The Christian Heritage: Problems and Prospects

The Christian Heritage

The Christian Heritage Problems and Prospects

George Anastaplo

Lexington Books A division of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

Publication of this book was supported by a Loyola University of Chicago School of Law subvention. Published by Lexington Books A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 http://www.lexingtonbooks.com Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom Copyright © 2010 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Anastaplo, George, 1925– The Christian heritage : problems and prospects / George Anastaplo ; foreword by Martin E. Marty. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-7391-3597-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7391-3598-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7391-3599-0 (electronic) 1. Christianity and culture. I. Title. BR115.C8A49 2010 261—dc22 2009048369

⬁ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

To the memory of the youngsters in the Sunday School class of the First Baptist Church in Carterville, Illinois, whom I was permitted to accompany, seven decades ago, as a respectful fellow-traveler

Contents

Foreword Martin E. Marty

xi

Prologue

xv

1

The Triumph of Christianity

1

2

Beowulf (521–800?)

10

3

Moses Maimonides (1135–1204)

25

4

Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274)

29

5

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)

35

6

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375)

55

7

Geoffrey Chaucer (1340–1400)

67

8

Thomas More (1478–1535)

76

9

Martin Luther (1483–1548)

91

10

Michel Eÿquem de Montaigne (1533–1592)

109

11

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)

119

12

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)

128

13

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)

134

14

Thomas Paine (1737–1809)

140

15

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)

145

vii

viii

Contents

16

Charles Darwin (1809–1882)

156

17

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)

170

18

The Modern Greek Character and Islam

176

19

A Memo to Protestants

190

20

Public Funds and Church-Sponsored Schools

196

21

Reason versus Revelation, Reconsidered

204

22

The Legislation of Morality and the Law of Abortion

209

23

Animal Sacrifices and the Sacrifice of Morality

216

24

On Physician-Assisted Suicide

224

25

Mortality and Happiness

236

26

The Case for Israel

242

Epilogue

255

APPENDICES: FURTHER THOUGHTS ON THE MORAL CHALLENGES OF OUR TIME Appendix A. European Jews, Their “Christian” Neighbors, and the Holocaust (2000)

257

Appendix B. On the Right to Live as a Beggar: Reflections by Moonlight (2001–2002)

301

Appendix C. On Knowing Oneself: Projections and Introspection (2003)

307

Appendix D. On Facts and Theories: Lessons for Law Students from Ptolemy’s Astronomy (2004)

311

Appendix E. Christmas Stories (2004)

315

Appendix F. Still Another Look at Taoism (2005)

319

Appendix G. On the Apparent Knowability of the Good (2005)

335

Appendix H. On Properly Knowing Oneself (2006)

337

Appendix I. Come, All Ye Faithful: St. John Chrysostom and the Meaning of Christmas (2006)

341

Appendix J. An Academic Autobiography, by Way of St. Thomas and St. Ignatius (2008)

343

Contents

ix

Appendix K. Struggles for the Soul of Christendom (2008)

347

Appendix L. On Truly Knowing What One Is Trying to Do: The Mystery of Evil (2008)

357

Appendix M. Glimpses of Leo Strauss, Jacob Klein, and St. John’s College (2009)

361

Notes

371

Index

431

Foreword Martin E. Marty Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago

This book is mistitled, but it is creatively mistitled. Hand me a book called The Christian Heritage and I will expect either a thematic approach, an A-B-C listing as if it aspired to be a dictionary or encyclopedia, or a more or less linear accounting, in the style of “and then . . . and then . . .” that historians favor. True, the sequence of chapter subjects here is chronological, and those who are partly informed can find the pegs on which to hang them. George Anastaplo himself has a keen sense of chronology and does allude to some high spots along the way. One does learn that there was a Constantinian era “going in” and a Jeffersonian or Franklinian moment “going out,” as Christianity first seized and then abandoned its integral ties to the current civil orders. But teaching the A-B-Cs or the “and thens” is not Anastaplo’s purpose. In effect, he is saying or implying, “You can get that kind of thing in thousands of reference books; you don’t need one more.” And he is showing explicitly that what he has to offer will cast a different kind of light on that heritage. Even his cast of characters will surprise and perhaps frustrate those who look for a standard-brand reference work. Yes, he has a few ecclesiastical and theological titans on hand, without whom it would be hard to talk about the Christian heritage. We readers make chapter-length stops along the way with Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther, but he is more interested in those who cast oblique angles of vision on the heritage. Pascal will do and, even more, the literary elaborators—Dante, Chaucer, and lesser figures. His zest is even more apparent when he deals with those who give legitimacy to the choice of terms in the subtitle: Problems and Prospects. It is hard to think of more profound creators of problems for custodians of the heritage than Schopenhauer, Paine, Darwin, and Nietzsche, or who brought more eccentric light than the author of Beowulf (perhaps a Christian), Maimonides the Jew, raunchy Boccaccio, and skeptical Montaigne. xi

xii

Foreword

Anastaplo, as he organizes the book, having dealt with these major figures turns to themes and arguments. Some of these—for example, those that discuss Supreme Court decisions and tendencies—are not on points at issue now, and have mainly antique historical interest. But who am I as a historian to complain about antiques and dated stories? He found fresh things to say when the cases were live and can illumine our thought on replacement issues of today. Foreword writers are not called simply to run a finger down a table of contents and note what or who is there and who isn’t—such as, where are popes and kings? We are to try to characterize the author and her or his approach and achievement. Let me try to do this by picturing some of the aspects in Anastaplo’s approach to teaching and learning, so evident here, especially when he leaves undeleted some touches of the classroom experience. I like to quote Northrop Frye’s understanding of teaching, which works on assumptions like those I’ve heard about or seen or read about concerning Anastaplo’s style, often described as Socratic. Let’s say he begins by assuming much. This is not a beginner’s book, and few of his books are, even when they are envisioned or advertised as such. Woe to the unprepared sophomores at Dominican or Loyola or Dallas or Chicago or anywhere else that Anastaplo has sat among students at a large table with a skinny book on it. They have a problem. The students know in minutes that he knows so much about the text and the context and the many things in the penumbra of both that they do not want to make fools of themselves. So they are quiet. Here is Frye: [The teacher] is someone who attempts to re-create the subject in the student’s mind, and his strategy in doing this is first of all to get the student to recognize what he already potentially knows, which includes breaking up the powers of repression in his mind that keep him from knowing what he knows. That is why it is the teacher, rather than the student, who asks most of the questions. (Northrop Frye, The Great Code, New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1982, xv)

Such an approach means that Anastaplo has to find things in the text that they may not have discovered in Cliff Notes–cramming or have lost with the midnight oil and the draining of the coffee cup. Many times as I read the chapters it occurred to me that “I’ve read Montaigne [or Pascal or Franklin] but I did not notice this or that before.” I hope the author doesn’t think it is belittling if I pay him the compliment of saying that he strikes me as a serious but ornery reader, teacher, and writer. Another word that came to mind is that he is an unearther of meanings. We’ve all been doing our figurative archeology with a literary site; we know it well—I can at least make some claims about knowing Martin Luther—which means we’ve dug up shards and little oil lamps and bone jewelry—and then he says, “But didn’t you notice this?” And in the text he shows what we had not seen before. One might call him a hermeneut not of suspicion, which is the voguish thing to be, but a hermeneut of complexity. He interprets with a willingness to see many

Foreword

xiii

angles and facets of a text and then he renders it simple, sometimes luminescent. I’ll never be at ease with Pascal’s “Wager” again after reading Anastaplo on the subject. Wagers demand willingness to risk. Anastaplo raises the stakes. I wish the people who want the government to provide legally sanctioned prayers because Franklin put in a bid for prayers at the Constitutional Convention would read Anastaplo’s accounting of the event and its meanings. I can’t say that the readers will come away assured that they know what the Christian heritage is, what is in it, but I am confident that they will come away from this reading more interested in finding out, before arguments get staged. We live in a society which regularly asks for political candidates to defend values, but are hard-pressed to say what those values are. Majorities want the Ten Commandments posted on school and courtroom walls—but then cannot name what is in more than one or two of them. (We bat 1,000 on knowing the one against adultery!) A story follows that D. W. Brogan, a British visitor, told about this trait in American character and pattern in American practice (paraphrased): Visitors come upon a woebegone, suffering, running victim who has been tarred and feathered after dissension in a town. Why had he suffered this ignominious torture? What had he done? What was the argument about? “The Monroe Doctrine!” How did it come to this end? “When challenged, I told them that I believed in the Monroe Doctrine, I live by the Monroe Doctrine, I love the Monroe Doctrine, I would die for the Monroe Doctrine—I just told them that I had no idea what was in it.”

No doubt the tar-and-featherers had no idea either, but they had the power to enforce uniformity of values. George Anastaplo clearly knows what is “in” these parts of the Christian heritage, and he wants to teach others. But he knows he cannot succeed, even among intellectually high-powered college and post-graduate and “Great Books” readers who enliven his natural habitats, unless he gets their curiosity roused. Instead of using PowerPoint or a megaphone—do those readers who know him ever notice how softly he speaks?—he insinuates his way into the consciousness and consciences, yes, consciences, of those who claim the Christian heritage and would push what they think are its values on others. I may not have the patience to reread Beowulf soon again to find those paraChristian values he hypothesizes are there, though I used the same delightful Seamus Heaney rendering he used, but when his name and the poem and the plot come up, I’ll be more ready than before to think of Beowulf and Jesus in the same sentence, as he did. I do read Montaigne regularly, and found my appetite whetted for rereading, as soon as I can set a few hours aside. Reading Anastaplo on my own will not be as informative or inspiring as learning with him at the head of a table or the end of a log, but he can’t go and be everywhere (though his vitae suggests he has been everywhere). So having his book is one way of being able to create in the mind the experience of being in a seminar in which we are being challenged and because, á là Frye’s teacher, Anastaplo is asking the questions being informed and inspired.

Prologue

[Paul and Barnabas] fled unto Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia [a Roman colony in Asia Minor], and unto the region that lieth round about: And there they preached the gospel. And there sat a certain man at Lystra, impotent in his feet, being a cripple from his mother’s womb, who never had walked: The same heard Paul speak: who steadfastly beholding him, and perceiving that he had faith to be healed, said with a loud voice, “Stand upright on thy feet.” And he leaped and walked. And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, “The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men.” And they called Barnabas, Jupiter; and [they called] Paul, Mercurius, because he was the chief speaker. Then the priest of Jupiter, which was before their city, brought oxen and garlands unto the gates, and would have done sacrifice with the people. Which when the apostles, Barnabas and Paul, heard of, they rent their clothes, and ran in among the people, crying out, and saying, “Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein: Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless [the living God] left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.” And with these sayings scarce [Paul and Barnabas] restrained the people, that they had not done sacrifice unto them. —Acts of the Apostles, 14:6–18 (adapted from the King James Version)

The enduring texts (or “sayings”) that we in the West repeatedly encounter, especially the most challenging of them, are apt to draw upon, and to illuminate, the fundamental assumptions and the enduring questions by which Western civilization has been guided and challenged for millennia. Vital to Western civilization has long been the Christian heritage. That heritage has been taken xv

xvi

Prologue

for granted in our general education, in something as prosaic as the everyday operations of our legal system, and perhaps even in our economic and other social arrangements.1 Obviously critical to the Christian heritage have been the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. Virtually all significant Western thinkers (including artists), up to the twentieth century, had to be aware of, if they did not also have to take account of, the biblical influence among us. It has been an influence promoting the highest aspirations and the greatest sacrifices and yet also somehow legitimating (if not even “requiring”) unbelievable atrocities.2 The discussions found in the twenty-six chapters of this volume were developed in a variety of circumstances over a quarter-century. Two-thirds of these chapters examine authors very much aware of the Christian heritage, culminating in the apparent challenge to that heritage posed by iconoclasts such as Friedrich Nietzsche. The remaining third of these chapters (supplemented by the thirteen items in the appendices, prepared during the past decade) consider representative problems in the application of that heritage to our everyday life.3 Each of the authors drawn on in this volume should be read, in large part, on his own. What does each text say, and especially what questions does it suggest and develop? Proper practice here can help train one to read usefully such critical texts, of which there are, of course, many. Our texts are Western. This means, among other things, that our ancient philosophical tradition, with its innovative openness to nature, is apt to be drawn upon and illuminated. Non-Western texts, however useful they may sometimes be in helping us see what is (and is not) in our own tradition, are apt to be far less instructive for us than their Western counterparts.4 In the background of various inquiries pursued for American audiences in this volume is our political/constitutional system. That system, even though it has been developed in part somewhat by chance, can be critical in shaping what is noticed and how it is dealt with.5 Challenges to the Christian heritage (a heritage nourished both by Judaism and by the Western classics) have been stimulated by the very success of the way of life that is promoted, a way of life that is somehow responsible for the emergence of modern science with its revolutionary technology. This science has built into it the tension that may be seen in the remarkable reliance by Isaac Newton on the Pantocrator (in the culmination of his most celebrated work, the Principia), to account for the reassuring orderliness of the planetary orbits in our solar system.6 A variation, in a sense, upon what a determinedly pious Newton (as a latterday Paul?) proposed may be noticed (as an alternative that Westerners confront) in this passage taken from a four-decades-old discourse, by Leo Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens”:

Prologue

xvii

While Socrates does not claim [in Plato’s Apology] to have heard the speech of a god, he claims that a voice—something divine and demonic—occurs to him from time to time, his daimonion. This daimonion, however, has no connection with Socrates’ mission, for it never urges him forward but only keeps him back. While the Delphic oracle [Socrates said] urged him forward toward philosophizing, toward examining his fellow men, and thus made him generally hated and brought him into mortal danger, his daimonion kept him back from political activity and thus saved him from mortal danger. The fact that both Socrates and the prophets have a divine mission means or at any rate implies that both Socrates and the prophets are concerned with justice or righteousness, with the perfectly just society which as such would be free from all evils. To this extent Socrates’ figuring out the best social order and the prophets’ vision of the Messianic age, Socrates merely holds [as in Plato’s Republic] that the perfect society is possible: whether it will ever be actual, depends on an unlikely, although not impossible, coincidence, the coincidence of philosophy and political power. For, according to Socrates, the coming-into-being of the best political order is not due to divine intervention; human nature will remain as it always has been; the decisive difference between the best political order and all other societies is that in the former the philosophers will be kings or that the natural potentiality of the philosophers will reach its utmost perfection. In the most perfect social order as Socrates sees it, knowledge of the most important things will remain, as it always was, the preserve of the philosophers, i.e., of a very small part of the population. According to the prophets however, in the Messianic age “the earth shall be full of knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the earth” (Isaiah 11:9), and this will be brought about by God Himself. As a consequence, the Messianic age will be the age of universal peace: “all nations shall come to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” (Isaiah 2:2–4) The best regime, however, as Socrates envisages it [in Plato’s Republic], will animate a single city which as a matter of course will become embroiled in wars with other cities. The cessation of evils that Socrates expects from the establishment of the best regime will not include the cessation of war. The perfectly just man, the man who is as just as is humanly possible, is according to Socrates the philosopher and according to the prophets the faithful servant of the Lord. The philosopher is the man who dedicates his life to the quest for knowledge of the good, of the idea of the good; what we would call moral virtue is only the condition or by-product of that quest. According to the prophets, however, there is no need for the quest for knowledge of the good: God “hath showed thee, o man, what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.” (Micah 6:8) In accordance with this the prophets as a rule address the people and sometimes all the peoples, while Socrates as a rule addresses only one man. In the language of Socrates the prophets are orators while Socrates engages in conversations with one man, which means he is addressing questions to him.7

xviii

Prologue

Should not one be left to wonder what the perspective is from which such an authoritative assessment can be made of both prophecy and philosophy? That is, should not this assessment be recognized as included among “knowledge of the most important things”? Such things include the problems and prospects of the religious heritage that a people may be privileged to inherit from those who have been inspired to offer themselves as prophets.

Chapter One

The Triumph of Christianity8

The genius of Christianity is to have proclaimed that the path to the deepest mystery is the path of love. —Andre Malraux9

I Most of us, most of our lives, have taken for granted, as somewhat authoritative, what is loosely referred to as “the Judeo-Christian tradition.” That tradition is perhaps still as fundamental to the way of life in this country as are the republican political principles of our regime.10 We do hear of other religious traditions elsewhere, and sometimes we have to deal with their consequences.11 But most of us in this country do not know much about those other traditions. We are not even likely to have a reliable sense of the diluted version of the grand tradition which was immediately replaced by our biblically guided way, that classical tradition which is largely restricted nowadays to the academy.12 Nor do we have an appreciation of what a wrench the turn away from the weakened pagan approach must have been in some cases. For many, of course, it was not much of a wrench, as they slid from one way to another as “the times” changed. But before that happened, some of the more knowledgeable or the more sensitive probably experienced much more of a crisis.13 A poem by Constantine Cavafy, a Greek-language poet who lived most of his life in the exotic city (at least until 1952) of Alexandria, Egypt, can be instructive here.14 I am told that Cavafy (who sometimes seems to be a lost soul) is regarded by Egyptians as one of their national poets, with all of his poems translated into Arabic.15 The poem that we will examine on this occasion is about 1

2

Chapter One

Myris, a young Greek-community Alexandrian whose late Hellenistic name draws upon the word from which we get myrrh (which refers to the aromatic resin which was used, for example, in anointing the dead).16 The poem is entitled “Myris: Alexandria, A.D. 340.” Among those poems of his that Cavafy designated as worthy of permanent publication, this one is by far the longest.17 We can see in this poem, along with its dominant pagan/Christian clash of cultures, something of related clashes between male and female and between body and soul, if not also between virtue and vice. Let us now examine the poem, stanza by stanza.18

II When I heard the terrible news, that Myris was dead, I went to his house, although I avoid going to the houses of Christians, especially during times of mourning or festivity.19

The scene is laid, in the first three stanzas of the poem (the staccato-like bursts of four-line stanzas)—the scene is laid for some kind of service for the dead, which unexpectedly turns into an unnerving challenge for the unnamed narrator. The opening words of the poem introduce the event—translated variously as “the terrible news,” “the misfortune,” and “the disaster”—the dreadful event about which the narrator has just heard, the death of Myris.20 It is difficult, in an English sentence, to put this event literally first, the event of which the narrator learned, just as it is difficult in English to end the poem as it should, with the name Myris being desperately clung to. The narrator goes at once to Myris’s house, even though he usually avoids going to the houses of Christians. Christians, we are alerted at the outset, are different, and that difference becomes more evident, perhaps more of a problem for the Others, at times of mourning and festivity. It is at such times of obvious transition that a family, and by extension a people, is most likely to exhibit itself as distinctive. A critical facet of such an association, dramatized on the occasion of death, is its faith, or religion. The character of a community can become clearer in such circumstances than it might otherwise be. The narrator’s way of life can be described negatively, as somehow in opposition to what Christianity stands for. It is a way of life, keyed somehow to the gods of the ancient Greeks—a way which seems consistent with, if not even supportive of, a determined pursuit of bodily pleasures. If such pursuit is dominant, then death can indeed be terrible. The immense gulf between pagans and Christians, which becomes apparent before this poem ends, may be implicit from its outset. Myris and the narrator had been close, and yet (it seems) the narrator had not even known that Myris

The Triumph of Christianity

3

was dying. Evidently, the first that the narrator knew of Myris’s affliction was when he learned of his death. We have all had the unsettling experience of reading in a newspaper that someone we had known has died, even though we had not heard that he had been fatally ill. One can be reminded thereby that one had not been as close to that person as one might have believed oneself to have been.21

III I stood in the corridor. I didn’t want to go further inside because I noticed that the relatives of the deceased looked at me with obvious surprise and displeasure.22

This stanza begins with the shortest sentence in the poem, a sentence (in the Greek) of three words. The narrator stands in the vestibule, put off (it seems) by the unreceptive response by the “relatives of the deceased” to his presence, relatives who are Christian (and who are probably Greek, as the narrator seems to be also). Were the relatives indeed hostile? This is hardly an exhibition of the hospitality famous in ancient Greece and generally still evident in modern Greece. Or is there reflected here the narrator’s own intense aversion to Christianity, indicated in the first stanza? (Is this, that is, an instance of “projection” on his part?) The stranger, at least here, is not made comfortable. Nor is he said to offer condolences to the family. Did the relatives consider the narrator as partly responsible for what had happened to their Myris? In what way, if at all, had Myris’s recent way of life contributed to his death? Nothing is said of the cause of death, a death which (as we shall see) killed more than Myris. The status of strangers may be critical here. The reference to Myris as simply “the deceased” anticipates the threat that Myris, once a dear friend, will turn into a total stranger before this encounter is over. However that may be, it is not a loving atmosphere which seems to permeate this house. This is hardly the spirit associated with Christianity and its promotion of love.

IV They had him in a large room and from the corner where I stood I could catch a glimpse of it: all precious carpets, and vessels in silver and gold.23

4

Chapter One

Nor is the wealth evident here the style of life usually associated with early Christianity. The family has worldly possessions, which now include Myris’s corpse: “They had him” is emphasized at the outset of this stanza. One may well wonder what both “had” and “him” means here.24 Had Myris’s wealth been part of his attraction to his companions? It may have permitted him to enjoy himself with the narrator and others. That enjoyment had been decisively bodily in its emphasis—and now the relatives have taken possession of an inanimate body. In fact, the circumstances are such that the narrator cannot even see the corpse. A key term in both the second and third stanzas is “I stood”: it opens the fifth line of the poem and ends the tenth line. Does it not become evident in this poem that the narrator cannot stand (that is, remain) where he most wants to be? Certainly, he cannot stand where he once was with respect to Myris.

V I stood and wept in a corner of the corridor. And I thought how our parties and excursions wouldn’t be worthwhile now without Myris; and I thought how I’d no longer see him at our wonderfully indecent night-long sessions enjoying himself, laughing, and reciting verses with his perfect feel for Greek rhythm; and I thought how I’d lost forever his beauty, lost forever the young man I’d worshiped so passionately.25

Although the narrator can no longer see Myris, or even get close to his lifeless body, he can at least recall him fondly. And so he does in this transition stanza, the ten-line central stanza of this poem. We are shown, in this stanza, both weeping and laughing: the narrator weeps as he recalls the loss of the wonderful laughing beauty that was Myris. Again, as in the second stanza, the vestibule is emphasized: it is an in-between place, which is where the narrator finds himself in more ways than one. The narrator, from the fringes of this scene, offers up a heartfelt eulogy of Myris, recalling what had made him so attractive (if not even essential) to the narrator and others. This is by far the longest sentence in the poem, running to nine lines (and sixty-five words). It is in the course of this sentence that the narrator speaks of Myris as having recited verses, exhibiting a “perfect feel for Greek rhythm.” Did not the poet himself, in carrying off these nine lines as he does, also exhibit considerable skill of his own with the Greek language? That is, is there not something playful in the poet’s having his narrator talking, in lines which themselves require considerable dexterity, about Myris as having a “perfect feel

The Triumph of Christianity

5

for Greek rhythm”? What do such complexity and competence, or self-consciousness, on the part of the poet do to the mood and effect of the poem? Why was Myris as critical to the happiness of the narrator and his companions as he evidently was? Had his Christian heritage helped shape his character, perhaps making him somewhat concerned for the well-being of others? Had his Christian allegiance, with an implicit endorsement of an elevated morality, tended to reassure the other young men in their dissolute pursuits? The narrator’s emphasis seems to be upon what he and others have been deprived of; he does not seem to be sorry primarily, if at all, for Myris himself, however reassuring and otherwise useful Myris may have been for them. The love of Myris, and of the pleasure associated with him, has become somewhat “religious” in character. Had the narrator’s worship of Myris taken the place of religion and of philosophy, both of which might have been made more of by the classical Greeks from which the pleasure-seeking Greeks of Alexandria of the narrator’s day are somewhat descended? Such idolizing of Myris, if others can sense it, could help explain the evident hostility of Myris’s Christian relatives, in addition to what they may have heard about irregular exercises in sensuality. Is an appetite for idolatry what the religion of the Ancients had degenerated into, something that is anticipated in that remarkable passage in the Acts of the Apostles when Paul and Barnabas, after performing a healing miracle in the city of Lystra, are acclaimed by observers as Hermes (Mercurius) and Zeus (Jupiter), an identification which horrifies the apostles?26 In short, had Myris himself become like “a god among them” in Alexandria? This, along with the intense pursuit of worldly pleasures, is what the ancient religion may have come to mean. As for ancient philosophy, there are echoes of that in the narrator’s threefold use, in this stanza, of skeptomoun, which is usually translated (as is done here) as thought, but which is rooted in the word from which we get skepticism.27 It is such skepticism which can pose a threat both to the Christian faith and to much of philosophy as well, but it can also undermine what the narrator had come to rely upon, especially with respect to Myris.

VI Some old women close to me were talking with lowered voices about the last day he lived: the name of Christ constantly on his lips, his hand holding a cross. Then four Christian priests came into the room, and said prayers fervently, and orisons to Jesus, or to Mary (I’m not very familiar with their religion).28

6

Chapter One

The narrator had lamented twice, in the closing lines of the fourth stanza, that he had “lost forever” the Myris he had known. This is followed immediately, in the fifth stanza, by the beginning of recognition of how much he had lost him: that is, not simply prospectively, but (perhaps even worse) retrospectively as well. Some old women talk about Myris’s last day, how he had fastened upon both the name of Christ and a cross. This revelation is reinforced by the fervent prayers of four priests, priests who invoke Jesus and Mary (which is hardly the way she would have been referred to). A critical feature of Christianity is highlighted by these observations: the female element figures as much as the male element in this ascendant religion. This is in marked contrast to the male-dominated pagan “world” of human beings and of gods which the narrator recalls in the following stanza.29 Does not the appeal of Christianity, and perhaps of any enduring faith, depend upon family connections, and hence upon the sense of a people, that the female element naturally caters to? One can see, upon hearing blood relatives talk amongst themselves, how much of an outsider one may be. However much the narrator had cared for Myris, he had never been moved to try to learn what Myris believed in his heart of hearts. Did the narrator somehow sense that to know is somehow to become? And he himself did not want to become a Christian.30 Of course, the rituals of others can often seem merely ridiculous. For example, I was intrigued last weekend, upon attending an academic conference of a couple hundred people, to watch one speaker after another read papers which were followed with considerable care by almost all of the audience, for they had copies also. It can be particularly striking when hundreds of pages are all being turned at the same time. It is almost as if each speaker is being graded on how well he read the paper he had prepared and distributed in advance to his audience. But there are also rituals which can seem, to the outsider, mysterious, even threatening. Myris’s last day and the priests’ fervent ministry obliged the narrator, almost in self-defense, to recall what still seemed to matter most from his association with Myris.

VII We’d known of course that Myris was a Christian, known it from the very start, when he first joined our group [parea] the year before last. But he lived exactly as we did: more devoted to pleasure than all of us, he scattered his money lavishly on amusements. Not caring what anyone thought of him, he threw himself eagerly into night-time scuffles

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when our group happened to clash with some rival group in the street. He never spoke about his religion. And once we even told him that we’d take him with us to the Serapeion. But—I remember now— he didn’t seem to like this joke of ours. And yes, now I recall two other incidents. When we made libations to Poseidon, he drew himself back from our circle and looked elsewhere. And when one of us in his fervour said: “May all of us be favoured and protected by the great, the sublime Apollo”— Myris, unheard by the others, whispered: “Not counting me.”31

Thus, the priestly ministry for the dead is countered by recollections of Myris’s two-year ministry in the narrator’s group or, as we might say, his crowd. There is a fine Greek term here, parea, associated with festive gatherings, excursions, and the like. This kind of enterprise is, of course, usually all male. Of course figures in as well in the narrator’s acknowledgment at the outset of this, by far the longest, stanza in the poem: “We’d known of course that Myris was a Christian.” There are seventy lines in the poem in which the underlying Christianity in the makeup of the pleasure-seeking Myris is recalled.32 There are included, in this account of the fun-loving Myris, the central lines (which turn out to be also the central sentence of the two dozen sentences) of this poem: more devoted to pleasure than all of us, he scattered his money lavishly on amusements.33

Why had Myris joined this parea? Were there for him anticipations of his early death, which he tried (perhaps desperately) to smother by immersing himself in the pleasures that his money could buy? One hears of such escapades today: because of the brawls in which the narrator’s parea indulged, one can be reminded specifically these days of English soccer fans on a rampage. However reckless Myris could be on occasion, he would not explicitly disavow the Christian heritage into which he was evidently born. A joking suggestion that they visit the Temple of Serapis (a Greco-Egyptian divinity) leaves him cold. Also shunned by him is joining any libation to Poseidon or in any prayer to Apollo. It is, we can all sense, one thing to disregard the demands upon one of one’s ancestral faith; it is quite another to adopt an alien faith. The narrator exhibits some of this aversion in his reluctance to visit the temple-like houses of Christians.34

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We can wonder, upon learning not only of Myris’s pursuit of pleasure but even more of his zest for street brawling, whether there was something suicidal about him. This may be reinforced, the pagan in us may suspect, by his refusal to be included in the fervent prayer, “May all of us be favoured and protected by the great, the sublime Apollo.” It is Apollo, we recall, who was regarded as the god of healing, something which the stricken Myris (soon thereafter?) evidently needed.35 In short, the narrator has been obliged, at least since he had heard during this ill-fated visit of Myris’s last day and thereafter upon being prompted to recall that Myris had balked at endorsing explicitly any of the pagan alternatives to Christianity, to face up to what he had always somehow known about Myris.

VIII The Christian priests were praying loudly for the young man’s soul. I noticed with how much diligence, how much intense concern for the forms of their religion, they were preparing everything for the Christian funeral. And suddenly an odd sensation took hold of me: indefinably I felt as if Myris were going from me; I felt that he, a Christian, was united with his own people and that I was becoming a stranger, a total stranger. I even felt a doubt come over me: that I’d been deceived by my passion and had always been a stranger to him. I rushed out of their horrible house, rushed away before my memory of Myris could be captured, could be perverted by their Christianity.36

The aggressive prayers of the priests reinforced what the narrator had been obliged to recall about Myris’s ultimate spiritual allegiance. Those loud prayers by the priests, for all to hear, follow immediately upon the whisper by Myris which only the narrator had heard, the whisper, “Not counting me.” All this forces the narrator to face up to what he may have always sensed about Myris, that he had never really known him, however intimate their relations had seemed. Does the narrator, like Myris, have an ingrained loyalty to an inherited way which he cannot simply disavow, even for the sake of another? The narrator is being overwhelmed by what is happening to the lovely young man whose soul (along with his body) is being reclaimed by his relatives and his people, becoming thereby “a stranger, a total stranger” to the narrator. He can even begin to wonder whether he had been deceived all along by his passion—

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the word for deceived suggests that one bas become laughable, a usage here that recalls the laughing youngster by whom the narrator had been smitten. Distressing as all this can be, perhaps there is something even more threatening for the narrator, something from which he must flee: to be fled, that is, would be a deeper knowledge of himself, as someone who had refused to face up to what he had always known about Myris and, by implication, about himself. The narrator does not yet know enough, however, to understand that this stripping away of illusions which he has been enduring (at least since he entered a house of the Christians) may ultimately be more liberating than threatening.37 The prototype for the narrator, it can be said, is Oedipus, the desperate man who, upon learning who others were and were not, began to learn how mistaken he had been about who he himself was as well. I say “began to learn” because Oedipus blinded himself, in part perhaps in order to shield himself from further awful revelations.38 Was not the narrator’s flight from Myris’s funeral an effort to preserve the remnants of illusions upon which depended for him a by now dubious way of life?

IX We must again distinguish the poet from the narrator. It is the poet who dates this poem in its title, placing it in Alexandria, a city with many ways of life. The date used (which tacitly recognizes the Christian ascendancy in the West) reminds the reader that within a generation or so, the celebrated Serapeion will be destroyed, signaling that Christianity was more or less in control in Alexandria (as in the Roman Empire generally). But the date used (A.D. 340) also warns the Greek reader that within two centuries the Arabs will conquer Egypt, thereby installing Islam as the dominant religion for centuries to come.39 And, this poet seems to suggest, even more of the same—of the constantly changing—can be expected, but that its precise form and duration may depend upon happenstance. We left the narrator fleeing from learning perhaps the truth about himself. Perhaps we can learn from this poem about the illusions that we in turn treasure, just as this narrator (something of a lost soul) may need to return, by studying poems about others, to a proper reconsideration of the challenging circumstances in which he happens to find himself.40

Chapter Two

Beowulf (521–800?)41

Good always wins over evil because it is nicer. —Mammy Yokum42

I This poem is about a week and then about a day in the life of a great warrior and a much-loved king. Beowulf died an old king, after fifty years of successful rule, which rule was preceded by several adventures of considerable note. The story of his life is told in a poem regarded by some as the first great piece in postclassical European literature. This poem was evidently developed sometime between A.D. 521 and A.D. 800, probably much closer to the latter date.43 I have found it useful, on this and other occasions, to count things in works of art and to mull over the figures and patterns which seem to emerge. A sample of what I have done may be found in my chapter on Lewis Carroll and his Alice stories in my Artist as Thinker volume.44 I believe I have shown there, with some plausibility, how carefully arranged the Alice stories are, despite their surface appearances of being as chaotic or as haphazard as dreams are apt to appear.45 Countings and other such noticings can help one see both the parts and the whole of a work of art. In addition, such calculating and organizing can make the discussion of poetry more disciplined then it might otherwise be. Even when one is wrongheaded in so doing—as is, for example, Samuel Butler in his The Authoress of the Odyssey caper—things can be usefully noticed that might otherwise have escaped a reader’s attention.46 So much, then, for “methodology.”

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II It should be useful to provide here a summary of the poem. I provide as well, also by way of introduction, both a few words about the Old English manuscript and tradition and an extended comment about the style of the poem. I draw for these introductory remarks upon the work of Howell D. Chickering Jr., the translator of the poem as it appears in a good dual-language edition.47 Beowulf, we are told by Professor Chickering, is written in the unrhymed four-beat alliterative meter of Old English poetry. It is the longest surviving poem in Old English, containing 3,182 lines. Roman numerals divide the poem into an introduction and forty-three sections, or fitts. They are of unequal length and their numbering is a bit confused. While these sections often match the logical breaks in the narrative, they do not reveal a clear division into chapters or cantos. The fitts may be a later scribal addition and not the work of the poet, who remains anonymous. The poetic structure of Beowulf is a good deal more intricate than the fitt divisions indicate, or than the story itself. But the story comes first.48

Virtually all of the things referred to in the Chickering summary of the poem are drawn on, or at least are touched upon, in my remarks here. A few things commented on by me are omitted from his summary.49 Finally, in this series of references to Mr. Chickering’s introduction to his edition of the poem, there should be noticed a set of observations by him on the style of the poem, a set of observations that are particularly useful since I myself know little about Old English literature or about the period.50 It seems to be the general opinion among the critics that Beowulf was developed either by a Christian or by someone exposed to Christian (or at least to biblical) thought, and that it was prepared for an audience that was to some extent aware of the Bible. The divinity many times referred to in the poem seems, by and large, to be biblical, even though there may be an occasional relapse into pagan language and pagan rites. But, it has been noticed, there is no explicit reference to Christ—and this has led to debates about whether Beowulf should be considered not a Christian poem but rather a pagan epic which has been somewhat colored, but not substantially shaped, by Christian or biblical doctrines.

III Let us consider now the beginning, middle, and ending of this poem. The beginning and the ending seem fairly easy to come by; the middle requires

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calculation, since what is properly to be considered the middle may depend on how one figures. Of course, the ambiguity about the middle of this poem may be seen as well in one’s effort to determine what are its true beginning and its true ending: much has happened before the poem opens (back, indeed, to the beginning of the world); and much will happen after the poem closes (and of this we are given anticipations in the form of prophecies).51 Further complicating the effort to identify the outer limits of the poem is the likelihood that the beginning and the ending, which provide the frame for the action of the poem, may be much more than they seem. That is, one must wonder how the poet himself understood the episodes with which he opens and closes his poem. I believe it instructive, in considering such debates, to notice how the opening and the closing of the poem can be described. The first name of a man we encounter in the poem is that of the great king, Scyld Scefing. He seems to have been considered the founder of the Spear-Danes (although they obviously were already there to receive him and to be governed and shaped by him). We learn in the prologue that Scyld had first come among this people as a waif, in a boat with treasure, unknown and helpless. We are not told how he became king, and a good king at that. But we are told that when he died, his body was once again placed in a boat, again with treasure, and sent out to the sea from which he had come as an infant. And we are further told (51), “Men cannot say, wise men in hall nor warriors in the field, not truly, who received that cargo.”52 At the end of this poem (of some 3,200 lines) is the story of the death of the warrior-king, Beowulf, who dies upon entering into the earth to slay a marauding dragon. A band of thirteen, including Beowulf, goes to encounter this dragon; the thirteenth is the person who had provoked the dragon by having stolen a cup from its treasure-trove. Thus, the thirteenth man of the company is of quite dubious character. Beowulf, in this final struggle, is abandoned by all but one of his men. After he dies he is so buried, pursuant to his instruction, in a place and way that his barrow may be seen from afar by men at sea.53 Thus, Scyld, who had come among his people as a waif in a boat, dies a peaceful death and is buried where no man knows. Beowulf, who died a violent death, leaves a grave and a name which reach out to all men. I venture to suggest that here we can see, perhaps that we are intended to see, a story which moves from the career of Moses through the career of Jesus.54 And, I further suggest, it is primarily the career of Jesus that the poet may be concerned to consider—and to reconsider in the light of the traditions and character of his audience. Once one opens oneself to this concern, then one becomes aware of many allusions and elements in the story of Beowulf which do remind of the story of Jesus, including the insistence that Beowulf was the greatest man in the world, but one who had had a most undistinguished, even disappointing and certainly unpromising, youth.55

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IV So much, at least for the moment, for the beginning and the ending of the poem. Let us turn now to its middle (or, rather, to the various middles, depending on how one figures). At the very center of the poem, taking the lines as we have them (which may have some lines missing here and there but evidently no considerable passage)—at the very center (in lines 1591–92) we can see the juxtaposition of despair and hope, a despair grounded in worldly wisdom, a hope that is beyond reason (again, a possible juxtaposition, from a Christian perspective, of the career of Moses and of Jesus). A couple of dozen lines from this center points up this juxtaposition: Beowulf has, in the water devils’ home (1500) in the hall deep in the lake, just killed Grendel’s mother (referred to as the “wolfish woman”) and turns to take full revenge for Grendel’s depredations on his corpse—Grendel having died there in his home after having had his arm and shoulder ripped off by Beowulf two days earlier in Heorot (Hrothgar’s great hall). This is what the poet now tells us (1583–1605): A full reward for such sinful crimes the fierce champion paid him back, for there he saw Grendel lying battle-weary, armless, lifeless from the hurt he’d received in the fight at Heorot. The corpse sprang open as he cut deep into it after death, a firm-handed battle-stroke, and chopped off his head. Soon the wise men above who gazed with Hrothgar at the turbulent water saw blood drifting up, a churning foam; the spreading stain was dark, lake-wide. The gray-bearded elders spoke quietly together about the brave Geat [Beowulf]; they did not think to see him return, said he would not come to seek the king again with another victory; it seemed to many that the wolfish woman had ripped him to pieces. Then the ninth hour came. The valiant Scyldings gave up the cliff-watch; the gold-friend departed, went home with his men. The Geatish visitors still sat, heartsick stared at the mere. They wished, without hope, they could see their lord their great friend himself.

Down below, of course, Beowulf has already prevailed; he finished his work, and thereafter returns to the surface, with Grendel’s head as a trophy and with the hilt of the sword with which he had killed Grendel’s mother (the remainder of that sword having been melted by monster blood).56 When Beowulf is thus resurrected, “They clustered around him, his thanes in their armor, gave thanks to God for return of their prince, that they saw him alive, happy and whole” (1626–28). It had been these thanes, “heartsick,” who had “wished without hope,” even past “the ninth hour,” at which time their companions, the Scyldings and their king, Hrothgar, had given up the watch. Echoes from the New Testament are, I believe, discernible here. We see in the passage I have just recalled the distinction drawn between “the gray-bearded elders” who “spoke quietly together,” but who “did not think to see

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Beowulf return,” on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the warriors who are Beowulf’s men, who stayed in watch for him long after it was deemed sensible to do so. Perhaps we are seeing here again what we had seen in the prologue of the poem, the distinction between “wise men in hall” and “warriors in the field” (neither of whom had known what became of Scyld’s body and treasure).57 At the very heart of the poem, then, may be seen the quite different responses in a crisis by men of worldly wisdom, so to speak, and by sturdy warriors with faith.58 This is what may be found at the center of the poem when we consider the lines as we have them.

V Still another way of figuring these matters reinforces the observations we have made thus far. Forty-three speeches are recorded as made in the course of the action of this poem, speeches which are made aloud and to others, and the words of which are given to us. (Many other speeches are reported, of course, in more or less detail; and a speech to the earth alone is recorded as having been given by a treasure-burier centuries before. That “43”is taken seriously by the poet, or by an early editor or copyist, is suggested by the fact that the story itself, in the one manuscript we do have, is divided into forty-three “fitts,” or sections.) Of these forty-three speeches, the central one (the twenty-second) is by Hrothgar, the king of the Scyldings, for whom Beowulf had done the service of ridding his land of Grendel. Beowulf himself delivers nineteen of the forty-three speeches we hear during the time that the poem covers. It is instructive, I believe, to compare Beowulf’s central speech (the tenth of his nineteen speeches) with the speech of Hrothgar (the twenty-second of the forty-three in the poem, and hence the central speech of the poem).59 The poem can very well draw us to this juxtaposition independent of any counting: thus, the counting may do no more than reinforce or call to our attention features of the poem which are otherwise noticeable as well. Hrothgar, in this speech, expresses his despair upon being reminded that although Grendel is dead, Grendel’s mother continues to haunt his land, having just the night before slaughtered Hrothgar’s chief advisor. He is moved to recall what he had heard about her and her circumstances, as we get the impression of a primordial evil by which mankind is always afflicted (1345–72): I have heard land-holders among my people, counselors in hall, speak of it thus: they sometimes have seen two such things, huge, vague borderers, walking the moors, spirits from elsewhere; so far as any man might clearly see, one of them walked in the likeness of a woman; the other, misshapen, stalked marshy wastes in the tracks of an exile, except that he was larger than any other man. In earlier days the people of the region named him Grendel. They know of no father from the old time, before them, among dark spirits. A secret land they guard, high wolf-

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country, windy cliffs, a dangerous way twisting through ferns, where a mountain torrent plunges down crags under darkness of hills, the flood under the earth. Not far from here, measured in miles, lies that fearful lake overhung with roots that sag and clutch, frost-bound trees at the water’s edge. Each night there is seen a baleful wonder, strange water-fires. No man alive, though old and wise, knows that merebottom. The strong heath-runner, chased far by hounds, the full-horned stag, may seek a safe cover, pursued to despair—still he will sooner die on the bank than save his head and plunge in the mere. Not a pleasant place!

Not a pleasant place, indeed! So awful is the habitation of Grendel and his mother that not only men, but even desperate animals running for their lives, shy away from it—and so, “No man alive, though old and wise, knows the mere-bottom.”60 This kind of talk suggests something desperate or hopeless that is intrinsic to the condition by which humanity is confronted. Certainly, Hrothgar is not hopeful, concluding in this fashion this central speech of the poem, the speech which reveals perhaps how men limited to worldly wisdom see things (1376–82): Now again, you [Beowulf] alone are our only help. You still do not know the awful place where you might find the sin-filled creature; seek it if you dare! I will reward your feud with payments, most valued treasures, as I did before, old twisted gold, if you live to return.

So when, at the ninth hour, Hrothgar abandons the watch at the water’s edge for the descended Beowulf, he must have believed that events had confirmed his dark forebodings about the sin-filled marauders by which mankind is bound to be afflicted.61 Of course, Hrothgar had allowed his hopes to be built up by the confidence with which Beowulf responded to the challenge. Beowulf had assured Hrothgar that he would do what was needed, and they tracked the bloody trail left by Grendel’s mother to the water’s edge, where they found the head of Hrothgar’s wise counselor. But thereafter the fresh blood on the water, and the long wait, had extinguished the king’s new hope, leaving him and his people in a world infested by dark spirits from the old time. All this, I suggest, the poet may well have indicated as the way the world can, perhaps must, look to men guided by worldly wisdom alone, by men who are limited to their own resources, both physical and psychic. In any event, this is the look of things in the central speech of all the speeches in the poem.62

VI We are offered quite another look at the world in Beowulf’s central speech, the tenth of his nineteen speeches. Beowulf, one is somewhat surprised to notice,

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is a great talker as well as a great warrior.63 He not only has far more speeches than anyone else (almost half of the total number of recorded speeches), but he also has the longest speech (one of 150 lines, with the second-longest coming from a messenger reporting Beowulf’s death and predicting the future of the country, in 128 lines, while the third-longest is also by Beowulf, in 84 lines).24 The longest speech is one in which Beowulf, on his return home, tells his king about his encounters with Grendel and with Grendel’s mother: that is, Beowulf imitates the poet who had already told us the story.65 We turn now to Beowulf’s central speech, the tenth of his nineteen speeches.66 Beowulf’s speech is in marked contrast to the speech of Hrothgar, that despairing central speech of the forty-three speeches of the poem (and of mankind, so to speak). This is the speech, a speech of a couple of dozen lines, which Beowulf makes to Hrothgar upon his return triumphant from the depth of the lake with Grendel’s head (1652–76): Behold, son of Healfdene, Scylding leader, this gift from the sea we have brought you gladly, a token of victory, which you look on here. Not very easily did I save my life in battle under water; performed this work with greatest trouble; at once the fight was decided against me, except that God saved me. In that battle I could not use Hrunting though that weapon is still good, but the Ruler of men granted the favor that I see on the wall, a bright sword hanging, gigantic heirloom—most often He guides the friendless, distressed—so that I found the right weapon to draw. When my chance came I cut down the monsters, those hall-guards, with edges; the wave-sword burned up, quenched in that blood, a hot battle-pouring. From my enemies I plundered this hilt, revenged their crimes, the many Danes killed, as was only fitting. Now I can promise you safe nights in Heorot without further sorrow, with the men of your troop, and each dear retainer picked from your people, the youths and the veterans; you will have no need, O lord of the Scyldings, for fear in that matter, dark man-killing, as you did before.

A promise is made, after a recognition of the Providence of God in helping Beowulf dispatch the source of “dark man-killing.” Fear is thereby lifted from the hall of the king.

VII Which of the two speeches should be regarded as ultimately authoritative, Hrothgar’s (which is central to all of the speeches in the poem) or Beowulf’s (which is central to his own array of speeches)? The former seems to be the opinion about things produced by “wise men in the hall”; the latter seems to be the opinion about things held by “warriors in the field,” by men who (we have seen) are characterized by a strong faith. I should also mention that this Beowulf

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speech is the one closest to the physical center of the poem, as we have it. This could suggest its centrality in still another way.67 There is another centrality among the speeches which I should notice, and that is among the twenty-four non-Beowulf speeches in the poem. Central to the non-Beowulf speeches are speeches by Hrothgar and his wife Wealhtheow (the eighteenth and twentieth speeches in the poem). It is somehow appropriate that the two speeches which are central according to this calculation should suggest a critical difference of opinion between husband and wife. In the first of these two speeches, the king acknowledges the killing of Grendel, whose shoulder is now on display in the great hall; he then praises Beowulf and says, “I will love you like a son, cherish you for life. . . . Nothing I own, of my worldly goods, would I keep from you” (947–49). After this, Beowulf speaks, acknowledging the king’s praise and saying more about the Grendel battle; and a bard tells stories about other heroes. There follows the queen’s speech (the other central speech among the non-Beowulf speeches). She begins by saying to her husband, “I have been told you would have this warrior as your son” (1175). (I should mention that Beowulf, at this time, was not the next in line for a throne back home. That became available to him only after Hrothgar and his son had been killed on an arrogant mission.) Hrothgar’s wife also praises Beowulf, but she reminds him of the ties between him and them. She seems, in this speech and in the following one (which are the only two speeches by a woman in the poem), concerned about the future relations between Beowulf and her son. Thus, this mother asserts the concerns and the claims of the family as against the claims of merit (which were implied in her husband’s speech). Is this not a reminder of tension between what we call the public and the private? Perhaps it is a reminder as well of the dependence of the public (with its concern with fame) upon the private (with its production and nurturing of bodies)? More will be said about this further on. Thus I have, in a variety of ways, suggested the contending positions that the poet has placed before us. These are positions—putting in opposition the opinions of the worldly wise and the opinions of the faithful—which may be seen throughout the poem. No doubt, lines and even speeches could be discovered in another manuscript which would call into question the calculations I have made. Such calculations are not conclusive but rather merely suggestive, grace notes which may point up features of the overall argument and the tone of the poem.

VIII One is induced to ask, partly as a result of these tentative speculations, just how well-crafted this poem is. We return to the central episode of the poem for still another instructive observation. At the physical center of the Beowulf manuscript is the passage which begins with Beowulf’s speech as he leaves Hrothgar

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to fight Grendel’s mother and ends with the report we have heard by Beowulf to Hrothgar about the fate of Grendel’s mother. This is a passage of some two hundred lines (from 1473 to 1676). The two speeches which frame this centerpiece are the only ones in which Beowulf (or anyone else) addresses anyone by his patronymic alone. Thus, in Beowulf’s first speech to the king (at 407), he had addressed him, “Hail, Hrothgar, health ever keep you.” Similarly, he later addresses Unferth by name, in a speech (53), and Hylegac (2000). The first of the two centerpiece-framing speeches by Beowulf (#24 at 1475) begins, “Famed son of Healideme, wisest of princes.” In this speech Beowulf takes leave of Hrothgar as he descends to encounter Grendel’s mother. The second of the two centerpiece-framing speeches by Beowulf (#25 at 1652) begins, as we have heard, “Behold, son of Healfidene, Scylding leader.” This form of address can be said to reinforce a feature of this central passage: there is included in this passage, between lines 1473 and 1651, the longest stretch in the poem (about 158 lines) in which the name of Beowulf is not used, once Beowulf is introduced by name at 343 (except for the very long speech, at 1999, by Beowulf himself, reporting to Hygelac his exploits with Grendel and his mother, during which it would have been awkward for him to use his own name). In this central passage, Beowulf is many times referred to by the narrator, of course, but not by name but rather by a variety of identifications: “man of the Weder-Geats,” “the warrior,” “kinsman of Hygelac,” “man of the War-Geats,” “warrior Geat,” “Ecgtheow’s son,” “Bold Scylding,” “Hygelac’s thane,” and “Hrothgar’s beloved.”68 Why should it be that in this part of the narrative, where Beowulf is so often and so variously referred to, that his personal name is never used? The narrative here is devoted to his battle with Grendel’s mother, who had struck out at Hrothgar’s men because she wanted “to buy back [that is, to avenge?] her only kinsman,” Grendel. One realizes, almost with a shock, that the monstrous Grendel did have a mother and that he even went home to her to die, and thus his carcass is on the floor of the underwater hall into which Beowulf enters.69 Grendel’s mother has lashed out at mankind for a mother’s revenge. There is something elemental about this passion on her part. Grendel himself had been exhibited as hating mankind because of his hatred of God’s creation; and he had been shown as a voracious eater of men. Nothing is said about the mother eating the man she killed; certainly, she is not as ravenous as her son. Furthermore, no name is assigned to her: she is known only as Grendel’s mother. And so likewise, in his encounter with her, Beowulf himself is identified only by reference to others, never by his own name. Does this suggest that there is something elemental about this encounter? That it should be in a womb-like room—in a hall beneath the sea—somehow seems fitting. Do the female (a primitive female) and a male (a somewhat liberated male) come into contention here?70 Does not

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this mother stand for the old way? And does not this son (who is never shown as intimately associated with a woman, who never produces a child of his own) stand for a new way that looks beyond the family and eventually to the world? Thus, we can again glimpse Christian underpinnings in the poem’s construction, as well as the kind of family concern that Hrothgar’s wife had expressed lest her son be passed by.

IX Should Christianity be taken, in the poet’s opinion, to have faced up to and conquered the ancient evil, the intrinsic awfulness in its existence, that the human race is confronted by? It is an evil represented by Grendel (who evidently has no name, or, it seems, any tools or even language, of his own) and by his mother (who is even more primitive than he is, in that she has not even been given a name by men). There is, it seems, something “natural” about this challenge to, or limitation for, mankind. However sound and successful the rule established and perpetuated by Scyld Skylding and his successors had been, there remained to plague them the Grendels of the world. This monstrous plague was something from which only a Beowulf could release them. Envy and appetite seem to characterize Grendel, and a related desire for revenge moved his mother. The dragon that Beowulf kills, and is killed by, seems to be otherwise constituted.71 The dragon had lain undisturbed for centuries, content with his treasure hoard, until a man had presumed to steal from him. (This is not to say that the dragon does not enjoy pillaging once he has been provoked to do so.) The language here is that of betrayal—as it is also in the relations between Beowulf and his band when they go to encounter the dragon. Consider this, by way of contrast: betrayal would never be talked about by a Socrates as the cause of evil, or of vulnerability, but rather ignorance.72 To make much of betrayal may be to make much of personal attachments and of the will rather than of a code which one can rely upon for one’s happiness. It may disregard the very character of mortality as efforts are made to insure the fidelity of others and thereby immortality for oneself.73 Immortality of another kind may be seen in the fame that men seek. Beowulf himself is eager for fame: the poem literally closes on that note. There is the raising up of the grave Beowulf had ordered for himself in these words (2802–8): Order a bright mound made by the brave, after the funeral pyre, at the sea’s edge; let it rise high on Whale’s Cliff, a memorial to my people, that ever after sailors will call it “Beowulf’s barrow” when the steep ships drive out on the sea on the darkness of waters, from lands far away.

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And so the very last words of the poem are the following by the narrator (3178–82): Thus did the Weders mourn in words the fall of their lord, his hearth-companions. They said that he was, of the kings in this world, the kindest to his men, the most courteous man, the best to his people, and most eager for fame.

A deep concern for fame is evident throughout the poem. It is not only reflected in the fact that Beowulf repeatedly invokes and is moved by a desire for fame, but also that he is the most vigorous proclaimer of his own fame, as we saw in the very long speech he made recapitulating his great deeds against Grendel and his mother.74 Or, rather, he is the second-most vigorous proclaimer of his fame, since his long account is itself imbedded in an even longer (a much longer) account by the poet. Indeed, the very fact that his own account was made, and that it is preserved at all, does depend upon the poet whom we read.

X This prompts us to wonder what it means that fame should be as important as it is throughout the poem. Its importance may be seen not only in how Beowulf makes so much of it in anticipating what he should do and how he should do it, in doing what he does do, and in recollecting what he has done—but its importance may be seen also in that a concern about fame, or about one’s acknowledged honor, should be so critical a motive in the other stories we hear in the course of the poem, stories about Beowulf (as in his contest with Breca), stories about other heroes (some of them of a legendary character), and stories about what is likely to happen thereafter (as when Beowulf predicts the fighting, because of a desire to pay back an insult, that will someday break out among the Scyldings).75 One must wonder what the worth of fame is when it relates to deeds that tend to be done and seen primarily in terms of fame. Surely, it can be said, only those deeds are worthy of fame which are worth doing for their own sake.76 And if that should be so, then fame is merely something added, of relatively little worth compared to the deed itself. Is to make much of fame, rather than of the deed in itself and by itself—is such an emphasis upon fame as we see in Beowulf a desperate grasping for a kind of immortality, a concern for the perpetuation of the self in preference to simply living a good life during one’s allotted years? True, one may win fame by conducting oneself well—one may be kind and courteous and the best for one’s people—but will one be truly the best, and truly deserving of enduring recognition, if a critical consideration both in doing what one does and in how one does it is the fame one may win?77

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The difficulty (one may even say, the irresponsible self-centeredness) to be seen in any determined pursuit of fame is suggested upon considering the speech made to Beowulf by his king after he has returned from the Grendel adventure. This is the only speech by King Hygelac in the poem—and of all the speakers we can be sure of (by name) in the poem the total lines assigned to Hygelac are the fewest, a mere dozen (1987–98): How did you fare, my beloved Beowulf, upon your journey, taken so suddenly, seeking the strife over salt water, battle at Heorot? And did you better the wellknown grief of Hrothgar the king? Cares of the heart, sorrow-surgings boiled within me; I did not trust that venture’s outcome. Often I asked you not to attack that murderous spirit, but to let the South-Danes test out Grendel themselves in battle. Great thanks to God I now give here, at your safe return.

Only now do we learn that Beowulf had ventured out not only on his own but against the repeated exhortation of his king. In whose interest, then, had been this adventure? And at whose risk? It becomes evident thereafter that Beowulf could be of great advantage to his own people, both as defender and as king, with himself ruling for fifty years. Perhaps the reputation he earned in his great exploits helped make it easier to defend his country. But again we must wonder whether that reputation is in any way compromised by the motivation which led to the deeds for which he is reputed. Immediately after Hygelac’s short speech—the fewest total lines, as I have said, assigned to anyone we know in the poem—we get Beowulf’s long speech, of 150 lines, recapitulating all that he has done. Perhaps the poet, in placing these two speeches in immediate juxtaposition, would have us wonder whether Beowulf’s torrent of words can wash away the stain on his reputation (if stain it be) left by the king’s loving remonstrance. Does not the king’s rebuke remain a reminder of the limitations of any fame which is pursued as Beowulf has pursued it? (The limitations of Beowulf’s means of pursuit may be seen in the disabilities he places himself under in his encounter with Grendel: since Grendel has no weapon, Beowulf will use none either. Is it not irrelevant that it is only later learned that no weapon would have helped? Does not this point up the problem with chivalry, or with that desire for fame which helps shape chivalry, for the serious political man?) In any event, one does not have to speak at length to make one’s point, and thus a vital question to be considered in thinking about this poem is the significance of the king’s terse speech. Neither Beowulf’s extended account nor the king’s gifts to Beowulf thereafter should make us lose sight of this. Nor should we lose sight of the fact that Beowulf’s final battle, with the dragon, was not conducted by him in a prudent manner. Perhaps the poet would have us wonder as well what the facts of Beowulf’s long account of his adventures among the Danes means, independent of its significance as a response to his king.78 I have already suggested that if one has

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to tell one’s own story in this fashion, then that suggests that the deeds one is reporting may not be worth much. At the very least, it would seem, those deeds do not speak for themselves; they are not their own justification.79 But should we go even further? If one considers the telling of one’s deeds to be critical to one’s deeds, to one’s very life, then how are one’s account (and hence one’s deeds?) significantly different from the accounts invented about other men?80 That is, how is the fame of a character developed by a poet different from the fame of a man reported by a historian? History, we have been taught, may not be as true as poetry.81 Be that as it may, how are we to regard fame when we read stories about characters invented by poets—characters who themselves fight for fame, and win it, being ever after remembered and even cherished by us?

XI But whether the famous man is a historical figure or an invented character, what is to be made of his fame when it rests (as in the case of Beowulf) entirely on one manuscript which has happened to survive?82 That Beowulf and we should both be so dependent on a single manuscript suggests how dubious fame can indeed be as a guide. The poet of Beowulf is not known to us by name. Does this matter? Does not the best of the poet survive in his poem, not in his name? Compare Orpheus, for example, whose name as a great poet comes down to us, but hardly any of his poetry.83 And, it seems, the poet of Beowulf retells stories by other poets, without giving their names. Must he not have sensed, therefore, the fragility of fame? We need not leave this entirely to conjecture. I have touched upon the fortythree speeches delivered to others in the course of the action of this poem. But there was another speech, of three centuries before, delivered not to other human beings but rather to the earth—and this because that speaker (an unnamed speaker) was the last survivor of his race (also unnamed). That man knew that his race (or people) was about to become extinct, and so he hid away in the earth the considerable treasure of his people, evidently as a kind of memorial to that people, as a substitute of sorts for the fame which human beings cherish. It is on that occasion that the speech we have was made. And it is that treasure which is guarded by the dragon fought by Beowulf.84 Thus, the poet seems to know, or at least to sense, that fame depends in part on a people (with its language, memories, and institutions). That is, fame needs a physical carrier as well as physical signs (such as Grendel’s head, which Beowulf had said was “a token of victory”). But this poet also knows that a people can die out—and if it does, what becomes of one’s fame?85

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XII A desire for fame (as distinguished from a desire for virtue for its own sake, to which fame may be added merely as an ornament or as an inducement to others to be virtuous) may have been nurtured by Christianity among the people for whom Beowulf was prepared. That is, an emphasis on fame seems related to the intensity of one’s feeling of vulnerability, especially if one has been taught to yearn for immortality.86 Did Christianity not contribute to this desire for fame, or rather did it rise in response to a special sense of vulnerability in that time? It has been suggested that “the early Anglo-Saxons’ fatalistic outlook and sense of mortality made them exceptionally ready for Christianity.”87 Thus, the case for giving Christianity a hearing is made by a king’s counselor in words which have been called “justifiably the most famous simile in Old English literature.”88 Here is the counsel given on that occasion: Your Majesty, when we compare the present life of man with that time of which we have no knowledge, it seems to me like the swift flight of a lone sparrow through the banqueting-hall where you sit in the winter months to dine with your thanes and counselors. Inside there is a comforting fire to warm the room; outside, the wintry storms of snow and rain are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in through one door of the hall, and out through another. While he is inside, he is safe from the winter storms; but after a few moments of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the darkness whence he came. Similarly, man appears on earth for a little while, but we know nothing of what went before this life and what follows. Therefore if this new teaching can reveal any more certain knowledge, it seems only right that we should follow it.89

I dare predict that some of my readers will remember this description, from the text of the Venerable Bede (who died in A.D. 735), long after they have forgotten what I have said on this occasion. The reference to the banquet hall can remind us of the many references to banquet halls in Beowulf, the hall around which the life of the community turns, in which meetings are held and stories are told, and (of course) which Grendel had so brutally violated. But does not the king’s counselor in the Bede account make one assumption that the poet of Beowulf would not, and that is that the banquet hall is somehow as enduring as the sparrow temporarily assumes it to be, whatever the conditions may be outside that hall? That is, does not the poet of Beowulf indicate again and again that the very foundation of fame and of the deeds of men is itself highly vulnerable? After all, one’s people, including the very name of one’s people and of its heroes, can disappear with hardly a trace from the face of the earth—and that people is the “place” (like the banquet hall of the sparrow) in which things happen and are enjoyed.

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Of course, a proper Christian faith in God can make banquet halls and peoples and fame superfluous. But with or without such a faith—and what that faith consisted of for Beowulf himself must be left an open question, considering what he was and was not concerned about in his final speeches—with or without such a faith, the fame of the heroes in the Beowulf poem does leave something to be desired. Thus, one can ask of the man desperate to secure his fame, “Why should you care what people inferior to you hear or believe about you?” After all, there is, during each of Beowulf’s three great monster-fights, a misapprehension by ordinary men as to what is indeed happening.90 What then should be made of fame, insofar as it depends upon a general opinion and insofar as it is intended to win the admiration of ordinary people whose judgment is generally suspect? “In fact,” one might add to the exceptional seeker for fame, “the only man whose opinion you should care for is a man as good as yourself: only he can apprehend what you are and what you have done. But if so, what has become of the generally recognized distinctiveness which you so cherish? May it not be even better to stand truly alone by reliably knowing what you have done and what it is worth?”91

XIII Is the poet of Beowulf aware of such considerations as I have touched upon on this occasion? I have suggested that the treasure trove hidden away in the earth is a substitute for fame—and of that treasure the poet does say that it did not do anyone any good. To what extent, then, are reservations indicated by the poet with respect to fame, even as he tells in a striking manner deeds which are worthy of fame in the common view? To what extent, that is, do we see in this poem the doings of a poet who has been influenced by Christianity even as he reconsiders and reformulates the Christian message—and a poet who must reckon with an audience that is still enthralled by pagan heroics? We may well have in Beowulf, then, a poet who quietly suggests that considerations of the common good and of a virtue grounded in a respect for truth should place restrictions on one’s self-centered heroic impulses, whether temporal or spiritual.92

Chapter Three

Moses Maimonides (1135–1204)93

I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live. —Moses94

I That prudential judgment which is evident throughout much of Maimonides’ writings may be seen even in an early, perhaps his first public, work, the Letter on Apostasy.95 He was about twenty-six when he wrote it, living at that time in Fez, Morocco.96 A critical problem confronts him: the members of a Jewish community, elsewhere in North Africa, are being offered a dreadful choice: either a public conversion to Islam or death. Perhaps, also, an opportunity is given them to leave the country, but that depends both on personal resources and a place to go. Another advisor learned in the law—a fanatic, Maimonides calls him—had instructed them (from a considerable distance) that Jews should not, under any circumstances, recite the formula pressed upon them, “There is no God but Allah and Mohammad is His Prophet.”97 Rather, one should suffer death. But, the fanatic continued, if one does succumb to threats and recites the Islamic formula, one should no longer consider oneself a Jew. That is, for such a person to continue to observe the rest of the Jewish law, after having committed this sin, is to make matters even worse. Rather, he should consider himself cut off forever from his people and its law.98

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II Maimonides’ assessment of this problem starts with the implicit recognition that most Jews, when confronted with the choices described here, will give in rather than be killed. Human nature being what it is, they can be expected thus both to save their lives and to be able to raise their own children. How, then, should such apostasy under duress be regarded? The fanatic’s approach may encourage a few who will die rather than surrender. But that approach cannot be expected to keep most Jews from giving in—and it virtually guarantees that anybody who does give in will be treated, and would be encouraged to regard himself, as permanently lost to his people. Thus, what would otherwise have been a nominal and temporary “conversion” to Islam by desperate Jews could very well become, because of the fanatic’s approach, the real thing and permanent.

III No, Maimonides says, this simply will not do. Not only will most Jews give in under such compulsion—but, he even seems to suggest, they should give in. Thereafter, he adds, they should continue to practice their religion, scrupulously obeying what they safely can of the law—and they should remove themselves, when they can, from control by any regime which requires of them the mouthing of offensive formulas, empty though they may be. This advice fits in with an observation which I believe Maimonides endorses elsewhere, that the God of the Jews is the God of the living, not of the dead. Thus, Jews are urged again and again to choose life. This is not to say, however, that a Jew may do anything to save his life—that is, to save himself for service to his family, to his people, and to the law. One cannot, in order to save one’s life, commit idolatry, incest/adultery, or murder. These three sets of offenses are of a different order, it seems, from such sins as repeating the language of a foreign creed.99 Thus, one is told that the Sabbath might be violated in order to save life.100

IV Perhaps we can see in all this a critical distinction between Christians and Jews. The fanatic had argued that the Christians, and some heretics, preferred death to a public (even if forced) acknowledgment of the Islamic creed. But, Maimonides replies, we are not bound to do as the Christians, or others, do. If, for example, they sacrifice their children to their god, should we do so also?

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Of course, it should be added, it cannot be an argument against a practice that the Christians do it.101 Does not Maimonides’ refusal to be guided by Christian practices here point to a fundamental, if not the central, difference between Christians and Jews? Christianity may be more obviously keyed to a creed than is Judaism. A Christian is who he is primarily because of what he believes, not because of who his forebears were. Not so with a Jew: he is who he is primarily because he is a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And as such a descendant, almost always by blood, he is obliged to believe critical things and to conduct himself in prescribed ways.102 If the Christian ceases to believe the creed of his faith, he is no longer a Christian; if the Jew ceases to believe what Jews have generally believed, he does not cease to be a Jew: he may simply be a bad Jew, a mistaken Jew, a Jew who has gone wrong.103

V To put all this as I have does run the risk of undue simplification. Not only do Christians pass on their faith with their blood—consider, for example, Greek Orthodox Christians of the last thousand years and more—but Jews do depend upon more than blood ties to perpetuate themselves. Thus, Maimonides advises, anyone who does resist mouthing the empty but nevertheless offensive Islamic formula should be considered noble.104 Such a Jew provides a model for his fellow Jews, someone to look up to, even if very few can be expected to imitate him. The noble should be praised, partly because it is so rare. But if such self-sacrifice assumed “epidemic” proportions, would it not have to be discouraged, perhaps even condemned? This is not likely to happen, however, in the typical community. Even so, the leaders in a community should be particularly careful how they conduct themselves: more resistance is expected from them; they should testify to what the law means, and to the risks and sacrifices it may call for. Most of what Maimonides said was intended to fortify the typical Jew who would, under threat of death, become an apparent apostate. Such people should not be driven out, whatever their sins, but rather should be encouraged to return to the fold (and to the practices of their people) when circumstances permit. God, Maimonides insists, is always open to repentance—and, he argues, a little repentance or piety can go a long way.105

VI Even so, Maimonides hints, Jews should not become cavalier about setting the law aside. If many did this at the slightest pretext to gain an immediate

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advantage,106 the religion of the Jews will become meaningless: property and comfort would then take the place of the law as the guides by which Jews will live. Acquiesce, if you have to, Maimonides advises, but get out of there as soon as possible thereafter. Do not allow property, social, or even family considerations to keep you in a place where you must make even nominal compromises with the dictates of the law. Emphasis is placed upon the law, but as a code which should be so interpreted and so applied as to allow a people to survive. Thus, the Torah is looked to, not the Messiah. Depending upon the Messiah (as the misleading fanatic had done?) runs the danger of Jews becoming otherwordly (like the more devout Christians). True, the Messiah himself will be a particularly wise (or prudent) ruler, but Messianic expectations, and opinions based upon such expectations, may lead to gross, even dangerous, imprudence. Rather, Maimonides advises his people, the Torah is, for better and for worse, all you can count on: it is according to it that you must live—but the Torah as properly understood and applied in changing circumstances.107

VII A proper application of the Torah, Maimonides can be understood to have said, has made a great and enduring people possible, whatever the meaning and truth of the Mosaic revelation.108 To approach all this thus is to concern oneself primarily with life here on earth and with that prudential judgment which serves a disciplined life together for a people. What ultimately defines this community, however, are not blood ties across centuries back to Abraham, but rather a dedication to critical opinions (or, if one wills, truths) about God. This community is worth preserving, in preference to many if not even all others, because of what it has taught for millennia about God. Prudence, with its sensibly expedient shifts in response to changing circumstances, is very much in the service of an absolute which keeps a people healthy. It is for this reason, perhaps, that this rather “political” Letter on Apostasy has an alternative title—A Treatise on the Sanctification of God’s Name.109

Chapter Four

Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274)110

And in His will is our peace: it is that sea to which all things move, both what it creates and what nature makes. —Dante111

I I believe it could be instructive to consider possible causes, and some implications, of the use by Thomas Aquinas of the term “natural law” (in the Treatise on Law and elsewhere in his Summa Theologica).112 Both “natural law” and “natural right” had been available to Thomas and his successors, and yet “natural right” is rarely used by them. First, then, let us consider the possible causes of Thomas’s preference for “natural law,” a preference which should remind us of longstanding questions about law, about nature, and about the relation of reason to revelation.113 It is not generally known that three-fourths of the Treatise on Law (that is, three times as much as is usually published in editions used in American schools)114 is devoted to a detailed discussion of the Divine Law—to a discussion of the Old Law and the New Law found, respectively, in the Old Testament and the New Testament.115 Thus, the directives and guidance provided by nature and ascertainable by human reason are regarded as “law,” perhaps in part to fit in with that reliance upon the Old Law and the New Law which dominates the complete Treatise on Law. This assumes, of course, that there are sufficient reasons for having the guidance provided by nature discussed in this treatise and not elsewhere in the Summa.116 That that guidance should be discussed here is suggested by what is said (in the part of the Treatise omitted from student editions) about the Decalogue.117 29

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The Decalogue, we are told, incorporates the principal precepts with which nature instructs human beings about their conduct.118 The Decalogue is a set of laws. Therefore, the precepts of nature, which are incorporated in the Decalogue, should also be called laws. Or, put another way, if God delivers His precepts in the form of laws, why not nature also? That the pronouncements of the Decalogue should be considered laws, it can be added, conforms to the character of revelation. A revelation is not an argument or a demonstration; it is not something figured out (which “natural right” can be said to suggest).119 Rather, revelations lay down guidance which can take the form of commandments or laws. Furthermore, there is implied by the use of “natural law” a community which guides human beings, an established way. This is not unrelated, perhaps, to the importance given by the Roman Catholic Church to the spiritual guidance of human beings: a man cannot, on his own, devise and follow the course which leads to personal salvation. Nor do the Scriptures suffice to guide him; rather, he should act in conformity to, and in company with, the Church. Similarly, the temporal guidance of man is rooted in a community, that community implied by any reliance on law. To speak of “natural right,” on the other hand, is to make more of the self-sufficiency of the best human beings, of women and men who can figure out what the right thing to do is and who then do it because of its intrinsic rightness. Such self-sufficiency may be found in its highest form in the life of the philosopher. But such a life, in which worship of a miracle-working Divinity does not figure largely, if at all, may be played down when “natural law” is spoken of, with its implication of a community. A lawgiver is also implied when “natural law” is used. This implication conforms to the teaching evident throughout the Summa, that the universe and everything in it are established and governed by an eternal lawgiver.120 He can and does lay down firm directives, including the “natural law” for the moral guidance of human beings, whereas “natural right” tends to be more flexible in both its terms and its tone. “Natural right” makes much more of prudence and of the use of one’s judgment in varying circumstances. The Divine Lawgiver, and He alone, has the prerogative of suspending the operation of His rules. Such suspensions, or miracles, are reported both in the Old Testament and the New.121 This is but one aspect of something which has been noticed by students of “natural law,” and that is that “natural law” implies an active agency, whereas Aristotle (as perhaps the most noteworthy source of natural-right doctrine) speaks only of that intrinsic rightness to which I have referred.122 Besides, to rely on “natural law” is to retain, in the very name of this set of transcendent standards, a respect for law itself. “Natural right,” on the other hand, can be easily seen (if, in most cases, mistakenly seen) to be somewhat in opposition to human law.123 If the “natural” inclination of the natural-right

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approach is to be somewhat cautious about reliance on law, then any endorsement of that approach might encourage some to begin to question law generally, and not just human law but perhaps even both the Old Law and the New Law grounded in the Scriptures. For this reason, too, some might say, it is better to reinforce the dignity of law generally by speaking of that assessment of human conduct provided by nature as “natural law.” Still another reason for the preference for “natural law” may be seen in the status of nature itself in Thomas’s scheme of things.124 That is, “natural law” fits in better than does “natural right” with what Thomas usually considers nature to be: nature is not simply autonomous; behind nature is a being endowed with knowledge and intelligence and, of course, will.125 To speak of the Divine Will is to speak of something that is commanding, something that is “laying down the law,” yet something that is incomprehensible except to the extent it chooses to reveal itself. It is not to speak, as the “natural right” people tend to do, of naturally ascertainable standards of intrinsic rightness, which suggest that nature is somehow independent of the divine and hence, in principle, knowable by the unaided human reason.

II These, then, have been some half-dozen possible causes of the use by Thomas of the term “natural law” in preference to the term “natural right.” These causes may be further developed by considering, if only briefly, a few of the implications of the preference (for whatever reasons) for “natural law” over “natural right.” At the root of the sovereignty of “natural law” for Thomas, I have suggested, may be the will of God, and that is, in principle, inscrutable. God is not moved to do what He does by any necessity of His nature or of any other nature. (I, Q. 19) Thus, it can be said of God that He is not bound: there is no nature controlling Him, no natural necessity.126 His will is the cause of all things. (I, Q. 25) Indeed, nature itself is different—it does not seem to mean, for Thomas, what it meant for the classical thinkers; it is not “on its own.” Be that as it may, “natural law” qualifies whatever thrust of necessity there may be in the term “nature,” inasmuch as “law” implies will and choice, not necessity, on the part of the lawgiver. That is, law draws on, or is, a convention; it need not rest on what is natural. Or, put another way, the classical thinkers tended to place “law” (or “convention”) in opposition to “nature.”127 “Natural law” reminds us, therefore, that at the foundation of things there is something which is not limited, something which is not operating according to nature, something which does not seem to be bound by necessity—and therefore something which cannot be fully investigated or understood by the unaided

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natural reason of human beings.128 Natural right, on the other hand, is more likely than natural law to imply that the fundamental things of the world can be discerned by the natural reason of human beings on its own. Thus, “natural law” depends upon something that is not fully or truly knowable by the aid of natural human powers. This means, among other things, that revelation is needed to complete the “natural law,” or at least to reinforce it. Indeed, it has been suggested that the entire notion of natural law, in the Thomistic sense, is—in fact, if not in intention—a dictate of reason “informed by faith.”129

III Is it so not only in fact but also in intention that Thomas understands revelation to be needed in order to complete the “natural law” teaching? We touch here—we can do no more than touch here—upon a question which is basic to any attempt to consider the relation of reason to revelation. Thomas several times indicates that the end at which man ultimately aims is both life eternal and the bliss possible only through such a life. That bliss finds its fulfillment in the vision of God. But, he also indicates again and again, no one of us is capable on his own of attaining such a vision and such bliss.130 It sometimes does seem, however (e.g., I, Q. 23, Rep. Obj. 3), that Thomas suggests that a few may be endowed, by nature, with the capacity (without the aid of Scriptural revelation) to have somehow the vision of God required for the attainment of the highest bliss.131 But it seems more clearly indicated elsewhere (e.g., I, Q. 12) that this natural ability to reason about or to God is severely limited. Thus, Thomas’s manifest teaching is that the natural reason cannot lead human beings to see what the Trinity is like, or perhaps even to see that it is. And he warns that it may undermine faith for believers to try to establish by reason matters which simply cannot be established that way.132 However all this may be, the basic question I have just referred to is not this one but a related one. Is man naturally aware that more is needed for the happiness he yearns for—the happiness he naturally yearns for—that more is needed for this than can be gotten by the use of his natural powers alone? Thomas sometimes seems on the verge of suggesting, as in Article 4 of Question 91 of the Treatise on Law, that human beings do naturally yearn for that bliss, for a bliss which can come only through biblical revelation.133 This would mean that the more astute classical thinkers were, or could have been, aware (albeit in a melancholy manner?) of a natural desire for something more than was attainable by them through philosophy or through an eminently virtuous way of life. Such a natural yearning would also mean, among other things, that since nature provides nothing in vain, nature itself points to that divine order of things described in biblical revelation. Is there such a natural yearning? Is it a

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natural desire, or is it the result of a faulty imagination, a misguided imagination which has been permitted to make too much of the natural desire for selfpreservation and which does not recognize that personal preservation without a body raises serious difficulties for the possibility of a soul capable of enjoying any bliss? Thus, reincarnation—a return of the soul to a body (whether to a series of bodies or to a resurrected body)—raises questions about whether the self one is most likely to be concerned about (that is, one’s own) truly endures. Besides, one might wonder, are the revelations offered mankind—revelations which provide assurances and guidance with respect to these matters—are such revelations clearly beyond the natural powers of human beings? What are the ultimate sources of such teachings? Indeed, what is the ultimate source of the arguments Thomas himself makes about the nature of faith and of revelation? The faith that he invokes again and again depends (he says) not on reasoning but on authority, an authority which is made available to the human race because of the grace of God. Thomas’s insistence here upon authority as decisive again reminds us of something which is vital to law. To speak as he does of “natural law,” rather than of “natural right,” is to invoke authority once again—and, by doing so, he points in still another way to God and the faith necessary if one is to approach God fully. That is, Thomas reminds his readers that something more is needed if human beings are to prosper, something more than the conclusions arrived at by even the most astute reasoning about the natural and the divine. Particularly to be guarded against, it would seem, are the self-sufficiency and perhaps even the pride that seem to characterize those who ground themselves in the natural-right teaching and in the philosophy which that teaching depends upon and which it can be said to serve.134 These remarks illuminate, I trust, key aspects, or at least assumptions, of the Treatise on Law. Perhaps they also suggest, if only implicitly, that one would do well to use in one’s inquiries here additional selections from Thomas Aquinas, selections which raise directly the questions about law, nature, and the relation of reason to revelation which I have touched upon here. Among the additional selections that might well be considered is the following from Thomas’s On Truth, which can be said to reveal him as philosopher more than as theologian, suggesting that a useful distinction might be drawn by Thomas himself between public teaching and private thought: Since justice is a kind of “rightness,” as Anselm teaches, or “equality,” as the Philosopher [Aristotle] teaches, the essential character of justice must depend first of all upon that in which there is first found the character of a rule according to which equality and correctness of justice is established in things. Now the will does not have the character of the first rule; it is rather a rule which itself has a rule, for it is directed by reason and the intellect. This is true not only in us but also in God, although in us the will is really distinct from the intellect. For this reason the will and

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its correctness are not the same thing. In God, however, the will is really identical with the intellect, and for this reason the correctness of His will is really the same as His will itself. Consequently the first thing upon which the essential character of all justice depends is the wisdom of the divine intellect, which constitutes things in their due proportion both to one another and to their cause. In this proportion the essential character of created justice consists. But to say that justice depends simply upon the will is to say that the divine will does not proceed according to the order of wisdom, and that is blasphemous.135

May not salutary ancient accents be heard here?

Chapter Five

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)136

A person will worship something—have no doubt about that. . . . [I]t behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming. —Ralph Waldo Emerson137

I There is so much to grasp—and yet so little time. All must be done here and now. We confront here in our own condition on this occasion a critical problem presented by Dante’s La Commedia: it is what happens in the course of one’s brief life (of some twenty-six thousand days, if one attains one’s allotted three score and ten years)—it is what happens in the course of a relatively brief life (it can be said) that matters to one for all eternity, just as all that matters for us, as readers of this poem, is what we can see within its one hundred cantos with their 14,233 lines. There may really be little to work with on most occasions, and yet much can be done with it. Certainly, much has been done with Dante’s Commedia, so much that there must be literally tons of commentaries on it. It may well be prudent simply to ignore most of them, however, just as one should expect one’s own commentary to do little more than to induce a few who happen upon it to return to the book itself. Even so, when one realizes (as, say, a sixty-year-old reader might) that Dante was dead by the time he was one’s age, one appreciates that some are infinitely better than others in making use of their talents, talents which, admittedly, may be by nature markedly superior to what most of us happen to have.138 35

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Dante’s story—of a trip through Hell (Inferno) and Purgatory (Purgatorio) and into Heaven (Paradiso)—first in the company of Virgil and thereafter in the company of Beatrice—Dante’s story is rich in detail, suggesting as it does much that has happened many times before among human beings, much that is now happening to those who have died, and much that will happen and be ever after. And yet, despite its account of much that has happened, is happening, and will happen—despite all this, the story is about a time, or about places, where nothing happens. Elapsed time does matter somewhat in Purgatory (so much so that there is sleeping and awakening, day by day), but the passage of time is incidental only to the situations of those in Purgatory. For, just as with those consigned to Hell or destined for Heaven, so with those moving through Purgatory, the essential things have been determined for and by them already at their deaths. Nothing essential “happens” to any of the dead; there is no unanticipated change—just as, it might be said, no essential change takes place in the movement from the caterpillar to the butterfly. Thus, the punishment of the condemned seems to be forever and unchanging, except perhaps for its perfection, and hence intensification, when souls are reunited with their bodies on the Day of Judgment. Death leads, therefore, to a recognition of what it is that the sinners have “always” suffered because of their sins and of what it is that the virtuous forever merit because of their virtues. Death, thus, seals one in one’s eternal condition, which may include a preliminary period of purgation, a period which, however long (and it can be, we are told, thousands of years long), is undertaken with a definite eventual emergence into Heaven in view. For those in need of purgation, it is only a matter of time, after which time will no longer run for them in Heaven, just as it does not run for those souls in Hell (except perhaps by reference to what is happening on earth among the still-living). Rewards and punishments, it is evident, are related to what the soul has decided to do and to be at a time when it could decide. The soul, it seems, needs to be in a body for it to be able to decide anything that matters. One may well wonder what the status of the body is either in the Inferno or in the Purgatorio: is it primarily a convenience for Dante and hence for us, so that we can “see” what happens to, what the condition is of, souls of a variety of constitutions? I have already likened the movement in Purgatory to that from caterpillar to butterfly. The condition of all souls at death could be likened to that of acorns, which have within them the oaks which they are destined to be. Thus, in Purgatory, a soul is not saved by learning and purgation; rather, it learns and is purged because it is already saved. Another analogy might be useful: it is, for the soul at death, like catching a train—the train one catches will take one along various routes; the decisive thing is to get on this train rather than on that one, and the only place to get on, with no prospect of getting off, is in the station. One might even say, therefore, that there is not even any sinning in Hell, so devoid is it of action. Of course, there is much there that does seem to be ugly, but would not sinning

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imply that those who are there can still choose, and hence could do otherwise, and thus could even act virtuously (and might thus still save themselves), if their wills were truly free? Indicative of the essential powerlessness of the dead is that those in Purgatory cannot do anything critical to speed up their purgation: one’s own prayers there do not help one; only someone on earth might move one along faster. One can hope, of course, that someone still living will think of one and try to intercede on one’s behalf. Otherwise, one must serve one’s time, unless one is so fortunate as to be able to take advantage of the rare opportunity offered when someone such as Dante visits Purgatory, someone who is destined to return to earth and who can be asked to carry requests to one’s survivors to pray for one. Thus, again and again, Dante is asked, while passing through Purgatory, to carry back to earth requests for intercession on behalf of penitents.139 If nothing truly changes among the dead, what then does Dante observe and report on? Primarily, it can be said, he sees what each sin means. (Perhaps the same can said about what each virtue means—but that is far less the emphasis, except to some extent in Heaven.) Each sin, then, is seen in terms of its punishment, in terms of its purgation, and somewhat in terms of the limitation it places on one in one’s relation to God in Heaven. Thus, the Inferno shows us what each sin does to us; the Purgatorio shows us what must be done to each sin to rid ourselves of it. It is significant that Virgil, a virtuous pagan, can accompany Dante through Hell and through much of Purgatory: what sins do to one, and what has to be done to sin-stained souls, a student of the subject may be able to figure out (as Dante the Poet did?) without the benefit of revelation. Even the nonbeliever can learn from all this, since he can at least learn what his vices consist of at the moment (whether or not anyone knows of them, whether or not anything awaits him after death). And, it can be added, both those who believe in a life after death and those who do not can agree that there is at death a vital change in one’s potentialities for control and change. They may even both agree that there can be no change in one’s “direction” after death: one is thereafter like a body in Newtonian motion, unable to change direction if not deflected by something (such as one’s repentance), and one evidently needs to be alive for that.140 The Inferno and the Purgatorio, then, both describe—that is, spell out the implications of—various sins, what follows from them if one does not repent and what follows from them (by way of purgation) if one does repent.141 Thus, the accounts of punishments and purgations are graphic versions of what routinely happens to the sinner, whether he is aware of it or not (and whether or not he “gets away with it”). Those who understand do not need this account. Something like Plato’s Republic, on the consequences to the soul of injustice and other vices, should suffice for them. Those who do not understand need the help of art to set them (or to keep them) straight.142 The consequences of vice, then, are to be reckoned with, whether or not there is, and whether or not one believes there is, a life after death. Whether there

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is such afterlife, the things one does here on earth are the only things one can ever choose to do—all else is records and consequences that cannot everafter be changed. Thus, our life here is the only arena or stage where one has free will, where chosen change is possible. Once one leaves earthly life, there is nothing which permits the “footing” or “friction” necessary for a change of direction or even a change of speed.143 In any event, whatever happens, one will never be able to change what one did do during the only life one has to live on earth; one’s life will always be what it was, with whatever implications and consequences that life may have built into it. Only human beings on earth, it can even be said, truly live.144 Death, then, is like taking a picture on film: development and printing of film are incidental to what was done when the shutter was snapped. In short, life after death can be no more than mere elaboration of all that has gone before in one’s life. There are, in the Commedia of Dante, dozens of vivid characters encountered by Dante and his companions. And yet, as I have argued, nothing essential happens in the course of this epic to any of them, with the possible exceptions of Dante the Pilgrim and Virgil, his guide. Why should these exceptions be noticed? Of course, Dante himself learns a great deal during his trip.145 But perhaps all that Dante learns is what is implied in what he knows from the outset, and hence not even he changes in the course of the trip.146 This learning, therefore, can be considered far more our learning than Dante’s. Still, do not both Dante and Virgil act, and hence change, in the course of their trip? Is not that implied by the fact that, on several occasions, one or the other or both of them can be criticized for what they do or say and can become embarrassed?147 If one can be ashamed of or can be chided for anything one does, as happens to both Dante and Virgil, it suggests that one could have acted otherwise!148 Elsewhere, too, there seem to be indications of free will still being available to Dante: thus, he can be turned to stone if he should look on Medusa.149 It is Dante himself, as someone who both acts and is acted upon, with whom we shall be primarily concerned here. La Divina Commedia has long been recognized as one of the great travel stories of the West, a story which draws on the odysseys described by Homer and Virgil, and which in turn influenced the travelogues of artists such as Jonathan Swift and James Joyce.150 Among the greatest travel stories, Dante’s may be unique in that the artist and the traveler bear the same name. The relation of the artist to traveler, and hence the nature of art itself, will be considered here. Dante the traveler and Dante the artist are, then, our immediate concerns.

II Dante the Pilgrim is aware, of course, that he is a privileged character. Throughout his journey, he is recognized as unique in that he, alone of all the characters

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described, still has a body—and this is marveled at again and again. Indeed, at the outset, Charon resists taking him on his boat for the fateful crossing, until he is informed by Virgil that the authority for Dante’s passage comes from where will and power are one.151 Dante himself can say, in the Purgatorio, that God wills that Dante “see His court in a way quite strange to modern use.”152 And in the Paradiso, Beatrice says of Dante, as a privileged visitor, that it is “by God’s grace [that] this man has foretaste” of things ordinarily reserved only for those who have died and gone to Heaven.153 He is also said by her to have a “measureless craving” for such things.154 So privileged is Dante, we see, that he can be tested with respect to his faith by St. Peter himself.155 It is because Dante is of a particular time and place, and will eventually “report back” to readers of the time and place from which he had come, that he encounters the people he does during his trip. Thus, he can be told (in Heaven) about those whom he has met throughout, that he has been shown “only souls that are known to fame; because the mind of one who hears will not pause or fix its faith for an example that has its roots unknown or hidden or for other proof that is not manifest.”156 Most of his readers, it seems, could have been expected to recognize most of the one hundred or so people introduced by name in the Inferno alone. Does Dante, by making the Pilgrim someone of his name, make it easier to bring his family, friends, and enemies into the story? Does this make it all more “personal” and hence more interesting, as well as more “political”?157 Since it is the trip of this man, Dante becomes well known to us—and we do become interested in him.158 We are drawn to Dante himself, as someone vital, human, and distinctive: we are intrigued by him, his associations, enmities, and friendships, all of which appear to us as reliable samples of what mankind is like. The requirements of good storytelling encouraged Dante to provide as his “hero” someone we can identify, someone we can take an interest in. But it is not storytelling alone which brings an individual to the fore and permits Dante to make a convincing use of mundane particulars.159 There is also what has been called “the scandal of individuality” long associated with Christianity itself.160 Individuality may be rooted in the imperfections which result from any material working of nature (however perfect nature may be in the end at which it aims).161 But even if imperfections may be reflected in, or make possible, individuality, is it not individuality which makes personal immortality something that can be taken seriously? Do not the body, and the associations of embodied souls with one another, make individuals and communities distinctive?162 Thus, Dante can be very much interested in what his great-grandfather can tell him (when they meet in Heaven) about ancient Florence: cities, like people, have individual characters and can come to mean something special to those accustomed to them.163 Thus, personal immorality depends on the particular, which is related to an emphasis on the here and now: it is these which define or identify me.164 One

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alternative, which seems to be unacceptable to Christian orthodoxy, is the notion that human souls participate passively in “an impersonal universal mind,” a participation which seems to leave to the thinking soul no life and immortality of its own.165 The relation between individuality and immortality is further indicated by what is said in the Paradiso166 about the desire of souls for their bodies—“not perhaps for themselves alone, but for their mothers, for their fathers, and for the others who were dear before they became eternal flames.”167 Once one recovers one’s body, one will be more nearly complete. This can mean an intensification of pains as well as of pleasures.168 Thus, it can be said, the artist as artist makes much of individuality, of the particular, of the concrete. It is by loving attention to details that the artist provides his distinctive glimpse into the very nature of things. It is this that Dante does by presenting his cosmic survey of the Christian universe through the soul—that is, through the eyes, mind, and heart—of an identifiable pilgrim, or traveler, someone who does bear the same name as the artist.

III What, then, is the relation between this artist and this traveler?169 The artist, we suggest, is in significant respects superior to the traveler. After all, this is a traveler who can become so infuriated with a soul he encounters immobilized in the ice at the bottom of Hell that he can tear out its hair by the handful.170 This can be vividly depicted by an artist sitting in his study in sunny Italy! That is, the traveler is exhibited as succumbing to questionable passions that the artist cannot, at least at the moment, truly have. In addition, the artist may notice various things that the traveler does not, perhaps cannot, notice. The traveler, on the other hand, may be in some respects superior to the artist describing his travels. Not only may the traveler have been selected for special consideration by divine powers. He may also experience things that the artist cannot describe, and this is several times said to happen in the course of Dante’s Commedia.171 “Dante” the Pilgrim is a product of the artist’s imagination; so is “Beatrice,” to a considerable extent. There is no recognition, at least on the surface of the work, of the fact that the historical Beatrice had been married.172 It might be useful to notice some of the differences between the artist and the traveler, perhaps contributing thereby to our grasp of how Dante understands things, especially if we can suggest why the artist wants the traveler to appear this way rather than that. The importance of Dante the Pilgrim is reinforced, in the closing cantos of the Commedia, by the exalted placement of Lucy, the woman who had first moved to save Dante from destruction.173 In this sense, it would appear, the traveler is

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more important than the artist. But, it would also appear, it is a traveler who interests divine authority because of his talent. We are told as well that St. Bernard prayed that Dante would hereafter keep his affections pure, once he had been granted so great a vision as was made available to him in Heaven.174 Who, then, is this traveler? He can be depicted as fearful, proud, angry, with experiences of lust in his background.175 Is the character presented thus primarily as a means of showing what Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven are like? Or is the artist primarily interested in what such a character is like, particularly against the backdrop of Christianity?176 Dante the Pilgrim tends to be humble or, at least, aware that he should be humble. Thus, he can explain his reluctance to accompany the Virgil sent by Beatrice to fetch him, “I am not Aeneas, I am not Paul.”177 As a traveler, he is careful in his use of language—for example, in the ways that he addresses Virgil on various occasions, or in the way he addresses St. Peter in Heaven. Even so, he continues to take seriously, among the dead and even in the presence of the most exalted personages (including popes), the personal and political life he had enjoyed on earth.178 The struggles he had endured there continue to matter: he remains very much a Florentine, interested in the fortunes of his city and of his cause. The traveler can at times be depicted as mean-spirited,179 as deceptive or cunning,180 and again and again as capable of doing things worthy of rebuke and productive of shame.181 The traveler reveals, by his responses, his sympathy with various penitents in Purgatory, responses which suggest that he has shared their particular sins (but not suggesting that he understands how much and why he is now moved as he is).182 In the Inferno, we see him swoon, without explicitly explaining why, upon hearing the love story (or lust story) of Paolo and Francesca.183 In the Purgatorio, it has been suggested, he reveals by his agony his own youthful sins.184 Thus, he is particularly touched by the treatment there of anger, an ugly sample of which could be seen down on the ice in Hell.185 A question has been raised as to why so much space is devoted to the sin of barratry in the Inferno.186 Because, it has been suggested, of a charge, a probably false charge, of barratry once lodged against Dante himself in Florence.187 The traveler can be shown to make too much of family pride, a shortcoming which Beatrice finds amusing, and which, it would seem, the artist appreciates more than the traveler himself.188 Is it the artist or the traveler whose family pretensions must be curbed here? An editor speaks only of the artist. Is he not mistaken?189 This editor also speaks of the faith of Dante deepening over the years.190 Certainly, the artist can depict the traveler as someone of whom it can be said in Purgatory that it is evident that he will reign with the righteous after his death.191 The artist can also depict the traveler as experiencing increasing joy as he approaches God. But in this respect, at least, the experience of the artist and that

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of the traveler can be quite different, and not only because the parts of a great poem or play may not be written in the order they are finally presented. After all, did not the artist probably have a sense of the whole of his poem from the beginning, something that the traveler (who is lost and distressed at the outset) cannot have? Must the artist “forget” the vision of God toward which he is building as he presents the many low things that his traveler must first encounter? Are not the travails and pains of the lower levels difficult to take seriously, or fully, if one recalls the ecstasy that awaits one? In short, the artist has (from the beginning) already been where the traveler is going.192 Another way of putting all this is to ask whether someone as subtle and disciplined as this artist, in presenting various opinions, is likely to be someone who is susceptible to the sometimes unattractive passions that the traveler is swept by. Of course, some might say, the artist does not really see those passions—not even the hair-pulling exhibition193—as unattractive. Indeed, it might be said, the artist is not substantially more subtle than the traveler himself. But, it should be remembered, the artist is someone who was once accused of heresy, suggesting the possibility that he may not fully agree with everything he is obliged, for one reason or another, to subscribe to.194 At the very least, we are encouraged to probe even further into the mind not only of the traveler but also of the artist who depicts these travels. IV It is a mind—this mind of our artist—which is capable of feats of organization of which the traveler is not shown to exhibit any awareness.195 That the Commedia is well organized has long been apparent to its readers. The fact that there are one hundred cantos altogether (thirty-four, thirty-three, and thirty-three) is too obvious to be ignored even by those who like to consider poets as carried along entirely by inspiration.196 Scholars have noticed the meticulous arrangements both of the sins to be punished or to be purged and of the blessed in Heaven. It has also been noticed that each of the three parts of the poem ends with the word “stars.”197 It has been noticed as well, in the words of one conscientious editor, It is a part of the studied coherence of Dante’s narrative that he entered Hell, the place of despair, at nightfall—, he came forth at the foot of Purgatory, the place of hope, and entered its gate, and reached the Earthly Paradise, in the early morning of three successive days—, and now at noon he rises with Beatrice into the heavens, the place of fulfillment; and it is plain, though here he makes no reference to it, that he intended these times to correspond with the death of Christ and His descent into Hell on the evening of Good Friday, His resurrection on the morning of the first day of the week, and His ascension, according to the accepted tradition, at noon.198

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Notice further what is said here by this editor, that these correspondences are plain, even though Dante “makes no reference” to them. Furthermore, editors can notice that the circle of the slothful is unique among the circles of Purgatory in that no prayer or office of the Church is to be found: “no reader of Dante will suppose the omission to be accidental,” one editor observes.199 This omission, we notice, is in that circle where everyone is rushing about all the time, purging thereby the earthly slothfulness of the penitents found there. Many other things have been noticed by editors. I mention here only a few more, if only to lay the groundwork for my own suggestions (which I would not presume to make without establishing that I am not the first to notice how carefully Dante has done his work). It has been noticed, for example, that there are curious correspondences between parallel lines in various cantos,200 that the poet has used acrostics to make a point,201 that cryptic numbers have been used (as by Beatrice in predicting the liberator of Italy),202 and that the poet has taken considerable pains in presenting his materials in the order he does.203 Finally, scholars have noticed that the seat of Dis is at the central point of the universe,204 that at the center of the central canto of the Paradiso, the narrator praises his benefactor.205 It is no wonder, then, that it can be said (in the Inferno), that wisdom supreme has great art.206 What is not said is something else which must also be true, that Dante must have enjoyed himself hugely putting together as he did, and in a much more playful manner than usually seems to be appreciated, the intricate arrangements that he did.207 There are, of course, other patterns that have not been noticed—or rather, have not been noticed in the meager sampling I have been able to make of the vast literature on Dante. I warm up to my task here by noticing that in the twenty-sixth canto in each of the three parts of the Commedia much is made of fire in connection with the parties involved, and that Ulysses is featured there in Hell and Adam in Heaven.208 I, for one, should like to know how many such correspondences there are, and what they point to, throughout the Commedia. I mention also, by way of warm-up, that the only canto which I have noticed to have its number mentioned in the text, canto XX of the Inferno, is the very one in which the sin of divining is dealt with (that sin in which the occult significance of numbers can be made much of, in an improper fashion).209 We now propose to notice less fanciful patterns that can be found in the Commedia. We are told in canto IV of the Inferno of those released by Christ during the Harrowing of Hell210: those released are mentioned in the chronological order of their appearance in the Old Testament; at least, that is the way the list begins, but there is a critical departure (and others later), in that Moses precedes Abraham. Does this cautiously point to Moses as the true founder of the people of Israel?211 I continue. We notice that there are forty-one virtuous pagans identified in canto IV of the Inferno. Central to them, of course, is Aristotle, “the master of them that know.”212

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Perhaps a few words should be said as well about that which is central to the work as a whole. There may be various ways of talking about this. The central cantos of the entire Commedia are those dealing with the purgation of anger, something which may be particularly fitting considering what the artist knows about the propensities of the traveler he is following.213 The central line of the entire comedy214 finds the traveler in the fourth terrace of the Mount of Purgatory: there has just been a “review” of the three sins below; now he goes on to the sin dealt with on this terrace (that of sloth, which makes too much of rest?) and then to the three sins above. Thus, this is the transition from below to above, in which the emphasis is upon intention and the mistaken pursuit of something good. But perhaps even more instructive are the central lines of each of the three parts of the Commedia. The central lines of the Inferno show a demon smiting a sinner and saying, “Off, panderer! here are no women [for you] to coin.”215 The central line of the Purgatorio observes that genuine love can never turn its face from the welfare of its subject.216 And the central lines of the Paradiso speak of heroic virtue which appears in a disregard both of wealth and of toil.217 Thus, we move from love which is transformed into money through love which looks out for the wealth of its subject to someone who was not diverted from virtue by money or toil. The culminating hero here is not a parasite, unlike the panderer, who allows someone else to toil for him. After the panderer is smitten, Dante returns to his escort, Virgil. Are we not taught by this arrangement that if love, which naturally tends to the good, is allowed to have full sway, things will be rightly ruled—that is, if love is properly guided? The problem remains, however, whether guidance with respect to love comes best from pagan guides or from Christian ones? Does Christianity, in making as much as it does of love, perhaps make too much of it?218 In any event, at the center of the Inferno is perhaps the basest kind of sinner, someone who perverts love to the making of money. To what extent, and in what way, may Christianity itself be responsible for this?219 We notice this question as we conclude our consideration of these patterns, at least for the moment, by moving from the broad canvas (of the entire Commedia) to a much more modest picture, the presentation for our instruction in the Purgatorio, of various instances of avarice: We recall then Pygmalion, whom ravenous lust for gold made traitor and thief and parricide, and the misery of the avaricious Midas which followed on his inordinate demand that must always be a thing for laughter; each then remembers the foolish Achan, how he stole the spoils, so that the wrath of Joshua seems to sting him here again; then we accuse Sapphira with her husband; we celebrate the kicks that Heliodorus bore; and in infamy the name of Polymnestor, who slew Polydoros, circles all the mountain; last, the cry is: “Tell us, Crassus, for thou knowest, what is the taste of gold?”220

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There are here seven instances of avarice. It becomes clear, upon the most perfunctory inspection, that this listing is carefully ordered, since the first and second instances here are pagan, the third, fourth, and fifth are biblical, and the sixth and seventh are again pagan. Furthermore, the central ones, which are biblical, are distributed thus between the Old Testament and the New Testament: the third is Old Testament, the fourth is New Testament, and the fifth is Old Testament. Central to the entire array is the one New Testament example: indeed, it can be said that at the heart of this attack on avarice is a Christian woman. Is this not the only woman in the list? Certainly, the artist could have used Ananias, the woman’s husband (who is referred to, but not by name), instead of Sapphira (who is far less familiar to us). By the use of the woman’s name, is the artist inducing us to notice that the woman is being “reached for” by him? Consider what is suggested here, and elsewhere, about the relation of women to Christianity. Counters to this fallen woman are, of course, the Virgin Mary, Lucy, and Beatrice (with the Virgin known as the second Eve). Is Christianity, in some critical respect, more a woman’s religion than either paganism or Judaism?221 Is this related to its considerable emphasis on love? And is not avarice intimately related to love (to a desire to possess)? In any event, consideration of avarice introduces the three sins (avarice, gluttony, and lust) which are presented as perversions of love. Such then are samples of patterns which the reader of the Commedia might notice but which the traveler reported on might not be able to take heed of. We have been exploring the works of the mind of the artist, indicating in the process not only how he might differ from the traveler he portrays but also what he might be suggesting about the doctrines he is depicting. We return now to a consideration of the artist himself.

V One key to an artist may be his pride. It was not mere perversity on the part of James Joyce that he should have made Lucifer virtually the patron saint of Stephen Daedalus—Lucifer with his great pride.222 Indeed, there may be something radically un-Christian about art, at least as we know it—that is, as the work of particular minds. The pride of the artist is to be compared with the abject humility exhibited by Dante the traveler on several occasions. Thus, it can be again and again indicated that accursed pride is the origin of troubles.223 Even so, this pious traveler can keep asking others about the justice of the fate of the virtuous pagans. That is, the artist and the traveler do overlap in various matters. The limits of Dante’s art are noticed again and again. It is said on many occasions, we have noticed, that there are things seen by the traveler that the artist

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cannot describe.224 It is said of various things which are described that fancy could not have conceived of them.225 The limits of art are noticed in other ways as well. Thus, Dante can say that he does not have the harsh rhymes needed to describe some of the things he sees at the bottom of Hell.226 On the other hand, the artist remembers things (and records them) that the traveler later on seems to forget.227 More important, perhaps, as indicative of the claims of Dante’s art is that he can confidently correct august authorities or supply arcane information not otherwise available. Thus, Dante can have Adam provide data about his time in the Garden of Eden;228 he can choose an account by John over an account in Ezekiel;229 he can settle a longstanding dispute as to whether John ascended to heaven in his body;230 he can have Virgil speak after long silence and correct himself on various points found in his writings;231 he can settle a dispute between St. Dionysus and St. Gregory;232 he can correct Thomas Aquinas (his greatest teacher, in matters theological) on various points;233 and he can even provide an authoritative account of spots on the moon.234 Indeed, Dante is so much to be relied upon that he can be ordered by St. Peter himself to speak the truth fully when he returns to earth.235 Dante the Poet is very good—and he knows it. There are plenty of indications of that (just as there are of Beatrice’s beauty, of which she is explicitly aware!). Thus, Dante can place himself in the company of the five great poets of antiquity he meets in Limbo,236 and he can later have himself joined in speech (by another) with the two great marshals of the world (the poets Virgil and Statius).237 At one point, he does refuse to give his name when asked, saying that his name would not mean anything (yet) to the inquirer.238 But earlier, he had put his own name in the text, in code, even as he considers the nature of pride.239 Is not this cryptic use of his name, and the way he does regard himself, meant by him to be noticed and savored by a few such as himself? That he is aware of his pride, and of the problems that pride can lead to, are evident throughout the Commedia. Thus, in the context of his cryptic reference to himself as an artist of note, there is an artistic array in stone of thirteen famous examples of prideful people who were brought down. This is followed by praise of the sculptor who had fashioned these things. But, it should also be noticed, central to this array 240 is the only artist in the group of thirteen downcast prideful people—the weaver Arachne. Such playfulness with respect to pride is of course, not to take it as seriously, or at least in the same way, that the traveler and the typical Christian might. In a sense, indeed, Dante’s art can be seen as sovereign. This is perhaps reflected in the fact that his arrangements of the circles of Hell and of Heaven are not the same as God’s, in that Dante does not have as central to his accounts the circles that had been fashioned central by God.241 The sovereignty of art may be seen as well in such observations, as that at the very end of the Purgatorio, that he did have more to say about what he had seen but that “all the sheets prepared

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for the second cantica are full”; and, he says, “the curb of art does not let [him] go further.”242 This is a most remarkable statement, and not only because the preceding canto had been twenty lines longer than this one.243 The integrity of his art, Dante would have us notice, cannot be compromised even for the sake of describing everything that God and His agents have commissioned him to see and to report.244

VI We are encouraged by these remarks to move from Dante as artist to Dante as thinker (insofar as these can be usefully distinguished). We should consider, among other things, what Dante himself actually thought of revelation and of his faith, what he thought of nature and of chance, and what he thought of the status of the pagan legacy (including the mythology) upon which he so much depends. These questions are related, of course, to one another, and all of them are ways of asking how Dante did differ, if at all, from the virtuous pagans of intellectual distinction he so much admired.245 These questions lead to a further inquiry, as to how Dante regarded Christianity. Certainly, he recognized that it is something that he must conform to, even as he insists upon the separate and at least equal place for the political order of his place and time. Otherwise, he can be understood as indicating, one must have recourse to the kind of remedy that another great Florentine resorted to two centuries later in redefining the relations of church and state.246 Critical to these questions is an examination of just how the traditional virtues (moral, political, and intellectual) are to be seen in the light of Christian doctrines. This would require, among other things, a reconsideration of just who is in Hell and where, as well as the ordering of the blessed in Heaven. These questions, for their proper consideration, should include an examination of the various indications in the Commedia of the natural anticipations, in antiquity and in the human soul, of Christianity. 247 The theologian must proceed cautiously here: nature must provide some opening to Christianity: otherwise, revelation could not be noticed, received, and assimilated at all. But if nature provides too much of an opening, it also leaves room for the argument that the revelations human beings depend upon are little more than the products of the natural reason (including the poetic imagination) of mankind.248

VII These are all questions, however, not peculiar to Dante—and so we can leave extended considerations of chance, nature, and revelation for another venue.249

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Also not peculiar to Dante is the question of what the proper relation is between the artist and the philosopher. Indeed, there is, we have been told, an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry.250 Philosophers, we know, often dramatize the things they investigate, even as they insist that art should be subordinated to the common good. Poets, we also know, attempt to provide us comprehensive descriptions of universal truths, at least as manifested in particulars. Be that as it may, does not the philosophic element in Dante, including a strain of philosophic skepticism, guide the artist in him?251 Certainly, to examine his work as we have begun to do here is to search for, or at least to presuppose, the philosophic foundations of his great poem, even as we acknowledge his remarkable artistic accomplishment. We as travelers ourselves—spiritual travelers, so to speak—can be instructed and moved as is Dante the Pilgrim in the La Divina Commedia. And we, as would-be thinkers, have to see more than the traveler does. Are we not intended, and helped, by this artist to do so? These have been, as I have said, questions for another time—that is to say, for all times.252

ADDENDUM: THE GREAT MARSHAL OF THE WORLD253 Because thou dost again fix thy mind merely on things of earth, thou drawest darkness from true light. —Dante

I The immediate objective of man’s ascent of the Mount of Purgatory is the Earthly Paradise, the Garden of Eden. The earthly life in the Garden of Eden, forfeited upon man’s Fall, must be recovered before the even higher life of Heaven is possible. It is this struggle to regain the Earthly Paradise that is described in the Purgatory. This is the process of purgation, or recovery from the Fall. II It was by an act of free will that man fell from the Earthly Paradise. By doing so, he embarked upon a career of sin against God. With each sin, his debt increases and ever more purgation is necessary before the soul can be whole again. The main purpose of the Purgatory is to describe the way provided by God for man to recover that original virtue which was lost in the Garden of Eden, to repair the damage caused by sin. The retributive suffering undergone by the penitent is designed both to make him whole and to satisfy a violated moral order.

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By his act of free will, man lost that wholeness in which true freedom is found. Free will he retained, but the defects of his will and appetites are such as to lead him to misuse that freedom. The more he sins, the more defective he becomes. Only through an act of divine grace is man permitted an opportunity to save himself, an opportunity to use what remains of his freedom to save himself, from the eternal deprivations of Hell. Those who by their conduct on earth take advantage of this opportunity begin after death the climb to freedom and peace. They recognize the justice and love of God in the extended purgation to which they are exposed, a purgation that they eagerly endure. It is the consciousness by the penitents of God and of the divine regard for them that determines the difference between Purgatory and Hell. Without this recognition of the divine order all pain would be torment; with it, suffering becomes corrective and purifying. It is sin, not punishment, that the penitent wants and needs to be relieved of. Freedom comes only with moral purity, with the burning away of all impurities and the filling of the void caused by sin with the being of goodness. This freedom, even though it is an eventual certainty for the penitent, is something that has to be striven for. The beginning of this freedom is seen in the eager desire of the soul for what it must endure. The souls are rushed along, kept to their purpose despite all distractions and temptations. The task of salvation is an absorbing one, requiring the complete devotion to it of one’s being. To be free, the sinful soul must learn the truth. He must realize just what his sin means. Unlike the soul in Hell, the penitent is taught the nature of his sins: all of the imagery depicting his activities emphasizes this learning process. The result, after much toil assisted by grace, is the Earthly Paradise. But the process may not be completed yet. Now that increased knowledge is possessed, the keenest sense of sin can be experienced. This comes when the penitent soul first gazes upon perfect righteousness. The extent of his sinfulness, of the awfulness of his errors, becomes most bitterly apparent to him. The soul can become really free of his sin—can become truly whole again— only by having removed from his memory all consciousness of prior imperfection. Otherwise, he would always be to that extent incomplete. After this obliteration of a sinful past, there is renovation of the soul. Now the penitent is a complete man, both capable only of good and free from all sin and defects. Having been tested on earth, and having been cleansed on the Mount of Purgatory, he stands in full command of himself, free for eternity of corruption and deprivation. He has attained a freedom even greater than that of the first man—for now he cannot fall. Justice and love have combined to make freedom complete. III There are, in the Commedia, two parallel arguments. We have just seen, stripped of imagery, that part of one of the arguments which is set forth in the Purgatory.

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It is through the imagery of the poem that the more formal argument is given a depth and life that mere statement of the operations of sin and purgation would not provide. In fact, imagery is to the argument what grace is to reason. The entire poem is, in one sense, an image—a grand image of the fall, purgation, and redemption of man. There is nothing essential in the poem—about the effects of sin and love, of virtue and error—that Dante does not know when he is lost, in the opening canto of the Inferno, in the middle of a dark wood. Yet there is nothing that he does know. He is lost. The recipient of an act of grace, he is to be led through experiences which are to give meaning to what he somehow already knows. The bare bones of the story, of Dante’s ascent and of the penitents he meets, provide in the Purgatory the second argument we have referred to. This is an argument intimately welded to the imagery of the poem. In fact, from the nature of the poem, this argument is also imagery. Just as the entire Commedia is an image, so is the Purgatory an image, an image of the ascent of the soul to freedom. We see here the imagery of an allegory. We state again, therefore, the argument so far as it bears upon Dante’s concept of freedom. To state the argument in this sense is to set forth much of the imagery. Dante and Virgil cross “a sea so cruel,” leaving behind the sulfurous gloom of Hell. A clear sky awaits them. So does Cato, the embodiment of citizen virtue and an earthly sacrifice to the cause of freedom. Before the travelers can proceed, Cato instructs them, the filth of Hell must be washed from Dante’s face. As they proceed, Virgil has to do repeatedly what he rarely did in Hell—ask for advice as to which way to go: “We are strangers even as ye are.”254 As the ascent begins, Dante meets Manfred, who is destined for purgation even though he died excommunicated.255 Further along, Belacqua informs Dante that the angel guarding the entrance of Purgatory proper does not permit souls to proceed to their penitence until the time is ripe for them.256 The two poets are also informed that they cannot ascend by night, only by the light of the sun.257 That night, which they spend in Ante-Purgatory, angels from Mary’s bosom come to drive off the serpent who tries to approach the resting penitents.258 The following day, Dante and Virgil having been admitted to Purgatory, they see scenes illustrative of humility carved on the mountain sides on the first terrace. It is at this level that the proud are to be found, bent over double with heavy stones on their backs.259 They come next upon the envious with their eyelids stitched shut.260 On the third terrace, they encounter “a smoke, dark as night, rolling toward [them], nor any room was there to escape from it.” These are the fumes of wrath which, we are told, are worse than the gloom of Hell.261 It is by a penitent concealed within the smoke that they are instructed on Free Will.262 That night, as they rest on the next terrace, Virgil continues Dante’s instruction, answering questions as to the definition and nature of love. Dante is dropping off

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into a contented slumber when he is awakened by the rush of the slothful, who race by shouting slogans extolling the virtues of speed.263 On the fifth terrace the poets encounter, the following morning, the avaricious who lie still on the ground, facing downward.264 Later that day, the Mount shakes, the signal that another soul finds itself cleansed and hence prepared to enter the Earthly Paradise. This, it turns out, is the soul of another poet, Statius, who is to accompany Dante and Virgil for the remainder of the ascent in Purgatory.265 The three poets proceed through the sixth terrace where the emaciated gluttons “sanctify themselves again in hunger and thirst, for having followed appetite to excess.”266 Finally, we see the incontinent, immersed in a mass of flame.267 It is this wall of flame that a very apprehensive Dante and his companions walk through to enter the Earthly Paradise.268 After a night’s rest, Virgil relinquishes his charge over Dante, speaking to him for the last time, “I do crown and mitre thee over thyself.”269 It is in the Earthly Paradise that Dante is reunited with Beatrice and is brought to repent for “pursuing false visions of good.”270 Thereupon, his “sad memories,” the recollection of all his sins, are washed away in the river Lethe.271 After drinking of the river Eunoe, he returns from the sweet draught, “born again, even as new trees renewed with new foliage, pure and ready to mount to the stars.”272 IV The imagery by which Dante’s concept of freedom is expounded is, with the exception of the final image of the Purgatory, the imagery of man’s attempt to attain that freedom, not of freedom itself. Our analysis of both argument and imagery follows. There is indicated throughout the Purgatory the inadequacy of human reason. That reason, which served as a guide through Hell, is often inadequate in Purgatory. Virgil must inquire at almost every turn the path they must take. No penitent, furthermore, can move up the Mount of Purgatory at night. There must be light from above to give them strength and direction. One of the principal differences between the images of this cantica and that of the Inferno is that there is here an abundance of light. The sun, the dazzling appearance of the angels, the polished surfaces and clear skies all reflect the heavenly light provided for guidance of the penitents. Nevertheless, some of the crucial statements of this cantica, those of Virgil on love, are made at night as the pilgrims rest from the labors of the day. Love, Dante is told, is the seed of every virtue in man, and of every deed that deserves punishment.273 The doctrine set forth by Virgil, Aristotelian in character, is something that unaided human reason can grasp. The statutes of the doctrine of free will, however, are ambiguous—the instruction comes by day, but out of

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the terribly gloomy smoke of the wrathful. Related to this ambiguity of source may be the inability of Virgil to give, anywhere in the entire poem, a completely satisfactory justification for the confinement of the eminent pagans “in the first circle of the dark prison.”274 Human reason, it would seem, must try again to justify the fate of the virtuous pagans. In any event, Virgil recognizes his limitations, warning Dante, Mad is he who hopes that our reason may compass that infinitude which one substance in three person fills.275

We would expect, therefore, that the concept of freedom developed throughout the Purgatory would not be simply that worldly concept with which human reason has supplied us. The freedom toward which the penitents climb cannot be attained before their souls are purged completely of earthly sin. For there is included in the concept of freedom a wholeness in which sin can have no part. The eagerness of the souls in Purgatory to endure all they can contrasts sharply with the despair of Hell. An angel must hold souls back from premature purgation;276 it is remarked with wonder that one hears songs upon proceeding from one circle to another, while in Hell only fierce wailings strike the ears.277 That which would ordinarily be called “pain” is transformed into “solace.” And we see throughout the care that the penitents take to continue this painful solace even while they talk to Dante.278 The purpose of the purgation is two-fold: to right the offended moral order and to repair the damage in the souls of the penitents. The penitents are made to understand, both by the instruction provided them and by the penance prescribed for them, the nature of the sins they have committed. When understanding and expiation are complete, they are ready to enter the Earthly Paradise. Purgatorial, as distinguished from earthly, freedom is seen in the intense devotion of the penitents to the task of purgation. The will of the penitents is always to climb; the Earthly Paradise, it can be understood, is more than sufficient as the object of that will. What keeps them to their task, however, is “that desire . . . which divine justice sets, counter to will, toward the penalty.”279 This is the Mount “where justice probes us.”280 Any soul that is privileged to be directly exposed to divine justice cannot but desire to do what is just. The good, which even the worst men on earth always desire, is overwhelmingly apparent and attractive in Purgatory. Temptation to further sin is vigorously kept from the penitents.281 And so they freely choose the remaining alternative, having been penetrated by God “with desire to behold Him.”282 When once purged, the soul can take his pleasure for guide. Reason is no longer necessary to counsel him with respect to competing desires. The will has become “free, upright and whole.”283 That sweet fruit, the highest good which all men seek, is in the Earthly Paradise overwhelmingly apparent to all.284 This is the fruit which gives peace to man’s hungering.285

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The theme of peace, resulting from true freedom, runs throughout the Purgatory. This is the peace of complete fulfillment. Dante tells us that he has pursued peace from world to world.286 The freedom, which makes peace possible, begins with separation from the mortal body.287 It is perfected by the purgation, obliteration of “sad memories,” and rejuvenation which leave the soul eternally complete. The closing image of the Purgatory, of “the new trees renewed with their new foliage,” is the only visual representation of that state of complete freedom toward which the penitent ascends. The soul is new, yet it is renewed; it is the same person, but that which made it that person has been transformed. The soul has attained the fullness for which it was ordained. It is now free of imperfection, free to be itself. V Virgil has, by this time, returned to his conversations with the ancient poets and philosophers. It was from this pursuit that he had been summoned to accompany Dante. No doubt, it is because he is qualified for such conversations that he can play the role he does in the central part of the Purgatory, where we find the triad of cantos about freedom and love. The smoke-enclosed penitent, Marco Lombardo, insists that “not heaven, but man causes things.”288 Otherwise, he argues, there could be no free will. Heaven may set the impulses and prime will in motion, “but a light is given you to know good and evil.” And it is the good that man always aims at. Love, Virgil instructs Dante that evening, moves every creature. But there is in man an innate freedom to perceive and choose between good and evil loves. Otherwise, “it were not just to have joy for good and mourning for evil.”289 “The simple, tender soul,” Marco Lombardo explains, needs guidance lest it be misled by the savor of a trifling good into great sins: Wherefore ‘twas needful to put law as a curb, needful to have a ruler who might discern at least the tower of the true city. Laws there are, but who putteth his hand to them?290

If men on earth are to be properly led, there must be a separation of the spiritual and the worldly rules. The confusion of these two realms is what makes “the world . . . so wholly desert of every virtue.”291 The advocacy of this separateness in function is seen throughout the Commedia. The emphasis on it is particularly strong in this triad,292 which concludes with the slothful’s slogans drawn equally from both profane and sacred literature.293 It is also in this triad that the relation between spiritual and worldly freedom is most clearly expressed. The spiritual freedom of man is misused, as we have seen, partly because he is deprived of proper guidance. This is one result of the confusion of the spiritual and temporal functions. Another result is the loss of

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political freedom. Thus, Italy has become “a slave, hostel of woe, vessel without pilot in a mighty storm.”294 Political freedom is seen in the Purgatory in terms strikingly similar to those in which spiritual freedom is expressed. Freedom for Italy consists in conformity to a higher will, to the will of the leader who can make things whole, who can make his country the “mistress of provinces.”295 Until then, the cities will be “full of tyrants,” unable to enjoy peace.296 Dante’s political doctrines are significant enough to warrant recognition in the Earthly Paradise. Beatrice hints that there shall come a political Messiah to restore the proper relations of church and state and to purify them both. Italy, too, will become as “the new trees renewed with new foliage.”297 VI There is for Dante, we suggest, still another concept of freedom in addition to those of the spiritual and political realms. This is the freedom of the creator, of the poet who can order the world, of the man who knows. Even among the horrors of Hell, the earthly thirst of Ulysses for knowledge is worthy of admiration: “O brothers!” I said, “who through a hundred thousand dangers have reached the West, deny not, to this the brief vigil of your senses that remains, experience of the unpeopled world behind the Sun. Consider your origin: ye were not formed to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.”298

The merit of poets and poetry is seen throughout the poem. Dante is accompanied on his journey, first by Virgil, then by Statius. They seem to him “the two who were such great marshals of the world.”299 An angel, immediately thereafter, addresses them as “ye lone three.”300 Later Dante casually places himself, as an author, on the level of John and Ezekiel.301 Even in the circle of the penitential proud, he hears a prophecy of his worldly fame.302 So low had Dante sunk, Beatrice explains, “that all means for his salvation were already short, save showing him the lost people.”303 It is Dante who merits the opportunity thus to redeem and perfect himself, because it is he alone who can describe (for others in need of such guidance) the worlds of both the lost and the redeemed. VII Here, too, is that freedom of which we have seen images. Man as man is shown in his true grandeur as the poet ascends from canto to canto. Dante’s power is such that we almost forget that the waters of Lethe have no effect upon the Florentine.304

Chapter Six

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375)305

Speak the truth and shame the devil. —François Rabelais306

I The attentive reader cannot help but be challenged by Boccaccio’s array of ten Florentines, each telling a story on ten different days, with the topics for each day varying along with who is “ruler” for the day’s activity and what the order of the speakers is.307 One wonders, that is, what the principle of the ordering may be of these ten speakers and of the one hundred stories they tell. It is through that ordering, one suspects, that Boccaccio himself has much to say both about the people telling stories and about the stories they do tell. That is, Boccaccio’s own story may be primarily about the storytelling.308 Of course, the typical reader probably sees the stories as more or less haphazardly arranged, especially since many of them are so engaging in themselves as tales which stand alone, so much so that various of them have been removed by other artists and told elsewhere. And yet, an elementary alertness leads one to notice intriguing features about the arrangements described by Boccaccio. Thus, the sets of ten speakers are so arranged, on ten different occasions, that no day’s sequence is like any other day’s sequence. This does suggest randomness. Even so, intimations of orderliness may be glimpsed here and there. Take, for example, the distribution of the three male speakers among the seven female speakers. On the first day, the male speakers are the first, fourth, and seventh storytellers: that is, there are two female speakers following each male speaker. After the third male speaker (who is in the seventh slot for the first day), in the place where a male speaker could be expected (that is, after 55

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an intervening pair of female speakers), there is (in the tenth slot) Pampinea, the most “masculine” of the women—“masculine” in that she is not only the oldest of the females but also their leader and the one who first suggested both the expedition into the country and the telling of stories by each in turn.309 It is Pampinea, as well, who is ruler for the day at the outset of storytelling, and we once again notice, among the daily rulers, the principle of distribution found among the speakers of the first day. That is, after each male ruler (beginning the first day’s rule with Pampinea, as an honorary male, so to speak) there is a pair of female rulers before the next male ruler—with the result that there is a “male” ruler over the first, fourth, seventh, and tenth days of storytelling. After the first day of stories it is determined that one of the men (Dioneo) would be the last speaker each day, with the ruler for the day being the next-to-last speaker for the day (except, of course, for the day when Dioneo himself is ruler).310 The one hundred stories can remind us of the one hundred cantos in the La Divina Commedia of Dante, a poet whose work Boccaccio knew well. Others, too, have been reminded of this great predecessor of Boccaccio, so much so as to regard the Decameron as the human comedy. It should be evident to every reader of Dante’s Commedia (I have suggested) that it is meticulously organized311—and this, too, should induce us to wonder about Boccaccio’s organization.312 We have already noticed that much is made of ten.313 Are we thereby invited to reconsider the Ten Commandments (or the conventional virtues, the virtues ministered to by law)?314 And are we helped in such reconsideration by being shown, in so many of the stories, what the promptings and consequences of love may be? This suggests a possible juxtaposition of the lawful (or conventional) and the natural (at least so far as the natural is manifested in the erotic). Certainly, much is made of the erotic, and it is that, of course, which brings the typical reader to these stories, just as it is the erotic which brings the typical man to the family.315 Boccaccio further encourages us to think about the stories and their arrangements by observing that the names he has given to the women are appropriate to the character of each.316 Pampinea’s name (all-counseling) is well suited, it seems, to the guiding role she plays. The three men’s names seem appropriate as well: Pamfilo (all-loving), for the man most often indentified with Boccaccio himself; Dioneo (a name associated with Aphrodite),317 for the man who tells the bawdiest stories; and Filostrato (lover of strife), for the man who seems the most martial. It is indicated in the book that if one devotes one’s life to war, love is less likely to be understood.318 And so we are not surprised to notice that, during the day Filostrato rules (day 4), there are among the ten stories a number of accounts of the double deaths of lovers. (Filostrato does tell an amusing sexual story the next day, perhaps reacting to Dioneo’s criticism of the preceding day’s stories. He tells the story of the girl who holds a nightingale [V, 2].319 May this be related to an interest he may have in Filomena, whose name reminds one of

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the nightingale? On the sixth day, he can present a woman’s justification for not allowing excess sexuality to go to waste [VI, 5]. And on the seventh day, under Dioneo’s licentious rule, Filostrato can come up with the coarsest story [in VII, 2] since Dioneo’s “devil in hell” story on the third day [in III, 10]. Pamfilo, the other male, never descends so low.) Various stories told during Filostrato’s rule (more than on any other day) come to a disastrous close, with particular emphasis upon ill-starred love, so much so that Dioneo finds them pernicious and will not imitate them when his turn comes to speak.320 In a sense, then, Filostrato’s day, with its preponderance of morbid stories, is almost a new beginning for the series, reminding readers of the desolation in Florence because of the plague which had led to this party’s venturing out into the country and thereafter having recourse to storytelling.321 The devastation of the plague has broken down restraints, perhaps even promoting licentiousness, at least in speech. But it is not simply licentiousness for its own sake by which people are moved, but rather a yearning for that which love promises, a kind of self-preservation.322 Similarly, love can be seen as a counter to war.323 The resort to love can be seen then as a kind of reaffirmation of life. The context of these stories which feature extraordinary loving is a world in which there is extraordinary dying. But there are not only love stories, with an emphasis on sexuality; there is also a considerable amount of laughter. We can be reminded of the recent suggestion, “All art is laughter to relieve us from life’s griefs.”324 By the end of the ten days of storytelling (or two weeks in the country, for Fridays and Saturdays were kept free of these festivities), the party is ready to return to Florence, and no apprehension is expressed about the plague they had fled. It is almost as if the immersion in a century of stories of love and laughter has dissipated the power and fear of the plague, if not indeed of death generally.325 The emphasis upon love and love-making seems directly related to the fact that all this is due to the initiative of women. The three men are brought into the party because, it is said, men are needed if there is to be a proper rule over a community of women.326 And the love and blood ties among the seven women and the three men maintain public order in their relations to one another, it seems.327 It has been said that this is the first work of art, aside from individual poems, ever addressed to women. Whether that is so, Boccaccio does have to defend himself for ministering as he does to women.328 We do tend to regard love—at least serious love, especially as it eventuates into marriage—as more likely to be a female concern. (Would not a party of ten men have been likely to concern themselves more with stories of adventure than of love?) In a sense, of course, many of the stories are about efforts to break down the resistance of women to lovers, either the resistance in the stories themselves or the resistance among the ladies listening. But women do sense, by and large, that love is more important for them, to the extent it is, because it is the basis of marriage.329 In the stories of the fifth day (Fiammetta’s day), the first of

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the two central days, the nine stories (putting aside Dioneo’s concluding story) end in marriage—and this in a day when the theme is that of the good fortune which befalls lovers.330 Women, more than men, must conceal love within the bosom, even as they depend upon it.331 Is then the Decameron primarily for them, and for the female element in men? We should notice again that seventy of these one hundred stories are told by women. Perhaps this was one of the more astonishing features of these stories for many of Boccaccio’s readers, the suggestion that women do know such stories, that they have heard them somewhere and that they remember (perhaps even treasure) them. The circumstances attending the plague had liberated them to reveal and to share what they had long had. And this in turn prompts us to wonder how much love, and restraints upon love, matter to women, as well as to men, and of course to the community at large. Boccaccio pays a high compliment to his characters, men and women alike, in that he wants us to believe that they did have available to share among themselves a remarkable array of stories that, for the most part, continue to attract us, perhaps reflecting thereby the enduring character of the passions upon which these stories draw. We can now turn, having suggested the seriousness of Boccaccio’s lively storytelling, to a somewhat more detailed (but far from exhaustive) discussion of a half-dozen of the stories told in the Decameron. We can hope thereby to confirm what we suspect about the care with which all this has been done. That, in turn, can provide us incentive and guidance as we think about the work as a whole, reminding us once again of the care needed for, and the profit to be derived from, truly reading a book. The half-dozen stories we will look at are the first and the last, the shortest and the longest, and the two central stories (the fiftieth and fifty-first of the hundred).

II The first story of the Decameron is told by the oldest male under the supervision of the oldest female. It is the story of a thoroughgoing rascal who is mistaken, at death, for a saint and who is ever after revered as such. This elevation of a grand deceiver seems to fit in well as prelude to the array of gay stories to be told at a time when, even though the plague is not seen as a punishment, God does seem to have abandoned the human race. That is, things at large are not as they should be.332 Not only are things not as they should be but it also seems that one may know the good and yet choose the bad. That is, the dying rascal manages to pass himself off as saintly by so describing his life as to have had nothing but trivial faults, and few of them at that. He is well aware of what to include and of what to exclude (namely, virtually everything he personally ever did). One could argue,

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of course, that his reconstruction of his life is a kind of repudiation of what he had indeed done, perhaps even a form of repentance for that life. But he clearly does not intend this. Why then does he carry on as he does to his “confessor”? Partly for the sake of his hosts, in whose house he is dying, but even more for the sheer deviltry of it: he has always liked to deceive, and he cannot forego one last opportunity to do so, especially if he can continue to do so (as a supposed saint) after his death.333 However this may be, this man—“perhaps the worst man that ever was born”334—is not only recognized as a saint, but miracles and other good things are associated with his burial place and memory. Pamfilo begins his narration with a recognition of the power of the Maker of all: it does not matter to Him what this reputed saint was really like; what matters are the intentions of those who pray at the tomb of this man. It should at once be added that this is not an attack on the clergy, as such a story might be today. The alternative to this clergy is not “no clergy,” but rather another (and perhaps more vigilant) clergy.335 Besides, that this clergy was deceived was almost natural, for it is asked, “And who is there who would not have so believed, hearing him so speak at the point of death?”336 Thus, the first story told by the company in the Decameron reminds us that a deception (even if not well-intentioned) can have beneficent effects. Thus, although deception reigns, good can follow. Perhaps this is seen in art as well. Perhaps, that is, this is related to what Boccaccio as artist does in this book: the low (even the lascivious) is turned into the high by means of art; and because the low is seen as available in the book, various people are drawn to and elevated by the high who would not otherwise be exposed to it. Thus, good comes from bad in the Decameron, as from the plague and from the bogus saint. Such deception may be particularly needed if the most awful prospects of death are not to demoralize mankind. In any event, Boccaccio does have the hundred stories begin with one which reminds us that the ways of God may not necessarily be the ways of men, and that the artist, as divinely inspired deceiver, may indeed be in the service of the divine.337

III The shortest story told among the one hundred is provided, fittingly enough, by the youngest woman in the company, and this in her very first attempt. It is fitting, also, that she was not called upon to provide her story until the very end of the first day, followed as she is only by the ruler for the day. This young woman, Elissa (whose name may be derived from the Hebrew, connoting the “godlike”), turns out to rule one of the central days (the sixth day) on which stories are told: she is said to be naturally a little severe in manner.338

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Elissa has the distinction of being the only member of the company who never speaks later in the order than she had the day before, except of course for the day she is queen, when she speaks at the end (just before Dioneo). On the first day, hers is the ninth story from the beginning. Also hers is the ninth story from the end (X, 2), one in which a brigand manages to move an abbot and then the pope to his side. In this ninth story of the first day, Elissa recounts the succinct rebuke by a wronged woman who moves the feckless king of Cyprus to be much more severe than is his wont.339 This story is anticipated by the succinct remark which converts a miserly man into a generous man (I, 8). We can thus see, as quite appropriate, that the youngest storyteller followed the lead of her immediate predecessor, and thus she could be quite modestly brief. We can see as well that there is a conjunction in this story of form and matter: not only does the youngest narrator tell the shortest story, but the story itself turns around a particularly pithy rebuke.340 Critical to Elissa’s rebuke of the king was that the king was induced by her to see himself.341 It should come as no surprise then that Elissa’s own story, on the day she rules (VI, 9), should depend upon the assumption that, compared to the philosopher, the nonphilosophers are like dead men. Perhaps Elissa (of the ten storytellers) has the fewest stories in which sexual immorality is countenanced: on days 3, 7, and 9, with only the third one being without extenuating circumstances. But even this one (IX, 2) reminds of her first story in that a succinct remark saves the day. Is there a corruption of Elissa in the course of the ten days of storytelling, or only a useful (if not even natural) relaxation of her severity? In any event, the shortest story of the Decameron reminds us of how effective rhetoric can be, and how it can revive someone morally.342 Perhaps, it should be said, Boccaccio’s stories—which are, after all, perhaps among the first short stories in European literature—serve a similar rhetorical purpose for his readers.

IV The first of the two central stories of the one hundred (V, 50) is about how a husband (who is homosexual in his inclinations) deals efficiently with the young lover he discovers his wife with: that is, he shares him with her. This is a remarkably perverse story, and it can be understood to have been deliberately resorted to by Dioneo, at the end of the fifth day, in order to counteract the emphasis in all of the stories that day upon marriage as the fortunate culmination of love. One must wonder, upon watching Dioneo maneuver, what (or rather, who) is Dioneo after. One must also wonder whether a thorough understanding of the Decameron would leave the reader with a plausible account of who wants whom, who gets whom, and why (if not also how).

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There is emphasized in this central story something which is made much of elsewhere as well in the Decameron, and that is the complaint that it is most wasteful for a woman to pine away her youth deprived of adequate sexual satisfaction. A vigorous woman makes this complaint, observing that this is a far more serious matter for women than for men, since men have other outlets for being fully themselves.343 We should be reminded, for example, of the difference between the home or family life, on the one hand, and the city or political life, on the other. In any event, this woman complains that her husband (in his preference for boys) breaks the law of nature, while she breaks only the law of marriage (in order to serve her natural appetites).344

V Before we go on to the other central story, the first story of the sixth day, we, like the reader and like the company of storytellers, must deal with an unexpected interruption, a quarrel between a man and a woman among the servants in the kitchen. This is identified by Boccaccio as something unprecedented.345 Also unprecedented had been the authority that the ruler had had to exercise, at the end of the fifth day, over the singer called upon to provide the song with which each day’s proceedings conclude. That ruler, Elissa (as the ruler of the forthcoming day), had had to veto ten different proposed songs by Dioneo (songs which were presumably of a somewhat bawdy character), before an acceptable one was nominated by him. Perhaps this can also be understood as her rebuke of him for the story he had just told, at the end of the fifth day. All this is taking place in the interlude between the fifth and sixth days. That is, all this is at the center of the book (and the sun is said—only here?—to be at mid-heaven). The interruption by the kitchen help is dismissed by one editor as having “very little consequence.”346 But it may have the most serious consequence, however comic or even trivial it may seem, for the quarreling finds a woman insisting that women simply cannot wait for sexual satisfaction upon the rules of, and according to the wasteful timetable set by, men (such as fathers and brothers). Women, she insists, should and do routinely take matters into their own hands, not waiting upon marriage. Thus, a woman argues against female chastity, insisting upon the prerogatives of nature as against those of convention or of law. Similar sentiments had already been expressed by various of the ladies in the Decameron.347 But that a lower-class woman should say this, and so vigorously, suggests that it is not the opinion merely of dissipated women of leisure, but rather that there is something natural to the concerns of women here. The ladies do laugh at this quarrel, as do, say, the Olympian gods at the antics of human beings.348 But are not these ladies helped by this intervention

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to see themselves better than they had? Of course, Dioneo attempts to exploit this reduction of love to its lowest, or most plebeian, form: what the servant woman had said provides him the theme he proclaims for the day that he rules (the seventh day). But in doing so, he may not appreciate the aspirations that are perhaps implicit even in ordinary sensuality. Boccaccio had anticipated the servant woman’s observations when he himself had told the story, in his prelude to the fourth day, about the innocent boy raised in the wild who, upon first seeing beautiful women, wanted one of the goslings for himself, thereby reminding his overly protective father of the demands of nature.349 Thus, here at the center of the book, all of the fancy stories come down to earth, so to speak, as we once again are reminded of the limits of law in the face of natural impulses. Or, rather, we are told by the servant woman, the law would be more widely respected and observed if it conformed more to what nature demands.350 This central reaffirmation of nature helps us appreciate something perhaps conventional, but nevertheless instructive—the importance that centrality can have in a well-constructed work. We have already noticed the importance of Elissa, who is the ruler of one of the central days of storytelling.351 The ruler of the other central day, the fifth day, is Fiammetta. We know that this is the name used by Boccaccio elsewhere to designate his own beloved, a beloved who evidently was (because of her noble birth) beyond his reach. There seems to be a tradition, as we have noticed, that Pamfilo may stand for Boccaccio. We find, in one of Pamfilo’s stories, a description by him of a beautiful woman which reminds us of a description given earlier by Boccaccio himself of Fiammetta.352 Boccacico may suggest the importance of Fiammetta for him by placing her, as he does, in one of the two central slots on seven of the ten days of storytelling; no one else has more than three such slots. During Elissa’s rule, Pamfilo and Fiammetta are together in the two central slots. Something of an affinity between them is suggested as well by the facts that she is ruler of the fifth day and that he is ruler of the tenth day. In these and other ways, then, the artist reminds us of the care, and hence the thinking, that has gone into the making of his book, that thinking which we can do little more than sample in this chapter.

VI We can now turn to the second of the two central stories of the one hundred, the fifty-first (VI, 1), which is about how a witty woman politely (yet effectively) rebuked a knight whose storytelling was too jerky for her taste. The knight, we are told by the narrator (Filomena, the nightingale), turned then to other stories, which he did tell better.

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One can well wonder whether this story forecasts a change in the stories that are to follow. The reader who knows well all of the hundred stories could probably tell us how the second half of this book differs from the first half. Is there now to be something of a lowering of perspective (anticipated by the intervention of the vulgar kitchen servants), even as more is made than heretofore of ingenuity and tricks? We are again reminded, in any event, of how much we do not yet understand, and perhaps may never understand, about the Decameron.

VII The longest story told among the one hundred is, fittingly enough, told by the oldest woman in the company, Pampinea. This story (VIII, 7) is the seventy-seventh story told in the book, which also seems to lend it special significance. We can see here a vindication of philosophy in the effectiveness displayed by a scholar in thoroughly punishing, and perhaps somewhat curing, a wicked woman who had exploited his wooing of her by trapping him one cold winter night in her courtyard while she enjoyed herself indoors with her lover, periodically pretending to him all night long that she would bring him to her any minute. He carefully conceals from her that his love has turned to hatred, as he remains alert for an opportunity to avenge himself by punishing her with the severity he believes she deserves. The culmination of his project is her exposure, completely unclothed, for an entire day to the hottest Italian sun, which put her into a sick bed for some days just as he had been because of his freezing. This precise righting of the balance, this complete reversal of things, is seen as justice. The care and thoroughness with which the scholar proceeds could well have taught Machiavelli a thing or two about Machiavellianism.353 The scholar knows that menaces forearm the one against whom one is going to act. And when his opportunity comes, he must resist both pity and lust in pressing forward with the punishment he had arranged for the beautiful and now vulnerable woman in his power. He can proceed with the determination he does because, as he says to this somewhat stupid woman, “I know myself better now than I did earlier, for you taught me more about my own character in a single night than I ever learned during the whole of my stay in Paris.”354 A lover can even be led to wonder what he ever saw in a vulgar beloved. To say that there is here a vindication of philosophy is not to say that this scholar is himself a philosopher. He is a man of spirit,355 and so his action is somewhat more ferocious than, say, a Socrates would resort to. But there does seem to be developed in this story a theme that Pampinea had used in her first story (I, 10), in which a man had honorably put to shame a woman who had tried to shame him because of his love for her. (In both stories, the man tells the

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woman that it should not matter that he is older than she is.) Pampinea does seem to be troubled by this problem: perhaps it somehow reflects her own situation, in that she is being mistreated by someone whom she loves.356 We should notice, before we leave this very long story (which we have only begun to appreciate), that the malicious widow’s name was Elena. And when we recall what Helen has always meant to mankind, we can begin to understand why the scholar was captivated as he was by her. Thus, a modern poet can speak of each youth “hold[ing] secretly within his wine-drenched arms rose-breasted Helen in a downy cloud of dawn.”357 It can even be said that what Helen ultimately stands for is what philosophy, and perhaps philosophy alone, can really provide, and this may be suggested by what the scholar tells the widow as he punishes her, that he now loves someone fairer than she.358 In any event, we are reminded, in this the longest story in the Decameron, that even love can be transcended, that there is an end beyond it which, if not truly served, can lead to the transformation and redirection (if not even to the repudiation) of love.

VIII Still another transcending of love may be seen in the stories of the tenth (or final) day. But first, we must notice the very last story of the Decameron, the concluding tale told by Dioneo. It is in a most fitting juxtaposition to the very first story of the book, which was (it will be remembered) about the thoroughgoing rascal who was mistaken for a saint.359 The final story is about a most saintly woman, a beautiful woman from common stock whose love for her husband the duke is subjected by him to the severest tests, which included her willingness to sacrifice her children and her marriage to him.360 This points up how much love can mean to a woman, even as it reminds us that love cannot easily level all social distinctions. It is somehow fitting that this celebration of marital fidelity, on the part of the woman, should be celebrated through Dioneo. His influence during the ten days of storytelling had not been elevating. The stories told the day he ruled (day 7) had been particularly perverse and cruel; and his preceding story (at the end of day 9) could be said to have had the private element hit bottom in its crudity. But the end of the self-indulgent excursion into the country is in view: it will soon become evident, if it is not already, that this company must return to the city on the morrow. And so, the primacy of the political (not of the private) is pointed up throughout the tenth day, as much is made of rulers. In the last story of the Decameron, as we have seen, the woman submits completely to her sovereign (who is also her husband). He strips her of everything she has, in order to reinvest her with what she deserves. In the next-to-last story, the importance

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is emphasized of old-fashioned Roman citizenship in ordering love and family relations. And in the story before that, Italian love-matters are put in order by a sultan (that is, by a Muslim), which means, among other things, that proper political governance transcends religion as well as love. But that the end in these experimentations has been reached is indicated by the fact that even Dioneo must recognize, however grudgingly, the demands of both the family and the city, with the political ultimately sovereign, if only because it is the political order which determines and designates what the family indeed is and what its privileges and consequences are.

IX We have looked at a half-dozen stories in the Decameron—at the first and last stories, the shortest and longest, and the two middle stories. We have seen that a desiring is at the foundation of the family and hence of the community.361 We have also seen that it is not good simply to suppress such desiring, but rather to discipline it: it is healthy when the erotic is recognized and treated with respect. We can again be reminded of the father who discovered, on bringing his innocent son to Florence where he is at once attracted by beautiful women, that nature is (as he laments) more powerful than art.362 This episode was at the outset of day 4, just before a string of stories in which nature is prominent.363 And yet the plague itself can be seen as nature run wild. Art must be directed against it, in the form of medicine, of course, if it should be available; otherwise, art both in the form of an orderly physical removal from exposure to the plague and in the form of a spiritual removal from it by the telling of stories. In such recourse to art, or poetry, we deal with mortality generally, of which the plague is a particularly dramatic reminder. We have been moved by the arrangements and other manifestations of art in the Decameron to wonder, to think, about all this. Lustfulness is moderated by wit; the reason shines through as superior to mere desiring. Thus, breeding and discipline elevate the simply sensual.364 Boccaccio himself is more moderate in telling about what his people do than they are in talking about their own characters.365 Thus, we are taught that art is one thing and conduct another: Boccaccio’s ten storytellers, like Boccaccio himself, are most discreet in what is said about who is with whom. There are, as we have seen, various hints that there are affinities and associations among these ten, but not enough is provided for anyone, including us, to be certain. Social and other arrangements do matter, we learn from this book, with the work being particularly addressed to those who can figure things out.366 Perhaps among the things to be figured out is that nothing definite can, or should, be figured out about some critical relations. In any event,

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a story in which Giotto, a great artist himself, figures should remind us as well of the perhaps inevitable discrepancy between appearance and “reality.”367 There is, we should notice in closing this introduction to the Decameron, a tradition that Boccaccio, as he approached death, repudiated various of his stories for their grossness. How is that to be taken? For one thing, he can be understood as repudiating the view of the stories taken by some, perhaps by many, of his readers. Besides, in the Decameron itself, he had already disavowed some of the stories, explaining that they were not really his but rather those of characters, whom he had been obliged to describe faithfully.368 Furthermore, perhaps he intended, by his supposed repentance, to call attention to how enticing his stories indeed are (thereby helping to draw readers to them for centuries to come). Perhaps also his supposed repentance is even intended to remind us of the very first story in the Decameron, the one about the supposed “saint” with his bogus repentance. We may be reminded, that is, of how cautiously, even artfully, we must assess what we are told about the state of mind and purposes of others, especially in the face of death.369

Chapter Seven

Geoffrey Chaucer (1340–1400)370

The inequalities [which are assumed in the Government’s proposed system of taxation] . . . arise from our social state itself, and the correction of that order we cannot, as we ought not, attempt to [make]. It would be a presumptuous attempt to derange the order of society, which would terminate in producing confusion, havock, and destruction, and with a derangement of property, [would] terminate in the overthrow of civilized life. —William Pitt371

I A distinguished student of medieval literature observes that it has not seemed “strange” to him that the last words appended to the Canterbury Tales should be a penitential prayer for forgiveness for the “translations and [writings] of worldly vanities.” The famous “retractation,” with which the maker of the book takes leave of the reader, has frequently been attacked as a spurious addition to the text; but it has always had for me the look of a genuine expression of the poet’s own feelings, as he drew near the end of his life and knew that he would write but little more, whether of “worldly vanitees” or of “moralitee and devocioun.” To conclude his last great work in such a fashion was the natural act of the devout Catholic. A more fanatic piety, hardly content to “revoke” the offending works, would have committed the mad sin of consigning them to the flames; but Geoffrey Chaucer, who was better instructed in “what is bihovely and necessare to verray parfit Penitence,” let his account stand as he had written it, very sure that “the benigne grace of him that is king of kinges, and preest over alle preestes” could strike a just balance between the evil and the good.372

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Questions evidently persist in some quarters, however, about the authenticity of Chaucer’s Retractation, or at least about whether it was meant to be where it is found, at the very end of the Canterbury Tales. Certainly, it is regarded by some not to be in the spirit of the Tales generally, which leads to questions about whether Chaucer had, in this Retractation, merely conformed to the conventions of his day (as may be seen also in, say, Boccaccio373) or about whether he had ever experienced severe pangs of conscience as he faced the immediate prospect of death, a prospect which can inspire gloominess if not even trepidation in many.374 The Retractation cannot be seen properly without some grasp of its context, the context provided not only by the tale which it immediately follows but also by the collection as a whole. And, in turn, a proper placement of the Retractation in its context may help us see better the Canterbury Tales in their intended entirety. It may help us see as well how and why Chaucer has had the remarkable effect he has had for many centuries.375 An opportunity is provided us, even as neophytes who have sampled only a small fraction of the vast Chaucerian criticism that is available, to see how carefully Chaucer did his work. I will, in these remarks, make suggestions which I have not seen elsewhere, venturing to do so because I know that there are available good-natured experts who can easily set me straight in the gentlest fashion possible.376

II The immediate context for the Retractation is the end of The Parson’s Tale, a long sermon which is introduced after the series of tales told by the company of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury and its shrine.377 The Parson is asked, as he begins his tale, to be brief, but he will do things his way: that is, he very much asserts himself as he speaks at length about the Seven Deadly Sins and about Penitence. In doing so he draws upon a well-established tradition which was described in this fashion in 1914: Among men of the Middle Ages no theme, religious or secular, was more widely popular than the motif of the Seven Deadly Sins. From summae and sermons, from “mirrors” and manuals, from hymns, “moralities,” and books of exempla, from rules of nuns and instructions of parish priests, from catechisms of lay folk and popular penitentials, and finally from such famous allegories as De Guileville’s Pèlerinage every medieval reader gleaned as intimate a knowledge of the Sins as of his Paternoster and his Creed, and hence was able to respond to every reference to them, explicit or implicit.378

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Our 1914 account includes these observations, preliminary to a discussion therein of the uses of the seven deadly sins in the works of Chaucer: Before any discussion of a particular use of the Sins is possible, it is necessary to say a few words about the place of these conceptions in medieval thought. The Vices, unsystematized and unclassified in the writings of the Fathers, and unreduced to a strict sevenfold division in the homilies of early Englishmen . . . who recognize eight principal Vices, were afterwards adapted to rigid categories, and acquired phases and features which soon became stereotyped. The very order was fixed by convention: Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony, Lechery. This is the sequence of Dante’s circles of Purgatory, of the elaborate analyses in Gower’s Mirour and Confessio, in Wyclif’s Sermons, in Chaucer’s Parson’s Tale. . . . More formal even than these sequences of the Sins are the traits assigned to each.379

Much is made, in The Parson’s Tale, then, not only of the seven deadly sins but also of penitence. Indeed, of the dozens of uses of that word in the Canterbury Tales, all but one use is by the Parson. The exception is Chaucer’s use in the Retractation.380 The word penance is used here and there by others than the Parson, but even that word is used more by the Parson than by all other speakers in the Canterbury Tales combined.381 All this is not unrelated, of course, to what the party of pilgrims will be doing soon, perhaps even the next day, when they reach the shrine of the martyr at Canterbury.382

III The tenor of what the Parson says, who can sometimes be fierce (and anything but meek) in his account of the sins, points up how much more humane is Chaucer’s “world,” that view of things which he exhibits in his approach to human affairs. It is an approach which is milder, much more forgiving, than that exhibited (in spirit) by the Parson, whatever he may preach. The Parson’s approach seems to be the “official” one, presenting what is likely to be said on such occasions, whatever one’s personal temperament may happen to be. The Parson had been presented by Chaucer in the prologue as anything but harsh in his service to his people. Had the Parson been challenged, if not even hardened, by some of the stories he had heard from his fellow travelers, and, perhaps even more important, by how those stories had been received by the company? Certainly, he pulls out all the stops in performing his oratorio on the seven deadly sins, their consequences, and the penitence they require if one is not to forfeit eternal bliss and to endure perpetual torment.383

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Chaucer’s Retractation is, in the light of the Parson’s “call” (if not his demands), rather mild by comparison. A quite limited account of misconduct, in no more than a score of lines, is acknowledged there by Chaucer. Indeed, he is almost pro forma in noticing his own shortcomings, with no thought indicated of either a desire or a need to suppress his work. Rather, Chaucer alerts his readers, in effect, to what they are likely to find attractive (or “good”) in his works. (This is like what being “banned in Boston” used to do among us for the sales of a book.) The typical reader, in any event, is not likely to rush to secure those pious works of his that Chaucer mentions, including his translation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy.

IV No doubt, Chaucer’s philosophical understanding of things was brought to bear upon the intended organization by him of all of the tales he had planned to collect from the pilgrims on their way to Canterbury. It would require a far greater familiarity than I have with the projected collection to make useful conjectures about that organization.384 But there are anomalies which I have noticed, which may throw light upon what is going on. Consider, for example, the instructive relations among the three parts of the Canterbury Tales, which are presented entirely in prose. The Parson makes a point of his use of prose, rather than of poetry, in presenting his sermon. His message, he seems to suggest, is too serious for the beguilement of verse. The lesson here, it can be said, is not lost on Chaucer, who follows the very long sermon with a very brief retraction, and in prose also. Should the Parson be understood to have noticed that Chaucer himself had had to use prose when he, as one of the thirty pilgrims, had presented his own tale (after having been stopped by the Host from telling an evidently nonsensical tale in verse).385 A recognition of sorts of the connection between the Parson’s tale and that presented by Chaucer as pilgrim may be found in the inclination of editors of the Canterbury Tales to present these two (and sometimes only these two) “tales” in synopsis form. They are linked also in the fact that Chaucer had to use prose after having been prevented by the Host from using poetry, while (later on) the Parson uses prose after having been instructed by the Host to use poetry. It should be noticed as well that the Parson’s sermon is by far the longest offering in the collection, and that Chaucer’s tale may be the second-longest (in terms of words used).386 Chaucer’s contribution as one of the pilgrims, The Tale of Melibeus, has a wife extolling prudence and hence forgiveness rather than revenge in how her husband should deal with men who had wronged her and her daughter.387 This Tale of Melibeus, which is not well regarded either by readers or by critics, does

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not make much of penitence. If one is not prudent, it is argued, one will be sorry, but not in the sense of being penitential. Chaucer, it can be said, is himself guided more by prudence, less by a sense of sin, in what he presents as the author of the Canterbury Tales, which includes how he presents his work. And prudence dictates Chaucer’s paying deference to those who, in the circumstances in which he found himself, do make much (perhaps even far too much) of the sense of sin. Thus, it can also be said, Chaucer teaches us about prudence by showing us how he uses it, even more than he shows us by talking about it. Melibeus, we are told, means “he who drinks honey,” with the nourishing honey that he is induced to imbibe being the prudence extolled by his wife, Dame Prudence.388 The prudence she counsels depends on a proper respect for nature, something that neither the Parson’s people nor the moderns sufficiently appreciate. This neglect of nature may be seen both in the Wife of Bath’s tale and in our failure to recognize that her repeated recourse to marriage might have been far less desperate if there had happened to be during her career the natural products of marriage to deal with for a generation.

V Perhaps we can see the Parson better once we have noticed the importance, for Chaucer, of prudence. Is not the dispassionate observer, at least of our time, apt to see the Parson as “obsessed” with the seven deadly sins, however common that subject was in his day? The uses the Parson makes of numbering are revealing as almost a parody of a scientific approach, ratifying thereby perhaps the emphasis upon seven. This numbering becomes more and more intricate and yet often incomplete (if not even ritualistic) as the sermon unwinds. Related to this are the Parson’s determined invocations of authorities, often a half-dozen or more to a page. He is, in all this, not reasoning but rather intimidating and commanding. The Dame Prudence, too, had relied (in The Tale of Melibeus) on authorities, but far less feverishly than the Parson, and hers tended to be more pagan than his, although she did make substantial use of Solomon and of St. Paul. What does Chaucer really think of the Parson? We have noticed that the poet spoke well of the Parson in the prologue, but here (in The Parson’s Tale) he allows the Parson to show himself for what he is, as far gloomier than our fundamentally cheerful poet. The power of the pervasive religious institutions of the day is reflected in the fact that the Parson can be praised as he is in the prologue, just as it is in the fact that the pilgrims are on the way to Canterbury. Among the aspects of their religious life highlighted by the Parson’s sermon is the power of the confessional (and hence of the priests involved in it).

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Cannot we see Chaucer better for all this, especially when one considers the background against which he worked, and which he tried to ameliorate and use as best he could? Chaucer, in short, can see in the Parson much of (if not even more than) what we can. One advantage we may have over him, however, is that we may have instructive material to draw upon that was not available to him. We, for example, can notice that the Parson may be a spiritual cousin of the Grand Inquisitor found in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, another priest passionately concerned for the welfare of his charges.389 We should also notice that while the response to the Parson’s sermon is the quite limited endorsement of it by the next speaker (that is, Chaucer in his Retractation), the response to Chaucer’s own sermon (in The Tale of Melibeus) is the enthusiastic endorsement of it by the next speaker (that is, by the Host, who wishes that his own wife could be like Dame Prudence).

VI We can now consider, however briefly, major alternatives to the approach of the Parson to issues of life and death—and in doing so we can try to make use of the prudence extolled by Chaucer. There is first the approach found in the Al het prayer drawn upon ten times during the Yom Kippur service of the Jews. Here, too, organization may be seen, an organization of the reported sins by pairs, in alphabetical order. This means that since there are twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet, there are fortyfour items, allocated in groupings of twenty, twelve, and twelve.390 The discipline of the law itself can be said to be reflected in such an ordering of sins for the Jews. Central to the forty-four items in this prayer is the sin of scoffing, or jesting, which points up the seriousness of the entire endeavor.391 Even more critical, and in marked contrast to the scheme of things assumed by the Parson and his fellow Christians, is the emphasis placed in this Yom Kippur prayer (and elsewhere in Judaism) upon the collective: “We have sinned in . . .” One is not expected or permitted to vary this confession in the light of one’s own experiences; one is not looking out primarily for oneself, nor does one stand or fall completely on one’s own. This is to be contrasted not only with what is to be seen in the Parson’s approach to personal salvation, but also with what could be seen centuries later in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress.392 The alphabetical order in our Yom Kippur prayer is not emphasized—and, as I have found upon making inquiries, is not likely to be noticed by most of those who recite the prayers—but that ordering is there throughout, unlike the numbering that the Parson talks so much about without always carrying it through in his ordering of things. What is emphasized in the Judaic approach is, as I have

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indicated, the communal in place of the individual, the people more than the person. It would require far more learning than I am ever likely to have available to develop the movement from the Judaic to the Christian approach to these matters. The intervening Greek (and especially the Dionysian) influence would have to be traced, as well as the significance and consequences of the personal sacrifice of the divine, which can only be ignored at one’s peril—or so the Parson would have us understand.393 Another major alternative to the Parson’s approach is that found among the classics, with the life and death of Socrates providing particularly graphic guidance, much of which Chaucer could have learned about through his Latin sources rather than directly from the Greek.394 The Socratic response to issues of life and death may be seen, for example, in Xenophon’s Apology, in which Socrates is shown to be anything but apprehensive about the immediate prospect of death, confident that he has conducted himself as he should.395 In fact, Xenophon presents Socrates as even welcoming death, permitting him thereby to escape the decrepitude and trials of old age. All this is in marked contrast to what may be seen in the Parson’s sermon.396 Chaucer might well have pondered, as we might do also, why the Socratic alternative may no longer seem feasible for moderns. Of course, one might also wonder how many (even among the Ancients) were ever drawn to that alternative in these matters. Still, Socrates did seem to live in a time that did not seem to be moved, as much as the Parson’s people sometimes seem to be, by dread of the consequences of death. Something similar to the Socratic approach may be seen in the Yom Kippur approach, which can be said to advise the faithful that they should consider themselves as surviving in, with, and through others.

VII We return, in preparing to conclude this inquiry, to the Retractation of Chaucer, which obliges us to notice again the proper relation of faith to reason.397 That relation is perhaps hinted at again and again, as in the engaging, if not even delightful, Nun Priest’s Tale. It does not seem to be generally noticed that that story can be understood as teaching that prophetic guidance (whether in the form of dreams or in some other form) is ultimately irrelevant in what happens to anyone. Another way of putting this, which bears on age-old arguments about the relation of foreknowledge to free will,398 is to say that one always has contending signs to reckon with. In this story about Chanticleer, there are the fearful dream of the male and the scornful response of the female. One’s fate depends most perhaps on how one responds to the “situation” one finds oneself in.399

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Perhaps we can be aided in our examination of Chaucer by recalling, however briefly, the career and thought of another great comic poet, Aristophanes. Particularly challenging here is this scholarly suggestion: The mingling and interplay of fantasy and what we should probably term satiric realism in Aristophanes’ plays lead us to recognize, therefore, how much more likely we are to respond to appeals to what we would today term our volition (the province of the fantasist) than we are to the reminders of our moral cognition (the province of the satiric realist).400

An emphasis upon “our volition” looks more perhaps to the Parson’s sermon; an emphasis upon “our moral cognition” looks more perhaps both to the Socratic and to the Chaucer of The Tale of Melibius, if not also to the Canterbury Tales as a whole. Insofar as the Parson’s sermon plays upon the fear of revenge at the hands of a divinity whose great and undeserved suffering is not properly appreciated by mortals, it is tacitly corrected by the grievously wronged woman in The Tale of Melibius who prudently counsels forgiveness in place of that revenge which men are “naturally” inclined to seek. In this way, it can also be said, Geoffrey Chaucer himself anticipates the Prospero of William Shakespeare, perhaps the only poet in the English-speaking tradition who may be regarded as at least his equal.

ADDENDUM A401 Chaucer’s Retractation (in the original language) Heere taketh the makere of this book his leve. Now preye I to hem alle that kerkne this litel tretys or rede, that if ther be any thyng in it that lyketh hem, that ther-of they thanken oure lord Jesu Crist, of whom procedeth al wit and al goodnesse./ And if ther be any thing that displese hem, I preye hem also that they arrette it to the defaute of myn unconnynge, and nat to my wyl, that wolde ful fayn have seyd bettre if I hadde had konngnge./ For oure book seith, “Al that is writen is writen for oure doctrine,” and that is myn entente./ Wherfore I biseke yow mekely, for the mercy of God, that ye preye for me that Crist have mercy on me and foryeve me my giltes;/ and namely of my translacions and enditynges of worldly vanitees, the whiche I revoke in my retracciouns:/ as is the book of Troilus; the book also of Fame; the book of the XIX. Ladies; the book of the Duchesse; the book of Seint Valentynes day of the Parlement of Birddes; the tales of Canterbury, thilke that sownen into synne;/ the book of the Leoun; and many another book, if they were in my remembrance, and many a song and many a leccherous lay; that Crist for his grete mercy foryeve me the synne./ But of the translacion of Boece de Consolacione, and othre

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bookes of legendes of seintes, and omelies, and moralitee, and devocioun,/ that thanke I oure Lord Jhesu Crist and his blisful Mooder, and alle the seintes of hevene,/ bisekynge hem that they from hennes forth unto my lyves ende sende me grace to biwagte my giltes, and to studie to the salvacioun of my soule, and graunte me grace of verray penitence, confessioun and satisfacioun to doon in this present lyf,/ thurgh the benigne grace of hym that is kyng of kynges and preest over alle preestes, that boghte us with the precious blood of his herte;/ so that I may been oon of hem at the day of doom that shulle be saved. Qui cum patre et Spiritu Sancto vivit et regnat Deus per omnia secula. Amen. Heere is ended the book of the tales of Canterbury, compiled by Geffrey Chaucer, on whos soule Jhesu Crist have mercy. Amen.

ADDENDUM B402 Chaucer’s Retractation (in translation) Here taketh the maker of this book his leave Now pray I to all those who hear this little treatise or read it [The Parson’s Tale], that if there be anything in it that pleases them, that they thank our Lord Jesus Christ for it, from whom proceeds all wit and all goodness. And if there be anything that displeases them, I pray them also that they attribute it to my want of skill, and not to my purpose, which would gladly have said better if I had had skill. For our book says, “All that is written is written for our doctrine,” and that is my intent. Wherefore I beseech you humbly, for the mercy of God, that you pray for me that Christ have mercy on me and forgive me my sins; and especially for my translations and writings that concern worldly vanities, which I renounce in my retractations; such as the book of Troilus is; the book also of Fame; the book of the XIX Ladies; the book of the Duchesse; the book of Saint Valentine’s day of the Parliament of Birds; the tales of Canterbury, those that make for sin; the book of the Lion; and many another book, if they were in my remembrance, and many a song and many a lecherous lay; that Christ for his great mercy forgive me the sin. But concerning the translation of Boethius on Consolation, and other books of the lives of saints, and homilies, and morality, and devotion, for them I thank our Lord Jesus Christ and his blessed Mother, and all the saints of heaven, beseeching them that they from henceforth to the end of my life send me grace to repent my sins, and to study toward the salvation of my soul, and grant me the grace of true penitence, confession, and satisfaction to perform in this present life, through the benign grace of him that is king of kings and priest over all priests, that bought us with the precious blood of his heart; so that I may be one of them at the day of doom that shall be saved. Here ends the book of the tales of Canterbury compiled by Geoffrey Chaucer, on whose soul Jesus Christ have mercy. Amen.

Chapter Eight

Thomas More (1478–1535)403

The almost general mediocrity of fortune that prevails in America obliging its people to follow some business for subsistence, those vices that arise usually from idleness, are in great measure prevented. Industry and constant employment are great preservatives of the morals and virtue of a nation. Hence bad examples to youth are more rare in America, which must be a comfortable consideration to parents. To this may be truly added, that serious religion, under its various denominations, is not only tolerated, but respected and practised. Atheism is unknown there; infidelity rare and secret; so that persons may live to a great age in that country, without having their piety shocked by meeting with either an atheist or an infidel. And the Divine Being, seems to have manifested his approbation of the mutual forbearance and kindness with which the different sects treat each other, by the remarkable prosperity with which He has been pleased to favor the whole country. —Benjamin Franklin404

I Some passages about American newspapers by a nineteenth-century Englishwoman bear on what I have to say here about Thomas More’s Utopia.405 This visitor, who published her report in 1832, observes: In truth, there are many reasons which render a very general diffusion of literature impossible in America. I can scarcely class the universal reading of newspapers as an exception to this remark; if I could, my statement would be exactly the reverse, and I should say that America beat the world in letters. The fact is, that throughout all ranks of society, from the successful merchant, which is the highest, to the domestic serving man, which is the lowest, they are all too actively employed to read, except at such broken moments as may suffice for a peep at a newspaper. It is 76

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for this reason, I presume, that every American newspaper is more or less a magazine, wherein the merchant may scan, while he holds out his hand for an invoice, “Stanzas by Mrs. Heamans,” or a garbled extract from Moore’s Life of Byron; the lawyer may study his brief faithfully, and yet contrive to pick up the valuable dictum of some American critic, that “Bulwer’s novels are decidedly superior to Sir Walter Scott’s,” nay, even the auctioneer may find time, as he bustles to the tub, or his tribune, to support his pretensions to polite learning, by glancing his quick eye over the columns, and reading that “Mis Mitford’s descriptions are indescribable.” If you buy a yard of ribbon, the shopkeeper lays down his newspaper, perhaps two or three, to measure it. I have seen a brewer’s drayman perched on the shaft of his dray and reading one newspaper, while another was tucked under his arm. . . . This, I presume, is what is meant by the general diffusion of knowledge, so boasted of in the United States; such as it is, the diffusion of it is general enough, certainly; but I greatly doubt its being advantageous to the population.406

Some advantages of newspaper readings, such as they are, are suggested in the following report that the visitor makes of an exchange she had with an American milkman: Well now, so you be from the old country? Ay—you’ll see sights here, I guess. I hope I shall see many. That’s a fact. I expect your little place of an island don’t grow such dreadful fine corn as you sees here? It grows no corn at all, sir. Possible! no wonder, then, that we reads such awful stories in the papers of your poor people being starved to death. We have wheat, however. Ay, for your rich folks, but I calculate the poor seldom gets a belly-full. You have certainly much greater abundance here. I expect so. Why they so say, that if a poor body contrives to be smart enough to scrape together a few dollars, that your King George always comes down upon ’em, and takes it all away. Don’t he? I do not remember hearing of such a transaction. I guess they be pretty close about it. Your papers ben’t like ourn, I reckon? Now we says and prints just what we likes. You spend a good deal of time in reading the newspapers. And I’d like you to tell me how we can spend it better. How should freemen spend their time, but looking after their government, and watching that them fellers as we gives offices to doos their duty, and gives themselves no airs?

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But I sometimes think, sir, that your fences might be in more thorough repair, and your roads in better order, if less time was spent in politics. The Lord! to see how little you knows of a free country! Why, what’s the smoothness of a road, put against the freedom of a free-born American? And what does a broken zig-zag signify, comparable to knowing that the men what we have been pleased to send up to Congress, speaks handsome and straight, as we chooses they should? It is from a sense of duty, then, that you all go to the liquor store to read the papers? To be sure it is, and he’d be no true-born American as didn’t. I don’t say that the father of a family should always be after liquor, but I do say that I’d rather have my son drunk three times in a week, than not look after the affairs of his country.407

I have suggested that these passages bear on what I have to say about More’s Utopia. The closing remarks—for example, “I’d rather have my son drunk three times a week, than not look after the affairs of his country”—indicate how civicmindedness and ordinary pleasures can go together. That is to say, there may be evident in these United States something of that public-spirited hedonism anticipated in More’s Utopia.408

II Utopia was first published in 1516. It seems to have been a great success from the beginning, a success appropriate for one of the leading figures in English letters and law. And it inaugurated a considerable series of what are now known as utopian writings.409 A summary of what happens in this work might be useful to set the stage for the suggestions I will be making here. There are two parts in this text. The first part finds Thomas More in Antwerp, in the course of a diplomatic mission abroad: One day [he records] after I had heard mass at Notre Dame, the most beautiful and popular church in Antwerp, I was about to return to my quarters when I happened to see [a friend] talking with a stranger, a man of quite advanced years. The stranger had a sunburned face, a long beard, and a cloak hanging loosely from his shoulders; from his appearance and dress, I took him to be a ship’s captain.410

This stranger, whom More came to know, was Raphael Hythloday.411 More and his companions learn about Raphael’s travels to exotic parts of the world, including of course to the country of Utopia. In their preliminary conversation, Raphael explains why he does not choose to use his considerable information

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and insights in advising European princes. In the course of this conversation he passes judgment on various institutions and social conditions in England, where economic developments and selfish interests have led to theft and beggary and to harsh legal measures (including capital punishment) to curb the desperate acts to which the poor have been driven.412 The second part of More’s Utopia consists, for the most part, of Raphael’s description of that well-ordered country to which he had referred several times in describing and assessing European practices. That description addresses itself to the following topics: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) 10) 11) 12) 13) 14) 15) 16) 17)

The Geography of Utopia Their Cities, Especially Amaurot Their Officials Their Occupations Social and Business Relations Travel and Trade in Utopia Their Gold and Silver Their Moral Philosophy Their Delight in Learning Slaves Care of the Sick and Dying Marriage Customs Punishments, Legal Procedures, and Customs Foreign Relations Warfare Religions 413 An epilogue by Raphael, which he begins with this observation: Now I have described to you as accurately as I could the structure of that commonwealth which I consider not only the best but the only one that can rightfully claim that name. In other places men talk very liberally of the common wealth, but what they mean is simply their own wealth; in Utopia, where there is no private business, every man zealously pursues the public business. And in both places, men are right to act as they do. For among us, even though the state may flourish, each man knows that unless he makes a separate provision for himself, he may perfectly well die of hunger. Bitter necessity, then, forces men to look out for themselves rather than for others, that is, for the people. But in Utopia, where everything belongs to everybody, no man need fear that, so long as the public warehouses are filled, he will ever lack for anything he needs. Distribution is simply not one of their problems; in Utopia no men are poor, no men are beggars. Though no man owns anything, everyone is rich.414

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III Critical to the way of life of the Utopians is the elimination of virtually all private property. This is referred to many times, as is the decisiveness of communism and equality.415 But, it should at once be emphasized, it is the elimination of private property which is aimed at, not the elimination of property itself. Thus, public (or common) property, in considerable abundance, is expected from the Utopian way of harnessing productive activity. This is not only expected but desired. That is, the standard of living is to be high; it is not an ascetic way of life, even though there are references to Christian communism, but rather a better way of producing and distributing the truly useful goods that human beings want.416 When property becomes public, it is shown, so do human interests and concerns. Thus, the Utopians have an acute sense of what is public property, what belongs to their country, especially in their relations with other peoples.417 Underlying this insistence upon suppressing private property is the opinion (Raphael’s or the Utopians?) that the ultimate cause of most social ills is pride.418 Private property permits pride to have its ostentatious display, a display which further encourages pride.419 All this is reported to a man, Thomas More, who is himself abroad on public business, a man who yearns for his own family back in England.420 Public business, we can see from More’s own mission, can be all-engrossing.421 We notice also that all this is reported by a man (Raphael Hythloday) who shuns public business in Europe: the only place in which it is sensible to engage in public life, he argues, is among the Utopians. Is he in this respect like the Utopians? Is it, for him, all or nothing? Is such an approach essentially apolitical, perhaps even anti-political?422

IV We must consider further the implications of the Utopian insistence that little, if anything at all, is to be private in their community.423 A singleminded insistence, depending on what is insisted upon and depending as well on what the circumstances are, can lead either to sensible institutions or to monstrous ones. What is the case here, in a community in which most (if not all) pursue public business much, if not all, of the time? Various features of Utopian life can usefully be noticed. 1) An extensive uniformity results, which is perhaps most evident in the clothing generally worn in the community. Indeed, the only conversation directly reported from Utopia is between a boy and his mother, when the boy expresses

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amusement at the fancy dress of visiting ambassadors who are not aware of Utopian simplicity in manners.424 2) One consequence of the extensive uniformity (or rather of the depreciation of private property, from which such uniformity results) is that there are few disputes between private parties among the Utopians.425 3) Reinforcing the tendency toward uniformity is the mobility provided, for people are periodically shifted in their farms and houses. This discourages them from regarding any particular house or farm as their own.426 4) This also means that the Utopians, wherever they are on their island (which is roughly the size and shape of Great Britain and which has a population of about ten million, not counting slaves taken only in their wars), are always at home. That is, since their fifty-four cities are all pretty much the same, one never really feels away from home.427 5) All this encourages a substantial equality which, among other things, eliminates the necessity of or the excuse for begging. Restrictions on travel, among their cities, insure the minimum of laziness and its exploitations.428 6) But all of this uniformity and equality is limited to Utopia itself. The Utopians who live in nearby colonies—colonization is resorted to when the population at home becomes excessive—are not subjected to the same discipline, it seems. In any event, those colonies are expendable when Utopian circumstances require it.429 7) Central to the Utopian institutions is the attitude toward money, toward gold, silver, and the other things regarded as valuable by other peoples. This attitude is referred to again and again by Raphael. Indeed, it is reported as the hardest difference to believe between Utopia and other lands.430 The use of gold for chamber pots and for the chains of slaves points up the massive and continuing effort to play down the role of gold and silver.431 8) This attitude means that the Utopians are quite willing to sacrifice their property in war. This makes them far more effective warriors than their neighbors.432 9) But they do recognize that their neighbors care very much for money. They recognize, for example, that those who are not properly trained are easy to corrupt by the use of bribes in time of war.433 10) All this is not to say, however, that the Utopians forget the property sacrifices they have made in time of war. They seem to consider it good policy, as well as just, to secure full reparations from defeated enemies for public property expended on a war.434 11) Perhaps it is the attitude toward property (and especially money), as well as the extensive uniformity, which makes Utopian families so flexible. That is, whenever some families get too large and others too small, family members are reassigned. Perhaps also this adjustability in family attachments contributes both to uniformity and to the attitude toward private property.435

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12) Related to all this may be the practice of displaying, under official auspices, prospective brides and grooms, unclothed, to one another. This can be understood to undermine the hold of pride upon us.436 13) Also related to all this—to the subordination of the private to the public— is the status of suicide. Someone who is sorely afflicted may indeed commit suicide, but only after a public body has determined that suicide would be appropriate (indeed, that body may even initiate the suggestion to the afflicted). But suicide on one’s own, like extralegal sexual experimentation and adultery, is severely dealt with.437 These, then, are thirteen features of Utopian life related to the suppression of the private among them. Perhaps the only major realm of privacy left among them is the realm of speculation, which may be seen in the differences among them with respect to religious opinions (not, it should be immediately noticed, with respect to public worship, which tends to be uniform).438 Since religion also has among Utopians a private dimension, it is seen in various forms in private opinions and private worship. Thus, the Utopians hold different opinions about the Creation.439 Thomas More himself is known, of course, to have stood by his faith, even when that faith was opposed to the official view; but he is also known to have been willing to use harsh (if not even cruel) measures in trying to make the true faith the official one.440

V One curious side-effect, or rather corollary, of Utopian attitudes and institutions is the insistence among them upon the legitimacy, even the critical importance, of pleasure.441 The significance of pleasure was reflected, for example, in the official assessment as to when suicide was not only appropriate but even called for.442 It was evident as well in what we have seen about the desirability of public property as a means for a high standard of living. The status of desire can become critical in a scheme of things which seems rather Epicurean. But, it should be remembered, the Epicureans did insist, as do the Utopians, that true pleasures are to be preferred, not just any gratification.443 Even so, is there not something to the common notion about the Epicureans, which sees an emphasis upon pleasure leading to the justification of the lowest pleasures? It is as if the Utopians recognized that to eliminate private property is to take away one avenue to, or substitute for, pleasure. That is, does not he who has money simply defer gratification of desires? Or, put another way, is not money (except in perverse instances) congealed private pleasure? In any event, the deference to pleasure means that a good deal is made of the body, as may be seen, for example, in the sumptuous public meals the Utopians indulge in. Thus, the private has asserted itself in an immediate way.444

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VI Still another curious side-effect, or corollary, of the Utopians’ attitudes and institutions is their refusal to believe in or to rely on men being virtuous for the sake of virtue alone.445 Indeed, the concern is not so much with virtue as with social organization and the enduring pleasures resulting therefrom. Virtue for its own sake does not count on pleasure as a guide. The Utopians prefer to move men to act as they should by offering pleasures and threatening pains, now or eventually. Thus, morality, too, is really public, not private. On the other hand, virtue, for its own sake, depends, does it not, on something similar to pride? Is this approach to virtue too much like private property, as well as too unreliable, for the Utopians who want, as a community, to control the movements of the community? There can seem to be in all this a cold, calculating approach to life.446 Certainly, Utopia is radically utilitarian. This may be seen in its recourse, in war, to bribery and assassination. It may also be seen in the displays to one another of prospective brides and grooms. This is more mechanical, less passionate, and hence perhaps more troublesome than our variation upon this institution: premarital sexual relations.447 This radical utilitarianism may be seen in still another mechanical arrangement, the preference of oxen over horses for farm labor—since the oxen can be eaten when they can no longer labor.448

VII What does Thomas More himself think of all this? Perhaps the safest answer is to suppose that he thinks much as we do, when we stop to analyze what he presented in the way he has. In any event, we are shown the implications of various opinions about property and about the “rational” organization of society.449 In addition, we can learn something about More’s assessment of all this when we consider not only what he has presented but also the way he has presented it. Thus, the account of Utopian institutions is presented by a man who is cityless.450 The narrator is a man who has chosen, at least in Europe, a private life for himself; he is anything but civic-minded, at least in an immediate practical sense. It may even be a matter of chance that his account of a better way of life or of social organization is ever made public. Certainly, he does not have the zeal for improving the lot of his fellow men that some Utopians had when they learned from Raphael’s party about Christianity.451 More’s assessment of these matters may be indicated as well in how Raphael’s account of Utopian institutions is framed. Meals are provided him both before and after.452 Needs are ministered to and pleasures are provided. But, it should be noticed, it is More as private person, not as public official, who provides this

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entertainment (if not even compensation) for Raphael. And, perhaps even more critical for determining More’s assessment, the recourse by the party to More’s house permits extended private discourse about these matters: More is able to arrange with his servants that they have an uninterrupted conversation at home.453 Is genuine privacy, and hence serious investigation of regimes, possible only in such circumstances?454 In any event, it may be no accident that there is no systematic philosophical inquiry or serious literature among the Utopians, however receptive they may be to whatever happens to be imported.455 Does philosophy depend on private endeavors, not on public enterprise? There are various indications in the book that learning is one’s own, more so than family or country or even one’s body. Is the public, or society, more apt to suppress private talent rather than to develop its own? Does a public-spirited people tend to make a public use of whatever talent manifests itself?456

VIII The explicit and somewhat detailed criticisms that More himself makes of Utopian institutions are directed primarily to the restrictions among them on private property. They are to be found in both part I and part II of the book. In part I he suggests, upon learning about the abolition of private property, that that is not desirable in that productivity would be adversely affected.457 This concern is somewhat lessened, it seems, when More learns (in part II) of the discipline to which the Utopians are subjected.458 In part II, after this account ends, More observes: When Raphael had finished his story, it seemed to me that not a few of the customs and laws he had described as existing among the Utopians were quite absurd. Their methods of waging war, their religious ceremonies, and their social customs were some of these, but my chief objection was to the basis of their whole system, that is, their communal living and their moneyless economy. This one thing alone takes away all the nobility, magnificence, splendor, and majesty which (in the popular view) are considered the true ornaments of any nation.459

Perhaps another way of putting this objection is to say that the virtue of magnificence, if not also the virtue of liberality, would be adversely affected by Utopian institutions. Or, to put this more generally, nobility, if not the virtues themselves, is subverted by the Utopian way of doing things. Thus, Aristotle can be quoted elsewhere as saying, “Nobility is virtue plus ancient riches.”460 Distinction seems to be discouraged among the Utopians, in practice, if not in theory.461 We can see again that virtue for its own sake, for its very beauty, so to speak, is questionable among the Utopians. Would not what More calls “true ornaments of any nation” be condemned by the Utopians as improper pride?462

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Perhaps an even more serious criticism is made by More of this Utopian account, but made implicitly: these are not men such as ourselves. Of course, they are not like us, after they have been trained as they have. But More seems to go further than that: they are different by nature. Thus, they seem to be people who may not be descendants of those who fell in the Garden of Eden. Consider the observation, “If we believe [their] records, they had cities before there were even human inhabitants here.”463 Does this mean that the biblical creation and its consequences do not apply to them? Consider as well the observation (also by Raphael), Pride is too deeply-fixed in the hearts of men to be easily plucked out. So I am glad that the Utopians at least have been lucky enough to achieve this commonwealth, which I wish all mankind would imitate. The institutions they have adopted have made their community most happy, and as far as anyone can tell, capable of lasting forever.464

Does this mean that the Utopian institutions can be, in principle, eternal, that there need be, at least for them, no end of the world and Judgment Day? Certainly, no intrinsic corruption or inevitable mortality for human things is taken for granted.465

IX It may well be, then, that Utopia is indeed nowhere (as its name suggests), not because it has not yet come into existence anywhere but because it requires citizens of a nature radically different from that found among mankind.466 Why is this basic limitation of the Utopian account not made explicit? Perhaps because More considers the account salutary, even though impractical. That is, this account may be an effective (it not even a safe) way of criticizing English and European institutions of the day. This account suggests, for example, what private property really means—by showing how things look without it. And how things look without it is complicated: its abolition is of course unlikely, and so the criticism of its abolition can be muted; its continuance, on the other hand, can be abused—and thus, the interest in part II of Utopia can insure that the criticisms in part I of contemporary institutions will be read. But in so proceeding, are not men’s consciences—men’s openness to virtue for its own sake—being appealed to, not just the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain? In any event, is More really saying that Utopian institutions would not work, human nature being what it is (whether or not that nature is what it now is because of the Fall in the Garden of Eden)? Is Raphael less sensitive than is More to the limits posed by human nature? Thomas More, at least, seems to recognize that some irrationality must be expected in civil society, that it would not be rational to disregard this necessity.467

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ADDENDUM: A RETURN TO THOMAS MORE’S PETITION TO THE KING For know well, men of Athens, if I had long ago attempted to be politically active, I would long ago have benefited neither you nor myself. —Socrates

I It has been for me a chastening experience studying, once again, the 1521 petition to King Henry VIII by Sir Thomas More as speaker of the House of Commons, the petition in which he sought (on behalf of the House) the traditional royal assurance about parliamentary freedom of speech. I have long used this petition, reprinting a substantial part of it in my 1971 treatise on the First Amendment, The Constitutionalist. Then, three decades later, I included the entire petition in the Appendices for my Commentary, The Amendments to the Constitution (1995). The substantial part of the petition which I used in The Constitutionalist (538–39) is that in which the freedom of speech request is to be found: Myne other humble requeste, most excellent prince, is this: Forasmuche as there be of the Commons here by your high commandment assembled for your Parliament, a greate nomber which are, after the accustomed manner, appoynted in the Common House to treate and advise of the common affayres amongst themselves aparte; and albeit, most deere leige lord, that accordinge to your prudente advise, by your honorable writtes everye where declared, there hath beene as due dilligence used in sending up to your highnes courte of parliament the most discreete persons out of everye quarter that menne could esteeme meete thereto; whereby yt is not to be doubted but that ther is a substanciall assemblye of right wise, and politicke persons; yet, moste victorious prince, sithe amonge soe many wise menne, neither is every man wise alike, nor among soe many men like well witted is every man like well spoken, and it often happenethe that likewise as muche follye is uttered with paynted polished speeche, soe many, boysterious and rude in language, see deepe indeede, and give righte substanciall councell; and sithe also in matters of great importance, the mynde is often soe occupyed in this matter, that a man rather studiethe what to saye, than howe; by reason whereof the wisest man and best spoken in a whole countrye fortunethe, while his mynde is fervent in the matter, somewhat to speake in such wise as he would afterwards wishe to have uttered otherwise and yet noe worse will had when he spoke it, then he hathe when he would soe gladly change it. Therefore, most gratious Soveraygne, consideringe that in your high courte of Parliament is nothing intreated but matter of weyghte and importance concerning your Realme and your owne Royall Estate, yt could not faile to lett and put to silence from the givinge of their advice and

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councell many of your discreete Commons, to the greate hinderance of the common affayres, excepte that everye one of your Commons were utterly dischardged of all doubtes and feare howe any thinge that it should happen them to speake, should happen of your highnes to be taken. . . . Yt may therefore like your most aboundante grace, our most benigne and godly Kinge, to give all your Commons here assembled your most gratious lycence and pardon, freely witheout doubte of your dredfull displeasure, everye man to dischardge his conscience, and boldly in every thinge incidente amongst us, to declare his advise; and what soever happen any man to say, that yt maye like your majestie of your inestimable goodnes to take all in good parte, interpreting everye mans wordes, howe unconningly [unlearnedly, ignorantly] soever they be couched, to proceede yet of good zeals towards the profitt of your realme, and honor of your Royall personne, the prosperous estate and preservacion whereof, most excellent sovereygne, is the thing which we all, your most humble loving subjects, accordinge to the most bounden dewtye of our naturall allegiance, moste highly desire and praye for. (“The Lyfe of Sir Thomas More Knighte, Sometyme Chauncellor of Englande, Written by his Sonne-in-Law, William Roper,” George Sampson, ed., in The Utopia of Sir Thomas More, London: G. Bell & Sons, 1910, at 211–13 [notice the discreet uses of “happen,” especially the second])

II We can see here the traditional case made for freedom of speech. This privilege can no doubt be abused, especially by impassioned speakers, but it is necessary for members to have a general assurance of it if the House of Commons is to engage in that full and frank debate needed for an informed and effective handling of public affairs. It is essential, it is in effect argued by More, that members of the House be secure from official sanctions from outside of that body for whatever may happen to be said there. It is not pointed out here that the House of Commons can, on its own, discipline those members who abuse the privilege of freedom of speech. (Conservatives and liberals alike have, the past fortnight, remarked on how the retiring Jesse Helms was not adequately reined in by his colleagues in the U.S. Senate when he exploited, as he evidently did, the rules of the Senate for decades.) More’s petition is particularly instructive in that it can remind us that parliamentary freedom of speech serves as the prototype for the countrywide freedom of speech to which we have long been accustomed. This prototype suggests that our First Amendment privilege, or right, is designed primarily for political discourse as part of the constitutional processes of the community—and as such it is virtually unlimited in its scope. (If the political, or self-governing, aspect of this right is thus stressed, “freedom of speech” is distinguished from that “freedom of expression” which has become so fashionable in recent decades.)

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However much freedom of speech—or, for that matter, freedom of expression— is protected from official sanctions, significant judgment can still be passed on a speaker by the community at large, a judgment which can have for him serious consequences from which the First Amendment cannot be expected to protect him. III We, too, can pass judgment—this time on what Thomas More says in this petition, and perhaps even more on how he says it. Does not More’s manner here tell us much about the powers, and perhaps about the character, of this king? Particularly challenging for us is this observation by the speaker: “[A]nd it often happenethe that, likewise as muche follye is uttered with paynted polished speeche, soe many, boysterious and rude in language, see deepe indeede, and give righte substanciall counsel.” The obvious concern here, and in what immediately follows, is that the “boysterious” speaker, the man who bluntly says what is on his mind, should not be penalized by the king and his judges for his manner of speaking. Rather, he should be encouraged (by a promise of immunity) to say what he believes is called for by the public interest. That one should be suspicious of the fancy speaker—the one who can employ “painted polished speeche”—is not dwelled upon by More. But, one can wonder, is not the king, or at least the more perceptive among his subjects, warned against being taken in by the smooth talker? IV With this question—about who is being warned and against what—we get to my chastening experience. One can notice, upon pausing to look at this petition, how “paynted and polished” More’s own remarks are. There are fewer than ninety lines in this petition (roughly half of which I reproduce here) and in thirty or more of these lines the king is referred to in what we would call extravagant terms. True, those terms may not have been considered extravagant then—but is it not likely that the profusion of them was itself extravagant? What should be made of this kind of conduct? (One can recall how stubborn the Macedonian officers of Alexander the Great were in resisting his desire that he be kowtowed to like an Eastern potentate.) If it is assumed that More was not aware of what he was doing, this kind of extravagance could expose him as naturally a sycophant. It could also suggest how powerful, if not also how dangerous, this king could be. If, on the other hand, it is assumed that More was indeed aware of what he was doing, it can induce us to wonder what he “means” by this sort of thing?

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Within a decade or so, More himself was in serious trouble with the king (he had, by that time, risen from speaker of the House of Commons to the post of chancellor of England, second only in power to the king himself). His trouble came, however, not from what he said or how he said it, but rather from what he would not say—from that silence, about the claim of the king to be head of the Church in England, which spoke volumes to the country and especially to the ambitious king himself. We have seen that More warns, in his petition, against the fancy speaker—and yet all the while he is very much the fancy (that is, the vigorously flattering) speaker himself. Is there here, in this juxtaposition of warning and flattery, a suggestion that More’s real thoughts (elsewhere as well as here) are not necessarily the sentiments voiced by him? Already, that is, a chilling discretion on his part is indicated. Particularly suggestive here is the curious fact that the only extended passage in our petition in which there is no celebration at all of the king’s attributes is the very passage from which I have quoted about the unreliability of “paynted polished speeches” and so forth. V All this, we can observe, says something about the king. But does it not also say something important to the king? At the least, it seems, the king is being told that he should not take seriously any fancy talk about him. (That fancy talk was later expanded by the king himself to include the fateful title of head of the Church in England.) Perhaps, also, the king is being told how elusive More can be—and told further that perhaps it would not be prudent to expect More to acquiesce in whatever the king happened thereafter to set his heart on from time to time. Indeed, the most prudent thing to do—given this Christian king’s appetites and inclinations—would have been for the king to ease More out of public life, thereby minimizing the possibility of troublesome friction between them. Even more prudent, of course, would have been a course of conduct that found the king reforming himself. He should have long before asked himself what it says about a “ruler” that he requires (or at least permits) such fawning as is exhibited in More’s petition. The king’s power is thus testified to, of course, but perhaps even more his weakness: the power is accidental, due to his circumstances; the weakness, however, may be intrinsic to him. In short, it is argued by More than frank speaking is healthy, especially if guided by clear thinking. Should not the blatant flattery resorted to by More in our petition have alerted the king to the fact that he was not being treated as what we would call “a grown-up”?

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VI No doubt, unpredictable events very much affected what happened thereafter in the relations between Thomas More and his king. Even so, it may be useful to notice a few developments in the years following. The king evidently did not “read” the petition as we just have. If he could not, or would not, so read it, what does it say not only about the condition of his soul but also about the condition of his dynasty? Is not any ruler’s dynasty vulnerable when he can be warned against fancy talk even as he is inundated by it without his putting a stop to it? Henry was a king very much concerned about the perpetuation of his dynasty. That concern was critical to the measures that Henry took in defiance of the pope in Rome, with all of the turmoil that followed in England. That turmoil was to continue in the country for years to come, temporarily papered over (so to speak) by the glorious reign of Elizabeth, but always lurking beneath the surface of political life. Indeed, one can be startled to notice that however powerful Henry VIII seemed to be, the English monarchy was shaken to its foundations (and thereafter permanently restricted severely) within a half-century after the reigns of Henry VIII and his three children (Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I). (That is, Elizabeth died in 1603; the second monarch after her, Charles I, was executed in 1649—and things have not been the same for the British royals since then.) VII We have, upon really looking at something quite familiar, been permitted to see how exceptional minds can work, and how chance can affect them. More does point out that fancy talk might be far shallower than blunt talk. But he leaves open the possibility, without explicitly noticing it, that the deepest talk may be found among the polished speakers, not among the bluntest. For the blunt speakers, we can notice, probably cannot help themselves, while one kind of polished speaker, the man of talent and insight, very much knows and controls what he is doing. I began by confessing to a chastening experience. But (both the Socratic and the Christian might agree) one should welcome such experiences, especially if they permit one to understand better than one otherwise might the things that one takes very much for granted. I do hope, that is, that all of you have, in the course of this semester, chastening experiences of your own which permit you too to clarify what you believe you know.

Chapter Nine

Martin Luther (1483–1548)468

God said it I believe it And That Settles It —Bumper sticker469

I It is fortuitous—or, as some might say, providential—that the ten uses of nature in Martin Luther’s important Christian Liberty tract (of 1520) appear in the order that they do.470 His arrangement of the uses of nature offers us a convenient way of organizing our inquiry into his thought. One might well wonder, of course, whether Luther himself was aware of what he had done, or whether he had (in the manner of a gifted artist) revealed more than he was explicitly aware of. How one answers this kind of question depends, in part, upon how thoughtful one considers him to have been. It is well at the outset to remind ourselves that Luther was no mere visionary, that he was able, during a long public career, to conduct complicated matters with skill and to retain the respect and affection of people who knew him well. This means, among other things, that he must not be taken as “standing for” one side of a fundamental dichotomy to the total exclusion of its opposite—whether the dichotomy be between “justification by faith” and “justification by works,” or between “body” and “soul,” or even between “divine” and “human.” It is, I suggest, virtually impossible—if not even madness—to settle upon one side in such a juxtaposition to the total exclusion of the other side. Rather, the question usually is: Where, on this occasion, should the emphasis be placed?471

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It is well, also, to remind ourselves of the political circumstances which helped shape Luther’s public career. Thus, his very survival, to say nothing of his effectiveness, evidently depended much upon the protection provided him by various princes and noblemen. Certainly, it is easy to see that much of Luther’s influence was derived from his status as the representative of a developing German self-consciousness, particularly as Germans attempted to assert their independence of control by Southern Europe (of which the papacy was the supreme representative) and to develop a culture rooted in “good plain German.” And so one of Luther’s contemporaries could say, about his standing firm in the face of papal disapproval on one occasion, “that had Luther recanted the angry knights would have killed him.”472 Luther can even be spoken of (as much later by Friedrich Nietzsche) as a peasant—which does suggest that he was a man of the people, albeit their leader. In various ways, then, the Reformation can be seen as leading to the end of the “Middle Ages,” or perhaps it should be said that the end of the “Middle Ages” produced the Reformation. The availability of the printing press magnified considerably, among the self-asserting Germans, the influence of their most articulate son.473 In any event, the Protestant Reformation was a departure from Roman Catholicism. But it can also be understood to have depended upon Roman Catholicism—upon its centralized institutions, its teachings, and its abuses—so much so that the Reformation was not able to take root in those places where the Eastern Orthodox Church held sway.474 To remind ourselves of the circumstances and conditions of Luther’s career should not be taken to suggest that there was nothing special about the man himself. His intimates, it has been noticed, “regarded him as a really great man, one standing within the historic succession of prophets and doctors of the church, through whose life and witness the Word of God had gone forth, conquering and to conquer.”475 On the other hand, the long Babylonian Captivity of the Church had undermined considerably its prestige and influence in Europe. Luther writes in a lively fashion; he speaks in quite confident terms, even when he is acknowledging his shortcomings and sins. His subjects are varied; his treatments are interesting, enlivened as they are by his uninhibited criticisms of Papists, Turks, Jews, worldly men, and even his own supporters and disciples. There is, about the man, something we call “human,” more so than with most of the other Reformers. Thus, when someone sent to know whether it was permissible to use warm water in baptism, Luther replied, “Tell the blockhead that water, warm or cold, is water.”476 Thus, also, when he was asked if the thoughts and words of the prophet Jeremiah had been Christian-like when he cursed the day of his birth, Luther said, “We must now and then wake up our Lord God with such words.”477 And so Ralph Waldo Emerson could say, in his lecture on Martin Luther, “He addresses the Deity . . . much as a subject who is conscious

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that his great services to his king and his known devotion to his service entitle [him] to use great liberties of speech.”478 The “personality” of the man is further suggested in this description, by a Roman Catholic scholar of our day, of how Luther conducted himself at his last birthday party, at a time when everyone knew that death was imminent for him: The Doctor rises to give one of those great speeches whose conception will forever be a mystery—wild like a charging elephant that tramples everything in its path, yet also tender as an elephant’s trunk which can pick a fragile butterfly from blooming roses without causing a single leaf to fall to the ground.479

This scholar has also said of Luther, “It was characteristic of both the man and the Christian that every time he found himself in a life-threatening crisis, he confronted danger with poise, serenity, and total commitment, yet not without skill, reflection, and even reserve.”480 No doubt, Luther’s confidence and competence in the matters he dealt with were nurtured by a faith grounded in the Bible, of which book he could say, “Scripture is like a huge stream along whose banks lambs scamper and in whose deep middle elephants bathe.”481 So much, then, by way of suggesting the nature of Martin Luther himself. Let us turn now (with considerable help from the Table Talk) to a consideration of how he uses the word nature in his Christian Liberty tract, usages which are particularly significant in that they are not merely his but rather reflect a long development (going back to St. Augustine and perhaps even to St. Paul, if not to Jesus himself).482 It is, I might add, an approach to nature which may seem to pose a serious challenge to the sort of thing that any serious program of liberal education can be said to be dedicated to.483

II Luther, in his Christian Liberty tract, first uses nature in this fashion: “Love by its very nature is ready to serve and be subject to him who is loved.”484 Here, the interesting thing is not how nature itself is used—for “by its very nature” means “of its kind” or “in its character.” Rather, what is critical here is how love is regarded: it is seen as other-regarding, not as self-serving. That is, love is for the good of the other, not something which reflects one’s desire to possess something for oneself. Self-sacrifice, at least with respect to the things of this world, seems to be called for as the highest form of love. By proceeding in this manner, it can be said, Luther revived something that had been lost (or muted) in Christianity by the Roman Catholic Church, the

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importance of justification by grace. (The grace of God can be seen as the ultimate form of love for another, a love from which the lover—in this case God Himself—does not “personally” gain anything.) Thus, one is most godlike when one is most in the service of others.485 Of course, Roman Catholic scholars will point out, the problems Luther posed about contrition and “pure love” could have generated Catholic solutions.486 Thus, one can find among Roman Catholic thinkers notable instances, comparable to Luther’s, of a dedication to a “theology of the Cross,” with the supreme self-sacrifice and other-centeredness implied thereby.487 A different stance obviously seems to have been taken by the great thinkers of antiquity. Even Thomas Aquinas, the great expositor of Aristotle in the Roman Catholic Church, could be troubled by the absence of humility as a virtue in the work of Aristotle.488 Augustine, before him, had spoken of the great effort needed “to convince the proud of the power and excellence of humility.”489 It is evident that Luther, who evidently lectured for a year (as a professor) on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, is put off by the Aristotelian insistence that the man of virtue is entitled to recognize himself as a good man. Luther counsels instead, “Wherefore, let no man proudly boast and brag of his own righteousness, wisdom, or other gifts and qualities, but humble himself, and pray with the holy apostles, and say: Ah Lord! strengthen and increase the faith in us!”490 Of course, Luther’s insistence upon the propriety and necessity of humility does not preclude him (as I have indicated) from being a man of strong convictions with respect to many things and many people. He certainly is not reticent in making his opinions known.491 But, he would also insist, he speaks for God, not for himself—and the resulting recognition should be God’s, not his. Thus, he could say, “Honour might be sought for in Homer, Virgil, and in Terence, and not in the Holy Scripture; for Christ says: ‘Hallowed be thy name—nor ours, but thine be the glory.’”492 The extent of Luther’s self-abnegation is suggested by the message found among his effects, after the great man’s death, on a scrap of paper, “The truth is, we are beggars.”493 In Plato’s Symposium, the speaker who sees love as impoverished and beggarly considers love to be grasping, very much moved by a desire to acquire and to possess.494 But Luther, rather, sees one’s impoverishment remedied only by a determined emptying of oneself for the sake of others—and so he can say that love by its very nature “is ready to serve and be subject to him who is loved.”495 One must wonder, of course, whether there is something “unnatural” about such disregard for one’s own. Does it tend to disparage the demands of the body, to spiritualize love more than is good for health and ordinary human sociability? Still, Luther was not simply oblivious of the need to look out for one’s own. Consider Emerson’s account: “He received offers of protection from noblemen in Suabia, Switzerland, Bohemia. But his help lay in himself; the thunder of his coarse unchosen words was the arsenal of his power which made men’s ears to

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tingle, and stimulated their imaginations as the accents of a superior being.”496 Whether Luther’s own theology, with its emphasis upon the inevitable impoverishment of the human soul, allows a place for what Emerson recognized as “a superior being” is, of course, a critical question.

III Luther’s second use of nature in his Christian Liberty tract may be found in this form: “Man has a twofold nature, a spiritual and a bodily one.”497 One may see here, perhaps, the grounding for the distinction between faith and works: works, it can be said, minister to the bodily; faith, to the spiritual. But, of course, the body is not simply physical. It does provide, so far as we know, the condition (or receptacle) for the soul, at least on earth; and even if the soul should survive death, it seems to be assumed by Christianity that the soul would require something like a body in order to be subjected to opportunities for its proper development, salvation, and rewards. Works—whether they be ceremonies, good deeds and penitence, or the use of relics and the like—do tend to be centered upon the body, its community, and its care. The “indulgences” issue, of which Luther made so much, is a way of distinguishing works and faith (even though, obviously, the institution of indulgences presupposes considerable faith, even an unquestioning faith, on the part of the people who purchase such things).498 The indulgences issue raised questions about the power and authority of the Church: that issue proved, it seems, a convenient way to express an evidently growing opposition to the demands and claims of the Church. Others, as we know, were also challenging the Church, all over Europe, and had been doing so for more than a century. The advantage of Luther’s approach was that it provided a concrete issue and an easily dramatized instance on which to build a doctrinal opposition: such an issue could be made to mean more to the man in the street than any number of learned debates. Luther seems to have been able to exploit, for all that it was worth, an issue which had long troubled many pious Roman Catholics who never dreamt of breaking with the Church. Or, as Emerson put it, “The central fact in the history of Luther is the publication of his Thesis against Indulgences.”499 If the body and the temporal, physical community are to be taken seriously, there must be not only works but also laws by which these matters must be regulated. And, it seems to follow as day the night, that a system must make some provision for purgation and pardoning of offenses. Thus, indulgences (in some form or another, whether purchased or otherwise earned or acquired) seem a likely consequence of any extensive reliance upon law. A system of law also means that there will be all kinds of officials and organizations, including what we would today call a bureaucracy. All this in turn is likely to permit (if not even

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to seem to require) a considerable amount of corruption, or at least moral laxity. It is no wonder, then, that Luther, on his one trip to Rome (about 1510), should have had “his earnestness . . . shocked at the Italinate levity of the Roman clergy and by the worldliness so evident in high places.”500 Luther himself would put these observations somewhat less tolerantly than I have: he would have tended to emphasize, as did Augustine before him, the inherent depravity of mankind, something which laws and works and the most conscientious efforts of the community really cannot prevent or correct. Thus, Augustine saw unredeemed mankind, no matter how good-intentioned, as little better than Epicureans, living “by the rule of the flesh.”501 He could add, “And it was not the corruptible flesh that made the soul sinful; it was the sinful soul that made the flesh corruptible.”502 So corrupting is the soul, inherently so now (it would seem), that Augustine (and, to some extent at least, Luther after him), can see conjugal intercourse, even with a view to the procreation of children, as inherently shameful.503 When mankind is regarded thus, it would seem that no laws or any other human institutions can do anything significant to redeem a human being. This approach does seem critically different from that implied in the command by Isaiah, “Cease to do evil and learn to do right.” In this respect, the approach of Augustine and Luther seems to differ from that of Isaiah and, say, Socrates or Aristotle (to whom we will return).504 Luther came to believe that too much had been made among Christians of justification by works and not enough of justification by grace (or of faith). Thus, he (and his sympathizers after him) could come to believe that theologians who were too respectful of pagan antiquity (such as Thomas Aquinas) did not appreciate sufficiently, or in the right way, justification by grace. How far Luther went in his subordination of the temporal to the spiritual, and hence of works to grace, may be seen in his determinedly harsh response to the Peasants’ War, an uprising which seems to have been encouraged if not even originally inspired by what peasants took to be his liberating doctrines. But, it has been observed, “Nothing makes clearer how alien Luther can seem to us than his position” in response to the peasant uprisings.505 Perhaps his response can be seen as consistent with, if not even required by, his depreciation of works and the body. Reinforcing his attitudes here may have been his expectations, voiced again and again, that the last days were imminent.506 IV And yet, having said all this, we must notice that Luther retreats from a full, and simply destructive, application of his doctrines. He does indicate, in various ways, that one should look out somewhat for oneself. Even the body, and works related thereto, should be respected—and in saying this, he can further attack a reliance upon works by suggesting that an undue reliance upon works (in the

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form, for example, of ascetism and mortification of the flesh) can wreck the body and destroy its ability to do the works necessary for its proper maintenance and activity. This argument may be seen in Luther’s third use of nature in the Christian Liberty tract, where he says of those who rely excessively upon certain kinds of works, that “they even addle their brains and destroy, or at least render useless, their natural strength with their works.”507 Thus, it can be said, common sense emerges here, representing something of a retreat from the position Luther had seemed to take. That is to say, nature, in a sense, asserts herself, as he concedes the proper place of the physical (including brains) in the temporal life of the human being. Some works (which are, after all, implications of a radical insistence upon faith) can be self-destructive—and Luther counsels against that. Does not this reflect an awareness, evident in the Table Talk, of the natural sociability of mankind?508 Besides, Luther himself was a quite “physical” man—a man with a temper, who was inclined on occasion to use coarse language. He did like to eat and drink. And he was commonsensical enough to regard as great gifts of God not wealth but rather sight and reasoning.509 Nature, he recognized, teaches even the animals useful things.510 Luther’s instinctive respect for the temporal and for its works, whatever he may have said about a virtually exclusive reliance upon faith, may be manifested in the marriage he made. A Roman Catholic scholar of our day, in his quite sympathetic biography of Luther, reports, “For the marriage that is being blessed and witnessed here became one of the happiest in all of Christendom.”511 Emerson, more than a century earlier, argued that Luther’s stupendous passions did not lead to insanity because his warm social affections (including for his wife) kept him balanced.512 And, Emerson could say of the vein of humor in Luther, “Language like this is not to be mistaken. It is like a broad smile of good nature which cannot be counterfeited and inspires confidence.”513 Thus, we see here a partial retreat on the part of Luther, a retreat which finds him exhibiting toleration of, if not even respect for, some degree of self-regarding and the works which follow therefrom. There is, no doubt, some risk for the moralist in such an allowance for self-interest, for it may liberate all too many petty-minded and shortsighted people who (almost self-righteously) can make looking out for themselves into a virtuous duty, forgetting in the process how much they have depended upon and profited from the efforts of others on many occasions. The demands here of nature are prudently recognized by Luther, even as he is wary of the consequences of such a concession.514 V Luther’s wariness with respect to the demands of nature is reflected in the passage which incorporates his fourth and fifth uses of nature in Christian Liberty.

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A perverse notion about works can be rooted out of the soul only by means of a sincere faith: Nature of itself cannot drive it out or even recognize it, but rather regards it as a mark of the most holy will. If the influence of custom is added and confirms this perverseness of nature, as wicked teachers have caused it to do, it becomes an incurable evil and leads astray and destroys countless men beyond all hope of restoration.515

Nature, we see here, stands in the way of a proper restoration of mankind. Nature does point to works (including ceremonies, rituals, and pious deeds) as proper efforts at restoration—but since nature is perverse (that is, corrupted and hence unreliable), it not only cannot be helpful, it can even be harmful in that it diverts us from the only true way to salvation. The Church, in its considerable reliance upon works and laws, follows the promptings of nature. But perhaps an even more misleading source of misdirection here is the Jewish people: indeed, the Roman Catholic Church can be seen as doing, essentially, what the Jews before it had done—and because what the Jews had done had once rested on acknowledged divine authority, the laws of the Jews may pose even more of a problem for Luther. Besides, it is easier to be vituperative toward the Jews, not only because (after all) the Papists acknowledge the Christian faith in some form but also because all Christians in Western Europe (including those already in Luther’s camp and many more whom he wants to enlist) had been or were Papists.516 A critical problem—perhaps, for an embattled Luther, the critical problem, especially since he must make so much of justification by faith—is that the Jews make as much as they do of law and works. Does a righteousness based on laws and works (including a concern for the moral virtues) point more to a community and more to primary concern with temporal life? And does a righteousness based on faith point more to the eternal condition and fate of the soul?517 Of course, faith is critical to the Jews as well, as may be seen in the life of Abraham (someone whose story Luther very much liked).518 But is the emphasis different, with a much greater concern among the Jews for the things of this world and for their proper ordering? A people, Luther can be taken as saying—a people with their emphasis on works can turn themselves virtually into idols; they can become too self-centered (just as love, on the other hand, can become too self-neglecting). What is odd about all this is that the Jews, who are the “workers” par excellence, should be the ones who follow the route of nature, that route which takes most seriously the community, laws, and works—this despite the fact that there is in the Hebrew of the Bible no recognition of nature as such. On the other hand, it is odd that the Christians, who do know something about nature (as seen

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in the Greek of their Scriptures), should be determined to disavow nature as corrupt: it is almost as if one must explicitly know “nature” in order to put her in her place, to recognize her for the perversion that she is. In critical respect, then, the Jews are soulmates of the ancient pagans (and particularly of the Greeks), who took their guidance substantially from nature and even fashioned divinity in the light provided them by nature.519 People have long wondered why Luther (particularly in his last years) was personally so bitter against the Jews. It may be partly because they did not convert, as he had evidently hoped they would do, once Christianity became available without the disabilities of the Church.520 But perhaps even more important, I have suggested, is that the Jews can be considered to have posed the most critical challenge to Luther’s doctrines about the overwhelming efficacy of justification by faith alone. It is not inappropriate to notice that Adolf Hitler’s support and electoral base were predominantly Protestant.521 Luther was always firm in what he had to say about Jews. He had hardly a kind word about them as a people, however respectfully he could speak of particular Jews (such as Moses, Abraham, David, Solomon, Peter, and Paul, to say nothing of Jesus himself). For him the Jews are, in the final analysis, stubborn and hence troublesome. They once had great God-given privileges and great opportunities—and they squandered them. Luther evidently believed what he said when he complained, “And truly they hate us Christians as they do death; it galls them to see us.”522 Some of Luther’s diatribes against the Jews accuse them of all kind of horrible things, so much so that the Nazis could republish his words to their advantage. And this despite the fact that Luther was evidently influenced in his translation of the Bible by a medieval scholar (Nicholas de Lyra, not a Jew), who had been influenced in turn by Rashi, the great Jewish commentator.523 I have suggested that the fundamental difference between Luther and the Jews may have been as to the importance of justification by faith. And, indeed, modern Jews do tend to say that Judaism relies upon justification by works, that it is not “Pauline.” But, it can also be said, this disjunction may not truly be valid in Jewish thought. Thus, for the Jew, the mizvah (the pious work, the good deed) presupposes a command rooted in faith. Circumcision, for example, must be done for the sake of Heaven, if it is to have the proper significance and effect: faith is critical for making works mean what they should. The Epistle of St. James can be studied with profit here, exhibiting as it does a more Jewish point of view on these matters than do the writings of St. Paul. Among the things insisted upon both by James and by the Jews is that faith without works is dead.524 We should be reminded, in the context of this discussion of the Jews, of what justification by faith means—that one must guard against the delusion of believing that salvation is dependent upon human achievement or as a reward for human merit.525 It is against this background, then, that I suggest it can be

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believed that the truly serious shortcoming of the Jews, an enduring shortcoming, is that they actually believe that it is possible for men to be righteous, to be truly righteous, in this world, that it is possible for a human being (women as well as men) to be simply good and hence worthy of God’s care.526 Related to this, and also threatening for someone of Luther’s persuasion as well as for many other Christians, is the evident lack of concern by Jews (by and large) for eternal life as Christians understand it. And yet Luther’s great teacher, Augustine, could insist, “[I]t is, strictly speaking, for the sake of eternal life alone that we are Christians.”527 Thus, Christianity ministers to what Augustine considers a desire implanted in our nature for blessedness and immortality.528 Elsewhere, Augustine can speak of “the stupefying arrogance of those people who imagine that they find the Ultimate Good in this life and that they can attain happiness by their own efforts.”529 To imagine that the ultimate good is to be found in this life, with or without the help of God, and that one can attain and perhaps even earn happiness here by one’s own efforts—this approach to things seems to Luther the way that the Jews proceed—and it is also the way that those who rely upon nature proceed. But if nature is perverse, and if the Old Law has been superseded, then both the Jews and the followers of nature (or the philosophers) are simply wrongheaded, if not even malicious, in their obstinacy and in their suicidal course. The perversity of nature means that life is not itself attractive. (Compare Aristotle, who could say that existence can be sweet.) Thus, life is meaningful only on the basis of the teachings and hopes of the Bible, and especially of the New Testament.530 We can readily appreciate what perversity of nature can mean by considering how unnatural the medieval monastic life can seem to many people today. The extent to which Luther differed from the standard teaching in the Roman Catholic Church of his day is evident upon noticing the considerable respect in Thomas Aquinas for nature: “Even without divine grace [Thomas indicates] nature is complete in itself and possesses its own intrinsic perfection in that it has within itself that by means of which it is capable of attaining its ends or returning to its principle.”531 And Thomas adds, “Far from destroying nature, divine grace presupposes it and perfects it by elevating it to an end that is higher than any to which it could aspire by its own means.”532 Thus, there is no fundamental divergence between the truths of revelation and the knowledge acquired by reason, however subordinate the latter may always be to the former. Augustine, on the other hand, could insist “that all men, as long as they are mortals, must needs be also wretched. If this is so, we must look for a mediator.”533 Augustine’s disparagement of the natural may even be seen in the fact that where Cicero speaks of the “natural law,” Augustine preferred to speak of the “eternal law.”534 It is the Augustinian position that Luther inherited, but he evidently did even more with it. Since Luther was much further than Augustine from a lively

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awareness of the classical writers, he could make even less than Augustine did of nature. And he could in turn make less than Augustine did of a mediator, insisting instead that each man could establish a personal relation with God. Thomas Aquinas, on the other hand, seemed to make much more of nature than either Augustine or Luther; and he stressed, perhaps more than Augustine and certainly more than Luther did, the need for a mediator, for habituation, for (in short) a vital community here on earth. It should be no wonder, then, that Thomas Aquinas may have been, among the leading figures of the Middle Ages, the Gentile most sympathetic to Jewish interests. In this respect, Pope John XXIII, with his humane opening to the Jews in our time, can be understood to have sided with Thomas Aquinas and against Martin Luther in an insistence upon paying due respect to the promptings of nature.535

VI In some ways, then, Luther can be considered somewhat like the Christ figure in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor” story, at least in his challenge to the established order and in favor of a primitive Christianity.536 On the other hand, the Grand Inquisitor, like the Roman Catholic Church, can be considered to have deferred to the promptings of nature, and to the natural limitations of most men, by taking seriously the things of this world, including the works to which men are naturally inclined in their effort to save themselves.537 The sixth usage of nature in Luther’s Christian Liberty takes the form of a reference to “the divine and the human nature” of Jesus.538 We may see, in this unprecedented (if not even unnatural) combination, the roots perhaps of the peculiar relation of faith to works, for they too both diverge and yet combine or depend upon one another. So peculiar is this relation, one might venture to add, that no adequate account will ever be possible, at least among human beings, which allows each to be given its due in company with the other. It is instructive to notice here that Luther once again retreats from an extreme position. Although he has, in his unbecoming invectives against both the Roman Catholic Church and the Jews, dismissed reliance upon nature and disparaged the efficacy of works, he then makes a point of insisting that Jesus, while on earth, had submerged his divine nature, allowing his human nature to be so afflicted as to do many good works. We are given to understand by this insistence that the Christian who is properly moved by faith will in fact do many good works for others. He will not be merely self-regarding. Besides, Luther can himself be understood to have believed that without various works (including laws and institutions), the community will degenerate—and with it the conditions that permit the Christian faith to be properly taught and learned.

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How the combination of two quite divergent natures in Jesus is to be understood is, I have suggested, perhaps in principle impossible to determine by the use of ordinary language. Is the very notion of nature thereby undermined? Must that notion be challenged by the Christian, if he is to be able to persist in accepting both elements in that combination? How is it possible, for example, to take seriously the afflictions of Jesus if he all the time knew the divine plan, and so on? It should be evident that one may not be able to reason about such matters as one does about everyday things.539 Be that as it may, we can say that reason does assert itself again and again in Luther, along with the promptings of nature. Thus, he could be heard to explain that Jesus is not in heaven “like a stork in a nest.”540

VII How much Luther must rely upon reason (and not only in interpreting Scripture and judging controversies) is evident in the next passage in Christian Liberty in which nature is used—used three times, in fact: Since human nature and natural reason, as it is called, are by nature superstitious and ready to imagine, when laws and works are prescribed, that righteousness must be obtained through laws and works; and further, since they are trained and confirmed in this opinion by the practice of all earthly lawgivers, it is impossible that they should of themselves escape from the slavery of works and come to a knowledge of the freedom of faith.541

Thus, we here see Luther insisting that it is superstitious not to rely on faith as decisive! That is, Luther turns the weapons of reason back against reason itself. He seems to assume here that reasoning is the natural and proper way, but reasoning that has been instructed as it needs to be. In any event, it may well be that Christianity and Luther have gotten enough from philosophy to be able to go into business for themselves, so to speak.542 Lurking behind this talk of superstition may be seen the question of the reliability of revelation and the records thereof. Luther recognizes that natural reason can be useful to the regenerated Christian.543 Is it not his reason, and a rather sophisticated reason, that he brings to bear in his depreciation of reliance upon miracles in establishing one’s Christian faith? Thus, he notices that the apostles’ miracles were as great as those performed by Jesus.544 Luther insists that he knows only the name of Jesus: he does not want Christ to appear to him; he desires no new revelation.545 This suggests that he does not want to have to make any further judgment as to whether any proposed revelation is genuine.

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This points up—does it not?—the vital usefulness of what the Roman Catholic Church had long done for him. For one thing, was it not the Church which provided him, in an authoritative and reliable form (and in Latin yet!), the Scriptures upon which he so much relies?546 And yet there are here various problems that one is tempted to investigate—and not only the implications of Luther’s condemnation of Copernicus as a fool because he, Luther, believed “in Holy Scripture, since Joshua ordered the Sun, not the Earth, to stand still.”547 But we must leave such problems for another occasion. Neither Luther and his supporters, on the one hand, nor his opponents, on the other, ever questioned publicly (so far as I know) the validity of Scriptures as recorded in the version authorized by the Church. Why not? Did Luther sense that this was not a question to be pursued? And hence he places the emphasis on faith? Does, on the other hand, an emphasis on works come, in part, from men (in the Church) who sense the equivocal nature of revelation, from men who do not understand the stories about miracles and so on as the many do? Do these men regard the Scriptures as worthwhile because of the works they inspire among human beings and the conduct they require? Is to ask, or at least to pursue such questions, as well as questions about the sources and the ratification of revelations—is all this to depend too much upon nature and (in effect) upon philosophy? Does revelation stand, in large part, for the privilege, if not even the necessity, of being (or at least of seeming to be) absurd?548 Is there, about the insistence upon justification by faith, a hedge against any serious attack by reason upon one’s faith?549 Reason, Luther insists, can in no way contribute to faith.550 Indeed, he even suggests that reason is the greatest enemy that faith has. And with these remarks we can be reminded of the tension within the Roman Catholic Church itself between the teachings of Augustine and the teachings of Thomas Aquinas.551

VIII But rather than dwell upon that tension further, we must consider the perhaps related implications of the final use of nature in Luther’s Christian Liberty: “If [God] himself does not teach our hearts this wisdom hidden in a mystery, nature can only condemn it and judge it to be heretical because [it is] offended by it and regards it as foolishness.”552 Nature, we are told here, can condemn faith-based wisdom as heretical. That which nature, in the fallen condition of mankind, produces is quite different from that “wisdom hidden in mystery” which the heart is receptive to. Philosophy stresses understanding, which is (in some ways) akin (in its “spirituality” and “otherworldliness”) to faith—but philosophy uses nature as its ground

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(and to use nature as one’s ground may be, I have argued, somewhat like an emphasis upon works).553 We have been told that Luther, in his student days at the university, “talked long and enough to be nicknamed ‘the Philosopher.’”554 But he did come to believe that the critical problem with the philosophers is that they believe there is a natural guide which permits one to live justly, if one but chooses to do so. Luther, on the other hand, insists upon the inevitable and deep sinfulness of men. The philosophers simply do not regard men thus: they have a sense neither of unredeemed man’s inevitable vulnerability nor of his irradicable guilt. The Pauline insistence on faith, on the other hand, means that one cannot possibly figure out on one’s own the way to salvation: if that could be done, if one could be sufficiently ethical on the basis of reason and nature alone, then the Incarnation would not have been necessary.555 And so we find in Luther repeated disparagements of the philosophers, and especially of Plato and Aristotle. Whereas Augustine (a millennium earlier) could speak highly, and almost with reverence, of Plato,556 Luther can dismiss Plato as someone who “chatters.”557 And of Aristotle, Luther can say that he is an “Epicurean,” in that “he holds that God heeds not human creatures, nor regards how we live, permitting us to act at our pleasure.”558 How is one to regard the mysteries of religion? Are they, in critical respects, the consequences of quite serious art? That is, are the teachings of religion, and especially its prophecies, an acceptable, and particularly effective, form of guidance by inspired godlike statesmen?559 Thus, Emerson could say of Luther, He held all his opinions poetically, not philosophically; with poetic force but with poetic narrowness also. In his religious faith, there is no approach to the conception of God as the Pure Reason, which is the faith dear to philosophic minds, but he adhered to the lowest form of the popular theology.560

We need not adopt—we need only notice—Emerson’s opinion. But we must wonder whether one can be in principle equipped to assess the various forms of popular theology available to mankind. The popular answer today is that there is no basis for judging among faiths—but that opinion, too, may be the result of a failure to give reason its due, to recognize its scope and the use to which it can put the teachings of nature. Thus, we recall in Plato’s Republic that Socrates can insist that some of the stories about the gods simply cannot be true—and Augustine, later on, adopts in effect the Platonic mode in discounting many of the stories about the gods believed by the pagans.561 We recall also that Thomas Aquinas could observe that God cannot undo that which has been done: that is, even God cannot make something which has been not to have been. With this the medieval theologians evidently agreed.562 This does suggest that whatever the ultimate incommensurability between reason and revelation, reason can help us decide what purported revelations might well be taken seriously. I must leave it to others to decide whether Luther

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would agree with this proposition—and what it suggests about him, or about the proponent of such a proposition, if he should not.

IX In considering the status of reason for Luther, one should not fail to take into account the significance of a considerable use of intelligence and of eloquence in the service of one’s cause. One is reminded here that there is an intimate relation between reason and language—a reminder particularly appropriate, considering the remarkable quality of Luther’s language. In passing judgment upon the soundness of what Luther said, is one entitled— is not one obliged—to consider how well he understood what he was doing? Consider various consequences of his rebellion. What Luther did, in opposition to “philosophy” and the life of reason, for the sake of the faith, may have helped make faith much more vulnerable than it might otherwise have been. It is remarkable as well that this vigorous opponent of the great humanist Desiderius Erasmus should now be credited with having united the humanistic tradition with the reform movement. Certainly, Luther has, with his insistence upon the “priesthood of all believers,” helped legitimate the cult of “individuality”—and this has meant, among other things, breaking down social and intellectual barriers and thus opening the way to modern science and to modern democracy (as well as to modern tyrannies).563 Thus, it can now be said that everyone can write to his Congressman, just as everyone can talk to his God. All this can be said to follow, more or less, for better and for worse, from the sort of thing Luther said before the Diet at Worms in 1521: [B]e it known to you, that until such time as either by proofs from Holy Scripture, or by fair reason and argument, I have been confuted and convinced, I cannot and will not recant. It is neither safe nor prudent to do aught against conscience.564

I say “the sort of thing Luther said” since what he was saying along these lines others had said before him and were saying with him. In fact, the causes of his emergence may depend in large part on deep social and intellectual movements of which he was a particularly visible (and audible) manifestation. That Lutheranism was most appealing in urban commercial areas—or so I have been told—may suggest something about the causes of these movements.565 Must we not wonder whether Luther’s insistence upon a return to the faith— to an unvarnished and deeply felt faith—did this insistence help undermine faith in the centuries following? That is, had both the Roman Catholic Church and the Jews recognized, long before Luther, that even the most worthy faith needs a fence around it (in the form of law, works, ceremonies) to protect it? Were they, in this and other respects, more respectful of both nature and reason than Luther?566

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The unpredictability of political, intellectual, and social developments may be seen in Luther’s own career. He was moved by an unexpected and developing controversy to begin to examine the pope’s authority and even the authority of the councils.567 This led him to place considerable, even virtually exclusive, reliance upon Scriptures. And this has led, since him, to the questioning of the Scriptures themselves. I have suggested that although Luther drew heavily upon Augustine, Augustine himself was more respectful of the great classical philosophers (and especially of Plato) than was Luther.568 The affinity between Luther and Augustine may be seen, however, in such observations as the following by Augustine: It was, no doubt, difficult for so great a philosopher [Porphyry?] either to acknowledge [a] society of demons or to censure them with confidence, whereas any Christian old woman would have no hesitation about the fact of their existence, and no reserve about denouncing them.569

But Augustine did learn something from the philosophers which, in the light of subsequent developments even Luther might have had to begin to ponder the usefulness of—a teaching which left Augustine believing that “the whole truth in matters of supreme moment can be safeguarded only if its investigator is accompanied by a prudent reserve in the expression of that truth.”570 And we in turn can wonder whether what Augustine had come to believe is indeed true—and, if true, what his prudent conclusion reveals about the deference that even the man of God owes to the dictates of nature. ADDENDUM: THE USES OF “NATURE” IN MARTIN LUTHER’S CHRISTIAN LIBERTY571 Page 7 (para. 2), #1 Love by its very nature is ready to serve and be subject to him who is loved. (Amor vero natura sua officiosus est et obsequens ei quod amatur.) Page 7 (para. 3), #2 Man has a twofold nature, a spiritual and a bodily one. (Homo enim duplici constat natura, spirituali et corporali.) Page 22–23 (para. 32), #3 In this way everyone will easily be able to learn for himself the limit and discretion, as they say, of his bodily castigations, for he will fast, watch, and labor as

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much as he finds sufficient to repress the lasciviousness and lust of his body. But those who presume to be justified by works do not regard the mortifying of the lusts, but only the works themselves, and think that if only they have done as many and as great works as are possible, they have done well and have become righteous. At times they even addle their brains and destroy, or at least render useless, their natural strength with their works. (qui vero praesumunt operibus iustificari, observant non mortificationem concupiscentiarium, sed ipsa tantum opera, arbitantes, si modo quam plurima et maxima, fecerint, sese bene habere et iustos factos esse, aliquando et cerebum laedentes et naturam extinguentes aut saltem inutilem reddentes. [Not all of the Latin is given here.]) Page 26 (para. 42), #4, #5 But this leviathan, or perverse notion concerning works, is unconquerable where sincere faith is wanting. Those work-saints cannot get rid of it unless faith, its destroyer, comes and rules in their hearts. Nature of itself cannot drive it out or even recognize it, but rather regards it as a mark of the most holy will. If the influence of custom is added and confirms this perverseness of nature, as wicked teachers have caused it to do, it becomes incurable evil and leads astray and destroys countless men beyond all hope of restoration. (Hic autem leviathan et perversa opinio in operibus insuperabilis est, ubi deest syncera fides: abesse enim non potest a sanctis illis operariis, donec fides vastatrix eius veniat et regnet in corde. Natura per seipsam non potest eam expellere, immo ne cognoscrere quidem, quin eam ducit loco sanctissimae voluntatis, ubi, si consuetudo accesserit et hanc naturae pravitatem roboraverit [sicuti factum est per impios Magistros] incurabile malum est et infintos irrecuperabiliter seducit ac perdit.) Page 29 (para. 48), #6 This salutary word of the Apostle [Paul] has been obscured for us by those who have not at all understood his words, “form of God,” “form of a servant,” “human form,” “likeness of men,” and have applied them to the divine and the human nature. (Hoc enim verbum Apostoli saluberrimum nobis obscurarunt ii qui vocabula apostolica “formam dei,” “forman servi,” “habitum,” “similitudinem hominum” prorsus non intellexerunt et ad naturas divinitatis et humnitatis transtulerunt.) Page 39–40 (para. 71), #7, #8, #9, #10 Since human nature and natural reason, as it is called, are by nature superstitious and ready to imagine, when laws and works are prescribed, that righteousness must be obtained through laws and works; and further, since they are trained and

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confirmed in this opinion by the practice of all earthly lawgivers, it is impossible that they should of themselves escape from the slavery of works and come to a knowledge of the freedom of faith. Therefore there is need of the prayer that the Lord may give us and make us theodidacti, that is, those taught by God [John 6:45], and himself, as he has promised, write his law in our hearts; otherwise there is no hope for us. If he himself does not teach our hearts this wisdom hidden in mystery [I Cor. 2: 7], nature can only condemn it and judge it to be heretical because [it is] offended by it and regards it as foolishness. So we see that it happened in the old days in the case of the apostles and prophets, and so godless and blind popes and their flatterers do to me and to those who are like me. May God at last be merciful to them and to us and cause his face to shine upon us that we may know his way upon earth [Ps. 67:1–2], his salvation among all nations, God, who is blessed forever [II Cor. 11:31]. Amen. (Verum cum natura humana et ratio (ut vocant) naturalis sit naturaliter superstitiosa et propositis quibusque legibus et operibus prompta sit in opinionem iustificationis per ea adipiscendae, his adde, quia usu omnium legislatorum terrenorum in eundem sensum est exercita et firmata, impossibile est ut per seipsam se exuat a servitute ill operaria in libertatem fidei cognoscendam; ideo oratione opus est, ut dominus non trahat et theo didactos, idest dociles deo, faciat et ipse in coribus nostris, sicut promisit, legem scribat: alioquin actum est de nobis, Nisi enim ipse doceat intus hanc sapientiam in mysterio absconditam, natura non potest nisi damnare eam et haereticam iudicare, quia scandalisatur in ea et stulta ei apparet, sicut olim in prophetis et Apostolis vidimus accidisse, sicut et nunc mihi et mei similibus faciunt impii et caeci pontifices cum suis dulatoribus, quorum aliquando nobiscum misereatur deus, et super nos illuminet vultum suum, ut cognoscamus in terra viam eius, in omnibus gentibus salutare eius, Qui est benedictus in saecule. Amen.)

Chapter Ten

Michel Eÿquem de Montaigne (1533–1592)572

I know well what I am fleeing, but not what I am seeking. —Montaigne573

I One falls by the wayside. Another steps in to carry on as the seemingly endless procession continues. The components of this human parade constantly change, even as the whole remains somehow the same.574 I examine here, however tentatively, an essay that suggests how the human parade, and hence death, should be regarded. This is the twentieth essay in the first book of Montaigne’s essays, “To Philosophize Is to Learn How to Die.”575 Montaigne observes, at the end of I, 20, that he would like a quiet, unexpected death.576 I suggest in what follows what the thoughtful human being’s choice should take into account in ordinary circumstances.

II I confess that there is something artificial, even limiting in considering I, 20, largely on its own, as I do here. A full understanding of this essay probably requires that it be read in the context of the entire collection of the one hundred and seven essays that Montaigne published.577 The very name that Montaigne gave to this literary form—essai—recognizes the provisional character, or attempt, to be expected here.578 There seem to be signs of careful craftsmanship in the making and arrangement of these essays. Thus, the twenty-ninth essay, which is the central essay in book 109

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I, is about twenty-nine sonnets; depending on how one counts, the thirtieth quotation or paraphrase in I, 20, deals with the thirty tyrants of Athens.579 Scholars point out that the reference by Montaigne should have been to the democratic assembly of Athens, not to the thirty tyrants—but this only suggests to me that Montaigne may have wanted (for some reason or other) this correspondence in numbers. The central essay in the second book is on liberty of conscience; the central essay in the third book is on the disadvantages of greatness.580 Both of these subjects seem critical to his advocacy of a way of life which promotes that enlightened individuality with which we are familiar. Central to the entire collection of 107 essays is I, 54, and hence is on vain subtleties, which may ultimately call into question the orthodox creeds of Montaigne’s day.581 These are matters that one would have to take into account in attempting to grasp fully what he says in any particular essay, certainly in an essay evidently so important to him as I, 20, with its recommendations about how the prospect of death is to be dealt with.582 Among the things that would emerge from a consideration of the whole would be a sense of how, if at all, Montaigne’s opinions about death changed in the course of writing these essays. Three of his essays are recognized as particularly important on this subject: I, 20, II, 6, and III, 12.583 Montaigne tells us that I, 20, was written just after he turned thirty-nine. II, 6, includes the observation, among other comments about death, that nature provides sleep as an introduction to death.584 III, 12, includes the observation, which may seem to make superfluous much of what had been said by him over the years about preparing oneself for death: “If you do not know how to die, do not let it trouble you; Nature will give you full and sufficient instruction when the time comes. She will do the business for you at the precise moment; do not burden your mind with the thought of it.”585 He adds here, in III, 12, “We trouble our life by the thought of death, and death by the thought of life. The one gives us a feeling of regret, the other terrifies us.”586 Since I cannot pretend to grasp Montaigne’s work as a whole, my inquiry about I, 20, must deal more with the positions suggested by that essay than with what Montaigne himself says and perhaps does in this essay, something that I cannot address properly without knowing much more than I do about the other essays. The positions I will now discuss, whether or not they are truly Montaigne’s (and they may well not be his; certainly, they cannot all be his)—these are positions that various people have held, perhaps partly because of Montaigne’s influence. These are also positions that can be instructive to address on their own terms. Perhaps they can be helpful as well for anyone interested in considering further the overall teaching of someone long reputed to be a wise man.587 III The topic of I, 20, is introduced with Montaigne’s immediate comment on something said in antiquity: “Cicero says that to philosophize is nothing else

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but to prepare for death. This is because study and contemplation draw our soul out of us to some extent and keep it busy outside the body; which is a sort of apprenticeship and semblance of death. Or else it is because all the wisdom and reasoning in the world boils down finally to this point: to teach us not to be afraid to die.”588 This passage establishes the tone for much of this celebrated essay. Thus, further on, Montaigne counsels that since death is uncertain, one should look for it everywhere.589 To teach a man to die, then, is to teach him to live, he argues.590 It is evident throughout his essay that death is something that must be reckoned with, especially since the human awareness of the prospect of death can be oppressive. Is too much being made of death by this approach, and by this understanding of philosophy? Consider the significance of the dramatic use here of Cicero in the opening lines of the essay. Should we not assume that Montaigne knew what has been easily known for millennia about Cicero, that he was something of a physical coward? Thus, Plutarch can comment adversely on the unseemly way that the elderly Cicero tried to avoid death at the hands of his enemies, although nature was bringing it close to him anyway.591 The desperation of the fleeing Cicero is to be contrasted to the well-known refusal of Socrates to take advantage of an opportunity to escape from prison. Socrates’ serenity on the day of his execution is also to be noticed.592 The intimidating character of death, as evident in Cicero, may be seen in others as well. Consider the remarks made by Leo Strauss at the funeral of one of his graduate students at the University of Chicago: “We are struck by the awesome, unfathomable experience of death, of the death of one near and dear to us. . . . Death is terrible, terrifying, but we cannot live as human beings if this terror grips us to the point of corroding our core.”593 He went on to say about his graduate student, in terms which echo the opening of Montaigne’s essay, “Slowly, step by step but with ever greater sureness and awakeness did he begin to become a philosopher. I do not know whether he knew the word of a man of old: may my soul die the death of the philosophers, but young as he was he died that death.”594 Montaigne seems to be particularly alert to the modern attitude about the prospect of death, an attitude seen, for example, in the central place given by Thomas Hobbes in his political teachings to the desire for self-preservation.595 Before I turn to Montaigne proper, I offer, as a further indication of the desperate form that the modern response to death can take, the following comment I have had occasion to make about Charles Dickens’s most beloved story, A Christmas Carol: A question should be raised . . . about the status of death in the stories of Dickens. Is not Scrooge’s terror of death made too much of and, in effect, legitimated by this story? Does not this legitimation reflect the modern attitude—an attitude of deeprooted anxiety in the face of that death which threatens the continuation of the self, of the individuality, we make so much of today? The considerable concern about death, which Dickens repeatedly puts to dramatic use, may be seen as well in the

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remarkable role assigned to food and drink in this and other Christmas-season tales by Dickens. . . . Does not glorying in food and drink assert, in a crude way, that one is truly alive? May it not be for many, and perhaps even for Dickens himself, an effort to repress the terrors of death? There may be, in short, something corrosive and corrupting in Dickens’s attitude toward death.596

This was said by me in 1975, in a lecture dedicated to the memory of a colleague who had recently died.597 IV Montaigne’s essay (I, 20) on philosophy and death can be conveniently divided into two major parts. A third part, very short, brings the essay to a close. The first part of the essay, following upon the use of Cicero, can be considered stoical.598 Emphasis is placed there upon familiarizing oneself with death, and with the prospect of death, thereby reducing its threatening character. Among the models held up for consideration, if not for emulation, are the Egyptians, who would introduce skeletons to the most festive occasions. Little is said by Montaigne either about what immortal life on earth would be like or about the comforts of a life after death. Rather, his emphasis, in developing this response to the prospect of death, is upon purging the soul of the corrosive effects of an unknown (and unknowable?) hobgoblin. One feature of Montaigne’s essays is his abundant use of quotations from the ancients, many of which quotations were evidently added by him after the earliest printings of the essays. Of the some thirty quotations used in this essay (I, 20), one-third are from the poet Horace. I do not believe that Horace would usually be regarded as a Stoic, however stoical the quotations may be that are taken from him. Indeed, he seems to me somewhat like Montaigne in temperament and interests. Does Montaigne, by drawing as much as he does on someone known to have enjoyed living comfortably, attempt to moderate the stoical, even life-denying, character of the argument made in the first part of this essay?599 We are moved by this first part—perhaps we are intended by Montaigne to be moved—to raise again the question of whether too much is being made of death in this and related essays. Certainly, to have recourse to familiarization with death as a major remedy for those already oppressed by the prospect of death is perhaps to dramatize death and the ominous mysteries of eternity even more, at least for the reader, than they already are.600 V The first part of the essay (I, 20) culminates in this story: “To the man who told Socrates, ‘The Thirty Tyrants have condemned you to death,’ he replied, ‘And

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Nature, them.’”601 Socrates can be regarded by some as a thoroughgoing skeptic, but do we not know that he does know some important things?602 What is special about Socrates, although this is not pointed out by Montaigne, is that he is the only one of those whose deaths are referred to in the essay who had some choice as to when he died.603 Socrates knows what nature means, something which is probably critical to philosophy in the old-fashioned sense. He knows that all are “condemned” to death by nature. Does not this Socratic observation assume the goodness of life—otherwise why speak here in terms of condemnation rather than, say, of liberation? The goodness of life for Socrates may be seen elsewhere as well—for example, in the last book of Plato’s Republic, where souls are prepared for rebirth on earth. Such return to earth is evidently not regarded as a punishment or a burden, as it seems to be by, say, the Buddhists and perhaps the Hindus.604 True, there are other comments by Socrates in which philosophy can be looked to as preparation for death, freeing the soul from that body which interferes with a clear apprehension of the truth.605 But the circumstances of each Socratic comment must be considered if one is to begin to understand what he says. Thus, what is said in the Phaedo, which does seem to play down the importance of earthly existence, is offered by Socrates on the day of his death as comfort for his friends: they will have to live with his death, not he. However that may be, Socrates (unlike the Ciceronean?) does not look grimly upon his impending death. Montaigne observes in this essay (I, 20) that “the goal of our career is death; it is the necessary object of our aim.”606 Socrates, on the other hand, would insist that there is something eminently worthwhile, for its own sake, about a virtuous life, that that should be thought about as the end of life. He would find much more salutary, than the sentiments developed here by Montaigne, what Edgar says to his desperate father in Shakespeare’s King Lear: “Ripeness is all.”607 Just before the Socratic culmination of the first part of this essay Montaigne reports, “Our religion has no surer foundation than contempt for life.”608 The religion referred to here seems to be Christianity, which can be suspected of having contributed decisively to a disparagement of earthly life. But just as the Socratic teaching seems to consider a good earthly life worthwhile, so does the Hebrew Bible, of which Montaigne must have been aware. The obvious goodness of the Creation is insisted upon; death is a deprivation, if not even a punishment; and the killing of a human being is considered bad. Thus, life is regarded as good, with the sanctity of life celebrated in various ways. Indeed, do not human beings generally, even instinctively, consider life as fundamentally good? Any systematic disparagement of life, then, goes against the grain of both the Socratic and the most ancient biblical teaching. The pre-philosophic Greeks also saw life as good, so much so that they believed that the gods reserved immortal life for themselves.609 However much life can be overshadowed at times

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by death, life has “always” been seen as a generally good thing by one people after another. There is, of course, merit to Montaigne’s proposal that it can help purge the soul of the fear of death to be so exposed to death as to become familiar with it and relaxed about it. This is testified to by some of those who have survived being given up for dead (even with extreme unction) or have survived being about to be killed.610 The philosopher, it seems, should be able to think through to the liberating conclusions that others can get only by extraordinary experiences. Perhaps Montaigne intends to contribute to such vicarious experiencing.611

VI The first part of our essay (I, 20) concludes shortly after the Socratic episodes, with Aristotle enlisted for a report on animals that live only a day. What difference does it make, Montaigne wonders, whether such an animal dies in the morning rather than in the afternoon? He suggests that this lesson be applied to the human life span as well.612 This leads the reader into the second part of the essay, devoted almost to its end to an extended statement by Mother Nature. Nature’s argument may be significantly different from what is seen in the first part of the essay: much is now made of death as part of the order of the universe. The culmination of Nature’s argument, and hence of the second part, is an observation by another wise man, someone whom Nature calls a “sage”: Thales. Thales is offered up as someone who denies that there is a significant difference between life and death: it is “indifferent,” he says, whether one is dead or alive.613 Death, then, would not be intrinsically good or bad. The ancient source drawn on most of all, by far, in this part of the essay is Lucretius. He is notorious, although Montaigne does not say so here, for his disparagement of religious teachings both as threats and as comforts.614 In addition, Lucretius is a materialist, something that fits in with the “indifference”-preaching Thales, who reduces everything to four elements: water, earth, air, and fire.615 The importance of Lucretius may be seen as well in his insistence, “All things remain as they have been before.”616 The cyclical character of movements is pointed up by him.617 This materialism, if not determinism, raises questions about how seriously any human activity can be taken, whether political/social or philosophical. Both understanding and virtue (or nobility) seem to be depreciated by such an approach. Is there not something inhuman about the approach offered by Thales and endorsed by Montaigne’s Nature?618 Montaigne seems to prefer to go out of this essay on the note of “indifference” proclaimed by Thales. Are we supposed (and perhaps even equipped by him) to question this? We do notice elsewhere that Montaigne can speak with some

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respect of glory. Is glory a kind of life, or a substitute for life? There is implied, by what Montaigne tells us about Cicero, Socrates, and others—there is implied an awareness of death as significantly different from life, not just as part of a continuum with life, and certainly not something that is simply indifferent. So different are life and death, at least in appearance, that men do have to be helped to deal with the prospect of change from one to the other. Nature, of course, denies a significant difference between life and death: but does Nature truly know? After all, is nature ever alive in the sense that human beings can be?619

VII We have noticed the use made in this essay (I, 20) by Montaigne of Aristotle to testify to the fragility of life. Should we not be reminded, however, that Aristotle also testified, and much more prominently, to the proposition that existence can be sweet, especially when not unduly burdened by impositions or deprivations?620 In any event, we can wonder whether there is a serious difference between the Cicero/Stoic/Socratic position developed in the first half of the essay and the Nature/Thales position developed in the second half. How is philosophy understood by Montaigne? Does it make sense to emphasize as he (or at least Cicero) does that philosophy is primarily, if not exclusively, a preparation for death?621 Is not such a concern with death to make too much of change and human limitations and also of chance? Montaigne, in order to show how vulnerable we are, lists various chance deaths, including deaths by several men while carnally engaged with women. One of these is a man whom he identifies as a “Platonic philosopher.”622 I do not believe that the word philosophy or philosopher is used again thereafter in this essay, as if the fatal experience of the philosophical lover has removed philosophy as a serious contender for the allegiance of thoughtful men. Although Montaigne does not speak again of philosophy, he does draw on Socrates and then on Aristotle, as we have seen, before finally seeming to settle on Thales.623 We can concede that it may be a matter of chance that there is life here or there in the universe.624 But what follows from life when or where it does happen to appear may not be a matter of chance, especially if there should be eternal ideas upon which the reason can fasten.625 Is Montaigne open, we must wonder, to philosophy in its highest form? Consider again that the only activity of a “philosopher” described in the essay may be that of the Platonist who dies in the arms of a woman. Although we can notice that that unfortunate philosopher had been trying to know things through the flesh, it does seem that his activity, whatever its natural intention, contributed in this case to a cessation of life.626 But then, negation of life is in effect what Nature, of which Thales may be an authoritative interpreter for Montagigne, seems to offer as the proper result

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of a sensible reflection on the world. Still, we must wonder, and perhaps Montaigne before us: Does negation of life, or of being, make sense as an objective for the inquiring mind? After all, philosophy, at least as traditionally understood, is largely dedicated to a study of being, an effort to understand what is. In this essay, however, Montaigne seems to offer philosophy as primarily something that eases the way to non-being, not as a calling that affirms life and being. This may be reflected in the commendation of Thales as a sage, not as a philosopher. He seems to be presented as someone who reduces things to their material elements.627

VIII Montaigne makes much of pleasure. In fact, he chides philosophers for their usual disparagement of pleasure, at least as pleasure is commonly understood. One consequence of the emphasis seen in Montaigne upon pleasure may be that the preservation of that self which can experience pleasures becomes allimportant. This, in turn, can make death even more threatening. It would seem, therefore, that it is particularly important that a social teaching grounded, as Montaigne’s may be, in the importance of self-preservation should be accompanied by a determined neutralization of the fear of death, so much so that philosophy is recruited (as in I, 20) primarily to that end.628 The philosopher may want to grant some merit to the emphasis by the personally moderate Montaigne on pleasure, but with the reservation that the deepest pleasure, at least as testified to by those who have had the full range of human experience, is the pleasure of learning and understanding. All human beings, the philosophy would point out, desire to know. It is especially important for them to understand, or at least to believe themselves able to understand, the whole.629 There are, then, things worth knowing, and it can be pleasurable to learn them. Is there, also, a natural wholeness for human life, in terms both of years and of accomplishments, reflecting somehow the wholeness of the universe? This is the way the philosopher may begin to respond to Montaigne on pleasure and philosophy. Montaigne’s argument about pleasure comes early in this essay. It may be critical to his effort to suggest that philosophy, at least as shaped in his day by ascetic Christian influences, cannot be taken seriously for its stated objectives but only as a means of reducing, if not eliminating altogether, the fear of death. Philosophy cannot be taken seriously in part because, he argues, individuals are moved by their personalities to make the arguments they do. Does Montaigne expect the validity of his own arguments to be questioned in turn on that ground? Are those who confront philosophical arguments, and assess them, moved in turn primarily by their own personalities?630

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The Socratic position would concede that many are indeed moved by their personalities in what they come to believe. It would also concede that pleasure can dominate the lives of most people, including most of those who would pass as philosophers.631 But, Socrates would add, there are things truly worth knowing and it can be pleasurable to learn them. However much we depend on the body to house the reasoning part of us, we can become virtually disembodied as thinkers: minds can and do reach across centuries, even across millennia, to one another. Thus, the Frenchman Montesquieu could move two American women two centuries later to devote themselves to a meticulous translation of The Spirit of the Laws, which in turn should be pondered by generations of Englishspeaking students yet unborn. Socrates seems to appreciate, more than Montaigne does explicitly in this essay (I, 20), the ideas or the possibility of something enduring which can be grasped by the reason. Life, then, can be seen as worth having as an opportunity to know, to grasp, eternal things, however temporarily. Is there not something attractive, and perhaps enduring as well, about preeminently virtuous activity, about morally right actions soundly chosen? Does the attraction here rest upon something more than what such activity may contribute either to relief of the fear of death or to one’s reputation (or glory)?632 Particular souls do die, the philosopher can teach us, but the standards that can guide souls with respect to both thought and action live on. Independent of time and place, they seem to be always there for the properly constituted soul to rediscover. We must wonder what guide nature does provide here for the most thoughtful inquirer.633

IX The reader is carried in this essay (I, 20) from Cicero, with his recruitment of philosophy solely to the service of dealing with the fear of death, to Thales, with his indifference to life itself. Philosophy, it would seem from this essay, does not have an independent status. To what extent does Montaigne see philosophy as he seems to because of a fundamental skepticism? Consider again the implications of the hope expressed by Montaigne, at the end of this essay and elsewhere, for a quick, unexpected death.634 The longing for such a death means that pleasure, or the absence of pain, seems to be given precedence in the human soul over learning and knowing.635 Is Montaigne truly a skeptic, and what does that mean? Is it possible to know whether anything is worthwhile in human life? Is it possible to learn whatever worthwhile things there may be? Thus, we are left with the problem of what Montaigne does believe about the possibility of philosophy as understood by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the like.

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It should at once be added that whatever skepticism meant for Montaigne, he did seem capable of a serious interest in political life and the right ordering of society. This combination of philosophical skepticism and civic-mindedness, if indeed found in him, identifies Montaigne as a modern who is allied to (although somewhat different from) a Machiavelli, a Spinoza, a Hobbes, a Locke, and the like. His modernity seems to include an openness to natural science as we know it, dealing with that matter which is in principle eternal.636 What, then, does Montaigne truly think about the questions touched upon in that essay of his we have begun to examine? Is it not prudent to entertain the possibility that he required the four score and seven essays thereafter to attempt to work out what he meant? We need to know more about all of the essays to determine where Montaigne ultimately stands. Does he do little more in Essays, I, 20, than suggest some implications of the positions of others, sometimes in a guarded manner? Certainly, he never wants to appear heretical, nor should we want him to. The complexity we have begun to describe in one of his essays suggests the depth of study required for a proper reading of all 107 of them. I hope I have said enough to indicate some of the things one might well think about in studying Montaigne’s essays. I myself would particularly like to know, in the spirit of the self-centeredness that Montaigne seems to legitimate, how much he anticipated and would endorse of the questions I have raised and the criticisms I have presumed to offer in response to his lively essay, or experiment, on this occasion.

Chapter Eleven

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)637

Albeit the world think Machiavel is dead, Yet was his soul but flown beyond the Alps, And, now the Guise is dead, is come from France To view this land and frolic with his friends, To some perhaps my name is odious, But such as love me guard me from their tongues, And let them know that I am Machiavel, And weigh not men, and therefore not men’s words. Admired I am of those that hate me most. Though some speak openly against my books, Yet will they read me and thereby attain To Peter’s chair; and, when they cast me off, Are poisoned by my climbing followers. I count religion but a childish toy And hold there is no sin but ignorance. Birds of the air will tell of murders past; I am ashamed to hear such fooleries. Many will talk of title to a crown; What right had Caesar to the empery? Might first made kings, and laws were then most sure When, like the Draco’s, they were writ in blood. Hence comes it that a strong-built citadel Commands much more than letters can import; Which maxim had Phalaris observéd, H’ had never bellowed in a brazen bull Of great one’s envy. O’ the poor petty wights Let me be envied and not pitied. But whither am I bound? I come not, I, To read a lecture here in Britain, But to present the tragedy of a Jew 119

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Who smiles to see how full his bags are crammed, Which money was not got without my means. I crave but this: grace him as he deserves, And let him not be entertained the worse Because he favors me. —Machiavel638

I The Jew of Malta, a determinedly disturbing play, reminds us how Jews have long been generally regarded in Europe.639 We might also begin to see what Jews are truly like. A gifted artist can be expected to reveal more than he may be personally aware of in such matters. The text of Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta leaves editors with serious problems. The play we have is often said not to be altogether of Marlowe’s devising, with the quality of its craftsmanship falling off markedly after the first two acts.640 But whatever Marlowe did do, whether only the first two acts or all five acts, the play exploits and intensifies prejudices, much more with respect to the Jews who live on Malta than even with respect to the Turks who threaten that island from outside. The heroic villain of the play is Barabas, a wealthy Jewish merchant who is introduced to the audience in a prologue by his spiritual master, Machiavel. Barabas soon finds himself stripped of much of his riches by the Christian governor of the island who plans to buy off the Turks who dominate that part of the world. Barabas manages, with the aid of his only child, to salvage some of his wealth. He then manages to provoke a deadly duel between two suitors of his beautiful daughter, thereby avenging himself on the Maltese governor by having his son killed in the duel. Barabas’s daughter abandons him and Judaism upon learning what her father has done to the man she loved, one of the dead duelists. In order to kill her he then destroys the entire nunnery in which she has taken refuge. Her deathbed revelations lead to the exposure of Barabas’s wickedness to the Maltese authorities.641 Barabas escapes immediate execution by feigning death. This permits him, when he is “resurrected,” to help the Turkish invaders conquer Malta. But however exalted the position he now has, he does not yet consider himself secure: he conspires with the Maltese to destroy the Turks who now rely upon him. The trap he sets for the Turkish leader, however, is used by the Maltese governor against him. This leaves the Maltese in command of their island, with Barabas dead and the Turks thwarted. 642 We may well wonder whether the audience is expected to believe that Machiavel adds anything to the shaping of Barabas than there had been by a malevolent Judaism.

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II Our fellow panelist’s paper for this convention, on Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, opens with these suggestions: Marlowe and Shakespeare, no mean authors, each write what we may call a Jewish play. Unfortunately, both seem vulnerable nowadays to suspicions of harboring and fostering vicious anti-Jewish prejudices. Decent and thoughtful readers must therefore come to their defense: after all, perhaps the suspicions in question have arisen in those with wandering minds or short attention spans.643

Distinctions are drawn between the two plays. For example, “[A]lthough Marlowe’s Jew seems meant to be almost thoroughly despicable, Shakespeare’s is maybe not half bad.” This distinction can be granted, albeit with qualifications. Our colleague then anticipates the argument of his paper by saying, “The general defense is this: that while both authors present dramas deliberately premised on the existence of anti-Jewish prejudices, nevertheless neither drama aims to induce its audience to judge those prejudices in the light of more salutary alternatives—and so, ultimately, to moderate or mend those prejudices. So much for the generalities: we must now get down to particulars.” The particulars provided in our colleague’s paper do little on behalf of Marlowe, however much they serve the defense of Shakespeare.644 Does Marlowe, in making Barabas as robustly, even grotesquely, bad as he is shown, satirize the conventions of his day about the Jews? This is what the Jews are like, if the common opinion is taken seriously, providing us in effect a kind of reductio ad absurdum. I do not understand that we are being offered such a defense, a defense which would be somehow unpersuasive in this context. Also unpersuasive is another defense, that Jewish villainy in this play is a reflection of Christian doctrines and misconduct. One difficulty with this defense, which is implicit in the companion paper I have drawn upon, is that Barabas is far worse in his conduct than anyone else in the play. It is difficult, therefore, to see how Marlowe can be defended against “the common charge of somehow slandering Jews.”645

III We are left to wonder, therefore, what the purpose of Marlowe truly was in treating Jews as he does. He certainly does not do this by inadvertence. Are the Jews simply used for investigating other matters, such as Machiavellianism and Christian theology, two “phenomena” that can seem to some to be intimately related?

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Marlowe’s own character and career may bear on our understanding of these matters. He was a spirited fellow who had a quite tumultuous and (consequently?) short life.646 We cannot be certain that Marlowe knew personally any Jews, at least in England. The Jews had been expelled from his country in 1290 and were not readmitted until 1655. But Marlowe evidently did spend considerable time on the continent. Perhaps he met Jews there—or at least talked with people who had known Jews in everyday life. It is not likely, however, that he had much, if any, contact with Turks or other Muslims. The Mediterranean for The Jew of Malta is convenient in that it permits the playwright to bring together representatives of the three great (post-classical) faiths of the West.647 The way Jews are dealt with by Marlowe is far less informed and certainly far less sympathetic than is evident in such other English-language works as James Joyce’s Ulysses.648 What changes, if not even sacrifices, in the genius of English letters have been necessary to bring about this salutary development? IV The Jew in Marlowe’s play is, it seems to me, shown to be what was regarded as the Jew par excellent. That is, the impression is given that this is the essential Jew. He is presented as the thoroughly Jewish man. Although the other Jews in the play can refer to him as “good Barabas,”649 he is disdainful of them. That, we are given to understand, is the way “the Jew” is. The other Jewish men in the play never consider Barabas as an outsider; he is regarded by them as clearly within the Jewish community, if not even as one of its leaders. What are we taught about what a true Jew is like? He is shrewd and rich, two qualities that are intimately related. The play is known as “the famouse tragedie of the Riche Jewe of Malta.” Barabas understands his wealth to be still another fulfillment of the promise of worldly success made to Abraham by God.650 However successful Barabas may be, he is always the outsider in the Gentile community, and as such always vulnerable. He cannot be considered, either by himself or by the Maltese, a true citizen. He cannot be fully relied upon by them. He always has to take precautions. Machiavellianism, it seems, comes naturally to him. V Machaivellianism is, in this Marlowe play, at the core of the Jewish character and of the responses of others to “the Jew.” It has been said that this play, along with Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, helped shape the understanding of Machiavelli for Elizabethan drama.651 Even those among us who are not familiar with The

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Jew of Malta have probably run across the famous opening speech by Machiavel, especially his insistence that “there is no sin but ignorance.”652 Even if Marlowe’s primary interest is to show what radical Machiavellianism means, with little if any interest for him in what Jews are really like, there is something deeply irresponsible (if only in the injustice he reinforces) in his proceeding as he does. Machaivellianism means shrewdness, manipulation, unscrupulousness—in short, “policy.”653 And all this is in the service of self-interest, which is itself legitimated. Thus, Barabas (the Jew) can proclaim, “I am always closest to myself.”654 Further on he acknowledges, “For, so I live, perish may all the world!”655 To what extent is the radical self-centeredness of Barabas, if not simply of the Jews, related to a lack of concern about any torments awaiting the sinner after death?656 Are we to understand from the play that Jews are more apt to be “liberated” than either Christians or Muslims from such restraining illusions? Does this play suggest that the Jew is peculiarly Machiavellian? Radical self-centeredness is seen in what Barabas is willing, even delighted, to do to his only child. In this he may be seen to follow, however perversely, the example of Abraham vis-a-vis Isaac.657 But here the “sacrifice” is seen not as a sign of faith but as a sign of singlemindedness (and we, although perhaps not Marlowe, would say, a sign of madness).658 If we are indeed shown what Machiavellianism really means, are its limitations also shown, partly in what we see of the ultimate failure of Barabas? His fate is emphasized by the derogatory remarks made about Jews in the closing speeches of the play. All this would suggest that people may have a natural aversion to Machiavellianism, an aversion reflected in the prejudice against Jews as they are believed to be. Even so, the true Machiavellian may not really be deterred by the way the play ends, especially since he is all too aware of an unavoidable human mortality. For him it may be “the game” that counts, and with it a determined spiritedness. We might well wonder, then, what Machiavelli would say if he were to return in an epilogue to this play. Is that left for us to figure out? Is that what we are now trying to do in our analysis of the play? Certainly, Barabas does not express regret or repentance at the end, however desperate he may be in his effort to escape his fate. The importance of “the game itself” in Machiavelli may be evident in a kind of sportiveness in Marlowe himself.659

VI I hasten to add that Christians are also shown in The Jew of Malta to be bad. This is anticipated by Machiavel in the prologue, where it is said that even aspirants to the papacy (“Peter’s chair”) have to resort to Machaivellianism.660

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But, it should also be added, Christians, in being bad, are shown to be hypocritical: if they lived by the principles they profess they simply would not act as they all too often do. Jews, on the other hand, are presented as living most by their principles when they are Machiavellian (or wicked, in the conventional sense). So much is this so that when a Jew becomes good, he or she can no longer remain a Jew. A conversion to Christianity is then in order. And when Barabas’s daughter does convert, driven to this extreme by her father’s wickedness, she becomes vulnerable at the hands of Jews, and particularly at the hands of her own father.661 In this and other ways, then, we are shown what Judaism is truly like. Unfortunately, Jews were not shown to be so bad that they became simply unbelievable in the eyes of Marlowe’s audiences. Evidently those audiences relished Barabas’s final destruction.662

VII What, if anything, does the play attempt to teach about why the Jews are the way they are? Some among us would be tempted to say that this is primarily because of chance developments—but the play does not seem to say this. Appeals are made in the play to the audience’s belief that the Jews’ troubles come from their being cursed: they missed their great opportunity with Jesus.663 This causality is reflected in Barabas’s name: he is what the Jews chose in place of Jesus when they were given a choice by Pontius Pilate.664 That Barabas was, in effect, the original Antichrist. Job is invoked at one point by Marlowe’s Barabas: he is not concerned, however, about the virtues of Job, but only with his ruin after great successes. The more or less pious audience that the playwright caters to could be expected to believe that those parts of the Jewish heritage represented by Abraham and Job were forfeited by Jews at the time of Jesus.665 How much, we might well ask, have Jews themselves contributed to their perennial plight? Do they, for example, exhibit the vulnerability that philosophers frequently do, because of a superior and not adequately concealed rationality? Philosophers, too, can seem arrogant and self-serving.666 This may be a more important adverse influence with respect to Jews than even the sometimes questionable (and often provocative) financial careers that Jews were left with because of political and economic limitations placed upon them.667 A superior rationality is not unrelated to an ability to deceive. Barabas is shown in this play to be deceitful well before he had his property expropriated.668 Barabas can be condemned by Christians as covetous. But he himself considers theft worse than covetousness.669 In this he seems to rely more on the law and on outward things. Perhaps Jews are more successful in worldly affairs, if they

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indeed are, because they take this world more seriously than the pious Christian can: the Hereafter cannot comfort, mislead, or distract Jews as much as they do Christians.670 Again and again we are obliged to consider, and not only by this play: Why have Jews been singled out for mistreatment in the ways and to the extent that they have been?671 Is there something ultimately questionable about any people, or about their understanding of the world, that they should be chronically mistreated? The answer to this question may depend upon our understanding of the world. On the other hand, that something may be sound about the conventional understanding of Jews is suggested, perversely enough, by their staying power, their resiliency, and, of course, the remarkable men and women they again and again produce, well out of proportion to their numbers.672

VIII A further critique of Marlowe could well begin with the observation that he does not, in his portrayal of Jews, take sufficient account of the heritage of the Hebrew Bible, even as he makes too much of various polemical elements in the New Testament. The Marlowe portrayal of Jews is far worse than Shakespeare’s, whatever serious problems there are with The Merchant of Venice as well. In critical respects, The Merchant of Venice is more painful, if only because The Jew of Malta sometimes verges on the burlesque. Also, Shakespeare’s play may have had a worse long-run effect than Marlowe’s because of Shakespeare’s superior craftsmanship. That the Jew is made more “human” in The Merchant of Venice has helped to keep that play alive on the English stage.673 Besides, Marlowe’s obviously atheistic approach and his fierceness must have tended to undermine his general standing.674 It is, I believe, no accident that Shakespeare could retire to Stratford as a respectable gentleman, long after Marlowe had been killed in a tavern brawl.675 But not even Shakespeare, and even less Marlowe, can exhibit with respect to Jews the humanity evident in, say, the second and third stories of Boccaccio’s Decameron.676 It should be noticed, however, that neither of the two Jewish heroes in the Boccaccio stories is “pushy”: one becomes a Christian; the other says, in effect, that the three major Western faiths are equal.677 Are Jews peculiarly vulnerable when they act as if they believe themselves better than all others? That is, they see themselves, not without respectable authority, as privileged in their relation to God—and either this opinion or the character it develops tends to make their less privileged neighbors resent them. A current illustration of this can be provided us in the press whenever the deep resentment is reported among many Israelis because of the exemptions from military service available to “the Yeshiva Boys.”678 We are inclined to ask upon reading the two stories by

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Boccaccio I have just referred to: What did these Jewish heroes really believe upon comparing Judaism with Christianity and Islam? We are also inclined to ask whether the pious Christian should not see, in the capacity of Jews to prevail despite unjust persecution, a pattern evident as well in the career (pre- and postCrucifixion) of Jesus himself. Should not the pious Christian be moderated by this in any hatred of Jews? Furthermore, what lessons are offered here by Boccaccio to the Jews whom he would help, including lessons about the nature and uses of faith? Do any efforts to counter hatred of Jews by discounting religion generally have the tendency to undermine (if not to eliminate) Jews as Jews?679

IX I have suggested that Marlowe caters to, exploits, and reinforces deep-seated prejudices against Jews among his audiences. Unfortunately, these are not the prejudices of the vulgar or the uneducated alone. The informed, intelligent, and successful (especially if they are envious and ambitious for even more) can also be suspicious of Jews, as we can see down to our day. At the end of the play, Jews in general are condemned, not just the monstrously adventurous Barabas. The typical Elizabethan audience found Barabas a vivid character throughout the play, and (it seems), was delighted by what finally happens to him. I have also suggested that the typical audience of this play was not apt to be moved to repudiate those prejudices against Jews which require Jews to be more and more bizarre in their conduct. Rather, Marlowe’s audiences evidently “enjoyed” these performances, particularly delighting in the boiling cauldron into which Barabas falls in place of his intended victim.680 Does not Marlowe fail to recognize the good evident in the Jews or in Jewish communities that he may have had access to, if only in speech? Does he fail to appreciate, for example, the depth of family feeling among Jews and the tendency of Christians, on the other hand, toward an anarchic individuality? Perhaps even more important, in that it should remind us of a deeper understanding of human motivation and conduct, is what Marlowe fails to recognize about the good which people are naturally moved by, that good held up in the opening lines of both the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics of Aristotle as the end by which so much, if not all, human action is guided.681 Especially is this so if a community is as long-established as the Jewish community is or, for that matter, as Christian and Islamic communities are. The sovereignty of the good is reflected in a variety of things even in this play. For example, the Turks must have a pretext before they can attempt to occupy Malta; otherwise, they corrupt and destroy themselves.682 Even Barabas, like Hitler and Stalin long after him, seems to need pretexts as he follows his remarkably destructive course.

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What does Marlowe himself truly believe about these matters? He may, in effect, reveal more in this play than he is personally aware of. Is a sovereign goodness somehow recognized in what “has” to happen to Barabas? Although goodness may be thus vindicated, it is still accompanied by what amounts to a vicious attack upon an entire people. Marlowe does not seem to care what the long-tem effects on the fate of Jews would be because of such plays as his. Even in his own time the Elizabethan temper expressed itself against the Jews, sometimes in ugly ways.683 The concluding words of the play are the governor’s: “[A]nd let due praise be given neither to Fate or Fortune, but to Heaven.” How is this to be taken? What does account for the final results? We are shown that there are limits to Barabas’s machinations. When others act on his principles, he is undone. How would the original Machiavelli talk about these matters? Might he not try to suggest Nature in place of Fate, Fortune, and Heaven, in accounting for what happened? Would Machiavelli approve of the way that Barabas tried to conduct himself? Marlowe’s Machiavel may be correct in his insistence that “there is no sin but ignorance.”684 But we must at some point ask: Ignorance of what? The wicked, or self-centered, may be ignorant of something vital—and they may need to be punished dramatically from time to time, so as to be able to thereby teach others, if not also themselves. If Nature is offered up as the ultimate cause of things, the place of Goodness in Nature must be investigated.685 Does the fate over the years of Marlowe’s mangled play in the English-speaking theater, as well as the fate of Barabas himself in that play, testify to the enduring power of the Good? But whatever the intrinsic supremacy of the Good as found in nature, it may also be good not to make so much of that as to discourage people from voicing salutary praises of Heaven when things do happen to come out right. In these sportive matters, Machiavellian tricks must be trumped from time to time by someone who truly knows what is—and who knows as well what he is doing.

Chapter Twelve

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)686

[It] is necessary to the happiness of man that he be faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. —Thomas Paine687

I I ventured, while preparing these remarks, to ask a learned scholar what he thought of the famous “wager” passage in Blaise Pascal’s Pensees.688 The response was devastating: its mathematics was dismissed as “punk”; its argument, as fanatical and naive; its influence, as weak. What this scholar left unsaid, others in our gathering supplied: the argument is hypocritical and it is that of a man of no faith. Søren Kierkegaard’s “leap into faith” was held up as a preferable alternative, as something much more honest and full-blooded.689 It was emphasized by my advisors that considerable present (and hence certain) good would be given up, pursuant to Pascal’s wager-proposal, for a quite uncertain future good. Asceticism was taken to be called for by Pascal—and this was condemned by my advisors as an unnecessary sacrifice of genuine pleasures. In addition, our scholar stressed that Pascal prescribed conformity—and conformity in itself was questioned as a dubious thing.690 Discouraging (if not even demoralizing) though their remarks are, I do venture to make an effort to say here what can be said on behalf of what Pascal may have been doing in his “wager” passage. Critical to my advisors’ comments, I might add, was the insistent disregard of my suggestion that Pascal’s intelligence had not been sufficiently appreciated in the criticisms being made of him for my

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benefit, that we should assume (at least provisionally) that he was as aware as we may be privileged to be of any obvious limitations of his argument.691 This suggestion is important for what I now have to suggest to anyone familiar with the notorious wager passage. For one thing, consider the kind of person Pascal can be said to have directed this argument to, the person who is revealed in the speeches recorded in response to this discours. The kind of person being addressed is the kind of person who can make the responses there recorded. Others are also being addressed, including those who would be affected by the exchanges, and the results of the exchanges, between Pascal and his principal addressee. That is, some people, perhaps most people, may be persuaded because they see others persuaded. All they may need is a show of reasoning—or a show of someone responding to what looks like reasoning. Then there are a few who can see also this and not be persuaded themselves—but who can see and appreciate that others can be, even need to be, persuaded in the manner displayed. All this may even point up to these few particularly thoughtful observers of the nature of religion, its usefulness, and its conditions, as well as its limitations.

II Let us begin then with the kind of person primarily, or immediately, addressed, as revealed in the discours itself, the person who makes the speeches recorded here. The seven quoted responses of the addressee are the following: (1) “Agreed; but although that excuses those who present religion as they do, and clears them from blame for setting it forth without supporting reason, it does not excuse those who accept it.” (2) “I won’t, but I shall blame them for making not this choice but any choice; for, although he who calls ‘heads’ and the other are equally wrong, they are both of them wrong: the right thing is not to wager.” (3) “Admirable! Yes, I must wager; but I stake perhaps too much.” (4) “I confess and admit it. But still is there no way of seeing the face of the cards?” (5) “Yes, but my hands are tied and my lips are closed; I am forced to wager, and I am not free; I am not released, and I am so made that I cannot believe. What am I to do?” (6) “But that is just what I fear.” and (7) “Oh, your words transport me, delight me, etc.” (In French: “Oh! ce discours me transporte, me revit, etc.”)692

Suppose this should be all that one knows about a man—that he responds in this fashion to the arguments made here. What would that tell us about his intellect? And what would it tell us about his character? This person does seem cautious and self-seeking. He is a man whose reasoning leads him to agnosticism. Is not such a man already tepid and calculating? Does he not need to be shaken loose from his pettiness? He does not seem to have any grand passions, only

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trivial ones. And he is, in various ways, somewhat apprehensive, perhaps fearful of seeming foolish by giving up his immediate pleasures. His central speech points up his desire for reassurance. Is there not something demoralizing about this kind of life, this kind of approach to the challenges posed by religious faith? Is this merely a liberated intellectual, not really a thoughtful man? If he had been thoughtful, one might say, there may not have been a need to have had recourse to the wager argument. The first third of the discours and such arguments found elsewhere might have sufficed.693 Those arguments do serve to deflate the listener’s sense of self-importance, as the insignificance of the human being (at least with respect to the things that this kind of man takes seriously) is pointed up, especially when placed in juxtaposition to the infinite and to the divine. Such a man may be usefully threatened, once the protective shield of self-satisfaction has been removed.694 It should be noticed that the addressee does not make arguments invoking, against any recourse to the wager, considerations of integrity or truthfulness. Nor are the “virtues” to which he is to be moved grand ones. There are seven of them listed toward the end of this discours.695 Central to his virtues, under the new dispensation, is gratitude, which may suggest that such a man is normally apt to be characterized by a deep ingratitude, a failure if not even refusal to acknowledge those forces which have shaped him into the liberated intellectual he takes himself to be. Pascal had indicated at the outset of this discours that the body is responsible for a soul’s apprehension of number: one might expect that the human (the embodied?) soul should be particularly receptive to numbers and numbering—and so we see him play with the number seven.696 The addressee, when he is “converted,” speaks of rapture and delight (or ravishment).697 Is he unduly moved? Perhaps his native fearfulness has been overcome by an even greater fearfulness, including being fearful of having missed out on a good thing, of having been foolish heretofore. But perhaps fundamental to what happens to him is not that a future good has been held out to him but rather that a great future evil has been insured against. He has been moved, perhaps as one would expect a man of his character to be. The opening paragraph, with its emphasis upon the body, suggests that Pascal is dealing here with someone for whom the body is very important, if not even all-encompassing. Such a person, as we can see in the second paragraph, has to be led to see that his body and hence his self do not add much if anything to the sum total of things. His self-centeredness has to be questioned or at least made use of: fear has to be brought to bear against self-centeredness. In addition, the possibility of God’s existence has to be shown to him—by reminding him of other important things he does not really know. Once that possibility is established, and the inevitable limitation upon the human knowledge of God (even if one accepts revelation), then the inactivity promoted by his agnosticism must be confronted.698

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III What I have been saying about the composition of this discours can remind us of what happens in various Platonic dialogues. This discours is like a Platonic dialogue in that it is addressed to, or takes account of, the particular kind of soul before it. Recollect, for example, Socrates’ recourse to the Laws for Crito’s benefit and to Recollection for Meno’s.699 Pascal’s addressee is not going to be led to the grand virtues.700 Nor is the more serious reasoning (or passion) likely to move him. Pascal resorts to the wager approach only after the argument about the awesome nature of things had failed to do more than silence or intimidate the addressee. He says, when turning to the wager, that he is proceeding by “natural lights.” Does he mean this? Or is he ironic?701 That is, does not Pascal, like the Platonic Socrates on various occasions, indicate that what he is about to say is not necessarily his argument, that it is an argument tailored to particular circumstances?702 Pascal calls this discussion a discours. It is not a demonstration or, strictly speaking, even an argument. The argument Pascal does make is, in some respects, essentially that found at the end of Plato’s Gorgias. That Socratic argument is directed at keeping men like Callicles in line, men moved by ambition and luxury.703 Certainly, Socrates may not have himself believed all of the various tales he tells, in one dialogue or another, about the afterlife and the judgment of souls. But he considers it salutary to place restraints on various men; he asks them, in effect: What if this is so?704 What is Pascal’s own position? It is, of course, difficult to say. But I do suggest that this is a serious problem for the thoughtful reader. “Truthfulness” is at the end of his list of the “virtues.” Is this, too, perhaps ironic? It can be seen in juxtaposition to the “fidelity” at the beginning of this list, perhaps indicating thereby a kind of truthfulness at the expense of truth? Be that as it may, Pascal can be seen at least as instinctively disassociating himself from the position enunciated by the wagering. He has a praying man make this wager argument: such a man might well use such an argument to help others, if only out of a great benevolence inspired upon seeing others misuse their lives here and risk their souls hereafter. But whether Pascal himself is such a man seems to me an open question. If there is merit to the suggestions I have made here, it should be reassuring to see Pascal use, in a calculating manner, his argument from calculation.705 Among his calculations may be that offered with respect to what makes for a decent community, for a proper control of the passions. What then can we say that Pascal may be saying about religion itself in his discours on the wager? Perhaps far more important than anything that I may have happened to notice about the form and details of the wager-proposal is what I have ventured to suggest about how one might try to read such a text as I have begun to examine here.706

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ADDENDUM A Encyclopedia of Philosophy (6:54) The problem of knowledge thus becomes, for Pascal, a religious one. Only through submission to God and through acceptance of his revelation can we gain completely certain knowledge. The greatest achievements in science and mathematics rest on a fundamental uncertainty, since the basic principles employed, known through instinct and intuition, are open to question. Skeptical probings can only reveal the human predicament in its fullest and prepare us to submit and accept a religious foundation of knowledge. The Pensées then proceeds to show how men try to avoid recognizing their situation through diversion and philosophy. Philosophy can only lead us continually to skepticism, from which we are saved by our own intuitive knowledge of truth. We seek for happiness but cannot find it apart from religion. Pascal then tried to show in the famous wager argument (418 and 233) that it is not unreasonable to believe in God and to seek for religious guidance. If there is a God, he argued, he is infinitely incomprehensible to us. But either God exists or he does not exist, and we are unable to tell which alternative is true. However, both our present lives and our possible future lives may well be greatly affected by the alternative we accept. Hence, Pascal contended, since eternal life and happiness is a possible result of one choice of God (if God does exist) and since nothing is lost if we are wrong about the other choice (if God does not exist and we choose to believe that he does), then the reasonable gamble, given what may be at stake, is to choose the theistic alternative. He who remains an unbeliever is taking an infinitely unreasonable risk just because he does not know which alternative is true. Next, Pascal tried to show how belief can be achieved by curbing the passions, submitting to God, and using reason as a means of realizing that true religion is beyond reason and is known only through Jesus. We are suspended between two infinities, the infinitely small (the void) and the infinitely great (the divine). Reason exposes our plight to us. Our desire for truth and happiness makes us see the futility of science, mathematics, and human philosophy, as ways of finding the answers man seeks.

ADDENDUM B Encyclopedia of Religion (11:203) Although as Pascal argues both in Pensées and in De l’esprit géométrique, human reason cannot achieve any certitude, there is a separate power, the heart, which has “reasons of its own, unknown to reason” and which is a practical,

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rather than intellectual, faculty whereby a choice between equally valid arguments for and against Christianity can be made. In the famous passage on the wager (pari), Pascal appeals to a kind of practical reasoning in order to compel the libertine to admit that he cannot avoid the choice between religion and irreligion. It is impossible to suspend the question of immortality and of our eternal destiny: our happiness is at stake, and the search for happiness is an aspect of our nature. God being infinite and therefore inaccessible to our reason, we cannot rationally affirm or deny his existence, but neither can we suspend our judgment. We have to bet, as in a game of chance: if we bet on God having even the slightest chance of existence, we may gain an eternal life of happiness, whereas only our finite life on earth is at stake; betting against God we risk the loss of eternal life, and the possible gain is finite; it is therefore practically rational to opt for God. It needs stressing that the wager is a way to persuade a skeptic that he ought to bet on God, however uncertain of God’s existence he might be; it is neither the expression of Pascal’s own uncertainty nor another “proof” of a theological truth. It is practical advice, and Pascal is aware that by itself it cannot produce genuine faith. He wants to show the libertine that he ought to behave as if God were real, and this means taming his passions and even “stultifying” himself by complying, without real faith, with external Christian rules. The new way of life eventually will make him realize that he has lost nothing in abandoning his sinful habits, and he will be converted to a true Christian faith.

Chapter Thirteen

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)707

Both [parties in this war] read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. . . . The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. —Abraham Lincoln708

I The founders of the American regime exhibited on various occasions an instructive levelheadedness with respect to religion. This may be seen in a memorable intervention by Benjamin Franklin in the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia.709 Franklin was, by the time of the 1787 Convention, a very old man. He died not long after the Convention finished its work in producing the Constitution we now have. He was one of the most celebrated members of the Convention: a scientist with a worldwide reputation, a known patriot, and something of a freethinker in matters of religion and morality. He made it a practice, because of his feebleness, of writing out his speeches, often asking colleagues to read them for him. This means that we have several speeches of his available in their entirety and can study them with some confidence that they are accurate indications of his thinking. His speech about prayer is one which he evidently felt strong enough to deliver himself when the opportunity presented itself.710 The Convention had opened in late May. By the time Franklin gave this speech, on June 28, it had become evident that there was an impasse, with the

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delegates divided between the large and small states and perhaps along sectional lines (with the slavery issue in the background).711 It is Franklin’s intervention that we now consider.

II Franklin begins by speaking of the limitations of human wisdom, especially when men try to act together. He makes explicit, or describes, for them what all of them have an awareness of. Further on, he can talk about the problem of allowing “little partial local interests” to move them.712 They are, he reports, confused and uncertain. They naturally look to the past and to other countries for guidance. It is apparent, he says, that they recognize that they need help. He suggests that they are too limited in how they think. Franklin’s talk is designed to enlarge their horizons. They are urged to think big—that is, to remedy their deficiencies in thought and in the workings of interest among them. But, he goes on, if we resort to history, why not to the history of the United States itself, especially during the recent contest with Great Britain. Notice the use of “contest” rather than “war,” now that peace has been established with that great nation. This suggests care in his choice of language. He reminds them, upon looking to American history, that we then called on divine help, having recourse to “daily prayers in this room.”713 Our doing so, he further reminds them, helped us. Something was done for us. His testimony is a sort of New Testament, which is provided for all to be guided by. He does not spell out one implication of the Convention’s failure to rely on daily prayers: they have acted as if they did not believe that the divine concerned itself in the affairs of human beings. Later he looks further back into history, to Old Testament events. He can find there, in the story of the “Builders of Babel,” an apt description of what is happening in the Convention.714

III There are seven characterizations of the divine in Franklin’s short talk: the “Father of lights,” source of protection, providence (both superintending and kind), “that powerful friend,” God as governor, the Lord, and Heaven.715 The first and last terms display the divine as celestial; the second and sixth speak of protector and Lord, with an emphasis upon the divine as critical to carrying out projects; the third and fifth look to the divine as providential and

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governing, as ordering the affairs of a country; and central to this array is the divine as “powerful friend.” The opening references to the divine are to a divinity that is more or less “impersonal.” It is only after the midpoint is reached in these references, with talk of the “powerful friend,” that Franklin can use “his” in referring to the divine. (He can return to the “impersonal” at the end, with the divine referred to as Heaven and “it.”) To say that the divine is presented as somewhat impersonal in the first half of the talk is to draw upon the teachings of natural religion. Franklin, by beginning thus, starts by catering to the way his more free-thinking colleagues in the Convention prefer to see things. He reminds them of how people had been buoyed up during the contest with Great Britain by the sense of divine aid and of a benevolent Providence. No doubt, various of the free thinkers present believed that God helps those who help themselves.716

IV The turning point in the talk, I have noticed, is connected with the reference to the divine as “powerful friend.” Up to that point Franklin had spoken exclusively of “we” and “our”; thereafter, he can make considerable use of “I” and “my.” Does he hint thereby that the personal should find expression only after the general has been acknowledged and provided for? “I” comes on the scene when Franklin takes advantage of his age. And as he becomes more personal, he can speak more of what we know as a personal God. It is at this point that biblical passages can begin to be drawn upon.717 Thus, the terms “God” and “Lord” are not presented by Franklin on his own authority but rather on the authority of generally accepted books of revelation. His reluctance to use these terms apart from the prevailing sacred books may reflect the difficulty he has in dealing with some of his colleagues who are more deistic than Christian. This distinction may bear on the tension there always is in the United States with respect to these matters.718 Franklin reminds his more sophisticated colleagues, among whom he could obviously be numbered, that biblical authority or influence can be more powerful with the people at large, among whom some of the other members of the Convention can be numbered, than can a philosophical approach. It is this authority which can guide and inspire the public, helping to induce everyone to submit to a collective rededication. Prayer in these circumstances is, then, a kind of common oath, a promise to do better, to look beyond partial interests.

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V Franklin’s talk concludes with the proposal to bring in one or more of “the Clergy of this City” to officiate in a daily service. It is not enough, it seems, for one or another member of the Convention to say something of a spiritual character at the beginning of each session.719 The clergy are public ministers. To bring in the clergy is to do something for all to see. This may be needed to enhance the effect desired, especially because recourse to the local clergy exposes the matter to the community at large.720 Professional clergy, we notice, usually work with revelation and organized religion; they are not likely to be, at least among us, ministers of a natural religion.721 Ordained clergymen represent much more a community effort; they certainly do not represent primarily the activity or emanations of intellectuals. It is noticed in the ensuing discussion that clergymen would expect to be paid—and the Convention’s budget had not permitted it to call them in up to this point. There may be something reassuring, by the way, in the reminder that the clergy are paid: this suggests that they are regarded as efficacious.722 Be that as it may, recourse to the clergy is perhaps an imitation of recourse to divine authority. The clergy is more apt to know the appropriate rituals and to be able to perform them properly.723

VI Does not Franklin accomplish much of what he wants just by making his proposal? He tries, that is, to move his colleagues to look beyond their “partial local interests.” The common ground they need is higher ground. What did the refusal of the delegates to ask for prayers suggest? Did some of them express thereby higher principles themselves? Was their sense of honor challenged, leading them to resist? Even so, they knew that other delegates of a more pious cast of mind would find the proposal appealing. These people, in turn, might well have appreciated the reluctance of the freethinkers among them. It is, in short, a delicate situation. Political skills are used by the various “factions” to get past this crisis without making explicit, and thereby worsening, their underlying differences. Perhaps this exercise was salutary practice for the accommodations they still had to make in their framing of the Constitution. Insofar as the more pious were also the ones who were reluctant to establish a strong central government, the evident piety of a strong-government delegate such as Franklin could have been reassuring. The shrewdness of Franklin in such matters should not be underestimated.

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It is instructive to consider whether Franklin’s short talk is not itself a kind of prayer. Does it not invoke sentiments and passions as a prayer would? How would a call on God be different from that which Franklin himself did on this occasion? Indeed, his talk can be seen as a sermon as well as a prayer. Did he not in effect “threaten” the delegates with the consequences of their present activity, suggesting that there would be more of this desperation (and not only expressed by him) if they did not reform? He is not averse to letting the people at large learn that things are not going well, which can serve as a reminder of the political consequences of a continuing impasse. Perhaps, then, it does not matter whether formal prayer by the clergy is instituted once Franklin delivers his sentiments. Is this what he had aimed at all along, a means for “preaching” to them about their partialities and how much they jeopardized the cause of republican government everywhere? Certainly, his presence each morning, old and feeble as he was, could serve as a reminder of the divine intervention he had invoked.

VII The levelheadedness of the Founders with respect to religion is further testified to by Edmund Randolph’s proposal about the use of the impending Fourth of July ceremonies to initiate the recourse to daily prayers. We may even wonder whether Franklin arranged for this proposal to be made in due course.724 It did seem to be assumed by the Randolph proposal, and by the way it was received, that it is proper enough to join religion and politics. Or rather, there is no explicit suggestion that there are “church and state” problems here for the delegates, either on a great state occasion (the Fourth of July celebration) or in conducting the public business on a daily basis. Even those who are opposed to the use of the clergy in the Convention did not openly do so on “the Separation of Church and State” grounds. Perhaps they would not have considered it politic or responsible to do so.725 We may well wonder if things went better in the Convention after, and because of, this intervention by Franklin. If so, should this be regarded as a kind of divine intervention, which can find expression through the arguments and influence of human beings? Human wisdom is depreciated at the beginning of Franklin’s talk, at least as it had been exhibited in the workings of the Convention up to that point. But at the end of the talk, Franklin expresses the hope that human wisdom would be effective, and not just chance, in the establishment of government.726 Does he suggest thereby that although human wisdom may not be seen in the many, it can find expression in key members of the community? A few know how to make

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use of the highest powers available to mankind, as testified to by Franklin’s call for prayers. If only a few have true wisdom, what is needed for the community at large? What access can a properly shaped religion provide to wisdom and an elevated spirit? No doubt, as freethinkers would remind us, religious passions can be ugly and destructive in their partisanship. But the more thoughtful even among free thinkers would recognize as well that formal religious ceremonies can provide salutary outward manifestations of the solemn and the highminded.727

Chapter Fourteen

Thomas Paine (1737–1809)728

For we must not misread ourselves: we are machines as much as mind; and hence the instrument by which persuasion is not mere demonstration. How few things are demonstrated! Proofs only convince the mind. Our strongest proofs and the most generally believed are created by habit; habit guides the machine, and the machine carries away the mind unconsciously. What has demonstrated that there will be a morrow, that we shall die? Yet what is more generally believed? So it is habit that persuades us of the fact; ‘tis habit that makes the mass of Christians, makes Turks, heathen, artisans, soldiers, etc. . . . In a word, we must appeal to religion when once the mind has seen where truth resides, in order to quench our thirst and imbibe belief which is ever slipping from our reach; for it is very difficult to have proof always ready to hand. —Blaise Pascal729

I The fact that today is Good Friday in Western Christendom is related, providentially, to our subject. Good Friday derives its meaning from a particular story, going back to a particular time and place. It is a story very much dependent upon ancient reports, requiring and contributing to the faith of people. It is not something simply reasoned to or arrived at by demonstration. We are reminded of what Good Friday can mean when we read such stories as that in Nikos Kazantzakis’s The Greek Passion.730 We can see there not only the good and the bad that organized religion can lead to but also the richness in life made possible by such combinations of good and bad. And so we must wonder how much the richness of human life depends upon both an attachment to a particular time and place and to opinions keyed to time and place. 140

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II Thomas Paine, in The Age of Reason, addresses his “fellow-citizens of all nations.”731 May there not be a self-contradiction here? Is not citizenship necessarily grounded in a country? Is citizenship possible which is not limited primarily to a particular place? Is the designation of “world citizen” an improper combination of terms? One may be humane, on a worldwide basis, but can one be a citizen with such a scope? Indeed, one may even wonder, is it possible for most people to become or to remain truly humane if they are not citizens (that is, rooted) somewhere?732 III It is true, of course, that a particular regime can be an inspiration to people all over the world. Such have been the American regime since 1776 and the French regime after its great revolution of 1789.733 Even so, inspiration (or imitation) cannot suffice; adaptations have to be made in the light of local conditions. Thus, just as worldwide citizenship may be suspect, so may a single regime for all nations. Indeed, one can even wonder whether a universal political regime must be tyrannical.734 IV The sophisticated character of Paine’s approach to doctrines and allegiances may be seen as well in his insistence that he subscribes to “the pure, universal and unadulterated belief of one God, and no more.”735 Here, too, the differences between peoples, and between their circumstances, tend to be leveled out. But the problem remains whether the God, or the beliefs in God, considered thus can affect and move people deeply and for long. V Paine can insist that his own mind is his own church.736 This is related to his insistence that he has “a right not to believe” others’ hearsay about revealed matters.737 And so he can urge, in conclusion, “[L]et every man follow, as he has a right to do, the religion and the worship he prefers.”738 But what does such an approach do to the sense of community? Does not community depend upon the country that people share, and does not “country” often (if not even naturally) lead to, if it does not depend upon, a common “church” (that is, a generally accepted body of religious beliefs and modes of worship)?

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VI Paine explains away, however, the body of religious beliefs and modes of worship known as Christianity. Christianity is subjected by him to what we now know as an anthropological approach. Thus, it can be seen by him as building upon ancient mythology as well as upon the Jewish tradition, which no doubt can also be seen by Paine as dependent upon still another ancient mythology.739 VII Central to Paine’s understanding of Christianity is his determination that “all national institutions of churches” are ultimately dedicated to monopolies and enslavement. Thus, he can suggest, the adaptation of Christianity from ancient mythology, and the development of organized worship and a priesthood, were all done for “the purposes of power and revenues.”740 Still, one must wonder, is not this too low a view of things, whatever merit there may be to Paine’s distinctions between revelation and hearsay? Does he fail to appreciate the grandeur and the achievements of organized religion, and not only in the West? Does he make too much of the dubious aspects and lamentable consequences of religion without paying sufficient attention to the most elevated ways that believers tend to regard themselves and hence may be encouraged to conduct themselves?741 Perhaps Paine is not enough of an anthropologist. After all, what is it in mankind which inclines human beings to religious worship? Why is it (as it seems to be) that it cannot suffice for most people to say, with Paine, that God is revealed in Creation alone? Creation is insisted upon by him as the only “book” to be studied, not those manifestations (or revelations) of the divine offered up from time to time in print.742 VIII But are God’s “moral goodness and beneficence” as clearly manifested in Creation as Paine argues? Can Creation suffice, by itself, to provide an adequate moral guide for mankind in various circumstances? Does not Paine himself tacitly rely upon lessons about goodness inculcated by various religions for thousands of years? IX Thus, we must wonder whether reasoning alone can suffice to guide most human beings most of the time. Paine can make much of reasoning to the First Cause.743

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The Jews can be referred to as a people for whom one god suffices, unlike the Christians whom Paine can regard as polytheistic.744 But do not even the Jews make much of stories of a few great men (such as Abraham and Moses)? That is, are such stories, and not reason or God alone, critical for the vitality of a people, however much the best stories may seem to depend upon reasoning and inspiration (or the grace of God)?

X Men do naturally tend to make much of their own, if only because they are not likely to believe they can ever know much more than their own (or, at least, because they are not likely to believe they know anything else as well as they know their very own). How much Paine himself makes of his own is reflected in the confidence he expresses, both at the beginning and at the end of his book, in the continued existence of his soul after death.745 But again, we must wonder, is this assurance, without particular stories and particular promises to back it up, enough to move and to guide most people?

XI It should be recognized—and this Paine is very much aware of and troubled by—it should be recognized that particular religions do tend toward the use of compulsion. That is, religious worship in a people does tend toward “national institutions of churches.”746 And so, Paine advocates “the total abolition of the whole national order of priesthood, and of everything appertaining to compulsive systems of religion.”747 The separation of church and state he advocates is related to the way Paine wants us to think about patriotism and piety. Both are to be universal, not local—and, perhaps even more important, church and state are not to be connected in any public way.

XII Thus, Paine is correct to recognize that there has long been an intimate relation between religion and government. He foresaw that a revolution in the system of government, such as had already been seen in his day in America and in France, would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion. But he may not have foreseen that a revolution in the religious thought of a people might have a critical effect in turn on its political thought. In fact, there may be something distinctively Christian in Paine’s insistence upon the self-sufficiency of the

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individual. And when such individuality is made much of both in the political realm and in the spiritual realm, does not that make community (and hence both politics and religion) less likely to be taken seriously?

XIII Extra spice is provided to Paine’s arguments in that he is moving against the general backdrop of the religions of his (and earlier) days. This can mean that there is some risk, and hence interest, in what he says and in how he puts it. Indeed, his need to be somewhat careful here may make him more thoughtful and hence more interesting than his conventionally iconoclastic successors have tended to be. The universality, in both politics and religion, that Paine makes so much of may reflect the claims to universality that Christianity had long made. We can again wonder, therefore, whether Paine appreciates the extent to which the Christianity he condemns has influenced him. Of course, he would insist that it is Jesus he respects, not Christianity. He does speak of Jesus as a good man worthy of considerable respect. But would he know much about Jesus, or hold him in as high a regard as he evidently does, but for the efforts made over many centuries by organized Christian religion to dramatize annually the story of Jesus for mankind? Paine can speak critically of the apostles’ stories about Jesus, those gloomy stories “of a man dying in agony on a cross.”748 But does it take such stories—something which the most thoughtful poets have always known—if the typical human being is to be moved in the most instructive fashion to look beyond everyday interests to the first and last things?

Chapter Fifteen

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)749

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself; neither do we rejoice therein, because we control our lusts, but contrariwise, because we rejoice therein, we are able to control our lusts. —Baruch Spinoza750

I I address myself to Arthur Schopenhauer’s general opinions about suffering and its significance in his work. Our text for this occasion is the essay “On the Suffering of the World.”751 It is a work, it should at once be added, which can impress the most gifted readers, as may be seen in the response to it by Friedrich Nietzsche (in 1873): I belong to those readers of Schopenhauer who know perfectly well, after they have turned the first page, that they will read all the others, and listen to every word that he has spoken. My trust in him sprang to life at once, and has been the same for nine years.752

Nietzsche was eventually to develop serious reservations about Schopenhauer. But in his first decade of enthusiasm, he could say such things as this about Schopenhauer (who had died in 1860): I only know a single author that I can rank with Schopenhauer, or even above him, in the matter of honesty; and this is Montaigne. The joy of living on earth is increased by the existence of such a man. . . . I can say of him as he [said] of Plutarch—“As soon as I open him, I seem to grow a pair of wings.”753

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Nietzsche then adds something that can sound strange to the reader familiar with Schopenhauer’s reputation as a gloomy “pessimist”: Schopenhauer has a second characteristic in common with Montaigne, beside honesty; a joy that really makes others joyful. . . . There are two very different kinds of joyfulness. The true thinker always communicates joy and life, whether he is showing his serious or comic side, his human insight or his godlike forebearance: without surly looks or trembling hands or watery eyes, but simply and truly, with fearlessness and strength, a little cavalierly perhaps, and sternly, but always as a conqueror; and it is this that brings the deepest and intensest joy, to see the conquering god with all the monsters that he has fought. But the joyfulness one finds here and there in the mediocre writers and limited thinkers makes some of us miserable.754

Perhaps there is in what Nietzsche says here about “the conquering god” an indication of why he came to disavow Schopenhauer as he eventually did. (Is the presentation of anyone as godlike essentially a repudiation of Schopenhauer’s view of mankind?) Nietzsche’s sympathy for Schopenhauer (perhaps as a fellow-sufferer) may be seen in this observation: “He was absolutely alone, with no single friend of his own to comfort him, and between one and none there lies an infinity—as ever between something and nothing.”755 And he adds, in this context, that Schopenhauer had only “his faithful dog.”756

II It could be considered providential that I happened to visit the Art Institute last Friday, as I was thinking about my remarks for this occasion. For while there I was reminded of two subjects attempted by Renaissance painters—Democritus, the laughing philosopher, and Heraclitus, the weeping philosopher.757 The two paintings on these subjects, in the permanent collection of the Art Institute, are particularly striking, hanging side by side.758 Neither Democritus (with his silly grin) nor Heraclitus (with his hand-wringing anguish) is attractive; in fact, they would be considered unseemly in the passions to which they surrender even if they were not “philosophers.” One responds too gleefully to the follies of the world; the other laments too much the troubles of the world.759 The two portraits, side by side, did suggest to me two facets of Schopenhauer’s soul: he sees human life as absurd (worthy of laughter, perhaps even of derision), even as he responds passionately to the sufferings of mankind and even of animals. If there is something incongruous about either of these responses, and especially by a philosopher, how much more so when they are combined (combined, not blended?) in Schopenhauer? Should not one be able, by recognizing what inclines men to both responses, to rise to a different level?

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It is what Schopenhauer does with the suffering he makes so much of—suffering which (he indicates) may very well seem to most observers to be purposeless and hence absurd—it is what he does with suffering that we will particularly concern ourselves with on this occasion.

III What does Schopenhauer do with suffering? It is their response to suffering, he seems to say, that directs human activities. That is, he can be understood as assuming (without making it explicit) that life takes its bearings from what is to be avoided. Indeed, this avoidance provides for life such meaning as it has. We can recognize here something familiar to us from Thomas Hobbes and various of his successors (among whom, I dare suggest, may well be Schopenhauer himself, at least in critical respects).760 It is Hobbes, we recall, who made so much of what human beings strive to avoid, not what they aspire to. Schopenhauer does praise Hobbes as having “admirably described” the war of all against all.761 Schopenhauer can be said to share with Hobbes a kind of materialism. Thus, he can say in the text we have, “However varied the forms that human happiness and misery may take, leading a man to seek the one and to shun the other, the material basis of it all is bodily pleasure or bodily pain.”762 It is Hobbes, then, that he may have been most influenced by, although he does not seem to have recognized (or, at least, acknowledged) this connection. Schopenhauer does seem to share Hobbes’s “atheism” as well as his respect for old-fashioned morality, especially with respect to the importance of law and order (as may be seen in Schopenhauer’s response to the Revolution of 1848). Nietzsche noticed this: He held quite openly the opinion that the state’s one object was to give protection at home and abroad, and even protection against its “protectors,” and to attribute any other object to it was to endanger its true end. And so, to the consternation of all the so-called liberals, he left his property to the survivors of the Prussian soldiers who fell in 1848 in the fight for order.763

Also Hobbesian are Schopenhauer’s observations that “the inner being of unconscious nature is a constant striving without end and without rest,” and that “the life of the great majority” is moved more by “the fear of death” than by the “love of life.”764 More than one scholar has been obliged, despite his sympathy with Schopenhauer, to regard him as a “second rater.”765 If he is indeed a second rater, which means, among other things, that he himself could not have discovered the truths he draws upon, one must look for his source—and so I have nominated Hobbes, at least with respect to the matters I have mentioned.766 This is

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not to deny that Schopenhauer, if asked, would probably have been inclined (in the fashion of German idealism) to dismiss Hobbes and the other British thinkers as too pedestrian.767 I suggest, therefore, that various critical doctrines in Schopenhauer may be better seen in Hobbes than in him, if only because Hobbes has thought them through better. On the other hand, it may be possible, by considering how Schopenhauer put doctrines that he shares with Hobbes, to see, perhaps better than Hobbes permits us to see, how much the free-thinking Hobbes himself may be dependent upon Christianity.768 Certainly, it is Christianity with which Schopenhauer sees himself (and was seen by Nietzsche) to be in some sense and to some degree allied. He can insist upon “how essential to all life is suffering,” “that striving [which] we see everywhere hindered in many ways, everywhere in conflict,” so varied are “the form[s] of suffering.” Thus, if there is no final end of striving, there is no measure and end of suffering.769 And, in his essay on suicide, Schopenhauer can say, “The inmost kernel of Christianity is the truth that suffering—the Cross—is the real end and object of life.”770 Elsewhere, he can say, “There really resides in the heart of each of us a wild beast which only waits the opportunity to rage and rave in order to injure others, and which, if they do not prevent it, would like to destroy them.”771 And a Jesuit scholar can report, “Schopenhauer does indeed say that in his philosophy the world possesses a moral significance. But what he means by this at first sight astonishing statement is this: Existence, life, is itself a crime: it is our original sin. And it is inevitably expiated by suffering and death.”772 Support for such a paraphrase may be found in the essay we are discussing, concluding with its observation, “And true Christianity—using the word in its right sense—also regards our existence as the consequence of sin and error.”773 Earlier in our essay, Schopenhauer had said, My philosophy shows the metaphysical foundation of justice and the love of mankind, and points to the goal to which these virtues necessarily lead, if they are practised in perfection. At the same time it is candid in confessing that a man must turn his back upon the world, and that the denial of the will to live is the way to redemption. . . . In this sense, then, my doctrine might be called the only true Christian philosophy—however paradoxical a statement this may seem to people who take superficial views instead of penetrating to the heart of the matter.774

That this statement might seem paradoxical to some is not surprising, especially when one considers such things as Schopenhauer’s celebration of oblivion, or Nirvana, as that to which the human soul should aspire. The considerable influence upon him here of Eastern thought (especially Buddhism), which had become available to Europe in the nineteenth century, is evident.775

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Before proceeding further with considerations of Schopenhauer’s emphasis on suffering and its relation to Christian doctrines, it would be useful to notice (if only briefly) the classical alternative, particularly as seen in Aristotle.

IV The Greeks, Schopenhauer says in our essay, “looked upon the world and the gods as the work of an inscrutable necessity.”776 But whatever the world’s origins, we have noticed that it could be recognized by Aristotle that existence is sweet, at least so long as one is not unduly burdened by painful afflictions.777 Schopenhauer, on the other hand, seems to lean the other direction in our essay, disparaging those who “prefer to be assured that everything the Lord has made is good.”778 Is not Aristotle’s assessment of existence substantially that of the Biblical Jews as well? This seems to be implied by the attribution to God, by the Jews, of the opinion that His creation was praiseworthy, and this despite the fact that there may be in Jewish thought (as Schopenhauer puts it) “no trace whatever of any belief in the immortality of the soul.”779 Aristotle himself is known to assume that happiness is possible on earth, and that genuine happiness is linked to the virtues.780 Compare, on the other hand, the modern approach—not as seen in Schopenhauer but rather in Nietzsche: The heroic man does not think of his happiness or misery, his virtues or his vices, or of his being the measure of things; he has no further hopes of himself and will accept the utter consequences of his hopelessness. . . . The old philosophers sought for happiness and truth, with all their strength: and there is an evil principle in nature that not one shall find that which he cannot help seeking.781

Related to this is Schopenhauer’s observation, in The World as Will, that “the man who is gifted with genius suffers most of all.”782 Furthermore, Schopenhauer argues, But whatever nature and fortune may have done, whoever a man may be and whatever he may possess, the pain which is essential to life cannot be thrown off. The ceaseless efforts to banish suffering accomplish no more than to make it change its form.783

He also argues, in a passage similar in sentiment to the opening paragraphs in our reading: All satisfaction, or what is commonly called happiness, is always really and essentially only negative, and never positive. It is not an original gratification coming to us of itself, but must always be the satisfaction of a wish. The wish, i.e., some

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want, is the condition which precedes every pleasure. But with the satisfaction the wish and therefore the pleasure cease.784

It is revealing that “pleasure” is used at the end of this quotation, since what Schopenhauer here calls “happiness” seems to be what Socrates calls “pleasure” and especially physical pleasure (and indeed is subject to the limitations recounted here by Schopenhauer). We are reminded by this observation to wonder whether Socrates can usefully be thought of as having “suffered” in the way that Schopenhauer assumes geniuses do. The underlying difficulty here may be that Schopenhauer does not see happiness as the natural result of a life properly lived: that is, he may not grasp what the meaning of “nature” is.785 Particularly illuminating is the following observation: The human individual finds himself as finite in infinite space and time, and consequently as a vanishing quantity compared with them. . . . But the present is always passing through his hands into the past; the future is quite uncertain and always short. Thus his existence, even when we consider only its formal side, is a constant hurrying of the present into the dead past, a constant dying. But if we look at it from the physical side, it is clear that, as our walking is admittedly merely a constantly prevented falling, the life of our body is only a constantly prevented dying, an everpostponed death; finally, in the same way, the activity of our mind is a constantly deferred ennui.786

Is there not something perverse, and misleading, in thus seeing human activities, whether walking or living or even thinking?787 The differences for Schopenhauer between the ancients and the moderns (at least in Europe) are further suggested by the way he opens his discussion elsewhere of “The Virtue of Loving-Kindness”: Justice is, therefore, the first and fundamentally essential cardinal virtue. Even the philosophers of antiquity regarded it as such, though they coordinated it with three others that were unsuitably chosen. On the other hand, they did not set up philanthrophy, loving-kindness, caritas [agape], as a virtue; even Plato, who rises to the greatest heights in morality, gets only as far as voluntary, disinterested justice. It is true that philanthrophy has existed at all times, in practice and in fact; but it was first theoretically mentioned, formulated as a virtue—indeed as the greatest of all virtues—and extended even to enemies, by Christianity. This is Christianity’s greatest merit.788

What Schopenhauer says here is intimately related to how he, elsewhere, can speak of tragedy: it expresses “the unspeakable pain, the wail of humanity, the triumph of evil, the mocking mastery of chance and the irretrievable fall of the just and innocent.”789 If one compares this characterization of tragedy to that by

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Aristotle (in the Poetics), one can sense how Schopenhauer’s emphasis upon the suffering that mankind does have to endure distorts, indeed perverts, the understanding and guidance that nature can provide the thoughtful human being.790 Nature herself is lost sight of when too much is made of the wailing of humanity. One must wonder whether such misdirection by Schopenhauer of one’s fellow man was imagined by him to be an act of loving-kindness?

V Something more may usefully be said about the consequences of putting one’s emphasis on the significance of suffering among men (including that dreadful suffering known as boredom, which would follow the elimination of conflict). Consider how Schopenhauer, early in our reading, sees the human condition: “We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey. So it is that in our good days we are all unconscious of the evil [that] Fate may have presently in store for us—sickness, poverty, mutilation, loss of sight or reason.”791 It is “under the eye of the butcher” that we frolic, not under that of the shepherd. In this matter, it would seem, Schopenhauer sides with Thrasymachus against Socrates. Thus to see mankind, always under the knife, leads Schopenhauer to make much of negation as the distinctively human response to the world. That is, self-defense, if not constant self-assertion, is called for.792 This is related, I suggest, to the emphasis in Schopenhauer’s work on the will. He sees such self-assertion (which seems related to Hobbes’s emphasis on selfpreservation) at the core of things. It is the thwarting of the will—the thwarting of the efforts one makes to achieve “satisfaction, well-being, happiness”—that we know as “suffering.”793 And, in turn, it would seem, the will is most evident in responses by man to that suffering which is so pervasive in his life. Certainly, the will is to be seen most dramatically in the face of the ultimate defeat, the inevitable defeat, confronted by the human being. That is to say, the will of which so much is made by Schopenhauer may come down to the will to live, the effort to escape death (or at least to put it off a very long time).794 How self-centered this is, in Schopenhauer’s view, may be seen in this passage which leads to the praise already noted of Hobbes’s description of the war of all against all: Therefore [an individual’s] own being, and the maintenance of it, is of more importance to it than that of all others together. Every one looks upon his own death as upon the end of the world, while he accepts the death of his acquaintances as a matter of comparative indifference, if he is not in some way affected by it. In the consciousness that has reached the highest grade, that of man, egoism, as well as knowledge, pain, and pleasure, must have reached the highest grade also, and

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the conflict of individuals which is conditioned by it must appear in its own terrible form. And indeed we see this everywhere before our eyes, in small things as in great.795

Cannot we see here, in this emphasis upon individuation and the will, the roots of contemporary Existentialism? The only being that matters is one’s own existence, if only because it is that being alone which one can somehow know.796 To notice this is, however, to be prompted to delve even deeper for the roots of Existentialism—down to Immanuel Kant (if not to Thomas Hobbes himself)—to Kant and his radical subjectivity.797 Is this not related to Nietzsche’s own “the truth is deadly” sentiment? Among the consequences of Schopenhauer’s approach, it would seem, is his suggestion in our essay: The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to everyone. But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole!798

No superior consolation, or pleasure, it would seem, awaits the human being upon contemplating the whole (if only, perhaps, because such contemplation is bound to be both partial and temporary). And yet, is not an awareness of being and the goodness of being—indeed, the goodness, or at least the potential goodness, of the whole—implied in the discontent which human beings can have and which Schopenhauer repeatedly expresses.799

VI The being of things is somehow lost sight of in Schopenhauer, perhaps because he considers it inaccessible. A natural awareness of that which is both enduring and good about existence seems to be denied. And yet, is not nature implicitly relied upon by him, even in the opening paragraph of our essay, where it seems to be suggested that the pervasive human suffering must be for some end?800 Among the things lost because of Schopenhauer’s approach is the grasp one might have of the place of reason in the universe.801 Thus, Schopenhauer does not seem to believe that the universe is somehow finer, more nearly complete and hence good, by having in it reasoning (and freely choosing) beings such as the human being. Certainly, there is no respect shown by him for the opinion that something precious is added to the universe by the presence of reasoning beings, a preciousness to which we can all be said to contribute and in which we all share, whatever the ultimate fate of the individual soul.802

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Instead, one finds in our Schopenhauer essay such sentiments as this: If you try to imagine, as nearly as you can, what an amount of misery, pain and suffering of every kind the sun shines upon in its course, you will admit that it would be much better if, on the earth as little as on the moon, the sun were able to call forth the phenomena of life; and if, here as there, the surface were still in a crystalline state.803

Is there not something monstrous in this evident suggestion that it would have been far better for the world and the human race never to have existed?804 Perhaps at the root of the difficulty here may be Schopenhauer’s opinion that knowledge is the servant of the will.805 Here, too, Hobbes comes to mind, of course, with his observation that the thoughts are to the desires as scouts and spies.806 VII I return, as I prepare to close this inquiry, to the parallels between Christianity, on the one hand, and Hobbes-Schopenhauer, on the other—parallels which may perhaps be accounted for by common insights into the nature of things or by common longings, rather than by any direct influence of one upon the other. In any event, in Christianity, too, it can be said, knowledge may be seen as the servant of the will, thoughts as the scouts for desire (or faith).807 Somewhat in tension with our Christian heritage, it would seem, is that approach to things which recognizes the possibility of temporal human happiness, with nature as one’s guide.808 Is an emphasis upon will related to the predominance of faith, which is a kind of will (or very strong desire)? Do we see here, whether in Christianity or in Schopenhauer, “Kantianism” pushed to the limit?809 All this bears as well on the status of individuality and its responses to the world.810 Schopenhauer, it can be suspected, espouses a kind of Christianity without revelation: things would be much easier for Schopenhauer, but less of a challenge for us, if he did “believe.”811 We should not be surprised, in any event, that Schopenhauer should make as much as he does, in our reading, of ascetism and hence of Christianity.812 Indeed, he himself can see his doctrine as the only true Christian philosophy. That is, Schopenhauser is somehow the “Christian philosopher,” in that he has responded most to both the fact and the significance of suffering. Whether he has made less endurable such inevitable suffering as there is, by having helped make atheism respectable, is a question that cannot be more than touched upon here.813 In any event, Schopenhauer can be seen to provide a useful correction to Hegelianism: it is important, is it not, to notice the extent of suffering and

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irrationality in the world?814 And so he can say, once again allying himself with Christianity, I cannot here avoid the statement that, to me, optimism, when it is not merely the thoughtless talk of such as harbour nothing but words under their low foreheads, appears not merely as an absurd, but also as a really wicked way of thinking, as a bitter mockery of the unspeakable suffering of humanity. Let no one think that Christianity is favourable to optimism; for, on the contrary, in the Gospels world and evil are used as almost synonymous.815

Thus, one finds in Schopenhauer’s work special attention paid to sympathy and toleration. Compassion, we are told again and again, is the key to everything, that compassion which (as we have seen) neither the Greeks nor the Jews made enough of in thought (whatever may have been the case for them in practice).816 One’s critical compassion, we are told, is innate.817 But, we must wonder, does the emphasis upon suffering come from Schopenhauer’s personal openness to compassion, or vice versa?818 Was it the emphasis upon compassion (or the virtue of loving-kindness) at the expense of almost all the other virtues that eventually turned Nietzsche away from Schopenhauer? True, Nietzsche had indulged himself, in his Schopenhauer phase, in sentiments similar to Schopenhauer’s: The deeper minds of all ages have had pity for animals, because they suffer from life and have not the power to turn the sting of the suffering against themselves, and [to] understand their being metaphysically. The sight of blind suffering is the spring of the deepest emotion. . . . To cling to life, blindly and madly, with no other aim, to be ignorant of the reason, or even the fact, of one’s punishment, nay, to thirst after it as if it were a pleasure, with all the perverted desire of a fool—this is what it means to be an animal.819

Nietzsche eventually reported that he had endeavored, “with some enigmatic longing,” “to think pessimism through to its depths and to liberate it from the half-Christian, half-German narrowness and simplicity in which it has finally presented itself to our century, namely in the form of Schopenhauer’s philosophy.”820 And so he can say, There are still harmless self-observers who believe that there are “immediate certainties”; for example, “I think,” or as the superstition of Schopenhauer put it, “I will”; as though knowledge here got hold of its object purely and nakedly as “the thing in itself,” without any falsification on the part of either the subject or the object.821

Years before, Nietzsche had seen Schopenhauer’s thought as leading to an emphasis upon what Nietzsche called the nobler ends: justice and mercy.822 I

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suspect that Nietzsche came to see the emphasis upon mercy as dominant in Schopenhauer, with the justice of Schopenhauer as rather pedestrian, perhaps as little more than a lively concern for law and order. Whether it was good for Europeans, and especially for the Germans, to be exposed to, instead of Schopenhauer’s (if not also to Hobbes’s) humanitarian sentiments (if not even sentimentality)—whether it was good to be exposed, instead, to Nietzsche’s call for tough-mindedness is, of course, a problem we can do no more on this occasion than notice as we have just done. I should not bring to a close this preliminary survey of the thought of Schopenhauer without recalling something else that Nietzsche himself wrote about him: “The errors of great men are venerable because they are more fruitful than the truths of little men.”823 Something of Schopenhauer’s superiority is suggested by the following comment by the Jesuit scholar from whom I have quoted: The natural question to ask is this: if the thing-in-itself is manifested in such diverse phenomena as the universal forces of Nature, such as gravity, and human volition, why call it “Will”? Would not “Force” or “Energy” be a more appropriate term, especially as the so-called Will, when considered in itself, is said to be “without knowledge and merely a blind incessant impulse,” “an endless striving”? For the term “Will,” which implies rationality, seems to be hardly suitable for describing a blind impulse or striving. Schopenhauer, however, defends his linguistic usage by maintaining that we ought to take our descriptive term from what is best known to us. We are immediately conscious of our own volition. And it is more appropriate to describe the less well known in terms of the better known than the other way around.824

Something more of Schopenhauer’s superiority, which it is well for us to keep in mind if we should return to and rethink his work, may be seen in the following comment by Nietzsche himself: The beauty of the antique vases, says Schopenhauer, lies in the simplicity with which they express their meaning and object; it is so with all the ancient implements; if Nature produced amphorae, lamps, tables, chairs, helmets, shields, breastplates and the like, they would resemble these.825

If all this is indeed Schopenhauer’s observation, it does suggest the power of his mind. It would mean, among other things, that he has a deeper sense of the significance of nature, and perhaps consequently of the place of reason in the universe, than I have thus far been able to give him credit for.826

Chapter Sixteen

Charles Darwin (1809–1882)827

And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. . . . And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. . . . And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. —Moses828

I I was fortunate the other day to find myself in a stalled elevated train on 63rd Street in Chicago, overlooking an abandoned field cluttered with weeds and other vegetation. A black cat moved about, weaving in and out between things, over and under things, making its way across the field. It was an engaging sight, to watch this complicated vertebrate, a species with which we are so familiar, flowing across the field like water. The night before last, as I was working on this talk in my cabin, a black ant (about a quarter-inch long) crawled onto the papers I was using. It proved a welcomed diversion: I watched it crawl determinedly along the table edge, feeling its way with its antennae, as someone would who was groping in the dark. At one point, it fell two feet to the floor below—and I thought that that was the end of my diversion. But in a few minutes, here the ant came again, doing the same thing—perhaps it was trying to make its way to the light (because of its heat?) suspended immediately over my desk. Once again it slipped over the edge—and this time I watched it pick itself up and struggle manfully up the side of my table. It was, this time, obviously the worse for wear: it had trouble making it up (it

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took considerably longer this time)—and when it got to my papers again, it was much slower. In fact, after a few minutes, it lay down in the corner of one of my papers—and rested. In fact, I thought it might even be dead, so still was it. A quarter-hour later, when I had to move the paper, I nudged it off to another part of the table—at which the ant scurried away, evidently revived. These two episodes suggest to me one problem, perhaps a set of problems, posed by a study of evolutionary biology. One living thing, the cat, which is so close to us in many ways, can be described (in some circumstances) as moving so “mechanically”—flowing, as I have said, like water, or like lava. Another living thing, the ant, which is obviously so distant from us, can be described as we describe human beings, as something with a soul: it was persistent, curious, and apprehensive. The “mechanical” account of the cat I have given is an image of what the more advanced biologists can do with living things, describing them in terms of physical (especially chemical) properties and reactions. And yet is there not something in living things—as seen in what I have said of the ant—which defies such descriptions, or at least is lost sight of in such descriptions? What, then [I could ask in 1978], are we to make of all this—of Darwinism in its many forms—in the closing quarter of the twentieth century? What are we to believe about what really happens and why? I must confess at the outset of these remarks that I do not know what to “make” of the Darwinism account of things. There are, of course, many marvelous things in that account—and yet it is all somehow incomprehensible, and not simply because we do not have all the information we may like. In fact, the Darwinian account can be both fascinating and inconsequential.829 Its inconsequentiality is suggested by the fact that we are apt to be troubled when we hear accounts of genetic “meddling,” and not only when such meddling is directed at human genes. Is not our concern, even our revulsion, about that prospect a reflection of the fact that most of us may not really “believe in” evolution, not in our heart of hearts? If what there is should be regarded as the product of “blind” natural selection, in response to various chance developments, why should it matter what changes happen to be made now (so long as extinction does not result)? On the other hand, if there is no perfection or even pattern according to which natural selection is working, or by which it can be judged, why should those attempting to make changes (the “meddlers”) bother to care what is done? According to what standard can they usefully direct changes?830 Of course, human beings do ask themselves, “How do you suppose ‘all this’ happened?” Can an answer be given or are we reduced to ingenious, even poetic, conjectures? Does the Darwinian account matter, ultimately, only to those who make much of history—who believe that it is more important to learn how a thing came to be as it now happens to be than it is to ask (with little prospect, it must be admitted, of getting conclusive answers)—to ask what a thing is, what

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its nature is?831 Evolutionists, it has been noticed, are still historians, not prophets.832 We need not consider here—it suffices only to remind ourselves—that there are serious problems with history, that it may not (for all its fascinations) really tell us much, if anything, about how things really are. This is an old problem, with a history of its own—which the claims of evolutionists present us in still another way.833 Indeed, are not all the critical—that is, the more interesting and persistent— questions posed by evolution theories merely modern versions of old questions? Thus, one can ask: What is the relation of body and mind? Can matter be understood by mind, at least to the extent that the mind can know itself? Thus, also, one can ask (as did the ancient sophists) whether man has “an essence, or nature, and therefore a unique excellence.”834 Thus, as well, one can ask: What is the universe ultimately constituted of, or dependent upon—ideas or matter? Such questions oblige one to wonder, among other things, about the connections among things, about whether there is a higher and a lower, and about what distinguishes the real from the imaginary.835 Consider, for example, the status of the declaration by St. Paul, “All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.”836 I had occasion, some years ago, to put in this form some of the issues that may confront us here: Men have always recognized . . . that the human being progresses from the irrational to the rational (that is, from infancy to maturity): the rational is the culmination and fulfillment. But, the Darwinian may say, whereas it had [once] been assumed that nature “intended” such culmination, “we now know” that nature does not really “care.” Still, do not certain criteria with respect to rationality govern when the rational element is (even if only fortuitously) crystallized? Does not evolution theory account merely for the determination and emergence of the material vehicle in which the rational element appears and for the chemical and other causes of the desiring parts (whatever they have happened to become) of the human being?837

This question—“Does not evolution theory account merely for the determination and emergence of the material vehicle in which the rational element appears?”—suggests (does it not?) that whatever may be the history of the development of the body, the nature, criteria, and consequences of rationality remain substantially the same. Consider, however, the emphasis found in the closing sentence of Charles Darwin’s book, The Descent of Man: We must . . . acknowledge . . . that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creatures, with god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system—with all these

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exalted powers—Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.838

One effect of Darwinism, I suggest, has been to make somewhat clearer, or more evident, what has been said of old about the relation of body and soul. Perhaps we are obliged, by the Darwinian challenge to the old way, to ask what the human being is, what human nature means, perhaps also what existence means and what knowledge means.

II Whatever it means to know, it is evident that Darwinism has made sense for us of a great deal of information. And it has promoted the collection and organization of vast stores of data. It has promoted as well research along many lines, particularly in biology. Darwinism, as I have already indicated, has been particularly productive in recreating the “mechanics” of the changes over many years in bodily structures, changes recorded in fossils and otherwise. Among the lessons it has taught are the following: 1) We see that small things matter, that minute variations, sustained over a very long time, can have profound effects. It can mean—it has evidently meant, again and again—that many millions of species have arisen, that millions of them have become extinct, usually as the result of adaptations to, or failures to adapt to, slight changes in circumstances. Are we not reminded of how much small things can matter when we have our most idyllic moments interrupted by a cinder (even a very small cinder) in the eye? 2) We can also see from Darwinism the involved interconnectedness of things. Consider, for example, Darwin’s development of the relations between the presence of a loose cat in the neighborhood and the profusion there of flowers: the cat hunts the mice which destroy the nests of the bumblebees which pollinate the flowers.839 3) We can see as well from Darwinism how ingenuity can be brought to bear on biological problems. We have all heard by now of the wonderful mimicry practiced by some butterflies and moths in order to protect themselves from birds: they come to resemble (that is to say, the ones that happen to survive in some species are those which happen to resemble most closely) various unpalatable insects shunned by birds. But what is one to make of insects that do not hide themselves through mimicry but rather announce themselves in vivid colors? Darwin himself was troubled by this problem, especially when he learned of such caterpillars as a South American variety which was “about four inches in length, transversely banded with black and yellow, and with its head, legs and tail of a bright red. Hence it caught the eye of anyone who passed by, even

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at the distance of many yards, and no doubt that of every passing bird.”840 He continued his account: I then applied to [Alfred Russell] Wallace [codiscoverer of natural selection], who has an innate genius for solving difficulties. After some consideration [Mr. Wallace] replied, “Most caterpillars require protection, as may be inferred from some kinds being furnished with spines or irritating hairs, and from many being coloured green like the leaves on which they feed, or being curiously like the twigs of the trees on which they live.” . . . From such considerations Mr. Wallace thought it probable that conspicuously coloured caterpillars were protected by having a nauseous taste; but as their skin is extremely tender, and as their intestines readily protrude from a wound, a slight peck from the beak of a bird would be as fatal to them as if they had been devoured. Hence, as Mr. Wallace remarks, “distastefulness alone would be insufficient to protect a caterpillar unless some outward sign indicated to its would-be destroyer that its prey was a disgusting morsel.” Under these circumstances it would be highly advantageous to a caterpillar to be instantaneously and certainly recognized as unpalatable by all birds and other animals. Thus, the most gaudy colours, would be serviceable, and might have been gained by variation and the survival of the most easily-recognized individuals.841

Very bold hypotheses, such as this one, challenge and sometimes charm us. We can see a mind at work here—if not in the making of the universe, at least in sorting out what has happened and in making sense of things. The problem remains, of course, whether ingenuity—even persuasive ingenuity—can ever take the place of thoughtfulness, that thoughtfulness which is directed less at one puzzle after another and more at enduring questions—indeed, that thoughtfulness which recognizes what questions are truly the enduring ones. Still, we should recognize what it is that Darwinism can do—and we should be able to enjoy the speculations of those human beings with a “genius for solving difficulties.”842

III These solutions can seem to make sense of data that have been long known, of things that are always before us to be noticed. There are obviously all kinds of things, sometimes quite interesting things, going on around us all the time which we simply do not notice or do not notice the obvious significance of. Common sense may seem to be deficient here—but does not common sense at least tell us that there are many unnoticed things around us?843 The common sense of the earlier Darwinians may have been stronger than that of their more professional successors who have much more equipment and technical training available to them. That is, the earlier work was done by scientists who were still close to nature, who still knew (and hence may have

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been somewhat restrained by) an alternative account of things. Such scientists would also be more likely to be aware of the enduring questions to which I have referred, questions with which their predecessors challenged them. These questions include the inquiry whether there is an overall end or purpose to the development and conduct of living things. Thus, it is asked, what, if anything, makes sense of the whole? The nonhuman animals are not expected to make sense of the whole: they cannot be expected to understand what they are doing. The insects that mimic probably do not “realize” they resemble those whom they mimic. The cuckoo that lays her eggs in another nest, for another bird to hatch and raise, may never “realize” that it even has offspring of its own. Again and again, one suspects, one sees instances of complicated conduct that is totally incomprehensible to the actors. There may still be some sense to it all, of course, but we human beings cannot depend on other living things to figure out that sense for us. And our efforts to figure things out are guided, or perhaps are clouded, by a realization that (so far as we know) no other living thing on earth has—the realization recorded so poetically in the Bible: “For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again.”844 Is it significant—does it matter—that life emerges, if only to die out again? Is it natural that life emerges? Is the whole somehow meaningful? What sense does it make?

IV At the very least, for something to be sensible, would it not have to be orderly? Is there order in the world that we encounter? We could consider at length what Darwin says about this: at times he seems to suggest that there is no real order in nature; at other times, he seems to take order in nature for granted.845 Is it possible to reason about things unless one assumes some order? If order is required for reasoning, can it be such that the higher is to be seen in terms of the lower?846 The lower in this case would be the material basis for life, with the primitive stimulation, perhaps chemical in character, upon which it rests. Is there a place in such an account for altruism, self-sacrifice, ideas, beauty, and the good itself? Can such things be dealt with on the basis of a conventional materialism without losing something essential to them?847 Must not a theory—such as the Darwinian, which considers it necessary in biological matters to pay a due respect to details, to vestigial remains, to small differences—give due weight to and account for the intuitions and (sometimes) protests of those who resist the Darwinian teaching in its fullest extent? What is there, for example, to various of the following relics of old ways of thinking?

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First, there are the religious fundamentalists, especially those who insist (with or without reliance upon a literal reading of the first chapter of Genesis) that Intelligence is at work in the universe, that It constantly asserts itself, manifests Itself, fulfills Itself.848 Perhaps Darwinism implicitly recognizes their insight, in a manner of speaking. Consider also the sentiments of a leading spokesman for fundamentalists in the 1920s, William Jennings Bryan, in the course of the Scopes trial.849 Two of his observations deserve more attention than they have received, especially since they do touch upon critical questions that go back to antiquity, questions which have yet to be properly addressed by the Darwinians (who tend to be more concerned with immediate puzzles than with long-run implications). These are questions which can no longer be diverted by that “Victorian” optimism which seems to have accompanied much of Darwin’s remarkable work. Thus, Bryan protested, “They want to come in with their little padded-up evolution that commences with nothing and ends nowhere.”850 Can sense ever be made of something which “commences with nothing and ends nowhere”? What serves as a reliable starting point for one’s thought in such circumstances? Does the Darwinian somehow assume there is something at the beginning and at the end, if not (as some ancients believed) that there are everywhere enduring beings to which the sense of things is tied? Bryan also testified, or rather protested, “I would rather begin with God and reason down than begin with a piece of dirt and reason up.”851 Is not Bryan suggesting here that the higher cannot adequately be seen in terms of the lower? And is not this a suggestion which does seem to respect the nature of things? Was it the nature of things which was appealed to, in effect, by Darwin’s ingenious colleague, Wallace, who evidently believed the gap between man and ape much too large to have been bridged by natural selection? He made man an exception to the rule of evolution, attributing the origin of human mental capacities to “some higher intelligence.” Darwin regretted his friend’s recourse to the supernatural, believing that man is a wholly natural phenomenon explicable by natural laws.852 What “supernatural” means here is, of course, a question not easily answered. May not Wallace’s intuition have been sound: that is, mind, or the ideas, may somehow be “responsible” for what has happened? And some do see this mind, or ruling rationality, as the divine.853 We touch here upon a more important issue than any raised directly by evolution itself: it is, as I have already indicated, an ancient issue about the very nature of things. Still another relic of the old way of thinking about the nature of things—that old way which Darwinism must somehow take account of—may be seen in the references, even by contemporary scientists, to organisms having been “designed by evolution.” Everyone, it sometimes seems, senses mind to be somehow at work. Earlier people saw it in terms of Someone who makes all, and Who thereafter orders all. Modern men (less so, modern women?) stress the mechanics, the how, with less concern for meaning—or for Mind in its fullest

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sense. But modern men can also suggest—as it seems was done, for instance, by Max Planck—that nature is ruled by intelligent, purposive will, that it is (in this sense) rational.854 Consider further what Lamarck, one of Darwin’s great scientific forerunners, argued for: he could speak of a Chain of Being, with a drive toward the perfection of living things on the part of nature. His view can be considered “vitalistic, mystical, bordering on the supernatural”—but for him it was “materialism epitomized.”855 Indeed, even Darwin himself invoked, innumerable times, the notion of “perfection.” That is, he could not speak of what he described without recourse to some standard, however vaguely conceived, of improvement and deterioration. Was this a sound intuition on his part—or merely a regrettable vestige of a discredited way of talking about things? Platonists would argue that there may be here a revealing intuition, that one cannot help drawing upon the ideas, those timeless forms, however crudely one may do so. Is everything we see, especially among living things, a testimony to the creative power of enduring forms, of a kind of mind at work?856 Finally, in this survey of relics of the old way of thinking that Darwinism must somehow or other incorporate into its obviously impressive account of things, there is the Aristotelian insistence that all human activity aims at the good. Should this observation be extended to nonhuman activity as well? What is there about the nature of things which led Aristotle to such a challenging conclusion?857 Thus, we are obliged to wonder whether there is sense to the whole of things. Do species have within themselves tendencies, inclinations, even ends—something which guides what happens to them? Certainly, the seed of the most insignificant plant has that, determining the series of complicated movements from seed to the “adult” plant. Is there anything which determines (or at least suggests) what direction families of species will take, what form mutations may take? Is each part of the whole somehow purposive, but not the whole? Can, however, any part be “seriously” purposive, if not the whole? A teacher of mine, who is a confirmed Darwinian, has always been struck by the colors and varieties of colors among living things, especially among insects and flowers—colors which cannot always be readily explained in Darwinian terms. He puts this profusion down to what he calls “sheer exuberance” on the part of living things.858 Does this, too, draw upon an old-fashioned intuition, that intuition which one sees in the contemporary slogan, “The men who kill the whale waste nothing of the whale, except its beauty”?859

V And so we arrive at a fundamental question, a question that goes back to antiquity but which we state in the form formulated by Gottfried Leibnitz: “Why is there

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something rather than nothing?”860 Does being require that there be something rather than nothing? Can this question be answered—can any serious discourse take place—without premises, premises which in themselves assume being? Certainly, it is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine nothingness, the complete absence of what we know as the universe. An awareness of being, then, seems very much at the heart of our every perception, thought, and desire.861 If one says that order is, then must one say (is this no more than tautological?) that something must be, indeed that some things must be? Does this also indicate, if the things that must be have natures—does this indicate, within a wide range, the forms that things will take? Chance does play a part here, but only a part. Is there anything to be truly known? What is constant enough to be knowable? Some say that there is only process; there is no end—and it is that process alone which can be known. But can movement be charted if there is nothing by which one is to take one’s bearings?862 Others say that there are enduring things which can be known, and those are the smallest particles of matter: it is these particles, and their constant rearrangements, which can be somewhat known. But once such particles are granted, is there not something implicitly granted as well about the eternity of the universe and of nature? In the final analysis, can only the beingness of those particles be known, only being itself?863 But let us not, at least here, dwell on this question. Consider, instead, implications of our awareness of the permanency of matter, that permanency and that matter (whatever its forms from time to time) taken for granted by modern science. May not matter, of the kind we have (that is, of the kind there is), have everything implied in it which we know of, including perhaps life? If so, nature would have built into it something which tends always and everywhere toward the production of life. Whether life will emerge, and in what form here or there, may very much depend upon chance, but not absolutely. And does not life have implied in it, however dependent it may be on many chance circumstances, intelligence itself? Does not mind somehow animate life, as life animates body?864 It should be noticed that to say that matter-always-is need not mean that materialism (of which Darwinism may be an instance) should dominate our thinking about how and why things are. Perhaps there was no beginning—after all, we usually have no problem accounting for today’s things from yesterday’s. But what is included in “today’s things?” What, for example, makes them be as they are? What makes them continue? What, if anything, do they aim at? It is evident, of course, that human beings do aim for beauty and the good, that these and such things are aimed at once reason begins to work. It may not be as evident, but it may nevertheless be so, that the good and the beautiful are naturally aimed at by all living things—and, indeed, that the living cannot really be otherwise.865 To go even further, perhaps being is necessarily thus, if it is to be. Does this mean that nature, including matter, yearns for and testifies to the

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good and the beautiful, to which the emergence and doings of life contribute? This suggests a meaningfulness to life, a meaningfulness of which the universe (and not only human beings?) is somehow aware. Is this related to why there is something rather than nothing? Have not people sensed all this and thus have been moved to speak of “God”?866 One is reminded by these and like observations of various old, and now unfashionable, proofs for the existence of God. One is reminded also, of course, of the perennial question: What is God? Perhaps it is salutary to be reminded as well of the Aristotelian insistence upon design in nature, a design which evidently did not rest for him upon Genesis-style origins.867 Darwin himself insisted that he had nothing to say about the origins of mental powers or of life itself.868 Was he merely being politic? Or did he recognize the limits in his time of scientific developments?869 Or did he believe that science could never get beyond the “how” of things to the “why,” to the very nature, of things? Even so, must not questions about such matters be addressed—including questions about the origins and nature of life—if the whole is to be understood to any significant degree? And must not the whole be grasped if the parts are indeed to be made sense of? But then, perhaps science is too narrow to account for the whole. Is a philosophical, or for most people a poetic, account of things needed? Poets do think, whether or not they explicitly recognize it. Is it not evident that much of Darwin’s writing, certainly much of the parts which animate the whole, is poetic in the broadest sense (which sense, it should be remembered, has included the prophetic).870 Consider how Darwin ends his first major book, The Origin of the Species: It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted objects which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.871

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Of course, to recognize the poetic element in Darwin cannot be the last word on this subject. For, as we all know, there are good poets—and then there are better, and even the best, poets. In The Descent of Man, Darwin refers at one point to Newton and Shakespeare as the peaks (at least among the Englishspeaking peoples) of intellectual development. Subsequently he has occasion to refer again to such a peak—and this time Newton stands alone.872 Perhaps this reflects his inability to recognize the very highest in intellectual achievement; that is, may not the philosophical poet (such as Shakespeare) be greater even than a scientific giant (such as Newton)?873 VI I am sure that Darwin would not have troubled himself much with such a critique as that which I have sketched thus far on this occasion, even if it had been presented with more elegance and scholarship than I have been capable of. He would, instead, have gone on about his work, in his good-natured way, leaving it to others to sort out the philosophical presuppositions and implications of what he was doing. Indeed, Darwin (in his philosophical position) is a derivative figure. Hobbes and Descartes had earlier addressed themselves to the key questions, including to the implications of treating living bodies as one would machines. The way had been prepared for Darwin by what can be called “the collapse of metaphysics” in modernity.874 My reference to Hobbes should remind us of the critical role in Darwin’s work of “survival,” of the “Struggle for Life.” One comes out of any consideration of biological data with what one goes in: if one goes in with Hobbes, one comes out with Hobbes; if one goes in also with Plato, on the other hand, one does not come out just with Hobbes. “Just with Hobbes” means here an overriding emphasis upon self-preservation as that which moves, and indeed should move, human beings. Is self-preservation as critical as Hobbes makes it? Is survival to be regarded as the primary key to all the activity we observe among living things? We touch here upon a question which pits Hobbes and his company against the ancients. We cannot dwell here on this development, however—a development which culminates in that collapse of metaphysics to which I have referred. Rather, we should return to Darwin’s work, trying to learn from the rich store of insights he has provided us. VII What are living things like? What is the status of that which is to survive?875 The Darwinian answer to a question here (in effect, “What are living things like?”)

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seems to be that they are overwhelmingly concerned with survival, with preservation of their species (and hence with propagation). But is not an emphasis upon “survival” both too purposive and not purposive enough?876 It is important to notice—or so it seems to me upon considering the many nonhuman living things we have all known and upon considering what Darwinians say—it is important to notice, I suggest, that most living things are moved primarily by a desire for pleasure of one kind or another (including that negative pleasure, the avoidance of pain). They are moved primarily by a desire for pleasure, except when instinct, in the most primitive sense of instinct, guides them.877 This observation is consistent, I believe, with Darwin’s suggestion that there is no purposeless display of beauty in nature.878 Such an observation, that nonhuman living things are moved primarily by a desire for pleasure, may seem to fly in the face of Darwin’s indication at times that various animals (for example, courting males who display themselves) “know what they are about.”879 By and large, however, animals cannot know what they are doing. If they did know, they would deliberately modify what they do when what they do undermines what they are about. Consider, for example, one of the many instances Darwin himself reports: the tearing apart by male seals of a female seal they are contending over.880 Consider also a gentler episode, reported elsewhere: raccoons, as you know, thoroughly wash any food they eat. They have even been seen to do this with lumps of sugar, to their dismay.881 I have suggested that to emphasize survival is to be too purposive: the pleasure that is sought is, to a degree, sought for its own sake, at least so far as most living things know. Of course, the Darwinian will answer, natural selection has so arranged things that survival results, or is likely to result (unless circumstances change significantly), from the conduct from which this living thing derives the pleasure it gets. But this is too purposive, in that it may not recognize sufficiently how singleminded and simpleminded most living things are in their immediate apprehensions. But, I have also suggested, to emphasize survival is not to be purposive enough. That is, if pleasure is so immediately in the forefront of what moves the living thing, then we must look beyond pleasure for purpose. Must we not look beyond any pleasure to what it means?882

VIII What does pleasure mean? Its meaning can be approached by considering what it is that happens to bring pleasure. Also, its meaning can be approached by considering what tends to result from pleasurable activities. Certainly, survival does result—if it did not, the living thing would not be around for us to consider. But we see in the world many more instances of

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beauty (or of order) than of survival. After all, we have been told, 99 percent of all the species there have ever been on the earth have perished.883 And all the species that are here now, every one of millions, will someday perish, we are also told. Or, put another way, there have been many more species which have succeeded in producing beauty (or even usefulness) than there have been species which have succeeded in permanently insuring their own survival. Perhaps that which we see so much more of should be considered the primary purpose of living things—not survival but beauty or some other related goodness. Cannot nature be said to “intend” a goodness independent of survival, just as a man is presumed, at law, to intend the likely consequences of his actions? Darwin protests that any doctrines arguing that many structures are developed only for the sake of beauty or of variety would, if true, be “fatal” to his theory.884 But to say that something is fatal to his theory (if indeed it would be) is not to say that it would invalidate many of his remarkable observations and insights. Certainly, animals can be said to be attracted to a beauty of sorts. Or, rather, we can often (if not usually) see as beautiful, among the various species, what the animals of the respective species are attracted to as preferable. What are we suggesting, when we say all this, about the place of love in the universe?885 Of course, survival is evident in the living things of the world—but, as I have noticed, so is beauty (or order). Is survival a condition for beauty? Or is beauty a condition for survival? Does the beautiful, the symmetrical, tend to be the more efficient, the more reliable? Be that as it may, the condition for the existence of a thing is not necessarily the highest or the most important element connected with that thing. Consider, for example, the stone block which is one condition (in that it provides the material) for a Michelangelo sculpture. Consider also that as one sits and listens to or reads something of interest, one’s body need not matter: it can be forgotten for long periods.886 Should we not also consider, in putting survival in its proper place, that we are aware that survival can be secondary? That is, we can realize that survival is not all, or even the most important thing. Cannot nature also somehow “realize” this? Are there not advantages from living well, to be distinguished from and (if need be) preferred to simply living? Indeed, why should we not say (in line with what I suggested earlier about the nature of matter) that all living things aspire somehow to what human beings do, not as particular living things but generally? In short, may not nature indicate, in all that she does, that she respects beauty, order, and goodness even more than she does survival?887

IX The beauty I have referred to can be understood as a corporeal manifestation of goodness, of which pleasure is a sign.888 I have even suggested that there may

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be something in matter which promotes the beautiful; perhaps it can even be said—and here the poet can help us—that matter wants both to be and to be beautiful. Indeed, survival may not be as much a “concern” for matter—for, as we are told, whatever happens, it will always continue to be. But living things may have, in addition to an openness to beauty and goodness, a kind of joy, even a joie de vivre, displaying thereby what Aristotle called the sweetness of existence.889 This is the sense that life has of itself as something good, however temporary its incorporation may be in particular beings. If, as I have suggested, matter may imply life, and if life itself is something good, then it can be argued, or at least suggested, that one “reason” (so to speak) why there is something instead of nothing is that it is good that there be something, that there be things, especially living things, in their proper places. It should be remembered that in the Book of Genesis, God is reported, a half dozen times, to have seen various of His creations as good. It is only the complete creation, the whole of things (which includes ambiguous man, of whose specific goodness nothing is said there, I believe)—it is only the creation in its entirety which is said to be “very good.”890 It is the whole, that is, which can be said to be preeminently good, with all its possibilities inherent in it, including of course that peak of developments—sustained, self-conscious rationality. I have wondered about the goodness of the universe in its entirety and about the joy-in-their-own-being of living things. It is one of the many merits of Darwin’s remarkable inventive work that he can help us see, through the eyes of a human being imaginatively sensitive to what is happening all around him, how marvelously engaging the study of living things can be. Darwin can also help us see how much we are entitled to say that life—despite its inevitable struggles, disasters, and other limitations—that life, with all, perhaps indeed partly because of, its perplexities, is genuinely good.891

Chapter Seventeen

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)892

The morning sun shines from the east, And spreads his glories to the west; All nations with beams are blessed, Where’er the radiant light appears. So science spreads her lucid ray O’er lands which long in darkness lay; She visits fair Columbia, And sets her sons among the stars. Fair freedom attendant waits, To bless the portals of her gates, To crown the young and rising states With laurels of immortal day; The British yoke, the Gallic chain, Was urged upon our necks in vain, And haughty tyrants we disdain, And shout, Long live America. —Jezaniah Sumner893

I The “Last Man” passage in Friedrich Nietzsche’s Zarathustra book894 offers a devastating critique of the modern project and its moral, political, and social consequences. There are, we can concede, problems with the hedonism that we see encouraged and ministered to all around us, an aggressive hedonism that can seem to some observers the natural outcome of the Enlightenment. One consequence of this development has been the enthronement of individualism and of self-interest. Alexis de Tocqueville, in the central chapter of his 170

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On Democracy in America, suggests that there has been in the United States a somewhat successful reliance upon self-interest rightly understood. Nietzsche’s position, on the other hand, is that debilitating illusion, not life-enhancing understanding, is likely, if not even inevitable, whenever ordinary self-interest is legitimated.895 Related to this critique by Nietzsche is his contempt for the “happiness” which the “Last Man” insists upon. The evident disparagement here of happiness itself suggests how far Nietzsche is from the more sober tradition of political philosophy, something to which I will return on this occasion.896

II Much of what I have to say here is suggested by a reading of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals, a text which can be considered a somewhat accessible addendum to other work of his.897 Several causes of a much-criticized modernity are diagnosed in the Genealogy. But it can seem that the deepest hostility is aroused in the author by Christianity. One can suspect that there is manifested in Nietzsche’s passion here an instinctive rebelliousness as he tries to exorcize generations of his own spiritual heritage. With Christianity comes Judaism. The two religious movements can be separated to some extent by Nietzsche, sometimes to the credit of the Jews whom he sees as once having been a heroic people. But Judaism has been tamed somewhat by its association with Christianity and is thus made vulnerable by having been partially transformed because of the Christians.898 Christianity is seen as weak (and yet as imperialistic), unnaturally ascetic, lifedenying, and yet self-regarding, unbecomingly so. No doubt there is evidence for much of that which Nietzsche alleges—but he does not seem to appreciate the heroic aspects of Christianity across millennia. He sometimes does notice, as I have said, the heroism of Judaism, even as he notices and at times deplores the deep-seated German antipathy toward the Jews.899

III Underlying the Christian influence which Nietzsche condemns is the Platonic influence. Platonism, he evidently believes, supplied essential intellectual, if not philosophical, materials for Christianity. This may be illustrated, for us, by what may be seen in St. Augustine’s Confessions, where, for example, one can see Plato anticipating somewhat the opening verses of the Gospel of John.900

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Plato, whose undue asceticism is inherited by Christianity—an asceticism which is not properly respectful of the bodily element in the human species—Plato is particularly attacked by Nietzsche because of the Platonic hatred of art. A deep-seated opposition between Plato and Homer dramatizes, for Nietzsche, the failings of the Platonic approach to human things. A passage in the Genealogy suggests both the terms and the tone of a critique that goes back to Nietzsche’s first book, The Birth of Tragedy: Art, in which precisely the lie is sanctified and the will to deception has a good conscience, is much more fundamentally opposed to the ascetic idea than is science: this was instinctively sensed by Plato, the greatest enemy of art that Europe has yet produced. Plato versus Homer: that is the complete, the genuine antagonism—there the sincerest advocate of the “beyond,” the great slanderer of life; here the instinctive deifier, the golden nature. To place himself in the service of the ascetic ideal is therefore the most distinctive corruption of an artist that is at all possible; unhappily, also one of the most common forms of corruption, for nothing is more easily corrupted than an artist.901

But is not Plato more of an artist than Nietzsche (at least here) chooses to acknowledge? And is not Homer more thoughtful, if not “philosophical,” than Nietzsche takes him to be? In short, does not Nietzsche, perhaps the greatest classical scholar of his (and perhaps of our) time, misread both Homer and Plato, perhaps deliberately so?

IV Central to this inquiry, then, is the question of how to read a Platonic dialogue. If Plato is read properly, some might argue, Christianity itself may come to look better because of its absorption of some of the Platonic ethos.902 Plato seems to be most hostile to art in his Republic. But consider what Socrates does with the very first passage from Homer attacked by him, a passage in which Achilles, in Hades, is depicted as “antiheroic” (or improperly deathfearing) in his sentiments.903 One can wonder, of course, whether Socrates was sound, or serious, in suggesting that Homer (in how he depicts his heroes) might unnerve young men. Does not Plato know what we do, even before the testimony of heroes such as Alexander the Great, that Homer influenced his readers to be more, not less, spirited than they should be?904 Even so, the first Homeric passage that Socrates deprecates is in effect rehabilitated, quietly but definitely, later on in the Republic,905 alerting the reader to the complexities of the Socratic approach to things. One may wonder whether the reader of either the Odyssey or the Republic is supposed to notice that the source

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of the uncharacteristic sentiment from Achilles in Hades is not Homer directly but rather Homer’s Odysseus, who reports on his supposed visit to Hades.906 This observation encourages us, in addition, to consider with care what is done by Socrates with Odysseus at the end of the Republic, in the celebrated Myth of Er account.907 It is there that Odysseus is depicted as making the kind of choice, for his next life, that Socrates might himself make. Odysseus, that is, becomes proto-philosophic in his inclinations.908 This could suggest to the open-minded reader that Homer may indeed have been more thoughtful, less simply the inspired artist, than Nietzsche evidently took him to be. Thus, we can question not only how Nietzsche read Plato, but also perhaps how he read Homer, his ostensible hero. Or would Nietzsche say that this transformation of Odysseus by Socrates, if that is indeed what we see, shows how anti-artistic Plato truly is?909 V Further exploration is needed into what Nietzsche does with the philosophical tradition. Consider, for example, the curious passage in which he speaks about the philosophers not marrying, listing various unmarried (and hence asocial) philosophers across the ages.910 Socrates is noticed as an exception, but his marriage is seen as no more than instructive irony on his part.911 Perhaps significant is the omission from this list of one of the greatest philosophers, Aristotle. He evidently did marry, or at least he had a son, whom he helped raise.912 Aristotle was also important for the development of Christian thought. Why might Aristotle be a problem, in this context, for Nietzsche, leading to his omission? Vital to Aristotle’s discussion of the moral virtues are the nature and status of happiness.913 We have noticed that happiness tends to be disparaged in the “Last Man” passage in Zarathustra. But the happiness which is vital to the Aristotelian scheme of things is something that is grounded in virtue. It is important for Aristotle to show that the ethical is intimately linked to human well-being.914 Vital in turn to the ethical life is the status of citizenship and a proper political order, to which a proper system of marriages contributes. This is made much of by Aristotle, of course, but it can be woefully neglected by Nietzsche. It is almost as if all political interests are suppressed by Nietzsche simply because he is so distressed by the dominant modern political developments.915 VI Nietzsche is willing to allow himself to appear deficient in citizenship. He is a cosmopolitan. The great man (or “superman”) he looks up to, and anticipates,

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seems to be somehow apolitical, even as he would lead multitudes.916 Nietzsche does speak well of Napoleon, but is that not largely because he provided resistance to both Judaism and the French Revolution? Here is Nietzsche’s celebration of Napoleon: With the French Revolution, Judea once again triumphed over the classical ideal, and this time in an even more profound and decisive sense: the last political noblesse in Europe, that of the French seventeenth and eighteenth century, collapsed beneath the popular instincts of ressentiment—greater rejoicing, more uproarious enthusiasm had never been heard on earth! To be sure, in the midst of it there occurred the most tremendous, the most unexpected thing: the ideal of antiquity itself stepped incarnate and in unheard-of splendor before the eyes and conscience of mankind—and once again, in opposition to the mendacious slogan of ressentiment, “supreme rights of the majority,” in opposition to the will to the lowering, the abasement, the leveling and the decline and twilight of mankind, there sounded stronger, simpler, and more insistently than ever the terrible and rapturous counterslogan “supreme rights of the few”! Like a last signpost to the other path, Napoleon appeared, the most isolated and late-born man there has ever been, and in him the problem of the noble ideal as such made flesh—one might well ponder what kind of problem it is: Napoleon, this synthesis of the inhuman and the superhuman.917

This can usefully be compared to, say, the critique of Napoleon in the correspondence of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.918 Even so, should not Napoleon also be recognized as implementing in much of Europe the aggressive rationalism of the French Revolution?919 Nietzsche’s deficiency as a citizen is dramatized by his mode of speech, which is (sad to say) often simply irresponsible. He is, we have noticed, quite critical of the European political situation of his day, not without some justice in what he says. But he evidently counts on enough continued stability in Europe to permit him safely to speak as irresponsibly as he relishes doing. He can be usefully contrasted here to Abraham Lincoln’s mode of speech. Lincoln was always much more careful in how he spoke, even when he questioned some of the religious precepts that Nietzsche sees modern man spoiled by. Indeed, it seems to me, it would have been revealing to have had Nietzsche study with care the career, including the rhetoric, of Lincoln.920 Be that as it may, Nietzsche does not seem to be aware of the consequences of careless speech. Certainly, he does not seem to take such consequences into account. Does this reveal a curious naiveté, if not even a lack of imagination, in so gifted a man? At the very least, the way Nietzsche talked pointed up the remarkable deficiency, in him, of sophrosyne, or prudence.921

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VII Nietzsche, perhaps the preeminent critic of modernity in our time, can be distressingly modern in his insistence upon expressing himself in the most uninhibited manner.922 This can make him both attractive to and harmful for the young. An almost mindless self-expression may be seen both in Nietzsche’s exaltation of the “blond beast” and in some of the things said by him against Christians and about Jews. This kind of talk was put to the worst possible use by the Nazis, two generations after Nietzsche, who probably did not notice the kind of irony with which Nietzsche laced many of his more outlandish opinions—nor would most of those Germans have been restrained if they had noticed.923 The self-expressing mode—this insistence upon dramatic self-assertion— may be seen in the emphasis by Nietzsche in his works upon the importance of willing.924 It is worth considering how much the current emphasis upon willing is related to that enhancement of the power of mankind that has resulted, in part, from the remarkable modern development of the natural sciences.925 Science, too, is not given its due by Nietzsche. Rather, he tends to condemn it for contributing (along with Plato, the later Judaism, and Christianity) to the modern predicament, including its nihilistic tendencies. Science, he argues, has reinforced that “self-belittlement of man” promoted by Christianity.926 Particularly destructive have been the scientists spawned by Copernicus and Darwin.927 Here, too, a corrective might be provided by Aristotle, that philosopher upon whose work so much of modern science ultimately depends.928 For Aristotle would appreciate, more than Nietzsche seems to want to do, what can be said about the great achievements in a highly disciplined science, just as he would appreciate what modern republicanism adds to the political heritage of the West.929 Not that Aristotle would disregard the deficiencies of our grand political and scientific movements, deficiencies which include the empowerment of articulate critics who seem determined not to recognize, and to speak properly about, what there is good in what we do happen to have inherited.930

Chapter Eighteen

The Modern Greek Character and Islam931

In the whole world, there is no such oppression felt as by the Christian Greeks. In various parts, India, to be sure, the government is bad enough; but then it is the government of barbarians over barbarians, and the feeling of oppression is, of course, not so keen. There the oppressed are perhaps not better than their oppressors; but in the case of Greece, there are millions of Christian men, not without knowledge, not without refinement, not without a strong thirst for all the pleasures of civilized life, trampled into the very earth, century after century. . . . The world has no such misery to show; [elsewhere] there is no case in which Christian communities can be called upon with such emphasis of appeal. —Daniel Webster932

I I attended, in Athens, in the mid-1960s, the performance of a century-old play, Babylonia, which dramatized the problems of a then-new Greece, the sometimes absurd problems that people of a considerable variety of dialects had in talking with one another as fellow Greeks.933 The differences in dialect were matched by differences in dress, vocabulary, and, it seemed, temperament. Certainly, we continue to be familiar with the differences between, for example, the easygoing yet subtle Peloponnesian and the proud, forthright Cretan. One could not help but wonder what, if anything, the diverse nineteenth-century peoples of that play had in common, what it was that made them all—and made them all regard themselves as—Greeks. What they had in common—what they, it seems to me, still have in common—can best be seen in their political and their religious aspirations, aspirations which continue to shape even those who no longer recognize or acknowledge them.934 176

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The political, or national, character of a people is often aptly reflected in the national anthem it selects and thereafter responds to. That anthem can be the distillation of the spirit—or, at least, the self-image—of a community, an expression of its national will. Thus, one can usefully look at another (or, indeed, at oneself) by examining what is commonplace, at what is taken for granted, at what may not usually be noticed. The national anthem of a people, which is so familiar that it may be barely noticed, however often it is sung, can be a convenient point of departure for our tentative inquiry here into the Greek character. I trust you will keep in mind, as I speak, the Socratic observation that it is not difficult to praise Athens to Athenians.935

II We should ask about a national anthem: What is there about it which appeals to that people? Why did they select it? Even more important, why do they retain it? What is implied by it? What is aspired to, by them, so far as their anthem indicates? We should note at the outset, in this inquiry about the relation of national anthem and national character, that the poems selected as civic statements are not usually from the best available in the literary heritage of a people. But even this can be instructive, in that it suggests something important about the relation between art and politics. It points up the problem of what the popular response may be to the finest expressions of the human spirit. It is worth noticing, furthermore, that the music of national anthems is usually better than the words. This may be because music appeals to elements in the soul which require less training, less sophisticated preparation, than do words. In any event, when we talk about a national anthem, we are really talking about the sentiments, expectations, and responses of a people. The American national anthem can provide us practice which may be useful for our consideration of the Greek anthem. (Some features of the American anthem, in turn, may become clearer after we have examined in some detail the Greek one.) Here, then, is the opening stanza of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” a song written during the War of 1812 by Francis Scott Key: Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming, Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof thro’ the night that our flag was still there. Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!936

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Thus, the anthem begins with a question as to whether the national banner has withstood an assault. Reassurance is given that the flag continues to wave, that the dawn will see it still in its proper place. That place is over “the land of the free, and the home of the brave.”937 The place to be defended—the land of the free, the home of the brave—already exists: it does not have to be established. The first light of dawn reveals the flag flying (this is in the second stanza), and, we are told in the third stanza, the country has withstood the assaults of the now defeated “hireling and slave” which had threatened the very existence of this people. The fourth (and final) stanza of the anthem looks to the future with hope, with thanksgiving, and with confidence: Oh! thus be it ever when freemen shall stand Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: “In God is our trust!” And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave, O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!

Thus, the American emphasis (as revealed by this national anthem) is upon the celebration of that which is already acquired: the key concern is with perpetuation of established institutions. There is a sense, that is, that the country is complete, whatever room and need there may long be for improvement. The critical contrast with the Greek national anthem will become apparent when we turn to it. But first it might be useful to consider briefly as well what is, in effect, the second national anthem for Americans—“America the Beautiful.” It is a song (written in 1895 by Katharine Lee Bates) which reminds us that an emphasis upon the preservation of what has already been achieved is not to be found only in a wartime setting: O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountains majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed His grace on thee. And crown thy good with brotherhood, From sea to shining sea! O beautiful for Pilgrim feet, Whose stern, impassioned stress A thoroughfare for freedom beat

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Across the wilderness! America! America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law! O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife, Who more than self their country loved, And mercy more than life! America! America! May God thy gold refine, Till all success be nobleness, And every gain divine! O beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years Thine alabaster cities gleam Undimmed by human tears! America! America! God shed His grace on thee, And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!938

I note in passing that it is assumed here, as in “The Star-Spangled Banner,” that God takes an interest in the American regime, that God’s help is needed if faults are to be corrected, and that there has always been (as seen in the recollection of the Pilgrims whose feet beat “a thoroughfare for freedom . . . across the wilderness”)—there has always been an intimate connection in this regime between the political and the religious. I also note in passing that brotherhood seems to remain a problem: that is, it may be recognized that the critical problem for Americans may be that of making one enduring people out of many: And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!939

III We are now better equipped to consider the Greek national anthem, to reflect upon what is there, and to notice what is not said about Greece and her people. The Greek anthem is taken from “The Hymn to Liberty” written in 1823 by Dionysios Solomos. The complete hymn is 158 stanzas (with four lines in each stanza); only the first four stanzas seem to be used for the national anthem— these were set to music by Nicholas Manzaros in 1845.940 I understand that the

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song was proclaimed the national anthem by King George I in 1865 and has remained that ever since. The music can be quite stirring, appealing to Greeks of all political persuasions, it would seem. The most memorable performance of it I have ever heard was that sung by Melina Mercouri when she appeared on a Chicago radio program as part of her gallant campaign against the regime of the Colonels in Athens.941 Solomos was only twenty-five years old when he wrote the long poem from which the anthem is taken. I am told that he came to know Greek better later than he did then (he was part Italian both by birth and by training, growing up on the island of Zante). He wrote better poetry later, but his poems never reached the level that, say, Constantine Cavafy was to reach, nor did Manzaros’s music reach the level of Mikis Theodorakis.942 Still, Solomos’s powerful “Hymn to Liberty” does say something for and about the Greek people—and it is to that we now turn. Here, then, are the first four stanzas, as found in a prose translation: I know you by the sword’s dread cutting edge, I know you by the look that with vigor measures the earth. Out of the sacred bones of the Hellenes you issue valiant as before, hail o hail, Liberty! You dwelled therein, sorrowful, withdrawn, waiting for a mouth to tell you, “Come again.” That day was long in coming, and all were silent, cowering under the terror and the crush of slavery.943

I must leave to others an analysis of the music itself, of how it moves the soul: there is to it something which is both grand and intimate, something which enlists the individual citizen in a great enterprise. The nostalgic is invoked, as is done by much of Greek music. This may be seen as well in the language of this song. The goodness of liberty is assumed; a struggle is required to secure it; and, even when secured, it continues to be precarious. Consider each of the stanzas in turn: The first stanza reads, I know you by the sword’s dread cutting edge, I know you by the look that with vigor measures the earth.

“I know you. . . . I know you.” This is a quite personal statement. It is important, it would seem, that the I be involved. It is also important that there be knowledge, some grasp (or recognition) of things. Such an emphasis upon the personal may be markedly Greek.944 When carried to extremes—and, all too often, it is—it takes the form of exhibitionism. This kind of self-expression, of amour propre,

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is indeed an aspect of liberty. Liberty can take the form also of exaggeration and of quarrelsomeness. This is the more pedestrian (and sometimes exasperating) form of Greek liberty. In its more majestic form, as in this first stanza, it is seen as warlike, forceful, in some ways even forbidding. The second stanza reads, Out of the sacred bones of the Hellenes you issue valiant as before, hail o hail, Liberty.945

The best—for it does seem that liberty is the best—the best is rooted in the past, in the sacred bones of the Hellenes. The best is something which had previously been attained and was then lost and is now to be restored. Thus, in the verses selected for the national anthem—it is different in other parts of the original hymn—the narrator looks across the Byzantine era to antiquity for inspiration. The modern world, to which Greek intellectuals are quite attached, is much more interested in the ancients than in the Byzantines. Liberty, it would seem, really originated with the ancients, perhaps particularly with the ancients in Greece.946 The third stanza reads, You dwelled therein, sorrowful, withdrawn, waiting for a mouth to tell you, “Come again.”947

It is odd that “a mouth” should be so critical here, rather than a heart or a soul or a people. Does the emphasis upon the mouth recognize the importance among the Greeks of the rhetorical element? It is almost as if liberty should be sulking, proud, hurt, waiting to be summoned. There is—is there not?—something distinctively Greek about this (this, too, can be said to come from antiquity: consider Achilles’ fateful withdrawal from the battle at Troy).948 I trust that I am making observations that can remind Greeks of facets that they recognize, and hence guard against, in the sometimes difficult Greek character. And the fourth stanza reads, That day was long in coming, and all were silent, cowering under the terror and the crush of slavery.949

It is odd that the selection for the anthem should end on this note. But then, the end of the poem as a whole—that is to say, verses 155 through 158—also has something of this downtrodden tone to it. The fact of subjugation, the expectation of betrayal, and the sense of helplessness seem to be critical to the Greek character: subjugation, betrayal, and helplessness are recognized and resented— and they have long induced a curious vacillation among many Greeks between heroism and apathy. Is not this true to this day? Is it not instructive that the final word of the Greek national anthem should be “slavery”?

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And yet it is liberty which is extolled in the four stanzas of the national anthem, not the country or its people. It is to Greece and to Greeks that liberty is to return, but only when conditions are right. Is this liberty like liberty elsewhere? Or is it a special Hellenic version? Be that as it may, the return of liberty will mean a rebirth of Greece. But it is far from certain in the anthem, or in the poem as a whole, that any rebirth of Greece will be permanent. No indication is given as to why this time is right, if it is. Nor is it said what it is that governs, or determines, the call to liberty. The anthem is difficult to understand. Even so, it is deeply felt—and is it not significant that this should be so? Should the perhaps instinctive selection of this as their anthem serve to remind Greeks of their intermittent self-destructive follies? One problem with Greece, and hence with the Greek character, is that the country is never complete: there is always something more to be added. Compare the American’s ability to speak of his country as extending from “sea to shining sea.”950 Even should the Greeks get all the territory they have ever aspired to, there is still the problem for them of coming to terms with the past, of acquiring (so to speak) that which they had once had as one of the seminal peoples of the West. This inevitable incompleteness may contribute to the pervasive Greek sense of nostalgia. Solomos himself, by the way, may have been too European, especially in the poem as a whole, to be fully Greek. He draws again and again on Western thought. This may even be seen at the outset of the poem, in the epigraph supplied to the complete poem, a passage from Dante’s Purgatorio.951 This passage has Virgil (Dante’s guide theretofore) saying to Cato (the Roman who had died for liberty) about Dante himself, “He goes seeking liberty, which is so dear, as he knows who gives his life for it.”952 But, it should be noticed, this is the passage as written by Dante: Solomos, when he uses it for his purpose, shifts from the seeking to the singing of liberty. I assume he did this deliberately, that it is not the result of carelessness (either on his part or on the part of the editor of the text from which he took his quotation).953 The problem of liberty does not seem to me as much appreciated in the Solomos version of this passage as in the Dante version: for Solomos, liberty is to be sung about rather than to be sought for or to be examined. One who examines liberty realizes that there is a critical problem about the relation of liberty to prudence. Is it not true that only a confident, free human being can really be prudent? Is only such a man self-assured enough, and experienced enough, not to consider himself dishonored by exercises of prudence?954 The Greek does often seem to be expecting the worst to happen. After all, the Golden Age has come and gone: improvements, when made, are only temporary. Liberty, it is to be hoped, may be revived, at least for a while. When we notice, however, the emphasis throughout much of Solomos’s poem (although not in its opening stanzas) upon Christianity, and upon the cross at the very end,

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we are obliged to notice also that liberation is desired in order that Greeks may be able to be Christians without any interference. Indeed, is there not a Christian cast to what is said about liberty in the poem, including in the opening stanzas?955 That is, liberty is to be resurrected, not just perpetuated—and this points anyone truly interested in the Greek character back beyond political liberty and national aspirations to the distinctively Greek Orthodox elements in that character, particularly those elements reflected in the great Resurrection Hymn of Easter.

IV The Resurrection Hymn, I venture to suggest, may be the true national anthem of Greece. This hymn of fourteen words is attributed to St. John of Damascus, an eighth-century poet, a monk of Arab ancestry.956 It is, it seems to me, better Greek than Solomos’s poem, a better poem, set to even more moving music. It is a haunting, joyful, and yet sad reaffirmation of faith, something which can bear considerable repetition (especially when illuminated by candlelight) during the long-awaited Easter service, the most moving service of the year, the holy day around which everything else turns in the Orthodox year. The words of the hymn are simple. They can be rendered thus into English: “Christ has risen from the dead, by [his] death trampling upon death, and has upon those in the tombs life bestowed.” It is difficult (as is appropriate with something mysterious)—it is difficult to say much about this. It is something to be experienced, if one is to appreciate the fervency with which it is invoked by the Greek congregation, a fervency which suggests that one approaches through the hymn much nearer the bedrock of the Greek soul. I am suggesting, that is, that the religious (cultural) element may be at a deeper stratum in the Greek character than the constitutional (political). Perhaps this is in part because the Greek Church has “always” been in the service of the people: Greekness depended for centuries on the Church, the religion, the liturgy. A few remarks on the language of the Resurrection Hymn must suffice for this occasion. It is Christ, not Jesus, who is spoken of here: it is the divine manifestation or aspect of Jesus, not the human. And, it seems, all is done now; there is nothing further to be done, at least by Him. By His death he has destroyed death. Did He really die Himself? Or did He merely go among the dead? Reason does not seem to be relied upon, but an article of faith, to settle such questions. Upon whom has life been bestowed? Upon those already dead only, or also upon those yet to die? Notice that life is said to be bestowed, or given, not restored, and certainly not earned. It is, it would seem, a permanent gift.957 Does not all this imply that there has not been heretofore—there cannot be independent of this bestowal—any real life? Everything else pales by comparison,

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it would seem. The conquest of death is the most important effect (and hence purpose?) of all this. Of the fourteen Greek words in the hymn, almost half of them have to do with death and life (risen, dead, death, death, tombs, life). The life-saving, or rather true-life-bestowing, power of the Christian drama is central to the shaping of the Greek character.958 The most profound study of the Greek character must consider, therefore, the central role in the shaping and perpetuation of that character by the church and liturgy. Such songs as the Resurrection Hymn cannot mean for our children and grandchildren what they meant for our parents and grandparents. We are, I suspect, the transition generation, alone able to appreciate somewhat what has gone before and to anticipate perhaps what is to come. Certainly, the Resurrection Hymn may need, if it is really to be heard and felt, weeks of serious fasting (during Lent) and long night after long night of exhausting church attendance (during Holy Week). One might even go so far as to say that the Greeks consider the resurrected Christ as both “natural” and “national.” It should never be forgotten, if one is to understand this appropriation of Him by the Greeks, that the New Testament does come down to the modern world in Greek.

V If the Greek character is, in large part, what it is because of the Eastern Orthodox Church and its devotion to the resurrected (and all-judging) Christ, then is not a proper study of that character obliged to address itself to the influence upon Greeks of serious challenges to their very existence as a Christian people? The juxtaposition of the Greeks, for so long, to the Turks may be even more important than their juxtaposition to the Slavs—more important because the Turks are Muslim while the Slavs are Christian, indeed often Orthodox.959 The Turks and the Greeks do have much in common—various elements of their physical makeup, their food, their temperament, their music, even their shadow theatre (known among the Greeks as the karaghiozi, among the Turks as karajog).960 But it is in their religious faith that they differ radically, perhaps reflecting in some way the ancient difference between East and West, between, say, the Greek cities of the fifth century B.C., on the one hand, and the Persian Empire, on the other hand.961 There does seem to be a deep, mutual animosity between Greek and Turk— and considerable ignorance of one another. Indeed, it sometimes seems, each knows only the worst of the other. Yet, it also sometimes seems, each very much needs the other if it is to be able to define itself as a people. Thus, the Greek national anthem has Turkey as an integral part of it, as something to be overcome, more so than even the British, say, are a part of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

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To speak of the Greek character is to speak of something which is, in certain critical respects, non-Turkish, if not even anti-Turkish, especially insofar as “Turkish” is Muslim. We need to consider here, if only briefly, how the Turks do differ from the Greeks and, perhaps more important, why the Greeks did not become Muslims. A simple answer to the latter question is that the Greeks were already set in their ways when they came under Muslim rule, ways which included a dependence (ever since antiquity) upon diverse divine manifestations. Another simple answer, of course, is that God did not will the submission of the Greeks to the Muslim faith.962 But such speculations are not apt to prove as productive as the effort we can devote now to what can be considered the Muslim (but not the secular Turk?) “national anthem”—the Muslim call to prayer which is chanted from the minaret five times a day (in Arabic).963 Let us try to learn something from it about the Turk and hence about the Greek. The call to prayer goes something like this (with “God” being used in place of “Allah” in this translation, lest the conventionally divine character of “Allah” be lost sight of by us): God is most great, God is most great, I bear witness that there is no God except God. I bear witness that Muhammad is the Apostle of God. Come ye unto prayer. Come ye unto good. Prayer is a better thing than sleep.964 God is most great. God is most great. There is no god except God.965

The greatness of God is asserted at the outset of this call to prayer. Witness is then borne to the uniqueness of God and to the apostleship of Muhammad. Muhammad, it would seem, is the witness of witnesses; and that decisive witness is in turn witnessed to by the caller. This leads to the recognition of the prayer called to as something good, as something better than sleep. Thereafter—once prayer is given its due, so to speak—the greatness of God is again asserted as well as (in conclusion) the uniqueness of God. Nothing is said at the end about witnessing. Once the community is brought together for prayer, it would seem, the need or role for personal witnessing diminishes: the personal (or, as we would say today, individuality) is submerged in the common endeavor. It would seem from this call to prayer that death is not the critical thing to be overcome, but rather, curiously enough, sleep. Sleep may stand not for death (as it sometimes does for us) but rather for sensuality, the attractions and distractions of the body. Compare the Greeks who have been known, from antiquity, as a

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restless people, a restlessness which is seen in such mundane things (familiar to us in Greek immigrants in this country) as a willingness to work very hard and an ability to postpone immediate gratification.966 The Greeks do not have to be summoned from sleep; rather, it has been said of them (if the ancient Athenians are, for them, a model), that they neither rest themselves nor allow others to rest.967 The Persians and Egyptians, on the other hand, seem to have been a more languid people—and it may be against the tendency toward languor (and the idolatry that a permissive languor can lead to?) that the call of Muhammad may ultimately be directed. It would seem, in any event, that a serious study of Greek character (and of the character of those peoples which throw light, by their differences, upon the Greek character) could well begin with a recollection of Herodotus.968 We return to the call to prayer: once the body is overcome, the greatness and uniqueness of God triumph. In a sense, then, it is life, not death, which is the critical problem for the Muslim. Is there not something ascetic about the Muslim approach to life, an asceticism which recognizes (perhaps even exploits, at times) the power of sensuality?969 Such asceticism can be understood, of course, as a form of deferred sensuality. Certainly, the Muslim paradise is commonly presented as the most sensual of all the afterworlds we are likely to hear about at this time. When the body is disciplined in this fashion—perhaps, as I have suggested, because of what had to be overcome in the background and temperament of their predecessors—then a belief in incarnation is suspect as is any resurrection here on earth. For the Christian resurrection is, in a sense, the liberation of the human being, his release from the demands and limitations of the body, rather than a means of serving the body. There may even be about this something Platonic.970 But liberation, or liberty, does not really figure in the Muslim call to prayer. Rather, the call and the faith for which it stands both seem to depend upon and to require total subservience, total submission. (This may be seen even in the routine posture of the praying Muslim.971) Central to the call to prayer—“Come ye unto prayer. Come ye unto good”—is the insistence upon an action, not upon a realization or upon contemplation. An act of submission is called for which will ultimately find the body fully served, fully gratified. Or so it may seem in Western or Platonic eyes.972 Submissiveness requires, among the Muslims, uncompromising resistance to idolatry. This is reflected, it would seem, in the attitude among them with respect to icons. The supreme sin for Islam, it has been said, is the belief that God has associates.973 After all, it is insisted upon several times a day, for all of Islam to hear, that “there is no god except God.” Do not the Greeks agree that idolatry is bad? But they would question (on the basis of a different understanding both of things and of the nature of things)—they would question whether icons and the Trinity really amount to idolatry.974

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I suggest, therefore, that the typical Greek cannot understand himself, his character, unless he knows much more than he does now about what the Turk is, what the Turk aspires to, and how and why the Turk regards the Greek as he does. The Muslim faith, as reflected in the daily calls to prayer, I have also suggested, is a good place to start, even for a people (such as the Turks are) who have vigorously attempted since the First World War to reduce at least the political influence of Islam among them. No doubt, old-fashioned political considerations very much shape both the Greeks and the Turks, just as they have shaped the faiths they have held. But those faiths, and the passions they both evoke and depend upon, continue to exercise upon Greeks and Turks alike powerful influences, and should continue to do so for many years to come, whatever may generally happen to daily religious observances in the modern world. VI There are, I have argued, admirable (or at least interesting) aspects of the Turks that are not properly appreciated by the Greeks. The Greeks, I have also argued, cannot really know themselves until they know (much, much better than they do now) the Turks. Certainly, it should always be kept in mind, Turks are as suspicious of Greeks as Greeks are of Turks. I have suggested that how and why things are as they are between Greeks and Turks very much reflects the Greek (as well as the Turkish) character. Since “Cyprus” is the issue which particularly exercises the Greeks and Turks in our time, it may be useful to glance at the Cyprus problem before we draw to a close what has been said here about the Greek character.975 There is a particularly pressing need today—perhaps more so than at any time since the great Asia Minor disasters of the early 1920s—for Greeks and Turks to come to some decent understanding of and with one another. War, threats of war, the exploitation of refugees, mutual expropriations, and decades thereafter of mutual recrimination, all of which accompany the current Cyprus crisis—all these things (it should be obvious) are hardly helpful. To dwell upon them in a partisan fashion is to postpone, and thereby to make ever more difficult, whatever reconciliation is possible or desirable. I have had occasion to sum up in this fashion what contributed to the Cyprus debacle of July 1974: [I]f the Greek community on Cyprus had behaved better than they did toward the Turkish minority there since 1960, the Turks would have been far less inclined [in 1974] to exploit the pretext for invasion provided them by the Greek Colonels. Of course, even worse atrocities against Greeks on the mainland of Turkey help explain the Greek Cypriot attitude—but truly political men appreciate that revenge is not a luxury statemanship can afford.976

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The last clear chance to settle the Cyprus problem in a decent manner may have come (and gone, for decades to come) when the Greeks did rule all of Cyprus, and hence Cypriot Turks, for more than a dozen years after the independence of Cyprus was proclaimed in 1960.977 Generosity and a scrupulous constitutionalism were called for from the Greek Cypriots. Thinking the worst of others—with one’s actions matching one’s thoughts—has not worked. Is it not time to begin to try to appeal to the best in the Turkish heritage—and thereby to appeal to the best in the Greeks as well, since this would draw upon the Greek ability to seek the truth, to be sensible? It is difficult (as I have indicated) for Greeks to appeal to the best in the Turkish heritage, since the typical Greek has little idea of what may truly be the best there. Consider the highly disciplined, the serene beauty, of even quite modest mosques in Turkish villages. And yet where are the mosques that once could be found all over Greece? There has been, perhaps for centuries, the systematic destruction by Greeks and Turks of each other’s (and, in a sense, mankind’s) artistic and cultural legacies.978 Of course, we should also recognize that a people’s vitality may come not so much from regarding or respecting such things as art but rather from regarding them as decisive expressions of a national will, to be advanced or to be repulsed, as the circumstances may require. The typical Greek finds it difficult to study the Turkish heritage with the sensitivity and competence that would be necessary if the best in the Turk is to be appealed to. For example, a great deal is published about Cyprus in the Greek press (in the United States as well as in Greece), but very little (it seems to me, from the little I see) that is informative and constructive. Even the considerable suffering, on both sides, has been cheapened by demagogic exploitation. If the Greeks had had a better sense of the Turkish character, it would have been recognized that the Turks are as likely to be moved by considerations of honor as the Greeks—and that they are not apt to be publicly pressured into doing what they are not shown to be good.979 In short, the most “realistic” way to proceed in such matters may well be to pay less attention than we have to the so-called realists among us. That is why I suggest that Greeks need to appeal to the best in the Turkish heritage—and this means a serious, sustained attempt to understand the Turkish character, to say for it what can and should be said.

VII All this brings us to my concluding remarks on the Greek character, that character which does make so much of liberty. This need not be, we have seen, a disciplined liberty. But neither is it simply political liberty. Or rather, when the Greeks talk of liberty, as in Solomos’s poem, the emphasis seems to be

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more upon independence from foreign rule than upon domestic freedom. This emphasis was seen in the welcoming response of most of the Greek-American community—that is, of the older, established generation in this country—to the tyrannical (and peculiarly inept) rule of the Colonels in Athens between 1967 and 1974.980 Indeed, it may well be true that one of the legacies of the Colonels and their Greek-American supporters has been the “permanent” loss (that is, for several generations)—the loss by Greeks to Turkey of the choicest parts of Cyprus. Had the leaders of the Greek-American community directed against official American collaborationist policy in Greece between 1967 and 1974 the efforts they have so passionately directed since 1974 against American policy toward Turkish aid, the Colonels could not have survived six months—and Cyprus would probably continue to be united and independent.981 But that is a long, sad story—and perhaps better suited for development elsewhere. It should be apparent by now how badly the most influential members of the Greek-American community of that day failed in their response to the Colonels—and how this contributed to the unnecessary sacrifice of an always vulnerable Cyprus. This failure among Greek-Americans, too, reflects the Greek character, with its curious blending of extreme individuality (as distinguished from political liberty) with a passion for national independence. This is what liberty does seem to mean for Greeks. Thus, it can be said, insofar as the Greek-American community is still Greek, it has virtues and failings which very much draw upon the Greek character. We cannot be clear about what happens to Greeks in the United States—something which is very much our concern during our most ambitious national celebrations—unless we are clear about what the Greeks themselves are like. I hope that the kind of inquiry I have begun here, about the Greek national anthems and about the Turkish, is a good place to start. In concluding our inquiry in this fashion, I have returned to that challenge which went out in ancient times to all Greeks, that call which can be said to be at the beginning of the truly Greek consciousness, the insistence that to be a genuine human being one must know oneself.982 Only then may one enjoy the true liberty of choosing that which one should—that is, of choosing that which one has sound reasons for believing to be the very best.

Chapter Nineteen

A Memo to Protestants983

You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? —Jesus984

I This is, in a sense, a homecoming for me. I was for several years (I am not sure how it came about) a regular member of the Sunday School class of one of the Baptist Churches in the small town in southern Illinois where I grew up.985 Indeed, my principal recollection of that membership is that one of my friends and I alternated in the offices of class president and class secretary, year by year. There was also an annual summer visit to an amusement park in a neighboring town. My experience in that Sunday School was, I suspect, pretty much like the experience in any number of Protestant Sunday Schools of that time—with the possible exceptions of the Presbyterian, the Lutheran, and (if one can call it Protestant) the Episcopalian. In fact, I gather from what I hear of what goes on in the Sunday School in which my wife now teaches [in 1963], this is still the way things are run: not much is said about the Bible; there is no serious or rigorous religious teaching. One wonders what it is all about. Indeed, I still retain something of the feeling that we had many years ago: yes, we attended the Baptist Sunday School—if only because it was “the thing to do” on Sunday morning—but the real church, the place where religion could be taken most seriously, was in the Greek Orthodox Church in St. Louis, a hundred miles away.986

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II These memories have been reawakened whenever I have listened to and have read debates on current church and state issues.987 It has been my impression that the Protestant statement of these issues has been woefully inadequate. No doubt, Protestants are still dominant in this country—traditions and numbers are not quickly set aside—but one wonders about the caliber of their thought. One wonders, that is, about the training, not only of the clergy but also of the ordinary layman. Where do Protestants learn what they are supposed to know, that which makes them Protestants? Roman Catholics, for example, have believed that they must make great sacrifices to train their children properly. Is this because they have been mistaken about what is needed? Or is it because that which they have to inculcate is harder to instill? Or could it be that they have had a sound appraisal of the difficulty of establishing and maintaining religious faith in this age? You Baptists know the importance of “the call” among Protestant sects: it is not the training but the call that makes the preacher. But how can a minister, who is himself anything but properly trained, guide his congregation and direct the instruction of the young? To what extent should the minister be learned in the Bible? How seriously can one take the practitioner who does not trouble to learn the two principal languages in which he considers God’s revelation to have come? (Some have tried to get around this concern by insisting that the King James translation of the Bible is itself divinely inspired.) It can be suspected, from a study of the works of men such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, that the serious nineteenth-century atheist knew the Bible far better than does the typical clergyman of our day.988 What will the typical Protestant a generation or two from now believe? And where will he have learned it? Perhaps, the typical Roman Catholic is being undermined as well: he, too, is no doubt affected by “the climate of opinion,” the laxness and frivolity so often associated with intellectual pursuits. Is the Catholic becoming more like the Protestant in this respect? And the Jew as well? I know from the adult education seminars I conduct that adults can no longer be expected to know much about the Bible. Of course, most of them will not know the languages in which the Old and New Testaments were written, but also the most remarkable events recorded in the Bible will be new to them. They are what they are partly by habit—that is, partly because they are too unenterprising, at least in religious matters, ever to “change.” This trend seems particularly significant for the American Protestant: the Jew may not be dependent primarily upon an understanding of his faith; the Roman Catholic is instructed somewhat both in what he is to believe and in the role of

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his priest. It is difficult to see in what the Protestant of the next generation will believe (aside from the most elementary notion that he is different from, and hence better than, the Roman Catholic). Protestantism is in danger of becoming a shell containing nothing substantial. One might even wonder whether it could use some old-fashioned Jesuits among its teachers.989 In any event, problems of church and state need to be reappraised with the possibility in mind that American Protestantism may soon be a “religion” in little more than name.

III Some might reply: If that is the way American Protestantism is, let it go; may it rest in peace. But one must consider as well the influence heretofore of Protestantism on American political and social institutions.990 Is American Protestantism vital for self-government, both personal and communal? Has it encouraged and developed the sense of one’s personal responsibility in the affairs of the world? One must continually make choices: one is expected both to take an interest in the church community that one has chosen and to assume a role in running it. This can reinforce whatever inclination Americans have for local self-government, as against centralized government.991 Protestants, by and large, choose their ministers. There is a danger, of course, of a simpleminded view of what “commitment” requires—and this may be reflected in the emphasis that is placed, in some Protestant circles, on the “call” I have referred to rather than on training. But there does remain the massive fact that, by and large, this people chooses its pastors. If it can be trusted to choose leaders with a view to eternal life, why not with a view to life on this earth as well? This question must be taken into account in considering the American’s sense of confidence and duty in running his country’s affairs.

IV A memorial service I attended this very afternoon in one of the local Protestant churches reflected much of what I have said. The “service” aspect of the meeting consisted primarily of various Scripture readings, especially from the Book of Psalms. The impression was rather “thin.” Indeed, there was something almost casual about it, not because of any deficiency on the part of the officiating minister but simply because of the way things had to be done. One could not but wonder how much this could mean either to the congregation or to the family. The service in a Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox church on a similar occasion would have been much richer in significant ritual.

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But there then followed something that one would not usually find in the other churches I have just mentioned: a friend of the deceased rose to speak of her life, of her defeats and triumphs, of what her life had meant to her, to her family, and to the circle of friends and students who had come into contact with her. A particular person was thus evoked: the specialness of this woman (as distinct from the identification of the dead with the legion of the dead, which tends to be the effect of ritual) was recognized. Here the force and significance of Protestantism became more evident: men and women are more likely to be known to one another as particular human beings, as distinctive parts of a community.992

V The fact is that the American people can and do govern themselves remarkably well. To what extent is the traditional church-state relation responsible for this? But a tradition may not be enough, especially when some believe they have vital interests that can be protected only by changing the tradition. Are Protestants able to develop and promulgate an understanding of what that tradition means for them and for the country? How much, or what aspect, of it do they want? What should the country want? What is the best arrangement to be settled on? There is, it seems to me, serious danger in taking a simply secularist approach in this issue, to approach the matter as if it did not make any difference which religious faith prevails or, indeed, as if it made no difference if all faiths should go down. The role of religion in the life of a people is reflected in the fact that Roman Catholics, by and large, do every Friday [it could still be said in 1963] what they do not do on the other days of the week: they abstain from eating meat.993 They do this in the privacy of their homes, when they are alone, and without any but spiritual sanctions to guide them. They do consistently and, in some sense, do voluntarily what it would probably be impossible to compel them to do by the use of secular law: the meat is in the house but they will not touch it. (I should note that I retain to this day the effects of the rigorous precepts of “my” Baptists with respect to both smoking and drinking. These are habits that I retain partly out of habit and partly as resistance to the general self-indulgence, partly out of principle, to say nothing of obvious considerations of health.) It is evident that many of the moral and cultural developments that we deplore are not likely to be curbed by secular legal measures alone. Is a more puritanical style needed these days for the good not only of citizens but also of our general political life? What can influence the opinions which the community holds on these matters? Do we have—should we have—any preferences in the way decisions are made here?

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The question is not whether any particular citizen will be permitted or denied the right to exercise religion freely. Rather, the question to which Protestants should address themselves—for it is they who are most likely to be negligent in this respect—is whether political and social developments are permitted in this country that indirectly affect (and are in turn affected by) the religious life of the community?

VI I suggest that there is needed among Protestants a willingness to face up to such issues—and not only a willingness, but a tough-mindedness as well, a toughmindedness guided by clear thinking. There must be, for instance, serious thought developed about the role of the public school system in the training of our citizen body. To what extent is the problem that of improving the quality of such schools? This question could include a consideration of the effect of the continued existence in this country of the parochial school system—and could even raise the further question of what the proper proportion of Catholics to Protestants in the national community should be. Even more radical questions need consideration. Is old-style religion dead, or dying? Are we looking for a merely artificial and only temporary revival? On the other hand, do we want to continue to permit the faltering parochial schools to operate? Do we want, for instance, to begin to buy their buildings and convert them to public schools? Or should we insist instead upon improving those schools with the aid of public funds?994 The danger at this time to American Protestantism, and perhaps to the American republic, is that Protestants will rely merely on constitutional arguments in dealing with the problems here. But such arguments may provide only temporary victories (or results). We have to see what is fundamental; in the final analysis, is the side with the best arguments more likely to win out over those who rely on mere constitutional arguments? A generation or two ago, American Protestants could be moved to wage intolerant crusades. Now they are much more likely to be moved to demonstrate their “tolerance.” But, in these circumstances, an informed refusal to acquiesce in permissive conduct may not be intolerance but rather a salutary regard for what is good not only for religious freedom but for the country as well.995 The real danger, in short, is to allow serious issues to go by default.

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VII There are pitfalls to be avoided: the legitimate issues must be addressed and the false ones avoided. An educated leadership and clergy are needed as well as properly trained congregations. This means, in part, the imaginative exercise, especially by the boards of laymen in churches, of that talent for self-government that Protestantism is said to develop.

Chapter Twenty

Public Funds and Church-Sponsored Schools996

When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary. —Thomas Paine997

I Litigation about public financial support for church-sponsored schools usually depends for its resolution upon readings of the First Amendment.998 My own study of the First Amendment developed a reading of the speech, press, assembly, and petition clauses of the First Amendment, a reading summarized in this way: The First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits Congress, in its law-making capacity, from cutting down in any way or for any reason freedom of speech and of the press. The extent of this freedom is to be measured not merely by the common law treatises and cases available on December 15, 1971—the date of the ratification of the First Amendment—but also by the general understanding and practice of the people of the United States who insisted upon, had written for them, and ratified (through their State legislatures) the First Amendment. An important indication of the extent of this freedom is to be seen in the teachings of the Declaration of Independence and in the events leading up to the Revolution. Although the prohibition in the First Amendment is absolute—we see here a restraint upon Congress that is unqualified, among restraints that are qualified—the absolute prohibition does not relate to all forms of expression but only to that which the terms, “freedom of speech, or of the press” were then taken to encompass, political speech, speech having to do with the duties and concerns of self-governing citizens. Thus, for example, this constitutional provision is not primarily or directly concerned with what we now call artistic expression or with the problems of ob196

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scenity. Rather, the First Amendment acknowledges that the sovereign citizen has the right freely to discuss the public business, a privilege theretofore claimed only for members of legislative bodies. Absolute as the constitutional prohibition may be with respect to Congress, it does not touch directly the great State power to affect freedom of speech and of the press. In fact, I shall argue, one condition for effective negation of Congressional power over this subject (which negation is important for the political freedom of the American people) is that the States should retain some power to regulate political expression. It seems to me, however, that the General Government has the duty to police or restrain the power of the States in this respect, a duty dictated by such commands in the Constitution of 1787 as that which provides that the “United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.”999

I have developed further the constitutional and the jurisprudential reading just summarized.1000 But I recognized that my studies of the First Amendment would be incomplete without a more extended explicit discussion of the religion clauses than I have devoted to them in the materials to which I have referred. II When I say religion clauses, I should add that I mean particularly the establishment of religion clause, since the other religion-related clause (the free exercise clause) may be, to a large extent, implicitly taken care of by any extended discussion of the speech, press, assembly, and petition clauses of the First Amendment.1001 That is, in critical respects, the free exercise of religion protection can be considered a special case of the freedom of speech and of assembly protection. The establishment of religion clause, on the other hand, is more on its own—and it is to that which I turn my attention here, for the most part. Establishment clause problems have risen, in recent decades, primarily in cases involving school situations—whether in cases that challenge efforts made by a state to arrange for prayers or for Bible readings in public schools or in cases that challenge efforts made by a state to support financially the education provided in church-sponsored schools.1002 It is in the school context that considerable compulsion is exercised by the community, and it is there as well that efforts are repeatedly made to secure public funds to help institutions operated by religious organizations. Whatever the reasons, schools do tend to provide the principal terrain over which “establishment of religion” battles are fought these days.1003 An assignment I undertook permitted me to investigate in an unexpected way the problem of the applicability of the establishment clause to school operations. That assignment found me preparing in 1978 an extended constitutional analysis for the National Institute of Education in the Department of Health, Education, and

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Welfare, an analysis of the implications of providing Title I remedial educational services for educationally deprived poverty-level students who happen to be enrolled in church-sponsored schools.1004

III I turn now to my 1978 H.E.W. memorandum.1005 An instructive way of stating the establishment of religion problem posed by the Title I programs may be to ask how much the United States can do, and in what ways, to support inner-city schools run by Roman Catholic parishes for the benefit of Southern Baptist children. Among the issues that come up here is whether the federal government should, in dealing with children in church-sponsored schools, be limited to dispensing welfare aid. It is when the government tries to provide straightforward educational aid (that is, not under a welfare guise) that religion clauses problems are said to arise.1006 Perhaps it would be useful, before I proceed further, to indicate (as I did with the speech and press clauses of the First Amendment) what I consider the original intentions of the religion clauses of that amendment to have been.1007 Let me begin by suggesting that, according to the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, religion-based conduct is to be treated like any other conduct (except for that religion-based conduct (a) which consists of attending religious services, but not necessarily everything that might happen at such services or (b) which consists of professing the beliefs about the divine that one has). On the other hand, the establishment clause was designed (1) to keep the federal government from setting up a religious establishment of its own and (2) to keep the federal government from interfering with deliberate establishments of religion sponsored by various state governments. That state religious establishments were intended to be protected by the First Amendment has been conceded again and again by justices of the Supreme Court and by constitutional scholars. Even the most determined separationists recognize that the First Amendment may have been designed as much to hinder federal interference with state establishments as it was to forbid a federal establishment.1008 It should be evident, from any thorough study of the framing in 1789 of the First Amendment (in the First Congress), that the prevailing opinion did not consider the existing state establishments bad in themselves.1009 James Madison did try to have various limitations in the Bill of Rights extended against the states as well, but his effort proved unsuccessful.1010 Even so, his attempt did not include the establishment restriction, only the free exercise (or “rights of conscience”) restriction. Nor was Thomas Jefferson, from whom the influential “wall of separation” language is drawn,1011 clearly representative of American opinion on this issue at the time of the framing and adoption of the First Amendment. Yet

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the “wall of separation” language has been critical in reinforcing, if not even in prompting, the tendency to keep church and state completely separated. Restrictions have been laid down (until quite recently) not only against direct provision of public funds to church-sponsored schools but also against various (but not all) indirect provisions. Publicly funded welfare services are generally considered to be permissible, no matter where the children may happen to be, provided that such services are available for all children (that is, provided they are not just for children in church-sponsored schools). Thus, the U.S. Supreme Court has indicated what may be purchased with state funds for the sake of students attending church-sponsored schools: bus transportation, school lunches, public health services, and secular textbooks. Thus, also, although the Court has approved publicly funded welfare services which are made available to all children wherever they may be found, services which consist of teaching, or come close to it, are suspect, especially if not provided at “truly religiously neutral locations.” There seems to be no problem now with diagnostic services, whether for health conditions or for educational achievements. But there have been problems (for the Court) with remedial services ministering to educational deficiencies discovered as a result of diagnostic services. Again and again [I could say in 1981] one hears a concern expressed lest public funds spent for education be used to advance the “religious mission” of a church.1012

IV I suggest, however, that it should not matter to us, for constitutional purposes, what a church believes or wants with respect to its “religious mission.” Its perceptions, interests, and expectations should be irrelevant to how the public should respond to the rather obvious activities of church members. Government can properly penalize such conduct as bigamy or child neglect or poisonous-snakehandling, whatever the sincere religious opinions may have been that led to (or even “compelled”) the misconduct (and even though the opinions themselves, as such—that is, without the conduct—are not vulnerable before the law).1013 Why, then, cannot the public provide aid to children in church-sponsored schools, and even to the schools themselves, so long as legitimate public concerns are being dealt with (concerns about transportation safety, nutrition, morality, health, and education) and so long as the aid is not primarily designed by the public to advance or to hinder “the religious mission” of the organization sponsoring the schools? Indeed, I further suggest, central to the problem of public funding of churchsponsored schools is not a constitutional issue but rather a policy question. We should be asking ourselves: Do we want what “we” are getting from these schools?

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V The legitimate constitutional issue which does come up here, in the circumstances of the United States today, is not that of any possible establishment of religion but rather that of any possible interference by government with the free exercise of religion. A free exercise problem is evident whenever oaths of allegiance, school prayers and religious ceremonies are mandated by law. Thus, the Gobitis-Barnette-Engel line of cases (to put this in terms of litigation that is familiar) should raise more serious constitutional (or at least political) concerns than the Everson type of case.1014 One can see in the Gobitis-Barnette-Engel line of cases the unseemly spectacle of governmental power being used to force reluctant children to appear either “religious” or “patriotic” (or both) by reciting prescribed oaths of allegiance or prayers. On the other hand, the Everson type of case can be seen primarily as an effort by the public to underwrite expenditures (on bus services, textbooks, etc.) made on behalf of students who happen to be in church-sponsored schools.1015 It is the coercion of citizens which proved troublesome in the Gobitis-Barnette-Engel line of cases, thereby raising free exercise of religion concerns. Certainly, Americans generally agree that people should not be compelled to witness, or even to seem to witness, to that which they do not believe in with respect to religious matters. It is not inconceivable—to return to the principal subject of our discussion—that the size and influence of church-sponsored schools (or, for that matter, of public schools dominated by one or another sect) could in some circumstances undermine religious liberty or even threaten to promote something like an establishment of religion in this country. But such developments can be dealt with politically (and perhaps also as a constitutional issue) when, if ever, they appear (or threaten to appear) decades from now. Until that prospect becomes much more imminent, however, no harm need be done—and considerable good could be accomplished—by our church-sponsored schools, schools for which some form of public support may be needed if they are to do for all of us the good that they are capable of. It is a curious state of affairs when some private schools are willing and able to provide what the public wants but cannot always get from its public schools— and yet a willing public cannot find a way to pay for what it now gets and will stop getting as private schools close for lack of funds. Why should it matter to the public what the supplier of publicly desired educational services does with the money it is paid, so long as what it does is not in itself criminal or otherwise against public policy? Thus, the country (or particular states therein) should be able to decide what school systems are wanted. If we want diversity, we should be able to have it and to promote (and support) it; if we do not want diversity, but rather a unified “religiously neutral” public school system, we should be able to try to have that

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also. Whatever the public chooses and pursues should be chosen and pursued in accordance with the rule of law and other constitutional standards. If we should decide to promote diversity, we should also be able to decide how much supervision we want to have of the schools which are not fully public. In short, all schools are to some extent public; none is fully private. We should, therefore, be able to say, if we choose, “We are glad to have people devoted to community concerns, even though the organization through which those concerns are expressed by them is a church, a synagogue, or a mosque. We do not want to make it difficult for them to help us do our duty as a community.”

VI I thus call into question the current orthodoxy among our separationists. But there is another side to the coin made available to church-sponsored schools under the First Amendment. It is implied by what I have found, upon thinking about the First Amendment, that the landmark case in this field, Pierce v. Society of Sisters,1016 is rather dubious. That 1925 Oregon school case now stands for, among other things, the fundamental rights of parents to control, to a considerable extent, the education of their children. I suspect that those rights rest ultimately upon the right to emigrate (as a kind of natural right). I also suspect that respect for such parental rights has contributed to the child-benefit theory seen in the Everson-Allen line of cases. But whatever status the right to emigrate may have, it does not necessarily require parental rights in this form (such as the right to establish one’s own schools) for those who choose not to emigrate. It should be evident that I have been arguing not for a child-benefit theory but for a community-benefit theory by which we should be governed in determining what schools we should have and how they should be supported. A few more words about Pierce may be useful. Although that case was not originally grounded in the religion clauses of the First Amendment, but rather in the Fourteenth Amendment alone, it now seems to have become accepted that the decision in Pierce was ultimately based upon the recognition of the validity of the free exercise claim implicit in that controversy. Pierce has come to have far-reaching consequences. Not only has Pierce established the right of parents to choose nonpublic over public education, but it has been used to help establish once unsuspected constitutional rights, such as the rights to privacy, to contraceptives, and to an abortion.1017 My reservations about Pierce can be restated in this fashion, drawing on what I have already said here: the community, at least so long as it is not tyrannical, should have ultimate control over which agencies (public or “private”) educate its children. Since the state, in any event, shares responsibility for (and benefits from) church-sponsored schools, it should be able to support them to the extent

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that it chooses. Thus, Reynolds, the 1878 Mormon bigamy case,1018 recognizes the primacy of civil authority in some matters that bear on religious practices. Although Reynolds considered primarily the free exercise clause, in effect, it does bear on establishment problems as well: it reminds us that official emphasis should be, in these matters, on the deeds, not the opinions or beliefs, of the parties under consideration. This could mean, among other things, that what is critical in assessing public financial support for church-sponsored schools is not the set of opinions that teachers or an institution happen to have but whether the secular education is being provided which a state has mandated for its children (however mixed with, but not undermined by, religious or other teachings and practices that education may be).

VII Two fairly recent cases [I could say in 1981] bear on the points I have been making in this discussion. One is Public Funds for Public Schools v. Byrne, decided in January 1979 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and affirmed in May 1979 by the U.S. Supreme Court.1019 Action had been brought challenging the constitutionality of a New Jersey statute which provided that a taxpayer who has dependent children attending a nonpublic elementary or secondary school on a full-time basis may, for each such child, have a personal deduction of $1,000 against gross income for state income tax purposes. It was held both by a federal district court and by a court of appeals that that statute violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment in that such an exemption has a primary effect of advancing religion.1020 The same U.S. Supreme Court which summarily affirmed the ruling against the modest tax exemption in the Byrne case (with three justices indicating that they wanted to hear it) upheld in Committee for Public Education and Religious Liberty v. Regan (nine months later, in February 1980, by a five to four vote1021) a New York statute which provided for payment, directly to nonpublic schools, of the costs incurred by them in complying with some state-mandated requirements, including requirements as to testing (public evaluation, achievement, and scholarship and college qualification tests) and as to reporting and record-keeping. Much was made of the fact that this statute, unlike similar statutes which had been held unconstitutional a few years before, provided means by which state funds are audited, thus ensuring that only the actual costs incurred in providing the specific, mandated secular services would be reimbursed out of state funds. These cases indicate, in their opposed tendencies, that the problems of the nature and extent of permissible public aid to church-sponsored schools indeed

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remain problems. What would be useful for a sensible and enduring resolution of these, and similar constitutional issues, are lawyers (and teachers of law) who not only have an informed grasp of fundamental constitutional principles but also have a reliable appreciation of how vital a properly made record can be in such matters. A good record—one which reflects a sound grounding in rules of evidence and in legal procedures—means, among other things, that competent lawyers have helped the courts they serve to consider fully the demands of that justice to which judges, by and large, are dedicated.

Chapter Twenty-One

Reason versus Revelation, Reconsidered1022

A gentleman who is widely versed in letters and at the same time knows how to submit his learning to the restraints of ritual is not likely, I think, to go far wrong. —Confucius1023

I The First Amendment provides, in part, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” What does this mean?1024 Congress, according to the First Amendment, cannot itself establish any religion or do anything about (either in support of or in opposition to) “an establishment of religion” in any state. What “establishment” means, primarily, is official action designed to promote one or a few religious sects at the expense of the other sects that there may be in the country.1025 Nor can Congress interfere with “the free exercise [of religion],” which exercise means, primarily, (1) the holding of and expressing presumably sincere opinions about divine matters, and (2) the gathering together, or refusing to gather together, to share and to express those opinions.1026 Conduct, even though it is said to be based upon if not even “required” by religious doctrines, is to be treated like any other conduct, except for that religionbased conduct which consists of attending religious services (but not necessarily extending to everything that might happen at such services), or which consists of professing the religious beliefs that one has. A legislature’s exemption of any conduct from regulation, because it is deemed to be religious, is hardly likely to

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contribute to an establishment of religion unless there is also a more direct and obvious attempt to do so. What “religion” is, for the purpose of these two clauses of the First Amendment, was once fairly evident—and, I suspect, still is to the country at large. Certainly, Americans generally agree that people should not be compelled to witness, or even to seem to witness, to what they do not believe in with respect to religious matters.1027 Even so, the legitimate political and social interest in religion has something to do with a general concern for both morality and education. This concern, which is of course worthy of support by public funds, has even found expression in such congressional enactments (of constitutional stature) as the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, where it is said, “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”1028 It is believed that most schools in this country at that time were connected with religious institutions.

II The free exercise of religion does not extend to entitling one to immunities and empowerments because of one’s religious opinions or practices. Thus, one is not entitled (whatever a legislature may do as a matter of grace or of efficiency) to recognized conscientious objection from military conscription, to special time off from employment for one’s religious observances, or to exemption from restrictions on such activities as being married to more than one person at a time or sharing with others the ritual handling of poisonous snakes.1029 There probably is not much difficulty in justifying this position, when limited to such examples as these. But what about the extension of the position to matters having to do either with the right to operate nonpublic schools or with the proper guides for the governance of family relations and medical practices? American courts have been far from consistent here, even though they do tend to make much of the autonomy of individuals and families in a way that may go beyond the intended reach of the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.1030

III Also questionable may be what our courts have done in recent decades [I could say in 1987] in the name of the establishment clause of the First Amendment. A productive collaboration between church and state has become far more difficult than it need be in this country.

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This is particularly evident in the repeated, and largely unsuccessful, efforts made from time to time by communities (local, state, and national) to provide financial support, in the public interest, for the education provided children in church-sponsored schools. The benefits to the public from such schools are often quite evident, but how the public can properly insure continued enjoyment of such benefits is far from clear. Thus, the Title I programs, established by Congress in 1965, were beset with threats, challenges, and rulings that have led to disbursements and expenditures of funds in ways that are both contrived and inefficient. Indeed, one can say, there is something scandalous about the extent to which economically, and hence educationally, deprived children in church-sponsored schools have been routinely shortchanged in the administration of these Title I and other programs.1031 There is not much sense to what the courts have done here. The Aguillar case (out of New York) is illustrative of this development.1032 The simplest and cheapest way to provide deprived children the help they are believed to need is to have properly trained and adequately skilled teachers (on the public payroll) go to the church-sponsored schools (as they routinely go to various public schools) to work with children where they routinely are. But this was ruled out by the courts as somehow contributing to an establishment of religion, thereby significantly reducing both the amount and the quality of the help made available to deprived children in church-sponsored schools.1033

IV The key questions here, I again suggest, are not constitutional, but political. It is a legitimate public-policy question as to what nondiscriminatory collaboration between church and state is indeed best for the community. The rulings of courts, however, have led to artificial uses of public funds here and to subterfuges, distortions, and wasteful practices. It is difficult to be reasonable about these matters if one is not simply sensible—that is to say, prudent.1034 Proper collaboration between church and state ultimately depends upon statesmen whose grasp of things is such as to permit them to recognize the limits of nature (and hence of the political order, with its laws) in the guidance of a people toward the good—toward making and keeping a people good. Thus, the statesman who is grounded in nature, and hence natural right or natural law, appreciates the uses of religion for the promotion of both morality and education.1035 Is an approach which makes much of the civic usefulness of religion ultimately subversive of religion? It is not likely to defer to religious sensibilities without taking social, moral, and political consequences into account.1036 In any

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event, the tension which is traditionally made much of between reason and revelation has to be reconsidered, at least in our circumstances.1037

V Critical here, then, is not revelation but rather reason, insofar as these are separable. After all, there may be many faiths among a people—and their adherents often contend among themselves. Some aspects of certain faiths may be better than others for the common good (as ordinarily understood). The ardent proponent of any particular faith cannot be routinely relied upon to judge among faiths or to pick and choose for the sake of the common good from among the tenets of his own faith. Prudence is indeed needed if there is to be a useful selection for civic purposes from what various religious sects may offer. Does this begin to sound like an establishment of religion? Prudence may also be needed if the prevailing religion is to be reshaped for civic purposes. Does this begin to sound like an interference with the free exercise of religion? Or should we say that prudent statesmen never intended the religion clauses of the First Amendment to mean anything that would substantially interfere with the thoughtful fashioning and employment of religion for civic purposes, something that they were quite familiar with? Still, it is prudent to recognize the suspicions that are “naturally” aroused in our circumstances when any government does attempt to collaborate with religious institutions—and this may require, on the part of the truly thoughtful, indirect ways of proceeding which empower the good even as they restrain the fanatical or the unscrupulous.

VI The proclaimed apostles of reason today—the descendants of the like of Voltaire, Thomas Paine, and Ralph Ingersoll—are inclined to be free-thinking, skeptical, even iconoclastic.1038 Some of them go so far as to see religion as dehumanizing, an approach which is summed up in the notorious opinion that religion is the opiate of the people.1039 Heaven knows that such suspicions are not without foundations. The massive witch hunts of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries—witch hunts that cost hundreds of thousands of lives at the hands of both Protestant and Roman Catholic zealots—are more than enough warning as to what can go dreadfully wrong when church and state collaborate improperly.1040 However more ferocious the devastation of the aggressively godless have been since the

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nineteenth century, many intellectuals do still consider it a matter of honor, as well as safer, to hold out against any civic-minded reliance upon religion. All this is not to deny that there is a significant role for reason within religion. The Summa Theological of Thomas Aquinas provides conclusive evidence of that.1041 Biblical illustrations also abound, as for example the ingenuity of Gideon in assessing the evidence of dew on a fleece.1042 And yet, the typical intellectual today is apt to believe, the reasoning used by the faithful is essentially fettered— and he resists on principle any public reliance on religious institutions.

VII Decent religions may need today the help of thoughtful nonbelievers, since reason (in the form of science and technology, including medical science) has removed from everyday human life many incentives for, or supports of, religious belief. Consider here, in anticipation of modernity, the daring project of Lucretius and how he proposed to explain away awe-inspiring events.1043 The underlying problem here may be that philosophy itself has been subverted by the considerable repudiation of nature as the authoritative guide to both the true and the good.1044 I have suggested that if one grasps nature well enough to see what nature requires, one also apprehends the natural limitations of most people and hence the necessity for the systematic control of the passions for both the moral training and the civic ordering of citizens.1045 The most prudent statesmen have always been aware of the usefulness here of that art which finds salutary expression to this end in both theater and religion. When theater and religion are completely privatized, however, it can become a matter of chance what condition the passions of a people may be in.1046 Thus, without the steadiness provided by a decent religion, there is not likely to be the social stability necessary for developing serious thought, that very thought which can sometimes lead in turn to the decisive questioning of religion itself. Reckless questioning emerges, I have suggested, when the “philosophically” minded among us repudiate their grounding in nature. When nature, and hence natural right, are routinely subverted, religion is apt to be so also, at least in modern times. After all, many of the more intelligent among us do feel honorbound to ignore, if not even to attack, religion, leaving it without any defenders who can truly know what they are doing. Vital, then, to an adequate defense, as well as to the proper civic use, of religion today may be a return to an old-fashioned notion of philosophy.1047

Chapter Twenty-Two

The Legislation of Morality and the Law of Abortion1048

At Sea, September 17, 1833. Yesterday I was asked what I mean by morals. I reply that I cannot define, and care not to define. It is man’s business to observe, and the definition of moral nature must be the slow result of years, of lives, of states, perhaps of being. Yet in the morning watch on my berth I thought that morals is the science of the laws of human action as respects right and wrong. Then I shall be asked, And what is Right? Right is a conformity to the laws of nature as far as they are known to the human mind. —Ralph Waldo Emerson1049

I The issue of the relation of law to morality is always controversial among us, as may be seen in the decades-long struggle over abortion. I had occasion to argue in October 1979, before an assembly of liberal lawyers in Chicago, that “the virtually unlimited access to abortion now available in this country is an unconscionable state of affairs.”1050 I went on to say in that 1979 talk, The Roman Catholics among us are substantially correct in their deep opposition to what we now have, even though they (because of a misunderstanding of the dictates of natural law) have long been misled by their leaders with respect to birth control. Particularly serious here is the unwarranted reading of the Constitution by the United States Supreme Court, which has left local governments paralyzed in any attempt to deal compassionately but firmly with our dreadful abortion epidemic (which represents, among other things, a callous exploitation of women and an endorsement of mindless gratification).1051

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To criticize a “virtually unlimited access to abortion” on the grounds I have indicated here is to draw upon commonsensical concerns. This is not to suggest, however, that there are not many sensible people in the pro-choice movement.

II The same can be said, of course, about many people in the pro-life movement in this country. But they, in the extreme measures which they advocate, do run the risk of giving legislation of morality a bad name. Similar considerations applied to our Prohibitionists in the first quarter of the twentieth century. It is not now generally remembered that the Prohibition movement enjoyed considerable success in this country before the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified in 1919. But the virtually total prohibition of the production and sale of alcoholic beverages, finally achieved at that time, seems to have contributed to the subversion of the many state and congressional statutory prohibitions that there had been before the Eighteenth Amendment. If the proponents of prohibition had been more restrained, there might be much more useful control of the production and consumption of alcoholic beverages in this country today than there is.1052 Much the same can be said about the “success” in recent decades of the prochoice proponents. It probably would have been better for them in the long run if they had not prevailed to the extent that they did in the 1973 Roe v. Wade litigation.1053 They probably would have gotten through many state legislatures the major changes in abortion laws that most of them really wanted, without opening up access to abortions as much as Roe v. Wade did. That is, the “liberalization” seen in recent decades in other countries without judicial interventions would probably have also been seen eventually in the United States. If such changes had taken place by way of the state legislatures, there probably would have been a far less outraged and determined pro-life movement than there has been among us. In addition, our federal judiciary would probably not have been politicized as much as it has been.

III A distinguished scholar has endorsed two proposals that the pro-life movement came up with in an effort to place curbs on abortion virtually from the moment of conception. The first is described by him in this way: Several years ago, when there was still an interest in drafting a constitutional amendment on abortion, I suggested that an amendment of that kind could simply be confined to a point that is undeniable, even on the part of the partisans of abortion: namely, that the offspring of homo sapiens cannot be anything other than

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homo sapiens, from its earliest moments. [It has been suggested] that this premise could simply be planted now in our law, and the laws in the separate States would have to be reconciled with that premise. That is, there would be no ground on which to pretend that the unborn child was anything other than a human being. The laws of the States still comprehended different shades of “justifiable homicide,” in which it is defensible to take the life of a human being. But once the premise was planted that the unborn child was a human being, the reasons brought forth for the taking of fetal life would have to be reconciled with the grounds that were accepted in other parts of the law for the taking of human life. If it were legitimate to destroy other human beings on account of their size, their weight, or their infirmities, then unborn children would be vulnerable in the same way. But if the law refused to extend a license for that kind of killing, it would [suffer some serious inhibitions before it could accept] those same reasons, as a ground of justification in taking the lives of these other human beings.1054

It may be providential that this kind of argument is followed in our scholar’s paper by the observation, “In the last few years, the rhetorical advantage has shifted, for some reason, to the party that describes itself as pro-choice.”1055 Further on in his account our scholar describes still another approach to the problem of abortion: I have been at work myself over the last few months on a statute that would seem to offer the most moderate of measures, with the lightest touch of enforcement. But its aim is to produce a certain unhinging effect on the party that favors abortion on demand. The measure would simply create an obligation to preserve the life of the child who survives the abortion. Most people, and even most lawyers, are not aware that the “right to an abortion” extends through the entire length of the pregnancy—and even after the child leaves the womb. . . . The fact that the child is indecorous enough to come out alive is not to be taken as a fact that dislodges the right to rid oneself of an unwanted child. . . . A law that would save the child in these circumstances would affect only a handful of cases each year. But it could have a vast effect in breaking out, to the American public, some jolting news. It would disclose to the American public that abortions may be carried out at any time, and for any reason. The party of “choice” might find it hard to declare itself in opposition to a law of this kind, but if the defenders of abortion signed onto this, they would help establish a point of principle that could bring about the unraveling of their whole argument. For they would accede to the critical point: that the right of any child to receive the protections of the law could not pivot on the questions of whether anyone happens to “want” her. It would merely remain for us then to consider just what makes the child, one day, one week, one month, before delivery, any less a human child than the child who has emerged from the womb. And at every one of these stages, it should be quite as plain that the right of a vulnerable child to receive the protections of the law could not depend on whether she is wanted. This kind of law is obviously meant then to teach, or impart a new direction to the public discussion of abortion. It matters less, in the reckoning of its framers,

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that the law should be used as a device for prosecuting doctors and clinics. Still, to borrow a phrase from Jefferson, some “salutary prosecutions” may be quite in order. But this law is not designed to produce them. This law would seek to exert its effect mainly by requiring doctors to offer a report and a justification for the surgeries they have conducted. Perhaps the law may encompass a civil penalty, a fine imposed by a court, after an action brought by the United States Attorney. We will probably forego the possibility of allowing disinterested third parties to bring suits on behalf of the child, or seek punitive damages. But simply by requiring a report on the part of the doctor, or administering a civil penalty, this law would put certain critical predicates into place. The laws of the separate States may come into play, bringing with them penalties far more serious and astounding than fines. The decision to hasten the death of a live child is still looked upon, in the laws of the States, as something notably more serious than a moving violation.1056

I am reminded, by such dramatization of “only a handful of cases each year,” of the imprudent concern exhibited from time to time about the handful of cases of flag-burning in this country.1057 A sense of proportion is needed in the advocacy here of both constitutional amendments and provocative legislation.1058 It is difficult for me to see that the two proposals I have just reported would make much difference even if adopted, however instructive the controversy over such measures might be. The constitutional amendment proposal would (and should) be difficult to get through Congress. Even many pro-life partisans would regard this use of constitutional amendments as questionable.1059 The fate of the statute proposal would probably depend on how it was perceived by the pro-choice movement. It would be prudent for them to regard it as no substantial threat to their interests.

IV However inconsequential such proposals may be for the current abortion struggle in this country, they are instructive, especially because they reflect an approach commonly seen in the pro-life movement. A state of mind is revealed which suggests difficulties with some anti-abortion proponents. One can be reminded by such proposals as these of longstanding complaints against the application of philosophy to practical affairs.1060 “Practical” people are not going to be “argued” in this way into conclusions, or policies, they “know” to be undesirable. The anti-abortion approach evident here seems to them to be sophistical.1061 A somewhat mechanistic view of both law and the Constitution is discerned. The scholar from whom I have quoted at length looks to Abraham Lincoln to provide him a model for his efforts. Lincoln did use a syllogistic approach effectively, but he grounded his arguments upon generally accepted principles

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of justice and equality. The position of Lincoln with respect to slavery in the territories, which our scholar invokes, did not only serve to reaffirm a principle but also threatened the economic and political viability of slavery everywhere in the United States.1062 From the pro-life point of view, a comparable measure would be a refusal to permit abortions in any civilian medical facility dependent on federal funds. The pro-life people are going to have to make, in the critical political (not judicial) encounters ahead, arguments that do not depend primarily on the sacred, but depend rather on nature and on that which seems to be by nature good and right. Our scholar knows, of course, where to look for such arguments. The observations in his paper about Aristotle are instructive. But there is a challenge here that the pro-life people must deal with for the sake of all of us—what do we have, aside from what some may be privileged to know through revelation, that explains to us why Plato and Aristotle (with their own considerable deference to the natural) were mistaken about the legitimacy not only of abortion in some circumstances but also even of infanticide.1063 Certainly, Plato, Aristotle, and their students have always known what our scholar had hoped to teach through the homo sapiens constitutional proposal he has described.

V If, as it is widely suspected, the sacred is the primary, if not the sole, basis for the arguments (or, at least, for the passions) of those pro-life proponents in this country who would condemn any interference with any pregnancy from the very moment of its conception, serious political problems face them. One problem is that there seem to be two forms of the sacred contending here. One form of the sacred invokes the sanctity of all human life, no matter how tentative or how miserable that life may be. The other form of the sacred involves the sanctity of individuality, or of the private will. The former invocation may make more of life itself, or of the body; the latter, although its advocates appear more materialistic in inclination, may oddly enough make more of the soul. Neither approach seems to recognize, in the way or to the extent that Plato and Aristotle did, the duties and prerogatives of the community.1064 The second problem accompanying any major pro-life dependence among us upon the sacred is that bitter sectarian conflict may be engendered. Such dependence tends to confirm the suspicions of those (not a few) who believe that the anti-abortion movement in this country is predominantly an effort on the part of some religious organizations to establish their parochial doctrines by law. Pro-life people are, of course, aware of this charge, and the political vulnerability with which it threatens them. Many of the politically astute among them try, therefore, to conceal from public view the considerable reliance they do (“naturally”?) place

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upon the sacred, or at least they point out that the sources of the sacred here are not limited to one sect among us.

VI The status of nature in these matters is bound to be illuminated by examining the classical positions with respect to both abortion and infanticide. If nature is made more of by the pro-life movement, one unwelcome consequence for them could be that their overall reliance upon the sacred may be reduced, especially insofar as the sacred texts teach Christians that human nature is fallen.1065 The pro-choice movement may also have problems with a greater reliance upon nature, and not only because of what should be suggested, by such reliance, about inherent differences between male and female. Pro-choice advocates tend to teach not that human nature is fallen but rather that it is elevated, or at least that it should be independent of political and legal restraints. Thus, this approach to human nature is not “Christian” but rather “utopian.”1066 An old problem with respect to the status of the sacred goes back through Machiavelli to the ancients: may the sacred be defined (if not “enforced”) in critical respects (that is, with a view to both public and private actions) by authorities independent of the political sovereign of the place?1067 The prerogatives of the sacred may be seen even in what can be insisted upon by many among us about the inalienable rights of the family in the engendering and education of children.1068 A critical risk for the cause of morality among us may be anticipated here. If morality is seen as primarily due to religion, and if religion is recognized (as it probably has to be recognized, at least among us) as something to be left to personal choices (and, hence, considerably to chance, if only the chance of where one lives or the chance of what family one is born into), then our moral precepts begin to look like they, too, are largely determined by chance. This can mean relativism, often expressed by the familiar query which begins, “Who is to say . . .?”1069 Another way of putting such reservations would once have been (and may again come to be), “No ‘foreign’ ecclesiastical authority is going to dictate our morals.”1070 I have already warned against giving the legislation of morality a bad name. We should be on guard against giving morality itself a bad name as well.

VII A couple of special problems here should also be mentioned. The rules forbidding abortions during the past two centuries in the Western world have been

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seen by many women as one form of a general subjugation of women—and against this many spirited women are “naturally” rebelling today.1071 In addition, modern abortion rules have been seen as an assault upon sexuality itself, especially female sexuality. It has sometimes seemed to women that they have been obliged to bear children almost as punishment for their unladylike appetites.1072 It does not help the cause of dispassionate discussion of these matters to have it widely believed that various organized religions are dangerously deficient here. I draw, in closing, upon the final paragraph of a talk, “Abortion and Technology,” that I gave in Canada in 1989: The abortion controversy of the past two decades has obliged us to consider the place of self-gratification, along with the law, in our way of life. We have been obliged to consider as well the circumstances that law depends on or must take account of. Abortion issues do raise questions about nature and about the relation of nature to morality, a morality which must, if it is to be sensible, pay due deference both to the sanctity of truly human life and to the sovereignty of the properly choosing will.1073

We can be grateful if we should be able, as well as obliged, to consider these questions seriously despite all the turmoil we have had to endure in recent decades because of the perhaps inevitable abortion controversy.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Animal Sacrifices and the Sacrifice of Morality1074

Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom; give ear to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah: “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me?” says the Lord. “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs or goats. When you come to appear before Me, who has required this from your hand, to trample My courts? Bring no more futile sacrifices; incense is an abomination to Me. The New Moons, the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies—I cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting.” —Isaiah1075

I An editorial in the Chicago Tribune entitled “Two Religion Cases, Rightly Decided”1076 provides us a useful introduction to the first of these cases, which assesses official efforts in Florida to curb animal sacrifices by a religious sect.1077 It is that case which I will be principally dealing with here. The second case mentioned by the Tribune editorial found the U.S. Supreme Court deciding that a public school district in Arizona could continue to supply a sign-language interpreter to a deaf youngster when his parents transferred him from a public school system to a Roman Catholic high school. The Court ruled, five to four, that such help did not violate “the constitutional ban on government promotion of religion.”1078 Here, in the first half of the Tribune editorial, is our introduction to the animal-sacrifice case: Few parts of the Constitution stir more heated debate among Americans than the 1st Amendment’s religion clauses. One [clause] requires the government to tolerate religion; the other forbids it to sponsor religion. 216

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In recent days, the Supreme Court has issued two important decisions bearing on the meaning of these provisions, and in both cases it reached the right conclusion— asserting that government hostility toward religious practice is neither permitted by the free exercise clause nor mandated by the establishment clause. The first ruling involved a city ordinance in Hialeah, Florida., which outlawed the ritual sacrifice of animals. The measure came in direct response to plans by followers of the Santeria faith to open a church there. This religion, a Caribbean import blending African and Roman Catholic elements, employs animal sacrifice in some of its central rites. The city defended its law as an attempt to prevent cruelty and protect public health against the unsanitary disposal of animal carcasses. It claimed the ordinance conformed to a controversial 1990 Supreme Court decision allowing the government to incidentally burden religion with neutral, broadly applied laws. But the court saw through the charade, with all nine justices voting to overturn the law (though there was ample division on the reasons for doing so). As Justice Anthony Kennedy noted in the court’s opinion, the law permits “almost all killing of animals except for religious sacrifice,” including hunting, pest eradication and euthanasia, while excepting kosher slaughter. The alleged disposal problem could be regulated without singling out one religious group. The purpose here, he wrote, was “the suppression of the central element of the Santeria worship service.” However offensive that ceremony may be to nonbelievers, it is protected by the free exercise clause.1079

An article in a publication of the Seventh Day Adventist Church provides us (from the perspective of an author friendly to the legal cause of the animal-sacrificing cult) some background for this case. This was written before the Supreme Court decided the animal-sacrifice case: Lukumi Babulu Aye is, definitely, not mainline Protestant. Its members, called Santeros, practice an ancient Afro-Caribbean faith known as Santeria. Santeros celebrate birth, death, and marriage with animal sacrifices. In their rituals they decapitate goats, chickens, doves, and turtles—often 20 animals at a time—usually in private homes. In one ceremony a priest slices the throat of a chicken, chops off its head, bites into the headless bird’s breast, and rips the animal open with his teeth before stuffing the open chest with herbs, tobacco, and bits of dried fish—all in an attempt to please Babulu Aye, a Santeria god. The city of Hialeah wants the practice stopped. . . . More than 50,000 Santeros live in South Florida, where many fled from Castro’s suppression of their religion. In 1987 the Santeria church, wanting to open a public place of worship, bought land in Hialeah, a Miami suburb. In anticipation of an animal-sacrificing church, complaints about paganism, and decapitated goats and chickens found in parks, under trees, and on courthouse steps, Hialeah passed four ordinances making animal sacrifices for religious purposes a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by a $500 fine and/or 60 days in jail. The Santeria church sued the city, claiming that the laws violated its free exercise [of religion] rights. When the United States District Court in South Florida upheld the laws, the Santeros appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.1080

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The author of this article observes: I remember reading earlier the story from the Santeros’ perspective. They complained that one can boil lobsters alive, feed rats to snakes, butcher animals in a slaughterhouse, hunt them with a bow and arrow, and kill unwanted pets publicly—as long as none of this is done for religious reasons. As an amicus brief filed on behalf of the Santeros said: “One may get Chicken McNuggets in Hialeah, but one may not partake of chicken roasted at a religious service of the Santeria faith.”1081

It is obvious that the City Council of Hialeah had indeed been much agitated by the prospect of public animal sacrifices being conducted in their community, however unconcerned they may have been about Chicken McNuggets, the hunting of animals, and the like.

II It is not surprising that the Hialeah authorities should have been agitated. What is somewhat surprising is that the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court should have exhibited unanimous support of a decision to declare the Hialeah legislation unconstitutional. A few decades before there probably would have been no case at all, if only because no organization would have ventured to announce that it planned to conduct animal sacrifices of this kind in public. The Hialeah City Council had prevailed in the trial court, where the judge ruled that a city has a legitimate interest in curbing animal sacrifices for the sake of the safety and health of citizens and for the welfare of children. The Supreme Court, on the other hand, considered the Hialeah ordinances to be efforts to stop an “essential” activity or ritual of a religious sect, with no overriding public interest available to justify such intervention. The Court was obviously concerned about where it would lead if a religious sect could be singled out in this way with a view to what some regarded its virtual suppression.

III That a religion as religion is being aimed at, according to the Supreme Court and various participants in this litigation, is testified to by the fact, much insisted upon, that several other kinds of killings of animals are allowed in Hialeah and in Florida generally. We have noticed that it was pointed out that animals are routinely killed for food, for other animal products, in hunting, in classrooms and laboratories, by pest extermination, and in disposing of pets. The defenders of the Hialeah ordinances evidently could not offer substantial evidence either of any special cruelty to animals resulting from Santeria ritual

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killings or of any special health problems resulting either from the quality of the food eaten among the Santeros or from the disposal of carcasses by them. Presumably the Hialeah authorities can go back into court if health or carcassdisposal problems begin to develop. Stories do abound, from countries where the Santeria cult is strong, of decapitated and other animal carcasses adorning graveyards and crossroads. Until that happens here, the U.S. Supreme Court seems to have said, the Santeros should be treated as just another religious cult. The religious freedom protected in this case can even be seen as an aspect of that general freedom of expression we now make so much of in this country.1082

IV The most troublesome feature of this entire controversy, it seems to me, is that there is nothing in the opinions of any of the judges involved in this litigation or in the briefs and commentaries I have seen which indicates even an awareness of the interest in the morality of its citizens that a community may have in this kind of situation. Moral concerns, as a proper object for the community, seem to be legitimate (even in the trial court which upheld the Hialeah ordinances) only when the welfare of children is involved—and even then references to morality are transformed into concerns about “adverse psychological effects” upon children and about an “emotional danger to children.”1083 A similar emphasis upon children may be seen when questions are raised about the excessive violence on our television screens.1084 Thus, measures can be taken by government in order to protect the health and safety interests of persons, especially if those interests are threatened by the actions of others. If one harms only oneself, it is said, that is another matter.1085 Be that as it may, the promotion and maintenance of morality have long been questioned in many circles in this country, by conservatives and liberals alike, as a proper concern of government. “Legislation of morality” has come to be regarded with considerable suspicion.1086 All this reflects what has happened to a general reliance among us upon the community as the source of moral instruction and guidance. This development is related to the status of individualism in modern times. Private associations are looked to as the only proper source of moral training—and care must be taken (we are warned) lest such associations enlist government in their efforts here. It is not appreciated how much or in what ways that private associations, including religious associations, serve as agents of the community and are even empowered by the community. I have noticed, in discussing this animal-sacrifice matter with people of various persuasions, that the moral issue—that is, the corruption issue—never

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occurs to them as a problem. Nor are they much moved by it when I attempt to bring it up. This suggests what has become of the way we talk about such matters in this country.1087 Among the questions that no longer seem either necessary or desirable for the community to address are the following: (1) What kind of people do we require and want? (2) What can we do to make such people more likely? I presume to suggest that the First Amendment should not keep us from recognizing that all too many people believe and do things in the name of religion that are highly questionable. Does not a community have at least as much of a duty and hence power to be concerned about pollution of human souls as it has to be concerned about pollution of the environment?1088

V Our “principles” keep us from noticing some obvious things about the animalsacrifice situation, especially the moral sense at the root of the response of the Hialeah authorities. This is something that the city council and its supporters have evidently not been able to explain, or perhaps even to recognize. But is there anything to be disturbed by in the animal-sacrifice context, considering the various kinds of killings of animals that are permitted in the typical American community? We can begin to delve further into the moral questions here—the questions about corruption—if we consider what should be done about, say, a sports team or a social club that routinely engages in animalsacrifice ceremonies to further its ends. Is not this kind of activity significantly different from what may be done by individuals in private? If done in private, it is harder to police, and besides, the effects on the community are likely to be far less intense. But what effects are there, one may well ask, that should be a concern to the community? The effects that should be taken into account are those that take the form of coarsening the passions, intensifying the ugly, and degrading observers along with participants.1089 We are repeatedly reminded, however, of animal sacrifices among civilized peoples in antiquity. But things look, and indeed may be, different in different contexts, including such practices as slavery, infanticide, abortion, suicide, mutilations, family relations, homosexuality, pacifism, and celibacy. Thus, the practices of antiquity cannot suffice as conclusive precedents. The limits of the “consenting adults” criterion, which we hear so much of these days, are evident when we consider the possibility of human-sacrifice ceremonies engaged in only by volunteers. What, then, can we say about the football team that rips up animals as part of its pre-game self-stimulation? Is this something that the community is entitled, if

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not obliged, to look into, perhaps even to suppress? Is a community likely to be harder to live in if such conduct is routinely resorted to, and if it is known that this happens? There may be a question of fact here: What is the effect of such activity both upon those who do and witness it and upon those who learn about it? Is it healthy, in that it helps to purge violent passions? Or is it unhealthy, in that it makes people ferocious, if not even vicious? Should the community be permitted to watch such activity and to judge its effects? Is there, in short, a legitimate community concern with respect to moral character and decent sensibilities?

VI Our animal-sacrifice issue bears upon a related, and probably much more important, issue: what activities, properly regulated or forbidden by laws made with no particular sect in view, are so much a part of a sect’s way of life that that sect should be exempt from the general prohibition? These activities can be related to such matters as polygamy, medical treatment, school attendance, military service, clothing protocols, the status of designated days of the week, nonpublic schools, and drugs.1090 Should the importance of a practice for a religious sect give that practice any special status as a matter of constitutional law? In our assessments of these matters, how much depends on our notions about the reasonableness of various religious arrangements and beliefs? Is the older that a religion is the more sensible it is apt to be? Does the Santeria cult go back thousands of years? And if so, what if anything does that suggest about the earlier ages of the human race? Notice that in Judaism, since the destruction of the Second Temple in A.D. 70, it is said that the study of Torah has taken the place of various rituals, including animal sacrifice. What does the thoughtful legislator know, or at least strongly suspect, about the diverse claims of revelation that are made among us? May he know that many, if not most, such claims are mistaken, and that something is wrong with the people who believe certain things and perform certain acts in the name of religion? Is such knowledge something that the legislator is entitled to act upon? What is the minimum that the free exercise of religion clause of the First Amendment calls for? People should be able to gather together, unmolested, to believe and say what they wish about divine things, and to do there what others elsewhere in like circumstances can do. The restraints that others face—for example, about curfew rules or about taxes or about the safety of the buildings in which they gather—apply to them also. Thus, a religion, as such, should not criminalize (or “decriminalize”) any activity associated with it. In the official responses to the Santeros, for example, there have been no surprises: that is, the members of this cult were not asked to conform to a way

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of life different from what they expected to find in the United States before they voluntarily came to this country a generation or two ago, a country which is obviously civilized and hence entitled to have its moral standards generally respected, however subject to investigation and reassessment those standards should always be.

VII The continual reassessment of standards that we do need is subjected more and more these days to litigation in which judicially enforceable constitutional rights are invoked. Equal-protection standards, or the insistence upon laws of general applicability, usually go a long way toward insuring fair treatment.1091 But, it is said, some groups need exemptions from the application of the rules properly covering everyone else; otherwise, they will not be able to carry on with the distinctive, perhaps even essential, practices of their sects. Implicit to this argument is the assumption that it is good that there be a diversity of creeds in this country, however dubious some of those creeds may be either in theory or in practice. Concern is expressed repeatedly about the vulnerability of various minorities among us. That is why, it is argued, there must be a judicially available protection of the right to be different, especially in the realm of religious allegiances and conduct. At the heart of the apprehensiveness here is the growing reluctance to rely upon the good faith of politicians or upon the sound working of the political process. But in a healthy political order, prudence is very much in evidence. This may be seen in the many accommodations there have long been in this country for minorities, accommodations which can take the form of exemptions for nonpublic school attendance, for some users of wine and peyote, and for conscientious objectors to military conscription.1092 Such exemptions, which need not be constitutionally mandated, can represent efforts on the part of the community as a whole to be fair and to promote domestic tranquility. Of course, the community may not be sensitive enough in some instances. But are judges really apt to be more reliable than legislators in the long run? It is remarkable, for example, that the Supreme Court divided five to four on the issue of whether the community could continue to provide a sign-language interpreter for a youngster in a parochial high school1093—and at the same time that Court had no member who believed that the community could forbid public animal sacrifices during a religious ceremony. The issue of animal sacrifices is not the most critical thing here. After all, the community could even allow such sacrifices in some circumstances, especially when it takes into account the problems of law enforcement and the effects of

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suppression on the morals of participants. Besides, public opinion will probably have, eventually, a restraining effect on members of the Santeria faith in this country, in the next generation or two, if not in the original generation here.1094 The most critical thing here is to recognize that to insist upon community is usually to insist upon morality, and vice versa. No doubt, imprudent official suppression over the years, in the realms both of political discourse and of artistic expression, have contributed to a widespread repudiation of the role of the community in promoting and preserving common morality. But even more destructive than ill-conceived suppression is thoughtless subversion of that morality which depends upon a confident community for its maintenance. Without such morality, stoutly adhered to by the community at large, there are not apt to be that sense of duty and that good judgment which are necessary if we are to be able and willing to question sensibly and to oppose usefully the unfortunate things that legislators, judges, and others sometimes try to do in our name.

Chapter Twenty-Four

On Physician-Assisted Suicide1095

Is there no balm in Gilead, is there no physician there? —Jeremiah1096

I Our inquiry on this occasion seems fairly straightforward: In what circumstances among us may there be physician-assisted suicide? I presume to begin with a straightforward response, a response to which I daresay some of you physicians (on the basis of your training and experience) might well offer corrections, for which I should be grateful. The straightforward response to our inquiry about when there should be recourse to physician-assisted suicide is “rarely, if ever—probably never.” This straightforward response can be amplified by the counsel that simple suicide should probably never be resorted to, let alone be assisted by, anyone. There are three terms here, however, which require elaboration if our inquiry is to be useful: physician, assisted, and suicide. The first of these terms is by far the easiest for us to deal with for our immediate purposes: by physician I mean the medical practitioner designated as such by the law. So much is the physician dependent upon the law that it is troublesome when physicians, in a decent community, openly defy laws directing their conduct as physicians.1097 I developed some of the implications of reliance upon law in these matters in a talk I gave in this hospital in 1983 about the discipline of medicine. My concluding remarks in that talk included these observations: I have on this occasion called into question the autonomy that some doctors and many patients believe they are entitled to. Autonomy means, literally, that one gives a law to oneself. 224

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Does it not make sense for government, or better still for that community for which government acts, to use its sovereign authority, including its taxing and spending powers, to regulate what may be done to terminate or to preserve life, restraining what doctors, patients, or the families of patients may be disposed to do in various circumstances? Having said all this, it is prudent to add that a sensible community need not spell out in its laws things which are apt to be misleading or which are apt to be misused. Cannot a community have an understanding with its doctors and nurses about what should be done in a variety of circumstances? If a community is soundly constituted, such an approach can be surely relied upon, especially if the training and supervision of doctors and nurses are conducted with a view to producing and maintaining practitioners of both competence and integrity.1098

I will return, at the end of these remarks, to these observations from my 1983 talk, having said enough for the moment about the first of our three terms, physician. The terms assisted and suicide are, for our immediate purposes, far more complicated. The term assisted, in the context of a deliberate effort to hasten someone’s impending death, can refer to a half-dozen different kinds of things done (or not done) by the physician. There is, first, the making clear to the patient or to his representative what the prospects are for the patient, how bleak the prospects are for a return to health and comfort. There is, then, the supply of information about ways that death may be hastened, if that should be desired. There is, then, the giving of directions for securing the medication or equipment useful in the hastening of death. There may even be the suggestion, if not the encouragement, of such hastening, and perhaps also (if need be) the allaying of concerns and fears about so acting. Assistance by the physician can take even more physically active forms. There is, first, the removal of the life-support systems that the patient seems to depend upon. There is, then, the withdrawal of the nourishment and fluids necessary to sustain life. Finally, there is the kind of intervention by a physician represented by a potent injection with a view to ending life immediately. Although there may be serious problems posed by all, or almost all, of these actions by physicians, two of them are of particular interest to us on this occasion: the giving of directions (perhaps even prescriptions) for securing the medication or equipment useful in the hastening of death; the kind of intervention represented by a potent injection with a view to ending life soon, or immediately. Overarching all of this is what the physician may suggest about the merits of hastening death in some circumstances. This brings us to the third term, suicide, which has to be examined by us at far greater length as we attempt to clarify the issues raised by our inquiry. In what circumstances may there be physician-assisted suicide? There is a deeply rooted tradition, at least in the Western world, against what can be conveniently called suicide for personal reasons, a tradition that

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one should be extremely reluctant to disregard. Guidance in dealing with these matters can be provided by law. Also important here is the community opinion which directs everyone and helps shape the law. Discussion such as this one here today can help refine community opinion. One problem we confront is the more or less modern insistence that it is entirely a personal matter what one does about ending one’s life. This is seen as an aspect of personal autonomy and as a form of self-expression. I believe there may be something naive, or unexamined, about this approach. Related to this approach, however much in opposition it may seem to be to it in practice, is the insistence that the meaning of medicine is such that any killing by a physician is simply out of the question. This insistence can make medicine seem to be sovereign. But, it should be remembered, medicine is not the master art, but rather politics: medicine is ultimately subject to law (including the law of what is by nature right).1099 It will not do, then, to regard medicine as essentially autonomous, an opinion to which I will return.

II Suicide must be examined at some length if we are to have clarity about our overall inquiry. The deeply rooted tradition against suicide to which I have referred goes back both to the Bible and classical Greece. Socrates, for example, spoke of a duty to stick at the post that one has been assigned. The biblical response to suicide is suggested, for example, in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, where Eve proposes to Adam (after their Fall) that they avoid the awful fate awaiting them and any offspring they might have: Let us seek Death, or he not found, supply With our own hands his Office on our selves; Why stand we longer shivering under feares, That show no end but Death, and have the power, Of many ways to die the shortest choosing, Destruction with destruction to destroy.1100

Things, it can be said, were as desperate then as they have ever been for human beings, with the wonderful life in the Garden of Eden having just been lost. Even so, Adam’s response includes some of the arguments that have been used against suicide ever since: Eve, thy contempt of life and pleasure seems To argue in thee something more sublime And excellent than what thy mind contemns: But self-destruction therefore sought, refutes

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That excellence thought in thee, and implies, Not thy contempt, but anguish and regret For loss of life and pleasure overlov’d. Or if thou covet death, as utmost end Of misery, so thinking to evade The penaltie pronounc’t, doubt not but God Hath wiselier arm’d his vengeful ire than so To be forestall’d; much more I fear lest Death So snatcht will not exempt us from the pain We are by doom to pay; rather such acts Of contumacie will provoke the Highest To make death in us live.1101

You will recall related sentiments in Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” speech, as when he says: To die, to sleep— To sleep—perchance to dream; ay, there’s the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause.1102

You will also recall, however, that a different response to suicide may be found in Shakespeare’s Roman plays. The Roman openness to suicide in some circumstances, which openness was developed by the Stoics and thereafter (perhaps most notably) by David Hume,1103 has as its most celebrated instance what the ravished Lucretia did in taking her own life, an action on her part which led to the overthrow of the monarchy in Rome.1104 Even so, St. Augustine (a millennium later) repudiated Lucretia’s deed, helping to establish thereby the Christian tradition with respect to suicide that has dominated the Western world ever since.1105 An Illinois Supreme Court opinion, early in the twentieth century, reminds us of that anti-suicide tradition: We adopted the English common law, and the acts of the British Parliament in aid thereof, as it existed up to the fourth year of James I, which was the year 1606, as far as the same was applicable to our conditions and institutions and of a general nature; but [as we have never had a forfeiture of goods] or seen fit to define what character of burial our citizens shall enjoy, we have never regarded the English law as to suicide as applicable to the spirit of our institutions. In the view we entertain of the case at bar it is not necessary that suicide be held to be a crime.1106

Even so, whether suicide was regarded as a crime, helping someone to commit suicide (or, certainly, killing another at his request) was often regarded as a crime (perhaps even as the crime of murder). The survivor of a suicide pact, for

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example, could even be charged with murder in some circumstances.1107 In opposition to this approach is that which argues that a physician should not be held legally responsible for helping a patient do anything that the patient is entitled to do, so long as the physician does not exploit the patient thereby. However this may be, and putting aside for the moment the case of the terminally ill, the personal suicides we learn about tend to be serious affronts to the community, often impressing themselves upon the survivors as quite hostile acts. Milton, when he describes Eve’s suicide proposal, speaks of her “vehement despair.”1108 Her vehemence is reflected in her exhortation, “Destruction with destruction to destroy.”1109 Each suicide I have known about personally (after the fact) was very much to be regretted.1110 Whatever the traditional response to suicide in the Western world, there is obviously developing a different general opinion about how we should respond today to a recourse to “suicide” by some terminally ill patients. Thus, a 1993 opinion poll in Australia reported 78 percent of those polled answering yes to the question, “If a hopelessly ill patient, in great pain with absolutely no chance of recovering, asks for a lethal dose, so as not to wake again, should a doctor be allowed to give a lethal dose or not?”1111 We are also told that the yes vote on this question in Australia had risen from 47 percent in 1962 to 78 percent in 1993.1112 Virtually the same results are reported from Canada. In the United States, a 1990 poll reports that 65 percent of those polled were in favor of allowing doctors to end the life of an incurable patient by some painless means if the patient and his family request it.1113 No doubt, all this reflects the growing recognition of our ability to have life in desperate circumstances prolonged far more than could ever have been done in the past, with consequently more and more instances of the distressing diseases and senility of old age to be expected. Even so, it should be noticed that many more people live longer with less pain, and probably with more delight, than ever before in human history. An editorial in an English newspaper (presented here in its entirety), examines the problems confronting British doctors today: Is there a moral difference between accelerating death through withholding a drug—and administering a drug to achieve the same end? The British Medical Association believes there is and so, in carefully prescribed circumstances, does the law. Philosophically, the two principles are contradictory. Withholding treatment is just as much a death-dealing procedure as active intervention. The law, which rests on intent, should certainly recognize this contradiction. Yet euthanasia has always been riddled by philosophical inconsistencies and moral contradictions. But this is no reason why [government officers] should ignore the issue. Doctors are grappling with its dilemmas every day. They need better guidance, particularly given the division in their ranks. A new survey of 2,000 family practitioners show they divide 44:54 against legalising active euthanasia. This gap grows narrower every year. Over onethird of the GPs had received requests to take active steps to end a life.

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If the ethical guidance is unsatisfactory, the law is even more obscure. The doctors of Tony Bland, the football fan tragically crushed into a permanent vegetative state by the Hillsborough disaster, were forced to go to court two years ago before they could shut off his water and feeding tubes—even though there was no chance of him recovering consciousness, thought or feeling and Tony’s parents themselves had given permission. The law Lords finally ruled that the tubes, to which he had been attached for three years, could be defined as “medical treatment” and accordingly [could] be withdrawn. This at least brought the law in line with BMA ethics; but the court made it clear they were not authorising the withdrawal of treatment from all PVS patients. Only a succession of cases will draw a clear legal line. Yet case law is not the right way of resolving such moral dilemmas. Two of the five law Lords in the Bland case emphasised their objection to judges developing “new, all-embracing principles” when society as a whole was “substantially divided on the relevant moral issues.” Quite so. Active euthanasia exists in Britain but covertly, not overtly. The BMJ has sensibly called for a royal commission to resolve this issue. A neutral body, like a commission, must be the best way of resolving the oldest medical problem in the world: dying with dignity.1114

I particularly call your attention to what is said in this newspaper editorial questioning the “moral difference between accelerating death through withholding a drug—and administering a drug to achieve the same end.” Even so, physicians, it seems, do consider the two cases quite different. Whether they are truly different, when both the intentions and the results are substantially the same in the two kinds of cases, may bear on some of the issues I touch upon here. Physicians, it also seems, are far less likely than the population at large to approve of “legalising active euthanasia.” British physicians (we are told) split 44:54 on this question as against 78:15 among the Australian public. Is this because physicians cannot bear the thought of being personally involved in such an activity? I also call your attention to the observation, “Active euthanasia exists in Britain but covertly, not overtly.”1015

III It has been argued, including by such experienced and thoughtful physicians as your colleague, Richard A. Shapiro, that physicians have been concealing from themselves what they routinely do. That is, he exposes the semantical disguises resorted to by physicians in describing what they do to hasten the death of a patient. Thus, he has said, I am specially concerned with those of us whose stance is opposed to assisting death and to active euthanasia. I suggest that we choose language to protect our egos and that we are neither candid nor honest as we pick our way through this

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ethical hedge—not because candor and honesty would make our position untenable but because their exercise makes defending our positions less easy, less comfortable.1116

But I, unlike Dr. Shapiro, venture to point out the differences that should be maintained, rather than emphasizing the similarities, among various actions by physicians. I continue thereby to consider what our third critical term, suicide, means in this context. What is truly the kind of suicide, what I call the personal suicide, which has traditionally been condemned in the Western world? Certain political and other acts are not instances of the personal suicide about which people have always been concerned. I collect here a half-dozen examples for your consideration. First, there is the Massada-type collective retreat into death as a means of avoiding enslavement at the hands of a brutal enemy.1117 Then there is the killing of oneself in order to avoid any torture by the enemy that would likely make one compromise secret operations. (One may even be provided what is called a “suicide pill” for this purpose. Would it be improper for a physician to devise such medication for soldiers fighting in a just cause?) Then there is the kind of death that seems to have been highly regarded, if not sometimes virtually required, by the Romans in some desperate circumstances. There may even be the kamikazestyle death, the so-called suicide mission, which requires that one be willing to sacrifice oneself in the effort to destroy the enemy.1118 In all of these instances, the political or social order supports, if it does not even require, the “suicidal” action taken. One is not out primarily to kill oneself, but rather one acts as an agent of the community. Thus, if one could have the public effects desired without dying, one should not be disappointed. How similar are these instances to those of the man who recognizes that the expenses of his prolonged terminal illness will financially ruin his loving family? This is related to our next instance, the sort of thing that is said to have been done among the Eskimos, when the unproductive old man or old woman would take leave of the family and go out onto the ice to die when his or her food consumption threatened the survival of the others. Then there is the taking of the officially prescribed poison, as by Socrates, in the execution of a death sentence.1119 Finally, there is the Greek counterpart to the Jewish “mass suicide” at Massada: the dancing of the women of Souli off a cliff rather than allowing themselves to be taken by the enemy. Massada is celebrated to this day as an instance of patriotic piety; Souli is celebrated as an instance of ethnic solidarity, with a moving folk dance, “The Women of Souli,” repeatedly reenacting that dramatic deed.1120 These half-dozen instances are preludes to what may be critical to my analysis on this occasion, a consideration of a variety of choices confronting the conscientious physician, choices relating to actions which may be mistaken for conventional “suicide.” How one should respond in each of these situations depends

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partly on circumstances and the rules of one’s day. I even venture to suggest that a fairly general consensus has developed, or at least is steadily developing, about the “not-suicide” instances I will now examine, instances that do not induce the regrets among survivors that the true suicide usually does.1121 This is not to deny that it may be prudent not to be uniformly open about what is going on in each of these instances.

IV It is not suicide, nor is it assisting in suicide, to relieve intense pain in such a way that it hastens the death of a patient. You are familiar with the recourse to, say, “morphine drip” in some circumstances.1122 The physician, pursuant to his calling, does not attempt only to heal, but also to relieve pain and eventually to ease the dying of a patient. Certainly, it is not unheard of that measures taken to heal a patient end up hastening (perhaps even causing) his death. On the other hand, the physician is not disappointed if something like the enhanced “morphine drip” measure happens to cure what had seemed to be the terminal illness of the patient. In various instances, it is not death that is sought but rather relief. Caution is called for, however, whenever the pain may be intense but not prolonged—that is, when a cure of the illness and hence the permanent cessation of this pain can reasonably be expected. In such circumstances, the physician may have to supply the moral resolve that the patient may lack, the resolve to look beyond his pain to the cure, thereby discouraging recourse by the patient to genuine suicide. Still, I have argued, it is not acquiescence in suicide, strictly speaking, to relieve pain in such a way as to hasten death. This, then, has been the first of a variety of choices confronting the physician which may be mistaken for “suicide.”

V It is not suicide or assistance in suicide, I next suggest, to curtail or remove, or to refuse to initiate, life-support systems in circumstances when it is obvious to informed observers that meaningful life (and hence truly human life) is over. It may be irrelevant here whether any pain is being experienced. But it is not irrelevant what the patient, when rational, had indicated, or can be reasonably presumed to have indicated, about what should be done with “him” in such circumstances.1123 Vital to all of these determinations is an awareness of what is natural for the human being in various circumstances. This awareness depends upon an appreciation of what the truly human looks like and requires. Certainly, nature does

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not dictate or provide the therapeutic measures which happen to be available at any particular time or place. That is, we should not allow ourselves to be trapped by chance arrangements, including the therapeutic measures that happen to have been initiated. Complications can develop here, however, if the patient continues to live after all of the life-support systems (except that of intravenous feeding) have been discontinued. I will consider that situation next. But the discontinuance measure I have just sketched is the second of a variety of choices confronting the physician which may be mistaken for “suicide.”

VI It is not suicide or assistance in suicide, I next suggest, to hasten the death of a patient (not on life-support systems, except perhaps for intravenous feeding), a death that seems inevitable and imminent because of a nonpainful affliction. (A variation of this situation is that confronted upon the delivery of a baby that is terribly deformed.) Such hastening is apt to be desired by the patient or his family if he is alert, mobile, and so on. But what if he is not? May the community’s interest here be different both from the patient’s instinctive desires and from the physician’s practice, inclinations, and code of conduct? There may be, for example, the problem of the best use of scarce resources, a problem that can be dramatized by such extreme situations as may be found on the battlefield.1124 If it should be deemed advisable to hasten death in such circumstances, how should that be done? Should something like the morphine-drip method be relied upon, even if there is no pain to be dealt with? There is something to be said for sticking to techniques that are often useful, about which much is known, and which can be routinely monitored. Is the morphine-drip measure (and hence the appearance of a healing attempt) so much to be preferred that pain should even be induced in order that it may thus be alleviated? But would not that be making far too much of the form at the expense of substance? We can be reminded here of the semantic disguises that Dr. Shapiro warns against.1125 Still, we must wonder, if morphine drip may properly be used to hasten death, why is this somewhat cumbersome method to be preferred to an outand-out lethal injection? One physician, a thoughtful student of these matters, has argued: [I]t may be true that the notion of a death with dignity encompasses under some conditions (e.g., protracted untreatable pain) a direct hastening of one’s death. It may be an extreme act of love on the part of a spouse or friend to administer a death-dealing drug to a loved one in agony. But this is indeed a delicate matter, if we wish to insure that the hastening of the end is never undertaken for anyone’s

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benefit but the dying patient’s. . . . As one doctor put it, if mercy-killing were legalized tomorrow, doctors must not do them. Doctors must not kill.1126

Is it advocated, then, that nonmedical specialists be trained for killing, thereby serving as executioners both in hospitals (or hospices) of the willing and in prisons of the unwilling?1127 May physicians properly help train such specialists? And may physicians identify what is lethal, if not even providing the lethal doses? Questions such as this may encourage us to reconsider the insistence, which can no doubt sound reassuring to many fearful patients, that doctors must never kill. But however these questions are answered, it will not do to mistake the kind of situation addressed here for “suicide.”

VII It is not suicide or assistance in suicide, I next suggest, to accelerate the death of a patient who is permanently comatose or so senile as to be in effect permanently comatose. Human life seems, from all indications, virtually over for such a person. But he differs from the others we have considered in that he may continue in a painless vegetative state for a very long time. Hastening the death of such a person is not suicide or assistance in suicide. It may, however, appear to be murder to some, even when the person had indicated, while still alert, that this is what he wanted done if he should ever be in this condition. The spiritual, as well as the material, drain upon families and upon a community can be imagined if a large proportion of the population should be sustained (because of modern medical science) in a vegetative state.1128 Compassion is called for when someone acts in desperation to help relieve the crushing burden upon others in some of these cases. However intimate and private individual cases should be, rigorous, perhaps highly publicized, procedures may have to be provided if the hastening of death in these circumstances should become routine. Questions have to be addressed here about how acceleration of death should be effected. Is, for example, starving a patient to death to be preferred to a virtually painless lethal injection? In addition, abuses are to be reckoned with, which may affect how to regard permitting anything like this at all. But however these matters are dealt with, it is not useful to mistake the kind of situation addressed here for “suicide.”

VIII It will be recalled that I proposed, at the outset of these remarks, that there should rarely, if ever, be recourse to physician-assisted suicide. I have, in order to explain my proposal, reviewed four different kinds of accelerated deaths that

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are not truly suicides. Earlier, I had reviewed a half-dozen instances of socially induced or politically dedicated deaths that are not traditional suicides either. There remains now for us to consider, however briefly, the truly suicidal. The truly suicidal is seen when death is resorted to because of considerable pain, physical or psychic, that is neither permanent nor in the course of a terminal illness. Such pain can be so severe that it dominates one’s thoughts. What may properly be done when it is known that such pain cannot be relieved (in the short term) by medication? We all sense that there is usually something deeply wrong about the true suicide. Some experts say that “there is empirical justification for thinking that a suicide rarely, if ever, occurs in the absence of a major psychiatric disorder.”1129 But, we must ask, may such a “major psychiatric disorder” be induced by a physical condition which is overwhelming? Still, it may be a good general rule to repudiate true suicide, whether such suicide is effected with or without the assistance of a physician. But one must at once add that dreadful situations can develop in which true suicide may appear to be the only humane way out—and it might appear unduly dogmatic not to expect the decent doctor to do what he can to help in such situations. We have to be careful, however, lest deference to the hardest cases contribute to a cheapening of human life and to the demoralization of physicians and nurses, if not of the entire community. The best suicides, then, may be among those self-inflicted deaths that one never hears about, leaving intact a salutary tradition against suicide.1130 That tradition is threatened today by the fashionable, but dubious, opinion that one may do with and to one’s life as one pleases, at least so long as no one else is physically injured by what one does.1131

IX A key concern today should be, then, not to change critical long-established opinions about and responses to suicide. There may be unpredictable consequences if such changes are permitted, distorting moral judgments and weakening the social fabric. Thus, it is probably a mistake to identify (as some do) the recently approved Oregon “Death with Dignity Act” as authorizing “physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill,” whatever the merits of that measure may be.1132 The guidance of the laws and of the professional medical associations authorized by the laws should be very much relied upon in these matters, laws which are adequately discussed and properly publicized. But it is also sensible for the law not to try to restrain, or publicize, various compassionate actions that are likely to be done anyway, and that may have always been done, by conscientious physicians. True caring here includes being sensitive to the principles (or feelings) of various people who may be involved in a particular situation: the pa-

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tient, the patient’s family and friends, their spiritual advisors, other physicians, the nurses, the hospital administrators, and the community at large (including public officials who must take public opinion seriously). In some of these cases, the less said, the better. The physician may have to be left somewhat on his own, even to the extent of sometimes having to do things without consulting the patient or the patient’s family. (Has not this always happened, for example, upon the delivery of certain babies?) This reminds us of the character and competence we do depend upon in physicians. Problems are likely to develop, however, if physicians have more and more technical training and less and less serious nonmedical education. I presumed to say, in concluding my 1983 Grand Rounds talk here, “The considerable and perhaps inevitable independence of the medical profession tends to reinforce doctors in their tendency to make much, perhaps too much, of life itself. There is much in the modern world that moves us in that direction. This can be devastating for nobility and for an enduring happiness. It remains to be seen what the community can do to correct this tendency.”1133 In short, I have suggested, we expect the physician to be sensible. Sensibleness depends, in part, upon clarity about the questions that one confronts. Such clarity depends, in turn, upon care in the terms one uses, terms such as physician, assisted, and suicide. A community’s carelessness with respect to such matters can be dangerous as well as unbecoming, verging as it does on the suicidal.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Mortality and Happiness1134

Why then should we not say that he is happy who is active in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some chance period but throughout a complete life? Or must we add “and who is destined to live thus and to die as befits his life”? Certainly the future is obscure to us, while happiness, we claim, is an end and something in every way final. If so, we shall call happy those among living men in whom these conditions are, and are to be, fulfilled—but happy men. So much for those questions. —Aristotle1135

I A visit yesterday to an art museum on the Stanford University campus providentially provided me graphic illumination of an argument that I will sketch in this paper. There was on exhibit a fine collection, “Corot to Picasso,” from the Smith College Museum of Art, which included Gustave Courbet’s painting of the 1850s, long known as The Preparation of the Bride.1136 It shows a partially reclining woman being dressed for a wedding, with thirteen other women in the room all around her working away at various tasks. It is now evidently believed by critics, since x-ray studies of the painting were made in the 1960s, that this is a painting that had been known as part of Courbet’s work, but by another name: The Preparation of the Dead Girl. The x-rays show a nude body being prepared for burial, with the other women working on the bed upon which she would be laid and on the shroud in which she would be buried.1137 Alterations may have been made, about 1919, by a hand less skilled than Courbet’s in order to make the painting less grim and hence better suited for an 236

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impending auction. Perhaps the then-recently concluded First World War had turned potential buyers against grim subjects. It is this attempted transformation of a reminder of mortality which can be said to illuminate disturbing movements in modernity.1138

II Critical to much of the contemporary understanding of things is the challenging form that the awareness of human mortality takes among us, partly because of what the mass media display to us on a grand scale. We have discovered death—or, at least, death may pose a more intense concern for us because of the yearning for personal immortality that had once seemed to be securely ministered to by Christianity.1139 Our responses to the prospect of death are colored in various ways. Thus, although we are probably far less vulnerable to disease and accident than the human race has ever been, the sense of mortality may now be more on the surface of our lives than it has long been. Three responses to mortality can be seen in the literature-related papers prepared for this panel. The first response is the religiosity of Flannery O’Connor, who makes much of death. Not only are human beings mortal, but also human nature itself is shown to be somehow mortal. This is how that fallen nature, upon which O’Connor’s Christianity seems to depend, may be understood.1140 The second response to mortality is the steady self-governance exhibited by the sounder characters in Jane Austen’s novels. This is, by far, the least spectacular of the three responses to mortality exhibited in our papers.1141 The third response is implicit in the recent adaptations made by screen writers and directors in preparing Austen’s novels, and especially the Mansfield Park text, for rendition in film. These adaptations try to make up for mortality, partly by enhancing the body and catering to sensuality. A determined selfgratification can counter the threat of mortality by inducing one to feel that one is “truly living.”1142

III Let us now consider, in turn, our instances of each of these three modern responses to mortality. First, there is the O’Connor response, a Christian response without the benefit of an Aristotle-guided Thomas Aquinas,1143 however attached O’Connor herself may have been to some of Thomas’s work. One paper prepared for this panel refers repeatedly to the sense of mortality which permeates the work of Flannery O’Connor.

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So fallen is human nature, in this artist’s opinion, that bizarre conduct is promoted. Indeed, there is something Aristophanic in O’Connor’s approach to these matters. But, one might well wonder, what is it that Aristophanes knew that O’Connor did not—or is it that Aristophanes, unlike O’Connor, was misled by a noble delusion about the possibilities of human nature?1144 However that may be, O’Connor evidently believed that social arrangements are bound to be defective, and their implicit promises are bound to be disappointed. Grace, not reason, is critical for salvation, with eternal bliss, not an earthly happiness of the prideful, aimed at.

IV Jane Austen, on the other hand, has mortality tamed to a remarkable degree. A proper social ordering permits the best use of human resources consistent with the chance circumstances that we are all subject to. Christianity is respected in the Austen novels, most obviously perhaps in Mansfield Park —but, of course, it is a Christianity quite different from (and some would say inferior to) that drawn upon by O’Connor. In this, Austen deals with the established religion of the regime in much the way one might expect an Aristotle to do. In the world of Jane Austen, much is made of discipline. Life on earth is seen usually as worth having for its own sake, not primarily as a testing place with a view to perpetual rewards and punishments. Happiness is what results when human beings are properly shaped and steadily governed, unless of course they are very unlucky. Earthly happiness, grounded in the virtues, is seen as both attainable and worthwhile. A productive ordering of life is in accordance with what nature suggests. Nature is reliable, especially so if one is properly equipped to be guided by nature. Such guidance is contributed to by statesmen, who know how to make the best use of any divine directives which happen to be provided for a people. The impassioned ministers of religion cannot be allowed by statesmen to interfere in temporal affairs without any regulation. (Another way of putting this is to say there should not be here a complete “separation of church and state.”)

V We have already examined an alternative to the Austen approach, that O’Connor alternative which sees happiness “radicalized” by shifting it to the eternal realm. As that happens, faith and doctrine are substituted for prudence and institutional inheritance.1145

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Another alternative to the more sober Austen approach is that seen in recent film adaptations of the Austen novels, adaptations which have happiness made not eternal but rather immediate. Much is made in these circumstances (especially in the Mansfield Park adaptation) of individuality, of sensuality (including female assertiveness), and of simply enjoying oneself. Emphasis is placed upon one’s “personality” and upon “self-expression.” These adaptations can help us see the original Austen better—her steadiness, sobriety, and irony. Mortality can be somehow forgotten in the film versions of various classic stories, if only temporarily. Or it can be regarded as a good, permitting pleasures to be experienced (for they do very much depend upon the changes that flesh is subject to). That is, gratification depends upon mortality; the unchanging, or eternal, cannot have such experiences, perhaps not any experiences.1146 Human nature, under this dispensation, is seen as both responsible for and in the service of impulses and desires which should be catered to (so long as others’ desires are not interfered with unduly). The human can then be seen primarily in terms of human rights, or liberty (that is, in terms of being unfettered).

VI I was reminded of still another, not unrelated, approach to these matters, by another Claremont Institute panel I have attended during this convention, the enlightening panel on Saul Bellow’s Ravelstein.1147 The Bellow book is an extreme version of the modernizing process resorted to by the adapters of Jane Austen’s stories for film. One can see magnified in Ravelstein almost a glorification of personal gratification. The philosophical (especially that taught by Plato and Aristotle) is virtually transformed into the self-indulgent, even as an attempt is made to moderate this by an almost instinctive deference to Judaism. One can see in the Bellow “novel” (which is interesting in much of what it purports to disclose about Allan Bloom)1148 that obsession with death which influences much of contemporary “fiction.” One can also see thoughtless selfindulgence and a self-centered individualism carried to extremes. Monumental personal gratification is presented as essential to the Allan Bloom character in Ravelstein, with very little reliable indication of what made our old schoolmate truly attractive. Certainly, no one grounded in the thought of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle (as Leo Strauss’s students were encouraged to be grounded) could make as much of mortality as is done in this Bellow novel. How much mortality dominates this story may be seen in what is depicted not only of its hero’s dying and death but also of its narrator’s own near-death experience. Much is made in the “novel” of art and self-expression, with a peculiar emphasis upon dress and food. This means that Allan Bloom’s genuine talents and

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worthwhile thoughts (which were shaped by Leo Strauss’s influence and work) are lost sight of. Indeed, there may perhaps be seen, in the closing decades of Allan Bloom’s life, a contest for the soul of this gifted man between Leo Strauss (as remembered) and Saul Bellow (as constantly present). We, as students of political philosophy and statesmanship, should take to heart what may have been the most challenging comment made from the floor of the Ravelstein panel two days ago. A mature colleague of ours reported that one of his best students told him, upon reading the Bellow book, that he felt like burning all of the Bloom books that he owned. We can all hope that this is not the kind of response provoked upon the reading of the books we might write about Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, or any other teachers we truly cherish.1149 The one redeeming feature of the Ravelstein book is that it does justice to this author’s current wife, a gracious lady. But others do not fare well in this author’s books, including at least one of his former wives, who was also a quite decent woman. This kind of unfair distortion is somehow emblematic of the modern tendency to sacrifice enduring worth for immediate effect and hence gratification.

VII I recapitulate, briefly, what I have argued on this occasion. The Socratics have taught that happiness is more likely to be genuine and enduring if it is not the primary objective of one’s conduct. Happiness is better, more solid—less distracting and misleading—if it follows from activity chosen for its own sake, not primarily for its consequences. In Flannery O’Connor’s stories the principal concern (in the author’s view) should be salvation, a kind of perpetual happiness. Nature does not provide an authoritative guide here, but rather nature must be corrected, if not even replaced. In the recent film adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels earthly happiness is quite important, but it is a diluted happiness. That is, there is a tendency (again, especially in the Mansfield Park adaptation) to reduce happiness to immediate gratification. This is carried much further in the Ravelstein book, which displays celebrated intellectuals with philosophical pretensions indulging themselves in unbecoming ways, distorting significantly the erotic urge upon which philosophy does seem, by nature, to depend. In Jane Austen’s novel, however, nature is much more of a guide, even calling to account those temperamental inclinations which often masquerade as the truly natural. For Jane Austen, nature is reinforced by (and exemplified in) the institutions which have been rationally developed with a view to bringing out and sustaining the best in human beings.

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I return, in closing, to our visit yesterday to the Stanford University art museum and Courbet’s painting, the painting which evidently portrayed originally a girl being prepared for burial but which was crudely transformed into the portrayal of a bride being prepared for a wedding. My sensitive companion observed, when she first saw this painting from a distance, that it had seemed to her the picture of a madhouse. It may not be an accident that this is the effect that is risked—that of vivid irrationality—when mortality is either wished away or made too much of.1150

Chapter Twenty-Six

The Case for Israel1151

Entreat me not to leave you, or to turn back from following after you, for wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. —Ruth1152

I You will, I trust, permit me to begin on what may seem merely a personal note. For a quarter of a century [I could say, at a Chicago synagogue, in 1974]—ever since I first came to the University of Chicago in 1947 as an undergraduate after three years service as an aviation cadet and then as a flying officer during and immediately after the Second World War—many, perhaps most, of my best friends have been Jewish. Such extensive association might seem to disqualify one as having a “bias.” But might it not also have provided one with an opportunity to become informed? My intimate association with Jews in the American academic community for more than two decades has certainly kept me somewhat more aware of the problems and aspirations of the State of Israel than I might otherwise have been. I should add, however, that my last air bases overseas before returning to civilian life were in Egypt and in Saudi Arabia, both of which assignments provided me opportunities to observe as well the daily lives of Arabic-speaking peoples throughout the Middle East and North Africa.1153 I have referred to “what may seem merely a personal note.” Why “merely”? To make much of the personal may be to make too much of chance, of the people one happens to encounter in the circumstances one happens to find oneself. But, on the other hand, one’s acquaintances and friends and problems (and hence one’s opportunities and one’s duties) do depend in large part upon 242

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particulars—and this does mean chance associations and arrangements. Thus, as I prepared this talk for you, I thought again and again of an old friend of mine at the University of Chicago, a man whom some of you might have known while he served there, first as the assistant at Hillel House to Rabbi Maurice Pekarsky and thereafter as the director himself of the House. I refer to Rabbi Richard Winograd, who (at the age of thirty-eight) died last month in New York: he had gone to Israel to live (with his wife and young children) but had had to return to this country for treatment of a chronic and, as it turned out, fatal heart affliction. (The body was returned to Jerusalem for burial.) The three of us—Rabbi Pekarsky, Rabbi Winograd, and I—worked out on many occasions programs of lectures and discussions for Hillel House, programs which were designed to reach Gentile as well as Jewish students on the University of Chicago campus. I had occasion to say in 1963, after the death of Maurice Pekarsky, Hillel House was [in Rabbi Pekarsky’s view] to be primarily dedicated to the special requirements and interests of Jewish students, but at the same time it was to be, and was, a place where students from any faith would feel welcome because it provided a forum in which the examination of even many Jewish problems and affairs revealed their roots in the affairs and problems of all men, that is to say, of all thoughtful men. This may well have been the masterstroke of his policy: [Rabbi Pekarsky] could, with his taste for quality and his peculiar talent for harmony, appeal to both the iconoclastic student and the instinctive believer in the young Jew.1154

Rabbi Winograd proved to be a faithful disciple of his master. This was particularly significant in that one could see that a young, American-born Jew could devote himself to the spiritual work in this world with the wholeheartedness one associates with the Jewish communities of Europe. Thus, to speak as I do today is to pay one’s respects, in what I trust is an appropriate manner, to an old friend and colleague who happened to be Jewish, someone who could burn with the righteousness of the prophets of old, and, like those prophets, someone who could sacrifice his personal interests to the demands of his mission. It is difficult to persuade such men to take proper care of themselves, partly because they do not see their “selves” as confined to individual bodies. Consequently, they can live on in the institutions they so selflessly serve.1155 The case for Israel depends, in part, upon an understanding of what Israel means—and hence upon an understanding of what Jewishness means. What Jewishness means—or, to be less presumptuous, what I take it to mean—includes a curious emphasis, for so spiritual a people, upon the things of this world. What it means is a remarkable concern with what happens to be one’s own—with one’s body, with one’s family, and with the community generated by that family, a community which is said to stem from a particular family, the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.1156 This is one reason I have begun this talk on what may have seemed a personal, and hence accidental, if not even irrelevant,

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note: if one is to take seriously the things and associations of this world, Judaism teaches us, one must give considerable weight to the personal, to the particular, to the things which do happen to be one’s own.1157 One learns from one’s Jewish friends what “one’s own” can mean, how rich and reassuring and (one must add) how demanding (if not even stifling) “one’s own” can sometimes be.1158 One learns what it can mean, in an age of a disintegration-promoting mobility and of superficial encounters—one is reminded of what it can mean to care for one’s own. Consider this recent commonplace example—a commonplace to many of you, that is, but most remarkable to a Gentile. We were having a leisurely Christmas dinner in our home last December [1973] with a Northside Jewish family who occasionally venture back to the South Side. It is, I believe it fair to say, not an observant or obviously pious family, but rather a “liberated” one. Suddenly, in the course of our gathering, the man of the family recollected himself—and he and his son-in-law excused themselves to rush off to a neighborhood synagogue. The women who remained explained that it was the Yahrzeit for the man’s father. The man seemed to me to act as if his father had died recently, perhaps a year ago, certainly no more than a few years ago. I expressed surprise that his father had lived so long, since our guest was himself in his sixties. On the contrary, I was informed, the father had died a quarter of a century ago—and this prosaic businessman had, year after year, observed religiously the anniversary of his death. One might even say that such observances spiritualize what would otherwise be for him and for hundreds of thousands of others like him a humdrum life in the marketplace. It is this spiritualization of the commonplace which Jews have, for thousands of years, contributed to the life of the West—a contribution which, so far as I can see, no other people has been able to make. The commonplace looks to the community for its most enduring manifestation—and this points up, even for Jews who never intend to live there, the significance of the country of Israel. Or, put another way for the students among us this morning, the Jews may be considered “natural Hegelians”: they instinctively put in concrete form the idea of justice and the posture of holiness. One cannot endure the desert of Sinai for forty years—or the desert of the world for forty centuries (whatever may really have happened in the Sinai)—without thus coming to terms, and in an indelible manner, with the particular and the concrete.1159

II What brings me here today? There came to the attention of your rabbi an article in the Chicago Sun-Times, of October 21 [1973], an article in support of Israel which was written by me during the worst days of the Yom Kippur War, and which was addressed to the

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general American community.1160 I subsequently spoke to a local left-wing organization about the tyranny in Greece, in the course of which I had occasion to say that I believed their organizational hostility to Israel to be “ungenerous.”1161 I should add that my October [1973] article was timed to appear on the day of the funeral in Annapolis of a great Jewish scholar, a man who had been for many years a teacher of mine at the University of Chicago: Leo Strauss.1162 One sees here, as well, the role in our lives of chance and of particulars: what I have to say on this occasion might be more appropriate as a remembrance of Professor Strauss, whereas what I had to say in October (a newspaper article which was addressed to immediate action) might have been more appropriate as a remembrance of so practical a man as Rabbi Winograd. But, in coming to terms with the things and hence the events of this world, one must be governed somewhat by what the days and years bring forth. Even so, my reference to Mr. Strauss in that October discussion pointed to something less transitory than the immediate war which seemed (at least to outsiders) to threaten the very existence of Israel. For I said, as I prepared to close: Should not Arab honor be appealed to over the heads of their impassioned exploiters? Everyone should be reminded that the Arabs are capable of behaving better than they have been moved to do in recent years. Their illustrious past should not be forgotten, either by them or by us. Jews and Arabs, for centuries at a time, have lived with one another in peace and harmony. There is no good reason why this should not happen again to their mutual advantage. Indeed, the richest period of Jewish philosophy, to which the work of the late Leo Strauss is an eloquent tribute, was when Jews lived under Muslim rule in Spain and elsewhere.1163

That is, I believe that the best in the Arabs should be appealed to. Whether, in the circumstances in which they find themselves, such an appeal will suffice, I dare not predict. For although there may be “no good reason” why Jews and Arabs should not live together in peace and harmony, there are many bad reasons (if anything bad can properly be called a “reason”) why their enmity might continue, to their mutual disadvantage. One is bound by circumstances to a burdensome degree when one takes seriously the things of this world.1164

III It is not my intention, however, to make here the argument on behalf of Israel which I was obliged to make—which I thought it useful to make—for the typical newspaper reader last October. It is, Socrates once observed, easy to praise Athens to Athenians.1165 The problem then is how to speak to partisans in such a way as to respect their allegiances and still be useful. In the Platonic dialogue from which I have just quoted, Socrates exalts the Athenians by showing them

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the best that could be said about their country, thereby pointing beyond and above that which intelligent Athenians could see all around them in their everyday life.1166 However that may be, flattery, even if it could disarm you, would be a disservice: American Jews know, or should know, how desperate things are in Israel; they should be contemptuous of anything which attempts to substitute wishful thinking for serious thinking about the plight of their cousins in Israel. What is the “situation today” in Israel? The Israelis seem to have won what, in military terms, can be regarded as a remarkable victory. But the price, of 2,500 casualties (and many more wounded), is very hard to bear. (Consider the effect, even in so divided a city as Chicago, if fifty healthy young men—our better young men—were to die in each of the fifty wards of this city, and all within a few weeks—say, over Christmas and New Year’s.) Even more traumatic than these deaths seems to have been the realization that so many could be killed and that this could happen again and again hereafter. The very possibility of a meaningful, or somewhat permanent, military victory is thereby called into question. I gather, as well, that morale is higher among Israeli troops at the front than with people at home. Indeed, there seems to have been a demoralizing effect from the failure of the Israeli government to report truthfully what was happening during the war. In addition, this may well have been the first real war for the Israeli people (as distinguished from the Israeli armed forces): a considerable strain upon the population, psychic as well as physical, has been reported. A general depression seems to have settled upon the Israeli soul—with the tendency of a traumatic paralysis following upon a great sacrifice. Along with a general sense of serious damage and of shock, there is the sense of isolation: the whole world seems to have turned against them, with the exception of the Dutch and the Americans. Everyone, I am told, recognizes that American aid is vital, the aid which was evident in the massive air lift required to re-equip the hard-pressed Israeli army. And, as an ironic counterpoint to what is happening in this country, President Nixon is regarded highly in Israel.1167 The gratitude toward the American is, no doubt, accompanied by apprehension because of the recognition that Israel should have been, and should continue to be, so vulnerable as to require the aid for which Israelis are so grateful. All this, in turn, raises the question whether Israel before the Yom Kippur attack had been realistic, or whether it had tended to be somewhat arrogant in its attitude toward Arabs and toward conscientious negotiations. Has Israel been imaginative enough? Is it appreciated, for example, that the terrorists, of whom so much is made, may be as critical a problem for the Arabs as for the Israelis? However that may be, the Israelis seem to be disposed to allow the Egyptians to feel they did well in the war—to allow the Egyptians to get as much honor from the encounter as they choose to claim. General Dayan, for example, seems to be aware of Mr. Sadat’s problems. He seems of the opinion that it is “better [to have] a shaky truce than a certain war.”1168 And, lest too much be made of

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the date chosen for the surprise attack (last October), it seems to be recognized that there was one advantage for the Israelis in the choice by their enemies of Yom Kippur: everyone was home; there was no traffic in the streets; if messages could be gotten to the reserves, they could be mobilized more easily than at other times. This does not, of course, excuse the sensibilities or the motives or the timing of those launching such an attack.1169 Thus, one can conjecture, the Israelis confront three choices, choices which are not mutually exclusive: procreation with a view to perpetual war, negotiation, and emigration. And, I imagine, all three are being pursued with passion. The demoralization to which I have referred does not stem only from the traumatic losses and from the sense of isolation—bad as these are—but perhaps even more from the memory which must be buried in the psyche of every sensitive Jew, the memory of generations of vulnerability and persecution and, closer to home, the memory of what someone has called “the unspeakably tragic end [in the twentieth century of the] thousand-year-old Jewish civilization in Central and Eastern Europe.”1170 The Arabs, for all their grievances (and they do have legitimate grievances), have had nothing comparable to this inflicted upon them: that is, almost half of the Jews alive worldwide in 1935 had been systematically and deliberately murdered by 1945. This is indeed something which the West must take account of and do something about—and the West for this purpose includes the Mediterranean and the Middle East, including that modest strip of land which has for millennia been claimed by and associated with Judaism. One might even say that the genesis of Israel comes from a state of things in which (as in the 1930s) there were for the Jews only two kinds of countries in the world: those that would not let Jews out and those that would not let them in.

IV The United States, it should be added, has not done too badly by the Jews. It has, after all, provided a comfortable refuge for, shall we say, one-third of the Jews in the world. And the Jews living here have done so well as to be able to become the principal financial support from abroad of that one-third of world Jewry which lives in Israel. I speak, on this occasion, from the perspective of an American and to Americans. What is proper for Jews and their friends, as Americans, to expect from the United States, and why? What is the American interest with respect to Israel, aside from the sometimes dubious military considerations which are referred to? The nonmilitary interest of the United States seems to me to be divisible into three parts. The first is that we have, and have long had, a duty to do what we can to establish, or at least to preserve, something in the Middle East which is

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good and special. Israel seems to me, for a variety of reasons, to be both good and special. This interest among Americans with respect to what happens abroad goes back to the earliest days of this republic—and, indeed, it is a kind of repayment of the interest exhibited, and the assistance provided, by men of goodwill in the eighteenth century toward what Americans were trying to do. Consider, in the first half of the nineteenth century, the speech made in the U.S. House of Representatives by Daniel Webster on behalf of the liberation of Greece from Turkish domination.1171 I will say something more shortly about the specialness of the Jews and hence of Israel. But first, just briefly, we must look at the second and third parts of the nonmilitary interest of the United States. We do have an interest, as Americans, in preventing the demoralization of the American people. The destruction of Israel—and, considering the uncertain intentions of the Arab leaders, one cannot know what an Israeli surrender would lead to—the destruction of Israel would (it is feared) deliver an “irreparable moral blow to Jews all over the world.”1172 Anything which hurts, and hurts deeply, American Jews cannot help but hurt the United States as well, considering how significant a part the Jews here have come to play in the intellectual, professional, commercial, and artistic life of this country.1173 And, even aside from the indirect effect upon the American spirit because of the effect upon American Jews, there is the third nonmilitary interest of the United States: there would be a demoralizing influence upon the United States if a country with which we have profound affinities, as Israel certainly is, should be allowed to “go under.” We can easily survive the “loss” of Vietnam or of Korea or even of China: such countries do not, and cannot, mean to us what Judaism and hence Israel mean. Should we be thus affected by the fate of Israel? One need not argue that at this point: the fact is that we are intimately connected with Israel and the millennia-old heritage of which the State of Israel continues to be so fragile a manifestation.

V It is evident that the American people, and their government, have to be encouraged to do what they “feel” to be right: that is, “the better angels of our nature” should be invoked and reassured.1174 But what about the Jews themselves, whether in this country or abroad? What do they need (aside from what they need in their capacity as American citizens)? There are, it seems to me, three principal dangers confronting the Jews of the world at this time, especially those in Israel and in this country—at a time, that is, when the desperate situation in Israel has dissipated (at least for the moment) the arrogance which some have attributed to them. These three dangers, it seems to me, all have to do with problems of “confidence.”

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There is, first of all, the danger of that traumatic shaking of confidence to which I have already referred, that shaking of the passions which follows upon the surprise, the deep casualties, and the sense of vulnerability resulting from the Yom Kippur War. This danger leads to, and is perhaps somewhat generated by, the second danger, that of the loss of intellectual self-confidence. Israel has had to rely on modern technology to survive: it will be hard for them to continue to resist the temptation to rely as well on the modern sociology and “philosophy” which tend to accompany that technology, that collection of opinions which call into question traditional opinions about one’s country and about one’s moral standards.1175 Thus, whereas failure (or great losses) can be demoralizing in one way, success (and modernity) can be demoralizing in quite another, and even more insidious, way. Some Jews, in the tradition of the Enlightenment, prefer to emphasize the “universalism” in Judaism—but that may only be the way of modern intellectuals. Most men cannot build and sacrifice for a country on the basis of such generalities and allegiances: one’s own, that for which one cares most deeply, very much depends upon the particular and the immediate. One must, in addition, prudently walk the path, as citizen, between pacifism and belligerency if one is to serve in the best possible way one’s people and one’s country. I will return to this shortly.1176 But first, let me mention the third danger confronting the Jews of the world at this time, and that is the danger of placing undue confidence in the United States. Israel is dependent upon the United States. But the attention of this country does stray. In addition, we can also ignore or at least “adjust to” massive killings, once they are done (as may be seen in various African countries and in Indonesia).1177 No doubt the Israelis appreciate that Americans (including many American Jews, if the truth came to be known) do not, and probably cannot afford to, devote much of their time and thought to what is happening from day to day on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. Indeed, for these reasons, we in the United States very much depend upon the Israelis, perhaps (in a sense) even more than the Israelis depend upon us. We depend upon the Israelis to stay alert and to remain aware of the risks they run and the occasional opportunities they encounter. That is, we depend upon them to be realistic, neither to exaggerate nor to minimize. Thus, Israel is obliged to instruct us about what is needed: it should not ask for too much, but neither should it underestimate what the danger truly is and what is indeed needed. We all depend upon the Israelis, that is, to keep us from a demoralizing mistake with respect to Israel. Certainly, the Israelis should take to American public opinion—to the “candid Opinions of Mankind”1178—whatever seems to pose a grave risk to the very existence of Israel. Both the inclination “to cry wolf” and the temptation to martyrdom should be firmly resisted. Or, put another way, the Israelis owe it to the United States (and indeed to all mankind) to survive.1179

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But, on the other hand, neither we nor the Jews of the world should want the earth blown up, or the human species exterminated, for the sake of Israel. Should we not all say that a third world war should be avoided at almost all costs? 1180 However that may be, it is remarkable, considering their centuries-old traumatic experiences in Europe and their intermittently desperate circumstances in the Middle East, that the Israelis are as sensible as they seem. They, both for their good and for ours, should continue to be a people we can rely upon. We here, Jews and Gentiles alike, should encourage the Israelis to remain what they can truly be: confident custodians of a great heritage. I return, that is, to the critical problem of Israeli self-confidence, to the danger faced because of the universalism toward which modern intellectuals tend. If Israel means anything serious—if it is to be regarded as truly special—it is somehow derived from the biblical teachings which we all know (and upon which both Christianity and Islam depend). What is the status of such teachings? Or perhaps we should ask, what is it salutary to have generally accepted as the status of such teachings? With this question I address at last, if only briefly, the three biblical texts (from Joshua, Deuteronomy, and 2 Samuel) cited in the original title of this talk.

VI A few suggestions should suffice, for this occasion, not because one can say easily what these texts mean and point to but because one can quickly indicate enough to suggest how these texts bear on what I have been saying here. Indeed, the very richness of these biblical texts makes it easy for one to be brief: that is, one realizes both that there is a great deal that can be said and that anything one is likely to say will have to leave much unsaid. A series of suggestions should suffice, then, leaving it to you to reflect on these texts, and others like them, at your leisure. Consider, first, Joshua 24:13: “And I gave you a land whereon thou hadst not laboured, and cities which ye built not, and ye dwell therein; of vineyards and olive-yards which you planted not do ye eat.”1181 This reminder is included, as coming from God, in Joshua’s final set of exchanges with the people of Israel. We, in turn, are reminded thereby of the problem there always is in determining just whom the good things of this world properly belong to. What constitutes the decisive priority? Whom does the earth (including North America) really belong to? What is the significance, in an irreligious age, of the arrangement once thought to have been solemnly and repeatedly decreed by God? Is not this a deep and genuine claim, one which the Arabs themselves (insofar as they are Muslims and hence “something”) are obliged to recognize?1182

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Modern intellectuals—and especially those who might be inclined to “tolerate” the claim of strangers and to depreciate the needs of their own people— modern intellectuals should consider the significance of the recognition by the people of Israel that they had come to possess land and cities and vineyards and olive-yards which others had originally established. That is, the people of Israel recognized what had happened—and they depended upon the authority of their Lord to justify what they had acquired, just as they depended upon their sense of justice (as well as upon their self-interest) to put to good use (and thereby to authorize before believers and unbelievers alike) what they had thereby providentially acquired. Thus, we should be moved by this passage to consider what “property” means and the tension there can be between “justice” and “self-preservation.”1183 Indeed, the experience of Israel, of ancient as well as of modern Israel, can be instructive. We can, if we reflect upon Israeli circumstances and alternatives today, appreciate better than might otherwise be possible for us the awful dilemma confronting the elderly Thomas Jefferson, as he contemplated in 1820 the controversy over the dreadful institution in his country of slavery: “[W]e have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”1184 I will return shortly to the problem of “justice” when I comment upon our passage from 2 Samuel.

VII But first, there is the passage from Deuteronomy, a passage Mr. Strauss liked to draw upon, Deuteronomy 4:6: “Observe therefore and do [the statutes and ordinances I have taught you, even as the Lord my God commanded me]; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, that, when they hear all these statutes they shall say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’”1185 Thus Moses spoke to the people of Israel, exhorting them to preserve and to respect the laws handed down to them. Do not wisdom and understanding make it possible to choose as one should among contending claims to property? Does one need wisdom not only to sense the relation of divine rule to the particulars of this world, but also to preserve the proper attitude toward divinity itself? The sovereignty of wisdom in the affairs of human beings seems to be invoked by this passage from Deuteronomy, at least where an explicit divine ordinance does not govern. Indeed, it is suggested that the intrinsic good sense of divine ordinances governing a people can be observed and assessed by other peoples, by peoples not privileged to have, or not so stiff-necked as to require,

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divine guidance. Such ordinances can be seen for what they are, a sign of wisdom and understanding. Thus, at the core of the biblical heritage can be said to be a fundamental respect for the rational, a respect which both reinforces its revelation and justifies its mystery.1186 It should also be noticed that this wisdom—a kind of practical wisdom, it would seem, rather than that which one associates with philosophy—this wisdom seems to depend upon a people. Laws which are arbitrary in appearance may be necessary to establish a community which can, in turn, make it possible for understanding to develop. Practical wisdom, it should be added, does depend upon a caring for the attachments of this world and hence upon blood ties and communal allegiances and historical continuity. Philosophy, on the other hand, can be more coldblooded (or, should we say, bloodless?) in its disregard of the ties and demands of the flesh. Philosophy (at least as the Greeks developed it) does not seem to be the way of the wise men of Israel.1187 Israel is to be distinguished then, not so much by what it tries to escape—the persecutions of its long past, whether in Pharaoh’s Egypt or in medieval Europe or in the twentieth century—but by what it yearns for. And what it yearns for in its provincialism is at least as exalted as what sophisticated intellectuals are likely to invoke in their cosmopolitanism.1188

VIII I return, with my last biblical reference, to the immediate case for Israel today: little is being asked for, really, by Israel in proportion to what has been given and continues to be given by Jews to the world (and hence very much to Arabs as well). In 2 Samuel 12:1–3 is part of the story of Nathan and David, when the great king is led to see the terrible injustice he has done to Uriah the Hittite for the sake of Uriah’s truly remarkable wife, Bathsheba. I read the first three verses of the chapter: “And the Lord sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto him, and said unto him: ‘There were two men in one city: the one rich, and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds. But the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and reared; and it grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own morsel, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter.’”1189 You know the rest of that awful story, the story which angered the unsuspecting David so, about the rich man slaughtering the poor man’s only lamb rather than one of his own flock to serve the visiting traveler.1190 What a curious people the Israelites were! They could tell such a story about their cherished king: righteousness, one sees, is no respecter of persons. And notice that Nathan could expect David to respond as he did: we can see here a kind

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of natural justice being invoked, independent of explicit divine rule or particular revelation. (The story told by Nathan, I should note, was used by Mr. Strauss as one of the epigraphical quotations for his book, Natural Right and History.1191) Thus, we see the people of the Bible as self-critical: righteousness is reaffirmed, and such righteousness is one of the great contributions of the Jews to the West and indeed to the world; it provides in a popular form what philosophy can refine and ratify, but which philosophy cannot be reasonably expected to teach anywhere to multitudes.1192 We see here a standard of justice by which laws and customs can be judged or devised: the conventional is always subject to such judgment, however useful or long-established it might be. And for such judgment the wisdom and understanding spoken of in Deuteronomy seems vital. Do not the Arabic-speaking people, because of their craving for honor, depend upon world opinion? If so, should not world opinion consider shameful any desire to liquidate what has been nourished, with great sacrifice, in modern Israel? Should we not say, again and again and again, that it is really very little that Israel wants and needs and that, insofar as it has taken that little from another people, it is not without an ancient, sincerely held, and hence plausible claim—and in circumstances in which that other great people is still left with tremendous resources in land and wealth in the same part of the world? Once this is acknowledged, compensation and resettlement of obviously desperate Palestinian refugees can be much more readily effected.1193 “The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds. But the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb.” 1194

IX But, it should at once be added, the ewe lamb should not be fashioned into a golden calf.1195 Or, put another way, there is for Israel the danger of success as well as the danger of failure: for in its success, it can try to become like other nations—and thus forfeit the specialness which does make it particularly worthy of worldwide respect and support. And, I repeat, that specialness does seem to depend ultimately upon its rootedness in the Bible of its fathers.1196 Am I being unfair? Do I ask too much? I can only reply that, as you know, it has never been easy being a Chosen People. Jews should take care, in any event, not to turn the State of Israel itself into an object of worship. The more powerful and self-sufficient a community is, the more like a nation it is—or, put another way, the weak and the persecuted usually have more respect for justice, if only because they need it most. Or rather, they realize they do need it—whereas the powerful, who may sometimes need justice even more, are less likely to be moved by it. Or so it can seem.

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X What should we, as Americans, do? What is it good for us to do with respect to the Middle East? First and perhaps foremost in these perilous times [1974], we should listen carefully to what the Israelis say. We should help them as much as we humanely can, preferably without insisting that Israel also dedicate itself to the Cold War. And if the worst comes to view—and this is possible in the decades ahead—we should provide a haven in this country to those Jews who do not believe it prudent to remain in the Middle East. We have, as a people, sacrificed a good deal of our moral capital, accumulated the past two hundred years, in our Vietnamese effort.1197 This makes it harder than it should be to marshal world opinion on the side of a fair settlement in the Middle East. We can, of course, still use there our tremendous power and influence—and, if used the right way, our own moral stature can begin to be restored both at home and abroad. We should recognize, as we try to rejuvenate our own community, that the Vietnamese involvement was well-intentioned so far as the American people were concerned—well-intentioned but lamentably ill-conceived. That is, it was generally believed when we got into that war that American sacrifices in Indochina were necessary contributions to the cause of freedom and self-government worldwide. I did not think so at the time, nor do I think so now. But now that we have extricated ourselves from that dreadful mistake, are we not obliged to emphasize what can be said on behalf of American intentions with respect to Indochina? That is, are we not obliged to do what we can to restore the faith of our people, especially among the young, in our institutions and in the aspirations which those institutions both serve and help define? Here, too, Israel can be instructive. Permit me to close, therefore, with a quotation from the old friend to whose memory I consider this talk to be dedicated. Rabbi Winograd could write well before the demoralization (we can hope, the temporary and perhaps even sobering demoralization) of October 1973: Israel does not seem to be suffering from the malaise and disintegration which has afflicted the West for the past twenty years. There does not seem to be a significant generation gap. The youth have a sense of hope and trust in the future. . . . The mood here among the young reminds me of the best days of the civil rights movement [in the United States]. They believe in the past, too, and unlike many of America’s young people who tend to view historical persons and events with cynicism and disdain, the youth believe and trust in the founders of the nation.1198

Of course, the overriding question remains: In these dubiously enlightened times, whom should young Jews be taught to revere, and how, as the true founder of their nation?1199

Epilogue

We were forcibly reminded of one of the problems of religion for the political order by the murderous assaults, under color of faith, upon the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. The dark side of various religions that we know should be exposed for correction if not even for demolition, even as their bright side should be drawn upon and reinforced. Consider, for example, the counsel offered in this “Letter to the Editor” I prepared in September 2001: Among the innocent victims of the monstrous assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are the multitudes of decent Muslims worldwide who must endure the shame, for years to come, of the shocking abuse of American hospitality by their demented co-religionists, the kind of hospitality that Islam and its Prophet have always cherished. Is it not the duty of prudent Muslims everywhere to remind their peoples of what is truly noble in their great tradition?1200

Students of religion and of political philosophy should be reminded from time to time of the monstrosities that can be produced when passions (not least, religious passions) are not moderated by the dictates of prudence. Here, as elsewhere, a respectful study of the religious heritage of various peoples, and especially of the proper relation between Jerusalem and Athens, can provide salutary guidance.

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Appendix A

European Jews, Their “Christian” Neighbors, and the Holocaust (2000)*

Anastaplo: We were beginning to talk about your trip [in July 1944] from Lithuania to Germany. You had been to Germany before, as a child. Brudno: Yes. A: And I think you told me once about visiting Koenigsburg. B: Koenigsburg, yes. A: And how impressed you were with the railroad station. B: Oh yes, oh yes. A: And with going up to—

* Sources: This is the second conversation (March 30, 2000) in a six-hundred-page transcript of thirteen recorded conversations between George Anastaplo (A) and Simcha Brudno (B), Simply Unbelievable: Conversations with a Holocaust Survivor. The first such conversation (March 23, 2000) has been published in George Anastaplo, Reflections on Life, Death, and the Constitution (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2009), 251–78. See also appendix L in this book. The third such conversation (May 4, 2000) is to be included both in my article on Abraham Lincoln in the Oklahoma City University Law Review and (in a translation by Manuel Vela Rodriguez) published in a Spanish book (with the title Simplemente Increible: Conversaciones Con Un Superviente del Holocausto). The tapes of these thirteen conversations were transcribed by Adam Reinherz, who was then a student at the Loyola University Chicago School of Law. The current availability of these conversations in print has very much depended on both his diligence and his knowledge of Jewish things. Mr. Reinherz, as a research assistant, has been invaluable as well in preparing the manuscript of this Christian Heritage volume for publication. (See also the epigraph for appendix M in this book.) Simcha Brudno (1924-2006), who eventually became a recognized mathematician, lived in Siauliai, Lithuania, until he was deported to Dachau, Germany, in 1944. After the war he lived in Israel before settling in the United States. See, on the Brudno-Anastaplo encounter, “The Holocaust and the Divine Ordering of Human Things,” in George Anastaplo, The Bible: Respectful Readings (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2008), 319–25. The Second World War “officially” began, in Europe, with the German invasion of Poland in September 1939. Thereafter Russia occupied the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania). Germany invaded Russia in June 1941, at which time the German occupation of the Baltic States began. That occupation continued until the German retreat from Russia in 1944, at which time the Russians returned to the Baltic States for decades. (The spellings used in this transcript of the names of persons and places in Lithuania could not always be confirmed.)

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B: —the bridges. A: Now that time was— B: When I was a small child, 1930. A: And your second trip? B: My second trip was 1944. A: And you were at that time nineteen years old? B: No, in 1944 I was twenty. A: You were twenty already? B: Yes. A: Would you just start again at the beginning of the trip. You were told back in your home town [Siauliai, Lithuania], in the ghetto where you were living then, that you were to be part of a group that would walk out to the place where— B: This was the last group, you see. I will start from the end. A: Yes. B: So I got an offer I couldn’t refuse, to go with a free ticket to Germany. So I took it. We are in the ghetto. The fact that we have to go to Germany I found out the 8th of July. And now we have about two weeks—twelve days—till the 20th. A: They told you two weeks in advance that you were going to leave, roughly? B: Yes. My hometown had also branch camps, little camps around it. So all the people from the branch camps have also been brought into the ghetto, to concentrate them, you know, for the big event. A: The big event means the trip? B: The trip. A: Now, what proportion of the people then living there were going to be on the trip? B: All of them. A: All the remaining Jews in the ghetto? B: Yes. A: How many Jews were left by then in the ghetto, roughly? B: I don’t know. I told you we were about four thousand Jews. So it must be the same amount. Of course, they cannot go in one trip. There are several trips. A: But I thought that by this time the children, the sick, and the elderly had been gotten rid of? B: Subtract six hundred people. A: All right. B: So we are in the ghetto and then all the Jews from the surrounding branches were brought over. Now we are a concentration camp. A: Yes. B: It turns out in these branches that there had been brought over Jewish people from all over. It is not only my hometown. So, of course, this is a great occa-

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sion for me to talk with people. I found a Hungarian woman. This Hungarian woman had already been in Auschwitz. A: You said that she had been there, this woman you talked with? B: Yes. A: But then how come she was in Lithuania? B: What do you think a camp like Auschwitz was—an extermination camp, right? A: Well, not altogether. B: Thank you. So there were people who had to go to work, who were able to work. They were sorted out to work and were sent all over. A: Even back to Lithuania? B: Not back; forward to Lithuania. They had never been to Lithuania. They had been in Hungary. B: They were sent as far away as Lithuania and Latvia. A: From Auschwitz? B: Yes. A: How far would that have been? B: I don’t know. That we could look up. A: Right. You had two weeks before you were actually put on the train? B: Yes. A: And you talked with this lady? B: I talked with three girls. Two of the girls’ names were Gerre and the third girl was Girstel. The original family name of all three was Girstel, but two of them had been already assimilated Hungarians, and the third still had a Jewish name. They told me that children never had a chance if they went to Auschwitz: that’s it! And they were women whose head had already been shaven in Auschwitz. So each one of them tried to go with a hat, not to show their shaven head. They were quite intelligent girls, so I liked to talk with them. A: How old were they? B: My age. The younger girl was younger, but much younger people didn’t exist, basically. Younger than fourteen didn’t exist, so the younger girl must have been fifteen, sixteen. This is the first inkling that I got about such a thing, that horrible place in Poland. A: Now, you got an inkling that people were being killed there? B: They said that there was no chance for children to survive. A: What did you understand they meant by that? B: They had been killed. Nobody used the word “been killed,” as you well know. A: They would not use it? B: No “been killed.” A: Then what would they say? How would they describe it? B: They didn’t describe it. They said, “No chance they were alive.” That’s all.

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A: I see. And now, during these two weeks you were also talking with— B: I was talking with older people. A: Other Jews? B: Yes, yes. A: Most of the people you talked with were obviously people from your own— B: —from my hometown. A: What did they believe was going to happen? B: They believed that we were going to be taken to Germany and we would work exactly like we had worked in my hometown. A: The kind of work that you had been doing for a couple of years? B: Yes, like in the factory. We will work again in all kinds of places where you repair army property. A: So for two weeks, this is what speculation was about? B: That’s what the speculation was about. Some people tried to run away. A few people were successful. A: Now, “running away”: what does that mean? What did they do? B: It’s going under the barbed wire, which is not a big deal. A: And where would they try to go when they went under the barbed wire? B: Wherever anyone tried to go, wherever he wanted. A: Well, where do you think they tried to go? Where do you believe they were going when they left? B: If they had anywhere to go, they went. I had nowhere to go. Finish! A: What do you mean that “they had anywhere to go”—that they had somebody they knew somewhere? B: They had some Lithuanian friends or something and they had a chance. A: So one possibility was to go to Lithuanian friends, if they knew of any? B: Yes. A: Was there anything else that they talked of doing? B: Try somehow to run away to the forest. The forest was supposedly the place where you can run away and hide. And everybody knew that is a temporary thing: the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming. Many Jewish people tried to run away to their Lithuanian friends, and the Lithuanian friends brought them back. A: What do you mean by that? They would do what? They would go to the friends’ houses? B: And the friends took them and brought them back to the ghetto. A: Because? B: No need “because”! I give you the facts. A: Well, they must have given a reason why they were bringing them back, didn’t they? B: They didn’t give any reason: they were not ready to hide them, and that’s it.

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A: Did they insist upon bringing them back? B: They insisted upon bringing them back. A: They couldn’t have just gone someplace else? B: The facts are what I’m telling you, what I saw with my own eyes. A: That’s what I want to find out. B: They were brought back. And the amazing thing is that people didn’t even seem to take it seriously, ah, you know, smiling, etc., etc. To me it was a horrible scene. Here you run away to someone you trust, and they bring you back to the ghetto. A: But how would they bring them back? How could they bring them back? B: They walked with them. What else do you want? A: Well, by force? I am trying to imagine how it worked. B: Please. A: How did it happen? You leave the ghetto— B: Some of them brought back the Jews in this way. [Demonstrates] A: Oh, you mean arm in arm? B: Arm in arm, unbelievable, unbelievable. A: You mean they are escorting their friends to their next— B: Yes, it’s mindboggling what happened, but people were not really desperate. A: There was no general sense of desperation, you say? B: People were optimistic, I didn’t share their feeling. I gave up already. I decided this is the end, finish. A: For you personally? B: For all the ghetto. A: You thought that you yourself were finished? B: Yes, that I am going to be finished along with everybody else. A: So you saw these people being brought back. B: Yes, to me it looked like they had lost their lives. They should be desperate, nothing of the type. A: But you hadn’t run away yourself, while they had? B: I told you, I couldn’t. I told you that I went to our neighbors. I went to our neighbors and they were not ready to hide me. I had no other place to go, that’s final. A: And you weren’t going to try to go where the Russians were? B: Where were the Russians? A: That’s what I want to know. They’re coming soon, you say. B: They’re coming soon. A: How far away are the Russians? B: At this moment they are about one hundred kilometers to the east. A: One hundred kilometers? B: Yes.

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A: Now, you could have walked that? You were young and strong? B: If I am not turned in, God Almighty! A: That’s right. But if you were not turned in— B: If I am not turned in— A: —you could have walked to where the Russians were? B: You didn’t even have to walk, you had to wait for the Russians to come. But you had to have a place to wait. A: Either way, you could have done that? B: Okay, there were people who did it. A friend of mine did it. They were four boys and two girls, and they decided they will run for their lives. A: Right. B: They went out, and the first night they found some place to sleep over and everything was okay. Next day, that guy, Menkelov, I’ll even give you names— A: Yes. B: —he had gone to a Lithuanian school, not to a Jewish school, so he had Lithuanian friends. So a guy who had been together with him in the same grade recognized him. A: On the second day? B: On the second day. He recognized him, brought over police to catch them. All six started to run. Two boys and two girls got shot down. Two boys managed to run away into the woods. That’s a fact that I am telling you. A: So four of them were shot down? B: Yes. A: Were they killed? B: What else? A: I don’t know. They could have been wounded. So as far as you know they died? B: They died, yes. A: And two of them got into the woods? B: Two of them managed, just by sheer running, to go so deep into the woods that the people decided, “Hey it’s not worth chasing them.” A: Do you know of any others who ran away? B: I’m telling you only about those I know. Of course, there were others, too. This was the real situation. A: Was there any sense of what the odds were—if you run away or if you go on a train? Was there any sense of which was more dangerous? Both were dangerous, right? B: People are optimistic. A: I know, but which way was it thought— B: I would have run if I could. I didn’t. A: You said earlier you thought that you were finished when you were shipped out. That means 100 percent, right?

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B: That means 100 percent. A: Now what would have been your odds if you had run away? B: I would have been killed, like one of the four— A: Well, no. B: —because I cannot run that quick. A: Two out of three, right? Two thirds of them were killed? B: Yes. A: Isn’t that better than— B: If you want to look at it that way, okay. A: You are the mathematician, I’m not. You see what I am asking? B: You have to be strong, physically, and ready to run and be able to run. A: Was it a matter of chance that they were even spotted? B: A friend of his. A: Wasn’t it a matter of chance that he would run into a “friend”? B: Yes. A: So that was unlucky. It could have been that he— B: But most of the people were unlucky. A: Most people were unlucky when they tried these things? B: Yes, unless you had some particular place to go. A: Did you know anybody else who ran away, who tried to get away, and succeeded? B: I’m telling you about these two guys, that’s it. A: Anyone else? B: That I remember now? A: Yes. B: I will continue the story. In these two weeks many things were happening. So there’s a guy who tries every possible means to go out. He tries this, he tries that. Finally, one morning, these people go to the bakery to make bread for the ghetto, so he sneaked out with them. A: This is a bakery outside of the ghetto? B: There were no bakeries in the ghetto, there was nothing inside the ghetto. So he sneaked out with them. Got it? The story only begins. Meanwhile the first transport is sent already to Germany. A: The first contingent from your ghetto is already gone? B: Yes, they already went to Germany A: That was how long after the initial notice? B: I don’t know. A: They began taking people before the anticipated two weeks were up? B: Yes, of course. You cannot take four thousand at one time. This is a continuing process. During the two weeks there are several trainloads. A: I’m sorry, you were told sometime in July— B: The 8th of July precisely.

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A:—that they would be taking people out of the ghetto. B: That all of the ghetto is being evacuated to Germany. A: And that the evacuating would begin when? B: Who has to tell you anything? Nobody knew anything. A: What did they tell you? B: They didn’t tell anything. It was a rumor. A: Oh, you heard a rumor on the 8th of July that you were all going to be moved out of there? B: Yes. A: And how long after that did they begin actually moving people? B: I don’t know. A: Well— B: Several days. They had first to bring everybody from the surrounding camps. It took time and— A: So your friend went into the bakery that morning? B: Yes, and he escaped with his family. A: He went to where his family was? B: Yes. A: Where was his family? B: They were already with Lithuanians. A: Elsewhere? B: Yes. A: Obviously not in this area? B: Yes, in this area. A: I see. So he moved in with them? B: Please, let’s not generalize. “Lithuanians” is a general concept. There were Lithuanians who helped Jews and there were Lithuanians who did not. He had Lithuanians who helped him. A: He moved in where his family already was? B: Yes. A: How long did he stay there? B: After two weeks, the Russians came. A: I see. B: It was a matter of days. A: So all those people that were taken out of your ghetto, if they had stayed there another two weeks or three weeks, the Russians would have been there? Is that what you are telling me? B: Three days. A: You mean they just barely got out of there before the Russians came? B: Barely. Some of the German guards became prisoners of war under the Russians. Some of the German guards of this ghetto couldn’t escape and they became prisoners of war of the Russians. So you know how touch-and-go

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the situation was. Wait, wait. These two weeks were a long time. The foreign Jews from Hungary have already been transported. A: You mean the foreign Jews went first? B: More or less. Then there was a jail in the ghetto. There was a police force, there was also a jail. All the servicemen were basically Jewish people who knew German. One guy, who worked for the commandant, found a letter that all those that were in jail should be killed because they are criminals and they don’t want them in Germany. A: You mean the Germans had standards about whom they would take? B: Please, it’s all very serious business. So the Jewish people helping to run the jail decided, when there was the next transport, to take all of the jail and send them on the transport, straight from jail. This saved them from being killed. The commandant came and said, “Where are they?” He was told, “They have been taken away.” “You shouldn’t have sent them away.” “Well, you never told us.” A: I see. B: So those people don’t even know that this saved their lives. On the spot, they were protesting—why are they taken straight from jail and not let them even to say goodbye to their friends? But that saved their lives. A: Now, these were criminals, you say? B: I don’t know what you call them. A: What were they in jail for? They were not political prisoners? B: Maybe they tried to go through the barbed wire and were put in jail. All kind of things, all kind of little things. A: So two weeks have gone by. B: Two weeks are a real long time. In these two weeks I didn’t go to work. I was very desperate. When I was in my routine, I wasn’t able to think. These two weeks I don’t go out to work. I have to think. The situation is really bad and I try to figure out a way. I see absolutely nothing, and I look at the others. All of a sudden, some people from the factory who had tried to hide are being brought back to the ghetto. A: They had tried to hide where? B: In the factory. The factory was big. There were several people who did hide in the factory. A: Until the Russians came? B: Until the Russians came. So this guy had his wife, two children, and his sister. He knew exactly the factory, so they were hiding, but he had to go out to find food, and he was turned in. To be turned in was, in my opinion, like a death sentence. This family, of course, the wife and the two children, were later on sent away to be killed. And he— A: Wait, wait a minute, I’m sorry. He was caught when he went out to get food, right?

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B: So, of course, the whole family was caught. A: Why? B: Because they traced him down. What do you mean, “Why?” A: Oh, I see. So they found out where his family was. B: Yes, of course. So anyway, the net result was that the wife and the two children were taken away right away. A: You mean killed in Lithuania? B: No. A: Killed in a concentration camp? B: Yes. I will explain later to you. So for them it was a death sentence being caught. But he and his sister survived the war. A: Were they some of those put in jail? B: No. No. A: But they went on another train? B: Yes, they went. A: To a concentration camp? B: Yes. A: Now— B: Go ahead if you have a pertinent question. A: Did any of your friends come to you and say, “I have a plan for getting out of here. Come with me”? B: No, no, God forbid! There were people who said, “If you run, I will run with you.” They trusted me. But where could I run? A: Did they have a suggestion where to run? Which way? B: It doesn’t matter which way we ran, the situation is so desperate that it doesn’t matter. A: And you said that you would not? B: I didn’t say anything. I had no choice. If I had half a choice, I would do it. A: I’m sorry I don’t understand. Your friends came to you, and some of your younger friends, right? B: Yes, a younger guy, one precisely. A: Somebody your age— B: Yes. A: —says what to you? I mean, how does he put it? B: Let’s go through the barbed wire. The time to go through the barbed wire was in the middle of the night. You know, when the people, the guards, are more or less asleep. A: That’s right. B: Wait, the story only begins. A: And you said what, to him? B: I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have to say anything. A: Well, what did he do?

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B: He went, like all of us, to a concentration camp. A: He wouldn’t go by himself, is that it? B: He didn’t go by himself. I don’t know why, but he didn’t. A: I don’t quite understand why you didn’t take up his offer to go with you. B: Where should I go? I am trying to explain to you the desperate situation. Where should I go? A: Well, I guess— B: Besides, wait a minute, before you go further. I have my mother. A: All right, that begins— B: Enough, finish! I have my mother. A: And you didn’t want to leave her? B: Officially, I don’t want to leave her. A: What do you mean by “officially”? B: I don’t know. I was desperate enough. I don’t know. A: Well, what did your mother want you to do? B: My mother wanted to have me with her. What kind of question is that? My mother wanted to have me with her. A: What did your mother say about all this? Did she ever say to you, “Listen, son, you try to get out of here”? B: No, no, no! A: “You’re young, you can make it.” B: No! No! A: Why not? Why didn’t— B: The assumption was that we were going to work in Germany. So, we work here, we work in Germany. A: Wait a minute, you have already said that you thought that once you got on the train you were finished. B: I thought so, I thought so. A: But did you tell her that? B: No, no. I don’t have to tell it. These thoughts I keep to myself. The situation is desperate enough. I don’t have to add any black— A: All right. B: I’m just looking at the others, who are optimistic, and I think either I am crazy or they are. A: Now your mother was in good health? B: Yes. A: She was able to move around. B: Oh yes, oh yes. Now I am old, so you assume my mother was old. I and my mother, we were young. Wait, wait, the story only thickens. Then, slowly, slowly, the ghetto begins to be empty, so there is more food— A: As the ghetto is emptying there is more for those who are left behind? B: Yes.

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A: Because the same amount of food is being produced for the ghetto? B: They are baking bread every day. A: Are they reducing the bread rations for the ghetto? B: No, no. A: They are sending in the same amount of bread? B: The same amount of bread. A: So the amount of food for each person is improving. B: It’s improving. A: So if you are living in the ghetto in the last days, you are better off than you had been before? B: Yes, definitely, definitely. A: But you also knew that time was short? B: I knew it, beyond any shadow of doubt. I personally was completely desperate. I was just looking at what was happening and couldn’t believe my own eyes, that’s all. A: Well, you must have talked to other people who were desperate, too? B: No! A: Never? B: No! A: No other young man came up to you— B: No! A: —or young girl came up to you and said that this is desperate? B: No! No. Wait, the story only thickens. To you it looks so strange. So what things have I been doing during these days? Anyway, all of a sudden, one night, I think the 17th of July, I wake up, I hear the beats of planes flying. You know, from far away, the planes give beats, you know, it’s not a continuous— A: Yes. B: I hear the beats of planes. I wake up my mother. I say, “The Russians are coming. The Russians are coming to bomb us.” She says she doesn’t hear it. Okay, I think she’ll hear it sooner or later. A: Yes. B: Soon enough, they came more near, more near, more near, and the first bomb fell. A: On what? B: Who knows? I hear a bomb falling. A: In the town somewhere? B: Yes, of course, the town is going to be bombarded. The town. So I go out and of course I know my laws. I have to lie down on the ground; this is my best chance. And I go out and my mother and all the neighbors are laying there. And, of course, I curse the Russians. I say it’s not enough that we are in so much trouble, we still have to be bombed. And the rest of the Jews are

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shouting, “Shema Yisrael.” This is “Hear, O Israel,” you know? This is what people shout. A: Oh, you mean they are praying? B: They are praying, yes, “Shema Yisrael, Shema Yisrael.” And I am cursing the Russians. And my mother says, “Please don’t curse.” Supposedly, it’s not nice to curse them. But this is the way I felt at that time. [Laughter] A: I take it from your laughter that you see something strange and even funny about this? B: It is completely mixed up. Wait, wait, wait. The story only thickens. A: Now the bombing is going on, right? B: This is what I want to tell you about the bombing. I don’t know if you have ever been bombed. A: No. B: The usual feeling is that every bomb is aimed at you. You hear the plane diving and the feeling is that it dives towards you. You hear the shaking of the bomb, pshhh, you know? A: Yes. B: But when you hear the explosion, it’s okay, it didn’t hit you. A: If you can hear it, you are okay? B: If you hear the explosion, it’s okay. So I am cursing, cursing, and all the time I know that it’s psychology, because everybody feels that way. I know it’s psychology. Then, I hear a diving in the air. I hear a bomb screeching, and a bomb hits very near, and I am covered with dirt. So it’s not a joke. A: What are they trying to hit? B: They are bombing the city. A: But what in the city? B: Everything, for God’s sake! Everything, God Almighty! You say you have been in the Air Corps. Didn’t the Air Corps bomb cities? A: I’m just trying to learn what it was that they were trying to bomb. B: Everything. A: Did you ever form any opinion as to what they were trying to do there? B: Yes. A: What? B: The army had to march in. They didn’t want Lithuanian snipers. They wanted the population of my city to leave town. A: So they were trying to get people to leave the city? B: Yes, and they bombarded mercilessly. A: And did people leave? B: And how! And how! A: The Lithuanians? B: Yes.

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A: So the Russians were successful in that? B: Of course, they were successful. A: Did the Germans leave, too? B: Wait, wait, wait. For the Germans everything is according to plan. A: Right. B: The ghetto was alongside the jail. The jailbirds used the opportunity of the bombing. They jumped over the wall of the jail and they found themselves in the ghetto—from one jail into another jail. [Chuckling] But they are daring and brave and there is nothing to lose. So they run. There is a German guard and he is holding his gun, not to let them through. A bomb comes and kills the guard. Sheer, pure coincidence; sheer, pure coincidence. A: Right. B: So, of course, all these run away, and some Jews run with them. A: Now the jailed people were Jews, or were they— B: Lithuanians. A: I see. B: So they all run away. A: Some Jews run with them? B: Towards a lake. A: And what are they going to do when they get to the lake? B: Along the lake you go farther in the fields. You go farther, farther. You run— A: Out of the ghetto? B: Not out of the ghetto, out of the city. A: Out of the city? B: Yes, everybody who has a little amount of mind knows it’s not the time to be in the city. A: Well, why didn’t you run with them? B: Don’t ask questions. I am giving you the facts. A: But why didn’t you? You must have a fact as to why you didn’t run then. B: I didn’t even know they were running. I didn’t even know. A: So you didn’t see them running? B: I see them running but I didn’t know which direction, what their aim is, if they know something. I just thought how pitiful it was of them that they dived from the jail into the ghetto. A: You thought it at that time? B: Yes, pity. They thought they are already free, and they are in the ghetto. A: Yes. B: And that the German guard got killed is a sheer, pure coincidence. But wait, here one girl is shot. A: By whom?

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B: By the guards. She tries to run away and I am the one who carries her to the hospital. You have to do now what can be done. I run and take her to the hospital. And the bombing is serious and then came morning and I saw the hole that this bomb made that covered my— A: That covered you with dirt, yes? B: When I saw the hole, all my daring and all my bravery left me like nothing. It was like a two-story house, a hole, you know, in the ground. So I knew this game is for real, it’s not jokes. A: Yes. B: All my daring and all my bravery left me. So during the day people start digging ditches. The first night we had had nothing. A: Ditches for? B: Against bombing. The first day, I think altogether eight people got killed in the ghetto. A: Now, there are no basements in any of these houses, right? B: I don’t know. No, not that I remember. A: So you couldn’t go into a basement, or you wouldn’t want to? B: I don’t know. Nobody thought about it. In my house there was no basement. A: But they did dig ditches during the day? B: Oh, during the day even I dug a ditch. So the second night there was again bombing and nobody got killed. The ditches were effective. A: Were you in a ditch yourself? B: Yes. A: And your mother too? B: Yes. A: How long were you in the ditch? B: What do you mean? As long as the bombing was going on. A: And how long was that? B: Hours. A: How many planes would there be? Do you have any idea? B: Who knows? A: One or two? B: No! No! A: One hundred? B: No, no. I bet a whole squadron of planes. A: All right. B: Then, the first day after the bombing, the people, a little reality starts to enter their mind. They don’t want to be bombed. They are ready to go to Germany now with their own free will. A: Why is that? B: To run away from the bombs.

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A: Unless you ran in the direction, where the Russians were—then you would be safe? B: No, no, no. When you are bombed, all you think is to run away from the place that is being bombed. A: That’s right, but there were two ways you could run. B: There were no “two ways.” A: You could run towards Germany or away from Germany. B: No! The Germans are offering a way to go. So we take their offer. It looks like that here we would be bombed for certain, and going to Germany we don’t know what is going to happen. So public opinion changed completely, to go to Germany. A: Because of the bombing? B: Yes. Two nights they bombed. The second night, I am telling you— A: So the next morning they said to themselves, “It’s better to go to Germany than to stay here for more of this.” Is that it? B: Right, right. A: And did you agree? B: Please, I decided the game is up. A: But did you agree that it is up faster one way than the other? B: I didn’t want to be bombed. That much is clear. I don’t want to be bombed till this day. I don’t like this little excitement. But we were already cut off from Germany, the railway was already in the hands of the Russians, I couldn’t know it then. Incidentally, after the first day I am standing with a guy, and we try to decide if the Russians are far away or not. Several bombs seemed to hit the factory, so we decided they are far away. If they were nearby they would not hit the factory because they needed the factory. As it is, the factory had not been bombed—neither by the Russians nor by the Germans, and it worked through all the years—but part of it had been mined by the Germans and disappeared. So we’ll have to walk, we’ll have to walk. We are told we should put all of our things in sacks that will be picked up. A: Are you in the last party from the ghetto? B: I am in the last party. A: Now why were you among the last out of the ghetto? B: Because, the locals had definitely a preference. A: Who made the choice as to who left when? B: The Jewish representatives. You mean the leaders of the Jewish— B: The leaders, yes. A: Now, two of the Jewish leaders are gone by this time. B: So there took over a guy that was married with a non-Jewish. I told you this already. A: Right. B: So he’s now the boss.

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A: By himself? B: By himself. A: What’s his name? B: Parize. A: Now he’s the boss and he decides who goes. Was it the opinion of the Jews, including Parize, that the longer you could stay there, the— B: Wait, wait, wait, wait, it’s very important. So people tried to negotiate with Parize to take a chance with the Russians. Parize tried to negotiate with the SS, with the Germans. It so happens, one guy had a gun. A: “One guy”? One Jew? B: Yes, he had a gun hidden. And Parize found the gun. I think somebody told him. The gun was oiled. Parize said “Ha ha, I have no chance. If I wait for the Russians I will be killed. Obviously we all go.” A: Now why did he think he’d be killed if he waited for the Russians? B: Don’t ask me. That was his opinion. A: Well, I mean, killed by whom? B: By the Russians. A: He thought the Russians would kill him. B: Yes. A: Did many of the other Jews believe that, that they would be killed by the Russians if— B: No, no, no, no, he was the head and he knew what to expect. He knew what he had done. Anyway, the story doesn’t end here because he convinced the Germans that he was a German, so he did not go to a concentration camp. The other way around: he stole a lot of things that belonged to the Jews and took them away. A: To? B: To Germany? In Germany he was accepted like a German. A: Because of his wife? B: Because he said he was in the First World War. Anyway, during the journey, he took off his star. His second in command, Mr. Burgond, also wanted to take off his star, and Parize said, “No, no, no, you have to wear the star.” So this Parize just misled us as to what was necessary and we were ready to be misled after the bombings. So now, because there are no railway carriages, we have to walk about twenty kilometers to where there is still rail connection with Germany. So we walk. A: Including Mr. Parize? B: Yes. A: Everybody walked? B: Everybody walked. The German guards also walked. A: So you all walked twenty kilometers, you say? B: Yes.

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A: And were you the last of the ghetto? B: Yes. A: How do you know you were the last? B: What do you mean, How do I know? A: You knew enough about what was in the ghetto, to know that you were the last of them? B: We were the last contingent. A: Now as you were leaving, what was happening in the ghetto? Were Lithuanians coming in? B: No, no, no, no. The Germans are very orderly. A: The Germans are still in control of— B: Of course, in control. A: So as you left, you left the Germans behind— B: Yes. A: —in control of the ghetto? B: Yes. I don’t want to lie to you. We left them with several Jews. A: Who were the Jews that were left? To do what? B: To do the cooking and the washing. Some Jews were left in the ghetto. A: The Germans kept those to take care of them? B: These Jews were completely disconnected and they had to be evacuated to Riga because there was no way they could be evacuated to Germany. A: Why? B: Because the railroads were cut off. A: When were they disconnected? B: After we left the railroads were completely disconnected. A: Now, how do you know what happened to those Jews? B: Because I met them later in concentration camp, some of them. They had been sent to Riga and again there was a selection. Those who were good to work and— A: —were sent to where you were? B: And they were sent to the same camp. Several days later they came. A: So as you are leaving, you know that you are the last contingent of Jews? B: Yes. A: And you know that the others have gone, of course, to the same place you are going? B: Yes. A: You expect that they will all go to the same place? B: Yes. A: You are walking twenty kilometers. Your mother is with you? B: Yes. A: She’s walking the twenty.

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B: Of course, she’s walking. A: And how old was she then? B: I figured out she must have been fifty-two or fifty-three. A: In good health? B: Obviously. She has been sorted out in the camp to work and not to die. A: So she must have been thought of as being good enough— B: And they sorted people naked so it was not how you pretend to be. They looked at the body: are you capable or not? A: I see. B: So wait; don’t jump the story. So we are coming and like I told you, in the middle of the night, people had to relieve themselves. A: Yes. B: So we are allowed. People who are squeamish said that men and women should not relieve themselves together. At that moment it didn’t matter. A: They wouldn’t let men and women go to different sides? B: No! No! No! A: Did they try to go separately? B: No! I mean this, the sadism was on the surface. They didn’t have to impress us, nothing. A: The sadism of the Germans? B: Yes. A: Who were they, the people in charge of you? Was it the guards that had been over at the ghetto, or were these different people in charge? B: The guards were the same guards. A: The same guards? B: Yes. Santa is going to bring special guards for us? A: And these are all Germans? B: Germans, yes. A: They are not Lithuanians? B: No. All Germans. A: German Germans? B: German. I don’t know, maybe Germans from other countries that came over to Germany. A: But they are not Lithuanian Germans? B: No, no. The Lithuanian Germans were finished, ethnic cleansing. A: What do you mean? They have been shipped out? B: Under the Russians, that’s what I tried to tell you. A: So the Lithuanian Germans have been taken care of by the Russians? B: By Hitler, God Almighty. This is what I want to tell you all the time and you don’t listen. A: I’m sorry. I had a—

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B: There was an agreement between Germany and Russia. A: You said “taken care of by the Russians,” but you mean they were taken care of because of the agreement with the Russians? B: The agreement— A: —with the Germans, and Hitler took them out, back to Germany? B: Wait, it’s very important, another detail: it was officially an exchange of populations. A: Right. B: Namely, Lithuanians in Germany could say that they wanted to go back to Lithuania. A: Lithuanians in Germany? B: Because part of Lithuania has been occupied. And guys who wanted to avoid being drafted in the German army of course asked to be written down as Lithuanians. And I know personally a guy that came with this transfer of population. Everything looked very nice, on the level, this population exchange. A: How long did this trip by foot take? B: By foot it was one night. A: You slept on the road? B: No, we didn’t sleep on the road. It was still light when we left and then we walked, walked, and around midnight we got there. Twenty kilometers is not the end of the world. A: I know, but that makes it even more puzzling. Twenty kilometers is not very far— B: Not very far. A: —and how many more than twenty kilometers were the Russians? B: Wait, wait, before you jump. The Russians, already during the last bombing, dropped parachutists. A: Into? B: Into the town. A: Into your town? B: Yes. A: While you were there? B: Yes. A: You saw the parachutes? B: No, but I saw the light flares. When they bombed, they didn’t bomb in the dark. They put in a tremendous amount of light flares. So maybe some of the light flares were on parachutists. A: And what were the parachutists doing? B: They were to conquer the city. What kind of question is that? A: I don’t know what they were doing. Were they there to— B: I don’t know, please, because I don’t know. A: But you do know that they dropped them?

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B: Some parachutists were dropped. A: But the Germans are still in control of the city? B: The Germans are still in control of the city. It didn’t make sense then to me, not only now. A: But they’re still facts? B: The facts are facts. I was watching, my eyes were open. A: So you took the twenty-kilometer trip? B: Yes. A: It took all night? B: No. A: Much of the night? B: No, at the end of the night we were sleeping over there. A: At the town, at the junction? B: Yes. A: Was the train waiting for you? B: No, no. In the morning some railway carriages came with the locomotive. A: Yes. B: We had been given good food, boxes of good meat, and good bread. A: Then you were taken onto the cars? B: We were taken onto the cars. Families are still together. Twenty people in a car. A: Very carefully, twenty people to a car? B: Yes. A: Why twenty? B: Why are you asking me? I give you the facts. A: Well, no, let me ask you this. Why didn’t they have forty to a car? B: Because they still wanted to impress us that this is a civilian movement, that it is all okay. A: So you load up the train. B: Yes, and the train starts moving. A: Does it take everybody? B: Yes, of course. A: Why do you say “of course”? B: Yes, everybody. A: There’s enough space in the train for all of them? B: Yes. I’ll give you another thing. All of a sudden they brought water in the encampment where we are. Everybody wants to get their water. I saw the German guard shooting in the air. A: Shooting what? B: Just one shot in the air. And all of a sudden, all of these people run away, and I thought, if they want water they want water. So there is one shot in the air. Don’t they see that it is a shot in the air and it means nothing? They didn’t.

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A: How many German guards were there? B: Very few. A: How many? B: I don’t know. A: Well, one hundred? B: Less, definitely less. A: How many Jews were there? B: I don’t know. A: Do you have any idea how many people walked with you that night? B: Now I don’t remember; then I knew. Definitely in the hundreds, definitely. A: Hundreds? B: Oh yes, definitely. A: And how many Germans were there? B: I don’t know, as many Germans as were guarding us. A: I know, but how many would that have been? B: Not in the hundreds, definitely not. Assuming one German for twenty persons is quite fair. In reality, if we had decided, we could have overpowered them, even though the guards had rifles. A: You could have overpowered them? B: Oh yes, because we were so many more. And it was in the middle of the night. A: Yes. B: And we could have run away as we were walking through the woods. A: Yes. B: We could walk away. In reality, that was a chance. A: If you had done that, if some contingent of you had said, “We can overpower the guards right here—” B: Yes. A: —you and some other young men— B: Yes. A: —you could have overpowered them, right? B: Oh, yes. A: And you were right next to the woods? B: No, we were walking through the woods. A: Walking through the woods? B: Yes, no problem to run away through the woods. A: Which is where other people were hiding, too, right? In the woods, some people were hiding in the woods? B: There were other woods where some were hiding. A: You, too, could have hidden there for a day or two? B: Oh, yes. A: But there was no thought of acting thus, even though you could overcome the guards, there was no serious—

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B: Nobody thought about it. A: Because? B: Don’t ask me why because I give you the facts. A: Why didn’t you try to get it done? You must have had some notion why it was not a good idea. B: I didn’t think that I had a chance. A: That’s what I mean. So you didn’t think that it would work. Could you have gotten away for a bit? B: I did have the thought, but I didn’t think I had a chance, because I think these things should be organized. If one guy attacks, he has not much of a chance. A: But there was nobody organizing it? B: No! No! Forget it. Everybody was running away from the bombing. A: No leaders in the community— B: No, no. Everybody thought only about running away from the bombing. That was the general feeling, we are not being bombed anymore. Where we worked, we could see how my hometown was bombed. A: Did you hear about other communities like yours, when you were in the camp? B: There was one of the branch camps that the guys tried to run away and they were quite successful, but at one point they were caught. Some of them ran away and have survived. A: Some of them actually organized an escape? B: Yes, yes. A: And some of them escaped? B: Yes. A: Successfully got away? B: Yes. A: Now what made the difference, do you think? Why did they do it? Did you ever find out? Did you, when you talked to people, ever figure out why some were able to do it? B: In their place they could do it. That’s it. No argument. A: So you’re on the train now. How long did you wait for the train to come? B: Wait! Please, it’s the 20th of July. Does that ring a bell? A: Yes, they are trying to get rid of Hitler back in Germany. B: That’s it, and we are in this place before we are put on the train and we hear on the radio— A: On the German radio? B: The German guards are lost. Because if, on the day I left for a concentration camp, the attack on Hitler had succeeded, I would never have been in a concentration camp. A: What did you hear? B: Nothing, I didn’t hear anything. Everything was rumors. A: Wait a minute, you just said that you heard something. What did you hear?

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B: I don’t remember. I know only that the German guards were lost. A: By “lost” you mean what? B: They didn’t know what to do. I know that the Jews said that there is an attack on Hitler and he is dead. That was the rumor. A: That’s what the Jews thought? B: Yes. But they got it from the Germans. All the time this information goes freely. A: So the rumor began spreading. When did it begin spreading? B: That day when it happened. A: Morning or afternoon? B: When it happened. A: I’m sorry— B: The German radio said it on the spot. A: You have to be patient with me, because— B: No, I will not be patient. A: —because I was not there. You got there at— B: At midnight. A: —you got where—what do you want to call it? B: It’s called Pavanche. A: Okay. Pavanche’s the place where you got on the train, right? B: Yes. A: Now you got there about midnight? B: Yes. A: You settled down on the ground? B: We settled down on the ground, some people. A: It’s warm. B: Some people even shine their shoes. I mean, like peacetime. A: Some people shined their shoes? B: Yes. A: Dressed up? B: Yes. A: Fixed themselves up a little bit? B: Yes. A: Waiting for the morning? B: In the morning this is what happens, when you get up to start the day. A: They got up and they started preparing for the day, like they were going on a trip? B: Yes. A: And the train comes in, at what time? B: I don’t know. A: Was it the next day? B: No, no, the same day, but in the afternoon.

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A: But long before that— B: Long before that there is a rumor. A: You heard a rumor? B: Yes, that Hitler is dead. A: Why would there be a morning rumor? B: Because that’s when it happened. The world is connected. The report came straight from Berlin. A: And the initial report out of Berlin was— B: —that he is dead— A: —that he had been killed? B: Yes. A: I’m surprised that the attack was very early in the morning in Germany. B: I don’t know. A: Because you wouldn’t ordinarily have a meeting early in the morning. B: Maybe it was the evening before, and in the morning the radio reported it. A: No, it was the 20th. We know it was the 20th. B: The 20th? A: Yes. And this is the 20th? B: It is the 20th. A: Some way or other, the message, the rumor gets to you people. B: Right away. A: Right away? B: Yes. A: The Germans are demoralized. B: They are not demoralized! A: Or uncertain about what to do? B: They are not. A: They are lost, you said earlier? B: In my opinion they are lost. But they don’t show anything. They got orders to take us, they will take us, if Hitler is dead or alive or anything. They don’t change. A: Well, you said they were lost. What do you mean by being lost? B: They are not happy. Let’s put it that way. A: I see. B: But wait a minute. I have to give you my innermost thought. My innermost thought is, maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not true. There were all kind of rumors all the time. What would I like it, to be true or not? I wanted it to be not true. Why? Because I hated the Germans at that stage with all my heart. There is not even one soldier on German soil at that time. A: What do you mean by “one soldier on German soil”? B: What Allied soldier— A: Oh, Allied soldier?

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B: Yes. I want Germany to be just crushed. A: And that would not happen unless Hitler is still alive? B: If he is dead, of course, there is peace and no problem. A: Yes. B: And Germany has not been occupied. A: That’s right. So? B: And they get away again, like in the First World War. I wanted the rumor to be wrong. And I decided that this is a rumor, it has nothing to do with reality. Then I make the decision. I know that if I am taken to concentration camp, I will have to pay a very high price, but to hell with it, the Germans will pay. [Chuckles] That was my innermost feeling. A: But you consider that kind of funny now, don’t you? B: No! No. A: Well, then, why are you laughing? B: Because it was completely unrealistic. Everything was completely unrealistic, but this is how I felt. A: You hoped that he was still alive so that Germany would continue the war? B: Yes, and they will be occupied. A: So the Allies would have to go all the way and occupy the country? B: Yes, yes. That’s revenge. A: You would get the revenge you wanted? B: Yes. A: How long did it take you to learn that he was alive? B: Nobody knows if he is dead or not. A: How long did it take you to learn that he was not dead? B: I didn’t believe that he was dead. A: How long was it before you learned what had happened? B: Nobody learned what happened that day. That day the Germans behaved exactly by order. We have to be transported, and all the other things don’t matter. A: When did you get on the train? B: I think in the afternoon, late in the afternoon. A: All of you got on by that time? B: Yes. A: There was nobody left behind? B: Nobody left. A: What happened to the German guards? B: They were together with us on the trains. A: Was there a guard in each car? B: Two. A: Two in each car?

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B: Yes. Again, just for the sake of truthfulness, I thought there was absolutely no problem in overpowering the two guys because they fell asleep and left their rifles standing. A: There would have been absolutely no problem overpowering them? B: Even to steal their rifles. A: And then jump out? B: And then jump out. The question is where to go. This is the whole tragedy. There was nowhere to go. Two guards and twenty people, the twenty people can overpower them. A: That’s right. B: The two guys are human beings, they fall asleep. How they ignored us as human beings boils me till this day. They didn’t even consider us dangerous. A: Because you weren’t? B: Because we weren’t. A: They were right? B: They were right, and this is what bugs me till this day. [Laughs] A: [Laughs] B: Don’t laugh. [Laughs] This bugs me till this day. A: [Still laughing] I’m laughing because you are laughing. B: It was too easy for the Germans. This is what I will swear till the last day of my life. Killing the Jews was too easy. That’s all. A: Because obviously, you all could have taken over the train. B: That I don’t know— A: Well, wait a minute— B: We could have taken over our carriage. I don’t know about the train. A: You’ve already told me that they were very methodical, that they put twenty passengers in each carriage? B: Yes. A: And two guards in each? B: Yes. A: So there’s no reason to believe the situation was not the same in every carriage? B: It must be so in every carriage. A: And yet nothing was done in any of the carriages? B: Nothing was done in any of the carriages. A: All of the people that got on were there when the train got to its destination? B: Right. A: How long did the trip take? B: Here is what I was going to tell you. We have been taken away from my hometown. We have been taken away up till Telshay. Then the locomotive

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disconnected us and went away. And we are now a trainload without a locomotive. A: The locomotive left you off somewhere? B: Yes. A: On the main line or off on the side? B: I don’t know. Anyway, the main line didn’t matter because there are no trains going anymore. And, of course, everyone is allowed to go down and relieve himself, out of the train. A: Well, they weren’t doing this in the car? B: In the car we had a special arrangement, but now we are standing. A: How long were you traveling in the car before you came to this place? B: This is one day, only one day. A: But the full day? B: And night, I think. A: So people were not leaving the car during the trip to relieve themselves? B: No, no. A: So you had some kind of toilet set up? B: We put bed sheets around and that was the place where people relieved themselves. A: So they would go in there? B: They would go in, do it, and it would be thrown out. A: And the guards also? B: No! The guards were free to do whatever they wanted. A: What did they do? B: Who cares? A: Did they make use of the facility? B: No! Definitely not! A: Well, why didn’t they? B: Why should they? A: They were there all day, what did they do? B: But they were free to leave the carriage and go wherever they wanted. A: Well, the carriage is moving all day? B: The carriage is stopped, and is standing in its place. A: I’m not talking about when you stopped. I’m talking about as you’re traveling all day. You’ve already told what happened as you were traveling. B: We didn’t travel continuously one day, never, not even one day did we travel continuously— A: Did you stay in the carriage all day? B: Yes, we Jews. A: The Jews did, but the guards could go in and out of the carriage? B: They could go. A: Sometimes there wouldn’t be any Germans there at all?

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B: No. One guard would go and the other would stay. A: And the guard didn’t know Yiddish? B: We spoke German to them. A: But among yourselves you could talk freely in Yiddish. B: But they understand Yiddish, the guards. They understand German, they understand Yiddish. No problem. A: No problem? B: They talk both ways. A: Did they understand Lithuanian? B: No. A: You all did know Lithuanian, didn’t you? B: Yes. A: You could talk among yourselves? B: Yes. A: Without any guards knowing what you were talking about? B: Definitely. A: Did you? B: No. A: Why? B: Don’t ask why. I give you the facts. Nobody even thought about resistance. A: Or even about talking to each other about what the situation was? B: Nothing, nothing. A: About what’s going to happen? B: We are going to work in factories in Germany. Very optimistic. A: Okay. So you are traveling all day and at night. Before you get to the stopping place, how long is the trip? B: I don’t know. A: Yes, you do know. B: I don’t. A: What time did you get to the stopping place? B: I don’t know. A: Well— B: Who cares? A: Was it overnight? B: We are leaving this place and we come, I think the same day in this place. A: Did you have any meal on the trip? B: They gave us food; we could decide ourselves whenever we want to eat. A: And there was no bombing during that trip? B: No! Now we are happy that we are not being bombed. A: You’ve gotten away from the Russians? B: Away from the Russians. A: And now you get to this place. You are still in Lithuania, obviously?

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B: We are in Lithuania. A: You stop. B: We stop. A: The locomotive leaves. B: The locomotive leaves. A: Where did it go? B: I don’t know. A: Why did it leave? B: Why are you asking me? The theory was that it went back to my hometown to bring more railway carriages for other purposes. I mean they are evacuating the city, the Germans. A: But the Jews are all gone? B: The Jews are all gone. They have to evacuate other things, too. A: So you are there for how long? B: We stayed there a day, I think. A: In the carriages or outside? B: In the carriages. They didn’t allow us outside; only for relieving ourselves, they let out several people and when these people came back, others went out. A: How far would you have to go to do that? B: I did it beneath the carriage. A: So you are there all day. Did they bring you some more food? B: No! The food was already given to us. A: Whatever you had in the beginning was all the food for the trip? B: Yes, that was all the food. A: There was no food served on board? B: No, no. A: How about water? B: They let us pick up water. A: At this place you stopped? B: At this place, yes. A: You stopped there all day? B: Yes. A: And the night? B: I don’t remember. A: By the way, by this time, have you heard any more about Hitler? B: Nothing. A: No more, nothing yet? B: Nothing. I never heard anything. So what is happening is that the front stopped. After the Russians conquered my hometown, the front stopped there. The Russians didn’t go any farther. A: You mean they came to the town? B: Their aim was to conquer the town.

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A: And they came? B: And they came. They conquered the town and didn’t move any more of— A: When did they take it? B: This is jumping ahead. When I came to concentration camp, I saw, in a newspaper, of the 23rd of July, written in German that my hometown had been evacuated according to plan. And I thought how right they are and how true it is. The German paper gave it. A: On the 23rd it was already in the German paper that they had evacuated? B: That they evacuated. A: And when did the Russians get there? B: I don’t know. I think the same day, but it’s not obvious because later I saw the Russians give a later date when they entered my hometown. So it may be the Germans left but there were still no Russians there. You know such things happen— A: So you make this stop on the way. How long were you there? B: I don’t know, I don’t remember. A: Well, a week? B: No, no, no, no. A: An hour? B: If three days later we are in concentration camps, it means the journey took at most five days, at least three days. I think the whole journey took five days. A: Did you stay the night at this town? B: Yes, we stayed the night. A: Where did you sleep? B: In the carriages. A: And the following morning, were people still fixing themselves up, shining their shoes and everything? B: No, no, no, we are already in the carriages, we are already closed in hermetically. A: So when they get up in the morning they don’t— B: They do whatever they can do, that’s all. Wait a minute. So we are in this Tersh. A: That’s a stopping place, right? B: That’s a stopping place. There is no locomotive. And here comes a story I heard only later. So I don’t know, should I tell you now or later? A: Tell me now. B: Later I heard a story that there was no locomotive. And we might have stayed there, who knows. So the Jewish leaders bribed a locomotive engineer with vodka. This is why I believe this is a true story. A: Where was the locomotive driver to be bribed? Where was he? B: Instead of going back and obeying the orders, they gave him a bribe and he stayed.

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A: Going back where? B: Going back to Shoulet or somewhere, I don’t know. A: To get more? B: To get more. A: They bribed him to stay there? B: To stay there and take us to Germany. A: If they hadn’t done that— B: I don’t know what would have happened but this is the story I heard later. A: What do you believe would have happened otherwise? B: I don’t know. I have absolutely no idea. I can’t even guess. A: Why? B: The front stopped. It’s not that the Russians are coming. A: Why did these Jewish leaders do that? B: They wanted to run away from the Russians. That was the general feeling. A: The leaders did that? B: Everyone wanted to run away from the Russians. A: You didn’t want to run away from the Russians, did you? Did you want to run away from the Russians? B: That’s a very good question. Up till this moment I never thought about it. I have to close my eyes and think. Of course, I would gladly fall into Russian hands, no doubt. But I have to think about it. A: So far as you remember now, you were willing to fall into the Russian hands if— B: And how! Also, just for the sake of truthfulness, I thought all the time in the ghetto we are sitting in a ghetto and doing nothing— A: Yes. B: —and waiting for Russian soldiers who get killed to liberate us. That was my thought. If we do nothing it’s not obvious that Russian soldiers would come and liberate us. A: You didn’t think that would be fair or what? B: I am giving you the thoughts that I had then. You cannot demand from others to come and liberate you if you are not ready also to make some effort. A: But you weren’t willing to put up some effort, yourself? B: That’s right. A: So you’re there, you’re waiting for the locomotive. The leaders, you hear later, bribed— B: Yes, bribed, with two bottles of vodka, and this is why I believe it because in Lithuania, money is money, but the true value is vodka. A: And these were Lithuanians? B: Lithuanians, yes. A: They were the drivers of the locomotive? B: Yes.

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A: And so instead of going back to your hometown, they stayed there. B: They stayed in order to take us up to the German border. A: That’s what I don’t understand. They bribed them— B: Yes. A: —from leaving? B: I don’t know how it happened. A: Why didn’t you leave immediately then with the locomotive? B: I think that the locomotive went back to my hometown to bring something and then they came back with something. A: And then they bribed them? B: And then they bribed them. A: Before they went back again, you mean? B: There was no place to go back, but they bribed them. My hometown was conquered the same day, the 23rd. A: Of July? B: Of July. A: So now you have a locomotive again? B: We have a locomotive which takes us to the German border. A: And you get there when? B: Wait! On the way we stop in some place to get water. A: For yourselves? B: For all the people in the train. A: For the passengers. B: Yes. And you know me, I am the one who volunteers always to go because I prefer always to be outside of the carriage than inside. A: Right. B: I go, I look, no chance of escape, nothing. So we brought water and the people were very jealous of those who bring the water because we could drink fresh water. The people inside don’t. All the people wanted to volunteer. A: How far would you have to go to get the water? B: To the next well. What’s the problem? A: Well, how far would that be? B: Nothing, twenty meters, thirty meters. We fill up all our water, and again a day goes through, and we come to the German border. Now the story changes completely. A: Wait a minute. When did you get to the German border? What day was it? B: I think that must have been the 23rd. A: Before you get to the German border, do you know whether anybody on the train tried to leave the train? B: Nobody tried. A: You don’t know of anybody? B: I know for certain that nobody tried.

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A: Well, how many cars were there? B: I don’t know. A: Well, five? B: I don’t know, please. Don’t squeeze me for what I don’t know. A: You do know— B: No. A: —something about that. How many cars were on that train? B: No, I don’t— A: Well, was it one car? B: No, no, no, it was a sizeable amount. A: [Laughs] How many cars do you believe there were? How many people do you think there were, passengers? B: We were hundreds of people and if only twenty people per car— A: Very good! B: —so we were hundreds, it must have been tens of carriages. A: Twenty, thirty carriages, right? B: Yes. A: Now as far as you know now, nobody escaped? B: Nobody escaped. A: Nobody tried to escape? B: Nobody tried to escape. A: How do you know that nobody tried to escape? B: I don’t. A: But then why do you believe nobody— B: Because nobody escaped. A: But how do you know nobody escaped? B: Because people would talk amongst themselves. A: I see. B: When they arrived at the camp— A: —you would have heard about it? B: Yes. A: So you didn’t hear anybody even talking about whether one should escape? B: Nobody said a word. A: Okay, you got to the German border. B: At the German border, the German guards come alive. Before they were scared, maybe, or something. A: You mean the guards in your carriage? B: Yes, all of a sudden they became alive, like they got a new lease on life. They feel very good. We come in the border town. It’s Memel. Have you heard about Memel? A: Memel I have heard about, yes.

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B: Big huge placards. All the wheels are hauling for their victory. I remember it very well. And here happened a thing that, because you know me, you know it’s true. A: Yes? B: We are getting coffee. A: Coffee? B: Coffee. A: Served to you? B: Served. A: By? B: By the Germans. Now, this was a place where the German army was all the time moving, so they had a coffee place. Whenever German soldiers were going through they got coffee, and they treated us like German soldiers. We got coffee. A: Now this would be a house where they make coffee? B: They gave us coffee in the railway carriage. I don’t know if it was a house or anything. I know we got coffee. A: Well, was there a restaurant there? B: No, forget about it. I don’t know anything. A: All you know is that they brought coffee to the carriages? B: Into the carriages. A: Who brought it? B: The Germans, or they took some Jews to carry for them. I don’t know. A: Were the soldiers bringing it or civilians? B: Civilians didn’t exist, we are completely under the soldiers. A: So there weren’t any German civilians who were being used? B: No. But we have been treated like German soldiers. This is what I want to underline. A: This is while you are still in Lithuania? B: Now we are in Germany. A: You have crossed the border. B: We crossed the border. It’s a completely different attitude. A: Let me ask you a silly question. Was there any identification required when you crossed the border? B: That is a silly question. A: I know it’s a silly question. B: That’s all. A: No identification was required? B: You’re talking like it’s peacetime and everything. A: That’s right. B: This is a trainload that is running from the Russians.

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A: Very good, but what I want to know is— B: I forgot to tell you. A: Yes? B: On the way we stopped before, still in Lithuania, we found another train, with Lithuanian refugees, who were also going to Germany. A: Lithuanians? B: Lithuanians. What’s more is that some of them knew some of us, and we even exchanged greetings. A: But you didn’t change places at all? B: [Laughs] A: You didn’t try to go into that train? B: Please, of course not. A: Were they also twenty per carriage? B: No! They were like human beings. A: How many would there have been? B: I don’t know. They had railway carriages like human beings. A: Oh, they had seats. B: Chairs and seats. A: You didn’t have seats at all, did you? B: No, no. A: Just an empty carriage, right? B: An empty carriage. A: A freight car? B: Yes. A: Did anybody try to hide in the Lithuanian carriage? B: No, we talked through the window. We said “Hi” only through the window. A: Did you see people you knew? B: Some people did. I didn’t see people that I knew. A: So you and they could look out the window? B: They looked out and called each other by name. A: It’s summer time. In summer time the windows are open? B: Yes. A: There was no air conditioning in those days? B: The people in the other train are standing outside; they are walking along the train. A: You could talk to them? B: Yes. And they are running from the Russians. A: To Germany? B: To Germany. A: These are Lithuanians? B: Lithuanians.

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A: Why were they running? B: Because they didn’t want to be under Russian occupation. A: Were these people political people or just ordinary people? B: The average Lithuanian does not want to be under Russian rule, to this day. A: Yes. But most Lithuanians did not leave Lithuania then? B: Most, no. A: So why were these people leaving? Who were these people? Were they special? You don’t know? B: No. A: So you saw them there? This was not at Memel, but earlier? B: Earlier, in Lithuania. And they even talked to us. A: A brief encounter? B: A brief encounter. A: And then you were all running on the same railroad line? B: Parallel tracks; yes, the same railroad. A: Two parallel lines and the two trains are both going the same direction? B: Yes, but we stopped our train, and their train stopped for some reason. A: So this route you’re taking had two sets of tracks? B: I don’t know if it had two sets of tracks all the way. A: But it did have two sets of tracks at this point? B: At this point, yes. A: So you visited with each other a little bit. B: We talked. A: You compared notes about— B: The head of the factory, the Lithuanian head of the factory, was one of them. A: You saw him? B: Yes. I forget his name. A: But you recognized him. Did he see you? B: He didn’t have to see me. He saw others that he knew. A: I see. B: It was like friends talking among themselves. A: Yes. But there was no sense about what the difference was going to be for each? B: There was a very good sense of that. We are in railway carriages like pigs and they are in railway carriages like human beings. A: And did they say anything about that? B: They didn’t say anything, just “Hi!” The whole atmosphere looked strange to me then and still does, like it’s a joyous occasion, like people are going to a picnic. A: On the part of?

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B: On both parts. It’s excitement, you know; trains are going— A: But there was no sense, on the part of the Lithuanians you talked to, of sympathy for your situation? B: No sense, no, nothing. A: No sense of, “Gee, this is awful, what they are doing to you”? B: No, no. A: Nothing like that? B: Nothing like that. That’s what bothers me more than anything— A: Yes. That’s why I want to— B: —that they did not have any pity for us. A: That is very intriguing. B: That’s the thing that bothers me. A: Yes. They saw what condition you were in? B: Yes. A: There was no question about that, right? B: If they see what kind of railway carriages we are in— A: That’s what I mean, they see how you are traveling. B: They see, and we wave to them, and they wave to us. A: And you recognized some of them? B: Yes. A: And yet, so far as you know, may they have been afraid to express pity? Do you think— B: They didn’t give a damn about us, it’s clear. A: They didn’t care at all about— B: Of course, they didn’t. And they were trying to save their own lives, their own hides. A: Even though some of them were old friends? B: “Old friends” is an exaggeration, but okay. A: Old acquaintances? B: Old acquaintances. A: Fellow workers? B: Yes, fellow workers, no doubt. A: Some of them had been working for your father? B: No, no, no, no. A: No, never? B: No. This factory had been a huge factory, it had about five departments, five factories, in effect. A: So they wouldn’t have been with your father? All right, so you are there, you see these people, you greet them. B: Yes, as if nothing was wrong. I feel that we are condemned to die, and they are saving their own lives. This was my own personal feeling.

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A: And at the same time that you feel you are condemned to die, and although you have several days during which to do it, you don’t jump out of the carriage to try to take your chances. B: To go where? [Stomps down] Where can I go? A: But you are quite clear in your mind that if you kept going on this trip you are going to get killed. B: That was my own personal opinion. A: But you don’t take any measures to get away from the trip. B: I’m fatalistic. Finished. A: Okay, you get to Memel. B: So I was surprised. A: Because they brought you coffee? B: Coffee, like we were German soldiers. A: And people drink the coffee? B: And how they drink. That was not true coffee. A: This is what the Germans were getting? B: This is what the Germans themselves were drinking. A: And did they bring you anything else? B: No. A: No doughnuts? B: No. A: No cookies? B: Please! A: No bread? B: Have pity. Have pity. A: No food? B: Of course not. We had been given food for the whole journey. A: On the 20th? B: Yes. We got food enough then. A: For the whole trip? B: Yes. A: And so you got to Memel. Let me ask again my silly question. When you got to the border— B: There is no border! What is a border? A border is what some people say is a border. A: Well, you already told me you got to the German border? B: What was Germany? A: Okay, you got there. B: Up till here it was Lithuania, then it was Germany. A: Now you are going to move into Germany? B: Yes. A: Did anybody come out to see who these people were that were—

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B: No, nobody gave a damn. What are you talking? A: —trying to make sure who these— B: Nothing. A: —who these people are? B: They knew exactly. One thing you have to give to the Germans, everything went according to plan. A: So you got there, you got to the border, you know you’re in Memel. B: Yes. A: How long do you stay there? B: Not long, but we stay to drink coffee. The train stops, we drink coffee like human beings. A: Where is the other train, with Lithuanians from your home town that you had met on your trip? B: I don’t know. A: You never saw them again? B: I never saw them again. A: A day or so earlier you had met them. You had exchanged greetings at a stop. B: That’s all. A: Then who left first? B: We did. A: So they’re behind you, probably? B: Yes, because for the Germans it was more important to have Jews than to let the Lithuanians have any— A: So the Jews have a certain priority? B: Don’t laugh, a priority. A: Good, now, you get to Memel. B: Yes. A: You get your coffee. B: I get my coffee. A: How much longer of a trip do you have? B: Not long. I told you that the whole ceremony from my hometown to the concentration camp was five days, that much I remember for certain. A: How long would you estimate the trip from Memel to the camp? Another night on the train? B: Yes, it must be another night on the train. A: The same conditions? They didn’t change when you got to Germany? B: But listen to what did change: the attitude of the guards. A: They got rejuvenated? B: Not only they got rejuvenated. They showed their true colors. Up till that moment they didn’t say anything. They had guarded us like they guard us in the ghetto. Now they said, “Everything is going to be taken away from you, so

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if anyone wants cigarettes, give me your watch for a package of cigarettes.” They didn’t grab. They didn’t loot. It was absolutely on the level. “Here is a package of cigarettes, give me your watch.” A: You mean they set up a market right there on the train? B: Not set up a market! Straight, that was the price. For a package of cigarettes, give them a watch. A: So, they set up such “exchanging” only after they got into Germany? B: Only after they got into Germany. All of a sudden they changed and they said everything is going to be taken away from us. Otherwise, why should a guy give a watch for a package of cigarettes? Now they opened their mouth. All the time on the trip they didn’t say it. A: They knew this all the time, of course? B: They knew it, yes, but they didn’t say anything. A: Now these are the guards you could have easily disarmed on the train. B: On the train, and in the ghetto. I think easily, because these were not young guys full of pep. These guards were older people, in their forties, and to me they looked old, old, old. A: Sure, these were people who couldn’t fight very well. So now you are riding on, the guards tell you this, and people did make the suggested exchanges, right? B: They were desperate for smoking, so what choice did they have? A: They believed them that— B: I don’t know if they believed them, but they had to smoke. These people had to smoke, so they gave their watches in order to get a package of cigarettes. A: And they had several packages with them. B: They had them, of course. They got them from the army. A: How many packages would a guard have, do you think? B: I don’t know how many cigarettes they got per week. The American army also got cigarettes. A: How many watches did they get on this trip? B: I watched only one such exchange. A: You suspect there were others? B: Definitely. People wanted to smoke. A: You were on the train overnight from Memel? B: From Memel we were on the train and in the morning we come to Koenigsberg. A: You are back in Koenigsberg now. B: This is a personal experience. A: I know, yes. B: I looked out and it hurts me now—the same beautiful city that I remembered as a child. And this is fourteen years later. A: Did you tell your mother that?

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B: No, my mother is asleep. Everybody is asleep. The guards are asleep. And their rifles are standing. Now I am a very shy or very personal person, so this was my opportunity to go to the door in peace. So I used the opportunity to relieve myself. A: Yes. B: The guards were asleep, the rifles were standing, there was absolutely no problem about running away. A: That’s right, you could have jumped out. B: And I relieved myself, so it means I felt free and disregarded the guards and everything. A: In other words, you could have jumped out and you would have been in Koenigsburg? B: So what? A: How were you dressed? B: Like a human being. A: But you had the star on? B: Yes. A: You could have taken the star off? B: Of course, I could have taken the star off. A: I see. Then you would have looked like the Germans? B: But that doesn’t matter because you have to eat. You have to eat. A: I know, I know. B: You forget this little detail. You have to eat. A: And your eyes are the wrong color? B: No, in Germany my eyes are the right color. A: No problem in Germany? B: There are dark-eyed Germans. In Germany it’s okay. A: But you didn’t think about jumping out? B: Where to? I tried to imbue in you the whole desperate situation. A: I know you have. B: The where-to is the problem. A: And I am asking these questions just to see how desperate it was. B: Once you jump you need coupons for food. You don’t have coupons. I don’t have to explain to you. A: So you’re in the station? B: Koenigsberg, yes. We stopped, of course, not at the station; that wouldn’t be yet the station. But then we went through the Koenigsberg station. I remember the sign vividly and the city looked beautiful, like I remembered it as a small child when I was there with my father. I thought: after fourteen years I still remember. And we cross Koenigsberg and go further. A: Yes.

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B: The train is now going full speed ahead, not like in Lithuania you know, when it was slow, slow. A: Why? B: Because we are in Germany. A: But why would it go faster in Germany? B: That’s according to a plan that trains go fast. Germany is Germany: peace. Germany is like there was no war. They have not been bombed. The British didn’t come that far east. The Russians didn’t have enough then to bomb. This part of Germany is peaceful. A: So you are rushing across the landscape. While you are traveling on this car did the door remain open? B: Yes. The door is open because the guards sit at the door. Why should they be closed in? A: So you are going through Germany— B: And we see everything. We see people walking and cutting hay and everything. A: They see you, too? B: Yes. A: They see people in these freight cars. B: Yes, and they don’t give a damn. A: And they know who they are? B: I don’t know if they knew, but they don’t give a damn. A: What do you think? What do you believe they believed? B: Wait, wait, wait, let me continue. Let me continue. Maybe I forgot a lot of things, but here we are coming to the camp. Here is where things— A: Wait a minute, before you get to the camp. What do you think those people believed out there when they saw you? B: I don’t know, I don’t know. I didn’t think about that. I will tell you later about what I did think, so don’t push me now. A: Tell me this now: they clearly saw you in those cars? B: Yes. A: You were not closed off? B: No. A: You are sure they could see you? B: Oh, no doubt. A: They could see car after car? B: Yes. A: With human beings in them? B: Yes. A: And they knew they weren’t passenger cars? B: They knew they were not passenger cars.

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A: And so far as you know, they did not wave at you? B: No. No. A: Did you wave at them? B: No. A: There was no contact made? B: No, no contact. A: None at all? B: None.

Appendix B

On the Right to Live as a Beggar: Reflections by Moonlight (2001–2002)*

This inquiry is prompted by the exhibitions of the destitution of one’s neighbors observed in San Francisco (August–September 2001) and in Paris and London (December 2001). The destitution in San Francisco seems to be primarily drug-related. Many “lost souls” may be seen there on the streets and on public transportation. These people often seem embittered, perhaps even somewhat aggressive—or at least threatening to the ordinary observer who comes into contact with them. Begging is not the dominant expression by these people, but rather a troubling presence. Also troubling, but in a different way, are the beggars one encounters nowadays in Paris and London. In Paris, the beggars (usually male) may be seen in prayerful postures. The Paris beggar is apt to have a hand-painted sign announcing that he is hungry (“J’ai faim . . .”) and that he has two or three or even more children that he must provide for. Sometimes, indeed, one of the children will be with him, huddled with him under a blanket. (One can wonder whether the children are sedated enough to keep them quiet for hours at a time. One can also wonder whether there is here a form of child abuse that the community should respond to.) One has the impression that there is something imitative about the forms of begging resorted to from place to place. Certainly, there is something “professional” about how a beggar may set himself up at a particular location. (It seems that begging sites are allocated by a kind of economy of begging, just as territory for the sale of Streetwise by the homeless seems to be in Chicago.) Thus, one can see the same person, day after day, take up his station, as at the entranceway to the Eglise St. Germain des Pres (near where we lived before coming to London).

*Sources: These observations were prepared by George Anastaplo in a bed and breakfast room in London, England, before and after midnight on December 31, 2001.

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The professionalism is most evident when one sees the beggar set himself up in a kneeling position which he may assume for a half-hour or more in the middle of a sidewalk. In short, there is a style about Parisian begging that is not seen in San Francisco or London. The same can be said about how Parisian women are dressed and how they handle themselves, compared to the women in other cities one knows. (Are these reflections by me a modest return to George Orwell’s account of being destitute in Paris and London?) Much more evident in the London beggar is the protection provided against the cold (which is, however, not appreciably more severe than in Paris—it can get down to a few degrees below freezing). The London beggar on the street is neither standing nor kneeling. Rather, he (again, the beggar is far more apt to be male) is apt to be sitting, with his back up against the wall and with his legs stretched out in front of him on the pavement, a cup or other receptacle for money next to him. He is completely covered by blankets (with only his face showing). And if he is sleeping, his face too may be covered. Something may be said to the passerby (as is done in Paris). The most prominent beggar in our London neighborhood is at the entrance to a fancy grocery store on Bernard Street, across from the Russell Square tube station. (It is not always the same person.) One can be reminded, upon seeing the London beggar, of the English term for the city’s destitute: “Sleeping rough.” (A proper study of these matters would include information about the community-funded shelters available in a city.) It should not require much argument to develop a persuasive case for community services being made available, in countries such as the United States, France, and England, for ministering to the poor. One suspects that those services should include intensive counseling and other activities which address the breakdown in character or in the ability to care for oneself in circumstances where other, barely reliable, people do manage to have a minimum of access to financial security. But somewhat more difficult is the issue of what might be done—what might properly be done—by a community to compel someone to live other than as a beggar. It can be instructive to notice here the prevalence, in both London and Paris, of elaborate headgear for motorcyclists. It seems likely that such use of helmets follows from strictly enforced traffic regulations, at least in the city. For whose good—in whose interest—are such regulations promulgated and enforced? The interest of the community may be seen here: unhelmeted cyclists can affect how motorists conduct themselves, especially those who may be inhibited or otherwise troubled in how they drive by a considerable apprehensiveness on their part because of the obvious vulnerability of the cyclists they encounter. Also, the community may properly consider the vulnerable cyclist as likely to become a substantial charge upon the medical and other services of the community in case he is injured.

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But is there any other consideration that the community may properly take into account in requiring the motorcyclist to be substantially protected? The extreme form such protection could take would be the prohibition of motorcycles altogether. That is, is the community entitled to require someone to be as good as he can be? This could include requiring him to preserve, as long as possible, a healthy and productive life. Relevant here are longstanding arguments about the circumstances in which one may deliberately end one’s life. What, then, about the life of the beggar? Does the community have an interest, and hence also a right if not even a duty, to discourage (if not fully to prevent) the life of beggary, no matter what any particular beggar may believe he wants? Particularly challenging here is the man who has no children or other family responsibilities. Is he entitled to be left alone to beg, at least in circumstances where he does not obstruct traffic or disturb passersby with his pleas for help? (The English laws of the eighteenth century might well be reviewed here.) Is the community entitled to the services of a healthy citizenry—and is the beggar today likely to be a wreck of a man? In addition, the beggar can become a threat to the health of the community, if only because he can be a particularly effective carrier of infectious diseases. If the community is regarded like a cadre of military personnel, it is obvious how the vulnerability of one may affect adversely the interests of all. In addition, it can be determined how much social service will eventually be required to salvage the beggar whose conduct makes him particularly liable to disease and incapacity. One need not be concerned here by the occasional beggar who may make a “solid living” from his career. (See the Sherlock Holmes story about the man whose “job in the city” consisted of systematic begging, in disguise, after which he would return nightly to his respectable suburban home.) Particularly challenging here, however, is the insistence of those with Libertarian inclinations who argue that, unless the community’s interest is affected (because of infectious disease, or traffic interference, or whatever), the activity of the beggar should not be curbed for his own good. Related to this consideration is whether the community is entitled to act against beggary in order to minister to the community’s sensibilities. It now seems to be widely accepted that the community may develop measures to promote and protect beautiful things in its midst. This is evident in laws regulating what may be seen and heard all around us. But what about those aesthetic sensibilities which take the form of being pained by the display of chronic poverty or of the personal demoralization likely to be evident in systematic beggary? Thus, should begging be routinely “wiped out” as graffiti is in a well-administered community? Should one, in considering what one advocates as a citizen in responding to the way of life of a beggar, try to learn much more than one is apt to know about

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the case that the beggar makes for his way of life? Or is one entitled to suspect that the beggar is not apt to know what he is really doing? He may consider himself realistic, when he is really only demented or otherwise handicapped in dealing with the demands, duties, and opportunities of everyday life. (Anyone of us can know from personal experience how difficult it can be to think productively when one’s physical conditions are oppressive.) Are we entitled (if not even obliged) to say that we do not want to live in a community in which beggars are prevalent? Such begging may be opposed, not only because of the economic, social (including health), and other considerations sketched out already, but also because such a way of life does not fit in with what we take to be a proper ordering of society. (Such considerations may also support the case being made against pornography being permitted to be displayed in the community.) As a practical matter, the typical beggar probably would not resist being ministered to in some form or other. After all, his pursuit of sustenance is a way of attempting to organize community support for him. If he refuses to permit the community to minister to him by stopping him from begging and otherwise helping him, should he be treated as demented or otherwise incapable of looking out for himself? Does such a man know what he is doing—and what is in his interest? Indeed, it may have to be wondered, who or what is he? And how did he get to be what he is? How much then is one entitled to be on one’s own, to conduct (and even ruin) one’s life as one chooses? Bearing upon such questions are considerations with respect to citizenship and to the status of individuality, especially when Christian sensibilities are challenged. (See, on the rationality of beggars, what King Lear says about Poor Tom. Lear recognizes that even someone as demented as Poor Tom seems to be is somehow aware of his interests—and he conducts himself accordingly.) It can well be, of course, that the community might believe (with some basis in experience) that it is generally better off, and its members are apt to be happier, if people are generally allowed to make their own decisions about how to live their lives. This is reflected in what I can see from my bed and breakfast window. I look out on the backyard of this establishment (a converted home). That backyard, or garden, is protected from passersby (in an alley or in the street) by a very high brick wall, well over six feet high. Such protection of privacy may be seen throughout English society (as it may also be seen in French society, where it can even be cited as a cause of the French reluctance to use public laundromats). It does seem good for the individual, as well as for the community, that individuals be able to wall themselves off from public gaze and scrutiny to a considerable extent. Does not this also mean that the community, in turn, may properly wall itself off from displays of misery, especially that misery which it

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can relieve by a systematic ministering to the would-be beggar? For one thing, the community should not be subject to that display of heartlessness that beggary suggests—the heartlessness evident not in the refusal to give to a beggar, but rather even in permitting beggary to continue? Cannot a country properly determine that it does not want even to appear, let alone to be, a community in which routine begging is “necessary”? A significant factor here may be the concern about the waste evident in beggary (as well as the misery that it displays and calls to be remedied). The problem of waste—the duty to avoid substantial waste in human resources— may be seen in the very existence of the fact, evident in these reflections, that I have for some time been troubled about how the community should address the life of beggary, including the sacrifices it should be willing to make to deal with it properly. One should, in these situations, do what one can—even as one takes care not to make matters worse by the way one responds. It is evident, for example, that giving to beggars does tend to encourage begging: the beggar does not ply his trade in times and places where no one else is apt to show up. The refusal to give to beggars, therefore, can help eliminate beggary—but this response should not be resorted to without the advocacy and support (financial and otherwise) of community measures for ministering to the would-be beggar. That is, one should do what one properly can, where and when one happens to be. That can be testified to by these reflections. They have been developed as I sit in a B&B room, unable because of my circumstances either to sleep or to turn on a light to read. But it so happens that a full moon, immediately overhead outside our window, is remarkably bright in a cloudless London sky. This has meant that I can sit here, for several hours, sketching out these observations. It should be noted, however, that the light at this time is good enough to write by but not good enough to read by. This means, among other things, that I cannot consult anything, not even notes, in preparing what I am writing. Indeed, I cannot even consult what I have already written on this occasion. Even so, is it not better to proceed thus, with these limitations, than to indulge oneself in unsystematic ruminations in a more or less disorganized manner? Here, as elsewhere, one testifies to better and worse ways of conducting oneself with the resources one happens to have. Is it an awareness, a somewhat disciplined awareness, of the distinction between the better and the worse which permits and obliges the community to discourage some ways of life even as it deliberately encourages other ways—and all with a view to ministering to the truly human? In conclusion, is there arrogance as well as inadequacy, if not even dementedness, in the typical beggar among us? Is there thoughtfulness, if not even a kind of hostility, on the part of those who routinely give to beggars without addressing the underlying causes of the destitution and the moral and aesthetic (as well

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as the economic) consequences of such an institution among their neighbors? What is to be made of those societies in which widespread begging is routine, if not even seemingly hereditary? [I can recall a particularly dramatic beggar I used to encounter on the streets of Cairo while I was stationed there in 1946. I never gave him anything, but I was determined to give him something substantial when I was transferred to a station in Saudi Arabia. When I made a special trip to his “station,” on my last day in Egypt, he was not there! I can also recall the hopelessness I felt, while stationed earlier on Guam—the hopelessness I felt upon visiting a leper colony on that island.] Circumstances do matter, something which is further testified to by the need to stop these jottings both because of fatigue setting in and because of the moon going behind a building across the way, making it virtually impossible for me to continue to write. We may even have in these reflections, in more ways than one, reminders of the limits (and perhaps also the fleeting opportunities) confronting us, both as individuals and as communities, because of human mortality.

Appendix C

On Knowing Oneself: Projections and Introspection (2003)*

I Critical to any serious education is the effort to come to know oneself, something said to have been urged (if not even commanded) by Apollo at his Delphic shrine three thousand years ago. Unless one does know oneself reasonably well, one cannot properly hope either to know anything else that is important or to take proper control of whatever one tries to do. The high school commencement we celebrate today is, we have reason to hope, truly that—a commencement, a beginning of the lifelong education which is available to the competent human being. Perseverance is needed in this enterprise, but it is likely to be useful only if one does happen to be pointed, early on, in the right direction. An educational campaign is something like a military campaign in that one takes one’s place in an operation organized all around one, with each participant doing what one can and should do. A particularly dramatic instance of such organization was the massive assault on the Normandy beaches during the Second World War. We are now in the sixtieth year since that greatest of D-Days. The spirit of that D-Day is best captured for me by what an American Air Corps colonel (John Murphy) said in briefing his fighter pilots who were providing air support for the men hitting the Normandy beaches on the morning of June 6, 1944: “If you think you have engine trouble, think of the men in the 4,000 landing craft below you, and make sure in your soul that the trouble’s in the engine.” (See George

*Sources: These remarks were prepared by George Anastaplo for a ceremony on June 22, 2003, celebrating the graduation of John Anastaplo Scharbach from Whitney Young Public High School in Chicago.

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Anastaplo, “Law, Judges and the Principles of Regimes,” 70 Tennessee Law Review 455, 511, 2003.)

II The colonel did not have to spell out the alternative to be avoided—that response to trouble in one’s own soul which might lead one to find, in the way one’s engine seemed to be running, an excuse for one’s faintheartedness (if not even for one’s cowardice). Or, to use modern psychological terms, those pilots were told, “Do not project on to your equipment your own feelings, your own shortcomings.” Also important, of course, is how one (in everyday life) assesses and responds to what others are saying and doing, especially in times of crisis. That is, one should carefully look into oneself when one is tempted to make much of the shortcomings of others, especially those shortcomings which seriously disturb one’s own life one way or another in unexpected ways. It is proper, of course, to evaluate others, to notice and to assess the actions (and the inaction) of others. That is, there are established standards and reasonable expectations that should be taken seriously and firmly insisted upon. But the tenor of one’s critical attitude and remarks can expose one’s own shortcomings; the passions thus expressed can reflect one’s inadequacies. One might even have to ask oneself, “Why am I ‘reacting’ as I am on this occasion?” Also to be asked is whether one is making a bad situation still worse by the way one responds to it. The wrong kind of response can lead to premature, ill-considered (if not even reckless) measures which make it harder to limit what can be called “collateral damage.”

III Especially to be watched out for is the “ganging up” on the person who is most obviously at fault in a disturbing situation, a person who may be desperately pursuing a delusion. When the bizarre happens, it is likely to be revealing. Something may indeed be wrong somewhere, but precisely where? The temptation to “pile on” should be resisted, especially when there are symptoms of the self-destructive in one person after another among those involved in a disturbed set of relationships. All too often, it seems, those who take an almost fiendish delight in displaying the shortcomings of others close to them may have contributed substantially to the provocations which have led to the desperate misconduct now held up for ridicule. The censorious pleasure evident on such occasions may even represent

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a kind of relief that one’s own significant responsibility for the disaster is still concealed from view. In this way, one’s own share of the guilt can be shifted to someone else. In this way, also, one’s share in inevitable human limitations, if not even in mortality itself, can be denied.

IV It is here that education, or the need for it, can be critical. At the core of troubling misconduct, whether in the one who is acting improperly or in those who divert themselves from truth-seeking by responding improperly—at the core here may be a deep ignorance. Much is to be said for trying—and even more for actually being equipped—to see things from an angle other than that which most people work from. Much is to be said, that is, for trying to see what can be said for “the other side” in any serious difference of opinions. It is particularly here that it can become evident that one cannot assess others properly, and hence humanely, unless one returns to the challenge of truly knowing oneself. Among the things one may be ignorant of is how one has exploited the person who has responded in a bizarre, even self-destructive, manner to what had come to seem to that person “an impossible situation.” Such personal relations can be distressingly complicated. One’s education may sometimes do little more than help one to see how difficult it can be to grasp “the situation” reliably—but to do so without repudiating deep-rooted distinctions between right and wrong.

V However all this may be, there is often relatively little that one can do about the shortcomings of others, the causes of which may simply be too complicated to grasp “from the outside.” Fortunately, one can reasonably hope to do much more with one’s own shortcomings—to recognize them and perhaps to do something useful about them. In this way, one may be able to provide a model by which others, including the misguided and the distracted, can take their own bearings in a healthy manner. In fact, a preoccupation with the shortcomings of others may do little more than keep one from looking into one’s own soul. One is thereby kept, perhaps even encouraged to keep, from doing that very thing which is rarely likely to be effectively done by anyone else: that is, one is kept from knowing and hence sensibly governing oneself.

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VI Much is to be said for regarding the misconduct, as well as the limitations, of others as one does the accidents that one is bound to encounter from time to time. Not everything can be anticipated—or even insured against. But how one responds to unfortunate events can be critical. It is the quality of that response which is much more in the control of those who do know themselves. If one relies too much upon the conduct of others, then one becomes a prisoner of chance. This is particularly so in a society such as ours, which is remarkably mobile, with everyone “free” (if not “obliged”) to realign oneself physically, sartorially, linguistically, politically, and even spiritually as the fancy happens to move one or others, undermining thereby the integrity of the family and an enduring sense of community. Thus, a vital question emerges: What can I do? And this can depend upon how one answers questions about who one is and about what it is that one should truly want to be and to do.

VII We have, in beginning to examine together what our education should help us think, be, and do—we have looked back to what an Air Corps colonel said sixty years ago about the tricky state of one’s soul upon confronting deadly fire. And we have looked even further back—to what was said at Delphi sixty lifetimes ago about the need to know oneself if one is to be able both to become and to remain truly human. All this is with a view to leaving today’s high school graduate with an instructive challenge: What do you want to be able to say, and to say truly, about yourself sixty years from now?

Appendix D

On Facts and Theories: Lessons for Law Students from Ptolemy’s Astronomy (2004)*

I What, in the preparation of a brief or of a closing argument, is to be done with the record that has been made during a trial? What is the testimony or other information that has to be worked with (or around)? Let us consider, as students of jurisprudence, what may be learned about this “process” from the history of astronomy. There was collected, across centuries and in various parts of the world, an immense body of information about the movements of heavenly bodies, however primitive the equipment used may now seem to us. Data assembled for one purpose—especially because of astrological interests—could later be put to what we are privileged to consider more scientific interests. Information is usually gathered with some overall understanding of things in mind. That is, a “theory” may be implied in the information collected, or in the way it is collected and arranged. II An account of things—collecting and making use of information—typically starts with solid (or, at least, plausible) assumptions. Thus, the lawyer builds upon an opinion about the justice of his client’s cause. Or he may have an opinion about what is likely to have happened in the matter under consideration. *Sources: These remarks were prepared by George Anastaplo for his jurisprudence seminar, Loyola University Chicago School of Law, November 23, 2004. See Anastaplo, “Thursday Afternoons,” in Kameshwar C. Wali, ed., S. Chandrasekhar: The Man Behind the Legend (London: Imperial College Press, 1997), 122.

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Thus, also, the astronomer once built upon an opinion about the solidity and steadiness of the Earth. In addition, he could hold the not-unreasonable opinion that the movements of heavenly bodies were, in their evident perfection, circular. Of course, we are cautioned about what we take for granted in the accounts of things that we devise. But, it should be recognized, not all of our starting points, or assumptions, can be tested. Indeed, all reasoning depends ultimately upon unexaminable premises that are, somehow or other, accepted by us. Still, if what is accepted in this way should be deeply flawed, problems can emerge as these premises are built upon.

III The facts (or observations or evidence) may not always be exactly what are needed on a particular occasion. Part of the problem here may be due to the facts having been collected with a now discarded theory in mind. The lawyer comes to recognize (upon studying the record supplied to him, say, for an appeal) that something critical was not asked of a witness, just as the astronomer may recognize that a particular useful observation was not recorded. That is, there are likely to be gaps in the information to be worked with. Or the available information may suggest alternative, if not even contradictory, explanations. It is not unusual that the facts have to be adjusted somewhat to permit a plausible account. This may even require setting aside facts that do not “fit in,” that can find no useful place with the categories one is using. Another way of putting this is to recognize that there is, every day, a lot of information available to us that we have no use for in conducting our affairs or in preparing our accounts of things. Sometimes we can even suspect insanity in how obviously irrelevant facts are made use of. That is, all theories are not created equal.

IV We can be alerted to a problem when we see how elaborate a theoretical contrivance has to be in order to accommodate the available facts. This could be seen (it is said) in how the Ptolemaic celestial system, in order to account for planetary movements, had to develop epicycles upon epicycles. Epicycles were evidently useful for those describing (not necessarily accounting for) the available astronomical data. But even though the epicyclical accounts may have been “only” a mathematical device for assembling and representing the data, their growing complexity (as more and more data were accumulated) could become troubling.

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Of course, the more elaborate the account of the planetary system became, the more impressive the talents of the astronomer might appear. But such contrivances could begin to suffer with respect to their persuasiveness. Some astronomers, it seems, could not help asking whether this was the way the planets moved—or whether the way being used to organize the data was merely the most convenient way to organize, even if only “geometrically,” the available data. Our ultimate reliance on unexaminable premises naturally depends upon intuition. To what extent, or in what ways, may intuition be nurtured by experience and thinking? May a matured intuition help one choose usefully among alternative accounts of things? Particularly illuminating here can be the way that Galileo dealt with the data he collected during experiments trying to determine whether light was transmitted instantaneously. That is, he did not allow “the facts” (as provided by the equipment available to him) to mislead him into concluding that transmission of light was instantaneous, no matter what the distance.

V Consider, further, the accommodations that Ptolemaic astronomers eventually had to make, especially as observations increased and perhaps improved. Their need to place epicycles upon epicycles must have made some of them wonder even more whether something was fundamentally mistaken in their premises. Another accommodation they made was to move the center of their planetary orbits away from the geometric center of the orbit. This proved to be a remarkable step in the effort to account for the heavenly observations they had to work with. This was in response to challenges posed by the information they had when it was used as they were using it. There was, we now believe, something important in this movement away from the center. Another important change had yet to be made, the move from the circle to the ellipse as the path of planetary bodies. Even more critical, of course, was the move which would regard the Earth itself as a planetary body in orbit around the Sun. Similar challenges may be seen confronting those investigating the origins (as well as the movements) of the visible universe and among those investigating the origins (as well as the biological processes) of living things. In all of these efforts the implications of conventional biblical teachings have had to be reckoned with.

VI The move to an ellipse came with Kepler, with each planet found by him to be centered upon one of the foci of its elliptical path around the Sun. This also

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meant, for him, that the speed of a planet varies so that it can “sweep” equal areas during equal times. (I recall the manner in which we worked out the areas in our Works of the Mind stained-glass window for the Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago, something described in my 1983 Artist as Thinker book.) Some say that Kepler made the decisive move that permitted the emergence of modern science. Others would nominate the work that Galileo did with falling bodies here on Earth. It seems that it was left to Newton to bring these two (and other) developments together in a system of universal gravitation. In the course of this development, it became irrelevant whether the Earth feels steady underfoot to human beings.

VII After all, we do have sometimes the experience of not being able to determine whether we are moving or the people in the train on an adjoining track. More of a problem, for an account which has the Earth in a planetary orbit around the Sun, was the lack of any observable parallax. That is, if the Earth is in a great orbit around the sun, and if the fixed stars are scattered at various depths throughout the universe (and not all in one sphere), then shifts in the positions of the stars relative to each other should become apparent if the Earth itself moves in its great orbit. But, we are told, it was not until well into the nineteenth century (as telescopes improved) before the sought-for parallax could be detected. That is, it was not imagined how far away the “fixed stars” really are. Even so, I suspect that the lack of observable parallax must have alerted some heliocentric partisans to the possibility that the “fixed stars” were at a far greater distance from the Earth than had ever been imagined by serious astronomers. Did all this alert some of them not only to the immense scope of space but also to the immense scope of time? This can lead in turn to a theory of “the universe” which provides a more plausible account than ever before taken seriously of the facts that have been accumulated for centuries. Once that account is accepted, it can contribute thereafter to the generation of even more facts which steadily reinforce the new “theory of the case.” One can be reminded here of the lawyer who happens to secure a new trial in the course of litigation, a new trial which permits him to develop and use facts which support a theory that he had come to suspect (and thus accumulate facts for) only on appeal.

Appendix E

Christmas Stories (2004)*

I I still have the first Christmas present that I remember getting. It is an elevenhundred-page anthology, Great Stories of All Nations, edited by Maxim Lieber and Blanche Colton Williams and issued in 1936 by the Tudor Publishing Company of New York. This book is said to collect “one hundred and sixty complete short stories from the literature of all periods and countries.” I probably received it for Christmas 1938, when I was in the eighth grade in Carterville, Illinois. I have recently been moved to wonder how this anthology ever came to be chosen as a present. I began with the supposition that someone must have recommended it to my parents. Perhaps, even, someone had given it to them for me. It is not likely, that is, that my parents would have read (or even read about) this, or any other, English-language book. II My two brothers and I were born in St. Louis, where our maternal grandfather (Pericles Syriopoulos) is buried. My schooling in this Williamson County town * Sources: These recollections were prepared by George Anastaplo for The Greek Star newspaper, Chicago, Illinois, in December 2004. The dedication for Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen: Essays on Virtue, Freedom, and the Common Good (Chicago: Swallow Press, 1975) is:

TO MY PARENTS who discovered as Immigrants from Greece how difficult it is for one to become a Human Being where one is not born a Citizen. See also Roger K. Newman, ed., The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law (New Haven, Connecticutt: Yale University Press, 2009), 12–13. This “George Anastaplo” entry was reprinted, with appropriate modifications, in The Greek Star, Chicago (August 27, 2009), 3.

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of three thousand began when I was in the fifth grade. By that time my father had opened a restaurant in “downtown” Carterville. Our cuisine at home was different from, and usually better than, what could be sold in our restaurant. My parents, who had met and married in this country, had been born in the same Arcadian village (Divritzi, Gortinea) in the mountains northwest of Tripoli. Theodore Anastasopoulos was probably born in 1884; Margareta Syriopoulou, in 1897. (I, their oldest child, was born in 1925.) We were the only Greeks in Carterville, except for a year or two when an eccentric (even exotic) Greek doctor somehow showed up with his family. He liked to tell me about his Harvard adventures and to speculate about the mysteries of the universe.

III I was known to be a reader. This was so much so that my mother, concerned for my health, managed to have a limit placed on the number of books I could borrow from the Carterville grade school library. I have been told that I knew no English upon first being taken to grade school in St. Louis. But I recall no problems in “adjusting.” Perhaps it helped that I soon came to be regarded as something of a mathematical prodigy, so much so (I have also been told) that I would, while in the first or second grade, be put into competitions with children in the seventh or eighth grades. My favorite book, during my Carterville grade school years, was Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. I would read it every few months. [I have recently learned that this was also Winston Churchill’s favorite book as a boy.]

IV My mysterious Great Stories anthology includes tales from a score of countries in Europe, as well as others from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the United States, but none from modern Greece. But there are three stories from ancient Greece, stories which farsighted Greeks would today probably claim as part of their heritage. These three stories were taken from Homer (“Ares and Aphrodite”), Herodotus (“Candaules’ Folly”), and Heliodorus (“Cnemon’s Story”). It probably never occurred to my parents to read any of the stories in the anthology before they gave it to me. If they had read them, they would have learned that the Greek stories, at least, were somewhat salacious—and hence hardly the fare for a grade-schooler. I do

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not recall, however, whether I myself read these, or any other, stories in the anthology when I first got it. But I do recall that it was somehow important that I could be entrusted with such an impressive volume, the foundation stone, so to speak, upon which my personal library has been built for seven decades. Much could be said to turn around this gift.

V I am reminded by all this that our parents knew little about the culture that their sons routinely imbibed. It is not, however, that they were out of touch with events of the day. We did subscribe to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which was then one of the best newspapers in this country. And of course they were aware of the cataclysm that was threatening Europe. However limited they were in their grasp of the adolescent milieu in which their sons moved, there was never any doubt but that we should remain decidedly Orthodox. We children could, as part of our “social” life, attend Sunday School in the Baptist church across the street, and even Sunday night services at another Baptist church, where the pretty girls were. I also found of interest, but only as a respectful spectator, the lively revival services that would be held from time to time in our town. Our real religious life, about which my mother was particularly zealous, was in St. Louis (two to three hours away by car or bus), a city we would visit on occasion. Its St. Nicholas Church meant even more to her than the St. Louis Cardinals did to her sons. Our periodic exposure to the Church in St. Louis was reinforced for me by a summer spent (with my mother and brothers) in Sioux City. This was in 1938. (St. Louis and Sioux City were said to be the principal American cities in which emigrants from “our” village settled in the United States.) I even served as an altar boy in a Sioux City church upon the insistence of my mother, who could even talk about my becoming a monk.

VI Our father was more apt to go to St. Louis on business than to attend church services. He worked hard with his restaurant, which he had christened “The Thrill.” I later wondered whether “Grill” had been misheard either by him or by a sign-painter as “Thrill.” The favorite piece in my father’s “anthology” during those grim Depression years was a popular song about a “rainbow in the sky.” That song had the

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encouraging refrain, “So, let’s have another cup of coffee, let’s have another piece of pie.” I worked regularly in the restaurant, sometimes being left in charge. I even worked there several nights a week during the school year, somehow managing to go through high school without ever having to do any homework. I “graduated” from all this when I enlisted, at age seventeen, in the Aviation Cadet Program of the U.S. Army Air Corps. That three-years-service took me all over the world, as an aerial navigator, leading eventually both to my education at the University of Chicago (beginning in 1947) and to my marriage to a Texas Presbyterian (beginning in 1949).

VII I am reminded by these recollections of how low-key the Christmas celebration was for us. Of course, the religious season of the year was Easter Week, which my mother and her sons would try to spend in St. Louis. Our parents did work long and hard at their respective callings. Our father had evidently made considerable money with investments in St. Louis, which he had then lost in the Great Depression. His “second chance,” at which he prospered, was in Carterville. We children never knew how he had gotten there. It was during Holy Week that our mother was most conspicuously dedicated to her principal calling. She would, each day, go early and stay late at St. Nicholas, taking us with her. Indeed, she saw to it that her sons would get a lifetime supply of churchgoing during their formative years. All of these recollections have prompted me to recall (for the first time in decades and only after I began writing this memoir)—to recall that we were, in the summer of 1938, somehow connected in Sioux City with a secondhand bookstore, perhaps because a young Greek or two worked there. I must leave this bookstore recollection as vague as it sounds, for I do not now recall much more about this curious “connection.” Perhaps that is how a mysterious anthology came into my life.

Appendix F

Still Another Look at Taoism (2005)*

I and Pangur Bán, each of us two at his special art: his mind is at hunting [mice], my own mind is in my special craft. I love to rest—better than any fame—at my booklet with diligent science: not envious of me is Pangur Bán: he himself loves his childish art. When we are—tale without tedium—in our house, we two alone, we have—unlimited [is] feat-sport—something to which to apply our acuteness, It is customary at times by feats of valour, that a mouse sticks in his net, and for me there falls into my net a difficult dictum with hard meaning. His eye, this glancing full one, he points against the wall-fence: I myself against the keenness of science point my clear eye, though it is very feeble. He is joyous with speedy going where a mouse sticks in his sharp claw: I too am joyous, where I understand a difficult dear question. Though we are thus always, neither hinders the other: each of us two likes his art, muses himself alone. He himself is master of the work which he does every day: while I am at my own work, bringing difficulty to clearness. —Anonymous, “An Irish Scholar and His Cat” (ninth century)

* Sources: This talk was given by George Anastaplo in the Works of the Mind Lecture Series, University of Chicago, January 23, 2005. His book, But Not Philosophy: Seven Introductions to Non-Western Thought (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2002), has elicited this comment (of July 17, 2006?) by Won Joon Choe, a Korean-born scholar:

[R]egarding [a scholar’s claim of a more] privileged position in interpreting Nietzsche because he knows the language and was raised in the same culture, I do not find this argument always persuasive. For instance, I find George Anastaplo’s interpretation of Confucius at certain points far more penetrating than [what] many contemporary Asian scholars have written about Confucius. Why? Perhaps I am an outdated adherent of philosophia perennis [perennial philosophy], but I think because Anastaplo is a genuine philosopher, or at least has an inkling of what genuine philosophy is about, and hence has a privileged access to the mind of a genuine philosopher (though at the end he

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I A knowledgeable reader of my 2002 collection of introductions to non-Western thought observed that the only “major” tradition I had left out is Taoism, which is based in part on the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu. Taoism is mentioned in my book, but only in passing. That book of mine, But Not Philosophy, surveys a half-dozen schools of thought from around the world, schools ancient and modern. My limitations in discussing each of these schools should be apparent to the perceptive reader, especially when it is obvious that I do not know either the language of any of the texts discussed or most of the vast literature available about these matters. Even so, we can perhaps learn enough about these various schools of thought to recognize something about ourselves and about the enduring questions that human beings confront. There has been, in recent decades, considerable interest, worldwide, in Taoism. This is to be contrasted to the way that it was regarded as recently as a halfcentury or so ago, as may be seen in the modest account of it as a “philosophical system” in the fourteenth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Taoism is identified there as a system attributed to Lao Tzu (b. 604 B.C.) and Chuang Tzu (b. 330 B.C.). Thereupon the reader is told that “the term Tao originally meant the revolution or the way of the heavens about the earth.” The Britannica account continues thus: This movement of the heavens was regarded as the cause of the phenomena on earth. The Tao was located about the celestial pole, which was considered to be the seat of power because all revolves about it. In the course of time this concrete expression became abstract, and the Tao was viewed as the universal cosmic energy behind the visible order of nature. This cosmic energy regarded as being is impersonal, omnipresent and eternal; viewed as becoming it works spontaneously, orderly, unselfishly, and continuously for the highest good of all things. The Tao produced the yin and the yang, the negative and the positive, female and male principles of nature. These by their interaction brought forth heaven and earth. Heaven and earth gave birth to all beings. The human order is the product of the eternal energy. claims that Confucius was not a genuine philosopher—which testifies to his own limitations as well). balkin.blogspot.com/2006/07/letter_16.html. [emphasis added] This scholar has an article in the Wall Street Journal of June 10, 2005, “Korea’s Anti-Americanism,” which concludes with these challenging suggestions about “a struggle for the hearts of the South Korean people”: The Bush administration can speak directly to ordinary South Koreans about the horrors of [the North Korean] gulag state, explain why the world cannot allow it to possess nuclear arms, and also remind South Koreans of how their alliance with the U.S. has protected them for more than half a century. America taught South Korea’s long oppressed people to yearn for the intoxicating beauty of freedom. And President Bush could do no better than to remind them of the fragility of freedom, and that freedom’s preservation requires unblinking courage in the face of those who would seek to trample it.

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Further on, this encyclopedia entry describes Taoist teachings, comparing them with those of Confucius (about whom I will say more later): [Taoism] advocated frugality, simplicity and the joys of the peasant life in contact with the soil. It opposed the educational programme of the Confucianists, and advocated the theory that the people should be kept in innocence (not in ignorance). The Taoist philosophy is responsible for that remarkable trait of the Chinese, namely their contentment in situations which offer a minimum of comfort and their prizing of culture above possession. In politics Taoism opposed a highly centralized government and favoured the maximum autonomy for the people. Lao Tzu and his successors promoted the small village which enjoyed full autonomy and lived in harmony with its neighbours. All forms of bondage and legal restraints were opposed. Non-resistance was exalted and militarism was condemned. The ethics of Confucianism met with the strongest opposition on the part of the Taoists. Such virtues as love, justice, reverence, wisdom and sincerity were regarded as the first steps departing from the harmony of the simple life in the Tao, and producing the distracting contraries which marred the purity of life.

Taoism, understood in this manner, can remind observers of the “Quietests” who have shown up from time to time in the Western world. Of course, my use here of the term “understood” can itself be questioned, inasmuch as it is quite difficult for the typical Western observer to make reliable sense of the Tao. Thus, it is difficult so to analyze the principal text, the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu, as to come up with “the teaching” The text can be, at least in translation, quite obscure—and yet it has long had a considerable following. I have the impression that for most readers the text provides general confirmation and reassurance rather than precise instruction and guidance. Does all this suggest something mysterious, at least for us, about the history and resulting temperament of the Chinese people? Of course, the appeal of Taoism (especially when blended with Buddhism) is not limited to the Chinese; thus, the Tao Te Ching is said to be, next to the Bible, the most “translated” book into English. (I mention in passing that a number of these “translations” appear to be by authors who do not personally know the Chinese language: their texts are often their own interpretations of the translations to which they have had access.) It seems, in any event, that there is something in Taoist thought which appeals to others (albeit, minorities) elsewhere. Such an appeal is even more remarkable when one recognizes how much questioning there is in the Tao Te Ching of that which is conventionally accepted. Such questioning is evident in the encyclopedia passages I have quoted. It seems to be argued in the Tao Te Ching that it is hard, if not impossible, to be certain about many of the matters about which people usually have firm opinions. Of course, one problem here is that people can have not only quite firm but also contradictory opinions about everyday matters. We “know,” for example,

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that “out of sight is out of mind.” But we also “know” that “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” And we “know” that “a penny saved is a penny earned.” But we also “know” that one can “be penny-wise but pound-foolish.” Is the Tao Te Ching attractive as it is, at least in some quarters, because of what it does recognize about human limitations? We all know from everyday experience that there are things we are usually confident about which can look quite different in other circumstances. This kind of experience can even make us wonder how well we grasp anything at all. It can also make us wonder how effective we can be in doing whatever we set out to do, something that is particularly dramatized for us in the West by the story of Oedipus. All this may be a way of saying that we are indeed mortal. Our experience can even suggest to us that there are vital matters that may be intrinsically unknowable. Sometimes this can suggest a questioning of the rules by which people are usually urged to live. Such questioning, both theoretical and practical, is reflected in the development of various schools of philosophy, or thinking, in the West for more than two millennia. Our mortality, and hence our limitations and vulnerability, can be dramatized for us by such calamities as the tsunami experience last month [in December 2004] in the Indian Ocean. Particularly instructive for us can be the fate of the large number of Western tourists who were caught up in that disaster, people who could afford to go anywhere in the world for their pleasures—and who got to their Asian fate by air carriers subjected (for their safety) to the strictest security measures. Thus, we can be reminded, again and again, that we may not really know what we are doing. This is the kind of awareness which seems to be at the core of Taoist morality. Something of the spirit of Taoism may be seen in these lines from a sixteenth-century French poet (Guillaume de la Perriere, La Morosophie, 1553, emblem 21): Just as a lute softens the heart more With its sweetness, than [does] a frightful sound, So one must appease a people’s anger Not with menaces, but with gentle words.

II Taoist thought was more than counterbalanced, in China itself, by Confucian thought. A discussion of Confucian thought was the first of the series of essays on non-Western thought collected in my But Not Philosophy volume. (My Confucian essay was first published thirty years ago.) Confucian thought, too, can be difficult for us to understand, but it can seem a model of clarity when compared to Taoist thought. Confucius himself

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is generally believed to have been a historical figure. Whether Lao Tzu ever lived is much debated. Some even consider him merely a convenient source for sayings developed over centuries, with their proclaimed “author” being merely “the Old One.” But there is a tradition that Lao Tzu and Confucius met once—and even that Confucius was impressed, if not even intimidated, by that older man. Lao Tzu is also said to have been an imperial archivist (like the sub-sub-librarian in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick?). It is said as well that he was, upon seeking to leave the realm at the end of his career, required by a border guard to write down his thoughts in the eighty-one short verses (or chapters) attributed to him in the Tao Te Ching. Thus, Lao Tzu may have been a bureaucrat, but one who had serious reservations about the doings and consequences of government. Confucius, on the other hand, was remarkably influential in prescribing for the training of bureaucrats and for the administration of states. Government was taken very seriously by him, including matters of war and peace. Much was made by Confucius both of filial piety and of doing one’s civic duty—and this was in marked contrast to the apparently more relaxed approach to such matters by Taoism. There is, however, something Taoist in one observation made about Confucius: he is, it was said, a man who knows it’s no use, but he keeps on trying anyway. Even so, the relation in Chinese thought between Confucianism and Taoism suggests the yin/yang relation referred to in the encyclopedia article I have quoted. This is the relation between the male and the female, between the active and the passive—that relation which accounts for the way things both are and seem to be. (We may even be reminded here of Isaac Newton’s “equal and opposite reaction.”) The yin/yang relation may be explicitly referred to only once in the Tao Te Ching (in verse 42). But it is many times indicated that that relation is to be found in all things which endure. This may be seen in a number of verses, where opposites are identified as the bases not only for the meaning of various things but also for the very existence of all things. We can see, further on, what this means in a particular verse (41).

III Students of Taoism are not inclined to be rigorous in talking about the principal Taoist text, the Tao Te Ching. Rigor here may even seem un-Taoist in spirit. The typical Western impression is that expressed by a distinguished scholar of Chinese things at this university a generation ago who could speak of the Tao Te Ching as “beautiful, lulling mumbo jumbo.” That scholar can be recalled by his students as of a rationalist, Confucian turn of mind.

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If the investigator of Taoism does not know Chinese, any attempt at rigor can seem presumptuous. The remarkable variety among the many translations of the Tao Te Ching into English can be challenging, to say the least. No one of them, we are told by experts, provides more than an indication of what may be found in the revered Chinese original. A brief consideration of verse 1 can put us on notice about the problems that we Westerners face here. A Dutch scholar provided, in 1954, the following rendering of verse 1 into English, using “term” where others use “name” (he had, earlier, published a Dutch translation): The Way that may truly be regarded as the Way is other than a permanent way. The terms that may truly be regarded as terms are other than permanent terms. The term Non-being indicates the beginning of heaven and earth; the term Being indicates the mother of the ten thousand things. For, indeed, it is through the constant alternation between Non-being and Being that the wonder of the one and the limitation of the other will be seen. These two, having a common origin, are named with different terms. What they have in common is called the Mystery, the Mystery of Mysteries, the Gate of all Wonders. —J. J. L. Duyvendak, Tao Te Ching: The Book of the Way and Its Virtue (London: John Murray, 1954), 17

Three years later a University of California professor concluded an article on the philology of verse 1 with this material (Peter A. Boodberg, “Philological Notes on Chapter One of the Lao Tzu,” 20 Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 598, 618, 1957) (with “lodehead” suggesting the source of something precious): The following translation of the entire text [of verse 1] has little literary merit. It reflects, however, to the best of my ability, every significant etymological and grammatical feature, including every double entendre, that I have been able to discover in the original in an endeavor to establish a solider philological foundation upon which a firmer interpretation of the incipit of Taoist philosophy might be built. Lodehead lodehead-brooking: no forewonted lodehead; Namecall namecall-brooking: no forewanted namecall. Having-naught namecalling: Heaven-Earth’s fetation. Having-aught namecalling: Myriad Mottlings’ mother. Affirmably, Forewont Have-naught Desired—for to descry in view the minikin-subliminaria, Forewont Have-aught

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Desired—for to descry in view the circuit-luminaria; These pairing one at-one Egressing, Diverse namecall: At-one—bespeak such: Darkling, Adarkling such, again adarkling The thronging subliminaria’s gate

There is about this dreadfully obscure passage, which might fit nicely in Finnegan’s Wake, a caution which we can duly note, even as we venture to work with what does happen to make some sense for us. We can begin here with the title of this collection, Tao Te Ching. One translator, a Chinese scholar, renders it as “The Classic of the Way and Its Virtue” (Wing-tsit Chan, The Way of Lao Tzu, The Library of Liberal Arts, 1985, preface). Another translator, a Westerner, provides a more elaborate account (Jonathan Star, trans., Tao Te Ching: The Definitive Edition, New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2001, 2): Tao is the Supreme Reality, the all-pervasive substratum; it is the whole universe and the way the universe operates. Te is the shape and power of Tao; it is the way Tao manifests, it is Tao particularized to a form or a virtue. Tao is the transcendent reality. Te is the immanent reality. Ching means a book or a classic work. Hence the Tao Te Ching means, “The Classic Book of the Supreme Reality (Tao) and its Perfect Manifestation (Te),” “The Book of the Way and Its Power,” “The Classic of Tao and Its Virtue.”

The date associated with the emergence of the Tao Te Ching is somewhere between the fifth and third centuries before the Christian era. It is a text of about five thousand characters, collected in its eighty-one verses. The first half of the standard version culminates in verse 40, which has the fewest characters of any verse (twenty-one). The standard version has to be specified here because there are other arrangements of the eighty-one verses. Thus, there is a version which divides the standard arrangement into two parts, with verses 1–37 designated as the first part and verses 38–81 as the second part. Even more drastic a variation may be seen in the ancient manuscripts which can have the old verse 24 as the new verse 1, the old verse 9 as the new verse 2, the old verse 67 as the new verse 3, and so on. (See, for example, Michael La Fargue, trans., The Tao of the Tao Te Ching, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. The old verse 47 is the new verse 41 and the old verse 37 is the new verse 81.) It is not obvious, at least to me, what the principle of this reordering is. (I mention, in passing, that we can see similar substantial rearrangements

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of parts—by scholars—in one of the texts discussed in my But Not Philosophy book, and that is the Koran. But my discussion of that text worked from the standard text, that version which has been influential for some fourteen hundred years. I proceed in the same way with the Tao Te Ching.) It need not matter, for our immediate purpose, whether Lao Tzu ever existed in the way reported by the tradition. Even if the Tao Te Ching is primarily a compilation of long-voiced thoughts, it can be instructive for us to consider how that compilation was fashioned by the perhaps thoughtful “editor” who put it together in the standard form which has been so influential for millennia. (Similar considerations apply to other important texts, such as the standard edition of the Bible that we study.)

IV Is there a pattern, or a principle of order, in the usual arrangement of the eightyone verses? It is hard to say, but we can at least ask questions and suggest tentative answers for others, better equipped than we will ever be, to work with. That there is no obvious principle of order is suggested by the willingness of some readers (going back to antiquity) to develop quite different arrangements of the verses. Still, we do seem to have something solid in the reliance on eighty-one verses. The number 9, which is squared in 81, does seem to have been a special number for the Chinese, suggesting a majestic quality. We can be reassured here by the observations of our Dutch scholar who said (a half-century ago) (4): The text numbers 81 chapters. This number is not accidental. The number 81, that is 3x3x3x3, is a sacred number in Taoism and it is certain that this division was made artificially during or shortly after the Han dynasty (200 B.C.–A.D. 221).

Perhaps we can venture to add to this observation the suggestion that the compiler of the eighty-one verses in the standard edition hinted at it as a compilation by placing at the very center of it (that is, in verse 41) a passage which includes a dozen “sayings.” Thus, there may be seen in verse 41 something that is done in the Tao Te Ching as a whole. Perhaps there may even be seen in those sayings not only a series of yin/yang relations but also an arrangement which has half of these sayings echoing the first part of the compilation of eighty-one verses and has the other half anticipating the second part. Perhaps. However this may be, verse 41 is distinctive in having the most uses of tao, nine in all (of the seventy-six (?) uses of tao in the compilation as a whole). This is not evident in the typical, or perhaps in any, English translation of the text, for tao can be variously translated as not only way, but also as doctrine, method, path, principle, and virtue, besides being left simply as tao. Tao may even be

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treated by some as the Chinese counterpart to the Greek logos. The principal other multiple uses of tao may be found in verse 23 (five), verses 25, 51, and 77 (four each), and verses 1, 53, and 62 (three each). Before we proceed further we should have English translations of verse 1 before us. Here is one from our Dutch translator (1954, 97): When a gentleman of top grade hears about the Way, he does his best to put it into practice. When a gentleman of middle grade hears about the Way, he seems now to keep it, now to lose it. When a gentleman of bottom grade hears about the Way, he will laugh loudly at it. If it were not laughed at, it would not be worth regarding as the Way. For there is an established saying: “The bright Way looks dark. The progressive Way looks retrograde. The level Way looks rugged. The highest Virtue looks like a valley. Sheer white looks soiled. The widest Virtue looks inadequate. The firmest Virtue looks feeble. The truest substance looks pitted. The greatest square has no corners, The greatest vessel is the last completed. The greatest music has the rarest sound. The greatest Image has no form.” The Way is hidden and without names. Indeed, just because the Way is able to lend it is able to complete.

Then we draw again upon our Chinese translator (Wing-tsit Chan, 174): When the highest type of men hear Tao, They diligently practice it. When the average type of men hear Tao. They half believe in it. When the lower type of men hear Tao, They laugh heartily at it. If they did not laugh at it, it would not be Tao. Therefore there is the established saying: The Tao which is bright appears to be dark. The Tao which goes forward appears to fall backward. The Tao which is level appears uneven. Great virtue appears like a valley (hollow). Great purity appears like disgrace. Far-reaching virtue appears as if insufficient. Solid virtue appears as if unsteady

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True substance appears to be changeable. The great square has no corners. The great implement (or talent) is slow to finish (or mature). Great music sounds faint. Great form has no shape. Tao is hidden and nameless. Yet it is Tao alone that skillfully provides for all and brings them to perfection.

And here is another Chinese translator (Gia Fu Feng, Laotse: Tao Te King [HTML edition by Dan Baruth, 2000], 28): The wise student hears of the Tao and practices it diligently. The average student hears of the Tao and gives it thought now and again. The foolish student hears of the Tao and laughs aloud. If there were no laughter, the Tao would not be what it is. Hence it is said: The bright path seems dim; Going forward seems like retreat; The easy way seems hard; The highest Virtue seems empty; Great purity seems sullied; A wealth of Virtue seems inadequate; The strength of Virtue seems frail; Real Virtue seems unreal; The perfect square has no corners; Great talents ripen late; The highest notes are hard to hear; The greatest form has no shape; The Tao is hidden and without name. The Tao alone nourishes and brings everything to fulfillment.

It is emphasized, by this array of a dozen “sayings” (however translated), that it is a common experience to be obliged at times to reconsider opinions usually taken for granted. Of course, this point would not be as telling as it is if there were not many things that are usually one way rather than another. We can again be reminded of the yin/yang relation upon which the very existence of all things can be said to depend.

V I have suggested that verse 41, with its array of a dozen sayings, may reflect the act that the entire Tao Te Ching text is a compilation. Of course, anyone who

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has a reliable “feel” for the Chinese language could well have a much better sense than I can ever have of this and other patterns to be found in the text. (On the other hand, we, in the West, might be intrigued upon noticing that 41 is the thirteenth prime number, if 1 is considered a prime.) Do the patterns that can be sensed in the Tao Te Ching have an effect on many who have never bothered to make explicit how “the system” works? Indeed, may there even be something profoundly un-Taoistic in any attempt to be somewhat rigorous in figuring out the things we have been considering on this occasion? But then we are what we are as we try to learn what we can from a text, if not even from a way of thinking or of feeling, destined to remain mostly mysterious for us. Perhaps the most significant thing to be learned by us from the central verse of the standard ordering of the Tao Te Ching is what is said there about the responses to the Tao by three kinds of people: the most gifted, the ordinary, and the inferior. (One can even be reminded of the Seder service with the questions of the four sons: the wise one, the wicked one, the simple one, and the one who does not know how to ask.) May there be, for the most gifted, a justified self-confidence that the other two do not have? May he, and he alone, have a reliable sense of the whole, with the ability to grasp how it is put together—and hence what is to be learned from it? The middling observer senses that there is something to be respected in what is offered by the Tao, but his grasp of these matters is limited. Perhaps the most significant thing here, at the very center of the Tao Te Ching, is the laughter of the most inferior observer. (Laughter does not seem to be referred to elsewhere in the book.) Is it not revealed by this laughter how much common sense is routinely offended by Taoism, something which is illustrated in the twelve sayings that follow? We can be reminded by this laughter of the ridiculing of the highly impractical Socrates in Aristophanes’ The Clouds. In short, the thoughtful Taoist recognizes how dubious, if not even how silly, his most cherished doctrines can seem to the uninitiated, those who include most of the people in any particular community most of the time. Even so, the most thoughtful Taoist might be amused upon noticing how, in modernity, one can find verbal confirmation of unexpected (but inevitable) connections between the high and the low, between the most ethereal and the most mundane: Tao can be used, for example, in references to religious rites and to virtues—but it can also be used (because of its sound) in references to the Dow Jones Index and to the Dow Jones Stock Average. Should this be regarded by the intrigued Taoist as a cosmic joke? However all this may be, do we not find ourselves (from time to time, if not always) somehow in the middle of things, unable to be certain about either the beginning (before us) or the ending (after us)? And, therefore, do we not find it difficult, if not impossible, truly either to see or to control what seems to be

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present? Certainly, as we move along, things can sometimes (but not always) seem quite different from what we had believed them to be. Are such reflections at the heart of the tentativeness associated (at least by impressionable outsiders) with Taoism?

VI What, we can now wonder, are the foundations upon which something reliable or solid can be developed for the most gifted acknowledged in verse 41 of the Tao Te Ching? We can recall Socrates’ insistence, in Plato’s Meno, that it is hard, if not simply impossible, for human beings to arrange for a reliable inculcation of virtue if one does not know—if one cannot say—what virtue is. The difficulties of knowing the most serious things are recognized from the outset of the Tao Te Ching, as we have seen in the translation by a Dutch scholar of verse 1. Much the same effect is encountered in a Chinese scholar’s translation of verse 1 (Gia Fu Feng): The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of Heaven and Earth. The named is the mother of the ten thousand things.

I interrupt this reading of verse 1 to observe that one can be reminded here, if not also elsewhere in the book, of the opening of Hesiod’s Theogony. Verse 1 continues thus, in this Chinese scholar’s translation: Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one sees the manifestations.

It seems to be suggested here that it is only by freeing oneself from desire that one can penetrate to the heart of things, where the mysterious is evident. So long as one’s desires are in control, however, one must settle for ever-changing manifestations or appearances that are far from secure. Verse 1 concludes, in this translation, with these observations about “the mystery” and “the manifestations”: These two spring from the same source but differ in name; This appears as darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gate to all mystery.

One can be reminded of the darkness encountered in the opening canto of Dante’s Inferno. But there is not here in the Tao Te Ching any prospect of en-

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lightenment, at least as that is ordinarily understood. The truly learned, extolled in verse 41, recognize the limitations of human inquiry—and they conduct themselves accordingly, suggesting that others moderate their expectations and hence both their joys and their grief. At the very least there seems to be recognized in these eighty-one verses something that thinkers in the West (and not only self-abnegating monks) have also been obliged to acknowledge—that everyday appearances can be deceptive and that the fundamental things, upon which all inquiry and understanding depend, must be somehow grasped or posited before anything can be studied and described. (Consider, for example, what even the quite rigorous Euclid had to take for granted.) It is likely, of course, that the most fundamental things, like the divine, can never be truly or fully known and named. A working understanding of things seems to be intuited and hence presupposed from the beginning of any serious inquiry, that understanding which tends to be incorporated in the language that one inherits. For something to “work” in a reliable (if not also in a sustained and productive) manner, an established social order may be presupposed. The social order, or political culture, promoted by Taoism tends to be moderate in tone and anything but imperialistic in scope. All this can seem to be in marked contrast to a wider-ranging Confucianism. (It might even be suggested that Taoism is to Confucianism in China as states rights doctrines are to national consolidation inclinations in the United States.)

VII Still another difference between our Taoist text and the standard Confucian texts, such as the Analects, should be noticed. There are in the Tao Te Ching no explicit references to dates, to historical events, or to identifiable people. Nor are there any conversations recorded. This is in marked contrast to the Confucian texts (and also to such texts as the Platonic dialogues). The lack of names means, in effect, the suppression both of ambition and of what we know as “personality.” We have noticed the insistence that even the Tao cannot be named. On the other hand, common sense, or everyday necessities, can induce compromises with the spirit of the Tao. This may be reflected in the tradition to which I have referred, about how the Tao Te Ching came to be written: a border guard (that is, a member of the bureaucracy) compelled LaoTzu to provide this collection before he could be allowed to leave the country (or “to die”?). Is it a matter of chance, then, that we do have this text? But, it can be countered, if there had not been one set of chance factors at work here, there would have been another. That is, Taoist sentiments were being expressed here and there—and to some effect, perhaps because of the political and social circumstances among the

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Chinese people at large. The tradition does consider it plausible that someone such as a border guard had heard challenging things that required recording (a compulsion which may be, in itself, un-Taoist in spirit?). The fortuitous character of things does seem to be taught—or, should we say, recognized?—by the Tao Te Ching. Here, as elsewhere, limits related to human mortality are evident. This can be dramatized for us in the West by the Oedipus story. Particular disasters, such as the December 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, can also dramatize our limitations. But, when we stop to think about it, we can calculate that more people die worldwide each week, year in and year out, than those who died because of the recent tsunami. The spirit of the Tao is, then, one response to the intermittent human awareness of vulnerability. Both victories and defeats thus tend to be taken less seriously by the Taoist than they might otherwise be. But is the philosophical enterprise— which rests upon the assumption that there are things worth knowing and which can indeed be grasped—is that enterprise to be regarded as no more than a refined form of futility? There is in the Socratic tradition an element of vigorous skepticism—and this can be said to be dominant, if not even exaggerated, in Taoism, so much so as to undermine the entire philosophical enterprise, that enterprise which (at least in its most influential form across millennia in the West) respects the surface of things reflected in common sense, however much that preliminary awareness of things has to be continually examined, corrected, and refined.

VIII I have suggested that Taoism may be so deeply rooted in the massive Chinese experience and traditions that it may be impossible for us in the West to secure more than a glimpse of it here and there. I have also suggested that the primary effect of the study by us of any non-Western school of thought may be to help us see ourselves somewhat better than we otherwise might. Is the growing interest in Taoism in the West symptomatic of a change in character among a significant minority of us? And how does that change, encouraging a form of Quietism, bear on the moral code and the political morale that our way of life takes for granted? We might wonder, for example, what Taoism says about, and does to, the faith that a people may have in “the Pursuit of Happiness” as a proper goal. And we recall that the Confucians sometimes regarded Taoism as subversive both of laudable patriotism and of traditional filial piety. On the other hand, the Taoist may be tempted to suggest that there is often much that is arbitrary (or accidental) in the political allegiances human beings esteem from time to time and from place to place; the Taoist may also be tempted to suggest that family connections are far less intimate than they might seem to be (thus, the person

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whom one may exalt as one’s ancestor four generations ago is only one of the sixteen progenitors one had in that generation). However all this may be, Taoism may indeed help us see ourselves better than we otherwise might. We can see in the Taoist grasp of things the spirit of some of the pre-Socratic thinkers (such as Heraclitus). This seems to have been what prompted Martin Heidegger’s considerable interest in the Tao Te Ching after the Second World War. The Heideggerian interest does suggest that Taoism should be taken seriously by us. But the character of Heidegger—the Macbeth of philosophy—should prompt us to be cautious here, especially since he was a thinker who somehow managed to move from the pre-Socratics to the post-Socratics without being sufficiently moved by the life of Socrates.

IX Caution is also called for when we notice that there has evidently been in Taoism a curious movement over millennia from the more philosophical to the more mystical (with all kinds of divinities now available to be worshiped). This seems to be the reverse of the movement that Westerners have seen in “mainstream” Christianity, and in “mainstream” Judaism, and perhaps also in “mainstream” Islam. (See But Not Philosophy, xxiii, n. 19.) “Mystical” Taoism may be related to “philosophical” Taoism as astrology is to astronomy. (One can be reminded here of some of the Pythagoreans.) Is mysticism promoted, or at least permitted, by the ambiguous way that the Tao Te Ching text is organized? And is there here a sense of that form of the mystical which is not disciplined by a respect for common sense? Common sense may seem to be deferred to, however, in the repeated references to nature in our Tao Te Ching translations. (See also the Britannica passages I have quoted.) But, I venture to suggest, our translators have probably done us a disservice by thus exporting to ancient China that notion of nature which did not emerge until about the sixth century in Greece (with one curious harbinger of it in Homer). And, it does seem, a sustained philosophic tradition is not possible without a reliable grasp of nature. We are put on notice as to the dubious uses of nature in the English translations of the Tao Te Ching: the term nature can be used again and again, but (significantly) not for the same characters by the various translators. And when there is no proper grounding in nature, there is not likely to be either a responsible questioning of the questionable or a reliable confidence in that which can truly be known. Of course, there do remain questions about what can be known, aside from what a reliable revelation may provide. For example, is there a beginning of the

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world or is it forever? Piety (or poetry) may suggest one answer, philosophy (or science) may suggest another. The answer we personally prefer may depend on our circumstances or on our temperament (which temperament, in turn, may be shaped, at least in part, by circumstances, including the prevailing doctrines in one’s community). The contending answers we confront can be either fascinating or terrifying (or both, in turn). How one does respond to such matters may well depend upon what one has been taught to believe, to think, and to feel. In any event, it does seem, however changeable everything we observe may be, that there is something ultimately inexplicable which is somehow forever. The nature of thinking itself is touched upon in the closing verse (81) of the Tao Te Ching, which opens with this sentiment (Gia Fu Fang, trans.): Truthful words are not beautiful. Beautiful words are not truthful.

Those in the West who have best taught us how to think might want to question this sentiment, suggesting as they do so the fundamental correspondences among the good, the true, and the beautiful. They might want to question as well the next two lines of verse 81 of the Tao Te Ching, where something like this is said: Good men do not argue. Those who argue are not good.

Perhaps this and like translations are not accurate—but they do suggest the apparent “know nothing” underpinnings of the Tao. However that may be, are we not entitled to recollect that not only did a man as obviously good as Socrates argue a lot but also that his noteworthy goodness was both developed by and exhibited in his continuous arguing in an effort to uncover, and to share with others, the beautiful truths in things?

Appendix G

On the Apparent Knowability of the Good (2005)*

Are there standards of the good or of the bad that can be known? Or is that which is regarded as good, from time to time or from place to place, too much dependent upon circumstances to be always identifiable as good or right? Still, it can be instructive to notice what is invoked when circumstances are cited thus as affecting our judgment here. Is there not even in such a caution some sense of an overriding good that is relied upon? At least, it seems to be sensed that it is not good to be mistaken as to what may be applied where or when. It can be recognized that the particular rules by which we are accustomed to live should sometimes, if only rarely, be set aside. This setting aside may be done for the sake of something considerably worthwhile which is perceived to be threatened by the rules that would ordinarily be applicable. Something, that is, may help us distinguish among the competing goods that come to view for human beings. That “something” can be understood to be the virtue traditionally known by us as prudence. Such authoritative guidance may seem to be provided as well for others, here and there, by a reliable divine revelation. It can also be recognized by human beings that precisely what action or any other thing is indeed good may sometimes be difficult to discover. It is this recognition that makes prudence as attractive as it should be as a guide to action. Some may be moved, perhaps because of personal temperament, to look for ultimate guidance not to a good to be secured but rather to an evil to be avoided. But even they can be understood to regard as good the avoidance of particular

* Sources: These introductory remarks were prepared by George Anastaplo for a colloquium on ethics at Lawrence University’s Björklunden Conference Center, Baileys Harbor, Wisconsin, July 25, 2005. The principal participants in this colloquium included a Milwaukee rabbi and a Door County Episcopal priest.

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evils. Are not they, that is, inclined to avoid as evil those things that seem most to threaten the good they instinctively cherish? However all this may be, it can be difficult, if not virtually impossible, by the use of reason alone, to identify any particular good as always or absolutely so. Still, it does seem to be intrinsic to reasoning beings (if not to all living things) that they at least sense, if they do not truly know, that there is a sovereign or overarching good by which both thoughts and actions may properly be judged.

Appendix H

On Properly Knowing Oneself (2006)*

You will remember that your Basic Program experience began four years ago with an extended examination of a suggestion that learning is substantially dependent on recalling what one has somehow always known. Your Basic Program experience has just ended with the concluding text on our reading list, Xenophon’s Hiero, a dialogue by one of the two most distinguished students of Socrates. Critical to that challenging dialogue is the regret expressed by a powerful political ruler that he can never be confident that he is loved by anyone for himself alone, and not because of his power and his wealth. One “naturally” wants the beloved who may be cared for to care sincerely for one in return. After all, the person cared for is likely to seem superior in a critical respect, and hence it is not surprising that that person’s assessment of oneself is treasured. One’s worthiness is thereby attested to by someone who is somehow invested with authority. An underlying problem here is that one does not otherwise know on one’s own “what’s what”—either what is truly good or whether one is truly that way. Such concerns are reflected in the institution of honor in a community. We recall that Aristotle suggested, at the outset of his Nicomachean Ethics, that human beings seek honor in order to be assured of their goodness. This suggests that most men sense that they need help if they are to recognize where their true interests lie. This also suggests that the more one does understand, the less dependent one is apt to be on others. Such an understanding can be furthered by the better texts available for study. One critical lesson “taught” by such texts is that we may not truly matter as much individually as we may want to believe. *Sources: These remarks by George Anastaplo, on behalf of the Basic Program Staff, were made at the Fifty-Seventh Annual Awarding of Certificates to graduates of the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults at the University of Chicago, June 17, 2006. See, for the Basic Program reading list, George Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker: From Shakespeare to Joyce (Chicago: Swallow Press, 1983), 299–300. That list begins with considerable time devoted to Plato’s Meno.

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Unless we happen to be blessed by access to a reliable divine revelation, the best minds (the most disciplined intellects) have to be looked to if we are to think and act in the best way possible in our time and place. Such minds have not only to be identified, but also to be studied, if they are to be usefully understood. Particularly important here are the Platonic dialogues, examinations (by that other distinguished student of Socrates) which suggest the enduring questions in need of identification and clarification if they are to be usefully applied to our circumstances. We aim, thereby, at an excellence that is dependent, ultimately, on rationality and an awareness of what is universal. We are thus offered that precious (however temporary) access which may thereby be available to us, as mortal beings, to eternal things. Particularly important for us, therefore, is a reliable identification of enduring questions. We constantly need to clarify them if they are indeed to be usefully applied to changing circumstances. Even so, we have always to be on our guard lest we allow the constant changes in our circumstances (including changes in ourselves) to lead to an insistence that everything is “relative.” The Basic Program reading list (which is revised annually) does try to provide a reliable sampling of those texts in the Western tradition that are most likely to suggest what is genuinely worth thinking about and knowing. We can now return, briefly, to men such as Xenophon’s Hiero. The powerful ruler is never likely to be “personally” satisfied—partly because of the everchanging realm in which he has to “operate,” partly because of what he “had had to do” in order to get where he is, and partly because of what he “now has to do” in order to sustain himself in power. Indeed, why he is there at all—what is likely to have moved him to want to be where he is and to do what he has been doing—why he is there at all is probably because he himself is likely to have been moved by deep insecurity somehow grounded in profound ignorance. True political rule, it has been argued by competent observers, means self-sacrifice, not self-advancement. It means, that is, a disciplining (if not even a sacrificing) of oneself to serve the common good. It is well to be reminded that these lessons are not only for those few among us who chance to be in positions of apparent power. All of us have had the experience of being lovers and, perhaps, beloveds as well. It can be sobering, if not even distressing, to recognize how much we depend thereby on circumstances, including personal traits we happen to have and the traits, and hence limitations, of others. We can be reminded of all this by what a poet, perhaps the best poet of his time, has taught us about the quite charming girl who wanted (Hiero-like) to be loved for herself alone, and not for her wonderful yellow hair. We may wonder, of course, whether any human being can, in this life, be effectively separated from what may seem to be accidental attributes. What (if anything), we may wonder as well, can be said to be truly and forever one’s own, one’s self? (Is there something Cartesian about such an inquiry, which strives for a godlike

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perspective?) The poet suggests the inevitable limitations upon our self-knowledge and our self-realization when he concludes his poem (“For Anne Gregory”) with this convenient revelation addressed to our desperate girl: I heard an old religious man But yesternight declare That he had found a text to prove That only God, my dear, Could love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.

Still more texts may have to be consulted if we are to secure a reliable clarity about the questions that can be said to be addressed here. All this can remind us, still another time, of the difficulty as well as the importance of properly knowing oneself.

ADDENDUM: HOW MAY ONE UNDERSTAND WHAT ONE IS AND DOES?* It was in November 1950 that I found myself refusing to go along with the loyalty oath–type demands which chanced to be made by the Committee on Character and Fitness of the Illinois bar. That refusal cost me my career at the bar, evidently making me the only person ever denied admission to the Illinois bar on this ground. It suffices for our immediate purpose for me to report that my rejection by the Character Committee, beginning in 1950—a rejection upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court [by a five-to-four vote] in 1961 [366 U.S. 82]—led to my alienation from almost all of my University of Chicago Law School teachers. It evidently did not matter much to them that I had done quite well in their law school after several years of service in this country and abroad as a flying officer during and immediately after the Second World War. Nor did it seem to matter to them that the Character Committee never claimed to have any evidence, or even any allegations, to justify the demands which were accidentally insisted upon in my case. It was for them also irrelevant that I believed that it was not good for this country (especially during the Cold War) that citizens be harassed because of their political opinions. The tone of the dominant law school faculty response to my bar admission troubles was set, quite early, by its then newly appointed dean, who later became *Adapted from a talk by George Anastaplo, “If You’re as Good as You Look, Why Aren’t You a University of Chicago Professor?”—remarks made to the Hyde Park Historical Society, Chicago, Illinois, November 16, 2003. See, for the complete text, anastaplo.wordpress.com. See also the Hyde Park Historical Society website.

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the provost and then the president of the University of Chicago before going to Washington to serve as the attorney general of the United States. It was soon apparent, from 1950 on, that there would be considerable distance between the law school and me. The law school dean never explained himself publicly, so far as I know, but one can guess what his motives, and most of his colleagues, were. They probably included concerns about the reputation and hence the future of the school, if not also concerns about the career and welfare of a misguided student. The genuine understanding that one should aspire to depends, in part, upon the capacity to think seriously about what one believes oneself to know even as one remains open to new things, including challenges. The dean’s own experience, in himself encountering (shortly before my own “troubles” began with the bar) the serious resistance (we have since learned) he evidently experienced from the some on the University Board of Trustees to his appointment as dean because he happened to be Jewish, could have had one of two (among other) effects on him: it could have made him determined to stand up for others who happened to be unfairly discriminated against, or it could have made him particularly apprehensive that he not be considered politically unorthodox, so much so that he might even have become determined to prove himself obviously “reliable.” Certainly, the dean did not seem to recognize that to have one of his best students treated cavalierly by the bar admission authorities was really an insult to the school. Both his ambition and his insecurity—both of which he did have in good measure—inhibited him from being as bold here as I believe he should have been. Had the law school intervened, if only behind the scenes, the bar authorities would likely have backed down. The faculty’s intervention could have depicted me, not without some justice, as a foolish young man who was really all right. Be that as it may, the dean and the colleagues for whom he acted were never big enough (in the decades that followed) to admit publicly their mistake, whatever they may have said in private from time to time. Still, when “my” dean died three years ago, I could recognize him publicly as a gifted and conscientious man, very much devoted to the University of Chicago, a man who did seem to conduct himself better in the exercise of power the higher up he rose in the ranks of his fellow citizens. [See 46 South Dakota Law Review 102, 304–7 (2001).] In the final analysis, it is not what others do or don’t do that may really matter—for such responses can be hard to influence or even to be certain about. What does matter most is what one does oneself and how one understands what one does. It is this that one may have some control over and hence “responsibility” for, thereby avoiding conduct that can be simply fearful or otherwise contemptible.

Appendix I

Come, All Ye Faithful: St. John Chrysostom and the Meaning of Christmas (2006)*

We are accustomed to hearing complaints about that commercialization of Christmas which ignores its spiritual significance. Such complaints have ancient counterparts, as may be seen in a sermon (Homily VI) by St. John Chrysostom (d. 407), the “golden-mouthed” archbishop of Constantinople. Chrysostom explains, in this sermon (a week before Christmas), that the Feast of the Nativity was being neglected among the Christians that he knew. And yet, he argues, without that miraculous birth everything else that Christians make much of is meaningless—and that includes the Passion, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection of Jesus. Thus, fundamental to Christian doctrine is the Incarnation, which is celebrated by the Feast of the Nativity. Everything meaningful for Christians, as Christians, follows from and depends on THAT. What did happen at Bethlehem two millennia ago? And (a secondary question) precisely when, in the course of that fateful year, was this great event? What is offered to the faithful is both immense and trivial—trivial in the ordinariness of yet another human birth, and yet immense in the implications of what is associated with this particular birth. At the heart of this matter, Chrysostom argues, is a feast day which is “the most holy, august, and awesome of all feasts.” “It would be no mistake,” he argues, “to call it the chief and mother of all holy days,” “the day of Christ’s birth in the flesh.” He then explains, It is from this day that the feasts of the Theophany, the sacred Pasch, the Ascension, and Pentecost had their source and foundation. Had Christ not been born in the flesh, he would not have been baptized, which is the Theophany or Manifestation; nor would he have been crucified, which is the Pasch; nor would he have sent

*Sources: This essay was prepared by George Anastaplo for the Greek Star newspaper, Chicago, Illinois, in December 2006.

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down the Spirit, which is Pentecost. So it is that, just as different rivers arise from a source, these other feasts have their beginnings from the birth of Christ.

The Christians of his day are addressed by the preacher. Evidence does not have to be provided in support of the historicity of the great events associated with Jesus of Nazareth. It may be, from the very nature of things, that relevant evidence with respect to such matters is never available for others aside from the immediate observers of truly miraculous events. We might even wonder what observers of the birth of Jesus could themselves have seen that was essentially different from what could be routinely observed elsewhere on many occasions. Indeed, could the remarkable heavenly signs said to have been witnessed at the birth of Jesus have been taken by some to apply instead to various other births (or events) that very night? All this is to recognize that religious allegiances (whether to the creed of Moses, the Buddha, St. Paul, Arjuna, or Muhammad) depend upon faith, which can in turn depend (at least in large part) upon the circumstances of one’s upbringing. The thoughtful Christian recognizes that others are likely to have as much, or as little, basis for their respective faiths as do Christians. This is not to deny that the faith people do happen to cherish can have profound effects both on their lives as believers and on the way that a community conducts itself. Such profound effects may be seen in how Chrysostom can speak of “the day of Christ’s birth,” since on that day the Christian can experience more “holy fear and trembling” than on any other occasion. For, he argues, the fact that Christ, who became man, also died was a consequence of his birth. Even though he was free from any sin, he did take upon himself a mortal body, and that should make us marvel. That he who is God was willing to become man, that he endured to accommodate himself to our weakness and to come down to our level is too great for our minds to grasp. It makes us shudder with the deepest holy fear; it fills us with terror and trembling.

Are we moderns, in being liberated from such “fear and trembling,” truly better off—or have all too many of us made ourselves more susceptible instead to other (less elevating) forms of intimidation? Certainly, our current intimidation by such threats as those posed by would-be “terrorists” (instead of, say, by Satan?) can seem trivial, and otherwise unseemly, by comparison.

Appendix J

An Academic Autobiography, by Way of Saint Thomas and Saint Ignatius (2008)*

I have been privileged to teach, for decades, at Roman Catholic institutions of higher learning after having received my AB, JD, and PhD degrees (as well as considerable experience in conducting “Great Books” adult education seminars) at a “Baptist” school (that is, the University of Chicago). My principal Catholic institutions (after the Saint Louis where I was born) have been Dominican University and Loyola University Chicago (along with, off and on, the Cistercianrelated University of Dallas). I served at Dominican University (known in my time there as Rosary College) as Professor of Political Science and of Philosophy (and, at times, as Chairman of the Political Science Department). My Dominican appointment was due, in large part, to a decision by the then-president of the school, Sister Candida Lund, OP, who had been a graduate student with me at the University of Chicago. Indeed, she had even been at the U.S. Supreme Court, working on her doctoral research project, when I made my oral argument there in my Illinois bar admission case (in December 1960). In short, she should have known what she was getting. Critical to the spirit of Dominican University can be said to be the influence of St. Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the greatest of the Dominicans. Certainly, his Treatise on Law is a text that every student of the law should know. It develops, in a useful manner, the definition that law “is nothing other than an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated.” Such guidance is particularly important to keep in mind when one confronts the contemporary emphasis on laws as merely dictates based on power. It is not

*Sources: This essay was prepared by George Anastaplo for the spring 2008 issue of Loyola Law, Chicago, Illinois, where it was published in an abridged form.

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generally recognized that such a dubious power-oriented proposition is really at the heart of the understanding of the common law (if not of law generally) sanctified by the landmark Supreme Court case, Erie Railroad Company v. Tompkins (1938). (One unhappy consequence of such an approach to the law is that it tends to undermine respect for international law.) The last conversation I had with the late David P. Currie, an eminent constitutional law scholar, consisted only of this exchange: G.A.: Does anyone, besides me, believe that Erie was wrongly decided? D.P.C.: No! G.A.: No one?! D.P.C.: No one!!

This suggests the bad shape that jurisprudence, or the philosophy of law, is in these days. (But were the seeds for Erie sown in Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion in Johnson and Graham’s Lessee v. William M’Intosh in 1823?) Critical to the spirit of Loyola University has to be, of course, the influence of the founder of the Society of Jesus, St. Ignatius of Loyola. He too was concerned about the law, but in a way quite different from the eminently scholarly Thomas. Ignatius was critical to laying down rules for the development and administration of an ambitious religious order. The importance of discipline, or law, is evident in the order that he fathered, an institution which very much depends on respect for recognized authority (anticipating thereby the Erie approach?). It is not generally known, however, how much, and how often, Ignatius himself and his earliest spiritual comrades were threatened by the Inquisition, and not only in their native Spain. He and his successors seemed to some, in the sincere but vigorous simplicity of the message they promulgated, to appear too much like the old Waldensians, the emerging Lutherans, and other suspect sects developing all over Europe. Ignatius himself could even be locked up, for weeks at a time, while the authorities debated what to make of an aristocrat who insisted on dressing and acting like a man of humble origins. It can be considered a matter of chance, if not even the working of Divine Providence, that he was not done away with early in his tempestuous career. One consequence of Ignatius’s early troubles was that he was effectively silenced (as a preacher) for four years. This led him to go abroad to study and work, which meant an extended stay in Paris. Such self-exile then, as in our own time (I recall with considerable pleasure our extended association with the Sorbonne in 1951)—such self-sacrifice can prove to be enlightening and otherwise attractive. Even so, Ignatius evidently managed to avoid coming under the influence of the leading Catholic humanist of the day, Desiderius Erasmus, preferring

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instead Thomas à Kempis. Ignatius’s mission was, rather, to develop an “army” that could be of service to the leader of the Church. Thus there was, early on among the Jesuits, the understanding that they themselves should not personally aspire to the highest positions in the Church. Thus, also, someone such as René Descartes could begin his influential speculations with the expectation of his Jesuit teachers that study would yield “a clear and certain knowledge of all that is useful to life.” That the Jesuits have made as much as they have of discipline and service may reflect the experiences Ignatius had himself had in his military career. His transformation into a priest can even be considered a form of “reenlistment” after having been severely wounded in battle as a soldier. The grounding of the Jesuit order in a military ethos makes even more significant a remarkable pronouncement by a Jesuit in our own time, an article published by Father John C. Ford during the Second World War: “The Morality of Obliteration Bombing” (Theological Studies, 1944). Father Ford’s article was published while German cities were being systematically demolished by British and American bombers and before the two uses of nuclear bombs in Japan. This was also before it became known worldwide both how fiendish the European concentration camps had been and how severe Japan’s atrocities in its occupied territories had been. Such revelations made humane people generally less concerned than they might otherwise have been, for several years after the war, about the unprecedented devastation which Allied aerial bombardments had caused. But as people have had an opportunity to think about such war measures, Father Ford’s “conclusion” offers us a serious challenge: Obliteration bombing [of cities], as defined, is an immoral attack on the rights of the innocent. It includes a direct intent to do them injury. Even if this were not true, it would still be immoral, because no proportionate cause could justify the evil done; and to make it legitimate would even lead the world to the immoral barbarity of total war. The voice of the Pope and the fundamental laws of the charity of Christ confirm this condemnation.

These 1944 sentiments should remind us that the case for international rules and natural law/natural right may be stronger than contemporary legal realists (in disregard for authorities such as Thomas Aquinas) may like to believe. I mention in passing that Father Raymond Baumhart remembers Father Ford as a vibrant personality. And I, in turn, salute Father Baumhart as the sensible university president who ratified my appointment to the Loyola law faculty, for which I am profoundly grateful, especially as I recall the cool (if not even unfriendly) reception I had received for years at the hands of law school deans and university presidents at my alma mater.

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It has been noticed that religious sentiments and organizations tend to be more vigorous these days in this country than in Europe. And, partly because of the circumstances of their establishments here, our religious organizations also tend to be fairly tolerant toward each other, contributing thereby to a healthy political life among us. The determined openness which can be observed at Dominican and at Loyola can also be observed at, say, Lenoir-Rhyne University, a Lutheran school in North Carolina, where I have been privileged to help conduct spring seminars for a quarter-century now.

Appendix K

Struggles for the Soul of Christendom (2008)*

I There may be seen in the battles among French intellectuals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries struggles for the soul of France, perhaps even for the soul of Continental Europe and hence for the soul of Christendom. These struggles had been anticipated by the post–Roman Empire “fallout” in Europe, especially as the challenge of Islam became evident not long after its founding in the seventh century. That challenge was dramatized by the career of Charlemagne (742?–814) and by The Song of Roland (of around 1100). Thereafter, the French were helped toward self-realization by the inspired yearnings of Jeanne d’Arc (1412?–1431). Western Christendom had struggles within itself to deal with, especially as the Protestant challenge to the Roman Catholic Church developed. Within the Church itself deep, or at least troubling, divisions could be felt. Thus, in France, a Roman Catholic sect with suspicious Calvinist inclinations, the Jansenists, found itself locked in mortal combat with another sect, the Jesuits, combat that was dramatized in the career of Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), a defender of the determinedly rigorous Jansenists who considered the Jesuits far too permissive. *Sources: This talk was prepared by George Anastaplo for the University of Chicago First Friday Lecture Series, April 4, 2008. It drew upon his 2007-2008 Alumni Seminar, “Masters of French Thought,” in the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults, University of Chicago. That seminar was also drawn on for George Anastaplo’s talk for the University of Chicago Works of the Mind Lecture Series, January 13, 2008, “Montesquieu on the Future of Europe, If Not of the Human Race.” The contributions of students in the Basic Program Seminar, including Robert Cox and John Metz, were useful for both talks. See, on John Locke’s The Reasonableness of Christianity (referred to in Section X of this First Friday talk), Anastaplo, The Bible: Respectful Readings (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2008), p. 305. This First Friday talk was dedicated to the memory of Robert E. Mann (1929-2008), a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, who represented his Hyde Park district with distinction in the House of Representatives of the Illinois General Assembly for sixteen years.

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By this time, the Muslim threat to Europe had faded away and the Crusades had been abandoned. By this time, also, modern science had taken root and was steadily asserting itself. One consequence of this latter development was the beginning of a radical reexamination of the religion-related history inherited from the pious ancestors of Europeans. Another consequence was a reconsideration of the prevailing opinions about the very nature of the human soul, how it originally got to be, and what eventually became of it after death. Ancient (that is, pre-Christian thinkers) were drawn on in this radical reconsideration of the human condition. This is illustrated by the career of Karl Marx (1818–1883), a man who began his scholarly career with an 1841 doctoral dissertation, “The Difference Between the Democritean and the Epicurean Philosophies of Nature.” In addition, it is hard to overestimate the effects (the spiritual as well as the material effects) in Europe of the post-Columbus openings to the Western Hemisphere and Asia.

II It is against the background I have just sketched that the Pascal career can be usefully reconsidered, the career of a noteworthy mathematician and scientist who could express remarkable spiritual yearnings. His research included studies of the laws of probability and of the nature of a vacuum. Critical to Pascal’s spiritual experience was a sister’s dedication (eventually as a nun) to the Port-Royal Jansenist sect. His own personal development in these matters culminated in a profound conversion-like experience of November 23, 1654. One consequence of this was a “charm” that he so stitched into the lining of his coat that he wore it the rest of his life. This “charm” (dated November 23, 1654) was “FIRE. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars. Certainty. Certainty. Feeling. Joy. Peace.” (The text, in French, is “FEU. Dieu d’ Abraham, Dieu d’Isaac, Dieu de Jacob, non des philosophes et savants. Certitude. Certitude. Sentiment. Joie. Paix.”) Another consequence of Pascal’s piety was the considerable collection of notes he made, evidently for an extended testimonial to his faith that he did not live to write. Those notes were collected and published (after Pascal’s death) as Pensées (or Thoughts). Scholars continue to differ as to how these thoughts should be arranged. The Pensées collection is said to have become Pascal’s most-read text in our time. It includes his famous (some would say, his dubious) “wager” argument on the usefulness of going along with the Christian dispensation. Informing much of what Pascal says, here as elsewhere, is his confession that the silence of infinite spaces (or the heavens) terrified him. (Was this one consequence, we may wonder, of his remarkable proficiency in geometry?) One can be reminded,

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by way of contrast, of the condemned Socrates’ willingness (as at the end of the Apology) to recognize death as a dreamless sleep, a prospect that should not trouble the sensible human being who is reasonably well-informed. It can, by the way, sometimes be difficult for the modern reader of the Pensées to see why some of Pascal’s arguments on behalf of Christianity would not apply as well to various other established religions worldwide that also have long had multitudes of worshippers. Pascal attempts to deal with this problem by suggesting that Christianity was prophesied—or, at least, can be said to have been prophesied—in ways that no other religion was.

III During Pascal’s lifetime his most popular writings are said to have been his Provincial Letters (1656–1657). These eighteen pamphlets, published anonymously (evidently with the pen name, Louis de Montalte), have come to be recognized as masterpieces of French style. These letters, addressed initially to a supposed correspondent in a province of France, purport to describe encounters of the author in Paris with distressingly permissive Jesuits. The text is often witty, enlivened by masterly character sketches, and punctuated by ironic touches. In the second half of this “correspondence,” the “letter writer” becomes fiercer as he repels, from a rigorous Jansenist perspective, the attacks that had been made upon the “letters” already published. It can even seem at times that the then-anonymous author of the “letters” is ruled by his passions, especially as he develops his responses to what he considers libels by the Jesuits. This seems quite different from the Pascal who could, as a youngster, work out, on the walls of his bedroom, elaborate geometric proofs that Euclid would have been proud of. Thus, there may be seen, in the Provincial Letters, the passion evident in many of the Pensées, but without the sense of a depressed soul that may be detected here and there in the Pensées. (It is said, in chapter XIV of book I of the “Fantine” section of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables [1862], that Pascal had “slipped into insanity” from “sublime heights.”)

IV Depressed or not, the genius of Pascal may be glimpsed again and again in the Provincial Letters (as in other work by him, including the Pensées). I can do little more on this occasion than to suggest some things that evidently have not been noticed about the masterly way the Provincial Letters are organized. Here, as elsewhere (as Christopher A. Colmo has observed), “[t]he detail that does not seem to fit [can] become . . . the key to understanding.”

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One detail seems to be related to the fateful November 23, 1654, “conversion” (or, really, reconversion) experience of Pascal. When one recalls that date, one can be moved to notice (after observing that it fell on a Thursday during 1656, the year that the letters began to be issued)—one can be moved to notice that none of the eighteen letters were assigned a Thursday date. Then one can be further intrigued upon noticing that half of the eighteen letters fell during the first half (that is, the pre-Thursday half) of the week and half in the second half. It should also be noticed that the first letter used 23 for its date (with January as the inaugural month), as do two others thereafter. In fact, 23 is used more for dating the letters than any other number—except for 25, which also has three uses. (Thus, almost one-half of the dates used [including a 24] are clumped with 23.) One can even get the impression that Pascal, after the ninth letter, recognized that he “had” to use more dates in the second half of the week before he could allow the series to end. The professional mathematicians I have consulted have confirmed these and other tentative suggestions that I have ventured to make. Indeed, they have also confirmed that it would be highly unlikely that a chance distribution could account for the “phenomena” I have already catalogued. Even more telling, they suggest, is the remarkably high proportion of primes and squares (eleven of them) among the numbers used by Pascal in dating his eighteen letters. (These include 23 [I], 29 [II], 9 [III], 25 [IV], 25 [VII], 3 [IX], 9 [XIII], 23 [XIV], 25 [XV], 4 [XVI], and 23 [XVII]. The remaining seven letters [V, VI, VIII, X, XI, XIII, and XVIII] use only even-numbered dates [2, 10, 18, 20, 24, 28, 30] even though almost a dozen odd-numbered dates were also available for Pascal to use. One or more of these seven numbers may also have special characteristics. In no case does Pascal use the same number for a letter and its day of the month. In short, one is challenged to figure out what is being “said” by the numbers used and not used.) I have tried to confirm what the French calendar looked like in 1656–1657. It appears, so far as I have been able to discover, that the French calendar already had by then what has long been the arrangement in modern France—an arrangement of the week beginning with Monday. This does put the fateful Thursday in the very middle of the week. But, in a sense, it does not “really” matter what the practice of that day was. That is, Pascal could, in working out revealing patterns, arrange the week as he pleased. Indeed, interesting things suggest themselves when one uses the Julian calendar as well with his dates, marked. An ingenious law student of mine (Irina Dashevsky, in a Loyola University seminar) was moved by our inquiry to detect (using the Julian calendar) a tune indicated by the numbers and hence the spatial arrangement used by Pascal, an attractive tune (she tells me) that would have to be played on a flute. (Should it not be wondered whether Pascal himself had ever exhibited any talent for music?)

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These and like conjectures would have to be examined thoroughly before they could be confidently accepted. But it should not require much evidence or argument to persuade us that a genius such as Pascal is likely to be much more in control of his materials than he might at times seem to be, especially when he appears to be moved by religious passions. And, considering his mathematical prowess, we should expect his uses of numbers to be revealing and interesting, even more interesting than anything we have already noticed. Certainly, one should not be confident that one understands any work of a great mind unless one grasps the principle of organization of that particular work.

V Both the Jansenists and the Jesuits (bitter foes in Pascal’s time) came to be severely disciplined by the Church. The Jansenists were dealt with during Pascal’s lifetime, the Jesuits were dealt with (indeed, temporarily suppressed) a century later. Both orders were determinedly Christian. Were not both imprudent in how they had gone after each other? Certainly, they did not seem to recognize that they had much in common, especially at a time when Protestant movements were growing. All this can seem rather odd to us. Why, it can be wondered today, did they not see the need for a common front (perhaps also with the Protestants) against a rising secularism grounded in modern science and ever more sophisticated historical research? Furthermore, the common cause among the various professions of faith grounded in the Bible (both the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Bible) should have been ever more compelling as more and more was learned about long-established creeds and ways in Asia.

VI We can notice, if only in passing, that Jansenists and Jesuits did seem to be allies (if only temporarily) in enlisting the authority of the Roman Catholic Church in suppressing Molière’s Tartuffe (1664), a comedy about a remarkably “successful” religious hypocrite. We do not have the original play. Even so, we can marvel at these reactions, which may even suggest that Molière had perceived something deeply troubling about the Christianity of his day. What does it mean, we can also wonder, that Molière has thrived ever since while his critics have been discredited? Did such critics fail to learn the lesson about themselves offered by Molière in what has turned out to be one of his

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most popular plays, a lesson about the destructive presumptuousness of the religious hypocrite?

VII It can be instructive to notice how Molière (1622–1673) managed to secure a permanent place on the French stage for his play about religious hypocrisy. The exploitation by a religious hypocrite of issues of conscience was not dealt with by any ecclesiastical authorities in the play. (The archbishop of Paris had come down hard against the original version of this play.) Instead, the presumptuous hypocrite, who had ruthlessly exploited pious gullibility, is thwarted (in the play) by the king himself who detects and condemns such fraud. The king is extolled in the play for his perceptiveness and justice. We do not know whether anything like this had been done in the original version of this play—but once the king is used as he is in this version, the Church authorities must have seen themselves as trumped. This resolution of the play suggests the ultimate subordination of religiongenerated issues to a political disposition. Is this not really “Hobbesian” in orientation? That is, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) had argued, a dutiful people should take its religious orientation, at least for public application, from its political sovereign. All this can be said to have been anticipated by the career of King Henry VIII (1491–1547) in England, who had become the head of the Church of England. The subordination of the religious to the political may be reflected in the current controversy in this country about the reckless oratory of an ambitious senator’s preacher. It may have been reflected as well in what Jeanne d’Arc can be said to have stood for. She was personally moved by her spiritual voices—but the consequences included a political development that survived her condemnation by the religious authorities of her day.

VIII The issues addressed in these matters—whether by Jeanne d’Arc, Henry VIII, Thomas Hobbes, Blaise Pascal, or Molière—tend to be subsumed by us under the category of “church and state issues.” An influential contributor to this development was Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), a remarkably prolific scholar (out of a French Calvinist background) who was heartily endorsed by the iconoclastic Voltaire (1694–1778), among many others. Bayle is particularly remembered for his encyclopedic Dictionary, which ran (in several editions) to more than a dozen massive volumes. (The great Encyclo-

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pedia of Denis Diderot [1713–1784] is said to have been influenced considerably by Bayle’s project.) The attentive reader can see, in Bayle, salutary lessons about the care needed for safe and responsible examinations of sensitive religious and political issues. Particularly challenging, for the typical reader, were Bayle’s examinations of the careers of such Old Testament figures as David and Abraham (the very Abraham included in the “charm” that Pascal always carried after November 23, 1654). Bayle was anticipated by Montaigne (1533–1592), who was renowned as an apostle of skepticism. It can be difficult for us to recognize fully Montaigne’s influence. Thus, Pascal, who was quite ambivalent about Montaigne, felt obliged to take issue with him about matters of faith.

IX Bayle can be thought of as “poetic” in his development of historical topics. One can be reminded here of Aristotle’s observation that poetry is more philosophical than history. The complicated format and cross-references that Bayle uses, with extensive footnotes keyed to earlier notes, draws the reader into an amazing labyrinth. It can be difficult to pin down Bayle, especially on the most explosive issues—but the reader does get the impression that Bayle had serious reservations about the religious and political orthodoxies of his day. I believe it was Voltaire, a halfcentury later, who could speak of Bayle as having provided an arsenal for the Enlightenment. Marx also came to speak of Bayle with considerable respect. Bayle tended to be cagier—or, we might say, he was more responsible—than men thereafter such as Voltaire, Paine, and Marx had (partly because of Bayle?) to be. Certainly, it can be difficult to be sure where Bayle “really stood” on the more troubling issues of his day. Thus, he was careful not to do openly with New Testament figures what he had done with Old Testament figures such as Abraham, Sarah, and David. (Bayle did write a book on a passage—14:23—in the Gospel of Luke, a big book which questions the use of compulsion with respect to religious orthodoxy.)

X Where, then, did Bayle stand? His care in investigating grand topics (as well as many seemingly trivial matters) has made it difficult for scholars, down to our day, to determine what his core opinions were, not the least with respect to the reliability of biblical revelation.

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He is sometimes said to have opened the way, in the late seventeenth century, to skepticism, if not even to atheism. However that may be, Bayle seemed to consider it publicly irresponsible (as well as personally foolish) to allow oneself to be seen as Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677) had come to be seen. Particularly instructive are the Bayle discussions of Spinoza and of the Manicheans (with their insistence upon a principle of evil in eternal harness with the principle of good). Bayle was politic enough to speak well both of Pascal and of Hobbes. In short, he could recognize genius when he saw it. Some of what I have said on this occasion about the care with which Bayle wrote was anticipated by what Leo Strauss said, a half-century ago (in his Natural Right and History, 198–99), about the Bayle entry on Hobbes. The reader can see in Bayle’s massive explorations the early effects on social thought of modern science, especially what it was threatening to do to old-fashioned revelations about the creation of the earth and of its animate inhabitants and about the age and extent of the universe. The tension here can be glimpsed when we recall how the profoundly revolutionary Isaac Newton (1642–1727) could still, to the end of his life, devote considerable effort to the study of the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation. Perhaps a more cautious version of Thomas Hobbes may be seen in John Locke (1632–1704), who did offer (in an evidently unsuccessful effort to reconcile the political-religious differences of his day) a book entitled The Reasonableness of Christianity.

XI The intellectual and social developments we are accustomed to seem now to have been virtually inevitable, no matter what a Pascal might do to impede them or what a Bayle might do to facilitate them. We can be reminded, by displays at this time of Muslim anger in response to perceived insults, of the deadly religion-related public passions once common in Europe. Thus, today, it can be publicly suggested (and, indeed, broadcast) among us by learned scholars that the Israelites were really the descendants of Canaanites, that they had never been en masse in Egypt, that the battle of Jericho never happened, and so on. Similar doubts can be publicly expressed (even in profitable bestsellers) about the Creation accounts in Genesis and about the most momentous miracles recorded in the Gospels. Sciences such as astronomy and biology routinely seem to call into question today what had been routinely accepted as recently as a century ago. Champions of a literal reading of the Bible are now beleaguered minorities here and there. One can be regarded as hopelessly old-fashioned if one suggests that the long-

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established faith of a people should usually be treated with respect, at least in public discourse. It is hardly likely that any people, at large, can become dispassionate philosophers. Rather, it must be wondered whether the revolutionary ideologies that peoples are prone to in our time are likely to be as moderating (and hence as civilizing) as some of the religious opinions and institutions of their forebears.

XII Pierre Bayle is famous (or is it notorious?) for having argued that a society of atheists can be moral. Even so, I have recognized, he does give the impression that there are better and worse ways of talking, especially in public, about sensitive matters. An insistent atheism, he sometimes seems to suggest, is not likely to be either polite or politic. But then, some might add, neither is the kind of passion in promoting spiritual matters exhibited by Blaise Pascal. Of course, questions may be raised about the significance of gentlemanliness itself in the grand scheme of things. Willa Cather’s archbishop suggests how attractive, and constructive, the gentleman can be. That cleric was anticipated by the remarkably goodhearted, and effective, bishop we encounter in the opening chapters of Hugo’s Les Misérables. We can be reminded by Hugo of a lesson taught by Molière a century earlier in his Tartuffe about the theological-political problem, a Hobbesian lesson about the ultimate sovereignty of the political in human affairs, at least in the everyday world. That is, we learn at the outset of Les Misérables that the saintly bishop depicted there had been elevated to his eminently useful ecclesiastical post because of something that the Emperor Napoleon (in a brief encounter) had detected in him.

XIII Perhaps the greatest thinker among the postclassical Europeans I have glanced at on this occasion is the free-thinking Spinoza. Even so, he has yet to be “officially” rehabilitated after having been expelled from the synagogue in Amsterdam in 1656. The concern remains for some whether Judaism, with its remarkable accomplishments, could continue to thrive without a settled respect for its inherited religion. The French intellectual development I have reviewed (which includes Descartes, Montaigne, Pascal, and Bayle) can be considered to have culminated in Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau. Then, of course, there was the Revolution.

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Bayle, I note in passing, had a considerable influence among the English-speaking peoples, including artists such as Herman Melville (who even purchased a complete set of the Dictionary, evidently in translation). Also influential among us has been Montesquieu, especially for what he had to say about the varying capacities among the peoples of the earth for diverse political institutions. Particularly to be noticed here is Montesquieu’s insistence that Christianity could never be worldwide, that some peoples can never be expected to become Christians. Would not such a conclusion have seemed plausible to Pierre Bayle but profoundly disturbing to Blaise Pascal? Montesquieu’s conclusion can be said to be recognized, and adapted to, by an eminent Jesuit of our day, Avery Cardinal Dulles, of Fordham University. Consider, for example, the concluding paragraph of an article by him in the February 2008 issue of the journal First Things: Who, then, can be saved? Catholics can be saved if they believe the Word of God as taught by the Church and if they obey the commandments. Other Christians can be saved if they submit their lives to Christ and join the community where they think he wills to be found. Jews can be saved if they look forward in hope to the Messiah and try to ascertain whether God’s promise has been fulfilled. Adherents of other religions can be saved if, with the help of grace, they sincerely seek God and strive to do his will. Even atheists can be saved if they worship God under some other name and place their lives at the service of truth and justice. God’s saving grace, channeled through Christ the one Mediator, leaves no one unassisted. But that same grace brings obligations to all who receive it. They must not receive the grace of God in vain. Much will be demanded of those to whom much is given.

It can be instructive to consider how the Pascal of the Provincial Letters (which attacks so vigorously the supposed permissiveness of Jesuits of his day) would regard such sentiments as these from Fordham, sentiments that can be said to rise to the challenge of Bayle’s innovative anthropology.

Appendix L

On Truly Knowing What One Is Trying to Do: The Mystery of Evil (2008)*

[T]he man who had drawn the first lot [for the life he was next to live on earth] came forward and immediately chose the greatest tyranny, and, due to folly and gluttony, chose without having considered everything adequately, and it escaped his notice that eating his children and other evils were fated to be a part of that life. When he considered it at his leisure, he beat his breast and lamented the choice [he had made]. —Socrates (in Plato, Republic) So farewell Hope, and with Hope, farewell Fear, Farewell, Remorse: all Good to me is lost; Evil be thou my Good. —Satan, in John Milton’s Paradise Lost For as to pure evil or malignity for its own sake, apart from some procurement or notion of good, nothing which we see in all nature induces us to suppose it possible. The veriest wretch that ever astonished the community did not perpetrate his crime out of sheer love of inflicting evil, but out of some false idea of good and pleasure, or of avoidance of evil; which idea might have been done away in him by a wiser and healthier training. —Leigh Hunt, in The Seer; Common-Places Refreshed, LII (1840)

Instructive reservations have been recorded, in a reader’s comment, on assessments I have made in an essay, “The Holocaust and the Divine Ordering of Human Things.” That essay (included in my book The Bible: Respectful Readings, *Sources: This essay was prepared by George Anastaplo in August 2008 for his jurisprudence seminar at the Loyola University Chicago School of Law. See, for the Anastaplo-Brudno conversations referred to here, appendix A in this book.

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2008) drew on the six-hundred-page transcript of a dozen conversations Simcha Brudno and I had (mostly in 2000) about his experiences, as a Lithuanian Jew, primarily with the Nazis in Lithuania and Germany during the Second World War. I have entitled these materials Simply Unbelievable: Conversations with a Holocaust Survivor. (The first of these conversations is included in my book Reflections on Life, Death, and the Constitution, 2009. The second conversation may be seen in appendix A of this Christian Heritage volume.) My thoughtful reader’s comment (of August 7, 2008) included seven observations which I reproduce here, finding it convenient to number those observations as I develop what I have to say on this occasion: [1] I have never understood what you and Brudno mean by saying the Holocaust was “simply unbelievable.” [2] The Holocaust, notwithstanding its deniers, is a matter of fact, not of credence. [3] I have never understood what you mean by saying that the Nazis “really did not know what they were doing.” [4] They knew full well what they were doing, so much so that they knew they would be condemned for doing it if others knew as much. [5] The only mystery is why so many of them, knowing what they were doing, continued to do it while disliking what they did. [6] Whether they were unique in thus acting against their feelings and principles, when they had them, or whether other people such as ourselves would do the same thing, I don’t know. [7] This crime was theirs.

Observation 1—“I have never understood what you and Brudno mean by saying the Holocaust was ‘simply unbelievable.’” This characterization goes back to my first conversation with Simcha Brudno, a mathematician of some reputation, whom I met during a weekly physics colloquium tea-time at the University of Chicago. Very early in our first conversation, he asked me (out of the blue) what I thought of the Holocaust. I replied that I found it “simply unbelievable.” He responded that he agreed—that he had spent a year in Dachau, and every day he could not believe he was there. That experience was, in short, an incredible distance from the comfortable life he had had (since his birth in 1924, twenty years before) as a member of a middle-class Jewish family in Siailiau, Lithuania. Observation 2—“The Holocaust, notwithstanding its deniers, is a matter of fact, not of credence.” The typical Holocaust denial cannot be taken seriously, except perhaps as a symptom of a deep psychic flaw. It is indeed “a matter of fact” that some six million European Jews (as well as many others) were deliberately murdered by the Nazis during the Second World War. This must be, by far, the largest systematic destruction of a particular people of which there is a historical record. One cannot begin to think and speak seriously about this subject if one does not recognize the monstrous proportions of the deadly Nazi campaign against the Jews. Observation 3—“I have never understood what you mean by saying that the Nazis ‘really did not know that they were doing.’” What they did very much

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depended on the appraisal they had of the people they were systematically slaughtering, and of the deadly threat that they evidently believed that that people posed for Germany and the future of European civilization. Thoughtful observers can be expected to agree, however, that the Nazis were seriously (perhaps even insanely) deficient in what they saw in and from the Jews. In short, the Nazis were obviously doing other than they may have somehow believed themselves to be doing. Observation 4—“They knew full well what they were doing, so much so that they knew they would be condemned for doing it if others knew as much.” What the Nazis did know “full well” was that world opinion, and perhaps also much of German opinion, would condemn them for doing what they were ruthlessly doing to the Jews. But the Nazi leaders can be understood to have “reasoned” that the others (at least, if those others did not rule out, on principle, all capital punishment) would have to permit (if not even to endorse) the dreadful measures being relied upon by the Nazis if the Jews were truly as dreadful as the Nazis believed them to be. Observation 5—“The only mystery is why so many of them [the Nazis], knowing what they were doing, continued to do it while disliking what they did.” The use here of the term mystery can be said to have been inspired. It is, indeed, always a mystery how it is that human beings can ever “knowingly” do evil things. If one could see—could truly see—the evil one did, one surely would not want to do it, or ever want to be able to do it. Fundamental here is the ancient proposition that evil depends, ultimately, on ignorance. That many of the Nazis “dislik[ed] what they did” is suggested by their abandonment of the reliance on wholesale shootings to get rid of Jews and others. We are told that so direct a slaughter of other human beings, especially on a large scale, proved unbearable for the executioners. Gassing such victims (out of sight, so to speak) proved much more “impersonal” (as well, perhaps, as more “efficient”). Of course, there was obviously something deeply wrong about those who could be effectively recruited for even the more “impersonal” forms of mass executions. Here, as elsewhere, it must be wondered what it was that such killers believed they were doing. What else did these mass murderers believe that simply was not so? Observation 6—“Whether they [the Nazis] were unique in thus acting against their feelings and principles, when they had them, or whether other people such as ourselves would do the same thing, I don’t know.” What we can know is that people, when either seriously threatened or mightily tempted, may deal inhumanely with others. Consider the culminating grievance in the indictment of the king of Great Britain in the Declaration of Independence: “He has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is

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an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes, and Conditions.” We can be reminded by this grievance of how comfortable many early Americans could be with both large-scale human slavery and the relentless subjugation (if not even the elimination) of the natives encountered by them on this continent. Observation 7—“This crime was theirs.” The crimes of the Nazis were usefully recognized by the historic Nuremberg Trial (of Hermann Goering and others) in 1945–1946. Even so, the most horrendous crime of the Nazis—the systematic murder of perhaps half of the world’s Jews—was not entirely theirs alone. Centuries, if not even millennia, of spiritualized condemnation of Jews, often by the most distinguished authorities in Christendom, can be understood to have culminated in the Nazi madness. This is not to suggest that “we” have ever been as bad as the Nazis, especially in their merciless campaigns against Jews, gypsies, and others. But it is to remind ourselves of the dubious “facts” and “principles” that can be conjured up in attempts to justify ultimately unjustifiable measures. It can help to see evil programs for what they truly are. Thus, Leo Strauss observed in 1962, “The Nazi regime was the only regime of which I know which was based on no principle other than the negation of Jews.” The campaigns against the Jews, ancient as well as modern, can seem incomprehensible, especially when they take the form of systematic excesses in inhumanity. Such evil actions can indeed be unbelievable. It is hard (if not simply impossible) to understand how human beings can promote and perform satanic deeds, especially deeds on a large scale visible to multitudes. Again we can be reminded of the mystery of evil, grounded as it seems to be in a pervasive (perhaps even in a somehow determined) ignorance.

Appendix M

Glimpses of Leo Strauss, Jacob Klein, and St. John’s College (2009)*

George Anastaplo: What do you recall about Leo Strauss at St. John’s College? Eva Brann: I can recall remarkably little, but I will try to wrench up from memory whatever I can. I did not attend Mr. Strauss’s seminars regularly, but I saw him often at the Klein house for lunch and dinner. I can give you an overall impression. He was absolutely the most exquisitely courteous man imaginable, especially to me as “the daughter of the house.” He didn’t quite know what to make of me because I was always around. He was very, very polite. I heard much conversation. I don’t know if I absorbed much of it, but I know that Jasha was very happy to have him in Annapolis. I also know that Dodo Klein was very good about taking care of Miriam Strauss (who needed to be taken care of), while Jasha and Mr. Strauss talked to each other a great deal. And that’s really it. I don’t remember details. It was so long ago. Maybe the thing that might be of interest, and that I do have some recollection of, is what Jasha said to me and to others about the difference between him and Mr. Strauss. As I recall it—and it may well be that people who knew Mr. Strauss better will contest this, I’m simply telling you what I recall—one point of difference, and maybe the most important, was that Mr. Strauss thought that political philosophy was fundamental. I think that Jasha thought that ontology, or metaphysics, was fundamental, and that the revolution in science was

*Sources: This conversation, between George Anastaplo (of Chicago, Illinois) (A) and Eva Brann (of Annapolis, Maryland) (B), was recorded in May 2007 during the Lenoir-Rhyne University Humanities Conference at the Wildacres Retreat, Little Switzerland, North Carolina. It was further developed at the Hickory Humanities Conference in 2009. The transcript was prepared with the help of Adam Reinherz. (See, also, the headnote for appendix A in this book.) See, for indications of the work of George Anastaplo, Eva Brann, Jacob Klein, and Leo Strauss, as well as citations to discussions of their work by others, John A. Murley, ed., Leo Strauss and His Legacy: A Bibliography (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2005). See, on Jacob Klein and Leo Strauss, “A Giving of Accounts,” Walter Nicgorski, “Leo Strauss,” Modern Age (Summer–Fall 1982), 270.

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more telling for modernity than the political revolution. (I never heard Jasha express much interest in Machiavelli.) So that was a great divergence. Also, Jasha had no discernible interest, that I ever discovered, in Judaism. He was, to be sure, very Jewish. He looked like a Jew. He had a Jewish fate. But he was not interested in Judaism. I recall him willing to place bets on Mr. Strauss becoming Orthodox at some point. GA: He thought that he was inclined in that direction? EB: He thought that Mr. Strauss was turning in that direction. GA: And by “Orthodox,” you mean observant? EB: Observant, possibly, but in any case more conscious of his Judaism than he had been. And the third difference that Jasha used to smile about was the different ways they approached pedagogy in teaching. Jasha liked rude, crude, uncivilized American kids, and he knew what to do with them. He made them stop barging on. He made them defend what they were saying. He showed them what it was they were saying, in order that they would know what they were talking about. But Mr. Strauss had students who were mature. Here’s the way I think of it: I don’t recall Jasha ever really telling me anything that I hadn’t always known. GA: About whatever? EB: Especially about Plato. I remember being disappointed, even angry, that I never seemed to learn new and amazing secrets from him. It was exactly the opposite with Strauss, because his students learned from him things they probably couldn’t have thought of. They were deeply impressed by interpretations that he gave them, that were news to them. This was, I think, a difference in pedagogy, and the result was that—I don’t know exactly how to put it—when Strauss students talk to each other, his name will come up all the time. Jasha actually doesn’t come up very often in our conversations, even though he was our teacher. GA: Even among those of you who studied with him? EB: No one “studied with him.” You mean people around him? GA: Yes. EB: I do think of him quite often. But you don’t think of the day you were born, particularly. And that’s how it was. It was a new life, new discoveries, but they seemed natural. It was simply a different kind of learning, which had nothing to do with being told things. I was never told anything that I couldn’t have figured out myself. GA: Now, the way you talk about the difference, it sounds as if Mr. Klein was somewhat more Socratic. EB: Socrates was a local hero in Annapolis. What Jasha did with the young ones (and also with those tutors who were in his house, and I guess I was the one who was there most often) was to get out what was in them and then to show

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them how it worked or didn’t work. I should say again that I was annoyed very often because I wanted him to tell me something, but he never did tell me anything. (Of course, I eventually translated his Origin of Algebra book and there were things I learned from that.) So his was a different style entirely of dealing with people, not only youngsters but also the faculty. He liked, especially, rambunctious kids. He also liked rambunctiousness in tutors. He chose people who could fight tooth and nail about something. If I or some other tutor didn’t understand, or thought the argumentation was too flabby, we’d fight and he would puff on his pipe and smile until we’d worked things out ourselves. GA: So he didn’t have disciples? EB: He didn’t like disciples. It may have been different before I came. I came in the last year of his deanship. That was 1957. There were students who had attached themselves to him and he was fond of them. But anyone who showed signs of discipleship got a pretty ungentle kick. That wasn’t what he wanted. There was an aspect of our way of being with him that I never saw when Mr. Strauss was in the house. Jasha could be made fun of, loving fun; they would even build snowmen, courtly looking snowmen—fat, actually. GA: Who would do this? EB: Students. GA: You mean that they would imitate him? EB: They’d imitate him. In the year-end play that they put on (called “The Reality Show”), which was kind of comical, they would make raucous fun of his various Russian habits. They weren’t always very nice habits. And he would sit there and laugh his head off. I don’t remember at all in the years that Mr. Strauss was in the Klein house that anybody laughed at him. That didn’t happen. He was not the kind of man that you would wish to laugh at. GA: What was the influence of Leo Strauss at St. John’s College, if any? EB: I think that the students who came to his seminars remember them and often refer to them. So those seminars were influential. One thing, I think, is that they did introduce people to a kind of close reading and to the study of difficult philosophers. I don’t know that, but I would imagine it. They were well attended. I would say that he had quite a scholarly influence. He was not a tutor at the College; those were extracurricular meetings. GA: Now, Mr. Klein never spoke like that routinely? EB: No. This was another way in which they differed. Mr. Strauss was infinitely learned. He didn’t know only English and French and Greek and Latin (and German, of course), but also Hebrew and Arabic. Jasha did know what one learns in a German high school. He was well educated, but he was not a learned man in the sense of having studied many books very deeply. He was a little lazy. It was part of his very human way. And during the war years he

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was deeply preoccupied with the war, or so he told me. I wasn’t there. Jasha had an immediacy and also a worldliness that I think you never noticed in Mr. Strauss. GA: You’re right. EB: That’s how they appeared to me. GA: They also appeared to me, from what little I saw of them together, that Mr. Klein was more like an older brother. EB: It was something like that, because Mr. Strauss did need taking care of. Jasha didn’t need taking care of, even though he told me (and there was plenty of evidence of this) that in his earlier years he was a most unreliable fellow. He wouldn’t repay his debts and he wouldn’t be punctual and he didn’t do what he was supposed to do. But as soon as he became dean, he changed completely. He was punctilious about being on time, about repaying. He once asked to borrow a quarter; he came running after me to give me that quarter back. He had to be on time, and he was on time. Thus he learned to be what one needs to be in order to run an organization. There were two things I noticed: first, he did it with some relish; and, second, I don’t think that he felt that he had lost anything by it. It’s very hard to imagine Mr. Strauss, as I knew him, either running an organization or wanting to give up the time to do it. In other words, book-writing was not what Jasha was deeply engaged in. In fact, he didn’t believe in scholarly scribbling. GA: What you have just said reminds me of one occasion while Mr. Strauss lived right behind us (in Chicago). One day something was wrong, he couldn’t get out. But he needed his morning newspaper and he telephoned to ask me if I would bring one over, the Chicago Sun-Times. It was then ten cents. EB: Yes. GA: He insisted on paying me. And I said, “Well, I’ll take a check.” So he wrote me a check. I still have it. EB: You still have it? GA: Of course. I wasn’t going to cash that check. What about Mr. Klein’s hours? You know that Mr. Strauss was notorious for staying up all night. EB: Well, Jasha could stay up. He liked afternoon naps. And he could stay up for something interesting. He didn’t take any exercise. It seems to me that the really big difference was that Mr. Strauss was, after all, a Jew who was German. He was a German Jew. But Jasha was a Russian. GA: He really was Russian? EB: He really was Russian. He had all the warmth, the messiness, everything that goes with being a Russian. He used to spit, like they do in Russian novels. GA: Now, what had brought them together? EB: Jasha often emphasized that this was really a friendship of the intellect, of the soul. I think what brought them together is they both discovered how to

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read texts, but not all by themselves. Jasha learned a lot from Heidegger. And they both worried about the state of modernity. They thought that there was wisdom to be gathered from the ancients. And they were serious students—so to me it seemed natural that they should be friends. “Older brother” makes a certain sense, though an admiring one. GA: I understand that Mr. Klein was the first one who studied with Heidegger. EB: I believe that’s right, but I’m not sure about it. GA: What would Mr. Klein say about Heidegger? EB: Jasha told me anecdotes about Heidegger that showed he was a person who was—I don’t know how to put it; “unreliable” is not the word. “Contemptible” might be a better word. Still, he thought this without having any doubt at all that this was the great philosopher of the century. GA: But how did he account for, what shall we say, Heidegger’s misconduct, to say the least? EB: I don’t know. Much of the evidence came out much later. I know that people tried to show that the philosophical and the personal aspects were connected. I never heard Jasha say that. GA: You know that Mr. Strauss was deeply offended by what Heidegger had done? EB: Yes. GA: And he showed this in various ways, even as he recognized him in some ways as the greatest thinker of the century. EB: I think that was about the same with Jasha. GA: What did Mr. Klein read? EB: He was preoccupied with the Platonic dialogues, about which he wrote. He read loads of newspapers and journals. He read novels. I don’t recall him reading other people’s books very much. In fact, as I have said, he himself had very strong resistance to publication. GA: You mean publication of his own things? EB: Yes. When I decided to translate his book on the origin of algebra, I knew that he wouldn’t want me to do it, so I did it in secret. But when I finished I showed it to him—and it didn’t take him long to melt. [Chuckling] Then he became very interested in getting it published. But his general attitude was that conversation was to be preferred to writing. He was very much in tune with the Platonic dialogues, especially the Phaedrus. GA: And, of course, when you knew him he was working on the Meno? EB: Yes, that was a remarkably preoccupying experience. GA: Did he do what he had wanted to do with that dialogue, do you think? I believe Mr. Strauss had reservations about what had been done. EB: Jasha was satisfied. I think Mr. Strauss did read at least the Origin of Algebra book very carefully. He gave great prominence to Jasha’s notion of the meaning, alluded to in the Sophist and by Aristotle, of being as an “eidetic

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number,” a number-like genus whose unit-like species were not what the genus was and were incompatible to each other, unlike mathematical units. That’s the great discovery in the first part of Origin. I know that Mr. Strauss admired it very much. GA: Did Mr. Klein go over your translation with care? EB: I don’t know whether he did it with much care. Once I informed him that it existed, he did become very interested. I had a list, a long list of questions and alterations, places where I thought that the terminology wasn’t quite clear. He was ready to accept my emendations. GA: You say that Mr. Strauss did read the Origin of Algebra book? EB: He must have, because I remember in conversation he referred particularly to it. GA: But what about Mr. Klein reading the Strauss books? EB: I don’t recall him talking about them. They talked to each other a lot, so presumably he knew what Mr. Strauss was thinking. GA: Were you there on the occasion of “A Giving of Accounts,” when the two spoke together publicly at St. John’s in 1970? EB: Yes. That was miserable. GA: Was it? Let me tell you my own history in that connection. In a way, I’m somewhat comforted if I did not miss anything truly special. I was in Annapolis at that time and I had planned to go to that Strauss/Klein public meeting. But I went into Washington for something earlier that day and I was driving back with Jenny Strauss Clay and her husband. EB: Yes, Diskin. GA: Their car broke down on our way back and we were off on the side of the road. I said, “Well, we have to wait for the road service to get us. In the meantime, let us each sum up our dissertations.” [Chuckling] They thought that that wasn’t a bad way to spend time. So we missed completely “A Giving of Accounts.” But you say it was miserable? EB: The general feeling was that it didn’t work. GA: Why? EB: They were both constrained in some way. We all felt that. They felt it, too. GA: But you don’t know why it happened that way? EB: It was just one of those things where the setting wasn’t right. The point of the thing wasn’t clear. GA: Now, you have the impression that Mr. Klein thought that Mr. Strauss was moving toward Orthodoxy. EB: That I remember very clearly. GA: Do you know why he thought that? EB: I think that Mr. Strauss expressed more and more the sense that tradition and reverence were of very great importance in his life, because what you

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preach to others—that religion was a source of civic virtue—you should be doing it yourself to some degree. He became more and more interested in Jewish things. GA: What about Mr. Klein? EB: Oh, he was Jewish, absolutely Jewish. GA: He had no question about that? But he just wasn’t interested? EB: He wasn’t interested. GA: He wouldn’t read Maimonides or other Jewish thinkers— EB: I don’t remember his ever reading even the Jewish Bible. What he read was Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and the Russian novelists. He was a great lover of Tolstoy. GA: Did he ever talk about Kojève? EB: He did recommend Kojève to me, but exactly what he said, I can’t remember. He often told me things to read that he didn’t read himself. I was young enough to do it, to my benefit. GA: There is a letter by Mr. Strauss—I believe it was a letter—in which he singles out Mr. Klein, M. Kojève, and himself as the only really serious thinkers of their day about the kind of things they were interested in. Does that make sense? EB: Well, it makes sense that Mr. Strauss should have done this. I don’t think that Jasha would have written it; he might have thought it. GA: He never would have— EB: He would say extravagant things in conversation. But I don’t think he would put them down on paper, not as I remember him. GA: Did he ever talk about what he thought was at the core of Mr. Strauss’s ability? I’m not sure I’m asking this in the right way. EB: He thought that Mr. Strauss had the power of concentration and a breadth of learning, and together with that a soundness of interpretation that was simply talented. As I have said, they agreed on much about the state of modernity. GA: Did they agree on politics? EB: Not quite, because Jasha had a liberal streak in him. And he would from time to time interest himself in some cause concerning blacks. On occasion he would write letters. I don’t know that Mr. Strauss would do this. My guess is that Jasha was a moderate conservative with occasional forays into liberal causes and probably a little bit to the left. I should add that Jasha had a real interest in politics, not in political philosophy. He had an avid interest in practical politics, in European politics as well as American. GA: And he would talk about politics with others? EB: Yes. He would sometimes tell really personal stories, the way that anybody would tell personal stories, of life-changing events, even affairs. But this was different from the way he talked with students. He would attend to each

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student at once personally and intellectually. He would get into dialogue and make him talk and make him reverse himself and make him see what was involved—and that it was his own. GA: And there was no way that Mr. Strauss would do that? EB: I would be surprised. But I did not have much opportunity to observe him. I did go to one or two of his seminars. He would mostly sit there and someone would read something from a text, then he would quietly comment on it. Then he would politely take some questions. But an intense dialogic relation, I didn’t see. I think that Mr. Strauss’s students had respect, even reverence, for him. Jasha’s students loved him. It set the tone, which is still the tone at St. John’s College, that the less we act as authorities the more respect we get. Our affection for our students is all put in the service of their intellect. GA: Bearing on this is the fact that none of the Strauss students I knew would ever address him as other than “Mr. Strauss” or “Dr. Strauss.” EB: Jasha became “Jasha” to everybody. GA: One of the interesting things that I heard about was how the Strauss students, who were teaching at St. John’s College, would deal with Mr. Klein. They tended to speak of and to him as “Mr. Klein,” as distinguished from what everyone else at the college would do. EB: One thing I had in common with them, when I first came to the college, was that I tried to get Jasha to tell me esoteric mysteries. I remember there was a year that I was totally annoyed because he wouldn’t tell me anything, and— GA: You believed he had something to tell? EB: Yes, I thought he had everything to tell. Well, I overcame that. I saw that there was not a telling of things so much as a doing of things. I learned that doing those things was more valuable for St. John’s. GA: Now, you spoke of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes—who else? EB: The Russian novelists, and Leibnitz. GA: Well, Leibnitz I have a story about. I was in one of Mr. Klein’s seminars one night, during a visit to Annapolis. He simply started out by saying, “I want to tell you a few things.” He gave a lecture. [Chuckling] I don’t know what the practice there usually was. But that night he just laid it out. He evidently thought that he was not going to get out by discussion whatever needed to be said about Leibnitz. EB: Well, Aristotle and Leibnitz, he did lecture on. He had written “Friday night” lectures about them. GA: I’ve seen those. But that evening, it was supposed to be a seminar. EB: Well, he did change a little when he got older. When I came he was still relatively young. His mode in seminar then was dialectical and playful. But as he got older, like most of us, he talked more. GA: Now, who were his modern heroes, the men he spoke well of?

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EB: I learned from him that Husserl was a man of remarkable probity, intellectual probity. He was everything that Heidegger was not. And consequently he was very hard to read. GA: You know that Mr. Strauss was a great admirer of Churchill. Did Mr. Klein ever talk about Churchill? EB: I don’t remember him talking about him, but he probably did at some point. I don’t recall it. But, like Mr. Strauss, he didn’t think much of Hannah Arendt. GA: Because? EB: I believe they both thought she was too historicist-minded; she had too much of a German-scholarly way about her. I really don’t know what they had against her. I have read something of hers since then and I thought it was pretty good. GA: You thought better of her than Mr. Klein did? EB: Oh, yes. GA: Or than Mr. Strauss did? EB: Well, Mr. Strauss evidently really didn’t get along with her at all. And when she came to visit the college, those were not wonderful occasions. GA: Now, to go back to Heidegger. Did you ever get an explanation of why Heidegger conducted himself the way he did? EB: There were many stories about. One explanation that Jasha gave, which I’ve since read in other places as well, is that Mrs. Heidegger was critical here, but that doesn’t seem quite adequate. I remember him saying that she was a rabid Nazi and she drove him into it. Now why a man of Heidegger’s intellect could be driven by his wife to something like that I don’t quite understand. But that was certainly a factor. Well, Jasha knew her. GA: He knew Mrs. Heidegger? EB: Yes, I think so. In fact, I’m pretty sure—and to know her was to hate her, evidently. GA: Did Mr. Klein ever go back to Germany? EB: Yes, he went to Germany right after the war. He had unfinished personal business there. GA: But he never had much to do with Germany after that? EB: I never heard that he had any sort of offer from Germany. Besides, he loved St. John’s. GA: I believe that we have covered, at least in a preliminary way, what we set out to do. EB: I doubt that there is anything of major interest in what I have said. Much of it is remembrance, and I might be wrong. GA: Still, it will be one of the things of our time that people will read fifty years from now.

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EB: Maybe. [Laughing] GA: I’m telling you. And I thank you very much. EB: You know what Jasha’s favorite saying was? GA: What? EB: “Your word in God’s ear.” GA: Your word in God’s ear? [Chuckling] EB: Yes. [Chuckling] GA: He would give it in English? EB: Well, it is a Russian proverb, but he would say it in English. GA: Your word in God’s ear? EB: Meaning, you have said something that seems unlikely but desirable. [Chuckling] GA: I see. EB: He would also say, “That’s honey in my ears.” I didn’t much like that notion.

Notes

1. Tentative explorations of the enduring religion-related questions among us are offered in various of my law review collections in recent decades. See, e.g., George Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the Moderns: Explorations,” 20 Northern Illinois University Law Review 251 (2000); “Constitutionalism, the Rule of Rules: Explorations,” 39 Brandeis Law Journal 17 (2000–2001); “Law & Literature and the Austen-Dostoyevsky Axis: Explorations,” 46 South Dakota Law Review 712 (2001). A remarkably useful compendium of a variety of challenging explorations by hundreds of authors is provided in John A. Murley, ed., Leo Strauss and His Legacy: A Bibliography (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2005). And remarkably helpful, in preparing this volume for publication, have been the efforts of Adam Reinherz. See the headnote for appendix A of this Christian Heritage volume. See, on the “method” employed in this Christian Heritage volume, note 578, below. See also notes 600 and 601, below. See as well note 1185, below. 2. See, e.g., George Anastaplo, The Bible: Respectful Readings (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2008). (The publication of that book was graced by instructive cover endorsements by Laurence Berns, Christopher A. Colmo, and Jules Gleicher. The citation in note 185 in my Bible book should be to Exodus 20:2, not to Exodus 20:11.) Horrendous, and then intermittently benevolent, consequences of biblical influences among us are recalled in the appendices to this Christian Heritage volume. 3. A quite useful anticipation of the discussions collected in this volume (except for its thirteen appendices) may be found (with an alternative mode of capitalization and style) in George Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the Christian Heritage: Explorations,” 40 Brandeis Law Journal 191–533 (2001). Permission to use here the discussions found there has been provided by the editors of that law review, who were quite helpful in the original development of these materials. One problem in converting law review material to book form should be noticed: some of the publication data one had originally had, but which law review editors had not used, may be difficult to recover a decade or so later if one’s original papers are not immediately available. 4. See, on those texts (and on what they cannot say about nature), George Anastasplo, But Not Philosophy: Seven Introductions to Non-Western Thought (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002). John Van Doren provided a foreword for that volume. He had been the editor with whom I worked when those essays were originally published in The Great Ideas Today. See also appendix F of this Christian Heritage volume. 5. See, on the American regime, George Anastaplo, The Constitutionalist: Notes on the First Amendment (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1971; reprinted, with additions, by Lexington Books in 2005); The Constitution of 1787: A Commentary (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

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University Press, 1989) (see the text accompanying note 999 in this Christian Heritage volume); The Amendments to the Constitution: A Commentary (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); Abraham Lincoln: A Constitutional Biography (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1990) (preferred title, Thoughts on Abraham Lincoln: A Discourse on Prudence); “Abraham Lincoln and the American Regime: Explorations,” 35 Valparaiso University Law Review 39 (2000); “Abraham Lincoln, Lawyers, and the Civil War: Explorations,” Oklahoma City University Law Review (my discussions of Abraham Lincoln, in two recent books devoted to Hans J. Morgenthau, have to be read with caution because of the unfortunate editorial revisions exhibited therein). See also my Constitutional Reflections series. The first three volumes of these “constitutional sonnets” have been published by the University Press of Kentucky (in 2006, 2007, and 2009). (The subsequent three volumes in this projected series [tentatively titled Reflections on Slavery and the Constitution, Reflections on Religion, the Divine, and the Constitution, and Reflections on War & Peace and the Constitution] are well advanced in their preparation.) See as well Anastaplo, On Trial: From Adam & Eve to O.J. Simpson (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2004). Laurence Berns, a University of Chicago fellow student (since 1947), provided a foreword for the recent reprinting of The Constitutionalist. Abner J. Mikva, a University of Chicago law school classmate (1948–1951), provided a foreword for my On Trial volume. Harry V. Jaffa is interested in providing a foreword for my second Abraham Lincoln collection. Eva Brann has prepared a foreword for any reprinting of my first Abraham Lincoln collection. See 46 South Dakota Law Review 666 (2001). 6. See the “General Scholium” added by Isaac Newton to his Principia. See also note 143, below. See as well Hellmut Fritzsche, “Of Things That Are Not,” in John A. Murley, Robert L. Stone, and William T. Brathwaite, eds., Law and Philosophy: The Practice of Theory (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1992), 3. 7. Leo Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 171–72. See, on the Strauss respect for “religion,” appendix M of this Christian Heritage volume. See also appendix J of this Christian Heritage volume. See, for glimpses of how the preeminent English-language artist has dealt with the juxtaposition of faith and reason, Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and Shakespeare: Explorations,” 26 Oklahoma City University Law Review 1 (2001). See, for how other artists have fared here, Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker: From Shakespeare to Joyce (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1983); Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist: From Homer to Plato & Aristotle (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997). I hope to collect someday in book form my Shakespeare discussions. David Bevington is interested in providing a foreword for such a collection. See, for other such collections, notes 4 and 5, above; notes 977 and 1177, below. See as well anastaplo.wordpress.com. 8. This talk was given at the Lenoir-Rhyne University Hickory Humanities Forum, Wildacres Retreat, Little Switzerland, North Carolina, May 17, 2001 (originally titled “C. Cavafy and the Perpetual Clashes of Cultures”). 9. Andre Malraux, Anti-Memoirs, Terence Kilmartin, trans. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968), 154. 10. See, e.g., George Anastaplo, “Church and State: Explorations,” 19 Loyola University Chicago Law Journal 61, 145 (1987). 11. See, e.g., Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 345. 12. See Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 303; Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the Moderns,” 566. 13. See, on the career of St. Augustine in this respect, George Anastaplo, “Rome, Piety, and Law: Explorations,” 39 Loyola University New Orleans Law Review 2, 83 (1993); Anastaplo, “Teaching, Nature, and the Moral Virtues,” 1997, The Great Ideas Today 2 (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1997).

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14. See, on Cavafy’s career, Peter Bien, Constantine Cavafy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964). See also note 20, below. 15. See, e.g., Ibrahim ’Abd al-Majid, No One Sleeps in Alexandria, Farouk Abdel Wahab, trans. (Cairo, Egypt: American University in Cairo Press, 1999), v., 183, 344.) 16. Miroma is used, on the Wednesday of Holy Week in the Eastern Orthodox Church, for anointing members of the congregation. 17. This poem was first published in 1929. The translation I am primarily using in this chapter is taken from Edmund Kelley and Philip Sherrard, trans., C. Cavafy, Collected Poems (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1975), 118–20. See, for other translations, note 20, below. 18. See, on Cavafy’s Thermopylae and the Anti-Heroic, George Anastaplo, “Law, Education, and Legal Education: Explorations,” 37 Brandeis Law Journal 585, 763 (1998–1999). 19. Cavafy, Collected Poems, 118. 20. The first of these translations, “the terrible news,” is in the Kelley and Sherrard translation; “the misfortune” is in the Rae Dalven translation, The Complete Poems of Cavafy (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1961), 155; “the disaster” is in Kimon Friar, ed., Modern Greek Poetry: From Cavafis to Elytis (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973), 157. 21. Then there are the times when one learns that someone (of some note) has died, a person one had not realized was still alive. Experiences of this kind can remind one of a Babylonian saying, “Humans, no matter how numerous, who among them knows anything about himself?” Meguid, No One Sleeps in Alexandria, 217. See also Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the Austen-Dostoyevski Axis,” 764–65, n. 261. See as well notes 60 and 68, below. See, on the immense gulf between pagans and Christians, The Song of Roland. See also Anastaplo, “September Eleventh, The ABCs of a Citizen’s Response: Explorations,” 29 Oklahoma City University Law Review 165, 212 (2004). 22. Cavafy, Collected Poems, 118. See, on what the relatives may have really thought, note 40, below. 23. Cavafy, Collected Poems, 118. 24. Consider the implications of the front-page story, Isabel Wilderson, “Cruel Flood: It Tore at Graves, at Hearts,” New York Times, August 26, 1993, A1. See Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 367, n. 8. See also “Count at Crematory May Hit 200,” Chicago Tribune, February 18, 2002, sec. 1, 1; “Body Discoveries Devastate Families in Georgia Town,” USA Today, February 20, 2002, A10; note 1094, below. Compare Sophocles, Antigone. A character in an Egyptian novel observes, “All Antigone did was bury her brother’s body. Humanity can’t have dignity if the dead aren’t buried.” Ibrahim ’Abd al-Majid, No One Sleeps in Alexandria, 230. See, on the use here of “him” by Cavafy, the text accompanying note 1123 in this Christian Heritage volume. 25. Cavafy, Collected Poems, 118. 26. See Acts of the Apostles 14:8–18. See also Zondervan Pictorial Bible Dictionary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1963), 497. 27. See, on skepticism, Robert S. Hill, “David Hume,” in History of Political Philosophy, Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds., third ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 535. See also ibid., 962 (Index: “Skepticism”). 28. Cavafy, Collected Poems, 118. 29. Whatever the roles of earlier female divinities such as Isis, Athena, and Aphrodite may have been, the emphasis among the narrator’s parea, or crowd, was male. Compare the Homeric Odysseus’s reliance upon Athena. 30. Consider the Platonic association of virtue with knowledge. See appendices C, G, H, and L of this Christian Heritage volume. See, on the doctrine of the ideas, Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 303. See also note 72, below, and the texts accompanying notes 72 and 137 in this Christian Heritage book.

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31. Cavafy, Collected Poems, 118–19. 32. It would be surprising if this very learned poet himself did not recall the miracle-working Seventy who had long been said to have been critical to the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, that translation which we know as the Septuagint. See, e.g., Zondervan Pictorial Bible Dictionary, 770–71. It has been said of the Septuagint, “Probably it was the first work of substantial size ever to be translated into another language.” Ibid., 770. 33. Cavafy, Collected Poems, 119. 34. The poet himself, we are told, drew for this poem upon his own experience upon visiting the home of a Jewish friend who had died. 35. We can see, in book I of Homer’s Iliad, the control that Apollo was believed to have over pestilences. 36. Cavafy, Collected Poems, 119. 37. Sigmund Freud, among others, argued that the painful stripping away of crippling illusions can be therapeutic. Socrates insisted, again and again, that he welcomed being corrected. See, e.g., Plato, Phaedo. See also appendices C, G, H, and L of this Christian Heritage volume. 38. See, on Oedipus, Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 119. See also Anastaplo, On Trial, 83. 39. See, on ancient Egyptian thought, Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 31. See, on Islam, ibid., 175. 40. Consider the intriguing account that could be developed (perhaps in another poem) of what the old women in Cavafy’s “Myris” poem said among themselves about the strange young visitor who had seemed so disturbed and who left their house so soon after his arrival without talking to anyone. They might even have been inspired to surmise that he had wandered in by mistake. See Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the Austen-Dostoyevsky Axis,” 766. 41. This talk was given at St. John’s College, Santa Fe, New Mexico, March 2, 1984 (originally titled “Beowulf: The Artist as Christian and as Thinker”). 42. This was a saying of Mammy Yokum in Al Capp’s comic strip, “Li’l Abner.” See Wall Street Journal, August 18, 1983, A24. 43. This is the range of dates I settled upon when studying the poem and some of its literature a quarter-century ago. The following passage probably reflects recent scholarship on this subject: The poem called Beowulf was composed sometime between the middle of the seventh and the end of the tenth century of the first millennium, in the language that is to-day called Anglo-Saxon or Old English. It is a heroic narrative, more than three thousand lines long, concerning the deeds of a Scandinavian prince, also called Beowulf, and it stands as one of the foundation works of poetry in English. The fact that the English language has changed so much in the last thousand years means, however, that the poem is now generally read in translation and mostly in English courses at schools and universities.

Seamus Heany, Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2000), ix. 44. See Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker, 166. 45. See, on dreams in literature, ibid., 490 (Index: “Dreams”). 46. See ibid., 404, n. 117. 47. See Howell D. Chickering Jr., ed., Beowulf (New York: Anchor Books, 1977). 48. Ibid., 1. 49. See, for the Chickering summary, note 92, below. The following, much shorter, summary of Beowulf is taken from the Heaney translation, x–xi: The poem was written in England but the events it describes are set in Scandinavia, in a “once upon a time” that is partly historical. Its hero, Beowulf, is the biggest presence among the warriors in the land of the Geats, a territory situated in what is now southern Sweden, and early in the poem Beowulf crosses the sea to the land of the Danes in order to clear their country of a man-eating monster called Grendel. From

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this expedition (which involves him in a second contest with Grendel’s mother) he returns in triumph and eventually rules for fifty years as king of his homeland. Then a dragon begins to terrorize the countryside and Beowulf must confront it. In a final climactic encounter, he does manage to slay the dragon, but he also meets his own death and enters the legends of his people as a warrior of high renown.

50. See Chickering, ed., Beowulf, x–xi. 51. There are problems, it seems, because of the condition of the manuscript. See, on that manuscript, Heaney, Beowulf, x: We know about the poem more or less by chance because it exists in one manuscript only. This unique copy (now in the British Library) barely survived a fire in the eighteenth century and was then transcribed and titled, retranscribed and edited, translated and adapted, interpreted and reinterpreted, until it has become canonical.

52. We can be reminded here of Moses, who began his career as a waif in a boat and whose place of burial is not known to his people. See, on Moses, Anastaplo, The Bible, 394. The numbers in parentheses in the text of this chapter refer to the standard lines of the Beowulf manuscript. 53. We can be reminded here of Jesus who ended his career (as a mortal) on a prominent height. Jesus was also part of a fateful company of thirteen, with one of them, too, a quite dubious character. See, on the career of Judas Iscariot, Anastaplo, The Bible, 392. 54. See notes 52 and 53, above. See also Xenophon, The Education of Cyrus. 55. Beowulf, upon coming to Hrothgar to help with the ravaging Grendel, reports, “I am Hygelac’s thane and kingsman; mighty the deeds I have done in my youth.” Chickering, ed., Beowulf, lines 408–9. 56. See Chickering, ed., Beowulf, lines 1615–17: “Already the sword had melted away [except for the hilt, jewel-bright], its blade had burned up; too hot the blood of the poisonous spirit who had died within.” 57. See the text accompanying note 52 in this Christian Heritage volume. Is a sense of mystery suggested here? 58. Is Beowulf an anticipation, in a sense, of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, with some of the same kind of heroic irresponsibility? See Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker, 75. See also note 392, below. 59. Was the poet, or an early editor who prepared (and perpetuated) this text, aware of all this? See, on what poets do and do not know, Plato, Apology. See also George Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen: Essays on Virtue, Freedom and the Common Good (Chicago: Swallow Press, 1975), 8. 60. Is there a recognition here that the bottom of things generally is not truly known (or knowable) by human beings? See note 21, above; note 68, below. 61. Is “the human condition,” being what it is, only a Messianic savior of use to mankind? 62. Had the Messiah failed, somehow, to carry out his expected (and indispensable) mission? 63. Beowulf is like Homer’s Odysseus in this respect. 64. For the Messenger’s speech, see Chickering, ed., Beowulf, lines 2900–3027. The poet adds, “Thus the brave man told grievous news, was hardly wrong in his words or prophecies.” Ibid., lines 3029–30. 65. See, for Beowulf’s speech, ibid., lines 2000–2151. It should be instructive to compare Beowulf’s account with that provided by the poet himself. 66. I notice in passing some odd features about the numbers I have been referring to. Fortythree is, if I may say so, a peculiar number. Where does it come from, this number which was used by the poet not only for the number of speeches but also (it seems, by him or by an early editor) for the number of sections in the poem? The only sensible derivation I have been able to devise, drawing upon the poem alone, comes from a combination of 30 and 13: the 30 which figures so

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prominently in the first half of the poem (Grendel takes thirty men at one time; Beowulf is said to have the strength of thirty; nothing is said of Judas and his thirty pieces of silver nor, of course, of the Thirty Tyrants), and the 13 which figures so prominently at the end of the poem (the band of thirteen who go to destroy the dragon in his den). Did “43” mean something special in Old English or among the Northern people? I do not know. It is, I might add, a prime number; in fact, it is the fourteenth prime. But what one should or can make of that, I do not yet know, except to notice both that fourteen is the number of Beowulf’s party (including Beowulf himself) who return in triumph with Grendel’s head and that one of the two central numbers in the array of fourteen primes (2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43) is nineteen, which is the number of speeches Beowulf is recorded as giving. But why dwell upon primes at all? The quality of being a prime does suggest, as does one itself, that there is something special about the particular thing (that is, one and the primes have a kind of inviolability that the other numbers do not have). It is a related odd feature of this poem that its forty-three speeches are so distributed among some ten speakers that not one speaker, or at most only one, has a number of speeches which is not either one or a prime: in order of appearance, the coast guard, 3; Beowulf, 19; Wulgar, 3 or 4, if his first speech is not another nobleman’s; Hrothgar, 7; Unferth, 1; Wealhtheow, 2; Hygelac, 1; Wiglaf, 5; messenger, 1. The speakers with a single speech are no surprise. But what about the other six, five if not all six of whom are thus associated with primes? And, of course, in the numbers from 1–19, from which their numbers of speeches are drawn, more than half of the numbers are not primes. It appears to be too much of a coincidence, therefore, that all, or virtually all, of the numbers “used” within this range should be primes: the 3 and the 7 do have attractions of their own, of course, but what of Wiglaf’s 5 and Beowulf’s 19? (19 is one of the central primes of the fourteen primes earlier noticed.) Of course, there can be, in a poem, many fine things of which a poet is not consciously aware (as I once heard T. S. Eliot confess at the University of Chicago). But such a use of numbers, if use there be, as I have noticed (or confected) can hardly be unconscious or by instinct. But to say all this is to make far more of the sophistication and the education of this poet than anyone else has ever done, so far as I know. Let us, however, set these engaging (if not distracting) speculations aside, at least for the moment, and return to Beowulf’s central speech, the tenth (about that number, at least, the Bible has something to say, of course). 67. It is distinguished by a curious feature: it is one of the only two speeches in the poem which has exactly the same number of lines as the number it has in its placement. That is, Beowulf’s central speech (his tenth, of his nineteen speeches) is the twenty-fifth speech in the poem; and it has twenty-five lines. Only one other speech can be spoken of thus, the fourth speech in the poem, that by the coast guard who takes leave of Beowulf and his company upon delivering them to Hrothgar’s hall. This he does in four lines (316–19): It is time I returned; the Father all-powerful in His mercy keep you safe through all your ventures. I am off to the sea to keep the watch for enemy marauders.

Thus, a kind of affinity between Beowulf and this dutiful coast guard may be indicated: they, and they alone, have a numerical correspondence between their speeches’ placement and their speeches’ length: four lines in the fourth speech, and twenty-five lines in the twenty-fifth speech. A further affinity between Beowulf and the coast guard is suggested by the fact that they speak the shortest speeches in the poem, four-line speeches, and these speeches are both leave-takings, Beowulf’s being his very last speech (his nineteenth, the thirty-ninth of the poem) as he dies, in which he says to Wiglaf, his one fully faithful companion (2813–16): You are the last man of our tribe, the race of Waegmundings; fate has swept

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all my kinsmen to their final doom, undaunted nobles. I must follow them.

That Beowulf’s farewell speech is the very same length as the coast guard’s suggests that the coast guard can be thought of as having established the pattern for such a speech. That such a pattern was set in a speech which shows a numerical correspondence between placement and length suggests, in turn, that such a correspondence may be significant as indicative of fittingness. All this is a roundabout way of pointing, once again, to Beowulf’s speech, in reporting on the conquest of Grendel’s mother with the indispensable aid of God (but no spectacular miracle). Does this kind of pointing to Beowulf’s speech suggest that it is somehow to be preferred to Hrothgar’s speech of despair as more indicative of what human life is like? That both speeches do have a good deal to be said for them should go without saying: in fact, the significance of each does depend, to some extent, on the existence and plausibility of the other. (It should be noticed that the sixth speech, which is by Beowulf, is five and a half lines long, the speech in which Beowulf seeks his first audience with Hrothgar. See Chickering, ed., Beowulf, lines 350–55.) 68. One can be reminded of the epithets in Homer, designations which suggest various facets of gods and heroes in ever-changing circumstances. See, on the problem of knowing oneself, note 21, above. And can one ever truly be known by others? See appendices C, G, H, and L of this Christian Heritage volume. 69. She is like Hrothgar’s wife in this respect, being very much concerned about her son. 70. One can be reminded here of the tension, in Aeschylus’s Oresteia, between Apollo and the Furies. See Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 109; Anastaplo, On Trial, 41. 71. I do not pretend, on this occasion, to have worked out the most critical differences between the Grendels and the dragon. See, on dragons in the Western tradition, Anastaplo, “Law, Education, and Legal Education,” 744. 72. See note 30, above. See also the text accompanying note 137 in this Christian Heritage volume. 73. See, on the yearning for immortality, Anastaplo, The Bible, 391. See also the text accompanying note 133 in this Christian Heritage volume. 74. See section VI of this Beowulf chapter. 75. One can be reminded of book I of Homer’s Iliad. Compare the reconciliation, following upon other grievances, at the end of Homer’s Odyssey. 76. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book I. See also the text accompanying note 91 in this Christian Heritage volume. 77. Is reliance upon fame a substitute for understanding or philosophy? Such reliance (however limited it may be) is to be preferred, of course, to recourse to ignoble acts. 78. One could usefully consider how Beowulf’s account differs from the earlier account by the poet himself. One might also wonder, of course, what “source” the poet may have, in such circumstances, aside from what Beowulf reports. 79. The accounts both of Odysseus and Winston Churchill may suggest otherwise. 80. Various other accounts are given in the course of the poem. Are all of them supposed to be true? Does it matter? 81. See Aristotle, Poetics 1451b5. See also Laurence Berns, “Aristotle’s Poetics,” in Joseph Crospey, ed., Ancients and Moderns (New York: Basic Books, 1964), 80. 82. The one copy we have dates, it seems, from around A.D. 1000. See notes 49 and 51, above. 83. Some surviving fragments are regarded as “Orphic.” See Smaller Classical Dictionary, Sir William Smith, ed. (New York: E. Dutton, 1958), 206. 84. It is said that there are many such treasures. Is there something natural about this? See, on the nature (and limitations) of acquisitiveness, Plato, Meno. Laurence Berns and I have published,

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with the Focus Publishing Company, a translation of the Meno. See William A. Welton, “Book Review,” 58 Review of Metaphysics 871 (2005). 85. See, e.g., Percy B. Shelley, “Ozymandias.” See, on the fate of the Gilgamesh epic, Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 1. 86. See note 73, above. 87. Chickering, ed., Beowulf, 269. 88. Ibid., 270. 89. Id. 90. Ibid., 15. 91. See notes 76 and 77, above. Is the dragon somehow defending, in a ritual (empty-headed?) fashion, the fame of another people, which fame Beowulf seeks for himself in turn? And yet we as authors do like to put our names even on books making arguments about the limitations of fame. See note 826, below. 92. A summary of the plot of Beowulf appears in Chickering, ed., Beowulf, 1–3, 10–11. 93. These remarks were made at the Catholic-Jewish Dialogue Group, Chicago, Il1inois, January 14, 1980 (originally titled “Moses Maimonides’ Letter on Apostasy”). The invitation was at the suggestion of Sister Candida Lund, then-president of Rosary College. See appendix J of this Christian Heritage volume. 94. Deuteronomy 30:19. 95. “It was written in 1160 or 1161, at least seven years before the completion of his first major work, ‘The Commentary on Mishna’ in 1168.” Letters of Maimonides, Leon D. Stitskin, ed. (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1977), 34. 96. See, on Maimonides, George Anastaplo, The American Moralist: On Law, Ethics and Government (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1992), 58. 97. See, on Islam, Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 175. 98. See Letters of Maimonides, 36. 99. Do not these offenses, or at least two of them, violate the natural order more than do offenses against the conventions laid down by the Law? 100. We can sympathize with this as we can somewhat with the intense desire of William Shakespeare’s Falstaff to preserve his life for better things than serving as a neglected carcass on a battlefield. See note 107, below. 101. It should not be forgotten—and much in this Christian Heritage volume should remind us of this—that Christianity remains, in significant ways, very much a Jewish sect. This means, among other things, that “Christian anti-Semitism” is suicidal. See chapter 26 of this Christian Heritage volume. See also note 853 below. See, as well, the text accompanying note 1200 in this Christian Heritage volume. 102. See, on the descent from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Anastaplo, The Bible, 383. In this context, does not voluntary lifelong celibacy become almost unthinkable? See, in Plutarch’s Lycurgus, the Dercylidas comment. 103. See Leo Strauss, “Why We Remain Jews,” in Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, Kenneth Hart Green, ed. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 311. See also appendix M of this Christian Heritage volume. 104. See, on the relation between the noble and the just, Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 182. 105. See Letters of Maimonides, 51–53 (explaining the leniency shown toward even Ahab, Eglon, Nebuchadnezzar, and Esau). 106. Consider, for example, the acquisitive flexibility in piety displayed in Erskine Caldwell, God’s Little Acre (New York: The New American Library, 1933). 107. The capacity to gauge changing circumstances sensibly may be seen in the truly prudent. See, on prudence, Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 618 (Index). See also notes 5 and 100, above.

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108. See, e.g., Deuteronomy 4: 5–6. See, for a commentary on this passage, Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the Austen-Dostoyevsky Axis,” 751. See also the text accompanying note 119 in this Christian Heritage volume. 109. See Letter of Maimonides, 34 (“Iggeret Ha-Shemad” or “Maamar Kiddush Ha-Shem”), 40 (“Letter on Apostasy” or “A Treatise on the Sanctification of God’s Name”). 110. This paper was prepared for a meeting of the staff of the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, January 10, 1981 (originally titled “St. Thomas Aquinas and ‘Natural Law’”). 111. Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, C. Ill, lines 85–87, John D. Sinclair, trans. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961). 112. All citations in the text of this chapter are, unless otherwise indicated, to Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica. See, on the thought of Thomas Aquinas, Ernest L. Fortin, “St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274),” in Strauss and Cropsey, eds., History of Political Philosophy, 248. See also appendix J of this Christian Heritage volume. 113. See Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 327–30. 114. A convenient English translation of much of the Summa Theologica may be found in the Encyclopedia Britannica’s Great Books of the World (second ed., 1990), vols. 17–18. Thomas’s Treatise on Law makes up questions 90–108 of part I of the second part of his Summa Theologica. Popular editions of the Treatise on Law are usually limited today to questions 90–97. See, on the Treatise on Law, George Anastaplo, “Lawyers. First Principles, and Contemporary Challenges: Explorations,” 19 Northern Illinois University Law Review 353 (1999). 115. See, e.g., Anastaplo, The Bible, 13. 116. Consider how the divine and the natural are combined in the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence (with its invocation of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”). See, on the Declaration of Independence, Anastaplo, Abraham Lincoln, 11, 31; Anastaplo, “Abraham Lincoln and the American Regime,” 41, 66. 117. The Decalogue refers to the Ten Commandments given to Moses. See Exodus 20:1–17; Deuteronomy 5:6–21. See, on the Decalogue, Anastaplo, The Bible, 85. 118. See Summa Theologica, Treatise on Law, Question 91, Article 5; Question 98, Articles 5 and 6; Question 99, Articles 2 and 4; Question 100, Articles 1, 3, 6, 7, and 8. 119. But consider the far-reaching implications of Deuteronomy 4:5–6. See also note 108, above. 120. See, e.g., Summa Theologica, Part I, Question 46, Article 2. 121. See, e.g., ibid., Part II of the second part, Question 2, Article 9, Reply to Objection 3. 122. It has been noticed by students of these matters that the term natural law implies an active agency, whereas Aristotle, as perhaps the most noteworthy source of what later developed into the natural right/natural law doctrines, speaks only of that intrinsic rightness to which I have referred. See Harry V. Jaffa, Thomism and Aristotelianism—A Study of the Commentary by Thomas Aquinas on the Nicomachean Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), 174. See also Anastaplo, Campus Hate-Speech Codes, Natural Right, and Twentieth Century Atrocities (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999), 127, 147; Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 100; Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 323. See as well Murley, ed., Leo Strauss and His Legacy, 756, item 248. 123. Consider, for example, Thomas Hobbes’s suggestion that the “classical” natural-right teachers were subversive of public order. Such a response can sometimes be heard on the part of authorities in our own time when they encounter a defense of the right of revolution as affirmed by the Declaration of Independence. See, e.g., In re Anastaplo, 366 U.S. 82 (1961). Hobbes himself may have been a modern natural-right teacher. See Laurence Berns, “Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679),” in Strauss and Cropsey, eds., History of Political Philosophy, 396. 124. See, e.g., Fortin, “St. Thomas Aquinas,” 252–53, 258–71. 125. See, e.g., ibid., 258–60. See also Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, First Part, Question 2.

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126. See ibid., First Part, Question 10, Articles 3 and 4. 127. There may have been intended to be something odd, then, in the use of “the law of nature” in Plato’s Gorgias. 128. See Summa Theologica, First Part, Question 19. There is no cause of the will of God. See ibid., First Part, Question 46. But consider the passage from Thomas’s On Truth with which this chapter concludes. 129. See Jaffa, Thomism and Aristotelianism, 192. 130. See, e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Treatise on Law, Question 91, Article 4. See also ibid., Part I, Question 12. 131. Some might even venture to suggest that it is this which can lead to the invention of Scripture. This bears also upon the supposed (and perpetual) tension between reason and revelation. See note 718, below. 132. See, e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, First Part, Question 32. See also Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 341–42, n.74. 133. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Treatise on Law, Question 91, Article 4. See, for what Augustine does with this problem, Anastaplo, “Teaching, Nature, and the Moral Virtues,” 9– 23. See, on our natural yearning, note 73, above. See also the end of Plato’s Apology of Socrates. 134. See, for the supposedly troubling observations by the philosopher, Judah Halevi, Kuzari, opening pages. See also the text corresponding to note 1187 of this Christian Heritage volume. Does Thomas, in his great commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, properly recognize the great-souled man? 135. Thomas Aquinas, On Truth, Question 23, Article 6, Reply. See Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 139. 136. This talk was given in the Works of the Mind Lecture Series, Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, May 22, 1983 (originally titled “Dante as Traveler and as Artist”). An anticipation of this 1983 talk may be seen in the 1956 essay provided as an addendum to this chapter. 137. Singing the Living Tradition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), item 563. See note 30, above. See also note 72, above. 138. Dante Alighieri, Hell, Dorothy L. Sayers, trans. (New York: Penguin Books, 1953), 52. Dante was fifty-six years old when he died in 1321. 139. See, e.g., Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, IV, 63; V, 71–75, 79; VI, 81; XIII, 173–75; XIX, 254; XXIII, 301; XXVI, 343. Compare ibid. XI, 143, where the prayer is for those left behind, with ibid., XVI, 211, where the request is for a prayer to be taken above. The references in this chapter are, unless otherwise indicated, to the cantos of the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso, and to the pages in the John D. Sinclair translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961). 140. The question remains, of course, as to what moves one to repentance or to any other action or response. 141. To what extent is one’s placement in Heaven the result of one’s limitations or shortcomings? Is that another way of referring to one’s accomplishments? 142. See, e.g., the end of Plato’s Gorgias. 143. Does this mean that Dante’s account is a charting of a kind of Newtonian spirituality? See note 6, above. 144. In a sense, that is, the gods (at least those of the pagans) do not truly live. Of course, doctrines of reincarnation do not rely upon any “one-time-through scenario.” See, e.g., Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 67, 147. 145. Perhaps Virgil learns a great deal as well, so far as he goes. How will all this affect his understanding of things when he returns to the Limbo in which he is a permanent resident? Can he serve “thereafter” as a kind of prophet to the other virtuous pagans with whom he associates there? See the text accompanying note 247 of this Christian Heritage volume.

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146. See, on learning as recollecting, Plato, Meno. See also Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 74. See as well note 84, above. 147. It should be instructive to notice which of the condemned sinners in Hell become embarrassed, and to what effect. Is this related to their unwillingness, in some cases, to be reported on among the living? See also Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 326, 333. 148. See, on shame, Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book 4. (The pagans made more of “shame.” Christians make more of “conscience.”) For a rebuke of both Dante and Virgil, consider what Cato does in response to their dalliance over a love song of Dante’s being sung. See Dante, Purgatorio, II, 39, 45. Virgil is especially embarrassed by this slip. See also note 181, below. 149. See Dante, Inferno, IX, 123. Also, what does Dante’s fearfulness imply here and there? And what is implied by such pleasures as that of Statius upon meeting Virgil? 150. See, on Jonathan Swift, Allan Bloom, Giants and Dwarfs (New York: Simon & Schuster 1990), 35. See, on James Joyce, Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the Moderns,” 504; Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker, 226. It seems that Divina was added by the general public to Dante’s original title, La Commedia. 151. See Dante, Inferno, III, 51. See also ibid., V, 73. 152. Dante, Purgatorio, XVI, 211. 153. Dante, Paradiso, XXIV, 345. 154. Id. 155. See ibid., XXIV, 347. 156. Ibid., XVII, 249. 157. On the other hand, Homer had Odysseus, and Virgil had Aeneas, visit Hades. 158. The characters, then, are not abstract in the fashion of the characters in the ancient English morality tale, Everyman. 159. See Dante, Paradiso, XXVI, 384. 160. See Dante, Hell (Sayers, trans.), 37. This may be related to the status and character of art in the West. The extreme of this may be seen, even in Dante’s time, by the individualism advocated by St. Joachim, an individualism perhaps reflected in Virgil’s concluding charge to Dante, proclaiming that he possesses sceptre and mitre over himself. See Dante, Paradiso, XII, 186. See, for perverse (if not even suicidal) forms of individualism, appendix B of this Christian Heritage volume. Compare, however, the discussion of Buddhism in Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy. 161. See Dante, Paradiso, XIII, 193. 162. See ibid., XIV, 201 (on the resurrection of the body). 163. See Dante, Purgatorio, XV. 164. See, e.g., Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker, 412–13, n. 415. See appendix E of this Christian Heritage volume. 165. See Dante, Purgatorio, 334. We can be reminded of the Buddhist approach here. See, e.g., Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 147. 166. See Dante, Paradiso, XIV, 203. 167. See ibid., 200. 168. See Dante, Inferno, VI, 93, 96. 169. We could also call the traveler the “narrator,” but that is apt to confuse matters, since there is obviously something artistic in the usual narrator’s account. Although the traveler is in some respects an artist in what he selects and reports, yet, it can be said, the artist is different from him here and is usually superior to him in that capacity. 170. See Dante, Inferno, XXXII. See also the text accompanying notes 185 and 193 of this Christian Heritage volume. 171. Of course—and this complicates our analysis somewhat—the traveler may “know” that the story he is “telling” is being presented in the form chosen by the artist. For example, the traveler can speak at one point in the Paradiso (V, 81) of what the “next canto” says.

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172. See Dante, Hell (Sayers, trans.), 27. 173. See Dante, Paradiso, XXXII, 460, XXXIII, 479. 174. See ibid., XXXIII, 481. 175. See Dante, Inferno, VIII, 96. See also Dante, Purgatorio, XI, 99; Dante, Paradiso, XXXII, 53; Dante, Purgatorio, XXVII, 360–61. 176. Similarly, Homer could be interested in showing what Odysseus is like, in the Odyssey, particularly against the backdrop of the received opinions of “his” time. See, for subsequent accounts of Odysseus, Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the Moderns,” 566. See also the text accompanying note 298 of this Christian Heritage volume. 177. Dante, Inferno, II, 37. 178. Dante anticipates his return to Italy, for which return he expresses no regrets. 179. See Dante, Inferno, XXV, 309. 180. See ibid., XXXIII, 414. 181. See ibid., XXX, 377, 380–81. See also Dante, Purgatorio, XXXI, 403 (where Dante weeps after Beatrice’s rebuke). See, on whether the truly good man ever feels shame, Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book 4. See also note 148, above; Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 402 (“shame, shamelessness”). 182. See Dante, Purgatorio, I, 27; XXVII, 360. 183. See Dante, Inferno, V, 79, 82. See also ibid., XXV; Dante, Purgatorio, XXVI. 184. See ibid., XXVII, 360. 185. See ibid., XVI, and the text accompanying note 170 in this Christian Heritage volume. At times, however, Dante is praised by Virgil for his show of indignation. That is, there is anger and then there is anger. See Dante, Inferno, VIII, 113, 119. 186. “Barratry” is a fraudulent sale of offices. 187. See Dante, Inferno, 278. 188. See Dante, Paradiso, XVI, 239. One is reminded here of Athena (Minerva) and Odysseus (Ulysses). Is not Beatrice likened somewhat to Minerva in the Commedia? 189. See ibid., XVI, 239–40. 190. See ibid., XX, 300. 191. See Dante, Purgatorio, XXI, 271. 192. The artist knows as well such things as the prophecies made to the traveler which have been fulfilled, and in what way, by the time he writes. How should the Christian regard the human agony of a Jesus who possesses complete divine knowledge of all that is going to happen? Is it here that mystery may be seen? 193. See the text accompanying note 170 of this Christian Heritage volume. See, on the limitations of even the best poets, Plato, Apology of Socrates; Plato, Republic; Plato, Ion. See also note 66, above. 194. See Dante, Paradiso, XXIV, 356; XXV, 368. See also Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1952); Jacob Klein, Lectures and Essays (Annapolis, Maryland: St. John’s College Press, 1985), 241. Compare the text accompanying note 570 of this Christian Heritage volume. 195. Compare Odysseus in the court of Alcinous, where he tells much more fanciful tales than Homer on his own ever does (except perhaps for the stories that Homer does tell about the relations, including the conversations, of the gods among themselves). See, on Homer’s Odyssey, Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 27. 196. See Dante, Inferno, 33. 197. See ibid., 432. 198. Dante, Paradiso, I, 28. 199. Dante, Purgatorio, XVIII, 242. 200. See Dante, Paradiso, XII, 185.

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201. See ibid., XIX, 283. 202. See Dante, Purgatorio, XXXIII, 437; XXXIII, 443–44. 203. See ibid., XIV, 194. See also Dante, Paradiso, XXV, 368, 466. 204. See Dante, Inferno, 147. 205. See Dante, Paradiso, XVII, 254. Compare the plight of Brutus, Cassius, and Judas Iscariot, at the very bottom of Hell, because of their betrayals of their benefactors. 206. See Dante, Inferno, XIX, 237. 207. See, e.g, Anastaplo, “Notes Toward an ‘Apologia pro vita sua,’” 10 Interpretation 319, 338 (1982). Consider, also, the three collections of “constitutional sonnets” published by the University Press of Kentucky in my Reflections series. See note 5, above. 208. See, on “the mad track of Ulysses,” Dante, Paradiso, XXVII, 391. 209. An even more fanciful suggestion on my part is the following: There seem to be (and such things do depend upon how one happens to count) some seventy-seven places in the Commedia where Latin words are used (instead of the vernacular Italian that Dante made so much of, and for which he is celebrated). Central to this array (the thirty-ninth place) is a usage of Latin in the course of the transition from Virgil to Beatrice as Dante’s principal guide, with Dante shaken up and in need of rebuke upon discovering that Virgil is gone. It is this canto which has the most instances of different uses of Latin words of any canto in the Commedia. (See Dante, Purgatorio, XXX.) The central Latin phrase here could well be, “In thee, O Lord, have I hope.” This seems to refer to God, of course; but could it not also refer to Virgil? In any event, there is a movement here from a pagan guide to a Christian guide, from someone masculine as a guide to someone lovely (who is also much more of a scold). What is one to make of the fact that the Latin usage immediately preceding this one includes the word “hands,” whereas the one immediately following this one includes the word “feet”? How can paganism be associated with hands or Christianity with feet? See, on the importance of feet, Dante, Paradiso, XX, 291. See also Dante, Inferno, XXX, 375 (distinguishing arms and legs: legs permit freedom of motion; arms permit one at least to strike out). Is there not something perverse about soccer in that the ball may be routinely struck by one’s head, but not by one’s hands? As for the seventy-seven, the following suggestions can be offered: 77 is 7 times 11; 7 has, of course, longstanding significance in the West; 11 (as we can see by an allusion in Dante, Paradiso, XXIV, 354) can refer to the eleven tongues in which the surviving Disciples came to speak after the Resurrection. Is it anticipated that Latin would be considered a foreign tongue after Dante’s successful use of the vernacular? (Consider the [deliberately?] questionable use of Hebrew in Dante, Paradiso, VII, 1–3.) It should be noticed as well that eleven ancient poets are referred to by name in Dante, Purgatorio, XXII, 97. It should also be noticed that 39, the center of 77, is itself an interesting number: 3 times 13. Of course, it should be remembered that my 77 may not stand up, in the counting, to rigorous inspection. Even so, it is at about this point that there is the critical transition from the reign of Virgil to the reign of Beatrice. 210. See Dante, Inferno, IV, 61. This took place while His body was still in the tomb. 211. See, e.g., Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, Leo Paul S. de Alvarez, trans. (Irving, Texas: University of Dallas Press, 1980), VI, 33: But in order to come to those who have become princes by their own virtue and not by fortune, I say that the most excellent are Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus, and the like. And although one ought not to reason of Moses, he having been a mere executor of the things that were ordained by God, he ought yet to be admired, if only for the grace which made him worthy to speak with God.

See, on Machiavelli, the epigraph for chapter 11 of this Christian Heritage volume. 212. Dante, Inferno, IV, 65. Aristotle is number 21 (that is, 3 times 7). I mention in passing that there are in this listing sets of 7s; but there does seem to be a poet missing, even when Dante is added to the pagan poets on that occasion.

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213. See, e.g., the text accompanying note 170 in this Christian Heritage volume. Does Dante consider his pride as far less serious? See, e.g., the title for the addendum to chapter 5 of this Christian Heritage volume. 214. See Dante, Purgatorio, XVII, 125. See, on the number of lines for the Purgatorio, the end of its canto XXXIII. 215. Dante, Inferno, XVIII, 66–67. 216. See Dante, Purgatorio, XVII, 196. 217. See Dante, Paradiso, XVII, 83. 218. The Christian radicalization of love challenged that Jewish emphasis upon law and community which the pagans should have found more congenial. See, on Judaism, chapters 3, 11, and 26 of this Christian Heritage volume. See also Anastaplo, The Bible. See as well appendices A, L, and M of this Christian Heritage volume. 219. It has long been believed that “the corruption of the best is the worst.” 220. Dante, Purgatorio, XX, 263. 221. It is said that the cult of Mithra, a military-oriented sect, was for a while a formidable competitor to Christianity. 222. See Dante, Inferno, 429; Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker, 228 (non serviam); Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the Moderns,” 261. 223. See, e.g., Dante, Paradiso, XXIX, 419. We should notice, in passing, that making one’s personal salvation paramount, as Christianity seems to do, can be distorted into an unhealthy selfcenteredness. See also appendix B of this Christian Heritage volume. 224. See, e.g., Dante, Paradiso, I, 28; XVII, 247–49; XXX, 431; XXXI, 450; XXXIII, 481. 225. See ibid., XIX, 271. What is one to make of this? 226. See Dante, Inferno, XXXII, 395. 227. That is, the traveler is told about some things which he has already reported. See Dante, Purgatorio, XXXIII, 439. This is rather curious. 228. See Dante, Paradiso, XXVI, 379. 229. See Dante, Purgatorio, XXIX, 381. 230. See Dante, Paradiso, XXVI, 381–85. He did not! 231. See Dante, Inferno, 25, 258; Dante, Purgatorio, VI, 281. 232. See Dante, Paradiso, XXVIII, 409 (in favor of Dionysus). 233. See ibid., V, 84. 234. See ibid., II, 46. 235. See ibid., XXVII, 399. One may even wonder how much of what is to be seen during this trip—how much of what is?—is there primarily for Dante’s benefit and through Dante for us. See also note 194, above. 236. See Dante, Inferno, IV, 100. 237. See addendum, chapter 5 of this Christian Heritage volume. 238. See Dante, Purgatorio, XIV. 239. See ibid., XI. The one explicit use of Dante’s name in the Commedia is excused as a necessity. See ibid., XXX, 395. 240. See Dante, Purgatorio, XII. 241. Here, too, how one counts can be critical. 242. Dante, Purgatorio, XXXIII, 441. 243. This suggests the importance of the total number of lines in the Commedia. 244. See, on the relation between political science and prophecy, Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 131, n. 38. See also note 718, below. 245. The pagan legacy included the philosophic tradition. See, on Raphael and that tradition, Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 335. See also note 194, above. 246. See, on Machiavelli, note 211, above. See also, of course, Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958).

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247. See, e.g., Anastaplo, The Bible, 189. See also Augustine, The City of God. 248. See note 244, above. See also addendum, chapter 5 of this Christian Heritage volume, section IV. See as well note 145, above. 249. See, e.g., chapter 13 of this Christian Heritage volume. 250. See, e.g., Plato, Republic, books II, III, and X. Compare Anastaplo, The Constitutionalist, 274–81. 251. See, on skepticism, note 27, above. 252. Thus, some of these questions were addressed, however provisionally, in the essay incorporated in this Christian Heritage volume as the addendum to chapter 5. 253. This essay was written by me as part of the fundamentals examination (for students in the doctoral program), Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, May 11–15, 1956. The assignment for this particular essay was: “Write an analysis of the argument and imagery by which Dante’s concept of freedom is expounded in Purgatory.” Essays on Aeschylus’s Oresteia and on Aristotle’s Politics were prepared by me as the other two parts of the fundamentals examination on that occasion. (A day or so was available for preparation of each essay.) The Oresteia essay has been incorporated in Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 109–18. See, on the role chance may play in one’s education, appendix E of this Christian Heritage volume. See also Roger K. Newman, ed., The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 12–13. (This biographical entry, with appropriate modifications, was reprinted in The Greek Star, Chicago, Illinois, August 27, 2009, 3.) See as well note 1008, below. The epigraph for this essay was taken from Dante, Purgatorio, XV. There were then, as there are here, fifty-two notes in this essay. (Notes 1 and 2 are combined, here for note 254, thereby providing a note for this headnote without otherwise disturbing the original enumeration.) All quotations in the 1956 essay were taken from the Carlyle-Wicksteed translation of Dante’s Commedia. The notes in this quickly prepared 1956 essay were simply to Cantos in the Commedia. A little more is added at this time in notes 269, 271, 275, 278, 298, and 301, below. I hope the reader finds as instructive as I have my efforts with Dante a quarter of a century apart, two sets of efforts brought together here a half-century after my initial effort. 254. Dante, Purgatorio, I, II. 255. See ibid., III. 256. See ibid., IV. 257. See ibid., VII. 258. See ibid., VIII. 259. See ibid., X. 260. See ibid., XIII. 261. See ibid., XV–XVI. 262. See ibid., XVI. 263. See ibid., XVII–XVIII. 264. See ibid., XIX. 265. See ibid., XXI. 266. Ibid., XXIII. 267. See ibid., XXVI. 268. See ibid., XXVII. 269. Ibid., XXVII. See note 160, above. 270. Ibid., XXX. 271. Ibid., XXXI. But not washed away are the memories of what he has seen thus far. We can recall that the narrator of the Myth of Er account (Plato, Republic, book X) may not drink the waters of forgetfulness that other returning souls must drink. 272. Dante, Purgatorio, XXXIII. 273. See ibid., XVII. 274. Ibid., XXII.

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275. Ibid., III. See note 145, above. 276. See ibid., IV. 277. See ibid., VII. 278. See ibid., XXVI. 279. Ibid., XXVI. 280. Ibid., III. 281. See ibid., VIII, XI. 282. Ibid., V. 283. Ibid., XXVII. 284. See ibid., XXVII. 285. See ibid., XXVII. 286. See ibid., V. 287. See ibid., II. 288. Ibid., XVI. 289. Ibid., XVI–XVIII. 290. Ibid., XVI. 291. Ibid., XVI. 292. See ibid., XVI–XVIII. 293. See ibid., XVIII. 294. Ibid., VI. 295. Ibid., VI. 296. Ibid., VI. 297. Ibid., XXXIII. 298. Inferno, XXVI. See note 208, above. 299. Purgatorio, XXIV. 300. Ibid., XXIV. 301. See ibid., XXIX. See also note 229, above. 302. See ibid., XI. 303. Ibid., XXX. 304. See ibid., XXXIII. 305. This talk was given in the First Friday Lecture Series, Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults, University of Chicago, at The Cultural Center, Chicago, Illinois, May 3, 1985 (originally titled “The Challenges of Boccaccio’s Decameron”). 306. Francois Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, book V, author’s prologue (1552). 307. See Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron (in two volumes), J. M. Rigg, trans. (New York: Everyman’s Library, 1973). References to this work will be either by the Everyman edition (volume and page) or, within brackets or parentheses, by the day and the story. 308. See, on the significance of ordering, Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 37–39, 375–77 (on the catalogue of ships in Homer’s Iliad). 309. See Boccaccio, Decameron, I, 12–15. 310. Thereafter, except for what happens in the ninth and tenth slots on the days when there is a male ruler (the fourth, seventh, and tenth days), no male ever follows another male as a storyteller (Filostrato and Pampinea are next to each other on the second and third days). Another curiosity here is that there never is any male speaker, or Pampinea, in the eighth slot on any day, whereas the tenth slot on each day is filled by Pampinea (on the first day) or by Dioneo (on all other days). One can well wonder whether eight is somehow thoroughly female and ten male. Slot 2 and slot 3 each had three male and three Pampinea stories over the ten days. 311. See chapter 5 of this Christian Heritage volume. 312. A further inducement may be seen in the facts that the first and last speakers on the first day, just as the first and last rulers over the ten days, have names beginning with the syllable Pan

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or Pam (meaning all), and that each of them seems to be the oldest male and female respectively. Certainly, each is named first among the males and females respectively, and we are explicitly told that Pampinea is the oldest of the females. I notice in passing that there are, in addition to the seven women and three men, four maid servants and three male servants, for a total of seventeen persons in all for this excursion in the country. 313. We could have added that there is a ten-year spread among the women, with the oldest twenty-eight and the youngest eighteen. See Boccaccio, Decameron, I, 12. 314. See, on the Ten Commandments (that is, the Decalogue), Anastaplo, The Bible, 85. 315. See, on the erotic and philosophy, Plato, Phaedrus; Plato, Symposium. See also the text accompanying note 358 of this Christian Heritage volume. 316. See Boccaccio, Decameron, I, 12. 317. Dione, a female Titan, beloved by Zeus, had by him Aphrodite (who was sometimes called Dionea). See Smith’s Smaller Classical Dictionary, 109. 318. See Boccaccio, Decameron, I, 230. 319. References within brackets or parentheses are, unless otherwise indicated, to The Decameron by the day and the story. See note 307, above. 320. See Boccaccio, Decameron, I, 284. Is this, also, Boccaccio’s response, reported by him at the start of the fourth day, to the criticism he had heard about the tenor of the first thirty stories, which he had published separately? 321. See, e.g., Boccaccio, Decameron, I, viii. 322. See, e.g., ibid., at the opening of the poem. See also ibid., II, 108. 323. See Boccaccio, Decameron, II, 112. It should be noticed that the plague is not seen here as punishment for licentiousness or as a purgation to be made use of. Rather, it is an affliction, originating in the East (like their religion?), which one can properly attempt to avoid. The fierceness of the plague is hard for us to imagine, comparable as it is in its scope to what we are told today about the likely consequences of a nuclear war. It is said that three out of every five Europeans died as a result of the Great Plague. See Thomas Caldecott Chubb, The Life of Giovanni Boccaccio (New York: A & C Boni, 1930), 135. Something of this scope of devastation has been reported in recent decades as the result of the AIDS epidemic in parts of Africa. 324. Nikos Kazantzakis, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, Kimon Friar, trans. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1958), 173. 325. Of course, by the time Boccaccio does write, the plague is over. 326. See Boccaccio, Decameron, I, 15. 327. See ibid., I, 15, 16. See also the text accompanying note 498 of this Christian Heritage volume. 328. See Boccaccio, Decameron, I, 299. 329. Do “affairs” for women make more “sense” after marriage than before? 330. Consider, for example, the dire tableau conjured up to warn women who do not respond to lovers interested in marriage. See Boccaccio, Decameron, II, 43. See also Aeschylus, Libation Bearers, 598–601. 331. See Chubb, The Life of Giovanni Boccaccio, 140–41. 332. God’s overall rule is reflected in story 2 of day I: a corrupt Church is seen as evidence that Christianity must be the true religion, since that institution can still prosper. But does not story 3 of day I suggest that there is no true religion, or at least that Christianity is not it? This story, unlike its predecessors, is greeted by silence. See the text accompanying note 677 of this Christian Heritage volume. Once the question of whether there is a true religion is raised, Dioneo can move (he speaks fourth on the first day). His first sexual story, pointing up clerical hypocrisy, is ventured by him, to blushes by some of the women. (I, 4) Again and again, there is an emphasis on fortune as ruling. See, e.g., Boccaccio, Decameron, I, 15–16, 56. Much is made of fortune, particularly in story 9 of day VII, which is set in Greece. And day II is devoted

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to stories about fortune. It should also be noticed that God and fortune are often interchanged in these stories. 333. Of course, nothing is said about what happens to the soul of this supposed saint after his death. Perhaps this is because Boccaccio himself does not pretend to know either what does happen to departed souls or what the actual condition of this man’s soul was at death. See Boccaccio, Decameron, I, 30. It does seem that the dying rascal does not believe either in the immortality of the soul or in the usefulness (especially for the dying) of a sincere confession and repentance. 334. Ibid., I, 22. 335. It is commonly accepted that the friars have generally deteriorated. See ibid., I, 195. 336. Ibid., I, 28. Compare day II, story 1: a phony miracle is exposed. But see day III, story 1: a fake miracle is rewarded. And the first story in day IV has another kind of miracle, leading to the suicidal death of a deprived lover. See, on suicide, appendix B and I of this Christian Heritage volume. See also Anastaplo, Reflections on Life, Death, and the Constitution, 296. 337. Notice, in Boccaccio, Decameron (I, 21), that the name of this rascal is mistaken when he dies. Deception depends on names being wrong, just as philosophy depends on making sure of the names (or terms) one uses. See, e.g., the opening speeches in Plato’s Meno, note 84, above. 338. See Boccaccio, Decameron, I, 178. 339. One can be reminded of Nathan’s rebuke of King David in the matter of Bathsheba and Uriah. See section VIII of chapter 26 of this Christian Heritage volume. 340. We notice, further on, both that Elissa, when she rules, presides over a series of stories about appropriate rebukes, and that this turns out to be the shortest day of storytelling. See Boccaccio, Decameron, II, 91. 341. We see something of this in the longest story of the Decameron as well. 342. We can be reminded of the legendary Spartan terseness. 343. See ibid., II, 55. 344. See, on the status of homosexuality among thoughtful people, Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the Austen-Dostoyevsky Axis,” 758 (“How to Read a Platonic Dialogue”). See also Anastaplo, “Harry V. Jaffa: Leo Strauss’s Bulldog” (ready for publication). 345. See Boccaccio, Decameron, II, 61. 346. See ibid., I, xi, n. 1. 347. See, e.g., ibid., I, 148, 156, 182, 190, 239. 348. See, e.g., Homer, The Iliad. Compare Aristophanes, The Birds. 349. This, in turn, can remind us of the engaging “devil in hell” story. 350. See, on law and nature, chapter 4 of this Christian Heritage volume. See also Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 303. 351. Elissa is also the only one who is chosen to sing the song at the end of the day that she rules. She is also the one who leads the ladies in some bathing in the nude. 352. See Boccaccio, Decameron, I, 201, II, 3. 353. See, on Machiavellianism, chapter 11 of this Christian Heritage volume. 354. Boccaccio, Decameron, II, 196. 355. See ibid., II, 188, 196. 356. In story 10 of day I, Pampinea had recognized the appropriateness of brevity of speech in women. See ibid., I, 32. Now, she makes the longest speech. Does this, too, reflect something that has been happening to her, requiring an extended retaliation? Pampinea concludes with warning against trifling with scholars. Is she herself a scholar of sorts? See, on philosophy and its uses, story 1 of day V and story 9 of day VI. See also ibid., I, 136, II, 75, 106, 196, 227, 255, 304, 310, 347; story 10 of day VIII. Perhaps she has even learned “about the control one may have with respect to falling in love.” See Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker, 364, n. 5. 357. Kazantzakis, The Odyssey, 32.

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358. Consider the significance of the “infinite variety” associated with William Shakespeare’s Cleopatra. See, e.g., Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and Shakespeare,” 61, 76. See also note 315, above. 359. See section II of this Decameron chapter. 360. This is anticipated by story 9 of day III. The final story (about the patient Griselda) may also be found in Petrarch and in Chaucer. Compare the story of Dame Prudence discussed in section IV of chapter 7 of this Christian Heritage volume. 361. Notice here, as is said of Socrates at the end of Plato’s Symposium, that the seven women are finally said, upon their return to Florence and a day’s activities there, to have gone home. 362. See Boccaccio, Decameron, I, 232. 363. A perversion of nature, in the form of love, may be seen in the story of that presence under the sage bush which turns its leaves poisonous. See ibid., I, 276. 364. Wit can be lifesaving. See ibid., II, 72–73. Compare ibid., II, 70. 365. See, e.g., ibid., II, 147–48, 225. 366. See ibid., II, 68. 367. See ibid., II, 74. 368. See Boccaccio, The Decameron (Penguin edition), 831. 369. Fifteen years after my 1985 talk on The Decameron, I had an opportunity to consider the deathbed repentance of another great artist. See chapter 7 of this Christian Heritage volume. 370. This talk was given in the weekend conference of the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults, University of Chicago, at Alpine Valley Resort, East Troy, Wisconsin, April 22, 2001. 371. William Pitt, House of Commons, December 14, 1798. See George Anastaplo, “Legal Education, Economics, and Law School Governance: Explorations,” 46 South Dakota Law Review 240 (2001). 372. Robert Dudley French, ed., A Chaucer Handbook (New York: F.S. Croft & Co., 1947), 338. The Chaucer “retractation” may be found, in the original language and in a modern translation, in addendum A and addendum B to this Chaucer chapter. 373. See, on Boccaccio and his repentance, chapter 6 of this Christian Heritage volume, sec. IX. 374. See the comment on a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem in George Anastaplo, “The Forms of Our Knowing: A Somewhat Socratic Introduction,” in Douglas A. Ollivant, ed., Jacques Maritain and the Many Ways of Knowing (Washington, D.C.: American Maritain Association, 2002), 22. See also note 383, below. 375. See, e.g., Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, Nevill Coghill, trans. (New York: Penguin Books, 1975), 15: He died on the twenty-fifth of October 1400 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. A fine tomb, erected by an admirer in the fifteenth century, marks his grave and was the first of those that are gathered into what we now know as the Poets’ Corner. The Father of English Poetry lies in his family vault.

376. See note 400, below. 377. The agenda of talks, we learn in passing, has been changed from that initially announced by the Host in the prologue. See, on the martyr enshrined at Canterbury, Anastaplo, “Rome, Piety, and Law,” 138. See also note 382, below. 378. Frederick Tupper, “Chaucer and the Seven Deadly Sins,” 29 Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 93 (1914). 379. Ibid., 93–94. See, on Dante, chapter 5 of this Christian Heritage volume. 380. There is, in all of the works of Chaucer, evidently but one other use of “penitence”—that is in his “ABC” poem.

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381. See Concordance to the Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, eds. J. S. P. Tatlock and A. G. Kennedy (Gloucester: Smith, 1963). 382. One may well wonder whether Chaucer ever indicates, in the Tales (or elsewhere), any judgment by him with respect to the fatal controversy between the king and the martyr. See note 377, above. 383. See, on the yearning for personal immortality, Anastaplo, The Bible, 189. I had occasion not long ago to suggest how fearfulness can distort one’s political as well as one’s personal judgment. This suggestion was made in the following letter submitted in July 2001 to the New York Times (this letter was not published): Daniel Ellsberg, in his recent recollections of the Pentagon Papers controversy (“Lying About Vietnam,” June 29, 2001), emphasized that he had expected to go to prison, perhaps even for the rest of his life, because of his unauthorized release of forty volumes of Top Secret materials in 1971. Do we not see here the kind of exaggeration of risks that fueled Mr. Ellsberg’s early support of our unfortunate Vietnam intervention? In the course of our 1972 appearance together on a Chicago television program, during a recess in the Ellsberg Espionage Act trial, Mr. Ellsberg was astonished when I offered him 3-to-1 odds against a conviction of him which would stand up on appeal. “This is the first time anyone has said this to me,” he observed. “I wish my wife could hear it.” On that occasion I bet Mr. Ellsberg a dinner that he would never spend a night in jail because of his Pentagon Papers conduct. He still owes me that dinner.

See also George Anastaplo, “‘Racism,’ Political Correctness, and Constitutional Law: A Law School Case Study,” 42 South Dakota Law Review 108, 154 (1997); note 374, above. 384. See, for the conjectures made about the organization of the Boccaccio Collection, chapter 6 of this Christian Heritage volume. 385. See, on the aborted tale of Sir Topaz, Coghill, Geoffrey Chaucer, 194–202. Why thirty pilgrims? Is there an echo here of Judas Iscariot’s thirty pieces of silver? Or of Athens’ Thirty Tyrants? Or of both? 386. Does the Parson need a very long presentation because he is not persuasive? Does Chaucer mean to have his tale seen in juxtaposition to the sermon? 387. Is she a Christ-like figure who does not expect her suffering to be treated in the way that the Parson speaks of the required response to Jesus’ sufferings? See the text accompanying note 393 of this Christian Heritage volume. 388. See note 360, above. See, on Melibeus’s name, The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900), vol. 5, 216. 389. See, on the Grand Inquisitor, Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the Austen-Dostoyevsky Axis,” 725. 390. There was evidently a problem finding sins for one of the Hebrew letters and so another, somewhat similar in sound, was used again in its place. It seems appropriate that that pair includes a sin having to do with inadequate speech. 391. The word jester, I am told, is taken from this term. I have been helped, with respect to things Judaic, by Irving Skolnick of the Spertus College of Jewish Studies. 392. See, on The Pilgrim’s Progress, note 58, above. See, on the “situation” of Judaism today, chapter 26 of this Christian Heritage volume. See, on the horrors Jews have encountered in “a Christian world,” appendices A and I of this Christian Heritage volume. 393. See note 387, above. See also note 218, above. 394. Jacob Klein, in his Commentary on Plato’s Meno (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), used as the epigraph for his work the following lines from the prologue of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: Eek Plato seith, who-so that can him rede, The wordes mote be cosin to the dede.

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395. The work of Leo Strauss contributed significantly, in the twentieth century, to the rehabilitation of Xenophon among thoughtful scholars. 396. Plato, in his account of the trial, does not have Socrates going as far as Xenophon has him go in seeming to court his death. See, e.g., Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 8. 397. Compare the opening of John Paul II’s encyclical Faith and Reason. Consider also John Henry Newman’s discussion of this issue, as well as what Leo Strauss said about the productive tension, at least in the West, between reason and revelation. See, on Mr. Strauss, Kenneth L. Deutsch and John A. Murley, eds., Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and the American Regime (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999). See also Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker, 249; Anastaplo, The Bible, 201, 225. See, as well, John A. Murley, ed., Leo Strauss and His Legacy; appendix M of this Christian Heritage volume. 398. See, e.g., F. Anne Payne, “Foreknowledge and Free Will,” 10 Chaucer Review 201 (1976). 399. See Coghill, trans., The Canterbury Tales, 232. This is a lesson explored most dramatically perhaps in the Oedipus story. See also, note 38, above. 400. Christina von Nolcken Kazazis, “Meaning and Generic Interplay in the Plays of Aristophanes,” in Murley, Braithwaite, and Stone, eds., Law and Philosophy: The Practice of Theory, 896. 401. F. N. Robinson, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), second ed., 265. 402. See, for another translation into modern English of this retractation, Coghill, trans., The Canterbury Tales, 507–8. 403. These remarks were made to a University of Chicago Alumni Seminar, Chicago, Illinois, May 6, 1978. 404. Benjamin Franklin, “Information to Those Who Would Remove to America,” in The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Jared Sparks, ed. (1840), II, 467. See George Anastaplo, Liberty, Equality & Modern Constitutionalism: A Source Book (Newburyport, Massachusetts: Focus Publishing Company, 1999), II, 138. 405. See Sir Thomas More, Utopia, Robert M. Adams, trans. (Norton Critical Edition, 1975). 406. Frances Milton Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans (London: Whittaker, Treacher & Co., 1832), I, 126–38. 407. Ibid., I, 140–42. 408. See, on Thomas More, Anastaplo, On Trial, 253. See also Ginger Thompson, “Politicians, Saints and Sinners Alike, Gain Patron,” New York Times, January 6, 1993, A4: Nearly 100 elected officials, mostly local and federal legislators, took part in a special Mass [in Mexico City] in honor of St. Thomas More, the Roman Catholic patron of politicians. Organizers said the event was intended as a personal demonstration of commitment to their religion and to the ideals of public service embodied by their patron, who was executed in 1535 for refusing to accede to King Henry VIII’s claim to be head of the English church.

409. One American version was incorporated in the movie Shangri La. 410. More, Utopia, 6. 411. The Norton Critical Edition of Utopia provides this explanation of the stranger’s name (6): Raphael will not be known specifically as the “affable archangel” till Milton writes Paradise Lost a century and a half hence; still, he is already known as a comfortable, sociable archangel, as contrasted with Michael the warrior: witness his befriending of Tobias in the apocryphal Book of Tobit. The first root of “Hythloday” is surely Greek huthlos, meaning “nonsense;” the second part of the name may suggest daien, to distribute, i.e., a nonsense-peddler. A fantastic trilingual pun could make the whole name mean “God heals [Heb., Raphael] through the nonsense [Gr., huthlos] of God [Lat., dei].”

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412. See, e.g., ibid., 10. 413. These are the divisions provided in the Norton Critical Edition. Ibid., 34–78. 414. Ibid., 80. This epilogue then goes on to develop these sentiments, concluding with observations about the baleful effects of pride, “the prime plague and begetter of all other [monsters].” Ibid., 90. See the text accompanying notes 418 and 464, in this Christian Heritage volume. 415. See, e.g., ibid., 29, 30, 31, 32. 416. See, e.g., ibid., 79. 417. See ibid., 72, 78. 418. See ibid., 90. See also note 414, above. 419. See ibid., 46. 420. See ibid., 5. 421. See ibid., 9–10. 422. One can be reminded here of Socrates’ avoidance of voluntary public activity on his part. See, e.g., Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 8. See also note 450, below. 423. See, e.g., More, Utopia, 87–88. 424. See ibid., 40. One can be reminded of the former prevalence of Mao jackets in China. 425. See ibid., 39. 426. See ibid., 38. 427. See ibid., 35–36, 48. It would be as if we lived all of the time in the hotel rooms we can become accustomed to during our travels. 428. See ibid., 49. See also appendix B of this Christian Heritage volume. 429. See ibid., 45. 430. See ibid., 50–51. 431. This is reflected in the quotation, previously referred to, of the only recorded conversation from Utopia. See the text accompanying note 424 in this Christian Heritage volume. 432. See ibid., 32. Compare the difficulty Caliban has, in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, keeping his drunken co-conspirators from being distracted by Prospero’s finery. Here Caliban is even Spartan-like? 433. See More, Utopia, 73. 434. See ibid., 77. They are, however, fairly generous and easygoing in the terms on which their excess production is sold. See, e.g., ibid., 49. 435. See, e.g., ibid., 40. One can be reminded here of some of the sentiments of the American Quaker, John Woolman. See Anastaplo, “Legal Education, Economics, and Law School Governance,” 253. 436. See More, Utopia, 65–67. See also the text accompanying note 447 in this Christian Heritage volume. 437. See, e.g., ibid., 65. See also chapter 24 of this Christian Heritage volume. 438. See ibid., 86. 439. See ibid., 54. 440. See note 408 above. 441. See ibid., 27. About this, too, Raphael expresses reservations. 442. See ibid., 65. 443. See ibid., 42, 54–56, 59, 61. 444. See ibid., 45–58. 445. See ibid., 55, 81, 86. 446. Consider More’s own hospitality in this story. See ibid., 7, 33–34, 91. 447. See the text accompanying note 436 in this Christian Heritage volume. 448. See ibid., 36. 449. See, for the implications of the dominant opinion among us today about these matters, Anastaplo, “Legal Education, Economics, and Law School Governance,” 132–205.

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450. See, e.g., More, Utopia, 9. On the other hand, the Socrates who sketches “the best city” in Plato’s Republic, is notorious for never leaving Athens on his own volition. See also note 422, above. 451. These zealots have had to be gently suppressed by the Utopians, since the Utopians do not permit the private religious opinions of others to be attacked in public. See More, Utopia, 79. See also note 466, below. 452. See note 446, above. Consider the remarkably ascetic circumstances of the discussion in Plato’s Republic (especially when compared to the circumstances depicted in Plato’s Symposium). 453. See More, Utopia, 33–34. 454. See, on the use and abuse of privacy, George Anastaplo, “The Public Interest in Privacy: On Becoming and Being Human,” 26 DePaul Law Review 767 (1977). 455. See More, Utopia, 63–64. 456. See e.g., ibid., 28. 457. See ibid., 32. 458. Tyranny can make up for private initiative, but only to some extent and only for awhile. See Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 144, 161. See also Anastaplo, Reflections on Freedom of Speech and the First Amendment (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), 318. See as well note 461, below. 459. More, Utopia, 91. 460. See Dante Alighieri, De Monarchia (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Library of Liberal Arts edition, 1957), 27. 461. Does not tyranny tend to suppress true superiority? Aristotle, for one, seems to suggest this. See note 458, above. 462. See note 414, above. 463. See More, Utopia, 32–33. See also note 1142, below. 464. Ibid., 90. See also note 414, above. Consider the use here of “good luck” (or “good fortune,” in the Yale University Press edition of Utopia). How rational is the Utopian system if it should indeed be critically dependent on chance? See note 467, below. 465. This is in marked contrast to what seems to be said about the durability of “the best regime” conjured up in Plato’s Republic. It should be evident, from these and like questions, that the reading of Utopia provided in this Christian Heritage chapter should be regarded as no more than preliminary and suggestive. What did Thomas More, who was both determinedly (if not even, at times, tyrannically) pious and temperamentally philosophical, truly mean by all this? 466. Is the preaching of Christianity among such people somehow bizarre, if only because it is superfluous? See also note 451, above. 467. It is natural, therefore, to develop and to rely upon conventions. This is most evident, perhaps, in the fruitful use we make of historically derived languages which are very much (but not completely) the products of chance. See, on the doctrine of the ideas, Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 303. See, on the nature of nature, Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 303. See also the text accompanying note 566 in this Christian Heritage volume. See as well appendices D and F of this Christian Heritage volume. The following addendum to chapter 8 of this volume, “A Return to Thomas More’s Petition to the King,” inaugurated a course in constitutional law at the Loyola University of Chicago School of Law, August 27, 2001. All citations by me to materials for this talk are left in the text of the talk rather than being collected in notes. The Socratic epigraph is taken from Plato’s Apology (31D). 468. This talk was given in the weekend conference of the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults, University of Chicago, Alpine Valley Resort, East Troy, Wisconsin, May 20, 1984 (originally titled “The Uses of ‘Nature’ in Martin Luther’s Christian Liberty”). What I presume to say here about Luther should be assessed in the light of the considerable guidance provided by a recent biography of the man: Martin Marty, Martin Luther (New York: Viking/Lipper, Penguin,

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2004). “This is the best brief biography of Luther ever penned.” Publishers Weekly, January 19, 2004, 73. See also note 491, below. 469. This bumper sticker was seen by me on an automobile in Santa Fe, New Mexico, March 2, 1984. That this was encountered in Santa Fe may even seem providential. 470. These ten uses are collected in the addendum to this chapter. See the text accompanying note 571 of this Christian Heritage volume. The principal text used on this occasion is Martin Luther, Christian Liberty, W. A. Lambert, trans. (Minnesota, Fortress Press, 1957). 471. See, on madness, George Anastaplo, “Samplings,” 27 Political Science Reviewer 345, 389 (1998). See also Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker, 331. 472. “Martin Luther,” 14 Encyclopedia Britannica, 436, 440 (fourteenth ed., 1972) (quoting Thomas Müntzer). 473. It is hard to exaggerate the influence of Luther on German thought, including on the German language Leo Strauss could come to see in Martin Heidegger the cunning peasant. 474. See, on the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Nicene Creed, Anastaplo, The Bible, 175. A kind of “Luther” for the Orthodox Church was St. John Chrysostom, whom I glance at in appendix I of this Christian Heritage volume. Chrysostom anticipated the anti-Jewish diatribes of Luther. Fortunately for both the Greeks and the Jews, the Greek people were far less receptive to this kind of corruption than the German people. Besides, later on, the Greeks had more than enough targets in the Ottoman Turks. See Anastaplo, Campus Hate-Speech Codes, Natural Right, and TwentiethCentury Atrocities, 71; Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 109–10. See also chapter 18, sections V–VII of this Christian Heritage volume. See as well note 959, below. 475. “Martin Luther,” Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 14, 443. 476. The Table Talk of Martin Luther, Thomas S. Kepler, ed. (1979), 218 (#305). See also ibid., 239–40, 244. 477. Ibid., 196 (#270). See also ibid., 226, 236–37. 478. Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Early Lectures (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1959), vol. 1, 134. One can be reminded here of how the duke of Kent addresses King Lear in the first scene of Shakespeare’s play (only to get himself banished for his impoliticly expressed loyalty). 479. Peter Manns, Martin Luther (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 119. 480. Ibid., 84. 481. Ibid., 120. 482. See, on St. Paul and on St. Augustine, Anastaplo, “Rome, Piety, and Law,” 39, 83. See also Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 376, 388. See as well notes 489 and 534, below. 483. See, on nature, ibid., 303. 484. Luther, Christian Liberty, 7. 485. It is important, we notice, that Luther himself evidently considered On the Bondage of the Will his best work. 486. Manns, Martin Luther, 48. 487. See, e.g., note 482, above. See also chapters 4 and 8 of this Christian Heritage volume. 488. See Ernest L. Fortin, “St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274),” in Strauss and Cropsey, eds., History of Political Philosophy, 270. 489. Augustine, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, Henry Betterson trans. (New York: Penguin Books, 1976). 490. The Table Talk of Martin Luther, 59 (#80). See also ibid., 48 (#67). 491. See ibid., 67–68 (#94). He has here a string of villains which begins and ends thus: “Of Abraham came Isaac and Ishmael; of the patriarchs and holy fathers, came the Jews that crucified Christ; of the apostles came Judas the traitor . . . of the true church come heretics; of Luther come fanatics, rebels, and enthusiasts.” Id. See also the text accompanying note 516 in this Christian Heritage volume. “The flaws that blighted Luther’s reputation, such as in his relation to peasants

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in 1524–25 or to the Jews late in his life, are gross, obvious, and, in the latter case, even revolting.” Marty, Martin Luther, xi. “Marty [in his biography] admires Luther. But the book is noteworthy in its straightforward presentation of the crudity, inconsistencies and sometimes ‘revolting’ (p. xi) aspects of Luther’s personality and career. Luther is the hero of the book, but he is not a person without serious flaws and problematic behavior, as in his notorious attack on the peasants and his vitriol against the Jews.” John W. O’Malley, “Monk on a Mission” America, September 11, 2004, 27. See, on Luther’s deadly campaign against the Jews, James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jew—A History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001), 366–68, 426–28, 475–78; Robert Michael, Holy Hatred’s Christianity, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 248. “Luther had no equivalent in England, France, Italy, or Spain.” Ibid., 119. Did, however, Luther have an “equivalent” in Muhammad (who, like Luther, expected to be more persuasive with Jews than he was)? See, e.g., Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 175. See also appendices A and L of this Christian Heritage volume. See, as well, notes 512 and 520, below. 492. Ibid., 242 (#344). 493. Manns, Martin Luther, 119. 494. See, on the Symposium, Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 171. 495. See Manns, Martin Luther, 119. 496. Emerson, The Early Lectures, vol. 1, 123. 497. Luther, Christian Liberty, 7. 498. Compare, for a more “humanistic” view of these matters, section II of chapter 7 of this Christian Heritage volume. 499. Emerson, The Early Lectures, vol. 1, 119. (“This act is the crisis of his life, the cause out of which all his other actions flow.”) 500. “Martin Luther,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 437. 501. Augustine, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, 548. 502. Ibid., 551. 503. See ibid., 579. See also The Table Talk of Martin Luther, 158. 504. For neither Isaiah nor Socrates/Aristotle, it can be said, is there a Fall which leaves all human beings with critically impaired natures. See note 666, below. 505. Manns, Martin Luther, 86. 506. See The Table Talk of Martin Luther, 117–18. 507. Luther, Christian Liberty, 23. 508. See, e.g., The Table Talk of Martin Luther, 209. 509. See ibid., 59, 63. 510. See ibid., 99, 313–14. 511. Manns, Martin Luther, 100. 512. See Emerson, The Early Lectures, vol. 1, 138 (“A man of his mighty heart and excessive Imagination is in danger of insanity, and in such circumstances as he fell upon, of a Mohammedan fanaticism.”) See also note 491, above; note 520, below. Compare note 647, below. 513. Ibid., vol. 1, 139. See also ibid., vol. 1, 139–40. One can be reminded here of the naturally political Abraham Lincoln. 514. Compare the text accompanying note 445 in this Christian Heritage volume. See also note 371, above. 515. Luther, Christian Liberty, 26. 516. See, e.g., note 491, above. 517. Is there, in this evident emphasis upon intention instead of upon consequences, an anticipation of the Kantian approach to moral issues? See, on Immanuel Kant, Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 27. 518. See, on Abraham, Anastaplo, On Trial, 111. See also Anastaplo, The Bible, 383. 519. See Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the Austen-Dostoyevsky Axis,” 751.

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520. He may have been anticipated here by Muhammad. See Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, chapter 6. See also note 512, above. See, as well, note 491, above. 521. See Beata Ruhn von Oppen, “On Resistance to the Nazis,” St. John’s College Review (Winter 1984), 7. See also note 1118, below. 522. See Martin Luther, Table Talk, William Hazlitt, trans. (Bohn’s Library, 1909), 353. 523. See, on the translation of the Bible by Luther and his associates, “Martin Luther,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 441. 524. I have relied here somewhat upon Monford Harris (of the Spertus College of Jewish Studies). See, on the status of the Jews, The Table Talk of Martin Luther, 55, 94–95, 109, 116–17, 139–40, 166–67, 183, 218–19, 302–3. See also note 491, above, and note 535, below. See as well chapter 26 of this Christian Heritage volume. 525. See “Martin Luther,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 440. 526. Consider, for example, the career of Job as extolled by God Himself. In addition, the Jews made more than Luther evidently could of honoring one’s father and mother. See ibid., 437. See also Augustine, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, 1014. 527. Ibid., 247. See also ibid., 253, 284, 293, 359, 415, 487, 498–99, 589. 528. See ibid., 415. 529. Ibid., 855. See also ibid., 856. 530. See Duncan B. Forrester, “Martin Luther and John Calvin,” in Strauss and Cropsey, eds., History of Political Philosophy, 319. See also the text accompanying note 777 in this Christian Heritage volume. 531. Fortin, “St. Thomas Aquinas,” 252. 532. Id. 533. Augustine, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, 359. 534. Fortin, “St. Thomas Aquinas,” 186. 535. See, on the unnaturalness of the German animus toward the Jews, which Luther both drew upon and in some ways reinforced, Anastaplo, On Trial, 297. See also note 491, above. Pope John XXIII can be said to have drawn upon the intrinsically gentler Italian spirit here. See George Anastaplo, Campus Hate-Speech Codes, Natural Right, and Twentieth Century Atrocities (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999), 71. See also chapter 26 of this Christian Heritage volume. See as well appendix A in this Christian Heritage volume. 536. See, on primitive Christianity, Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker, 62. 537. See, on Dostoyevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor,” Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the AustenDostoyevsky Axis,” 725. 538. See Luther, Christian Liberty, 29. 539. A study of Tertullian can be instructive here. See Anastaplo, “Rome, Piety, and Law,” 47. See also note 548, below. 540. “Martin Luther,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 442. 541. Luther, Christian Liberty, 39. 542. See Manns, Martin Luther, 15. 543. See The Table Talk of Martin Luther, 181. 544. See ibid., 120. 545. See ibid., 134–35, 137–39. 546. See also ibid., 126–27. 547. See Oppen, “On the Resistance to the Nazis,” 27. 548. Consider, also, Tertullian’s “I believe because it is absurd.” See note 539, above. How does one choose among the infinite number of absurdities eligible for belief? See, e.g., appendices B and C of this Christian Heritage volume. See also note 604, below. 549. Consider the implications of what Luther says about the story of Jonah. See The Table Talk of Martin Luther, 268–70.

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550. See ibid., 216. 551. See Fortin, “St. Thomas Aquinas,” 253. See also Augustine, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, 387. 552. Luther, Christian Liberty, 39–40. 553. See, e.g., the text accompanying note 519 in this Christian Heritage volume. 554. “Martin Luther,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 437. 555. We can be reminded here of the problem of the virtuous pagans in Limbo, a problem recognized in chapter 5 of this Christian Heritage volume. See also appendix L of this Christian Heritage volume. 556. See Augustine, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, 313, 453. 557. See The Table Talk of Martin Luther, 7. 558. Ibid., 344 (#508). See also Forrester, “Martin Luther and John Calvin,” 321; Manns, Martin Luther, 45; The Table Talk of Martin Luther, 57, 344–45; Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Continuum, 1994), 246. See, as well, George Anastaplo, “Constitutionalism and the Good: Explorations,” 70 Tennessee Law Review 737, 783 (2003). 559. See Augustine, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, 168–69, 176, 248. 560. Emerson, The Early Lectures, vol. 1, 134. 561. See Plato, Republic, books II, III; Augustine, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, 304, 1095. Consider also the stories among the Aztecs about the divine. 562. Or was this Aristotle? But, it should be added, it may be difficult, if not impossible, for human beings to be certain either about precisely what has been done or, of course, about what is. 563. Alexis de Tocqueville can be instructive here. See Anastaplo, Abraham Lincoln, 81. See, on the status of “individuality” in modernity, Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 323; Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 23. See also the text accompanying note 810 in this Christian Heritage volume. See as well appendix B of this Christian Heritage volume. 564. Emerson, The Early Lectures, vol. 1, 125–26. 565. See, e.g., R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1954). 566. See, e.g., note 467, above. 567. See Manns, Martin Luther, 67. 568. See the text accompanying note 557 in this Christian Heritage volume. 569. Augustine, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, 387. Compare Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker, 13 (on the philosopher in the cemetery). 570. Fortin, “St. Thomas Aquinas,” 178, 267. Compare ibid., 250. 571. This collection of passages from Martin Luther’s Christian Liberty was originally prepared by me for a 1984 weekend conference of the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults at the University of Chicago. See note 468, above. The English is taken from Christian Liberty, W. A. Lambert, trans., Harold J. Grimm, ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1957). The Latin is taken from the 1520 De Libertate Christiana (J. Svennung, ed., 1932). The page numbers are taken from the English text. The paragraph numbers are taken from the Latin text. The other numbers count each use of some form of nature in the Latin text (the language of the original publication of Christian Liberty). 572. This talk was given in the First Friday Lecture Series, Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults, University of Chicago, at the Cultural Center, Chicago, Illinois, January 5, 1990 (originally titled “On Montaigne, Death and Philosophy: Essays, I, 20. A Preliminary Inquiry”). See, on French thought, appendix K of this Christian Heritage volume. 573. See Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, The Essays, Donald M. Frame, trans. (The Great Books of the Western World, Encyclopedia Britannica, second ed., 1990), vol. 23, 9. See also the text accompanying note 761 in this Christian Heritage volume.

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574. My Basic Program colleague, Anne M. Cohler, had died unexpectedly shortly before this talk was given. She, in collaboration with Basia Carolyn Miller (another Basic Program colleague) and Harold Samuel Stone, published in 1989 an English translation of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 575. See Montaigne, The Essays, 84. The title of this essay in French is “Que philosopher c’est apprendre a mourir.” See Montaigne, Essays and Selected Writings: A Bilingual Edition, Donald M. Frame, trans. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1963). 576. See Montaigne, The Essays, 91. See, on death, Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 213. 577. The essays are arranged in three books, with the third book of essays not included in the first edition. The initial publication of essays was in 1580; the final one in Montaigne’s lifetime, with additions and revisions, was in 1588. Another edition, with even more changes, was published shortly after his death in 1592. One is encouraged to take all of the essays together by those scholars who see an evolution, perhaps a maturation, in Montaigne’s essays over the years. See David Schaefer, “Montaigne’s Intention and his Rhetoric,” 5 Interpretation 57 (1975). Also instructive is Mr. Schaefer’s University of Chicago doctoral dissertation, “Liberty, Skepticism, and Political Change in the Political Philosophy of Montaigne” (1971). 578. The essais are, in some ways, like Platonic dialogues. It is in this essais mode, by the way, that I have long regarded my own talks and papers, each of which is likely to be very much keyed to circumstances (including the original time and the intended audience). Some authority for this approach, which is reflected in the two dozen collections for the “explorations” genre which I have developed since 1987 (and which I will not have time to turn into books), is provided by the cautions about writing found in Plato’s Phaedrus. See Anastaplo, “Constitutionalism, the Rule of Rules,” 254–77. See also notes 705 and 1180, below. See as well note 600, below. 579. See the text accompanying note 601 in this Christian Heritage volume. 580. See Montaigne, The Essays, 364 (II, 19), 485 (III, 7). 581. See ibid., 190. 582. Compare Xenophon, The Apology of Socrates. See note 603, below. 583. See Montaigne, The Essays, 84, 216 (“Of Practice”), 545 (“Of Physiognomy”). 584. See ibid., 217. 585. Ibid., 552. 586. Id. It has been pointed out that “the two chapters that refer to the Socratic understanding of philosophy as ‘learning how to die’ (I, 20, and III, 12) are equidistant from II, 6, which embodies the anti-Socratic ‘turning point’ in Montaigne’s own professed attitude toward death.” Schaefer, “Montaigne’s Intention and His Rhetoric,” 62, n. 18. 587. See, on the prudential use of one’s wisdom, Montaigne, The Essays, 487–88 (III, 7): [W]hen the Emperor Hadrian was arguing with the philosopher Favorinus about the interpretation of some word, Favorinus soon yielded him the victory. When his friends complained to him, he said: “You are jesting; would you want him to be less learned than I, he who commands thirty legions?” Augustus wrote some verses against Asinius Pollio, “And I,” said Pollio, “am keeping quiet; it is not wise to be a scribe against a man who can proscribe.” And they were right. For Dionysius, because he could not match Philoxenus in poetry, and Plato in prose, condemned the one to the quarries, and sent the other to be sold as a slave on the island of Aegina.

588. Ibid., 84. 589. See ibid., 87. 590. See ibid., 88. 591. See Plutarch, Lives (Modern Library edition), 1092. Compare Considius’s response to Caesar, described elsewhere by Plutarch:

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Considius, a very old man, took occasion one day to tell Caesar that the senators did not meet because they were afraid of his soldiers. Caesar asked, “Why don’t you, then, out of the same fear, keep at home?” To which Considius replies, that age was his guard against fear, and that the small remains of his time were not worth much caution.

Ibid., 863. I have had occasion, since turning eighty in 2005, to make similar observations to perhaps unduly solicitous medical advisors. See note 595, below. 592. See Plato, Phaedo. 593. Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker, 270–71 (quoting Leo Strauss at the funeral of Jason Aronson). See also ibid., 266–67. 594. Ibid., 271. 595. See, on Hobbes, Laurence Berns, “Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679),” in Strauss and Cropsey, eds., History of Political Philosophy, 396. It is said that the temperamentally fearful Hobbes was much more emboldened in his very old age. See note 591, above. See also the text accompanying note 628 in this Christian Heritage volume. 596. Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker, 138–39. 597. That was Arthur Heiserman, of the University of Chicago English Department. He, too, had served with the Basic Program. Richard Stern has said of him: “I had a very talented colleague here [at the University of Chicago]. He was known as a fine scholar-critic, but he also wrote brilliant fiction, most of it never published; indeed, it appears to be lost. He died young.” Stephen Barbara and Matthew Deming, “An Interview with Richard Stern,” Euphony, vol. 2, no. 1 (Spring 2002), 106, 133. 598. See Schaefer, “Montaigne’s Intention and His Rhetoric,” 82–83. 599. My talk on Horace, of December 5, 1986, is to be included in my collection, “Law & Literature and the Classics: Explorations.” It was anticipated by talks on Sappho and Pindar. See Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 45, 76. 600. On the other hand, it is said that children today “witness” so many killings on television that they can become quite casual (or is it benumbed?) about the deaths they encounter and even occasionally cause. Central to one’s inquiry into the intentions and meaning of a serious author should be an awareness of that author’s circumstances and primary intended audience. See note 578, above. Most readers, however, should be cautioned against trying to make too much of this sort of thing. We can well wonder what it may be like for any one of us “personally” once dead. It can be argued that each of us has already had as much of the “experience” of “eternity” that any human being may ever have. That is, it is believed, if the material universe is forever, however varied its forms (just as, say, numerical relations are forever), that there has been as much of eternity “before” any one of us as there will be “after” any one of us. This can be understood to “mean” (in a manner of speaking) that each of us has already “experienced” for a very long time (“half an eternity,” again in a manner of speaking) what it is like (what it “means”) to be dead. Thus, death can again be likened (as at the end of Plato’s Apology) to a dreamless sleep, but a sleep from which one does not wake. See notes 635 and 656, below. See also note 601, below. 601. Montaigne, The Essays, 89. Nature does “tell” us that we will die. But what does it tell us about what happens to the human soul after death? See note 600, above. Jonathan Edwards, in his notable 1741 sermon (“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”), insists upon the need for even the typical Christian to be “born again.” Only the Christian revelation provides reliable guidance to eternal salvation (or, even more compelling, reliable guidance away from perpetual condemnation). Nature as a guide is repeatedly condemned by Edwards, even though it should have been obvious to him that that is all that may be sensible that much of the human race have ever had to rely on. Does an emphasis upon this kind of eternal salvation (Machiavelli asked) tend to leave decent people poorly equipped to deal, especially politically, with everyday problems requiring foresight, toughness, and so on? It may even be wondered whether all this is a poor (even fundamentally

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unfair) way for things to have been arranged. Still, it can be argued that one consequence, or effect, of the grim Edwards argument is that it may make it easier for most people to regard human life as intrinsically meaningful. (I hope to include, in another volume some day touching on these matters, writings which include both my play The Last Christian [on Judas Iscariot] and my talk “God in the Hands of an Angry Preacher” [on the Jonathan Edwards sermon].) See note 768, below. See also note 635, below. 602. See, e.g., George Anastaplo, “Freedom of Speech and the First Amendment: Explorations,” 21 Texas Tech Law Review 1941, 1945 (1990). 603. Thus, Socrates could have handled himself differently both at his trial and when an opportunity to escape was presented. See Plato, Crito. See also Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 203; note 582, above. 604. See, e.g., Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 67, 147. May we not see, in our responses to the multitude of radically different systems of belief, that Reason may have a natural role to play in the assessment of Revelation? See ibid., 131, n. 38. William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) reminds us that there are many ways people can go (and go wrong) “spiritually.” See note 548, above; note 870, below. 605. See, e.g., Plato, Phaedo 69D. See again the opening lines of The Essays, I, 20. 606. Montaigne, The Essays, 85. 607. See William Shakespeare, King Lear, act V, sc. ii, l. 11. 608. Montaigne, The Essays, 89. 609. Compare Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 597–98 (for Silenus’s grim view of human existence). But see the text accompanying note 620 in this Christian Heritage volume (for Aristotle’s celebration of life). 610. See, e.g., Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 586. 611. One can see such an experience examined in a short story, “The Man Who Died a Lot,” in Mark Van Doren, Collected Stories (New York: Hill and Wang, 1965), 8. 612. See Montaigne, The Essays, 89. The Homeric gods, we have been told, could speak of human beings as “creatures of a day.” 613. See ibid., 93. 614. See, on Lucretius, Anastaplo, “Samplings,” 426. 615. Nature teaches “indifference” to Thales and to us. Yet Montaigne says that Nature teaches “good counsels,” which means not simply indifference? 616. Montaigne, The Essays, 90. 617. The central quotation of all the quotations in this essay (I, 20) may be Lucretius’s insistence upon the flimsiness of human existence and its attainments. See ibid., 87. 618. Is this, too, related to the Christian influence? Did Stoicism also contribute to Christianity? Is there any indication of how nature transmits her message? Primarily through poets? Instinct? Common sense? Someone such as Lucretius? Or someone such as Thales? 619. See, on the nature of nature and on nature as a guide, Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 303. See also note 636, below. 620. See Aristotle, Politics 1278b25–29. See also Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 599–600; the text accompanying note 859 in this Christian Heritage volume. 621. Compare, in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Prospero’s anticipation that every third thought of his, back in Milan, would be of the grave. 622. See Montaigne, The Essays, 86. 623. What had been said about nature in the first part to lead to Socrates’ use of nature? And how had that led to the reliance upon the long speech by Nature in the second part? 624. See Anastaplo, The Constitutionalist, 803, n. 38. See also chapter 16 of this Christian Heritage volume. 625. See, on the doctrine of the ideas, Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 303.

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626. Consider the use of our term, “carnal knowledge” (with its biblical anticipations?). 627. See, e.g., the text accompanying note 613 in this Christian Heritage volume. One can be reminded as well of Martin Heidegger, who evidently thought of himself as a thinker, not as a philosopher. Nature is seen by Montaigne as independent of philosophy. See, e.g., Montaigne, The Essays, 546 (III, 12). See, on the ever-troubling (and yet personally peculiarly untroubled?) Heidegger, Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 144. 628. See, e.g., the text accompanying note 595 in this Christian Heritage volume. 629. See, for Montaigne’s final opinion about death, Schaefer, “Montaigne’s Intention and His Rhetoric,” 82–83. There does not seem to be any reliance upon an expectation by him of life after death. See, on the need to understand the whole, Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the AustenDostoyevski Axis,” 758. 630. Consider what seems to be Nietzsche’s argument to that effect. 631. Consider how Montaigne can speak of that erotic element which Socrates and others had made so much of as critical to the philosophic enterprise: The dissentions of the philosophic sects in this matter are merely verbal. . . . There is more stubbornness and wrangling than befits such a sacred profession. But whatever role man undertakes to play, he always plays his own at the same time. Whatever they say, in virtue itself the ultimate goal we aim at is voluptuousness. I like to beat their ears with that word, which so goes against their grain. And if it means a certain supreme pleasure and excessive contentment, this is due more to the assistance of virtue than to any other assistance.

Montaigne, The Essays, 84. Compare Molière, The Misanthrope. 632. See Montaigne, The Essays, 84. 633. See, for the discussion of a papal encyclical with respect to these issues, Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 347. 634. His biography, as in the “Great Books of the Western World” edition of Montaigne’s Essays, reports that that is not quite what happened to him, however easy his death may have been. 635. Cicero is quoted elsewhere as having said, “I do not want to die, but I would not care if I were dead.” A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principals, H. L. Mencken, ed. (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1942) (citing Tusculum disp. I). See notes 600 and 601, above. 636. See Schaefer, “Montaigne’s Intention and His Rhetoric,” 58. See, on modern natural science and its adventures, Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 272. See also Anastaplo, The Bible, 327 (“Yearnings for the Divine and the Natural Animation of Matter”). 637. This paper was prepared for a Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship panel at the annual convention of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, September 4, 1992 (originally titled “Machiavellianism and The Jew of Malta”). 638. Machiavel, “Prologue” to Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, in The Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe, Irving Ribner, ed. (New York: Odyssey Press, 1963), 178–79. There are other prologues as well. See also appendix A of this Christian Heritage volume. 639. See, for a reminder of the systematic atrocities following upon such opinions about (that is, deep—indeed, insanely satanic—hatred of) the Jews, Anastaplo, On Trial, 297; Anastaplo, The Bible, 319. See also chapters 3 and 26 of this Christian Heritage volume. See as well appendices A and L of this Christian Heritage volume; note 1185, below. 640. See, e.g., Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, xxxi. See also Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, T. W. Craik, ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), viii, xix. 641. See, for the turning of another Jewish daughter against her father, but with far less provocation, note 661, below. 642. The Maltese governor, at the end of the play, attributes the island’s deliverance “neither to fate nor fortune, but to heaven.” Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, 239.

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643. The convention paper drawn on here (not available to me at this time) was a precursor to much more work by that paper’s author on this subject, work that he can be understood to be identified with. 644. There is no indication that either Marlowe or Shakespeare was worried about how an unfriendly portrayal of Jews would be taken, nor is there any indication that either of them believed that he would be in need of a defense. 645. A thoughtful introduction to these matters is provided in Martin D. Jaffe, Shylock and the Jewish Question (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). The Jaffe book is introduced thus (p. 1): In this book I analyze the figure of Shylock, the unfortunate Jewish villain in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. My immediate aim is to challenge the widespread presumption that Shakespeare is, in the last analysis, unfriendly to Jews. In so doing, my larger hope is to rescue Shakespeare’s play as a helpful guide for the self-understanding of the modern Jew.

See, on why the Shakespeare play is very much in need of “rescue,” Anastaplo, On Trial, 231; Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and Shakespeare,” 163. See also note 661, below. 646. Marlowe was born the same year as Shakespeare, 1564, but died a quarter of a century before him, in 1593. See Michiko Kakutani, “Finding New Evidence in a 16th-Century Killing” (reviewing Charles Nicholi, The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe), New York Times, March 4, 1994, B8. 647. In this play Islam is shown to be the least devious of the three great faiths drawn upon—the Jewish, the Christian, and the Muslim. See, on Islam, Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 175. See also notes 101 and 512, above. See, as well, the text accompanying note 1200 in this Christian Heritage volume. 648. See Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker, 226; Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the Moderns,” 514. 649. The Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe, 184. 650. An editor of the Marlowe text quotes another scholar to this effect: “Luther, in his extended commentary on Galatians (published in English in 1575), notes how the Jews use Abraham’s blessing, ‘applying it only as a carnal blessing, and do great injury to Scripture.’” Craik, ed., The Jew of Malta, 15. However that may be, the truly pious Jew recognizes that the “bargain” with God leaves Jews with significant obligations as well. See note 1185, below. 651. See The Jew of Malta and The Massacre at Paris, H. S. Bennett, ed. (New York: Gordian Press, 1931). 652. See the text accompanying note 638 in this Christian Heritage volume. Is there something Socratic about this sentiment? See appendices G, H, and L in this Christian Heritage volume. See also appendix D of this Christian Heritage volume. 653. See, on “policy,” H. S. Bennett, ed., The Jew of Malta, 43, 156–57. 654. The Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe, 185. Barabas says this in Latin: “Ego mihimet sum semper proximus.” This phrase is evidently taken from Terence’s Andria, and may be paraphrased, “I am my own dearest friend.” Craik, ed., The Jew of Malta, 18, n. 192. 655. See Bennett, ed., The Jew of Malta, 161n. How is this related to modern Existentialism? See, e.g., Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 139. 656. One is left wondering whether anyone in the play believes that an eternity of punishment awaits any sinner. Compare chapter 5 of this Christian Heritage volume. See notes 600 and 601, above. 657. See, on Abraham and Isaac, Anastaplo, On Trial, 111. See also Anastaplo, The Bible, 383, 391.

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658. See, on madness, Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker, 492 (“Insanity”); Anastaplo, “Samplings,” 389; Anastaplo, On Trial, 485. See also appendices B and L of this Christian Heritage volume. 659. The Jew of Malta, along with Shakespeare’s Richard III and Ben Jonson’s Volpone, can be described as an instance of “sportive villainy.” See James Schiffer, “The Aesthetics of Sportive Villainy” (University of Chicago doctoral dissertation, 1980). 660. Not that Machiavelli himself considers that to be bad on their part. 661. An uglier version of this—on the daughter’s part—may be seen in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. See note 641, above. 662. See note 673, below. 663. See, e.g., The Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe, 186–88. 664. See, on the biblical Barabbas, Matthew 27:16–22; Mark 15:5–14; Luke 23:13–24. 665. See, on Job (who was evidently not an Israelite), Anastaplo, The Bible, 141. 666. Indeed, the philosopher can seem anti-apocalyptic—and hence not subject to the fears and precautions of most human beings in the West in recent millennia. See, e.g., the opening of Judah Halevi’s The Kuzari. See also note 504, above. See, as well, notes 600 and 601, above. See, on wishful thinking and the Apocalypse, George Anastaplo, “On Freedom: Explorations,” 17 Oklahoma City University Law Review 465, 579. 667. See, on how Jews could be regarded as questionable residents among Christians, Luther, Table Talk, 346–54. See also appendices A and L in this Christian Heritage volume. 668. That Malta did have some claims upon Barabas is suggested by the fact that he had been permitted to accumulate a fortune while living among, and perhaps off, Christians. The governor does deceive Barabas at the end, but this did not require much imagination on that official’s part, but only opportunity. Barabas is much more innovative, daring, and hence interesting in his devices. 669. See The Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe, 187–88. 670. This bears upon the status of martyrdom among various peoples. See, e.g., chapter 3 of this Christian Heritage volume. See also appendix B of this Christian Heritage volume. 671. Consider, also, how Gypsies can be talked about and treated today. See, e.g., George Anastaplo, “Lessons for the Student of Law: The Oklahoma Lectures,” 20 Oklahoma City University Law Review 19, 159–60 (1995). 672. This is evident, for example, in the academic world, especially in the United States. Thus, a permanent catastrophe in Israel would likely have a prolonged, if not permanent, demoralizing effect in this country. See chapter 26 and appendices A, L, and M of this Christian Heritage volume. See especially note 1173, below. See also note 1185, below. 673. I noticed, in the course of this September 4, 1992, paper that Morris Carnovsky had died that week. And I then recalled that I once saw him do Shylock before a quite sophisticated audience in Chicago and visited with him in his dressing room afterward. He was, on that occasion, quite distressed because of the considerable laughter that the downfall of Shylock had evoked—and I could wonder why he had not realized that Shakespeare had expected such a response. See Anastaplo, On Trial, 243, 251. 674. Shakespeare, on the other hand, could be known among some of his associates as “Gentle Will.” 675. It is hardly likely that an aggressively atheistic Marlowe would suggest that only God can make sense for us of any life that is blighted, as Barabas’s life is, by Job-like afflictions. 676. Boccaccio had lived two centuries before Marlowe. See note 332, above. 677. The second Decameron story glanced at here is drawn upon by Gotthold Lessing in his Nathan the Wise. See Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the Moderns,” 288. See also note 679, below.

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678. See Clyde Haborman, “Draft the Yeshiva Boys? Parents Fire Up a Battle,” New York Times, September 3, 1992, A4. 679. I had occasion to say, about Lessing’s classic plea for toleration (see note 677), “Compare the effects of Plato’s Crito and Lessing’s Nathan the Wise: the Athenians are in effect told that only well-behaved laws (e.g., laws which provide for an opportunity for critics to criticize or to leave) need be obeyed; the Germans are in effect told that only Jews as well-behaved as Nathan need to be tolerated (or so it must seem to many).” Anastaplo, The Constitutionalist, 503, n. 11. See, for another Elizabethan contemporary’s opinion about Jews, Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning (New York: Modern Library edition), book I, 196–98, where even the ceremonial law can be spoken of with respect. 680. The famous cauldron of Malta at the end of Marlowe’s play anticipated infamous ovens at Auschwitz and elsewhere in our time. See, e.g., appendix A of this Christian Heritage volume. 681. See, on the good, the true, and the beautiful, Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker, 275; appendices G, H, and L of this Christian Heritage volume. See, on individualism and modernity, note 563, above. 682. See, e.g., Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 161 (on George Orwell’s 1984). 683. See, e.g., Bennett, ed., The Jew of Malta, 8, 17–18. 684. See the text accompanying notes 638 and 652 in this Christian Heritage volume. 685. See, on nature, Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 303. See also note 601, above. 686. This paper was prepared for a meeting of the staff of the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, April 3, 1976 (originally titled “On Pascal’s Wager”). See, on French thought, appendix K of this Christian Heritage volume. 687. Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (1794), in Thomas Paine, Representative Selections, Harry Hayden Clark, ed. (1961), 235–36. See chapter 14 of this Christian Heritage volume. 688. “The Wager” may be found (as #223) in Pascal’s Pensées, H. F. Stewart, ed. (in a duallanguage edition, Pantheon Books, 1950). This item bears the title “Infinity-Nothing” (Infiny-rien). See, for summaries of this argument with commentary, the addenda to this Christian Heritage chapter. See also notes 702 and 705, below. 689. See, on Soren Kierkegaard, Anastaplo, On Trial, 111. Indeed, it can be argued, a robust God might well detest the kind of spiritual bookkeeping used by Pascal’s sophisticated wagerer. 690. Our lecturer was, in this respect, very much in the tradition of Thomas Paine. 691. See, for appreciations of Pascal in such matters, the addenda to this chapter. 692. Pascal’s Pensées, 117, 118, 118, 121, 121, 122, 123. See the texts accompanying notes 699 and 729 in this Christian Heritage volume. 693. Much is made there, as elsewhere in the Pensées, of the infinitude and hence the incomprehensibility of God for human beings. See ibid., 117. 694. There are, however, better and worse ways of responding to the awareness of the “abyss” over which the stripped-down human being may find himself. See, e.g., chapter 17 of this Christian Heritage volume. See, on the “abyss” past and present, notes 600 and 601, above. 695. It should also be noticed that the care with which all this may have been composed, despite the fragmentary and largely “fugitive” character of much of the Pensées, is suggested by the allocation to the addressee (if properly reshaped) of both seven speeches and seven virtues: “You will be faithful, honest, humble, grateful, beneficent, a good friend, true.” (In the French: “Vous serez fidelle, honneste, humble, reconnoissant, bienfaisant, amy, sincère, veritable.”) Pascal, Pensées, 120–22. 696. Seven seems to be the key to the addressee’s make-up: the seven speeches, the seven virtues (or commendable qualities), and also the arrangement of the paragraphs in sevens (if my French text is to be relied upon): the first seven paragraphs devoted to infinity and man, the second seven paragraphs to the wager, and the final six paragraphs (perhaps because this part of the story cannot yet be finished) to the consequences of submission to the “logic” of the wager.

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697. See note 692, above. 698. See, e.g., note 693, above. Is the addressee, in his agnosticism, characterized by paralysis, albeit a pleasure-sustained paralysis? 699. See, on Plato’s Crito, Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 203. See, on Plato’s Meno, ibid., 74. See also note 722, below. See, on how to read a Platonic dialogue, Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the Austen-Dostoyevski Axis,” 758. See, as well, note 84, above. 700. Are “the grand virtues” apt to be pagan in their orientation? These are virtues that St. Thomas Aquinas was more open to than, say, St. Augustine (who seems to have had more influence on Pascal). See, on Thomas Aquinas, chapter 4 of this Christian Heritage volume. See also appendix J of this Christian Heritage volume. See, on Augustine, Anastaplo, “Rome, Piety, and Law,” 83. See, on Pascal’s use of Augustine, Pascal, Pensées, 543. I believe it was Etienne Gilson who, in distinguishing Augustine and Thomas, compared the freedman and the freeman. This distinction bears upon how the remarkable ascendancy of Barack H. Obama may be understood. 701. Pascal speaks of parlons here, as if recognizing the rhetorical character of what he is about to say. (In French: “Parlons maintenant selon les lumières naturelles.”) See Pascal, Pensées, 116. 702. One can well wonder what Pascal himself would have done with all the materials collected in the Pensées if he had had an opportunity to complete and edit that which various editors have assembled in a variety of ways. See, e.g., note 578, above. 703. See, on Gorgias himself, a perhaps useful instrument for Socrates, Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 264. 704. See, e.g., note 705, below. Compare chapter 14 of this Christian Heritage volume. Benjamin Franklin, it can be argued, falls somewhere in between. See chapter 13 of this Christian Heritage volume. 705. Calculating may be seen in what seems to be a one-sentence summary of the wager argument: “I should have far more fear of being mistaken, and of discovering that Christianity is true, than of not being mistaken and believing it to be true.” Pascal, Pensées, 135. It is such a spirit, which would have one take advantage of any clues which suggest “what’s really up,” that can be conjured up whenever one reads such detailed accounts as that of the 1941 surprise attack by the Japanese upon the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. On the other hand, there is the risk of promoting paranoia. See, on the Pearl Harbor attack, Gordon W. Prange, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: Penguin Books, 1982); Anastaplo, “On Freedom,” 645. See, on paranoia, Anastaplo, Abraham Lincoln, 336, 368. See also note 658, above; note 1200, below. See as well my running commentaries on the often misdirected American responses to the September 11 attacks collected in volumes 29 and 35 of the Oklahoma City University Law Review, and in volume 4 of the Loyola University Chicago International Law Review. 706. Summaries of the wager argument, with commentary, may be seen in the encyclopedia entries incorporated in the addenda to this Pascal chapter: in addendum A, from an article on Pascal by Richard H. Popkin, 6 Encyclopedia of Philosophy 51, 54 (1972); in addendum B, from an article on Pascal by Leszek Kolakowski, 11 Encyclopedia of Religion 201, 203 (1987). 707. This talk was given to the Men’s Group, Saints Faith, Hope and Charity (Roman Catholic) Church, Winnetka, Illinois, February 18, 1990 (originally titled “Benjamin Franklin and the Power of Prayer”). See appendix D of this Christian Heritage volume. 708. Abraham Lincoln, second inaugural address (1865). See note 727, below. 709. See The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, Max Farrand, ed. (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1937), I, 450–52. 710. Franklin also joined the debate that followed upon his intervention. See ibid., I, 452. 711. The Convention finished its work on September 17, 1787. See ibid., II, 641. 712. See ibid., I, 451–52. 713. Ibid., I, 451. 714. See id. See, on the experience at Babel, Genesis 11:1–9.

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715. See Records of the Federal Convention, I, 451–52. See, on the revealing (even constitution-minded) references to divinity in the Declaration of Independence, Anastaplo, Abraham Lincoln, 25–26. 716. The differences of opinions here can be said to have anticipated those between men such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. See, e.g., Anastaplo, The Amendments to the Constitution, 107. 717. See Records of the Federal Convention, I, 451, where Franklin is recorded as having said, I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that “except the Lord build the House they labour in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel.

718. See, e.g., chapter 14 of this Christian Heritage volume. Indeed, Benjamin Franklin (as “believer”) and Thomas Paine make an instructive pair with respect to these matters—and, as such, can remind us of the instructive tension which (Leo Strauss has noticed) is generated in the West by the relation between reason and revelation. See note 131, above. See also appendix F of this Christian Heritage volume. See as well appendix M of this Christian Heritage volume. 719. See Records of the Federal Convention, I, 452, where Franklin is recorded as having proposed, I therefore beg leave to move—that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that service.

720. The Convention’s proceedings were not open to public observation. But it could be feared that calling in the clergy might alarm those depending on the Convention to minister to the country’s problems. See note 724, below. 721. We can find it unusual, therefore, to hear representatives of a massive, long-established religious movement, such as the Buddhists, insist that they do not rely upon invocations of God. See, e.g., Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 147, 347–48. See also appendix I of this Christian Heritage volume. 722. See, e.g., the discussion between Socrates and Anytus in Plato’s Meno. See, on the Meno, note 84, above. 723. We can notice, in Plato’s Republic, the recourse by Socrates to the Delphic oracle in order to confirm various institutions in “the best city” constructed according to reason. See, on the Delphic oracle, Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 93. 724. See Records of the Federal Convention, I, 452, where the Randolph suggestion is dealt with in this way: Mr. Randolph proposed in order to give a favorable aspect to ye. measure, that a sermon be preached at the request of the convention on 4th July, the anniversary of Independence, —& thenceforward prayers be used in [the] Convention every morning. Dr. Frankn. 2ded this motion. After several unsuccessful attempts for silently postponing the matter by adjourng. the adjournment was at length carried, without any vote on the motion.

The Randolph proposal spoke to the concern about having it seem, by recourse to the clergy, that the Convention was in trouble. See note 720, above. This does seem to be the kind of move that a Franklin, not a Randolph, might think of.

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725. See, for President George Washington’s Farewell Address on this subject, Anastaplo, “Constitutionalism, The Rule of Rules,” 136. Did Washington’s confidant, Alexander Hamilton, who spoke in opposition to Franklin on this June 28, 1787, occasion, eventually come to appreciate what Franklin had tried to do by his invocation of divinity? (Hamilton is regarded as Washington’s principal aid in the preparation of the sober Farewell Address.) 726. This sentiment is echoed in the opening paragraph of Federalist No. 1 (1787). This number of the Federalist is said to have been written by Hamilton. 727. This is evident in how Abraham Lincoln, who had been something of a freethinker in his youth, could draw more and more upon the religious sentiments of the American people during the Civil War. His second inaugural address has been described as a sermon. See, on that address, Anastaplo, Abraham Lincoln, 243. 728. This talk was given at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York, March 28, 1986 (originally titled “Reason and Revelation: The Case of Tom Paine”). 729. Pascal, Pensées , 129–31. 730. See, on Nikos Kazantzakis, Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the Moderns,” 530. 731. See Paine, Representative Selections, 235. 732. See, e.g., George Anastaplo, “How to Read the Constitution of the United States,” 17 Loyola University of Chicago Law Journal 1, 55 (1985) (on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). See also Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, Dedication. 733. Consider how Paine dated The Age of Reason: “Paris, 8th Pluviose, Second Year of the French Republic, one and indivisible. January 27, O.S. 1794.” Paine, Representative Selections, 234. Compare the reservations that Gouverneur Morris, as the American minister to France, developed toward the French Revolution, George Anastaplo, “American Constitutionalism and the Virtue of Prudence,” in Abraham Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address, and American Constitutionalism, Leo Paul S. de Alvarez, ed. (Irving, Texas: University of Dallas Press, 1976), 77, 94. 734. Most instructive here are the 1968 exchanges between Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojève with respect to Mr. Strauss’s book, On Tyranny (New York: Political Science Classics, 1948). See also appendix M of this Christian Heritage volume. 735. Paine, Representative Selections, 236. 736. Ibid., 235. 737. Ibid., 237–38. 738. Ibid., 293. 739. See ibid., 236. 740. Ibid., 239. 741. Compare, for example, Willa Cather’s Death Comes to the Archbishop, with its testimonial to the high-minded aspirations and worthy achievements that can be associated with organized religion. See also chapter 6, section II, of this Christian Heritage volume. 742. Paine finds it revealing that there is no universal language available in which the one god does express himself in print. Compare the aspirations of modern science here. See, e.g., Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 272. 743. See Paine, Representative Selections, 259. 744. See, e.g., ibid., 262. 745. See ibid., 235, 328. 746. Ibid., 235. 747. Ibid. 748. Ibid., 261. Consider, as perhaps derivative from agony having been made so much of in the Christian tradition, the preoccupation with suffering examined in chapter 15 of this Christian Heritage volume. 749. This paper was prepared for the Irregular Seminar on Political Philosophy, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, February 20, 1983 (originally titled “Schopenhauer on the Suffering

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and the Suffered of the World”). See, on that Irregular Seminar, “A Roundtable Discussion,” 26 Political Science Reviewer 3, 16 (Andrew Patner, ed., 1997). See also on this Irregular Seminar, Larry Arnhart, “Darwinian Conservatism” blog; note 829, below. 750. Body, Mind, and Death, Antony Flew, ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1964), 148. 751. See Arthur Schopenhauer, Selected Essays, in 1980 Great Ideas Today 346–53 (1980). The editor of The Great Ideas Today reports (p. 309), The essays reprinted here are taken from the book which was the first to win any fame for Schopenhauer during his lifetime. When it appeared in 1851, under the title Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays, he was already sixty-three years old and his major work, to which he owes his place in the history of philosophy, had been published thirty-three years before. The World As Will and Idea was first written in the years 1814–18, then later enlarged and published in a second edition in 1844. Neither edition attracted the slightest attention from either the learned world or the public at large.

752. “Schopenhauer as Educator,” in Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Adrian Collins, trans. (1915), 5:114. 753. Ibid., 5:110. 754. Ibid., 5:116. 755. Ibid., 5:122. 756. Id. 757. Jusepe de Ribera, for example, has had two such paintings attributed to him. 758. They are by Johan Moreelse, a Dutch painter who died in 1634. 759. See, on Democritus and Heraclitus, Encyclopedia of Philosophy 3:477; 5:446 (1967). 760. See, on Hobbes, Laurence Berns, “Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679),” in Strauss and Cropsey, eds., History of Political Philosophy, 396. 761. See The World as Will, in The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, Irving Edmov, ed. (New York: Modern Library, 1919), 277. See also the text accompanying note 573 in this Christian Heritage volume. 762. Something of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s influence can be detected as well in the essay we are examining in this chapter, especially as the pains and pleasures of the most sophisticated human being are compared with those of lower beings. See Schopenhauer, Selected Essays, 348–49. See, on Rousseau, Allan Bloom, “Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” in Strauss and Cropsey, eds., History of Political Philosophy, 559. 763. Friedrich Nietzsche, “Thoughts Out of Season,” in Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Adrian Collins, trans., 5:559. 764. See The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, 252–53. 765. See, e.g., ibid., xiv. See, on the use and abuse of third-rate books, Anastaplo, “Law, Education and Legal Education,” 774. 766. Who, among the ancients, would Schopenhauer have looked to for guidance? Perhaps Lucretius? See note 798, below. Hobbes, for example, challenged “the tradition of political philosophy that he associated with the names of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, and Cicero.” Berns, “Thomas Hobbes,” 396. See also note 826, below. 767. One can be reminded here of German thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, neither of whom seemed to be open to the commonsensical guidance offered by the best-known British thinkers. See note 792, below. 768. The overriding emphasis upon physical self-preservation is perhaps a perverse rendering of the Christian emphasis upon the importance of each soul with a view to its eternal salvation. See note 601, above. 769. See The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, 249–51. 770. Schopenhauer, Selected Essays, 359.

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771. A History of Philosophy, Frederick Copleston, S.J., ed. (Garden City, New York: Image Books, 1965), 7:47. 772. Ibid., 7:48. 773. Schopenhauer, Selected Essays, 352. 774. Id. 775. See, on Buddhism, Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 147. See also note 518, above. 776. Schopenhauer, Selected Essays, 350. 777. See the text accompanying note 530 in this Christian Heritage volume. 778. Schopenhauer, Selected Essays, 347. 779. Ibid., 351. But consider the implications of passages such as 1 Samuel 28:3–19, 2 Kings 2:1–12. 780. Jews would be more inclined to link it with holiness? 781. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thoughts Out of Season, in Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Adrian Collins, trans. (Edinburgh and London: T. N. Foulis, 1915), 5:146. 782. The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, 250–51. See also ibid., 255. This may be seen in the “Suffering” essay as well. 783. Schopenhauer, Selected Essays, 256. 784. Ibid., 260. 785. See, on nature, e.g., Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 303. 786. The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, 251–52 (The World as Will). 787. One can be reminded of Hamlet’s speculations in the graveyard and Horatio’s response that for anyone to think thus is to think too curiously. See, e.g., Anastaplo, The Constitutionalist, 30–32. 788. The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, 251–52. 789. A History of Philosophy, 7:47. 790. See, on the Poetics, Laurence Berns, “Aristotle’s Poetics,” in Joseph Cropsey, ed., Ancients and Moderns (New York: Basic Books, 1964), 70. 791. Schopenhauer, Selected Essays, 346. 792. We can again be reminded, by this reference to self-assertion, of the (determinedly?) wrongheaded political career of Martin Heidegger. See, e.g., Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 144. See also note 767, above. The difference between Socrates and Thrasymachus referred to may be found in book I of Plato’s Republic. 793. See The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, 249. 794. See A History of Philosophy, 7:38. 795. The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, 277. See also Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker, 412–13, n. 145. 796. See the text accompanying note 824 in this Christian Heritage volume. See, on Existentialism, Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 139. 797. We recall Nietzsche’s observation in his Schopenhauer essay, that Kant’s influence “on the popular mind” included “a corrosive skepticism and relativity.” Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, 5: 124. See, on Kant, Pierre Hassner, “Immanuel Kant (1724–1804),” in Strauss and Cropsey, eds., History of Political Philosophy, 581. See also Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 27. 798. Schopenhauer, Selected Essays, 346. There is an echo here of Lucretius. See, on Lucretius, Anastaplo, “Samplings,” 426. See also note 766, above. 799. See Schopenhauer, Selected Essays, 347, 349, 351 (“Suffering” essay). 800. See ibid., 342. 801. We may see here, I mention in passing and will return to, what is perhaps a not altogether unsalutary reaction against popular Hegelianism, with its apparently facile optimism. On the other hand, it should be noticed that Nietzsche could speak of Schopenhauer’s “unintelligent wrath

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against Hegel.” Frederich Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil, Walter Kaufmann, trans. (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), Aphorism 204. 802. See, on the yearning for personal immortality, Anastaplo, The Bible, 189. See also note 600, above. 803. Schopenhauer, Selected Essays, 347. One can be reminded here of the sentiment of Silenus. See note 806, below. 804. Consider how Dante, in the Inferno, would have dealt with this kind of condemnation of the divine plan for the world. See chapter 5 of this Christian Heritage volume. 805. See A History of Philosophy, 7: 34. See also ibid., 7: 34–35, 38–39. 806. Is the ultimate human desire, as Schopenhauer sees it, either not to live at all or to live entirely in a not-painful present without any regard for what is to come? See notes 600 and 601, above. Consider what he says, in his “Suffering” essay, about “the delight we take in our domestic pets,” who are, he also says, “the present moment personified.” Schopenhauer, Selected Essays, 350. See also note 816, below. 807. There is an echo here of Thomas Hobbes. See also The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, xiv (on the primacy of will over intellect). 808. See, e.g., Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 345 (on a papal encyclical). 809. See A History of Philosophy, 7: 33, 36–37. 810. See, on the status of individualism, the text accompanying note 563 in this Christian Heritage volume. See also appendix B of this Christian Heritage volume. 811. See A History of Philosophy, 7: 52–53. Father Copleston considers Schopenhauer one of the least loveable philosophers. See ibid., 7: 28. 812. See Schopenhauer, Selected Essays, 351–52. See also The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, xii–xiii. 813. See Leo Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy (New York: Free Press, 1959), 171. Consider, also, what is said in the “Suffering” essay distinguishing philosophers from priests. Does Schopenhauer, whatever he may otherwise preach, express thereby a preference for understanding and hence being over comfort and blissful oblivion? See, on the relation of virtue to knowledge, appendices C, G, H, and L of this Christian Heritage volume. See as well appendices D and J of this Christian Heritage volume. 814. See A History of Philosophy, 7: 41–42. 815. The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, 269. 816. See The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, 67, 144, 170, 346 (“The Basis of Morality”). Schopenhauer can even make much of the sensibilities, vulnerability, and rights of animals. See ibid., 175, 178. See also note 806, above. 817. See ibid., 187 (“The Basis of Morality”). 818. What influence on Schopenhauer did Eastern thought have, especially Buddhism with its sensitivity to compassion? Or was he predisposed toward sentiments which some of Eastern thought, then becoming available in Europe, merely reinforced. See the text accompanying note 775 in this Christian Heritage volume. 819. Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, 5: 149 (“Thoughts Out of Season”). 820. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 68 (Aphorism 56). 821. Ibid., 23 (Aphorism 16). 822. See Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, 5: 126 (“Thoughts Out of Season”). 823. The Portable Nietzsche, Walter Kaufmann, ed. (New York: Viking Press, 1954), 30 (identified as “Fragment of a Critique of Schopenhauer”). See also A History of Political Philosophy, 849. 824. A History of Philosophy, 37. 825. Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, 5: 180 (“Thoughts Out of Season”).

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826. Certainly, Schopenhauer’s discussions of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle should be studied before passing final judgment on him. See note 766, above. But, it seems, Schopenhauer’s congenital pessimism (if it can be called that) evidently kept him from recognizing the highest levels upon which the intellect can work. Is this due in part to his personal temperament, and in part to the Christian influence of his day? Consider, for example, this observation: But there is always a limit to human capacity; and no one can be a great genius without having some decidedly weak side, it may even be some intellectual narrowness. In other words, there will be some faculty in which he is now and then inferior to men of moderate endowments. It will be a faculty which, if strong, might have been an obstacle to the exercise of the qualities in which he excels. What this weak point is, it will always be hard to define with any accuracy even in a given case. It may be better expressed indirectly; thus Plato’s weak point is exactly that in which Aristotle is strong, and vice versa; and so, too, Kant is deficient where Goethe is great.

Schopenhauer, Selected Essays, 344 (“On Genius”) (emphasis added). Is there a superior position, without any significant limit or flaw, from which the judgment just quoted can be passed? (Was Martin Heidegger, the Macbeth of philosophy, anticipated here? See appendix M of this Christian Heritage volume.) However all this may be, there is much to be said for another observation by Schopenhauer: Herodotus relates that Xerxes wept at the sight of his army, which stretched further than the eye could reach, in the thought that of all these, after a hundred years, not one would be alive. And in looking over a huge catalogue of new books, one might weep at thinking that, when ten years have passed, not one of them will be heard of.

Ibid., 310 (“On Books and Reading”). Still, this challenging comment about the ephemeral quality of the printed word has itself stayed alive for more than a hundred years. See note 91, above. 827. This talk was given in the weekend conference of the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults, University of Chicago, Starved Rock State Park, Illinois, November 5, 1978 (originally titled “On Darwin’s Evolution”). See also Anastaplo, “Abraham Lincoln, Lawyers, and the Civil War,” part VI. 828. Genesis 1:20–26. See, on Genesis, Strauss, Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, 359. See also the text accompanying notes 836 and 890 in this Christian Heritage volume. 829. See, for current reflections on this subject, Larry Arnhart, Darwinian Natural Right: The Biological Ethics of Human Nature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 277. See also the Arnhart “Darwinian Conservatism” blog on the Internet. See as well note 749, above. 830. See, e.g., Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 97 (on pollution, ancient and modern). 831. See, on the nature of nature, Jacob Klein, Lectures and Essays, 219. 832. Norman Macbeth, Darwin Retried: An Appeal to Reason (Boston: Gambit, 1974), 103. 833. See, e.g., Aristotle, Poetics, chapter 9. 834. See Robert Sternfeld and Harold Zyskind, Plato’s Meno: A Philosophy of Man as Acquisitive (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), 25. See also note 84, above. 835. See, on the ideas, Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 305. See also note 848, below; the text accompanying note 856 in this Christian Heritage volume. 836. 1 Corinthians 15:39. See also the text accompanying note 828 in this Christian Heritage volume. 837. Anastaplo, The Constitutionalist, 804, n. 38. 838. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man (New York: Modern Library Giant, n.d.), 804.

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839. We can be reminded, by the following observation in The Descent of Man, how much chance can determine not only a particular line of evolutionary development but even more perhaps our ability to figure out what might have happened: If it be asked why apes have not their intellects developed to the same degree as that of man, general causes only can be assigned to answer, and it is unreasonable to expect anything more definite, considering our ignorance with respect to the successive stages of development through which each creature has passed.

Ibid., 465. What is, perhaps inadvertently, implied by the use here of “creature”? 840. Ibid., 668. 841. Id. 842. See id. One of the attractions of Darwin was his willingness, even eagerness, to recognize the talents and the contributions of others. 843. See Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography, and Other Papers (New York: Philosophical Liberty, 1949), 109–10. 844. 2 Samuel 14:14. 845. See, e.g., Darwin, The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, 68, 85–86. See also note 21, above. 846. See, on the proper relation of the low to the high, Leo Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion (New York: Schocken Books, 1965), 2. See also the text accompanying note 851 in this Christian Heritage volume. 847. See, on the good, the true, and the beautiful, Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker, 275. See also note 835, above; the text accompanying note 865 in this Christian Heritage volume. Compare notes 873 and 887, below. 848. See, e.g., Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 327. 849. See, on the Scopes trial of 1925, Encyclopedia of Religion, 5: 190, 193 (1986). 850. Michigan State University Department of Natural Science, The Search for Explanation, 3: 261 (Walter C. Blinn). 851. Ibid., 3: 259–60. See note 846, above. 852. Ibid., 3: 350–51. 853. Moses Maimonides, from the outset of his Guide of the Perplexed, is very much concerned about how God should be regarded physically (that is, not at all). Does the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation pose a sometimes productive challenge? See chapter 3 of this Christian Heritage volume. See also note 601, above. See as well appendix I of this Christian Heritage volume. 854. See note 843, above. 855. See Michigan State University Department of Natural Science, The Search for Explanation, 3: 271. 856. See note 835, above. 857. See the opening passages of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics. 858. Would we not say this as easily about the medley of colors in the Grand Canyon or about the torrents of water at Niagara Falls? The teacher referred to was Malcolm Sharp of the University of Chicago Law School. See, on Mr. Sharp, Anastaplo, “Lessons for the Student of Law,” 133; Anastaplo, Reflections on Life, Death, and the Constitution, Dedication. See also the text accompanying note 884 in this Christian Heritage volume. See as well note 1181, below. 859. At the heart of this inquiry may be the vital question: What distinguishes the living from the nonliving? See the text accompanying note 875 of this Christian Heritage volume. See also Anastaplo, The Bible, 327 (“Yearnings for the Divine and the Natural Animation of Matter”). See as well note 869, below.

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860. See, on Gottfried Leibnitz, Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1967), volume 4, 422. See also the text accompanying notes 886 and 890 in this Christian Heritage volume. See as well notes 600 and 601, above. 861. See Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 144. 862. Max Planck argued that the “relative” presupposes the absolute. Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, 46. See also ibid., 58 (on the “real”). 863. See Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 272. 864. It is revealing that we can know Aristotle’s treatise on the soul as De Anima. 865. See note 847, above. 866. See the text accompanying note 860 in this Christian Heritage volume. See also Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964), 318. 867. See, on Aristotle, Strauss, The City and Man, 13. See also Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 318. 868. See Darwin, The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, 133, 184. 869. Consider the attempts of Harold C. Urey and his associates, shortly after the Second World War, to bridge in the laboratory the gap between the inanimate and the animate. This effort was common knowledge on the University of Chicago campus while I was a student there in the 1940s and 1950s. See also note 859, above. 870. See, on the prophetic, Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 93. See also note 604, above; note 909, below. 871. Darwin, The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, 373–74. 872. See ibid., 445, 495. 873. See, on Shakespeare, Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and Shakespeare.” See also note 7, above. Consider the implications of this observation about the beautiful: Hence a perfect beauty, which implies many characters modified in a particular manner, will be in every race a prodigy. As the great anatomist Bichat long ago said, if every one were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty. If all our women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de’ Medici, we should for a time be charmed; but we should soon wish for variety; and as soon as we have obtained variety, we should wish to see certain characters a little exaggerated beyond the then existing common standard.

Darwin, The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, 890. Compare note 847, above; note 878, below. 874. See, on Hobbes and Descartes, Strauss and Cropsey, eds., History of Political Philosophy, 396, 421. See also note 886, below. 875. I notice in passing that this is another form of the mind/body problem. See note 859, above. 876. See, on the Declaration of Independence with its enthronement of “the Pursuit of Happiness,” Anastaplo, Abraham Lincoln, 11, 31. See also the text accompanying notes 896 and 913 in this Christian Heritage volume. 877. See Darwin, The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, 477. 878. See ibid., 731, 734. See, on beauty as a source of danger, ibid., 734, 917. See also note 873, above. 879. Ibid., 570. 880. See ibid., 837. 881. See Ernst Mayr, “Evolution,” Scientific American, September 1978, 47, 53. Consider also Mark Twain’s observation that a cat that sits on a hot stove will never sit on a hot stove again—or on a cold one either.

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882. “It is hard to fight desire; what it wants it buys with the soul.” Heraclitus, Fragments, 85. See Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 87. 883. See Norman Macbeth, Darwin Retried, 118. 884. See Darwin, The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, 146. See also the text accompanying note 858 in this Christian Heritage volume. 885. Or, to put this in theological terms, what is at the foundation of Christianity? See, e.g., appendix I of this Christian Heritage volume. 886. Is a bodiless mind imagined by Descartes? See note 874, above. 887. That is, is survival perhaps the byproduct of, not the exploiter of, beauty, order, and goodness? 888. See note 847, above. 889. See Aristotle, Politics 1278b25–29. See also the text accompanying note 620 in this Christian Heritage volume. 890. See Genesis 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31. See also note 828, above. 891. See, on the divine command to choose life, chapter 26 of this volume. See also, the text accompanying note 874 in this Christian Heritage volume. See as well appendix B of this Christian Heritage volume. 892. This talk was given in the First Friday Lecture Series, Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults, University of Chicago, at the Cultural Center, Chicago, Illinois, February 2, 2001 (originally titled “Thoughts on Friedrich Nietzsche”). The talk was dedicated to the memory of Marshall Patner. See George Anastaplo, “Marshall Patner (1931–2000),” Hyde Park Herald, February 21, 2001, 4. Marshall Patner, I suggested in my dedicatory remarks, stands as a democratic challenge to Friedrich Nietzsche’s condemnation of modernity. Our fellow Chicagoan’s republicanism challenges Nietzsche’s wholesale repudiation of the humanitarian movement in the Western world. Even so, Marshall Patner’s adventurous zeal for life, and his refusal to count costs in a decent cause, might well have endeared him to Nietzsche. See also note 930, below. 893. Jezaniah Sumner, “Ode to Science” (1798). See The Sacred Harp (Bremen, Georgia: Sacred Harp Publishing Company, 1991), 242. “Fair Columbia” is the United States. 894. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, prelude, section 5. Copies of the “Last Man” passage were distributed to the audience on the occasion of this talk. 895. See, on Tocqueville and self-interest in the United States, Anastaplo, Abraham Lincoln, 81. 896. See note 876, above. 897. See, for the reading list of the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults at the University of Chicago, Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker, 299–300. Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals had recently been replaced in that reading list by his Beyond Good and Evil. 898. Would not Nietzsche’s appraisal of the Jews be affected by the emergence of a toughminded Israel? See chapter 26 of this volume. See also Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 155. 899. Leo Strauss had many perceptive things to say about the complicated relation of Nietzsche to the Jews. See, e.g., Strauss, “Why We Remain Jews,” 323. See also appendix M of this Christian Heritage volume. 900. See Saint Augustine, Confessions, VII, viii (13). See, on Augustine, Anastaplo, “Rome, Piety, and Law,” 83; Anastaplo, “Teaching, Nature, and the Moral Virtues,” 1997, The Great Ideas Today 2 (1997). 901. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, Third Essay, sec. 25. 902. See, on how to read a Platonic dialogue, Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the AustenDostoyevski Axis,” 758. 903. The poets are criticized in books II–III and X of Plato’s Republic. See note 905, below. 904. See, on Alexander the Great, Anastaplo, “Law, Education, and Legal Education,” 734. See also Sara Prince Anastaplo’s account of Alexander in the Encyclopedia Britannica. 905. See Anastaplo, The Constitutionalist, 278. See also Anastaplo, “On the Best City—Plato’s Republic,” The Greek Star, Chicago, Illinois, August 16, 2001, 8.

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906. See, on Odysseus as a reporter, Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 27. 907. See Plato, Republic, book X. 908. The Myth of Er should be read in the somewhat dim light provided by both the Gyges story (in book II of Plato’s Republic) and by the cave story (in book VII of the Republic). See, on the Gyges story (which begins in a cave), Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 224. See, on the cave story, note 905, above. 909. An underlying question here may be as to what the nature and status of prophecy are (as well as what they should be?) for Nietzsche. See, on prophecy, notes 604 and 870, above. 910. See Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, third essay, section 7. Nietzsche probably wanted his readers to remember that he had never married either. 911. No notice is taken of one tradition which has Socrates marrying twice, at least once out of a sense of civic duty. On the other hand, what did Nietzsche think of the celibacy of the founder of Christianity? See note 916, below. 912. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics may have been named, in part, for the author’s son—and, also appropriately enough, in part, for his father. 913. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book I. See also note 876, above. 914. It is also important for Aristotle to show that the ethical usually depends upon a proper political order. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book X. See, on the Ethics, Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 318. 915. See Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 125. 916. Is this Savior a distortion both of the Christian Messiah and of Socrates’ philosopherking? 917. Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, first essay, sec. 16. 918. See Anastaplo, The Amendments to the Constitution, 107, 330. 919. Consider, also, the efforts made by Napoleon to “emancipate” the Jews of France. See, e.g., Strauss, “Why We Remain Jews,” 341. See also appendix M of this Christian Heritage volume. 920. Nietzsche did praise Ralph Waldo Emerson on occasion, which should encourage American intellectuals to take Emerson more seriously than they are inclined to do these days. 921. Here, too, Aristotle should have helped him. 922. See, on the sadly mistaken substitution of the modern “freedom of expression” for the traditional “freedom of speech,” note 995, below. 923. See, on the Nazis at Nuremberg, Anastaplo, On Trial, 297. See also appendices A, L, and M of this Christian Heritage volume. 924. See, on the status of the will for Nietzsche, Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 125. 925. See, for a pioneering program both encouraging and regulating the development of a science-based technology, Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis. 926. See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, Third Essay, sec. 25. 927. Does Darwin, more than Copernicus, unsettle people because most people still believe “in their bones” that the sun goes around the earth, and so on? See, on Darwin and his influence, chapter 16 of this Christian Heritage volume. 928. See, on Joe Sachs’s useful translation of Aristotle’s Physics, “Book Review,” 26 Interpretation 275 (1999). 929. Harry V. Jaffa, for example, has dramatized the Aristotelian features of the American regime, especially in the light of Abraham Lincoln’s career. See, e.g., Anastaplo, Abraham Lincoln, 344, n. 492. 930. The observations made in this note are adapted from the Epilogue of my Nietzsche talk of February 2, 2001: I began these remarks by establishing a Chicago Connection with Friedrich Nietzsche. I saluted, that is, a local attorney whose generous republicanism challenged Nietzsche’s wholesale repudiation of the humanitarian movement in the Western world. (See note 892, above.)

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Another Chicago Connection was noticed in closing out these remarks. The editor of our translation of the Genealogy provides a warning that could well apply to what I have ventured to say on this occasion: “It is fashionable to read hastily, as if, for example, one knew all about Nietzsche’s contrast of master and slave morality before one had even begun to read him. But if one reads snippets here and there, projecting ill-founded preconceptions into the gaps, one is apt to misconstrue Nietzsche’s moral philosophy completely—as [here we have the Chicago Connection: as] Loeb and Leopold did when, as youngsters, they supposed that a brutal and senseless murder would prove them masters.” (Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, Walter Kaufmann, ed., New York: Vintage Books, 3.) It is probably futile to try to curb what the Nietzsches of the world and their disciples say. Such talented provocateurs, it should be argued, although less competent than they believe themselves to be, can still be quite instructive, teaching us both by their insights and by their defects. We can again be reminded of the old saying that wisdom cannot be separated from moderation, however venturesome and hence attractive a thinker may be. (See Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 134.)

931. This talk was given at a meeting of the Hellenic Professional Society of Illinois, at the Sheraton-Chicago Hotel, Chicago, Illinois, June 13, 1976. See The Greek Star, Chicago, Illinois, July 25, 2002, 7; August 1, 2002, 8. 932. Daniel Webster, The Works (fifteenth ed., 1869), III, 80. This is taken from a Webster speech, “The Revolution in Greece,” delivered in the United States House of Representatives, January 19, 1824. See also note 946, below. 933. See D. K. Byzantios, Babylonia (1836). See also note 950, below. 934. I opened my account of modern Greece, in the fifteenth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, with these observations: There is about Greece a vitality, all too often undisciplined, that makes many other European countries seem tame, even dull, by comparison. This is evident immediately upon sailing into a Greek port or upon crossing a Greek border: sounds, smells, movements, colours—the very tempo of things—conspire to heighten sensibilities and intensify expectations. But alongside all this is the serene coolness, even aloofness, of what remains in Greece from classical antiquity, the visible monuments of which constantly stand as a challenge to (if not even a rebuke of) contemporary endeavours. The vitality of Greece and the Greeks can be said to stem from the heady mixture over the centuries of many peoples and ways of life. The land has long been “at the crossroads”—at that place in the Balkans where “three roads meet,” where Europe, Africa, and the East converge, and at that point in time where the ancient, the medieval, and the modern coexist and conflict. Greeks are familiar with the Middle East: their language and food, to say nothing of their religion and history, are marked by exotic and even oppressive elements from Turkey, the Holy Land, Egypt, and beyond. However, they are familiar as well with the more sober West, with the Europe to which the young venture forth for training and for work, with the Americas and Australia to which so many have gone for a new home. Greeks, like the Jews, Scots, and Chinese, whom they resemble in so many ways, have long been able to accommodate themselves as merchants in many climes and to many ways of life. But, also like the Jews and perhaps the Chinese, they have preserved in their heart of hearts, a vital memory of the homeland to which they yearn to return. This homeland is as much a state of mind as it is a place to be found on maps. The yearning to “return,” then, is almost as strong among those who have never left Greek soil as it is among those who find themselves abroad. Perhaps it is a yearning to attain that which has never been but which has always been aspired to. It is a yearning evident in the melancholy of Greek music, in the nostalgia that can be felt even in the lively tunes and ballads sung on festive occasions. It is a yearning that can be heard as well in interminable conversations, especially those with which Greeks refresh and recreate themselves through the cool nights that follow blistering summer days. And it is a yearning that can be seen in the faces and deeds of the Greeks, a yearning that makes it impossible for them “to leave well enough alone.” A perpetual restlessness, much like that which was said to characterize the political life of ancient Athens, is evident, a restlessness that can continue subterraneanly despite surface conformity to the tyranny of the moment. Indeed, there have been many tyrannies in Greece, tyrannies that are as much a part of the oft-discussed “Greek experience” as (if not even the most frequent result of) their volatile democracies. Perhaps it might even be said that the memories of intermittent tyrannies remind Greeks of the unpredictability of human things, of the disaster that can follow upon prosperity, of the trials that even the most successful encounter

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from time to time. Life can be expected to be as hard, as unyielding, and as toughening as the soil and the sea from which the Greeks have for centuries wrested their livelihood. But it can also be as enriching and as exciting as the landscape and the enlightened culture for which Greece has always been celebrated.

“Greece,” Encyclopedia Britannica (fifteenth ed., 1994), vol. 20, 178. Perhaps the “crossroads” setting of the ancient Greeks contributed to the remarkable emergence among them of the idea of nature, something that is critically independent of inherited ways. Should one be reminded here of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos? See also note 718, above; note 945, below. See as well appendix F of this Christian Heritage volume. 935. See Plato, Menexenus. See also the text corresponding to note 1165 in this Christian Heritage volume. 936. See 4 The Annals of America 354 (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1976). 937. The sentiments evident here understandably find expression in intermittent efforts among us to make desecration of the flag a crime. Compare George Anastaplo, “Flag Desecration Amendment Could Make Matters Far Worse,” Chicago Sun-Times, September 11, 1995, 24; Congressional Record, vol. 141, S16676 (November 13, 1995). See also note 1013, below; the text corresponding to note 1091 in this Christian Heritage volume. 938. See, for the original version of this song, 12 The Annals of America 1 (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1976). See also note 950, below. 939. See, e.g., Anastaplo, “‘Racism,’ Political Correctness, and Constitutional Law,” 108. 940. See Modern Greek Poetry, Kimon Friar, ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973), 15–18. 941. That was about 1970. See, on the Colonels’ regime, Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 3; Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 501. See also note 977, below. 942. See, on Cavafy, chapter 1 of this Christian Heritage volume. See, on Theodorakis, Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 335, 338, 352. 943. This prose translation is by Theodora Vasils of Chicago, Illinois. See, for her translation of Cavafy’s “Thermopylae,” John A. Murley et al., eds., Law and Philosophy, I, xvii. I notice, in passing, that Miss Vasils has written a novel based on the life of Nikos Kazantzakis that is worthy of publication. 944. Compare the text corresponding to note 982 of this Christian Heritage volume. 945. Are there echoes here of the story about Cadmus’s sowing of the dragon’s teeth which led to the ancestors of the Thebans? Internecine strife was always part of the “bargain” among Thebans? See, e.g., Smith’s Classical Dictionary (“Cadmus”). See also note 934, above. 946. Daniel Webster observed at the outset of his 1824 House of Representatives speech, “The Revolution in Greece,” We must, indeed, fly beyond the civilized world; we must pass the dominion of law and the boundaries of knowledge; we must, more specially, withdraw ourselves from this place and the scenes and objects which here surround us—if we would separate ourselves entirely from the influence of all these memories of herself which ancient Greece has transmitted for the admiration and benefit of mankind. This free form of government, this popular assembly, the common council held for the common good—where have we contemplated its earliest models? The practice of free debate and public discussion, the contest of mind with mind, and that popular eloquence, which, if it were now here, on a subject like this, would move the stones of the Capitol—whose was the language in which all these were first exhibited?

Webster, The Works, III, 61. 947. “You dwelled therein”—that is, within “the sacred bones of the Hellenes.” 948. See Homer, Iliad, book I. See also Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 13. 949. Compare Julia Ward Howe, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” (1862). See Anastaplo, “Abraham Lincoln and the American Regime,” 172. See also note 5, above.

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950. See the text corresponding to note 938 in this Christian Heritage volume. These words, however, are not in the original version of “America the Beautiful,” which has its opening stanza conclude, “America! America! / God shed His grace on thee / Till souls wax fair as earth and air / And music-hearted sea!” See note 938, above. Was it only in the early twentieth century that Americans came to regard themselves as truly consolidated from “sea to shining sea”? 951. See, on Dante, chapter 5 of this Christian Heritage volume. 952. Dante, Purgatorio, I, 70–72. 953. Here are the two versions of the text referred to: Dante: Or ti piaccia gradir la sua venuta: Libertà va cercando, ca é si cara, Come sa chi per lei vita rifuta Solomos: Libertà vo cantando, ch’ ‘e si cara Come sa chi per lei vita rifiuta.

954. See, on prudence, Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 618. 955. See, on Christianity and parresia, Anastaplo, The Constitutionalist, 781–82, n. 8. 956. One can be reminded here that one of the richest periods of Jewish thought was when Jews lived under Muslim rule in Spain and elsewhere. See Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 159. See also chapter 26 of this Christian Heritage volume. 957. See, for the distinctive doctrines of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Anastaplo, The Bible, 175. Compare appendix E of this Christian Heritage volume. 958. Our familiar distinctions, as Americans, between church and state simply do not make much sense here. See chapters 19–21 of this Christian Heritage volume. See also the text corresponding to notes 1100 and 1109 of this Christian Heritage volume. 959. Even so, there have been bitter differences, for centuries, between Greeks and their Eastern Orthodox neighbors immediately to the north. See note 474, above. 960. It is sometimes said that this shadow theatre originated in Indonesia. See, for the obituary of Evgemos Spatharis, a Greek master of the Shadow Theater, Chicago Tribune, May 13, 2009, section 1, 26. 961. Once, while I was visiting the famous Persian War battlefield at Platea, I was told by a young Greek man riding a donkey that a great battle had been fought there. “Who won?” I asked him in Greek. “The Greeks!” he replied. “And whom did they defeat?” “The Turks!” 962. And, some Greeks might say today, it was God who willed that the Greeks would not succumb to Marxism after the Second World War. 963. See, on Islam, Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 175. 964. The Shi’ites add here the phrase, “Come ye to the best deed.” See Kenneth Cragg, The Call of the Minaret (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Galaxy Books, 1964), 30–31. See also ibid., 33, 96, 105, 170. 965. Ibid., 30–31. 966. Chance, too, could play a significant role. See, e.g., Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 15. 967. See Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, I, 70. 968. See, on Herodotus, Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 211. 969. It has been said that the typical Muslim is more apt to observe the prolonged fasting of Ramadan than the daily prayers. See Cragg, The Call of the Minaret, 114. 970. See, e.g., Anastaplo, The Bible, 396. 971. Does not “Islam” itself mean “submission”? See Cragg, The Call of the Minaret, 111. 972. See, on the Platonic orientation toward the ideas, Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 303. See, again, on the relation of virtue to knowledge, appendices C, G, H, and L of this Christian Heritage volume.

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973. See Cragg, The Call of the Minaret, 38. 974. The Shi’ites evidently make more of suffering than do the Sunnis. See ibid., 132. Are the Shi’ites, therefore, more “Christian” in their orientation? See chapter 15 of this Christian Heritage volume. Are not the Turks of a Sunni heritage? Thus, for the Turks to be anti-Greek is really, for them, to be anti-Shi’ite? Or is it vice versa, if not both? 975. See, on Cyprus and the predictable adventurism of the remarkably incompetent Greek Colonels, Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 511. See also Anastaplo, “What the United States Can Learn from China and Greece” (Epilogue), The Greek Star, Chicago, Illinois, September 24, 2009, 7. See, as well, notes 1039 and 1071 below. 976. Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 229. 977. See, for my discussions of Greek affairs during the rule of the Colonels (1967–1974), Anastaplo, “An Autobiographical Bibliography (1947–2001),” 20 Northern Illinois University Law Review 581, 588–95, 627–36. See also Murley, ed., Leo Strauss and His Legacy, 879. See, as well, note 941, above. I hope to collect someday in book form my discussions of the Colonels’ dismal adventures. Harry Mark Petrakis is interested in providing a foreword to such a collection. 978. The most dramatic such atrocity of late was the Taliban destruction of mammoth Buddhist statuary in Afghanistan. 979. A hopeful sign of late was the exchange of rescue teams during earthquakes in Turkey and Greece. 980. Compare Murley et al., Law and Philosophy, eds., I, 539. 981. See Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 228–29. 982. See the text corresponding to note 1047 in this Christian Heritage volume. Compare the text corresponding to note 944 in this Christian Heritage volume. 983. This talk was given at the Church-State Issues Series, Baptist Graduate Students Center, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, January 27, 1963 (originally titled “A Memo for Protestants: A Supplement to ‘Church and State: The Beginnings of an Argument’”). See note 987, below. See also the dedication for this Christian Heritage volume. 984. Matthew 5:13. 985. The Illinois town was Carterville in Williamson County. I was born in St. Louis, Missouri. See, on Carterville, Illinois, Anastaplo, The American Moralist, v, xiii. 986. See, e.g., Anastaplo, The Bible, 175 (on the Nicene Creed). See also chapter 18 of this Christian Heritage volume. 987. A 1961 talk of mine, “Church and State: The Beginnings of an Argument,” is incorporated in Anastaplo, “Church and State,” 86–100. See note 983, above. 988. Consider also how much the highly skeptical Thomas Paine knew about the Bible. See, e.g., chapter 14 of this Christian Heritage volume. 989. Consider, for example, the Jesuits described in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. See, e.g., Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 226. I have discussed the career of my favorite Jesuit, R. Eric O’Connor, in a book review. See Anastaplo, “Liberation Pedagogy,” 39 Cross Currents 463 (1989–1990) (Father O’Connor would perhaps have been more charitable than I was inclined to be upon encountering the unannounced editorial liberties taken with my text on that occasion.) See, on my relations with Jesuits and others, appendix J of this Christian Heritage volume. See also chapter 4 of this volume. 990. It is hard to overestimate the influence of the English Bible on the language of Americans. See, on the shaping of the American soul, Jonathan Edwards’s 1741 sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” See note 601, above. See also appendix K of this Christian Heritage volume. 991. The prototype here is said to be the Mayflower Compact. See Anastaplo, “Constitutionalism, The Rule of Rules,” 33. 992. This is not to suggest that something “personal” might never be said at a Roman Catholic service. I, for example, was asked to say something about a great lady, Angela Frangella Ebzery, during her funeral service in Holy Name Cathedral, Chicago, Illinois, July 6, 1988.

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993. The reader is reminded that this talk was given in 1963, before the change was made with respect to not eating meat on Friday (except during Lent). 994. See chapter 20 of this Christian Heritage volume. 995. See, on the status of obscenity under the First Amendment, Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 117. Also questionable (I have indicated) is the status of “freedom of expression.” See Anastaplo, The Amendments to the Constitution, 459; note 922, above. See, as well, Anastaplo, Reflections on Freedom of Speech and the First Amendment (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), 314. 996. This paper was prepared for a faculty seminar at the School of Law, Loyola University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, April 1, 1981. Subsequent developments in the constitutional law of church-state relations are noticed in Anastaplo, Reflections on Life, Death and the Constitution (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2009). See also note 1002, 1003, below. See, for a salutary challenge to conventional opinions about the doings of the United States Supreme Court, Leno A. Graglia, “Courting Disaster: The Supreme Court and the Demise of Popular Government,” The Institute of United States Studies, University of London (1997). See also note 1008, below. 997. Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776). 998. See, for the stages in the First Congress of the text of the First Amendment, Anastaplo, The Constitutionalist, 289; Anastaplo, The Amendments to the Constitution, 315. 999. Anastaplo, The Constitutionalist, 15–16. 1000. See Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 117; Anastaplo, The Amendments to the Constitution, 47. See also note 995 above. 1001. See, on religion and the law, Anastaplo, The Constitutionalist, 820. See also Anastaplo, The Amendments to the Constitution, 47, 107; Anastaplo, “Church and State,” 86, 109, 145. 1002. Now, three decades after this talk was given, there is considerable discussion about whether federal funds should be used to support “faith-based initiatives.” 1003. It seems to be generally conceded that there is little or no fear that religion of any kind can be established anywhere else by law among us. Some people do seem to be concerned lest laws regulating conduct (for example, with respect to abortions) be, in effect, the dictates of particular religious organizations. See, e.g., chapter 22 of this Christian Heritage volume. 1004. That was at a time when the Title I program was before Congress for renewal. 1005. See George Anastaplo, “Title I Funds, Church-Sponsored Schools and the First Amendment: From Child-Benefit to Community Benefit?” (1978) (prepared as part of a study directed by Thomas W. Vitullo-Martin, The Participation of Private School Students in ESEA Title I Programs [1977], under a research contract sponsored by the Compensatory Education Division, National Institute of Education, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare). See also Anastaplo, “The Religion Clauses of the First Amendment,” 11 Memphis State University Law Review 151 (1981). 1006. When, however, a religious organization undertakes the usually thankless task of ministering to severely damaged people, little is heard about religious-establishment concerns. 1007. I draw for this purpose on my H.E.W. memorandum (note 1005, above). 1008. Here, as elsewhere, on “original intent” issues, the work of William W. Crosskey remains quite instructive. See, e.g., George Anastaplo, “Mr. Crosskey, the American Constitution, and the Natures of Things,” 15 Loyola University Chicago Law Journal 181 (1984). See also Anastaplo, Reflections on Constitutional Law (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006), Dedication. See, as well, the Crosskey entry in the Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law (2009). See further notes 253 and 996, above. 1009. I put aside the question—the quite different question—of whether the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to make the First Amendment guarantees applicable against the states. That, in any event, is not directly a problem when one considers the massive Title I expenditures by the national government. See, on the Fourteenth Amendment, Anastaplo, The Amendments to the Constitution, 168.

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1010. See ibid., 315. 1011. See, e.g., Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1, 18 (1947) (“The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable.”). 1012. See notes 1002 and 1006, above. I return to the Title I programs in chapter 21 of this Christian Heritage volume. 1013. On the other hand, we can see the reverse in the flag desecration controversy: that is, all kinds of mistreatment of the flag are ignored (if not even commercialized and otherwise approved of), only so long as they are not accompanied by offensive opinions. See note 937, above. See also the text corresponding to note 1091 in this Christian Heritage volume. 1014. See Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962); Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947); Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586 (1940); West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943). See also Anastaplo, Reflections on Life, Death, and the Constitution, 65–73. 1015. See note 1006, above. 1016. 268 U.S. 510 (1925). See also the texts corresponding to notes 1030 and 1068 in this Christian Heritage volume. 1017. See George Anastaplo, “The Public Interest in Privacy: On Becoming and Being Human,” 26 DePaul Law Review 767 (1977). See also chapter 22 of this Christian Heritage volume. 1018. Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1878). See Anastaplo, Reflections on Life, Death, and the Constitution, 294. 1019. 590 F.2d 514 (3d Cir. 1979), affirmed, Byrne v. Public Funds for Public Schools, 442 U.S. 907 (1979). 1020. See ibid. 1021. 444 U.S. 646 (1980). “Committee v. Regan is another illustration of the blurred nature of the line the [U.S. Supreme Court] has attempted to draw between permissible and impermissible state support to church-related schools.” Richard E. Morgan, Encyclopedia of the American Constitution (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1986), 332. 1022. This talk was given at Rosary College (now Dominican University), River Forest, Illinois, October 6, 1987. 1023. The Analects of Confucius, Arthur Waley, trans. (Vintage Books, 1938), 121. See, on Confucius, Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 99. 1024. See Anastaplo, “Church and State,” 62. See also chapter 20 of this Christian Heritage volume. 1025. See, e.g., the text corresponding to note 1009 of this Christian Heritage volume. 1026. See, e.g., the text corresponding to note 1001 of this Christian Heritage volume. 1027. See, e.g., West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943). See also note 1014, above. 1028. Anastaplo, The Constitution of 1787, 263. 1029. See, e.g., Anastaplo, “Church and State,” 127 (“Conscientious Objectors and Military Conscription”). See also Anastaplo, Reflections on Life, Death and the Constitution, 74–81. 1030. See the texts corresponding to notes 1016 and 1068 of this Christian Heritage volume. 1031. See chapter 20 of this Christian Heritage volume. 1032. See Aguilar v. Felton, 473 U.S. 402 (1985). 1033. See the text corresponding to notes 1012–13 of this Christian Heritage volume. 1034. See, on prudence, Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 618. 1035. See, e.g., Anastaplo, “Church and State,” 109, 175. See also Anastaplo, Campus HateSpeech Codes, Natural Right, and Twentieth Century Atrocities, 147. 1036. See, e.g., Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1878). See note 1018, above. Compare note 1006, above. 1037. See, e.g., Anastaplo, “Church and State,” 183.

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1038. See chapter 14 of this Christian Heritage volume. Compare the text corresponding to note 997 of this Christian Heritage volume. 1039. This Marxist opinion has survived, at least among some intellectuals, the collapse of the Soviet Union, which also depended upon an opiate-like “religion.” See, on the long-term fragility of such regimes, especially when they are repressive (and hence self-blinding), Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 161; Anastaplo, “What the United States Can Learn from China and Greece” (note 975, above). 1040. See, on the massive witch hunts of Europe, Anastaplo, “Church and State,” 65. 1041. See, on Thomas Aquinas, chapter 4 of this Christian Heritage volume. See also Anastaplo, “An Academic Autobiography,” appendix J of this Christian Heritage volume. 1042. See Judges 6:36–40. 1043. See, on Lucretius, Anastaplo, “Samplings,” 426. 1044. See, on nature as a guide, Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 303. See also note 601, above. 1045. See, e.g., the conclusion of Aristotle’s Politics. 1046. See, e.g., Aristotle, Poetics; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Letter to D’Alembert. 1047. By “old-fashioned” I am thinking of that philosophic tradition established primarily by Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle. See the text corresponding to note 982 of this Christian Heritage volume. See also note 1063, below. 1048. This talk was given at the Law and Morality Panel, A Conference on the Roles of Church and State in Forming the Character of Americans, University of Dallas, Irving, Texas, April 24, 1992 (originally titled “The Legislation of Morality and the Law of Abortion”). See Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the Moderns,” 677. 1049. Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson, S. E. Whicher, ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), 14. See Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 273–74, n. 35. 1050. Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 189, 399. 1051. Ibid., 399. See also Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 46. Particularly instructive here is Alan M. Dershowitz, Supreme Injustice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 191–97. 1052. See, on the rise and fall of Prohibition, Anastaplo, The Amendments to the Constitution, 195. 1053. See Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973). 1054. Participant’s paper, Law and Morality Panel, note 1048, above. 1055. Id. 1056. Id. See also Hadley Arkes, First Things: An Inquiry into the First Principles of Morals and Justice (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1986). 1057. See, e.g., note 1013, above. 1058. I have cautioned against “federalizing” such issues. This was done by the United States Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. This is what the proposals described in the paper quoted from in the text would also do. Consider, as well, the implications of the Freedom of Choice Act urged on Congress by some pro-choice people. 1059. Compare “Great and Extraordinary Occasions”: Developing Guidelines for Constitutional Change (New York: Century Foundation Press, 1999). 1060. Consider, for example, what Glaucon says about this in Plato’s Republic and what Callicles says in Plato’s Gorgias. 1061. A modern form of the sophistic is the legalistic. See, e.g., Anastaplo, “Legal Education, Economics, and Law School Governance,” 304. 1062. See, e.g., Anastaplo, Abraham Lincoln, 157. 1063. We need not assume here that Plato and his heirs have been infallible. For example, we may have reservations about their apparent casualness with respect to slavery. But see George Anastaplo, “Slavery and the Constitution,” 19 Texas Tech Law Review 677, 691 (1989).

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1064. See Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 46. See also note 1047, above. 1065. See, e.g., Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 346–47. 1066. See, on the “utopian,” chapter 8 of this Christian Heritage volume. 1067. Consider here the career of King Henry VIII. See, e.g., Anastaplo, On Trial, 253. 1068. See, e.g., Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925). Pressure for reconsideration of critical assumptions here, including recourse to restrictions upon family size (and not only for those on welfare), has been built up during the past century by the considerable escalation in population. We were, in 1990, at the level worldwide of five and a half billion souls and soaring, compared to two and a half billion only forty years before. See William K. Stevens, “Humanity Confronts Its Handiwork: An Altered Planet,” New York Times, May 1, 1992, B5. See also the text corresponding to notes 1016 and 1030 in this Christian Heritage volume. 1069. See, e.g., Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and Shakespeare,” 163. 1070. Even the bulk of faithful Roman Catholic women in the United States, who have been thoroughly Americanized (or is it modernized?) in critical respects, have effectively rebelled against their Church’s teaching about birth control. See Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 46. 1071. Compare the feminist uneasiness, however, about the widespread use of abortions (as in China and India) to select for gender in fetuses. On the other hand, the bargaining power of unmarried Chinese young women should be considerably enhanced thereby. Consider, for example, Mei Fong, “It’s Cold Cash, Not Cold Feet, Motivating Brides in China: Surplus of Bachelors Spurs New Scam,” Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2009, A1. It is reported, at page A12 of this article, Thanks to its 30-year-old population-planning policy and customary preference for boys, China has one of the largest male-to-female ratios in the world. Using data from the 2005 China census—the most recent—a study published in last month’s British Journal of Medicine estimates that there was a surplus of 32 million males under the age of 20 at the time the census was taken. That’s roughly the size of Canada’s population.

Consider, also, note 975, above 1072. See Genesis 3:16. 1073. Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 406. 1074. These remarks were made at a meeting of the Chicago, Illinois, chapter of MENSA, January 29, 1994. 1075. Isaiah 1:10–13. 1076. Editorial, Chicago Tribune, June 23, 1993, sec. 1, 16. 1077. See Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993). See also Anastaplo Reflections on Life, Death and the Constitution, 110–14. 1078. See Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District, 509 U.S. 1 (1993). See also the text corresponding to note 1093 of this Christian Heritage volume. 1079. Editorial, Chicago Tribune, June 23, 1993, sec. 1, 16. 1080. Clifford Goldstein, “The Hialeah Animal Sacrifice Case,” Liberty, March/April 1993, 6. 1081. Ibid., 8. 1082. See, on freedom of expression, Anastaplo, The Amendments to the Constitution, 459. See also section V of chapter 25 of this Christian Heritage volume. Consider as well my letter to the editor prompted by a New York Times editorial of October 9, 2009, “Animal Cruelty and Free Speech”: Our traditional freedom of speech provides that the advocates of dogfighting or any other questionable cruelty among us are free to advocate it, even to the extent of urging the repeal of all laws curtailing dreadful activities. But it does not mean that public displays of prohibited activities cannot be forbidden. The First Amendment is intended to protect political discussion, Authoritative guidance to what “freedom of speech” was originally understood to cover is provided by the history of the near-absolute

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protection routinely assured for participants in parliamentary debates (on any subject) in the Englishspeaking world. Such distinctions are essential for a properly disciplined republican regime that is confident about the promotion of sustained decency, including what is routinely displayed in the community.

1083. See Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah, 723 F. Su 1467, 1485–86 (S.D. Fla., 1989). 1084. I have even heard the suggestion, from a pious legal scholar of distinction, that we can constitutionally prohibit child sacrifice only for the sake of the child. Compare Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 303. 1085. See chapter 24 of this Christian Heritage volume. 1086. See Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 46, 74. See also chapter 22 of this Christian Heritage volume. 1087. See Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 117. 1088. See ibid., 97. 1089. An earlier, less sophisticated age would have spoken of the satanic or demonic here. See, on the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker, 275. 1090. I am assuming here that these are truly laws of general application—that they have not been adopted, although put in a general form, only for the purpose of harassing a particular sect. There may also be here a question of fact as to the purpose of a law. 1091. See, e.g., Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 134. See also note 937, above. 1092. See, e.g., Anastaplo, “Church and State,” 127. See, on prudence, Anastaplo, Reflections, on Life, Death and the Constitution, 294. See also note 601, above. See, as well, appendices C, G, H, and L of this Christian Heritage volume. 1093. See note 1078, above. 1094. Consider, for example, how Zoroastrians around the world now deal with their traditional (perhaps even sacred) practice of leaving human corpses for birds to eat. See Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 350, 368. See also note 24, above. 1095. These remarks were made at Grand Rounds, Department of Surgery, Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois, March 28, 1995. See Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 389. 1096. Jeremiah 8:22. 1097. There is something highly questionable, for example, about the way that Dr. Jack Kevorkian conducted himself, invoking among other things a supposed constitutional right to assisted suicide. See “Kevorkian Vows to Keep Fighting Laws Barring Assisted Suicide,” New York Times, December 18, 1994, 21; “Doctor Seeks to Quash Case of Murder in Suicide Deaths,” New York Times, August 30, 1995, A9. See also Anastaplo, Reflections on Life, Death, and the Constitution, 165–71. 1098. Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 397. 1099. See Aristotle, Politics, book I, chapter 1; Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 303. 1100. John Milton, Paradise Lost, X, 1001–6. One can be reminded here of Shakespeare’s Cleopatra (“Of many ways to die the shortest choosing”). 1101. Ibid., I, 1013–28. 1102. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act III, scene ii, lines 66–70. 1103. See David Hume, Of Suicide. See also Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 622; Darwin, The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, 847. 1104. See Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker, 29, 46. 1105. See Augustine, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, book 1, chapter 19. Compare note 1114, below. See, on Augustine, Anastaplo, “Rome, Piety, and Law,” 83. 1106. Burnett v. People, 204 Ill. 208, 222, 68 N.E. 505, 510 (1903).

Notes

425

1107. Id. 1108. See Milton, Paradise Lost, I, 1007. 1109. Ibid., I, 1106. There is an echo here of the Greek Orthodox Resurrection Hymn. See section IV of chapter 18 of this Christian Heritage volume. 1110. See, e.g., Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker, 437, n. 183. 1111. Margaret Otlowski, “Active Voluntary Euthanasia: Opinion for Reform,” Medical Law Review 161, 166 n. 19 (Clarendon Press, 1997). 1112. Id. 1113. Id. See also “To Cease Upon the Midnight,” The Economist, September 17–23, 1994; “Poll Finds Support Among Doctors for Assisted Suicide,” Chicago Defender, September 19, 1995, 22. 1114. “Creeping Crabwise Towards Death,” Guardian Weekly, February 17, 1995, 12. Is this “the oldest medical problem in the world”—or a modern way of putting an old not-necessarilymedical question? How such questions are formulated may itself be significant, if not decisive. See, e.g., Arthur J. Droge and James D. Tabor, A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom Among Christians and Jews in Antiquity (San Francisco: Harper, 1992). Compare Gore Vidal, “The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh,” Vanity Fair, September 2001, 348. 1115. See the text corresponding to note 1114 in this Christian Heritage volume. 1116. Richard A. Shapiro, “Roiling the Waters: An Examination of the Rhetorical & Semantic Matrices of Our Discussion About Euthanasia,” Third Annual Chicago Conference on Ethics in Health-Care Institutions, August 11–12, 1994. 1117. Some pious Jews can regard that as a “Greek,” that is, a Western, response. See note 1114, above. In marked contrast to the “Massada-type” response is that described in Seymour M. Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy (New York: Random House, 1991). 1118. The failure of the plot against Hitler in 1944 has been attributed, at least in part, to the failure of the officer in charge of placing the bomb to stay with and relocate his lethal briefcase as Hitler moved about in his headquarters bunker. If that is what happened, could something have been said for suicide bombing on that occasion? The plot against Hitler is noticed by Simcha Brudno in the account found in appendix A of this Christian Heritage volume. 1119. See, on the trial of Socrates, Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 8. Compare R. G. Frey, “Did Socrates Commit Suicide?” 50 Philosophy 106 (1978). 1120. See, on Greek folk tales and songs, Kimon Friar, ed., Modern Greek Poetry (Simon and Schuster, 1973), 6. See, on other exploits of the people of Souli, C. Fauriel, Chants Populaires de la Grèce Moderne (Paris: F. Didot, 1824), I, 225. 1121. My model here is Aristotle’s discussion, in book III of his Nicomachean Ethics, of the imitations of courage that the community comes upon. 1122. It has been suggested that “morphine drip” can become euthanasia by another name. See Thomas A. Preston, “Killing Pain, Ending Life,” New York Times, November 7, 1994, A15. See, on the question of what is truly civilized in these matters, Nancy Gibbs, “Dying Together,” Time, August 3, 2009, 64. 1123. On what one considers oneself to be (and not to be), consider how Socrates responds to Crito about the disposition of “him” after death. See Plato, Phaedo. See also the text corresponding to note 24 of this Christian Heritage volume. See as well notes 24 and 600, above. 1124. This is related to the Eskimo illustration referred to in section III of chapter 24 of this Christian Heritage volume. See, on the folly of perpetuating a worthless life, Plato, Republic. See also Anastaplo, Reflections on Life, Death, and the Constitution, 156 (“Nancy Cruzan and ‘The Right to Die’”). 1125. See note 1116, above. 1126. Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 321–22, n. 10 (quoting Leon R. Kass).

426

Notes

1127. See, for an executioner of whom Socrates spoke with respect, Plato, Phaedo. 1128. See Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 386. 1129. David C. Clark, “‘Rational’ Suicide and People With Terminal Conditions or Disabilities,” 8 Issues in Law & Medicine 147, 156 (1992). See also Don Wycliff, “How Should Newspapers Cover Suicides?” Chicago Tribune, August 23, 2001, 23: Suicide, we now recognize, is intimately connected with mental illness. According to a set of guidelines on news coverage released earlier this month by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and two partner organizations, “Over 90 percent of suicide victims have a significant psychiatric illness at the time of their death.” Mood disorders and substance abuse are the most common such illnesses. And depression is the most common mood disorder.

See, on suicide, Anastaplo, Reflections on Life, Death, and the Constitution, 296. Consider, also, William Shakespeare, “The Phoenix and the Turtle.” 1130. See Plato, Republic 414D. 1131. See Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 87 (on the self); Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and Shakespeare,” 163 (“Who is to say—?”). 1132. See, e.g., Gary Lee v. Oregon, No. 94-6467-HO, 1994 WL 728856 (D. Or. Dec. 27, 1994). See also Herbert Hendin, “Scared to Death of Dying,” New York Times, December 16, 1994. 1133. Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 398. See also Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 214 (on death and dying). 1134. This paper was prepared for a Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship panel at the Annual Convention of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, California, September 2, 2001. The other literature-related papers prepared for this panel were by Germaine Paulo Walsh and Hank Edmondson. 1135. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1101a14–20. 1136. See Robert Fernier, Gustava Courbet (New York: Praeger, 1969), 26 (identified as “The Bride at Her Toilet,” “an unfinished picture sold on the 5th of June, 1919, after the death of Juliette Courbet”). The museum visited was the Cantor Arts Center of Stanford University. 1137. One of the x-rays of the original painting, displayed with the painting, shows the body as nude and with its head leaning back much farther than in the retouched version on display. See Smith College Museum of Art, A Guide to the Collections (1986), 47, 104. The central figure of the thirteen or fourteen women in attendance upon the corpse seems to me the only woman dressed in dark clothing. She seems to be looking intently at the corpse. 1138. Courbet’s work generally does not tend toward the morbid. His eroticism can even anticipate the elderly Picasso. See, e.g., “The Origin of the World,” in Michael Fried, Courbet’s Realism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 210–12, 220–22. This “origin” title (evidently not Courbet’s) implies that “the world” depends on human things. See, on death and dying in modernity, Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 214. 1139. See, e.g., Anastaplo, The Bible, 189. 1140. See, on the work of Flannery O’Connor and others, George Anastaplo, “Can Beauty ‘Hallow Even the Bloodiest Tomahawk’?” 48 The Critic 2 (1993). See, on Judaism and a not-so-fallen human nature, chapter 26 of this Christian Heritage volume. 1141. See, on the work of Jane Austen, Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 86; Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the Moderns,” 350; Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the Austen-Dostoyevski Axis,” 714. 1142. This is somehow an antidote to the “Fallen Nature” condition. See the text corresponding to note 463 of this Christian Heritage volume. See also note 601, above. 1143. See, on Thomas Aquinas, chapter 4 of this Christian Heritage volume. See also note 1041, above.

Notes

427

1144. See, on Aristophanes, Leo Strauss, Socrates and Aristophanes (New York: Basic Books, 1966); Anastaplo, The Thinker as Artist, 157. 1145. See, on prudence, Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 618. 1146. See, on the pleasure that can result from simply moving one’s limbs, Plato, Phaedo. 1147. See Saul Bellow, Ravelstein (New York: Viking, 2000). See also note 1149, below. 1148. See, on Allan Bloom, Robert L. Stone, ed., Essays on “The Closing of the American Mind” (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1989), 225, 267; George Anastaplo, “‘McCarthyism,’ the Cold War, and Their Aftermath,” 43 South Dakota Law Review 103, 156, 169 (1998). 1149. Also on exhibit in the Stanford University art museum are pieces by Auguste Rodin prepared in the course of his rendition of Honore de Balzac in the nude. The dignity of Balzac survives this unconventional treatment of him by Rodin. 1150. See, on nature, Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 303. See also note 601, above. 1151. This talk was given at the Beth Am Synagogue, Chicago, Illinois, February 10, 1974 (originally titled “The Case for Israel: Joshua 24:13; Deuteronomy 4:6; 2 Samuel 12:3”). 1152. Ruth 1:16 (Ruth to her mother-in-law, Naomi). See Ruth 4:13–17, 22; note 1185, below. 1153. See Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 31. 1154. Anastaplo, “American Constitutionalism and the Virtue of Prudence,” 170. 1155. See, on the self, Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 87. 1156. See Anastaplo, On Trial, 111; Anastaplo, The Bible, 43, 383. 1157. See, e.g., Strauss, “Why We Remain Jews,” 311. See also appendix M of this Christian Heritage volume. See as well note 1185, below. 1158. It is instructive to be able to watch, close at hand, and week after week, what strict observance can mean for Orthodox Jews. 1159. See, e.g., Anastaplo, The Bible, 77f. 1160. See Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 155. 1161. See Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 506. 1162. See George Anastaplo, “Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago,” in Kenneth L. Deutsch and John A. Murley, eds., Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and the American Regime (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), 3. 1163. Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 159. See, for “A Yahrzeit Remembrance of Leo Strauss,” Anastaplo, The Artist as Thinker, 250. 1164. Compare Anastaplo, “On Freedom,” 622–25. See the text corresponding to note 1200 in this Christian Heritage volume. 1165. See Plato, Menexenus. See also the text corresponding to note 935 in this Christian Heritage volume. 1166. Is not this an implicit criticism of what Athens then was? Socrates was, on other occasions, explicit in his criticism of Athens. See, e.g., Plato, Apology of Socrates. 1167. Later in 1974, of course, Mr. Nixon was obliged to resign the presidency. 1168. Compare Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince. 1169. See, on the instructive Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, Anastaplo, “On Freedom,” 645. Compare Anastaplo, “September Eleventh, the ABCs of a Citizen’s Response,” 175. 1170. See New York Review of Books, January 24, 1974, 48. See also appendix A and appendix L of this Christian Heritage volume. See as well appendix M of this Christian Heritage volume. 1171. See Daniel Webster, Works (1851), III, 60 (speech of January 19, 1824). See also The Annals of America, vol. 5, 104–13 (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1976); the text corresponding to note 932 in this Christian Heritage volume. 1172. See New York Review of Books, January 24, 1974, 48. 1173. We Greek-Americans, for example, are far less important in this respect in and to the United States, however critical the classical world may be for American republicanism. See note

428

Notes

672, above; note 1199, below. See also Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Cemetery (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2004). 1174. This “better angels” phrase was used by President Abraham Lincoln at the conclusion of his first inaugural address. 1175. See, e.g., Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 272, 303. 1176. See, on pacifism, Anastaplo, “Church and State,” 127. 1177. Even massive killings closer to home, such as the September 11, 2001, atrocities in New York City and Washington, D.C., can “naturally” come to be regarded as a bad dream, once those responsible have been properly dealt with. See also note 1200, below. I hope to collect someday in book form my periodic discussions of our responses to the monstrous September 11 assaults. Ramsey Clark, a University of Chicago Law School classmate, is interested in providing a foreword for such a collection. 1178. The phrase is from the Declaration of Independence. 1179. See chapter 3 of this Christian Heritage volume. 1180. The reader is reminded that the remarks in chapter 26 of this Christian Heritage volume were made in 1974. Here, as for many of the chapters and appendices in this volume, the circumstances of the time and the place of delivery of the talk can very much matter. See note 578, above. 1181. This is the translation of the Jewish Publication Society of America (1917). This verse, in the King James translation, reads: “I have given you a land for which you did not labor, and cities which you did not build, and you dwell in them; you eat of the vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant.” This is a verse that Malcolm P. Sharp liked to quote. See note 885, above. 1182. See, on Islam, Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 175. 1183. See, on property, Anastaplo, The Constitutionalist, 213. 1184. Letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes (April 22, 1820). See 4 The Annals of America 603 (1976). 1185. This is the translation of the Jewish Publication Society of America (1917). This verse in the King James translation (without my interpolations) is “Therefore be careful to observe them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes, and say ‘Surely, this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’” This is a verse that Leo Strauss liked to quote. I am scheduled to give, in 2010, a talk, “The Epistle of Jude and the Jewishness of Christianity.” This should follow up on another talk of mine on the Book of Ruth and chapter 1 of the Gospel of Matthew (with their curious collaboration among Tamar, Ruth, and Mary). I am encouraged, in my speculative explorations, by the reviews of my Reflections series in the Law and Politics Book Review (vol. 17, no. 4, 286–89, April 2007 [Philip A. Dynia]; vol. 17, no. 7, 591–601, July 2007 [Ira L. Strauber]; vol. 19, no. 12, 858–61, December 2009 [Christopher A. Riddle]). 1186. See Anastaplo, “Law & Literature and the Austen-Dostoyevsky Axis,” 751. 1187. See, e.g., the opening pages of Judah Halevi’s The Kuzari. See also the text corresponding to note 134 in this Christian Heritage volume. 1188. See Strauss, “Why We Remain Jews.” Compare Anastaplo, The Bible, 189. 1189. 2 Samuel 12:1–3 (this is in the translation of the Jewish Publication Society of America [1971]). See note 1191, below. 1190. See 2 Samuel 12:4–23. 1191. See Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), x. This Strauss epigraph is taken from 2 Samuel 12:1–4. 1192. See Plato, Republic 414D. 1193. See, e.g., Anastaplo, “On Freedom,” 624–25. See also note 1200, below. 1194. 2 Samuel 12:2–3. See note 339, above. 1195. See, e.g., Anastaplo, The Bible, 389 (Golden Calf). 1196. Compare 1 Samuel 8.

Notes

429

1197. See Anastaplo, Human Being and Citizen, 151; Anastaplo, The American Moralist, 225. 1198. Richard Winograd, Jerusalem Newsletter, October 23, 1969. 1199. The true founding of the West includes not only what is believed to have happened among the Israelites but also thereafter among the Greeks and the Romans. 1200. University of Chicago Maroon, October 2, 2001, 8. See also Chicago Tribune, September 21, 2001, sec. 1, 26. See, on Islam, Anastaplo, But Not Philosophy, 175. See also Anastaplo, “Letter to the Editor,” Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, September 28, 2001, 2; George Anastaplo, “Letter to the Editor,” New York Times, October 13, 3001, A22; George Anastaplo, “Letter to the Editor,” Chicago Sun-Times, November 20, 3001, 30. See, on the excesses of which Judaism has been capable, Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1984), 91–92. See, on the excesses of which Christianity has been capable, Geoffrey Moorhouse, “Butchery in the Name of Religion,” Guardian Weekly, November 1–7, 2001, 18. See also Anastaplo, “Church and State,” 61, 65 (on the trial of witches). See as well, on the Nazi Holocaust, appendices A and L of this Christian Heritage volume. I offered further counsel about the September 11 attacks in this letter to the editor: It can be dismaying to learn that many “informed” Arabs insist that the September 11 attacks were really the work of the C.I.A., or of Israelis, or of anyone else they happen to hate. (See, for example, Thomas Friedman’s column, New York Times, January 23, 2002.) There is, however, a heartening aspect to these absurd accusations, for they do recognize that such attacks are monstrous and hence to be repudiated. Thus, Arabs everywhere can be understood to consider themselves morally, as well as politically, obliged to condemn the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks, whoever they may be.

Chicago Weekly News, University of Chicago, January 31, 2002, 13. See, for my running commentaries on the September 11 attacks, note 705, above. See also note 1177, above. See as well, for what might still be said to lie at the core of things, at least for us, notes 600 and 601, above.

Index

‘Abd al-Majid, Ibrahim, 373n24 Abortion, the law of, 201, 209–15, 220, 420n1030, 422n1051 Abraham, 27–28, 43, 98–99, 122–23, 143, 243, 348, 353, 378n102, 394n491, 402n650, 402n657. See also Jews/Judaism Absolute, the, 413n862 Absurdity/absurdities, 103, 146–47, 396n548 Abyss, the, 404n694 Achilles, 172–73, 181 Acquisitiveness, 377n84, 378n106 Adam and Eve, 43, 45–46, 226–28 Adams, John, 174, 406n716 Adultery, 26, 387n329 Aeneas, 41, 381n157 Aeschylus, 377n70, 385n253 Afghanistan, 419n978 Africa, 249 African Americans, 367 Agnosticism, 129–30, 405n98 Aguilar v. Felton (1985), 206, 421n1032 Ahab, 378n105 AIDS epidemic, 387n323 Alcinous, court of, 382n195 Alexander the Great, 87, 172, 414n904 Alexandria, Egypt, 1–9 Allah, 185 Allen (1983), Mueller v., 200–201 Altruism, 161 American ways, 76–78 Ananias, 44–45 Anastaplo, Sara Prince, 241, 414n904 Anastasopoulos, Theodore George, 316

Anger, 44, 382n185. See Book of Revelation; Noah’s flood; Sodom and Gomorrah Animal cruelty/rights/sacrifices, 154, 216–23, 410n816, 423n1082 Animate, the, 413n869 Animation of matter, natural, 412n859 Anselm, 33 Anthems, national, 176–89 Anthropology, 142, 356 Antigone, 373n17, 373n24 “Anti-Semitism,” 378n101. See also Strauss, Leo Anytus, 406n722 Apes, 412n839 Aphrodite, 56, 373n29, 387n319 Apocalyptic, 403n666 Apollo, 7–8, 307, 344n35, 377n70 Apostasy, Maimonides’s letter on, 25–28 Aquinas, Thomas. See Thomas Aquinas, St. Arabs, 9, 242–54, 429n1200 Arachne, 46 Arendt, Hannah, 369. See also Sinaiko, Herman Aristophanes, 74, 238, 329, 427n1144 Aristotle, 20, 30, 33, 43, 51, 84, 94, 96, 100, 104, 113–17, 126, 148, 150, 163, 165, 169, 173, 175, 213, 226, 236–40, 337, 353, 365, 367–68, 377n76, 377n81, 379n122, 380n134, 382n181, 383n212, 393n461, 395n504, 397n562, 400n609, 408n766, 409n790, 410n826, 413n864, 413n867, 415n912, 415n914, 415n921, 415nn928–29, 422n1047, 425n1121. See also Philosophy

431

432

Index

Arjuna, 342 Aronson, Jason, 111, 399n593 Art/artists, 38, 57, 59, 62, 65, 156–57, 172, 177, 223 Art Institute of Chicago, 146 Asceticism, 96–97, 153, 172 Asia Minor Disaster, 187 Asian creeds, 351. See also Buddhism; Confucius; Hinduism; Islam Asinius Pollio, 398n587 Astrology, 333. See also Numerology Astronomy, 311–14, 333, 354, 415n927 Atheism, 76, 147, 153, 191, 354–56. See also Gentlemanliness Athena, 373n29, 382n188 Athens, 112–13, 186, 245–46, 255, 390n385, 393n450, 404n679, 416n934, 427n1166 Atoms, 164. See also Ultron Augustine, St., 93–94, 96, 100–101, 103–4, 106, 171, 227, 372n13, 380n133, 396n526, 405n700, 414n900. See also Luther, Martin Augustus, Emperor, 398n587 Auschwitz, 259, 404n680. See also Holocaust Austen, Jane, 237–40, 426n1141 Australia, 228 Authorship, and its quaintness, 378n91 Avarice, 44–45, 51 Aztecs, 397n561. See also Relativism, limits of Babel, builders of, 135, 405n714, 405n717 Babylonia, 176. See also Vyzantiou, D. K. Babylonian Captivity of the Church, 92. See also Roman Catholicism Bacon, Francis, 404n679, 415n925. See also Berns, Laurence Balkans, the, 418n959 Balzac, Honore de, 427n1149 Baptist Church, v, 191 Barabas (of Christopher Marlowe), 119–27, 403n668, 403n675 Bar admission controversy (Illinois), 339–40. See also Black, Hugo L.; Levi, Edward H.; Sharp, Malcolm P. Barnabas (Paul’s companion), xiii, 5 Barratry, 41 Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults, The University of Chicago, 337– 39, 347, 399n597

Bates, Clifford A., Jr. See The Constitutionalist Bates, Katherine, 178–79 Bathsheba, a vital link, 252, 388n339, 428n1185 Baumhart, Raymond, S.J., 345 Bayle, Pierre, 351–55 Beatrice (of Florence), 40–43, 45–46, 51, 54, 382n181, 383n209 Beauty/beautiful, 161, 164–65, 167–69, 220, 334, 404n681, 412n847, 413n873, 413n878, 414n887, 424n1089 Becket, Thomas. See Thomas à Becket, St. Bede, Venerable, 23 Beggar, life of, 79, 94, 301–6 Being, 116, 164, 365–66; Chain of, 163 Belacqua, 50 Bellow, Saul, 239–40 Beowulf, xi, xiii, 10–24, 374n43, 374n49, 375nn51–52, 375nn55–56, 375n58, 375nn63–66, 376n67, 377n78, 378n91 Bernard, St., 41 Berns, Laurence, 372n5, 377n81, 377n84, 379n123, 399n595, 408n766, 409n790. See also Reality of Grandfathering Bibfeldt, Franz. See Aristophanes; Clemens, Samuel; Marty, Martin E. Bible/biblical, 11, 13, 29–32, 113, 134, 192, 253, 313, 351, 419n988, 419n990. See also Analects; Bhagavad Gita; Homer Biology, 159–69, 351. See also Aristotle; Darwin, Charles; Lucretius Birth control, 209, 433n1070. See also Laius and Jocasta Bland, Tony, 229. See also Cruzan, Nancy Bloom, Allan, 239–40, 381n150, 408n762, 427n1148. See also Stone, Robert L. Boccaccio, Giovanni, xi, 55–66, 68, 125–26, 386–89, 403n676 Boethius, 70 Boodberg, Peter A., 324 Boredom, 151 Braithwaite, William T., 372n6. See also “The Reasonableness of Christianity” Brann, Eva, 361–70, 372n5 Brogan, D. W., xiii Brown, George Makay, 383n210 Brudno, Simcha, 257–300, 357–60, 425n1118. See also Holocaust Brutus, 383n205 Bryan, William Jennings, 162

Index Buddhism, 113, 148, 321, 342, 381n160, 381n165, 406n721, 409n775, 410n818, 419n978 Bunyan, John, 72, 375n58 Burgond, 273 Burnett v. People (1903), 227, 424n1106 Bush administration, 320 Butler, Samuel, 10 Byrne v. Public Funds for Public Schools (1979), 202, 421n1019 Byzantine Empire, 181 Caananites, 354 Cadmus, 417n945. See also Oedipus Caesar, Julius, 119, 398n591 Cairo, Egypt, 306 Caldwell, Erskine, 378n106 Caliban, 392n432 Callicles, 131, 422n1060 Calvinists, 347, 352 Canada, 228 Capital punishment, 79, 359 Capp, Al, 10, 374n42 Carnal knowledge, 401n626 Carnovsky, Morris, 403n673 Carroll, James, 395n491 Carroll, Lewis, 10 Carterville, Illinois, v, 190, 315–18 Cassius, 383n205 Castro, Fidel, 217 Cather, Willa, 355, 407n741 Cato, 50, 182, 381n148 Cats, 156–57, 413n881 Cavafy, Constantine, 1–9, 180, 374n40, 417n943 Cave, story of, 415n908 Celibacy, 220, 415n911 Chance, xvi, 47, 90, 115, 138, 149–50, 164, 214, 242–43, 245, 263, 310, 331–33, 338, 344, 350, 385n253, 393n464, 393n467, 401n642, 412n839, 418n966. See also Koran; New Testament; Old Testament Chandrasekhar, S., 311 Character and Fitness Committee, 339–40 Charlemagne, Emperor, 347 Charon, 39 Chastity, 61. See also Nature/natural Chaucer, Geoffrey, xi, 67–75, 389n360, 389n372, 389n375, 389n380, 390n382, 390n386, 390n394

433

Chicago, 415n930 Chickering, Howell D., Jr., 11 Child sacrifice, 424n1084 China/Chinese, 248, 319–34, 392n424, 416n934, 419n975, 423n1071 Chivalry, 21 “Choose Life,” 25 Christendom, soul of, 347–56 Christmas, 315–18, 341–42 Chrysostom, John. See John Chrysostom, St. Chuang Tzu, 320 Church and state issues, 138, 190–94, 196– 203, 238, 420n1009, 421n1011, 421n1021 Church of the Latter Day Saints, 202 Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah (1993), 216–23. See also Child sacrifice; Freedom of expression; Sense of proportion Church-sponsored schools, 196–203 Churchill, Winston S., 316, 369, 377n79 Cicero, 100, 112–13, 115, 117, 401n635, 408n766 Cigarettes for watches, 297 Circumcision, 99 Citizenship, 141, 173, 303, 315 Civil rights movement, 254 Civil War, U.S., 407n727 Classics, 31–34, 44–45, 47 Clay, Diskin, 366 Cleopatra, 389n358, 424n1100 Coffee, power of, 291, 295 Coffey, Lyndon, v, 190 Cohler, Anne M., 109, 117, 398n574 Cold War, 254, 339–40 Colmo, Christopher A., 371n2 Colonels, Greek (1967–1974), 180, 187, 189, 245 Columbus, Christopher, 348 Comedy, 146 “Commitment,” 192 Committee v. Regan (1980), 421n1021 Common good, 338 Common law, 344 Common sense, 97, 160, 329, 332–33, 408n767 Community, interests of, 301–6; sense of, 141 Compassion, 154, 410n818 Composition, principles of, 398n578. See also Numerology Confucius/Confucianism, 204, 319–23, 331–32

434

Index

Conscience (a post-classical phenomenon), vi, 68, 85, 87, 105, 172, 174, 352, 381n148. See also Aristotle; Daimonion; Delphic oracle Conscience, rights of, 198 Conscientious objectors, 205, 222 Considius, 398n591 Constantinan era, xi Constantinople, archbishop of, 341 Constitution of the United States, 137, 196–97, 209, 216 Constitutional Convention (1787), 134–39 Constitutionalism, xvi, 195. See also Prudence Contemplation, 152 Contemptible, on recognizing the, 339–40 Contraceptives, 201 Copernicus, Nicolaus, 103, 175, 415n927 Copleston, Frederick, S.J., 148, 155, 410n811 Corrupting influences, 220–21 Courbet, Gustave, 236–41, 426n1136, 426n1137, 426n1138 Courage, 307–8, 310, 425n1121 Cowardice, 307–8, 310 Cox, Robert, 347 Cragg, Kenneth, 418n964 Crassus, 44 Creation/creationism, 30, 142, 156–69, 354. See also World, eternity of Creature, 412n839 Creed, 27 Crito, 131, 425n1123 Cropsey, Joseph, 399n595, 409n790 Crosskey, William W., 420n1008 Crusades, 348 Cruzan, Nancy, 425n1124. See also Prudence Cuckoo bird, deplorable practice of, 161. See also Natural right/natural law Cuba, 217 Curious encounters, 292–95, 299–300. See also Holocaust Currie, David P., 344 Cyprus, 187–88, 419n977. See also Colonels, Greek Cyrus, King, 383n211 Dachau, 257–300, 358. See also Holocaust Daedalus, Stephen, 45. See also Joyce, James Daimonion, xvii Dalven, Rae, 373n20 Daniel, Book of, 354

Dante Alighieri, xi, 29, 35–54, 56, 182, 330–31, 380n138, 380n143, 381nn148–50, 381n160, 382n178, 382n185, 383n209, 383n212, 384n213, 384n235, 384n239, 385n253, 397n555, 410n804, 418n953 Darwin, Charles/Darwinism, xi, 156–69, 175, 313, 354, 412n842, 413n873, 415n927 Dashevsky, Irene, 350 David, King, 99, 252, 353, 388n339 Dayan, Moshe, 246 de Alvarez, Leo Paul S., 383n211, 407n733 Death, 35–54, 59, 66, 73, 85, 99, 109–18, 140, 147, 150–51, 183–86, 234–41, 398n586, 399nn600–601, 401n629, 401n635, 425n1123, 426n1138 Decalogue, the, 29–30 Decency, sustained, 423n1082 Deception, will to, 172 Declaration of Independence (U.S.), the, 249, 359, 379n116, 379n123, 406n715, 413n876 Degradation, 220 Deism, 136 Delphic oracle, xvii, 189, 207, 310, 406n723 de Lyra, Nicholas, 99 Democritus, 146, 348, 408n759 Demonic, 424n1089 Demonstrations, 140 de Ribera, Jusepe, 408n757 Dershowitz, Alan M., 422n1051. See also Abortion, the law of; Natural right/natural law; Prudence Descartes, René, 166, 338–39, 345, 367–68, 413n874, 414n886. See also Kennington, Richard Desire, 414n882 Deutsch, Kenneth L., 391n399, 427n1162 Devil/devilry, 55, 59 Dickens, Charles, 111–12 Diderot, Denis, 352 Dioneo, 56–58, 60–61, 64–66, 386n310, 387n332 Dionysius, King, 398n587 Dionysus/Dionysian, 73 Dionysus, St., 46 Dis, 43 Discipline, 238 Divine Providence, 76 Divining, 43 Divritzi, Gortinea, 316

Index Dog, faithfulness of, 146 Dominican University, xii, 343 Dominicans, 343–46 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 92, 101 Draconian laws, 119 Dreams, 10, 73 Drug addictions, 301 Dudley, Robert, 67 Dulles, Avery Cardinal, 356 Duyvendak, J. J. L., 324, 326–27, 330 Earth, stability of, 314 Easter/Easter Week, 183, 318 Eastern Orthodox Church, 183, 394n474, 418n957, 418n959. See also Greek Orthodox Church Ebzery, Angela Frangella, 419n992 Eden, Garden of. See Garden of Eden Edgar (King Lear), 113 Education, 204–8, 307–10. See also Mortality; Nature/natural; Philosophy Edward VI, King, 90 Edwards, Jonathan, 399n601, 419n990. See also Anger, the limitations of Egypt/Egyptians, 1–9, 112, 186, 242, 246, 252, 306, 373n24 Eliot, T. S., 376n66 Elissa, 59–62, 388n340, 388n351 Elizabeth I, Queen, 90 Ellsberg, Daniel, 390n383 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 35, 92–95, 97, 104, 209, 394n478, 395n499, 395n512, 415n920. See also Nietzsche, Friedrich End, purpose, 160. See also Nature/natural; Philosophy; Prudence Engels, Friedrich, 191 Engel v. Vitale (1962), 200, 421n1014 Enlightenment, the, 170, 249 Ennui, 150 Envy, 50 Epicurus/Epicurean, 82, 96, 104, 348 Epicycles, 312–13 Equal protection standards, 222 Er, Myth of, 173, 385n271 Erasmus, Desiderius, 105, 344 Erie Railroad Company v. Tompkins (1938), 344 Erotic/eroticism, 56, 65, 387n315 Esau, 378n105 Eskimos, 425n1124

435

Essai, the, 109 Establishment Clause, 196–203 Estonia, 257 Eternal law, 100. See also Natural right/natural law Eternity, and “experience” thereof, 112, 115, 164, 334, 399n600–601 Euclid, 331, 349 Euphemisms, and the Holocaust, 259 Euthanasia, 228–29, 425n1122 Everson v. Board of Education (1947), 200– 201, 421n1011 Everyman, 381n158 Evil, 19, 354, 357–60 Evolution/evolutionists, 159–69 Existentialism, 152, 402n655, 409n796 Exodus, 354 Expression, freedom of. See Freedom of expression Ezekiel, 46, 54 Facts, 311–14 Faith, 102, 105 Fall, the, 48, 50, 85, 395n504. See also “Thirty-six righteous men,” implications of Falstaff, 378n100 Fame, 20–24, 377n77, 378n90 Family relations, scope of, 332–33 Fate, 151 Favorinus, 398n587 Fear/fearfulness, 130, 390n383 Federalizing issues, risks of, 422n1058 Female principle, 162 Feminist unease, 423n1071 Fiametta, 62 Filial piety, 323. See also Oedipus Filibuster rule, U.S. Senate, 195 Filomena, 56–57, 62 Filostrato, 56–57, 386n310 First Amendment, the, 196–208, 221, 420n993, 420n998, 420n1009, 423n1082 First World War, 237, 273, 282 Flag-desecration issue, 212, 417n937, 431n1013. See also Prudence Flammetta, 57–58 Florence, Florentines, 439, 41, 55–66 Ford, John C., S.J., 345 Forms, timeless, 163. See also Ideas, doctrine of the Fortune, 149, 383n211, 387n332

436

Index

Fourteenth Amendment, 420n1009 Fourth of July, 138, 406n724. See also Declaration of Independence, the France/French, 141, 143, 170, 347–56, 415n919 Franklin, Benjamin, xi, xii, 76, 134–39, 391n404, 405n704, 405n710, 406nn717– 19, 406n724, 407n725 Free will, 37–39, 50–51, 53, 73 Freedom, 49–50, 52–54, 170 Freedom of Choice Act (proposed), 422n1058 Freedom of expression, 87, 175, 219, 226, 239, 415n922, 420n993, 423n1082. See also Freedom of speech Freedom of speech, 86–90, 93, 195–97, 423n1082. See also First Amendment, the Freeman/freedman, 405n700 Freethinking, 136, 148, 207, 355, 407n727 French, Robert Dudley, 67 French calendar, 350 French Revolution, 174, 355, 407n733 Freud, Sigmund, 374n37 Fritzsche, Hellmut, 372n6 Frye, Northrop, xii Fundamentalism, religious, 162 Furies, the, 377n70 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 397n588 Galileo, 314 Garden of Eden, 46, 48, 85, 226. See also Milton, John; Nature/natural; Philosophy Genetic “meddling,” 157 Gentlemanship, 355. See also Atheism, proclaimed Germany, 91–108, 155, 171, 257–300, 358–59, 364, 394n474, 404n679. See also Goethe, Johann W. von; Lessing, Gotthold; Simply Unbelievable Ghetto life, 257–300 Gia Fu Feng, 328, 330, 334 Gibbs, Nancy, 425n1122 Gideon, 208 Gilson, Etienne, 405n700 Giotto, 66 Glaucon, 422n1060. See also Plato Gleicher, Jules, 371n2 Gluttony, 45, 51 Gobitis Case. See Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940) God, 41–42

Goering, Herman, 360. See also Nuremberg Trial Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 411n826 Good, the/goodness, xvii, 10, 24, 52–53, 113–14, 127–28, 130, 152, 161, 163–65, 168–69, 175, 206, 208, 213, 222, 239, 334–37, 354, 357–60, 404n681, 414n887 Good Friday, 42, 140 Grace, act of, 50, 67 Grand Canyon, 412n858 Grand Inquisitor, the, 72, 101, 390n389. See also Nietzsche, Friedrich Gratification, mindless, 209 Gravity, laws of, 165, 228–29 Great Britain, 135, 136, 359 Great Depression, 318 Great-souled man, 380n134. See also Aristotle; Churchill, Winston S.; Pericles Greece/Greeks (ancient), 1–9, 73, 149, 154, 252, 417n946, 425n1117, 429n1199. See also Homer; Herodotus; Plutarch Greece/Greeks (modern), 176–89, 245, 248, 315–16, 394n474, 416–19, 427n1173. See also Jews/Judaism Greek-Americans, 427n1173 Greek language, xvi, 191 Greek Orthodox Church, 183, 190, 192, 315– 18, 425n1109. See also Delphic Oracle; Eastern Orthodox Church; Nicene Creed Green, Kenneth Hart, 378n103 Gregory, St., 46 Grendel, 13 Griselda, 389n360 Guam, 306 Gyges, 415n908. See also Herodotus; Lessing, Gotthold; Plato Gypsies, 360, 403n671. See also Holocaust Hades, 172, 381n157. See also Inferno Hadrian, Emperor, 398n587 Halevi, Judah, 380n134, 403n666, 428n1187. See also Strauss, Leo Hamilton, Alexander, 407nn725–26 Hamlet, 227, 409n787 Happiness, 19, 128, 133, 149–50, 171, 173, 236–41. See also Aristotle; Nature/natural; Virtue/virtues Harris, Monford, 396n524 Harrowing of Hell, 43. See also Brown, George Mackay

Index Hassner, Pierre, 409n797 Health, 303 Heaney, Seamus, xiii, 374n43 Hearsay, 142. See also Revelation Heaven/Paradise, 35–54, 186 Hebrew language, xvi, 191 Hedonism, public-spirited, 78, 170. See also Friedman, Milton; Hobbes, Thomas; Smith, Adam Hegel, G. W. F., 153–54, 244, 409n801 Heidegger, Martin, 333, 365, 369, 401n627, 408n767, 409n792, 411n826; as cunning peasant, 394n473; as Macbeth of philosophy, 333; wife of, 369 Heiserman, Arthur, 112, 399n597 Helen, 64 Heliodorus, 44, 316 Hell, 35–54. See also Harrowing of Hell Helms, Jesse, 87 Henry VIII, King, 86–90, 352, 391n408, 423n1067 Heraclitus, 146, 414n882 Heresy, 42 Hermes, 5 Herodotus, 186, 316, 411n826 Hesiod, 330 Hialeah, Florida, 216–23 Hiero, 337–39. See also Tyranny High and low, 162, 329 Hinduism, 113. See also Bhagavad Gita; Doniger, Wendy; Gandhi, Mahatma History/historicism, 22, 157–58, 353, 369 Hitler, Adolf, 99, 126, 275–76, 279–81, 286, 425n1118. See also Nazis Hobbes, Thomas, 109, 111, 118, 147–48, 151– 53, 155, 166, 244, 352, 354–55, 379n123, 399n595, 408n766, 410n807, 413n874. See also Berns, Laurence; Locke, John; Strauss, Leo Holiness, 409n780 Holmes, Sherlock, 303 Holocaust (European), 175, 247, 252, 257– 300, 345, 357–60, 390n392, 404n680. See also Gypsies; Homosexuals; Jews/Judaism Homer, 38, 94, 172–73, 316, 333, 373n29, 375n63, 377n68, 377n75, 381n157, 382n176, 382n195, 386n308, 400n612 Homosexuals, 60, 220, 388n344. See also Nature/natural Honesty/honor, 137, 145, 188, 337

437

Horace, 112 Horatio (Hamlet), 409n787 Hospitality, abuse of, 255. See also September 11 Hrothgar, 10–24 Hugo, Victor, 349, 355 Human condition, 151. See also Chance; Nature/natural; Philosophy Hume, David, 227 Humility, xvii, 94 Hunt, Leigh, 357 Hungary, 259 Husserl, Edmund, 369 Hypocrisy, 351–52 Hythloday, Raphael, 78–81 Idealism, German, 148 Ideas, doctrines of, 115, 162–63, 373n30, 393n467, 400n625, 411n835, 418n972. See also Plato Idolatry, xv, 5, 186 Ignatius Loyola, St., 343–46. See also Jesuits Ignorance, 19, 338, 359–60 Illinois bar, 339–40, 343 Immortality of the soul, 19–20, 23, 39–40, 143, 149, 377n73, 388n333, 390n383, 399nn600–601, 402n656, 408n768, 410n802. See also Individual/ individualism Incarnation, 341–42. See also Reincarnation Incest, 26 Incontinence, 51 Incarnation, 412n853 Incommensurability, 104. See also Mystery of being India, 176, 423n1071. See also Hinduism Indians, North American, 359–60 Individual/individualism, 39–40, 72–73, 105, 126, 150, 152–53, 170–71, 185, 189, 213, 226, 234, 239, 304, 381n160, 384n223, 397n563, 410n810. See also Immortality of the soul Indochina, 254 Indonesia, 247, 418n960 Indulgence, 95–96. See also Luther, Martin Infanticide, 213–14 Infinity/infinitude, 130, 132, 220, 404n693, 404n696. See also Universe, eternity of Ingersoll, Ralph, 207 Inquisition, 344

438

Index

Insanity, 97, 241 Intellectuals, 130, 137, 249, 251–52 Intelligence/intelligence in the universe, 162, 164 Intuition, 313 Irish poetry, 319 Irrationality, 241 Irony, 131 Isaac, 27, 123, 243, 348, 378n102, 349n491, 402n657. See also Rebecca Isaiah, xvii, 96, 216, 395n504 Ishmael, 394n491. See also Islam Isis, 373n29 Islam, 26, 65, 123, 126, 176–89, 242–54, 347–48, 354, 402n647, 418n956, 418n964, 418n969, 418n971, 419n974, 429n1200. See also Koran; Muhammad; Trinity Israel, ancient and modern, 43, 242–54, 257, 269, 403n672, 414n898, 425n1117. See also Jews/Judaism Italy, 43, 54, 96, 396n535 Jacob, xvii, 27, 243, 348, 378n102. See also Jews/Judaism Jaffa, Harry V., 372n5, 415n929 Jaffe, Martin D., 402n645 James, St., 99 James, William, 400n604 Jansenists, 347–48, 349, 351. See also Pascal, Blaise Japan, 345. See also Pearl Harbor attack Jeanne d’Arc, 347, 352 Jefferson, Thomas, xi, 174, 198, 212, 251, 406n716, 428n1184. See also Crosskey, William W. Jeremiah, 92, 224 Jericho, Battle of, 354. See also Rahab Jerusalem, 255 Jesuits, 148, 192, 343–46, 347, 349, 351, 356, 419n989 Jesus, 144, 375n53 Jews/Judaism, xv, xvi–xvii, 25–28, 72–73, 92, 98–101, 105, 119–27, 142–43, 149, 154, 171, 174–75, 191–92, 221, 230, 257–300, 329, 333, 354–55, 357–60, 362, 366–67, 374n34, 378n101, 378n103, 384n218, 390n392, 394n474, 394n491, 396n526, 396n533, 402nn644–45, 402n647, 402n650, 404n679, 409n780, 414nn898– 99, 415n919, 416n934, 418n956,

425n1117, 426n1140, 427n1158. See also Holocaust Job, 12, 396n526, 403n665 John, St., 54 John XXIII, Pope, 101, 396n535 John Chrysostom, St., 341–42, 394n474 John Paul II, Pope, 391n397 Jonah, 396n549 Johnson and Graham’s Lessee v. William M’Intosh (1823), 344 Jonson, Ben, 403n659 Joshua, 44, 103 Joyce, James, 38, 45, 122, 325, 381n150, 419n989 Joyfulness, 146 Judaism. See Jews/Judaism Judas Iscariot, 375n53, 383n205, 390n385, 394n491, 400n601. See also “The Last Christian” Jude, 428n1185 Judgment Day, 36, 85. See also Wagerproposal Jupiter (Zeus), xv Jurisprudence, 344. See also Law and community Justice, xvii, 29–34, 49, 52, 63, 150, 154–55, 244, 251–54, 288, 378n104. See also Garden of Eden Justification, by faith, 91; by works, 91 Kamikaze action, 230 Kant, Immanuel, 152–53, 395n517, 409n797, 410n826 Karaghiozis Shadow Theatre, 184, 418n960 Kass, Leon R., 232–33, 425n1126 Kazantzakis, Nikos, 140, 417n943 Kazazis, Christina von Nocklen, 74 Kelley, Edmund, 373n17 Kennedy, Anthony, 217 Kent, Duke of (King Lear), 394n478 Kepler, Johannes, 313–14 Kevorkian, Jack, 424n1097 Key, Francis Scott, 177–78, 184 Kierkegaard, Søren, 128 Klein, Else Georgia (“Dodo”), 361 Klein, Jacob, 361–70, 382n194, 390n394 Knowledge and its limits, 322, 357–60, 410n813 Koenigsburg, Germany, 297–98 Kojève, Alexandre, 367, 407n734

Index Koran, 325–26. See also Islam Korea, 248, 320 Kyd, Thomas, 122 La Fargue, Michael, 325 Lamarck, Jean-Baptist, 163 Lao Tzu, 319–34 Laughter, revealing, 57, 329 Latvia, 257, 259 Law and community, 72, 95–96, 147, 165, 378n99, 384n218. See also Constitution of the United States, the; Decalogue, the; Declaration of Independence, the Lear, King, 113, 304, 394n478 Legal realists, 339–40, 345 Legislation of morality, 210, 214 Leibnitz, Gottfried W., 368, 412n860 Lenoir-Rhyne University, 346 Lent, 420n993 Leper colony (Guam), 306 Lessing, Gotthold, 403n677, 404n679 Lethe, waters of, 54 Levi, Edward H., 339–40, 345 Liberality, 84 Liberty, 180–83, 186–87, 199–201 Lieber, Maxim, 315 Life, 164–66, 169; goodness of, 25, 113, 410n806. See also Aristotle; Freud, Sigmund; Moses Light, speed of, 313 Lincoln, Abraham, 134, 174, 212–13, 248, 372n5, 395n513, 407n727, 415n929, 428n1174 Lithuania/Lithuanians, 257–300, 358 Living/not living, 412n859 Locke, John, 118, 347, 354. See also Braithwaite, William T.; Goldwin, Robert A.; Hobbes, Thomas Loeb and Leopold, 416n930. See also Nietzsche, Friedrich Logos, 326–27 Lombardo, Marco, 53 London, 301–6 Louis de Montalte, 349 Love, 41, 44–45, 49, 50, 51, 53, 57, 93–94, 98, 106, 168, 384n218; falling in, 388n356 Loyola University of Chicago, xii, 344 Lucifer, 45 Lucretius, 114, 208, 227, 400n618, 408n766 Lucy, 40, 45

439

Lund, Sister Candida, 343, 378n93 Lust, 41, 45 Luther, Martin, xi, xii, 91–108, 344, 346, 395nn473–74, 395n485, 395n491, 396n526, 402n650, 403n667. See also Marty, Martin E. Lystra, xv Macbeth of philosophy, the, 411n826. See also Heidegger, Martin Machiavelli, Niccolò, 63, 118, 119–20, 121, 122–24, 127, 214, 362, 383n211, 399n601. See also de Alvarez, Leo Paul S. Madison, James, 198. See also Crosskey, William W. Maimonides, Moses, xi, 25–28, 367, 378n95, 412n853. See also Lerner, Ralph; Strauss, Leo; Weiss, Raymond L. Malraux, Andre, 1, 372n9 Malta, 119–27 Manfred, 50 Manicheans, 354 Mankind, 174 Mann, Robert E., 347 Manns, Peter, 93, 96–97, 394n479 Manzaros, Nicholas, 179–80 Maritain, Jacques, 389n374 Marlowe, Christopher, 119–27, 401n642, 402n644, 402n646, 403n675–76, 404n680 Marriage, 97, 173 Marshall, John, 344 Marty, Martin E., xi–xiii, 394n491 Martyrdom, temptation to, 249, 403n670 Marx, Karl/Marxism, 191, 207, 348, 353, 418n962, 422n1039 Mary, mother of Jesus, 5–6, 45, 50, 428n1185 Mary I, Queen, 90 Massada, 230, 425n1117 Materialism, 116, 163–64 Mathematics, 316, 363 Matter, 158, 164, 169; eternity of, 118 Mayflower Compact, 419n991 McKeon, Richard P., 128 Mechanics, 162 Medical ethics, 224–41 Medicine, limits of, 399n591 Medusa, 38 Melville, Herman, 323, 356 Memel, Lithuania, 290–91, 295–96 Menkelov, a Lithuanian Jew, 262

440

Index

Meno, 131 Mercouri, Melina, 180 Mercurius/Mercury (Hermes), xv, 5 Mercy, xvii Messiah/Messianic Age, xvii, 28, 54, 375n61, 375n62, 415n916 Metz, John, 347 Micah, xvii Michael, Robert, 395n491 Midas, 44 Mikva, Abner J., 342n5 Miller, Basia Carolyn, 117, 398n579 Milton, John, 226–28, 357, 391n411 Mind, mind/body problem, 158, 162–63, 413n875 Mindless gratification, 209 Minerva (Athena), 382n188 Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940), 200 Miracles, 102, 388n336 Misery, 146, 153 Mithra, cult of, 348n221 Moderation, 416n930. See also Virtue/virtues Modernity, 170–75, 367, 414n892 Modesty, violated, 275 Molière, 351–52, 355 Monroe Doctrine, xiii Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de, xi, xii, xiii, 109–18, 145–46, 353, 355–56, 398n577, 396n586–87, 400n615, 401n627, 401n629, 401n631, 401n634. See also Emerson, Ralph Waldo Montesquieu, 117, 347, 355, 398n574 Morality, 98, 205–6, 209–23; legislation of, 210, 214 More, Thomas, 76–90, 391n408, 393n465; intolerance of, 82 Moreelse, Johan, 408n578 Morgan, Richard E., 421n1024 Morgenthau, Hans J., 372n5 Mormons, 202 Morphine drip, 231, 425n1122. See also Euthanasia; Natural right/natural law; Suicide Morris, Gouverneur, 407n733 Mortality, 123, 236–41 Moses, 12–13, 25, 28, 43, 99, 143, 156, 244, 342, 375n52, 379n117, 383n211. See also Cyrus; Romulus; Theseus Moslem. See Islam

Motorcyclists’ helmets, 302–3 Mueller v. Allen (1983), 200–201 Muhammad, 185–86, 342, 395n491, 395n512, 396n520. See also Islam Murder, 26, 227–28. See also Decalogue, the Murley, John A., 307, 310, 361, 371n1, 372n6, 391n397, 427n1162 Music, 176–89 Muslim. See Islam Myris, 1–9 Mystery, 357–60, 382n192 Mysticism, 333 Myth of Er, 415n908. See also Reincarnation Mythology, 142 Nakedness and captivity, 275 Napoleon, Emperor, 174, 355, 415n919 Nathan (prophet), 252, 388n339. See also Bathsheba Natural right/natural law, 29–34, 100, 201, 206, 208, 209, 226, 345, 379nn116–17. See also Conscience; Prudence; Virtue/virtues Natural science, 175, 401n636. See also Physics Colloquium Natural selection, 156–69. See also Universe, beginning of Nature/natural, xvi, 39, 47, 61–62, 71, 85, 91–108, 110–11, 113–15, 117, 123, 127, 131, 133, 135–37, 141, 147, 149–50, 152–53, 155, 156–69, 206, 208, 213–15, 226, 231–32, 237–40, 253, 333, 337, 357, 362, 371n4, 378n99, 379n116, 389n363, 393n467, 395n504, 399n601, 400n604, 400n615, 400n618, 400n623, 409n785, 411n830, 417n934, 426n1142. See also Philosophy; Prudence; Universe, eternity of Nazis, 99, 175, 257–300, 345, 359–60, 369, 396n521, 415n923, 429n1200. See also Holocaust; Plagues; Simply Unbelievable Necessity, 31, 149. See also Universe, eternity of Negation, virtue of, 151 Newman, John Henry, 391n397 Newman, Roger K., 315, 385n253 Newspapers, 76–78 Newton, Isaac, xvi, 37, 166, 314, 323, 354, 380n143. See also Lucretius; Pantocrator; Universe, beginning of Niagara Falls, 412n858

Index Nicene Creed, 394n474. See also Eastern Orthodox Church; Greek Orthodox Church Nicgorski, Walter, 361 Nietzsche, Friedrich, xi, xvi, 92, 145–46, 147, 149, 154–55, 170–75, 319–20, 408n767, 409n797, 409n801, 414n892, 414n898–99, 415nn909–11, 415n920, 415n930. See also Lomax, J. Harvey Nihilism, 175 Nirvana, 148 Nixon, Richard M., 246, 427n1167 Noble/nobility, 27, 84, 174, 378n104 Non-Western thought, xvi, 319–34 Normandy beaches, 307, 310. See also Second World War Northwest Ordinance (1787), 205 Nostalgia, 180, 182, 416n934. See also Greece, modern Nothing/nothingness, 164–65. See also “Why something . . .” Nuclear war, 387n323. See also Natural right/ natural law; Obliteration bombing; Pearl Harbor attack Nude bathing, 388n351. See also Plagues Numerology, 14, 42–43, 55–56, 65, 71, 109, 130, 135–36, 326, 329, 350–51, 375n66, 377n67, 383n209, 383n212, 384n241, 385n253, 390n385, 404n696, 426n1137. See also Illusions, salutary; Newton, Isaac; Reading, on Nuremberg Trial (1945–1946), 360, 415n923. See also Holocaust; International law; Natural right/natural law Oaths, 136. See also Bar admission controversy Obama, Barack H., 405n100 Obliteration bombing, 345. See also International law; Natural right/natural law; Sense of proportion Obscenity, 196–97. See also Greed, inordinate O’Connor, Flannery, 237–38, 240 O’Connor, R. Eric, S.J., 419n989 Odysseus, 172–73, 373n29, 375n63, 377n79, 381n157, 382n176, 382n188, 382n195, 383n208, 415n906. See also Homer; Joyce, James; Sophocles Oedipus, 9, 322, 332, 374n38, 391n399, 416n932. See also Chance; Fate; Prudence Old woman, pious, 106

441

Olympian gods, 61. See also Apollo; Athena; Hermes; Poseidon; Zeus Ontology, 361 Optimism, 409n801. See also Socrates Order, 414n887 Oregon “Death with Dignity Act,” 234 Original sin, 148. See also Nature/natural Orpheus, 22 Orthodoxy among Jews, 427n1158. See also Jews/Judaism Orwell, George, 302 Pacifism, 220, 428n1176 Pagans, 11, 24, 45, 96, 99, 384n218, 384n245 Paine, Tom, xi, 128, 140–44, 196, 207, 353, 404n690, 406n718, 407n733, 407n742, 419n988. See also Burke, Edmund Pamfilo, 56–57, 59, 62 Pampinea, 56, 63–64, 386n310, 387n312, 388n356 Pangur Bán, 319 Pantocrator (of Isaac Newton), xvi Paolo and Francesca, 41 Parallax problem, 314 Paranoia, 405n705 Parize, a Jewish representative, 273 Parricide, 44. See also Oedipus Paris, France, 301–2, 344 Parmenides. See Cropsey, Joseph Parson, the (of Chaucer), 72–73 Pascal, Blaise, xi, xii, 128–33, 140, 347–56, 404n689, 404n691, 404n696, 405n700. See also Wager-proposal Patner, Andrew, 408n749 Patriotism, 143 Paul, St., xv, xvi, 5, 71, 93, 99, 104, 107, 158, 342. See also Damascus Road; Grand Inquisitor, the; Presumptuousness (apparent) Pavanche, Lithuania, 280 Pearl Harbor attack (1941), 405n705, 427n1169 Peasants (Germany), 92, 96, 394n491. See also Heidegger, Martin; Luther, Martin; Reformation Pekarsky, Maurice, 243 Penitence, 52, 67. See also Dante Alighieri Pentagon (U.S.), 255 Pentagon Papers, 390n383

442

Index

Perriere, Guillaume de la, 322 Persian Empire, 184, 186 Persian War, 418n961. See also Herodotus Perversity, 150 Pessimism, 153–54, 410n826 Peter, St., 39, 41, 46, 99 Petrarch, 389n360 Pets, domestic, 410n806 Peyote, 222 Philanthropy, 150 Philosophy, xvi–xviii, 5, 30, 32–33, 48, 53, 60, 63–64, 82, 84, 100, 102–5, 109–18, 124, 132, 146, 148–50, 153–54, 160, 165–66, 171–73, 175, 208, 212, 239–40, 245, 249, 252–53, 255, 319–20, 322, 332–34, 344, 348, 353, 355, 361, 365, 367, 377n77, 384n245, 387n315, 388n336–37, 388n356, 393n465, 397n562, 397n569, 398n586, 401n627, 401n631, 403n666, 410n813, 415n916, 416n930, 422n1047. See also Apollo; Aristotle; Parmenides; Plato; Plutarch; Socrates; Xenophon Philoxenus, 398n587 Physics Colloquium (University of Chicago), 311, 358. See also Natural animation of matter; Ultron; Universe, eternity of Picasso, Pablo, 426n1138 Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), 201, 423n1068 Piety, 134–39, 143, 393n465. See also Rhetoric Pilate, Pontius, 124 Pindar, 399n599 Pitiless encounters, 294. See also Contemptible, on the; Curious encounters; Holocaust Pitt, William, 67 Plagues, 57, 387n323. See also Boccaccio, Giovanni; Lucretius; Thucydides Planck, Max, 163, 413n862 Planetary orbits, xvi. See Newton, Isaac Platea, battlefield at, 418n961 Plato, xvii, 37, 94, 104, 106, 113, 115, 117, 131, 150, 163, 166, 171–72, 175, 186, 213, 239–40, 245–46, 330–31, 338, 357, 362, 365, 367–69, 373n30, 374n37, 375n59, 377n84, 380n127, 380n133, 380n142, 381n146, 385n271, 387n315, 388n337, 389n361, 390n394, 391n396, 393n450, 393n452, 398n578, 398n587, 399n600,

404n679, 405n699, 406n723, 408n766, 411n826, 415n908, 418n972, 422n1047, 422n1060, 422n1063, 425n1123, 426n1127, 427n1146, 429n1166. See also Philosophy Pleasure/pleasure principle, 82, 116, 150, 154, 167. See also Epicurus; Hobbes, Thomas; Lucretius Plutarch, 111, 145, 398n591, 408n766. See also Diogenes Laertius Poetry/poets, 22, 54, 104, 144, 165–66, 382n193, 414n902. See also Homer; Plato; Shakespeare, William Poland, 257. See also Holocaust Political activity, xvii, 61, 64; philosophy, 361. See also Common good; Philosophy; Prudence Pollution, 220, 411n830 Polydoros, 44 Polygamy, 221 Polymnestor, 44 Poor Tom (King Lear), 304 Population issues, 276, 423n1068 Porphry, 106 Poseidon, 7 Prange, Gordon W., 405n705 Prayer/praying, 134–39 Pre-Socratics, 333 Pride, 46, 50, 84, 392n414 Prime numbers, 329. See also Pascal, Blaise Printing press, 92 Privacy, use and abuse, 80–84, 201, 304, 393n454 Process alone, 164. See also Chance; Nature/ natural; World, eternity of Pro-choice movement, 209–15. See also Abortion, the law of Prohibition (1919–1933), 210 Property, 73, 82, 84–85, 79–81 Prophecy, xvii–xviii, 165, 384n244, 413n870, 415n909. See also Chance; Poetry; Statesmanship Proportion, sense of, 212. See also Prudence Proportionate cause doctrine, 345 Prospero, 74, 392n432, 400n621 Protestantism, 91–108, 190–96, 347, 351. See also Marty, Martin E. Providential, 91, 394n469. See also Chance Prudence, 21, 25–28, 30, 71–72, 74, 89, 105, 106, 118, 133, 144, 174, 182, 206–8, 212, 222–23, 225, 231, 238, 245, 249, 254, 255,

Index 335, 351, 378n107, 398n587. See also Common good; Common sense; Philosophy Ptolemy, 311–14 Public Education and Religious Liberty v. Regan (1980), 202 Public Funds for Public Schools v. Byrne (1979), 202 Purgatory, 33–54 Pygmalion, 44 Pythagoreans, 333 Rabelais, Francois, 55 Raccoons, charming compulsiveness of, 161. See also Cuckoo bird Ramadan, 418n969 Randolph, Edmund, 138, 406n724 Raphael (angel), 391n411 Raphael (painter), 384n245 Rashi, 99 Reading, on, xvi, 58 Reason/rationality (powers and limitations), 51–52, 73, 102, 105, 107–8, 152, 155, 158, 163–64, 174, 252, 380n131, 400n604 Reason and revelation, 204–8, 391n397, 406n718. See also Revelation Rebecca. See Jews/Judaism Recollection, learning as, 381n146 Reincarnation, 380n144. See also Buddhism; Hinduism; Myth of Er Reinherz, Adam, 257, 371n1 Relativism, 214. See also Aztecs; Holocaust; Nuremberg Trial Relativity, 409n797 Religion clauses of the Constitution, 197–98, 204–8 Repentance, 59, 66. See also Second thoughts Representative, Jewish (Lithuania), 272–73. See also Holocaust Republican principles, 1, 175, 197, 414n892, 427n1173, 429n1082 Resurrection, 186. See also Reincarnation Resurrection Hymn, 183, 184 Retractation of Chaucer, 74–75 Revelation, 29–31, 47, 136, 204–8, 221, 333–35, 338, 380n131, 391n397, 399n601, 400n604, 406n718. See also Philosophy; Poetry; Reason and revelation Revelation, Book of, 354 Revenge, limits of, 187 Revolutionary War (U.S.), 135

443

Reynolds v. United States (1875), 202 Rhetoric, 129, 181, 405n701. See also Aristotle; Hobbes, Thomas; Nietzsche, Friedrich Righteousness, xvii, 253 Rockefeller Chapel (University of Chicago), 314 Rodin, Auguste, 427n1149 Rodriguez, Manuel Vela, 257 Roe v. Wade (1973), 210, 422n1058. See also “A Bridge Too Far”; Abortion, the law of; Prudence Roman Catholicism, 29–34, 91–108, 119, 123–24, 191–92, 193, 194, 198, 347, 356, 419n992, 423n1070. See also Augustine, St.; Dante Alighieri; Pascal, Blaise Rome/Romans, 9, 65, 96, 227, 429n1199. See also Crucifixions; Beheadings; Hemlock Romulus, 383n211. See also Brotherly love Rosary College, 343 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 355, 408n762 Russia/Russians, 257, 260–62, 264–65, 268–70, 272–73, 275–76, 285–88, 292–93, 298–99, 364, 367 Ruth, 242, 427n1152, 428n1185. See also St. Augustine’s Lucretia; Machiavelli’s Mandragola; Raskolnikov’s Sonia Sabbath, 26 Sacred/sacredness, 213–14. See also Revelation Sadat, Anwar, 246 Sadism, 275 St. John’s College, 361–70 St. Louis, Missouri, 190, 315, 317, 343 St. Nicholas Church (St. Louis), 317 Sainthood, 58 San Francisco, California, 301 Santeria faith, 216–23 Sapphira, 44–45 Sappho, 399n599 Sarah (wife of Abraham), 353 Satan/satanic, 342, 357, 360, 424n1089 Saudi Arabia, 242 Schaefer, David, 398n577, 398n586, 401n629 Scharbach, John Anastaplo, 307 Schiffer, James, 403n659 Schopenhauer, Arthur, xi, 145–55, 408n751, 408n766, 409n801, 410n806, 410n811, 410n813, 410n816, 410n818, 411n826

444

Index

School prayer, 197 Science, modern, xvi, 118, 175, 334, 351, 354, 361–62, 407n742, 415n925 Scopes Trial (1925), 162, 412n849 Scots, the, 416n934 Scott, Walter, 77 Scrooge, Ebenezer, 111–12 Scyld Scefing, 12 Second World War, 257–300, 307, 310, 317, 345, 357–60, 363–64 Secularism, 351 Seder service, 329 Self/self-centeredness/self-expression/selfindulgence/self-interest/self-preservation, 20, 33, 97, 109, 111, 116, 123, 151–52, 166–67, 170–71, 226, 239, 251, 384n223, 408n768. See also Freedom of expression; Hobbes, Thomas; Salvation, personal Self-knowledge, 307–10, 337–40, 373n21. See also Delphic oracle; Polonius (Hamlet); Socrates Senate, U.S., 87, 195 Sense of proportion, 212 Separationists, 201 September 11, 255, 405n705, 427n1169, 428n1177, 429n1200 Septuagint, the, 374n32. See also Revelation Serapis, Serapeion, 7, 9 Serpent, the, 50 Seven deadly sins, 68–69, 71. See also Dante Alighieri Seventh Day Adventist Church, 217 Sexuality, 83, 96 Shakespeare, William, 74, 113, 121, 125, 166, 227, 304, 372n7, 378n100, 389n358, 392n432, 394n478, 400n621, 402nn645– 46, 403n659, 403n661, 403nn673–74, 413n873, 424n1100, 426n1129 Shame/shamelessness, 255, 381n148, 382n181 Shangri La, 391n409. See also Utopian thinking Shapiro, Richard A., 229–30, 232 Sharp, Malcolm P., 412n858, 428n1181 Sherrard, Phillip, 373n17 Shi’ites, 418n964, 418n974. See also Sunnis Shelley, Percy B., 378n85 Shylock, 121, 402n645, 403n661, 403n673 Silenus, 400n609, 410n803 Simply Unbelievable, 257–300, 357–60 Sinai, 244. See also Alcinous, Court of; Moses; Odysseus

Sinclair, John D., 42, 380n139 Sioux City, Iowa, 317–18 “Situation,” the, 309 Skepticism, 5, 113, 117–18, 132, 332, 353, 409n797 Skolnick, Irving, 390n391 Slavery, 81, 102, 135, 181, 213, 220, 251, 359–60, 416n930, 422n1063 Sloth, 44, 51 Smith College, 236 Socrates, xii, xvii, 19, 37, 63, 73–74, 86, 90, 96, 104, 111, 112–14, 115, 117, 131, 150–51, 172–73, 177, 189, 226, 239–40, 245–46, 329–30, 332, 333, 334, 337–38, 349, 357, 362, 374n37, 380n133, 389n361, 391n396, 392n422, 393n450, 395n504, 398n586, 399n600, 400n603, 400n623, 401n631, 402n632, 406n723, 408n766, 409n792, 411n826, 415n911, 415n916, 422n1047, 425n1119, 425n1123, 427n1166. See also Philosophy Sodom and Gomorrah, 216 Solomon, King, 71, 99 Solomos, Dionysios, 179–80, 182, 188–89, 418n953 Sophists/sophistic, 158, 422n1061 Sorbonne, 344 Souli, Greece, 230, 425n1120 Southern Baptists, v, 191, 198 Soviet Union, 422n1039. See also Russia/ Russians Spain, 344 Sparta, 388n342 Spatharis, Evgemos, 418n960 Spinoza, Benedict de, 118, 145, 354–55. See also Hobbes, Thomas; Kant, Immanuel; Socrates Spiritedness, 172 SS, the, 273 Stalin, Josef, 126. See also Hitler, Adolf Stanford University, 236 Star, Jonathan, 325 States rights, 197, 331. See also Wishful thinking Statius, 46, 51, 54, 381n149 Stern, Richard, 399n597 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 316 Stoics/Stoicism, 112, 115, 227, 400n618 Stone, Harold Samuel, 398n574 Stone, Robert L., 372n6, 427n1148

Index Strauss, Leo, xvi–xvii, 111, 239–40, 245, 251, 253, 354, 360, 361–70, 378n103, 384n246, 391n395, 391n397, 394n473, 399n593, 406n718, 407n734, 411n828, 412n846, 414n899, 428n1191 Strauss, Jenny, 366 Strauss, Miriam, 361 Subjectivity, 152. See also Self/selfcenteredness Suffering, 145–55, 407n748 Suicidal Christianity, 378n101. See also Socrates Suicide, 82, 148, 220, 224–41, 230, 303, 388n333, 388n336, 391n396, 424n1097, 426n1129 Suicide-bombing, merits of, 425n1118 Suicide mission, 230 Sumner, Jezaniah, 170 Sunnis, 419n974. See also Shi’ites; Northern Ireland; Oklahoma City bombing Superstition, 102, 107–8 Survival, 168 Swift, Jonathon, 38, 381n150 Syriopoulos, Pericles, 315 Syriopoulou, Margareta, 316 Taliban, 419n978. See also September 11 Taoism, 319–34 Taxation, 67 Technology, xvi Television, 219, 399n600 Ten Commandments, xiii, 56. See also Decalogue, the Terence, 94, 402n654 Terror/terrorism, 246, 342. See also Apocalypse, the Tersh, Lithuania, 287 Tertullian, 396n539, 396n548 Thales, 114–16, 117, 400n615, 400n618. See also Aristotle Theft, 79. See also Decalogue, the Theodorakis, Mikis, 180 Theophany, 341. See also Daimonion of Socrates, the Theseus, 383n211 Third-rate books, 408n765 Thirty Tyrants, 112–13, 390n385. See also Tyranny “Thirty-six righteous men,” implications of. See Fall, the Thomas à Kempis, 345

445

Thomas Aquinas, St., xi, 29–34, 46, 94, 96, 100–101, 103, 208, 237, 343–46, 379–80, 405n700, 426n1143 Thomas à Becket, St., 69, 389n377, 390n382 Thrasymachus, 151, 409n792 Thucydides, 186 Title I education programs, 206, 420n1004, 420n1009, 421n1112 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 170–71, 397n563, 414n895 Toleration, 404n679 Tragedy, 150–51 Trinity, 32, 52, 186 Trollope, Frances Milton, 76–78 Troy, 181 Truth/truthfulness, 131, 132, 334, 412n847; deadliness of, 152 Tsunami (December 2004), 322, 332 Turkey, 92, 119–27, 140, 184–85, 187–88, 248, 394n474, 418n961, 419n974, 419n979 Twain, Mark, 413n881 Tyranny, 105, 141, 170, 189, 245, 393n458, 393n461, 393n465, 416n934. See also Machiavelli, Niccolò; Strauss, Leo; Xenophon Ulysses, 43, 54, 382n188. See also Odysseus Universe, 152, 158, 164, 168; beginning of, 333–34, 354; eternity of, 164, 399n600. See also Philosophy; Revelation University of Chicago, xii, 242, 339–40, 343, 345, 347, 358 University of Dallas, xii, 343 Urey, Harold C., 413n869 Uriah the Hittite, 252, 388n339 Utilitarian, 83 Utopian thinking, 76–90, 214 Van Doren, Mark, 400n611 Vasils, Theodora, 417n943. See also Kazantzakis, Nikos Vice/vices, 37–38, 69. See also Virtue/virtues Vidal, Gore, 425n114 Vietnamese intervention, 248, 254, 390n383. See also Sense of proportion Virgil, 38–39, 41, 44, 46, 50–53, 54, 94, 182, 380n145, 381nn148–49, 381n157, 381n160, 382n185, 383n209 Virtue/virtues, xvii, 23, 37–38, 51, 83–84, 98, 113, 130, 145, 149–50, 196, 205–6,

446 209–23, 236, 246, 329, 330, 335, 367, 382n181, 383n211, 401n631, 404n695, 405n700, 410n813. See also Aristotle; Philosophy; Socrates Vitalism, 163 Vitullo-Martin, Thomas W., 420n1005 Voltaire, 352, 353, 355 Voluptuousness, 401n631. See also Hobbes, Thomas; Nietzsche, Friedrich; Socrates Wager-proposal, xiii, 128, 348, 404n689, 404n696, 405nn705–6. See also Pascal, Blaise Waldensians, 344 “Wall of Separation” language, 198–99. See also Crosskey, William W.; Jefferson, Thomas; Judicial presumptuousness Wallace, Alfred Russell, 160, 162. See also Darwin, Charles War, xvii, 56–57, 323 “War of all against all,” 147 Washington, George, 407n725 Webster, Daniel, 176, 248, 417n946, 427n1171 Welton, William A., 378n84 West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), 200 Will, the, 151, 155, 415n924 Will to live, 148. See also Darwin, Charles; Hobbes, Thomas; Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne Wing-tsit Chan, 325, 327 Winograd, Richard, 243, 254

Index Wisdom, 33–34, 139, 416n930. See also Chance; Philosophy; Revelation Wit, therapy of, 389n364 Witch hunts, 207. See also Cold War, the; Palmer Raids; September 11 responses Won Joo Choe, 319–20. See also Philosophy Woolman, John, 392n435 World. See Universe World Trade Center, 255 Women, exploitation of, 209; and love, 64. See also Bathsheba; Jeanne d’Arc; Rebecca; Tamar World War I. See First World War World War II. See Second World War Wrath, 50, 52, 69. See also Achilles; Noah’s flood; Sodom and Gomorrah Wycliff, Don, 426n1129 Xenophon, 73, 337–39, 391nn395–96, 422n1047. See also Philosophy Xerxes, King, 411n826 Yeats, William Butler, 338–39 Yin and yang, 320, 323, 326, 328 Yokum, Mammy, 10, 374n42 Yom Kippur, 72–73, 244–45; war (1973), 245–47, 249 Zealotry, 393n451 Zeus, 5, 387n317 Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District (1993), 216 Zoroastrians, 424n1094