Saving Western civilization one student at a time.
Winter 2020
In Defense of
Western Civilization by Martin Cothran Literature & Western Civilization by Joseph Pearce
What Is a Classic? by Louise Cowan
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
The Giant and the Mite by Martin Cothran
IN
Eleanor Farjeon's The Little Bookroom, there is a fairy tale called "The Giant and the Mite." It is the story of something so big that it cannot be comprehended—and of something too small to be comprehended. The size of the Giant was the first problem: There was once a Giant who was too big to be seen. As he walked about, the space between his legs was so great that nobody could see as far as from one side to the other, and his head was so high in the sky that nobody's eyes were strong enough to see the top of him. Not being able to take him in all at once, nobody therefore knew that the giant existed.
Then there was the problem of the size of the Mite: At the same time, there was a Mite who was too small to be seen …. A grain of sand was like a mountain to him, and it would have taken him longer than his whole life to walk across a sixpence. So you can fancy what a tiny bit he moved day to day from the spot where he was born. But he himself never knew this….
Western civilization is like the Giant: It is too big to be seen. It is such a great, universal, allencompassing thing that to try to step out of it and look back on it objectively is, practically speaking, impossible. It is the air we breathe, the intellectual food we eat; it is everything we aspire to, and everything we fear. It is all we know and all we don't know. It is the culture we took in with our mother's milk and took for granted until we became conscious of its existence at all. "The universe," says G. K. Chesterton, "is the supreme example of a thing that is too obvious to be seen." In a sense, Western civilization is our universe. Those who would criticize this cultural heritage (it is "racist," it is "sexist," it is this or that) think they somehow stand outside it—over and above it in some position from which they can see all its contours and consequences. But they are living in the imperceptible shadow of the Western giant, mites too small to apprehend it. 2
Letter from the Editor
They think they have, to borrow a term from the philosopher Thomas Nagel, a "view from nowhere." But, as Nagel himself points out, such a perspective does not exist. Anyone who pretends to rationally criticize Western civilization must take his place inside it, since Western civilization is the birthplace of reason and criticism as we know it. The very acts of reason and criticism, in other words, are Western impulses. We can only criticize the West from the inside. The rest of Farjeon's story cannot bear the full weight of my analogy. She uses it to make a completely different point. Still, the figures of the Giant and the Mite perfectly illustrate our plight: As mites, the Western giant is hard to see. So what do we do, we mites, in the cause of understanding the giant whose shadow is cast over everything we say and do? When we look at the list of the great works of the West, it is hard not to despair. To be well-versed in even a small handful of them is a challenge that can take a lifetime of study. Thomas Aquinas once said, "The slightest knowledge of the greatest things is greater than the greatest knowledge of the slightest things." As modern people, we spend so much of our time on trivialities. What if we began spending our time on a few great things? This is the idea behind classical Christian education: to focus on the greatest thoughts, actions, and aspirations of a few great men and women. No one has ever fully encompassed the Western tradition, not even the greatest of Western thinkers. But the best of them have learned the most important things. We can at least do this. It is all a mite can do. MemoriaPress.com
Winter 2020
FEATURED ARTICLES
Letter from the Editor by Martin Cothran...................................................... 2 Greek Pronunciation: The Pedagogical Pertinence by Mitchell L. Holley ......... 4 Logic Is Not Math by Martin Cothran ........................................................... 6 What is a Classic? by Louise Cowan ............................................................. 8 In Defense of Western Civilization by Martin Cothran ................................. 10 Book Review: Medieval Literacy by James Grote .................................. 13 Why Study Western Civilization? by Cheryl Swope .................................... 14 In Defense of Hospitality & Storytelling: What I Learned from Reading the Odyssey by Louis Markos ......................................................... 16 The Classical Education of the Founding Fathers by Martin Cothran ........... 18 Literature & Western Civilization by Joseph Pearce .................................. 20
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GREEK
Greek Pronunciation: The Pedagogical Pertinence by Mitchell L. Holley
G
reek teachers find themselves in a difficult predicament in regard to the pronunciation of Greek. On one hand they have the option of teaching modern pronunciation (Demotic), and on the other, Erasmian. The primary difference between the two is in the pronunciation of vowels, but a few consonants differ as well. With Demotic pronunciation, used today in Greece and passed down from the medieval Byzantines, several of the letters and diphthongs—though they are represented by unique symbols in written Greek—are pronounced exactly the same. In the Erasmian system, every written symbol has a unique sound. Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages, but for many good reasons the system developed by Desiderius Erasmus (so Mitchell L. Holley works for Memoria Press as a Greek specialist and a writer, and holds a master's of theology. After nine years of studying Greek, he still has to memorize new Greek vocabulary.
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Greek Pronunciation: The Pedagogical Pertinence
called the Erasmian system) is the best system of pronunciation for Greek students today. In 1267, Roger Bacon observed the dearth of Greek grammarians in Latin Christendom. Knowledge of Greek had all but vanished on the continent, and Latin dominated the West. But providence would not leave Europe in such a wretched state for long, for just when Greek was lost, it was found. After Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, Greek-speaking Byzantine scholars (who used what we now call Demotic pronunciation) migrated into southern Europe, and Greek language and ideas began to populate academies of learning, spurred on by the persistent refrain of the Renaissance, ad fontes ("to the sources"). In the words of Erasmus, "Chiefly, one must hasten to the sources themselves, that is, to the Greeks and the ancients." But as scholars in the fifteenth century began to study the Greek classics, they realized that the MemoriaPress.com
Concerned about the relative dryness of the contemporary system of pronunciation imported material, Erasmus presents his treatise as a by the Byzantines did not accurately represent dialogue between a learned bear (representing the spelling of Greek words in the ancient Greek himself) and a lion. The two unlikely friends texts. For example, in the Demotic system several discuss the education of the lion's cub. The vowel sounds are pronounced as the single Greek bear explains that he learned pronunciation by vowel iota (which sounds like the i in "police"), forming a club that read and reread, ad nauseam, a development that is known as Iotacism. The the complete works of Demosthenes, Plutarch, Greek words καλοί and καλή, which have Thucydides, Homer, and Lucian, which is nothing different meanings and spellings, are pronounced less than a herculean task. The bear also references the same (kahlee). Demotic pronunciation, the ancient Greek grammarians and draws therefore, obscures the fine phonetic distinctions analogies from Dutch, German, English, French, necessary for young students to learn Greek Italian, and Spanish. An average bear, of course, spelling—which is critically important to might know only one of these languages, but this understanding Greek grammar. was no average bear, you see—he had received a In response to this confusion, several scholars classical education. in the sixteenth century tried to resurrect the older The lion and the bear go on to articulate a system of pronunciation that would make sense of system of pronunciation that Erasmus thought ancient spelling. A Spanish humanist named mirrored that of Antonio of Lebrixa the ancient Greeks. f irst i nst igated t h is The bear criticizes move me nt i n 15 0 3 by Greek Demotic Erasmian the tendency of suggesting, among other Letter Pronunciation Pronunciation contemporary Greek things, that eta was the speakers to conflate long form of epsilon. Per η i in police ea in break the pronunciation his suggestion, eta would ι i in police i in bit of vowels, and he be pronounced like the ea devises a system in "break" instead of like υ i in police oo in book that uses a different the i in "police," as in the sound to represent Demotic system. Then, in each unique letter. 1508, Aldus Manutius He agrees with Quintilian's formula that "words defended a humorous hypothesis about the should be written as they are pronounced." A pronunciation of βη, the noise that sheep make in system like this, the bear argues, helps the student Cratinus' Greek poetry. He reasoned that sheep avoid mixing up his letters, and so it has superior were unlikely to be saying "vee vee," as they would pedagogical value. At the end, the lion concludes, be if using the Demotic pronunciation of βη βη, but "Obviously the pronunciation must have been rather the sheep probably blatted in the regular different in antiquity than in modern Greek." "bea bea" fashion, as was common in Cratinus' day Obviously. (and ours). The Erasmian system possesses great heuristic This pronunciation debate culminated in the value for the new Greek student. By using the publication of Erasmus' Dialogus de recta latini system of Erasmus, students learn a pronunciation graecique sermonis pronuntiatione ("A Dialogue system that allows them to quickly memorize the Concerning the Correct Pronunciation of the Latin spelling of words, which is a vital part of learning and Greek Languages"). Writing to the young an inflected language. And when students begin sovereign Maximilian of Burgundy, the Dialogus to read the classical texts of Aesop and Sophocles, is actually an overview of the ideal Renaissance the Erasmian system will make better sense of the education and the best pedagogical methods of words that they read. Finally, when students begin instruction. According to Erasmus, a child of the to recite the superlative Greek poets and quote the Renaissance (and today) must learn to read the best Greek of Matthew's Gospel, they will do so clearly, literature in the two classical languages, Latin and without confusion or mistake. For good reason, Greek, but he must read it properly, as the ancients then, Erasmian pronunciation is widely used in would have read it. To this end, he goes to great the academy today. Every student can learn Greek; lengths to reconstruct the classical pronunciation of Erasmus can help. the ancient Greeks. 1-877-862-1097
Greek Pronunciation: The Pedagogical Pertinence
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LOGIC
Logic Is Not Math by Martin Cothran
IF
I see my logic program listed in the math section of a catalog one more time, I'm going to—well, I'm not entirely sure what I'll do, but it will probably be illogical. Not that the people who make these catalogs are trying to make me mad, I'm sure. They're just trying to sell my books, which should make me happy. So why does it bother me so much that people think logic is math? Well, first of all, because logic is not math. And, second, because the fact that so many people think it is math is an indication of how much we are influenced by modern philosophy—and how far we have come from a classical Christian view of reality. What catalogs are doing is putting logic books where most modern people expect to find them, and most people expect to find them in the math section. This is, unfortunately, also where you will find logic in the curriculum of many classical schools. Martin Cothran is the editor of The Classical Teacher and author of Traditional Logic Books I & II, Material Logic, and Classical Rhetoric.
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Logic Is Not Math
This tendency to view logic as mathematical rather than linguistic is partly due to the fact that the only exposure most people have to logic is a smattering of modern symbolic logic in a high school or college math class. Indeed, when most people think of logic, they think almost exclusively of the modern symbolic system, because that is what most logic programs teach. If you pick up any popular college text, you will find that, although it includes a small section on traditional logic, most of the book is focused on modern symbolic logic. These books will cover the traditional system, but only as a sort of prolegomena to the modern systems of propositional and predicate calculus. The difference between the two systems of logic is quite dramatic, and easy to see because of the modern system's prolific use of symbols, in addition to common modern fixtures such as truth tables and Venn diagrams. These things are almost entirely absent from the traditional system. MemoriaPress.com
The question I want to ask and answer here is this: If logic is not math, then what is it? The answer is that logic is a language art. It is the study of right reasoning. I cannot stress this point strongly enough. For classical educators, this point is absolutely crucial because it will determine the very makeup of the curriculum. In the old listing of the liberal arts, there were two basic classes of subjects: the three language arts (the trivium) and the four math arts (the quadrivium). Logic was always considered to be the second of the language subjects, after grammar and before rhetoric. Grammar is the prerequisite for log ic, si nc e t he abi l it y to argue and reason rightly assumes t he abi l it y to com mu n icate competently. And log ic is t he prerequisite for rhetoric, since logic is one of the three persuasive appeals: to the will (ethos—the appeal to the speaker's character), to the imagination (pathos—the appeal to the audience's emotions), and to the intellect (logos—the appeal to truth).
THE RISE AND FALL OF MODERN LOGIC
Logic is the prerequisite for rhetoric, since logic is one of the three persuasive appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos.
In fact, modern symbolic logic is the creation of modern philosophers (such as Bertrand Russell) and didn't even exist until the turn of the twentieth century. Russell and Alfred North Whitehead wrote a book called Principia Mathematica that attempted to create a logical calculus that could be used to solve scientific problems. To this was added "truth tables," a procedure that purported to be able to resolve any meaningful statement into a set of symbols and determine its truth value. This was at a time when philosophers in the English world were experiencing science envy. They wanted their discipline to have the same objectivity and accuracy as the hard sciences. For these people Principia Mathematica became a sort of totem, and for many years it was required reading for English and American philosophy students. This was, of course, a daunting task, since most students were not mathematically sophisticated (or patient) enough to even understand the book, with its complex technical formulas and turgid explanations. It helped give rise to the school of philosophy known as "logical positivism," which claimed that the only meaningful statements were statements which could be scientifically verified, a belief that persisted into the late twentieth century. But 1-877-862-1097
the close connection between modern logic and philosophical positivism has turned into something of a curse given the steep fall of positivism since the late twentieth century. Logical positivism was in one sense a victim of its own criterion. Its adherents believed that there were only two kinds of meaningful statements: logical statements that were true by definition (the ones we see in modern logic) and factual statements that could be empirically verified. Statements that were neither logical nor factual (like the statement "God exists," which is neither true by definition nor empirically verifiable) were dismissed as meaningless. But the central criterion of logical positivism does not meet its own criterion. The statement "There were only two kinds of meaningful statements: logical statements and factual statements" is neither a logical nor a factual statement, and is therefore meaningless. As these and other issues arose inside and outside the movement, confidence in the movement began to erode, and, along with it, the original basis for modern logic.
LOGIC AS A LANGUAGE ART
Why should we feel under any obligation to cast our reasoning into mathematical terms in order to ape the sciences? Language can be just as objective and accurate in the qualitative realm as mathematics is in the quantitative realm. Mathematical symbolism can sometimes be more precise, but more often it is less accessible. Most of the things in life that we need to analyze and argue about do not involve the application of science, and even those that do involve science still require a facility with language in order to think about and discuss mathematics and science. In actual discussion and debate we do not use mathematical symbols; we use language. And if we are going to demand anything of the system of logic we want our students to use, we ought to at least be able to demand that it be usable. The system of modern logic is useful in understanding how computers think, and it is an excellent preparation for computer programming, but outside these applications we need to remember that human beings are themselves not computers, and they relate to one another through language. Logic Is Not Math
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H
ow do we recognize a classic? Tradition has held that classics are works of a very high order that touch on matters of immense importance. They are not mere skilled works of whatever category; they establish a category of their own. In fact, when we examine those works that readers have agreed upon as classics, we find a surprisingly constant set of characteristics: 1. The classics not only exhibit distinguished style, fine artistry, and keen intellect, but create whole universes of imagination and thought. 2. They portray life as complex and many-sided, depicting both negative and positive aspects of human character in the process of discovering and testing enduring virtues. 3. They have a transforming effect on the reader's self-understanding. 4. They invite and survive frequent rereadings. 5. They adapt themselves to various times and places and provide a sense of the shared life of humanity. 6. They are considered classics by a sufficiently large number of people, establishing themselves with common readers as well as qualified authorities. 7. And, finally, their appeal endures over wide reaches of time.
Given the rigor of such standards, to call a recent work a classic would seem something of a prediction and a wager. The prediction is that the book so designated is of sufficient weight to take its place in the dialogue with other classics. The wager is that a large number of readers will find it important enough to keep Louise Cowan served for many years as the graduate dean and chairman of the English Department at the University of Dallas, and director of its Institute of Philosophic Studies, and was the recipient of numerous awards, grants, and professorships. This essay is an excerpt from the forward to Invitation to the Classics, and is reprinted here with permission from Baker Publishing Group.
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What Is a Classic?
alive. Strictly speaking, as we have indicated, there is no canon of great works, no set number of privileged texts. People themselves authorize the classics. And yet it is not by mere popular taste—by the bestseller list— that they are established. True, books are kept alive by readers—discriminating, thoughtful readers who will not let a chosen book die but manage to keep it in the public eye. They recommend it to their friends, bring it into the educational curriculum, install it in institutional libraries, order it in bookstores, display it on their own shelves, read it to their children. But something more mysterious makes a work an integral part of the body of classics, however well-loved it may be. It must fit into the preexisting body of works, effecting what T. S. Eliot has described as an alteration of the whole existing order. The past, he maintains, is altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. The body of these masterworks thus shifts and changes constantly in the course of time. Plato, who was passed over in the late medieval world in favor of his disciple Aristotle, became a dominant philosopher in the Renaissance; Thomas Aquinas, the learned founder of Scholasticism, has been in modern times largely relegated to seminaries; Francis Bacon has declined to the role of a minor eccentric. Even Shakespeare, now often described as the world's greatest poet, has not always been considered a classic author; the eighteenth century decried his lack of taste and rewrote several of his plays. John Donne's lyrics lay neglected for two centuries before the twentieth century found in him a kindred troubled soul. John Milton's Paradise Lost was almost dethroned in the 1930s and 1940s, but its author's position is more secure now than before. Alexander Pope, whose greatness as a poet was unchallenged in the eighteenth century, has been in the twentieth virtually deposed. Herman Melville's Moby Dick encountered several generations of readers MemoriaPress.com
who dismissed the novel entirely; not until the 1920s did it suddenly attain its full status in the curriculum. Vergil's Aeneid seems, regrettably, to be losing some of its position in recent times. But the Iliad and the Odyssey hold their foremost place as firmly as when Plato cited Homer nearly twenty-five hundred years ago, or when, at the turn of the last century, most college students read them in the Greek. To place a contemporary writing among the classics, then, is to make a bold conjecture. That conjecture is based on the judgment of a sufficiently large body of readers in current society who consider the work a masterpiece. But the book in question has to be worth their endorsement. All the popular acclaim in the world will not make a classic of a mediocre text. The masterpieces are not confined to their own peoples or to their own epochs. The organic order of literature that makes up the Western tradition exists essentially in a timeless realm, by which we mean a kind of communal memory. We could argue that, since the real existence of masterpieces is beyond time, we should not have to wait for time to make its judgment on newcomers. A recently published work might be seen by perceptive readers to take its place among its predecessors and to converse amicably with them. The sensitive reader should be able to judge. And remarkably enough, a surprising degree of agreement exists among literary people about twentieth-century classics. There is a strong agreement about the inclusion of such writers as Eliot, Yeats, Frost, Joyce, Faulkner, Solzhenitsyn, and numerous other recent authors whose ideas and images have already entered into that communally shared web we call culture. Why is it necessary for everyone to read the classics? Shouldn't only specialists spend their time on these texts, with other people devoting their 1-877-862-1097
efforts to particular interests of their own? Actually, it is precisely because these works are intended for all that they have become classics. They have been tried and tested and deemed valuable for the general culture—the way in which people live their lives. They have been found to enhance and elevate the consciousness of all sorts and conditions of people who study them, to lift their readers out of narrowness or provincialism into a wider vision of humanity. Further, they guard the truths of the human heart from the faddish half-truths of the day by straightening the mind and imagination and enabling their readers to judge for themselves. In a word, they lead those who will follow into a perception of the fullness and complexity of reality. But why in particular should followers of Christ be interested in the classics? Is Scripture not sufficient in itself for all occasions? What interest do Christians have in the propagation of the masterworks? The answer is this: Many of us in the contemporary world have been misled by the secularism of our epoch; we expect proof if we are to believe in the existence of a spiritual order. Our dry, reductionist reason leads us astray, so that we harden our hearts against the presence of the holy. Something apart from family or church must act as mediator, to restore our full humanity, to endow us with the imagination and the heart to believe. My serious encounter with Shakespeare and then with all the riches of the classics enabled me to see the splendor of Him who is at the center of the gospels. In a time when our current culture is increasingly secular in its aims, one of the most important resources Christians possess is this large treasure trove of works that have already been assimilated by readers and commentators in the nearly two thousand years of Western Christendom. What Is a Classic?
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couple of summers ago I was part of a panel of classical educators discussing the importance of our Western heritage and the obligation we have of passing it on through the education of our children. The audience of homeschool parents listened attentively, and those of us on the panel answered questions from the audience. But near the end of the question and answer period a young black woman stood up. She explained that she had been about ten minutes late and had not heard the first part of the session, but, she said, she was appalled when she heard us defending Western civilization. She explained that, to her, Western civilization represents racism and oppression. The ensuing discussion seemed to resolve many of her concerns, but the fact that she thought this way about our cultural heritage in the first place is significant. I have heard similar comments in other discussions among parents and teachers. Although Western civilization is still generally acknowledged as something to be valued and upheld, it is increasingly assailed for the misdeeds of Western people, misdeeds that, according to some, call Western civilization itself into question. But in order to criticize something, you have to know what it is, and it is doubtful most of the critics of the West could adequately tell you what it is. What do we mean by the expression "Western civilization"? Western civilization is the body of ideals and values deriving originally from the cultures of Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem, transformed and completed by Christianity. That Western people and nations have engaged in base behavior is undeniable. Abuse of power, corruption, hatred, racism, sexism, slavery—all have characterized Western societies at one time or another. These things, of course, have occurred in all cultures. But should any culture be viewed as simply the sum of its worst actions? Several years ago, I had a public disagreement with a prominent conservative blogger who had written a post titled, "No, America Is Not a Great Nation." In my response, I said that [he] gives a litany of the bad things he thinks Americans are engaged in: moral relativism, abortion, gay marriage, pornography, sexual promiscuity, recreational looting, and illegal immigration. He is right that Americans do some really bad things― and lots of them. Some of them are even done in the name of America. But, just as he has gotten a good list of symptoms, he lapses into a bad diagnosis. Martin Cothran is the editor of The Classical Teacher and author of Traditional Logic Books I & II, Material Logic, and Classical Rhetoric.
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In Defense of Western Civilization
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In fact, the disease metaphor is an apt one, since he is basically blaming the patient for his sickness.
The blogger was engaged in reasoning that is typical of the critics of Western civilization. The problem is a failure to make a basic distinction: the distinction between people's acts and the principles and virtues they profess to uphold. The distinction many critics of traditional American culture (a culture which is inherently Western) fail to make is between America as an ideal and America as a practical reality. If the problem is the practical reality, it is not necessarily the fault of the ideal. In fact, the actions that critics often point to almost always involve a failure to live up to some ideal, and frequently the critics appeal to the very ideal of the civilization they are criticizing in order to criticize it. This question comes up in discussions about classical education, which studies the cultures of Athens and Rome. Some people point out that the Greeks and Romans did some pretty bad things. My response is always the same: We admire these cultures―and judge them―on the basis of their ideals, and our criticisms of them usually involve the failure of people to live up to their own ideals. We judge Rome on the basis of Rome, not on the basis of Romans. And we do the same with Greece and every other civilization. Why would we not do this with America—or Western civilization itself? What is wrong with America is Americans. The problem with the argument that holds Western civilization responsible for acts that violate the very principles it upholds is not only that it is wrong, but that it is self-defeating. By what standards do the self-professed critics of the West judge it? Do they judge it on the basis of the values and ideals they have learned from some other culture? If so, which culture is it? The traditional cultures of the East and those of many of the local cultures of the developing world were historically just as rife with racism and oppression, if not more so. The fact is that the values by which its critics would bring Western civilization down are values they have derived from Western civilization itself. Yes, Western nations engaged in slavery, but the movement that brought the institution of slavery down employed the criticisms and prescriptions of Western thinkers and writers. Oppressors often appeal to some principle they claim justifies their oppression, but they are then opposed by those who appeal to the same body of principles in defense of their freedom. Only in the West were the ideals of freedom and equality held as a universal ideal in the light of which all actions were to be measured. The West 1-877-862-1097
In Defense of Western Civilization
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has produced its share of despotism and oppression, but there has always been its own tradition of thought—going back to Athens and Jerusalem—from which to provide a court of appeal. We see this self-critical impulse nowhere more conspicuously than in the Hebrews, whose most severe shortcomings can be found in—and judged by—their own sacred texts. One way of seeing the universality of Western ideals is to look at those who challenged the evils in which Western people often engaged. When Frederick Douglass sought to equip himself to argue the cause of abolition, he didn't find the weapons for this fight in some other civilization. He found a ready arsenal in Western civilization itself. Douglass' owner had illegally taught him how to read, and when he was thirteen years old he managed to purchase a copy of The Columbian Orator, a collection of classic speeches edited by Caleb Bingham. Douglass read the book, which contained the speeches not only of Americans like George Washington,
• • • • • • •
Second Treatise of Government, by John Locke Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes Politics, by Aristotle Critique of Practical Reason, by Immanuel Kant The Social Contract, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau Summa Theologica, by Thomas Aquinas The Nicomachean Ethics, by Aristotle
These were the works that contained, in one form or another, the ideals of Western civilization: not only the cardinal virtues of prudence, tolerance, fortitude, and justice, but the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity. It was the same with another form of oppression: colonialism. The reason colonialism met its doom was because the values of the civilization the colonialists brought with them leaked out into the cultures they had colonized. The oppressors were found out through the very values of the oppressors themselves. Simόn Bolívar, the great liberator of Latin America from the yoke of Spanish control, was well-read in the works of Western history, and he appealed to them repeatedly in his case against the Spanish. The thinkers who most influenced Gandhi, the great champion of Indian sovereignty, The only way to criticize Western included Ruskin, Gibbon, civilization is to employ it. Dickens, Tolstoy, and Plato. America is also a primary example of this. The arguments of the founders were taken from Benjamin Franklin, and William Pitt, but classical figures the thoughts and writings of the British themselves, such as the Romans Cato and Cassius. One of Douglass' who, in turn, had imbibed them through the Greek favorites was Cicero. He read and memorized these and Roman works they had mastered, and through the speeches. And in doing so, he approximated what we Christianity by which they had received these works. today would call a "classical education." The Declaration of Independence was explicit He did not use this learning to attack the values on this: The British were not only wrong; they were of the country that had enslaved him. Far from violating their own principles. it. He did exactly the opposite: He "mastered his Western civilization can be appealed to to indict masters' language" and held Americans to their the actions of Western people, but not to indict own ideals of freedom and equality—the standards Western civilization. To do so would be to saw off America had itself obtained from the Western the very limb on which the critic sits. If you want culture that produced it. to indict a people for its injustice, that is perfectly And what of the great civil rights leader Martin appropriate—vital even. But, you can't indict the Luther King, Jr.? Did he revile the West as we hear whole culture of a people by employing the very idea some modern voices doing today? This list of required of justice held by the people you criticize. texts from the social philosophy course he taught at The only way to criticize Western civilization is Morehouse College suggests not: to employ it. Many Western people have violated their own • Civil Disobedience and Other Essays, by Henry David Thoreau principles. But the solution to our problems is not to • Republic, by Plato reject the West. The solution is to go back to our own • The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli classical Christian tradition. To do otherwise will only • The City of God, by Augustine of Hippo • Utilitarianism, by John Stuart Mill leave us bereft of the means to our renewal. 12
In Defense of Western Civilization
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BOOK REVIEW
by Martin Cothran here are two kinds of books. The first treats a particular subject, as it were, from the outside. It describes the thing—a historical person, a historical event, a philosophical subject—by telling you about it, by giving you the contours of the subject so that you can see it comprehensively from the outside. But occasionally you come across a book of a second kind, one that takes you inside a subject and helps you understand the perspective of the very thing it is describing. Medieval Literacy: A Compendium of Medieval Knowledge with the Guidance of C. S. Lewis by James Grote is a book of the second kind. It describes the medievals by allowing you to see the world as a medieval person would have. As modern people, our thoughts are bound by certain presuppositions, many of which we don't even realize we have. One of them is that the newer a thing is, the better it must be. Old things are inherently inferior. Our chief belief is that of progress—that every new thing is an improvement on some old one. The medievals believed the opposite of this: The older something was, the better it was. If something was written in an old book, it was granted immediate authority, and the older the book, the better. Of course, both of these views are extreme. A medieval probably would have gained some balance
if he could have been exposed to the modern view. But just as certainly, a modern person would gain balance by being exposed to the medieval view. And there is no better book to provide counterbalance to our modern mindset than Medieval Literacy. The book contains sections on mythology, cosmology, psychology (in the ancient sense of the "study of the soul"), the seven liberal arts, logic, philosophy, and theology, as well as art and literature. Each section begins with an introduction to the medieval view of the topic with numerous quotes from medieval thinkers like Thomas Aquinas, as well as from modern writers such as Lewis and Chesterton. The medievals were the masters of the diagram, and the book contains them in abundance. There are charts and lists analyzing the three views of nature (ancient, Christian, and post-Christian), Hesiod's Five Ages of Man, the various mythological figures, the celestial spheres of the Ptolemaic universe, Aristotle's Five Geographical Zones, Aquinas' Three Kinds of Life, and Boethius' classification of music. This is a book you can read from front to back, or that you can peruse by opening up to a random page. Either way you will be informed, delighted, and equipped to see more clearly the ordered world in which we live.
Cheryl's Corner a note from Cheryl Lowe
Subjects do more than provide information. Subjects are formative. They form the minds of students; they impress their qualities on the minds of students. You have heard the expression "you are what you eat." Your mind becomes like what you study. Your mind takes on the qualities of the subjects that it dwells on. The formative aspect of subjects is as important as—if not more important than—the information they provide. For instance, the subject of literature teaches insight, perception, compassion for the human condition. The subject of history teaches judgment, discernment, acumen, wisdom. Math teaches accuracy, attention to detail, logic. Likewise, the mind of the student that has been educated in Latin takes on the qualities of Latin: logic, order, discipline, structure. Those qualities of mind are priceless, and are what differentiate the educated person from the uneducated.
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Book Review
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SIMPLY CLASSICAL
WHY STUDY WESTERN CIVILIZATION? by Cheryl Swope
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nce upon a time, when a person intended to learn about education, the words "Western civilization" did not offend him. Today, for reasons that elude many of us, hearers now take offense at these words and the studies they embody. I witnessed this firsthand at a recent homeschooling convention in a room filled to its three hundred-seat capacity, as our Classical Education Panel fielded questions. As soon as one member of the panel described the content of classical education as "the great literature, music, art, and ideas of Western civilization," a woman near the front of the room abruptly gathered her belongings and left our session, head held high all the way to the back door. We wondered if, to soften our stance in pre-emptive avoidance of a growing animosity toward Western civilization, we should say that a classical education teaches the great literature, art, music, and ideas of "all time and places," rather than of "Western civilization." But I wonder if this is really necessary. Are there not good reasons we can confidently give for why Western civilization is worth passing on?
Who We Are In A History of Western Civilization by Thomas Patrick Neill et al., we read that the history of Western civilization is the story of our civilization: how we have come to be what we are. (In a telling discarding of books such as this, my husband purchased the 1,255-page volume for a quarter at our library sale.) The authors defend an emphasis on Western civilization with these words: Cheryl Swope is the author of Simply Classical: A Beautiful Education for Any Child and Memoria Press' Simply Classical Curriculum, as well as editor of the Simply Classical Journal.
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Why Study Western Civilization?
Various civilizations have developed in the course of time, such as those of China, India, the Near East, and the West. We cannot study them all in detail. But the leading civilization, which prevails or is imitated in every quarter of the world today, is Western civilization, which also happens to be our own. Confronted by the necessity of selection and the desirability of a certain degree of concentration and explanation, it is natural for us to choose the latter, without entirely neglecting its relation to the others.
How We Study Perhaps one difficulty in this discussion arises because of the way history is now studied. The subject of history, once taught and learned as a body of knowledge, became relegated to the pile of "social studies," with less emphasis on a mastered, comprehensive body of knowledge and more opportunity for widespread dabbling. Time magazine, November 6, 1940, noticed the shift and noted that progressive education "undid the old packages of history, geography, etc., and dumped all information in one basket—social studies." Rather than seek to teach influential names, dates, places, and events in Western civilization, one influential textbook series, Man and His Changing Society, focused "social studies" on students' own investigation of current and future social problems.
What We Teach Western civilization emerged in Mediterranean Europe during classical antiquity and is derived principally from Greek, Roman, and Christian elements. The authors of A History of Western Civilization tell us that "the Greek contribution was paramount in intellectual and artistic fields; the Roman in social organization and practical MemoriaPress.com
application; the Christian, in the spiritual and religious realms." They add that "a knowledge of our past, such as is provided by the history of Western civilization, helps us to comprehend 'how things have come to be what they are,' and enables us to place ourselves more intelligently in the world." As Cicero famously writes, "Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to continue always a child."
More Than History As we read any thorough treatment of Western civilization, we begin to appreciate the need for teaching history in context as we acknowledge that reason cannot suffice without faith, liberty without morality, and knowledge without love. In the midst of opposition, there has always been a determined core of men and women in the Western tradition who have held firmly to the Christian faith and taught this to their children. The authors of A History of Western Civilization write that "in the last generation this group seems to have grown larger, more coherent and more influential—a ray of light and hope to an age that possesses the wherewithal to destroy itself." We seek to carry this tradition forth today.
Our Heritage A classical education is a heritage bestowed upon us to preserve for and convey to future generations. The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo, Handel's Messiah, Plutarch's Lives, Augustine's
Confessions, Galileo's Two New Sciences, Shakespeare's Sonnets, and the Gospel of John belong to all of our students. I recently visited King's Grove School, a classical school near Tulsa, Oklahoma, devoted to teaching students with special needs. In the mornings, students learn reading and spelling, writing and arithmetic. In the afternoons between necessary therapies, they hear beautiful music and gaze upon great art through the "Wonder, Beauty, and Imagination" section of our Simply Classical Curriculum. I observed with delight as students listened to a reading from the Bible about eternal life, heard Pachelbel's simple "Canon in D," and studied the warm, golden landscape of "Peace and Plenty" by George Inness. One young girl, a student with Down syndrome, fixed her eyes on the painting and spoke slowly with great longing, "I want to go there." Her teacher softly told her, "In Jesus, we will all go to the land of peace and plenty." Thus, amid any detractors that may argue otherwise, we proceed. Not only this, we assume a leading role in the preservation and transmission of our great heritage for all of our students. We freely study the lands, cultures, and peoples of all time and in all places, but our emphasis will remain on the heritage that brought us to this place in time and history. Informed by the Holy Scriptures at every level of instruction for every student, may the study of Western civilization continue to be a ray of light and hope to an age that possesses the wherewithal to destroy itself.
Simply Classical: A Beautiful Education for Any Child by Cheryl Swope | $24.95
REVISED EDITION
Ready to be encouraged? We are now offering this second edition of Simply Classical: A Beautiful Education for Any Child with revised content, updated resources, and new information for classical schools and cottage schools. You will find more tips for teaching all children classically, more stories of real children, and more inspiration for your own journey.
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LITER ATURE
In Defense of Hospitality & Storytelling What I Learned from Reading the Odyssey by Louis Markos
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an English professor, lecturer for the Honors College, and public speaker, I am afforded many opportunities to guide students of all ages and backgrounds through Homer's Odyssey. One thing I love to emphasize along the way is how committed Odysseus, Telemachus, and the other noble characters are to the laws of xenia. Based on the root word xenos, which means "foreigner" (hence our word "xenophobia"), xenia is the Greek concept of hospitality that established the rules by which strangers and other suppliants were to be received and treated. In a world without passports or police or international law, safe travel relied on a system in which Louis Markos, professor in English and Scholar in Residence at Houston Baptist University, holds the Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities; he's the author of eighteen books, including From Achilles to Christ, Heaven and Hell, Literature: A Student's Guide, and two children’s novels, The Dreaming Stone and In the Shadow of Troy, in which his kids become part of Greek Mythology and the Iliad and Odyssey.
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In Defense of Hospitality & Storytelling
all civilized people agreed to play the role of guest or host in accordance with certain standards. If you were the host, you were to take in all strangers without asking their names. Only after you had fed them and showed them hospitality were you to inquire after their identity and their story. So the Phaeacians treat Odysseus and so Telemachus treats Athena when she comes, disguised, to the palace of Ithaca. The Cyclops Polyphemus, on the other hand, immediately asks Odysseus for his name and then promptly eats two of his men. The guest, too, was expected to adhere to strict codes of conduct. He was not to overstay his welcome or steal from his host. Telemachus and Odysseus prove to be good guests in the various homes where they stay. Penelope's suitors, in sharp contrast, eat her out of house and home, abusing her servants and sleeping with her maids. Odysseus' men also prove to be bad guests when they devour the sacred cattle of the sun god. It is this breach in xenia that leads to the death of Odysseus' crew, setting apart our hero (who MemoriaPress.com
alone does not touch the cattle) as the sole survivor of the journey from Troy. Such are the external rules of xenia. What I really learned from my frequent readings of the Odyssey, however, was not so much the rules themselves as the attitude of heart that goes with them. No one exactly teaches Odysseus and Telemachus how to follow xenia. Rather, the good man absorbs from those around him the kind of behavior expected of a gentleman. A similar ethos of hospitality runs throughout the Bible. Abraham shows xenia to the three angels who come to his home and he is blessed, while the evil citizens of Sodom seek to abuse those same angels and are destroyed. Rahab the harlot takes in the spies and her family is spared when Jericho is put under the ban; Herod the Great slaughters the innocent children of Bethlehem and dies a wretched death. Though the ancient Greeks, lacking special revelation, did not understand the biblical definition of justice to be mercy for the widow and orphan, they did understand that hosts have obligations toward their guests and other strangers in the land. In my own life, I learned xenia from Homer before I learned it from the Bible. Indeed, it was because of my earlier love for Homer that I felt a thrill of pleasure when I first read these words in the New Testament: "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares" (Hebrews 13:2). Telemachus taught me the importance of being attentive, of picking up on social clues without having to be formally instructed. But he taught me even more the importance of internalizing such things, of writing them on the heart. Xenia expressed in a legalistic, grudging way is not true xenia. One should not merely treat guests well; one should enjoy having guests and take pleasure in the fellowship that follows. The New Testament treats hospitality as an important gift (see 1 Peter 4:9, Romans 12:13, 1 Timothy 3:2, and Titus 1:8), and the Odyssey presents it as a key indicator of inner nobility. Xenia became for me a cornerstone of the good life. Too often people give charity in a somber spirit, receiving people into their homes (and their hearts) as a religious exercise rather than a joyous privilege. Communal feasting in the Odyssey is an affirmation of the human spirit, of the fact that we are not souls trapped in bodies but enfleshed souls. To rush
through dinner, or worse, to eat it with the television on, is a profanation of the sacredness of food. Every meal taken with thanksgiving and shared in fellowship is an agape supper, a love feast. Homer taught me to feast, and he taught me one further thing, something that goes with the feast and makes it all the richer. After Odysseus returns to Ithaca and Athena disguises him as a beggar, he is taken in by his faithful swineherd, Eumaeus. After sharing with the beggar his meager fare, Eumaeus offers his guest two options: They can go to bed and sleep, or they can stay up all night and tell stories. The beggar and the swineherd choose the latter, and I have spent most of my life choosing it as well. Even one's sorrows and woes, Eumaeus wisely explains, become precious things when they are shared, in recollection, with another. I pulled many an all-nighter during my college years, but very few of them were motivated by the need to finish a paper. I stayed up late to share stories with my college mates, even as I stay up late to talk and fellowship with the students who come to my home for Bible study every Thursday night during the fall and spring semesters. Memory, I have come to believe, is the most intimate part of who we are, and when we share memories—whether they be personal memories or the collective memories of our culture and tradition— we form bonds that cannot be defined in biological or sociological terms. Yes, we are moral animals, and yes, we are political animals. But we are also storytelling animals. I can know every fact about a person's height, weight, hair color, ethnicity, education, and work experience, and still not know him at all. But let him share with me one story from his past, a story of how he interacted with a person or a book or a mountain, and I will know him as a fellow human being who is nevertheless distinct from every other human being who has ever lived and breathed and dreamed on planet Earth. The Odyssey tells one of the great stories, but it also tells of the importance of telling stories. It tells of a one-of-a-kind man who comes home and a one-of-akind boy who becomes a man, yet both man and boy are universal figures whose stories are our stories. And the story goes on, and we are all a part of it.
Yes, we are moral animals, and yes, we are political animals. But we are also storytelling animals.
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HISTORY
The Classical Education of the Founding Fathers by Martin Cothran
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he Founding Fathers were of varying backgrounds and disparate political beliefs, but they shared two characteristics that distinguished them from other men of their time—and from most men of any time: wisdom and virtue. And it is for this reason, beyond just wanting to become familiar with who they were and what they did, that many parents are interested in teaching their children about the men who founded the United States of America. But more than just teaching our children about these men, many of us are also interested in how our children might become more like them. So rather than just admiring them for these traits, we should strive to understand how they came to possess them.
Colonial Education When Alexander Hamilton entered King's College (now Columbia University) in 1773, he was expected to have a mastery of Greek and Latin grammar, be able to Martin Cothran is the editor of The Classical Teacher and author of Traditional Logic Books I & II, Material Logic, and Classical Rhetoric.
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read three orations from Cicero and Vergil's Aeneid in the original Latin, and be able to translate the first ten chapters of the Gospel of John from Greek into Latin. Thomas Jefferson received early training in Latin, Greek, and French, and then continued his formal education at a classical academy in preparation for attending the College of William and Mary, where his classical education continued, along with his study of law. When James Madison applied at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), he had already read Vergil, Horace, Justinian, Caesar, Tacitus, Lucretius, Phaedrus, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plato. Other key figures in the American founding received similar educations. "Americans view the Founding Fathers in vacuo, isolated from the soil that nurtured them," says Tracy Lee Simmons in his book, Climbing Parnassus: A New Apologia for Greek and Latin. For the founders, says Simmons, instruction in wisdom and virtue came principally from two places: "the pulpit and the schoolroom." We are already fairly familiar with the explicitly biblical influences on America's founding, but we are MemoriaPress.com
far less familiar with the classical influences on the founders—and how these two influences worked in concert to mold their education and their thinking. The typical education of the time—what we would now call a classical education—began at about age eight. Students who went to school were required to learn Latin and Greek grammar and to read the Roman historians Tacitus and Livy, the Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides, and to translate the Latin poetry of Vergil and Horace. A formal education also stressed the seven liberal arts: grammar, logic, and rhetoric (the trivium), as well as arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (the quadrivium). Several of the founders, including John Adams and John Hancock, attended Harvard. The sole academic requirements for admission to Harvard University in the 1640s were as follows: "When any scholar is able to read Tully [Cicero] or such like classical Latin author ex tempore and make and speak true Latin in verse and prose suo (ut aiunt) marte [by his own power], and decline perfectly the paradigms of nouns and verbs in the Greek tongue, then may he be admitted into the college, nor shall any claim admission before such qualifications." No ACT or SAT scores. No application essays. Just Latin and Greek. Students were also required in these early years of Harvard, with limited exceptions, to use only Latin in class or in class assignments. Some of this undoubtedly changed by the time the founders attended, but not much. When it came to classical education in colleges of colonial times, they took no prisoners. But what of those who were not college graduates, such as George Washington? Were they influenced in any way by classical education? In Washington's case, while he had little formal education, he admired classical thinkers greatly. He also insisted on a classical education for his stepson. Classical influences were pervasive in the schoolroom, but it didn't stop there. Even what Americans heard from the pulpit was imbued with classical references and allusions. Today it is not uncommon to hear some say that Christians should shy away from the pagan authors of antiquity, but this is an idea the generation of the founders—including great Christian thinkers such as Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards—would simply have considered preposterous. In fact, all of the great Christian theologians and thinkers of early America were soaked and steeped in the classics. Not only did they think a classical education was consistent with a Christian vocation, they considered it absolutely essential.
How the Classics Influenced the Founders If the founders were steeped in classical thought, how did it affect their own thinking about the new nation? For one thing, it inculcated in them a respect for the lessons of history, which is readily apparent in their writings and debates about how to construct the American Republic. "I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided," said Patrick Henry, "and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past." They combed the annals of the ancients for examples of governments that worked well—and for those that did not. They knew, well before the philosopher George Santayana was born to say it, that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." "These men," says Simmons, discussing the Philadelphia debates in 1787, "had read and digested Polybius, Aristotle, and Cicero, and they used the ancient luminaries to frame and illustrate their ideas before the assembly…. These heated yet erudite debates, along with the Federalist Papers, fairly pullulate both with subtle classical allusions—with which Madison, Hamilton, and Jay assumed readers to be tolerably familiar—and direct references to the leagues—Amphictyonic, Achaean, Aetolian, Lycian—formed by the ancient Greeks in order to achieve political and physical security."
In order to become like those we admire, we must not only admire them, we must do what they did.
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Classical Education Today To become inspired by the great deeds of great men is to obtain the motivation to do similar things. But while we can admire other men, that won't necessarily make us more like them. In order to become like those we admire, we must not only admire them, we must do what they did. It is tempting to look back on the education of these great Americans and think that their course of education is too difficult for the students of today. But that would be a grave mistake. The fact is that we have advantages they didn't have. For example, the educational resources available to colonial children were not only harder to find, but of vastly inferior quality than today. We can, moreover, say we lack their fortitude, but that is not something they brought to their education—it is a benefit they received from it. Education is the cultivation of wisdom and virtue. In deciding how to accomplish this with our own children, we would do well to see how it was done in a time when wisdom and virtue were more prevalent than in our own. The Classical Education of the Founding Fathers
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W
estern civilization is often seen as the fusion of the cultures of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome, baptized in the blood of Christ to form what is known as Christendom. The faith of Christendom, its theological foundation, springs from Jerusalem and the Jewish covenant with God fulfilled in Christ. The rational grounds for Christendom, its philosophical foundation, springs from Athens and the golden age of Greek philosophy fulfilled in the Christian realism of Augustine and Aquinas. The spread of Christendom, and what might be called its political and legal foundations, springs from Rome and its empire, which was the means by which the Gospel spread throughout the known world. And yet this is not the whole story, and perhaps not even the most important part of the story. It is, in fact, not really a story at all. It is only a diagrammatic illustration of the structure of the story. The true meaning and purpose of Christendom is best revealed as a narrative in which the Author of Creation is also the divine protagonist, working through history with grace and, in the person of Christ, entering the story Himself in order to reveal its deepest meaning to the characters within the story, which is all humanity. Seen in this light, we can see that history is His Story. And that the part of the story in which He enters in person, through His Incarnation, is the greatest story ever told. All the foregoing might be seen as uncontroversial, at least to Christians, but what of other stories which cannot claim to be the greatest ever told? What of lesser stories? What of those stories that are merely figments of the imagination, which are fictional and therefore not true, at least not in the same way that the facts of history are true? Should we waste our time with such things? Should we tell stories, or read them? Or should we just stick with facts?
The answers to these questions are given by Christ Himself. He does not merely enter the story, teaching us through the facts of His life; He tells us stories, revealing the deepest truths through fictional narratives. The Prodigal Son never existed in history, nor did his father, nor did his brother or the pigs. They are all figments of our Lord's imagination. They are not true in the sense that a fact can be said to be true. They are not real in the sense that something we can see and touch is real. And yet, in a deeper sense, the Prodigal Son is as real as we are. Every time anyone has heard the story, from multifarious cultures across manifold centuries, they have seen themselves in the story. Every time we have heard it, we have seen ourselves as the Prodigal Son. We don't say that the Prodigal Son is like us; we say that we are like the Prodigal Son. He is the archetype of which we are merely types. He came first, springing forth from the mind and imagination of Christ—a word worded into being by the Word Himself; words made flesh by the Word made flesh. There is indeed no avoiding the fact that we are meant to learn real-life lessons from this work of fiction. This is all very well, we might be tempted to say, but this is Scripture. What is true of Scripture, which is divinely inspired, is not applicable to other works, written by mere men. This is true, indubitably so, but only up to a point. We need to remember, and indeed it is perilous to forget, that we are made in God's image. We are meant to love as God loves, to reason as He reasons, and to create beautiful things, insofar as we have been gifted with the creative talents which enable us to do so. It is, in fact, a terrible sin to fail to use the talents we've been given, as Christ tells us in another of His fictional stories. We are called to use our God-given imagination, which is one of the defining marks of God's image in us (image-ination) to do as God does with His own imagination. We are called to make beautiful things. We are called to compose or play music, or, should we not have the necessary talent, to see the beauty in the creative gifts of others. We are called to see the beauty of God's creation in the works of nature, such as sunsets or trees, but we are also called to re-create, or more correctly sub-create, such beauty on canvas or in marble, and to admire such sub-creative beauty Joseph Pearce is the series editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions, the Tolkien and Lewis Chair in Literary Studies at Holy Apostles College and Seminary, and the author of several biographies of Christian literary figures.
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when we see it. And what is true of music or the visual arts is even more true with respect to the use of words, especially in the telling of stories. If Christ Himself reveals the deepest truths through the telling of stories, both in His own life story and in the fictional stories He narrates to us, are we not meant to do the same? We are meant to do as He does. We are meant to tell stories and to learn from the stories of others.
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nd this is why literature is such an integral part of Western civilization. Hamlet touches upon this when he discusses the moral purpose of drama, "whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." In short, Shakespeare, through the words he places in Hamlet's mouth, is telling us that the purpose of his plays is to tell it as it is. His work is a mirror that shows us our virtues and our vices, and shows us the times in which we live. Shakespeare "is not for an age but for all time," as Ben Jonson famously remarked, because he shows us ourselves and our own age through the prism of the timeless Christian morality that informs his work, as well as showing us himself and his own age as he sees 22
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it. And since "all the world's a stage," as Shakespeare tells us in As You Like It, his plays are themselves plays-within-a-greater-play, serving some purpose in mirroring the plot of which they are themselves a part, but also—and crucially—they are capable of altering the plot profoundly, as does the staging of the play-within-a-play in Act Three of Hamlet. Clearly, by implication and by extension, Shakespeare hoped that his own plays would "catch the conscience of the King" (or Queen), or, at any rate, that they might expose the crimes of the King (or Queen). And what is true of Shakespeare is true of the other great writers of Western civilization. Homer tells us at the beginning of the Iliad that his epic will show us how Achilles' anger, the cankered fruit of his hubris, has destructive consequences to himself and others, and that Zeus will teach Achilles and others that pride precedes a fall. Much the same moral is present in Homer's other great epic, the Odyssey. Sophocles, arguably the greatest dramatist other than Shakespeare himself, shows us in Antigone that the rights of religion and the family precede and supersede the rights of the secular state. In Oedipus Rex he offers a deep and penetrating meditation upon the mysteries of suffering, analogous to the Book of Job, and in Oedipus at Colonus he reveals that the deepest wisdom can only be gained through the acceptance and embrace of suffering, and that such wisdom is pleasing to the gods. Moving into the Christian era, Beowulf exposes the errors of Pelagianism, which taught that man can get to heaven through the triumph of his own will and without the need of the supernatural assistance which theologians call grace. This ancient heresy, which plagued Anglo-Saxon England, is in the ascendant today in the burgeoning "self-help" movement which offers a "do-it-yourself" approach to salvation, thereby illustrating how ancient stories teach timeless truths. Such truths are present throughout the great books of the Western literary canon, from Dante and Chaucer through to Dickens and Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Tolkien. The great works of literature have the power to reenchant and reorient the most weary of souls. They are the inheritance of all of us—or of all of us who want them. In reading these great works we find ourselves in the presence of great minds thinking about great things. We find ourselves in the presence of almost three thousand years of genius. We find ourselves in the company of the illustrissimi of civilization. Such works are good companions for the journey of life and excellent guides. Like the lembas which sustained Frodo and Sam on their journey through Mordor to Mount Doom in The Lord of the Rings, great literature is manna for the mind and food for the soul. MemoriaPress.com