|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 50
And again, in the years of the Risorgimento, more than one of the
champions of Italian liberty went to death with those great names on their
lips.
So runs the law of order and right subordination. But if the classics
offer the best service to education by inculcating an aristocracy of
intellectual distinction, they are equally effective in enforcing the
similar lesson of time. It is a true saying of our ancient humanist that
"the longer it continueth in a name or lineage, the more is nobility
extolled and marvelled at." It is true because in this way our imagination
is working with the great conservative law of growth. Whatever may be in
theory our democratic distaste for the insignia of birth, we cannot get
away from the fact that there is a certain honor of inheritance, and that
we instinctively pay homage to one who represents a noble name. There is
nothing really illogical in this: for, as an English statesman has put it,
"the past is one of the elements of our power." He is the wise democrat
who, with no opposition to such a decree of Nature, endeavors to control
its operation by expecting noble service where the memory of nobility
abides. When last year Oxford bestowed its highest honor on an American,
distinguished not only for his own public acts but for the great tradition
embodied in his name, the Orator of the University did not omit this
legitimate appeal to the imagination, singularly appropriate in its
academic Latin:
... Statim succurrit animo antiqua illa Romae condicio, cum non
tam propter singulos cives quam propter singulas gentes nomen
Romanum floreret. Cum enim civis alicujus et avum et proavum
principes civitatis esse creatos, cum patrem legationis munus apud
aulam Britannicam summa cum laude esse exsecutum cognovimus; cum
denique ipsum per totum bellum stipendia equo meritum, summa
pericula "Pulcra pro Libertate" ausum,... Romanae alicujus
gentis--Brutorum vel Deciorum--annales evolvere videmur, qui
testimonium adhibent "fortes creari fortibus," et majorum exemplis
et imaginibus nepotes ad virtutem accendi.
Is there any man so dull of soul as not to be stirred by that enumeration
of civic services zealously inherited; or is there any one so envious of
the past as not to believe that such memories should be honored in the
present as an incentive to noble emulation?
Well, we cannot all of us count Presidents and Ambassadors among our
ancestors, but we can, if we will, in the genealogy of the inner life
enroll ourselves among the adopted sons of a family in comparison with
which the Bruti and Decii of old and the Adamses of to-day are veritable
_new men_. We can see what defence against the meaner depredations of the
world may be drawn from the pride of birth, when, as it sometimes happens,
the obligation of a great past is kept as a contract with the present;
shall we forget to measure the enlargement and elevation of mind which
ought to come to a man who has made himself the heir of the ancient Lords
of Wisdom? "To one small people," as Sir Henry Maine has said, in words
often quoted, "it was given to create the principle of Progress. That
people was the Greek. Except the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves in
this world which is not Greek in its origin." That is a hard saying, but
scarcely exaggerated. Examine the records of our art and our science, our
philosophy and the enduring element of our faith, our statecraft and our
notion of liberty, and you will find that they all go back for their
inspiration to that one small people, and strike their roots into the soil
of Greece. What we have added, it is well to know; but he is the
aristocrat of the mind who can display a diploma from the schools of the
Academy and the Lyceum, and from the Theatre of Dionysus. What tradition
of ancestral achievement in the Senate or on the field of battle shall
broaden a man's outlook and elevate his will equally with the
consciousness that his way of thinking and feeling has come down to him by
so long and honorable a descent, or shall so confirm him in his better
judgment against the ephemeral and vulgarizing solicitations of the hour?
Other men are creatures of the visible moment; he is a citizen of the past
and of the future. And such a charter of citizenship it is the first duty
of the college to provide.
I have limited myself in these pages to a discussion of what may be called
the public side of education, considering the classics in their power to
mould character and foster sound leadership in a society much given to
drifting. Of the inexhaustible joy and consolation they afford to the
individual, only he can have full knowledge who has made the writers of
Greece and Rome his friends and counsellors through many vicissitudes of
life. It is related of Sainte-Beuve, who, according to Renan, read
everything and remembered everything, that one could observe a peculiar
serenity on his face whenever he came down from his study after reading a
book of Homer. The cost of learning the language of Homer is not small;
but so are all fair things difficult, as the Greek proverb runs, and the
reward in this case is precious beyond estimation.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|