descartes expresses a confusing vacillation between the accepted scholastic view that a man is an ens per se (a substantial unity) and the view that a man is an ens per accidens (a composite being) which an angel inhabiting a body would be. Descartes' vacillation is partly due to his desire not to offend other religious thinkers and authorities needlessly. He recommends qualified endorsement of the prevailing view to Regius as a matter of prudence. But his intellectual uncertainty is also apparent. Descartes never reaches a satisfactory understanding of the "mixing" of mind and body in human existence. Descartes' demonstration of dualism amounts to these propositions: (1) We have indubitable knowledge of the existence of ourselves as thinking beings, and of the content of our conscious thought and experience. (2) The idea of an infinite, perfect, and independent being, which is the idea of God, is found among our conscious thoughts. (3) We know that God must exist as the required cause of the idea of God. (4) Some of our ideas are clear THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW and distinct, and propositions involving clear and distinct ideas can be known to be true. (The seeming mutual dependence of this and the previous proposition is the foundation of the common charge that Descartes' reasoning is circular.) (5) Mathematical truths are prominent among those certified by their clarity and distinctness. (6) Perceptual ideas of sensuous qualities are confused ideas of things external to our minds. (7) Geometry is clear and distinct thinking about extended things, without the confused sensuous aspect, but with an essential imaginative component that connects geometry with perception. (8) The goodness of God assures us that there is an external world corresponding to and causing our perceptual ideas, and that this reality exemplifies the truths of mathematics in the form in which they are imagined in geometry, but not as represented in perceptual experience. (9) From our ideas alone we know that the essence of mind is consciousness and the essence of body is extension, and that these are distinct essences. (10) The power of God certifies the real distinctness of existing minds and bodies, though the thinking subject's mind is intimately connected with his body in a way that is not entirely intelligible. (ll) The distinctness of minds and bodies is confirmed by the reflection that a mind is an indivisible thing, for example, there is no such thing as half a mind. Bodies are all essentially divisible. The striking thing about reactions of Descartes' early readers to this argument for dualism is that so much of it is ignored. The standard response to Descartes, one might say, has been to accept his dualism and to pay little attention to his demonstration of its correctness. The authors of "Objections" published with the Meditations write as though Descartes has based his dualism on the first two Meditations alone. In criticisms addressed to the Second Meditation, Hobbes and Gassendi, authors of the third and fifth set of Objections, respectively, both complain that Descartes has only assumed that the mind is not corporeal.4 In replying, Descartes points out that he did not claim to have proved the incorporeal status of the mind until the Sixth Meditation. In the earlier context, where these materialists find an unsupported assumption of dualism, Descartes merely notes that he can imagine that there are no material things at all, though he is at the same time conscious of his own existence. He cannot imagine that there are not minds for his own conscious~ ness is incompatible with that supposition. Then he says 1 But perhaps it is the case that these very things which I suppose to be nonentities [that is, bodies imagined not to existL and which are not properly known to me, are yet in reality not different from the "I" of which I am aware. I do not know and will not dispute the point. 5 At this point he does not dispute the view that the thinking thing may be corporeal. It may be the body that thinks. It is not only the predictably critical materialists who 31 �respond as though Descartes had rested his dualism on the first two Meditations. The preponderance of readers incline to look for, and to find, in the first part of the text a more direct, less ornate argument for the nonmaterial status of the mind. Then they find this simpler argument inadequate; but it is not an argument that Descartes has presented. The "diverse theologians and philosophers" whose views Mersenne assembled as the second set of Objections say ous but still skeptical. Her attention is quite properly focused on the desperate problem of mind-body interac· tion that is imposed by the acceptance of dualism. She writes to Descartes Up to this point [the Second Meditation] you know that you These critical reactions are at least partly a conse· quence of the order of the argument in the Meditations. We start with assurances about the mind and mental contents. The question at the beginning of the Third Medita· lion is: What else exists? What is there in addition to this mental reality? And the answers: God and the material world naturally seem to be an articulation of further realities outside the mind. There is an awkward turn of thought in the reflection that the mind itself might be a constituent of this further material reality. Managing the awkward turn of thought, readers come to imagine that it has eluded Descartes and that he rests his dualism on the natural presumption of the otherness of body that derives simply from the skeptical subjective starting point. When we correct this misinterpretation, however, we are left only with Descartes' unconvincing theological arguments. Descartes' demonstration of dualism is, then, inadequate. Empiricists have generally eschewed any religious foundation for metaphysics, and even the firm believers among Descartes' first readers and critics found little to convince them in his theological premises. This is under· standable. However great our faith, how could we pre· sume to have so fine a grasp of the implications of the goodness and power of God as to rest upon it our confi· dence that outer reality does fit our spatial intuitions and does not fit our perceptual experiences? The response to Descartes' argument shows that his premises are less attractive than his conclusions. We cannot avoid asking, Are there not other reasons for his acceptance of a dualism that, in itself, has seemed correct to so many philosophers? are a being that thinks; but you do not know what this thinking thing is. What if it were a body which by its various mo- tions and encounters produces that which we call thought? For granted that you rejected the claim of every sort of body, you may have been deceived in this, because you did not rule out yourself, who are a body. For how will you prove that a body cannot think, or that its bodily motions are not thought itself?6 Even the judicious Antoine Arnauld either ignores or re· jects out of hand the whole elaborate argument we have summarized. In his, the fourth set of Objections, Arnauld says I can discover no passage in the whole work capable of effecting this proof, save the proposition laid down at the outset: I can deny that there is any body or that any extended thing exists, but yet it is certain that I exist so long as I make this denial, hence, I am a thing that thinks and not a body, and the body does not pertain to the knowledge of myself. But the only result I can see this to give, is that a certain knowledge of myself be obtained without knowledge of the body. But it is not yet quite clear to me that this knowledge is complete and adequate, so as to make me sure that I am not in error in excluding the body from my essence.7 It is true that Descartes does not give any fuller reason for his contention that the essences of mind and body are distinct than the clear and distinct separability of these ideas in our thought. We can suppose all bodies nonexis· tent but we cannot suppose all minds nonexistent. How· ever, this is not Descartes' argument for dualism. He invokes theological premises three times in moving from this thought-experiment to the conclusion that the mind is not material. The existence of God is needed to assure me of the truth of what I think clearly and distinctly, by ruling out the deceiving-demon hypothesis. The goodness of God is appealed to in assuring me that my propensity to refer perceptual ideas to an outer material reality is jus· tified. Finally, the power of God is cited to certify the dis· tinction between minds and bodies, however intertwined their real instances. Even Descartes' friendliest critics such as Father Gibieuf and Princess Elizabeth do not find his reason for the distinction between mind and body satisfactory, and in their hesitations they pay no attention to theological niceties. Gibieuf thinks that the claim to have established the real essence of mind may have been accomplished by an illegitimate abstraction. 8 Elizabeth's response is gener- 32 The senses teach me that the soul moves the body but neither they nor the imagination nor the intellect teaches me how. Perhaps there are properties of the soul unknown to us which will overturn the conviction of the soul's nonextension which I acquired from the excellent arguments of your Meditations.9 The Scientific Background In the Meditations, we are invited to consider the securely known conscious mind and then to ask, Could this consciousness turn out to be a corporeal thing? Could it be the body that thinks? It is instructive to consider a parallel question that is not represented in the Medita· tions at all. Suppose that we could, somehow, start from a secure knowledge of material things and then ask, could these material things themselves manifest intellectual ac· tivities and consciousness? Could it be minds that are extended? No such question can arise in the Meditations because, following the skeptical method, "the mind is more easily known than the body." 10 These unfamiliar questions, however, would far better reflect the order of WINTER 1981 �discovery in Descartes' own attainment of a dualist metaphysics than the artfully organized questions and answers of the Meditations. He is convinced that matter cannot possibly think long before he attempts to prove that mind cannot be extended. It is his scientific thought about the material world, unencumbered by systematic metaphysics, that is the source of Descartes' conviction that mind and matter are distinct essences and distinct existences. The metaphysical doctrines for which he is famous did not receive any formulation in Descartes' writings and played no part in his thought for many years after he had begun systematic study of the physical world. It is easy to read the philesophy of the Meditations and the Principles of Philosophy back into Descartes' earlier thought as expressed in his youthful scientific writings, in Le Monde, and in the Rules for the Direction of the Mind. Etienne Gilson's studies of Descartes have done much to correct this error. 11 In the Discourse on Method, Descartes tells us that after he had resolved on a life of search for truth and had begun to construct scientific explanations on the model of mathematical understanding ... nine years elapsed before I had yet taken any position con· ceming the difficulties commonly disputed among the learned or begun to search for the principles of any philosophy more certain than the common variety [plus certaine que la vulgaire.] 12 Descartes identifies the success of his physical researches with the gradual elimination from his own thinking of a prevailing tendency to ascribe intellectual functions to mere physical things and events. Aristotelian physical explanations fail, in his opinion, just because they confuse mental and physical things and they ascribe mental powers and functions to matter. These are the scholastic accounts in terms of substantial forms and real qualities that Descartes attacks in letters to other thinkers. Writing to de Launay he says The earliest judgments which we made in our childhood and the common philosophy later, have accustomed us to attribute to the body many things which belong only to the soul, and to attribute to the soul many things which belong only to the body. So people commonly mingle the two ideas of body and soul when they construct the ideas of real qualities and substantial forms which I think should be altogether rejected. 13 And to Princess Elizabeth ... we have hitherto confounded the notion of the soul's power to act on the body with the power one body has to act on another. We attributed both powers not to the soul, whose nature we did not yet know, but to the various qualities of the body such as weight, heat, etc. We imagined these qualities to be real, that is to say to have an existence distinct from that of bodies, and so to be substances, although we called them qualities. 14 Descartes overcame these confusions by developing a conception of material things that excludes mind. In his THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW replies to the sixth Objections, offered by anonymous theologians and philosophers, Descartes says that his own reasons set out in the Meditations for the view "that the human mind was really distinct from the body and was more easily known than it," were not fully persuasive, even to him, when he first thought of them. He was like an astronomer who could not stop thinking of the earth as larger than the sun after possessing demonstrations that it is much smaller. Then Descartes says that, to reinforce his assent he "proceeded further," 15 keeping his ideas straight until I observed that nothing at all belonged to the nature or essence of body except that it was a thing with length, breadth and depth, admitting of various shapes and various motions. [Such shapes cannot exist apart from the bodies that have them and, in contrast,] ... colors, odors, savors, and the rest of such things, were merely sensations existing in my thought, and differing no less from bodies than pain differs from the shape and motion of the instrument which inflects it. Finally, I saw that gravity, hardness, the power of heating, of attracting and of purging, and all other qualities which we experience in bodies consisted solely in motion or its absence, and in the configuration and situation of their parts. 16 One aspect of dualism emerges here from the concept of the subjectivity of the sensuous. Descartes reports his appreciation of the fact that a shape cannot exist separately from the body shaped, while color does not exist in the shaped body and, therefore, must exist in some other substance. So a nonmaterial mind is implied here as the locus of secondary qualities which have some reality somewhere but cannot be referred to the physical world. It is often said that the mind for Descartes is a receptacle for sensuous characteristics which have been removed from bodies. There is justice in this interpretation. The last clause in the quoted passage, however, leads to a deeper reason for the thesis that the mind is nonmaterial. l(Gravity, hardness, the power of heating" and other ~~qualities" are prominent in Descartes' examples of spurious scholastic explanations that purport to know about the substantial forms of things and the real qualities they contain. Descartes thinks of his own attainment of a far superior conception of physical objects and events as conditioned by the rejection of these concepts. The scholastic explanations Descartes discards are those often ridiculed for their vacuousness by later critics: burning wood heats because the wood contains the power of heating; opium induces sleep because of its soporific virtue. This charge of vacuousness is not all Descartes' objection. He finds the scholastic explanations defective because they import a psychological dimension into the physical order where explanation should only be mechanical. Qualities and substantial forms are psychologically intelligible determinants of change. They are like souls. Writing to Mersenne in 1643, Descartes says that there are two principles that need to be established: 33 �The first is that I do not believe that there are in nature any real qualities, attached to substances and separable from them by divine power like. so many little souls in their bodies. [Claims involving such qualities make assertions that we do not understand, and] . .. the philosophers invented these real qualities only because they did not think they could otherwise explain all the phenomena of nature; but I find on the contrary, that these phenomena are better explained without them. The second principle is that whatever is or exists remains always in the state in which it is, unless some ulterior cause changes it. . .. 17 The first principle excludes the psychological from physics. The second rejects intrinsic causality, and it is the foundation of Descartes' law of inertia. 18 The two principles of physics Descartes expounds to Mersenne are closely connected and both focus on the re· pudiation of mental functions in accounts of physical change. Real qualities and substantial forms were con· ceived by the scholastics as self-contained causes of motion, in the general sense in which both qualitative changes and movements were called motions. If every change of state (and motion is itself a state for Descartes) must have some ((ulterior" cause, that is, external cause, as the second principle requires, then there will be no selfinduced motions to be ascribed to the real qualities and forms that are rejected by the first principle. But we still have to ask why it is that Descartes construed the prevailing explanations as psychological and why he says they amount to projecting "little souls" into material things. The concept of substantial forms rests on Aristotle's distinction between form and matter. Any existing entity must be composed of something and that matter of which it is composed must have some organization or other making it the particular thing it is,for the same matter has the potential to figure in the constitution of many different particular objects. So Aristotle thinks of rna Iter as potentiality which is realized in a particular being by form or actuality. This pair of metaphysical concepts reflects a Platonic influence and it was much exploited by medieval thinkers. Unlike Plato, Aristotle usually says that forms do not exist by themselves, apart from any matter, any more than matter exists by itself without being anything in par· ticular, that is, without any form at all. 19 The real qualities and substantial forms of scholastic science are derived from this basic concept of form and matter. To under· stand them we should appeal to a further Aristotelian distinction between natural objects and artificial colloca· tions, and to the Aristotelian emphasis on organisms as the paradigm illustration of existing substances. A natural entity for Aristotle is precisely one that con· tains within itself the causal initiative for its own motions and changes. 20 It is the possession of such self-realizing potential that makes something into a substantial unity in the fullest sense. 21 For Aristotle, this concept is the faun· dation of the difference between artifacts and self-repro· 34 clueing things that are made by men 22 The intrinsically caused motion that is best illustrated by reproduction marks an entity as a natural object. Reproduction leads us immediately to the emphasis on organisms that is characteristic of Aristotle. We should note, however, especially because it is directly relevant to Descartes' thinking, that natural objects manifesting natural motions are not confined by Aristotle nor the scholastic tradition to living things. The down· ward motion of heavy things toward ·the center of the universe is a natural motion according to Aristotle. This coheres with common sense in that one does not have to do anything to a heavy thing to induce its fall except remove obstacles. 23 One does not have to remove obstacles and then push the heavy thing downward. It is, then, as though the push comes from within as part of the nature of the heavy thing which will be manifested in selfinduced changes when inhibiting forces are removed. In the same way, light things recede from the center and, generally, the four elements have their proper places in the universe, which is where they tend to go. The empirically observed universe has a layered structure, earth mostly at the center, water for the most part next closest, and so on. This seems obvious confirmation of the conception of natural motion since it appears that things have mostly gone where they belong. 24 And Aristotle has a theory of the transmutation of elements from heavy to light and from light to heavy, which could account intelligently for the fact that a permanent stasis is not reached 25 Within the setting of this theory of natural motion, to say that a body is heavy is just to say that it contains within itself a causal factor that originates motion toward the center. As we shall see, Descartes' contention that scho· lastic physical explanations psychologize inanimate material things is especially clearly articulated in connection with weight and gravitational motion. 26 In Aristotelian thought, the motions and changes that a thing can induce in itself in virtue of its formal nature are all construed as realizing an innate potentiality or attaining an objective. Such objectives are ascribed to the ob· jects that are able to move themselves. The power to initiate motion is thus an intrinsic directedness. The motions which result from this in-dwelling causal initiative are, therefore, susceptible to teleological explanations citing final causes. The natural motion that the contained quality gravity induces is a directed motion toward the place the heavy object seeks to occupy. This finalism connects the inanimate physical world with essentially biological understanding. Gravitational motion is assimilated to the pattern of explanation that seems so natural for motions, like those involved in respiration, which have a legible goal in the welfare of the breathing animal. So the paradigm of a substance is a living organism. The Aristotelian doctrine articulating four types of explanatory question, usually called the theory of four causes, can be thought of as an implicit definition of an individual substance. For a thing that is a true substan· WINTER 1981 �tial unity, each of the four questions, including the question that calls for a purpose or objective, has an answer. Physicists as well as biologists investigate final causes of phenomena. Although in some cases the efficient, final and material causes collapse into a single factor for Aristotle, finality is never absent from natureP The various souls that Aristotle finds in plants, animals, and men are among the forms capable of initiating motions with obvious natural objectives. The organization of complex organisms is intelligible in terms of hierarchies of such forms. In De Anima, the rational soul is the highest form of the body making up a man. It is "the first actuality of the body," a doctrine taken over by Thomas and other scholastics." Aristotle considers the possible separate existence of souls, which seems to be excluded by his formmatter conception of individual things. "Suppose the eye were an animal, sight would have been its soul . .. ". 29 A sightless eye could exist as a material object with a lower form, though not really as an eye, while sight could not exist at all without some material embodiment. In a passage that has reverberations in the Meditations, Aristotle goes These Aristotelian-scholastic views are the occasion for Descartes' contention that forms and qualities are like "little souls" in material objects. The conscious rational soul of man, in this tradition, is the substantial form of man. It accomplishes in a consciously articulated way the initiation of movement toward ends just as substantial forms and qualities in inanimate objects initiate directed changes in phenomena like combustion and the fall of heavy bodies. The heat generated in combustion, as Descartes reads scholastic accounts, is the realization of a con~ tained goal-like potential in the wood. For Descartes, the production of heat is not the goal of a material object. Nor is burning a self-caused action in which a piece of wood can engage. Nothing happens but the turbulent motion of minute particles, progressively disturbing the stabler structure of the unburned wood. Heat is merely a subjective feature of our perception of these particle motions, which are not directed from within the particles that move. In "La Traite de la Lumiere," tactfully summing up his rejection of scholastic explanations of combustion, Descartes says: on to say Though another may imagine, if he wishes, that there is in From this it indubitably follows that the soul is inseparable from its body, or at any rate that certain parts of it are (if it has parts)-for the actuality of some of them is nothing but the actuality of their bodily parts. Yet some may be separable because they are not the actualities of any bodies at all. Further we have no light on the problem of whether the soul may not be the actuality of the body in the sense in which the sailor is the actuality of the ship.3o I want to emphasize that, in Aristotle's thinking, souls are like the qualities gravity, heat, and attraction in that they are originative causes of motion and change. Intrinsic causal agency is found in gravitational fall, in the growth of plants, in the locomotion of animals, and in consciously directed human actions. Behavior-directing factors which are mental by Descartes' criterion are, for Aris~ totle, sophisticated versions of the same inner determina~ tion of motion that is manifested by heavy objects. The Aristotelian model of explanation, invoking forms as causes of motion, was accepted by the scholastic thinkers to whom Descartes reacts. 31 In scholastic terminology, forms are qualified as substantial not because they are thought to be independent substances. Substantial form contrasts with accidental form. The substantial form of a thing comprises its essential nature. Accidental forms have the same status as intrinsic causes of change, al~ though possession of them is inessential: ... [T]he substantial form differs from the accidental form in this, that the accidental form does not make a thing to be absolutely, but to be such, as heat does not make a thing to be absolutely but only to be hot. 32 An existing thing could lack an accidental form that it has and yet remain what it is. Accidental forms include the real qualities that Descartes repudiates. 1HE ST. JOHNS REVIEW this wood the Form of fire, the Quality heat, and the Action which burns it, as entirely distinct constituents, for my part, since I am afraid of error if I posit anything more than what I see must be there, I content myself with conceiving in it only the movement of its parts. 33 The burning wood manifests only externally caused motions of particles. The realization of self-contained potentialities and the attainment of objectives, which do characterize actions of minds, are absent in combustion. In the Fourth Meditation, Descartes says that he finds "final causes to be wholly useless in physics," 34 for the reason that the purposes of an infinite Divinity are largely opaque to men. But his scientific investigations have given him a more fundamental reason for excluding finalism. He actually finds teleological explanations defective even in cases where our assessment of purposes and ends is quite correct. This rule-that we should never argue from ends-should be carefully heeded. For. .. the knowledge of a thing's purpose never leads us to knowledge of the thing itself: its nature remains just as obscure to us. Indeed, this constant practice of arguing from ends is Aristotle's greatest fault. 35 For example, when we rightly understand that the heart beats in order to circulate the blood, we do not thereby know anything at all about what makes it beat as it does. We still need a causal explanation that purpose does not provide or even suggest. Descartes' most instructive criticisms of mental con~ cepts in physics concern weight and gravitational motion. He portrays the evolution of his own thought about gravity as a gradual emancipation from a universal propensity to mind-matter confusions traceable to childhood inter-. pretations of experience: 35 �... I noticed that from infancy I had passed various judgements about physical things, for example, judgements which contributed much to the preservation of the life I was then entering; and I had afterwards retained the same opinions which I had before conceived touching these things .... [And although the mind was at the time] conscious of its own nature and possessed of an idea of thought as well as extension, nevertheless, having no intellectual knowledge, though at the same time it had an imagination of something, it took them both to be one and the same and referred all its notions of intellectual matters to the body. 16 The primitive theory of childhood springs from the intimate connection between phenomena and the conditions for our survival as organisms. Sensations of pleasure and pain succeed in the function of assuring survival precisely through our inclination to identify pleasurable and painful sensations with the outer objects that stimulate them. As a consequence of this biologically useful merging of physical cause and mental effect we naturally develop a mentalistic conception of physical reality. Reconstructing his own intellectual biography, Descartes explains how the scholastic-Aristotelian explanation of the fall of heavy bodies springs from this childhood imputation of "intellectual matters to the body." Gravity, conceived as a real quality, is the self-contained cause of motion in a heavy thing. This quality is a soul-like constituent, in the first instance, because it cannot be located inside the heavy thing as a part can be, just as the conscious mind of a man initiates his movements but is not locatable in some particular place within his body. The soul is able to focus all its causal efficacy at a single point and so, too, the formal quality "gravity" can exercise its causal force at a point. In the case of the efficacy of the soul at a point, Descartes means that, in the transition from intention to behavior, a single part of the body can be moved in a particular way while the rest is unaffected. The heavy body seems to mimic this in that, wherever a rope is attached, all of the contained gravity acts at that one point "as if the gravity resided in the part along which the rope touched and was not diffused through the others." 37 Descartes' physics, however, rejects the concept of gravity as a space-filling quality of body that can act at a point. Effectiveness at any selected point remains the right idea when we are thinking about the operation of minds in bodies that do have minds: "Indeed it is in no other way that I now understand mind to be coextensive with body, the whole in the whole and the whole in any of its parts." 38 Descartes finds the most telling evidence of a confused assignment of mental functions to matter in the alleged directedness of gravitational movement. The chief sign that my idea of gravity was derived from that which I had of the mind, is that I thought that gravity carried bodies toward the center of the earth as if it contained some knowledge of this center within it. For it could not act as it did without knowledge, nor can there be any knowledge except in the mind. At the same time I attributed also to gravity certain 36 things which cannot be understood to apply to the mind in the same sense; as, e.g., that it is divisible, measurable, etcYJ In other words, the internal source of motion must be understood within the scholastic explanation, not only as an agency capable of inducing movements that express the whole power of the inner cause at any one point in the body, but also the inner agency must know where the center is from the place the heavy body happens to occupy. Given a spherical universe, heavy bodies may reside in any direction whatever from the center. It follows that the same quality, gravity, is able to induce motions in one body in any direction whatever. A body will move in a certain direction along a straight line through the center of the universe, if it is on one side of the center, and it will move in exactly the opposite direction along that same line, if it is on the other side. How does this inner determinant manage to cause diametrically opposed motions? The supposition that it does requires that the inner causal factor be able to discriminate from one another the positions a body may occupy relative to the center. By analogy, a bird's nest is its natural place, and a bird is able to and does move toward that nest, if the obstacles are not too great. But this ability would be quite unintelligible if we were not willing to ascribe to the bird something like knowledge of the location of the nest. It would be unintelligible just because the ability imputed is a plastic disposition that issues in variously directed flight, depending on the relative positions of bird and nest. It is not a brute tendency to move in some set way. Thus, the theory of natural place and natural motion, widely accepted by such prominent scholastic scientists as John Buridan and Albert of Saxony, does interpret gravity on a pattern suitable for animal and human behavior that exhibits discrimination and intelligence. 4<l In the last analysis, Descartes assigns even the intelligent performances of birds and all other nonrationalliving things to the world of mindless mechanical interactions. A man knows where his home is, and his knowledge together with his conscious control of his own movement does indeed explain his homecomings at the end of the day. The explanatory schema here, however, is grossly misapplied, Descartes believes, in accounts of free fall, and it is misapplied in accounts of the behavior of brutes as well. The uncompromising segregation of human actions which do support psychological explanations and animal behavior which does not is simply the consistent workingout of the implications of the rejection of mental factors in elementary phenomena such as gravitational fall. The essence of mind is consciousness. Where there is no consciousness, mind-like functions have no footing in scientific explanation. The deeply rooted inclination that we possess to read psychological activities into nature is most obvious in our thinking about animals that share so much with us from the point of view of physiology. Even this almost irresistible psychologizing is the elaboration of the WINTER 1981 �confused thinking of childhood wherein the inner conscious affective and sensuous representation is hopelessly mixed up with the outer things that are both the causes and the objects of the ideas that we have in perception. Descartes adheres firmly to the view that physiology is just mechanical physics applied to intricate structures and elaborately organized functions that are found on a very small scale in living things. Contemporary materialist philosophers of mind rely on the complexity of the brain and the nervous system to lend plausibility to their hypothesis that neural events may be identical with conscious experiences and thoughts. No simple. working of levers and gears could produce a feeling. But, perhaps, somehow, the billions of nerve cells, each with its delicate electrical activity, interconnected in hierarchical networks, containing a world of feedback mechanisms, graspable as a maze of information chan~ nels, controls, dampers, and amplifiers-pei-haps mere physical activity at this level, still dimly, partially, and provisionally understood, can amount to conscious thought. Descartes is unattracted by this kind of speculation. He was deeply impressed by physiology, and his visionary program for a physiological psychology in The Passions of the. Soul is in the spirit of contemporary neurophysiology even though the details of Descartes' neural science are now but picturesque misconceptions. He is never tempted, however, by the hypothesis of mind-brain identity. Complex physical events are only physical events. This intuitive conviction that the intricacy of the physical cannot convert it into consciousness was well expressed by Leibniz. In the Monadology, he suggests that the microscopic size of things in the nervous system gives a spurious aura of feasibility to materialism. But if the mind-machine were enlarged to the size of a mill we could enter it and would "find only parts which work upon one another, and never anything by which to explain a perception [that is, a conscious experience.]" 41 Descartes' rejection of materialist conceptions of mind rests on his conviction that his own gains in understand~ ing have been possible only because he has eliminated a mental aspect from even the subtlest physical activities. La Description du Corps Humain begins with the theme of self-knowledge. Man's understanding of himself should extend to anatomy and physiology and not only to the moral dimensions of human existence. From this self- study Descartes envisions unlimited practical results for medicine in the cure and prevention of disease, and even the retarding of old age. But these results will be forthcommg ... only if we have studied enough to understand the nature of our own body and do not attribute in any way to the mind the functions which depend only on the body and on the disposition of its organs. 42 Again Descartes cites patterns of thought developed in childhood as an obstacle to understanding. We know we have conscious control of some bodily movements and, THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW therefore, we incline to ascribe a mental principle to all the others. Ignorance of anatomical structure and the mechanics of physiology permits us to extend the psychological explanatory idiom to the motions of the heart, the arteries, and digestive organs, ''though these, containing no thought, are only bodily movements." 43 One body is moved by another, not by anything non bodily. Where we do not consciously experience the dependence of move~ ment on the mind, we should not ascribe it to the mind. ... [A]nd even the movements that are called voluntary proceed principally from the disposition of the organs, since they cannot be excited without those bodily dispositions, whatever volitions we may have, even though it is the mind that determines thern. 44 The physiology of bodily movements, then, reveals that even for movements under the control of the will, physical effects must have physical causes. Here the question of a final reconciliation of a thoroughgoing mechanical viewpoint with mental control is left open. La Description will try to explain, Descartes says, "the machine of our body" and to show that we have no more reason to ascribe its physiological workings to a soul than we have to impute a soul to a clock. 45 A clock plainly has no soul, although its inner workings and outer behavior are elaborately organized in ways that reflect the intelligence of its maker and the human objectives in its use. These relationships to conscious mental activities are not, in the case of a clock, the occasion for a confused imputa- tion of thinking to the mechanism itself. But it is just this confusion to which we are susceptible when we think about the workings of an animal's body or our own. Descartes' lifelong interest in automata, 46 clever prod- ucts of engineers devised for the amusement of kings, provides him with another telling analogy with which to expose the error of mentalistic explanations in physiology. Automata seem to react to stimuli, to have goals, and, generally, to move as though directed by a contained intellect. A naive spectator will actually believe that a mechanically operating automaton is guided by some kind of conscious appreciation of the environment, and that it manifests a will of its own and thought-out responses. When we understand that such things are accomplished by cleverly rigged magnets, or gears, or hydraulic valves the illusion of mental control vanishes. 47 Descartes believes that the appearance of a mental element in the natural machines that are animal and human bodies is just as much an illusion, although it is much more difficult to dispel. The finest and most consistent expression of a mechanical conception of human physical existence extending to all of the inner. and outer manifestations of mind appears at the end of the posthumously published fragments of Le Monde. Descartes has exploited throughout the book a curious rhetorical device that is both prudential and intellectually liberating. He expressly offers, not an explanatory picture of our "world" and the human race to which 37 �we actually belong, but, instead, the complete science of an imaginary world located somewhere in the reaches of extension far from our skies.48 Suns and planets are · formed by an evolutionary process commencing from an initial chaos from which everything develops in strict obedience to permanent laws of motion. Living things and the analogs of men, in this imagined world, come into existence in the same way. In the "Traite de L'homme", these are "men of clay whom God has made to be as like us as possible."49 Descartes does ascribe a mental constitution to these umen". Like US 1 they have ideas, appetites, passions, and memories. The physical aspect of their existence is absolutely mechanical and wholly explicable without any appeal to a mental constitution. Insofar as Descartes believes that we are in fact such men, he ascribes to us, here, a complete physiology without mindbody interaction. I would like you to suppose that all the functions I have attributed to this machine, such as the digestion of food, the pulse in the heart and arteries, the nourishment and growth of the members, wakefulness and sleep; the reception of light, of sounds, or odors, of heat and similar qualities, by the external organs of sense; the impression of ideas from them on the organ of common sense50 and of imagination, the retention or engraving of these ideas in the memory; the interior movements of appetites and of passions; and finally the exterior movements of all the members, which are so well suited both to the action of objects presented to the senses and to iriner passions, that they imitate as perfectly as possible those of a true man: I say I would· like you to consider that these functions follow entirely naturally in this machine, from the mere disposition of its organs, neither more nor less than the movements of a clock or other automatoh follow from the disposition of its counter weights and wheels; so that there can be no reason at all to conceive in it any other vegetative soul, nor sensitive soul, nor any other principle of movement and of life than its blood and its spirits, excited by the heat of the fire which burns continually in its heart, and which is of no other nature than all the fires which burn in inanimate bodies. 51 Of course, Descartes does not mean that the workings of the human body do not show any indisputable marks of mind and intelligence at all. God is responsible for the constitution of men and his workmanship manifests a standard of creative intelligence that no engineer can approach. The human body reflects, therefore, the mind of God, but in the creation of the body-machine God has utilized only extended particles interacting according to fixed laws. From this point of view, all of the motions of the human body, molar and microscopic, including all those that go into voluntary actions, have their sufficient physical causes. Only this exceptionless principle could justify the corresponding claim that no motions of the "men" of Le Monde require explanations that invoke a mental function. Descartes drew back from this wholly mechanical man. He mars the consistency of his insight by allowing a 38 unique locus of mind-body interaction in the pineal gland. In this tiny gland, the animal spirits, which are the most rarefied blood-like constitutent of the nervous system, are affected by the mind. Descartes invokes the fragile support of the fact that the pineal gland is not double and is, to that extent, a plausible site for a central integration of the functions of the many dual parts of the sensory system and brain. 52 The animal spirits are only deflected by mental influence, according to Descartes' aC: count, so that the total quantity of motion of physical things can remain constant. Had Descartes retained the rigorously consistent view he formulated at the end of Le Monde, he might have been led to abandon the concept of a substantial mind altogether. The idea of deflection of the animal spirits re· quires a quasi-physical influence and leads at once to a "paramechanical" conception of mind. 53 And the interac- tion creates a fundamentally unintelligible leakage from the self-sufficient sphere of physical activity. Mental deflection of particles, however subtle they may be, violates a crucial feature of a mechanical system like that which Descartes' physical universe is supposed to comprise. This is expressed by later science as violation of the conservation of energy. If nonphysical agencies can cause any movement or deflection at all, that movement or deflection could, for example, compress a spring or raise a weight, thus causing an increase in total energy. Defects in his understanding of force leave Descartes without an appropriate concept of energy in terms of which he might have grasped this criticism. However, his limitation of the supposed influence of the mind to deflections that leave "the quantity of motion" unchanged reveal Descartes' own qualms concerning the compatibility of conservation and mind-body interaction. His clear grasp of inertia, requiring uniform motion in a straight line, should have but did not reinforce those qualms considerably. But for the pineal gland Descartes' dualism would have a very different force. The tendency of his total scientific effort is the elimination of mental direction as a factor in explanations of physical changes and motions. Beliefs, acts of will, desires, and intentions do not move parts of the body any more than an inner quality, gravity, moves a heavy thing, or inner self-realizing heat creates changes in a piece of wood. Of course, we are left with the fact that men do act, execute their intentions, and gratify their desires. The uncompromised vision at the end of the "Traite de L'homme" rejects the idea that the relationship between psychological explanations of human behavior and physical explanations of the motion of bodily parts can be expressed as any kind of interaction between substances. Beliefs, desires, and the like, figuring in psychological accounts, are not physical causes and only physical causes can move material objects. All motions, even of "the blood and the spirits" have sufficient physical causes although we do not have a complete account of these physiological events. "No other principle of movement" is WINTER 1981 �required, not in the case of a man's body any more than in the case of an automaton. For myself, apart from the outmoded scientific details, I think this view of bodily motions is correct. The right way of capturing intellectually the relationship of mental concepts and physical events is at present the subject of scientific investigation and of unsettled philosophical reflection. At present, a materialist philosophy of mind that identifies beliefs and desires with neural states and processes is dominant. Like the theory of the pineal gland, this contemporary materialism assigns a causal role to mental things. For Descartes' paramechanical events materialism substitutes a frankly physicalist interpretation of mental functioning. The theory gets undeserved support from association with the sophisticated physiology and anatomy that has replaced Descartes' curious conceptions of the facts. As far as I can see, materialists have not offered anything at all to make it intelligible that a physical occurrence in the brain can be a belief, or a desire, or a thought. 54 There is a strange irony in the mechanical perspective on the body expressed in Le Monde. It is as though we start wanting to know how a certain miracle occurs the miracle of mental control of movements in the physical world. How does a desire and a belief move a hand? We know that muscles, not thoughts, move hands. Nervous impulses, not desires, move muscles. The ironic explanation of the miracle that Descartes reaches, at least on this occasion, is that the miracle does not occur. Beliefs and desires and other mental things simply cannot be attached to motions as their causes. The same irony appears in Descartes' account of the miracle of vision. How do we manage to get a conscious picture of the external world through the organs of sense? In the Optics Descartes explains what happens when we see, invoking as a helpful analogy a blind man feeling his way with a stick! Descartes particularly wants to reject the idea that "intentional species," which scholastic philosophers took to be tiny images, leap into the eye and somehow migrate to an inner center of conscious reception. He interprets the transmission of light as a kind of pressure which does not involve the entrance of anything into the eye, 55 just as pressures in the blind man's stick do not involve a flow of things through the stick and then into the hand. This is the thinking that lies behind the Second Meditation when Descartes says 1 1 But it must be observed that perception of the wax is not sight, not touch, not imagination; nor was it ever so though it formerly seemed to be; it is a purely mental contemplation . ... 56 In other words the miracle of real contact with outer reality does not occur at all. So vision is like blindness and mental control is really automatism. These understandings would be grotesque but for their profound appreciation of the idea that elements in our discourse about conscious experience are not to be iden1HE ST. JOHNS REVIEW tified with stages in physiological processes. The positive thesis that Descartes adopts is unsatisfactory. Because he thinks of the mind as a second substance with its own independent footing in reality, he is left with a "two-worlds" view and the quagmire of unintelligible interaction that leads to bizarre Occasionalism or idealist elimination of the physical world altogether. Although he rightly rejects confused interpretation of mental discourse that assigns it physical referents, Descartes precipitates these difficulties because he posits an inevitably mysterious nonphysical mind. The question remains, why did Descartes construct the metaphysical proofs presented in the Meditations which reflect the true foundations of his thinking so inadequately? There is a strand of reserve and secrecy in Descartes' writing. As a young man, Descartes described himself with some aptness as entering on the stage of public life masked like an actor, so that his audience will not see his true state of mind. 57 He intentionally published his geometry in a form difficult to follow lest others, grasping his discoveries too easily, claim to have possessed them already. He was always concerned about the reception of his scientific innovations by religious authorities. He withheld the publication of Le Monde upon hearing of the condemnation of Galileo by the Inquisition. He always organized his presentations as prudently as he could. His life and letters show an exceptional desire for privacy and avoidance of embroiling controversy. Leibniz and others complain that he conceals the sources of his ideas which often contain unacknowledged influence of the writings of others. The first concern of Descartes as a writer is not the artless expression of his personal thought. Descartes, however, certainly did believe that the many-sided insights of scientific works needed a coherent metaphysical foundation to replace the discarded Aristotelianism. The theological turn of his arguments rests on sincere religious commitment. Furthermore the metaphysical arguments do involve as their first stage the articulation of the subjective point of view, which has great power and from which the metaphysical arguments are mounted with a certain naturalness. It is worth emphasizing that this systematic subjectivism is not part of the context of scientific investigation for Descartes. Egocentric skepticism is absent from the methodology of the Rules. There is no hint of the method of doubt or of the phenomenological resolution of doubt by the cogito argument in the scientific work presenting the findings that motivate Descartes' dualism. Finally, the metaphysical demonstrations constitute a conservative and backward-looking project for Descartes, relative to the progressive content of his scientific thought. The crucial arguments are reconstructions and new employments of ideas taken over from existing traditions. Starting from the cogito argument, the Meditations are full of Saint Augustine. The ontological argument is Anselm's. In discussing causes that contain the reality of their effects ''eminently" versus "formally", Descartes is 1 39 �employing traditional scholastic distinctions. 58 The concepts of essence and existence, as Descartes employs them, are taken over from Saint Thomas and Aristotle. None of this battery of terms, concepts, and arguments appear in the scientific contexts that really motivate Des· cartes' dualism. We can see the late metaphysical works as a restatement in which Descartes tries to connect his radical conclusions to existing traditions of thought. This understanding does not confer any greater merit on the tortured theology of the official proofs of dualism. I should say that the influence of dualism, which is certainly not due to these arguments, rests, first, on the appeal of the subjective starting point of the Meditations and, second, on a rough, wide- spread, frequently unstated appreciation of the tendency of Descartes' scientific thinking which I have tried to describe here. Conclusions The philosophical issues to which Descartes' dualism is addressed are still at the center of metaphysics and epistemology. In contrast, the relevance of Cartesian science diminished rapidly following the appearance of Newton's superior theories. Descartes has retained prestige as a mathematician, although his mathematical work is read chiefly by historians. But Descartes' metaphysical writings have always been studied, and they have exerted a decisive influence on modern thought, especially through Berkeley, Locke, and Hume. It is Cartesian metaphysics, separated from the context of scientific thought, that has influenced empiricism. In assessing Descartes' dualism we should restore its sci- entific setting. We should also ignore the deficiencies of his outmoded conceptions. This does not mean only that we should overlook Descartes' beliefs that a fire burns in the heart and that animal spirits are a rarified form of blood. More important, we have to ignore his limited conception of physical objects and his reduction of physical events to motions and impacts among particles. Even his idea of causality ill fits contemporary physics wherein The seeming difficulty is clear. If mental things like beliefs and desires are not physical causes, and if only such causes can account for physical changes and motions, then what is the connection between beliefs and desires and human actions to which beliefs and desires are patently relevant? Under the pressure of this question, Descartes allowed an exception to his otherwise rigorous mechanism, a unique channel connecting two metaphys- ically incommensurable worlds, namely, the pineal gland. This is a mistake. The mistake is engendered by a substance-conception of mind. Descartes patterns his thinking about mental concepts on material things and events, as though, by somehow subtracting materiality, we arrive at nonmaterial things and events. This kind of thinking is encouraged by the methodological outlook of the Meditations. We are more or less forced to conceive of the mental as a realm of things and events. The phenomenological perspective seems to certify the reality of mental goings-on, and then raises the question: What is all this? By this we mean: What is the metaphysical status of mental things, the existence of which is assured? When the materialist identification is rejected, mental things and events necessarily appear to be another kind of reality. Then the problem of interaction is generated and Descartes' compromise, so destructive of his principle insight, is motivated_ We have to ask: What is a conception of mentality that does not generate a second realm of things and then lead to the hopeless problem of interaction? This question from Descartes' perspective is, What are we to make of the phenomenology of the Second Meditation, if we neither identify mental things with neural things nor posit any substantial res cogitans. It is helpful here to focus on truth where Descartes focuses on reality. The thinking subject, tentatively repudiating all empirical knowledge, finds that his own beliefs and desires, as such, are not jeopardized. Though the outer world may all be illusion, he believes, for example, that he is in a room with an open fire, and he desires to warm himself. Belief and desire arc thus insulated from empirical skepticism. Descartes reads this, in the idiom of realities, as demonstrating the ex- istence of certain things (ideas in the mind) or the occurrence of certain events (thinking). Though there may be causal relations are expressed in equations that do not break up reality into discrete consecutive events. Let us no firelit room, my believing-that-there-is is something just imagine all of Descartes' old-fashioned ideas replaced by some up-to-date conception of the physical world. We want a conception that is free of psychological and teleological ideas. We do use such a conception of physical this mode of expression we can retain the insights of the subjective point of view by saying that "I believe I am in a reality in our thinking and it corresponds to, in fact it is the heir of, Descartes' mechanical universe of extended particles. Given such a conception of the physical world, I believe that Descartes is right to exclude explanations that introduce nonphysical factors as causes of physical events. He is also right to refuse a materialist reduction of the mind to the body. The joint assertion of mechanism and rejection of mind-brain identity can appear paradoxical. 40 that does exist, and my desiring does occur. Abandoning firelit room" and "I want to warm myself by the fire" are true, and these truths are independent of the existence of the room and the fire. Though these subjective reports are true, what their truth implies about realities is not obvious. In particular, it is not obvious that believing and desiring are things that are present in, or go on in men. Elsewhere I have argued that any account of belief that identifies believing with an inner something, whether material or nonmaterial, cannot be correct. 59 At the least, reflection on mental concepts creates serious questions WINTER 1981 �about the unargued-for interpretation of these concepts in terms of inner realities, that is, the inter¢retation that Descartes shares with contemporary mind-brain materialism. If this interpretation is set aside, we can try to overcome the illusion that mental states must be identified with brain states lest they be identified with states of some unscientific and intrinsically mysterious nonmaterial mind. This illusion is one of the pillars of mindbrain materialism. In the "Conversation with Burman," Descartes is close to the kind of understanding I recommend here. Explanations that state the purpose for which things take place do not give a causal account even if the claim about purpose is correct 60 Applied to psychology, Descartes' insight amounts to this: We ask a man why he has done something, fired a gun, for example. The answer tells us that he desired something (to scare the birds away from his field) and that he believed something (that firing the gun would scare away the birds.) So a combination of a desire and a belief explains the action by displaying the purpose of the behavior explained. If Descartes is right, however, this leaves untouched all physical questions of the form: What caused this object to move? And is it not clear that Descartes is right? Assuming the correctness of the psychological explanation, we know the man's intention and the point of his behavior. But none of this sheds light on causes of the movement of his finger on the trigger, any more than it sheds light on causes of the movement of tlie · bullet in the gun barrel. There is something naive in the idea that a man's believings and wantings are states and events inside him that are capable of moving parts of his body, as contracting muscles can move fingers and expanding gases can move bullets. It would be preposterous to say that "wanting to scare birds" might directly cause the motion of a bullet. Nor could wanting something directly cause the motion of a finger. As Descartes puts it, motions of fingers depend on "the disposition of the organs", which means that there are physical events and conditions in the nerves and muscles which explain the motion of the finger. These physical causes are certainly not what is referred to as "wanting to scare birds." When we are subject to materialist inspiration, we are tempted to place the causal efficacy of mental things further along in remote neural stretches of the sequence of physical events. "Wanting to scare birds" then becomes a posited neural cause, the immediate effect of which also has to be posited. A vague sense of the fabulous complexity of the brain helps us to imagine that this transaction that would be preposterous out in the open is easily accomplished in the nervous system. But, in fact, "wanting to scare birds" does not belong anywhere in a sequence of causally intelligible motions of things. Nor are wantings spiritual occurrences. We must formulate the truth-conditions for "He wanted to scare the birds" without making wanting into any occurrence at all. The difference between the Cartesian theory of the THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW pineal gland and the materialist theory is that the materialist asserts that the relevant mental things are themselves physical states and events. He does this precisely to make them eligible as causes of motions while saving the principle: physical motions must have physical causes. That is the principle that Descartes adopts and also compromises. But the trouble with mental things as candidate causes is not just their vexed metaphysical standing. From the point of view of physics "knowledge of a thing's purpose never leads to knowledge of the thing itself."" Here, knowledge of the thing itself means knowledge of the causes of physical changes. Beliefs and desires explain actions in terms of purposes and goals. As Descartes believed, these explanations, even if they are correct, leave all questions of physics unanswered. Translations are from the English"language versions cited in these notes. Wherever there is no English reference the translations are mine. No references are given for well-known themes of the Meditations except where passages are quoted. For my general understanding of Descartes I am much indebted to other writers and most indebted to Etienne Gilson. The following abbreviations are used in these notes: AT I-XI C. Adam, and P. Tannery, Oeuvres de Descartes, Nouvelle presentation, Paris 1964. HR I-II E. S. Haldane, and G. R. T. Ross, The Philosophical Works of Descartes, London 1911. AG E. Anscombe, and P. Geach, Descartes: Philosophical Writings, London 1964. K A. Kenny, Descartes' Philosophical Letters, London 1970. *'* l. This subtitle appears first in the second Latin edition, 1642; HR I, 144; AT VII, xxi. 2. AG 117. See also note 30. 3. January 1642, AT III, 491; K 127-8. . 4. For Hobbes' view, HR II, 61; for Gassendi's, HR II, 142. Descartes' replies: HR II, 63, and 211. 5. AG 69. 6. HR II, 25. 7. HR II, 83. 8. K 123: AT Ill, 474. 9. K 144. 10. The LJhrase is part of the title of the Second Meditation. 11. See Etudes sur le rOle de la pensee medievale dans la formation du systeme Cartesien, esp. zeme pt., 1. 12. Discours, Ill, AT VI, 30; P. Olscamp, Discourse etc., Indianapolis 1965, 25. 13. July 22, 1641, K !09; AT III, 420. 14. May 21, 1643, K 139; AT III, 667. 15. "Postquam autem ulterius perrexi ... ,"AT VIII, 440; HR II, 253. This suggests a temporal order in Descartes' thinking that cannot be taken literally. 16. HR 11, 253-4. 17. April26, 1643, K 135-6; AT III, 648-49. 18. Compare Principles, pt. 2, art. 37: "The first law of nature: that each thing as far as in it lies, continues always in the same state; and that which is once moved always continues so to move." Art. 39 asserts that "all motion is of itself in a straight line." HR I, 267. For an illuminating account of Descartes' concept of inertia and its influence on Newton, see A. Koyre, "Newton and Descartes," in his Newtonian Studies, Cambridge 1965,69-76. 19. Metaphysics, Z, 8, l033a-4a. But compare L, 4, 1070a. 'I'his passage seems to allow a possible exception in the separate existence of the 41 �forms of natural beings and, in particular, of the rational soul of man. The same kind of suggestion is made at H, 2, l043b, "Whether the substance of destructible things can exist apart is not yet at all clear; except that obviously this is impossible in some cases; e.g., a house or a utensil. Perhaps, indeed, neither of these things themselves, nor any of the other things which are not formed by nature, are substances at all; for one might say that the nature in natural objects is the only substance to be found in destructible things," W. D. Ross, Oxford 1908. It must be noted that Aristotle speaks here of forms by themselves as "substances." On this confusing alternative usage he does not apply the term to composites of form and matter, although this is commonly his practice elsewhere. 'At 1070b-la, Aristotle states flatly, "Some things can exist apart and some cannot, and it is the former that are substances." These passages very much conform to the conception of soul-like separable constituents, capable of causing motions in things of which they are forms, that is, the very conception that Descartes ascribes to the scholastics and then rejects. 20. Metaphysics, H, 3, 1043a-b. 2l. Metaphysics, H, 6, 1045a-b. 22. Physics, I, A, 1, l93a. 23. On the Heavens, Bk. I, 1, 7-8, 276a-b; and Bk. 3, 2, 300a. 24. On the Heavens, Bk. 1, l, 8. 25. On the Heavens, Bk. 3, 7, 314b-6b, and On Generation and Corruption, Bk. 2, 4, 33la-2a. 26. Holders of the sort of view to which Descartes refers are not limited to Aristotle and the Schoolmen of the thirteenth century and later who were so deeply affected by the rediscovery of Aristotle's works. Even Saint Augustine voices both the idea that heavy things are directed to goal-like natural places by their weight, and the idea that this activity of heavy bodies resembles human desire-guided behavior. Augustine says, "Our body with its lumpishness [Augustine has merely 'corpus pondere'] strives towards its own place. Weight makes not downward only, but to his own place also. All things pressed by their own weight go towards their proper places ... Things a little out of their places become unquiet. Put them in their order again and they are quieted. My weight is my love. By that I am carried wheresoever I be carried." Confessions, Bk. 13, Ch. 9; trans. W. Watts, London 1912, 391. 27. Physics, Bk. 2, 3_~nd 7. 28. Physics, Bk. 2, 1, 4l2a-b; and Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q 76, a 4. 29. De Anima, Bk. 2, 1, 412a-b; trans. J. A. Smith. 30. De Anima, 413 3 • I take this to be the precedent for Descartes' pilotship analogy in the Sixth Meditation. 31. Gilson shows that these doctrines are prominent in the manuals from which Descartes was taught as a boy at La Fleche. See Etudes, 155 and 161 n. For a full survey of the Aristotelian concept of form and substantial form in patristic, scholastic, and Renaissance thought, see "Form und Materie," in Historisches Worterbuch der Philosophie, ed. J. Ritte<, Basell971, Vol. 2, 978-1015. 32. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q 76, a 4, Dominican trans. 33. Le Monde, AT XI, 7. See also Gilson's discussion of this passage, Etudes, 152-53. 34. AG 94. 42 35. Descartes' Conversation with Burman, J. Cottingham, London 1976, 19. 36. HR II, 254. The view that self-preservation is the biological function of our confused experience of pleasure and pain is also presented in the Sixth Meditation, without reference to the inadequate theories that Descartes thinks this confusion tends to promote. HR I, 197. 37. HR II, 255. 38. HR II, 255. 39. HR II, 255. 40. See Crombie, A.C., Medieval and Early Modern Science, New York 1959, Vol. 1, 128, and Vol. 2, 46 and 68ff. Crombie also reports medieval theories involving natural place influenced by Plato's Timaeus and incorporating the on-Aristotelian notion of multiple worlds (no one center) such as that of Nicolas of Cusa. Such accounts are part of the historical background of Descartes' vortex theory of planetary motion. Insofar as these alternative medieval cosmologies accepted some version of the idea of natural motion, they are simply further illustrations of what Descartes took to be a universal error. 41. Art. 17, Latta, R., The Monadology etc., Oxford 1898,228. Latta also quotes Leibniz's "Commentatio de Anima Brutorum," (1710): "Whence it follows that, if it is inconceivable that perception arises in any coarse "machine" whether it be made of fluids or solids, it is equally inconceivable how perception can arise in a finer 'machine' ... ," Gerhardt, ed., Phil. Schriften, Vol. 7, 328. 42. AT XI, 223-24. 43. AT XI, 224. 44. AT XI, 225. 45. ATXI,226. 46. For a survey of Descartes' discussions of automata and an interpretive investigation, see F. Alquie, La decouverte metaphysique de I' hom me chez Descartes, Paris 1950, 52-54. 47. See Discourse, HR I, 116; and Principles, IV, art. 203-04, HR I, 299-300. 48. AT XI, 31. 49. AT XI, 120. 50. That is, the sensus communis, a hypothetical organ or faculty which integrates the input of the several senses according to Thomas and other scholastics. 51. AT XI, 201-02. 52. Passions, art. 32, HR I, 346. 53. This is Gilbert Ryle's penetrating epithet, from The Concept of Mind, London 1949, 19. 54. See my, "Could Our Beliefs Be Representations in Our Brains?" Journal of Philosophy, 76, 1979, 225-44. 55. Dioptrique, I, AT VI, 84. 56. AG 73. 57. Cogitationes Privatae, AT X, 213. See also H. Gouhier, Premieres pensees de Descartes, Paris 1958, 67. 58. For example, Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q 4, a 2. 59. Summa Theologica, I, q 4, a 2. 60. Cottingham, 19. 61. Cottingham, 19. WINTER 1981 �Family Pages, Little Facts: October George Dennison W E LIVE AT THE NORTHERN EDGE of the hardwoods in central Maine, a region of hills and mountains, ponds, lakes, streams, rivers. Most of the homes lie scattered in the intervale below us, a flat, narrow valley that IS freshened and sometimes flooded by a rocky stream, but a few rest on the sides of hills, as does ours. It is the second week of October. The slopes across from us catch the morning sunlight and have become dazzling banks of reds, oranges, and yellows, all the more intense because of the shadowed evergreens around them. A week ago delicate sheets of ice covered the puddles between our sheds, and the children lifted them entire and looked at one another as through panes of glass, but now the days are so warm that Patricia goes into the garden without shoes. The insects are gone. Most of the birds are gone. Long, gleaming filaments of airborne spiders drift across the fields and over the ponds. What a mood we are in! We are torporous, yet restless; restless, yet free of discontent, as if walking through the landscape of a dream. I drove to the lakeside mechanic's this morning and saw a broad-backed, red-faced country· woman emerge from her car and stand looking at that motionless water. "Oh God!" she called to me, though we were strangers, HAin't it some weather!" An hour later I saw her again, sleepwalking, as are the rest of us, staggermg past the bank and the grocery store. I look out the window of my bedroom workroom and see Patricia going slowly up the hill, deep in thought. She the wood's edge, one throws herself on the tall grass ai arm across her eyes. I should be working. Wherever I look one, two, or several leaves with . . ' mg motions, fall to the ground. rock~ The table is covered with yellow paper. On the topmost sheet I read: He is sleeping in the wheelchair, his small bald head hanging all the way forward. . . . · -a description of my former neighbor, Dana Tomlin who is in a nursing home now. But my eyes go again t~ the sunlit window, where flies that were dead last night are buzzing violently. Their wings are twisted. Nothing works. Theu flights are wild arcs ended by collisions. It is impossible to sit here. As I leave the room I hear a far-off barking and think of yesterday's sight of the Canada geese, whose honking, in the distance, had sounded like dogs, but we had heard it agam, closer, and had realized what it was. They were right above us, not in a V but an undulant long line, noisy and rapid. How powerful and grand they are! Everything about them is forceful and grand. They passed out of sight qmckly, honking noisily and stroking like rowers with their powerful wings, and I was surprised by the longing and sadness I felt. Ida's class at school has been reading poems and she had been asked to write some at home. She is ten. The geese in flight, she had said that evening looked like the fishermen's buoys we had seen at the ~cean. She was right. The geese had drifted up and down in their formation as if long, gently heaving swells were passing under them. She composed aloud, dictating, and I wrote the words for her: Geese, when they are flying south look like strings of buoys bobbing up and down on the deep, wide ocean. Geo:ge Dennison recently published Oilers and Sweepers and Other Sto~ws {Random House 1979). In 1969 he published The Lives of Chddren: The Story of the First Street School. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Liza, her .sister, who is two years younger than she, began chantmg all kinds of things, and some of these too we wrote as poems: 43 �When the days are orange leaves are falling down. As I come out of the house the geese, the poems, the girls-and four-year-old jacob, who had sabotaged everything that evening-mingle in my thoughts with images from long ago that have been coming into consciousness of late: fields of brown grass, a yellow brick building in which certain sisters lived, twelve and thirteen, with brand-new breasts. If I had thought that I was going somewhere, this stepping out of doors into the mild, bright sunlight turns out to be an arrival, and I realize abruptly that I don't know what to do. I stand there indecisively and look across the yard at the three dogs, who are sprawled in the grass with as deep a lassitude as my own, and who lift their heads to look at me, but do not alter their positions. The dirt road ends in our dooryard. Across the road are the barn and the shed, and between them, nose to nose and bathed in light, stand the two drowsy, half-wild ponies. They are a sight to see. They have been gorging for weeks. Our crop of corn had ripened progressively and had been husked in the grass near the cornfield, and the ponies had attended every session. They had eaten all the husks, all the silk, many unfilled tips of ears. They had consumed whole bushels of cooked cobs. After that had come the apples, a flood of them, and once a feast of slightly rotten pears. The ponies are so fat now as to be comical, yet they are handsomer and more vigorous than ever, and are enchanting to watch when they sprint in the evening, as they do without fail before dark, just as the fork-tailed swallows, all summer long, had sped around and around the house at sunset. They gallop madly, apparently with abandon. They toss up their heads and then plunge downward, kicking both heels high. They whinny and veer off through the small orchard and come drumming back again, their curved haunches bunching and thrusting powerfully. Their winter coats are almost complete: richly colored, deep-piled hair that is almost fur, a mixture of soft and coarse that will bring them through nights of twenty below, and a few of forty. They lift their heads as I approach, and move them from side to side looking sharply at my hands, which are empty of apples. I stand there a moment scratching the powerful jaw of the chestnut male, and he drops all the weight of his head into my hands, either playfully or simply for the enjoyment of resting. Without quite realizing what I am doing I close my eyes and breathe deeply his mild, clean, yet pungent aroma. And then I become aware that this streaming of heated odors from his mouth and barrelled sides is consoling and deeply reassuring. Only a few seconds have elapsed, but the jealous dogs are trotting toward me and the foremost, a golden retriever, is barking querulously. Now ponies and dogs follow me into the orchard, the dogs gamboling competitively around my feet and the ponies ambling lazily, moving their bodies as if in sections. Only eight apple trees are left. Once there were four 44 hundred and the orchard went uphill into what is now a stand of maples and pines. A few apples still dangle from their twigs, plump and generous, and wonderfully decorative against the blue of the sky. I throw a stick and three come down, and the alert ponies draw near. While I feed an apple to the chestnut gelding, I hear again-actually I imitate it in my throat-the slurred, dense, attractive voice of old Eddie Dubord, who ten days ago helped me split wood with a rented hydraulic splitter. He had fed an apple to the pony in just this way, scratching the working great muscles at the base of its jaw, saying, "Yeah, Starbright, you put your firewood inside you, don't you! Yeah-uhhh .... " The ponies stay, the dogs follow me to to the vegetable garden which is just uphill of the house. I lean on a rail of the crude fence and look thoughtfully at the surviving greens. meant something! My thoughts are scattered like leaves. I am scarcely a person. There in front of me are the late crops that must be harvested, the broccoli, Swiss chard, collard greens, Brussels sprouts, survivors of the first frosts, and I do actually see them, but I see the children, too, made quiet by the stillness and the mild sun, wearing puffy orange vests, kneeling in the canoe while I move us glidingly over the reflections of clouds and colored trees. It was only yesterday, but these are remembered things now and are almost on a par with other memories; exciting Fall weather and I'm running home past lighted windows, tossing a football. Again now, as repeatedly in recent weeks, I see my mother's exhausted brave face the day before she died, almost four years ago. The disease had invaded all parts of her body. She had become too weak to hold a spoon or lift a cup. Early that morning it had spread again and she could no longer form words. A young nurse had been coming to the house. She had just changed the bedsheets and gently lowered my mother's head to the mound of pillows. My mother spoke to her, but a blurred, gutteral sound came from her mouth, shocking to hear. Without expressing annoyance, my mother closed her lips, raised her hand and stroked the young woman's head. The nurse had grown fond of her and was weeping as she left us. We heard the opening and closing of the front door. My mother looked at me and held out her hand. I went to her. She took my hand and laboriously drew it to her lips, and with a steady, grave look held it there a long while, kissing it. Three years later my father too was dead, not on the anniversary of her death, as he had hoped. Now that they are gone I hear my mother's voice in my own, and notice outbreaks of my father's temper. There are glimpses of his face in Liza's brow and chin, and in Jacob's eyes. Ida resembles my mother. Several days ago, in the afternoon, when already this motionless time had begun, I gave up stalking partridge in the shaggy high fields of a neighbor and lay down in the sun by a stone A S IF THIS PURPOSIVE GAZE WINTER 1981 �wall that made me think of loaves from an oven, and was pulled under instantly. I slept deeply and for a long time, and then did not awaken at once but passed into a waking dream in which I imagined that I was coming into the entranceway of our present house, making noise, and my fa- ther leaned around through the inside doorway angrily. He was talking on the phone. He covered the mouthpiece and began to upbraid me, but I forestalled him by indicating my apologies with gestures. I noticed that I had set aside false pride and had not responded to his anger with anger of my own. I began to feel buoyant. The actions of the dream took on the quality of revelation. I put my arm around him and kissed his forehead, and he blushed and smiled happily. I too was happy, and I felt the excitement of liberation that comes with understanding. The dream changed now entirely into insight, a train of thought, the gist of which stirred me as deeply as had the images. I understood that touching, affectionate touching would ease our relationship of its angers and relieve his need for tokens of esteem. I thought of the times he had responded to affection with just this melting surprise, blushing and smiling. But a terrible unease invaded all this reasoning. Something was wrong. I became aware that I was not awake, then opened my eyes and sat up in the cooling shadows of the wall and remembered that my father was dead. The ground was damp. The sun was low and the sky was white with clouds. The sadness I felt was a child's sadness. I remembered things I had forgotten for decades, and could see the faces of my parents in their youth, good-looking and far younger than I was now. The images were so nu- merous that I could scarcely register them ... and in the very instant that I became aware of their abundance, they vanished. I wanted to stop their going but could not, and when I tried to call them back I found that my mind was blank. I set out through the woods, which soon began to darken, and walked the long way home without thought at all. who had been lolling at my feet while I gazed at the garden, suddenly leaped up and whirled around, barking explosively. They ran to the road, arrayed themselves across the brow of the hill, and with legs braced and heads slightly raised, barked without cease. The sound of a lightweight motor grew louder, and then a battered blue Volkswagen parted the dogs, who bounded stiff-legged beside it, barking obstreperously as it rolled to a stop under the locust trees. Justine was nursing her baby. She smiled at me and waved and looked down at the inconspicuous head. Her somewhat pretty husband waved too, and sat there behind the steering wheel watching them. A few minutes later the chortling infant was clinging to its mother's hip, wet-lipped and bedazzled, and I bent over to admire it, really to bask for a moment in Justine's heady aura. She asked for Patricia. I said that she was sleeping and T HE THREE DOGS, 1BE ST. JOHNS REVIEW offered to get her. "No, no," said Justine, stopping me with her hand, "we're not going yet . ... " We carried five sacks of apples into the barn. The huge space was dim and cool and was striped gorgeously with gleaming blades of sunlight between the boards, vertical in the walls and horizontal in the gables. Other bulging, lumpy sacks, smelling of apples and hempen fibers, leaned against one another in the hayloft. Beneath the loft and to one side of it stood the massive press of roughhewn beams. In a week or two we would gather here, perhaps twenty of us. The sacks would be lifted and the apples dumped noisily into a narrow high trough, along which they would be hurried by hand to the belt-driven grinder. A worker with a wooden rake would shove the emerging pulp down another trough, steeply pitched, onto the square platform of the press. There it would be levelled in layers and covered with strong cloths stained a rich sienna from many years of pressing. When the layers were complete, still other friends, pushing three or four abreast at a stout lever, like sailors at a capstan bar, would crank the giant screw slowly tighter, and the sweet smell of apples would grow more intense. There would be ten or a dozen children and several unengaged adults standing around or sitting on the edge of the hayloft, legs dangling. After the first pale flowing into the wax-lined barrel everything would stop. Cups and glasses and dippers of this finest, purest juice would be passed around, and many voices would comment on its quality. Justine and Henry would be missing all this. They were going home to Albany for the winter. Patricia had offered to press their cider and send it down by a mutual friend. Before they left they stopped in the high doorway of the barn and glanced at each other. "The weirdest thing happened that night we did the lambs," Henry said. I had helped him butcher two ewes. They owned a ram as well, but had let it live, intending to board it for the winter. "We were just ready to go to bed," he said, "when we heard this knocking at the door. ... " "It was a pounding," said Justine. "It was strong." "I said, 'Who's there?' -but there wasn't any answer," said Henry, "only this pounding. I thought, wow, what is it? I opened the door, and my God, I couldn't see anything ... but I heard something, and then I felt something rush past me .... " "It was the ram," Justine said. "He was wild. He ran through the whole house. He pushed open the hall door and went to the woodshed and stood there butting the door . ... " ''That's where the ewes were," said Henry, "they were hanging from the rafters in the woodshed." -which I knew, as I had helped him carry the carcasses, and had myself draped the skins over the neat stacks of split wood. After they had gone I went to my room and wrote the story of the ram in a notebook, appending it to a description of the slaughtering and cleaning of the ewes. 45 �I SAT THERE A WHILE reading earlier entries in the note- book-descriptions, ideas, quoted words. There are many such notebooks in this room, and journals as well, and diaries, saved letters, clippings, unfinished literary projects ... so much of it, finally, that I can scarcely avoid seeing that its real purpose all along has been to stop the draining away of time. My parents' photograph album is here, on a shelf among books. It ends in their early adulthood. I was six then, my sister five, my bwther four. I seldom open it. Those ochre and ivory images are as if imprinted on my mind, one especially, of my mother as a young woman, just twenty-two, extremely pretty, with something innocent in her face, a leftover glow of childhood. She wears a skirted bathing suit. Her legs are curled to the side and she is leaning on one arm in shallow water, on a sandy beach. She seems to be happy and is looking trustingly into the camera. Her arms and legs are long, yet are handsomely rounded. Her abdomen, too, is slightly curved, but I myself, in embryo, am the cause of that. How strangely this image affects me! Here is the woman herself, who later vanished into that beloved invention called mother! And here, invisibly, is the young man, the mere youth holding the camera. What was he like, free of me? Here also am I, before time has begun. This picture astonishes me. It entices and baffles me .... vigorous, brash and tender. The strap of her canteen crosses her chest diagonally, and she wears a headband, from which a large fern sweeps back rakishly, like a plume. She looks adventurous and dashing. The leader of this trio, however, is observant, bright-faced Ida, who moves along so lightly that one might expect her to turn a cartwheel at any moment, or take leave of the ground entirely. The children's faces are intent and serious. Having greeted the dogs, they are silent again. They cross the yard ... and Jacob deserts his sisters. "Mommy! Mommy!" he calls. They have not seen Patricia, who is standing in the grass now and is fully dressed. I hear the opening of the front door, and hear it slamming backwards, and hear the voice again, "Mommy! Mommy!" suddenly babyish. This summons, and the flood tide of demand held in readiness behind it release me from the doting happiness I had been feeling. I become defensive. I let him call Mommy! Mommy! and though I haven't moved, the fact is, I am hiding. I say to myself He'll reject me if I go down, it's Patricia that he wants-but I know that this is not the reason. The reason is that this present mood, in which the feelings are so close to words and the words to feelings, is precious to me and must be defended, especially against Jacob, whose demands are innocent and boundless. And so I sit at my table and take up my papers. From the window to my right I can see the roadside trees of the valley. Most are not large, but spaced among them are the stumps of elms that once were large indeed. How handsome that road must have been when the huge trees towered over it, and wagons and horses went along in their I of the dogs again, and go to the window. They have not run to the road, but in the opposite direction, to the woods. Now I hear the HEAR THE CHALLENGE BARKING children's voices, and in the same instant, with a shock of embarrassment, I see Patricia, entirely naked, sit up in the tall grass and with hasty, guilty movements shake out her red blouse and blue skirt. After the embarrassment, I feel affection, admiration, and compassion for her middleaged longings, her large and stately, slightly dumpy, oddly childish middle-aged body.· Then small anxieties appear. ... But now the children come into view, who have long been the antidote to my own desperations, and such happiness leaps within me as is almost frightening. How could I deserve these three? They come through the wagonbreak in the low stone wall, where years ago cattle came and went. They step out of the shadows of the trail into the open sunlight of the yard, bare-legged, as in the depths of summer. All three, even four-year-old Jacob, carry walking sticks picked up in the woods. I can see the barbaric whorls and streaks-red and blue Magic Marker-Jacob had applied to his arms and cheeks after breakfast. His shorts are cut-off jeans. Someone-Ida, probably-has placed the stems of ferns under his belt. The ferns cross his chest and flutter as he strides along. He goes beside Liza, his great love, who is stalwart and 46 shade! The past is everywhere. There are cellar holes deep in the woods, inexplicable stone walls, farm roads that are now deer trails, rows of grayed apple trunks crumbling among maples and pines. The papers on my table are de· scriptions of these things, and of some of the surviving elders, whose rural graciousness and sweet modesty have often astonished me. The topmost pages are of Dana Tomlin, whom I have seen twice this week at the nursing home, and who is ninety-eight now. Three years ago, late in the summer, I saw him standing in line at the bank looking shyly all around him and smiling continually. He is the eldest of the town's elders, and his manner showed a consciousness of his status, but his wrinkled face was as shy and sweet as a child's. His look of grateful happiness affected everyone. People came to him and greeted him, and he returned their greetings, though it was clear that he did not know who they were. He was well-knit, or had been-of a middle size and workaday substantiality. He wore an old gray suit, a gray fedora hat, and button-up shoes of a soft black leather. When he came to the teller's window, he tweaked open a pouch-like leather purse, looked down into it soberly, and rummaged about with his thumb and forefinger. He was walking well then and must have weighed thirty pounds more than he does now. He is confined to a wheelchair, and his thighs and shins have become mere rods of bone. WINTER 1981 �I HAD WRITTENo ... He was asleep in the wheelchair-rather, there in the chair was a heap of old clothes out of which a hairless speckled head hung forward alarmingly. The young woman shook him gently and said, "Dana ... Dana .... " There were other patients in the community room. Some had been studying me from the moment I had come in. Now at the sound of her voice most of the others turned their heads. "Dana .... " There was a stirring amidst all that clothing, as when some small, shy forest creature stirs under a covering of leaves. He braced himself with his hands. The cords of his neck tightened, and his shoulders and back slowly straightened. At last he was looking at us. His small speckled face was anxious. "Dana," the young woman said, "your visitor is here. You're going out in the car today. Have you forgotten? It's a beautiful day, Dana." His face relaxed and took on its characteristic sweetness, and he said, "Yes," very faintly, but he was still confused. She spoke to him once more, in the loud, clear voice of nurs· ing homes. He blinked laboriously while he listened. The doughy, almost liquid folds around his eyes merged so thoroughly that it was surprising to see them part again. "You can take him to his room. Call me if you need help," the young woman said, adding quietly, "He can't turn the wheels." I guided the chair down the corridor. He was looking at the hands in his. lap. Presently he raised his head and said whisperingly, "Oh ... it's funny ... you know ... I can't always think of what I want to. Tell me again where you live." "I live in the house your sister lived in. You brought her over one day about five years ago." I was not sure he had heard me. He lifted his hand to his watery triangular blue eyes and patted it with a handkerchief was shearing sheep, so dad said to me, 'Would you rather haul milk, or shear?' and I said,"-here he turned to me, smiling wittily and peering goodhumoredly out of that triangular blue eye-"I said it didn't make no difference, they was both work. So that's when I started. I was sixteen years old .... " I heard footsteps, then a rapping of knuckles on my door, at no great height. The door moved inward, and there in the doorway stood strong, diminutive Jacob, grinning expectantly. I could see that he had been primed with a speech. His eyes danced on mine and he shouted happily, "Hurry up, daddy, we're starved t' death!" Before I could answer, the smile faded from his face, and his fouryear-old eyes darted omnivorously about the room. "What are you doing?" he said-a temporizing question. By the time he had reached me his fingers had handled half-adozen things. Someone-Patricia or Ida-had washed his face and hands. He leaned against me and said, "Can I see ... daddy, can I see the hunting knife and the pistol?" He went by himself to the drawer where these things were kept, and opened the drawer slowly, looking back at me over his shoulder. I stood behind him and watched him unsheath the knife, and unwrap the soft cloth from the -automatic. The pistol awed him. He had scarcely any idea what it could do, nor was it a symbol of anything in his eyes, though certainly its sequestered place had given it status. It was the object itself that impressed him, so weighty and handsome. He turned it in his small hands .... There came a pounding on the downstairs wall that was obviously Patricia, Liza, and Ida pounding in unison, and we put away the knife and gun and went down to supper. that had been balled in his fist. The other eye, the left, is blind with cataracts. "I had four brothers ... two sisters ... and a mother and father," he said falteringly, "now I'm all that's left." He sat there just breathing for a moment, apparently recovering from the effort of talking; and then with cautious, trembling movements he extracted a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his flannel shirt, unwrapped a set of dentures and fixed them into place. "They drop out very easily now," he said, "so I keep them in my pocket." The lines across his forehead deepened and his single good eye grew brighter. He was smiling. "I lost two teeth out o' them," he said. ''I'm afraid o' losin' the whole thing." His entire face brightened with shy humor, astonishing to see, and in this very moment of finding pleasure in his own wit he remembered that we had planned to go out, and that I was the one who was writing something about the early days of the town. Fifteen minutes later we were driving in my car along a hilltop road in the most delicious sunlight and air. There were woods to the left of us, and long vistas of pastures, woods, and distant hills to the right, and he was telling me of the milk route he had serviced for sixty years. His melnories were geographical. He could recall the time of a thing once he had established the place of it. "We got started because the old creamery failed," he said. "My dad went around to the farmers and asked if they'd let us haul their cream to the North Folsom creamery. They said they would. It was March. My dad took ill, and my brother THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW with autumn colors. One would think that by now they would be familiar, but they remained astonishing, and our eyes, as we ate, at least Patricia's and mine, went back to them again and again. Glowing, blazing, flaming . .. one uses fire words. No others are accurate. It is not only that the colors are intense, but that the leaves are translucent, the light passes through them, and the colors are lit from within. It is due to this effect, too, and to the profuse scattering of the leaves in space that one receives so little sense of discrete surfaces, but sees instead a vibrating haze of color. The dining-room door was open, and the doorway framed three bands of color. The topmost, a narrow band, was a soft, rich blue. Then came the wide band of the saturated reds and ochres. And finally-the widest band of all-the bronzed greens of the dying grass. VERY WINDOW GLOWED E blood cranberries pomegranate Morocco leather red apples dark roses hot magentas rose madders 47 �-these are the reds of the red or swamp maple, some of whose leaves also turn orange. The clouds of saffron, slightly rusted, are poplars and birches. Here and there one sees the dull purples of white ash, and the buckskin and tobacco shades of red oak. But the flaming oranges and lighter reds, the saturated ochres and the deep, sal· mon pinks are sugar maples, intensified in color by the pine, spruce, fir, and hemlock that surround them. We ate quickly, almost heedlessly, so drawn were we to the lingering warmth and light at the open door. Jacob was the first one out. And as often happens, he gave immediate, naive expression to impulses we others felt as well as he but were too inhibited to act upon. He began to leap and twirl and throw out his arms. He kept it up even after we others came out. Ida and Liza joined him at once, and so did the three dogs, who barked in high-pitched, complaining voices and ran from one whirling child to another. Patricia glanced at me and laughed. She was still barefoot. She pranced out into the midst of the capering figures and began to swing her arms and lift her knees. I followed behind her, in spite of my self-consciousness. By now the dogs were barking hectically. They plunged against one another, sideswiping and nipping. A rubber ball was lying there in the grass, and I threw it toward the front of the house. All three dogs sped after it. They centered on it, growling in strange, plaintive tones. The aging retriever picked it up ... and here one must say Ia and behold! for just as the dogs turned, the brown pony and the black one emerged from beyond the house, and all five animals, side by side, wheeled together in a momentarily perfect flank, and came prancing towards us abreast. Ida shouted with delight. Liza turned to see what was hap· pening, and she shouted too. I glanced at Jacob. He hadn't noticed a thing. He was still dancing. He was chanting or talking to himself, was whirling and jumping, and kept throwing out his arms, first one and then the other, m marvelous, mighty gestures . ... woods to my left. Had there really been a melting sun that afternoon? There was no illusion now: winter was coming. All this landscape that had seemed to be an emanation of one's own torporous dream was real again. There were real chores to do, real wood to split, carry and stack, real cabbages to hang in the root cellar, chard and collards to be picked and frozen, screens to be taken down, storm windows to be installed, hay to be covered in the barn so that the cider-makers wouldn't wet it .... Earlier in the year I had tried to follow the spring thaw in daily notes, and had brought my notes through May, having kept track, though certainly skimpily, of returning birds and returning green, and of the sequence of the wildflowers. On the last day of May I wrote: ... more rain. Lilacs everywhere. The locust leaves are wellestablished, but are not full size. Dandelions are going to seed, though the yellow heads are still plentiful. A few lightning bugs ... -and there my journal ended. Which is to say that it was at this moment that I was carried off in the flood of sum· mer, aware only that everything was shooting upward, was spreading outward, was beautiful, and that I myself was spinning like a top. Now in the dwindling of the cold it all becomes perceptible again. Within a week the lavish colors were gone, and the last leaves, as usual, did not fall of their weight, but were pulled away by the wind and knocked down by rain. Soon the hills had darkened to the shadowed greens that would last until spring. The coldness of the nights persists into the days, and there comes an afternoon that "spits snow," followed by a morning of whiteness, which the sun transforms into vapors and fat drops of water at the eaves. In the woods I notice a small moth beating this way and that, apparently haphazardly, and I wonder where it is going and how it survived the freeze of the night before. And then, driving in the dark· ness over wet asphalt roads, I see in the headlight beams, as always this time of year, every quarter-mile or so in the intervale, a little frog, or several, hopping across the road. WALKEDALONE after dark up the lumber road that passes for a mile through woods and then emerges into fields. It was cold and the wind was moving briskly through the trees. I wore a sweater and a woolen jacket. There had been stars, but now the ~ky was overcast. Two screech owls were screaming back and forth in the dark stretch of I 48 They are so purposive, so doomed, so pathetically ineffi· cient, going up laboriously in high Gothic arches just to move forward a foot or two! I laugh and shake my head at the wretches, yet slow the car so as to avoid crushing them. They had been sitting on the heat-retaining road, fending off the cold. Soon enough that glistening black surface will be white with snow and ice. WINTER !981 �The Latin-American Neurosis Carlos Rangel The political ground of Latin-American society has not yet gotten over the earthquake of the Cuban revolution; for that matter, no recovery is possible. What happened in Cuba since 1959 marks at least as much of an era as the Wars of Independence in the first quarter of the nineteenth century and as the enunciation of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823. The Monroe Doctrine's Perverse Results For about one hundred and thirty-three years, Latin America, a mosaic of sovereign states, existed in an infantile way in the face of the complexities of international politics. Only Bolivar and a few other statesmen of the generation of the struggle for independence grasped the differences between the imperialistic powers and the risks run by the small and the weak in a world where power settles essential questions. European affairs directly involved this handful of untypically clearsighted men born under Spanish rule. They lived high international politics intensely, often at a distance, but sometimes, like Miranda and Bolivar, on the scene of events. France between 1789 and 1815 fascinated them like everybody else. They came to understand strategic power-above all the naval power that had decided events in England's favour. They kept in touch with England, sometimes at the highest level-contacts favored by Whitehall's early concern at the crumbling of Spain's empire in America. Because with Napoleon's downfall they immediately perceived the danger of a A Venezuelan, partly educated in the United States {at New York University), Carlos Rangel wrote The Latin Americans: Their Love-Hate Relationship With the United States (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1977), a book that has become something of a classic in France. This article first appeared in 1980 in the spring issue of Commentaire. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW restoration of the ancien regzme in their America also, these men greeted President Monroe's declaration enthusiastically. Only Bolivar, however, grasped that LatinAmerica was exchanging the certainty of subjection to a North American protectorate for the "open" risk run by the other weak regions exposed to conquest, intervention, or colonization by the great powers of Europe. The external protectorate suffered one noteworthy breach. Absorbed in their Civil War, the North Americans did not check France's violation of the Monroe doctrine when it sent troops to support Maximilian, installed by Napoleon the Third on the throne of Mexico. But this was merely an episode. The higher ranks of Latin-American society soon forgot that in the world as it is, the sovereignty and security of weak countries run permanent risks. They took Monroeism for a part of the landscape without anyone noticing, for a long time, that it diminished sovereignty and encouraged irresponsibility. Here is the deep, perhaps irreparable harm that the United States did Latin America-not the grievances habitually listed under "imperialism." Political maturity, the realism necessary for reasonably effective policy, springs from the recognition of the precarious character of all security and from the consequent recognition that survival requires unremitting efforts to increase a society's margin of safety with its available ways and means. Real military power matters-not a comic opera army-and a serious, consistent, not excessively inept foreign policy. A society that meets these minimal conditions will probably find itself upon the way of modernization and economic development. For economic development and modernization are the consequences rather than the causes of political maturity. But Monroeism deprived Latin America of the "natural selection" that makes political maturity the necessary condition of 49 �survival. With Monroeism (except perhaps in Brazil, which would explain a great deal) the creole class suddenly regressed to the state of irresponsibility it had lived in before the North-American and French revolutions brought the "abnormal" generation of Independence. The combination of Monroeism with traditions of slavery, of a feudal-mercantilist economy with parish-pump politics, the legacies of three centuries of Spanish rule, pro- duces after 1830 widespread mediocrity, specifically, the "political underdevelopment" thaf)ean-Fran9ois Revel has rightly underscored. 1 To explain the deep frustration, -of a sOciety othCrwise fortunate in its endowment -you have to look, as Revel suggests, to this "political underdevelopment." With its predominantly western character this body of human beings should not theoretically offer major obstacles to modernization, to economic and social development, or to stable democracy. Some of these countries even enjoy an urban infrastructure and "modern" institutions, such as universities, that are older than those in the United States. In addition, the region enjoys exceptional advantages in natural resources; in a living space ample for its population; in a varied climate (which cannot, therefore, be held accountable); in navigable rivers, in a supply of fresh water unequalled elsewhere which affords considerable resources for hydroelectric power, etc. These relative advantages distinguish LatinAmerica from the rest of what is called the "Third World." After 1945 with the complete realization of the "interAmerican system" and with the United States' assumption not only of hemispheric but of world leadership, the security guaranteed South America free of cost even made wars between Latin-American countries inconceiv- -able: The activation of the "system" could stop outbreaks of hostilities within a matter of hours (for instance in Honduras and El Salvador in 1969). But with the new era inaugurated by the Cuban revolution and the coincident Americans. With astounding reasoning the Mexican philosopher, Leopolda Zea (whom Jean Fran9ois Revel cites), takes not only Washington's former complicity with Latin American dictatorships for a manifestation of Yankee imperialism, a truism, but he also calls the Carter administration's pressure on right-wing dictatorships that torture, diabolical neo-imperialism. Wicked and powerful, the United States can do anything. We can do nothing. After twenty years the embargo and the malevolence of the United States still serve to excuse Cuba's failure in everything except its resolute and lasting defiance of North American predominance in the hemisphere -a defiance that lends the Cuban revolution prestige and measureless importance. The Latin-American Neurosis On a visit to Argentina in March 1979, in all likelihood on business for the Chase-Manhattan Bank, David Rockefeller had a curious exchange with an Argentinian journalist at a press conference: Journalist: You say that you have come to Argentina for meetings with bankers, but I have here a list of ten business enterprises, ostensibly Argentinian, actually controlled by your family. Were you ignorant of this fact? Rockefeller: Perhaps, if you show me the list, I may be able to reply. ): (Reads a list) R: Well, the International Basic Economy Corporation (IBEC) is a company founded by my brother Nelson, who died recently, and now directed by his son. Other companies on your list are subsidiaries of IBEC. So it's correct that my family has connections with them. But what are you driving at? ): The Rockefeller family controls the policies of the world, serious conflicts like the barely avoided war between Chile and Argentina over the Beagle Channel again became possible in Latin America. Prolonged and United States whatever the party in power. I should like to know if you also intend to control Argentinian and Latin American politics thanks to the companies you own i:n our country, and the several score of others that belong to you in Latin-American, such as Exxon and others on this other list. bloody civil wars like the recent one in Nicaragua occur. (Reads it). All this happens with only the most cautious involvement of the United States and without the activation of the R: Your question is somewhat absurd. My family owns none of the companies you have just mentioned. We are dealing with joint-stock companies in which one or other of us from time to time may hold one percent or less of the shares. The only exception is Rockefeller Center, which belongs entirely to us. My grandfather founded E:X:xon a hundred years ago, but today we have almost nothing invested in it. You are mistaken in supposing that we strictly control the businesses on your list widespread erosion of North-American power in the "inter~American system." ·with the crisis in Monroeism, denied by Washington for some years but today recognized even in Presidential speeches, Latin American leaders have experienced, with dread, the inherent precariousness of the internal make-up of their states and even of their survivaL' The bankruptcy of the alibi that attributed every disagreeable occurrence in Latin-America to outside interference (North-American imperialism or-the obverse of the same false coin-the international Communist conspiracy) should finally be evident. Latin America, however, continues to be the last region of the globe where educated men, with access to all the available information, continue to pretend to believe ·in the omniscience and all-powerfulness of the NI;>rth 50 In his subsequent article (from which I drew the previous quotation) our insightful journalist delighted in his success in making David Rockefeller admit his family was sole owner of Rockefeller Center. 3 For this "holding com, pany" could be presumed to own in its turn one hundred and thirty-two companies in Latin America, including the Exxon subsidiaries. Obviously, this fairly influential jourWINTER 1981 �nalist does not know what Rockefeller Center is. But what need is there to bother about details of this kind, when a member of the clan leaves the fortresses of Wall Street to descend upon defenceless Argentina: These people don't travel to far-away countries like ours merely to inspect a bank branch. They come to have conversations with the Minister of Finance (an actual reason, it appears, for l\!Ir. Rockefeller's trip) and to receive information, confidential information, about our economy-information not vouchsafed the people of Argentina. In politics and economics paranoia serves to keep a cer- tain number of Latin-American leaders at the level of the most out-of-date and ill-informed of their colleagues, in countries undeniably poor and just out of colonialism. The Latin-American neurosis, in face of the United States, corresponds less and less each day to the facts. For the weakening and inconsistency of the country, so long the guide and protector of Latin America, can no longer go unrecognized. With the Cuban revolution, however, the United States' interest in this region reached its highest point in an intense but short-lived blaze. An interest, I should add, always faint in public opinion and even among North-American leaders-with the exception of certain statesmen from Henry Clay (Secretary of State to Monroe) to John Kennedy, for whom Latin America was not only a private preserve that the United States maintained in face of European lusts, but also a sister region that came to independence in the same surge of history as, and in the wake of, the United States; and that embraced republican and democratic government, at a moment when that innovation survived only in the Western Hemisphere. Monroeism had two components: first, without the close guardianship of the United States and her intervention if necessary in Latin America, other powers outside the Hemisphere would necessarily intervene-with serious strategic consequences and dangers unacceptable to the United States. Secondly, the real though condescending sympathy that idealistic North Americans have always held for peoples whom they see attempting to better their lot by adopting political institutions which they regard as virtuous, because inspired by the North American republic. The weapons revolution with its ICBM's and nuclear rocket submarines that, for instance, made possession of the Panama Canal strategically inconsequential, have made it bluntly clear that the second component was much less important than the first. American public opinion's resistance to President Carter's attempt to part with the Canal, came not of any interest-almost non-existent-in Panama or in Latin America, but because of the legendary exploits, taught to Americans in school, of the engineers and doctors who dug the canal. For Americans the canal is not the Panama Canal but a North American canal that crosses Panama (as a Senator put it). A man who knows what he is talking about described the actual attitude of the United States toward Latin America: THE ST. JOHNS REVffiW One of the more conspicuous hypocrisies of the (North) American way in foreign affairs is the combination ofritualistic solicitude about the inter-American system with visceral indifference to the Latin American ordeal. On ceremonial occasions United States leaders talk lavishly about hemisphere solidarity. When a United States company is nationalized or a United States diplomat kidnapped, Latin America creates a brief stir in the newspapers. But one cannot resist the conviction-certainly Latin Americans don't-that deep down most North Americans do not give a damn about LatinAmerica. 4 The United States now plainly displays the lack of interest in Latin America as a whole (for instance, President Carter's speech of April 14, 1977) that before was "at the bottom" of its attitudes. From now on the Americans will deal with particular situations, like relations with their neighbor, Mexico, illegal immigration, and other problems directly connected with them, that they cannot help seeing. They want to continue to count in Latin Americabut without acknowledging, still less affirming, the special responsibility and the fraternal bond that existed in the past. After 1966 (when Johnson in the last spasm of Monroeism sent the Marines to the Dominican Republic), the countries of Latin America found themselves more and more abandoned by the power that had for so long "overprotected" them. Abandoned, just in the years when they had to struggle to come to terms with the vast upheaval triggered by the Cuban revolution. With the most firmly established and the most cunning political system of Latin America, Mexico alone weathered the storm, relatively unscathed. Mexico alone stood up to the United States in the economic and diplomatic ostracism of Cuba and refused to sever relations with the Castro regime. As a result, it preserved its "progressive" image abroad and kept the extreme left at home isolated and insignificant-at the same time that it mercilessly crushed not only the occasional underground guerrillas but also, in passing, dissenting students, massacred in their hundreds in 1969, during a demonstration right in the center of the capital. Only Venezuela, which came out of a military dictatorship just before the fall of Batista (1958), found leaders capable of founding and defending undeniably democratic institutions in the face of the double challenge from the militarists of the right and from the armed extreme left, inspired and actively encouraged by Havana. Elsewhere the rising wave of the Cuban revolution made for enduring upheavals, without anywhere establishing a truly socialist regime, or even a "military socialism," since the ((Peruvian model" betrays a kind of perfection in economic and political failure. Everywhere it provoked tragic civil wars; undermined long-standing democracies (in Uruguay and Chile); spurred a new right authoritarianism, based as in the past on military power, but more implacable, because for the first time since the establishmenfof professional armies in Latin America the "military party" faces the problem of survival, in a hemispheric and 51 �world-wide political context that, in Cuba, brought the dissolution of the regular armed forces and the execution, imprisonment, or exile of all their officers. This new situation is nowhere more discouraging than in Argentina, a country once indisputably (and still essentially) the most advanced in Latin America. Sunk in its present nightmare, Argentina shows how hard it is for Latin America, more specifically, for Spanish America (for, although analogous, Brazil is too distinct for automatic inclusion in generalizations about Latin America) to overcome its political underdevelopment. Quite comparable to a serious neurosis, this difficulty in overcom-ing political underdevelopment comes, essentially, because it is our lot to share the "New World" with the United States and because up to the present (in our inner conviction) we remain the dark panel in the diptych of the great American enterprise. The Paradoxical Prestige of Castro back for the Cuban people and even for Latin America as a whole; his submission to the strategic plans of the So· viets, like his only noteworthy contribution to the business of our time. To the Soviets he handed over the youth of Cuba, first for an army of disproportionate size, afterwards for an expeditionary force-a project that the Soviet Union must have conceived and guided for quite some time, at least since 1965. But Latin America counts what strikes any non-Latin-American as a shameful business for the Cuban nation and a bloody hazing for its young people, forced to play the "Senagalese of the Soviet empire," as an additional plus for Fidel. Pro-Soviet or, more generally, "leftist" circles are not the only ones not to find fault with Fidel in this regard. Social Democrats, liberals, and even Latin-American conservatives (and many military men including officers) take secret pridethe pride of "decolonized men" -in the fact that our home-grown soldiers have, for the first time in history, trodden the soil of Africa, the Maghreb, Arabia, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Cambodia. Everyone acknowledges the bankruptcy of the Cuban I do not dare expect that political evolution in the near revolution-except ill Lclfh1-Amefica. No one dreams any future will deliver our America from permanent crisis and longer of denying that the Cuban jails hold a very large number of political prisoners, who receive unspeakable illtreatment.5 But when Fidel paid an official visit to Mexico in May 1979, President Lopez Portillo greeted him at the airport as "one of the men of the century." At the same time hypocritical and sincere, Lopez Portillo's hyperbole, reportedly, did him enormous service with the public opinion of his country. Over the past twenty years, four from swinging between economically incompetent populist democratic regimes with suicidal tendencies, and equally or more incompetent authoritarian regimes-with exceptions like the '(Mexican system," and with eccentric deviations like the totalitarian regime in Cuba. Almost without exception, the most gifted and educated LatinAmerican intellectuals (almost all, since 1960, "of the left" and admirers of Castro) carefully evade profound critical reflection about our society, and ardently persist in the contrary enterprise: they reinforce all about them the paralysing idee fixe that external agencies cause all of Latin America's problems and that The Revolution will provide their solution-revenge. The economists of Latin America have, for instance, made an inordinate contribu- tion to the theory of economic dependence as a sufficient explanation for political underdevelopment. They are not at all bothered by the fact that countries like the United States, first of all, but also Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Spain, have each in their different ways come through this ordeal, and that countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore are doing the same at tliis very hour. Not surprisingly, Fidel Castro and his revolution continue to enjoy measurelesS prestige and deep influence in Latin America-prestige difficult for a European observer, even a Marxist sympathizer, to grasp. To such an observer, Castro now looks like a pretty contemptible tyrant, unmasked; his revolution, like a fearfully costly set- 52 managers of the 44 Mexic'an system," quite different in other respects (Presidents Lopez Mateos, Diaz Ordaz, Etcheverria and, now Lopez Portillo) have all sought to bolster their position and the dubious legitimacy of the only Mexican party (Institutionalized Revolutionary Party) by showing an unchanging desire to please Fidel Castro. That makes one think. Translated by Hugh P. McGrath and Leo Raditsa l. Jean Franc;:ois Revel, "L' Amerique La tine et sa culture politique," Commentaire, Autumn 1978, 261-266: in English translation, "The Trouble with Latin America," Commentary, February 1979. 2. For inStance, President Carter's speech berore the Organization of American States on Aprill4, 1977. 3. Redaccion, Buenos Aires, 73, March 1979. 4. Arthur Schlesinger, "The Alli:mce for Progress: a Retrospective," in Latin America: The Search for a New International Role, New York 1975, 58. 5. Of epochal importance in France: Pierre Golendorf, Sept ans d Cuba, Paris, Belfond 1978; Armando Valladares, Prisonnier de Castro, trans· lated, annotated and edited by P. Golendorf with an afterword by Leonid Pliouchtch, Paris, Gmsset 1979. WINTER !981 �On the Origins of Celestial Dynamics: Kepler and Newton Curtis Wilson I wish to consider two moments in the emergence of celestial dynamics, a Keplerian moment and a Newtonian one, seeking to explore what the development of such a dynamics meant to its authors. Before Kepler, astronomy was a branch of applied mathematics, employing arithmetic and geometry, but having nothing to do with physics or forces (in Greek, dynameis). It was Kepler who introduced forces into the heavens, and thus founded celestial dynamics. David Gregory, a follower of Newton, writing in 1702, spoke of the new celestial physics that "the most sagacious Kepler had got the scent of, but the Prince of Geometers Sir Isaac Newton brought to such a pitch as surprizes all the world." Actually, the Keplerian dynamics and the Newtonian dynamics differ in important respects, but Gregory's singling out of Kepler- and Newton makes sense. Kepler introduces a dynamics into the heavens in the sense of hypothesizing a quantifiable influence of one celestial body on the motion of another, and Newton's universal gravitation does the same kind of thing. Moreover, the mathematical results Kepler arrives at by pursuing his hypothesis nearly coincide with Newton's results, derived from a different dynamics. Meanwhile, in the period intervening between the appearance of Kepler's hypothesis in 1609, and the appearance of Newton's Principia in 1687, there were various attempts at proposing what may be called mechanical causes for the celestial motions, but none of them allowed of mathematical formulation, or led to an astronomical . calculus, a way of predicting positions of planets. The egregious Thomas Hobbes imagined that, as the southern and northern hemispheres of the Earth differ with respect A revised version of a lecture given at St. John's College in Annapolis in May 1971. Curtis Wilson is at work on an article "Predictive Astronomy in the Century after Kepler," to appear in Volume II of The General History of Astronomy, Cambridge University Press. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW to the proportion of dry land and ocean, therefore the aethereal vortex or whirlpool that moves about the Sun, having now more solid land to press against and now more of the yielding ocean, would drive the Earth in a path differing from a circle, perhaps approaching an ellipse. Descartes figured out a reason why the suns or stars are off-center in their vortices, so that in the solar vortex the planetary paths are eccentric to the sun, but as in Hobbes's case, the hypothesis did not lend itself to mathematization; on the contrary, because Descartes believed the universe to be packed with vortices inclined at various angles to one another, vortices that fill all space and interact with one another by transference of matter and motion, any simple mathematical rule for the planetary orbits and motions becomes implausible. In Kepler's and Newton's cases, we can ask how the dynamical hypothesis and its quantification come about, what they presuppose, what they mean to their authors. The first sprouts of Kepler's celestial dynamics make their appearance in his first venture into print, his Cosmo~ graphic Mystery of 1596, published when he was just turning twenty-five. Since April 1594, Kepler had been holding the position of district mathematician in Graz, with the task of teaching mathematics to the boys in a Protestant school, and making up an annual astrological calendar for the province. The calendar was to show when to plant crops, and what to expect of the weather and the Turks. He was, let me mention, marvelously successful with his first calendar: the cold spell he had predicted was so grievous that herdsmen in the mountains lost their lives or their noses from frostbite, and the invasions of the Turks he had predicted were also grievous; the provincial magistrates therefore added a bonus to his stipend. But Kepler was not satisfied with this kind of astrological hackwork. Beginning on the Sunday of Pentecost in 1595, we find him concerned with, and indeed thinking unceasingly about, three large cosmological questions. 53 �At the start of the Cosmographic Mystery, Kepler says, "there were three things above all of which I sought the causes why they were thus and not otherwise: the number, size, and motions of the planetary orbs. That I dared this was brought about by that beautiful harmony of the quiescent things, the Sun, fixed stars, and intervening space, with God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." That is, Kepler sees the spherical layout of the cosmos, with the Sun at the center, and the stars at the periphery, as an image or signature of the triune God, the Creator, His Being, Knowledge, and Love. And with this vision in his head, he makes bold to seek the number, spacings, and motions that the Creator gave to the mobile bodies, the planets, occupying the intermediate space between Sun and stars. Obviously, Kepler is at this point a Copernican, a heliocentrist. But he does not have a thorough knowledge of the details of Copernicus's planetary theory. As he begins his speculations, he has not read and does not even possess Copernicus's book; he does not even know Rheticus's Narratio prima, the book in which, in 1540, three years before the appearance of the De revolutionibus, Rheticus had communicated to the world the major outlines of Copernicus's theory and given an account of its superi~ ority over the Ptolemaic theory. Kepler says that he had learned partly from his teacher Maestlin at Tubingen, and partly from his own thinking, the mathematical advantages that Copernicus has over Ptolemy. The Copernican arrangement, simply by its layout, accounts for certain phenomena that are left unaccounted for, are left as coincidences, in the Ptolemaic arrangement. Why do the Sun and the Moon not retrograde, while the other planets do? Why do Mercury and Venus always keep relatively close to the Sun, while the other planets can be at any angular distance? Why are the superior planets always lowest in their epicycles, when in opposition to the Sun? For these questions and a few more, the Copernican arrangement provides an answer; the Ptolemaic does not. By the time he had finished his Cosmographic Mystery, Kepler had apparently read the famous tenth chapter of Book I of the De revolutionibus, where Copernicus says, in his brief commendation of the heliocentric arrangement, Hwe find in this arrangement a marvelous symmetry of the world and a harmony in the relationship of the motion and size of the orbits, such as one cannot find elsewhere." But even before, Kepler was asking not merely in what the symmetry and harmony consist, but also: On what are they founded? How does man come to recognize them? And already at the start, Kepler has answers to which he will always adhere: The world carries in itself the features of the omnipotent creator and is his copy, his signature. To man, God gave a rational soul, thereby stamping him in His own image. It is with that soul that man can recognize the symmetry and harmony of the Copernican world. Seeing that spherical Copernican world in terms of an idea of Nicholas Cusanus, as a 54 kind of quantitative representation of the indissoluble triune essence of God, Kepler is encouraged to raise and pursue his bold, naive questions. One of the questions was not new. If you were a Copernican, there were six circumsolar planets, not seven planets as with Ptolemy, since Copernicus leaves the Moon as a satellite of the Earth. Rheticus in his Narratio prima had explained this sixfold number by the sacredness and perfection of the number six: six is the first perfect number, i.e., equal to the sum of its factors, l, 2, and 3. A little later in the sixteenth century, Zarlino will be using this same idea to explain the role of the first six numbers in musical consonances; he will be the first musical theorist to include thirds and sixths among the consonances, as they needed to be included for polyphony's sake. Kepler will be the second such musical theorist, but here as in the case of the number of the planets he will reject the notion of particular numbers as causes. He rejects number-mysticism in that sense. Numbers for him are only abstractions from the created things, and hence posterior to Creation; they could not therefore be used by God as archetypal forms for cosmopoiesis, the making of the world. Not satisfied with Rheticus's answer, Kepler has to face the question afresh: why are there just six planets, no more and no less? The second and third of Kepler's questions were new. They had to do with the causes for the relation of the Sun-planet distances to one another, and for the ratios of the planetary periods. In August of 1595 Kepler wrote to Maestlin, his former teacher at Tubingen, telling of his investigations, and asking whether he had ever heard or read of anyone who went into the reason of the disposition of the planets, and the proportions of their motions. In the margin, Maestlin wrote in answer: "No." Let me remark here that no analogous questions are likely to arise in what can be called, and indeed came to be called, the Ptolemaic system, which was what Kepler had been officially taught at the university. By this term I mean not the set of planetary theories in Ptolemy's Almagest, but rather the world picture, current in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, according to which the planetary spheres are nested to fill exactly without remainder the space between the highest sublunary element, fire, and the fixed stars. There is no trace of this picture in the Almagest, but in 1967 it was discovered that it is given in Ptolemy's Hypotheses of the Planets, the relevant passage having been omitted from Heiberg's standard edition of Ptolemy, apparently from some confusion among the translators; most of the work, including this passage, exists only in Arabic MSS, of which Heiberg gives only a German translation.* What I now say is based on this recovered portion of the Hypotheses. *The discoverer was Bernard R. Goldstein; see his "The Arabic Version of Ptolemy's Planetary Hypotheses", Transactions of the American Philosophical Society vol. 57, Part 4 (1967). WINTER 1981 �be made to fit in such a sequence of nested spheres, using the Ptolemaic numbers. In further justification Ptolemy adds that "this arrangement is most plausible, for it is not conceivable that there be in Nature a vacuum, or any meaningless and useless thing." ! ' / F'i'gure 1 The Ptolemaic system, Ptolemy freely admits, involves conjecture, but he also insists on its plausibility, as did his followers through the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Tycho Brahe was still accepting it in the 1570s. The piau· sibility is as follows. Ptolemy ·gives certain arguments in the Almagest, and again in amplified form in the Hypoth· eses, for a certain order of the planets, beginning Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, and going on to the superior planets;) won't repeat the arguments here. (The Sun, note, is the central one of the seven planets or wandering stars.) He had a very good value for the maximum dis· tance of the Moon from the Earth, determined from observations, namely 64 Earth radii. Assume now that the maximum distance of one planet from the Earth is equal to the minimum distance of the planet next above it; take from the Almagest the ratios of nearest approach to farthest distance for each planet, and start constructing outward, using the Ptolemaic order. After the Moon comes Mercury and then Venus. The maximum distance of Venus turns out to be 1,079 Earth-radii, and the Sun is to come next. But there was an independent method for determining the relative distances of the Sun and the Moon, a way invented by Hipparchus, described in the Almagest, using eclipses. The method is unreliable, but it did not come to be distrusted till the seventeenth century. The result of that method, reported in the Almagest, was that at its closest approach to the Earth, the Sun was 1,160 Earth-radii distant, 81 Earth-radii beyond the high· est point ofVenus's orb. Is this a big gap? Ptolemy shows in the Hypotheses, that by a very slight change in the data of this determination, a change within the limits of obser· vational error, the Sun at nearest approach will be found to use up the extra 81 Earth-radii, and everything fits. Moreover, this is the only order in which the planets can THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW This Ptolemaic system was very well known during the sixteenth century, owing to the description of it in Peurbach's Theoricae planetarum, which went through many editions. I suspect it was widely accepted as filling out the heavens, and allowing for the strange motions of these divine beings~motions which, according to Ptolemy, follow from the essence of the planet and are like the will and understanding in man. Copernicus, and also Kepler in the Cosmographic Mystery, explicitly reject this system, but I do not think any really forceful argu· ment was made till Kepler showed, some years later, that the Hipparchic method for the Sun's distance, based on observation of lunar eclipses, and in particular of the width of the Earth's shadow, was practically useless, a small error in the observations leading to an enormous error in the final result. The question of the reason of the spacing of the plane· tary orbs does not, then, arise in the Ptolemaic system, because all the available space has been used up in the placing of the orbs. In the Copernican theory, on the con· trary, there are unused spaces, not only a huge one beyond Saturn, separating the solar system from the stars, but also unused spaces between the hoop-shaped regions of space that the individual planets pass through in their motions (Figure 1). That is the effect of the economy of the Copernican system, the elimination of the large epicycles. Copernicus speaks of planetary orbs and spheres; whether he believed them to be real or imaginary, solid bodies or merely geometrical figures, remains a subject of scholarly debate. Kepler thought Copernicus believed the spheres to be real and solid, but in the Cosmographic Mystery he is already pointing out some of the difficulties with this conception. By what chains or struts is the Earth with its atmosphere held within the solid spherical shell to which it belongs? We are already in the heavens, and they aren't solid. But in either case, whether the spheres are real or not, there have come to be apparently functionless spaces, and the question can be raised as to the reason of the spacing of the planetary orbs. Copernicus does not raise this question. He is apparently seeking to redo not the cosmography of Ptolemy's Hypotheses of the Planets, an exercise in geometrical arrangement or layout, but the mathematical, predictive astronomy of Ptolemy's Almagest, and he wishes to do this job in a manner consistent with the first principles of the astronomical art. A primary principle is that there must be only uniform circular motion; this is required if there is to be strict periodicity, if the motions are not sometimes to fail, owing to their dependence on a changing and thus changeable motor virtue. The intellect abhors such an idea, Copernicus says. 55 �The Copernican insistence on uniformity of circular motion will be taken up by later astronomers-Tycho, Longomontanus, Bullialdus, and others-and echoed for a hundred years and more by both heliocentrists and nonheliocentrists. Not only had Ptolemy failed to keep to the principle but new phenomena, discovered since Ptolemy's time, showed that there was an inequality in the precession of the equinoxes that Ptolemy had not suspected. This was called the trepidation, supposedly proved by observations of the Arabs collated with those of Ptolemy and Hipparchus. According to one scholar (). E. Ravetz), it was this supposed phenomenon that pushed Copernicus into setting the Earth in motion. For, argued Ravetz, if the precession of the equinoxes is due to the motion of the stars, if this motion is non-uniform, and if the standard of time by which equality is judged is provided by the diurnal rotation of those very same stars, then the standard of time has been vitiated, and the entire system has become logically incoherent. The Copernican revolution, Ravetz wanted to argue, was a logical necessity, forced on Copernicus if he was to avoid logical incoherence in the measurement of time. But this is wrong. The truth is that the uniformity of the diurnal rotation would be vitiated slightly whether one assigned the trepidation to the Earth or to the stars; in either case, one would have to calculate one's way back to a uniform measure of time-something astronomers had long been doing with respect to the apparent diurnal motions of the Sun. Fortunately, the trepidation is unreal. Sometime after 1588 Tycho Brahe convinced himself that it is merely the effect of the large errors in the times of the equinoxes that Ptolemy reports in Book III of the Almagest; and this is the conclusion of modern astronomy. As for Copernicus, it was not the supposed inequality 56 in the precession, or the problem of measuring time, that led him to cast the Earth into motion. No, Copernicus's original motive appears to have been opposition to the Ptolemaic equant-that point, not the center of the circle, about which Ptolemy assumes the motion on the deferent circle to be uniform. This violated the first principle of the astronomical art, the assumption of only uniform circular motions. With this idea primarily in mind, Copernicus redoes the Almagest. Year after year, from the time he first sketched out his idea until his death, he labored over the revision of numerical constants, trying to obtain an astronomy that would be accurately predictive, fitting all the available, recorded observations. One recent biographer (Arthur Koestler) has judged him to be timorous and myopic. What is more certain is that in his efforts he met with discouragement: he could not get the numbers to come right. And in any case, he is not primarily looking at the emergent system with the eye of a cosmologist; and he is not, like the young enthusiast Kepler in 1595 and 1596, asking for the archetypal, a priori reasons in the mind of God that will account for the layout of the heliocentric world. Between Copernicus's death in 1543 and 1596, the date of Kepler's Cosmographic Mystery, there were very few Copernicans who spoke. out. The ill-fated Bruno; a poet or two in the entourage of Henry III of France; Benedetti, Galilee's precursor in mechanics; a mystically minded Englishman named Thomas Digges-they were few. An overwhelming chorus of denunciation opposed them. Melanchton (1497-1560), Luther's lieutenant and a professor at Wittenberg, referring in 1541 to the Copernican doctrine, said, Hreally, wise governments ought to repress impudence of mind." Maurolycus, a very competent and indeed innovative mathematician of Messina, said that Copernicus "deserves a whip or a scourge rather than a refutation" (Opera Mathematica, Venice, 1575). Pyrrhonist skeptics like Montaigne and his followers were fond of citing Copernicus and Paracelsus to show that there can be found people to deny even the most universally accepted principles. In these references they desired to show that we are so ignorant that it is even excessive to assert that we know that we know nothing. And Tycho Brahe wrote: "What need is there without any justification to imagine the Earth, a dark, dense and inert mass, to be a heavenly body undergoing even more numerous revolutions than the others, that is to say, subject to a triple motion, in violation not only of all physical truth but also of the authority of Holy Scripture, which ought to be paramount" (Progymnasmata, 1602). And the list of denunciations could be greatly extended. Kepler turns out to be one of the early Copernicans, one of a handful, to speak out; he does so before Galileo does, and before his own teacher Maestlin. Maestlin praises Kepler for his first book, saying, " ... at last a learned man has been found who dared to speak out in defense of Copernicus, against the general chorus of obloquy." And WINTER 1981 �Kepler's defense has a unique character, starting as it does from the notion of the spherical, Sun-centered world as symbol of God, a geometrical reflection of His triune essence, a signature of the Creator in the created world. It is this symbol, Kepler explicitly states, that encourages him to seek the reasons of the number, spacings, and ratio of motions of the planetary orbs. This symbol of God remains central in Kepler's thought; every one of his major undertakings and achievements can be related to it. Let me mention in passing that, just as Kepler's question about the spacings is inappropriate to the Ptolemaic system, so it is unlikely to arise for a follower of Tycho's system, which resembles the Copernican except that the Earth remains stationary, and the Sun with the remaining planets moves about the Earth (Figure 2). In letters written in the late 1580s, Tycho says that he was induced to give up the Ptolemaic system by the discovery, from measurements of the parallax of Mars when it is in opposition to the Sun, that it is closer to the Earth than the Sun is. This is possible in the Copernican system, but not in the Ptolemaic; the Tychonic system accommodates the fact by preserving the Copernican spacings (see Figure 2). Actually, Kepler found later that Tycho could not have determined, from his observations, the parallax of Mars; it was too small for observational discrimination by the means at his disposal. And poring over Tycho's MSS, Kepler concluded that some assistant of Tycho had misunderstood instructions and computed the parallax, not. from observation, but from the numerical parameters of Copernicus's system. In any case, if you do accept the Tychonic system, then the path of Mars cuts across the path of the Sunnot impossible, because Tycho knows by now from his study of comets that there are no solid orbs, but still inelegant. And the entire set-up lacks the centered symmetry that provoked the Keplerian inquiry. The answer Kepler finds to the first two of his questions, concerning the number and spacing of the planets, is well known (Figure 3); the discovery comes after he has tried many different schemes, and it comes, he tells Maestlin, accompanied by a flood of tears. It is based on the five regular solids or polyhedra. That there are just five polyhedra, with all faces consisting of equal, regular polygons and with all solid angles convex and equal, was one of the discoveries of Theaetetus, and the proof of it forms the culmination of Euclid's Elements. A beautiful paradigm, this, of completeness of understanding: we can prove that there are these five, and we can see why there are no more. Kepler's answer as to why there are just six planets is a structure in which the regular polyhedra are encased in one another like Chinese boxes, but with spheres in between, and with a sphere circumscribing the largest polyhedron and another sphere inscribing the smallest polyhedron, so that there are six spheres in all (Figure 4). His arrangement is: sphere of Saturn-cube-sphere of jupiter-tetrahedron-sphere of Mars-dodecahedronTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Figure 3 ' I', ___ r'lcosct.\..e.d,..0l'L - --------G.a.or+\, ------------ Vt..Y\\1.!) Figure 4 sphere of Earth-icosahedron-sphere of Venus-octahedron- sphere of Mercury. Each solid is inscribed in a sphere which passes through all its vertices, and at the same time has inscribed within it a sphere which touches the centers of all its faces. The structure is not built outward from the Sun: it is built inward and outward from the Earth's sphere, which divides the five regular solids into two groups. The cube, tetrahedron, and dodecahedron Kepler calls primary; each has vertices formed by three edges, each has its own special kind of face-square, triangle, or pentagon. The other solids, called secondary because built out of the primary, are the octahedron and icosahedron; these have their vertices formed by four and 57 �five edges, respectively, and have triangular faces. The oc· tahedron is formed from the cube by replacing square faces by the points at their centers; the icosahedron is similarly formed from the dodecahedron. A similar transformation performed on the tetrahedron yields only another tetrahedron. Kepler therefore speaks of the secondary bodies, octahedron and icosahedron, as offspring of the cube and dodecahedron, respectively; and he calls the latter bodies their fathers, as the chief determiners of their forms. But he also calls the tetrahedron their mother, as the one from whom they receive their triangular faces. The tetrahedron, meanwhile, is hermaphroditic in its production of tetrahedra. Of the primary solids, the cube has to come first, because, Kepler says, it is "the thing itself," meaning, I believe, that it presents to us the very idea of corporification, the creation of body by the regular filling-out of space in the three dimensions. The transformation of cube into tetrahedron is carried out by subtraction, replacing each square face by one of its diagonals; the transformation of cube into dodecahedron is carried out by addition, roofing over the cube, turning each edge into the diagonal of a pentagon. Out of the 120 possible orders of the five bodies, Kepler can say that he has chosen the one that singles out, as a starting point, the very notion of corporification or the creation of body, that singles out the Earth's sphere as the very special place it is, the home of the image of God, and that, given these conditions, has the most complete symmetry. And it shows at once why the number of the planets must be just six; there are only five regular solids, as Euclid proves, hence only six circumscribing and inscribing spheres; the number has been deduced from the very idea of the creation of body, of the world, by an ever geometrizing, and let me add, echoing Kepler, a playful God. And man was meant to understand these things. Kepler says: As the eye was created for color, the ear for tone, so was the intellect of humans created for the understanding not of just any thing whatsoever but of quantities . .. It is the nature of our intellect to bring to the study of divine matters concepts which are built upon the category of quantity; if it is deprived of these concepts, then it can define only by pure negations. Thus the five regular solids, the being of which depends on quantitative ratios, form the basis of the layout of the world; and man, the contemplative creature, was meant to see and appreciate this beautiful structure. But is it true? To know that, we must know that the distances in the construction jibe with the distances determined by the astronomers, and moreover, jibe rather exactly. Kepler at different times ~xpresses the thought that the imposed forms might not fit the world quite exactly, but in that case he hopes to find reasons even for the deviations. 58 F Figure 5: The squares in the ·octahedron are ABCD, BDEF, and AECF. The problem Kepler faces in testing his hypothesis is, first of all, to know which distances to take from the Copernican theory. The sphere of each planet must be of such a thickness as to accommodate the planet's approaches to and recessions from the Sun; but should one, for instance, allow space for Copernicus's equatorial epicycle, which sticks out beyond the planet's path at aphelion? And can one trust Copernicus's theories for Venus and Mercury, which involve some peculiar hypocyclic and epicyclic motions that keep time with the Earth's motion? Moreover, Kepler thinks it incongruous that Copernicus computes the planetary distances from the center of the Earth's orbit rather than from the Sun itself. It is with such considerations that Kepler begins his critique of the details of the Copernican theories. But in disallowing the equatorial epicycles, and in shifting to the real Sun as reference point, Kepler is able to make a preliminary comparison of distances. The ratios for the intervals between Mars and Jupiter and between Venus and the Earth come out with zero percent error; for the Earth-Mars interval the error is 5 percent, for the Jupiter-Saturn interval about 9 percent For the Mercury-Venus interval, with Copernicus's numbers, the error is unfortunately 20 percent Kepler persuades himself-on the ground of Mercury's very unusual situation and motion-that for Mercury the sphere to be used is that inscribed, not in the octahedron itself, but in the three squares formed by the twelve edges of the octahedron-the octahedron is the only regular solid that can be sliced through along its edges in such a WINTER 1981 �way as to yield regular polygons (Figure 5). With this concession, the Mercury-Venus error is reduced to 2 percent; the largest error remains that for Saturn, whose distance is the greatest and therefore most difficult to measure; the next largest error involves the Earth, and a Figure 6 c Kepler has reason to believe that Copernicus's theory of the Earth is in need of a major revision; and the average error for all the intervals is but 3.3 percent. Seeing how closely the numbers derived from observation and those derived from his model agree, Kepler has his initial moment of elation; later on, as he calculates, there are doubts, and then again moments of elation. He writes to Maestlin that he suspects a tremendous miracle of God. Older, more cautious, Maestlin, widely known as a competent astronomer, comes to agree with him, comes to suppose that it will be possible to obtain the distances of the planets a priori, from Kepler's model. He assists extensively in the preparation and publication of the book, in which Kepler calls upon all astronomers to help in working out the details of the hypothesis. Among the readers were those who, like Johann Praetorius of Altdorf, said that even if the numbers came out exactly, it would not mean a thing: astronomy should go back to its practical business of predicting the planetary positions on the basis of observations. Tycho's reaction was less hostile: of course there are harmonies, he said, but one must work out the planetary theories on the basis of exact observations first, before investigating the harmonies. Tycho understands here that the theories must employ uniform circular motion, in accordance with the Copernican insistence on that principle; and in contrast to Kepler he assumes that the Earth is at rest. This brings me to another theory that is contained in Kepler's book, one which Tycho will object to, and which even Maestlin finds, he says, too subtle. From the very beginning, Kepler had had a third question: he had wanted to account not only for the number and spacing of the planets, but for the proportion of their motions. From the very beginning, he had noted that the periods of the planets increase more rapidly than the distances, so that the period of the planet twice as far from the Sun is more than twice as great. This observation had been one of Kepler's THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW encouragements in the investigation of the reason of the distances, because, he says, if God adapted the motions to the orbs according to some law of distances, then surely He also accommodated the distances to some rule. The first mathematical rule Kepler proposes for the periods is given in a diagram (Figure 6). Note that the diagram is pretty. Sis the Sun, ACB the sphere of fixed stars. AEC and BFC are quadrants of circles with radius equal to the radius of the stellar sphere, SC. To a given distance of a planet from the Sun, SP, Kepler imagines that there would correspond a "vigor of motion" or speed, proportional to the line EF. In the Sun would be the moving soul, and an infinite force of motion; at the periphery are the motionless stars, providing by their distance the space for the planetary motions, and by the non-unifonnity of their distribution, a background against which the contemplative creature, man, can locate the planets. The difficulty with the scheme is that Kepler has no clue as to the radius of the cosmos, SC, and without a value for that radius, there is no possibility of calculating the consequences of the hypothesis, and so subjecting it to empirical test. This hypothesis, for Kepler at this point, has a status similar to that of the other one about the five regular solids, in the sense that it arises from the same thought, of the world as symbol of God. The five-regularsolid theory had the assumed fact of spacings to work with; this hypothesis has the assumed fact of some kind of inverse relation between distance and speed. Kepler tries another hypothesis for the motions which is more testable, and in a rough way correct, although it is not the right one (the right one is the third law that he will discover only in !618). I shall not describe it, but will only remark that here again Kepler is looking for a pure mathematical form, graspable by the mind because mathematical. He is looking for a form which will somehow make the action of the Sun on the planets a symbol of the creating and radiative activity of the Godhead. He will therefore speak of the decrease in motive vigor with increasing distance from the Sun as suitable; it was fitting that God should have arranged matters thus. Kepler also begins to compare the spreading-out of the motive virtue to the spreading out of light from a center; light, as he will say later, is a kind of mediating thing, intermediate between bodies and souls. Kepler is the first to quantify light's intensity, to say that it varies inversely as the square of the distance. It is by a similar quantification of the Sun's motive virtue that he will arrive at his celestial dynamics. He is already onto an important clue to it, in eliminating Copernicus's equatorial epicycle, which was totally incompatible with the five-regular-solid theory, and in thinking about the individual planet as slowing up at aphelion, in some proportion that he is not sure of. Between the time of completing the Cosmographic Mystery in 1596, and going to Prague to work with Tycho Brahe in 1600, Kepler became involved in the study of musical harmony, and a word must be said about this 59 �investigation as it relates to his study of the planets. Kepler loved polyphonic music, which he regarded as one of the dence between the soul and the bodily, as for instance, when the interval of a sixth following on certain disso- most important discoveries of modern times, ranking with nances triggers a particular perception of sweetness; but the compass and printing. In his Harmonic of the World, published in 1619, he will write: the bodily, in Kepler's view, does not account for the psychic in the sense of constituting its intelligible cause. Kepler's explanation for the correspondence between soul and body takes us back to the sphere, image of the triune God. By creative radiation from the center, one gets the straight line, the element of bodily form, the beginning from which all body comes to be. A straight line, rotated about one of its points, describes a plane, representing in this image the bodily. When the sphere is cut by the plane, the result is a circle, the true image of the created mind, which is assigned to govern the body. As the circle lies both on the sphere and in the plane, so is the mind at the same time in the body, which it instructs, and in God as a radiation which, so to speak, flows from It is no longer a marvel that at last this way of singing in several parts, unknown to the ancients, should have been invented by Man, the Ape of his Creator; that, namely, he should, by the artificial symphony of several voices, play out, in a brief portion of an hour, the perpetuity of the whole duration of the world, and should to some degree taste of God the Creator's satisfaction in His own works, with a most intensely sweet pleasure gained from this Music that imitates God. Kepler refers here to the potentially infinite structure of the polyphonic music he was familiar with; the Missa Papae Marcelli, for instance, like a rope of many intertwined strands, might be imagined as going on indefinitely; nothing in the internal structure requires that it come to an end at this point or that. Now for the production of polyphony, one needs to be aiming at thirds and sixths as consonances; and these intervals involve the ratios 4:5, 5:6, 3:5, and 5:8. The ancient derivation of the consonances, as for instance in Plato's Timaeus, does not treat these ratios as consonances. The trouble with Plato and the rest, Kepler says, is that they didn't listen carefully enough, before setting out to make their theory. Kepler sets out to make a new theory, without invoking the causal efficacy of numbers, or the perfection of the number six (Zarlino, we recall, had claimed to derive the consonances from just this perfection of the number six). Kepler's solution involves the regular polygons constructible with straight-edge and compass, which divide the circumference of the circle into equal parts. If one imagines the circle stretched out into a straight line, and transformed into a monochord, one has the divisions giving the consonances required for polyphony, including thirds and sixths, fundamentally because of the constructibility of the pentagon. The pentagon depends for its construction on the division of a line in extreme and mean ratio, the golden section. If you are familiar with that division, and know how it can be indefinitely reproduced by subtracting the smaller from the greater segment, or by adding the greater to the whole, you may understand why Kepler views this division as imaging sexual generation, and you will thus gain an explanation of the tender feelings that accompany thirds and sixths in polyphonic music. Kepler did not suppose, and I do not believe that any theorist before him supposed, that the inquiry into the physical conditions for the production of certain intervals would account for the shades of feeling that those intervals arouse in consciousness. On the one side we have instruments like the monochord, from which we can get numbers; on the other, we have subtle perceptions of harmony, dissonance, restoration of consonance. There is a strange correspon- 60 God's countenance. Since now Kepler conceives the cir- cle as the bearer of pure harmonies, and believes these harmonies to be based in the nature of the soul, he comes to speak of the soul as a circle, supplied with the marks of the constructible divisions, the divisions that can be concluded with ruler and compass. It is an infinitely small circle, a point equipped with directions, a qualitative point. This is no doubt a metaphor or symbol, but it is by such means alone that we can understand (insofar as that is possible) how body, soul, and God are related. The harmonic divisions of the circle apply, of course, in the heavens, as well as in music; it is from these divisions that Kepler develops his astrological doctrine, and also his harmonic theory for the planetary eccentricities. I cannot take time to describe these here. Kepler comes to see the five-regular-solid theory as inexact, an archetypal form used to determine the number of planets, but not thereafter used in its exact quantitative relations by the Creator, but slightly modified in order to jibe with the harmonic theory of the eccentricities. A playful God, ruled by the necessities of geometry, may be forced to such expedients. All these parts of Kepler's work are omitted, to say the least, from the corpus of scientific knowledge recognized today. Meanwhile, his great achievement in remaking planetary theory, accomplished first for Mars in the years 1600 to 1605, is praised, sometimes on the mistaken grounds that it is purely empirical. It is not. It involves assumptions that are rejected today. Alternative paths to the so-called Keplerian laws are conceivable, but neither could they have been purely empirical. The empirical evidence is too inexact; some reasoned guesses are required. Kepler's study first of optics and then of the motions of Mars in the years 1600 to 1605 leads to the development of a possibility already. present in his thought. He is the first to quantify the intensity of light, in accordance with the inverse square of the distance from the source. (This is a purely a priori derivation, involving no experimentaWINTER !981 �tion.) He does not regard light as material or corpuscular; that would have meant Epicurean philosophy, which like most good Christians of the time he abhorred. Rather, he says, light is quantified according to surface, not according to corporeality. It is one of a group of immaterial emanations, whereby bodies, which are isolated from each other by their bounding surfaces, are enabled to be in communication with one another. The motive virtue issuing from the Sun, Kepler finds, must be another such emanation, distinct from light, for as Kepler discovers in about 1602, its intensity varies inversely as the distance from the Sun, not as the square of the distance. The empirical support consists in what is known as the bisection of the eccentricity, which he had been able to verify from Tycho's observations in the case of Mars and the Earth. A further step is taken in 1605 when he discovers that that component of the planet's motion whereby it approaches and recedes from the Sun, can be regarded as simply a libration, or what we would today call a simple harmonic motion: this, he says, smells of the balance, not of mind. By this he means that it is a pattern not chosen for its aesthetic or mathematical beauty but determined by the law of the lever and the nature of matter. Here is introduced something that one can perhaps call mechanism: matter turns out to have inertia in the sense of being sluggish, and it turns out to be pushed by an immaterial something in an incomprehensible way. As Kepler clearly realizes, the mechanism or quasi-mechanism could not, in principle, account for everything. It accounts for the actions but it does not account for the initial conditions, the sizes of the orbits and their eccentricities. These must be works of mind, harmonically determined. Kepler's Harmonies of the World (Harmonice mundi) of 1619 will remain his final testament. And indeed it is through the spherical symbol, ultimate source of the harmonies that he calls archetypal, that Kepler was first enabled to accept Copernicanism, and then, developing the emanative aspect of the symbol, to banish from the sky the celestial intelligences, the planetary movers of Aristotle and Ptolemy, ultimate relics of paganism (as he calls them), and to regard the planets as material, subject to quantifiable forces that man from his moving platform can measure. Kepler wanted to dedicate his Harmonice mundi to James I of England. For years, very naively from a political point of view, he had looked to this monarch as the hope of Europe, the one who could bring a religious peace out of the strife of Reformation and Counter-Reformation. The relevance of the Harmonice mundi to this end was that it was a work of the liberal arts, the arts of peace as Kepler called them, setting forth the principles of the harmonies with which the world had been adorned by its Creator. Kepler thought that, could these things but be seen, men would be raised above the level of doctrinal dispute. But it is doubtful that James I read far into the THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW book. And indeed, no one in the seventeenth century that I know of accepted either Kepler's dynamics as a whole (Leibniz undertook to revamp it), or his harmonic even in part. And as the book first appeared for sale in the market stalls, the Thirty Years War had already begun its terrible course. Turning to Newton, we will probably not expect to find effusions about the celestial harmonies in his writings. True enough, in the second edition of the Principia, explaining his rules of reasoning in philosophy, Newton says that Nature is ever consonant with itself; and so we might imagine it as emitting some single, deep organ tone. But this is from the second edition, 1713, and the first edition, 1687, does not contain the rules of reasoning, at least in their final form, and such as it contains, it labels "hypotheses". We are thus led to suspect that Newton's understanding of his great discovery when he was in the midst of making it, was rather different from the understanding he later came to have of it, when he was defending it before the world. Shortly after the publication of the first edition, Newton began a series of revisions, pertaining particularly to the early part of Book III. He wrote a series of scholia to accompany those propositions, 4-9, which lead to the establishment of universal gravitation. I wish to quote to you from the proposed scholium to Proposition 8. By what proportion gravity decreases in receding from the Planets the ancients have not sufficiently explained. Yet they appear to have adumbrated it by the harmony of the celestial spheres, designating the Sun and the remaining six planets ... by means of Apollo with the Lyre of seven strings, and measuring the intervals of the spheres by the intervals of the tones. Thus they alleged that seven tones are brought into being ... and that the Sun strikes the strings. Hence Macrobius says, "Apollo's Lyre of seven strings provides understanding of the motions of all the celestial spheres over which nature has set the Sun as moderator." And Proclus (commenting) on Plato's Timaeus, "The number seven they have dedicated to Apollo as to him who embraces all symphonies whatsoever, and therefore they used to call him ... the Prince of the number seven." Likewise in Eusebius' Preparation of the Gospel, the Sun is called, by the oracle of Apollo, the king of the seven-sounding harmony. But by this symbol they indicated that the Sun by his own force acts upon the planets in that harmonic ratio of distances by which the force of tension acts upon strings of different lengths ... The same tension upon a string half as long acts four times as powerfully, for it generates the Octave, and the Octave is produced by a force four times as great. For if a string of given length stretched by a given weight produced a given tone, the same tension upon a string thrice as short acts nine times as much. For it produces the twelfth [i.e. an octave plus a fifth], and a string which stretched by a given weight produces a given tone needs to be stretched by nine times as much weight so as to produce the twelfth ... Let me briefly review the mathematical relation here (Figure 7). Imagine a series of six strings with length propor- 61 �But he taught that the sounds were emitted by the motion and attrition of the solid spheres, as though a great sphere emitted a heavier tone as happens when iron hammers are smitten. And from this, it seems, was born the Ptolemaic System of orbs, when meanwhile Pythagoras beneath parables of this sort was hiding his own system and the true harmony of the heavens. Figure 7 tiona! to the distances from the Sun to the six planets; let equal weights be hung on the strings; we thus obtain six different tones-very dissonant with one another, let me add, but Newton does not mention the fact. These tones betoken different forces, which can be measured by taking strings of equal lengths and hanging on them different weights, so as to give the same tones. Any two of the weights will be inversely as the squares of the corresponding lengths. Newton continues: Now this argument is subtle, yet became known to the ancients, for Pythagoras, as Macrobius avows, stretched the intestine of sheep or the sinews of oxen by attaching various weights, and from this learned the ratio of the celestial harmony. Therefore, by means of such experiments he ascertained that the weights by which all tones on equal strings [were produced] ... were reciprocally as the squares of the lengths of the strings by which the musical instrument emits the same tones. But the proportion discovered by these experiments, on the evidence of Macrobius, he applied to the heavens and consequently by comparing those weights with the weights of the Planets and the lengths of the strings with the distances of the Planets, he understood by means of the harmony of the heavens that the weights of the Planets towards the Sun were reciprocally as the squares of their distances from the Sun. But the Philos~ ophers loved so to mitigate their mystical discourses that in the presence of the vulgar they foolishly propounded vulgar matters for the sake of ridicule, and hid the truth beneath discourses of this kind. In this sense Pythagoras numbered his musical tones from the Earth, as though from here to the Moon were a tone, and thence to Mercury a semitone, and from thence to the rest of the planets other musical intervals. 62 I have to say: Newton's interpretation of the ancient texts is not a little dubious. Contrary to what all seventeenth-century Copernicans believed, the early Pythagoreans were not heliocentrists; Philolaus, a contemporary of Socrates and the first Pythagorean to write down doctrine (for which he is supposed to have been appropriately punished), did not in fact know the Earth to be round, and his Central Fire was not the Sun. Again, so far as anyone knows today, the law relating weights and stringlengths for different musical intervals was first discovered not by Pythagoras but in the late 1580s by Vincenzo Galilei, the father of Galileo Galilei. Indeed, the discovery of this law, which can be verified very precisely if one has a good ear (and Vincenzo was a musician)-this discovery may have been what set Galileo on his course of experimentation, seeking exact numerical ratios in nature; he started with pendulums (again, weights hung on strings), and proceeded to motion down inclined planes, in order perhaps to analyze the motion of the pendulum. But the incorrectness of Newton's interpretations is not my concern here. The sheer volume of the manuscripts, the many variants and revisions, in all of which Newton is seeking to show that the ancient philosophers before Aristotle understood the Newtonian system of the world, demonstrates that these views were important to Newton. Can we make that fact intelligible to ourselves or must we conclude simply that it is one of the queernesses of genius? I want to speak briefly about the discovery of universal gravitation. I have recently changed my mind on this matter. My previous argument (which I unfortunately published) was that before !684 Newton did not have his "proof' of universal gravitation, therefore was uncertain about the universality. I now suspect that before !684 a good deal more was missing than just the "proof'; I suspect that the idea itself, as a clear and cogent proposal, was not yet present to his mind. The idea of universal gravitation can seem more paradoxical than we perhaps realize. For a long time, since the 1720s, it was generally thought that Newton already in 1666 had all his principal ideas, and was held up from producing his masterpiece by the lack of a good value for the Earth's radius, or according to a nineteenth-century suggestion, by the lack of a certain mathematical theorem. That interpretation is supported by no solid evidence whatsoever; there is no sign that Newton entertained the idea of universal gravitation before 1684. And up to !679, all of Newton's statements about planetary motion imply either Descartes' theory of vortices, and/or an aethereal theory to keep the planets from receding from the Sun. WINTER 1981 �Newton uses Descartes 1 term1 conatus recedendi a centro 1 the term which Huygens in 1673 replaces by the term centrifugal force. Newton's thought about planetary motion during these years, like that of Huygens, remains confined to Descartes' analogy of the stone in the sling. There is no evidence that, before 1679, Newton ever conceptualizes the orbital process as the falling of the planet out of the rectilinear path it would follow if left to itself, a falling towards a central attracting body. Now this does not mean that during these years Newton altogether rejected the possibility of attractions and repulsions as possible physical causes. He was not a Cartesian; he did not believe space to be identical with matter, and all transfer of motion to be by contact. He was familiar with Gassendi 1 s counter-argument1 according to which not everything that is, is substance or accident; thus time and space need not be the accidents of anything, but may independently subsist, and so space need not be the space of something (namely body). This argument may not have satisfied Newton, but given Torricelli's experiment with the barometer, he was willing to grant the vacuum. While this discovery does not in itself lead to the granting of real attractions and repulsions, it opens up the possibility and even the desirability of hypothesizing them. If there are spaces free of matter between the smallest parts of bodies, or the corpuscles of which ordinary bodies are composed, then in order that the parts of these ordinary bodies should cohere and various substances should have the various chemical and physical properties they exhibit, we may well be led to postulate "intermolecular" forces. No doubt, to hypothesize such forces was to depart from the accepted norm of natural philosophy established by Descartes. But Robert Hooke was doing it, and Newton began doing it, speaking of the sociability and unsociability of bodies in chemical reactions and cohesions. The forces he considered seem to have been forces acting over very small distances; his alchemical experiments were probably meant to find out about them. In 1679 comes the famous exchange of letters between Hooke and Newton, a polite fencing between bitter enemies. Here Hooke explicitly proposes that Newton work out the path of a body under an inverse-square attraction that pulls the body away from its rectilinear trajectory. So far as the evidence goes, this is the first time that Newton faced the planetary problem in such a form. And under this provocation, he makes the great discovery that a force of attraction, directed toward a fixed center, implies the equable description of areas, Kepler's so-called second law. He applies this law, which allows him to use area to represent time, to the ellipse with center of attraction in the focus, and finds that the force follows an inverse-square law. At one point I thought that it was Hooke who first placed in front of Newton the idea of universal gravitation, so that if Newton had not grasped it before, he did so now, and proceeded to look for a way to test it. But the fact is THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW that Hooke himself did not believe gravitation to be universal, that is, applicable to absolutely all matter. He had generalized gravitation more than any previous author. Earlier authors like Kepler had regarded attraction as belonging to cognate bodies, that is, closely related bodies like jupiter and its satellites, or the Earth and its moon. Thus Roberval could talk of a lunar gravity, a terrestrial gravity1 a solar gravity 1 a jovial gravity 1 and so on. Let me quote Hooke's view in 1678; he is here explaining an hypothesis about comets: I suppose the gravitating power of the Sun in the center of this part of the Heaven in which we are, hath an attractive power upon all the bodies of the Planets, and of the Earth that move about it, and that each of those again have a respect answerable, whereby they may be said to attract the Sun in the same manner as the Load-stone hath to Iron, and the Iron hath to the Load-stone. I conceive also that this attractive virtue may act likewise upon several bodies that come within the center of its sphere of activity 1 though 'tis not improbable also but that as on some bodies it may haVe no effect at all, no more than the Load-stone which acts on Iron, hath upon a bar of Tin, Lead, Glass, Wood, etc., so on other bodies, it may have a clean contrary effect, that is of protrusion, thrusting off, driving away ... ; whence it is, I conceive, that the parts of the body of this Comet (being confounded or jumbled, as 'twere together, and so the gravitating principle destroyed) become of other natures than they were before, and so the body may cease to maintain its place in the Universe, where it was first placed. Now Hooke is an inductivist of a sort, but induction is not here leading to universal gravitation. That is, Hooke is not concluding that every particle of matter attracts every other in exactly the same way. In his correspondence with Newton in the following year, Hooke suggests that Newton may be able to think of a cause of the gravitating principle: now in Hooke's understanding-and I think in Newton's, too-to say that was to imply that gravitation is not universal, for the material cause of gravitation could not itself be subject to gravitation. In view of the passages cited and others I shall refer to later, I suspect that the idea of a truly universal gravitation became effectively present to Newton only after he had discovered the "proof." Why propose a theory which, by its very nature, precludes any mechanical explanation, which seems to preclude being tested, and which, moreover, as Newton actually suggests once he has begun to entertain it, would seem to put the calculation of a planetary orbit beyond the power of any human mind? There is the problem, also, of explaining Newton's delay for five more years after 1679. The best explanation, I believe, is that Newton does not yet think he has discovered anything very important, and sees no direction in which to pursue his discovery. Then Halley appears, probably in August of 1684, and persuades him that his discovery of the logical relation between the inverse-square law and the Sun-focused elliptical orbit is important, and 63 �that he should publish it, to secure the invention to himself. Newton sets to work, and we have a series of MSS which can be arranged in temporal order on the basis of internal evidence. In the first MS, there is no sign of the notion of universal gravitation. Newton speaks of gravity as one species of centripetal force-the term "centripetal force" making its first appearance here (it is Newton's invention). There is no hint of the problems of perturbation, the disturbance of the orbit and motion of one planet by the attraction of another planet. The inverse-square law is derived from Kepler's third law as applied to the planets and to the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, that is, from the fact that, for both the satellites and the circumsolar planets, the squares of the periods are as the cubes of the mean distances from the central body. Newton shows that the revolving bodies must be subject to a centripetal force toward the central body which varies inversely as the square of the distance. The orbits are simply said to be elliptical. The entire development, I believe, is up in the air, in the sense that Newton does not know the cause of the attraction, does not know how exact Kepler's third law may be (he had questioned its exactitude at an earlier date), and is merely proceeding mathematically without knowing what may underlie his derivation of the inverse square law; it could be something that might lead to the results needing to be qualified. To mention just one possible explanation, one that Newton had thought up in the 1660s and proposed to the Royal Society in 1675: the action of the Sun on the planets might be due to the inrushing of a subtle aether, which would serve as fuel for the Sun's burning. A similar but different aether might be rushing into the Earth to produce terrestrial gravity; this aether might be transformed chemically within the Earth, then issue forth as our atmosphere. The satellite systems of Jupiter and Saturn might be sustained by similar circulations of aether. These several centripetal forces would be explicable mechanically, that is by impacts; gravitation would not be universal, for the in-rushing aether would not itself be subject to the forces it caused in other bodies. In the second MS the notion of perturbation appears. Newton is now assuming that all the bodies of the solar system attract one another, just as Hooke had before. Can the planetary orbits still be said to be elliptical? Hardly, if the ellipses are drawn badly out of shape by the perturbations, the attractions of the different planets toward one another. What must be done is to evaluate the relative magnitude of these perturbations. How is that going to be possible? Newton does it by considering the accelerations of the satellites of Jupiter towards Jupiter, of the Moon towards the Earth, of Venus towards the Sun_ Each satellite is being accelerated towards the body round which it goes, and that acceleration depends on the power of the central body to attract, and so may be able to serve as a measure 64 of that power. Of course, to be comparable measures, all three satellites ought to be at the same distance from their central body, and they aren't. But we can shift them in thought to the same distance, by using the inversesquare law. What we get, then, are the comparative attractive powers of Jupiter, the Earth, the Sun. That of the Sun is overwhelmingly larger than the others. But do we really have attractions here or not? Thus far there has been no evidence that Newton's aethereal theory for the planets is wrong. What then happens, I think, is that Newton realizes a consequence of something he has been assuming. In his derivation of the comparative attractive powers of Jupiter, the Earth, etc., he has been assuming that the quantity of matter of the satellite or test body didn't (if you will forgive a pun) matter; it didn't matter what mass it had, it was accelerated to the same degree anyhow, the differences between the masses of the test bodies could be ignored. Is that right? Is it so on the Earth? Did Newton know the downward acceleration of all bodies on the Earth, at a given place, to be the same? Not at this moment. Earlier we know he had assumed the rates to be slightly different for different bodies, depending on their micro-structure, and the way the downflowing aether affected them. Now, in the third MS, Newton sets out to test the constancy, and this is the most precise experiment reported in the Principia. He takes equal weights of nine different materials; encloses each of them-gold, salt, wool, wood, and so onin boxes of equal size and shape, to make the air resistance the same; and uses these boxes as the bobs for nine different pendulums, with very long but equal suspensions. The pendulums, he says, played exactly together for a very long time. The accelerations of these different materials, he concludes, cannot differ from one another by more than one part in a thousand. Essentially the same experiment, the EotvOs experiment, has been performed in this century with a precision of one part in one billion. Another way of stating the result, you may know, is that inertial mass is proportional to weight. At this point in the manuscript series, there appears for the first time in history, so far as I know, a statement of Newton's third law of motion, the equality of action and reaction. Let me now put these two results together-Newton's Eotvos experiment, and his third law, as they are put together in the Principia. The first implies that bodies on the Earth are accelerated downward by a force that is strictly proportional to what Newton now calls their mass, by which he means their resistance to being accelerated. (If the proportionality had not been exact, the pendulums would not have played together, would not have had the same periods.) If the same thing holds with respect to Jupiter, with respect to Saturn, and with respect to the Sun, then one can compare the attracting powers of these different bodies in the way we have already seen: by taking a test body, it doesn't matter of what mass, placing it at a fixed distance from the attracWINTER 1981 �ting body, and seeing how much it is accelerated. Newton couldn't do this physically, as we've said, but assummg the inverse-square Jaw he could find from the actual acceleration of a body at one distance what the acceleration would be if the satellite were placed at any stipulated distance. Now comes the final step. Since the mass of the test body can be ignored, in the comparison of the attracting forces of two bodies, one can use each as a test body for the other. Then A's power of attraction B's power of attraction acceleration of B acceleration of A By the third law of motion, these accelerations are inversely as the inertial masses: acceleration of B acceleration of A mass of A mass ofB Putting the two results together, A's power of attraction B's power of attraction mass of A mass of B All right, that's it. The gravitational force is proportional to both the mass of the attracting and the mass of the attracted body. Inertial mass belongs to bodies merely because they are bodies. Therefore gravitational force goes with all bodies; all bodies attract gravitationally. Gravitational attraction is therefore inexplicable by any mechanical model of matter in motion. The mechanical philosophy, Newton concludes in the 1680s and 1690s, is dead; he has rediscovered the ancient mystic Pythagorean truth of the harmony of the spheres. Gravitation, he concludes, is the result simply of the immediate action of God. There was a tradition in seventeenth-century England, pursued particularly by the so-called Cambridge Platonists Henry More and Ralph Cudworth, having to do with the prisci theologi or ancient theologians-Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Thales, Plato, and so on-whose pagan wisdom, it was claimed, was really derivative from that of the Hebrew prophets, especially Moses. More and Cudworth· developed their interpretation of these ancient doctrines into a justification for a new and revolu- tionary natural philosophy, that is, for modern science as it was coming to be in the works of Galileo and Descartes. Newton, influenced by these men in earlier years, now believes he has found the right interpretation of the ancient wisdom precisely because he has found the right natural philosophy. And so he writes: Since all matter duly formed is attended with signs of life and all things are framed with perfect art and wisdom and nature does nothing in vain; if there be an universal life and all space be the sensorium of a thinking being who by immediate presence perceives all things in it, as that which thinks in us, perceives their pictures in the brain; those laws of motion THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW arising from life or will may be of universal extent. To some such laws the ancient philosophers seem to have alluded when they called God Harmony and signified his actuating matter harmonically by the God Pan's playing upon a Pipe . .. To the mystical philosophers Pan was the supreme divinity inspiring this world with harmonic ratio like a musical instrument and handling it with modulation according to that saying of Orpheus "striking the harmony of the world in playful song". But they said that the Planets move in their circuits by force of their own souls, that is, by force of the gravity which takes its origin from the action of the soul. From this, it seems, arose the opinion of the peripatetics concerning Intelligences moving solid globes. But the souls of the sun and of all the planets the more ancient Philosophers held for one and the same divinity exercising its powers in al1 bodies whatsoever ... All [their gods] are one thing, though there be many names. And so Newton goes on to argue, using passages from Plato and Lucretius and many other ancient writings, that the philosophers of antiquity-Thales, Anaximander, Pythagoras, Democritus, and so on-were really agreed upon the atomicity of matter, the inverse-square law of gravitation, the universality of gravitation, and further, true mystics that they were, held the true cause of gravity to be the direct action of God. The unity of physical, moral, and theological wisdom is thus shown to have been present in the beginnings of the world, transmitted from Adam and Eve. That unity and that wisdom were gradually lost, after the corruptions of the sons of Noah; but now they have been recovered and restored by Newton, who thus takes his place among the prisci theologi, the ancient theologians. Newton is even able to find in the biblical book of Daniel the prophecy of his, Newton's, rediscovery of the truth. So the first beginnings of a mathematized celestial dynamics came, with Kepler, out of a trinitarian symbol, the three-foldness of the Sun, spherical shell of stars and intervening space in a Sun-centered world; Kepler had his main idea from the beginning. With Newton it was different, and the crucial justifying discovery came late, with a precise experiment to test the exactness of the constancy of the acceleration of gravity, and a new realization of the meaning of that constancy. And in a world that has now lost its geometrical center, Newton accepts this. discovery as a revelation of a mysterious, omnipresent, unitarian God, to discourse of whom from the appearances, as he will tell us in the General Scholium to the second edition of the Principia, does certainly belong to Natural Philosophy. But the most famous statement of the General Scholium, presented there as the outcome of inductivist caution, "f do not contrive hypotheses" (hypotheses, that is, as to the cause of gravitation)-this statement disguised rather than expressed the deeper ground of Newton's original and I suspect persisting view, that gravi- tation was indeed universal, and the result of the direct action of God, so that no hypotheses for it could be successfully contrived. 65 �Recent Events In the West* Er will mein Leben und mein Glueck; und fuehlt nicht, dass der schon tot ist, der um seiner Sicherhett willen lebt. Leo Raditsa Introduction After five years of evasion there is now something like the beginning of awareness that in 1975 Soviet actions changed fundamentally. In 1975 the Soviet Union began to separate Europe from America by taking over countries, openly and through proxies, that border on trade routes and have natural resources without which neither Europe and the United States can survive. At the same time the propaganda war, now carried on largely by countries of the so-called Third World, and the attack on international traditions (seizure of embassies, murder of nations, murder of refugees, murder of political exiles, and terrorism) intensified. The object of this apparently chaotic and "spontaneous" second war is not only to distract attention from the strategic significance of recent Soviet advances but also to destroy international public opinion by making it complicit with murder-the public opinion that Solzhenitsyn says has been destroyed in Russia and has left people helpless against themselves and others. The Soviets aim to win control of Europe without actually fighting a total war by exploiting the Free World's fear of nuclear disaster and its present reluctance to fight small wars-and even to defend itself by openly stating the truth. But their success, if it can be called that, would probably bring only bitterer wars. ' . This article is first in a series dealing with the United States in the world-a series, in part, provoked by Raymond Aron's recent remark: "Le peuple america in s'est toujours plus preoccupe de lui-m~me que du monde exterieur." I write here in my own name, not as editor. My views do not represent the editorial policy of The St. fohn's Review. L R. 66 In the United States and Europe the sense of crisis appears now widespread but mixed with resignation and bafflement. Both the bafflement and the resignation come, probably, most of all from unacknowledged fear, but they also come from lack of policy. The simple return to the "containment" of the late forties and fifties does not make sense, even if it were possible, for containment, especially the passivity and rigidity it tended to foster, has had a lot to do with bringing us into the present danger. Also, more importantly, containment focuses too much on the future at the expense of the present struggle which will decide the future. Policy must be more active, more daring, more courageous, and what amounts to the same thing, more modest. Above all, the government must not be afraid to speak the truth. In its further reaches the crisis we are now living started in 1914. The struggle against totalitarianism is always in part a struggle against ourselves, for totalitarianism sprang from our thought and the distortions of our traditions. It is not alien to us. We know it all too well-and until recently it has won widespread allegiance in the Free World. What passes for totalitarianism's strength (actually, nothing more than force) comes from our weakness. Because totalitarian regimes exist off our weakness, they are not enemies which countries and in.dividuals can respect. As a result, war with them is unceasing when it is not total and self-destructive. Because we fear ourselves to some extent in them, struggle with totalitarianism tends to undo reLeo Raditsa recently published Some Sense About Wilhelm Reich (Philosophical Library 1978). He writes frequently on current events in the world for Midstream and other publications. WINTER 1981 �spect for virtues otherwise selfevident, such as courage. But it is from those who have lived under these regimes and remained true to themselves that courage can be relearned. "Pygmies in power-the Mussolinis, Stalins, and Hitlers-seem like giants; mediocrities like men of genius; men of genius like madmen" (Lev Kopelev). l. The Recent Background Since 1975 seven countries have succumbed to commu~ nist aggression. In all instances the Soviets were involved. Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, South Yemen, Angola, Ethiopia, Afghanistan. (The situation in Mozambique is not clear.) In Angola and Afghanistan resistance, mostly ignored, continues. Until recently only Solzhenitsyn dared keep count. The end of 1975 made it plain that defeat in Vietnam was not an isolated instance but a general route, especially a psychological route that involved the whole free world, profoundly. Abandoned to a three-sided civil war in the collapse of Portuguese self-confidence, Angola was invaded in 1975 by Cuban troops with East German and Soviet advisorsa clear violation of the self-determination of nations, open aggression. Kissinger resorted to covert aid to the Angolans fighting the Cubans, but at the same time forbade Moynihan to bring the aggression against Angola before the UN. Once exposed, Kissinger's secretiveness pro~ voked a congressional prohibition against aid to Angola. Had the opposition to the Vietnam War been rational, disinterested and forthright, against one specific, miscon~ ceived war, it would have been able to distinguish between Indochina and Angola, and it would have known the danger to the free world, especially to its raw materials and trade routes, in the attack on Angola and on the Horn of Africa. But behind 1975 and the fall of Saigon lies 1973, and 1968 and 1967. These mark even more fundamental turning points whose importance begins to be perceived, dimly, only now. In 1967 Israel won a war and it conquered territory. It struck first (because its survival depended on it) when it became clear that Nasser was about to attack. But victory and, worse still, inadvertent conquest as a result of the readiness to fight for one's life (a "right" whose assurance in article 51 of the UN Charter only serves to hamper its exercise) violates all contemporary sensibilities, which exist on their denial of the most obvious experience of the past. Nobody knew what to do with this victory and this strength. Above all it embarrassed us, especially our government. Like our own victory in the Second World War we could not cope with it, especially in its contrast to our incapacity to face either victory or defeat in Indochina. Our government (for instance in 1969), in accordance with the unmistakably expressed desire of people and the THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Congress, helped Israel with economic and military aid; but on condition that it show "flexibility" and assume something like sole responsibility for the war-that it appear to deny itself. That there was a place for courage and heroism in our world, and that it could be effective, was more than we could bear: At the same time we could not deny it outright, for that would be too obvious a self-betrayal. As a result of this victory of 1967, even the UN in resolution 242 had to acknowledge, grudgingly, Israel's "right" to survival. The ambiguity, really the ambivalence, that shows itself in this resolution's refusal to accept the victory it had to acknowledge, provided the basis for the continuance of the war of 1967. Inspired by the PLO's example, the terrorism which started in a big way after Israel's victory in the 1967 war represents a continuation and extension of that war throughout much of the free world in order to undo its victory and prevent negotiations for peace. 1 The terrorists sensed they could win in the great cities of the free world and in the UN the victory the Arabs had been denied on the battlefield. This violence has worked. People who before 1967 had never heard of the "Palestinians" or the PLO now speak dimly of their "right" to "self-determination".' This capacity to carry on a war throughout the world in random violence-a war that has been lost in open battle-tells something of the character of the war we are involved in throughout the world. Our world allows courage on the battlefield to be undone by cowardly murder. Without Soviet support and training this war would not have been carried out in such a highly professional and organized manner. To my knowledge no government in the free world has spoken out openly about Soviet involvement in terrorism. Yet it has been known in the West at least since 1973 that since 1967 the Soviet Union has been training foreign terrorists in Moscow. President Carter in his State of the Union message after the Soviet attack on Afghanistan never mentioned it. With some exceptions (Israel, Italy since the murder of Mora, Germany at least once, Britain lately) Western governments have negotiated with terrorists. Because of their unwillingness to make public the Soviet Union's involvement in terroriSm, these governments have acted as if each nation's terrorism was its own "personal" problem that had no relation to the common danger they feared to identify. In fact the terrorists are often native sons. This capacity to make nations turn in on themselves (as if they were alone in the world), in the illusion of looking out for themselves, has been one of the worst effects of terrorism. With its demonstration of the West's weakness and lack of cohesion, the effectiveness of terrorism has probably surprised the Soviet Union. Events since 1967 have shown that we, at least our governments, will put up with international wars as long as those that fight them (for instance, the terrorists) do not show undeniable courage. 1968 brought the open Soviet crushing of Czechoslovakia, which, unlike Hungary in 1956, had neither defied the 67 �Soviet Union in the name of democracy nor taken to arms. An event that hardly affected Europe's and the United States' relations with the Soviet Union: 1969 was the beginning of so-called detente in Europe. By their readiness to negotiate with the Soviet Union as if nothing had happened, the governments of Europe and, three years later, the United States, showed the Soviet regime that despite their mild protestations they were indifferent to the breaking of Czechoslovakia. 1969 also brought johnson's refusal ·to run for reelection. Within six months of Nixon's accession to office at the beginnng of 1969 the first troops were withdrawn from Vietnam-a change in policy which despite Nixon's and Kissinger's intentions to the contrary eventually led to the abandonment of South Vietnam-the necessary consequence, in Hanoi's view, of Nixon's and Kissinger's desire to lessen American commitment. The 1973 war in the Middle East, which began with a surprise attack on Israel on all fronts, and which Israel barely survived, by luck and extraordinary courage, marks another turning point. Its consequences were obvious, though they were denied even by a publication of the courage and the intelligence of The Economist. Perceived accurately as a renewed outbreak of the continuing war in the Middle East, the War of 1973 also intensified and extended the war that had continued almost unnoticed outside of Israel since 1967. Its chief feature was the Arab oil-producing nations' and Persia's extortion- ary resort to the oil embargo and the formation of an oil cartel that included Venezuela and Indonesia. Such a cartel represented a direct attack on the Atlantic Charter, which had laid the basis of the prosperity of the world since 1945 by insisting on the freedom of trade between nations, including specifically trade in natural re- sources. The oil embargo threatened the world free trade had made, in which the fiercest competition exists between nations rather than within them. Suddenly, states which had nationalized their oil industries, or at any rate controlled them, resorted to monopoly and artificial price fixng, with not a murmur of protest from the Western industrialized nations. Because it undermined Western leadership by attacking its guarantee of free and unrestricted trade between nations, this extortionary action helped the Soviets more than they could help themselves. The Arabs, some of whom said they hated communism, were in fact undermining "capitalism". Consciously or not, they acted in accordance with Stalin's understanding that held that "revolution" could be brought about not only within nations but between them, by putting the poor and undeveloped nations against the industrial nations. By allowing the Arab nations and Persia (which was primarily responsible for the second doubling of prices in 1973) to get away with this extortion, the United States and its allies were not only undoing themselves but help1 ing the oil producing countries to undo themselves. Barely five years later, the collapse of Persia showed this self-de- 68 structiveness to a world baffled because it had too long told itself its paralysis would have no consequence. The collusion of the blackmailed with the blackmailers blinded them both to obvious facts. Neither the Shah nor the government of the United States, even after they had been warned by what was left of the CIA and by Israeli intelligence, faced the opposition to the Shah within Persia. The passive acquiescence. to oil extortion also immedi- ately allowed the gap between America and Europe to widen. It encouraged Europe to make her own arrangements. With the exception of Portugal-which allowed American planes flying to the aid of Israel to refuel-and the Netherlands, Europe indulged in a display of cravenness. Italy, which had been deeply moved by Israel's courage in 1967 and strongly supported it, held its silence in 1973. Its once leading newspaper, the Carriere della Sera, shifted to a pro-Arab line. The Arab resort to the use of oil as a weapon intensified the extension of the Middle East War, which the terrorists had begun after 1967, to every individual in the free world. Within less than two years the extortion succeeded in winning the acceptance of the PLO, with observer status and in some sessions with the attributes of full sovereignty, at the UN. Nor did the United States help Europe, which is dependent on the Middle East for about seventy percent of its oil and, therefore, for its riches. (A one percent increase in production brings with it something like one percent increase in oil consumption.) Acting as if its relation to Eu- rope was of little importance, it has increased the pressure on Europe by allowing its oil imports to increase staggeringly-by about forty percent in the period of 1973-1978. The evasiveness of the United States and Europe toward oil extortion has also weakened their relations with their own citizens, for they dared not bring home the grim realities of their citizens. By 1978 on the average only twenty-two percent of the real rise of the price in oil had shown up in the price of gas and heating fueJ.l The rise in inflation in almost every major country in Europe to levels not easily controlled comes in part from this evasion. The evasiveness about oil brought with it an evasiveness about the Soviets. Few in office spoke openly of growth in Soviet conventional and nuclear armaments. Only Margaret Thatcher has spoken with anything approaching forthrightness and conviction about the danger facing the West, both the economic danger and the threat from the Soviet Union. In these years (after 1969) of great and obvious danger in which we acted as if there was no danger, Kissinger managed to persuade us that the time had come to negotiate with the Soviets. He even managed to persuade us to think that they would help us out of our difficulties in Indochina, that they could be made to cooperate at a time of our obvious weakness. This willingness, initiated by the government, to think the Soviet regime would behave "more reasonably", that "super-power" relations could WINTER 1981 �improve in the midst of obvious Western weakness, is the most striking feature of the period. The last decade shows that the Soviet Union and its satellites, for instance, Hanoi, will play upon our fear of nu· clear destruction, which we call our yearning for peace, until we are weak enough to be overrun. By abolishing conscription, our government appears no longer willing to risk our lives in our defense. In the instance of Europe this subjection may not re· quire direct Soviet conquest but simply neutralization. Giscard d'Estaing's and Schmidt's readiness to meet with the Soviet leaders as if nothing had happened, a few months after the Soviet attack on Afghanistan, show this process to have started already. Strangely, the economi· cally weaker of the larger nations of NATO, Italy and Britain, have shown themselves our bravest allies. The governments of France and Germany are rich enough to risk betraying their countries-and the rest of Europe. American confusion allows them such indulgence. Would Giscard and Schmidt have dealt with the Soviet regime if Muskie had not preceded them with his meeting with Gromyko in Vienna? 2. 1979 Afghanistan in 1980 showed Soviet brutality unmistakably to men who had mistaken their forgetfulness of the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 for the illusions of detente. 1979 had already told something of what the fu· lure could hold. It was in 1979 that we began to understand the actual consequences of the war in Indochina in the four years after the fall of Saigon. For immediately after the fall of Saigon, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam slipped off the map. First there was a deadly silence, then dim suspicions of murder in Cam· bodia, confirmed in hearings before a Congressional com- mittee (July, 1977) and by Cambodian refugees in France. The information was received numbly-there was nothing like a public outcry. It took Carter, as Paul Seabury noticed, more than a year in office before he even mentioned, and then only meekly, the murder there. The last we had seen was the bloody conquest of Phnomph Penh in which patients were left to die on the operating table. The New York Times reporter confessed to a seizure of ~'double vision": the butchery of conquest and a whole population driven out into the countryside was not at all what he had meant by "revolution". Faced with slaughter before his eyes, he could tell the difference between his aspirations and fantasies and murder: but he had to see the slaughter. Knowledge, the experience of the past, had not been enough. It must be this that drives Solzhenitsyn to say that the West will not wake up until it too has been through the camps. The silence in the four years since the fall of Saigon tells something about freedom and what free countries do to the world. Without their presence there is no informaTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW tion. You only find out when it is too late and at the risk of the lives of those who dare bear witness. And the murder of those who bear witness goes on right now. In Persia, a young woman of thirty dared speak in her own name, in the spring of 1980, of the murders of socalled government troops in Kurdistan and call for French intervention. She was murdered almost immediately after publication of her testimony in L'Express-murdered by those readers of the international press, the "holy revolutionaries" of Teheran. In 1979, with the boat people in flight from the North Vietnamese regime and hundreds of thousands of Cambodians trying to cross into Thailand, the murder of the previous four years broke before our eyes. 1979 started, really, at Christmas of 1978, with the Vietnamese attack on Cambodia. Numbering an estimated six hundred thousand men, the Vietnamese army is one of the largest in the world, battle-hardened and arrogant in a victory won not on the battlefield but in the newspapers, radio, and television of Europe and the United States. Vietnam's attack on Cambodia occurred in the days of President Carter's recognition of the regime in mainland China (an- nounced December 16, 1978, for January I, 1979). On February 17, a few days after the visit of the Chinese Vice-Premier to Washington, China attacked Vietnam. The American government's apparent surprise showed the good faith that informed the new relationship. Since notlii"ng much worse than Pol Pot could be imagined, the first reaction to_ the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia was bafflement, even involuntary relief. At last somebody had done something about Cambodia-had made it possible to speak, even perhaps to think of it again. Even McGovern had advocated intervention the summer before (August 21, 1978). But after baffled involuntary relief came doubt. The North Vietnamese attempt to conquer Cambodia not only substituted one totalitarian regime for another but, as Prince Sihanouk' s voice suddenly clear from Peking reminded, threatened the extinction of Cambodia forever. In its self-righteous support of the invasion, the Soviet regime implied that opposition to the Vietnamese con· quest amounted to support for Pol Pot. They did not even have to remind us that Pol Pot had murdered for three and a half years without even a word of protest from Western governments. Or from the people. Nothing-no demonstrations, those fabled demonstrations that just a few years before had been taken for the most important, even the only exercise of genuine freedom. The State Department expressed its displeasure at the Vietnamese and at the same time attempted to keep its distance from Pol Pot. He was, after all, supported by the Chinese regime which we recognized. The so-called movement of the non-aligned (despite Castro's maneuvers later in 1979) did not recognize the Vietnamese regime in Cambodia, thereby implying Pol Pot had some claim to 14 legitimacy." With the Chinese attack on Hanoi about six weeks later 69 �It was in the Red Army, from the lips of General Korotayev, that I first heard the stupefying thought, not entirely alien to me: when Communism is victorious the world over, then wars will be fought with the ultimate bitterness. Hadn't I had similar thoughts that night after our disaster on the Sutjeska River? Hadn't I reflected that forces stronger than ideology and interests had thrown us and the Germans into a death struggle amid those wild ravines? And now a Russian who was also a Communist, Korotayev, was entertaining the thought that wars would be especially bitter under Communismthough under Communism, theoretically, there would be no classes and no wars. What horrors gave rise to these thoughts in Korotayev and myself? And how was it that he had the boldness so late at night, after supper and a cordial conversation, to express his thoughts, and I to listen in mute remembrance of horrors and reflections of my own?4 we again faced a war in which it was impossible to take sides. The Chinese regime had at least responded to Hanoi"s attack, which meant they took it seriously when the West ignored it. But the Chinese were not combatting aggression for the sake of the self-determination of Cambodia. Conquerors first of all of themselves (and of Tibet), they were simply contesting Soviet and Vietnamese domination of the area (a Soviet-Vietnamese "friendship" treaty had brought Vietnam nearly to the status of an "East-European" satellite barely a month [December 3, 1978] before the Vietnamese attack). Mainland China was quite comfortable with Pol Pot and supported him. Like the Soviet regime, it takes murder to be the stuff of history when it is merely the stuff of civil wars, or "revolutions". Milovan Djilas, associate and victim ofTito, asked himself recently when reliving his wartime: "Killing is a function of war and revolution. Or could it be the other way around?" The State Department sought a quick end to hostilities in which the Chinese regime appears not to have done well, but did nothing about the continuing Vietnamese conquest of Cambodia. We did not count. We were effectively shut out. For four years we and the world we lead had meekly put up Against this background of wars in which the United States could take neither side but only intervene against both, the President recognized mainland China. The expected recognition came unexpectedly and without pub- with not knowing what was going on in those nations, and lic discussion. Congress was not in session, and only the now that they did not hide their actions, we did nothing. Another fact came clear. The war for Indochina would continue; it had continued. Since the United States had been assumed to be the cause of the fighting, people imagined that with its withdrawal, the violence would cease. There would be no freedom, no peace, but fighting, at least, would cease. Instead the fighting continued with briefest notice (something like twenty-four hours) was given to the Republic of China (Taiwan). In evading the Senate's criticism, Carter deprived himself of its moderating support, which might have told in his dealings with China. The Senate might have given him the strength to recognize China without breaking relations with Taiwan and without suspending, unilaterally, the treaty of alliance with a year's notice-legally correct but certainly not within the spirit of alliance, which is not made of paper. After a few weeks the Senate passed a motion that expressed its support of Taiwan without explicit mention of the readiness to defend it. In response, mainland China made it as dear as it makes anything, that it limited its greater furor and brutality, with plain murderousness, be- fore the whole world, a war now of conquest between communists where free men could discern nothing at stake except destruction for destruction's sake. And it spread. It threatens Thailand. It intensified, almost unnoticed in its international dimension, in Europe, in terrorist attacks in Italy, in Turkey, in Ireland, in Spain where every step towards a constitution and freedom encountered terrorist violence. But men did not connect the increasing domestic violence in the countries of Europe with their incapacity to bring the destruction of Indochina to an end. When Djilas visited the front lines on a visit to Moscow in 1944, a Soviet general shocked him with his remark that the worst and most destructive wars would come with the triumph of "socialism" throughout the world. Then the murder would start in earnest. The murder in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge, the conquest of South Vietnam by the regime in the North, the attempted conquest of Cambodia by North Vietnam, as well as China's attack on Hanoi, all show the beginnings of that world of bitter wars with no discernible object. The defense of freedom in the world, which the totalitarian regimes call unforgivabie aggression, gives the world its only stability. Such a stability is not to be maintained without facing danger frequently. 70 3. The Recognition of Mainland China ((commitment" not to attack Taiwan to a few years. By repudiating Taiwan in shameless fashion at the moment he recognized China, Carter made it dear that the United States took recognition of the regime in mainland China for something like an affirmation of its "legitimacy." Recognizing the regime in China a generation after it seized power in civil war made sense, since it was about time we looked that reality in the face; but making recognition amount to something like approval meant appearing to disown our previous thinking-our friends and ourselves. Our policy towards mainland China runs the risk of repeating all the mistakes of our war-time association with Stalin and the Soviet Union-a policy that came from the weakness of the democracies and has put us since 1945 in a situation of fighting, and not knowing we are fighting, a war, in Brian Crozier's phrase, called ({peace." In their recent insistent coupling of the United States and China, and their significant omission of Europe in their propaganda about Afghanistan, the Soviets betray WINTER 1981 �full awareness that association with China can compromise the United States and separate it from Europe and NATO. They may not be as afraid of China as they pretend-and we assume. The worst part of the China policy is its motive. According to well-founded rumors it comes from a desire of some high officials in the government to exploit this assumed Soviet fear of China. Instead of deluding ourselves that we could exploit Soviet fear of China, we ought to fear that such actions might provoke the Soviet Union to irrational acts. Any thought of using the Chinese to make up for our government's lack of courage and forthrightness shows little common sense. The men in power (not office) in the Soviet Union are accustomed to murder and imprisoning without compunction. It is self-destructive to expect that Western statesmen could manipulate these men. Especially American men in office, with their professors as advisors, who in most instances in the last fifteen years have been incapable of addressing their own citizens effectively (and, therefore, of distinguishing their citizens' capacity to think from the "public opinion" of the newspapers, television, and the polls). Because in contrast to Hitler (who wanted to get back to his drawing), the Communists in Russia and China are not in such a hurry and appear, as an aide to Schmidt put it (before Afghanistan), "predictable", there is a tendency to assume they are not self-destructive, not at any rate as self-destructive as the Nazis in Germany or the Fascists in Italy. But events in Indochina especially since the fall of Saigon in April 1975 have shown again that Communists when left to themselves cannot control their self-destructiveness. ... The twentieth century has also shown us that evil has an enormous urge to self-destruction. It inevitably ends in total folly and suicide. Unfortunately, as we now understand, in destroying itself, evil may destroy all life on earth as well. However much we shout about these elementary truths, they will only be heeded by people who themselves want no more of evil. None of this, after all, is new: everything is always repeated, though on an ever greater scale. Luckily, I shall not see what the future holds in store.S Nobody can tell whether the Communists in China and Russia will continue to turn against each other or again join together against the countries that manage to enjoy the consent of the governed. An eventual rapprochement between the Communists in China and in Russia may well be more likely than continued name-calling-and in any case rapprochement is compatible with some namecalling. In his interview in Time at the beginning of 1979, Brezhnev winked more than once at the Communists in China. 6 There are talks, probably insignificant, now going on. Totalitarian regimes can neither distinguish between friends and enemies nor between war and peace. The worst of it has been the kind of euphoria that has greeted opening relations with China. From hearing travTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW ellers return you hardly dare remember that China is a totalitarian country that has criticized the Soviet Union for the slight distance it has supposedly taken from Stalin and for not using nuclear weapons. There is hardly any real information coming out of China. There are np real voices like those now speaking for Russia throughout the whole length and breadth of the world, and those coming out of what has come to be called "Eastern Europe". We know little; and we should never act and think as if we know much. One of the two books I know of on the Chinese camps (Prisoner of Mao) shows them to be more terrifying than the Soviet camps, for unlike the Soviet camps they are intent on destroying the power to think.' He (Pasqualini, one of the writers of Prisoner of Mao) confesses that after a few years in the labor camps, he came, if not exactly to love the system which was methodically destroying his personality, at least to feel gratitude for the patience and care with which the Authorities were trying to re-educate worthless vermin like himself. 8 Instead of deluding ourselves that we could effectively exploit Soviet fears of China, we ought to take the Soviet regime's fears of China seriously: they may know what they are talking about. And they are not only the fears of the Soviet regime, but of Russians, of men who can teach us a thing or two about freedom. In 1974 Vladimir Bukovsky in Vladimir Prison, met a Chinaman, Ma Hun, who had fled death in China in 1968 during the so-called "cultural revolution". He had been arrested by the KGB. They took him for a spy after their failure to turn him into one, because they could not conceive of anybody fleeing to the Soviet Union for refuge: ... The boys used to ask him: "Well now, Ma Hun, how do you like it here?" "Velly good," he would say. "Velly, velly good." "What do you mean, good? This is prison, starvation." "What starvation?" Ma Hun looked astonished and pointed at the flies flying about the cell. As if to say, if there had been real starvation, this wildlife would long since have disappeared. The boys got a fit of the shivers-what do the poor sods call starvation back in China? In time Ma Hun was able to tell us about the starvation in China, when they ate all the leaves off the trees and all the grass. For fifty miles around you couldn't find even a dung beetle . . . . The more he told us about China, the more it reminded us of our own 1920s and 30s, under so-called "Stalinism". But if anything, it was worse in China: more cruelty, cynicism, and hypocrisy. They didn't need any concentration camps there, they simply killed off their undesirables. For instance, all the Chinese volunteers who had been captured in Korea and returned by the Americans were simply wiped out, to the last man. But they were far from being the only ones. There were the "class aliens," the "wreckers" and the "opportunists." And above all, of course, the intelligentsia. The rest were herded into stafe farms and communes to be reeducated by work. 71 �... Soviet life still seemed like paradise to him: you were paid money for your work, which you could use to buy food and clothing without restriction. Not like in China, where you got nine yards of cloth per person per year. As for hypocrisy, he was used to it. Soviet hypocrisy struck him as child's play compared with the Chinese variety. 9 Because our policy does not come of sliength it cannot support such individuals who live in China, who understand and love government by law and democracy and speak out. The new regime has arrested some of these men, after a few months in which they spoke their mind; there has been no notice, as far as I know, from the governments of the West. 10 4. The Murder of Peoples You now have to go to the refugee camps in Thailand or in Malaysia, among the dying or those about to be returned to their death, if you want to hear the words of john F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address of 1961 ("Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty") said with a straight face: We got to know that the Thai govt have sent thousands of refugees back to Cambodia. We feel very sorry and disappointed about the news. We have tried all our best to escape from Communist Cambodia to look for freedom. Dear sir (President Carter), your Anierican people have fighted for liberty with tears and blood. You realize very well about the worth and happiness of freedom. We will rather die in a freedom country than being sent back to unhuman Communist Cambodia. . . 11 In june 1979 in Vienna when Carter brought up the "problem" of the refugees of Indochina, he met Brezhnev's icy silence. That silence means: these people will die like flies and you will do nothing about it; words do not mean much and you can talk all you like-we know you do not mean it. 12 Who got the governments of the West finally to pay a semblance of attention to the refugees? Thailand and Malaysia and Singapore. How did they do it? By blackmail, by declaring they would let the refugees perish, by threatening the United States and Europe with their own ideals-by actually driving something like forty thousand refugees back from Thailand into western Cambodia to almost certain death-before everybody's eyes. The once great nations of Europe and the United States called an international conference in july 1979 in Geneva. What happened at this conference? They asked Vietnam to stop the flow of refugees sent to death on the South China Sea. They thus accorded the regime in Vietnam, 72 not recognized by the United States, a kind of recognition. Cambodia was not even represented, because the "nations" could not agree on its representation. At the conference only the Chinese spoke open words-the Chinese, who had backed and still back the murderous regime of Pol Pot. From them we took lessons in interna· tionallaw! The Soviet Union kept silence except when it accused China of driving men into the sea and blaming Hanoi for it. 13 In effect the large nations of the West indicated to Hanoi that it could do what it wanted with those it wished away as long as it did not involve the West in their extermination by putting them on the seas. (In june 1979 the immigration minister of Australia estimated that two hundred thousand Vietnamese had died at sea in the previous four years. In Hong Kong offici;Jls estimated Hanoi might finally extort several billion dollars in gold from the Chinese and Vietnamese whom it allowed to take to the uncertain mercies of the seas.jl"' And the flow of refugees stopped-for a time. The newspapers could turn to easier subjects. When the freespoken President of Italy, Pertini, sent three Italian ships, which together could hold one thousand refugees, to the South China Sea in july, 1979, Hanoi savagely accused Italy of aggression. In answer the Italian commander spoke in what sounded like embarrass· ment of "humanitarian" considerations. Ships of the United States were also active at this time pulling men, women, and children out of the South China Sea. In an unaccountable callous misreading of British public opin· ion, Margaret Thatcher, by declaring she would not honor the custom of first refuge, encouraged British merchant men, at considerable expense, to avoid waters where men were drowning. The United States took on about half the cost of caring for the refugees who had survived, but the United States did not speak out in defense of the traditions of refuge that reach back at least to the Odyssey and the earliest books of the Bible. This catastrophe is as serious, and will haunt us deeply, as the murder of twelve million individuals by the Nazis. This time nobody will be able to say he did not know. Solzhenitsyn, especially in the third volume of Gulag Archipelago, and Bruno Bettelheim, in a remarkable essay on Linda Wertmuller's Seven Beauties printed several years ago in The New Yorker, show over and over again that the readiness to do anything to survive in concentration camps-which is called "appeasement" in international relations-invites murder because it makes individuals helpless 1 5 The war now waged on an international scale not only in Southeast Asia but in much of Europe through terrrorism, in the Middle East, in South America and, especially at this moment, Central America, may well instill this camp attitude everywhere, both in government and individuals. Meanwhile, the Afghans fight the Soviet army with almost their bare hands. WINTER 1981 �5. The Recognition of Terrorists In 1979 the terrorist war against the West which had in· tensified since 1967 began to culminate in the world-wide effort of the fedayeen to achieve diplomatic recognition as the representative of the Arabs of Palestine, and in the success of Persia in forcing the world to take its collapse for a ('revolution". Khomeini showed the connection between the two events immediately upon his arrival in Teheran when he embraced Arafat for all the world to see, put the PLO in the Israeli embassy in Teheran, and stopped all oil shipments to South Africa and Israel, thereby increasing Israel's isolation and dependence on the United States. The "official" recognition of terrorism now threatens to become the subject of international negotiations both in the instance of the PLO and of Persia. Terrorists are acting as if they were governments. Ordinary terrorists are trained in Libya, Algeria, Syria, Czechoslovakia, Moscow, and God knows where else (often by Cuban and East German as well as Soviet instruc· tors). The terrorists in Teheran, in contrast, besides taking lessons from the fedayeen are in some sense self· taught-on American campuses. In its most recent phase this use of "revolution" to at· tack nations from without by undoing international law started with the subjection of the UN to PLO propaganda and "Third World" ways of not-thinking. Here the guilt· riddling superstition that the hard-working countries were responsible for the poverty of the poor countries would, but for the courage of Moynihan's intelligence, have gone unnoticed. Inconceivable without the resort to the sale of oil as a political weapon, which touches all important nations, this "revolutionary" attack on international traditions accompanies inflation, which, especially in Europe, comes from the forced rise in oil prices. Lenin knew that the quickest way to destroy societies that obey their laws is to undermine their currency. Inflation makes men feel their work does not count enough even to make for a fair exchange. This kind of inflation too is an attack from without. Supplied and supported by the Soviet Union, the PLO and the so-called radical states like Libya have attacked internationally, especially in Europe. They have realized they could better get at the United States through Europe than through Egypt and attacking IsraeL For the United States, as Joseph Churba manfully stresses, provides the link between the Arabs of Palestine, which the PLO claims to represent, and the peace treaty between Egypt and IsraeL 16 Not mentioned in the treaty itself, the Arabs of Palestine (called "Palestinians") appear in the appended agreement which Carter negotiated at Camp David. The attempt to win diplomatic recognition for the PLO is an attack not only on Israel but on all legitimate governments. For Israel has a government which enjoys the deep TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW consent of those it governs. It is also one of the few governments in the world whose policy toward terrorists has been unambiguous from the start, and fearless. The fedayeen's recent successes are not to be taken lightly. Their representatives have been received in Portugal, in Spain (by the King in the fond illusion, almost immediately undone, that the PLO would restrain its murder). In defiance of the best opinions of his countrymen who wanted him to support the peace between Egypt and Israel, Giscard d'Estaing on a trip to the Middle East called for the independence of the Arabs of Palestine, and found something like support from the government of Germany. The Council of Foreign Ministers of the Common Market, in a Europe which rarely speaks in unison on foreign affairs, especially in regard to the Soviet Union, has issued repeated declarations favouring the fedayeen: In Turkey the PLO, through the violence of another fedayeen terrorist organization, won something approaching diplomatic recognition. In Brazil in the summer of 1979 the Vice President of Kuwait demanded recognition of the PLO under the threat of cutting off the oil on which Brazil depends for all but ten percent of its needs. In his threatening speeches in Brazil, the Vice President called openly for the destruction of Israel and praised Nazism. This praise appalled his audience, for the war still counts in Brazil, the only country in South America whose soldiers fought and died with the Allies in the war for freedom. Arafat, too, received in July 1979 in an official manner and in public buildings in Vienna by Kreitsky and Brandt-although he was a guest, not of the government of Austria, but of the Socialist International-openly declared the readiness of the PLO to use the "oil weapon". Throughout these attempts to win diplomatic recognition on the basis of its past violence, the PLO has never repudiated its desire, openly stated in its "charter", to destroy Israel. All this fury of activity comes because the peace between Israel and Egypt of March 1979 threatens the PLO. The peace has made things more dangerous, for it can make things better or much worse. A real peace would threaten all regimes that do not obey their own laws. (The move towards peace has in fact encouraged Sadat to undo some of the authoritarian character of the Egyptian regime-and the tensions that will come to the surface in Egypt if the peace takes hold may undo him.) Peace in the Middle East would represent a major triumph over the totalitarian powers, who after all have made peace impossible in Europe. The tendency, however, to put pressure on Israel rather than on Egypt and the other more accessible Arab states runs the clear risk of turning the peace into a more effective means of undoing Israel than war. Unequivocal American support for Israel's distinction between self-rule for the Arabs actually living in the West Bank and Gaza and an independent fedayeen state might have strengthened Sadat, by helping him face down the rest of Arab "opinion." Such policy 73 �might bring some of the Arabs to the recognition that in attacking Israel they are attacking themselves, for without Israel they would be helpless before the Soviets. 17 Without Arab support the fedayeen could not make such an impression on the West fearful for its oil. The turning point will probably come when Israel gives up the irreplaceable Sinai air bases in 1982. 6. "Revolution" in Persia In its capacity to involve the world in its troubles, Khomeini's Persia outdoes even the fedayeen. Without the participation and the extorted approval of "international opinion," the collapse of authority in Persia might not have occurred-and it certainly would not have been able to pass itself off as a "revolution." This capacity of Persia to involve the whole world in its collapse comes not because events in Persia had anything to say to the world, but because of the West's servility in its dependence on oil and because of Persia's geographical an accurate assessment, attention would have necessarily turned also on the Communist Party and the Soviet Union who are "professionals" in using the fantasy of "revolution" to seize power. Nor did it impress people that Khomeini immediately took Soviet positions in foreign policy; that he attacked the "imperialism" of the United States; that he showed an unseeing world he thought like a Marxist, not like a Mohammedan, when he released the blacks and the women among the American hostages-since when have Mohammedans shown sensitivity to blacks and to women; that he took weeks to criticize the attempted Soviet conquest of Afghanistan, and then attacked both the United States and the Soviet Union as equally "evil." Writing in L'Express about eight months after Khomeini's alightment in Teheran, jean Fran<;:ois Revel showed that almost all of the points of the program of the Communist Party of Persia, announced six months be- fore, had found fulfillment: nationalization of the banks, removal of "undesirable elements" from the police, the judiciary, and the army. All except the formation of an position. open coalition regime including the Communists. Except for the West's servility in its dependence on it, the facts that count about Persis are old. The sights that the precipitous oil riches brought recalled Herodotus, es- The seizure of Americans in the United States embassy in Teheran represents another development in the open effort to destroy international opinion. The "leaders" of pecially his sense of grandeur's violation of proportion Persia, some of whom had studied at American universi- and, therefore, of rationality. Two thousand trucks rusting on the side of a road because of the lack of trained drivers who finally had to come from abroad, from Korea and Taiwan; harbours with their approaches clogged by six months of ships because Persian stevedores would not work (again men came from Korea and Taiwan), soldiers kissing the Shah's feet in an embarrassing misunderstand- ties, sensed the American administration would put up with any violence short of murder. With his frequent boasts that no American in his time in the White House had died in battle, Carter invited violence short of murder. Upon Cyrus Vance's resignation after the failure of the long-delayed attempt to rescue the captives, the news- ing of ancient Persian custom. Invested on january 6, 1979, by the Shah, the Bakhtiar government tested the illusion that there was an impulse to liberty in ancient Persia, strong, and thereby rational enough in the midst of chaos to find viable expression in a constitution. A veteran of the French Resistance and of the Shah's arrests, Bakhtiar made the mistake of getting the Shah to leave the country on january 16, 1979. This was the moment to make the transition to a constitutional autocracy (not a constitutional monarchy, for the Shah was no king in any European sense). It was also the moment for the United States to back openly the Shah and his new Prime Minister-who faced crowds, sometimes papers repeated his associates' characterizations of the Secretary of State as a man who never said an angry word, who never gave way to his actual feelings. Soon after the seizure of the captives, an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal described the men in the White House as worrying most about the reaction of the American people as if the mob were not in Teheran, but here. The seizure of the Americans in Teheran meant to show the whole world that there was no difference between diplomats and anybody else; that there was no such thing as a government capable of protecting its own officials and, therefore, its citizens; that nobody, whether rich or poor, was safe; that passports were pieces of paper. The attack on diplomatic custom, by '~students", unprece- nary unwillingness of newspapers, radio, and television to dented except as deliberate act of war, was taken as a novelty. But the attack is deadly serious. It undermines the world's recognition that something underlies both war and peace which allows nations to distinguish between them and negotiate with each other even when at war. In his second inaugural address (in the importantly different pay attention to the Communist Party of Persia and So- circumstances of civil war), Lincoln referred to this com- viet involvement, even in the face of fairly reliable reports mon underlying recognition of something fundamental that transcends war and peace when he spoke of both Northerners and Southerners reading the same Bible. manipulated, everywhere and strikes in the oil-fields skillfully timed by the Communists, to undermine the new government. 18 The United States did nothing. It did not support Bakhtiar by opposing the return of Khomeini. The readiness to accept "revolution" as a label for events in Persia found its telling match in the extraordi- of KGB involvement with the "students" who had seized the American Embassy. For had "revolution" represented 74 WINTER 1981 �The attack had immediate consequences. The Soviets showed the increase of their influence in Persia: they warned the United States not to attempt rescue. American paralysis in Persia in the face of outrage probably also encouraged Soviet effrontery in attacking Afghanistan a few weeks after the seizure of the hostages. In the third volume of The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitzyn tells of local populations refusing succour to fugitives, in fear of reprisals. He remarks that the Soviet regime had not only destroyed public opinion in Russia but also undermined customs-the unwritten Jaws. These people have everything-they have food and they have water. Why don't we just knock on the door like beggars: "Brothers! GOod people! Help us! We are convicts, escaped prisoners!" Just like it Used to be in the nineteenth centurywhen people put pots of porridge, clothing, copper coins by the paths through the taiga. I had bread from the wives of the village And the lads saw me right for makhorka. Like hell we will! Times have changed. Nowadays they turn you in. Either to salve their consciences, or to save their skins. Because for aiding and abetting you can have a quarter slapped on you. The nineteenth century failed to realize that a gift of bread and water could be a political crime. 19 7. Nicaragua, Central America-and the Americas Unlike Persia, where collapse with much murder came from crowds supported by world-wide opinion in their hatred of the Shah, Nicaragua suffered full-scale civil war. Announced several years before it occurred, civil war came as if on schedule-with regular announcements from guerrillas, otherwise in hiding, to the major newspapers. Faced with a long-awaited civil war that afforded no meaningful alternative in Nicaragua, and therefore required outside arbitration and intervention (like Henry L. Stimson's arbitration upon request of the warring factions in 1927 in Nicaragua), Brzezinski remarked to jean Franyois Revel, at the moment of the victory of the Sandinistas in july, 1979, that nobody yet had found out how to fashion democracies. 20 The truth, however, comes a little closer to home. In announcing the "Alliance for Progress" on March 13, 1961, meant to face the threat of Castro's seizure of power in Cuba to the rest of South America, Kennedy connected economic aid to democracy and the rule of law. Such an emphasis led to the public appreciation of democratic statesmen like Romulo Betancourt of Venezuela and Alberto Lleras Camargo of Columbia 21 After a few years the connection grew forgotten. A general neglect of South America followed. Some years later Kissinger, without any embarrassment, disparaged its strategic "geopolitical" significance, even though Castro's destruction of the Monroe doctrine had brought all of South America closer THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW to the civil war raging in the minds of men-and in many places, not only in their minds. In the absence of a forthright persistent American policy to support the constructive forces in South America, confusion deepened the polarization Castro incited in South America. Hatred of the United States drove much of South America (with the important exception of Brazil) to take itself, incredibly, for part of the "Third World". The polarization that this hatred encouraged helped destroy freedom in Chile and Uruguay and further undermine Argentina, the Canada of South America at the beginning of the century. In its turn the destruction of freedom in Chile (which Kissinger had ignored along with the rest of South America until a few months before Allende won a plurality in September 1970) became a test of conscience throughout the world second only to the war in Indochina. It brought South America further into the struggle for Europe which rages throughout the world -while Europe (with the exception of France in Africa) tends to local riches, and the United States yields to the distraction of the "big" problems like mainland China and negotiations to limit arms and the danger of "nuclear holocaust". Civil war broke out in Nicaragua after the passage of the Panama Canal treaty. Despite the provisions of the treaty that allow the United States control of the canalunti1 the end of the century, an increase in instability in the entire Caribbean followed its approvaL Panama, which benefited most from the treaty, made a show of its efforts to train and supply fighters for Nicaragua. (In Costa Rica there was training also, but only because the government could not prevent what it would not openly endorse: individuals of vacillating allegiance, probably within the government, warned the training camps when the police sought to move against them.) Panama, in its open encouragement of civil war in Nicaragua, which violated South American traditions of not taking sides in the civil wars of neighbors, took the place of Cuba, which denied involvement-until victory 22 As in Persia, the amateurs at "revolution" took the place in public of the professionals in the seizure of power. The war for Nicaragua began the civil war for Central America, the only region in South America where the United States has intervened directly (and repeatedly) to insure freedom of the seas in the access to the canal. Reporters told of youths, or teenagers, sometimes posing as Nicaraguans, coming to Nicaragua from all over South and Central America-most of all from Chile, Uruguay, Colombia and Panama. They came because they wanted to bring a war like the war for Nicaragua home. Propaganda crosses frontiers more quickly in South America than anywhere else in the West. So does fear. For men there, especially capable and important people, often do not harbour loyalty to the lands of their birthand they keep much of their money abroad. In January 1979, people in Guatemala, where property is more evenly distributed than in Nicaragua, said nothing like Nicaragua 75 �could happen to them for fifteen or twenty years. By De· cember 1979 they estimated two, at the outside, five years. El Salvador is deeply at war. In 1980 there was violence from all sides in Guatemala-more or less unreported and ignored abroad. In the immediate region, the prize is Costa Rica, the other democracy, besides Venezuela, left in South America. Law abiding and courageous, for instance in its votes at the UN, it is a country that astonishes sensitive travellers in its contrast with the rest of the region. Other prizes are of even more consequence than Costa Rica. Totalitarian self-conquest (for totalitarianism spreads with the, in appearance, uncontrollable self-destruction of states) of Central America in civil war would isolate South America from the United States even more than the countries of South America and the United States have isolated themselves from each other. Self-conquest of Central America would also mean pressure on the canal, on the surrounding waters-an freedom of the seas, hardpressed elsewhere: by means of the willful extension of territorial waters, by the increasing presence of the Soviet fleet on the oceans, by Kadafi's designs on Malta (for instance, his recent attempt to keep an Italian company from exploring for oil off its coast). An inheritance from the eighteenth century, freedom of the seas means not only trade and the riches it brings, but the movement of individuals and words. Like OPEC's attack on trade, the threat to the freedom of the seas endangers freedom within nations, for there cannot be much freedom within at least some nations without free movement between them. As his situation worsened Somoza suddenly grew, like the Shah, unbearable to people who had hardly thought of him before. Nobody defended him (only a few men in Congress, who still clung to the old phrase, "He's a son-ofa-bitch, but our son-of-a-bitch"). Nobody remembered Somoza's loyalty at the UN: Nicaragua had voted in defense of Israel, when the Shah had not. The murder of the courageous newspaper editor, Chamorro, was connected with Somoza. When informed of the murder, Somoza, according to people close to events, expressed astonishment genuine in appearance. The murder may have been the work of his henchmen who killed without his knowledge as danger increased. Unlike the Shah, Somoza and his army fought in total disregard of international opinion, and in spite of the United States government's refusal to supply him with arms and spare parts after the beginning of 1979 (February 8). He was a tyrant with a tyrant's courage, mixed in with brutality and cowardice. Unlike his successors, however, he had set a date for elections in the near future. In some sense the extent of Somoza's dominance over Nicaragua brought the civil war, for it made it impossible for another caudillo to replace him with a coup in the fashion usual in much of South America. His predominance also helped turn opinion outside Nicaragua against him. At a time when visitors to Nicaragua itself reported 76 numbing terror in which all who did not flee were compelled to choose sides, people elsewhere hoped destruction would bring democracy. The devastation in Nicaragua with forty thousand dead still has not left its imprint on the world's senses. There is no way in such a situation for the United States not to influence events. The refusal of the American government to supply arms and spare parts to Somoza and the later refusal to intervene without the support of the OAS (June 21-23, 1979) helped bring Somoza down and discouraged negotiations to stop the civil war. Refugees from Nicaragua received little attention except from newspapers in Spain and Central and South America. With Soviet backing, the victors called for the "extradition" of Somoza after he fled; as if he, like the Shah, were an ordinary criminal. As in Persia, there were to be no visible exiles, for exiles mean there is another side. A civil war in which no side was entirely right came to be taken for a "revolution." And men abroad hoped for democracy and the rule of law. Within Nicaragua too, hopes for democracy sprang from terror. Towards the end almost everybody who would say anything was against Somoza-but not, in most instances, for the Sandinistas. Trained and armed abroad, the Sandinistas, however, did the fighting-until towards the end when they were joined by volunteers, many of them adolescents. The people who tried to tell themselves the fall of Somoza would occasion democracy were not doing the fighting. Those who fought did not want democracy. This division between those who fought and those who did not persisted after the cessation of open hostilities, for the victors did not disarm themselves. Many young people in Sandinista uniforms (which are not distinguishable from those of the police) are said to be on the streets of Managua and, presumably, other cities in Nicaragua. Rebelo, a non-Sandinista member of the Junta, remarked upon his resignation in April 1979, "How can you have genuine pluralism under a gun?" The coalition (the Junta) of the guerrillas and the democratically-minded individuals amounts to a truce which allows those who fought to hold something like the acquiescence of those who did not. The guerrillas need this truce because their aim-the self-conquest of all of Central America-can only be achieved if the rest of Central America and the world persuade themselves that their seizure of power is actually a "revolution for democracy". The truce also helps win credits-which are coming from Germany (Federal Republic). At the formation of the coalition, the armed guerrillas also went about the country organizing the same kind of capillary neighbourhood and local organizations that help'ed the Communists take over in East Germany. The recent campaign against illiteracy probably reinforced this local control. In the spring of 1980 the guerrillas increased their representation in the Council of State. There are indications that they, not the coalition, have come to an understanding with the Soviets. There have been execuWINTER 1981 �tions without trial and murders and disappearances; at least sixty-five hundred men are in prison without due process. Although reported, these facts receive little attention. Civil war in Central America intensifies not only because of Western, especially American, paralysis in Persia and Afghanistan but also because of the instability in Cuba. Within hours after the inadvertent removal of Cuban guards from the Peruvian embassy in the spring of 1980, something like ten thousand men sought asylum. The misery in Cuba was plain for the whole word, including South America, to see. Costa Rica with her usual cour· age declared her readiness to receive them, until the other South American nations agreed about who would take how many. The refugees would have been living witnesses to Castro's Cuba in South America, where, in contrast to the United States, Castro still fascinates people in spite of themselves. Desperate to keep the refugees in the Peruvian compound out of South America, Castro allowed thousands of others to leave for the United States to distract attention from them. He managed to make it look, not as if they were fleeing, but as if he were "dumping" them on the United States. To discredit them he flung among them in unabashed spite common criminals, undesirables, and the sick unto death. In a few weeks something like a hundred and twentyfive thousand reached the United States. Castro had turned a responsibility that touched each of the Americas into an embarrassment in appearance forced upon the United States. A fitting nemesis for a President who had announced himself a patron of ''human rights" -and who had withdrawn his support from Somoza in their namebut had discovered he did not have the guts for it. In this at least Kissinger recognized his limitations-without, however, acknowledging them. War of subversion and self-conquest abroad-in this instance, in Central America-to face down instability at home-in this instance, in Cuba-is that the future? In the next ten and twenty years, Soviet-supported self-conquest through chaos abroad, especially outside of Europe, could be matched by rational struggle for liberty in "Eastern Europe". For the courage of resistance and the love of liberty in Russia and the other countries to the east can only be publicly ignored-as it has been in Poland in recent days by the governments of the West-at the expense of Western self-knowledge and self· respect. "Inside the country (Russia), these are times of ever greater repression. '' 23 8. Europe-and Us I have said little of Europe. Our-and Great Britain'sincapacity to bring the Second World War to an end in a real peace with the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Europe has made the history of Europe our history. But Europe, the Europe of the West, acts as if it does THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW not know that the war throughout the world is for Europe. Even when terrorists attack her innards, in Spain, Turkey, Italy, Ireland, and Germany, her governments, for fear of offending the Soviets and because of guilt at previous weakness before violence, act not as if Europe is under attack, but as if terrorism is their own domestic affair. Even a man of the intelligence and courage of Raymond Aron says that Soviet nuclear predominance is "only" important because of its "political effects." As if "political effects," in this instance the disintegration of daily life and the death-like yielding up of the courage to live, were not what is at stake in the struggle! Surrender threatens to take place without struggle and, therefore, is more likely to lead to self-destructive violence and the resignation which leads to total war. Not recognizing the war now going on means expecting that a brutal civil war, in which communist trained and supplied forces brought down the tyrant, will bring de· mocracy to Central America. It means taking it for granted that totalitarian regimes can interfere in civil wars, but not free governments. The European civil war (for with no apparent limited objectives the war that started in 1914 has turned into a civil war-into a war to undo governments and even to change "human" character) that came to a halt but not to an end in 1945 has continued outside of Europe, first of all in 1950 with the Soviet-supported attack on Korea. But somehow because it was only Europe that really counted, Europe that center of so much to love and so much to hate, so obviously destroyed and wrecked, we and especially Europe, Western Europe, did not realize that the European civil war, the World War in the twentieth century, continued-because it continued outside of Europe. The war continued also in Eastern Europe with the Soviet slaughter of six hundred workers in Berlin in 1953 and of unnumbered Hungarians in 1956 and with the tanks in Prague in 1968. Yet Western Europe, at least its governments, forgot these events. Without any reference to the rest of the world, NATO centered on the defense of this Europe of the West, and the United States' commitment to it. In the beginning there was some pretence that NATO was directed against Germany-the treaty names no enemy, for fear of offend· ing the Soviet regime. In those very years the Soviet Union sent many of its veterans from the Second World war to the camps because Stalin feared the courage they had learned in battle. He thus showed that he could not bring the war to an end abroad, because he feared to end it at home. No matter what the Uriifed States did, Europe could no longer hold its sway abroad. More than any country Britain showed the extent war had undone Europe. Had undone victors as well as defeated-the unmistakable mark of a civil war-for, although she had stood alone and victorious, she suffered a loss of confidence similar to the defeated and conquered. With the intelligence that comes of courage, she helped Greece save herself from herself 77 �until the beginnings of civil war, in the latter half of 1946. Then she astonished Marshall, Acheson, and Truman at the end of February 1947 with the announcement that she would withdraw from Turkey as well as Greece in six weeks. She no longer looked outward upon the world. She turned herself on herself. Her political life threatened to turn into an ideological struggle. This struggle eroded the consensus that makes possible law-abiding opposition, in which sides respect each other enough to criticize each other. As in many countries in the rest of Europe, parties in Britain threatened to turn into factions. They spoke words incomprehensible to each other, and acted as if only domestic strife counted, as if there were no world elsewhere. This was especially true after Parliament's inability to get the truth out of the government after the failure in the Suez 1956. The withdrawal of Europe, encouraged by the United States, freed the rest of the world to imitate the worst of Europe, in the name of ridding itself of Europe, to continue the civil war and slaughter that had brought Europe to exhausted dependence on the United States. The more much of the rest of the world denied Europe, the more it imitated Europe servilely. As everybody knows, huge portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin hang in the main square of Peking. The world knows neither how to get along with Europe or without it. Except for the United States. The United States showed an answer to the questions that had been tearing Europe apart-a way of recovery from the civil war that the French Revolution had brought to Europe. This capacity to cope with Europe because they could distinguish themselves meaningfully from it drew Tocqueville. His book on Democracy in America tells as much about Europe as about America. Mindful of the security two oceans gave the Federation, Tocqueville wondered whether its open way of life would withstand conflict with other nations once its success drew it into the world-into Europe. With a constitution centered on preserving men from themselves, could it cope with others, especially with wars, which are the stuff of history? Tocqueville called the United States a democracy, not a republic, at a time when egalitarian aspirations had not yet overcome experience of Republican sobriety. This emphasis on the egalitarian temptation in the American way of living that Tocqueville took to be irresistible told of his experience of Europe's levelling and the reaction against it which appeared to force a choice between equally outrageous alternatives. At the same time that he saw the future in the United States, Tocqueville wondered whether they could remain free of the struggles that were at Europe.' Egalitarianism and thirst for direct participation might undo representative institutions based on the recognition of differences in ability and character; The Federalist's distinction between ancient, direct democracy and a federated, representative republic might give way to the pressure of men's aspirations and words. 78 To some extent, especially in recent years, his doubts have shown themselves in our life. But we remain a Republic in some sense in spite of ourselves. The Europeanization of the politics of the United States occurred, to an astonishing extent, during the Indochina war, which produced a kind of extremization, "politicization," and polarization of attitudes. There were fearful analogies to the polarization that in many European countries prolongs the European Civil War brought to a truce in Europe in 1945. In some sense it was difficult to tell whether the United States was being Europeanized or Europe Americanized. In the United States there was the collapse of many in the groups taken for the "Establishment" in the face of the threat of disapproval of crowds (made up to some extent of their sons and daughters and their friends) in the years 1968-69. A collapse Kissinger powerfully describes in his memmrs. The declarations against the war in Indochina often took exaggeration for conviction. They often rang hollow, because they served to deny, rather than to admit, individual responsibility and error. A few years later, in 1978, the international show "trial" and murder of Aldo Mora with his ambiguous forced confessions further emphasized the relation of these testimonials to totalitarian self-accusations. Above all the "times" required you to bear witness against yourself by attacking yourself in others. ... Special attention must be paid . .. to clandestine activities since a person is inclined to forget something if it is not waved in front of his eyes. The West and developing countries are filled with citizens who by reason of their positions are able to promote Soviet influence and expansionist goals. Some of them are motivated by ideas that at least merit discussion. After all, in the Soviet Union, the ideological epicenter, and in China as well, Communist ideology is not a complete fraud, not a total delusion. It arose from a striving for truth and justice, like other religious, ethical and philosophical systems ... There are others among such people who conduct themselves in a "progressive" manner because they consider it profitable, prestigious or fashionable. A third category consists of naive, poorly informed or indifferent people who close their eyes and ears to the bitter truth and eagerly swallow any sweet lie. Finally there is the fourth group-people who have been "bought" in the most direct sense of the word, riot always with money. These include some political figures, businessmen, a great many writers and journalists, government advisers, and heads of the press and television. Over all, they make up quite a group of influential people. 24 Recently, one of the most courageous journalists of Europe, Indro Montanelli, founder of the important newspaper, II Giornale Nuovo, took the measure of the confusion of American and European ''public" opinion that passed itself off as agreement. In the midst of criticizing Carter for vacillatioll, hypocrisy, and weakness, he suddenly asked himself: Whose president is this, anyhow? WINTER 1981 �This is our president, he answered himself. We made him with our demonstrations and protests against the war in Vietnam. What did we have in Italy to do with that war? Nobody asked us to fight and die in it. Montanelfi' s observation helps us understand why the confusion of America and Europe occurred. It came of the United States' evasiveness towards its allies as well as towards its own citizens. For who has ever heard of a socalled "imperial" power undertaking a war without the help, without even the strong public support of almost all its major allies? Kissinger writes in his memoirs of the em- barrassed desire of European leaders to avoid Vietnam, even in private conversation. The present dangerous ambiguity in Europe is connected with the crisis in American leadership, that is, in American self-knowledge and capacity to remember and to distinguish its responsibilities from those of others. To my knowledge some of the Israeli leaders are the only men in office who can reason coherently in public with reference to what actually happened in the past, with a living grasp of international law and the distinction between war and peace. Kissinger in his memoirs attributes occasional examples of admirable lucidity to Nixon, but they are always private words-not even words for his cabinet. Since 1945 it has become clear that it takes much longer than a generation for countries and governments destroyed in war, to rebuild confidence, good sense, and readiness to take responsibility for themselves and their defense. Expectations in 1945-1948 overestimated the difficulties of economic recovery and underestimated the difficulties of political recovery. Individuals were too stunned by the slaughter and destruction to take in its political consequences. There was even a tendency to take economic recoverywhich has turned out to be much more than recoveryfor political recovery instead of as the necessary but not the sufficient condition for political recovery. In fact Europe's prosperity has made Europe's lack of political self-confidence and fear of self all the more brutally apparent. This contrast between well-being and lack of confidence in government and politics had much to do with the crisis in Europe in the seventies. A similar terror of self took hold in the United States. There are dramatic signs that things are changing deeply in Europe-or could change-if leaders in the United States woke up and exercised leadership (like the leadership General Haig exercised at the risk of his life when he led NATO). Europe in the last years appears to have admitted to itself that its grasp of events at home and abroad is weak. This is most obvious in France (which still counts in matters of intellectual leadership) but it appears to be happening also in Italy and elsewhere. We see a readiness to drop Marxist ideology and to admit that it has served largely as an evasion of reality and of hard study for something like a generation. We see also a refusal, after the euphoria of the past, to entertain illusions about the Communist parties in the West. This readiness to drop pretenTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW sions means there is less shouting, and a good deal of emptiness. But it is an emptiness in which fundamental facts stand out in their isolation. It is time to return to the less pretentious authors; Cavour, Tocqueville, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, The Federalist, Mirabeau:_and the road to them, oddly, leads through the Russian writers. For we have had to learn common sense in blood, other people's blood. In Italy individuals in their late teens appear more lithe and resilient than people of the same age twenty years ago. About ten years ago teenage couples openly holding hands appeared on the streets of Rome. These young people seem more pragmatic, much less, if at all, given to the self-immolation in ideology which characterized many of those fifteen and twenty years older. But they need to hear common sense. The man and woman in their early twenties who wrote the remarkable pornographic novel that is also a love story, Porci con le Ali (Pigs with Wings), show more clearheaded understanding of life in Italy in the last fifteen years than most of the men now in their late thirties or early forties who are coming into the center of Italian politics. The generation that went through the war and the destruction of freedom in the twenties and thirties, which had in some sense neither fathers nor sons, also appears finally on the verge of coming to terms with itself. Those in most trouble are those in between, those in their late thirties and forties who wish to belong to the new world but refuse to admit they are caught in the breakdown of the old. France has awakened to the realization that she has become a serious contemporary nation, ready to work and compete in international markets. In the face of an organized attempt to destroy her government in terrorism, Italy shows remarkable courage and unanimity. Many of her public men and her journalists do not flinch before death or disablement in the streets. This war has cleared heads: the Socialists have distinguished themselves to some extent from the Communists, and the Christian Democrats, in response to the electorate and with continuing internal struggle, are facing the Communists instead of entertaining coalition with them. The debate in the fall and winter of 1979 about receiving Pershing and Cruise missiles was fierce throughout Europe, even in France which, with its forces not directly under NATO command, had nothing to decide. In Italy, Cossiga's government openly braved Communist opposition to win acceptance of the missiles in a debate comparable in intensity to the decision to join NATO and the West in 1949. During the debate, Gromyko visited Bonn, and Ponomarev, in charge of subversion abroad, appeared before an Italian Parliamentary committee. Such interferences in "internal affairs" were unthinkable ten years ago. The first direct elections to the Parliament of Europe in June 1979 showed something like sixty percent participation (thirty percent in England). Despite the presentation of issues, in many countries, in terms of domestic politics, people knew the vote was for Europe. It was not clear, 79 �however, whether Europe meant also Europe to the east. By his visit to Poland at the time of the election, Pope John Paul II reminded western Europe of Europe's larger disaster-especially in his distinction between nation and regime. There is also a darker possibility. Under threat of Soviet SS 20 missiles, already pointed at every major city in Eu· rope, and new installations every week, Europe, despite its denials, threatens to take its distance from the United States. It is an open secret that relations between the United States and Germany have been troubled. In the face of the courage and responsibility of Poland, western governments did little. Perhaps necessarily, but not wisely, for weakness does not amount to the prudence of restraint. And Poland's renewed struggle is only in its beginnings. Taken more or less for granted, Soviet domi· nance of Poland violates both the Yalta agreements, which centered on Poland, and the more recent Helsinki agreements. The response of the governments of Europe, with the exception of Britain, to the Soviet attack on Afghanistan was weak. It did not lead to economic sane· lions to match those of the United States. (Australian, Argentinian, Canadian, and Western European surpluses largely undid the American refusal to sell seventeen million tons of grain to the Soviet Union). It did not even lead to a boycott of the Olympics-with the exception of Ger· many and Japan. (The governments of Great Britain and Italy could not persuade their Olympic committees to withdraw.) There was more resistance to Persia's under- mining of international custom. The readiness of the governments of Europe to let things drift in indecision shows itself in their slowness in admitting Spain and Portugal into the common market and Spain into NATO (while the Soviet Union hints that Basque terrorism will cease if Spain stays out of NATO). The drift of some of the governments of Europe towards unacknowledged accommodation undermines the confidence of their best citizens. Except for the Commu· nists the whole French press criticized Giscard's readiness to meet Brezhnev in Warsaw soon after the Soviet attack on Afghanistan. At a moment when there are indications of the political recovery of Europe from the devastation of the World War, Europe is most threatened. Its life defies Soviet policy, which since 1945 has assumed that the political recovery of Europe could not take place. With the brutality that he took for realism Stalin said at Yalta that after such a war there had to be an intermission for something like fifty years. He did not think the destruction could be done away with, that there could be a real settlement; only a pause before the next round. Such a Soviet attitude as· sumes that the West, especially the United States, is not in earnest about freedom but needs to talk of it for the purpose of its vanity. It also assumes that the defeat, dev· astation and humiliation of Europe divide it irrevocably frojil the United States, despite the disguise of a genera· tioil of enterprise, hard work, and riches. The constant re- 80 call in Soviet propaganda of the destruction of the World War, which makes visitors to Moscow think time has stood still, testifies to the grim, but in some ways realistic assumption, that Europe and the United States-but es· pecially Europe-cannot recover politically from its selfdevastation. Such an attitude amounts to holding that there is no way of avoiding the consequences of "history" or stopping its drift, that the destruction of one generation continues after it. Just such an attitude informs Soviet refusal to do anything about the murder in Indochina, its determination to "let it work". Sakharov writes: A nation that has suffered the horrible losses, cruelties and destruction of war, yearns above all for peace. This is a broad, profound, powerful, and honest feeling. Today, the leaders of the country do not, and cannot, go against this dominant desire of the people. I want to believe that in this regard, the Soviet leaders are sincere, that when peace is involved they are transformed from robots into people. But even the people's deep wish for peace is exploited, and this is perhaps the cruelest deception of alL The deep yearning for peace is used to justify all the most negative features in our country~economic disorder, excessive militarization, purportedly "defensive" foreign policy measures (whether in Czechoslovakia or Afghanistan) and lack of freedom in our closed society ... 25 But a little later: ... The dogmatic bureaucrats and the new people replacing them-anonymous and shrewd cynics, moving in the many "corridors of power" of the departments of the Central Committee, the K.G.B., the ministries, and the provincial and regional party committees-are pushing the country toward what they consider to be the safest path but that is in reality a path to suicide. Everything is as is was under the system of power and economy created by Stalin. The leaders carry on the arms race, concealing it behind talk of their love of peace. 26 And elsewhere: But the world is facing very difficult times and cruel cataclysms if the West and the developing countries trying to find their place in the world do not now show the required firmness, unity, and consistency in resisting the totalitarian challenge. . Europe must fight shoulder to shoulder with the transoceanic democracy, which is Europe's creation and Europe's main hope. A certain lack of unity, of course, is the reverse side of the coin of democratic pluralism, the West's major strength. But this disunity is also caused by the systematic Soviet policy of driving "wedges", a policy that the West has not resisted adequately because of carelessness and blindness ... Western unity is one of the main conditions for international security, unity that will promote resistance and ultimately lead to rapprochement and the convergence of world systems, averting thermonuclear catastrophe. 27 More serious than any crisis since the thirties, the present crisis comes not only because of Europe's weakness WINTER 1981 �but also because Europe threatens to grow stronger. It comes also because the United States has for something like ten years been unable to exercise effective leadership. Europe's strength still depends on our leadership. also betrays remarkable grasp of the functioning of democracies, for instance, for the significance of Nixon's resignation in 1974 and of De Gaulle's withdrawal in 1969. II. From a letter addressed to President Carter from one of 40,000 Cambodians forced back into Cambodia at gunpoint after they had sought asylum in Thailand. Henry Kamm, Internl1tional Herald Tribune, june 16-17, 1979. 12. Neue Zuercher Zeitung, June 18, 19, 1979. At this meeting Brezhnev said: l. For the connection of the rise in terrori~m with an international dimension throughout the West with the 1967 war, Paul Wilkinson, "Terrorism: International Dimensions", Conflict Studies, 113, November 1979. For Soviet and East European involvement in terrorism since 1967, Brian Crozier, Strategy of Survival, London 1978. Between 1968 and 1977 more than two hundred American diplomats and more than five hundred simple citizens and businessmen suffered at the hands of terrorists. Fifty were murdered. Israeli intelligence found three maps of an East German training camp with one of the terrorist's names written on the back after a PLO attack near Tel Aviv on March II, 1978 in which thirty four Israelis were murdered. In October 1971 Dutch authorities at Schipol airport seized four tons of Czech anns destined for the Provisional IRA. See now Robert Moss, "Terrorism," The New York Times Magazine, Sunday, November 2, 1980. Claire Sterling's book on terrorism in its international dimension will appear in the spring (Holt Rinehart & Winston). International Terrorism-the Communist Connection, Washington, 1978. See also, Stefan T. Possony and L. Francis Bouchey. 2. The Security Resolution (242, November 22, 1967) does not mention the fedayeen but speaks simply of "achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem." 3. The Economist, December 22-28, 1979, 7-8 and 49-50. In 1979 imports of foreign oil were thirty percent above 1973. 4. Milovan Djilas, Wartime, New York 1977, 384-385. 5. Nadezha Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope, New York 1970, 289. 6. Time, January 22, 1979. 7. Baa Ruo-Wang (Jean Pasqualini) and Rudolph Chelminski, Prisoner of Mao, New York 1973 (Penguin Books 1979); see also Lai Ying, The Thirty-Sixth Way, New York 1969. 8. This is Simon Ley's {"Human Rights in China", National Review, December 8, 1978, 1537-1545 and 1559) characterization of Prisoner of Mao. 9. Vladimir Bukovsky, TO Build A Castle-My Life as a Dissenter, New York 1979,414-416. 10. See the statement of Wei Jingsheng, introduced by Simon Ley, "La lutte pour Ia liberte en Chine", Commentaire 7, 353-360. Imprisoned recently, Wei Jingsheng shows similarities between Teng Hsiao-p'ing's way of dealing with the past and Mao Zedong's way of operating. He The Soviet Union opposes any interference in the internal affairs of any other country. We are persuaded of the principle that every people has a right to determine its own destiny. What is the point of the attempts to make the Soviet Union responsible for the objective course of history and to use them as pretexts for worsening relations? THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 13. NZZ, july 24, 1979. 14. NZZ, June 19, 1979; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 19,1979. For the Vietnamese among the boat people, NZZ July 25, 1979, 3. 15. Bruno Bettelheim, "Reflections", The New Yorker 52, August 2, 1976, 31-36. 16. Joseph Churba, The Politics of Defeat, America's Decline in the Middle East, New York 1977. 17. Sec Paul Eidelberg, "Can Israel Save the U.S.?", Midstream, December, 1978, 3-9. 18. See Robert Moss, "The Campaign to Destabilise Iran," Conflict Studies 101, November 1978. In the summer of 1978, Navid, a weekly published in Persia with the covert sponsorship of the KGB, called for an "anti-dictatorial broad front" with the mullahs playing an important role: We are ready to put at the disposal of our friends from other political groups all our political, propaganda and technical resources for the campaign against the Shah. 19. Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gult1g Archipelago 1918-1956, 3, New York 1978, 161. 20. Henry L. Stimson, American Policy in Nicaragua, New York 1927. 21. See President Kennedy's Message to Congress of March 22, 1961. Also Carlos Rangel, The Latin Americans, New York 1977, 55-57. 22. For the Cuban and Nicaraguan admission of Cuba's role in Nicaragua, NZZ july 28, 1979, 3. 23. Andrei D. Sakharov, "A Letter from Exile", The New Yorl< Times Magazine, June 8, 1980. 24. Sakharov, "Letter", The New York Times Magazine, June 8, 1980. 25. Sakharov, "Letter", The New York Times Magazine, June 8, 1980. 26. Sakharov, "Letter", The New York Times Magazine, June 8, 1980. 27. Sakharov, "Letter", The New York Times Magazine, June 8, 1980. 81 �The Streets on Which Hertnan Melville Was Born and Died Meyer Liben Suddenly a file card showed up among my papers, and on it was written: Herman Melville Born-6 Pearl St., NYC Died-104 East 26th St., NYC I live midway between these two streets, each is within walking distance, and it struck me as proper (walk or no) to visit both these locations. Very few of our classic American authors were born in New York City, and Melville is the only one I can think of who was born and died in New York City, on Manhattan Island (which I unfairly equate with New York City). Henry James was born in New York City and died in London. I know that Pearl Street is close to the Battery, and I had no particular difficulty in finding it. Walking east on the street, the numbers were growing (!) higher, so I turned around, walked west, and found 6 Pearl Street. It is on the south side of the street, Pearl Street lying between State Street on the west and Whitehall Street on the east. Six Pearl Street is now a rather handsome modern building, the Seaman's Church Institute of New York, which is located at 15 State Street but swings around the corner onto Pearl. On the side of the Institute building, next to a garage entrance (one leading down) is a plaque with the following inscription: Meyer Liben (1911-1975) was a New York writer much of whose work remains unpublished. (See "From Our Readers") 82 "Heritage of New York" A house on this site was the birthplace of the novelist and poet Herman Melville (1819-1891) "Moby Dick," among his numerous sea-tales attained enduring recognition in American literature Plaque erected 1968 by the New York Community Trust Two things struck me particularly. One was the transposition of his birth and death dates (first wrote birth and life dates), and I wondered what were the statistical possibilities for such a transposition, and whether among the Pythagoreans or the Kabbalists, whose emphasis on numbers is so well known, such a transposition has a special meaning. It is a kind of reverse symmetry, adds an eccen- tric or mysterious dimension to the fixity, the unalterableness, of the dates of birth and death. The other thing that struck me was the emphasis on Melville as a teller of sea-tales. Although so much of his writing is about the sea (Pierre and Bartleby are two notable exceptions that come to mind) I don't think of him as a writer about the sea, because, I guess, of the power of his psychological and· metaphysical ruminations, or maybe because so many of his great works are not exactly "sea yarns," though a deep and intricate narrative pulses through them. The place of Melville's birth is now surrounded by skyscrapers. A huge office building takes up all of the other, WINTER 1981 �the northern side of the street. It is I Battery Park Plaza, as well as 24 State Street. Next door to the birthplace is a fairly new restaurant building with some offices in it, and then a huge office skyscraper, almost completed, extends to Whitehall, and goes back to State, kind of surrounding the Church Institute. Pearl Street is fairly narrow. It is just off Battery Park, a few blocks away from the Battery itself. One can see the Bay (if that's what it is at this point) and smell the sea. To get the feel of the street (on which Melville lived for the first five years of his life and which, according to William Earl Dodge, in a speech delivered on April 27, 1880, entitled "A Great Merchant's Recollections of Old New York," and reprinted in Valentine's Manual, 1921, was the wholesale dry goods center of the city in 1818 when he, Dodge, worked there as a boy, at a time when the city's population was less than 120,000, and the Battery a favorite promenade), I walked east, past the U.S. Army building on Whitehall Street (now the city's main induction center, and the scene of many disturbances against the Vietnam War). A short distance from Whitehall is Moore Street. There are a number of old buildings on the north side of Pearl, though it is difficult to guess their age, and I saw none dated. One of the old row of buildings is: E. Bergendahl Co. Ship Chandlers Down to Broad Street the buildings are quite modern. On the corner of Broad and Pearl is the Fraunces Tavern, scene of Washington's Farewell to his officers (is this another famous farewell address?). Still heading east on Pearl Street, there is a row of quite old buildings between Broad and Coenties Slip, which buildings seem to be coming down, and on the corner of Pearl and Coenties Slip is Carroll's Bar & Grill Est. 1856 the bar closed and padlocked. (Melville mentions Coenties Slip in Redburn: "Coenties Slip must be somewheres near ranges of grimlooking warehouses, with rusty iron doors and shutters, and tiled roofs; and old anchors and chain-cable piled on the walk. Old-fashioned coffee houses, also, much abound in that neighborhood, with sun-burnt sea captains going in and out, smoking cigars, and talking about Havana, London, and Calcutta." Curious in the above paragraph is Melville's change from umust," as though he were writing about a place he had heard about, to an actual description of the neighborhood in which he was born.) THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Continuing east, close to Hanover Square (that's a name you'd think would have been changed during the Revolution), at 93 Pearl, is an old building with the sign The Hamilton Press, then a street unnamed, going north (the car traffic, that is) which a passerby told me was Wall Street, then Pine, Maiden Lane, John, mostly full of huge office buildings .... I walked back on the north side of Pearl, but saw nothing new from this perspective, and sat down on a bench in Battery Park. So this was Melville's block as a kid. The stones tell you nothing. Why should they? They're not even his stones. And if they were his stones? Knocking your head against a stone street. I wondered if Hawthorne's choice of the name Pearl for the ethereal illegitimate girl in The Scarlet Letter had anything to do with the name of the street on which his friend was born. So much social and physical change in this century and a half, but Pearl Street probably winds as ever, with the s.rme contours. I heard the cries of boys playing ball in the park, glad-some cries winning me away from this search for spirit in stone. (Still wondering what the neighborhood was like then, I later looked into the New York City Guide-seeking spirit in paper-put out in 1939 by the Federal Writers Project. There is no mention of Melville being born on Pearl Street. The origin of the street name is given thus: " ... so named because of the sea shells found there in the days when the East River almost reached this street." So Pearl Street goes right across Manhattan Island. The Guide notes that Melville is buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery, 233rd Street and Webster Avenue, in the Bronx. But there are hardly any cemeteries in Manhattan.) 104 East 26th Street is between Park Avenue South (4th Avenue) and Lexington Avenue. I often pass the street on my way to the Belmore Cafeteria, a few blocks away on 4th Avenue, a favorite haunt of taxicab drivers. 104 is at the end of the Armory which fronts on Lexington Avenue between 25th and 26th Streets and then swings around toward 4th Avenue. The site of the house in which Melville died is about the same distance from the corner of 4th Avenue as the house on Pearl Street in which he was born is from State Street. I walked the block, whose buildings are mostly fairly new, except for the Elton Hotel, at 101 East 26th Street, right across the street from 104, and this hotel could easily have been there when Melville was alive. It looks kind of run-down now. The street is a stony one, a block of unrelieved stone. Spirit is buried in stone, the way spirit and heart are buried in a body. I looked at the stones on East 26th Street, as though for a sign from the household gods. Shall these stones live? 83 �Walking back toward 4th Avenue and the Belmore Cafeteria (after looking at the front of the Armory), I noticed, next to the number 104 on the Armory wall, that someone had scrawled, in black crayon on a whitewashed section of the wall: Herman Melville lived here which Melville was born had come down. Stones come down, cities of stone come down, countries disappear 'from sight (the way Atlantis sank to the bottom of the sea), books and papers turn to dust, we have memories and die with them. Such was the conventional nature of the melancholia, gloom, which passed over and through me at thought of the dissolution of our human-made objects by the combined presence and labor of time, air, water, fire, and man. not Herman Melville died here What will outlast stone, paper, and the memory of man? Spirit, we hope, and the spirit, for one, of Herman Melville Lives! Had I a black crayon in my pocket, I could have scrawled that on the wall, knowing full well that it would have been rubbed off one day, sooner or later, or might conceivably last as long as the building (for why would anyone want to erase from an armory wall the. notation that Herman Melville lived here, that he lives?), disappear when these stones came down, the way the stones of the building in 84 Melville, whose books, the paper on which they are written and printed, will surely dissolve, the memory of Melville and his works maybe disappear, but the word (we hope) which was in the beginning, lives through to the end (of some new beginning), maybe (I imagine) in some flaming scroll that neither time nor the elements can destroy, and so back to the imagination and memory of man. But who knows where or if it is, and it is not our business to seek (doesn't seem to be here on 26th Street between 4th and Lexington Avenues), likely not even to think about it (much). WINTER 1981 �De Gaulle's Le fil de /'epee (1932) Will Morrisey N !927, optimism pervaded the world. The international Left admired Stalin; the Right applauded Mussolini; centrists remembered Wilson fondly and put their faith in the League of Nations. Non-ideologues could afford to ignore the political enthusiasts, for there was money to be made and Lindbergh's exploits to celebrate. The French shared the fashionable sentiment of the day, but contrived a unique expression of it: the Maginot Line, a series of fortifications built along the German border in hope of suppressing whatever ambitions their former enemies might still harbor. The French government, including its military leaders, believed that a defensive strategy was more prudent than one of counter-attack; in the Great War they had learned (too well) that the strategy of attack-at-any-cost brought exhaustion and stalemate. Thus pacifism, another aspect of optimism, provided buttressing for this sentiment, a place for humanitarian worship. But the country was not free of heretics. Marshall Henri Petain dissented, albeit with discretion; he was fortunate to have a less cautious protege who could be sent out for the riskier acts of sacrilege. Major Charles de Gaulle, at Petain's insistence, was allowed to read three lectures to higher-ups at the Ecole Superieure. Being higher-ups, they doubtless found the young officer's subject provocative: I The more he spoke, the more uncomfortable and angry the professors in the front row became. For de Gaulle's theme was the vital role of leadership, and the picture he painted of the leader was at once a criticism of his superiors, a justification of himself and a veiled but unmistakable tribute to the Marshall. I A freelance political writer, Will Morrisey is an associate editor of Interpretation-A Journal of Political Philosophy. This article comes from om unpublished book, De Gaulle/Malraux: Reflections. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Petain, who introduced each lecture, must have enjoyed himself. De Gaulle's career was not advanced, however, and a repeat performance at the Sorbonne later that year did not even cause resentment-only indifference. The lectures were, to use Nietzsche's word, untimely. Later, de Gaulle revised them, added a 1925 article on military doctrine and a new essay on the relationship of the military to politics, and published them in 1932 under the title Le fil de I'epee. At the time, few cared to read this apologia of an obscure man. But twelve years later the man was no longer obscure, and the second edition sold well. The book had turned out to be not only an apologia but, as Stanley Hoffman has written, "a self-portrait in anticipation."' De Gaulle would become the leader he had imagined. * * * HE FORWARD'S EPIGRAPH IS: "Etre grand, c'est soutenif une grand querelle," *a line taken from Hamlet. But the epigraph omits the second half of Hamlet's original sentence: T Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw, When honor's at the stake. For de Gaulle, the object of contention-France-is not at all trivial, but honor is indeed at the stake, along with survival. He begins: *All quotations from Le fil de !'epee (Paris 1944), "Le Livre de Poche" edition (Paris 1973). All translations are the author's. 85 �Incertitude marks our epoch [as it marks Hamlet]. So many denials ["dementis"; also "disappointments" or "contradictions"] of conventions, -previsiOns, doctrines, so many trials, losses, deceptions, so many scandals, shocks, surprises have shaken the established order. The military, being part of that order, suffers from "melancholy"; de Gaulle notes that this is usual after a period of effort. But this usualness consoles no one; everything in "the ambiance of the times appears to trouble the conscience of the professionals". The masses, having endured the cruelties of force, "react with passion" against it. A "mystique" arises, which not only causes men to curse war but "inclines [them] to believe it out-of-date [perimee: also, "no longer valid"], to such a degree as they wish that it were." Men try to exorcise this "evil genie"; "to inspire the horror of sin, a thousand painters apply themselves to representing [war's] ravages." They evoke "only the blood, the tears, tombs, not the glory with which people consoled their sorrows." They deface "History's" traits "under the pretext of effacing war," thus attacking the military order "at its root." In his first book, La discorde chez l' ennemi, de Gaulle showed how immoderation and imbalance undermined the legitimacy of the German rulers during the Great War. In Le fil de ['epee he warns that immoderate fear of war threatens the legitimacy of the French military and, ultimately, that of the state. De Gaulle finds this ambiance "only too easily explicable"; it is ... the instinct of preservation of enfeebled Europe, which senses the risks of a new conflict. The spectacle of a sick man who shakes his fist at death can leave no person unfeeling. He also discerns a rhetorical strategy. Those who would establish an "international order"-obviously, he refers to the League of Nations and its publicists-in the name of the people (who are, de Gaulle remarks tartly, "temporarily made wiser"), need "a vast collective emotion" to do it. "Now one does not rouse crowds other than by elementary sentiments, violent images, brutal invocations." Clearly de Gaulle does not lack rhetorical skill either; here he accuses the internationalists of the same sort of rhetoric that they decry. He also reminds them of other sentiments: Without disavowing any hope, where do we see that the passions and the interests that cause armed conflict silence their demands? that anyone renounces willingly what he has and what he desires? that men, finally, cease to be men? Given human nature, internationalists cannot depend on voluntary consent when building a peaceful world order. If such an order appears, it will appear because it was imposed. And one cannot impose anything so ambitious without the aid of the very military force that internationalists decry. "Whatever direction the world takes, it will not dispense with arms." 86 Indeed, de Gaulle goes beyond the negative, force-asnecessary-evil argument: "Without force, in fact, can one conceive of life?" Only in an "immobile world." Force is the "resource of thought, instrument of action, condition of movement." Shield of masters, bulwark of thrones, battering-ram of revolutions, one owes to it, turn by turn, order and liberty. Cradle of cities, scepter of empires, gravedigger of decadences, force gives the law to the people and regulates their destiny. Like Nietzsche, de Gaulle sees force as that which, through its role in causation, pervades and unifies the world. He may not see it as the only such entity. Force underlies both order and liberty, for example, because it can serve masters and revolutionaries alike. But, obviously, order and liberty are distinguishable states; they imply certain ends, not merely means. De Gaulle does not present force as an end. It is a resource, shield, and battering-ram; it enables and regulates-but does not prescribe. What does, then? In truth, the military spirit, the art of soldiers, their virtues are an integral part of the capital of humans. One sees them incorporated in all phases of History .... For finally, can one understand Greece without Salamis, Rome without the legions, Christianity without the sword, Islam without the scimitar, the Revolution without Valmy, the League of Nations without the victory of France? And then, this abnegation of individuals to the profit of the ensemble, this glorified suffering-the mental stuff of which one makes soldierscorresponds par excellence to our esthetic and moral concepts: the highest philosophical and religious doctrines have not chosen another ideal. Actually, some have-as de Gaulle knows very well. Of the two religions mentioned here (coincidentally, he places them in the middle of the list,- paired as if equivalent), Christianity does not teach self-abnegation for the glory of the ensemble, so much as it does self-abnegation for the glory of God-and force is not the way one goes about it. But de Gaulle will come back to this point later. Returning to the contemporary world, de Gaulle contends that if French military strength declines, that decline would imperil/a patrie and "the general harmony" as well. Whether it is thought to be good or bad, if military and political power "escapes the wise, what fools will seize it, or what madmen?" In the end, responsibility involves power. "It is time that the military retake the consciousness of its preeminent role, that it concentrate on its object, which is, simply, war." To do this, "to restore the edge to the sword," it must "restore the philosophy proper to its state"; for de Gaulle, a "philosophy" both energizes and provides the ends which energy, force, and power serve. Le fil de !'epee, then, contains a military philosophy, not a "philosophy of life" -although the one implies the WINTER 1981 �other. The book has five chapters, of two, three, three, three, and four sections, respectively; fifteen in all. • • HE FIRST CHAPTER'S TITLE- "The T * Action of War" -de· picts war as a thing one engages in, and suggests de Gaulle's thesis that war is essentially active, not sus· ceptible to what he calls "a priori" planning. Consonant with this, he uses a Faustian epigraph: "In the beginning was the Word? No! In the beginning was the Action." Faust, like Machiavelli and Bacon, aspired to the domina· tion of things, and this chapter studies the opposition be· tween the autonomous flow of events, and those men who would dominate that flow-Heraclitus versus Machi· avelli, if you will. "The action of war essentially comes to the character of contingency": the enemy's strength and intentions, the terrain, events, the direction, speed, and manner of one's strike, men and materiel, atmospheric conditions. "In war as in life one can apply the ["everything flows"] of the Greek philosopher; what has taken place will no longer take place, ever, and the action, whatever it may be, might well not have been or been different." He quotes Bergson (a friend of de Gaulle's family), who revived and metamorphosed Heraclitean metaphysics twenty years earlier, on the intelligence's discomfort when it attempts to grasp what is not constant, fixed, and definite, but is instead mobile, unstable, and diverse. Logic doesn't work there; it is, de Gaulle writes, like trying to catch water in a fishnet. Intelligence does have its function: "elaborating in advance the givens of the conception, it clarifies them, makes them precise, and reduces the chance of error". It defines the problem, and formulates hypotheses on how to deal with it. But the faculty that gives us "a direct con· tact" with Hthe realities" is intuition, "the faculty which links us most closely to nature." Intuition gives us not only "profound perception" but the "creative impulse"; for life (inconceivable without force) produces, and the intui· tion, by linking us to life, enables us to be productive. We participate in what it is possible to find there of obscure harmony. It is by instinct [de Gaulle uses "instinct" and "intu- ition" interchangeably] that man perceives the realitY of conditions which surround him and that he experiences the corresponding impulsion. Military inspiration is analogous to that of the artist; in either case, as de Gaulle quotes Bacon, "It is man adding to nature." De Gaulle apparently means that man adds to external nature by linking himself with it. He then draws upon its productive force, which expresses an obscure in- herent harmony; this force, filtered through man, re· emerges in the world in order to master it. Alexander's "hope," Caesar's "fortune," and Napoleon's "star" were "simply the certitude of a particular gift putting them in a strict enough relation to realities to dominate them THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW always." One might recall Bacon's observation that to master nature one must know and use nature's laws. But de Gaulle, unlike Bacon, promises no utopias brought by the advancement of learning. Human nature has limits, and de Gaulle recognizes that fact more clearly than Bacon does. The most J:!e asserts is that such great men give others "the impression of a natural force which will command events"; they possess, as Flaubert said of Han- nibal (in Salammb6), "the indefinable splendor of those destined for great enterprises." (Nevertheless, despite his assertion that such men can dominate realities, the ex- amples he chooses are of men who could not dominate them "always," as he surely realizes.) · The intelligence takes what instinct gives it and makes those "givens" coherent, definite.* This enables the military leader to set goals and priorities, decide timing, and placement, coordinate the various operations and their phases-in a word, to synthesize. It is why all the great men of action have been meditative. All possessed to the highest degree the faculty to retreat into themselves, to deliberate inwardly. Some critics exalt instinct, claiming that there is no true art of war because chance alone determines battles. De Gaulle cites Socrates, who, he claims, told Nichomachides that the popular assembly's choice of a leader was unim· portant because a dishonest and incapable citizen would lead the army no worse than a skillful and conscientious general. But that is not what Socrates says in the pass~ge de Gaulle alludes to. In Xenophon's Memorabilia, Book III, chapter 4, Nichomachides complains that the assembly elected Antisthenes, a man without Nichomachides' military experience to be a general. What Socrates con· tends is not that the choice of commanders doesn't matter, but that military experience doesn't matter. He claims instead that what matters is the ability to rule. Antisthenes had managed a chorus well, even though he had no musi· cal skill, because he found the best masters to do his work for him. Xenophon's words could not be innocently misread as de Gaulle misreads them. A slip of memory is just as unlikely, for de Gaulle's memory, which he trained since childhood, was nearly infallible when he wanted it to be. As if to prove it, de Gaulle next correctly recalls Socrates' remarks to Pericles (son of the famous Pericles), which oc· cur in the following chapter of the Memorabilia. "It is true," .de Gaulle writes, "that the same Socrates, inter- rogated by Pericles on the cause of the indiscipline of the Athenian troops, held responsible their leaders, who were incapable of commanding them." De Gaulle has good reason to be "forgetful" concerning the Socratic defense *Although de Gaulle writes that the iritelligence attributes form to the "givens" instinct provides, it's important to recall that the givens are not inchoate, but possess "an obscure harmony" of their own. To what extent that harmony must match the form attributed to the givens by intelligence is not clear; obviously, there must be some relationship, or the battle-plan wouldn't work. 87 �of amateurism in war; as we've seen, de Gaulle wants France to have a professional army. De Gaulle prizes military experience. His book is an attack on the notion that anyone who can rule well can also rule an army. The last chapter, "Politics and the Soldier," gives a more subtle view of the relationship between politicians and soldiers than Xenophon's teaching. Perhaps de Gaulle cites Xenophon falsely-as Bacon, in his Essays, cites the execution of Socrates under the oligarchy-to seem authoritative to the ignorant and to stimulate those who are not ignorant. De Gaulle's mention of Socrates' teaching to Pericles' son also has a point for those who know that passage. In their conversation, Socrates and young Pericles consider how one may lead the Athenians so as to enhance the city's fame and to defeat its enemies. Notable among these ene· mies are the Boeotians, "who formerly did not dare, even on their own soil, to meet the Athenians in the field without the aid of the Spartans and the other Peloponnesians"; the Boeotians now "threaten to invade Attica single-handed."' They can do so because Athenian military affairs are commanded by "men who are greatly deficient in knowledge." To counter this threat, Socrates suggests that the Athenians, "if equipped with light arms," could "do great mischief to our enemies, and form a strong bulwark for the inhabitants of our country" by oc· cupying the mountains on the frontiers of Attica, especially those bordering on Boeotia. The parallel between democratic France, threatened (according to de Gaulle and Petain) by Germany, and ancient democratic Athens, threatened by Boeotia, is suggestive. France, it is true, has no mountains on the German border; but in a 1928 essay called "The Historical Role of French Places," de Gaulle described the military uses that French terrain had and could be put to. He praised the use of fortifications, but also insisted on the need for mobility-precisely the combination of a strong defensive bulwark and a maneuverable attack force that Socrates recommends to Pericles. De Gaulle ends this "epistemological" essay by noting that military men sometimes neglect the cultivation of intelligence, especially when afflicted by the "depression of spirits" which follows a "great victorious effort." But more frequently they make the opposite error, longing to ''deduce the conception of known constants in advance" -what de Gaulle calls "a priorism" -an activity which ''exercises a singular attraction over the French mind." The "speculative and absolute character" of such dogmas "render them seductive and perilous." In section ii de Gaulle turns to the non-intellectual faculties of the leader. Petain, he tells us, said that giving orders calls for the greatest effort of any part of an action. "In fact," de Gaulle continues, "the intervention of the human will in the chain of events has something ir· revocable about it"; from this derives the military leader's responsibility, one of "such weight that few men are capable of supporting it entirely." 88 It is why the highest qualities of mind do not suffice. Without doubt, the intelligence aids, without doubt, instinct pushes, but, in the last resort, the decision is of the moral order. An officer must act, and not conceal his incapacity by claiming that he has no specific orders, or by looking after details only, as certain French generals did during the Franco-Prussian War. The other extreme, the exaggeration of initiative "to the point of violating discipline and smashing the convergence of efforts," was exemplified by the German general, Alexander von Kluck, during the Battle of the Marne; such indiscipline usually occurs in "the absence or the softness of the decisions of the superior echelon." (De Gaulle studies the von Kluck inci· dent in his 1924 book, La discorde chez l'ennemi and later discusses the Franco-Prussian war in La France et son armee, published in 1938.) The mean between these two extremes is "the spirit of enterprise," necessary if the leader will "win over the others." He must do so, for he needs not only to know what he wants to do and to order it done, but to have the authority that ensures his men's obedience. Army discipline helps-it is a sort of contract wherein subordinates pledge their obedience-"but it does not suffice for the leader to bind the executants by an impersonal obedience.'' It is in their souls that he must imprint his living mark. To move their wills, to seize, to animate them to turn themselves toward the purpose that he has assigned them; to make grow and to multiply the effects of discipline by a moral suggestion which surpasses reasoning; to crystallize around himself all that there is in their souls of faith, of hope, of latent devotion (but not, apparently, of charily)-such is [the nature of] his domination. Training of leaders is part of the preparation for war; such preparation can occur during a war or during peacetime. But peacetime is a poor time to prepare for war (although obviously, one should not wait until the enemy attacks), because it produces second-rate leaders. Good leaders are hard to recruit in peacetime: "the pro· found motive of the activity of the best and the strongest is the desire to acquire power," and the peacetime army offers ambitious men no place to command, and slow advancement. De Gaulle, again echoing Nietzsche, defines "power" broadly. After 1815, when the French saw many years of peace ahead of them, those men desirous of power-Thiers, Lamennais, Comte, Pasteur-went into politics, law, speculation, and the arts. They did not go into the army. A Pasteur does not desire power in the vulgar sense; he desires power in that he wishes to accomplish something worthwhile. If power is what the best men want, it would seem that they are inspired by that "Bergsonian" intuition mentioned earlier, which 1inks them with the forces of life. They have what Bergson called ''l'energie spirituelle.'' WINTER 1981 �Today, it is toward affairs that ambitions turn; money is, for the moment, the apparent sign of power and the French nourish willingly the conviction that international laws and ententes will succeed in preventing war. De Gaulle does not camouflage his skepticism about this "conviction," and the desire for money that underlies it. Not only do ambitious men shun the peacetime military, but peacetime military leaders tend to promote the least-gifted men in their ranks. They select their successors by observing field exercises, which test superficial cleverness, the ability to grasp the immediate features of a circumstance, and flexibility of mind-rather than real ap· titude, the power of seeing the essentials of a circumstance, ahd genuine understanding. Finally, "powerful personalities" often lack "that superficial seductiveness which pleases in the course of ordinary life." The mass may admit their superiority, but does not love them, and they are not chosen for advancement at times when no danger seems near. Of all the young major's statements, this may have angered his superiors most. Not only was de Gaulle just such a "personality," criticized for his supposed arrogance, but he dared to suggest that his superiors are of the mass, men who recognize his excellence but will not reward it. De Gaulle's conclusion: "Our times are little propitious to the formation and selection of military leaders" because the intensity of the Great War led to "a relaxation of wills, a depression of character," which led to "moral lassitude." War and soldiers are held in little esteem. * C * * "Of Character," concerns Gaullist ethics. De Gaulle's epigraph-"The smell of the world has changed" -comes from Georges Du- HAPTER TWO. hamel; to choose a sentence from one of the era's best- known pacifists probably amused de Gaulle, especially in writing on the "spirit of his age." The French army has had "powerful life only by the effect of an ideal, issuing from the dominant sentiments of the epoch and drawing from that harmony its virtue and radiance." Ethics, it would seem, derive from sentiment, not reason-and fashionable sentiment, at that. As de Gaulle rehearses his examples, this "spirit of the age" explanation of ethics seems accurate. In the seventeenth century, Louvois's reforms unified the military so as to serve the interests of the sovereign, who was en- gaged in unifying the country. The Republican army of Hache was possessed of a "rather ostentatious contempt for honors and rewards," an affectation that "went well with glory." When de Gaulle comes to the contemporary state of things, we detect a tone of irony, for de Gaulle has already noted that today's ambiance is anti-militaristic. Presumably, the army most consonant with "the times" would be the army the French have now: torpid, defensive, hard for de Gaulle to get promoted in. There have been improveTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW ments in institutions, equipment, and, he admits, in military thinking, but these aren't sufficient. To achieve "efficacity" the French army needs "a moral renaissance." The "rejuvenating ideal" of this epoch is "character," "the virtue of difficult times." The second chapter studies the opposition between the ambiance of the times as seen by most people and the ambiance de Gaulle presents, which excludes those aspects of fashionable thought and sentiment which tend to undermine the security and the grandeur of France. "The man of character," the Gaullist leader, has recourse ~'to himself." "His impulse is to impose on action his mark ... to make it his affair." "He has the passion to will, he is jealous to decide." Uninterested in profit, this "gambler. .. searches less for gain than to succeed, and pays his debts in his own money." If he loses he reacts not with sorrow bUt with "some bitter satisfaction." The man of character "confers nobility to action; without him [action would be] the dismal blemish of the slave, thanks to him, [it is] the divine sport of heroes." He doesn't act alone. Subordinates assist him; their virtues are self-sacrifice and obedience. Counsellors and theorists help him plan. But his "character" is "the supreme element, the creative part, the divine point." We recall that intuition perceives the creative and forceful realities; character, too, links a man to that in life which is creative and forceful~ more, it is itself creative and force- ful. On the level of ethics, of human action, it corresponds to the "obscure harmony" of nature. This property of vivifying the enterprise implies the energy to assume the consequences [he may be thinking of Bergson's "energie spirituelle"]. Difficulty attracts the man of character, for it is in gripping [the difficulty] that he realizes himself. But whether or not he vanquishes, it is an affair between it and him. Jealous lover, he never shares what it gives him, or what it costs him. What it gives him is "the austere [or harsh: apre] joy of being responsible." This paradoxical phrase epitomizes the Gaullist balancing of opposites in the domain of ethics. De Gaulle is now far from Machiavellian success-philosophy; the telos of Machiavellian virtu has little to do with true austerity. De Gaulle combines the individualism of such ~·moderns" as Machiavelli and Bacon with the au- sterity of the "ancients." Self-realization in struggle and the austere joy of being responsible: one thinks of Nietzsche, or, perhaps, of Aristotle's great-souled man. In peacetime the man of character has detractors, "but in action, enough of criticism!" And in a passage reminis- cent of Aristotle (Nichomachean Ethics, Book IV, Chapter 3), de Gaulle writes: Reciprocally, the confidence of the small exalts the man of character. He feels himself obliged by this humble justice rendered to him. His firmness increases in measure, but also his benevolence, for he was born a protector. If the affair sue- 89 �ceeds, he distributes advantage generously, and, in the case of a reverse, he does not allow reproach to descend on any but himself. Esteem and loyalty exchanged for security: to "ancient" and "modern" themes, de Gaulle adds a "medieval" one: the ideal relationship of the vassal and his lord. With intuition, de Gaulle wrote, one "participates" in reality's ere~ ative force; with character, he might have added, one participates in the reality of other men, calling up their creative force, as well as one's own. In ordinary times, the man of character's superiors often dislike him, calling him "arrogant and undisciplined." De Gaulle writes from experience. "But when events become grave" he receives justice; "a sort of ground swell pushes to the first level the man of character." He "does not abuse" his moment, scarcely tasting "the savor of revenge, for the action absorbs everything." Not quite Aristotelian magnanimity-which eschews revenge because revenge is small and it is large, rather than because action preoccupies it-but de Gaulle's man of character comes nearer to achieving it than do most of the men of his time. De Gaulle shows that "character" is not an exclusively military virtue, any more than intuition is. He finds it in Alexander, Richelieu, Napoleon, Bismarck, and Clemen<;eau, but also in Galilee, Columbus, Boileau, and Lesseps. He fails to list a religious leader (unless one would so characterize Cardinal Richelieu). . . . the success of great men implies multiple faculties. Character, if accompanied by nothing, only gives daredevils and stubborn personalities. But inversely, the highest qualities of mind (alone) cannot suffice. Sieycs and Talleyrand were notable for their qualities of mind, de Gaulle contends, but they were not great men. De Gaulle writes more against the ambiance of his "time" than with it. In the third section of this chapter he "reconciles" this ambiance with his notion of "character." The pre-1914 world, he observes, was an era of stability, economy, and prudence. It is gone. "Competition, aided by technique," comprise the "allegorical group which symbolizes the new age." The postwar generation, adventurous and money-conscious, take initiative and self reliance as their virtues. The army should "reflect" these virtues, but obviously de Gaulle would have it "reflect" a judiciously modified version of them; he does not advocate money-consciousness in soldiers and, as he has already written, these are bad times for the military. The "dominant sentiments" of an epoch, in de Gaulle's view, are really those among the popular sentiments which the man who would dominate his epoch selects-because they most nearly resemble his own virtues. There are epochs in which such a man cannot advance, and undominating men predominate. De Gaulle waits, writing books. While the army waits, it will be paralyzed if its leaders smother initiative, along with "the taste to be responsible and 90 the courage to speak plainly." De Gaulle wants "character" respected. Each individual should have responsibility on his own level. (This idea anticipates the "participation" that de Gaulle advocated in 1969, wherein capital, labor, and technocrats would share power on the governing boards of industry, and whereby local governments would have more responsibility.) If "character" is respected, the army will have fewer regulations, get better results. Better men will adopt the military career, and continue in it, because the army will allow them to exercise"their capacity to act," which is what such men want. ' '0 * * * the central chapter of Le fil de l'epee, consists of de Gaulle's final diagnosis F PRESTIGE;· of, and prescription for, the epoch's disease. Prestige is usually a matter of appearance only, but de Gaulle chooses as this chapter's epigraph a phrase from Villiers de L'Isle Adam-"In his breast, to carry his own glory" -a phrase which links prestige to character. Authority has decayed in the postwar era. Men are either reticent and unsure, or overconfident and obsessed with forms. This decadence follows the decline of the moral, social, political order which, for centuries, held sway in our old nations. By conviction and by calculation, one has for a long time at· tributed to power an origin, to the elite rights which justify hierarchies. The edifice of these conventions has collapsed . Deference fades; perhaps this is the other, negative, side of the taste for initiative de Gaulle cited before. But the crisis can't last. Men cannot, fundamentally, do without being directed. These political animals have need of organization, that is to say of order and of leaders. Ancient sources of authority no longer exist, but "the natural equilibrium of things will bring others, sooner or later, better or less good, proper in all cases to the establishment of a new discipline." Even as he dismisses the old, de Gaulle affirms something ancient: the idea, discarded by Machiavelli and Hobbes, that man is a political animal, by nature and not by convention. The "new discipline," of course, will be in large part conventional; still, it responds to a natural requirement, and will be "better or less good" than its predecessors-not merely "historically relative." De Gaulle sees the beginnings of the new discipline in "the individual value and ascendence" of certain "new men." Once, the mass accorded credit to a man's function in society, or to his birthright. Now it respects "those here who know [how] to impose themselves"-dictators, technicians, athletes-men who owe success to their own efforts. In the army today, rank has some importance, but upersonal prestige" has more. WINTER 1981 �In section ii, the central section of the central chapter, de Gaulle writes frankly of prestige. Prestige is "a sort of sympathy inspired in others," comprised of affection, sug· One can observe, in fact, that the leaders of men-politicians, prophets, soldier-who obtain the most from others, identify themselves with high ideas . ... gestion, and impression, which depends on ((an elemen- tary gift, a natural aptitude that escapes analysis." Not dependent on intelligence, it is undefinable, although one can isolate "some constant and necessary elements" of it. Mystery is one of them; "one reverses little what one knows well." Mystery doesn't come from isolation~the most isolated man is unknown, not mysterious-but from reserve, which contributes to the sense that the man The prophets' centrality on the lisi suggests that they do not differ from secular leaders, at least in their self-identification with "high ideas." In view of the assertion that this is a selfidentification, one may wonder if such men are models of evangelical perfection, but at the least we can say that all of them embody ideas rather than argue possesses a "secret," or a "surprise" with which he can in- for they are "renowned less for utility than for the extent of their work" ~sentiment glorifies them. Useful men appeal to our rationality, but great men do not strive for tervene at any time. "The latent faith of the masses does the rest." for them. "Whereas, sometimes, reason blames them"~ Prestige also involves an outer reserve, one of words and of gestures-"appearances, perhaps, but according to usefulness. which the multitude establishes its opinion." Great sol- even so, he shows an ethical seriousness, an elevation, diers have always taken care to appear in a certain way; de that Machiavelli lacks. De Gaulle's exemplary leader does not "enjoy himself." Indeed, the suffering that comes of his solitude-among-men partly explains why some leaders "suddenly reject the burden." Years later Andre Malraux ·would remember this passage as he considered de Gaulle's final retirement. De Gaulle completes this section with an anecdote: Bonaparte (he usually calls him Napoleon, but Gaulle reminds us of Hamilcar in Flaubert's Salammb6, Caesar in his Commentaries, Napoleon. "Nothing enhances authority more than silence"; for action demands concentration, and speech dissipates strength. There is a necessary correspondence between "silence and order," and de Gaulle quotes the Roman phrase, Imperatoria brevitas. Aristotle's human animals are political due to their capacity of reasoned speech or logos. De Gaulle, with his intuitionism (a distrust of verbal depictions of reality), apparently does not believe that the natural order, including human nature and the politics it necessitates, can be comprehended through the use of language. Politics becomes as much the art of silence as the art of speaking, and Gaullist rhetoric emphasizes brevity and symbolism instead of elaboration and argument. There is liberated from such personages a magnetism of confidence and even illusion. For those who follow them, they personify purpose, incarnate aspiration. This is de Gaulle's most Machiavellian chapter. But here, in a personal moment, his given name seems more appropriate), regarding "an ancient and noble monu- ment," agreed with a companion who thought it sad~ "comme la grandeur!" he added. The third section of "Of Prestige" is the eighth of the book's fifteen sections, the central one. It extends the previous treatment of individual authority to the army. The ambiance of the time damages corporate as well as individual authority. "For recovering (prestige), the army has little need of laws, demands for money, prayers, only a vast internal effort." "The military spirit" needs distance and reserve, as does the great man; such partial isolation contributes to prestige, because military rigor and cohesion have always impressed men. To become such a personification or incarnation, the leader responds to "the obscure wish of men" who are imperfect, who therefore "accept collective action with a view that it tends toward something great." Whereas the great man realizes himself by participating in a difficult action, lesser men complete themselves by participating in a collective action, under the direction of a great man. The leader needs "the character of elevation," but leader· ship ... is no affair of virtue, and evangelical perfection does not conduct the empire. The man of action scarcely conceives of himself without a strong dose of egoism, pride, hardness, ruse. This chapter thus examines the opposition between means and ends. In de Gaulle's view, it is ends, results, that count; if the leader uses the means of realpolitik for "realizing great things," those means will be forgotten because he satisfies "the secret desires of all." THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Some current trends favor the development of military spirit. "Individualism is in the wrong" today: trades unionize, political parties and sports are mass-oriented, as well; Ia machinisme has increased and the division of labor intensifies, leading to less eclecticism and fantasy; labor and leisure are equalized; standardization exists in education, housing, and fashions. (Earlier, de Gaulle wrote that individual initiatives were fashionable; but the contradiction is less de Gaulle's than that of his "time." Again, we notice de Gaulle's selectiveness.) As important as these current trends may be, the army's self-esteem matters more. The military must not only appear firm; it must feel "confidence in itself and in its des· tiny." "The day when the French nobility consecrated its ardor to defending its privileges rather than to conducting the State, the victory of the Third Estate was already certain." The military should therefore avoid reacting to the public's anti-militarism by a selfish defense of its privileges. This won't happen if the military reminds itself, and 91 �the public, that anti-militarism is understandable, even good-(for men should not want to destroy each other)but nevertheless inadequate. Foreigners envy French prosperity, and France's geography renders her vulnerable to invasion; therefore the French need a shield. The military serves the French, not only itself. And war is not purely evil. "The desires of conquerors" have brought riches, advances in science and art, "marvel~ lous sources of wisdom and inspiration." "With what vir- tues [arms] have enriched the moral capital of men!" Courage, devotion and "greatness of soul" are among them. Armies have transported ideas, reforms and religions; Hthere would have been no Hellenism, no Roman order, Christianity [the central item on the list], Rights of Man, modern civilization but for their bloody effort." Pacifists and bellecists are both right: the age of Descartes' Discours de Ia. Methode, Bossuet's Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle, Richelieu's "realistic politique," the "practical administration" of Colbert, and the "objective strategy" of Turenne. The French mind then "constrained itself by the rule of mesure and of the concrete." At his best Napoleon shared this sense of mesure and the ability to adapt strategy to circumstances; but more often in French history-especially in the eighteenth century and in the generation that fought Germany in 1870- "a priorism" dominated. And failed. Although military strategy and ethics are not the same, de Gaulle sees a relationship between them. "A priorism" in strategy habituates leaders to disregard circumstance; this makes them intellectually and ethically weak, for "a doctrine constructed in the abstract" has often "rendered blind and passive a leader who, in other times, had made proof of experience and audacity." Arms have tortured but also fashioned the world. They have accomplished the best and the worst, begetting infamy as well as the most great, by turns groveling in horror or radia ting in glory. Shameful and glorious, their history is the history of men. The central section in "Of Doctrine" is an analysis of the doctrine employed by French leaders in the Great War. Military thought turned toward the offensive. This orientation was salutary . ... But the strategy went too far. The history of men is not a tale of evangelical perfection. And de Gaulle repeats: if an international order comes, a military force will "establish and assure it." It is not merely a "pragmatic" argument. The army's greatness, like that of individuals, depends on virtue-if not evangelical virtue. This military virtue can be described with a paradox: the army's pride would be worthless were it not accompanied by self-sacrifice. There is "a French strategists propounded "an absolute metaphysic of action" modeled on Prussia's offensive drives in 1870. That strategy worked against an inactive opponent; but the Great War demonstrated that a mobile and resolute opponent can resist such an attack-strategy. Colonel Petain had objected to this doctrine of attack, curious relationship, but incontestable, between the re- arguing for the importance of circumstances and the need nunciation of individuals and the splendor of all." Most Frenchmen give their energies to profit-making, and it's difficult to find soldiers who don't imitate civil- for maximum obtainable fire support at the time and ians. Here also, however, balance will assert itself; "in a fracas of bankruptcies, scandals and judicial prosecutions" the forgotten "moral values" will return to "the great daylight of public respect." With this return, and a natural pulling-back from extreme corruption, the army's prestige will return also. For its prestige rests on such virtues. ' 'I * * * N WAR, there are principles, but they are few," wrote Bugeaud, the unsuccessful defender of Paris in 1848. De Gaulle uses this remark as the epigraph for "Of Doctrine," the simplest, if not the shortest, chapter of Le {il de I'epee. De Gaulle here outlines a stra- tegic doctrine, not an ethical one, because war is not ex- clusively a problem of ethics. Battle plans count, too. Once more, de Gau1le insists on the importance of circumstances. A statesman will fail, despite will, hardness, national resources and alliances, if he "does not discern the character of his times." The French military tends to ignore war's empirical character, he claims. But in the sev- enteenth century it did not; that was, de Gaulle observes, 92 place of attack ("concentration of means" forms Hthe basis of execution"). He proved the validity of his thesis in the Battle of the Marne. But his superiors persisted in advocating, and practicing, an attack-strategy; only after the failure of their "systematic audacity" during the April 1917 offensive did they relent. As we know, de Gaulle thinks the present French military stance is too defensive. He has praised a military strategy of action and leadership. Nevertheless, he is careful to warn against any "a priorism "-of attack, or of defense. De Gaulle turns to the defense-strategy in the third section. The new doctrine may end in "abstract deductions and foreclosing conclusions." Obviously an extension of Petain's teaching on firepower, it involves the concentra- tion of firepower, coupled with the siting of offensives only in those places where the terrain is best suited. Unfortunately, this strategy neglects other variables-most notably, the enemy, who may not decide to occupy the sites that French guns can most easily fire upon. "May French military thinking resist the age-old attraction of the a priori, of the absolute, and of dogmatism!" It should instead "fix itself in the classical order," the "taste for the concrete," the "gift of mesure" and the "sense of realities." * * * WINTER 1981 �studies the opposition expressed in its title, "Politics and the Soldier" ~specifically, the tension between politicians and soldiers. Like the fourth chapter, it addresses the practical question: What should leaders think and do? Politicians and soldiers may, as the epigraph from Musset claims, "go two by two/Until the world ends, step by step, side by side." But they'll rarely go amicably. In peacetime the politician has the dominant role; in wartime he shares it with the military leader, and interdependence is not conducive to friendship. Politicians and soldiers are different men, and not especially compatible T HE FIFTH CHAPTER ones. The politician attempts to udominate opinion"- whether it be that of the monarch, the council or the people (the one, the few, or the many)~because he can do nothing except insofar as he acts in the name of the sovereign. Pleasing and promising, not opposing and arguing, lead to advancement; "to become the master he poses as servant. ... " After acquiring power he must defend it~ convincing prince or parliament, flattering passions, aid~ ing special interests. It is a precarious career in an unstable world. Unlike that of the soldier, whose world is built on hierarchy, discipline, and regulations, he advances slowly, but with slight worry of demotion. As de Gaulle knew only too well, the off-battlefield danger for a military man is stagnation, being "posted" to nowhere and forgotten. The two men act differently. The politician reaches his goals by governing himself; the soldier is direct. The politician's eyes are far-sighted (and beclouded) because for him reality is complex, mastered only by calculation and ruse. The soldier short-sighted (but also clear-sighted) because for him reality is simple, controlled by resoluteness. The politician asks, "What will people say?" The soldier asks, "What are the principles?" That such men find one another distasteful seems predictable. Nor is it entirely bad. Soldiers who make laws alarm 1 neighboring countries, and politicians who intrude into the army corrupt it with partisan doctrines and passions. The public interest is best served by their collaboration in defense of the country from external dangers~and their separation in defense of the country from internal dangers. Before elaborating on that suggestion, de Gaulle devotes two sections to the difficulties of enacting it. In peacetime the two "sides" bicker (especially in those regimes where public opinion has influence). Arms are expensive, and are therefore unpopular except among soldiers, who are "only too ready" to believe war will come, because wartime brings their chance for glory and advancement. Civilians, who have no reason to want war, who fear it, refuse to believe that another war approaches. When war comes, soldiers and politicians unite, ini- tially. Later, if the war lingers on, the civil government feels its own impotence, becomes frustrated. The public also becomes irritable. Reverses of fortune excite recrimiTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW nations. Soldiers and politicians are men who want power, and do not want to share it. If one group succeeds in subordinating the other, the destruction of the balance may ruin the country~as it did in 1793 and 1870, when the French politicians dominated the military and caused battlefield defeats, and in 1917 when the military undermined civilian authority in Germany. A country avoids that predicament, not by hiring pleasant fellows to run the government and the army, but by finding leaders who are not pliable or docile. "It is necessary that les maitres have the souls of maitres, and it is a very bad calculation that excludes from power characters accused on the pretext that they are difficult." Nor can the two groups of men separate entirely. As always, circumstances differ, sometimes from day to day~personalities, the phase of the war, and so forth. No a priori compartmentalization works. But their purposes are separable. "The most just glory" that a statesman can win comes from his success in maintaining the "national will" during war. Soldiers, however, should deal with the fighting. In the fourth and last section de Gaulle explains the ethical and institutional bases for the balance and partial separation of power between civil and military authorities. Although fluid, changing with circumstance, the relationship between the two does not depend on "chance" to "inspire" leaders. It depends on the institution of a system that educates men of character to lead well. "Other epochs assured [this] by a social and political regime which mingled in the families and in the councils all the sorts of servants of the State": Roman patricians and Prussian nobles held both civilian and military posts; French nobles served in one branch or the other, but understood the problems of both. Too, the sovereign "personified all the powers, symbolizing their harmony." "Resulting from this perpetual osmosis was a reciprocal understanding between toga and arms which is no longer in the spirit of the times" ~although de Gaulle would like to revive it. De Gaulle implies that parliamentarism lacks the unifying sovereign who would compel politicians and soldiers to think of shared ends, if only by symbolizing the harmony of all state powers. Nonetheless, today's military leaders retain "the secret esteem of the strong for the strong." The "man of character" wants things his way and remains alone among subor- dinates. But as he protects helpful inferiors and attacks his enemies, he also esteems others of his kind; he may conceal this esteem, but he acts in accordance with it. Relations between great-souled equals are productively, not injuriously, tense. With classical moderation, unmen- tioned in this section but presumed by it, the secret esteem of the strong for the strong prevents the selfdefeat brought on by petty squabbling that de Gaulle found in the German leaders during the Great War, as described in La discorde chez l' ennemi. De Gaulle now proposes an institutional basis for this concordia discors. He does not as yet propose a political 93 �revision for France, although he has hinted that one may be needed. He suggests an educational reform: One could conceive, it is true, of a providential State wishing to prepare a political, administrative, and military elite, by studies done in common, to direct, if such should be the case, the wartime effort of a nation. De Gaulle's civic education would increase the accord between the two domains in wartime and clarify discussions and laws concerning military power in peacetime. It would not "solve" the problem because the problem isn't susceptible to rules. But it would help. Intuition and character aren't teachable assets. "One does nothing great without great men," the "ambitieux of the first rank ... who want nothing in life but to imprint their mark on events and who, on the shore where they spend their ordinary days, dream only of the surge of History!" These are men who know that an illustrious military career must serve "a vast policy," that a states~ man "of great glory" defends his country. * * • of his time's "incertitude" and the "melancholy" of the army, de Gaulle attempts to restore the mental balance of his contemporaries by a defense of power. Many writers who lament the disappearance of authority in the modern West prefer to avoid discussing power. Not de Gaulle. In the first three chapters he begins with epistemology, and therefore metaphysics, moves to ethics, then to politics. In the fourth and fifth chapters he discusses more immediate concerns: military doctrine and educational reform. One may say that he moves from the theoretical and timeless to the practical and immediate. Gaullist epistemology reconciles, without blending, the "flow of events" -and the need to adjust to them-with the attempt to dominate events. The leader intuitively perceives the nature of things (which is creative, forceful and possesses an "obscure harmony"), using his "intelligence" to translate these perceptions into effective actions. This intellectual process complements the ethical, decision-making faculty, the "spirit of enterprise" which balances the extremes of passivity and rashness. I N THE FACE Gaullist ethics reconciles, without blending, the "spirit of the age" with "character," under the aegis of the will to power (broadly defined), which animates the best men. In 94 selecting, ordering, and directing certain aspects of "the ambiance of the times," the leader realizes himself, feeling "the austere joy of being responsible" -the joy of the great-souled or magnanimous man. Intuition and intelligence, plus character, yield grandeur. Gaullist politics reconciles, without blending, the means and the end. Authority's present disrepute can't persist for long, because men are by nature political animals, by which de Gaulle means that they need leaders and an ordered life. Prestige is that which enables the leader to lead. De Gaulle associates it with the use of words, with actions, and with the personification of aspirations and purposes. The end of politics is grandeur, and the means are not those of evangelical perfection. Such means are forgiven, however, because they serve "the secret desires of all." War, which is not politics but shares some of its characteristics, embodies the tension of means and ends in the extreme, having both tortured and fashioned the world. As with all products of human nature, perhaps as with human nature itself, it is both shameful and glorious. Gaullist military strategy depends on balance, mesure. It is anti-dogmatic because dogmatism encourages leaders to be passive, complacent, and blind to circumstances. Gaullist civic education reconciles, without blending, the politician and the soldier. Though the two are by nature different-the one speaks in order to gain power, the other acts in order to gain power-their mutual will to power and consequent attempts to achieve it cause discord. But their natural similarity can make possible the concordia discors that is Gaullist reconciliation. That similarity is the secret esteem of the strong for the strong. Both serve the country, realizing themselves by selfsacrificing patriotism. If its members participate in common studies, this elite will suffer less discord. De Gaulle concerns himself, on each "level" of human life, with the problem of establishing a concordia discors which does not sacrifice, but rather enhances, the integrity of the participating elements. He thus avoids the extremes of totalitarianism and egalitarianism and provides a basis for republicanism, in a century wherein republicanism has declined. l. Aidan Crawley, De Gaulle, Indianapolis and New York 1969, 53. 2. Stanley Hoffman, Decline or Renewal? France Since the 1930s, New York 1974, 217. 3. Xenophon, Memorabilia, Book 3, Chapter 5. WINTER 1981 �FIRST READINGS Plato's Moral Theory: The Early and Middle Dialogues, by Terence Irwin, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1977. Terence Irwin's book is an attempt at a critical exposition of the moral theory in Plato's early and middle dialogues. It is intended to show that Plato's questions concerning morality are "legitimate moral questions" (285; cf. 266), and that his "questions and answers, right and wrong, are not of purely historical interest. ... that they raise issues which justify the effort to decide for or against his views" (4). Some readers might regard the continuing significance of Plato's moral thought as being so obvious as to need no discussion. But anyone familiar with the neglect of the ancients among contemporary academic philosophers must welcome Professor Irwin's efforts. Moreover, Plato's admirers and followers themselves might profit from a careful, yet critical, discussion of his moral teachings. Indeed, even the legiti~ macy of Plato's questions, let alone the truth of his answers, is not so obvious as it may seem. It is not self-evidently legitimate to ask-as Irwin rightly emphasizes that Plato does ask- "whether it is worthwhile to do what morality is normally supposed to require", e.g. to benefit other people (251, italics mine; cf. 249-50 and 265-66). According to Professor Irwin, Plato's moral thought centers around three Socratic questions: What is morality (i.e., virtue)? What sort of morality is worthwhile for a rational man? What is the right method for reaching knowledge about morality? Socrates and Plato both assume, acCording to Irwin, that a genuinely moral man will be able to understand his own morality, to defend it against criticism, and in particular to justify it as being ultimately worthwhile for him. Because of these demands, Socrates and Plato agree that any genuine virtue must be in the virtuous man's self-interest, and must be understood by him to be so (5). Socrates and Plato disagree, however, in their further thoughts about the character of virtue and about the correct method of justifying it. TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Irwin distinguishes between Socrates and Plato on the basis of the difference between those dialogues thought to have been written first and those thought to have come later. He accepts the conventional scholarly opinion that we can trace a development from Plato's early dialogues, which present the thought of Socrates, to the middle (and late) ones, in which Socrates becomes a spokesman for Plato himself. What is most noteworthy about Irwin's argument, and what has aroused most controversy, is his interpretation of Socrates. According to Irwin, Socrates held that vir~ tue is a kind of knowledge, a knowledge that is first glimpsed as the result of crossquestioning, but which is also a teachable expertise or craft (159). Irwin's boldness shows itself above all in the latter claim, namely that Socrates thought of virtue as a teachable craft. As for cross-questioning, or the Socratic elenchus, Irwin gives an illuminating outline of its typical features. Socrates tests some rule of conventional virtue in terms of our beliefs about examples (i.e. whether this or that kind of action would be virtuous), and especially in terms of our general assumptions that virtue is always admirable, and worthwhile for the virtuous man. "The elenchus," says Irwin, "adjusts our conceptions of the virtues to our view of what is worthwhile over all" (6, cf. 39, 47). Thus, the method of cross-questioning is not merely negative or critical, but is intended to yield positive results. As Irwin points out, however, there are shortcomings in this elenctic approach to moral knowledge, Although the elenchus yields valuable positive insights (40), it must rely on the interlocutor's own convictions about disputable moral questions. Is it clear, for instance, that admirable or noble action is always good, in the sense of being worthwhile for the agent (49, 117)? The elenchus, with its demand that we try to justify our moral beliefs, helps bring our deepest moral beliefs to light (40, 70; Compare Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Part One, Book Two-especially Chapter Two, Section Five, "On the Existence of God as a Postulate of Pure Practical Reason"). But a clearer awareness of our deepest moral beliefs is not yet knowledge that they are true. And there are radical critics, like Thrasymachus, who seem to reject all morality, or at least all recognized morality, on the grounds of its not being worthwhile for the moral man himself. "Socrates notices that moral questions raise disputes with no acknowledged arbitrator, and may cause skepticism about whether there is an authoritative answer to be found" (75). And the method of cross~questioning does not go far enough to remove such skepticism. According to Irwin, Socrates tries to answer this skepticism by pointing to the contrast between our many differences over moral questions and our universal agreement about the arts and crafts. "If Socrates could show that virtue is a craft, these doubts [about the possibility of moral knowledge] would be silenced" (75). Now a craft, as Irwin understands it, is knowledge of the means to produce some product-a product distinguishable from the productive activity itself, and for which we have a previously recognized desire. There is little controversy among craftsmen, or between craftsmen and other men, since the craftsmen accept the ends of their craft as previously given, as goods that the non-craftsmen already desire. Accordingly, if virtue, or true morality, were merely a knowledge of the means to produce some further good that everyone already desires, it would no longer be a matter of irresolvable dispute. (There need be no dispute, at any rate, about what it is.) In particular, if true morality were a knowledge of the means to produce some definite kind of happinessdistinct from moral action itself-that all men necessarily desire, then even the radically nonmoral man could be taught to become moral. He could be taught to choose true morality as the most efficient means to achieve the same nonmoral good he had previously been pursuing without it (84). And as a consequence, the skeptic, if he is to be distinguished from the nonmoral man, would be compelled to acknowledge 95 �that moral questions admit of rational solutions. Irwin elaborates at length the implications of treating virtue as a craft-above all, the implication that virtue {i.e., moral knowledge) is of merely instrumental value. Though Socrates never says so explicitly, Irwin offers indirect textual evidence, and he argues at length that the need for consistency with the craft-analogy must have led Socrates to accept this implication. And yet the overwhelming impression one gains from Socrates' life, and especially from his death, seems to oppose Professor Irwin's suggestion. This evidence suggests instead that Socrates must have regarded virtuous activity as its own (highest) reward. Irwin himself points to Socrates' emphatic assertion that one should always prefer justice to injustice, no matter what the future consequences (58; cf. 240). And Socrates even contends, according to Irwin, that virtue is in itself sufficient to ensure happiness for the virtuous man (100; Compare Ap. Soc. 4lc8-d2, and cf. Chapter VII, Note ll, page 326). Now it may be logically possible for a merely instrumental good to be of such boundless worth. Yet how could a man in his senses have absolute confidence in the goodness of any state of soul that wasn't somehow good in itself? (cf. M. F. Burnyeat's review, in the New York Review of Books, September 27, 1979) Irwin himself draws attention to this great difficulty (!00-01, 26!, 28182), and he later speaks of the identifica· tion of morality with some craft-knowledge as being "intolerably over-simplified" (17576). Why then, without the compulsion of unambiguous evidence (cf. Chapter VI, Note 63, page 323), does he claim that Soc· rates made this identification? According to Irwin, Socrates identified virtue with craft-knowledge in order to provide "objective" justification for his moral doctrine (73-75). Now it is true that Soc· rates often contrasts his interlocutor's inability to teach his "virtue", or even to show its worth, with the craftsman's ability to teach an obviously useful trade. Moreover, Irwin quite rightly insists that Socrates is serious about the superiority of craft-knowledge, as knowledge, to our socalled knowledge of what virtue is. But it does not follow that Socrates believed that "real virtue-not fully embodied in anyone 96 at the moment-will be a craft" (75). Socrates had no illusions that moral controversy could ever be laid to rest by an authoritative craftsman, or with the discovery of some new craft (see ·especially Crito 49cl0-d5). To be sure, he sometimes pretended otherwise (Charmides 165c4-e2; Laches !84c4-!85d2). But Socrates' inten· tion, in pretending to seek a teachable craft-knowledge of virtue, was to awaken some of his listeners to genuine awareness of their own ignorance. Here, as elsewhere (notably in Chapter IV on the l'rotagoras), Irwin fails to appreciate Socratic irony. This failure may stem in part from his belief that the non-moral man, or the radical critic of conventional morality, raises legitimate questions, and makes demands that Socrates must have hoped to satisfy (35-36, 73, 175). But Irwin's disregard of Socratic irony stems also from his failure to see the need for it, to see the serious obstacles that hinder any attempt to share one's knowledge of ignorance with others (cf. Ap. Soc. 2lc7-e2 and Republic 492a5-c2. Consider also Irwin's apparently unquestioned claim to know that "the common [unplatonic] conception of justice", or at least one of its key elements, is truly "justice", or the "virtue" that is "real justice" [246-47, 2!!-12; cf. 67-68, 98, !63, 253).) According to lr· win's interpretation, Socrates' moral theory contains a deep conflict-between the very great good he expected a virtue to be, on the one hand, and his attempt to transform his moral beliefs into knowledge, on the other. But what Irwin calls a conflict within Socrates' moral theory is instead Socrates' way of raising a fundamental question about morality, or the moral world-view, itself. According to Irwin, it was Plato (i.e. the Socrates of the "middle" dialogues) who fi· nally concluded that the attempt to treat virtue as a craft could not succeed. Instead of regarding morality as a merely instrumental good, he saw that it must be viewed as a good in itself, and as a necessary component, if not the whole, of human happiness. But how could he justify morality, so understood, against its radical critics? Plato seems to have decided-and rightly, according to Irwin (175-76; cf. I)-that the demand for a defense of morality in terms of some nonmoral final good "cannot plausibly be met" (Compare Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics l248b9-!249al7). As an alternate justification, Plato developed his own most characteristic, and paradoxical, doctrines. His Theory of Forms, his Theory of Recollection, and his teaching about the ascent of "rational desires" are all intended, in part, to explain how we can acquire knowledge of the highest moral good as being good. Irwin's interpretation of the middle dialogues contains quite a few valuable insights. He is right to emphasize the continuing relevance of Socrates' moral questions in the later dialogues, even in some of their seemingly most metaphysical passages. And he discusses clearly and cogently some important difficulties {e.g. about the separation of the Forms from the particulars, and about the Republic's seemingly equivocal use of the term "justice") that enthusiastic Platonists tend to ignore or else slough over. But his horizon is severely limited by inadequate attention to the drama of the dialogues, to what happens as distinct from what is said {3). And partly because of this, Irwin is far too ready to assume that Plato failed to see certain major, and rather obvious, problems in his own arguments (cf. 3-4, !0, 155, 163-64, 233, 242, 258). He thus never considers that Plato might have chosen, or felt compelled, to leave these problems as questions for his readers. As a result, he fails to recognize some of the most important questions that Plato intended his readers to ask. To illustrate this claim, I limit myself to what Irwin says about philosophy and the philosopher-king. Irwin contends that Plato was mistaken, even in terms of his own argument, to suggest that "the philosopher in the Republic will want to stay contemplating the Forms and will not voluntarily undertake public service" (242). Now the philosopher in the Republic is indeed a public servant, but not because he wants to be one, but rather because he is compelled to, out of necessity. And yet Plato's overall argument, as Irwin interprets it, requires instead that the contemplative philosopher also value virtuous action, including public service, as a good in itself (243). According to Irwin, Plato was inconsistent on this key point, and he never faced the problems that his attraction to a "solipsist [i.e., selfish] contemplative ideal" creates for the rest of his moral theory (257-58; cf. WINTER 1981 �255). This criticism presupposes, of course, training that Irwin has correctly understood Plato's moral theory as a whole. But Plato's moral theory, as Irwin presents it, culminates in a vague and obscure teaching-about the virtuous man's "rational desires"- that Irwin himself seems to regard as just barely defensible (246-48; Compare 278-79 and 285-86). And there is no reason to think that Plato could ever have been satisfied with this theory that Irwin attributes to him. Perhaps, then, Plato was not being inconsistent when he acknowledged the power of the "contemplative ideal". Wouldn't it have been better for Irwin, instead of dismissing that ideal as an aberration, to admit that he couldn't yet make sense of the whole of Plato's thought? According to Irwin, Plato's conception of the philosopher also contains a more serious flaw than the mere one-sidedness with which it stresses his contemplative nature. This other flaw, which Irwin regards as part of the deepest weakness in Plato's moral theory, is the "bizarre" conclusion that only philosophers-indeed only those wise men who have beheld the Forms (Republic 517b7-519a)-possess genuine virtue (283-84). As Irwin sees it, Phito was led to this conclusion in the following manner. Plato agrees with Socrates' "basic demand" that a genuinely virtuous man must be able to justify his way of life with good reasons, and not merely with the "sec· ond-hand support" of "custom, authority, training, and the rest" (284). And he "rightly insists", as Irwin interprets him, "that it is worthwhile in itself, and can fairly be expected of a virtuous man, to try to defend and justify moral beliefs rationally" (284). But he then makes what Irwin calls the "mistake" of thinking that "this kind of justification [sic] requires the capacities and Republic" (284). (284, italics mine) is not necessarily "worth- Irwin argues as follows to try to show that Plato was mistaken in limiting genuine virtue to successful philosophers. He claims that "the most plausible defense" of Plato's basic demand [for justification of one's moral beliefs] presupposes a respect for persons as "autonomous agents" (274). It requires us to regard "an individual's efforts to find a rational justification for his own beliefs" as being intrinsically worthwhile. Accordingly, a man's attempt "to ex· amine, understand, and justify his beliefs as far as he can" -even though he may possibly find "the wrong an~wers" and have "the wrong beliefs" -is sufficient to make him "more virtuous" and even "virtuous" (284-85). Plato "does not notice", however, that his demand for knowledge, or at least "the most plausible defense" of its legitimacy (284-85), requires such great respect for the very attempt to understand. Instead, he mistakenly limits true virtue to successful philosophers, or to the wise. In fact, however, Plato's conclusion about true virtue is not a result of any such oversight (cf. also 164). Plato could never have remained satisfied with Irwin's "de· fense" of the "demand for knowledge and justification," or with Irwin's implicit assumption that virtue requires little more than the loss of innocence. Plato was well aware that he was saying something surprising when he limited genuine virtue to the wise. But once a man has asked, with Glaucon and Socrates, why virtue (or justice) is worthwhile or good for him, it is no longer so easy to dismiss Plato's conclusions about it. Plato's strict teaching about virtue follows from his awareness that a man's attempt to justify his moral beliefs might indeed not be good. Merely "to try to while in itself', nor even useful. Attempts that fail to lead to insight, or at least to right opinion, could easily be worse and less worthy of esteem than the morality that relies on the "second-hand support" of "custom, authority, training, and the rest". We can be grateful for Irwin's straightforward attempt to distinguish the true from the false in Plato's moral thought. Irwin's posture toward Plato's thought is more fruitful than either the patronizing "veneration", or the open contempt, of those who treat it merely as a part of theirrevocable past. And Irwin clearly brings a superior intelligence to his work. But his efforts to be open to Plato's thought are thwarted from the beginning by his own patronizing, for instance by his thoughtless belief that Plato is "more concerned to present and recommend his views ... than to argue for them or explore their consequences in any detail" (3). Because he accepts this caricature of Plato as primarilyat least in his writings-a mere spokesman for certain opinions, Irwin fails even to glimpse the full beauty of Plato's writing or the full range of his thinking. The failure of Irwin's interpretation stems from his inability to accept the guidance that the dialogues can offer if one begins by looking up to them, as to a possibly competent teacher. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW of the philosopher in the defend and justify moral beliefs rationally'' David Bolotin David Bolotin recently published Plato's Dialogue on Friendship: an Interpretation of the ''Lysis'' (Cornell University Press 1979) 97 �AT HOME AND ABROAD Letter from Nicaragua and Guatemala At the airport, customs and immigration officials wear green fatigues and shiny black boots. Guards in the same uniform carry rifles. A sign on the wall reads "Welcome to Free Nicaragua." The capital, Managua, bears traces of the war alongside other older ruins. Empty and barren except for tall grass and a few inhabited ruins, central Managua still shows the devastation of the 1972 earthquake. Despite all the reconstruction money from abroad, Somoza appeared not to rebuild, to the anger of many before his fall. Instead, Managua spread out with new construction on the perimeter of this area. Everywhere there are reminders of the war: damaged buildings, cars with bullet holes and broken windows, shelled-out factories. Each neighborhood tells its own story. In the poorer areas younger residents recount battles in graphic details that sound a bit exaggerated. People speak of Nicaragua's sufferings under Somoza, the "inhuman tyrant": he bombed the poorer neighborhoods of Managua, killing many more civilians than Sandinistas; he ordered doctors in city hospitals not to let wounded Sandinistas survive. But the victory of the Sandinistas in July 1979 now overshadows the memory of the war's suffering. The names of streets, schools, hospitals-entire neighborhoodshave been changed to commemorate victory: the A. C. Sandino Airport, the Lenin-Fonseca Hospital, the Highway of the Resistance, and more. Monuments to Somoza or his family have been destroyed or defaced. New ones have been erected to commemorate the Sandinista war heroes and civilians who gave their lives. The red and black flag of the FSLN (Sandinista Front of National Liberation) is everywhere. People praise the Sandinistas for "making the revolution possible" and for "giving the victory to the people." They mean not just victory, a year ago, but all that has happened since. When an American-type grocery re-opened, selling basic foodstuffs 98 instead of luxury goods, housewives praised the "revolution" and the Sandinistas for making it possible for everyone, not just the rich, to shop there. This praise was typical; hardly anyone I met had any criticism of the Sandinistas after their first year in power. Most Nicaraguans I met seemed to be in a kind of euphoria which came of surviving a brutal war in which so many died for the "liberation" of their country. They appeared willing to work hard to reconstruct their country and "continue the revolution." The remains of July's anniversary celebration of victory were still in evidence on the streets of Managua in early August. Banners proclaimed that "In NicaragUa, it will always be the 19th of July." Billboards and posters all over the city repeated a few key slogans: "Sandino yesterday, Sandino today, Sandino forever"; "An armed people is the guarantee of victory"; "People, Army, ... unity guarantees the Peace"; "Cuba yesterday, Nicaragua today, El Salvador tomorrow." Others advertise new government programs. The faces of Cesar Agosto Sandino, the legendary rebel hero of the 1920's and 30's (from whom the FSLN took its name) and of the late Carlos Amador Fonseca, Cuban-trained guerrilla and founder of the FSLN, appear in all shapes and sizes. The most dramatic are their portraits in lights on Managua's two tallest buildings, the Bank of America and the Intercontinental Hotel. Many songs that are popular now grew out of the war; they are also heard in other Central American countries, though only in homes, not on the radio. For Nicaraguans, they are now for entertainment, but perhaps for other Central Americans, they serve a more serious purpose. Many are about guns and other weapons. "The Garand", for instance, is about how to load, aim, shoot, and disarm the Garand M-1 rifle; it lists its specifications and praises its accuracy. There are also hand grenade songs and homemade bomb songs. Other songs tell of the heroic deeds and sometimes tragic ends of Sandinista guerrillas. With catchy slogans, the songs are sometimes moving in their revelation of the passion and hope of the Sandinistas' long struggle. A song commemorating Carlos Fonseca begins "When we were in jail, a member of the National Guard. full of joy, came and told us that Carlos Fonseca had died. And we replied, 'Carlos Fonesca is of the dead that never die!' ... " Carlos Fonseca had promised that when the Sandinistas took power, all Nicaraguans would have the opportunity to learn to read and write. The Sandinistas claimed that there were 669,000 illiterate adults (forty percent of the population), of whom ten percent were considered "unteachable." So, the Sandinistas formed the "Popular Army of Literacy" (EPA). According to the newspapers, 50,000 young people from all over the country left their homes and families to teach their "comrades" to read and write. Members of the Sandino Army, students, even some volunteers from abroad made up many of the literacy "brigades"; all the "brigadistas" that I met were under thirty. In exchange for their services, they received room and board. Classes were held in homes, factories, farms, whenever the students had time. By August, newspapers claimed that 464,500 people had learned to read and write, 70% of their goal. The crusade received an enormous amount of publicity. In the official Sandinista newspaper, headlines declared towns and districts "liberated" and "victorious over ignorance" as more and more areas reached their goal. A billboard-sized chart set up in front of the Palace of the Revolution showed the progress of each region. The media called the brigadistas "sons of Sandino''. They claimed service in the EPA amounted to fighting for the FSLN in the war, because the EPA was "fighting" the "next phase of the revolution." They published simple handwritten letters from WINTER 1981 �the newly literate that thanked the brigadistas and praised the Sandinistas and the "revolution" for bringing them "out of the darkness and ignorance." The two television stations (now controlled by the "Sandinista System of Television") showed people who had just learned to read and write, reading newspapers and talking about how it felt to be able to read. When only a little short of their goal, the government planned a "victory" celebration in Managua, in honor of EPA's workers. Independent and openly critical of the Somoza regime, La Prensa for decades stood for political life in Nicaragua. The murder in 1978 of editor Pedro Chamorro, allegedly on Somoza's orders, set off the public protest and wide-spread strikes that led to full scale civil war. Fifteen months later, Somoza had La Prensa-which had kept printing after Chamorro's murderbombed and burned. A month later, shortly after the Sandinista victory, La Prensa, using another newspaper's facilities in nearby Leon, was back on the streets. Chamorro's widow was named to the five-member ruling junta (resigning less than a year later to go back to La Prensa). Left in the hands of another family member, Xavier Chamorro, the newspaper all but lost its independence. Editorial comments suggesting that reporters distorted facts in the service of "imperialism" prefaced articles critical of the Sandinistas or communist countries. In the end, under pressure from the board of directors, Xavier resigned-to start his own newspaper with workers who had struck to preserve La Prensa's pro-Sandinista line. Members of the Chamorro family now run all three major newspapers in Nicaragua: La Prensa is run by Jaime Chamorro, El Nuevo Diario by Xavier, and the official FSLN paper, La Barricada by Carlos Chamorro. La Barricada, named for the way battles were fought behind barricades in the streets, features Sandinista propaganda above all. Much of the content of El Nuevo Diario, while not strictly propaganda, is nevertheless pro-Sandinista and against the U. S. Only La Prensa-which prints much of the same news as the others-also prints letters from readers which question Sandinistas about friends or family members who have disappeared from jail or from the streets. The other newspapers refer to La Prensa as the "bourgeois" paper. All three comment on TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW each other's "inaccuracies" and "misrepresentations". When an article head· lined, "Elections? The People have not asked for them!" appeared in La Barricada, La Prensa responded the next day with the results of its own poll that showed that roughly eighty percent of the people questioned wanted elections. Most of the criticism now centers on La Prensa for its articles mildly critical of the Sandinista regime. All three newspapers print the regime's column, "Our New Trench-Lecture for the Literate". Printed in extra large type with only a few lines to an installment, it tells the story of A. C. Sandino and the beginnings of the rebel movement in a simple kindergarten style especially tailored to the reading ability of the newly literate. This column claims that the peasants were Sandinistas too because they served as the "ears" of Sandino and his men. According to the column, even the children helped the "revolution". With their noise, they prompted the "traitor" (Somoza's father) and the "invaders' (the U. S. Marines) to overestimate the number of rebels. The victory of the Sandinistas is told everywhere in Central America. In tiny, overpopulated El Salvador, the violence has become unpredictable; some call it open civil war. I found the situation too dangerous and continued north to Guatemala. Guatemala, too, has seen a great increase in political violence in the last year, but the situation is not yet as bad as in El Salvador. Still, when I think of Guate· mala, I am afraid-afraid of what is happening now and what is likely to happen soon. As one U.S. congressman put it, Guatemala is a bloodbath waiting to happen. In Guatemala, what there is of a middle ground, a moderate side, is shrinking rapidly. There are many factors involved in the situation, but it is the extremist violence from all sides that polarizes the country. While the government may in fact be on the middle ground, opposition groups feel that it arid any groups that support it also support-or at least condone-extremist violence. Although the government at least outwardly condemns violence, some of their methods~i.e. killing Indians suspected of collaborating with the guerrillas-tend to have fhe opposite effect. The Indians, alienated from the government by these acts, turn to the guerrillas. The government seems to be doing itself in. Conservative groups, on the other hand, see the opposition-i.e. any group that does not support the government-as supporting the Marxist guerrillas and therefore opposed to peaceful means of reform or change. The extreme conservatives take matters into their own hands, as they hold the government to be ineffective. There is an all-pervasive attitude of being anti-anticommunist, anti-fascist, anti-government. Although the terms "left" and "right" are used by the different groups to label their opposition, it is not that simple, since different groups on the same "sides" have different ideologies. Extremist violence takes standard forms: assassination, murder, and kidnappingsometimes for ransom, but more usually the victims' bodies are discovered days later. There are many groups, each with its own targets. Some, particularly the Marxist guerrilla organizations, claim public responsibility for their acts-especially kid· napping, since the guerrillas usually ask for ransom. Most terrorism, however, is face· less, with perpetrators identified in the newspapers as "unknown men". These "unknown men" murder labor leaders and organizers, student leaders and professors, opposition party officials, journalists, and priests-anyone suspected of "leftist" sympathies. That these "unknown men" operate as groups is apparent from their methods; that they are radically "rightwing" is clear from their choice of victims. It is widely believed that they are govern· ment supported. The arguments for this are compelling, though not conclusive. First, in the late sixties-another peak in guerrilla activity in Guatemala-the Army and other government security forces openly killed and terrorized the same people in the same way. Many believe that the government now operates underground to protect itself from being accused of resorting to terrorism. In several incidents some connection with the government has been established. In June, an unsuccessful murder attempt took place on the national university campus, which has seen much terrorism. Two snipers shot at a student, wounding him seriously. The two men did not have time to make their getaway, however, and other students saw them and chased them down. The students burned 99 �one alive and then lynched them both. The wounded student was rushed to a government hospital, but his family, fearing for his safety, removed him to a private one. Within 24 hours, more "unknown men" tried unsuccessfully to gain entrance to the hospital, shooting up windows and doors with machine guns. As soon as his health permitted, the student sought asylum in Costa Rica. The two snipers were said by the newspapers to have been "confidential agents" of the Army. The Army acknowledged this but denied any connection with their actions. In other incidents, vehicles used have been traced to branches of the government, such as the judicial department. That some members of these groups have been members of government security forces does not prove that they were acting on orders from the government. The government, however, raises suspicions, because it appears to do little to prevent or investigate these incidents. The vice president, Villagran Kramer, protested the continuing violence by threatening to resign, but was reportedly silenced by threats on his life. Eventually, however, he did resign and went to the u.s. There are four main Marxist guerril1a organizations now operating in the country. Mainly involved in shoot-outs with the Army in the mountains and in urban terrorism, they say they aim at total ''revolution". These groups are underground: your next door neighbor could be a member and you'd never know. I was taken into the confidence of some people who claimed membership in one of these organizations. Cautious and not ready to answer many of my questions, they did, however, tell me a great deal. Comparatively successful in their everyday working lives, these people still lived in the poor neighborhoods they grew up in. They say they want someday to "liberate" the people of Guatemala, the poor and the Indians, from the "oppression" of the government. And when they say this, their dedication to- the cause becomes apparent. They are willing to die for it like heroes, knowing that it may be without glory, in anonymity. The guerrilla group of the men I talked to is separated into two main divisions. The larger is the guerrilla army-in-training hiding in the mountains. These men claim that Indians make up thirty percent of the army. 100 (Even a few Indian enlistments would terrify conservative Guatemalans, who have up to now taken Indian passivity for granted.) Smaller, and up until recently, more active, the second division is made up of independent units, each with a specific mission: procuring arms, making explosives, trailing prospective targets, gathering information, stealing vehicles, etc. Their arms and money come from ransoms and bank robberies-and other less easily identifiable sources. Guns and ammunition are stolen from Army depots and outposts. They receive, they told me, arms, money, and training from Nicaragua-one of them received instruction in the use of new weapons at a Sandinista training session in southern El Salvador a few months ago. (Aid from Cuba and from the P.L.O. is also suspected. See Robert Moss, "Terror: A Soviet Export," New York Times Magazine, 8 November 1980.) They have an overall plan which is known by all members, but its specifics are revealed only little by little. Unlike the Sandinistas, the leaders of the organizations have not yet made themselves known publicly. Members of units, I suspect, know only their immediate superiors. Although they call themselves Marxists, they are much better at saying what's wrong with the current government and what it stands for than at explaining their own political ideas and their plans. What is important to them now is "bringing the revolution," without imposing their ideology. They believe that, as in Nicaragua, those who do the fighting will end up in power. To prevent further polarization of the country, the government has launched an expensive advertising campaign. There are radio, newspaper, and television ads with the theme "Let us maintain the peace in Guatemala." One ad tells Guatemalans that their brothers, the soldiers of the Army, protect them from "foreigners" and "traitorous" Guatemalans who want to steal their land. Another ca11s upon "citizens" to stand up against terrorism for the sake of their and their children's future. Another shows Cubans upon their arrival in the U. S. speaking of the hardships of life under communism. To my surprise, many Guatemalans doubted that the Mariel boatlift brought more than a few hundred refugees to the U. S. They dismissed accurate reports in the newspapers of more than 100,000 refugees as propaganda of the government and the rich. There is also a big campaign to promote the government of General Lucas Garcia as "progressive" and humanitarian. Ads show hospitals, roads, and public housing, some already built, and some under construction, other planned-but too few, too late, in the opinion of many Guatemalans. In August, the guerrillas succeeded in sharply cutting down public attendance at an important rally in support of the government and against terrorism. A few days before the rally, bombs exploded all over Guatemala city. The biggest one, which killed eight persons and wounded many others, went off in the park in front of the National Palace, where the rally was to take place. Guerrilla groups publicly claimed responsibility for the bombs, and the turnout (forty thousand in a country where twice the number is not unusual) was not nearly what had been expected. The country's wealthy elite seem determined to fight the "communist threat," in the government's phrase. These people do not believe that the "leftist movement", as they can it, is popular and spontaneous. They claim rather that it is directed and financed by outside parties, namely Cuba and Nicaragua. A rancher on the Caribbean coast explained that he let the Army maintain and train several hundred soldiers on his property in order that they might guard the coast. He claims that boats carrying arms from Cuba have been intercepted. People like this rancher feel that they've got their backs against the wall, and that they must-and will-fight to preserve what they feel is theirs. In the face of such violent conditions, life goes on, but there is more and more an atmosphere of fear, and a feeling of impending disaster. Killings by extremists leave no one untouched. While each side has its own targets, innocent people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time lose their lives. People who have reason to believe that they are on somebody's "list" try to insure their safety. Dealing with these threats alters everday life-as Salvadoreans who have fled to Guatemala because of death threats can attest. In some instances, it means having bodyguards, although this is not always very effective. For most, it means never keeping a regular schedule. It means never taking the same WINTER 1981 �route to work, using different cars, coming and going at irregular hours. It means not always spending the night at home but going to the homes of friends and family to keep from establishing a predictable pattern. For many, many Guatemalans, it means carrying a gun-especially at night. A woman who fears for her husband, an economics professor at the university, says he's being watched and followed. She says she knows what happens to professors suspected of "leftist sympathies"-if they do not flee to Mexico, or "join the guerrillas in the mountains," they are murdered or they disappear. When I left Guatemala in August, friends on all sides felt that the situation would wait for the outcome of the U. S. elections in November. Even large business deals were pending the results of the elections. More conservative Guatemalans have been infuriated with the Carter administration and its human rights policy. They feel that the State Department and the administration have supported the "leftist movement", if only by not unequivocally supporting the current government. From the way they talked about the U.S. election, one would think they could vote. The guerrillas I spoke with hinted that if Carter were reelected they could take their time, but if Reagan won, they might have to speed up the implementation of their plan. The elections are sure to be front page news, just as the conventions were, reflecting their importance in Guatemala's affairs. Among the conservatives, although there is an anti-Carter attitude, they are not anti-American. Some people even believe that if anything drastic happens, the U. S. will step in. The only strong antiAmerican attitudes I encountered were among students and guerrillas. On the whole, Guatemalans are still fairly friendly to the U.S. This may change in the future. In Nicaragua before the war, there was not nearly the widespread anti-Americanism that one encounters there now. For while Washington and the Sandinistas deal with each other, the Nicaraguans do not forget the verse of the FSLN hymn that replaced their national anthem: "The sons of Sandino/Not to be sold nor surrendered~ Ever!/We fight against the Yankee/Enemy of humanity." HONOR BULKLEY A student at St. John's College, Annapolis, Honor Bulkley has made three extended visits to Central America in the last three years, most recently for three months in the summer of 1980. FRoM OuR READERS To the Editor: Thank you for publishing the marvelous "Three by Meyer Liben" in the July The College/The St. John's Review. In your note on the stories, you quote George Dennison's description (1976) to the effect that he [Liben] was "an unknown first-rate writer." In my book, The Ordeal of Civility: Freud, Marx, Levi-Strauss and the Jewish Struggle with Modernity (Basic Books 1974) on page 208, you will find an attempt to appraise the greatness. july 18, 1980 jOHN M. CUDDIHY The passage Mr. Cuddihy refers to reads: All these considerations come to mind when we reflect on Malamud's most recent novel, The Tenants (1971). Why the vogue for Malamud's stories, rather than those incomparably better stories of Meyer Liben, for example? Liben's characters are precisely observed; they resist, with the stubbornness of stones, being blown up into Malamudian emblems. They are thus culturally unavailable; obviously, this is "minor fiction." THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 101 ���The St. John's Review St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Non-profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 66 Lutherville, Md. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 thestjohnsreview Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 101 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review (formerly The College), Winter 1981 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1981-01 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Radista, Leo Parran, Jr., Thomas Sisson, Barbara J. von Oppen, Beate Ruhm Wilson, Curtis A. Thompson, Homer A. Lund, Nelson Collins, Arthur Dennison, George Rangel, Carlos Radista, Leo Liben, Meyer Morrisey, Will Bolotin, David Bulkley, Honor Brann, Eva T. H. Description An account of the resource Volume XXXII, Number 2 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Winter 1981. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0010-0862 The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_32_No_2_1981 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a86b0251a287cc0834212303aee73791.pdf 161d37c53f0d346ec4d906dc11d029ab PDF Text Text �Editor: Leo Raditsa Managing Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr. Editorial Assistant: Barbara J. Sisson Consulting Editors: Eva Brann, Beate Ruhm von Oppen, Curtis A. Wilson. Editor's Note Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome, but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope in each instance. Reasoned comments are also welcome. Requests for subscriptions should be sent to The St. John's Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD 21404. Although there are currently no subscription fees, voluntary contributions toward production costs are gratefully received. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW (formerly THE COLLEGE) is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, Edward G. Sparrow, Dean. Published twice yearly, usually in winter and summer. Volume XXXII SUMMER 1981 Number 3 ©1981, St. John's College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0010-0862 Cover: Front elevation of Virginia State Capitol, by Thomas Jef- ferson (1785). The Coolidge Collection, Massachusetts Historical Society, with permission. Composition: Britton Composition Co. Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co. �fHESTJOHNSREVIEWSUMMER81 3 The Contemporary Reader and Robert Frost Helen H. Bacon 11 From The Hills as Waves 14 Soviet Hegemonism: Year 1 Raymond Aron 24 Thucydides and Perikles 30 Not Quite Alone on the Telephone 38 An Outline of the Argument of Aristotle's Metaphysics joe Sachs 47 In the Audience Robert Roth 55 ., Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance" 74 Cicero's Teaching on Natural Law Etta Blum Christopher Brue/1 Meyer Liben Eva T. H. Brann Thomas G. West 1 ��The Contemporary Reader and Robert Frost The Heavenly Guest of ''One More Brevity'' and Aeneid 8 Helen H. Bacon For Kathleen and Theodore Morrison, who pointed me in the right direction and encouraged me to keep on looking. ''I almost think any poem is most valuable for its ulterior meaning .... I have developed an ulteriority complex. 1 ' ' Robert Frost said this in an interview in 1927, but it is only recently that we have begun to take him at his word and recognize his ulteriority-the dense literary texture of his poems in which lurk ulterior meanings that make extraordinary demands on the reader. Frost's well-known essay, "The Prerequisites," written about the same time as the poem I am about to discuss, is a classic formulation of what Frost hoped of a reader of what he liked to call "a little poem." There he describes how, repudiating the wrong, that is, academic, kind of help, he took nearly fifty years to acquire what he called "the prerequisites" for understanding Emerson's sixteen line poem "Brahma." What he came to understand in those fifty years was the meaning of Nirvana, "the perfect detachment from ambition and desire that can alone rescue us from the round of existence." Professor of Greek and Latin at Barnard College and Columbia University, Helen Bacon has published Barbarians in Greek Tragedy (Yale University Press, 1961) and translated (with Anthony Hecht) Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes (Oxford University Press, 1973). She has also written on Robert Frost's reading of the Greek and Latin poets in the American Scholar (1974), the Yale Review (1977), and the Massachusetts Review (1978). She delivered this essay, in an earlier version, as a Blegen Lecture at Vassar College. TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW To experience the poem as poetry, as opposed to "mere information," the reader must independently rediscover its ulterior meanings. "The heart sinks when robbed of the chance to see for itself what a poem is all about .... Any footnote while the poem is going is too late. Any subsequent explanation is as dispiriting as the explanation of a joke. Being taught poems reduces them to the rank of mere information." And a little further on the often-quoted statement, "Approach to the poem must be from afar off, even generations off. A poem is best read in the light of all the other poems ever written. We read A the better to read B (we have to start somewhere; we may get very little out of A). We read B the better to read C, C the better to read D, D the better to go back and get something more out of A. Progress is not the aim, but circulation. The thing is to get among the poems where they hold each other apart in their places as the stars do." 2 And this is the contemporary reader's dilemma. The prerequisites to experiencing the full richness, the ulterior meanings, of many of Frost's poems include knowledge of a literary tradition from which each high school generation is more remote than the last. And of that whole enormous tradition the least familiar part, and therefore the hardest to recognize, are the Greek and Latin classics. Though his classical education, his lifelong reading of Greek and Latin authors in the original, is now documented, the extent of Frost's use of them in his poems is barely suspected. The dilemma is that, even though most 3 �of the poems stand by themselves, their ulterior meaning, what makes them most valuable in Frost's own terms, often depends on affinities and analogies with a literature little known and only with the greatest difficulty accessible to modern readers. Further, the kind of commentary on a poem which I am about to make is that "dispiriting" explanation that robs the reader of the joy of discovery. However, if it can be understood as an example of how to "read A the better to understand B," etc., rather than as an attempt to reduce the poem to "mere information," perhaps it will not be out of keeping with the spirit of Frost's pronouncement about prerequisites. Of many possible examples of Frost's method of evoking ancient poems I will mention briefly two which I have discussed elsewhere with fuller documentation. "Hyla Brook," which seems to be, and is, about a brook in summertime on Frost's New Hampshire farm, is also an al~ most line-for-line imitation of Horace's celebrated 0 fans Bandusiae (Odes 3.13), about a spring in summertime on his farm in the Sabine hills. Horace rather obliquely and unexpectedly celebrates his humble little Italian spring as a spring of those quintessentially Greek, and for Italians at least literary, divinities the muses. Only when we see that Frost is evoking Horace's poem can we recognize that he makes the same claim for his brook, and thereby gives a whole new range of meaning to the last line: We love the things we love for what they are. More complicated is a poem called "The Lost Follower," which seems to be, and is, an evocation of Browning's "Lost Leader." Both poems are about abandoning poetry for gold. Browning's poet deserts the ranks of true poets for material gain. Frost's poet deserts the "golden line of lyric" not for material gold, but to try torealize through social and political action a golden age of peace and brotherhood on earth. But beneath the explicit reference to Browning lurks a complicated set of allusions to another poem of Horace, Epode 16, which asserts that the only way that men can experience the golden age in this corrupt world is through poetry. In this context the function of Frost's poet becomes enormously more cru~ cia!, and his defection proportionately more devastating. Explicit classical references or clues to classical connections in Frost's poetry are rare. But he does give little pointers. Apparently random details insisted on in the text that are very vivid, but not obviously connected with anything, should be scrutinized. For instance, by june the Hyla Brook, having vanished underground, is A brook to none but who remember long. 4 And the poem makes other allusions to memory. Why is memory important? Memory is the mother of the muses, and Frost's spring, like Horace's, is a spring of fhe muses, translated to a, for them, unfamiliar landscape. Another pointer is the way poems are grouped for publication. Frost placed "The Oven Bird" next to "Hyla Brook" in Mountain Interval (1916). The bird of dusty midsummer, hidden in the wood, who "knows in singing not to sing" and asks "what to make of a diminished thing," is a somewhat more explicit metaphor than the vanished brook for poetry's unquenchable power. Such groupings reinforce suggestions within poems, as do hints Frost dropped about the poems when he read them aloud. Frost's evocations of other texts, ancient or modern, are never lifeless imitations. There are reversals, inversions, variations of themes and motifs. Frost replaces Browning's materialistic poet leader with an idealistic poet follower, and makes us see the desertion of poetry as morally paradoxical and the poet's function as morally crucial. Horace's spring of the muses never fails even in the dog days of August. Frost's brook dries up in summer. All the more does it symbolize the muses' unfailing creativity, because, through the power of memory, the spring, though no longer visible, continues to exist. His reticences and disguises are not mere tricks. They facilitate the experience of seeing for oneself that he insists on in "The Prerequisites." What are the criteria for recognizing an allusion, whether to a classical or to any other poet? How can we be sure that what we take for a pointer really is not an accidental analogy? If a possible connection reveals an unsuspected economy and consequent richness of language, an increased coherence, both internal and external, it is probably intended. If it enables us to see that every word of the poem relates to a single theme, that what seems like merely vivid detail reinforces what the poem says by connecting it with some other work of literature, it is probably valid. If the surrounding poems reinforce and are reinforced by what that poem is saying, that is further confirmation, as are Frost's own comments and collocations when he read the poem aloud. Using these criteria I am going to present in detail one poem that will illustrate how discovering "the prerequisites" (in this case they happen to be largely classical) affects the way one reads a poem. It vividly illustrates both the reader's dilemma, and what Frost meant by "ulteriority ." The poem, "One More Brevity," is about Sirius, the brightest of the fixed stars, the "dog star" in the constellation Orion. With one significant deviation, it is in rhymed couplets. It was Frost's Christmas poem for 1953, composed about the same time as his description of the way a poem should be read in "The Prerequisites." SUMMER 1981 �One More Brevity I opened the door so my last look Should be taken outside a house and book. Before I gave up seeing and slept I said I would see how Sirius kept His watchdog eye on what remained To be gone into if not explained. But scarcely was my door ajar, When past the leg I thrust for bar Slipped in to be my problem guest, Not a heavenly dog made manifest, But an earthly dog of the carnage breed; Who, having failed of the modern speed, Now asked asylum-and I was stirred To be the one so dog-preferred. He dumped himself !tke a bag of bones, He sighed himself a couple of groans, And head to tail then firmly curled Like swearing off on the traffic world. I set him water, I set him food. He rolled an eye with gratitude (Or merely manners it may have been), But never so much as lifted chin. His hard tail loudly smacked the floor As if beseeching me, "Please, no more; I can't explain-tonight at least. '' His brow was perceptibly trouble-creased. So I spoke in terms of adoption thus: "Gustie, old boy, Dalmatian Gus, You're right, there's nothing to discuss. Don't try to tell me what's on your mind, The sorrow of having been left behind, Or the sorrow of having run away. All that can wait for the light of day. Meanwhile feel obligation-free. Nobody has to confide in me. " THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW 'Twas too one-sided a dialogue, And I wasn't sure I was talking dog. I broke off baffled. But all the same, In fancy I ratified his name, Gustie-Da!matian Gus, that isAnd started shaping my life to his, Finding him in his right supplies And sharing his miles of exercise. Next morning the minute I was about He was at the door to be let out With an air that said, ''I have paid my call. You mustn't feel hurt if now I'm all For getting back somewhere or further on. " I opened the door and he was gone. I was to taste in little the grief That comes of dogs' lives being so brief, Only a fraction of ours at most. He might have been the dream of a ghost In spite of the way his tail had smacked My floor so hard and matter-offact. And things have been going so strangely since, I wou!dn 't be too hard to convince, I might even claim, he was Sirius (Think ofpresuming toea!! him Gus), The star itself-Heaven's greatest star, Not a meteorite, but an avatarWho had made an overnight descent To show by deeds he didn't resent My having depended on him so long, And yet done nothing about it in song. A symbol was all he could hope to convey, An intimation, a shot of ray, A meaning I was supposed to seek, And finding, wasn't disposed to speak. 5 �According to the official biography this poem is "about a dog very much like [Frost's dog] Gillie, whose death in 1949 had robbed him of his most constant companion since 1940."3 Frost would not have disagreed. He read the poem often-seven times at Bread Loaf, with teasing and suggestive comments. After one of these readings he hinted at the importance of the couplet form. "I've got a poem somewhere about how couplets symbolize meta· phor. There's a pairing that deeper down in is the pairing of thought that is the metaphor. ... The couplet is the symbol of the metaphor.''4 What then are "the prerequisites" for detecting "the pairing of thought" deeper down beneath the pairing of couplets in this poem? What is A meaning I was supposed to seek, And finding, wasn't disposed to speak? (Note the felicitous couplings-supposed/disposed within the lines, as well as seek/speak at the end, or, ear· lier in the poem, smacked/matter-of-fact.) First of all we have a pattern story quite widespread in European and Asiatic folklore-the rewarding of a humble host who offers hospitality to a divine visitor in dis· guise. In this case the reward is some kind of unexplained illumination. A classic example is Ovid's story of Baucis and Philemon (Met. 8.618-724). But beyond this easily recognized pattern, is there a more specific reference? Let us get to those vivid and expressive but apparently unrelated concrete details that I have already mentioned. First and most important is the dog's name-Dalmatian Gus, emphasized in its first mention by the only triple rhyme in this sequence of couplets. So I spoke in terms of adoption thus: "Gustie, old boy, Dalmatian Gus, You're right, there's nothing to discuss. " And again, after telling the dog he needn't say anything, I fancy I ratified his name, Gustie-Dalmatian Gus, that isAnd finally, I wouldn't be too hard to convince, I might even claim, he was Sirius (Think ofpresuming to call him Gus). Then 'Dalmatian' is used twice, and also alluded to in the phrase, "an earthly dog of the carriage breed." Dalmatians, of course, are carriage dogs. There is no need for the dog to speak, for the poet has found his name, and a name establishes identity and makes explanation superfluous. Naming is itself a kind of coupling, a way of creating a relationship by recognition. Who then is Dalmatian Gus who is also Sirius? What Augustus, Gus for short, has connections with Dalmatia and Sirius? I do not know that anyone has asked this question. I think I can show that Frost wanted us to associate 6 Dalmatian Gus with Augustus Caesar as Vergil presents him in Aeneid 8 directly, and in Aeneid 10 through the figure of Aeneas, linked with the star of destiny, the Julian star, which Vergil associates with Sirius, celebrating his triple triumph of 29 B.C. for victories in Dalmatia, Actium, and Alexandria. To understand Frost's allusion we do not need to understand what Augustus' triple triumph means to historians, but only what Vergil wants it to mean. In book 8 the triple triumph and its attendant celebrations are the climax of a series of images on a shield presented to Aeneas by his mother, Venus, forged at her prompting by her spouse, Vulcan. These images are scenes from future, from the point of view of Aeneas, Roman history. Vergil's language stresses military achievement-"Italian events, and the triumphs of the Romans . .. the whole race to come . .. and, in sequence, the wars [which will have been] fought" (8.626-629). But, except for the last group of scenes, they are not conventional military episodes. They are rather a series of spiritual achievements, triumphs of light and order over chaos and darkness. I mention only the first-the wolf suckling Romulus and Remus. In what sense is this a Roman triumph? It is an expression of Vergil's vision of Rome's civilizing mission, the taming of natural savagery and its integration into a higher order of peace and brotherhood. Only the final scenes of the shield refer to a literal military victory-Augustus' naval victory at Actium over Antony and Cleopatra (8.675-731). As the forces of darkness take flight Augustus, "standing in the high stern," stans celsa in puppi, is transfigured. Flames stream from his helmet, and over his head appears the father's star, the patrium sidus, the star of the deified Julius Caesar, Augustus' father by adoption. The comet which appeared at the funeral games for the murdered Julius Caesar was immediately identified as Caesar's soul transported to the realm of the gods. Augustus was then saluted as the son of a god, ultimately himself to become a god and join his "father" in the sky. In the Aeneid the Julian star is a recurring symbol of the savior hero (Aeneas, Romulus, Augustus) chosen to help realize on earth some part of the Roman ideal and then join the gods on Olympus. Throughout the Aeneid Vergil makes Aeneas prefigure Augustus in his battle with the forces of darkness. This is nowhere more explicit than in the passage in book 10 where Aeneas is transfigured. Here all the elements of Augustus' transfiguration, the ship, the flames, the Julian star, recur. The words used of Augustus, "Standing in the high stern," stans celsa in puppi, are now used of Aeneas as he descends the Tiber bringing reinforcements to the beleaguered Trojans. And as he salutes his comrades by raising the shield, the divine gift of his goddess mother, which has on it the image of the transfigured Augustus, flames stream from his helmet, and from the shield. Perhaps because Aeneas is only at the beginning of the historical process which the shield envisions as culminating with Augustus, the star is not literally present. It is intraSUMMER 1981 �duced in a characteristically complex and indirect way through a double simile (10.260-275). The streaming flames are first compared to a comet "glowing blood red and mournful through the clear night," in the context an almost inescapable allusion to that other comet, the Julian star. The second part of the simile likens the flames to "the burning heat of Sirius which brings thirst and sickness to suffering mortals when it rises and saddens the sky with sinister light," an evocation of the scene in the Illiad where Achilles, clad in divine armor, the gift of his goddess mother, about to confront Hector in their final duel, is compared to Sirius, bringer of suffering and disaster (22.26). The comet links Aeneas to the future, to Julius Caesar's death and the culmination of the vision in Augustus' victory at Actium. Sirius links him to the past and the beginnings of the great historical process in Hector's death and Achilles' victory, itself the prelude to Achilles' own death. Both images have a double message. The comet signalled not only mourning for the murdered leader, but also his deification and the eventual deification of his son. The rising of the dog star signalled not only the "dog days" of August, with the suffering and privations of heat and drought, but also the eventual coming of the season of fruition, of the vintage and the autumn rains. Both comet and star allude to the suffering and destruction that inevitably accompany the attempt to realize the ideal. To come back to the shield~the three final scenes of Vulcan's masterpiece offer a vision of the fulfillment through Augustus of the ideals which are the goal of all the struggles of the A~neid. These scenes are the moment of victory at Actium, and its sequel, Augustus celebrating the triple triumph of Dalmatia, Actium, and Alexandria, and finally, enthroned, godlike, on the threshold of the newly restored temple of Apollo on the Palatine, receiving the homage of a pacified world, and inaugurating a new golden age of peace and brotherhood. The imagery of comet, star, and flame, which links every stage of the attempt to realize this vision from the fall of Troy, through the ordeals of Aeneas and his descendants, to its culmination in Augustus' victory, stresses the cost in human suffering (Hector's death, Caesar's death, and all the other deaths and losses of the poem) as well as the greatness of an ideal that can culminate in deification. If Dalmatian Gus really represents the spirit of the deified Augustus briefly returned to earth with a message for the poet, the message should be something about the pain and struggle involved in trying to give social and political reality to a spiritual ideal. Here are some further coincidences between Aeneid 8 and "One More Brevity" which tend to confirm this reading. The theme of hospitality in a humble home to a god in disguise is central in both. The association with Sirius is more than a hint of Gus's heavenly origins, and Frost wants us to be aware of his hospitable concern for his guest's comfort. THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW I set him water, I set him food . .. and later, [I] started shaping my life to his, Finding him in his n"ght supplies And shan"ng his mzles of exercise. Near the beginning of Aeneid 8 Aeneas arrives at the site of what will one day be Rome. An Arcadian exile named Evander has found refuge there. It is a wilderness with a stream running through the valley where the forum will someday be, and cattle lowing on the slopes of the Esquiline. Evander after offering Aeneas friendship and alliance and sharing his rustic feast with him, welcomes Aeneas into his little thatched hut on the Palatine. Hereminds him that Hercules, recently deified, had also deigned to be entertained there, after slaying the firebreathing monster, Cacus, that was devastating the region from his cave on the nearby Aventine. At this point Aeneas is a refugee and a suppliant, but like the savior hero Hercules, to whom he is repeatedly assimilated in the Aeneid, and like Augustus, Aeneas is destined to achieve godhood for his efforts to save humanity by realizing a golden age of peace and brotherhood. Evander welcomes both Hercules and Aeneas, savior gods in human guise, in a little thatched hut on the Palatine hill, the very hill on which Augustus, another savior god in human guise, will one day have a studiedly modest residence. The word 'avatar' (the only occurrence in all of Frost's work) is a further reinforcement of the theme of the god in disguise. Maybe, Frost suggests, the visitor really was Sirius, the brightest of the fixed stars~ Not a meteorite, but an avatar. Avatar is a Hindu term for a brief manifestation of a savior god in earthly form, a temporary incarnation of deity. Frost might have learned this from Emerson or Thoreau, two favorite authors of his, both of whom were saturated in Hindu mythology, or from Bulfinch's Age of Fable, a work he consulted often. One of the few things Bulfinch says about Hindu mythology concerns the nature of an avatar. Certainly the brief visit of Dalmatian Gus is associated with a brief visit to earth of a god in disguise. Frost's description of the dog's condition, physical and emotional, also has Hindu associations which evoke a theme of Aeneid 8. He is "an earthly dog of the carriage breed," who has "failed of the modern speed." He is out of step with the world and so exhausted that he can barely roll an eye and thump his tail. He takes a carefully indicated position of withdrawal. He dumped himself like a bag of bones, He sighed himself a couple of groans, And head to tail then firmly curled Like swearing off on the traffic world. 7 �Head to tail is the position of that image of detachment and eternity, the "tail eater," the ouroboros. The dog in this position, "swearing off on the traffic world" (traffic in all its senses), is seeking "the perfect detachment from ambition and desire that can alone rescue us from the round of existence," that state of Nirvana which Frost had only recently learned about. The weariness, like the sorrow, that is inseparable from the attempt to realize the spirit on earth through the recreation of the golden age is another major theme of the Aeneid. The young poet of "The Lost Follower," who is trying to realize the golden age through social and political action experiences a comparable sorrow and exhaustion. If Dalmatian Gus is intended to evoke the spirit of the deified Augustus his exhaustion is the exhaustion of this struggle. Still another detail which this poem shares with Aeneid 8 is the sense of election. The poet ... was stirred To be the one so dog-preferred. He is then awed by the thought that Sirius himself ... Heaven's greatest star, Not a meteorite, but an avatarhas brought him a personal, though enigmatic, message, which he understands and accepts. A symbol was all he could hope to convey, An intimation, a shot of ray, A meaning I was supposed to seek, And finding, wasn't disposed to speak. Aeneid 8 is about the moment when Aeneas finally accepts election as founder of the new order. With that acceptance comes renunciation of all earthly fulfillment, and, ultimately, deification. He receives the message from heaven in three forms. First Venus most unconventionally thunders in a clear sky. That she should, against all precedent, be wielding the thunderbolt, Jove's emblem, indicates that the message comes with his concurrence. Aeneas' response, "I am summoned on Olympus," Ego poscor Olympo, is both a recognition and an acceptance of election, a decision to act and take on the frightful burdens of his mission. The second form which the message of election takes is the poignant moment when Venus, bringing the divine armor, briefly ("One More Brevity") presents herself undisguised to her son, and for the first and only time in the Aeneid allows him to embrace her. Aeneas has two other encounters with Venus-in book 1, where she is disguised as a mortal maiden and reveals her identity only as she is disappearing, and in book 2, where, though she briefly appears in person to present a vision of Troy in ruins, she offers no contact. Only here, in book 8, do god and man have the kind of real communion, brief though it is, that occurs between poet and dog in "One More Brevity." Vulcan's masterpiece bears the third form of the message of election, the prophecy of Rome's spiri- 8 tual achievement, which Aeneas initiates when he accepts the burden of election. The theme of exhaustion is associated in book 8 with this burden. Whether for Aeneas, or Hercules, or Augustus, the attempt to realize the spirit on earth is exhausting. Throughout the Aeneid, but particularly in book 8, where Hercules' victorious fight with the monster Cacus is narrated, Vergil makes Hercules' labors, labores, prefigure the labors of Aeneas and Augustus as saviours of humanity, struggling to dispel chaos and darkness by giving reality to the vision of peace and brotherhood. The last line of the book, which describes Aeneas shouldering the shield with its only half understood message, stresses in its movement as well as its sense the strain of this effort-"Lifting on to his shoulders the fame and fate of his descendants," attollens umeris famamque et fata nepotum. The cost of this effort is part, but I would like to say only part, of the message Dalmatian Gus brings to the poet. Another significant detail that connects Dalmatian Gus with Augustus, is the idea of Sirius as a watch dog. I opened the door so my last look Should be taken outside a house and book. Before I gave up seeing and slept I said I would see how Sirius kept His watchdog eye on what remained To be gone into if not explained. Sirius is imagined as keeping an eye on things and, characteristically, the poet is keeping an eye on Sirius. Vergil makes no direct allusion to Sirius as a watchdog, but he takes pains to make us aware that the rising of Sirius coincides with the feasts of the deified saviors and guardians of order, Hercules and Augustus. Aeneas arrives at the site of Rome on the feast of Hercules, which Evander and his followers are celebrating, at the time of the rising of the dog-star, which is also the date on which Augustus celebrated his triple triumph, in the month of August, named for Augustus after the fact. This rather tenuous association of Sirius with the functions of the guardian or watchdog is made explicit in other ancient authors. For instance, both Manilius, a didactic poet of the Augustan period, and Plutarch refer to Sirius as a watchdog. Whatever his source, the watchdog image for Sirius is not an invention of Frost's, but part of Sirius' ancient associations. These are the principal coincidences that suggest that Aeneid 8 is one of the prerequisites for understanding "One More Brevity." It is a reading validated by the criteria I suggested earlier. When the connection is perceived, the poem gains coherence and intensity. Every commonplace detail of dog and human behavior proves to be related to the idea of election, or of the grief and exhaustion associated with the struggle to bring the spirit to earth, or of the poignant brevity of an encounter between god and man. Above all the dog's name has no other explanation. The connection gives poetic purpose to an otherwise aimless insistence on an apparently ordinary name. I am open SUMMER 1981 �to suggestions of a meaning that works better. This increased coherence and intensity is the best evidence that Frost wanted us to associate Dalmatian Gus with Augustus, and through him with Aeneas, Hercules, and all the other figures of the Aeneid who will become gods after a brief sojourn on earth. In this series of brevities Gus makes one more. The context of the poem reinforces the suggestion that Gus brings a message about the cost of trying to recreate the golden age. In the collection in which it was first published (In The Clearing, 1962) "One More Brevity" is preceded by "America Is Hard To See," a poem about Columbus' failure to find the gold of the orient in the New World, and his inability to envision the opportunity to create a new age of peace and brotherhood there. The poem stresses a missed opportunity for godhood and the inevitable weariness of trying to realize the ideal. The two poems that follow in different ways evoke the themes of struggle and the new order. The first, "Escapist~ Never," is about a pursuer pursuing a pursuer and a seeker seeking a seeker in what Frost called "an interminable chain of longing." I suggest that this is the "round of existence," the endless and unrealizable attempt to actualize the ideal. Perhaps we should think of Orion with his dog Sirius, forever pursuing the Pleiades across the heavens and never overtaking them. The second poem, "For John F. Kennedy, His Inauguration," has several explicit and implicit references to a new golden age of Augustus. I mention three. First, the opening lines- A golden age ofpoetry and power Of which this noonday's the beginning hour. One further kind of confirmation. The poems Frost associated "One More Brevity" with in his Bread Loaf readings also emphasize the themes I have been discussing. He read it with "The Lost Follower" (that poem about forsaking the gold of poetry for the attempt to realize the golden age through social action), and with "The Gift Outright," which is the other part of the Kennedy poem. Another time he followed it with a passage from "Kitty Hawk," about incarnation- But God's own descent Into flesh was meant As a demonstration That the supreme merit Lay in risking spirit In substantiationand commented, "See, we've got to risk spirit in substanti~ Then the explicit allusion to the adapted Vergilian phrases about the golden age that appear on our dollar bill (spiritual and material gold) above and below the image of a pyramid surmounted by an eye which radiates rays of light. Annuit coeptis (Georg. 1.40, also Aen. 9.625) novus ordo saeclorum (Eel. 4.5)-literally, "the new order of the ages gave the nod of assent to the enterprise." Frost's ver- ation and we mostly fail." 5 Twice he read it with his better known poem about Sirius, "Take Something Like A Star," which is also about matter and spirit. Once he prefaced it with "How Hard It Is To Keep From Being King," a poem about election and the attempt to realize spiritual ideals through the art of government. "Take Something Like A Star" brings up a final point. Frost's lifelong preoccupation with astronomy in general and Sirius in particular is well-known. It goes back at least to his discovery when a boy of British astronomer Richard Proctor's book Our Place Among the Infinities, with its chapter on Sirius entitled "A Giant Sun." In a 1935letter, Elinor Frost quotes him as saying he is "down here in Key West now to find out if Canopus is as good a star as Sirius."6 In "One More Brevity" he wonders if his visitor sion is, was not Summoning artists to participate In the august occasions of the state. Now came on a new order of the ages That in the Latin of our founding sages (Is it not written on the dollar bill We carry in our purse and pocket still?) God nodded his approval of as good. For "our founding sages" and for Frost, though unfortunately not for the contemporary reader, the Vergilian context made it plain that the new order being proclaimed was a recreation of the golden age, the theme of both passages adapted on the dollar bill. Finally there is a reference to the challenge of the present. It makes the prophet in us all presage The glory of a next Augustan age The star itself-Heaven's greatest star, Not a meteorite, but an avatarWho had made an overnight descent To show by deeds he didn't resent My having depended on him so long, And yet done nothing about it in song? What is this very special relation to Sirius that would make him say, ten years after "Take Something Like A Star" first appeared in print, that he had "yet done nothing about it in song?" "Take Something Like A Star" is about what Sirius can mean to everyone. THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW 9 �Not even stooping from its sphere, It asks a little of us here. It asks of us a certain height, So when at times the mob is swayed To carry praise or blame too far, We may take something like a star To stay our minds on and be staid. "One More Brevity" is about a relationship with Sirius so personal that the star does stoop from its sphere~ to pay a personal visit and deliver a personal message which mcorporates the reason for this special dependence ofpoet on star. The message is best understood m connection with one more aspect of Aeneid 8. Not surprisingly it is about being an artist. Aeneas' shield which embodies the dream of the golden age restored is Vulcan's masterpiece, in Vergil's words, "an in~ describable fabric," non enarrabile textum. The inspiration for its creation is a night of lovemaking with Venus. The thrill of love experienced by Vulcan is compared to lightning. This simile makes Venus once again, as when she sends the sign of election to Aeneas, the unlikely wielder of Jove's thunderbolt. Inspired by Venus' fire from heaven, forged in Vulcan's subterranean fires, the shield bears on it the flaming birth portent of the new golden age, the star of Julius. Fire is both instrument and emblem of creation. It links the creation of the great work of art to the act of love, and, since the thunderbolt is Jave's instrument, both are seen as expressions of his cosmic purpose. Like Vergil, Frost often associated the impulse of love with the impulse of art, for instance in "Take Something Like A Star." not disposed to speak." One can reveal unsuspected ulterior meanings of a poem by finding its relation to other poems, but, as Frost said of his star, Some mystery becomes the proud. I would hope that this demonstration makes it seem at least credible that Frost wanted to be read as he has frequently compelled me to read him, by getting among the poems (in this case ancient ones, but they are not always ancient), and that it would further serve as an illustration of what the abandonment of the poetic tradition can do to poetry, even, perhaps I should say particularly, to recent poetry. Not only the poems of Frost, almost all great poems, ask "of us a certain height," ask us to repossess our past so that we may experience them fully by discovering their "ulteriority." There exists something calling itself poetry that does not make such demands. But the great tradition has always been to "get among the poems." The muses are daughters of memory in more ways than we realize. Poets know, Frost knew, there is only one tradition of literature. We scholars, locked in our specialties, tend to forget. Classicists in particular should remember that not only do we "read A the better to understand B" but "D the better to go back and get something out of A." We cannot read Vergil unless we know Homer, but having read Vergil we will read Homer differently, and having read Milton, or Frost, we will read Vergil differently. We need to know the poets of the past to be good readers of modern poetry, but, just as important, to be good readers of ancient poetry we should read Frost and as many other modern poets as we can. "Progress is not the aim, but cir- Say something to us we can learn By heart and when alone repeat. Say something! And it says, "I burn. " Aeneas, Hercules, 1_\mp.ulus, perhaps even Augustus, will die before the golden age becomes a social reality. It is only on the shield, the work of the artist Vulcan! ulti· mately of the artist Vergil, that Romans and we, theu successors, can fully experience it. So perhaps another part of the message brought by Dalmatian Gus is about the role of the artist in keeping alive a vision which generations of statesmen and political idealists will exhaust themselves trying to realize. To be "dog-preferred" is to be elected to risk spirit in substantiation, to bring back the golden age by making poems under the inspiration of love. I would not like to imply that in getting among the poems to try to understand this poem I have succeeded in discovering the whole of the message that the poet "was 10 culation." The great poets give us back our past by forcing us to circulate. Poems of Robert Frost are cited from The Poetry of Robert Frost, ed. by E. C. Lathem, New York 1972 (Holt, Rinehart and Winston), with permission. Copyright 1953, © 1962 by Robert Frost. Copyright © 1969 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, publishers. l L. Thompson and R. H. Winnick, Robert Frost: The Later Years, 1938-1963, New York 1976 (Holt, Rinehart and Winston), 214. 2 "The Prerequisites: A Preface," in Robert Frost: Poetry and Prose, ed. E. C. Lathem and L. Thompson, New York 1972 (Holt, Rinehart and Winston), 416-418. 3 Thompson and Winnick, Frost: The Later Years, 204. 4 Reginald Cook, Robert Frost: A Living Voice, Amherst 1974 (The Uni· versity of Massachusetts Press), 135. 5 Cook, Robert Frost, 148. 6 Thompson and Winnick, Frost: The Later Years, SOl. SUMMER 198i �From The Hills as Waves Etta Blum AT YAD VASHEM (Holocaust Memorial) 1 2 3 The Light Monument Remnant It's the first light, the last Upward rising stack and huge unfurling to black flame We are the saved ones, we are those who were not slaughtered The summer air assaulted by blackness Shape of darkness like the heart, stilled Your faces are ours, your eyes We look with your eyes The candlelight driven by our breath, searchingfinding loss Hope comes oddly with the stumbling outside to sun, No room for shadow to the green leaping at us with gold We are living your lives for you, we are safe We are living your deaths Blackness screams into sunlight, forever condemned 0 mightiest of shrouds Etta Blum has just published a collection of poems, The Space my Body Fills (The Sunstone Press, Post Office Box 2321, Sante Fe, New Mexico). The poems that appear here come from an unpublished collection, The Hills as Waves, inspired on a trip to Israel. TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 11 �STRANGER Neither shalt thou gather the fallen fruit of thy vineyard... -Leviticus 19:10 I thank you, watchman of the grove, for the fruit you did not pick, for the grapes you left carelessly lying in the fading sunlight when all things glowed with a final burning, seared to the oncoming wind of night. You dreamed most certainly of a stranger without vineyard or grove, who could not calm his hand to sow, or await as others do, the ripe harvest. As I was passing, 0 watchman, a stranger to every home, I hurried over the earth as one passing through corridors. I picked the fruit you left, the moist and trembling grapes. Unseen your face, but kind as that of perfect sister or brother. 12 SuN RisEs, SUN SETS There's nothing spectacular about the sunsets here: light slips into darkness docilely without fanfare; the moon and stars appear on time. (Because here is where it started?) Sprinkled lights on hillhumps look upward, questioning the stars. Dawn comes as easily with a sliding into unblemished brightness. It's plain God separated light from darkness, working it both ways. SUMMER 1981 �HIPPIE AT WESTERN WALL Blue-jeaned, hair streaming straight from the scalp (as in the New York subway) she leans on the Wall, forehead resting on curve of rock (how this stone shapes itself to flesh) and prays. With all of her angulariry (which is the shape of her loneliness) she prays to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Beneath the granny glasses, tears fall to holy ground. Within her palm the small black prayerbook lies, ready to succor her. Almost, she sees the letters flying apart, searching. It's not hare hare krishna krishna now, but ani ma'amin . am. ma 'amtn Jerusalem Note: ''Ani ma'amin" means ul believe" in Hebrew. THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW THAN JONAH Constantly I flee from self. Constantly I stare with bitter eyes . of hope. In swift kaleidoscope of lost and found. Tears start from dry lids, for I'm more prone to self-pity even than Jonah who, luckier, fled only from God. ''THE STORY OF MY LIFE'' The room was too high for the flies, but the garbage smells reached us all right. On the narrow bed, the beige blanket with brown end-stripes was falling apart. Still, it lasted for us-a wonder. The door opened to the porch where, above roofs and treetops, we could see all the way to Yafo Gate and King David's Tower, the walls of the Old City, Mt. Zion, Ammunition Hill. At twilight the shadows (the Judaean Hills really) emerged to clear foldsmore like the rumpled cloaks of a Michelangelo. Close by, palm leaves tilted into sky. It was there you carne and spoke of your past, the Nazi horrors. I held your small perfect hands in mine. Afterwards, with childish contentment you said, "Now you know the story of my life." That room's like a box in my brain. 13 �Soviet Hegemonism: Year 1 Raymond Aron A year ago,* I analyzed the paradox or the contradiction in the present situation. Thanks to her military power, the Soviet Union approaches first place in international rela· tions at the same time that she remains of secondary im· portance in world trade. She is of secondary importance not only because her vast spaces, which provide most of the raw materials her industry needs, free her from the kind of dependency on foreign trade characteristic of Great Britain, Europe, and even the United States, but also because she does not match the leading nations when she is measured in our times' standards: gross national product, per capita production, productivity. Because of this contradiction, commentators hesitate. Some, obsessed with the military power of this land empire, denounce like China the threat that an ideocratic despotism, that relies on arms to propagate its power and its truth, exercises over both Europe and Asia; others, struck by the lability of a state that excels only in missiles and submarines while borrowing computers for Olympic games and Western know·how for automobile production, refuse to let exces· sive Soviet armament frighten them. In the last years, Western public opinion has finally come to see the change in the military balance. The abil· ity of the USSR's heavy missiles, the SS·l8's, to destroy every one of the United States' land·based missiles im· presses the man in the street and some of the experts. A Soviet first strike that deprived the United States of its Minutemen would, of course, not disarm it. The United States could still resort to its Poseidon submarine missiles and its B·52 bombers. The United States has, however, lost the nuclear superiority so long averred and main· tained, that had made up for Soviet superiority in conven· tiona! weapons. Toward the end of the fifties, Mao's slogan spread A leading thinker on world events, Raymond Aron writes a weekly column of comment in L'Express. His latest book is In Defense of Decadent Europe (Regnery/Gateway 1979). This article first appeared in Commentaire in autumn 1980. 14 through the world: "The East Wind is stronger than the West Wind." The "missile gap" took up the headlines and the speeches of presidential candidates. A few years later the wind blew in a different direction: the "missile gap" turned out not to exist and ceased to trouble the sleep of the men responsible for the fate of the West. Is the alarm today comparable to the alarm after Sputnik? What is the outlook for Europeans and Americans, still bound in the Atlantic alliance but not united by a common perception of events, and by mutual confidence? The Military Balance-A Few Figures The defense budget of the United States amounts to five percent of the GNP, the Soviet Union's to fifteen percent. This disparity began in 1965, when the defense budget of the Soviet Union started to increase five per· cent a year; in the same period the defense budget of the United States-apart from the bloated costs of the Viet· nam war-declined steadily in real terms unti\1978. The 1981-82 budget foresees increases; inflation and the rising price of fuel, however, make accurate calculations in real terms difficult. Not all figures are instructive** For instance, the dis· parity in numbers between fourteen American divisions and 165 Soviet divisions does not mean much. The Soviet army numbers 1,825,000 men, 47 armored divisions, 118 ordinary or mechanized divisions, eight airborne divisions; the American army counts 750,000 men, divided into four armored divisions, five mechanized divisions, five infantry divisions, and one airborne division. (There are in addition a number of regiments, brigades, or battalions.) The So· viet army, however, is divided between Europe and the *In an article, "De l'imperialisme americain a l'hegemonisme sovietique," published in Commentaire in spring 1979. **I refer to figures published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in The Military Balance. SUMMER 1981 �Far East-and a part of it is not available for foreign intervention. But eight airborne divisions tell a different story, whose truth many events have proven: the bear is no longer locked in his den. The Soviet Union can now project its power far beyond its frontiers. In Europe, the Far East, and the Middle East, the Soviet Union can deploy more tanks, divisions, and artillery than any of its likely adversaries. As for the air force and the navy, the figures do not betray quantitative inferiority of the same order of magnitude. Some figures, however, highlight Soviet advances: the International Institute for Strategic Studies records 180 American surface vessels against 275 Soviet; 80 American attack submarines (73 nuclear) against 248 Soviet submarines (87 nuclear). Raw figures, however, do not yield strategic judgements. The American air force and navy probably remain qualitatively superior. In war, the mission of the United States Navy would be to keep the seaways open; in contrast, the Soviet navy would seek to wrest dominion of the seas from the West. Statistics do not tell the outcome of this potential war at sea. I think forces should be analyzed in their distribution in various theaters. Although not entirely without significance, grand totals make for a superficial view-and a partially false one at that: the 165 Soviet divisions are not all of the same sort or equipped in the same way-and in peacetime, not at a uniform standard of training and readIness. The European Theater Europeans look first to the theater of operations that involves them directly. What is the relation of forces in the middle of the Old World? The first figures, the figures most often quoted, support received opinion: the superiority of the Soviets in conventional weapons. Not counting mobilization, 27 NATO divisions face 47 Warsaw Pact divisions (among them 27 Soviet). 7,000 NATO tanks face 20,500 Warsaw Pact tanks (of which 13,500 are Soviet). In artillery NATO inferiority is even more telling: 2, 700 against 10,000. In addition, the Soviet Union can reinforce its armies more easily than NATO. Because of the threat of Soviet submarines and bombers to Western sea transport, Soviet divisions stationed east of Poland will reach the battlefields more easily than the divisions available in the United States. The theater nuclear weapons of the two groups provoked debate upon publication of The Military Balance last year. Does the Warsaw pact have or is it about to achieve superiority in delivery of theater nuclear weapons? In such an event there will be no resolving the disputes about bare numbers of bombers, fighter-bombers, and missiles. How much chance does a fighter-bomber have of breaking through the Soviet Union's anti-aircraft defense network? How important are the nuclear warheads of the SS-20 missile, in comparison to the warheads THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW of the medium range missiles (SS-4 and SS-5), aimed at Europe since the beginning of the sixties? At the risk of simplistic exaggeration: a direct, head-on, military attack on Western Europe remains the most improbable of all manifestations of Soviet hegemonism. A Soviet attack against the heart of Europe, unless by surprise and with all weapons including nuclear, risks unleashing total war between the super-powers. If the Soviets resorted only to their conventionally armed divisions they would probably win. They would, however, expose their more or less clustered armored divisions to an American initiative in the use of theater nuclear weapons. Immediate employment of theater nuclear weapons, and even of chemical warfare, would make victory on the ground easier at the same time that it would increase the danger of American resort to strategic nuclear weapons. Do the SS-20 and Backfire bombers change the balance in tactical nuclear weapons? If we limit ourselves to counting nuclear warheads and megatons, not necessarily. The Soviets can destroy some of the missiles deployed at the beginning of the sixties, crude in comparison to the SS-20 which has three nuclear warheads and has the same range of accuracy as American missiles, a few dozen me- ters from the target. NATO has nothing to compare to the SS-20. But the American commander of NATO has at his disposal several submarines that belong to the strategic forces, which are the subject of the SALT II accords. Once one admits the two-fold improbability of a Soviet attack in the heart of Europe and of a European war that would not lead to total war, the behavior of the two camps invites reflection. Why do the Soviets assure themselves a crushing superiority in tanks and cannons at the same time that their books of strategy all speak of all-out battle with tactical nuclear weapons? The Soviets do not want to foreclose either the option of conventional battle in which preponderance in steel-tanks, cannons, shellswould bring victory; or of an all-out battle in which armored divisions would only play a subsidiary role, because nuclear warheads would have destroyed vital NATO defenses beforehand. That seems to me the only answer. In politics as well as war the West condemns itself to the defensive. The commanders of NATO have to assume they will suffer the offensive. At the beginning of the sixties the civilian professors around Kennedy had the doctrine of "flexible response" officially imposed on the military. Kennedy's team believed the doctrine of "massive reprisals" would lose credibility the more the Soviet Union approached parity. Use of nuclear weapons only as a last resort would reinforce "deterrence" -they thought. In addition they tended to limit the escalation of response either to conventional or nuclear. There was no discerni- ble dividing line, recognized by all belligerents, between a tactical nuclear shell and the apocalypse. This assumption, which came to be the first principle of United States and NATO thinking, is, fortunately, arbitrary and unlikely-in my judgement. Because of this postulate, NATO divisions are not 15 �trained in the use of tactical nuclear weapons, which are concentrated in a small number of depots. There will be time in a crisis to distribute the nuclear shells among the troops-that is the assumption. Not opposed to "flexible response," the partisans of the neutron bomb criticize the mystical notion of a "nuclear threshold." They do all they can to "rehabilitate" both conventional ground war and the neutron bomb, which will neither destroy towns nor contaminate battlefields. What conclusions does this summary analysis afford? A massive attack against We~tern Europe remains as unlikely today as yesterday. Limited military attacks against Northern Europe are, for the moment, incompatible with the policy of detente, which the Soviet Union pursues in Europe at the same time that it expands in the Near East and Africa. In Europe the Politburo, however, pursues a strategy of intimidation; it increasingly strengthens its di· visions in East Germany to maintain, even to accentuate, its conventional army's superiority over NATO; it sees to it that it has means for unlimited battle; it trains its sol· diers to fight in contaminated territory; finally, its SS-20's give it. the fearful power of destroying several hundred crucial points in the Western defense system with re· duced collateral destruction. Faced with a variety of hazardous threats, the West has come up with only two answers, one trivial, the other more to the point. Every European country has committed itself to a three percent increase in defense spending-a commitment of little importance in a time of inflation and of yearly increases in fuel prices. In addition Europe has accepted the United States' offer to deploy, during 1983, 108 Pershing 2 and 464 cruise missiles in the Federal Re· public of Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and perhaps in Belgium and the Netherlands. The Soviets lost no time in unleashing a frantic campaign against the modernization of tactical nuclear weapons-a campaign which told on Europeans. Does American protection alarm as much as it reassures? The modernization of nuclear theater-weapons does not seem to transform the situation, militarily. The Soviet Union has assured itself of threefold superiority: an ar· mored army; integration of nuclear arms in its divisions; SS-20's. In addition, it alone-and this is an enormous ad· vantage-will choose between peace and war and decide on the extent and intensity of hostilities. Despite every· thmg, a head-on attack of any sort remains fraught with perils as long as the American presence in Europe means such a Soviet offensive runs the risk of general war. A sur· gical operation with SS-20's and Backfires, on its merits the least unlikely of the possibilities, increases the likelihood of a nuclear response from the United States- aresponse which would enjoy the advantage of a first strike. In theory less vulnerable because of their mobility, the Pershing and cruise missiles will complicate the task of Soviet strategic planners. Will these missiles prevent "decoupling", in the jargon of strategists? To put it plainly, will they prevent the sepa- 16 ration of the European theater from the central strategic balance? Specialists argue opposite sides with equal passion. The truth is that everything depends less on arms than on men: How do the Soviets size up the President of the United States? In Europe the balance between the forces has worsened at the expense of the West; it has not been transformed fundamentally. The men in charge of NATO have never thought that they could repel an all-out Soviet attack without resort to nuclear weapons. Ten years ago these men probably thought they would retain the initiative in escalation, if escalation proved necessary. They no longer have any reason to assume they have any such freedom of initiative. The Middle East and Afghanistan With the fall of the Shah and the occupation of Afghanistan, the situation in the Persian Gulf changed completely. Pahlavi Iran was the policeman of the area; its troops succored the emirates threatened by revolt; its navy patrolled the Strait of Hormuz; it allowed the United States to install on its territory the electronic listening devices necessary to verify arms control agreements; it put six million barrels of oil a day on the world market; it furnished Israel with oil; most important of a!~ it provided the United States, in case of a crisis, with a base from which it could project its military power in the region. The coup in Kabul brought home his powerlessness to President Carter. He announced his resolve to defend the Persian Gulf with all means, even, if necessary, with nuclear weapons-declarations received with indifference and skepticism. A rapid deployment force was decided upon. But it will take several years, it seems, before the United States will be able to send several hundred thousand soldiers several thousand miles away from its shores, to a territory only hundreds of miles from the Soviet Union. Do Soviet actions in Afghanistan show what the Chinese call hegemonism? Taken for a buffer state between Russian and Indian spheres of influence, Afghanistan in the nineteenth century saw the disastrous end of an English expedition from India. In the last twenty years Afghanistan moved more and more toward the Soviet sphere of influence: the Soviets spent more money in Afghanistan than the United States; Afghan officers studied, not at West Point, but in Moscow. The first, crucial revolution occurred in April 1978. Conspirators, with the help of a few officers, either Soviet trained or inclined to the Soviets, overthrew the President, Mohammed Daud Khan-who himself had removed the King, his brother-in-law and first cousin, in 1973. Daud's replacement, Taraki, signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union. He was in turn overthrown by Hafizullah Amin-a second coup d'etat that the Soviet Union put up with in distaste. Faced with Amin's inability to consolidate his regime and SUMMER 1981 �to take charge in the country as a whole, the oligarchs in Moscow precipitated still another coup with their troops' entry. Babrak Karma] was supposed to ask the Soviet Union for help-like Kadar's work-peasant government against the Hungarians in revolt. Amin and his family were killed before his successor, Karma!, leader of the Parcham faction, arrived in Kabul to legitimize, at least, in appearance, the coming of Soviet troops. A badly conceived or badly executed scenario. As usual, two interpretations face each other in the West. Taraki's treaty of friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union, according to the first interpretation, turned Afghanistan into a socialist country-and the Soviet Union never stands for the desovietization of countries that have crossed the threshold of the socialist community. The military operation is more brutal and drawn out because of the warlike people's resistance. Other commentators go further. An Islamic republic in revolutionary ferment might have awakened religious passions in the Islamic republics of Central Asia: in the last analysis the coup in Kabul occurred for defensive reasons. Not a piece of 1 global strategic offensive toward the seas to the South, the invasion of Afghanistan is a local crisis, a feud between two factions of the popular party, the Khalq (Taraki and Amin) and Parcham (Babrak Karma!). After its exile of the principal members of Parcham, Khalq provoked increasingly widespread revolt with its attempts at radical reform. The Soviets returned the exiled Parcham leaders, who were and are incapable of exercising power without the Soviet army. The Soviet army cannot withdraw without giving the country up to chaos and anarchy. The invasion of Afghanistan is yet another example of the way things go. A pessimistic interpretation contrasts with this optimistic assessment. The Soviets have completed yet another phase in their whole design, in their continuous expansion. They are hundreds of miles nearer the gulf. Additional airbases are at their disposal. They threaten Pakistan, wedged between India and the Soviet army. They are now near enough to manipulate the Baluchi tribes at the frontiers of Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. Even admitting that the Amin regime's repeated failures drove the Soviets to forceful measures, the invasion of Afghanistan shows their confidence in themselves, in their power, and in the weakness of their principal enemy, the United States. Whatever the truth of either of these interpretations, the dispatch of a hundred thousand soldiers to a country that did not belong to the socialist community (a treaty of friendship and cooperation does not amount to a mutual assistance pact; it is less important) represents something new and dangerous that perhaps presages other undertakings. President Carter retaliated: he restricted wheat sales; suspended the sale of high-level technology, especially for oil exploration; initiated the boycott of the Olympic games; postponed the Senate debate on the ratification of the SALT II treaty. To emphasize the turn in American policy, the President proposed the reintroduction of regisTI!E ST.JOHNS REVIEW tration to Congress-a step necessary for the eventual reintroduction of the draft. The invasion of Afghanistan cost the Soviet Union both in moral and diplomatic terms. At Islamabad, the Moslem countries almost unanimously condemned Soviet aggression, One condemnation included both superpowers, the supporter of Israel as well as the conqueror of a people faithful to Islam. The disparity between the "credibility," as it is usually called, of the United States and the Soviet Union, however, grows more marked. What does this word mean? Not prestige in its real sense; not the feelings of respect and admiration that a great power evokes. Perhaps a few incidents will shed light on the meaning of this American word. Iranian students seized the personnel of the American embassy in Teheran and held them; the Iranian crowds that headed for the Soviet embassy, in contrast, met with the revolutionary militia. Pakistan contemptuously refused American offers of help: what difference did a few hundred million dollars make? In some countries governments hesitate to accept American protection, because it might exacerbate the fervors of their revolutionaries and because they fear that, compromised by their relations with Washington, they will be abandoned on the day of reckonmg. I am not about to review the Iranian file or the file on the fall of the Shah or the hostages. But the place of Pahlavi Iran in the Americans' world-wide diplomacy has to be remembered. Brezhnev' s team and the emirs and kings of the region did not imagine that the imperial Republic would abandon imperial Iran. Incapable of believing Washington's resignation to the fall of the Shah, the men in the Kremlin merely looked on for a long time. Prodigal in contradictory advice to the sick, will-less sovereign, Carter's team in the end imposed exile on him in the illusion that they could save the regime without the man who symbolized it. What can the King of Saudi Arabia and his countless relatives make of this? All these "moderate" sovereigns wish for discreet American protection. They fear revolutionaries, Palestinians, and fundamentalists, those who look to Mecca as well as those who look to Moscow- even as they all set their eyes on Jerusalem. The career of events in the Middle East provides a touchstone for the two doctrines on use of armed force in international conflicts, especially in the Third World, that confront each other in the United States and also in Europe. Iran and Afghanistan appear to teach contradictory lessons: for all its sophisticated weapons, the Shah's army showed itself powerless before infatuated crowds and Khomeini's propaganda cassettes. The unarmed prophet won. In Kabul not words but Antonovs in a few hours flew in soldiers and tanks that drove one faction (Khalq) out and put the other (Parcham) in power. Which of these examples-Teheran or Kabul-should stay with strategists? Both, obviously. The example of Iran reminds us once more-if we need 17 �reminding-that in our times a change of regime often brings a change in diplomatic orientation. The Ayatollahs curtailed oil production. A fundamentalist or revolutionary government in Riyadh might take similar measures. These facts lead to the belief that the destiny of the West will be decided in the Third World, not by intercontinental missiles, but by diplomacy and economics. To a certain extent, an indisputable teaching; but one-sided and dangerous. Arming a moderate regime shaken by popular reaction to violation of religious prescriptions and to the weakening of tradition may speed its destabilization. In the case of Iran the "modern" generals did not defend their sovereign to the end; they might, however, perhaps have saved him if they had imposed effective martial law when still in control of the situation. A look at the prospects in the Persian Gulf shows that neither of the two doctrines is sufficient in itself. The Soviets can occupy the Strait of Hormuz without serious resistance if they so decide. They can also gamble on the precariousness of the so-called traditional or moderate regimes, on the potential rebels in this region that number in the hundreds of thousands: Palestinians drawn by the oil riches or Mujahiddin, militant Islamic socialists or Moslems with a Marxist veneer. Need I add that the correlation of forces, even when not employed, weighs on the minds of all the actors, on sovereigns and masses. The American abandonment of the Shah is not forgotten; the contrast between the proximity of Soviet troops and the distance of American troops is not overlooked. Events in the Middle East have brought back to the fore the economic stakes of the political competition. In the last thirty years even dogmatic Marxists had a hard time finding economic motives for the great decisions made in Washington. The war in Korea, the war in Vietnam, were wars of defense on the edges of the sphere of influence, and the world market, of the United States. Neither of these two divided countries had important raw materials either in their northern or southern halves. To find economic motives, you had to suppose that containment of Soviet expansion aimed 1 in the final analysis, at the preservation of the integrity of the world market for the multinationals, who opposed Soviet armed conquest or the coming to power of Soviet-inspired parties for the sake of their expansion. For the first time, in the Middle East, the doctrine of containment does not hide an objective that takes precedence: oil. The United States now imports forty percent of its oil; Japan imports nearly all its oil (which makes up the largest share of its energy [75% ]). Oil still makes up about 55% of Europe's total energy consumption. Soviet control of the Persian Gulf would, for all that, not deprive Europe of oil in normal times, in times of peace. But who can underestimate the power of the oil weapon? Added to thousands of tanks and nuclear warheads, the increased capacity for pressure and blackmail at the disposal of the Kremlin would not make the Mecca of Socialism more attractive, but it would make its demands more imperative. 18 Western Dependence It might perhaps be useful at this point to touch upon a too-often-neglected subject. It is all well and good to recall the enormous superiority of Western economies over So- viet bloc economies. As long as American power fashioned, not an empire, but at least an imperial area inside of which the world market prospered, we forgot our dependence on raw materials. OPEC reminded us of it. Economists conceive of production as the result of the combination of work and capital. Ecologists think of it as coming from the transformation of nature by human energy, intellectual or material. Without the raw materials to transform, capital becomes sluggish-and human energy by itself is no longer enough to keep up the steel and cement monstrosities where hundreds of millions of men in the industrialized nations live. The United States depends on other countries for 100% of its cobalt, for 95% of its manganese, for 90% of its nickel, for 100% of its tin, for 100% of its chrome. All the raw materials the United States must import are found in southern Africa, especially in South Africa. By itself South Africa contains 77% of the manganese, 89% of the platinum, 64% of the gold of the Western world. Modern armament cannot do without raw materials like chrome, platinum, nickel, cobalt, titanium. The region where these metals that might be called strategic lie is another hot point in the world today. Any political upheaval in Zaire (cobalt), in South Africa (chrome, platinum, diamonds, titanium), would mortgage the West's supply of these strategic materials. Why Do Present Crises Divide the Western Partners? Regardless of whether it betrays a design to expand to the south, testifies to growing Soviet .confidence in their power, or comes of a faulty diplomatic move, the invasion of Afghanistan provoked an international crisis and dissension in each camp. Rumania expressed reservations about the Soviet operation; the Polish Prime Minister intimated his unhappiness. In the West the Europeans showed their desire for autonomy in many ways-and not without criticizing Washington's actions. Let's put aside the simplistic comments of some of the American press: the voluntary Finlandization of Europe. Let us .also forget about the equally simplistic observations of some Europeans: the entrance of Soviet troops into Afghanistan represented a North-South, not an EastWest conflict; we, we Europeans are not about to sacrifice the advantages of detente for the sake of a country already in the Soviet sphere of influence, when Washington, with hardly any protest, accepted the coup d'etat of April1978 that eliminated Daud, who for his part had set aside without bloodshed the King, his cousin. Europeans who retain some planetary sense know as well as Americans that SUMMER 1981 �everything that occurs in Afghanistan interests the Persian Gulf and, thereby, the independence of Europe. The crucial question is: Why do the present crises-in Iran, in Afghanistan, concerning Palestine-divide the Atlantic allies instead of tending to unify them like the crises in the past-Korea, Berlin, and Cuba? Yesterday the allies backed each other in the face of danger, today they bicker. Some answers come to mind of their own accord. The Europeans have regained their rank and station in the world economy. The United States is still first, but without the same margin of superiority. Europe's dependence on the United States has now turned into interdependence. The American authorities who are in charge of the still irreplaceable international currency of the dollar must have the cooperation of the central banks, especially of the bank of- the Federal Republic of Germany. At the same time, Europeans feel more dependent on the oilproducers. Already, during the Yom Kippur war, Europe refused the American air force the use of its airports. Only Salazar's Portugal facilitated the airlift that saved Israel. Europe feared that joining the United States, the protector of Israel, would compromise it before the oil governments. At the risk of further weakening the only Arab or at least Moslem leader who had thrown in his destiny with the West, Europe did not approve the Camp David accords. By mutual consent on either side of the Atlantic there was relatively little discussion of Europe's attitude during the Yom Kippur war. Europe's neutrality toward the Camp David agreements continues her attitude of 1973. Circumstances made neutrality or indifference impossible in the instance of Afghanistan. With the Arab states for once blaming the Soviet Union instead of the United States, with the President of the United States, in words at least, siding with his advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and taking his distance from his Secretary of State, the Europeans had to condemn the coup in Kabul. Even more, they were joyous at the resurgence of American will. They willingly would have endorsed the sensational proposition of The Economist: the Soviets did not hesitate to invade Afghanistan because the United States had let its guard down and had, since the war in Vietnam, passively put up with Soviet-Cuban activities in Africa. Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, South Yemen had not been enough to provoke the reflex of containment. In the first year of his mandate President Carter used to congratulate himself on his country's readiness to rid itself of its irrational fear of communism; he stopped taking a country's turn to communism for an American defeat. The same Carter worried the allies more than he reassured them when he declared that he had learned more about the Soviet Union in a few days than in the three preceding years. A conversion in view of the elections or for good? After several days' hesitation, Valery Giscard d'Estaing took on the firm language of the "unacceptable". At the same time he tried to take advantage of French diplomaTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW cy's independence from Washington. He turned down a dinner a trois in Bonn because this "informal" meeting had been announced ahead of time. On his own initiative or in response to a Soviet initiative through the Polish Prime Minister, he met with Leonid Brezhnev. Above all, he was anxious to keep diplomatic contact with Moscow at a moment when the current no longer passed between Moscow and Washington. The real novelty came from Helmut Schmidt, or perhaps one should say, from the Federal Republic of Germany. The Ostpolitik Willy Brandt initiated now unfolds its unforeseen and at the same time logical consequences. Before the conclusion of the treaties with the other Germany, the managers of East Germany had la\lnched the password Abgrenzung-in other words, the solidification of moral and political borders to compensate for the opening of the actual frontiers to visitors from the West. Abgrenzung seems to me to have enjoyed indifferent success at best. The Germans on either side of the line that divides them have never been closer because of commercial exchanges, television, and personal encounters. The word Ostpolitik recalls the expression, Ostorientierung, I heard so often a half-century ago. A country in the middle, Germany looks either to the East or the West for a partner, for an ally to forestall encirclement. In 1931 and in 1932 at the Student Center in Berlin, which hummed with political discussion, some looked to the East, and, thereby, to the Soviet Union; others toward the West and the Western democracies. Both sides emphasized their German identity in face of the Tsarist knout or Bolshevik despotism on one side and the rationalism of the Western democracies on the other. Helmut Schmidt would not indulge in such rhetoric or cultural hermeneutics today. He counts himself-and the Federal Republic of Germany-unhesitatingly among the Western or pluralistic democracies. In spite of the sincerity of its Westorientierung, the government in Bonn, however, fears Moscow's bad temper as much as Washington's. The withdrawal of American troops? The Germans, the Europeans already show too much docility in the face of Soviet prohibitions and commands. The withdrawal of the American troops in Europe would turn docility into servility. Europeans know that the protection they owe America serves the interest, rightly conceived, both of protectors and protected. The three hundred thousand Americans in Western Europe constitute at least an unreckonable risk for the Soviet Union in the event that she envisages military aggression. For his part, Kissinger could say at Brussels-he would have done better to keep his silence-that no President of the United States would unleash strategic missiles against Soviet cities in the certainty that American cities would suffer the same lot within an hour: The truth is that no one can say with certainty what the President of the United States would do in reply to a partial or total Soviet attack against the European members of the alliance. 19 �This goes for the men in the Kremlin, too. This uncertainty has now become the normal, essential mode of deterrence between the superpowers. The Americans cannot, and do not desire to, take away this residual deterrence from their allies, even if they are ungrateful. And the allies for their part do all they can to supplement it with the Ostpolitik. The Ostpolitik makes up the specifically national component in Bonn's diplomacy. As long as the Federal Republic of Germany clung to the Hallstein doctrine, she gave herself no room for maneuver and condemned herself to the role of model ally of the United States. Because she did not recognize the consequences of the War-the "Polandization" of the territories east of the Oder-Neisse and the for!Jlation of the German Democratic Republicshe remained the out-post of the Atlantic army. She was on the front line. She dedicated herself to economic wellbeing and to the unity of Europe (Europe west of the line of demarcation). An economic giant and a political dwarf-as someone put it. The economic colossus in the end lent political power to the so-called dwarf: the Ostpolitik showed her, not a field for immediate action, but prospects on the future. The Ostpolitik has inherent limitations, to be sure. The workers' party, which rules the GDR and which will not submit its authority to the hazard of free elections, confounds its own and the Soviet Union's destiny. With its military and civilian technicians the GDR does her share in helping Sovietism to expand in Africa and the Americas. I do not think Schmidt harbors any illusions about "peace through commerce" crusades. Nor does he count on the mutuality of interests of the two countries on either side of the political and ideological dividing line. Without the alliance with Washington, cordial relations with Moscow would turn dangerous. But alliance with Washington has its perils when relations between Washington and Moscow grow tense. A "cynical" analysis could -go further in this direction. Let us look at western Europe's situation without preconceived iudgement: to the east the largest army in the world, to the south and farther east the Arab countries who for at least ten years have opened and closed the oil tap. Neither the Israelis nor the American~> have oil to sell. The United States still has enough military might to make the Soviets think; it hardly has any means left to pressure its allies. It can no longer dictate its decisions to them. It must come to an understanding with them. The Americans are not yet fully conscious of their decline. Schmidt's team and Carter's. The Chancellor has not forgotten the episode of the neutron bomb. He will not forget the undiplomatic letter he received from Washington just before his trip to Moscow ... The left wing of the Social Democratic Party and an important segment of public opinion and of the intelligentsia turn away from the United States either because the United States has disappointed them or for other reasons. They prefer detente to confrontation with the Soviet Union. Many top German executives, in and out of government, are severely critical of the fiscal and economic man- agement for which, in varying degrees, all Presidents since Johnson have been responsible. In this field they no longer accept Washington's leadership, even though the United States, because of its currency and importance, inevitably exercises considerable influence on all participants in the world market. For my part, the inflation, the fall in the growth of productivity, the inability of Nixon, Ford, and Carter to conceive and carry out an energy policy impress and disturb me less than the disappearance of a strategic doctrine, and of leadership capable of overcoming the chaos of pressure groups and setting a goal for the American Republic. The East Coast establishment, which had supported the foreign policy of the United States from 1947 to 1965-from Truman's awakening to the frustrations of an endless war-split irremediably after defeat in Vietnam and Watergate. To put it bluntly, it committed suicide. Since 1975 the United States has had neither a policy nor a president. Remember John F. Kennedy's inaugural address. To preserve liberty the Republic would shoulder all burdens and refuse no sacrifice. Turn in contrast to the speeches of Teddy, the last of that illustrious, tragic dynasty. In domestic affairs liberal, in the American sense, he belongs to that group of senators who plead for reductions in the military budget and regularly vote against interventions abroad. The alliance that liberalism, the left, made in the past with the unions to encourage resistance to the Soviet Union is now all undone. The liberalsmany of them at least-look down with contempt on the anti-communist obsession that inspired the American strategy of containment. The conversion of George F. Kennan, although it occurred before the Vietnam war, is symbolic. The man who launched the very conception of containment, who opened the eyes of a President of the United States who knew nothing or next to nothing of Bolshevism, this man repudiates himself today, is ashamed of his prophetic writings, and sees one place alone, Berlin, where American in- American Decline? Do the Europeans shrink from American leadership because they have come to have confidence in themselves or because the power of the Soviet Union frightens them? Or is there a third reason that subsumes the other two: the decline of America? Let's take a brief look at personal relations between 20 terests directly oppose Soviet interests. As for the rest of the world, whether it be Mozambique or Angola, how do Soviet actions damage the security of the United States? Kennan does not suggest outright that the leaders of the Republic give up their interest in regions outside of Western Europe and Japan, its natural allies. He, however, no longer finds it necessary to contain the Soviet Union's expansionist whims more or less everywhere because he SUMMER 1981 �no longer apparently believes in the inherent characteristics of the Soviet Union. Containment is admittedly more an all-purpose word than a doctrine. This word, however, once recalled both the world·wide dimension of Soviet ambitions and, thereby, of Soviet-American rivalry, and the uniqueness of the regime in Moscow. This regime is not a banal despotism, oriental or not, but an ideocracy, animated and run by a party which, whether it believes or not, will not think its mission complete until its truth has reached the ends of the universe. Principles of American diplomacy until the disaster in Vietnam, these two corollaries of the word "containment" are today questioned or abandoned entirely. The maturity and wisdom the Carter administration boasted of in its beginnings showed themselves in the abandonment of just these principles: a conquest of Sovietism in some far-off country of Africa no longer provoked "irrational fear," in the United States. Thanks to this lack of "fear" events in Angola, Ethiopia, South Yemen did not disturb the serenity of the liberals come to maturity-including a part of Carter's team. Washington tolerated the use of Cuban troops in Africa. More than once Zbigniew Brzezinski evoked "the arc of crisis" around the Horn of Africa. The United States, however, only reacted unmistakably to the news of hostilities on the frontier between South and North Yemen-hostilities this time in the immediate vicinity of Saudi Arabia. Do not misunderstand me. I am not arguing for a return to containment-if that doctrine was ever carried out in the sense of resistance at any price, anywhere, to advances of the Soviet Union or communism. The distinction between the Soviet Union and communism brings out the major difficulty: every victory of a Marxist-Leninist party does not imply a success for the Soviet Union. The Sino-Soviet schism makes it more difficult to identify the enemy. Is it the Soviet Union, progressivism, or communism? To some extent this ambiguity was responsible for the Vietnam war's, and containment's, fall into disrepute. In Vietnam, on account of something like a conditioned reflex of containment, the Americans supported the republic in the south against the Marxist republic in the north. Whose imperialism were they fighting? Moscow's? Peking's? Hanoi's? We know the answer today. At different times the advisors singled out and announced different enemies. First Moscow. Then, the revolutionary romanticism of the Maoists. Nixon and Kissinger, who were resuming contact with Peking and sought accomodation with Moscow, blamed the North Vietnamese themselvesa version nearer the truth, although the Soviet Union supplied Hanoi with modern arms until the end. The equivocality of the cause, the brutality of the means employed by the American air force in questionable combat, the apparent impossibility of victory, the disproportion between what was at stake and the cost, in the end, roused public opinion and discredited the idea of containment. In 1975, THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Congress forbade a President weakened by Watergate to "punish" flagrant breaches of the Paris agreements. The liberals who bore some of the responsibility for the original American intervention beat Nixon's (whom they hated) and Kissinger's breasts with their mea culpas. After the fact and in the light of the events that followed, no one doubts that intervention was a political mistake. Was it a moral error? In its defense of South Vietnam the United States defended the lesser evil. The dominoes continue to fall. James Carter wanted to learn one of the valid lessons of Vietnam: he wanted to rid himself of the compulsive imperatives of containment. This break meant two things: regimes, no matter how hateful, would no longer be supported simply because of fear of communism; everything possible would be done to avoid sending American troops to the aid of governments in jeopardy. The Americans are doing all they can to apply this lesson to Central America and the Carribean. Washington had entertained cordial relations with the petty tyrannies (it had not made) in the little countries of this region. The revolutionaries in Nicaragua did not distinguish in their hatred between Somoza and his family and their protectors in Washington. After the victory of the Sandinistas, who were close to the fidelistas, Congress desired to make the respect of human rights a condition of a loan of seventy-five million dollars. The Sandinistas had it easy: the senators had never shown such fastidiousness in the respect of human rights in Somoza' s time. In El Salvador the Americans support a junta of civilians and military men that at its beginning promised a third way between President Romero, creature of the big landowners, and Castroist and Maoist revolutionaries. Besieged on both sides by the fidelistas and by the extreme right, abandoned by a number of Christian Democrats, the junta, despite its announcement of lapd reform, pursues repression. It does not appear capable of forestalling civil war. Successful in Korea, military containment led to disaster in Vietnam. In Latin America, especially in Central America, the pursuit of systematic containment-the indiscriminate support of anti-Communist regimes-ends in either explosions or in Castroist regimes. In Africa, American passivity allows free play to Cuban operations, whose persistence makes for lasting influence. From Ethiopia to the frontier of Pakistan crises intertwine without, however, losing their distinction. In the coming years, these crises will continue be- yond present preoccupations (the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, ... the impasse in Israeli-Egyptian negotiations). The complexity of the present career of events would make a mockery of the slogan: return to containment. The United States no longer holds sway over the interstate system or the world market. The revolt against the West of the countries that produce oil and other raw materials helps Soviet undertakings-but Moscow neither instigates nor manipulates it. A return to systematic containment in South America would not be better than passivity in the face of Soviet-Cuban expansion in Africa. East-West 21 �rivalry now unfolds more and more to the south-and crises are not always in favor of the camp with the most arms .... . . . Reagan with good advisers may surprise even his supporters .... But the question goes beyond individuals .... The American people have always been more concerned with their own affairs than with the world abroad. They had immense territory at their disposal and apparently unlimited resources. Politics did not attract the best. Without a strong state, with a limited central authority subject to pressure groups, society prospered. The force of circumstances drove the United States towards an imperial role. For barely a quarter century it dominated the world. Even in that short period the Soviet Union, inferior in every respect, had no trouble maintaining her positions. The United States should no longer aspire to an out-ofthe-ordinary predominance that could not in any case have lasted. It must, however, reestablish the balance, not so much of power, but of will. The Soviet Union holds two cards: its armed might and the inclination toward Sovietism of some revolutionaries in the Third World. The United States holds others. But neither the gross national product nor the standard of living can match tanks and missiles. The Crucial Question: the True Character of the Soviet Union? The reader will probably judge this analysis too pessimistic. I agree. A commanding general knows the weakness of his own soldiers better than the weaknesses of his enemy, as Clausewitz wrote. In the eighties, according to all experts, the Soviet Union's economic difficulties will increase. Economic growth in the Soviet Union has always depended on capital accumulation and expansion of the work-force. There is, however, less and less surplus labor at the disposal of Soviet planners-and centralized management hardly allows for the possibility of increases in the intensity of work, in productivity. The diplomacy of Brezhnev's team has brought China and Japan, and China and the United States, closer. At the moment Japan only dedicates one percent of its gross national product to defense. In equipment the army of the People's Republic of China lags twenty years behind the Soviet army. With its invasion of Afghanistan, the Soviet Union alienated many Moslem countries. She frightens many, but the fear she occasions today will disappear tomorrow if faced again with an America aware of itself and resolute. ... Massive swift rearmament would require unpopular measures from any President. There are no available surpluses in the budget or in industry. An additional deficit in the budget would increase inflationary pressures. The acceleration of the production of armaments, whether of tanks, airplanes, or missiles, would mean the transfer of re- sources, an extraordinary effort, an end to "business as usual". Is rearmament a proper response to the challenge? On this question perhaps more than on any other no unanim- 22 ity prevails in the United States. On the basis of the wrong lesson learned from Vietnam, the majority of liberals cling to the latest fashionable theory, which holds that arms are useless in the diplomatic conflicts of our time . According to this theory, the stability or instability of the states in the region will decide the destiny of the Persian gulf-more than tanks and planes delivered to local princes or installed on the spot by the United States. The theory holds that sophisticated arms did more to undo Pahlavi Iran than to save it. Afghanistan underlines the limits of these otherwise valid objections. Neither rebels nor princes are indifferent to the assumed relation of forces between the two superpowers. The crucial question, however, lies beyond these controversies that concern means rather than principles: What Soviet Union are we dealing with? A great power, impatient for recognition as such, desirous of solving its economic problems, ready to seize upon any chance for success but without revolutionary passion and unlimited ambitions? Or an ideocratic despotism superior only in armaments, indifferent to the low standard of living of its population, animated always by the same view of the world, always dedicated to the same end: the spread of its ideological truth throughout the entire world? Nobody can choose between these two interpretations on the strength of an irrefutable demonstration. In 1936 no one could prove that Hitler would go to war. It was the same in 1938: neither those for nor those against Munich could prove their thesis. In 1936 and 1938, those who did not take Hitler at his word and believe in his desire for peace did not lack for arguments. The situation today is at once different and the same. The men in the Kremlin loudly proclaim that they are still Marxist-Leninists; that detente does not lessen the ideological conflict; that the capitalist West is destined to disappear with or without a last battle. The West of the eighties has this in common with the thirties: a half century ago people refused to take Mein Kampf seriously; today they do not pay attention to the language the oligarchs in Moscow use in addressing their people and their militants. There is, however, this difference today: Hitler wanted war; the Soviets want to enjoy its fruits without fighting. We are not living the spring of 1914 or the thirties. In 1914 those who ruled unleashed an infernal diplomatic machine that they proved incapable of, in fact were not equally interested in, stopping before it exploded. During the thirties, the West, first France and then Great Britain, lost their cards and their arms. With or without summit meetings those responsible for governments today keep constantly in touch. In contrast to the men of 1914, they know what a great war would mean. Because of his conviction that he was the only man capable of conducting it, Hitler preferred to have the war break out when he was fifty years old and at the height of his powers. Today, Brezhnev and his comrades conceive of themselves as militants in a historical movement that existed before them and will outlive them. I am not even sure that they SUMMER 1981 �intend to take advantage of "the window of opportunity" -at the suggestion of commentators in the West. For the moment, as is their practice, they are doing all they can to distract the attention of the world from Afghanistan in order to win definitive recognition and ac~ ceptance of the unacceptable. Whether they take advantage or not of the coming years (Will the military balance have sensibly improved in four or five years?), they will continue their molelike activity. They will manipulate revolts against pro-Western regimes to their advantage; they will even possibly instigate these revolts when circumstances are favorable; they will buy Western technologies on credit; they will make advances at one moment to the United States, at another to Europe, in order to separate them; they will multiply their bases in the entire world; they will prepare for the war they hope to avoid-and to survive. The Western world has neither a common strategy nor a firm will to oppose to this armed ideocracy. Ever since Vietnam and Watergate the American Republic has appeared torn between a bad conscience and the fanciful wish to pull itself together again. Without a governing class it is driven at one moment to undertake a new crusade (human rights) at another to retire from an incomprehensible universe. As for the Europeans, who are beginning to speak with one voice, do they profess their rewon self-confidence? Do they spell out their independence from the Soviet Union or the United States? I did not give this article its title, "Soviet Hegemonism: Year I" without hesitation. I had thought of another title inspired by Solzhenitsyn's warnings: "Western Blindness". A friend of mine reported a remark he heard from a Soviet economist who, although fully aware of the defects in his country's economy, proudly declared: "We would be masters of the world if it were not for the Chinese." Would the West have triumphed over Hitler without Stalin? Do democracies always have to count on a brother of their enemy who hates his brother? Translated by Nina Ferrero and Leo Raditsa THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 23 �Thucydides and Perikles Christopher Bruell The three speeches .of Perikles are a good place to begin one's study of Thucydides because Perikles is -in many respects-the most impressive human being and the most outstanding statesman in Thucydides' book. In many respects ... not in every respect: Perikles is not, in Thucydides' view, simply admirable. In the following remarks, I will try to give an introduction to Thucydides' work as a whole by speaking of the place in that work held by Perikles and his speeches, of some differences which Thucydides points out between his perspective and that of Perikles, and of the significance of these differences for Thucydides' understanding of his theme. Thucydides' theme is in the first place the war fought between the two leading Greek cities, Athens and Sparta, and their respective allies-the cities of the Athenian empire, and the Peloponnesians and their allies outside of the Peloponnesian peninsula. The war lasted for twentyseven years and ended with the unconditional defeat of Athens and the dismantling of the Athenian empire. The Periklean speeches were speeches to the Athenians by a great leader of Athens-a man who in both influence and capacity was unrivalled among the Athenians of his time (I 139.4). What were his qualities of leadership? Perikles himself says that he was able not only to figure out what was needed, but to explain his thought to others, that he was a lover of his city and was above being influenced by bribes. For, as he explains, a knower who cannot teach clearly, is no better than one who lacks understanding; one who has both of these abilities but is hostile to the city, is unlikely to declare what is in her interests; while even one who is also loyal to the city but is overcome by his desire for money, would sell everything for this one thing alone (II 60.5-6). Thucydides' narrative confirms and expands on Perikles' self-assessment by incidents such as the following. When the Spartans and their allies first invaded the countryside of Athens, Perikles was afraid that the Spartan king, who happened to be his friend, might spare his estates-either out of friendship or, on the instruction of the Spartan authorities, to damage Perikles' standing with the Athenian people. Perikles therefore announced to the Athenian assembly in advance, that if the enemy did not ravage his estates together with those of the other Athenians, he would turn Christopher Bruell teaches political science at Boston College. He published another article on Thucydides in The American Political Science Review (March, 1974). 24 his estates over to the public to be public property, so that suspicion against him would not arise on their account (II 13.1). This incident not only tends to give a partial confirmation to what Perikles says of himself; it also helps to show how he was able to make his outstanding qualitiesin this case his honesty and loyalty-visible to the Athenian people (cf. II 65.8). As a result of this, they trusted him as they trusted no other leader who appears in the book, though others may have been equally deserving of their trust. Similarly, Perikles may not have been the wisest Athenian leader known to Thucydides, but his wisdom was most visible to the Athenians-who, therefore, respected it and deferred to it to an extraordinary degree (I 145, II 14 and 65.2-4). As a result, Perikles' leadership was unusually free from the necessity to flatter or please the people to their detriment, from the necessity to give in to their unwise wishes or whims. Thucydides goes so far as to say that Athens was in Perikles' time a democracy in name, but in fact or deed the rule of the first man (II 65.8-9). Perikles' speeches-including one that is merely summarized but not quoted by Thucydides (II 13)-all concern the war, either directly or indirectly. The first urges a policy of no compromise with the Spartans, or no yielding to the Spartan demands-a policy which made the war, likely in any case, inevitable. It also discusses Athenian resources for the war and addresses the question of the strategy that Athens ought to follow to survive or win the war. Resources and strategy are also the themes of the second speech (the one summarized). The funeral speech, like the others, speaks with approval of the imperial course which brought Athens to the brink of war; and the last speech defends the decision to go to war and urges perseverance in the chosen course. Perikles was the leader of what we can call the war party in Athens. Insofar then as he was partially responsible for the coming of the war, and the war ended in complete Athenian defeat, he bears some responsibility for that defeat, for the fall of Athens. Thucydides, however, provides a ready defense of Perikles against this charge. He shows that the Athenian defeat was brought about by the Athenians' abandoning Perikles' war policy or strategy after his death (Perikles died two and one half years after the war began). Perikles had advised the Athenians not to seek to add to their empire during the war and not to fight the Peloponnesians-who were superior to them in numbers-on land in defense of their homes and farms. These were to be SUMMER 1981 �abandoned to the ravages of their enemies, while the Athenians withdrew into the city to guard its walls and to maintain, through their fleet, their grip on their empire and the sea. All that Athens needed to survive could be brought into the city from her overseas possessions by sea; but the subject cities could not be expected to remain quiet if the Athenians, through being defeated in a land battle, became so reduced in numbers as to be unable to suppress revolts (I 143.4-144.1, II 13.2-3). Some years af. ter Perikles' death, with the war against the Spartans not yet completely extinguished, the Athenians decided, contrary to Perikles' advice, to try to conquer Sicily. This de· cision grew out of a political situation in Athens that had undergone a considerable deterioration since Perikles' death. The decline in the quality of Athenian political life, which brought about the abandonment of Perikles' pol· icy, also made the consequences of abandonment worse than they would otherwise have been: not only did Athens attempt to conquer Sicily-she bungled the at· tempt. As a result, Athens suffered a defeat of such magnitude that her loss of the larger war became almost inevitable. A further deterioration in her domestic political situation-the overthrow of the democracy and the outbreak of civil war-brought her still closer to the end (II 65). Perikles must be absolved then of responsibility for Athens' fall, because it was only with the abandonment of his policy, an abandonment brought on by the political deterioration of post-Periklean Athens, that the fall came. But Perikles' policy itself was not without costs for Athens-sound as it may have been with respect to the war (II 65.6). It required that Athenians give up, perhaps for a very long time (I 141.5), their country homes and farms, as well as their ancestral shrines or temples, to the ravages of the enemy. For most of the Athenians, who were rural people, this was nothing less than the giving up of their traditional way of life. Perikles' policy may have been militarily sound; it may have enabled an Athens wise and sober enough to stick by it to win the war; but it brought about a grave transformation of Athenian life (II 14-17). In this, and perhaps other ways, Perikles may have unwittingly contributed to the political decline which, in the end, undid his work. * * * With this much as background regarding the place which Perikles and his speeches have in Thucydides' work, let me turn to the differences which Thucydides points to between his own perspective and that of Perikles, differences which Perikles' speeches help to bring to light. Both Perikles and Thucydides have to face the ques· tion of what brought on the war, or who was to blame for it. Perikles' answer is contained in his first speech. The answer is based on a thirty-year peace treaty between Athens and Sparta and the Spartan allies which still had fourteen years to run when the Peloponnesian war broke THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW out (II 2.1; cf. I 115.1). This treaty called for disputes between the parties to it to be submitted to arbitration. Yet when they began to make complaints to the Athenians before the war, and to make demands on the Athenians, the Spartans did not ask for arbitration, nor did they accept it when the Athenians offered it. This showed, according to Perikles, that the Spartans were plotting against the Athenians, intending that their complaints be settled by war rather than words (I 140.2). Nor did the demands which the Spartans were making have any basis in the treaty (144.2). Perikles therefore characterized the response which he persuaded the Athenians to give to those demands as both just and at the same time befitting the dignity of the city: the Athenians were willing to offer arbitration, as the treaty required; they would not start the war; but once it was begun against them, they would defend themselves (144.2). In short, according to Perikles, the Spartans were to blame for bringing on the war: they were the aggressors, acting in contravention of a treaty still in force. Perikles' position derives support from the fact that the first blow in the war was indeed struck by the Spartan side. Before war had been declared, the Spartan ally Thebes launched a sneak attack on the Athenian ally Plataea, in clear violation of the treaty. It is also noteworthy that this view of the question of responsibility for what came to be called the first war was later, in large part, tacitly accepted by the Spartans themselves. Even before the war, a Spartan king had ventured the opinion that it was not lawful to proceed militarily against those who were offering arbitration, and he had opposed the Spartan decision to go to war partly for this reason (I 85.2). He had been outvoted; but when the first war began to go badly for the Spartans, they in turn began to feel that the illegality was more on their side and that, accordingly, their bad luck was only what was to be expected. Afterwards, when the first war had been brought to an end and a peace treaty concluded, there was a reversal of this situation: it was the Athenians who refused the arbitration called for by the new treaty and who first committed an open breach of it. Accordingly, the Spartans turned eagerly to the renewal of the war (VII 18.2-3; cf. IV 20.2.). Still, this Spartan-Periklean view of the responsibility for the coming of the war is not Thucydides' view. According to Thucydides, the truest cause or pretext for the war, though the one least mentioned, was that the Athenians, by becoming great (that is, by acquiring their great empire) and frightening the Spartans, compelled them to go to war (I 23.6, 88, 118.2). According to Thucydides, then, the Spartans cannot be blamed for starting the war because the Athenians compelled them to start it. Perikles' treatment of the issue was too narrow, too legalistic: the Spartans acted out of legitimate self-defense. The fault for the war lies with the Athenians. It lies with the Athenians for acquiring their empire, or for expanding it to the point that it encroached on areas of legitimate Spartan concern. It lies with the Athenians, that is, unless there is some reason why the Athenians cannot be blamed 25 �for acquiring or expanding their empire. In order to settle the question of whether the Athenians can be blamed for the war, it thus becomes necessary to look into the question of the justice of Athenian imperialism. Here then is a second question on which we can compare the views of Perikles and Thucydides. Perikles barely alludes to this question. In his last speech, he says that the Athenians now hold their empire as a tyranny, which it "seems unjust" to have taken but is dangerous to let go (II 63.2). So far as I know, this is the only statement of Perikles in Thucydides, which addresses itself to the question of the justice of Athenian imperialism-if even this statement can be said to do that. For Perikles apparently sidesteps the issue here. He does not openly admit that the acquisition of empire was unjust; nor does he argue that it was not unjust. (There is a connection between Perikles' sidestepping of this issue and his position on the question of who is to blame for the war. If he had not given the war question such a narrow or legalistic treatment, his consideration of that question alone-to say nothing of other reasons-would have forced him, as it forces Thucydides, to look more deeply into the question of the justice of Athenian imperialism.) Thucydides examines the question of the justice of Athenian imperialism at length. The issue is prominently raised in the speeches of many characters other than Perikles, and it was Thucydides himself who chose which speeches to report, arranged their order of appearance, and was responsible, in the final analysis, even for their composition (I 22.1); moreover, some of the characters whose speeches are of interest here, are almost surely his inventions (Diodotos, the Athenian ambassadors at Melos, Euphemos). In addition, Thucydides' narrative is designed and arranged to cast further light on the issues raised and explored in the speeches. For example, after re· porting what some Athenians had said in Sparta about the acquisition and expansion of the empire, and immediately after stating for the second time that the fear aroused by the enormous Athenian expansion was what led the Spartans to go to war, Thucydides, in alpng digression (I 97.2), g1ves h1s own account of Atheman growth (I 89-118). Through both the speeches and the narrative, then, Thucydides indicates the seriousness with which he-as opposed to Perikles-takes the question of the justice of Athenian imperialism, and therewith of justice simply. If we wish to follow Thucydides' thought, we must follow his treatment of this question. Is there some reason why the Athenians cannot be blamed for acquiring or expanding their empire? The Athenians who speak in Sparta before the war trace the background of Athenian growth. The great war prior to the Peloponnesian war was the Persian war, in which two Persian invasions of Greece had been repelled. The outstanding role in that war had been played by the Athenians, although Sparta, as the leading Greek power, held the leadership of the alliance of Greek cities. After the invasions had been repelled, however, the Spartans withdrew 26 from active involvement in the alliance, while the Athenians were asked by the majority of the allies to take over the leadership. The Athenians in Sparta refrain out of tact from mentioning that the Spartans withdrew after dissatisfaction with the behavior of the Spartan commander had arisen among the allies and turned them toward Athens (I 73.2-75.2; cf. 94-96.1). The question of the justice of Athenian imperialism is largely the question of how Athens' voluntarily held leadership came to be transformed into what Perikles could describe as a tyranny over the formerly allied, and now subject cities (75.3; cf. 97.1). According to the Athenians in Sparta, the Athenians were compelled to transform the alliance into an empire, their leadership by consent into leadership through compulsion. That is, they can be excused for the same reason that Thucydides excused the Spartans for starting the war. But what compulsion acted upon the Athenians? According to the startling assertion of the Athenians in Sparta, the compelling forces were fear, then honor, and in the end benefit (I 75.3, 76.2). If we confine ourselves for the moment to the question of fear, it is not hard to see that the Athenian claim has some basis. For as Thucydides indicates in his own treatment of the period between the two wars, the spectacular Greek victories which had turned back the Persian invasions had not put an end to the Persian threat: there might be more invasions in the future {cf. I 93.7 with 138.3). Athens, whose sufferings in the war had been unsurpassed (cf. I 74.2), might be expected to be especially worried by this prospect. The clearest way to safety was to hold together the Greek alliance. But as we know from more recent experience, in the absence of immediate obvious danger, few countries are willing to make the sacrifices necessary to maintain their military preparedness or to fulfill their obligations to their allies. So it was with the alliance led by Athens: the allies chafed under the strict Athenian leadership, as the Athenians insisted that they meet their obligations-whether in the form of money, ships, or serviceto the full; the dissatisfaction of the allies led to revolts; and the Athenians, putting them down, led the cities no longer as their equals but as subjects (I 96-99). It is difficult to condemn the Athenians for this because it is difficult to know whether any other course would have been compatible with Athenian safety. Surely the decisive defeat of the Persians in Asia, a defeat which may have effectively ended for a time the threat from Persia, occurred, as Thucydides emphasizes, after the transformation from alliance to empire had taken place (I 100.1; cf. 93.7). And if the Persian threat ceased then to be worthy of consideration, and with it the original need for imperial rule, it may have become dangerous, by that time, for the Athenians to relinquish a rule that was already widely resented (cf. I 75.4). To this extent then, there is substantiation, even in Thucydides' digression on Athenian growth; for the Athenian claim that they were compelled, compelled by fear, to acquire their empire. But as one reads through the digresSUMMER 1981 �sion as a whole, one finds it increasingly difficult to account for the remarkable range and extent of Athenian expansionist activity, activity which led them to attempt even the conquest of Egypt (I 104, 109-IO),by recourse to a concern for the city's safety alone, however thoroughly pursued (cf. however Alcibiades' comment in VI 18.6-7). We should not forget in this connection that expansion itself has risks; that growth on one side may invite growth on another; and that Athenian expansion in particular brought on the war through which Athens lost aiL On the other hand, it is far from clear that an Athenian policy of expansion inspired solely by concern for the city's safety, and limited to what could reasonably be expected to con· tribute to such safety, would have been sufficiently frightening to the Spartans to force them to go to war: they were generally quite slow to take such a step (I 118.2). It is true that as early as the revolt of the Thasians, we find the Spartans secretly promising to invade Attica to assist an ally seeking to leave the Athenian alliance (I 101.2); but this promise was given in the aftermath of the decisive defeat of the Persians mentioned above, a defeat which could have seemed to have ended the threat from Persia. That is, it was given only after continued Athenian imperialism ceased to be clearly authorized by that threat; and in any case, if only because Sparta was diverted by an earthquake accompanied by revolution, the Spartan promise remained unfulfilled. In Thudydides' view, it was the Athenian reaction to a related incident, a reaction culminating in expansion of the empire at the expense of Sparta and her allies, rather than the action of putting down the Thasians (that is, of maintaining the empire already acquired), that first inspired the intense hatred of Athens in Sparta's allies which eventually forced Sparta herself to a determined effort to bring Athens down (I 101.3, 102.3-103.4; cf., especially with 101.2, 118.2). But the Athenians in Sparta do not even claim that it was fear alone that compelled Athenian expansion. To the extent that it was not compelled by fear, it was com· pelled, they claim, by honor and benefit-that is, by the Athenian longing for these things. Can such longings act with the force of compulsion? Can we admit such a thing without at the same time admitting that many more crimes than just those committed by the Athenians are excusable (or are not crimes at all)? Thucydides' answer to this somewhat surprising ques· lion-which we are forced by the Athenians to raise-is difficult. I think the heart of it is conveyed in the Melian dialogue. The Athenians had forbidden the Melians to raise considerations of justice: the Athenians will not be influenced by such considerations which, in the circumstances (the vast difference in power between the two sides) are, according to the Athenians, quite out of place (V 89). The Melians refuse in effect to accept the separation of utility or advantage from right which they understand the Athenians to have insisted upon, for they take justice to be a common good (V 90). This, however, opens the way to the Athenians to demonstrate that their good TilE ST.JOHNS REVIEW consists now in the subjugation of the Melians (V 91-99), to demonstrate that there was no good common to the Athenians and Melians at this time, unless one considers that a Melian surrender on moderate terms would have been good for both parties (V 91.2 and 111.4). More gener· ally, by pointing to our insistence that justice be (a common) good, the Melians point to the fact of the primacy of our concern with the good, a fact which comes to light even and precisely in the midst of any consideration of justice, provided that it goes far enough. But this means that the good compels us to its pursuit, at least to the extent that it remains always our most fundamental con· cern. And if this is so, what appears to us good-even if it is not truly good-may reasonably be held by us to compel us, and thus compel us in fact. It appeared to the Athenians that what was best for them was rule over all the Greeks (at the minimum: II 62.1-2; cf. 41.4 and VI 15.2). For, as Perikles put it in his last speech, "to be hated and burdensome in the present belongs to all who think fit to rule over others; but whoever accepts envy for the sake of very great things deliberates correctly: hatred does not hold out for long, but the brilliance of the moment is left behind even into the future as ever-remembered fame" (II 64.5). We can understand from this why one of the best and most generous of Athens' opponents, even while resisting the Athenians with all his strength, refused to blame them for their ambition (IV 61.5). But is the Athenian ambition as free from reasonable criticism as this seems to indicate? Having sketched the argument we have sketched, we are obliged to add that it is important that the good be correctly understood (cf. Aristotle, Politics 1325a34-b3). Did the Athenians cor· rectly understand what was good for them? If, as we have argued, the Athenians suffered severely from their all but limitless imperialism, the question becomes whether the glory or fame to which it led was worth the price. That such glory or fame is indeed worth the price was somehow felt by Perikles and, so far as one can judge from Thucydides, by almost all Athenians of quality. But we are obliged to accept their experience as authoritative with respect to the human good only if it is a genuine experience, that is, only if it is based on a clear view of themselves and of the object of their longing. Did the Athenians in question possess such a view? The glory for which they long and which they pursue by their all but limitless imperialism is understood by them as something noble (II 64.6).lt must therefore be for something noble, for actions noble and/or just (I 76.3, VI 16.5). But are not such actions characterized at least in part by the fact that they are not simply self-serving? This, at any rate, appears to have been the Athenian view. In the Melian dialogue itself, they assert that it is the Spartans who, in their relations with others, most manifestly hold that whatever pleases them is noble, whatever is to their advantage is just: the Athenians imply, that is, that they themselves do not make these equations. Or, as one can gather from remarks ofPerikles, it is the actions of vir- 27 �tue which are called noble (II 43.1, 42.2-4; cf. V 105.4), and it is especially action taken in disregard of advantage which is called virtuous. It was especially in praising the non-calculating generosity of the Athenians that Perikles claimed to be speaking of their virtue; he thus implicitly distinguished their virtue from what he had been speaking of just previously-the Athenian capacity to act, to take risks, on the basis of calculation leading to the clearest possible awareness of the terrible and pleasant things (cf. II 40.4-5 with 40.3; cf. 43.1; cf. also 35.1, 36.1, 42.2-3, 45.1, 46.1, and, on the other hand, 37.1 and 45.2). Now as this implies, and as a noble imperialism in their understanding of it requires, the Athenians do not act, or at least do not understand themselves to act, in a simply selfish manner. Their spokesmen at Sparta claim that they are more just in the exercise of their rule than they have to be, given their superiority in power (I 76.3). And Perikles claims that the Athenians benefit others not out of calculation of advantage but from trust in their own generosity. (Indeed the Athenians at Sparta argue that Athens was hurt by her rather just or measured conduct toward her subjects: it permitted resentments to arise which a harsher rule might have avoided, resentments, we might add, which helped bring on the war [I 76.4-77.5]. Similarly, according to Perikles, Athenian generosity had the effect that the Athenians were firm in their regard for those they had benefited rather than vice versa [II 40.4].) On the other hand, the fact that the Athenians pursued, as they thought, a noble imperialism seems to have been inseparably connected with the limitlessness of their aims (as well as with their willingness to take risks to achieve them: V 107): it was the noble-minded Athenians, rather than the more cynical (and cautious) Spartans, who were led on by hopes (I 70.3-8, VI 24.3 and 31.6; cf. II 42.4)-as if the happiness they foresaw always eluded them or lay ahead. But precisely because it was a noble imperialism they wished to pursue or believed themselves to be pursuing, and because they refused to follow the Spartans in simply equating nobility and justice with their own pleasure and advantage, the Athenians could not help becoming aware of the tension between this wish, or this view of their enterprise, and the fact that in seeking through such an em· pire above all their glory, they were pursuing what they took to be their highest good or advantage to the exclusion of that of all others. The attempt to defend the empire, in the series of great Athenian statements which address the question of the justice of Athenian imperialism, is testimony to this awareness-especially where these statements go beyond what a politic defense of the em· pire may have called for in the circumstances. (Cf., for example, what the Athenians say at Sparta with the statement of "Euphemos" at Kamarina [I 73.1, 75.3, 76.2 and, on the other hand, 75.4-5 with VI 82.1, 83.2 and .4, and 87.2]. The Spartan ephor correctly understands that the Athenian statement at Sparta leaves no room for SpartanAthenian accommodation or avoidance of war on terms 28 other than the subordination of Sparta, to take place sooner or later through loss of her allies, to Athens [I 86].) In other words, the sometimes shocking argument we have examined justifying, or rather excusing, limitless ex· pansion is testimony not to the callousness of the Athenians but to their concern with the noble-and to the fact that the outstanding Athenians had reflected deeply on this issue. For there is little doubt that this argument also lay behind Perikles' ambiguous reference to the question of the justice of the acquisition of empire. That is, the conclusion which we drew from that reference and from the lack of any other Periklean discussion of the justice of Athenian imperialism, the conclusion that Perikles had failed to look deeply into this issue, is almost surely false. Nevertheless, it is not entirely misleading. The Athenian leaders, and Perikles in particular, did not take the question of justice seriously enough to draw out the full implications of the argument to which their concern to defend the empire, their awareness that their imperialism needed defending, had led them. Their argument proved to be inseparable, as we saw, from a vindication of selfishness. The Athenians could not abandon this argument without abandoning the attempt, called for by their concern with the noble, to defend the all but limitless imperialism to which that same concern with the noble had helped to lead them; they therefore embraced the argument and proclaimed their acceptance of the standard of conduct it sets forth (I 76.2, V 105.1-2). The argument, however, confirms the very characterization of their enterprise which they (still) shrink from accepting, because to accept it is to cease to see that enterprise as noble (V 89). Hence the strange inconsistency of their statements, an inconsistency ranging from contradiction to incongruity of tone: the strong never put justice before advantage (I 76.2), but the Athenians are more just than they have to be, even though this does them harm (I 76.3ff.); they advance to conquer without seeking to color their intention with "noble words" or claims of justice (V 89), in clear-sighted recognition rather of the compulsion of human nature to rule where it can (V 105 .1-2), yet they are not so crude as to hold, like the Spartans, that whatever pleases them is noble, whatever is to their advantage is just (V 105.4). Only the unpolitical Diodotos appears to have faced squarely the question of what imperialism of the Athenian sort looks like in the light of a thoroughgoing acceptance of the argument advanced in its defense (Ill 45; cf. VI 24.3 and 31.6; cf. also Nikias' comments at VI 9.3 and 13.1). The Athenian spokesmen whom we have considered turned from this spectacle, if only at the last minute, to contemplate instead what they regarded as Athens' less selfish actions. Since these appeared to concern rather small matters (see esp. I 76.3ff.), those spokesmen did not feel the need to explain to themselves how such selflessness is compatible with the argument they had embraced, at the core of which is the discovery of the primacy of the concern with the good. The Athenians thus sought to have it both ways. Their argument authoSUMMER 1981 �rizes the unrestricted pursuit of the good, and they understood themselves to be pursuing (without significant restriction) what they felt to be the human good. What they felt or experienced regarding this "good", however, was colored by the belief that their pursuit of it was noble, by which they meant: not dominated by concern with their own good. This appears to be the most important ground, in Thucydides' view, for refusing to defer to that experience, for doubting that the Athenians truly knew what was good for them. * * * In conclusion, I wish to turn to some implications for Thucydides' thought of the differences between him and Perikles which have come to light. When we compare Thucydides' book to the writings of the classical political philosophers, we see that it has a special place among the works left to us by antiquity. While Plato and Aristotle present us with beautiful pictures of "ideal" cities, Thucydides describes for us the life of actual cities. Actual cities turn out to be almost always cities at war or near to war whether foreign or civil. Thucydides chose to write about the biggest war known to him. As a result, as he himself notes, his book is full of descriptions of grim and terrible things (I 23.1-3). Because Thucydides wrote of actual cities, his book was of special interest to the modern thinkers who wanted to construct a new political science on a realistic basis. Hobbes, for example, made a translation of Thucydides, and there are important echoes of Thucydides' unrivalled description of the horrors of civil war, in particular, in Hobbes' Leviathan. (Compare Thucydides' account of the Corcyraean civil war with Hobbes' description of "the natural condition of mankind" in the light of Hobbes' remark in the same chapter that, "it may be perceived what manner of life there would be, where there were no common power to fear, by the manner of life, which men that have formerly lived under a peaceful government, use to degenerate into, in a civil war" [Leviathan I 13; cf. II 29].) The reaction of Hobbes, and later of Alexander Hamilton, to the sort of description presented by Thucydides may be roughly estimated from this comment of Hamilton in the Ninth Federalist Paper: "It is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were continually agitated, and at the rapid succession of revolutions by which they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy . ... " The "sensa· tions of horror and disgust" were lessened only by the conviction of both Hamilton and Hobbes that the civil wars, at least, to which the Creek cities were subject are due to "vices of government" (Ninth Federalist) or to "imperfections ..• of policy" (Leviathan II 29), which they hoped their new political science would overcome. In the words of Hobbes, when commonwealths "come to be disTHE ST.JOHNS REVIEW solved, not by external violence, but intestine disorder, the fault is not in men, as they are the matter; but as they are the makers, and orderers of them" (ibid). That is, with the right understanding, we can change things (cf. ibid II 31 ). While according to Hamilton, "the science of politics ... like most other sciences, has received great improvement. The efficacy of various principles is now well understood, which were either not known at all, or imperfectly known to the ancients" (Ninth Federalist). For the moderns, then, the grimness of Thucydides' account of political life was relieved by their hope for fundamental political progress. It is not difficult to show that Thucydides did not share this hope: hence his remark that his work is intended to benefit those who wish to understand what has happened in the past and what will, given the way of humanity, happen in much the same form again (I 22.4; cf. III 82.2 as well as II 48.3). What then enabled Thucydides to bear the grimness of his own account, as he did bear it, with such dignity and calm? For not only is his work without any trace of "horror and disgust"; it is also free from taint of anger or bitterness 1 gloom or despair. The reason cannot be that he lacked feeling for the sufferings he observed and portrayed: his feeling shines through no less impressively for being conveyed with a manly gentleness. He was undoubtedly a man of immense natural strength, but Hobbes and Hamilton were not insignificant in this respect either. I suspect then that the reason has more to do with his thought: that Thucydides saw something which the later thinkers did not see, something which can be glimpsed by reflecting on the difference between Thucydides' perspective and that of Perikles. This is that human life, at least for any human being of quality, is never free from concern for the noble and the just. This has the result that we are dependent on the belief that we know what nobility and justice are. We remain dependent on that belief, unless it is replaced by what we can tentatively call the search for justice, for what justice truly is-unless it is replaced, that is, by philosophy. If I remember correctly, philosophy is mentioned in Thucydides' work only by Perikles, who in the same context suggests that thought and writing are subordinate to action and criticizes the inactive life (II 40.1-3. 41.4; cf. 63.2-3, 64.4). Thucydides, who clearly regarded his writing and thought, the substance and outcome of his search for truth (I 20. 3), as superior to any possible action on his part, quietly presents the evidence for the alternative view. Thucydides, that is, shows us the necessity for philosophy; he shows us that human life, for all its apparent disorder, necessarily points in this direction. Beyond that, he shows us something of the philosophic life in action. All that we see in Thucydides' book-battles and speeches, intrigues and civil strife-we see through his eyes: In looking at all these things, then, we are also becoming acquainted with Thucydides himself. This, too, is part of the reason why his book, despite the many grim things that it necessarily contains, possesses also a very great beauty. 29 �Not Quite Alone on the Telephone Meyer Liben not mine, but the one I rent from the Telephone Company, and not all of it, but just the receiver, cradled in the slightly curved arms of the secure base, solid mother base, and I heard not the familiar dial tone, that serene hum which tells us that all is electronically well, and, by extension, for the imagination is so at the mercy of the immediate, that all is well in general, or in the words of juliana (also known as Julian) of Norwich, moving now into the future, that "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well," I heard, not the familiar dial tone, but an unfamiliar buzzing, rasping sound. I picked up the telephone (the part for the wholewhat is the word for it?) and heard silence, not a golden silence, but the silence of a far-off emptiness, a silence growing more and more ominous as time passed and no sound came to fill the unexpected void. I picked up the phone, and after dialing my number, not my number, but the number I was trying to reach, the number of the other, the phone went dead, into an extraordinarily deep silence, a silence with bells on, the way ). D. Salinger describes sexual intercourse as masturbation with bells on, then suddenly came to life again, celebrated I PICKED UP MY TELEPHONE, Meyer Liben (1911-1975), whose work has appeared in New American Review, Commentary, Midstream, in these pages, and elsewhere, is the author of Justice Hunger and Nine Stories, (Dial Press 1967). "Not Quite Alone on the Telephone" is from an unpublished collection of stories, Streets and Alleys. 30 its resurrection with a piercing whistle, a kind of locomotive, clear-the-track whistle. I picked up the phone, dialed a long-distance number, and instead of the voice I expected to hear, found myself in the midst of a conversation between a bank official and a man who was trying to borrow $12,000 to modernize a superette (examine that word for an instant), a small supermarket in a southern border state-is there any other kind of border state? -at least that was my guess by the accents of the pleasantly recalcitrant banker and the cagy would-be debtor. Feeling like the unknown and unwanted member of an audience at a real-life drama, I quietly hung up the receiver (not the phone). I picked up the phone, heard a series of staccato noises, like that of a generator crying for help, hundreds and hundreds of these noises, part of an apparently endless wave of sound, one unit exactly like another in timbre, duration, volume-then quiet, this side of dead. I picked up the phone. There was a click, as though two small metal objects had come together, perhaps in a magnetic field (this is the sheerest surmise of an electronic cretin), then the familiar reassuring dial tone, that marvelous golden hum we used to take so much for granted. I picked up the phone and heard a shriek, imagined a woman in extreme distress, by some monster forced, the sound echoing as from the wall of a cave, and then slowly dying away. I picked up the phone, and heard, for maybe thirty seconds, the pure tones of a string quartet. SUMMER 1981 �I picked up the phone and heard a blast, like that of a factory lunch whistle, followed by a kind of tinkling, the murmur of not altogether still waters .. . I picked up the phone and heard ... but let these few examples suffice. I decided that the phone was tapped, and that it was tapped for no specific reason (what could such a reason be?) but on a random basis, though no doubt part of an overall selective process, the way you might be chosen as a participant in the Neilson ratings or in The Daily News straw poll. It is, I analyzed, part of the selective policy of the F.B.I., the C.I.A., or some intelligence-gathering service that I had not yet heard of. But in our country the most secret agencies become well-known, we even hear of splits in the C.I.A. between liberal and conservative factions. trustingly, in remembrance of the reassuring sonorities of the woman at the company, I heard, far from the dial tone I was prepared to hear, hoping and expecting to hear, a piercing whistle, as from a policeman who has sighted a thief, followed by a silence not quite long enough to be ominous, but close to it, and that followed by a familiar click, and that followed by a voice of a woman asking me what number I wanted. When I said that I was calling for Weather Information in New York City, she explained to me (more slowly and patiently than I thought necessary) that I had reached a number in Sacramento, California, that she would connect me with the operator, the wire went dead, there came the sounds of a kind of electronic music, and then, what used to be the most reassuringly do· mestic (all that electronic chaos out there tamed) of all tel· ephone sounds, the equable, unwavering, steady, warm, H AVING DECIDED THAT MY PHONE WAS TAPPED, I called the Telephone Company (more exactly, I called my Business Representative on the advice of the Operator) and that was the beginning of a series of con· versations with a series of individuals of various ranks and in various positions in the hierarchy of the phone company's bureaucracy, individuals so numerous, so different in character, in temperament, that the content and nu· ances of the conversations I had, as I was plugged into this or that hole in the huge administrative switchboard, to say nothing of letters received and answered, plus calls follow· ing up unanswered letters-all that would take up considerably more space (and therefore time) than I intended to use up in my account of this episode. I finally wound up in the hands, rather the voice, of a young woman, who, as I understood, was in a kind of Public Relations Security branch of the company, and after a number of conversa· lions, reports on cable checks, electronic checks and in· vestigations, she, without firmly saying that my phone was not tapped, said that she was very sorry about the in· conveniences I was experiencing, about the spectrum of noises, silences, and interruptions, that it was all part of the problems created by the unprecedented growth of the phone company, that the company was in the process of catching up with that unprecedented growth by the spe· cia! training and employment of old and new personnel, by the installation of new, very sophisticated equipment, that once this newly-trained personnel was on the job and once this new equipment was in full use, she was confident that these clicks, interruptions, whizzing sounds, thunderous noises, hums, whistles, clangings, whirrings, and welcoming Dial Tone. I HAVE ALWAYS HAD MIXED FEELINGS about the tele· phone in my house. Rats, mice, cockroaches, those thin silver-fish that sometimes appear in the bathtub, are living creatures which now and then make their pres· ences felt. They do not play dead, like the telephone, fixed in its place forever, wherever you put it, there it stays (never, never, has a telephone moved by itself, never has a telephone tried to move by itself), and comes to life only by human intervention, though not necessarily with a human presence, for so often does a phone ring and no· body there to answer it. It has all that coiled power, and sometimes, when it rings, at odd hours of the night, or when I am in an absent-minded or bemused state, it is as though a wild beast has leapt into the room. The roach surprises, the mouse frightens, the rat scares, the tele· phone terrifies. But the phone is so useful an object, brings so much pleasure, the voices of our far-off dear ones, or those close by, the simple pleasures of the temporarily parted, that one grows attached to a given phone. I shall go into that. Nevertheless it is an instrument not continually under our control, therefore a stranger in the house, the way all machines are strangers, no matter how utilitarian or plea- sure-giving. And when I heard that a phone could be bugged in such a way that it will record what is said in a room even when the receiver is on the hook, that rein· forced my sense of its silent and forbidding animosity, its treacherous and inhuman nature. me quite ashamed of my complaints, my ignorance, my (And yet-to again point up the ambivalence-what pleasure this same phone has given me over the yearsthe long, cozy conversations, the way on a miserable rainy or freezing night, I might choose to stay at home, thinking of all those I hadn't spoken to for so long, and how pleas· ant it would be (and was) to stay at home, exchanging tele· suspicious nature. phonic pleasantries, confidences, ideas, jokes, gossip, Then, when I came home that evening (I had spoken to the telephone representative from the office where I am employed) and picked up the phone to dial a number, all while the wind rattled the window panes, the rain covered these panes with crooked streams, and the phone always available, responding to those needs, obedient, helpful, buzzes, indeed all the varieties of noises and silence, would disappear. Added to this was a promise to check further, all said in a tone of voice so sweet, so agreeable, so understanding, so sincere and reassuring, that she made Tiffi ST. JOHNS REVIEW 31 �accurate transmitter of your words, the sounds beneath the words, and the spirit beneath the sounds). that the phone was tapped, my attitude toward it moved naturally, even dramatically, in the direction of suspicion, hostility, indeed to the limits of that suspicion and hostility. So do we foist a kind of human nature on a manufactured object. Let me say this: it is possible to have strong personal feelings about a telephone, but never have I heard of a telephone which has been given a name, the way a domestic animal (or a wild animal, for that matter) is given a name, never have I heard of a child giving a telephone a name, one's positive feeling for it does not go so far, the way it might go to a moving machine, like a truck (but automobiles are not given names apart from the company names), though the phone company is now beginning to name its phones, one being the generic name Princess. I've never heard anyone refer to this small bedroom phone by name, though Joyce Carol Oates has mentioned it in one of her works, casually, the way you'd mention a random character who never appears again. I moved toward the negative ambivalent pole, first in a kind of respectful cautious way, the way you deal with a mysteriously powerful enemy, used the phone as little as possible, saw in it a new and unexpected power ... Indeed, my next month's bill was the lowest I can remember, because of the absence of the Message Units so inexorably used up in those long cozy conversations (isn't talking on the phone sometimes like being in front of a pleasant fireplace fire?) which take the place of a visit, or a night at the theatre, or just out? And how many Message Units can you run up in a call to Weather, a call to the druggist or cleaner? 0 NCE I WAS CONVINCED was quite abandoned for a spell, though it was on my mind, both configuration and number. It is curious, by the way, how we remember, far back, our own old phone numbers, like the rock strata which the geologists make so much of. I remember very old numbers, ones when the Exchange was a name, like Circle or Butterfield. When you stopped saying the name, and slatted to dial it, you of course dialed only the first two letters, then the first two letters and a number (Cl-2 is quite different from Circle, though if you know the name of the exchange, you are naturally always aware of it). And then came the takeover by the numbers, more of which later. This feeling of respect, trepidation, in front of a mysterious power, particularly uncanny to one who is electronically backward, soon faded (uncanny or not) and was replaced by an amalgam of feelings, a many-sided thronging, not too easy to sort out-anger, scorn, sense of outrage, disbelief, among others-which brought me closer to this instrument (cannot initiate, can only be used), to an involvement, an engagement, a kind of confrontation. Y 32 ES, MY PHONE The way I said it to myself was: If this phone is going to bug me, two can play at that game (see again how I treat the instrument as if it had a life of its own, a volitional sense). Let me say right off that the fact of a government agency going to the trouble and expense of tapping my phone indicated to me (forget the random sampling) that I was a person of considerably more importance than I had ever imagined myself (since the daydreams of childhood) to be. Indeed, this situation reactivated those daydreams of childhood. I imagined, for example, that in a confusion of names, I was called before an Investigating Committee of the Congress, asked my name and occupation, which I gave, under oath. The committee members then proceeded to launch a barrage of questions at me, regarding dozens of trips I was supposed to have taken abroad, about contact with individuals I had never heard of, all of which made it as clear as the most perfect sentence ever written that I was being confused with another person with my name and occupation. I quietly answered "no" to hundreds of detailed questions about trips to Havana, Buenos Aires, Hanoi, East Berlin, Hong Kong, small towns in Cambodia and cities of which I had never heard in countries which I could not locate nor even identify. "You are telling this committee, sir, on your sworn word, that you were not on the premises of the Swedish Embassy in Jakarta on January 9, 1967?" "I am telling you just that." "And you are telling us, sir, that on the afternoon of June 17, 1967, you did not meet a certain representative of the government of Albania in a tavern on O'Connell Street in the city of Dublin, and that certain documents were not exchanged on that occasion? "Sir, I am telling you just that." After some three hours of this questioning, the form sometimes direct, sometimes involuted or oblique, sometimes coming right at you, sometimes seeming to bank off the ceiling or walls (so various are the deliveries), a man suddenly moves into the room, carrying a sealed envelope which he hands to the Chairman, after a short whispered interchange. The Chairman halts the proceedings, opens the envelope, reads the letter, shakes his head in a kind of weary puzzlement, calls a recess, confers with the other Committee members, raps his gavel, and calls the meeting to order. He has a rather strained, awkward look. So do the other Committee members. "I have a statement to make," says the Chairman. "We sincerely regret that a serious error in identification has been made. There are apparently two gentlemen with similar names and occupations, approximately. of the same age, height, and appearance, one of whom lived at an address which! with the transposition 0 f two numbers, would be precise y the number of the house on the avenue at which the gentleman on the stand resides. It is the other gentleman we are seeking to interrogate. Again, we sincerely regret any inconvenience we have caused due to this unfortunate case of mistaken identities .... " 11 SUMMER 1981 �HIS REACTIVATION of an earlier fantasy life (not childhood) helped to break down, after a while, the tentative reserve I had adopted toward my telephone. It was one of the factors that emboldened me in my dealings with that instrument In the formulation of Leon Trotsky (perhaps I shouldn't mention his name) I have skipped a stage in my description of this process, for, before the anger, emboldenment, etc., I went through a kind of intermediate stage, one of easy, impersonal contact. During that period I called Weather, Time, Dial-APoem (started to write Dial-A-Phonel)-part of the spectrum of services I plan to write about later-the most neutral calls possible. I made calls to strangers which involved a minimum of conversation (these, of course, can be sus· pect, on the theory that they are coded), calls to the supermarket, other merchants, to have deliveries made, to the dry cleaner to find out if my jacket was ready, that kind of thing. It was a warm-up, where the call had a specific, circumscribed purpose, and to enable me to get the feel of the phone, after a period of disengagement I succeeded in that, recovered the physical sense, the old comfort and flexibility in handling the instrument T HERE FOLLOWED (that makes two stages skipped before the turnaround) a kind of cautious approach, on a more personal level. Actually, these two intermediate stages intermingled, because, though my voluntary use of the phone is as described above, the phone did ring, the way it does in the normal course of events. My deduction-for it was nothing more-that the phone was tapped (curious how tapped is a technical word, and bugged a word from the natural world, science and nature in this case seeming to conspire against our sense of privacy, the inviolability of home and intimacy) naturally had no effect on the telephone habits of my friends and associates, and to my amazement, for I had not set myself on such a course, I found myself reducing all the conversational exchanges to the blandest possible level, I found myself taking the sting out of all potentially partisan or politically controversial subjects. Talking generally, our conversations, on phone and off, tend to fall into certain patterns, depending on so very many factors, but it is a rare conversation which does not include, at one time or another, mention of the day's news, or yesterday's news, so it would not be unusual (though, at this time of awareness, I noticed that a number of people shied away from touchy subjects, out of extraordinary prudence, a vague sense of discomfort, or because they were not sure of the absolutely private nature of these phones, imagined maybe that their own phones were tapped) for a friend to make mention of the Conspiracy Trial, with the idea of passing the time of night with a give and take on what we had both read in the newspapers or heard on the television, the news of the T THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW day, after all, being so staple a part of our daily conversations. But when I responded by repeating what he had said, or referring to some totally insignificant element in the matter, not pushing ahead to meaningful dialogue on the merits, or even, as I sometimes did, changing the subject-"How do you like the way the Knicks are going?"(though, had I thought the matter through, I would have seen that this kind of trivialization and change of subject was more suspicious than the routine give-and-take of conversation) well, the manner of my response had a way of taking that first-mentioned particular subject off its track. It is surprising, by the way, how most people accept these conversational shifts, particularly if the subject they've brought up is of no pressing importance to them, as if it doesn't particularly matter what the topic of conversation, as long as the time passes agreeably. I am not thinking of those who use the phone for a given specific reason, to make an appointment, get some information, and who, if there were no phones available, would have to write for the given specific reason. But the phone company does not live off these limited calls, the money is in the out-of-town business and other long-distance calls, it is in the dawdling friendly conversations (the Message Units!) and in such a conversation, if a friend were to make mention of the latest development in the war, and I would respond by asking when he planned to take his vacation, he'd accept that conversational shift, seeing it maybe as a kind of impressionistic way of keeping the ball rolling, of filling the void which had initiated the call. It is amazing how many subjects are potentially touchy, even controversial, so complex and interlocked is the world, I mean touchy from the point of view of telephone surveillance, though that is a visual word, and the tap or bug is an auditory intervention, but now we are approaching that era in the communications world where we will see the ones with whom we are conversing. It is easy to turn away from the difficult, to reduce the thrust of the controversial, by a process of homogenization (that recently popular word from the dairy world), so easy to take the sting out of the thorny. You can do it by tone, by inflection, by showing no interest, so if a political assassination is mentioned, you swing it easily to the airplane crash (then it turns out that could have been sabotage, politically motivated). As I've pointed out, this kind of blanding-to coin a word-this obvious change of subject from the potentially controversial to the ordinary: "What do you think of our chances in the Olympics?" (but this can lead to a discussion of the killed and jailed students in Mexico City) is, to any kind of trained listener, a most obvious indication of apprehension, and, further, conversation becomes extraordinarily boring if you cannot discuss a subject in depth, but must leap, like a gazelle on a mountaintop (why like a gazelle on a mountaintop?) from one conversational ridge to another, in an effort to throw off your trail some unknown listener telephonically stalking you. 33 �and likely deep down in my character structure, previously called human nature, I am a prudent, cautionary man, carefully weighing the next step, considering as best I can the distant possibilities, the hazards flowing out of present behavior, I am, also, thank God, a rather fun-loving person, who recognizes that all contingencies cannot be taken into account, that we have all been blessed with pleasure-possibilities, that joy attends us, that we scorn volatility, ebullience, at peril to our bodies, to our very lives. And, living as we do in a society full of all sorts of freedoms, we'd have to be pretty retarded not to take advantage of some of the pleasure-possibilities that inhere in the bureaucratic madnesses of the repressive elements. So I decided that I'd have a bit of sport with my unknown tappers. The way to do it, obviously, was to present to these unknown listeners as wide a spectrum of views as I could possible manage. Indeed, I sat down to my desk and wrote a list of views, ranging from the fascist right to the terrorist left. On second thought, I excluded the extremes, for what would stop them from using only the extreme statements? My revised spectrum therefore ranged from reactionary to the limits of the constitutional left. Who has the patience to re-enuri:terate such a list? And then I threw in religious musings (omitting none of the great religions of the world), anti-political statements, all kinds of philosophical analyses on the nature of the state, the moralities of political behavior, threw in quotations from thinkers famous and unknown, copied quotations and passages from books, encyclopedias, magazines, newspapers. Working from this list, and from the free-as- N OW, THOUGH IN MANY RESPECTS, sociational, occasional spontaneous working of mind and imagination, I went to play. Never had my friends, relatives, associates, even ran~ dam callers and neighborhood shopkeepers been subjected, from me anyway, to such a farrago of thoughts, opinions, views, analyses, doctrines, probes, questions, descriptions, commentaries, on so wide a variety of subjects bearing in any way on the political scene. Plato's Republic, The New Republic, Tolstoy's views on non-violence, editorials from The Manchester Guardian, quotations from Hobbes, Aristotle on Politics, passages from Fourier, Kautsky, Eugene Debs, remarks on the Brook Farm experiment, Burke on the American colonies, comments from The National Review, Sukhanov (Carmichael's translation) on the concept of the power lying in the streets, critiques of nihilism, sections of the Kabbalah, Daily News editorials, thoughts out of Thoreau, Harold Lasswell, M yrdal, Le Monde, the St. Louis Post Despatch, Mahatma Gandhi, A. ). Muste, Thomas Jefferson, reasoned critiques of all sorts of revolutionary thinkers, opinions from Reston, Buchwald, Mark Sullivan, Walter Lippman, Westbrook Pegler, Heywood Broun, Wechsler, A. H. Raskin, Hentoff, Roger Baldwin (special emphasis on the great libertarians), passages from Leon Blum, Kierkegaard, Bosanquet, Yeats' airman, Freud and Einstein on war, Goodman, Mailer, Nelson, Feuer, Macdonald, Dorothy Day, Oswald 34 Garrison Villard, Morris Hillquit, Barry Goldwater, the New York Review of Books, William Buckley, The Louisville Courier-Journal, Henry Clay, R. H. Tawney-a motley of names, views, magazines, books, pamphlets, dissertations, theories, manifestoes, for, against, neutral, a me· lange of all political positions and doctrines, revolutionary too (let them make head or tail of it). Anyway, for one week, I made tapes of all my conversations, which I carefully dated and have filed. and that was all. A frenetic, chaotic week, and then one night, as I entered the apartment, the phone rang, and I had an ordinary conversation with a friend. I expressed my views as I felt them, the madness was over, my tapes carefully dated and filed away for any future eventuality, any legal confrontation. I was back to my old telephone, accepted the weird noises, silences, electronic beeps, as part of the growing confusion, part of the complexities of a growing America, part of the struggle for a better America. And I thought: In the old days you'd pick up the phone and put through your call, no problems at all. Now you pick up the phone to make a call, and the situation is fraught with possibilities. Isn't it more interesting this way? A WEEK OF IT, How, after all, can one do without a phone? Years back I'd occasionally hear of a person who could afford a phone and chose not to have one because he didn't want his privacy at the mercy of friends and strangers (it was before the expression "invasion of privacy" became popular). I don't hear of such people anymore, it is not in the current style of eccentricity. A telephone is as taken-for-granted as a sink. My old telephone (rented but not mine) has been around for some fifteen years, indeed ever since I've been in my apartment, my rented apartment. You don't change a phone the way you do a car or an overcoat. The phone doesn't have moving parts, it rarely breaks down, and when it does, can most often be put in order from the Central Office. Think of it! a phone put in working order from a distance. Since it doesn't much break down, it is usually replaced when the style changes, or because some of us can't stand old worn objects around. I remember only two styles of phone (maybe also the wall phone, the one you cranked, but that likely is out of a fantasy, a dream, a movie, or a dream of a movie). The first phone was lanky, upright, sober, almost preacher-like, the receiver in its right-sided cradle (wonder if you could have requested a left-handed phone?) parallel with the instrument. I remember very well that skinny phone, weathered after a while like old Slim Summerville. It had no dial; you picked up the receiver, and the operator answered, saying "Hello Central" (later the name of a song, but one can make a song too about the serene dial tone, mildly telling you, as I've told you before, that all is in order, that all the M Y OLD TELEPHONE. SUMMER 1981 �electronic complexity and circuitry await your instruction, your move). Back to the old phone: you told the operator the name of the exchange and the number, and waited till she got it for you, all quite personal, not intimate. She put through local and long distance calls ("put through" more for long distance than for local), covered the whole electronic spectrum a one-to-one situation. We'd see the op1 erator in the movies, a pretty girl with earphones. Then came the dramatic change (was there really nothing in between?) to the dial phone, the one now on my desk-solid, squat, with the receiver snuggling, nestled in its cradle, with its round lettered and numbered face, its ten apertures for the finger to twirl, its four feet (now coming on to the market, into our home, is the push-button dial-farewell to the ten apertures-a swifter, computer-like mechanism, but that hasn't yet hit the city in force). The old, squat, solidly-rooted telephone, with its worn, familiar number, more familiar than your auto license number, than your checking account or Social Security attachment attaching itself) to the numbers which replace the name. Such an attachment must bear on pleasure sources, so that, for example, if your public school life was to some extent enjoyable, meaningful, mention of the number of that school will bring a kind of glow to the features, indicating a speedup somewhere in the movement of the body's blood. That kind of familiar, even affectionate connection with numbers could be true of all sorts of numbers that become ours for a time-just gave such a list-but these numbers-though conceivably related to pleasure sources-are rarely used (your car license, Social Security), only occasionally written, hardly ever uttered. Not so of our phone number (curious how some cling to the name of the exchange or the first two letters of the exchange, struggling against the spreading numeralization) which we see staring at us every time we make a call, which we have printed up on cards and letterheads, which we give to people-"This is my number," or, more cau~ tiously, "Call me, I'm listed in the phone book." number, even more familiar than your age, which changes from year to year, and you must keep up with it. But your phone number never changes (unless you ask to have it changed, out of restlessness or objective need; you can even take your old number with you if you move from one apartment to another). to no one's surprise, the phone is not a living thing (what we mean by a thing is that it's not alive), does not have a nervous system, has wires instead of veins, does not move by voli- A S I'VE ALREADY POINTED OUT, tion, does not grow, merely weathers, but, because of its utility (forget for a moment all the complaints, such as, in the middle of a conversation, the entrance of a whizzing sound, as though a wind, a hurricane, were roaring over some distant prairie), because of its familiarity, precisely its unchanging physicality and special quality, because of the pleasure it has given, and promises to give, is capable of giving-for these reasons one develops a kind of attachment, not a deep, strong feeling, for the instrument, and that carries over to the name and numbers. One of the reasons we don't give a name to the phone is that it already has a name and number, assigned by the Company, and the fact that names have pretty much been replaced by numbers doesn't much alter the situation. One got so used to the name-Circle, Wadsworth, Trafalgar, Gramercy, Endicott-not because it refers to a geometric form, a historical figure (who Wadsworth?), the scene of a famous naval battle, a variant of "God's mercy," a Puritan worthy (might be interesting to make a study of the overall effects an exchange and number have over an individual, how the luck of the draw affects the course of his life) but simply out of long familiarity, out of everyday use, everyday contact with the unceremoniously assigned name. And the feeling for a name can attach itself (a feeling of THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW NE NIGHT, not so long ago, just before going to bed, I somewhat sleepily looked into my. dictionary for the origin of the word telephone. I believe I know its meaning. It is, as I surmised, a Greek compound, but I hadn't thought that it meant "sound from afar." Between the sleepiness and the falling asleep, I considered this an excellent word origin, and fell asleep, dreaming (after a while, I guess, for I don't imagine you fall into dream as you sometimes fall into sleep) of a distant voice, then of a number of voices, all telephonically connected in error-a 0 woman pleading; a man cajoling, another woman, with a younger voice, saying over and over again: "but this has to stop, but this has to stop," and that was the beginning, as far as I can recall, of a long dream, a mosiac kind of dream. I heard the insistent, the unrelenting busy, that sound which is like a wall cutting you off from the one you wish to talk to, the one otherwise occupied. I saw the coming visual phone (what will it be called?), a woman alone in a house having to throw on a house coat before approaching the phone! I heard two of the most popular songs relating to the telephone, namely the afore-mentioned "Hello Central" and "All Alone," and saw, in viginettes, the opposing contents of those songs-the young man flirting with the pretty operator, the fantasy of a date, a conquest, and the elderly man (or was it an elderly woman) sitting by the instrument, grimly, in trepidation, waiting and fearing for it to ring. I thought (in my dream) that there were so many more numbers to dial now, and wondered if the possible combination of numbers could finally run out. What then? I asked myself. I went through a speedy history of the use of numbers and letters-first the numbers alone, then the first two letters of the exchange plus the numbers, and now all numbers again, though very likely the first two numbers you'd dial (soon to push) don't necessarily have to be the first two letters of an exchange-farewell to Academy, Atwater, Audubon, 35 �Judson, Lorraine, Murry Hill, Sacramento, Schuyler, Rhinelander, Wisconsin, Yukon (what can LL stand for? or LT? or LR?-not only do the numbers stand for nothing, neither do some of the letters). I saw myself, on a cold wintry night, curled up over the Manhattan Phone Directory (the Book Of The Living), looking up the names of friends, exfriends, acquaintances, public figures, seeing who is listed first, and who is listed last (the stratagems, jockeyings for position, in the Yellow Pages of the Red Book!), thought (again) of the pleasure James Joyce used to have in listening to friends read to him from the Telephone Directory (name after name after name), saw the thin physicist (in our own apartment, think of it!) tear the Telephone Directory (Manhattan? Queens?) in half, remembered someone asking me: "What are you reading?" and my answering: "The Manhattan Phone Book," and he asking: "Who wrote it?" and then: "How do you like it?" and my answering: "The D's were pretty good, but I'm not so crazy about the S' s." I saw myself taking care of my phone, washing and drying it at frequent intervals, occasionally oiling the surface, covering it in the bitter winter nights, keeping it in good working condition, the way you do a car or any machine or instrument that works for you. I saw the repair man come into the apartment, a tall Scandanavian chap, who checked out my complaint, a kind of intermittent buzz (this in the days before the Troubles) and wondered if he planned to replace the phone. Prepared for the change, he had a new instrument with him, which he started to unpack. "Can't you get the old one to work properly?" I asked. "I probably can," said the repair man, "but it's a pretty old machine, and I can replace it." "I like the old one," I replied, ''I'm kind of used to it." "In that case," he said, and went ahead, made the necessary adjustments or replacements, and got rid of that intermittent hum. "The old ones are better," he said, in a kind of confidential manner, before leaving. "They don't make them that way any more." I thought again of the curious dichotomy of the words bug and tap, the differences between the natural and technological worlds, saw fields blooming with flowers, flooded with color, and saw the steely computer, humming away in some subterranean office. I thought (partly in a dream, partly in half-awake, half-analytic state) of the various services the phone company provided-Reporting A Fire, Emergency, or that you could buy, like (once more) Dial-A-Poem, remembered someone telling me that in Vienna you could call and have someone tell a bedtime story to a child, imagined a body of legal, medical advice, that could be offered, a place to call when lonely, upset, lost, disappointed (all such services no doubt exist), read in my mind's eye a letter advising how to deal with nuisance calls, profanities, curious suggestions, saw the phone as a unique artifact, the puzzlement on the faces of a crew digging thousands of years from now amid the ruins of ancient civilizations and coming up with this phone, squat, four-legged, cradle and dial. I heard myself explaining to an old woman who spoke little English that there was a difference between 36 the small o which was shown on the dial together with M, N, and the number 6, and the large 0, above the word Operator, and it was the large 0 you had to use when you were dialing the number 0, and because she was dialing the small o, she was getting a number 6, and it was a wrong number, but the old woman had little English and she kept getting my number, and I kept explaining about the small o and the large 0, and she kept not understanding, and the phone continued to ring, and I continued to explain about the big 0, the Operator 0, mentioned Oscar Robertson, said something about the Marquis of 0. She couldn't understand hardly anything I was saying, and I started to holler: "Call the big 0, call the Operator, not the little o with the M, N, and 6, but the big 0," and I hollered so loud that I woke myself up arid stared at the familiar phone on the desk (whatever happened to the telephone tables?) and it was just as quiet as could be. And in the morning mail that day was a letter from the phone company explaining that "a low-pitched melodious hum will replace the familiar dial tone buzz.' with a person, or an object (such as a telephone) on this or the other side of trauma, will permanently affect (I use the word in its psychoanalytic sense) your connection. Your connection with the telephone! Since the bugging idea came up, things have never been quite the same between us. Despite my ordinary common sense, my fun-loving spirit (akin to that of one of the Rover Boys) there is neverthe- A NY STRONG EXPERIENCE, less a sense of intrusion, an invasion of privacy, surveil- lance by strangers, not that it would be very pleasant if the surveillance were by friends. So, now and then, when I think of it, I talk into the phone with the sense of that third party, human or technological, in mind. I do it by sometimes dramatizing the subject at hand, going into an extra bit of song and dance, pouring it on, making it memorable for the unknown listener (but how successfully does a bug or a tap catch the excitement of a voice? Loudness is not all, it is more the vibrancy, the thrill of interest). One evening I explained to my Uncle Max the Kabbalistic notion of Tsimtsum, about which I had read, as I told my uncle, in Gershom G. Scholem's work, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism: "This is what it is, in an over-simplified summary. God decided (think of it! God deciding) to make room for the world, he contracted, and that made the space. It is the Tsimtsum." My uncle is a misnagid, in the rabbinical tradition, and somewhat cool to the Kabbalistic doctrine, but he was naturally fascinated by this notion. "How is it called again?" "The Tsimtsum." 'Tsimtsum. A curious word." lsn't it? And a curious notion too." Then we discussed further, I forgetting after a while 1 11 SUMMER 1981 �the Third Ear, but then recalling it as I imagined this interchange as part of the variegated spectrum which the unknown listener would have to work on. The noises continued intermittently-bleeps and blurps and bloops, sounds difficult to imitate with letters, delicate taps, interminable moans, riveting sounds, hammer sounds, file rasps, and the one that bugged me the most, the busy signal which starts up as you are halfway through the dialing. If the busy signal came when you were through with the dialing, then there'd be a chance that the line was indeed busy (circuits too can be busy, are you aware of that? whole circuits busy so that when you dial there is a nothing response, but to have the busy signal start when you're halfway through dialing, that is somehow insulting. (Now and then I went into double talk or pig Latin, but that annoyed my friends, they think they're too old for that sort of thing, so I gave up on it.) Well, I wasn't going to give up on the phone, I wasn't going to change to an unlisted number (such notions flashed across the mind) and talking to my friend Irving, with whom I sometimes swap jokes (though we are both complaining about the paucity of jokes) I told him (on the phone) two jokes that I had heard on two different T.V. talk shows: "Dizzy Dean told the story about the baseball manager who protested a call on a play with such vigor and tenacity that the umpire threw him out of the game, whereupon THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW the manager keeled over. One of the ball players said that the manager had been ill, that he might now be dead. 'Dead or alive,' said the umpire, 'out he goes.' "Louis Armstong told the story about one of the guests at a wake who touched the forehead of the deceased and said to the widow: 'He feels warm.' 'Hot or cold,' said the widow, 'out he goes tommorow."' For my friend yes, but why do I tell such fine jokes to an unsolicited listener? Y ES, ALL THESE MATTERS are part of the story of what's happening with my telephone, with me and my telephone. Things are not the same, they're never the same (for example, I notice that recently I don't like anyone to use my phone, find it unnerving. But since I have but the one phone [what difference would it make if I had two?] when a visitor asks to use it, I accede with a graciousness which I like to think covers my disinclination). The possibility of the phone being bugged has become part of the situation, and when I think of this possibility, I either react to it or not. What starts as a traumatic experience sometimes gets absorbed in the ongoing life process. In our country, with its vast reservoir of freedom, one likes to think that these inquisitorial tendencies, these inquisitorial actualities, will sink to the bottom of the clear waters and there dissolve. 37 �An Outline of the Argument of Aristotle's Metaphysics Joe Sachs When Aristotle articulated the central question of the group of writings we know as his Metaphysics, he said it was a question that would never cease to raise itself. He was right. He also regarded his own contributions to the handling of that question as belonging to the final phase of responding to it. I think he was right about that too. The Metaphysics is one of the most helpful books there is for contending with a question the asking of which is one of the things that makes us human. In our time that ques· lion is for the most part hidden behind a wall of sophistry, and the book that could lead us to rediscover it is even more thoroughly hidden behind a maze of misunder· standings. Paul Shorey, a scholar best known for his translation of the Republic, has called the Metaphysics "a hopeless muddle" not to be made sense of by any "ingenuity of conjecture." I think it is safe to say that more people have learned important things from Aristotle than from Professor Shorey, but what conclusion other than his can one come to about a work that has two books numbered one, that descends from the sublime description of the life of the divine intellect in its twelfth book to end with two books full of endless quarreling over minor details of the Platonic doctrine of forms, a doctrine Aristotle had already decisively refuted in early parts of the book, those parts, that is, in which he is not defending it? The book was certainly not written as one whole; it was compiled. Once one has granted that, must not one admit that it was compiled badly, crystallising as it does an incoherent ambivalence toward the teachings of Plato? After three centuries in which no one had much interest in it at all, the MetaA lecture read at St. John's College, Annapolis, on Aprilll, 1980, and in Santa Fe on April 24, 1981. Mr. Sachs is a tutor at the Annapolis Campus. 38 physics became interesting to nineteenth century scholars just as a historical puzzle: how could such a mess have been put together? I have learned the most from reading the Metaphysics on those occasions when I have adopted the working hypothesis that it was compiled by someone who understood Aristotle better than I or the scholars do, and that that someone (why not call him Aristotle?) thought that the parts made an intelligible whole, best understood when read in that order. My main business here is to give some sense of how the Metaphysics looks in its wholeness, but the picture I will sketch depends on several hypotheses independent of the main one. One cannot begin to read the Metaphysics without two pieces of equipment: one is a set of decisions about how to translate Aristotle's central words. No translator of Aristotle known to me is of any help here; they will all befuddle you, more so in the Metaphysics even than in Aristotle's other works. The other piece of equipment, and equally indispensible, I think, is some perspective on the relation of the Metaphysics to the Platonic dialogues. In this matter the scholars, even the best of them, have shown no imagination at all. In the dialogues, in their view, Plato sets forth a "theory" by putting it into the mouth of Socrates. There is some room for interpretation, but on the whole we are all supposed to know that theory. Aristotle must accept that theory or reject it. If he appears to do both it is because passages written by some Platonist have been inserted into his text, or because things he wrote when he was young and a Platonist were lumped together with other things on similar subjects which he wrote when he was older and his thoughts were different and his own. The Plato we are supposed to know from his dialogues is one who posited that, for every name we give to bodies in the world there is a bodiless being in another world, one SUMMER 1981 �while they are many, static while they are changing, perfect while they are altogether distasteful. Not surprisingly, those for whom this is Plato find his doctrine absurd, and welcome an Aristotle whom they find saying that being in its highest form is found in an individual man or horse, that mathematical things are abstractions from sensible bodies, and that, if there is an ideal man apart from men, in virtue of whom they are all called men, then there must be yet a third kind of man, in virtue of whom the form and the men can have the same name, and yet a fourth, and so on. You cannot stop adding new ideal men until you are willing to grant that it was absurd to add the first one, or anything at all beyond just plain men. This is hardheaded, tough-minded Aristotle, not to be intimidated by fancy, mystical talk, living in the world we live in and knowing it is the only world there is. This Aristotle, unfortunately, is a fiction, a projection of our unphilosophic selves. He lives only in a handful of sentences ripped out of their contexts. The true Aristotle indeed takes at face value the world as we find it and all our ordinary opinions about it-takes them, examines them, and finds them wanting. It is the world as we find it which continually, for Aristotle, shows that our ordinary, materialist prejudices are mistaken. The abandonment of those prejudices shows in turn that the world as we found it was not a possible world, that the world as we must reflect upon it is a much richer world, mysterious and exciting. Those of you for whom reading the Platonic dialogues was a battle you won by losing, an eye-opening experience from which, if there is no going forward, there is certainly no turning back, should get to know this Aristotle. But you will find standing in your way all those passages in which Aristotle seems to be discussing the dialogues and does so in a shallow way. Each dialogue has a surface in which Socrates speaks in riddles, articulates half-truths which invite qualification and correction, argues from answers given by others as though he shared their opinions, and pretends to be at a loss about everything. Plato never straightens things out for his readers, any more than Socrates does for his hearers. To do so would be to soothe us, to lull us to sleep as soon as we've begun to be distressed by what it feels like to be awake. Platonic writing, like Socratic talk, is designed to awaken and guide philosophic thinking, by presenting, defending, and criticising plausible responses to important questions. The PlatonicSocratic words have only done their work when we have gone beyond them, but they remain in the dialogues as a collection of just what they were intended to be-unsatisfactory assertions. One commentator finds eighty-one places in the Metaphysics where Aristotle disagrees with Plato. It is not surprising that Aristotle himself uses Plato's name in almost none of those places. Aristotle is addressing an audience of students who have read the dialogues and is continuing the work of the dialogues. Many, perhaps most, of Aristotle's students would, like scholars today, find theories and answers in Plato's dialogues. Aristotle would not be THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW earning his keep as a teacher of philosophy if he did not force his students beyond that position. Aristotle constantly refers to the dialogues because they are the best and most comprehensive texts he and his students share. Aristotle disagrees with Plato about some things, but less extensively and less deeply than he disagrees with every other author that he names. The Metaphysics inevitably looks like an attack on Plato just because Plato's books are so much better than anything left by Thales, Empedocles, or anyone else. My first assumption, then, was that the Metaphysics is one book with one complex argument, and my second is that, in cohering within itself, the Metaphysics may cohere with the Platonic dialogues. I assume that discussions in the dialogues may be taken as giving flesh to Aristotle's formulations, while his formulations in turn may be taken as giving shape to those discussions. One need orily try a very little of this to find a great deal beginning to fall into place. For example, listen to Aristotle in Book I, Chapter 9 of the Metaphysics: "the Forms ... are not the causes of motion or of any other change .... And they do not in any way help either towards the knowledge of the other things ... or towards their existence . ... Moreover, all other things do not come to be from the Forms in any of the usual senses of 'from.' And to say that the Forms are patterns and that the other things participate in them is to use empty words and poetic metaphors." A devastating attack on Plato, is it not? Or is it? Aristotle says that positing the Forms explains no single thing that one wants to know. But doesn't Socrates say in the Phaedo that to call beauty itself the cause of beauty in beautiful things is a "safe but stupid answer," that one must begin with it but must also move beyond it? Again, everyone knows that the Platonic Socrates claimed that the forms were separate from the things in the sensible world, off by themselves, while Aristotle insisted that the forms were in the things. Recall the Phaedo passage just referred to. Does not Socrates say that the cause of heat in a hot thing is not heat itself but fire? Where, then, is he saying the form is? Aristotle taught that the causes of characteristics of things were to be looked for not in a separate world of forms but in the primary instances of those characteristics right here in the world. This doctrine may seem to be a rejection of Plato's chief postulate, but listen to Aristotle himself explain it in Book II, Chapter I of the Metaphysics: "of things to which the same predicate belongs, the one to which it belongs in the highest degree is that in virtue of which it belongs also to the others. For example, fire is the hottest of whatever is truly called 'hot', for fire is cause of hotness in the others." Do you hear an echo? Again, Aristotle teaches that form is to be understood as always at work, never static as is the Platonic form, or is it? Do not the Stranger and Theaetetus agree in the Sophist that it would be "monstrous and absurd" to deny that life, motion, and soul belong to the intelligible things? Do they not indeed define being as a power to act or be affected? Does not Socrates in the Theaetetus entertain the same 39 �definition when he construes the world as made up of an infinity of powers to act and be affected? Plato's dialogues do not set forth a theory of forms. They set forth a way to get started with the work of philosophic inquiry, and Aristotle moves altogether within that way. Much in his writings that is a closed book to those who insist on seeing him as Plato's opponent opens up when one lets the dialogues serve as the key. We shall not hesitate to take whatever light we can find in the dialogues and shine it on Aristotle's text, at least to see if anything comes into the light. And this brings me to a third assumption: the English word substance is of no help in understanding Aristotle's word ousia. The central question of the Metaphysics is, What is ousia? Aristotle claims that it is the same as the question, What is being? and that it is in fact the question everyone who has ever done any philosophy or physics has been asking. Since we do not share Aristotle's language we cannot know what claim he is making until we find a way to translate ousia. The translators give us the word substance only because earlier translators and commentators did so, while they in turn did so because still earlier translators into Latin rendered it as substantia. Early modern philosophy, in all the European languages, is full of discussions of substance which stem from Latin versions of Aristotle. Though oral traditions keep meanings alive, this written tradition has buried Aristotle's meaning irretrievably. We must ignore it, and take our access to the meaning of ousia from Plato's use of it, but before we do so a quick look at where the word substance came from may help us bury it. The earliest Latin translations of Aristotle tried a number of ways of translating ousia, but by the fourth century A.D., when St. Augustine lived, only two remained in use: essentia was made as a formal parallel to ousia, from the feminine singular participle of the verb to be. plus an abstract noun ending, so that the whole would be roughly equivalent to an English translation being-ness; the second translation, substantia, was an attempt to get closer to ousia by interpreting Aristotle's use of it as something like "persisting substratum." Augustine, who had no interest in interpreting Aristotle, thought that, while everything in the world possesses substantia, a persisting underlying identity, the fullness of being suggested by the word essentia could belong to no created thing but .only to their creator. Aristotle, who is quite explicit on the point that creation is impossible, believed no such thing, and Augustine did not think he did. But Augustine's own thinking offered a consistent way to distinguish two Latin words whose use had become muddled. Boethius, in his commentaries on Aristotle, followed Augustine's lead, and hence always translated ousia as substantia, and his usage seems to have settled the matter. And so a word designed by the anti-Aristotelian Augustine to mean a low and empty sort of being turns up in our translations of the word whose meaning Aristotle took to be the highest and fullest sense of being. Descartes, in his Meditations, uses the word substance only with his tongue in his cheek; 40 Locke explicitly analyzes it as an empty notion of an I-don't-know-what; and soon after the word is laughed out of the vocabulary of serious philosophic endeavor. It is no wonder that the Metaphysics ceased to have any influence on living thinking: its heart had been cut out of it by its friends. What does ousia mean? It is already a quirky, idiomatic word in ordinary use when Plato gets hold of it. By a quirk of our own language one may say indeed that it means substance, but only, I repeat only, in the sense in which a rich man is called a man of substance. You may safely allow your daughter to marry him because you know where he will be and what he will be doing tomorrow and twenty years from now. Ousia meant permanent property, real estate, non-transferable goods: not the possessions we are always using up or consuming but those that remain-land, houses, wealth of the kind one never spends since it breeds new wealth with no expense of itself. When Socrates asks Meno for the ousia of the bee he is not using a technical philosophical term but a metaphor: what is the estate of a bee that each one inherits simply by being born a bee? A man of substance who has permanent wealth is who he is because of what he owns. A bee is to his permanent and his variable characteristics as a man is to his permanent and his spendable wealth. The metaphor takes a second step when applied to virtue: the varying instances of virtue in a man, a woman, a ·slave,. and the rest must all have some unvarying core which makes them virtues. There must be some single meaning to which we always refer when we pronounce anything a virtue. This is the step Socrates continually insists that Meno must take. But remember, in the slave-boy scene, Socrates twice entices the slave-boy into giving plausible incorrect answers about the side of the double square. Is there an ousia of virtue? Socrates uses the word not as the result of an induction or abstraction or definition, but by stretching an already strained metaphor. People have disposable goods which come and go and ousiatic goods which remain; bees have some characteristics in which they differ, and others in which they share; the virtues differ, but are they the same in anything but name? Even if they are, must it be a definition that they share? Not all men have ousia. Ordinarily only a few men do. The rest of us work for them, sell to them, marry them, gather in the hills to destroy them, but do not have what they have. Perhaps there are only a few virtues, or only one. The word ousia, as Plato's Socrates handles it, seems to be a double-edged weapon. It explicitly rejects Meno's way of saying what virtue is, but implicitly suggests that the obvious alternative may fail as well. If virtue is not simply a meaningless label used ambiguously for many unconnected things, that does not mean that it must unambiguously name the same content in each of the things it names. Since ousia is our metaphor, let us ask what wealth means. If a poor man has a hut and a cow and some stored-up food, are they his wealth? He is certainly not wealthy. On SUMMER1981 �the other hand, King Lear says that "our basest beggars Are in poorest thing superfluous"; no human life is cut so fine as to lack anything beyond what satisfies bare need. The beggar, like the family on welfare, does not have the means to satisfy need, but need not for that reason forego those possessions which give life comfort or continuity. His wealth is derived from the wealth of others. The small farmer may maintain something of the independence a wealthy man enjoys, but one bad year could wipe him out. He will either accumulate enough to become wealthy himself, or his life will remain a small-scale analogy to that of the wealthy. Wealth means, first of all, only that which a few people have and the rest of us lack, but because it means that, it also, at the same time, means secondarily something that all of us possess. There is an ambiguity at work in the meaning of the word "wealth" which is not a matter of a faulty vocabulary nor a matter of language at all: it expresses the way things are. Wealth of various kinds exists by derivation from and analogy to wealth in the emphatic sense. Indeed Meno, who spontaneously defines virtue by listing virtues, is equally strongly inclined to say that the power to rule over men and possessions is the only virtue there is. He cannot resolve the logical difficulties Socrates raises about his answers, but they are all resolvable. Meno in fact believes that virtue is ousia in its simple sense of big money, and that women, children, and slaves can only have virtue derivatively and ambiguously. Socrates' question is one of those infuriatingly ironic games he is always playing. The ousia of virtue, according to Meno and Gorgias, is ousia. When the word ousia turns up in texts of Aristotle, it is this hidden history of its use, and not its etymology, which is determining its meaning. First of all, the word fills a gap in the language of being, since Greek has no word for thing. The two closest equivalents are to on and to chrema. To on simply means whatever is, and includes the color blue, the length two feet, the action walking, and anything at all that can be said to be. To chrema means a thing used, used up, spent, or consumed; any kind of posses~ sion, namely, that is not ousia. Ousia holds together, remains, and makes its possessor emphatically somebody. In the vocabulary of money, ousia is to ta chremata as whatever remains constant in a thing is to all the onta that come and go. Ousia also carries with it the sense of something that belongs somehow to all but directly and fully only to a few. The word is ready-made to be the theme of Aristotle's investigation of being, because both the word arid the investigation were designed by Plato. For Aristotle, the inquiry into the nature of being begins with the observation that being is meant in many ways. It is like Meno's beginning, and it must be subjected to the same Socratic questioning. Suppose that there is some one core of meaning to which we refer whenever we say that something is. What is its content? Hegel says of being as being: "it is not to be felt, or perceived by sense, or pictured in imagination ... it is mere abstraction ... the absolutely negative ... just THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW Nothing." And is he not right, as Parmenides was before him? Leave aside all those characteristics in which beings differ, and what is left behind? To Aristotle, this means that being is not a universal or a genus. If being is the comprehensive class to which everything belongs, how does it come to have sub-classes? It would have to be die vided with respect to something outside itself. Beings would have to be distinguished by possessing or failing to possess some characteristic, but that characteristic would have to be either a class within being, already separated off from the rest by reference to something prior, or a non-being. Since both are impossible, being must come already divided: the highest genera or ultimate classes of things must be irreducibly many. This is Aristotle's doctrine of the categories, and according to him being means at least eight different things. The categories have familiar names: quality, quantity, relation, time, place, action, being-acted-upon. The question Socrates asked about things, What is it?, is too broad, since it can be answered truly with respect to any of the categories that apply, and many times in some of them. For example, I'll describe something to you: it is backstage now; it is red; it is three feet high; it is lying down and breathing. I could continue telling you what it is in this fashion for as long as I pleased and you would not know what it is. It is an Irish setter. What is different about that last answer? To be an Irish setter is not to be a quality or quantity or time or action but to be a whole which comprises many ways of being in those categories, and much change and indeterminacy in them. The redness, threefoot-high-ness, respiration, and much else cohere in a thing which I have named in its thinghood by calling it an Irish setter. Aristotle calls this way of being ousia. Aristotle's logical works reflect upon the claims our speech makes about the world. The principal result of Aristotle's inquiry into the logical categories of being· is, I think, the claim that the thinghood of things in the world is never reducible in our speech to any combination of qualities, quantities, relations, actions, and so on: that ousia or thinghood must be a separate category. What happens when I try to articulate the being of a thing such as an Irish setter? I define it as a dog with certain properties. But what then is a dog? It is an animal with certain properties, and an animal is an organism with certain properties, and an organism is a thing with the proper-ty of life. At each level I meet, as dog, animal, organism, what Aristotle calls secondary ousia or secondary thinghood. I set out to give an account of what makes a certain collection of properties cohere as a certain thing, and I keep separating off some of them and telling you that the rest cohere as a whole. At my last step, when I say that an organism is a living thing, the problem of secondary thinghood is present in its nakedness. Our speech, no matter how scientific, must always leave the question of the hanging-together of things as things a question. Thus the logical inquiries bequeath to the Metaphysics its central question, which we are now in a position to 41 �translate. The question that was asked of old and will always be asked by anyone who is alive enough to wonder about anything is, What is being? in the sense, What is a thing? in the sense, What is the thinghood of things? What makes our world a world of things at all? We are here at the deepest postulate of Aristotelian philosophizing: the integrity of the world as a world and of anything in it which endures as itself for any time at all, is not selfexplanatory, is something to be wondered at, is caused. We are taught that a moving thing, if nothing disturbs it, will continue moving forever. Do you believe that? It is certainly true that a heavy thing in motion is as hard to stop as it was to set in motion, and that we cannot step out of moving automobiles without continuing, for a while, to share their motions. But these are evidences of persistence of motion, not at all the same thing as inertia of motion. There is no evidence of the latter. In principle there cannot be, because we cannot abolish all the world to observe an undisturbed moving thing. There is a powerful and in its way, beautiful, account of the world which assumes inertia, appealing to those experiences which suggest that motion at an unchanging speed is a state no different from that of rest. The hidden premise which leads from that step to the notion of inertia is the assumption that rest is an inert state. If it is not, the same evidence could lead to the conclusion that an unchanging speed is a fragile and vulnerable thing, as unlikely and as hard to come by as an unchanging anything. How can a balloon remain unchanged? It does so only so long as the air inside pushes out no harder and no less hard than the air outside pushes in. Is the air inside the balloon at rest? Can it be at rest as long as it is performing a task? Can the balloon be at rest if the air inside it cannot be? It can certainly remain in a place, like other apparently inert things, say a table. If you pulled the legs from under a table the top would fall, and if you removed the top the legs would fall. Leave them together and leave them alone and they do not move, but is the table at rest? Surely no more so than a pair of arm wrestlers, straining every muscle but unable to budge each other, can be said to be resting. But can't we find an inert thing anywhere in the world? How about a single lump of rock? But if I throw it in the air it will return to find a resting place. It seems to rest only when something blocks it, and if I let it rest on my hand or my head, something will make me uncomfortable. Can the rock be doing nothing? And if we cannot find inertia in a rock, where could it be? An animal is either full of circulating and respirating or it is rotting, and the same seems true of plants. But what in the world is not animal-like, plant-like, rocklike, or table-like? The world contains living and non-living natural beings, and it contains products of human making, and all' of them are busy. From Aristotle's wondering and wonderful perspective, everything in the world is busy just continuing to be itself. This is not a "theory" of Aristotle's; it is a way of bringing the world to sight with the questioning intellect awake. Try that way of looking 42 on for size; the world has nothing to lose by ceasing to be taken for granted. Consider an analogy, Ptolemy is content to say that Venus and Mercury happen to have the same longitudinal period as the Sun, and that Mars, jupiter, and Saturn all happen to lag just as far behind the Sun in any time as they have moved in anomaly. Copernicus, in the most passionate and convincing part of his argument, shows that these facts can be explained. Lucretius (whom we may substitute for Aristotle's favorite materialist, Empedocles) thought that cats and dogs and giraffes just happened to come about by accumulation, like the sands on the beach. Lucretius' failure to wonder at a giraffe, his reduction of the living to the blind and dead, is, from Aristotle's standpoint, a failure to recognize what is truly one, what is not just a heap, what is genuinely a thing. The least thoughtful, least alert way of being in the world is to regard everything which remains itself as doing so causelessly, inertly. To seek a cause for the being-as-it-is of any thing is already to be in the grip of the question Aristotle says must always be asked. To seek the causes and sources of the being-as-it-is of everything that is, is to join Aristotle in his Copernican revolution which regards every manifest _tion of persistence, order, or recurrence as a marvel, an achievement. That everything in the world disclosed to our senses is in a ceaseless state of change, most of us would grant. That the world nevertheless hangs together enough to be experienced at all is a fact so large that we rarely take notice of it. But the two together-change, and a context of persistence out of which change can emerge-force one to acknowledge some non-human cause at work: for whichever side of the world-change or rest, order or dissolution-is simply its uncaused, inert way, the other side must be the result of effort. Something must be at work in the world, hidden to us, visible only in its effects, pervading all that is, and it must be either a destroyer or a preserver. That much seems to me to be demonstrable, but the next step is a difficult one to take because the world presents to us two faces: the living and the non-living. The thinghood of living things consists in organized unity, maintained through effort, at work in a variety of activities characteristic of each species; but a rock or a flame or some water or some dirt or some air is a thing in a much different way, unified only by accidental boundaries, indifferent to being divided or heaped together, at work only in some one local motion, up or down. Which is the aberration, life or non-life? For Aristotle the choice need not be made, since the distinction between the two forms of being only results from a confusion. Flesh, blood, bone, and hair would seem inorganic and inanimate if they were not organized into and animated as, say, a cat. But earth, air, fire, and water, all of it, is always organized into and animate as the cosmos. The heavens enclose an organized body which has a size, a shape, and a hierarchical structure all of which it maintains by ceaseless, concerted activity. You SUMMER 1981 �may think that in believing this, Aristotle betrays an inno· cence which we cannot recover. But not only Aristotle and Ptolemy, but also Copernicus and Kepler believed the visible heaven to be a cosmos, and not only they, but also, amazingly, Newton himself. In our century, Einstein cal· culated the volume of the universe, and cosmology has once again become a respectable scientific pursuit Mod· ems, for whom the spherical motion of the heavens no longer indicates that the heavens have boundaries, draw the same conclusion from the fact that there is darkness. Anyone who would take the assertion that his outlook is modern to include the denial that there is a cosmos would make a very shallow claim, one having more to do with po· etic fashion than with reasoned conviction. The question of the cosmos has not been made obsolete, and the very least we must admit is that the appearance of an inor· ganic, inanimate nature is not conclusive and would result from our human-sized perspective whether there is a cos· mos or not. If the world is a cosmos, then it is one more instance of the kind of being that belongs to every animal and plant in it And if that is so, there is nothing left to display any other kind of being. Try it: take inventory. What is there? The color red is, only if it is the color of some thing. Color itself is, only if it is some one color, and the color of a thing. The relation "taller than" is, only if it is of two or more things. What has being but is not a thing must depend on some thing for its being. But on the other hand a mere thing, mere matter as we call it, using the word dif· ferently than Aristotle ever does, is an impossibility too. Relatively inert, rock-like being is the being of a part of what comes only in wholes-cosmos, plant, or animal. And all man-made things must borrow their material from natural things and their very holding-together from the natural tendencies of the parts of the cosmos. To be is to be alive; all other being is borrowed being. Any compre· hensive account of things must come to terms with the special being of animals and plants: for Lucretius, living things are not marvels but a problem which he solves by dissolving them into the vast sea of inert purposelessness. For Aristotle, as for Plato, wonder is not a state to be dis· solved but a beckoning to be followed, and for Aristotle the wonderful animals and plants point the way to being itself, to that being qua being which is the source of all being, for we see it in the world in them and only in them. Thus when Aristotle begins in Book 7 of the Metaphysics to ask what makes a thing a thing, he narrows the ques· lion to apply only to living things. All other being is, in one way or another, their effect He is asking for their cause. At that point, his inquiry into the causes and sources of being itself, simply as being, merges with the inquiry in Book 2 of his Physics, where the question is, What is nature? The answer, as well, must be the same, and just as Aristotle concludes that nature is form, he con· eludes that being is form. Does the material of an animal make it what it is? Yes, but it cannot be the entire or even principal cause. If there is anything that is not simply th THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW sum of its parts, it is an animal. It is continually making itself, by snatching suitable material from its environment and discarding unsuitable material. Add some sufficiently unsuitable material, like arsenic, and the sum of parts re· mains, but the animal ceases to be. The whole which is not accounted for by the enumeration of its parts is the topic of the last section of the Theaetetus, where Socrates offers several playful images of that kind of being: a wagon, a melody, the number six, and the example discussed at most length, which Aristotle borrows, the syllable. . Aristotle insists that the syllable is never the sum of its letters. Socrates, of course, argues both sides of the ques· tion, and Theaetetus agrees both times. Let's try it ourselves. Take the word put, p·u·t Voice the letters sepa· rately, as well as you can, and say them in succession, as rapidly as you can. I think you will find that, as long as you attempt to add sound to sound, you will have a grunt surrounded by two explosions of breath. When you voice the whole syllable as one sound, the u is already present when you begin sounding the p, and the t sound is already shap· ing the u. Try to pronounce the first two letters and add the third as an afterthought, and you will get two sounds. I have tried all this, and think it's true, but you· must decide for yourself. Aristotle says that the syllable is the letters, plus something else besides; Socrates calls the something else a form, while Aristotle calls it the thing· hood of the thing. When I pronounce the syllable put, I must have in mind the whole syllable in its wholeness before I can voice any of its parts in such a way as to make them come out parts of it. Now a syllable is about as transitory a being as one could imagine: it is made of breath, and it is gone as soon as it is uttered. But a craftsman works the same way as a maker of syllables. If he simply begins nailing and gluing together pieces of wood, metal, and leather, he is not likely to end up with a wagon; to do so, he must have the whole shape and work of the wagon in mind in each of his joinings and fittings. Even so, when he is finished, what he has produced is only held together by nails and glue. As soon as it is made, the wagon begins falling apart, and it does so the more, the more it is used. All the more perplexing then, is the animal or plant It is perpetually being made and re-made after the form of its species, yet there is no craftsman at work on it It is a com· posite of material and form, yet it is the material in it that is constantly being used up and replaced, while the form remains intact. The form is.not in any artist's imagination, nor can it be an accidental attribute of its material. In the Physics, nature was traced back to form, and in the first half of the Metaphysics all being is traced to the same source. But what is form? Where is it? Is it a cause or is it caused? Most important of all, does it have being alone, on its own, apart from bodies? Does it emerge from the world of bodies, or is a body a thing impossible to be un· less a form is somehow already present for it to have? Or is there something specious about the whole effort to make 43 �form either secondary to material or primary? Are they perhaps equal and symmetrical aspects of being, inseparable, unranked? Just as ultimate or first material, without any characteristics supplied by form, cannot be, why should not a pure form, not the form of anything, be regarded as its opposite pole and as equally impossible? Or have we perhaps stumbled on a nest of unanswerable questions? If form is the first principle of the science of physics, might it not be a first principle simply, behind which one cannot get, to which one may appeal for explanation but about which one cannot inquire? Aristotle says that if there were not things apart from bodies, physics would be first philosophy. But he calls physics second philosophy, and half the Metaphysics lies on the other side of the questions we have been posing. It consists in the uncovering of beings not disclosed to our senses, beings outside of and causal with respect to what we naively and inevitably take to be the whole world. Aristotle marks the center and turning point of the Metaphysics with these words: "One must inquire about (form), for this is the greatest impasse. Now it is agreed that some of what is perceptible are things, and so one must search first among these. For it is preferable to proceed toward what is better known. For learning occurs in all things in this way: through what is by nature less known toward the things more known. And just as in matters of action the task is to make the things that are good completely be good for each person,· from out of the things that seem good to each, so also the task here is, from out of the things more known to one, to make the things known by nature known to him. Now what is known and primary to each of us is often known slightly, and has little or nothing of being; nevertheless, from the things poorly known but known to one, one must try to know the things that are known completely" (l029a 33-b ll ). The forest is dark, but one cannot get out of it without passing through it, carefully, calmly, attentively. It will do no good to move in circles. The passage just quoted connects with the powerful first sentence of the Metaphysics: "All human beings are by nature stretched out toward a state of knowing." Our natural condition is one of frustration, of being unable to escape a task of which the goal is out of reach and out of sight. Aristotle here likens our frustration as theoretical beings to our condition as practical beings: unhappiness has causes-we achieve it by seeking things-and if we can discover what we were seeking we might be able to make what is good ours. Similarly, if we cannot discern the goal of wisdom, we can at least begin examining the things that stand in our way. The next section of the Metaphysics, from Book 7, Chapter 4, through Book 9, is the beginning of an intense forward motion. These books are a painstaking clarification of the being of the things disclosed to our senses. It is here that Aristotle most heavily uses the vocabulary that is most his own, and everything he accomplishes in these books depends on the self-evidence of the meanings of these expressions. It is these books especially which Latin- 44 izing translators turn into gibberish. Words like essence, individual, and actuality must either be vague or be given arbitrary definitions. The words Aristotle uses are neither vague nor are they conceptual constructions; they call forth immediate, direct experiences which one must have at hand to see what Aristotle is talking about. They are not the kinds of words that books can explain; they are words of the kind that people must share before there can be books. That is why understanding a sentence of Aristotle is so often something that comes suddenly, in an insight that seems discontinuous from the puzzlement that preceded it. It is simply a matter of directing one's gaze. We must try to make sense of Books 7-9 because they are crucial to the intention of the Metaphysics. Aristotle has an argument independent of those books, which he makes in Book 8 of the Physics and uses again in Book 12 of the Metaphysics that there must be an immortal, unchanging being, ultimately responsible for all wholeness and orderliness in the sensible world. And he is able to go on in Book 12 to discover a good deal about that being. One could, then, skip from the third chapter of Book 7 to Book 12, and, having traced being to form, trace form back to its source. Aristotle would have done that if his whole intention had been to establish that the sensible world has a divine source, but had he done so he would have left no foundation for reversing the dialectical motion of his argument to understand the things in the world on the basis of their sources. Books 7-9 provide that foundation. The constituents of the world we encounter with our senses are not sensations. The sensible world is not a mosaic of sensible qualities continuous with or adjacent to one another, but meets our gaze organized into things which stand apart, detached from their surroundings. I can indicate one of them to you by the mere act of pointing, because it has its own boundaries and holds them through time. I need not trace out the limits of the region of the visual field to which I refer your attention, because the thing thrusts itself out from, holds itself aloof from what is visible around it, making that visible residue mere background. My pointing therefore has an object, and it is an object because it keeps being itself, does not change randomly or promiscuously like Proteus, but holds together sufficiently to remain the very thing at which I pointed. This way of being, Aristotle calls being a "this". If I want to point out to you just this red of just this region of this shirt, I will have to do a good deal more than just point. A "this" as Aristotle speaks of it is what comes forth to meet the act of pointing, is that for which I need not point and say "not that or that or that but just this," but need do nothing but point, since it effects its own separatiun from what it is not. A table, a chair, a rock, a painting-each is a this, but a living thing is a this in a special way. It is the author of its own thisness. It appropriates from its surroundings, by eating and drinking and breathing, what it organizes into and holds together as itself. This work of self-separation SUMMER 1981 �from its environment is never finished but must go on without break if the living thing is to be at all. Let us con· sider as an example of a living this, some one human being. Today his skin is redder than usual, because he has been in the sun; there is a cut healing on his hand because he chopped onions two days ago; he is well educated, because, five years ago, his parents had the money and taste to send him to Harvard. All these details, and innumerably many more, belong to this human being. But in Aristotle's way of speaking, the details I have named are incidental to him: he is not sunburned, wounded on the hand, or Harvard-educated because he is a human being. He is each of those things because his nature bumped into that of something else that left him with some mark, more or Jess intended, more or less temporary, but in any case aside from what he is on his own, self-sufficiently. What he is on his own, as a result of the activity that makes him be at all, is: two-legged, sentient, breathing, and all the other things he is simply as a human being. There is a difference between all the things he happens to be and the things he necessarily is on account of what he is. Aristotle formulates the latter, the kind of being that belongs to a thing not by happenstance but inevitably, as the "what it kept on being in the course of being at all" for a human being, or a duck, or a rosebush. The phrase ti en einai is Aristotle's answer to the Socratic question, ti esti? What is giraffe? Find some way of articulating all the things that every giraffe always is, and you will have defined the giraffe. What each of them is throughout its life, is the product at any instant for any one of them, of the activity that is causing it to be. That means that the answer to the question, What is a giraffe? and the answer to the question, What is this giraffe? are the same. Stated generally, Aristotle's claim is that a this, which is in the world on its own, self-sufficiently, has a what-it-always-was-to-be, and is just its what-it-always-was-to-be. This is not a commonplace thought, but it is a comprehensible one; compare it with the translators' version, "a per~se individual is identical with its essence." The living thing as it is present to my looking seems to be richer, fuller, more interesting than it can possibly be when it is reduced to a definition in speech, but this is a confusion. All that belongs to the living thing that is not implied by the definition of its species belongs to it externally, as a result of its accidental interactions with the other things in its environment. The definition attempts to penetrate to what it is in itself, by its own activity of making itself be whole and persist. There is nothing fuller than the whole, nothing richer than the life which is the winning and expressing of that wholeness, nothing more interesting than the struggle it is always waging unnoticed, a whole world of priority deeper and more serious than the personal history it must drag along with the species-drama it is constantly enacting. The reduction of the living thing to what defines it is like the reduction of a· rectangular block of marble to the form of Hermes: less is more. Strip away the accretion of mere facts, and what is a THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW left is that without which even those facts could not have gained admittance into the world: the forever vulnerable foundation of all that is in the world, the shaping, ruling form, the incessant maintenance of which is the only meaning of the phrase self-preservation. Indeed even the bodily material of the living thing is present in the worlcj only as active, only as forming itself into none of the other things it might have been, but just this one thoroughly defined animal or plant. And this, finally, is Aristotle's answer to the question, What is form? Form is material at work according to a persisting definiteness of kind. Aristotle's definition of the soul in De anima, soul is the beingat-work-staying-the-same of an organized body, becomes the definition of form in Book 8 of the Metaphysics, and is, at that stage of the inquiry, his definition of being. Book 9 spells out the consequences of this clarification of form. Form cannot be derivative from or equivalent with material, because material on its own must be mere possibility. It cannot enter the world until it has achieved definiteness by getting to work in some way, and it cannot even be thought except as the possibility of some form. Books 7-9 demonstrate that materiality is a subordinate way of being. The living body does not bring form into the world, it must receive form to come into the world. Form is primary and causal, and the original source of all being in the sensible world must be traced beyond the sensible world, to that which confers unity on forms themselves. If forms had no integrity of their own, the world and things could not hang together and nothing would be. At the end of Book 9, the question of being has become the question of formal unity, the question, What makes each form one? In the woven texture of the organization of the Metaphysics, what comes next, at the beginning of Book I 0, is a laying out of all the ways things may be one. Glue, nails, and rope are of no use for the problem at hand, nor, any longer, are natural shapes and motions, which have been shown to have a derivative sort of unity. All that is left in Aristotle's array of possibilities is the unity of that of which the thinking or the knowing is one. This thread of the investigation, which we may call for convenience the biological one, converges in Book 12 with a cosmological one. The animal and plant species take care of their own perpetuation by way of generation, but what the parents pass on to the offspring is an identity which must hold together thanks to a timeless activity of thinking. The cosmos holds together in a different way: it seems to be literally and directly eternal by way of a ceaseless repetition of patterns of locomotion. An eternal motion cannot result from some other motion, but must have an eternal, unchanging cause. Again, Aristotle lays out all the possibilities. What can cause a motion without undergoing a motion? A thing desired can, and so can a thing thought. Can you think of a third? Aristotle says that there are only these two, and itllatt,moreover, the first reduces to the second. WtiemHdesire am aP,ple ii is the fleshy apple and not tllee tHought of it toward which I move, but it js·the thought ou<ifuagining of the fleshy ap- 45 �pie that moves me toward the apple. The desired object causes motion only as an object of thought. Just as the only candidate left to be the source of unity of form among the animals and plants was the activity of thinking, so again the only possible unmoved source for the endless circlings of the stars is an eternal activity of thinking. Because it is deathless and because the heavens and nature and all that is depend upon it, Aristotle calls this activity God. Because it is always altogether at work, nothing that is thought by it is ever outside or apart from it: it is of thinking, simply. Again, because it is always altogether at work, nothing of it is ever left over outside of or apart from its work of thinking: it is thinking, simply. It is the pure holding-together of the pure holdable-together, activity active, causality caused. The world is, in all its being most deeply, and in its deepest being wholly, intelligible. So far is Aristotle from simply assuming the intelligibility of things, that he requires twelve books of argument to account for it. All being is dependent on the being of things; among things, the artificial are derived from the natural; because there is a cosmos, all natural things have being as living things; because all living things depend on either a species-identity or an eternal locomotion, there must be a self-subsisting activity of thinking. The fact that there are a Book l3 and a Book 14 to the Metaphysics indicates that, in Aristotle's view, the question of being has not yet undergone its last transformation. With the completion of Book 12, the question of being becomes: What is the definition of the world? What is the primary intelligible structure that implies all that is permanent in the world? Books l3 and 14 of the Metaphysics examine the only two answers that anyone has ever proposed to that question outside of myths. They 46 are: that the divine thinking is a direct thinking of all the animal and plant species, and that it is a thinking of the mathematical sources of things. The conclusions of these two books are entirely negative. The inquiry into being itself cannot come to rest by transferring to the divine source the species-identities which constitute the world, nor can they be derived from their mathematical aspects. Aristotle's final transformation of the question of being is into a question. Books l3 and 14 are for the sake of rescuing the question as one which does not and cannot yield to a solution but insists on being faced and thought directly. Repeatedly, through the Metaphysics, Aristotle says that the deepest things must be simple. One cannot speak the truth about them, nor even ask a question about them, because they have no parts. They have no articula· tion in speech, but only contact with that which thinks. The ultimate question of the Metaphysics, which is at once What is all being at its roots? and What is the life of God?, and toward which the whole Metaphysics has been designed to clear the way, takes one beyond the limits of speech itself. The argument of the Metaphysics begins from our direct encounter with the sensible world, absorbs that world completely into speech, and carries its speech to the threshold of that on which world and speech depend. The shape of the book is a zig-zag, repeatedly encountering the inexpressible simple things and veering away. By climbing to that life which is the beingat-work of thinking, and then ending with a demonstration of what that life is not, Aristotle leaves us to disclose that life to ourselves in the only way possible, in the privacy of lived thinking. The Metaphysics is not an incomplete work: it is the utmost gift that a master of words can give. SUMMER 1981 �In the Audience Robert Roth For Pete Wilson I A man in his late forties sits on a bench in Washington Square Park. He is disheveled and out of sorts. He gestures casually in the air as he makes his point. Ideo], ideology, ideal, he says over and over again. His manner is that of a teacher in front of a small class. Or that of a man, a man of opinion, being interviewed on television. A woman not yet old rocks violently back and forth a few benches away trying to release some violent inner pain. 4 2 It is Christmas time. On sale, green shower soap in the shape of a microphone. 3 Maxwell throws Allison's book aside. It is a study on language. He is jealous and in a rage. Perceptions formalized. Thoughts codified. Maxwell Berman cannot follow what is being said. His mind is in a blur. A real emptiness is slipping through those structures, he thinks, angrily. No, a passionate heart is beating through those structures. His own heart beats wildly. And he lies stricken, almost as if in love. Inside a car. A scene remembered. In the front seat a dialogue. Karla, dark, intense, a fine public speaker, turns to her friend Norman and says, You can always interpret what I have to say. You make clear sense of it." Norman suddenly pink faced answers, "You're the one with so much to say." Short little outbursts. Short political essays. That is the limit of Maxwell's work. A year of thought into thirty words, maybe three hundred, maybe twelve hundred. And the words definitely need an easily recognizable context to give them any sort of meaning. For by themselves they do not create a world. He cannot "invent" a world. In such a way is his imagination limited. So he cannot call himself a poet. He is a marginal polemicist, attached to the moment, engaged in obscure skirmishes. Maxwell picks up Allison's book again. Why does she want him for a friend? Why would any of them want to 11 Robert Roth lives in New Yark City and writes fiction, THEST.JOHNSREVIEW know him? It was as if he were a girl who had learned how to flatter, smile, be bright. And they could imagine him as they wished him to be. Those of the world of books. Resigned caretakers of Knowledge, he thinks; suddenly angry again. Why do they take it for granted that he knows · what they know? Maybe they are drawn to him tne way social scientists are drawn to shrewd peasants or bright-eyed black children: to accummulate and codify and pepper their works with vignettes and little quotations of life. He is repelled and he is frightened. He wants their acceptance. The shutters are closed bringing the room into darkness. "For final relaxation, everyone in the corpse position/' the voice of the Yoga instructor, authoritative, reassuring. "On your back, eyes closed, feet a foot and a half apart, arms slightly away from your sides, palms up, turn your head from side to side, until comfortable." The voice changes: "By the process of auto-suggestion ... " It is no longer authoritative, rather it is mechanically commanding. A mind control machine, thinks Maxwell. More precisely it is as if a small cassette recorder had been implanted in his brain. "By the process of auto-suggestion you will relax, completely relax. My toes will relax," the voice continues," my toes will relax, my toes are relaxed. My ankles will relax, my ankles will relax ... " Allison lies alongside Maxwell. Her toenails are painted bright orange. The room is at rest. Maxwell lies still, sweat from his forehead running down the sides of his face. Subtle smells released by the sweat from his groin enter his nostrils. Maxwell remembers resting after masturbation: Licking my semen from my fingers, I relax, completely relax. But for the voice, the room is silent. And the voice soon will disappear. This is the part of the class Maxwell most looks forward to. The asanas are arranged to bring one into a state where consciousness is altered. And the room itself is transformed into a sanctuary, a place for meditation, reflection. Occasionally the silence will be broken, and Maxwell jarred, by a loud noise from the street or by the sweet chiming front door bell of the ashram itself. Allison's thin arms rest by her side. Her fingers are relaxed, completely relaxed. She is aware of the absence of pain. Deeply etched lines on her forehead disappear during final relaxation. Life force energy flows through her body and she feels herself very young and supple. 47 �From the very first moment they met, Maxwell had felt a powerful, though peculiarly limited, almost compulsive pull towards Allison. It was as if Allison had drilled two fingers through his chest, touching his heart but for an in· stant, then pulled her fingers out as quickly as she could, leaving the part that she touched burning with love. And so a part of his heart no bigger than a quarter was totally in love with Allison. And for the full year they have known each other it has never increased or diminished in size. During the first months of their friendship Maxwell and Allison would meet every couple of weeks for half an hour or forty· five minutes, usually in the late afternoon in a coffee house or a restaurant. They would meet in a space in Allison's tight, carefully structured schedule. Maxwell who had less to do could more or less be the one to accommodate. Their meetings were often tense and peculiar. They would speak past each other. They would both be dull. AI· lison would look up at the ceiling. Maxwell would talk past her shoulder. Allison would withdraw. Maxwell would grow panicky and start speaking compulsively, speaking loudly with uncharacteristic bravado. And the more Max· well would talk the more Allison would withdraw. And the more she would withdraw the more he would talk. Allison would feel she was drowning or she was being consumed. Once, in the street, she grabbed her chest and grew faint. "Please, no more," she demanded. Whenever he left her Maxwell would be relieved. It's not worth it, he would think. And then half an hour later he would be flooded with affection and longing. The tension between them in part was over aspiration and life style. Allison, the author of a book on linguistics, though in the grip of a tenure struggle, was in a partial way being rewarded for her work. She felt, however, that she did not allow herself free rein, either in her work, for her theories always seemed to stop at the point of break· through, or in her life style, which was subtly but signifi· cantly upwardly mobile. Allison in short was the very good student who had grown up to be the very good scholar. In turn she was to receive the proper social rewards. She was extremely competent in her work and she would defend her areas of competence with a ferocity that she hated, for it symbolized her own complicity in the limits placed on her imagination. She could not allow herself to imag· ine herself as more than competent. She was the Prisoner of Competence. She wanted to break free. Maxwell in turn was not able to write a book or produce a body of work. He didn't even try. He was the poor stu· dent who had either been broken by the system or had somehow managed to cut himself free from its socializa· tion and was brilliant and daring. His essays were usually very short, condensed, and often beautiful. They were small meditations. To Maxwell they seem alternately slight and deep. He wrote them only occasionadly. 'There were long periods of inertia. ''You are either mwriter or you are not," someone once 48 told him. "And you write thirty variations of the same fan· tasy," he replied, rupturing their friendship. His short pieces, while having a validity of their own, symbolized for Maxwell his own imprisonment. They Je. gitimated his passivity. They suggested unusual potential and yet they hid the full range of Maxwell's concerns and understandings which if revealed might be less significant than he wished to imagine. And Maxwell always imagined himself on a grand scale. Important thinker, huge recognition, tremendous respect and influence. Maxwell and Allison, two talented insecure people, symbiotically locked, would meet fairly regularly. One day, Maxwell blew up. "I'm always in the interstices of your life," he said with a flourish. "I'm neither your friend nor your colleague. I'm neither in your public life nor your private life." Allison answered, "There are certain things, very inti~ mate things, that I can tell you. Other things I make a con· scious decision not to. It must be painful and confusing. Our conversations are stilted. There is something twisted in our friendship." And with a flourish of her own, "From now on I will be consistently less intimate." Except for an occasional chance encounter where they would both be polite and formal, Allison and Maxwell did not speak for two months. One cold dismal afternoon marching in a demonstration Allison came over to Max· well and after a few moments asked him whether he would like to take Yoga with her. "It might help center you," she said with a smile. She herself had been taking it for a couple of months and was feeling very good about it. Maxwell came to Yoga initially to be near Allison. But their meetings in class have been only random and occa· sional. Maxwell came alone more often than not and the classes themselves have taken on a certain importance. There are moments of unease, even dread. He always enters the room with caution. Painful memories surface as body tension is released. Maxwell is not very loose yet or supple. He has trouble with the asanas. His legs feel like match sticks, thin, brittle. And he can feel naked in his awkwardness. .. This is not a competitive environment," an instructor inevitably says when either Maxwell or someone else is particularly clumsy or slow. And Maxwell can always hear the unease just barely concealed by these words. The in· structors' startling grace, thinks Maxwell, is not the result of inner quiet but is achieved by sheer will. They fear abandonment as persons and are ashamed of their bodies. The experience in Yoga is charged and dangerous. Bodies sweaty, vulnerable. Intense awareness and the sug· gestion of common understanding. Something powerful is taking place. Strange unexpected feelings surface and consciousness is altered. Possibilities for betrayal hang heavy in the room. A chance word, a foolish observation, can be particularly painful. Comments such as, "We are not a Mickey Mouse organization. The weekend retreat is .~well organized and efficient." Or, "Yoga sure can make SUMMER 1981 �your day," can be particularly jarring. They underline the split in consciousness of people who are deep within a common experience. Contemplation, silence, community, a dark sexuality are at the core of Maxwell's social vision. Fear of death and of life freeze the body and the spirit. Destruction, war machines, grinding social injustice, brutal nation states grow out of this terror. And the social structures take on a life and history of their own, and constrict human and social possibilities even further. In Yoga, as in absorbing conversation, or in an intense sexual encounter, one briefly is able to glimpse a state different from what is. It is terrifying and often not very clear. But one has stepped outside everyday experience and consciousness. Things can be different. And even if only that has become clear, something significant and dangerous has taken place. And so when Maxwell distances himself too sharply from the people in the room, seizing on their vulgarity or their narrowness, he does so as much out of his own fear of illumination as out of a desire to protect himself from false experience. Our fingers will touch, our fingers will touch, our fingers touch, a hidden smile forms inside his restful face. Loud disco music from the street, loud frantic voices from the street break into the room. And across Maxwell's mind an exuberant Christopher Lasch, wearing silver pants and a scarlet jersey, skates and dances to the pounding disco beat. And as suddenly as he had appeared, he disappears as the music and voices fade up the block. And somewhere in the corner of his mind a long forgotten scene emerges. And he watches as it passes before him. A fund raising event for the then faltering now defunct Free University. Allison, whom he had not yet met, was being introduced by Joan McBride, economist, workplace fensive. And Maxwell was no exception. He admired some of the people, basically he respected everyone, but more often than not he was in a state of agitation. Maxwell remembers how his mind strained that night as he juggled hollow perceptions, idle perceptions to make himself feel important. Wedding ring. Worldly. Adult. Domesticated. Complacent. Worn out. Defeated. Red Star. Adventure. Break from domestic stranglehold. Identification with people in struggle. Anger at injustice. Sexy. Sexy symbol of entrenched state power. The event took place three years ago, two years before he met Allison, one year before the break up of her eight year marriage. It is the impressions of her songs, more than the actual words, that have remained with him. The songs could not be easily categorized. They had within them conflicting strains. One would emerge, then fade, quickly replaced by another. It was as if some conflict and struggle were taking place within the songs themselves. The songs would cut deep and then pull back, becoming almost compulsively lighthearted. Her songs had a sad playful humor, but it was humor more debunking than radically subversive. Maxwell sensed at the time a tension between an almost timid venturing forth and a wild yet still inhibited rage. Later in the night the room broke into a chorus of song. Folk songs, political songs, popular songs, religious songs. As is often the case, the folk and political songs were sung with an earnest, animated enthusiasm. And the pop and religious songs with an ironic, self-satisfied, near manic frenzy. There was plenty to drink, dope to smoke,. food to eat. And in walked Joe DePerri. Short and round, rosy cheeked from the cold winter night, Joe DePerri joined the chorus of voices. Someone handed him a beer. "Sono- organizer, movement heavy. rous music," he once wrote in an essay on mass culture, "I would like to introduce my very dear friend who will sing some songs that she has written." They theorize, they organize, and they sing their very own songs Maxwell remembers thinking. Allison's hair, dark blonde, was cut much shorter then. He noticed her gold wedding ring as she played her guitar. She wore a dark blue work shirt with a red star on her collar. Maxwell remembered how uneasy he felt as he watched her. He hoped her songs would be good. He hoped her songs would be bad. Never quite comfortable with the people at the school, he would often make clumsy attempts at friendship. He, however, was very difficult. He was insistent, often unyielding. He would polarize and provoke. He felt beleaguered. But if there was one thing that defined the Free University it was that everyone felt as if they were part of a beleaguered minority. There was much unease and rancor. But little lasting bitterness. People without much social power had gathered to form a place to share ideas, study, and in some cases work out political strategy. The people were often paranoid and de- "maintains routine perception by being sweet and soothing." Joe DePerri took a drink from his beer, hitched up his pants, deepened his voice, giving it a rough edge. But his voice soon became melodious and high pitched. Occasionally it would crack. And he would collect himself and his voice would deepen then grow high again. Joe DePerri's presence charged the room. Singing became more animated. People more alert. This was often the case. Even rooms that were dull often became transformed when he entered. Joe DePerri had a galvanizing personality. He set things in motion. He started magazines, political organizations. He helped start the Free University. Joe DePerri was a fine public speaker, a good careful inspiring teacher, with an acute social imagination and powerful analytic gifts. He had if not a deeply poetic nature, a forceful and almost joyous polemical style. His written work could be dense, even labored, but more often than not it had the feel of a working class ballad. If there were one major flaw in his character, it would be that he was morally obtuse. He could not be trusted. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 49 �Maxwell enjoyed watching joe DePerri when a serious new problem arose: sensing the confusion and the shifting opinion in the room, Joe DePerri would panic at his loss of control, and then make up arguments on the run, leapfrogging ahead to resume his place of leadership. There would be a slight break in his voice, a slight color to his cheeks, revealing to Maxwell just when Joe De Perri had lost his integrity. Round, long-winded, shiny-faced men have always had a special place in Maxwell's heart. He would, for example, make it a point to be home whenever Hubert Humphrey would defend the Vietnam War on television. Something in his enthusiasm, in his earnestness, would draw him to the man. Hubert Humphrey would say and, more importantly, believe whatever it was that was required of him. He was in the fullest sense the suppliant. Maxwell imagined him as the servant of the people. One night in a heavy rainstorm, Hubert Humphrey greeted President Johnson at the airport. He stood there so erect, holding his umbrella over President Johnson's head, the rain pouring down his beautiful wet face, the floodlights shining off his shiny bald head. He had given himself over totally to his President. Hubert Humphrey looked almost saintly that night, deeply transformed by sacrifice. Joe DePerri, charismatic, inspiring, morally obtuse, occasionally abusive, generated resentment as well as admi- ration. People felt manipulated by him. "It's as if we were puppets on a string, here to play out his fantasies," was a common complaint. In one rare and revealing outburst, Joe DePerri answered a room full of people angry at what they perceived to be his cavalier treatment of them by saying, "The movement is fragmented and there's no sense of commu- nity. I know almost everyone here. I brought you all together and there is no other way you would have met. This project grew out of my imagination and out of my inspiration. It had to grow out of someone's imagination. I'm limited, I'm just a person. This project can be redeemed, transformed by all of you working together. I'm tired. And God damn it leave me alone." And he dashed out of the room and sat on the steps trembling. Arbyne all night stood off to one side. She did not join the singing. Looking through slightly tinted glasses, her eyes, clear and excited, would dart curiously from person even saying hello. "We decided that it wasn't quite right for our purposes," he said officially. "What do you mean 'we'. Two days ago you said that you liked it. Well I'm upset." "That's tough," he said suddenly his face freezing into the face of a tough guy. He grew silent as he savored the force in his voice. Arbyne wanted to cry but wouldn't. The thought of him trying to console her, of his putting his arm around her made her almost shake with disgust. "I'll bring it somewhere else then." This is not what he wanted. "If you only rework it," said Joe DePerri. He panicked, his voice softened. "I think you just have to fix up the beginning." Liar, she thought. Her head pounded. She said, "I like the beginning. And I don't want to talk about it anymore. Besides I don't like you." Joe DePerri grew despondent and he started to speak very fast, charmingly. Arbyne felt herself weaken. She tightened up her body and her face became a mixture of anger and disdain. Joe DePerri crumbled into sudden depression. Arbyne walked away. Joe DePerri looked quickly, anxiously around the room. He settled upon a young man, a psychiatrist, and soon they became locked, absorbed, in conver· sation. "Feel the awareness come back into your body," a dis- tant voice reaches Maxwell. "Everybody sit up. Om. Om. Om. Om Shanti, shanti, shanti." One final prayer. Maxwell's eyes are still half closed and he smiles at Allison. It is not so much desire he feels, thinks Maxwell, but the need to be near her, wake up next to her. Still imagining himself just waking up, he brushes her shoulder as he passes. Allison quickly thanks the instructor for a very fine class. Whoever is dressed first will wait for the other on the stoop outside. 5 Allison, alone in her bed, strokes her belly gently. She touches a nipple playing with it until it is firm, licks her fingers, sucking them half unconsciously. It is still raining hard as it had all weekend. "To be in bed with someone on such a rainy day, huddled together under the covers doubly emphasizes the idea of shelter," she thinks as she pulls the covers over her head. "Lovers always rush to meet in the monsoon season. It is a relief to person, taking in everyone in the room. Her curly hair, from the barrenness." black and gray, formed a bluish halo around her. The communal singing ended. Allison had left much earlier, but she was not all that important to Maxwell that night. People moved about starting conversations. Others went to another room where there was music to dance to. joe DePerri moved from person to person, speaking intimately and with animation. Each conversation, however brief, would end only after a small but significant catharsis. Arbyne came up to him. He greeted her warmly. "What did they think about my piece?" she asked before Her face flushes with sudden erotic feeling. And as suddenly she feels broken, dried out. "Burned out," she thinks. Pain grips her stomach. And she does not want to 50 come out from under the covers. The paper she will deliver comes into focus. Important faculty members will be there. To displease them might jeopardize even further her chances for tenure. But some students of hers will be there as well as some faculty members who support her. She won't be totally alone. Her hair feels stringy, damp. The fingers on her hand SUMMER 1981 �ache. Arthritic hands and I'm so young. It can only get worse. And the pain in her fingers, though not often se· vere, appears to foreshadow a lifetime of pain. It is something she does not often think about. She has put it to one side. But it is there, muted but continuous. The weekend had been one of controlled panic. She would look at her paper, then type up whole new pages at a time, only to discard what she had just written. She would read sections of her paper into her tape recorder, and play it back imagining herself a member of the tenure committee, sitting in the lecture hall, holding the frightened candidate's future in her hands. And she even read the beginning of her paper into her own telephone answering machine. "This is Allison Kramer, the subject of my paper is patterns of speech differences according to sex and class in the urban Northeast, if you wish to critique me please wait until you hear the tone." She had actually done this and would not answer her phone for five hours. She smoked dope on and off all weekend. Her mind would float out into reverie and then crash back into anxiety. Allison washes her hair, combing it out slowly, relaxing herself. She smokes a cigarette, and then puts it out quickly. She makes toast and tea. She puts on a little eyeshadow, a little rouge and some lipstick. She puts on hooped earrings, a silver necklace and an elegant if not extravagant blouse. She flirts with herself in the mirror, touches her cheek. Allison's hands begin to tremble. The pain in her fingers increases, an intense throbbing pain. She swallows two aspirin. Throws on her raincoat. And leaves for school. On the subway Allison carefully observes the passengers. She divides them into age, sexual, and racial group· ings. She imagines whom she would like to sleep with, what combinations of people and where. She knows the stations by heart, but starts testing her memory. She feels a brief satisfaction as each predicted station comes into view. It was a game she had played with her brother as a child. They would compete with each other over whose memory was better. They liked to make faces at the passengers on the subway and at each other. Their faces so beautiful and rubbery. Allison's mind unexpectedly focuses on the last night she and Joe DePerri had ever spent together as lovers. It was not a love affair that she often thought about. It was brief and not very memorable or painful. And it had been well over a year since it ended. And now she can think only of that night. The scenes of that night replaying themselves with astonishing clarity. She has almost completely forgotton that they had been lovers. There is a casualness and affection and mutual regard that they now have for each other. But she feels bitter as she remembers that night. Joe DePerri answered the door carrying a saucepan. I'll be with you in a minute, he said, rushing back into the kitchen. Allison walked into the living room, and she noticed herself gazing upon it as if for the first time. She had THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW been there four or five times before. Now she ..yas seeing it in a totally different light. The tenure pressure had been severe that week. She had come here in order to be catered to, waited on, to luxuriate in being attended to. Joe DePerri had said, "Tonight you will just sit and relax. And you'll see what a really fine cook I am." But Allison could not relax. She found herself rather detached and anthropologically observant. She looked around the room and for the first time had a real sense of unease. For the fi<St time the bookshelves, the art objects, everything about the room seemed io be arranged for effect. The room in fact was impressive. Everything about it suggested a person of a genuinely serious and critical intelligence, a person of fine taste. The books were arranged by topic. Excellent books, serious topics. Allison felt cold as she made her observations. The mahogany stained bookshelves were bracketed to the walls. The shelves on one wall contained fiction, both contemporary and classical, while on another wall were arranged scholarly and critical works of history and social science. Previously she had been impressed by the range and taste of his reading, but now she felt, and for reasons she could not fully understand, that there was something manipulative about it all. She tried to pull herself away from her perceptions. But she could not do so for more than a few seconds. She felt not so much that Joe DePerri was trying to manipulate her or any passing stranger into outright subservience, but rather as if the structure of the bookshelves provided a framework or scaffolding for his own egotism. This reflected not a conscious desire to control or manipulate, thought Allison, but rather a massive self-absorption whose effect was the same. Allison thought of Joan McBride, whose books were piled helter-skelter on her bookshelves, other books lying on tables and chairs. And she thought of Joe De Perri's own work room, his bedroom with papers scattered on his desk, his clothes thrown on the floor and chairs. But it was the living room that he presented to the world. Allison became upset again. There is nothing wrong with beautiful books she told herself. His books are not detached from his main concerns, thought Allison, they are books that he has read, books that he has studied. Joe DePerri called from the kitchen. 'Til talk to you in a minute," he said. "Why don't you pick out a record." She was relieved to be able to perform a task. But similar thoughts came to her as she attempted to choose a record. The records were not arranged in such impeccable order. But they were placed on a beautiful shelf. There were fewer records, but well chosen. The best jazz, best rock, best blues, best classical. Pairs of names as if mocking her flashed in front of Allison's eyes. Vivaldi and Mozart, Charles Mingus and Charlie Parker, Bessie Smith and Billie Holliday, Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones. A new thought made her smile: occasionally Joe DePerri would spend hours listening to records of social protest, mostly militant workers' ballads, and he would sing along with 51 �them, his voice breaking as always whenever he would get too excited. Allison picked Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. "Oh, The Four Seasons," joe called from the kitchen. "I particularly like Neville Marriner's performance." Allison checked the cover quickly with annoyance to see if it were the Neville Marriner recording. It was. She was both curious and upset, suspicious and off balance. Was he patronizing her, she wondered. Was he just show· ing off his general knowledge of music, or, as she wanted so badly to believe, was he just expressing simple enthusi· asm about the recording? She smoked a cigarette but could not listen to the music. ''I'm making lemon and garlic salad dressing. Come in and smell it as I put it together. I discovered the recipe just a couple of days ago." Allison went into the kitchen. "Do you like your roast beef rare?" asked joe. "Yes," she answered. joe looked at the clock ''I'd better take it out within five minutes then. While I'm making the salad dressing do you think you could pull apart the lettuce leaves and slice the tomatoes?" The roast beef, the fresh lemon and garlic, the olive oil carried her along with the impetus of their good smells. She found herself separating the lettuce leaves and quartering the tomatoes. He said he was going to do it all him· self. ''I'm going to do it all by myself from scratch," he had said. And for an intense moment, Allison felt resentful and constricted. But Joe looked so engaged and earnest, even loving, as he prepared his dinner for her. But the am· biguity of the situation did not leave her. For once she was aware of the disparity between Joe's genuine concern and interest and his massive egotism, subtly manipulative while hardly noticeable. Allison had been uneasy in the living room, and now she was standing in the kitchen preparing the meal. She was confronted by false promises subtly broken. Allison turns over the phrase in her mind as she sits on the sub· way still not halfway to school. "! spoke to Robert Laszlo," Joe De Perri said as they sat down to eat. "I told him how excited I was about your book. He told me that he remembered Fischer's review in my magazine and was interested in it. And he'd meant to get around to reading it. And now that I brought it up, he will definitely review it for The Nation." "Robert Laszlo will review my book," Allison screamed out, her whole face lighting up. joe smiled at her, a smile mixed with delight and plea· sure. So that's my reward for being a good lay. The thought sprang suddenly and unexpectedly. It almost choked her. God, that's unfair. And her face turned into a mask. But quickly the pleasure and excitement of Robert Laszlo re· viewing her book returned. Taking a chance, she asked, "Did you finally work things out with Arbyne?" 52 "She's a very bright women," answered Joe, <~but she's being totally unreasonable." "What do you mean?'' asked Allison. "Each new manuscript becomes crazier -and crazier. A whole new section of this one is devoted to the occult and astrology. She calls them the female sciences. It's pseudospiritual nonsense. She won't change a sentence. And she's not writing metaphorically. She means every word of it." "Well, I'm sure there is more to it than that." "I don't care if there is more to it. It's regressive and it's empty." Allison grew stone silent. You boorish pig, her mind screamed, any creative woman is going to be driven crazy in this culture. As Allison now remembers her thoughts she is filled with shame. She had been thinking like a stupid social worker. Who was she to imagine Arbyne as crazy? Nine out of ten times Arbyne will make wild bizarre leaps and land on her head. Her theories are often half-baked and compulsively thrown out. But she has also illuminated the darkness, if only briefly, and she has penetrated, if only randomly, areas of concern seldom if ever explored. Allison returns to that night. "It will be a long hard haul," Joe said speaking of tenure. "The cutbacks, the firings, make each opening that much more precious and difficult to secure. As radicals and as Marxists it's difficult enough. They tell us," his voice grew indignant, "that our ideology," he said the word with a bitter mockery, "informs and distorts our objectivity. They have no ideology, right? Their ideological hegemony is so taken for granted. They think that is the world." Joe's face grew soft. "And as a woman," he continued, ((it is doubly and triply oppressive. Only so many positions can be filled. No one will say it outright. But we all know that it's true." "Well," he said trying to be kind, "security can be its own prison." He paused for a moment and then smiled. "Well, if you don't get it, you can always raise a family." Allison laughed. She answered with a retort that she cannot remember. And the next morning she woke all knotted inside. Where did he get the nerve to put up bookshelves that would be so imposing. To have such impeccable taste. To know that it was Neville Marriner. He asks me over to din· ner and I have to help him prepare the salad. I can always raise a family. Very, very funny. Jokes like that blunt the edge of sexual hatred, thinks Allison as she nears her stop. They allow us to get through dangerous situations. But they camouflage the social con· flict and they obscure the true extent of oppression. She thinks how often she would joke back, share a laugh, be petulant. But deep down she always felt humiliation and rage. Filled with embarrassment and self-loathing, she thinks of how often she has acquiesced to such a process. One more relationship down the drain, Allison remem· bers thinking as she left Joe DePerri's apartment. SUMMER 1981 �Allison pulls out the paper she is to deliver. This whole fucking nightmare is going to go on forever. Any mistake, a wrong word and it all can explode. She always has to be careful. She has to flatter but not be too obvious about it. Every moment she is on edge. Every step is like being on a minefield. Every sentence is a semantic minefield. She must mute her radical perceptions, reducing them to scattered insights. She must keep her prose stiff and dense and be scrupulous with her references. Why don't I ditch the whole thing, she constantly asks herself. But security is very important to her. She does not want to float, to flounder about. And jobs are not that easy to come by. Allison has become edgy and paranoid. She read a crucial paragraph to four different friends. Three said it should stay in. One said that she should cut out the whole paragraph, that it was too politically charged. And Allison screamed that her friend was just out to kill her. The rain has turned into a gentle drizzle. Somewhere between dream and nightmare Allison Kramer walks the five blocks to the campus. Twenty minutes early the lecture hall is already half filled. 6 Sarah Kendall is giving a reading. The crowd is steadily filling up the spacious auditorium of the Greenwich Village school. Maxwell Berman stands by the doors watching people as they enter. "Are you still an intellectual?" Suzanne says approaching Maxwell. She leans forward, "Or are you now into using your hands?" She has always been this way. She would ask a question, aggressive and intimate and totally unpleasant. Suzanne's face looks gaunt and haunted. "God, she's aged," thinks Maxwell. He has not seen her during the two years since the Free University folded. "Some of us from the old school have taken over an old precinct house," says Suzanne. "We're going to build a garden on the roof." "That sounds nice," answers Maxwell, sneaking a look around the room wondering who else had come. "I just recovered from a nervous breakdown," she con~ tinues. "The tranquilizers have dehydrated my body. I've lost twenty pounds" "Are you okay?" asks Maxwell, wishing she would leave. He knows he should feel concerned, but he can't. "Do you know that I just got out of the hospital," Suzanne says, moving to a new person. 1 had a nervous breakdown. They put me on tranquilizers that dehydrated my body. I lost twenty pounds. Did you hear that we've renovated the old precinct house? We don't know whether we should concentrate on theory or practice. I think we should do both. Don't you?" It is already twenty minutes after Sarah Kendall was scheduled to read. 11 "There's Joe DePerri," someone shouts out. Joe DePerri nods to the voice and scans the room. Allison walks in with a group of friends. She waves casually to Maxwell. He has the feeling that she is still annoyed with him. He had spoken to her on the phone yesterday THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW and read her a statement he had written. It called for the release of Dan White, the murderer of gay rights leader Harvey Milk, on the grounds that the type of hatred which leads to murdering "deviants" and the fear which leads to locking up murderers amount to the same thing. When Maxwell asked Allison if she would sign the statement she exclaimed, "God, Maxwell, you're always trying to provoke people. Well, this statement I'm not going to sign." Robert Laszlo also would not sign the statement. He told Maxwell that he didn't disagree with it, but he said that as a gay man he wanted to talk about institutionalized homophobia, not about the nature of punishment. Maxwell sees Joan McBride. He goes over to her and asks, "Have you read my Dan White statement?" "I thought it was basically amoral," she answers. Her comment makes no sense. There is too much noise, too much activity to ask her what she means. Sarah Kendall enters the auditorium. The applause is heartfelt. She responds to the greeting with a slight, almost timid wave. She seems both shy and overcome as she makes her way to the stage. Sarah smiles broadly to a friend, hugs two or three people, squeezes an arm. Throughout the room people turn to friends and say, "God, isn't she wonderful." Affection and love pour out to her as she approaches the microphone; there is a sense of well being. The people this night have come as much to celebrate her for the person she is as to hear her read. She is an artist of rare gifts and a public figure of rare courage. She speaks with wisdom and simplicity and this has endeared her to her public. And it is these very qualities that Maxwell Berman will focus on this night with such dark and bitter rage. There is a terrible defensiveness, analyzes Maxwell, as she introduces the first story she is planning to read. He understands the source of her defensiveness all too well. The projected wisdom of her persona, like his own stumbling incoherence, protects her from the academicians and the intellectually accomplished; people she at once fears and is greatly drawn to. They in turn are often struck by her vitality and her intelligence. But she knows that she is not one of them; they fear her. And she herself fears her own vitality, thinks Maxwell. She has let her folksiness limit the full range of her subversive spirit. When Sarah Kendall speaks, a simple anecdote, a shrug of the shoulder can unravel the most sophisticated apologetics for injustice and death. Yet somewhere within the simplicity of her manner there lies a rigid ideological mind, thinks Maxwell, a mind that negotiates its way through the world along a narrow corridor of concerns. And for Sarah Kendall to venture outside this narrow corridor causes her terrible anxiety. In the face of a politics that challenges her own, she can turn vicious. Maxwell remembers a night many years before when Sarah Kendall was asked how young men should respond to the draft. Her voice grew thin as she answered. "It is our moral obligation to do whatever is necessary to stop this war. Look at the terrible sacrifices of the Vietnamese 53 �people. It is a moral obligation for young men to turn in their draft cards." And her tone implied that there was something unforgiveably self-indulgent about not exposing oneself to danger in the struggle against injustice. Whether vicious or puritanical, it was very cruel, thinks Maxwell, suddenly re-experiencing the sense of guilt he had felt while listening to her answer. And he knew there would have been no way for him to challenge her that night without being humiliated, for Sarah Kendall, in moments of panic, could treat even people of vision as if they were agents of death. The room has grown very hot. People throughout have remained very attentive, engaged in the experience, deeply responsive. And the more enthusiastic the response the more Maxwell withdraws into himself. Each turn of phrase repels him. Each word, each gesture, each response. The appreciative laughter makes him cringe. The affirmation of community further separates him from the rest of the audience. He thinks of Arbyne secluded in her vision, driven to near madness by abuse. "The differences between what you and the others have to say are significant," Maxwell would tell her, "but not all that significant." "You'll see some day how serious they are/' she would answer. Tiny seemingly obscure skirmishes, she would insist, might very well determine the whole direction and spirit of a movement. Sarah Kendall's voice breaks as she reads. There are sobs in the room, and then laughter. Headlines shape your consciousness, Maxwell's thoughts accuse the audience. Code words substitute for thought. You rest so secure in a closed arena of consciousness. Half of you are always filled with new concerns: nuclear power plants, sterilization abuse, medical cutbacks. Always instant anger, instant analysis, instant all the facts, instant full of opinions. Instantly mobilized. And the rest of you, the independent-minded, can't get absorbed in anything that is new. You choose so carefully which issues will engage you, at which injustices you will draw the line. you remain so complacent with explanations worked out so long ago. Maxwell's eyes grow distant as he remembers two re· cent scenes. At a conference on pornography a civil liberties lawyer was talking to a small group of people who had gathered around him. He took his pipe out of his thin, slightly op· ened mouth and said, "You should have seen the response when I defended the Klan." There was a twinkle in his eyes. The civil liberties lawyer was very pleased with himself. "I recognize all the dangers and complexities of the situation, but nonetheless I believe ... " Nonetheless he remains so manly, willing to risk all for a principle. And in the face of women acting so. irrationally against pornography, he knows how to maintain a consistent point of view. Three women against pornography appeared on morning TV in front of a studio audience made up largely of midwestern housewives. "We have some trouble with the 54 civil libertarians," one of them said to a whole roomful of people who had no sense of freedom. One woman from the audience spoke about how pornography pollutes. The three women against pornography nodded encouragingly. They would not speak about the hidden violence of the family. They would not speak about the everyday sexual and psychic dread of the women in the audience. Maxwell is enraged by his recollections. He takes out the notebook that he always carries with him and writes: "The civil liberties lawyer does not understand the pervasive social madness, the manipulation of consciousness. He is secure in his homilies, for way down he thinks this is a free society. He thinks passing ERA will solve the problem of misogyny. He goes through life with his little formulations. He turns red in the face during heated discussion. Basically he is complacent." Maxwell continues writing: "In the society of docile, frightened people, largely without will, the three women against pornography offer mind control as their program for social transformation. Destroy dangerous images, they say. They manipulate the fear and bigotry of imprisoned midwestern housewives. This to build a movement!!" The reading will go on forever. His head spins, tears fill his eyes. He is slumped in his seat. The common understanding. The common pain. The common outrage. So deeply connected to the people. So split off. Everything is unraveling, unraveling. They are being thrown into different worlds. It is a rupture of love. The bond between Sarah and the audience grows stronger. "This is my favorite story," he hears a voice whisper. The separation is permanent. The air in the auditorium has grown oppressively hot and damp. Suddenly the reading is over. He files out with the crowd. He lingers outside, breathing in the cool spring air, resting against a car. The light from the street lamps comes from far overhead. He feels less enclosed. Some people gather about in small circles, others leave quickly. He waits a while longer. Joe DePerri walks outside talking excitedly with two friends. Suzanne looks needfully from side to side. joan McBride, busy as always, walks away with a strong determination. "This is the community in resistance," thinks Maxwell. "The comic individuation of people," he writes in his notebook. "The comic individuation of the people in the community of resistance." What does that mean, wonders Maxwell. Each person is ludicrous, partly distorted yet partly free. Does it matter? For a moment the people he knows seem like figures in a landscape, but a landscape of buildings and human activities. They were shaped by the society, they shaped the resistance to the society-well, he thinks, it can't be otherwise. He laughs at himself. He feels calm. Allison calls over to Maxwell. Clearly she is no longer annoyed at him. She and a few friends are speaking with Sarah. "Hi," says Maxwell. Allison extends her cheek to him. Maxwell kisses her quickly, then turns to Sarah and says, "It was a very beautiful reading." Sarah Kendall grabs his arm, squeezes it and smiles warmly. SUMMER 1981 �Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance, ' ' A Model of American Eloquence Eva T. H. Brann The document entitled "To the Honorable the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, A Memorial and Remonstrance" is a jewel of republican rhetoric. 1 Nor has this choice example of American eloquence gone without notice. And yet, compared to the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address, it has re· mained obscure-more often quarried for stately phrases than conned by heart, more often admired at a distance than studied in detail. This lack of popularity can in part be accounted for by the circumstances of the document. Addressed to the legislature of a state rather than to the people of the nation, it is concerned with an issue which is critical only sporadically, though then critical indeed. The Supreme Court has, to be sure, searched the docu· menton several occasions for help in interpreting the "establishment" clause of the First Amendment. (See the Appendix.) But this naturally narrow judicial mining of the text has itself served to draw away attention from the depth of its political precepts and the fitness of its rhetori· cal form, discerningly lauded, for example, by Rives, Mad· ison's nineteenth century biographer. 2 In part, again, Madison's work has been kept off the roster of canonized On December 3, 1784, a bill "establishing a provision for Teachers of Religion" was reported to the General Assembly of Virginia. Its preamble said: Eva Brann recently published Paradoxes of Education in a Republic (University of Chicago Press, 1979). This study was written under a Mellon Foundation Grant for Individual Study and delivered in abridged form at the Conference on Rhetoric and American Statesmanship held at the University of Dallas on October 1618, 1980. Whereas the general diffusion of Christian knowledge hath a natural tendency to correct the morals of men, restrain their vices, and preserve the peace of society, which cannot beeffected without a competent provision for learned teachers, who may be thereby enabled to devote their time and attention to the duty of instructing such citizens as from their THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW public prose because it lacks Jefferson's heady generalities and Lincoln's humane grandeur. But I know this: To study it is to come away with a sense of having discovered, under the veil of Madison's modesty, the great rhetorician of the Founding, whom John Marshall called "the most elo· quent man I ever heard." The immediate and the histori· cal efficacy of Madison's appeal shows that despite the deprecating modern estimate that he "could not mesmer· ize a mass audience" but "only those who sought ... i11umination,"3 Madison was master of that true eloquence which sometimes turns the former kind of audience into the latter. It is an eloquence of measured passion and sober ardor, which knows what to say when and to whom with· out bending the truth. L The Circumstances Surrounding the Remonstrance 4 55 �circumstances and want of education cannot otherwise attain such knowledge; and it is judged such provision may be made by the Legislature, without counteracting the liberal principle heretofore adopted and intended to be preserved, by abolishing all distinctions of pre-eminence amongst the different societies or communities of Christians . .. 5 The author of the bill, Patrick Henry, had introduced it with a fervent speech tracing the downfall of ancient and modern polities to the decay of religion: the repeal in 1776 of the tithe law, which meant the end of a state-salaried clergy and amounted to the disestablishment of the Anglican Church, was a source of such decay in Virginia. Other eminent Virginians, even more anxious about an increase in laxness of morals and lawlessness than about the precipitous decline of church attendance during and after the Revolution, saw nothing wrong with the bilL Among them were George Washington and John MarshalL Madison, absolutely opposed, debated Henry on the floor of the Assembly late in November. These speeches contain revealing anticipations of-and contrasts to-the Remonstrance. 6 Even with the bill still in committee, Madison's arguments had told. There had been a short-lived attempt to de-christianize it extending it to all "who profess the public worship of the Deity," be they Mohametans or Jews. The bill reported out was, furthermore, no longer the General Assessment bill which had sought in effect to reestablish Christianity (though, of course, not Anglicanism) by a general levy on taxpayers in support of a Christian church. It had been transformed into a Christian education bill, designed partly, as evidenced by the reference in the preamble to those who cannot afford private education, to be a defense against Jefferson's long tabled secular public education bill of 1779, and partly, as is apparent from its more restricted aims, to be a response to Madison's pressure. Meanwhile Madison also engaged in some practical politics. In order to remove the oratorical Henry from the scene, Madison had hit on a device both kinder and more efficacious than Jefferson's suggestion "devotedly to pray for his death": he had conspired to elevate him to the governorship. The proud governor-elect had retired to his estates, "a circumstance very inauspicious to his offspring" as Madison wrote with satisfaction to James Monroe. Also, in exchange for the withdrawal of his opposition to a companion bill for the incorporation of the Episcopal Church, Madison had won postponement of final action on the bill to 1785, so that there might be time to publish its text for consideration by the people. This move was crucial, since in 1784 the bill would probably have passed the legislature with an overwhelming majority.' Here as ever, the two facets of Madison's statesmanship-practical maneuvering and principled rhetoric-complemented each other. He had gained a year. Throughout spring of 1785 Madison's own inclination was to wait quietly for the popular opposition to manifest 56 itself. The Episcopalians, as old beneficiaries of establishment naturally, and the Presbyterian clergy to their shame, supported the bill; the laity and clergy of the dissenting sects were solidly opposed. By May several suporters, but no opponents, of the bill had lost their seats. As late as June 21 Madison was assured enough of its unpopularity merely to echo the rebellious common feeling, that although the legislature "should give it the form, they will not give it the validity of a law ... -1 own the bill appears to me to warrant this language of the people." 8 Some of his associates in the battle, however, George Mason and the brothers Nicholas, were anxious for more pointed action. They had reason to fear civil disturbances if the legislature, in which the favoring tidewater counties were overrepresented, should attempt to force the law on the people. They hoped to deter its passage with a large number of well-subscribed identical petitions from all parts of the state, the best device then available for conveying the power of a public sentiment to the legislature. They asked Madison to compose the text. He wrote the <(Memorial and Remonstrance" sometime soon after June 20, 1785, intending it to circulate anonymously. The few friends who knew of his authorship respected his wish, which arose, presumably, from his desire to maintain good working relations with all parties in the legislature. At the time some attributed the work to George Mason, who had drafted the religious liberty clause of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Though a printer had put his name on a reprint as early as 1786, Madison acknowledged only late in life, in a letter of 1826 to Mason's grandson, that "the task of composing such a paper had been imposed upon him." Mason had the petition printed as a broadside in Alexandria, having seen no reason for changing even one word of the text. The Nicholases saw to its distribution throughout the state. It met, Madison noted in retrospect, "with the approbation of the Baptists, the Presbyterians [who had recanted], the Quakers, and the few Roman Catholics, universally; of the Methodists in part; and even of not a few of the Sect formerly established by law, [the Episcopalians]."' The Remonstrance was solidly successful in drawing subscribers. The thirteen circulated copies collected 15 52 signatures; 150 freeholders signed one petition in a day. Yet, successful though it was, another, still anonymous, petition, based on the fervently Christian argument that the bill contravened the spirit of the Gospel, ran up more than three times as many signatures on twenty-nine copies. All in all, about eighty opposing petitions with 10,929 signatures came in to Richmond, and only a few in support. After a brief consideration the bill died in committee in the fall of 1785, lost, however, by a mere three votes. Madison's petition may well have been cruciaL On January 22, 1786, Madison reported the results of that session to Jefferson in Paris in a modestly jubilant vem: SUMMER 1981 �The steps taken throughout the Country to defeat the Gnl. Assessment, had produced all the effect that could have been wished. The table was loaded with petitions and remonstrances from all parts against the interposition of the Legislature in matters of Religion. In the same letter he had already told jefferson even greater news. One element alone of Jefferson's six-year- old revisal of the laws of Virginia had that year been passed into an act, his bill for establishing religious freedom, 10 the most celebrated of all documents concerned with religious liberty. Advantage had been taken of the crisis produced by the crushing of the religious assessment bill to carry through the jefferson bill, as Madison put it. The two events were closely connected. The impetus of the collapse of a regressive measure carried over-as sometimes happens-into a sudden advance. The religious clause of the Virginia Declaration of Rights had guaranteed the free exercise of religion to all Christians, but it had not unequivocally banned-witness the assessment bill-the establishment of a non-sectarian state church. During the next nine years the legislature had passed a patchwork of special exemptions, tolerances and particular measures favoring dis- senting sects. jefferson's bill, which happened to attack compulsory support of religious teachers in its preamble, rode in, as Madison recollected in 1826, under the "influence of public sentiment" manifested in the death of the assessment bill, as a "permanent Barrier agst. future attempts on the Rights of Conscience as declared in the Great Charter affixed to the Constitution of the State." 11 Madison interpreted the petitions against the assessment bill as demands for the enactment of jefferson's law concerning religious freedom; he thought it an advantage that it had been sanctioned by what was in effect a plebiscite. The Remonstrance had advanced it as a principle that there should be such invitations to the people to express their sentiments in the course of law-making. II. The Arguments of the Remonstrance The Remonstrance is a petition addressed to the General Assembly of Virginia that remonstrates on fifteen counts (listed in summary in Note 12) against a bill before it establishing a provision for teachers of the Christian religion. Each of these points is set forth in one paragraph in the form of a reflection on one aspect of the right relation between religion and politics. Madison clearly intended to make the argumentation as complete, as principled, as fundamental, and yet as concise as possible. The fifteen counts are, furthermore, composed into a symmetrical structure. The eighth, that is, the middle point, addresses the concern immediately central to the occasion-the fear of the decline of social stability-by arguing that state support of religion is not necessary to the civil authority. Clustered about that-central claim are the other prudential and cautionary points to be addressed to TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW the Christian communities which hoped to profit from the law. Points 6-7 and again 9-11 display the bill as internally and externally deleterious to Christianity in particular. By contrast, Points l-4 and again Points 13-15 have a wider, more encompassing matter: humanity in general. The intoductory points proceed on the grandest scale. The first asserts a positive theological prin9iple-the absolute priority of man's relation to God over his social bonds-as the ground for the inalienable character of the right to religious freedom; the second deduces from the first the prohibition of legislative interference in religion. The third point draws the political principle of prompt resistance to civil interference out of the uncompromisably absolute separation of the realms, the fourth draws from the philosophical principle of human equality the political injunction against state support of religion. The closing numbers cite the forms and practices of popular government which proceed from the foundations established in One through Four as they bear on the bill. Thirteen warns against unenforceable laws, Fourteen states the majoritarian principle, and the last point recalls the principle of limited government to the offending legislature. The rhetorical force of this structure will, I think, tell even on a reader who does not apprehend it explicitly. III. Rhetorical Analysis of the Textu PREAMBLE To The Honorable the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia A Memorial and Remonstrance We the subscribers, citizens of the said Commonwealth, having taken into serious consideration, a Bill printed by order of the last Session of General Assembly, entitled ''A Bill establishing provisions for Teachers of the Chn'stian Religion, '' and conceiving that the same iffi'nally armed with the sanctions ofa law, will be a dangerous abuse of power, are bound as faithful members of a free State to remonstrate against it, and to declare the reasons by which we are determined. We remonstrate against the said Bill, The preamble alludes to the postponement resolution which had requested the people of the counties "to signify their opinion respecting the adoption of such a Bill" -the resolution is quoted in the next to last paragraph. The petition, then a common political instrument, is intended to elicit popular opinion in the course of lawmaking. Such moments of communication between the people and their representatives are an important part of Madison's theory of self-government, set out in the penultimate paragraph of the petition. 57 �Not Madison but "We ... the citizens" speak. His style could well accomodate itself to a canonical anonymity. He had been trained in a school of rhetoric which eschewed idiosyncracies, and he never engaged in the luxuriously indignant periodicity peculiar to Jefferson. This petition is presented in the form of a remonstrance, that is, a protest, a protest, suggestively, of the ((faithful," but it is not a mere protest, as are most present- day petitions. It is also a memorial, a declaration of reasons-every paragraph begins with a ~~because" -in the tradition of the Declaration of Independence. FIRST PARAGRAPH 1. Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, ''that Religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence." The religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable nght. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds cannot follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable also, because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe: And rf a member of Civil Society, who enters into any subordinate Association, must always do it with a reservation of his duty to the General Authon.ty; much more must every man who becomes a member of any particular Civrl Society, do it with a saving of his allegiance to the Universal Sovereign. We maintain therefore that in matters ofRelzgion, no mans right is abridged by the institution of Civzl Society and that Relrgion is wholly exempt from its cognizance. True it is, that no other rule exists, by which any question which may divide a Society, can be ultimately determined, but the wz/1 of the majon·ty; but it is also true that the majority may trespass on the rights of the minon'ty. 58 The first is the most philosophical and the most rhetorically artful paragraph. Madison begins by reminding the legislature of its own fundamental law; he quotes, as he notes in the margin of his copy, from Article XVI of the "Declaration of Rights and Frame of Government of Virginia," adopted in 1776. Madison himself intervened crucially in George Mason's draft of that article, though not in the clause here cited. (The sentence he affected is given in the fourth and fifteenth paragraphs.) In accordance with the symmetrical structure of the petition the Virginia Declaration is cited in the first, the fourth, the eleventh, and the fifteenth paragraphs. The quotation from Article XVI is here introduced in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence-the Virginia Declaration has no such language-as an axiom, an undeniable truth. The consequences of that axiom are then developed in an enchained sequence of sentences which has something of the quality of a liturgical responsion, a kind of ronde! of reason. The enchaining brings with it a non-periodic style. (A period, speaking technically, is a circuit-like sentence, whose meaning is not deliv- ered until the whole is complete.) Several sentences are grammatically simple; conjunctions and relatives, regarded in school rhetoric as weakening the vivacity of writing since their function should be carried by the diction, 14 are avoided; the continuity indeed comes from the incantation-like diction. "The religion of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man": he restates the phrase "reason and conviction" of Article XVI alliteratively and tactfully, avoiding the everlasting dwelling on the reason by which some of the defenders of religious liberty had made themselves suspect. The recurrent phrase "every man," rather than "all men" as in the Declaration of Independence, carries a subtle emphasis: as Madison's logic notes from college point out, when one turns "all" into "every," the predicate is logically distributed so that it "belongs to every individual."15 Since religion consists of "voluntary acts of individuals singly and voluntarily associated," Madison's use of "every" rather than "all" conveys the individual nature of religion implied by the fundamental axiom: no religious dogma is to be imposed and no religious exercise interfered with-the First Amendment in germ. Each key word is picked up and elaborated as the argument continues: " ... it is the right of every man to exercise" religion freely. "This right is ... an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men" are free. "It is unalienable also, because what is here a right toward men, is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render the Creator such homage" as seems right to him. "This duty is precedent ... to the claims of Civil Society." "Before a man can be considered a member of Civil Society . .. ," etc. The rhetorical form emphasizes the mutual involve· ment of the terms. Free exercise of religion is a right and SUi~MER 1981 �moreover an inalienable right because of an ineradicable feature of human nature-its freedom. This human freedom, the ground of civil liberty, is understood as a bondage of the mind to the dictates of reason and evidence-a dependency clearly expressed in the original opening paragraph of Jefferson's bill on religious freedom, which was deleted by the General Assembly with Madison's reluctant acquiescence: Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds . .. 16 Madison, who had earlier displayed a lively interest in the philosophical question of mental liberty and misgivings about its possibility, 17 must indeed have been sorry to see this pertinent passage disappear from the bill, bartered away for its passage. The right to religious liberty is inalienable because of man's nature, but also because of man's relation to God, which is that of a subject bound by a duty to his Creator. Religion as defined in the passage from the Declaration of Rights which Madison quotes is a conflation of the Roman notion of obligatory performance and the biblical idea of obedience to the Creator, with the Christian salvational sense, to be introduced in the middle paragraphs, here missing. The inalienability of the right is, then, rooted in man's nature as free and as created; it is therefore inalienable by the very reason which makes it a right, namely that it is a divine duty that must be individually discharged. Succinctly put: "What is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator." Now comes the crux of the paragraph and indeed of the work. Man's relation as a creature is prior both in time and in degree to his membership in a polity. Before he can be thought of as a citizen of civil society, he must be considered as a subject under the Governor of the Universe; as the former he has rights, as the latter duties. This priority in time may mean that these duties were his before this or any polity was instituted, even in the Garden of Eden, or that they precede adult citizenship and obligate even children. Precedent in "degree of obligation" must mean that moral duties supersede political obedience and that religion governs citizenship-indeed a creed for citizen-resisters to the usurpations of the civil powers. Although Madison himself later cites Jesus' "own declaration that his Kingdom was not of this world" in behalf of the separation of worlds, 18 his own remarkable theory is quite distinct from the scriptural doctrine of the two realms, the secular and the spiritual. That doctrine holds this world inferior-Roger Williams, for example, demands a hedge between the garden of the Church and the wilderness of the World. 1 ' In contrast the precedence of the religious realm set out in the Remonstrance is not seen from the perspective of the world beyond, but from the position of a practicing THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW citizen of this world, albeit with prior obligations. That is precisely why the functionaries of civil society may not invade the realm of religion-because that realm is here conceived as belonging to the active life of the world, not to civil society but certainly to society. The suspicion and contempt of the world, on the other hand, against whose intrusions the soul and the church must be guarded, belongs to Christian liberty-a theological condition and not a civil right. (The defense of religious liberty from the scriptural point of view is rousingly made in Milton's Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes; Madison may have known it.) Madison is proposing a civil theology20 in which the political arena is circumscribed by religion. From the point of view of political theory men come out of (though in a sense they never leave) the Lockean state of nature and its right to self-preservation; from the point of view of the civil theology man first and last remains "a free-born subject under the crown of heaven owing homage to none but God himself."21 Madison, however, does not advocate the cause of a deistic super-sect with its positive rationalistic doctrines, so confidently set out in Jefferson's bill concerning religious freedom which knows and approves "the plan of the holy author of our religion ... to extend it by the influence on reason alone." Encompassing all religions, whether propagated by reason, revelation, or force of tradition, Madison's civil theology is a genuine grounding for religious pluralism. The conclusion is that rights of conscience are reserved from the authority of the political power. As Jefferson puts it in Query XVII of the Notes on the State of Virginia (1781): Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. There follows an intricately wrought analogy containing more subtleties than bear articulating: As l. a member of Civil Society 2. who enters into any subordinate Association 3. must always do it 4. with a reservation of his duty 5. to the General Authority, Much more so must l. every man 2. who becomes a member of any particular Civil Society 3. do it 4. with a saving of his allegiance 5. to the Universal Sovereign. The climax of the deduction from the axiom of religion as a duty to God is the radical proposition that "no man's right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society andReligion is wholly exempt from its cognizance." That is to say: l. individual religious rights are not alienated upon entering civil society and 2. the realm of common religious observance is wholly out of its jurisdiction. This is the seminal secular statement concerning reli- 59 �gious liberty as a civil right in the public realm, since Jefferson's law, to which Madison later gave the honor of being the standard of expression on the subject, was, though prior in the drafting (1779), posterior in publication (1785). The political consequences are reserved for the last paragraph of the petition. Madison, however, here adds an afterthought which brings these fundamental principles into the political arena. It is an antithesis acknowledging in capsule form the paradox of majoritarianism, a clash of truths in the world of action: 22 "True it is" that the will of the majority alone can settle divisive differences, "but it is also true" that the majority may try to infringe the rights of the minority. The penultimate paragraph will counterbalance this reservation by an expression of full faith in the majority as a last court of appeal in cases of infringements on liberty. SECOND PARAGRAPH 2. Because zf Religion be exempt from the authority of the Society at large, still less can it be subject to that of the Legislative Body. The latter are but the creatures and vicegerents of the former. Their jurisdiction is both derivative and limited: it is limited with regard to the co-ordinate departments, more necessarily is it limited with regard to the constituents. The preservation ofa ftee Government requires not merely, that the metes and bounds which separate each department of power be invariably maintained; but more especially that neither of them be suffered to overleap the great Barrier which defends the rights of the people. The Rulers who are guilty ofsuch an encroachment, exceed the commission from which they derive their authority, and are Tyrants. The People who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived ftom them, and are slaves. Now the doctrines of the first paragraph are applied, a fortiori, to government: if religion is beyond the political community, so much the more is it beyond the legislature. For as human beings are God's creatures, so the legislature is civil society's creature. (The manner of this legislative subordination is again taken up in the corresponding next to last paragraph.) The double limitation on its jurisdiction is stated in a succinct presentation of the theories of checks and balances and of limited government. It displays Madison's genius for articulating a full complement of fine but fundamental distinctions in the smallest compass: he speaks of the "metes and bounds" (a phrase possibly adapted from Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration 23 ) 60 that contain the departments of government, and of the "great Barrier" that circumscribes government itself. That barrier, the limitation of legislative jurisdiction, is the political palisade before the "wall of separation," in Jefferson's famous metaphor for the First Amendment, which is to be erected between church and state. 24 The language of the following sentences grows terse and absolute (although Madison manages to tuck in definitions of both tyranny and slavery): the rulers who encroach are tyrants, the people that submits, slaves. The theory of prompt resistance to be set out in the next para· graph is prepared. THIRD PARAGRAPH 3. Because it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The ftee men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw a!! the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much soon to forget it. Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any· particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of a!! other Sects? that the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever? The first sentence is often quoted, and "viewing with alarm" has, of course, become a cant phrase of American rhetoric. Here the key word "liberties" first appears; the phrase "religious liberty" is missing from the work. The Revolution is invoked in favor of a "noble" mode of political response. In the remarkable phrase "prudent jealousy" Madison conflates republican duty with the principle of honor, the citizen's calculation of conse~ quences with the nobleman's propensity for quick offense. The necessity for a ready response lies, of course, in the fact that absolute principles, not compromisable interests, are involved; "the least interference with religion would be a flagrant usurpation." The Revolution, being the complex event of both principle and interest, was in fact slow in coming: ... mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. {Declaration of Independence.) SUMMER 1981 �Nevertheless Madison here propagates the view, for the sake of the "revered lesson" it contains, that the three-penny tax on tea moved the "free men of America" to revolt because it was a first signal of oppression, not the last straw. 25 This view was evidently dear to him, for later he wrote: The people of the U.S- owe their Independence and their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprized in the precedent. 26 The lesson he urges is immediate recognition of and resistance to breaches of principle, and especially of the principle of religious liberty, because it stands and falls as a whole. As Locke says: "The civil power can either change everything in religion, ... or it can change nothing." 27 Two balanced rhetorical questions next address first the churches and then the individual citizens: as the authority to establish Christianity impks the power to establish one sect, so the authority to touch a citizen's property implies the power to force him into religious conformity. This passage reveals Madison's universal view of religious liberty. He writes here, in hopeful suppression of the fact admitted in the eleventh paragraph, that Virginia still had a Christian establishment, as if the establishment were an incipient event to be feared by the sects. His vigorous promotion of Jefferson's bill concerning religious liberty shows that he knew otherwise. An episode that occurred during its consideration in the Assembly shows where his sentiments lay: For the sake of passage Madison acquiesced in several deletions urged by men who objected to the aggressively deistic tone of the bill, although he thought these defaced the text somewhat-to him its expressions were ever the "true standard of religious liberty," even if his own inclination was to phrase that liberty as a right to the "full and free exercise" of religion rather than to its non-exercise. What he refused to agree to was an insertion that was attempted; as Madison much later recalled it: ... an experiment was made on the reverence entertained for the name and sanctity of the Saviour, by proposing to insert the words "Jesus Christ'' after the words "our lord" in the preamble. 28 Madison, ever vigilant of words, fought the insertion and it was dropped_ On January 22, 1786, he reported in a spirit of modest triumph to jefferson in Paris that the enacting clauses had passed without alteration and,"[ flatter myself, have in this country extinguished forever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind." The rejection of the insertion proved, jefferson later said, that "the jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohametan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination" were within the mantle of its protection_ Those were exactly Madison's intentions, and indeed he was to receive expressions of gratitude from American Jews and to give encouragement to them. 29 1HE ST.JOHNS REVIEW So, although in the Remonstrance he writes to and for and-unemphatically but unquestionably-as a Christian, there can be no question about the universal application of his principle of religious liberty. No more can there be doubt about his uncompromising steadfastness in its application. Of many proofs let me choose only three. His early draft of those amendments to the Constitution which were to become the Bill of Rights specifically prohibit the establishment of a "national religion_'' Even in later life he retained his rhetorical vigor in fighting Christian establishments_ He apostrophises his country: Ye states of America, which retain . .. any aberration from the sacred principle of religious liberty, by giving to Caesar what belongs to God, or joining together what God has put asunder, hasten to revise and purify your systems . .. 30 As ever, he attacks the perverse wedlock of church and state on the ground of Christianity itself_ The most striking, almost comical, examples of his scrupulous avoidance of even the slightest trespass are his presidential Thanksgiving Messages during the War of 1812- Forced from him by a Congressional resolution, he phrased them rather as exhortations to free choice of worship than to public piety_li The strong Madisonian meaning of the word "liberty" as applied to religion, to be adumbrated throughout the petition, begins to emerge: Religious liberty is a civil right which is grounded in relations of duty to God antecedent to political society and therefore incapable of being abrogated_ These relations are determined by the nature of the human conscience which is free in a philosophical sense, that is, determined not by external force but only by the internal compulsion of evidence, be it reason or revelation; they are also determined by the original nature of the human being which is dependent in a theological sense, that is, created by God_ (Para. 1.) Delicate because it must be maintained absolutely (Para_ 3), this liberty requires the government to abstain completely from interference, either for the purpose of supporting or of obstructing the exercise of religious obligations (Para_ 2)- The government must protect religion, but only by abstaining evenhandedly from interference and by safeguarding each sect from the intrusions of the other sects (Para. 8). As a right held on the same political terms as the other natural rights which are reserved to the individual, religious liberty stands or falls with them (Para. 15)FOURTH PARAGRAPH 4. Because the Bill violates that equality which ought to be the basis of every law, and which is more indispensible, in proportion as the validity or expediency of any law is more liable to be im- 61 �peached. If' 'all men are by nature equally free and independent, '' all men are to be considered as entering into Society on equal conditions; as relinquishing no more, and therefore retaining no less, one than another, of their natural rights. Above all are they to be considered as retaining an ''equal title to the free exercise of Religion according to the dictates of Conscience." Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is an offence against God, not against man: To God, therefore, not to man, must an account of it be rendered. As the Bill violates equality by subjecting some to peculiar burdens, so it violates the same principle, by granting to others peculiar exemptions. Are the Quakers and Menonists the only sects who think a compulsive support of their Religious unnecessary and unwarrantable? Can their piety alone be entrusted with the care of public worship? Ought their Religions to be endowed above all others with extraordinary privileges by which proselytes may be enticed from all others? We think too favorably of the justice and good sense of these denominations to believe that they either covet pre-eminences over their follow citizens or that they will be seduced by them from the common opposition to the measure. The proposed bill violates the natural equality of men affirmed in Article I of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, now quoted by Madison. Such equality is presented here as an internal condition of all law. The more liable a law is to the charge of invalidity or inexpediency, the more important such equality becomes. The dictum that equality "ought to be the basis of every law" refers to the inner equity of the law, which ought to affect everyone equally, not to the familiar demand for equality of treatment under the law; the law must be such as to be capable of equal application. A succinct statement of the contract theory of rights which underlies this demand is given: All men being by nature equally free, they must enter civil society on equal conditions; they must give up and retain exactly equal rights. "To embrace, to profess, and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin," to join, to declare, and to exercise whatever religion seems to us to be truly a religion, is the essence of these rights with respect to religion. 62 In the conclusion of his Letter Concerning Toleration Locke says that "the sum of all we drive at is that every man may enjoy the same rights that are guaranteed to others." Madison italicizes this one word in the petition-equal-when he quotes for the first time that clause of Article XVI of the Virginia Declaration of Rights for whose form he himself was responsible. Equality of application was for Madison, as for Locke, important above all else. Although it intends to preserve the "liberal principle" of Article XVI, by "abolishing all distinctions of pre~eminence" among the different sects, the Assessment bill is inequitable because it burdens all in support of a religious service that will peculiarly burden non-Christians and peculiarly exempt those Christians who do not wish to take advantage of its benefits. The rhetorical question what sects besides those mentioned would fall under the latter category would have the obvious answer: above all the Baptists, whose opposition to any kind of state intervention was a matter of theological principle. There can never be a moral or theological pretext for interference, because the abuse of the right of religion is not subject to human punishment. Madison had restricted Mason's broad reservation in the original draft of Article XVI, that the magistrate might restrain free exercise if, "under colour of religion, any man disturb the peace, the happiness, or the safety of society" to the condition that "the preservation of liberty and the existence of the State are manifestly endangered." His record shows that as a magistrate he would have found no occasion to apply it; presumably he was glad finally to see the whole clause drop out. 32 A bilaterally symmetrical sentence, the only one in the petition to contain the word "God," presents this central point. Early American documents mention the names of God profusely enough to intrigue a medieval theologian. 33 In this petition he is the Creator to whom man owes the duties of a dependent creature; the Governor of the Universe to whom man is a subject rather than a citizen (Para. l); God before whom alone man can sin (Para. 4); the Author of our Religion who hands down its .teachings in scripture (Para. 6); the Supreme Lawgiver of the U niverse from whom illumination of the legislature is requested (Para. 15). Not mere unreflective Enlightenment epithets, these names must be genuine expressions of Madison's understanding of the facets of humanity's relations to God, for they delineate just such a God as would be the ground of religious liberty. In his work on Article XVI of the Declaration of Rights, 34 the young delegate to the Revolutionary Convention of May 1776 had offered but one draft article, on religion. Patrick Henry, who had himself sponsored it, had quickly disclaimed it when challenged on the floor to explain whether he actually intended to disestablish the Church. Madison had, of course, intended just such disestablishment: SUMMER 1981 �That Religion or the duty we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, being under the direction of reason and conviction only, not of violence or compulsion [a stylistic emendation of Mason's "force or violence"], all men are equally entitled to the full and free exercise of it according to the dictates of Conscience . .. No man or class of men, the article continues, should receive special privileges or be subjected to special penalties for religious reasons, a prefiguration of the two prongs of the First Amendment, the establishment and free exercise clauses. Madison, having been forced to withdraw his own draft, scrutinized Mason's version, which promised "the fullest toleration in the Exercise of religion." He alone, perhaps, in that assembly took one word of it seriously enough to forestall a danger. 35 That word was "toleration," which implies not a right to religious liberty but a privilege granted. That was absolutely insufferable for Madison, for toleration accorded with, and so confirmed, ecclesiastical establishment (as in modern times it can accompany an anti-clerical policy). 36 Although he wrote respectfully of the Dutch "experiment of combining liberal toleration with the establishment of a particular creed," 37 Madison would certainly have rejected Spinoza's views in the Theologico-Political Treatise (Ch. XIX), that the possessor of sovereign power has rights over spiritual matters but should grant religious liberty on matters of outward observancy, only inward piety being private and inalienable. In any case, it is unlikely that he knew Spinoza's writings, especially since Locke, whose Letter he had probably read (as external likelihood and internal evidence in the Remonstrance indicate), admitted to little acquaintance with Spinoza's work. 38 Although called a "Letter Concerning Toleration," Locke's work, by a typical cunning twist, shifts the meaning of the term: not granted to dissenting Christians by the ecclesiastical establishment and its state sponsors, toleration is required of the magistrate toward all churchesMohammetan, Pagan, idolaters (though not-and here Madison differed-to atheists); the magistrate has no right to interfere with either the internal or the external aspects of religion. This ~~tolerance" was not the notion Tom Paine excoriated in the Age of Reason as "not the opposite of Intolerance, but. _. the counterfeit of it," but a demand for a right under cover of a less aggressive term. Madison might well have taken his lead from the thought of the Letter Concerning Toleration at the same time that he balked at the use of the term "toleration" in fundamental law. FIFTH PARAGRAPH 5. Because the Bzl/ implies either that the Civzl Magistrate is a competent judge a/Religious Truth; or that he may employ Religion as an engine of Civil policy. The first is an arrogant pretension fa/THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW sifted by the contradictory opinions ofRulers in all ages, and throughout the world: the second an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation. This brief but resounding paragraph ("arrogant pretension"-"unhallowed perversion") appears to have been retained from the debate on the floor of the Assembly. Madison's notes show that he employed his large theological erudition 39 to bring home to the Assembly, with that muted irony of which he was capable, the politicotheological consequences of the bill. It would require a legislative definition of Christianity: it would require that the law-makers choose an official Bible-Hebrew, Septuagint, or Vulgate, decide the method of its interpretation, confirm a doctrine-Trinitarian, Arian, Socinian-as orthodox, and so forth. The sentiment of the paragraph is Lockean: "neither the right nor the art of ruling does necessarily carry along with it the certain knowledge of other things and least of all of the true religion." In this paragraph alone Madison speaks of religion as a "means of salvation," in contrast to its employment as an "engine of civil policy." In the argument for religious liberty the obligations of religion, not its blessings, count most. SIXTH PARAGRAPH 6. Because the establishment proposed by the Bzll is not requisite for the support of the Christian Religion. To say that it is, is a contradiction to the Christian Religion itself, for every page of it disavows a dependence on the powers ofthis world: it is a contradiction to fact; for it is known that this Religion both existed and flourished, not only without the support of human laws, but in spite of every opposition from them, and not only during the period of miraculous aid, but long after it had been left to its own evidence and the ordinary care of Providence. Nay, it is a contradiction in terms; for a Religion not invented by human policy, must have pre-existed and been supported, before it was established by human policy. It is moreover to weaken in those who profess this Religion a pious confidence in its innate excellence and the patronage ofits Author; and to foster in those who stzll reject it, a suspicion that its friends are too conscious of its fallacies to trust it to its own merits. Madison leaves the universal considerations of religious liberty to attend to the particularly Christian interest in it. The seven core paragraphs of the petition are devoted to that Christian point of view, an arrangement that tellingly mirrors both the encompassing necessity for a philosophical foundation and the immediate fact that a Christian 63 �constituency is speaking. Establishment, prohibited in a purely political context for the sake of the free exercise of religion, is to be yet more eschewed for the sake of Chris· tianity itself. His notes for the floor debate show that he intended to divert the argument from the preoccupation with the so· cial need for religion to the utrue question": Are religious establishments necessary for religion? The proponents' concern with "the peace of society" were, so he implies later, in part a cover for concern with the declining impor· tance of the churches. The end of war, laws that cherish virtue, religious associations which would provide personal examples of morality, the education of youth, and precisely the end of governmental intrusion, not state in· tervention, were the "true remedies" for the decline of re- ligion which he recommended to the legislature. Note the neo-classical notion that the laws should promote virtue. 40 Madison's Christian defense of liberty is in the great tradition of Protestant dissenting writings, especially Mil· ton's Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes (1659), in which he shows "the wrong the civil power doth; by violating the fundamental privilege of the Gos· pel, ... Christian libertie," 41 that is, freedom from forcible impositions in matters of worship. Indeed Milton's whole argument is drawn from scripture, especially from the Pauline letters. Madison, too, alludes to scripture: "every page" of reli· gion "disavows a dependence on the power of this world." The Baptists, whose whole petition was based on the grounds that the bill was "repugnant to the Spirit of the Gospel," however, outdid him in this line of argument. For them, as for other opposing Christians, disestablish· ment dated literally from Jesus himself. "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." (Mark 13, 17). The paragraph next exposes the contradictions of the bill's premise that Christianity cannot be diffused "with· out a competent provision" for its teachers. The contra· diction of fact is that Christianity has indeed flourished at all times without aid-and Madison gives a believer's cap· sule history of its two epochs, the era of miracles and the era of ordinary providence. The more serious contradiction in terms is twofold: the dependence of religion, which is pre-existent, on human policy and the failure of the faithful to trust in God for its support. The argument is rendered in beautifully branching and balanced cola. Fifty years later, Madison would feel entitled to answer the "true question" definitively from the accumulated ev· idence of the American experience, which had "brought the subject to a fair and finally decisive test." Left to it· self, religion would flourish; indeed the danger lay rather in its extravagancesY Madison insisted that "every successful example of a perfect separation ... is of imp or· tance," and that he regarded such success as an indispens- ible empirical test of the principle of religious liberty. At the same time, he was certain that the test would never fail since "there appears to be in the nature of man what 64 insures his belief in an invisible cause ... " But what would Madison have said in the face of an observable decline of "religious commitment"?41 SEVENTH PARAGRAPH 7. Because experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. Enquire of the Teachers of Christianity for the ages in which it appeared in its greatest lustre; those ofevery sect, point to the ages prior to its incorporation with Civzl policy. Propose a restoration of this primitive State in which its Teachers depended on the voluntary rewards of their flocks, many of them predict its downfall. On which Side ought their testimony to have greatest weight, when for or when against their interest? Proof positive that religion could flourish on its own was a half-century in the future, but the evidence of fif· teen centuries, that is, dating back roughly to the Conver· sion of Constantine, showed that legal establishments corrupted Christianity, because they hampered freedom of conscience, "the truly Christian principle." 44 Here, as elsewhere, Madison allows himself the most spirited language for clerical degeneracy, without, how· ever, giving way to that automatic anti-clericalism that possessed Jefferson. Even in his youth, in an early letter to his friend William Bradford (Jan., 1774), he had given a similar catalogue of clerical and lay vice, of the "Pride ig· norance and Knavery among the Priesthood and Vice and Wickedness among the Laity," evident in his home coun· try; worst of all: That diabolical Hell conceived principle of persecution rages among some and to their eternal Infamy the Clergy can furnish their Quota of Imps for such business. The Protestant supporters of the bill would preach the life of early Christianity, but they do not want to live like the first disciples, much less like the first Teacher himself. This passage deals with church business without resorting to the word 11 Church," which never occurs in this petition. Madison opposed not only the "incorporation with Civil policy" effected by a bill proposing state-salaried religious teachers, but the "encroachments and accumulations" encouraged by the legal incorporation of churches. 45 He desired neither state-supported nor richly endowed churches, but small congregations which would directly support their ministers. SUMMER 1981 �EIGHTH PARAGRAPH 8. Because the establishment in question is not necessary for the support of Civil Government. If it be urged as necessary for the support of Civil Government only as it is a means of supporting Religion, and it be not necessary for the latter purpose, it cannot be necessary for the former. IfReligion be not within the cognizance of Civil Government how can its legal establishment be necessary to Civil Government? What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins ofthe Civil authon'ty; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not. Such a Government will be best supported by protecting every Citizen in the enjoyment ofhis Religion with the same equal hand which protects his person and his property; by neither invading the equal nghts of any Sect, nor suffen.ng any Sect to invade those of another. At the middle count, Madison takes up the main point supposedly agitating the proponents of the bill: the dan· gerous decline of morality which the bill was supposed to halt. In his very first extant expression concerning religious liberty, a youthful letter to Bradford (Dec., 1778), Madison had asked this politico-theological question: "Is an Ecclesiastical Establishment absolutely necessary to support civil society in a supream Government?" In this petition Madison has prepared the ground for answering the question in such a way that he can dispose of it by a mere syllogism (modus tollens): Only if religion is within the cognizance of government can the question of necessary legal establishment arise. But it is not, by the first paragraph. Therefore establishment is not necessary. With equal logic, he disposes of the circular arguments of the supporters, who say that establishment is necessary to government only insofar as government is a necessary means of supporting religion; since the latter contention has been shown false by the preceding paragraph, the former falls also. So logical a resolution of the great question was not universally appealing. After he heard these arguments, Henry Lee wrote to Madison: "Refiners may weave as fine a web of reason as they please, but the experience of all times THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW shows Religion to be the guardian of morals." Not really in disagreement with Lee's premise, Madison only disclaimed the inference that government ought to support the churches; he certainly never went as far as Jefferson, who claimed that "the interests of society require observation of those moral precepts only on which all religions agree," 46 which amounts to saying that any church is unnecessary to society. There are some instances of establishments supplanting governments, many instances of their upholding tyrannies, none of their supporting liberty. "A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not," concludes Madison, in the language reminiscent of the Declaration of Independence: "That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed." How does a just government protect religious rights? It protects them precisely as it protects property and other rights. In a short essay "On Property," 47 written in 1792, Madison elaborates a remarkable theory of religious rights which goes further: Rights are property: "In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally be said to have a property in his rights ... " And earlier in the same essay: "He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them .... " Just government is instituted to secure property, in the large sense in which the term includes anything which a person values as his own (leaving to everyone else a like advantage), of which dominion over external things is only a part. Religious rights so conceived establish a kind of internal personal, and external sectarian, territoriality which government is to protect by "neither invading the equal rights of any Sect, nor suffering any Sect to invade those of another." NINTH AND TENTH PARAGRAPHS 9. Because the proposed establishment is a departure from that generous policy, which, offen'ng an Asylum to the persecuted and oppressed of every Nation and Religion, promised a lustre to our country, and an accession to the number of its citizens. What a melancholy mark is the Bill ofsudden degeneracy? Instead of holding forth an Asylum to the persecuted, it is itself a signal ofpersecution. It degrades from the equal rank of Citizens all those whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the Legislative authonty. Distant as it may be in its present form from the Inquisition, it differs from it only in degree. The one is the first step, the other the last in the career of intolerance. The magnanimous sufferer under this cruel scourge in foreign Regions, must view the Bill as a Beacon on our Coast, warning him to seek some other haven, 65 �where liberty and philanthrophy in their due extent, may offer a more certain repose from his Troubles. 10. Because it will have a like tendency to banish our Citizens. The allurements presented by other situations are every day thinning their number. To superadd a fresh motive to emigration by revoking the liberty which they now enjoy, would be the same species offolly which has dishonoured and depopulated flourishing kingdoms. Now Madison inserts two complementary considerations, humanitarian and practical, which had figured in the floor debates under the heading of "Policy." The bill might close Virginia as a religious asylum and also drive out dissenters, and might thus at once prevent much-needed immigration and further thin a population already moving westward at an alarming rate. Madison did not have to spell out to his fellow farmers the bad economic results of this policy: a yet greater shortage of labor power and further declining land prices. The politically regressive consequences, however, needed telling. Citing again his maxim of the contiguity of the least and the greatest breach of liberty he does not hesitate to compare, though with reasonable qualifications, a Protestant Establishment with the Catholic Inquisition. The springiness of style that derives from the adroit use of the two dictions of English, the long latinate and the short Anglo-Saxon, is noteworthy; for example: "What a melancholy mark is the Bill of sudden degeneracy?" ELEVENTH PARAGRAPH 11. Because it will destroy that moderation and harmony which the forbearance of our laws to intermeddle with Religion has produced among its several sects. Torrents of blood have been spilt in the old world, by vain attempts of the secular arm, to extinguish Religious discord, by proscribing all difference in Religious opinion. Time has at length revealed the true remedy. Every relaxation of narrow and rigorous policy, wherever it has been tried, has been found to assuage the disease. The American Theatre has exhibited proofs that equal and compleat liberty, if it does not wholly eradicate it, sufficiently destroys its malignant influence on the health and prosperity of the State. If with the salutary effects of this system under our own eyes, we begin to contract the bounds ofReligious freedom, we know no name that will too severely reproach our folly. At least let warning be taken at the first 66 fruits of the threatened innovation. The very appearance of the Bill has transformed "that Christian forbearance, love and charity, " which of late mutually prevailed, into animosities andjealousies, which may not soon be appeased. What mischiefs may not be dreaded, should this enemy to the public quiet be armed with the force of a law? A crowd of notions familiar in early American rhetoric is now brought to bear on the threat of sectarian strife raised by the bill: Time has revealed, and America is the stage to test and prove, the remedies to old problems; liberty once instituted, innovations may be dangerously regressive. The paragraph permits itself some hyperbole, in the claim of complete religious freedom in Virginia, which flies in the face of the fact that the same Article XVI which Madison cites establishes Christianity, if not as a state church, at least as the public morality; moreover, in 1781 jefferson had indignantly noted that although "statutory oppression" had ceased, common law permitting all sorts of persecution was still on the books. 48 In this section Madison prudently suppresses his opinion that a vigorous variety of sects is an even more practi- cally efficacious guarantee of liberty than a bill of rights, 49 and that disestablishment promotes church prosperity very much as factions well managed produce political stability. The unstated premise is, of course, that doctrinal enthusiasms are as much an irrepressible force of human nature as special secular interests. I can detect no strain in this opinion of Madison which might equate it with the insouciant dogma that truth is a private predilection and that everything is "true for" them that believe it. His preference for sectarian variety rests on the limits and necessities of observed human nature, not on a doctrinal disavowal of the search for truth. TwELFTH PARAGRAPH 12. Because the policy of the Bill is adverse to the diffusion of the fight of Christianity. The first wish of those who enjoy this precious gift ought to be that it may be imparted to the whole race of mankind. Compare the number of those who have as yet received it with the number still remaining under the dominion of false Religions; and how small is the former! Does the policy of the Bill tend to lessen the disproportion? No; it at once discourages those who are strangers to the light of revelation from coming into the Region of it; and countenances by example the nations who continue in darkness, in shutting out those who might convey it to them. Instead of Levelling as far as possible, SUMMER 1981 �every obstacle to the victorious progress of Truth, the Bill with an ignoble and unchristian timidity would circumscribe it with a wall ofdefence against the encroachments of error. In his notes for the floor debate Madison had proposed to himself at about this place in the argument a vindication of disestablished Christianity, a "panegyric of it on our side." He omits it in the Remonstrance in favor of an appeal to the missionary urge. The offending bill is altogether too parochially conceived. Not only in Virginia but throughout mankind should Christianity be propagated. Instead the bill will act to prevent conversions by discouraging "strangers to the light of revelation," that is, infidels, (Madison had first written "light of truth" and then christianized the term) from "coming into the Region of it," which implies that a free America ought to be the natural ground on which revealed religion may be experienced. The final sentence of the Christian section is reminiscent of the great peroration of Jefferson's bill establishing religious freedom, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself: that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, except that the truth of this paragraph is truth of revelation, and the freedom here called for Christian liberty, a very Madisonian harmonizing of the spirit of enlightenment and the claims of Christianity. THIRTEENTH PARAGRAPH 13. Because attempts to enforce by legal sanctions, acts obnoxious to so great a proportion of Citizens, tend to enervate the laws in general, and to slacken the bands of Society. If it be difficult to execute any law which is not generally deemed necessary or salutary, what must be the case, where it is deemed invalid and dangerous? And what may be the effect ofso striking an example ofimpotency in the Government, on its general authority? Again balanced phrases: "enervate the laws ... slacken the bands," "necessary or salutary . .. invalid and danger- ous." The rhetorical questions are intended to give pause to legislators who are ignoring the dangerous political effects of an unenforceable law: Madison's associates antici- pated rebellion in some counties. FOURTEENTH PARAGRAPH 14. Because a measure of such singular magnitude and delicacy ought not to be imposed, with1HE ST.JOHNS REVIEW out the clearest evidence that it is called for by a majority of citizens, and no satisfactory method is yet proposed by which the voice of the majority in this case may be determined, or its influence secured. "The people of the respective counties are indeed requested to signify their opinion respecting the adoption of the Bill to the next Session of Assembly. "But the representation must be made equal, before the voice either of the Representatives or of the Counties will be that of the people. Our hope is that neither of the former will, after due consideration, espouse the dangerous principle of the Bill. Should the event disappoint us, it will still/eave us in full confidence, that a fair appeal to the latter will reverse the sentence against our liberties. In accordance with the symmetry of the composition, the penultimate paragraph returns to the beginning. The resolution which occasioned the petition is cited, though with a little rhetorical interjection ("indeed") reflecting on its insufficiency. Self-government, Madison argues, demands both that the voice of the majority be determined and that its influence be secured. That is to say, the legislature's occasional solicitation of petitions is not a methodical enough polling of opinion, and electoral qualifications as well as legislative apportionment are not fair enough for either the Delegates or the Senators to be truly representative. 50 Truly representative representatives, namely those elected from districts fairly apportioned and responsive to their constituents, would have been less likely to support the dangerous abuse of power perpetrated by the bill. The petitioners hope, however, that even the legislature as presently constituted can be brought to reconsider its dangerous course. The paragraph concludes with a veiled threat of an organized grass-roots campaign for repeal should the bill nonetheless be passed. Here is set out an important aspect of Madison's theory of self-government. It is the idea that when major and controversial legislation is in progress, the people should be given some systematic opportunity to express themselves, because such a plebiscitic element is a trustworthy preventive of legislative usurpation and an added sanction for laws. (There is, however, no evidence that Madison was proposing that this "method" for determining the voice of the majorityj>e incorporated in the constitution.) Accordingly, the fact that Jefferson's law .on religious liberty had been overwhelmingly passed in the wake of this and other petitions was regarded by Madison as a consummating factor: it had the "advantage of having been the result of a formal appeal to the sense of the Community and a deliberate sanction of a vast Majority .... " 51 The majoritarian faith Madison expresses here is, of 67 �course, qualified in other contexts where he designs devices, "moderations of sovereignty," for protecting liber· ties from the people as well as from the legislature. FIFTEENTH PARAGRAPH 15. Because finally, "the equal right of every citizen to the free exercise of his Religion according to the dictates of conscience'' is held by the same tenure with all our other rights. Ifwe recur to its origin, it is equally the gift of nature; zf we weigh its importance, it cannot be less dear to us; if we consult the "Declaration of those rights which pertain to the good people of Virginia, as the basis and foundation ofGovernment, ''it is enumerated with equal solemnity, or rather studied emphasis. Either then, we must say, that the Will of the Legislature is the only measure of their authority; and that in the plenitude of this authority, they may sweep away all our fundamental rights; or, that they are bound to leave this particular right untouched and sacred: Either we must say, that they may controul the freedom of the press, may abolish the Trial by jury, may swallow up the Executive and judiciary Powers ofthe State; nay that they may despoil us of our very right ofsuffrage, and erect themselves into an independent and hereditary Assembly or, we must say, that they have no authority to enact into law the Bill under consideration. We the Subscribers say, that the General Assembly of the Commonwealth have no such authority: And that no effort may be omitted on our part against so dangerous an usurpation, we oppose to it, this remonstrance; earnestly praying, as we are in duty bound, that the Supreme Lawgiver ofthe Universe, by illuminating those to whom it is addressed, may on the one hand, turn their Councils from every act which would affront his holy prerogative, or violate the trust committed to them: and on the other, guide them into every measure which may be worthy of his [blessing, may re]dound to their own praise, and may establish more firmly the liberties, the prosperity and the happiness of the Commonwealth. The right of religious liberty is now examined not insofar as it is grounded in transpolitical conditions, as in the opening paragraph, but with respect to its situation in the political realm. Madison again quotes his free exercise clause of Article XVI, as he evidently had in the floor de- 68 bates, together with a sonorous adaptation of the full title of the Virginia Declaration of Rights: "A declaration of rights made by the representatives of the good people of Virginia, assembled in full and free convention; which rights do pertain to them and their posterity, as the basis and foundation of government." The purpose of the citation in the fourth paragraph was to emphasize the equal application of the right; the point now is the equal, or even superior, standing that it has compared with the other fundamental rights. The religious right is equal with them in its natural origin, in its importance, and in its place of promulgation in fundamental law. (It had in fact been given the ultimate, most emphatic, position, even beyond the article of exhortation to virtue and "frequent recurrency to fundamental principles.") Since it is coequal with the other fundamental rights, religious liberty stands or falls with them. The argument, presented in two parallel sets of alternatives, recurs to the all or nothing reasoning of the third paragraph which is now extended: The least breach of the religious right endangers all the rights at once: Either the will of the legislature is unlimited or this particular right is untouchable; either they may sweep away all rights or they cannot enact the present bill. All the phrases are precise and suggestive: "Will of the legislature" is opposed to "voice of the people" of the previous paragraph; the "plenitude of their authority" conveys legislative high-handedness; "sacred" is used in the double sense of holy and inviolable. The rights of which the legislature "may despoil us" -Madison had first written "may abolish" but then remembered that natural rights cannot be abolished-are then enumerated from the Declaration, but their order is almost exactly reversed, ending with the most specifically political right, a "fundamental article in Republican Constitutions," the right of suffrage." The whole appeal is couched in terms of the constraints of reasonable speech: "Either we must say . .. or we must say .. .. " It concludes determinedly: "We the Subscribers say, that the General Assembly of this Commonwealth have no such authority." The final pronouncement of the citizens, then, supersedes all the previous considerations. It is the principled denial of legislative authority to enact the bill at all. -The legislators may not arm it "with the sanctions of a law," in the words of the preamble. Into the last paragraph of his law concerning religious freedom Jefferson had written just such a denial: No assembly can constrain -a future one equally elected by the people, but it is free to shame it by declaring that if it should repeal or narrow the law, "such an act will be an infringement of natural right." The subscribers' pronouncement introduces the submission of the Remonstrance in a peroration which counters the simplicity of the opening with a grand, intricately branching rhetorical period, praying, as religious duty demands, that two coordinate illuminations might descend on the law-makers, that they may both refrain from violating their trust, and pass measures which will make them SUMMER 1981 �worthy of God's blessing, will procure for them the praise of men, and will establish for the citizens liberty, prosperity, and happiness. Observe the careful enumeration of goods in triads and subtriads; such triples belong to the familiar rhythms of American rhetoric: "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" rise most immediately to the ear. The prayer for the establishment of these goods echoes Jefferson's title: "A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom," which proclaims the republican appropriation of the offending term. The petition ends as it began, with a reference to the Commonwealth. was produced which indeed satisfied them: Certainly they · describe Madison's style with accuracy. They were, I suppose, not so much the instigators as the precipitates of a well-defined and uncompromising taste-well-defined insofar as a deviation truly offended, and uncompromising because no one, certainly not Madi- son, lowered his language for any audience or occasion. All the manifestos, pamphlets, correspondences, petitions, memoranda, and memorials of the time that come in one's way show the same educated correctness of style. Such correctness, then called purity, that is, speech true to its rules, is said by Campbell to be the lowest-and indispensible-rhetorical virtue: IV. Madison's Rhetoric How is the rhetoric of the Remonstrance to be characterized and how is it to be accounted for, reticent and rousing, calculated to persuade and designed for truth-telling, concisely compendious and artfully structured, as it is? In his essay "Of Eloquence," Hume complains of the definciency of modern eloquence. It is "calm, elegant, and subtile," but also lacking in passion and sublimity as well as order and method: it is mere "good sense delivered in proper expressions." The Remonstrance has the precise virtues and precisely lacks the shortcomings Hume names. It is at once "argumentative and rational," grandly passionate and carefully constructed. It is almost as if Madison had composed to Hume's standards, standards probably more appropriate to written than to spoken eloquence. -Unlike Jefferson, whose style failed him on the floor, Madison, incidentally, was a persuasive though undeclamatory speaker. He seems to have addressed assemblies with just the same educated elegance with which he wrote, suiting his matter rather than his form to the occasion. The terms and criteria for judging style used to be fairly fixed; they were to be found in textbooks of rhetoric, or-the preferred word in the eighteenth century-of eloquence, and they were universally employed in characterizing and judging productions. The loss of such a set critical vocabulary is not much mourned by modern writers on rhetoric who regard it as meaningless and unprofitable, and demand more fluid, sophisticated criteria. But its disappearance is a loss. To be sure, a writer was unlikely to improve his style through learning Quintilian's maxim that the first virtue of eloquence is perspicuity or clarity, that vivacity or liveliness of imagery is next in order of importance, that elegance or dignity of manner is also required, and that the intellect has the prerogative of being always the faculty ultimately addressed in speech. (My source here is Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric, 1776, a work based mainly on Humean principles of human nature and popular as a textbook in the colleges of the early Republic. 53) Yet it seems to me a suggestive fact that in the era when these criteria were considered significant, prose THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW 14 Where grammar ends, eloquence begins." It was in such basic studies that Madison, and everyone of his class, was amply trained, and that early, in boyhood. At twelve, Madison recalls in his Autobiography, he was learning Greek and Latin, studies which, if not absolutely indispensable to good style, at least insure that knowledge of syntax and vocabulary which prevents illogical constructions and faulty diction, while shaping the latinate English appropriate to the political writing. "Miscellaneous literature" was also embraced by the plan of the school he attended. Madison devotes a special paragraph to one such work of literature which he read early to great advantage, namely the Spectator, especially Addison's numbers, and in recommending it late in life to his nephew, he writes: Addison was of the first rank among the fine writers of the age, and has given a definition of what he showed himself to be an example. 'Fine writing,' he says, 'consists of sentiments that are natural, without being obvious'; to which adding the remark of Swift, another celebrated author of the same period, making a good style to consist 'of proper words in their proper places,' a definition is formed, which will merit your recollection . .. 54 Madison has here conjoined precepts from one writer of satiny sweetness and another of mordant savor. Both together evidently guided his taste. The young student apparently had an interest in rhetorical lore; at one point he copied out and annotated a long poem on the tropes of rhetoric: A metaphor compares with out the Sign [Madison's marginalia: "as, like, etc."] Virtue's A star and shall for ever shine. 55 Studies conducive to good style and rational discourse continued in Princeton. There he filled a copybook with notes on a course of logic, probably given by the president, Dr. Witherspoon, much of which naturally bore on argumentation. 56 There, too, he is very likely to have heard Dr. Witherspoon's lectures on eloquence, of which extensive notes taken, among others, by Madison's college friend William Bradford in 1772, are still extant. 57 Witherspoon was fully conscious that he was speaking to young men destined for political responsibilities, who might one day have to address "promiscuous assemblies." He tried 69 �to convey to them the dignity and efficacy of rhetorical studies. He deals with the usual topics: types of language, such as the sublime and the simple; the use of tropes or figures of speech; his own set of characteristics for eloquent writing-for example it is just if it pays "particular attention to the truth and meaning of every sentence" and elegant if it employs "the best expression the language will afford." Furthermore he treats of invention, organization, and style, always giving examples, and among them Addison and Swift. But what seems to me most likely to have penetrated to his young auditors was his introductory list of five rules for good writing: I. "Study to imitate the greatest examples." 2. "Accustom yourselves to early and much composition and exercise in speaking." 3. Acquaint yourselves with the Hbranches subordinate" to eloquence, namely grammar, orthography, punctuation. 4. Notice and guard against "peculiar phrases," namely idiosyncracies of speech. 5. "Follow nature," meaning, gain clear conceptions and follow the truth. Who now is bold enough to give such good advice so authoritatively? Rives thought that Witherspoon had had a major part in forming Madison's style. Both show the same lucid order, the same precision and comprehensiveness combined, the same persuasive majesty of truth an:d conviction clothed in a terse and felicitous diction, words which surely describe Madison's style faithfully. -Evidently good style, if not great eloquence, can be taught. One far from negligible feature of this early training was the prodigious amount of studying Madison-and Jefferson as well-did in their youth. Madison reports that he lost his health and nearly his life at Princeton through all too successfully cramming two year's work into one. But as a result both men were masters of their style early: Jefferson was thirty-three when he wrote the Declaration and Madison composed the Remonstrance at thirty-four. Yet these efforts, being completely self-imposed, never spoiled the savor of study for either man. Madison went to his books throughout his life; for example, no sooner had he been appointed deputy of the Constitutional Convention than "he turned his attention and researches to the sources ancient and modern of information and guidance as to its object. Of the result of these he had the use both in the Convention and afterwards in the 'Federalist'." And later, at the close of his public life, he devoted himself to his farm and his books. 58 Such continuous, ready recourse to reading both for private pleasure and political practice is surely a chief contributor to fluent expression. But of course, the most minute history of his studies is as insufficient to account for Madison's eloquence as the most time-honored rubrics of eloquence are to describe it. Finally, it seems to me, his rhetoric is shaped by that rare aptitude for conjoining speech and action, which caused Jefferson in his own Autobiography to couple in his noble description of Madison "the powers and polish of his pen, 70 and the wisdom of his administration." That capacity was part of a habit of self-possession which placed at his ready command the rich resouices of his luminous and discriminating mind .. .. Never wandering from his subject in vain declamation, but pursuing it closely in language pure, classical, and copious, soothing always the feelings of his adversaries by civilities and softness of expression .... With these consummate powers were united a pure and spotless virtue which no calumny has ever attempted to sully. In the traditional understanding the rhetorical art has three parts: first, and least, elements of style such as copious diction and felicitous syntax; next, devices of persuasion such as Civilities," prudent ommissions and emphases together with well-placed passion; and finally, the very conditions of good speech, the veracity of the speaker and the verity of his thought. By these criteria, Madison was a consummate rhetorician. 11 1 Madison's ' Memorial and Remonstrance" seems to me in truth among the finest of those works of republican rhetoric in which adroit enunciation of the principles of liberty elicits their practice. In particular, that strict separation of church and state which implies the total secularization of public life and which, when promoted with heedless or rabid rationalism causes me, at least, some unease, is set forth in the Remonstrance with such respectful, even reverent, reasonableness that my scruples are dissolved in a certain enthusiam for Madison's principles and in the gratitude that a Jew and a refugee must feel for the safe haven he made. And yet the question obtrudes itself whether such texts, for all their fineness, are not relics of an irrecoverable art. A document to whose phrases the highest court of the land has recourse in formulating decisions affecting every school in every district of the country can, of course, hardly be relegated to history. Nonetheless, it is perhaps no longer a possible model of public discourse. I ask my· self why that might be. I can imagine four reasons which would be readily forthcoming. It will be said that the public will no longer listen to educated speech, and it will be said that politicians can no longer be expected to have the requisite training. And again, it will be claimed that the level of language itself has fallen, and also that the complexity of our condition precludes any grandly perspicuous statement of principles. These may be true reasons, but they are also bad excuses. They merit indignant refutation as miserable collu· sions with mere or imaginary circumstance. How we will be spoken to, how we and our representatives will be educated, to what level the language will rise, how our thought will dispose the world-these matters are not yet in the hands of Society or the Historical Situation, but in ours. And in the exercise of the liberties in which that truth is realized Madison is not only a possible, but the best possi· ble, model. SUMMER 1981 �APPENDIX The Remonstrance in Supreme Court Decisions The after-history of the petition is chiefly that of its citation by the Supreme Court. 59 The Court has recurred to the Remonstrance for elucidation of the Hestablishment" dause ofthe First Amendment, both because the latter was also drafted by Madison and because the Remonstrance is concerned with religion in education, as are so many cases involving that clause. The relevant part of the First Amendment runs: Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. It includes two clauses, one prohibiting aid, and the other obstruction, to religion. That is to say, the "establishment" clause prohibits official support of religious institutions, while the "free exercise" clause guarantees absence of coercive invasions of any individual's religious practice. (Justice Clark, 1963). In this country, happily, the court has to deal far more often with putative at~ fempts at establishment than with more direct interference with the free exercise of religion. Therefore the question of the precise meaning of the term "establishment" remains continual1y acute. Madison's wording of the establishment clause is not vague but extremely careful, careful, that is, to use the most encompassing language. Thus the phrase "a law respecting" an establishment conveys a wider notion than would have been contained in the briefer phrase "a law establishing" religion, and, as Justice Rutledge points out, an "establishment of religion" is a wider notion than would have been an "establishment of a church." Such observations, however, are only the beginning of an interpretation; the central matter is the recovery of Madison's meaning of the word "establishment" itself, and here the Remonstrance, which was composed to combat an establishment of religion, is naturally the most pertinent document. The Remonstrance played its chief role in the Everson decision of 1947. Everson, as a district taxpayer in New Jersey, filed a suit challenging a statute authorizing local Boards of Education to reimburse parents of parochial school students equally with parents of public school students for money expended on bus transporation. The argument was that such state aid to religious education constituted an establishment of religion under the First Amendment as made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth. Although the Court held that this particular statute did not constitute such an establishment, Justice Black in the course of his opinion paraphrased the Remonstrance at the climax of his argument for a very strong interpretation of the First Amendment: The "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Justice Rutledge canvassed the Remonstrance at yet greater length for his dissent, to find in it that broad meaning of the word "establishment" which would be consonant with the evident breadth of language of the First Amendment just pointed out. He found the word to have a wider scope of application than that current in England, where it usually meant a state church established by law. 60 Establishment, he showed, could encom1HE ST. JOHNS REVIEW pass measures of all sorts and degrees, including, above all, state aid to any activity associated with religion, especially when coming out of tax money. He argued that all such government support whatsoever was vigorously proscribed under the name of establishment by the Remonstrance and hence by the First Amendment. Therefore the New Jersey statute supporting the children's way to parochial schools was unconstitutional. Rutledge thought the Remonstrance so fundamental a document that he appended it to his dissent. In short, the justices who have cited the Remonstrance have almost all understood it as enjoining an absolute separation of church and· state, and have construed the First Amendment accordingly~a construction named by a Jeffersonian phrase the "wall of separation" doctrine. Justice Frankfurter cites the Remonstrance once again in 1948, in the McCollum opinion, finding unconstitutional the device of so-called "released time," which permitted religious groups to come into public schools to instruct children who were released from the classroom for that purpose. He alone, incidentally, had an ear for that note of the document which could hardly get full hearing in a judicial context: its "deep religious feeling." Again, in 1963 Justice Clark quotes from the third paragraph, that "it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties," to support prohibition of even minor incursions of the state into religion, such as the reading of a super-sectarian prayer in school But this agreement on intent has not been sufficient to decide cases. The Remonstrance has several times been used on both sides, as in the Everson case and, much earlier, in the Mormon marriage case of 1879. There Judge Waite endorsed its doctrine that religion was not within the cognizance of the government, but found nevertheless that it did not protect religious practices made criminal under the law of the land, such as polygamy. Madison himself had confessed "that it may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority," 61 though he thought that the doubts would arise on inessential points. In other words, like all fundamental documents, the Remonstrance is necessary but not sufficient for determining cases. It should be noted that the one judge who wished to give the Remonstrance and Madison's views a narrowly historical interpretation, Justice Reed in his McCollum dissent, cites as traditionally permissible involvement of the government in religious affairs the existence of chaplains of Congress and of the armed forces-evidently unaware that Madison had most emphatically opposed the first and only tolerated the latter. 62 (Such toleration is rationalized by present day courts under the category of "neutralizing" aids, breaches of the wall of separation permitted to counterbalance restrictions on the free exercise of religion incidental to meeting governmental demands, such as service in the armed forces.) Madison, however, excused such practices only reluctantly by the aphorism "the law ignores trifles." 63 Furthermore the judge who rejected most forcefully "a too literal quest for the advice of the Founding Fathers" (Brennan, 1963), largely on the grounds that conditions of education have changed, failed to recall that the two new issues he mentions, universal public schooling and religious· diversity, were precisely among the chief preoccupations of both Jefferson and Madison. It is as hard to find fault with the strong interpretation of the First Amendment in the light of the Remonstrance as it is to deny the principles themselves of the Remonstrance. Yet one must wonder whether, were Madison alive now, he would not recognize certain complicating circumstances, especially where education is concerned. 71 �Within the context of the Constitution the establishment clause is essentially ancillary to the free exercise clause. -It is because state aid to religion inevitably in some way restricts someone's free exericse that it is prohibited. Furthermore, the Court has repeatedly held that irreligion, secularism, humanism are all entitled to protection under the First Amendment, that is to say, they are in some manner of speaking religions, "belief systems": "the day that the country ceases to be free for irreligion it will cease to be free for religion ... " (Justice Jackson, Zorach v. Clauson, 1952). Consequently there is, by the Court's own ad· mission, a sense in which secular schools are not neutral in respect to religious doctrine. · Might not Madison, the fairest of men in such arguments;14 have honored the point, if moderately made, that the enormous preemption of a child's time for secular purposes implied by modern school-attendence requirements, considered together with the financial hardship which justice Rutledge admits the policy of total separation imposes on parents wishing to give their children religious schooling, amounts to a state invasion of religious rights? Would he not have lent an attentive ear to the admission made by Justice Black (Epperson v. Arkansas, 1968) that non-religious schooling cannot help but be, as &Jr example in the teaching of evolution, in some sense anti-religious, and that the mandated secu1arism65 of the public schools is indeed in the sense before explained, a kind of religious establishment, possibly in need of counterbalancing by fairly vigorous "neutralizing aids?" To study Madison's writings on religious liberty is to conceive an ardent wish that he might be here to consider these dilemmas. 1. Printed with introduction and notes in The Papers of fames Madison, Robert A. Rutland and William M. E. Rachal, eds., {Chicago) Vol. 8 (1784-1786), pp. 295-306. I know of no detailed study of the Remonstrance. 2. William Cabell Rives, A History of the Life and Times of James Madison (Boston 1859), p. 632: In this masterly paper, he discussed the question of an establishment of religion by law from every point of view,-of natural right, the inherent limitations of the civil power, the interests of religion itself, the genius and precepts of Christianity, the warning lessons of his· tory, the dictates of a wise and sober policy,-and treated them all with a consummate power of reasoning, and a force of appeal to the understandings and hearts of people, that bore down every opposing prejudice and precluded reply. "This noble production of the mind and heart of Mr. Madison" is, he concluded this _perfectly just appreciation, a triumphant plea in the great cause of religious liberty, "never surpassed in power or eloquence by any which its stirring influence have called forth." 3. Neal Riemer, James Madison (New York 1968), pp. 12-13. Riemer does not rate Madison's rhetorical gifts very high, particularly when compared to those of Jefferson and of Paine. He describes the style as earnest, forthright, simple, unadorned, quiet. "His writings convince but do not take fire." I think his estimate too much reduces rhetoric to oratory. 4. Sources: Papers, VoL 8, pp. 295-98; Madison's "Detached Memoranda" in the William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, III, (October 1946), pp. 555-56; Irving Brant, James Madison, Vol. 2, The Nationalist; 1780-1787 (New York 1948), pp. 343-55; Charles F. James, Documentary History of the Struggle for Religious Liberty (New York 1971), pp. 128-41; Ralph_Ketcham, fames Madison (London 1971), pp. 162-68; Anson Phelps Stokes, Church and State in the United States, Vol. I {New York 1950), pp. 339-45; Manfred Zipperer, Thomas Jefferson's "Act for Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia" vom 16. Januar 1786, Dissertation (Edangen 1967), pp. 24-28. 5. James, p. 129. 72 6. The speeches are extant in the form of notes; see Papers, Vol. 8, pp. 195-99. 7. Gaillard Hunt, "Madison and Religious Liberty," Annual Report of the American Historical Association (1901), Vol. I, p. 168. 8. Rives, p. 631. 9. "Detached Memoranda," pp. 555-56. 10. Papers, Vol. 8, p. 473. II. Papers, Vol. 8, p. 298. 12. To display the bare bones of the argumentation I have stripped it of Madison's diction and added connectives. 1. Because of the unconditional priority of religious duties over civil obligations, religion is wholly exempt from any secular direction. 2. So much more so is it exempt from governmental interference. 3. Therefore even the smallest infringement of religious liberty constitutes an insupportable breach. 4. Governmental aid to religion is necessarily discriminatory and therefore violates the basic principle of equality. 5. Furthermore it constitutes officials the judges of orthodoxy and enables them to use religion politically. 6. At the same time it weakens Christianity by making it depend on secular support. 7. Moreover, such aid contaminates the purity of Christianity. 8. Above all, it is unnecessary to the security of a free government; indeed it is dangerous. 9. It discourages immigration by signalling possible persecution. 10. And it encourages emigration of dissenting citizens. 11. It encourages violent animosity among the sects. 12. In thus hindering free movement it in fact restricts the spread of Christianity. 13. The attempt to enforce so unpopular a law will undermine social stability. 14. Therefore before the bill is enacted into law the will of the majority should be fairly ascertained and represented in the legislature. 15. Ultimately, however, religious liberty being coequal .with the other natural rights, the legislature has in any case no authority to abridge it, unless it is granted to have unlimited power to take away all rights. 13. Since the texture of the Remonstrance will sometimes be best brought out by comparison with Madison's other writings on religious liberty, that dearest of his causes, a list of his chief expressions on the subject is subjoined. I want to observe here that while Madison's language soon acquires a certain canonical quality it never becomes formulaic. -Iteration does not wear away its warmth. 1. 1773-1775. A series of youthful letters addressed to his friend from Princeton, William Bradford. These were written when Madison was in his early twenties and express in youthfully vigorous language his disgusted preoccupation with evidences of religious persecution in Orange County and in Virginia. 2. 1776. His first small but important contribution as a law-maker, his amendment of George Mason's draft of Article XVI for the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Also his own rejected version. 3. 1785. The "Memorial and Remonstrance," his most extensive writing on the subject. 4. 1788. A note on the value of a multiplicity of sects, meant for the Virginia Convention. 5. 1789. An early version and the final form of the first article of the Federal Bill of Rights, the First Amendment. 6. 1792. Essay "On Property," expressing a theory of rights, and par· ticularly religious rights, as constituting personal property. 7. 1811. Presidential Veto Message, against the incorporation of the Episcopal Church. 8. 1811, 1813: Presidential Thanksgiving Messages, with caveats about publicly ordered prayer. 9. 1819-1822. Letters demonstrating that state support is not necessary to the religious sects. 10. 1823. Letter to Edward Eyerett, on the secular university. ll. "Detached Memoranda" (fragmentary essayS sePai-aied from his main works in the nineteenth century), containing historical notes and exhortations concerning religious liberty, and an account of the events around the Remonstrance. SUMMER 1981 �12. 1832. A late letter to the Rev. Jasper Adams giving proofs from American history that Christianity is not in need of state support. The sources for these texts are: 1. Papers, Vol. I (1751-1779), pp. 100-161 passim; 2. ibid., p. 174; 3. ibid., Vol. 8, pp. 298-304; 4. James Madison, The Forging of American Federalism, Saul K. Padover, ed. (New Yark 1965), p. 306; 5. Stokes, p. 345; 6. ibid., p. 551; 7. Forging, p. 307; 8. Adri· enne Koch, Madison's "Advice to My County" (Princeton 1966), pp. 33-34; 9. Forging, pp. 308-10; 10. Stokes, p. 348; 11. op. eit., pp. 554-62; 12. The Writings of James Madison, Gaillard Hunt, ed., Vol. IX, 18191836, (New York 1910) pp. 484-88. 14. Gemge Campbell, The Philosophy of Rhetorie (1776), Lloyd F. Blitzer, ed. (Carbondale, 1963), p. 365. 15. Papers; Vol. I, p. 38. 16. Frank Swancara, Thomas Jefferson vs. Religious Oppression (New York 1969), p. 124. 17. Samuel Stanhope Smith sent him a disquisition "on that knotty question ofliberty and necessity," for light on which, Madison had "frequently attacked" him. Madison's response is lost, but Smith observes in a later letter: "I have read over your theoretical objections against the doctrine of moral liberty; for practically you seem to be one of its disciples." (Papers, Vol. I, 1751-1779, pp. 194, 253). For Madison's theory of human nature in general see Ralph L. Ketcham, "James Madison and the Nature of Man," Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. XIX, (1958), pp. 62-76. 18. "Detached Memoranda," p. 556. 19. Wilber G. Katz and Harold P. Southerland, "Religious Pluralism and the Supreme Court," Religion in America, op. cit., p. 273. 20. Alexander Landi, "Madison's Political Theory," The Political Science Reviewer, Vol. VI (Fall1976), pp. 77-79. 21. John Wise in Vindication of the Government of New England Churches (1717), quoted in Sidney E. Mead, "The 'Nation with the Soul of a Church'," American Civil Religion, Russell E. Richey and Donald G. Jones, eds. (New Ymk 1974), pp. 53 ff. 22. On Madison's views of the problems of majoritarian rule, see above all Federalist, no. 10; also Landi, pp. 84 ff. 23. See Papers, Vol. 8, p. 297. 24. See Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists, 1802; On Roger Williams, see Loren P. Beth, The American Theory of Church and State (Gainesville 1958), p. 65. The American author of the separation doctrine was Roger Williams, with whose ideas Madison was probably acquainted through his connection with the Baptists of his county. 25. John Adams' entry in his Diary shows how the Boston Tea Party caught the imagination as a beginning: "This is the most magnificent Movement of all. There is a Dignity, a Majesty, a Sublimity, in this last Effort of the Patriots, that I greatly admire .... I cant but consider it as an Epocha in History." (December 17, 1773). 26. "Detached Memoranda," p. 557. 27. John Locke, The Second Treatise of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration, J. W. Gough, ed. (Oxford 1976), p. 149. 28. Swancara, pp. 123-32; "Detached Memoranda," p. 556. 29. To Mordecai M. Noah, 1818; to Jacob de la Motta, 1820. 30. "Detached Memoranda," p. 555. 31. Koch, p. 33; cf. "Detached Memoranda," pp. 560-61. 32. Papers, Vol. 1, pp. 172-75. 33. For example, in the Declaration of Independence there is "Nature's God," man's "Creator," "the Supreme Judge of the World." In his law Jefferson used one designation that ple.ased the devout, "holy author of our religion," the very one employed by the Baptists in their resolution against the assessment bill (James, p. 138). 34. See Papers, op. cit., pp. 170 ff. 35. See Hunt, "James Madison and Religious Liberty," op. cit., p. 166. 36. Stokes, pp. 22-26. 37. Letter to Edward Livingston, 1822; to Rev. Adams, 1832. 38. Locke started writing on toleration in the decade before Spinoza's Treatise, which appeared in 1670, though the Letter postdated it (1683-4). For Locke's lack of interest in Spinoza see Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago 1974), p. 211. 39. See, for example, the theological catalogue for the library of the University of Virginia which he hastily tossed off at Jefferson's urgent THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW request, listing an astonishing number of church writers of the first five Christian centuries. (Rives, pp. 641-44). 40. Landi, pp. 80-84. 41. John Milton, Selected Prose, C. A. Patrides, ed. (Penguin 1974), p. 316. 42. Letter to Rev. Jasper Adams, 1832. The opinion here expressed seems to have been current. For example, just the preceding year Tocqueville had asked a Catholic priest whom he had met in his travels through the Michigan Territory this very question: "Do you think that the support of the civil power is useful to religion?" -and had received the same answer Madison was to give to Rev. Adams, a decided negative. See George Wilson Pierson, Tocqueville in America, Dudley C. Lunt, ed. (Gloucester 1969), p. 203. 43. Evidence for such a long term decline in the second half of this century is given in Rodney Stark and Charles Y. Glock, American Piety; The Nature of Religious Commitment, Vol. I (Berkeley 1970) pp. 204 ff. Of course, the question would become moot, should a massive religious revival refute the sociological projections. 44. "Detached Memoranda," p. 554. 45. "Detached Memoranda," p. 556-57. 46. Beth, p. 66. Madison's own church allegiance was so vanishingly weak a factor in his opinions about religious liberty that it can be rele· gated to a footnote. He was, in fact, a born Episcopalian with strong Presbyterian associations from his Princeton days, apparently a communicant of no church, who displayed unfailing respect for the faiths of the sects. 47. Stokes, p. 551. The starting point of the essay appears to be Locke's definition of property as life, liberty and estate in the Second Treatise of Government, Ch. IX. 48. Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVII. 49. Madison liked to quote Voltaire's Article on "Tolerance" in the Philosophical Dictionary: "If one religion only were allowed in England, the government would possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people would cut each other's throats; but as there are such a multitude, they all live happy and in peace." See Koch, p. 76. 50. Jefferson, too, had complained of the under-representation in both houses of the middle and upper counties, and of the arms-bearing population in generaL 51. "Detached Memoranda," p. 554. 52. Forging, p. 36. 53. Campbell, The Philosophy of Rhetoric, op. cit., pp. 215-16, 285, 35. I. A. Richards, for example, in his Philosophy of Rhetoric (New York 1965), p. 70, decries the use of just such terms as "misleading and un· profitable." 54. Rives, p. 25, n. l. It is the spirit of Swift's definitions which I. A. Richards' rhetoric is intended to oppose. 55. Papers, Vol. 1, pp. 32-42. 56. Papers, Vol. 1, pp. 18-19. 57. Microfilm, Princeton UniVersity Library. 58. "James Madison's Autobiography," Douglas Adair, ed., William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, II, no. 2, pp. 202, 207. See also Robert A. Rutland, "Madison's Bookish Habits," The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, Vol. 37, no. 2 (Spring 1980), pp. 176-91. 59. Sources: Irving Brant, The Bill of Rights, Its Origin and Meaning (New York 1967), pp. 400-18; The Supreme Court and Education, Classics in Education No. 4, David Fellman, ed. (New York 1976), Pt. I, pp. 3-124. 60. Stokes, pp. 26-30, gives a history of the term. The contemporary political use of the phrase "The Establishment" is, of course, quite differ· ent since it has no reference to legal confirmation. 61. Letter to Rev. Jasper Adams, 1832. 62. "Detached Memoranda," pp. 558-60; Letter to Edward Livingston, 1822. 63. Religion in America, William C. Mclaughlin and Robert N. Bellah (Boston 1968), p. 275; "Detached Memoranda," p. 559. 64. An example is his reply to Rev. Adams, 1832. 65. For the definition of secularism, see Stokes, pp. 30-31. Just this year the secular religion issue has again been raised in Seagraves vs. State of California. 73 �Cicero's Teaching on Natural Law Thomas G. West We are in the midst of a crisis-not always evident in the comfortable lives we lead, but a crisis nonetheless. A sign of the crisis is the ongoing political collapse of the West; the liberal democracies of America and Europe are barely willing to defend themselves against the insolence of petty tyrants and the armed imperialism of the Soviet Union. Why this somnolent slide into voluntary weakness? Because we are not convinced that we have anything to fight for. We are ready to believe the worst of ourselves, and the best of our adversaries, because we no longer fully believe that we deserve to survive. That is because we no longer know what the West is, and why its preservation matters for nurturing and sustaining the noblest and best of human activities. In particular, we in America no longer know why the United States is the best hope for the modern world. The core of the West is not only worth saving; it is perhaps the highest reason for living. Our best moral traditions and political institutions foster a rational thoughtfulness that enables all of us, to the extent of our abilities, to use words, human speech, to discover and articulate the natures of things. This unique feature of Western peoples became most evident to me when I taught classes that included both Americans and non-Western foreigners, especially students from the Middle East. Because their characters were formed by different kinds of laws and habits, such foreigners are inclined to look upon reason and speech as manipulative tools by which people impose their will on each other rather than as aids to bringing forth truth from darkness. Truth, then, is the opinion of the stronger, of whoever has or appears to have the power to make it stick. A Newsweek reporter expressed his bafflement over this attitude when he visited Iran in December of 1979 and found everyone convinced that Khomeini would make America turn over the ex-Shah to Iran-even though our laws and our self-interest forbade it. The Ayatollah said it, so the people believed it. 1 Americans are different. You can argue with them and get them to see, by means of the argument, what you see. A successful argument is not just a victory of one person over another, for what the discussion is about is never merely personal. Even when Americans fling their convictions at one another in barroom disputes-who is the better quarterback, Bradshaw or Staubach?-they are dimly aware that the issue they are controverting is something real, independent of their boisterous claims, and that the truth about it can be brought to light through words. When students raised in non-Western traditions appear in one's classes, they do not grasp that the purpose of talk is insight, not power; as a result, they usually suppose that the teacher only wants his students to remember and parrot his own opinions. On the contrary, proper teaching provides an example of thinking which students at first imitate; later, they begin to be able to repeat the thought on their own, and finally, if ability and effort suffice, to think by themselves without such help. To learn the connection between rationality and republican political institutions, education is needed. And to perfect one's own rationality, education is needed. But education today most often means getting through college quickly and moving on to one's career. I do not believe such an education is enough to enable students to withstand the assaults of positivism, socialism, and the other defeatist doctrines that dominate current fashion in most professional and graduate schools, not to mention the "real world" outside. As ever, the best education consists principally of a patient, dedicated study of political history and the outstanding Western authors, particularly the classical authors, of history, literature, and political philosophy-' The revival of this education-and it has already begun-is probably the only thing that can save the liberty of our country and of our minds. Cicero deserves inclusion in such a curriculum, no less for his admirable statesmanship than for his philosophical work. • • * 1980. Cicero has a prominent place in most histories of political philosophy, but few scholars regard him as a thinker of the first rank. His ideas, it is typically asserted, are mostly platitudinous and second-hand, taken over from second-rate Hellenistic philosophers. His philosophical works, which educated men read as recently as the eighteenth century for rational guidance in the conduct of 74 SUMMER 1981 Professor of Politics at the University of Dallas, Thomas G. West has recently published Plato's Apology of Socrates (Cornell University Press 1979). This article represents a revised version of a lecture given at Boston Col- lege, Kenyon College and Wake Forest University in March and April �life, are now studied chiefly by antiquarians engaged in source-criticism and historical research.' Even among his scholarly admirers, few would seriously look to Cicero for instruction in living their own lives. His eclipse rivals that of Xenophon, that allegedly simple-minded hanger-on of Socrates who wrote such surprisingly charming prose. I believe that what Leo Strauss accomplished in his interpretations of Xenophon-he rediscovered Xenophon the philosopher by conceding to subtlety the benefit of every doubt-can also, in part, be done on behalf of Cicero.' Besides this scholarly depreciation of Cicero, another and deeper critique is posed by Martin Heidegger. Cicero, or rather Roman philosophy generally, represents for Hei· degger an important stage in the gradual forgetting of the Greek discovery of nature, a forgetting process which has marked the whole history of the West. According to Hei· degger, the very translation of Greek philosophy into Latin effaced that insight. Roman philosophy conceived natura, the nature of things, as present-at-hand and readily available to easy philosophic contemplation and the formulation of ethical doctrines. It thereby failed to renew the vibrant amplitude of the Greek physis, which embraces the emergence and coming-to-be of things no less than their distinct standing-forth in full presence before the mind's eye. The Roman narrowing of nature therefore prepared the way for the modern view of beings as mere disposable resources, easily accessible to human projects and manipulation. The scholarly view of Cicero, being less serious, can be addressed more easily. But Heidegger's more profound charge can also be met. Cicero faced a philosophical-political situation in Rome in some ways similar to our own. As today, philosophical writings about how politics ought to be conducted, and more broadly, about how life ought to be lived, were widely known. But their effect on the formation of the characters of future politicians, not to speak of direct influence on public life, was small. Nor did political philosophy temper the philosophers' nearly exclusive preoc· cupation with private morals, theory of knowledge, the nature of the gods, and the order of the physical world. By tremendous efforts Greek philosophy had achieved its insight into the distinction between and yet necessary belonging-together of nature and convention, being and appearance, truth and opinion, an insight anticipated in the dark lyrics of the pre-Socratic thinkers and given its consummate expression in the works of Plato and Aristotle. But now, in the moribund Roman republic, this grasp upon the tense unity of nature and convention was forgotten by politicians unformed by philosophy and philosophers disdainful of politics. In all of his writings, from the practical orations to the theoretical excursions into epistemology and theology, Cicero strove to reyoke the sundered pair. He sought thereby not only to revitalize philosophy, which in its late Greek appearance and Roman transplantation had become routinized in a set of contesting schools of thought, 1HEST.JOHNSREVIEW each with its characteristic jargon and dogma; he also tried to revive the wilting prospects for political liberty in Rome, where the despotic acquisitiveness and imperialism that had long marked its foreign policy were increasingly employed within Rome itself by ambitious factions and generals, acting against their fellow Romans. Julius Caesar's conversion of Rome into a popular dictatorship late in Cicero's career openly displayed whither Roman politics were tending. Cicero's teaching on law, the peak of his reflections on the nature of the political, epitomizes his twofold intention: to render politics more rational and reason more politically responsible, on the ground that reason and politics are inseparable. Only in the first two books of De legibus (On Laws) does Cicero give a sustained account of his legal doctrine. There is a famous passage on law from the third book of his De republica (III.33), but its value is doubtful because it is a fragment whose context is lost and because it is put into the mouth of one of the dialogue's characters, Laelius, whose views do not always coincide with Cicero's. In any event, Laelius's statement on law is not much different from what we find in the Laws, where Cicero speaks in his own name and the question of law is amply developed. At first glance the Laws offers an array of comforting certitudes. True law is grounded in the eternal verities of God, reason, and nature; and Rome's law, with some mod· ifications, seems to be a fitting exemplar. Rhetorical flights in praise of law-abidingness and piety, apparently nothing more than variations on Stoic commonplaces, grace the pages of the book. Cicero is of course fully responsible for this initial impression, and if many scholars penetrate no further than this surface, they at least grasp the first level of his teaching. The surface provides a standard for politicians and professors who incline toward private gain at the expense of public duty; by "private gain" I mean the pleasure of pursuing wisdom apart from the commonwealth no less than the acquisition of wealth and honor to its actual detriment. For the law teaches politicians that man's end is to know and to choose the good, which requires philosophy and "pure religion," and it teaches philosophers that the soul is born for political society and not merely for private contemplation of eternity (1.58-62). It takes only a modest attentiveness to the order and argument of the work to see beyond this first impression. The Laws is a fictitious dialogue between Cicero himself, his brother Quintus, who was active in Roman public life and composed some tragic poetry, and Cicero's closest friend, Atticus, the Epicurean philosopher and wealthy Roman knight. Like many Roman political men, Quintus is liberally educated in Greek philosophy and poetry (11.17), though not philosophically inclined, and he is an uncritical adherent of government by his own peers, the aristocrats or optimates (111.17). He is possessed by a certain excess of the love of one's own that typifies the citizen and gentleman at all times and places. 75 �Atticus has the opposite defect. His very name, "the man from Attica," signals his long removal from his native Italy to the academic center Athens. His interest in the conversation on law is purely theoretical-one might even call it aesthetic, for he pursues it for the personal pleasure it affords and the trans-political themes it develops, not because of any practical good he might gain from it (1.13-14, 28). He is particularly delighted by the setting of their dialogue, in the summer shade, along the banks and islands of a cool stream in the country (I.l4, II.6-7). In his attention to these pleasures of body and mind he displays himself as the unpolitical Epicurean that he is. Cicero's two interlocutors, then, represent the two di· vergent Roman tendencies mentioned at the outset, un· philosophical politics and unpolitical philosophy, but with this difference: both men are close enough to Cicero that they can be persuaded to follow his lead-Quintus because of his admiration and affection for his brother, Atticus because of his friendship with Cicero and of his probable awareness that law-abidingness protects the wealth that sustains his philosophic leisure. Cicero comprises in himself the qualities possessed separately by his two companions. He shares exclusively with Quintus a serious political vocation and a poetizing avocation, and with Atticus, a dedication to philosophy and admiration for Plato (1.1, 15, Ill.l ). These three topics-politics, poetry, and philosophyare prominent themes in the Laws, and the conversation opens with an exchange on the nature of poetry. Poetry, it seems, has the capacity to immortalize what is by nature mortal; the old oak that stands before the three men will live forever in Cicero's poem, just as the olive tree on the Athenian acropolis is believed to have been planted by Athena and hence to be sempiternal. But poetry, says Cicero, affords pleasure rather than truth; truth is rather the standard for history. And since history too is full of innumerable fables-Herodotus is the example named-Cicero will shortly turn from history to philosophy to bring forth the truth about law and justice (1.1-5, 17). The prefatory conversation to the Laws, then, sets forth an implicit antithesis between poetry, pleasant but untrue, and philosophy, which is true. The contrast raises this question: does Cicero mean that the truth exposed by philosophy is unpleasant? This seemingly inconsequential talk about poetry arrests our attention as soon as we notice a possible similitude, not explicitly stated by Cicero, of poetry to law. Poetry renders the mortal immortal, and, more generally, it bestows life and memory on that which does not exist by nature. By mentioning the example of Romulus's apotheosis in the context of this discussion of poetry's truth, Cicero implies that poetry allots to the gods themselves their being and qualities (!.3). Does not law, too, share this capacity to implant convictions in the minds of men, convictions that surpass by far in importance and degree the voluntary suspension of disbelief that we concede to a well-wrought novel or poem? Poetry and law (law taken in 76 a wide sense, like the Greek nomos, to include custom and tradition) appear to immortalize the transient or even to bring non-being into being by touching our minds and memories through words. If philosophy, which strives uncompromisingly to unveil the true natures of things, is the antithesis of poetry, it would likewise seem to be the enemy of the traditions and beliefs on which law depends and which in some measure law is. The beginning of Cicero's Laws unobtrusively questions whether law contains any truth whatever. Law, like poetry, may be nothing more than a fiction that furnishes pleasure by establishing trust in eternally binding precepts and practices.' Cicero forestalls this positivist inference by drawing a distinction between two senses of the word law: the popular sense, according to which law is "that which sanctions in writing whatever it wishes, either by commanding or prohibiting," and the more learned sense, derived from nature itself, according to which law is "the mind and reason of the prudent man" (1.19). This explanation serves the law's truthfulness by limiting merely arbitrary enact· ments to the vulgar notion of law. But the unambiguous clarity we might expect from Cicero's employment of this distinction is not forthcoming. For he immediately adds that "it will sometimes be necessary to speak popularly" about law, since "our whole discussion is involved in the people's way of reasoning (in populari ratione)" (1.19). We wonder why Cicero must speak at all in the vulgar manner, for he has just said that he will draw his account of law from the heart of philosophy (1.17). We will return to this question later, but a preliminary answer is suggested by the parallel treatment of morality in Cicero's On Duties. Morality (honestum) in the strict sense is wisdom, says Cicero, possessed (if by anyone) by extraordinary men such as Socrates. But the morality that is discussed in Qn Duties, he says, is only "a certain second~grade morality," and the great statesmen who come to mind as examples of virtue, such as the two Scipios and Marcus Cato, have only "a sort of similitude and appearance of wise men." Nevertheless, "we [ordinary men] ought to watch over and preserve that morality which falls within our [more limited] understanding .... For otherwise it is not possible to maintain such progress as has been made to· ward virtue" (De officiis, III.B-17, 1.148). We infer that a forthright presentation of morality as wisdom would discourage progress in virtue, because genuine wisdom is ex- alted too far above the common intellectual capacity and moral taste to be a plausible aim for most men. Most Athenians regarded Socrates as an object more of curiosity or annoyance than of emulation. By concealing the wisdom requisite for strict morality, Cicero allows "second-grade morality" to retain the luster that would otherwise be robbed from it. Nevertheless, the concealment is not absolute, for part of Cicero's purpose is to explain the truth about virtue. The Laws treats law as On Duties treats virtue. Cicero will indeed be seeking true law, but he will also speak with a view to "strengthening republics, establishing cities, and SUMMER 1981 �making peoples healthy" (1.37). Therefore he will not ad· mit Epicureans into the discussion, "even if they speak the truth," because by referring everything to the criterion of pleasure and pain, they corrode the convictions of those who believe that "all correct and honorable things are to be sought for their own sake" (37, 39). Even the skepticism to which Cicero adheres in other works is ex· eluded, so that the grounds for their dialogue will not be destroyed (39). In short, since the Laws has a twofold pur· pose of revealing the truth about law and promoting salu· tary political usages, Cicero will speak about law in both the strict and vulgar sense-and he does not spell out at what times he will speak in which sense. The truth frankly displayed would not only cause displeasure, like poetry de· bunked, but it would also mar the intended practical effect. Before we pursue further Cicero's intricate weaving of the two senses of law, let us first look at some of his ex· plicit statements on the subject. His first is a report of the most learned": "Law is the highest reason, seated in nature, which orders what is to be done and forbids the opposite. This reason, when it is settled and accomplished in the mind of a human being, is law" (1.18). In his own name Cicero restates the formulation as follows: "[Law] is a force (vis) of nature, the mind and reason of the prudent man, the standard of the just and of injustice" (1.19). In the three other places in Book I where law is defined, it is "correct reason" (1.23) or "correct reason in ordering and forbidding" (1.33, 42). Law is natural in the same way that reason is natural, as a gift of nature bestowed on every human being (1.33). But only in the prudent man, whose rea· son is developed as far as it can be, does reason become "correct," and so only his commands and prohibitions are 14 truly "law." In spite of the exalted tone in which Cicero delivers these pronouncements, we note that law is nothing more than the reasonable orders of the sensible man. There is no trace whatever here of a table of definite, eternally bind· ing precepts, of the sort characteristic of the natural-law doctrine, actually medieval, that scholars generally attrib· ute to Cicero 6 His formulation avoids entirely the notori· ous dilemma between inflexible rules of scholastic natural law and the Machiavellian renunciation of any natural law whatever. Cicero's alternative is so simple, yet so radical, that cognizance of it has rarely been taken. True law-Ci· cera himself persistently avoids the term "natural law" (lex naturalis or lex naturae)-true law, then, to put it bluntly, is whatever the wise man orders.' If he commands you to worship Zeus, then worship of Zeus is part of the true law. If he says, "believe that you are sprung directly from the earth itself and that your soul is compounded of gold or silver or bronze," then such beliefs too will be en· joined by true law. Far from being eternal, the true law will be subject to change whenever the sensible man sees that circumstances call for it. And conflict between the positive law of the actual political order, infused as it must be with concessions to particularity, and a higher law whose demands cannot be met in this world, need not oc· THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW cur. To the extent that the government is prudent or that the wise orders of the original law-giver continue to fit present conditions, the statutes on the books and the true law will be one and the same. In light of all this, how can Cicero maintain that law is "one"? (1.42). What center governs the seemingly indefi· nile latitude granted to the prudent man and prevents it from spinning off into orderless multiplicity and caprice? How can what is one be many? Cicero provides an oblique resolution of these questions in the lengthy set-piece ora· tion that occupies the bulk of Book I. The nature of the just, he begins, must be sought in the nature of man (17), and human nature, like the divine, achieves its peak and perfection through virtue (25). Virtue, in turn, is the steady and continuous rational conduct of life, in which prudence follows the naturally honorable and avoids the naturally dishonorable courses of action; virtue is "reason perfected" (45). And since reason, "when it is full-grown and perfected, is duly called wisdom" (23), prudence in· valves the full development of man's rationality and thoughtfulness. From these statements we might expect Cicero to pro· claim unambiguously that wisdom, acquired by philosophy, comprising knowledge of self as well as the nature of all things, is the human good (cf. 58-62). Such a standard would furnish the prudent man with a reliable guide as he crafted his laws for a given polity, just as the legislator of Plato's Republic looks up to the idea of the good as a pat· tern for his artful lawmaking (484c-d). The laws would then prescribe such educational practices and institutional arrangements as would issue in habits of body and mind conducive to the development of reason in every· one so far as that is possible. The variety of prudent legis· lative codes would betoken an application of the one truth about the human good, qualified by the vagaries of local circumstances. Laws and customs appropriate to men who look up to Jave and honor martial valor would be far different from those suited to men who believe in human equality and regard the career of a businessman as more respectable than that of a general. This interpretive expectation, however, stumbles over the fact that Cicero disclaims such precise knowledge of the good. It is true that Cicero allows us to form the im· pression that he believes he knows not only the good but the nature of the cosmos and the gods themselves. In con· sidering his grandiloquent foray, however, we must not fail to notice the light, bantering exchange that touches it off, in which the Epicurean Atticus, who can be pre· sumed not to believe it, agrees to Cicero's assertion of Divine rule over the cosmos (21 ). He perhaps accepts Cicero's teleo-theology because he is aware of its usefulness in supporting the rights of property from which he benefits and which provides leisure for his phi· losophizing (cf. III.37). 8 And Cicero's own joking over this solemn matter is far from reassuring. We particularly wonder about Cicero's true convictions in light of his surprising admission at the end of his long 77 �speech that the controversy over the end or highest of goods, the finis bonorum, will not even be investigated in their conversation (1.52-57). This theme, which provides the title for that book of Cicero's which according to himself is most worth reading, On the Ends of Goods and Evils (finibus bonorum et malorum, 1.11) would divert the inquiry into an extended and perhaps endless weighing of the alternative accounts of the good. We infer this because although in that book Cicero refutes the Stoic and Epicurean teachings on the good, he will not affirm there any definite opinion of his own. To be sure, he finds the Peripatetic doctrine "probable" or "praiseworthy" (probabilis), but this, he says, in no way qualifies his skeptical stance toward all of them (De finibus, V.7, 75-76). Although Cicero does not advertise his skepticism in the Laws, his explicit omission of an account of the good points to his knowledge that he does not know it. Neither here nor elsewhere does Cicero claim to have resolved this first of all moral and political questions. Quintus, however, is quite satisfied with Cicero's speech, and he even believes that the nature of the good has been sufficiently brought to light (1.56). Certainly all those fine words about honor, virtue, and the gods lend themselves to Quintus's sanguine conclusion, but it appears that his urgent concern for a code of law to live by distracts him from the central question of the good, for he now asserts that that question has nothing to do with the subject of law (57). Quintus's urgency springs from the same source as the urgency of law itself, which cannot hold in abeyance its dispensations of what it holds to be just and unjust without endangering the political order. So Quintus calls Cicero and Atticus back from the leisure of philosophy to the practical problems of everyday life that demand instant attention, and thus he unknowingly draws a veil over the unsolved problem. Cicero remarks ironically that Quintus speaks "most prudently" (57), and he accommodatingly closes the discussion of the highest good. How then are we to understand Cicero's account of law? Or, putting the question another way, what constitutes the correctness or reasonableness of reason if no final criterion of good is forthcoming by which reason can orient itself? Even if complete knowledge of the good is unavailable, as Cicero's skepticism implies, we may infer that an approximation to wisdom is accessible through the assiduous exercise of the understanding. Cicero's final peroration to Book I paints a picture of perfect wisdom that can be a standard, even if unattained, of human striving (58-62). Self-knowledge is the key. For once we thoroughly examine and test ourselves, says Cicero, we learn that we are equipped by nature for acquiring wisdom, and we sense that the mind, as a sort of image of the gods, is worthy of care and cultivation (59). But Cicero does not promise a consummation of wisdom; using the future perfect tense, he speaks as one not yet wise, but aiming to become so: "when [the soul] will have ex- 78 amined ... the nature of all things .... " (61 ). Cicero's own wisdom extends no further than the "human wisdom" of Socrates, who, by knowing his own ignorance, is spurred on to an active pursuit of knowledge to supply that defect.' The law laid down by such a man would, I think, have a double aspect aiming at the single end of wisdom. First, like the legal code mentioned above, it would nourish decorous moral habits and vigorous thoughtfulness by means of appropriate rules of conduct and education. Cicero says, "Law should be a commender of virtues and detractor from vices" (58). Second, the law's formulation would itself be both an example of and an incentive to, thought. Perhaps, like the religious laws that Cicero proposes in Book II, the law's proclamations could be discerned, by a close observer, to be deliberately incomplete or ambiguous or an image of something else. The theological preface that Cicero attaches to those laws declares at once that "the gods are lords and governors of all things" and that "it is sacrilege to say that any thing stands above the nature of all things" (II.l5-16). Are the gods governed by nature or are nature's habits subject to divine exception? The philosophic inquiry into the relation of nature and the will of the gods is as it were built into the law itself, for a self-contradiction embedded in an authoritative statement can only be resolved by rational consideration of the doubtful point. 10 I would propose another, deeper sense in which law can be an exemplary embodiment of philosophy or human wisdom. This sense can also help to explain our earlier questions: how the law's variety, which we attributed to the prudent man's adaptation of wisdom to conditions, can be reconciled with its alleged oneness, and how and why the vulgar and precise senses of law are mingled in the dialogue. Philosophy for Cicero is inseparable from its beautiful presentation in particular form: "I have always judged that philosophy to be complete which is able to speak about the greatest questions abundantly and with suitable adornment (ornate)." 11 One of Ciceros' characters in de oratore identifies the complete philosopher with the complete orator (III.56-73), since the capacity to think well necessarily involves the capacity to speak well about what one is thinking. Similarly, if we take a larger, synoptic look at Cicero's teaching on law, we are inclined to the conclusion that the perfect philosopher is the perfect legislator, and that law in the strictest sense is philosophy. If "law is taken as one possible form of wisdom's displaying itself "with suitable adornment," then a well-crafted legal code would be constructed like any other philosophically informed work of art. The variety and particularity of true laws would therefore derive not only from the disparity of men and nations, but also from philosophy's inherent need to show itself forth. For reason only becomes visible in display, and a display is always cast in particular form. Unless the truth that is thought is given "a local habitation and a name," it does not manifest itself and therefore is not itself, for the essence of truth is to be the SUMMER 1981 �unconcealment of what is naturally hidden. It has to be brought out into the open, usually through words. And once truth is given concrete shape, it of necessity appears as a partial, particular, incomplete fragment or image of what is inherently one. 12 Let us return to the two senses of law deliberately inter· woven in Cicero's text. There is a difficulty with my earlier argument that now must be faced. One law, the true one, is ~~the reason and mind of the wise man for ordering and deterring," which is "eternal" and can never be repealed (II.8, 14). About law popularly understood Cicero says: "those things that have been drawn up for peoples variously and for the times have the name 'law' more by indulgence (favore) than in fact (re)" (ILl!). The statements quoted here require that true law be eternal and exclude from it the element of timeliness. Yet I con· tinue to maintain that true law is whatever the wise man orders, which will vary according to circumstances. How can this be? Can one and the same law be both law and not law, both eternal and temporal? Can law in truth and law by convention be the same? I believe they can, for it all depends upon how the one "law" is understood. Inso· far as it is thought through from the rational perspective of the philosophizing legislator, the law is true; insofar as it is understood "popularly," that is, to the extent that its rational conception and intention are missed, then the and since correct reason is presumably reason perfected, then law and perfected nature are one. So Cicero's ac· count of law, his "politics/' is also his account of nature 44 and nature's end, his physics" and "metaphysics." A sign of this is that the doubleness of law, which both reveals and conceals, remaining one while adapting to particular conditions, is like the doubleness of nature itself. Its prin· ciple is one, its forms diverse; it shows itself but loves to hide. 14 When Cicero says that law is "something eternal that directs the whole world by its wisdom in ordering and prohibiting" (II.8); he is personifying, for the sake of his proposed civil law, the truth that nature aims at and that rational man grasps in part. Why is it that when people accept law as a rule to live by, they rarely recover or repeat the discovery that gener· ated its founding? Most men are blind to the single truth that unites the variety of good institutions found in well· governed cities and nations or in books like Cicero's Laws. Once established, law becomes routine, obvious, boringit becomes a convention that reflects only dimly the tre· mendous thought lying behind it and in it. Why is this so? Cicero's comparison of law to poetry suggests an answer. Like poetry, law as convention is sweet. We take comfort in the simple answers affirmed in its familiar cadences, and we do not gladly expose ourselves to the uncertainty that goes with sustained inquiry into its truth. Even when law is only conventionally or "by indulgence" a law, not in we moderns, enlightened as we are, question our religious fact. At the moment when law is conceived in the mind of a and moral upbringing, we mostly do so in the name of a yet deeper unexamined faith in such received opinions as the value of learning, compassion for our fellow men, or the vulgar notion that wealth, fame, and enjoying oneself constitute happiness. Seeing through convention to na· ture, from law by indulgence to law in fact, means repudi· ating the comforts of convention. Only when the law's "poetry," its affirmations of eternity, are read "philosoph· ically" does it become more than an untruthful instru· ment of slothful pleasure. Alfarabi succinctly epitomizes the teachings on law that I am attributing to Cicero, as follows: prudent man, a discovery occurs and truth becomes mani- fest to him, so far as he grasps it, in the artifact he is about to produce. Truth remains present in the law only when it is being thought or rethought in its originating sense. So its truth is eternal only equivocally, during such thought· ful occasions, as the fruit of the mind's vigorous exertion. It is not something lying there present at hand, open to the view of anyone who casts an idle glance in its direc· tion. But neither is its truth a Nietzschean contrivance of the mind or will, that imposes itself on an otherwise meaningless external world. The truth of the law is like that of any well-crafted dramatic or philosophical work. Consider the Platonic dialogue. If the reader grasps only its obvious surface teaching, no "philosophy" will be transmitted or rather will occur, since "the philosophy of Plato" is an event that only happens through an active thinking about the work by the reader, in such a way that he repeats the thought of its author by discerning the weave of its dramatic action and its explicit argument. Such also is true law. True law, as philosophy, seeks to discover what it is. 13 To the extent that it does so, law reveals nature. But "Now these things [namely, the images representing the theoretical things, and proper convictions about the practical] are philosophy when they are in the soul of the legislator. They are religion when they are in the souls of the multitude. For when the legislator knows these things, they are evident to him by sure insight, whereas what is established in the souls of the multitude is through an image and a persuasive argument. Although it is the legislator who also represents these things through images, neither the images nor the persuasive arguments are intended for himself. As far as he is concerned, they are certain . ... They are a religion for others, whereas, so far as he is concerned, they are philosophy." IS nature's own end, its core, is reason perfected, as can be inferred from Cicero's identification of virtue and per· fected reason (!.45), and of virtue and perfected nature (!.25). (Cicero's attribution of reason to the whole cosmos shows that reason is not confined only to human nature.) But since Cicero also links law with correct reason (!.23), THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Although Cicero's specific legal proposals presented in Books II and Ill appear to be a hodgepodge of traditions from the Roman past, they present a different aspect when read with this twofold sense of law in mind. His polytheistic theology in particular deserves scrutiny for its 79 �covert truth, as is indicated by his replacement of the expression "the wise and prudent man" with "highest jupiter" (ILl 0) in the context of composing prefaces to his proposed laws. From here we begin to make sense of the fact that the only gods mentioned by name in Cicero's religious law are jupiter and Ceres (representing, respectively, wisdom and grain from the earth), the household gods of the hearth (the Lares), apotheosized human beings of exemplary virtue, and deified excellences such as Mind, Piety, and Virtue (II.l9-22). Evidently a purgation of the Roman pantheon is in process. The very inclusion of a god called "Mind" in the list ought to give pause, since there is no record as far as I know of any Roman tradition assigning divinity to this name. Religion is the people's image of philosophy. It is opium indeed for those who fail to think, but a stimulant to the rest. We are now prepared to speak to Cicero's most profound critic-indeed, the most profound critic of the philosophical tradition stemming from Plato-Martin Heidegger. Speaking of the translation of Greek philosophy into Latin by Cicero and others, Heidegger says: "The event of this translation of Greek into Roman is nothing indifferent and harmless, but rather the first chapter of the course of the exclusion and alienation of the original essence of Greek philosophy." The rest of the course of Western philosophy, Heidegger claims, leads us through Christianity and modernity to the predicament of today, where an "emasculation of the spirit" reigns, where, in the grip of technology, which reduces all things to raw materials and resources to be exploited for an indefinite variety of indifferent purposes, "all things reach the same level, a surface that is like a blind mirror that reflects no longer, that throws back nothing."" The impoverished spirit of the present has come about as the result of a progressive narrowing of the meaning of being in Western philosophy. For the Greeks, being, or rather physis ("nature"), which comprehends beings as a whole, is that which spontaneously emerges out of itself and endures, standing steadily by itself and manifesting itself. Physis also designates the process of emerging, the effort and struggle through which things become what they are by finding their completion and end. This process includes not only the generation of plants and animals but also and especially the bringing-forth-into-thelight achieved by our thought and speech. Heidegger maintains that the post-Aristotelian tradition, presumably including Cicero, was formed directly or indirectly by a superficial Platonism that forgot the becoming- and thinking-aspect of physis and reduced it to what can be gazed at by the mind's eye (the ideas) and what can be an eternal model for human life to imitate (the good). This forgetting took place in part because of the incapacity of the Latin language to capture the philosophically indispensable resonances of such decisive Greek words as logos (speech), aletheia (truth), and especially physis. Thus they inadvertently deprived physis of its richness and depth. In its place they installed, we may infer, a less ambiguous world 80 of concepts and facts that could be described, to the extent that human knowledge reached, in propositional formulations suitable for dissemination in schools and treatises. This change, in turn, which made physis far more accessible to man, became the foundation for the modern transformation of nature into manipulable material available for an indefinite array of projects of the will. 17 If Cicero truly bears part of the responsibility, however remote, for the degradation of man and thought that threatens to overwhelm us today, it would be wrong for us to defend him. But our discussion of his teaching on law shows that Greek thinking, far from being smothered, was recovered in Cicero's work. Cicero was no stale Platonist. If he had contented himself with being a mere translator, of which Heidegger almost accuses him, then he would indeed have failed to convey the thought of the Greeks, for the Latin language simply cannot perform what Heidegger shows that Greek can do. 18 Cicero overcame this obstacle by the arrangement of what he wrote; he created complex dialogues and double-edged speeches that retained and re-presented the Greek insight into truth and opinion, the one and the many, being and appearance. Cicero's teaching on law is from this perspective a restatement and rethinking of the Greek physis, which Heidegger was the first to recover in our century. Cicero's teaching on law instances the decisive characteristic of the writings of the best philosophers, namely, exotericism. By "exotericism" I mean a manner of writing that presents an apparently straightforward outer doctrine which however is substantially qualified and deepened by the reader's reflection on the movement and details of the argument. 19 By using such a twofold outer and inner teaching as I have described in this essay, Cicero and the other thoughtful successors of Plato recapitulated in their writings the doubleness vibrating in physis itself that was discovered by the Greeks. Nature both shows itself and withdraws; it affords a surface appearance that comes to a stand and yet comprises an inner development, grasped in thought, that gives the lie to that surface permanence. Similarly, the books of Plato and Cicero in their weave of surface and thought imitate and thereby reveal nature's nature. Although Heidegger recovered the original sense of physis through his rereading of the pre-Socratics, he was unaware of the exotericism employed by Plato and later authors, and so when he compared the early Greek physis to the doctrines that followed in the later history of philosophy, beginning with Plato, he plausibly concluded that a forgetfulness of being has dogged the thinking of all the philosophers. Whence followed his thesis that philosophy's history describes the course of a gradual withdrawal or self-concealment of being, culminating in the present "night of the world." 20 When Leo Strauss and Jacob Klein rediscovered the exoteric character of the writings of ancient and medieval philosophers, partly under the im· petus of Heidegger's recovery of physis, 21 the Heideggerian presumption about the philosophers' forgetfulness SUMMER 1981 �of being could be strongly challenged, The multitude of philosophical doctrines among Greek, Roman, and Christian thinkers is not necessarily a consequence of the blind dispensation of fate, as Heidegger's radical historcism would aver. Some of these writers may have chosen their doctrines quite deliberately, with a view to the changing circumstances of the people they were addressing and as the particular embodiment of the writers' insights. The history of philosophy, at least in pre-modern times, may chronicle the thoughtful responses to these circumstances and the various depictions of a ('common" truth, rather than the shifting conceptions of being over which the thinkers have no control. Their deepest insights may well be the same. Hence the recovery of exotericism is the condition for the refutation of historicism. Cicero employed exotericism to redeem philosophy from its Roman and late Greek tendency toward doctrinalism, which treated nature as eternally present to view, lying open to the propositional descriptions and contented gaze of apolitical contemplatives like Atticus. Cicero also directed his teaching toward the educated politicians like his brother Quintus who, being ignorant of the unity of true and popular law, saw no need to engage in abstruse philosophical considerations as a prelude to decent political practice (1.56-57). By directing Atticus's attention from nature to politics and Quintus's from politics to nature, Cicero points each of them to the one truth of which each touches only a part. He thus made available to the Latin-speaking world if not a salvation from the impending tyranny of the Roman empire, at least an example from which a later revival of liberty and philosophy could take its bearing. 1. Newsweek, December 17, 1979, 34. 2. See my three-part essay, "On Education," Improving College and University Teaching 28/1 (Winter 1980), 3-7; 28/2 (Spring 1980), 61-66; and 28/3 (Summer 1980), 99-104. 3. This is particularly so in the case of Cicero's Laws: Elizabeth Rawson, "The Interpretation of Cicero's 'De legibus,' " in Aufstieg und Niedergang der rOmischen Welt, ed. Hildegard Temporini, Berlin 1973, Part I, val. ' ~40. 4. Exem] c Strauss on Xenophon is On Tyranny, New York 1963. 5. This oL cion on law, and the point to be pursued later connect· ing the partJcular laws of Book II with law in the strict sense, were first developed in part by Eric Salem in a graduate seminar paper at the University of Dallas. 6. The scholarly consensus on Cicero has changed little since George H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, 3rd ed., New York 1961, 163-167. As for the medieval doctrine, even St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica, 1-11.100.8) appears more rigid than he is, for although he maintains that the ten commandments are indispensably part of the natural law, he qualifies this by admitting that the only moral precept that admits of no exception is "that nothing undue be done to anyone and that each one be rendered his due; for it is according to this reasoning that the precepts of the decalogue are to be understood." The spirit of Acquinas's doctrine comes very close to the spirit of Cicero's. For a different account of Acquina's natural law-but one that agrees THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW with the tendency noted here-see Ernest L. Fortin, "Thomas Aquinas and the Reform of the Augustinian Natural Law Doctrine," paper delivered at the 1975 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, mimeographed. 7. Quintus uses the expression "law of nature" at 1.56, but Cicero himself never does. As a man of the city, Quintus is unaware of the problem embedded in that facile formulation. As far as I know, the only other occurrences of "natural law" in Cicero are in On the Nature of the Gods, 1.36, and in On Duties, III (several times). In the former instance, the expression is attributed to the Stoic Zeno by an Epicurean critic, who may be exaggerating the Stoic claim in order to refute if more easily. And in On Duties Cicero has deliberately adapted the imprecise manner of speech.about morality described on page 76 above. Apparently Cicero himself, when speaking in his own name, hesitated to yoke nature and law (convention) in an unqualified bond. Cicero does occasionally speak in the Laws of ius naturae, the right or justice of nature (1.36, 40); this expression grates less because of the wide range of ius from "legal enactment" to ''that which is right." Helmut Koester argues persuasively that there is no natural law teaching properly so called either in the pre-Ciceronian Stoics or in Cicero himself: natural law in the sense of an eternally valid binding rule of moral conduct first appears in the Jewish author Philo of Alexandria (Koester, "Nomos Physeos: The Concept of Natural Law in Greek Thought," in Religions of Antiquity: Essays in Memory of Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough, ed. Jacob Neusner, Leiden 1970, 521-41). Hence Leo Strauss's remarks in Natural Right and History, Chicago 1953, 15·4-55, on Cicero's relation to Stoicism are misleading insofar as they appear to attribute to the Stoics a natural law that commands particular moral duties. 8. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 154. 9. Plato, Apology, 20d-23b. 10. The "preludes" to the laws in Plato's Laws perform a similar function, as is shown by Thomas L. Pangle, The Laws of Plato, New York 1980, 445-49, commenting on Laws 718b-724a, 11. Tusculan Disputations, 1.7. The importance of ornatus for Cicero's thought is discussed by Raymond DiLorenzo, "The Critique of Socrates in Cicero's De Oratore," Philosophy and Rhetoric 11 (Fall1978), 247-61. 12. The conception of truth informii:tg the latter part of this paragraph is the Greek one, as explained by Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Ralph Manheim, New Haven 1959. 13. Cf. Plato, Minos, 315a: "Law wishes to be a discovery of being." 14. Besides Heraclitus's Fragment 123-physis kryptesthai philei {nature loves to hide)-compare this remark made by one of Cicero~s characters in de finibus, V.4l: " ... at first, at any rate, nature is marvellously hidden and can be neither observed nor known; as we grow older, however, we gradually or rather tardily come, as it were, to know ourselves." 15. "The Attainment of Happiness," in Alfarabi's Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, trans. Muhsin Mahdi, Ithaca 1969, 47. 16. Introduction to Metaphysics, ch. 1;·the quotations are on pp. 13, 45, and 46 (translations mine); "The Question Concerning Technology," in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, New York 1977. 17. Introduction to Metaphysics, especially ch. 2 and 4. 18. Consider, for example, his discussion of physis (Introduction to Metaphysics, 13-17, 100-101), aletheia and doxa (102-105), and logos (119-136). 19. Leo Strauss has written widely on this topic. See, for example, Persecution and the Art of Writing, Glencoe 1952. 20. Introduction to Metaphysics; the expression "forgetfulness of being" (Seinsvergessenheit) appears in Wegmarken, Frankfurt 1967, 243; "night of the world" in "What are Poets For?" in Poetry, Language, Thought, New York 1971, 94. 21. Leo Strauss, "An Unspoken Prologue to a Public Lecture at St. John's," Interpretation 7 (September 1978), 2; "Klein was the first to understand the possibility which Heidegger had opened without intending it: the possibility of a genuine return to classical philosophy, to the philosophy of Aristotle and of Plato, a return with open eyes and in full clarity about the infinite difficulties which it entails." See also Jacob Klein and Leo Strauss, "A Giving of Accounts," The College 22 (April 1970), I, 4. 81 �The St. John's Review St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Non-profit Org. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review (formerly The College), Summer 1981 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1981-07 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Radista, Leo Parran, Jr., Thomas Sisson, Barbara J. von Oppen, Beate Ruhm Wilson, Curtis A. Sachs, Joe Brann, Eva T. H. Bacon, Helen H. Blum, Etta Aron, Raymond Bruell, Christopher Liben, Meyer Roth, Robert West, Thomas G. Description An account of the resource Volume XXXII, Number 3 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Summer 1981. 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If. la..r.tlj ,, .. t.M~ V t.,lt. ~r,,. . .'...rn.A . ;_,.f.;,..\. : ,, tHl UMf£ D 5TAT£5 ..JI.fl~~N/1 )'& ( % . yt.....L 1 ,. J .,J .l~rt 4 ·;:, ~U•. 1/...vm a ~ re.rrd Jf,(J """~ ~~Jl..~~ �Editor: Leo Raditsa Managing Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr. Editorial Assistant: Janet Durholz Consulting Editors: Eva Brann, Curtis A. Wilson. Editor's Note Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome, but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope in each instance. Reasoned comments are also welcome. Requests for subscriptions should be sent to The St. John's Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD 21404. Although there are currently no subscription fees, volun· tary contributions toward production costs are gratefully received. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW (formerly THE COLLEGE) is pub· lished by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, Edward G. Spar· row, Dean. Published thrice yearly, usually in autumn, winter and summer. Volume XXXIIl AUTUMN 1981 Number 1 ©1981, St. John's College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Cover: Superimposed on Thomas Jefferson's "Rough draft" of the Declaration of Independence (composed between June 11 and 28, 1776) upon a Mathew B. Brady photograph of President Abraham Lincoln with General George B. McClellan, October 4, 1862. This latter photograph was taken at McClellan's headquarters near Sharpsburg, Maryland, about two and one· half weeks after the Battle of Antietam. Composition: Britton Composition Co. Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co. �~HESTJOHNSREVIEWAUTUMN81 3 Inventing the Past Henry V. jaffa 20 Four Poems Laurence Josephs 22 The World of Physics and the "Natural" World jacob Klein 35 "Sexism" is Meaningless Michael Levin 41 Going to See the Leaves Linda Collins 46 One Day in the Life of the New York Times and Pravda in the World: Which is more informative? Lev Navrozov 62 The Incompleteness Theory David Guaspari 72 Philosophy and Spirituality in Plotinus Bruce Venable 81 OCCASIONAL DISCOURSES The Permanent Part of the College Eva T. H. Brann 84 FIRST READINGS Sidney Hook, Philosophy and Public Policy, review by Nelson Lund V. S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River, review by Adam Wasserman. 1 �Abraham Lincoln, photograph by Mathew B. Brady, probably taken in February 1860. From the Collections of the Library of Congress. 2 AUTUMN 1981 �Inventing the Past Garry Wills's Inventing America and the Pathology of Ideological Scholarship Harry V. Jaffa And this too is denied even to God, to make that which has been not to have been. Thomas Aquinas Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence is a book that should never have been' published, certainly not in its present form. Its errors are so egregious that any intelligent graduate student-or undergraduate student-checking many of its assertions against their alleged sources, would have demanded, at the least, considerable revision. It has been widely hailed as a great contribution to our understanding of the American political tradition. There have been "rave" reviews in the New York Times Book Review, the New York Review of Books, the Saturday Review, the New Republic, the American Spectator, and National Review, to mention but a few of many. It has been praised by S\lCh glittering eminences of the academy, and of the historical profession, as David Brion Davis, Edmund Morgan, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. These are men who can, if they wish, split a hair at fifty paces. In this instance, their critical faculties seem to have gone into a narcotic G ARRY WILLS'S Henry Salvatori Research Professor of Political Philosophy at Clare· mont Men's College and Claremont Graduate School, Harry V. Jaffa has recently published The Conditions of Freedom (The John Hopkins University Press 1975) and How to Think about the American Revolution (Carolina Academic Press 1978) He is editor of, and contributor to, the forthcoming Statesmanship: Essays in Honor or Sir Winston Spencer Churchill (Carolina Academic Press 1981). THE ST.JOHNSREVJEW trance, proving the truth of the aphorism that ideology is the opiate of the intellectuals. Among the reviewers hitherto, only Professor Kenneth Lynn, writing in Commentary, October, 1978, has seen Wills's book for what it is. "Inventing America," he writes, udoes not help us to un~ derstand Thomas Jefferson, but its totally unearned acclaim tells us a good deal about modern intellectuals and their terrible need for radical myths." The myth promoted by Inventing America "is that the Declaration is not grounded in Lockean individualism, as we have been accustomed to think, but is a communitarian manifesto derived from the common-sense philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment. .. " By this myth, says Lynn, Wills would have "transmogrified" a ~~new nation, conceived in liberty ... into a new nation, conceived in communality," and thus have supplied "the history of the Republic with as pink a dawn as possible." I think that Professor Lynn is correct as far as he goes. But he does not go far enough. Inventing America was received with virtually the same enthusiasm on the Right as on the Left. The reviews in National Review and the American Spectator were both written by current editors of National Review, surely the most authoritative of conservative journals* (Ronald Reagan's message to the *See Postscript 3 �Twentieth Anniversary banquet declared he had read every issue from cover to cover.) But the current editors, we must note, are apostolic successors to Wills himself, who wrote for the journal for a number of years. His account of his days as an NR staffer may be found in Confessions of a Conservative, published shortly after Inventing America. The title of the book is not meant in irony. Wills thinks of himself as a Conservative still, and somehow traces all his serious ideas to St. Augustine. At the deepest level of Wills's being, there is indeed a kind of Lutheran hatred (and Luther was an Augustinian Monk) of classical rationalism. Lynn calls Wills "the leftist (formerly rightist) writer." Yet there is more inner consistency between the two "Willses" than Lynn perceives. That is because there is more inner consistency between the Right and the Left than is commonly supposed. where Inventing America "comes from," to employ a popular neologism, one must read an essay Wills published in 1964, entitled "The Convenient State." It was originally published in a volume edited by the late Frank Meyer (an NR editor, and Wills's close friend), called What is Conservatism? Later, it achieved neo-canonical status, by. its inclusion in an anthology of American Conservative Thought in the Twentieth Century, edited by NR's Editor of Editors, William F. Buckley, Jr. (It is only fair to add that an essay of mine, "On the Nature of Civil and Religious Liberty," was included in the same volume. My essay, however, represented Conservative heresy; Wills's Conservative orthodoxy.) Frank Meyer and I exchanged dialectical blows in the pages of NR in 1965, after Meyer published an article attacking Abraham Lincoln as the enemy of American constitutionalism and American freedom. (Meyer's own best known book is called In Defense of Freedom.) Meyer in 1965 and Wills in 1964, follow exactly the same line: Calhoun is their hero and their authority, Lincoln the villain of American history. As we shall see, both of them, in the decisive sense, follow a pattern of thought which seems to have been worked out for them by Willmoore Kendall. Kendall was a professor of political science at Yale when Wills was a graduate student in classics there. For Wills, as for Meyer and Kendall, there is no contradiction, nor even any paradox, in identifying the cause of constitutionalism and freedom with the defense of chattel slavery. For all three, the defense of freedom turns, in the decisive case, into the defense of the freedom of_ slaveowners. The main thesis of Wills's 1964 essay was that something called "rationalism" is the root of all political evil. This attack on "reason" has been the stock-in-trade of Conservatism since Rousseau's attack on the Enlightenment was fortified by Burke's polemics against the French Revolution. Most present-day Conservatives would be horrified to learn that they are disciples of Rousseau, yet such is surely the case. For it was Rousseau who, in going all the way back to the "state of nature" discovered that T 4 O UNDERSTAND man by nature was free, but not rational. The celebration of freedom, divorced from reason, has a theoretical foundation in Rousseau which is nowhere else to be found. The Rousseauan denigration of reason, and the elevation of sentiment to take its place, is the core of nineteenth century romanticism, both in its Left phases (e.g. anarchism, syndicalism, socialism, communism), and in its Right phases (e.g. monarchism, clericalism, feudalism, slavery). Romantic nationalism has been equally a phenomenon of the Right and of the Left. "Rationalism," Wills declared as a man of the Right, "leads to a sterile paradox, to an ideal freedom that is a denial of freedom." What such a remark means can be inferred only from the use to which it is put. Here it clearly refers to the question of slavery, and to the Civil War. Concerning slavery, heremarks, somewhat vaguely, "One cannot simply ask whether a thing is just." Certainly, to ask whether slavery was just was never sufficient, but it was always necessary. One cannot distinguish a greater from a lesser evil, unless one can distinguish evil from good. Wills concedes that "the abolition of slavery [may have] been just," but insists nevertheless that the only politically relevant question was "whether it [was] constitutional." For "what is meant by constitutional government" Wills turns to that statesman of the Old South, the spiritual Father of the Confederacy, John C. Calhoun. According to Calhoun, we are told, constitutional gov·ernment means Hthe government in which all the free forms of society-or as many as possible-retain their life and 'concur' in a political area of peaceful cooperation and compromise." We can now better understand Wills's polemic against "rationalism," since among the "free forms" which, by the foregoing statement, ought to be retained, was the institution of chattel slavery. It was not the slaves whose concurrence Calhoun's constitutional doctrine required, but only those who had an interest in preserving, protecting, and defending slavery. Calhoun provided the slaveholders a constitutional mechanism, in the supposed rights of nullification and secession, to veto any national (or federal) legislation that they regarded as hostile to the interests of slavery. Calhoun's constitutionalism, based upon supposed rights of the states, was originally forged in the fires of the nullification controversy, between 1828 and 1839. Later it was elaborated in two books, the Disquisition on Government, and the Discourse on the Constitution. Calhoun's main dialectical adversary in 1830 was no one less than the Father of the Constitution, James Madison, although his principal political adversary was President Andrew Jackson, backed in the Senate by Daniel Webster. It was as the heir of Madison, Jackson, Webster (and others) that Lincoln compounded his constitutional doctrine. Lincoln's genius proved itself less by its originality than by the ability to reduce a complex matter to its essentials, and to express those essentials in profound and memorable prose. The essence of a constitutional regime, according to Lincoln, was that it was based upon the consent of the governed. And the consent of the governed was required, because AUTUMN 1981 �"all men are created equal." In 1964, Wills rejected Lincolnian constitutionalism because (like the Declaration) it was rational. In 1978, he rejects it because it is based upon an allegedly mistaken understanding of the Declaration. In Inventing America, he will undercut what Lincoln has made of the Declaration, by unleashing a barrage of fanciful scholarship designed to transform the Declaration's lucid doctrine of self-evident truths into esoteric eighteenth century mysteries. Wills's 1964 essay follows the conventional path of Confederate apologists since the Civil War (and Wills is a native of Atlanta). He tries to make it appear that, on the one hand, Lincoln's war was an abolitionist crusade and, on the other, that the South was defending, not slavery, but constitutionalism. Nothing could be further from the truth. As we shall presently see, however, Inventing America is less a book about Thomas jefferson and the Declaration of Independence, than it is a book against Abraham Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address. make the record straight, as against the 1964 Garry Wills and his preceptors of the Right, as to what purposes were in conflict, that led to the Civil War, or the War for the Union. (It was not a War between the States.) First of all, there was no disagreement between Abraham Lincoln and the followers of John C. Calhoun that slavery was a lawful institution in some fifteen of the States. Moreover, it was agreed that where slavery was lawful, it was under the exclusive control of the States, and that the federal government had no jurisdiction over it. In his inaugural address, Lincoln quoted from a statement he had made many times before, in which he said that he had "no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists." He said that he believed that he had "no lawful right to do so," and added that he "had no inclination to do so." Lincoln's anti-slavery policy was comprehended completely by his avowed purpose to have excluded slavery, by federal law, from the national territories, where it had not already established itself. It is true that Lincoln believed, as, indeed, his pro-slavery antagonists believed, that slavery as an institution in the United States was highly volatile, and that if its expansion were prevented, its contraction would set in. And, it was further believed-on both sides-that if contraction once set in, slavery would be, in Lincoln's words, "in course of ulti~ mate extinction." Lincoln believed that, in the understanding of the Founding Fathers, slavery was an evil. It was an evil condemned by the principles of the Declaration, which Lincoln called "the father of all moral principle among us." It was an evil to which certain constitutional guarantees were given, in the political arrangements of the Founding, because at the time there did not appear to be any alternative arrangements which would not have been disruptive L ET US HERE THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW of the Union. Yet the Fathers showed their opposition to its perpetuation in various ways: by the limit placed upon the foreign slave tra-de, and by the prohibition upon slavery in the Northwest Territory, among others. They had left the institution of slavery where, to repeat, "the public mind might rest in the belief that it was in course of ultimate extinction." Such a belief, Lincoln held, was absolutely necessary, if the slavery question were not to agitate the public mind, and threaten the perpetuity of the Union. Yet the expectations of the Fathers had been upset: by the invention of the cotton gin, by the progress of the factory system, by the enormous expansion of the cotton economy, and with the latter, the expansion of the demand for slave labor. These changes culminated, in time, in the most sinister change of all: that change in at least a part of the public mind which, from regarding slavery as at best a necessary evil, now began to look upon it as a positive good. With this, slavery sought expansion into new lands: into the lands acquired from France in 1803 (the Louisiana Purchase), and into the lands acquired from Mexico as a result of the war that ended in 1848. To prevent this expansion of slavery, the Republican Party was formed in 1854, and, in 1860, elected Abraham Lincoln to be sixteenth President of the United States. The great ante-bellum political question, the one that dwarfed and absorbed all others, was the question of whether slavery should be permitted in the territories of the United States, while they were territories, and before they became states. The dialectics of this dispute became as complicated as any thirteenth century theological controversy. Yet in the end the legal and political questions resolved themselves into moral questions, and the moral questions into a question of both the meaning and the authority of the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution itself was ambiguous-if not actually self-contradictory-as to whether Negro slaves were human persons or chattels. In fact, the Constitution refers to slaves (which are never explicitly mentioned before the Thirteenth Amendment) only as persons, even in the fugitive slave clause. But by implication, it also refers to them as chattels, since they were so regarded by the laws of the states that the fugitive slave clause recognized. But the logic of the idea of a chattel excludes that of personality, while that of a person excludes that of chatteldom. The Fifth Amendment of the Constitution forbade the United States to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, except by due process of law. Did this forbid the United States to deprive any citizen of a slave state of his Negro chattel, when he entered the territory of Kansas? Or did it forbid the United States to deprive any Negro person of his liberty, when he entered that same territory? Since the language of the Constitution was equally consistent with two mutually exclusive interpretations, there was no way to resolve the meaning of the Constitution, from the language of the Constitution alone. For Lincoln the question was resolved by the Declaration of Independence, by the proposition that all men are created equal. The right of 5 �persons to own property under the Constitution as under any substance. Rather was he "the great artist of America's the laws of nature and of nature's God," was derivative romantic period." By his "democratic-oracular tone" he from their right, as human beings, to life and to liberty. Such an understanding of the Declaration alone gave life and meaning to the Constitution. Wills, in "The Conve· nient State," repudiates the Declaration. In Inventing America, he denies that it has any such meaning as Lincoln found in it. In the course of denying that meaning, he denies some of the most undeniable facts of American history. invested the Declaration with a meaning that the Gettysburg Address canonized, but which has nothing in com· mon with the document drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1776! The Civil War was not, however, fought because of any merely abstract moral judgment concerning the ethics of treating human beings as chattels. It was fought because eleven states of the Union "seceded," meaning that they repudiated and took arms against the Constitution and the laws of the United States. They did so because they refused to accept the lawful election of a President who believed that slavery ought to be excluded by law from United States territories. (The President, by himself, had no authority to accomplish that exclusion. Nor was there a majority in Congress to pass such a law, before the representatives of the "seceding" states left Washington.) Slavery was, in fact, abolished as a result of the Civil War. This abolition was accomplished, in part, by the Emancipation Proclamation. It was consummated by the Thir- 11 * * * in the free states of the antebellum United States, for public opinion to acquiesce in the proposition that slavery was in itself neither good nor evil, and that it was best to leave to the people of a territory the decision whether they should permit slavery as one of their domestic institutions. This was the famous doctrine of "popular sovereignty," advanced by Lincoln's redoubtable opponent, Stephen A. Douglas. Douglas's doctrine was both appealing and plausible, since it seemed to rest upon and embody the very kernel of the idea of popular self-government, that "the people shall be judge." Here is how Lincoln-dealt with it. The following is from Lincoln's Peoria speech, of October 1854: I T WAS NOT POSSIBLE, The doctrine of self-government is right-absolutely and eternally right-but it has no just application as here attempted. Or perhaps I should rather say that whether it has such application depends upon whether a negro is not or is a man. If he is not a man, why in that case, he who is a man may, as a matter of self-government, do just as he pleases with him. But if the negro is a man, is it not to that extent a total destruction of self-government, to say that he too shall not govern himself? When the white man governs himself that is self-government; but when he governs himself, and also governs another man, that is more than self-government-that is despotism. If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that "all men are created equal;" and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another. [All emphasis is Lincoln's.] I have quoted so much of classic Lincolniana here, to bring before the reader an example of that reasoning that Garry Wills dismisses and ridicules. For Lincoln, of course, the article of his "ancient faith" was such, not be- cause it was inherited, but because it was true. Inventing America was written for no other reason than to obfuscate and deny what Lincoln here affirmed. The Declaration, Wills writes, "is written in the lost language of the Englightenment." "It is dark with unexamined lights." It embodies "the dry intellectual formulae of the eighteenth century" which according to Wills "were traced in fine acids of doubt, leaving them difficult to decipher across the intervals of time and fashion." Wills does not think that Lincoln-like Calhoun-was a political thinker of 6 teenth Amendment. The former was a war measure, aimed at the property of the enemies of the United States, in arms against the United States. But we cannot forget that the destruction of property by the Proclamation had a double effect, due to the peculiarity of the "peculiar institution" at which it was directed. By the laws governing this institution, certain human beings were legally defined as chattels. Interestingly, the root meanings of both "peculiar" and of "chattel" refer to "cattle." But some eightysix thousand of these human beings who had hitherto been regarded by law as no more than cattle, enlisted and fought in the Union armies, many of them sealing with their blood their right to that freedom that the Declaration of Independence had proclaimed to be the universal birthright of mankind. Nevertheless, the Civil War was not, we repeat, an abolitionist crusade. It was a war to preserve the Union, to prove that there could not be a successful appeal, as Lincoln said, from ballots to bullets. Emancipation and abolition became, in the course of the war, and because of the war, indispensable constitutional means to a constitutional end. Let us never forget this just but tragic consummation of our history: that men who had been called cattle proved their manhood in arms, and provided indispensable help to save a Union which thereby became theirs. They also vindicated the Declaration ofln· dependence, by proving that human laws which rest upon a denial of the laws of nature cannot long endure. The Union endured, but only by repudiating that denial and becoming a different Union. The original Union-or nation-embodied the Original Sin of human slavery. With· out "a new birth of freedom" it must needs have perished from the earth. It is this understanding of the Declaration of Independence, in the light of what "fourscore and seven years" had revealed as to its meaning, that is immortalized by the Gettysburg Address, but that Inventing America maliciously attacks. AUTUMN 1981 �in 1964 that in a constitutional regime "the free forms of society ... 'concur' in ... peaceful cooperation and compromise," he was using Calhounian Confederate code language, implying the rightfulness and constitutionality of "secession." Con· versely, he was implying the wrongfulness and unconstitutionality of Lincoln's executive action to preserve the Constitution and the Union. But what was this vaunted ''right of secession"? Lincoln called it an "ingenious sophism" according to which "any State of the Union may, consistently with the national Constitution, and therefore lawfully and peacefully, withdraw from the Union without the consent of the Union or of any other State." [Lincoln's emphasis.] But, Lincoln asked, if one can reject the constitutional decision of a constitutional majority, whenever one dislikes that decision, how can there be any free government at all? Unanimity is impossible. Government that is both constitutional and popular also becomes impossible, if the principle of "secession" is once granted. With what right, Lincoln asked, can the seceders deny the right of secession against themselves, if a discontented minority should arise amongst them? In 1848 Henry David Thoreau published his essay, "Civil Disobedience." At the same time, Thoreau called for the secession of Massachusetts from the Union. He adopted the pattern of abolitionists generally, who declared that there should be "No Union with slaveholders." Thus Thoreau invoked an alleged right of secession against slavery, as Calhoun's followers would invoke it for the sake of slavery. But Thoreau brushed aside any such notion as that of the "concurrent majority" in Calhoun's sense. Thoreau saw quite clearly that the argument of a minority veto upon majority action, in any matter of interest that could be called one of conscience, did not admit of any stopping point, short of the minority of one. Thoreau declared frankly that, although he preferred "that government ... which governs least," he would not be satisfied except with that government "which governs not at all." Thoreau believed in the withering away of the state quite W HEN WILLS WROTE as much as Karl Marx, and saw the best regime as an anar- chist regime, also quite as much as Marx. But Lincoln, in 1861, showed by unrefutable logic that Calhoun's premises led to Thoreau's conclusions. In short, despotism leads to anarchy, as surely as anarchy leads to despotism. The Garry Wills of 1964 defended despotism. In the later sixties and early seventies, Garry Wills joined those who were protesting and demonstrating in behalf of their Thoreauvian consciences, in behalf of those causes which, in the name of conscience, would arrest the process of constitutional government. But the earlier Wills and the later Wills are like two segments of the same circle. Each leads into the other: like anarchy and despotism. I * * * differs from the later one, as John C. Calhoun differs from Henry David Thoreau, so also do the two "Willses" differ as George Fitzhugh and Karl F THE EARLIER WILLS THE ST.JOHNSREVIEW Marx. Fitzhugh (1806-1881), after the death of Calhoun in 1850, became the leading publicist and intellectual protagonist of the thesis that slavery was a positive good. Of all the pro-slavery writers, none roused the anger of Abraham Lincoln more than he did. Yet Lincoln viewed Fitzhugh's argument with a certain grim satisfaction, since it arrived at the conclusion that Lincoln always insisted followed from the pro-slavery premises: namely, that if slavery was a positive good for black men, then it must also be good for white men. Calhoun had already argued that, in the burgeoning conflict in the industrial North, between capital and labor, the South, with its stability rooted in chattel slavery, would be the force making for equilibrium between the two great factions. Fitzhugh went a step farther: only by the enslavement of the white work force, could the North achieve that equilibrium. By way of contrast, Lincoln declared, in March, 1860, "I am glad to know there is a system of labor where the laborer can strike if he wants to! I would to God that such a system prevailed all over the world." It is a matter of the highest moment for students of the political scene today, to understand that what is now called Conservatism, and what is now called Liberalism (although neither is properly so called), have their common ground in the rejection of the principles of the American Founding, above all in the rejection of the principles of the Declaration of Independence. On both sides, there is a peculiar hatred of Abraham Lincoln, because of the renewed vitality he gave to the authority of the Declaration, in and through the Gettysburg Address. The Liberalism of today-or, more properly the Radical Liberalism of today-stems largely from the Abolitionism of the ante-bellum North (not to mention its successor in the Reconstruction era). And the abolitionist critique of Northern free society, and the critique by Fitzhugh and his pro-slavery coadjutors of that same free society, were not only virtually identical, but were hardly distinguishable from the Marxist critique of capitalism. Anyone today reading the pro-slavery literature of the ante-bellum South, must be struck by the constant reference to Northern workers as ''wage slaves." Indeed, if someone reading these tracts did not know where they came from, and when, he might reasonably suppose that they were written by Marxists of a later period, or even by Bolsheviks. The general argument against Northern capitalism-which as we noted was shared with the Abolitionists-ran as follows. The "free workers" depended upon the owners for their livelihood. But the owners employed them only when they could make a profit from their labor. There was no provision for the workers during the slack periods of business; but neither was there provision for them when they were too young, too old, too sick, too feeble, or too handicapped to be profitably employed. In these respects, Fitzhugh (and all the other defenders of slavery) argued, slavery, with its traditions of paternalism and patriarchalism, with its ethics of responsibility for masters no less than of obedience for slaves, was morally 7 �as well as economically superior. Thus Fitzhugh, at the end of Cannibals All! (1857) addresses the Abolitionists as follows. (In today's parlance, a Conservative addressing a Radical Liberal, or Garry Wills, vintage 1964, addressing Garry Wills, vintage 1978): As we are a Brother Socialist, we have a right to prescribe for the patient; and our Consulting Brethren, Messrs. Garrison, Greeley, and others, should duly consider the value of our opinion. Extremes meet-and we and the leading abolitionists differ but a hairbreadth. We ... prescribe more of government; they insist on No-Government. Yet their social institutions would make excellently conducted Southern sugar and cotton farms, with a head to govern them. Add a Virginia overseer to Mr. Greeley's Phalansteries, and Mr. Greeley and we would have little to quarrel about. Extremes do indeed meet. "Phalansteries" were the Fourierist anticipation of the later and better known "communes" and "soviets." Nearly a century before Hayek's Road to Serfdom, Fitzhugh saw with perfect clarity the inner identity of the slave system and a socialist system. We noted earlier the denigration of reason, and the elevation of sentiment, that characterized the radical thought~equally of the Left and the Right-of the nineteenth century. Capitalism, Marx declared, reduces all human relations to "the naked cash nexus." It is this ~~nakedness," this reducton of man to a "commodity" which ((alienates" him, and leaves him feeling alone in a world without meaning. It is Marxism's promise to restore "community" (where all men will be "comrades"), that is the source of that magnetism to which we have adverted. No promise of wealth to mere "individuals" by a market economy can possibly compete for long with this secularization of Christian eschatology. But Marx's communist moral vision is itself adapted from the moral vision of the ancien regime that we find in Edmund Burke. From the standpoint of historical dialectics, it is true that the bourgeois regime is "progressive" compared with its predecessor_ That is because, in stripping away ''illusions," it prepared the way for the revolution of the proletariat. Intrinsically, however, the ancien regime is more humanly desirable, even to Marx, because these self-same illusions made man at home in his world. Men are not as ''alien- as if Conservatism is wedded to the free market economy. But that is true only on the surface. Garry Wills deserted Conservatism rather than embrace the free market. Others embraced the free market, rather than submit themselves to the authoritarianism of the Left. But Conservatives who embrace the free market, not as Abraham Lincoln did, because it implements the moral principles of the Declaration of Inde- T ODAY IT SEEMS pendence, but because it is "value free," are building their politics on that same "House Divided" as the ante-bellum Union. For a free market economy committed to nothing but "consumer sovereignty" does not differ essentially from a "popular sovereignty" that is free to choose slavery. Those who look backward to slavery, and those who look forward to the dictatorship of the proletariat, will always have the better of an argument founded upon "ethical neutrality." Critics of Marxism in our time, notably the patrons of the free market economy, constantly marvel at the survival of Marxism as an intellectual force (notably in the minds of college professors of the liberal arts). They marvel at the apparent immunity of Marxism to the disastrous fate of every single one of Marx's predictions, based upon his analysis of the dynamics of capitalism. And this, moreover, despite his claim of "scientific" status for his analysis, and his staking of his claim to that status upon the verification of these same predictions. But the magnetic core of Marxism, the source of the power of its attraction, consists not in its economic analysis, or its economic claims, but in its moral analysis, and in its moral claims. What follows is a representative passage from the Manifesto: The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors." 8 ated" under feudalism as they are under capitalism. For in the ancien regime there is the illusion that, in being governed by his "natural superiors" the superiors and inferiors are joined together in ucommunity," an organic relation- ship in which the whole gives independent meaning to each of its human parts. In the meaning that the proletarian whole gives to the lives of each of the comrades, it resembles the feudal order. This is why R. H. Tawneyhimself a socialist-could remark, with profound insight, that "the last of the Schoolmen was Karl Marx." Both feudalism and communism see themselves as bonded into a community, which is denied to man in "the lonely crowd" of the de-humanized bourgeois-capitalistic order. Burke's romantic imagination dignified the morality of inequality, of the ancien regime. Here, in truth, is the inspiration of Marx's moral imagination. What follows are excerpts from the Reflections on the Revolution in France: H ERE IS HOW It is now sixteen or seventeen years, since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness ... and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision ... Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men . .. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever . .. All the pleasing illusions . .. are to be dissolved by this conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of AUTUMN 1981 �life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furn· Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, ished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature . .. are to be example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by when built. exploded ... On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is but a woman ... In another famous line, Burke also spoke of that "digni· fied obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom." Here was the very spiritual charter or gospel of the Confederacy, in building a polity upon chattel slavery. For make no mistake, it was this spiritual justification of the ancien regime that became the ideology of the Holy Alliance, and that served the cause of American slavery, when it came across.the seas. For the "exalted freedom" of the slaves was compared, to its disadvantage, with the debased freedom of the "wage slaves" of the bourgeois order. How these "superadded ideas" appeared to the leader of the American Revolution, may be inferred from what Washington wrote in 1783: The foundation of our empire was not laid in the gloomy ages of ignorance and superstition; but at an epoch when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any other period. Everyone knows that Karl Marx called revealed religion "the opiate of the people." But Marx's critique of Chris· tianity, the very foundation of his system, also had its lum· inous antecedent in Burke. Here is what Burke wrote, in the Reflections, before Marx was born: The body of the people ... must respect that property of which they cannot partake. They must labor to obtain what by labor can be obtained; and when they find, as they commonly do, the success disproportioned to the endeavor, they must be taught their consolation in the final proportions of eternal justice. Of this consolation, whoever deprives them, deadens their industry, and strikes at the root of all acquisition as of all conservation. To convert Burkean Conservatism into Revolutionary Communism, all that was necessary was to declare that the disproportion between labor's endeavor and labor's success was the Hsurplus value" appropriated by the owning classes. To make the proletariat revolutionary, it was necessary to deprive them of that meretricious consola· tion in the "final proportions of eternal justice." Marx did not state more clearly than Burke the utility of revealed religion for maintaining a regime of unmerited privilege. here to compare the proto-Marxism of Burke, and the Marxism of Marx, with Abraham Lin· coln. Here is how Lincoln teaches respect for private property: I T IS DESIRABLE THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW Concerning the priority of labor to capital, Lincoln was as emphatic as Marx: Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor; and could not exist if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration. (Nevertheless] Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights . .. What the rights of Capital are, is seen in the following: That men who are industrious and sober and honest in the pursuit of their own interests should after a while accumulate capital, and after that should be allowed to enjoy it in peace, and . .. to use it to save themselves actual labor, and hire other people to labor for them is right. The common ground of Burke and Marx is the idea that morality-whether illusory or real-is ineluctably grounded in stratified and invincible class distinctions. For Burke, this stratification follows the arbitrary lines of the feudal regime. It requires, in the name of the myths of such a re· gime, an unequal distribution of the rewards of life, along the lines of class and caste. Yet the proletarian society of the future-the classless society of Marx-is nothing but a mirror image of that very same feudalism. For it is as arbitrary in its commitment to an equal distribution of the rewards of life, as the other is to an unequal distribution. For arbitrary equality-that is to say, giving equal rewards to unequal persons-is as unjust as unequal rewards to equal persons. Both are equally unjust, for the same reasons. The regime of the American Founding, however imperfect the implementation of its principles, is in its principles the perfectly just middle way between these two extemes. As a regime of equal rights, it recognizes the justice of unequal rewards. There is, said James Madison, "a diversity in the faculties of men from which the rights of property originate." "The protection of these faculties," he added, "is the first object of government." Because of this equal protection of unequal faculties, wealth accumu· lates and social classes become distinguishable. But neither accumulations of wealth, nor social classes, are fixed in any immutable pattern. As Lincoln declared, on one of many similar occasons, There is no permanent class of hired laborers among us. Twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer. The hired laborer of yesterday labors on his own account today, and will hire others to labor for him tomorrow. And again: The progress by which the poor, honest, industrious and resolute man raises himself . .. is that progress that human nature is entitled to [and} is that improvement in condition that is in- 9 �tended to be secured by those institutions under which we live ... It is this moral vindication of the "bourgeois" regime, as the regime which is truly in accord with human nature, that makes Abraham Lincoln, and his interpretation of the Declaration of Independece, that "hard nut" that the tyrannies of both Right and Left must crack, to establish their sway and domination. It explains the extraordinary efforts in Inventing America, of that symbol of the union of Left and Right: Garry Wills. I NVENTING AMERICA begins in this way: Americans like, at intervals, to play this dirty trick upon themselves: Pollsters are sent out to canvass men and women on certain doctrines and to shame them when these are declared -as usually happens-unacceptable. Shortly after, the results are published: Americans have, once again, failed to subscribe to some phrase or other from the Declaration of Independence. The late political scientist Willmoore Kendall called this game ''discovering America.'' He meant to remind us that running men out of town on a rail is at least as much an American tradition as declaring unalienable rights. But Wills is not accurate even in this reference to Kendall. The game Wills calls "discovering America" is called by Kendall "Sam Stouffer discovers America," and may be found described in pages 80 and 81 of The Conservative Affirmation. It is Kendall's commentary on a book by Stouffer published in the early fifties under the title of Civil Liberties, Communism, and Conformity. It is one of the "classic" liberal attacks on the reactionary public opinion of the so-called McCarthy era; and one should bear in mind that Kendall was one of McCarthy's staunchest defenders. Hence Kendall's testimony is unusual, in this context, for a guru of the Left to take as his authority! Here is how Kendall actually described Stouffer's book: Mr. Stouffer and his team of researchers asked a representative sample of Americans a number of questions calculated to find out whether they would permit (a) a Communist, or (b) an atheist, to (I) speak in their local community, or (2) teach in their local high school, or (3) be represented, by means of a book he had written, in their local public library. And consider: some two-thirds of the sample answered "Nothing doing" right straight down the line . .. nor was there any evidence that they would have been much disturbed to learn that the Supreme Court says that the Fourteenth Amend- ment says they can't do anything legally to (e.g.) prevent the Communist from speaking. In the poll conducted by Stouffer there is, we see, literally nothing about the Declaration of Independence. What Kendall observes the American people saying "Nothing doing" to-at the period in question-is what the Warren Court (not the Declaration) was saying in interpreting the First and Fourteenth Amendments. And on this point I 10 think the American people (thus polled) were right, and the Court wrong. In 1964 I myself published an essay "On the Nature of Civil and Religious Liberty" in which I argued that precisely on the ground of the principles of the Declaration, Communists and Nazis had no just claim to the constitutional privileges of the First Amendment. Moreover, I know of no such polls or studies, that Wills asserts exist, in which Americans have "failed to subscribe to some phrase or other from the Declaration oflndependence." In any event, it is not phrases that count, but ideas or principles. These must be stated in terms intelligible to the respondent. Perhaps the best known slogan of the American Revolution was "Taxation without Representation is Tyranny." In accordance with it, the Declaration denounced the King "For imposing taxes on us without our Consent." The premise underlying these judgments is that the power to tax is the power to destroy. Does Wills think that Americans today do not agree with these judgments or their underlying premise? The Declaration says that the just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed. Suppose a pollster, asking whether the respondent thinks that any government that governed him, might do so justly without his consent. Does Wills believe that Americans today would answer differently from those in 1776? Does he think that they think that any government might justly levy taxes upon them-or on anyone else-without the consent, given by their elected representatives, of the ones taxed? But perhaps Wills thinks that the arch mystery of the Declaration is the great proposition, upon which Lincoln so concentrated attention in the Gettysburg Address, that all men are created equal. Certainly many are today puzzled by this doctrine. This is not, I think, because of its intrinsic difficulty, but because publicists like Wills have for so long told them that it is a mere vague abstraction. But let us re-phrase the proposition, in some of its applications. Suppose, in conducting a poll, one asked whether the respondents thought it reasonable to divide all human beings (men and women) into the superior and the inferior, the latter to be ruled by the former, and without their consent? Or, to put the same queston slightly differently, suppose one asked whether those· who made the laws should live under them, or whether the government might reasonably and justly exempt itself from the laws it made for others. (One example might be whether the lawmakers might exempt themselves from the payment of taxes; another might be whether the punishments for either civil damage or criminal offenses might be different for those in office, as compared with those out of office.) How many today would reject Lincoln's simple maxim-interpreting the proposition that all men are created equalthat no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent? All the foregoing questions a.re based upon that simplified Lockeanism that Jefferson thought was to be found AUTUMN 1981 �in the American mind, no less than in the common sense of the subject. One need not have ever heard of the names of Hume or Hutcheson or Reid or Stewart-indeed one need not have heard of John Locke-to know that the power to tax is the power to destroy, and to draw all the long series of inferences that follow from it. Wills wants to turn the Declaration into an esoteric mystery, by convincing us that we do not know things that we know perfectly welL He would have us think that eighteenth century beliefs are necessarily different from twentieth century beliefs, and that the veil between them can be pierced only by the magic of the cultural (or professorial) elite. This is the priestcraft of our contemporary Dark Age. I would like to make one further comment on Kendall's assertion, endorsed by Wills, that T O END THIS DISCUSSION, the true American tradition is less that of our Fourth of July orations and our constitutional law textbooks, with their cluck-clucking over the so-called preferred freedoms, than, quite simply, that of riding someone out of town on a rail. Note that even here Kendall says something different from what Wills represents him as saying. Kendall does not mention unalienable rights. The closest he comes to it is when he mentions Fourth of July orations. "Preferred freedoms" refers almost certainly to the constitutional doctrines of Mr. Justice Black, not to those of Thomas Jefferson, or of any other of the Founding Fathers. Yet Kendall here is in fact being squeamish, something certainly unusual for KendalL Riding someone out of town on a rail is a quasi-euphemism for lynching. Someone-perhaps a specialist in Burlamaqui or Hutcheson-might not know that riding on a rail was usually preceded by tarring and feathering. And tarring frequently resulted in second (and sometimes third) degree burns. Since the tar covered the whole body, the minimum result was usually pneumonia. Not many more survived a tarring and feathering than survived a hanging. But it was a more protracted process, and accompanied by terrible suffering. In the thirty-third chapter of Huckleberry Finn we bid our farewell to the Duke and the King. These bunco artists have by now forfeited all of our-and Huck's-sympathy, by betraying Jim back into slavery. In their last appearance Huck sees them being whooped along by the townsmen they had cheated. Huck says he knew it was the Duke and the King, though they was all over tar and feathers, and didn't look like nothing in the world that was human . .. Although he had loathed them before, and hates them now, he says that It was a dreadful thing to see. Human beings can be awful cruel to one another. THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW When Kendall or Wills tells us that lynching is as much an American tradition as declaring that there are unalienable, or natural human rights, they are telling us no more than that evil is as deeply engrained in the American tradition as good. This is a difficult proposition to contest. All that I would contend is that the principles of the Declaration, which embody the principles of the rule oflaw, stand in direct opposition to lynching, which is the denial or repudiation of lawfulness. And by a disposition of Providence, as poetical as it is historical, Abraham Lincoln's first great speech-his Lyceum Address of 1838-was a denunciation of the growing and dangerous habit of lawlessness, which he observed to be abroad in the land then. In that speech, Lincoln warned that lynch law and free government were enemies of each other, and that one could not long survive in the presence of the other. Lynch law, we repeat, was but one expression of the repudiation of the Declaration of Independence. Slavery was another. Slavery and lynch law went together. Kendall's (and Wills's) tacit patronage of lynch law is but another aspect of their tacit patronage of slavery. According to Wills, Abraham Lincoln was "a great artist of America's romantic period." This, however, is not in- tended as a compliment. Rather is it intended as an a priori explanation of how Lincoln was able to substitute a fallacious myth of our origins as a nation for the truth about those origins. Lincoln's artistry, he says, fit the antiscientific, biblical mood of mid-century, so that the "biblically shrouded" figure of "Fourscore and seven years . .. " presumably evoked acceptance, as "eighty-seven" might not. And Wills is not tender with Lincoln's character, in regard to this alleged deception about the date of the founding of the nation. "Useful falsehoods," he writes, "are dangerous things, often costing us down the road." The Gettysburg Address, beginning with its magisterial invocation of the year 1776 as the point of our origin as a nation, is a "falsehood," and even a "dangerous" one. Wills has summoned up a strict standard of truthfulness, by which he, no less than Abraham Lincoln, must then be judged. Wills's entire work, as we shall see, actually stands or falls by this claim that 1776 is not, and cannot be regarded as, the birth date of the nation. Lincoln, he says, "obviously gave some thought" to his "Fourscore and seven." Indeed he did. I pointed out, more than a score of years ago, that the beginning of the Gettysburg Address marked as well the end of the long debate with Stephen A. Douglas. For Douglas had declared that we existed as a nation only by virtue of the Constitution. Notwithstanding the fact that, in other respects, Douglas was a Jacksonian Unionist, in this he echoes Southern-and Calhounian-doctrine. It was axiomatic for Jefferson Davis-and for all who voted for secession in the winter and spring of 1860-1861-that the United I N CRISIS OF THE HOUSE DNIDED 11 �States could be regarded as a single nation, solely by virtue of the Constitution. Each state, it was held, became part of the Union or nation by virtue of the process of ratification. The ordinances of secession were regarded as-and in some cases were actually called~acts of de-ratification. And there can be no doubt that, were the Union or nation created solely by the process by which the Constitution of 1787 was ratified, then it could lawfully have been uncreated by the same process. Willmoore Kendall, whom Wills is obviously following, repeats this Confederate dogma, saying that there was a "bakers dozen" of new nations resulting from the Declaration of Independence. By this interpretation, in the Declaration of Independence the thirteen colonies were not only declaring their independence of Great Britain, they were declaring their independence of each other. Wills thinks that Lincoln would have had some ground for treating 1777 as the year of birth of the nation, since in that year the Articles of Confederation were adopted. But best of all, as a proposed birth date, he thinks, is 1789, the year in which the Constitution came into operation. For this date, he says, Lincoln should have written "Four score minus six years ago ... " With this ill-placed facetiousness Wills shows himself completely oblivious of the great ante-bellum debate. He seems unconscious of the existence of the masterful brief, legal, historical, and philosophical, that Lincoln presented, notably in his inaugural address, and still more copiously, after Sumter, in his message to Congress, in special session, July 4, 1861. Lincoln's argument, as to the nature and origin of the Union, is presented with Euclidean precision and classic beauty. It is surpassed by nothing in Demosthenes, Cicero, or Burke. Wills writes as if Lincoln had suddenly invented the notion that the nation had been born in 1776 as he com· posed the Gettysburg Address, and that he relied upon the mesmerizing influence of his vowels and consonants (e.g. "by mere ripple and interplay of liquids") to secure his deception. But Lincoln's audience in 1863 and thereafter, unlike Wills, knew very well that the Gettysburg Ad· dress was but a moment in a dialectical process that had been going on for more than a generation. Neither Lin· coin nor the nation ever imagined that he was appealing to their sentiment, apart from an argument, laid in fact and reason. It would have been perfectly honorable for Wills to have taken up the weapons of controversy against Lincoln's side, as statemen and scholars have done since the days of Calhoun, jefferson Davis, and Alexander Stephens. But mere malicious sneering has no place in such a debate. Wills tells us, with easy assurance, that "there are some fairly self-evident objections to that mode of calculating," viz., the mode expressed by "Four score and seven years ago ... " What are these objections? All thirteen colonies [writes Wills] subscribed to the Declaration with instructions to their delegates that this was not to 12 imply formation of a single nation. If anything, july 4, 1776, produced twelve new nations (with a thirteenth coming in on July 15)-conceived in liberty perhaps, but more dedicated to the proposition that the colonies they severed from the mother country were equal to each other than that their in- habitants were equal. [Italics by Wills.] We note that Wills does not say that the delegates were not instructed to form a single nation. He says that they were instructed not to form (or imply formation of) a single nation. If Wills had said that the instructions for indepen· dence were in some cases ambiguous, as to whether the thirteen colonies were to form a single union, state, or na~ tion, he would have asserted what would certainly have been plausible. But in positively asserting an unambiguous intention not to form a single nation, he is asserting something for which there is not a shred of evidence. Not many readers will take the trouble to look up the colonial instructions to the delegates to the Continental Congress, in the spring of 1776. Like most reviewers, they will assume that someone with a prestigious professorship at a major university, with a doctorate from Yale (all things advertised on the dust jacket), will of course have read documents carefully, and reported them faithfully. Errors like Wills's, launched with such authority, spread like plague germs in an epidemic. And although it takes few words to put such errors in circulation, it takes painstaking effort, and detailed analysis, effectively to contradict them. Turning now to the instructions, we note that they do not contain the word "nation" at all. The word "union" is its nearest equivalent. (We note also that in Lincoln's political vocabulary, the words "union" and "nation" were virtually synonymous.) In the instructions, the word "confederation" is also used in a sense, at least quasi~synony~ mous with "union." The important question we must ask, in examining the language of the instructions for independence, is whether the colonies were, in making a single and common declaration of independence, implying or assuming or declaring that they did so as members of a common government. And further, we would want to know whether they implied or stated that they expected their association in and through the Congress to become a permanent one. An affirmative answer to these two questions is all that would be needed to sustain Lincoln's thesis with respect to the "Four score and seven years." Wills, we repeat, by assert~ ing that in july of 1776 thirteen nations or states came into existence by virtue of the Declaration, asserts that the thirteen were not merely declaring their independence of Great Britain, but their independence of each other. Rhode Island, by its General Assembly, on May 4, 1776, instructed its delegates to join with the delegates of the other United Colonies in Congress . .. to consult and advise . .. upon the most proper AUTUMN 1981 �measures for promoting and confirming the strictest union and confederation . .. such further compact and confederation . .. as shall be judged necessary for securing the liberties of America . .. Virginia's instructions-May 15th-called simply for such measures as might be thought proper and necessary Most extraordinary of all is the instruction of the House of Representatives of New Hampshire. For in this case, the instruction for independence and the instruction for union, given separately in the other cases, were here com~ bined into one. New Hampshire instructed its (single) delegate for forming foreign alliances, and a confederation of the colonies. Here "confederation" is synonymous with "union and confederation" in the Rhode Island instructions. in reading these documents, that we are witnessing a transformation in the use and application of certain key terms. The word "confederation," like the words "federal" or "confederal," was an old bottle into which new wine was being poured. The American Revolution, and the American Founding, produced a form of government unprecedented in the history of the world. In later years, James Madison called the government of the United States a "nondescript," because there was still no word that properly expressed what it actually was. In 1787, in the Federalist, Madison called the government of the new Constitution, "partly national, partly federal," although by the traditional understanding of "federal" and ''national" such an expression would have been a self-contradiction. As the late Martin Diamond has pointed out, the expression "federal government" would have been a solecism, prior to the emergence of the American form of government. What had hitherto been regarded as federal, could not properly be regarded as a government, and what had hitherto been regarded as government, could not properly admit any distinct or separate sovereignty in any of its parts. In these instructions we see an early application of "confederation" in a sense consistent with what was later understood clearly in the expression "federal government." It would be a mistake to assume that the later meaning was clearly present to the minds ofthe men of 1776. Yet it would be an equally great mistake to fail to perceive, in 1776, the genesis of the later meaning. Lincoln, one should remember, said that the nation had been born in 1776, he did not say it had already matured. W E SHOULD BE AWARE, Connecticut, on June 14, 1776, instructed its delegates in Congress to . move and promote, as fast as may be convenient, a regular and permanent plan of union and confederation of the Colonies ... New Jersey, on June 21st, called for entering into a confederation for union and common defense .. . Maryland, on June 28th, in authorizing independence, also authorized THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW to join with the other colonies in declaring the thirteen United Colonies a free and independent state . .. Concerning what might justly be called the burgeoning national consciousness, consider the language with which the Georgia Colonial Congress addressed its delegates in the Continental Congress, in April of 1776. They exhorted their representatives that they always keep in view the general utility, remembering that the great and righteous cause in which we are engaged is not provincial, but continental. We therefore, gentlemen, shall rely upon your patriotism, abilities, firmness, and integrity, to propose, join, and concur in all such meaSures as you shall think calculated for the common good, and to oppose all such asappear destructive. We see the coordination of "patriotism" with the "com~ mon good," and that this good is said to be "continental" and not "provincial." Can anyone, reading these words, think that in 1776 Georgia (any more than New Hampshire) was engaged in declaring its independence from its sister colonies? what could lie behind Wills's assertion about these colonial instructions. It is certainly true that the full implications of single statehood, or union, or nationhood, were not visible in 1776. And it is true that all of the colonies, while endorsing union in vary: ing terms, nonetheless did so with reservation. For example, while calling for the formation of the "strictest union," Rhode Island required that the greatest care be taken L ET US ASK to secure to this colony . .. its present established form, and all powers of government, so far as it related to its internal police and conduct of our own affairs, civil and religious. Virginia, in like manner, asked that the power of forming government for, and the regulating of the internal concerns of, each colony, be left to the respective Colonial Legislatures. Pennsylvania required that there be reserved to the people of this colony the sole and exclusive right of regulating the internal government and police of the same. 13 �And New Hampshire, the same New Hampshire which thought that the United Colonies should declare themselves a single "free and independent state," nonetheless required that, the regulation of our internal police be under the direction of our own Assembly. Could there be any clearer demonstration, than these words by which New Hampshire reserved its right of internal or local government, that such reservations did not constitute obstacles, in the minds of those making the reservations, to national unity? These reservations of local or state autonomy represent, in generic form, the great principle of American federalism. They reappeared, the year following the Declaration, in the Articles of Confederation, in Article II, which reads as follows. Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled. The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution contains a similar reservation of the "internal concerns" to the juris- diction of the governments of the states-and to the people of the states-as is found in those colonial instructions of the spring of 1776. It reads: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, o~ to the people. The notable difference between these two articles is the presence of the words Hsovereignty" and "expressly" in the former. But John Quincy Adams, among others, thought that the spirit of the Declaration (and of the instructions authorizing the Declaration) was stronger in the Constitution than in the Articles. The Tenth Amendment, by not referring to the powers delegated as being "expressly" delegated, opened the door to the great contest, begun by Hamilton and Jefferson, between liberalor broad-construction, and strict-or narrow-construction, a contest which continues until this very day. But the ambiguity in the Constitution which permits two schools of constitutional interpretation is not different from the ambiguity in the original instructions for forming a union. If that ambiguity is regarded as militating against the formation of a national union, then we are no more a nation today than we were on July 4, 1776. * * * denies any credibility to Lincoln's characterization, in the Gettysburg Address, of july 4, 1776, as the birth date of the nation. We have seen that his alleged grounds for this denial, the colonial instructions to the delegates to the Continen- W 14 lLLS, WE HAVE NOTED, tal Congress in the spring of 1776, do not bear out what he says about them. But Edmund Morgan, writing in The New York Review of Books, August 17, 1978, in a generally favorable notice of Inventing America, has pointed to a very good test of single statehood in the Declaration itself. For the Declaration reads, near the end, as follows: That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be Free and Independent States . .. and that as Free and Independent States, they have full power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. "Which of these free and independent states," asks Morgan, "undertook to do the acts and things Jefferson specified as characteristic of a state?" It was Congress [Morgan continues] that levied war through the Continental Army; it was Congress that concluded peace through its appointed commissioners; and it was Congress that contracted the alliance with France. Congress may not have established commerce, but in the Association it had disestablished it, and in a resolution of the preceding April 6, it had opened American ports to all the world except England. In denying that there was "one nation" or anything like it, resulting from the Declaration of Independence, Wills makes the extraordinary assertion that the Declaration is not a legal document of any kind. He calls it and the Gettysburg Address mere "war propaganda with no legal force." Now the Gettysburg Address was an occasional address of the President of the United States. Its force, as such, was moral rather than legal. Its chief feature, however, was to reaffirm the principles of the Declaration, and to reaffirm them in conjunction with another Presidential act, namely, the Emancipation Proclamation. The latter of course was a legal act, although its permanent force depended upon the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. The purpose of the Gettysburg Address was to help to generate the political forces which would lead the nation from the Emancipation Proclamation-whose legal effect was limited to what could be inferred from the war powers of the Commander-in-Chief-to that permanent abolition of chattel slavery that could only be accomplished by an amendment to the Constitution. It is that fulfillment of the promise of equal human rights by the Declaration, in the Thirteenth Amendment, that constitutes the "new birth of freedom" wished for by the Address. If Wills regards this as mere "war propaganda" then he can have little regard for the abolition of slavery as an event in American history. To assert, as Wills does, that the Declaration of Independence is not a legal document, is simply amazing. It is among the more stupendous reasons why we think that Inventing America should have been shipped back to its author in manuscript. Evidently Wills-and the readers of his manuscript-have never held in their hands the StatAUTUMN 1981 �utes at Large of the United States, the Revised Statutes of the United States, or the United States Code. The 1970 edition of the United States Code, which is before me as I write, classifies the Declaration among the "Organic Laws of the United States." Of these, the Declaration of Independence is the first. Second is the Articles of Confederation. Third is the Ordinance of 1787: The Northwest Territorial Government. Fourth is the Constitution of the United States and Amendments. Let us recall that Wills preferred both the Articles and the Constitution to the Declaration, as marking the beginning of American statehood or nationhood. But the Articles declares, in its preamble, that it was done "in the second year of the Independence of America." Moreover, the Constitution, in the form in which it left the Convention, over the signature of George Washington, dates Itself in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth. Both these notable documents-which Wills thinks Lincoln should have preferred to the Declaration-themselves refer to the Declaration as the originating document of the United States. This dating of the union, at the end of Article VII of the Constitution, has moreover a particular legal application. Article VI reads, in its first paragraph, that our State, and of that of the United States," they wrote, the first of the "best guides" to this end was the Declaration of Independence, as the fundamental act of union of these States. We see then that the Declaration was not regarded by Jefferson and Madison, as it is by Wills (and Kendall), as an act whose sole effect was to separate thirteen colonies from Great Britain. It was an act whereby the separation from Great Britain was simultaneously accompanied by union with each other. It was the accomplishment of union that makes it the primitive organic law of the United States. This is why all acts of the United States are dated from the Declaration. But the Declaration is more even than an organic law. Its statement of principles remains that statement of the principles of natural right and of natural law which is the ground for asserting that the government of the United States (and of each of the States) represents law and right, and not mere force without law or right. In 1844, for example, in a great speech in the House of Representatives, john Quincy Adams declared that the assertion of principles in the Declaration of Independence, beginning with the proposition that "we hold these truths to be self-evident ... " constituted the "moral foundation of the North American Revolution." It was, he said, "the only foundation upon which the North American Revolution could be justified from the charge of treason and rebellion." All debts contracted and engagements entered into, before the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation. From the foregoing, it is clear that there was a "United States under the Confederation" before there was a "United States under this Constitution." The fact that the United States in its subsequent form (that of "a more perfect Union") acknowledges the debts of the earlier United States, shows that it remains the same moral person. But Article XII of the Articles of Confederation accepts responsibility for the debts contracted by the Congress before the adoption of the Articles, just as the Constitution accepts the debts of the government of the Confederation. In short, the United States is continuously the United States, is continuously the same collective identity, the same moral agent, from the moment that it became independent, viz., since july 4, 1776. In what sense then is the Declaration of Independence a law of the United States; or, rather, in what sense is it the first of the organic laws of the United States? The United States Code does not say. In 1825, however, Thomas jefferson and james Madison, both members of the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia, together prepared a list of books and documents to serve as authorities for the instruction to be offered by the faculty of law. On "the distinctive principles of government of 1HE ST.JOHNSREVIEW But Wills hates the very idea that the United States was born out of a dedication to liberty and justice. For him, the belief that our political arrangements are in some particular sense in accordance with universal principles of natural right, breeds only a sense of self-righteousness, and makes us a danger to ourselves and to others. As an example of the latter, he cites john F. Kennedy's alleged willingness "to throw Communist devils out of Russia, China, Cuba, or Vietnam." As an example of the former, he cites "the House Un-American Activities Committee!" In 1823, jefferson, writing to Madison on August 30th, referred to a meeting that had taken place the previous month as an anniversary assemblage of the nation on its birthday. When Jefferson thus referred to july 4th as the nation's birthday, Abraham Lincoln was fourteen years old. By this time, such references to the Glorious Fourth were traditional and customary. No one seemed to doubt then that the principles that accompanied our beginnings were as luminous as they were true. It was some years later that men began to discover the "positive good" of slavery, and to mutter that the so called self-evident truths might after all be self-evident lies. Then was the foundation laid for Garry Will's discovery that the Declaration was, after all, written in "the lost language of the Enlightenment." * * * 15 �ILLS CONTENDS that the major influence upon Jefferson, and upon the writing of the Declaration, was not John Locke, but Francis Hutcheson. Hutcheson was a Scottish philosopher, who wrote a generation or so after Locke. The dates of his books, as given by Wills, are from 1725 to 1755. Locke died in 1704. Indeed, the principal explicit thesis of Inventing America is that the Declaration is an Hutchesonian and not a Lockean document. Wills's principal antagonist, within these lists of controversy, is Carl Becker.. Becker's The Declaration of Independence, published in 1922, has long been regarded as a classic. And in certain respects, its authority-as Wills notes-has gone unchallenged. We would note that Becker was himself an historicist and a relativist, and as such took no more seriously than Wills the Declaration's assertion (in Lincoln's words) "of an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times." However, Wills cites one noted scholar after another, who has cited Becker, assimilated Becker, built on Becker. "The secret of this universal acclaim," writes Wills, W lies in the inability of any later student to challenge Becker's basic thesis-that Jefferson found in John Locke "the ideas which he put into the Declaration." [Wills's italics] According to Wills, the thesis of a "Lockean orthodoxy ... coloring all men's thought in the middle of the eighteenth century" is one which has not been challenged by "any later student." That is to say, it has not been challenged by a single student prior to Wills. Wills's bold cliallenge to Beckerian-and all later-orthodoxy, concerning the Lockean orthodoxy of the Amer· ican Founding, comes to a climax in Chapter 18. This chapter is prefaced by a paragraph from an influential pamphlet essay by James Wilson, first published in 1774. This passage from Wilson, says Wills, was used by Becker "to establish the orthodox Lockean nature of Jefferson's Declaration." Here it is, as it appears in Inventing America. All men are, by nature, equal and free: no one has a right to any authority over another without his consent: all lawful government is founded on the consent of those who are subject to it: such consent was given with a view to ensure and to increase the happiness of the governed, above what they could enjoy in an independent and unconnected state of nature. The consequence is, that the happiness of the society is the first law of every government. [Wilson's italics.] Next, we will repeat what Wills says about this passage from Wilson's essay, and what he says about Becker's use of it. We give this paragraph from page 250 of Inventing America exactly as it appears there. If the reader finds the paragraph confusing, he must ask the apology of Wills. For Wills has the muddling and confusing habit of using no footnotes, but incorporating all his reference notes in parentheses within his text. As we shall presently see, however, Wills does not only not use footnotes, he does not know how to read them. Becker, says Wills, 16 calls the Wilson quote "a summary of Locke" (Declaration, 108), part of America's common heritage of ideas. But if the idea was so common, why did Wilson give a particular source for it, and only one? Here is his own footnote to the passage (in his Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament of 1774): "The right to sovereignty is that of commanding finally-but in order to procure real felicity; for if this is not obtained, sovereignty ceases to be a legitimate authority, 2 Burl., 32, 33." He is quoting in summary Burlamaqui's Principes du droit politique, 1, v, 1; 6( ~Principes du droit nature!, 1, x, 2). Now Burlamaqui was a disciple of Hutcheson's philosophy of moral sense (Nature!, 2, iii, 1) and therefore he differed from Locke on concepts of right (ibid., 1, v, 10) and property (1, iv, 8), of the social contract (1, iv, 9) and the state of nature (2, iv, ll). If Wilson meant to voice a Lockean view of government, as Becker assumed, he clumsily chose the wrong source. The unsuspecting reader, confronted by this witches' brew of scholarship, is apt to think that Carl Becker must certainly have been clumsy, and not James Wilson. And it would certainly seem as if a whole generation-or more-of scholars had followed Becker, "like sheep, through the gates of error." It takes two or three readings of this paragraph before one can accustom one's eyes to the forest of parentheses, and then slowly begin to distinguish the sentences within. This, however, is what can be seen at last. Wilson has quoted something in a footnote. At the end of the quotation, and within the quotation marks, he has given a source for that quotation. Wills calls the quotation "a summary" of a certain chapter in a book of Burlamaqui, which parallels another chapter in another book of Burlamaqui. Having read with some care both chapters in both books, I would call the quotation a paraphrase rather than a summary. But that is not important. What is important is that Wilson does not present the paraphrase or summary of Burlamaqui as a source for what he himself has written. Wills's assertion 'that the passage from Burlamaqui is the "particular source" and the "only" source for Wilson's alleged "summary of Locke" is simply untrue. It is easier to see this if one has Wilson's essay before one, and if one sees the footnote separated from the text at the bottom of the page. Let us suppose, for example, that after saying that "all lawful government is founded on the consent of those who are subject to it" Wilson had appended this footnote: "Our authority is his consent, Sh., 2 Hen. 6, 4, I, 316." Would this have meant that Wilson had declared that the source of the idea expressed in the text was the second part of Shakespeare's Henry VI? Would it have meant more than that Wilson had found a felicitous expression of his thought in Shakespeare, and that such an expression lent a certain cogency or weight to what Wilson had said? Wills's assertion that this note gives the "only" source of Wilson's thought, is all the more absurd because Wilson's essay has forty-eight separate footnotes. Some cite Blackstone, some cite Bolingbroke, but the majority refer to decisions of British courts, and opinions of British AUTUMN 1981 �judges. As Becker rightly observes, the main point of Wilson's entire essay is to show the close approximation of the principles of British constitutionalism to the principles of natural law. All of Wilson's footnotes are designed to confirm his judgments, not to give sources for his ideas. To repeat: the quotation in the footnote is a paraphrase of Burlamaqui. The reference to Burlamaqui is simply to give the source in Burlamaqui of the passages thus paraphrased. The reference then is to the source of the footnote, not to the source of the text. All that buckshot spray of alleged differences between Burlamaqui and Hutcheson, on the one hand, and Locke on the other, is simply pretentious nonsense. Wilson has throughout spoken in his own name, not in that of either Locke or Burlamaqui. That he has in the main followed Locke, as Becker says, is not to be doubted on the basis of any evidence supplied by Wills. * I * * N HIS ANXIETY to re-write the intellectual history of the American Founding, Wills goes to lengths of hyperbole and exaggeration which are inconsistent with serious scholarship. He says, for example, that there is "no demonstrable verbal echo of the Treatise [Locke's Second Treatise of Government] in all of Jefferson's vast body of writings." Against the many writers who have said that the Declaration repeats not only arguments, but even the phraseology of the Second Treatise, Wills airily asserts that "no precise verbal parallels have been adduced." Wills, however, thinks that verbal parallels to the Declaration abound in Hutcheson. Here, for example, is a passage from Hutcheson, adduced by Wills as an example of the proximity of Hutcheson to the jefferson of the Declaration: Nor is it justifiable in a people to have recourse for any lighter causes to violence and civil wars against their rulers, while the public interests are tolerably secured and consulted. But when it is evident that the public liberty and safety is not tol- erably secured, and that more mischiefs, and these of a more lasting kind, are like to arise from the continuance of any plan of civil power than are to be feared from the violent efforts for an alteration of it, then it becomes lawful, nay honorable, to make such efforts and change the plan of government. Here is the passage in the Declaration it is compared with: Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But here is what Locke, in the Second Treatise (para. 230) had written: THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW For till the mischief be grown general, and the ill designs of the Rulers become visible, or their attempts sensible to the greater part, the People, who are more disposed to suffer, than right themselves by Resistance, are not apt to stir. Who cannot see that the words of Locke are much closer to the words of jefferson than those of Hutcheson? The phrases "disposed to suffer" and "right themselves" may or may not be echoes, but they are key phrases, and they are identical in Locke and Jefferson. Here is another example of Hutcheson, provided by Wills: A good subject ought to bear patiently many injuries done only to himself, rather than take arms against a prince in the main good and useful to the state, provided the danger extends only to himself. But when the common rights of humanity are trampled upon, and what at first attempted against one is made precedent against all the rest, then as the governor is plainly perfidious to his trust, he has forfeited all the power committed to him. Here is the parallel passage in the Declaration. This is from the Declaration in the draft originally reported, as distinguished from that finally adopted: But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, begun at a distinguished period and pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government .. . And here is Locke, in the parallel passage in the Second Treatise. But if a long train of abuses, Prevarications, and Artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel, what they lie under, and see, whither they are going; 'tis not to be wonder'd, that they should then rouze theniselves, and endeavor to put the rule into such hands, which may secure to them the ends fOr which Government was first erected . .. Once .again, we have, not echoes, but identical phrases in jefferson and Locke. The "long train of abuses" has been the phrase most cited by generations of scholars-although Wills stubbornly denies that they have ever "adduced" such parallels. Even more to the point, is the key word "design," which occurs in both Locke and jefferson, and which is peculiarly vital to the Declaration's argument. Edmund Morgan, in the review to which we have already referred, says flatly that the resemblances of Jefferson's language to Locke are closer than anything Wills has found in any Scottish philosopher. But even more to the point-and we will let Morgan make this point for us-is that in the parallels between Hutcheson and Jefferson cited by Wills, "the distance from Locke's political principles is not noticeable, indeed it is non-existent." Yet so insistent is Wills upon this very distance of jefferson from Locke, that he asserts that: "There is no indication )effer- 17 �son read the Second Treatise carefully or with profit. Indeed, there is no direct proof he ever read it at all (though I assume he did at some point.)" Wills is aware that Jefferson recommended the book to others but thinks that, like many a professor puffing himself to students, "There would be nothing dishonest about his general recommendation of the Treatise, made to others while he lacked any close acquaintance with the text. .. " Yet in 1790, writing to an intimate friend, Jefferson pronounced "Locke's little book on government" to be "perfect as far as it goes." Forty-five years later, near the end of his life, Jefferson collaborated with Madison-as we have already noted-in drawing up a list of books and documents for the faculty of law at the University of Virginia. Again-and for the last time-he turned to Locke, as he sought by university education to preserve the principles of the Revolution. In a resolution, prepared for, and adopted by the Board of Visitors, it was affirmed to be the opinion of this Board that as to the general principles of liberty and the rights of man, in nature and in society, the doctrines of Locke, in his "Essay concerning the true original extent and end of civil government," [the full title of the Sec- ond Treatise] and of Sidney in his "Discourses on government," may be considered as those generally approved by our fellow citizens of this, and the United States ... From this recommendation of Locke and Sidney for "general principles" Jefferson went on, as we have already seen, to recommend the Declaration for the "distinctive principles" of American government. The pairing of Locke and Sidney was, as Wills notes, a traditional Whig custom. I do not see how this detracts from the importance of Locke. Wills says that the famous letter to Henry Lee is the only place in which Jefferson ever links Locke and the Declaration. In this resolution however, Locke and the Declaration are again linked, and linked in the most authoritative manner. Coming at the end of Jefferson's life, this resolution has a peculiar and final authority. Among the many absurdities of Wills's work is that Adam Smith, as a "moral sense" philosopher, becomes a "communitarian." Thus the spiritual father of capitalism-or the system of natural freedom, as he called it-becomes part of the anti-individualism which prepared the way for Marx and today's Left. Had Wills read that notable book linking the Theory of Moral Sentiments with The Wealth of Nations, Joseph Cropsey's Polity and Economy: An Interpretation of the Principles of Adam Smith, he would not have committed such an egregious error. For he would have learned from Cropsey that the Scottish school were emenders of Locke, rather than negators or opponents. All their thought moves within a circle previously defined by Locke, and before Locke, by Hobbes. Indeed, the quotation from Burlamaqui, relating the purposes of civil society to sovereignty, points back from Locke towards Hobbes, rather than forward toward the Scottish school. 18 An important book may still be written about Hutcheson, and the school he represents, and their influence upon the American Founding Fathers. No responsible scholar has ever claimed that the Declaration of Independence is purely (or merely) a Lockean document. The substitution of "pursuit of happiness" for "property" in the famous enumeration of rights is a sufficient obstacle to such a simplistic view. So is the appeal to the "dictates of prudence." The ultimate authority for the meaning of the intellectual virtue of prudence is Aristotle. For it was Aristotle who separated philosophic wisdom from practical wisdom, sophia from phronesis, sapientia from prudentia. T a great deal in the Declaration that points backwards from Locke, towards the ancients. In that famous letter to Henry Lee in 1825, Jefferson wrote of the Declaration: HERE IS ACCORDINGLY All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc. Wills attempts to brush this aside and to ridicule the reference to Aristotle, because elsewhere Jefferson depreciates him. But Jefferson makes clear in the Lee letter that in drafting the Declaration he was the agent of the Congress, and of the American people. What he wrote was not intended as a personal statement, but "as an expression of the American mind." That Jefferson listed two ancientsAristotle and Cicero-before two moderns-Locke and Sidney-was not casual or accidental. Patrick Henry's famous apostrophe began by noting that "Caesar had his Brutus." The Senate, the Capitol, and many other symbols from the Founding period remind us of the power of the example of ancient Rome, and of ancient freedom. Perhaps Rome was more looked to than Greece. But Cicero himself looked to Athens to discover the principles of Rome's greatness. Cicero was an "academic skeptic," who, although he wrote both a "Republic" and a "Laws," came closer in many respects to Aristotle than to Plato. Wills ends his Prologue, his apology for writing his book, with an appeal to the authority of Douglass Adair. He cites an essay by Adair published in 1946, in which Adair said, among other things, that An exact knowledge of Jefferson's ideas . .. is still lacking ... We know relatively little about his ideas in the context of the total civilization of which he was a part . .. This, Wills thinks, authorizes his flat rejection of the Lockeanism of orthodox scholarship. Certainly, Adair was himself something of a rebel against orthodox scholarship. He was also the author of what has often been referred to as the most influential unpublished dissertation of our time. Adair was restrained more by modesty and perfecAUTUMN 1981 �tionism, than by fear of the orthodox. Adair-who died in 1968-was my colleague and my friend, and a copy of his 1943 dissertation is before me. It is entitled The Intellec· tual Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy. Its exceedingly bold hypothesis is: that the most important source of Jef. fersonian ideas on the connection between virtue, free~ dom, agrarianism, and republicanism, was to be found in the Sixth Book of Aristotle's Politics. Adair's argument, although brilliantly set forth, is not altogether persuasive. But it adds plausibility to the notion of an Aristotelian in· fluence on the Declaration-particularly since Jefferson mentions that influence himself. When the Declaration speaks of the people, instituting new government, such as "to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness," he is appealing to a tradition of more than two thousand years. For safety and happiness are the alpha and omega of political life, according to a tradition originating with Aristotle. Political life, Aristotle had writ. ten, originates in the desire for life, that is, for self-preser. vation. But it moves on a scale of dignity, from mere life, to the good life. And the name for the good life is happi· ness. In his straining to credit everything Jeffersonian to Hutcheson, Wills makes much of the fact that Hutcheson coined the phrase, "the greatest happiness of the greatest number." He is sure that this is what caused Jefferson to write "pursuit of happiness" instead of property" or ~<estate," in the famous enumeration. He tells us confidently that from the teachings of the Scottish school "public happiness" is "measurable'' and "is, indeed, the test and justification of any government." That public happiness is the test and justification of any government is also the teaching of both the Nicomachean Ethics and of the Politics. Such public happiness would not, how· ever, be measurable in any mathematical sense. Happi· ness, according to Aristotle, is the summum bonum. As such it cannot be counted among good things, since it 11 THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW represents the presence of all good things, in the propor· lions that make them beneficial to their possessor. For ex· ample, you cannot be made happier by becoming richer, if you already have all the wealth that you can use well. But where does Jefferson ever speak of measuring happi· ness, in the mathematical or geometrical manner that Wills imputes to Hutcheson? It bears repeating, that in sketching the literary sources of the Declaration-or, rather, of the American mind that the Declaration ex· pressed-Jefferson names Aristotle first of all. Then, after naming Cicero, he mentions Locke. But the name of Francis Hutcheson, in connection with the Declaration of Independence, is never mentioned at all. POSTSCRIPT The two reviewers in question were M. J. Sobran, for NR, and Richard Brookhiser for the American Spectator. In a later article in NR, "Saving the Declaration," (December 22, 1978) Mr. Sobran wrote as follows. The Declaration is a republican document, based squarely on Locke's theory . .. Which brings me to a personally embarrassing point. In his recent book, Inventing America, Garry Wills persuaded me (NR, July 7), that the Declaration can be understood without reference to Locke. He denied, in fact, that there are any distinct echoes of Locke, either in the Declaration or in Jefferson's writings generally. But a careful reading of the Second Treatise makes overwhelmingly clear that Wills is wrong. In diction, terms, turns of phrase, structure, and of course destination, the resemblance is so close that it is hard to feel that the Declaration is anything but a sustained allusion to Locke. [Emphasis by Mr. Sobran.] The reader will, of course, have perceived that in our opinion the Declaration is in fact much more than an allusion to Locke. Without that allusion, however, nothing of substance in the Declaration comes to sight. I am pleased to be able to record that Mr. Brookhiser has authorized me to declare his association with Mr. Sobran's revised judgment of Inventing America. This is a most hopeful sign, that for better reasons than mere success, the Right may become the Center of American politics. 19 �Four Poems Laurence Josephs ELM TREE LATE WINTER PoEM My elm is dead. Its bark Peels off in shrugs, aghast Bendings. Though some birds Still bud there like leaves, They sing through its bones Resentfully, and none will nest. For Frederick Caldwell II A fairground edge-of-town, A wreck stripped for the next Stop, it shows only absence Down to the last pennant Where before the summer sky Gorgeously intervened. There has been some snow, I see, Enough just to receive The traced pawprints Of small animals, to and from The birdfeeder Where they have mined A first course of fallen Seeds left by the birds. Next spring will hear it Shrieking in the chain-saw's Mad embrace, as if Gargantuan insects Rubbed mutant wings, until, Mire in the chimney And released, all sickness Burned away, its pale insubstant Ghost against a pewter sky Once more will branch In air, blooming high over the house. Up early I catch a cold World almost a part Of the moon, as if It had dropped from that Somehow and hardened. Let me open the door! 0 let Me open the window and lean out Into this mask of silent air! Has nothing really human Happened here since last night Before the snow began to come down? In the road are tire-tracks: Tracks of snow pushed aszde To look like sculptured wavesThe wake of someone rushing past my house As I slept and dreamed. Professor of English at Skidmore College, Laurence Josephs has published three collections of poems, Cold Water Morning (Skidmore College 1964), The Skidmore Poems (Skidmore College 1975) and Six Elegies (The Greenfield Review Press 1972). 20 AUTUMN 1981 �THE PoRCH UNFINISHED SELF-PORTRAIT AND SEASCAPE (Late August Mternoon) Seeing in the glass their life Losing color- as you saw that last, Sad summer- painters will make us Their mirror. Now I am your mirror, Father, today looking your sickness Back into your eyes; knowing Nothing to disguise it in paint or words. The breeze is transparent Ribbons coming untied between the trees. Far back, tin-voiced Hawks parade the air, not flying, But afloat, cruciform, at leisure Just lower than the cloud. Somewhere closed in all this I am lying-a book interrupted By a forgotten bookmark Beneath which the page is a slightly Differing color: a pale Stripe no one could ever have painted; Almost a whisper of color, unnameableAnd I hear your voice, unrolling too, Like the ribboned breeze: ~ou are saying that summers were always Ltke thts; always, always the same As this: that there was even the same Thunder waiting somewhere near the tall Glasses of tea the ice had made Weep through the tea -colored glass And run down the sides like tears. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW On the easel where an unfinished Seascape began to grow from canvas, I see reflected the start Of a world losing itself in your skill That was not skillful enough. Now it will never flow, that ocean, Though in my eyes its sketchy tide Stops, starts, subsides; changing No course as we knew it could not When you put aside the last brush. Horizons show beginning Is the end; endings begin. And even God, I think, knew this Ceding the sea nothing but depth And that restlessness From which life came crawling up On a shore unwilling, As it always is, to support life. 21 �The World of Physics and The "Natural" World Jacob Klein I It can scarcely be denied that at the present time physics and philosophy, two sciences of recognized durability, each handed down in a continuous tradition, are estranged from one another; they oppose one another more or less uncomprehendingly. By the nineteenth century a real and hence effective mutual understanding between philosophers and physicists concerning the methods, presuppositions, and the meaning of physical research had already become basically impossible; this remained true even when both parties, with great goodwill and great earnestness, tried to reach a clear understanding of these issues. When, in the second half of the last century, physicists themselves adopted certain basic philosophical positions, the Neo-Kantian or Machian, for instance, this scarcely affected their genuine scientific work. They did their work independently of any philosophical question; they conquered more and more territory and were not distracted from their course by difficulties appearing from time to time in the interpretation of the formal mathematical apparatus (as in the case of Maxwell's Theory) or in regard to the validity of ultimate physical principles (as in the case of the second law of thermodynamics). In this respect the situation has now changed in an essential way. To be sure, mathematical physics, in conformity with the basic attitude it has never abandoned, is still content today with what can be established experimentally and can be given an exact mathematical formulation; it refuses to follow philosophy into the region of what is neither experimentally nor mathematically confirmable and hence is almost always controversial. Nonetheless, physics now sees itself faced by questions in its own fundamental work which have always been taken to fall within the domain of philosophy. In its own right physics raises questions about space and time, causality and substance, about the limits of possible knowledge and the epistemic sense of scientific statements and experimental results. Consequently, it now considers turning to "philosophy" as a reliable and valid court of appeal, if not for solutions to these questions, then at least for advice or for new points of view. The unsatisfactory relation between mathematical physics and philosophy has consequently become more acute than it usually was in the 19th century. The particular philosophical tendencies involved are a secondary matter. More importantly, it is clear that no agreement about the meaning of the most fundamental concepts which both physics and philosophy employ can be achieved, e.g., the meaning of the concepts Space," "Time," 11 ('Causal Law,'' ''Experience,'' ''Intuition.'' texts. Sometimes it seems as if two languages were being spoken, languages that sound the same and yet are totally different. Physicists and philosophers assess this situation differently only insofar as the physicists are inclined-not always, certainly, but for the most part-to regard the language of philosophy as unscientific, while the philosophers -not always, to be sure, but frequently enough-suspect themselves of something like bad conscience in such debates, simply because they think they are incapable of getting to the bottom of the physical concepts amidst the formalistic thicket of differential equations, tensor calculus, or group-theory. This bad conscience is understandable. For, no matter how philosophy expresses itself philosophi- 22 AUTUMN 1981 Delivered as a lecture to the Physikalische Institut of the University of Marburg on February 3, 1932, this paper is the only completed work which one of Jacob Klein's literary executors, David R. Lachterman, found among his papers after his death in 1978. The first half, roughly of the paper is in typescript, the second in manuscript with marginal ad: ditions, not always easily fitted into the text. The transcriber and translator, David R. Lachterman, has completed several elliptical references to �cally, no matter what "standpoint" it might adopt, it cannot possibly pass by the problem of the World. And does not physics, most of all, have to do with the world around us? Don't the formulae of physics give an answer to the question of the "true world," however "truth" might here be understood? Even when philosophy believes it cannot accept the answer physics gives, even when it regards it as basically unsuccessful, it still has to reckon with it in some fashion, even if only to refute it. Above all philosophy must try to understand this answer. Even if philosophy concerns itself exclusively with things falling within that other hemisphere of science, the so-called "Geisteswissenschaften," it should never forget, even for an instant, that mathematical physics is at the foundation of our mental and spiritual life, that we see the world and ourselves in this world at first quite ingenuously as mathematical physics has taught us to see it, that the direction, the very manner of our questioning is fixed in advance by mathematical physics, and that even a critical attitude towards mathematical physics does not free us from its dominion. The idea of science intrinsic to mathematical physics determines the basic fact of our contemporary life, namely, our "scientific consciousness." Mathematical physics and philosophy are nowadays split apart and at odds with one another; they depend on one another, even while time and again they are forced to acknowledge their mutual incomprehension. What is to be done in this situation? We must first of all try to find a common ground, a basis of shared questions, such that our questions are not in danger of missing their target from the start. Is there any common ground? Where should we try to find it? If we cannot glimpse it anywhere in the present, then we have to consider whether we can find it in the past. Let us remember that there was an age that did not know this hard and fast division between philosophy and physics. Let us recall the title of Newton's work: Philosophiae natura/is principia mathematica. For Galileo the true philosophy coincides with the true science of the structure of this world. Likewise, Descrates' entire physics is contained in his Principia philosophiae. The philosophia naturalis of the seventeenth century is scientia naturalis, science pure and simple, the heir to the legacy of medieval and ancient science. The seventeenth century claimed that the foundations it gave to this scientia were identical with the foundations of all human knowing. Leibniz was the first to open a gap between physics and metaphysics, between the sciences of nature and of philosophy; however, Leibniz himself also exhibited their essential unity in an especially impressive way. In the middle of the eighteenth century the paths of the new science of nature and the new philosophy parted, even though their common origin could never be forgotten. Furthermore, the contemporary tense division just noted between physics and philosophy has its roots in precisely this history of the two disciplines, a history which leads them from an original unity to an increasing mutual estrangement. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Accordingly, we must try to gain purchase on that common ground by going back to the initial situation, the situation of science in the seventeenth century; from this we might possibly gain a measure of enlightenment concerning present-day difficulties, even if we simply come to understand the nature of these difficulties better. We should not forget that all of the basic concepts of contemporary science were given their now·authoritative stamp in the seventeenth century. This holds especially true of the basic concepts of physics, at least of "classical" physics, to speak in the idiom of modern-day physics. However great the changes modern-day physics is about to make, or has already made in its foundations, no one will deny that it stands squarely on the shoulders of classical physics and, thus, of seventeenth century physics. Reflection on the historical foundations of physics is not an utterly wayward and irrelevant beginning, since physics itself, even in its most recent phase, has been forced again and again to look back to the past in order to recognize the limited character of many of its basic concepts. Thus, the designation "classical physics," used to refer to the physics of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, arises from the debate between quantum mechanics and relativity-theory and the basic concepts of Galilean and Newtonian mechanics. In their own day, the debates between the mechanistic and the energistic conceptions within physics led to the historical investigations of Mach and Duhem. What we have to do, in my judgment, is make this turn to historical origins even more radical. Not only is this demanded by the issue itself, it is most intimately connected with the basic presuppositions of our knowledge of the world. II Let us begin by picturing the general situation of science in the seventeenth century: A new science, desirous above all of being a science of Nature and moreover a "natural" science, opposed an already extant science. The conceptual edifice of this new science was built up in continuous debate with the traditional and dominant science of the Scholastics. The new concepts were worked out and fortified in combat with the concepts of the old science. As has been emphasized time and again, the founders of this new science, men like Galileo, Slevin, Kepler, Descartes, were moved by an original impulse quite alien to the erudite science of the Scholastics. Their scientific interests were inspired by problems of practical mechanics and practical optics, by problems of architecture, machine construction, painting, and the newly-discovered art of optical instruments. An open and unprejudiced eye for the things of this world took the place of sterile booklearning.1 However, it is no less true that the conceptual interpretation of these new insights was linked in every case with the old, traditional concepts. The claim to communicate true science, true knowledge, necessarily took 23 �its bearings from the firmly-established edifice of traditional science. At all events, such a claim presupposes the fact of "science"; it also presupposes the most general foundations of the theoretical attitude which the Greeks displayed and bequeathed to later centuries. The battle between the new and the old science was fought on the ground and in the name of the one, uniquely true science. One or the other had to triumph; they could not subsist side by side. This explains the great bitterness of the battle which lived on in the memory of succeeding generations, a bitterness immediately evident even today in the difficulty we have when we try to distance ourselves from the interpretation the victors -gave both of the battle and of the enemy they vanquished. _ What especially characterizes this battle is not only the common goal marked out by those most general presuppositions, viz., the one, unique science, but, over and above this, a definite uniformity of the weapons with which the battle was fought. However different their viewpoints, however antithetical the contents designated by their concepts might be, the antagonists are very largely in accord as to the way in which these contents are to be interpreted, the way in which the concepts intend what is meant by them whenever they are employed, in short, the conceptual framework or intentionality [Begrifflichkeit] in which their antithetical opinions are expressed. This accord has all too often been overlooked. The only issue is: Which of them handled these weapons more suitably, which of them filled in the conceptuality common to both with contents genuinely in harmony with it? No doubt, the outcome gives the victory to the new science. When it mocks at the physics of the Scholastics, the physics of "substantial forms/' the new science is striking primarily at the unquestioning attitude of the old science, the Scholasticism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, an attitude which made this old science unable to detect the tension between the contents of its concepts and the use it made of these. Such an unquestioning understanding of oneself always exhibits a failure to comprehend one's own presuppositions and thus a failure really to grasp what one pretends to know. This is the danger to which science is always exposed; this is the danger to which Scholastic science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries succumbed as no other science had done before. To penetrate to the foundations of the new science and, in this way, to the foundations of mathematical physics, we have to keep this general situation of science in the seventeenth century constantly in mind. It determines in the most basic way the horizon of this new science, as well as its methods, its general structure. It determines, above all, the intentionality of its concepts as such. There is a long-standing controversy over how the experiential bases of physics fit together with its specific conceptuality. The very possibility of distinguishing "experimental" from "theoretical physics," a distinction which surely rests on nothing more than a didactic, or technical, division of labor, illustrates the problem. The 24 reciprocity of experiment and theory, of observation and hypothesis, the relation of universal constants to the mathematical formalism-all of these issues point again and again to the two antithetical tendencies pervading modern physical science and giving it its characteristic stamp. This controversy, familiar to us from the nineteenth century, fundamentally concerns the preeminence of one or the other of these two tendencies. Nowadays, depending on the side one takes, one speaks of Empiricism or Apriorism; physicists themselves customarily side with the so-called empiricists and confuse apriorism with a kind of capriciously speculative philosophy. The good name of Kant has been made to bear the burden of furnishing ever-new fuel for this controversy. I am not going to take sides in this controversy. The controversy itself first grows from the soil of the new science and must be clarified by turning back to its origins in the seventeenth century. What is primarily at stake is an understanding of the particular intentionality, the particular character of the concepts with whose aid the mathematical physics which arose in the seventeenth century erected the new and immense theoretical structure of human experience over the next two centuries. This intentionality is that of contemporary Scholasticism. The Scholastics believed that by using it they were faithfully administering the legacy of knowledge handed down to them by tradition. They believed that they were reproducing ancient doctrine, especially ancient cosmology, in exactly the same way as it was understood and taught by the Greeks, that is, by Aristotle. They identified their own concepts with those of the ancients. The new science, moreover, followed them in this matter. It, too, interpreted ancient cosmology along the lines of contemporary scholastic science. It was, however, certainly not content with this. Rather, it called upon the things themselves in order to rebuke the untenable doctrines of this Scholastic science, with its seemingly unquestioning certitude. In doing so, it exposed the incongruity between Scholastic intentionality and the contents the traditional concepts were intended to refer to. Furthermore, it went back to the sources of Greek science, neglected by Scholastic science; these sources, too, were interpreted in terms of the intentionality it shared with Scholastic science. And this interpretation of the legacy of ancient teachings, involving a characteristic modification of every ancient concept, is the basis of the whole concept-formation of the new science. As a result, the special character of these new concepts can be brought to light in one of two ways. First, we can contrast the Scholastic science of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with genuine Aristotelianism. If we do so, a direct path leads from the lengthy and little-read compendia of Cremonini,Z Francesco Piccolomini,3 Buonamico,4 Zabarella, 5 Toletus,6 Benedictus Pereirus/ Alessandro Piccolomini,8 etc., and, above all, of Suarez, as well as from the humanistically-influenced interpretation of Aristotle (e.g., in Faber Stapulensis and Petrus Ramus), AU!1JMN 1981 �back to the Nominalism of fourteenth century. As Duhem has shown, initiatives leading to the modern sci· ence of Nature are present everywhere in fourteenth cen· tury Nominalism. Secondly, we can confront Aristotle himself as well as the other sources of Greek science, most importantly Plato, Democritus, Euclid, Archimedes, Apol· Ianius, Pappus, and Diophantus, with the interpretation given them by Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Fermat, Vieta, et al. In what follows I want to discuss only this second path, selecting just a few characteristic examples. None· theless, before I begin I must make a more general remark. Since the pioneering works of Hultsch and Tannery on the history of ancient mathematics, the relation between ancient and modern mathematics has increasingly be· come the focus of historical investigation as well as the theme of reflection in the philosophy of history. Two general lines of interpretation can be distinguished here. One-the prevailing view-sees in the history of science a continuous forward progress interrupted, at most, by periods of stagnation. On this view, forward progress takes place with "logical necessity";' accordingly, writing the history of a mathematical theorem or of a physical principle basically means analyzing its logic 10 The usual presentations, especially of the history of mathematics, picture a rectilinear course; all of its accidents and irregularities disappear behind the logical straightness of the whole path. The second interpretation emphasizes that the different stages along this path are incomparable. For example, it sees in Greek mathematics a science totally distinct from modern mathematics. It denies that a continuous development from the one to the other took place at all. Both interpretations, however, start from the present-day condition of science. The first measures ancient by the standard of modern science and pursues the individual threads leading back from the valid theorems of contemporary science to the anticipatory steps taken towards them in antiquity. Time and again it sees contemporary science in ancient science; it seeks in ancient science only the seeds of now-mature fruits. The second interpretation strives to bring into relief, not what is common, but what divides ancient and modern science. It, too, however, interprets the otherness of ancient mathematics, for example, in terms of the results of contemporary science. Consequently, it recognizes only a counter-image of itself in ancient science, a counter-image which still stands on its own conceptual level. Both interpretations fail to do justice to the true state of the case. There can be no doubt that the science of the seventeenth century represents a direct continuation of ancient science. On the other hand, neither can we deny their differences, differences not only in maturity, but, above all, in their basic initiatives, in their whole disposition (habitus). The difficulty is precisely to avoid interpreting their differences and their affinity one-sidedly in terms of the new science. The new science itself did exactly that, in order to prove that its own procedure was the only correct one. The contemporary tendency to subTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW stitute admiration or tolerance of ancient cosmology for condemnation contributes little to our understanding of that cosmology. The issues at stake cannot be divorced from the specific conceptual framework within which they are interpreted. Conversely, these issues cannot even be seen within a conceptual framework unsuited to them; at best, they can only be imperfectly described. The best example comes from modern physics itself: the discussion of modern physical theories is ensnared in great difficulties when physicists and non-physicists alike try to ignore the mathematical apparatus of physics and present the results of research in a "commonsense" manner! We need to approach ancient science on a basis appropriate to it, a basis provided by that science itself. Only on this basis can we measure the transformation ancient science underwent in the seventeenth century. A transformation unique and unparalleled in the history of man! Our modern ''scientific consciousness" first arose as a re- sult of this transformation. This modern consciousness is to be understood not simply as a linear continuation of ancient h<UT~I'~> but as the result of a fundamental conceptual shift which took place in the modern era, a shift we can nowadays scarcely grasp. I want to try to grasp the nature of this conceptual shift more precisely, that is, to determine more precisely the character of the new concepts in contrast with the old. III The unambiguous and explicit preference for quantitative over qualitative determinations in the new science sets it distinctively apart from the old. There cannot be any difference of opinion on this point. How often have those lines from Galileo's II Saggiatore (1623) been cited, that pilosophy is written in mathematical language in the great open book of the Universe! To be able to read it one has first to understand this language, one has to know the script, the letters in which it is written. These letters are ((triangles, circles, and other geometrical Figures"; without their aid we cannot understand even a single word of that language. II In the second chapter of Kepler's Mysterium cosmographicum this idea finds its most pointed formulation: God wanted quantity to make its appearance in reality before anything else, so that the relation between the curved and the straight might exist (Quantitatem Deus . .. ante omnia existere voluit, ut esset curvi ad rectum comparatio.) Hence, He first selected the curved and the straight in order to spread a reflection of the splendor of the divine creator over the world (ad adumbrandam in mundo divinitatem Conditoris); for this purpose the 'quantities' were necessary, namely, figure (fig~ ura), number (numerus) and extension (amplituda or extensio). For this reason He created the body which embraces all these determinations. 12 25 �These words point immediately back to Nicholas of Cusa, whom Kepler explicitly mentions, and anticipate Descartes' later theory. However, they are also directly connected with the whole Platonic-Pythagorean and Neo-Platonic tradition and, above all, with Plato's own Timaeus. This tradition had always remained alive. For example, in Roger Bacon's Opus Maius (1266-68) we can find statements such as these: "Mathematics is the gateway and key to all other sciences." "Anyone who does not know it cannot understand either the other sciences or the things of this world" (Qui ignorat earn, non potest scire caeteras scientias nee res huius mundi.) HLogic, too, depends on mathematics. Nothing of great significance in the other sciences can be understood without mathematics." (Nihil in eis potest sciri magnificum sine mathematica.)" What distinguishes Kepler's and Galileo's words from such statements in the earlier Platonic tradition? There clearly must be a distinction here, one that shows itself in the quite different influence, that is, the entirely different role played by mathematics in ancient and modern science. Is the distinction merely that Kepler and Galileo spoke from a firsthand, living experience of things, while the earlier authors were attached only to traditional texts? Or, did the two traditions understand something different by "quantity," by "mathematical science?" To answer this question, I have chosen examples relevant to the foundation of analytical geometry and algebra. Both analytical geometry and algebra stand in the closest relation to one another from the outset, although algebra asserted its primacy within this relation. Both belong to the foundations of mathematical physics. Vieta took the decisive step in the realm of algebra, basing himself both indirectly and immediately on Diophantus. Fermat and Descartes, who, as is well-known, count as the founders of analytical geometry, rely directly on Diophantus and Apollonius, as well as on Pappus. In both cases, then, we can confront the old and the new concepts by paying attention to the way Diophantus and Apollonius were received and construed. In both cases, what is at issue is nothing less than the creation of a formal mathematical language, without which mathematical physics is inconceivable. I shall begin by considering Apollonius' relation to Fermat and Descartes. IV A. Two works by Apollonius particularly captured the interest of sixteenth and seventeenth century mathematicians: (I) the first four books of his Treatise on Conic Sections, available in the original Greek since the fifteenth century and since 1566 in the first usable Latin translation made by Fredericus Commandinus; (2) his "Plane Loci" in two books. Only fragments of the latter are preserved in the Mathematical Collection of Pappus, the Latin translation of which-also by Commandinus-appeared in 1588. These works-along with those of Diophantus, Archi- 26 medes, and Euclid-are among the basic books of seventeenth century mathematical science. Fermat, for example, undertook to reconstruct the "Plane Loci" on the basis of the fragments in Pappus and in the light of the Conic Sections. In an introduction added later, the Isagoge ad locos pianos et solidos, and an appendix, Fermat sketched the basic features of analytical geometry. Among other things, he shows that every equation of the first and second degree in two unknowns can be coordinated with a plane geometrical locus, that is, a straight~line or a curve, if one represents the two unknowns as (orthogonal) coordinates, as we would say today. Among the infinitely many possible curves of this kind are the circle, the parabola, the ellipse, and the hyperbola, that is, the conic sections Apollonius treats in his major work. Independently of Fermat, Descartes, by solving a locus-problem posed by Pappus which goes back to Apollonius, arrived at the definitive conception of this procedure now familiar to us from ana- lytical geometry. In doing so, Descartes took up again a line of thought that had occupied him in his youth. Nonetheless, since the studies of Moritz Cantor, Fermat has rightly been considered the genuine founder of analytical geometry, since his Isagoge had certainly already been written when Descartes' Geometrie appeared (1637). Strikingly, neither Fermat nor Descartes unleashed one of those struggles over priority so common in the seventeenth century. Fermat made Descartes acquainted with his own works in analytical geometry after the Geometrie had appeared; nonetheless, neither of them placed any value on claiming priority for himself. This is all the more astonishing since they did embroil the entire Republic of Letters in the most unpleasant disputes over much flimsier points, as Gaston Milhaud has emphasized.l4 The only explanation must be that neither Descartes nor Fermat believed he had advanced beyond Apollonius on any essential points. What we take to be the enormous achievement of Descartes and Fermat they themselves believed they had learned in essence from Apollonius or Pappus. Fermat finds fault with Apollonius only because he did not present matters "generally enough" (non satis generaliter).15 He says very cautiously that his general procedure for constructing geometrical loci "was perhaps not known to Apollonius" (ab Apollonio fortasse ignorabatur). 1 And ' Descartes is quite convinced that the Ancients-he expressly names Pappus along with Diophantus-deliberately erased the traces of their true knowledge out of a kind of perverted cunning (perniciosa quadam astutia) and divulged to us, not their own art, but only a few of their resultsP I want to examine this matter more closely. When Apollonius considers a conic-section, e.g., the ellipse in Book I, Theorem 13 of the Treatise on Conic Sections,18 he begins by passing a plane through the axis of a cone and then lets the cone be intersected by another plane in such a way that the desired figure, an ellipse in this case, emerges on the surface of the cone; the line of intersection of these two planes forms the diameter of the ellipse (see Fig. 1). AUTUMN 1981 �A day we call the parameter of the ellipse and in Apollonius is called bpO{a, because it is perpendicular to the diameter and hence is "straight.") If, now, a perpendicular to ED is drawn at M, and Pis connected with D, then the segment PD cuts the perpendicular from M at point X, which determines segment MX. The segments EM and FM thus stand in a ratio that can be exactly determined geometrically and this holds true of any point F on the ellipse. In other words, this ratio is characteristic of ~he entire ellipse and, consequently, of any ellipse as such. Apollonius calls the segments EM and FM, respectively, ~ &7roTEJ'VOJ'€v~ (the line "cut off' by the diameter of the chord) and ~ TE7a"fl'{vw• xaT~'YI'€v~ (hl ri)v &&J'ETPov) the line "drawn down" to the diameter in a determinate way (that is, not in an arbitrary, but in an "ordered" way)-in Latin translation, abscissa and ordinatim applicata, or for short, ordinata.l9 Apollonius uses these segments, the Habscissa" and the "ordinate/' in every individual case, in order to define Figure 1 An auxiliary line is drawn from the vertex A which meets the plane of the base of the cone at point K; AK is parallel to the diameter ED. From an arbitrary point F on the ellipse a straight line FM is drawn to the diameter in a determinate manner, namely, in such a way that the chord FF' is bisected by point M. Consequently, FF' becomesas we say today-a conjugate chord to the diameter ED. (Compare Figure 2.) F MF l. = EM-MX Figure 2 It is then proved that the square on FM equals the rectangle made up of EM and a segment MX (in modern notation: FM2 ~ EM•MX), where the segment MX is defined as follows: on a perpendicular line dropped to E the segment EP is drawn, which stands in the same ratio to the diameter ED as the rectangle BK, CK to the square on AK (in modern notation: EP:ED ~BK·CK:AK 2 ). (Compare Fig. 1). The straight-line EP corresponds to what toTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW the general properties, the basic "planimetric properties," characteristic of different conic-sections. What distinguishes these segments from our "co-ordinates" employed for the first time by Fermat and Descartes? First of all, the axes to which they are referred, viz., in the present instance, the diameter ED and the tangent to the conic atE, "do not constitute a system of lines on their own, but like other auxiliary geometrical lines make their appearance only in connection with the conic section; they are brought into existence by the theorem to be proved in each instance."20 This procedure, which for the Greeks themselves belonged to "Analysis," has been called "geometrical algebra." This expression, first used by Zeuthen21 and now widely current, is quite felicitous insofar as it hints at both the affinity as well as the difference between the Greek and the modern procedure. The term, however, does not indicate that the procedure can only be carried out on different conceptual levels in these two different cases. In each case Apollonius has in view the particular ellipse, which is cut out on the surface of a particular cone by two particular intersecting lines. The representation in the drawing gives a true 'image' [Abbild] of this cone, these intersecting lines and this ellipse. There are infinitely many possible cones, sections, and ellipses. The procedure specified is applicable to all of them-its generality consists in this-but to this generality of procedure there does not correspond the generality of the object. There is no "general object" for the drawing ing to represent in a merely symbolic way [symbolisch ]. There are infinitely many possible, more or less good, images of the one ellipse represented here. And there are, in turn, infinitely many such ellipses which can be exhibited or 4 'imaged." The characteristic of the f.U:t.O'Yip.&nxa, math- ematical objects in the Greek sense, is precisely that they can be grasped by the senses only in images, while they themselves, in their unalterable constitution, are accessi- ble only to the discursive intellect; however, there are infinitely many of these objects. 22 What the phrase "there are" is supposed to mean here, how the mode of being of 27 �mathematical objects is to be understood, is one of the great disputes in Greek philosophy. No one disputes, however, that mathematical science as such has to do with these "pure" figures or formations [Gebilde] whose nature is accessible to the intellect alone. The lines drawn in any particular diagram and their ratios belong to this "pure" ellipse which is exhibited by them. To be sure, in the case of every individual ellipse-thanks to the generality of the procedure-such "abscissas" and "ordinates" can always be singled out, but each time line-segments belonging to the particular ellipse in question are intended. This is not due to the imperfection of Greek mathematics, its defective means of presentation, or its inadequate capacity for generalization, but is rather entailed by the specific intentionality of Greek science. Its concepts in each instance intend the individual objects themselves; they are-to speak in Scholastic language-intentiones primae ["first intentions"]-that is, concepts which refer immediately to individual objects. This is in harmony with the means of presentation which Greek science employs. The lines drawn in the figure exhibit the object, they "image" it. Consequently, the mode of presentation of Greek mathematics-with a single exception which we shall come to later-is never merely representative [stellvertretend], never symbolic, but is always the presentation of an image [abbildlich], and in this way first-intentional. For this reason, the designation "geometrical algebra," which perhaps takes its bearings too much from the exceptional case we shall discuss later, does not really do justice to the facts of the case. In contrast to analysis in our own sense, Greek analysis does not merely have a different style of presentation, but embodies a fundamentally different relation between the style of presentation and what is presented. What, in fact, do the lines which Descartes and Fermat employ as abscissas and ordinates signify? What do the curves which they draw mean? In the second part of his Discourse on Method, Descartes gives us exhaustive information on this point-" In these curves he intends to exhibit only relations or proportions (nihil aliud quam relationes sive proportiones~4 and to do so in the greatest possible generality (et quidem maxime genera/iter sumptas). 25 The exhibition of these relations in line-segments is only the simplest and clearest illustration for the senses and the imagination, so long as it is a matter of a single relation. In order to survey many such relations together and to be able to keep them conveniently in memory, they have to be simultaneously represented [representiert] by appropriate signs of ciphers, namely, by letters. Illustration by lines and representation by letters are thus merely two modes of the very same symbolic style of presentation. Lines and letters both are here simply the most suitable bearers of the general relations and proportions being considered; they are merely "les sujets qui serviraient a m'en rendre la connaissance plus aisee. "26 The ellipse inscribed within coordinate-axes (as we employ them today, using the method worked out by Descartes and Fermat) (Fig. 3) 28 Figure 3 is thus no longer an image of the "pure" ellipse, the Ellipse-Itself. The coordinate-axes drawn are no longer images of a pair of straight lines applicable to the "pure" ellipse, but merely symbolize the generally possible use of such a pair. The abscissa and the ordinate of a point when actually drawn no longer exhibit particular line-segments in the manner of images, but "illustrate" the general procedure of Apollonius; in other words they stand immediately only for the general concepts of "abscissa" and ('ordinate" resulting from that procedure and not for the line-segments directly intended by these concepts in each individual instance. Accordingly, the modern concepts of "abscissa" and ''ordinate" are intentiones securidae [''second intentions"], concepts which refer directly to other concepts, to intentiones primae, and only indirectly to objects. In the language of mathematics this means: They are concepts of the "Variable n." For this reason the abscissa and ordinate axes can be detached from the realm of objects. All the curves investigated with their help are from now on nothing but symbolic exhibitions of various possible relations, or of the different "functional" relations, between two (or more) variables. All this, however, is only one side of the matter (the side emphasized principally by the Neo-Kantians and viewed by them as the only essential aspect). It is no less essential that these symbolic curves were understood as the images of the curves exhibited by the Ancients. For example, the ellipse inscribed within coordinate-axes was regarded as the very same ellipse treated by Apollonius. Precisely this assumption led Fermat and Descartes to believe that they were not proceeding any differently than Apollonius had. Although, in fact, there has been a shift in conceptual-levels, Fermat thinks that he has simply interpreted many of Apollonius' theorems more generally (generalius), 27 that his procedure merely opened up a "general path" to the construction of geometrical loci (generalis ad locos via)" in exactly the sense in which Apollonius says that Book One of his Conic Sections treats things more generally or uniAUTUMN 1981 �versally ("a86)..ov p,&AAov~ 9 than his predecessors had done. (And not even this is certain for Fermat, if we reflect on his word fortasse ["perhaps"].) What Fermat and Descartes call "generalization" is in reality a complex conceptual process ascending from intentio prima to intentio secunda while, at the same time, identifying these. Only in this way can we understand what Descartes means when he characterizes his analytical procedure as a unification of the geometrical analysis of the Ancients with algebra. This unification is brought about through a symbolic in· terpretation and exhibiton of geometrical forms, on the one hand, and of arithmetical ratios, on the other. Both kinds of "quantities" are viewed together with regard to their common 1 "general" quantitative character and ex~ hibited in this generality. Consequently, the modern analytical procedure has to do immediately only with "general quantities." However, these "general quantities," on the whole, can only be sensibly exhibited because their generality at the same time is understood as variability, that is, because these magnitudes are thought of from the start as "alterable." (And, indeed, this holds true as much of the magnitudes posited as 'constant' as it does of genuine variables.) The <(being" of "general magnitudes" consists here only in their peculiar ability to take on all, or all admissible, values one after the other. This is exactly what gives all of them the capacity to replace particular line-seg· ments or particular numerical values. Their symbolic exhibition corresponds to what Kant understands by a schema. Kant says: This representation of a universal procedure of imagination in providing an image for a concept [i.e., assigning to a first intention the image belonging to it], I entitle the schema of this concept. 30 The schema can be directly transformed into an image [Abbild], if the segments and ratios of segments, of which it consists, assume numerically determinate lengths and values. The possibility of identifying prima and secunda intentio is, therefore, based on this, that the schema is or· dinarily understood as a schema already transformed into an image. Schematic imageability [Abbildlichkeit] is thus the element which allows us to illustrate the generalization of Arithmetic into Algebra, or, in other words, to "unite" geometry and algebra. Only in this way can we come to understand that Des· cartes' concept of extensio identifies the extendedness of extension with extension itself. Our present-day concept of space can be traced directly back to this. Present-day Mathematics and Physics designate as "Euclidean Space" the domain of symbolic exhibition by means of line-segments, a domain which is defined by a coordinate system, a relational system [Bezugssystem], as we say nowadays. "Euclidean Space" is by no means the domain of the fig· ures and structures studied by Euclid and the rest of Greek mathematics. It is rather only the symbolic illustration of the general character of the extendedness of those THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW structures. Once this symbolic domain is identified with corporeal extension itself, it enters into Newtonian physics as "absolute space." At the present time it is being criticized by Relativity Theory, which has been steered by the question of "In variance" into trying to break through these symbolic bounds, while continuing to use this very symbolism. B. The founding of analytical geometry by Descartes and Fermat is also conditioned by the immediately preceding development of algebra and the language of algebraic formulae. Vieta, as I have said, provided the decisive impetus here. I want to consider now, as a further example of this conceptual shift, Vieta's relation to traditional algebra. The science of algebra, in the form in which Vieta encountered it in the sixteenth century, namely, in the form of a doctrine of equations, was received in the West from the thirteenth century on as an Arabic science. This Arabic science was, in all probability, nourished essentially by two Ancient sources. We can identify one of these straightaway, viz., the Arithmetic of Diophantus; the other can only be indirectly inferred. (Tannery believed that he could recognize it in a lost work by a contemporary of Diophantus, sc., Anatolius.) In any case, Diophantus is by far the most important source, as the very name "Algebra" indicates: the word ''Algebra" (a 'nomen barbaricum/ as Descartes says) is in Arabic nothing more than the first half of a formulaic expression for the basic rule for solving equations that Diophantus sets out at the beginning of Book I of his Arithmetica.l 1 The doctrine of equations had made great progress in the West, before people began, in the second half of the sixteenth century, to take up Diophantus' work itself. Modern algebra and modern formalism grew out of Vieta's direct occupation with Diophantus; later writers merely elaborated and refined his work. Here, then, in Vieta's reception of Diophantus, we encounter one of those nodal-points of development, a point where the new science arose from the confrontation of two distinct conceptual planes. The surviving six books of Diophantus' Arithmetic* teach how to solve problems of reckoning which today are familiar to us as determinate and indeterminate equations of the 1st and 2nd degree. Diophantus, in giving these solutions, uses, in addition to other signs, a series of abbreviations for the unknowns and their powers. In every case it is only a matter of a simple abbreviation; this is above all the case with the sign for the unknown, which is nothing other than an abbreviation of the word &p,Op,6<. Heath has conclusively explained this point. Diophantus' "epochal *[Readers of the Review may be interested to know that the "lost" books of Diophantus' Arithmetica have now been discovered in an Arabic translation. See J. Sesiano, The Arabic Text of Books IV to VII of Diophantus' 'ApdJp.rtnx& . .. edited, with translation and commentary (Ph.D. Diss., Brown Univ. 1975).] 29 �invention" (to use Hultsch's phrase)32 consists in his having introduced this sign into the logistical procedure of solution, that is, he reckons or calculates with the unknown. Apart from the unknown or unknowns and their powers he admits only formations that correspond to rational numbers, i.e.~ to integers and fractions. In modern termi· nology, only numerical coefficients appear. What does an equation look like in Diophantus? Let us look at a very simple example which I shall write in its simplest form: That is, lxptfJp.ol OUo p.ov&OES rPt'i:~ '[(JO'i Elalv 1.wv&cn brrci. Or, in English, "Two numbers [lxP<OI'ot] and three units are equal to seven units." The sign s is a ligature for &p,OI'6s; the sign IV! (or tt=J is an abbreviation for l'ov&s or l'ov&!i<S (the plural is also written 1'"). The corresponding equation in Vieta, which for the sake of simplicity I shall write in modern form, since this does not basically deviate from his, is: 2x + 3 ~ 7. Is this merely a technically more convenient form of writing? Do the two equations say entirely the same thing, if we disregard the mode of writing? To answer this question we have to look a little more closely at the Greek manner of writing. (It is of no importance here whether Diophantus wrote in exactly this way; the extant manuscripts reproduce what is essential.) What is particularly surprising is the addition of the sign for l'ovali<S. Scholars have tried to explain this as intended to discriminate with sufficient clarity the numerical signs which specify the number [Anzah~ of dptOI'o(, i.e., the number of the unknowns (thus, in our case, the sign /3), from the signs for the purely numerical magnitudes (in our case the sign)'). If the sign M did not stand between /3 and)', then the expression could be read: 2 C,p,OI'o( and 3 C,p,OI'o( together make 7. Regardless of the fact that in a great many instances confusion is not possible at all, this interpretation fails to recognize the fundamental importance of the monad, or the monads, for Greek arithmetic. Hence, it also misjudges the Greek concept of dptOI'ot, the Greek "number-" concept in general. 'Apt01'6s does not mean "Zahl," [number in general) but 11 Anzahl/' viz., a definite number of definite things: 'II'Els &pt01'6s nvos ian. ("Every number is a number of something." 33 ) In daily life we frequently have to do with numbers of visible and tangible objects, each of which is in each case just one. However, the very possibility of counting, where we utter the same words again and again, viz., "two," ~<three," "four," etc., while referring to different things at different times, points to objects of a quite different sort, namely, to incorporeal, "pure," ones, to "pure" monads. The Greek science of arithmetic is occupied with these monads. For this reason the well-known definition of &pdJp.Os in Euclid runs as follows: ro €x p.ovciOwv av'Yx•ii'Evov 'll't./i/Oos (Euclid 7, Def. 2), "a multitude composed of monads, of unities." What it means that there are such monads, the question of the mode of being of these 30 pure monads, is the great issue in Greek philosophy, as I have already mentioned. Indeed, the case of the monad is one of the ultimate issues which divide Plato from Aristotle. It is not a matter of controversy, however, that only these pure monads as such can be the object of scientific arithmetic. According as one interprets the mode of being of these pure monads there can or cannot exist a scientific doctrine of reckoning, a logistic, alongside arithmetic, the doctrine of pure numbers and pure numerical relations. Diophantine arithmetic is in this sense a scientific logistic and stands to arithmetic in much the way the metrics of Heron of Alexandria stand to theoretical geometry. 34 It focuses upon the field of pure monads. Every single number which it treats is a number of such monads. Its mode of writing is accommodated to this fact. Even the unknown, the dptOwfs which has to be reckoned, is a definite number of monads, although still unknown at first and "indeterminate" in this sense alone. All the signs used by this logistic refer immediately to the enumerated objects in question here. How does the new science interpret this situation? In his work "In artem analyticen Isagoge" published in 1591 Vieta introduces the fundamental distinction between a ''logistica numerosa" and a "logistica speciosa." The former is a doctrine of numerical equations; the second re- places numerical values with general "symbols," as Vieta himself says, that is, with letters. (We can, in this context, disregard the fact that Vieta, in accordance with his "Law of Homogeneity," has these symbols apparently refer to geometrical formations.) Logistica speciosa gives Vieta the capacity, not only of writing an expression such as ax+ b ~ c (in a much more detailed form, with which we are not concerned here)-initiatives in this direction can be found prior to Vieta-but also of calculating with this expression. With this step, he becomes the first creator of the algebraic formula. How are we to understand this step from 2x to ax, from the numerical coefficient (the term "coefficient" stems from Vieta himself) to the literal coefficient? Could Diophantus have taken basically the same step? The answer to this depends directly on how we interpret the numerical sign "2." For Vieta the replacement of "2" by "a" is possible because the concept of "two" no longer refers, as it did for Diophantus, directly to an object, viz., to two pure monads, but in itself already has a umore general" character. "Two" no longer means in Vieta "two definite things," but the general concept of twoness in general. In other words, in Vieta the concept of two has the character of an intentio secunda. It no longer means or intends a determinate number of things, but the general number-character of this one number, while the symbol "a" represents the general numerical character of each and every number. In this sense the sign "a" represents "more" than the sign "2." The symbolic relation between the sign and what it designates is, however, the same in both cases. The replacement of "2" by "a" is in fact only "logically required here." However, in this case as wel1, this uz" is identified AUTUMN 1981 �with the sign employed by Diophantus-and this is the decisive thing. The concept of two ness is at the same time understood as referring to two entities. (Modern set theory first tries to separate these two constituents, to clarify what "at the same time" means.) In any case, Vieta, as the result of this identification, understands Diophantus' logistic as a logistica numerosa which "logically" presupposes the "more general" logistica speciosa. Thus, Vieta says in paragraph 14 of his Isagoge that Diophantus practiced the art of solving equations most cleverly. He continues: "Earn vera tanquam per numeros non etiam per species, quibus tamen usus est, institutam exhibuit." ("However, he exhibited it [this art] as if it were based on numbers and not also on species [that is, the literal-signs,] although he nonetheless made use of these species.")35 Diophantus kept silent about the latter, in Vieta's opinion, only so as to make his acuity and his skill shine more brightly, since the numerical solution-procedure is indeed much more difficult than the convenient literal-reckoning. The relation between Fermat and Apollonius finds its exact counterpart here: Vieta sees in literal-reckoning only a more convenient, because more general, path to the solution of the problems posed. He can do this because he interprets the numbers with which Diophantus dealt from a higher conceptual level, because, in other words, he identifies the concept of number with the number itself, in short he understands Anzahl [counting-number] as Zahl [number in general]. Our contemporary concept of number [Zahlbegriffj has its roots in this interpretation of the Ancient c,p,ep.6s. We can now understand how important it is that Bachet, who in 1621 (hence, after Vieta) published the first usable edition and Latin translation of Diophantus, abandons the current rendering of the sign for the p.ovas. "Who," he says, "does not immediately think of six units when he hears the number 6 named?" ("Ecquis enim cum audit numerum sex non statim cogitat sex unitates?") "Why is it also necessary to say 'six units,' when it is enough to 1 say 'six'?" ("Quid ergo necesse est sex unitates dicere, cum sufficiat dicere, sex?'')l 6 This discrepancy-felt to be selfevident-between cogitare (thinking) and dicere (saying and also writing) expresses the general shift in the meaning of the concept from intentio prima to intentio secunda, together with their simultaneous identification. Consequently, there is no longer anything to prevent Vieta's logistica speciosa from becoming a part of geometrical analysis; this is exactly what Fermat and Descartes explicitly did. The unification of these two disciplines is basically complete in Vieta' s ars analytica. Modern analysis is, therefore, not a direct combination of Ancient geometrical analysis with the Ancient theory of equations, but the unification of both on the basis of a transformed intentionality. The same shift in meaning can be established in a whole series of concepts. For instance, the mathematical term OVvafus, 'power' in ancient mathematics, means only the square of a magnitude, while we speak as well of the third, the fourth power, etc. We do not encounter this THEST.JOHNSREVIEW relation in the mathematical domain alone. It also holds between the modern concept of 'method' and the Greek term p.€8ooos, between our 'theory' and Greek B<wPia. In two cases, those of substance and causality, this shift in meaning was of the greatest importance for the construction of the new science. I cannot discuss these now. I want simply to remark that the relation here is more complicated, inasmuch as these concepts-like all concepts belonging to 1rpwr~ qn"Aoao<ria, the Ancient ontological fundamental-science-themselves already have the character of intentiones secundae; this is why the new science considered itself the sole legitimate heir of ancient philosophy, why, in other words, mathematical physics can in a certain sense replace ancient ontology for us. I want now, by way of conclusion, to turn to the exception I mentioned earlier and thereby compare one of the bases of ancient cosmology with the fundaments of the modern study of nature. C. I said that what is peculiar to the conceptual intention of ancient science-and especially of Greek mathematics-is that its concepts refer immediately to definite objects. This obviously does not hold true of the 5th book of Euclid's Elements which goes back to Plato's friend Eudoxus. This book contains the so-called general theory of proportions, that is, it treats ratios and proportions of p.ey€8~, magnitudes in general. Accordingly, it does not treat the ratios of particular magnitudes, geometrical forms for instance, or numbers or bodily masses or time- segments, but ratios "in themselves," the wholly undetermined bearers of which are symbolized [symbolisch . .. versinnbildlicht] by straight lines. The fifth book of Euclid, in fact, contains a "geometrical algebra." The exceptional character of this branch of Greek mathematics brings it into immediate proximity to Greek ontology. It is not surprising, therefore, that it had an exemplary, although diverse, significance for both Plato and Aristotle. This xcxOO>..ov 7rPcx'YJ.UXTEia,31 this scientia generaliS or universalis, took on an even greater importance for the new science, if that is possible. A direct path leads from the fifth Book of Euclid and the late Platonic dialogues, through the preface of Proclus' Commentary on Book One of Euclid, and the Latin translation of that work by Barozzi in 1560, to Kepler's astronomical researches, to Descartes' and Wallis' mathesis universalis, to Leibniz's universal characteristic and finally to modern symbolic logics, on the one hand, and, on the other, to Galileo's mechanical investigations and to the conception of natural laws in general. (The latter connection has not been sufficiently emphasized up to now.) The close relation between the general theory of proportions and the new science is established from the start by their kindred conceptual basis. What is important, however, is the very different ways in which ancient cosmology and seventeenth century physics made use of the concept of proportion. I want to 31 �try to define this difference by using the example of seventeenth century interpretations of Plato's Timaeus. In that dialogue, the mathematician, the "Pythagorean" Timaeus, gives a genetic presentation of the construction of the world. (In this context, and only in this, can we disregard the fact that this presentation does not claim to be a valid €7na7'1/p:q, a true science, but claims only to give an Elxws !LiiOos, an image approximating the truth as closely as possible.)l 8 A chaotic state of the world-matter precedes the origin of the world: Fire, Air, Water, and Earth are in disharmonious and disordered motion, they pass freely into one another, they are at first nothing but 7fA~!L!LEAws xed drrixrws xtvoVp,€vcx.39 The divine demiurge brings them from this condition of dis-order into the condition of order, of nXtts-: Els r&~w . .. if'YCX'YfV Ex rfjs lna~t&s. 40 How does he bring about this condition of order? By producing a self-maintaining equilibrium among the world-materials, so that their restless passage into one another yields to well-balanced rest, turns into ~<Jx{rx. 'Avrx>-.o-y{rx, proportion, is best suited for this purpose, in the first place, because it knits together a firm connection, a firm bond, a liE<JjLos,' 1 among the world-materials, a bond which proves to be unbreakable throughout almost all internal changes in these materials, that is, throughout the overwhelming majority of possible permutations of the elements within this proportion; secondly, because the proportion is a bond which, among all possible bonds, is itself most of all bound to what it binds together, that is, it binds itself most intimately with what is bound together so as to form a unitary whole: atnOv n xal: nl ~vvOoVp..EVa ~n p.&Aurra €'v 7fotfi.42 Proportion has both of these features by virtue of its incorporeality. Thus, its incorporeality, by virtue of which it institutes wholeness and brings about order, makes it akin to what we call "soul," >fvx~- Indeed, it is difficult to say whether the Timaeus allows us to draw any distinction at all between >fvx~ and d.vrx>-.o-yfrx. All of the world-materials together from now on form a structured whole, because their quantity, the size of their respective bulk (cf. rxptOjLGJv o-yxwv-3lc), remains in a fixed ratio throughout all changes or at least comes very close to this fixed ratio: as Fire is to Air, so Air to Water, and as Air is to Water, so Water to Earth. Just as a single, living, "besouled" organism maintains itself as a whole throughout the constant changes of its bodily materials, so, too, the entire visible world maintains itself, thanks to this proportion among its materials, as this one, perfect whole (t'v OX.ov TEAEov).43 And that means: as this living whole. It is only through this proportion that a "world" arises at all, that is, an ordered condition of the world-materials, which we call that it continues to produce itself anew, renews itself again and again as what it already is within the texture of the world-order. Thereby it helps this world-order, this Ta~ts, to be continuously maintained. The being of every natural thing, therefore, is determined by the world-order as such, the Td.~ts of the world, the >fvx~ Tov xo<JjLOV [soul of the world) and, finally, by the d.vrx>-.o-y{rx. Td~ts is thus the basic concept of ancient cosmology, not only Plato's, but also Aristotle's, in the version transmitted to the Christian centuries 45 But Ta~ts, order, essentially means in every case a definite order, an ordering according to a definite point of view, in conformity with which each individual thing is assigned its place, its location, its n57fos. Order always means well-ordering. For this reason ancient cosmology, as topology, is not possible without the question of this ultimate ordering point of view, without the question of d-yrxOov, the Good. And ancient cosmology reaches its fulfillment in the doctrine of the different T61fot [places). This doctrine also investigates the ratios and proportions in which the celestial bodies appear arranged in their spheres. How did the new science receive this ancient doctrine of nx~ts and rxvrx>-.o-y{rx, of ordo and proportio? In his Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, Galileo takes his bearings continuously from the two basic books of traditional cosmology, Aristotle's De caelo and Plato's Timaeus; in battling against Aristotle he relies again and again on Plato. The entire construction of Galileo' s dialogue is in a certain sense determined by the construction of the Timaeus. Like the Timaeus, Galileo, too, bases all further cosmological explanations on the thesis that the world has an order. Its parts are coordinated in the most perfect manner ("con sommo e perfettissimo ordine tra di lora dispaste.") In this way the best distribution ("l'ottima distribuzione e collocazione") of the heavenly bodies, the stars and the planets arises. However, what is important here is how Galileo understands the Platonic principle that the divine demiurge brought the world-material from disorder to order. He thinks that Plato meant the following: each of the different planets has a different orbital velocity within the present order of the world. In order to reach these velocities, they must, from the instant of their creation, have passed through all the grades of lesser velocity. The creator let them fall close to the mid-point of the world in rectilinear motion, so that the uniform acceleration pecu~ liar to falling-motion (free fall) could bring them gradually to their present velocity, at the moment when they reached the place assigned to them. Only then did He set them rotating, so that they proceeded from the non-uniform recti- a cosmos. K6aJLoS thus means a self-maintaining condition linear motion to the henceforth uniform circular motion of m'~" (order). This condition is the basis of life, life that maintains itself, produces itself time and again. For life alone creates itself ad infinitum. Hence the world, precisely as an ordered world, is a self-sufficing animal, a tWov rxvmpxn. 44 Its own being, as well as the being of its parts, in which they persist until today. Non-uniform rectilinear motion along the vertical corresponds, for Galileo, to the state of disorder, rxmUrx, of which Plato speaks, while uni- is cpVat.s, that is, Hnatural" being. The natural being of every entity existing "by nature" is determined by the fact 32 form circular motion, that is, motion along the horizontal line (for "horizontal" originally means the direction of the circle of the horizon) corresponds to the present state of order. With this interpretation, Galileo intends above all AUTUMN 1981 �to defend the Platonic principle against Aristotle's criti- new science, it is a "law." Accordingly, the new science in cisms in De caelo.46 terprets ""'~"' ordo, as law, and construes the order of the world as the lawfulness of the world. The shift in the meaning of the concept of ordo has its concrete basis here in the possibility of transferring proportion from the ratios among the quantities of the relevant elementary-bodies, or from the ratios of their correlative positions, to the state of motion of these bodies. This shift, however, eliminates the order of the elementary-bodies, their r&~"' in the sense of well-ordering. For the lawfulness of their motion, the regular sequence of their states of motion, can be constructed only on the basis of their complete equality in rank, their lack of ordering in the strict sense, that is, their complete indifference to the place they occupy. The new science now understands just this lawfulness in the course of motion, in the temporal sequence of states of motion, as the order of the world. The order of things moves up one story higher, so to speak, when the temporal dimension is added. At the same time, however, the disorder of the elementary-bodies, on which the lawfulness of the It is not crucial here that Galileo's interpretation finds no support in Plato's text What is significant is the direction in which he looks for the distinction between order and disorder: not in the ratio or absence of ratio among the quantities of the basic materials, not in the correlative positions of the celestial bodies (although these do appear, in accordance with the construction of the Timaeus, as the genuine theme of his inquiry), but in the differences in the states of motion as such. The bodies themselves are not subject to comparison (comparatio, as Cicero in his translation of the Timaeus says for proportion as well), only a mode of being of these bodies, namely, their motion. The application of proportion in Galileo's mechanical works is also consonant with this. The connection with the Greeks' general theory of proportions is immediate here, thanks to the direct reception of Euclid and Archimedes, as well as indirectly, by way of a qualitative doctrine of geometrical ratios stemming from the 14th century Nominalist school.47 What we today call Galileo's laws of free-fall are intended by Galileo himself as EudoxianEuclidean proportions. In the Discorsi (Third day, Second Book, Theorem II, Proportio II) a proportion is derived with Euclidean means which we today would write as: Both types of magnitude (S and T) are symbolized by straight lines, in accordance with Book Five of Euclid. The decisive difference from the cosmological proportion in the Timaeus is that time becomes one of the elements of the proportion. What I have said about Galileo also holds true of Kepler, whose lifework, in his own opinion, consists in the restoration of the Platonic doctrine of order and proportion. The relation between the square of the periods of the planets and the cubes of the great axes of their orbits, familiar to us as Kepler's Third Law, is once again conceived as a Euclidean proportion, of the form ti:ti=d:ri, or, as it has to be written to conform with Kepler's own wording in Book One of the Harmonice mundi: 11 world is based, is now understood as Drder." Let us hear Descartes: In chapter 46 of the Third Part of his Principia he sets out the basic assumptions of his physics. In the next chapter Descartes refers to his earlier attempt to derive the present state of the world by assuming an original chaos. He says: "Even if, perhaps, this very same order of things, which we encounter now (idem ille ordo qui iam est in rebus) can be derived from chaos with the help of laws of nature (ex chao per leges naturae deduci potest), something I once undertook to show [sc. in Le Monde], nonetheless I now assume that all the elementary parts of matter were originally completely equivalent to one another both in their magnitude and their motion ... because chaotic confusion (confusio) seems to be less fitting to the highest perfection of God, the creator of things, than proportion or order (proportio vel ordo) and also can be less distinctly known by us, and because no proportion and no order is simpler and more accessible to knowledge than the one which consists in universal equality." It was only later, through the work of Boltzmann and then of Planck, that this "hypothesis of elementary disorder," as it was called, was made explicit in statistical terms. Its importance for physics is clear from the fact that Planck called the essence of the Second Law of Thermodynamics the "Principle of Elementary Disorder."48 The world of mathematical physics built upon this presupposition, the world of natural processes occurring in accordance with law, determines the concept of nature in Taken together with the other two proportions which we today call Kepler's First and Second Laws, it determines the cosmic order in which we live. In these Galilean and Keplerian proportions the concept of law, of the lex naturae, becomes visible for the first time. (Although neither Galileo nor Kepler uses this word as a technical term; it is first given a fixed sense by Descartes.) The relation of the new to the old intentionality here becomes immediately comprehensible. For Greek cosmol- concept of nX~L>; T&~t.s is now understood as lex, that is, as ogy, &va'Ao"({a is the expression of rtx~~~, of order; for the order over time. The ascent from prima intentio to secunda THEST.JOHNSREVIEW the new science generally. "Nature" means for it a system of laws, means-to speak with Kant-"the conformity to law of appearances in space and time." All the concepts in this formula (as I have tried to show for "space" and "law") can only be understood by contrast with the corresponding concepts of ancient science. Above all, the concept of conformity to law signifies a modification of the ancient 33 �intentio is initiated here by the insertion of the time-dimension.49 How, then, does the new science, on the basis of its intentionality, interpret ancient cosmology? How does it interpret the "natural" world of the Ancients, the world of r&hs? It interprets it as the qualitative world in contrast to the "true" world, in contrast to the quantitative world. It understands the "naturalness" of this qualitative world in terms of the "naturalness" of the ''true," "lawful" world. Eddington, in the introduction to his recent book, speaks in a characteristic way of these two worlds: "There are duplicates of every object about me-two tables, two chairs, two pens." The one table, the commonplace table, has extension, color, it does not fall apart under me, I can use it for writing. The other table is the "scientific" table. "It consists," Eddington says, "mostly of emptiness. Sparsely scattered,in that emptiness are numerous electrical charges rushing about with great speed."SO Translated by David R. Lachterman 1. Leo Olschki has forcefully emphasized this point in his important work Geschichte der neusprachlichen wissenschaftlichen Literatur, I-III (Heidelberg 1919-1927). 2. Disputatio de coelo, 1613. 3. Librorum ad scientiam de natura attinentium pars prima, 1596. 4. De motu, 1591. 5. De rebus naturalibus libri XXX, 1589. 6. Commentaria una cum quaestionibus in octo libros Aristotelis de physica auscultatione, 1574. 7. De communibus omnium rerum naturalium principiis et affectionibus, 1562. 8. De certitudine mathematicarum, 1547. 9. Compare, e.g., Leon Brunschvicq, Les €tapes de la philosophie mathimatique, Paris 1912, 105. 10. See Pierre Duhem, La thiorie physique, son objet et sa structure, Paris 1906, 444 [English translation, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, trans. P. P. Wiener, Princeton 1954.} 11. Galileo Galilei, Opere, Edizione nazionale, 6, 232. 12. Kepler, Opera, ed. Frisch, I, 122 f. 13. Pars IV, Dist. 1, Cap. I & II. 14. Descartes savant, Paris 1921, 124-148. 15. Oeuvres de Fermat (ed. Tannery and Henry), I, 91. 16. Oeuvres de Fermat, 99. 17. Regulae ad directionem ingenii, Rule IV, Oeuvres, ed. Adam & Tan· nery, X, 376. 18. Opera, ed. Heiberg, I, 48 ff. 34 19. See also Apollonius, ed. Heiberg, I, 6, DeF. 4. (The term "abscissa" was first used in the 18th century; cf. Tropfke, Geschichte der ElementarMathematik (2nd ed., Leipzig 1921-24), VI, 116 f.) 20. Moritz Cantor, Vorlesungen tiber Geschichte der Mathematik (3rd. ed., Leipzig 1907), I, 337. 21. Zeuthen [The author may have had in mind H. G, Zeuthen, Geschichte der Mathematik in Altertum und Mittelalter (Copenhagen 1896), ch. IV: "Die geometrische Algebra," 44-53. Translator's Note.] 22. See Plato, Republic VI, 510 D-E and Aristotle, Metaphysics, #6, 987bl5 ff. 23. Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Adam & Tannery, VI, 19-20. 24. Oeuvres de Descartes, 551 (Latin text). 25. Oeuvres de Descartes. 26. Oeuvres de Descartes, 20. 27. Oeuvres de Fermat, 93. 28. Oeuvres de Fermat. 29. Ed. Heiberg, I, 4. 30. Critique of Pure Reason, B 179. 31. [The full Arabic phrase is "al-jabr wa'l-muqabalah." For a contemporary discussion of the meanings of "jabr" and "muqabalah" see G. A. Saliba, "The Meaning of al-jabr wa'l-muqabalah," Centaurus 17 (1972), 189-204. Translator's Note.] 32. F. Hultsch, Article: "Diophant," in: Pauly Wissowa Realenzyklopii.die, Paragraph 9. 33. Alexander of Aphrodisias, In Aristotelis Metaphysica Commentaria, ed. M. Hayduck, 85.5-6. See also Aristotle, Physics IV 4, 224a2 ff. 34. Compare Heron, Metrica {ed. Sch6ne), I, 6 ff. 35. [Vieta's Isagoge has been translated by]. Winfree Smith as an appendix to Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (Cambridge, Mass., 1968). The passage cited occurs on page 345. Translator's Note.] 36. 1621-edition, 4. 37. See, for Aristotle, Metaphysics 6 1, 1026a23-27; K4, l061b17 ff; M2, 1077a9-12; M3, 1077bl7-20; Posterior Analytics A5, 74al7-25; A24, 85a38-bl. Compare also Marinus on Apollonius [i.e. the mention of a now-lost "General Treatise" (xa86Aou 7rPa'YJ.tO'Tda) in Euclidis Opera, ed. Heiberg-Menge, VI, 234 Translator's Note.] 38. Timaeus 29D 39. Timaeus 30A 40. Timaeus 41. Timaeus 31C 42. Timaeus 43. Timaeus 33A-B 44. Timaeus 33D; 37D 45. See Aristotle, Metaphysics M3, 1078a36-b6 and compare the title of Ptolemy's work: h ativm~n (sc. TWv E 1rAavw~-tfvwv The Ordering-Together of the Five Planets.) For this title, see Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. "Astronomie." 46. r2, 300b 16 11. 47. Compare P. Duhem. [The author most probably had in mind Etudes sur Leonard de Vinci (Paris 1905-1913)-Translator's Note.] 48. Max Planck, Die Einheit des physikalischen Weltbildes, Leipzig 1909. 49. M. Planck, Das Weltbild der Physik (Leipzig 1931, 2d. ed.). 50. Sir Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, New York 1929, ix-x. AUTUMN 1981 �"Sexism" is Meaningless Michael Levin W HEN MY WIFE AND I PLAY TWENTY QUESTIONS, and my wife must guess a woman, she will often ask "Is this woman famous for whom she married?" Many would label her or her question "sexist." Indeed, few words have figured as prominently as "sexism" in contemporary public discourse. Such currency would ordinarily suggest that this epithet means something, but in the present instance this impression is mistaken. Beyond carrying a negativ·e expressive force, like "Grrrr" 11 or "Goddammit," Sexism" is empty. 1 What "sexism" is supposed to mean is clea~ enough. "Dr. Smith has a roving eye, and his attractive wife is a notorious flirt" is called "sexist" because it implies that interest in the opposite sex is worse in married women than in married men, and that appearance matters more for that will serve my son will not serve my daughter. I base these convictions on a belief in a difference between men and women. Call these convictions "sexist" if you wish, but please tell me what precisely is wrong, unreasonable, or even controversial about them. The discomfort of women in milieus demanding aggression has been confirmed by experience countless times. If noticing this is sexism, there is nothing wrong with it. "Sexism" cannot be used to label the factual judgement that the sexes dif. fer in certain specific ways and at the same time retain its automatic pejorative force. Unfortunately, words are not always used as they should be. "Exploit" means "to use another without his consent," but contractual wages are nevertheless de- is a man's book" is "sex- nounced in some quarters as "exploitative." The point of such tendentious misusage is, of course, to get your inter~ ist" because it implies that men more than women enjoy adventure stories. My wife is a sexist because she believes that fame often comes to women from their liaisons with men, and-more egregious-she isn't indignant about it. "Sexism," then, is typically used to describe either the view that there are general, innate psychological differences between the sexes, or that gender is in and of itself important.' Since the first view is simply a factual belief supported by a vast body of evidence, and the second view, however objectionable, is held by almost no-one, neither view is worth attacking. But one thing is clear: locutor to call wage labor "exploitation" and then to let the negative connotations of that word impel him to denounce wage labor itself. If you succeed, you have boxed him into a substantive moral position by word magic. Once recognized, this trap is easy to elude. Anyone who approves of wage labor ought to say: "I'll call wage labor 'exploitation,' if you insist on using words that way. But I see nothing wrong with what you call 'exploitation'." The same maneuver avoids the feminist's provocation. If, as it often is, "sexism" is deployed simply to descredit belief in gender differences, anyone who accepts these differences those whose active vacabulary includes "sexism" (femi- can treat "sexism" as a neutral name for this belief. With a nists, for short) take it to describe something that is both objectionable and widely held, and hence worth-in fact requiring-regular and vehement attack. This relentless tagging of "sexism" on to what it does not fit suggests, to put it charitably, that feminists are confused about what their subject is and about what they want to say about it. The word Sexism" simply encapsulates and obscures this confusion. Take the view that there are innate gender differences. I doubt that my daughter will become a quarterback. I expect her to develop habits different than those of my son -and I hope so as well, because I believe that the habits little gumption he can preface his conversations with feminists with this caveat, and continue to judge his belief on its factual merits. Sometimes the trick of illicitly transferring an epithet is managed by constantly stressing some similarity between its central cases and vaguely peripheral ones. A polemicist may seduce his audience into calling wage labor "slavery" by focusing on what wage labor does share with slavery. (Both may involve working up a sweat.) To transfer an epithet to new cases ad libitum is harder, the clearer and more stable its central cases are; easier, the fewer its antecedently clear cases. At the limit of this process are neologisms, like "sexism," which come into the world with only negative connotations and nearly unlimited denotative potential. "Exploitation" derives its force from the recognizable badness of its central cases; abusing it consists in exporting it too far from these cases. One might suppose that women than for men. "Kon~Tiki 11 Professor of Philosophy at The City College of New York, Michael Levin has recently published Metaphysics and the Mind-Body Problem (Oxford University Press 1979). He has contributed to Measure, Commentary, Newsweek, and numerous philosophical journals. THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW 35 �"sexism" has acquired its force similarly, by describing something obviously bad. This would imply that "sexism" does have some legitimate meaning, however much that legitimate meaning has been abused. Not every word, however, functions like "exploitation": some have only the force of disapprobation. Consider the communist practice of endlessly reviling enemies as "bourgeois" and 1'revanchist." These words have lost a11 mooring in the descriptive uses they once had. Nonetheless, their repetition induces confusion and guilt in the victims of public hate sessions simply because they convey so much hate. Words used as vehicles for anger will acquire negative force, whatever the source of the anger. Neologisms like "sexism," trailing clouds of rage at their birth, are of this sort. The very ugliness of "sexism" itself supports this account of its genesis, for it you want to endow a word with a negative force, it is helpful to make the word itself repellent. Calling housework "shitwork," and using the grating sound "sexism" for those rare cases to which ''misogyny" might have applied, plays on the human tendency to attribute the qualities of words to things, and, by the animosity implicit in flaunting ugliness, communicates the rancor behind the word. (Orwell noted that avoidable ugliness is a sure sign of political cant.) Calling my belief in gender differences "sexist" invites me to perceive my belief as ugly because its name is ugly and comes prepackaged with ugly emotions. that men and women differ ''sexist" makes for sheer confusion, what of using "sexist" to describe the idea that gender is intrinsically important? Obnoxious as this idea may be, it is virtually without adherents. Suttee and purdah are not features of Western culture. Despite the frequency and vigor with which feminists publicly identify their enemy as the doctrine that IDen are inherently superior," 3 its followers could hold a public meeting in a telephone booth. That the feminists' enemy here is merely nominal becomes clear with the reflection that "better" means nothing at all apart from some specification of abilities or relevant context. Mr. A cannot simply be better than Miss B. Of course, we do speak of one person being morally better than another, and by this we do perhaps intend a judgement of overall value. The feminist's point can hardly be, however, that women are morally as good as men. Not only does no one deny this, feminists themselves are constantly deploring the ''stereotype" that woman's "role" is to civilize the naturally amoral and anarchic impulses of the male. "Better," then, must mean "better at this or that particular task," and men are so obviously better at some things than women that this "doctrine," rather than being the object of scorn, should pass unchallenged. If "sexism," for example, means the idea that men can hurl projectiles farther than women, it once again becomes impossible to un- I F CALLING THE BELIEF 11 36 derstand why "sexism" is used with such heat. Is "sexism" the view that men surpass women at some highly valued activity, like abstract reasoning, while women are better at other activities like child-rearing-which, outside feminist circles, are valued as highly as anything men do? If so, then the view in question once again becomes a factual hypothesis, indeed a hypothesis which is rather obvious to the unaided and scientifically aided eye. In any case, we are back to interpreting "sexism" as a name for a group of factual beliefs and, as I have already stressed, calling a factual hypothesis by an invidious name is sheer confusion. The readiness of feminists to attack what no one defends- "men are better than women" -may be explained by the observation that traits can be significant in two different ways. A trait can be important in itself: intelligence, for example, is necessary for a variety of tasks and is valued in its own right. This is why employers may permissibly hire the brightest applicants, and why most people enjoy witty companions. But many traits not significant in themselves are closely associated with some which are. People may and do heed such derivatively significant traits because they confirm the presence of what actually matters. Illiteracy is not intrinsically bad, but it usually implies deeper incompetence. We permit an employer to ignore illiterates who want to be laser technicians because an illiterate is unlikely to know much about lasers. Similarly, strength is what counts for being a fireman, but size and weight are sufficiently reliable signs of strength to serve as proxies in deciding who gets to be a fireman. Since we can be pretty sure of the results beforehand, it is a waste of time to let a 5 foot, 100-pounder try to drag a 120 pound weight up a flight of stairs. Values and institutions commonly deplored as "sexist" because they appear to appeal to the intrinsic importance of gender really rest on the idea that gender is highly correlated with traits whose significance is not at issue. Take two examples. Those opposed to drafting women do not argue that women are women, but that women are less aggressive and less tolerant of the stress of combat than men. (They also understand that an army is meant to defend its country, not to serve as an equal opportunity employer or a crucible for social experiments.) The pivotal objection to conscripting women has nothing to do with any inherent "inferiority" of femaleness, everything to do with the ability of women to fight. Take even the "double standard" which judges female promiscuity more harshly than male. Despite appear· ances, this difference in attitude is not based on the belief that there is something intrinsically worse about female promiscuity. Even the unanalyzed "gut" double standard that most people still feel rests on a belief about the different psychologies of the sexes. Most people believe that men can divorce their sexual feelings from their emotional commitments more easily than women, and hence can more easily satisfy their sexual appetites without risking rejection and unhappiness. People thus believe, or sense, AUTIJMN 1981 �that there is more likely to be something wrong with a promiscuous woman than a promiscuous man. We expectand I know of no statistical or impressionistic evidence against this-that willingness to have sex with many partners is more likely to be associated with compulsivity and other personality disorders in women than men. It is this belief, however inarticulate, that underlies the double standard, and even feminists must agree that if it is true the double standard is more than caprice. I believe that a dispassionate overview would confirm what these two examples illustrate: almost all views labelled "sexist" because implying the intrinsic importance of gender amount to factual beliefs about the sexes.4 T of dubious relevance so certain to be raised at this point that it must be heard. It runs that judging people on the basis of what is usually true is unfair to the unusual. What of that unusually strong midget who could pass the fireman's test? What if there is a female tougher than most Marines who, because women ar~arred from combat, will never get a chance to win the Medal of Honor? It must be replied, first, that expectations must be based on what is generally, even if not universally, true. A sure way to fail to get what you want is to base your plans on expectation of the exceptional. If ninety percent of the apples in an orchard are green, it is sheer irrationality to expect the next apple you pick to be red. Second, legally mandated discrimination on the basis of derivatively significant traits is relatively rare. All that most people want is the legal right to use their own discretion. What is wrong with much "anti-discrimination" legislation is that it forbids attending to what may prove relevant. (The whole matter is exacerbated in this country by the alacrity with which the federal government has overruled local jurisdiction on such matters.) Third, and most important, it is perniciously utopian to demand that exceptional cases have a right to be recognized. It is not unfair, although it is perhaps unfortunate, that a potential female Audie Murphy goes unrecognized. No one promised her she would be appreciated, no agreement has been breached if she is not. Nobody promised you at birth that you would enter the field best suited to your talents, but this hardly violates some mythical right to self-actualization. HERE IS A COMPLAINT B the impatient feminist might be keen to remind me that there is a middle ground. "Sexism," she might say, is prejudice against women and their abilities. According to her, prejudice is a much subtler matter than dislike of a morally irrelevant trait like gender or race: it is the irrational retention of unflattering beliefs about those who have the trait. A racial bigot need not believe that Negroes are "inferior" to whites: his bigotry consists in believing on patently insufficient grounds that Y NOW Negroes are lazier than THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW ~bites. Prejudice, moreover, in- valves self-deception. A bigot may believe he has an open mind-even though he loses his temper whenever anyone tries to change it. Finally, prejudicial underestimation typically serves unhealthy needs: it bolsters feelings of worth by representing the Other as inferior, or forestalls guilt by projecting illicit desires onto the Other. Perhaps, then, "sexism" should be taken to mean the belief, held with irrational tenacity, that on the whole men and women differ significantly. The trouble with this new gambit is that anyone who claims much of past and current society to be "sexist" in this new sense must deny that there is good evidence that men differ significantly from women, and maintain that people would not change their minds if presented with a disproof of sex differences. This is not an easy position to hold. The most ardent feminist must admit that all the available evidence favors difference. Women differ physically from men, and act differently. Anyone who has had anything to do with little children observes that these behavioral differences appear before "socialization" takes hold. Every little boy notices that his little girl friends' homework is neater than his own, and that they are not so willing as he is to fight over points of honor. Everyone sees that fathers are usually sterner than mothers. Anyone familiar with the artistic and literary classics of other cultures finds that they represent men and women just about as ours do. The feminist may deplore these facts, and she may believe that an environmentalist hypothesis will someday explain them, but she cannot deny them. Even she must admit that belief in male/female difference is perfectly reasonable. People think of the typical physicist as male simply because almost all physicists have been male. "Liberated" movies and novels which ostentatiously present female detectives, etc. are so jarring precisely because their self-conscious implausibility destroys the suspension of disbelief. My wife asks her question because many women have derived fame from the fame of their husbands or lovers. To pretend this is not so is to refuse to face facts and to handicap oneself at such practical tasks as winning at twenty questions. Even if the apparent differences between men and women are the result of conditioning-a hypothesis that can only be invoked after the innateness hypothesis has been refuted and some other hypothesis, however ad hoc, must be invoked-classifying traits as "masculine" and "feminine" is too well founded to be called prejudice. Even if there is a shortage of brilliant female composers because a conspiracy barred women from conservatories, it is not "sexist prejudice" to expect the next Mozart to be male. For all its contribution to modern science, the work of Copernicus managed to convince the learned world of a great falsehood: that things are usually not what they seem. Descartes was only the first of many thinkers who, shaken by the discovery that the sun's motion is merely 37 �apparent, resolved to regard his senses as liars until proven truthful, his ordinary beliefs guilty until proven innocent. In fact, the instance of Copernicus and the others stressed by such champions of scientific revolution as Kuhn and Feyerabend are rare and anomalous. Most things do turn out, under critical scrutiny, to be as they seem. Bread really nourishes, water does extinguish fire, appeasement encourages bullies, and on and on. What science tells us is why and how these things are so, not that they are illusions. I stress this because the falsehood that most scientific discoveries undo common sense is, I suspect, one of the main supports of the currently rampant scepticism about sex differences. Because common experience points over· whelmingly to important intrinsic differences between the sexes, it is inferred that the job of science, in this case social science, is to explain these differences away. What the history of science should lead one to expect is that, on the contrary, deeper inquiry will explain the gender differ· ences revealed by ordinary experience. But the acid test of the "prejudice" theory is whether society would abandon belief in gender differences in the face of evidence to the contrary. This question must be carefully distinguished from several others. Since the belief at issue concerns general tendencies, ignoring ex· ceptions is not prejudice. One can consistently believe that men are better at mathematics than women while ad· miring the work of Emmy Noether. Furthermore, a belief may be important without being irrationally fixed, and serve a need which is profound but healthy. A belief may thus be painful to surrender without being a prejudice. For instance, a man finds it important that his wife's per· sonality complement rather than copy his own. He meets enough duplicates of himself in the impersonal world of work to want something else at home. The suggestion that the complementarity he prizes is an artifact will natu· rally disturb him. 5 But this does not mean that his belief channels guilt or fortifies a weak ego, or that he is wrong to demand convincing arguments before he accepts the suggestion. Nor is the irritation felt by many men at the (alleged) in· flux of women into "non-traditional" fields evidence that belief in sex differences is held with prejudicial tenacity. This outrage is directed against coercion, not against a challenge to faith. It is provoked by the pressure-group agitation, lawsuits, and doctrinaire federal fiats that force women on them. Changes that no one would mind or take much note of had they occurred through necessity or social evolution (like the influx of women into factories during World War II, or the replacement of men by wo· men as telephone operators earlier in this century) are bit· terly resented when imposed by ideologues. Feminists might want to cite, as proof of "sexist prejudice," those famous experiments in which graders gave the same test a higher grade when told that the testee was "Norman" than when told the testee was "Norma." (I will 38 not here go into the serious issues that can be taken with the design and replicability of these experiments, or the ways in which they have been reported.) Even this evidence is equivocal. If a professor has found over many years that females write inferior philosophy examinations, it is reasonable for him to anticipate that the next female philosophy examination will be inferior. His expectation will, of course, influence his perception, but this influence amounts to prejudice only if there is no "feedback loop" by which a run of good female tests can correct his expectation. A baseball scout used to minor-league incompetence can reasonably attribute a B-league shutout to atrocious hitting rather than good pitching. His attitude toward the winning pitcher is prejudice only if he continues to denigrate the pitcher's fastball after it has been clocked at 97 mph. To return to those grading experiments-there is, however, no evidence that teachers persist in anticipating poorer Norma performances after a string of good Norma tests. (It is in any case worth remembering in this connection that the tests which provide the chief quantitative evidence for differences in male/female aptitudes are standardized and computer graded.) The performance of women in the military hardly challenges the belief that women cannot do some jobs that men can, since women have been accommodated by lowered standards. Barriers on obstacle courses, for example, have literally been lowered so females can get over them. It is an open secret that universities have compromised their standards to accomodate "affirmative action" and live in dread of lawsuits filed by females denied tenure. As a result, it is impossible to gauge the performance of women against the standards of scholarship men have had to meet. Such assessment is made especially difficult by the great number of academic women who specialize in "women's studies" and cognate made-up subjects in other disciplines, subjects in which expertise is the ability to perpetuate the anger that created them. Throughout 1979 the New York Times chronicled the troubles of the First Women's Bank, floundering despite a Federal law mandating assistance to firms with a "substantial" number of female managers. This law makes it impossible to tell if women can do as well as men in the realm of finance. The closer one looks the harder it becomes to evaluate the acid test. There is no way of saying how men might react to evidence against sex differences, because there isn't any such evidence. The anthropological uevidence" is fanciful or worse.6 The most recent psychological and neurological research supports the view that women are more verbal than men, men more at home with spatial abstractions, and so on.? Indeed, these studies are so decisive that feminists have lately started to shift the focus of the debate by trying to minimize rather than, as in the 1960's, denying gender differences. For instance, Drs. Macoby and Jacklin insist that of the thousands of variables they studied, men and women differ "only" in four: verbal ability, spatial visualization, mathematical ability, and aggresAliTUMN 1981 �siveness. This is like saying that the difference between me and Pavarotti is insignificant because he and I differ "only" with respect to girth and the ability to sing. Others who are at least willing to face the scientific facts 8 stress that intra-gender variations far exceed the difference between gender means: e.g. men average about 6" taller than women, but the tallest man is about 4' taller than the shortest man. This is so, but it hardly shows that inter-gender differences are trivial. Even though Wilt Chamberlain is much, much bigger than I am, I remain much bigger than most women. There is, then, not a shred of support for the view that the ordinary attitudes of ordinary people toward the sexes are prejudice, and hence more reason to doubt that "sexism" is the name of anything in heaven or earth. B EFORE ADOPTING A STUDIED incomprehension toward those who find "sexism" richly informative, let us recur to our reflections about words as vehicles for negative emotions. One can make a kind of sense of Hsexism" in three stages. First, take "sexism" as the fern· inist uses it to refer to the conviction that men and Nomen differ. Second, take her to believe that many people subscribe to this conviction and are in this sense "sexists." Third, to explain why "sexism" is a term of abuse, attribute to the feminist rage at the existence of these differences and people's acknowledgement of them. The feminist's usage now becomes quite coherent: "sexism" denotes a fact of nature while expressing outrage at this fact and its universal recognition. If this is the real meaning of "sexism," it is a very mis· chievous word. Its negative charge invites us not to believe-to insist that it is bad to believe-what can be shown to be so. Insofar as "sexism" refers to sex differ· ences themselves, "sexism" invites a negative response to a fact of nature, a response as inappropriate as annoyance at the law of gravity. Only two obstacles impede attributing this array of beliefs and resentments to the feminist. (1) She herself is unlikely to agree that this is what she means by "sexism," and would probably repudiate it angrily. (2) Rage at the workings of D?ture is a peculiar and perverse emotion; such alientation is rare and should not be imputed to anyone without good grounds. As for (I), people often deceive themselves about what they are doing with words and about the feelings that lie behind the ready use of a phrase. Such blind willingness to let language do the work of thought is a hallmark of ideological rhetoric. There is no other way to explain, for example, the evident sincerity of politicians who call the forced transfer of income "compassion." As for (2), it is not hard to understand this particular form of alienation. Modern society rationalizes tasks, thereby making them less expressive. Male and female impulses remain to be expressed, but it is no longer easy to tell by inspection what is a "male" activity and what is THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW "female." Warming a TV dinner is not especially nurturant, nor does riding a bus to work satisfy the urge to dominate. Western industrial society tends to separate people from a sense of their own gender and hence their own identity.' Combine this phenomenon with the radical egalitarianism and environmentalism of the last half-century, and widespread gender confusion becomes inevitable 10 A woman who is ill at ease with her essential identity, who has lost the sense of the values peculiar to her sex and to herself as a member of her sex, cannot very well admit this to herself. No ego can support such self-hate, such loss of meaning. But the emotion is there, and the ego must do something with it. Freud first identified the process by which the psyche resolves such tensions: the ego can recognize an unacceptable emotion by projecting it onto someone else. By calling her self-hate the hatred of others, and confirming the attribution by endlessly reviling her imaginary enemies, the feminist can transform a sense of worthlessness into a sense of moral superiority. Taking this to be the real function of "sexism" explains more than how usexism" has acquired such emotional freight while failing to attach itself to a recognizable object. It connects as well with the larger distrust of human sexuality that is becoming increasingly evident in the soidisant "women's movement," a distrust fully compatible with its ritual paeans to sexual activity and to abortion as a right coequal with free speech. In addressing the fear that further obliteration of sex roles in the interest of "nonsexist" childrearing will increase the incidence of homosexuality, Letty Pogrebin writes "Homophobia, not homosexuality, is the disease of our times/' and uour fear of lesbianism for ourselves and our daughters may really be fear of selfhood and freedom." 11 Res ipsa loquitur. F "SEXISM" IS SO CONFUSED, why worry about it? Since words that mark no salient fact or distinction usually fall into disuse, it would seem that "sexism" is destined to go the way of the names of the humours. Unfortunately, the situation is complicated by the immense power of "sexism" to intimidate. No one knows what the label means, but everyone-especially politicians-knows he is in for trouble if the label is pinned on him. People have learned to avoid at all costs doing or saying anything that attracts it. Feminists have thus perfected a tool for stigmatizing beliefs that they do not like but which they cannot discredit on rational grounds. The self-evident beliefs most people hold about human nature have been called "sexist" so often and so angrily that continuing to hold them now carries a heavy price. People would rather surrender them than endure the anger and internalized misgivings that holding them provokes. Feminists are not likely to surrender lightly so apt a tool as "sexism." A parable and a precedent may serve to suggest the I 39 �harm done by the persistence of "sexism" in public discourse. L Suppose an influential group of people began referring to the belief that automobiles should move in traffic lanes as "stupidism" (or "traffickism"), a word they always used with rage. They denounced as "stupidist" anyone who thought that if traffic were not uniform, driving would be too dangerous. Anyone who requested clarification about why all vehicular institutions to date were "stupidist" was met with redoubled anger. Through repetition, "stupidism" would doubtless come to be regarded as more than a device for expressing rage at the way traffic works. Eventually, ordinary people-and especially politicians-would start to worry about being called "stupidists." To avoid the imputation of stupidism, they would, doubtless, begin to agree that traffic should follow no fixed lanes. They would agree that to say or even think otherwise was stupidist prejudice. Proponents of "automobile liberation" who gained control of highway policy would denounce the desire to test the tenets of automobile liberation as the profoundest form of stupidism of all. I leave to the reader's imagination what a day on the road would be like. 2. In Nazi Germany, the theory of relativity was called "Jewish physics." This meant nothing except, perhaps, the uninteresting fact that the theory of relativity was invented by a Jew. Enough people used this phrase, however, and used it vituperatively enough until-unbelievably, it seems to us-German scientists actually began to disregard the theory of relativity on the grounds that it was Jewish physics. So don't be puzzled when I say words like "sexism" and "Jewish physics" can mean nothing at all, yet do immense harm by creating aversion to reasonable beliefs. Happily, this conditioning can be resisted. My wife usually wins at twenty questions_IZ 1. The 1980 Report of the President's Advisory Committee for Women uses "sexism" freely but without explanation. The word occurs most frequently in the subsections ominously headed "Federal Initiatives." 2. The suffix "ism" suggests, often falsely, belief in a doctrine. Socialism is indeed belief in the virtues of a command economy, but "capitalism" -i.e. the practice of anyone who distinguishes what is his from what is someone else's-typically involves no beliefs at all about economic organization. So here: "sexism" sounds like a doctrine, and "sexists" its followers. Typically, however, practices labelled "sexist" -such as the use of the generic pronoun "he" -involve no beliefs at all about the sexes or anything else on the part of those who follow them. Calling your opponent an "ist" is a good tactic, since most people are sceptical 40 of worldviews and you can thus create an unearned initial distrust for what you want to attack. I suspect that feminists avoid the word "misogyny" because it carries no connotations of system. 3. See e.g. Iris Mitgang in Commentary, March 1981, 2. 4. Judith Finn made a comparable point simply and well when testifying before the Senate in connection with the claim that "sexism" and "sex discrimination" are responsible for pay differences between men and women: "Since pay differences are almost completely caused by differences in jobs rather than the failure to obtain equal pay for equal work, understanding the earnings gap requires an explanation of the reasons why women, on the average, hold lower-paying jobs than men. Women have different job-related attributes and different amounts of these attributes than men." [Testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, April 21, 1981; (my emphasis)] 5. See Bruno Bettleheim, "Notes on the Sexual Revolution," in Surviving New York 1979. 6. For the anthropological material on male dominance, see Steven Goldberg, The Inevitability of Patriarchy, 2nd ed., London 1977. Martin Whyte has lately offered the Semang (HRAF, AN7) as a matriarchy in The Status of Women in Pre-Industrial Societies, Princeton 1978. Goldberg replies in " 'Exceptions' to the Universality of Male Dominance," to appear. 7. Even avowed feminists concede important psychological differences: see e.g. E. Macoby and C. Jacklin, The Psychology of Sex Differences, Stanfmd 1974. 8. Not all scientists are. The Newsweek of May 18, 1981, carried that magazine's millionth cover story on "the sexes," which concludes, after much divagation and vague talk about man's ability to "transcend his genes," that the latest research demonstrates gender differences built in by hormones. The editors, perhaps trying to defuse the issue, quote the geneticist Richard Lewontin to the effect that the whole question is "garbage from old barroom debates," as if that renders the question meaningless. Egalitarian fundamentalists are also fond of citing silly nineteenth century phrenological theories, as if that undercuts modern research. 9. Edward Levine and his associates have explored this topic in a series of papers in the Israel Annals of Psychiatry and Related Disciplines (1966, 1971, 1972, 1974), Adolescent Psychiatry (1977) and The American Journal of Psychiatry (1977). l 0. This hypothesis predicts parallel if not similar effects among men, and such effects are appearing. For instance, homosexuality among black males is increasing sharply, just as urbanization, welfare, AFDC, and other boons of modern life destroy the black family. 11. Growing Up Free, New York 1980. 12. In an essay entitled "Research on IQ, Race and Delinquency" (in Taboos in Criminology, ed. E. Sagarin, London 1980, 37-66), Robert Gordon has occasion to ponder the word "racism" as it is used nowadays of scientists like Arthur Jensen. He concludes that this epithet does no work whatever: "Clearly, if a scientist reports or hypothesizes ... a non-trivial difference, perhaps genetic in origin, between racial groups .. . we have added nothing to the content of discourse by describing him in addition as a 'racist.' Employed in this way, the term is simply redun· dant. ... But 'racist' is used in a second sense .... In this sense, use of the term 'racist' conveys something in addition to the first sense that is not easily communicated by other means, something plainly unscientific and gratuitously invidious." Just replace "racism" by "sexism" here and you have in a nutshell what I have taken many pains to say. The point itself is obvious to Gordon, to me, and I daresay to anyone who reflects on the issue for a single moment. Unfortunately, explaining the obvious involves lessons more complicated than what the lesson is intended to convey. AUTUMN 1981 �Going To See The Leaves Linda Collins to go to Vermont to see the leaves, and to invite their son and his wife to go with them. They could stay, she said, in a really nice inn, and go for walks, and on Saturday, if it was warm, they could find a meadow to picnic in with a view of the moun- I T WAS MRS. CHILD'S IDEA, tains. She had suggested the plan rather tentatively: there would be a lot of driving, and it would be sure to be quite expensive, putting up all four. Besides, she was hesitant about making outright proposals. She preferred to agree to the suggestions made by others. HAnd on Sunday," she said, "there is a concert we might want to go to. And start home from there." But Thomas agreed at once. He said, "Yes, let's." Elizabeth felt that he had agreed too quickly, there was no chance now for her to explain why it was a good idea, no chance for them to talk about Luke and his wife, Sarah. Thomas said, "Yes, let's," in a voice that sounded as though he was putting his newspaper up before his face. Yes, they should go, Elizabeth needed something. Elizabeth did want something. It had been at one time Thomas who used to say, "Let's take Lukie out West." He had suggested a trip to Kenya, to the Serengeti. One of his partners had gone there and advised him to go soon while the animals were still thriving and before Luke was too old to want to travel with his parents. Thomas's partner had said it would be the experience of a lifetime. But Elizabeth hadn't wanted to go and so they had stayed home and gone to the seaside for a week when Luke came home from camp. But recently Elizabeth thought about places to go, where, she didn't quite know, while Thomas now wanted to stay at home in the evening and on long weekends, as well as on his month's vacation. Thomas did not know what made him agree so quickly to Elizabeth's suggestion. Still, the proposal struck him as one that would accomplish something that should be accomplished, touched his underlying understanding of things, for even to himself his "Yes, let's" sounded too quickly after his wife's, "Dear?" HOMAS DROVE, although Luke had offered to drive. After New Haven, they started north. A blue light, soft and even, spread from one part of the sky to the other. It was hot. Thomas drove, looking straight ahead. Sarah sat behind Elizabeth, looking out the window. Her hair blew across T THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW her mouth. She pushed it away with the back of her hand. Luke turned this way and that, trying to find space for his long legs. His mother saw his profile and the full, sculptured curve of his lips. He ran his big fingers through his blond hair which sprang up again after his fingers had passed. Elizabeth said: "We used to sing on drives." Luke began: "Oh, the cow kicked Nelly in the belly in the barn." Sarah: "But the doctor said t'wouldn't do her any harm." The two young people sang out with their loud strong voices. They heard themselves. Their voices shook their chests and vibrated in their throats. Sarah tried to outsing Luke, she sent her voice from her diaphragm, a soldier in her cause. Luke heard the challenge but would have none of it. He had no doubt he could wrestle her to the ground, pin her, outsing her, but she would not accept this. Thomas sang with them, then fell silent. Elizabeth hummed. They passed a clump of low red bushes on the grassy divider. Elizabeth said she hoped they had not come too early, that the leaves would have reached the height of their color. They drove past the domes and cylinders of Hartford. There were many cars on the highway with out-of-state plates. "I wonder how many of these cars are going to see the leaves," said Elizabeth. She had a strong response to the idea of people being brought together; the periodicity of things moved her, and the discovery of community in unexpected places. Sarah opened her camera case. She loaded three cameras. "There," she said. "Black and white?" said Elizabeth, looking over her shoulder. "For the leaves? Why black and white?" "She takes a dim view of color," said Luke. "Oh, Luke," said Sarah. "I want to try to do something with the leaves. With the light. I don't want just to gawk at the color." "You know, in Japan, people swarm to the hillsides to see the leaves," said Elizabeth, while to herself she said that Sarah was not being rude to her, only eager about her work. Linda Collins's stories have appeared in The Hudson Review and other magazines. 41 �"Well, so do we. That's just what we're doing, isn't it? How is it different?" Luke pressed Sarah and his mother both. "Nobody calls them 'leafies' in japan," said Sarah. "How do you know?" asked Luke. "How do you know there aren't just as many scoffers in japan as here?'' "Peering out from behind screens and saying 'See the reafies' to one another." Sarah took up Luke's scenmio with a certain excitement. She tried to adorn it, expand it, but Luke let it go, turned to the window, and Sarah's voice trailed off. Thomas said nothing. He was the driver. He was the person behind the wheel, taking his wife where she wanted to go, ferrying the young people. It brought a sort of peace to him. He had, when he was young, harbored the idea of some outcome for himself. It had been unclear to him what it would be, but that it would be, had seemed unquestionable. For most of his life, he had taken courage from the thought that a task awaited him. Thomas was still strong, still smooth muscled and fit. Recently, the thought had come to him that perhaps the rest of his life would be no different from the way things were now, that he would not be called upon. Recently, he had found he could no longer contemplate his wife in an erotic fashion. Nothing was said about this. He meant to speak about it, but it seemed unspeakable. He could not raise the subject. He was not sure whether the reason was that he feared to hurt her or that he hesitated to embarrass himself. Sometimes he wished for old age when the issue would be, he thought, dead. Soon they would pass Deerfield, where Thomas had spent his years from thirteen to seventeen. As the little school buildings came into view, Elizabeth, as she always did, turned her head to look at them across the fields. They seemed far away and very small. There Thomas had played ice hockey and read Ethan Frome. In the early morning, in all seasons, thick white fog had sat in the low places in the valley. In spring, limp yellow strings had blossomed on the birch trees. When his parents came to visit, they took him out to lunch in Greenfield. His father asked him how things were going. His mother told him what his cousins and aunts were doing. He felt very small, very young. It seemed at each visit that he and his parents were growing farther apart. He no longer cried when they left. He knew it was untenable to love them. "How come you didn't send Luke to Deerfield?" asked Sarah. "Thomas hated Deerfield. They snapped towels at him." Elizabeth was always outraged that his parents had sent him off so young and tender. But I didn't hate it, Thomas was thinking. That he had been lonely as a child had seemed only ordinary. He had merely waited for the end of childhood. In school, he had walked from building to building. He had seen, as the morning fog lifted, the color of the leaves, which had grown stronger during the night. No child remarked to another on the color or observed aloud that the 42 trees, which had been green when school started, were now orange, or red. The children noticed the leaves but said nothing. In the autumn, he had run cross-country; in winter, he wrestled. He grew, he felt himself to be merely the container of his strength. Who could tell how much stronger he might become? Running through tunnels of copper leaves, he thought of nothing but persisting. In winter afternoons in the wrestling room, he heard the thunder of the basketball team overhead. In january, the daylight was gone by the time he got to the gym. Under yellow lightbulbs in their metal cages, he lifted weights and practiced his moves. On Saturday, all honed and pure, he struggled with another youth. His veins swelled. He scarcely saw his opponent. It,was all in terms of something else. If I win this match, then ... what? His thoughts carried him far, but something lay beyond them. There was something more than the trophy to be gained. In the rear-view mirror Thomas caught his son's glance. Father and son seldom spoke to one another, but each sometimes intercepted the other's gaze. Now Thomas swung out into the passing lane and pressed the accelerator to the floor, causing Elizabeth to sway forward against her seat belt, and the maps to slide along the top of the dashboard. Exhaust fumes entered the car as he passed first one trailer truck, then another, and pulled back into his lane. "Thomas, my goodness," said Elizabeth. As they crossed into Vermont, the color in the trees intensified. "Oh, look," said Elizabeth, as they left the Connecticut Valley and started up into the orange hills, "this really is the peak. We came at the right time." I N THE MORNING, Thomas and Luke got up first. They met in the hall, testing the locks of the doors they were closing upon their wives who had not yet risen. Sunlight blazed at a little window at the end of the hall. Thomas waited for Luke to reach him. He felt a shy excitement which he was scornful of, but nonetheless he wondered what he could offer Luke that might please him. Luke approached, bending a little under the low ceiling of the hallway, and together they went down the uneven, carpeted stairs to the dining room. In the morning light, between butterings and bites and swallows, Thomas examined his son. He felt able to look at Luke in a way he could not in his wife's presence. He was anxious to make his observations acutely and quickly, before Elizabeth should appear. Luke's skin was fresh, he looked rested, but what Thomas had thought he had detected yesterday was true, his hair was beginning to recede. Thomas reached up to touch his own hairline, but he blurred the gesture by stroking his head where the hair was still thick. How old is Luke? he thought. Is he twenty-five or AUTUMN 1981 �already twenty-six?· Thomas hoped he was only twentyfive. Luke held his fork with the tines down and pressed a neatly cut, five-layered mound of pancake into the maple syrup which had pooled at the outer edge of his plate. When the syrup had all disappeared into the pancake, he leaned over his plate and brought the forkful to his mouth. It was winking with syrup. When he had finished, he drank the last of his milk, tilting the glass, and then turned to his coffee. "Good?" said Thomas. "Did you enjoy your breakfast?" "Listen, Daddy," said Luke. "I know that you are worried about me. And Mommy is, too. I know that. But don't. Or do. I know you can't help it. I will be all right." The morning sun moved in the sky just enough to brilliantly strike the water glasses and the restaurant silver on the table, flinging blades of light on the walls. The table cloth was too white to look at. For that moment Thomas felt that Luke was the father and he was the son. He wanted to say something to Luke that would be true. At the £arne time he wanted to say something that would make him be the father again. He raised his eyes from the quivering light and saw that Elizabeth and Sarah were standing in the doorway of the dining room. ~~There you arel" said Elizabeth. Thomas and Luke stood up. Elizabeth wore a white cardigan over a blouse with little lavender dots, and a blue denim skirt. She was wearing pink lipstick. Her "There you are!" had sounded so loud in the dining room that she was surprised. She crossed quickly from the dim hall to the bright square of sunlight where Thomas and Luke were standing, letting herself smile only when she had reached them. Sarah followed. She wore an olive shirt with many pockets. When she moved her head, her long straight hair parted in places, and Luke could see the little turquoise earrings his parents had given her. She seldom wore jewelry and he was glad she had put them on. "How lucky we are!" said Elizabeth and smoothed her skirt under her as she bent to sit down on the chair Thomas was holding. "What a beautiful day it is!" Luke winced at the eagerness and timidity with which his mother, dressed like a child, had crossed the room. Both his mother and father had blue eyes. To Luke, it seemed that they both peered at him as if to see what was inside his head. Their look seemed to try to exact something from him, some agreement; for instance, as now, that it was indeed a beautiful day, and since all were agreed on that, all of one mind, some further harmony was bound to follow. The mild questioning look of his mother and father peering at him made him say: "Let's get this show on the road," but when he realized that his mother and Sarah had not even ordered yet, he sat back, abashed. Thomas ordered Granola for Sarah and muffins for Elizabeth. While they ate, the men drank more coffee, and together they agreed on a plan for the day. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW FTER LUNCH, it took a while to get comfortable. They shook the crumbs off the two blankets and ·spread them out again to rest on, but they had picnicked in a mown field and the ground was stubbly. Finally, they moved the blankets to the far edge of the field under the trees where the grass was soft. Thomas was reluctant to leave the car so far out of sight, but Luke said he wanted to take a nap and Sarah had her tripod and filters ready and was eager to get to work. For a while, as they carried the blankets across the field, sending up showers of crickets with each step, it seemed they were making too much fuss. Elizabeth tried not to seem to be arranging things. She knew there could be a reaction against her for being too managing, too motherly, but she was willing, right now, to risk it. What had they driven all this way for, if not for this? Nonetheless, as they walked, she hung back, not to be first. Thomas took the lead, and Luke walked with him. The sun shone through the rims of their ears. Sarah noticed this and said to Elizabeth: ''The sun is shining through their ears." Elizabeth was offended that this young woman should speak so familiarly about her son's ears, her husband's. "I think Luke might go back to school next semester," said Sarah in a soft voice. Elizabeth knew she was anxious lest Luke hear them talking about him. When the blankets were smoothed out, Luke stretched himself out on the plaid one and folded his arms over his chest. "Night," he said from under closed eyes. Sarah looked at him, the length of him on the blanket, occupying it fully. ''I'm going to take some wide-angle shots," she said, with a lift of her chin, and she picked up her tripod and bag and stalked off down the field. And so, wheh Elizabeth and Thomas lay down on their blanket, having carefully made room for one another, the family was together, mother, father, and son. After a bit, Luke opened his eyes and turned his head towards his mother. She was lying on her back with her eyes closed. The afternoon sun struck her full in the face. A lavender vein moved stepwise across her eyelid. The lid was rose-colored; the edge of the lid looked moist and it trembled slightly. Her yellow-gray hair lay in flattened coils under the weight of her head. Above her upper lip fine hairs shone in the light, and from the red cave of her nostril long yellow hairs emerged. Luke touched his own nostril and felt the stiff hairs that stuck out of his nose. He raised himself on one elbow and looked beyond his mother. His father lay beside her. Briefly, he saw them both up close, enormous, as though in a fever, or through a lens. Their faces were magnified in his eyes, for a second they occupied the entire landscape. With a guilty heart, he sat up straight and felt in his buttoned-down shirt pocket for a marijuana cigarette. At the sound of the match striking, both his parents opened their eyes. As he inhaled the smoke, his father said, "Do you have to do that, Lukie?" and he said, "Yes, Daddy, I do." A 43 �He sat with his knees up, one arm around them, holding his cigarette with his free hand. His parents sat up and began to brush bits of grass off their sweaters. Leaves, the color of apricots, with an occasional speck of light green, were falling from the tree above. "There's Sarah," said Elizabeth. Sarah was at the lower end of the meadow. It was diffi· cult to tell how far away she was. She looked tiny and there was nothing to measure her by. Elizabeth stood up and waved, but the sun was behind her. "Saaa-rah." She gave a sort of yodel. Sarah turned in their direction but Luke knew that all she could see was the afternoon sun. They watched her walking up the slope with her awkward, determined stride. She could as well have been an utter stranger. Luke gently tapped his cigarette on a rock in the wall behind him. When he was quite sure it was out, he pinched the end, and folded the remains in a bit of paper which he carefully returned to his shirt pocket. Then he stood up and in long strides ran the length of the field to Sarah who was standing at the edge of the woods in a drift of leaves. She watched him running towards her. The opening and closing of his legs gave her the impression he was running in slow motion and she started to reach for her camera, but he got to her too soon, before she was ready. She hadn't got the lens cap off when he grabbed her and held his arms around her. "Oh, Sarah, don't leave me," he said. She felt his heart leaping like an animal in a cage, she smelled his sweat and felt the moisture on his neck and face. "I wasn't going to leave you," she said, but she felt, as usual, a certain confusion, an apprehension. Why had he lain down in the field in front of his mother and father and taken up the whole blanket? Didn't that mean she should leave him? How could they be going to lead their whole lives together? Where was comfort to come from, where was happiness? From passion? Perhaps, but it was unreliable. Who was this man, this blond man? How had she come to lie down with a stranger? The sun was veiled, as a thin skin of clouds rose in the west. As the light in the sky paled, the radiance of the leaves increased. Something solemn and important was happening in the woods. A chill crept over the meadow. Luke's lips nuzzled Sarah's neck. His knee pressed between her legs. She saw the small figures of Elizabeth and Thomas leave the far edge of the field and move toward them over the stubble. Luke inserted his hand under the waist of her jeans in the back and reached down to feel her buttocks, thin and clenched. "Luke," said Sarah, twisting about, "don't. Don't do that." Luke began to laugh. He wanted to wrestle with her, to push her down in the leaves. The smell of the woods rode upon the cooling air which poured into the meadow, carrying with it the smell of moss, of mushrooms, of rot, of black mud, of rotting stumps and the rotting bodies of small animals, of chipmunks, rats, mice, squirrels, of 44 everything that dies in the woods. The smell of decaying leaves and decomposition was delicious, it appeared suddenly and turned thoughts to the secrets that lie in the forest. Luke pressed against Sarah. ~~Later," said Sarah. "I would like to go into the woods with you now," said Luke. He pressed his knee against the hard double seam of her blue jeans. She stepped back and let herself fall to the ground. The wind blew a hard gust. Above, the ash tree let loose a shower of leaves, yellow, the color of dark mustard. They lay in the leaves, laughing. "OK," said Sarah, in a soft voice, as Luke's parents, smiling uneasily, drew near, "later." Elizabeth slept and woke, hearing the wind and the tap of branches against the window of the unfamiliar room. She lay in bed and thought about the leaves and their drying stems and the trees they dance upon as they try to leave. She thought about how hard it is for them to leave. The tree sends juices, the leaf clings; the wind blows and the leaf turns, spins, bends back upon its stem. She went to the window and stood looking out. Her bare feet on the wooden floor made her feel like a girl. The room was cold. She heard the wind and saw that the leaves were still falling in the dark. It was a grave matter that all the leaves were falling, but she was very glad she had come to see them. T T HE WIND BLEW ALL NIGHT LONG. in what had been a Congregationalist church, square and white, which had been renovated to accommodate its new function. Moulded stackable seats replaced the pews, and recording equipment stuck out of the pulpit. On the floor, wires trailed. It took most of the first movement for Elizabeth to begin to concentrate. She had to remind herself to pay at· tention to the sound which drummed or gurgled in her head, memorably, she thought, but no sooner had the first bit opened into its development than it was gone. And she couldn't get it back. She criticized herself, but at the same time wondered if she was alone in this failing, or whether there were others like herself who were confused. The cellist plucked a loose strand from his bow and poised himself to plunge in again. The cello was pale, almost yellow; the viola was red. The two violins were similar in color, but one glittered, the smaller one. The second violinist was a woman who wore a long dress of bright green. The dress was sleeveless and the woman's arms were white. Elizabeth thought it was no doubt a C<Jnvenience for her not to have sleeves. A loose sleeve would get in the way, and a tight-fitting sleeve would pull under the arms, or at the elbow. And yet the young woman was HE CONCERT WAS PLAYED AUTUMN 1981 �exposed, and her arms seemed very private, with everyone looking on. Of the four players she was the only woman. She was neither pretty nor ugly. From time to time, as she played, she gave her head a shake, and her smooth brown hair crested and fell back into place. The first violinist played, and she waited, holding her violin upright on her thigh. When he had played for several mea· sures, she raised her violin and held it under her chin, let· ting the bow hang loose from her right hand, watching the other players, and nodding her head, until, with a sudden deliberate movement, she lifted the bow and began to play vigorously. Her thin arm went rapidly up and down. The four leaned toward one another as they played. The music was loud and strong. Then the three others plucked their instruments and the woman in green played alone. Afternoon light fell in stripes upon the listeners. In the darkness between the stripes, motes of dust floated. Eliza· beth held her breath. Something wonderful was happen· ing. The music rose from the platform and spread to fill the space above. The sound resonated upon whatever it touched, the beams in the ceiling, the planked floor, the walls. The first violinist and the woman in green were playing sweetly and loudly to one another, while the others sustained them with arpeggios. As he finished drawing his bow and with a subtle gesture of his wrist was preparing to return it, she was drawing hers to its tip. Her head was bent down so her chin touched her chest, and her arms were spread wide apart. Her face was hidden. Only the top of her bowed head could be seen. The sounds she was pulling from her instrument were the sounds of tearing, the sound of something long being torn in two. The cello and viola fell silent and then the first via· linist stopped playing as though to honor the last of her long trembling notes. Elizabeth thought: Then there is no happiness. A rush of courage filled her completely, and she thought, I can bear it, now that I know. From above a peculiar noise distressed her. She realized it had been pressing upon her for some time and she had been resisting it, as though holding a door shut against a great force, but now she gave way. She looked up. On a ledge under one of the high windows, birds were sitting. One fluttered out, circled and landed. The others chirped and shrilled. It was a shocking breach. Could the players hear? Elizabeth would have liked to do something to save the situation, but that was ludicrous. What could she do? Nothing, she thought, but sit there and wait it out. Dis· tracted, she waited for the quartet to finish. When the concert was over and the players had come back several times to bow to the audience, which was standing to applaud, Elizabeth turned around to look up at the eaves. The birds had disappeared, but she thought she saw straw sticking out from one of the high joists. The glare of the lights caught a feather which was floating THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW down in an uneven way, impelled by whatever drafts reigned up there. Luke followed her gla:rrce. He put his arm around her. "Did they bother you, the birds?" he said. Love for him weakened her. She wanted to sit down. She did not want Thomas to see how moved she was, or Luke either. "Sparrows, were they?" she asked, turning her face away slightly to hide her eyes. "Passer domesticus," he said, evoking thus the days when he and she had walked together, noting the particulars of the world. She had carried with her her bird book and little jars in which to bring home beetles or whatever special things they should find. In this manner she had felt she was molding him into the kind of man she dreamed for him to become. In the parking lot, they saw the cellist set his instrument carefully in the back seat of his car. They said how glad they were that they had already checked out of the inn, that they could start home at once. Thomas agreed that Luke should drive, and so he and Elizabeth sat in the back. Thomas reached for Elizabeth's hand. "I am glad we came," he said. "Oh, wonderful," said Sarah. "Thank you so much. Thank you both." Thomas fell asleep holding Elizabeth's hand. When she saw that he was deeply asleep, she gently withdrew her hand. Darkness gathered quickly. As the light sank out of the air, the sky became dark blue. Sarah and Luke murmured together in the front seat, laughing occasionally. Then they fell silent. Sarah leaned her head on the headrest. Soon she too was asleep. Elizabeth looked at the red taillights extending far ahead and the sweep of the lights of the northbound cars approaching. By the dim light of the dashboard she could see the line of Luke's cheek and his brow when he turned his head to look in the side mirror. "Mom?" said Luke softly. "Why don't you go to sleep, too? I'm going to drive very carefully." "I wasn't worrying," said Elizabeth, quite truthfully, but nonetheless she too then fell asleep. Although they had agreed to stop for a bite to eat somewhere near the halfway point, Luke did not stop at all. He drove peacefully, absorbed in the task of not driving too fast, or too slowly, in deciding whom to pass and whom to let pass, checking the fuel gauge and the mileage. No one woke until he stopped for the toll at the bridge. Both his parents woke then, and after a minute Sarah, too raised her head. "Where are we?" she said. "Almost home," said Luke. "You were asleep almost the whole way." 45 �One Day in the Life of the New York Times and Pravda in the World: Which is more informative? Lev Navrozov To inform is not the raison d'etre of Pravda, for Pravda is. no source of news for Soviet decision-makers. The latter have for their daily information a multi-tier system of their own "closed" (secret) newspapers like White Tass, just as they have their own "closed" statistics, or their own "closed" book publishing. The goal of Pravda, as well as all uopen" media intended for non~decision·makers, is to assure the Soviet expendable majority (which is to do or die, not to ask why) as well as all vassals, allies, and supporters all over the globe that they are on the right (winning) side of history. In contrast, the Western media must be informative, for the entire population of the Western democracies makes decisions, if only by voting, in foreign policy, strategy, and defense, and the New York Times is the main source of In 1971 Lev Navrozov left Russia for the United States with all of his son, and mother (his father had been killed in action in the Second World War). Trained both in the exact sciences (at Moscow Energy Institute) and in languages, he graduated in 1953 from the Institute of Foreign Languages, Referents' Faculty-a facility, organized on the specific orders of Stalin, to produce "outstanding experts whose knowledge of Western languages and cultures would not be inferior to that of well-educated natives of the relevant countries." In Russia he translated Dostoevsky's The Poor People and Notes from the Deadhouse and Alex· ander Herzen into English. In 1975 he published The Education of Lev Navrozov (Harper and Row), a work he had written in English in Russia. Among his most important articles are: "The Soviet Britannica" (Midstream, February 1980); "Liberty and Radio Liberty" (Midstream, January 1981); "What the CIA Knows about Russia" (Commentary, November 1978); and a series of reviews of recent novels in Chronicles of Culture. In 1979 he founded The Center for the Survival of Western Democracies. This article is taken from a forthcoming book, What the New York Times Knows about the World. family~wife, 46 daily international news for top American decision-makers, including the President of the United States. In short, for Pravda to be informative is a gratuitous luxury, while in the case of the New York Times, information is a matter of life and death for the United States and the entire non·totalitarian world. But is ~<international news" more informative in the New York Times than in Pravda? The top New York Times editors seem to be confident that it is ridiculous even to compare the two newspapers. Pravda is free to be informative only within its propaganda assignment. The New York Times is free to be as in· formative as it wishes. Does it not follow therefrom that the New York Times is as informative as a newspaper can possibly be? Who can compare the international news of the New York Times whose Sunday edition averaged 558 pages per issue and weighed seven pounds way back in 1967, with that of Pravda which still consists of six pages? In a book of generous self-appreciation written by fortyeight Timesmen," one of the contributors, Max Frankel, says that at some point in his sojourn in Moscow as a New York Times correspondent, he could compose a Pravda text in advance, without seeing it, With 80 percent accuracy": 11 11 WORLD SERIES ... TASS ... NEW YORK ... The peaceloving peoples' valiant struggle for progress throughout the world is being obscured in the American monopoly press this month by a great hullabaloo over what American sport finan· ciers arrogantly call a world championship. Not only the heroic sportsmen of the Great Socialist Camp but even America's poorer allies are barred from the games ... 1 We will see if Mr. Frankel's composition is good even as a parody. Alas, the fact that Pravda is a sensitive and AU1UMN 1981 �powerful totalitarian tool in an evil cause does not mean that it consists, as Mr. Frankel assures us, of moronic gobbledygook, in contrast to the New York Times, "by every objective criterion the most thorough, most complete, most responsible newspaper that time, money, talent, and technology in the second half of the twentieth century had been able to produce," to quote Harrison Salisbury's Without Fear or Favor. Unfortunately, utotalitarian" and "evil" does not mean "stupid" or "funny." Nor should it be forgotten that freedom means in particular the freedom to ascend to the infinite heights of genius as well as the freedom to descend to the incredible depths of ignorance, stupidity, or general personality degradation, as is exemplified by Walter Durante of the New York Times who is now recognized, even by Harrison Salisbury, to have been perhaps the worst non-Communist falsifier of information on Russia in the twenties and thirties. So let us turn to Pravda and the New York Times as they are, not as the "top Timesmen" assume them to be. As a sample for comparison I take the issues of both newspapers dated February 18, 1975, a date I picked at random as I scanned the New York Times for Cambodia-related reports and articles. In its "News Summary and Index" the New York Times lists five news items as the "major events of the day." The first of them the newspaper summarizes as follows: International Secretary of State Kissinger and Andrei A. Gromyko, the Soviet Fareign Minister, completed their talks in Geneva still in disagreement over the Middle East. After five hours of discus- sion on the Middle East, Mr. Gromyko told newsmen that "there were questions on which our positions did not exactly coincide." Mr. Kissinger said he concurred with that. The relevant Pravda article is entitled "Joint Communique on the Talks Between A. A. Gromyko and H. Kissinger" and is the text of the official document so named. The Pravda text is worth reading for seven words near the end of the following paragraph: Special attention in the talks between A. A. Gromyko and H. Kissinger has been paid to the Middle East. Both sides continue to be concerned about the situation there which remains dangerous. They have confirmed their determination to do their best for the solution of the key problems of a just and durable peace in this area on the basis of Resolution 338 of the United Nations Security Council, with due account of the legitimate interests of all peoples in this area, including the Palestinian people . .. The sole purpose of the "talks" and the "Joint Communique" lay for the Soviet side in these seven words, "the legitimate interests of. .. the Palestinian people," which were to be officially and publicly endorsed by the United States Government. The question is: why did the New York Times leave out THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW these seven words in all relevant texts of the issue under review? My explanation, based on my studies of the New York Times in the last sixty years, is that the New York Times has always tended to conceal unpleasantly dangerous "sharp angles" of the outside world and show it far more benign, safe, and peaceful than it really is. Here in 1975 there still flourished detente, that is, the unilateral fantasy that the Soviet war-regime is a peaceful, cooperative if essentially Russian and hence outlandish society. And suddenly this American recognition of the "legitimate interests of the Palestinian people" (read: the establishment of "Arafat's Cuba" at the heart of Israel). So the Soviet rulers were pushing their global strategic interests just as before-and much more successfully owing to the American fantasy called "detente"? This could upset some Americans, especially Jews, and in the ensuing panic, paranoia, hysteria, they might (God forbid!) question the meaning of detente itself! It is true that the tendency of the New York Times to conceal "sharp angles" becomes strong if the (future) tyrant and his (future) tyranny can be connected with "Left-wing" words like ''revolutionary," "progressive," "independence," "national liberation," as opposed to "Right-wing" words like "reactionary," ~<colonialism," "imperialism/' "fascism." However, if the tyrant and his tyranny are dangerous enough, the New York Times seems to be anxious to play down the danger, no matter whether it can be connected with Left- or Right-wing words. The New York Times was ruthless to Lon Nol's government in Cambodia since whatever its "ineptitude" and "corruption" were according to the New York Times, even the latter never suggested that Cambodia under this government was dangerous to any country on earth. But the more dangerous the regime is the more determined the New York Times seems to be to conceal the danger, just as some individuals conceal unpleasant news from everyone around them and even from themselves, and speak especially well of those who are powerful and nasty. Certainly Hitler and his regime could be much more readily connected with words like "reactionary" or "fascism" than the government of Lon Nol of Cambodia, "inept" and ''corrupt" as it was, according to the New York Times. But what was the coverage of Hitler and his regime by the New York Times? This digression into the past will not be time wasted. "If the international Jewish financiers (read: the United States, Britain, and France) go to war with Germany," Hitler stated in the official translation of his speech of January 30, 1939, "the result will be the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe." That is, Hitler officially declared that he regarded the Jews of Germany and any country he would occupy as hostages whom he would kill off if the Western democracies tried to interfere with his conquests. 47 �The intention was clear already in 1938 as Dr. Goebbels's Angriff commented on Kristallnacht, the Nazi's ostentatious pogrom of Jewish-owned businesses in Germany on November 10: For every suffering, every crime and every injury that this criminal [the Jewry] inflicts on a German anywhere, every in~ dividual jew will be held responsible. All that Judah wants is war with us, and it can have this war according to its own moral law: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. "Excerpts" from Hitler's speech of January 30, 1939, occupy pages 6 and 7 of the New York Times. But on the front page we find an article headlined "Hitler's Advice to U s. " I had to read the article twice to get rid of the notion that the New York Times was being sardonic. No, it was dead serious. It presented Hitler's speech as Hitler's advice to the Americans. I reproduce the article in full, down to the last full stop: "Hitler's Advice to Us" Berlin, jan. 30-That part of Chancellor Adolf Hitler's speech dealing specifically with German-American relations reads textually as follows: "Our relations with the United States are suffering from a campaign of defamation carried on to serve obvious political and financial interests which, under the pretense that Germany threatens American independence, are endeavoring to mobilize the hatred of an entire continent against the European States that are nationally governed. "We all believe, however, that this does not reflect the will of the millions of American citizens who, despite all that is said to the contrary by the gigantic Jewish capitalistic propa· ganda through press, radio and films, cannot fail to realize that there is not one word of truth in all these assertions. "Germany wishes to live in peace and on friendly terms with all countries, including America. Germany refrains from any intervention in American affairs and likewise decisively repudiates any American intervention in German affairs. "The question, for instance, whether Germany maintains economic relations and does business with the countries of South and Central America concerns nobody but them and ourselves. Germany, anyway, is a great and sovereign country and is not subject to the supervision of American politicians. "Quite apart from that, however, I feel that all States today have so many domestic problems to solve that it would be a piece of good fortune for the nations if responsible statesmen would confine their attention to their own problems." There is a story about a class at an American school writing an essay on poverty, and one girl stating: "That family was very poor, and their butler was poor, too." The girl differentiated between wealth and poverty, but the scale of differentiation was very narrow: the wealthy employ rich butlers, while the poor poor ones. The New York Times differentiated between good and eviL Stalin's regime was good, and Hitler's eviL But the scale of differentiation was very narrow. From the article entitled "Hitler's 48 Advice to Us" it was clear that Hitler referred to "gigantic Jewish capitalistic propaganda" and so he was an evil man. But no more evil than Henry Ford I and other such reactionaries who used the word "Jewish" in this sense. And despite this evilness, the German Chancellor's speech is presented by the New York Times as advice, good and sensible: he is obviously for peace (the conjecture that Hitler may be for world conquest seems in the context as outrageous as the conjecture that some poor family may not employ even a poor butler). But what about Hitler's warning that the "Jewish race" in Europe would be annihilated? Surely this was the only news in Hitler's endless verbiage. And surely this on/y news was the news of the century, certainly so in New York where so many Jews lived. The New York Times tucked away this news of the century into the middle of a paragraph, lost in the full-page expanses of Hitler's speech far from the front page. I wonder how many scholars found it. I have never seen it quoted or recalled anywhere. On page 6, the New York Times printed within a frame inside Hitler's speech a summary of the speech as a whole. The summary is attributed to the Associated Press and entitled "Hitler's Salient Points": BERLIN, jan. 30.-Following are important quotations from Chancellor Adolf Hitler's Reichstag speech tonight, as contained in the official translation. There are four salient points. In point I, subtitled "Colonies," Hitler speaks reasonably and peacefully about the European colonial powers, though he tactfully mentions no country. Do usome nations" imagine that ' God has permitted" them to "acquire the world by force and to defend this robbery with moralizing theories"? The Chancellor suggests a peaceful solution "on the ground of equity and therefore, also, of common sense." In point 2, subtitled "Support of Italy," Hitler says, no less reasonably and peacefully, that Germany will side with Italy if the latter is attacked. In point 3, subtitled "Need for Exports," Hitler explains~not only reasonably and peacefully, but indeed in the tone of a pathetic plea-that the "German nation must live; that means export or die." "We have to export in order to buy foodstuffs." And in point 4, subtitled "Foreign 'Agitators'," Hitler is again made to present a well-justified plaint: when British agitators rail at Germany this is considered part of their sacred rights, but when Germany defends herself against their attacks, this is regarded as an encroachment on these sacred rights of theirs. So the forthcoming annihilation of the "Jewish race" in Europe is not even a salient point of Hitler's speech. In other words, part of the American media, including the New York Times, had been seeing the totalitarian regime of Germany as a projection of their own American middle-class experience. According to this projection, international peace is something like peace in an American middle-class environment. If you have failed to make a 1 AUTUMN 1981 �deal, do not blame the other side: you have been insufficiently understanding, attentive, accomodating. What on earth are you trying to say? That Herr Hitler does not want peace like all of us? Chancellor Adolf Hitler is human, isn't he? Of course, he is a Right-wing reactionary. So what? What about Henry Ford I? Study the interests of Germany, especially in trade, try to see its side of the case (you must admit that its grievances are just), negotiate, resolve conflicts, settle issues, work out problems, and sign an agreement to your mutual advantage. Of course, the highest triumph of this kind was the Munich Agreement of 1938. On October I, 1938, the New York Times announced it in its banner headline as: "AntiWar Pact." Prime Minister Wildly Cheered by Relieved LondonersKing Welcomes Him at Palace By Ferdinand Kuhn, Jr. London, Sept 30-Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had a hero's welcome on this rainy Autumn evening when he came back to London, bringing the four-power agreement and the Anglo-American declaration reaffirming "the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again." "For the second time in our history," he told a wildly cheering crowd in Downing Street, "a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor." Mr. Chamberlain was comparing himself proudly to Disraeli, who came home amid similar enthusiasm after the Ber- lin Congress of 1878. A cynical outsider might have said that part of Czechoslovakia has just been given away to Hitler in exchange for a piece of paper. The purpose of every conqueror is not fighting, but conquest The fact that Hitler was taking over part of Czechoslovakia without a single shot fired and could and would conquer the rest in the same way meant that he had won a war without any resistance (the greatest triumph of every conqueror), not that he desired ~<never to go to war." There had been nothing like it here since grateful crowds surged around David Lloyd George during the victory celebrations of 1918. London usually hides its emotions, and all this exuberance was more astonishing than a ticker tape parade on Broadway. Women Almost Hysterical It had more than a trace of the hysterical about it. Most of Mr. Chamberlain's welcomers seemed to be women, who probably had not read the terms of the Munich agreement but who remembered the last war and all it meant to them. They flocked from little suburban homes to watch the Prime Minister pass in his car along the Great West Road leading into London. They stood outside Buckingham Palace in pouring rain with newspapers over their hats waiting for him to arrive for a welcome by King George and Queen Elizabeth. The crowd set up such tremendous cheers that Mr. and THEST.JOHNSREVIEW Mrs. Chamberlain had to appear with the King and Queen on the again. flood~lit palace balcony as if this were coronation time And here is a New York Times report from Munich itself: "Britain and Germany Agree" by Frederick T. Birchall. Munich, Germany, Sept. 30- The whole aspect of European relations has been changed by developments today following the signature of the four-power agreement over Czechoslovakia in the early hours of this morning. However, something far more important happened: The Czechs have consented to the agreement, but far transcending their acceptance in importance to the world at large are the results of an intimate conversation between Chancel- lor Adolf Hitler and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in Herr Hitler's private apartments just before the departure of the British delegation. What is the Czech consent to the agreement (that is, Hitler's conquest of Czechoslovakia) compared in importance to the world at large with an intimate (yes, intimate) conversation in Herr Hitler's private (yes, private) apartments? These results were made known in the following joint communique issued after the conversation: We, the German Fuehrer and Chancellor and the British Prime Minister, have had a further meeting today and are agreed in recognizing the question of Anglo-German relations as of the first importance for the two countries and for Europe. We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German naval agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again. We are resolved that the method of consultation shall be the method adopted to deal with any other questions that may concern our two countries, and we are determined to continue our efforts to remove probable sources of difference and thus contribute to assure the peace of Europe. Never has a simpler document been issued in history with consequences more far-reaching or more pregnant with hope. If the two men who issued it stick to their resolves the peace of Europe seems assured for a generation at least. It is to Czechoslovakia that the New York Times devoted about one-tenth of its editorial space: Czechoslovakia as it stood before the end of last week was itself the product of a series of major surgical operations made in 1919 by the framers of the Treaty of Versaille's. As the world knows, the results of those surgical operations were far from uniformly happy. The city of Vienna, which had been the financial heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, became in many ways a shadow of its former self. The German industries in Bohemia, in becoming part of the new Czechoslovak State, were torn from most of their previous market in the old Austria-Hungary. It is partly for this reason that they have suf~ 49 �fered so severely that many factories in that district have been shut down and abandoned, often throwing whole communities into unemployment. made unmistakably clear to the dictators, who have hitherto relied upon the threat of force for the achievement of their ends, that there is a limit beyond which the democracies of the world will not go. Whatever Hitler may have thought be· So what was happening to Czechoslovakia was good? No: there is a serious but. But if the new territorial amputating and grafting process that is now going on partly corrects some maladjustments, it is more likely to create new and more serious ones. In other words, the New York Times sees Hitler's con· quest of Czechoslovakia as a split or merger of a corpora· tion, a mixed bag of advantages and disadvantages. The message of the editorial is to demonstrate that as far as the still remaining part of Czechoslovakia is con· cerned, the new split-and-merger gives it on balance more disadvantages than advantages. True, it might have been different: In a world dominated by pacific sentiments and free trade, changes in political frontiers might have only a minor economic significance. Trade relations would continue largely in their accustomed channels, subject to those adjustments made necessary only by changes in currency, in legal codes, contract forms and courts, and in the incidence of taxes. Alas, trade relations are not to continue in their accus· tamed channels: But the world today is dominated more than it has been for generations by nationalism and the doctrines of protection and self-containment. That is why the amputation of sections of Czechoslovakia is likely to have so serious an economic effect on the part that remains. On the editorial page the New York Times published "Opinions on the Munich Agreement": five letters in all. The first letter says: The gains from the Munich settlement for the forces of law and order are substantial and far outweigh the sacrifices. The greatest gain of all is that the democracies set out to enforce peace and succeeded. British and French arms backed by American moral support brought home to Hitler that there is a law which he could not defy with impunity-the law of nations, which though trampled underfoot in China, still has vitality in EurOpe. The second letter seems to continue the first: Despite the scramble for settlement on the part of the democracies and their leaders allowing their powerful countries to be humbled, I think that the Four-Power Pact preserving the peace of Europe is the greatest tribute to the democratic form of government. The third letter assures the good New Yorkers that the Munich surrender has 50 fore, he knows now that Britain and France are not afraid to fight and that there are issues for which, if need be, they will fight. The fourth letter states that the relevant countries have been spared untold agonies of slaughter and have saved billions of dollars by the sacrifice of Czechoslovakia. It is right that millions in these countries now pray and offer up thanks for peace ... And the fifth and last letter deserves to be quoted in full: To the Editor of the New York Times: While it was good politics in Munich for Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Daladier not to underscore the important fact that Hitler retreated shamelessly from the position he took up before the four-power meeting, it is deplorable that the newspapers and the public, instead of emphasizing this outstanding defeat of Hitler's, concentrate on bewailing what Czechoslovakia lost. If one thing has been proved beyond doubt at the Munich conference it was Hitler's realization that threat of force for power politics does not work anymore, and that the council table has to replace his former methods. Obviously, if a threat of force is of no use to Germany's future then Hitler is played out, as there are Germans with greater competence available to settle its affairs by discussion. Therefore, for the good of Germany and the rest of the world, it is Hitler's defeat and not Czechoslovakia's loss that should be emphasized and advertised. Alexander Gross New York York, Oct. 1, 1938 And here four months after this triumph, Chancellor Adolf Hitler declared like an unreal movie gangster that the Jews of Europe were his hostages, whom he would kill off if the United States and other countries came to the rescue of the rest of Czechoslovakia, which Hitler meant to occupy in six weeks, or Poland, which he was to invade late in the year. Now we can return to February 18, 1975-to these seven words about the legitimate interests of the Palestin· ian people which Henry Kissinger duly signed in 1975 on behalf of the United States government, but the New York Times deleted. My Britannica (1970) calls pre-1948 Israel Palestine. The Arabs who live on the territory or have fled (though the government of Israel invited them to return, according to my Britannica) were first called the Palestinian Arabs, to distinguish them from the Iraqi Arabs, for example. Later the word "Arabs" was dropped (for brevity?) and they be· came the Palestinians or the Palestinian people. Now, surely Palestine must belong to the Palestinians? AUTUMN 1981 �But there is something called Israel in the area? In reply to this supposition, the Palestine Liberation Organization drew in 1968 its "Palestinian National Charter": The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time, because they were contrary to the will of the Palestinian people and to their natural right in their homeland, and inconsistent with the principles embodied in the Charter of the United Nations, particularly the right of self-determination.2 Still, what is Israel? "Israel is the instrument of the Zionist movement," answers the Charter. But what is, then, the Zionist movement? Zionism is a political movement organically associated with international imperialism and antagonistic to all action for liberation and to progressive movements in the world. It is racist and fanatic in its nature, aggressive, expansionist, and colonial in its aims, and fascist in its methods. On October 28, 1974, twenty Arab heads of government meeting at Rabat named the PLO with Arafat as its leader "the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people." The Palestinian Arabs have not elected any sole legitimate representative, you will say. But who elected Stalin, the co-founder of the United Nations, to be the sole legitimate representative there of more than 100 expansion in the Middle East, that the Soviet rulers had repeatedly tried to crack by means of wars by proxy, and only an unpredictable counter-attack of Israeli armor had saved Israel in 1973. How does one know that Arafat's ~~sovereign state" may be like Castro's Cuba? But how did one know that Castro's Cuba would be a Castro's Cuba? The New York Times argued that it would not be: Arafat's "sovereign state" will be small. But Castro's Cuba was even smaller compared with both Americas, Africa, and Asia, and yet look at what it has been doing. There is no harm for the Soviet rulers to try out Arafat: this is only one move by one piece on the global chessboard. If the move does not destroy Israel, some other moves will. If Israel destroys Arafat, not vice versa, there is no end of spare Arafats in this world. And if the war spreads to the entire Middle East, its oil fields will become the first casualty, which will be of immense benefit to Soviet global strategy, and the Soviet invasion of the Middle East will be far easier too. Later, the Soviet rulers will restore oil production in their Middle East-possibly with Western aid. On November 22, 1974, the United Nations Resolution 3236 "legitimized the interests of the Palestinian people," that is, Arafat's armed group. The Soviet rulers (the "Soviet people"?) voted for it with eighty-eight other "nations" or "peoples," including the Byelorussians or the Czechs who also figure as (sovereign) "nations" or "peo- cow a "permanent representation" (a Russian term mean- ples" because their sole legitimate representative Stalin wanted it that way. Most democracies, including Britain, abstained, while a few, including the United States, voted against. In his speech of explanation of the negative vote, the United States delegate said that the United States favored the Security Council Resolution 338 of 1973. The resolution does not mention any Palestinian people, let alone their interests: it called upon the countries which attacked Israel in the Yom Kippur war and Israel which saved herself by accident to cease fire in twelve hours and begin to negotiate. Pravda's text of the joint document to which Henry Kissinger agreed on behalf of the United States Government refers to "Resolution 338 ... with due account of the legitimate interests of. .. the Palestinian people." The word "legitimate" leaves no doubt as to the meaning: "self-determination and sovereign state of the Palestinian people" in Palestine, as the United Nations resolved. By having signed the "Joint Communique" the United States recast its vote in the United Nations, as it were, which constituted the only news the "talks" and the "Joint Communique" contained and the New York Times extirpated. This example does not mean that Pravda is truthful by definition, while the New York Times is mendacious by nature (as Pravda would assert). The information on the ing both embassy and consulate). The "legitimate" (in American side's agreement to "Palestinian sovereignty" Russian synonymous with "legal" or "law-bound") inter- that appeared in Pravda showed the Soviet readers that at the height of so-called detente early in 1975, the Soviet re· gime was expanding as victoriously as before: the establishment of an "Arab Cuba" at the heart of Israel could nations of Russia? Arafat is a terrorist? American periodi- cals I have happened to read at this writing, from the frivolous Time magazine to the sedate Foreign Affairs, explain that Prime Minister Begin of Israel was once a terrorist too. True, the PLO killed from June 1967 to September 1979 350 Arabs who disagreed with the PLO, including Sheik Hashem Khozander, the Imam of Gazda. 3 On the other hand, I have never heard that Begin ever touched even the most Arab hair on the most anti-Israeli head in the pro-Soviet Communist Party of Israel. But the fact that Lenin killed those who disagreed with him as well, and George Washington did not, is evidently an irrelevant minor difference. In unison with what was or has since become the pre· vailing view of the American media, not to mention the media of West-European countries, on July 30, 1974, a "top-level Palestinian delegation," headed by Arafat was officially received by Boris Ponomaryov, "head of the International Section of the Central Committee of the Com· munist Party of the Soviet Union," and in August it was announced by Pravda that the PLO was to open in Mas· ests of the "Palestinian people" had thus come to mean the creation of an "Arab Cuba" to be established at the heart of Israel, this little hard nut of resistance to Soviet THEST.JOHNSREVIEW 51 �well mean the destruction of Israel, while the refusal of Israel to have an "Arab Cuba" at its heart would lead to the "international isolation" of Israel, which would also be helpful in the achievement of the same goaL In general, the veracity of Pravda has been improving in proportion to the growth of the Soviet rulers' global might When Pravda said on March 6, 1919: "The Soviets have won throughout the world," and added on the next day: "The comrades present in this hall" (of the 1st Congress of the International) "will see the establishment of the World Federative Soviet Republic," that was wildly untrue. Such a statement today would not be so wildly untrue. Pravda does not now need to make such explicit, extravagant, or premature statements to keep the Soviet population as well as Soviet allies, vassals, and supporters, assured as to the "imminent victory of our cause all over the world." Many Soviet inhabitants, whether they identify themselves with the regime or oppose it, now believe in the "ultimate victory" of the Soviet regime without any assurance on the part of Pravda. Because the Soviet regime has matched and surpassed American strategic power only in the 1970s, it is obvious to them that the Soviet global game of chess has merely begun, and as in every game of chess, the moves are tryouts, advances, re~ treats, detours, exchanges. Many Soviet inhabitants understand, for example, that the Soviet rulers keep Eastern Europe on a loose leash just to demonstrate to their potential vassals in France, Italy, or elsewhere that the latter will enjoy some latitude when they come to power in their countries-if they behave, of course. Since the Soviet rulers are after the whole globe, they play with their Eastern European pieces. was this kind of truth-a truth in keeping with Pravda's propaganda goaL Inversely, the New York Times censored out the news which could prompt some readers to question the view of the Times that the foreign policy or strategy called detente was working to the advantage of all concerned and, above all, the United States. But surely this is a generally expected behavior of an individual or a social group in a democracy. The prosecutor in a court of justice censors out the defendant's innocence, while the counsel for defense the defendant's guilt Why should not the New York Times censor out what contradicts its view? The trouble is that the New York Times has no adequate opposition source or adequate competitor as regards international daily news for American decision-makers. It is the prosecutor (or the counsel for defense) without the counsel for defense (or, respectively, the prosecutor). The evidence in the twenty years or so, beginning with Castro's seizure of Cuba, indicates that what the New York Times censors out usually remains censored out in the process of decision-making in American foreign policy, strategy, and defense. The rest of the New York Times article is sheer verbiage. In contrast to Pravda, it is not a documentary text, but its own report, which the Times would define as "incisive news analysis" and Soviet decision-makers as Philis- tine prattle. Whatever it is, it would be misleading in its own way even if the New York Times had not extirpated the only grain of news the official text contained. In this first high-level Soviet-American meeting since Vladi- What makes Soviet world' conquest so plausible to vostok and the chill caused by the Soviet abrogation of the 1972 trade agreement, the atmosphere was described as many Soviet inhabitants is not "Soviet gains" in Europe, somewhat more formal and slightly more abrasive than in pre- Africa, the Caribbean, or the Middle East What impresses them is the very fact that the democracies have been allowing and even helping the Soviet regime to grow from a militarily backward parochial country in the 1930s to the global military mammoth of today. Just think what will happen tomorrow! In 195 3 the Soviet regime still produced 38 million tons of steel a year as against the lO 1 million tons of the United States. In 1978 the Soviet regime produced 151 million tons of steel, used mainly for military purposes, while the United States produced 124 million, put mainly to civilian uses. What will stop the Soviet global military mammoth from continuing to outgrow the democracies? If, having invested in defense since 1947 several trillion dollars, the United States does not yet know how to defend the Middle East, for example, these Soviet inhabitants conjecture that the United States will know how to do it less and less. In other words, today Pravda can often afford the truth and thus gain credibility without sowing any doubt as to vious sessions, but on the whole "joviaL'' The article is a projection of American middle-class life all over again thirty-six years later-only this time not onto the totalitarian regime of Germany but of Russia. The incidental difference is that while the rulers of Germany were, in the columns of the New York Times, American Right-wing corporation presidents, the rulers of Russia are American progressive corporation presidents, the ''imminent victory of our cause all over the world." pleasant, warm, and forward-looking. It will be recalled that the "Soviet abrogation of the 1972 trade agreement" the article mentions occurred as a result of the Jackson-Vanik amendment in Congress which tried to "attach political strings to Soviet-American trade and interfere in Soviet domestic affairs," as Pravda put it. Many top American decision-makers, including President Ford (whom Pravda quotes on the subject in the issue under review), agreed that the "Soviet Union" had a good reason for being offended. And yet the "atmosphere" of the Soviet-American talks was on the whole The news that the United States government agreed as of February 18, 1975, to "Palestinian sovereignty," and thus reneged on its United Nations vote of four months earlier, dents, the Soviet rulers bear no grudge: Russia, Inc. is future-oriented, optimistic, positive-it looks forward to 52 "jovial." Like up·and·coming American corporation presi· AUTUMN 1981 �agreements on world peace, international cooperation, and everything else-in particular in the Middle East, and this is why the Soviet side is so eager to convene the Geneva conference on the Middle East: On the Middle East, the Russians have pressed for an early reconvening of the Geneva conference so that they can play a more active role. They are co-chairmen with the Americans. The fact that the Soviet rulers (the "Russians") prepared two wars by proxy to destroy Israel and have been penetrating the Moslem countries by all expedient means short of the overall invasion of the entire Moslem world, does not exist because the Soviet war-civilization and its rulers do not exist: there is instead Russia, Inc. with its presidents and lawyers, and naturally, they want to play a more active role in the establishment of peace in the Middle East-in order to trade with the Middle East, travel there and enjoy peace in general. What other earthly purposes can a human have? The United States would prefer to see the Geneva conference reconvened while there was momentum for further political progress and not as a last-ditch effort to prevent a Middle East war. Of course, Russia, Inc. is eager to prevent a Middle East war. Still greater is its desire to add to the "momentum for further political progress." During the discussions, Mr. Gromyko raised the possibility of an accord to limit arms to the Middle East. But this was in the context of what would be in the final settlement, not as a measure to be adopted now. Actually, "Mr. Gromyko," that is, the Soviet rulers, meant that the United States would "limit arms to the Middle East" while the Soviet regime would send them to their allies, guerrillas, and subversives in the Middle East so secretly that no intelligence agency of the West would know (not that it takes any special top secrecy to achieve this). Anyway, we learn that Mr. Kissinger "dined tonight at Admiralty House with [British] Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Foreign Secretary James Callaghan, who just returned from Moscow." They compared notes on Soviet relations. The British leaders were the first Westerners to see Mr. Brezhnev since he be· came ill in December. Mr. Kissinger reportedly learned from Mr. Gromyko that Mr. Brezhnev had been suffering from influenza and was now in "fine health" although he would, by doctors' orders, perhaps take two more weeks of rest. A jovial meeting cif corporation presidents and lawyers: Mr. Kissinger and Mr. Gromyko represent different firms, of course, but they always swap tidbits of inside info. THEST.JOHNSREVIEW Joking with Mr. Gromyko, Mr. Kissinger said he could not compete with "the oratorical skill" of his colleague . .. Obviously, no meeting of corporation lawyers is complete without their joking with one another, and since the entire description is phoney, jokes may be contrived too. The United States discerned Soviet flexibility on extending the agreed 150-kiloton limit on nuclear explosions to peaceful applications. Yes, flexibility is what also distinguishes Russia, Inc. in negotiations. In fact, the third part of the New York Times article is subtitled "A Russian Concession." According to the Times, it is the Soviet side, not the American one, which made a concession during these talks. What concession is that? Having read the two relevant paragraphs of the article, we learn that the Soviet side agreed that the "Geneva conference . .. should resume its work at an early date/' not "as soon as possible," the expression on which the Soviet side had allegedly insisted before. (Is "as soon as possible" necessarily earlier than "at an early date"?) In the Pravda text of the communique in Russian (which is as valid as the English text of the document) the expression is "at the nearest time." So the Russian concession" that the New York Times espied was lost anyway in the equally valid Russian text. While the Soviet side is flexible and makes concessions-as a future-oriented, optimistic, positive corporation should-this is more than can be said about the American side: 11 Later, on the way to London aboard Mr. Kissinger's plane, newsmen were told that Mr. Gromyko had urged the immediate reconvening of the Geneva conference on the Middle East and had accused the United States of bad faith in excluding the Soviet Union from the Middle East diplomacy. There is no mention, of course, that Gromyko merely repeated the standard charge Soviet propaganda has been making: the Soviet side is so eager to negotiate, to be flexible, to make concessions, but the egotistic American side does not give the Soviet side half a chance in the Middle East. To be sure, corporation lawyers rarely agree as soon as they meet. On the other hand, all issues can be finally resolved. After all, every issue between two corporations can be reduced to money: who pays whom how much. And each side will finally decide that it is worth its while to pay the required sum, settle the issue, and recoup elsewhere the money lost. The two sides still disagreed on some aspects of the European security conference, but the Americans believe the issues can be resolved. All that is necessary is good will and legal expertise: 53 �After their talks in the Hotel Intercontinental in Geneva, Mr. Gromyko and Mr. Kissinger came down to the lobby to speak with newsmen. Mr. Gromyko said that "on many of the questions we touched, our positions were close or coincide.'' For Stalin's man, Gromyko, who survived Stalin and Beria and Malenkov and Khrushchev, to impersonate for Western consumption a jovial HMr. Gromyko, Russia, Inc." is about as difficult as for Al Capone or the Godfather to trick school children. The last sentence of the article adds to the picture of Hdynamism and genius" of Mr. Kissinger, America, Inc.: The Secretary will be in Zurich for luncheon with the Shah of Iran, who is vacationing in Switzerland. While negotiating on the Middle East (and getting a concession from the Soviet side), on the European security conference, and even on the extension of the !50-kiloton limit on nuclear explosions to peaceful applications, he is taking care at the same time of AmericanIranian relations right on the spot, in Switzerland. No wonder the relations between the United States and Iran are so good at this writing, what with the American hostages and the rest. Pravda did not print a word of this verbiage. Why should Pravda mislead its readers in this way? On the contrary, Pravda readers must know that the enemy made a concession on "the Palestinian question" because Soviet might cows the enemy, and this is what detente is about: Western concessions, servility, self-disarmament, retreat, surrender, hoping to placate the globally winning Soviet regime. As for that Philistine prattle, let the Western Philistines consume it-the more the better. What does Pravda regard as the most important international news of the day? Britain's signing of several extensive Soviet-British documents, each of which Pravda printed in full. Those who were interested (and I prefer to read documents rather than their interpretation by the New York Times) could glean from them some grains of news. From "The Soviet-British Protocol on Consultations" we learn that the Soviet war mammoth and the British midget are "determined to contribute to the deepening of the process of relaxation of international tension [the official Soviet Russian-language definition of the word 'detente'] and to render it [the process] irreversible." The last word is the key. The natural resources of Britain are small compared with those of the United States, not to mention Russia (the territory of Britain accounts for l percent of that of Russia proper, excluding Soviet vassals). When Henry Kissinger launched his detente, the United States preserved at least the economic ability to reverse its policy of transfer of American science and technology to the Soviet military if the Soviet regime openly invaded Afganistan, for example (at that time a wild conjecture, of course). But not Britain. "The Soviet- 54 British Protocol" was aimed at making the "process of detente" irreversible for Britain. The definition of this goal comes up again in "The Joint Soviet-British Statement" (just as do the "legitimate interests of the Arab people of Palestine," though Britain had abstained from the United Nations vote four months earlier). "Irreversible detente": the impoverished Britain would henceforth be like a hungry little fish on a big strong hook inside the bait of Soviet imports and exports. The Soviet turn-off of British-Soviet trade if Britain misbehaved would lead to such deprivations and dislocations that the Government would receive a vote of non-confidence, not to mention the British trade unions' wrath. To bite the bait of Soviet trade, Britain offered the Soviet rulers $2.4 billion in trade credits extended over five years: the little hungry fish paid for at least part of its bait. In the Soviet strategists' view, Britain is the most resistant country in Europe: it is the only European country that takes defense at least as seriously (if this may be called serious) as the United States: British and American military spending account for almost the same percentage of their respective GNP's, though the living standards in Britain are lower than in the United States. At this writing, I was interested to see how this most resistant country of Europe had reacted to the Soviet open invasion of Afghanistan. The latest Facts on File carries an item of three paragraphs entitled "United Kingdom Retaliates against Soviets.''4 The first paragraph can send a chill down the Soviet decision-makers' spine. Is the little fish off its big hook? Great Britain Jan. 26 announced a series of retaliatory measures against the Soviet Union for its invasion of Afghanistan. The second paragraph will move to laughter even the most humorless Soviet bureaucrat: Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington told Parliament that the government had canceled scheduled visits to London by a Soviet minister and deputy minister, a performance by the Soviet Army Chorus, and such ceremonial military contacts as a planned exchange of naval ships. The third paragraph announces that the five-year-credit agreement expires in February (that is right: five years have passed since February 18, 1975, the date of the New York Times and Pravda we sampled). Will Britain stop at least her financing of her transfer of science and technology to the Soviet global war-machine? Oh, no. It will continue to do so Hon a case-by-case basis." I picked up the British newspapers and learned that two days later, on January 28, Mrs. Thatcher said in Parliament with awesome gravity: We have announced [see above] the measures that we shall be taking with regard to the Soviet Union . .. AUTUMN 1981 �In addition Mrs. Thatcher said she wanted Britain to boycott the Olympics (an awesome retaliation in itself). Alas, the spirit (of Mrs. Thatcher) is willing, but the flesh (of the hungry little fish) is weak, and many British sportsmen will not inflict on the Soviet regime even the griev· ous damage of staying home. One section of "The Joint Soviet-British Statement" as published by Pravda of February 18, 1975, is subtitled "Bilateral Relations." Here we learn about the cooperation between British firms and Soviet organizations and enterprises in the field of reclamation of natural resources, including oil, aircraft building . ... Let us pause here. So British and Soviet aircraft builders will cooperate bilaterally? The Soviet regime has been producing at least twice as many helicopters and twice as many combat planes as the United States, even according to what the United States Department of Defense can observe or detect. Is Britain still dissatisfied? Perhaps Britain wants to help the Soviet regime to realize its target of pro· ducing one long-range bomber a day? Are there too few Soviet transportation planes to carry troops and/or material to any point of the globe? The documents Pravda published demonstrate how British science and technology are put at the disposal of Soviet military growth. Britain had expelled !05 Soviet agents. But even 10,005 Soviet agents in Britain would hardly be able to pass so much military-industrial information to the Soviet military. Yet, as of 1975 this all-out mass espionage was to be called henceforth bilateral cooperation and include all possible forms of transfer of British .;cience and technology. Once upon a time Britain acquired colonies in order to import raw materials from them in exchange for her scientifically or technologically sophisticated merchandise and thus support her huge population on a small island. On February 18, 1975, in order to achieve the same economic goal, Britain made a major step toward becoming a Soviet colony in economic reverse: that is, a colony which would supply the Metropolis with her science and engineering in exchange for raw materials and thus support her huge population on a small island. In other words, just as Gambia was once a "raw-materials appendage of Britain" (as Soviet propaganda puts it), so Britain began to move towards becoming a "science and technology appendage" of the Soviet global military machine, and this is the news Pravda of February 18, 1975, reported by publishing the relevant documents. The New York Times, which had printed the voluminous verbiage of the "Pentagon Papers," did not find an inch of space for these documents. Instead, the New York Times printed again a report of its own, from Moscow "special to the New York Times." As nearly all "reports from Moscow," the text could well have been written on the New York premises of the New York Times. It is based on the same American middle-class projection: the news is THEST.JOHNSREVIEW that America, Inc. has been outpaced by Britain, Inc. which landed a huge hunk of trade with Russia, Inc.: The announcement of the British credits tended to bolster Moscow's contention that it could find trading partners elsewhere in the West. In renouncing the 1972 trade agreement with the United States last month, the Russians expressed particular annoyance over the low credit ceiling, which is in addition to about $600-million of loans already outstanding. The United States does not want to sell on credit what the Soviet rulers want? Then Britain will: The credits, which Mr. Wilson said would be less than £!-billion ($2.4-billion) are part of a broader program for economic cooperation that was signed today. Mr. Wilson characterized it as possibly "the biggest breakthrough in Anglo-Soviet trade that I have known." Trade, cooperation, good relations: The warm tone on which the British visit ended showed that relations between the two countries had emerged from the chill into which they were thrust after London expelled 105 Soviet diplomats on espionage charges in 1971. The Kremlin accepted an invitation for Mr. Brezhnev, Mr. Kosygin, and Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko to visit Britain. But why does the Soviet global military mammoth keep spies in little Britain by the hundred (or by the thousand)? Because it fears Britain's invasion of Russia? Or because, on the contrary, Britain is for the Soviet rulers just another Czechoslovakia, or Afghanistan, or indeed, Ukraine? In terms of the middle-class projection, the only New York Times answer is that Russia, Inc. kept those 105 spies in Britain, Inc. in order to improve trade relations between the two corporations. Before Henry Kissinger's detente there was a practically universal embargo on strategic trade with the Soviet re· gime. After the embargo was repealed, each ally of the United States began to reason that if it refrained from a trade deal accelerating Soviet military growth, another country would seize the opportunity. Henry Kissinger destroyed-possibly forever-whatever economic unity existed among the allies of the United States as against the Soviet regime. If Hl'nry Kissinger were in charge of for· eign policy in Russia, for that alone he would have been put on trial and shot. But since he is on the other side, he shines at this writing, as ever, and the Soviet rulers cer· tainly owe him a monument for the destruction of a world economic alliance against their war~regime. Anyway, the state of world trade after the undoing of the embargo on trade with the Soviet regime fits well the misperception of the New York Times: the world as just so many corporations vying with each other to sell Russia, Inc. whatever it wants and on terms it chooses: Mr. Wilson defended the decision to offer the low-interest credits at a time when Britain has been hit by recession, while 55 �the Soviet Union has been increasing its foreign currency holdings with greater oil profits. Moscow has already concluded deals for cash with other Western countries, notably West Germany. Or look at France, Inc. Only America, Inc. falls behind, punishing itself: The British credit falls short of the $2.5-billion extended by France in a trade agreement signed last December. However, it is seven times more than the $300-million limit set by the United States Congress on Export-Import Bank loans to the Soviet Union in a four-year period. Let us now proceed to the third of the five "major [in· ternational] events of the day" according to the New York Times. "World crude-oil prices have begun to sag noticeably under the impact of reduced consumption by the indus· trialized nations." No figure for this "noticeable sag." Is it l, 2, 3 percent? Of what importance was this "sag" if the OPEC countries had been raising the prices 100, 200, 300 percent? The New York Times ascribes this "sag" to "re· duced consumption" because this tends to support the view that the newspaper has been advocating throughout the 1970s. In his lengthy article (February I, 1980) to which the New York Times referred editorially with approval and which was put on the Congressional Record twice in the same month, George Kennan says: "If the Persian Gulf is really vital to our security, it is surely we who by our unrestrained greed for oil have made it so." One wonders whether it is America's greed for the fifteen raw materials without which the American economy cannot function that has made the rest of the outside world so vital to American security. Must the United States overcome its greed for these fifteen critical raw materials and let the rest of the world go Soviet? The "greatest real threats to our security in the area remain what they have been all along," Mr. Kennan says after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Predictably, the Soviet invasion is not one of these threats. They are: "our self-created dependence on Arab oil and our involvement in a wholly unstable Israeli-Arab relationship." Not the Soviet involvement in this relationship, to be sure. Let us assume that the United States has overcome its greed for oil, and so has no need of the Middle East, which duly becomes Soviet. As a result, the Soviet regime will have additional hundreds of billions of dollars annually from oil alone, which means as many dollars for Soviet global military power. Where will the United States take additional hundreds of billions of dollars annually to invest in defense in order to counter the Soviet investment? In other words, on February 18, 1975, the New York Times front-paged an accidental annual or monthly crudeoil price fluctuation to support its view (which is as frivolous as it is lethal) and give it thereby the front-page weight of a "major event of the day." Naturally, Pravda (or 1 56 1 any other newspaper in the world) did not mention it because it was not an event, whether major or minor. The fourth "major [international] event of the day" according to the New York Times is another failure of the Cambodian Government in its war against the "communist insurgents." Here the view of the New York Times and that of Pravda (that is, Pravda's owners, of course) coincide in the sense that both newspapers assure their readers that the Cambodian Government is doomed and the sooner it will fall the better. The reports on Cambodia in both newspapers are wrapped in unmitigated gloom (for the Cambodian Government) except one paragraph describing the American airlift. In Pravda this paragraph is as follows: Washington, 17. (TASS). The United States has started an airlift to supply the Phnom Penh regime with additional military material and ammunition. According to the Washington Post, the first of those transportation planes, DC-8s, which belonged to American Airlines and which the Pentagon has chartered, has arrived in the capital of Cambodia. The corresponding paragraph of the New York Times is: With the Mekong blockaded, the Americans have expanded their supply airlift from Thailand. The airlift, technically being handled by civilian contractors but actually run from beginning to end by the American military, is mostly devoted to ammunition so food and fuel are increasingly scarce. Food and fuel increasingly scarce? But the next para· graph says that "rice and fuel stocks, if stretched carefully, can last well over a month and even two months or more." Does the New Yark Times expect the airlift to carry food and fuel to the city three, four, or more months in advance? Does New Yark have food and fuel stocks for three, four, or more months? The differences between this paragraph of Pravda and that of the New York Times can be outlined as follows: Pravda The New York Times With Cambodia's defeat made to seem imminent, Pravda emphasizes American involvement to show that even the United States is so weak that it can no longer defend any country. Whether the planes belong to American Airlines or the Pentagon is immaterial. Both are ultimately at one and against us. At the same time, Pravda does not want to assure its readers in advance that the American airlift is ineffective The New York Times emphasizes the wily wickedness of the American military: they have hired civilian contractors for the airlift, a loophole in the struggle led by the New York Times against the American aid to Cambodia. The New York Times wants to assure its readers that anything would be futile: that the airlift is "mostly devoted to ammunition," instead of carryAUTUMN 1981 �or futile: no one can predict its outcome, and Pravda does not want to commit itself and later look foolish. Our side is winning, but temporary setbacks are always possible. ing also food and fuel to replenish the city's stocks three, four, or more months in advance. The Cambodian Government is bound to lose, the American aid must be stopped. The fifth and last "major [international] event of the day" according to the New York Times is the theft of pictures at the Municipal Museum in Milan. I am sure that for a large part of the Western media (such as the other two major newspapers of New Yark) this was the most important international news of the day or the only such news worth reporting. Pravda ignored it. Pravda was called by a Western newspaper the most boring newspaper in the world. It is true in the sense that Pravda feels no more obliged to be entertaining than does the American Congressional Record or a CIA report. But, having treated the theft as a major international event of the day, does not the New York Times try to relieve its boredom not by interesting information, which is so hard to obtain, but in the same easy way the New York Post does? Does not the New York Times mix the boredom of Pravda (minus some of Pravda's grains of information) and the entertainment of the New York Post? So much for what the New York Times regards as the five major international events of the day. Let us now take a couple of international news items of the New York Times which are not major events, according to the New York Times. On page 8 we find that in the "new winter-spring campaign" in South Vietnam the Vietcong forces, "with large numbers of fresh North Vietnamese regulars," had "scored their biggest gains in the Mekong area since the 60s." This is no major international event. True, some read- ers of the New York Times could still remember that on January 27, 1973, the Paris peace agreement on Vietnam had been signed after years of negotiations. So the Soviet rulers, who were behind both the war in Vietnam and the peace agreement in Paris, had treated the United States But what about vast Soviet help (which is not even mentioned)? If such exists, it is evidently part of the natural balance of forces. The Soviet rulers are part of the nature in any country: it is the United States which is extraneous, foreign, aggressive everywhere. A truly minor event this war is, a reassertion of the natural balance of forces, a play of nature, as one might say. Who can compare this event to the theft of pictures in Milan or the noticeable sag of crude-oil prices allegedly as the result of reduced consumption! As for Pravda's coverage of this war, here Pravda proves that it is a totalitarian newspaper. The New York Times can blot out or distort an event reported by the rest of the media. But it cannot ignore it forever if the rest of the media persists. Now, according to Pravda, the war does not exist. Of course, Pravda readers know about it from foreign radios. But Pravda does not risk the report: what if an American Senator's aide finds such a report in Pravda? Here you are (he will say): Pravda admits that North Vietnam's perfidious all-out invasion is fully on. Pravda ran a three-paragraph item entitled "Repulsing the Violators of the [Paris Peace] Agreement" only about a month later, on March 14, 1975, after the Soviet rulers had understood beyond all doubt (if only from the New York Times' reports and editorials) that the top American decision-makers regarded the Soviet perfidious all-out attack by proxy on an American ally as something having nothing to do either with the United States or the Soviet rulers. Recently [days, weeks, months ago?] the Saigon administration has extended provocations aimed to undermine the Paris agreement on Vietnam. Fortunately, in South Vietnam there already exists the legitimate government of South Vietnam: the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam (the PRG of RSV). The PRG of RSV will not allow the "Saigon administration" to violate the Paris peace agreement. 11 Government as so many fools and used the peace" agree- ment to prepare and launch an open all-out attack and win the war. The impression the article creates, however, is that this attack, brazen, perfidious, contemptuous of the United States, is some remote war of two obscure tribes neither of which has anything to do with the United States, not to mention those jovial corporation presidents and lawyers of Russia, Inc. Besides, South Vietnam is not really endangered, according to the article. "So far most of the Communist gains have come in the more peripheral parts of the delta." Some Vietnamese and Westerners therefore believe that what is happening is a reassertion of the natural balance of forces, which had been artificially extended in the Government's favor by vast American help. THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW In response to the appeal of the PRG of RSV, the People's Armed Forces of Liberation of South Vietnam are repulsing with determination the violators of the Paris agreement. Then for two weeks Pravda is silent again. On March 28, 1975, Pravda runs a report entitled "Situation in South Vietnam." What is the situation? The same as before. True, Pravda now says openly, the Provisional Government of the Republic of South Vietnam governs most of South Vietnam, and surely South Vietnam must be gov· erned by its government, not the "reactionary Thieu clique, stubbornly violating the Paris agreement on Vietnam," as Pravda puts it, quoting the newspaper Nyan Zan which the "legitimate" government of South Vietnam publishes. Pravda does not lie when the truth is to the Soviet rul- 57 �ers' advantage. But when Pravda is called upon to lie, it lies with the same limitless insolence, professional skill, and almost inhuman hypocrisy with which it lied on the 6th of November of 1917 when Lenin's troops attacked the democratic institutions of Russia, while Pravda an· nounced that we were being attacked. The other report of the New York Times which it does not list as a major international event of the day, but which is remarkable in its own way, is an especially serene lOQQ. word fantasy by Flora Lewis entitled "Security Talks Moving to Finale." Since many Soviet decision*makers are male chauvinists, they would classify this report as a starry·eyed housewife's chatter rather than (male) Philis· tine prattle. There has been a great deal of difficulty over the wording of the agreements. For example, a Soviet draft used "important" where a Western draft said "essential." So this is the stumbling block. Otherwise the Confer· ence on European Security and Cooperation, working on what was later called the "Helsinki agreements," ushering in a new era in the history of mankind, is "moving to finale." Take the third section of its epoch·making agree· ments, for example: The third section, on human contacts and exchange of information, caused problems last year, but has now been advanced to the point where only a few details are in dispute. What details? There was an argument over whether a clause on information should provide for "public access" or "access by the public." tution named after Patrice Lumumba, a "hero of African liberation," has young people from eighty·nine countries. This is where future Walter Ulbrichts or Fidel Castros study and are studied in vivo, to be selected in order to be trained, introduced to their fellows·in·arms, and helped to come to power in their respective countries: the most am- bitious and lucrative profession of today, Soviet satrap. This is the breeding ground for the young personnel of the Soviet global political infra·structure. This is where the Soviet global empire is built. A grand meeting in honor of the 15th anniversary of the Friendship-of-Peoples University named after Patrice Lu- mumba, with the awarding of the [Friendship·of.Peoples] Or· der to commemorate the event, was held on February 17 in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses. The Pravda article is heavy, oppressive, monumental, as befits the builders of the totalitarian world empire. But it is informative compared with Flora Lewis's daydreams, for example. Elected unanimously as the Presidium of Honor was the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with Comrade L. I. Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Central Committee, at the head. This is a university that enrolls young people of eighty· nine countries. Foreign diplomats and correspondents are present at the ceremony. Yet even before it begins, these future doctors, engineers, scientists (and/or subversives, guerrilla fighters, "revolutionary leaders") of eighty·nine countries elect unanimously the Soviet Politburo as grand supranational sovereign over them all, while the present governments of their eighty.nine countries are not so much as mentioned. So in the Soviet regime there will be "public access" or "access by the public" (the problem is only to decide which) to exchange of information, not to mention human contacts. The conference is, The speaker is B. N. Ponomaryov, that same "man in charge of the globe" who legitimized in the person of Ara· fat the "interests of the Palestinian people": as one delegate described it, the only way "to transform detente from just a matter of states to something for individuals, with human meaning." Great Lenin was the first man to enunciate and champion the right of the people of the colonies to self-determination and national sovereignty. Our country fought for many years to realize this principle. The debacle of the colonial empires was the triumph of Lenin's great idea. As of February 18, 1975, Flora Lewis is still living in a de· tente which is just a "matter of states" (the invasion of the state known as South Vietnam, in violation of an agree· ment, being a remote irrelevant reassertion of the natural balance of forces). But new agreements (also signed by Henry Kissinger?) are to "transform detente from just a matter of states to something for individuals, with human meaning." As a Soviet lady journalist jeered off the record on a similar occasion: uOne feels like singing, laughing, dancing.'' Let us turn back to Pravda. "True to Lenin's Behest: Patrice Lumumba Friendship·of·Peoples University is Awarded Friendship·of·Peoples Order." The Soviet insti- 58 What next? In their struggle for their economic independence, the developing countries are more and more determined to nationalize the property of foreign corporations [the Soviet regime's property and personnel in these countries being sacred, of course] and to take other measures assuring their sovereign right to dispose of their national resources, as well as to con· duct joint coordinated practical activity in defense of their in· terests. HThis course of events," Ponomaryov remarks with grim satisfaction, "is obviously not to the taste of imperial· AUTUMN 1981 �ism" (that is, any group which resists Soviet global expansion). Union of Soviet Socialist Republics challenged them all, liberated mankind, and saved civilization. The imperialist powers do their utmost to arrest the progressive changes in these countries and keep these developing states within the orbit of capitalism. Our ideological enemies have set afloat the slanderous myth of "superpowers." Of course, the Soviet Union is a mighty power. But its might has not been created at the expense of exploitation of other peoples. It has been produced by our people's labor. The imperialist powers will fail. Bear in mind growing Soviet global military might: However, the international balance of forces has tipped drastically and continues to change in favor of socialism and progress [both of which the Soviet Politburo incarnates]. Under these conditions, the imperialists' possibilities to impose their will on other nations become more and more limited. The sub text of the message cannot be clearer. Young people of eighty-nine countries! Do you see what is happening in Vietnam? Our side is winning after the United States has paid with more than $100 billion and more than 50,000 American lives to defend its ally against our side. You will win in your country if you are with us. And if you are against us, you will lose, as the South Vietnamese who defended South Vietnam are now losing, and the United States makes believe that this has nothing to do with them or with us. We are on the eve of a great day, the thirtieth anniversary of the victory over Hitlerism. It is common knowledge that the Soviet Union sustained the he_aviest losses in this war and made the decisive contribution to the rout of Hitler's Germany, to the liberation of the peoples of Europe from fascism, and to the rescue of world civilization. How is this relevant to the eighty-nine countries today? The lessons of World War II remind us of the need to maintain vigilance constantly and wage an uncompromising struggle against the aggressive plans of imperialist reaction trying to impede the process of relaxation of tension [the official Soviet definition of detente]. Without naming the United States, the speaker makes it clear that the United States has become a superpower by exploiting the poor of the world. In other words, Ponomaryov is propounding what may be called "global Marxism." According to Marx, the rich in each country have become rich at the expense of the poor (who are poor as a result). The poor must rise in arms and expropriate the rich. "The expropriators are expropriated!" said the Communist Manifesto of 1848. Obviously, the same can be applied on the global scale to the rich (countries) versus the poor (countries). There are dozens of millions of "haves" in the United States, and hundreds of millions of "have-nots" in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Why not sick these "masses of the underprivileged" on the "handful of the rich"? It was done successfully in Russia, Bavaria, Hungary way back in 1918. Why cannot it be done globally-with the aid of the Soviet global armed forces? Ponomaryov's speech may be summed up by the following statement of his: "Domestic national policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has found its extention on the international arena." If, indeed, the Soviet regime was able to subjugate in the early 1920s the Moslem nations of Central Asia, it can absorb those of the Middle East, for geographically and historically the Middle East is an extention of now-Soviet Central Asia. If the Czechs or Eastern Germans fell under Soviet sway with no more resistance than the Ukrainians or Estonians did, the same strategic techniques can successfully be applied to West Germans or North Americans. Ponomaryov is a universalist: he believes that human nature is basically the same everywhere-in Moscow, Kiev, Prague, Berlin, or In other words, on one side, the side of goodness, is the New York. Soviet Union, detente, peace, progress, socialism, those Neither the ceremony nor Ponomaryov's speech are re- Western capitalists who sell the Soviet rulers strategically important merchandise on credit, the young people of eighty-nine countries, world civilization. On the other side, the side of evil, is Hitlerism, Hitler's Germany, fas- ported in the New York Times: The Soviet building of a global totalitarian empire is screened out by the newspaper. The other news of Pravda and the New York Times reduces to minor items which can be listed as follows for brief comparison: cism, all who are against detente, reactionaries, war, imperialism, colonialism, capitalism. To someone like the philosopher Sidney Hook, this Manichaean dichotomy may seem absurd. But to many young people of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and indeed, Europe and the United States, it may look like an ade· quate general picture of history today. Some of them may even believe that the capitalist United States and the colonialist British Empire were at one with the reactionary Nazi Germany, while the freedom-loving progressive THEST.JOHNSREVIEW The New Yark Times "Syria Bids Arabs Bar A Limited Peace." "Syria" is against Israeli-Egyptian rapproche· Pravda "Syria's Stand." The item shorter, but no less perfunctory, superficial, empty. ment. 59 �4 "Makarios Requests U.N. Council to Meet." "The Cyprus Government of President Makarios called tonight for an urgent session of the Security Council .... Nicosia is believed interested in the Soviet proposal that the whole Cyprus situation be taken up at a large conference." The report does not cite a word of the Makarios statement. Statement by Makarios." "I value highly the stand taken by the Soviet Union on the problem of Cyprus, as expressed unequivocally in yesterday's TASS statement," declared President Makarios of Cyprus. " ... We are grateful to the Soviet Union for its opposition to the Turkish community leaders' arbitrary decision to proclaim an isolated state." "Ethiopia, Battling Secessionists, asks U.S. for Airlift of Arms." The article does not say or imply that the Soviet regime regards the "military government" of Ethiopia to be on the Soviet side, according to Pravda. "United States officials indicated that there was reluctance to comply with the Ethiopian request" for arms because Syria, South Yemen and Libya will not like it: they have been aiding the secessionists of Eritrea. The world is construed by the New York Times as a mosaic of totally independent countries: Ethiopia, Eritrea, Syria, South Yemen, Libya. "For the Sake of Unity." A 300,000-strong demonstration in the capital of Ethiopia to support the "military government" in its war to keep Eritrea from secession. It is clear frOm Pravda that the "military government" is "on our side." Small tyrants are likely to be eventually on the Soviet side. A tyrant will want the democracies to comply with his tyranny. They will finally waver. The Soviet rulers will never waver unless his tyranny is against theirs. "Yugoslavs Sentence 15 as Secessionists." Why Yugoslavs? Is the regime and "Yugoslavs" the same? "Yugoslavia: Subversives on Trial." The "defendants have close ties with extremist emigre elements in the West. ' The other news items do not overlap: Pravda ignores the news items of the New York Times and vice versa. The New York Times Pravda "The United Kingdom: Can it Survive?" Secession of various parts of England: "it is not impossible that the United Kingdom, as we know it today, will cease to exist." "Insolent Challenge." Spain has the insolence of sending warships to its bases in Africa, though every sane person knows that only the Soviet regime can have bases all over the globe. "Pakistan Charges Afghan Subversion." "Afghanistan ... has supported a demand ... for an independent state to be carved out of Pakistani territory." No Soviet involvement at present or in future is conjectured. "NO! to Bases." A week of protest against imperialist (that is, American or NATO) bases in the Indian Ocean has begun in Sri Lanka. The global system of Soviet military bases is growing without anyone's protests. 60 "Released Koreans Allege Torture for Confessions." According to this article reprinted from The Times, London, the participants in the "demonstrations against the authoritarian constitution" in South Korea in 1974 have been released and "charge today" that they were tortured by the "Korean CIA." Why is the al1leged torturing organization called the "CIA"? Is the CIA the world's only institution of torture? "The worst days were the rainy days. I hated them. The C.I.A. would use the sharp ends of their umbrellas to prod us around the cells." Wait for a rainy day to use umbrellas for torture. The "CIA" could not use them very well on a fair day, could it? I doubt that Pravda would print something so flippant or unintentionally comical. "Chile: The Tragedy Continues." Pravda is after what may be defined as an ideal democracy, of the kind the United States would have been if Senator McGovern had been elected President, as the New York Times wished. The motives of the two newspaper~ are different, of course. Pravdd is after an ideal democracy in the "target countries" because it is, according to the Soviet rulers, the best form of government to be first neutralized and finally destroyed. Therefore, Pravda is at least as sensitive as the. New York Times to any violation of an ideal democracy. At the same time, the article on Chile is very sedate. No torture is alleged, and the article merely soberly notes that "even the [Chilean] authorities admit. that thousands of political prisoners languish in the prisons of Santiago alone." "Saigon Drops Case Against Six Papers." The Government of South Vietnam, which the New York Times calls in its editorials "totalitarian," has dropped libel charges against six newspapers, and so they can go on publishing allegations of the corruption of the Government, while the invasion of South Vietnam, a minor event of the day, is on, to obliterate the "totalitarian" Government, its alleged corruption, the independent newspapers, their allegations, and all. "Here Where the Chilean junta will be on Trial." "It is here, in the Palace of Arts in the capital of Mexico," that the third session will be held investigating the ''crimes of Chile's military junta." The relevant "manifesto" has been "signed by a number of organizations, including the youth organization of the ruling InstitutionalRevolutionary Party of Mexico." With this sort of social atmosphere, no wonder the Soviet rulers were preparing a Cuba-like coup in Mexico, and only a Soviet defector frustrated it. "Ford Preparing Busy Schedule of Trips Overseas in the FalL" "One source ... said that Mr. Ford would like to be on hand to sign personally any Helsinki agreement." There is not a hint that the value of this action is equivalent to Mr. Ford's being on hand to sign personally shopping bags before TV cameras, while its harmfulness goes much deeper than meets the eye. "U.S. President's Interview." Said President Ford, as translated from the Russian of Pravda: "In the United States there are many people who realize~and will realize even better in future-that the abrogation of the Soviet-American trade agreement resulted from ill-thought-out decisions in Congress." AUTUMN1981 �"Gulf Oil Officials in Soviet Talks." Officials of the Gulf Oil Corporation started talks "Preparations for the Conference." No, not the peace conference Flora Lewis reports, today with the Soviet Government to explore the possibility but the "power conference"- of helping to market Soviet oil." "U.S. Tuna Men Held in Ec· uador Are Bitter and in Fight- ing Mood." A IOOO.word piece about American tuna fishermen wishing to fight for the right to fish within the 200· mile limit off Ecuador though fifty countries have established the 200·mile limit for their territorial waters. "Foes Intensifying Drive Against Mrs. Ghandi.'' the "conference of communist and workers' parties of Europe." "Victory of Progressive Forces." The "candidate of progressive pardes" was elected mayor of Kyoto yesterday. Thus, "among the ten biggest cities of Japan, seven have mayors representing the parliamentary opposition, including the Socialist and Communist Parties." "India: Women's Day." Prime Minister Gandhi: all women of the world, unite! "Vorster Verifies Visit to Liberia." Turkey). "Italians Preparing to Send "Gambia Yesterday and To- U.S. Extradition Request for day" provides a specific illustration of Ponomaryov's global approach. Sindona," a run-away Italian banker. "Saudi Denies Price Talks "Riots of Reactionaries" (in With Kissinger Over Oil." "Situation on Madagascar." The "military directoriat" Kissinger is said to have tried to impel Saudi Arabia to have (Pravda would not call "junta" a junta it favors)" of the Mala· a heart and bring down the gasy Republic" smashed the price of oil sold to the United States (oh, the power of Kiss· HQ of the Malagasy Socialist Party and killed sixteen people in the process. Pravda regards inger's diplomacy). However, Saudi Arabia denies alL this little massacre of Socialists as a victory for socialism, that is, the Soviet rulers' power. There are several more such news items in both newspapers, but we may as well stop here, observing that in the volume of international news data, the issue of Pravda (six pages) roughly matches the New York Times. International information fills the bulk of Pravda, and its presentation is mostly concise and factual, if not documentary, while in the New York Times it is scattered like islands over the vastness of the newspaper, and is mostly chatty. The conclusions? The international information in both newspapers is su· perficial, easy-to-obtain and insipid (I disregard the enter· tainment, such as the reporting of a theft in the New York Times). Both newspapers shape whatever meager information they have to fit their respective views (motives or goals). Pravda's mendacity is instrumental: it is a professional propaganda tool of Soviet global expansion. The mendac· ity of the New York Times is motivated in particular by its narrow-minded spineless middle class desire to wrap itself in its middle-class experience, screen out the outside 1HE ST.JOHNS REVIEW world, and to substitute an easy fantasy spun out of this experience. Pravda deceives only others; the New York Times deceives itself as well. Apart from individual exceptions, inevitable in any institution, neither newspaper is intelligent or intended for intelligent readers: certainly the issues under review do not contain a line which would take more than a mediocre, conventional, and conformist mind to write. A random selection of the same number of news items as supplied by any world news agency would be no less informative. But all in all, as of February 18, 1975, Pravda presents the Soviet regime as an expanding global system of power, with many countries as local arenas of this world struggle. The New York Times presents the Soviet regime in a far more false and benign way than the regime presents itself via Pravda. According to the New York Times issue, the world is a mosaic of separate countries and local events, none of which has any bearing on the Soviet regime, seen as just another chip in this mosaic: a kind of corporation much bigger than General Motors or Chase, but essentially also seeking-through its representatives-good re· lations, economic cooperation, and trade. This parochial world fantasy of the New York Times makes it on the whole not only uninformative, but misleading. None of those bits of information which the New Y ark Times issue contains and Pravda does not can compensate for this dangerous deceptiveness of the New York Times dreamland, presenting mankind as its middle class milieu multiplied to the global scale. But when all this is said, we must perhaps look at both newspapers from a higher vantage point. Quite a few people assume that reality is a certain set of objects, and so anyone can describe reality no worse than Einstein or Chekhov-it is sufficient to name objects in front of you: a house, Mr. Kissinger, a tree. Similarly, it is often assumed that it is no less easy to describe newschanges of reality: the house has caught fire, Mr. Kiss· inger is going to Moscow, the tree has grown by ten inches in one year. If we look at the New York Times and Pravda through the eyes of such a Philistine, both newspapers can be said to describe all the world news there is, and this means all the reality and all its changes. How and what else can one describe? But looking at both newspapers from a higher than Philistine point of view, it can be said that they have no sense of reality (the New York Times is more hopeless in this respect) and hence no sense of changes of reality known as world news. To claim that the New York Times presents news about the world at large is the same as to claim that Philistine twaddle is space-time physics or literature. L The Working Press, New York 1966, 71. 2. "The Middle East and North Africa 1973-74," 20th Edition, Europa Publications, London 1973, 61-62. 3. Middle East Review, Spring 1980, 45. 4. Facts on File, Facts on File, Inc., New York, February 1980, 67. 61 �The Incompleteness Theorems David Guaspari [Every mathematician shares] the conviction (. .. which no one has yet supported by a proof) that every definite mathematical problem must necessarily be susceptible ofan exact settlement, either in the form of an actual answer to the question asked, or by the proof of the impossibility of its solution. DAVID HILBERT An introduction The Goede! Incompleteness Theorems are perhaps the most celebrated mathematical discoveries of this century. I hope to make those celebrations more informed; and, ac· cordingly, take as my topic not the nature of mathematics or of the mind-grand things and plausibly related to Goedel's work-but something rather technical and more mundane: What, exactly, do those theorems say? What are the questions to which they constitute some sort of answer and the new questions to which they give rise? To understand those questions we must devote considerable attention to some of Goedel's great predecessors: Frege, Cantor, Russell (and Whitehead), and Hilbert. The story begins in 1879 with the invention, by Gottlob Frege, of (formal) logic. This invention was important in two ways: l. It was necessary for the elaboration of the so-called "logicist thesis": the thesis of Frege that arithmetic is a part of logic; or, as Frege paraphrased it into Kantian terms, that arithmetic is analytic. Russell extended Frege's "logicist thesis" to the claim that all of mathematics is reducible to logic-that is, that formal logic provides a fundamental theory, a grounding, of the whole of mathematics. 2. The devices of formal logic may be used, not to lay David Guaspari teaches at St. John's College in Annapolis. Most of his work in mathematical logic has been in set theory and proof theory. 62 out "the" theory of mathematics, but rather as the basis for rigorous axiomatic theories of geometry, algebra, set theory, etc. (For the distinction between "an axiomatic theory of X" and "an axiomatic theory which reduces X to logic" see section l.) This secondary use of formal logic makes possible a mathematics about mathematics, by providing it with a precise object of study-formal theories. Hilbert proposed the invention of just such a theory of formal systems, umetamathematics" or "proof theory", as the basis for a radical philosophy of mathematics. The domain of meaningful mathematics was to be reduced, essentially, to the domain of mere calculation. Mathematics was to be framed within formal theories, and any non-calculational propositions of those formal theories were to be seen merely as byproducts generated on the way to calculations. Hilbert wanted to have things two ways: to have the power of modern methods, while avoiding the difficulty of explaining or justifying those methods. In order to understand Hilbert we will therefore need to know something about the methods he wanted so desperately to save. I will use Cantor's invention of set theory as a synecdoche for the whole of the modern upheaval. Cantor did not invent the notion of "set" or "class": he invented set (or class) theory. Classifications (rather than things classified) became the objects of study, and mathematics became the study of patterns, not things: of "the third position in the sequence of natural numbers", not of "three". AUTUMN 1981 �After winning his way to this position, Cantor made the further and frightening step of pressing toward its logical conclusion (which, we will see, skirts paradox). We will be interested in Cantor not as a participant in the controversies about the character of mathematics, but as one of the forces which, by radically altering mathematical practice, made those controversies urgent. I The logicists Classical logic-more or less a code word for Aristotleis plainly inadequate to give an account of the most elementary sorts of mathematical reasoning, for it gives no account of sentences involving more than one term expressing generality: sentences such as "Everybody loves somebody.'' Medieval logicians introduced elaborate theories treating of certain sentences with two general expressions. Those theories were correct in that they certified the correct inferences to and from such sentences; but they were both complicated and incapable of extension to more elaborate sentences; which is evidence that they were just plain wrong. What was wrongheaded in medieval logic was the attempt to treat "Everybody loves somebody" as though it were like "John loves Mary." "Everybody" was to be, like 11 John", a kind of name, referring to certain people who somehow or other loved a person or persons denoted by "somebody." The difficulties with this are legion: for example, a proper name like "Mary" always stands for the same person, while "somebody" -assuming it ought to be thought of as standing for someone-can stand even in the same context for different people: If John loves somebody and somebody is the mayor of Cleveland it does not follow that John loves the Mayor of Cleveland. Again: "John loves Mary" is equivalent to "Mary is loved by John." If "everybody" and "somebody" were genuine names we would be able to make the same switch. But we cannot: "Everybody loves somebody" and "Somebody is loved by everybody" are not equivalent. In the restricted cases to which their theories applied, medieval logicians surmounted such difficulties by making distinctions about the various kinds of ways in which general terms could refer to their objects. Unfortunately there seemed to be no end to the making of such distinctions, and with such a logic the best one could look forward to was an ever-expanding collection of ad hoc methods and distinctions. According to Frege his predecessors were misled by accidents of grammar, such as the accident that "John" and "somebody" are governed by the same grammatical rules. The logical structure of mathematical statements-i.e., those features in virtue of which statements can legitimately enter into chains of inference-are not systematically displayed (and sometimes not displayed at all) by the grammar of ordinary speech. THEST.JOHNSREVIEW If the logical structure of a sentence is to show on its face-in its syntax-then a revised syntax and some new grammatical categories become necessary. Frege's revised language is not intended to give an exhaustive account of natural language. It gives no account of metaphors, ambiguities, tenses, modalities, puns, or jokes. Its success comes to this: the fact that all mathematical argument (and therefore all deductive argument) can be expressed in Frege's language and so be made altogether explicit. (The principal novelty is Frege's introduction of thecategories of "quantifiers" and "variables", which constitute an analysis of the uses of troublesome general terms like "somebody." He also discards the "subject-predicate" analysis of sentences, because of its intrinsic demerits and because of the requirements of the quantifier-variable analysis of generalization.) In addition, Frege listed a small number of rules which suffice for the purely formal derivation of all valid inferences. By calling the derivations formal I mean this: We can apply the rules-i.e., determine whether a sentence is an immediate consequence of some other or group of others-simply by inspecting the syntax of each sentence involved; and the procedure for doing so is mechanical. A machine can check such derivations just as it checks multiple choice tests. Frege wanted to attain rigor-and he did. Rigor cannot go any further; controversy over the validity of a proof came to have the same character as controversy over the correctness of a long division. Frege had made it clear just what complete rigor consisted in. This achievement did not, however, have the desired practical effect of making mathematical argument completely certain. An attempt to verify the validity of an ordinary prose proof by translating it into Frege's system will in general involve so many steps that a clerical error seems no less likely than a logical error in checking the original informal proof. Nonetheless, the theoretical possibility of rigorously formulating mathematical theories makes Frege's language and logic, and their kin, analytical tools for investigations about those theories. I will from now on call a language and logic like Frege's a forma/language and the formulation of a theory in such a language a formalization of the theory. Formalization is therefore the first step in laying out a completely rigorous axiomatic theory. It is not a trivial step. If, for example, we tried to formalize Euclid, we would immediately be forced to see that the basic terms of geometry are not only those denoting its objects-points, lines, planes-but also those denoting certain relations among them: e.g., the relation of incidence, which holds between a point and a line when the point lies on the line. Symbols for those relations would have to be included in the language as part of the special vocabulary of geometry. When we looked for a suitable collection of geometrical axioms we would come to see that Euclid's unexpressed assumptions largely concern those relations. 63 �In I884 Frege published another book, The Foundations of Arithmetic, this one about the nature of mathematical truths. He was interested not in how we acquire mathematical truths, or why we happen to believe them, but in the ultimate justification for believing them. Frege asserted that the truths of arithmetic and algebra (although not those of geometry) are truths of logic: Frege was undertaking to do more than merely to lay out a formalized theory of arithmetic. I might well frame a (mere) formalized theory of arithmetic by beginning with primitive signs for "1 "~ "2", "plus", "times", etc.-signs which, so far as the theory is concerned, are employable only as directed by the axioms. From the rules of logic alone we could then deduce "I=1" and even "1+2= 1 + 2", but not, e.g., "1 + 1 = 2". The specifically arithmetical content of the theory I am describing would have to be supplied by a list of arithmetical axioms. (The provision of a suitable list is a mathematically deep, but for our purposes technical, problem.) We need the axioms because "1 ", " + ", and "2", being non-logical (and therefore arbi- trary) signs, can stand in no intrinsic logical relations to one another. If, however, "1", "+", and "2" are signs which are themselves defined in other terms, it might happen that a purely logical explication of those definitions would result in a deduction of "l + 1 =2". Frege claimed just that, that plus, times, etc., etc., could themselves be defined in "purely logical terms," and that from those definitions alone, and with no need for extra hypotheses, the arithmetical truths would follow. Arithmetical truths could-and, to be properly understood, should-be regarded as highly compressed abbreviations of logical truths. The statement "2 + 2 = 4" or ''there are infinitely many primes" would be more compli- cated than, but of the same character as, "A implies A." Philosophical questions about the certainty and applicability of arithmetic would then be reduced to questions about the certainty and applicability of logic. The terms of Frege's proposal require explanation. A satisfactory account of arithmetic must cover not only statements like "7 + 5 = 12" but also certain kinds of empirical statements-but not all empirical statements-involving numbers, for there is no need to account for "2 is my favorite number." The point of contact between arithmetical theory and its empirical application is counting. The record of a bit of counting-"There are 2 bats in the belfry" -is what Frege calls a "statement of number." We must account for the statements of pure arithmetic and the statements of number. Next we need to ask what it would mean to "define" 2 at all, and what, in particular, it would mean to cast that definition in purely logical terms. For Frege it is pointless to ask what 2 "actually" is. That does not mean that talk about numbers is talk about imaginings and private fantasies. Rather, to give the meaning of the word "2" is to give an account of the contribution it makes to specifying the 64 conditions under which arithmetical statements containing "2" are true or false. Whatever does so correctly is entitled to be called a definition of "2". Here is an example, a purely logical explanation of the use of "2" in "There are 2 kings of Sparta." For some x andy, x differs from y and each is a king of Sparta; and, it is not the case that there are x, y, and z, each of which is a king of Sparta and all of which are different. This explanation is correct; that is, it is true to say that there are two kings of Sparta in precisely those circumstances in which our elaborate paraphrase is true. Furthermore, the account is perfectly general, being an account of the role of "2" in all such sentences: to explain "There are 2 bats in the belfry" we simply replace "king of Sparta" everywhere by "bat in the belfry." Finally, the fixed terms of this general explanation (that is, all terms except "king of Sparta") are purely logical words; and the non-logical phrases ("king of Sparta", "bat in belfry") occur only in the simplest way possible, as simple predications. This account is not a definition of "2". It explains the role of ''2'', ''3", etc., in particular statements of numberthat is, the adjectival uses "There are 2 X's", "There are 3 X's", etc. It is insufficient to account for the uses of "2" as a noun, especially for the thinghood we seem to attribute to numbers by generalizations such as "For every number ... " Frege took the noun-like uses as fundamental. He argued that it would be incorrect to analyze arithmetical statements in such a way that numbers (some collection or other of entities to be called numbers) disappeared altogether. His analysis replaced each appearance of "2" by a noun phrase denoting, essentially, a certain set or class. He then explained statements of number as elliptical references to such classes and explained generalizations at face value as generalization over the lot of them. This counted as a logical explanation because he regarded a set as a kind of logical object. My example has been intended only to show what kind of thing a purely logical definition is, and to show that Frege's proposal is: (a) neither opaque nor occult (which already suffices to set it apart from most accounts of the subject); and (b) altogether unconcerned with what happens to go on in my mind when I say or believe that there are two kings of Sparta. Frege outlined this program (the "logicist" program of reducing arithmetic to logic) in The Foundations of Arithmetic and carried it out in the two volumes of The Basic Laws of Arithmetic, the first published in 1893 and the second, delayed by the discouraging silence which met the first, in 190 3. There turned out to be a problem. One of Frege's fundamental notions was that of "the extension of a concept" -what we would now call the set or class of things AU1UMN 1981 �falling under the concept. He regarded "class" as a logical notion-and in any event could see no way to do without it- but pointed out that its treatment was the problematic part of his system. It turned out to be, in a sense, unproblematic-because it made the system inconsistent. Frege learned of this, while volume two was in press, in a letter from Bertrand Russell setting out what has come to be called the Russell Paradox. Russell's paradox is a sort of liar's paradox. Formulated for a theory of sets, it shows its sting by demonstrating that an assumption seemingly fundamental, natural, and innocuous, leads swiftly to a contradiction. The assumption is that to every property there corresponds a set, whose members are precisely those things which possess that property. If we apply this assumption to the property "not a member of itself' and call the corresponding set R (so that the members of Rare precisely those sets which are not members of themselves) we turn up a contradiction by asking: Is R a member of R? For, R is a member of Ras long as Rs-atisfies the defining condition "not a selrmember"; which is to say, as long as R is not a member of R. Frege dashed off a quick and woe- fully inadequate fix in an appendix beginning, with characteristic detachment, "Hardly anything more unwel· come can befall a scientific writer ... " and concluding, hopefully, " ... still I do not doubt that the way to the solution has been found." Russell was not Frege's adversary, but rather his heir. Principia Mathematica, published by Russell and Alfred North Whitehead between 1910 and 1913, advanced even more sweeping claims for logic: the system of Principia Mathematica (from now on, PM) was a revision of Frege's logic which purported to reduce all of mathematics to logic. That PM sufficed for the derivation of known mathematics, Russell and Whitehead made clear. That it might justly be called logic they did not. And no one could tell whether PM would suffice for all future mathematics. II Cantor and "Modernism" Meanwhile, mathematics went on. One of the things that went on is commonly called a "crisis" -a "crisis in the foundation of mathematics" -perhaps suggesting to the innocent (falsely, as it turns out) that mathematicians around the world were hurling themselves from their of· fice windows. The central event in this drama was the ap· pearance of a large array of paradoxes and contradictions in the theory of sets, the Russell Paradox among them. The thinking man's reaction might well be ... So what? Why should the collapse of some particular theory be of more than local interest? Frege's scheme fell to the ground and no llcrisis" resulted. In order to understand why the difficulties with set theory are of interest to other branches of mathematics it is necessary to understand why set theory has become the idiom of mathematics. Set theory was invented by Georg Cantor in a series of papers published between 1879 and 1897. It is important THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW to know that Cantor's creation of set theory grew directly out of his work on one of the important mathematical problems of his day-on the convergence of a particular kind of infinite series called a Fourier series. just what a Fourier series is is not important to us, but two things about Fourier series are: (1) Fourier series are a part of hardcore applied mathematics. (Fourier introduced them in order to study heat transfer.) (2) The theory of Fourier series was, in Cantor's day, at the cutting edge of two important questions: What is the continuum? What is a function? If I needed a slogan to characterize the radical features of twentieth century mathematics I would try something like this: Functions are things, and things are extensional. "Extensional" stands in opposition to "intensional", in opposition, broadly speaking, to any concern for the "in· ner nature" of mathematical things. Consider Euclid's definition of "point." That definition is never appealed to in proofs, and for that reason has no mathematical interest. Nothing follows from it. The only way in which something which we might call the "nature" of a point has any mathematical significance is by way of postulates about the relations between points and the other geometrical notions, such as: Between any two points there is a unique straight line. Euclid's definition of point is an "intensional" attempt to tell us something about the "nature" of points. In contrast, what matters about a function is that certain inputs result in certain outputs. What a function has by way of a "nature" is exhausted by the record of the in· put-output pairs, conveniently representable as the set of all such pairs. Relations are treated in the same way. The "nature" of the relation "less than" comes to nothing but a record of which numbers are less than which. Galling the things of mathematics extensional comes, grandly and vaguely, to saying something like this: What interests us about a mathematical object is not its putative internal constitution, but rather the role which that object plays in the system of mathematical objects. Mathematics is about the patterns into which things fall, not about the things. The other half of my slogan reads "functions are things." What is at stake in calling functions things? The account, I'm afraid, will begin and end in metaphor. Think of a function as a black box from which; in some way or other, the input-output record can be extracted. Then I can, if I want to, take those things, those black boxes, and put some or all of them into another box-so that I have a big box full of functions. I offer this merely as one example of what you can do with things. You can heap things into big boxes. I want to contrast this picture of function with another. In the other a function is not a thmg, but a kind of continuing process, which you cannot put your hands on all at once and therefore cannot pick up and toss into a box. What's at issue behind these varying metaphors w11l have to be considered later. 65 �Let me first give an example of the usefulness of the first picture-function as thing. Quantum mechanics as· signs to each thing in the world-electron, atom, cow-a representative, a function called its wave function. Wave functions, it so happens, input real numbers and output complex numbers (the outputs are thought of as representing certain probabilities). All the.se wave functions are then heaped together in a box called Hilbert Space. What stands for the world is a box of functions. Now, one of the other things you can do with things, beside tossing them into boxes, is to input them into functions. It turns out that momentum, for example, can be conveniently represented by a function which inputs not numbers but those boxes in the Hilbert Space, and out· puts not numbers but other boxes in Hilbert Space. Momentum and its kin, being functions, are therefore things, and can themselves be heaped in boxes, input into still other functions, and so on and on. All these entities have in an important sense the same status as numbers. You can do the same kinds of things with and to them. (An aside: This example may give you some idea why it's wildly wide of the mark to call our mathematics a "science of quantity.") To make functions and relations into things, and to be concerned only with the extensional aspects of those things, is to make the very fabric of mathematics a search for patterns and analogies, whose aim it is to exploit the power of generality. It is important also to realize that study of the tops of those towers of generality can yield consequences about things at the bottom. The elaborate machinery of quantum mechanics yields testable predic· tions about the behavior of atomic particles. Deep results in number theory, which concerns the integers, have been discovered by studying the calculus of complex numbers. This raises a question to which we will return: Even if such high-powered methods are helpful for finding theo· rems and their proofs, are they in some way essential? Set theory is important not in its details, but because the point of view which is so conveniently formulable by means of set theory is fundamental to the current mathematical enterprise. In David Hilbert's famous words: "No one shall expel us from the paradise which Cantor has cre· ated for us." Hilbert was not voicing a consensus. He was uttering a battle cry. The reception of Cantor's work made plain deep and radical divisions among mathematicians. Those opposed to set theory typically argued along lines like this: Set theory is riddled with paradoxes and contradictions because it admits as objects "infinite things", such as the set of all numbers, and the notion of an "infinite thing" is inherently contradictory. The two metaphorical pictures of "function" show the same opposition. A function which is a "thing" is, in general, an "infinite thing" -an endless ledger of inputs correlated with outputs. A function, which is an "uncompleted process", is never present all at once, but is a sort of drama at any stage of which only 66 finitely much has happened. The controversy over set theory becomes "the problem of infinity." This is not a problem about some alleged power, entity, or principality called The Infinite. I, for one, have no idea what that could mean. Nor has it anything to do with God, goose bumps, mysticism, or eternity. (There is evidence that Cantor thought: that it had to do with all these things; that theological considerations vindicated set theory; and, at times, that set theory had been granted him by divine revelation.) It would be better, but still not very good, to say that we are asking whether there "really are" infinite sets. Part of the trouble with that formulation (the passionate but redundant "really" gives it away) is that it has an air, wholly spurious, of being clear and commonsensical, as though the matter could be settled by an argument like Samuel johnson's "refutation" of Berkeley: Johnson's proof that there "really are" stones consisted of kicking some. The fruitful view, I think, is that the important differ· ence between the two positions is entirely expressed as a difference in mathematical practice. In the mathematical practice of one side infinite sets play the role of things, and in the practice of the other side they do not. (In our speech about Hilbert Space functions are assigned the role of things: they serve as inputs and outputs of functions; they are collectable into boxes; they comprise a domain over which we generalize ... Moreover, that way of speaking has been fruitful for the physicist as well as for the mathematician.) In one sense the practical problems of set theory were solved in 1907 by Zermelo, who informally described a notion of set that seemed clear and persuasive, and pro· duced axioms for that notion from which followed all of the desired consequences of set theory and (so it seemed) none of the undesired. To opt for Zermelo's set theory was to opt for treating infinite sets as things. What grounds might there be for making that choice? The practicing mathematician might be satisfied by the fact that set theory provides new terms in which to answer old questions, illuminates the work of his predecessors, and poses interesting new questions. If unimpressed, however, by Zermelo's framework, he might maintain that "infinite things" had to lead to contradictions and that Zermelo's system would eventually tumble. He might hope to find empirically interpretable consequences of set theory to test against experience. He might be appalled by set theory's sheer perversity: Cantor said of one of his most famous results, "I see it, but I don't believe it." Set theory, in and of itself, is not a fundamental theory. It is not an attempt to ground or to explain the nature of mathematics, but is rather the organ of a revolutionary change in mathematical practice. A set theorist can happily be an opportunist, tinkering with the axioms ad hoc in order to avoid an awkwardness or a paradox. Set theory is useful to "foundational" studies because it yields a formalization of all known mathematics, thereby making of "mathematics" a precise object of study. AUTUMN 1981 �III Hilbert's metamathematics In 1900 Hilbert began to formulate a radically new reason for deciding in favor of set theory, based on the possibility, which he seems to be the first to have fully grasped, of using formalization as a tool for the investigation of theories. Frege, well aware that deductions in his system could be carried out mechanically, insisted on the importance of the fact that those deductions nonetheless had a meaning. According to Hilbert, the fact that "deductions" could be adequately guided by mechanical rules freed us from the burden of trying to assign a meaning to each step. Thus freed, we are free to see that much of the "meaning" we find in mathematics is nonsense. Hilbert divided the statements of mathematics into two classes: "real" statements, which are intuitively meaning· ful and can be said to be true or false; and "ideal" statements, which are not, and cannot. Let us for the moment sidestep all dispute about the legitimacy of such a distinction or about where to draw the line, and call anyone who wishes to make such a distinction "Hilbertian." Let us also temporarily adopt a "Hilbertian" position much less stern than Hilbert's own: that the meaningful mathematical statements are the statements of elementary pure arithmetic, such as "2 + 2 = 3", "There are infinitely many primes," etc. Accordingly, propositions about real numbers~ calculus, or Hilbert Space are "ideal." Let us further suppose ourselves to be contentedly employing a formal-and meaningful-theory of axiomatic arithmetic, and to be one day confronted by Cantor. He offers us a (non-meaningful) set theory which incorporates our theory of arithmetic as a small part. Do we accept? From our "Hilbertian" point of view we can think of set theory as an ideal superstructure superimposed on a meaningful theory of arithmetic. Suppose it happened to be the case that any meaningful proposition derivable in set theory by ideal methods is also derivable by meaningful methods-i.e., according to our present stance, from the axioms of arithmetic. Then, in the "Hilbertian" view, the controversy about set theory would be finessed out of existence. All the ideal machinery could be explained away as an ingenious engine for facilitating proofs. We would have saved set theory without giving in to the vulgar requirements of saving the sets; we would establish a paradise without angels. To ask whether the ideal machinery of a formalized theory is redundant is to ask a precise mathematical question. By formalizing a theory we make it an object of study. Its statements are patterns of signs, comparable to positions on a chessboard; and we possess, analogous to the rules of chess, specified procedures, colorfully but irrelevantly called proofs, for singling out certain of the sign patterns, colorfully but irrelevantly called theorems. So that the question "Does such and such a statement have a proof employing no ideal mean?" has exactly the same character as the question "Could such and such a position on THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW the chessboard have been reached without White's having castled?" With some historical justification I will call the proposal to justify the ideal means of set theory by demonstrating their redundancy, the "Hilbertian" Program. To carry out the "Hilbertian" Program we have to prove a mathematical theorem about a theory; and that proof itself must be above suspicion or our justification would be circular. This new branch of mathematics, the mathematical theory of formal theories, Hilbert calls "metamathematics" or "proof theory." To carry out the "Hilbertian" Program is also to demonstrate that all the meaningful consequences of set theory are true. For we would be guaranteed that any meaningful consequence of set theory, however originally obtained, would also possess an uncontroversial proof, one employing only those arithmetical methods we had previously been content to employ. The "Hilbertian" Program hopes for a certain rough justice: that meaningful statements should have meaningful proofs seems only fair. There is also some evidence in its favor: many theorems of number theory originally proven by ideal means have turned out to be derivable from the axioms of elementary arithmetic. In any event, there is now out on the table a genuine mathematical question, susceptible to proof or disproof: Can all those positions be reached without castling? The Incompleteness Theorems answer, among others, that question. Before turning to Goedel's paper, let me summarize these three introductory sections. Frege began his work as a participant in one of the great intellectual enterprises of the nineteenth century-the attempt to make mathematics rigorous. He succeeded in providing an analysis of mathematical proof which made the notion of rigor precise and which provided all the technical tools necessary for the elaboration of rigorous deductive theories. This analysis led him to the conviction that mathematics is in fact a part of logic. Neither this thesis nor his powerful criticisms of other views of mathematics (the first half of The Foundations of Arithmetic is a model wrecking job) received much notice until they were partly rediscovered by Russell. Wider interest in the problems of founding mathematics arose not from Frege' s work, but from the practical need to secure set theory from paradox. Hilbert, guided partly by his "faith" -the belief that all mathematical problems can be solved-and by the specific desire to save for mathematics the generalizing power of set theory, proposed a radically different foundation. Set theory would be saved by declaring most of it to be meaningless; and by a proof (which he hoped to carry out) that set theory could nonetheless be safely employed. Goedel's 1931 paper "On formally undecidable propositions of Principia Mathematica and related systems" replies to the characteristic questions of Frege and Hilbert: Can mathematics be reduced to logic? Are the ideal methods of set theory redundant? Is "mathematics" com- 67 �pletely specifiable? I take this last question to be a concern of both Frege and Hilbert. Frege attempted to encompass mathematics within logic. Hilbert's "faith" can be construed as a belief in the possibility of devising a formal system adequate for known mathematics and capable of proving or disproving every proposition arising within it. To each of these questions Goede! gives the answer no. What, then, can mathematics be supposed to be? Goedel's own view is that mathematics must be understood not as a body of tautologies, or as the result of our constitutive mental activity, but as something we discover. IV A first look at Goedel's theorems In the first part of his paper Goede! exhibited an arithmetical statement in the language of PM which is independent of PM-i.e., neither provable nor refutable from the axioms of PM. By itself, that is a striking technical achievement, and evidence for the fruitfulness of Hilbert's point of view: If you make theories into objects of study just look at the surprising things you can find out. Let us call a theory incomplete if some of its statements are independent; and otherwise, complete. It might now seem that we should get to work, promulgating some new axioms in order to extend PM to a theory which is complete. If we can demonstrate the incompleteness of some theories we surely ought to be able to demonstrate the completeness of others. Then we would have justified Hilbert's "faith" by a proof. For a complete formal system provides the means for solving every problem expressible in its language. Unfortunately, Goede! showed more. He pointed out that his argument applies not only to PM, but to any formal system which is sufficiently strong (strong enough to contain grade-school arithmetic). Such a system must be incomplete. The last two sentences contain a mild lie. I can easily describe a complete formal theory by stipulating that the list of its axioms is to be precisely the list of all true statements of arithmetic. The trouble with that theory is that we cannot use it. Should someone hand us a purported proof in that theory we would not be able to appeal to any general procedure for checking it, for we have no general procedure for determining which propositions are axioms. If we intend to use a formal theory in our demonstrations or to provide a standard for our demonstrations, then we must at least require that there be an infallible (mechanical) procedure for checking the validity of its proofs. The First Incompleteness Theorem says that any sufficiently strong theory with that property (the property that its proofs can be checked mechanically) must be incomplete. How does this bear on Hilbert, or Frege, or us? Can all mathematical problems be solved? One precise way to construe that question is: Is it possible to construct a usable, complete formalization of mathematics? Goedel's theorem tells us that the answer is no. Frege's program seems dead as well. If arithmetic really is logic, then since 68 arithmetic cannot be completely axiomatized neither can logic be. There would be no general procedure for testing the validity of proofs in such a so-called logic. The "Hilbertian" Program is alive only until we ask: What about Goedel's independent arithmetical statement? Is it true or false-or, if the axioms of arithmetic (or PM) contain all that we think we know about arithmetic, does the question of its truth or falsity even have any sense? Goedel's paper contained an informal demonstration that that independent statement is true. His argument can be formalized and carried out in set theory-proving that set theory is not redundant. Goede! has provided an explicit example of a "meaningful" statement unprovable by "meaningful" means, but provable by the "ideal" methods of set theory. Therefore our "Hilbertian" Program, and every "Hilbertian" Program which accepts Goedel's independent proposition as meaningful, fails. (It will be claimed below that no "Hilbertian" Program can succeed.) The Second Incompleteness Theorem speaks directly to Hilbert's (actual) Program, to understand which we need a brief excursion. Hilbert called himself a "finitist". He maintained that a precondition to thought is an immediate intuitive grasp of certain "extralogical concrete objects", which must be surveyable "completely in all their parts" and must therefore be, in particular, finite. It is only about such things and by means of such intuitions that we can perform genuine ''contentual" inferences. An adequate expression of "contentual" inference is the manipulation of signs. The concrete objects considered by mathematics are the mathematical signs themselves-the numerals. Accordingly, the "real" propositions are simply the assertions about particular calculations: "7 + 5 ~ 12", "2 < 3", '' l =/::. l ", etc. The ''contentual" reasoning by which we attain to the truth or falsity of these propositions Hilbert calls elementary. In Hilbert's thought not even the formula "x + 2 ~ 2 + x", regarded as a shorthand for the assertion that "for every x, x + 2 = 2 + x", designates a real proposition-for we cannot directly verify the infinitely many instances of true propositions which it summarizes. Another way to say this is to say that we cannot really negate that assertion; for the purely existential claim that "there is some x for which x + 2 ,P 2 + x", since it points to no particular x, has no finitistic meaning. Is any mathematics left? Hilbert is willing to admit the "ideal" propositions such as ''x + L. = 2 + x", the proposi- tions of algebras and calculus, etc., but denies that they have any content in and of themselves. The introduction of "ideal" propositions is analogous to the introduction into algebra of~ which simplifies and unifies the algebraic rules. Although the ideal propositions are individually insignificant, the system of ideal propositions is fruitful by virtue of its ability to simplify and unify, and the ultimate reason for its success is that it discloses the structure of our thinking. To justify the introduction of ideal propositions (and rules for their manipulation) we need only an elementary AUfUMN 1981 �proof of the consistency of the resulting system. Hilbert's Program is the proposal to provide such a proof. Hilbert's Program is connected with our previous no· lion of a "Hilbertian" Program as follows. The calculating rules of grade school arithmetic suffice for the formal demonstration of every real truth. Those calculating rules are derivable in, e.g., set theory. Set theory, however, might also contain a formal refutation of one of those truths. That is, the only way in which set theory could be non-redundant (with respect to "contentual" inference) would be the ruinous way of being inconsistent. Hilbert's Program, although differently expressed, is merely that "Hilbertian" Program that corresponds to Hilbert's austere notion of "real". The Second Incompleteness Theorem says, roughly, that the means available in a theory are not sufficient to prove the consistency of that theory; so that the consistency of axiomatic arithmetic-let alone of set theorycannot be demonstrated in an elementary way. All this needs some explanation, since arithmetic is, after all, about integers and not about formal theories. How can we even pose the problem "Is arithmetic consistent?" in arithmetical terms? The answer is that we communicate with a speaker of the language of arithmetic just as we communicate with speakers of other foreign languages-by means of translations. Suppose we wanted to discuss the consistency of arithmetic with a computer. We could do so be devising a numerical code in which to signify statements and proofs. The statement "Arithmetic is consistent" could then be translated as a lengthy statement, from now on called CON, about numerical calculations involving the code. (Those who are worried by this may be justified. The sense of the claim that the coded translation CON somehow "means the same as" the original is not immedi- ately clear.) Goede! showed that CON is unprovable in axiomatic arithmetic. Now, axiomatic arithmetic is, I take it, consistent; that is, CON is true under the ordinary interpretation of its signs. Indeed, CON is provable in set theory, and is therefore another example of an arithmetical truth which becomes provable as a result of adding to arithmetic the "ideal" superstructure of set theory. This is a perfectly general phenomenon: no consistent, usable, sufficiently strong theory can prove its own consistency; and whenever we are able to add to such a theory a suitable "ideal" superstructure, the consistency of the original the- ory becomes one of the newly provable arithmetic truths. This shows that no "Hilbertian" Program can succeed. An elementary proof that an ideal superstructure is redundant immediately yields an elementary proof that it is consistent. If it is granted that the elementary means of proof, whatever they may be, are exhausted by the means available in ordinary arithmetic, there can be no elementary proof of consistency, and therefore none of redundancy. If we use a theory we are, of course, implicitly assuming that it is consistent. Nonetheless, that supposition is THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW something over and above the suppositions of the theory. Whatever convinces us that the theory is consistent lies somehow outside its purview. That fact is a genuine piece of news, even though the consistency of arithmetic is not controversial. Many mathematical questions which have at one time or another been topics of active research have been shown to be independent of the currently accepted axioms for set theory. It is a distressing fact that few of these problems seem to be solvable by extending set theory along the lines of its original inspiration; and that, indeed, many are only known to be solvable by adding to set theory hypotheses which are at best implausible and at worst bizarre. As a result the mathematician-in-the street typically responds to such news about a problem (the news of its independence) by losing interest in it and regarding this as evidence that however things might have seemed at one time the problem is not one of central importance. He can sometimes justly say that he was seduced by set theory into studying the wrong problem, or the right problem in the wrong terms; but that would suffice as a general explanation only if the family of set theories were uniquely subject to the Incompleteness Theorems. V A second look at the First Incompleteness Theorem Let me conclude by stating the First Incompleteness Theorem correctly, in its most radical form, so that it is tied to no particular formalism or formulation of logic, and to no particular notion of proof. To do that it will be nee· essary to look briefly at its proof. Goedel's original argument, which is important, is widely regarded as utterly mysterious. From this apparent mysteriousness the Incompleteness Theorems derive some of their cachet. I shall outline a different proof, which shows that the Incompleteness Theorems can be understood as facts about mechanical procedures. In 1936, A. M. Turing produced a precise definition of the notion of "algorithm", or "computing rule" by defin· ing a kind of paradigm computing agent (now called a Turing machine). Turing machines can work in any symbolism you like and on any problem you like. We may as well stick to machines that work on numerical problems. Machines can provide solutions to calculating problems in two ways-by decision procedures and by listings. Consider the problem of determining which numbers are even numbers. A decision procedure for the property "even number" works like this: We hand our imaginary computer the name, in some specified notation, of a number; it calculates awhile and then answers yes or no, according as the number is even or not. It always answers and always answers correctly. A listing of the property "even number" works differently: We sit in front of the computer and watch it. From time to time it writes down, in some specified notation, the name of a number. Only the names of 69 �even numbers appear in the list, and sooner or later the name of every even number appears in the list. There is no general procedure for turning a listing machine into a deciding machine (which might lead one to suspect, correctly, that some listable properties are not decidable). Suppose I want decisions about the evenness of 6 and 7, and try to use the listing machine to get them. I sit and wait. Eventually "6" turns up, at which point I know that the decision about 6 is "yes." I'm still waiting, but there has been no "7". I can never safely conclude "no," because, for all I know, were I to wait just a little longer 7 might turn up in the list. "Evenness", of course, has both listing and deciding machines, but there are indeed properties which can be listed yet not decided. One example is the property of "being a computer program that will run successfully." If that were decidable (in some efficient way) life would be a lot simpler. A Russian mathematician, Juri Matijasevic, proved in 1971 that there is a listable but undecidable property P of the following remarkably simple kind: For a certain (polynomial) equation with "x" among its unknowns, x has property P (from now on, abbreviated "P(x)"), if there are integer solutions for the other unknowns. That is, P(x) looks like the following assertion, which I'll temporarily call R(x): There are integers y and z for which 3xy + 2y2 + x2z +I ~ 0. So that 2 has property R (or, for short, "R(2)") if and only if there are integers y and z for which 6y + 2y2 +4z +I ~0. Here is an outline for a proof of the First Incompleteness Theorem which, in a sense, only restates the fact that there are such simple undecidable properties. Officially we are proving a theorem about PM, but to show how general the proof is, I will point out the only two facts about PM which will be appealed to. The first is this: (l) PM can "express" some undecideable property~e.g., the P(x) mentioned above. (From now on this will be abbreviated as: PM is sufficiently strong.) It takes a little effort to say just what "expressing" is. For example, "+" does not happen to be one of the signs of PM, but is instead defined in terms of others. So our rendering of P(x) into the language of PM will be a little indirect. That, however, is a minor point and will be ignored. I will suppose that the arithmetical signs we ordinarily use do appear in the formal language, so that "P(x)", "P(O)", "P(l)", etc. occur both in English and in our formal language. More important is the question: What does it mean to say that some formula in a formal theory "expresses" the (English-language) notion P(x)? We can put our rather weak requirement this way: Whatever PM happens to prove about the property is true. More exactly, should the string of symbols for P(l7) occur among the theorems of PM, then the English sentence P(17) is true, which is to say that a certain equation with coefficient 17 has integer solutions. Should "not P(l7)" occur among the theorems of PM, then we require that P(l7) be false. Weak 70 as this assumption is, we could get by with much less. If a theory of arithmetic lacked the means to write down simple equations, or had the means but proved falsehoods about them, it would not be of much use. So, for our purposes, this restriction is no restriction at all. The only theories of interest are those which are sufficiently strong. The other thing we need to know about PM is this: (2) The property of "being a theorem of PM" is listable. For our purposes this is no restriction either, because it turns out that (2) is a consequence of: (2 ') The property of "being a proof in PM" is decideable. I have already argued that a theory is of no use for theorizing if we cannot decide what counts as a proof. The First Incompleteness Theorem says: Any sufficiently strong, listable theory is incomplete. Therefore no useful theory-PM, axiomatic arithmetic, set theory-is complete; no useful theory can even settle all the simple questions of elementary arithmetic. To see the extreme generality of this it might be better to replace the word "theory" by something like "recordable mathematical activity." We need assume nothing about symbolism, logic, or the nature of the proofs that result from this activity, except that the activity can treat of simple equations, and that a machine can decide whether the record of some bit of activity counts as a proof. The proof of the First Incompleteness Theorem is a proof by contradiction. Assuming first that PM is listable, I will describe a mechanical procedure (from now on to be called M) which is an attempt at a decision procedure for Matijasevic's property P. That is, the inputs to M will be natural numbers and the outputs ''yes" and "no". We know that there can be no decision procedure for P. That is, for some input M must either give the wrong answer or fail to give any answer at all. On the other hand, from the assumptions that PM is sufficiently strong and complete it will follow that M is a decision procedure for P, and therefore at least one of the three assumptions "listable, sufficiently strong, complete" is false. Having established that we have established the First Incompleteness Theorem. Here is procedure M: Handed an input, say 17, turn on the machine which lists the theorems of PM. If "P(l7)" ever appears on the list, output "yes"; and if "not P(l7)" appears, output "no". Suppose now that PM is sufficiently strong. Then procedure M, whenever it does give an answer, gives the right answer. Suppose further that PM is complete. Then procedure M always yields an answer, because one or the other of "P(l7)", "not P(l7)" is a theorem of PM and is therefore bound to turn up in the list. It follows (from all these assumptions) that M is a decision procedure for P. AUTIJMN 1981 �That concludes the proof of the First Incompleteness Theorem. (By juicing this up a little bit we can exhibit a particular instance of property P which is independent of PM.) It might seem that this proof merely transfers the burden onto the shoulders of Mr. Matijasevic, with his magical property P. In fact, simpleminded undecideable properties are not hard to find. I chose property P only because it seems evident that any self.respecting theory ought to be able to express it. We can easily tidy up the last loose end by showing why (2') guarantees (2)-why the theorems of PM are listable. A proof is a finite sequence of signs from the language of PM. We therefore begin with a machine that lists all finite sequences of signs of PM. (It is left to the reader to build such a machine for himself.) This machine feeds its output to a proof checking machine. (Here is where we make use of (2').) The proof checker decides which of those sequences are proofs and feeds the legitimate proofs to a third machine; and that one writes down for us the proposition that each proof proves. (Note: The First Incompleteness Theorem is itself proved by elementary means. Although the hypothesis "PM is sufficiently strong" cannot be so established, the incompleteness of PM follows from that hypothesis by a long chain of reasonings of the most elementary sort.) Goede!' s own interpretation of his work is in some ways quite cautious: Hilbert's Program has not necessarily been shown to be impossible, because the notion of "elementary means of proof' is vague. . In other ways Goedel's interpretation is breathtaking: Notice, he says, that the argument of the paper has resulted in a curious situation. Having shown that a certain proposition {CON, let's say) is undecidable in PM, we THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW have nonetheless been able to determine that it is true. That is, we have been able to appeal to a standard of truth and falsity independent of the notions of provability and refutability in PM. What could be the basis of such a standard of truth? Here Goede! reaches back to one of the most ancient answers of all-to an independent, extramental world of mathematical objects. We believe in tables and chairs because we see no other way to make sense of our sensible experience. Goede! feels equally compelled, in order to make sense of his "mathematical experience", to believe in the objects of mathematics. Along this line of argument Goede! has few followers. Aside from its philosophical difficulties, Goedel's view must face a fact of our recent mathematical experience: CON is a proposition which has been cooked up in order to be undecidable. When we consider those set-theoretically undecidable propositions which have simply been stumbled upon in the course of doing mathematics, we almost invariably find that we have no idea how to resolve them or where to look for relevant "evidence." What, then, do the Incompleteness Theorems say? As soon as we get beyond the bounds of mere calculation, as soon as we allow ourselves to enquire whether something is so not merely for this or that number, but "for every number"-we can no longer appeal to any systematic method for obtaining answers. No improvements in mathematics or philosophy can get around that fact. Philosophy is called on for a clarification-not to discover the address at which the numbers reside (or, perhaps, their convenience mail drop), but rather to give an account of what we can justifiably mean by those problem-producing generalizations over the (infinite) domain of numbers. To speak in a slightly loose and pre-Fregean way: We need an account of the word "all". 71 �Philosophy and Spirituality in Plotinus Bruce Venable 1 Knowledge as unity with God The essential insight of Plotinus and, for us, the central problem in studying the Enneads is that in them the practice of philosophy and the desire for mystical experience are inseparable. For Plotinus, a philosophy that does not culminate in mystical experience is an empty speculation; the most justly celebrated passages of the Enneads, those that have caused them to be read and cherished, are those in which, after many pages of arduous dialectic, technical distinctions, and dense argumentation, he summons the reader to the state of serene union with God that fulfills and transcends them. He felt, however, that a personal religion that strives for mystical experiences without grounding itself in philosophy is likely to degenerate or go astray, like the Gnostics, into melodramatic fantasies and delusions of cheap salvation. For those who regard philos· ophy or, if you like, science and religion as independent of one another their mutual dependence in the Enneads must seem very strange and might seem even to invalidate them both because Plotinus presents neither a coherent rational philosophy nor a genuine piety, but only an unsatisfactory muddle of the two. In what sense is philosophy the necessary preparation for mystical experience? In what sense is mystical experience the necessary culmination of philosophy? Those acquainted with medieval scholasticism should be advised that I shall not discuss this interdependence in the form most familiar to them: the attempt to reconcile faith and revealed religion with reason and philosophy. The problem as it appears, for example, in the first question of the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas does not appear in the Enneads for two characteristic reasons: Plotinus recognizes neither divine revelation nor an Bruce Venable is at work on a study of Nco-Platonic spirituality. A tutor at Sante Fe, he delivered this essay as a lecture at St. John's College in Annapolis on October 22, 1976, and at St. John's College in Santa Fe on November 5, 1976. 72 independent science of theology UJ1der which the various claims of revelation and philosophy are reconciled. The strangeness of Plotinus' view can be somewhat dissipated if we try to peer beyond the fantastic formal complications of the Plotinian system in order to isolate the ultimate or highest state of existence envisaged by that system, briefly, a state of unconditioned unity and freedom. It appears in the Enneads twice: as the Good or the One that is the unknowable first cause in metaphysics, and again as the self that is the hidden center of the soul. These two are very similar, if not identical, because, for Plotinus, to ascend in thought above all created things to a contemplation of the One is also to descend within the soul to the hidden depths of the self. Furthermore, just as a person does not view his self, but rather comes to exist at that fundamental level, so also a person does not have a vision of the One, but is rather unified with it. Returning upon oneself is returning upon one's first cause and in at~ taining to this cause, one meets no stranger, but one's very self. Anyone who makes these assertions would consider religion and philosophy inseparable and even very similar to each other. But these assertions are rather strange. Even setting the One aside for a moment as the mystery it properly is, what about this notion of the self? Where does it come from, what does it mean, and do we need it at all? Plotinus, who was perhaps the first philosopher to feel the need of such a concept of the self, frequently distinguishes the self as more inclusive and elementary than the soul. The soul means the conscious activities, the acquired traits and personality, as well as the latent contents and unconscious powers of the intellect, emotions, and perceptions. The self means something both more primitive and more exalted than the soul. Not acquired or augmented by experience, education, or practice, it does not present itself directly in any conscious activity, although it supports and unifies them; the inclusive totality of the psychic contents and powers, it is also independent of them, isolated and aloof, unmanifested, unknowable, and AUTUMN 1981 �unique. It is freedom. When the soul is free, it has withdrawn itself from its conscious life, its scattered thoughts and feelings, its activities projected outward into the world, and has gathered its powers into a motionless inward concentration. When it emerges again, the soul rea]. izes that all the goods which previously it sought outside of itself belong to it naturally, eternally, are proper and intrinsic to itself. The soul is happy. This description makes it clear that the self, as Plotinus conceives it, is very similar to the One. It also makes clear why union with the self will be union with the One. But why did Plotinus use or even perhaps invent such a concept of the unknown self that is similar to God, when he had already at hand the perfectly useful notion of the observed soul that is certainly not similar to God? If he had not used this concept of the self he might have avoided his confusion, perhaps an accidental one, between philosophy and religion. Plotinus was certainly impelled by intimate religious desires to create and teach his philosophy. The fervor of his desire for God is manifest in the Enneads, but something of its inner meaning has not been shared with us. Because he expressed his religious desires in the external form of a philosophy that was in constant conversation with his great precedessors in the Greek tradition, we can, by reexamining some relevant aspects of that more familiar or less esoteric tradition, see the innovations of Plotinus in at least the intellectual context in which he himself considered them and found them necessary. Because of his insistence on the mutual dependence of philosophy and religion, Plotinus never teaches any religious doctrine, however intimate its origins, that he would not be prepared to explain, amplify, defend, and fight for on purely philosophical grounds. There was no philosopher with whom Plotinus' conver· sation was more intimate than Aristotle. I shall begin, therefore, with that strange passage in De anima book three, chapter five that has caused commentators so much vexation and disappointment. Aristotle says that in every nature there is something that is its matter; this is passive and receptive and becomes all the forms of that kind of being. There is also an active or productive cause that makes all these forms in the passive matter. It is necessary that these two exist also in the soul: there is an intellect that makes all the forms (of knowiedge, presumably) and an intellect that receives or becomes these forms. The active or productive inte]. lect is like light which makes potential colors actual colors-the light that makes them visible and actually seen. This active intellect is "separable, impassive, and unmixed." This means that the active intellect is independent of the body. Of these two intellects, Aristotle says, the potential or passive intellect, which receives the forms of knowledge, is temporally prior, but only in the individual; in general, the active intellect is prior. This is more difficult to explain. The first clause seems to mean that in each individual person, the potential for knowing exists THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW before any actual knowledge. But to say that in general this is not so seems to imply that there is some other, nonhuman, intellect. Many ancient commentators said, therefore, that Aristotle here refers to the divine intellect. The view that Aristotle does mean the divine intellect gains support from his following remark that there is an active intellect that is eternally thinking; or, as he puts it, "it does not think sometimes and sometimes not think." But what follows is again more puzzling: "only when it is separated is it just what it is and this alone is immortal and eternal." If ''separated" means "separated from the human body," then Aristotle refers here to the destiny of the active intellect of every individual person after the death of the body. What follows seems to confirm this: "But we don't remember because the active intellect is impassible, but the passive intellect is mortal." The most obvious interpretation of this sentence-although I don't suppose that its being obvious must necessarily be held to recommend it-is that every human soul contains two intellects, an active and a passive; that only the active intellect is immortal, but that this active intellect, when liberated by death from the body, has no personal memory of ourselves because it cannot receive the impression of anything merely temporal and transitory, but on\y makes universal ideas or concepts; the passive intellect does receive the experiences of ordinary life and is related to what we should call our personality; but this intellect perishes along with the body. Thus there would be no personal immortality. This interpretation was popular enough in antiquity to cause it widely to be believed that Aristotle denied the survival after death of any personal consciousness. Aris· totle appeared to many as an enemy of the hopes for the afterlife expressed in the Phaedo and the Republic. This interpretation was not, however, without its opponents, who insisted that by the active intellect Aristotle means the divine intellect. Many of these commentators identified the active intellect with the thought of the unmoved mover which eternally thinks only itself. In support of this identification, they argued that it was impossible to imagine that Aristotle refers to any human intellect when he says that the active intellect thinks eternally. But if this chapter of the De anima concerns the divine intellect rather than the human intellect, other commentators wondered why it appears in Aristotle's book on psychology rather than in his books on metaphysics or theology. So problems remain. My only reason for discussing what Aristotle means in this difficult chapter at all is to locate Plotinus in the con· text of the problems that this chapter caused for ancient philosophers: the possibility of something like God in the human soul. It is easy in this context to combine or confuse metaphysics and psychology, as Plotinus seems often to do. Perhaps it will be possible to combine or confuse metaphysics and religion as well. One of the most notorious interpretations of this passage in the De anima is that of Averroes, an Arabic philosopher 73 �who lived in twelfth-century Spain. Averroes decided that the active intellect is divine, universal, and immortal, while the passive intellect is human, individual, and does not survive the death of the body. An individual human intellect actually knows only when it is illuminated by the active intellect, passively receiving from it the forms, essences, or definitions of the things eternally known by the active intellect. The human intellect is the mere disposition to receive intelligible objects and to suffer knowledge to occur in it. Knowledge is not an act of the human intellect, because that intellect is purely passive, but only an event that happens in and to the intellect. The human person is a particular individual, but knowledge itself remains universal. Nevertheless, the individual's experience of knowledge is a kind of contact with God. Because, however, the passive disposition of the human intellect perishes with the body, there can be no personal immortality, no eternal life with God. In the language of religion, the human individual is of no eternal significance and cannot be saved. It is passive, transient, and helpless. There is a conflict between the conclusions of philosophical psychology and the word of God as revealed in the Koran which proclaims salvations and teaches personal immortality. The consequences of this interpretation seemed intolerable to St. Thomas Aquinas, writing about a century later, and he wrote a commentary on the De anima to prove that the interpretation of Averroes was not in fact the doctrine of Aristotle. He asked: If, as Averroes, says, there is no individual active intellect, what sense does it make to say "This individual person knows"? No sense at all, St. Thomas thought. He maintained against Averroes that, distinct from the divine intellect, every human soul contains an active intellect as well as a passive intellect. The passive intellect receives from the senses the images of perceptible things; the active intellect, by its natural power, extracts from these images their intelligible forms, essences, or definitions. The active intellect is said to "spiritualize" the images. In St. Thomas' reconcilation of the psychology of Aristotle with the teachings of revealed religion, the active intellect is spiritual in its essence:, sur- vives the death of the body, and is immortal. What, according to these interpretations of Averroes and St. Thomas, is the relation between the individual soul and the divine truth? Despite the differences between these two interpretations, this relation for both of them is extrinsic or external. In neither interpretation is the act of knowledge a co-operation or conversation between the soul and the truth. For Averroes, the soul is completely passive; it receives the illumination of the active intellect and experiences knowledge, but remains, nonetheless, unchanged, without any intelligible content or intellectual power of its own. The soul receives the truth as an inspired prophet receives the divine revelation, as a free gift of a God who exceeds the human capacity to imagine his purposes. Because the soul is completely passive, it is not trans- 74 formed by the truth, nor can the truth save it, because it has no immortal part. For St. Thomas, it is of the soul's destiny and inherent power to know the divine truth. But the soul constructs this truth for itself, rather than receiving it from God. The soul does not require the direct intervention of the divine intellect to experience knowledge because the soul has an autonomous and immanent power to know the divine truth. This situation implies, however, that the soul is isolated; it does not meet, in the act of knowledge, any divine being, power, or operation. Again, the act of knowledge, and therefore philosophy, is without religious significance for personal salvation. Also, as in the theory of Averroes, knowledge has no specifically individual content. Although the senses have particular experiences, the active intellect extracts a uri!versal meaning from them. Individual salvation, therefore, according to St. Thomas, is conferred upon the soul by an external donation of grace. Although there is a cognitive content to this.salvation, it is incomprehensible to the human intellect unaided by grace. For St. Thomas, as for Averroes, the soul, empty and helpless, must accept its hope of salvation from divine revelation alone. There is no continuity between its experience in knowledge of the universal truth and its private desire in religious feeling for a personal God. St. Thomas and Averroes sought to resolve, perhaps successfully, the conflicts that appeared to remain between philosophical psychology and personal religion. The success of these efforts is not important here, for these theories are far from anything that happens in the Enneads. Averroes and St. Thomas begin with a stark contrast and separation of the human and divine intellects; Plotinus regards them as connatural: of the same nature and inseparable, they always act simultaneously. He considers human perfection to be a sharing in the divine act of knowing but he does not want to have anything to do with grace. Perfection must be real elevation of psychic life to a higher act of existence, but must not be given to the soul as something extrinsic to it. Perfection must be internal and personal, it must be a discovery of and a proper act of the self. It must also be divine; it must be contact and union with God. The difficulty of attaining perfection or even of describing it appears already in Aristotle: there seems to be no internal continuity between the individual human soul and the universal divine intellect; there seems, therefore, to be no way for the soul to share in the divine existence without abandoning its own. In the passage from the De anima Aristotle never says that he is discussing the divine intellect, but he must mean the divine intellect when he says that the active intellect thinks eternally, for surely no human intellect can be said to think eternally. With his usual taste for radical solutions, Plotinus says that the human soul does indeed think eternally. Does this mean that the human intellect shares what would seem to be an exclusively divine power? How can an infinite divine power be present in a finite being without AU1UMN 1981 �compromising the absolute distinction between God and the soul (a distinction that Averroes and St. Thomas presuppose)? How can one resolve the problems of knowledge, as posed by. Aristotle in the De anima, as the relation between the active and the passive intellects, without isolating the soul from God and without separating philosophy from the practice of religion, as Averroes and St. Thomas did? We seem to have either tgo much unity between God and the soul or else not enough. The ordinary philosophical question "How does the soul get its ideas?" can develop convolutions that involve the entire destiny of the soul and the religious problems that surround that destiny. The soul has to be in contact with God in order to have knowledge at all, but this contact with God threatens to engulf and dissolve the soul in the ocean of the divine being. 2 Existence as unity with God I now turn to the question of unity from a metaphysical point of view, rather than from the point of view of knowledge and its possibility. The question of unity again develops consequences for personal religion and spirituality. It will be seen again, I hope, that the distinction between what happens inside the soul and what happens outside of it becomes vague. The Pannenides raises the problem of the participation of material objects in their common, immaterial form. The problem is seen there as an antinomy of immanence and transcendence. If the many particular objects truly participate in the single form, the form becomes immanent in them and is infected with their plurality; if they partake of the form, they seem to take parts of it, to divide it, and so do not all have a share of the same integral form and so cannot all be called by its single name. Yet if the form remains intact, if it remains untouched by, aloof from, and transcendent to, the particular objects, it seems that the particulars cannot participate in it at all. The philosopher has two problems here: he wants the form to be transcendent to the particular objects, single and undivided, because he wants the form to be the authentic, unchanging object of knowledge, distinct from the uncertain and changing appearances of the particulars, which can be the object only of opinion. At the same time, however, or perhaps not quite at the same time, he wants the form to be in some sense the cause of the particulars. This demand seems, however, to imply some contact between the form and the particulars that will violate the integrity of the form as an object of knowledge. This antinomy quickly became a traditional point of argument in ancient philosophy. Most schools maintained against the Platonists that the forms were in some way immanent, or embedded, in the material particulars; the Platonists strove to preserve the integrity and dignity and the forms by keeping them separate from the sadness and THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW disorder of the material world. One typical gesture in this direction was the view that the forms were the thoughts of the divine intellect, the paradigms that guide its creation of the material world. Eager to affirm the primacy of unity at all levels, Plotinus would have inclined, as his theory of emanation suggests, to a theory whereby the particulars, produced immediately by their causes, retain contact with them. His religious language, however, constantly exhorts one to flee the confusions of this lower world for the true visions and delights of a divine world somewhere "higher" and certainly separate from this one. The dilemma about unity looks this way in Plotinus: how can the divine power create and sustain the sensible world without (l) compromising its own transcendence and unity or (2) destroying the real multiplicity and diversity of the sensible world? Either the divine power will be dissipated in the world or the world will be completely reabsorbed into the monochromatic unity of the greater power that creates it. Plotinus devotes two long tractiltes to this technically complex problem. He begins by attacking the Stoics who, like him, were monists~people who emphasized the unity of all things, but who, unlike Plotinus, were materialists. The Stoics tried to solve the antinomy of transcendence and immanence by making the world-soul present at every point of the material universe. They diffused the intelligent, creative divine power throughout the world. Plotinus objects that (l) the divine power is thus thought of as material and that (2) it loses its unity with itself because it is spread around on or in other material objects. (Nothing will make Plotinus accept materialism: he thinks it degrading. Some of the peculiarity of his own theory of matter is due to this feeling.) Plotinus further objects that the Stoic solution is impossible because two separate material things cannot participate in each other, they only muddle together and lose their mutual independence. If the world-soul is material, as the Stoics held, then the material world cannot participate in it at all. The world-soul is left without any power to create or direct it. The objections of Plotinus to the materiality of the world-soul recall the objections to Averroes' doctrine of the active intellect: it abolishes the necessary distinctions between the creator and the created. The later Neoplatonists such as Proclus betray a desire similar to St. Thomas Aquinas' in his doctrine of active intellect. They sought to preserve the dignity and integrity of the transcendent form while allowing the immanent form to govern the particulars, by distinguishing simply and sharply between the transcendent forms in the divine intellect, calling them unparticipated forms, and the forms immanent in particular material things. The Neoplatonists had nevertheless to explain the real relation between the immanent forms and the transcendent form, but not, of course, as participation. In their efforts to explain this relation they multiply distinct terms in a relation and then seek to justify their logical continuity~a procedure that contrasts strikingly with Plotinus' method 75 �of establishing continuity between the transcendent form and the material particulars. I call Plotinus' solution the theory of integral omnipres· ence. Typically, Plotinus accepts everyone's terms and seeks to solve everyone's difficulties by comprehending them in a universal theory that explains not only how things are but also why other philosophers have the par· tial and therefore false views of things that they do have. It is a theory of consciousness, of attitudes and knowledge, as well as a theory of metaphysics, i.e., a theory about the objects of consciousness. First, the metaphysi· cal side of the theory because it is slightly less paradoxical than the theory of consciousness, and because this order provides an edifying climax. The theory of integral omnipresence is a characteristic expression of Plotinus' intuition of the universe as a single spiritual life. In his philosophy, the distinctions of a static structure of reality were overlaid and dominated by the notion that this structure is in fact a dynamic interrela· tionship of spiritual forces. The notion of life as a power of self-movement and transformation prevails over the no- tion of existence as formed and completed. Being is pri· marily power and activity and only secondarily, form and hypostasis (6.4.9, 23-25). For Plotinus a form in the divine intellect is a radiance or a power, illuminating and actualizing the particulars, rather than an archetype or paradigm separate from them. The transcendent form is universally present in particular qualities. Conversely, the particular quality acts as the form, locally present, although with diminished strength and intensity. For example, the white color throughout a bowl of milk is also the white color in two different bowls of milk, because color is a quality not a quantity and, therefore, has no parts (IV.2.l; IV.3.2). In more modern terms, Plotinus equates the intension of a quality, its defi· nition, with its extension, its range of application. If the form in the divine intellect is omnipresent in its spatially-separated and material manifestations, does this presence not make the form itself spatial and material? If so, Plotinus will have failed in his attempt to outflank Stoic cosmology while retaining its dynamic character. Plotinus attempts therefore to purify his notion of crea· tion and created diversity from all spatial references, correcting thereby the materialistic implications of his own imagery of emanation by which he represents the diffusion of infinite creative power into successively' lower and weaker, but more determinate, forms of existence, desending at last to visible and tangible matter. He takes up his own imagery and revises it carefully to remove from it every spatial or material reference. For clarity's sake the argument has often tried to lead the mind to understand the origin of multiplicity by making an image of many radii emanating from a single center. (cf. 5.1.!1, !0-!5). But one must add to this image the idea that the radii become many while remaining together. One removes, as it were, the lengths of the radii and considers only 76 their extremities, lying at the center, where they are all one. Again, if you add the lengths again, each radius will touch the center still. Nevertheless (despite the length of the radii), the several extremities at the center will not be separated from the primary center but will be simultaneous with it. The centers will appear to be as many as the radii which they touch, but they remain all together. If, therefore, we liken all the intelligible forms to many centers related to and unified in one center, but appearing many because of their radii (although the radii do not generate the centers, but only reveal where they are), let the radii be analogous to the material things which, when the intelligible form touches them, make the form appear to be multiple and to be present in many places. (6.5.5) In this chapter he uses a spatial image to express a dynamic notion of causality: the generation of multiple beings as distinct forces emanating from a single source of creative power. Plotinus then carefully revises the image in order to remove from it every spatial or material sugges· tion: he strives to represent direction without quantity and forces without a space across which they are extended. Multiplied and diversified, the power of the creative cause remains (paradoxically) concentrated and undiffer· entiated in the cause. The diversity of the created world is simultaneous with the simplicity of its cause, but utterly distinct from it because each created being takes a direc· tion in which it is manifested spatially and materially, whereas the single cause is free from every specification and limitation. The relation between cause and effect is asymetrical; the cause has a transcendent existence be· cause it is not exhausted in its relation to its effects: the effects are completely defined by their dependence upon their cause and their limited and local appearance in the sensible world. This asymetrical relation is eternal and can never be reversed. The primacy of the first cause lies in its infinity and power which contrasts with the structured di· versity of its effects. This discussion shows one reason for introducing this new theory. If all individuals, even the archetypes in the divine intellect, are not constantly present to their trans· cendent cause, the One, they will be separated from it and deprived of its power. They will have no power of self-subsistence and would perish as heat fades when fire withdraws. Their death would leave the One as the single, universal being, the imperishable substrate of its transitory modes or emanations. A further consequence of particu· Jar interest is that there could be no personal immortality of the soul. Plotinus offers this theory as a solution to the pantheis· tic and monistic dilemmas encountered by his predeces· sors. Nevertheless, one must admit that in seeking to solve all possible difficulties he has invented a theory t)lat is far stranger than anything his predecessors even imagined. (I hope that you do not think that I am approaching my subject frivolously. I have been provoked to this some· what unscholarly fashion of speech in order to set the problems aroused by a prolonged study of Plotinus in all AUTUMN 1981 �their immediacy. Many scholars will blandly present a bizarre theory like the present one without a hint of why Plotinus should have desired it at all, without explaining what sort of satisfaction he might have taken in it.) The weirdest aspect of this theory is that it seems to disregard matter entirely. Plotinus was ready for this objection. He points out that the greatest obstacle to understanding his theory is the persistent human weakness that remains convinced, despite his many demonstrations to the contrary, that the visible world is real and that consequently the intelligible world must be extended in space to form and govern it (6.4.2, 28-43). He insists that the material world is specious, the last feeble manifestation of intelligible power in the blank and insubstantial substrate of matter. This manifestation is appropriate only to the most feeble exercise of thought: the naive opinion that takes things for what they only seem to be. Let me hasten to add that Plotinus does not deny that matter is somehow real; he merely insists that its reality is not intelligible in itself, but only with reference to the divine intelligible power that creates, informs, and sustains it and with reference also to the power of human intellect that beholds it and seems to penetrate its deceptive appearance. Matter is an illusion only in the sense that it is the most diffused appearance of the divine thought which recognizes it not as delusion or falsity, but as its own exuberance and self-revelation. For Plotinus, all mere existence (for the One is beyond existence) is appearance, a real apparition of divine energy, in a particular intelligible, psychic, or material form, relative to the level of consciousness that is able to perceive and understand it. He insists only that the reality of these appearances is not in themselves but in their cause because reality means in~ telligibility. All levels of reality are strictly relative to the levels of consciousness-perception, emotion, discursive knowledge, pure contemplation-which apprehend them. The soul ascends to a higher level of reality as it attains to a higher level of consciousness: the soul ascends to God as it attains a divine power of thought. A topography of salvation is completely internalized. This kind of thinking is unfamiliar to us and even Flolinus' contemporaries seem to have been puzzled by it. Why does Plotinus want to think and talk this way? Plotinus concludes from the immateriality of the intelligible world that whatever is able to participate in it, participates in it as a whole. Where there is no question of extension or magnitude, whatever is present to any. must be present to all (6.4.2, 43-49). The truth of this inference is easy to see in the case of demonstrative knowledge which, if it is to be genuine, universal knowledge, must be the same for all human intellects, despite the differences in human personalities. Plotinus' idea is another form of the Aristotelian theorem that the intellect in act is identical with the intelligible in act. If individual intellects know the identical object of knowledge, they must each become it identically. Plotinus, therefore, says that participation in knowledge, in the divine intellect, is identical because THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW knowledge, being immaterial, is equally present to all intellects that know it. The object of knowledge, likewise, is equally available to any intellect that turns its attention towards it and becomes present to every intellect in proportion to its individual ability. to know it. But the differences among actually attained knowledges are all on the side of the individual human intellects; the divine intellect is equally present to all. But this truth is not too obvious in the case of existential participation, e.g. human participation in the divine virtues. Why, one may object, does this participation not also appear uniform? Why in fact does it appear to be wildly diverse, there being perhaps not a single form-justice or beauty, for example-that appears to be evenly distributed in the world? Plotinus answers that there are manifest degrees of participation because they correspond to the differing abilities of created things to accept the impression of the form whose power is nonetheless present and available to it (6.4.8, 39-40; 11, 3-5). These varying abilities to participate correspond in turn to different intensities of the desire to receive the quality or form (5.3.17, 28-32; 5.5.8). Here Plotinus again uses the vocabulary of psychology in a metaphysical discussion. But Plotinus is not just careless about his vocabulary: he wants the identification or confusion of metaphysics and psychology to be an explicit principle of his philosophy. Free will and not existence is to be its foundation. Because divine being is omnipresent and because its presence is realized in the actual existence of each particular being according to the capacity and desire of each to receive a divine mode of existence, this relation of the transcendent power and immanent presence of the divine being will be valid also for the individual soul. Because, moreover, all divine reality is both intellectual and intelligible (both thinks and is the object of thought), the soul shares in divine reality through contemplation, both expanding its knowledge and strengthening its power of thought. The metaphysical interrelation of transcendence and immanence is the structure of personal salvation. The soul is elevated through contemplation to a divine and universal mode of existence without losing its uniqueness in that greater power. The divine existence appears as the individual existence without resigning its transcendence. This development reveals the importance of the idea of the self as distinct from all the powers and contents of the soul. (Compare the argumentation throughout 5.3, 3-4). The human soul and intellect are manifestations of and participations in the world soul and the divine intellect. Just as, in the universe, the world soul and the divine intellect are unified by the comprehensive power of the One, so, in the individual human person, the individual soul and intellect are unified by the comprehensive power of the self, superior to them and usually hidden by them. Further, just as the One generates the world soul and the divine intellect out of itself but remains unlimited by their specific natures and undiminished by their specific activities, so the human self is the real source of the individual 77 �soul and intellect, but a source that remains unaffected by their diverse natures and acts. The soul is many things and all things, both the things above and those below down to the limits of all life. We are each one an intelligible cosmos, touching the lower world by the powers of the soul belOw, but with our higher powers attain- ing the entire intelligible realm. We remain with all the rest of the intelligible above, but by our lowest edge we are bound to the world below. (3.4.3, 21-27) Only the attachment of the soul to a material body dulls its perception of its continued residence in the divine world. The soul does not literally descend into a body. Its only descent is ignorance of its divine origin and nature. Detachment from the body liberates the higher sensibility and delivers the soul again to its original beatitude. Salvation, the ascent of the soul to divine life, is therefore selfknowledge; salvation is a re-awakening of the soul from the torpor of incarnate existence to the eternal world of its origin and its higher, inner, and secret life. Because the interior cosmos of the soul mirrors the cosmos of the uni- verse, the life of the philosopher becoming conscious of himself is an archetypal personal history in which his individual existence is elevated to the status of an archetype because it is consciously conformed, through his contemplation, to the pattern of universal being, a pattern that is always present in his soul as an inherent possibility and power of existence, the power to transform his life in the image of the divine realities he contemplates. As a consequence of the theory of integral omnipresence, a general theory of universal being becomes the equivalent of the practice of the interior life of contemplation. Because of this equivalence, self-knowledge is knowledge of God; because knowledge of God is salvation, self-knowledge is salvation. Or is it? The One is unknowable. But is the One God? Yes. But is the One present in us, so that knowledge of the self can be knowledge of the One? Yes. In the first tractate of the fifth Ennead, after outlining his metaphysics, Plotinus continues: It has now been shown that we must believe that things are as follows: there is first the One which is beyond being, as our discourse tried to demonstrate, so far as it is possible to dem- onstrate about such things; next there is intellect and then the soul. As these three exist in nature, so it is necessary to believe that they exist even in ourselves. I do not mean in the perceptible parts of ourselves-for these three are incorporeal-but in those parts that Plato calls "the inner man." Even our soul, then, is a divine thing and of another nature, such as is the universal nature of soul. (5.1.10, 1-12) Plotinus says in other passages that we are joined to the One, that we touch the ultimate Godhead, by a similar nature in ourselves. He even says at one point, after hav- ing described the ethical purification he demands as preparation for the contemplation of divine reality, "but our 78 desire is not to be free of sin, but to be God" (1.2.6, 2-3). What is the meaning of this dark utterance? It is one thing, and a thing whose meaning has, I hope, become somewhat clearer in the course of this essay, to say that the authentic self is an archetype in the divine intellect, a self that is therefore unique, divine, and immortal; the self, on this view, is a determinate aspect of the divine wis- dom, relative to its limited sphere of manifestation in the created world. But to assert that the One dwells in the self seems to make an unrestricted claim for the divinity of the self, seems to abolish the distinction between the created self and the ultimate source and desire of all created existence. Furthermore, because the One is said to be present in every self and in every form in the divine intellect, it seems that even the distinction between the One and the divine intellect, so carefully made and so strenuously defended, would disappear and with this distinction would disappear all rational justification for created diversity and multiplicity. The desire of Plotinus to unify metaphysics and personal religion has caused a serious problem. 3 Mystical Unity I shall proceed obliquely and by negative contrasts. If we find difficulties in the system as Plotinus presents it, let us wonder what it would have been like if it were not as Plotinus presents it. Specifically, if we see problems in the distinction between the divine intellect and the One and in the assertion that the soul can be unified mystically with both of them, let us consider what the system would look like without these features. I hope by this procedure to reveal the appetites of Plotinus in making his system and his satisfaction in it. If, then, Plotinus had not posited above the divine intellect another deity, incomprehensible in thought, but attainable in an immediate, non-rational union, his religious aspiration for union with God could still have been satisfied. He already speaks of the divinization. of the soul through union with the divine intellect (5.8.7, 32-35; 5.8.10, 39-40; 5.8.11). He could have developed this idea much as Averroes was to do, by making the conjunction of the human passive intellect with the divine active intellect the goal of all religious and philosophical striving. Such a theory would, however, have implied a different notion of the self than that embodied in the system as Plotinus has it. The self for such a theory would be defined by its being coextensive with the divine intellect as a system of laws, relationships, and pure archetypes of being. The self would exist insofar as the truth of the divine intellect, its unity as perfect knowledge, is valid. This theory implies a fundamentally abstract and impersonal view of being; the self would be a law of knowledge, coextensive with the divine intellect, rather than a life or a free will. (Averroes, who professed this view of human beatitude, found no need for an additional, personal immortality.) AUTUMN 1981 �Even if this system included within the divine intellect the forms of human individuals, the self, although imperishable, would still be defined as a unique point of view on the finite content of the divine intellect. Its desire for union with God would have no uniquely determined personal significance. Its immortality would be guaranteed by the conformity of the intellect to the perfect order of the divine intellect. This order has two essential characteristics: finitude and necessity. The self, in turn, would be finite and contained by the necessity that governs all intellectual being. The divine intellect would be the single, final, and absolutely integrated self and the pattern of all genuine selfhood. Against or, more accurately, beyond this notion of selfhood and of divinity, Plotinus sets another, for which intellect and consciousness are not the highest values. His decision to do this sets him apart from his predecessors in the Greek philosophical tradition. For Plotinus the two most important personal qualities are freedom and, dependent upon it, love. It is precisely these two qualities, insignificant in an impersonal notion of selfhood and divinity, that Plotinus sought to preserve and exalt in the mysticism that culminates in union with the One. The basic affirmation of "intellectualistic" mysticism is that each human individual is an archetype contained in the divine intellect. Union with the divine intellect elevates the human intellect to the universality of the divine intellect, but allows no freedom in that unity. If the self is preserved as an eternal mode, moment, or aspect of the divine intellect, its existence is limited and determined by the necessary causal dependence that creates and maintains it. Such a self is not free and its personal religious aspirations are ultimately irrelevant because that self will cease to exist as separate. The intellect sees the One as the supreme object of metaphysical speculation. Personal religion desires not to understand the One, but to be united with it as the object of its love. This union of love reveals not only a new aspect of the God that is loved, but also of the self that loves Him. (In such descriptions Plotinus uses the masculine pronouns which name a personal God instead of the more usual neuter pronouns which name an abstract principle or im- personal cause.) In this union with a personal God, the self and its love are experienced as infinite and free. The desire to experience the native infinity and freedom of the self, in addition to purely metaphysical reasons, motivates Plotinus' description of the One as itself (or Himself) infinite and free. Here ·is a passage from the long and careful discussion of how the One may be said to be free, in which Plotinus makes it clear that his doctrine about the One's freedom implies a similar nature in ourselves, a state of isolation and self-mastery. When we say that He (the One) receives nothing into Himself and that nothing else contains Him, intending to place Him outside of chance, we mean not only that He is free by reason THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW of His attainment of self-unity and purity from all things, but also that, if we discover a similar nature in ourselves that has nothing to do with those things which depend upon us and by which we suffer accident and chance (the body and its emotions), we mean that by that nature alone we have the same self-mastery that the One has, the autonomy of the light that belongs to the Good and is good in actuality, essentially superior to any intellectual light or goodness. When we ascend into that state and become that light alone, having discarded everything else, what else can we say but that we are more than (intellectually) free, more than autonomous? (6.8.15, 8-23) It would be impossible to state more emphatically that the discovery of an utterly transcendent God corresponds to the attainment of a state of personal transcendence that is the unceasing presence of that God within the self. In religion, as in metaphysics, there is a union or coincidence of an immanent power and its transcendent cause. In this union with God the soul discovers that its deepest ground is not its archetypal being contained in the divine intellect, that its highest aspiration is not, therefore, to become perfect self-consciousness, omniscence, and formed existence. Its ultimate uniqueness is a mystery inaccessible to discursive reason, because its authentic self is infinite and free. The self is an ideal, a teleological notion because the self can withdraw itself from its apparent, projected, personality (within whose boundaries it can have only finite satisfaction) and can thereby discover its infinity and freedom in union with the infinity and freedom of the One (6.5.7). The aspiration of the self to know itself as unique finds its complete satisfaction only in this union with a God unlimited in activity and uncomprehended by thought. The One is experienced in this union as one with the deepest point of the self (6.9.11). But we must return to our problem: how did Plotinus think that he could get away with this? We must return because Plotinus himself had no patience with religious enthusiasm unsupported by philosophy. Plotinus does not see this problem quite as we do because he is completely unaffected by incarnational thinking and probably completely ignorant of it. He believes that the divine world is omnipresent: its powers and possibilities underlie every derived existence. The One is present to the intellect as an innate desire to surpass its self-reflective unity of being and thinking; this desire, moreover, is prior to the subject-object duality of intellect precisely because the desire to be at one with oneself is the presence of the One in the human person as its innate unity and simplicity. The life of the One persists in the intellect as its inner light which strives to return from thoughts to its original free and undefined condition. The One is present everywhere as this spontaneous desire to transcend every internal division, as the desire of all things for their inherent unity (6.5.1; 6.9.1-2). Intellect is a principle of diversity and multiplication, "for intellect is an activity manifest in the expansion of all things" (3.8.9, 20-33). The One is an act of contraction of 79 �the soul upon itself, a descent into itself, a negative activity that shrinks from the nullity of phenomena mto the core of the self. All consciousness IS concentratiOn, a strengthening of the contemplative power upon the inside of the soul. The One appears as the final event of this concentration. This state is not an intellectual intuition of the self nor of an absolute unity, but is a coincidence of the self with the One, not a coalescence of substances but a coincidence of activities. In this coincidence neither the transcendence of the One nor the dependence of the self as created are violated. Plotinus often recalls the language of the Symposium when describing this union (1.6.7; 6.7.22; 6.7.34-35). Plato interpreted erotic passion as the vehicle of personal transcendence into the world of true bemg because eros discovers and actualizes the likeness of the soul to that world. The sequence of transcendences that conducts the soul to a final vision of the forms and contact with the truth IS described in the Symposium as an ascending dialectic of desire stimulated and desire fulfilled, of beauty perceived and beauty attained, of love aroused by vision and love at rest in its object. Plotinus makes one significant addition, speaking of "beauty perceived and beauty acquired" as the contemplative soul affectively mmors the dlVlne perfections it beholds. The soul actualizes its visions as deeper levels of its own virtual existence. Therefore the dialectic of love in Plotinus culminates not m VISIOn but m union. But it is a union of lovers that does not obliterate their distinction, for that would obliterate also their love, but causes them to forget the distance between them. This union is two-fold: because it is an attainment of the authentic self, it occurs within the boundaries of the soul but because it is union with the One, it is also a certain'transcendence of the soul's individuality. This union is the mystical counterpart of the metaphysical theory of integral omnipresence and is a particular application of It. The One is transcendent because it is the efficient cause of the lower forms of existence which proceed from it; yet as their final cause it is immanent in its effects because they can return to it only by enfolding and concentrating their activity around the center of their own existence. Transcendence corresponds to the desire stimulated by one's unattained good; immanence corresponds to the tranquil possession of one's good as the part and activity of one's own self. The soul is not poor: its best part, its innermost self, is already somehow transcendent (3.5.3, 25-26). The soul does not need to become divine by grace because its deepest point is already God. We must put aside all else to remain in that Alone and to become it, discarding all other attachments. We are impatient to depart this life and to be free of it so that we may be enfolded upon our own entirety and have no part in us but ~hat through which we have contact with God. Then it is possible to see Him and one's self together, insofar as one may speak 80 any longer of vision. It is a vision of a self resplendent, full of intellectual light, pure, weightless, lightsome, a self that ~as become God, or rather that is God always, but only then wtth its Godhead enkindled. (6.9.9, 50-58) The spiritual meaning of the theory of integral omnipresence is thus made clear. When the soul is saved, it apprehends and possesses its good, it is assumed into and possessed by the more inclusive existence of its good, but II has not departed from itself in an ecstasy nor has It received a new self by grace; it has only for the first time realized the good inherent in itself. . This union with the God is both the culmination of philosophy (because philosophical contemplation is the only valid preparation) and also a transcendence of philosophy (because the union surpasses and temporanly obliterates the subject-object duality of all contemplation). Phtlosophy is not a mechanical method that. will inevitably supply the desired mystical experiences (such a view would violate the freedom of God); the self must prepare·itself for these experiences and wait (5.5.8; also 1.6.9; 5.3.17, 28-32; 6.5.12, 29-31). The visions of the sober intellect are annulled by the experiences of the drunken intellect in love with God (6.7.35). In this sense philosophy is itself left behind by religion, although it will again be asked to interpret the experiences at the essentially inferior level of thought and speech. The final personal tr')nsformation is to have one's desire for God and one's vision of God so cldsely united to one's essential self that the self becomes the pure mirror into which the final revelation of God is suspended. The whole sequence of contemplative vision is accomplished within the soul as a life of theopathy, suffering the divine, because the transfiguration of these visions occurs only for the soul that is transformed by them. The important factor is the correlation of the real apparition of God to the soul and the soul's degree of inner association with God, the degree to which it concentrates and strengthens its inner light into likeness with God. The ultimate spiritual attainment of the self and the form of its salvation coincide with the ultimate manifestation of God. The true self, experienced only in union with the One, is perfect freedom; the ultimate God, experienced only in union with the self, is pure creative spontaneity. The return of the soul through gradual simplifications of intellectual vision to the motionless self reveals at the same time that self, in its purity and freedom, as the only perfect revelation of God. We have returned to the beginning, we have seen Flolinus' idea of the self, its inseparable connection with his experience of God, and we have solved all problems. I hope, finally, that it is clear, through th1s discusswn of the union of the deepest self with the highest God, how the entire philosophy of Plotinus is but the preparation and intimation of the silence of that unimaginable splendor. AUTUMN I981 �OCCASIONAL DISCOURSES The Permanent Part of the College* By "the permanent part" of the College in the title of my address, I mean, as you have probably guessed, you, the alumni. That is not just an ingratiating way of speaking devised for the occasion, but it has some facts in its favor. Before I explain myself, let me remind you of an occasion in which many of you have participated-the president's Senior Dinner. One part of it that is sometimes quite moving is the Dean's Toast to theRepublic. If he is feeling thorough, it will have four parts, ascending in order of worldly magnitude and then dropping into intimate immediacy. There will be celebrated the Republic of Plato, which is the world's first book to set out the program of a true school, the republic of letters which is the commonwealth of all those who love the word, the republic of the United States of America which is the ground and foundation of our worldly being, and finally, St. John's College, the living community of learning. The question concerning the continuity of all these commonwealths with each other, and of each in itself, in other words, the question in all its range of the continuity of community has always been a preoccupation of mine. As I understand it, it is an aspect of that question that you, as alumni, want me to speak about, and I welcome the occasion for becoming clear about it to myself. So to return to the position of the alumni within the college community. Consider the students at any time attending the college. Presently they graduate, they go to a first degree of academic honor and are students in the strict sense no longer. The Board of the college changes *Delivered at a gathering of San Francisco area alumni of St. John's in the fall of 1980. THE ST.JOHNS REVlEW all the time; its members have a fairly short term. Our last president was with us an amazingly long time-the longest or among the longest of any twentieth century college president. But he has now sworn not to set foot on either campus for a year, for a well-earned period of distance and refreshment. May our new president, whom you will meet later in the year, be with us for that length of time which betokens a good fit!-but it will not be permanently. And finally, the tutors themselves, who may seem to you to be truly permanent fixtures at Annapolis and Santa Fe-they too must retire late in life <!nd become "emeriti," members of the college by reason of their meritorious past but now completed service. Alumni, on the other hand, are alumni for good. Their very name proclaims itthey are "nurslings" who have, presumably, absorbed something of the college's substance. By the college Polity all students, once matriculated, become alumni of the college, whether they leave with or without a degree, and no one can retire or "terminate" them. All other membership in the college is by choice; that of alumni alone has in it something analogous to being by nature. So as nurslings of the institution, alumni are first of all asked to nourish it in return. I know very well and have a certain limited sympathy for the complaint that when the college communicates with graduates it is too often about money-exactly the complaint parents have about their student children. It has to be. Private colleges are charitable institutions that give their services almost half free. Money-raising is the price they pay for their freedom to choose to be what they are. It can be done crudely or tactfully, but done it must be, by our president as by all other private school presidents. Of course, the response is a matter of choice. That choice may well be determined not only by a general sense of responsibility for the continuation of nongovernmental education but also by gratitude. For example, I have a fixed, and fairly well-kept rule of sending twenty-five dollars to St. John's whenever the institutions from which I graduated-whom I respected only as the employers of much admired but very remote professors and loved not all.-solicit me for money. But, of course, the notion that the alumni's relation to the college-at least to our college-begins or ends there is absurd. So let me now consider the question what constitutes the after-life of a student from its most specific to its widest aspect. First of all, and this turns out to be by no means a mere formality, the alumni participate in the governance of the college through their board representatives and informally by the weight of their organized opinion. That opinion has on occasion decided issues-such as the proposed abandonment of our old name. The college in turn, we all agree, owes its alumni certain reliable services and wellorganized, substance-informed occasions for their return. Among the first is the prompt and effective composition of letters of reference. Among the second are Homecoming with its seminars, and the exhilarating summer alumni seminars that take place in Santa Fe. Then there are the alumni meetings in the various cities, such as this one. For all of these affairs the tutors who help with them volunteer their time and efforts, in acknowledgement of the permanent bond between them and their former students. But the tutors have another kind of duty~that more informal kind of duty which, were it not such a pleasure to per- 81 �form, would probably not be very faithfully observed. It is a duty which, even though it is more sporadic than undergraduate teaching, is as serious and as satisfying. It is to be in some practical sense there for alumni, to write to in weal or woe, to visit on the way to a new departure or on a sentimental journey, to bring the conclusions of life to. Those visits from former students-sometimes there is time only for fifteen minutes of conversation in the coffee shop-are always talked about among us. Nothing brings home to us the ultimate impotence of the profession Of teaching and the deeply dubious character of the program as does a visit from a former student who is lost and who attributes that condition to having been touched by some unassimilable intimation of paradise or of hell in this school. Nothing gives so exhilarating a sense of stability in change as the appearance of alumni who have so well and truly put the college in the past that it is equa11y well and truly present in them: an oracular saying which I am certain will have some immediate meaning for most of you, and of which I want to say more later. But the feelings with which these encounters leave us, from disturbed regret to a sense that the deliberate benevolance we felt towards you in your student daysgood teachers are never "close" to their students-is about to turn into life-long friendship, are not my present point. That point is that alumni are in a more than metaphorical sense returning home, and have a right to be received in that spirit. Those, then, are the continuing relations of the alumni with the college as a home community, made up of officers and two campuses and one faculty. Now I come to the after-life of alumni on their own. How does the college continue with them? It is by far the more problematic topic and a better subject for reflection. Of course, it too has a practical and organizable part. The alumni organizations are, as it were, independent extensions of the college. In bringing former students together in the kind of event which is characteristic of St. John's, in seminars and lectures legitimated by discussion, they propagate the life of the college and provide members with the means for continuing to live it at their leisure. For us to hear that a city has a lively alumni group is to have a sense of having friends in the world, 82 and to come to such a city, for example, to San Francisco, is a little like the experience of the shipwrecked Greek who, being cast up on a wild coast, saw scratched in a rock the diagram of Eucid I, 47 and said: "Here too are humans." (Let me hasten to add that this feeling is absurd. Humans, that is to say, people to talk to, are everywhere. And yet, absurd as it is, it is also humanly sensible, for it is humanly sensible to feel relieved at finding one's own.) This external, organized continuation of college life away from the campuses is, of course, only the expression of any inner individual continuity. Let me again begin at the easy end by giving some plain and practical tutors' answers to the questions about alumni life. Alumni should continue reading. I imagine that most of you read quite a bit in the ordinary course of your lives. Much of that reading is in so called "papers" -newspapers, position papers, official paperseverything I call to myself "instrumental junk.'' Mally of you probably also read reams of poetry and of novels-my own favorite genre-of that mean range of excellence which goes down easily and yet nourishes the imagination. Many of you will have emerged from the program hungry for history written to that same standard. I have often thought that the much-bemoaned heavy tread of our program readings has in the best event this happy side effect-that it leaves students with a great appetite-some of you may recall that the Greeks called it boulimia, "oxfamine" -for miscellaneous reading. But this kind of reading, which we share with the rest of the literate world, is not what I have in mind. I am thinking of a very deliberate effort. It involves first of all letting the time ripen, by keeping the thought in mind without pressing on to the execution. But then, when you are ready, pick up the program list. Readiness may be that the new ways of life which you have, in a healthy zest for contrast, thrown yourselves into have begun to fail you. It may mean that some specific question has returned to preoccupy you, or that you see its true shape for the first time. It may mean simply that you feel the wave of activity floating you away from the isle of contemplation. Pick up the list and choose a text. Then read it. Read it as experienced grown-ups reread the books of their youth: with a twinge of nostalgia for the circumstances of its first reading and with some wry admiration for the lordly consumption of metaphysics of which you were once capable, but after that with the critical discernment which comes from a well-digested, that is to say, half-forgotten education. That is my small but precise recommendation for doing alumni-deeds. But now the moment has come for matters of larger scope. Let me work my way into them by dwelling on a dilemma often discussed or displayed by visiting alumni, a dilemma at once highly specific to this college and of the widest human importance. Alumni sometimes arrive with a shamefaced and apologetic air about them. How have they sinned? They are respected at their work and loved at home, but now they have come to the place of accountgiving, and they feel wanting. The matter is this: they are not living the philosophic life. Now that is a difficulty that I can only imagine a St. Johnnie as being oppressed by. Other students might be anxious before their teachers for having failed in the world or even for having lost their soul, but they would not usually know much about or honor the philosophic life. I am always charmed by our students' anxiety because it shows on their part a willingness to take root in a deep and wise tradition concerning the good life. But I am also, in turn, anXIOUS. Let me backtrack for a moment to be more accurate. Sometimes there really is something amiss in these uneasy visitors. They may have become enmeshed in what I will simply denominate here by its all too instantiable formula, "the hassles of contemporary living". Or they are absorbed in the mild miserie~ of forgetfulness and can't come to. But more often their account of their life is full of shy ardor and quiet intelligence. Then I ask myself: what on earth does he or she, what do we all mean by the philosophical life? So the matter needs to be thought out. Let me give you some of my thoughts, some long in coming, some thought out for the occasion. When the ancient philosophers speak of the philosophical life, the bios philosophiAUTIJMN 1981 �k6s, one thing is immediately clear. It is a life and not a profession they are speaking of. Professors of philosophy have certain real disabilities in living the philosophical life. For as professors they have a position to maintain in the world, and work, not leisure, is their element. It is just the same with returning graduate students in philosophy. Sometimes they are full of interesting reflections on their activity, but sometimes they are so lost in their profession that it makes one's heart sink. Not that tutors are altogether different. To be sure, one incident that did much to win my heart for the college was a salary report prepared now almost a quarter century ago by Winfree Smith. Its preamble declared that although tutors were paid to live, they were not paid for their work because that was invaluable. It was invaluable both in being a pleasure and the need of their soul to perform and because its value was incapable of being quantitatively fixed. But while it is an inner truth that tutors do not work for wages, it is an external fact that we are the employees of a demanding institution, who converse by appointment, teach on schedule, and study according to a program-and to miss any of these official obligations without a reason is highly unacceptable behavior. It follows that we too are professionals, and not free to live a daily life of absorbed contemplation. But perhaps if no one we know lives a philosophical life by reason of even the best loved profession, it is still true that that life is compatible with any work, and any work can be done in a philosophical spirit. Let me pursue that. The life of philosophy seems to me to have one external condition, leisure, and one reason for being, the search for truth. That leisure is not exhausted "time off' from work, bUt the free time for the sake of which the other times of one's life are spent. Of the search for truth let me say only that it is not only a possibility but a necessity for most human beings. In whose life have there not been moments when all considerations have waned but the desire, the exigent desire, to know the truth? The long and short of it is, I think, that like all fundamental human modes the phil· osophical life comes in graduated versions which are continuous and even complementary, and those who come nearest to living it in some pure form hold its shape in THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW trust for those who, from duty or preference, do the world's business. For in spite of what I said before, there are protected environments for that life, and the college is the best place I know for study and reflection. Its program and its schedules are, after all, intended to be the ladder and the handholds in the reflective climb; most of us certainly I, myself, need such prescribed paths, since a life wholly free of stimulants and constraints leaves us more melancholy than illumined. The business of our college is in the service of leisure; it is a true schOol, if I m"ay recall to you the old chestnut, that that word itself comes from schole, Greek for '~leisure." Of course, it is for that very reason not the so-called real world. No one knows that better than its long-term inhabitants, particularly since they also live out of it, as neighbors, consumers, taxpayers, voters, and world-watchers. To be sure, in large academic conglomerations theoretical megalomania and practical impotence come together in that Lilliputian preoccupation known as academic politics. But the atmosphere of smaller schools is usually no more strained than that of an intensely close family, while the tutors of St. John's, because of the common allegiance to a program with integrity, form a remarkable community of friends, willing to talk to and to trust in each other. Not only is the philosophical life best carried on in a special place, it is even most apt to be carried on by distinctive people. That distinction seems to me to be less one of nature or kind than of circumstance and predeliction. For example, our students approach the leading of such a life by reason of their being in leisured circumstances, and most of us tutors come near it more through our inclination than capacity for intellection. I know that in saying all this I can be accused of showing myself a child of my time and of depreciating the philo· sophical life. Those would be heavy charges, but perhaps I must face them in the question period. How then is this special life, the life of philosophy, related to the life of action, if they are not in principle discontinuous? I used to think that the movement back and forth between them was entirely possible. In particular it seemed to me that someone who had thought deeply about the world should be able to act wisely in it. I was never such a fool as to think that academics or intellectuals would cope particularly well ·with ruling responsibility, but I was thinking of philosophers, people whose thought is not divorced from the nature of things. The notion of a philosopher kingor queen, for that matter-did not seem impossible to me. I have not totally recanted, but the facts of life loom larger now. I honor experience more, though that is an argument against the activity of the young as much as of the philosopher. What matters more is that the rhythm and therequirements of the two lives seem to me more irreconcilably different. From the point of view of the life of reflection, the other life seems unbearable for the continual curtailment of thought and its incessantly instrumental use, for the lack oflong legatos of development and the hurried forestalling of spontaneous insight it brings with it. From the point of view of the life of action, the inability to reach conclusions without going back to the primal ameba (as Elliott Zuckerman likes to say), the ob· struction of progress on mere principle, the lack of feel for possibilities, the sheer impotence of those who represent the other life, must be repellent. I conclude that with whatever freedom we may begin, at some time we become habituated to one or the other of the lives, and we will settle into our profession and our setting accordingly. But there is nothing at all in this against frequent cross-overs. On the contrary, just as those who make reflection the center of their life must keep their worldly wits about them to have anything to reflect on, so those who do the world's business can and ought to philosophize, either as a steady accompaniment of their work, or intermittently, in their times of leisurewhichever fits the economy of their life. I think our alumni often live just that way. Would that they knew how close to us they seem when they do it! That is what I wanted to say about the relations between the college as an institution and its alumni. Now I would like to conclude by consid· ering how alumni might cope with the college insofar as it is a place and a time in their lives. I would like to entitle this section: "How rightly to forget the college." By forgetting I mean, to begin with, a phenomenon well known to theorists of learning-and of course, to learners. Most 83 �learning begins in proud but hesitant selfconsciousness and later subsides into a latent, yet ever active, condition. Such learning informs the soul as a second nature-it reshapes it with good nourishment and right exercise. It is in the hope that something of that sort has happened that alumni are called alumni. I think much of that inner shaping, that passage into the past by which what was once a time in your life becomes a permanent possession, actually takes place in the decade after you have left the place itself, and takes a considerable digestive effort. Let me tell you what seem to me the signs that the passage has taken place. My recital will be illustrative rather than exhaustive, because I am not much enchanted by analytic check lists of the lib· eral skills and attitudes, and those are, of course, what I am talking about. If you like, we can talk more about these in the question period. And my examples will be given pell-mell, mixing the sublime and the trivial-always remembering though, that "trivial" originally meant: belonging to the trivium, the triple arts of language, gram· mar, rhetoric, logic. Here, then, are some of the features of that second, that alumninature, which we always recognize with deep satisfaction: l. An unpretentious, companionable closeness to some deep and difficult books. 2. A fairly wide factual learning of the sort that is absorbed incidentally, in the course of trying to understand some matter. 3. A resourceful recalcitrance toward all translation, be it from Greek into latinate English, from common language into technical jargon, from book onto screen, from original text to popular paraphrase. 4. A long perspective on our modern tradition which avoids either kvetchy cavilling or easy riding, because it is based on some knowledge of our roots and our revolutions. 5. Knowing that the plural of eYdos is etde. 6. A carefully cherished ignorance that texts of mathematical symbols and of musical notes might be anything but essentially accessible expressions of the human soul. 7. A determinedly naive faith in the possibility of principled political action, supported by a shrewd and ever-evolving theory of human nature which will neither buckle under the weight of the world's wickedness nor invite more of it. 8. A love for the illuminations of the studies of motion and of life, that is, physics and biology, and no disposition at all to be taken in by them. 9. As a precipitate of many etymologie::; studied and many meanings discussed, a constitutional inability to use even the most current words without taking thought for their origin and the accumulated burden of sense they bear. 10. A disposition toward that marriage of radical reason with reverent respect which was when you were there, and always will be, the best mood of the college. Let me finish by telling the second way in which the college might pass into a recollection. This way has to do with the fact that it is the place of your youth. It seems to me likely that you never had been, nor ever will be, so young again. Such places of quintessential youth tend to leave a powerful after-image. McDowell Hall and Peter· son Student Center become temples through which float diaphanous figures swathed in love and logos. Sometimes when you return, this image may suddenly fit itself onto the reality-the result will be pure romance. However, let me try to be sober about this phenomenon, for it is, I think, an indispensible instrument in the shaping of a good life-but only if the col· lege has become a true object of recollection. By that I mean that you have allowed life to carry you cheerfully away from its temporal and spatial coordinates, until the after-image has in it neither regret nor nostalgia and has become a mere vision. When those conditions are met, the inner image can and should serve as a source -a source, not the source-of shapes for a good life. Then it may provide a paradigm -a paradigm, not the paradigm-of that earthly paradise I imagine our alumni as forever trying to prepare for themselves: a community of friends held together by a love of learning. Then you will have put the college well and truly behind you. lie policy. But the complexity of the controversies among the great philosophers of the past should caution us not to expect easy answers to the questions that are raised by such an inquiry. Philosophy and Public Policy is a collection of twenty-one essays that Professor Sidney Hook has selected from his work over the past thirtyfive years and edited for publication as a book. Nowhere in this book does the author give more than passing attention to the important disputes among the great philosophers. Instead, he offers one admir- ing essay about John Dewey and one introductory essay of his own on the general theme of "philosophy and public policy." Early in this introductory essay, the author summarizes the results of his historical studies: "The most comprehensive as well as the most adequate conception of philosophy that emerges from the history of philosophy is that it is the normative consideration of human values." This definition, though the author gives Dewey credit for it in another essay, is somewhat reminiscent of Socrates' exhorting us to think EvA BRANN FIRST READINGS Philosophy and Public Policy, by Sidney Hook, Southern Illinois Press, Carbondale & Edwardsville, 1980. Philosophy and politics have enjoyed a strangely intimate and uneasy relationship in Western civilization. This curious entanglement, which began no later than the time of Socrates, remains today at least as difficult to understand as it ever was. The historical fact of the relationship should move every student of politics to inquire about the influence of philosophy on pub- 84 AUTUMN 1981 �about the pre-suppositions of our ordinary opinions and activities. Such exhortations may help move certain people to begin seeking wisdom, but the definition does not by itself enable us to distinguish philosophy from ordinary moral reasoning. When the author tries to provide this distinction, he encounters difficulties that he does not surmount. He concedes that philosophic inquiry is not always about moral phenomena and is not always "morally motivated" in the usual sense of that term. But he avoids pursuing the difficulties in the relationship between morality and philosophy by saying that "[t]he relationships among the various philosophical disciplines is a meta philosophical problem, and sti11 open." At the end of the essay he seems to return to his original position by saying that "[t]he philosopher is uniquely a moral seer .... " But nowhere does he say precisely what a moral seer is, how he comes to be, why he does what he does, or what he is good for. In place of ~m adequate account of philosophy, the author attempts to distinguish the philosopher by the special skills and outlook that he might bring to the discussion of public affairs. But the outlook and skills he describes are available to any thoughtful man. What Professor Hook offers is very little more than the uncontroversial standard according to which philosophers' speech, like everyone's, should be reasonable. That standard is a good one, however, and I shall try to apply it to the other essays in this volume, most of which concern specific political issues. Perhaps partly because he has not undertaken a thorough examination of the Western philosophic tradition, Professor Hook is an extreme liberal, or as he calls himself in one essay, a "social democrat." Though he stays well within the boundaries of modern liberal principles, he is not as crippled by that limitation as many other contemporary writers are. The cause of this, I suspect, is that he has the great gift of common sense. But whatever the cause, he writes very well when attacking Communists, who subscribe to one of the most poisonous liberal heresies, and when criticizing liberal fools, whom he calls "ritualistic liberals." Common sense operates best when dealing with narrow issues, and on such issues Professor Hook often steps resolutely aside from the sad coffle of liberal opinion. Confronted with the little tyrannies brought to us by recently fashionable forms of racism and feminism, he provides a careful and devastating liberal critique of what is so euphemistically called "reverse discrimination." In the same spirit, he THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW shows that William 0. Douglas's confused and intemperate defenses of political violence are incompatible with the principles of liberal democracy. And Professor Hook reminds us that to be a liberal one need not substitute a fetish about the free speech clause of the First Amendment for an intelligent interpretation of the Constitution. But when he takes up topics that are very general or remote from specific events, Professor Hook is apt to become confused and unilluminating. The volume's longest essay, which is devoted to "human rights," displays this shortcoming vividly. In the fashion of contemporary academic philosophy, the author is much concerned with defining his terms and defending his definitions. His discussion tends to revolve around the following statement: A human right is a morally justifiable claim made in behalf of all men to the enjoyment and exercise of those basic freedoms, goods, and services which are considered necessary to achieve the human estate. On this definition human rights do not correspond to anything an individual literally possesses as an attribute, whether physical or mental. Morally justifiable claims are proposals to treat human beings in certain ways. Human rights are not names of anything. They specify procedures-courses of action-to be followed by agencies of the government and community with respect to a series of liberties, goods, and services. If we follow ordinary usage, in which the term "right" means something justifiable, the first sentence appears to be little more than a tautology. Later in the essay, the author uses the terms "rights" and "freedoms" interchangably; while this would eliminate the tautology, it would leave us to wonder how a freedom can be a claim to a freedom. Much of the essay is devoted to criticizing other definitions of human rights; these others are worse, and most of his criticisms are appropriate. But not once does he mention the notion of "natural rights," which is the best known-and I believe also the best-alternative to his own conception. That he means to reject that notion is evident from his claim in the quotation above that human rights are not names of anything and are not attributes of human beings; and his rejection of it is implied even more clearly when he later asserts that human rights "are not derived from the reason of things or the reason in God, Nature, or Man." The closest he comes to offering any evidence against such a derivation is to point out that bills of rights are altered and re-interpreted as time passes. But this fact does not even begin to prove that the truth about rights has ever changed or ever will. Despite its lack of any arguments against the concept of natural rights, Professor Hook's essay does contain hints of at least three grounds upon which that concept might be discarded. Perhaps an appeal to natural rights would be rhetorically ineffective in our time because of the power of cultural relativism among our most literate and influential citizens; or perhaps "nature" is a term so broad that it induces us to pay insufficient attention to the particular political conditions within which all human rights are enjoyed and circumscribed; or perhaps we should rely on human progress rather than reason, nature, or God to tell us what the limits of human claims and freedoms should be. There may be some merit in one or more of these suggestions, but Professor Hook does not defend them adequately. His own rhetoric in this essay is so convoluted and academic that even such old-fashioned writers as Jefferson and Lincoln still sound strong and timely by comparison. And despite the author's frequent insistence on the need to understand rights in their historical context, he offers some strained interpretations of history; with perfect seriousness, for example, he treats the Bible's injunction to observe the Sabbath as a recognition of "the right to rest and leisure." In general, Professor Hook tries to talk about rights without specifying their limits, apparently in the hope that this will contribUte to the expansion of human rights and human happiness. But this leads him to substitute a rather hazy optimism about human possibilities for a definite statement about human nature and enduring human needs. One result is that he pays too little attention to the practical constraints on the expansion of human rights. He defends the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights without showing that it can ever be more than a pious fantasy; and he acquiesces in Justice Douglas's fabrication of a constitutional right to privacy without so much as mentioning the grave political consequences that this doctrine has had through the Court's abortion decisions. Before we forsake the notion of "natural rights," which has been such a central element in our political life, we should wait for a more solid substitute than the one Professor Hook offers in this essay. On occasion, Professor Hook's weak grasp of general issues leads him to make statements that are simply astonishing. 85 �One example occurs in an essay on the rights of victims of crime: I am prepared to weaken the guarantees and privileges to which I am entitled as a potential criminal or as a defendant in order to strengthen my rights and safeguards as a potential victim. Purely on the basis of probabilities, I am convinced that I run a greater danger of suffering disaster as a potential victim than as a potential criminal or defendant. It is these probabilities, that shift from one historical period to another, that must be the guide to wise, prudent, and just administration of the law. The crude egoistic utilitarianism of this statement appears nowhere else in the essay or in the rest of the book. One can easily advocate a firmer enforcement of the criminal laws without elevating fear for one's own safety into a principle of justice, and elsewhere in the essay Professor Hook does just that. But through this one careless formulation of the principle upon which the rights of defendants should be circumscribed, he allows his otherwise reasonable and public-spirited arguments to seem motivated by a selfish calculation of his own advantage. Another example of the author's clumsiness with general formulations occurs at the end of an essay on political heroism: The democratic republic that was born in this hemisphere some two hundred years ago is the only political alternative ever devised to mediate, in Lincoln's phrase, "between anarchy, on the one hand, and despotism on the other." The patriotism of this statement is touching, but the claim is preposterous. The United States is not the first, let alone the only, nation to escape the evils of anarchy and despotism; and an Englishman could remind us that our republic is not even the oldest existing alternative to those evils. Abraham Lincoln, in whose works I have not been able to find the quotation offered above, would certainly protest that his position has been distorted. In the First Inaugural Address, Lincoln does say that the majority principle, rightly understood, must be maintained lest the country fall victim to anarchy or to some form of despotism. But Lincoln's whole argument is directed to the controversies about secession that were burning in America in 1861. He does not claim that the Union is the first or only legitimate polity in history, nor even that it is the best; he says nothing about other countries, nor about the forms 86 of government that might be suitable to them. Not all the disagreeable statements in the book result merely from the author's carelessness in formulating his positions. In one essay, Professor Hook very sensibly argues that the Cold War has been the best mean between suicidal appeasement and the terrible dangers that are now inherent in military warfare between the great powers. But a little later in the same essay, he makes this remark: In the past, President Eisenhower, whose charming and vacuous smile matched his knowledge of international affairs, and who confessed.himself stumped by General Zhukov's questions as to what ideals inspired the West, repeatedly warned us against the dangers of "atheistic communism" as if a communism that was not atheistic would be any less objectionable. The language at the beginning of the sentence lacks precision, but the meaning is clear: President Eisenhower was a buffoon. It is unfortunate that Eisenhower became perplexed in the encounter with Zhukov, but that does not justify this casual and premeditated display of disrespect; and the injustice is especially striking since it comes at the expense of the man who presided over the execution of policies that Professor Hook has just spent several pages defending. At the very least, Professor Hook should explain to us how this buffoon managed to lead our nation through eight years during which Communist imperialism was successfully contained and during which prosperity at home grew almost without interruption. But the main point of the author's sneering remark concerns President Eisenhower's opposition to "atheistic communism." Does Professor Hook consider all communism, whatever its form, equally evil? Was the Oneida COmmunity as objectionable as the Soviet Union? Is life in the Israeli religious kibbutzim comparable to life in Cambodia? The insistent atheism in Marxist-Leninist doctrine is certainly not the only source of its errors; and the atheism of Communist regimes is certainly not the sole cause of the horrors that they bring about. But one has to ask why Professor Hook refuses even to consider the possibility that atheism might be one of the soui-ces of Communism's evils. The explanation probably lies in the author's own manifest, though unacknowledged, atheism. For reasons that are not made clear in the book, he fails to state his position forthrightly. But that position becomes visible when he calls himself a ''militant secularist.'' And it becomes trans· parent when he makes, almost in passing, the following theological pronouncement: "It is only because human beings build gods in their own moral image that they can reasonably hope that the divine com· mandments can serve as a guideline in human experience." Professor Hook has included in this vol· ume Jacques Maritain's graceful and pow· erful critique of Hook's secular humanism. The heart of Maritain's position lies in three propositions: "no society can live without a basic common inspiration and a basic common faith"; this faith must in· elude "convictions ... which deal with the very substance and meaning of human life"; and for this purpose no decent substitute for religion has been found. Professor Hook tries to refute this view by pointing out the weakness of the logical link between religious faith and allegiance to democracy. This weakness is obvious, and it should remind us that tolerance of atheists is not necessarily incompatible with preserving a decent polity; it should also re· mind us that strong religion does not guarantee good politics. But Maritain never denies the Weakness of the logical link: his claim is that religion, and religion alone, can provide a society with the durable common morality that is one necessary precondition of political democracy. Professor Hook, who maintains that the "validity [of moral principles] rests upon their fruits in human experience," offers not a single example of a society that has given up religion without degenerating into savagery. Nor does he offer any evidence to show that such a society can be brought into being; indeed, the poverty of his own anti-religious faith is manifest in the last paragraph of the book: "How to inspire, ex· tend, and strengthen faith in democracy, and build a mass movement of men and women personally dedicated to it, is a difficult problem which cannot be treated here." Despite its weaknesses, Philosophy and Public Policy contains much that is sound. The strengths of the book appear most clearly in the section on "Heroes and AntiHeroes." The section begins with a loose and unimpressive general essay on the place of leadership in democracies. But when he turns to criticizing the Communists, liberal fools, and leading hypocrites of our time, Professor Hook emerges as a powerful and sometimes brilliant polemicist. In a review of a biography of Trotsky, he shows why even large men cannot be AUTUMN 1981 �truly great if they cling to Lenin's doctrines. In a discussion of Bertrand Russell's political ravings, he shows quite clearly why America's involvement in Viet Nam may have been moral without necessarily also being prudent. In an essay on the Hiss case, he vividly reminds us that this country has indeed recently been threatened by at least one genuine and dangerous conspiracy. And in the volume's best piece, Professor Hook destroys Lillian Hellman. He is brave enough to call her "an eager but unaccomplished liar"; he is well informed enough to convict her of act after act of "political obscenity"; and he is generous enough to distinguish her from Dashiell Hammett, who kept his integrity despite his colossal political misjudgments. Because Philosophy and Public Policy displays so much common sense and anti- Communist passion, it could be good medicine for contemporary liberalism. And because the author accepts most of the liberals' leading assumptions, there is no good reason for them to refuse him a hearing. tory and progress~makes for the power of Europe. But Europe also brings corruption: Hit was Europe, I feel, that also introduced us to the lie ... we were people who simply did what we did. But the Europeans could do one thing and say something quite different. .. It was their great advantage over us." Salim discovers that a line supposedly from the Aeneid on a Belgian monument commemorating the founding of the city has been altered. It reads: 41He approves of the mingling of peoples and their bonds of union"; but in the original the gods warned Aeneas not to marry Dido, not to mingle Europe and Africa. "Rome was Rome. What was this place? To carve the words on a monument beside this African river was surely to invite the destruction of the town." The self-deluded Europeans are now gone, driven out by their former subjects, but their example remains ~n all its ambiguity. The Africans imitate European institutions, buy European goods, and, increasingly, look on Europe itself as a place of refuge. As his mentor and fellow Indian Nazruddin explains to Salim on a visit to London, HAll over the world money is in flight. People have scraped the world clean, as clean as an African scrapes his yard, and now they want to run from the dreadful places where they've made their money and find some nice safe country." In London, foreigners from all corners of the Commonwealth threaten to undermine unquestioned European values. With a mixture of irony and dismay, Salim observes that the Arabs in London have brought with them their black slaves; Britain now tolerates at home the slave trade it had once stamped out in East Africa. "In the old days they made a lot of fuss if they caught you sending a couple of fellows to Arabia in a dhow. Today they have their passports and visas like everybody else, and nobody gives a damn." The escape to Europe is possible only for a handful, but the pressures of modern African life~ the insecurity of rapid and random change-foster escapism throughout the population. Salim realizes that even in the city "when you get away from the chiefs and the politicians there is a simple democracy about Africa; everyone is a villager." In times of trouble the city empties as people return to their villages and the simple life of the bush, to re-emerge when things quite down. A new generation of young Africans, however, without ties to the bush, who know nothing except the empty and imitative life of the cities, has no place to retreat. At the same time the country's leader opens up the countryside to bring the previously inaccessible rural population under his control. The dilemma of the "new African" is symbolized by Ferdinand, a young man whom Salim befriends. Born in the bush, Ferdinand goes to school at the Europeanrun lycee, is trained at the Domain (the Big Man's school for future leaders), and eventually becomes the local district commissioner. Ferdinand is trapped by his own modern upbringing, and by the precarious nature of political life, where every official is at the mercy of the Big Man, who rules through a talent for playing his enemies off against one another. At first, Ferdinand is confused, his mind "a jumble, full of all kinds of junk." But in the end he achieves a terrible clarity: "Nobody's going anywhere. We're all going to hell and every man knows this in his bones ... Everyone wants to make his money and run away. But where? That is what is driving people mad. They feel they're losing the place they can run back to ... " The political stratagems of the Big Man produce temporary peace and prosperity, but in the end serve only to break down traditional restraints. When they fail to quell a rural uprising, the soldiers of a tradi- NELSON LUND Nelson Lund teaches political science at the University of Chicago. 'THE MINGLING OF PEOPLES A Bend in the River, by V. S. Naipaul, 278 pp., New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., !979, $8.95 V. S. Naipaul's novel, A Bend in the River, never names the city and country in which the narrative takes place. Its true setting, however, is clearly Kisangani (formerly Stanleyville), the second-largest city of Zaire (formerly the Belian Congo); and the mysterious Big Man, the unnamed country's ruler, is Sese Mobotu, Zaire's dictator for the past fifteen years. Though Mobotu's Zaire is a poor and ill-governed Third World country, Naipaul does not take the stance of an expert trying to diagnose and cure the 'disease' of underdevelopment. The principal danger he foresees is anarchy 3.nd nihilism, more often cause than result from the impoverishment that preoccupies the experts. The disorder and despair which permeate the novel result primarily from the haphazard coming together of different religious, ethnic, and cultural groups. Naipaul's protagonist, Salim-an Indian brought up in an Arab-dominated section of East Africa, educated in British schools, who now lives in a newly-independent black African state-embodies Africa's contradictions. The book's great theme is the disaster this mingling of peoples brings to Indians, Africans, and perhaps to Europeans as welL Europe has been the catalyst; it provides the possibility of self-understanding for Africans and Indians alike. Salim says: ''All that I know of our history and the history of the Indian Ocean I have got from books written by Europeans ... without Europeans, I feel, all our past woUld have been washed away, like the scuff marks of fishermen on the beach outside our town." The ability to detach oneself, to form a distinct self-image of one's past, present and especially future condition~the source of hisTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 87 �tional warrior tribe are treacherously disarmed and dispersed by an imported force of white mercenaries. Unable to adopt commercial or agricultural ways, they form the nucleus of a new and deadlier rebellion. Official corruption, fostered by the pervasive insecurity, makes a mockery of the regime's motto, "Discipline Avant Tout." The opposition turns by degrees to unqualified hatred: "When they've finished nobody will know there was a place like this here. They're going to kill and kill. They say it's the only way, to go back to the beginning before it's too late." Salim too seeks safety, a place of retreat. He and the other Indian expatriates fight an ongoing battle with nostalgia and regret, with the temptation to find refuge in the past, in the memory of their lost East African birth place. Unlike his friends who become rich by acquiring the town's "Big Boy" franchise, Salim does not forget himself in the successes of commerce. At the end his property is nationalized, and he be- 88 comes a homeless refugee. He finds his But people are like that about places in safety in the personal equilibrium, de- which they aren't really interested and tached and clear-sighted, that shows itself where they don't have to live. Some papers in the book's opening sentence: "The world spoke of the end of feudalism and the is what it is; men who are nothing, who al- dawn of a new age. But what had haplow themselves to become nothing, have pened was not new. People who had grown no place in it." feeble had been physically destroyed. That, Salim's hard-won balance does not de- in Africa, was not new; it was the oldest law pend on condemning those who are inca- of the land." Unlike the manipulative coldpable of such accomodation. He does not blooded ness of the development theorist explain away the Big Man's machinations or ideological reformer, Salim's detachas 'necessary' or 'progressive'; he appreci- ment comes from experience of the perenates success but rejects the ruthlessness nial laws of the human condition and of and the denial of the past which so often the ties between personal and historical accompany it. Naipaul/Salim understands experience. that Africa's lost balance may be impossible to regain, and that while the losses are ADAM WASSERMAN c~rtain, the gains may be illusory. On hearing of the revolution which cuts him off from his coastal homeland, he is astonished at the optimism of some of the foreign papers: "It was exraordinary to me that Adam Wasserman is a space program analyst some of the newspapers could have found for the Congressional Office of Technology Asgood words for the butchery on the coast. sessment in Washington, D.C. AUTUMN 1981 ��The St. John's Review St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Non-profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 66 Lutherville, Md. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 thestjohnsreview Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 88 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review (formerly The College), Autumn 1981 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1981-10 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Radista, Leo Parran, Jr., Thomas Wilson, Curtis A. Sachs, Joe Brann, Eva T. H. Jaffa, Henry V. Josephs, Laurence Klein, Jacob Levin, Michael Collins, Linda Navrozov, Lev Guaspari, David Venable, Bruce Lund, Nelson Wasserman, Adam Description An account of the resource Volume XXXIII, Number 1 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Autumn 1981. 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